Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 184, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 August 1918 — Winter-Killing of the Hedge [ARTICLE]

Winter-Killing of the Hedge

By JANE OSBORNS

(Copyright, 19M, by the McClure New®aper Syndicate.) Forty years from now the old residents of Rosevale will still be alluding, no doubt, to “the year the hedges win-ter-killed.” Perhaps by that time there will be a little uncertainty in the minds of some as to Just which Good Friday 11 was that the United States “got’into the war," and just how long that war lasted. They will have forgotten that old Peter Conkling— Rosevale’s millionaire —didn’t subscribe a cent to the Liberty loan and that Judge Robert Pritchard subscribed ten thousand, and that somebody’s neighbor probably poisoned somebody’s cat and that the doctor’s widow had set her cap most openly for said Peter Conklin. All these things will have been forgotten forty years from now, but not the winter-killing of the hedge. That is the sort of landmark in the flight of time that we somehow always remember even when we forget affairs of larger at more personal interest. “It was the coldest winter on record,” some octogenarians will say, “and I remember how the hedge twelve feet high that had been growing ten or a dozen years between Judge Pritchard’s place and the old Marden place was winter-killed, roots and branches.” That this particular luxurious growth of privet had been entirely blighted as the'effect of the unwonted cold weather last winter neither Judge Pritchard nor Hester Marden realized till weeks after the usual time for its buds to be bursting under the warmth of April sunshine. And It was after other Rosevallans, whose leks luxurious hedges had also been blighted, had come to the realization that the only thing to do to save what life might remain in the roots of their hedges was to amputate all the dead branches above,- that Hester on her side of the thick network of dead twigs and branches and Judge Robert Pritchard, hidden on his side, realized one warm spring evening that the old hedge would have to go. The hedge had been planted on the Marden side of the dividing line, so it was obviously up to Hester to have it cut down, although its branches had long since . spread many feet over into the Pritchard domain. Hester hesitated several days after she had purchased the last pair of hedge-clips in the Rosevale hardware store before giving her order to the gardener-by-the-day to begin the amputation. It seemed like desecration to her; she could not make it seem other than unloyal and traitorous to. the memory of poor old Aunt Bethiah. Still Aunt Bethiah would np| have wanted to let the hedge remain as it was. Hester was sure of it. She planned an overnight trip to the large nearby city for the days when the cutting down operation was to take place and, after having cast a contrite look at the old painting of Aunt Bethiah that still hupg over the marble mantelpiece in the old “front parlor,” made up her mind to give the order. There would have to be a first time lg that unhedged garden, Hester assumed herself. Even Aunt Bethiah could not object to her thirty-year-old niece going into her own garden under the circumstances. So as soon as-she had eaten her solitary dinner on the day she returned from the city She left the table and descended into the old garden. The sun was still warm and golden and the wood thrushes somewhere in the'Prltchard shrubbery were just beginning their long evening song. Hester tried not to see the change till she was actually in the garden. Then a strange sense of freedom and emancipation came over her. Already the plants and growing tidings in her garden had profited by the increase of air and sunshine that the passing of the hedge had allowed. The columbines and tulips were out earlier than usual and it seemed to Hester as if their colors were deeper find gayer than ill the old days when they were hedged in by the twelve-foot privet. And it was as if a new world had been opened and discovered to her when she first permitted her to wander beyond the line where the privet had once been placed, over there in the fairy land of light green leaves and foliage where the wjjod thrushes sang. She had not seen that realm for ten years, not since the -day the high board fence was taken down, and in consequence of that she was hurried away by Aunt Bethiah to be gone until the newly planted privet should have taken its place. Could it be that all these years that fairyland of leaves and blossoms had been there just beyond the privet? Hester was wondertog. '

And then camethe voice of Judge Pritchard, who must have been in his garden behind one of his lilac bushes all the time that she was inspecting her own transformed domain. Neither Hester nor Robert said anything very profound or clever or worth remembering that evening when they spoke for the first time in ten years. Each had known from the time they knew that the hedge had to go that their speaking would be the inevitable result. Perhaps that is why Hester had felt so especially guilty when she stood before old Aunt Bethlah’s picture a few minutes before. The spell cast by Aunt Bethlah, was entirely broken when Hester permitted herself to be nrged across that old barrier on the -reuse of looking at some especially

luxurious rose-colored columbines that Judge Pritchard Insisted had been vagrants from her garden and had shown themselves a season or so before. “I knew they were yours,” h% told her,“and that is why I cherished then), z so. I had the gardener nurse them like orchids.” Hester was kneeling over to touch the silky blossoms with her fingers. “I wonder how they dared go through the hedge?” was all she could think of saying, and then her eyes and those of Robert Pritchard met and,both knew that the barrier that had gone down with the hedge could never be replaced. ) After they had seated themselves on the rustic bench under Judge Pritchard’s lilacs, on the excuse of hearing the thrushes’ song, Hester volunteered the suggestion that it really seemed only a day since the last time she had sat on the same bench under the lilacs. And then 1 she wondered whether she had said anything that was too disloyal to the memory of Bethiah Marden, the stern old, aunt who had brought her up and left her all her property. Robert Pritchard answered this by taking Hester’s hand liLhis exactly as he had that last time, ten years before, and that, too, seemed quite natural, though Hester blushed quite as if she had been twenty instead of thirty. “You didn’t go away because you wanted to?” he asked. Hester shook her head. '“Tell me just what happened and then I’ll tell you something you perhaps never knew.” Hester had rehearsed the details of Just what happened on that memorable occasion so often to herself that the recounting_was not difficult. “Well, you see. Aunt Bethiah had ideas of her own about how girls should spend their time and so long as I read poetry and novels and did embroidery in thegarden she was satisfied. But when 1 Improved my time talking to you instead, she was distressed. So long as that high board fence was here she was satisfied. I was quite safe in ths garden. Then the Neighborhood association decided to have all fences down, and though Aunt Bethiah fought it, the association had its way, She planted the hedge and took me off for four years in France —she said she hadintended to take me, anyway, and perhaps she had. I would have liked going better if it had not seemed likt punishment for talking to you those days when the fence was down before we started. It was just about this time of the year, wasn’t it? “And then by the time we came back the hedge was high enough for a protection and you had forgotten al! about your neighbor, and Aunt Bethiah was sure she had done her duty. 1 think the poor old dear died happiei because the hedge was twelve feet high and five feet thick. She used to smile so contentedly when people told her it was the finest hedge in the state. 1 really don’t know why she should have objected so much to our talking.” I was very much to blame,’ Robert Pritchard explained. “I was twenty-five then, and went .about things differently than I would now. You see I made the Neighborhood association vote to have the fences taken down. It was my first attempt at civic Improvement, and no one but Aunt Bethiah suspected my motive. She called at my office and told me hei opinion of me and I got as hot-headec as she was and told her that I wantec to marry you and intended to do it I’d spent the evening here by the lilacs with you then and I knew my heart. 1 didn’t believe the good lady when she told me that you had told her I annoyed you and had asked "to be taken away, so I can’t hold it up against her. I’ve wanted, though, to hear you say that it wasn’t so.”

“And I really think Aunt Bethlab liked you all along—do you believe she Is So very cross because we are sitting here again under the lilac bush?” Judge Pritchard would have liked to Wfjust then that he was entirely indifferent as to whether Aunt Bethiah approved or not —but so completely was he concerned w’ith the realization that he had within his reach the love of the woman of his dreams that he had no thoughts for the other woman who had separated them ten years before. * l