A PICNIC IN THE ENCHANTED GARDEN
After that Peace came often to the handsome stone house, half hidden
from the road by its thick hedges and giant trees. Almost daily the
white cloth fluttered its summons from the lilac bushes, and Elizabeth,
having heard the sad story of the young girl mistress, rejoiced that the
tumble-haired, merry-hearted little romp could bring even a gleam of
sunshine into that darkened life.
At first it was the great, beautiful gardens which lured the child
through the iron gates, for she could not understand the different moods
of the imperious young invalid, and secretly stood somewhat in awe of
her. But gradually the natural childish vivacity and quaint philosophy
of the smaller maid tore down the barriers behind which the older girl
had so long screened herself, and Peace found to her great amazement
that the white-faced invalid, who could never leave her chair again, was
a wonderful story-teller and a perfect witch at inventing new games and
planning delightful surprises to make each visit a real event for this
guest. So the calls grew more and more frequent and the chance
acquaintance blossomed into a deep, tender friendship.
Of course, Peace did not realize how much sweetness and sunshine she was
bringing into the garden with her, but in her ignorance supposed that
the many visits were all for her own happiness. How could she know that
her lively prattle was making the weary days bearable for the frail
sufferer? And had anyone tried to tell her what an important part she
was playing in that life drama, she would not have believed it. Perhaps
it was the very unconsciousness of her power which made her such a
beautiful comrade for the aching heart imprisoned in the garden. At any
rate, Peace not only made friends with the lonely Lilac Lady, but she
also captivated gentle Aunt Pen and the adoring Hicks, who met her with
beaming faces whenever she entered the garden, and sighed when the brief
hours were over. But none of them would listen to her bringing Elspeth
or the minister, much to her bewilderment.
"It isn't because _I_ don't want them," explained Aunt Pen one day when
Peace had pleaded with her and had been grieved at her refusal. "Your
Lilac Lady isn't ready to receive other callers yet. You can't
understand now, dearie. God grant you may _never_ understand. She shut
herself up four years ago when she found out that she would never get
well enough to walk again, and you are the first person she has ever
seen since that time, except her own household and the physician.
Perhaps you are the opening wedge, child. Oh, I trust it may be so!"
Peace did not understand what an opening wedge was, but it did not sound
very appetizing, and she had grave doubts as to whether she had better
continue her visits under such conditions. But when she went to
Elizabeth with the story, that wise little woman answered her by
singing:
"'Slightest actions often
Meet the sorest needs,
For the world wants daily,
Little kindly deeds;
Oh, what care and sorrow
You may help remove,
With your songs and courage,
Sympathy and love.'"
Peace was comforted and went back to the shady garden with a deeper
desire to brighten the long, dreary, aimless days of the helpless
invalid. She said no more about introducing her beloved minister's
family, but in secret she still mourned because the lame girl so
steadfastly refused to welcome her dearest friends.
So the days flew swiftly by and the month of May was gone. Summer was
early that year, and the first day of June dawned sultry and still over
the sweltering city. It was a half-holiday at the Chestnut School, so
Peace returned home at noon, hot, perspiring, but radiant at the thought
of no more lessons till the morrow. She came a round-about way in order
to pass the great gates of the stone mansion, hoping to catch a glimpse
of the well-known chair under the lilac bushes; but the lawn was
deserted, and she was disappointed, for she had counted much on spending
these unexpected leisure hours in the cool garden with the lame girl.
To add to her woe, she found Elizabeth lying on the couch in the
darkened study, suffering from a nerve-racking headache, and the
preacher, looking very droll togged out in his little wife's
kitchen-apron, was flying about serving up the scorched, unseasoned
dinner for the forlorn family. He was too much concerned over the
illness of the mistress and the unfinished condition of his next
Sunday's sermon to sample his own cooking, and as Glen fell asleep over
his bowl of bread and milk, Peace was left entirely to her own devices
when the meal was ended.
It was too hot to romp, it was too hot to read, and there was no one to
play with. She swung idly in the hammock until the very motion was
maddening. She prowled through the grove behind the church, she dug
industriously in the small flower garden under the east window, she did
everything she could think of to make the time pass quickly, but at
length threw herself once more into the hammock with a discouraged sigh.
"School might better have kept all day. It is horrid to stay home with
nothing to do that's int'resting. I've watched all the afternoon for the
Lilac Lady's table-cloth and haven't had a peek of it yet. But there--I
don't s'pose she'd know there was only one session today, so she ain't
apt to hang it out until time for school to let out, like she usu'ly
does. Guess I'll just walk over in that d'rection and see if she ain't
under the trees yet. It's been two days since I've seen a glimpse of
her. Hicks says she's been dreadful bad again. P'raps I better take her
some flowers this time--and there is that little strawberry pie Elspeth
made for my very own. I might take her some sandwiches, too,--yes, I'll
do it!"
She tiptoed softly into the house, so as not to disturb the two
slumberers, and went in search of the minister in order to lay her plan
before him; but he, too, had fallen asleep and lay sprawled full length
by the open window, beside his half-written manuscript.
"If that ain't just the way!" spluttered Peace under her breath. "I
never did go to tell anyone nice plans but they went to sleep or were
too busy to be disturbed. Well, I'll do it anyway. I know they won't
care a single speck. I'll ask 'em when I get home and they are awake."
Back to the kitchen she stole, and into the tiny pantry, where for the
next few minutes she industriously cut and buttered bread, made
sandwiches, sliced cake and packed lunch enough for a dozen in the
picnic hamper which she found hanging on a nail in the shed. With this
on her arm, she returned to the little garden under the window and dug
up her choicest flowers, stacked them in an old shoe-box with plenty of
black dirt, as she had often seen Hicks do, and departed with her
luggage for the stone house across the corner.
She paused at the heavy gates, wondering for the first time whether or
not she would be welcome at this time, when no signal had fluttered from
the lilac bushes, but at sight of the motionless figure under the
largest oak, her doubts vanished, and, boldly opening the gate, she
marched up the gravel path and across the lawn toward the familiar
chair, bearing the lunch-basket on one arm and a huge box of
cheerful-faced pansies on the other.
Hearing the click of the latch and the sound of steps on the walk, the
lame girl frowned impatiently, and without opening her eyes, said
peevishly, "If you have any errand here, go on to the house. I won't be
bothered."
"Oh, I'm sorry," cried Peace in mournful tones. "I brought a picnic with
me, but--"
The big blue eyes flashed wide in surprise, and their owner demanded
sharply, "Why did you come this time of day? I have not sent for you."
"I didn't say you had. I came 'cause I thought you'd be glad to see me,
but if you ain't, I'll go straight home again and eat my picnic all
alone, and plant my flowers in my garden again. You don't have to have
them if you don't want 'em."
She whirled on her heel and stamped angrily across the grass toward the
gate, too hurt to keep the tears from her eyes, and too proud to let her
companion see how deeply wounded she was.
Astonished at this flash of gunpowder, the lame girl cried contritely,
"Oh, don't go away, Peace! I didn't mean to be cross to you. This has
been _such_ a hard week, dear, I hardly know what I am doing half the
time."
"Is the pain so bad?" whispered Peace tenderly, dropping on her knees
before the sufferer, having already forgotten her own grievance in her
longing to ease and comfort the poor, aching back.
"It is better now," answered the girl, smiling wanly at the sympathetic
face bending over her. "The heat always makes it worse, but I do believe
it is growing cooler now. Feel the breeze? What have you brought me? A
picnic lunch!"
"Yes--my strawberry pie--"
"Did Mrs. Strong know?"
"She made the pie all for my very own self to do just what I please
with. Don't you like strawberry pie?" Peace paused in her task of
unpacking the basket to look up questioningly at the face among the
pillows.
"Oh, yes, dear, I am very fond of it, and it is sweet of you to share
yours with me. I shall put my half away for tea."
"Oh, you mustn't do that," protested the ardent little picnicker,
passing her a plate of generously thick, ragged looking sandwiches,
spread with great chunks of butter fresh from the ice-box, and filled
with delicate slices of pink ham. "I want you to eat it with me. This is
a 'specially good pie, and Elspeth can 'most beat Faith when it comes to
dough. Mrs. Deacon Hopper sent us the ham--a whole one, all boiled and
baked with sugar and cloves. It's simply _fine_! The lilacs I took the
deacon did the work all right. He was so tickled that he got over being
grumpy, and calls Saint John a promising preacher now. Please taste the
sandwiches. I know you'll like them even if I didn't get the bread cut
real even and nice. Then after we get through eating, I'll plant the
pansies."
"Pansies!" She stared past the brown head bobbing over the hamper, to
the box of nodding blossoms in the grass. "What made you bring me
pansies?"
"'Cause you ain't got any, and no garden looks quite finished without
some of those flowers in it. Don't you think so?"
"I _de-spise_ pansies!"
Peace eyed her in horrified amazement an instant, then swept the
rejected blossoms out of sight beneath the basket cover, saying tartly,
"You needn't be ugly about it! I can take them home again. I s'posed of
course you liked them. I didn't know the garden was empty of them 'cause
you _wouldn't_ have them. _I_ think they are the prettiest flower
growing, next to lilacs and roses."
"Those mocking little faces?"
"Those darling, giggly smiles!"
"What?"
"Didn't you ever see a giggling pansy?"
"No, I can't say I ever did." A faint trace of amusement stole around
the corners of the white lips.
"Well, here's one. Oh, I forgot! You _de-spise_ them!" She had half
lifted a gorgeous yellow blossom from the hidden box, but at second
thought dropped it back in the loose earth.
"Let me see it!" The Lilac Lady extended one blue-veined hand with the
imperious gesture which Peace had learned to know and obey. Silently she
thrust the moist plant into the outstretched fingers, and gravely
watched while the keen blue eyes studied the golden petals which, as
Peace had declared, seemed fairly teeming with sunshine and laughter.
"It does--look rather--cheerful," she conceded at length.
"That is just what I thought. I named it Hope."
"Hope! The name is appropriate."
"Yes, it is very 'propriate. Hope is always so sunshiny and smily--"
"Oh, you named it for your sister."
"Who did you think it was named for?"
"I didn't understand. Is it a habit of yours to name all your flowers?"
"N-o, not all. But we gener'ly name our pansies, Allee and me. See, this
beautiful white one with just a tiny speck of yellow in the middle I
called my Lilac Lady."
"Why?" A queer little choke came in her throat at these unexpected
words, and she turned her eyes away that Peace might not see the tears
which dimmed her sight.
"You looked so sweet and like a _nangel_ the first time I saw you, and
this pansy has a reg'lar angel face."
"Don't I look sweet and like an angel any more?"
"Some days--whenever you want to. But lots of times I guess you don't
care how you look," was the reply, as the busy fingers sorted out the
different colored blossoms from the box, all unconscious of the stinging
arrow she had just shot into the heart of her friend. "This blue one's
Allee. Blue means truth, grandma says, and Allee is true blue. Red in
our flag stands for valor. Cherry ain't very brave, but I named this
for her anyway, in hopes she'd ask why and I could tell her. Then maybe
when she found out that folks thought she was a 'fraid cat, she'd get
over it. Don't you think she would?"
"Perhaps--if you were her teacher," the older girl answered absently.
"Who is the black one?"
"Grandpa. Isn't it a whopper? He is real tall but not fat like the
flower. He always wears black at the University--that's why I picked
that one for him. This one is grandma and here is Gail. The striped one
is Faith. She is good in streaks, but she can be awful cross sometimes,
too,--like you. This tiny one is Glen, and the big, brown, spotted
feller is Aunt Pen. It makes me think of old Cockletop, a mother hen we
used to have in Parker, which 'dopted everything it could find wandering
around loose. That's what Aunt Pen looks as if she'd like to do."
This was too much for the lame girl's risibles, and she laughed
outright, long and loud, to Peace's secret delight, for when the Lilac
Lady laughed it was a sure sign that she was feeling better.
When she had recovered her composure, she said gravely, "Speaking of
Aunt Pen reminds me that she told me this morning the cook had made some
chicken patties for my special benefit and was hurt to think I refused
them. You might run up to the house and ask for them now to go with our
picnic lunch. Minnie will give them to you--cold, please. Some lemonade
would taste good, too. Aunt Pen knows how to make it to perfection."
Peace was gone almost before she had finished giving her directions, and
as she watched the nimble feet skimming through the clover, she smiled
tenderly, then sighed and looked sadly down at her own useless limbs
which would never bear her weight again. How many years of existence
must she endure in her crippled helplessness? Oh, the bitterness of it!
And yet as she gazed at the slippers which never wore out, and compared
her lot with that of the dancing, curly-haired sprite, tumbling eagerly
up the kitchen steps after the promised goodies, the old, weary look of
utter despair did not quite come back into the deep blue eyes; but
through the bitterness of her rebellion flashed a faint gleam of
something akin to hope. She was thinking of Peace's latest sunshine
quotation which had been laboriously entered in the little brown and
gold volume and brought to her for her inspection:
"'To live in hope, to trust in right,
To smile when shadows start,
To walk through darkness as through light,
With sunshine in the heart.'"
Below the little stanza, Peace had penned her own version of the words
in her quaint language: "This means to smile no matter how bad the
world goes round and to keep on smiling till the hurt is gone. It don't
cost any more to smile than it does to be uggly, and it pays a heep site
better."
What a dear little philosopher the child was! A sudden desire to meet
the other sisters of that happy family sprang up within her heart. Why
should she stay shut away from the world like a nun in her cloister?
What had she gained by it? Nothing but bitterness! And think of the joys
she had missed!
An insistent rustling of the lilac bushes behind her caught her
attention, and by carefully raising her head she could see the thick
branches close to the ground bending and giving, as a small, dark object
twisted and grunted and wriggled its way through the tiny opening it had
managed to find in the hedge.
The girl's first impulse was to scream for help, but a second glance
told her that it was not an animal pushing its way through the twigs,
for animals do not wear blue gingham rompers. So she held her breath and
waited, and at last she was rewarded by seeing a round, flushed,
inquisitive baby face peeping through the leaves at her. She smiled and
held out her hands, and with a gurgle of gladness, the little fellow
gave a final struggle, scrambled to his feet and toddled unsteadily
across the lawn to her chair, jabbering baby lingo, the only word of
which she could understand was, "Peace."
"Are you Glen?" she demanded, smoothing the soft black hair so like his
father's.
"G'en," he repeated, parrot fashion.
"Where is your mamma?"
"Mamma." He pointed in the direction he had come, and gurgled, "S'eep.
Papa s'eep. All gone."
The baby himself looked as if he had just awakened from a nap. One cheek
was rosier than the other, his hair lay in damp rings all over his head,
and his feet were bare and earth-stained from his scramble through the
vegetable garden on the other side of the hedge.
A sudden gust of cool wind blew through the trees overhead, a rattling
peal of thunder jarred the earth, a blinding flash of lightning startled
both girl and baby, and before either knew what had happened, a torrent
of rain dashed down upon them. The storm which had been brewing all that
sultry day broke in its fury. Hicks came running from the stable to the
rescue of his helpless young mistress, Aunt Pen flew out of the house
like a distracted hen, and Peace rushed frantically to the garden to
save the precious picnic lunch and the box of pansies which were to be
planted under the gnarled old oak nearest the lame girl's window.
So it happened that baby Glen was borne away into the great house to
wait until the deluge of rain and hail should cease. In the flurry of
getting everything under shelter, no one thought of the mother at home,
crazed with anxiety and fright; and the whole group was startled a few
moments later to behold a bare-headed, wild-eyed woman, drenched to the
skin, dash through the iron gates, up the walk, and straight into the
house itself, without ever stopping to knock.
"It's Elspeth!" cried Peace, first to find her voice.
"Glen, where's Glen?" was all the frantic mother could gasp as she stood
tottering and dripping in the doorway.
"Ma-ma," lisped the little runaway, struggling down from Aunt Pen's lap,
where he had been cuddling, and running into Elizabeth's arms.
"Peace, why did you take him without saying a word?" she reproached,
sinking into the nearest chair, and hugging her small son close to her
breast.
"I didn't--" Peace began.
"I think he must have run away," volunteered the Lilac Lady, staring
fixedly at Elizabeth's face with almost frightened eyes. "He squirmed
through the hedge while I was alone in the garden. I had not seen the
storm approaching, and it broke before I could call Peace or--"
At the sound of the sweet voice, Elizabeth had abruptly risen to her
feet, and after one searching glance at the white face among the
cushions, cried out with girlish glee, "Myra! Can it be that Peace's
Lilac Lady is my dear old chum?"
"You are the same darling Beth!" cried the lame girl hysterically,
clinging to the wet hand outstretched to hers. "Why didn't I guess it
before? Oh, I have wanted you _so_ often--but I never dreamed of finding
you here. And to think I have refused all this while to let Peace bring
you!"
"No, don't think about that. Her desire is accomplished, however it came
about--and you are going to let me stay?"
"I would keep you with me always if I could. I have been learning
Peace's philosophy and find it very--"
"Peaceful?" They laughed together, and in that laugh sounded the doom of
the hedges which Peace had lamented so long.