Not that he saw this side of his vision as mere drudgery, or in any way secondary to the rest. It was all one to him, indeed, and of equal interest and beauty, for to the artist the craft is as fascinating as the dream. He knew, who had done every job in a garden in his time, the contentment that may wait upon a man when he is working out even the smallest detail of a great conception. Long ago he had learned that the whole is implicit in the part; so that, while he broke his way through stiff soil, or toiled patiently with the knife, he felt his material quiver with the message of all that was yet to come, and saw, not the apparently trivial task upon which he was engaged, but the beauty that should be.
He was so still during the few minutes in which his vision passed before him that the very bushes and trees, chained and weighted with heavy drops, seemed by comparison to be full of animation. It was as if the actual life were being drained out of him in order to supply vitality to the temporarily vivid picture. The light had brightened a little, and the mist was lifting. Far below, from the direction of the park, a sweet-whistled snatch swam up to him through the mist as the faint chimes of sunk church-bells are said to swim up through the sea. The men were coming to work. Behind him the kettle boiled over with a sudden angry hiss, and at the same moment he heard the bed creak in the room above.
Turning, he saw the letter....
II
ONCE again, however, he shut it out, firmly refusing to look at it as he stepped across to the kettle. Yet again his awareness of it was apparent in his every movement. His hand shook as he made the tea; and when the bed upstairs creaked again, with that sharp, emphatic creak which he had come to regard as actually emanating from his wife rather than as the mere protest of a piece of furniture, he hurried out of the room as if thankful to get away from it.
Cup in hand, he went upstairs, and entered the low bedroom, with its window looking out on to the little plot of ground which was private to the house, separated from the rest of the gardens by a privet hedge which he had planted forty years ago, and which had now grown thick and high. He had never ceased to feel surprised when he looked at that hedge, not because it had done so well, but because it was there at all. He would never have thought of planting it but for his wife, because it would never have occurred to him to feel the need of it. Either the whole place was his, or else none of it was,—that was how he looked at it. Nevertheless, he had planted the hedge to please her, because she wanted a spot where she could “get away.” In the same way she had chosen the bedroom which looked out on that particular side, because it made her feel that she “wasn’t there.” He had had some difficulty in understanding either of these rather puzzling statements, but he had made no bones about them. He himself had never wanted either to get away or to feel that he wasn’t there; but of course it wasn’t to be expected that he and Mattie should always feel the same.
She was sitting up in bed when he went in, and leaning forward a little, as if some eagerness in her had sent her spirit before her to unburden itself to him. The paralysis which had seemed to afflict her on the previous night,—the result, perhaps, of over-emotion or fatigue—had completely dropped from her. This morning, indeed, she looked alive to her very finger-tips. Her strong, buxom figure looked hale and wholesome in its good longcloth nightgown. Her plaited hair, run through with silver, was still silky and thick. Her eyes were shining and her cheeks flushed. She took the cup from him in a grasp that was as firm and capable as when he had first known her.
“Eh, but I’ve slept sound!” she announced, yawning and smiling in a breath, while the vibrant tones of her voice, running through the room, seemed to stir up the atmosphere of the house, and even to assist at the awakening of the world outside. “I don’t know that I ever remember sleeping like that before.”
He nodded, looking at her affectionately as he stood beside the bed in one of those still attitudes of his which suggested the poise of a flower on a windless day.
“Yes. You’ve slept grand. You were tired, likely, with all that settling and such-like.”