A sharp cold shower stung his cheeks, and he saw a slim rosebud beating itself helplessly against the wet earth, broken and muddy. He fetched a stake and tied it up. I think,' he said to himself, 'that I was put into the world to tie up broken roses, and one that is not broken yet, thank God! It is miraculous that she has never come to harm, for that great overgrown boy, her father, takes no care of her. Yes, I was meant for that. I can't preach.' He smiled ruefully as he remembered how steadfastly the congregation slept through his best sermons. 'I can't say the right things at the right time. I'm not clever. But I can take care of Hazel. And that is my life-work,' he added naively, 'perhaps I'd better begin at once, and go to see her to-day.'
Ah! the gold and scarlet morning as he came home after finding that resolve, which, as a matter of fact, he had taken with him! How the roof of the parsonage shone like the New Jerusalem! And how the fantail pigeons, very rotund denizens of that city, cooed as they walked gingerly—tiles being cold to pink feet on a frosty morning—up and down in the early sun!
Edward so much wanted to keep the violet he had found that he decided he ought to give it to his mother. So he put it on her plate, and looked for a suitable passage to read at prayers.
The Song of Solomon seemed the only thing really in tune with the morning, but he decided rather sadly that 'something in Corinthians' might please his mother better. So he read, 'The greatest of these is love,' and his voice was so husky and so unmanageable that Mrs. Marston, who did not notice the golden undertones that matched their beauty with the blackbird's song, went straight from the chair she knelt at in the prayers to her store-room, and produced lemon and honey, which Edward loathed.
'You're very throaty, my dear, and you must take a level spoonful,' she said.
It is only in poetry that all the world understands a lover. In real life he is called throaty, and given a level spoonful of that nauseous compound known as common sense.
Chapter 10
The garden at the Callow was full of old, sad-coloured flowers that had lost all names but the country ones. Chief among them, by reason of its hardihood, was a small plant called virgin's pride. Its ephemeral petals, pale and bee-haunted, fluttered like banners of some lost, forgotten cause. The garden was hazy with their demure, faintly scented flowers, and the voices of the bees came up in a soft roar triumphantly, as the voices of victors returning with hardwon spoil.
Abel had been putting some new sections on the hives, and, as usual, after a long spell of listening to their low, changeless music, he rushed in for his harp. He sat down under the hawthorn by the gate, and looked like a patriarch beneath a pale green tint. As day declined the music waxed; he played with a tenderness, a rage of delight, that did not often come to him except on spring evenings. He almost touched genius. Hazel came out, leaving the floor half scrubbed, and began to dance on the potato flat.
'Dunna stomp the taters to jeath, 'Azel!' said he.