The Garden Without Walls

by Coningsby Dawson

But when all is said, the real business of my Uncle Obad’s life was not philanthropy or running a boardinghouse, but poultry-raising. It was he who gave me the old white hen, without which I might never have met Ruthita. My money-making instincts were roused by his talk of the profits to be derived from eggs. I was enthusiastic to follow in his footsteps. To this end, at the hour of parting, when I was returning to Pope Lane, he gave me an ancient white Leghorn. He did not tell me she was ancient; he recommended her to me as belonging to a strain that could never get broody.

On the long drive home across London, my grief at leaving Charity Grove was partly mitigated by my new possession. It was a tremendous experience to feel that I had it in my power to make a live thing, even though it were but a hen, sad or happy. I discussed with Uncle Obad all the care that was necessary for egg-production. I got him to work out sums for me. If my hen were to lay an egg every other day throughout the year, how much money would I make by selling each egg to my father at a penny? I felt that the foundations of my financial fortunes were secure. The genuineness of my expectations made my uncle restless and ashamed; he knew that the hen had passed her first youth, and suggested that pepper in her food might help matters.

It was supper-time when I arrived home. I let the hen loose on the lawn to stretch her legs. My father was busy as usual, but he delayed a little longer over the meal in honor of my home-coming.

Some of the things I blurted out about my uncle must have revealed to him the comradeship that lay between us. He had risen from the table, but he sat down again. “You have known your uncle just a fortnight,” he said, “and yet you seem to have told him more about yourself than you have told me in all these years. Why is it, Dante? You’re not afraid of me? It can’t be that.” We were both of us shy. He reached over and took my hand, repeating, “It can’t be that.”

He knew that it was that and so did I. Yet he was hungry for my affection. He was making an unaccustomed effort to win my confidence and draw me out. But he spoke to me as though I was a grown man, whereas my uncle to get near me had become himself a child. If he had only talked to me about my white hen, I should have chattered. But I was awed by his embarrassment, and remained silent and unresponsive.

He went on to tell me that all the time he was away from me in his study he was working for my sake. “I want to have the money to give you a good start in life. I never had it. You must succeed where I have failed.”

I understood very little of what he was saying except that money and success seemed to be the same. That was the way Uncle Obad had talked about poultry-raising. I had no idea where money came from or how it was obtained. I must have asked him some question about it, for I recall one of the phrases he used in replying, “A man succeeds not by what he does, but by the things at which he has aimed.”

The red sun fell behind the trees while we talked, peered above my father’s shoulder, and sank out of sight. It was dusk when I ran into the garden.

I felt prisoned again—the door into the lane was locked and the walls were all about me. The lamp in my father’s study was kindled and flung a bar of light across the shrubbery. He was working to get the money that I might be allowed to work. I didn’t like the idea. I didn’t want to work. Why couldn’t one drive always through the sunshine, pulling up at taverns and sitting beside gipsy camp-fires?

I commenced to search for the white hen and so forgot these economic complications. Here and there I came across places where she had been scrabbing, but I could see her nowhere. At last I discovered her roosting on the branch of an apple-tree which grew close by the wall at the end of the garden. I spoke to her kindly, but she refused to come down. She was too high up for me to reach her from the ground. When I scattered grain, she blinked at me knowingly, as much as to say, “Surely you don’t think I’m as big a fool as that.” It seemed to me that she was grieving for all the cocks and hens to whom she had said farewell. She was embittered against me because she was solitary. I explained to her that, if she’d lay eggs, I’d buy her a husband. She remained skeptical of my good intentions. There was nothing for it—but to climb. I could hear the leaves shaking and the apples bumping on the ground; my hand was stretched out to catch her when, with a hoarse scream of defiance, she flapped her wings and disappeared into the great nothingness over our neighbor’s wall.