Chapter IX: The Gardens of Memory 247 (6)

"'I got her and the children to the house,' says he; 'and then I started out to get some person to help me move the body, and, as luck would have it,' says he, 'I met the Crawford boys comin' from town, and between us we managed to get the corpse up to the house and laid it on the big settee in the front hall. And now,' says he, 'I'm goin' after Uncle Jim Matthews; and me and him and the Crawford boys'll lay the body out when the undertaker comes. And Marthy Matthews will have to come over and stay all night.

"Says I, 'Sam, how is Mary bearin' it?'

"He shook his head, and says he, 'The worst way in the world. She hasn't shed a tear nor spoke a word, and she don't seem to notice anything, not even the children. But,' says he, 'I can't stand here talkin'. There's a heap to be done yet, and Milly's lookin' for me now.'

"And with that he got on his horse and rode off, and I went into the house to put the children to bed. Then I set down on the porch steps to wait for Abram. The sun was down by this time, and there was a new moon in the west, and it didn't seem like there could be any sorrow and sufferin' in such a quiet, happy, peaceful-lookin' world. But there was poor Mary not a mile away, and I set and grieved over her in her trouble jest like it had been my own. I didn't know what had happened that day between Harvey and Mary. But I knew that Harvey had been struck down in the prime o' life, and that Mary had found his dead body, and that was terrible enough. From what I'd seen o' their married life I knew that Mary's loss wasn't what mine would 'a' been if Abram had dropped dead that day instead o' Harvey, but a man and woman can't live together as husband and wife and father and mother without growin' to each other; and whatever Mary hadn't lost, she had lost the father of her children, and I couldn't sleep much that night for thinkin' of her.

"The day of the funeral I went over to help Mary and get her dressed in her widow's clothes. She was actin' queer and dazed, and nothin' seemed to make much impression on her. I was fastenin' her crape collar on, and she says to me: 'I reckon you think it's strange I don't cry and take on like women do when they lose their husbands. But,' says she, 'you wouldn't blame me if you knew.'

"And then she dropped her voice down to a whisper, and says she, 'You know I married Harvey Andrews. But after I married him, I found that there wasn't any such man. I haven't got any cause to cry, for the man I married ain't dead. He never was alive, and so, of course, he can't be dead.'

"And then she began to laugh; and says she, 'I don't know which is the worst: to be sorry when you ought to be glad, or glad when you ought to be sorry.'

"And I says, 'Hush, Mary, don't talk about it. I know what you mean, but other folks might not understand.'

"Mary ain't the only one, child, that's married a man, and then found out that there _wasn't any such man_. I've looked at many a bride and groom standin' up before the preacher and makin' promises for a lifetime, and I've thought to myself, 'You pore things, you! All you know about each other is your names and your faces. You've got all the rest to find out, and nobody knows what you'll find out nor what you'll do when you find it out.'

"Folks said it was the saddest funeral they ever went to. Harvey's people all lived down in Tennessee. His father and mother had died long ago, and he hadn't any near kin except a brother and a sister; and they lived too far off to come to the funeral in time. Abram said to me after we got home: 'Well, I never thought I'd help to lay a friend and neighbor in the ground and not a tear shed over him.'

"If Mary had 'a' cried, we could 'a' cried with her. But she set at the head o' the coffin with her hands folded in her lap, and her mind seemed to be away off from the things that was happenin' around her. I don't believe she even heard the clods fallin' on the coffin; and when we started away from the grave Marthy Matthews leaned over and whispered to me: 'Jane, don't Mary remind you of somebody walkin' in her sleep?'

"Mary's mother and sister hadn't been with her in her trouble, for they happened to be down in Logan visitin' a great-uncle. So Marthy and me settled it between us that she was to stay with Mary that night and I was to come over the next mornin'. You know how much there is to be done after a funeral. Well, bright and early I went over, and Marthy met me at the gate. She was goin' out as I was comin' in. Says she, 'Go right up-stairs; Mary's lookin' for you. She's more like herself this mornin'; and I'm thankful for that.'

"The minute I stepped in the door I heard Mary's voice. She'd seen me comin' in the gate and called out to me to come up-stairs. She was in the front room, her room and Harvey's, and the closet and the bureau drawers was all open, and things scattered around every which way, and Mary was down on her knees in front of an old trunk, foldin' up Harvey's clothes and puttin' 'em away. Her hands was shakin', and there was a red spot on each of her cheeks, and she had a strange look out of her eyes.

"I says to her, 'Why, Mary, you ain't fit to be doin' that work. You ought to be in bed restin'.' And says she, 'I can't rest till I get everything straightened out. Mother and sister Sally are comin',' says she, 'and I want to get everything in order before they get here.' And I says, 'Now, Mary, you lay down on the bed and I'll put these things away. You can watch me and tell me what to do, and I'll do it; but you've got to rest.' So I shook everything out and folded it up as nice as I could and laid it away in the trunk, while she watched me. And once she said, 'Don't have any wrinkles in 'em. Harvey was always mighty particular about his clothes.'

"Next to layin' the body in the ground, child, this foldin' up dead folks' clothes and puttin' 'em away is one o' the hardest things people ever has to do. It's jest like when you've finished a book and shut it up and put it away on the shelf. I knew jest how Mary felt, when she said she couldn't rest till everything was put away. The life she'd lived with Harvey was over, and she was closin' up the book and puttin' it out of sight forever. Pore child! Pore child!

"Well, when I got all o' Harvey's clothes put away, I washed out the empty drawers, lined 'em with clean paper and laid some o' little Harvey's clothes in 'em, and that seemed to please Mary. The father was gone, but there was his son to take his place. Then I shut it up tight, and Mary raised herself up out o' bed and says she, 'Take hold, Jane, I'm goin' to take this to the attic right now.' And take it we did, though the trunk was heavy and the stairs so steep and narrer we had to stop and rest on every step. We pushed the trunk way back under the eaves, and it may be standin' there yet for all I know.

"When we got down-stairs, Mary drew a long breath like she'd got a big load off her mind, and says she, 'There's one more thing I want you to help me about, and then you can go home, Jane, and I'll go to bed and rest.' She took a key out of her pocket, and says she, 'Jane, this is the key to the little cabin out in the back yard. Harvey used to keep something in there, but what it was I never knew. As long as we lived together, I never saw inside of that cabin, but I'm goin' to see it now.'

"The children started to foller us when we went out on the back porch, but Mary give 'em some playthings and told 'em to stay around in the front yard till we come back. Then we went over to the far corner of the back yard where the cabin was, under a big old sycamore tree. I ricollect how the key creaked when Mary turned it, and how hard the door was to open.

"Mary started to go in first, and then she fell back, and says she, in a whisper, 'You go in first, Jane; I'm afraid.' So I went in first and Mary follered. For a minute we couldn't see a thing. There was two windows to the cabin, but they'd been boarded up from the outside, and there was jest one big crack at the top of one of the windows that let in a long streak of light, and you could see the dust dancin' in it. The door opened jest enough to let us in, and we both stood there peerin' around and tryin' to see what sort of a place we'd got into. The first thing I made out was a heap of old rusty iron. I started to take a step, and my foot struck against it. There was old bolts and screws and horseshoes and scraps of old cast iron and nails of every size, all laid together in a big heap. The place seemed to be full of somethin', but I couldn't see what it all was till my eyes got used to the darkness. There was a row of nails goin' all round the wall, and old clothes hangin' on every one of 'em. And down on the floor there was piles of old clothes, folded smooth and laid one on top o' the other jest like a washerwoman would fold 'em and pile 'em up. Harvey's old clothes and Mary's and the children's, things that any right-minded person would 'a' put in the rag-bag or given away to anybody that could make use of 'em; there they was, all hoarded up in that old room jest like they was of some value. And over in one corner was all the old worn-out tin things that you could think of: buckets and pans and milk-strainers and dippers and cups. And next to them was all the glass and china that'd been broken in the years Mary and Harvey'd been keepin' house. And there was a lot of old brooms, nothin' but stubs, tied together jest like new brooms in the store. And there was all the children's broken toys, dolls, and doll dresses, and even some glass marbles that little Harvey used to play with. The dust was lyin' thick and heavy over everything, and the spiderwebs looked like black strings hangin' from the ceilin'; but things of the same sort was all lyin' together jest like some woman had put the place in order.

"You've heard tell of that bird, child, that gathers up all sorts o' rubbish and carries it off to its nest and hides it? Well, I thought about that bird; and the heap of old iron reminded me of a little boy's pocket when you turn it wrong side out at night, and the china and glass and doll-rags made me think of the playhouses I used to make under the trees when I was a little girl. I've seen many curious places, honey, but nothin' like that old cabin. The moldy smell reminded me of the grave; and when I looked at all the dusty, old plunder, the ragged clothes hangin' against the wall like so many ghosts, and then thought of the dead man that had put 'em there, I tell you it made my flesh creep.

"Well, we stood there, me and Mary, strainin' our eyes tryin' to see into the dark corners, and all at once the meanin' of it come over me like a flash: _Harvey was a miser!_"

Aunt Jane stopped, took off her glasses and polished them on the hem of her gingham apron. I sat holding my breath; but, all regardless of my suspense, she dropped the thread of the story and followed memory in one of her capricious backward flights.

"I ricollect a sermon I heard when I was a gyirl," she said. "It ain't often, I reckon, that a sermon makes much impression on a gyirl's mind. But this wasn't any ordinary sermon or any ordinary preacher. Presbytery met in town that year, and all the big preachers in the state was there. Some of 'em come out and preached to the country churches, and old Dr. Samuel Chalmers Morse preached at Goshen. He was one o' the biggest men in the Presbytery, and I ricollect his looks as plain as I ricollect his sermon. Some preachers look jest like other men, and you can tell the minute you set eyes on 'em that they ain't any wiser or any better than common folks. But Dr. Morse wasn't that kind.

"You know the Bible tells about people walkin' with God and talkin' with God. It says Enoch walked with God, and Adam talked with Him. Some folks might find that hard to believe, but it seems jest as natural to me. Why many a time I've been in my gyarden when the sun's gone down, and it ain't quite time for the moon to come up, and the dew's fallin' and the flowers smellin' sweet, and I've set down in the summer-house and looked up at the stars; and if I'd heard a voice from heaven it wouldn't 'a' been a bit stranger to me than the blowin' of the wind.

"The minute I saw Dr. Morse I thought about Adam and Enoch, and I said to myself, 'He looks like a man that's walked with God and talked with God.'

"I didn't look at the people's hats and bonnets that day half as much as I usually did, and part of that sermon stayed by me all my life. He preached about Nebuchadnezzar and the image he saw in his dream with the head of gold and the feet of clay. And he said that every human being was like that image; there was gold and there was clay in every one of us. Part of us was human and part was divine. Part of us was earthly like the clay, and part heavenly like the gold. And he said that in some folks you couldn't see anything but the clay, but that the gold was there, and if you looked long enough you'd find it. And some folks, he said, looked like they was all gold, but somewhere or other there was the clay, too, and nobody was so good but what he had his secret sins and open faults. And he said sin was jest another name for ignorance, and that Christ knew this when he prayed on the cross, 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.' He said everybody would do right, if they knew what was right to do, and that the thing for us to do was to look for the gold and not the clay in other folks. For the gold was the part that would never die, and the clay was jest the mortal part that we dropped when this mortal shall have put on immortality.

"Child, that sermon's come home to me many a time when I've caught myself weighin' people in the balance and findin' 'em wantin'. That's what I'd been doin' all them years with pore Harvey. I'd seen things every once in a while that let in a little light on his life and Mary's, but the old cabin made it all plain as day, and it seemed like every piece o' rubbish in it rose up in judgment against me. I never felt like cryin' at Harvey's funeral, but when I stood there peerin' around, the tears burnt my eyes, and I says to myself, 'Clay and gold! Clay and gold!'

"The same thought must 'a' struck Mary at the same minute it did me, for she fell on her knees moanin' and wringin' her hands and cryin':

"'God forgive me! God forgive me! I see it all now. He couldn't help it, and I've been a hard woman, and God'll judge me as I judged Harvey.'

"The look in her eyes and the sound of her voice skeered me, and I saw that the quicker I got her out o' the old cabin the better. I put my hand on her shoulder, and says I, 'Hush, Mary. Get up and come back to the house; but don't let the children hear you takin' on so. You might skeer little Harvey.'

"She stopped a minute and stared at me, and then she caught hold o' my hand, and says she: 'No! no! the children mustn't ever know anything about it, and nobody must ever see the inside o' that awful place. Come, quick!' says she; and she got up from her knees and pulled me outside of the door and locked it and dropped the key in her apron pocket.

"Little Harvey come runnin' up to her, and I was in hopes the sight of the child would bring her to herself, but she walked on as if she hadn't seen him; and as soon as she got up-stairs she fell down in a heap on the floor and went to wringin' her hands and beatin' her breast and cryin' without tears.

"Honey, if you're done a wrong to a livin' person, you needn't set down and grieve over it. You can go right to the person and make it right or try to make it right. But when the one you've wronged is dead, and the grave lies between you, that's the sort o' grief that breaks hearts and makes people lose their minds. And that was what Mary Andrews had to bear when she opened the door o' that old cabin and saw into Harvey's nature, and felt that she had misjudged and condemned him.

"I couldn't do anything for a long time, but jest sit by her and listen while she called Harvey back from the dead, and called on God to forgive her, and blamed herself for all that had ever gone wrong between 'em. But at last she wore herself out and had to stop, and says I, 'Mary, I don't know what's passed between you and Harvey--' And she broke in, and says she:

"'No! no! you don't know, and nobody on this earth knows what I've been through. I used to feel like I was in an iron cage that got smaller and smaller every day, and I knew the day was comin' when it would shut in on me and crush me. But I wouldn't give in to Harvey, I wouldn't let him have his own way, and I fought him and hated him and despised him; and now I see he couldn't help it, and I feel like I'd been strikin' a crippled child.'

"A crippled child! That was jest what pore Harvey was; but I knew it wasn't right for Mary to take all the blame on herself, and says I:

"'Mary, if Harvey could keep other people from knowin' what he was, couldn't he have kept you from knowin' it, too? If he was free-handed to other people, what was to hinder him from bein' the same way to you?' Says I, 'If there's any blame in this matter it belongs as much to Harvey as it does to you. When you look at that old cabin,' says I, 'you can't have any hard feelin's toward pore Harvey. You've forgiven him, and now,' says I, 'there's jest one more person you've got to forgive, and that's yourself,' says I. 'It's jest as wrong to be too hard on yourself as it is to be too hard on other folks.'

"I never had thought o' that before, child, but I've thought of it many a time since and I know it's true. It ain't often you find a human bein' that's too hard on himself. Most of us is jest the other way. But Mary was one of that kind. I could see a change come over her face while I was talkin', and I've always believed them words was put in my mouth to give Mary the comfort and help she needed.

"She grabbed hold o' my hand, and says she:

"'Do you reckon I've got a right to forgive myself?' Says she, 'I know I'm not a mean woman by nature, but Harvey's ways wasn't my ways. He made me do things I didn't want to do and say things I didn't want to say, and I never was myself as long as I lived with him. But God knows I wouldn't 'a' been so hard on him if I'd only known,' says she. 'God may forgive me, but even if He does, it don't seem to me that I've got a right to forgive myself.'

"And says I, 'Mary, if you don't forgive yourself you won't be able to keer for the children, and you haven't got any right to wrong the livin' by worryin' over the dead. And now,' says I, 'you lie down on this bed and shut your eyes and say to yourself, "Harvey's forgiven me, and God's forgiven me, and I forgive myself." Don't let another thought come into your head. Jest say it over and over till you go to sleep, and while you're sleepin', I'll look after the children.'

"I didn't have much faith in my own remedy, but she minded me like a child mindin' its mother; and, sure enough, when I tiptoed up-stairs an hour or so after that, I found her fast asleep. Her mother and her sister Sally come while she was still sleepin', and I left for home, feelin' that she was in good hands.

"That night about half-past nine o'clock I went outdoors and set down on the porch steps in the dark, as I always do jest before bedtime. That's been one o' my ways ever since I was a child. Abram used to say he had known me to forgit my prayers many a night, but he never knew me to forgit to go outdoors and look up at the sky. If there was a moon, or if the stars was shinin', I'd stay out and wander around in the gyarden till he'd come out after me; and if it was cloudy, I'd set there and feel safe in the darkness as in the light. I always have thought, honey, that we lose a heap by sleepin' all night. Well, I was sittin' there lookin' up at the stars, and all at once I saw a bright light over in the direction of Harvey Andrews' place. Our house was built on risin' ground, and we could see for a good ways around the country. I called Abram and asked him if he hadn't better saddle old Moll and ride over and see if he couldn't help whoever was in trouble. But he said it was most likely some o' the neighbors burnin' brush, and whatever it was it would be out before he could git to it. So we set there watchin' it and speculatin' about it till it died down, and then we went to bed.

"The next mornin' I was out in the yard weedin' out a bed o' clove pinks, and Sam Amos come ridin' by on his big bay mare. I hollered to him and asked him if he knew where the fire was the night before. And says he, 'Yes, Aunt Jane; it was that old cabin on Harvey Andrews' place.' He said that Amos Matthews happened to be goin' by at the time and took down the fence-rails to keep it from spreadin', but that was all he could do. Sam said Amos told him there was somethin' mysterious about that fire. He said it must 'a' been started from the inside, for the flames didn't burst through the windows and roof till after he got there, and the whole inside was ablaze. But, when he tried to open the door, it was locked fast and tight. He said Mary and her mother and sister was all out in the yard, and Mary was standin' with her hands folded in front of her, lookin' at the burnin' house jest as calm as if it was her own fireplace. Amos asked her for the key to the cabin door, and she went to the back porch and took one off a nail, but it wouldn't fit the lock, and before she could get another to try, the roof was on fire and cavin' in. Amos told Sam the cabin appeared to be full of old plunder of all sorts, and you could smell burnt rags for a mile around.

"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.

"I don't reckon Solomon was thinkin' about flower gyardens when he said there was a time for all things," Aunt Jane was wont to say, "but anyhow it's so. You know the Bible says that the Lord God walked in the gyarden of Eden in 'the cool of the day,' and that's the best time for seein' flowers,--the cool of the mornin' and the cool of the evenin'. There's jest as much difference between a flower with the dew on it at sun-up and a flower in the middle o' the day as there is between a woman when she's fresh from a good night's sleep and when she's cookin' a twelve-o'clock dinner in a hot kitchen. You think them poppies are mighty pretty with the sun shinin' on 'em, but the poppy ain't a sun flower; it's a sunrise flower."