III
MMÉ (PLUM-BLOSSOMS)
They lay in fleece-white purity down the hillside, and the brooding stillness of that garden was as a sheltering wing above the world.
Beneath one’s feet the six-sided tiles set in the brown earth were clean with a Dutch cleanliness, and the soil all around had been raked with the same quaint precision. Not a fallen leaf, nor the foot-mark of a bird, marred the soft brown surface—only the narrow line of glazed tiles ran on and on under the trees.
On every side the curve of the hill sloped upwards, outwards, drawing the white garden nearer as a mother draws her child close within her arms.
A hot sweet scent is in the air, delicate as honeysuckle, fragrant as the pine, half-soft, half-spiced—the scent of the blossoming plum, mmé, the emblem of chastity, of womanly purity and strength.
The pale grey stems of the trees are bent and old; some are covered with a grey-green moss, and between their silvered stems I walk as in the cloistered calm of ruined abbeys.
Up through the white fleece of blossom overhead bright stars of blue shine down. The sun-warmed presence of the living earth draws her children near. In all the world there is no sound....
“Like as a hen gathereth her chickens.” ...
Is not that the white wing of the eternal mother overhead? And the warm, sweet fragrance of herself is all around.