CHAPTER V
THE STRUGGLE: AND THE STORY OF "ALFRED SIMPSON"
The garden is peaceful, and this is the more extraordinary because it is really the perpetual scene of the bloodiest warfare, and this warfare is the more acute in a London garden because in London there are more enemies. One has the fight of the gardener against natural conditions, his fight against the enemies of his plants, and the fight of the plants among themselves.
One season there was a prolonged drought and the leaves of the trees fell prematurely. "That's due to the drought," said the experts. The following year the season was very wet, and once more my trees shed their leaves before the time. "What else can you expect after all the rain we've had?" said the experts. And in both seasons the dairymen, who seem to have a touch of the expert about them, raised the price of milk. Perhaps one year I shall find the kind of season which exactly suits my London garden.
To fight the drought I got me a great length of hose, and made the usual arrangements with the Water Board. But once the question of a garden is raised, the Water Board also seems to be infected with the military spirit. I had a printed document from them, which was severe to the point of truculence. They reserve themselves rights. They do not guarantee. They are not responsible. They strictly forbid. With these and similar phrases they teach the man who dares to use a hose what a poor worm he is. They tell me that the hose must not be left unattended. What am I to do with it then? Am I to sit up all night with it and hold its nozzle? A wet season brings home to me the awful injustice of Water Boards. Nobody who can get rain for his garden will use the hard, less satisfactory, but highly valuable products of the Water Board. But in the wet season, as in the dry, the consumer must pay. In strict justice, the amount one pays for the water supply for the hose should in any season be in inverse proportion to the rainfall during that season.
When the drought was here I watered my lawn profusely (and the Water Board need not rage and swell, for I never left the hose unattended for one moment). A little later I walked over the lawn to collect its gratitude, as it were, and I saw hosts of strange and horrid things. They were white, and yellow, and yellowish brown. They had come out of the crevices, and they had crawled. When I thought that for weeks past, this, my garden, had been providing them with sustenance, I was moved to fury. But I did not lose my head. There is a right way and a wrong way of doing everything. There is even a right way of killing slugs.
I have read in books that the gardener takes the slug and crushes it under his heel on the gravel path; a jobbing gardener might possibly do that—jobbing gardeners will do anything. Any man who does that is not fit to have a garden. He is only fit to collect house refuse in an open cart during hot weather.
My own method is simple and refined. I have a large jar filled with a strong solution of salt and water. I have, moreover, a large pair of surgical forceps serrated on the inner edge, price one shilling at the shop in the Strand. With the forceps I lift up the slug and I place him in the salt water; he dies incontinently and very neatly. My best time so far is a hundred and one in a quarter of an hour. I have found out the thing which the green fly absolutely cannot stand, and I give the green fly plenty of that thing with the syringe. I destroy earwigs. I destroy caterpillars. I have not yet reached the fine Tennysonian sensibility of the gentleman "whose eyes were tender over drowning flies." I kill some things that other things may live. They cannot all have it their own way in my garden, and I must settle which side is to prevail. All the same, I do sometimes try to look at it from the slug's point of view. What does the slug think about it? Let us hope and believe that the slug does not think about it.
With what brutality, too, does the gardener fight against the prolific impulses of nature. The dead flowers must be picked off from the sweet peas; otherwise they give up work early. If you cut down the lupine spikes as soon as the beans have formed, you will get more spikes. (I am told that this will not weaken the plant if it is well fed, but I never do it myself.) And what does it all mean, when one comes to think of it? These poor beautiful things live and struggle only for the perpetuation of their kind. When that is done, their warfare is accomplished. We make lovely gardens by thwarting and baffling this natural instinct.
Even among the plants that I tend there is civil war. My garden is surrounded by tall trees, so that at any hour of the day I can get shade. I would not have it otherwise. I would not lose one of the trees. But they are all unprincipled robbers. Their roots spread far underneath the ground. The fight goes on, and they steal the sustenance that one has given to the roses.
I knew a man who admired in his neighbour's garden the golden stars of the stone-crop. He put a little piece in an envelope and planted it in his own garden. A few years later he turned out of his garden three cartloads of stone-crop; that, I admit, was in the country. Australian bamboo is determined and rapacious. It is easy to get it into the garden. It is next to impossible to get it out. The smallest fragment of root seems to be enough, and up it comes again. The perennial sunflower is terrifically aggressive. It has a disregard of limits and wants the world. If its masses of yellow flowers were not so exhilarating, I would turn it out of my garden altogether. One would like to be able to argue with these things. I should like to say to those sunflowers: "Try to take example by the bergamot. It has the same perennial advantages as yourself, and it is quite beautiful. In addition, the scent of its leaves pressed in the fingers reminds one of Egypt. You do not find the bergamot shoving itself forward wherever it has a chance. Contemplate it and learn modesty." But argument does not avail with the perennial sunflower. The knife and the spade are the things that it understands.
I fight the weeds of course, but I have vague ideas as to what a weed is. I am quite merciless towards the bindweed, it is a murderer and a garrotter; but with the materials at my disposal I could not make anything quite so beautiful as its flowers. I found two low-growing things in a flower-bed, which seemed to be of the clover kind. One had small crimson-brown leaves with a flush of green on them; the other had a much larger green leaf with a delicate design in grey on it. The jobbing gardener said they were weeds, he would have turned them out. I saved their lives, and the one with the reddish-brown leaf rewarded me with any number of little yellow flowers. Were I a sentimentalist, I should say that this showed its gratitude. Next year some more of the same clovery thing came up in the middle of a gravel path, where it was not wanted; was that gratitude?
When one comes into my garden at the close of a fine summer day, one does really seem to come into a peaceful place apart, where the fight for life no longer exists. But the fight for life exists everywhere, and one can never get away.
Don't go, let me tell you the story of
ALFRED SIMPSON
Alfred Simpson was a nice-looking young man who had independent means and other attractions. People liked him, but when they spoke of him it was with a smile. "He is so easily influenced," said some. "He is so frightfully obstinate," said others. "He has such funny ideas," said both.
Simpson could be easily influenced by anything he saw in print. From views which he had formed in this way he could not be driven by spoken words of mature and skilled experience. He had the very unusual habit of acting upon his convictions, and the unusual is frequently funny. So possibly in what they said about Alfred Simpson people had reason.
"I have definitely made up my mind," said Alfred Simpson one day. "I will take no part whatever in the struggle. To struggle is vulgar. It happens that I have just enough to live upon; but if I had not, I should decline to earn anything. One cannot earn without beginning the struggle. Just as I set no value on property, so do I set none on my own rights. I would never resist anything."
Nobody minded. In spite of previous experience, nobody expected that Alfred Simpson would be as good as his word.
Hector Brown was quite a different type of man. His friends said that Hector was a rough diamond. His enemies said more briefly that he was a rough. Hector Brown went to a dance, danced with Mary, took her into the conservatory, and then and there kissed her—contra pacem and to the scandal of the Government.
Mary was very angry. She had promised to marry Alfred Simpson, and it was to him that she complained.
"Now, what you've got to do," said Alfred's friends, "is to punch Hector Brown's head."
"Why?" said Simpson.
"What will you ask next? For infringing your copyright, of course."
"That," said Simpson coldly, "would be quite contrary to the views which I have already expressed to you."
So he did not punch Hector Brown's head, and Mary told Alfred Simpson that he could go away and play by himself. Mary's decision was warmly applauded by her parents, who had heard without enthusiasm of the noble resolve on the part of their prospective son-in-law never to earn anything. Three months later Mary married Hector Brown.
Now Alfred Simpson was not a coward. He was not quite so big and heavy as Hector Brown, but he was quicker, harder, and in better training. He had been boxing while Hector had been boozing. The instructor was of opinion that Alfred could punch Hector when he liked, where he liked, and as often as he liked. Of this Alfred's friends were well aware, and it made them the more angry with him. They despaired. What could they say to a man who banged the door on the primeval instincts and declared that struggle, resistance, and retaliation were repugnant to him.
Alfred's subsequent refusal to secure a highly valuable post by the medium of a competitive examination alienated his family, as he had already alienated his friends. It is probable that his friends would have refused to have anything whatever to do with him, but for one fact—it was possible to borrow money from Alfred Simpson. They all did it, except one man, but differed in the amount and the frequency of their borrowings, according as their self-respect hindered or their necessities encouraged them. The one man who would not do it was the most confirmed borrower of them all. To the professional money-lender he was well known. "But," he said, "I cannot borrow from Alfred Simpson; it is altogether too easy—it is inartistic and gives me no satisfaction."
Without working Alfred Simpson could very well have lived on his income. But his income depended on capital, and his capital rapidly dwindled to nothing under the inroads made upon it. When his last hundred had been lent to a young gentleman who wished to test practically his solution of certain mathematical problems in the neighbourhood of Nice, Alfred Simpson went with empty pockets to those to whom he had lent money, and inquired if the repayment of the whole or part would be convenient. He returned from this inquiry with one pound six shillings, and the happy consciousness that he had not been vulgar. He had never insisted, he had never urged.
His next step was to sell the furniture of his well-appointed flat in order to pay the rent for it. After that he lived on a fairly extensive wardrobe and a few small articles of jewellery that he possessed. He retained only the gold watch and chain which had been presented to him by his mother on his twenty-first birthday.
There came a day when he had lunched lightly on his last six collars—or, to speak with pedantic accuracy, on the meal which had been provided with the money which had been acquired by the sale of those six collars. In spite of this banquet, by eight o'clock in the evening he felt hungry again, and our sentiments yield to our necessities. He therefore went out to dispose of his watch and chain. He went through Regent's Park and was stopped by a man whose appearance was against him. He looked in so many directions at once that anybody else would have mistrusted him.
"Could you tell us the time, Gov'nor?" said the man.
Alfred produced his watch. The man snatched it and the chain therewith, and ran. He did not run remarkably well. It would have been perfectly easy for Alfred Simpson to have overtaken him and to have given him into custody. But such an act would have been inconsistent with the rest of his career. So he gave up the idea of dinner and sat on the Embankment.
On the following day he remained in the parks until closing time and then sat on the Embankment again.
And the next night he dreamed that he died on the Embankment.
And after death Alfred Simpson opened his eyes and saw that he was in a large and very plainly furnished room. He sat on a hard bench, not unlike that which had been his bed on the Embankment, and many others, mostly of villainous appearance, sat there also.
"I say," said Alfred Simpson to the grey-haired reprobate next to him. "This isn't Heaven, is it?"
The reprobate chuckled. "Not exactly," he said.
"Then what is it?"
"It's the waiting-room for lost souls before they take their trial."
"But I'm not a lost soul," said Alfred Simpson indignantly. "I ought not to be here. I must have taken the wrong turning. I have never done anything very wrong in my life, and I have done heaps of good. I gave up the only girl I ever loved."
"I know," said the old man; "and in consequence she married a man she did not love out of pique. He's a brute, he ill-treats her, and she will die. You murdered her."
"This is terrible," said Alfred Simpson. "I had no idea of it. But I have done lots of other good things. I refused to go in for a competitive examination and take up a valuable post, in order that some other man might enjoy it."
"I know," said the old man again. "The other man got it; he had not your mental equipment and he was not equal to it. He bungled badly and disgraced himself. That's him over there, the man with the bullet-hole in his temples. It was his hand that held the revolver, but it was you who shot him, Alfred Simpson."
"This is most distressing," said Alfred. "If I could have foreseen this kind of thing, I should certainly have revised my ideas. I should have drawn out another scheme for my life altogether. But as it is, I must have done some good. I lent large sums of money without interest."
"I know," said the old man once more. "And by so doing you have turned various people who might have had self-respect and industry into worthless wastrels. The souls of some of them are waiting now to give evidence against you."
"It is very sad," said Alfred, "that things do not turn out as one intends. One of my last acts on earth was to allow a man to steal my watch and chain. I suppose it is useless to plead that this was a good action."
"Quite. How can you suppose it to be a good action to put such a premium on dishonesty?"
Then the door of the waiting-room opened and there stood there a most gigantic policeman.
"Alfred Simpson," he called, in a fruity and resonant voice.
"Here I am," said Alfred meekly. "Could you tell me what I am charged with?"
"You know perfectly well," said the policeman. "You are charged with starting the millennium before it was ready."
The shock awoke him. He rose and walked to his father's house. His dire necessities and abject condition broke down the alienation which had existed between him and his family, and he was welcomed as the returned prodigal. On the following morning, decently attired, with a bundle of IOU's in his pocket, he started across Regent's Park to call upon his solicitor. On his way he met a shabby man who looked in all directions at once. The shabby man saw him and ran. Alfred ran also. He caught the shabby man in an unfrequented part of the park, took from him fourpence in bronze, which was all that he possessed, and administered to him an extremely thorough hiding.
He handed the bundle of IOU's to his solicitor. Those who could pay in full were to pay in full. Those who could pay in part were to pay in part. Those who could not pay were to be left alone. Nobody was to be ruined, but Alfred Simpson was to have some of his money back.
And later, some two years later, he married the widow of Hector Brown. He is on his way to take up an important post in India, and she accompanies him. They say that she looks quite young and pretty again. She is certainly quite happy with her husband, though there are some who think him a little too selfish and dictatorial.