And Mrs. Lingard had also been at church the previous day and had repeated the responses in her ordinary tone of voice, and without faltering, though beyond a doubt her heart had been full of this scheme of suborning a faithful, if somewhat weak, servant from his allegiance to the mistress who had an undisputed claim to his services the next day!
Without a moment's hesitation Miss Mercer passed into the hall, opened the glass door beyond, and stood beside the guilty pair before either of them was aware of her presence. She saw that the man was planting asters—the finest aster cuttings she had ever seen.
“John Bingham, are you aware that this is Monday morning?” she said in an accusing voice, and so suddenly that a cry of surprise—it may have been with guilt—came from Mrs. Lingard, and John Bingham let drop his trowel and wiped his forehead.
“Good gracious, Lucy! Where did you drop from without warning?” cried the lady in the garden hat.
“I am addressing John Bingham, madam,” said Miss Mercer in icy tones. “And once again I ask John Bingham what he means by being here when his place should be in my garden.”
“I can easily explain, my good woman,” said Mrs. Lingard, lapsing, under the “madam” of the other, into the tone of voice she had found effective with the native servants in the West Indian island of St. Lucia when her husband had been stationed there.
“I am not addressing you, madam,” said Miss Mercer hotly: her glacial period had passed and had given place to the volcanic—the suppressed volcanic. “I wish to be informed why this man—this traitor—this—this——”
“Don't be a greater fool than you are by nature, my good creature,” said Mrs. Lingard. “But I might have known that you could be disagreeable over even such a trifle as my sending to John Bingham to assist me for an hour in planting out the asters which were only delivered this morning when they should have been here on Saturday. If I had not begged him to come to my help for a couple of hours the lot would have been spoiled. In justice to him I will say that he was very unwilling to come.”
“And what does that mean, pray?” asked Miss Mercer sneeringly.
“It means that he knew you better than I did,” responded Mrs. Lingard. “He has had more experience of your narrow-mindedness than I have had. Now, go on with your work, John. Don't mind her.”
But John did not go on with his work. He touched his forehead with the drooping aster that he held rather limply, saying, in the direction of Miss Mercer—“I can easy make up the extra however, ma'am—mortal easy, in the evenin', and so I thought or I wouldn't be here now.”
“There, let that satisfy you, make your mind easy; you'll not be defrauded of the shilling for his two hours,” said Mrs. Lingard.
“You will be good enough to dictate to your inferiors, if such exist, madam; you need not dictate to me. You may keep your John Bingham now that you have him; I have made other arrangements for the future of my garden.”
She turned with a mock courtesy. Mrs. Lingard also turned.
“Lucy Mercer, go back to your—your—your hen-run,” she cried, pointing dramatically to the place of exit. “Go on with your work, John Bingham. Mrs. Hopewell will only be too glad to take on your Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. She has a garden—a garden.”
That is the true and circumstantial account of how Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer ceased to be on speaking terms, and that is how it is that many people are becoming more hopeful of the future of Thurswell as the centre of a social neighbourhood. Each lady still arrogates to herself the right of veto in respect of the claims of any strange family to be visited on taking up their residence within reasonable visiting distance of Thurswell; but the people who formerly had been ready to accept the dictum of the two in such social matters are now beginning not only to assert their own independence of action, but even to dictate to others on all points on which they themselves had been dictated to—in no mild way—by Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer. But a mistake that was recently made by one of these immature dictators has done much to chasten their longing to take up the responsibilities attached to such a position. She had spoken with that definiteness which marks the amateur on the subject of the visiting of a certain Mrs. Judson Hyphen Marks who had taken Higham Lodge for a year, and accordingly quite a number of people left cards upon her. But suddenly the name of Judson Hyphen Marks appeared rather prominently in the columns devoted to the Law Court proceedings in the daily papers, and some curious information respecting the ménage of the Judson Hyphen Marks was brought under the notice of the people of Thurswell and, indeed, of England generally; and those who had left cards upon them consulted together as to whether it was possible or not for them to ask for their cards to be returned to them.
The general opinion that prevailed after several long discussions on this question was that no social machinery existed by which so desirable an object might be effected, and no move was made in that direction; but ever afterward the dictation of the feeble amateur who thought to take the social reins out of the hands of Mrs. Lingard and Miss Mercer when it was found that they were pulling them in opposite directions, threatening to upset the social apple-cart, was received for what it was worth, not for what it claimed to be worth.
III.—FLOWERS AND FRIENDSHIPS
The instance just recorded of horticulture playing a prominent part in the breaking up of friendships is by no means unique. When one comes to think of it, one cannot be surprised that as the earliest serious quarrel recorded in the history of the world was over a purely horticultural question—namely, whether or not the qualities of beneficent nutrition attributed to a certain fruit had been accurately analysed—there should be many differences of opinion among the best of friends on the same subject.
It was my old gardener—not-the oldest of all, but the second oldest—who told me how it was that the annual prize given by the Moated Manor House people for the best floral display of the cottage order was very nearly withdrawn for ever, owing to the bad blood that was made by the award, no matter in what direction it was made. It seemed that the prize-winner invariably found himself compelled to accept the challenge to fight of all the disappointed aspirants to the prize, and before nightfall there was a general distribution of black eyes and front teeth; in some cases both got inextricably mixed up, and this was no pleasure to anybody, my informant assured me, and the wives of the men who were keen to compete for the prize discouraged them from it, with the warning that if they continued to spend their time over the cultivation of the blooms they might some day actually find themselves awarded the prize. That warning, founded as it was upon sound sense and reason, was beginning to produce its effects upon the better class of flower growers; but there were still a number of young fellows who went into training at the punch ball at the Church Institute club-room the day they sowed their flower seeds, and so were at the top of their form when the award was made in the early autumn, so that if one of them got the prize he thought if a pity that his training and practice at the punch ball should be wasted, and thus he was ready to prove to all disputants that the prize had gone to the best man; while it was only to be expected that those who had only had the cold consolation of honorary mention were only too ready to dispute his ability to maintain such an attitude for any length of time.
The result of this joint cultivation of bulbs and biceps was not just what the givers of the prize intended to achieve, and twice, when there had been arrests and summonses to petty sessions, a formal warning was issued to all whom it might concern that if the connection between the two cultures were not severed, the prize, which was only meant for success in the one, would be withdrawn.
Happily, however, it was not found necessary to enforce this ultimatum, and a modus vivendi, founded upon one which had been understood to work very satisfactorily in the case of the Chrysanthemum Society of Mallingham, was adopted,