THE FALL OF THE LEAF

Once more has the Equinox come and dropped into the past. Autumn—the Fall, as our older and more poetic term had it to balance the image of Spring, and as America still prefers to call it—is about us.

We disagree radically with Chateaubriand’s estimate of the “russet and silver days.”

“A moral character” thus does the Father of Romantisme meditate, in his usual melancholy mood, upon the season of shortening days and long-drawing nights “is attached to autumnal scenes.... The leaves falling like our years, the flowers withdrawing like our hours, the colours of the clouds fading like our illusions, the light waning like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives—everything about Autumn bears secret relations to our destinies....”

Yes, we disagree with every one of these similes. Rather should Autumn be considered as the happy season of the task accomplished. The wine is pressed and stored, the fruit is garnered.... In the garden it is the time of eager preparation against new delights, another year; of solicitude for the treasures of beauty which are to brighten another Spring, another Summer. The seed of the dying Annuals has been saved; the more tender of the Perennials are timely withdrawn into shelter, while the hardier are cosily tucked in their own bed for the coming long winter sleep. It is the time of the tidying down and of the confident “good night—till next year!”

“Colder, like our affections,” indeed! What will not love of rhetoric perpetrate?—and Christmastide drawing on apace!

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The Master of the House has an old-fashioned weakness—what may be called a “Dickensy” weakness—for things Christmassy. And his family have all childlike tastes and are quite ready to minister to his picturesque fancy.

We have a Christmas tree—a Spruce sapling, selected yearly for sacrifice in the territory called the Wilderness. It must be said that the wide library, with the capacious hearth and the beamed ceiling, lends a suitable scenery to this homelike but, we fear, obsolescent entertainment. The tree is lit up on the first night for ourselves; on the second for the household; and a third time for the children. For the true pleasures of Yule would be incomplete without a “foregathering-and-rejoicing-together” as only a tough German compound word could express it of all grades of age and station. The children, in this case, are those of the Catechism class and of our employÉs—which pompous term must be understood to refer to the gardener, the chauffeur, the under-gardener, and the “occasional help.” This last has five of them—so it mounts up satisfactorily.

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The beloved “furry ones” are not forgotten. Loki, who is always in a state of violent excitement on Christmas Tree nights, has a toy animal to make acquaintance with, tease, and finally worry. Some one it must have been Juvenal suggested tying up nice clean bones in red ribbons; but out of regard for Grandma’s carpet, the succulent thought has never been “materialized.”

The Master of the House, and Juvenal, are also full of solicitude for the feathery things in Winter. The bird-baths are carefully thawed—it seems, by the way, to be in the coldest days of the year that they appear to prefer to bathe; sand baths are generally found sufficient in the Summer, one wonders why. In cold weather generally, cocoanuts filled with fat are disposed in various parts of the garden, around which tits and finches of every shade dispute noisily all day. But on Christmas day the terraces, the balustrades and steps round the house are further disfigured with such an abundance of crumbs and other tempting morsels, that, even with the help of all the black birds from neighbouring copses, they cannot come even with the whole of the feast.

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We give each other enchanting presents. The lovely little carved-wood Joan of Arc, on a bracket in Grandpa’s library; the Madonna of Cluny “prayer-stick” in one corner of the chimney-piece; the Medici copy of Filippino Lippi’s wonderful angel in the National Gallery, in the grey and yellow bedroom; the cut-glass goblets painted with purple plums and red cherries and blue grapes in the drawing-room—all these were this year’s Christmas gifts, cunningly chosen, we think, and a constant delight to our eyes.

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Loki’s Grandma, after the fashion of a lady in a recent celebrated lawsuit, likes to choose her own presents. But she is not so indelicate as to demand money and buy it herself—No, she drops an absent hint, as Christmastide draws near. If this is not satisfactory, she abandons diplomacy for an engaging frankness.... But she is always overwhelmed with surprise and delight when “the very thing she wanted” duly appears about the Tree. The Master of the Villino, on his side, has had all the pleasure of purchasing; and, being of a guileless nature, is often quite persuaded that the choice was his own.

In fact we all become like children again at Christmas; and this, after all, cannot be displeasing to the Christ Child. It is a time of hectic preparation, of pleasurable brain-racking over the suitability of gifts; of endless tying up of parcels for foreign and home dispatch. We decorate the Villino with round compact Holly-wreaths, which Adam makes with rare raste and adroitness. Never was such a year as the last for Hollies; and some of the trees were still scarlet with them in the late Spring.

As for Juvenal, he shows a recrudescence of genius in the devising of table decoration with unthought-of evergreens; with rich-toned leaves in the sear and the brown and purpling hues of Winter, brightened with an astonishing variety of haws, hips, and berries.

In the little Chapel a crib is built up in a stone manger brought from Rome. Therein lies the Italian Bambino, purchased two generations ago by a dear one who has now gone from us. It is the quaintest little wax figure imaginable, with its painted red curls and one wax foot uplifted in the act of kicking.—The story goes that the original much venerated image in a certain Roman church, the object of yearly pilgrimages, was purloined, or for some reason moved to another Church, to the woe and indignation of the faithful of the district. But on the first Christmas night after this translation, a loud knocking was heard at the door of the original Church, and the small figure was discovered, kicking with all its might for re-admittance. Captured and carried in with devotion and joy, it was re-established with much pomp in its old quarters, but ever after remained with a little kicking leg in the air!

Our Crib, surrounded with Roman Hyacinths and White Narcissus and Primulas, is fragrant and poetic; but we do not attempt to show anything more than the one image. Want of space prevents it. Our ambition, however, finds larger scope in the village Chapel. There Juvenal has built a very noble stable, thatched with heather; and all the figures of those first scenes of the Greatest Story in the World will take their place this year.

Last year the tragedy happened that the St. Joseph and Our Lady; the Ox and the Ass; the Kings and Shepherds, which had been ordered in secret to surprise every one, remained on the high seas detained by December gales, until too late.—But our coming Noel will be the richer for the enforced postponement of the Holy Picture.

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At the last Yuletide the Mistress of Villino was unable, after a long year’s illness, to join the family party at Midnight Mass in the village below the hill. Midnight Mass, be it noted in parenthesis, has an extraordinary charm for the household and indeed for the neighbourhood. And, when all is said and done, it certainly is as picturesque and touching a ceremony as ever men of goodwill are happy to join in. It seems to bring one in direct touch with the simplicity of the shepherds of those far-off hills. But as the excluded padrona was lying quietly in bed waiting for the sounds of departure, she was touched and charmed to hear the strains of a carol rising softly from the terrace beneath her windows:

All the household had gathered there to give her this pleasure and make her feel that she was not altogether shut out from the Christmas privileges! Wrapped in their thick cloaks, with Juvenal swinging a lantern, they stood in a long row and chanted to her. It was one of those small sweetnesses in life that leave a lasting memory.

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There is a picture in a garden paper of Japanese single Asters growing wild in grass: the seeds had been mixed by mistake, but the result, according to the illustration, was singularly attractive. When we saw it we said that the experiment should be made at Villino Loki!—Many indeed are the experiments, many the improvements to be made within our small acres.

But what a difference lies between conception and execution. Of late for an instance we had revolved round the agreeable thought of a Pool and a wet place generally, for Iris KÆmpheri, SpirÆa and other moisture-loving darlings. We had indeed intended something altogether choice in the shape of a large sunken basin with a piping faun on the edge of it. Oh, something quite delightful.... But an inconvenient attack of “conscience”—in other words the heavy memory of garden bills, already incurred over the Autumn lists, rose up and barred the way. We felt something like Scrooge when the ghost with the bony finger horrible vision of our youth pointed to the tomb. Only, on our tablet what was written was the ghastly total of our bulbous liabilities! Like Scrooge, we covered our faces with our hands. No wonder the faun took fright and leaped into next year.

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Well, now, another year has come; and it is passing, taking us upon yet another round of garden pleasures, of old hopes and ambitions renewed—with many new delights and new disappointments, as of old; with also fresh openings on the bright horizon. New interests too. Of these, some of the smaller are not the least engrossing. To Villino Loki this year, for example, has come a new Pekinese. It is a Princess, very small, very sleek; chestnut-hued, with a face like a pansy. She has got a little jutting under-jaw, an extremely flat nose; and, in moments of excitement, her eyes display an amazing amount of white rim. But they are becoming very beautiful eyes for all that. They were the brightest of “boot-buttons” when she came first.

Loki was, naturally, very angry. He did his best to kill her; which was ungrateful, as she was really procured, at great cost and difficulty, to be his Imperial Bride! She, on her side, liked him awfully, and told him so. On her first motor drive down here from London, as she waggled and smirked at him from an opposite lap, he sat on his Ma-Ma’s knee and pulled a series of grimaces in return, the like of which you can only find painted on Chinese screens or cast in Chinese bronze.

The ways of the new Peky are an endless source of amusement and joy. We tried to call her Mimosa; but, as usual with the youngest of the family, she remains “Baby.”

She has a coat the colour of a ripe chestnut, which will, we think, almost rival Loki’s in luxuriance. Her eyes have the same proportion to her face as those of a Dicky Doyle fairy. She has the oddest tastes, loving among many other unexpected things the flavour of tobacco. If she can get hold of a pipe or a cigarette she will sit and suck it, sniffing with enchantment, till one would swear she was smoking.

All the dogs, of course, have their coffee after lunch and dinner in orthodox fashion, so there is nothing astounding in her having taken to it with gusto from the very first—but, for her, the stronger the better!

Like most Pekies, she begs and “prays” without ever having had to be taught the art. She has furthermore a talent quite her own—that of elaborately waltzing in front of you when she wants anything very particularly.

One of the dearest peculiarities of the breed is, as we have said, the rapture of their welcome on the return of any member of the family. The Master of the House is sensitive to this attention, and is quite hurt if he misses Loki’s clamorous greeting. The other day “the Baby” was sent into the Hall to meet him on his home-coming. No sooner did he appear than she solemnly began her dance and preceded him as he advanced, conscientiously executing her finest pas de fascination. This consists of leaping into the air, turning round upon herself, and coming down on to her front paws. Little Eastern as she is, she knew no better way of expressing her feelings towards “the Master.”

From what far ancestress, bred in the secret sinister splendours of a Manchu Palace, did she inherit this accomplishment?