In My Lady's Garden: Pages Prom the Diary of Sir John Elwynne

May 10, 1900. The Lady Mary is the most aggravating, perplexing, distracting paradox that ever drew a breath of spring; she keeps a man’s heart on the high tension. The game of fire-snap is a mild parable. She sits under the beech tree in her garden, her hands crossed demurely (they are whiter than the muslin they rest upon, and that is as spotless as cleanliness) ; modestly her long black lashes sweep her cheek: she looks for all the world like one of the tranquil violets at her feet. She is a creature to guard, to cherish, to protect. In this mood one approaches her. The lashes lift, and there are flashing eyes which know no yielding; and the hand that grants a welcome has the air of wielding an invisible sceptre. A creature to cherish, to protect, to guard! O all ye heavenly powers, it is as much as any man can do to hold his own!

I love her, and of course she knows it. I have loved her since she was five and I was six, and we played together in this very garden. I have loved her since we watched the planting of the avenue of stripling oaks which enlarges the garden on the north side, — by her respected father, now in glory. Did we not play at housekeeping down in the dell that runs along the south end ? Did we not hide where the winding brook babbles, where the wild flowers grow? Did we not spread nuptial feasts of violets and cowslips, of primroses and buttercups, and pledge each other in sparkling water drunk from emerald goblets made of folded leaves ?

Does she love me ? It would puzzle the combined lawyers of the United Kingdom to discover. All the mind readers, the sages, and the witches together would be shaken by the task of divining. Even that nocturnal friend of the good King Saul, who seemed to know what was what in the world, and who was who, would have given up the conundrum, and asked for an easier. Sometimes my heart is glad as this sun-bright spring day, for Mary smiles, — turns to me with that ineffable sweetness which can mean naught but love. I am caught up into a heaven of delight. And then she says some scornful word, or laughs that rippling laughter, which is charming as a bit of nature, but, not encouraging to a lover’s heart. The few favors she grants me are questionable, open to doubt, debatable points. Take her garden, for example, — her dear, fragrant, incomparable garden, — to me the most delicious place in all the world. Is it a hopeful sign or is it a hopeless one that she says to me, with sweet graciousness, “Jack, don’t come to afternoon tea in the house, when every one is bothering around; come to see me in the garden, in the morning. I am always there from ten to twelve ” ?

Now I know perfectly well that a crowd of fashionables comes down from London every afternoon. The times I have been there, Mary has been resplendent in French gowns and London airs. Is it because she feels me worthy of better things that she pays me the compliment of receiving me in nature’s own vast corridors, beneath the royal vault of heaven; or is it because she thinks me just a country recluse, and out of place in drawing-rooms ? Is it because she loves her garden better than any place in all the world, and knows how well I love it, too, and remembers one of the mathematical axioms we learned together over there in the schoolhouse; or is it that she catalogues me with pinafores and lollipops, and I fit into remembrance, and give the garden a sense of home ? For my lady has a very homey side, with all her frills. Well, anyway, I like the garden best — but I wish I knew.

May 16. She really was more beautiful to-day than I have ever seen her; it is enough to turn a man’s brain. I like to run over every day, if only to say good-morning: this seems but proper and neighborly, for the few months she is down here, as our families have been friends since childhood. This morning I was late. I became so interested in my work I lost count of time, and it was nearly twelve when I reached the garden; but I felt that would make small difference to my lady, as she seemed to be especially oblivious of my presence yesterday.

Mary always comes into the garden by the small upper gate that opens from the lawn; but I of course enter by the lower one, nearer to the carriage drive; so if she is there before me, and has taken her favorite seat on the green knoll under the beech tree, I can see her before I reach her, as a picture through a vista, — the long yew walk.

This morning she was seated when I came. The hawthorn hedge is out, and made a background for her. It was not fairer than she. I stood a moment at the end of the walk and looked at her. She sat there like a queen upon her throne. She was all in white. Around her bloomed the flowers of spring in riotous abandonment of splendor,— lilacs and columbines and larkspur and daffodils, the first wild roses and the tall May lilies. Crimson and purple, yellow and blue, scarlet and violet, — every color seemed to have burst into blossom, to fling its homage at her feet. She did not raise her eyes, though I know she knew I was there. The garden was unusually still. The birds, even, for a wonder, were silent; only the plash of the fountain. Surely she must have heard my footsteps, but she did not look up until I stood beside her and said, “ Good-morning. ” Then she lifted her long lashes; her eyes flashed dark under her plumed garden hat.

“ Good-evening, ” she responded. “ I was just about going in; it is time to go to bed.”

“ Ah, now I understand it, ” I retorted. I saw she did not want to ask me what, but curiosity got the better of her.

“ Oh, ” I answered, looking at my watch, “I understand what makes you such a raving beauty. They say the beauty sleep is that which one takes before midnight, and of course if one takes twelve hours and a half ” —

“ Don’t be a goose, Jack,” she interrupted petulantly.

“ I might be something worse,” I argued. “Don’t you know it was a goose that saved Rome ? ”

“ Not at all, ” she replied. (You can’t catch Mary.) “ Geese saved Rome. Things change their relative value and potentiality when they are collective: that is the reason why I don’t mind geese in society. I see them en masse, and perhaps they have a mission, — like saving Rome, for example; but if I am reduced to a tête-à-tête with one man alone — why! — horrors ! He must be wisdom itself, or he could not save anything. You know as well as I do that one goose could never have saved Rome.”

Whereupon, because I am a coward and haven’t the courage of my convictions, — which are that Mary ought not to be humored at every tack and turn, — I began to talk with her in the most pedantic way about my work of the morning. I told her how intensely interested I was in a passage I had discovered in Herodotus which seemed to confirm my dearly held theory about the Greeks.

“ Dear me, Jack, how dull you are! ” she exclaimed, after I had talked awhile. She stifled a yawn, rose, and stretched out her beautiful arms. To the sun she stretched them, be it understood, not to me! Oh, not to me, alas! There is certainly no pleasing Mary.

May 24. To-day I was a fool, worse luck to me, — imbecile ! I wanted to teach Mary a lesson. Surely she deserves it. Now I notice that she is always more apt to listen when I appeal to some remembrance of childhood; so I thought up what I felt was a very clever scheme to tell her a plain truth in a taking way, — a way that would recall the days when we used to sit over there on the old stone seat by the hollyhocks, my brown curls touching her golden ones (oh, why are n’t we five now ?), my arm around her waist (oh, why did we ever grow up ? ), poring over nursery rhymes and nursery lays.

Yesterday afternoon I ran into town and made a tour of the toyshops. I bought some little silver bells and some shells that looked like my idea of cockleshells, — though for the life of me I don’t know what cockleshells are, and neither did the benighted toyman. Then I gathered a big handful of marigolds, and went over early to the garden. At the foot of the knoll where Mary’s seat is, a little to one side, I stuck them into the grass, — the silver bells, the cockleshells, and the “marigolds all in a row.” Then I sat down and waited.

By and by she came tripping over the lawn, her garden basket on her arm. I could see her through the iron gate. Her step is as light as the spring, and it seems to me that, like the spring, it must leave flowers wherever she treads. I know the poets say this of their ladyloves, and with them it is utter nonsense ; but with Mary it is different; there is a consciousness that it really will happen,— a practical fact in horticulture. I was at the gate to open it for her, and my lady was all graciousness.

“ Good-morning. Is n’t it a glorious day?” She threw back her head as though she would breathe in the universe. “Oh, Jack, I am so happy! Look at the sky!

I began to wish I had not arranged my little scenic effect on the knoll. Mother Goose brought into quick juxtaposition with Robert Browning was rather a grotesque dramatic absurdity. However, the die was cast; I must abide the issue. She stood still a moment, like a bird poised for flight ; then, “ Let ’s go down to the fountain, ” she said.

I drew a breath of relief; she had postponed the evil day. We always loved the fountain, she and I. How we used to lean over the stone circle and dabble our hands in the clear water, to the peril of our pinafores! And what unspeakable fascination the old Triton with his horn used to have for our childish imagination!

By a sudden impulse, — perhaps it was the day, for who dares say that nature is less intoxicating than wine ? — we both leaned forward and splashed our hands in the cool, clear water. I looked at the white, blue-veined hand near mine; it took all my courage to refrain from gathering it in my own. But there is this fortunate difference between being drunk with wine and being drunk with May elixir: the latter makes you strong to resist as well as strong to desire.

“Your hand isn’t so brown as it used to be, Mary.”

“Nor yours so little,” she said, looking at mine.

“Would you like to go back to those days, Mary ? ”

“Oh, I don’t know; that depends. Would you? ”

“That depends,” I reiterated.

“On what? ” she asked.

“On you,” I said.

She knew perfectly well what I meant. She has always known that I love her, and she knows also, perfectly well, that I will not make any claim of her nor ask her any question until she has shown me that it will not trouble her. My reverence is too great to bring to her the grief of saying “ No.” My reverence, — and is it perhaps my fear as well ? Better to be merely a guard in the court of my queen than to be a banished exile. But she knows. I have no fear that she does not know. I have told her by every way love can be told except by direct question and appeal.

“Yes, it depends on you,” I said again.

“On me? Oh, see that darling yellow butterfly! ” she cried. “He looks like a piece of sunshine broken off. ” She drew out her hands, dashed off the crystal drops, and started to chase the butterfly, — even the butterflies cannot escape Mary. In a few minutes she had it under her garden hat, — a great white straw flat, with long, white plumes.

“Poor butterfly,” I said. “What are you going to do now ? ”

“Why, let it go, of course. You don’t think I would keep it, do you? You cruel thing! ”

“Then why did you catch it?” I asked.

“Just to see that I could,” she answered.

“That is the way you do, is it ? ” I ventured, significance in my tone.

“Yes, that is the way I do, —always, ” she answered, inconsequence in hers.

The unavoidable time drew near. We turned toward the knoll. I thought of my coup d’état; all of a sudden it seemed such a stupid thing to have done, so supremely silly. Mary was busy readjusting her hat, and did not see it. She had been seated a few moments, when she turned her head to watch the flight of a bird. I saw her eyes suddenly caught; I saw them open wide. I saw laughter brim from their depths and ripple around the corners of her desirable mouth; for she had marked the silver bells, the cockleshells, and the “marigolds all in a row.” But by the time she had turned her head back to me she had banished every trace of laughter.

“I am not,” she said, with a most adorable pout and a stamp of her foot upon the soft earth.

“Not what?” I inquired.

“I am not ‘ contráry.’ ”

“Oh, then you understood?” I asked.

“I am not a dunce! ” stamping her foot a second time, and pouting even more adorably.

“You are not contrary, and you are not a dunce,” I said. “Two negatives make an affirmative; so what are you ? ”

She deigned me no answer, but jumped up and ran quickly down to the flower beds. I was about to follow her, when she returned with a bit of flaming snapdragon in her hands. She held it out and made a low curtsy; her white muslin swept the green grass like an angel’s wing.

“That is what you are, ” she said, and turned and went into the house.

Oh, miserere! miserere! What a change there was in the day ! How ugly and empty the world looked! I beat down with my foot and trod my foolish pleasantry into the ground. How amusing and funny it had seemed in the morning ! How stupid and foolish and idiotic it seems now!

Later. Just before getting into bed. I wonder if I ought to have followed Mary to the house ? When she was halfway up the lawn, she turned and looked back; she didn’t know I saw her. I wish now I had; but I hate presuming on old friendships.

May 25. One can never tell about Mary. I went over in fear and trembling to-day, and my lady was graciousness embodied. I had no sooner taken my seat than she said peremptorily, “Stay there.” She ran down to the carnation bed and picked a white May pink, which she brought to me. Now she knows very well that of all flowers I love the carnation; it is so firm and strong and delicate, and yet has such a spicy fragrance. She held it out and said : “Take that old snapdragon out of your buttonhole and throw it away. I will give you this pure, white, fragrant flower instead, ” and she put her hand ruthlessly upon the snapdragon. Then a spirit of contrariness possessed me.

“No, indeed, ” I said. “Thank you for the guerdon of the white flower,— I kiss the hand that grants it, — hut leave me my snapdragon ; it is well for me to ponder my lessons and keep the parable before me. Perhaps I am snappy and dragonish. I hope I am above taking suggestions with a pout.”

I was frightened at my temerity ; but she was not displeased, for a wonder.

“Am I contrary, Jack ? ” Her eyes were tender, her lips appealing. “Am I? ”

“Not now,” I assured her.

“Well, I fear I am sometimes; it is a great fault of mine. Help me to overcome it, won’t you, my friend? ” She held out her hand; and then and there I should have put my fortune to the test, but she clipped the wings of my heart, which had spread for a daring flight, by saying hurriedly: “I cannot stay; I only ran out for a second. Good-by. Some men are coming down to luncheon, ” she called back over her shoulder.

Men coming to luncheon! Why did she not ask me ? She ought to ; I am her neighbor. It is quite evident she does not care at all. I am well enough for the garden and the old-time memory, but the line is drawn there.

Later. I have just thought it may possibly be because, the last time I lunched there with some London men, I told her I did n’t see how she could stand such driveling twaddle as they talked. She was very angry.

May 30. There is nothing to record to-day. I had been to the village, and came in through the west gate, walking up by the lavender walk. I thought it would have its own pleasure to surprise Mary from the lilac bushes at the back of the knoll. When I got to the open space where the sundial is, I waited before going through the lilacs. I let myself wonder if there might be a divine possibility that Mary would be looking expectantly down the yew walk, but in a moment I was shocked out of any hope that was prescient within me. I heard Mary’s treble laugh in duet with a man’s heavier one. A man — here! In the morning! In our garden ! He must have come down from London on the early train; for I knew there are no guests staying in the house, and the rector of Thorny croft could never laugh so freely and blithely, on his small stipend, with five buxom lasses and four stalwart boys to provide for. I should have come home at once, — the garden had less of interest for me; but I could not spy upon her doings and remain unannounced, so I stepped out from the lilac bushes. Mary seemed startled for a moment; perhaps she did n’t like being interrupted; then she graciously took me into the circle, and sparkled away like a bit of sunshine. The man had come down from London, and he was not bad-looking. No, he was not badlooking, but I didn’t fancy him; he was an obsequious, unnecessary excrescence in the garden.

When Mary presented him, he looked at me with frank curiosity. “Sir John Elwynne of Elwynne?” he said. “Pleased to meet you, Sir John. Why do we never see you at the clubs in town ? ”

I presume a man who has a town house which is usually vacant seems a crank to him.

“I prefer Thornycroft, ” I answered stupidly. I knew perfectly well that this was an unmannerly answer, dull, altogether banal, which was the more irritating because I had a curious sense that Mary expected me to be brilliant.

She threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Sir John is buried in his musty, dusty, fusty books all the time. He doesn’t care for our frivolities.”

“Just fancy! ” said the man, looking at Mary with a frank air of freemasonry. It struck me with a pang that they have a bond in common of which I know nothing.

“Why leave London such a day as this? ” I said dryly. “Pall Mall must be inspiring to-day.” This was nasty; but if a man has predilections, I do like him to live up to them.

“Ah, when the best of London comes to Thornycroft it is a different matter, ” he said, waving bis hand toward Mary.

“Pardon me,” I remarked, “but I put it the other way: Thornycroft keeps its own best when the Lady Mary does not go to London.”

“Well, upon my word, you know,” he answered good-naturedly, “I could not fancy her down here; but the more I look at her,” and he focused Mary with his eyes, which irritated me beyond expression, “the more I see it suits her. She looks for all the world like one of those marquises in a Watteau picture.”

“A Watteau picture? ” cried Mary. “Merci, monsieur! Why not say a Dolly Varden on a field of chintz?” She raised her arch eyes to mine, and for a moment I knew that we had a bond in common.

I stayed only a few minutes, notwithstanding Mary’s “ Don’t go. ” Two are company; three a hopeless crowd. As the man from London did n’t seem to grasp that fact, I was obliged to. No, there is nothing new to record.

I feel strangely alone in the universe to-night, —as though I were on some frozen planet, where no human life abides. This is quite imbecile, for England alone has twenty-seven million inhabitants; and even if the Lady Mary —

May 31. If I were iron, I should soon become steel. Mary employs a process of plunging me from hot to cold, and from cold to hot. When I awoke this morning, there was the man from London, omnipresent, in my room, in my dressing room, even in my bath. I certainly could not defy him to his face and go over to-day to the garden, so I ordered Restless for a long ride. Just as I was starting off, by good luck, Mary’s messenger caught me, with this note. I have so few letters from Mary, in spite of our long friendship, I will copy it here, in case she should ever bid me destroy the original. You never can tell what Mary will do. Here it is:

DEAR JACK, — Jebbs is an idiot. If he had n’t so many qualities besides that weren’t idiotic, I should ask mamma to dismiss him. I was so angry at his stupidity yesterday. The idea of his sending that man down into the garden! I have told him a thousand times that when I am there I do not exist, —for the world, that is. I have given strict orders that even if the Pope of Rome or the Czar of Russia should come, I am non est. No one is to be sent into the garden save only the persons I invite. Come to-day.
MARY.

Of course I went.

“Well,” I greeted her, “women puzzle me. I thought that man’s visit was of all things your heart’s desire, yesterday ; I am sure you acted so. No one would have imagined for a moment that he was not a dear and much - desired friend.”

“Why, Jack, I had to be polite,” she said, opening her eyes demurely. “Don’t you approve of manners? ”

“I lived face to face, through all the years of my university course, with the maxim, ‘ Manners maketh man, ’ ” I answered her. “And it has been borne in upon me since that they do not spoil women, ” I added, under my breath.

“I know what you are thinking, Jack.” She leaned forward, her head on her hand, and looked into my face. (She is perfectly irresistible in that position.) “You are thinking that my manners might be better to you sometimes.”

My thought had not shaped itself, but it was along those lines; she shaped it for me. I didn’t tell her this, however; I said instead: “ Manners have no need to make the Lady Mary. The Lady Mary makes manners.”

“I know I am not as nice to you as I am to other men, ” she reflected, a little ruefully; “but then, with you it is different, you know.”

How is it different, I wonder ? Why is it different ? When Carlyle talks of man’s wrestle with the Everlasting Why, he is thinking along other lines, I presume, hut God knows there is no greater wrestle in the universe than the wrestle with the feminine Why.

June 1. I went over to-day armed with a message to my lady’s heart, and much good it did me! I carried my Herrick and a great fragrant rose. I handed her the rose.

“What a gorgeous creature!” she said. “ My poor garden cannot vie with the splendid gardens of Elwynne Court. ”

“What folly!” I replied. “You know there is nothing lovelier on earth than this tangle of fragrance and beauty, nature’s own expression, which man has not impudently meddled with; simply guided and curbed by a loving hand. The stiff gardens of Elwynne are detestable to me, with their topiary horrors and their ugly formal beds. It is nothing but respect for my ancestors that prevents my leveling them to the ground. A garden that is stiff is a monstrosity, like an affected woman.”

“What heresy! Level the gardens of Elwynne Court! Jack, you are a vandal. Think of your famous hedge, planted by Charles the Second ! ”

“I don’t like to think of it,” T argued. “I believe it was the only thing that Charles the Second ever did that lived; and why it should belong to me, to remind me of him, I don’t know.”

“Don’t you like Charles the Second ? ” She opened her great eyes with as much surprise as though I had claimed disapprobation of the Magna Charta.

“Do you ? ” I asked, to hear what she would say.

“Why, certainly, ” she replied, with her most earnest air; “ he wore such good clothes. The clothes a man wears show what he is! ”

She was too well bred to glance at mine, but I know I stand a poor showing beside those London swells who come down to luncheon. I dress well enough, and my clothes fit well enough, for the most part, but I do not give much thought to them; life seems too full of more important matters. I should have been in despair if I had not a good memory; but I recalled just then what she had said to me when I saw her last winter in London: “Just think,Jack, mamma wants me to marry Lord Exeter. I might as well marry Redfern. I should live in precisely the same atmosphere. Even as far as my quarterings are concerned, I should not lose, ” she had added, laughing; “for if I married Redfern, I could have the royal arms on my doorplate.” But if she doesn’t care, why does she bother to take her time with these dandies, these fops ? All the while I had been thinking these thoughts she had been burying her face in the rose and breathing its very heart out. She looked up.

“What is that?” pointing to my book.

I told her it was Herrick, and that there was a verse in it that went with the rose.

“Herrick is a fraud,” she announced emphatically.

“A fraud? ” I reiterated.

“Yes,” she went on, “a perfect fraud. He passed for a love poet, and cheated posterity into the belief he was one, and he did n’t know one thing about love.”

This was startling. I asked her why.

“Oh, how can a man know anything about love, when he writes a poem to Julia to-day, to Cloris yesterday, and to Clorinda to-morrow ? ” She tossed her head scornfully.

I suddenly remembered, as by thought transference, that I had had a most agreeable afternoon with the Lady Alice Longworth yesterday, and had passed Mary at the entrance gate just as I was riding out. I opened my Herrick and read: —

I closed the book; I only wanted to give her the first verse. I read it in a way she could not mistake.

“ Did you hear the message ? ” I asked, leaning toward her, my eyes on hers.

She sat perfectly motionless; so did I. It has been borne in upon me, as I sit here alone to-night, that I ought to have besieged her then and there, taken her in my arms, and stormed the heart to which I had sent the courier rose. I know the old tradition that women like to be conquered, that you must take them by storm; but it has always seemed to me grossly irreverent to look upon woman as though she were a fortress, and man a conqueror. Why not stand like a guest at the door, and wait for her to open? If her maiden modesty precludes her coming forth to bid you enter, at least should a true knight, chivalrous and reverent, wait at the door until she comes with welcome on her lips. So it has always seemed to me; but, as I say, it is borne in upon me tonight, as I sit here all alone, that perhaps a woman waits for something more; perhaps something of the old traditional idea of mastery, which the chivalrous man tries to get away from, lingers with her as the thing desirable. Why does this thought come to me now? Why did it come to me there at that crucial moment ? Was it born of a psychic consciousness of some need, some demand upon me in Mary’s heart? Never was I so tempted to contradict my own principles, to woo her, and woo her with masterful persistence that would leave no echo of her own heart’s voice. I looked at her, sitting there before me, the sunlight flickering through the beechtree branches on her bowed head. I felt for one rapturous moment that surrender and sweet yielding were in every line of her beautiful form, on her lips, in her eyes; but — I did not even take her hand. No; it surely must be hers to grant, not mine to seize.

“ Did you hear the message ? ” I asked again, after a while, without moving.

A sudden anger fell upon her; why, the Lord only knows. “No, I didn’t hear it,” she said. “ Read the last verse. No, not the next, but the last.”

I did n’t care for Herrick any longer, — he had fulfilled his mission; but I obeyed. I opened the book and read:

My heart sank. The universe spins round to me now as I think of it. Was that her answer? I should not have taken it so but for one fact. As I read she tore the rose to pieces, petal by petal. It was as though she tore the fibres of my heartstrings, one by one. The leaves of the rose floated around her, a red shower, lying on her immaculate muslin like bright drops of blood. This was more than I could bear. I had come to bind my love with a rose, and there were left but fallen petals and the blight of anger. I spoke her name, “Mary ! ” I know not what my voice betrayed; she hesitated a moment, took a step toward me, then turned and walked away. I did not walk to the gate with her, as is my habit. I walked instead down the dark path between the solemn yews. I heard the click of the gate; I knew she had left the garden — and me ! A moment later I heard her voice calling back from the lawn: “Jack, Herrick was a coward! It is only old women and children who are afraid of lightning.” With that she hastened her steps. I could not have overtaken her if I had tried, but I did not try. Something — is it my strength or my weakness ? — withheld me. But neither did I leave the garden. I walked back to where she had sat, and gathered the petals one by one, poor relic of my lovely rose. Then I looked for the calyx and the little green hip. I searched the grass, I followed the path; it was not to be found. Ah, rose, she despoiled you of your beauty, but your heart she carried away; and it is in your heart that you bear the promise of new roses for the summers still to come. Perhaps there is hope for me.

After all, I think I will go to the garden to-morrow.

June 2. Thanks be to God for his unspeakable gift! How strange it is that, no matter how far away we get from God or how we doubt him, in hours like these it is the words our mothers taught us which are the first to spring to our lips. Is it I, John Elwynne, sitting here to - night ? No longer alone, for, though she is not here, she is here, my Lady Mary, and will be here for evermore ; for she is mine now, — she has been mine so long ! Since morning!

How could I doubt, when I awoke to-day, if it were best to go to the garden ? It seems impossible for me to recall the state of mind which could harbor a question of the only thing to do. “The Ewigweibliche leads us upward and on, ” but it also guides us to the clear light of our immediate horizon. We men are so dull in the simplest matters. Since Mary told me, I see I should have been a dolt of the deepest dye not to have gone over to-day; and yet, actually, I pondered this morning on the pros and cons, and thought myself judicial.

When I opened the lower gate, I saw Mary through a vista made by the yews. Like a goddess she sat at the end of the long, shadowed way. Something moved me not to walk up the straight path, but to take a turn by the nearer path down by the brook, and come out through the hawthorn hedge by her side. I wanted to surprise her mood. When I had done so, I had no strength to approach her. I trembled in every limb at what I saw. The sky and masses of many-colored bloom of early summer spun about in a kaleidoscopic whirl; for a moment my heart almost ceased to beat. It was only a little thing I saw, — a little spray of myrtle. She held it in her hand, and was twisting it into a knot; but ah, my heart well knew what that spray of myrtle might mean!

When I was ten and she was nine, she had brought out into the garden a new book that had been given her, and for days it was our vade mecum. Of all the lays, our favorite was that one so well known in nursery lore ; —

I remembered how I had scoffed at the maid who had said no when she meant yes. I remembered Mary’s avowal, “Girls always do,” and my indignant protest, “Then I don’t think much of girls. ” “ Oh yes, you do, ” she had said, with calm assurance. And I did.

I have heard that the bravest soldier trembles for a moment before he storms the breach. I trembled my moment, standing there at the hawthorn hedge. Then I took firm hold of my hope, and went to meet my fate. I stood before her and outreached my hand; I said only four words, — “I love you, Mary.” The garden was very still; the fountain plashed, and two thrushes sang a gay antiphonal above us in the branches of the beech tree. Suddenly a soft, rosy loveliness suffused Mary. She laid the myrtle love knot in my hand; and then — and then — Not even in this book, where no mortal eye but mine will ever look, can I write what happened then. The sheltered knoll became to us a beacon hill. We went down swiftly to the dell, and there, beside the winding brook, in our childhood’s hidden place, “Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords with might.” Speech was of small account.

After an hour, or an eternity, or a moment, — I don’t know which, — Mary said: “Jack, why did you keep me waiting ? Why did n ’ t you tell me long ago that you loved me ? ”

“Why did you keep me waiting, Mary? You knew I loved you.”

“I wasn’t sure,” she said.

“Mary, ” — I made her look into my eyes, — “was there anything on earth you were more really sure of than my love for you ? ”

“Yes,” she answered, very low.

“What? ” I asked.

“My love for you,” and she hid her face. “You know that is not the way it ought to be, Jack,” she added, after a pause.

No, I told her, it was not the way it ought to be. I had made a mistake, but it had grown out of my great reverence, and my dread of forcing the question upon her before she was ready.

“But Alice? ” she murmured.

I did not know what she meant. The Lady Alice Longworth’s existence had passed out of my mind. She explained.

“Alice is your intimate friend,” I said.

“But you stayed there two hours day before yesterday. Alice told me so, Jack.”

“Did she tell you what we talked of ? ” I demanded.

“No.”

“Well, ask her the next time you see her, ” I advised.

In a few moments she spoke again: “Oh, Jack, why did you let us waste so much time? Why didn’t you take me and claim me, and brush aside all my caprices ? Bend down your ear, and I will tell you a great secret, ”

I did as she bade me, and she whispered, “Women never want to have their own way; they always want to be mastered.” Her sweet breath seemed to reach into my very brain. Her bewitching lips were near; I proceeded to follow her suggestion. “Jack, ” she cried, “stop! Let me alone! Listen : I want to talk to you. We haven’t talked for hours.”

“You have told me a secret, and I am remembering it,” I said.

“Well, I will tell you another just as important to remember, if you will only let me go, and bend down your other ear.”

I released her. It is sweet to hear secrets from Mary.

“Jack,” she whispered again, — “Jack, women love to have their own way ; they always want to be obeyed.”

Katrina Trask.