"Of course you do; everybody does really," answered Mrs. Greene
inattentively.
Roger laughed and took her arm.
"No they don't," he said. "That's nonsense. They like it mostly.
They feel safe living in a sort of rabbit warren. They'd be
terrified if you set them down in a little cottage in an open space."
"I suppose that's true," answered Mrs. Greene, "but it seems
incredible to me. Aren't the woods lovely, Roger?"
"They're perfectly lovely. You know I feel I ought to be asking you
all sorts of things but instead I'm just enjoying myself."
"So am I. I'm very fond of this path; I often come down it."
No faintest tinge of sadness broke their even happiness though both
were thinking of the many hundreds of times that Mrs. Greene had
walked along the grass path, over the fields and through the woods,
and of the very few more that would be added to the total.
"It's quite dense here, isn't it?" said Mrs. Greene, "and yet, you
know, in a minute we'll be in the meadow with the house in front of
us."
"I know; it always comes on you suddenly."
As Roger spoke, a turn in the path brought them out of the wood into
full view of the house.
The sun streaming over Lynton turned its austere grey facade to a
mottled richness, and the leaves of the Virginia creeper that was
only allowed to climb at the south-east corner licked at the stone
like little fiery tongues. The tall chimneys, the tall narrow
windows, gave to the sober beauty of the house an airy effect of
grace and lightness that did not mar its steadfast quality. Lynton
was undoubtedly sound.
Mrs. Greene and Roger had stopped at the edge of the wood. For a
moment the woman who was about to leave Lynton and the man who was
about to enter it stood together on a little hill and gazed greedily
at it over the intervening box hedge. Then they walked on, through
an opening in the hedge, over the lawn, and in at a side door.
"I want to find Hamilton this afternoon," said Mrs. Greene after
lunch. "He'll be in one of two places. He always is on Sunday
afternoons; either in the wall-garden or the peach-house."
"Doesn't he ever take a day off."
"No, not really. Mrs. Hamilton is very bad-tempered; gardeners'
wives are always shrews you'll find, and he never stays indoors if he
can help it."
"I wonder if they're shrews because their husbands are so placid, or
if the husbands have to be placid because the wives are shrews,"
mused Roger.
"I can tell you." Mrs. Greene spoke decisively. "All good gardeners
have easy-going temperaments, so they have a fatal attraction for
domineering women.-"
"I see. Hamilton is a good man, isn't he?"
"Excellent; patient and enterprising, the two best qualities in a
gardener. If you're not tired we'll go up to the garden now and look
for him."
"Surely it's you who should be tired after such a long walk?"
"Oh, no, I'm in quite good training for walking," answered Mrs.
Greene serenely.
Hamilton was discovered in the garden, leaning with folded arms over
the back of a seat, looking gloomily at the bare rose-bushes.
"Good afternoon, Ma'am, good afternoon sir," he said straightening up
as Mrs. Greene and Roger approached. "This is a real untidy wind."
He frowned disapprovingly and relapsed again into brooding silence.
Roger looking at the melancholy face above the white shirt with its
dotted blue stripe and stiff white collar wondered if Mrs. Hamilton's
tongue was the cause of so much sorrow, or if pessimism as well as
placidity was inherent in the tribe of gardeners.
"I wanted to have a chat with you about Parks," Mrs. Greene was
saying. "Do you feel quite satisfied with him, Hamilton?"
"He does his work well and thoroughly," answered Hamilton cautiously.
"But apart from that?" questioned Mrs. Greene.
Hamilton took off his cap and gently scratched his head before
replying. Presently he replaced the cap and pronounced heavily:
"The flowers don't like him, Ma'am."
"That's what I was afraid of," said Mrs. Greene, "I don't think they
grow for him."
Roger felt amazed. I have an awful lot to learn, he thought; I never
realised that flowers only grew for people they liked. I expect
Hamilton will heartily despise me. On an impulse of propitiation he
ventured to remark:
"Surely it's very surprising that flowers should grow for one person
and not another in the same garden, under the same conditions."
Hamilton smiled pityingly and addressed Mrs. Greene.
"It's well seen that Mr. Dodds is not a countryman," he said. Then
turning to Roger he added, "Plants are like children, sir; they need
handling. Ignorant persons or persons who don't care enough about
them can't handle them proper."
Roger was crushed, and at the same time stimulated at the thought of
what lay before him. The immediate future was depressing. He
visualised the grimy badly-lit third-class carriage, the inexplicable
delays characteristic of Sunday trains, the depressing arrival at
Victoria. But soon there would be no Sunday journeys; he would come
to Lynton to stay.
A poignant sorrow filled him at the thought that Aunt Sarah would not
be there to enjoy it with him; but her calmness, her air of
acceptance, had been infectious. Roger felt, as she did, that
regrets would be out of place; that the rounding-off of her life, so
nearly complete, was merely an incident in the continuity of Lynton.
She was still talking about Parks and his successor.
"We'll tell him to look around, then, for a month or two; there's no
immediate hurry, though I'd like it settled soon. And in the
meantime I'll ask Lady Langton about that man of hers who's leaving
her."
"Parks'll be sorry to leave," said Hamilton slowly. "People get
attached to Lynton. There's something about the place."
"There is," answered Mrs. Greene, "there certainly is. Well, we must
get back to the house now. Mr. Dodds is going up to town this
evening."
"That's a short visit this time, sir," said Hamilton. "But then
London people move about more quickly than what we do."
"I don't want to go," said Roger, anxious to make it clear that not
restlessness but sheer necessity drove him back to London. "I'd much
rather stay on here, but I have to get back to work."
Hamilton became a little more cordial.
"Well, goodbye, sir," he said, "We'll hope to see you down again
soon," and Roger felt childishly elated at having wiped out the bad
impression made by his first comment.
"He crushed me utterly, Aunt Sarah," he said as soon as they were out
of ear-shot.
Mrs. Greene laughed.
"My dear Roger, he's always like that. It's only his gloomy way of
speaking, but I think he likes you; he often asks after you."
"I like him," said Roger, "but he alarms me."
"He won't when you know him better; he's really the mildest creature
on the place. Now we must hurry back; I want you to have a cup of
tea before you go."
"You'll come to us on Thursday, then?" asked Roger, as the car drove
up to take him to the station.
"Yes, I'd like to do that, but I'll come back here on Saturday after
Edith's party, and you and Mary will come soon for a long visit,
won't you?"
"We'd like to," answered Roger soberly. "It would be good for Mary
to be in the country just now, and I'd like to be with you."
"I know that, my dear boy--" Sarah Greene lifted her face to be
kissed--"And I've had a delightful twenty-four hours with you."
She came to the door with him and stood at the top of the steps as he
got into the car, one hand resting lightly on the stone balustrade.
At the turn of the drive, Roger looked back.
The light was failing, and rooks were flying over the chimneys to
reach home before dusk fell. Sarah Greene had come down the steps
and was standing, looking up at them with her head thrown back as
they flew over her roof. She stood quite motionless and absorbed,
and did not notice when the car turned the corner and was lost to
sight.