ROSE DAY
Time, 1875
“I dobelieve this is rose day,” said Infant, standing on the top step of the veranda in delight.
“Iknowit’s soap-boiling day,” asserted her twin sister, who had been baptized Marilla Victoria when she was baptized Infanta Isabella, quite forty years before. These twins entered the world at a period when flowery, daring names were the extreme of fashion, and previous to a rebound to plain and strong Ann, Elizabeth, Mary, Hannah, Jane, and their various combinations. Infant came very near being labeled Lovey Lucilla, and she felt thankful for her escape, and even attached to her diminutive.
Belle would never have suited her (shewas not belle), while Infant did not shame her (she was more or less an infant at any age). She was slender, blue-eyed, and smooth-skinned, so smooth that wrinkles could scarcely make their indentation. And it never ceased to be appropriate for her to wear her hair in a braid down her back, tied with ribbons the color of the dress she wore. Infant herself could not separate the gray hair from the blond, nor did she care whether it was all blond or all gray. She scampered over a fence and swung in the cherry-trees. Her long tranced girlhood never ended; and the slow life of the farm, simple as grass and wholesome as new milk, kept up the illusion that time was eternity. In their neighborhood these twins had been the Baldwin girls when they first toddled into meeting, when they went off to be educated at an expensive school, when they came back to paint and to play on a grand piano, when their parents died and they took charge of the farm; and the Baldwingirls would probably be their title when they should become contemporary with all living grandmothers.
Occasionally Infant received a shock from the growth of young children. It was so astonishing to see a creature who was a baby but a short time ago, shooting aloft, long-armed and long-legged, and announcing itself in the teens. Such phenomena did not astonish Rilla, however. She resented them. Though she had the same fair complexion and comely make as her sister, a deadly drop of acid had been added to her nature. Her shoulders were bent. She loved to hear people talked about, and to lift the corners of her nose with scorn. She felt abused by much that had happened to her on this planet, and yet too insignificant in her own personality to take it out of the human race as she desired to do. The freedom, ease, and scope of mature unmarried womanhood were in no wise appreciated by her. These traits made Rilla an uncomfortable house-mate,especially in winter, when the twins were snowed in with their books and trim housekeeping. Still, Infant loved Rilla’s sourness along with Rilla. There was strong diversion in being scolded, and she always felt such a delicious warmth around her heart when she made it up with Rilla and gave her a handsome present, or took double turns at the cooking.
Rilla was very parsimonious, and felt bound to distort herself with aged gowns and long-hoarded hats. But Infant felt unhappy in any color except that tint of gray which has the thought of wine in it. On this very rose day, though it was early in the morning, she wore a clinging gray challie dress. And a good background it would be for all the roses Infant could hang upon it.
Nothing made Rilla lift the corners of her nose higher than Infant’s flower days. But as Rilla would be lifting her nose anyhow, and could really scent no harm in these silent festivals, Infant continued to observethem year after year, and to afford her sister that triumphant sense of superiority which we all have upon beholding others’ absurdities.
There was crocus day, when the first flowers broke the sod and made heavenly beauty in the dark spring. Infant decked herself with them, and put them on the dinner-table. More abundantly satisfactory, however, was lilac day. It took a critical eye to discern the exact date. If the lilacs browned about the edges, then, alas! lilac day had slipped past. They were not to be gathered too soon, either, if their full soul of fragrance was to be enjoyed. On lilac day Infant walked under burdens of lavender bloom. The walls, the pictures, breathed lilacs. And at night she went to sleep crushing her face into a nest of bunches, so that she had lilac dreams, and drew the sweetness into herself, like an Eastern woman absorbing roses.
But the best day of all was rose day. Beforeit arrived she had always ready a posy of poems from Keats, Wordsworth, Jean Ingelow, and Whittier, and read them in the morning while the dew was on the world. The Baldwin girls cultivated a great many roses. Rilla could hardly miss from her rose-water and home-made attar and rose preserves the heaps which Infant cut for her nonsense.
There was not a nicer day in the year than rose day, if Rilla would only abstain from boiling soap on that date. The sisters had inherited seventy-five thousand dollars apiece, but they made their own soap every spring of refuse fats and the lye of wood-ashes. It could have been made cold in the cellar, if that way had not been too easy for Rilla. She held it a movable festival, like rose day, and no one will ever gauge the degree of satisfaction she felt in haling her flower-wreathed sister up to the vile-smelling caldron to keep the stirrer going while she set about other duties. Rilla honored pioneercustom and her grandmother’s memory by performing her soap incantations in the oldest, mouldiest, most completely shattered garment she possessed. This was a red wool delaine, so abased from its ruby tone that the drippings of the lye gourd could find little remaining space to burn or spot.
They boiled soap in a huge iron kettle in the chip yard. The blue wood smoke would envelop Rilla and her tarnished tatters as she ladled and tested, until she looked witch-like to passers along the road. Her unhappy victim, the slim woman in gray, with a rope of roses wound spirally around her from head to foot, a burden of roses on her bosom, and roses studded thickly along the band of her hat, sat on the corded wood as far as Rilla would allow from the soap, alternately inhaling their odor and rejecting the alkali steam. If Infant had to stir the soap, she would have a long-handled stirrer. The hot sun, beating on the chip yard and her huge hat, smote also the roses, and amidst theirdying fragrance she had sad thoughts on the disappointments of life. So there was nothing but the morning of rose day which Rilla did not spoil.
But this anniversary Infant felt a sudden uplifting of courage within herself when her twin announced the soap orgy.
“Mysoap-boiling will not come any more on rose day,” she put forth strongly. “And I think I will pay Enos Robb’s wife to make up my share of the fat and lye after this, Rilla.”
“I would,” said Rilla sarcastically, “particularly as Enos Robb and his wife and children don’t batten on us already. Give them the piano and the best parlor chairs and the solid coffee service while you are about it.”
“Why, Rilla, I didn’t propose to give her my share of the soap. But it would be cheaply got rid of that way. Yes,” exclaimed Infant, with sudden recklessness, “I would ratherbuysoap, and pay out money to havethis dirty stuff carted off, than ever smell it again while I live. Let us make a new rule, and give our fat and ashes to the Robbs. They have farmed for us ever since father died,” Infant pleaded, “and whatever you say, Rilla, I know you have the greatest confidence in them.”
“The poorhouse wagon is never going to call for me,” said Rilla decidedly. “You can go and build a fire under the kettle, while I carry some more water to pour on the ash-hopper. That lye is strong enough to bear up a setting of eggs, but we may need some more a little weaker.”
“Rilla, I am as firm as the ash-hopper itself. You can’t shake me any more than you could our brick smoke-house. I won’t help make any more soap—especially on rose day,” added Infant to herself. “I don’t see any sense in it.”
“But you can see sense in spoiling dozens of good roses to load yourself up with like a mad Ophelia. You feel above all the associationsof wash day, though the Princess Nausicaa didn’t.”
“Oh, Rilla, I don’t feel above anything. I merely feel under that soap kettle, and as if it would crush my soul out, as the shields crushed Tarpeia, if I didn’t throw it off.”
“Well, I am going to make soap,” said Rilla, whitening with intense disapproval of the liberty her twin proposed to grasp. “You are not a minor, and if you were, I’m not your guardian. But if you propose to go to yourself and leave me to myself, we both know what belongs to us, and it is easily done.”
This time-worn hint, which in her girlhood used to startle and distress Infant so much, made but the slightest impression on her hearing now, as she leaned over the veranda railing to look at the roses. There were such abundant stacks of them: she might cut and pile them into a pyramid almost as tall as herself. Such smooth, sweet tea-roses, such crimson velvet-petaledJacqueminots, blush and white so fragrant you would be willing to drown yourself in a sea of their scent; yellow roses piercingly delightful, Prairie Queens creeping all over the front of the house, old hundred-leaved varieties, having always in their depths a reminder of grandmother’s chests and long, long past days. There were eighteen distinct families of roses, each family a mighty tribe, marshaled before Infant on lawn and dewy stretch of garden. It was rose day. She would not let herself think of anything else.
Rilla would not come to the embowered dinner-table which Infant prepared so carefully, and to which she called her sister exactly as the clock struck twelve.
Rose day never interfered with Infant’s duties. Her conscience acquitted her of shirking. Often in dead winter-time, when the snow piled up, and Enos Robb’s family settled down to the enjoyment of colds and rheumatism, she fed all the stock herself.
Rilla turned her back on Infant’s several approaches, and dipped lye with a savagely noisy gourd to quench Infant’s voice. Slugs and ants in the roses, and even mildew, were no drawback at all to rose day compared to Rilla. Habits of endurance become proof armor to one’s sensibilities in the course of life, however; so Infant wandered off and absorbed the beauty of that day almost as completely as if she did so with Rilla’s approval. There was tremulous heat over the meadows. The huge and strictly tended garden was a world by itself. Beyond that stretched their orchard, having a run of clear water winding through it, all thickly tufted along the margins with mint.
Infant stepped upon the spongy lichens of the fence and rested her arms on the top rail, while she looked along the narrow country thoroughfare. The sweet green world was dear enough to be pressed in her arms. Mingled mint and rose scents were satisfying. The noble strength of their Normancolts pasturing in the stock meadow was beautiful to the eye. Infant loved to hear the pounding of those tufted feet, and to note the brilliant blackness or gray dappling of the young creatures’ coats glistening in the sun. She did not expect anything more unusual to happen on this rose day than her rebellion against Rilla and the splendor of the weather.
But who should come suddenly riding along the road, as if he had an appointment with Infant, and meant to keep it the moment she set her foot on the rail, but the Honorable Truman Condit, who many years before rode as instantaneously out of her sight! She knew him in a flash, although his hair showed gray around the ears, and much experience had added unspeakably to his personality. He was on a Condit horse, evidently riding around to look at his old neighborhood. There was a great tribe of the Condits, all well-to-do, high-headed people. The Honorable Truman had been thelocal bright young man of his generation. He went west, where, Infant heard, he became a Senator and did tremendous things.
She was suddenly conscious that her rose-studded braid was not wound up in a decent lump as she wore it before her class of young ladies in Sunday-school. She felt contemptible and out of her place in the human procession, although the Honorable Truman turned his horse straight into the fence corner to shake hands with her.
“Pretty nearly the same Infant Baldwin,” he remarked. “But I do see some lines on your face.”
“I suppose I’ve vegetated instead of lived all the time you have been doing so much,” said Infant.
“Oh, I haven’t been doing so much.”
“We heard you had.”
“We means Rilla and you. And you didn’t marry?”
“No,” said Infant, feeling it a stinging indignity that he should mention it, afterthat courtship so long ago buried.Hehad married, and raised a family out west. Rilla was probably right when she said one woman was the same as another to a man.
“And how is Rilla? Is she as hard on you as she used to be?”
“Oh, Rilla was never hard onme. She is quite well, thank you. You’re coming up to the house to make us a call and take tea, aren’t you?”
“I thought I would.”
Infant looked anxiously at the westering sun. She hoped Rilla would have the cold soap cut into cakes and boxed, and herself bathed, clothed, and in her right mind, before the Honorable Truman Condit rode up to their door.
“I want to have a talk with you first, though,” he added. “And my way is to go right to the point. Why did you never marry?”
“Come to that,” retorted Infant, a sparklebreaking through her face, “why didyou marry?”
“In the first place, because you wouldn’t have me, and in the second place, because I found a very good wife where I went. I’ve been a widower now several years, and the boys are settled. I’m loose from business for almost the first time in my life, and back here to look at the old neighborhood before spending some years abroad. Your never marrying has revived certain things. Maybe you’ve forgotten.”
Among her other thoughts, Infant was conscious of recollecting how often she had wished to go abroad if only some happy friend could go along as a cushion betwixt Rilla and her. She unfastened with a furtive hand the rose rope wound about her, but, unwilling to let so many precious roses go, gathered it into loops on her arm.
“Did you ever know,” pursued the Honorable Truman, “that Rilla told me you were going to marry one of the Pierson boys?”
“No!” Infant cried out so suddenly that the horse started.
“She did,” said the Honorable Truman.
“Why,” stammered Infant, “how could you believe it?”
“I was a hot-headed boy with more pride than sense. I wouldn’t say anything to you about it.”
“I remember your quarreling with the Piersons.”
“Weren’t you engaged to one of them?”
“No; which one?”
“Abner.”
“I never was engaged to anybody except you,” she retorted, burning hotly in the face, “and I did not admire that experience when you dropped me and went off. And I don’t yet, though you do lay the blame on poor Rilla.”
Plenty of time had Rilla for all the domestic countermarching she wished to perform before that conference by the fence ended. Unusually stirring were her tacticstoo, for all the Robbs were haled up from the tenant-house—Mrs. Robb to cook a supper, and the young Robbs not actually farming to run on errands.
It was six o’clock when Enos came riding his plough-horses to the great barn. He had turned off early on purpose to intercept Miss Infant and find out what changes were to be made. Infant hastened up the orchard, while the Honorable Truman hastened to the same destination by the road. She saw him leading his horse up the avenue, and felt impatient at Enos Robb’s interruption.
“Sudden doin’s up to the house,” said Enos, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. “’Pears like Miss Rill’s made up her mind about Brother Sanderson at last.”
“Is Brother Sanderson at the house?” inquired Infant.
“He is, for a fact, and the license and the preacher with him. Now what I wantto know, and what I ought to been consulted, Miss Infant, seeing how long I been here, is this—what’s you and me going to do afterward? Is it an interference?”
“Enos,” said Infant, with a gasp, “this isalmostas sudden to me as it is to you. But considering Rilla’s firm character, do you think she would let any new person interfere with her established plans?”
“No, I don’t,” replied Enos, grinning.
Rilla was standing before the dresser in her room arrayed in her stiffest silk. She looked with composure upon her twin, who shut the bedroom door, and hurried up to embrace her.
“It was the best boiling of soap I ever had,” said Rilla, warding the fading roses away from her silk.
“Rilla dear, you might have told me what you meant to do this evening. But I am so glad! I couldn’t bear the thoughts of leaving you before, but now I can.”
“I saw Truman Condit come into theyard with you,” said Rilla. “He’s grown fat. It must have agreed with him to go west.”
“This has been a great rose day,” said her twin, undoing all traces of the day’s festival, and piling them carefully in a waste-basket where they could make no litter. “Won’t you let me kiss you, Rilla?”
The acquiescent nip which Rilla gave Infant took up a world of forgiveness which Rilla never felt.
“And do you think, dear,” Infant ventured, “we’ll ever wish we hadn’t? We’ve lived so long with each other. Truman Condit and Brother Sanderson are really strangers to our ways.”
“I think,” replied Rilla, with decision, “that Brother Sanderson will never have a rose day while he lives onmyfarm; and when I say it is soap-boiling day it willbesoap-boiling day, and Brother Sanderson will stir the soap.”