Crimson roses Read online

  " I guess it's yours, lady/' he said. " Nobody would come back after them kind of things. Whoever dropped it has plenty more where that come from."

  "Oh, do you think so?" sighed Marion, and sped away with her treasure out into the darkness.

  Up in the little top-floor room the rose glorified everything. She put it in a slim glass vase that had belonged to her father's mother; it was one that Jennie had always called old-fashioned. The dusky velvet warmth of the rose seemed to be at home. The girl hovered about it, taking little whiffs of its intoxicating sweetness; she had laid her cheek softly against its wonderful petals and was happy. She went to sleep making up stories of how it got into her chair, but never by any chance did she happen on the right explanation.

  The next day she wore the rose to the store. It must stay with her while it lasted. She could not

  let it waste its sweetness all alone. That day everyone came to smell her rose and ask her where she got it, and when she said " I found it," they thought she was joking, and rallied her upon her friend, the giver, wondering why she was not willing to confess, and speculating on who it could be.

  There are some people whose physical make-up is so constructed that a flower cannot live long near them, but seems to be burned up, smothered, choked, just by lying on their bosoms. But that rose seemed to love to lie near Marion, and to gain extended life from contact with hers. She kept the rose in her wash-bowl under a wet newspaper that night, and the next day it was almost as fresh as ever. Again she wore it, making all the girls marvel and declare it was another flower. The third day she still wore its crimson softness, no longer stiff and fresh, yet beautiful in its fading limpness. The fourth day she gathered its dropped petals wistfully and laid them in a drawer with her handkerchiefs. She would keep their fragrance after their beauty had departed.

  The rose was still a pleasant memory on the night of the next symphony concert, and as she came down the velvet stairs to her seat, she was smiling at the thought of it and wondering again how it came there.

  Then suddenly she paused beside her seat, and drew a quick breath, passing her hand over her eyes.

  Did she see aright ? It was there again! The great dark burning rose. Every curl of the petals seemed the same. Was she dreaming, or was this an hallucination?

  As before, there was no one near who seemed to have any connection whatever with the flower, and finally she managed to gather it up softly and sit down in a little limp heap with the flower lying against her breast where her lips could just touch it and its breath steal up into her face. If anyone were watching, he must have thought it a lovely picture. It was as if the first flower had been human and beloved, and had come back to its own from the dust of the grave. This time the girl took the flower to herself, and without trying to fathom its secret, delighted in the thought that it was hers. It seemed to her now that it had a personality of its own and that it had come to her there of its own will.

  When the music began, she rested her head against the high back of the seat and closed her eyes. It seemed the voice of the rose speaking to her inmost soul, telling of wonders she had never known, great secrets of the earth; the grave of the seed, and the resurrection of the leaf and flower; the code of the wind's message; the words of a brook; the meaning of the birds' twitter; the beating of the heart of the woods; the whisper of the moss as it creeps; sound of flying clouds on a summer's day. All this

  and more the rose told her through the music, until her heart was stirred deeply and her face spoke eloquently of how her whole being throbbed in tune to the sound.

  The girls in the store exclaimed with laughter and jokes over the second rose; but it seemed too sacred to talk about, and Marion said little, letting them think what they pleased. For herself she tried not to think how the rose came to be in her chair. Since she had looked into the handkerchief-box and found the dead rose-petals still lying sweet and withered, and two days later when she laid the second rose in its lovely death beside the first, she resolutely refused to think how it came to be hers. It was enough that two such flowers had come to her. She did not want to think that perhaps they had been meant for another, and someone was missing what had made her so happy.

  The night of the fourth concert her heart beat excitedly. She had told herself a hundred times that of course there would be no rose this time, that whatever happening had given her the two roses could not of course in reason continue; yet she knew that she was expecting another rose, and her limbs trembled so that she could hardly climb the stairs to the gallery.

  It was later than she had ever come before. She had felt that she must give some other one a chance

  to claim the flower if it were really there. There were people sitting all about the middle aisle. The large lady with a fur wrap lying across her lap was there, bulging over into Marion's seat. Marion tried not to look at her own chair until she was close beside it; and she walked down the steps slowly, taking long, deep breaths to calm her tripping heart; but every breath she fancied heavy with rose perfume, and before she had quite reached her place she saw the chair was dow^n, and a great green stem stuck out into the aisle three inches!

  There it lay in all its dusky majesty. Her rose! as like the other two as roses could be. It nestled to her heart as if it knew where it belonged, and no one seemed to think it strange that she had taken it as her own.

  Marion wore to-night her last winter's black felt hat with a new black grosgrain ribbon put on in tailored fashion by her own skilful fingers. She was learning rapidly how to look like other people— nice people—without spending much money for it. The severe little hat was most becoming to her.

  More than one music-lover turned to look again at the fresh, sweet face of the girl with the great dark rose against her cheek. Her lips moved softly on the petals as if caressing them, and her eyes glowed dark and beautiful.

  That night there grew in her the consciousness

  that there was intention in this flower, and behind it someone. Who ?

  The thought made her tremble with fear and dehght. Who in all the wide world could care enough for her to put a flower in her chair every night? She was half frightened over it. It seemed not quite proper, yet what was wrong about it? And how could she possibly help it ? Throw the flower on the floor? Crush it? Leave it where she found it? Impossible. The flower appealed to every longing of her nature, and she could no more resist the gift of the rose than the rose itself could resist the rays of the sun and turn away to shadow.

  Surely the most scrupulous could not find anything wrong in her accepting this anonymous gift of a single wonderful blossom, so long as no further attempt at acquaintance was made. It might be some girl like herself, who liked to do a kind act; or some dear old lady who had seen the loneliness in her face ; or some—well, it didn't matter who. There never seemed to be anyone seated around her who was not nice and refined and respectable looking, and utterly beyond any such thing as flirting with a shabby little person like herself. She would just take the flower as a part of her concert, and be happy over it, letting it sing to her again, during the days that it lasted, the melodies that lifted her soul beyond earthly disappointments and trials.

  She looked around again as she went slowly out with the others, this time holding her rose boldly close to her face, and taking deep breaths of its sweetness. She wanted to make sure to herself that there was no one about her from whom she would not like to have taken the rose.

  As she looked up her eyes met those of a young man just ahead of her in the throng. He was good looking enough to be noticeable even in such a crowd. There was something about him that gave instant impression of refinement and culture. Though his eyes met hers, it was but for an instant, with a pleasant, unintimate glance, as one regards the casual stranger who for the time has been a partner in some pleasure.

  Yet somehow in that glance she sensed the fact that he was of another world, a world where roses and music and friendships belonged by right, and where education and
culture were a natural part of one's birthright like air and food and sunshine. It was a world where she could only steal in by sufferance for an hour, and that at the price of her little savings and much self-denial. Yet it was a world which she could have enjoyed to the utmost. She sighed softly, and touched her rose gently once more with her lips as if to assure herself that so much of that world was really hers, at least for to-night.

  That night she slept with the rose on a chair

  beside her, and she dreamed that a voice she had never heard before whispered softly to wonderful music, " Dear, I love you." She could not see who spoke, because the air was gloomed with dark rose-leaves falling and shutting out the light; only amid that soft, velvety fall she could hear the echo, " Dear, I love you.'*

  It was very foolish, the whole thing, she told herself the next morning with glowing cheeks. She positively must stop thinking about who put the flowers in her chair, and just enjoy them while they lasted. Ver}^ likely there wouldn't be any more, anyway. She must expect that, of course. If anyone was doing it for fun, the freak w^ould not last much longer.

  She went humming down the stairs toward her work that day, with the rose on her breast and a happy light in her eyes in spite of all her philosophy. Somehow those roses made her little top floor seem more like home, and drove the loneliness from her heart.

  The roses did not stop; they kept coming, one every symphony night. The good looking stranger was usually in his place, but their eyes never met. She glanced back once or twice shyly, just to see who was near her; and always he seemed in his cultured aloofness to be a type of the world of refine-

  ment. But he never looked her way. He did not even know she was there, of course. His was another world.

  She felt quite safe to glance at him occasionally, as one glances at an ideal. It could do him no harm, and it was good to know there were such men in the world. It made one feel safer and happier about living, just as it was good to know there was a great symphony orchestra to which she might listen occasionally.

  One night it rained, but not until after the concert had begun. The sky had been clear at eight o'clock, with the stars shining and no hint of a coming storm. When the concert was out, and the stream of people had reached the great marble entrance where the cream of society lingered in delicate attire, awaiting their automobiles, the rain was pouring down in sheets and the heavens were rent with vivid flashes of lightning and crashing thunder.

  Marion in dismay, umbrellaless and rubberless, lingered until all but a few were gone. Then, step-ping outside under the metal awning that covered the sidewalk to the curbing, she decided that she must go home. It was getting very late, and there seemed no sign of a let-up.

  She did not like to linger longer alone. There were only men left now, and they were glancing at

  her. She felt uncomfortable. In a moment more the doors of the Academy of Music would close, and she would be left standing in the dark, wet street. She could not walk home, and must sacrifice a few cents of that hoarded sum which was growing toward next winter's symphony concerts, and perhaps a lecture or two in between.

  The car came, and she made a dash through the wet, and gained the platform. It was only a step; yet she was very wet, and her heart sank at thought of her garments. She could not afford to replace them if they were spoiled.

  The car was full, and she could barely get a seat, squeezed in between two cross fat women. Marion thought with a sinking heart of the half-block she must walk in this driving storm when she reached her own corner. She could not hope to protect herself. She must make up her mind to face it, for the rain was pelting down as hard as ever.

  The car stopped at her corner, and she stood for just an instant gasping on the step before she made the plunge into the downpour, expecting to be soaked to the skin at once; but to her surprise she felt only a few sharp spatters in her face now and then and the instant chill of water on her ankles as she hurried down the street.

  Suddenly she realized that a shelter was over

  her. Someone, whom she could not see because of the rain in her eyes when she turned her head, and because of the slant of the blackness before her, was holding an umbrella over her as she flew along. She dared not turn to look, and had no breath to speak and thank him. Indeed, so black was the night—for the electric street-lamps were gone out—that it seemed as if an umbrella had stepped impersonally off the car and was conducting her to her home in the teeth of the storm.

  A moment more, and she was safe in the vestibule of her abiding-place; and the dark form who jhad protected her, umbrella and all, was rushing on through the blackness. Oh, why hadn't she drawn him into the shelter until the rain stopped ?

  "Come back!" she called, but the wind tossed her words scornfully into her face. Then '' Thank you! " she flung out into the darkness, and was it fancy or only the wind that seemed to voice the word, " Welcome " ?

  She put the thought away with others to keep, and went slowly, smiling, up the stairs, her cheek against the wet rosebud. Someone had taken the trouble in all this storm to protect her. It mattered not who it was; it might be God; it was God, of course. The protector had passed on, but it warmed the girl's lonely heart to know that he had cared, that

  she was not all alone in the wide universe, with no one who knew or thought of her.

  Out of the night and blackness had come a helping hand holding an umbrella, and passed on unknown. Why not a rose the same way? She must get over the idea that someone was picking her out from the world and bestowing flowers upon her. It was utterly absurd and ridiculous, and would put wrong notions into her head, and make her dissatisfied with life.

  But the next morning Marion was sick. A cold the day before, and the wetting and excitement had been too much for her. She was not able to go to the store, and had to pay the little colored maid downstairs to send a telephone message for her to the head of her department.

  About ten o'clock that morning a boy from the florist's rang the door-bell of the small, unpretentious house where Marion lodged. He carried a large pasteboard box under his arm, and whistled to keep up a brave front. He was to earn half a dollar extra if he performed his errand thoroughly.

  He made a low bow to the tattered little maid of all work who held the door half open and giggled at him.

  " Hey, kid! " he began in the famiHar tone of an old friend; '* do me a favor ? What's the name of the

  good-Iookin' lady you got livin* here? She's had some flowers sent to her, and I can't for the Hfe of me remember her name. It's got away from me somehow, and I can't get it back. Just mention over the names of the pretty girls you've got boarding here, I might recognize it."

  '' It ain't Miss M'rion, is it? "

  *' Miss Marion, Miss Marion what? That sounds as if it might be it. Is she small, and wears a little black hat?"

  " Sure! " answered the girl. " That's her. An' anyway she's the only girl here now any more. All the rest is just old women 'ceptin' the 'lect'ic-light men, an' the vaclum-cleaner agent. It couldn't be no other girl, 'cause ther' ain't no other here now."

  " What'd you say her last name was ? Marion what? I just want to be sure, you know."

  " Miss M'rion War'n," replied the girl, and held out her hand eagerly for the box.

  " Just give Miss Warren that box, please, and I'll dance at your wedding. So long! " and he dashed away before the girl could get a chance to ask him any questions.

  The box contained two dozen great crimson roses, the exact counterpart of those that had been laid in Marion's chair at the concerts.

  CHAPTER VIII

  Marion sat up in bed and opened the box in amaze--ment, almost fright. There was no card, nothing even on the box to identify the florist. Just the sweet, mute faces of the lovely flowers.

  The astonished, gaping maid stood by in wonder, but could give no explanation save the many-times-reiterated account of her conversation with the boy.

  Marion laughed into the box, and cried into it. She had been feeli
ng so lonely, and her head and limbs ached so fearfully, before this box came. Almost she had repented staying in the city. Almost she had decided that probably, after all, her place had been in Vermont, caring for the children and endlessly helping Jennie for the rest of her life. Education and culture were not for her, ever. It was too lonely and too hard work. Too few promotions and too many extra expenses. The loss of this day might cut down her money a little, too, although she was allowed a certain time for sick-leave.

  Now, however, things seemed different. The roses had come, and behind the roses must be someone—someone who cared a little. Her cheeks glowed scarlet at the thought. She gave the astonished maid a rose, and sent three more down to her sad old H4

  landlady. Then after she had laughed over the roses and cried over them again she put them into the wash-bowl beside her bed, and went to sleep. Someone cared! Someone cared! No matter who; someone cared! It was like the refrain of a lullaby. She slept with a smile upon her face; and, while she dreamed, her father came and kissed her, and said as he used to say long ago, "I'm glad for you, little girl, real glad/'

  When she awoke, the roses were smiling at her, and she felt better. The next day she was able to go back to the store. She wore a great sheaf of roses this time, and had some to give away, which doubled her own pleasure in them.

  It was two days later, while still a dusky red rose was brightening the blouse of Marion's sombre little dress, a young man walked slowly down the aisle in front of the ribbon-counter, and looked earnestly at the array of ribbons as if they possessed a kind of puzzled interest for him. He walked by twice; and the third time, when he turned and came back, two of the girls at the counter whispered about him. They thought he had been sent on an errand for ribbon and didn't know just how to go about it. They had seen his kind before. They presented themselves to his notice with a tempting, " Would you like to be waited upon ? " but the young man replied 10