Were
the lawns somehow imperfect? Anon, when he darted back, I saw what it
was that his taste had required: lichen, moss, for the roof. Sundry
morsels and patches of green he deftly disposed in the angles of roof
and gables. His stock exhausted, off to the breakwater he darted, and
back again, to and fro with the lightning directness of a hermit-bee
making its nest of pollen. The low walls that enclosed the two gardens
were in need of creepers. Little by little, this grace was added to
them. I stood silently watching.
I kept silent for fear of discommoding him. All artists--by which I
mean, of course, all good artists--are shy. They are trustees of
something not entrusted to us others; they bear fragile treasure, not
safe in a jostling crowd; they must ever be wary. And especially shy
are those artists whose work is apart from words. A man of letters can
mitigate his embarrassment among us by a certain glibness. Not so can
the man who works through the medium of visual form and colour. Not
so, I was sure, could the young architect and landscape-gardener here
creating. I would have moved away had I thought my mere presence was a
bother to him; but I decided that it was not: being a grown-up person,
I did not matter; he had no fear that I should offer violence to his
work.
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