A Little House in War Time
9781465650849
108 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
Even in the ordinary course of life—those times that now seem extraordinary to a world already accustomed to the universal struggle—when everyone in England was in peace, except where their own unquiet spirits may have marred it, even then this nest of ours seemed peace within peace. We do not know now whether the contrast is not the more acute. One of the thousands of homes dedicated to the quiet joys and innocencies of life, where no one ever wanted to quarrel, because all found the hours so full of sweet content, we do not flatter ourselves that we are singular: only typical. The shadow of the great cloud cast at first a hideous, unnatural darkness over our harmless ways. All during the long golden summer, when we looked out across the moor basking in the radiance; when our roses bloomed and the garden rioted in colour, and the valley slowly turned from green to russet; when the harvest-moon went up like a huge brass platter in silver skies, the very beauty of it all clutched one’s heart the fiercer. How fares it with our boys over there in the heat and the stress? How much worse it must be for them that the sun should blaze upon them, marching, firing, rushing forward, lying wounded, wanting water!... Oh, dear lads of England, how we at home agonized with you! The little house, bought in a light-hearted hour, furnished with infinite zest in happy days out of distant Rome, was a sort of toy to us from the beginning; and kind friends surveyed it with indulgent and amused, yet admiring, glances, such as one would bestow upon an ingenious and pretty plaything. We called it the Villino, partly in memory of the Italian sojourn, and partly because, though it is bounded by wild moors, it contrives a quaintly Italianate air. It stands boldly on the lip of the hill, and the garden runs down in terraces to a deep valley. Across the valley to the east the moors roll, curve upon curve. South, facing us, the trees begin their march; and westward the valley spreads, rising into moors again, where again the fir-trees sentinel the sky. The view from the terrace rather takes your breath away. It is unexpected and odd, and unlike anything, except Italy and Scotland mixed: the wildness, and the trim terraced garden with its calculated groups of cypress, its vases brimming with flowers, its stone steps, its secret bowery corners.
