Every one in the village knew that Helen Turrell did her duty by all her world, and by none more honorably than by her only brother's unfortunate child.
The opening line commences the pervasive use of ambiguous language in the story to create a certain level of doubt as to questions not directly answered. On its surface, it appears to suggest that Helen abided by all the duties expected and require of her by the world, but especially by her brother’s child, but as the narrative progresses, it becomes increasingly more likely that the child is not her brother’s but her own and, what’s more, than every one in the village knew this to be the case, but bound themselves to an unspoken agreement to pretend it was not so. Then again, maybe Michael is just her nephew, but if that’s the case, then why other ambiguous language which supports the alternative explanation? The story is filled with enough ambiguous potential to more than suggest that they cannot all be true, although technically, of course, even that explanation is possible, though it stretches the limits of the imaginative gap offered by the tale’s uncertainty. Not to mention that stories of incest—whether alluded to or not—were hardly the public’s cup of tea at the time.
"You don't mean to tell me that you believed that story all this time?"
Michael—Helen’s “nephew”—has been raised well enough by a single “aunt” to be accepted into Oxford with a scholarship. Unfortunately, enrollment coincides with the outbreak of World War I and Michael opts for putting country first over his own ambition and since he doesn’t suffer from any physical impairment like flat feet or bone spurs that would keep him from serving, military enlistment wins out over college enrollment. Shocked to hear this news, Helen tries to convince him otherwise, but Michael’s reply is in direct line with the “official story” of the nature of his parentage. Helen’s response to that—quote above—is another example of the ambiguity at play. The characters in this short conversation speak to each other in the kind of coded language that family members share such that outsiders—readers in this case—are not equipped with all the necessary information to make an absolute determination of the actual referential meaning of what is being said. Maybe it is an admission that they both know the real truth or then again, maybe the conversation is about something else entirely that only seems to the uninformed reader to be applicable to the question of parentage and truth.
“I'm so tired of lying. Tired of lying—always lying—year in and year out. When I don't tell lies I've got to act 'em and I've got to think 'em, always. You don't know what that means. He was everything to me that he oughtn't to have been—the real thing—the only thing that ever happened to me in all my life; and I've had to pretend he wasn't.”
On her first visit to Michael’s gravesite at a war memorial cemetery in France, Helen meets a woman who tells her this is her ninth such visit. Initially, Mrs. Scarsworth feeds Helen the “lies” she’s been living with everyone else she meets about the frequency of these visits, but eventually finds something in Helen that causes her to break down and confess at last that the real reason is that she keeps visiting the grave of a soldier with whom she was having an affair. She can’t tell anyone the truth precisely because is still Mrs. Scarsworth. The meeting between these two serves no other purpose than to force the reader to make the connection between the life of lies Scarsworth confess with the life of lies that Helen never has admitted, lending credence—though still not exactly concrete evidence—to the idea that Michael was her own son and not her nephew.
When Helen left the Cemetery she turned for a last look. In the distance she saw the man bending over his young plants; and she went away, supposing him to be the gardener.
The enigmatic quality of these final lines of the story may be lost on many more readers today than they would have been when originally published. To put the possible interpretations of the who the gardener really might be into context, here is the inspiration for this line as composed in the New Intl. Version of the Bible:
At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
So, the reader is left with another lingering question by the end. Who is the man in the cemetery who tells Helen that he will show here where her son is buried immediately after she just told him he she is trying to gravesite of her nephew? Did he misheard or merely assume she meant son? Does he mean son in the metaphorical sense of all the bodies buried in that cemetery are sons of God? Is he Jesus or just a Christ figure? Is he none of the above, but rather the long-lost father of Michael that Helen fails to recognize? Or is just a gardener who has grown used to showing grieving women where their sons are buried and didn’t even register the word “nephew” at all?
