"Did she have princess-feather in hers, and candytuft, and
sweet-williams?" Lillie turned over on her side, her hand under her
cheek, and in her eyes a quick, eager glow. "In mother's garden were
all sorts of old-fashioned flowers also. We lived two miles from town
and father sold vegetables and chickens to the market-men, who sold
them to their customers. But he never had as good luck with his
vegetables as mother had with her flowers. She loved them so. There
was a big mock-orange bush right by the well. Did you ever shut your
eyes and see things again just as they were a long time ago? If I were
blind-folded and my hands tied behind me I could find just where every
flower used to grow in mother's garden, if I could go in it again."
Like a flood overleaping the barrier that held it back, the words came
eagerly. To keep her from talking would do more harm than to let her
talk. The fever in her soul was greater, more consuming, than that in
her body. I did not try to stop her.
"I don't remember where each thing was in grandmother's garden." I
moved my chair a little closer to her cot. "But I remember the
gooseberry-bushes were just behind a long bed of lilies-of-the-valley.
It seemed so queer they should be together."
"Lilies of the valley grow anywhere. Mother's bed got bigger every
year. There was a large circle of them around a mound in the middle of
our garden, and they were fringed with violets. One February our
minister's wife died. They didn't have any flowers, and it seemed so
dreadful not to have any that I went into the garden to see if I
couldn't find something. The ground was covered with snow, but the
week before had been warm, and, going to one of the beds, I brushed the
snow away and found a lot of white violets. They were blooming under
the snow. I pulled them and took them to the minister, and he put them
in her hands. They used to put flowers in people's hands when they
were dead. I don't know whether they do it now or not."
"Sometimes it is done." I took up the sewing an my lap and made a few
stitches. "Tell me some more of your mother's garden. Did she have
winter pinks and bachelor's buttons and snap-dragons and hollyhocks in
it? I used to hate grandmother's hollyhocks. They were so haughty."
"We did not have any, but we had bridal-wreath and spirea and a big
pomegranate-bush. There were two large oleanders in tubs at the foot
of the front steps. One was mine, the other was my sister's. My
sister is married now and lives out West. She has two children."
A bird on the bough of the apple-tree began to twitter. For a moment
Lillie listened, then again she looked at me, in her eyes that which I
had noticed several times before, a look of torturing fear and pain and
shame.
"Do"--her voice was low--"do you know about me?"
"Yes, I know about you."
"You know--and--and still you talk to me? I don't understand. Why did
you come down here? You don't belong in Scarborough Square."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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