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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Evelina's Garden, by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Evelina's Garden
+
+
+Author: Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 1, 2006  [eBook #17891]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EVELINA'S GARDEN***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Jeff Kaylin and Andrew Sly
+
+
+
+EVELINA'S GARDEN
+
+by
+
+MARY E. WILKINS
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+New York and London
+Harper & Brothers
+MDCCCXCIX
+
+
+
+
+
+On the south a high arbor-vitae hedge separated Evelina's garden from
+the road. The hedge was so high that when the school-children lagged
+by, and the secrets behind it fired them with more curiosity than
+those between their battered book covers, the tallest of them by
+stretching up on tiptoe could not peer over. And so they were driven
+to childish engineering feats, and would set to work and pick away
+sprigs of the arbor-vitae with their little fingers, and make
+peep-holes--but small ones, that Evelina might not discern them. Then
+they would thrust their pink faces into the hedge, and the enduring
+fragrance of it would come to their nostrils like a gust of aromatic
+breath from the mouth of the northern woods, and peer into Evelina's
+garden as through the green tubes of vernal telescopes.
+
+Then suddenly hollyhocks, blooming in rank and file, seemed to be
+marching upon them like platoons of soldiers, with detonations of
+color that dazzled their peeping eyes; and, indeed, the whole garden
+seemed charging with its mass of riotous bloom upon the hedge. They
+could scarcely take in details of marigold and phlox and pinks and
+London-pride and cock's-combs, and prince's-feather's waving overhead
+like standards.
+
+Sometimes also there was the purple flutter of Evelina's gown; and
+Evelina's face, delicately faded, hung about with softly drooping
+gray curls, appeared suddenly among the flowers, like another flower
+uncannily instinct with nervous melancholy.
+
+Then the children would fall back from their peep-holes, and huddle
+off together with scared giggles. They were afraid of Evelina. There
+was a shade of mystery about her which stimulated their childish
+fancies when they heard her discussed by their elders. They might
+easily have conceived her to be some baleful fairy intrenched in her
+green stronghold, withheld from leaving it by the fear of some dire
+penalty for magical sins. Summer and winter, spring and fall, Evelina
+Adams never was seen outside her own domain of old mansion-house and
+garden, and she had not set her slim lady feet in the public highway
+for nearly forty years, if the stories were true.
+
+People differed as to the reason why. Some said she had had an
+unfortunate love affair, that her heart had been broken, and she had
+taken upon herself a vow of seclusion from the world, but nobody
+could point to the unworthy lover who had done her this harm. When
+Evelina was a girl, not one of the young men of the village had dared
+address her. She had been set apart by birth and training, and also
+by a certain exclusiveness of manner, if not of nature. Her father,
+old Squire Adams, had been the one man of wealth and college learning
+in the village. He had owned the one fine old mansion-house, with its
+white front propped on great Corinthian pillars, overlooking the
+village like a broad brow of superiority.
+
+He had owned the only coach and four. His wife during her short life
+had gone dressed in rich brocades and satins that rustled loud in the
+ears of the village women, and her nodding plumes had dazzled the
+eyes under their modest hoods. Hardly a woman in the village but
+could tell--for it had been handed down like a folk-lore song from
+mother to daughter--just what Squire Adams's wife wore when she
+walked out first as bride to meeting. She had been clad all in blue.
+
+"Squire Adams's wife, when she walked out bride, she wore a blue
+satin brocade gown, all wrought with blue flowers of a darker blue,
+cut low neck and short sleeves. She wore long blue silk mitts wrought
+with blue, blue satin shoes, and blue silk clocked stockings. And she
+wore a blue crape mantle that was brought from over seas, and a blue
+velvet hat, with a long blue ostrich feather curled over it--it was
+so long it reached her shoulder, and waved when she walked; and she
+carried a little blue crape fan with ivory sticks."  So the women and
+girls told each other when the Squire's bride had been dead nearly
+seventy years.
+
+The blue bride attire was said to be still in existence, packed away
+in a cedar chest, as the Squire had ordered after his wife's death.
+"He stood over the woman that took care of his wife whilst she packed
+the things away, and he never shed a tear, but she used to hear him
+a-goin' up to the north chamber nights, when he couldn't sleep, to
+look at 'em," the women told.
+
+People had thought the Squire would marry again. They said Evelina,
+who was only four years old, needed a mother, and they selected one
+and another of the good village girls. But the Squire never married.
+He had a single woman, who dressed in black silk, and wore always a
+black wrought veil over the side of her bonnet, come to live with
+them, to take charge of Evelina. She was said to be a distant
+relative of the Squire's wife, and was much looked up to by the
+village people, although she never did more than interlace, as it
+were, the fringes of her garments with theirs. "She's stuck up," they
+said, and felt, curiously enough, a certain pride in the fact when
+they met her in the street and she ducked her long chin stiffly into
+the folds of her black shawl by way of salutation.
+
+When Evelina was fifteen years old this single woman died, and the
+village women went to her funeral, and bent over her lying in a last
+helpless dignity in her coffin, and stared with awed freedom at her
+cold face. After that Evelina was sent away to school, and did not
+return, except for a yearly vacation, for six years to come. Then she
+returned, and settled down in her old home to live out her life, and
+end her days in a perfect semblance of peace, if it were not peace.
+
+Evelina never had any young school friend to visit her; she had
+never, so far as any one knew, a friend of her own age. She lived
+alone with her father and three old servants. She went to meeting,
+and drove with the Squire in his chaise. The coach was never used
+after his wife's death, except to carry Evelina to and from school.
+She and the Squire also took long walks, but they never exchanged
+aught but the merest civilities of good-days and nods with the
+neighbors whom they met, unless indeed the Squire had some matter of
+business to discuss. Then Evelina stood aside and waited, her fair
+face drooping gravely aloof. She was very pretty, with a gentle
+high-bred prettiness that impressed the village folk, although they
+looked at it somewhat askance.
+
+Evelina's figure was tall, and had a fine slenderness; her silken
+skirts hung straight from the narrow silk ribbon that girt her slim
+waist; there was a languidly graceful bend in her long white throat;
+her long delicate hands hung inertly at her sides among her skirt
+folds, and were never seen to clasp anything; her softly clustering
+fair curls hung over her thin blooming cheeks, and her face could
+scarce be seen, unless, as she seldom did, she turned and looked full
+upon one. Then her dark blue eyes, with a little nervous frown
+between them, shone out radiantly; her thin lips showed a warm red,
+and her beauty startled one.
+
+Everybody wondered why she did not have a lover, why some fine young
+man had not been smitten by her while she had been away at school.
+They did not know that the school had been situated in another little
+village, the counterpart of the one in which she had been born,
+wherein a fitting mate for a bird of her feather could hardly be
+found. The simple young men of the country-side were at once
+attracted and intimidated by her. They cast fond sly glances across
+the meeting-house at her lovely face, but they were confused before
+her when they jostled her in the doorway and the rose and lavender
+scent of her lady garments came in their faces. Not one of them dared
+accost her, much less march boldly upon the great Corinthian-pillared
+house, raise the brass knocker, and declare himself a suitor for the
+Squire's daughter.
+
+One young man there was, indeed, who treasured in his heart an
+experience so subtle and so slight that he could scarcely believe in
+it himself. He never recounted it to mortal soul, but kept it as a
+secret sacred between himself and his own nature, but something to be
+scoffed at and set aside by others.
+
+It had happened one Sabbath day in summer, when Evelina had not been
+many years home from school, as she sat in the meeting-house in her
+Sabbath array of rose-colored satin gown, and white bonnet trimmed
+with a long white feather and a little wreath of feathery green, that
+of a sudden she raised her head and turned her face, and her blue
+eyes met this young man's full upon hers, with all his heart in them,
+and it was for a second as if her own heart leaped to the surface,
+and he saw it, although afterwards he scarce believed it to be true.
+
+Then a pallor crept over Evelina's delicately brilliant face. She
+turned it away, and her curls falling softly from under the green
+wreath on her bonnet brim hid it. The young man's cheeks were a hot
+red, and his heart beat loudly in his ears when he met her in the
+doorway after the sermon was done. His eager, timorous eyes sought
+her face, but she never looked his way. She laid her slim hand in its
+cream-colored silk mitt on the Squire's arm; her satin gown rustled
+softly as she passed before him, shrinking against the wall to give
+her room, and a faint fragrance which seemed like the very breath of
+the unknown delicacy and exclusiveness of life came to his bewildered
+senses.
+
+Many a time he cast furtive glances across the meeting-house at
+Evelina, but she never looked his way again. If his timid boy-eyes
+could have seen her cheek behind its veil of curls, he might have
+discovered that the color came and went before his glances, although
+it was strange how she could have been conscious of them; but he
+never knew.
+
+And he also never knew how, when he walked past the Squire's house of
+a Sunday evening, dressed in his best, with his shoulders thrust
+consciously back, and the windows in the westering sun looked full of
+blank gold to his furtive eyes, Evelina was always peeping at him
+from behind a shutter, and he never dared go in. His intuitions were
+not like hers, and so nothing happened that might have, and he never
+fairly knew what he knew. But that he never told, even to his wife
+when he married; for his hot young blood grew weary and impatient
+with this vain courtship, and he turned to one of his villagemates,
+who met him fairly half way, and married her within a year.
+
+On the Sunday when he and his bride first appeared in the
+meeting-house Evelina went up the aisle behind her father in an array
+of flowered brocade, stiff with threads of silver, so wonderful that
+people all turned their heads to stare at her. She wore also a new
+bonnet of rose-colored satin, and her curls were caught back a
+little, and her face showed as clear and beautiful as an angel's.
+
+The young bridegroom glanced at her once across the meeting-house,
+then he looked at his bride in her gay wedding finery with a faithful
+look.
+
+When Evelina met them in the doorway, after meeting was done, she
+bowed with a sweet cold grace to the bride, who courtesied blushingly
+in return, with an awkward sweep of her foot in the bridal satin
+shoe. The bridegroom did not look at Evelina at all. He held his chin
+well down in his stock with solemn embarrassment, and passed out
+stiffly, his bride on his arm.
+
+Evelina, shining in the sun like a silver lily, went up the street,
+her father stalking beside her with stately swings of his cane, and
+that was the last time she was ever seen at meeting. Nobody knew why.
+
+When Evelina was a little over thirty her father died. There was not
+much active grief for him in the village; he had really figured
+therein more as a stately monument of his own grandeur than anything
+else. He had been a man of little force of character, and that little
+had seemed to degenerate since his wife died. An inborn dignity of
+manner might have served to disguise his weakness with any others
+than these shrewd New-Englanders, but they read him rightly. "The
+Squire wa'n't ever one to set the river a-fire," they said. Then,
+moreover, he left none of his property to the village to build a new
+meeting-house or a town-house. It all went to Evelina.
+
+People expected that Evelina would surely show herself in her
+mourning at meeting the Sunday after the Squire died, but she did
+not. Moreover, it began to be gradually discovered that she never
+went out in the village street nor crossed the boundaries of her own
+domains after her father's death. She lived in the great house with
+her three servants--a man and his wife, and the woman who had been
+with her mother when she died. Then it was that Evelina's garden
+began. There had always been a garden at the back of the Squire's
+house, but not like this, and only a low fence had separated it from
+the road. Now one morning in the autumn the people saw Evelina's
+man-servant, John Darby, setting out the arbor-vitae hedge, and in
+the spring after that there were ploughing and seed-sowing extending
+over a full half-acre, which later blossomed out in glory.
+
+Before the hedge grew so high Evelina could be seen at work in her
+garden. She was often stooping over the flower-beds in the early
+morning when the village was first astir, and she moved among them
+with her watering-pot in the twilight--a shadowy figure that might,
+from her grace and her constancy to the flowers, have been Flora
+herself.
+
+As the years went on, the arbor-vitae hedge got each season a new
+growth and waxed taller, until Evelina could no longer be seen above
+it. That was an annoyance to people, because the quiet mystery of her
+life kept their curiosity alive, until it was in a constant struggle,
+as it were, with the green luxuriance of the hedge.
+
+"John Darby had ought to trim that hedge," they said. They accosted
+him in the street: "John, if ye don't cut that hedge down a little
+it'll all die out."  But he only made a surly grunting response,
+intelligible to himself alone, and passed on. He was an Englishman,
+and had lived in the Squire's family since he was a boy.
+
+He had a nature capable of only one simple line of force, with no
+radiations or parallels, and that had early resolved itself into the
+service of the Squire and his house. After the Squire's death he
+married a woman who lived in the family. She was much older than
+himself, and had a high temper, but was a good servant, and he
+married her to keep her to her allegiance to Evelina. Then he bent
+her, without her knowledge, to take his own attitude towards his
+mistress. No more could be gotten out of John Darby's wife than out
+of John Darby concerning the doings at the Squire's house. She met
+curiosity with a flash of hot temper, and he with surly taciturnity,
+and both intimidated.
+
+The third of Evelina's servants was the woman who had nursed her
+mother, and she was naturally subdued and undemonstrative, and
+rendered still more so by a ceaseless monotony of life. She never
+went to meeting, and was seldom seen outside the house. A passing
+vision of a long white-capped face at a window was about all the
+neighbors ever saw of this woman.
+
+So Evelina's gentle privacy was well guarded by her own household, as
+by a faithful system of domestic police. She grew old peacefully
+behind her green hedge, shielded effectually from all rough bristles
+of curiosity. Every new spring her own bloom showed paler beside the
+new bloom of her flowers, but people could not see it.
+
+Some thirty years after the Squire's death the man John Darby died;
+his wife, a year later. That left Evelina alone with the old woman
+who had nursed her mother. She was very old, but not feeble, and
+quite able to perform the simple household tasks for herself and
+Evelina. An old man, who saved himself from the almshouse in such
+ways, came daily to do the rougher part of the garden-work in John
+Darby's stead. He was aged and decrepit; his muscles seemed able to
+perform their appointed tasks only through the accumulated inertia of
+a patiently toilsome life in the same tracks. Apparently they would
+have collapsed had he tried to force them to aught else than the
+holding of the ploughshare, the pulling of weeds, the digging around
+the roots of flowers, and the planting of seeds.
+
+Every autumn he seemed about to totter to his fall among the fading
+flowers; every spring it was like Death himself urging on the
+resurrection; but he lived on year after year, and tended well
+Evelina's garden, and the gardens of other maiden-women and widows in
+the village. He was taciturn, grubbing among his green beds as
+silently as a worm, but now and then he warmed a little under a fire
+of questions concerning Evelina's garden. "Never see none sech
+flowers in nobody's garden in this town, not sence I knowed 'nough to
+tell a pink from a piny," he would mumble. His speech was thick; his
+words were all uncouthly slurred; the expression of his whole life
+had come more through his old knotted hands of labor than through his
+tongue. But he would wipe his forehead with his shirt-sleeve and lean
+a second on his spade, and his face would change at the mention of
+the garden. Its wealth of bloom illumined his old mind, and the roses
+and honeysuckles and pinks seemed for a second to be reflected in his
+bleared old eyes.
+
+There had never been in the village such a garden as this of Evelina
+Adams's. All the old blooms which had come over the seas with the
+early colonists, and started as it were their own colony of flora in
+the new country, flourished there. The naturalized pinks and phlox
+and hollyhocks and the rest, changed a little in color and fragrance
+by the conditions of a new climate and soil, were all in Evelina's
+garden, and no one dreamed what they meant to Evelina; and she did
+not dream herself, for her heart was always veiled to her own eyes,
+like the face of a nun. The roses and pinks, the poppies and
+heart's-ease, were to this maiden-woman, who had innocently and
+helplessly outgrown her maiden heart, in the place of all the loves
+of life which she had missed. Her affections had forced an outlet in
+roses; they exhaled sweetness in pinks, and twined and clung in
+honeysuckle-vines. The daffodils, when they came up in the spring,
+comforted her like the smiles of children; when she saw the first
+rose, her heart leaped as at the face of a lover.
+
+She had lost the one way of human affection, but her feet had found a
+little single side-track of love, which gave her still a zest in the
+journey of life. Even in the winter Evelina had her flowers, for she
+kept those that would bear transplanting in pots, and all the sunny
+windows in her house were gay with them. She would also not let a
+rose leaf fall and waste in the garden soil, or a sprig of lavender
+or thyme. She gathered them all, and stored them away in chests and
+drawers and old china bowls--the whole house seemed laid away in rose
+leaves and lavender. Evelina's clothes gave out at every motion that
+fragrance of dead flowers which is like the fragrance of the past,
+and has a sweetness like that of sweet memories. Even the cedar chest
+where Evelina's mother's blue bridal array was stored had its till
+heaped with rose leaves and lavender.
+
+When Evelina was nearly seventy years old the old nurse who had lived
+with her her whole life died. People wondered then what she would do.
+"She can't live all alone in that great house," they said. But she
+did live there alone six months, until spring, and people used to
+watch her evening lamp when it was put out, and the morning smoke
+from her kitchen chimney. "It ain't safe for her to be there alone in
+that great house," they said.
+
+But early in April a young girl appeared one Sunday in the old
+Squire's pew. Nobody had seen her come to town, and nobody knew who
+she was or where she came from, but the old people said she looked
+just as Evelina Adams used to when she was young, and she must be
+some relation. The old man who had used to look across the
+meeting-house at Evelina, over forty years ago, looked across now at
+this young girl, and gave a great start, and his face paled under his
+gray beard stubble. His old wife gave an anxious, wondering glance at
+him, and crammed a peppermint into his hand. "Anything the matter,
+father?" she whispered; but he only gave his head a half-surly shake,
+and then fastened his eyes straight ahead upon the pulpit. He had
+reason to that day, for his only son, Thomas, was going to preach his
+first sermon therein as a candidate. His wife ascribed his
+nervousness to that. She put a peppermint in her own mouth and sucked
+it comfortably. "That's all 't is," she thought to herself. "Father
+always was easy worked up," and she looked proudly up at her son
+sitting on the hair-cloth sofa in the pulpit, leaning his handsome
+young head on his hand, as he had seen old divines do. She never
+dreamed that her old husband sitting beside her was possessed of an
+inner life so strange to her that she would not have known him had
+she met him in the spirit. And, indeed, it had been so always, and
+she had never dreamed of it. Although he had been faithful to his
+wife, the image of Evelina Adams in her youth, and that one love-look
+which she had given him, had never left his soul, but had given it a
+guise and complexion of which his nearest and dearest knew nothing.
+
+It was strange, but now, as he looked up at his own son as he arose
+in the pulpit, he could seem to see a look of that fair young
+Evelina, who had never had a son to inherit her beauty. He had
+certainly a delicate brilliancy of complexion, which he could have
+gotten directly from neither father nor mother; and whence came that
+little nervous frown between his dark blue eyes? His mother had blue
+eyes, but not like his; they flashed over the great pulpit Bible with
+a sweet fire that matched the memory in his father's heart.
+
+But the old man put the fancy away from him in a minute; it was one
+which his stern common-sense always overcame. It was impossible that
+Thomas Merriam should resemble Evelina Adams; indeed, people always
+called him the very image of his father.
+
+The father tried to fix his mind upon his son's sermon, but presently
+he glanced involuntarily across the meeting-house at the young girl,
+and again his heart leaped and his face paled; but he turned his eyes
+gravely back to the pulpit, and his wife did not notice. Now and then
+she thrust a sharp elbow in his side to call his attention to a grand
+point in their son's discourse. The odor of peppermint was strong in
+his nostrils, but through it all he seemed to perceive the rose and
+lavender scent of Evelina Adams's youthful garments. Whether it was
+with him simply the memory of an odor, which affected him like the
+odor itself, or not, those in the vicinity of the Squire's pew were
+plainly aware of it. The gown which the strange young girl wore was,
+as many an old woman discovered to her neighbor with loud whispers,
+one of Evelina's, which had been laid away in a sweet-smelling chest
+since her old girlhood. It had been somewhat altered to suit the
+fashion of a later day, but the eyes which had fastened keenly upon
+it when Evelina first wore it up the meeting-house aisle could not
+mistake it. "It's Evelina Adams's lavender satin made over," one
+whispered, with a sharp hiss of breath, in the other's ear.
+
+The lavender satin, deepening into purple in the folds, swept in a
+rich circle over the knees of the young girl in the Squire's pew. She
+folded her little hands, which were encased in Evelina's
+cream-colored silk mitts, over it, and looked up at the young
+minister, and listened to his sermon with a grave and innocent
+dignity, as Evelina had done before her. Perhaps the resemblance
+between this young girl and the young girl of the past was more one
+of mien than aught else, although the type of face was the same. This
+girl had the same fine sharpness of feature and delicately bright
+color, and she also wore her hair in curls, although they were tied
+back from her face with a black velvet ribbon, and did not veil it
+when she drooped her head, as Evelina's used to do.
+
+The people divided their attention between her and the new minister.
+Their curiosity goaded them in equal measure with their spiritual
+zeal. "I can't wait to find out who that girl is," one woman
+whispered to another.
+
+The girl herself had no thought of the commotion which she awakened.
+When the service was over, and she walked with a gentle maiden
+stateliness, which seemed a very copy of Evelina's own, out of the
+meeting-house, down the street to the Squire's house, and entered it,
+passing under the stately Corinthian pillars, with a last purple
+gleam of her satin skirts, she never dreamed of the eager attention
+that followed her.
+
+It was several days before the village people discovered who she was.
+The information had to be obtained, by a process like mental
+thumb-screwing, from the old man who tended Evelina's garden, but at
+last they knew. She was the daughter of a cousin of Evelina's on the
+father's side. Her name was Evelina Leonard; she had been named for
+her father's cousin. She had been finely brought up, and had attended
+a Boston school for young ladies. Her mother had been dead many
+years, and her father had died some two years ago, leaving her with
+only a very little money, which was now all gone, and Evelina Adams
+had invited her to live with her. Evelina Adams had herself told the
+old gardener, seeing his scant curiosity was somewhat awakened by the
+sight of the strange young lady in the garden, but he seemed to have
+almost forgotten it when the people questioned him.
+
+"She'll leave her all her money, most likely," they said, and they
+looked at this new Evelina in the old Evelina's perfumed gowns with
+awe.
+
+However, in the space of a few months the opinion upon this matter
+was divided. Another cousin of Evelina Adams's came to town, and this
+time an own cousin--a widow in fine black bombazine, portly and
+florid, walking with a majestic swell, and, moreover, having with her
+two daughters, girls of her own type, not so far advanced. This woman
+hired one of the village cottages, and it was rumored that Evelina
+Adams paid the rent. Still, it was considered that she was not very
+intimate with these last relatives. The neighbors watched, and saw,
+many a time, Mrs. Martha Loomis and her girls try the doors of the
+Adams house, scudding around angrily from front to side and back, and
+knock and knock again, but with no admittance. "Evelina she won't let
+none of 'em in more 'n once a week," the neighbors said. It was odd
+that, although they had deeply resented Evelina's seclusion on their
+own accounts, they were rather on her side in this matter, and felt a
+certain delight when they witnessed a crestfallen retreat of the
+widow and her daughters. "I don't s'pose she wants them Loomises
+marchin' in on her every minute," they said.
+
+The new Evelina was not seen much with the other cousins, and she
+made no acquaintances in the village. Whether she was to inherit all
+the Adams property or not, she seemed, at any rate, heiress to all
+the elder Evelina's habits of life. She worked with her in the
+garden, and wore her old girlish gowns, and kept almost as close at
+home as she. She often, however, walked abroad in the early dusk,
+stepping along in a grave and stately fashion, as the elder Evelina
+had used to do, holding her skirts away from the dewy roadside weeds,
+her face showing out in the twilight like a white flower, as if it
+had a pale light of its own.
+
+Nobody spoke to her; people turned furtively after she had passed and
+stared after her, but they never spoke. This young Evelina did not
+seem to expect it. She passed along with the lids cast down over her
+blue eyes, and the rose and lavender scent of her garments came back
+in their faces.
+
+But one night when she was walking slowly along, a full half-mile
+from home, she heard rapid footsteps behind, and the young minister,
+Thomas Merriam, came up beside her and spoke.
+
+"Good-evening," said he, and his voice was a little hoarse through
+nervousness.
+
+Evelina started, and turned her fair face up towards his.
+"Good-evening," she responded, and courtesied as she had been taught
+at school, and stood close to the wall, that he might pass; but
+Thomas Merriam paused also.
+
+"I--" he began, but his voice broke. He cleared his throat angrily,
+and went on. "I have seen you in meeting," he said, with a kind of
+defiance, more of himself than of her. After all, was he not the
+minister, and had he not the right to speak to everybody in the
+congregation? Why should he embarrass himself?
+
+"Yes, sir," replied Evelina. She stood drooping her head before him,
+and yet there was a certain delicate hauteur about her. Thomas was
+afraid to speak again. They both stood silent for a moment, and then
+Evelina stirred softly, as if to pass on, and Thomas spoke out
+bravely. "Is your cousin, Miss Adams, well?" said he.
+
+"She is pretty well, I thank you, sir."
+
+"I've been wanting to--call," he began; then he hesitated again. His
+handsome young face was blushing crimson.
+
+Evelina's own color deepened. She turned her face away. "Cousin
+Evelina never sees callers," she said, with grave courtesy; "perhaps
+you did not know. She has not for a great many years."
+
+"Yes, I did know it," returned Thomas Merriam; "that's the reason I
+haven't called."
+
+"Cousin Evelina is not strong," remarked the young girl, and there
+was a savor of apology in her tone.
+
+"But--" stammered Thomas; then he stopped again. "May I--has she any
+objections to--anybody's coming to see you?"
+
+Evelina started. "I am afraid Cousin Evelina would not approve," she
+answered, primly. Then she looked up in his face, and a girlish
+piteousness came into her own. "I am very sorry," she said, and there
+was a catch in her voice.
+
+Thomas bent over her impetuously. All his ministerial state fell from
+him like an outer garment of the soul. He was young, and he had seen
+this girl Sunday after Sunday. He had written all his sermons with
+her image before his eyes, he had preached to her, and her only, and
+she had come between his heart and all the nations of the earth in
+his prayers. "Oh," he stammered out, "I am afraid you can't be very
+happy living there the way you do. Tell me--"
+
+Evelina turned her face away with sudden haughtiness. "My cousin
+Evelina is very kind to me, sir," she said.
+
+"But--you must be lonesome with nobody--of your own age--to speak
+to," persisted Thomas, confusedly.
+
+"I never cared much for youthful company. It is getting dark; I must
+be going," said Evelina. "I wish you good-evening, sir."
+
+"Sha'n't I--walk home with you?" asked Thomas, falteringly.
+
+"It isn't necessary, thank you, and I don't think Cousin Evelina
+would approve," she replied, primly; and her light dress fluttered
+away into the dusk and out of sight like the pale wing of a moth.
+
+Poor Thomas Merriam walked on with his head in a turmoil. His heart
+beat loud in his ears. "I've made her mad with me," he said to
+himself, using the old rustic school-boy vernacular, from which he
+did not always depart in his thoughts, although his ministerial
+dignity guarded his conversations. Thomas Merriam came of a simple
+homely stock, whose speech came from the emotions of the heart, all
+unregulated by the usages of the schools. He was the first for
+generations who had aspired to college learning and a profession, and
+had trained his tongue by the models of the educated and polite. He
+could not help, at times, the relapse of his thoughts, and their
+speaking to himself in the dialect of his family and his ancestors.
+"She's 'way above me, and I ought to ha' known it," he further said,
+with the meekness of an humble but fiercely independent race, which
+is meek to itself alone. He would have maintained his equality with
+his last breath to an opponent; in his heart of hearts he felt
+himself below the scion of the one old gentle family of his native
+village.
+
+This young Evelina, by the fine dignity which had been born with her
+and not acquired by precept and example, by the sweetly formal
+diction which seemed her native tongue, had filled him with awe. Now,
+when he thought she was angered with him, he felt beneath her lady
+feet, his nostrils choked with a spiritual dust of humiliation.
+
+He went forward blindly. The dusk had deepened; from either side of
+the road, from the mysterious gloom of the bushes, came the twangs of
+the katydids, like some coarse rustic quarrellers, each striving for
+the last word in a dispute not even dignified by excess of passion.
+
+Suddenly somebody jostled him to his own side of the path. "That you,
+Thomas? Where you been?" said a voice in his ear.
+
+"That you, father? Down to the post-office."
+
+"Who was that you was talkin' with back there?"
+
+"Miss Evelina Leonard."
+
+"That girl that's stayin' there--to the old Squire's?"
+
+"Yes."  The son tried to move on, but his father stood before him
+dumbly for a minute. "I must be going, father. I've got to work on my
+sermon," Thomas said, impatiently.
+
+"Wait a minute," said his father. "I've got something to say to ye,
+Thomas, an' this is as good a time to say it as any. There ain't
+anybody 'round. I don't know as ye'll thank me for it--but mother
+said the other day that she thought you'd kind of an idea--she said
+you asked her if she thought it would be anything out of the way for
+you to go up to the Squire's to make a call. Mother she thinks you
+can step in anywheres, but I don't know. I know your book-learnin'
+and your bein' a minister has set you up a good deal higher than your
+mother and me and any of our folks, and I feel as if you were good
+enough for anybody, as far as that goes; but that ain't all. Some
+folks have different startin'-points in this world, and they see
+things different; and when they do, it ain't much use tryin' to make
+them walk alongside and see things alike. Their eyes have got
+different cants, and they ain't able to help it. Now this girl she's
+related to the old Squire, and she's been brought up different, and
+she started ahead, even if her father did lose all his property. She
+'ain't never eat in the kitchen, nor been scart to set down in the
+parlor, and satin and velvet, and silver spoons, and cream-pots
+'ain't never looked anything out of the common to her, and they
+always will to you. No matter how many such things you may live to
+have, they'll always get a little the better of ye. She'll be 'way
+above 'em; and you won't, no matter how hard you try. Some ideas
+can't never mix; and when ideas can't mix, folks can't."
+
+"I never said they could," returned Thomas, shortly. "I can't stop to
+talk any longer, father. I must go home."
+
+"No, you wait a minute, Thomas. I'm goin' to say out what I started
+to, and then I sha'n't ever bring it up again. What I was comin' at
+was this: I wanted to warn ye a little. You mustn't set too much
+store by little things that you think mean consider'ble when they
+don't. Looks don't count for much, and I want you to remember it, and
+not be upset by 'em."
+
+Thomas gave a great start and colored high. "I'd like to know what
+you mean, father," he cried, sharply.
+
+"Nothin'. I don't mean nothin', only I'm older'n you, and it's come
+in my way to know some things, and it's fittin' you should profit by
+it. A young woman's looks at you don't count for much. I don't s'pose
+she knows why she gives 'em herself half the time; they ain't like
+us. It's best you should make up your mind to it; if you don't, you
+may find it out by the hardest. That's all. I ain't never goin' to
+bring this up again."
+
+"I'd like to know what you mean, father."  Thomas's voice shook with
+embarrassment and anger.
+
+"I ain't goin' to say anything more about it," replied the old man.
+"Mary Ann Pease and Arabella Mann are both in the settin'-room with
+your mother. I thought I'd tell ye, in case ye didn't want to see
+'em, and wanted to go to work on your sermon."
+
+Thomas made an impatient ejaculation as he strode off. When he
+reached the large white house where he lived he skirted it carefully.
+The chirping treble of girlish voices came from the open sitting-room
+window, and he caught a glimpse of a smooth brown head and a high
+shell comb in front of the candle-light. The young minister tiptoed
+in the back door and across the kitchen to the back stairs. The
+sitting-room door was open, and the candle-light streamed out, and
+the treble voices rose high. Thomas, advancing through the dusky
+kitchen with cautious steps, encountered suddenly a chair in the dark
+corner by the stairs, and just saved himself from falling. There was
+a startled outcry from the sitting-room, and his mother came running
+into the kitchen with a candle.
+
+"Who is it?" she demanded, valiantly. Then she started and gasped as
+her son confronted her. He shook a furious warning fist at the
+sitting-room door and his mother, and edged towards the stairs. She
+followed him close. "Hadn't you better jest step in a minute?" she
+whispered. "Them girls have been here an hour, and I know they're
+waitin' to see you."  Thomas shook his head fiercely, and swung
+himself around the corner into the dark crook of the back stairs. His
+mother thrust the candle into his hand. "Take this, or you'll break
+your neck on them stairs," she whispered.
+
+Thomas, stealing up the stairs like a cat, heard one of the girls
+call to his mother--"Is it robbers, Mis' Merriam? Want us to come an'
+help tackle 'em?"--and he fairly shuddered; for Evelina's gentle-lady
+speech was still in his ears, and this rude girlish call seemed to
+jar upon his sensibilities.
+
+"The idea of any girl screeching out like that," he muttered. And if
+he had carried speech as far as his thought, he would have added,
+"when Evelina is a girl!"
+
+He was so angry that he did not laugh when he heard his mother answer
+back, in those conclusive tones of hers that were wont to silence all
+argument: "It ain't anything. Don't be scared. I'm coming right
+back."  Mrs. Merriam scorned subterfuges. She took always a silent
+stand in a difficulty, and let people infer what they would. When
+Mary Ann Pease inquired if it was the cat that had made the noise,
+she asked if her mother had finished her blue and white counterpane.
+
+The two girls waited a half-hour longer, then they went home. "What
+do you s'pose made that noise out in the kitchen?" asked Arabella
+Mann of Mary Ann Pease, the minute they were out-of-doors.
+
+"I don't know," replied Mary Ann Pease. She was a broad-backed young
+girl, and looked like a matron as she hurried along in the dusk.
+
+"Well, I know what I think it was," said Arabella Mann, moving ahead
+with sharp jerks of her little dark body.
+
+"What?"
+
+"It was him."
+
+"You don't mean--"
+
+"I think it was Thomas Merriam, and he was tryin' to get up the back
+stairs unbeknownst to anybody, and he run into something."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"Because he didn't want to see _us_."
+
+"Now, Arabella Mann, I don't believe it! He's always real pleasant to
+me."
+
+"Well, I do believe it, and I guess he'll know it when I set foot in
+that house again. I guess he'll find out I didn't go there to see
+him! He needn't feel so fine, if he is the minister; his folks ain't
+any better than mine, an' we've got 'nough sight handsomer furniture
+in our parlor."
+
+"Did you see how the tallow had all run down over the candles?"
+
+"Yes, I did. She gave that candle she carried out in the kitchen to
+him, too. Mother says she wasn't never any kind of a housekeeper."
+
+"Hush! Arabella: here he is coming now."
+
+But it was not Thomas; it was his father, advancing through the
+evening with his son's gait and carriage. When the two girls
+discovered that, one tittered out quite audibly, and they scuttled
+past. They were not rivals; they simply walked faithfully side by
+side in pursuit of the young minister, giving him as it were an
+impartial choice. There were even no heart-burnings between them; one
+always confided in the other when she supposed herself to have found
+some slight favor in Thomas's sight; and, indeed, the young minister
+could scarcely bow to one upon the street unless she flew to the
+other with the news.
+
+Thomas Merriam himself was aware of all this devotion on the part of
+the young women of his flock, and it filled him with a sort of angry
+shame. He could not have told why, but he despised himself for being
+the object of their attention more than he despised them. His heart
+sank at the idea of Evelina's discovering it. What would she think of
+him if she knew all those young women haunted his house and lagged
+after meeting on the chance of getting a word from him? Suppose she
+should see their eyes upon his face in meeting time, and decipher
+their half-unconscious boldness, as he had done against his will.
+Once Evelina had looked at him, even as the older Evelina had looked
+at his father, and all other looks of maidens seemed to him like
+profanations of that, even although he doubted afterwards that he had
+rightly interpreted it. Full it had seemed to him of that tender
+maiden surprise and wonder, of that love that knows not itself, and
+sees its own splendor for the first time in another's face, and flees
+at the sight. It had happened once when he was coming down the aisle
+after the sermon and Evelina had met him at the door of her pew. But
+she had turned her head quickly, and her soft curls flowed over her
+red cheek, and he doubted ever after if he had read the look aright.
+When he had gotten the courage to speak to her, and she had met him
+with the gentle coldness which she had learned of her lady aunt and
+her teacher in Boston, his doubt was strong upon him. The next Sunday
+he looked not her way at all. He even tried faithfully from day to
+day to drive her image from his mind with prayer and religious
+thoughts, but in spite of himself he would lapse into dreams about
+her, as if borne by a current of nature too strong to be resisted.
+And sometimes, upon being awakened from them, as he sat over his
+sermon with the ink drying on his quill, by the sudden outburst of
+treble voices in his mother's sitting-room below, the fancy would
+seize him that possibly these other young damsels took fond liberties
+with him in their dreams, as he with Evelina, and he resented it with
+a fierce maidenliness of spirit, although he was a man. The thought
+that possibly they, over their spinning or their quilting, had in
+their hearts the image of himself with fond words upon his lips and
+fond looks in his eyes, filled him with shame and rage, although he
+took the same liberty with the delicately haughty maiden Evelina.
+
+But Thomas Merriam was not given to undue appreciation of his own
+fascination, as was proved by his ready discouragement in the case of
+Evelina. He had the knowledge of his conquests forced upon his
+understanding until he could no longer evade it. Every day were
+offerings laid upon his shrine, of pound-cakes and flaky pies, and
+loaves of white bread, and cups of jelly, whereby the culinary skill
+of his devotees might be proved. Silken purses and beautiful socks
+knitted with fancy stitches, and holy book-marks for his Bible, and
+even a wonderful bedquilt, and a fine linen shirt with hem-stitched
+bands, poured in upon him. He burned with angry blushes when his
+mother, smiling meaningly, passed them over to him. "Put them away,
+mother; I don't want them," he would growl out, in a distress that
+was half comic and half pathetic. He would never taste of the
+tempting viands which were brought to him. "How you act, Thomas!" his
+mother would say. She was secretly elated by these feminine libations
+upon the altar of her son. They did not grate upon her sensibilities,
+which were not delicate. She even tried to assist two or three of the
+young women in their designs; she would often praise them and their
+handiwork to her son--and in this she was aided by an old woman aunt
+of hers who lived with the family. "Nancy Winslow is as handsome a
+girl as ever I set eyes on, an' I never see any nicer sewin'," Mrs.
+Merriam said, after the advent of the linen shirt, and she held it up
+to the light admiringly. "Jest look at that hem-stitchin'!" she said.
+
+"I guess whoever made that shirt calkilated 't would do for a weddin'
+one," said old Aunt Betty Green, and Thomas made an exclamation and
+went out of the room, tingling all over with shame and disgust.
+
+"Thomas don't act nateral," said the old woman, glancing after him
+through her iron-bound spectacles.
+
+"I dun'no' what's got into him," returned his mother.
+
+"Mebbe they foller him up a leetle too close," said Aunt Betty. "I
+dun'no' as I should have ventured on a shirt when I was a gal. I made
+a satin vest once for Joshua, but that don't seem quite as p'inted as
+a shirt. It didn't scare Joshua, nohow. He asked me to have him the
+next week."
+
+"Well, I dun'no'," said Mrs. Merriam again. "I kind of wish Thomas
+would settle on somebody, for I'm pestered most to death with 'em,
+an' I feel as if 't was kind of mean takin' all these things into the
+house."
+
+"They've 'bout kept ye in sweet cake, 'ain't they, lately?"
+
+"Yes; but I don't feel as if it was jest right for us to eat it up,
+when 't was brought for Thomas. But he won't touch it. I can't see as
+he has the least idee of any one of them. I don't believe Thomas has
+ever seen anybody he wanted for a wife."
+
+"Well, he's got the pick of 'em, a-settin' their caps right in his
+face," said Aunt Betty.
+
+Neither of them dreamed how the young man, sleeping and eating
+and living under the same roof, beloved of them since he entered
+the world, holding himself coldly aloof from this crowd of
+half-innocently, half-boldly ardent young women, had set up for
+himself his own divinity of love, before whom he consumed himself
+in vain worship. His father suspected, and that was all, and he
+never mentioned the matter again to his son.
+
+After Thomas had spoken to Evelina the weeks went on, and they never
+exchanged another word, and their eyes never met. But they dwelt
+constantly within each other's thoughts, and were ever present to
+each other's spiritual vision. Always as the young minister bent over
+his sermon-paper, laboriously tracing out with sputtering quill his
+application of the articles of the orthodox faith, Evelina's blue
+eyes seemed to look out at him between the stern doctrines like the
+eyes of an angel. And he could not turn the pages of the Holy Writ
+unless he found some passage therein which to his mind treated
+directly of her, setting forth her graces like a prophecy. "The
+fairest among women," read Thomas Merriam, and nodded his head, while
+his heart leaped with the satisfied delight of all its fancies, at
+the image of his love's fair and gentle face. "Her price is far above
+rubies," read Thomas Merriam, and he nodded his head again, and saw
+Evelina shining as with gold and pearls, more precious than all the
+jewels of the earth. In spite of all his efforts, when Thomas Merriam
+studied the Scriptures in those days he was more nearly touched by
+those old human hearts which throbbed down to his through the ages,
+welding the memories of their old loves to his living one until they
+seemed to prove its eternity, than by the Messianic prophecies. Often
+he spent hours upon his knees, but arose with Evelina's face before
+his very soul in spite of all.
+
+And as for Evelina, she tended the flowers in the elder Evelina's
+garden with her poor cousin, whose own love-dreams had been
+illustrated as it were by the pinks and lilies blooming around them
+when they had all gone out of her heart, and Thomas Merriam's
+half-bold, half-imploring eyes looked up at her out of every flower
+and stung her heart like bees. Poor young Evelina feared much lest
+she had offended Thomas, and yet her own maiden decorum had been
+offended by him, and she had offended it herself, and she was faint
+with shame and distress when she thought of it. How had she been so
+bold and shameless as to give him that look at the meeting-house? and
+how had he been so cruel as to accost her afterwards? She told
+herself she had done right for the maintenance of her own maiden
+dignity, and yet she feared lest she had angered him and hurt him.
+"Suppose he had been fretted by her coolness?" she thought, and then
+a great wave of tender pity went over her heart, and she would almost
+have spoken to him of her own accord. But then she would reflect how
+he continued to write such beautiful sermons, and prove so clearly
+and logically the tenets of the faith; and how could he do that with
+a mind in distress? Scarcely could she herself tend the flower-beds
+as she should, nor set her embroidery stitches finely and evenly, she
+was so ill at ease. It must be that Thomas had not given the matter
+an hour's worry, since he continued to do his work so faithfully and
+well. And then her own heart would be sorer than ever with the belief
+that his was happy and at rest, although she would chide herself for
+it.
+
+And yet this young Evelina was a philosopher and an analyst of human
+nature in a small way, and she got some slight comfort out of a
+shrewd suspicion that the heart of a man might love and suffer on a
+somewhat different principle from the heart of a woman. "It may be,"
+thought Evelina, sitting idle over her embroidery with far-away blue
+eyes, "that a man's heart can always turn a while from love to other
+things as weighty and serious, although he be just as fond, while a
+woman's heart is always fixed one way by loving, and cannot be turned
+unless it breaks. And it may be wise," thought young Evelina, "else
+how could the state be maintained and governed, battles for
+independence be fought, and even souls be saved, and the gospel
+carried to the heathen, if men could not turn from the concerns of
+their own hearts more easily than women? Women should be patient,"
+thought Evelina, "and consider that if they suffer 't is due to the
+lot which a wise Providence has given them."  And yet tears welled up
+in her earnest blue eyes and fell over her fair cheeks and wet the
+embroidery--when the elder Evelina was not looking, as she seldom
+was. The elder Evelina was kind to her young cousin, but there were
+days when she seemed to dwell alone in her own thoughts, apart from
+the whole world, and she seldom spoke either to Evelina or her old
+servant-man.
+
+Young Evelina, trying to atone for her former indiscretion and
+establish herself again on her height of maiden reserve in Thomas
+Merriam's eyes, sat resolutely in the meeting-house of a Sabbath day,
+with her eyes cast down, and after service she glided swiftly down
+the aisle and was out of the door before the young minister could
+much more than descend the pulpit stairs, unless he ran an indecorous
+race.
+
+And young Evelina never at twilight strolled up the road in the
+direction of Thomas Merriam's home, where she might quite reasonably
+hope to meet him, since he was wont to go to the store when the
+evening stage-coach came in with the mail from Boston.
+
+Instead she paced the garden paths, or, when there was not too heavy
+a dew, rambled across the fields; and there was also a lane where she
+loved to walk. Whether or not Thomas Merriam suspected this, or had
+ever seen, as he passed the mouth of the lane, the flutter of
+maidenly draperies in the distance, it so happened that one evening
+he also went a-walking there, and met Evelina. He had entered the
+lane from the highway, and she from the fields at the head. So he saw
+her first afar off, and could not tell fairly whether her light
+muslin skirt might not be only a white-flowering bush. For, since his
+outlook upon life had been so full of Evelina, he had found that
+often the most common and familiar things would wear for a second a
+look of her to startle him. And many a time his heart had leaped at
+the sight of a white bush ahead stirring softly in the evening wind,
+and he had thought it might be she. Now he said to himself
+impatiently that this was only another fancy; but soon he saw that it
+was indeed Evelina, in a light muslin gown, with a little lace
+kerchief on her head. His handsome young face was white; his lips
+twitched nervously; but he reached out and pulled a spray of white
+flowers from a bush, and swung it airily to hide his agitation as he
+advanced.
+
+As for Evelina, when she first espied Thomas she started and half
+turned, as if to go back; then she held up her white-kerchiefed head
+with gentle pride and kept on. When she came up to Thomas she walked
+so far to one side that her muslin skirt was in danger of catching
+and tearing on the bushes, and she never raised her eyes, and not a
+flicker of recognition stirred her sweet pale face as she passed him.
+
+But Thomas started as if she had struck him, and dropped his spray of
+white flowers, and could not help a smothered cry that was half a
+sob, as he went on, knocking blindly against the bushes. He went a
+little way, then he stopped and looked back with his piteous hurt
+eyes. And Evelina had stopped also, and she had the spray of white
+flowers which he had dropped, in her hand, and her eyes met his. Then
+she let the flowers fall again, and clapped both her little hands to
+her face to cover it, and turned to run; but Thomas was at her side,
+and he put out his hand and held her softly by her white arm.
+
+"Oh," he panted, "I--did not mean to be--too presuming, and offend
+you. I--crave your pardon--"
+
+Evelina had recovered herself. She stood with her little hands
+clasped, and her eyes cast down before him, but not a quiver stirred
+her pale face, which seemed turned to marble by this last effort of
+her maiden pride. "I have nothing to pardon," said she. "It was I,
+whose bold behavior, unbecoming a modest and well-trained young
+woman, gave rise to what seemed like presumption on your part."  The
+sense of justice was strong within her, but she made her speech
+haughtily and primly, as if she had learned it by rote from some
+maiden school-mistress, and pulled her arm away and turned to go; but
+Thomas's words stopped her.
+
+"Not--unbecoming if it came--from the heart," said he, brokenly,
+scarcely daring to speak, and yet not daring to be silent.
+
+Then Evelina turned on him, with a sudden strange pride that lay
+beneath all other pride, and was of a nobler and truer sort. "Do you
+think I would have given you the look that I did if it had not come
+from my heart?" she demanded. "What did you take me to be--false and
+a jilt? I may be a forward young woman, who has overstepped the
+bounds of maidenly decorum, and I shall never get over the shame of
+it, but I am truthful, and I am no jilt."  The brilliant color flamed
+out on Evelina's cheeks. Her blue eyes met Thomas's with that courage
+of innocence and nature which dares all shame. But it was only for a
+second; the tears sprang into them. "I beg you to let me go home,"
+she said, pitifully; but Thomas caught her in his arms, and pressed
+her troubled maiden face against his breast.
+
+"Oh, I love you so!" he whispered--"I love you so, Evelina, and I was
+afraid you were angry with me for it."
+
+"And I was afraid," she faltered, half weeping and half shrinking
+from him, "lest you were angry with me for betraying the state of my
+feelings, when you could not return them."  And even then she used
+that gentle formality of expression with which she had been taught by
+her maiden preceptors to veil decorously her most ardent emotions.
+And, in truth, her training stood her in good stead in other ways;
+for she presently commanded, with that mild dignity of hers which
+allowed of no remonstrance, that Thomas should take away his arm from
+her waist, and give her no more kisses for that time.
+
+"It is not becoming for any one," said she, "and much less for a
+minister of the gospel. And as for myself, I know not what Mistress
+Perkins would say to me. She has a mind much above me, I fear."
+
+"Mistress Perkins is enjoying her mind in Boston," said Thomas
+Merriam, with the laugh of a triumphant young lover.
+
+But Evelina did not laugh. "It might be well for both you and me if
+she were here," said she, seriously. However, she tempered a little
+her decorous following of Mistress Perkins's precepts, and she and
+Thomas went hand in hand up the lane and across the fields.
+
+There was no dew that night, and the moon was full. It was after nine
+o'clock when Thomas left her at the gate in the fence which separated
+Evelina Adams's garden from the field, and watched her disappear
+between the flowers. The moon shone full on the garden. Evelina
+walked as it were over a silver dapple, which her light gown seemed
+to brush away and dispel for a moment. The bushes stood in sweet
+mysterious clumps of shadow.
+
+Evelina had almost reached the house, and was close to the great
+althea bush, which cast a wide circle of shadow, when it seemed
+suddenly to separate and move into life.
+
+The elder Evelina stepped out from the shadow of the bush. "Is that
+you, Evelina?" she said, in her soft, melancholy voice, which had in
+it a nervous vibration.
+
+"Yes, Cousin Evelina."
+
+The elder Evelina's pale face, drooped about with gray curls, had an
+unfamiliar, almost uncanny, look in the moonlight, and might have
+been the sorrowful visage of some marble nymph, lovelorn, with
+unceasing grace. "Who--was with you?" she asked.
+
+"The minister," replied young Evelina.
+
+"Did he meet you?"
+
+"He met me in the lane, Cousin Evelina."
+
+"And he walked home with you across the field?"
+
+"Yes, Cousin Evelina."
+
+Then the two entered the house, and nothing more was said about the
+matter. Young Evelina and Thomas Merriam agreed that their affection
+was to be kept a secret for a while. "For," said young Evelina, "I
+cannot leave Cousin Evelina yet a while, and I cannot have her
+pestered with thinking about it, at least before another spring, when
+she has the garden fairly growing again."
+
+"That is nearly a whole year; it is August now," said Thomas, half
+reproachfully, and he tightened his clasp of Evelina's slender
+fingers.
+
+"I cannot help that," replied Evelina. "It is for you to show
+Christian patience more than I, Thomas. If you could have seen poor
+Cousin Evelina, as I have seen her, through the long winter days,
+when her garden is dead, and she has only the few plants in her
+window left! When she is not watering and tending them she sits all
+day in the window and looks out over the garden and the naked bushes
+and the withered flower-stalks. She used not to be so, but would read
+her Bible and good books, and busy herself somewhat over fine
+needle-work, and at one time she was compiling a little floral book,
+giving a list of the flowers, and poetical selections and sentiments
+appropriate to each. That was her pastime for three winters, and it
+is now nearly done; but she has given that up, and all the rest, and
+sits there in the window and grows older and feebler until spring. It
+is only I who can divert her mind, by reading aloud to her and
+singing; and sometimes I paint the flowers she loves the best on
+card-board with water-colors. I have a poor skill in it, but Cousin
+Evelina can tell which flower I have tried to represent, and it
+pleases her greatly. I have even seen her smile. No, I cannot leave
+her, nor even pester her with telling her before another spring, and
+you must wait, Thomas," said young Evelina.
+
+And Thomas agreed, as he was likely to do to all which she proposed
+which touched not his own sense of right and honor. Young Evelina
+gave Thomas one more kiss for his earnest pleading, and that night
+wrote out the tale in her journal. "It may be that I overstepped the
+bounds of maidenly decorum," wrote Evelina, "but my heart did so
+entreat me," and no blame whatever did she lay upon Thomas.
+
+Young Evelina opened her heart only to her journal, and her cousin
+was told nothing, and had little cause for suspicion. Thomas Merriam
+never came to the house to see his sweetheart; he never walked home
+with her from meeting. Both were anxious to avoid village gossip,
+until the elder Evelina could be told.
+
+Often in the summer evenings the lovers met, and strolled hand in
+hand across the fields, and parted at the garden gate with the one
+kiss which Evelina allowed, and that was all.
+
+Sometimes when young Evelina came in with her lover's kiss still warm
+upon her lips the elder Evelina looked at her wistfully, with a
+strange retrospective expression in her blue eyes, as if she were
+striving to remember something that the girl's face called to mind.
+And yet she could have had nothing to remember except dreams.
+
+And once, when young Evelina sat sewing through a long summer
+afternoon and thinking about her lover, the elder Evelina, who was
+storing rose leaves mixed with sweet spices in a jar, said, suddenly,
+"He looks as his father used to."
+
+Young Evelina started. "Whom do you mean, Cousin Evelina?" she asked,
+wonderingly; for the elder Evelina had not glanced at her, nor even
+seemed to address her at all.
+
+"Nothing," said the elder Evelina, and a soft flush stole over her
+withered face and neck, and she sprinkled more cassia on the rose
+leaves in the jar.
+
+Young Evelina said no more; but she wondered, partly because Thomas
+was always in her mind, and it seemed to her naturally that nearly
+everything must have a savor of meaning of him, if her cousin Evelina
+could possibly have referred to him and his likeness to his father.
+For it was commonly said that Thomas looked very like his father,
+although his figure was different. The young man was taller and more
+firmly built, and he had not the meek forward curve of shoulder which
+had grown upon his father of late years.
+
+When the frosty nights came Thomas and Evelina could not meet and
+walk hand in hand over the fields behind the Squire's house, and they
+very seldom could speak to each other. It was nothing except a
+"good-day" on the street, and a stolen glance, which set them both
+a-trembling lest all the congregation had noticed, in the
+meeting-house. When the winter set fairly in they met no more, for
+the elder Evelina was taken ill, and her young cousin did not leave
+her even to go to meeting. People said they guessed it was Evelina
+Adams's last sickness, and they furthermore guessed that she would
+divide her property between her cousin Martha Loomis and her two
+girls and Evelina Leonard, and that Evelina would have the house as
+her share.
+
+Thomas Merriam heard this last with a satisfaction which he did not
+try to disguise from himself, because he never dreamed of there being
+any selfish element in it. It was all for Evelina. Many a time he had
+looked about the humble house where he had been born, and where he
+would have to take Evelina after he had married her, and striven to
+see its poor features with her eyes--not with his, for which
+familiarity had tempered them. Often, as he sat with his parents in
+the old sitting-room, in which he had kept so far an unquestioning
+belief, as in a friend of his childhood, the scales of his own
+personality would fall suddenly from his eyes. Then he would see, as
+Evelina, the poor, worn, humble face of his home, and his heart would
+sink. "I don't see how I ever can bring her here," he thought. He
+began to save, a few cents at a time, out of his pitiful salary, to
+at least beautify his own chamber a little when Evelina should come.
+He made up his mind that she should have a little dressing-table,
+with an oval mirror, and a white muslin frill around it, like one he
+had seen in Boston. "She shall have that to sit before while she
+combs her hair," he thought, with defiant tenderness, when he stowed
+away another shilling in a little box in his trunk. It was money
+which he ordinarily bestowed upon foreign missions; but his Evelina
+had come between him and the heathen. To procure some dainty
+furnishings for her bridal-chamber he took away a good half of his
+tithes for the spread of the gospel in the dark lands. Now and then
+his conscience smote him, he felt shamefaced before his deacons, but
+Evelina kept her first claim. He resolved that another year he would
+hire a piece of land, and combine farming with his ministerial work,
+and so try to eke out his salary, and get a little more money to
+beautify his poor home for his bride.
+
+Now if Evelina Adams had come to the appointed time for the closing
+of her solitary life, and if her young cousin should inherit a share
+of her goodly property and the fine old mansion-house, all necessity
+for anxiety of this kind was over. Young Evelina would not need to be
+taken away, for the sake of her love, from all these comforts and
+luxuries. Thomas Merriam rejoiced innocently, without a thought for
+himself.
+
+In the course of the winter he confided in his father; he couldn't
+keep it to himself any longer. Then there was another reason. Seeing
+Evelina so little made him at times almost doubt the reality of it
+all. There were days when he was depressed, and inclined to ask
+himself if he had not dreamed it. Telling somebody gave it substance.
+
+His father listened soberly when he told him; he had grown old of
+late.
+
+"Well," said he, "she 'ain't been used to living the way you have,
+though you have had advantages that none of your folks ever had; but
+if she likes you, that's all there is to it, I s'pose."
+
+The old man sighed wearily. He sat in his arm-chair at the kitchen
+fireplace; his wife had gone in to one of the neighbors, and the two
+were alone.
+
+"Of course," said Thomas, simply, "if Evelina Adams shouldn't live,
+the chances are that I shouldn't have to bring her here. She wouldn't
+have to give up anything on my account--you know that, father."
+
+Then the young man started, for his father turned suddenly on him
+with a pale, wrathful face. "You ain't countin' on that!" he shouted.
+"You ain't countin' on that--a son of mine countin' on anything like
+that!"
+
+Thomas colored. "Why, father," he stammered, "you don't think--you
+know, it's all for _her_--and they say she can't live anyway. I had
+never thought of such a thing before. I was wondering how I could
+make it comfortable for Evelina here."
+
+But his father did not seem to listen. "Countin' on that!" he
+repeated. "Countin' on a poor old soul, that 'ain't ever had anything
+to set her heart on but a few posies, dyin' to make room for other
+folks to have what she's been cheated out on. Countin' on that!"  The
+old man's voice broke into a hoarse sob; he got up, and went
+hurriedly out of the room.
+
+"Why, father!" his son called after him, in alarm. He got up to
+follow him, but his father waved him back and shut the door hard.
+
+"Father must be getting childish," Thomas thought, wonderingly. He
+did not bring up the subject to him again.
+
+Evelina Adams died in March. One morning the bell tolled seventy long
+melancholy tones before people had eaten their breakfasts. They ran
+to their doors and counted. "It's her," they said, nodding, when they
+had waited a little after the seventieth stroke. Directly Mrs. Martha
+Loomis and her two girls were seen hustling importantly down the
+road, with their shawls over their heads, to the Squire's house.
+"Mis' Loomis can lay her out," they said. "It ain't likely that young
+Evelina knows anything about such things. Guess she'll be thankful
+she's got somebody to call on now, if she 'ain't mixed much with the
+Loomises."  Then they wondered when the funeral would be, and the
+women furbished up their black gowns and bonnets, and even in a few
+cases drove to the next town and borrowed from relatives; but there
+was a great disappointment in store for them.
+
+Evelina Adams died on a Saturday. The next day it was announced from
+the pulpit that the funeral would be private, by the particular
+request of the deceased. Evelina Adams had carried her delicate
+seclusion beyond death, to the very borders of the grave. Nobody,
+outside the family, was bidden to the funeral, except the doctor, the
+minister, and the two deacons of the church. They were to be the
+bearers. The burial also was to be private, in the Squire's family
+burial-lot, at the north of the house. The bearers would carry the
+coffin across the yard, and there would not only be no funeral, but
+no funeral procession, and no hearse. "It don't seem scarcely
+decent," the women whispered to each other; "and more than all that,
+she ain't goin' to be _seen_."  The deacons' wives were especially
+disturbed by this last, as they might otherwise have gained many
+interesting particulars by proxy.
+
+Monday was the day set for the burial. Early in the morning old
+Thomas Merriam walked feebly up the road to the Squire's house.
+People noticed him as he passed. "How terribly fast he's grown old
+lately!" they said. He opened the gate which led into the Squire's
+front yard with fumbling fingers, and went up the walk to the front
+door, under the Corinthian pillars, and raised the brass knocker.
+
+Evelina opened the door, and started and blushed when she saw him.
+She had been crying; there were red rings around her blue eyes, and
+her pretty lips were swollen. She tried to smile at Thomas's father,
+and she held out her hand with shy welcome.
+
+"I want to see her," the old man said, abruptly.
+
+Evelina started, and looked at him wonderingly. "I--don't believe--I
+know who you mean," said she. "Do you want to see Mrs. Loomis?"
+
+"No; I want to see her."
+
+"_Her?_"
+
+"Yes, _her_."
+
+Evelina turned pale as she stared at him. There was something strange
+about his face. "But--Cousin Evelina," she faltered--"she--didn't
+want-- Perhaps you don't know: she left special directions that
+nobody was to look at her."
+
+"I _want to see her_," said the old man, and Evelina gave way. She
+stood aside for him to enter, and led him into the great north
+parlor, where Evelina Adams lay in her mournful state. The shutters
+were closed, and one on entering could distinguish nothing but that
+long black shadow in the middle of the room. Young Evelina opened a
+shutter a little way, and a slanting shaft of spring sunlight came in
+and shot athwart the coffin. The old man tiptoed up and leaned over
+and looked at the dead woman. Evelina Adams had left further
+instructions about her funeral, which no one understood, but which
+were faithfully carried out. She wished, she had said, to be attired
+for her long sleep in a certain rose-colored gown, laid away in rose
+leaves and lavender in a certain chest in a certain chamber. There
+were also silken hose and satin shoes with it, and these were to be
+put on, and a wrought lace tucker fastened with a pearl brooch.
+
+It was the costume she had worn one Sabbath day back in her youth,
+when she had looked across the meeting-house and her eyes had met
+young Thomas Merriam's; but nobody knew nor remembered; even young
+Evelina thought it was simply a vagary of her dead cousin's.
+
+"It don't seem to me decent to lay away anybody dressed so," said
+Mrs. Martha Loomis; "but of course last wishes must be respected."
+
+The two Loomis girls said they were thankful nobody was to see the
+departed in her rose-colored shroud.
+
+Even old Thomas Merriam, leaning over poor Evelina, cold and dead in
+the garb of her youth, did not remember it, and saw no meaning in it.
+He looked at her long. The beautiful color was all faded out of the
+yellow-white face; the sweet full lips were set and thin; the closed
+blue eyes sunken in dark hollows; the yellow hair showed a line of
+gray at the edge of her old woman's cap, and thin gray curls lay
+against the hollow cheeks. But old Thomas Merriam drew a long breath
+when he looked at her. It was like a gasp of admiration and wonder; a
+strange rapture came into his dim eyes; his lips moved as if he
+whispered to her, but young Evelina could not hear a sound. She
+watched him, half frightened, but finally he turned to her. "I 'ain't
+seen her--fairly," said he, hoarsely--"I 'ain't seen her, savin' a
+glimpse of her at the window, for over forty year, and she 'ain't
+changed, not a look. I'd have known her anywheres. She's the same as
+she was when she was a girl. It's wonderful--wonderful!"
+
+Young Evelina shrank a little. "We think she looks natural," she
+said, hesitatingly.
+
+"She looks jest as she did when she was a girl and used to come into
+the meetin'-house. She _is_ jest the same," the old man repeated, in
+his eager, hoarse voice. Then he bent over the coffin, and his lips
+moved again. Young Evelina would have called Mrs. Loomis, for she was
+frightened, had he not been Thomas's father, and had it not been for
+her vague feeling that there might be some old story to explain this
+which she had never heard. "Maybe he was in love with poor Cousin
+Evelina, as Thomas is with me," thought young Evelina, using her own
+leaping-pole of love to land straight at the truth. But she never
+told her surmise to any one except Thomas, and that was long
+afterwards, when the old man was dead. Now she watched him with her
+blue dilated eyes. But soon he turned away from the coffin and made
+his way straight out of the room, without a word. Evelina followed
+him through the entry and opened the outer door. He turned on the
+threshold and looked back at her, his face working.
+
+"Don't ye go to lottin' too much on what ye're goin' to get through
+folks that have died an' not had anything," he said; and he shook his
+head almost fiercely at her.
+
+"No, I won't. I don't think I understand what you mean, sir,"
+stammered Evelina.
+
+The old man stood looking at her a moment. Suddenly she saw the tears
+rolling over his old cheeks. "I'm much obliged to ye for lettin' of
+me see her," he said, hoarsely, and crept feebly down the steps.
+
+Evelina went back trembling to the room where her dead cousin lay,
+and covered her face, and closed the shutter again. Then she went
+about her household duties, wondering. She could not understand what
+it all meant; but one thing she understood--that in some way this old
+dead woman, Evelina Adams, had gotten immortal youth and beauty in
+one human heart. "She looked to him just as she did when she was a
+girl," Evelina kept thinking to herself with awe. She said nothing
+about it to Mrs. Martha Loomis or her daughters. They had been in the
+back part of the house, and had not heard old Thomas Merriam come in,
+and they never knew about it.
+
+Mrs. Loomis and the two girls stayed in the house day and night until
+after the funeral. They confidently expected to live there in the
+future. "It isn't likely that Evelina Adams thought a young woman no
+older than Evelina Leonard could live here alone in this great house
+with nobody but that old Sarah Judd. It would not be proper nor
+becoming," said Martha Loomis to her two daughters; and they agreed,
+and brought over many of their possessions under cover of night to
+the Squire's house during the interval before the funeral.
+
+But after the funeral and the reading of the will the Loomises made
+sundry trips after dusk back to their old home, with their best
+petticoats and cloaks over their arms, and their bonnets dangling by
+their strings at their sides. For Evelina Adams's last will and
+testament had been read, and therein provision was made for the
+continuance of the annuity heretofore paid them for their support,
+with the condition affixed that not one night should they spend after
+the reading of the will in the house known as the Squire Adams house.
+The annuity was an ample one, and would provide the widow Martha
+Loomis and her daughters, as it had done before, with all the
+needfuls of life; but upon hearing the will they stiffened their
+double chins into their kerchiefs with indignation, for they had
+looked for more.
+
+Evelina Adams's will was a will of conditions, for unto it she had
+affixed two more, and those affected her beloved cousin Evelina
+Leonard. It was notable that "beloved" had not preceded her cousin
+Martha Loomis's name in the will. No pretence of love, when she felt
+none, had she ever made in her life. The entire property of Evelina
+Adams, spinster, deceased, with the exception of Widow Martha
+Loomis's provision, fell to this beloved young Evelina Leonard,
+subject to two conditions--firstly, she was never to enter into
+matrimony, with any person whomsoever, at any time whatsoever;
+secondly, she was never to let the said spinster Evelina Adams's
+garden, situated at the rear and southward of the house known as the
+Squire Adams house, die through any neglect of hers. Due allowance
+was to be made for the dispensations of Providence: for hail and
+withering frost and long-continued drought, and for times wherein the
+said Evelina Leonard might, by reason of being confined to the house
+by sickness, be prevented from attending to the needs of the growing
+plants, and the verdict in such cases was to rest with the minister
+and the deacons of the church. But should this beloved Evelina love
+and wed, or should she let, through any wilful neglect, that garden
+perish in the season of flowers, all that goodly property would she
+forfeit to a person unknown, whose name, enclosed in a sealed
+envelope, was to be held meantime in the hands of the executor, who
+had also drawn up the will, Lawyer Joshua Lang.
+
+There was great excitement in the village over this strange and
+unwonted will. Some were there who held that Evelina Adams had not
+been of sound mind, and it should be contested. It was even rumored
+that Widow Martha Loomis had visited Lawyer Joshua Lang and broached
+the subject, but he had dismissed the matter peremptorily by telling
+her that Evelina Adams, spinster, deceased, had been as much in her
+right mind at the time of drawing the will as anybody of his
+acquaintance.
+
+"Not setting store by relations, and not wanting to have them under
+your roof, doesn't go far in law nor common-sense to send folks to
+the madhouse," old Lawyer Lang, who was famed for his sharp tongue,
+was reported to have said. However, Mrs. Martha Loomis was somewhat
+comforted by her firm belief that either her own name or that of one
+of her daughters was in that sealed envelope kept by Lawyer Joshua
+Lang in his strong-box, and by her firm purpose to watch carefully
+lest Evelina prove derelict in fulfilling the two conditions whereby
+she held the property.
+
+Larger peep-holes were soon cut away mysteriously in the high
+arbor-vitae hedge, and therein were often set for a few moments, when
+they passed that way, the eager eyes of Mrs. Martha or her daughter
+Flora or Fidelia Loomis. Frequent calls they also made upon Evelina,
+living alone with the old woman Sarah Judd, who had been called in
+during her cousin's illness, and they strolled into the garden,
+spying anxiously for withered leaves or dry stalks. They at every
+opportunity interviewed the old man who assisted Evelina in her care
+of the garden concerning its welfare. But small progress they made
+with him, standing digging at the earth with his spade while they
+talked, as if in truth his wits had gone therein before his body and
+he would uncover them.
+
+Moreover, Mrs. Martha Loomis talked much slyly to mothers of young
+men, and sometimes with bold insinuations to the young men
+themselves, of the sad lot of poor young Evelina, condemned to a
+solitary and loveless life, and of her sweetness and beauty and
+desirability in herself, although she could not bring the old
+Squire's money to her husband. And once, but no more than that, she
+touched lightly upon the subject to the young minister, Thomas
+Merriam, when he was making a pastoral call.
+
+"My heart bleeds for the poor child living all alone in that great
+house," said she. And she looked down mournfully, and did not see how
+white the young minister's face turned. "It seems almost a pity,"
+said she, furthermore--"Evelina is a good housekeeper, and has rare
+qualities in herself, and so many get poor wives nowadays--that some
+godly young man should not court her in spite of the will. I doubt,
+too, if she would not have a happier lot than growing old over that
+garden, as poor Cousin Evelina did before her, even if she has a fine
+house to live in and a goodly sum in the bank. She looks pindling
+enough lately. I'll warrant she has lost a good ten pound since poor
+Evelina was laid away, and--"
+
+But Thomas Merriam cut her short. "I see no profit in discussing
+matters which do not concern us," said he, and only his ministerial
+estate saved him from the charge of impertinence.
+
+As it was, Martha Loomis colored high. "I'll warrant he'll look out
+which side his bread is buttered on; ministers always do," she said
+to her daughters after he had gone. She never dreamed how her talk
+had cut him to the heart.
+
+Had he not seen more plainly than any one else, Sunday after Sunday,
+when he glanced down at her once or twice cautiously from his pulpit,
+how weary-looking and thin she was growing? And her bright color was
+wellnigh gone, and there were pitiful downward lines at the corners
+of her sweet mouth. Poor young Evelina was fading like one of her own
+flowers, as if some celestial gardener had failed in his care of her.
+And Thomas saw it, and in his heart of hearts he knew the reason, and
+yet he would not yield. Not once had he entered the old Squire's
+house since he attended the dead Evelina's funeral, and stood praying
+and eulogizing, with her coffin between him and the living Evelina,
+with her pale face shrouded in black bombazine. He had never spoken
+to her since, nor entered the house; but he had written her a letter,
+in which all the fierce passion and anguish of his heart was cramped
+and held down by formal words and phrases, and poor young Evelina did
+not see beneath them. When her lover wrote her that he felt it
+inconsistent with his Christian duty and the higher aims of his
+existence to take any further steps towards a matrimonial alliance,
+she felt merely that Thomas either cared no more for her, or had come
+to consider, upon due reflection, that she was not fit to undertake
+the responsible position of a minister's wife. "It may be that in
+some way I failed in my attendance upon Cousin Evelina," thought poor
+young Evelina, "or it may be that he thinks I have not enough dignity
+of character to inspire respect among the older women in the church."
+ And sometimes, with a sharp thrust of misery that shook her out of
+her enforced patience and meekness, she wondered if indeed her own
+loving freedom with him had turned him against her, and led him in
+his later and sober judgment to consider her too light-minded for a
+minister's wife. "It may be that I was guilty of great indecorum, and
+almost indeed forfeited my claim to respect for maidenly modesty,
+inasmuch as I suffered him to give me kisses, and did almost bring
+myself to return them in kind. But my heart did so entreat me, and in
+truth it seemed almost like a lack of sincerity for me to wholly
+withstand it," wrote poor young Evelina in her journal at that time;
+and she further wrote: "It is indeed hard for one who has so little
+knowledge to be fully certain of what is or is not becoming and a
+Christian duty in matters of this kind; but if I have in any manner,
+through my ignorance or unwarrantable affection, failed, and so lost
+the love and respect of a good man, and the opportunity to become his
+helpmeet during life, I pray that I may be forgiven--for I sinned not
+wilfully--that the lesson may be sanctified unto me, and that I may
+live as the Lord order, in Christian patience and meekness, and not
+repining."  It never occurred to young Evelina that possibly Thomas
+Merriam's sense of duty might be strengthened by the loss of all her
+cousin's property should she marry him, and neither did she dream
+that he might hesitate to take her from affluence into poverty for
+her own sake. For herself the property, as put in the balance beside
+her love, was lighter than air itself. It was so light that it had no
+place in her consciousness. She simply had thought, upon hearing the
+will, of Martha Loomis and her daughters in possession of the
+property, and herself with Thomas, with perfect acquiescence and
+rapture.
+
+Evelina Adams's disapprobation of her marriage, which was supposedly
+expressed in the will, had indeed, without reference to the property,
+somewhat troubled her tender heart, but she told herself that Cousin
+Evelina had not known she had promised to marry Thomas; that she
+would not wish her to break her solemn promise. And furthermore, it
+seemed to her quite reasonable that the condition had been inserted
+in the will mainly through concern for the beloved garden.
+
+"Cousin Evelina might have thought perhaps I would let the flowers
+die when I had a husband and children to take care of," said Evelina.
+And so she had disposed of all the considerations which had disturbed
+her, and had thought of no others.
+
+She did not answer Thomas's letter. It was so worded that it seemed
+to require no reply, and she felt that he must be sure of her
+acquiescence in whatever he thought best. She laid the letter away in
+a little rosewood box, in which she had always kept her dearest
+treasures since her school-days. Sometimes she took it out and read
+it, and it seemed to her that the pain in her heart would put an end
+to her in spite of all her prayers for Christian fortitude; and yet
+she could not help reading it again.
+
+It was seldom that she stole a look at her old lover as he stood in
+the pulpit in the meeting-house, but when she did she thought with an
+anxious pang that he looked worn and ill, and that night she prayed
+that the Lord would restore his health to him for the sake of his
+people.
+
+It was four months after Evelina Adams's death, and her garden was in
+the full glory of midsummer, when one evening, towards dusk, young
+Evelina went slowly down the street. She seldom walked abroad now,
+but kept herself almost as secluded as her cousin had done before
+her. But that night a great restlessness was upon her, and she put a
+little black silk shawl over her shoulders and went out. It was quite
+cool, although it was midsummer. The dusk was deepening fast; the
+katydids called back and forth from the wayside bushes. Evelina met
+nobody for some distance. Then she saw a man coming towards her, and
+her heart stood still, and she was about to turn back, for she
+thought for a minute it was the young minister. Then she saw it was
+his father, and she went on slowly, with her eyes downcast. When she
+met him she looked up and said good-evening, gravely, and would have
+passed on, but he stood in her way.
+
+"I've got a word to say to ye, if ye'll listen," he said.
+
+Evelina looked at him tremblingly. There was something strained and
+solemn in his manner. "I'll hear whatever you have to say, sir," she
+said.
+
+The old man leaned his pale face over her and raised a shaking
+forefinger. "I've made up my mind to say something," said he. "I
+don't know as I've got any right to, and maybe my son will blame me,
+but I'm goin' to see that you have a chance. It's been borne in upon
+me that women folks don't always have a fair chance. It's jest this
+I'm goin' to say: I don't know whether you know how my son feels
+about it or not. I don't know how open he's been with you. Do you
+know jest why he quit you?"
+
+Evelina shook her head. "No," she panted--"I don't--I never knew. He
+said it was his duty."
+
+"Duty can get to be an idol of wood and stone, an' I don't know but
+Thomas's is," said the old man. "Well, I'll tell you. He don't think
+it's right for him to marry you, and make you leave that big house,
+and lose all that money. He don't care anything about it for himself,
+but it's for you. Did you know that?"
+
+Evelina grasped the old man's arm hard with her little fingers.
+
+"You don't mean that--was why he did it!" she gasped.
+
+"Yes, that was why."
+
+Evelina drew away from him. She was ashamed to have Thomas's father
+see the joy in her face. "Thank you, sir," she said. "I did not
+understand. I--will write to him."
+
+"Maybe my son will think I have done wrong coming betwixt him and his
+idees of duty," said old Thomas Merriam, "but sometimes there's a
+good deal lost for lack of a word, and I wanted you to have a fair
+chance an' a fair say. It's been borne in upon me that women folks
+don't always have it. Now you can do jest as you think best, but you
+must remember one thing--riches ain't all. A little likin' for you
+that's goin' to last, and keep honest and faithful to you as long as
+you live, is worth more; an' it's worth more to women folks than 't
+is to men, an' it's worth enough to them. My son's poorly. His mother
+and I are worried about him. He don't eat nor sleep--walks his
+chamber nights. His mother don't know what the matter is, but he let
+on to me some time since."
+
+"I'll write a letter to him," gasped Evelina again. "Good-night,
+sir."  She pulled her little black silk shawl over her head and
+hastened home, and all night long her candle burned, while her weary
+little fingers toiled over pages of foolscap-paper to convince Thomas
+Merriam fully, and yet in terms not exceeding maidenly reserve, that
+the love of his heart and the companionship of his life were worth
+more to her than all the silver and gold in the world. Then the next
+morning she despatched it, all neatly folded and sealed, and waited.
+
+It was strange that a letter like that could not have moved Thomas
+Merriam, when his heart too pleaded with him so hard to be moved. But
+that might have been the very reason why he could withstand her, and
+why the consciousness of his own weakness gave him strength. Thomas
+Merriam was one, when he had once fairly laid hold of duty, to grasp
+it hard, although it might be to his own pain and death, and maybe to
+that of others. He wrote to poor young Evelina another letter, in
+which he emphasized and repeated his strict adherence to what he
+believed the line of duty in their separation, and ended it with a
+prayer for her welfare and happiness, in which, indeed, for a second,
+the passionate heart of the man showed forth. Then he locked himself
+in his chamber, and nobody ever knew what he suffered there. But one
+pang he did not suffer which Evelina would have suffered in his
+place. He mourned not over nor realized the grief of her tender heart
+when she should read his letter, otherwise he could not have sent it.
+He writhed under his own pain alone, and his duty hugged him hard,
+like the iron maiden of the old tortures, but he would not yield.
+
+As for Evelina, when she got his letter, and had read it through, she
+sat still and white for a long time, and did not seem to hear when
+old Sarah Judd spoke to her. But at last she rose and went to her
+chamber, and knelt down, and prayed for a long time; and then she
+went out in the garden and cut all the most beautiful flowers, and
+tied them in wreaths and bouquets, and carried them out to the north
+side of the house, where her cousin Evelina was buried, and covered
+her grave with them. And then she knelt down there, and hid her face
+among them, and said, in a low voice, as if in a listening ear, "I
+pray you, Cousin Evelina, forgive me for what I am about to do."
+
+And then she returned to the house, and sat at her needlework as
+usual; but the old woman kept looking at her, and asking if she were
+sick, for there was a strange look in her face.
+
+She and old Sarah Judd had always their tea at five o'clock, and put
+the candles out at nine, and this night they did as they were wont.
+But at one o'clock in the morning young Evelina stole softly down the
+stairs with her lighted candle, and passed through into the kitchen;
+and a half-hour after she came forth into the garden, which lay in
+full moonlight, and she had in her hand a steaming teakettle, and she
+passed around among the shrubs and watered them, and a white cloud of
+steam rose around them. Back and forth she went to the kitchen; for
+she had heated the great copper wash-kettle full of water; and she
+watered all the shrubs in the garden, moving amid curling white
+wreaths of steam, until the water was gone. And then she set to work
+and tore up by the roots with her little hands and trampled with her
+little feet all the beautiful tender flower-beds; all the time
+weeping, and moaning softly: "Poor Cousin Evelina! poor Cousin
+Evelina! Oh, forgive me, poor Cousin Evelina!"
+
+And at dawn the garden lay in ruin, for all the tender plants she had
+torn up by the roots and trampled down, and all the stronger-rooted
+shrubs she had striven to kill with boiling water and salt.
+
+Then Evelina went into the house, and made herself tidy as well as
+she could when she trembled so, and put her little shawl over her
+head, and went down the road to the Merriams' house. It was so early
+the village was scarcely astir, but there was smoke coming out of the
+kitchen chimney at the Merriams'; and when she knocked, Mrs. Merriam
+opened the door at once, and stared at her.
+
+"Is Sarah Judd dead?" she cried; for her first thought was that
+something must have happened when she saw the girl standing there
+with her wild pale face.
+
+"I want to see the minister," said Evelina, faintly, and she looked
+at Thomas's mother with piteous eyes.
+
+"Be you sick?" asked Mrs. Merriam. She laid a hard hand on the girl's
+arm, and led her into the sitting-room, and put her into the
+rocking-chair with the feather cushion. "You look real poorly," said
+she. "Sha'n't I get you a little of my elderberry wine?"
+
+"I want to see him," said Evelina, and she almost sobbed.
+
+"I'll go right and speak to him," said Mrs. Merriam. "He's up, I
+guess. He gets up early to write. But hadn't I better get you
+something to take first? You do look sick."
+
+But Evelina only shook her head. She had her face covered with her
+hands, and was weeping softly. Mrs. Merriam left the room, with a
+long backward glance at her. Presently the door opened and Thomas
+came in. Evelina stood up before him. Her pale face was all wet with
+tears, but there was an air of strange triumph about her.
+
+"The garden is dead," said she.
+
+"What do you mean?" he cried out, staring at her, for indeed he
+thought for a minute that her wits had left her.
+
+"The garden is dead," said she. "Last night I watered the roses with
+boiling water and salt, and I pulled the other flowers up by their
+roots. The garden is dead, and I have lost all Cousin Evelina's
+money, and it need not come between us any longer."  She said that,
+and looked up in his face with her blue eyes, through which the love
+of the whole race of loving women from which she had sprung, as well
+as her own, seemed to look, and held out her little hands; but even
+then Thomas Merriam could not understand, and stood looking at her.
+
+"Why--did you do it?" he stammered.
+
+"Because you would have me no other way, and--I couldn't bear that
+anything like that should come between us," she said, and her voice
+shook like a harp-string, and her pale face went red, then pale
+again.
+
+But Thomas still stood staring at her. Then her heart failed her. She
+thought that he did not care, and she had been mistaken. She felt as
+if it were the hour of her death, and turned to go. And then he
+caught her in his arms.
+
+"Oh," he cried, with a great sob, "the Lord make me worthy of thee,
+Evelina!"
+
+There had never been so much excitement in the village as when the
+fact of the ruined garden came to light. Flora Loomis, peeping
+through the hedge on her way to the store, had spied it first. Then
+she had run home for her mother, who had in turn sought Lawyer Lang,
+panting bonnetless down the road. But before the lawyer had started
+for the scene of disaster, the minister, Thomas Merriam, had
+appeared, and asked for a word in private with him. Nobody ever
+knew just what that word was, but the lawyer was singularly
+uncommunicative and reticent as to the ruined garden.
+
+"Do you think the young woman is out of her mind?" one of the deacons
+asked him, in a whisper.
+
+"I wish all the young women were as much in their minds; we'd have a
+better world," said the lawyer, gruffly.
+
+"When do you think we can begin to move in here?" asked Mrs. Martha
+Loomis, her wide skirts sweeping a bed of uprooted verbenas.
+
+"When your claim is established," returned the lawyer, shortly, and
+turned on his heel and went away, his dry old face scanning the
+ground like a dog on a scent. That afternoon he opened the sealed
+document in the presence of witnesses, and the name of the heir to
+whom the property fell was disclosed. It was "Thomas Merriam, the
+beloved and esteemed minister of this parish," and young Evelina
+would gain her wealth instead of losing it by her marriage. And
+furthermore, after the declaration of the name of the heir was this
+added: "This do I in the hope and belief that neither the greed of
+riches nor the fear of them shall prevent that which is good and wise
+in the sight of the Lord, and with the surety that a love which shall
+triumph over so much in its way shall endure, and shall be a blessing
+and not a curse to my beloved cousin, Evelina Leonard."
+
+Thomas Merriam and Evelina were married before the leaves fell in
+that same year, by the minister of the next village, who rode over in
+his chaise, and brought his wife, who was also a bride, and wore her
+wedding-dress of a pink and pearl shot silk. But young Evelina wore
+the blue bridal array which had been worn by old Squire Adams's
+bride, all remodelled daintily to suit the fashion of the times; and
+as she moved, the fragrances of roses and lavender of the old summers
+during which it had been laid away were evident, like sweet memories.
+
+
+
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