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In A London Garden
by
The ambitious mamma saw that Rose had improved out of all knowledge. She became proud of her. She now waited for Rose to make an exceptionally brilliant match. She continued to wait, for something had changed in Rose. People said she was very accomplished and very beautiful, but nobody said she was rather sweet. The boys who had played with her and danced with her did not seem to require her any more; they shivered with fear in her splendid presence.
We should all improve ourselves, and try to do our best–this is the accepted view and there is no need to dispute it–but concentration on one’s own self, even with the highest possible motive, is poison. And Rose had drunk of that poison.
And then the ambitious mamma died; and there were some people who thought that she was better dead. But Rose was overcome with grief. It was not until six weeks later that, standing before the cheval-glass, she noticed how very well she looked in black. She worked harder than ever at the task of self-improvement, until her health broke down. Then two things happened simultaneously. She was ordered into the country, and her papa went to take up an important post in Paris.
Rose lived now in a cottage up on a hill with a refined and elderly lady-companion. Beyond the garden of the cottage was common-land. Here the bracken grew waist-high, and you might see as many foxgloves in ten minutes as you would find in London in ten years. Sheep roamed among the bracken. The difference between the face of the lady-companion and the face of one of those sheep was hardly noticeable; they also had similarities in disposition.
When the lady-companion slept–and she was a perfectly grand sleeper–Rose wandered all the afternoon about the common. She was not improving herself any longer, because that was held to be bad for her health. She worried because she felt that she had lost the love of people. The longer she lived in the country, the more she wanted to be loved. She even put tentative questions to the lady-companion, to find out how it was that she was not loved. But these tentative questions were of no use, because the lady-companion maintained that Rose was loved very much indeed, being under the impression that this was the kind of thing that she was paid to say. She was a conscientious woman.
And then one night Rose had a dream. In her dream she heard a loud knocking at the cottage door, and she herself went to see who was there.
There stood a very ugly old pedlar with a leer on his face, and a pack on his back. He swung his pack round and took off the piece of American cloth from the top of it.
“And what can I sell you to-day, my pretty lady?” he asked.
“Nothing, thank you,” said Rose.
“Don’t say that,” said the pedlar. “You have dealt with me before, you know.”
“Never,” said Rose. “You are mistaken.”
“Yes, you did,” said the ugly old man stoutly. “You bought a packet of Amoricide, and those that deal with me once must deal with me again.”
“What is Amoricide?” asked Rose, who began to have a feeling that after all she did recognise the pedlar’s face.
“Well, well,” said the pedlar, “that’s telling. I don’t mind owning that there is a lot of the Air of Superiority in it, and there are other things. You have no complaint to make about it, have you? It does its work all right. I guarantee that it will exterminate love absolutely. It is death to love. Have you not found it so?”
“I have found,” said Rose, “that it has destroyed the love of others for me, but not the love of me for others.”
The old man chuckled. “That’s it. That’s right. That’s why the people who deal with me once must deal with me again. You must have one more little packet.”