During dinner I was deeply interested in father's plans for my garden,
which brilliantly carried the plans Nickols and I had made to what I saw
in another year would be a marvelously artistic completeness. But under
the joy of hearing him talk as I had never really heard him since I was
old enough to appreciate his scintillating delicious choice of words and
phrases, I was hot and sore at the thought of my duty to render
gratitude where gratitude was due for having him like that.
"It will be perfectly wonderful, father, and Nickols had not worked it
out to anything like that completeness. He will be wild about it, but
won't it take a lot of money? And where did you get your inspiration?" I
asked the question, though I hated the answer I knew it must receive.
"The plans are entirely my own," answered father, with a pleased flush
making even brighter his dulled eyes and cheeks, faintly glowing from
the shower at which Dabney had officiated a few minutes before. I had
not failed to notice that we had sat down and were halfway through
dinner and father's hand had not motioned Dabney towards the decanter
and ice and siphon on the sideboard. "I must confess that the
inspiration came from a kind of rage when Goodloe said to me how much it
was to be regretted that all the great gardens in the North are being
made out of a sort of patchwork of English, French, Italian and even
Japanese influences. You couldn't expect anything more of the
inhabitants of the part of the country in the veins of whose people flow
just about that mixture of blood, but in the Harpeth Valley we have been
Americans for two and a half centuries, and I'll show 'em an American
garden if it does unhinge both mine and Dabney's backs and make Cockrell
swear I'm crazy when he audits my accounts once every month. No, Madam,
your own grandmother and great-grandmother, in conjunction with
Goodloe's maternal ancestors, conceived and laid out the beginning of
the great American garden, and we will combine to produce it."
"What about Nickols' plans?" I asked, trying hard to raise indignation
in my heart and voice at the thought of Nickols Morris Powers' work,
for which the people of wealth in the North were beginning fairly to
clamor, being criticized and laid aside at the inspiration of the
Methodist parson across the lilac hedge. And I succeeded better than I
expected, for I saw father lose color and tremble with his own rage,
which he always quells with drink.
"That sunken garden is Italian, and I'm going to tear it out and
put--Oh, my daughter; forgive me, but I forgot, in this queer nature
frenzy that has come over me of late and which I do not at all
understand, that the garden is yours, was your mother's and
grandmother's. So far the plans have just been begun, and nothing that
you and Nickols have done--Dabney, pour me three fingers of the 1875
Bourbon." And in a second I saw father grow white and shaking with
mortification at what he felt to be an unmannerly trespass upon
another's rights. My father has been a drunkard for nearly twenty years,
but he is still a great gentleman. Slowly he drank the whiskey, every
drop of which seemed to go to my heart like cold lead.