The garden of resurrection

by E. Temple Thurston

I did not sign it because I had determined that if it were to be delivered at all, it must be with my own hands. But how? It had all the difficulties attached to it as I remember having experienced when I was a boy at school. At the church where we went every Sunday, there attended also a neighboring school of girls. It was my fortune that one of them should catch my eye. From Sunday to Sunday those glances continued, till at last they held a smile. She smiled at me. I could hardly believe it to be true. Again I looked and again she smiled. Then I remember how I tore from my hymn-book that page containing the hymn:

"Can a woman's tender care
Cease toward the child she bare?
Yes, she may forgetful be,
Yet will I remember thee."

And in the fulness of my heart, believing it to convey all my sentiments far better than I could ever have expressed them myself, I marked the last line deeply with pencil, meaning to give it her at the very first opportunity. But how? I have never found out to this day. Shall I ever find out the way to give this letter to Clarissa?

CHAPTER IX

A little comedy was played here yesterday, here in the garden—in our garden. I call it ours for, as the days go by in the company of Cruikshank and his Bellwattle, there grows more and more into my mind the belief that theirs is the only way of living. Wherefore, in my vainest imaginings, I share the garden with them, calling it ours to give a flavor of reality to the conceit.

I was not present when this little play was enacted, nor indeed should I have perceived the full comedy of it had I been there. Bellwattle, Dandy and I were away round the first head of the cliffs where the gulls were wheeling, for ever wheeling, up against the wind.

Cruikshank told us about it afterwards. He was working, it appears, in the garden—when, indeed, is he not? There is so much for a gardener to be doing at this time of the year; indeed, there is so much for him to be doing that I come to think he is one of the busiest men I know.

"The earth is a bed," Cruikshank said to me once, "that always needs making."

I suppose he is right. The princesses who sleep there till the morning of summer calls them to get up, show all the tenderness of flesh that betokens a real princess. Their beds must be made every day. One pea beneath innumerable mattresses would bruise their delicate skins. What wonderful employment then, to be master of the bed-chamber, mistress of the robes, comptroller of the household—all rolled into one—and this to princesses whom you believe to be the most beautiful in the world.

Cruikshank, therefore, was making the beds, shaking the coverlet of earth so lightly as never to disturb the sleepers beneath. It was while he was working, he said, that he became aware of the approach of General Ffrench. The old gentleman came up the little drive from the gate that opens on to the road. He was walking timidly, as though he knew that at such a time in the morning it were an intrusion to visit one's friends. Much of that military bearing of his was gone. His shoulders were bent and his head thrust forward as he glanced suspiciously about him.