I
Through the wide-open window floated in the fragrance of dew-dripping
flowers. On the edge of the table a smouldering cigarette sent up a
thin, wavering filament of gray smoke that lost itself in the upper
gloom of the darkened room, leaving behind it a not-unpleasing odor of
the Orient to mingle with the incense from the gardens without. When he
paused in his writing--and pauses were frequent--Mr. Stephen Burton’s
gaze invariably wandered to the sunlighted morning world represented
by the vista at his elbow.
[Illustration]
Immediately below him a small, turf-carpeted garden formed a square
of shadow and sunlight. A jasmine clambered and sprawled along the
purple brick wall at the rear, and a narrow, chocolate-hued bed of
moist loam caught the fallen blooms. The bed held white and purple and
lavender iris, and spiræa, and blue pentstemon, and was bordered with
honey-flower. At the end of the old wall, where it formed an angle with
an iron fence, a queerly shaped Daphne-tree threw grotesque shadows on
the little lawn. But it was beyond the rusty iron barrier that Burton’s
eyes found their richest reward.
[Illustration]
There stretched a quadrangle that was bounded by walls on two sides
and at the farther end by the back of an old-fashioned Southern house,
staid and sleepy-looking, whose second-story porch, half hidden by
vines over white-painted iron lattice-work, held a hammock which
ever since Burton’s coming had remained idle, swinging lazily in the
afternoon breezes. The quadrangle was intersected by narrow red gravel
paths bordered by box hedges waist-high. And between the hedges,
against the walls, along the fence, and clambering upon the house were
roses. Never had Burton seen or dreamed of such roses. The garden was a
riot of intense reds, of tender pinks, of flaring yellows and dazzling
whites, and of every hue and tint between.
[Illustration]
For the most part, they were the favorites of a generation gone:
Banksias, festooning the warm bricks with bouquets of amber yellow and
of violet-tinged white; Baltimore Belles, creamy-hued and graceful;
rosy-violet Pride of Washingtons; sweetbriers of scarlet and blush;
Austrian briers, single blossoms of flame-yellow. In the beds were
great cabbage-roses of delicate, clear pink and of deep rose;
moss-roses of many sorts, crimson Damasks, bright-red Luxembourgs,
tiny clusters of flesh-colored Pompons. An immense bush of Gloire des
Jardins was aflame with its great double blooms of red, while clustered
about it were Madame Cottins, Philippe Quatres, Marceaus, Madame
Hardys, Princess Clementines, and Madame Plantiers. The rich crimson,
cup-shaped blossoms of a George the Fourth were nodding regally over
the yellow-pink blooms of an Emmeline; the brown velvet petals of a
Lord Nelson were clustering above a lowly Wellington; while, supreme in
one three-cornered jungle of color, a spreading bush of Queen Victoria,
an offshoot of the parent stem, showered the ground with its glowing
petals.
[Illustration]
Above the farther wall leaned a magnolia, a portly, eminently
respectable magnolia, spreading its long branches far out over
the garden as though offering old-gentlemanly protection to the
rose-ladies. In the long afternoons the green and bronze foliage,
now reflecting the morning sunlight from its varnished surface, made
a pleasant gloom thereabouts, throwing great gently-moving ovals of
greenish shadow over the rosebushes along the old wall; here was the
Giant of Battles, with petals so darkly red as to verge upon black,
and the Duchess, with old-fashioned blooms, globular, chary of petals,
showing yellow at the heart when fully opened to the sun, and of a rare
old shade of pink that made one think of lavender-scented brocades and
was like the inner surface of a sea-shell.
[Illustration]
Many a rose bloomed there whose name was no longer known, whose origin
was forgotten with its grower, but which, nameless and unpretentious,
leafed and budded and flowered season after season, year after year,
gladly and humbly fulfilling its mission and setting an example which
many of the far-heralded and perverse beauties of the garden might well
have emulated.
[Illustration]
In one corner dwelt a foreign colony of hardy phlox, white, scarlet,
and crimson, tall and vigorous as they needs must be in order to
reach the sunlight above the great rose-bushes and to maintain their
hard-won footing. And here and there, aliens too, yuccas shot their
great spikes above the wilderness of bloom and swung their panicles
of cream-colored bells, whose tinkling the birds and bees alone might
hear, in the languorous morning breeze. Fallen petals splashed the
level tops of the box hedges with brilliant colors, and, when a vagrant
wind set the blooms a-nodding, fluttered to the gravel paths and so
drifted like scented, tinted snowflakes to and fro. In the shadowed
corners of the hedge closely woven spider webs were jewelled with
dew-drops and, when the moving leaves let the sun-flecks through,
gleamed and sparkled like silver filaments hung with diamonds and blue
pearls.
[Illustration]
For the fiftieth time since breakfast Burton looked up from the
littered table and gazed over the scene, inhaling the intense yet
delicate perfume and bathing his sight in the little sea of color with
a sensation of almost physical delight. And as he looked, there stepped
into the scene a flower that dimmed the others as the moonlight dims
the first faint radiance of the stars. He dropped his pen, heedless of
the fact that it rolled over his clean sheets leaving a broken trail
of ink, and leaned towards the casement with eager eyes and quickened
breath.
[Illustration]
The flower was dressed in white, in hue a modest blossom enough, its
only color being a sash of lilac ribbon about its waist. On its
head--for, after all, what does it matter if metaphors are mixed?--was
a broad-brimmed garden hat wound about the crown with a filmy white
veil. It--she--carried a basket in one hand and with the other held up
daintily the skirt of her gown. For a moment she stood on the topmost
step in the green shadow of a yellow Banksia, small, graceful, a very
rose herself, and the fairest, daintiest in all the garden. Burton’s
papers rustled in the tiny morning breeze and fluttered unseen one
by one to the dark-hued, highly polished floor. He leaned an elbow
on the sill and, without shame, kept his eyes upon the denizen of
the rose-garden. After a moment of smiling survey of the scene the
girl descended the steps and, basket at side, threaded the paths,
snipping here and there with a pair of tiny scissors held in a gloved
hand until the basket was filled and weighted with pink and white
blossoms.
[Illustration: THE BASKET WEIGHTED WITH PINK AND WHITE BLOSSOMS]
Yet all the time the broad brim of her hat threw a soft shadow across
her face, and it was not until she paused beside the iron fence to
clip a single cluster of crimson Damasks that the watcher in the
window was rewarded with a clear view of her features. Perhaps, for a
Northerner, Burton was impressionable. At all events, it is a fact that
when she lifted her face for a moment in an idle glance towards the
neighboring house and the light fell fully, boldly upon it, his heart
leaped chokingly and then, with a series of disconcerting bumps and
thuds, raced faster than it had within his memory. And yet the glimpse
he had was but a fleeting one, for the girl’s eyes encountered his
own, and after a look of infinitesimal duration, a look pregnant with
surprise and dismay, were swiftly lowered, while a faint blush crept
over the warm, clear skin. The next instant the shadow had descended
again; another, and she had turned away, blossom-laden, towards the
house. Burton gazed after her, his mind a confused memory of warm,
brown hair and clear, startled brown eyes; of a tender, oval face,
southern-hued, sun-lighted; of small, red lips, upon which a little
glad smile was fading before a look of confusion. Up the path she went,
with never a look behind, yet not hurriedly; plainly, she wanted it
understood that here was no rout, but merely a retirement in good order
before a superior and better-positioned force. Suddenly from an open
window of the house above her a voice called, a man’s voice, languidly
imperative,--
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
“Kitty! Kitty!”
“I’m coming,” called the girl. She flew lightly up the steps, the
door was opened from within by invisible hands, and the girl and the
blossoms disappeared. The door closed with a subdued slam.
Burton drew a long sigh and mechanically picked up his dead cigarette.
“Kitty,” he murmured under his breath; and again, “Kitty!”
Then, with the cigarette burning, he blew a cloud of purple smoke out
of the window into the June sunshine and nodded his head confidentially
towards the garden and the house.
“Kitty of the Roses,” he whispered.
[Illustration]
[Illustration]