Book 1 - Chapter 10. A Bit Of Eden

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_ BOOK I CHAPTER X. A BIT OF EDEN

"This is my first entrance into Eden," I said, as we passed through the rustic gate made of cedar branches and between posts green with American ivy.

"Like another man, you won't stay here long."

"Like Adam, I shall certainly go out when you do."

"That will be before very long, since I have promised Mr. Yocomb some music."

"Even though a Bohemian editor, as you may think, I am conscious of a profound gratitude to some beneficent power, for I never could have chosen so wisely myself. I might have been in Sodom and Gomorrah--for New York in contrast seems a union of both--receiving reports of the crimes and casualties of the day, but I am here with this garden in the foreground and music in the background."

"You don't know anything about the music, and you may yet wish it so far in the background as to be inaudible."

"I admit that I will be in a dilemma when we reach the music, for no matter how much I protest, you will know just what I think."

"Yes, you had better be honest."

"Come, open for me the treasures of your ripe experience. You have been a week in the country. I know you will give me a rosebud--a rare old-fashioned one, if you please, with a quaint, sweet meaning, for I see that such abound in this garden, and I am wholly out of humor with the latest mode in everything. Recalling your taste for homely, honest worth, as shown by your passion for Old Plod, I shall seek a blossom among the vegetables for you. Ah, here is one that is sweet, white, and pretty," and I plucked a cluster of flowers from a potato-hill. "By the way, what flower is this?" I asked demurely.

She looked at it blankly for a moment, then remarked, with a smile, "You have said that it was sweet, white, and pretty. Why inquire further?"

"Miss Warren, you have been a week in the country and don't know a potato-blossom."

"Our relations may be changed," she said, "and you become the teacher."

"Oh, here comes Zillah. We will settle the question according to Scripture. Does it not say, 'A little child shall lead them'? Who are you so glad to see, little one, Miss Warren or me?"

"I don't know thee very well yet," she said shyly.

"Do you know Miss Warren very well?"

"Oh, yes, indeed."

"How soon did you come to know her well?"

"The first day when she kissed me."

"I think that's a very nice way of getting acquainted. Won't you let me kiss you good-night when you get sleepy."

She looked at me with a doubtful smile, and said, "I'm afraid thy mustache will tickle me."

The birds were singing in the orchard near, but there was not a note that to my ear was more musical than Miss Warren's laugh. I stooped down before the little girl as I said:

"Suppose we see if a kiss tickles you now, and if it don't now, you won't mind it then, you know."

She came hesitatingly to me, and gave the coveted salute with a delicious mingling of maidenly shyness and childish innocence and frankness.

"Ah!" I exclaimed, "Eden itself contained nothing better than that. To think that I should have been so honored--I who have written the records of enough crimes to sink a world!"

"Perhaps if you had committed some of them she wouldn't have kissed you."

"If I had to live in a ninety-nine story tenement-house, as so many do, I think I would have committed them all. Well, I may come to it. Life is a risky battle to such as I, but I'm in heaven now."

"You do seem very happy," she said, looking at me wistfully.

"I am very happy. I have given myself up wholly to the influences of this day, letting them sway me, lead me whithersoever they will. If this is a day of destiny, no stupid mulishness of mine shall thwart the happy combination of the stars. That the Fates are propitious I have singular reason to hope. Yesterday I was a broken and dispirited man. This evening I feel the influence of all this glad June life. Good Mrs. Yocomb has taken me in hand. I'm to study topography with a teacher who has several other bumps besides that of locality, and Zillah is going to show us the garden of Eden."

"Is this like the garden of Eden?" the little girl asked, looking up at me in surprise.

"Well, I'm not sure that it's just like it, but I'm more than content with this garden. In one respect I think it's better--there are no snakes here. Now, Zillah, lead where you please, I'm in the following mood. Do you know where any of these birds live? Do you think any of them are at home on their nests? If so, we'll call and pay our respects. When I was a horrid boy I robbed a bird's nest, and I often have a twinge of remorse for it." "Do you want to see a robin's nest?" asked Zillah excitedly.

"Yes, indeed."

"Then come and walk softly when I do. There's one in that lilac-bush there. If we don't make a noise, perhaps we can see mother robin on the nest. Sh--, sh--, very softly; now lift me up as father did-- there, don't you see her?"

I did for a moment, and then the bird flew away on a swift, silent wing, but from a neighboring tree the paternal robin clamored loudly against our intrusion. Nevertheless, Zillah and I peeped in.

"Oh, the queer little things!" she said, "they seem all mouth and swallow."

"Mrs. Robin undoubtedly thinks them lovely. Miss Warren, you are not quite tall enough, and since I can't hold you up like Zillah, I'll get a box from the tool-house. Isn't this the jolliest housekeeping you ever saw? A father, mother, and six children, with a house six inches across and open to the sky. Compare that with a Fifth Avenue mansion!"

"I think it compares very favorably with many mansions on the Avenue," she said, after I returned with a box and she had peered for a moment into the roofless home.

"I thought you always spoke the truth," I remarked, assuming a look of blank amazement.

"Well, prove that I don't."

"Do you mean to say that you think that a simple house, of which this nest is the type, compares favorably with a Fifth Avenue mansion?"

"I do."

"What do you know about such mansions?"

"I have pupils in some of the best of them."

"I hear the voices of many birds, but you are the _rara avis_ of them all," I said, looking very incredulous.

"Not at all; I am simply matter-of-fact. Which is worth the more, a furnished house or the growing children in it?"

"The children ought to be."

"Well, many a woman has so much house and furniture to look after that she has no time for her children. The little brown mother we have frightened away can give nearly all her time to her children; and, by the way, they may take cold unless we depart and let her shelter them again with her warm feathers. Besides, the protesting paterfamilias on the pear-tree there is not aware of our good-will toward him and his, and is naturally very anxious as to what we human monsters intend. The mother bird keeps quiet, but she is watching us from some leafy cover with tenfold his anxiety."

"You will admit, however, that the man bird is doing the best he can."

"Oh, yes, I have a broad charity for all of his kind."

"Well, I am one of his kind, and so shall take heart and bask in your general good-will. Stop your noise, old fellow, and go and tell your wife that she may come home to the children. I differ from you, Miss Warren, as I foresee I often shall. You are not matter-of-fact at all. You are unconventional, unique--" "Why not say queer, and give your meaning in good plain English?"

"Because that is not my meaning. I fear you are worse--that you are romantic. Moreover, I am told that girls who dote on love in a cottage all marry rich men if the chance comes." She bit her lip, colored, and seemed annoyed, but said, after a moment's hesitation, "Well, why shouldn't they, if the rich men are the right men?"

"Oh, I think such a course eminently proper and thrifty. I'm not finding fault with it in the least. They who do this are a little inconsistent, however, in shunning so carefully that ideal cottage, over which, as young ladies, they had mild and poetic raptures. Now, I can't associate this kind of thing with you. If you had 'drawings or leadings,' as Mrs. Yocomb would say, toward a Fifth Avenue mansion, you would say so in effect. I fear you are romantic, and are under the delusion that love in a cottage means happiness. You have a very honest face, and you looked into that nest as if you liked it."

"Mr. Morton," she said, frowning and laughing at the same time, "I'm not going to be argued out of self-consciousness. If we don't know what we know, we don't know anything. I insist upon it that I am utterly matter-of-fact in my opinions on this question. State the subject briefly in prose. Does a family exist for the sake of a home, or a home for the sake of a family? I know of many instances in which the former of these suppositions is true. The father toils and wears himself out, often gambles--speculating, some call it--and not unfrequently cheats and steals outright in order to keep up his establishment. The mother works and worries, smooths her wrinkled brow to curious visitors, burdens her soul with innumerable deceits, and enslaves herself that her house and its belongings may be as good or a little better than her neighbor's. The children soon catch the same spirit, and their souls become absorbed in wearing apparel. They are complacently ignorant concerning topics of general interest and essential culture, but would be mortified to death if suspected of being a little off on 'good form' and society's latest whims in mode. It is a dreary thraldom to mere things in which the soul becomes as material, narrow, and hard as the objects which absorb it. There is no time for that which gives ideality and breadth."

"Do you realize that your philosophy would stop half the industries of the world? Do you not believe in large and sumptuously furnished houses?"

"Yes, for those who have large incomes. One may live in a palace, and yet not be a slave to the palace. Our home should be as beautiful as our taste and means can make it; but, like the nest yonder, it should simply serve its purpose, leaving us the time and means to get all the good out of the world at large that we can."

A sudden cloud of sadness overcast her face as she continued, after a moment, half in soliloquy:

"The robins will soon take wing and leave the nest; so must we. How many have gone already!"

"But the robins follow the sun in their flight," I said gently, "and thus they find skies more genial than those they left."

She gave me a quick, appreciative smile as she said:

"That's a pleasant thought."

"Your home must be an ideal one," I remarked unthinkingly.

She colored slightly, and laughed as she answered:

"I'm something like a snail; I carry my home, if not my house, around with me. A music-teacher can afford neither a palace nor a cottage."

I looked at her with eager eyes as I said, "Pardon me if I am unduly frank; but on this day I'm inclined to follow every impulse, and say just what I think, regardless of the consequences. You make upon me a decided impression of what we men call comradeship. I feel as if I had known you weeks and months instead of hours. Could we not have been robins ourselves in some previous state of existence, and have flown on a journey together?"

"Mrs. Yocomb had better take you in hand, and teach you sobriety."

"Yes, this June air, laden with the odors of these sweet old-style roses and grape-blossoms, intoxicates me. These mountains lift me up. These birds set my nerves tingling like one of Beethoven's symphonies, played by Thomas's orchestra. In neither case do I know what the music means, but I recognize a divine harmony. Never before have I been conscious of such a rare and fine exhilaration. My mood is the product of an exceptional combination of causes, and they have culminated in this old garden. You know, too, that I am a creature of the night, and my faculties are always at their best as darkness comes on. I may seem to you obtuseness itself, but I feel as if I had been endowed with a spiritual and almost unerring discernment. In my sensitive and highly wrought condition, I know that the least incongruity or discord in sight or sound would jar painfully. Yes, laugh at me if you will, but nevertheless I'm going to speak my thoughts with no more restraint than these birds are under. I'm going back for a moment to the primitive condition of society, when there were no disguises. You are the mystery of this garden--you who come from New York, where you seem to have lived without the shelter of home life, to have obtained your livelihood among conventional and artificial people, and to whom the false, complicated world must be well known, and yet you make no more discord in this garden than the first woman would have made. You are in harmony with every leaf, with every flower, and every sound; with that child playing here and there; with the daisies in the orchard; with the little brown mother, whose children you feared might take cold. Hush!" I said, with a deprecatory gesture, "I will speak my mind. Never before in my life have I enjoyed the utter absence of concealment. In the city one must use words to hide thoughts more often than to express them, but here, in this old garden, I intend to reproduce for a brief moment one of the conditions of Eden, and to speak as frankly as the first man could have spoken. I am not jesting either, nor am I irreverent. I say, in all sincerity, you are the mystery of this garden--you who come from New York, and from a life in which your own true womanhood has been your protection; and yet if, as of old, God should walk in this garden in the cool of the day, it seems to me you would not be afraid. Such is the impression--given without reserve--that you make on me--you whom I have just seen, as it were!"

As she realized my sincerity she looked at me with an expression of strong perplexity and surprise.

"Truly, Mr. Morton," she said slowly, "you are in a strange, unnatural mood this evening."

"I seem so," I replied, "because absolutely true to nature. See how far astray from Eden we all are! I have merely for a moment spoken my thoughts without disguise, and you look as if you doubted my sanity."

"I must doubt your judgment," she said, turning away.

"Then why should such a clearly defined impression be made on me? For every effect there must be a cause."

She turned upon me suddenly, and her look was eager, searching, and almost imperious in its demand to know the truth.

"Are you as sincere as you are unconventional?" she asked.

I took off my hat, as I replied, with a smile, "A garden, Miss Warren, was the first sacred place of the world, and never were sincerer words spoken in that primal garden."

She looked at me a moment wistfully, and even tearfully. "I wish you were right," she said, slowly shaking her head; "your strange mood has infected me, I think; and I will admit that to be true is the struggle of my life, but the effort to be true is often hard, bitterly hard, in New York. I admit that for years truthfulness has been the goal of my ambition. Most young girls have a father and mother and brothers to protect them: I have had only the truth, and I cling to it with the instinct of self-preservation."

"You cling to it because you love it. Pardon me, you do not cling to it at all. Truth has become the warp and woof of your nature. Ah! here is your emblem, not growing in the garden, but leaning over the fence as if it would like to come in, and yet, among all the roses here, where is there one that excels this flower?" And I gathered for her two or three sprays of sweetbrier.

"I won't mar your bit of Eden by a trace of affectation," she said, looking directly into my eyes in a frank and friendly manner; "I'd rather be thought true than thought a genius, and I will make allowance for your extravagant language and estimate on the ground of your intoxication. You surely see double, and yet I am pleased that in your transcendental mood I do not seem to make discord in this old garden. This will seem to you a silly admission after you leave this place and recover your everyday senses. I'm sorry already I made it-- but it was such an odd conceit of yours!" and her heightened color and glowing face proved how she relished it.

It was an exquisite moment to me. The woman showed her pleasure as frankly as a happy child. I had touched the keynote of her character as I had that of Adah Yocomb's a few hours before, and in her supreme individuality Emily Warren stood revealed before me in the garden.

She probably saw more admiration in my face than she liked, for her manner changed suddenly.

"Being honest doesn't mean being made of glass," she said brusquely; "you don't know anything about me, Mr. Morton. You have simply discovered that I have not a leaning toward prevarication. That's all your fine words amount to. Since I must keep up a reputation for telling the truth, I'm obliged to say that you don't remind me of Adam very much."

"No, I probably remind you of a night editor, ambitious to be smart in print."

She bit her lip, colored a little. "I wasn't thinking of you in that light just then," she said. "And--and Adam is not my ideal man."

"In what light did you see me?"

"It is growing dusky, and I won't be able to see you at all soon."

"That's evasion."

"Come, Mr. Morton, I hope you do not propose to keep up Eden customs indefinitely. It's time we returned to the world to which we belong."

"Zillah!" called Mrs. Yocomb, and we saw her coming down the garden walk.

"Bless me! where is the child!" I exclaimed.

"When you began to soar into the realms of melodrama and forget the garden you had asked her to show you, she sensibly tried to amuse herself. She is in the strawberry-bed, Mrs. Yocomb."

"Yes," I said, "I admit that I forgot the garden; I had good reason to do so."

"I think it is time we left the garden. You must remember that Mrs. Yocomb and I are not night editors, and cannot see in the dark."

"Mother," cried Zillah, coming forward, "see what I have found;" and her little hands were full of ripe strawberries. "If it wasn't getting so dark I could have found more, I'm sure," she added,

"What, giving them all to me?" Miss Warren exclaimed, as Zillah held out her hands to her favorite. "Wouldn't it be nicer if we all had some?"

"Who held you up to look into the robin's nest?" I asked reproachfully.

"Thee may give Richard Morton my share," said the little girl, trying to make amends.

I held out my hand, and Miss Warren gave me half of them.

"Now these are mine?" I said to Zillah. "Yes!"

"Then I'll do what I please with them."

I picked out the largest, and stooping down beside her, continued: "You must eat these or I won't eat any."

"Thee's very like Emily Warren," the little girl laughed; "thee gets around me before I know it."

"I'll give you all the strawberries for that compliment."

"No, thee must take half."

"Mrs. Yocomb, you and I will divide, too. Could there possibly be a more delicious combination!" and Miss Warren smacked her lips appreciatively.

"The strawberry was evolved by a chance combination of forces," I remarked.

"Undoubtedly," added Miss Warren, "so was my Geneva watch."

"I like to think of the strawberry in this way," said Mrs. Yocomb. "There are many things in the Scriptures hard to understand; so there are in Nature. But we all love the short text: 'God is love.' The strawberry is that text repeated in Nature."

"Mrs. Yocomb, you could convert infidels and pagans with a gospel of strawberries," I cried.

"There are many Christians who prefer tobacco," said Mrs. Yocomb, laughing.

"That reminds me," I exclaimed, "that I have not smoked to-day. I fear I shall fall from grace to-morrow, however."

"Yes, I imagine you will drop from the clouds by tomorrow," Miss Warren remarked.

"By the way, what a magnificent cloud that is rising above the horizon in the southwest. It appears like a solitary headland in an azure sea."

"Ah--h!" she said, in satirical accent.

"Mrs. Yocomb, Miss Warren has been laughing at me ever since I came. I may have to claim your protection."

"No! thee and father are big enough to take care of yourselves."

"Emily Warren, is thee and Richard Morton both lost?" called Mr. Yocomb from the piazza. "I can't find mother either. If somebody don't come soon I'll blow the fish-horn."

"We're all coming," answered Mrs. Yocomb, and she led the way toward the house.

"You have not given me a rose yet," I said to Miss Warren.

"Must you have one?"

"A man never uses the word 'must' in seeking favors from a lady."

"Adroit policy! Well, what kind of a one do you want?"

"I told you long ago."

"Oh, I remember. An old-fashioned one, with a pronounced meaning. Here is a York and Lancaster bud. That has a decided old-style meaning."

"It means war, does it not?"

"Yes."

"I won't take it. Yes I will, too," I said, a second later, and I took the bud from her hand. "You know the law of war," I added: "To the victor belong the spoils."

She gave me a quick glance, and after a moment said, a trifle coldly,

"That remark seems bright, but it does not mean anything."

"It often means a great deal. There, I'm out of the garden and in the ordinary world again. I wonder if I shall ever have another bit of Eden in my life."

"Oh, indeed you shall. I will ask Mr. Yocomb to give you a day's weeding and hoeing there."

"What will you do in the meantime?"

"Sit under the arbor and laugh at you."

"Agreed. But suppose it was hot and I grew very tired, what would you do?"

"I fear I would have to invite you under the arbor."

"You fear?"

"Well, I would invite you if you had been of real service in the garden."

"That would be Eden unalloyed."

"Since I am not intoxicated, I cannot agree with you." _

Read next: Book 1: Chapter 11. "Moved"

Read previous: Book 1: Chapter 9. "Old Plod"

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