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Updated: August 2, 2024
Jane joining me, we had a most charming ramble down a narrow track to the bed of the stream which rushes down from the snow-covered ridge guarding the Lolab. Here we crossed into a splendid belt of gaunt silver firs, the first I have seen here; whitish yellow marsh-marigolds and a most vivid "smalt" blue forget-me-not with large flowers were abundant, also an oxalis very like our own wood-sorrel.
It brightens up the old, time-worn barns, and relieves the monotony of grey stone walls and mossy roofs in the Cotswold village. The prevailing colour of the Cotswold landscape may be said to be that of gold. The richest gold is that of the flaming marsh-marigolds in the water meadows during May; goldilocks and buttercups of all kinds are golden too, but of a slightly different and paler hue.
Never was water more exquisitely tricksy: now darting over the bright pebbles, sparkling and flashing in the light with a bubbling music, as sweet and wild as the song of the woodlark; now stretching quietly along, giving back the rich tufts of the golden marsh-marigolds which grow on its margin; now sweeping round a fine reach of green grass, rising steeply into a high mound, a mimic promontory, whilst the other side sinks softly away, like some tiny bay, and the water flows between, so clear, so wide, so shallow, that Lizzy, longing for adventure, is sure she could cross unwetted; now dashing through two sand-banks, a torrent deep and narrow, which May clears at a bound; now sleeping, half hidden, beneath the alders, and hawthorns, and wild roses, with which the banks are so profusely and variously fringed, whilst flags,* lilies, and other aquatic plants, almost cover the surface of the stream.
The wide meadows through which flowed the river, seemed to smite the eye with their greenness; and the black and red and white kine bent down their sleek necks among the marsh-marigolds and the meadow-sweet and the hundred lovely things that border the level water-courses, and fed on the blessed grass.
The Barle comes with his natural rush and fierceness under the unhewn stone planking, then deepens, and there overhanging a black pool for the shadow was so deep as to be black grew a large bunch of marsh-marigolds in fullest flower, the broad golden cups almost resting on the black water.
Violets, Jacks-in-the-pulpit, marsh-marigolds, and dozens of other familiar and lovely blooms he found as he wandered through the forest. There was nothing Charley liked more than the flowers. He determined to know every bloom in his section of the forest. So he divided his territory into definite strips, patrolling a different strip each day.
There were banks now, and they were fringed with green borders of aquatic plants, rushes, and broad spatter-docks, and flags, and arrow-heads, and marsh-marigolds, and round-leaved pond-lilies, and pointed pickerel-weed. The current was still rapid and strong, but it flowed smoothly through the straight reaches and around the wide curves. On either hand the trees grew taller and more stately.
They are stainless flowers, passionlessly white, that grow beyond the general reach of man, where the air is keen and pure; and, in spite of her graciousness, there was a coldness and a calm, which instead of repelling appealed to him strongly, about this girl. Mabel laughed mischievously. "If you want to give me flowers, it had better be marsh-marigolds," she said.
He went on: "If you could only run over here to roam about our Kentish hills, you would soon be all right again. They are covered with millions of wood anemones, violets, primroses, cuckoo flowers, and blue-bells; and the low ground is gay with marsh-marigolds."
Wood sorrel nestled in the grassy corners near the crude rail fences, daisies and spiked toad-flax grew lavishly among the weeds of the roadside. In the meadows tall milkweed swayed its clusters of pink and lavender, marsh-marigolds dotted the grass with discs of pure gold, and Queen Anne's lace lifted its parasols of exquisite loveliness.
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