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Evelina’s Garden
by
Now if Evelina Adams had come to the appointed time for the closing of her solitary life, and if her young cousin should inherit a share of her goodly property and the fine old mansion-house, all necessity for anxiety of this kind was over. Young Evelina would not need to be taken away, for the sake of her love, from all these comforts and luxuries. Thomas Merriam rejoiced innocently, without a thought for himself.
In the course of the winter he confided in his father; he couldn’t keep it to himself any longer. Then there was another reason. Seeing Evelina so little made him at times almost doubt the reality of it all. There were days when he was depressed, and inclined to ask himself if he had not dreamed it. Telling somebody gave it substance.
His father listened soberly when he told him; he had grown old of late.
“Well,” said he, “she ‘ain’t been used to living the way you have, though you have had advantages that none of your folks ever had; but if she likes you, that’s all there is to it, I s’pose.”
The old man sighed wearily. He sat in his arm-chair at the kitchen fireplace; his wife had gone in to one of the neighbors, and the two were alone.
“Of course,” said Thomas, simply, “if Evelina Adams shouldn’t live, the chances are that I shouldn’t have to bring her here. She wouldn’t have to give up anything on my account–you know that, father.”
Then the young man started, for his father turned suddenly on him with a pale, wrathful face. “You ain’t countin’ on that!” he shouted. “You ain’t countin’ on that–a son of mine countin’ on anything like that!”
Thomas colored. “Why, father,” he stammered, “you don’t think–you know, it’s all for her–and they say she can’t live anyway. I had never thought of such a thing before. I was wondering how I could make it comfortable for Evelina here.”
But his father did not seem to listen. “Countin’ on that!” he repeated. “Countin’ on a poor old soul, that ‘ain’t ever had anything to set her heart on but a few posies, dyin’ to make room for other folks to have what she’s been cheated out on. Countin’ on that!” The old man’s voice broke into a hoarse sob; he got up, and went hurriedly out of the room.
“Why, father!” his son called after him, in alarm. He got up to follow him, but his father waved him back and shut the door hard.
“Father must be getting childish,” Thomas thought, wonderingly. He did not bring up the subject to him again.
Evelina Adams died in March. One morning the bell tolled seventy long melancholy tones before people had eaten their breakfasts. They ran to their doors and counted. “It’s her,” they said, nodding, when they had waited a little after the seventieth stroke. Directly Mrs. Martha Loomis and her two girls were seen hustling importantly down the road, with their shawls over their heads, to the Squire’s house. “Mis’ Loomis can lay her out,” they said. “It ain’t likely that young Evelina knows anything about such things. Guess she’ll be thankful she’s got somebody to call on now, if she ‘ain’t mixed much with the Loomises.” Then they wondered when the funeral would be, and the women furbished up their black gowns and bonnets, and even in a few cases drove to the next town and borrowed from relatives; but there was a great disappointment in store for them.
Evelina Adams died on a Saturday. The next day it was announced from the pulpit that the funeral would be private, by the particular request of the deceased. Evelina Adams had carried her delicate seclusion beyond death, to the very borders of the grave. Nobody, outside the family, was bidden to the funeral, except the doctor, the minister, and the two deacons of the church. They were to be the bearers. The burial also was to be private, in the Squire’s family burial-lot, at the north of the house. The bearers would carry the coffin across the yard, and there would not only be no funeral, but no funeral procession, and no hearse. “It don’t seem scarcely decent,” the women whispered to each other; “and more than all that, she ain’t goin’ to be seen.” The deacons’ wives were especially disturbed by this last, as they might otherwise have gained many interesting particulars by proxy.