Exit a Gardener

IT was really appalling, the way he vanished. Disappearance more sudden could not have marked the flight of the beautiful boy, borne by Jove’s eagle to high Olympus, to become cup-bearer to the gods in place of the slipshod daughter of Juno. But I allude to one whom no god could have envied for his youth and beauty. ‘My brave hero, ’as Mr. Phillpotts would call him, was a Scotch gardener, middle-aged and homely. He appeared one day with a reference from the florist in the village, and in a short time had transformed our wilderness into a flowering paradise. I watched with joy the green things budding and flowering under the magic touch of his hands. I listened with delight to his Aberdeen drawl. It seemed too good to be true. When he said ‘pot’ I was filled with ecstasy. He pronounced it ‘pawt,’ but the bare letters only vaguely suggest the rich way he rolled it under his tongue.

And then one morning he disappeared. No one had seen him go, but on this tiny place there are no copses, no bosky dells, where he could be lured to his destruction, no sheltered and luxuriant corners where an assassin could have lurked. No, if death, swift and sudden, had descended, it would have done so in the open; the drying-ground perhaps, where my shirts, suspended limply from the line, would have afforded but a tenuous screen. Reluctantly I shall have to dismiss this supposition. I say reluctantly, for it would have been so much more heroic than the hypothesis I am sadly forced to accept. If he had met a bloody death protecting with his heart’s blood my egg-plant and cauliflower and sweet peas, I would have lifted my voice and chanted his praise. Forever he would stand among the goodly band of heroic Scots, with the gallant Montrose, and Douglas, and Wallace. But it was not to be. Romance wrapped his face in his cloak and wept. Forgotten are the glories of Flodden. Dead are the memories of Bannockburn.

It was a hot day, and he was thirsty. Circe holding aloft her cup seductively peeped from behind the privet-hedge. Bacchus, smiling and wreathed, shook his rosy head from the catalpa tree radiant with fleecy white bloom. The gardener’s throat was parched, and the sun beat down on him from its sapphire setting. I can only suppose that he was tempted and fell. Stealthily he discarded his garb of artisan, and forswore the livery and arms of Ceres. Once more he was a freeman as he paced the dusty road to the village, which beckoned alluringly in the distance. There refreshment and cheer were to be had. In the cool bar no hot sun penetrated. With his foot on the brass railing, he was the master of his fate, and captain of his own destinies. The essence of the hop-fields was his slave to lull him into tranquillity and peace.

I have written the florist to send me another gardener, and quoted the excellent Mr. Walpole: —

‘If your Linnæus should have any disciple that would condescend to look after my little flower-garden, it would be the delight of my eyes and nose. — Not one proviso do I make, but that the pupil be not a Scot. We had peace and warm weather before the inundation of the northern people, and therefore I beg to have no Attila for my gardener.’