“Is this private?” she asked. There was something in the shy look of the garden, and in the reproachful look of the gardener, that made the question natural.
“No,” said the gardener. “This is the ship’s garden.”
“Good,” said Mrs. Paul Rust.
She always said “good” to everything she had not heard before. To her the newest was of necessity the best. Originality was her ideal, and as unattainable as most ideals are. For she was not in the least original herself. She was doomed for ever to stand outside the door of her temple. And “good” was her tribute of recognition to those who had free passes into the temple. It owned that they had shown her something that she would never have thought of for herself. For nothing had ever sprung uniquely from her. Even in her son she could only claim half the copyright.
The suffragette tried to rearrange her looks, which certainly needed it. There are two sorts of women, the women before whom you feel you must be tidy and the women before whom such things don’t matter. Mrs. Rust all her life had belonged to the former, all her life what charm she had, had lain in the terror she inspired.
For the first time the gardener questioned himself as to his plan of attack. Hitherto he had pinned his faith to inspiration. He had left the matter in the hands of his private god, Chance. His methods were very simple, as well as bizarre. His mind was a tortuous path, but he followed it straightforwardly, and never looked back. To do him justice, however, I must say that he searched his repertoire for a suitable point of conversational contact with Mrs. Rust. Finding none, he dispensed with that luxury.
“I am the ship’s gardener,” he said, smiling at his intended victim.
Mrs. Rust was broad, and the deck-chair was narrow. It was some time before a compromise between these two facts could be arrived at, so the remark came upon her at a moment of some stress.
“Now, then, what was that you were saying?” she asked at last, in an unpromising voice.
The gardener, who was very literal in very small things, repeated his information, word for word, and inflection for inflection. “I am the ship’s gardener.”