LOVE’S GARDEN.
AFTER nearly a week of rain and dull, gray skies, the weather was again
entrancing. The warm, soporific breeze which played through the house
lulled Grandther Donner off to sleep, as he sat in his chair, staring at
vacancy and rubbing his thumb across the ends of his fingers.
Garde, responding to the mood of coming summer, could not resist the
impulse to go out into the garden, which to her would always be
associated with her childish meeting with Adam Rust, and which therefore
now made of her yearning to see him a positive force.
Thus it doubtless appeared to her as an answer to her longing when she
felt a presence and glanced up at the gate, to see him standing there,
as he had so many years before, with two of the pickets clasped in his
big, strong hands.
Her heart gave a leap that almost hurt, so suddenly did it send the
ecstasy bounding through her veins. Yet so sublimated was the look on
Adam’s face, as, with parted lips and visible color rising and falling
in his face, he gazed at her, steadfastly, and as one entranced, that
she went toward him as slowly as if walking might disturb the spell.
One of her hands, like a homing dove, came up to press on her bosom
above her heart. She was pale, for the cares of those weeks had bleached
the rose-tints from her cheeks. Nevertheless, the moment painted them
with vestal flames of love’s own lamp, as she looked into Adam’s eyes
and saw the tender passion abiding there.
“Adam, I prithee come in,” she said, in a soft murmur, unconsciously
repeating what she had said when first he had leaned upon this gate.
As one approaching something sacred, Adam came in and took her two hands
in his. He raised them slowly to his lips, and then pressed them
together against his breast.
“Garde,” he said, almost whispering. “Garde. My little Garde.”
“Oh, Adam,” she answered.
They looked at one another and smiled, she through shining tears. Then
they laughed, for there were no words, there was nothing which could
absolutely express their overflowing joy, but their laughing, which was
wholly spontaneous, came the nearest.
“Oh, I have been so afraid this moment would never come,” said Garde,
presently, when she could trust herself to speak. “It has been such a
long, long time to wait.”
“I love you. Garde, dearest, I love you,” said Adam. “I love to say that
I love you. I could say it all day: ‘Garde, I love you. Garde, I love
you, dear, and love you.’ I have told every star in the heavens to tell
you how I love you, dear. But I would rather tell you myself. Let me see
you. Let me look at you, sweetheart.” He still held her hands, but at
arms’ length away, and looked at her blushing face with such an
adoration in his eyes as she had never beheld.
Indeed, Adam’s passion had swept her from her feet. It possessed her,
enveloped her form, held her enthralled in an ecstasy so profound that
she gasped to catch her breath, while her heart leaped as if it were
pealing out her happiness.
They were standing thus, oblivions of everything, when a sour-visaged
Puritan, passing by the gate, halted a moment to look at them
malignantly. It was none other than Isaiah Pinchbecker, the scolding
hypocrite who had danced to Adam’s fiddling, several years before. He
suddenly gave himself a nudge in the ribs. His eyes lighted up with grim
satisfaction. He had recognized the rover, and with news in his narrow
head he hastened away, prodding himself assiduously as he went.
In the meantime, Grandther Donner, whose naps lasted hardly as long as
forty winks, had awakened. He started from his sleep as if he had
suddenly caught himself neglecting to watch the charter. Glancing
hastily about the room, he missed Garde at once. In his brain, two cells
had broken their walls so that their substance commingled, till Garde
and the charter seemed at times the same, and always so interlinked that
he dared not let her go a yard from his sight.
He tottered to his feet, and rubbing his thumb diligently across the
ends of his fingers, went out at the open door, toward his grandchild,
guided by some sense which in an animal is often highly developed. He
came upon the scene in the garden just as Adam, after looking his heart
full, nearly to bursting, had drawn Garde close again, to kiss her hands
in uncontainable joy.
At sight of Adam’s costume, which was not a great departure from that of
the Royalists of the day, in contradistinction from that of the
Puritans, David Donner flew into a violent rage. He raised his two
palsied hands above his head and screamed.
“Garde!” he cried, “Garde! Kill that man—Kill him!—kill him! The
charter! The King’s devil! Kill him! He’s ripping the charter to pieces
with his teeth!”
He came running toward them, clawing his nails down across his face till
he made his pale cheeks bleed, and tore out little waving filaments,
like gossamer, from his snow-white hair. Almost at their feet he fell
full length, where he struck at the soil and dug in his finger nails,
frantically, all the while making terrible sounds in his paroxysm, most
dreadful to hear.
Adam and Garde had started, he merely alert in the presence of the
unexpected, she in a fear that sent the color from her face so abruptly
that it seemed she must swoon at once. She uttered one little cry, clung
galvanically to Adam’s fingers for a second, and then bent quickly down
to place her hand on the old man’s head.
His delirious fury lasted but a moment. It then subsided as quickly as
it had come, leaving him limp, exhausted, dull-eyed and panting like
some run-down animal. A more pitiable sight than he then became, as he
began to weep, shaken by the convulsive sobs which sometimes possess the
frame of a man, Adam hoped he should never be obliged to witness.
Well as he understood that the sight of himself had precipitated this
painful episode, Adam was also now aware that the old man, for the
moment, saw and comprehended nothing. He therefore lifted him tenderly
up in his arms and carried him into the house, placing him gently down
on a lounge which he readily saw had been recently employed for the old
man’s couch.
Garde had followed, her hands clasped together, the look of a tired
mother in her face, making it infinitely sweet and patient.
“Garde, dear, forgive me,” said Adam. “I came too soon to see you.”
“Oh Adam!” she said, sadly. “In a few days, a week, dear, he is sure to
be better.”
“Is there anything I can do?” said Adam, from the depths of his distress
and sympathy and love.
“Oh, he is coming back to himself. Go, Adam, please,” said Garde, “don’t
wait, dear, please. Come back to the gate, this evening.”
Adam went without so much as waiting to say good-by, for Garde had
turned to her grandfather quickly, and anything further he might have
said he abandoned, when David feebly spoke.
Depressed by the whole affair immeasurably, Adam was still too exalted
by love’s great flight to dwell for long upon old Donner’s mania. His
worries for Garde, in her tribulations, however, were strewn like sad
flowers of thought through his reverie. He longed to help her, yet he
knew how utterly impossible such a thing would be.
Walking aimlessly, he came before long to the harbor shore. The melted
emerald and sapphire, which the sea was rolling against the rocks, with
sparkles of captured sunlight glinting endlessly through and upon the
lazy billows, gave him the greatest possible sense of delight. He sat
down on a rock where the green velvet moss had dried like fur, after a
wetting.
No king on a throne ever detected more evidences of the world’s gladness
than did the rover, thinking away the hours of that balmy afternoon. He
forgot all about dinner, when the sun went down, and he had nearly
forgotten old man Donner, when at length he started to his feet, in the
twilight, in love with the evening for having come so soon, although
half an hour before he had been thinking the day would never end.
He was soon at the gate in front of Donner’s house, listening, watching
the darkened windows, holding his breath as every fragrant zephyr
trailed its perfumes by, thinking Garde was coming, preceded by the
redolence attendant on her loveliness.
But he had many such breathless moments of suspense, in vain. Evening
glided into the arms of night. The hours winged by, on raven wings, and
still no Garde appeared. Adam paced up and down, restoring, time after
time, the picture of Garde as he had seen her, during those precious few
moments before the interruption.
He was not conscious of the flight of time. He was well content to be
near where his lady was and to wait there, knowing that she knew he was
waiting, thinking of her, as he knew she was thinking of him. He clasped
his hands back of his head; then he folded his arms, the better to press
on his heart; then he stopped and tossed kisses to the silent house,
after which he again walked back and forth, pausing to listen, and then
going on as before.
At length, near midnight, he stood looking up at the stars, completely
absorbed in a dream he was fashioning to suit himself.
There was a faint flutter.
“Adam—oh, are you there?” said a sweet voice, subdued and a bit
tremulous. “Oh, I am so glad you didn’t go away, discouraged.”
Adam had turned about instantly, a glad sound upon his lips. In one
stride he reached the gate and caught her two trembling hands where they
rested on the pickets.
“Dearest!” he murmured to her joyously. “At last!”
“I can only stop a minute, Adam,” said Garde, who was quaking a little,
lest her grandfather wake and come again into the garden. “He has been
very restless, and he wouldn’t go to sleep, and he wakes up so easily!
But I couldn’t let you go away like that. And I have tried to come out
five times, but he woke up every time, and now I must say good night,
Adam, and run right back at once.”
“Oh, but I love you so,” said Adam, illogically. “If you must go,
though, you must. I know I can never tell you how much I love you,
dearest.”
“Oh, Adam!” she said, expressing more than he did, poor fellow, in all
his protestations. “Oh, dear! I really must go, Adam. But in about a
week I am sure he will be much better.”
“Shan’t I see you for a week?” said he.
“It might be better not,” she answered, “if we could wait.”
“I could go down to see my poor old beef-eaters, I suppose,” Adam mused.
In relating his travels, on the road, he had told Garde of the
beef-eaters, so that now, although she said nothing to betray herself,
she understood what he meant.
“And then you’ll come back, as soon as you can, in a few days, or a
week?” she asked. “Oh, dear—it is too bad. But, Adam, I must not remain
another single minute. I must say good night, dear, and run.”
Adam had remained on his own side of the gate, retaining her hands,
which he had kissed repeatedly, till they fairly burned with their
tingling. He now reached over the gate and took her sweet face between
his two big palms.
“Good night, dearest little love,” he said, and slowly leaning forward,
he kissed her, once—then he kissed her three times more.
She started slowly away, looking back at him lovingly.
“Oh, Garde!” he whispered.
She stopped and came fluttering back to meet him. He had let himself in
at the gate with one quick movement. He took her home to his arms and
held her in breathless joy against his throbbing heart. With love in her
eyes her face was turned upward to his own.
“My Adam!” she said, with all the fervor of her nature.
“My love! My darling!” he responded.
He kissed her again. It was a warm, sweet kiss that brought their very
souls to their lips. Then he dropped down on his knee and kissed her
hands and pressed their fragrant palms against his face.
“My love!” he said. “My own love!”
She nestled in his arms yet once again. She gave him the one more kiss
that burned on her lips to be taken, and then she fled swiftly to the
house.
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