Produced by Mardi Desjardins & the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at https://www.pgdpcanada.net [Illustration] IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT BY L. H. HAMMOND AUTHOR OF âTHE MASTER-WORD,â âIN BLACK AND WHITE,â ETC. NEW YORK THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY PUBLISHERS COPYRIGHT, 1916, BY THOMAS Y. CROWELL COMPANY To LUCY AND CALDWELL IN MEMORY OF THE WHEELED-CHAIR SUMMER AT PEN-Y-BRYN CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. A COUNTRY CHILD 1 II. BIRD CORNERS 16 III. IN MAKE-BELIEVE 37 IV. THE DARK Oâ THE YEAR 57 V. PREMONITIONS 81 VI. BEFORE THE DAWN 115 VII. SPRING MAGIC 126 VIII. BLACKBIRD DIPLOMACY 150 IX. THE PROOF OF COURAGE 169 X. THE ROUTING OF UNCLE JASON 186 XI. WHERE THE BATTLE WAS FOUGHT 204 XII. IN THE GARDEN OF DELIGHT 229 XIII. WHILE THE NEST WAS BUILDING 241 I A COUNTRY CHILD THERE is one thing, at least, in this puzzling world which, though everything changes it, nothing can spoil: and that is out-of-doors. Long ago, when this place was stately old Cedarhurst instead of home-y Bird Corners, and I a wilful small girl climbing trees and tearing my frocks whenever Great-aunt Virginia and Great-aunt Letitia were both looking the other way at the same timeâa coincidence as blissful as it was infrequentâI thought being outdoors was heaven enough for anybody. In the long winter afternoons I sat by the big wood fire in the back parlor and hemmed towels and napkinsâwhen I wasnât pulling out yesterdayâs work because Great-aunt Virginia found the stitches too big: and I looked out at the cold, bare hills, blue and beautiful against the pale sky, and longed to play over them like the winds, and to be whirled up into the air like the brown leaves which scurried about them all winter long. And in the spring, when the budding branches draped the trees with jewelled mists, all silver and green and gold and ruby-red, I wished the great-aunts had learned to play on the grass with their whole selves, instead of just with their fingers on the big old rosewood piano, which stood stiff and square in the front parlor, an instrument of torture to rebellious hands that longed to be pulling wild-flowers, and to ears tuned to catch the songs of birds. And in summer time, when the rain blotted out the hills, and every leaf of every tree sang the Song of the Rushing Winds; when the lightning ran zig-zag all over the sky and the thunder jarred the houseâoh, why should great-aunts call one indoors, and shut the free winds out, and put cotton in their ears, and make little girls come away from the windows, and the chimneys, and every place where they wanted to be, instead of leaving them out in the rain to be drenched like the flowers and shake themselves dry like the birds? And in autumnâbut those memories are too painful! On frosty days the house was shut tight, the log fires kindled, and my small person swathed in insufferable flannelsâflannels!âin a Tennessee October! And when I rebelled, there were fearsome tales of children who had died of pneumonia, or gone into consumption, because their misguided relatives had allowed them to play outdoors in the cold. And yet outdoors was never more beautiful. Some of the hills were far and blue, and some were near and green, or brown with stubble, or yellow with stalks of corn. The grass in the pasture was greenest green; and when I slipped out on the back porch the sycamores down by the brook rustled their drying leaves and called me as loud as they dared. And the doves flew by in flocks, and the killdeers whirred up from the valley with wild, free cries, and the field-larks sang on the fence-posts, or lighted on the short, sweet grass, the white of their outer tail feathers shining in the sun. But Great-aunt Letitia would call me back to the parlor, where she made tea, which she and Great-aunt Virginia drank, sitting in rosewood arm-chairs, dressed in soft shimmering silks, with cobwebby lace about their throats. I myself balanced unhappily upon one of the big square ottomans, too small to get far enough back on it to have any purchase against the slippery horsehair, and painfully conscious of Great-aunt Virginiaâs eyes on my awkwardly swinging feet. I kept my place as best I could, holding a bit of egg-shell china, and sipping my odious cambric tea. This was the chosen time to instill proper principles of conduct into my callous little soul. The gentle old aunts made a duet of it, and I always thought they practiced it together beforehand, like a âpieceâ on the piano. It was really very easy not to hear! I always sat on the ottoman nearest the center table. The other was nearer the east window, and showed the long front drive bordered by the stiff lines of cedars, which gave Cedarhurst its name before the great-aunts were born. But the one by the table had the double advantage of giving me a dutiful appearance, being equally distant from both of the arm-chairs, and of allowing me, by an almost imperceptible sliding to one corner, to look out of the silver-maple window to the jug of water I kept in the center of the seven trunks, a drinking fountain for all the birds of the place. I sat very still during the duet, my head raised a little to see the lowest branches, where the birds always alighted; and I often quite forgot my cambric tea until Great-aunt Letitia gently reminded me of it. My docility touched them very much. I heard Great-aunt Letitia tell Great-aunt Virginia one day that she was afraid I would never live to grow up, my expression was so rapt when they urged my duty upon me; and she felt as though there were an invisible halo above my little brown head. I was running in through the hall when I heard this, and stopped in breathless amazement. I had no thought of eavesdropping, but I saw Great-aunt Virginia wipe her eyes; and Great-aunt Letitia almost sniffed. I sat stiller than ever after that, and rolled my eyes a little; and Great-aunt Letitia sent for the doctor, who said I needed calico dresses and mud pies. The great-aunts were shocked at first, but the doctor was firm. And after that I played outdoors unless the thermometer was very unkind and the wind in an especially dangerous quarter. There are really two of the-most-beautiful-place-in-the-world. One of them is the real outdoors; and the other is outdoors in the Land of Make-Believe. The advantage of the real outdoors is that its loveliness is ready-made. One invents nothing; one merely opens eyes and ears and soul to drink in beauty and joy, and learns, almost without knowing it, the most curious and interesting things. The advantage of Make-Believe is that when things are as they shouldnât be, one can instantly step over into that blessed country and make them be exactly what they should. No one ever sees you do it, either, or guesses that you can make a world in a twinkling, out of dreams. It has all the charm and mystery of a fairy ring, or fern seed, or Aladdinâs lamp. Oneâs body can perch on a horsehair piano stool, twisting oneâs two little meat legs about its one fat leg of rosewood, and great-aunts may be sure you are practising scales most faithfully; and all the time you are really running races in the wind with charming, dirty children who tear their dresses all day long, and never had their hair in curl-papers in their lives. And that is only the beginning. For one can learn so well the road to that dear land that one never forgets it, even in grown-up days. There is never any sickness in Make-Believe. One can walk and run there always, though oneâs body lies weak and helpless, or drags slowly about, year after year, in a world that is full of pain. One can slip away from the long, black, sleepless nights into a lovely world where imagination is the motive power, and all one needs and all one longs for lie ready to oneâs hand. * * * * * It was the January after I was sixteen that Cedarhurst burned down. It was a bitter cold time; and the heaviest snow I had ever seen turned my familiar world into fairyland under the winter moon. It was Great-aunt Letitia who found the fire. She had been looking for it all her life. One of the most familiar memories of my childhood is the waking at night to hear a soft rustle past my open doorâthe doors were always left open that we might smell the fire when we really had oneâand to see Great-aunt Letitia, her white hair tucked away under a dainty nightcap and the light of her candle bringing out soft gleams in her flowered silk dressing gown, as she followed her highbred nose to the spot where it assured her a fire had broken out. It used to frighten me at first; but I grew too accustomed to it even to wake. So it taxed my credulity to the utmost when, on that bitter night, she roused me to tell me with tense white lips that Cedarhurst was in flames. How the fire started, we never knew. It burst through the floor of the empty guest room first, and the ceiling of the dining-room below it. But however it started, it was there; and there was no one to fight it but two fragile old ladies, a half-grown girl, and the terrified Negroes. It was before the days of rural telephones, and the house was in ruins before any one in the village knew our need. We carried the news ourselves when we drove into Chatterton in the gray dawn, shivering with cold. We were all fully dressed, of course; the great-aunts would have perished in the flames before they would have shocked the stars of heaven by appearing outdoors in the mildest disarray. And we saved the family silver, a portrait or two, great-grandmotherâs sewing table, a few books, and the clothes upon our backs. On the way to the village Great-aunt Virginia said we had much to be thankful for in that our lives were spared; but hers, had we known it, was already lost. She had stood in the snow after the flames barred all access to the house, until the roof fell in and her birthplace was a mass of ruins; and before we had been a week at the home of her nephew, Cousin William Wrenn, she had died of pneumonia, leaving Great-aunt Letitia and me, as she told us in the parting, alone and unprotected save for the Father of all, to whom she trusted us. But Great-aunt Letitia, whom every one expected to wither and droop without her sisterâs sheltering care, developed an amazing power of decision. She seemed crushed at first. But on the fourth day after Great-aunt Virginia had been laid to rest in the hillside burial ground at home, she came into the family sitting room, looking, in her deep mourning, very tall and white and frail, and announced that she had decided not to rebuild Cedarhurst, but to go to the city to live. I could scarcely believe my ears. The cityâs outmost edge was only fifteen miles away, but even the village of Chatterton, peopled largely by our own relatives, seemed crowded and bustling after the wide quiet of the fields at home. That this frail, retiring old lady should contemplate a plunge into the vortex of a city whose inhabitants were numbered by tens of thousandsâreally several tensâseemed madness. But her determination was fixed. âThis dear child needs the advantages of city life,â she declared. âI always found the country exceedingly quiet myself, and-er not altogetherâprogressive. But I deferred to Sister Virginiaâs judgment. Now, howeverââ her voice trembled a moment, and then went on quite steadilyââthe responsibility is mine, and I cannot shirk it. I think Lydia should have city advantages. I shall go there and devote myself to her education, and prepare for her entrance into society at the proper time.â Argument was of no avail. When I avouched my preference for the country she said quietly that I knew nothing of the city yet, and that every one should try more than one side of life before making a final choice. She was very gentle, but Great-aunt Virginia herself could not have been more inflexible. We went, to the envy of my cousin, Billy Wrenn, and to my own silent and passionate grief. As I grew older, Aunt Letitia grew youngerâyounger, that is, in her ideas and in her desires for me. She cared far more than I about my clothes, and took a livelier interest in possible lovers. I understood, beneath this late blossoming of pleasure in what she called gay life, the starved aspirations of her own youth, shut away in the seclusion of her beautiful home during the many years of her widowed motherâs invalidism and morbid grieving for her husband. There were times when her dead-and-gone girlhood rose to life in her eyes, and a soft color tinged her delicate cheeks, as she imagined for me some small social triumph or admired me in some new dress. I divined that she was immensely interested in my men friends, though her shyness in discussing them was even greater than her interest. I wondered often if she had a love-story of her own; but I never knew. My own love-story, when it came, gave her great happiness; and for three years after my marriage she lived with us in great content, and passed out at last in utter peace. My husband is known in our family circle as the Peon, since he entered into a contract to work for me without wages for life. He brought into our home at our marriage his brotherâs orphaned child, David Bird, a little fellow four years of age, who flatly refused to call me auntie and dubbed me Mammy Lil. That was many years ago; and as the time has passed the Peon and I have realized with deepening gratitude our debt to the little child who has given our home its crowning joy. But for David we would have been childless, growing old alone; for we owe Caro to David, too. I have never flattered myself that we could have captured and held the heart of that tricksey birdling if David had not added to our attractions childhoodâs lure to a child. For our years in the city, however, we found David sufficient in himself. He has grown up like the Peonâs own son, sturdy, steady, large of body and of heart. He has stood well in his classes without much effort; but more because it is his disposition to do thoroughly whatever he does at all than because of any great love for books. He is deliberate in manner, and somewhat slow of speech; and his steady gray eyes seem made to look facts in the face. He has always moved in straight lines, mentally and physically, cutting through obstacles which Caro would flutter around in a twinkling; yet somehow he arrived at the goal in time to secure whatever he set out to obtain. He was rather too solemn as a child, and regarded me, apparently, somewhat as the Peon did at times, with an air of amused and affectionate tolerance. I used to hunt through his small personality for the spark of fun I was sure lay hidden there, and as the years passed I caught the glint of it more and more frequently; but it was really Caro who brought it out into the open, and set it, a perpetual signal, in his eyes. I found it easy to awaken in him my own love of outdoors, and together we made friends with such birds as could be enticed to our shady yard in the cityâs outer circle. We were sworn comrades in our enmity to the English sparrows, and the bond of a common foe was one of the many things that drew us into a fellowship unusually close. The Peon used to say that no boy came to genuine manhood without something in the way of an evil to hate and to fight; and for my part I joyfully set up the English sparrows as the embodiment of all wickedness, to be destroyed beak and tail. My own objections to them were the result of long watching; but Davidâs hatred sprang to life full-fledged the morning we found four of the wretched bullies fighting one small chickadee, which hung head downward from a twig of privet, his eyes shut tight, his claws clenched, and his throat and breast exposed to his enemiesâ vicious bills. I think some deep thirst for justice seized the childâs soul at sight of the helpless victim, and ever since he has been mindful of weak things in a way surprising in a boy so ruggedly strong. He has been wonderfully mindful of me, always. Long before we left the city I had learned to enjoy outdoors from a cot under the trees in the back yard. The pain which was to be by turns my companion, my jailer, and my emancipator had already laid upon me an iron hand. I was up and about when the Peon was at home; but when he came in unexpectedly he learned to look for me under the drooping silver maples in the yard; and my old-time love of birds was an easy explanation of the many-cushioned cot and the long hours I daily spent upon it. David filled the birdsâ drinking fountain for me when he came home to leave his books and get his bat or his football; and I would lie there, watching my visitors, wondering at the variety of birds to be seen in a city yard, and wishing the sparrowsâ duels were less on the harmless French order. They never fought because they needed to do it; it was always for something perfectly futile and foolish. They would leave all the food I could scatter to tear one crumb from a neighbor. For it is English sparrow nature never to be satisfied with what they have, to want only what some one else is enjoying, and to get it for themselves if they can. David and I were fully agreed that if anything more hateful was ever created we wished to be spared acquaintance with it. II BIRD CORNERS IT is to Uncle Milton that I owe our return to the country, and all the delights of Bird Corners. Uncle Milton is an inheritance from my great-aunts and Cedarhurst, where he had the finest flowers and the most flourishing vegetable garden in the country. He is a lean old Negro, tall, and straight as a pine. His features are finely cut; and with his gray hair, long gray moustache, regular features, and skin like polished bronze, he makes a distinguished appearance, even in his old blue jeans. He is a real lover of the outdoor world, and the earth and the plants know it. He bends over the flower-beds lovingly, with eyes that see, not dirt, but all dirtâs possibilities of beauty and life. There is never a plant set carelessly nor a seed that falls by chance. No wonder all he touches grows! That he went to town with Great-aunt Letitia, and stayed there afterward with me, spoke eloquently of the strength of affection between us. But after my great-auntâs death he did not accept the situation without constant protests, and the advice which my youth and ignorance demanded. âYou ainât got no moâ business in de city dan I is, Miss Lil,â he said spring after spring, as I sat on the grass by the flower-beds and watched his fork go in and out like clock-work, leaving behind it long rows of fresh-turned earth. âYou done losâ all dem roses you had in yoâ face at home. Ef Miss Ferginny done lived she wouldnâ put up wid dis foolishness not er minute.â âBut the city is more convenient for Mr. Bird,â I would explain. âSome day when he is rich enough he expects to give up business, and then we will go back.â âHeâll be givinâ up his wife fusâ news you know,â growled the old man, stopping to thin the thick border of violets. âAnâ heâll be goinâ to bury you dar by Miss Ferginny and Miss âTitia befoâ he goes retirinâ from business ef he donâ look out. We-all got er plenty ter live on nowâyou got er plenty widout hisân; en ef you ainât, I kin make er plenty outen dat grounâ. Hitâs de richesâ lanâ in Davisâson county. I made hit pay befoâ, en I kin do hit agin, stidder wasâinâ it on poâ white-trash renters like you all do. But I âclare to gracious, Miss Lil, ef you-all donâ go, I will. I been mixinâ up wid town niggers till Iâm plumb woâ out wid âem. Dis is de lasâ spring Miltonâll fix yoâ flowers in dis mizzable little cramped-up lot.â He had said this so often that I regarded it as one of Natureâs regular spring processes; and beyond a sudden deeper stirring of my constant homesickness, his threats passed unnoticed. But one February morning he came out and stood by my cot under the trees with a face at once elated and downcast. âAre you going to begin the spring work today?â I asked in delight. He looked embarrassed. âHitâs sorter early to rake dem leaves offen de beds yit,â he said. Then he hesitated. âI âspec I ainât gwinter be able ter do de wuk no moâ.â âAre you sick?â I asked anxiously. Then I saw the new look in his face, and gasped. âYouâre going to the country!â I cried. âYassum, I is. I canât stanâ it yere no longer, Miss Lil: Iâm er gittinâ too ole fer town; I des bleeged ter go out whar God made de worlâ en breathe free en be er man ergin, befoâ I die.â The years had slipped from him like a cloak. I looked at him enviouslyâjust as an English sparrow might look at some bird of stronger flight, I reflected suddenly, and scowled at one of my greedy kinsman in the walk, trying to gobble all the best crumbs at once. âIâm glad for you,â I said honestly. âWhen do you go?â âWhen my montâs out. But I hates ter go, Miss Lil.â âWhat am I to do here?â I demanded, the sparrow in me refusing to be quenched altogether. âIâll do de besâ I kin,â he said. âI been lookinâ rounâ fer you all winter. But dese town niggers is a onery set, fer shoâ. When you-all comes home Miltonâs cominâ back.â âNever mind,â I said; âweâll manage somehow.â I closed my eyes because they were getting full of tears. He moved away, and I let the tears come. I wanted the country, too; and more and more as my illness grew, and it became increasingly difficult to take my part in the busy city life. The more oneâs bodily freedom is restricted by weakness and pain, the more one longs for the unconfined spaces of earth and air, for wide horizons and sweeping winds, and wings that flash far up into the sunshine, above the shadows where one must lie, conning the hard lesson of patient idleness. And I wanted Uncle Miltonâthe visible link between me and that dear world of hill and sky for which I longed. Return to it seemed so bright a possibility while another heart, even this old Negroâs, held it as dear as I. If he went from me he would leave my hope bereft. I lay with closed eyes, absorbed in longing for that dear receding vision of delight. âDonâ you see how bad she wanter go, Marse John?â said Uncle Milton again, close beside me. I sprang up in amazement, to find him and the Peon by my cot. âShe ainât gwine ter say a word ef she think hitâll discommerdate you; but de chileâs eâen erbout breakinâ her heart fer de country, same as I is.â âUncle Milton,â I began indignantly; but the old man brushed my words aside. âYou en Marse John fight hit out, honey,â he said. âMek âer tell de trufe, Marse John. Hitâs you en her fer it now; Miltonâs done his besâ.â He turned deliberately and walked out of the yard. It did not take the Peon long to get the facts, to answer all my objections as to the inconvenience to himself, and to settle finally our immediate return. We would rebuild Cedarhurst at once. âOh, no,â I cried, ânot Cedarhurst! Let us build our own home, all sunshine and out-of-doors! It isnât the old house that I love; it was too cold and stately and darkâsuch an indoors kind of house. Itâs the hills Iâm homesick for, and the sky, and the biggest maple, and the pasture, and the sycamores down by the brook.â âBut we canât sleep in the maple,â objected the Peon, ânor eat in the pasture when it rains. There must be a house.â âOh, of course. But let it be our houseânot Great-aunt Virginiaâs. You may really build it any way you please if only you will have porches enough, and so many windows that wherever you sit you can lift your eyes and look right out, miles and miles and miles. And Iâd like all the rooms to have a southern exposure, of course, on account of the breeze and the sun, and east windows for winter mornings, and west windows for the sunsets. I donât care about the rest.â âI insist upon bath-rooms and a kitchen,â said the Peon; âmere scenery is not a sufficient sanitary basis for life. But what shall we call itâCedarhurst?â âOh, no! Just a plain, every day, home-y nameâsomething that belongs to us and the birds. Why, weâre Birds ourselves, Peon, dear. Letâs be sociable and call it Bird Corners.â âBut there arenât any corners,â said the practical Peon; âthe place lies straight along the pike.â That is a manâs way. He thinks he must face facts and shape his course accordingly, poor slave to the visible that he is. But a woman conquers facts by turning her back upon them, and playing they are something else. âThe birds will make the corners,â I explained patiently. âBefore Iâve been putting out crumbs a month thereâll be bird pikes cutting through the place at every conceivable angle, and crossing each other under that seven-trunked maple where my cot will be. And if that wonât be bird corners, what will?â So we prepared for our homing flight. Uncle Milton went out at once to trim the trees and prune the shrubbery and vines; and the occasional days he bestowed on us in town were full of delight for me, filled as they were with reports of progress at home. For it was home, before dirt had been broken for the house; the city dwelling was a mere temporary shelter. âDe jonquils out home is showinâ up fine,â he announced one morning in mid-February; âhitâs time to sorter stir up dese yere lazy town flowers. En Iâll trim de trees, too, seeinâ Iâm âbout done wid âem out home. I âspec de city folks whatâll live yere atter we-all goneâll want what little dab er trees dey got in dis yard.â He looked scornfully at the back yard, generous in size, after the fashion of our Southern cities, and shaded with fine old trees. But a little later, high in the hackberry, his love of all earth-rooted things swept contempt from his heart, and his dark old face shone with happiness as he wielded the hatchet with rhythmic strokes. That is always the beginning of the spring workâthe severance of death from life, that life may rise again, even out of death. Where would life draw this dead matter next? To darkness first, to growth most surely, and perchance, some day, to wings. And the dark old man with the happy face was servitor of lifeâlife for the dead as for the living; for death is but the underside of life. * * * * * We went home early in May. The house would not be finished until October; but outdoors was all ready for us, and we could not waste the summer for lack of a house. âYou know,â I argued to the Peon, âwe had a beautiful time in the mountains last summer; and we slept in a two-roomed cottage with only weather-boarding between us and the trees outside. Why canât we have a shed with a gasoline stove, and a couple of tents to live in?â So we had them. The Peon and David drove in to Chatterton daily and took the train for business and school; and I fed the birds and followed Uncle Milton, and drank in the changing beauties of earth and sky. And all summer we watched our home grow, from cellar to roof-tree, till it became a thing complete, and fitted into the landscape for which it was designed. We set it on the old homeâs hill, which overlooked the countryside, and faced it toward the sunrising. The dark lines of cedars which had bordered the approach to the old house were left at one side, and the road, curving from their upper end, swept into full sunshine and passed under a great beech, which spread its tiers of leaves above the doorway. It is an unpretentious house, rambling about pretty much as it pleases in its efforts to give southern and eastern and western exposures to all the rooms. Porches are everywhere, and the windows either open on them, like doors, or stop a little above the floor at low, cushioned seats, which tempt one to sink down and wonder once again at the beauty of this fair country of middle Tennessee. There are no curtains at the windows, nor mats of vines outside. But up the widely-separated columns of the porches run clematis and jasmines which cross the great openings in narrow bands, above and below. So all summer the fretwork of green leaves frames the landscape, a perfect, yet everchanging picture in each of the wide spaces. The east end of the living-room is of glass, and my flowers flourish there in winter time. In my own room the bed stands in a deep recess formed all of windows on the three sides. A low seat runs under them within reach of the bed. All through the dark, sleepless night I can lie there and watch for the first paling of the eastern sky, and follow the level light as it moves softly along the southern hills, creating the shadows which make the light so clear. It must be confessed that some of the kin at Chatterton thought my wits astray that first summer, and the Peon but a soft-headed, poor-spirited creature for giving way to my whimsies. Camping out was not as popular then as it is now; and the older members of the family did not hesitate to commiserate the Peon and David. That they professed to enjoy our long picnic only added to the heinousness of my folly. Cousin Chadwell Grackle and his wife were among my first callers. Cousin Chad is always to the front when anything new crops up in the family. He has cried the sins and shortcomings of the whole usual order so long that even he is half bored with them, and the prospect of something new to criticise whets his social appetite to the keenest possible edge. Cousin Jane is his reflection and echo. If she were not, even her stolid nerves could scarcely have endured his painful type of piety without disaster. They drove up one sunshiny morning, after they had seen the Peon and David pass on their way to town. I was on the cot under the biggest maple. Its seven trunks fall apart like long-stemmed flowers in a vase, spreading into a great green tent whose leafy curtains droop in a circle full seventy feet across. The blackbirds were my principal guests that morning, a sanctimonious crew in sleek black coats, solemn, censorious, and self-satisfied to the last degree. All birds which walk instead of hopping are awkward-looking; but none are as preposterous as the blackbirds, because none of them put on such sanctified airs. As they moved about this morning, their heads thrust meekly forward, ducking modestly as they stepped, they appeared to be meditating on their neighborsâ sins. But they had their tribeâs keen eye for the main chance, and it was a swift bird and a wary one which secured a big crumb with these feathered Chadbands in the yard. I looked up at the sound of wheels and nearly choked with swallowing my laughter. Cousin Chad and Cousin Jane did look so sleek and proper, that as I rose to meet them I could not refrain from throwing some extra crumbs on the grass for possible additions to my breakfasting guests. They descended ponderously and looked at me with the apprehensive scrutiny one might bestow on a lunatic who is liable to break out immediately in a fresh place. âHow are you, Lyddy?â inquired Cousin Jane, with sepulchral anxiety. Cousin Chad, busy with the hitching-post, listened with his back as well as with his ears. They both know perfectly that I have always been Lil to everyone except the great-aunts, and that Lyddy has been an abomination to the entire family connection, and especially to me, since they first invented it in my childhood. That is why they stick to it. They believe in chastenings, do my cousins, the Gracklesâparticularly when they are the chasteners. âIâm perfectly well,â I answered, with added emphasis to my usual formula. âCome and sit down. Thereâs no need to ask how you and Cousin Chad are; you look the picture of health.â âAppearances donât do to go by, Lyddy,â she answered solemnly, sinking ponderously on a creaking campstool. âChadwellâs been havinâ sciatica, and Iâve stayed awake nights with him till Iâm just about worn out. But Iâve never made my afflictions an excuse for shirkinâ my duty. We came over to say that as you seem to be without a roof over your heads weâd take you to board till your house is finishedâif it ever is.â She glanced contemptuously at the amorphous piles of building material just beyond us. âYou can have the second spare bed-room upstairs,â put in Cousin Chad. âItâs more to my interest to put you in the front one; but livinâ comes high any way you take it, and I want to consider you. I reckon John ainât able to spend much, with all this building on hand. The back roomâs small, but you three can make out in it. If you want the other, of course it will cost more. You can come over this evening after John gets home, and he and I can settle the terms after supper.â I kept my face quite straight, and made a handsome contribution to current fiction. âItâs so kind of you. John will appreciate it as much as I. But we really enjoy camping, and would not give it up even for those lovely rooms of yours, Cousin Chad. Thank you so much.â Cousin Janeâs rubicund complexion assumed a purplish hue. âDo you intend to kill that delicate child of Henry Birdâs, making him sleep out in the weather all summer?â she demanded. âNo,â I said, considering; âI donât intend to kill him, exactly. And he isnât at all delicate.â âWell, he will be by the time you get through with himâif he ainât dead,â broke in Cousin Chad. âLyddy, itâs my duty to speak plainly, and Iâll not shirk it. Letitia spoiled you from the time you were born, and John Bird seems bent on keeping it up. David will pay the penalty for it. We do a very different part by the orphan the Lord made it our duty to take charge of, I can assure you. Caroline Wrennâs health is taken care of, with a view to her future usefulness as a Christian. But of course youâll stick to your own ways.âWell, Iâve warned you: my conscience is clear. Come, Jane: weâd better be going.â âIâm glad your conscience is clear, Cousin Chad. I know thatâs a comfort to you, if Iâm not. But we can be good friends, canât we, even though our ideas are different?â âI shall not turn my back upon you if youâre in trouble, Lyddy, if thatâs what you mean,â he answered. âI hope I know my duty better than that. But when you want help again you must ask for it. I donât intend to offer it.â âThatâs a bargain, then,â I said; âand we must both remember it.â Cousin Jane looked at me sharply, but Cousin Chad was already heaving her into the buggy, and she turned to get a good grip on the side. The vehicle creaked as she settled in it, and groaned when Cousin Chad sank beside her. âGood-bye, Lyddy,â she said. âWeâve done our best. I hope you wonât regret it.â This quite upset me, and after the cedars hid them I lay laughing until the thought of poor little Caro suddenly sobered me. What were they doing to Billyâs child? I must make friends with Cousin Jane, somehow, and entice the little thing over to Bird Corners as much as possible. There was no one else whom our erratic manner of life really scandalized, except Cousin Jason Blue; and he, as he took occasion to tell me when he met me out driving one day with Caro, never made a fool of himself like Chad Grackle by meddling. If a woman wanted to follow her nature and behave like a lunatic, and her husband chose to allow it, it was none of his business; so he shrugged his shoulders and passed on. Cousin Jason and the Grackles are the only kin I have in all Chatterton whose kinship I would discount if I could; but there is no denying they belong in the family. Cousin Chadâs father was my grandmotherâs third half-cousin on my fatherâs side; and Cousin Jasonâs mother was Cousin Lysander Hilliardâs step-daughter by his second marriage: there could scarcely be anything plainer than that. And if Cousin Jason had his drawbacks, there are none about his half-sister, Grace, fifteen years his junior, and, except Ella, the dearest friend I have. She married George Wood soon after I married the Peon, and they have a daughter, Milly, about the age of Caro Wrenn. David took kindly to country life, and to his numerous cousins-by-marriage. There were plenty of boys among them; and though at first they resented Davidâs city ways, their respect for him grew immensely when they found how far he could bat a ball; and after he had whipped Bob White in single combat he was admitted to Chatterton boydom as a comrade in full fellowship. There was no particular reason for his fighting Bob, so far as we dull grown-ups could discover, except that Bob was the leader of his set, and a fight was considered the necessary initiation to membership. As soon as this was made clear to him, David had painstakingly trodden on Bobâs toes, and the preliminaries were arranged at once. The boys were excellent friends, before and afterward; and the Peon would not allow me to discuss the matter with David. They talked it out in private, and reached some amicable male conclusion of their own. Of the girl cousins David was loftily tolerant, excepting Caro Wrenn. She was five years old the spring we came back to the country, when David was half-past nine. Her mother had died when she was born, and her father, Billy Wrenn, had gone to Colorado three years afterward, to die there of consumption. He made Cousin Chad Caroâs guardian before he died, knowing, as we all did, Cousin Chadâs remarkable ability in reaping financial harvests from even the smallest investments; but he left the child herself with her motherâs sister, Sally Martin, never dreaming that death would again bereave the little creature of a motherâs love. Sally died, quite suddenly, less than a year after Billy; and Cousin Chad and Cousin Jane, intent, as usual, on doing their impeccable duty, assumed sole care of the little heiress, and installed her in their own childless and virtuous home. A more incongruous setting for her could scarcely have been found. She was a tiny creature, with rose-leaf skin, great hazel eyes, a mop of red-brown curls, and a mouth where laughter bubbled all day long. Quick and bird-like in all her movements, she flitted in and out of the most unexpected recesses in the twinkling of an eye, with endless flutterings of hands and skirts and sweet gurglings of suppressed laughter. Almost from her cradle she sangâqueer little soft croonings which slipped into tunes before she could speak their words. Cousin Jane scarcely knew what to make of her, and was torn between a sincere desire to do her Spartanly-Christian duty by her, and her solemn puzzlement over what she considered the childâs combination of depravity and charm. Even Cousin Jane could not be very severe with her; but she had an uneasy sense of spoiling her every time she forebore the rod, so that I found her more than willing to turn the child over to me for the greater part of the time. This arrangement gave my revered relative ample warrant for looking closely into my household affairs and reproving me for everything she did and didnât discover; it was her duty to know all about a place where dear Caroline spent so much of her time. And when Caro departed from Cousin Janeâs ideals, as she did with every movement of body and mind, it was a great relief to my pious cousin to be able publicly to disavow all responsibility for the childâs shortcomings. What, as she constantly inquired, could one expect of Caroline when that scatter-brained Lyddy would persist in encouraging the child in her flightiness? She published abroad her own powerlessness to control either Caro or the situation, and openly washed her hands of the consequences. Caro and I bore up as best we could, and the Peon and David stood by us nobly. David, indeed, was ready to fight his idolâs battles with Cousin Jane herself. In fact, he grew up with a lack of respect for that excellent lady which tempted her to assume the role of a prophet, in which capacity she dwelt at large on the penitentiary as Davidâs ultimate place of residence. Caro always responded to these prognostications that, if Davy went to the penimtentium, she would go, too, as soon as she was big enough, and keep house for him, and make the cook give them ice-cream every day that came. And so the matter rested. III IN MAKE-BELIEVE IT is four years since I wrote those last words. Not long after, Caro went away to school. David went North to college that year, and was only coming home for the regular holidays. He still held to his boyhood preference, and was determined to be a scientific farmer: and since the Peon and I were to have him with us always, we wanted him to have a few years quite away from us in which to make his own adjustments to life. So they left us the same week, David with all a boyâs love to hold him back, and a young manâs eagerness to urge him away; and Caro in as nearly easterly weather as her sunny nature ever experienced. It was Cousin Jane who first decided on Caroâs banishment. For the sake of her own peace of mind she had of late years resigned the child almost entirely to me; but every now and then she had what Caro called a âqualm spell.â During these painful periods Caro resided with the Grackles, strictly, not even coming over to take lunch with me. She arose at five and extinguished her light at nine; and pinned on the wall beside her bureau, in Cousin Janeâs firm handwriting, was a schedule of useful occupations for each of the intervening sixteen hours. She had so much time for devotions, so much for meals, so much for school, for study, for âdomestic occupations,â for âimproving and useful reading,â and for âpractical sewing.â Cousin Jane never allowed precious time wasted on fancy work; and if she thought it was all like the awful things she had in her parlor I donât in the least blame her for thinking it wicked. However, Caroâs time was laid out for her as exactly as the squares on a checker-board. She fed the chickens, argued with the old biddies who wanted to âsetâ in the wrong place, and wheedled the arrogant old Buff Orpington, who ruled the hens and Cousin Jane with ease and contempt, into doing whatever she wanted of him. She made butter that drew near-smiles to Cousin Janeâs stiff lips, and evolved cakes that called forth lectures to Cousin Chad on the sin of gluttony. She sewed, without a murmur, or a particle of trimming, undergarments of good, reliable, ever-wearing domestic. She was always foresighted enough to make ample allowance for their shrinking when washed; whereby she both pleased Cousin Jane and insured an excellent fit for little black Josie when she returned to us with a halo of virtue above her red-brown curls. She read history till she could put me to the blush. She washed the best tea-cups and the Persian cat. She dusted the parlor daily. And from her early childhood she made irreproachable jam. It really was excellent training for her; thorough good discipline, as Cousin Jane would say; especially as it was interspersed with âspells of Bird-Cornering,â during which she sojourned with the Peon and me. For the period of discipline always followed an accustomed round. It began with a Cousin Jane all severity, lynx-eyed to drag poor Caroâs delinquencies to light and overcome them by unsparing criticism. But Caro has always made play of everything, finding by the talisman of her own happy heart the hidden beauty, or laughter, of the ugliest and solemnest things. She did all Cousin Jane found for her to doâwhich is saying a good dealânot only cheerfully, but with whole-souled delight, as if it were her very meat and drink. Doing it that way, she did it beyond criticism; and Cousin Jane would begin to relax, unwillingly, unable to find a flaw, yet with an uneasy feeling that something must be wrong, or Caro couldnât possibly be enjoying herself so much. When she set herself to mortify Caroâs girlish vanity the child met her more than half-way. She did her best to âslickâ her curls, and donned shapeless gingham aprons as joyously as though they were made of jewels and lace. Cousin Jane would find herself being mollified to the point of indulgence in spite of herself; and about that time Caro would come flying into the yard at Bird Corners and drop fluttering beside me, her eyes shining with the pure joy of living and the love of living things. âIâm back again, Mammy Lil,â she would laugh, whirling about on one toe. âCousin Jane hasnât scolded me for four days, and yesterday she almost patted my head; so I knew she thought Iâd had training enough for the present, and Iâd be coming back home in a jiffy. Theyâre so good to me in their funny way Iâm most ashamed to be glad to come home to youâbut I am, all the same. Whereâs Josie? Iâve made three new petticoats and a night gown for her, out of muslin strong enough to climb trees.â The truth was that when Caro came back to me it was because Cousin Jane had detected in her own soul symptoms of the childâs being made an idol: she had to get rid of her to recover her own moral poise. But she still intended to do her full duty by her: so when Caro was fifteen she was sent to boarding school, to remain at least five years. By that time Cousin Jane hoped to have re-established her own imperturbability without unduly exposing her charge to the dangerous influences of Bird Corners. We had a battle royal concerning the school she should go to, and to this day Cousin Jane thinks she won. She really has no more idea about schools than a chinquapin worm, living fat and contented in
{'title': 'In the Garden of Delight by Lily Hardy Hammond', 'source': 'Project Gutenberg', 'lang': 'en'}