THE GARDENER'S LESSON
OLD Jonathan's home was a picture worth studying. It consisted of two small rooms, one over the other, in the little round house which stood at the entrance to Oaklands. Its name, "The Lodge," seemed given in irony. Passers-by often wondered why such a crazy old tenement should be allowed to remain on the boundary of so fine an estate; for it was more like a battered old pepper-pot than anything else, with its rounded roof and sides, and its cracked slates, which often, parting company in a high gale, left holes for the wind and rain to enter, thus making the resemblance more painfully exact.
Yet the old man loved his dilapidated cottage, and could never have felt at home in a new lodge, though faultless it might be within and without. How tenderly he would twine the tendrils of the vine still higher each year, and encourage the merciful ivy to creep up and up, to cover all defects, and shield the cracked walls from rude blasts, which sometimes threatened to shake them down!
"Let us crumble away together," was old Jonathan's speech to the proprietor of Oaklands whenever there was any talk of a new house. "It would break my heart, dear master, to have a stone of her touched. Let be, let be. Don't ye touch a stone till I am gone. One of the many mansions in glory will be my new home. I don't want any other till I go there."
And so Jonathan always had his own way, for his kind-hearted employer could not resist such pathetic pleading.
The aged pilgrim and his house were indeed a match for each other; and as he went in and out through the rustic porch day after day, the tender green tints of vine and Virginian creeper deepened and crimsoned, and grew golden with happy autumn tints, until they fluttered away on the wings of a wintry wind.
Robin often crossed the threshold, and the ideas of order and neatness which he found so useful in after life were chiefly gained from his observations in the old man's home. For here was a place for everything, and everything in its place. All was neatly arranged and scrupulously clean; and on the round table in the window was the great Bible that had belonged to Jonathan's mother, with the silver-rimmed spectacles beside it.
There was a small lean-to room behind, which was full of gardening pots and tools; also boxes with divisions, to keep the bulb roots and flower seeds separate. Knots of bass and twine hung from the wall, for tying up stray branches, and a great pair of scissors sat astride on a nail above. There were also bunches of dried and sweet-smelling herbs, of which Jonathan well knew the properties. His practical knowledge of simple remedies he was often called upon to use on behalf of his humble neighbours, who all looked up to him as an authority on most matters.
The villagers wondered how he could live there all alone from year to year, doing everything for himself. Only a few of the oldest inhabitants remembered the sad story he brought with him of the fever-stricken town he had fled from, a widower and childless. His Maggie would never grow old. She had gone away to the better land with her two little ones, just at the beginning of the life-journey which both husband and wife had thought would be such a long one together. Not many knew why he brushed away the tear that was ready to fall on the golden-haired child he would take upon his knee, as the little ones crowded round the porch of his house on their way home from school. There were three locks of hair in the old Bible, and sprigs of rosemary and lavender beside them. They were laid upon the page that told of a happy spring-time: "My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." (Cant. ii. 10-13).
Those withered tokens were the old man's only "in memoriam." But they kept his heart tender and child-loving as now and then he touched them reverently, and thought how long it was since his loved ones had gone to dwell in the presence of the King.