CHAPTER II
Itwas as I passed out of King Street that I bethought me of my club; of the hall-porter there who bears a reputation for rose-growing. He has a strange natural ugliness of features which has often drawn me to converse with him as I come in or go out of the building. Our discussions are none of them very weighty or worthy of record. I remark upon the weather while I wait for him to get my letters; in return he tells me of his troubles with the new messenger whose medals speak well for the mightiness of his chest but, as the hall-porter assures me, say nothing in recommendation of his intelligence.
How the knowledge of this amiable hobby of rose-growing came to be known of him by the members is more than I can understand. He has never mentioned it to me, and I should have thought that such an observation as "A bad time for the roses" would have been an excellent reply to some of my meteorological remarks.
He has, however, never expressed himself in that way so I took his reputation on trust, walked straight into the club and asked for my letters.
"Nothing this morning, sir," said he. He did not even look in the little pigeon-hole marked B. This threw me back at once upon my own resources.
"What sort of a spring do you think we're going to have?" I inquired.
He peered out of the tiny window of his hall-porter's house, from which he could just see two square feet of sky.
"It's difficult to say, sir," said he.
It must have been.
"Do you think your roses will do well this year?" I went on.
He took off his glasses and looked at me. All the precise expression of the hall-porter had suddenly slipped from him. I could detect in his eyes a similar look to that which I see always in the eyes of Cruikshank when he is at work in his garden. Can this be the effect of just one word—roses? Will it in one moment convert a man from a machine into a human being with just that light of Nature in his eyes as plucks him there and then from the confusion of the crowd?
"How did you know I went in for roses, sir?" he asked.
I said that I had heard some one of the members mention the fact and it had interested me.
"I suppose you live in the country?" I added.
He shook his head, wiped his glasses—seemingly to no purpose, since he did not put them on again—and pushed aside some things upon his desk that were not the least in the way.
"I used to, sir; last year I did. I'd a little place at Loughton in Essex, not far from the Forest—Epping. It was quite the country there. I'd a nice bit of garden and a friend of mine living next door had a sort of nursery—a green-house and some ground—and he used to give me plants he didn't want. But it was too far away comin' up here in the winter early of a morning. So I got nearer London."
"You didn't give up your garden," I exclaimed, "just because it was a little difficult to get up to Town?"
"Well, it didn't agree with the wife," he admitted. "She felt lonely down there with me up here all day long. Besides, she has a taste for the theatres and seein' the shops, so we moved up to Fulham. It's much handier, but, of course, I haven't got a garden, not to speak of, now."
"How much?"
"About the size of this small hall, sir. But roses won't grow there. I've tried, giving 'em all the manure I could get; but they don't take to Fulham. It's easy enough to get manure in London, sir; there's plenty of that in the streets. It's the soil that's wanting."
"That's the truest description of a city I ever heard," said I. And then I asked his advice about my window-boxes. He took an immense interest in them; even brought out a seedman's catalogue from his desk and went so thoroughly into the subject as made me in time imagine that we were dealing with acres instead of inches.
So now I have bought all my bulbs. It was a great day when they were planted. With a table fork which Moxon obtained from the housekeeper's kitchen we prepared our beds, and all the while stood Dandy with his fore-paws on the window-sill watching the operation with breathless interest.
As I put them in, covering the mould over their little brown bodies, I looked up occasionally at Moxon, who stood by with his mouth wide open.
"Marvellous thing, isn't it, Moxon?" said I, "to think that these little bulbs are going to bring up yellows and blues and pinks, all the colors of the rainbow, just out of themselves?"
"I was thinking that, sir," said he, "though I don't know as it's any more wonderful than a woman having babies."
That remark is characteristic of Moxon, who has sentiment to his finger-tips and imagines that he never shows a sign of it.
"My God!" said I. "You don't mean to compare the two! One's a catastrophe—it'll be a very different matter when these crocuses and tulips are delivered of their flowers."
I saw the look in his face then as when a man is on the verge of being a traitor to himself. I had only to press the matter a little further and he would be abusing the wonderful functions of maternity in order to maintain his own pathetic sense of dignity. I pressed it further without any delay.
"You don't mean to say you'd like your wife to have babies?" I said, as I laid one of the little brown snowdrop bulbs under the mould and, after the manner of Cruikshank, tucked the clothes well over its head. "You wouldn't talk of it as a splendid event for her, would you?"
I could see him thinking how wonderful it would be if he had a wife; how still more wonderful it would be if she gave him a baby of his very own.
"I thought you knew I was not married, sir," he said, presently.
"I was speaking hypothetically," said I.
"Indeed, sir, I was not aware of that."
Hypothetically was undoubtedly beyond him. Therefore, "I was supposing that you were," I added for his benefit. "And if you were, you wouldn't care to have to wheel a baby out in a pram, would you?"
"God forbid," said he, most fervently.
I turned my face from him as I planted another bulb. It would not have done at all if he had seen my smile.
"Now you see," said I, "how odious your comparison was. You wouldn't be ashamed to be seen out with one of these snowdrops in your button-hole?"
"Oh, no, sir."
"But you exclaim 'God forbid' when I suggest that you might have to wheel your baby out in a perambulator."
This treachery to himself was more than Moxon could bear. He laid down the bag of snowdrop bulbs, leaving Dandy and me to finish the business by ourselves.
It is more than a week now since they were planted, and almost every day I see a fresh little green nose thrusting its way out of the mould. At first the joy of these discoveries was spoilt in a great measure by Moxon, who, when he came up with my tea in the morning, would announce the arrival of another crocus or another snowdrop with that same suppressed excitement as if he were telling me of an addition to the household.
"All right—all right, Moxon," I said testily, one morning. "I only want you to valet me, you needn't look after my garden."
That must have been a very early morning temper, or I should have laughed at the ridiculousness of calling a few window-boxes a garden. The fact of the matter is, I was jealous and, as I lay drinking my tea, I came to the conclusion that I was behaving like a dog in my own manger. The next morning, therefore, when Moxon came in with the tray, I asked him whether there had been a frost.
"Just slightly, sir," said he.
"Have they suffered at all?" I asked quickly.
"Have what suffered, sir?"
"The crocuses."
"Not that I know of, sir. I didn't look."
Of course I deserved it; but it is the things which one deserves that are so annoying. I determined not to be done, so the next morning before Moxon's arrival, I slipped on a dressing-gown and hurried softly downstairs. It was just as I expected. There was Moxon, bending over one of the window-boxes and, with a gentle finger, raking away the mould in places to see if he could find any more crocuses shooting up their tender green.
"Put that mould back, Moxon," I said severely. At the unexpected sound of my voice, I thought the poor man would have fallen out of the window into the area below. "What are you doing?" I added.
"Just making it a little tidy, sir. That was all."
I let it go at that. I knew he would never transgress in such a fashion again. I believe, moreover, that it is always best to leave a shred of dignity with those whom you would admonish. It is by that single shred they still cling to you. Deprive them of it and the only dignity left them is to go out of your sight altogether.
Thus it was, with my snowdrops, my crocuses and my hyacinths that I fought my battle with depression through those last months of winter, till I should see the first hopeful light of spring. Twice every week also, I rose betimes in the morning and with Dandy was out to Covent Garden before the market closed at nine. It was Moxon who first informed me that I could get flowers cheaper that way. Accordingly when I had proved the truth of it, I filled my rooms with them.
"How did you happen to know about this?" I asked him when one fine morning I had returned with an armful of daffodils.
"I go there sometimes myself, sir," he replied; "my mother's a fancy for those sort of things, and though I don't 'old with petting women up with flowers, I send them to her occasionally because she's an invalid."
"It's bound to spoil a woman if you send her flowers?" I said solemnly.
"Bound to," he agreed.
I handed him a bunch of daffodils.
"Smell those," said I.
He buried his face in them and breathed as though he were drawing into his lungs the very first breath of spring.
"Send a bunch of them to your sister," I added casually; "it'll cheer her up if she's still taking to religion."
His face lit up with a wonderful smile of gratitude.
"It's very good of you, sir,—I can't afford daffodils yet—not till they're a bit cheaper. Amy will be pleased."
How easy it is to spoil women, thought I.
Oh—but that morning when they brought the first daffodils into market. You knew then you had been waiting for them so long, as on some dreary, lonely road you stand, long waiting for the mistress of your heart. The moments pass by and still she does not come. But you know in your spirit that she cannot fail. When last you met, she gave her promise and, sooner would you believe the heavens might fall, than that her promise should be broken. But suddenly you hear her. The faint distant sound of her little feet comes tapping softly along the road into your ears. For that first instant your heart stops its beating that you might hear aright. Then nearer she comes and nearer.... Another moment and you can dimly discern her figure against a darkening belt of trees. The footsteps quicken, for by this time she has seen you too. At last she is close within your arms, and her cheek, so cool and damp with the dew that it has gathered, is laid against your cheek.
It is somehow like this that the daffodils are brought one frosty morning to those who wait for them in Covent Garden.
So you come of a sudden into a golden glory. A man holds out a bunch before you and says:
"Nice and fresh, sir; only picked a few hours ago."
Only picked a few hours ago! You plunge your face in them as into cold water, and they too are cool and damp like the cheeks of your little mistress. Like her they have come at last to your long and patient waiting.