Part 44 (1/2)
In the second week of October, Mrs. Chigwin was at work in her garden, with her dress tucked up, a basket in her left hand, and a large pair of scissors in her right. Every flower that had begun to fade, every withered leaf and overgrown shoot fell before those fatal shears, and was caught in the all-devouring basket; and from time to time she bore a fresh load of snippets to their last resting-place. Her heart was in her work, and she would not rest until she had completed her round. From the clematis on the cottage wall and the jessamine over the porch she pa.s.sed to a clump of variegated hollyhocks, and from them to the hedge of sweet peas, to the fuchsias almost as high as the peas, the purple and white phlox, the yellow evening primrose, and the many-colored asters.
Stooping here and there, she carefully trimmed the rank-growing geraniums and the cl.u.s.ters of chrysanthemums, cut off the straggling branches of the mignonette and removed every pa.s.sing bloom of harebell, heartsease, and heliotrope.
The euthanasia of the fading blossoms filled her shallow skep half-a-dozen times over, and, to anyone ignorant (to his shame) of the art which our first ancestor surely learned from his mother, and loved, it might have seemed that Mrs. Chigwin used her scissors with a too unsparing hand. But the happy old soul knew what she was about. The evening was closing in, and she had cut both the flowers whose beauty had pa.s.sed away and those which would have been wrinkled and flabby before the morning, knowing full well that only so can you reckon on the perfection of beauty from day to day.
”There, now,” she said, when her last basketful was disposed of, ”I have done. And if old Squire Jermyn, who first laid out this garden, was to come to life again to-morrow, there would be nothing in Martha Chigwin's little plot to make his hair stand on end.”
She threw her eyes comprehensively round the ring of cottages which encircled the village green, with a sniff of defiant challenge, as though she would dare any of her neighbors to make the same boast; and then she came and sat down on the garden-seat, and said to her old friend and companion,
”What do you think about it, Elizabeth?”
”You are right, Martha; right as you always are,” said Mrs. Bundlecombe, in a feeble voice. ”And I was thinking as you went round, cutting off the flowers that have had their day, that if you had come to me and cut me off with the rest of them, there would have been one less poor old withered thing in the world. Here have I been a wretched cripple on your hands all the summer, and surely if the Lord had had any need for me He would not have broken my stalk and left me to shrivel up in the suns.h.i.+ne.”
”Now, Bessy,” said Mrs. Chigwin, severely, ”do you want to put out the light of peace that we have been enjoying for days past? Fie, for shame!
and in a garden, too. Where's your grat.i.tude--or, leastways, where's your patience?”
”There, there, Martha, you know I did not mean it. But I sit here thinking and thinking, till I could write whole volumes on the vanity of human wishes. Cut me off, indeed, just at this moment, when I am waiting to see my dear boy once more before I die!”
Mrs. Bundlecombe was silent again, and the other did not disturb her, knowing by experience what the effort to speak would be likely to end in.
Things had not gone well at Birchmead in the last six months. The news of Alan's arrest on the charge of wife-murder--that was the exaggerated shape in which it first reached the village--was a terrible blow to poor Aunt Bessy. She was struck down by paralysis, and had to keep to her bed for many weeks, and even now she had only the partial use of her limbs.
Mrs. Chigwin, buckling to her new task with heroic cheerfulness, had nursed and comforted her and lightened the burden of her life so far as that was possible. As soon as the cripple could be dressed and moved about, she had bought for her a light basket-chair, into which she used to lift her bodily. Whenever the weather was fine enough she would wheel her into the garden; and she won the first apology for a laugh from Mrs.
Bundlecombe when, having drawn her on the gra.s.s and settled her comfortably, she said,
”Now, Bessy, I have repotted you and put you in the sun on the same day as my balsams, and I shall expect you to be ready for planting out as soon as they are.”
But that was too sanguine a hope, for Mrs. Bundlecombe was still in her chair, and there was not much chance of her ever being able to walk again. As it had been impossible for her to go and see her nephew, either before his trial or since, Mrs. Chigwin had written a letter for her, entreating Alan to come to Birchmead as soon as he was free; and the writer a.s.sured him on her own account that there was not a better place in England for quiet rest and consolation. They heard from the prison authorities that the letter had been received, and that it would be given to the prisoner; and now Aunt Bessy was counting the days until his time had expired.
There had been other changes at Birchmead in the course of the year.
Mrs. Harrington no longer occupied the adjoining cottage, but lay at peace in the churchyard at Thorley. Her grand-daughter had written once to the old ladies from London, according to her promise; after which they had heard of her no more, although they sent her word of her grandmother's death, to the address which she had given them.
The sun was sinking low in the sky, and it was time for Mrs. Bundlecombe to be taken indoors. So Martha Chigwin wheeled her into the house, rapidly undressed her, and lifted her into bed. Then there was a chapter to be read aloud, and joint prayers to be repeated, and supper to be prepared; and Mrs. Chigwin had just made the two cups of gruel which represented the last duty of her busy day's routine, when she heard a noise of wheels on the gravel outside.
It was not a cart but a cab, and it stopped at the door. Cabs were not very familiar in Birchmead, and the appearance of this one at Mrs.
Chigwin's cottage brought curious eyes to almost every window looking out upon the green. There was not much to reward curiosity--only a lady, dressed in a long fur-lined cloak, with a quiet little bonnet, and a traveling-bag in her hand, who knocked at Mrs. Chigwin's door, and, after a short confabulation, dismissed the cabman and went in. At any rate it was something for Birchmead to know that it had a visitor who had come in a Dorminster cab. That was an incident which for these good souls distinguished the day from the one which went before and the one which came after it.
It was Lettice Campion who thus stirred the languid pulse of Birchmead.
She had found her way like a ministering angel to the bedside of Alan's aunt, within three or four days of her arrival in England.
Mrs. Chigwin felt the utmost confidence in her visitor, both from what she had heard of her before and from what she saw of her as soon as she entered the cottage. Lettice could not have been kinder to her mother than she was to the poor crippled woman who had no claim upon her service. She told Mrs. Chigwin that so long as she was at Birchmead she should be Mrs. Bundlecombe's nurse, and she evidently meant to keep her word. Aunt Bessy was comforted beyond measure by her appearance, and still more by the few words which Lettice whispered to her, in response to the forlorn appeal of the old woman's eyes--so unutterably eloquent of the thoughts that were throbbing in the hearts of both--
”I shall wait for him when he comes out!”
”G.o.d bless you!” said Aunt Bessy.
”The world has been cruel to him. He has only us two; we must try to comfort him,” whispered Lettice.
”I am past it, dearie. He has no one but you. You are enough for him.”