Ah, what it would be to
have such a garden at Glenwarlock!
He turned to the door, with difficulty opened it, and the vision
vanished. Not a few visions vanish when one takes them for fact,
and not for the vision of fact that has to be wrought out with the
energy of a God-born life.
[Illustration: 'He Turned to the Door']
CHAPTER XXV.
THE GARDENER.
There was a garden indeed, but a garden whose ragged, ugly,
degraded desolation looked as if the devil had taken to gardening
in it. Rather than a grief, it was a pain and disgust to see.
Fruit-trees there were on the wall, but run wild with endless
shoots, which stuck like a hog's mane over the top of it, and out
in every direction from the face of it with a look of impertinent
daring. All the fastenings were broken away, and only the old
branches, from habit, kept their places against it. Everything all
about seemed striving back to a dear disorder and salvage liberty.
The walks were covered with weeds, and almost impassable with
unpruned branches, while here lay a heap of rubbish, there a
smashed flower-pot, here a crushed water-pot, there a broken
dinner-plate. Following a path that led away from the wall, he came
upon a fountain without any water, in a cracked basin dry as a
lizard-haunted wall, a sundial without a gnomon, leaning wearily
away from the sun, a marble statue without a nose, and streaked
about with green: like an army of desolation in single file, they
revealed to Cosmo the age-long neglect of the place.
Pages:
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323