IV
FLORRIE met her at Victoria. Florrie did not know that it was hopeless, though she knew that it was not as yet, a cure; but from the way that she controlled her features to a determined joviality Miss Glover could infer her shock, her grief, her consternation. The glance, too, that Jane and Florrie exchanged was revealing, had she been in need of revelations.
After a night in Florrie’s flat, however, she knew that she looked so much better that poor Florrie, when she came to see her in the morning, was quite erroneously cheered. “You’re all right,” Florrie declared. “The journey’s knocked you about a bit; but once we get you down to Surrey, Jane and I, you’ll pick up in no time. After all, there’s no place like home, is there?”
Miss Glover, from her pillows, smiled. She felt very fond of kind Florrie and sorry for her that she must, so soon, suffer sadness on her account.
It was difficult, in the train, to listen to Florrie’s talk. After her fright of the day before, Florrie had cheered up so tremendously that she talked even more than usual, of her friends, her enterprises, of how she was going yachting that autumn with the Forestalls, and of how Di Haymouth had just had a baby.
“A splendid boy, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaacson are fairly off their heads with pride and pleasure. Such a layette, my dear, you never saw! Real lace through and through—and the cradle of a regular little prince! I gave him a silver porringer for his christening; a lovely thing, all heavy repoussé work with his initials on a shield at one side. Di say it’s the prettiest porringer she ever saw.”
It was difficult to listen to Florrie and to nod and smile at the right moment when she was thinking of her garden and wondering if Florrie had really remembered to sow the sweet peas and mignonette. Even if she hadn’t, the Madame Alfred Carrière and the Prince Charlie roses would be out, and the last tulips, and the pansies, of course. And it was such a beautiful day, just such a day as that she had risen to look at when, in her dream, the pansies had cured her.
The drive from the station up to Acacia Road was a short one. The dear, foolish little porch was there, the bow-window, the laurel-bushes. Her own home. As she saw it she felt such a lift of the heart that it seemed to her, too, that she might be going to get better after all. Florrie and Jane helped her out and she and Florrie went into the sitting-room. She looked round it, smiling, while she felt her happy, fluttering breaths like those of some wandering bird put back into its own dear cage again, safe, secure, bewildered a little in its contentment. She was like such a trivial little cage-bird; she was meant for Acacia Road, and not for Swiss mountains.
Everything was the same: even her knitting-basket stood waiting for her, and all that caught her eye with their unfamiliarity were the flowers, the profusion of flowers, standing in bowls and vases everywhere; perhaps almost too many flowers,—that was like dear, exuberant Florrie,—and all pink.
“Oh—how lovely they are!” she said, finding the fluttering breath fail her a little. “How dear of you, Florrie, to have it all arranged like this!”
“They look welcoming, don’t they?” said Florrie, who laughed with some excitement. “Will you rest, dear, or come into the garden?”
“Oh, the garden, please. I’m not at all tired. I can rest later.”
Florrie still led her by the arm. They went into the conservatory and there came to her then the strangest, dizziest sense of pink—everywhere pink!—shining in at her through the sea-green glass, bursting in at her through the open door.
For a moment she thought that her mind was disordered, and looked up with large, startled eyes at Florrie; but, beaming as she had never yet seen her beam, all complacency and triumphant benevolence, Florrie nodded, saying, “Now for your surprise, my dear. Now for your garden. Just see what I’ve made of it to welcome you!”
They stepped out. Pink. Pink everywhere, above, below, around one. The paths were arched with swinging iron chains on which, already, the long festoons advanced. The border, heaping itself up splendidly against the wall, was splashed with white, yellow, blue and purple, a blaze of colour indeed, but pink dominated, like the sound of trumpets in an orchestra. It also made Miss Glover think, strangely, sickly, of the sound of a gramophone. There was no lawn. The centre of the garden was flagged, with a highly ornamental sun-dial in the middle and a white garden seat and a wonderful white stone basin for the birds. There were no Prince Charlie roses, no mignonette and sweet peas, there were no pansies. Her garden had disappeared.
“There!” said Florrie.
She led her to the garden seat. From here Miss Glover, as she sank down upon it, could see that the back of the house was also dappled with the incessant colour.
“Isn’t it a marvel!” said Florrie. “I hardly dared hope they’d grow as they have, but Dorothy Perkins is a winner, and these latest climbers run her close. I spared nothing, my dear, nothing—manure, bone-meal, labour. The men were working here for a week last autumn. All the old soil was carted away and a rich loam put in three feet deep. I put them in big. I knew I could get them to take if I took enough pains over it. Those chains will be covered in another month. I knew it would do you more good than any open-air cure to find such a garden waiting for you. I’d defy anybody to have the blues in this garden! In its little way it’s just an epitome of joy, isn’t it? It’s done me good, to begin with! I’ve been having tea out here every day in my week-ends and every one who’s seen it and heard about my plan says I’m a regular old fairy with a wand. Mrs. Isaacson motored down only last Saturday and thought it was a perfect poem. And so it is, though I say it as shouldn’t.”
Florrie had paused on the deepest breath of purest satisfaction, and the time had come when Miss Glover must speak. She must find words to express gratitude and astonishment. She must not burst into tears. She felt that if she began to cry she would at once be very ill. She did not want to be taken ill before dear, good, kind Florrie. And it was, of course, a beautiful garden; far more beautiful than hers had ever been, no doubt; yet it hurt her so—to find her garden gone—that she heard her voice come in gasps as she said, “Dear Florrie—you are a wonderful friend—you are indeed.—I can never thank you enough. It’s a miracle.”
Florrie patted her shoulder—she had her arm around her shoulders. “My best thanks will be to see you happy in it, Edie dear, and getting well and strong again in it. It’s a regular surprise-packet, this garden, let me tell you, my dear. It’ll go on, that border, right up till November, one thing after another: I thought it all out, pencil and paper and catalogue in hand. I went over the whole colour-scheme with Mrs. Isaacson—there’s no one who knows more about it. And since most of the herbaceous things came from her garden, it didn’t cost as much as you’d think. They’ve always heaps of plants left over when they divide in autumn, and everything was at my disposal; and all the latest varieties, as I needn’t say. Wait till you see the lilies—yes, my dear, I’ve found room for everything; where there’s a will there’s a way is my motto, you know—and the phloxes and the chrysanthemums.”
She would never see them, though she was sure that they would all be very beautiful; she would never see these latest varieties from Mrs. Isaacson’s garden. And she would never see her own little garden again. How wonderfully fortunate it was—the thought went through her mind confusedly as she sat there, feeling herself droop against Florrie’s shoulder—that she was not to live with Florrie’s and to go on missing her own garden. How fortunate—but her thoughts swam more and more and tears dazed her eyes—that she had not to say good-bye twice to her pansies. She had died, then, really,—that was it,—on the moonlight night when she had last seen them. And she had left the house to Florrie, dear kind Florrie, and Florrie would go on having tea happily under the festoons of roses.
