Aunt Jane of Kentucky Part 14

"I declare to goodness!" laughed Aunt Jane, as she laid down her trowel and pushed back her calico sunbonnet, "if I never heard anything funny again in this world, I could keep on laughin' till I died jest over things I ricollect. The trouble is there ain't always anybody around to laugh with me. Sam Amos ain't nothin' but a name to you, child, but to me he's jest as real as if he hadn't been dead these many years, and I can laugh over the things he used to do the same as if they happened yesterday."

Only a name! And I had read it on a lichen-covered stone in the old burying-ground; but as I walked home through the twilight I would hardly have been startled if Sam Amos, in the pride of life, had come riding past me on his bay mare, or if Uncle Jim Matthews' voice of cheerful discord had mingled with the spring song of the frogs sounding from every marsh and pond.

It was Aunt Jane's motto that wherever a weed would grow a flower would grow; and carrying out this principle of planting, her garden was continually extending its boundaries; and denizens of the garden proper were to be found in every nook and corner of her domain. In the spring you looked for gra.s.s only; and lo! starting up at your feet, like the unexpected joys of life, came the golden daffodil, the paler narcissus, the purple iris, and the red and yellow tulip, flouris.h.i.+ng as bravely as in the soil of its native Holland; and for a few sunny weeks the front yard would be a great flower garden. Then blossom and leaf would fade, and you might walk all summer over the velvet gra.s.s, never knowing how much beauty and fragrance lay hidden in the darkness of the earth. But when I go back to Aunt Jane's garden, I pa.s.s through the front yard and the back yard between rows of lilac, syringas, calycanthus, and honeysuckle; I open the rickety gate, and find myself in a genuine old-fas.h.i.+oned garden, the homely, inclusive spot that welcomed all growing things to its hospitable bounds, type of the days when there were no impa.s.sable barriers of gold and caste between man and his brother man. In the middle of the garden stood a "summer-house," or arbor, whose crumbling timbers were knit together by interlacing branches of honeysuckle and running roses. The summer-house had four entrances, opening on four paths that divided the ground into quarter-sections occupied by vegetables and small fruits, and around these, like costly embroidery on the hem of a homespun garment, ran a wide border of flowers that blossomed from early April to late November, s.h.i.+fting from one beauty to another as each flower had its little day.

There are flower-lovers who love some flowers and other flower-lovers who love all flowers. Aunt Jane was of the latter cla.s.s. The commonest plant, striving in its own humble way to be sweet and beautiful, was sure of a place here, and the haughtiest aristocrat who sought admission had to lay aside all pride of place or birth and acknowledge her kins.h.i.+p with common humanity. The Bourbon rose could not hold aside her skirts from contact with the cabbage-rose; the lavender could not disdain the companions.h.i.+p of sage and thyme. All must live together in the concord of a perfect democracy. Then if the great Gardener bestowed rain and suns.h.i.+ne when they were needed, mid-summer days would show a glorious symphony of color around the gray farmhouse, and through the enchantment of bloom and fragrance flitted an old woman, whose dark eyes glowed with the joy of living, and the joy of remembering all life's other summers.

To Aunt Jane every flower in the garden was a human thing with a life story, and close to the summer-house grew one historic rose, heroine of an old romance, to which I listened one day as we sat in the arbor, where hundreds of honeysuckle blooms were trumpeting their fragrance on the air.

"Grandmother's rose, child, that's all the name it's got," she said, in answer to my question. "I reckon you think a fine-lookin' rose like that ought to have a fine-soundin' name. But I never saw anybody yet that knew enough about roses to tell what its right name is. Maybe when I'm dead and gone somebody'll tack a French name on to it, but as long as it grows in my gyarden it'll be jest grandmother's rose, and this is how it come by the name:

"My grandfather and grandmother was amongst the first settlers of Kentucky. They come from the Old Dominion over the Wilderness Road way back yonder, goodness knows when. Did you ever think, child, how curious it was for them men to leave their homes and risk their own lives and the lives of their little children and their wives jest to git to a new country? It appears to me they must 'a' been led jest like Columbus was when he crossed the big ocean in his little s.h.i.+ps. I reckon if the women and children had had their way about it, the bears and wildcats and Indians would be here yet. But a man goes where he pleases, and a woman's got to foller, and that's the way it was with grandfather and grandmother. I've heard mother say that grandmother cried for a week when she found she had to go, and every now and then she'd sob out, 'I wouldn't mind it so much if I could take my gyarden.' When they began packin' up their things, grandmother took up this rose and put it in an iron kittle and laid plenty of good rich earth around the roots. Grandfather said the load they had to carry was heavy enough without puttin' in any useless things. But grandmother says, says she: 'If you leave this rose behind, you can leave me, too.' So the kittle and the rose went. Four weeks they was on their way, and every time they come to a creek or a river or a spring, grandmother'd water her rose, and when they got to their journey's end, before they'd ever chopped a tree or laid a stone or broke ground, she cut the sod with an axe, and then she took grandfather's huntin' knife and dug a hole and planted her rose.

Grandfather cut some limbs off a beech tree and drove 'em into the ground all around it to keep it from bein' tramped down, and when that was done, grandmother says: 'Now build the house so's this rose'll stand on the right-hand side o' the front walk. Maybe I won't die of homesickness if I can set on my front door-step and see one flower from my old Virginia gyarden.'

"Well, grandmother didn't die of homesickness, nor the rose either.

The transplantin' was good for both of 'em. She lived to be ninety years old, and when she died the house wouldn't hold the children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren that come to the funeral. And here's her rose growin' and bloomin' yet, like there wasn't any such things in the world as old age and death. And every spring I gether a basketful o' these pink roses and lay 'em on her grave over yonder in the old buryin'-ground.

"Some folks has family china and family silver that they're mighty proud of. Martha Crawford used to have a big blue and white bowl that belonged to her great-grandmother, and she thought more o' that bowl than she did of everything else in the house. Milly Amos had a set o'

spoons that'd been in her family for four generations and was too precious to use; and I've got my family rose, and it's jest as dear to me as china and silver are to other folks. I ricollect after father died and the estate had to be divided up, and sister Mary and brother Joe and the rest of 'em was layin' claim to the claw-footed mahogany table and the old secretary and mother's cherry sideboard and such things as that, and brother Joe turned around and says to me, says he:

"'Is there anything you want, Jane? If there is, speak up and make it known.' And I says: 'The rest of you can take what you want of the furniture, and if there's anything left, that can be my part. If there ain't anything left, there'll be no quarrelin'; for there's jest one thing I want, and that's grandmother's rose.'

"They all laughed, and sister Mary says, 'Ain't that jest like Jane?'

and brother Joe says, says he:

"'You shall have it, Jane, and further than that, I'll see to the transplantin'.'

"That very evenin' he come over, and I showed him where I wanted the rose to stand. He dug 'way down into the clay--there's nothin' a rose likes better, child, than good red clay--and got a wheelbarrer load o'

soil from the woods, and we put that in first and set the roots in it and packed 'em good and firm, first with woods' soil, then with clay, waterin' it all the time. When we got through, I says: 'Now, you pretty thing you, if you could come all the way from Virginia in a old iron kittle, you surely won't mind bein' moved from father's place to mine. Now you've got to live and bloom for me same as you did for mother.'

"You needn't laugh, child. That rose knew jest what I said, and did jest what I told it to do. It looked like everything favored us, for it was early in the spring, things was beginnin' to put out leaves, and the next day was cloudy and cool. Then it began to rain, and rained for thirty-six hours right along. And when the sun come out, grandmother's rose come out, too. Not a leaf on it ever withered, and me and my children and my children's children have gethered flowers from it all these years. Folks say I'm foolish about it, and I reckon I am. I've outlived most o' the people I love, but I don't want to outlive this rose. We've both weathered many a hard winter, and two or three times it's been winter-killed clean to the ground, and I thought I'd lost it. Honey, it was like losin' a child. But there's never been a winter yet hard enough to kill the life in that rose's root, and I trust there never will be while I live, for spring wouldn't be spring to me without grandmother's rose."

Tall, straight, and strong it stood, this oft transplanted pilgrim rose; and whether in bloom or clothed only in its rich green foliage, you saw at a glance that it was a flower of royal lineage. When spring covered it with buds and full blown blossoms of pink, the true rose color, it spoke of queens' gardens and kings' palaces, and every satiny petal was a palimpsest of song and legend. Its perfume was the attar-of-rose scent, like that of the roses of India. It satisfied and satiated with its rich potency. And breathing this odor and gazing into its deep wells of color, you had strange dreams of those other pilgrims who left home and friends, and journeyed through the perils of a trackless wilderness to plant still farther westward the rose of civilization.

To Aunt Jane there were three epochs in a garden's life, "daffodil time," "rose time," and "chrysanthemum time"; and the blossoming of all other flowers would be chronicled under one of these periods, just as we say of historical events that they happened in the reign of this or that queen or empress. But this garden had all seasons for its own, and even in winter there was a deep pleasure in walking its paths and noting how bravely life struggled against death in the frozen bosom of the earth.

I once asked her which flower she loved best. It was "daffodil time,"

and every gold cup held nepenthe for the nightmare dream of winter.

She glanced reprovingly at me over her spectacles.

"It appears to me, child, you ought to know that without askin'," she said. "Did you ever see as many daffydils in one place before? No; and you never will. I've been plantin' that flower every spring for sixty years, and I've never got too many of 'em yet. I used to call 'em Johnny-jump-ups, till Henrietta told me that their right name was daffydil. But Johnny-jump-up suits 'em best, for it kind o' tells how they come up in the spring. The hyacinths and tulips, they hang back till they know it'll be warm and comfortable outside, but these daffydils don't wait for anything. Before the snow's gone you'll see their leaves pus.h.i.+n' up through the cold ground, and the buds come hurryin' along tryin' to keep up with the leaves, jest like they knew that little children and old women like me was waitin' and longin' for 'em. Why, I've seen these flowers bloomin' and the snow fallin' over 'em in March, and they didn't mind it a bit. I got my start o'

daffydils from mother's gyarden, and every fall I'd divide the roots up and scatter 'em out till I got the whole place pretty well sprinkled with 'em, but the biggest part of 'em come from the old Harris farm, three or four miles down the pike. Forty years ago that farm was sold, and the man that bought it tore things up scandalous.

He called it remodelin', I ricollect, but it looked more like ruinin'

to me. Old Lady Harris was like myself; she couldn't git enough of these yeller flowers. She had a double row of 'em all around her gyarden, and they'd even gone through the fence and come up in the cornfield, and who ever plowed that field had to be careful not to touch them daffydils.

"Well, as soon as the new man got possession he begun plowin' up the gyarden, and one evenin' the news come to me that he was throwin' away Johnny-jump-ups by the wagon-load. I put on my sunbonnet and went out where Abram was at work in the field, and says I, 'Abram, you've got to stop plowin' and put the horse to the spring wagon and take me over to the old Harris place.' And Abram says, says he, 'Why, Jane, I'd like mighty well to finish this field before night, for it looks like it might rain to-morrow. Is it anything particular you want to go for?'

"Says I, 'Yes; I never was so particular about anything in my life as I am about this. I hear they're plowin' up Old Lady Harris' gyarden and throwin' the flowers away, and I want to go over and git a wagon-load o' Johnny-jump-ups.'

"Abram looked at me a minute like he thought I was losin' my senses, and then he burst out laughin', and says he: 'Jane, who ever heard of a farmer stoppin' plowin' to go after Johnny-jump-ups? And who ever heard of a farmer's wife askin' him to do such a thing?'

"I walked up to the plow and begun to unfasten the trace chains, and says I: 'Business before pleasure, Abram. If it's goin' to rain to-morrow that's all the more reason why I ought to have my Johnny-jump-ups set out to-day. The plowin' can wait till we come back.'

"Of course Abram give in when he saw how I wanted the flowers. But he broke out laughin' two or three times while he was. .h.i.tchin' up and says he: 'Don't tell any o' the neighbors, Jane, that I stopped plowin' to go after a load of Johnny-jump-ups.'

"When we got to the Harris place we found the Johnny-jump-ups lyin' in a gully by the side o' the road, a pitiful sight to anybody that loves flowers and understands their feelin's. We loaded up the wagon with the pore things, and as soon as we got home, Abram took his hoe and made a little trench all around the gyarden, and I set out the Johnny-jump-ups while Abram finished his plowin', and the next day the rain fell on Abram's cornfield and on my flowers.

"Do you see that row o' daffydils over yonder by the front fence, child--all leaves and no blossoms?"

I looked in the direction of her pointing finger and saw a long line of flowerless plants, standing like sad and silent guests at the festival of spring.

"It's been six years since I set 'em out there," said Aunt Jane impressively, "and not a flower have they had in all that time. Some folks say it's because I moved 'em at the wrong time o' the year. But the same week I moved these I moved some from my yard to Elizabeth Crawford's, and Elizabeth's bloom every year, so it can't be that.

Some folks said the place I had 'em in was too shady, and I put 'em right out there where the sun strikes on 'em till it sets, and still they won't bloom. It's my opinion, honey, that they're jest homesick.

I believe if I was to take them daffydils back to Aunt Matilda's and plant 'em in the border where they used to grow, alongside o' the sage and lavender and thyme, that they'd go to bloomin' again jest like they used to. You know how the children of Israel pined and mourned when they was carried into captivity. Well, every time I look at my daffydils I think o' them homesick Israelites askin', 'How can we sing the songs o' Zion in a strange land?'

"You needn't laugh, child. A flower is jest as human as you and me.

Look at that vine yonder, takin' hold of everything that comes in its way like a little child learnin' to walk. And calycanthus buds, see how you've got to hold 'em in your hands and warm 'em before they'll give out their sweetness, jest like children that you've got to love and pet, before they'll let you git acquainted with 'em. You see that pink rose over by the fence?" pointing to a La France heavy with blossoms. "Well, that rose didn't do anything but put out leaves the first two years I had it. A bud might come once in a while, but it would blast before it was half open. And at last I says to it, says I, 'What is it you want, honey? There's somethin' that don't please you, I know. Don't you like the place you're planted in, and the hollyhocks and lilies for neighbors?' And one day I took it up and set it between that white tea and another La France, and it went to bloomin' right away. It didn't like the neighborhood it was in, you see. And did you ever hear o' people disappearin' from their homes and never bein'

found any more? Well, flowers can disappear the same way. The year before I was married there was a big bed o' pink chrysanthemums growin' under the dinin'-room windows at old Dr. Pendleton's. It wasn't a common magenta pink, it was as clear, pretty a pink as that La France rose. Well, I saw 'em that fall for the first time and the last. The next year there wasn't any, and when I asked where they'd gone to, n.o.body could tell anything about 'em. And ever since then I've been searchin' in every old gyarden in the county, but I've never found 'em, and I don't reckon I ever will.

"And there's my roses! Just look at 'em! Every color a rose could be, and pretty near every kind there is. Wouldn't you think I'd be satisfied? But there's a rose I lost sixty years ago, and the ricollection o' that rose keeps me from bein' satisfied with all I've got. It grew in Old Lady Elrod's gyarden and nowhere else, and there ain't a rose here except grandmother's that I wouldn't give up forever if I could jest find that rose again.

"I've tried many a time to tell folks about that rose, but I can't somehow get hold of the words. I reckon an old woman like me, with little or no learnin', couldn't be expected to tell how that rose looked, any more'n she could be expected to draw it and paint it. I can say it was yeller, but that word 'yeller' don't tell the color the rose was. I've got all the shades of yeller in my garden, but nothin'

like the color o' that rose. It got deeper and deeper towards the middle, and lookin' at one of them roses half-opened was like lookin'

down into a gold mine. The leaves crinkled and curled back towards the stem as fast as it opened, and the more it opened the prettier it was, like some women that grow better lookin' the older they grow,--Mary Andrews was one o'that kind,--and when it comes to tellin' you how it smelt, I'll jest have to stop. There never was anything like it for sweetness, and it was a different sweetness from any other rose G.o.d ever made.

"I ricollect seein' Miss Penelope come in church one Sunday, dressed in white, with a black velvet gyirdle 'round her waist, and a bunch o'

these roses, buds and half-blown ones and full-blown ones, fastened in the gyirdle, and that bunch o' yeller roses was song and sermon and prayer to me that day. I couldn't take my eyes off 'em; and I thought that if Christ had seen that rose growin' in the fields around Palestine, he wouldn't 'a' mentioned lilies when he said Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

"I always intended to ask for a slip of it, but I waited too long. It got lost one winter, and when I asked Old Lady Elrod about it she said, 'Mistress Parrish, I cannot tell you whence it came nor whither it went.' The old lady always used mighty pretty language.

"Well, honey, them two lost flowers jest haunt me. They're like dead children. You know a house may be full o' livin' children, but if there's one dead, a mother'll see its face and hear its voice above all the others, and that's the way with my lost flowers. No matter how many roses and chrysanthemums I have, I keep seein' Old Lady Elrod's yeller roses danglin' from Miss Penelope's gyirdle, and that bed o'

pink chrysanthemums under Dr. Pendleton's dinin'-room windows."

"Each mortal has his Carca.s.sonne!" Here was Aunt Jane's, but it was no matter for a tear or even a sigh. And I thought how the sting of life would lose its venom, if for every soul the unattainable were embodied in nothing more embittering than two exquisite lost flowers.

One afternoon in early June I stood with Aunt Jane in her garden. It was the time of roses; and in the midst of their opulent bloom stood the tall white lilies, handmaidens to the queen. Here and there over the warm earth old-fas.h.i.+oned pinks spread their prayer-rugs, on which a wors.h.i.+per might kneel and offer thanks for life and spring; and towering over all, rows of many-colored hollyhocks flamed and glowed in the light of the setting sun like the stained gla.s.s windows of some old cathedral.

Across the flowery expanse Aunt Jane looked wistfully toward the evening skies, beyond whose stars and clouds we place that other world called heaven.

"I'm like my grandmother, child," she said presently. "I know I've got to leave this country some day soon, and journey to another one, and the only thing I mind about it is givin' up my gyarden. When John looked into heaven he saw gold streets and gates of pearl, but he don't say anything about gyardens. I like what he says about no sorrer, nor cryin', nor pain, and G.o.d wipin' away all tears from their eyes. That's pure comfort. But if I could jest have Abram and the children again, and my old home and my old gyarden, I'd be willin' to give up the gold streets and gla.s.s sea and pearl gates."

The loves of earth and the homes of earth! No apocalyptic vision can come between these and the earth-born human heart.

Life is said to have begun in a garden; and if here was our lost paradise, may not the paradise we hope to gain through death be, to the lover of nature, another garden in a new earth, girdled by four soft-flowing rivers, and watered by mists that arise in the night to fall on the face of the sleeping world, where all we plant shall grow unblighted through winterless years, and they who inherit it go with white garments and s.h.i.+ning faces, and say at morn and noon and eve: _My soul is like a watered garden?_

[Ill.u.s.tration]