Section 1. On the south, a high Arborvitae hedge separated Evelina's garden from the road. The hedge was so high that when the schoolchildren 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 Arborvitae with their little fingers and make peepholes, 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 dazzle 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 flocks and pinks and London pride and coxcomb and princes' feather 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 peepholes 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 entrenched in her green stronghold withheld from leaving it by the fear of some dire penalty for magical suns. Summer and winter, spring and fall, Evelina Adams never was seen outside her own domain of an old mansion and 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 folklore song from mother to daughter, just what Squire Adams' wife wore when she walked out first as bride to meeting. She had been clad all in blue. Squire Adams' 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 crepe mantel that was brought from overseas 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 crepe 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 bride attire was said to be still in existence packed away in 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 packed the things away, and he never shed a tear, but she used to hear him a going up to the North Chamber nights when he couldn't sleep to look at him, the women told. People had thought the Squire would marry again. They said Avelina, who was only four years old, needed a mother, and they selected one and another of the good village girls, but the Squire never married. He had a single woman, who dressed in black silk, and wore always a black wrought veil over the side of her bonnet, come to live with them, to take charge of Avelina. She was said to be a distant relative of the Squire's wife, and was much looked up to by the village people, although she never did more than interlace, as it were the fringes of her garments with theirs. She stuck up, they said, and felt, curiously enough, a certain pride in the fact when they met her in the street, and she ducked her long chin stiffly into the folds of her black shawl by way of salutation. When Avelina was fifteen years old, the single woman died, and the village women went to her funeral, and bent over her lying in a last helpless dignity in her coffin, and stared with odd freedom at her cold face. After that Avelina was sent away to school, and did not return, except for a yearly vacation, for six years to come. Then she returned, and settled down in her old home to live out her life, and end her days in a perfect semblance of peace, if it were not peace. Avelina never had any young school friend to visit her. She had never, so far as anyone knew, a friend of her own age. She lived alone with her father, and three old servants. She went to meeting, and drove with the squire in his shears. The coach was never used after his wife's death, except to carry Avelina to and from school. She and the squire also took long walks, but they never exchanged ought, but the merest civilities of good days, and nods with the neighbors whom they met, unless indeed the squire had some matter of business to discuss. Then Avelina stood aside, and waited, her fair face drooping gravely aloof. She was very pretty, with a gentle, high-bred prettiness, that impressed the village folk, although they looked at it somewhat as scant. Avelina's figure was tall, and had a fine slenderness. Her soaken skirts hung straight from the narrow-soaked ribbon that girt her slim waist. There was a languidly graceful bend in her long white throat. Her long, delicate hands hung inertly at her sides, among her skirt folds, and were never seen to clasp anything. Her softly clustering, fair curls hung over her thin blooming cheeks, and her face could scarce be seen, unless, as she saw them dead. She turned and looked full upon one. Then her dark blue eyes, with a little nervous frown between 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 young man 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 little village, the counterpart of the one in which she had been born, wherein a fitting mate for a bird of her feather could hardly be found. The simple young men of the countryside were at once attracted and intimidated by her. They cast fond sly glances across the meeting-house at her lovely face, but they were confused before her when they jostled her in the doorway, and that rose and lavender scent of her lady-garments came in their faces. Not one of them dared accost her, much less march boldly upon the great Corinthian-pillared house, raise the brass-knocker, and declare himself a suitor for the squire's daughter. One young man there was, indeed, who treasured in his heart an experience so subtle and so slight that he could scarcely believe in it himself. He never recounted it to mortal soul, but kept it as a secret-sacred between himself and his own nature, but something to be scoffed at and set aside by others. It had happened one Sabbath day in summer, when Evelina had not been many years home from school, as she sat in the meeting-house in her Sabbath array of rose-colored satin gown and white bonnet trimmed with one white feather and a little wreath of feathery green. That of a sudden she raised her head and turned her face, and her blue eyes 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 sought, although afterwards he scarce believed it to be true. Then a pallor crept over Evelina's delicately brilliant face. She turned it away, and her curls, falling softly from under the green wreath, on her bonnet brim, hit it. The young man's cheeks were a hot red, and his heart beat loudly in his ears when he met her in the doorway after the sermon was done. His eager, temerous eyes sought her face, but she never looked his way. She laid her slim hand in its cream-colored soap mitt on the squire's arm. Her satin gown rustled softly as she passed before him, shrinking against the wall to give her room, and a faint fragrance, which seemed like the very breath of the unknown delicacy and exclusiveness of life, came to his bewildered senses. Many a time he cast furtive glances across the meeting-house at Evelina, but she never looked his way again. If his timid boy eyes could have seen her cheek behind its veil of curls, he might have discovered that the color came and went before his glances, although it was strange how she could have been conscious of them, but he never knew. And he also never knew how, when he walked past the squire's house of a Sunday evening, dressed in his best, with his shoulders thrust consciously back, and the windows in the west-during sun looked full of blank gold to his furtive eyes. Evelina was always peeping at him behind a shutter, and he never dared go in. His intuitions were not like hers, and so nothing happened that might have, and he never fairly knew what he knew. But that he never told, even to his wife, when he married, for his hot young blood grew weary and impatient with this vain courtship, and he turned to one of his villagemates, who met him fairly halfway, and married her within a year. On the Sunday, when he and his bride first appeared in the meeting-house, Evelina went up the aisle behind her father in an array of flowered brocade stiff with threads of silver, so wonderful that people all turned their heads to stare at her. She wore also a new bonnet of rose-colored satin, and her curls were caught back a little, 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 faithful look. When Evelina met them in the doorway after meeting was done, she bowed with a sweet cold grace to the bride, who curtsied blushingly in return with an awkward sweep of her foot in the bridal satin shoe. The bridegroom did not look at Evelina at all. He held his chin well down in his stock, with solemn embarrassment, and passed out stiffly 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, and that 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 not much active grief for him in the village. He had really figured therein more as a stately monument of his own grandeur than anything else. He had been a man of little force of character, and that little had seemed to degenerate since his wife died. An inborn dignity of menor might have served to disguise his weakness with any others than these shrewd New Englanders. But they read him rightly. The squire won't ever want to set the river of fire, they said. Then, moreover, he left none of his property to the village to build a new meeting-house, or a town-house. It all went to Evelina. People expected that Evelina would surely show herself in her morning at meeting the Sunday after the squire died. But she did not. Moreover, it began to be gradually discovered that she never went out in the village street, nor crossed the boundaries of her own demands after her father's death. She lived in the great house, with her three servants, a man and his wife, and the woman who had been with her mother when she died. Then it was that Evelina's garden began. There had always been a garden at the back of the squire's house, but not like this, and only a low fence had separated it from the road. Now, one morning in the autumn, the people saw Evelina's man-servant, John Darby, setting out the Arbor Vite hedge, and in the spring after that there were plowing and seed sowing extending over a full half-acre, which later blossomed out in glory. Before the hedge grew so high, Evelina could be seen at work in her garden. She was often stooping over the flower beds in the early morning when the village was first a stirrer, and she moved among them with her watering pot in the twilight, a shadowy figure that might, from her grace, and her constancy to the flowers, have been flora herself. As the years went on, the Arbor Vite hedge got each season a new growth and wax taller until Evelina could no longer be seen above it. That was an annoyance to the people, because the quiet mystery of her life kept their curiosity alive until it was in a constant struggle, as it were, with the green legurience of the hedge. John Darby had ought to trim that hedge, they said. They accosted him in the street. If he don't cut that hedge down a little, it'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 no radiations or parallels, and that had early resolved itself into the servants of the Squire and his house. After the Squire's death, he married a woman who lived in the family. She was much older than himself and had a high temper, but was a good servant, and he married her to keep her to her allegiance to Evelina. Then he bent her, without her knowledge, to take his own attitude towards his mistress. No more could be gotten out of John Darby's wife than out of John Darby concerning the doings of the Squire's house. She met curiosity with a flash of hot temper, and he with surly testernity, and both intimidated. The third of Evelina's servants was the woman who had nursed her mother, and she was naturally subdued and undemonstrative, and rendered still more so by a ceaseless monotony of life. She never went to meeting, and it was seldom seen outside the house. A passing vision of a long white-capped face at a window was about all the neighbors ever saw of this woman. So Evelina's gentle privacy was well guarded by her own household, as by a faithful system of domestic police. She grew old peacefully behind her green hedge, shielded effectually from all rough bristles of curiosity. Every new spring her own bloom showed paler beside the new 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 woman who had nursed her mother. She was very old, but not feeble, and quite able to perform the simple household test for herself and Evelina. An old man who saved himself from the alms-house in such ways came daily to do the rougher part of the garden work in John Darby's stead. He was aged and decrepit. His muscles seemed able to perform their appointed tasks only through the accumulated inertia of a patiently toilsome life in the same tracts. Apparently they would have collapsed had he tried to force them to ought else than the holding of the plow-share, the pulling of weeds, the digging around the roots of flowers, and the planting of seeds. Every autumn he seemed about to totter to his fall among the fading flowers. Every spring it was like death himself urging on the resurrection. But he lived on year after year, intended well Evelina's garden, and the gardens of other maiden women and widows in the village. He was taciturn, grubbing among his green beds as silently as a warm, but now and then he warmed a little under a fire of questions concerning Evelina's garden. Never seen none such flowers nobody's garden in this town, not since I knowed enough to tail a pink from a panty. He would mumble. His speech was thick. His words were all uncouthly slurred. The expression of his whole life had come more through his old knotted hands of labour than through his tongue. But he would wipe his forehead with his shirt sleeve and lean a second on his spade, and his face would change at the mention of the garden. Its wealth of bloom illumined his old mind in the roses and honeysuckles and pinks seemed for a second to be reflected in his bleared old eyes. Section 2 of Evelina's Garden by Mary E. Wilkins. This Librivox recording is in the public domain, reading by Bologna Times. 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 flocks 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 the 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 and roses. They exhaled sweetness and 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 leapt as at the face of a lover. She had lost the one way of human affection, but her feet had found a little single sidetrack 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, wandering glance at him, and crammed a peppermint into his hand. Anything the matter, Father? She whispered.  He had reasoned 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 and her own mouth, and sucked it comfortably. That's all tiths, she thought to herself. Father was always 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 Evelyn Adams and her youth, and that one love-look which he 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 Evelyn who had never had a son to inherit her beauty. He had certainly a delicate brilliancy of complexion which he could have gotten directly from neither father nor mother, and once came that little nervous frown between his dark blue eyes. His mother had blue eyes, but not like his. They flashed over the great pulpit Bible with a sweet fire that matched the memory and his father's heart. But the old man put the fancy away from him in a minute. It was one which his stern common sense always overcame. It was impossible that Thomas Merriam should resemble Evelyn Adams. Indeed, people always called him the very image of his father. The father tried to fix his mind upon his son's sermon, but presently he glanced involuntarily across the meeting-house at the young girl, and again his heart leapt and his face paled.  Now and then she thrust a sharp elbow in his side to call his attention to a grand point in their son's discourse. The odor of peppermint was strong in his nostrils, but through it all he seemed to perceive the rose and lavender scent of Evelyn Adams' youthful garments. Whether it was with him simply the memory of an odor which affected him like the odor itself or not, those in the vicinity of the squire's pew were plainly aware of it. The gown which the strange young girl wore was as many an old woman discovered to her neighbor with loud whispers, one of Evelyn's, which had been laid away in a sweet-smelling chest since her old girlhood. It had been somewhat altered to suit the fashion of a later day, but the eyes which had fastened keenly upon it when Evelynne first wore it up the meeting-house aisle could not mistake it. It's Evelynne Adams' lavender satin made over, when whispered, with a sharp hiss of breath, in the other's ear. The lavender satin, deepening into purple in the folds, swept in a rich circle over the knees of the young girl and the squire's pew. She folded her little hands, which were encased in Evelynne's cream-colored silk mitts over it, and looked up at the young minister and listened to his sermon with a grave and innocent dignity as Evelynne had done before her. Perhaps the resemblance between this young girl and the young girl of the past was more one of mean than else, although the type of face was the same. The girl had the same fine sharpness of feature and delicately bright color. And she also wore her hair and curls, although they were tied back from her face with a black velvet ribbon and did not veil it when she drooped her head as Evelynne's used to do. The people divided their attention between her and the new minister. Their curiosity goaded them in equal measure with their spiritual zeal. I can't wait to find out who that girl is, one woman whispered to another. The girl herself had no thought of the commotion which she awakened. When the service was over, and she walked with a gentle maiden stateliness, which seemed a very copy of Evelynne's own, out of the meeting-house, down the street to the squire's house, and entered it, passing under the stately Corinthian pillars with the last purple gleam of her satin skirts, she never dreamed of the eager attention that followed her. It was several days before the village people discovered who she was. The information had to be obtained by a process like mental thumbs growing from the old man who tended Evelynne's garden, but at last they knew. She was the daughter of a cousin of Evelynne's on the father's side. Her name was Evelynne Leonard. She had been named for her father's cousin. She had been finally brought up, and had attended a Boston school for young ladies.  Evelynne Adams had herself told the old gardener, seeing his scant curiosity was somewhat awakened by the sight of the strange young lady in the garden, but he seemed to have almost forgotten it when the people questioned him. She'd leave her all her money, most likely, they said, and they looked at this new Evelynne and the old Evelynne's perfume gowns with awe. However, in the space of a few months, the opinion upon this matter was divided. Another cousin of Evelynne Adams's came to town, and this time an own cousin, a widow in the fine black bombazine, portly and florid, walking with a majestic swell, and moreover, having with her two daughters, girls of her own type, not so far advanced. This woman hired one of the village cottages, and it was rumored that Evelynne Adams paid the rent. Still, it was considered that she was not very intimate with these last relatives. The neighbors watched, and saw, many a time, Mrs. Martha Loomis and her girls try the doors of the Adams house, scutting around angrily from front to side and back, and knock and knock again, but with no admittance. Evelynne, she won't let none of them in more than once a week, the neighbors said. It was odd that, although they had deeply resented Evelynne's seclusion on their own accounts, they were rather on her side in this matter, and felt a certain delight when they witnessed a crestfallen retreat of the widow and her daughters. I don't suppose she wants them Loomis's marching in on her every minute, they said. The new Evelynne was not seen much with the other cousins, and she made no acquaintances in the village. Whether she was to inherit all the Adams property or not, she seemed at any rate arous to all the elder Evelynne's habits of life. She worked with her in the garden, and wore her old girlish gowns, and kept Loomis as close at home as she. She often, however, walked abroad in the early dusk, stepping along in a grave and stately fashion, as the elder Evelynne had used to do, holding her skirts away from the dewy roadside weeds, her face showing out in the twilight like a white flower, as if it had a pale light of its own. Nobody spoke to her. People turned furtively after she had passed, and stared after her, but they never spoke. This young Evelynne did not seem to expect it. She passed along with lids cast down over her blue eyes, and the rose and lavender scent of her garments came back in their faces. But one night, when she was walking slowly along, a full half-mile from home, she heard rapid footsteps behind, and the young minister, Thomas Merriam, came up beside her and spoke. Good evening, said he, and his voice was a little hoarse through nervousness. Evelynne started, and turned her fair face up towards his. Good evening, she responded, and curtsied, as she had been taught at school, and stood close to the wall that he might pass. But Thomas Merriam paused also. I—he began, but his voice broke. He cleared his throat, angrily, and went on, I have seen you in meeting, he said, with a kind of defiance, more of himself than of her. After all, was he not the minister, and had he not the right to speak to everybody in the congregation? Why should he embarrass himself? Yes, replied Evelynne. She stood drooping her head before him, and yet there was a certain delicate hauteur about her. Thomas was afraid to speak again. They both stood silent for a moment, and then Evelynne stirred softly, as if to pass on, and Thomas spoke out bravely. Is your cousin Miss Adams well? said he. She is pretty well. I thank you, sir. I have been wanting to call, he began, then he hesitated again. His handsome young face was blushing, crimson. Evelynne's own color deepened.  Cousin Evelynne never sees callers, she said, with grave courtesy. Perhaps you did not know. She has not for a great many years. Yes, I did know it, returned Thomas Merriam. That's the reason I haven't called. Cousin Evelynne is not strong, remarked the young girl, and there was a savor of apology in her tone. But stammered Thomas, then he stopped again. May I—has she any objections to—anybody's coming to see you? Evelynne started. I'm afraid Cousin Evelynne would not approve, she answered primely. Then she looked up in his face, and a girlish piteousness came into her own. I am very sorry, she said, and there was a catch in her voice. Thomas bent over her, impetuously. All his ministerial state fell from him like an outer garment of the soul. He was young, and he had seen this girl Sunday after Sunday. He had written all his sermons with her image before his eyes. He had preached to her, and her only, and she had come between his heart and all the nations of the earth in his prayers. Oh! he stammered out. I am afraid you can't be very happy living there the way you do. Tell me, Evelynne turned her face away with sudden haughtiness. My Cousin Evelynne is very kind to me, sir, she said. But you must be lonesome with nobody of your own age to speak to, persisted Thomas, confusedly. I never cared much for youthful company. It is getting dark. I must be going, said Evelynne. I wish you good evening, sir. Shant I walk home with you? asked Thomas, falteringly. It isn't necessary. Thank you, and I don't think Cousin Evelynne would approve, she replied, primely, and her light dress fluttered away into the dusk and out of sight like the pale wing of a moth.  His heart beat loud in his ears. I've made her mad with me, he said to himself, using the old rustic schoolboy vernacular, from which he did not always depart in his thoughts, although his ministerial dignity guarded his conversations. Thomas Merriam came of a simple, homely stock, whose speech came from the emotions of the heart, all unregulated by the usages of the schools. He was the first for generations who had aspired to college learning, and a profession, and had trained his tongue by the models of the educated and polite. He could not help, at times, the relapse of his thoughts, and their speaking to himself in the dialect of his family and his ancestors. She's way above me, and I ought to have known it, he further said, with a meekness of a humble but fiercely independent race, which is meek to itself alone. He would have maintained his equality, with his last breath, to an opponent. In his heart of hearts he felt himself below the scion of the one old gentle family of his native village. End of Section 2 Section 3 of Evelina's Garden by Mary E. Wilkins. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, reading by Bologna Times. This young Evelina, by the fine dignity which had been born with her, and not acquired by precept and example, by the sweetly formal diction which seemed her native tongue, had filled him with awe. Now, when he thought she was angered with him, he felt beneath her lady feet, his nostrils choked with the spiritual dust of humiliation. He went forward, blindly. The dust had deepened, from either side of the road, from the mysterious gloom of the bushes, came the twangs of the Katy-Deds, like some coarse rustic quarrelers, each striving for the last word in a dispute not even dignified by excessive passion. Suddenly somebody jostled him to his own side of the path. That you, Thomas, where you been? said a voice in his ear. That you, Father? Down to the post office. Who was that you was talking with back there? Miss Evelina Leonard. That girl that's staying there? To the old squares? Yes. The son tried to move on, but his father stood before him dumbly for a minute. I must be going, Father. I've got to work on my sermon, Thomas said impatiently. Wait a minute, said his father. I got something to say to you, Thomas, as this is as good a time to say it as any. There ain't anybody around. I don't know as you'll thank me for it. But Mother said the other day that she thought you'd kind of an idea. She said you asked her if she thought it would be anything out of the way for you to go up to the Squires to make a call. Mother thinks you can step in anywheres, but I don't know. I know your book, Leonard, and your band and minister has set you up a great deal higher than your mother and me and any of our folks, and I feel as if you were good enough for anybody as far as that goes. But that ain't all. Some folks have different starting points in this world, and they see things different. And when they do, it ain't much of use trying to make them walk alongside and see things alike. Their eyes have got different counts, and they ain't able to help it. Now this girl, she's related to the old Squire, and she's been brought up different, and she started ahead even if her father did lose all his property. She ain't never eat in the kitchen, nor been scared to sit down in the parlor, and satin, and velvet, and silver spoons, and cream pots ain't never looked anything out of the common to her. And they always will to you. No matter how many such things you may live to have, they'll always get a little the better of you. She'll be the way above them, and you won't, no matter how hard you try. Some ideas can never mix, and when ideas can't mix, folks can't. I never said they could return Thomas shortly. I can't stop to talk any longer, Father. I must go home. No, you wait a minute, Thomas. I'm going to say out what I started to, and then I shan't ever bring it up again. What I was coming at was this. I wanted to warn you a little. You mustn't set too much store by little things that you think mean considerable when they don't. Looks don't count for much, and I want you to remember it, and not be upset by them. Thomas gave a great start, and colored high. I'd like to know what you mean, Father, he cried sharply. Nothing. I don't mean nothing. Only I'm older than you, and it's come in my way to know some things, and it's fitting you should profit by it. A young woman's looks at you don't count for much. I don't suppose she knows why she gives them herself, half the time. They ain't like us. It's best you should make up your mind to it. If you don't, you may find it out by the hardest. That's all. I ain't never gonna bring this up again. I'd like to know what you mean, Father. Thomas' voice shook with embarrassment and anger. I ain't going to say anything more about it, replied the old man. Mary Anne Pease and Arabella Mann are both in the sitting-room with your mother. I thought I'd tell you, in case you didn't want to see him, and wanted to go to work on your sermon.  When he reached the large white house where he lived, he skirted it carefully. The chirping trouble of girlish voices came from the open sitting-room window, and he caught a glimpse of a smooth brown head and a high shell comb in front of the candle light. The young minister tiptoed in the back door and across the kitchen to the back stairs. The sitting-room door was open, and the candle light streamed out, and the trouble voices rose high. Thomas, advancing through the dusky kitchen with cautious steps, encountered suddenly a chair in the dark corner by the stairs, and just saved himself from falling. There was a startled outcry from the sitting-room, and his mother came running into the kitchen with a candle. "'Who is it?' she demanded valiantly. Then she started and gasped as her son confronted her. He shook a furious warning fist at the sitting-room door and his mother, and edged towards the stairs. She followed him close. "'Haven't you better just step in a minute?' she whispered. "'Them girls have been here an hour, and I know they're waiting to see you.' Thomas shook his head fiercely and swung himself around the corner into the dark crook of the back stairs. His mother thrust the candle into his hand. "'Take this, or you'll break your neck on them stairs,' she whispered.  "'Is it robbers, Miss Maryam? Want us to come and help tackle him?' And he fairly shuddered.  "'The idea of any girl screeching out like that,' he muttered, and if he had carried speech as far as his thought he would have added when Evelina is a girl. He was so angry that he did not laugh when he heard his mother's answer back and those conclusive tones of hers that were want to silence all argument. "'It ain't anything. Don't be scared. I'm coming right back.' Mrs. Maryam scorned subterfuges. She took always a silent stand in a difficulty, and let people infer what they would. When Marianne Pease inquired if it was the cat that had made the noise, she asked if her mother had finished her blue and white counter-pan. The two girls waited a half hour longer. Then they went home. "'What do you suppose made that noise out in the kitchen?' Asked Arabella Mann of Marianne Pease the minute they were out of doors. "'I don't know,' replied Marianne Pease. She was a broad-backed young girl, and looked like a matron as she hurried along in the dusk. "'Well, I know what I think it was,' said Arabella Mann, moving ahead, with sharp jerks of her little dark body. "'What?' "'It was him.' "'You don't mean?' "'I think it was Thomas Mariam, and he was trying to get up the back stairs, unbeknownst to anybody, and he run into something.' "'What for?' "'Because he didn't want to see us.' "'Now, Arabella Mann, I don't believe it. He's always real pleasant to me.' "'Well, I do believe it, and I guess he'll know it when I set foot in that house again. I guess he'll find out I didn't go there to see him. He didn't even feel so fine, if he is the minister. His folks ain't any better than mine, and we've got enough subtle handsome furniture in our parlor.' "'Did you see how the tallow had all run down over the candles?' "'Yes, I did. She gave that candle she carried out in the kitchen to him, too. Mother says she wasn't never any kind of a housekeeper.' "'Hush, Arabella. Here he is coming now.' "'But it was not Thomas. It was his father, advancing through the evening with his son's gate and carriage. "'When the two girls discovered that, one tittered out quite audibly, and they scuttled past. They were not rivals. They simply walked faithfully side by side in pursuit of the young minister, giving him, as it were, an impartial choice. There were even no heart-burnings between them, one always confided in the other when she supposed herself to have found some slight favour in Thomas's sight, and indeed the young minister could scarcely bow to one upon the street, unless she flew to the other with the news. Thomas Merriam himself was aware of all this devotion on the part of the young women of his flock, and it filled him with a sort of angry shame. He could not have told why, but he despised himself for being the object of their attention more than he despised them. His heart sank at the idea of Avelinas discovering it. What would she think of him if she knew all those young women haunted his house, and lagged after meeting, on the chance of getting a word from him? Suppose she should see their eyes upon his face in meeting-time, and decipher their half-unconscious boldness, as he had done against his will, once Avelina had looked at him, even as the older Avelina had looked at his father, and all other looks of maidens seemed to him like profanations of that, even although he doubted afterwards that he had rightly interpreted it. Full it had seemed to him of that tender maiden surprise and wonder, of that love that knows not itself, and sees its own splendor for the first time in another's face, and flees at the sight. It had happened once when he was coming down the aisle after the sermon, and Avelina had met him at the door of her pew. But she had turned her head quickly, and her soft curls flowed over her red cheek, and he doubted ever after if he had read the look a right, when he had gotten the courage to speak to her again, and she had met him with the gentle coldness, which he had learned of her lady aunt, and her teacher in Boston, his doubt was strong upon him. The next Sunday he looked not her way at all. He even tried faithfully from day to day to drive her image from his mind with prayer and religious thoughts, but in spite of himself he would lapse into dreams about her as if borne by a current of nature too strong to be resisted. And sometimes upon being awakened from them, as he sat over his sermon with the ink drying on his quill, by the sudden outburst of trouble-voices in his mother's sitting-room below, the fancy would seize him that possibly these other young damsels took fond liberties with him in their dreams as he with Evelina, and he resented it with a fierce maidenliness of spirit although he was a man. The thought that possibly they, over their spinning or their quilting, had in their hearts the image of himself with fond words upon his lips and fond looks in his eyes, filled him with shame and rage, although he took the same liberty with a delicately haughty maiden Evelina. But Thomas Merriam was not given to undo appreciation of his own fascination, as was proved by his ready discouragement in the case of Evelina. He had the knowledge of his conquests forced upon his understanding until he could no longer evade it. Every day were offerings laid upon his shrine of pound cakes and flaky pies and loaves of white bread and cups of jelly whereby the culinary skill of his devotees might be proved. So can purses and beautiful socks knitted with fancy stitches and holy bookmarks for his Bible and even a wonderful bed quilt and a fine linen shirt with hemstitch bands poured in upon him. He burned with angry blushes when his mother, smiling meaningly, passed them over to him.  He would never taste of the tempting vians which were brought to him. How you act, Thomas, his mother would say. She was secretly elated by these feminine libations upon the altar of her son. They did not grate upon her sensibilities which were not delicate. She even tried to assist two or three of the young women in their designs. She would often praise them and their handiwork to her son, and in this she was elated by an old woman aunt of hers who lived with the family. Nancy Winslow is as handsome a girl as I ever set eyes on, and I never seen any nicer soan, Mrs. Merriam said after the advent of the linen shirt, and she held it up to the light admiringly. Just look at that hemstitching, she said. I guess whoever made that shirt calculated would do for a wedding one, said old Aunt Betty Green, and Thomas made an exclamation and went out of the room, tingling all over with shame and disgust. Thomas don't act natural, said the old woman, glancing after him through her ironbound spectacles. I don't know what's got into him, returned his mother. Maybe they follow him up a little too close, said Aunt Betty. I don't know as I should have ventured on a shirt. When I was a gal, I made of satin vest ones for Joshua, but that don't seem quite as pented as a shirt. It didn't scare Joshua, no how. He asked me to have him the next week. Well, I don't know, said Mrs. Merriam again. I kind of wish Thomas would settle on somebody, for I'm pestered most to death with him, and I feel as if I was kind of mean, taking all these things into the house. They about kept you in sweet cake, ain't they, lately? Yes, but I don't feel as if it was just right for us to eat it up, when it was brought for Thomas, but he won't touch it. I can't see as he has the least ID of any one of them. I don't believe Thomas has ever seen anybody he wanted for a wife. Well, he's got the pick of them. A set in their caps, right in his face, said Aunt Betty. Neither of them dreamed how the young man, sleeping and eating and living under the same roof, beloved of them since he entered the world, holding himself coldly aloof from this crowd of half innocently, half boldly ardent young women, had set up for himself his own divinity of love, before whom he consumed himself in vain worship. His father suspected, and that was all, and he never mentioned the matter again to his son. After Thomas had spoken to Evelina the weeks went on, and they never exchanged another word, and their eyes never met, but they dwelt constantly within each other's thoughts, and were ever present to each other's spiritual vision. Always, as the young minister bent over his sermon paper, laboriously tracing out with sputtering quill his application of the articles of the Orthodox faith, Evelina's blue eyes seemed to look out at him between the stern doctrines like the eyes of an angel, and he could not turn the pages of the holy writ unless he found some passage therein which, to his mind, treated directly of her, setting forth her graces like a prophecy. The fairest among women read Thomas Merriam and nodded his head, while his heart leapt with satisfied delight of all its fancies, at the image of his love's fair and gentle face. Her price is far above Ruby's, read Thomas Merriam, and he nodded his head again, and saw Evelina shining as with gold and pearls, more precious than all the jewels of the earth. In spite of all his efforts, when Thomas Merriam studied the scriptures in those days, he was more nearly touched by those old human hearts which throbbed down to his through the ages, welding the memories of their old loves to his living one until they seemed to prove its eternity, then by the messianic prophecies. Often he spent hours upon his knees, but arose with Evelina's face before his very soul in spite of all. And as for Evelina, she tended the flowers in the older Evelina's garden with her poor cousin, whose own love-dreams had been illustrated, as it were, by the pinks and lilies blooming around them when they had all gone out of her heart, and Thomas Merriam's half-bold, half-imploring eyes looked up at her, out of every flower, and stung her heart like bees. Poor young Evelina feared much lest she had offended Thomas, and yet her own maiden decorum had been offended by him, and she had offended it herself, and she was faint with shame and distress when she thought of it. How had she been so bold and shameless as to give him that look at the meeting-house, and how had he been so cruel as to accost her afterwards? She told herself she had done right, for the maintenance of her own maiden dignity, and yet she feared lest she had angered him and hurt him. Suppose he had been fretted by her coldness, she thought, and then a great wave of tender pity went over her heart, and she would almost have spoken to him of her own accord. But then she would reflect how he continued to write such beautiful sermons, and prove so clearly and logically the tenets of the faith. And how could he do that with a mind in distress? Scarcely could she herself tend the flower-beds as she should, nor set her embroidery stitches finally and evenly. She was so ill at ease. It must be that Thomas had not given the matter an hour's worry since he continued to do his work so faithfully and well. And then her own heart would be soarer than ever, with a belief that his was happy and at rest, although she would shide herself for it. And yet this young Evelina was a philosopher and an analyst of human nature in a small way, and she got some slight comfort out of a shrewd suspicion that the heart of a man might love and suffer on a somewhat different principle from the heart of a woman. It may be, thought Evelina, sitting idle over her embroidery with faraway blue eyes, that a man's heart can always turn a while from love to other things as weighty and serious, although he be just as fond, while a woman's heart is always fixed one way by loving, and cannot be turned, unless it breaks. And it may be wise, thought young Evelina, else how could the state be maintained and governed, battles for independence be fought, and even souls be saved, and the gospel carried to the heathen. If men could not turn from the concerns of their own hearts more easily than women, women should be patient, thought Evelina, and consider that if they suffer, tis due to the lot which a wise providence has given them. And yet tears welled up in her earnest blue eyes and fell over her fair cheeks and wet the embroidery, when the elder Evelina was not looking, as she seldom was. The elder Evelina was kind to her young cousin, but there were days when she seemed to dwell alone her own thoughts apart from the whole world, and she seldom spoke either to Evelina or her old servant man. Young Evelina, trying to atone for her former indiscretion, and establish herself again on her height of maiden reserve in Thomas Merriam's eyes, sat resolutely in the meeting-house of a sabbath-day, with her eyes cast down. And after service she glided swiftly down the aisle, and was out of the door before the young minister could much more than descend the pulpit stairs, unless he ran an indecorous race. And young Evelina, never at twilight, strolled up the road in the direction of Thomas Merriam's house, where she might quite reasonably hope to meet him, since he was wont to go to the store when the evening stagecoach came in with a mail from Boston. Instead she paced the garden paths, or when there was not too heavy a dew, rambled across the fields, and there was also a lane where she loved to walk. Whether or not Thomas Merriam suspected this, or had ever seen, as he passed the mouth of the lane, the flutter of maidenly draperies in the distance, it so happened that one evening he also went a walking there, and met Evelina. He had entered the lane from the highway, and she from the fields at the head. So he saw her first afar off, and could not tell fairly whether her light muslin skirt might not be only a white-flowering bush, for since his outlook upon life had been so full of Evelina, he had found that often the most common and familiar things would wear for a second a look of her to startle him, and many a time his heart had leapt at the side of a white bush ahead, stirring softly in the evening wind, and he had thought it might be she. Now he said to himself impatiently that this was only another fancy, but soon he saw that it was indeed Evelina, in a light muslin gown, with a little lace kerchief on her head. His handsome young face was white, his lips twitched nervously, but he reached out and pulled a spray of white flowers from a bush, and swung it airily to hide his agitation as he advanced. As for Evelina, when she first despised Thomas, she started and half turned as if to go back, then she held up her white kerchiefed head, with gentle pride, and kept on. When she came up to Thomas, she walked so far to one side that her muslin skirt was in danger of catching and tearing on the bushes, and she never raised her eyes, and not a flicker of recognition stirred her sweet pale face as she passed him. But Thomas started, as if she had struck him, and dropped his spray of white flowers, and could not help a smothered cry that was half a sob, as he went on knocking blindly against the bushes.   Oh! he panted. I did not mean to be too presuming, and offend you. I crave your pardon. Evelina had recovered herself.  I have nothing to pardon, said she. It was I whose bold behavior on becoming a modest and well-trained young woman gave rise to what seemed like presumption on your part. The sense of justice was strong within her, but she made her speech hotly and primly, as if she had learned it, by rote, from some maiden school mistress, and pulled her arm away and turned to go, but Thomas's words stopped her. Not unbecoming, if it came, from the heart, said he, brokenly, scarcely daring to speak, and yet not daring to be silent. Then Evelina turned on him with a sudden strange pride that lay beneath all other pride, and was of a nobler and truer sort. Do you think I would have given you the look that I did if it had not come from my heart? she demanded. What did you take me to be, false and a jilt? I may be a forward young woman who has overstepped the bounds of maidenly decorum, and I shall never get over the shame of it, but I am truthful, and I am no jilt. The brilliant color flamed out on Evelina's cheeks. Her blue eyes met Thomas's with that courage of innocence and nature, which dares all shame, but it was only for a second the tears sprang into them.  Oh, I love you so, he whispered. I love you so, Evelina, and I was afraid you were angry with me for it. And I was afraid, she faltered, half weeping and half shrinking from him, lest you were angry with me for betraying the state of my feelings when you could not turn them. And even then she used that gentle formality of expression with which she had been taught by her maiden perceptors to veil decorously, her most ardent emotions. And in truth her training stood her in good stead in other ways, for she presently commanded with that mild dignity of hers, which allowed of no remonstrance that Thomas should take away his arm from her waist and give her no more kisses for that time. It is not becoming for any one, said she, and much less for a minister of the gospel. And as for myself, I know not what Mistress Perkins would say to me. She has a mind much above me, I fear. Mistress Perkins is enjoying her mind in Boston, said Thomas Merriam, with the laugh of a triumphant young lover. But Evelina did not laugh. It might be well for both you and me if she were here, said she seriously. However, she tempered a little her decorous following of Mistress Perkins's precepts, and she and Thomas went hand and hand up the lane and across the fields. There was no dew that night, and the moon was full. It was after nine o'clock when Thomas left her at the gate in the fence which separated Evelina Adams' garden from the field, and watched her disappear between the flowers. The moon shone full on the garden. Evelina walked as it were over a silver dapple, which her light gown seemed to brush away and dispel for a moment. The bushes stood in sweet, mysterious clumps of shadow. Evelina had almost reached the house and was close to the great Althea Bush, which cast a wide circle of shadow, when it seemed suddenly to separate and move into life. The elder Evelina stepped out from the shadow of the bush. Is that you, Evelina? she said in her soft, melancholy voice, which had in it a nervous vibration. Yes, cousin Evelina. The elder Evelina's pale face drooped about with gray curls at an unfamiliar, almost uncanny look in the moonlight, and might have been the sorrowful visage of some marble nymph, Lovelorn, with unceasing grace. Who was with you? she asked. The minister replied young Evelina. Did he meet you? He met me in the lane, cousin Evelina. And he walked home with you across the field. Yes, cousin Evelina. Then the two entered the house, and nothing more was said about the matter. Young Evelina and Thomas Merriam agreed that their affection was to be kept secret for a while. Four said young Evelina. I cannot leave cousin Evelina yet a while, and I cannot have her pestered with thinking about it, at least before another spring, when she has the garden fairly growing again. That is nearly a whole year. It is August now, said Thomas, half reproachfully, and he tightened his clasp of Evelina's slender fingers. I cannot help that, replied Evelina. It is for you to show Christian patience more than I, Thomas, if you could have seen poor cousin Evelina as I have seen her through the long winter days when her garden is dead, and she has only the few plants in her window left. When she is not watering and tending them, she sits all day in the window and looks out over the garden and the naked bushes and the withered flowered stalks. She used not to be so, but would read her Bible and good books and busy herself somewhat over fine needlework, and at one time she was compiling a little floral book, giving a list of the flowers and poetical selections and sentiments appropriate to each. That was her pastime for three winters, and it is now nearly done, but she has given that up and all the rest, and sits there in the window and grows older and feebler until spring. It is only I who can divert her mind by reading out loud to her and singing, and sometimes I paint the flowers she loves the best on cardboard with watercolors. I have a poor skill in it, but Cousin Evelina can tell which flower I have tried to represent, and it places her greatly. I have even seen her smile. No, I cannot leave her, nor even pester her with telling her before another spring, and you must wait, Thomas, said young Evelina. And Thomas agreed, as he was likely to do, all which she proposed, which touched not his own sense of right and honor. Young Evelina gave Thomas one more kiss for his earnest pleading. And that night wrote out the tale in her journal. It may be that I overstepped the bounds of maidenly decorum, wrote Evelina, but my heart did so entreat me, and no blame whatever did she lay upon Thomas. End of Section 3 Section 4 of Evelina's Garden by Mary E. Wilkins The Slipper Vox recording is in the public domain, reading by Bologna Times. Young Evelina opened her heart only to her journal, and her cousin was told nothing, and had little cause for suspicion. Thomas Merriam never came to the house to see his sweetheart. He never walked home with her from meeting. Both were anxious to avoid village gossip, until the elder Evelina could be told. Often in the summer evenings the lovers met, and strolled hand in hand across the fields, and parted at the garden gate, with the one kiss which Evelina allowed, and that was all. Sometimes when young Evelina came in with her lover's kiss still warm upon her lips, the elder Evelina looked at her, wistfully, with a strange retrospective expression in her blue eyes, as if she were striving to remember something that the girl's face called to mind, and yet she could have had nothing to remember except dreams. And once when young Evelina sat sowing through a long summer afternoon, and thinking about her lover, the elder Evelina, who was storing rose-leaves mixed with sweet spices in a jar, said, suddenly, he looks as his father used to. Young Evelina started. Whom do you mean, cousin Evelina? She asked, wonderingly, for the elder Evelina had not glanced at her, nor even seemed to address her at all. Nothing, said the elder Evelina, and a soft flush stole over her withered face and neck, and she sprinkled more cassia on the rose-leaves in the jar. Young Evelina said no more, but she wondered partly because Thomas was always on her mind, and it seemed to her naturally that nearly everything must have a savor of meaning of him, if her cousin Evelina could possibly have referred to him and his likeness to his father. For it was commonly said that Thomas looked very like his father, although his figure was different. The young man was taller and more firmly built, and he had not the meek forward curve of shoulder which had grown upon his father of late years. When the frosty nights came, Thomas and Evelina could not meet and walk hand in hand over the fields behind this wire's house, and they very seldom could speak to each other. It was nothing except good day on the street and a stolen glance which set them both a trembling lest all the congregation had noticed in the meeting-house. When the winter set fairly in, they met no more, for the older Evelina was taken ill, and her young cousin did not leave her even to go to meeting. People said they guessed it was Evelina Adams' last sickness, and they furthermore guessed that she would divide her property between her cousin Martha Loomis and her two girls and Evelina Leonard, and that Evelina would have the house as her share. Thomas Merriam heard this last with a satisfaction which he did not try to disguise from himself, because he never dreamt of there being any selfish element in it. It was all for Evelina. Many a time he had looked about the humble house where he had been born, and where he would have to take Evelina after he had married her, and striven to see its poor features with her eyes, not with his, for which familiarity had tempered them. Often, as he sat with his parents in the old sitting-room, in which he had kept so far an unquestioning belief as in a friend of his childhood, the scales of his own personality would fall suddenly from his eyes, then he would see as Evelina the poor worn humble face of his home, and his heart would sink. I don't see how I ever can bring her hair, he thought. He began to save a few cents at a time out of his pitiful salary, to at least beautify his own chamber a little when Evelina should come. He made up his mind that she should have a little dressing table with an oval mirror and a white muslin frill around it, like one he had seen in Boston. She shall have that to sit before while she combs her hair, he thought, with defiant tenderness. When he stowed away another shelling and a little box in his trunk, it was money he ordinarily bestowed upon foreign missions, but his Evelina had come between him and the heathen. To procure some dainty furnishings for her bridal chamber, he took away a good half of his ties for the spread of the Gospel in the dark lands. Now and then his conscience smote him. He felt shame-faced before his deacons, but Evelina kept her first claim. He resolved that another year he would hire a piece of land and combine farming with his ministerial work, and so try to eke out his salary, and get a little more money to beautify his poor home for his bride. Now if Evelina Adams had come to the appointed time for the closing of her solitary life, and if her young cousin should inherit a share of her goodly property and the fine old mansion house, all necessity for anxiety of this kind was over. Young Evelina would not need to be taken away for the sake of her love from all these comforts and luxuries. Thomas Merriam rejoiced innocently, without a thought for himself. In the course of the winter he confided in his father. He couldn't keep it to himself any longer. Then there was another reason. Seeing Evelina so little made him at times almost doubt the reality of it all. There were days when he was depressed and inclined to ask himself if he had not dreamt it, telling somebody gave it substance. His father listened soberly when he told him he had grown old of late. Well, said he, she ain't been used to living the way you have, though you have had advantages that none of your folks ever had, but if she likes you that's all there is to it, I suppose. The old man sighed warily. He sat in his arm-chair at the kitchen fireplace. His wife had gone in to one of the neighbors, and the two were alone. Of course, said Thomas simply, if Evelina Adams shouldn't live, the chances are that I shouldn't have to bring her here. She wouldn't have to give up anything on my account. You know that, father. Then the young man started, for his father turned suddenly on him with a pale, wrathful face. You ain't countin' on that, he shouted. You ain't countin' on that. A son of mine countin' on anything like that. Thomas colored. Why, father, he stammered. You don't think you know it's all for her, and they say she can't live anyway. I had never thought of such a thing before. I was wondering how I could make it comfortable for Evelina here. But his father did not seem to listen. Countin' on that, he repeated.  Countin' on that. The old man's voice broke into a hoarse sob. He got up and went hurriedly out of the room. Why, father, his son called after him, in alarm, he got up to follow him.  Father must be getting childish. Thomas thought, wonderingly, he did not bring up the subject to him again. Evelina Adams died in March. One morning the bell told seventy long melancholy tones before people had eaten their breakfast. They ran to their doors and counted. It's her, they said, nodding, when they had waited a little after the seventieth stroke. Directly Mrs. Martha Loomis and her two girls were seen hustling importantly down the road, with their shawls over their heads, to the squire's house. Miss Loomis can lay her out, they said. It ain't likely that young Evelina knows anything about such things. Guess she'll be thankful she's got somebody to call on now, if she ain't mixed much with the Loomises. Then they wondered when the funeral would be, and the women furbished up their black gowns and bonnets, and even in a few cases drove to the next town and borrowed from relatives. But there was a great disappointment in store for them. Evelina Adams died on a Saturday. The next day it was announced from the pulpit that the funeral would be private by the particular request of the deceased. Evelina Adams had carried her delicate seclusion beyond death to the very borders of the grave. Nobody outside the family was bitten to the funeral, except the doctor, the minister, and the two deacons of the church. They were to be the bearers. The burial also was to be private in the squire's family burial lot at the north of the house. The bearers would carry the coffin across the yard, and there would not only be no funeral but no funeral procession and no hearse. It don't seem scarcely decent the women whispered to each other, and more than all that she ain't going to be seen. The deacons' wives were especially disturbed by this last, as they might otherwise have gained many interesting particulars by proxy. Monday was the day set for the burial. Early in the morning old Thomas Merriam walked feebly up the road to the squire's house. People noticed him as he passed. How terribly fast he's grown old lately, they said. He opened the gate which led into the squire's front yard with fumbling fingers, and went up the walk to the front door under the Corinthian pillars, and raised the brass knocker. Evelina opened the door, and started and blushed when she saw him. She had been crying. There were red rings around her blue eyes, and her pretty lips were swollen. She tried to smile at Thomas's father, and she held out her hand with shy welcome. I want to see her, the old man said abruptly. Evelina started, and looked at him, wonderingly. I don't believe. I know who you mean, said she. Do you want to see Mrs. Loomis? No, I want to see her. Her? Yes, her. Evelina turned pale as she stared at him. There was something strange about his face. But Cousin Evelina, she faltered. She didn't want—perhaps you don't know—she left special directions that nobody was to look at her. I want to see her, said the old man, and Evelina gave way. She stood aside for him to enter, and led him into the Great North Parlor, where Evelina Adams lay in her mournful state. The shutters were closed, and one on entering could distinguish nothing but that long black shadow in the middle of the room. Young Evelina opened a shutter a little way, and a slanting shaft of spring sunlight came in, and shot a thwart, the coffin. The old man tiptoed up, and leaned over, and looked at the dead woman. Evelina Adams had left further instructions about her funeral, which no one understood, but which were faithfully carried out. She wished, she had said, to be attired for her long sleep in a certain rose-colored gown, laid away in rose leaves and lavender, and a certain chest, and a certain chamber. There were also silken hoses and satin shoes with it, and these were to be put on, and a wrought lace tucker, fastened with a pearl brooch. It was the costume she had worn one Sabbath day, back in her youth, when she had looked across the meeting-house, and her eyes had met young Thomas Marriams. But nobody knew, nor remembered, even young Evelina thought it was simply a vagary of her dead cousins. It don't seem to me decent to lay away anybody dressed so, said Mrs. Martha Loomis, but of course last wishes must be respected. The two Loomis girls said they were thankful nobody was to see the departed, and her rose-colored shroud. Even old Thomas Marriam, leaning over poor Evelina, cold and dead in the garb of her youth, did not remember it, and saw no meaning in it. He looked at her long. The beautiful color was all faded out of the yellow-white face. The sweet full lips were set, and then the closed blue eyes sunken in dark hollows. The yellow hair showed a line of gray at the edge of her old woman's cap, and then gray curls lay against the hollow cheeks. But old Thomas Marriam drew a long breath when he looked at her. It was like a gasp of admiration and wonder. A strange rapture came into his dim eyes. His lips moved as if he whispered to her, but young Evelina could not hear a sound. She watched him, half frightened, but finally he turned to her. I ain't seen her, fairly, said he hoarsely. I ain't seen her, savin' a glimpse of her at the window, for over forty years, and she ain't changed, not a look. I'd have known her anywheres. She's the same as she was when she was a girl. It's wonderful. Wonderful. Young Evelina shrank a little. We think she looks natural, she said, hesitatingly. She looked just as she did when she was a girl, and I used to come into the meeting-house. She is just the same, the old man repeated, in his eager horse-boys. Then he bent over the coffin, and his lips moved again. Young Evelina would have called Mrs. Loomis, for she was frightened, had he not been Thomas's father, and had it not been for her vague feeling that there might be some old story to explain this which she had never heard. Maybe he was in love with poor cousin Evelina, as Thomas is with me, thought young Evelina, using her own leaping pull of love to land straight at the truth. But she never told her surmise to anyone except Thomas, and that was long afterwards when the old man was dead. Now she watched him with her blue, dilated eyes, but soon he turned away from the coffin and made his ways straight out of the room without a word. Evelina followed him through the entry and opened the outer door. He turned on the threshold and looked back at her, his face working.  No, I won't. I don't think I understand what you mean, sir, stammered Evelina. The old man stood looking at her a moment. Suddenly she saw the tears rolling over his old cheeks. I'm much obliged to ye for letting of me see her, he said hoarsely, and crept feebly down the steps. Evelina went back, trembling to the room, where her dead cousin lay, and covered her face and closed the shutter again. Then she went about her household duties, wondering she could not understand what it all meant, but one thing she understood, that in some way this old dead woman, Evelina Adams, had gotten immortal youth and beauty in one human heart. She looked to him just as she did when she was a girl. Evelina kept thinking to herself with awe. She said nothing about it to Mrs. Martha Loomis or her daughters. They had been in the back part of the house and had not heard old Thomas Merriam come in, and they never knew about it. Mrs. Loomis and the two girls stayed in the house day and night until after the funeral. They confidently expected to live there in the future. It isn't likely that Evelina Adams thought a young woman no older than Evelina Leonard could live here alone in this great house with nobody but that old Sarah Judd. It would not be proper nor becoming, said Martha Loomis to her two daughters, and they agreed, and brought over many of their possessions under cover of night to the squire's house during the interval before the funeral. But after the funeral, and the reading of the will, the Loomis's made sundry trips after dusk back to their old home, with their best petticoats and cloaks over their arms, and their bonnets dangling by the strings at their sides. For Evelina Adams's last will and testament had been read, and therein provision was made for the continuance of the annuity heretofore paid them for their support, with the condition affixed that not one night should they spend after the reading of the will and the house known as the Squire Adams's house. The annuity was an ample one, and would provide the widow Martha Loomis and her daughters, as it had done before, with all the needfuls of life. But upon hearing the will they stiffened their double chins into their kurchus with indignation, for they had looked for more. Evelina Adams's will was a will of conditions, for unto it she had affixed two more, and those affected her beloved cousin Evelina Leonard. It was notable that Beloved had not preceded her cousin Martha Loomis's name in the will, no pretense of love, when she felt none, had she ever made in her life. The entire property of Evelina Adams's spinster deceased, with the exception of widow Martha Loomis's provision, fell to this beloved young Evelina Leonard, subject to two conditions. Firstly, she was never to enter into matrimony with any person, whomsoever, at any time whatsoever. Secondly, she was never to let the said spinster Evelina Adams's garden, situated at the rear and southward of the house known as the Squire Adams's house, die through any neglect of hers. Due allowance was to be made for the dispensations of Providence, for hail and weathering frost and long continued drought, and for times wherein the sad Evelina Leonard might, by reason of being confined to the house by sickness, be prevented from attending to the needs of the growing plants, and the verdict in such cases was to rest with the minister and the deacons of the church. But should this beloved Evelina love and wed, or should she let, through any willful neglect, that garden perish in the season of flowers, all that goodly property would she forfeit to a person unknown, whose name, enclosed in a sealed envelope, was to be held, meantime, in the hands of the executor, who had also drawn up the will, lawyer Joshua Lang. There was great excitement in the village over the strange and unwanted will. Some were there, who held that Evelina Adams had not been of sound mind, and it should be contested. It was even rumored that widow Martha Loomis had visited Lawyer Joshua Lang, and broached the subject, but he had dismissed the matter peremptorily, by telling her that Evelina Adams, Spenster, deceased, had been as much in her right mind at the time of drawing the will as anybody of his acquaintance. Not setting store by relations, and not wanting to have them under your roof, doesn't go far in law, nor common sense to send folks to the madhouse. Old Lawyer Lang, who was famed for his sharp tongue, was reported to have said. However, Mrs. Martha Loomis was somewhat comforted by her firm belief that either her own name or that of one of her daughters was in that sealed envelope kept by Lawyer Joshua Lang in his strongbox, and by her firm purpose to watch carefully lest Evelina prove derelict in fulfilling the two conditions whereby she held the property. Larger peepholes were soon cut away mysteriously in the high Arbor Vitae hedge, and therein were often set for a few moments when they passed that way, the eager eyes of Mrs. Martha, or her daughter Flora, or Fidelia Loomis. Frequent calls they also made upon Evelina, living alone with the old woman, Sarah Judd, who had been called in during her cousin's illness, and they strolled into the garden, spying anxiously for withered leaves or dry stalks. They at every opportunity interviewed the old man who assisted Evelina in her care the garden concerning its welfare, but small progress they made with him, standing digging at the earth with his spade, while they had talked, as if in truth his wits had gone therein before his body, and he would uncover them. Moreover, Mrs. Martha Loomis talked much slyly to mothers of young men, and sometimes with bold insinuations, to the young men themselves, of the sad lot of poor young Evelina, condemned to a solitary and loveless life, and of her sweetness and beauty and desirability in herself, although she could not bring the old Squire's money to her husband. And once, but no more than that, she touched lightly upon the subject to the young minister, Thomas Merriam, when he was making a pastoral call. My heart bleeds for the poor child living all alone in that great house, said she, and she looked down mournfully, and did not see how white the young minister's face turned. It seems almost a pity, said she furthermore. Evelina is a good housekeeper, and has rare qualities in herself, and so many get poor wives nowadays, that some godly young man should not court her in spite of the will. I doubt, too, if she would not have a happier life than growing old over that garden, as poor cousin Evelina did before her, even if she has a fine house to live in, and a goodly sum in the bank. She looks pendling enough lately. A warrant she has lost a good ten-pound since poor Evelina was laid away, and— But Thomas Merriam cut her short. I see no profit in discussing matters which do not concern us, said he, and only his ministerial estate saved him from the charge of impertinence. As it was, Martha Loomis colored high. A warrant he'll look out which side his bread is buttered on. Ministers always do, she said to her daughters, after he had gone, she never dreamed how her talk had cut him to the heart. Had he not seen more plainly than any one else, Sunday after Sunday, when he glanced down at her once or twice cautiously from his pulp, but how weary-looking and thin she was growing, and her bright color was well nigh gone, and there were pitiful downward lines at the corners of her sweet mouth. Poor young Evelina was fading like one of her own flowers, as if some celestial gardener had failed in his care of her. And Thomas sought, and in his heart of hearts he knew the reason, and yet he would not yield. Not once had he entered the old squire's house since he attended the dead Evelina's funeral, and stood praying and eulogizing, with her coffin between him and the living Evelina, with her pale face shrouded in black bombazine. He had never spoken to her sense, nor entered the house, but he had written her a letter in which all the fierce passion and anguish of his heart was cramped and held down by formal words and phrases, and poor young Evelina did not see beneath them. When her lover wrote her that he felt it inconsistent with his Christian duty and the higher aims of his existence to take any further steps towards a matrimonial alliance, she felt merely that Thomas either cared no more for her, or had come to consider, upon due reflection, that she was not fit to undertake the responsible position of a minister's wife. It may be that in some way I failed in my attendance upon cousin Evelina, thought poor young Evelina, or it may be that he thinks I have not enough dignity of character to inspire respect among the older women in the church, and sometimes with a sharp thrust of misery that shook her out of her enforced patience and meekness, she wondered if indeed her own loving freedom with him had turned him against her, and led him in his later and sober judgment to consider her too light-minded for a minister's wife. It may be that I was guilty of great indecorum, and almost indeed forfeited my claim to respect for maidenly modesty, inasmuch as I suffered him to give me kisses, and did almost bring myself to return them in kind. But my heart did so entreat me, and in truth it seemed almost like a lack of sincerity for me to wholly withstand it, wrote poor young Evelina in her journal at that time, and further wrote, It is indeed hard for one who has so little knowledge to be fully certain of what is or is not becoming, and a Christian duty in matters of this kind, but if I have in any manner, through my ignorance or unwarrantable affection, failed, and so lost the love and respect of a good man, and the opportunity to become his helpmate during life, I pray that I may be forgiven, for I send not willfully, that the lesson may be sanctified unto me, and that I may live as the Lord's order in Christian patience and meekness and not repining. It never occurred to young Evelina that possibly Thomas Merriam's sense of duty might be strengthened by the loss of all her cousin's property should she marry him, and neither did she dream that he might hesitate to take her from affluence into poverty for her own sake. For herself the property, as put in the balance beside her love, was lighter than air itself. It was so light that it had no place in her consciousness. She simply had thought upon hearing the will of Martha Loomis and her daughters in possession of the property and herself with Thomas with perfect acquiescence and rapture. Evelina Adams' disapprobation of her marriage, which was supposedly expressed in the will, had indeed, without reference to the property, so much troubled her tender heart. But she told herself that cousin Evelina had not known she had promised to marry Thomas, that she would not wish her to break her solemn promise, and furthermore it seemed to her quite reasonable that the condition had been inserted in the will mainly through concern for the beloved garden. Cousin Evelina might have thought perhaps I would let the flowers die when I had a husband and children to take care of, said Evelina, and so she had disposed of all the considerations which had disturbed her, and had thought of no others. She did not answer Thomas' letter. It was so worded that it seemed to require no reply, and she felt that he must be sure of her acquiescence in whatever he thought best. She laid the letter away in a little rose wood-box in which she had always kept her dearest treasures since her school days. Sometimes she took it out and read it, and it seemed to her that the pain in her heart would put an end to her in spite of all her prayers for Christian fortitude, and yet she could not help reading it again. It was seldom that she stole a look at her old lover, as he stood in the pulpit in the meeting-house, but when she did she thought with an anxious pang that he looked worn and ill, and that night she prayed that the Lord would restore his health to him for the sake of his people. It was four months after Evelina Adams's death, and her garden was in the full glory of Midsummer, when one evening, towards dusk, young Evelina went slowly down the street. She seldom walked abroad now, but kept herself almost as secluded as her cousin had done before her. But that night a great restlessness was upon her, and she put a little black silk shawl over her shoulders and went out. It was quite cool, although it was Midsummer. The dusk was deepening fast. The Cady did, called back and forth from the wayside bushes. Evelina met nobody for some distance. Then she saw a man coming towards her, and her heart stood still, and she was about to turn back, for she thought for a minute it was the young minister. Then she saw it was his father, and she went on slowly, with her eyes downcast. When she met him she looked up, and said, Good evening, gravely, and would have passed on, but he stood in her way. I've got a word to say to you, if you listen, he said. Evelina looked at him tremblingly. There was something strained and solemn in his manner. I'll hear whatever you have to say, sir, she said. The old man leaned his pale face over her, and raised a shaking forefinger. I've made up my mind to say something, said he. I don't know as I've got any right to, and maybe my son will blame me, but I'm going to see that you have a chance. It's been born in upon me that women folks don't always have a fair chance. It's just this, I'm going to say. I don't know whether you know how my son feels about it or not. I don't know how open he's been with you. Do you know just why he quits you? Evelina shook her head. No, she panted. I don't. I never knew. He said it was his duty. Duty can get to be an idol of wood and stone, and I don't know, but in Thomas's is, said the old man.  He don't care anything about it for himself, but it's for you. Did you know that? Evelina grasped the old man's arm hard with her little fingers. You don't mean that. Was why he did it, she gasped. Yes, that was why. Evelina drew away from him. She was ashamed to have Thomas's father see the joy in her face. Thank you, sir, she said. I did not understand. I will write to him. Maybe my son will think I have done wrong, come and betwixt him and his ideas of duty, said old Thomas Merriam, but sometimes there's a good deal lost for lack of a word, and I wanted you to have a fair chance and a fair say. It's been borne in upon me that women folks don't always have it. Now you can do just as you think best, but you must remember one thing, riches ain't all. A little lacking for you that's gone at last, and keep honest and faithful to you as long as you live is worth more, and it's worth more to women folks than it is to men, and it's worth enough to them. My son's poorly. His mother and I are worried about him. He don't eat nor sleep. Walks his chamber nights. His mother don't know what the matter is, but he'd let on to me some time since. I'll write a letter to him, gasped Evelina again. Good night, sir. She pulled her little black silk shawl over her head and hastened home, and all night long her candle burned, while her weary little fingers toiled over pages of full-scap paper, to convince Thomas Merriam fully, and yet in terms not exceeding maidenly reserve, that the love of his heart and the companionship of his life were worth more to her than all the silver and gold in the world. Then the next morning she dispatched it all neatly folded and sealed and waited. It was strange that a letter like that could not have moved Thomas Merriam when his heart, too, pleaded with him so hard to be moved, but that might have been the very reason why he could withstand her and why the consciousness of his own weakness gave him strength. Thomas Merriam was one when he had once fairly laid hold of duty to grasp it hard, although it might be to his own pain and death, and maybe to that of others. He wrote to poor young Evelina another letter, in which he emphasized and repeated his strict adherence to what he believed the line of duty in their separation, and ended it with a prayer for her welfare and happiness, in which, indeed, for a second the passionate heart of the man showed forth. Then he locked himself in his chamber, and nobody ever knew what he suffered there. But one pang he did not suffer, which Evelina would have suffered in his place. He mourned not over, nor realized the grief of her tender heart when she should read his letter, otherwise he could not have sent it. He writhed under his own pain alone, and his duty hugged him hard, like the iron maiden of the old tortures, but he would not yield. As for Evelina, when she got his letter, and had read it through, she sat still, and white for a long time, and did not seem to hear when old Sarah Judd spoke to her. But at last she rose, and went to her chamber, and knelt down, and prayed for a long time. And then she went out in the garden, and cut all the most beautiful flowers, and tied them in wreaths and bouquets, and carried them out to the north side of the house, where her cousin Evelina was buried, and covered her grave with them. And then she knelt down there, and hid her face among them, and said in a low voice, as if in a listening ear, I pray you, cousin Evelina, forgive me for what I am about to do. And then she returned to the house, and sat at her needlework as usual, but the old woman kept looking at her, and asking if she were sick, for there was a strange look in her face. She and old Sarah Judd had always their tea at five o'clock, and put the candles out at nine. And this night they did as they were want. But at one o'clock in the morning, young Evelina stole softly down the stairs with her lighted candle, and passed through into the kitchen, and a half hour after she came forth into the garden, which lay in full moonlight. And she had in her hand a steaming tea kettle, and she passed around among the shrubs, and watered them, and a white cloud of steam rose around them. Back and forth she went to the kitchen, for she had heated the great copper wash kettle full of water, and she watered all the shrubs in the garden, moving amid curling white rays of steam until the water was gone. And then she sat to work, and tore up by the roots with her little hands, and trampled with her little feet all the beautiful tender flower beds, all the time weeping and moaning softly. Poor Cousin Evelina! Poor Cousin Evelina! Oh, forgive me, poor Cousin Evelina! And it dawned the garden, lay in ruin, for all the tender plants she had torn up by the roots, and trampled down, and all the stronger rooted shrubs she had striven to kill with boiling water, and salt. Then Evelina went into the house, and made herself tidy, as well as she could, when she trembled so, and put her little shawl over her head, and went down the road to the Mariam's house. It was so early the village was scarcely a stir, but there was smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney at the Mariam's, and when she knocked Mrs. Mariam opened the door at once, and stared at her. Is Sarah Judd dead? She cried, for her first thought was that something must have happened when she saw the girl standing there with her wild pale face. I want to see the minister, said Evelina, faintly, and she looked at Thomas's mother with piteous eyes. Be you sick? asked Mrs. Mariam. She laid a hard hand on the girl's arm, and led her into the sitting-room, and put her into the rocking chair with a feather cushion. You look real poorly, said she.  I want to see him! said Evelina, and she almost sobbed. I'll go, write, and speak to him, said Mrs. Mariam. He's up, I guess. He gets up early to write. But hadn't I better get you something to take first? You do look sick. But Evelina only shook her head. She had her face covered with her hands, and was weeping softly. Mrs. Mariam left the room with a long backward glance at her. Presently the door opened, and Thomas came in. Evelina stood up before him. Her pale face was all wet with tears, but there was an air of strange triumph about her. The garden is dead, said she. What do you mean? he cried out, staring at her, for indeed he thought for a minute that her wits had left her. The garden is dead, said she. Last night I watered the roses with boiling water and salt, and pulled the other flowers up by their roots. The garden is dead, and I have lost all cousin Evelina's money, and it need not come between us any longer. She said that, and looked up in his face with her blue eyes, through which the love of the whole race of loving women, from which she had sprung, as well as her own, seemed to look, and held out her little hands, but even then Thomas Mariam could not understand, and stood looking at her. Why did you do it? he stammered. Because you would have me no other way, and I couldn't bear that anything like that should come between us, she said, and her voice shook like a harp string, and her pale face went red, then pale again. But Thomas still stood staring at her, then her heart failed her. She thought that he did not care, and she had been mistaken. She felt as if it were the hour of her death, and turned to go, and then he caught her in his arms. Oh! he cried with a great sob. The Lord make me worthy of the Evelina. There had never been so much excitement in the village, as when the fact of the ruined garden came to light. Flora Loomis, peeping through the hedge on her way to the store, had spied at first, then she had run home for her mother, who had in turn sought Lawyer Lang, panting bonnetless down the road. But before the Lawyer had started for the scene of disaster, the minister, Thomas Mariam, had appeared, and asked for a word in private with him. Nobody ever knew just what that word was, but the Lawyer was singularly uncommunicative and reticent as to the ruined garden. Do you think the young woman is out of her mind? One of the deacons asked him, and a whisper. I wish all the young women were as much in their minds. We'd have a better world, said the Lawyer, roughly. When do you think we can begin to move in here? Asked Mrs. Martha Loomis, her wide skirts, sweeping a bed of uprooted verminas.  That afternoon he opened the sealed document in the presence of witnesses, and the name of the heir to whom the property fell was disclosed. It was Thomas Mariam, the beloved and esteemed minister of this parish, and young Evelina would gain her wealth instead of losing it by her marriage. And furthermore, after the declaration of the name of the heir was this added, This do I in the hope and belief that neither the greed of riches nor the fear of them shall prevent that which is good and wise in the sight of the Lord, and with the surety that a love which shall triumph over so much in its way shall endure, and shall be a blessing and not a curse to my beloved cousin Evelina Leonard. Thomas Mariam and Evelina were married before the leaves fell in that same year by the minister of the next village, who rode over in his sheis, and brought his wife, who was also a bride, and wore her wedding dress of a pink and pearl-shot silk. But young Evelina wore the blue bridal array which had been worn by old Squire Adams's bride, all remodeled daintily to suit the fashion of the times, and as she moved the fragrances of roses and lavender of the old summers, during which it had been laid away were evident, like sweet memories. End of Section 4 End of Evelina's Garden by Mary E. Wilkins