Evelina's Garden Read online

  E-text prepared by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly

  EVELINA'S GARDEN

  by

  MARY E. WILKINS

  New York and LondonHarper & BrothersMDCCCXCIX

  On the south a high arbor-vitae hedge separated Evelina's garden fromthe road. The hedge was so high that when the school-children laggedby, and the secrets behind it fired them with more curiosity thanthose between their battered book covers, the tallest of them bystretching up on tiptoe could not peer over. And so they were drivento childish engineering feats, and would set to work and pick awaysprigs of the arbor-vitae with their little fingers, and makepeep-holes--but small ones, that Evelina might not discern them. Thenthey would thrust their pink faces into the hedge, and the enduringfragrance of it would come to their nostrils like a gust of aromaticbreath from the mouth of the northern woods, and peer into Evelina'sgarden as through the green tubes of vernal telescopes.

  Then suddenly hollyhocks, blooming in rank and file, seemed to bemarching upon them like platoons of soldiers, with detonations ofcolor that dazzled their peeping eyes; and, indeed, the whole gardenseemed charging with its mass of riotous bloom upon the hedge. Theycould scarcely take in details of marigold and phlox and pinks andLondon-pride and cock's-combs, and prince's-feather's waving overheadlike standards.

  Sometimes also there was the purple flutter of Evelina's gown; andEvelina's face, delicately faded, hung about with softly droopinggray curls, appeared suddenly among the flowers, like another floweruncannily instinct with nervous melancholy.

  Then the children would fall back from their peep-holes, and huddleoff together with scared giggles. They were afraid of Evelina. Therewas a shade of mystery about her which stimulated their childishfancies when they heard her discussed by their elders. They mighteasily have conceived her to be some baleful fairy intrenched in hergreen stronghold, withheld from leaving it by the fear of some direpenalty for magical sins. Summer and winter, spring and fall, EvelinaAdams never was seen outside her own domain of old mansion-house andgarden, and she had not set her slim lady feet in the public highwayfor nearly forty years, if the stories were true.

  People differed as to the reason why. Some said she had had anunfortunate love affair, that her heart had been broken, and she hadtaken upon herself a vow of seclusion from the world, but nobodycould point to the unworthy lover who had done her this harm. WhenEvelina was a girl, not one of the young men of the village had daredaddress her. She had been set apart by birth and training, and alsoby a certain exclusiveness of manner, if not of nature. Her father,old Squire Adams, had been the one man of wealth and college learningin the village. He had owned the one fine old mansion-house, with itswhite front propped on great Corinthian pillars, overlooking thevillage like a broad brow of superiority.

  He had owned the only coach and four. His wife during her short lifehad gone dressed in rich brocades and satins that rustled loud in theears of the village women, and her nodding plumes had dazzled theeyes under their modest hoods. Hardly a woman in the village butcould tell--for it had been handed down like a folk-lore song frommother to daughter--just what Squire Adams's wife wore when shewalked out first as bride to meeting. She had been clad all in blue.

  "Squire Adams's wife, when she walked out bride, she wore a bluesatin brocade gown, all wrought with blue flowers of a darker blue,cut low neck and short sleeves. She wore long blue silk mitts wroughtwith blue, blue satin shoes, and blue silk clocked stockings. And shewore a blue crape mantle that was brought from over seas, and a bluevelvet hat, with a long blue ostrich feather curled over it--it wasso long it reached her shoulder, and waved when she walked; and shecarried a little blue crape fan with ivory sticks." So the women andgirls told each other when the Squire's bride had been dead nearlyseventy years.

  The blue bride attire was said to be still in existence, packed awayin a cedar chest, as the Squire had ordered after his wife's death."He stood over the woman that took care of his wife whilst she packedthe things away, and he never shed a tear, but she used to hear hima-goin' up to the north chamber nights, when he couldn't sleep, tolook at 'em," the women told.

  People had thought the Squire would marry again. They said Evelina,who was only four years old, needed a mother, and they selected oneand another of the good village girls. But the Squire never married.He had a single woman, who dressed in black silk, and wore always ablack wrought veil over the side of her bonnet, come to live withthem, to take charge of Evelina. She was said to be a distantrelative of the Squire's wife, and was much looked up to by thevillage people, although she never did more than interlace, as itwere, the fringes of her garments with theirs. "She's stuck up," theysaid, and felt, curiously enough, a certain pride in the fact whenthey met her in the street and she ducked her long chin stiffly intothe folds of her black shawl by way of salutation.

  When Evelina was fifteen years old this single woman died, and thevillage women went to her funeral, and bent over her lying in a lasthelpless dignity in her coffin, and stared with awed freedom at hercold face. After that Evelina was sent away to school, and did notreturn, except for a yearly vacation, for six years to come. Then shereturned, and settled down in her old home to live out her life, andend her days in a perfect semblance of peace, if it were not peace.

  Evelina never had any young school friend to visit her; she hadnever, so far as any one knew, a friend of her own age. She livedalone with her father and three old servants. She went to meeting,and drove with the Squire in his chaise. The coach was never usedafter his wife's death, except to carry Evelina to and from school.She and the Squire also took long walks, but they never exchangedaught but the merest civilities of good-days and nods with theneighbors whom they met, unless indeed the Squire had some matter ofbusiness to discuss. Then Evelina stood aside and waited, her fairface drooping gravely aloof. She was very pretty, with a gentlehigh-bred prettiness that impressed the village folk, although theylooked at it somewhat askance.

  Evelina's figure was tall, and had a fine slenderness; her silkenskirts hung straight from the narrow silk ribbon that girt her slimwaist; there was a languidly graceful bend in her long white throat;her long delicate hands hung inertly at her sides among her skirtfolds, and were never seen to clasp anything; her softly clusteringfair curls hung over her thin blooming cheeks, and her face couldscarce be seen, unless, as she seldom did, she turned and looked fullupon one. Then her dark blue eyes, with a little nervous frownbetween them, shone out radiantly; her thin lips showed a warm red,and her beauty startled one.

  Everybody wondered why she did not have a lover, why some fine youngman had not been smitten by her while she had been away at school.They did not know that the school had been situated in another littlevillage, the counterpart of the one in which she had been born,wherein a fitting mate for a bird of her feather could hardly befound. The simple young men of the country-side were at onceattracted and intimidated by her. They cast fond sly glances acrossthe meeting-house at her lovely face, but they were confused beforeher when they jostled her in the doorway and the rose and lavenderscent of her lady garments came in their faces. Not one of them daredaccost her, much less march boldly upon the great Corinthian-pillaredhouse, raise the brass knocker, and declare himself a suitor for theSquire's daughter.

  One young man there was, indeed, who treasured in his heart anexperience so subtle and so slight that he could scarcely believe init himself. He never recounted it to mortal soul, but kept it as asecret sacred between himself and his own nature, but something to bescoffed at and set aside by others.

  It had happened one Sabbath day in summer, when Evelina had not beenmany years home from school, as she sat in the meeting-house in herSabbath array of rose-colored satin gown, and white bonnet trimmedwith a long white feather and a
little wreath of feathery green, thatof a sudden she raised her head and turned her face, and her blueeyes met this young man's full upon hers, with all his heart in them,and it was for a second as if her own heart leaped to the surface,and he saw it, although afterwards he scarce believed it to be true.

  Then a pallor crept over Evelina's delicately brilliant face. Sheturned it away, and her curls falling softly from under the greenwreath on her bonnet brim hid it. The young man's cheeks were a hotred, and his heart beat loudly in his ears when he met her in thedoorway after the sermon was done. His eager, timorous eyes soughther face, but she never looked his way. She laid her slim hand in itscream-colored silk mitt on the Squire's arm; her satin gown rustledsoftly as she passed before him, shrinking against the wall to giveher room, and a faint fragrance which seemed like the very breath ofthe unknown delicacy and exclusiveness of life came to his bewilderedsenses.

  Many a time he cast furtive glances across the meeting-house atEvelina, but she never looked his way again. If his timid boy-eyescould have seen her cheek behind its veil of curls, he might havediscovered that the color came and went before his glances, althoughit was strange how she could have been conscious of them; but henever knew.

  And he also never knew how, when he walked past the Squire's house ofa Sunday evening, dressed in his best, with his shoulders thrustconsciously back, and the windows in the westering sun looked full ofblank gold to his furtive eyes, Evelina was always peeping at himfrom behind a shutter, and he never dared go in. His intuitions werenot like hers, and so nothing happened that might have, and he neverfairly knew what he knew. But that he never told, even to his wifewhen he married; for his hot young blood grew weary and impatientwith this vain courtship, and he turned to one of his villagemates,who met him fairly half way, and married her within a year.

  On the Sunday when he and his bride first appeared in themeeting-house Evelina went up the aisle behind her father in an arrayof flowered brocade, stiff with threads of silver, so wonderful thatpeople all turned their heads to stare at her. She wore also a newbonnet of rose-colored satin, and her curls were caught back alittle, and her face showed as clear and beautiful as an angel's.

  The young bridegroom glanced at her once across the meeting-house,then he looked at his bride in her gay wedding finery with a faithfullook.

  When Evelina met them in the doorway, after meeting was done, shebowed with a sweet cold grace to the bride, who courtesied blushinglyin return, with an awkward sweep of her foot in the bridal satinshoe. The bridegroom did not look at Evelina at all. He held his chinwell down in his stock with solemn embarrassment, and passed outstiffly, his bride on his arm.

  Evelina, shining in the sun like a silver lily, went up the street,her father stalking beside her with stately swings of his cane, andthat was the last time she was ever seen at meeting. Nobody knew why.

  When Evelina was a little over thirty her father died. There was notmuch active grief for him in the village; he had really figuredtherein more as a stately monument of his own grandeur than anythingelse. He had been a man of little force of character, and that littlehad seemed to degenerate since his wife died. An inborn dignity ofmanner might have served to disguise his weakness with any othersthan these shrewd New-Englanders, but they read him rightly. "TheSquire wa'n't ever one to set the river a-fire," they said. Then,moreover, he left none of his property to the village to build a newmeeting-house or a town-house. It all went to Evelina.

  People expected that Evelina would surely show herself in hermourning at meeting the Sunday after the Squire died, but she didnot. Moreover, it began to be gradually discovered that she neverwent out in the village street nor crossed the boundaries of her owndomains after her father's death. She lived in the great house withher three servants--a man and his wife, and the woman who had beenwith her mother when she died. Then it was that Evelina's gardenbegan. There had always been a garden at the back of the Squire'shouse, but not like this, and only a low fence had separated it fromthe road. Now one morning in the autumn the people saw Evelina'sman-servant, John Darby, setting out the arbor-vitae hedge, and inthe spring after that there were ploughing and seed-sowing extendingover a full half-acre, which later blossomed out in glory.

  Before the hedge grew so high Evelina could be seen at work in hergarden. She was often stooping over the flower-beds in the earlymorning when the village was first astir, and she moved among themwith her watering-pot in the twilight--a shadowy figure that might,from her grace and her constancy to the flowers, have been Floraherself.

  As the years went on, the arbor-vitae hedge got each season a newgrowth and waxed taller, until Evelina could no longer be seen aboveit. That was an annoyance to people, because the quiet mystery of herlife kept their curiosity alive, until it was in a constant struggle,as it were, with the green luxuriance of the hedge.

  "John Darby had ought to trim that hedge," they said. They accostedhim in the street: "John, if ye don't cut that hedge down a littleit'll all die out." But he only made a surly grunting response,intelligible to himself alone, and passed on. He was an Englishman,and had lived in the Squire's family since he was a boy.

  He had a nature capable of only one simple line of force, with noradiations or parallels, and that had early resolved itself into theservice of the Squire and his house. After the Squire's death hemarried a woman who lived in the family. She was much older thanhimself, and had a high temper, but was a good servant, and hemarried her to keep her to her allegiance to Evelina. Then he benther, without her knowledge, to take his own attitude towards hismistress. No more could be gotten out of John Darby's wife than outof John Darby concerning the doings at the Squire's house. She metcuriosity with a flash of hot temper, and he with surly taciturnity,and both intimidated.

  The third of Evelina's servants was the woman who had nursed hermother, and she was naturally subdued and undemonstrative, andrendered still more so by a ceaseless monotony of life. She neverwent to meeting, and was seldom seen outside the house. A passingvision of a long white-capped face at a window was about all theneighbors ever saw of this woman.

  So Evelina's gentle privacy was well guarded by her own household, asby a faithful system of domestic police. She grew old peacefullybehind her green hedge, shielded effectually from all rough bristlesof curiosity. Every new spring her own bloom showed paler beside thenew bloom of her flowers, but people could not see it.

  Some thirty years after the Squire's death the man John Darby died;his wife, a year later. That left Evelina alone with the old womanwho had nursed her mother. She was very old, but not feeble, andquite able to perform the simple household tasks for herself andEvelina. An old man, who saved himself from the almshouse in suchways, came daily to do the rougher part of the garden-work in JohnDarby's stead. He was aged and decrepit; his muscles seemed able toperform their appointed tasks only through the accumulated inertia ofa patiently toilsome life in the same tracks. Apparently they wouldhave collapsed had he tried to force them to aught else than theholding of the ploughshare, the pulling of weeds, the digging aroundthe roots of flowers, and the planting of seeds.

  Every autumn he seemed about to totter to his fall among the fadingflowers; every spring it was like Death himself urging on theresurrection; but he lived on year after year, and tended wellEvelina's garden, and the gardens of other maiden-women and widows inthe village. He was taciturn, grubbing among his green beds assilently as a worm, but now and then he warmed a little under a fireof questions concerning Evelina's garden. "Never see none sechflowers in nobody's garden in this town, not sence I knowed 'nough totell a pink from a piny," he would mumble. His speech was thick; hiswords were all uncouthly slurred; the expression of his whole lifehad come more through his old knotted hands of labor than through histongue. But he would wipe his forehead with his shirt-sleeve and leana second on his spade, and his face would change at the mention ofthe garden. Its wealth of bloom illumined his old mind, and the rosesand honeysuckles and pinks seemed for a second to be reflected in
hisbleared old eyes.

  There had never been in the village such a garden as this of EvelinaAdams's. All the old blooms which had come over the seas with theearly colonists, and started as it were their own colony of flora inthe new country, flourished there. The naturalized pinks and phloxand hollyhocks and the rest, changed a little in color and fragranceby the conditions of a new climate and soil, were all in Evelina'sgarden, and no one dreamed what they meant to Evelina; and she didnot dream herself, for her heart was always veiled to her own eyes,like the face of a nun. The roses and pinks, the poppies andheart's-ease, were to this maiden-woman, who had innocently andhelplessly outgrown her maiden heart, in the place of all the lovesof life which she had missed. Her affections had forced an outlet inroses; they exhaled sweetness in pinks, and twined and clung inhoneysuckle-vines. The daffodils, when they came up in the spring,comforted her like the smiles of children; when she saw the firstrose, her heart leaped as at the face of a lover.

  She had lost the one way of human affection, but her feet had found alittle single side-track of love, which gave her still a zest in thejourney of life. Even in the winter Evelina had her flowers, for shekept those that would bear transplanting in pots, and all the sunnywindows in her house were gay with them. She would also not let arose leaf fall and waste in the garden soil, or a sprig of lavenderor thyme. She gathered them all, and stored them away in chests anddrawers and old china bowls--the whole house seemed laid away in roseleaves and lavender. Evelina's clothes gave out at every motion thatfragrance of dead flowers which is like the fragrance of the past,and has a sweetness like that of sweet memories. Even the cedar chestwhere Evelina's mother's blue bridal array was stored had its tillheaped with rose leaves and