Married | Page 4

living nature. He allowed the garden with its many
splendours to become a wilderness, and finally let it to a gardener on
condition that he and his children should be allowed certain privileges.
The son used the garden as a park and enjoyed its beauty as he found it,
without taking the trouble to try and understand it scientifically.
One might compare the boy's character to an ill-proportioned
compensation pendulum; it contained too much of the soft metal of the
mother, not enough of the hard metal of the father. Friction and
irregular oscillations were the natural consequences. Now he was full
of sentiment, now hard and sceptical. His mother's death affected him
beyond words. He mourned her deeply, and she always lived in his
memory as the personification of all that was good and great and
beautiful.
He wasted the summer following her death in brooding and
novel-reading. Grief, and to no small extent idleness, had shaken his
whole nervous system and quickened his imagination. His tears had
been like warm April showers falling on fruit trees, wakening them to a
precocious burgeoning: but alas! only too often the blossoms are
doomed to wither and perish in a frosty May night, before the fruit has
had time to set.
He was fifteen years old and had therefore arrived at the age when
civilised man attains to manhood and is ripe to give life to a new
generation, but is prevented from doing so by his inability to maintain a
family. Consequently he was about to begin the ten years' martyrdom
which a young man is called upon to endure in the struggle against an
overwhelming force of nature, before he is in a position to fulfil her

laws.
* * * * *
It is a warm afternoon about Whitsuntide. The appletrees are gorgeous
in their white splendour which nature has showered all over them with
a profuse hand. The breeze shakes the crowns and fills the air with
pollen; a part of it fulfils its destination and creates new life, a part
sinks to the ground and dies. What is a handful of pollen more or less in
the inexhaustible store-house of nature! The fertilised blossom casts off
its delicate petals which flutter to the ground and wither; they decay in
the rain and are ground to dust, to rise again through the sap and
re-appear as blossoms, and this time, perhaps, to become fruit. But now
the struggle begins: those which a kind fate has placed on the sunny
side, thrive and prosper; the seed bud swells, and if no frost intervenes,
the fruit, in due time, will set. But those which look towards the North,
the poor things which grow in the shadow of the others and never see
the sun, are predestined to fade and fall off; the gardener rakes them
together and carts them to the pig-sty.
Behold the apple-tree now, its branches laden with half-ripe fruit, little,
round, golden apples with rosy cheeks. A fresh struggle begins: if all
remain alive, the branches will not be able to bear their weight, the tree
will perish. A gale shakes the branches. It requires firm stems to hold
on. Woe to the weaklings! they are condemned to destruction.
A fresh danger! The apple-weevil appears upon the scene. It, too, has to
maintain life and to fulfil a duty towards its progeny. The grub eats its
way through the fruit to the stem and the apple falls to the ground. But
the dainty beetle chooses the strongest and soundest for its brood,
otherwise too many of the strong ones would be allowed to live, and
competition would become over-keen.
The hour of twilight, the gathering dusk, arouses the passionate
instincts of the beast-world. The night-crow crouches on the newly-dug
flower-bed to lure its mate. Which of the eager males shall carry the
prize? Let them decide the question!

The cat, sleek and warm, fresh from her evening milk, steals away from
her corner by the hearth and picks her way carefully among daffodils
and lilies, afraid lest the dew make her coat damp and ragged before
her lover joins her. She sniffs at the young lavender and calls. Her call
is answered by the black tom-cat which appears, broad-backed like a
marten, on the neighbour's fence; but the gardener's tortoise-shell
approaches from the cow-shed and the fight begins. Handfuls of the
rich, black soil are flying about in all directions, and the newly-planted
radishes and spinach plants are roughly awakened from their quiet
sleep and dreams of the future. The stronger of the two remains in
possession of the field, and the female awaits complacently the frenetic
embraces of the victor. The vanquished flies to engage in a new
struggle in which, perhaps, victory will smile on him.