II

The woman who lives alone and weedsForgets her own and gives to others’ needs.

The woman who lives alone and weeds

Forgets her own and gives to others’ needs.

Elsie Carstonlived in the country, in the village of Bestways, and her life she ordered according to the sojournings abroad of her brother and his wife. It was for their children—she told herself and sometimes others—that she lived in the country; but she knew it was not quite true. When we deceive ourselves and know it, we are on the way to salvation. Elsie was undoubtedly on the way to salvation,—a long way on,—but she did stop on the way, now and then, to look back. She liked to feel that if she had not devoted herself to her brother’s children she would have travelled. She sometimes allowed people to believe that she thirsted for deserts and longed to climb camels; but if those people had seen her in her garden fringing the skirts of the walks with thrift, and embroidering the borders with pansies and pinks, they would not have believed her anxious to leave her garden and her work. She loved Bestways. Her house was of warm red brick—Georgian, she would tell you with pride. It was old, certainly: the garden that held it in its arms—as it were, huggingit—was old too, older than the house possibly. The yew hedges had been planted by people of long ago, who perhaps spoke of the day when the hedges should be grown quite high and they not there to see. There must always be in a garden that sadness. Therefore those who have a garden should also—if they may—have children, whose children will live to walk under the trees they plant.

Elsie had no children, of course; and she would have admitted it, if asked the direct question; otherwise she was inclined to look upon her brother’s children as hers, and in no way would she have allowed that they belonged to her sister-in-law’s brother. It was in her garden they should walk in years to come, not in his.

At one end of the village Elsie Carston lived. At the other, back from the road, in a house surrounded by a large park, with every other evidence around it of riches—quiet riches—lived Mrs. Sloane. She walked under trees that had been planted by Sloanes many years before, and in church she sat beneath monuments to Sloanes: but in the pew beside her must sit borrowed children, there being no little Sloanes. They would, by this time, have been grandchildren, if there had been. Though borrowed children are not what they should be, those would slip their little hands into Mrs. Sloane’s—one from each side—just as ifthey had been real grandchildren, and sit quietly, longing for the sermon to be done; and if it were longer than it should be, a little squeeze from the hand of their old friend would bid them take courage. She had been a child once and she knew! So must preachers also once have been children, yet do they think of the child to whom it is real pain to sit still? Some do.

Mrs. Sloane sat in the chancel, and sometimes into the chancel would come, during the service, a little bird. Then would the words of the preacher become winged words and would find their way into the heart of every child in the congregation. So robins as well as men may be evangelists.

Mrs. Sloane and Elsie Carston were great friends. They were both gardeners, which may make for friendship. There was between them this difference: Elsie weeded her garden because in her garden there were weeds; Mrs. Sloane weeded hers because to find a weed would have been something of an excitement—likewise a triumph. Elsie Carston planted and weeded and watered entirely oblivious to the hatred that she (aunt to Diana) had aroused in the heart of Marcus (uncle to Diana). And as she weeded and watered and planted, it was of Diana she thought, and she grudged not that far-off island its flowers and its luxurious vegetation, because it gave her Diana. She no longer found it inher heart to bemoan the sandy soil of her garden and its unquenchable thirst.

For Diana’s sake she watered the flowers as much as for their own. Diana loved flowers and Elsie stooped to pull up a weed that had dared to push its way into Diana’s border. She stooped easily, much more easily than Marcus would have imagined possible. He was pleased to think of her as middle-aged and crabbed and sour and disagreeable and grasping, whereas she was thirty-six and young at that and delightful—easily amused and a friend to every one in her small world. She was expecting Diana on a long stay, so there lurked a smile at the corners of her mouth and a twinkle in her honest grey eyes. While Eustace was abroad, Diana would be hers. She was thankful Eustace had married so devoted a wife. She had known people express surprise that Lady Carston should leave her children, suggesting that however much you love your husband your children should not be neglected. Sibyl’s children were not neglected, nor had they ever been. Elsie loved them. Not even a mother could feel more for them than she felt. When Dick, the boy, was small she had said to him, “I wish, Dick, you were mine—my own little boy.”

“Why?” he had asked, not seeing the necessity.

“Well—because I wish you were.” She had no better reason to give than this.

“But you have all the feelingship of a mother towards me,” he had said; and it was true: she had. What more than the feelingship could she desire? Not even all mothers possess it. Elsie, as she watered, wondered how Diana had looked at the dance; what her mother had thought of her, what the world in general had thought of her, what any one man had thought of her. Elsie frowned, assuring herself that she wished some man to fall in love with Diana. Of course she did. The pansies at her feet knew better. They would have allowed that she was kind and strangely gentle for one so capable—but of those children, they must have admitted, she was a little jealous. She would have “thinned” the children’s relations, on the other side, just as drastically as she thinned theirs on both sides of the border. On to the sterling qualities of a generous nature Elsie had grafted some of Sibyl’s tenderness. “But,” said Diana, “you can see where it joins”; but itdidjoin—that was something; moreover, the soldering held. At twelve o’clock the second post came in and a letter was brought out to Elsie. It was from Sibyl, her sister-in-law, and she opened it thinking here was the news she had been waiting for—the date of Diana’s coming. She read the letter, and re-read it.Then she turned back and read it for the third time.

Dearest Elsie,—no one dearer,—you know that. Shall I make you understand what I want you most desperately to understand? I am more than grateful to you for all you have done for Diana. Every time she comes into the room Eustace is grateful. For much of what she is she is indebted to you: her frankness, her honesty are yours. Her goodness, a reflection of yours. Everything, therefore, that is best in her I acknowledge as your gift to her, to me, to her father. But, Elsie, I want her to see something of the world; I want her to have the amusement a girl of her age should have. I want her to see men so that she may choose between them. I want her to stay in London for a few months and I want to leave her with my brother. I don’t think you like him? He was a dear to me when I was Diana’s age and a fierce chaperon. You have never seen him. He was so long abroad. I remember you said you had heard things about him: but they may not have been true, and if they were—if he is what you call a man of the world—it will only make him more fiercely particular with Diana than he would otherwise have been. It is my fault that he has drifted away from me. He was always jealous of Eustace. I wonder if you will understandthat? No, you are too generous a nature to understand anything so small. So, will you write to Diana and say you are pleased she should go to London? Because without that she won’t stay willingly, and I want her to stay willingly. Marcus would never keep her unless she wanted to stay. That’s his way. It will be so good for him to have her. Pillar, his man, says he wants something young about the house (Marcus, not Pillar). What have you to do with that? you will say. Don’t say it. I want you and Marcus to be friends—I want Diana to see something of the world and the world to see something of her. There, it’s out! Worldly woman that I am! You have a literary recluse at your gate (they are so dangerous when they come out). I am afraid of him. You have a muscular parson. I am afraid of him. I am afraid of all men—tinkers, tailors, soldiers and sailors, rich men, poor men, apothecaries, and thieves—they are all thieves. I am afraid of all but the right one.Your dear Eustace’s Wife

Your dear Eustace’s Wife

Elsie pondered over that letter—she was hurt—she was indignant—beaten—but there was one to whom she always could turn for comfort—one who always understood.

“Marcus,” she called, and to her feet came slithering a black dog, and he lay on his back beforeher, presenting all that was most vulnerable in his person to the tender ministrations of her wavering foot. One hind leg, to all appearances, was broken past mending. One front paw was badly damaged.

He was asking but the raking movement of his beloved physician’s well-booted foot and he should be healed. How long, how long, must he wait? There were other things to be done all on a summer’s day. There was a yellow cat—a stranger—not far off, that needed a lesson. There were more sparrows than there should be in a good woman’s garden. They needed a fright, that was all. Low-growing gooseberries there were within the reach of the shortest-legged and best-bred spaniel. He gave up the remote chance of healing by the scraping up and down of feet, and was off in the wake of the yellow cat, flushing sparrows as he went. The brambles did for him what his mistress would not. But brambles, being self-taught scratchers, have not the firmness of touch desirable; moreover, they don’t know when to leave go, or how.

“Marcus, do you hear me when I speak?” called Elsie.

“He’s that obstinate, that he be,” said the old gardener, who always came when any one was called, answering to any name if it were called loud enough.

He was deaf, so it was best to make sure: besides, his wife had lately died and he felt lonely if left entirely to vegetables.

“He just does it for the sake of contrariness,” he went on; “at his age he did ought to know better—but he don’t mean half he does—if you don’t take no notice of him he’ll come skeewithering back.”

And skeewithering back Marcus came, and resting his head on Elsie’s lap looked up into her face with that in his eyes that must forever disarm all feelings of anger, hatred, and malice against uncles—even uncles!

“Why, oh, why were you called Marcus?” she asked, and Marcus said, in his own particular manner of speech, that he had often asked himself the same question—and would now ask her.

Elsie remembered well the day Marcus had arrived—already named—in a basket. When she had opened the basket she had seen the smallest of black spaniels, and the blackest of black dogs, whose mother, judging by his neck, might have been a swan, and whose father, judging by the rest of him, the best spaniel ever bred. When she questioned the suitability of his name she discovered that he looked the wisest thing in the world—that a philosopher beside him must have lost in seriousness of demeanour. On his forehead there stood,strongly pronounced, the bumps of benevolence—so as Sibyl had named him Marcus, Marcus he remained.

The other Marcus was then nothing more than the forgotten name of a negligible brother—the children’s uncle—on the other side.

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