Stranica 400 [400]
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than house or garden, is the living glory of Oatlands. The rest of
the garden—the staircase, box-hedges and brick pilasters to one
side, with a great ivy-clad wall to the other, a larch tree crowning
the whole; and, looking down and southward, an old pink Venetian
well head, protecting a deep, cool well. Then the terraces, bearing
some vases, a sundial, many low box-hedges, and innumerable
flowers—they finish the tale. But the brick walls and, in one place,
a slender white fence, shut it all in and give it that sense of
separateness, of a certain aloofness almost, befitting the guardian
of treasures, the storehouse of old secrets.
The Oatlands garden should be visited in the springtime first, .
I believe, so as to see the peonies and iris, after the tulips have
faded. Later, the hot summer sun robs it of some of its charm;
but the late afternoon hours, before or after twilight, call you
imperatively to wander over the grass walks when the heliotrope
and mignonette smell strongest, and the mocking-birds and catbirds
speak to each other incessantly. Or, again, there are the lovely
autumn days, days of cosmos and chrysanthemum, and in Novem¬
ber or December, when the barberry berries give the only bit of
colour to the beds, although the red-birds flash their scarlet notes
through the upper foliage, it is always quiet and sheltered under
the lea of the walls, even when the most biting northwest wind 1s
blowing. But, take it all in all, the best of the year is generally
June, because the roses are in bloom then on every wall, and the
colours of the other fowers—larkspurs, pinks, lilies, with humming¬
birds among them—vie with each other against backgrounds of
stone or brick, ivy or box.
There are winter scenes, too, worth remembering; mornings
after a sleet storm, with the sun reflected on every leaf and twig,
every blade of grass, and the stillness so intense that it seems to
speak, and to bid one pause. One feels, then, as if the world must
be pausing, too, for a moment in its mad rush. At all events, some
fragments of an indefinable peace seem to have been caught within
its walls, by this old garden. Epitg: Evsris.
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