In one of the new cottages at the edge of the town beyond lives, or tries to live, a man who fought for many years in one of the suburbs a losing battle against London. His father had farmed land now covered by streets. He himself was persuaded to sell all but his house and garden to raise money for a business which promised his sons great wealth. He retained barely enough to live upon; the business, an honest one, failed; and in a short time misfortunes compelled him to open a shop. He converted the house—that was once a farmhouse—into a shop, and not five years ago it could still be seen at the end of a row of gaudy, glittering windows, itself a village shop, having but a common house window for the display of wares, the interior gloomy and approached through a strip of garden where a lime-tree put on and shed its leaves with the air of a princess of old romance. The back garden, half an orchard, was bordered along a side street by a high wall, and over that a broad cherry used to lean a gnarled branch and shower its blossoms upon the asphalte; the foot-passengers complained of the tree which had grown without foreknowledge of the fact that men would pass below in silk hats, and the branch was lopped. In the shop itself everything was for sale, everything that officious travellers could foist upon the little weak-eyed half-farmer, half-gardener who kept the The owner made no concessions except such as he was forced to, as when he bought the stock of jewellery because the traveller praised his cat; or allowed the cherry tree to be mutilated because the new Borough Council commanded. He dressed in breeches, gaiters and heavy boots, and never wore a coat or took his pipe out of his mouth (except to play with puss). Seldom did he leave the house, unless it was to go into the garden or to take a walk down the emptied busy street at night, when the only sound was the crickets’ song from the bakers’ shops. The little old house rippled over by creeper was beautiful then—the lime tree and the creeper trembling in the gusty moonlight, and the windows and doorway hollow and dark and romantic as if a poet had made them to sting men’s hearts with beauty and with regret. No one can ever say what the old man thought as he slammed the door after one of these walks and was alone with himself. Certainly he regretted the big decorous high-gated houses that used to stand opposite his, veiled by wistaria, passion flower and clematis; the limes that used to run the whole length of his father’s There followed a period when, the old attitudes, the Those elms had come unconsciously to be part of the real religion of men in that neighbourhood, and certainly of that old man. Their cool green voices as they swayed, their masses motionless against the evening or the summer storms, created a sense of pomp and awe. They gave mystic invitations that stirred his blood if not his slowly working humble brain, and helped to build and to keep firm that sanctuary of beauty to which we must be able to retire if we are to be more than eaters and drinkers and newspaper readers. When they were gone he won The new people were a mysterious, black-liveried host, the grandchildren of peers, thieves, gutter-snipes, agricultural labourers, artisans, shopkeepers, professional men, farmers, foreign financiers, an unrelated multitude. They were an endless riddle to the old man. He used to stare at their houses as one might stare at a corpse in the hope of discovering that there was something alive there. They were as impenetrable as their houses, when at night the blinds of the lighted rooms were drawn and figures or parts of figures shot fantastically by. He read of their bankruptcies, their appointments, their crimes, their successes, unwittingly, in the newspapers. He could He turned from them to his garden and cherry-tree, and thinking of those who had walked there, and in the long garden on the other side of the fence, he felt at home again, with his cat and her long line of descendants. That long garden had survived the big house to which it had belonged. A merchant had lived there with his family of four daughters, dark, tall women, whose pride and tender speech the old trees in their garden often recalled. All were beautiful, and they were most beautiful together. They walked, they rode, they played and read in the garden, and the old man could see them there. They were said to be clever and their father was wealthy. They were nearly always together, and as often as possible with him. They were a tribe apart, of extraordinary perfection of strength and grace, holding their own against the world. And yet, as the old man thought to himself, looking at their garden in the rain, not one of them was ever married. They had moved right into London after selling their house and land. They had come to his shop once or twice after and made an excuse for going into the garden: they looked into their own as if they had lost something there. Thinking of them he went into his shop and opened a book. A minute black insect, disturbed from among the leaves, crawled over and over the white page as he pretended to read; it went in zigzags half-an-inch long, lost in the But, of course, that was not why he left. Nobody knew why he left. In his seventieth year he ran away, bursting out of the crowd as one sheep no braver than the rest will do sometimes, inexplicably. He has brought his cats with him, and he has money enough to last until he is dead. Being considered by his niece as of unsound mind, he is free to do as he will and is happy when he is alone. |