In her lonely life, with the beauty of the earth about her to teach her
that there might be greater beauty that she yet might see with a daily
round of toil and sharp words to push her to that escape which lay in a
world of dreams, she had entered that world, and thrived therein. It was a
world that was as pure as a pearl, and more fantastic than an Arabian
tale. She knew that when she died she could take nothing out of life with
her to heaven. But with this other world it was different, and all that
she had or dreamed of that was fair she carried through its portals. This
house was there. Long closed, walled in, guarded by tall trees, seen at
far intervals and from a distance, as through a glass darkly, it had
become to her an enchanted spot, about which played her quick fancy, but
where her feet might never stray.
But now the spell which had held the place in slumber was snapped, and her
feet was set in its pleasant paths. She moved down the alley between the
lines of box, and the greyhound went with her. The branches of a
walnut-tree drooped heavily across the way; when she had passed them she
saw the house, square, dull red, bathed in sunshine. A moment, and the
walk led her between squat pillars of living green into the garden out of
the fairy tale.
Dim, fragrant, and old time; walled in; here sunshiny spaces, there cool
shadows of fruit-trees; broken by circles and squares of box; green with
the grass and the leaves, red and purple and gold and white with the
flowers; with birds singing, with the great silver river murmuring by
without the wall at the foot of the terrace, with the voice of a man who
sat beneath a cherry-tree reading aloud to himself,--such was the garden
that she came upon, a young girl, and heavy at heart.
She was so near that she could hear the words of the reader, and she knew
the piece that he was reading; for you must remember that she was not
untaught, and that Darden had books.
"'When from the censer clouds of fragrance roll,
And swelling organs lift the rising soul,
One thought of thee puts all the pomp to flight,
Priests, tapers, temples, swim before my sight'"-The greyhound ran from Audrey to the man who was reading these verses
with taste and expression, and also with a smile half sad and half
cynical. He glanced from his page, saw the girl where she stood against
the dark pillar of the box, tossed aside the book, and went to her down
the grassy path between rows of nodding tulips. "Why, child!" he said.
"Did you come up like a flower? I am glad to see you in my garden, little
maid. Are there Indians without?"