Evelinas Garden

Evelina's Garden

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Evelina's Garden, by Mary E. Wilkins
Freeman
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: Evelina's Garden
Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Release Date: March 1, 2006 [eBook #17891]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVELINA'S
GARDEN***
E-text prepared by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly

EVELINA'S GARDEN
by

MARY E. WILKINS

New York and London Harper & Brothers MDCCCXCIX

On the south a high arbor-vitae hedge separated Evelina's garden from
the road. The hedge was so high that when the school-children lagged
by, and the secrets behind it fired them with more curiosity than those
between their battered book covers, the tallest of them by stretching up
on tiptoe could not peer over. And so they were driven to childish
engineering feats, and would set to work and pick away sprigs of the
arbor-vitae with their little fingers, and make peep-holes--but small
ones, that Evelina might not discern them. Then they would thrust their
pink faces into the hedge, and the enduring fragrance of it would come
to their nostrils like a gust of aromatic breath from the mouth of the
northern woods, and peer into Evelina's garden as through the green
tubes of vernal telescopes.
Then suddenly hollyhocks, blooming in rank and file, seemed to be
marching upon them like platoons of soldiers, with detonations of color
that dazzled their peeping eyes; and, indeed, the whole garden seemed
charging with its mass of riotous bloom upon the hedge. They could
scarcely take in details of marigold and phlox and pinks and
London-pride and cock's-combs, and prince's-feather's waving
overhead like standards.
Sometimes also there was the purple flutter of Evelina's gown; and
Evelina's face, delicately faded, hung about with softly drooping gray
curls, appeared suddenly among the flowers, like another flower
uncannily instinct with nervous melancholy.
Then the children would fall back from their peep-holes, and huddle off
together with scared giggles. They were afraid of Evelina. There was a
shade of mystery about her which stimulated their childish fancies
when they heard her discussed by their elders. They might easily have
conceived her to be some baleful fairy intrenched in her green

stronghold, withheld from leaving it by the fear of some dire penalty
for magical sins. Summer and winter, spring and fall, Evelina Adams
never was seen outside her own domain of old mansion-house and
garden, and she had not set her slim lady feet in the public highway for
nearly forty years, if the stories were true.
People differed as to the reason why. Some said she had had an
unfortunate love affair, that her heart had been broken, and she had
taken upon herself a vow of seclusion from the world, but nobody
could point to the unworthy lover who had done her this harm. When
Evelina was a girl, not one of the young men of the village had dared
address her. She had been set apart by birth and training, and also by a
certain exclusiveness of manner, if not of nature. Her father, old Squire
Adams, had been the one man of wealth and college learning in the
village. He had owned the one fine old mansion-house, with its white
front propped on great Corinthian pillars, overlooking the village like a
broad brow of superiority.
He had owned the only coach and four. His wife during her short life
had gone dressed in rich brocades and satins that rustled loud in the
ears of the village women, and her nodding plumes had dazzled the
eyes under their modest hoods. Hardly a woman in the village but
could tell--for it had been handed down like a folk-lore song from
mother to daughter--just what Squire Adams's wife wore when she
walked 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 blue
satin brocade gown, all wrought with blue flowers of a darker blue, cut
low neck and short sleeves. She wore long blue silk mitts wrought with
blue, blue satin shoes, and blue silk clocked stockings. And she wore a
blue crape mantle that was brought from over seas, and a blue velvet
hat, with a long blue ostrich feather curled over it--it was so long it
reached her shoulder, and waved when she walked; and she carried a
little blue crape fan with ivory sticks." So the women and girls told
each other when the Squire's bride had been dead nearly seventy years.
The blue