Evelinas Garden | Page 5

in his
bleared old eyes.
There had never been in the village such a garden as this of Evelina

Adams's. All the old blooms which had come over the seas with the
early colonists, and started as it were their own colony of flora in the
new country, flourished there. The naturalized pinks and phlox and
hollyhocks and the rest, changed a little in color and fragrance by the
conditions of a new climate and soil, were all in Evelina's garden, and
no one dreamed what they meant to Evelina; and she did not dream
herself, for her heart was always veiled to her own eyes, like the face of
a nun. The roses and pinks, the poppies and heart's-ease, were to this
maiden-woman, who had innocently and helplessly outgrown her
maiden heart, in the place of all the loves of life which she had missed.
Her affections had forced an outlet in roses; they exhaled sweetness in
pinks, and twined and clung in honeysuckle-vines. The daffodils, when
they came up in the spring, comforted her like the smiles of children;
when she saw the first rose, her heart leaped as at the face of a lover.
She had lost the one way of human affection, but her feet had found a
little single side-track of love, which gave her still a zest in the journey
of life. Even in the winter Evelina had her flowers, for she kept those
that would bear transplanting in pots, and all the sunny windows in her
house were gay with them. She would also not let a rose leaf fall and
waste in the garden soil, or a sprig of lavender or thyme. She gathered
them all, and stored them away in chests and drawers and old china
bowls--the whole house seemed laid away in rose leaves and lavender.
Evelina's clothes gave out at every motion that fragrance of dead
flowers which is like the fragrance of the past, and has a sweetness like
that of sweet memories. Even the cedar chest where Evelina's mother's
blue bridal array was stored had its till heaped with rose leaves and
lavender.
When Evelina was nearly seventy years old the old nurse who had lived
with her her whole life died. People wondered then what she would do.
"She can't live all alone in that great house," they said. But she did live
there alone six months, until spring, and people used to watch her
evening lamp when it was put out, and the morning smoke from her
kitchen chimney. "It ain't safe for her to be there alone in that great
house," they said.

But early in April a young girl appeared one Sunday in the old Squire's
pew. Nobody had seen her come to town, and nobody knew who she
was or where she came from, but the old people said she looked just as
Evelina Adams used to when she was young, and she must be some
relation. The old man who had used to look across the meeting-house at
Evelina, over forty years ago, looked across now at this young girl, and
gave a great start, and his face paled under his gray beard stubble. His
old wife gave an anxious, wondering glance at him, and crammed a
peppermint into his hand. "Anything the matter, father?" she whispered;
but he only gave his head a half-surly shake, and then fastened his eyes
straight ahead upon the pulpit. He had reason to that day, for his only
son, Thomas, was going to preach his first sermon therein as a
candidate. His wife ascribed his nervousness to that. She put a
peppermint in her own mouth and sucked it comfortably. "That's all 't
is," she thought to herself. "Father always was easy worked up," and
she looked proudly up at her son sitting on the hair-cloth sofa in the
pulpit, leaning his handsome young head on his hand, as he had seen
old divines do. She never dreamed that her old husband sitting beside
her was possessed of an inner life so strange to her that she would not
have known him had she met him in the spirit. And, indeed, it had been
so always, and she had never dreamed of it. Although he had been
faithful to his wife, the image of Evelina Adams in her youth, and that
one love-look which she had given him, had never left his soul, but had
given it a guise and complexion of which his nearest and dearest knew
nothing.
It was strange, but now, as he looked up at his own son as he arose in
the pulpit, he could seem to see a look of that fair young Evelina, who
had never had a son to inherit her beauty. He had certainly a delicate
brilliancy