At the end of the story, Helen encounters a man in the Hagenzeele Third whom she assumes to be a gardener. He helps her find Michael's grave and gives her a compassionate look. This ending serves as an allusion to the Gospel of John, in which Mary Magdalene confuses Christ for a gardener when visiting his tomb.
A man knelt behind a line of headstones – evidently a gardener, for he was firming a young plant in the soft earth.
In John 20, Mary Magdalene looks into Jesus's empty tomb, weeping. Jesus appears, but Mary does not initially recognize him. When he asks her why she is crying and who she is looking for, the Bible verse mentions that she mistakes him for a gardener. A reader familiar with John's resurrection story would recognize a parallel between it and the end of Kipling's "The Gardener," when Helen finally makes it to the cemetery in which Michael is buried. The reader has already received a hint through the title that this allusion may come. Nevertheless, it is only at the very end that the reason for the title becomes clear.
In the final sentences of the story, the narrator underlines Helen's assumption about the man's identity.
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 first time this character is mentioned, the narrator doesn't specify that Helen is the one to assume his profession. Rather, it is an omniscient comment. Here, however, the comment is focalized directly through Helen's perspective. Additionally, the narrator uses a different article in the two instances. Whereas he is "evidently a gardener" in the first instance, he becomes "the gardener" in the second. This mirrors the syntax and diction in the Bible verse, which states that Mary Magdalene thinks Jesus is the gardener. The definite article emphasizes the singularity of Jesus.
One can also consider the story's title and ending as an allusion to Genesis, the very beginning of the Bible. The story's final image shows the gardener tending to some "young plants." Genesis 2 describes God planting a garden in Eden, which he cultivates and even walks through. Although Adam and Eve (and all humankind with them) are expelled from the garden after they fail to resist temptation, God later offers people an opportunity for redemption through faith in Christ. This arc of creation, destruction, and redemption can also be found in "The Gardener." The war can be considered as the story's version of the fall of man. Towards the end of the story, Kipling suggests that people, though having brought about destruction and sorrow on a mass scale, are ready to rebuild their ravaged world.
Creation, death, and re-creation are reigning themes in the books of Genesis and John. By framing the story—through title and ending—with the figure of the gardener, Kipling imbues the story with a sense of hope, despite the immense sadness contained within it. Furthermore, when the gardener tells Helen that he will "show [her] where [her] son lies," Kipling suggests that God has forgiven Helen for her life's shame: having a child outside of marriage, and keeping her true connection to Michael secret from him until his death.
As Michael grows older and grapples with the difficult truth of his birth, he seeks new ways of conceiving of his background—and understanding how it shapes his identity. At the age of ten, he unites his study of English literature and history with his self-examination through two allusions in a conversation with Helen. This conversation is punctuated by dramatic irony.
But don’t you bother, Auntie. I’ve found out all about my sort in English Hist’ry and the Shakespeare bits. There was William the Conqueror to begin with, and – oh, heaps more, and they all got on first-rate. ’Twon’t make any difference to you, my being that – will it?
This passage contains both a literary allusion and a historical allusion. When Michael states that he "has found out all about [his] sort in English Hist’ry," he initially leaves it up to Helen's (and the reader's) imagination to come up with examples of illegitimate heirs in English history. The one historical example he chooses to name is William the Conqueror, the first Norman king of England. Alternatively known as "William the Bastard," he was the illegitimate son of Duke Robert I of Normandy. William's illegitimate status played a role in the early years of his rule. Eventually, however, he consolidated his power and influence enough to make this detail recede to the background of his identity. Michael brings him up to challenge the shame associated with illegitimacy. As he learns more and more about the world, he seeks comfort in discovering that some of English history's most notable figures shared his circumstances.
He also mentions "the Shakespeare bits," which once again leaves it up to the reader to come up with specific examples. The Shakespeare bit that would probably first occur to most readers is the character Edmund from King Lear, who is the illegitimate son of the Earl of Gloucester. There are many other illegitimate sons in Shakespeare's work. A reason why Michael neglects to name any of them directly might be that they often function as villains in the plays.
These allusions indicate that, as he grows older, Michael seeks new ways of understanding his background. When he was six, he expressed his confusion, discomfort, and shame over being different through anger targeted at Helen. Now, at age ten, he still chooses to confront Helen, but relies on literature and history to cope with these emotions. Michael's language in this passage offers a contemporary reader an idea of how controversial it was to have children out of wedlock at the turn of the century. A word he leaves out, but which he clearly speaks around, is "bastard." Instead of saying this word outright, he says "my sort," "they," and "that." In a world with no tolerance for illegitimacy, even the act of naming his status out loud feels impossible for Michael.
To both Helen and the reader, who know more than Michael does, the question at the end of the quote stirs up many emotions. Largely for the sake of Helen's wellbeing, Michael expresses throughout the passage that he is coming to terms with his murky parentage. Most of all, he wants to make sure that it doesn't have any bearing on how she sees him. This demonstrates that Michael still believes that he is the son of Helen's brother rather than of Helen herself. In his eyes, the shame of extramarital sex lies with his supposed father George and himself, rather than with Helen. Operating from differing sets of information about Michael's parentage, Michael and Helen both grapple with the burden of his illegitimate status.
The story opens with an epigraph that contains two layers of allusion: one to a poem written by Kipling, another to Christ's Resurrection. This dual allusion has the effect of foreshadowing the story's ending.
One grave to me was given,
One watch till Judgment Day;
And God looked down from Heaven
And rolled the stone away.
One day in all the years,
One hour in that one day,
His Angel saw my tears,
And rolled the stone away!
The story's epigraph consists of the final verse of "The Burden," one of Kipling's own poems. However, while this self-referential allusion might seem apparent to a reader today, the poem had not yet been published independently when the story first came out. The poem's presence in the story makes for a less straightforward allusion. At the same time, the poem contains an allusion of its own that is much more accessible. To a reader of Kipling's time, the more obvious allusion in the opening of the story would be the epigraph's reference to the Gospel of John.
In John 20, Mary Magdalene visits Christ's tomb three days after his death and finds it empty. She then speaks with a man she believes to be a gardener, but who reveals himself to be Christ. The diction of words like "grave," "Judgment Day," "rolled, "stone," and "Angel" brings this book of the Bible to mind. A reader who is familiar with the Gospel would likely catch the allusion in the story's title after reading this epigraph.
Helen's visit to Michael's grave at the end of the story mirrors Mary Magdalene's visit to Christ's tomb, especially due to her conversation with the gardener. The biblical allusion of the epigraph and title foreshadows this ending. In addition, the stone that God and the Angel roll away for the poem's first-person speaker can be interpreted as the absolution Helen receives at the end of the story. When the gardener tells her that he will take her to her son, he relieves her of her burden of sin, shame, and secrecy.
