The Garden of God

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

“Yes, sir,” said Kearney. “They ain’t bad—off the wharfside.”

But Lestrange, fallen into a dream, scarce heard, and hearing would not have understood this profound and comprehensive summary of the ethical condition of the departed ones.

He cared for nothing. He was at peace. The presence of Stanistreet, the very decks of the Ranatonga were ties connecting him with the misery of the last twelve years, things disturbing that perfect new mood of mind, born of his vision and the surety that here in this paradise, at their own good time, his children would come to him, be with him.

Leaving the child to Kearney, he turned to the house and began to put things in order. This dreamer was no idler; he had brought all his books with him, some dozen volumes or so, and he arranged them on the shelf already prepared for him by the children, taking care that none of the other objects were disturbed.

He examined the walls, still incomplete in parts, and the roof all but finished, but not quite; the thought that the children had left it for him to complete came to him suddenly and made him pause in his work. It was only a fancy, yet his mind held it and dwelt on it as though it had been a fact of the first importance. It was to be his house as well as theirs.

As he stood like this, idle for a moment and gazing out across the sunlit sward, his eyes fell on Kearney and the child. The sailor’s hands were out of his pockets and he was standing, knife in one hand and a bit of stick in the other, whittling away and evidently making some sort of toy. Dick, seated on the ground, naked as the sun, was looking up at the work in progress.

Bowers had decided not to force clothes upon the child, firstly, because Dick, like some form of insane people, fought against any covering, even a blanket; secondly, because the child’s skin was already clothed, covered with a lovely golden brown tinge, a suit given him by the sea. He didn’t look naked, and the simple and logical mind of the sailor decided to let him be, and there he sat, perhaps the most beautiful object on earth, whilst above him stood Kearney whittling his stick—and Lestrange, casting his benevolent eye upon them, saw nothing but a little child waiting for a toy at the hands of a sailor man.

For Dick was almost nothing to Lestrange, he had no part in his obsession. Stanistreet had reckoned him half crazy partly because of his indifference to this grandchild—but he had forgotten that the forms for ever in the mind of the “poor gentleman” were the forms of the children of the past, that the vision that had brought him what seemed the peace of madness was the vision of two little children of six and seven. “Dick and Emmeline, just as they were long years ago, pure and sweet and happy and childlike, but knowing all things.” The fact that they had mated in life, the very fact of Dick, were alien to the consuming dream that here at their own chosen time little hands would push the leaves aside and that in some twilight he would see again the forms of the lost ones.

Poor gentleman!

“There you are and play about,” said Mr. Kearney, delivering up the finished article to the chubby hand reaching for it. “Yes, sir.” He came to Lestrange, who had called him, and between them they set about the work of making things shipshape. Some bunk bedding had been brought ashore, and Jim’s scanty wardrobe that had never been increased out of the slop chest lay in a bundle by the shack amongst the trees.