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Immediately in front of the building was a small garden where lilies, blue delphiniums, lupins and other old-fashioned flowers were in bloom, but no fence or hedge divided it from the moorland, which ran like a purple wave right up to the flower border. "Sit down," said Isabella. "Sit down and gloat over the wonder of it, as I do.
Sir Wilfrid, the ex-Minister Sir Louis Ford, the Dean, and the Chaplain of the house were chatting and smoking round the deserted tea-table, while Lady William and the Oxford Professor poked among the flower-beds, exchanging confidences on phloxes and delphiniums. In the distance, under the lime avenue, now in its first pale leaf, two young figures paced to and fro. They were Newbury and Marcia.
But there is not the same deluge that descends upon the outer ridges. So the forest is not so dense. Frequently in its place social grasses clothe the mountain-sides; and yellow violets, primulas, anemones, delphiniums, currants, and saxifrages remind us of regions more akin to our own.
I have a bed at this moment in the full glory of all these things, a little chosen plot of fertile land, about fifteen yards long and of irregular breadth, shutting in at its broadest the east end of the walk along the south front of the house, and sloping away at the back down to a moist, low bit by the side of a very tiny stream, or rather thread of trickling water, where, in the dampest corner, shining in the sun, but with their feet kept cool and wet, is a colony of Japanese irises, and next to them higher on the slope Madonna lilies, so chaste in looks and so voluptuous in smell, and then a group of hollyhocks in tenderest shades of pink, and lemon, and white, and right and left of these white marguerites and evening primroses and that most exquisite of poppies called Shirley, and a little on one side a group of metallic blue delphiniums beside a towering white lupin, and in and out and everywhere mignonette, and stocks, and pinks, and a dozen other smaller but not less lovely plants.
There was a woman at a table close by wearing a dress of a very beautiful blue, the colour of the lower flowers of the darkest delphiniums, but the sight of it gave her none of the pleasant physical sensations, the pricking of the skin, the desire to rub the palms of the hands together quickly that she usually experienced when she saw an intense, clear colour.
Flowers may blaze with colour in an open field and who has not marvelled as he passes in the train the seed-ground of some great horticulturist? but seen thus they have but little charm. In a college garden a border filled with delphiniums and madonna lilies is backed by sombre yews, while the thick foliage of elm or chestnut quiets harmoniously the farther distance.
Paula's flowers had arrived lemon-coloured hollyhocks, blue and mauve and purple delphiniums, filmy love-in-the-mist, primrose antirrhinums, snowy Madonna lilies with golden middles, huge creamy roses, tiny yellow rosebuds, straggling larkspurs. She was dressed in a grey whipcord coat and skirt with a grey swathed turban.
La France and Ulrich Brunner competed silver rose against cherry rose on either side of the porch. Yet the fragrance of all these roses had to yield to that of the Cottage flowers, mignonette, Sweet-William, lemon verbena, Brompton stocks annuals, biennials, perennials, intermixed that lined the border, with blue delphiniums and white Madonna lilies breaking into flower above them.
Such a day made glad the heart. All the flags of July were waving; the sun and the poppies flaming; white butterflies spiring up and twining, and the bees busy on the snapdragons. The lime-trees were coming into flower. Tall white lilies in the garden beds already rivaled the delphiniums; the York and Lancaster roses were full-blown round their golden hearts.
It's a big house and two hundred acres. How can I take a thing like that? You couldn't yourself if you were me." Maisie's little white fingers flickered over the blue delphiniums stacked in the blue-and-white Chinese jar. Her mauve-blue eyes were smiling at Anne over the tops of the tall blue spires. "Don't you want to make him happy?" she said. "Not that way." "If it's the only way ?"
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