Chapter XXI. Kedgers

The Shuttle

by Francis Hodgson Burnett

The work at Stornham Court went on steadily, though with no
greater rapidity than is usually achieved by rural labourers. There
was, however, without doubt, a certain stimulus in the occasional
appearance of Miss Vanderpoel, who almost daily sauntered round the
place to look on, and exchange a few words with the workmen. When
they saw her coming, the men, hastily standing up to touch their
foreheads, were conscious of a slight acceleration of being which was
not quite the ordinary quickening produced by the presence of
employers. It was, in fact, a sensation rather pleasing than
anxious. Her interest in the work was, upon the whole, one which
they found themselves beginning to share. The unusualness of the
situation--a young woman, who evidently stood for many things and
powers desirable, employing labourers and seeming to know what she
intended them to do--was a thing not easy to get over, or be come
accustomed to. But there she was, as easy and well mannered as you
please--and with gentlefolks' ways, though, as an American, such
finish could scarcely be expected from her. She knew each man's
name, it was revealed gradually, and, what was more, knew what he
stood for in the village, what cottage he lived in, how many children
he had, and something about his wife. She remembered things and made
inquiries which showed knowledge. Besides this, she represented,
though perhaps they were scarcely yet fully awake to the fact, the
promise their discouraged dulness had long lost sight of.

It actually became apparent that her ladyship, who walked with
her, was altering day by day. Was it true that the bit of colour
they had heard spoken of when she returned from town was deepening
and fixing itself on her cheek? It sometimes looked like it. Was
she a bit less stiff and shy-like and frightened in her way? Buttle
mentioned to his friends at The Clock that he was sure of it. She
had begun to look a man in the face when she talked, and more than
once he had heard her laugh at things her sister said.

To one man more than to any other had come an almost unspeakable
piece of luck through the new arrival--a thing which to himself, at
least, was as the opening of the heavens. This man was the
discouraged Kedgers. Miss Vanderpoel, coming with her ladyship to
talk to him, found that the man was a person of more experience than
might have been imagined. In his youth he had been an under gardener
at a great place, and being fond of his work, had learned more than
under gardeners often learn. He had been one of a small army of
workers under the orders of an imposing head gardener, whose
knowledge was a science. He had seen and taken part in what was done
in orchid houses, orangeries, vineries, peach houses, conservatories
full of wondrous tropical plants. But it was not easy for a man like
himself, uneducated and lacking confidence of character, to advance
as a bolder young man might have done. The all-ruling head gardener
had inspired him with awe. He had watched him reverently,
accumulating knowledge, but being given, as an underling, no
opportunity to do more than obey orders. He had spent his life in
obeying, and congratulated himself that obedience secured him his
weekly wage.

"He was a great man--Mr. Timson--he was," he said, in talking to
Miss Vanderpoel. "Ay, he was that. Knew everything that could
happen to a flower or a s'rub or a vegetable. Knew it all. Had a
lib'ery of books an' read 'em night an' day. Head gardener's cottage
was good enough for gentry. The old Markis used to walk round the
hothouses an' gardens talking to him by the hour. If you did what he
told you exactly like he told it to you, then you were all right, but
if you didn't--well, you was off the place before you'd time to look
round. Worked under him from twenty to forty. Then he died an' the
new one that came in had new ways. He made a clean sweep of most of
us. The men said he was jealous of Mr. Timson."

"That was bad for you, if you had a wife and children," Miss
Vanderpoel said.

"Eight of us to feed," Kedgers answered. "A man with that on
him can't wait, miss. I had to take the first place I could get. It
wasn't a good one--poor parsonage with a big family an' not room on
the place for the vegetables they wanted. Cabbages, an' potatoes,
an' beans, an' broccoli. No time nor ground for flowers. Used to
seem as if flowers got to be a kind of dream." Kedgers gave vent to
a deprecatory half laugh. "Me--I was fond of flowers. I wouldn't
have asked no better than to live among 'em. Mr. Timson gave me a
book or two when his lordship sent him a lot of new ones. I've
bought a few myself--though I suppose I couldn't afford it."

From the poor parsonage he had gone to a market gardener, and
had evidently liked the work better, hard and unceasing as it had
been, because he had been among flowers again. Sudden changes from
forcing houses to chill outside dampness had resulted in rheumatism.
After that things had gone badly. He began to be regarded as past
his prime of strength. Lower wages and labour still as hard as ever,
though it professed to be lighter, and therefore cheaper. At last
the big neglected gardens of Stornham.

"What I'm seeing, miss, all the time, is what could be done with
'em. Wonderful it'd be. They might be the show of the county-if we
had Mr. Timson here."

Miss Vanderpoel, standing in the sunshine on the broad
weed-grown pathway, was conscious that he was remotely moving. His
flowers--his flowers. They had been the centre of his rudimentary
rural being. Each man or woman cared for some one thing, and the
unfed longing for it left the life of the creature a thwarted
passion. Kedgers, yearning to stir the earth about the roots of
blooming things, and doomed to broccoli and cabbage, had spent his
years unfed. No thing is a small thing. Kedgers, with the earth
under his broad finger nails, and his half apologetic laugh, being
the centre of his own world, was as large as Mount Dunstan, who stood
thwarted in the centre of his. Chancing-for God knows what mystery
of reason-to be born one of those having power, one might perhaps set
in order a world like Kedgers'.

"In the course of twenty years' work under Timson," she said,
"you must have learned a great deal from him."

"A good bit, miss-a good bit," admitted Kedgers. " If I hadn't
ha' cared for the work, I might ha' gone on doing it with my eyes
shut, but I didn't. Mr. Timson's heart was set on it as well as his
head. An' mine got to be. But I wasn't even second or third under
him--I was only one of a lot. He would have thought me fine an'
impident if I'd told him I'd got to know a good deal of what he
knew--and had some bits of ideas of my own."

"If you had men enough under you, and could order all you want,"
Miss Vanderpoel said tentatively, "you know what the place should be,
no doubt."

"That I do, miss," answered Kedgers, turning red with feeling.
"Why, if the soil was well treated, anything would grow here.
There's situations for everything. There's shade for things that
wants it, and south aspects for things that won't grow without the
warmth of 'em. Well, I've gone about many a day when I was low down
in my mind and worked myself up to being cheerful by just planning
where I could put things and what they'd look like. Liliums, now, I
could grow them in masses from June to October." He was becoming
excited, like a war horse scenting battle from afar, and forgot
himself. "The Lilium Giganteum--I don't know whether you've ever
seen one, miss--but if you did, it'd almost take your breath away. A
Lilium that grows twelve feet high and more, and has a flower like a
great snow-white trumpet, and the scent pouring out of it so that it
floats for yards. There's a place where I could grow them so that
you'd come on them sudden, and you'd think they couldn't be true."

"Grow them, Kedgers, begin to grow them," said Miss Vanderpoel.
"I have never seen them--I must see them."

Kedgers' low, deprecatory chuckle made itself heard again,

"Perhaps I'm going too fast," he said. "It would take a good
bit of expense to do it, miss. A good bit."

Then Miss Vanderpoel made--and she made it in the simplest
matter-of-fact manner, too--the startling remark which, three hours
later, all Stornham village had heard of. The most astounding part
of the remark was that it was uttered as if there was nothing in it
which was not the absolutely natural outcome of the circumstances of
the case.

"Expense which is proper and necessary need not be considered,"
she said. "Regular accounts will be kept and supervised, but you can
have all that is required."

Then it appeared that Kedgers almost became pale. Being a
foreigner, perhaps she did not know how much she was implying when
she said such a thing to a man who had never held a place like
Timson's.

"Miss," he hesitated, even shamefacedly, because to suggest to
such a fine-mannered, calm young lady that she might be ignorant,
seemed perilously near impertinence. "Miss, did you mean you wanted
only the Lilium Giganteum, or--or other things, as well."

"I should like to see," she answered him, "all that you see. I
should like to hear more of it all, when we have time to talk it
over. I understand we should need time to discuss plans."

The quiet way she went on! Seeming to believe in him, almost as
if he was Mr. Timson. The old feeling, born and fostered by the
great head gardener's rule, reasserted itself.

"It means more to work--and someone over them, miss," he said.
"If--if you had a man like Mr. Timson----"

"You have not forgotten what you learned. With men enough under
you it can be put into practice."

"You mean you'd trust me, miss--same as if I was Mr. Timson?"

"Yes. If you ever feel the need of a man like Timson, no doubt
we can find one. But you will not. You love the work too much."

Then still standing in the sunshine, on the weed-grown path, she
continued to talk to him. It revealed itself that she understood a
good deal. As he was to assume heavier responsibilities, he was to
receive higher wages. It was his experience which was to be
considered, not his years. This was a new point of view. The mere
propeller of wheel- barrows and digger of the soil--particularly
after having been attacked by rheumatism--depreciates in value after
youth is past. Kedgers knew that a Mr. Timson, with a regiment of
under gardeners, and daily increasing knowledge of his profession,
could continue to direct, though years rolled by. But to such
fortune he had not dared to aspire.

One of the lodges might be put in order for him to live in. He
might have the hothouses to put in order, too; he might have
implements, plants, shrubs, even some of the newer books to consult.
Kedgers' brain reeled.

"You--think I am to be trusted, miss?" he said more than once.
"You think it would be all right? I wasn't even second or third
under Mr. Timson--but--if I say it as shouldn't--I never lost a
chance of learning things. I was just mad about it. T'aint only
Liliums--Lord, I know 'em all, as if they were my own children born
an' bred--shrubs, coniferas, herbaceous borders that bloom in
succession. My word! what you can do with just delphiniums an'
campanula an' acquilegia an' poppies, everyday things like them,
that'll grow in any cottage garden, an' bulbs an' annuals! Roses,
miss--why, Mr. Timson had them in thickets--an' carpets-- an'
clambering over trees and tumbling over walls in sheets an'
torrents--just know their ways an' what they want, an' they'll grow
in a riot. But they want feeding--feeding. A rose is a gross
feeder. Feed a Glory deejon, and watch over him, an' he'll cover a
housetop an' give you two bloomings."

"I have never lived in an English garden. I should like to see
this one at its best."

Leaving her with salutes of abject gratitude, Kedgers moved away
bewildered. What man could believe it true? At three or four yards'
distance he stopped and, turning, came back to touch his cap
again.

"You understand, miss," he said. "I wasn't even second or third
under Mr. Timson. I'm not deceiving you, am I, miss?"

"You are to be trusted," said Miss Vanderpoel, "first because
you love the things--and next because of Timson."