Tales of Men and Ghosts | Page 8

had been denied the chance to fulfil! It exasperated him
to think of it--and to reflect that even now a little travel, a little health, a
little money, might transform her, make her young and desirable... The
chief fruit of his experience was that there is no such fixed state as age
or youth--there is only health as against sickness, wealth as against
poverty; and age or youth as the outcome of the lot one draws.
At this point in his narrative Granice stood up, and went to lean against
the mantel-piece, looking down at Ascham, who had not moved from
his seat, or changed his attitude of rigid fascinated attention.
"Then came the summer when we went to Wrenfield to be near old
Lenman--my mother's cousin, as you know. Some of the family always
mounted guard over him--generally a niece or so. But that year they
were all scattered, and one of the nieces offered to lend us her cottage if
we'd relieve her of duty for two months. It was a nuisance for me, of
course, for Wrenfield is two hours from town; but my mother, who was
a slave to family observances, had always been good to the old man, so
it was natural we should be called on--and there was the saving of rent
and the good air for Kate. So we went.
"You never knew Joseph Lenman? Well, picture to yourself an amoeba
or some primitive organism of that sort, under a Titan's microscope. He
was large, undifferentiated, inert--since I could remember him he had
done nothing but take his temperature and read the Churchman. Oh,
and cultivate melons--that was his hobby. Not vulgar, out-of-door
melons--his were grown under glass. He had miles of it at
Wrenfield--his big kitchen-garden was surrounded by blinking

battalions of green-houses. And in nearly all of them melons were
grown--early melons and late, French, English, domestic--dwarf
melons and monsters: every shape, colour and variety. They were
petted and nursed like children--a staff of trained attendants waited on
them. I'm not sure they didn't have a doctor to take their temperature--at
any rate the place was full of thermometers. And they didn't sprawl on
the ground like ordinary melons; they were trained against the glass
like nectarines, and each melon hung in a net which sustained its
weight and left it free on all sides to the sun and air...
"It used to strike me sometimes that old Lenman was just like one of
his own melons--the pale-fleshed English kind. His life, apathetic and
motionless, hung in a net of gold, in an equable warm ventilated
atmosphere, high above sordid earthly worries. The cardinal rule of his
existence was not to let himself be 'worried.' . . I remember his advising
me to try it myself, one day when I spoke to him about Kate's bad
health, and her need of a change. 'I never let myself worry,' he said
complacently. 'It's the worst thing for the liver--and you look to me as
if you had a liver. Take my advice and be cheerful. You'll make
yourself happier and others too.' And all he had to do was to write a
cheque, and send the poor girl off for a holiday!
"The hardest part of it was that the money half-belonged to us already.
The old skin-flint only had it for life, in trust for us and the others. But
his life was a good deal sounder than mine or Kate's--and one could
picture him taking extra care of it for the joke of keeping us waiting. I
always felt that the sight of our hungry eyes was a tonic to him.
"Well, I tried to see if I couldn't reach him through his vanity. I
flattered him, feigned a passionate interest in his melons. And he was
taken in, and used to discourse on them by the hour. On fine days he
was driven to the green-houses in his pony-chair, and waddled through
them, prodding and leering at the fruit, like a fat Turk in his seraglio.
When he bragged to me of the expense of growing them I was
reminded of a hideous old Lothario bragging of what his pleasures cost.
And the resemblance was completed by the fact that he couldn't eat as
much as a mouthful of his melons--had lived for years on buttermilk
and toast. 'But, after all, it's my only hobby--why shouldn't I indulge it?'
he said sentimentally. As if I'd ever been able to indulge any of mine!
On the keep of those melons Kate and I could have lived like gods...

"One day toward the end of the summer, when Kate was too unwell to
drag herself up to the big house, she asked me to go and spend the
afternoon with cousin Joseph. It