An Autumn Sowing. E. F. Benson
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as reticent about such acts of kindness as he was about the pleasures of his secret garden, or the steady increase in his annual receipts from his stores. But all three gave him considerable satisfaction, and the luxury of giving was to him no whit inferior to that of getting.
Charles Propert, who presently arrived from the kitchen-passage in charge of the boy in buttons, was one of those who well knew his employer’s generosity, for Keeling in a blunt and shamefaced way had borne all the expense of a long illness which had incapacitated him the previous winter, not only continuing to pay him his salary as head of the book department at the stores during the weeks in which he was invalided, but taking on himself all the charges for medical treatment and sea-side convalescence. He was an exceedingly well-educated man of two or three-and-thirty, and Keeling was far more at ease with him than with any other of his acquaintances, because he frankly enjoyed his society. He could have imagined himself sitting up till midnight talking to young Propert, because he had admitted him into the secret garden: Propert might indeed be described as the head gardener. Keeling nodded as the young man entered, and from under his big eyebrows observed that he was dressed entirely in black.
‘Good-afternoon, Propert,’ he said. ‘I got that edition of the Morte d’Arthur you told me of. But they made me pay for it.’
‘The Singleton Press edition, sir?’ asked Propert.
‘Yes; sit down and have a look at it. It’s a fine page, you know.’
‘Yes, sir, and if you’ll excuse me, I really think you got it rather cheap.’
‘H’m! I wonder if you’d have thought that if you had been the purchaser.’
Propert laughed.
‘I think so. As you said to me the other day, sir, good work is always cheap in comparison with bad work.’
Keeling bent over the book, and with his eyes on the page, just touched the arm of Propert’s black coat.
‘No trouble, I hope?’ he said.
‘Yes, sir. I heard yesterday of my mother’s death.’
‘Very sorry. If you want a couple of days off, just arrange in your department. Then the copy of the Rape of the Lock illustrated by Beardsley came yesterday too. I like it better than anything I’ve seen of his.’
‘There’s a very fine Morte d’Arthur of his which you haven’t got, sir,’ said Propert.
‘Order it for me, please. The man could draw, couldn’t he? Look at the design of embroidery on the coat of that fellow kneeling there. There’s nothing messy about that. But it doesn’t seem much of a poem as far as I can judge. Not my idea of poetry; there’s more poetry in the prose of the Morte d’Arthur. Take a cigarette and make yourself comfortable.’
He paused a moment.
‘Or perhaps you’d sooner not stop and talk to-day after your news,’ he said.
Propert shook his head.
‘No, sir, I should like to stop. … Of course the Rape of the Lock is artificial: it belongs to its age: it’s got no more reality than a Watteau picture——’
‘Watteau?’ asked Keeling.
‘Yes; you’ve got a book of reproductions of Watteau drawings. I don’t think you cared for it much. Picnics and fêtes, and groups of people under trees.’
Keeling nodded.
‘I remember. Stupid, insipid sort of thing. I never could make out why you recommended me to buy it.’
‘I can sell it again for more than you paid for it, sir. The price of it has gone up considerably.’
This savoured a little of business.
‘No, you needn’t do that,’ he said. ‘It’s a handsome book enough. And then there is another Omar Khayyam.’
‘Indeed, sir; you’ve got a quantity of editions of that. But I know it’s useless for me to urge you to get hold of the original edition.’
Mr. Keeling passed him this latest acquisition.
‘Quite useless,’ he said. ‘What a man wants first editions for, unless they’ve got some special beauty, I can’t understand. I would as soon spend my money in getting postage-stamps because they are rare. But I wanted to talk to you about that poem. What’s he after? Is it some philosophy? Or is it a love poem? Or is he just a tippler?’
The conference lasted some time. Keeling was but learning now, through this one channel of books, that attitude of mind which through instinct, whetted and primed by education, came naturally to the younger man, and it was just this that made these talks the very essence of the secret garden. Propert, for all that he was but an employee at a few pounds a week, was gardener there; he knew the names of the flowers, and what was more, he had that comprehension and love of them which belongs to the true gardener and not the specimen grower or florist only. It was that which Keeling sought to acquire, and among the prosperous family friends, who were associated with him in the management of civic affairs, or in business relationships, he found no opportunity of coming in contact with a similar mind. But Propert was freeborn in this republic of art and letters, and Keeling was eager to acquire at any cost the sense of native, unconscious citizenship. He felt he belonged there, but he had to win his way back there. … He must have learned the language in some psychically dim epoch of his existence, for exploration among these alleys in his garden had to him the thrill not of discovery, but the more delicate sense of recollection, of revisiting forgotten scenes which were remembered as soon as they disentangled themselves again from the jungle of materialistic interests that absorbed him all the week. Mr. Keeling had very likely hardly heard of the theory of reincarnation, and had some modern Pythagoras spoken to him of beans, he would undoubtedly have considered it great nonsense. But he would have confessed to the illusion (the fancy he would have called it) of having known something of all this before when Propert, with his handsome face aglow and his eyes alight, sat and turned over books with him thus, forgetting, as his own absorption increased, to interject his sentences with the respectful ‘sir’ of their ordinary week-day intercourse. Keeling ceased to be the proprietor and master of the universal stores, he ceased even to be the proprietor of his own books. They and their pictures and their binding and their aroma of the kingdom of intellect and beauty, were common possessions of all who chose to claim them, and belonged to neither of them individually any more than the French language belongs to the teacher who instructs and the pupil who learns.
The hour that Propert usually stayed had to-day lengthened itself out (so short was it) to two before the young man looked at his watch, and jumped up from his chair.
‘I’m afraid I’ve been staying a very long time, sir,’ he said. ‘I had no idea it was so late.’
Mr. Keeling got up also, and walked to the window, where he spoke with his back towards him.
‘I should like to know a little more about your family trouble,’ he said. ‘Any other children beside yourself? I remember you once told me your mother was a widow.’
‘Yes, sir, one sister,’ said Propert.
‘Unmarried? Work for her living?’ asked Keeling.
‘Yes, sir. I think she’ll come and live here with me,’ said he. ‘She’s got work in London, but I don’t want her to live there alone.’
‘No; quite proper. What’s her work?’
‘Clerical work, including shorthand and typewriting.’
‘Efficient?’
‘Yes, sir. The highest certificates in both. She’s a bit of an artist too in drawing and wood-cutting.’
Mr. Keeling ceased to address the larch-trees that were the sponsors of his house’s name, and turned round.
‘And a book-worm