"Come out of doors, master--come out of doors. I can't talk or think
right with walls around me--never could. Let's go out to the garden."
These were almost the first words I ever heard Abel Armstrong say. He
was a member of the board of school trustees in Stillwater, and I had
not met him before this late May evening, when I had gone down to
confer with him upon some small matter of business. For I was "the new
schoolmaster" in Stillwater, having taken the school for the summer
term.
It was a rather lonely country district--a fact of which I was glad,
for life had been going somewhat awry with me and my heart was sore
and rebellious over many things that have nothing to do with this
narration. Stillwater offered time and opportunity for healing and
counsel. Yet, looking back, I doubt if I should have found either had
it not been for Abel and his beloved garden.
Abel Armstrong (he was always called "Old Abel", though he was barely
sixty) lived in a quaint, gray house close by the harbour shore. I
heard a good deal about him before I saw him. He was called "queer",
but Stillwater folks seemed to be very fond of him. He and his sister,
Tamzine, lived together; she, so my garrulous landlady informed me,
had not been sound of mind at times for many years; but she was all
right now, only odd and quiet. Abel had gone to college for a year
when he was young, but had given it up when Tamzine "went crazy".
There was no one else to look after her. Abel had settled down to it
with apparent content: at least he had never complained.
"Always took things easy, Abel did," said Mrs. Campbell. "Never
seemed to worry over disappointments and trials as most folks do.
Seems to me that as long as Abel Armstrong can stride up and down in
that garden of his, reciting poetry and speeches, or talking to that
yaller cat of his as if it was a human, he doesn't care much how the
world wags on. He never had much git-up-and-git. His father was a
hustler, but the family didn't take after him. They all favoured the
mother's people--sorter shiftless and dreamy. 'Taint the way to git on
in this world."
No, good and worthy Mrs. Campbell. It was not the way to get on in
your world; but there are other worlds where getting on is estimated
by different standards, and Abel Armstrong lived in one of these--a
world far beyond the ken of the thrifty Stillwater farmers and
fishers. Something of this I had sensed, even before I saw him; and
that night in his garden, under a sky of smoky red, blossoming into
stars above the harbour, I found a friend whose personality and
philosophy were to calm and harmonize and enrich my whole existence.
This sketch is my grateful tribute to one of the rarest and finest
souls God ever clothed with clay.
He was a tall man, somewhat ungainly of figure and homely of face. But
his large, deep eyes of velvety nut-brown were very beautiful and
marvellously bright and clear for a man of his age. He wore a little
pointed, well-cared-for beard, innocent of gray; but his hair was
grizzled, and altogether he had the appearance of a man who had passed
through many sorrows which had marked his body as well as his soul.
Looking at him, I doubted Mrs. Campbell's conclusion that he had not
"minded" giving up college. This man had given up much and felt it
deeply; but he had outlived the pain and the blessing of sacrifice had
come to him. His voice was very melodious and beautiful, and the brown
hand he held out to me was peculiarly long and shapely and flexible.
We went out to the garden in the scented moist air of a maritime
spring evening. Behind the garden was a cloudy pine wood; the house
closed it in on the left, while in front and on the right a row of
tall Lombardy poplars stood out in stately purple silhouette against
the sunset sky.
"Always liked Lombardies," said Abel, waving a long arm at them. "They
are the trees of princesses. When I was a boy they were fashionable.
Anyone who had any pretensions to gentility had a row of Lombardies at
the foot of his lawn or up his lane, or at any rate one on either side
of his front door. They're out of fashion now. Folks complain they die
at the top and get ragged-looking. So they do--so they do, if you
don't risk your neck every spring climbing up a light ladder to trim
them out as I do. My neck isn't worth much to anyone, which, I
suppose, is why I've never broken it; and _my_ Lombardies never look
out-at-elbows. My mother was especially fond of them. She liked their
dignity and their stand-offishness. _They_ don't hobnob with every
Tom, Dick and Harry. If it's pines for company, master, it's
Lombardies for society."
We stepped from the front doorstone into the garden. There was another
entrance--a sagging gate flanked by two branching white lilacs. From
it a little dappled path led to a huge apple-tree in the centre, a
great swelling cone of rosy blossom with a mossy circular seat around
its trunk. But Abel's favourite seat, so he told me, was lower down
the slope, under a little trellis overhung with the delicate emerald
of young hop-vines. He led me to it and pointed proudly to the fine
view of the harbour visible from it. The early sunset glow of rose and
flame had faded out of the sky; the water was silvery and mirror-like;
dim sails drifted along by the darkening shore. A bell was ringing in
a small Catholic chapel across the harbour. Mellowly and dreamily
sweet the chime floated through the dusk, blent with the moan of the
sea. The great revolving light at the channel trembled and flashed
against the opal sky, and far out, beyond the golden sand-dunes of the
bar, was the crinkled gray ribbon of a passing steamer's smoke.
"There, isn't that view worth looking at?" said old Abel, with a
loving, proprietary pride. "You don't have to pay anything for it,
either. All that sea and sky free--'without money and without price'.
Let's sit down here in the hop-vine arbour, master. There'll be a
moonrise presently. I'm never tired of finding out what a moonrise
sheen can be like over that sea. There's a surprise in it every time.
Now, master, you're getting your mouth in the proper shape to talk
business--but don't you do it. Nobody should talk business when he's
expecting a moonrise. Not that I like talking business at any time."
"Unfortunately it has to be talked of sometimes, Mr. Armstrong," I
said.
"Yes, it seems to be a necessary evil, master," he acknowledged. "But
I know what business you've come upon, and we can settle it in five
minutes after the moon's well up. I'll just agree to everything you
and the other two trustees want. Lord knows why they ever put me on
the school board. Maybe it's because I'm so ornamental. They wanted
one good-looking man, I reckon."
His low chuckle, so full of mirth and so free from malice, was
infectious. I laughed also, as I sat down in the hop-vine arbour.
"Now, you needn't talk if you don't want to," he said. "And I won't.
We'll just sit here, sociable like, and if we think of anything worth
while to say we'll say it. Otherwise, not. If you can sit in silence
with a person for half an hour and feel comfortable, you and that
person can be friends. If you can't, friends you'll never be, and you
needn't waste time in trying."
Abel and I passed successfully the test of silence that evening in the
hop-vine arbour. I was strangely content to sit and think--something I
had not cared to do lately. A peace, long unknown to my stormy soul,
seemed hovering near it. The garden was steeped in it; old Abel's
personality radiated it. I looked about me and wondered whence came
the charm of that tangled, unworldly spot.
"Nice and far from the market-place isn't it?" asked Abel suddenly,
as if he had heard my unasked question. "No buying and selling and
getting gain here. Nothing was ever sold out of _this_ garden. Tamzine
has her vegetable plot over yonder, but what we don't eat we give
away. Geordie Marr down the harbour has a big garden like this and he
sells heaps of flowers and fruit and vegetables to the hotel folks. He
thinks I'm an awful fool because I won't do the same. Well, he gets
money out of his garden and I get happiness out of mine. That's the
difference. S'posing I could make more money--what then? I'd only be
taking it from people that needed it more. There's enough for Tamzine
and me. As for Geordie Marr, there isn't a more unhappy creature on
God's earth--he's always stewing in a broth of trouble, poor man. O'
course, he brews up most of it for himself, but I reckon that doesn't
make it any easier to bear. Ever sit in a hop-vine arbour before,
master?"
I was to grow used to Abel's abrupt change of subject. I answered that
I never had.
"Great place for dreaming," said Abel complacently. "Being young, no
doubt, you dream a-plenty."