Then his gardener’s eye was suddenly arrested by a perle des jardins that was ramping beyond all bounds.
“I used to know about roses,” he said, “and I’ll cut that back for you to-morrow. You are not getting half the roses out of it.”
“I know, but it’s enjoying itself so enormously,” said Merivale.
Philip considered this as an abstract question on to which he had not previously turned his mind.
“And you think that ought to be taken into consideration when one deals with the destinies even of rose-trees?” he asked with a terrible air of being in earnest.
Merivale smiled.
“Decidedly London has not been good for you,” he said. “I think your words were ‘the destinies even of rose-trees.’ Now what destiny matters more than that? Not mine, I am sure, and I doubt if yours. Besides, the destinies of your rose-trees used to be of extraordinary importance, not only to them, but to you.”
Philip was silent a moment. Then for the first time, at the sense of peace that was here so predominant a note, or at the sight of Tom himself, in all the vigour and freshness of a youth that measured by years was already past, some faint gleam, or if not a gleam, the sense that light was possible to him, broke through the dismal darkness of his soul. For one short moment he laid his hand on his friend’s arm.
“Make allowance for me, Tom,” he said.
In spite of his long aloofness from the fretful race of men and the ways of them, Merivale had not forgotten—indeed it is as impossible for one who has ever known it to forget it as it is to forget how to swim—that divine gift of tact. Indeed, it is probable that his long sojournings alone had, if anything, made more sensitive those surfaces which come into contact with others and which others insensibly feel (for this is tact) to be smooth and warm and wise. And it was a fine touch that he did not respond, however remotely, to Philip’s appeal, for Philip had told him that pity and sympathy were exactly what he could not stand. Consequently he let this cry be the voice of one in the desert; it wanted silence, not audible answer. He, like the trees in the garden and the stream, must be dumb to it.