“What to do?”
“To start again.”
“Oh, yes,” replied the gardener. “I love starting again. What I never can do is to go on.”
After this the gardener, considered to be stronger, was allowed to see Mrs. Rust again. She was now but little better than a fretful echo of Courtesy.
Some people seem born to walk alone, and others there are who are never seen without a group behind them. Courtesy was as far a leader of men as can be compatible with having no destination to lead them to. She never knew what it was to be without a “circle.” Acquaintances were as necessary to her as air, and she used them, as she used air, innocently for her own ends.
Mrs. Rust never attained to the dignity either of being alone or the leader of a group, though she worshipped independence. She believed she had bought precedence of Courtesy for £200 a year.
And on the occasion of this visit to the gardener, she believed that she was about to shock and surprise that wise young man.
“Do you know what I have done?” she asked, when she had to some extent overcome the nervous cautiousness of behaviour impressed upon her by the absent Courtesy.
“I do not,” said the gardener, whose gently irreverent manner towards her was his salvation in her eyes. “It’s sure to be something that any one else would be ashamed of doing.”
Mrs. Rust bridled. “It was partly to annoy you that I did it,” she said. “Because you dared to advise me not to. I have sent my son Samuel a cheque, so as to launch his hotel.”