IN THE FOREMAN'S GARDEN
Mr. Best was a good gardener and cultivated fruit and flowers to
perfection. His rambling patch of ground ran beside the river and some
of his apple trees bent over it. Pear trees also he grew, and a medlar
and a quince. But flowers he specially loved. His house was bowered in
roses to the thatched roof, and in the garden grew lilies and lupins, a
hundred roses and many bright tracts of shining, scented blossoms. Now,
however, they had vanished and on a Saturday afternoon John Best was
tidying up, tending a bonfire and digging potatoes.
He was generous of his treasures and the girls never hesitated to ask
him for a rose in June. Ancient Mrs. Chick, too, won an annual gift from
the foreman. Down one side of his garden ranged great elder bushes, and
Mrs. Chick made of the blooth in summer time, a decoction very precious
for throat troubles.
Now Best stood for a moment and regarded a waste corner where grew
nettles. Somebody approached him in this act of contemplation and he
spoke.
"I often wonder if it would be worth while making an experiment with
stinging nettles," he said to Ernest Churchouse, who was the visitor.
"They have a spinnable fibre, John, without a doubt."
"They have, Mister Churchouse, and they scutch well and can be wrought
into textiles. But there's no temptation to make trial. I'm only
thinking in a scientific spirit."
He swept up the fallen nettles for his bonfire.
"I've come for a few balls of the rough twine," said Mr. Churchouse.
"And welcome."
An unusual air of gloom sat on Mr. Best and the other was quick to
observe it.
"All well, I hope?" he said.
"Not exactly. I'm rather under the weather; but I dare say it's my own
fault."
"It often is," admitted Ernest; "but in my experience that doesn't make
it any better. In fact, the most disagreeable sort of depression is that
which we know we are responsible for ourselves. When other people annoy
us, we have the tonic effect of righteous indignation; but not when we
annoy ourselves and know ourselves to blame."
"I wouldn't go so far as to say it's all my own fault, however,"
answered Mr. Best. "It is and it isn't my fault. To be a father of
children is your own fault in a manner of speaking; and yet to be a
father is not any wrong, other things being as they should."
"On the contrary, it's part of the whole duty of man--other things being
equal, as you say."
"We look to see ourselves reflected in our offspring, yet how often do
we?" asked the foreman.
"Perhaps we might oftener, if we didn't suffer from constitutional
inability to recognise ourselves, John. I've thought of this problem,
let me tell you, for you are one of many who feel the same. So far as I
can see, parents worry about what their children look like to them; but
never about what they look like to their children."
"You speak as a childless widower," answered the other. "Believe me,
Mister Churchouse, children nowadays never hesitate to tell us what we
look like to them--or what they think of us either. Even my sailor boy
will do it."
"It's the result of education," said Ernest. "There is no doubt that
education has altered the outlook of the child on the parent. The old
relation has disappeared and the fifth commandment does not make its old
appeal. Children are better educated than their parents."
"And what's the result? They'd kill the home goose that lays the golden
eggs to-morrow, if they could. In fact, they're doing it. Those that
remain reasonable and obedient to their fathers and mothers feel
themselves martyrs. That's the best sort; but it ain't much fun having a
house full of martyrs whether or no; and it ain't much fun to know that
your offspring are merely enduring you, as a necessary affliction. As
for the other sort, who can't stick home life and old-fashioned ideas,
they just break loose and escape as quick as ever they know how--and no
loss either."
"A gloomy picture," admitted Mr. Churchouse; "but, like every other
picture, it has two sides. I think time may be trusted to put it right.
After the young have left the nest, and hopped out into the world, and
been sharply pecked now and again, they begin to see home in its true
perspective and find that there is nothing like the affection of a
mother and father."
"They don't want anything of that," declared John. "If you stand for
sense and experience and try to learn them, they think you're a fossil
and out of sight of reality; and if you attempt to be young and interest
yourself in their wretched little affairs and pay the boy with the boys
and the girl with the girls, they think you're a fool."
"No doubt they see through any effort on the part of the middle-aged to
be one with them," admitted Ernest. "And for my part I deprecate such
attempts. Let us grow old like gentlemen, John, and if they cannot
perceive the rightness and stateliness of age, so much the worse for
them. Some of us, however, err very gravely in this matter. There are
men who have not the imagination to see themselves growing old; they
only feel it. And they try to hide their feelings and think they are
also hiding the fact. Such men, of course, become the laughing-stocks of
the rising generation and the shame of their own."
"All the young are alike, so I needn't grumble at my own family for that
matter," confessed Mr. Best. "Their generation is all equally headstrong
and opinionated--high and low, the same. If I've hinted to Raymond
Ironsyde once, I've hinted a thousand times, that he's not going about
his business in a proper spirit."
"He is at present obviously in love, John, and must not therefore be
judged. But I share your uneasiness."
"It's wrong, and he knows it, and she ought to know it, too. Sabina, I
mean. I should have given her credit for more sense myself. I thought
she had plenty of self-respect and brains too."
"Things are coming to a crisis in that quarter," prophesied Ernest. "It
is a quality of love that it doesn't stand still, John; and something is
going to happen very shortly. Either it will be given out that they are
betrothed, or else the thing will fade away. Sabina has very fine
instincts; and on his side, he would, I am sure, do nothing unbecoming
his family."
"He has--plenty," declared Mr. Best.
"Nothing about which there would not be two opinions, believe me. The
fact that he has let it go so far makes me think they are engaged. The
young will go their own way about things."
"If it was all right, Sabina Dinnett wouldn't be so miserable," argued
John Best. "She was used to be as cheerful as a bird on a bough; and now
she is not."
"Merely showing that the climax is at hand. I have seen myself lately
that Sabina was unhappy and even taxed her with it; but she denied it.
Her mother, however, knows that she is a good deal perturbed. We must
hope for the best."
"And what is the best?" asked John.
"There is not the slightest difficulty about that; the best is what will
happen," replied Mr. Churchouse. "As a good Christian you know it
perfectly well."
But the other shook his head.
"That won't do," he answered, "that's only evasion, Mister Ernest.
There's lots and lots of things happen, and the better the Christian
you are, the better you know they ought not to happen. And whether they
are engaged to be married, or whether they quarrel, trouble must come of
it. If people do wrong, it's no good for Christians to say the issue
must be right. That's simply weak-minded. You might as well argue
nothing wrong ever does happen, since nothing can happen without the
will of God."
"In a sense that's true," admitted Ernest. "So true, in fact, that we'd
better change the subject, John. We thinking and religious men know
there's a good deal of thin ice in Christianity, where we've got to walk
with caution and not venture without a guide. One needs professional
theologians to skate over these dangerous places safely. But, for my
part, I have my reason well under control, as every religious person
should. I can perfectly accept the fact that evil happens, and yet that
nothing happens without the sanction of an all powerful and all good
God."
"You'd better come and get your string then," said Mr. Best. "And long
may your fine faith flourish. You're a great lesson to us people cursed
with too much common-sense, I'm sure."
"Where our religion is concerned, we should be too proud to submit it to
common-sense," declared Ernest. "Common-sense is all very well in
everyday affairs; in fact, this world would not prosper without it; but
I strongly deprecate common-sense as applied to the next world, John.
The next world, from what one glimpses of it in prophecy and revelation,
is outside the category of common-sense altogether."
"I stand corrected," said Mr. Best. "But it's a startler--to leave
common-sense out of what matters most to thinking men."
"We shall be altered in the twinkling of an eye," explained Ernest, "and
so, doubtless, will be our humble, earthly intelligence, our reliance on
reason and other mundane virtues. From the heavenly standpoint, earth
will seem a very sordid business altogether, I suspect, and even our
good qualities appear very peddling. In fact, we may find, John, that we
were in the habit of putting up statues to the wrong persons, and
discover the most unexpected people at the right hand of the Throne."
"I dare say we shall," admitted Mr. Best; "for if common-sense is going
by the board and the virtues all to be scrapped also, then we that think
we stand had better take heed lest we fall--you and me included, Mister
Churchouse. However, I'm glad to say I'm not with you there. The Book
tells us very clear what's good and what's evil; and whatever else
Heaven will do, it won't go back on the Book. I suppose you'll grant
that much?"
"Most certainly," said the elder. "Most certainly and surely, John.
That, at least, we can rely upon. Our stronghold lies in the fact that
we know good from evil, and though we don't know what 'infinite'
goodness is, we do know that it is still goodness. Therefore, though God
is infinitely good, He is still good; the difference between His
goodness and ours is one of degree, not kind. So metaphysics and
quibbling leave us quite safe, which is all that really matters."
"I hope you're right," answered Best. "Life puts sharp questions to
religion, and I can't pretend my religion's always clever enough to
answer them."
Ernest took his twine and departed; but the subject of Raymond and
Sabina was not destined to slumber, for now he met Raymond on his way to
North Hill House.
He asked him to come into tea and, to his surprise, the young man
refused.
"That means Sabina isn't at home then," said Mr. Churchouse blandly.
"I don't know where she is."
At this challenge Ernest spoke and struck into the matter very directly.
He blamed Raymond and feared that his course of action was not that of a
gentleman.
"You would be the very first to protest and criticise unfavourably, my
dear boy, if you saw anybody else treating a girl in this fashion," he
concluded.
"I'm going to clear it up," answered the culprit. "Don't you worry.
These things can't be done in a minute. This infernal place is always so
quick to think evil, apparently, and judges decent people by its own
dirty opinions. I've asked Daniel to give me a holiday, so that I may go
away and think over life in general. And he won't give me a holiday.
It's very clear to me, Uncle Ernest, that no self-respecting man would
be able to work under Daniel for long. Things are coming to a climax. I
doubt if I shall be able to keep on here."
"You evade the subject, which is your friendship with Sabina, Raymond.
As to Daniel, there ought to be no difficulty whatever, and you know it
very well in your heart and head. Your protest deceives nobody. But
Sabina?"
Here the conversation ceased abruptly, for Raymond committed an unique
offence. He told Mr. Churchouse to go to the devil, and left him,
standing transfixed with amazement, at the outer gate of 'The
Magnolias.'
With the insult to himself Ernest was not much concerned. His regretful
astonishment centred in the spectacle of Raymond's downfall.
"To what confusion and disorder must his mind have been reduced, before
he could permit himself such a lapse," reflected Mr. Churchouse.