The Devil's Garden by W. B. Maxwell

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"London isn't Rodhaven either."

Then once again the talk became serious; and once again Ridgett saw in
Mrs. Dale's white face, trembling fingers, and narrowed eyes, the
deadly anxiety that she was suffering. With that face opposite to one,
it would have been monstrously cruel not to offer the wisest and best
considered advice that one could anyhow produce.

"Here's _verb. sap_," he said solemnly. "_Ultimatum_, and _ne plus
ultra_. I'm giving you Latin for Latin, Mr. Dale. I understand your
attitude, and I appreciate its bearing; but I say to you, the best
causes sometimes need the best advocates."

"Yes!" Mavis drew in her breath with a little gasp.

"If any of the gentry down here would speak up for you, send you a few
testimonials--well, I should get them to do it. You see, from what you
tell me of the case, you've your Member of Parliament against you. It
would be useful to counteract--"

Then Mavis eagerly explained that the biggest man of the neighborhood
had promised to give his support to her husband. This great personage
was the Right Honorable Everard Barradine, an ex-Cabinet Minister and
a large landed proprietor, who lived over at the Abbey House, on the
edge of Manninglea Chase, five miles away. Mr. Barradine had always
borne a good heart to her and hers.

"Capital!" said Mr. Ridgett, visibly brightening. "A friend at
court--what's the proverb? It's not for me to let fall any remarks
about wire-pulling. But naturally there's a freemasonry among the
bigwigs. You take my tip, and use Mr. Barradine's interest for all
it's worth."

"Well," said Dale, "he has given a promise--of a sort--and I shan't
bother him further."

After that the talk became light again. As if the strain of her
anxiety was more than Mavis Dale could bear for long at a time, she
plunged into frivolous discussion, telling Mr. Ridgett of the
splendors and beauties of the Abbey House. It was a show-place. Its
gardens surpassed belief; royal persons came hundreds of miles to look
at them. And the wild historic woodland of Manninglea Chase was
famous, it was said, all over Europe. Talking thus, she seemed as gay
and careless as a child of ten.

Mr. Ridgett, puffing his pipe luxuriously, contemplated her animated
face with undisguised admiration; and presently Dale felt irritated by
the admiring scrutiny.

That was what always happened. At first he felt pleased that people
should admire his wife; but if they seemed to admire her the least
little shade too much, he became angry. In the lanes, in church,
anywhere, he froze too attentive glances of admiring males with a most
portentous scowl. It was not that he entertained the faintest doubt of
her loyalty and devotion, or of her power to protect herself from
improper assiduities; but he loved her so passionately that his blood
began to boil at the mere thought of anybody's having the audacity to
court her favor. Instinctively, on such occasions, words formed
themselves in his mind and clamored for utterance on his lips. "You
take care, my fine fellow;" "Hands off, please;" "Let me catch you
trying it"--and so on: only thought-counters secretly used by himself,
and never issued in the currency of spoken words.

Now the internal warmth was just sufficient to make him push back his
chair and break up the party. "Mavis," he said, rather grimly, "we
mustn't detain Mr. Ridgett from his duties." Then he forced a laugh.
"I'm nobody; and so it doesn't matter how long I sit over my supper.
But we've to remember that Mr. Ridgett is the postmaster of
Rodchurch."

II

He went to bed early; but he knew that he would not sleep until the
mail-cart had gone.

His wife was sleeping peacefully. He could feel the warmth of her body
close against him; her breath, drawn so lightly and regularly, just
touched his face; and he edged away cautiously, seeking space in which
to turn without disturbing her. At immeasurably long periods the
church clock chimed the quarters. That last chime must have been the
quarter after eleven.

Every now and then there came a sound that told him of the things that
were happening on the ground floor; and in the intervals of silence he
began to suffer from an oppressive sense of unreality. This disruption
of the routine of life was so strange as to seem incredible. They were
making up the two big bags for the up mail and the down mail; and he
was lying here like a state prisoner, of no account for the time
being, while below him his realm remained actively working.

As midnight approached, an increasing anxiety possessed him. The horse
and cart had been standing under the window for what appeared to be
hours, and yet they would not bring out the bags. What in the name of
reason were they waiting for now? Then at last he detected the
movement of shuffling footsteps; he heard voices--Ridgett's voice
among the others; a wheel grated against the curbstone, and the cart
rolled away. The sounds of the church clock chiming twelve mingled
with the reverberations made by the horse's hoofs as the cart passed
between the garden walls. Thank goodness, anyhow, they had got it off
to its time.

With a sigh, he turned on his back and stared at the darkness that hid
the ceiling. Ah! A profuse perspiration had broken out on his neck and
chest. To give himself more air he pulled down the too generous supply
of bed clothes, and in imagination he followed the cart.

It was progressing slowly and steadily along the five miles of road to
the railway junction. Would Perkins, the driver, break the regulations
to-night and pick up somebody for a ride with the sacred bags? Such a
gross breach of duty would render Perkins, or his employer, liable to
a heavy penalty; and again and again Dale had reminded him of the
risks attending misbehavior. But unwatched men grow bold. This would
be a night to bring temptation in the way of Perkins. Some
villager--workman, field-laborer, wood-cutter--tramping the road would
perhaps ask for a lift. "What cheer, mate! I'm for the night-mail.
Give us a lift's far as junction, and I'll stan' the price of a pint
to you."

A glance up and down the empty road--and then "Jump in. Wunnerful
weather we're having, aren't us?" So much for the wise regulation!
_Most_ wise regulation, if one understand it properly. For when once
you begin tampering with the inviolable nature of a mail-cart, where
are you to stop? Suppose your chance passenger proves to be not an
honest subject, but a malefactor--_one of a gang_. "Take that, ye
swab." A clump on the side of his head, and the driver is sent
endways from the box-seat; the cart gallops on to where the, rest of
the gang lurk waiting for it; strong arms, long legs, and the
monstrous deed is consummated. Her Majesty's bags have been stolen.

Though so dark in this bedroom, there would be light enough out there.
There was no moon; but the summer night, as he knew, would never
deepen to real obscurity. It would keep all of a piece till dawn, like
a sort of gray dusk, heavy and impenetrable beneath the trees, but
quite transparent on the heath and in the glades; and then it would
become all silvery and trembling; the wet bracken would glisten
faintly, high branches of beech trees would glow startlingly, each
needle on top of the lofty firs would change to a tiny sword of
fire--just as he had seen happen so often years ago, when as an
undisciplined lad he lay out in the woods for his pleasure.

Now! The church clock had struck one. Barring accidents, the cart was
at its goal; and in imagination he saw the junction as clearly as if
he had been standing at Perkins' elbow. There was the train for London
already arrived--steam rising in a straight jet from the engine, guard
and porter with lanterns, and a flood of orange light streaming from
the open doors of the noble Post Office coach. Perkins hands in his up
bag, receives a bag in exchange, and half his task is done. Forty
minutes to wait before he can perform the other half of it. Then,
having passed over the metals with the cart, he will attend to the
down train; hand in his other bag, receive the London bag; and, as
soon as the people in the signal-box will release the crossing-gates,
he may come home.

Dale knew now that he would not sleep until the cart returned.

When the church clock struck the half-hour after two, he lay straining
his ears to catch the sound of the horse's hoofs. Finally it came to
him, immensely remote, a rhythmic plod, plod, plod. Then in a few more
minutes the cart was at rest under his window again; they were taking
in the bags; bolts shot into their fastenings, a key turned in a lock,
and the clerk went back to bed at the top of the house. All was over
now. Nothing more would happen until the other clerk came down in a
couple of hours' time, until the bags were opened, until Ridgett came
yawning from his hired bedroom at the saddler's across the street, and
the new day's work began. And Dale would be shut out of the work--a
director who might not even assist, a master superseded, a general
under arrest in the midst of his army.

He gulped and grew hot. "By Jupiter! I'll have to tell them what I
think of them up there, and please the pigs!"

Then he remembered the pleadings of his wife. She had implored him to
keep a tight hold of himself; and in fairness to her he must exercise
discretion. She and he were one. With extraordinary tenderness he
mentally framed the words that by custom he employed when speaking of
her. "She is the wife of my boosum."

For a little while he calmed himself by thinking only of her. Then,
tossing and turning and perspiring again, he began to think of his
whole life, seeing it as a pageant full of wonder and pathos. Holy
Jupiter! how hard it had been at its opening! Everything against
him--just a lout among the woodside louts, an orphan baited and
lathered by a boozy stepfather, a tortured animal that ran into the
thickets for safety, a thing with scarce a value or promise inside it
except the little flame of courage that blows could not extinguish!
And yet out of this raw material he had built up the potent, complex,
highly-dowered organism known to the world as Mr. Dale of Rodchurch.
There was the pride and glory--from such a start to have reached so
magnificent a position. But he could not have done it--not all of
it--without Mavis.

It would be unkind to wake this dear bedfellow merely because he
himself could not sleep. He clasped his hands behind his head, and by
a prolonged effort of will remained motionless. But insomnia was
exciting every nerve in his body; each memory seemed to light up the
entire labyrinth of his brain; each sense-message came inward like a
bomb-shell, reaching with its explosion the highest as well as the
deepest centers, discharging circuits of swift fire through every area
of associated ideas, and so completely shattering the normal congruity
between impressions and recognitions that the slight drag of the sheet
across his raised toes was sufficient to make him feel again the
pressure of thick boots that he had worn years ago when he tramped as
new postman on the Manninglea Road.

And each thing that he thought of he saw--hawthorn blossom like snow
on the hedgerows, red rhododendrons as vivid as Chinese lanterns in
the gloom of the dark copse, the green moss of the rides, the white
paint of the gates. The farthest point of his round was Mr.
Barradine's mansion, and he used to arrive there just before eight
o'clock. With the thought came the luminous pictures, and he saw
again, as clearly as fifteen years ago, the splendor of the Abbey
House--that is, all one can see of it as one approaches its vast
servants' offices. Here, solidly real, were the archway, the first and
the second courtyard, grouped gables and irregular roof ridges, the
belfry tower and its gilded vane; men washing a carriage, a horse
drinking at the fountain trough, a dog lying on a sunlit patch of
cobble-stones and lazily snapping at flies; a glimpse, through iron
scroll work, of terrace balustrades, yellow gravel, and lemon-trees in
tubs; the oak doors of laundries, drying-rooms, and so forth.

It was here, outside the laundry, that he saw Mavis for the first
time; and although the sleeves of her print dress were rolled up and
she was carrying a metal skimming dish, something ineffably refined
and superior in her deportment led him to believe that she was some
lesser member of the august Barradine family, and not one of its hired
dependents. He touched his peaked cap, and did not even venture to say
"Good morning, miss."

Then he found out about her. She was not quite so grand as all that.
You might say she was a young lady right enough, if you merely counted
manners and education; but she had been born far below the level of
gentility. She belonged to the Petherick lot; and, living with her
aunt at North Ride Cottage, she came every day to the Abbey to do some
light and delicate work in Mr. Barradine's model dairy. The fact that
she had lost both her parents interested and pleased Dale: orphanhood
seemed to contain the embryonic germs of a mutual sympathy.

He used to speak to her now whenever he saw her. One day they stood
talking in the copse, and he showed her their distorted reflections on
the curves of her shining cream-dish. She laughed; and that day he was
late on his round.

Then somehow he got to a heavy sort of chaff about the letters. She
said she liked receiving letters, and she never received enough of
them. He used to say, "Good morning, miss. My mate started off with a
tremendous heavy bag to-day. I expect the most of it was for you.
You'll find 'em when you get home this evening--shoals of 'em."

Walking fast on his round he rehearsed such little speeches, and if
she made an unanticipated answer he was baffled and confused. He
suffered from an extreme shyness when face to face with her.

Then all at once his overwhelming admiration gave him a hot flow of
language. Beginning the old cumbrous facetiousness about her
correspondence, he blurted out the true thoughts that he had begun to
entertain.

"You didn't ought to want for letters, miss, and you wouldn't--not if
I was your letter-writer. I'd send you a valentine every day of the
year."

As he spoke, he looked at her with burning eyes. He was astonished,
almost terrified by his hardiness; and what he detected of its effect
on her threw him into an indescribable state of emotion.

Rough and coarse he might be, and yet not truly disagreeable to her
fine senses; his freckled face and massive shoulders did not repel
her; no instinct of the lovely princess turned sick at these advances
of the wild man of the woods. Under his scrutiny she showed a sort of
fluttered helplessness, a mingling of beauty and weakness that sent
fiery messages thrilling through and through him, a pale tremor, a
soft glow, a troubled but not offended frown; and from beneath all
these surface manifestations the undeveloped woman in her seemed to
speak to the matured manhood in him--seemed to say without words, "Oh,
dear me, what is this? I hope you haven't taken a real fancy to my
whiteness and slenderness and tremulousness; because if you _have_,
you are so big and so strong that I know you'll get me in the end."

That was the crucial moment of his marvelous life. After that all his
dreams fused and became one. He felt as if from soft metal he had
changed into hard metal. And, moreover, the stimulus of love seemed to
induce a vast intellectual growth; things that had been difficult of
comprehension became lucidly clear; prejudices and ignorances fell
away from him of their own accord. A shut world had suddenly become an
open world.

As a grown man he returned to the benches of evening school. He
learned to write his beautiful copper-plate hand, and knocked the
bottom out of arithmetic and geography. Then came sheer erudition--the
nature of chemical elements, stars in their courses, kings of England
with their Magna Chartas and habeas corpuses. Nor content even then,
he must needs grapple with Roman emperors and Greek republics, and
master the fabled lore concerning gods and goddesses, cloven-footed
satyrs, and naked nymphs of the grove. But he understood that, in
spite of all this culture, in spite, too, of his greater care for
costume and his increased employment of soap and water, Mavis was
still enormously above him. The aunt, a smooth-tongued little woman
whom for a long time he regarded as implacably hostile to his suit,
made him measure the height of the dividing space every time that he
called at North Ride Cottage. Plainly trying to crush him with the
respectability both of herself and of her surroundings, she showed off
all the presents from the Abbey--the china and glass ornaments, the
piano; the photographs of Mr. Barradine on horseback, of the late Lady
Evelyn Barradine in her pony-carriage, of Mr. Barradine's guests with
guns waiting to shoot pheasants. And she conducted him into and out of
the two choicely upholstered rooms which on certain occasions Mr.
Barradine deigned to occupy for a night or a couple of nights--for
instance, when the Abbey House was being painted and he fled the smell
of paint, when the Abbey House was closed and he came down from London
to see his agent on business, when he wanted to make an early start at
the cub-hunting and he couldn't trust the servants of the Abbey House
to rouse him if he slept there.

"Last time of all," and Mrs. Petherick rubbed her hands together and
smiled insinuatingly, "he paid me the pretty compliment of saying that
I made him more comfortable than he ever is in his own house. I said,
'If we can't let you feel at home here, it's something new among the
Pethericks.'"

It seemed that the bond between the humble family and the great one
had existed for several generations. It was a tradition that the
Pethericks should serve the Barradines. Mavis' grandfather had been
second coachman at the Abbey; her aunt's husband had been valet to Mr.
Everard and made the grand tour of Europe with him; aunt herself was
of the Petherick blood, and had been a housemaid at the Abbey. It
also seemed to be a tradition that the acknowledgment made by the
Barradines for this fidelity of the Pethericks should be boundless in
its extent.

Aunt spoke of the Right Honorable Everard as though she held him like
a purse in her pocket, and Dale at one period had some queer thoughts
about this old widow of a dead servant for whom so much had been done
and who yet expected so much more. She said Mr. Barradine had charged
himself with the musical training of another niece, and he would
probably not hesitate to send Mavis to Vienna for the best masters,
should she presently display any natural talent. Her cousin Ruby sang
like an angel from the age of ten; but Mavis so far exhibited more
inclination for instrumental music.

"She'll belie her name, though, if she doesn't pipe up some day, won't
she?"

When Dale secured his appointment at Portsmouth, he and Mavis were not
engaged. She said, "Auntie simply won't hear of it."

"Not now," he said. "But later, when I've made my way, she'll come
round. Mav, will you wait for me?

"Oh, I don't know," said Mavis. "I can't give any promise. I must do
whatever Auntie tells me. I can't go against her wishes."

Yet somehow he felt sure that she would be his. A thousand slimy,
humbugging old aunts should not keep them apart. From Portsmouth he
wrote a letter to his sweetheart on every day of the year for three
years--except on those days of joyous leave when he could get away and
talk to her instead of writing to her. At the end of the three years
the postmastership at Rodchurch became vacant, and he boldly applied
for the place.

His life just then was almost too glorious to be true. All
difficulties and dangers seemed to melt away in a sort of warm haze of
rapture. Mrs. Petherick no longer opposed the marriage; Mr. Barradine,
at the zenith of political power, exerted his influence; the
postmastership was obtained. To top up, Dale made the not unpleasing
discovery that Mavis was an heiress as well as an orphan. She had two
hundred pounds of her very own, "which came in uncommon handy for the
furnishing."

And his education did not cease with wedlock. Mavis was always
improving him, especially in regard to diction. He was pleased to
think that he made very few slips nowadays--an "h" elided here and
there; the vowels still rather broad, more particularly the Hampshire
"a"; and one or two unchanged words, such as "boosum." But these
microscopic faults were of no consequence, and Mav had stopped teasing
him about them. She only warned him of what he knew was Gospel
truth--that the little failures were more frequent under hurry or
excitement, and that when deeply moved he had a tendency to lapse
badly toward the ancient peasant lingo.

Nothing to worry about, however. It merely indicated that he must
never speak on important matters without due preparation. He would be
all right up there, knowing to a syllable what he wished to say; and
he thought with swelling pride of comparatively recent public speeches
and the praise that he had received from them. After the Parish
meeting last January the _Rodhaven District Courier_ had said, "With
a few happy remarks Mr. Dale adverted again to the fallacy of plunging
the village into the expense of a costly fire-engine without first
ascertaining the reliability of the water supply." His very words,
almost _verbatim_ "Happy remarks!" A magistrate on the bench could not
have been better reported or more handsomely praised.

The reviewing of these manifold bounties of Providence had produced a
sedative effect; but now he grew restless once more. He felt that
twinge of doubt, the pin-prick of illogical fear which during the last
eighteen hours had again and again pierced his armor of
self-confidence. Suppose things went against him! No, that would be
too monstrous; that would mean no justice left in England, the whole
fabric of society gone rotten and crumbling to dust.

The spaces between the blinds and window-frames were white instead of
gray; the sun had risen; presently the whole room was visible.

Mavis' little face showed pink and warm as a baby's above the bed
clothes. And a sudden longing for caresses took possession of her
husband. To wake her, fold her in his arms, and then, pacified by the
embrace, perhaps obtain a few hours' sound sleep? For some moments his
desire was almost irresistible. But it would be selfish thus to break
her tranquil repose--poor little tired bird.

He noiselessly slipped from the bed, huddled on some clothes, washed
his face in cold water at the kitchen sink, and let himself out of the
house. The open air refreshed him almost as much as sleep could have
done. He walked nearly five miles and back on the Manninglea Road,
and would not even glance at the busy sorting-room when he came in
again.

Mavis accompanied him to Rodchurch Road Station, and saw him off by
the nine o'clock train. He looked very dignified in his newest bowler
hat and black frock-coat, with a light overcoat on one arm and his
wife's gloved hand on the other; and as he walked up and down the
platform he endeavored to ignore the fact that he was an object of
universal attention.

When buying his ticket he had let fall a guarded word or two about the
nature of his errand, and from the booking-office the news had flown
up and down both sides of the station, round the yard, and even into
the signal cabins. "See Mr. Dale?" "Mr. Dale!" "There's Mr. Dale,
going to London for an interview with the Postmaster-General."

Mr. Melling, the Baptist minister, took off his hat and bowed gravely;
Mrs. Norton, the vicar's wife, smilingly stopped Mavis and spoke as if
she had been addressing a social equal; then they received greetings
from old Mr. Bates, the corn merchant, and from young Richard Bates,
his swaggering good-for-nothing son. And then, as passengers gathered
more thickly, it became quite like a public reception. "Ma'arnin',
sir." "Good day, Mr. Dale." "I hope I see you well, sir."

Mavis got him away from all this company just before the train came
in, and made a last appeal to him. Would he recollect what the deputy
had said about eating that ugly dish which is commonly known as humble
pie?

But at the mention of Mr. Ridgett's advice Dale displayed a slight
flare of irascibility.

"Let Mr. Ridgett mind his own business," he said shortly, "and not
bother himself about mine. And look here," he added. "I am not
trusting that gentleman any further than I see him."

"I think you're wrong there, Will."

"I know human nature." His face had flushed, and he spoke
admonitorily. "I don't need to tell you to be circumspect during my
absence--but you may have a little trouble in keeping Mr. R. in his
proper place. You'll be quick to twig if he supposes the chance has
come to pester you. These London customers--whatever their age--think
when they get along with a pretty woman--"

"Oh, Will, don't be absurd;" and she looked at him wistfully, and
spoke sadly. "I'm not so attractive as you think me. I may be the same
to your eyes--but not to others. It's very doubtful if anybody would
want me now--except those who knew me when I was young."

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