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Page 56
Four feet tall, shaven and thick and shining, the old hedge stood, and
the garnered sweetness of a hundred years' slow growth breathed
delicately from it toward the great-great-grandson of the man who
planted it. A box hedge takes as long in the making as a gentleman, and
when they are done the two are much of a sort. No plant in all the
garden has so subtle an air of breeding, so gentle a reserve, yet so
gracious a message of sweetness for all of the world who will stop to
learn it. It keeps a firm dignity under the stress of tempest when
lighter growths are tossed and torn; it shines bright through the snow;
it has a well-bred willingness to be background, with the well-bred gift
of presence, whether as background or foreground. The soul of the
box-tree is an aristocrat, and the sap that runs through it is the blue
blood of vegetation.
Saluting him bravely in the hot sunshine with its myriad shining
sword-points, the old hedge sent out to Philip on the May breeze its
ancient welcome of aromatic fragrance, and the tall roses crowded gayly
to look over its edge at the new master. Slowly, a little dazed at this
oasis of shining order in the neglected garden, he walked to the opening
and stepped inside the hedge. The rose garden! The famous rose garden of
Fairfield, and as his mother had described it, in full splendor of
cared-for, orderly bloom. Across the paths he stepped swiftly till he
stood amid the roses, giant bushes of Jacqueminot and Mar�chal Niel; of
pink and white and red and yellow blooms in thick array. The glory of
them intoxicated him. That he should own all of this beauty seemed too
good to be true, and instantly he wanted to taste his ownership. The
thought came to him that he would enter into his heritage with strong
hands here in the rose garden; he caught a deep-red Jacqueminot almost
roughly by its gorgeous head and broke off the stem. He would gather a
bunch, a huge, unreasonable bunch of his own flowers. Hungrily he broke
one after another; his shoulders bent over them, he was deep in the
bushes.
"I reckon I shall have to ask you not to pick any more of those roses,"
a voice said.
Philip threw up his head as if he had been shot; he turned sharply with
a great thrill, for he thought his mother spoke to him. Perhaps it was
only the Southern inflection so long unheard, perhaps the sunlight that
shone in his eyes dazzled him, but, as he stared, the white figure
before him seemed to him to look exactly as his mother had looked long
ago. Stumbling over his words, he caught at the first that came.
"I--I think it's all right," he said.
The girl smiled frankly, yet with a dignity in her puzzled air. "I'm
afraid I shall have to be right decided," she said. "These roses are
private property and I mustn't let you have them."
"Oh!" Philip dropped the great bunch of gorgeous color guiltily by his
side, but still held tightly the prickly mass of stems, knowing his
right, yet half wondering if he could have made a mistake. He stammered:
"I thought--to whom do they belong?"
"They belong to my cousin, Mr. Philip Fairfield Beckwith"--the sound of
his own name was pleasant as the falling voice strayed through it. "He
is coming home in a few days, so I want them to look their prettiest for
him--for his first sight of them. I take care of this rose garden," she
said, and laid a motherly hand on the nearest flower. Then she smiled.
"It doesn't seem right hospitable to stop you, but if you will come over
to Westerly, to our house, father will be glad to see you, and I will
certainly give you all the flowers you want." The sweet and masterful
apparition looked with a gracious certainty of obedience straight into
Philip's bewildered eyes.
[Illustration: "I reckon I shall have to ask you not pick any more of
those roses," a voice said.]
"The boy Shelby!" Many a time in the months after Philip Beckwith
smiled to himself reminiscently, tenderly, as he thought of "the boy
Shelby" whom he had read into John Fairfield's letter; "the boy Shelby"
who was twenty-two years old and the only child; "the boy Shelby" whom
he had blamed with such easy severity for idling at Fairfield; "the boy
Shelby" who was no boy at all, but this white flower of girlhood,
called--after the quaint and reasonable Southern way--as a boy is
called, by the surname of her mother's people.
Toward Westerly, out of the garden of the old time, out of the dimness
of a forgotten past, the two took their radiant youth and the brightness
of to-day. But a breeze blew across the tangle of weeds and flowers as
they wandered away, and whispered a hope, perhaps a promise; for as it
touched them each tall stalk nodded gayly and the box hedges rustled
delicately an answering undertone. And just at the edge of the woodland,
before they were out of sight, the girl turned and threw a kiss back to
the roses and the box.
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