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Between December and June this tranquil existence had scarcely been rippled by anything that could be called an event, save the one grand event of Bessie Wendover's life her engagement to John Jardine, who had proposed quite unexpectedly, as Bessie declared, one evening in May, when the two had gone into a certain copse at the back of The Knoll gardens, famous as the immemorial resort of nightingales.
Nightingales were rare at Beechmark; and Buntingford would normally have hailed the enchanted flute-notes with a boyish delight.
He was, however, in such thick cover, that we were unable to get a shot at him. Our camp, we found, moved, according to order, some three miles higher up, to facilitate the shooting on that side: it was still, however, among the firs and nightingales. Up again before sunrise, and off to the tops of the mountains in search of game.
There do you find leafy walks, and dells of shade, and pathways by the great cool river leading to sequestered spots where you may sit and forget the clatter of flagstones and the stuffy apartment above them for which the rent is due; where the air of early June is perfumed by wild thyme and marjoram and the far-flung sweetness of new mown hay, and where the nightingales sing.
What charmed him most in his new residence was the garden "full of lilacs, laburnum, nightingales, and swallows." He writes: "We are just one mile from the turnpike at Hyde Park Corner, having about 3 acres of pleasure-ground around our house, or rather behind it, and several old trees, walnut and mulberry, of thick foliage.
I opened the third door, and found a large aviary, paved with marble of several fine and uncommon colours. The trellis work was made of sandal wood and wood of aloes. It contained a vast number of nightingales, gold-finches, canary birds, larks, and other rare singing-birds, which I had never heard of; and the vessels that held their seed and water were of the most precious jasper or agate.
Under the starry sky we sat down at a table beside a sunken garden, in which nightingales were trying their voices among the blossoms, whose perfume had been intensified by dew. It was an old-time dinner, at least, that Antonio provided; but, alas! those others were not there to eke out the illusion of the past. To each name, as I uttered it, Antonio added an epitaph.
In some places, from their making this peculiar noise, frogs have been called "Dutch nightingales." In Scotland, too, they have a curious name, Paddock or Puddick; but there is poetical authority for it: "The water-snake whom fish and paddocks feed, With staring scales lies poisoned."
Payne could hardly accept an interest in ornithology for explanation of her readiness to come to Overton, she was quick to promise that nightingales should be in full song at the next weekend. Thus having laid her plans, she resisted, though with difficulty, all her impulses to continue her search for evidence.
Gaskell pointed out the beauties of the perspective as seen from his vantage-point, and we were fortunate in hearing the sweet descant of nightingales for which this garden has ever been famous. As we stood silent and listening, a candle was lit in a small oriel at the end, and the light showing the tracery of the window added to the picturesqueness of the scene.
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