It was in one of these, though not the best, that Freddy lived with her sister Griselda and her father, George Alexander Webster. The house was called St Agnes’ and it was very nearly a genuine Bedlamite dwelling. But when St Agnes’ was three-quarters finished Prebendary Bedlam had run out of money, and had not completed his plan. He had not died bankrupt or in poverty, for in his day it was almost impossible for a dignitary of the Church of England to descend to such vulgarities, but it had been an uncommonly narrow squeak. After his death the house had been completed, but not according to the original plans, by an owner whose taste had not been as pure as that of Bedlam, whose mania for building had been guided by a genuine knowledge of what can be done with stone and plaster. In a later stage St Agnes’ had suffered a fire, and some rebuilding had been done around 1900 in the taste of that era. Since that time St Agnes’ had been little altered. George Alexander Webster had made it a little more comfortable inside; the basement kitchen had been replaced by a modern one, and arrangements had been made to heat the house in winter by a system which did not combine all the draughtiness of England with the bitter cold of Canada, but otherwise he had not touched it.
His contribution to the place was made in the grounds. St Agnes’ stood in ten or twelve acres of its own, and Webster’s taste for gardening had brought them to a pitch which would surely have delighted Prebendary Bedlam. Under the owner’s direction, and with the sure hand of Tom to assist, the gardens had become beautiful, and as always happens with beautiful things, many people wanted them.
Mr Webster did not like lending his gardens. He knew what the people thought who wanted to borrow them. They thought that a man with such gardens ought to be proud to show them off. They thought that a rich man should not be so selfish as to keep his beautiful gardens to himself. They thought that common decency positively demanded that he make his gardens available for a large variety of causes, and that he should not mind if a cause which had borrowed his gardens should thereupon charge other people admission to see them. He was, it was argued, “in a position to entertain”; most of the people who “gave of their time and effort” in order to advance causes “were not in a position to entertain”; the least that he could do to minimize the offence of being better off than these good people was to assume the entertaining position upon demand. But he did not like to have other people taking their pleasure with his gardens any more than he would have liked to have other people take their pleasure with his wife, if that lady had been living.
He was ready to admit that he was well off. (Rich men never say that they are rich; they think it unlucky.) He was ready to contribute generously to good causes, even when the goodness was somewhat inexplicable. But he did not want strangers trampling through the gardens which were his personal creation, and which he liked to keep for himself. The people who wanted his gardens did not, of course, know of his opinions in this matter, nor would they have believed that any man could seriously want such large gardens all to himself. Indeed, there were people of advanced political opinions in Salterton who could not imagine that one man with two daughters could really want so large a house as St Agnes’ all to himself, for any reason except to spite the workers and mock their less fortunate lot. These advanced people pointed out that a man could only be in one room at a time, sit in one chair at a time, and sleep in one bed at a time; therefore a man whose desires soared beyond one room with a chair and a bed in it was morally obliged to justify himself. An instructor at Waverley who was enjoying the delicious indignations of impecunious youth had once made a few remarks to a class in elementary philosophy on the iniquity of consuming seventy tons of coal each winter to warm one man; as Waverley had already drawn upon Mr Webster’s purse and hoped to give it many a good shake in the future, the instructor was instructed to find fuel for his own fires further from Salterton. But Mr Webster, beneath the horny carapace which a rich man must grow in order to protect himself against his natural enemies, the poor, had depths of feeling undreamed of by those who talked so much about him; he dearly loved his big, rather ugly old house and his big, beautiful garden; after his daughters he loved these best of all.
It was because of his daughter Griselda that he had agreed to lend his garden to the Salterton Little Theatre for an outdoor production or, as Mrs Roscoe Forrester preferred to call it, “a pastoral”. The particular pastoral which had been chosen was The Tempest, and Griselda, who had just been released from boarding-school, was named as a possible person to play Ariel. It had been Mrs Forrester’s intention from the beginning that the play should be done at St Agnes’, and at the meeting where the matter was discussed she began her campaign in these words:
“And now we come to the all-important question of site. There are several places in the city where a pastoral could be done. Bagot Park is just lovely, but it has been pointed out to me that there is baseball practically nightly. The Pauldrons have a lovely place, but Mrs Pauldron points out that it is right on the river, and well, if one of the boats sounded its siren right in the middle of a scene, well, it would ruin the scene, wouldn’t it?” (Laughter, led by Mrs Pauldron in a manner which she later described to her husband as “laughing the idea out of court”.) “Anyway, it gets damp after sundown.” (Histrionic shudder by Mrs Pauldron.) “The lawn in front of Old Bedlam is just perfect, but the Provost tells me that there are likely to be several theological conferences there this summer, and therefore he cannot be sure of anything. Mrs Bumford has kindly offered her grounds, but the committee feels regretfully that even if we put a row of chairs on the street, we could not accommodate more than sixty people in the audience. So the matter is still up in the air.”
Here a lady rose and asked if anyone had thought of approaching Mrs S. P. Solleret? Mrs Roscoe Forrester pursed her lips and closed her eyes in a manner which made it plain that she had spoken to Mrs Solleret, and that she did not wish to go into the matter of Mrs Solleret’s reply.
It was at this point that Professor Vambrace, who had been primed by Mrs Forrester before the meeting, rose hesitatingly to his feet.
“Has any thought been given to St Agnes’?” said he.
Mrs Forrester’s eyes flew open, and she seemed to project beams of new hope from them at the audience. “I hadn’t thought of it,” said she. “I suppose it is because Miss Webster is likely to be a member of the cast, and we just never thought of looking among the cast for—er—um.” Mrs Forrester found these uncompleted sentences, the Greek rhetorical device of aposiopesis, very handy in her duties as president. She would drop a sentence in the middle, completing it with a speaking look, or a little laugh, thereby forcing other people to do her dirty work. Professor Vambrace, that bony and saturnine hatchet-man of the Salterton Little Theatre, obliged her now.
“May I suggest,” he said, standing in the half-squatting, jackknife position of one who wishes to address a meeting without making a formal speech, “that Miss Griselda Webster be appointed a committee of one to approach her father regarding the performance of The Tempest in the gardens at St Agnes’.”
That was how it was done.
The approach which Griselda used might have surprised the meeting. It took this form.
“Daddy, have any sharks been after you for the garden this year?”
“Two or three. I said I’d think about it.”
“The Little Theatre has put me up to asking you if you’d let them do the play here. They thought I didn’t see through them, but I did. They asked a few first, and pretended there was no place to go unless you kicked through. You don’t have to say yes because of me.”
“Do you want to have it here?”
“Well, there’s no denying that it would be nice.”
“Was that why they hinted about giving you a leading part?”
“Probably. But they wrought better than they knew. I’m really quite a good actress. And I’m not what you’d call plain. At least, not what you’d call plain when you consider that the only other possible person is Pearl Vamb
race, who has rather a moustache. I’ll be quite good even if we do it on Old Ma Bumford’s little hanky of a weedy lawn, with half the audience sitting in the road.”
“It sounds like one of Nellie Forrester’s sneaky tricks.”
“Yes. But Daddy: if you let them have your garden you have a good excuse for refusing it to everybody else for the rest of this summer. Had you thought of that?”
“Yes; I suppose so. All right. Remind me in the morning to tell Tom.”
Tom took it very well. Very well, that is to say, for a gardener. He pointed out that it was not the damage to the lawns that he minded; that could be repaired by a month or so of rolling. It was the way people got their feet into his borders that bothered him. However, he realized that his employer had to lend the garden sometimes, and from what he had heard, the Little Theatre performances did not draw very big crowds, so it might not be too bad.
Mr Webster sympathized. Nevertheless, he said, if the thing was to be done, it must be done properly. Therefore Tom was to give the Little Theatre people any help they wanted. Mr Webster did not intend to have anything to do with the business himself. It pained him to see people in his garden who did not appreciate it as much as he did, and he did not propose to give himself needless pain.
Tom accepted this direction with a mental reservation. If it was in any way possible, he meant to keep the intruders out of the part of his domain which was called The Shed. It was here that he kept his tools, neatly hung up in rows, and tidily arranged on his workbench. The sight of a rake or a hoe standing on the floor, however neatly, offended Tom’s professional sense. He was the kind of gardener who sharpened hoes with a file. Mr Webster had once remarked that he had been shaved with razors which were duller than Tom’s hoes. In The Shed, Tom was in the capital of his kingdom. It is a measure of his affection for Freddy that he had permitted her to store her homemade wines in a corner of The Shed, in some racks which he built for her himself. They were covered by a folded tarpaulin. Insofar as a gardener’s workshop can be neat, The Shed was neat.
The Shed was a misleading name for this workshop. It was in fact a conservatory, built by the Victorian owner of St Agnes’ who had bought it from Prebendary Bedlam’s heirs. It was an elaborate and hideous erection; from the ground rose a stone foundation three feet high, and, above this, iron supports soared upward, to meet in an arch. Between the iron-work was glass, so that, inside and out, The Shed presented the appearance of an oblong birdcage. An elaborate system of canvas curtains had been devised to keep the sun from scorching the plants within, and these curtains were drawn up or let down by an intricate system of cording, like the rigging of a sailing-ship, which added to the birdcage a strong suggestion of a spider-web. The iron framework was ornamented at intervals with outbreaks of iron leafage and iron fruitage, which had grown rusty with time. There were no broken panes of glass in it, for Tom would not have permitted such an offence against neatness, but not all the panes matched, and some of them were discoloured by rust from the ironwork. In this conservatory Victorian lovers had doubtless flirted and whispered. And in its warmth, among displays of fern and large, opulent plants which were valued for their rarity rather than their beauty, rheumatisms long since at peace, and gouty toes which have ceased to twinge, were eagerly discussed and described by their owners. But the glory of the conservatory had fled. It was now The Shed, and the plants which served the garden and the house were grown in a modern greenhouse behind the garage. But The Shed was Tom’s citadel, and he meant to defend it to the last.
As luck would have it, The Shed was the first thing to fall into the hands of the Little Theatre. It happened about a week after Griselda had spoken, as a committee of one, to her father; since then Freddy had allowed no day to pass without working upon Tom, heartening him for a vigorous resistance to any invasion of The Shed.
It was a Friday afternoon, and after a threatening morning a businesslike rain had begun to fall. Tom sat by his workbench, mixing some stuff which was related to the future welfare of begonias; Freddy sat on a pile of boxes, reading George Saintsbury’s Notes On A Cellar Book, which was a favourite volume of hers. The door burst open without warning and Mrs Roscoe Forrester, Professor Vambrace and Griselda ran in.
“You’ll be dry here,” said Griselda; “I’ll go into the house and see if I can find some umbrellas.”
She ran out into the rain again; the door which led from The Shed into the rest of the house had been locked for many years, and a heavy cupboard stood before it.
“You’ll be Freddy,” said Mrs Forrester, who liked to use this Gaelic form of assertion jocosely. She was not a Scot herself, but she liked to enrich her conversation with what she believed to be Scottish and Irish idioms. “How sweet you look, sitting there with your wee bookie!”
“I am Fredegonde Webster,” said Freddy rising. “Good afternoon. You are from the Little Theatre. This is Mr Gwalchmai, the gardener: Tom—Mrs Forrester and Professor Vambrace.”
Tom touched his cap and said nothing. He had been a good soldier in his time—a first-rate sergeant—but he had never known what to do about surprise attacks, except to resent their sneakiness.
“We’re going to be great friends, Mr—uh—but perhaps I’d better call you Tom right away,” said Mrs Forrester, reaching for his hand. Tom’s hand was covered with muck, and he would have dearly liked to give it to her, but he forebore. Professor Vambrace gave what he doubtless meant to be a friendly glance, but was really a baleful glare, at both Tom and Freddy, to be shared between them.
“Wet,” said he. Classics was his subject, and he sometimes affected a classical simplicity in social conversation.
Freddy was young in years, but old in certain sorts of wisdom; she had learned from her father, for instance, that nothing is so disconcerting as silence, and she was preparing to give Mrs Forrester a lot of it. But Professor Vambrace’s summing up of the weather had scarcely died upon the air before the door burst open again and Griselda rushed in with two more people under an umbrella. The first was Solly Bridgetower, a young man whom Freddy admired in a friendly sort of way; the other was an unknown woman.
“We can finish talking here,” said Griselda. “We’ll get wet if we try to make a dash for the front door.”
Griselda did not recognize The Shed as Tom’s special property. She thought of it simply as an extension of her father’s house. Tom was not the big figure in her world that he was in Freddy’s.
“What about Larry and Mr Mackilwraith?” asked Mrs Forrester.
“We’ll keep an eye out for them,” said Griselda. “Larry wanted to finish his little sketch of the lawn. Anyway, he’s hanging about to look for What’s His Name—the fellow who’s going to play Ferdinand.”
“Mackilwraith will not be here until after four,” said Professor Vambrace. “School.”
“Probably not until after half-past four,” said Solly. “If old Hector hasn’t changed his ways he’ll have some wretched child under his eye for at least half an hour after closing-time. One of the really great detainers and keepers-in of our time, Old Hector.”
“Mr Mackilwraith is a schoolteacher,” said Mrs Forrester to the unknown woman. “I do hope he’ll be able to take a look at the lawn; he’s our business manager, and he can always tell how many it will seat, and what money that will mean, and all those things. A mathematical wizard.”
“A creaking pedant,” said Solly.
Professor Vambrace gave him a look which suggested that while irreverent remarks about schoolteachers did not necessarily affect university professors, they were in questionable taste.
“I speak, of course, in a rich, Elizabethan manner,” said Solly, with a rich, Elizabethan gesture which almost toppled a tower of small flower pots. “He’s not a bad chap really—I suppose. Freddy, I greet you. You and Miss Rich haven’t met, have you? Miss Rich is from New York and she is going to direct our play. This is Fredegonde Webster; she lives here, but splendour has not corrupted her. A pard-like spirit, be
autiful and swift.”
“How do you do, Miss Webster,” said Miss Rich holding out her hand.
“I am very well, thank you,” said Freddy, thinking that Miss Rich was a very well-mannered person, and nicely dressed. “Solly is a great tease, as I suppose you have found out.”
“We only met about an hour ago,” said Miss Rich.
“Aren’t we dignified, though?” said Mrs Forrester, with what she believed to be a laughing glance toward Freddy. “When one is just growing up—oh, the dignity of it! I remember when I was that age; do you remember, Val? Wasn’t I just loaded with dignity?”
“I don’t really remember, Nell,” said Miss Rich.
“Well, I do.” Mrs Forrester was firm. “We were both absolutely bursting with dignity.”
“But you got over all that, didn’t you?” said Freddy, sweetly. “I suppose that’s the fun of being grown up; one has shed so many things which seem desirable to somebody of my age.”
“That will do, Freddy,” said Griselda.
Freddy was happy to leave the matter there. Griselda’s rebuke carried little weight, and she was pleasantly conscious of having choked off Old Ma Forrester.
“Well, have we made up our minds?” asked Professor Vambrace. “Will the lawn do? Will those trees give the background we want? If so, let us make our decision. What do you think, Miss Rich?”
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