“I’ve come on particular business,” Grainger said, “and I’ll stroll about until you and Mr. Best are done with the hospital.”
Mr. Best, still with sadness in his manner, promised not to keep Mr. Palairet long and they went inside.
Grainger was left standing under the yew-tree. He took up Gavan’s book, while the sense of frustration, and of rebellion against it, rose in him. The book was French and dealt with an obscure phase of Byzantine history. Gavan’s neat notes marked passages concerning some contemporary religious phenomena.
Grainger flung down the book, careless of crumpled leaves, and wandered off abruptly, among the hedges and into the garden. It was a very different garden from the old Scotch one where a sweet pensiveness seemed always to hover and where romance whispered and beckoned. This garden, steeped in sunlight, and where plums and pears on the hot rosy walls shone like jewels among their crisp green leaves, was unshadowed, unhaunted, smiling and decorous—the garden of placid wisdom and Epicurean calm. Grainger, as he walked, felt at his heart a tug of strange homesickness and yearning for that Northern garden, its dim gray walls and its disheveled nooks and corners. Were they all done with it forever?
By the time he had returned to the lawn Gavan was just emerging from the house. They met in the shadow of the yew.
“I’m glad to see you, Grainger,” Gavan said, with a smile that struck Grainger as faded in quality. “This place is a sort of harbor for tired workers, you know. You should have looked me up before, or are you never tired enough for that?”
“I don’t feel the need of harbors, yet. One never sees you in London.”
“No, the lounging life down here suits me.”
“Your little parson doesn’t see it in that light. He has been telling me how you live up to your duties as neighbor and parishioner.”
“It doesn’t require much effort. Nice little fellow, isn’t he, Best? He tells me that you walked up together.”