“I need a second brain here, a brain that has an instinct for colour and effect.”
“Yes, I think you do.”
He sat and gazed at her with grave and half cynical amusement. Such a piece of news might have seemed of some importance to the average married woman, touching as it did, the edge of her own empire, and Canterton, as he watched her wrinkling up her forehead over those sheets of paper, realised how utterly unessential he had become to this woman whom he had married. He was not visible on her horizon. She included him among the familiar fixtures of Fernhill, and was not sufficiently interested even to suspect that any other woman might come into his life.
From that time Eve Carfax came daily to Fernhill, and made pictures of roses and flowering shrubs, rock walls and lily pools, formal borders and wild corners where art had abetted Nature. Canterton had given her a list of the subjects he needed, a kind of floral calendar for her guidance. And from painting the mere portraits of plants and flowers she was lured on towards a desire to peer into the intricate inner life of all this world of growth and colour. Canterton lent her books. She began to read hard in the evenings, and to spend additional hours in the Fernhill nurseries, wandering about with a catalogue, learning the names and habits of plants and trees. She was absorbed into the life of the place. The spirit of thoroughness that dominated everything appealed to her very forcibly. She, too, wanted to be thorough, to know the life-stories of the flowers she painted, to be able to say, “Such and such flowers will give such and such combinations of colours at a certain particular time.” The great gardens were full of individualities, moods, whims, aspirations. She began to understand Canterton’s immense sympathy with everything that grew, for sympathy was essential in such a world as this. Plants had to be watched, studied, encouraged, humoured, protected, understood. And the more she learnt, the more fascinated she became, understanding how a man or a woman might love all these growing things as one loves children.
She was very happy. And though absorbed into the life of the place, she kept enough individuality to be able to stand apart and store personal impressions. Life moved before her as she sat in some corner painting. She began to know something of Lavender, something of the men, something of the skill and foresight needed in the production and marketing of such vital merchandise.
One of the first things that Eve discovered was the extent of Canterton’s popularity. He was a big man with big views. He treated his men generously, but never overlooked either impertinence or slackness. “Mr. Canterton don’t stand no nonsense,” was a saying that rallied the men who uttered it. They were proud of him, proud of the great nurseries, proud of his work. The Fernhill men had their cricket field, their club house, their own gardens. Canterton financed these concerns, but left the management to the men’s committee. He never interfered with them outside their working hours, never preached, never condescended. The respect they bore him was phenomenal. He was a big figure in all their lives—a figure that counted.
As for Gertrude Canterton, they detested her wholeheartedly. Her unpopularity was easily explained, for her whole idea of philanthropy was of an attitude of restless intrusion into the private lives of the people. She visited, harangued, scolded, and was mortally disliked for her multifarious interferences. The mothers were lectured on the feeding of infants, and the cooking of food. She entered cottages as though she were some sort of State inspector, and behaved as though she always remembered the fact that the cottages belonged to her husband.
The men called her “Mother Fussabout,” and by the women she was referred to as “She.” They had agreed to recognise the fact that Gertrude Canterton had a very busy bee in her bonnet, and, with all the mordant shrewdness of their class, suffered her importunities and never gave a second thought to any of her suggestions.
Visitors came almost daily to the Fernhill nurseries, and were taken round by Lavender, the foreman, or by Canterton himself. Sometimes they passed Eve while she was painting, and she could tell by the expression of Canterton’s eyes whether he was dealing with rich dilettanti or with people who knew. Humour was to be got out of some of these tours of inspection, and Canterton would come back smiling over the “buy-the-whole-place” attitude of some rich and indiscriminate fool.
“I have just had a gentleman who thought the Japanese garden was for sale.”