IN THE GARDENS
She came out upon the stone terrace again rather early in the morning.
She wanted to wander about in the first freshness of the day, which was
always an uplifting thing to her. She wanted to see the dew on the grass
and on the ragged flower borders and to hear the tender, broken fluting
of birds in the trees. One cuckoo was calling to another in the park,
and she stopped and listened intently. Until yesterday she had never
heard a cuckoo call, and its hollow mellowness gave her delight. It
meant the spring in England, and nowhere else.
There was space enough to ramble about in the gardens. Paths and beds
were alike overgrown with weeds, but some strong, early-blooming things
were fighting for life, refusing to be strangled. Against the beautiful
old red walls, over which age had stolen with a wonderful grey bloom,
venerable fruit trees were spread and nailed, and here and there showed
bloom, clumps of low-growing things sturdily advanced their yellowness
or whiteness, as if defying neglect. In one place a wall slanted and
threatened to fall, bearing its nectarine trees with it; in another
there was a gap so evidently not of to-day that the heap of its masonry
upon the border bed was already covered with greenery, and the roots of
the fruit tree it had supported had sent up strong, insistent shoots.
She passed down broad paths and narrow ones, sometimes walking under
trees, sometimes pushing her way between encroaching shrubs; she
descended delightful mossy and broken steps and came upon dilapidated
urns, in which weeds grew instead of flowers, and over which rampant but
lovely, savage little creepers clambered and clung.
In one of the walled kitchen gardens she came upon an elderly gardener
at work. At the sound of her approaching steps he glanced round and then
stood up, touching his forelock in respectful but startled salute. He
was so plainly amazed at the sight of her that she explained herself.
“Good-morning,” she said. “I am her ladyship's sister, Miss Vanderpoel.
I came yesterday evening. I am looking over your gardens.”
He touched his forehead again and looked round him. His manner was not
cheerful. He cast a troubled eye about him.
“They're not much to see, miss,” he said. “They'd ought to be, but
they're not. Growing things has to be fed and took care of. A man and a
boy can't do it--nor yet four or five of 'em.”
“How many ought there to be?” Betty inquired, with business-like
directness. It was not only the dew on the grass she had come out to
see.
“If there was eight or ten of us we might put it in order and keep it
that way. It's a big place, miss.”
Betty looked about her as he had done, but with a less discouraged eye.
“It is a beautiful place, as well as a large one,” she said. “I can see
that there ought to be more workers.”
“There's no one,” said the gardener, “as has as many enemies as a
gardener, an' as many things to fight. There's grubs an' there's
greenfly, an' there's drout', an' wet an' cold, an' mildew, an' there's
what the soil wants and starves without, an' if you haven't got it nor
yet hands an' feet an' tools enough, how's things to feed, an' fight an'
live--let alone bloom an' bear?”
“I don't know much about gardens,” said Miss Vanderpoel, “but I can
understand that.”
The scent of fresh bedewed things was in the air. It was true that she
had not known much about gardens, but here standing in the midst of
one she began to awaken to a new, practical interest. A creature of
initiative could not let such a place as this alone. It was beauty being
slowly slain. One could not pass it by and do nothing.
“What is your name?” she asked
“Kedgers, miss. I've only been here about a twelve-month. I was took on
because I'm getting on in years an' can't ask much wage.”
“Can you spare time to take me through the gardens and show me things?”
Yes, he could do it. In truth, he privately welcomed an opportunity
offering a prospect of excitement so novel. He had shown more
flourishing gardens to other young ladies in his past years of service,
but young ladies did not come to Stornham, and that one having, with
such extraordinary unexpectedness arrived, should want to look over the
desolation of these, was curious enough to rouse anyone to a sense of
a break in accustomed monotony. The young lady herself mystified him
by her difference from such others as he had seen. What the man in the
shabby livery had felt, he felt also, and added to this was a sense of
the practicalness of the questions she asked and the interest she showed
and a way she had of seeming singularly to suggest by the look in her
eyes and the tone of her voice that nothing was necessarily without
remedy. When her ladyship walked through the place and looked at things,
a pale resignation expressed itself in the very droop of her
figure. When this one walked through the tumbled-down grape-houses,
potting-sheds and conservatories, she saw where glass was broken, where
benches had fallen and where roofs sagged and leaked. She inquired about
the heating apparatus and asked that she might see it. She asked about
the village and its resources, about labourers and their wages.
“As if,” commented Kedgers mentally, “she was what Sir Nigel
is--leastways what he'd ought to be an' ain't.”
She led the way back to the fallen wall and stood and looked at it.
“It's a beautiful old wall,” she said. “It should be rebuilt with the
old brick. New would spoil it.”
“Some of this is broken and crumbled away,” said Kedgers, picking up a
piece to show it to her.
“Perhaps old brick could be bought somewhere,” replied the young lady
speculatively. “One ought to be able to buy old brick in England, if one
is willing to pay for it.”
Kedgers scratched his head and gazed at her in respectful wonder which
was almost trouble. Who was going to pay for things, and who was going
to look for things which were not on the spot? Enterprise like this was
not to be explained.
When she left him he stood and watched her upright figure disappear
through the ivy-grown door of the kitchen gardens with a disturbed
but elated expression on his countenance. He did not know why he felt
elated, but he was conscious of elation. Something new had walked
into the place. He stopped his work and grinned and scratched his head
several times after he went back to his pottering among the cabbage
plants.
“My word,” he muttered. “She's a fine, straight young woman. If she
was her ladyship things 'ud be different. Sir Nigel 'ud be different,
too--or there'd be some fine upsets.”
There was a huge stable yard, and Betty passed through that on her way
back. The door of the carriage house was open and she saw two or three
tumbled-down vehicles. One was a landau with a wheel off, one was a
shabby, old-fashioned, low phaeton. She caught sight of a patently
venerable cob in one of the stables. The stalls near him were empty.
“I suppose that is all they have to depend upon,” she thought. “And the
stables are like the gardens.”
She found Lady Anstruthers and Ughtred waiting for her upon the terrace,
each of them regarding her with an expression suggestive of repressed
curiosity as she approached. Lady Anstruthers flushed a little and went
to meet her with an eager kiss.
“You look like--I don't know quite what you look like, Betty!” she
exclaimed.
The girl's dimple deepened and her eyes said smiling things.
“It is the morning--and your gardens,” she answered. “I have been round
your gardens.”
“They were beautiful once, I suppose,” said Rosy deprecatingly.
“They are beautiful now. There is nothing like them in America at
least.”
“I don't remember any gardens in America,” Lady Anstruthers owned
reluctantly, “but everything seemed so cheerful and well cared for
and--and new. Don't laugh, Betty. I have begun to like new things. You
would if you had watched old ones tumbling to pieces for twelve years.”
“They ought not to be allowed to tumble to pieces,” said Betty. She
added her next words with simple directness. She could only discover
how any advancing steps would be taken by taking them. “Why do you allow
them to do it?”
Lady Anstruthers looked away, but as she looked her eyes passed
Ughtred's.
“I!” she said. “There are so many other things to do. It would cost so
much--such an enormity to keep it all in order.”
“But it ought to be done--for Ughtred's sake.”
“I know that,” faltered Rosy, “but I can't help it.”
“You can,” answered Betty, and she put her arm round her as they turned
to enter the house. “When you have become more used to me and my driving
American ways I will show you how.”
The lightness with which she said it had an odd effect on Lady
Anstruthers. Such casual readiness was so full of the suggestion of
unheard of possibilities that it was a kind of shock.
“I have been twelve years in getting un-used to you--I feel as if it
would take twelve years more to get used again,” she said.
“It won't take twelve weeks,” said Betty.