“Trowel won’t nebber do, M’s Wells,” cried Saul between choking guffaws; “reckon you-all’ll hab to git a pickaxe! Yass’m—sho’ hab to git a pickaxe.”
Interested as Richard was in the plantation setting and in the glorious richness of the floral display his heart was not dancing like Wordsworth’s for either daffodils or black-eyed Susans. The first eager thought that he might find Jerry alone in the gardens had left a strong desire to go to her. There was much that he had to say to that young lady. It had better be done now. “Do it now” was not his favourite motto; it smacked too much of commerce; but doing it now seemed suddenly to acquire appropriateness. With this idea in mind he turned towards the ladder of stones and began to mount.
“As we go up the steps and turn to the left,” Mrs. Wells remarked as she followed, “you’ll come upon something I very much wish you to admire. Jerry said I mustn’t guide-book you about, so I’ll say nothing about what you’ll find; but I’m very proud of my—well, never mind what.”
She was going with him! Well, he would take a look and then be off. Of course, the gardens were wonderful, but they would keep, and——
Suddenly he found himself saying, “Beautiful!” again, exactly as George Alexander had predicted. Through a dense mass of shrubbery they had picked their way until abruptly the hollyhocks broke upon them, thousands of them! It was like a magnificent western cornfield, tilted to the sun. Walks of snapdragon and lupine and hardy pinks wound their way among the giant flowers. And no particular colour had been allowed to grow in very large masses; the foxglove and the larkspur and the gladiolus came back, like the leitmotiv of a German opera, and all joined in a monster symphonic design, whose design was not apparent at all. It was the climax, the finale, of the piece, the full orchestra wherein the little bowers of blue and pink and yellow had been solos, unaccompanied flute and clarionet and French horn.
But even here there were turns of the path, hummocks of hardy shrubs, unexpected beflowered walls, and finally, at the top of the hill, in the early stage of light-green bloom, a veritable grove of hydrangeas. “Gi-unts, they is, reg-u-lar hydrang’a gi-unts!” George Alexander had called them. Through the myriad straight slender trunks the blue sky beyond the hill formed a perfect background; and with the massive clustered heads, seemingly clipped out into symmetrical designs, the scene had all the effect of a gigantic Maxfield Parrish poster.
For the first time Richard neglected to say “Beautiful!” Instead, he looked on in thoughtful wonder, turned about and took in the sweep of acres below him crowded with perennials, masses of deep red and old rose and white which he had not seen before. Then he began to understand the enormous effort of the thing, and the cost in money, time and labour. So he did not say “Beautiful,” but he thought of George Alexander and said to himself, “Grapes fust!”
But he did not follow George Alexander’s directions and say it aloud. The beauty of the scene before him was too rare an experience; and grapes, after all, were simply something for sale. It was not expected that George Alexander’s mind could get above the rise and fall of the market. Beauty was an emotional experience, not something to be sold for a penny; and emotional experiences were the essence of living. Better a dinner of herbs where beauty is than many profitable baskets of grapes.
So he turned to the expectant woman beside him and praised and praised. These gardens were a revelation of her mind, he told her, a cross-section of her soul. Unconsciously he began to batter down George Alexander’s arguments against thrift and close buying and selling and all the other despicable acts of trade.
The penniless are the most eloquent abusers of wealth! What is money, he asked her derisively, compared with the wealth before them! “Let the millioned-dollared ride! Barefoot trudging at his side” hath what wealth cannot purchase. Thrift? Economy? Profit? He repudiated them all and apostrophized the work before him, and crowned with rhetoric the Workwoman.