"Tell me of your mother"s garden." I picked up the tiny flower and put it on Lillie"s cot, where its fragrance waked faint stirrings of other days. "I"ve always wanted a garden like my grandmother Heath used to have. I remember it very well, though I was only nine when she died.
There were cherry-trees and fig-trees in it, and a big arbor covered with scuppernong grape-vines, and wonderful strawberries in one corner.
All of her flowers were the old-fashioned kind. There was a beautiful yellow rose that grew all over the fence which separated the flowers from the vegetables, and close to the wood-house was a big moss-rose bush. There were Micrafella roses, too. I loved them best, and Jacqueminots, and tea-roses, and--"
"Did she have princess-feather in hers, and candytuft, and sweet-williams?" Lillie turned over on her side, her hand under her cheek, and in her eyes a quick, eager glow. "In mother"s garden were all sorts of old-fashioned flowers also. We lived two miles from town and father sold vegetables and chickens to the market-men, who sold them to their customers. But he never had as good luck with his vegetables as mother had with her flowers. She loved them so. There was a big mock-orange bush right by the well. Did you ever shut your eyes and see things again just as they were a long time ago? If I were blind-folded and my hands tied behind me I could find just where every flower used to grow in mother"s garden, if I could go in it again."
Like a flood overleaping the barrier that held it back, the words came eagerly. To keep her from talking would do more harm than to let her talk. The fever in her soul was greater, more consuming, than that in her body. I did not try to stop her.
"I don"t remember where each thing was in grandmother"s garden." I moved my chair a little closer to her cot. "But I remember the gooseberry-bushes were just behind a long bed of lilies-of-the-valley.
It seemed so queer they should be together."
"Lilies of the valley grow anywhere. Mother"s bed got bigger every year. There was a large circle of them around a mound in the middle of our garden, and they were fringed with violets. One February our minister"s wife died. They didn"t have any flowers, and it seemed so dreadful not to have any that I went into the garden to see if I couldn"t find something. The ground was covered with snow, but the week before had been warm, and, going to one of the beds, I brushed the snow away and found a lot of white violets. They were blooming under the snow. I pulled them and took them to the minister, and he put them in her hands. They used to put flowers in people"s hands when they were dead. I don"t know whether they do it now or not."
"Sometimes it is done." I took up the sewing an my lap and made a few st.i.tches. "Tell me some more of your mother"s garden. Did she have winter pinks and bachelor"s b.u.t.tons and snap-dragons and hollyhocks in it? I used to hate grandmother"s hollyhocks. They were so haughty."
"We did not have any, but we had bridal-wreath and spirea and a big pomegranate-bush. There were two large oleanders in tubs at the foot of the front steps. One was mine, the other was my sister"s. My sister is married now and lives out West. She has two children."
A bird on the bough of the apple-tree began to twitter. For a moment Lillie listened, then again she looked at me, in her eyes that which I had noticed several times before, a look of torturing fear and pain and shame.
"Do"--her voice was low--"do you know about me?"
"Yes, I know about you."
"You know--and--and still you talk to me? I don"t understand. Why did you come down here? You don"t belong in Scarborough Square."
"Why not? I have no one who needs me." I held my bit of sewing off, looked at it carefully. "Other women have their homes, their husbands and children, or their families, or duties or obligations of some sort, which they cannot leave, even if they wanted to know, to understand better how they might--" I leaned forward. "I think you can help me, Lillie, help me very much."
"Help you--" Half lifting herself up, Lillie stared at me as if not understanding, then the flush in her face deepened. "I help anybody!
Oh, my G.o.d! if I only could! If I only could!"
"I"m sure you can." I picked up the flower, which again had fallen.
"The doctor says you can go in the country soon, but before you go--"
"I hope I won"t live long enough to go anywhere, but before I go away for good if I could tell you what you could tell to others, and make them understand how different it is from what they think, make them know the awfulness--awfulness--"
She turned her head away, buried it in her arms, her body shaking in convulsive sobs. The bird on the apple-tree had stopped its singing, and the sun was no longer shining. In the hall I heard Mrs. Mundy go to the door, heard it open; then heavier footsteps came toward us, I looked around. Selwyn was standing in the doorway.
CHAPTER XVI
Selwyn closed the door, put his hat and overcoat on a chair beside it, and came over to the fire. Standing in front of it, hands in his pockets, he looked at me. I, also, was standing.
"Why don"t you sit down? Are you in a hurry? Am I interrupting you?"
I shook my head. "I am not in a hurry, and you are not interrupting.
I thought perhaps--"
"Thought what?"
"That you were in a hurry." I sat down on a footstool near the mantel, and leaned against the latter, my hands on my knees. "I so seldom have a visit from a man in the morning that I don"t know how to behave." My head nodded toward the chair he usually preferred.
"I would not take your time now--but I must." He took a seat opposite me, and looking at me, his face changed. "What is the matter? Are you sick? Your eyes look like holes in a blanket. Something has been keeping you awake. What is it?"
"I am not at all sick, and I slept very well last night." I drew a little further from the flame of the fire. "I"m sorry if my eyes--"
"Belie your bluff? They always do. Resist as you will, they give you away. You"ve been working yourself to death doing absurd things for unthankful people. Who is that sick person downstairs? Where"d you pick her up?"
"I didn"t pick her up. She had a hemorrhage and fainted in front of the house. I happened to see her and--and--"
"Had her brought in. I understand. In a neighborhood of this sort you don"t know who you"re bringing in, but I suppose that doesn"t matter."
"No, it doesn"t--when the bringing in is a matter of life and death, perhaps! As long as I am here and Mrs. Mundy is here, any one can come in who for the moment has nowhere else to go. Scarborough Square has no walls around its houses. Whoever needs us is a neighbor. The girl was ill."
My voice was indignant. There are times when Selwyn makes me absolutely furious. He apparently takes pleasure in pretending to have no heart. Then, too, he was talking and acting in such contrast to the way I had expected him to talk and act at our first meeting alone after the past weeks, that in amazement I stared at him. Of self-consciousness or embarra.s.sment there was no sign. It had obviously not occurred to him that his acquaintanceship with a girl he had given no evidence of knowing when I was present, and three days later had been seen walking with on the street, absorbed in deep and earnest conversation, was a matter I would like to have explained. The density of men for a moment kept me dumb.
Selwyn has been reared in a school honest in its belief that a woman is too fine and fair a thing to face life frankly; that personal knowledge and understanding on her part of certain verities, certain actualities, did the world no good and woman harm. But the woman of whom he thought was the sheltered, cultured, cared-for woman of his world. Protection of her was a man"s privilege and obligation. Of the woman who has to do her own protecting, fight her way through, meet the demands of those dependent on her, he personally knew little. It was what he needed much to know.
But because his handsome, haughty mother had lived in high-bred, self-congratulatory ignorance of what she believed did not concern her, and because he has for a sister, who"s a step-sister, a silly, sn.o.bby person, he is not justified in withholding from me what he naturally withheld from them. One can be a human being as well as a lady. It"s this that is difficult to make him understand.
For a half-moment longer I looked at him, then away. Apparently he had not heard what I said.
"I should not trouble you. I have no right, but I don"t know what to do. I"ve so long come to you--" He turned to me uncertainly.
"What is it?" I got up from the footstool and took my seat in the corner of the sofa. "Why shouldn"t you come to me?"
"You have enough on you now." He bit his lip. "It"s about Harrie--the boy must be crazy. For the past few weeks he has kept me close to h.e.l.l. I never imagined the time would come when I would thank G.o.d my father was dead. It"s come now."
"What is it, Selwyn? There is nothing you cannot tell me." I leaned forward, my hands twisting in my lap. I knew more of Harrie than Selwyn knew I knew, but because he was the one person I did know with whom I had no measure of patience, I rarely mentioned his name.
Harrie is Selwyn"s weakness, and to his faults and failings the latter is, outwardly, at least, most inexplicably blind. He is as handsome as he is unprincipled and irresponsible, and his power to fascinate is seemingly limited only by his desire to exercise it.
"What is it?" I repeated. "What has he been doing?"
"Everything he shouldn"t." Selwyn leaned forward and looked in the fire. "I was wrong, I suppose, but something had to be done. For some time he"s been drinking and gambling, and I told him it had to stop. I stood it as long as I could, but when I found he would frequently come home too drunk to get in bed, and would have to be put there by Wingfield, who would be listening for him, I had a talk with him which it isn"t pleasant to remember. I"d had a good many before. G.o.d knows I"ve tried--"
Selwyn got up, went over to the window and stood for a moment at it with his back to me. Presently he left it and began to walk up and down the room, hands in his pockets.
"I"ve doubtless made a mess of looking after him, but I did the best I knew how. Because of the eleven years" difference in our ages I"ve shut my eyes to much I should have seen, and refused to hear what I should have listened to, perhaps, but I was afraid of being too severe, too lacking in sympathy with his youth, with the differences in our natures, and, chiefly, because I knew he was largely the product of his rearing. He was only fourteen when father died, and to the day of her death mother allowed no one to correct him. She indulged him beyond sense or reason; let him grow up with the idea that whatever he wanted he could have. Restraint and discipline were never taught him. As for direction, guidance, training--" Selwyn"s shoulders shrugged. "If I said anything to mother, cautioned her of the mistake she was making, she thought me hard and cruel, and ended by weeping. After her death it was too late."
"Doesn"t he work? Does he do nothing at all?"
"Work!" Selwyn stopped. "He"s never done a day"s work in his life that earned what he got for it. When he refused to go back to college mother bought him a place in Hoge and Howell"s office. They kept him until he"d used up the capital put in the business, then got rid of him. I offered to put more in, but they wouldn"t agree.
Later, I got John Moore to take him in, but John now refuses to renew their contract. He"s absolutely no good. That"s a pretty hard thing to say about one"s brother, but it"s true. He"s the only thing on earth belonging to me that I"ve got to love, and now--"
Selwyn"s voice was husky, and again he went to the window, looked long upon the Square, and for a moment I said nothing. I could think of nothing to say. From various friends of other days who came occasionally to see me in my new home, I had heard of Harrie"s wild behavior of late, of Selwyn"s patient shielding of him, of the latter"s love and loyalty and care of the boy to whom he had been far more than a brother, and I wanted much to help him, to say something that would hearten him, and there was nothing I could say. Harrie was selfish to the core; he was unprincipled and unscrupulous, and for long I had feared that some day he would give Selwyn sore and serious trouble. That day had seemingly come.
"He is so young. At twenty-three life isn"t taken very seriously by boys of Harrie"s nature. He"ll come to himself after a while." I was fumbling for words. "When his money is entirely gone he"ll tire of his--his way of living and behave himself."
"The lack of money doesn"t disturb him. I bought his interest in the house for fear he"d sell it to some one else. He"s pretty nearly gotten through with that, as with other things he inherited. How in the name of Heaven my father"s son--" Selwyn came over to the sofa and sat down. "I didn"t mean to speak of this, however; of his past behavior. It"s concerning his latest adventure that I want your help, want you to tell me what to do."