The hot day ended. Toward sunset a thunder-shower drenched the
earth, and the night had begun cool and refreshing.
Mrs. Conyers was sitting on the front veranda, waiting for
her regular Sunday evening visitor. She was no longer the
self-revealed woman of the afternoon, but seemingly an affable,
harmless old lady of the night on the boundary of her social world.
She was dressed with unfailing: elegance--and her taste lavished
itself especially on black silk and the richest lace. The shade of
heliotrope satin harmonized with the yellowish folds of her hair.
Her small, warm, unwrinkled hands were without rings, being too
delicately beautiful. In one she held a tiny fan, white and soft
like the wing of a moth; on her lap lay a handkerchief as light as
smoke or a web of gossamer.
She rocked softly. She unfolded and folded the night-moth fan
softly. She touched the handkerchief to her rosy youthful lips
softly. The south wind blew in her face softly. Everything about
her was softness, all her movements were delicate and refined.
Even the early soft beauty of her figure was not yet lost. (When a
girl of nineteen, she had measured herself by the proportions of
the ideal Venus; and the ordeal had left her with a girdle of
golden reflections.)
But if some limner had been told the whole truth of what she was
and been requested to imagine a fitting body for such a soul, he
would never have painted Mrs. Conyers as she looked. Nature is not
frank in her characterizations, lest we remain infants in
discernment. She allows foul to appear fair, and bids us become
educated in the hardy virtues of insight and prudence. Education
as yet had advanced but little; and the deepest students in the
botany of women have been able to describe so few kinds that no
man, walking through the perfumed enchanted wood, knows at what
moment he may step upon or take hold of some unknown deadly variety.
As the moments passed, she stopped rocking and peered toward the
front gate under the lamp-post, saying to herself:
"He is late."
At last the gate was gently opened and gently shut.
"Ah," she cried, leaning back in her chair smiling and satisfied.
Then she sat up rigid. A change passed over her such as comes over
a bird of prey when it draws its feathers in flat against its body
to lessen friction in the swoop. She unconsciously closed the
little fan, the little handkerchief disappeared somewhere.
As the gate had opened and closed, on the bricks of the pavement
was heard only the tap of his stout walking-stick; for he was gouty
and wore loose low shoes of the softest calfskin, and these made no
noise except the slurring sound of slippers.
Once he stopped, and planting his cane far out in the grass,
reached stiffly over and with undisguised ejaculations of
discomfort snipped off a piece of heliotrope in one of the tubs of
oleander. He shook away the raindrops and drew it through his
buttonhole, and she could hear his low "Ah! ah! ah!" as he thrust
his nose down into it.
"There's nothing like it," he said aloud as though he had
consenting listeners, "it outsmells creation."
He stopped at another tub of flowers where a humming-bird moth was
gathering honey and jabbed his stick sharply at it, taking care
that the stick did not reach perilously near.
"Get away, sir," he said; "you've had enough, sir. Get away, sir."
Having reached a gravel walk that diverged from the pavement, he
turned off and went over to a rose-bush and walked around tapping
the roses on their heads as he counted them--cloth-of-gold roses.
"Very well done," he said, "a large family--a good sign."
Thus he loitered along his way with leisure to enjoy all the chance
trifles that gladdened it; for he was one of the old who return at
the end of life to the simple innocent things that pleased them as
children.
She had risen and advanced to the edge of the veranda.
"Did you come to see me or did you come to see my flowers?" she
called out charmingly.
"I came to see the flowers, madam," he called back. "Most of all,
the century plant: how is she?"