Sorrell and Son by Warwick Deeping

Sorrell had finished tea. He filled and lit a pipe, and after standing at the open window for a minute with a thoughtful face from which came rhythmic puffs of smoke, he went out into his garden. He had grown very grey these days, much greyer since the crisis in Kit's life, and but for the flowers at his feet his figure might have seemed lonely. For a while he just wandered up and down and to and fro, under the fruit blossom and between the beds of spring flowers. There was a wonderful show this year, the best show that he had ever had, and he enjoyed one of those rare half-hours on a perfect evening when the eyes see deeper, and perfumes are more poignant. He sat down on a rough seat under one of the fruit trees over against a half wild patch of purple and rose aubrietia, red daisies, blue myosotis, purple and gold tulips, and burning orange Siberian wallflowers. His eyes remained fixed upon this richness; he puffed at his pipe; he reflected. It occurred to him that a man's last and best friends might be his flowers. They grudged nothing; they gave you results.

Yes, and how little in the way of results could most poor, flustered conventional lives show? Just pathetic rushings to and fro after the passing of that state of semi-savagery and vague rebelliousness which is childhood. Getting up in the morning and going to bed, catching trains, eating indifferent food, responding rather blindly to the sex urge, squabbling with other individual men or groups of men over twopence on the wage-sheet, going with crowds of other human cattle to some cheap holiday resort and finding the same stale crowds there. Never to be alone, or to produce anything of significance, save perhaps a few children who would repeat the same obscure slave's march.