Hollyhock House/Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“FRAGRANT THE FERTILE EARTH AFTER SOFT
SHOWERS”
Mary’s injuries were serious. “Not necessarily dangerous, but decidedly serious,” Doctor Hall explained to the tortured Gardens.
“May be dangerous?” he echoed Jane’s question. “Surely, Jane. It all depends upon how Mary progresses. It is perfectly possible for her to develop dangerous symptoms. It is for us to do our best to prevent it. Mary is so unselfishly loving toward you all that I believe she will not give you pain in this! It wouldn’t be like her! In any case, it is something to rejoice over that the flames did not lick her sweet old-time face. Mary always has looked to me like an old daguerreotype.”
Jane turned away with impatience hard to restrain. Doctor Hall had been their physician as long as the Garden girls could remember, longer, but Jane did not want to hear him speak of Mary’s face. She did not want him to speak of anything except Mary’s condition. There was nothing left in the world to speak of nor to think of but that; all else was maddeningly unreal and intrusive. Mary lay wrapped in bandages, motionless, and, except for a few words feebly spoken occasionally, silent, patient. They did not know whether she slept most of the time, or lay enduring, weak, yet strong in submissive patience. The doctor said that there could not be a better patient. Mary gave herself up to being taken care of with the complete resignation that best coöperates with science and nursing.
Mr. Moulton had insisted upon a nurse for Mary, though Jane and Anne begged to be allowed to take care of her, promising entire obedience to Doctor Hall. But Mr. Moulton knew that it would be too hard upon those who loved her to dress Mary’s wounds. The nurse, kind, interested, faithful, was installed; Jane, Anne, Mrs. Garden were spared seeing how dreadfully hurt their beloved girl was.
For that Mary was a beloved girl to all three her danger proved. Anne’s devotion needed no proof; Jane’s adoring love for her sister had begun when she, the little baby, watched the big baby—for they were babies together—and wriggled to her as soon as she could creep. Florimel paid Mary the worship of a little sister for an older one, a tempestuous nature for a calm one, a generously ardent heart for one who deserved its best love. But now that Mary lay like the pitiful mummy of herself, now that the house was sadly deprived of her pervading unselfish presence, Mrs. Garden showed how closely this eldest daughter had grown into her love.
Jane prowled all day long, and the greater part of the night, up and down the hall, just beyond Mary’s door, or lay prostrate on the floor in the next room, her ear against the wall to catch a sound. Florimel, always restless, sat for hours on the top step of the stairs, clasping her knees with her hands, also listening, listening, all day long listening. Anne often joined Florimel here; Abbie came at intervals to ask: “Anything?” Then to go solemnly away, disappointed by the inevitable “No.” Win frankly gave up all attempt to work or to study during these days. He marched up and down the garden, often with Mark, whom Mr. Moulton released from duty. Indeed the older man was utterly unable to go on with his great book.
“What difference can it make about the flora of New York State, if our sweetest blossom is stricken?” he demanded, drawing fiercely on his extinguished pipe. Mrs. Moulton sat throughout these anxious days holding her hands, restraining nervousness by a great effort, wholly unable to accomplish any task.
All this was to be expected, for Mary was dearest of all earthly things to each of these, even to Mark, though no one but himself knew this.
But Mrs. Garden became Mary’s mother in full as she waited, watching, praying, fearing, to know whether she might keep her. No longer was she the Garden girls’ “little toy-mother,” as they had caressingly called her. She could not change her nature and become, suddenly, strong in body and dependence. All her life she must be the petted, reliant creature which habit had made her, but she proved that she could love her child and suffer keenly in the dread of losing such a daughter as Mary was. She it was who sat beside Mary’s bed, ceaselessly watching her dear face for a contortion of pain, or for a clue to a wish, or for the smile with which Mary tried to cheer her troubled family.
“I’ll be all right, little mother,” she said feebly one day. “Why don’t you go to drive? You are always here. Did that baby—is the Bell baby—better?”
Mrs. Garden knew what the word was which Mary could not bring herself to say. “The Bell baby was not badly burned, Mary. You saved her. She has suffered merely surface burns. She is in bandages, but not hurt as you are! Oh, Mary darling, and you are so much more valuable!” Mrs. Garden could not repress the cry. Mary gave her the ghost of her own smile.
“You mean you all love me best! You can’t tell about value. The Bell baby may do fine things before she is eighteen. I’m glad she is living,” Mary managed to say.
“You saved her life. I never expect to save a life in all my own life! A whole chime of Bell babies couldn’t ring the peal you do, Molly darling!” said Jane, who had come into the room.
Mary smiled at her, a better smile than she had heretofore achieved.
“Prejudice!” she whispered.
Slight as this encouragement was, Jane went away cheered. Surely taking interest in the Bell baby and discussing comparative value of lives must mean that Mary was better! Yet after this the fever which the doctor had feared set in and Mary grew worse. At times she knew no one, but begged unbearably to be taken home to her “dear old garden,” or implored for Jane, Florimel, or Anne, as the case might be. She never recalled her mother in her delirium, and, though Mrs. Moulton, moved to pity for the girlish mother for whom she had secretly felt a little contempt, carefully explained that Mary’s mind turned back to her not-distant childhood, in which her mother had no part, that it was not the Mary of that summer forgetting her, Mrs. Garden was not consoled. Finding herself excluded from Mary now by her voluntary absence from her as she grew up, showed Mrs. Garden, as nothing else could have shown her, that the loss of her little girls’ childhood was a heavy price to pay for the honour the world had heaped upon her.
“Rain, rain, rain!” Mary moaned. And again: “Rain, rain, rain!” repeated over and over, thrice each time, sometimes for a weary hour. Occasionally the lament was varied by the cry that Mary’s garden “was burning up.”
Jane knelt and said clearly, close to her ear, hoping that she might understand: “Mel and I take care of it, Mary dearest. It is watered and all right.”
But Mary’s head moved, distressed, and she repeated her trilogy: “Rain, rain, rain!”
There had been a drought of some weeks, the garden was suffering under it, although Joel Bell attached the hose to the garden reservoir and watered it. Joel was in utter anguish of mind over the disaster through which his child had so nearly died and Mary, perhaps, was to die for her.
“’Tain’t in nature not to be glad Nina May Bell is saved, but, my soul an’ body, you’ve no sort of an idee how I feel about your girl bein’ so bad hurt for her,” he repeated.
Doctor Hall said that it might be that a rainfall would benefit Mary. In her delirium she plainly mingled the suffering of her burns with the remembrance of the drought that parched her beloved blossoms. She was so sensitive, he added, to atmospheric conditions that she might be harmed by the dryness in the air.
After this Jane and Florimel watched the sky for a cloud as the shipwrecked sailor in the desert island of fiction scans it for a sail. On the third day after Doctor Hall had said that rain might help Mary toward recovery, they saw the fleecy heads of clouds in the west, white at their base, golden in the summer sunshine on their tops, the clouds which look as if one could plunge into them and fill the hands with their masses, the clouds which presage thunder. Later in the day the sky darkened into a metallic, cloudless sheet, blackened in the west to murky thickness, with a hint of yellow.
“It’s coming, madrina! Do you really think it will matter to Mary?” Jane implored.
“Oh, Jane dear, how can one tell? And I’m dreadfully afraid of lightning!” Mrs. Garden cried. These days of awful anxiety had told on her; the little woman looked wan and thin. It was the first time in her life that she had ever been called upon to live intensely and to face a real grief.
The storm broke with swift fury and raged till it had had its will of Vineclad. Then the electrical forces marched on, leaving behind them the steady, refreshing, permeating rain that the garden begged for, and for which its lover, Mary Garden, deliriously prayed.
As if Doctor Hall had been right, Mary sank into silence after the rain set in and, for the first time in several days, lay still. The beneficent rain fell quietly all the rest of the day and all night. The garden revived under it, its betterment visible from the windows, and Mary slept, with its gentle lullaby playing on the piazza roof and window panes. The Gardens dared not be glad, yet relief sounded in each voice in the household. Mr. and Mrs. Moulton and Mark, coming over through the blessed wetness, plucked up heart a little. Mr. Moulton alluded to his book for the first time since Mary was burned. If Mary were to recover, then books and science would be once more possible, worth while.
In the morning Mary opened her eyes and smiled into her mother’s, the ones in range with hers when she wakened. She touched her bandages and drew her brows trying to recall their meaning.
“Oh, now I know!” she said. “I remember. But I think I am better; I feel quite a different girl. Do you think I might have a nice little egg, madrina?”
“Oh, Mary, Molly darling! oh, my sweet, sweet girl! You may have all the eggs in the world, and all the chickens!” cried Mrs. Garden, falling on her knees in a frenzy of grateful joy.
Mary closed her eyes again with a tiny smile. “Too many—at once,” she murmured. Anne would not let any one but herself prepare the tray with Mary’s breakfast that morning. Jane and Florimel almost quarrelled with her for driving them off, but Anne was relentless.
“She’s been my child all her seventeen, going on eighteen, years, and I fed her and cared for her through every sickness she had. Now she’s asked for food I shall get her first breakfast ready, and that’s the end of it. You keep in mind how bad you wanted to do it, when you couldn’t, and wait on her hand and foot when you can, later on, when she’s getting about and tries to do for you two more than she should,” Anne delivered her ultimatum as she bustled about, getting out the little squat wedgewood teapot, the cream jug and sugar bowl that Mary had loved best as a child, and had called “Mr. and Mrs. Dumpie Short,” affectionately.
It did not need Doctor Hall’s beaming face to tell the Garden household that Mary was better and was to stay with them. Nevertheless that look on his face was a joy to see, after the anxiety that had been knitting it.
“The best of the Garden girls is going to live on, Jane and Florimel,” he said.
“With the worst of them!” cried Florimel, in a burst of happy tears. “Jane and I don’t care how high you put Mary above us. We know all about her!”
“Oh, well, I’ve seen worse little girls than you two, though Mary is about the sweetest maiden anywhere. That old word suits her, too. I’m happier than you can believe to tell you she’s safe. And her pretty face not touched, nor her fine hands scarred, beyond one mark that will last, on the right one. Her arms may be scarred. I think she may have to wear lace over them—when she goes to balls, I mean! But I had no hope, at first, of coming so near saving her from disfigurement.”
“Lace sleeves don’t matter; Mary won’t get to many sleeveless parties in Vineclad,” said Florimel. “To think we’re talking about parties! For Mary! Even if they had to be overall parties, it wouldn’t matter!”
“Right-o, kiddo!” cried Win, with a choke. “Suppose—say, Doctor, how’ll we be glad enough?”
“No need of telling any of you the best way to be glad,” said Doctor Hall, laying his hand on Win’s shoulder with a touch that expressed volumes.
Jane and Florimel, returning to Mary’s room, found their mother down on the rug before the hearth with her scrapbooks and photograph cases, rapidly emptying them. The fire was laid on the hearth, ready for lighting, and Jane hastened over to her mother to ask what she was doing. Mrs. Garden looked up at Jane, and then at Florimel, with an expression on her face so new and different that both the girls were struck by it.
“I’m going to burn it all,” she said, indicating her trophies with a comprehensive gesture.
“Madrina! What for? Indeed you’re not!” exclaimed Jane.
“This is what took me from you when you were babies; this is what kept me from you all your lovely childhood, which can never be recalled; this is what made me happy while you thought me dead. I hate it all, suddenly! If Mary had died”—she dropped her voice, glancing toward the bed, but speaking fiercely in spite of the muffled tone—“if Mary had died, and I remembered how short a time I had known her, lovely, sweet, dear Mary, for the sake of this!” Mrs. Garden wrung her hands, unable to express her horror of what had been her pride. “There’s nothing in it all, children; there’s nothing in anything on earth that draws one away from right and beautiful motherhood. Never forget that. I’ve been exactly what you called me: a toy-mother! I’m going to burn every foolish one of them!”
“No, madrina, please!” said Jane, dropping down beside her mother. “You didn’t know when you went away from us; you were so young. You had no idea that motherhood was more beautiful, made sweeter music, than your singing. Don’t be sorry; it all had to be. Do you suppose it matters how people learn things, provided they are not wicked? I imagine it’s just like school: different courses, you know. I’m a lot like you, and I can sing and act, you say. Perhaps I’d never have known that glory isn’t the best thing in the world if you hadn’t left us, and come home to tell us. Though I couldn’t have gone far from Mary! You mustn’t burn these things, little madrina! We want them; they’re our pride now, you see! It’s like bringing in the sheaves; these are the sheaves you’ve brought into the garden, and to your Garden girls. They’re ours now, madrina, because you are ours.”
Mrs. Garden stared at Jane, amazed, then dropped her head on her shoulder with a long breath of relinquishment.
“You are uncanny, Jane, positively,” she said, still speaking low, not to disturb Mary. “You can’t possibly know the things you seem to know, at your age! Every word you have said, Jane, is true and wise! How could you see all that? Mary is my sweet dependence, but you can be my teacher, thoughtful little Ruddy-locks! It’s your intuition, the intuition of an artist, Janie, that shows you truth. After all, it is a great thing to be an artist, isn’t it?”
“Oh, yes!” Jane breathed fervently. “But of course I’ve got to be Jane Garden, in the best way I can be, before I’ve a right to think of any other label. I feel ages older since Mary was hurt.”
“So do I, Jane, ages!” her mother agreed with her, as if they were girls together. “I never had much experience with life; I’ve been playing on its surface.”
“You can’t have, can you, unless you’re awfully fond of some one—like all of us now, here together?” asked Jane, suddenly embarrassed.
“More wisdom!” her mother exclaimed. “One lives in experience and feeling, not in events.” She had spoken louder than she meant to, and Mary opened her eyes, and put out her hand. “Janie and Mel, I’m going to stay right here, and I can’t help being glad not to have even heaven without my chumsters,” she said.
Florimel choked. When she was quite small, Mary had contracted the two words, “chums” and “sisters” into “chumsters,” to express the peculiar closeness of the tie between the Garden girls. Florimel had always loved it. It was so sweet to hear it now, and to know that their intimate love was not to be cruelly sundered, that she ran out of the room to be tearfully glad, alone, on the stairs. Jane jumped up, and ran over to Mary.
“I couldn’t have heaven without you, Molly darling,” she said, putting her glowing head down beside Mary’s brown one on the pillow. “It wouldn’t be that, you know, if I saw you poking about the old garden beds down here without me. When are you coming out into the garden again, old Niceness?”
“Soon, I think,” said Mary. “I don’t intend to be long getting back my strength.”
Mary was as good as her word. Now that her painful wounds had begun to heal, her sound young flesh went on rapidly with its task of restoration. In two days less than two weeks Mary was dressed in a beautiful new gown, all white and blue and soft-falling drapery, which her mother had sent for, that she might come forth in it as an outer symbol of her recovery.
Mr. and Mrs. Moulton, with Mark, were there in the garden to receive Mary, each with a little welcoming gift for the girl who was the heart of the Garden place, house, garden, and household. Mark’s gift was fringed gentians for which he had scoured the hills beyond Vineclad, rising before the sun to gather the rare and beautiful blossoms. Mark murmured as he handed them to Mary, “They were as blue as her eyes, and very like her.”
The rain that had associated itself with Mary’s recovery in the minds of those who loved her had been followed by successive downfalls. The drought once broken, the earth received refreshment constantly. The garden was beautiful with the more gorgeous bloom of September. Salvia blazed above dark-red cannas; the hedge of hollyhocks at the end of the longest garden vista shone like the mint; cosmos delicately triumphed in its last act of the summer pageant. Through it all came the persistent fragrance of alyssum and mignonette, faithful to the end, not to be dismayed that, after their long summer sweetness, tall and showy flowers overtopped them.
“How lovely it all is after the rain! And after the fire!” said Mary, with a little laugh that caught in her throat. “I’m so glad to come back to you, dear old garden!”
“It is just as glad to get you back, daughter,” said Mr. Moulton, springing to forestall Win and Mark, and to help Mary into the lounging chair prepared for her. “The garden called us all together to tell you so, though it seems to me to need no spokesman.”
“It never needed one, though it adds to it! But how it speaks! I think it is fairly shouting, in reds and yellows and whites and purples: ‘The old Garden garden is glad to see you, Mary. It can’t quite spare one of its girls!’” said Mary, settling down with a sigh of utter content into her great chair and into the great love all things, animate and inanimate, around her bore her.