The Garden

by L. A. G. Strong

“Well,” amended Mr. Gray, “I’m sorry you have had to come here again, through no fault of yours. I’ll keep this, and speak to my son: and—I don’t expect anything of the sort will occur again.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mr. Boggis, after thought.

  How it was managed, or what took place behind the scenes, Dermot never knew. All he knew was that, next morning, after breakfast, his father called him down to the dining-room, and was extraordinarily gentle and kind. He just pointed out the trouble and expense which had been caused, and said it would turn out a very good investment if Dermot learned from it never to interfere with what did not concern him. He held Dermot on his knee, and talked to him quietly and reasonably, as if he were grown-up too. Finally, he gave Dermot the piece of pipe, to keep as a memento, and a reminder not to tamper again with anything he did not understand.

  After that, it seemed evidence of some strange perversity on Dermot’s part that the second row should happen a bare week afterwards. He had learned from his governess how to draw a horse’s head, and accordingly decorated the wall of the house with a series of horses’ heads in chalk, all the way up beside the hall door steps, as a surprise for his father, and a proof of his newly acquired skill. The surprise was badly received, however ; and Dermot came out wide-eyed to the summons of an angry voice. “Guttersnipe,” “street cad,” “little vulgarian,”—terms of severe abuse broke like fireworks round his startled ears. He had let down the prestige of the house: he had befouled its aspect: he had disgraced his parents and himself.

  “I was very gentle with you, when you did a damnfool silly thing last week: and now you think you can do what you like with the place. It isn’t even as if the rotten things were decently drawn. Go and get a sponge and basin, and sponge them off.”

  Very silent, and with shaking hands, Dermot crept out again from the scullery. Even the maids were awed by the thunder from above. Cook gave him the basin hastily, as a person handing something to a leper. His father was still standing on the gravel, his mackintosh over his arm, when Dermot emerged.

  “Good. Now—don’t let there be a sign of that when I come out again.”

  He went up, passing Dermot on the steps. The boy shut his eyes, and cowered against the wall: but nothing happened.

  The despised heads were soon erased, and Dermot slunk off with his basin and grey, dirty sponge. As he passed under the drawing-room window, he heard his Mother’s low tone, and the raised voice answering.

  “My dear, we can’t have him thinking he can do just as he likes. You and Maud——”

  Maud. That was Munny. Mummy and Munny. You and Maud. How different, like the voice Moses heard out of the mountain, angry and terrible. Mummy and Munny. You and Maud. The Old Testament was at this time very near to Dermot. With its outbursts and its terrors, it was the supernatural counterpart of his view of life. His daily walks took him into the midst of it. The pleasure ground on top of Compton Hill was Mount Sinai. From its highest point Moses looked over to Egg Buckland, Lee Moor, and the Dartmoor heights, viewing the Promised Land. The same height did duty for other mountains. In the little gateway on the far side of the ground sat David, and heard of Saul’s death on Gilboa, a hundred yards up the slope. Eli also sat there, presently falling back and breaking his neck. Gideon, on the other hand, put to flight an enemy encamped in Granny’s meadow, his army hiding their lights in washstand jugs with bright pink rims (like Munny’s) or—this in the secrecy of his mind—in chamber pots. These last Dermot arrived at, not from any spirit of levity, but because they were so obviously suited to the purpose. Besides, there would not be enough jugs to go round.

  “What will happen when God comes next time, Munny?”

  “Next time,” Munny would reply, in a hushed whisper, “God won’t come with water. He’ll come with fire, and burn up all the world, and all the wicked people.”

  The answer never varied, and Dermot would have been much upset if it had. Munny was not often consulted upon religious matters. A couple of years ago, she had taken over from his mother the duty of hearing him say his prayers.

  “Our Father, Which art in Heaven——” she intoned.

  “Our Father, Which art in Heaven——”

  “—’allowed be Thy Name.”

  “No.”

  “Come on, Dermot, darling. Don’t be naughty. Say it after Munny. “Allowed be Thy Name.’”

  “No.”

  With childish pedantry, he would not countenance the dropped aspirate: and his mother had to be called in before he would finish the prayer. Nowadays, he said his prayers silently, to himself. His mother would come in, once he was in bed, and read a hymn to him. He became quickly expert in the Irish Hymnal, from which she read, and requested certain favourites so often that she felt obliged to impose a rule, restricting the appearance of the same hymn to once a week. Once a week, therefore, with unfailing regularity, Dermot demanded his favourite of all :

  Weary of earth, and laden with my sin,

  I look at Heaven and long to enter in.

  This was accompanied in his mind by a picture from a magazine, of a ship labouring to her death in stormy seas, while overhead, clear above the wreck, floated the Celestial City—envisaged by the artist as a cross between St. Paul’s and the Crystal Palace. As the hymn progressed, this quite inappropriate picture was succeeded by others. All the hymns were mentally illustrated in this manner, so that each became a very real journey through well-known country. Like almost every child, Dermot loved ritual, and the vividness of his imagination enlarged and complicated it to a high degree. It was love of ritual which prompted him to ask of Munny the question which could only have one answer,

  “Next time God won’t come with water. He’ll come with fire, and burn up all the world, and all the wicked people.”

  This, and the peculiar expression on Munny’s face as she said it, made a definite part of the furniture of life: those constant entities which it was good and reassuring to take out and verify, like the money in one’s money-box. One knew how much there was, and one knew it was there. Taking it out and counting it was a proof that the world was still the world: and this sort of reassurance was very necessary to Dermot. For the world was not always the world. It needed watching. Soon after the affairs of Mr. Boggis and the horses’ heads, the world gave an ugly and terrifying demonstration of its instability. Dermot’s father fell violently ill, and was put to bed with agonising pains in his stomach. The doctor diagnosed appendicitis. It was before the days of ready operation, though both the disease and this way of treating it had become known. Dr. Garfield applied poultices and belladonna, and held his hand. Forty-eight hours of agony followed ; then the disease fortunately cured itself. The patient survived the fever, the inflamed appendix sloughed away, and Dr. Garfield was able to assure Dermot’s mother that, though very weak, her husband was on the way to health. The danger had been near, and the case a lucky one: but such natural recovery, the doctor maintained, was more valuable and more complete than the results of an operation. Whether he was right or not, the recovery was complete, and Mr. Gray had no more trouble of the kind.

  The idea that anyone so tall, so authoritative and permanent should be struck down was a staggering shock to Dermot. He was not allowed to see his father for ten days, and then the shock was increased. The thin, pale, worn face, with the sprouting beard and tired, dull eyes: the kind, husky whisper of a voice, the smile that seemed a physical effort, leaving him more tired than before: it was all awful to Dermot, and he shed tears as soon as he was taken out of the room. The tears were not all compassion for the undreamed-of suffering which must have been necessary to reduce his masterful father to that poor, tired, gentle thing: they were partly compassion for himself, long since frightened of what the world might do to him, and now made aware of even more terrifying powers. When he was a very small boy, before Eithne was born, he well remembered coming crying into that very bedroom, where his mother was getting ready to go out to a concert or a theatre. He was always
afraid she and Daddy would be run over and killed outside the big Guildhall, or at the corner by the theatre. People were killed in the streets—Munny would read about it from the papers: and, as he had never himself been out at night, he imagined that the streets were then more dangerous. It had taken him a long time to get out of that particular fear: and here it was, swooping down again unexpectedly, in another form.

  “Aha! “said the world, nodding and grinning at him sardonically. “You’ve had a narrow escape, young fellame-lad, that’s what you’ve had.”

  For, if Daddy had died, what would have become of them all?

  He sat again with Daddy a few days later, and watched him eat his first solid food: an egg. He knew better this time than to ask for the top, which was usually his portion: realising somehow, so upset, so shocking had the world become, that the invalid would fight with the last of his feeble strength for every morsel of that precious food, and lie back weeping, in the abyss of all defeat, if it were taken from him. So vivid was the imagination that he burst into tears, and fled from the room. Then, shame of shames, they thought at first that he was crying because he had not been given the top of the egg as usual !

  The cruelty of this misunderstanding so humiliated and outraged him that he buried himself deep in his bed, and would not be comforted for an hour or more. But Mummy understood. She always did.

  Book II

  Chapter XIII

  Huge, overshadowing, and vivid, so full of dark massed colour that they seemed closer than the coast beneath their feet, the Dublin Mountains slid swiftly over the satin waters to meet the mailboat. From one dominant peak, of an intense, clear blue, they humped off in rich, uncouth profusion, huddling over the city which lay under their shelter in a silver haze of smoke: guarding it from the wilder, more arrogant peaks of Wicklow to the South. Beneath them, all was dark and vague, till a shaft of sun, falling on the spires of Kingstown, pulled them forth brilliantly from their brooding background, like a cluster of stiff, spiky flowers, rising suddenly above the water. And all the time the land came nearer, nearer. Soon the wide arms of Dublin Bay would open to let in the mailboat: the shapeless hill to the north-east would reach out past her, and take on the remembered contours of the Hill of Howth. Already that dim, insignificant mound near the spires had grown its tiny obelisk. It was Killiney Hill, which, once located, gave a clue to the changed shapes around it. Soon one would see the woods and rocks of Dalkey-and there, marvel, the shaft of sun struck nearer, and caught a low lying green strip, crowned with a short fat pepper-pot: Dalkey Island !

  Dermot stood by the rail, close to the bow. Every now and then he took a deep breath, and looked down from the land at the calm sliding water. It almost made him dizzy, the ease and speed with which the gleaming silver sheet slid past. It was the sea and the land that were moving, not the boat. She was still, a bright and spotless universe, with steady decks, and white paint brilliant in the sun. Her tall masts soared up motionless, her black majestic funnels leaned back into the sky. They were eternal. The afternoon in flux dreamed its way past them. Giddy, Dermot tightened his hold on the rail, and blinked at the dark splendour of the mountains. Now, as they drew nearer, their mass was even nobler than before. Now the Wicklow Mountains began to slope away astern, the Dublin Mountains drew further aloof from them. Now the spires of Kingstown shot up effortless ahead, and now could be seen the low short-bread arms of the harbour for which the boat was heading. And, at last, to complete the spectacle, the sun overcame the Cloud above the coast, and sent a great soft shaft towards the mountains. Gratefully, gently, yet still magnificently, they responded. Underneath their changing line the masses crumbled into new formation. Fresh humps, fresh shoulders burgeoned forth, new shadows fell across the valleys: slow colours flooded the vast, smooth curves and sides: for an instant, as the wide light poured between them and the boat, they looked like piles of giant fruit: then they became clear again, alive and angry, with deep shades of blue and purple, and on their lowest slopes the tiny fields showed emerald. And all the time, all the time, Ireland was drawing near: Ireland, so long unvisited: Ireland, with Granny’s cottage, Granny’s garden, Paddy monkey, Bessie—with Delgany, and Uncle Ben—all, all marvellously in front of him, stretching ahead for days, for weeks, for two whole months: Ireland, real, there, before his eyes: there still, when he shut and opened them again: not just looked back to, called from memory, but there.

  “Wait a minyit, Dermot darling. Hold hard for a minyit, now, till I come with you.”

  Dermot paused, and looked back, surprised.

  “Why, Bessie? I’m only going to see Paddy.”

  “Sure I know, honey. But you’d better wait. Here now”—she wiped her hands hastily on a cloth—“Now I’m ready.”

  “Why couldn’t I go by myself, Bessie? ”

  “Sure, he’s older, d’ye see, and he hasn’t seen ye for a long time.” Her voice fell to the old, familiar coo. “Paddymonkey! Paddy-monkey! ”

  There was a rattle of the chain, and the monkey sprang out from his kennel. The sight of him gave Dermot a shock. Not that he was unrecognisable: he was instantly and clearly Paddy: but he had grown, and coarsened. His black hair had turned in places almost to brown: his whole appearance was fiercer, more alert: and he was nearly half as big again. He sat up very straight on the back of the kennel, eyeing Dermot with keen, suspicious eyes.

  “Paddy,” said Dermot. He took a step forward, and held out his hand.

  “Here,” Bessie pushed by, and surreptitiously gave him a little carrot. “Here, Paddy, honey. Up to me.”

  With a single, swift bound, the monkey leaped to her shoulder, and rested, one arm about her neck, still staring at Dermot.

  “Here,” Bessie coaxed him, “Sure it’s your little friend Dermot, who used to play with you. Sure you remember him. Oh, indeed ye do, now. Give him the carrot, honey,” she added, in a low voice.

  Dermot went closer, and held out the carrot. A change came over the monkey’s demeanour. Very gingerly and softly he put out his hand, took the carrot, and began to eat, glancing up quickly every now and then at the giver.

  “That’s the boy,” cried Bessie, when it was finished. “That’s me little darling Paddy boy. Now, Dermot honey: give him your hand to look at.”

  Unafraid, Dermot put up his hand. Paddy drew back suspiciously: frowned down his nose at it: looked more searchingly into Dermot’s face: then took it, and began gently to examine it. There was a tiny dark spot, like a freckle, near the thumb. He pulled, gibbered suddenly to himself—the first sound he had made—and tried it with his teeth.

  As soon as she judged the introduction made, Bessie took Dermot away.

  “Ye want to be a bit careful with him, at first,” she said. “You see, it’s the way he’s older and stronger in himself. He’s got away on us lately once or twice, and he defies your Grandfather and the Mistress. Only for yous coming, they’d have got rid of him.”

  “Got rid of him! ”

  Dermot stopped blankly. Such a thought was sheer blasphemy. He could not understand it.

  “Got rid of him! ” he repeated. “But why—how silly !—how——”

  “Well, you see, honey,” Bessie glanced round anxiously, lest anyone should hear: “he’s a bit noisy, in the night time, and he wakes your Grandfather: and the neighbours do be complaining, sometimes.”

  “Noisy! At night! What does he do? ”

  “He does be banging his tin mug on the flags, and rattlin’ his chain. Don’t say too much about him, in the house, now.” Bessie’s anxious face creased into rueful smiles. “We had a terrible to-do on the head of him, only last Sunday.”

  “What was it about? ”

  “He wouldn’t let the old ladies into the closet. Your Granny had to take the cane to him.”

  Dermot considered this.

  “I expect I’ll have to hold him again.” The anxious look reappeared. .

  “Be careful how ye thwart him. He’s a bit wicked, when he gets excited.
Sure ye’ll mind him, honey? ”

  “I will,” Dermot promised.

  The subject was a live one, as he found when he sat down to his tea.

  “The ape,” declared Grandpapa (he pronounced it “the yape ”)—“the ape does be getting very savage. Ye’d do well not to approach him at all close. Ye’d want to mind yourself, for fear he’d do you some sort of mischief.”

  “I was with him just now,” ventured Dermot, “and he didn’t do me any harm. Bessie was there too,” he added hastily, seeing his Grandpapa’s face.

  “It would be well, Margaret,” said Grandpapa, “it would be well—Margaret, do ye hear me—it would be well, I’m saying, not to let the children near the ape.”

  Eithne, fortunately, showed no disposition to go near Paddy. Dermot hobnobbed with him more or less surreptitiously for a day or so, and then, as no harm befell, he did not bother to hide their conversations. Paddy, if more independent, was as friendly as ever: in fact, he visibly improved in disposition. Maybe it was solitude and lack of a playmate which had aged him. Grandpapa shook his head gravely, when he saw Dermot by the kennel, but he did not interfere: and the matter rested.

  For one thing, the family were only too pleased to see Dermot happily engaged. A new problem had arisen, the problem of filling his days. He was too big to be contented walking after the pram when Eithne rode, and her pace was too slow for him when she walked. Unaware of the problem himself, but making it plain to others, he found his own solution. Munny had left them ; she liked very young children, and there was no further prospect of them with the Grays. Her successor, a young and goodlooking girl called Annie, often took the two down to the Sea Wall, which, though now shorn of its glory by the new promenade, is still a feature of Dun Laoghaire. Below the Sea Wall is an enchanting half mile of rocks and pools and inlets, and here, sitting resentfully beside the pram, Dermot saw scores of boys, ragged and gentle, but mostly ragged, fishing, hunting for shrimps, digging for bait, busied in all the hundred ways which such a paradise afforded. He watched with growing envy, and went home with the one idea fixed in his head. It took about a week to get his way, but Dermot, once his imagination was roused, proceeded with unremitting obstinacy in the one direction. The new desire ousted all others. He moped about the garden, he grew bilious, he would not eat. In the end, his unhappiness carried the point. Objections were many. He would fall into the water. He would take cold. He would catch fleas, or diseases, from the little ragged boys. They would molest him. He would pick up vulgar accents and expressions. He would run the fish-hooks into his fingers. To all these Dermot replied with unhappiness and the reiterated assertion of his desire.