Chapter XIV. In the Gardens

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

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. What the man in the shabby livery had felt, he felt also, and
added to this was a sense of the practicalness of the questions she
asked and the interest she showed and a way she had of seeming
singularly to suggest by the look in her eyes and the tone of her
voice that nothing was necessarily without remedy. When her ladyship
walked through the place and looked at things, a pale resignation
expressed itself in the very droop of her figure. When this one
walked through the tumbled-down grape-houses, potting-sheds and
conservatories, she saw where glass was broken, where benches had
fallen and where roofs sagged and leaked. She inquired about the
heating apparatus and asked that she might see it. She asked about
the village and its resources, about labourers and their wages.

"As if," commented Kedgers mentally, "she was what Sir Nigel
is--leastways what he'd ought to be an' ain't."

She led the way back to the fallen wall and stood and looked at
it.

"It's a beautiful old wall," she said. "It should be rebuilt
with the old brick. New would spoil it."

"Some of this is broken and crumbled away," said Kedgers,
picking up a piece to show it to her.

"Perhaps old brick could be bought somewhere," replied the young
lady speculatively. "One ought to be able to buy old brick in
England, if one is willing to pay for it."

Kedgers scratched his head and gazed at her in respectful wonder
which was almost trouble. Who was going to pay for things, and who
was going to look for things which were not on the spot? Enterprise
like this was not to be explained.

When she left him he stood and watched her upright figure
disappear through the ivy-grown door of the kitchen gardens with a
disturbed but elated expression on his countenance. He did not know
why he felt elated, but he was conscious of elation. Something new
had walked into the place. He stopped his work and grinned and
scratched his head several times after he went back to his pottering
among the cabbage plants.

"My word," he muttered. "She's a fine, straight young woman.
If she was her ladyship things 'ud be different. Sir Nigel 'ud be
different, too--or there'd be some fine upsets."

There was a huge stable yard, and Betty passed through that on
her way back. The door of the carriage house was open and she saw
two or three tumbled-down vehicles. One was a landau with a wheel
off, one was a shabby, old-fashioned, low phaeton. She caught sight
of a patently venerable cob in one of the stables. The stalls near
him were empty.

"I suppose that is all they have to depend upon," she thought.
"And the stables are like the gardens."

She found Lady Anstruthers and Ughtred waiting for her upon the
terrace, each of them regarding her with an expression suggestive of
repressed curiosity as she approached. Lady Anstruthers flushed a
little and went to meet her with an eager kiss.

"You look like--I don't know quite what you look like, Betty!"
she exclaimed.

The girl's dimple deepened and her eyes said smiling things.

"It is the morning--and your gardens," she answered. "I have
been round your gardens."

"They were beautiful once, I suppose," said Rosy
deprecatingly.

"They are beautiful now. There is nothing like them in America
at least."

"I don't remember any gardens in America," Lady Anstruthers
owned reluctantly, "but everything seemed so cheerful and well cared
for and--and new. Don't laugh, Betty. I have begun to like new
things. You would if you had watched old ones tumbling to pieces for
twelve years."

"They ought not to be allowed to tumble to pieces," said Betty.
She added her next words with simple directness. She could only
discover how any advancing steps would be taken by taking them. "Why
do you allow them to do it?"

Lady Anstruthers looked away, but as she looked her eyes passed
Ughtred's.

"I!" she said. "There are so many other things to do. It would
cost so much--such an enormity to keep it all in order."

"But it ought to be done--for Ughtred's sake."

"I know that," faltered Rosy, "but I can't help it."

"You can," answered Betty, and she put her arm round her as they
turned to enter the house. "When you have become more used to me and
my driving American ways I will show you how."

The lightness with which she said it had an odd effect on Lady
Anstruthers. Such casual readiness was so full of the suggestion of
unheard of possibilities that it was a kind of shock.

"I have been twelve years in getting un-used to you--I feel as
if it would take twelve years more to get used again," she said.

"It won't take twelve weeks," said Betty.