They laughed again, and began to dig up the ground. I turned my back in horror; I could not watch. And at the last moment some qualms of doubt seized even them. They spoke to me almost humbly.
"How would YOU plant it?" they asked.
It was my last chance of making them realize their responsibility.
"I cannot say at this moment," I began, "exactly how the ceremony should be performed, but I should endeavour to think of something in keeping with the solemnity of the occasion. It may be that Mrs Atherley and I would take the flower and march in procession round the fountain, singing a suitable chant, while Bob and Archie with shaven heads prostrated themselves before the sundial. Miss Atherley might possibly dance the Fire-dance upon the east lawn, while Mr Atherley stood upon one foot in the middle of the herbaceous border and played upon her with the garden hose. These or other symbolic rites we should perform, before we planted it in a place chosen by Chance. Then leaving a saucer of new milk for it lest it should thirst in the night we would go away, and spend the rest of the week in meditation."
I paused for breath.
"That might do it," I added, "or it might not. But at least that is the sort of spirit that you want to show."
Once more they laughed ... and then they planted it.
These have been two difficult years for me. There have been times when I have almost lost faith, and not even the glories of our own flame-flower could cheer me. But at last the news came. I was at home for the week-end and, after rather a tiring day showing visitors the north-east end of the pergola, I went indoors for a rest. On the table there was a letter for me. It was from Mrs Atherley.
"BY THE WAY," she wrote, "THE FLAME-FLOWER IS DEAD."
"By the way"!
But even if they had taken the business seriously, even if they had understood fully what a great thing it was they were attempting--even then I think they would have failed.
For, though I like the Atherleys very much, though I think them all extremely jolly ... yet--I doubt, you know, if they are QUITE the family to have a flame-flower growing in their garden.
THE LUCKY MONTH
"KNOW thyself," said the old Greek motto. (In Greek--but this is an English book.) So I bought a little red volume called, tersely enough, WERE YOU BORN IN JANUARY? I was; and, rea.s.sured on this point, the author told me all about myself.
For the most part he told me nothing new. "You are," he said in effect, "good-tempered, courageous, ambitious, loyal, quick to resent wrong, an excellent raconteur, and a leader of men." True.
"Generous to a fault"--(Yes, I was overdoing that rather)--"you have a ready sympathy with the distressed. People born in this month will always keep their promises." And so on. There was no doubt that the author had the idea all right. Even when he went on to warn me of my weaknesses he maintained the correct note. "People born in January,"
he said, "must be on their guard against working too strenuously.
Their extraordinarily active brains--" Well, you see what he means.
It IS a fault perhaps, and I shall be more careful in future. Mind, I do not take offence with him for calling my attention to it. In fact, my only objection to the book is its surface application to ALL the people who were born in January. There should have been more distinction made between me and the rabble.
I have said that he told me little that was new. In one matter, however, he did open my eyes. He introduced me to an aspect of myself entirely unsuspected.
"They," he said-meaning me, "have unusual business capacity, and are destined to be leaders in great commerical enterprises."
One gets at times these flashes of self-revelation. In an instant I realized how wasted my life had been; in an instant I resolved that here and now I would put my great gifts to their proper uses. I would be a leader in an immense commercial enterprise.
One cannot start commercial enterprises without capital. The first thing was to determine the exact nature of my balance at the bank.
This was a matter for the bank to arrange, and I drove there rapidly.
"Good-morning," I said to the cashier, "I am in rather a hurry. May I have my pa.s.s-book?"
He a.s.sented and retired. After an interminable wait, during which many psychological moments for commercial enterprise must have lapsed, he returned.
"I think YOU have it," he said shortly.
"Thank you," I replied, and drove rapidly home again.
A lengthy search followed; but after an hour of it one of those white-hot flashes of thought, such as only occur to the natural business genius, seared my mind and sent me post-haste to the bank again.
"After all," I said to the cashier, "I only want to know my balance.
What is it?"
He withdrew and gave himself up to calculation. I paced the floor impatiently. Opportunities were slipping by. At last he pushed a slip of paper across at me. My balance!
It was in four figures. Unfortunately two of them were shillings and pence. Still, there was a matter of fifty pounds odd as well, and fortunes have been built up on less.
Out in the street I had a moment"s pause. Hitherto I had regarded my commercial enterprise in the bulk, as a finished monument of industry; the little niggling preliminary details had not come up for consideration. Just for a second I wondered how to begin.
Only for a second. An unsuspected talent which has long lain dormant needs, when waked, a second or so to turn round in. At the end of that time I had made up my mind. I knew exactly what I would do. I would ring up my solicitor.
"Hallo, is that you? Yes, this is me. What? Yes, awfully, thanks.
How are you? Good. Look here, come and lunch with me. What? No, at once. Good-bye."
Business, particularly that sort of commercial enterprise to which I had now decided to lend my genius, can only be discussed properly over a cigar. During the meal itself my solicitor and I indulged in the ordinary small-talk of the pleasure-loving world.
"You"re looking very fit," said my solicitor. "No, not fat, FIT."
"You don"t think I"m looking thin?" I asked anxiously. "People are warning me that I may be overdoing it rather. They tell me that I must be seriously on my guard against brain strain."
"I suppose they think you oughtn"t to strain it too suddenly," said my solicitor. Though he is now a solicitor he was once just an ordinary boy like the rest of us, and it was in those days that he acquired the habit of being rude to me, a habit he has never quite forgotten.
"What is an onyx?" I said, changing the conversation.
"Why?" asked my solicitor, with his usual business ac.u.men.
"Well, I was practically certain that I had seen one in the Zoo, in the reptile house, but I have just learnt that it is my lucky month stone. Naturally I want to get one."
The coffee came and we settled down to commerce.
"I was just going to ask you," said my solicitor--"have you any money lying idle at the bank? Because if so--"
"Whatever else it is doing, it isn"t lying idle," I protested. "I was at the bank to-day, and there were men chivying it about with shovels all the time."
"Well, how much have you got?"
"About fifty pounds."
"It ought to be more than that."
"That"s what I say, but you know what banks are. Actual merit counts for nothing with them."
"Well, what did you want to do with it?"