Evening Republican, Volume 20, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1916 — ELAINE’S GARDEN [ARTICLE]

ELAINE’S GARDEN

By CLARISSA MACKIE. It was such a hopeless looking garden! Rather, it was a neglected back yard criss-crossed with clotheslines, bounded by two neat brick walls on either side and, a shabby brick laundry shed at the back which gave upon an alley. The rear of Mrs. Frick’s boarding house formed the fourth' boundary, and from her window on the fourth floor Elaine Rogers could look down on the bleak squalidness of the neglected rectangle and compare it, most unfavorably, with the green loveliness of the one next door. “ Why don’t ! have a garden ’’’ Mrs. Frick replied when Elaine questioned her. She laughed harshly. “And who would be getting three meals a day, eh? Suppose you all came in to dinner and found no dinner at all and me mincing''abound in a garden! ‘Come into my garden and eat by smelling of my flowers!’ I’d say, Humph!” she ended contemptuously.

Elaine said no more about gardens, but she continued to look wistfully down at the neglected space and dream of what might by done with it if— '

. “if i had money enough,” she sighed, but there never was money enough to spare from her salary as kindergarten teacher. Elaine-was quite alone in the world and this was her first year at self-support. She had not known that boarding houses could be so drear, food so unappetizing, landladies so hardened to anything that ajfproached beauty.

“How absurd I mn!” she exclaimed. “Sitting here and wishing will not bring things to me. I must go out after them. Now, shall I attack Mrs. Frick’s back yard. No! But I can have a window garden of my very own and this southern exposure will be just the thing.” The next Saturday found Elaine, singing like a lark, arranging pots of geraniums and ferns and ivy on the wide sill of her solitary window. She had placed the last plant and was leaning out to arrange some falling sprays of ivy when something happened —something that brought a frightened exclamation from her lips and caused the young man walking in the garden next door to glance up with~-a-startled expression, of his pale face. The tiniest Sotted geranium of a sweet-smelling variety went hurtling down toward him. “Look out!” warned Elaine, but he did not move and the little flower pot sped to its mark between his eyes.

Elaine covered her own eyes for a moment. WJien she withdrew her hands the man* was lying prostrate and a man-servant was bending over him.

Elaine flew down the stairs to the front sidewalk and hastened into the area of the house next door. Here all was specklessly neat and bearing evidence of well-to-do occupants. She rang the basement bell and a flurriedlooking maid admitted her. “A flower pot fell from my window and I am afraid it has injured the young man who was in the garden,” hurriedly explained Elaine. The maid nodded. “Mr. Arthur Is In the dining room, miss. James is dressing the wound while he waits for the doctor.” • - • “Oh, is he so badly hurt?” breathed Elaine. “It bleeds frightfully, miss. It struck him fairly between the eyes,”, explained the girl. “It seems so strange that he did not move out of the way. He seemed to be looking straight at it.” “Mr. Arthur is blind, miss,” said the maid gravely. "Blihd!” cried Elaine pityingly. “Oh, no —how dreadful!” There was a murmur of voices in the next room and a man appeared with a roll of bandages in his hand. “Mr. Arthur wishes to know who is here, Mary?” he said. “The- young lady next door. She came to see if he was badly hurt. It was her flower pot that fell.”: “Please ask her to come in here, Mary,” said a man’s impatient voice, and in response the three of them hastened t 6 'enter the open door of the dining room. Elaine’s victim was lying on a broad leather-covered couch and James skillful hands had neatly bandaged his eyes. Elaine could only see a fine forehead, with dark hair brushed smoothly back, the end of a handsome nose and firm, well-cut lips. «I am so sorry!” she breathed impetuously. * “That’s the voice!” he cried excitedly. “You were singing,’*' hie went on eagerly. ~ "*, “Yes,” she replied. - ~ “You sounded so happy —I was wishing I could see you—my confounded eyes—” he ended abruptly. “And I have made them worse,” trembled Elaine, very near tears. “Hardly—the earth and the plant were loosened from the pot and struck me first, breaking the blow of the pot itself. Doctor Hurd will fix that up in a trice. Tell me what you were doing, please.” Elaine sat down and told him about her window garden and how it had geen inspiredby his own well-kept j plot next door. He listened eagerly and nodded his head many times as if he understood Just how she felt about boarding houses and back yards thajt ought to be gardens and persisted In being back yards. By the time she had finished, the •-* • > -

doctor arrived and she listened palpitatingly to his report. “A bad bruise —it won’t help the eyes any,” growled the physician. Elaine turned go. There was nothing she could do save to express her contrition for the accident*- The doctor looked at her severely, the maid was quite haughty and James wore a look of stern disapproval. The door behind her and then Arthur Pierce lifted his head. “Who went out?” he demanded sharply. “The young lad 7,” murmured the maid. “She didn’t say'anything,” protested Arthur; “she went away without a word.” ' “She was crying, I think, sir,” explained Mary. “Crying—and for me?” He jumped up add paced the floor restlessly. Later in the day, he told Mary to go and ask Mrs. ErickjTor the name of the girl who had tfie window garden. Mrs. Frick cheerfully supplied the name, but of Elaine’s present whereabouts she professed profound ignorance. “I told her I wouldn’t have any messing around with flowers and that my neighbors would be suing me for damages what with her carelessness in dropping flower pots about, and so she packed her trunk and went away —good riddance I say.” When Mary repeated this conversation to her master, Arthur frowned blackly. “If I hadn’t been out there listening to her singing, the pot would not have landed between my inquisitive eyes,” he groaned.

Three times during the ensuing week Elaine telephoned an inquiry concerning Arthur’s injury, and when Mary told her the last time that all traces of its had disappeared the inquiries ceased. It was six months after that when Arthur Pierce w r alking through the street heard Elaine’s voice once more. She was singing the same song and with her voice there blended a score of childish trebles.

The kindergarten was a tiny, lowroofed building, with casement windows opening upon a sunny garden. Arthur leaped the fence and crossed the grass to the, open window. With arms on the sill and his hat tucked under his arm, he listened, staring with all his might at the girl whose face he had never seen before, but whose voice had charmed him by its sweetness during long hours while he had gone about with eyes bandaged after a delicate operation to save his vision. '• t Now he could actually see her and she was as fair as her voice. He used to marvel how anyone ‘ could live in Mrs. Frick’s dreary domain and sing so cheerily. Round-eyed children eyed him with amusement as they sang and it was a gurgle of merriment that attracted Elaine’s attention. Her voice ended suddenly and the childish voices trailed into ..silence.

“What do you want?” she asked gravelly.' : .. '■

“I heard your voice singing,” he said humbly, “and I wanted to actually see you.” “Oh, are you Mr. Pierce. Won't you come in?”

He came in and Elaine gave him a seat on the low platform.

“You can see?” she said gladly. He explained the nature of his temporary blindness. “I’m glad it happened,” he said Utmtly. “If it hadn’t I never should have met you.” “Some day I shall have a real garden —with worms and caterpillars and everything,” she laughed to cover her confusion. “I’m sure you will,” he said with sudden gravity. The next day he bought an oldfashioned place in the suburbs. For months he supervised its repairs and remodeling, and one October day he took Elaine to see it and asked her to be his wife. “I really can’t resist this lovely garden,” she said, with a happy smile. (Copyright, 1915, by McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)