MORE BLACK SHEEP

This July, not remarkable for anything but rain and dark skies, has produced a perfect outbreak of wickedness in the village. Our black sheep have turned into tigers without even the excuse of torrid weather to inflame their passions. But, indeed, the public house is always ready to supply the stimulant necessary for driving average humanity into brutal and insane crime.

Caliban, whom the reader may remember as having once worked in our Fortunate Island, and always looking as if he had just risen from all-fours, has, in our recent absence, thrown away all pretence at humanity once and for all. Though, indeed, why should the poor beasts, who generally make excellent fathers and husbands, be compared to the type of man that deliberately ruins his home? To batter your wife, terrorize your children, to squander your substance for an indulgence which ultimately destroys your health, is a mystery of perversity reserved for the superior being.

Anyway, Caliban, having drifted from place to place, and lost his last chance of employment in this district by killing a whole hot-house full of Tomatoes through drunken neglect “on” the local market gardener, as we should say in Ireland, finally locked his wife and children out of the little cottage, and shut himself in with his drunkenness in company with his aged but not less drunken parent. The power of thought having returned in the morning, the precious pair put their boosy heads together and sold the furniture, possessed themselves of every available valuable, even of Mrs. Caliban’s solitary trinket, and decamped together from the district!

Mrs. Caliban, with an infant in arms and two little girls at her skirts, has now set to work to earn enough for all. She is a valiant woman; and no doubt when she has succeeded fairly well, Caliban will return to repeat the process. She is very anxious for a separation, but cannot accomplish this, as the whereabouts of her lord and master are unknown.

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She is less fortunate than the wife of Black Sheep No. 2. Last Saturday we were peacefully entertaining a couple of week-end visitors, when poor Mrs. Mutton crawled into our garden to “see the young lady.” The water-butt myth was cast to the winds. She had a black eye and a dislocated thumb, and informed us that Mutton had threatened to “do for her,” and that she was going in fear of her life. “When not drunk,” she remarked with the apathy of despair, “I think he’s mad!”

Mutton is well known in the district for his playful ways, and no one would consent to house his wife but an enterprising barber: on the condition, however, that Mutton did not come after her. The poor thing shivered and shook, and avowed that she could not return and pass another hour in such terrors. When she heard his step, she told us, a trembling would seize her.

“You ladies,” she said, rolling her hopeless eyes from one sympathetic listener to another, “can have no idea of the kind of life poor women like us lead!”

Little Jimmy Mutton and she had spent the previous night out under fear of a gun, which Black Sheep pÈre had taken to bed with him, with threats of instant use. The first idea of the owners of Villino Loki was that the woman should have protection; and here the drama took a Gilbertian form with a dash of nightmare. Her cottage being on the borders of another county, no policeman nearer than nine miles off had the right to intervene. In vain did “the young lady,” attended by the two week-end visitors, start off for the nearest magistrate and lay the case before him. Mrs. Mutton must betake herself to that far county town, by what means she best might; and if she and her poor lambs were “done for” between this and then, it would all be within the strict limits of the law as far as the magistrate was concerned. With fruitless eloquence were the perils of the situation painted in their blackest colours. Mutton, as we have said, was famous, and like Habacuc in Voltaire’s estimation, might be capable de tout.

Could not the local policeman take possession of the gun?

Impossible. No policeman nearer than Paddockstown could lay a finger on it.

Could not at least the village Bobby keep an eye on the house where the enterprising barber had taken in the refugees?

The Magistrate smiled at such ignorance of the law. All orders must come from Paddockstown.

“That,” remarked one of the week-end visitors as the discomfited party shook the Magistrate’s dust off their feet, “that seems a futile old gentleman!”

This week-end visitor had an emphatic manner of speech, which afforded the only relief in the exasperation of the atmosphere.

However, the affair managed to straighten itself out on, again, true Gilbertian lines. Mrs. Mutton duly found a motor-bus to convey her to Paddockstown; and there, with all the proper formality, interviewed the Magistrate and a lawyer, with the help of whom she was separated from her obstreperous Mutton. Little Jimmy gave evidence, Mutton was advised by his lawyer not to defend the case. She has now appropriately joined forces with Mrs. Caliban and is enjoying a time of peace which we trust may not be merely an interlude.

“Oh, Miss!” she cried, describing these unwonted sensations, “I’m that overjoiced, I’m afraid it’s hardly right!”

As the husband is hovering about the roads, waylaying all concerned with alarming politeness, we are a little anxious. We know that he is still mouton enragÉ at heart; and we do not know if in spite of the mandate from Paddockstown the local police would be allowed to interfere were gun or table knife to be put into requisition.

The Dorothy Perkins are coming out, showing a most glorious kind of fire rose, which hitherto they only displayed in the autumn after a touch of frost. Combined with the delicate sprays of the Ceanothus Gloire de Versailles, they make in a tall glass vase as pretty a harmony as we know.

The new Rose Garden promises complete success. Caroline Testout is coming out, fat and pink and smiling in her usual good-humoured profusion. We have a great bed in the shape of a Maltese cross in the middle of a stretch of turf in this new Rose Garden, and the other three beds are filled respectively with Madame Abel ChÂtenay; mixed yellow roses, among which are Betty, Lady Hillingdon, and Juliet, are specially successful; and another deep pink charmer named Madame Jules Groles. She has not yet come out. The centre bed is devoted to General MacArthur, with a Crimson Rambler pillar.

The Climbing Roses against the arches that bound this rose-lawn north and south are growing bravely; and we have lost our hearts to May Queen with its mass of bright pink flowers, which, combined with the fainter, creamier pinks of Paul Transon, make such a delicious bouquet of bloom, all on the same pillar.

The hedge of Penzance Briars, though only a couple of feet above the ground as yet, has thrown out long lines of starry blossoms, shading from faint primrose to deepest crimson, with intermediate constellations of pinks and carmines that out-do both Dorothy Perkins and Zephyrine Drouhin.

The new Rose Garden is shut off on the west by a fir-tree avenue, and we are trying to coax white and red Wichurianas up the stems, in spite of all expert pessimism. Marquise de Sinety is a delicate, warmly tinted, pinky cream Rose. Catalogues, no doubt, would call her “salmon”; but it is such a horrid word that we prefer to present the picture under another aspect.

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Do not let anyone subject to the watery caprices of an English climate place their trust in Maman Cochet! Her heavy bud becomes hopelessly sodden after anything like a shower. One can conceive that this dowager would be a handsome enough object in a southern garden, or that she would be a good greenhouse rose; but, like many another, she does not bear adversity.

Handsome, bland Caroline Testout keeps up her self-contained smile unimpaired in fair and foul weather; “fat-faced Puss” that she is, a very Gioconda among roses, even to the close folding of her plump leaves, which remind one of that overrated charmer’s compact hands. It would take a good deal to shake her equanimity; scentless, soulless beauty!

The Lyons Rose has burst on us this year in all its splendour, a most successful combination of pink and gold. The sunset glow seems to shine through the petals.

These efforts at producing new effects are not always successful, some having a very patchy appearance, to our mind. As for the Austrian Briar, Soleil d’Or, it is more like a blood-orange cut in two than anything else, in colour, shape, and pulpy texture. From a distance the bright circles look attractive, but we should recommend it to no one who values delicacy in their blooms.

A great success are the Weeping Standards Stella. Though it is their first year, the branches are covered with lovely tinted blossoms; and what is more, these are lasting. Single carmine stars are they, with golden centres and a scent of musk.

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The mistress of the Villino, a foolish and impetuous person, has three times made the same mistake and omitted to ascertain the blooming season of plants which she wished to be in beauty together. So the four Weeping Standards Stella, are considerably in advance of the four Dorothys which alternate with them; and the standards Soleil d’Or were quite over before the Conrad Meyers appeared in the Lily Walk; and the contrast of pink and yellow was what had been aimed at!

In the same manner she had intended the Garland Roses to foam up in two splendid white pillars at each end of the long length of Dorothy Perkins at the opposite side of the Blue Border terrace. Of course the Garland is becoming unsightly before the fire-pink of the Dorothy begins to show in any profusion.

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The garden—except on the upper terrace, which with Heliotrope, Lobelia, and the climbing Ceanothus keeps to the faint cool blues, untroubled by the efflorescence of the White Pet which, by the way, has completely eaten out Perle des Rouges and the very faint pink of the Ivy-Leaf Geraniums—except for the upper terrace, the garden, we say, is growing pink. What with the Verbenas and the Red Roses and the cheery coloured Ivy-Leaf Geranium called Jersey Beauty, in the Dutch garden, and the general ramp of Dorothy everywhere, it is a mass of pink.

Another year we must have more Penstemons. They are charming things, and as good as they are beautiful. In a garden nothing is beautiful that is not good, which is another facet of its likeness to Paradise.

We caress the idea of a border where perennial Gypsophila, large bushes of Monarda, Penstemons and Lavender should group and contrast and delight and rest the eye.

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There is a walk in a wonderful garden not far from here—a garden which brings a kind of fainting, despairing envy to the soul of Loki’s Grandmother—where Lavender and Penstemons make the happiest possible effect. The walk itself is a thing of beauty; through woodland on one side, the border in question runs quite a long way against a low parapet on the other. Below this parapet the ground slopes down, and at the end of the walk there is so abrupt a fall that it seems almost to end in mid-air with a vast panorama far beneath. And on the side of the flowery border a shelving precipice falls away out of which giant stone pines hang against the distant horizon. The Lavender has grown to a hedge, and the varying soft pinks of the Penstemons run vividly against its mistiness.

Would that walk, and that border, and that view, were ours!