Antony Gray-Gardener Part 18

He felt a queer bitterness towards his work, a bitterness towards the garden and the big grey house, and most particularly towards the man who had lived in it, and who was responsible for his present unhappiness. He had none towards the d.u.c.h.essa. But then, after all, he appeared in her eyes as a fraud, the thing of all others he himself most detested. He could not possibly blame her for her att.i.tude in the matter. Yet all the time, he had a queer feeling of something like remorse for his present bitterness; it was almost as if the garden and the very flowers themselves were reproaching him for it, reminding him that they were not to blame. And then a little incident suddenly served to dispel his gloom, at all events in a great measure.

It was a slight incident, a trivial incident, merely an odd dream.

Nevertheless, having in view its oddness, and--unlike most dreams--its curious connectedness, also its effect on Antony's spirit, it may be well to record it.

He dreamt he was walking in a garden. He knew it was the garden of Chorley Old Hall, though there was something curiously unlike about it, as there often is in dreams. The garden was full of flowers, and he could smell their strong, sweet scent. At one side of the garden--and this, in spite of that curious unlikeness, was the only distinctly unlike thing about it--was a gate of twisted iron. He was standing a long way from the gate, and he was conscious of two distinct moods within himself,--an impulse which urged him towards the gate, and something which held him back from approaching it.

Suddenly, from another direction, he saw a woman coming towards him.

Recognition and amazement fell upon him. She was the same small girl he had played with in his boyhood, and whose name he could not remember, but grown to womanhood. She came towards him, her fair hair uncovered, and shining in the sunshine.

As she reached him she stood still.

"Antony," she cried in her old imperious way, "why don't you go to the gate at once? She is waiting to be let in."

"Who is waiting?" he demanded.

"Go and see," she retorted. And she went off among the flowers, turning once to laugh back at him over her shoulder.

Antony stood looking after her, till she disappeared in the distance.

Then he went slowly towards the gate. As he came near it, he saw a figure standing outside. But he could not see it distinctly, because, curiously enough, though the garden was full of sunshine, it was dark outside the gate, as if it were night.

"Who are you?" asked Antony.

The figure made no reply.

"What do you want?" he asked.

Still the figure made no reply.

Antony felt his heart beating quickly, madly. And then, suddenly from a distance behind him, he heard a gay mocking voice.

"Why don't you open the gate, silly? Can't you hear her knocking?"

Still Antony stood irresolute, though he heard little taps falling on the iron.

"Open it, open it," came the sweet mocking voice, this time with a suspicion of pleading in it.

Antony went towards the gate. A great key was sticking in the iron lock.

He took hold of it and found it needed the strength of both his hands to turn. Then he flung the gate wide open. The figure moved slowly through the gate, and into the full sunshine.

"Antony," she said smiling.

"You! You at last!" he cried.

And he woke, to find he had cried the words aloud. He sat up in bed. A white pigeon was on the sill outside his window, tapping with its beak on the gla.s.s.

Of course it was an entirely trifling incident, and probably he was superst.i.tious to attach any real importance to it. Nevertheless it had a very marked influence on his spirits.

Doubtless it was as well it had, since about this time a certain happening occurred, which, though it did not precisely depress him, most a.s.suredly caused him considerable anger and indignation.

In spite of the somewhat hermit-like life he led, he nevertheless had something of an acquaintance with his fellow-creatures. Among these fellow-creatures there was one, Job Grantley, a labourer on the home farm, possessed of a pretty, rather fragile wife, and a baby of about three months old. Antony had a kindly feeling for the fellow, and often they exchanged the time of day when meeting on the road, or when Job chanced to pa.s.s Antony's garden in the evening.

One evening Antony, busy weeding his small flagged path, saw Job in the road.

"Good evening," said Antony; and then he perceived by the other's face, that matters were not as they might be.

"Sure, what's amiss with the world at all?" demanded Antony, going down towards the gate.

"It's that fellow Curtis," said Job briefly, leaning on the gate.

"And what'll he have been up to now?" asked Antony. It would not be the first time he had heard tales of the agent.

Job kicked the gate.

"Says he's wanting my cottage for a chauffeur he's getting down from Bristol, and I'm to turn out at the end of August."

"Devil take the man!" cried Antony. "Why can't his new chauffeur be living in the room above the garage, like the old one?"

Job grunted. "Because this one's a married man."

"And where are you to go at all?" demanded a wrathful Antony.

"He says I can have the cottage over to Crossways," said Job. "He knows 'tis three mile farther from my work. But that's not all. 'Tis double the rent, and I can't afford it. And that's the long and short of it."

Antony dug his hoe savagely into the earth.

"Why can't he be putting his own chauffeur there, and be paying him wage enough for the higher rent?" he asked.

"Why can't he?" said Job bitterly. "Because he won't. He's had his knife into me ever since March last, when I paid up my rent which he thought I couldn't do. I'd been asking him for time; then the last day--well, I got the money. I wasn't going to tell him how I got it, and he thought I'd been crying off with no reason. See? Now he thinks he can force me to the higher rent. 'Tis a bigger cottage, but 'tis so far off, even well-to-do folk fight shy of the extra walk, and so it's stood empty a year and more. Now he's thinking he'll force my hand."

Antony frowned.

"What'll you do?" he demanded.

"The Lord knows," returned Job gloomily. "If I chuck up my work here, how do I know I'll get a job elsewhere? If I go to the other place I'll be behind with my rent for dead certain, and get kicked out of that, and be at the loss of ten shillings or so for the move. I've not told the wife yet. But I can see nought for it but to look out for a job elsewhere.

Wish I'd never set foot in this blasted little Devonshire village. Wish I'd stayed in my own parts."

Antony was making a mental survey of affairs, a survey at once detailed yet rapid.

"Look here," said he, "I'd give a pretty good deal to get even with that old skinflint, I would that. You and your wife just shift up along with me. There's an extra room upstairs with nothing in it at all. We'll manage top hole. Sure, 'twill be fine havin' me cooking done for me. You can be giving me the matter of a shilling a week, and let the cooking go for the rest of the rent. What'll you be thinking at all?"

Now, the offer was prompted by sheer impulsive kind-heartedness, wedded to a keen indignation at injustice. Yet it must be confessed that a sensation exceeding akin to dismay followed close on its heels. Of his own free will he was flinging his privacy from him, and hugging intrusion to his heart.

Job shook his head.

"You'll not stand it," said he briefly. "We don't say anything, but we know right enough you're a come down. You didn't start in the same mould as the rest of us."

"Rubbish," retorted Antony on a note of half-anger and wholly aghast at the other's perspicacity. "I'm the same clay as yourself."