IN THE GARDENS
She came out upon the stone terrace again rather early in the morning.She wanted to wander about in the first freshness of the day, which was always an uplifting thing to her.She wanted to see the dew on the grass and on the ragged flower borders and to hear the tender, broken fluting of birds in the trees.One cuckoo was calling to another in the park, and she stopped and listened intently.Until yesterday she had never heard a cuckoo call, and its hollow mellowness gave her delight.It meant the spring in England, and nowhere else.
There was space enough to ramble about in the gardens.
Paths and beds were alike overgrown with weeds, but some strong, early-blooming things were fighting for life, refusing to be strangled.Against the beautiful old red walls, over which age had stolen with a wonderful grey bloom, venerable fruit trees were spread and nailed, and here and there showed bloom, clumps of low-growing things sturdily advanced their yellowness or whiteness, as if defying neglect.In one place a wall slanted and threatened to fall, bearing its nectarine trees with it; in another there was a gap so evidently not of to-day that the heap of its masonry upon the border bed was already covered with greenery, and the roots of the fruit tree it had supported had sent up strong, insistent shoots.
She passed down broad paths and narrow ones, sometimes walking under trees, sometimes pushing her way between encroaching shrubs; she descended delightful mossy and broken steps and came upon dilapidated urns, in which weeds grew instead of flowers, and over which rampant but lovely, savage little creepers clambered and clung.
In one of the walled kitchen gardens she came upon an elderly gardener at work.At the sound of her approaching steps he glanced round and then stood up, touching his forelock in respectful but startled salute.He was so plainly amazed at the sight of her that she explained herself.
"Good-morning," she said."I am her ladyship's sister, Miss Vanderpoel.I came yesterday evening.I am looking over your gardens."He touched his forehead again and looked round him.His manner was not cheerful.He cast a troubled eye about him.
"They're not much to see, miss," he said."They'd ought to be, but they're not.Growing things has to be fed and took care of.
A man and a boy can't do it--nor yet four or five of 'em.""How many ought there to be?" Betty inquired, with business-like directness.It was not only the dew on the grass she had come out to see.
"If there was eight or ten of us we might put it in order and keep it that way.It's a big place, miss."Betty looked about her as he had done, but with a less discouraged eye.
"It is a beautiful place, as well as a large one," she said.
"I can see that there ought to be more workers.""There's no one," said the gardener, "as has as many enemies as a gardener, an' as many things to fight.There's grubs an' there's greenfly, an' there's drout', an' wet an' cold, an' mildew, an'
there's what the soil wants and starves without, an' if you haven't got it nor yet hands an' feet an' tools enough, how's things to feed, an' fight an' live--let alone bloom an' bear?""I don't know much about gardens," said Miss Vanderpoel, "but I can understand that."The scent of fresh bedewed things was in the air.It was true that she had not known much about gardens, but here standing in the midst of one she began to awaken to a new, practical interest.A creature of initiative could not let such a place as this alone.It was beauty being slowly slain.One could not pass it by and do nothing.
"What is your name?" she asked"Kedgers, miss.I've only been here about a twelve-month.
I was took on because I'm getting on in years an' can't ask much wage.""Can you spare time to take me through the gardens and show me things?"Yes, he could do it.In truth, he privately welcomed an opportunity offering a prospect of excitement so novel.He had shown more flourishing gardens to other young ladies in his past years of service, but young ladies did not come to Stornham, and that one having, with such extraordinary unexpectedness arrived, should want to look over the desolation of these, was curious enough to rouse anyone to a sense of a break in accustomed monotony.The young lady herself mystified him by her difference from such others as he had seen.
