_The woman who lives alone and weeds
Forgets her own and gives to others’ needs._
Elsie Carston lived in the country, in the village of Bestways, and
her life she ordered according to the sojournings abroad of her
brother and his wife. It was for their children—she told herself and
sometimes others—that she lived in the country; but she knew it was
not quite true. When we deceive ourselves and know it, we are on the
way to salvation. Elsie was undoubtedly on the way to salvation,—a
long way on,—but she did stop on the way, now and then, to look back.
She liked to feel that if she had not devoted herself to her brother’s
children she would have travelled. She sometimes allowed people to
believe that she thirsted for deserts and longed to climb camels; but
if those people had seen her in her garden fringing the skirts of the
walks with thrift, and embroidering the borders with pansies and pinks,
they would not have believed her anxious to leave her garden and her
work. She loved Bestways. Her house was of warm red brick—Georgian,
she would tell you with pride. It was old, certainly: the garden that
held it in its arms—as it were, hugging it—was old too, older than
the house possibly. The yew hedges had been planted by people of long
ago, who perhaps spoke of the day when the hedges should be grown quite
high and they not there to see. There must always be in a garden that
sadness. Therefore those who have a garden should also—if they may—have
children, whose children will live to walk under the trees they plant.
Elsie had no children, of course; and she would have admitted it, if
asked the direct question; otherwise she was inclined to look upon her
brother’s children as hers, and in no way would she have allowed that
they belonged to her sister-in-law’s brother. It was in her garden they
should walk in years to come, not in his.
At one end of the village Elsie Carston lived. At the other, back from
the road, in a house surrounded by a large park, with every other
evidence around it of riches—quiet riches—lived Mrs. Sloane. She walked
under trees that had been planted by Sloanes many years before, and
in church she sat beneath monuments to Sloanes: but in the pew beside
her must sit borrowed children, there being no little Sloanes. They
would, by this time, have been grandchildren, if there had been. Though
borrowed children are not what they should be, those would slip their
little hands into Mrs. Sloane’s—one from each side—just as if they
had been real grandchildren, and sit quietly, longing for the sermon
to be done; and if it were longer than it should be, a little squeeze
from the hand of their old friend would bid them take courage. She had
been a child once and she knew! So must preachers also once have been
children, yet do they think of the child to whom it is real pain to sit
still? Some do.
Mrs. Sloane sat in the chancel, and sometimes into the chancel would
come, during the service, a little bird. Then would the words of the
preacher become winged words and would find their way into the heart
of every child in the congregation. So robins as well as men may be
evangelists.
Mrs. Sloane and Elsie Carston were great friends. They were both
gardeners, which may make for friendship. There was between them this
difference: Elsie weeded her garden because in her garden there were
weeds; Mrs. Sloane weeded hers because to find a weed would have been
something of an excitement—likewise a triumph. Elsie Carston planted
and weeded and watered entirely oblivious to the hatred that she (aunt
to Diana) had aroused in the heart of Marcus (uncle to Diana). And
as she weeded and watered and planted, it was of Diana she thought,
and she grudged not that far-off island its flowers and its luxurious
vegetation, because it gave her Diana. She no longer found it in her
heart to bemoan the sandy soil of her garden and its unquenchable
thirst.
For Diana’s sake she watered the flowers as much as for their own.
Diana loved flowers and Elsie stooped to pull up a weed that had
dared to push its way into Diana’s border. She stooped easily, much
more easily than Marcus would have imagined possible. He was pleased
to think of her as middle-aged and crabbed and sour and disagreeable
and grasping, whereas she was thirty-six and young at that and
delightful—easily amused and a friend to every one in her small world.
She was expecting Diana on a long stay, so there lurked a smile at
the corners of her mouth and a twinkle in her honest grey eyes. While
Eustace was abroad, Diana would be hers. She was thankful Eustace had
married so devoted a wife. She had known people express surprise that
Lady Carston should leave her children, suggesting that however much
you love your husband your children should not be neglected. Sibyl’s
children were not neglected, nor had they ever been. Elsie loved them.
Not even a mother could feel more for them than she felt. When Dick,
the boy, was small she had said to him, “I wish, Dick, you were mine—my
own little boy.”
“Why?” he had asked, not seeing the necessity.
“Well—because I wish you were.” She had no better reason to give than
this.
“But you have all the feelingship of a mother towards me,” he had
said; and it was true: she had. What more than the feelingship could
she desire? Not even all mothers possess it. Elsie, as she watered,
wondered how Diana had looked at the dance; what her mother had thought
of her, what the world in general had thought of her, what any one man
had thought of her. Elsie frowned, assuring herself that she wished
some man to fall in love with Diana. Of course she did. The pansies
at her feet knew better. They would have allowed that she was kind
and strangely gentle for one so capable—but of those children, they
must have admitted, she was a little jealous. She would have “thinned”
the children’s relations, on the other side, just as drastically as
she thinned theirs on both sides of the border. On to the sterling
qualities of a generous nature Elsie had grafted some of Sibyl’s
tenderness. “But,” said Diana, “you can see where it joins”; but it
_did_ join—that was something; moreover, the soldering held. At twelve
o’clock the second post came in and a letter was brought out to Elsie.
It was from Sibyl, her sister-in-law, and she opened it thinking here
was the news she had been waiting for—the date of Diana’s coming. She
read the letter, and re-read it. Then she turned back and read it for
the third time.
DEAREST ELSIE,—no one dearer,—you know that. Shall I make you
understand what I want you most desperately to understand? I am more
than grateful to you for all you have done for Diana. Every time she
comes into the room Eustace is grateful. For much of what she is
she is indebted to you: her frankness, her honesty are yours. Her
goodness, a reflection of yours. Everything, therefore, that is best
in her I acknowledge as your gift to her, to me, to her father. But,
Elsie, I want her to see something of the world; I want her to have
the amusement a girl of her age should have. I want her to see men so
that she may choose between them. I want her to stay in London for
a few months and I want to leave her with my brother. I don’t think
you like him? He was a dear to me when I was Diana’s age and a fierce
chaperon. You have never seen him. He was so long abroad. I remember
you said you had heard things about him: but they may not have been
true, and if they were—if he is what you call a man of the world—it
will only make him more fiercely particular with Diana than he would
otherwise have been. It is my fault that he has drifted away from me.
He was always jealous of Eustace. I wonder if you will understand
that? No, you are too generous a nature to understand anything so
small. So, will you write to Diana and say you are pleased she should
go to London? Because without that she won’t stay willingly, and I
want her to stay willingly. Marcus would never keep her unless she
wanted to stay. That’s his way. It will be so good for him to have
her. Pillar, his man, says he wants something young about the house
(Marcus, not Pillar). What have you to do with that? you will say.
Don’t say it. I want you and Marcus to be friends—I want Diana to see
something of the world and the world to see something of her. There,
it’s out! Worldly woman that I am! You have a literary recluse at
your gate (they are so dangerous when they come out). I am afraid of
him. You have a muscular parson. I am afraid of him. I am afraid of
all men—tinkers, tailors, soldiers and sailors, rich men, poor men,
apothecaries, and thieves—they are all thieves. I am afraid of all but
the right one.