Part 31

A neighbour opposite, probably a garden rival of the owner of the boat but lacking aquatic furniture, had utilized a single-seated cutter which, painted blue of the unmerciful shade that fights with everything it approaches, was set on an especially green bit of side lawn, surrounded by a heavy row of conch shells, and the box into which the seat had been turned, as well as the bottom of the sleigh itself, was filled with a jumble of magenta petunias and flame-coloured nasturtiums.

After we had passed down a village street a quarter of a mile long, bordered on either side by floral combinations of this description, the sight began to pall, and I wondered how it was possible that any flowers well watered and cared for could produce such a feeling of positive aversion as well as eye-strained fatigue; also, if this was all that the Cortrights had driven us many miles to see, when it was so much more interesting to lounge on either of the porches of their own cottage, the one commanding the sea and the other the sand garden, the low dunes, and the marsh meadows.

"It is only half a mile farther on," said Aunt Lavinia, quick to feel that we were becoming bored, without our having apparently given any sign to that effect.

"It! What is it?" asked Bart, while I, without shame it is confessed, having a ravenous appetite, through outdoor living, hoped that it was some quaint and neat little inn that "refreshed travellers," as it was expressed in old-time wording.

"How singular!" ejaculated Aunt Lavinia; "I thought I told you last night when we were in the garden--well, it must have been in a dream instead. It is the garden of Mrs. Marchant, wholly of fragrant things; it is on the little cross-road, beyond that strip of woods up there," and she waved toward a slight rise in the land that was regarded as a hill of considerable importance in this flat country.

"It does not contain merely a single bed of sweet odours like Barbara's and mine, but is a garden an acre in extent, where everything admitted has fragrance, either in flower or leaf. We chanced upon it quite by accident, Martin and I, when driving ourselves down from Oaklands, across country, as it were, to Gray Rocks, by keeping to shady lanes, byways, and pent roads, where it was often necessary to take down bars and sometimes verge on trespassing by going through farmyards in order to continue our way.

"After traversing a wood road of unusual beauty, where everything broken and unsightly had been carefully removed that ferns and wild shrubs might have full chance of life, we came suddenly upon a white picket gate covered by an arched trellis, beyond which in the vista could be seen a modest house of the real colonial time, set in the midst of a garden.

"At once we realized the fact that the lane was also a part of the garden in that it was evidently the daily walk of some one who loved nature, and we looked about for a way of retracing our steps. At the same moment two female figures approached the gate from the other side. At the distance at which we were I could only see that one was tall and slender, was dressed all in pure white, and crowned by a mass of hair to match, while the other woman was short and stocky, and the way in which she opened the gate and held it back told that whatever her age might be she was an attendant, though probably an intimate one.

"In another moment they discovered us, and as Martin alighted from the vehicle to apologize for our intrusion the tall figure immediately retreated to the garden, so quickly and without apparent motion that we were both startled, for the way of moving is peculiar to those whose feet do not really tread the earth after the manner of their fellows; and before we had quite recovered ourselves the stout woman had advanced and we saw by the pleasant smile her round face wore that she was not aggrieved at the intrusion but seemed pleased to meet human beings in that out-of-the-way place rather than rabbits, many of which had scampered away as we came down the lane.

"Martin explained our dilemma and asked if we might gain the highway without retracing our steps. The woman hesitated a moment, and then said, 'If you come through the gate and turn sharp to the right, you can go out across the apple orchard by taking down a single set of bars, only you'll have to lead your horse, sir, for the trees are set thick and are heavy laden. I'd let you cross the bit of grass to the drive by the back gate yonder but that it would grieve Mrs. Marchant to see the turf so much as pressed with a wheel; she'd feel and know it somehow, even if she didn't see it.'

"'Mrs. Marchant! Not Mrs. Chester Marchant?' cried Martin, while the far-away echo of something recalled by the name troubled the ears of my memory.

"'Yes, sir, the very same! Did you know Dr. Marchant, sir? The minute I laid eyes on you two I thought you were of her kind!' replied the woman, pointing backward over her shoulder and settling herself against the shaft and side of Brown Tom, the horse, as if expecting and making ready for a comfortable chat.

"As she stood thus I could take a full look at her without intrusiveness. Apparently well over sixty years old, and her face lines telling of many troubles, yet she had not a gray hair in her head and her poise was of an independent landowner rather than an occupier of another's home. I also saw at a glance that whatever her present position might be, she had not been born in service, but was probably a native of local importance, who, for some reason perfectly satisfactory to herself, was 'accommodating.'

"'Dr. Marchant, Dr. Russell, and I were college mates,' said Martin, briefly, 'and after he and his son died so suddenly I was told that his widow was mentally ill and that none could see her, and later that she had died, or else the wording was so that I inferred as much,' and the very recollection seemed to set Martin dreaming. And I did not wonder, for there had never been a more brilliant and devoted couple than Abbie and Chester Marchant, and I still remember the shock of it when word came that both father and son had been killed by the same runaway accident, though it was nearly twenty years ago.

"'She was ill, sir, was Mrs. Marchant; too ill to see anybody. For a long time she wouldn't believe that the accident had happened, and when she really sensed it, she was as good as dead for nigh five years. One day some of her people came to me--'twas the year after my own husband died--and asked if I would take a lady and her nurse here to live with me for the summer. They told me of her sickness and how she was always talking of some cottage in a garden of sweet-smelling flowers where she had lived one happy summer with her husband and her boy, and they placed the house as mine.

"'Her folks said the doctors thought if she could get back here for a time that it might help her. Then I recollected that ten years before, when I went up to Maine to visit my sister, I'd rented the place, just as it stood, to folks of the name of Marchant, a fine couple that didn't look beyond each other unless 'twas at their son. In past times my grandmother had an old-country knack of raising healing herbs and all sorts of sweet-smelling things, along with farm truck, so that folks came from all about to buy them and doctors too, for such things weren't sold so much in shops in those days as they are now, and so this place came to be called the Herb Farm. After that it was sold off, little by little, until the garden, wood lane, and orchard is about all that's left.

"'I was lonesome and liked the idea of company, and besides I was none too well fixed; yet I dreaded a mournful widow that wasn't all there anyway, according to what they said, but I thought I'd try. Well, sir, she come, and that first week I thought I'd never stand it, she talked and wrung her hands so continual. But one day what do you think happened? I chanced to pick a nosegay, not so much fine flowers perhaps as good-smelling leaves and twigs, and put it in a little pitcher in her room.

"'It was like witchcraft the way it worked; the smell of those things seemed to creep over her like some drugs might and she changed. She stopped moaning and went out into the garden and touched all the posies with her fingers, as if she was shaking hands, and all of a sudden it seemed, by her talk, as if her dead were back with her again; and on every other point she's been as clear and ladylike as possible ever since, and from that day she cast off her black clothes as if wearing 'em was all through a mistake.

"'The doctors say it's something to do with the 'sociation of smells, for that season they spent in my cottage was the only vacation Dr. Marchant had taken in years, and they say it was the happiest time in her life, fussing about among my old-fashioned posies with him; and somehow in her mind he's got fixed there among those posies, and every year she plants more and more of them, and what friends of hers she ever speaks of she remembers by some flowers they wore or liked.

"'Well, as it turned out, her trustees have bought my place out and fixed it over, and here we live together, I may say, both fairly content!

"'Come in and see her, won't you? It'll do no harm. Cortright, did you say your name was?' and before we could retreat, throwing Brown Tom's loose check-rein across the pickets of the gate, she led us to where the tall woman, dressed in pure white, stood under the trees, a look of perfectly calm expectancy in the wonderful dark eyes that made such a contrast to her coils of snow-white hair.

"'Cortright! Martin Cortright, is it not?' she said immediately, as her companion spoke the surname. 'And your wife? I had not heard that you were married, but I remember you well, Lavinia Dorman, and your city garden, and the musk-rose bush that ailed because of having too little sun. Chester will be so sorry to miss you; he is seldom at home in the mornings, for he takes long walks with our son. He is having the first entire half year's vacation he has allowed himself since our marriage. But you will always find him in the garden in the afternoon; he is so fond of fragrant flowers, and he is making new studies of herbs and such things, for he believes that in spite of some great discoveries it will be proven that the old simples are the most enduring medicines.'

"As she spoke she was leading the way, with that peculiar undulating progress, like a cloud blown over the earth's surface, that I had noticed at first. Then we came out from under the shade of the trees into the garden enclosure and I saw borders and beds, but chiefly borders, stretching and curving everywhere, screening all the fences, approaching the house, and when almost there retreating in graceful lines into the shelter of the trees. The growth had the luxuriance of a jungle, and yet there was nothing weedy or awry about it, and as the breeze blew toward us the combination of many odours, both pungent and sweet, was almost overpowering.

"'You very seldom wore a buttonhole flower, but when you did it was a safrano bud or else a white jasmine,' Mrs. Marchant said, wheeling suddenly and looking at Martin with a gaze that did not stop where he stood, but went through and beyond him; 'it was Dr. Russell who always wore a pink! See! I have both here!' and going up to a tea-rose bush, grown to the size of a shrub and lightly fastened to the side of the house, she gathered a few shell-like buds and a moment later pulled down a spray of the jasmine vine that festooned a window, as we see it in England but never here, and carefully cut off a cluster of its white stars by aid of a pair of the long, slender flower-picking scissors that hung from her belt by a ribbon, twisted the stems together, and placed them in Martin's buttonhole almost without touching it.

"Having done this, she seemed to forget us and drifted away among the flowers, touching some gently as she passed, snipping a dead leaf here and arranging a misplaced branch there.

"We left almost immediately, but have been there many times since, and though as a whole the garden is too heavily fragrant, I thought that it might suggest possibilities to you."

As Aunt Lavinia paused we were turning from the main road into the narrow but beautifully kept lane upon which the Herb Farm, as it was still called, was located, by one of those strange freaks that sometimes induces people to build in a strangely inaccessible spot, though quite near civilization. I know that you must have come upon many such places in your wanderings.

Of course my curiosity was piqued, and I felt, besides, as if I was about to step into the page of some strange psychological romance, nor was I disappointed.