Elizabeth and her German Garden | Page 6

a background of firs. When that time came,
and when, before it was over, the acacias all blossomed too, and four
great clumps of pale, silvery-pink peonies flowered under the south
windows, I felt so absolutely happy, and blest, and thankful, and
grateful, that I really cannot describe it. My days seemed to melt away
in a dream of pink and purple peace.
There were only the old housekeeper and her handmaiden in the house,
so that on the plea of not giving too much trouble I could indulge what
my other half calls my fantaisie dereglee as regards meals-- that is to
say, meals so simple that they could be brought out to the lilacs on a

tray; and I lived, I remember, on salad and bread and tea the whole time,
sometimes a very tiny pigeon appearing at lunch to save me, as the old
lady thought, from starvation. Who but a woman could have stood
salad for six weeks, even salad sanctified by the presence and scent of
the most gorgeous lilac masses? I did, and grew in grace every day,
though I have never liked it since. How often now, oppressed by the
necessity of assisting at three dining-room meals daily, two of which
are conducted by the functionaries held indispensable to a proper
maintenance of the family dignity, and all of which are pervaded by
joints of meat, how often do I think of my salad days, forty in number,
and of the blessedness of being alone as I was then alone!
And then the evenings, when the workmen had all gone and the house
was left to emptiness and echoes, and the old housekeeper had gathered
up her rheumatic limbs into her bed, and my little room in quite another
part of the house had been set ready, how reluctantly I used to leave the
friendly frogs and owls, and with my heart somewhere down in my
shoes lock the door to the garden behind me, and pass through the long
series of echoing south rooms full of shadows and ladders and ghostly
pails of painters' mess, and humming a tune to make myself believe I
liked it, go rather slowly across the brick-floored hall, up the creaking
stairs, down the long whitewashed passage, and with a final rush of
panic whisk into my room and double lock and bolt the door!
There were no bells in the house, and I used to take a great dinner-bell
to bed with me so that at least I might be able to make a noise if
frightened in the night, though what good it would have been I don't
know, as there was no one to hear. The housemaid slept in another little
cell opening out of mine, and we two were the only living creatures in
the great empty west wing. She evidently did not believe in ghosts, for
I could hear how she fell asleep immediately after getting into bed; nor
do I believe in them, "mais je les redoute," as a French lady said, who
from her books appears to have been strongminded.
The dinner-bell was a great solace; it was never rung, but it comforted
me to see it on the chair beside my bed, as my nights were anything but
placid, it was all so strange, and there were such queer creakings and
other noises. I used to lie awake for hours, startled out of a light sleep
by the cracking of some board, and listen to the indifferent snores of
the girl in the next room. In the morning, of course, I was as brave as a

lion and much amused at the cold perspirations of the night before; but
even the nights seem to me now to have been delightful, and myself
like those historic boys who heard a voice in every wind and snatched a
fearful joy. I would gladly shiver through them all over again for the
sake of the beautiful purity of the house, empty of servants and
upholstery.
How pretty the bedrooms looked with nothing in them but their
cheerful new papers! Sometimes I would go into those that were
finished and build all sorts of castles in the air about their future and
their past. Would the nuns who had lived in them know their little
white-washed cells again, all gay with delicate flower papers and clean
white paint? And how astonished they would be to see cell No. 14
turned into a bathroom, with a bath big enough to insure a cleanliness
of body equal to their purity of soul! They would look upon it as a
snare of the tempter; and I know that in my own case I only began to be
shocked at the blackness of my nails the day that I