A Suburban Garden [pp. 408-411]

A Suburbant Gardelz.
did it do to deny it? That new bonnet,
that silk apron, and above all, that sparkling air. All that must be the outcome
of some one's addresses.
Hersilie raised her eyes to heaven,
blushed, protested. Perfectly useless;
the poor man was head over ears in his
fancy, and from that arose quarrels on
every subject, reproaches, an inquisition.
Forbidden to go to confession, to look
toward the window,- what else? The
jealous man had no rest, even when she
was with him the whole time before his
invalid chair.
It was not easy to distract him, our
cousin Hector.
"Read me something, Hersilie."
She, who could only read large print
now, spelled and hemmed and hawed;
at the end, reader and audience were
sleeping the sleep of the just. The book
falling from Hersilie's hand awoke them
with a start.
"To the devil with the book!" came
from Hector. That being abandoned,
they talked to kill time. Hector lost his
footing in the very middle of his histories; he confused names, mixed up
dates, and skipped over two or three generations. They both conjugated their
verbs in the past tense. "She said this,
he did that." Fossil tittle-tattle, moldy
scandal, their remembrances unreeled
while their bones cracked like skeletons
at a Death's dance.
"The dead call them," it is said of
those who depart. Hector heard those
mysterious voices. More than once,
while sitting at the table, he said to Jacquette: "How now! Why have you not
laid a cover for Fabrice?"- an elder
brother departed twenty years for another world.
Hector went in his turn. He became
excited that day about the garden: a lot
of strawberries to transplant, and Jeanti
would not do it! Thereupon, he became
angry, and in a second - all was over!
We must say also that they had served
a kind of bread souffle with vanilla at
breakfast, and at his age, it takes so
little, you know! They had not time to
toll the passing knell.
As he died, bing, bang, a terrible storm
burst forth, thunder and hail. All the
garden was cut down; even the cvpresses in the cemetery, which let their
broken branches hang when we went the
next day to take Hector to the family
vault.
On our return, we found Hersilie
bathed in tears. She wept for the loss
of her brother, and also for the fruit
which was cut down by the storm. "My
poor brother, how I loved him!" sighed
she. "Those peaches, which would have
been ripe in eight days, alas!" And
as we took our leave, her dear little tearstained face emerged from the folds of
her handkerchief. "Ah, my good Hector," added she, "he set so much store
by his garden! And God was kind to
him. He died without knowing how it
hailed!"
Almha Blakeman Jones.
0
411
1890.]