IN THE RECTORY GARDEN
'A good man's life is like a fairest flower:
It casts a fragrant breath on all around.'
Though Miss Forster's pet flower-beds were a subject for modest
congratulation to their owner, they were not to be compared to those at
the Rectory, which were indeed a feast of scent and colour. The Rector
was worthily proud of his garden. It represented a considerable amount
of skill and artistic taste on the part of himself and his handy-man,
for the rare plants and exquisite groupings of contrasting blossoms
would have done credit to a more imposing establishment, and he had as
choice a collection of shrubs as could be grown anywhere in the county.
It was almost sunset when Peggy, having seen the last of Archie's
contrivances, and bidden good-bye to kind Miss Forster, passed by the
Rectory hedge, and hearing the brisk sound of the mowing-machine, pushed
open the little gate and went in, knowing she was always sure of a
welcome.
Peggy loved to get Mr. Howell sometimes quite to herself. Perhaps it was
because he was one of those rare characters in whose presence we can
feel certain of perfect sympathy, or perhaps it grew from a more subtle
and silent bond, felt keenly by the child, though never spoken of, for
Peggy could remember a time when the Rector's hair was raven black, and
there had been a little Raymond Howell playing about on the smooth lawns
of the old garden. Folks had said that the Rector, like many a man who
marries late in life, had made an idol of his motherless boy, and they
had said, again, that the father's heart was broken and the print of
death was on his face as he stood by his child's open grave. But they
judged wrong, for he had wrestled with his sorrow, like Jacob with the
angel of old, and came forth from the struggle with hair indeed as white
as snow, but a face so full of the glory of his conquest that those who
looked felt as if he, too, had died, and they saw his immortality.
'Ah, he's a changed man!' said Ellen, the nurse, to Susan, the cook, as
they talked in whispers over the night-nursery fire when the children
were in bed. 'If he was a saint before, it's an angel he is now, and
nothing less. They say he takes no thought for himself at all. His
heart's been left in the grave with the poor boy, it's true, but, mark
my words, if there's a soul in trouble in all the parish it's no kinder
friend they'll find than Mr. Howell.'
Little five-year-old Peggy, lying wide awake, straining her ears to
overhear the whispered conversation, sat up in bed with burning cheeks.
'Oh, nurse!' she cried. '_Poor_ Mr. Howell! Have they lost his heart in
the churchyard, and can't anybody find it for him?'
'Go to sleep at once, you naughty girl, or I'll call your aunt,' said
Ellen, putting out the candle to avoid further complications, for she
knew she ought not to have been talking within hearing of her charges,
and hoped Peggy would forget the matter by morning.
But the child lay awake for a long time, puzzling her small brain. She
was not quite sure what a heart was, but she thought the Rector would
miss it, and that he was in some sort of trouble she realized well
enough.
'Can people live without hearts?' she asked Lilian next day.
'Of course not,' replied Lilian, with the superior wisdom of nine years
old, and dismissed the idea with scorn.
But Peggy did not consider the question ended by any means. Like most
children, with the instinctive dread of being laughed at, she never
thought of confiding her difficulty to an older person, but solving the
problem according to her own quaint ideas, she dodged the vigilance of
Ellen, and trotted off alone to the churchyard. The lych-gate was
locked, but she toiled over the steep steps that spanned the wall, and
wading through the long grass under the yew-trees, found the spot, all
covered with flowers, which Lilian had pointed out on Sunday, where
'Mary, the wife of the Reverend Philip Howell,' slept, 'in sure and
certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life,' and where the
stonemason had been already busy with the newly-added line: 'Also
Raymond, only son of the above.'
Who can tell all that goes on in the mind of a little child, or what it
understands of death? In a vague way Peggy knew that her playfellow had
'gone to heaven, where mother is,' but she did not think of that as any
cause for sorrow, nor did she connect him for an instant with the place
where she stood, but, with her nurse's words still troubling her, she
knelt down and searched among the white flowers that hid the bare earth
beneath.
A step on the gravel walk startled her to her feet, but it was only the
Rector, coming slowly down the path from the church-door.
'Don't go away, little Margaret,' he said quietly. 'God's acre is free
to all. We have both precious seed sown here that we hope to find
blooming some day in Paradise.'
'Oh, Mr. Howell,' burst out Peggy, her gray eyes brimming over with
tears, 'is it really true that your heart is lost here? Don't you think,
if we were both to look, we might find it again?'
The Rector stroked the brown curls with a tender hand.
'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. No, child, it's
not here, but up in the light beyond;' and he pointed where the sun,
breaking through the clouds, burst out in a flood of golden glory. 'We
make our plans for this world,' he said softly, speaking as much to
himself as to Peggy, 'and say we will do this or that, but sometimes God
takes it out of our hands and arranges it for us; but His ways are
better than our ways, and His thoughts than our thoughts, and, after
all, death is but the gate to life immortal.'
Since then a great friendship had existed between these two, made all
the stronger, perhaps, by the fifty years that divided them, for old
folk have often more tolerance and sympathy for childhood than have
those whose eyes are still blinded by the bustle of life, and, whatever
Peggy might be to others, with Mr. Howell she was always at her highest
and best.
'As welcome as the flowers in May, dear child,' said the Rector this
evening. 'I was just longing for an excuse to leave the lawn-mower, and
now I feel bound to give up work and entertain you. Come and look at my
carnations.' And taking a basket as a receptacle for any weeds that
might offend his eye, he led the way, Peggy trotting after him with her
little tongue wagging freely in a lively account of her latest
adventures, and the marvels which her new friend Archie was constructing
in Miss Forster's garden.
'Yes, he's a clever lad,' said Mr. Howell, 'and likely to do well and be
a comfort to her, I hope. It's a grand thing when a boy can fill his
life with a hobby; it leaves him no time to get into mischief.'
'I think flowers are your hobby, next to the parish,' said Peggy, as she
watched the Rector tying up his carnations, touching each blossom as
carefully as if it were a child, with a tender pride in its loveliness.
'Flowers are such dear friends, you see, Peggy; they rarely disappoint
or deceive you. Treat them well, and they repay you a thousandfold; and
the best of it is they give so much pleasure to others as well as to
ourselves. By-the-by, how are Miss Forster's carnations getting on?'
'Beautifully! She has a lovely apricot-coloured one she hopes may take a
prize, but I don't like it as well as your yellow. She says the show
will be bigger than ever this year; so many of the village people have
sent in entries.'
'I'm glad of that. Gardening is the best hobby a working man can take
up. He won't want to think of the public-house when he's digging in his
patch of ground and watching the plants he's raised himself. I always
agree with good old Francis Bacon that "God Almighty first planted a
garden, and indeed it is the purest of human pleasures." I have given
away a great many roots in the village this spring, in the hope that the
flowers would find their way to the show in due course. People are
generally so pleased with them.'
'I took a nice carnation plant down to old Mrs. Johnson at the smithy,'
said Peggy, 'but she didn't seem at all pleased. She said I might have
known she wanted a Bizarre, and not a Picotee, and I was bringing "coals
to Newcastle."'
'But you left it for her, all the same?'
'Oh yes; I believe she liked it really, for it was quite a new kind; but
she loves to grumble; she's a terribly cross old woman.'
'Poor old soul! She's let her heart wither up instead of ripening! We
must all do one or the other, Peggy, child, as we grow older. It is only
the sunshine of God's presence that can mellow us thoroughly, and if
people wilfully turn away from that they are bound to become shrivelled
and sour. Worldly prosperity is like a strong electric light--it may
bring out flowers, but it will never ripen character; so don't forget
that, or ever exchange it for the true sunlight. Now come and help me to
choose out which flowers to specially train for the show, and we shall
just have time to stake them before dark.'
The Rector never made the mistake of continually talking down to a
child's level. He spoke with Peggy exactly as he would have done with a
grown-up friend, and if she could not always follow his train of
thought, I think the mere effort to do so was good for her, and the
older she grew, the more truly she understood and appreciated him.
It is not only when we try to amuse them that the children love us best
(who has not sometimes seen the look of almost contempt in the eyes of a
little one for the good-natured elder who plays the fool for his
benefit?), and often the companion most cared for and sought after by a
child is he who unconsciously raises the standard of the eager, growing
soul.
For reasons of his own the Rector kept Peggy late that evening, and they
made a little tour of the garden, selecting what they called their
prize plants, putting indiarubber bands round carnation-buds to keep
them from bursting, and tying up the most promising stocks and asters
with a scrupulous care, working until the light had almost failed and
the sky stood out yellow against the outline of the cypress-trees. It
grew so dim and still in the twilight that Peggy cried out in alarm as a
tall figure seemed to rise from the shadows under the dark yew-hedge,
and came towards them; but peering through the gathering dusk, she
recognised the face of her old friend Mr. Neville.
'John!' exclaimed the Rector, 'I thought you had been at the Abbey all
this time!'
'I haven't found the courage yet,' returned the other huskily, picking a
prize dahlia to pieces with a recklessness that seemed wanton in Peggy's
eyes.
'Oh, Mr. Neville, is it really you? However did you get here?' she
cried.
'Mayn't I know the Rector, too, Peggy? He happens to be a very old
friend of mine, and I have come to see him.'
'You said you knew Father and Aunt Helen, too, but you have never been
to see us,' said Peggy reproachfully. 'I'm afraid there's only Aunt
Helen in to-night, but I know she'd love you to come.'
'I'm not so sure about that,' said Mr. Neville rather bitterly. 'I don't
know whether I should be welcome, Peggy dear. Aunt Helen and I
quarrelled once, long ago, and I doubt if she could forgive me.'
'Oh, she would--I know she would!' exclaimed Peggy. 'She always forgives
us, however naughty we are; and she told me once--the night she was
crying over the old letters in her writing-desk--that if you quarrelled
with anyone it was better to make it up at once, and not let it go on
for ever. Do, please, try!'
'Go, my boy,' said the Rector. 'Tell her the simple truth, and don't
spoil two lives for the sake of an old tale that is best forgotten.'
* * * * *
Peggy waited wide awake in bed for hours that night to catch Father's
step in the passage and call him in for a good-night kiss.
'Oh, Daddy!' she cried, as she clasped him round the neck, 'is Aunt
Helen really and truly going to marry Mr. Neville?'
'Really and truly, at last, dear; and I could not wish to see her in
better hands.'
'But whatever _shall_ we do without her?'
'We must manage as best we can, Peggy, and try and not spoil her
happiness by any selfish regrets. I have had terrible trouble to
persuade her to leave us all, for she was ready to sacrifice herself
bravely a second time, but that I would not allow. Aunt Helen has
thought for us, and worked for us, all these years, and now we must
learn to look after ourselves. You are getting big girls, and Lilian
must be my little housekeeper, and a mother to the rest of you. Aunt
Helen has taught you how to behave, so don't you think, little woman, it
is time to begin to settle down, and do your best to grow up what she
and I would like you to be?'
'I'll try,' said Peggy, kissing him. 'We don't want to lose Aunt Helen,
but oh!'--as she nestled down among the bed-clothes--'what a delightful
uncle Mr. Neville will make!'