Rather strenuous labour you would think for an old man of eighty to be doing. But as he worked, I saw that all the stems of the grass had been cut for him beforehand with a scythe. He was only sweeping it together into heaps with the aid of a bill-hook. So long as it was a bill-hook it seemed man’s labour to him.
I try sometimes to find out what he thinks about life and its swiftly approaching end. But he is very reticent to speak of it—so unlike our little serving-maid, who takes her evenings out alone, and when I asked her why she did not prefer company, replied—
“I like to think, sir.”
“What of?” said I.
“Of life and the night,” said she.
But if he thinks of life and the night, as indeed I am sure he must, he tells his thoughts to no one. It was only once, when I was praising the scent and the show of his glorious wall-flowers, that he said to me—
“I like to think they’re the best this year that I’ve ever had. I grow them all from our own seed, sir. I save it up myself every year. And I like to think this year that they’re the very best, because you know, sir, I may not see them again.”
I tried to imagine what would be the state of my own mind, if I thought I should never see wall-flowers again. I wondered could I say it with such courage, such resignation as he.
To never see wall-flowers again! It seems in a nonsensical, childish way to me to sum up the whole tragedy—if tragedy there really be—in Death. It seems, moreover, to give just that little stroke of the brush, that little line of the pen in completion of this thumb-nail portrait of mine. An old man in an old garden that he loves, telling himself that his wall-flowers are the best that year of all—telling himself bravely night after night when he goes to bed, morning after morning when he rises to the new day—which is one more day nearer the end—telling himself that they are the best this year of all, because he may not see them any more.