"'Bless you, bless you, my children.'

"Then such a ringing cheer was heard, as never was heard before, or any time since. Even Peterie heard it down in the darkling mine, swallowed a ball of pota.s.sium, and died on the spot. As soon as Peterie was dead, he (Peterie) said, 'Well now, I wonder I never thought of that before;'

because he at once grew up again into ten new polyps, who forthwith left the mine, joined the revellers, and shouted louder than all the rest.

"And when at last Peggy was in Peterie's house, when the idol of his love became the light of his home, when he saw her there before him, so blooming and bonnie, he opened his twenty arms, and she opened _her_ twenty arms, and--

"'Peggy!' cried Pompey; and--

"'Pompey!' cried Peggy; and--

"Down drops the curtain. It would be positively mean and improper to keep it up one moment longer."

CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.

THE TALE OF THE "TWIN CHESTNUTS"; OR, A SUMMER EVENING'S REVERIE.

"Twilight grey Had in her sober livery all things clad: Silence accompanied; for beast and bird, They to their gra.s.sy couch; these to their nests Were slunk, all save the wakeful nightingale: Hesperus that led The starry host rode brightest, till the moon Unveiled her peerless light, And o'er the dark her silver mantle threw."

Milton.

Running all along one side of our orchard, garden, and lawn are a row of tall and graceful poplar trees. So tall are they that they may be seen many miles away; they are quite a feature of the landscape, and tell the position of our village to those coming towards it long before a single house is visible.

These trees are the admiration of all that behold them, but, to my eye, there seems always connected with them an air of solemnity. All the other trees about--the spreading limes, the broad-leaved planes, and the rugged oaks and elms--seem dwarfed by their presence, so high do they tower above them. Their tips appear to touch the very sky itself, their topmost branches pierce the clouds. Around the stem of each the beautiful ivy climbs and clings for support; and this ivy gives shelter by night to hundreds of birds, and to bats too, for aught I know.

Their very position standing there in a row, like giant sentinels, surrounds them with an air of mystery to which the fact that they follow each other's motions--all bending and nodding in the same direction at once--only tends to add. And spring, summer, autumn, or winter they are ever pointing skywards. In the winter months they are leafless and bare, and there is a wild, weird look about them on a still night, when the moon and stars are shining, which it would be difficult to describe in words. But sometimes in winter, when the h.o.a.r-frost falls and silvers every twiglet and branch till they resemble nothing so much as the snowiest of coral, then, indeed, the beauty with which they are adorned, once seen must ever be remembered.

But hardly has spring really come, and long before the cuckoo's dual notes are heard in the glade, or the nightingale's street, unearthly music fills every copse and orchard, making the hearts of all that hear it glad, ere those stately poplars are clothed from tip to stem in robes of yellow green, and their myriad leaves dance and quiver in the sunlight, when there is hardly wind enough to bend a blade of gra.s.s. As the summer wears on, those leaves a.s.sume a darker tint, and approach more nearly to the colour of the ivy that crowds and climbs around their stems. The wind is then more easily heard, sighing and whispering through the branches even when there is not a breath of air down on the lawn or in the orchard. On what we might well call still evenings, if you cast your eye away aloft, you may see those tree-tops all swaying and moving in rhythm against the sky; and if you listen you may catch the sound of their leaves like that of wavelets breaking on a beach of smoothest sand.

I remember it was one still summer's night, long after sundown, for the gloaming star was shining, that we were all together on the rose lawn.

The noisy sparrows were quiet, every bird had ceased to sing, there wasn't a sound to be heard anywhere save the sighing among the topmost branches of the poplars. Far up there, a breeze seemed to be blowing gently from the west, and as it kissed the tree-tops they bent and bowed before it.

Ida lay in a hammock of gra.s.s, the book she could no longer see to read lying on her lap in a listless hand.

"No matter how still it is down here," she said, "those trees up there are always whispering."

"What do you think they are saying?" I asked.

"Oh," she answered, "I would give worlds to know."

"Perhaps," she added, after a pause, "they hear voices up in the sky there that we cannot hear, that they catch sounds of--"

"Stop, Ida, stop," I cried; "why, if you go on like this, instead of the wise, sensible, old-fashioned little girl that I'm so fond of having as my companion in my rambles, you will degenerate into a poet."

"Ha! ha!" laughed Frank; "well, that is a funny expression to be sure.

Degenerate into a poet. How complimentary to the sons and daughters of the lyre, how complimentary to your own bonnie Bobby Burns, for instance!"

Ida half raised herself in her hammock. She was smiling as she spoke.

"It was you, uncle, that taught me," she said. "Did you not tell me everything that grows around us has life, and even feeling; that in winter the great trees go to sleep, and do not suffer from the cold, but that in summer they are filled with a glow of warmth, and that if you lop a branch off one, though it does not feel pain, it experiences cold at the place where the axe has done its work? Haven't you taught me to look upon the flowers as living things? and don't I feel them to be so when I stoop to kiss the roses? Yes, and I love them too; I love them all--all."

"And I've no doubt the love is reciprocated, my little mouse. But now, talking about trees, if Frank will bring the lamp, I'll read you a kind of a story about two trees. It isn't quite a tale either--it is a kind of reverie; but the descriptive parts of it are painted from the life.

Thank you, Frank. Now if the moths will only keep away for a minute, if it wasn't for that bit of displayed humanity on the top of the gla.s.s in the shape of a morsel of wire gauze, that big white moth would go pop in and immolate himself. Ahem!"

THE TWIN CHESTNUTS: A REVERIE. "THEY GREW IN BEAUTY SIDE BY SIDE."

We weren't the only happy couple that had spent a honeymoon at Twin Chestnut Cottage. In point of fact, the chestnuts themselves had their origin in a honeymoon; for in the same old-fashioned cottage, more than one hundred and ninety years ago, there came to reside a youthful pair, who, hand in hand, had just commenced life's journey together. They each had a little dog, and those two little dogs were probably as fond of each other, after their own fashion, as their master and mistress were; and the name of the one dog was "Gip," and the name of the other was "George"--Gip and George, there you have them. And it was very funny that whatever Gip did, George immediately followed suit and did the same; and, _vice versa_, whatever George did, Gip did. If Gip harked, George barked; if George wagged his tail, so did Gip. Whenever Gip was hungry, George found that he too could eat; and when George took a drink of water, Gip always took a mouthful as well, whether she was thirsty or not. Well, it happened one day in autumn, when the beauty-tints were on the trees--the sunset glow of the dying year--that the two lovers (for although they were married, they were lovers still) were walking on the rustling leaves, and of course George and Gip were no great way behind, and were having their own conversation, and their own little larks all to themselves, when suddenly--

"I say, Georgie," said Gip.

"Well, my love?" replied George.

"I'm quite tired watching for that silly blind old mole, who I'm certain won't come again to-night. Let us carry a chestnut home."

"All right," said George; "here goes."

So they each of them chose the biggest horse-chestnut they could find, and they were only very small dogs, and went trotting home with them in their mouths; and when they got there, they each laid their little gifts at the feet of their loved master or mistress.

This they did with such a solemn air that, for the life of them, the lovers could not help laughing outright. But the little dogs received their due meed of praise nevertheless, and the two chestnuts were carefully planted, one on each side of the large lawn window. And when winter gave place to spring, lo! the chestnuts budded, budded and peeped up through the earth, each one looking for all the world like a Hindoo lady's little finger, which isn't a bit different, you know, from your little finger, only it is dark-brown, and yours is white. Then the little finger opened, and bright green leaves unfolded and peeped up at the sun and the blue sky, and long before the summer was over they had grown up into sprightly little trees, as straight as rushes, and very nearly as tall, for they had been very carefully watered and tended.

Very pretty they looked too, although their leaves seemed a mile too big for their stems, which made them look like two very small men with very large hats; but the young chestnuts themselves didn't see anything ridiculous in the matter.

These, then, were the infant chestnuts.

And as the years rolled on, and made those lovers old, the chestnuts still grew in height and beauty. And in time poor Grip died, and as George had always done exactly as Gip did, he died too; and Gip was laid at the foot of one tree, and George at the foot of the other, and their graves were watered with loving tears. And the trees grew lovelier still. And when at last those lovers died, the trees showered their flowers, pink-eyed and white, on the coffins, as they were borne away from the old cottage to their long, quiet home in the "moots."

And time flew on, generation after generation was born, grew up, grew old, and died, and still the twin chestnuts increased and flourished, and they are flourishing now, on this sweet summer's day, and shading all the cottage from the noonday sun.

It is a very old-fashioned cottage, wholly composed, one might almost say, of gables, the thatch of some of which comes almost to the ground, and I defy any one to tell which is the front of the cottage and which isn't the front. There are gardens about the old cottage, fruit gardens and flower gardens, and grey old walls half buried in ivy, which never looked half so pretty as in autumn, when the soft leaves of the Virginia creepers are changing to crimson, and blending sweetly with the ivy's dusky green.

The princ.i.p.al gable is that ab.u.t.ting on to the green velvety lawn, which goes sloping downwards to where the river, broad and still, glides silently on its way to bear on its breast the ships of the greatest city of the world, and carry them to the ocean.

But the main beauty of the cottage lies in those twin chestnuts. No chestnuts in all the countryside like those two beautiful trees; none so tall, so wide, so spreading; none have such broad green leaves, none have such nuts--for each nutsh.e.l.l grows as big and spiny as a small hedgehog, and contains some one nut, many two, but most three nuts within the outer rind. I only wish you could see them, and you would say, as I do, there are no trees like those twin chestnuts.

The earth was clad in its white coc.o.o.n when first we went to Twin Chestnut Cottage, and the two giant trees pointed their skeleton fingers upwards to the murky sky; but long before any of the other chestnut-trees that grew in the parks and the avenues, had even dreamt of awakening from their deep winter sleep, the twin chestnuts had sent forth large brown buds, bigger and longer than rifle bullets, and all gummed over with some sticky substance, as if the fairies had painted them all with glycerine and treacle. With the first sunshine of April those bonnie buds grew thicker, and burst, disclosing little bundles of light-green foliage, that matched _so_ sweetly with the brown of the buds and the dark grey of the parent tree.

Day by day we watched the folded leaves expanding; and other eyes than ours were watching them too; for occasionally a large hornet or an early bee would fly round the trees and examine the buds, then off he would go again with a satisfied hum, which said plainly enough, "You're getting on beautifully, and you'll be all in flower in a fortnight."

And, indeed, hardly had a fortnight elapsed, from the time the buds first opened, till the twin chestnuts were hung in robes of drooping green. Such a tender green! such a light and lovely green! and the pendent, crumply leaves seemed as yet incapable of supporting their own weight, like the wings of the moth when it first bursts from its chrysalis. Then, oh! to hear the _frou-frou_ of the gentle wind through the silken foliage! And every tree around was bare and brown save them.

Even the river seemed to whisper fondly to the bending reeds as it glided past those chestnuts twain; and I know that the mavis and the merle sung in a louder, gladder key when they awoke in the dewy dawn of morn, and their bright eyes rested on those two clouds of living green.

And now crocuses peeping through the dun earth, and primroses on mossy banks, had long since told that spring had come; but the chestnut-trees said to all the birds that summer too was on the wing. c.o.c.k-robin marked the change, and came no more for crumbs--for he thought it was high time to build his nest; only there were times when he seated himself on the old apple-tree, and sung his little song, just to show that he hadn't forgotten us, and that he meant to come again when family cares were ended and summer had flown away.

Meanwhile, the flower-stems grew brown and mossy, and in a week or two the flowers themselves were all in bloom. Had you seen either of those twin chestnuts then, you would have seen a thing of beauty which would have dwelt in your mind as a joy for ever. It was summer now. Life and love were everywhere. The bloom was on the may--pink-eyed may and white may. The yellow laburnum peeped out from the thickets of evergreen, the yellow broom dipped its ta.s.sels in the river, and elder-flowers perfumed the wind. I couldn't tell you half the beautiful creatures that visited the blossoms on the twin chestnut-trees, and sang about them, and floated around them, and sipped the honey from every calyx. Great droning, velvety bees; white-striped and red busy little hive-bees; large-winged b.u.t.terflies, gaudy in crimson and black; little white b.u.t.terflies, with scarlet-tipped wings; little blue b.u.t.terflies, that glanced in the sunshine like chips of polished steel; and big slow-floating b.u.t.terflies, so intensely yellow that they looked for all the world as if they had been fed on cayenne, like the canaries, you know. In the gloaming, "Drowsy beetles wheeled their droning flight"

around the trees, and noisy c.o.c.kchafers went whirring up among the blossoms, and imagined they had reached the stars.

When the roses, purple, red, and yellow, clung around the cottage porch, climbed over the thatch, and clung around the chimneys, when the mauve wisterias cl.u.s.tered along the walls, when the honeysuckle scented the green lanes, when daisies and tulips had faded in the garden, and crimson poppies shone through the corn's green, a breeze blew soft and cool from the south-east, and lo! for days and days the twin chestnuts snowed their petals on the lawn and path. And now we listened every night for the nightingale's song. They came at last, all in one night it seemed: "Whee, whee, whee." What are those slow and mournful notes ringing out from the grove in the stillness of night? A lament for brighter skies born of memories of glad Italy?