Chapter 12
"Of course there was a good deal o' talk about the fire, and everybody said how curious it was that it could catch on the inside when the door was locked. I never said a word, not even to Abram, but I knew well enough who set the old cabin afire, and why the key Mary gave Amos wouldn't fit the lock. Harvey's clothes was packed away under the old garret; the old cabin was burned, and the ashes and rubbish hauled away, and there wasn't anything much left to remind Mary of the things she was tryin' to forget. That's the best way to do. When a thing's done and you can't undo it, there's no use in frettin' and worryin' yourself. Jest put it out o' your mind, and go on your way and git ready for the next trial that's comin' to you.
"But Mary never seemed like herself after Harvey died, until little Harvey was taken with fever. That seemed to rouse her and bring her senses back, and she nursed him night and day. The little thing went down to the very gates of death, and everybody give up hope except the old doctor. He'd fight death off as long as there was breath in the body. The night the turnin' point was to come I set up with Mary. The child'd been moanin' and tossin', and his muscles was twitchin', and the fever jest as high as it could be. But about three o'clock he got quiet and about half-past three I leaned over and counted his breaths. He was breathin' slow and regular, and I touched his forehead and found it was wet, and the fever was goin' away. I went over to Mary, and says I, 'You go in the other room and lie down, Mary, the fever's broke, and Harvey's goin' to git well.' She stared at me like she couldn't take in what I was sayin'. Then her face begun to work like a person's in a convulsion, and she jumped up and rushed out o' the room, and the next minute she give a cry that I can hear yet. Then she begun to sob, and I knew she was cryin' tears at last, and I set by the child and cried with her.
"She wasn't able to be up for two or three days, and every little while she'd burst out cryin'. Some folks said she was cryin' for joy about the child gittin' well; and some said she was cryin' the tears she ought to 'a' cried when Harvey was buried; but I knew she was cryin' over all the sorrows of her married life. She told me afterwards that she hadn't shed a tear for six or seven years. Says she, 'I used to cry my eyes out nearly over the way things went, and one day somethin' happened and I come near cryin'; but the children was around and I didn't want them to see me; so I says to myself, "I won't cry. What's the use wastin' tears over such things?" And from that day,' says she, 'I got as hard as a stone, and it looks like I was jest turnin' back to flesh and blood again.'
"There's only two ways o' takin' trouble, child; you can laugh over it or you can cry over it. But you've got to do one or the other. The Lord made some folks that can laugh away their troubles, and he made tears for them that can't laugh, and human bein's can't harden themselves into stone.
"I reckon, as Mary said, nobody on earth knew what she'd been through, livin' with a man like Harvey. If he'd been an out-and-out miser, it would 'a' been better for everybody concerned. But it looked like Nature started out to make him a miser and then sp'iled the job, so's he was neither one thing nor the other. The gold was there, and he showed that to outsiders; and the clay was there, and he showed that to Mary. And that's the strangest part of all to me. If he had enough sense not to want his neighbors to know his meanness, it looks like he ought to have had sense enough to hide it from his wife. A man ought to want his wife to think well of him whether anybody else does or not. You see, a woman can make out to live with a man and not love him, but she can't live with him and despise him. She's jest got to respect him. But there's some men that never have found that out. They think that because a woman stands up before a preacher and promises to love and honor him, that she's bound to do it, no matter what he does. And some women do. They're like dogs; they'll stick to a man no matter what he does. Some women never can see any faults in their husbands, and some sees the faults and covers 'em up and hides 'em from outsiders. But Mary wasn't that sort. She couldn't deceive herself, and nobody could deceive her; and when she found out Harvey's meanness she couldn't help despisin' him in her heart, jest like Michal despised David when she saw him playin' and dancin' before the Lord.
"There's something I never have understood, and one of 'em is why such a woman as Mary should 'a' been permitted to marry a man like Harvey Andrews. It kind o' shakes my faith in Providence every time I think of it. But I reckon there was a reason for it, whether I can see it or not."
Aunt Jane's voice ceased. She dropped her knitting in her lap and leaned back in the old easy-chair. Apparently she was looking at the dripping syringa bush near the window, but the look in her eyes told me that she had reached a page in the story that was not for my eyes or my ears, and I held inviolate the silence that had fallen between us.
A low, far-off roll of thunder, the last note of the storm-music, roused her from her reverie.
"Sakes alive, child!" she exclaimed, starting bolt upright. "Have I been sleepin' and dreamin' and you settin' here? Well, I got through with my story, anyhow, before I dropped off."
"Surely that isn't all," I said, discontentedly. "What became of Mary Andrews after Harvey died?"
Aunt Jane laughed blithely.
"No, it ain't all. What's gittin' into me to leave off the endin' of a story? Mary was married young; and when Harvey died she had the best part of her life before her, and it was the best part, sure enough. About a year after she was left a widow she went up to Christian County to visit some of her cousins, and there she met the man she ought to 'a' married in the first place. I ain't any hand for second marriages. 'One man for one woman,' says I; but I've seen so many second marriages that was happier than any first ones that I never say anything against marryin' twice. Some folks are made for each other, but they make mistakes in the road and git lost, and don't git found till they've been through a heap o' tribulation, and, maybe, the biggest half o' their life's gone. But then, they've got all eternity before 'em, and there's time enough there to find all they've lost and more besides. But Mary found her portion o' happiness before it was too late. Elbert Madison was the man she married. He was an old bachelor, and a mighty well-to-do man, and they said every old maid and widow in Christian County had set her cap for him one time or another. But whenever folks said anything to him about marryin', he'd say, 'I'm waitin' for the Right Woman. She's somewhere in the world, and as soon as I find her I'm goin' to marry.'
"It got to be a standin' joke with the neighbors and the family, and his brother used to say that Elbert believed in that 'Right Woman' the same as he believed in God.
"They used to tell how one Christmas, Elbert's nieces had a lot o' young company from Louisville, and they had a big dance Christmas Eve. Elbert was there, and the minute he come into the room the oldest niece, she whispered, 'Here's Uncle Elbert; he's come to see if the Right Woman's at the ball.' And with that all them gyirls rushed up to Elbert and shook hands with him and pulled him into the middle o' the room under a big bunch o' mistletoe, and the prettiest and sassiest one of 'em, she took her dress between the tips of her fingers and spread it out and made a low bow, and says she, lookin' up into Elbert's face, says she:
"'Mr. Madison, don't I look like the Right Woman?'
"Everybody laughed and expected to see Elbert blush and act like he wanted to go through the floor. But instead o' that he looked at her serious and earnest, and at last he says: 'You do look a little like her, but you ain't her. You've got the color of her eyes,' says he, 'but not the look of 'em. Her hair's dark like yours, but it don't curl quite as much, and she's taller than you are, but not quite so slim.'
"They said the gyirls stopped laughin' and jest looked at each other, and one of 'em said:
"'Well, did you ever?' And that was the last time they tried to tease Elbert. But Elbert's brother he turns to somebody standin' near him, and says he, 'Unless Elbert gets that "right-woman" foolishness out of his head and marries and settles down like other men, I believe he'll end his days in a lunatic asylum.'
"But it all turned out the way Elbert said it would. The minute he saw Mary Andrews, he whispered to his sister-in-law, and says he, 'Sister Mary, do you see that dark-eyed woman over there by the door? Well, that's the woman I've been lookin' for all my life.'
"He walked across the room and got introduced to her, and they said when him and Mary shook hands they looked each other in the eyes and laughed like two old friends that hadn't met for years.
"Harvey hadn't been dead much over a year and Mary wanted to put off the weddin'. But Elbert said, 'No; I've waited for you a lifetime and I'm not goin' to wait any longer.' So they got married as soon as Mary could have her weddin' clothes made, and a happier couple you never saw. Elbert used to look at her and say:
"'God made Eve for Adam, and he made you for me.'
"And he didn't only love Mary, but he loved her children the same as if they'd been his own. A woman that's been another man's wife can easy enough find a man to love her, but to find one that'll love the other man's children, that's a different matter."
One! two! three! four! chimed the old clock; and at the same moment out came the sun, sending long rays across the room. The rain had subsided to a gentle mist, and the clouds were rolling away before a south-west wind that carried with it fragrance from wet flowers and leaves and a world cleansed and renewed by a summer storm. We moved our chairs out on the porch to enjoy the clearing-off. There were health and strength in every breath of the cool, moist air, and for every sense but one a pleasure--odor, light, coolness, and the faint music of falling water from the roof and from the trees that sent down miniature showers whenever the wind stirred their branches.
Aunt Jane drew a deep breath of satisfaction, and looked upward at the blue sky.
"I don't mind how much it rains durin' the day," she said, "if it'll jest stop off before night and let the sun set clear. And that's the way with life, child. If everything ends right, we can forget all about the troubles we've had before. I reckon if Mary Andrews could 'a' seen a few years ahead while she was havin' her trials with pore Harvey, she would 'a' borne 'em all with a better grace. But lookin' ahead is somethin' we ain't permitted to do. We've jest got to stand up under the present and trust for the time we can't see. And whether we trust or not, child, no matter how dark it is nor how long it stays dark, the sun's goin' to come out some time, and it's all goin' to be right at the last. You know what the Scripture says, 'At evening time it shall be light!'"
Her faded eyes were turned reverently toward the glory of the western sky, but the light on her face was not all of the setting sun.
"At evening time it shall be light!"
Not of the day but of human life were these words spoken, and with Aunt Jane the prophecy had been fulfilled.
IX
THE GARDENS OF MEMORY
Each of us has his own way of classifying humanity. To me, as a child, men and women fell naturally into two great divisions: those who had gardens and those who had only houses.
Brick walls and pavements hemmed me in and robbed me of one of my birthrights; and to the fancy of childhood a garden was a paradise, and the people who had gardens were happy Adams and Eves walking in a golden mist of sunshine and showers, with green leaves and blue sky overhead, and blossoms springing at their feet; while those others, dispossessed of life's springs, summers, and autumns, appeared darkly entombed in shops and parlors where the year might as well have been a perpetual winter.
As I grew older I learned that there was a small subclass composed of people who not only possessed gardens, but whose gardens possessed them, and it is the spots sown and tended by these that blossom eternally in one's remembrance as veritable vailimas--"gardens of dreams."
In every one's mind there is a lonely space, almost abandoned of consciousness, the time between infancy and childhood. It is like that period when the earth was "without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." Here, like lost stars floating in the firmament of mind, will be found two or three faint memories, remote and disconnected. With me one of these memories is of a garden. I was riding with my father along a pleasant country road. There were sunshine and a gentle wind, and white clouds in a blue sky. We stopped at a gate. My father opened it, and I walked up a grassy path to the ruins of a house. The chimney was still standing, but all the rest was a heap of blackened, half-burned rubbish which spring and summer were covering with wild vines and weeds, and around the ruins of the house lay the ruins of the garden. The honeysuckle, bereft of its trellis, wandered helplessly over the ground, and amid a rank growth of weeds sprang a host of yellow snapdragons. I remember the feeling of rapture that was mine at the thought that I had found a garden where flowers could be gathered without asking permission of any one. And as long as I live, the sight of a yellow snapdragon on a sunny day will bring back my father from his grave and make me a little child again gathering flowers in that deserted garden, which is seemingly in another world than this.
A later memory than this is of a place that was scarcely more than a paved court lying between high brick walls. But because we children wanted a garden so much, we called it by that name; and here and there a little of Mother Earth's bosom, left uncovered, gave us some warrant for the misnomer. Yet the spot was not without its beauties, and a less exacting child might have found content within its boundaries.
Here was the Indian peach tree, whose pink blossoms told us that spring had come. Its fruit in the late summer was like the pomegranate in its rich color, "blood-tinctured with a veined humanity;" and its friendly limbs held a swing in which we cleft the air like the birds. Yet even now the sight of an Indian peach brings melancholy thoughts. A yellow honeysuckle clambered over a wall. But this flower has no perfume, and a honeysuckle without perfume is a base pretender, to be cast out of the family of the real sweet-scented honeysuckle. There were two roses of similar quality, one that detestable mockery known as the burr-rose. I have for this flower the feeling of repulsion that one has for certain disagreeable human beings,--people with cold, clammy hands, for instance. I hated its feeble pink color, its rough calyx, and its odor always made me think of vast fields of snow, and icicles hanging from snow-covered roofs under leaden wintry skies. Unhappy mistake to call such a thing a rose, and plant it in a child's garden! The only place where it might fitly grow is by the side of the road that led Childe Roland to the Dark Tower: between the bit of "stubbed ground" and the marsh near to the "palsied oak," with its roots set in the "bog, clay and rubble, sand and stark black dearth."
The other rose I recall with the same dislike, though it was pleasing to the eye. The bush was tall, and had the nature of a climber; for it drooped in a lackadaisical way, and had to be tied to a stout post. I think it could have stood upright, had it chosen to do so; and its drooping seemed only an ugly habit, without grace. The cream-white flowers grew in clusters, and the buds were really beautiful, but color and form are only the body of the rose; the soul, the real self, is the rose odor, and no rose-soul was incarnated in its petals. Again and again, deceived by its beauty, I would hold it close to my face to breathe its fragrance, and always its faint sickening-sweet odor brought me only disappointment and disgust. It was a Lamia among roses. Another peculiarity was that it had very few thorns, and those few were small and weak. Yet the thorn is as much a part of the true rose as its sweetness; and lacking the rose thorn and the rose perfume, what claim had it to the rose name? I never saw this false rose elsewhere than in the false garden, and because it grew there, and because it dishonored its royal family, I would not willingly meet it face to face again.
We children cultivated sweet-scented geraniums in pots, but a flower in a pot was to me like a bird in a cage, and the fragrant geraniums gave me no more pleasure than did the scentless many-hued lady's-slippers that we planted in tiny borders, and the purple flowering beans and white blossoms of the madeira vines that grew on a tall trellis by the cistern's grassy mound. There was nothing here to satisfy my longing, and I turned hungrily to other gardens whose gates were open to me in those early days. In one of these was a vast bed of purple heartsease, flower of the beautiful name. Year after year they had blossomed and gone to seed till the harvest of flowers in their season was past gathering, and any child in the neighborhood was at liberty to pluck them by handfuls, while the wicked ones played at "chicken fighting" and littered the ground with decapitated bodies. There is no heartsease nowadays, only the magnificent pansy of which it was the modest forerunner. But one little cluster of dark, spicy blooms like those I used to gather in that old garden would be more to me than the most splendid pansy created by the florist's art.
The lily of the valley calls to mind a garden, almost in the heart of town, where this flower went forth to possess the land and spread itself in so reckless a growth that at intervals it had to be uprooted to protect the landed rights of the rest of the community. Never were there such beds of lilies! And when they pierced the black loam with their long sheath-like leaves, and broke their alabaster boxes of perfume on the feet of spring, the most careless passer-by was forced to stay his steps for one ecstatic moment to look and to breathe, to forget and to remember. The shadow of the owner's house lay on this garden at the morning hour, and a tall brick building intercepted its share of the afternoon sunshine; but the love and care of the wrinkled old woman who tended it took the place of real sunshine, and everything planted here grew with a luxuriance not seen in sunnier and more favored spots. The mistress of the garden, when questioned as to this, would say it was because she gave her flowers to all who asked, and the God of gardens loved the cheerful giver and blessed her with an abundance of bud and blossom. The highest philosophy of human life she used in her management of this little plant world; for, burying the weeds at the roots of the flowers, the evil was made to minister to the good; and the nettle, the plantain and all their kind were transmuted by nature's fine chemistry into pinks, lilies, and roses.
The purple splendor of the wisteria recalls the garden that I always entered with a fearful joy, for here a French gardener reigned absolute, and the flowers might be looked at, but not pulled. How different from those wild gardens of the neighboring woods where we children roamed at will, shouting rapturously over the finding of a bed of scentless blue violets or delicate anemones that withered and were thrown away before we reached home,--an allegory, alas! of our later lives.
There was one garden that I coveted in those days as Ahab coveted his neighbor's vineyard. After many years, so many that my childish longing was almost forgotten, I had it, I and my children. Together we played under the bee-haunted lindens, and looked at the sunset through the scarlet and yellow leaves of the sugar maples, and I learned that "every desire is the prophecy of its own fulfilment;" and if the fulfilment is long delayed, it is only that it may be richer and deeper when it does come.
All these were gardens of the South; but before childhood was over I watched the quick, luxuriant growth of flowers through the brief summer of a northern clime. The Canterbury-bell, so like a prim, pretty maiden, the dahlia, that stately dame always in court costume of gorgeous velvet, remind me of those well-kept beds where not a leaf or flower was allowed to grow awry; and in one ancient garden the imagination of a child found wings for many an airy flight. The town itself bore the name of the English nobleman, well known in Revolutionary days. Not far away his mansion sturdily defied the touch of time and decay, and admonished the men of a degenerate present to remember their glorious past. The house that sheltered me that summer was known in colonial days as the Black-Horse Tavern. Its walls had echoed to the tread of patriot and tory, who gathered here to drink a health to General Washington or to King George; and patriot, and tory, too, had trod the paths of the garden and plucked its flowers and its fruit in the times that tried men's souls. By the back gate grew a strawberry apple tree, and every morning the dewy grass held a night's windfall of the tiny red apples that were the reward of the child who rose earliest. A wonderful grafted tree that bore two kinds of fruit gave the place a touch of fairyland's magic, and no explanation of the process of grafting ever diminished the awe I felt when I stood under this tree and saw ripe spice apples growing on one limb and green winter pearmains on all the others. The pound sweeting, the spitzenberg, and many sister apples were there; and I stayed long enough to see them ripen into perfection. While they ripened I gathered the jewel-like clusters of red and white currants and a certain rare English gooseberry which English hands had brought from beyond the seas and planted here when the sign of the Black-Horse swung over the tavern door. The ordinary gooseberry is a plebeian fruit, but this one was more patrician than its name, and its name was "the King George." Twice as large as the common kind, translucent and yellowish white when fully ripe, and of an incomparable sweetness and flavor, it could have graced a king's table and held its own with the delicate strawberry or the regal grape. And then, best of all, it was a forbidden fruit, whereof we children ate by stealth, and solemnly declared that we had not eaten. Could the Garden of the Hesperides have held more charms?
At the end of the long Dutch "stoop" I found the wands of the snowberry, whose tiny flowers have the odor and color of the trailing arbutus, and whose waxen berries reminded me of the crimson "buckberry" of Southern fields. Fuchsias and dark-red clove pinks grew in a peculiarly rich and sunny spot by the back fence, and over a pot of the musk-plant I used to hang as Isabella hung over her pot of basil. I had never seen it before, and have never seen it since, but by the witchery of perfume one of its yellow flowers, one of its soft pale green leaves could place me again in that garden of the old inn, a child walking among the ghosts and memories of a past century.
In all these flowery closes there are rich aftermaths; but when Memory goes a-gleaning, she dwells longest on the evenings and mornings once spent in Aunt Jane's garden.