CHAPTER X

There followed sixteen days of such great and idyllic happiness that for

that alone it seems worth while to have lived my life. Dream lost her

terror of the sea and every morning swam out with me. Sometimes we would

catch trout in the forest pools, and these I would clean and cook in the

manner I had learned in the South Seas, on hot stones and ashes, getting

fire from the sun by means of the lens of my perspective-glass. But this

we could only hazard on days when the wind blew strongly, lest the smoke

of our fire should signal our whereabouts. I was not able to shake

Dream's belief in the creature that came out of the sea, but she seemed

no longer to have any fear of that or of anything.

"When death comes," she said, "it will come to both of us. Every day is

a gain. Yet, when one cannot possibly be happier, it is not hard to die.

One has drunk the wine of life."

I had it in my mind to attempt some further exploration of the caves. In

this I had been so far prevented by the fact that we had no means of

lighting ourselves. It was on the morning of the sixteenth day that I

found in the forest wood of a very resinous character which I guessed

would make good torches. I got me a store of this and carried it down to

the cave, telling Dream what I meant to do.

"I shall go with you," she said. Nor could I dissuade her from it.

We kept a small fire burning at the entrance to the cave that day, and

when the sun had gone down we lit our torches from the fire and started

off, taking no other equipment than my clasp-knife and a lump of chalk

with which to mark our way in the labyrinth.

We soon reached a point where but two roads were left, each so wide and

lofty that a coach and four might easily have been driven along it. One

of these roads led upwards, and I made no doubt emerged on the farther

side of the hill. The other one struck more abruptly downward, and this

was the road which we took. Here, if it existed at all, I should find

the subterranean lake. As we went on, the noise of falling water became

more and more distinct. I was excited by the adventure and eager to see

more.

Presently the road widened into a vast hall, so vast that our torches

could not illumine the farthest recesses of it. And here it was as well

that I looked carefully to each step, for I found myself suddenly on the

edge of a precipice. Lying flat on my stomach and holding out my torch,

I could see a vast stretch of black water below, into which at one end a

cataract thundered. In the middle of this lake there projected something

which looked like a smooth boulder of rock. I wondered what it might be.

"We have plenty of torches?" asked Dream.

"Plenty."

"Then we will see what it is."

She waved her torch round her head till it was all ablaze and then flung

it down. It fell on that great mass in the middle of the lake. The mass

turned slowly over, showing shaggy hair matted with slime. The smell of

burning hair came up to us and with it a deep groan that seemed to shake

the cave.

We fled in panic. I must indeed ascribe it to chance and to no courage

of my own that I kept my grip of the torch. We did not even pause to

look at the chalk marks we had made for our guidance, and in consequence

found ourselves lost for a while in the labyrinth of passages at the

entrance to the cave. At last we found the way out and made our way to

the forest. There we spent the remainder of the night, wakeful and

talking of the wonders we had seen. It was the last night that we spent

together.

The sun had scarcely risen when I saw a few feet away from us a little

smoke flickering over the powdered soil.

"What is that?" I asked.

"That is the end," said Dream. "We shall die together."

Rapidly the smoke, which did not rise and disperse, became more opaque,

vibrating until it took solid shape. Before us leered the misshapen head

and bright beady eyes of the Professor.

His right hand covered with a rubber glove slipped out of the boot and

drew forth the death-rod.

"The stranger dies first," he said, and pointed the rod at me. Dream

clung to me. I felt a sensation as of fire in my throat.

And now comes what seems to me--though it may not so seem to others--the

strangest part of my story. Passing through a kind of swoon, I found

myself gently rocked as on board a ship. Opening my eyes I saw two men

bending over me. One of them held a glass containing brandy to my lips.

"You see?" said a voice triumphantly. "The beggar's alive and I win my

bet."

I found afterwards that I was on board the steamship _Hermione_ bound

from Alexandria to Cardiff with a cargo of cotton seed. I had been found

senseless at the bottom of an open boat. I was treated with plenty of

rough kindness and brought back to my own country; but over the story

which I told them the crew shook their heads gravely.

Since then nothing of import happened to me until I was brought to this

great barrack-like place where I now live in fair comfort. There are

many doctors here and many guests. Some of the guests, I fear, have an

aberration of the intellect, for they say strange things. I am well

contented. I have lived my life. But since no one will listen to my

marvellous experiences in the island of Thule--or if they listen at all

make a jest of them--I have written them down here for the service of

another and a wiser generation.

IN A LONDON GARDEN

CHAPTER I

THE RECLAMATION OF THE CAT-WALK: AND THE STORY OF "THE POOL IN THE

DESERT"

My London garden is not really mine. I have it for a period of years on

conditions arranged between two legal gentlemen, the tenant paying the

landlord's cost. Obviously the person who owns the property can better

afford to pay those costs than the man who has to hire it. And similarly

the man who is lending money on a mortgage can better afford to pay

costs than the man who has to borrow it. But the tenant pays, and the

borrower pays. It is a principle of the law that the poor man pays. But

this reflection, into which bitterness of spirit has led me, has nothing

whatever to do with my garden.

I wasted more than a year. The thing looked quite hopeless. I left my

garden to the cats, the jobbing gardeners, the caterpillars, and the

other pests.

Of these the worst and most dangerous is perhaps the jobbing gardener.

As the law stands at present you may kill a caterpillar, but not a

jobbing gardener.

Coming on the wrong day--and he never comes on the right day if he can

avoid it--he brings with him a mixed scent of beer and lubricating oil.

If the weather is wet, he sits in the potting-shed and smokes. If it is

fine, he may possibly mow the lawn. He prefers to mow part of it and

then to get on with something else, leaving it like a man with one side

of his face shaved. He takes no sort of interest in the garden, and

candidly there is no reason why he should take any interest. He only

sees the place for a few hours every week, and he would not see it then

if he were not paid for it. He has untruthful testimonials, very dirty

and decomposed, in his coat pocket, and he is aggrieved when you sack

him. This is quite reasonable. A jobbing gardener who attends to the

gardens of A, B, and C naturally steals something from A's garden to

sell to B, something from B's garden to sell to C, and something from

C's garden to sell to A, and thereout sucks he no small advantage. When

he gets the sack there is nothing left for him but to steal your

secators. He never forgets to do that. I will not say that even in my

regenerate condition I never employ a jobbing gardener. There are days

when it seems a fine, manly, and primitive thing to do a piece of

digging or to mow the lawn. There are more days when such operations

seem rather in the light of a nuisance. One would always sooner direct

than perform. But the jobbing gardeners who come to me now are under

supervision, and are compelled to do things that they hate most in the

world--such as putting away their tools when they have finished with

them.

I am not particularly fond of the expert and regular gardener either.

Generally he has the luck to be a Scotchman and is a man of few words

and great knowledge. But his knowledge is always better than his taste,

and he debases an art into a science. His ideals would not fit a London

garden, and his feeling for colour is often wrong and poisonous.

The horticulturist-and-florist debases a science into a commerce. I have

found him useful and shall continue to do so. He saves me trouble. I

will deal with him, but I absolutely refuse to admire him.

The amateur gardener would be pleasant if you could cut out his conceit,

but it is ineradicable. He comes into my garden and points out my

principal mistakes and tells me of the much better things which he has

in his garden.

I myself am not a gardener at all. I admit it. I should imagine that

there is no man in Great Britain and her Dependencies who knows as

little about gardening as I do. But that is not the sole reason why I

write about my London garden. We can distinguish between the dog lover

and the dog fancier. In the same way we may distinguish between the

garden lover and the gardener. It is an important distinction.

The garden in London makes you love it, and it also breaks your heart.

It has therefore all the charm of woman. I am not going to believe that

any garden in the heart of the country, where everything is green and

easy, can give the same pleasure as my half-acre reclaimed among the

chimney-pots. It has its limitations, of course, but so have I. So have

all human beings. One does not ask a beautiful woman to be clever. One

does not expect a clever woman to be beautiful. One does not even hope

that an aggressively good woman will be either. Similarly one does not

ask the London garden for fruit and vegetables. All that one may really

require is shade and flowers. Even that is something, when you remember

how very few flowers will grow in shade.

Some blackguard who was allowed to use this garden before it fell to my

lot planted rhubarb in a part of it. Most of the rhubarb has now gone,

and the rest is going (as the politicians used to say), contrary, I

believe, to the terms of my lease. But my landlord is more sympathetic

than her solicitors. (The word "landlady" is not to be used. It gives

totally wrong associations.) I have also a currant bush, and this shall

remain. Its green does not displease me. It produces few currants and I

never get or try to get any of them; but birds that are kept as busy

with the slugs and caterpillars as the birds in my garden are, deserve

an occasional change of diet. I have a few old apple trees and pear

trees, but I think I regard them chiefly for their blossom, though these

last two years they have taken heart from the enrichment of the soil and

have been covered with fruit. You will find parsley and mint in a

secluded border, but these represent rather the ornament of nutrition

than nutrition itself.

As a rule parsley in London is terribly over-worked. In the

refreshment-room at a London terminus late at night I have seen a

barmaid collect the sprigs of wilted parsley from the tired sandwiches

and sad hard eggs, and put it all in a teacup with a little water. It

was heart-breaking to think that that parsley would have to go to work

again the next day. But also it presented the barmaid in a new light. It

was so foreign to her abnormal stateliness and her unnatural gaiety. It

tempted one to believe that after all she was human.

Sitting here in the shade on a hot summer day, with an Austrian brier in

full bloom within a few yards of me, I wonder why on earth I ever

neglected this garden.

In the first place it had been neglected before. I think for some two

years previously a jobbing gardener had called one day every week on

purpose to neglect it. Therefore it seemed hopeless to do anything. In

the second place it was too rectilineal. It was an exact rectangle,

surrounded by straight paths and bisected by one straight path. In the

third place I bought a book about gardening for amateurs and it

frightened me. It began just about the point where I shall leave off if

I live to be a hundred years old.

And then, neglected though it was, the garden made its appeal to me. All

round it are tall trees--elm, and chestnut, and wild cherry, and plane,

and sycamore. It offered me grateful shade on a hot afternoon, and I had

done nothing to deserve it. In the springtime there were mauve blossoms

on the lilac, and golden trails on the laburnum, that I had never

earned. Later, tall hollyhocks, lavish sunflowers, crowded Michaelmas

daisies, added their reproach. I became uneasy. I went out and bought

things, such as bast, and fertiliser, and green stakes. I began to

wander about the garden, thinking what could be done with it. By the

next summer the garden had got a fair hold of me. A man who can learn

something fresh is not old, wherefore I am not old, but it surprises me

that one of my youth should have learned so amazingly little about a

garden in the time.

I began to see encouraging factors. I had not to think about fruit and

vegetables. I had not to think about a greenhouse, because the garden

has no greenhouse. It has not even got a frame. I shall buy one next

year, or possibly the year after. London is simply crawling with

florists, and for a few shillings you can buy things all ready to put

in. The shilling that goes to the taxicab driver is gone for

ever--sacrificed to a fit of laziness. The shilling that buys six

sweet-williams provides pleasure for many weeks. The sweet-william is, I

believe, a two-year thing, or as the sacred jargon of the gardener puts

it, a biennial. You start it one year and it flowers the next. It may be

a mean and cowardly thing to do to let the florist do the first year's

work on it, and buy it when it is ready to flower that season, but I do

it, and I shall continue to do it. I shall continue to do everything

that I can think of that will save me trouble in my garden without

injuring the garden. But the Iceland poppies are from seed that I myself

sowed. I have sown blood-red wallflowers and Canterbury bells to flower

next year. One can be lazy without being wholly bad.

Things which looked hopeless at first sight proved better on further

consideration. There was the lawn, for instance. The jobbing gardener

turned up his nose at the lawn. It slopes. It slopes in several

different directions simultaneously.

"There's only one thing to be done with that," said the jobber, "and the

sooner you make up your mind to it the better. That all wants to be

taken up, levelled, and relaid. It'll cost a bit of money, but it'll

never be satisfactory till it's done."

He produced figures and they frightened me. The lawn still slopes

deviously, and every day that I see it I am thankful for it. Nobody can

possibly play lawn-tennis on it. I hate white rectilineal lines on grass

almost more than I hate underdone mutton or "The Lost Chord". Therefore

it is a perpetual joy to me that my lawn slopes.

I asked the jobbing gardener what the roses were, planted in odd corners

of the lawn.

"Roses!" he said scornfully. "They ain't roses. It's just some common

sort of brier. What anybody put it there for, I don't know. It has never

flowered for the last three years, and never will flower, and if it did,

you wouldn't like it."

Those despised briers are all covered with flower at the present moment,

and I like them very much. They are not gardeners' roses, but they are

nicer to look at than the Putney bus.

Are there any plantains in my lawn? There are. There is also more grass

than there used to be. You can do a lot of things with plantains. If you

turn guinea-pigs loose on your lawn, so one newspaper informs me, they

will eat the plantains and leave the grass. But I have not got any

guinea-pigs, and I am not going to provide a manly but barbarous sport

for the cats of the neighbourhood by buying guinea-pigs. Another method

is to cut off the head of the plantain and apply lawn-sand. I shall very

likely do that one day when there is nothing in the garden which wants

doing more, and if I happen to feel like it. A part of a summer day you

must work in a London garden, but it is equally true that for another

part of the summer day you must just sit and enjoy it. Otherwise you

sacrifice the end to the means.

"As for that old box tree," said my jobbing Jeremiah, "it never ought to

have been put there at all, right on the edge of a bed. If you take my

advice you will have it out. Of course, if it had been properly trimmed

and looked after, that might have been made into a peacock, but it would

take you years to get it into shape now. You can't grow anything under

it, and it's no good trying."

I am glad the old box tree is not a peacock. It has grown the way it

wanted to grow, and it suits it. It is perfectly true that nothing will

grow under it, and therefore I have not tried to grow anything under it.

I found me a handy man and sent him out to buy me a hundred bricks, what

time I marked out under the box tree a place where one might sit--a

place dry to the feet after the rain. I sent him for red bricks, and he

came back with white, because the red bricks were (a) too expensive, and

(b) too soft. But the white bricks have done very well with some old

bricks mixed in with them, and soon lost their aggressiveness. So

underneath my box tree is an L-shaped pavement of bricks, with room for

a seat and a table.

People look at it and sniff. It is too unusual. Then they go away and

buy bricks. It is astonishing, by the way, how very few bricks there are

in a hundred. What I mean, of course, is what a very small pavement they

make.

I made another seat under the big scarlet thorn, but this is more

ambitious. I got me broken pavement stones--not very easy to get

nowadays--and paved a semicircle. On that I put a semicircular seat with

a back to it. Irreverent people have compared it _(a)_ to a pew, and

_(b)_ to a loose-box; but it is a pleasant place to sit in in the

evening, and just catches the last of the sunlight. After that I dealt

firmly with myself, and said that I could not be always making seats.

I began to see ways by which I might make the garden a little less

rectilineal. I need hardly say that I wanted a pergola, because of

course everybody wants a pergola. The best house-agents say that a

riverside cottage lets better if it has a pergola and no dining-room

than if it has a dining-room and no pergola. My pergola is built of

rustic wood creosoted, which costs very little. It forms a big

semicircle with a short tail projecting from the middle of the curve. On

it I grow ramblers and glory-roses. I told an expert with some pride

what I had done.

"Yes," said the expert sadly and thoughtfully, "almost any rose does

well in London, except the Gloire-de-Dijon."

My glory-roses look all right at present, but he is probably correct.

When you do a work and do not know how to do it, you are handicapped.

Almost the first thing I did in the way of gardening was to put in some

gaillardias, which I had bought in a box. Three of them died. It takes a

good deal to kill a gaillardia. Things that I plant now do not die. I am

certainly getting on. I shall soon be able to say Gloire-de-Dijon when I

mean glory-rose.

Perfection is not for me. But there are some pleasant halting-places

this side of it. I consult that book for amateur gardeners at intervals,

principally because it is such a delight to be able to skip the long

chapter about sea-kale. I still struggle, and tell myself frequently

that I shall continue to struggle. But, as I have said, there are

pleasant halting-places this side of perfection, and I have a great

tendency to get out at the next station.

When that tendency comes over me I try to remember the smallness of my

garden. In a small garden you may cut the caterpillar nests off the

scarlet thorn, and burn them to ashes so that no spark of life remains.

You feel sure that not one caterpillar is left in the garden. You may

then get to work and pick caterpillars off the rose trees. You may hunt

the ubiquitous green fly. You may weed properly with a small fork,

instead of perfunctorily with a hoe, after the manner of the jobbing

gardener. In time of drought you can water everything. In a small garden

much is possible.

It is not exactly a garden yet, of course. The author of that book for

amateurs would drop dead from shock if he saw it. But it is more like a

garden than the cankered cat-walk it once was.

By the way, speaking of a garden in London, you may possibly have heard

the story of

THE POOL IN THE DESERT

There was once a desert. Now I come to think of it, there still is.

Across the desert, mounted on three camels, came the millionaire, the

artist, and the analyst. During the day their diet had consisted

principally of biscuits and sand. With this they had drunk as much dry

sherry as happened to be left in the millionaire's gold flask with the

diamond monogram on it. Therefore at first sight they were glad when

they saw the pool, and dismounted hurriedly from their camels. But

self-respect, which is a splendid quality, came to their rescue. It was

the millionaire who spoke first.

"I don't call that a pool at all. I have a lake in the park at my

country-place at least four times the size of that. It is a wretched

skimpy little business not worth our attention. Now if we had come to

the cataract of Niagara, that really would have been of some interest."

Even as he spoke, the analyst had produced from his saddle-bags test

tubes, and litmus paper, and a spirit-lamp, and all manner of mixed

chemicals, and was busily engaged on a sample of the water which he had

taken.

It was the artist who spoke next.

"Water demands green surroundings. To put a pool in a desert is to put

it in a wrong setting altogether. Here we have one stunted and miserable

palm tree, and no other vegetation. There is really nothing at all here

that I should care to paint."

The analyst was now ready with his results.

"This is precisely what I feared. There can be no doubt whatever that

this pool suffers from organic pollution. I do not say that it exists to

such an extent as to be dangerous to life, but there is a very distinct

trace. I will show you the figures in my analysis."

He did so. I have forgotten the figures. But that does not matter,

because if I told you them, you also would forget them.

And then for a while these three good men sat and looked at one another.

"I believe I am dying of thirst," said the millionaire.

"So am I," said the artist.

"There is no known form of liquid that I would not at this moment gladly

drink," said the analyst.

So after all they turned their attention to the pool.

But in the meantime the three camels--poor dumb beasts who knew no

better--had drunk up the whole of that pool, and had gone on their way

rejoicing.

CHAPTER II

OMISSIONS: AND THE STORY OF "THE GIRL WHO WENT BACK"

There are smuts in London.

There is also a tradition about the smuts in London, and it may be as

well to differentiate the facts and the tradition. According to

tradition, everywhere within a six-mile radius from Charing Cross smuts

fall heavily and continuously. Nothing will grow. No green things can

exist. A sheet of paper exposed to the open air becomes black in three

seconds, and a thick layer of carbon covers everything. There are many

people who believe this. I was told so only the other night by a

beautiful lady to whom I had inadvertently jabbered about my garden. By

the way, she was wearing a white dress. Why?

The fact is that there are as many smuts as one can reasonably want--and

perhaps a few more--in the city and in Mayfair. There are not so many as

there used to be, because there is less smoke. Electricity does not

smoke. Up in St John's Wood and Hampstead the smuts are very much

diminished. Probably if I climbed one of my trees I should find my hands

black. But I am not a boy nor a gorilla, that I should do this thing. I

read or write in the garden, and I find that no smut settles on the

white page. I dine under the tall trees, and the white cloth remains

unpolluted. I may possibly get an elm-seed in my soup, but that is

another matter. (Can anyone tell me, by the way, why the elm produces

such an amazing lot of seeds and sows them broadcast, with a preference

for places where they can never by any possibility germinate?) This is

all quite contrary to tradition, but it happens to be the truth.

There is a good time coming--the time when smoke will be eliminated. The

London garden will doubtless be an easier and cleaner matter then. But

meanwhile the London garden is not impossible. The evergreens are

distinctly shop-soiled after the winter; but with the summer comes the

fresh green, and in the summer London provides us with less smoke from

fewer fires. Beautiful white dresses must be washed or cleaned, and

after all the garden has its hose and its rain-showers.

The tradition is inept as it stands, but it has a basis of truth. There

is very much that must be omitted in the London garden. There are

flowers that never come to town. Speaking generally, bulbs will do less

work here than they will in the country. After the first year the tulips

get tired. But as a compensation for the many things which one must

omit, come the many other things which one may omit.

The liberty of the subject is too much circumscribed, but I believe that

there is no law in this country which compels a man to grow the Jacoby

geranium. This does not seem to be generally understood. Look at the

window-boxes of London, and look at the gardens. Mayfair as a rule is

ambitious and kills quite pretty things in its window-boxes; but

elsewhere all too frequently one finds the Jacoby geranium and the

edging of blue lobelia. I think that people get these things and grow

them just exactly as they pay their dog licence--not because they want

to do it but because they feel they must. There is probably an organised

conspiracy between florists and jobbing gardeners to promote Jacobys.

"You will be wanting some geraniums," says the florist decisively, and

you are hypnotised into believing it. "What could we have in that bed?"

you ask the jobbing gardener. "A few Jacobys," he says, with the air of

a man who has had a bright idea. If he does not edge them with blue

lobelia, he edges them with some yellow stuff which I think he calls

pyrethrum. One has only to smell it once never to try it again. At the

same time there are some super-cultured people who carry the hatred of

the geranium to an unreasonable extent. There is a white one which does

not make me ill, and a pink one which is not too hideous. But as it

happens, the only geranium in my garden is the one which is grown solely

for the scent of its leaves. One year where geraniums might have been I

had blue-violet verbenas, sweet-scented and just as easy to grow. I was

told to hairpin them to the ground, but out of obstinacy I grew them

upright. They did not seem to mind. I have no rage against the blue

lobelia, if it is put in a safe place where its colour can do no harm. I

do not know why the white lobelia has so much less popularity. One is

not bound to grow it as an edging. Now I come to think of it, I believe

I hate all edgings.

I am not very fond of those flowers which are distinctively villa

flowers. I do not think there is any man alive who could sell me a

yellow calceolaria or persuade me to find room for it in my garden. The

fuschia too is rather a self-conscious and ostentatious thing, though I

admit the tree-fuschia. To these I prefer musk, and mignonette, and

heliotrope. They flourish in a wet summer, and I wish I did. Lilies and

carnations of course one must have, and London permits it. London pride

is common enough, but I like it and grow it. It is a generous thing that

asks little and gives much. If only its graceful flower were expensive,

it would be greatly admired. The white and yellow marguerites are of no

dazzling rarity, but I welcome them. Hosts of the old-fashioned

perennials are desirable and possible, though there are some of them

that need to be watched. The sunflower, for instance, is distinctly

greedy and would take the whole garden if it could get it.

If a general principle of omission and selection for a London garden

could be formulated, it would probably run as follows--choose

cottage-garden things and avoid villa-garden things. In this way you

will get all that is simple and sweet-scented and easy of cultivation,

and nothing which is formal and perky. There are men who at present do

earn large salaries by making gardens perky. The pity of it!

I have myself seen a long bed covered with things of different coloured

foliage in geometrical patterns. "You may see as good Sights, many

times, in Tarts." Thank you, my Lord Verulam, for those words. Looking

at such a bed one did not see the flowers only. The eye of imagination

lingered on all that must have conduced to its preparation--all the

pegs, and string, and perspiration, and misplaced cleverness. A garden

may easily be over-educated, and that which is good in itself may suffer

from improvement.

And that reminds me. You do not, perhaps, know the story of

THE GIRL WHO WENT BACK

There was once a girl whose name was Rose, and she was rather pretty and

rather clever. She was not very pretty or very clever, but everybody

said she was very sweet. She had great advantages. Her papa was a wise

man. Her mamma--well, her mamma had the best intentions and was troubled

with ambition. But they both loved Rose.

The ambitious mamma said to the wise papa: "Rose is now seventeen years

old. She has faults which must be eradicated. She has good qualities

which must be enhanced. The last year of her education must be

peculiarly strenuous."

"As how?" said the wise papa.

"Well, I do not quite like the way she speaks. Her voice is pleasant in

quality, and you can generally understand her; but she slurs her words

and she is just a little weak on the letter 'r'. She must be made to pay

far more attention to her personal appearance. Her waist is not as small

as it might be; and her complexion--but these are not things which you

will require to understand. She must learn German thoroughly. A

smattering is no use. She must not be allowed to have her own way about

the violin. Arithmetic is a very weak point with her. Are you

attending?"

The wise papa opened his eyes, and said that he had heard every word,

and that she was quite certain to be right, and that he would leave it

to her.

Rose had no ambition and no wisdom. She liked play. She liked real

music. She liked dancing. But as she was quite good, she did what she

was told. Many tutors came about her, and she worked early and late. Her

mother confided to her those secrets which should add to her beauty.

The elocution master was quite pleased with her. She learned to

ar-tic-u-late her words and to speak dis-tinct-ly. She pronounced every

"r" as if it had been a coffee-mill. It was a treat to listen to her.

Her proficiency in foreign languages was really remarkable.

Her music teacher said that she had improved enormously in technique and

in taste. Her playing on the violin was a mixture of gymnastics and

conjuring tricks. She learned to speak slightingly of melody. She

understood advanced orchestration, and pronounced Tschaikowsky

correctly. She occasionally annoyed people by giving Chopin the Russian

pronunciation.

Her waist became smaller. You might have thought that her long hours of

study would have made her pale, but there was always a delicate blush on

either cheek-bone, except when she had just washed her face. Her hair

became a work of art. It was marvellously arranged.

The college of domestic-training found Rose its most apt pupil. She

could cook. She could housekeep. Her arithmetic was unfailing. She could

detect at once the mistake in the tradesman's account, and she could get

the right note of asperity into her voice in speaking to him about it.

"Is it not rather an extraordinary coincidence that these frequent

errors are always in your own favour?" This was obviously the kind of

woman that a sensible man would be glad to marry. She was a highly

developed helpmeet.

The ambitious mamma saw that Rose had improved out of all knowledge. She

became proud of her. She now waited for Rose to make an exceptionally

brilliant match. She continued to wait, for something had changed in

Rose. People said she was very accomplished and very beautiful, but

nobody said she was rather sweet. The boys who had played with her and

danced with her did not seem to require her any more; they shivered with

fear in her splendid presence.

We should all improve ourselves, and try to do our best--this is the

accepted view and there is no need to dispute it--but concentration on

one's own self, even with the highest possible motive, is poison. And

Rose had drunk of that poison.

And then the ambitious mamma died; and there were some people who

thought that she was better dead. But Rose was overcome with grief. It

was not until six weeks later that, standing before the cheval-glass,

she noticed how very well she looked in black. She worked harder than

ever at the task of self-improvement, until her health broke down. Then

two things happened simultaneously. She was ordered into the country,

and her papa went to take up an important post in Paris.

Rose lived now in a cottage up on a hill with a refined and elderly

lady-companion. Beyond the garden of the cottage was common-land. Here

the bracken grew waist-high, and you might see as many foxgloves in ten

minutes as you would find in London in ten years. Sheep roamed among the

bracken. The difference between the face of the lady-companion and the

face of one of those sheep was hardly noticeable; they also had

similarities in disposition.

When the lady-companion slept--and she was a perfectly grand

sleeper--Rose wandered all the afternoon about the common. She was not

improving herself any longer, because that was held to be bad for her

health. She worried because she felt that she had lost the love of

people. The longer she lived in the country, the more she wanted to be

loved. She even put tentative questions to the lady-companion, to find

out how it was that she was not loved. But these tentative questions

were of no use, because the lady-companion maintained that Rose was

loved very much indeed, being under the impression that this was the

kind of thing that she was paid to say. She was a conscientious woman.

And then one night Rose had a dream. In her dream she heard a loud

knocking at the cottage door, and she herself went to see who was there.

There stood a very ugly old pedlar with a leer on his face, and a pack

on his back. He swung his pack round and took off the piece of American

cloth from the top of it.

"And what can I sell you to-day, my pretty lady?" he asked.

"Nothing, thank you," said Rose.

"Don't say that," said the pedlar. "You have dealt with me before, you

know."

"Never," said Rose. "You are mistaken."

"Yes, you did," said the ugly old man stoutly. "You bought a packet of

Amoricide, and those that deal with me once must deal with me again."

"What is Amoricide?" asked Rose, who began to have a feeling that after

all she did recognise the pedlar's face.

"Well, well," said the pedlar, "that's telling. I don't mind owning that

there is a lot of the Air of Superiority in it, and there are other

things. You have no complaint to make about it, have you? It does its

work all right. I guarantee that it will exterminate love absolutely. It

is death to love. Have you not found it so?"

"I have found," said Rose, "that it has destroyed the love of others for

me, but not the love of me for others."

The old man chuckled. "That's it. That's right. That's why the people

who deal with me once must deal with me again. You must have one more

little packet."

"This time I want to know what is in it."

The pedlar began to look uneasy. "Don't ask too many questions. We call

it Taedium Vitae. It is a splendid thing."

Rose was highly educated, and she told him that Taedium Vitae meant

life-weariness, and that she would like to know how it acted.

"You go down the hill," said the old man absent-mindedly, as if he were

speaking to himself, "and then, of course, you come to the pine wood."

Rose nodded. "Yes, I know it. Through the wood is the short cut if you

are going to the station. The stile is rather awkward to climb over."

"You can manage it all right. You have done it before. And you know the

dark pool under the trees?"

Rose nodded. This time she did not speak.

"That's another short cut," said the old man with a chuckle. "It's soon

over. The sensation of drowning is said to be quite pleasant. Then there

is no more trouble--no more worrying because you have lost love, and

because life has lost its savour."

Rose was rather frightened. "When do I pay you?" she asked in a husky

whisper.

"That's all right," said the old man ingratiatingly. "You don't pay me

till afterwards. We give credit."

"Afterwards?"

"After the pool. Come, you will take this packet."

"I will not," said Rose with sudden determination, and shut the door in

the old man's ugly face. He kept on knocking.

Then she knew that it was only the knocking of the maid who brought her

one cup of China tea, one piece of thin bread-and-butter, one large can

of hot water, and the news that it was a fine morning.

After that there was a change in Rose. Some of the change was very

subtle. Some of it was quite obvious. Even a lady-companion with the

mind of a sheep can detect a change in personal appearance. She did

detect it, and she spoke about it with discretion.

Rose answered: "Yes, two inches bigger. I don't wear them at all now.

Suppose I shall have to when I go back to town. And I find I simply

cannot stand the other stuff. If I've got brown, that is because God's

sun meant me to be brown."

"The merest touch would----"

Rose was good-humoured, but obstinate.

And in time she went back to town. She had lost the habit of thinking

about herself or of asking why people did not love her. She gave them

the music that they wanted, and not the music that she knew they ought

to have wanted. She became very simple and friendly. The tone of her

voice softened, and the "r" sound no longer buzzed properly. She had

gone back. And when she was not thinking about it at all, people began

to love her.

One man particularly. And this was fortunate for Rose.

Papa, who was a director of Kekshose & Cie--they make such big

motor-cars that nobody ever dares to let them do as much as they will,

and hardly anybody can afford to buy them--came back for the wedding.

I was just going to say, when that foolish story interrupted me, that

Cardinal Newman wrote a book called "Apologia pro vita sua." I mention

it not as a discovery but as a reminder. I believe that almost every

imaginative author writes an _Apologia pro vita sua_, though under a

different title and in a different guise. I could name one author (and

so, of course, could you) who has written several such apologiæ. If I

have never done it myself, it is because I am not of the heroic type

which undertakes lost causes. But I am not quite sure that I am not

writing an _Apologia pro horto meo_. There is a serpent in every Eden,

and its name is Pride. If my half-acre of cat-walk can claim to be a

remote descendant of Eden, the serpent exists there too. I point out the

good things in the garden. I cover up the defects, or--which is even

worse--I make elaborate explanations to prove that they are not defects

at all. I cannot expect anybody to like my garden as much as I do, but I

want them to respect it. Jokes about it always seem to me to be in bad

taste. A very good amateur gardener once came into my garden and

mentioned just a few of the things that he noticed. He did it in the

kindliest way. He taught me quite a good deal, and I hope he will never

know how near I came to beating him on the head with the business end of

a large rake.

I think that what I have said about omission is true. Everybody who

loves art loves omission. I should like, for instance, if I could, to

write in the fewest words that lucidity requires. It has given me

pleasure to omit certain things from my garden.

But all the same--and I may as well confess it--fewer things would be

omitted from my garden if it were larger and in the heart of the

country, and if I had somebody to help me, and if by chance I happened

to know something about it.

CHAPTER III

ROSES: AND THE STORY OF "THE BLESSED ARTIST"

The terminology of the botanist is a standard joke, but as a matter of

fact, the botanist blunders into a good thing sometimes. It was rather a

fine idea to have in plants an order of those that bear the

cross--cruciferæ. The turnip and sea-kale are among those whose petals

make the sign, but it need not shock us. Is there not loveliness in the

flower of the potato, and poetry in the foliage of the asparagus? On the

whole, I think the botanist makes me less angry than the horticulturist.

Why, for instance, are so many roses named after abominable

horticulturists or their wearisome female relatives? How can you call a

rose Frau Karl Druschki? I always call that great white rose Mabel,

because it reminds me of a large, lymphatic, handsome girl, who was

entirely without charm. Scent in a flower is charm in a woman. Frau Karl

Druschki has no scent. Hugh Dickson has nothing wrong with it but its

name. Fancy calling a beautiful apricot-tinted rose William Allen

Richardson! Its godfathers and godmothers in its baptism showed a small

sense of humour. Besides, its name is quite obviously Doris. It is

permissible to call a pink rambler Dorothy, but why add the unspeakable

surname Perkins? Why should a red rose be named after a duke? It is

insufferable, snobbish, and inept. No rose should be named after any

man, and should never bear more than the first name of a woman. Niphetos

is a possible name; it is the most sentimental of the white roses. But

almost all roses have their counterparts in women. There is, for

instance, in my garden a pink, useful, knobbly dumpling of a rose. I

have not the faintest idea what the horticulturist would call it, but no

one can see it without knowing that its real name is Kate.

I think the roses that I love best are those of the deepest and darkest

crimson. They have velvety skins and the most perfect fragrance. It is

part of the perversity of the thing that they should be so difficult to

manage. You feed them and tend them, and they give you scanty and

imperfect bloom, or they die, and the intelligent inquest results in an

open verdict. When that happens, the only consolation is to find

somebody else who has had the same trouble with the same rose. I have

not ventured to ask one of them to put up with a London garden as yet,

but I fancy one is coming to stay with me next year. Perversity haunts

the garden, and the dock always grows as near as possible to some plant

that you value. "Now then," says the dock, "if you dig me up, you'll

have to pay for it." But especially does perversity attach itself to

roses. What have I done for the perennial lupins? Nothing. And they have

given me numberless spikes of incomparable loveliness. What have I done

for the Canterbury bells? Nothing. And they also seem to like it. But I

did a good deal for that particular rose which I call Mabel, and then

there was a late spring frost. It was no fault of mine. I was not even

there when it was done. I was in bed at the time. But it annoyed Mabel.

She seemed unable to forget it. Why must those loathsome and

parthenogenetic green flies devour the tender roses? There is still a

certain amount of rhubarb in the garden, and they are welcome to it. I

would very much rather they ate it than that I should eat it myself. But

the green flies will not look at it. They cling to the rose and suck its

life out. Then, out of sheer devilry, they grow wings and migrate to

some other rose tree.

The queen demands homage, and the rose has received it to the extent of

countless volumes written by wise gardeners who have studied her

specially. Their learning appals. They almost deter the poor blunderer

in London from ever trying to grow a rose or to talk about one. A little

knowledge may be a dangerous thing, but the expert runs his risks also.

I was taken through a most beautiful rose-garden once, and I dared to

admire one particular bed. "Yes," said the owner of the garden almost

apologetically, "it's quite one of the old sorts." And then I was taken

to other beds in which was the very last word in roses--kinds that had

only been produced within the last year or so--and here the owner showed

more enthusiasm. Has it come to this then--that fashion is to stray from

the milliner's shop and find a place in the garden?

From motives of humanity I refrain from bringing out once more certain

over-worked quotations from Herrick and Omar; but in truth the poets,

like the scientific gardeners, have not spared writing materials where

roses were in question. They are ecstatic about the colour and

fragrance, and generally sentimental about the thorns, and never by any

chance allude to the culture. There is something feminine about poets.

They like the result, but they ignore the process, just as a woman eats

a lamb cutlet, but does not want you to talk about the slaughter-house.

Perhaps it is not to be expected that poets should mention the food of

the roses, and yet I hate a shirker of facts. I am not sure that there

is not something of poetry in the plain truth that in nature's impartial

chemistry there is only one step from muck to glory.

And now, if you are tired of uninformative talk about roses, I will tell

you the story of

THE BLESSED ARTIST

There was once an artist who lived in a great town. He was painting a

picture, and he took a great deal of trouble to make it as difficult for

himself as possible. He tried for effects of lighting that needed

miracles. In his work he sought and worshipped difficulties. In the

garden beyond the studio he found plenty of difficulty without seeking

for it. But this was difficulty of a kind that maddened him. He wanted a

garden, but he did not want to make a garden. So he employed a man one

day a week, and was profoundly dissatisfied.

One afternoon he had a dream. He dreamed that an angel came into his

room--a beautiful angel of the accepted Doré Gallery type. The angel had

a pleasant voice and said pleasant things to him.

"You have lived well," said the angel, "and you have worked well. You

have earned for yourself the blessedness that belonged to the Garden of

Eden. That blessedness shall fall upon your garden. Go and look at it."

So the artist went out on to his lawn and was quite surprised. It was of

one beautiful tint of fresh green all over, with never a brown spot.

There had been many daisies on that lawn, but they had all gone now. It

had suffered from moss, but the moss had vanished. It had been

superficially irregular, but it was now level. The perfect grass was

just three-quarters of an inch in height, and no tall bents stuck up

anywhere. He went to look at his roses. He remembered them as they had

formerly been--spindly bushes which he had forgotten to prune, and that

bore leaves only at the extreme end of their branches. They had changed

to compact bushes that were green all over and flowered like an

illustration in a seedsman's catalogue. Caterpillars had played havoc

with them aforetime, but now he could find no caterpillar and no trace

of the caterpillar's work. He went on to his two apple trees. They had

borne no blossom that year that he could remember, and the white tufts

of American blight had bedecked their trunks. The American blight was

all gone now. The blossom had set, and the fruit was swelling, and each

tree would bear exactly the right number of apples, neither more nor

less. The carnations were very large, numerous, and fragrant. The

madonna lilies promised well. There was no weed to be seen anywhere, and

the paths had been newly gravelled with the red gravel which he had

always wanted, and never been able to get. The very quality of the soil

had changed, and was now dark and rich. It was worth while to work in

such a garden as this; he took his coat off and went into the

potting-shed to get his tools.

And then he realised his blessedness. There was absolutely nothing for

him to do in the garden. It was all quite good. The drought had not

brought down the leaves nor cracked the surface. The strong winds had

not dishevelled and laid low the sunflowers. He noticed, moreover, that

things were tied up now with green bast to green sticks. He had always

wanted green bast and green sticks, but had used the other kind because

it was the only kind that the man round the corner sold.

He put on his coat and stretched himself on a deck-chair on the lawn in

the evening sunlight in a great state of contentment. When it grew dusk,

from the shrubbery at the end of the garden came beyond mistake the

voice of the nightingale. He had always wanted nightingales, but so far

he had put up with imitative blackbirds. Blessedness had come to him

indeed.

He lit a cigarette and reflected how he would show his garden to Smith,

and how much Smith would be annoyed about it. Smith had a garden of his

own, and was a toilsome amateur with a certain amount of knowledge.

Smith would undoubtedly be green with jealousy. He would ask Smith to

luncheon, and afterwards they would have coffee in the garden. He would

carefully abstain from calling Smith's attention to anything; but he

would watch him, as he slowly drank it all in and meditated suicide.

On the day that Smith was to come to luncheon, the blessed artist rose

early in order that he might mow the lawn before breakfast. But when he

went out, he found that it did not require to be mown. The grass grew to

just the right height and then stopped. At luncheon Smith was inflated

with pride, and talked freely about begonias. He mentioned other things

which he had in his garden--things that that artist ought to come and

see. The artist sat quite meekly, and was very polite until luncheon was

over. Then he said: "I think we might have coffee in the garden, Smith,

if you call that backyard of mine a garden."

"Ah," said Smith, "you should give a little more time and attention to

it."

Then they passed out into the garden, and Smith was struck dumb. At last

he said: "How do you manage to get those fine dark wallflowers in full

bloom at the end of June?"

"Takes a bit of management," said the blessed artist complacently.

Smith began to walk round the garden. He admired exceedingly. The

confession that he had got nothing like that escaped him frequently; and

when he had seen it all, he pulled from one pocket an old envelope and

from another a short stubb of a pencil.

"Look here," he said, "you might just give me the name of the chap who

does your garden for you."

"The angels do my garden for me," said the blessed artist.

"Oh, all right," said Smith, "if you don't want to tell me, you

needn't."

And he put back the old envelope and the pencil in their respective

pockets, and he went away in a very bad temper. But this incident

reminded the blessed artist to countermand the jobbing gardener--a man

of intemperate habits and quite unfit to collaborate with angels.

The next day the artist went into his garden and enjoyed it extremely.

The day after he enjoyed it less.

The day after that he began to be dissatisfied. Dissatisfaction began to

settle like a cloud upon him. He wondered why. It came to him slowly

that he felt like a man who had stolen the Victoria Cross and was

wearing it ostentatiously. He was exhibiting a perfection for which he

had never worked; and there was no savour in it.

"Better," he cried, "imperfection towards which one has contributed

something. Better even the sickly wilderness that this garden once was."

The sound of his own voice woke him.

He found that he was sitting in a deck-chair on the lawn. It was a

decayed chair, having been left out in many rains. The lawn was just as

bad as ever it had been. He could almost hear the caterpillars crunching

up the surrounding vegetation. One glance showed him that his rose trees

were still a shame and a reproach. And down the steps from the house

came his old friend Smith, smiling and rubicund.

"Been asleep in this rotten old garden of yours?" he said. "It looks to

me as if you would have done better if you had been working in it."

"I am inclined to think so," said the artist.

As a rule it is easier to do much work than little. The man who is

underworked rarely does the little that he has to do thoroughly and

punctually. The more leisure one has, the more one desires.

I feel confident that if I had a thousand rose trees, I should be up

bright and early in the morning to do for them all that they required. I

should study the literature on the subject and become expert. Possibly I

should not go so far as some experts, who provide a kind of conical tin

hat for each rose bloom to shelter it from the rain. But it would not be

slackness which would stay my hand; it would be because I cannot think

that the conical tin hat adds greatly to the beauty of the garden.

But I have not got a thousand rose trees. It is none the less essential

that I should cut off all the dead blooms. This labour, carried out with

no unseemly haste, might possibly occupy me for five minutes.

And how many times have I shirked those five minutes of labour? I am

shirking them now. Let me see, where are the scissors?

CHAPTER IV

THE FOUNTAIN: AND THE STORY OF "THE LITTLE DEATH"

I will admit that I very nearly erected a sun-dial in my garden. There

was a kind of snobbery about it. So many artistic people have erected

sun-dials in their gardens, that I supposed that I should be artistic if

I erected a sun-dial in mine. But all the time, somewhere at the back of

my head, was the conviction that the thing was rotten. I knew it was

rotten some time before I knew the reason why.

Sun-dials are not used nowadays for the purpose of telling the time. It

is therefore insincere and affected to put a sun-dial in a modern

garden. It is not conscientious. It is like the artificial creation of

worm-holes in the spurious-antique furniture. Where the sun-dial already

exists in an old garden one may be glad of it, but one may not

deliberately put a sun-dial into a new garden.

So I put in a fountain.

The simplest and most satisfactory way to get a fountain in one's garden

is to buy one from the fountain shop, make arrangements with the Water

Company, and get a real plumber to fix it. This did not appeal to me.

There was no adventure about it, it would cost too much, and I knew that

I should hate shop-fountains. I therefore designed and made my own

fountain, and will now instruct others how they may make one which will

be nearly as bad and delightful.

The first step is to find among your acquaintances a family where the

baby is grown up. Talk about babies. Ask if the baby had a tin bath with

a lid to it, the kind that its things are packed in when it goes to the

seaside in the summer. Ask further if that bath is still in existence.

If it is, then make the family give you the bath. It is to serve as the

reservoir for your fountain and is essential.

You proceed to the second step. In deciding where you would put your

fountain, you will remember of course that fountains always look best

among big trees with a green background. You now fix the disused bath

firmly in the tree twenty feet or so from the ground, in such a position

that it is secluded by foliage from the gaze of the curious and

impertinent. The chestnut tree seems to have been specially designed by

nature for this purpose.

Your third step would be to dig out the basin of the fountain. I chose a

spot under the trees mid ferns and laurels. I bought from a stone-yard a

cartload of material, half of it broken flat paving-stone and half of it

chunks, and I may add incidentally that I paid too much for it. I paved

the bottom of the basin with flat stone and concrete, leaving a space

for the jet of the fountain to come up in the middle. I used the flat

stone also for the border round the margin of the basin. At the back of

the fountain I built up the chunks to the height of six feet or so,

putting in plenty of earth with them. I have golden and silver ivies

climbing over the stones, and I have planted there anything which I

thought would grow.

The reservoir being in its place and the basin constructed, the next

step is to connect them. This is done by a compo pipe with a

surreptitious tap in it.

And after that you fill the bath with the garden hose and turn the tap.

As a rule nothing happens the first time, because there is air in the

pipe; but you can put the garden syringe to the fine nozzle in which the

compo pipe terminates, and draw out the air. My own fountain will play

for six hours continuously; and then when no one is looking one must

fill up the bath reservoir again.

It is really extraordinary how gardening turns decent, God-fearing men

into braggarts. I have said that I did this myself. I did design it. I

did direct the work, and to some extent assist in it; but can I fix

compo pipes on to holes in baths, or fine nozzles on to compo pipes? Can

I fit taps? Can I manipulate stone and concrete? Certainly not.

It is very useful to know a man who can do everything, especially when

one gets ambitious in a London garden. The same man who did the plumbing

work of the fountain also did the stone work. He built the palace--it

were an affectation of modesty to call it a kennel--in which the

Pekinese puppy lives when it is not eating the Iceland poppies. He

painted the garden seats. He is an expert in the removal of the American

blight. He has diagnosed that my wild cherry is bark-bound, and wishes

me to let him cut a slit in it, but I dare not. He is wonderful and he

is inexpensive.

The public fountain is always placed in an open space. There is a

tendency even among quite decent private people to use the fountain as a

lawn decoration. I like it better among trees myself; it is more

classical. It recalls more lines of Horace. The fountain must never be

allowed to play on a dull or cold day. And if you yourself are doing

something strenuous in the garden, it is irksome to have the fountain

playing while you are working. The fountain belongs to sunlight and

repose, and the garden that is not a place of rest is no garden. The

purr of the lawn-mower and the tinkle of falling water are the two most

soporific sounds in existence. They should be used by the medical

profession in the cure of insomnia. I do not know why, but people

generally seem to be a little proud of insomnia. They like to tell you

how many times in the night they heard the clock strike. One will do

almost anything to be interesting, undeterred by failure in it. This, I

suppose, it is which drives some to story-writing.

You may have chanced to hear the story of

THE LITTLE DEATH

There was once (but it must have happened a long time ago and in some

very distant island) a race of people who never slept. Occasionally they

became tired and lay down, but they never closed their eyes and never

lost consciousness. They had never heard of sleep. They had never

learned it. And in consequence they did a great deal of work, but they

died very young. They were quite happy about it of course, because one

never misses what one has never had. There may be something quite as

sweet as sleep which we ourselves do not miss, only because we do not

know about it.

One day a shipwrecked man was cast up on the shore. These were

hospitable people, and they took him up to the King's palace and

entertained him. And when night came, after he had feasted and drunk,

the King said: "And now what pleasure can we offer you? Would you like

to hear music, or to see the dancing-girls, or to ride out in the

moonlight?"

The man laughed. "None of these things, sir," he said. "The day has been

long, and a feeling of weariness overcomes me. I should now like to

sleep."

"That is some new game?" asked the King, intelligently.

"Sleep?" said the Princess Melissa. "We do not know that. What is this

sleep?"

The man explained it as best he could, and his account was received with

the greatest interest. Many questions were put to him.

"I perceive," said the King at last, "that this sleep is really a little

death. For the time being you are dead. Take my advice, therefore, O

stranger, and give it up. It is an awful risk, thus voluntarily to enter

into the place of death. Suppose that one day you find something there

that keeps you, and you cannot come back again."

The stranger explained that, so far was this from being the case, that

every time when he went to sleep he was more afraid that something would

wake him, than that he would never wake at all.

"I fear," said the King, "that this shows that you have not thought

about the matter profoundly."

"Possibly not," said the stranger. "But I am as I am constructed. I

sleep because I must sleep. Had I but a couch to lie upon, I could be

asleep now in five minutes."

"How exciting," said the Princess Melissa.

"May we all see it? May we watch you when you are dead of the little

death?"

"Most certainly," said the stranger politely. "I am so tired that I am

likely to sleep very soundly, but all the same noise or bright light

would wake me again, and that would make me very angry. I must beg,

therefore, that when you come to look upon me in my sleep, the light may

be subdued and no sound may be made."

And to this condition they agreed.

A room was prepared for the stranger in the palace. It was thickly

carpeted, so that no footfall could sound. It had a curtained entrance,

that the stranger might not be disturbed by the sound of the door

opening and shutting when people entered to see the show. The room was

dimly lit by the flame of a small lamp. In five minutes the stranger was

asleep.

One by one they entered the room--the King, the Princess, and all the

people of the court--to see this new and awful phenomenon of a man who

was dead of his own volition and would yet come to life again. Three

ladies of the court fainted on leaving the apartment. The King became

terribly anxious. "This is a dangerous game," he said, "and must be

stopped at once. We do not wish to have the death of this stranger on

our conscience. Bring, therefore, bright lights and make a loud

noise----"

But here the Princess Melissa intervened. "No," she said; "he is not

really dead, for he still breathes. I watched him most carefully and am

sure of it. It is an experiment which he has often made. He tells me

that he has had this sleep every night of his life."

"Doubtless," said the King, "he wished to make an impression; we are not

bound to believe that."

But the King was bound to admit, though he did so grudgingly, that a man

who breathed was not a dead man.

All the night through they watched outside the sleeping-chamber, and

about the middle of the night they heard a terrific sound.

"That," said the King, "is the cry of his death agony. I know it. I am

sure of it. We have done wrong."

As a matter of fact, the sound was the first snore which had ever been

heard in that island. It made even the Princess Melissa nervous. But she

investigated the phenomenon and reported that no interference seemed to

be required. The man was not only breathing, he was breathing more

strenuously than he did when he was awake.

Nevertheless a great weight was taken from the King's mind when his

guest came back to life again in the morning. It was noted that the man

was none the worse for his strange experience. He seemed even better for

it. He was more active and alert. His eye was brighter. He was instantly

ready to undertake the fatigue of swimming for a long distance in the

sea.

That morning, as he conversed with the Princess Melissa, he tried to

explain to her something even more strange than sleep--the dreams that

come to one in sleep. The two walked alone through the forest together.

"Tell me," said the Princess, "do you think that I also could sleep and

have a dream? I know it is bizarre and morbid, but I long passionately

and above all things to have this strange experience."

"So far as I can judge," said her companion, "you are constructed

precisely as the women of the rest of the world, where sleep is a

nightly event. I may be wrong, but I should imagine that if the initial

impulse could be given to you, you also would sleep."

The Princess clasped her hands in ecstasy. "How perfectly splendid!" she

said. "But then how am I to get the initial impulse?"

"What," asked the man, "is that glow of red amid the yellow in the field

yonder?"

"That is where poppies grow among ripening corn. But what have they to

do with the initial impulse?"

"They are it," said the stranger; "by means of those poppies I could

prepare for you the secret of sleep. But there would be a risk."

"You told me just now that in a dream it seemed to you that you were

sitting in a boat with an elephant, drinking tea, and the elephant had

on a small white coat with a rose in its buttonhole. That seemed as real

to you in the dream as it seems now that you are walking with me on the

edge of the forest?"

"Quite as real, absolutely real."

"Then for such a miraculous experience as that, who would not run any

risk? Come, we will go and gather poppies."

For the next few days the stranger was shut up in his apartments in the

palace, making the sleep-producing drug of which he knew. He had to test

it many times, that he might be assured that the Princess ran no risk.

And during these days the Princess Melissa gathered dry bracken and

carried it to the ruined temple that stood in the heart of the forest.

For it was there that she meant to yield to her great adventure.

The man continued to sleep at nights, always before a good audience. For

the wonderful story had been bruited abroad, and all the people in the

land were eager to see. One night he slept for a charity in which the

King was interested. Money was turned away at the doors, and the thing

was a great financial success. But one newspaper of the island

complained of the morbid character of the exhibition. "We cannot," wrote

the editor, "approve that this poor sufferer should be made to earn

money by what is doubtless his disease."

The time came at last on a hot afternoon in July. The Princess drank the

potion that was given her and lay down on the bed of bracken. The

stranger watched by her side.

"It is going to fail. I am not asleep," said the Princess; "I do not see

elephants or boats or anything but what is really here."

"Close your eyes," said the stranger; "relax your muscles, breathe

regularly, and count every breath you take up to ten. Then begin to

count again."

"It is no use," said the Princess wearily.

But in a few minutes she was fast asleep.

The Princess was young. Two years before she had fallen in love with a

man whom she could not marry, and the man had fallen in love with her.

There had been no scandal, such was the discretion that they used, but

there had been material for a scandal. The matter was all over now, for

the man in his wisdom had gone away.

When the Princess awoke, she sighed deeply.

"You have slept?" said the man.

"I have."

"You have dreamed?"

"I have."

"Tell me your dream."

"I cannot tell you my dream, but I have been to Paradise."

"Les yeux gris vont au Paradis," quoted the man.

"Now give me more of the poppy juice," said the Princess.

"No," said the man, "I have given you as much as you may take safely in

one day."

So the Princess pretended to be meek and obedient, and said it was very

well and she would think no more about it, and perhaps now sleep would

come to her at nights even if she did not drink the poppy juice. That

had broken down the barrier of the garden of sleep, and now she would be

able to enter the garden freely when she would.

"Perhaps," said the man.

But when for many nights she tried and could not sleep, she grew

rebellious, and going secretly to his apartments she procured the poppy

juice he had prepared. With this treasure in her hand, she went back to

the temple and stretched herself again on the bed of bracken. She drank

the whole of the poppy juice.

"For," she said aloud, "if the little death be so sweet, then--then----"

And here she fell asleep.

For ten successive days I had forgotten to buy the weed-killer;

therefore on the tenth day, which was a Wednesday, I went out to weed

the gravel paths with my own hands. It is not a pleasant operation. It

is, I believe, the thing in gardening that I loathe most.

The faint burble of water led me towards my fountain. It was playing

joyously, and some careless person had left beside it a garden-chair and

the current issue of _Punch_.

Any man with a sense of duty and a reasonable amount of will-power would

have turned off the fountain and got to work.

The sun was shining brightly. The day was warm. I had not seen that

number of _Punch_. And I did not turn off the fountain, I turned off the

work.

But the next day I remembered to buy weed-killer. The commonest saying

of the Spaniard is not duly appreciated in this country, and is

especially useful in the summer-time.

CHAPTER V

THE STRUGGLE: AND THE STORY OF "ALFRED SIMPSON"

The garden is peaceful, and this is the more extraordinary because it is

really the perpetual scene of the bloodiest warfare, and this warfare is

the more acute in a London garden because in London there are more

enemies. One has the fight of the gardener against natural conditions,

his fight against the enemies of his plants, and the fight of the plants

among themselves.

One season there was a prolonged drought and the leaves of the trees

fell prematurely. "That's due to the drought," said the experts. The

following year the season was very wet, and once more my trees shed

their leaves before the time. "What else can you expect after all the

rain we've had?" said the experts. And in both seasons the dairymen, who

seem to have a touch of the expert about them, raised the price of milk.

Perhaps one year I shall find the kind of season which exactly suits my

London garden.

To fight the drought I got me a great length of hose, and made the usual

arrangements with the Water Board. But once the question of a garden is

raised, the Water Board also seems to be infected with the military

spirit. I had a printed document from them, which was severe to the

point of truculence. They reserve themselves rights. They do not

guarantee. They are not responsible. They strictly forbid. With these

and similar phrases they teach the man who dares to use a hose what a

poor worm he is. They tell me that the hose must not be left unattended.

What am I to do with it then? Am I to sit up all night with it and hold

its nozzle? A wet season brings home to me the awful injustice of Water

Boards. Nobody who can get rain for his garden will use the hard, less

satisfactory, but highly valuable products of the Water Board. But in

the wet season, as in the dry, the consumer must pay. In strict justice,

the amount one pays for the water supply for the hose should in any

season be in inverse proportion to the rainfall during that season.

When the drought was here I watered my lawn profusely (and the Water

Board need not rage and swell, for I never left the hose unattended for

one moment). A little later I walked over the lawn to collect its

gratitude, as it were, and I saw hosts of strange and horrid things.

They were white, and yellow, and yellowish brown. They had come out of

the crevices, and they had crawled. When I thought that for weeks past,

this, my garden, had been providing them with sustenance, I was moved to

fury. But I did not lose my head. There is a right way and a wrong way

of doing everything. There is even a right way of killing slugs.

I have read in books that the gardener takes the slug and crushes it

under his heel on the gravel path; a jobbing gardener might possibly do

that--jobbing gardeners will do anything. Any man who does that is not

fit to have a garden. He is only fit to collect house refuse in an open

cart during hot weather.

My own method is simple and refined. I have a large jar filled with a

strong solution of salt and water. I have, moreover, a large pair of

surgical forceps serrated on the inner edge, price one shilling at the

shop in the Strand. With the forceps I lift up the slug and I place him

in the salt water; he dies incontinently and very neatly. My best time

so far is a hundred and one in a quarter of an hour. I have found out

the thing which the green fly absolutely cannot stand, and I give the

green fly plenty of that thing with the syringe. I destroy earwigs. I

destroy caterpillars. I have not yet reached the fine Tennysonian

sensibility of the gentleman "whose eyes were tender over drowning

flies." I kill some things that other things may live. They cannot all

have it their own way in my garden, and I must settle which side is to

prevail. All the same, I do sometimes try to look at it from the slug's

point of view. What does the slug think about it? Let us hope and

believe that the slug does not think about it.

With what brutality, too, does the gardener fight against the prolific

impulses of nature. The dead flowers must be picked off from the sweet

peas; otherwise they give up work early. If you cut down the lupine

spikes as soon as the beans have formed, you will get more spikes. (I am

told that this will not weaken the plant if it is well fed, but I never

do it myself.) And what does it all mean, when one comes to think of it?

These poor beautiful things live and struggle only for the perpetuation

of their kind. When that is done, their warfare is accomplished. We make

lovely gardens by thwarting and baffling this natural instinct.

Even among the plants that I tend there is civil war. My garden is

surrounded by tall trees, so that at any hour of the day I can get

shade. I would not have it otherwise. I would not lose one of the trees.

But they are all unprincipled robbers. Their roots spread far underneath

the ground. The fight goes on, and they steal the sustenance that one

has given to the roses.

I knew a man who admired in his neighbour's garden the golden stars of

the stone-crop. He put a little piece in an envelope and planted it in

his own garden. A few years later he turned out of his garden three

cartloads of stone-crop; that, I admit, was in the country. Australian

bamboo is determined and rapacious. It is easy to get it into the

garden. It is next to impossible to get it out. The smallest fragment of

root seems to be enough, and up it comes again. The perennial sunflower

is terrifically aggressive. It has a disregard of limits and wants the

world. If its masses of yellow flowers were not so exhilarating, I would

turn it out of my garden altogether. One would like to be able to argue

with these things. I should like to say to those sunflowers: "Try to

take example by the bergamot. It has the same perennial advantages as

yourself, and it is quite beautiful. In addition, the scent of its

leaves pressed in the fingers reminds one of Egypt. You do not find the

bergamot shoving itself forward wherever it has a chance. Contemplate it

and learn modesty." But argument does not avail with the perennial

sunflower. The knife and the spade are the things that it understands.

I fight the weeds of course, but I have vague ideas as to what a weed

is. I am quite merciless towards the bindweed, it is a murderer and a

garrotter; but with the materials at my disposal I could not make

anything quite so beautiful as its flowers. I found two low-growing

things in a flower-bed, which seemed to be of the clover kind. One had

small crimson-brown leaves with a flush of green on them; the other had

a much larger green leaf with a delicate design in grey on it. The

jobbing gardener said they were weeds, he would have turned them out. I

saved their lives, and the one with the reddish-brown leaf rewarded me

with any number of little yellow flowers. Were I a sentimentalist, I

should say that this showed its gratitude. Next year some more of the

same clovery thing came up in the middle of a gravel path, where it was

not wanted; was that gratitude?

When one comes into my garden at the close of a fine summer day, one

does really seem to come into a peaceful place apart, where the fight

for life no longer exists. But the fight for life exists everywhere, and

one can never get away.

Don't go, let me tell you the story of

ALFRED SIMPSON

Alfred Simpson was a nice-looking young man who had independent means

and other attractions. People liked him, but when they spoke of him it

was with a smile. "He is so easily influenced," said some. "He is so

frightfully obstinate," said others. "He has such funny ideas," said

both.

Simpson could be easily influenced by anything he saw in print. From

views which he had formed in this way he could not be driven by spoken

words of mature and skilled experience. He had the very unusual habit of

acting upon his convictions, and the unusual is frequently funny. So

possibly in what they said about Alfred Simpson people had reason.

"I have definitely made up my mind," said Alfred Simpson one day. "I

will take no part whatever in the struggle. To struggle is vulgar. It

happens that I have just enough to live upon; but if I had not, I should

decline to earn anything. One cannot earn without beginning the

struggle. Just as I set no value on property, so do I set none on my own

rights. I would never resist anything."

Nobody minded. In spite of previous experience, nobody expected that

Alfred Simpson would be as good as his word.

Hector Brown was quite a different type of man. His friends said that

Hector was a rough diamond. His enemies said more briefly that he was a

rough. Hector Brown went to a dance, danced with Mary, took her into the

conservatory, and then and there kissed her--_contra pacem_ and to the

scandal of the Government.

Mary was very angry. She had promised to marry Alfred Simpson, and it

was to him that she complained.

"Now, what you've got to do," said Alfred's friends, "is to punch Hector

Brown's head."

"Why?" said Simpson.

"What will you ask next? For infringing your copyright, of course."

"That," said Simpson coldly, "would be quite contrary to the views which

I have already expressed to you."

So he did not punch Hector Brown's head, and Mary told Alfred Simpson

that he could go away and play by himself. Mary's decision was warmly

applauded by her parents, who had heard without enthusiasm of the noble

resolve on the part of their prospective son-in-law never to earn

anything. Three months later Mary married Hector Brown.

Now Alfred Simpson was not a coward. He was not quite so big and heavy

as Hector Brown, but he was quicker, harder, and in better training. He

had been boxing while Hector had been boozing. The instructor was of

opinion that Alfred could punch Hector when he liked, where he liked,

and as often as he liked. Of this Alfred's friends were well aware, and

it made them the more angry with him. They despaired. What could they

say to a man who banged the door on the primeval instincts and declared

that struggle, resistance, and retaliation were repugnant to him.

Alfred's subsequent refusal to secure a highly valuable post by the

medium of a competitive examination alienated his family, as he had

already alienated his friends. It is probable that his friends would

have refused to have anything whatever to do with him, but for one

fact--it was possible to borrow money from Alfred Simpson. They all did

it, except one man, but differed in the amount and the frequency of

their borrowings, according as their self-respect hindered or their

necessities encouraged them. The one man who would not do it was the

most confirmed borrower of them all. To the professional money-lender he

was well known. "But," he said, "I cannot borrow from Alfred Simpson; it

is altogether too easy--it is inartistic and gives me no satisfaction."

Without working Alfred Simpson could very well have lived on his income.

But his income depended on capital, and his capital rapidly dwindled to

nothing under the inroads made upon it. When his last hundred had been

lent to a young gentleman who wished to test practically his solution of

certain mathematical problems in the neighbourhood of Nice, Alfred

Simpson went with empty pockets to those to whom he had lent money, and

inquired if the repayment of the whole or part would be convenient. He

returned from this inquiry with one pound six shillings, and the happy

consciousness that he had not been vulgar. He had never insisted, he had

never urged.

His next step was to sell the furniture of his well-appointed flat in

order to pay the rent for it. After that he lived on a fairly extensive

wardrobe and a few small articles of jewellery that he possessed. He

retained only the gold watch and chain which had been presented to him

by his mother on his twenty-first birthday.

There came a day when he had lunched lightly on his last six

collars--or, to speak with pedantic accuracy, on the meal which had been

provided with the money which had been acquired by the sale of those six

collars. In spite of this banquet, by eight o'clock in the evening he

felt hungry again, and our sentiments yield to our necessities. He

therefore went out to dispose of his watch and chain. He went through

Regent's Park and was stopped by a man whose appearance was against him.

He looked in so many directions at once that anybody else would have

mistrusted him.

"Could you tell us the time, Gov'nor?" said the man.

Alfred produced his watch. The man snatched it and the chain therewith,

and ran. He did not run remarkably well. It would have been perfectly

easy for Alfred Simpson to have overtaken him and to have given him into

custody. But such an act would have been inconsistent with the rest of

his career. So he gave up the idea of dinner and sat on the Embankment.

On the following day he remained in the parks until closing time and

then sat on the Embankment again.

And the next night he dreamed that he died on the Embankment.

And after death Alfred Simpson opened his eyes and saw that he was in a

large and very plainly furnished room. He sat on a hard bench, not

unlike that which had been his bed on the Embankment, and many others,

mostly of villainous appearance, sat there also.

"I say," said Alfred Simpson to the grey-haired reprobate next to him.

"This isn't Heaven, is it?"

The reprobate chuckled. "Not exactly," he said.

"Then what is it?"

"It's the waiting-room for lost souls before they take their trial."

"But I'm not a lost soul," said Alfred Simpson indignantly. "I ought not

to be here. I must have taken the wrong turning. I have never done

anything very wrong in my life, and I have done heaps of good. I gave up

the only girl I ever loved."

"I know," said the old man; "and in consequence she married a man she

did not love out of pique. He's a brute, he ill-treats her, and she will

die. You murdered her."

"This is terrible," said Alfred Simpson. "I had no idea of it. But I

have done lots of other good things. I refused to go in for a

competitive examination and take up a valuable post, in order that some

other man might enjoy it."

"I know," said the old man again. "The other man got it; he had not your

mental equipment and he was not equal to it. He bungled badly and

disgraced himself. That's him over there, the man with the bullet-hole

in his temples. It was his hand that held the revolver, but it was you

who shot him, Alfred Simpson."

"This is most distressing," said Alfred. "If I could have foreseen this

kind of thing, I should certainly have revised my ideas. I should have

drawn out another scheme for my life altogether. But as it is, I must

have done some good. I lent large sums of money without interest."

"I know," said the old man once more. "And by so doing you have turned

various people who might have had self-respect and industry into

worthless wastrels. The souls of some of them are waiting now to give

evidence against you."

"It is very sad," said Alfred, "that things do not turn out as one

intends. One of my last acts on earth was to allow a man to steal my

watch and chain. I suppose it is useless to plead that this was a good

action."

"Quite. How can you suppose it to be a good action to put such a premium

on dishonesty?"

Then the door of the waiting-room opened and there stood there a most

gigantic policeman.

"Alfred Simpson," he called, in a fruity and resonant voice.

"Here I am," said Alfred meekly. "Could you tell me what I am charged

with?"

"You know perfectly well," said the policeman. "You are charged with

starting the millennium before it was ready."

The shock awoke him. He rose and walked to his father's house. His dire

necessities and abject condition broke down the alienation which had

existed between him and his family, and he was welcomed as the returned

prodigal. On the following morning, decently attired, with a bundle of

IOU's in his pocket, he started across Regent's Park to call upon his

solicitor. On his way he met a shabby man who looked in all directions

at once. The shabby man saw him and ran. Alfred ran also. He caught the

shabby man in an unfrequented part of the park, took from him fourpence

in bronze, which was all that he possessed, and administered to him an

extremely thorough hiding.

He handed the bundle of IOU's to his solicitor. Those who could pay in

full were to pay in full. Those who could pay in part were to pay in

part. Those who could not pay were to be left alone. Nobody was to be

ruined, but Alfred Simpson was to have some of his money back.

And later, some two years later, he married the widow of Hector Brown.

He is on his way to take up an important post in India, and she

accompanies him. They say that she looks quite young and pretty again.

She is certainly quite happy with her husband, though there are some who

think him a little too selfish and dictatorial.

CHAPTER VI

NIGHT IN THE GARDEN: AND THE STORY OF "THE GHOSTLY MUSIC"

There are many things that may bring a man, normally sociable, into that

state of mind when it is not desirable that he shall dine out. Too many

wrong numbers on the telephone, too many visitors, too much

talk--anything in fact that jangles the nerves may be the cause. In my

case the cause was unimportant and uninteresting, but I was undoubtedly

in that state of mind. I had to dine out, and I had not the feeling of

gratitude which would have better become me. The idea of dining out

filled me with rage and despair--disproportionate, ludicrous, but quite

real. I recalled the words of a woman who had been through many seasons.

"I want," she said to me earnestly, "to be asked to everything and to go

to nothing."

And then the blessed sentence of reprieve came over the telephone. Never

before had I known what a lovely word chicken-pox is. Postponed is

another beautiful word; the long "o" sounds are like the coo of a dove.

My more important nerves that had been revolving rapidly like large hot

corkscrews began to shrink, to slow, and to cool.

Later, when it was dark, I went out into the garden. Lighted windows

patterned themselves on the lawn, and half-way across it a warm wave of

perfume met me from the white stars of the tobacco plants. The scents of

flowers please me. Lavender and rosemary, lemon verbena and musk, rose

and carnation--I have them all. But for scents in bottles or sachets,

the chemist's products, I have only hatred and contempt. The bottled

perfume is like mechanical music; the freshness and life have departed

from it.

Even in the daytime but little sound of traffic reaches my garden, and

at night there are such long stretches of precious silence that one

seems to be far from London. As one grows older one values silence

more--maybe a gentle providence, that in the end the great silence may

not be unwelcome. The years change in so many things our sense of value.

Property loses much of its attraction when one begins to think for how

short a time one may hold it. This is consolatory if one be poor. I

cannot own this scrap of London garden, but what matter? I may use it as

if it were my own in return for--well, for so many stories a year. The

transaction seems more estimable when the medium of exchange is not

mentioned.

I sat and smoked, and drank the silence "like some sharp, strengthening

wine". The great trees before me, motionless in the still air, were a

flat dark grey against a sky a little paler. Below, where in the

sunlight would be a riot of colour, were masses of velvety black out of

which only the white flowers spoke. The tall white hollyhock would be a

patient sentinel all night while its dark sister slept invisible. There

is peace in the gardens of the country--gardens far richer and more

beautiful than mine--but here the peace seemed deeper because of the

near contrast. Not far away the useful deadly motor-bus would be busy

for hours yet. Theatres would be full, and Fleet Street would be

strenuous, and (in houses which the chicken-pox had not yet reached)

people would be dining out. Perhaps, without being too artistic and

diseased, one who has sometimes liked crowds may sometimes like to

escape them. Dusk and sweet scents, silence and solitude--the London

garden has pleasant gifts for folks who are temporarily tired of things.

Across the lighted squares or mirrored windows on the lawn, slow yet

alert, crept a cat with a heart full of sinful purposes. It flickered

over the wall, poised clear against the sky for one moment, on its way

to blood and passion in some valerian-scented hell. The nocturnal cat is

supposed to be comic, but (in spite of many opportunities) I have never

managed to see the joke. There is something terrific in those lower

animals--there are several of them--that in certain moments produces the

sound of the human voice. Strange too is that electric repugnance that a

cat may set up. Unseen and unheard, her presence is yet felt and

loathed. She is a creature of the night, mysterious and satanic. Watch

her as she starts for the black sabbath--a voluptuous sprawl with claws

extended, steps of tense and measured stealth, and then a mad scurry.

Presently, you shall hear her cry like a woman, even as the wounded hare

sobs out her sisterhood. To-night it was as though for a few moments a

taint of monstrousness had passed through the peace of the garden.

Through an open window not far away came the sound of music--somebody

was playing the piano. Music heard from another house is supposed to be

a torture, and so (like the cat) has its place among the accepted jokes.

But, because to-night I was to have the luck--who invented

chicken-pox?--it was not distressing and funny. It was fine music played

by an artist on a good instrument. It had the quality of the night,

wistful and desiderious. Long ago and in a far country there was a king

who suffered from a restless melancholy, or a bad temper, or something

of that kind, and somebody made music for him. "So Saul was refreshed,

and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him." Surely, that

nocturne was meant to be heard as I heard it--in a garden at night.

Alas, these concerts, with their awful too-muchness, and professional

smirks, and roars of ugly applause! I do not like to have music thus

administered. But for the music that visited my garden that night I had

the most grateful welcome.

When the chance things are charming they far surpass the calculated, and

love itself may be no more than a delightful accident. It was just by

chance that somebody in a lighted room, without a thought of audience,

went to the piano and remembered that music. Chance makes things grow on

old stone walls; and in the rich man's rock-garden, wealth, skill, and

calculation try to imitate the charm. The music ceased, and my gratitude

must remain unspoken--unless, by a chance that were wellnigh miraculous,

this page may carry it. But artists--be they makers of music or

pictures, poems or stories--must not think too much of gratitude; for

they will not always get it, and they will not always deserve it. That

king of old once flung a javelin at the musician who played before him.

Some lazy souls can never do their uttermost unless they are thrashed up

to it. A moderate amount of javelin--avoiding vital parts--is not always

bad for the artist.

My garden, they tell me, was once the garden of an old priory. Under one

corner of the lawn is the well that provided the religious with water.

It has been covered in with stone, and just over the stone the grass

refuses to grow. It is like a tonsure. But though I have been in my

garden I think at every hour of the night and of the early morning, I

have met no shadowy figures counting their beads or reading their little

illuminated books. These good people sleep long and quietly.

Let me tell you the story of

THE GHOSTLY MUSIC

There was once a master of music, who, from the charity of his heart and

from his love of excellence, took as his pupil without reward a young

boy that was greatly gifted. And in time it came to pass that the pupil

reached his zenith and the powers of the master had begun to decline, so

that it was said by some that the pupil now surpassed the master. And

the hints of this that came to the master's ears were to him bitter as

wormwood.

Now it happened one day that, as the pupil walked in a wood, music came

to him; and he hastened back to his house in order that he might sit

down at the piano and play it. For although, being a musician, he knew

quite well how the music would sound, he yet wished to hear it. And as

he was on his way, though it was a calm day, the great limb of a

treacherous elm fell upon him and crushed him so that he died. And in

his music-room his piano waited in vain.

Upon his death all bitterness passed away from the heart of his master.

Rivalry died with the rival. There came back to him old recollections of

the boy and of the esteem and affection in which he had then held him.

There was now no one who spoke of the dead musician with more generous

praise than his master. In his own music-room the master placed the

piano on which his pupil had been used to play. It had been specially

bequeathed to him. It was the dead man's gift.

But now the old man became himself conscious that he was not as he had

been. The fountains were dried up. Melody had ceased to come. He was

arid and unproductive. His fear that his power was leaving him tended

the more to diminish it. There were many long days and nights when he

could do nothing; and at such seasons he would not enter his music-room

upstairs, but sat in the room below it, trying sometimes to divert his

mind by reading, and at other times cursing the wretchedness into which

the course of nature had brought him.

After a long while it happened that one night when he sat late alone,

his wretchedness seemed to him more than he could bear. In a few weeks

he was to play before the King and there would be many great musicians

in the audience. On such occasions it had always been his custom to

produce some new work. Now he had nothing to give them. He would have to

fall back on the compositions of his younger days. He could picture in

his mind the meaning looks which the musicians would interchange. He

could hear their polite applause, and it was like a torture. The King,

himself no mean musician, might ask some question. He could not go into

that company and thus fail. It was not possible. It could not be asked

of him thus to debase himself. And there seemed to him but one

alternative--a little more than usual of that laudanum in which he had

lately sought inspiration.

But as he raised the glass to his lips he heard something so unexpected

that the glass crashed to the floor. In the music-room overhead someone

was playing the piano. Who could it be? No servant of his had that

skill, and besides, hours before his servants had gone to sleep. It was

divine music, entrancing, uplifting.

For a moment he hesitated, and then the desire to know overcame his

fears. He went up the stairs, and in the passage outside the music-room

he noted that a light showed under the door. Someone had switched the

light on then. Was it the carelessness of a servant? "Quite possibly,"

he said to himself. "Quite possibly."

He opened the door and entered, and his eyes flew to the piano. No one

was seated there, but the notes moved and the touch was human. He shrank

back from the piano and stood in the farthest corner of the room,

listening intently. When at last the music ceased, he had a great desire

to say something, and yet could choose no words. And, as he hesitated,

there was a sudden click and the lights were switched off. He fled from

the darkness down the stairs to the brightly lit room below. For a while

he was too overcome to be able to do anything; and then, for he had a

musician's memory, he took paper and wrote down the music that he had

heard.

A few days later it chanced that a great lady asked him what new music

he would play before the King.

"I have decided," said the master, "to play a composition of mine

that--if one must give these things names--I shall call 'The Sylvan

Sonata'."

"Sylvan? How delightful. It represents scenes in the wood then."

The master shook his head. "Music represents nothing," he said. "Music

is music. It is not an imitation of a sylvan scene, or church bells

heard in the distance, or any other rubbish. I call this music 'The

Sylvan Sonata' merely because it has in it different phases of woodland

feeling. You understand me? It is the kind of music that might occur to

the mind of a musician when he was walking through a wood."

"But how that reminds one," said the great lady. "It was in the wood

that your favourite pupil died."

"I prefer," said the master sternly, "not to speak of that."

He preferred also not to think of it. The piano which had been

bequeathed to him was kept closed and locked now, and it was on another

instrument in another room that he prepared himself for the great

occasion. He was a fine executant, as not every composer is. He tried to

cheat himself. He said again and again to himself that what he had seen

and heard in the music-room that night was illusion. The notes had not

really moved. His brain had been over-wrought with worry and anxiety.

The music was really his own. But the attempt to cheat himself was idle,

for he knew too much of the characteristics of a promising young

composer who was now dead. No one else but him could have written that.

The evening came and the occasion found him equal to it. His playing of

"The Sylvan Sonata" was as near perfection as a man may attain. When he

had finished there were a few seconds of silence before the audience

could get back to the world again and begin their applause. And when

that had died away, many came up to congratulate him, and a critic of

music spoke.

"I am ashamed of myself," said the critic. "I confess that I had

thought, in company with many others, that you declined in power,

_maestro_. You have given us to-night something more superb than we have

ever heard from you before. You are at your very highest at this

minute."

The master did not seem to hear, did not seem to see the hands which

were stretched out to him. He sat looking intently before him, as at

some presence not visible to the others. And when he was summoned to

speak to the King, he rose stiffly and moved mechanically, looking now

and again over his shoulder, as at someone who followed him.

And when the King had finished his compliments, he drew a deep breath,

as of one who makes an effort. He swung round and pointed with a wave of

his hand.

"Alas, sir," he said, "I am not he who made 'The Sylvan Sonata'. But the

composer is here. See him. He stands behind me. The face was somewhat

crushed by the fall of the tree, but it is made well again. It is as it

always was. It is his music, not mine, that I have played to you."

He stepped backward from the royal presence. The shiver of sensation

went through the great assembly. This was clearly aberration. Someone

should see to the old man. The trial had been too great for him, and his

reason had been overcome. A doctor should be summoned.

But before anything could be done, the old man had slipped out of the

assembly and left the palace and gone back to his own house. Once more

he poured the laudanum, and this time his hand did not fail him. When he

had drunk, he went up to the music-room again and unlocked the piano

that had once been his pupil's. He opened it and began to play.

It was there they found him in the morning.

It was late at night and I had gone out to see the September moon. It

was one of those nights which people like to say are as light as day. It

was not in the least as light as day. It was light grey and silver. It

was even black in places. I heard a faint crackle and could smell the

acrid smoke which mounted thin and straight in the still air from the

fire which had been made in the morning. There burned things which had

done their work and had been beautiful, but were now over.

The fire had been lit that morning and the lawn had been swept that

morning; but there was a rustle of fallen leaves about my feet. The air

was shrewd and chill. Next morning I should still see flowers in my

garden, but none the less the sentence had been pronounced. Summer was

dead.

I suppose it is a question of temperament. Youth can enjoy the moment.

Age must look forward. There is plenty of work to do in this garden in

the autumn, and not a little in the winter. And all the time one is

looking forward to the spring--to the coming of the new leaves and the

fresh green.

But then, throughout the summer, one is haunted with fear and hatred of

the coming winter. Even as one plants or sows, one seems to see the

September weed fire.

It is better not to be wearisome, sentimental, and self-pitying on the

subject, for one might get into that state of mind when, throughout the

winter, one would no longer dare to look forward to the summer, because

one would know the summer would be haunted with the hatred of the next

winter. From which refinement and desolation may I be delivered.

ZERO

CHAPTER I

James Smith was a trainer and exhibitor of performing dogs. His age was

forty-five, but on the stage he looked less, moving always with an

alertness suggestive of youth. His face was dominant, but not cruel. He

never petted a dog. On the other hand, he never thrashed a dog, unless

he considered that the dog had deserved it. He had small eyes and a

strong jaw. He was somewhat undersized, and his body was lean and hard.

This afternoon, clad in a well-cut flannel suit, and wearing a straw

hat, he sat on the steps of a bathing-machine on the beach at Helmstone.

He was waiting for the man inside the machine to come out. Meanwhile he

made himself a cigarette, rolling it on his leg with one hand, and

securing the paper by a small miracle instead of by gum.

As he lit the cigarette the door of the bathing-machine opened, and a

tall young man of athletic build came out. He was no better dressed than

James Smith. At the same time, it was just as obvious that he was a

gentleman as that Smith was not.

"Hallo!" said the young man. "You're all right again, I see. What was

it--touch of cramp?"

"No, sir," said Smith. "I'm not a strong swimmer, and I've done no sea

bathing before. I never meant to get out of my depth, but the current

took me. What I want now is to do something to show my gratitude."

"Gratitude be blowed!" said the young man cheerfully. "It was no trouble

to me, and I happened to be there."

"Well, sir," said Smith, "will you let me give you a dog? I've got some

very good dogs. I should take it as a favour if you would."

He took from a Russia leather case a clean professional card, and

presented it to the young man.

"That, of course, is not my real name. That's just the French name

they've put on the programmes. I'm James Smith, and I have a two weeks'

engagement at the Hippodrome here. I've got my dogs in a stable not far

from there."

The young man glanced at his watch.

"Well," he said, "I've got nothing to do this morning, I'll go and have

a look at the dogs, at any rate. They're a pretty clever lot, I

suppose."

"They can do what they've been taught," said Smith; "all except one of

them, and he can do what no man can teach him."

There was a great noise when they entered the stables. Twenty dogs, most

of them black poodles, all tried to talk at once. Smith said something

decisively, but quietly, and the dogs became silent again. Smith made a

sign to one of the poodles and held out his walking-stick. It looked

quite impossible, but the dog went over it.

"My word, but that's a wonderful jump!" said the young man.

"It is," said Smith. "You won't find another dog of that breed in this

country that can do the same. He's yours, if you like to take him."

"No; hang it all! I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to take a dog

which you can use professionally. What about the beggar that you said

you could not teach?"

Smith pointed to a huge brindled bulldog, who lay in one corner of the

stable absolutely motionless, watching them intently.

"That's the one," lie said. "He's never been on the stage at all. He

couldn't even be taught to fetch and carry."

"And you just keep him because you're fond of him?"

"Fond of him? No, I'm not fond of dogs. They're my livelihood, and I

don't do so badly out of it. But I'm not fond of 'em--know too much

about 'em."

"Then what do you keep him for?"

"You may call it a sense of justice, or you may call it curiosity. He's

a rum 'un, that dog is, and no mistake."

"In what way rum?"

"I'll tell you. He's a dog that sees dangers ahead. He knows when things

are going to happen. I had him as a puppy, and when I found I could

teach him nothing, I made up my mind to get quit of him. I was going off

by train that day to a village fifteen miles away, and I knew a man

there who I thought might take a fancy to Zero."

"Zero, you call him?"

"Yes; that was a bit of my fun. As a performing dog he was just

absolutely last--number naught, see? Well, as I was saying, there was I

on the platform with the dog at my heel and the ticket in my hand. Just

as I was going to get into the train, he made a jump for that ticket,

caught it in his mouth and bolted with it, nipping in among a lot of

milk-cans. I called him, and he wouldn't come out. Then I went in after

him, and he bolted again. By the time I did get him I had missed my

train, and I didn't give him half a jolly good hiding for it, I don't

think! If I'd gone by that train I shouldn't have been talking to you

now. Collision three miles from the station. Well, you don't apologise

to a dog. All I could do was to keep him. But that wasn't the only

instance. The beggar knows things."

"Apparently he didn't know that you were going to drown yourself this

morning."

"If he knew anything about it, he knew that I wasn't."

"Good-tempered dog?"

"Oh, all bulldogs are safe! You want to look after him with collies. He

doesn't like 'em. If he gets hold of one, it's bad for the collie.

Otherwise a baby could handle him."

Zero had crossed over to them, and the young man stooped down and patted

him. The dog expressed delight.

"I can send him round to your hotel," said Smith; "or, for that matter,

he'd follow you. He's taken a fancy to you, he has."

"Look here," said the young man, "let me buy him. I'm not a millionaire,

but I can afford to buy a dog. I'd like to have this one, and there's no

reason on earth why you should give him to me."

"You'd like to have him, and I can afford to give him to you, and I want

to give him to you. You must let a man indulge his sense of gratitude.

It's only fair."

"Very well, if you say so. Many thanks. I'll step over to the Hippodrome

and see your show to-night."

"Do. You'll be surprised."

The two men talked for a few moments longer, and then Zero's new owner

said that he must be getting back to lunch.

"You really think the dog will follow me?" he said. "I don't want to

take a lead?"

"I know he'll follow you. I tell you I know dogs. They take fancies

sometimes. You can take that dog out, and if I call him back myself he

wouldn't come."

"I bet you a sovereign he would."

"I'll take that," said Smith. "You go on with him, and I'll wait here."

The young man walked a few yards away with the dog at his heels, and

then Smith called the dog back, loudly and insistently. The dog did not

give the slightest sign that he had heard anything at all. When his

master stood still, he remained standing patiently at his heel, and

never once looked back.

The young man laughed as he took out his sovereign-case.

"Queer chap, Zero. Well, you've won, Mr Smith. Catch!"

Mr Smith caught the sovereign adroitly, and went back into the stable.

"Yes," he said to the cleverest of the black poodles, "I don't know that

I wouldn't sooner he'd taken you."

It was seldom that Smith addressed any of his dogs, except to give an

order. The poodle did not know what to make of it. He whined faintly.

Richard Staines went back to his hotel, with Zero at his heels. He had

his own sitting-room opening into his bedroom at the hotel, and he

intended to keep the dog there at night. This was against the laws of

the hotel; therefore Staines had to pause a few moments in the hall to

get the laws altered. One of the arguments he used was that he would

only be there two days longer, and it would not matter for so short a

time. The other argument was bribery and corruption. After which he and

Zero went up in the lift together.