HIS NEIGHBOUR'S GARDEN
In his nightly work in the Brookes' garden, Ordway was prompted at first
by a mere boyish impulse to repay people whose bread he had eaten and in
whose straw he had slept. But at the end of the first hour's labour the
beauty of the moonlight wrought its spell upon him, and he felt that the
fragrance of the lilacs went like strong wine to his head. So the next
night he borrowed Mrs. Twine's spade again and went back for the pure
pleasure of the exercise; and the end of the week found him still
digging among the last year's plants in the loamy beds. By spading less
than two hours a night, he had turned the soil of half the garden before
Sunday put a stop to his work.
On his last visit, he paused at the full of the moon, and stood looking
almost with sadness at the blossoming lilacs and the overgrown path
powdered with wild flowers which had strayed in through the broken
fence. For the hours he had spent there the place had given him back his
freedom and his strength and even a reminiscent sentiment of his youth.
While he worked Lydia had been only a little farther off in the beauty
of the moonlight, and he had felt her presence with a spiritual sense
which was keener than the sense of touch.
As he drew his spade for the last time from the earth, he straightened
himself, and standing erect, faced the cool wind which tossed the hair
back from his heated forehead. At the moment he was content with the
moonlight and the lilacs and the wind that blew over the spring fields,
and it seemed easy enough to let the future rest with the past in the
hands of God. Swinging the spade at his side, he lowered his eyes and
moved a step toward the open gate. Then he stopped short, for he saw
that Emily Brooke was standing there between the old posts under the
purple and white lilacs.
"It seemed too ungrateful to accept such a service and not even to say
'thank you,'" she remarked gravely. There was a drowsy sound in her
voice; her lids hung heavily like a child's over her brown eyes, and her
hair was flattened into little curls on one side by the pressure of the
pillow.
"It has been a pleasure to me," he answered, "so I deserve no thanks for
doing the thing that I enjoyed."
Drawing nearer he stood before her with the spade on his shoulder and
his head uncovered. The smell of the earth hung about him, and even in
the moonlight she could see that his blue eyes looked almost gay. She
felt all at once that he was younger, larger, more masculine than she
had at first believed.
"And yet it is work," she said in her voice of cheerful authority, "and
sorely needed work at that. I can thank you even though I cannot
understand why you have done it."
"Let's put it down to my passion to improve things," he responded with a
whimsical gravity, "don't you think the garden as I first saw it
justified that explanation of my behaviour?"
"The explanation, yes--but not you," she answered, smiling.
"Then let my work justify itself. I've made a neat job of it, haven't
I?"
"It's more than neat, it's positively ornamental," she replied, "but
even your success doesn't explain your motive."
"Well, the truth is--if you will have it--I needed exercise."
"You might have walked."
"That doesn't reach the shoulders--there's the trouble."
She laughed with an easy friendliness which struck him as belonging to
her gallant manner.
"Oh, I assure you I shan't insist upon a reason, I'm too much obliged to
you," she returned, coming inside the gate. "Indeed, I'm too good a
farmer, I believe, to insist upon a reason anyway. Providence disposes
and I accept with thanks. I may wish, though, that the coloured
population shared your leaning toward the spade. By the way, I see it
isn't mine. It looks too shiny."
"I borrowed it from Mrs. Twine, and it is my suspicion that she scrubs
it every night."
"In that case I wonder that she lets it go out to other people's
gardens."
"She doesn't usually," he laughed as he spoke, "but you see I am a very
useful person to Mrs. Twine. She talks at her husband by way of me."
"Oh, I see," said Emily. "Well, I'm much obliged to her."
"You needn't be. She hadn't the remotest idea where it went."
Her merriment, joining with his, brought them suddenly together in a
feeling of good fellowship.
"So you don't like divided thanks," she commented gaily.
"Not when they are undeserved," he answered, "as they are in this case."
For a moment she was silent; then going slowly back to the gate, she
turned there and looked at him wonderingly, he thought.
"After all, it must have been a good wind that blew you to
Tappahannock," she observed.
Her friendliness--which impressed him as that of a creature who had met
no rebuffs or disappointments from human nature, made an impetuous,
almost childlike, appeal to his confidence.
"Do you remember the night I slept in your barn?" he asked suddenly.
She bent down to pick up a broken spray of lilac.
"Yes, I remember."
"Well, I was at the parting of the ways that night--I was beaten down,
desperate, hopeless. Something in your kindness and--yes, and in your
courage, too, put new life into me, and the next morning I turned back
to Tappahannock. But for you I should still have followed the road."
"It is more likely to have been the cup of coffee," she said in her
frank, almost boyish way.
"There's something in that, of course," he answered quietly. "I _was_
hungry, God knows, but I was more than hungry, I was hurt. It was all my
fault, you understand--I had made an awful mess of things, and I had to
begin again low down--at the very bottom." It was in his mind to tell
her the truth then, from the moment of his fall to the day that he had
returned to Tappahannock; but he was schooling himself hard to resist
the sudden impulses which had wrecked his life, so checking his words
with an effort, he lowered the spade from his shoulder, and leaning upon
the handle, stood waiting for her to speak.
"Then you began again at Baxter's warehouse the morning afterward?" she
asked.
"I had gone wrong from the very base of things, you see," he answered.
"And you are making a new foundation now?"
"I am trying to. They're decent enough folk in Tappahannock, aren't
they?" he added cheerfully.
"Perhaps they are," she responded, a little wistfully, "but I should
like to have a glimpse of the world outside. I should like most, I
think, to see New York."
"New York?" he repeated blankly, "you've never been there?"
"I? Oh, no, I've never been out of Virginia, except when I taught school
once in Georgia."
The simple dignity with which she spoke caused him to look at her
suddenly as if he had taken her in for the first time. Perfectly
unabashed by her disclosure, she stood before him as calmly as she would
have stood, he felt, had he possessed a thousand amazed pairs of eyes.
Her confidence belonged less to personal experience, he understood now,
than to some inherited ideal of manner--of social values; and it seemed
to him at the moment that there was a breadth, a richness in her aspect
which was like the atmosphere of rare old libraries.
"You have, I dare say, read a great many books," he remarked.
"A great many--oh, yes, we kept our books almost to the last. We still
have the entire south wall in the library--the English classics are
there."
"I imagined so," he answered, and as he looked at her he realised that
the world she lived in was not the narrow, provincial world of
Tappahannock, with its dusty warehouses, its tobacco scented streets,
its red clay roads.
She had turned from the gate, but before moving away she looked back and
bowed to him with her gracious Southern courtesy, as she had done that
first night in the barn.
"Good-night. I cannot thank you enough," she said.
"Good-night. I am only paying my debt," he answered.
As he spoke she entered the house, and with the spade on his shoulder he
passed down the avenue and struck out vigorously upon the road to
Tappahannock.
When he came down to breakfast some hours later, Mrs. Twine informed him
that a small boy had come at daybreak with a message to him from
Bullfinch's Hollow.
"Of course it ain't any of my business, suh," she continued
impressively, "but if I were you I wouldn't pay any attention to Kit
Berry or his messages. Viciousness is jest as ketchin' as disease,
that's what I say, an' you can't go steppin' aroun' careless whar it is
in the air an' expect to git away with a whole morality. 'Tain't as if
you were a female, either, for if I do say it who should not, they don't
seem to be so thin-skinned whar temptation is concerned. 'Twas only two
weeks ago last Saturday when I went to drag Bill away from that thar low
lived saloon (the very same you broke into through the window, suh) that
Timmas Kelly had the imperence to say to me, 'This is no place for
respectable women, Mrs. Twine.' 'An, indeed, I'd like to know, Mr.
Kelly,' said I to him, 'if it's too great a strain for the women, how
the virtue of the men have stood it? For what a woman can't resist, I
reckon, it's jest as well for a man not to be tempted with.' He shet up
then tight as a keg--I'd wish you'd have seen him."
"In his place I should probably have done the same," admitted Ordway, as
he took his coffee from her hands. He was upon excellent terms with Mrs.
Twine, with the children, and even with the disreputable Bill.
"Wall, I've done a lot o' promisin', like other folks," pursued Mrs.
Twine, turning from the table to pick up a pair of Canty's little
breeches into which she was busily inserting a patch, "an' like them, I
reckon, I was mostly lyin' when I did it. Thar's a good deal said at the
weddin' about 'love' and 'honour' and 'obey', but for all the slick talk
of the parson, experience has taught me that sich things are feelin's
an' not whalebones. Now if thar's a woman on this earth that could
manage to love, honour and obey Bill Twine, I'd jest like for her to
step right up an' show her face, for she's a bigger fool than I'd have
thought even a female could boast of bein'. As for me, suh, a man's a
man same as a horse is a horse, an' if I'm goin' to set about honourin'
any animal on o'count of its size I reckon I'd as soon turn roun' an'
honour a whale."
"But you mustn't judge us all by our friend Bill," remarked Ordway,
picking up the youngest child with a laugh, "remember his weakness, and
be charitable to the rest of us."
Mrs. Twine spread the pair of little breeches upon her knee and slapped
them into shape as energetically as if they had contained the person of
their infant wearer.
"As for that, suh," she rejoined, "so far as I can see one man differs
from another only in the set of his breeches--for the best an' the worst
of 'em are made of the same stuff, an' underneath thar skin they're all
pure natur. I've had three of 'em for better or for worse, an' I reckon
that's as many specimens as you generally jedge things by in a museum. A
weak woman would have kept a widow after my marriage with Bob Cotton,
the brother of William, suh--but I ain't weak, that's one thing can be
said for me--so when I saw my opportunity in the person of Mike Frazier,
I up an' said: 'Wall, thar's this much to be said for marriage--whether
you do or whether you don't you'll be sure to regret it, an' the regret
for things you have done ain't quite so forlorn an' impty headed a
feelin' as the regret for things you haven't.' Then I married him, an'
when he died an' Bill came along I married him, too. Sech is my
determination when I've once made up my mind, that if Bill died I'd most
likely begin to look out for another. But if I do, suh, I tell you now
that I'd try to start the next with a little pure despisin'--for thar's
got to come a change in marriage one way or another, that's natur, an' I
reckon it's as well to have it change for the better instead of the
worst."
A knock at the door interrupted her, and when she had answered it, she
looked back over her shoulder to tell Ordway that Mr. Banks had stopped
by to walk downtown with him.
With a whispered promise to return with a pocket-full of lemon drops,
Ordway slipped the child from his knee, and hurriedly picking up his
hat, went out to join Banks upon the front steps. Since the day upon
which the two men had met at a tobacco auction Banks had attached
himself to Ordway with a devotion not unlike that of a faithful dog. At
his first meeting he had confided to the older man the story of his
youthful struggles, and the following day he had unburdened himself
with rapture of his passion for Milly.
"I've just had breakfast with the Trends," he said, "so I thought I
might as well join you on your way down. Mighty little doing in tobacco
now, isn't there?"
"Well, I'm pretty busy with the accounts," responded Ordway. "By the
way, Banks, I've had a message from Bullfinch's Hollow. Kit Berry wants
me to come over."
"I like his brass. Why can't he come to you?"
"He's sick it seems, so I thought I'd go down there some time in the
afternoon."
They had reached Trend's gate as he spoke, to find Milly herself
standing there in her highest colour and her brightest ribbon. As Banks
came up with her, he introduced Ordway, who would have passed on had not
Milly held out her hand.
"Father was just saying how much he should like to meet you, Mr. Smith,"
she remarked, hoping while she uttered the words that she would remember
to instruct Jasper Trend to live up to them when the opportunity
afforded. "Perhaps you will come in to supper with us to-night? Mr.
Banks will be here."
"Thank you," said Ordway with the boyish smile which had softened the
heart of Mrs. Twine, "but I was just telling Banks I had to go over to
Bullfinch's Hollow late in the afternoon."
"Somebody's sick there, you know," explained Banks in reply to Milly's
look of bewilderment. "He's the greatest fellow alive for missionarying
to sick people."
"Oh, you see it's easier to hit a man when he's down," commented Ordway,
drily. He was looking earnestly at Milly Trend, who grew prettier and
pinker beneath his gaze, yet at the moment he was only wondering if
Alice's bright blue eyes could be as lovely as the softer ones of the
girl before him.
As they went down the hill a moment afterward Banks asked his companion,
a little reproachfully, why he had refused the invitation to supper.
"After all I've told you about Milly," he concluded, "I hoped you'd want
to meet her when you got the chance."
Ordway glanced down at his clothes. "My dear Banks, I'm a working man,
and to tell the truth I couldn't manufacture an appearance--that's the
best excuse I have."
"All the same I wish you'd go. Milly wouldn't care."
"Milly mightn't, but you would have blushed for me. I couldn't have
supported a comparison with your turtle-dove."
Banks reddened hotly, while he put his hand to his cravat with a
conscious laugh.
"Oh, you don't need turtle-doves and things," he answered, "there's
something about you--I don't know what it is--that takes the place of
them."
"The place of diamond turtle-doves and violet stockings?" laughed Ordway
with good-humoured raillery.
"You wouldn't be a bit better looking if you wore them--Milly says so."
"I'm much obliged to Milly and on the whole I'm inclined to think she's
right. Do you know," he added, "I'm not quite sure that you are improved
by them yourself, except for the innocent enjoyment they afford you."
"But I'm such a common looking chap," said Banks, "I need an air."
"My dear fellow," returned Ordway, while his look went like sunshine to
the other's heart, "if you want to know what you are--well, you're a
downright trump!"
He stopped before the brick archway of Baxter's warehouse, and an
instant later, Banks, looking after him as he turned away, vowed in the
luminous simplicity of his soul that if the chance ever came to him he
"would go to hell and back again for the sake of Smith."