It is not in the least impressive to disappear by brute force in public, so the gardener turned back.
The gods did not run out to meet the returning vagabond, as they had run out to meet him arriving. The gardener did not look for them. He was too much occupied in thinking of small cramping things like “paying concerns.” The expression sounded to him like a foggy square room papered in a drab marbled design.
“A paying concern does not interest me at all,” he said, feeling rather noble.
“It won’t as long as you’re a merry vagabond. But your situation as such is not permanent, I think. Wouldn’t you like to go and strike attitudes upon the sea?”
The gardener was intensely interested in what followed.
Mr. Samuel Rust was penniless, owing, as he frankly admitted, to propensities which he shared with the common sieve. But in other directions he was well supplied with blessings. He had, for instance, a mother. And the mother—well, you know, she managed to scrape along on nine thousand a year—what? The said mother, excellent woman though she was, had refused to finance the Red Place. She had not come within the radius of its blessing. She had no idea that it was under the direct patronage of the gods, and that it promised a fortune in every facet. Samuel had explained these facts to her, but she had somehow gathered the impression that he was not unbiassed. In her hand she held the life of the Red Place, and at present held it checked. A little money for advertisement, a few hundred pounds to set the heart of the place beating, and Samuel Rust saw himself a successful man, standing with his gods on terms of equality. But his mother had become inaccessible, she had in fact become so wearied by the conversation of Samuel upon the subject that she had made arrangements to emigrate to Trinity Islands, somewhere on the opposite side of the world.
“And what is it to do with me?” asked the gardener, who suffered from the drawbacks of his paramount virtue, enthusiasm, and never could wait for the end of anything. “Do you want me to turn into an unscrupulous rogue and dog her footsteps because——”
“You can have scruples or not as you choose,” said Mr. Rust. “But rogue is a word that exasperates me. It’s much the same as ‘naughty-naughty,’ and that is worse than wickedness. The wicked live on brimstone, which is at least honest; but the naughty-naughty play with it, which is irreverent. With or without your scruples, armed only with the blessing and the promise of this place, I want you to cross the Atlantic on the Caribbeania with my mother, and tell her what it is the gods and I are waiting for. That is—just try and talk the old lady round—don’t you know. Any old twaddle would do—what?”
The gardener produced two halfpennies, one of which he placed on each knee.
“And the fare first-class is ...” he said.