Chapter 13 | A Life's Eclipse

James Ellis went straight to the gardens, and had no difficulty in finding Daniel Barnett, whose voice he heard sounding loud, though smothered, in the closely-shut orchid-house, where he was abusing one of the under-gardeners.

“I don’t care—I don’t believe it,” he cried angrily, as Ellis opened the door slowly; and then came: “Hi! What idiot’s that? Don’t let all the cold wind in out of the garden. I say that glossum and that cattleya has been moved. Hi! Are you going to shut that door? Oh, it’s you, Mr Ellis. I thought it was one of the lads; they will not be careful with those doors.”

“Send him away,” said the bailiff.

“You can go,” said Barnett shortly, to the man, “and mind, I mean to know who moved those orchids. It was done out of opposition. I changed ’em there, and that’s where they’re to stand.”

“Well, I didn’t move ’em,” growled the man.

“Didn’t move them, sir” cried Barnett; but at that moment the door was closed with a bang. “I shall have to get rid of that fellow, Mr Ellis. He don’t like me being promoted, and he has been moving my orchids out o’ orkardness. Ha, ha! Not so very bad, that.”

“He did not move them,” said Ellis grimly.

“Who did, then?”

“John Grange.”

“John Grange?”

“Yes; I dare say he has been here. He has been in the big conservatory ever so long, tying up plants and clearing off dead stuff.”

“John Grange! What, has he got back his sight?”

“No; the mistress fetched him over from old Tummus’s cottage, and he has been hard at work ever so long.”

“But there wasn’t no clearing up to do,” cried Barnett, flushing angrily.

“Wasn’t there? Well, he was at it, and you may tell that fellow he won’t be wanted, for John Grange is going to stay.”

Daniel Barnett said something which, fortunately, was inaudible, and need not be recorded; and he turned pale through the harvest brown sun-tan with mortification and jealous rage.

“Why, you don’t mean to say, Mr Ellis, sir,” he cried, “that you’ve been a party to bringing that poor creature back here to make himself a nuisance and get meddling with my plants?”

“No, sir, I do not,” said the bailiff sharply; “it’s your mistress’s work. She has a way of doing what she likes, and you’d better talk to her about that.”

He turned upon his heel and left the orchid-house, and as soon as he was gone the new head-gardener stood watching him till he was out of hearing, and then, doubling up his fist, he struck out from the shoulder at one of the offending pots standing at a corner—a lovely mauve-tinted cattleya in full blossom—and sent it flying to shivers upon the floor.

It was the kind of blow he felt in his rage that he would have liked to direct at John Grange’s head, but as in his unreasonable jealous spite it was only a good-sized earthenware pot, the result was very unsatisfactory, for the flower was broken, the pot shattered, and a couple of red spots appeared on Daniel Barnett’s knuckles, which began to bleed freely.

“That’s it, is it?” he muttered. “He’s to be kept here like a pet monkey, I suppose. Well, he’s not going to interfere with my work, and so I tell him. Don’t want no blind beggars about. A silly old fool: that’s what she is—a silly old fool; and I should like to tell her so. So he’s to come here and do what he likes, is he? Well, we shall see about that. It’s indecent, that’s what it is. Why can’t he act like a man, and take it as he should, not come whining about here like a blind beggar of Bethnal Green? But if he can’t see, others can. Perhaps Mr John Grange mayn’t stop here very long. Who knows?” Daniel Barnett, for some reason or another, uttered a low-toned, unpleasant laugh, and then began to pick up the pieces of the broken pot, and examine the injured orchid, to see what portions would live; but after a few minutes’ inspection he bundled all into a wooden basket, carried it out to the rubbish heap, and called one of the men to sweep up the soil upon the red-tiled floor.