Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories
Page 6
HOLLYHOCKS
Green and peaceful, the long, low undulations of the prairie sea ofsouthern Kansas spread away to the horizon in lines as graceful andpleasing as those of a reclining Venus. Here and there against ahillside the emerald waves broke in a bright foam of many-coloredflowers. In all that vast extent over which I could look, there wasvisible no living creature save the tiny furred and feathered thingswhose home it was. The soft prairie wind blew caressingly against mycheek and seemed to whisper in my ear: "Why do men cling to theboisterous, cruel, lying sea as the emblem of freedom? Is not herebeauty that allures with freedom's own charms? Is not here freedomherself, serene, smiling, constant, and blessed with a blessedness thesea knows not?"
The prairie wind blew the freedom it sang of into my heart, and itdwelt there with joy and exultation as I drove on and on over the wavesof that smiling emerald sea. I salved my eyes, wearied and scorched bybrick walls and city pavements, with those long, swinging reaches ofgreen, and their silent benediction filled and soothed my very soul.
At last, when the low-lying hills began to cast cool shadows down theireastern slopes, there appeared against the velvet green of the distancethe sprawling blotch of a little town, ugly, naked, and unashamed inits bustling newness. And nearer, by a mile or more, on a green slopewhich caught the golden-red rays of the sinking sun, was a littleenclosure, naked and ugly as the town itself, but silent andawe-inspiring with the silence and awe of death. A barbed-wire fenceenclosed it, and the prairie turf still covered much of its space.There were here no sunken mounds, no reeling headstones, no discoloredmarbles. The grave heaps were trimly rounded, the wooden crosses whichmarked most of them grinned their newness, and the few headstones andmonuments shone upstartishly white in the sun. Barren of that curtainof verdure with which love strives to conceal the footprints of death,the little cemetery lay there against the green hillside like somefresh, gaping, ghastly wound in the face of a loved one.
One grave stood out startlingly from the rest. On the others only aninfrequent trailing vine or a faded bunch of flowers told of lovingeffort to cover death's nakedness. But this one, which lay in thecentre of the enclosure, was covered from headstone to foot-cross witha dense growth of hollyhocks. Their tall shafts were clothed with aluxuriance of vivid red bloom, as if they had sucked into their petalsthe life blood of the sleeper below. In the level red sun-rays theyglowed with lusty contempt of the silent impotence beneath them.
A woman in a white dress, with her hands full of the red hollyhockblooms, walked between the graves down to the barred gate and came outupon the road as I drove up. I recognized her as the woman whoseacquaintance I had made in the train a few days previously, and inwhose company I had travelled from Chicago hither. She had been apleasant chance acquaintance--intelligent, gentle, and refined.
"Will you ride back to town with me?" I said.
She accepted the offer of the seat beside me, carefully holding herflowers.
"How odd that grave looks with its marshalled array of hollyhocks!" Isaid, by way of opening conversation, for she sat there silent. "Whata peculiar taste, to adorn a loved one's last resting-place in thatway!"
She looked up at me silently, and I noticed that her eyes were hollow,and her face sad. Then she turned toward the graveyard and the tallred hollyhocks standing out so vividly in the sunset glow, and saidquietly:
"It is my mother's grave. I planted the hollyhocks upon it."
She was silent again, looking sadly and tenderly at the flowers in herlap, but presently she went on:
"I do not mind telling you why I did it. Perhaps talking about it willlessen the heaviness of my heart. No one but my sister knows why Iplanted them there, and she has never seen the grave, nor have I seenher, since our mother died. When we were young girls at home, ourmother loved hollyhocks. She had the yard filled with great clumps ofthem. We were away at school for a few years and when we went homeagain they quite horrified our advanced, young ladyish taste. Wethought them vulgar, and between ourselves we fretted and scolded aboutthem and declared to each other that they were horrid, and that we wereashamed to have any one visit us while those great, ugly, coarse thingsfilled the yard. We apologized for them to visitors and said they weremother's flowers, but we hated them. And after a while we complainedabout them to mother and said before her how common and coarse andold-fashioned they were. And she, dear, gentle soul, said not a word,but looked sadly out at the flowers she loved so well and had cared forso long and so tenderly. And one day, after we had fretted and worriedher a long time about them, she said to us--I can see yet how she triedto smile and disguise the sadness in her heart--that we might dig upall the hollyhocks and plant other flowers in their places. And wedid. It stabs me to the heart now to think of it,--but we did itjoyfully.
"After we were married and went away from home--my sister to London andI to Chicago--our mother came here to this town and soon died. In thesorrow of that time, when first I knew how much and how tenderly Iloved her, I remembered about the hollyhocks, and at last realized howbrutally thoughtless and unfeeling we had been. So, in shame andremorse, I did the one little thing that was all I could do, andcovered the grave of our dear, patient, gentle, saint-like mother withthe flowers she loved the best of all, but which we had not let hergladden her life with. I do not pretend to know whether or not thereis a hereafter, or whether there is anything more of her than what liesunder those red flowers back there. But often I wish--oh, how Iwish!--that it may be so, and that from somewhere her spirit may lookdown and see and be pleased by the atonement I have tried to make!
"I wrote to my sister what I had done, and I found that she also feltas I did about it. Every summer I come here and see that thehollyhocks grow and flourish as we wish them to; and, at her request, Igather and send to her some of the blooms. These in my lap are forthat purpose, and two weeks from now she will be weeping over them inher London home. If we could only have known--then--how we should feelabout it now!"