^-
 
 THE GARDEN 
 OF DREAMS
 
 Chi 
 
 rcaao 
 
 MCMXII 
 
 \c\. 
 
 o.
 
 COPYRIGHT 
 
 A. C. McCLURG & CO. 
 
 1912 
 
 Published September, 1912 
 
 Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England 
 
 Second Edition, October, 1912. 
 
 THE RALPH FLETCHER SEYMOUR Co. 
 
 FINE ARTS BUILDING 
 CHICAGO
 
 TO ALL THOSE WHO HAVE EVER WANDERED 
 
 WITHIN THE LOVE-GIRT REACHES OF 
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 2131793
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 PART I. The House of Dreams ... 29 
 
 PART II. Down Dreamland's Lane . . 57 
 
 PART III. The Deserted Orchard ... 75 
 
 PART IV. The Night Garden 99 
 
 PARTY. The Hearth 115 
 
 PART VI. Ye Darklynge Wode .... 137
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 PROLOGUE
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 PROLOGUE 
 
 WITH long, swinging steps the man 
 skirted the little valley and, facing 
 the rising sun took the road to the 
 right that wound upward over the mountain. 
 There marched, visualized before him, recol- 
 lections of other times, when, bareheaded even 
 as now, freckled-faced, and often, dirty, he had 
 trotted happily along intent on the morning's 
 business the filling, perhaps, of his shiny 
 pail with the wild strawberries which grew 
 scarlet drops of concentrated lusciousness 
 beneath their protecting leaves of green in 
 the wooded outskirts of old Al Somer's 
 meadow. Almost he was tempted to turn 
 aside, to slip down through the fields at his 
 left in search of them, until he remembered 
 that they would not be ripe for a month or 
 more. 
 
 "The spring is late this year," he mur- 
 mured regretfully.
 
 12 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 Ah well, it could afford to be late. For 
 him it would always be spring hereafter. He 
 threw back his head, unconsciously his hands 
 sought his pockets, his lips drew up in a 
 whistle the tune was one that had been pop- 
 ular with the country lads when he was a boy. 
 
 His thoughts kept up a running commen- 
 tary on the text supplied by the long ap- 
 praising glances that took in every detail of 
 the way, identifying the recollections of his 
 youth, marking the changes which time had 
 wrought. 
 
 Jonas Dempsy's big barn was not, after all, 
 such a pretentious aifair as he had remembered 
 it. And how they had let it run down! It 
 badly needed a coat of paint. Why would 
 they use that dull, muddy red? He smiled 
 a bit ruefully over old Jake Manderson's 
 farm. That long, rambling house, once the 
 height of his ambition it had been white 
 with green shutters then was an ugly, 
 nondescript drab. And how low the ceilings 
 must be. What if disillusionment awaited 
 him at the end of his journey! Unconsciously 
 his steps began to lag. He made pretense 
 of noting the growing things on the way; 
 examined the elderberry bushes to see how
 
 The Garden of Dreams Jj 
 
 soon one might expect the fragrant clusters 
 to spill their snowy loveliness along the road. 
 He even veered out of his path at the shy call 
 of a quail; but he caught no glimpse of the 
 insistent wooer. As he came to a bend in the 
 road his reluctant feet stopped of their own 
 accord. He dared not turn that corner 
 yet. He sat down on a rock, and still smiling 
 ruefully, sought encouragement from the dis- 
 tant view. 
 
 Ah yes! the view was all right. Time had 
 played no tricks with the everlasting hills 
 whose "utmost purple rim, " the country folks 
 would tell you proudly, was in another state 
 more than thirty miles away; it was always 
 wrapt in a tender haze now blue, now 
 softly gray, now rosily purple. They were 
 not awesome crags nothing terrifying in 
 their rounded outlines. Some giant sculptor 
 with gentle humor had pressed, molded, 
 rumpled up the dear old clay a bit that was 
 all. The fields were velvety with winter rye, 
 the spring moisture exuded everywhere, steam- 
 ing up a golden mist in the warm sunshine. 
 Below him, the slow, graceful curve of the 
 valley was soul-satisfying as ever. A slender 
 thread of water gleamed white beneath a
 
 14 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 passing cloud, then blue again reflecting 
 the sky. 
 
 With a sigh of relief the man's eyes swept 
 the distance, and with rapidly reviving courage 
 he took the few steps which crossed his morn- 
 ing's Rubicon. Here the road widened, tak- 
 ing a slight drop, and while a fork continued 
 on up to the right, the main thoroughfare 
 stretched out straight and smooth and white 
 over a bit of plateau ; and beyond, some hun- 
 dred yards ahead of him, was the low stone wall 
 he had so longed, yet feared to face. Well, at 
 least it was in good repair not a crumbling 
 mass of nigger-heads and covered, as he 
 remembered it, with Virginia creeper and 
 honeysuckle. He drew in a long delighted 
 breath; then, without wasting more time, 
 walked eagerly down to where the wall began. 
 The gate? He would have ridiculed the sug- 
 gestion. Oh yes, there was a gate farther 
 down, and another one on the opposite side 
 of the property, and a carriage drive not fifty 
 feet away but he was in no mood to enter 
 sedately through a gate. Putting both hands 
 carefully among the stones, that he might 
 not damage the clinging vines, he vaulted 
 lightly over.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 15 
 
 And then this man did a curious thing. 
 Apparently forgetting that he was in full 
 sight of anyone who might have been on the 
 road, he threw his hat in the air as a school- 
 boy might, swooped down upon it in the grass, 
 and catching sight of a white violet in sur- 
 prised proximity to his hand, plucked the 
 flower, kissed it, almost I think would have 
 cried over it, but for the fact that even as he 
 scrambled somewhat awkwardly to his feet, 
 from behind a clump of flowering dogwood 
 there stepped a wondering girl, the "inevi- 
 table girl" the man would have said had 
 he thus suddenly encountered her in the pages 
 of a book. 
 
 So far as he could see, the girl had no right 
 there; and yet she was part of it which 
 is the very nicest thing he could imagine him- 
 self saying of a person under the circumstances. 
 For in the picture thus formed a Co rot- 
 like study in greens and blues the tender 
 grey of her dress was the harmonizing note 
 for which the man was moved to glad thanks- 
 giving. 
 
 Someone many years ago, someone with 
 taste and refinement and feeling for all things 
 living, had taken this bit of the world and put
 
 i6 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 a fence around it, and the people who had since 
 then been fortunate enough to own the house 
 of which one saw ravishing glimpses through 
 the trees, had been wise enough not to attempt 
 to improve much upon the adjoining grounds. 
 They had tended and cared for each growing 
 thing without that insolent moving around of 
 nature's handiwork that more impertinent 
 ones venture. At least, so thought the man, 
 till a basket on the girl's arm attracted his 
 attention and filled him with sudden wrath. 
 For the pretty wicker thing was full, spilling 
 over with violets, white violets pulled out, 
 no, dug out (he saw the trowel in her hand), 
 roots and all. 
 
 "Who are you?" he demanded brusquely. 
 
 "The gardener, sir," she said, wide-eyed, 
 with quickly drooping mouth and quivering 
 chin. 
 
 "Whose gardener? and what are you doing 
 here?" he continued, brandishing the single 
 flower he held in his hand at the basket of 
 its innocent fellows. "How dare you trespass 
 on private grounds, committing vandalism 
 larceny and murder?" 
 
 She stared at him affrighted and took a 
 single backward step, but the thicket of dog-
 
 The Garden of Dreams 77 
 
 wood barred her retreat. Man-like, her 
 silence and embarrassment pacified him, and 
 he concluded more gently, but still chidingly: 
 
 "Didn't you know that these were private 
 grounds?" 
 
 She eyed him curiously. 
 
 "/ knew it; I thought, perhaps, that you 
 did not." 
 
 He smiled at which her confidence grew, 
 and she continued naiVely: 
 
 "We have no sign bidding trespassers be- 
 ware of dogs, and no dogs but old Fidelity, 
 who would not hurt a kitten; but the front 
 gate is always open, as no doubt you did not 
 know, and our visitors usually enter that 
 way." 
 
 At this it was his turn to look embarrassed. 
 
 "I suppose you thought me quite mad. 
 But I still do not understand. You speak 
 of your visitors; do you live here?" 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "I see. But how does that happen, may 
 I ask?" 
 
 "I told you I'm the gardener; and when 
 you frightened me so terribly and berated me 
 so cruelly, I was only digging up a few violets 
 there are so many here to plant in the
 
 i8 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 fairy-ring. Are you not ashamed of your- 
 self?" 
 
 "I am!" It was said very seriously. 
 
 "And if you had not been so rude, I might 
 have shown it to you." 
 
 "But if I offer to carry the basket and make 
 myself useful?" he begged. 
 
 She laughed, transferring the basket to his 
 eager hands. 
 
 "I accept your help, but I warn you I do 
 not care for useful things in my fairy garden." 
 
 "For what, then?" 
 
 "Only for dreams." She was leading the 
 way over the soft carpet of grass; in this part 
 of the grounds there were no paths. " This is 
 the Garden of Dreams, and" she pointed 
 poutingly to a large square board facing 
 the road "that is the only nightmare in it." 
 
 "A sign? Ah, I see! Tor Sale.' What a 
 pity! It's a fine old place. A comfortable 
 house, too, I'll be bound." 
 
 She waved the compliment aside impa- 
 tiently. 
 
 "Oh, the house is well enough to eat and 
 sleep in; but the garden the garden is 
 heaven! Wait, you have not seen it yet." 
 
 "How long has it been for sale?"
 
 The Garden of Dreams IQ 
 
 She stopped, petrified. Was she, perhaps, 
 gossiping to a prospective buyer? He read 
 the thought and waited teasingly. 
 
 "I I oh, I don't know. Eight per- 
 haps ten years. You don't want to buy it, 
 do you?" 
 
 Her anxiety was so patent that he laughed 
 outright. 
 
 " Who knows ? I might, perhaps, if the price 
 were reasonable. What do they want for it?" 
 
 She gasped. 
 
 "Oh, thousands of dollars, heaps of money, 
 ever so much more than you would think it 
 worth, unless "she looked at him more and 
 more suspiciously "you're not an agent, 
 are you?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I thought not. You see, agents do not 
 usually come over the wall." 
 
 Her sigh of relief was so profound that again 
 he laughed. She looked back at him re- 
 provingly. 
 
 "You wouldn't think it funny if you had 
 to receive them. They come nosing around 
 into everything from the hotbeds to the attic, 
 finding fault, patronizing, and criticising. And 
 as for the people in search of a summer home,
 
 2O The Garden of Dreams 
 
 they suggest improvements before they are 
 well inside the front gate. It's: 'Look, 
 Mother, we could have a fountain here!' 
 'What a dandy place for a hammock!' 'Oh, 
 Father! wouldn't those marbles you bought 
 in Italy look lovely in there among the ever- 
 greens ?' and so on. I hate them all. They're 
 bent on spoiling my Garden of Dreams." 
 
 "But perhaps," he suggested gently, "they, 
 too, have dreams." 
 
 "I don't believe it!" She shook her head 
 violently. " You might have." Her clear 
 grey eyes searched his deeply for a moment. 
 "Yes, I'm sure you have dreams. Tell me, 
 do yours ever come true?" 
 
 "Sometimes. One came true last week, 
 and fast upon its heels another crystallized 
 into a fact. And then " he hesitated, 
 while his glance took in the whole of the 
 slender, half-boyish figure beside, yet just a 
 little in advance of him "yes, I think I 
 may say that to-day another dream a 
 dream that I had almost given up of late 
 has come true." 
 
 She shook her head reproachfully. 
 
 "You must never give up having any dream; 
 because, no matter how bad things get, you
 
 The Garden oj Dreams 21 
 
 can always go away by yourself and dream 
 them different, unless " 
 
 Her voice grew very sad. 
 
 "Unless what?" he prompted. 
 
 "Unless you make the irreparable mistake," 
 she said softly. 
 
 "Which is?" 
 
 "To sell your future dreams for present 
 realities." 
 
 " Do you think you either of us could 
 ever do that?" 
 
 She stopped beside a great rock, dropped 
 on the hillside by some gigantic hand in sport, 
 and looked at him wistfully. 
 
 "You see, it isn't always a case of sale, or 
 barter even. Sometimes it's just a mad, free 
 gift. At least, in a woman's life it often hap- 
 pens that way, don't you think ?" 
 
 "Yes," he admitted gravely. 
 
 "And oh, the pity of it," she continued, a 
 sudden flood of divine compassion glorifying 
 her face. " I always think of The Lay of the 
 Brown Rosary. You know it? 
 
 If we whose virtue is so weak should have 
 
 a will so strong, 
 And stand blind on the rocks to choose the 
 
 right path from the wrong?'"
 
 22 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 He nodded and softly finished it for her: 
 
 '"To choose perhaps a love-lit hearth in- 
 stead of love and heaven 
 A single rose, for a rose-tree which beareth 
 seven times seven."' 
 
 "You see," she continued softly, "of late 
 I have been threatened quite often with losing 
 my Garden of Dreams." She scooped a 
 handful of dried leaves from a large fissure in 
 the rock and drew from beneath them a couple 
 of thin volumes wrapped in oiled silk. 
 "This," she said with a laugh, "is one of my 
 bookcases. Over in that hollow chestnut 
 is another. Down by the brook I have an old 
 tin box hidden under a stone; there is no lock 
 on it, for who would want to lock up Steven- 
 son and Jefferie's? They'd die, you know. 
 But you'll be surprised how many hiding places 
 you can find in a garden like this for a book or 
 two. And they help to make one's dreams 
 worth while. But then, when a dream para- 
 dise threatens to be swept away, and someone 
 offers you solid reality and abundance can 
 you understand ?" 
 
 "Yes. But you chose" 
 
 "The dreams, of course. I could not lose 
 the dreams."
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "I am glad," he said simply. 
 
 "Here comes mother; she has seen us from 
 the kitchen. Mother is the care-taker; I 
 have looked after the garden with Jim to 
 help me ever since father died." 
 
 "And who is Jim?" he asked, half-jeal- 
 ously. 
 
 "The hired boy. Mother, I am showing 
 this gentleman over the grounds. Why 
 what has happened, dear?" 
 
 The mother acknowledged the presence of 
 the stranger with a preoccupied nod, spoke 
 to her daughter in a worried aside, and hurried 
 back to the house. 
 
 "Oh!" moaned the girl; and then again 
 softly to herself: "Oh dear! Oh dear!" 
 
 "What is it?" asked the man with con- 
 cern. 
 
 "The house is sold. Mother has just re- 
 ceived a letter from the agent. To lose it 
 after all these years. You don't know what 
 it means!" 
 
 "I can imagine." 
 
 "I'm afraid I cannot take you around just 
 now. I must help mother get the house in 
 readiness for the new owner." 
 
 "Let that wait!"
 
 24. The Garden of Dreams 
 
 At the note of command in his voice her 
 eyes widened, and the surprise in her face 
 deepened as he continued: 
 
 "Let us go down to the fern-nest together. 
 There used to be a great tree with a solid 
 seat just large enough for two built in 
 its branches. Is it still there?" 
 
 "Why yes! But then you know the 
 place?" 
 
 "Indeed I do. And on the way I am going 
 to tell you about a boy, a freckle-faced country 
 boy who sold blackberries and wild straw- 
 berries and blueberries in season to the rich 
 folks who lived in that dear old house on the 
 hill. They liked the boy, and he did odd 
 jobs about the place for them. And this grew 
 to be his Garden of Dreams. When he was 
 about fifteen his parents died, and because 
 he was ambitious he went to the city; and 
 there he worked a little, studied a little, and 
 worked some more. And he made money, 
 and received a certain measure of what the 
 world calls fame. But always he was dis- 
 satisfied; for although he clung to his dreams 
 and would not sell them, even when he was 
 starving, they were never again so beautiful, 
 so fresh, and so true, as the ones he had
 
 The Garden of Dreams 2$ 
 
 dreamt as a boy, lying at full length on 
 his back among the ferns or cuddled in the 
 arms of a tree. One day, just after he had 
 been paid quite a large sum of money for 
 one of the dreams he had worked hard to 
 put into a form that others might enjoy, he 
 picked up a paper, and there, advertised for 
 sale, was his Garden of Dreams with the 
 house attached, of course. Fancy how he 
 felt! He rushed the purchase through with a 
 haste that scandalized the agent, and having 
 disposed of all his business, took a night train 
 that he might see the sunrise on the road. 
 All the way he was afraid he would be dis- 
 appointed; it seemed a dubious chance on 
 which to risk one's all. But the moment he 
 came in sight of the place he forgot everything 
 except that at last he owned what he had 
 always wanted; and he was so glad that he 
 jumped the wall, and well, you saw the 
 
 rest." 
 
 The girl had been looking at him half- 
 incredulously, vacillating between tears and 
 laughter. Now she gave a little satisfied sob. 
 
 "Oh, I'm so glad it's you! Since I had 
 to lose it I'm glad it's to someone like 
 you."
 
 26 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "But you are not to think of losing it," 
 he said, much as though he spoke to a child 
 whom he feared to frighten. "You and 
 your mother are to stay here just as you are 
 for the present. Afterward " he smiled, as 
 one who forsees long summer days of rest and 
 longings fulfilled, and love, perhaps "after- 
 ward we will talk of other things, compare our 
 dreams together; shall we? Only one as- 
 surance I ask now; that you will not think of 
 me as an intruder. Blot me out of the land- 
 scape entirely, ignore my existence if you 
 wish, but don't, I beg of you, think of me as 
 an alien." 
 
 Excitement had flooded the girl's face with 
 color. Slowly the rosy veil was lifted and left 
 her rather pale, but her eyes shone with clair- 
 voyant certainty. 
 
 "You're not!" she said quietly. "I think 
 you belong in the Garden of Dreams !"
 
 PARTI
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 THE HOUSE OF DREAMS 
 
 tA letter from Samuel Garth Winters"} 
 to his friend, Mathilde Bursey\ 
 
 May 20th, 19 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 TOU are, it seems, a truer {prophet 
 than I had supposed. Your con- 
 gratulations, which followed so 
 promptly upon my arrival, sweetly sympa- 
 thetic though they were, held yet a tender 
 little note of reproachful forecast: I would 
 forget the city that had acclaimed me; I 
 would forego the friends of my strenuous 
 middle-age Ah, Mathilde! how could you? 
 and slip blandly, smoothly into a sort of 
 second childhood so near senility you think 
 me, then? finding in my native village a 
 life so wholly apart from the old that I must 
 seem as unrecognizable to such as had known 
 me in my early prosperity as well, as a frog 
 might to some little tadpole acquaintances 
 he had distanced by a premature meta- 
 morphosis. Mathilde, you beautiful mother- 
 
 29
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 woman you, I shall never slip from your 
 sweet influence, be assured, never cease to 
 want the friendship you gave me when I so 
 needed it when it seemed as though but 
 for you and the dear family life into which 
 you admitted me, I might indeed have sold 
 all my dreams of future greatness for a neces- 
 sary loaf of bread. All that is fifteen years 
 ago, Mathilde, and I owe all that I am to you 
 and through you to the dear man who, 
 while he lived, made your wish his law. But 
 in those fifteen years I have never failed to 
 thank God for you each night and entreat him 
 for you and yours each morning. Do you 
 think, then, the realization of my castle in 
 Spain and a hundred acres of land will make 
 me forget? 
 
 Yet such is the procrastination of the happy 
 idle that though I fully intended to answer 
 your letter at once, I have actually seemed to 
 lend credibility to your doubts by my long 
 delay. Forgive me, Mathilde; it has been the 
 dear, peaceful silence of fulfilled desire, and 
 now that I have broken it, I shall be posi- 
 tively garrulous. Indeed, looking back over 
 the last fortnight, I wondered what possible 
 excuse I could offer for my silence. The days
 
 The Garden of Dreams 31 
 
 have never seemed so generously long, the 
 minutes never so roundly full of perfect 
 seconds. Since I came to live in the House 
 of Dreams, three short idyllic weeks ago, I 
 have fallen naturally into the habit of early 
 rising. I, who used to be the laziest and heav- 
 iest of sleepers, often find it hard to stay in 
 bed till five o'clock. I think the birds have 
 something to do with this, for they are awake 
 long before the sun. Perhaps, when their 
 days of courtship and nesting are over and the 
 fledglings have taken to the open, the morn- 
 ings will be more quiet but I shall miss 
 them. After all, this is their month, the time 
 when their song rises to its utmost perfection, 
 so I do not grudge them their few hours of 
 early practice. 
 
 On the morning after my arrival I awoke 
 cold, so cold that as I drew the blankets up 
 about my shoulders and rubbed my nose, I 
 wondered if I had not after all mistaken the 
 month and the season. 
 
 As though in ironic answer to my doubt, 
 came through the silence the clear, clucking 
 call of a robin. Three times his summons 
 was repeated, and not until it was taken up 
 by a dozen voices did he break out into his
 
 32 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 joyous warble. A cat-bird mewed plaintively 
 from the lilacs and shrubs that hedge the lawn, 
 then rollicked mischievously through its ever 
 surprisingly beautiful song; a little chippy 
 thrilled a sudden spirited greeting to the sun, 
 and a wren from its nest in the eaves bubbled 
 and rippled with fussy good-humor. 
 
 My window looks out over the long, slant- 
 ing shingle roof of the veranda, above which 
 a stately walnut tree waves its many-fingered 
 branches. There are two robin nests now in 
 this walnut, and during these lazy morning 
 hours I have had the joy of hearing their songs 
 change from the stress and storm and poign- 
 ant sweetness of courtship, to the solemn 
 peace and pride of assured possession. They 
 have quickly, too, become accustomed to the 
 inquisitive face that haunts the window, and 
 one bold adventurer has lately grown so self- 
 possessed as to vocalize on the sill peering 
 in the while, impertinently curious and criti- 
 cal of my morning ablutions. 
 
 But on that first day I buried my face among 
 the pillows that smelt a bit musty to a hyper- 
 sensitive nose, and because I felt absolutely 
 at peace with myself and the world, went 
 calmly off to sleep again right in the middle
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 of the first movement of their symphony 
 for which discourtesy I hope I have since 
 atoned by awaking at the opening notes 
 of the reveille, and religiously remaining at- 
 tentive to the entire performance. 
 
 In fact, I usually try not to go back to sleep 
 at all. It is so good to lie there in the clear, 
 cold dawn and count my many new posses- 
 sions, and dream of others yet to be added to 
 them. I am like a child at Christmas so 
 overwhelmed with my sudden wealth of toys 
 that I do not know which to play with first. 
 I say to myself: "To-day I will explore the 
 attic; no, I will keep the attic for a stormy 
 day this promises to be fine; I will visit 
 the orchard. But first I must see if the little 
 wood that clings to the side of the hill wears 
 the same primeval aspect it held for me when 
 a boy." The Major would never permit 
 a tree to be touched although no one from 
 the Hall ever walked there and you could 
 climb straight up a rather precipitous slope 
 and come out on a little ledge of virgin forest. 
 If other feet had ever wandered there, the soft 
 carpet of dead leaves, inches and inches thick, 
 held no trace of them. The trees grew very 
 close together, tall and slender for the most
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 part, save where some parent hickory or maple 
 had a quarter-of-a-century start of the en- 
 ergetic young saplings around it. It was a 
 great place for the spring and early-summer 
 flowers, the most timid of them taking ad- 
 vantage of their safety to show their faces 
 quite boldly. It was the favorite haunt of 
 the pippsessewa and her fragrant cousin, the 
 shin-leaf. There the Solomon's seal waved 
 its greenish plume, the partridge-vine allowed 
 its pale-faced twins a peep at the world from 
 under their blankets of dead oak and hickory 
 leaves, and even before these, you could find 
 the star-eyed liverwort and the snowy-petaled 
 blood-root and arbutus too, but in rather 
 scanty measure. 
 
 At the memory of this treasure-trove I 
 start from bed, eager to renew my explora- 
 tions but always I find some other outlet 
 for the day's energies. The fact is, I do not 
 wish to revisit these woods till Miranda is 
 with me. 
 
 Miranda ! Ah, now your sensitive patrician 
 nose scents a romance; and even at this early 
 stage, dear lady, I am prepared to hope that 
 you are right. Perhaps you remember that 
 I told you in my first hasty note that I had
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 been confronted on my arrival by a most 
 adorable comic-opera shepherdess who as- 
 sured me that she was the gardener. I think 
 I also mentioned that Miss Rowen was the 
 daughter of the Prof essor Rowen whose bio- 
 logical work had brought him much fame 
 but little money, and whose poor health had 
 led him to exchange his professorship for an 
 extended lease on life in the homely capacity 
 of care-taker of this mountain estate. I 
 imagine that the name Miranda was his choice, 
 but I wonder what prophetic intuition was 
 responsible for that christening. Miranda! 
 Dear lady, it suits her. Some day I shall try 
 to describe her I have only general impres- 
 sions so far. There is an evanescent quality 
 of beauty and temperament that defies im- 
 prisonment. 
 
 Well, on that first morning as I left the 
 breakfast room, I found the hall door open, 
 and had a glimpse of Miss Rowen armed for 
 the day's work. It was something of a shock. 
 I had fancied her playing at gardening, she 
 had looked so dainty and unprofessional with 
 her basket of violets on her arm. Now she 
 wore an old dress of faded blue, with a big 
 blue apron all cut up into pockets. All sorts
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 of ominous things peeped from these pockets; 
 a trowel, a pair of shears, twine, and some 
 little sticks. She was very busy transferring 
 a nursery of plants from their wooden box to 
 the row of little holes which she had gouged 
 out neatly in the unoffending earth, and over 
 in the path stood a wheel-barrow heaped high 
 with newly cut grass. 
 
 She did not see me. I watched the pretty 
 picture for quite a time before I stepped out 
 to her. 
 
 "Good morning, Miranda." 
 
 She started, straightening up suddenly. 
 
 "How did you know?" 
 
 "Know what?" 
 
 "My name." 
 
 "I didn't. I wasn't even guessing." 
 
 "Then you meant Shakespeare's Miranda?" 
 
 "Surely. And Prosperous and Ferdi- 
 nand's. (I muttered the last under my 
 breath so that she did not hear me.) 
 
 "I see. I thought " 
 
 "It was a happy chance," I said gallantly. 
 "The name suits you, which is more than most 
 names do their owners. But Miranda 
 may I call you so as a reward for my per- 
 spicacity? I have a quarrel with you.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 37 
 
 Why have you cut my grass ?" 
 
 She looked distressed. 
 
 "I told mother you would not like it. I 
 suppose a lawn must be kept as a lawn, but 
 I always feel as reluctant to cut it as a mother 
 over the first shearing of her baby boy's 
 ringlets." 
 
 "Not a bad comparison," I grumbled. "It 
 is indeed as ungraceful as the average mas- 
 culine hair-cut." 
 
 Miranda laughed. 
 
 "Just now it is; but in a day or two it will 
 be lovely; soft, velvety, wonderfully green a 
 clean-faced, irreproachably-groomed lawn, sir!" 
 
 It was my turn to laugh. 
 
 "But that is a man's work. Where is 
 Jim?" 
 
 "Oh no! Jim's province is the kitchen 
 garden. It is too early for him to offer you 
 much but you shall have some romaine for 
 dinner." 
 
 "Good! It is the queen of salads." 
 
 Miranda smiled at my gastronomic ecstasy. 
 
 "You speak like an epicure, yet your looks 
 belie you." 
 
 I raised offended eyebrows with an attempt- 
 ed severity.
 
 38 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "Am I then so lean and hungry-looking?" 
 
 Miranda studied me thoughtfully, and spoke 
 with analytic care. 
 
 "An ascetic, not by choice but by habit, a 
 habit that grew on you as the result of neces- 
 sity, perhaps, and was not relinquished with 
 the passing of the need for it." 
 
 Wasn't that clever? The description was 
 not flattering, yet because of something in 
 Miranda's eyes I could not resent it. 
 
 "You are right," I said, half apologetically. 
 "I suppose I have even earned the title of 
 miser t since I kept the pose of self-denial long 
 beyond the days of real poverty. Now I 
 know that I practiced economy all this time 
 merely that I might some day own the Garden 
 of Dreams. Since I have that " I smiled 
 to myself, waved my hand gayly to Miranda, 
 and sauntered on down to see if perchance 
 I might find a single winged cyclamen left 
 to mark the place where the daffodils and 
 crocus had long since bloomed. 
 
 I could not very well explain to this serious- 
 minded child, with her adorable conscience, 
 that since I had obtained that for which I 
 had denied myself I would probably never do 
 another stroke of work again as long as I
 
 The Garden of Dreams 39 
 
 lived, nor could I tell her that I was beginning 
 to look on all the joys that life had hereto- 
 fore denied me with a dogged determination 
 to own them to make them mine. To 
 live, to love, to learn; I care not a/o> ever to 
 produce anything again. Therein I show 
 conclusively that I am no genius Mathilde 
 and a few generously inclined critics to the 
 contrary. I admit to myself without reserva- 
 tion that my work has not satisfied; that 
 always, always, I have been hungry hungry 
 with an appetite that refused to be appeased 
 with the more or less skillful juggling of words, 
 the chess game of plot and counterplot, the 
 play of sentiment and fancy. 
 
 How is it that you alone of all my friends, 
 you whose arms and heart have never 
 known what it was to be empty you, with 
 your adorable daughter and her infant 
 son, and Alfred with his enthusiasms and 
 riotous affections, have alone shown me that 
 sympathetic understanding that can never 
 have been born of experience, have let me lave 
 my lonely heart in the flood-tide of your life, 
 have done your best that I should never feel 
 the futility of my make-believe? You are 
 very wonderful, Mathilde, and it is because
 
 4-O The Garden of Dreams 
 
 of all that you are that I write so to you. 
 Long ago you shared with me all that you had; 
 long ago I made a vow to share with you what- 
 ever of joy and light there might come into 
 my life. 
 
 But all this is far away from that first day. 
 I remember thinking that another spring we 
 would have thousands of snowdrops and 
 quaint blue squills peeping up beneath the 
 evergreens, while the strip of meadow on the 
 south side should be gladdened with narcissi 
 and daffodils. Which reminds me that I 
 must commission Miranda to order the bulbs 
 before I forget it. 
 
 Dear Mathilde, you will write soon again 
 will you not? However much I err towards 
 you, you are always there with your divine 
 forbearance. 
 
 My love to the children. If anything I 
 have said can tempt you from your barren 
 city streets to gladden me with the visit you 
 so graciously promise, I shall not have written 
 in vain. The lad must be nearly through his 
 university work. Surely then you can both 
 come. 
 
 Devotedly yours, 
 
 SAMUEL GARTH WINTERS.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 4.1 
 
 VA letter from Samuel Garth Winter"! 
 Lto his friend, Mathilde Bursey] 
 
 June 2nd, 19 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 THIS morning we were cut off from the 
 world by a sheet of silver mist a mist 
 that promptly resolved itself into a 
 slanting, steady downpour. It is the first 
 real storm since my arrival, and I think I 
 never heard such music. I lay abed two long 
 hours, listening, and I have about decided that 
 of all the wood instruments I prefer a shingle 
 roof provided it is properly played upon 
 by an orchestra of raindrops. When you 
 make us a visit I shall try to arrange for a 
 shower for your especial benefit. 
 
 I was down late for breakfast. Miranda 
 was just bringing in a glass bowl of wild 
 strawberries. 
 
 "In all this rain!" I exclaimed. 
 
 "Jim brought them over the very first of 
 the season. You must make a wish on them." 
 
 "How do you do it?" 
 
 "You should close your eyes and say the 
 wish over three times while the berry 
 slowly melts into fragrance and flavor on the 
 tongue."
 
 42 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "Have you had some?" 
 
 "There's only a cupful," she deprecated. 
 "Those green leaves are deceiving." 
 
 "Nevertheless" 
 
 "But Pve eaten them every spring all these 
 years that you have hungered " 
 
 "I should still be unsatisfied unless there 
 were someone to share them. We will make 
 our wish together." 
 
 We went through the ritual reverently, and 
 as our eyes unclosed, laughed half-guiltily 
 like foolish children. 
 
 "I will tell you my wish" I began, but 
 Miranda interrupted in mock horror: 
 
 "You mustn't! You will never get it if 
 you do." 
 
 I reflected that she was probably right, and 
 contented myself by adding with a smile: 
 "Some day!" 
 
 "Oh!" said Miranda, with a touch of con- 
 fusion, and left me to my eggs and bacon. 
 
 I tell you this because, in a manner, it 
 answers your question. Dear lady, come 
 and see for yourself! You will find Miranda 
 a ravishing mixture of all that is most allur- 
 ing in child and woman. To aspire to her 
 seems profanation. She is twenty-three, and
 
 The Garden of Dreams 4.3 
 
 I, alas ! am forty an elderly sort of forty, 
 too, at best. But I ask myself sometimes if 
 it isn't perhaps because I never enjoyed the 
 gay insouciance of a care-free youth. I was 
 old at sixteen older far than I am now that 
 I can snap my fingers at the wolf and his 
 snarling clan. Sometimes, Mathilde, I feel 
 very young; at such times Miranda eyes me 
 with that maternal tolerance that is always 
 present in the maiden's heart for the one man. 
 Whereupon I shake my bells and tell foolish 
 stories and am a very clown for joy in her 
 divine forbearance. 
 
 You do not tell me when Arthur's work 
 will be over. When will you feel free to make 
 us that promised visit? The dear lad has 
 surely earned a long vacation. I wish you 
 could both be induced to spend it here. Con- 
 sider it, will you, Mathilde? 
 
 As ever, affectionately yours, 
 
 SAMUEL WINTERS.
 
 44 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 VA letter from Samuel Garth Winters'} 
 Lto his friend, Mathilde Burseyl 
 
 June 8th, 19 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 TOU are no doubt right, dear lady. 
 Such days and days of industrious 
 idling, of leisurely pottering about 
 the house and grounds, will destroy my ca- 
 pacity for serious work. At least, I hope so. 
 Do not forget, Mathilde indeed, I know 
 that you do not, and say this more to justify 
 myself to myself than to you that I have 
 worked all my life, and for the most part 
 very seriously. I think I was not more than 
 five years old when I had my daily tasks. 
 No harm in that, you understand, except 
 that they lasted all day. No, no, Mathilde! 
 you cannot chide my ambitions into a tardy 
 resurrection. There is a task which I hope 
 to set myself some day, to which I will gladly 
 lend all the energies of my remaining years. 
 It is a duty which you have nobly ful- 
 filled, and the objects of your labor of love 
 rise up and call you blessed. To see that 
 which is born in the likeness of the beloved 
 one and of yourself grow into adolescence 
 at your side, is to have the chance, at least,
 
 The Garden of Dreams 45 
 
 to remold one's youth nearer to the heart's 
 desire. (With apologies to Omar.) 
 
 We have had a great deal of rain this week 
 for which the farmers are duly grateful. 
 As for the garden, even the wonder-world 
 of my recollections never seemed fairer to 
 me than has the Miranda-governed garden 
 of this spring. The shrubs, especially, have 
 outdone themselves the thorns, the lilacs, 
 the azaleas, and now the rhododendrons 
 while the borders are a perfect riot of German 
 iris and columbines. 
 
 This morning, after breakfast, I went into 
 the library with the laudable intention of 
 setting it in order. It is a room that I have 
 entered only once since my arrival. There 
 are several reasons for this neglect. In the 
 first place, it is a great bare room bare of 
 books as a last year's walnut, robbed of 
 its kernel by some maurauding squirrel, is 
 of meat. The polished floor, the high wains- 
 coting (the room is finished in age-darkened 
 oak), and the rows of empty shelves seemed 
 reproachfully to remind me that I have vowed 
 to be done with books the making of them, 
 at least. In one corner of the library and 
 therein was my second reason which I might
 
 46 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 call a certain delicacy, a hesitation at in- 
 truding too suddenly into the private places 
 of a woman's soul Miranda had kept a 
 portion of the spirit of the room alive. In the 
 bay window stood a low worktable with a 
 little sewing-chair beside it; an old-fashioned 
 desk, over which a brass candlestick and 
 a tiny bust of Shelley kept guard, flanked 
 one side, while a generously-cushioned arm 
 chair was drawn up in friendly communion 
 with three low shelves which held an alluring 
 collection of well-worn books. On that first 
 day, as Miranda stood beside me in the center 
 of the long, dull room, this little nook, aglow 
 with prismatic flecks of dying sunlight and 
 bathed in broad shafts of mellow amber, 
 seemed like a sanctuary. It was with some- 
 thing of an effort that I refrained from step- 
 ping up to examine the contents of the shelves 
 so eager was I to know Miranda better. 
 Yet although I have now been here a month 
 and more, the secret of her library is still 
 inviolate. I feel that I can trust Miranda. 
 To know the books a woman loves is to know 
 what company her spirit keeps, and to know 
 that is to grasp all her possibilities both for 
 good and evil. But I am content to wait,
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 knowing that Miranda cannot disappoint 
 me. t 
 
 Imagine, therefore, my chagrin as I stood 
 in the doorway and realized that although the 
 few pieces of furniture were undisturbed, the 
 books and feminine belongings had vanished. 
 Going at once to the door of the breakfast- 
 room I called, and at my voice Miranda ap- 
 peared from the kitchen. Then I stepped 
 back across the hall, Miranda following me, 
 and we stood together in the doorway, look- 
 ing into the somber room, which seemed 
 with its rain-swept outlook more dismal 
 than ever. 
 
 "Miranda how could you ?" I reproached. 
 
 She held up a protesting hand. 
 
 "Don't don't scold." 
 
 "I must. You have taken away your 
 playthings." 
 
 " But there are boxes and boxes of books up- 
 stairs to be unpacked, and every inch of avail- 
 able space is likely to be taken up " 
 
 " With vulgar trash !" I interrupted. " With 
 Compendium* and Treasuries of Verse, and 
 ponderous sets of World's Best Literature and 
 tiresome old duffers whom nobody reads; 
 while yours Miranda ! I haven't an inkling
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 of what those shelves contained, but they 
 looked so homey and friendly." 
 
 "But not decorative. Besides, I always 
 understood that the last owner of the Hall 
 was quite a literary gentleman." 
 
 I made a wry face. Miranda does not 
 suspect that I write. I wonder if she would 
 call me a literary gentleman? Bless the 
 child! She has lived in this enchanted garden 
 with her schoolbooks and her classics until 
 she does not know that such a thing as a 
 "best seller" exists; certainly I'll not be the 
 one to tell her. 
 
 Nor did I attempt to disturb her illusion 
 about the late owner of the Hall. It is true 
 that in my blackberrying days I had held 
 him in great awe, but remembering some of 
 the questions he had asked that ignorant 
 boy and the advice he had given him, I have 
 long since recognized in him the country 
 Polonius "a tiresome old fool" with a 
 medley of assorted and invariably pilfered 
 philosophies; so that I looked forward to 
 acquaintance with his library with but scant 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 Before long the room was filled with boxes, 
 brought in under the careful superintendence
 
 The Garden of Dreams 4.9 
 
 of Mrs. Rowen and opened by Jim, while 
 Miranda and I hovered anxiously about, 
 dipping into them at random. 
 
 It was true that Miranda urged that we do 
 the work systematically, but even her con- 
 scientiousness was not proof against the eager- 
 ness which every true book-lover feels at sight 
 of a box crammed with unknown possibili- 
 ties. You would have loved, Mathilde, to 
 see the innate reverence with which she lifted 
 out and dusted and sorted and stacked the 
 books into little piles around her on the floor, 
 or to hear her exclaim pityingly at broken 
 corners or a mildewed cover. Meeting my 
 eyes, however, her own twinkled merrily as 
 she tapped the red morocco of a Boswell's 
 Johnson, and declared she would save that 
 for after-dinner reading during the summer. 
 
 I was helping Jim with a crate of encyclo- 
 paedias of a forgotten and long since super- 
 seded issue, when from the depths of a new 
 box Miranda quoted gleefully : 
 
 At last, because the time was ripe, 
 I chanced upon the poets. 
 
 And with a little satisfied "Oh, this is bet- 
 ter!" sank down in a soft, adoring, childish
 
 jo The Garden of Dreams 
 
 heap on the floor before it, pulling out first 
 one volume, then another, opening them at 
 random, nibbling here and there like a 
 hungry mouse. Smiling at her enjoyment I 
 left her with her find, while Mrs. Rowen 
 and I disposed with scant ceremony of long 
 rows of de luxe editions whose uncut pages 
 and tarnished gilt told a pathetically incon- 
 gruous tale. They are a nightmare albeit 
 a somewhat grotesque one, and a trifle less 
 depressing than the empty shelves. Per- 
 haps, after all, I shall become productive- 
 ly industrious again and devote the proceeds 
 to showing Miranda what a library should be 
 like. At present, my trunkful of books shall 
 find lodgment in the cozy little upstairs room 
 I have set apart for a study. 
 
 Mrs. Rowen's announcement that dinner 
 was ready recalled Miranda to the actual 
 world of dust and disorder. She looked at me 
 reproachfully as she rid her lap of the Brown- 
 ings and Tennysons and dumped the whole 
 Victorian brotherhood Pre-Raphaelites and 
 all on the floor. 
 
 "Why did you let me waste the morning 
 so?" she wailed. "I never should have open- 
 ed the first book. Why didn't you shake me?"
 
 The Garden of Dreams 57 
 
 "I envied you your absorption. I was only 
 too glad that you had found something worth 
 while." 
 
 "It was wonderful,", admitted Miranda 
 thoughtfully. "Things I've read a hundred 
 times before seemed newly illumined as 
 though someone infinitely wise and good had 
 me by the hand." 
 
 "That can't be the ghost of the late Major," 
 I said. "At least, I don't recognize him by 
 your description." 
 
 "See!" said Miranda, putting into my out- 
 stretched hand two slender volumes bound 
 in gray. They were proper, precise, essen- 
 tially ladylike volumes, and even before I 
 had verified the name on the flyleaf they re- 
 called the forgotten image of the Major's 
 sister. You would have liked Miss Cynthia, 
 Mathilde. Silver-haired, placid, exquisitely 
 virginal, she had yet a fiery sparkle in her 
 large brown eyes that made it easy to imagine 
 her surreptitiously reading the latest 
 Swinburne, for instance, considered then a 
 highly immoral poet whom none but the most 
 advanced would read. She had not been 
 guilty of the insolence of annotation, but the 
 books had evidently been well and attentively
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 read, for they were sprinkled with little, fine, 
 wavering lines that were as clear and sharp 
 now as when Miss Cynthia's gold pencil had 
 made them. God bless her! she was good 
 to me and to my mother. 
 
 How I ramble along to you, Mathilde; I 
 who abominate letters and can scarcely bring 
 myself to the veriest business note. It is 
 because, dear lady, I am so very sure of being 
 understood that I bring my singing heart to 
 you to be rejoiced over. I wait longingly 
 for your visit. I would have you know 
 Miranda. How I wish I dared have written 
 my Miranda. 
 
 Affectionately your friend, 
 
 SAMUEL WINTERS.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 55 
 
 fA letter from Samuel Garth W inter s\ 
 Lto his friend^ Mathilde Burseyl 
 
 June nth, 19 
 
 OH, but I am disappointed more 
 than I can say. Yet of course I 
 agree with you. I am delighted 
 for the children's sake that you have the 
 opportunity for this Maine summer, and since 
 the doctor wishes Eloise to go at once there 
 is nothing for it but to forego your visit for 
 the present. Shall we make it October? It is 
 the most regal month of all the year up 
 here among the hills. 
 
 You dear Woman-heart! And do you 
 really think that I could know a Miranda 
 without telling her how much I owe a Ma- 
 thilde ? I think she is even more disappointed 
 than I am, since I suspect her of a natural 
 curiosity to see what sort of a friend such an 
 old fogy as myself would have. 
 
 I am glad to tell you that after two days of 
 hard work we have finished the library. It 
 looks just as I remember it, with all the old 
 books and pictures restored to their places. 
 Some day I may change it to suit a wife, 
 for instance but at present I like to see it
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 as it used to look when I waited for the 
 Major's orders while he finished his game of 
 solitaire, and Miss Cynthia embroidered in 
 the window. Miranda does not embroider, a 
 point in which she differs from Miss Cynthia. 
 Yes, it is good to feel that this great house, 
 which seemed so colossal and magnificent 
 to my boyish eyes, is mine at last, and that 
 I need no longer wander clandestinely through 
 the garden to shuffle up the steps of th.e kitchen 
 porch, but may boldly enter in at the massive 
 oaken doors that guard from too rude awaken- 
 ings the sleepers in the House of Dreams. 
 
 I shall not expect a letter from you until 
 you are settled. I know how disturbing to 
 your dear methodical soul such a migration 
 must be; but drop me a postal with your 
 address. I expect the book in from the pub- 
 lishers within a day or two, and you must be 
 the first to have a copy. 
 
 As ever your friend, 
 
 SAMUEL WINTERS.
 
 PART II
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 DOWN DREAMLAND'S LANE 
 
 \A letter from Miranda] 
 LRozven to Dorothy Roscome] 
 
 June 1 7th, 19 
 Dear Dorothy: 
 
 YOU are a mischievous little tease, 
 and if I did not love you so I should 
 be really provoked with you. What 
 nonsense, Dorothy! you know very well that 
 that is not the reason I do not want to come 
 to Boston. When did I ever visit you, you 
 rogue, in June ? How could I leave the garden 
 in the loveliest, busiest month of all, and in this 
 most probably our last summer, when it's 
 more beautiful than it ever was before per- 
 haps because I must so soon lose it. Indeed, 
 Dorothy, I think it will be much more likely 
 that I will defer my usual August visit, since 
 by October we will probably have said good- 
 bye to the Hall forever. That is, if you'll 
 have me then. 
 
 Mother and I are planning all sorts of ven- 
 tures, but really we have no more idea what 
 
 57
 
 $8 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 to do than two babes in the wood. I suppose 
 more ambitious people would have foreseen 
 and provided against such a contingency long 
 ago. As a matter of fact I should have taken 
 the man's part when my dear, tired father 
 laid down the load but what? Alas! 
 Daddy's ideas of education were beautifully 
 broad and splendidly impractical. Now if 
 only someone wanted a girl to pass an exami- 
 nation on Spencer, Darwin, and Huxley, or 
 Browning, Stevenson, and Burroughs, I might 
 stand some chance. Then, too, how could 
 we leave this place so loved for itself and 
 its associations with my father as long as 
 we could live as we did? Of course, now it's 
 different. Mr. Winters is simply dear so 
 kind, so delicate, so diffident. What he is 
 really trying to manage for us is to persuade 
 mother to stay on the old terms for doing 
 practically nothing. He has provided her 
 with a helper a rather inefficient but very 
 willing country girl and he has insisted on 
 a boy for the garden. More hindrance than 
 help he is at present, though I was really glad 
 of his assistance last month; I was late get- 
 ting out the perennials this year, there were 
 so many things to be attended to indoors.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 But you should see the garden now. The 
 two long beds that border the walk are al- 
 ready magnificent with larkspur, foxglove, 
 and the rich crimson of the peony, with Can- 
 terbury bells and sweet William and spicy 
 pinks; the golden glow will soon make the 
 old stone wall that cuts off the back of the 
 garden from the woods a riotous bank of 
 color; as for the phloxes, I am afraid they will 
 dwarf everything else in sight. I divided them 
 last fall, and had no idea there were still so 
 many; I think we have every shade in which 
 a phlox ever dared bloom. We will have 
 lots of poppies, too the beauties! two long 
 beds of them, scarlet and pink and white, to 
 flirt like gossamer coryphees in the summer 
 breeze, and furl their silken sails at night 
 to guard the drowsy sweets within. 
 
 Mr. Winters actually does not suggest a 
 single change. He is restoring all the old 
 pictures and books to their places, and seems 
 to remember how everything in the lower 
 rooms used to look. It was wonderful the 
 day in the library; he arranged one shelf from 
 which the Major's sister had allowed him to 
 borrow books when he was a boy, over and 
 over again until he got each volume where it
 
 60 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 used to stand; and he was quite upset because 
 an old copy of Huckleberry Finn was missing 
 said out loud several times, as though 
 speaking to Miss Cynthia: "I'm very sure 
 I returned it! I distinctly remember return- 
 ing it!" It quite made me love him, though 
 it did not surprise me. His whole attitude 
 is one of perfect loyalty to his beginnings; 
 his origin, the hard life of his parents, his own 
 lack of opportunity, his poverty and early 
 struggles, he never mentions except with a 
 certain gentle deference, as though he gave 
 them the credit for everything since accomp- 
 lished. 
 
 He told me quite a great deal about his 
 youth this afternoon, and incidentally I 
 found out something I had half suspected. 
 He is an author! He had not intended telling 
 me. How foolish, when we both love books 
 so. But he says he doesn't write books; not 
 real books, but just stories that are called 
 "best sellers," and asked me how I had come 
 to suspect him. I told him that it was rather 
 hard to unravel the exact train of thought 
 that had resulted in his conviction, but that 
 perhaps the most tangible clue had been a 
 number of short stories I had read while in
 
 The Garden of Dreams 61 
 
 Boston on a visit, some years ago. You must 
 have seen them Moonstone and Amber. 
 I remembered that they had been by a Mr. 
 Winters whose initials I had promptly for- 
 gotten, but whose literary ego lingered. Per- 
 haps that was why from the first moment 
 Mr. Winters seemed like an old acquaintance. 
 I used to wonder why, until suddenly one 
 day, behind the hazy veil of some treasured 
 impression, Mr. Winters, the author, peered 
 over the shoulder of the new owner of the 
 Hall and admitted mischievously: "Why, cer- 
 tainly! I'm Mr. Winters, the Mr. Winters! 
 Don't you know me ?" and I had much ado 
 to keep from falling on his neck and greeting 
 him as a long lost friend but I did not 
 tell him that. 
 
 He seemed well pleased that I liked the 
 stories surely you recall them? tender, 
 idyllic, springlike fancies, full of haunting, 
 whimsical suggestions. He said that they 
 had been written a good many years ago and 
 republished from various magazines, but that 
 they had failed to attract much attention. I 
 asked him to let me read them again and he 
 willingly agreed, but seemed very shy over 
 the novels.
 
 62 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 You should see the roads about here now. 
 The meadows swim in a hazy, twinkling sea 
 of blue above the long spears of grass, and the 
 brook is fairly hemmed in on each side by 
 masses of blue flag. Daddy used to say that 
 blue flowers always love the water. 
 
 Dear Daddy! I never miss him so much 
 as in the spring. I have thought of him 
 almost constantly today. In fact, I dare 
 admit it to you, Dorothy, because, with 
 all your teasing, you are such an under- 
 standing sort of a girl, there are times 
 when I see him. More frequently than ever 
 before I look up from some task of transplant- 
 ing or weeding to find him standing over me, 
 his dear gray eyes, so short-sighted for human 
 failings or peculiarities, fixed upon me in 
 kindly benison. And then the haze of sudden 
 tears blinds me for a moment, and when I 
 can see again it is only Mr. Winters, pausing 
 in his round of the garden to note the progress 
 of the rosebuds. I think that is why I feel 
 so much at home with him. I never thought 
 to meet a man so like my father. 
 
 But enough of all this, Dorothy dear. So 
 you really think you'll go back to Castine this 
 summer? I wish I could visit you in August
 
 The Garden of Dreams 63 
 
 as I did last year. Perhaps things will ar- 
 range themselves so that I can. Until then 
 we must be content- with letters. What 
 volumes I write to you always. 
 
 Your 
 
 MIRANDA. 
 
 * * 
 
 fA letter from Miranda"} 
 LRowen to her dead father J 
 My own dear Daddy: 
 
 SUCH a beautiful June night! Just 
 such a night as used to find you 
 wandering bareheaded and coatless 
 beneath the stars. Do you remember the 
 evening you strayed down Dreamland's Lane 
 and wandered off into the meadow, and 
 when we heard your call and went out to 
 your rescue we found you very bewildered 
 and very wet in the middle of the cow- 
 pond, rooted among the reeds and lilies? I 
 have wanted you so much all day, dear; 
 and I turn to you as naturally in writing 
 as I used to do in my school-girl days, 
 when I eased my exile by nightly recitals of 
 my daily exploits, for you to puzzle over. 
 Besides, I must write tonight, or go quite 
 mad with the loveliness of it all. I have just
 
 64 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 written a long, long letter to Dorothy. If you 
 were here you would furrow up your beauti- 
 ful forehead till your eyebrows fairly bristled 
 in your effort to remember, and say "Dor- 
 othy! Dorothy! Let me see. She's the com- 
 fortable little body with the curls, isn't she?" 
 And I would pretend to scold you for your 
 uncertainty, and at last admit that she was. 
 Only, that she doesn't wear curls now, and 
 is getting so roly-poly that I'm afraid it 
 isn't comfortable at all. But she's just the 
 same dear, fussy, good-humored little sym- 
 pathizer, and you'd love her if if 
 
 Oh Daddy! Daddy! Why did you have to go 
 away? 
 
 But I musn't think of that unless I want to 
 find myself at one end of the long, long 
 problem for which there never seems to be 
 any solution. Some day, I tell myself, I will 
 sit down and think it all out conscientiously 
 as you would have me do the "why" 
 of life as far as I can see it. But not yet! 
 
 I had such a beautiful walk with Mr. Win- 
 ters this afternoon. I really felt very much 
 gratified at being wanted, for I think the 
 ramble was intended to pick up his boyhood 
 days where he had dropped them.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 We followed the brook, Daddy, as you and 
 I used to do, by crossing over from side to 
 side whenever the bank ended in a tangle of 
 flag or bolted down into a jungle of pickerel- 
 weed. At last we left the sunny fields and 
 meadows and dipped down between the hills. 
 Mr. Winters asked if they still called it Para- 
 dise Falley. I told him yes, but that for me 
 I should sooner think of the hills as Paradise. 
 He smiled thoughtfully. 
 
 "How white a soul yours must be, Mi- 
 randa. There are times when even the view 
 from Mont Salvat (so he calls the Hall) will 
 make me long to find some hidden nook in 
 this little ravine where so poor a thing as I 
 may take refuge." 
 
 I really didn't know how to explain; I 
 can't talk well on personal matters, but I 
 think it is because I have not lived much that 
 I am unafraid of what the hills reveal. Per- 
 haps I, too, shall love the valley best when I 
 grow old. But goodness! Mr. Winters is 
 not really old, and the quick, boyish smile 
 that plays so radiantly about his mouth when 
 your fancy chimes in well with his is more 
 than compensation for his fast graying hair 
 which is probably responsible for the feeling
 
 66 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 that he's rather old which he really isn't. 
 Dear Daddy! how you would have shud- 
 dered at such English. 
 
 But we did not see the hills to-day. In- 
 stead we kept to the shaded lanes until we 
 reached the wood. He wanted to show me 
 the Indian Cave where he played as a boy 
 as though I did not know it well. But when 
 we came here I was almost too old to play 
 at Indians. I would slip in among the under- 
 brush, and loosening my short skirt pin it 
 up tunic-fashion over one arm, and forthwith 
 emerge a timid Imogen or jaunty Rosalind 
 as the mood directed. How often, leaning 
 on the alpenstock you cut me for climbing, 
 I have stood between the beeches, and soften- 
 ing and deepening my girlish treble to the 
 orotund I thought Shakespeare required, 
 sighed to an imagined Touchstone: 
 
 Well, this is the Forest of Arden ! 
 or brandishing a make-believe sword at the 
 ridiculously tiny opening of the cave, flut- 
 tered out a timid : 
 
 Ho! who's here? 
 
 If anything that's civil, speak: if savage, 
 Take or lend. Ho! No answer? Then I'll enter. 
 Best draw my sword; and if mine enemy 
 But fear the sword like me, he'll scarcely look on't. 
 Such a foe, good heavens !
 
 The Garden of Dreams 67 
 
 Oh, those happy days ! Quite as radiantly, 
 blissfully happy was I, with my make-believe, 
 as the boy with his bit of a candle and his 
 wicked looking cutlass (a rusty broken sickle 
 rescued from the blacksmith's scrap-heap). 
 I did not know that you could enter the cave, 
 but he says that he remembers that when he 
 crawled flat upon his stomach the length of 
 his body (he was then a boy of ten), the tunnel 
 widened and deepened until there was space 
 large enough to turn around and sit quite 
 comfortably facing the opening, with knees 
 drawn up, hands clasping them, and eyes 
 staring out into the circle of green beyond. 
 It must have been a thrilling sensation 
 when you were an escaped convict with a 
 price on your head, or the slaughterer of an 
 entire tribe of Indians doomed to fearful tor- 
 ture should you be captured. 
 
 We came home by Somer's place and down 
 through Dreamland's Lane. Before I thought 
 I had called it by that old name of my own 
 christening, and of course he wanted to know 
 why. Do you remember the day you left me 
 sitting by the roadside while you went over 
 to Somer's that time he hurt his arm? It 
 was very warm and I was tired, and when
 
 68 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 you got back you found me asleep and evi- 
 dently in the throes of a most distressing 
 dream. 
 
 You may guess how embarrassed I was when 
 Mr. Winters asked me if I would tell him the 
 dream. I hardly knew what to say. I had 
 never even told you, yet I hated to make a 
 mystery of nothing, especially after men- 
 tioning the matter of my own accord, so I 
 made light of it, begging him to remember 
 that I was not then out of my teens, was very 
 romantic, and inclined to be religious, and 
 that I had been reading poetry till my brain 
 was addled. I will tell it to you, now, as I 
 told it to him. 
 
 It seemed in my dream that I was 
 going hither and thither over the face of the 
 earth seeking someone. At first, as I looked 
 for him in the cities and by the sea, I did not 
 know just who it was that I sought; but 
 gradually it came to me although I still 
 could not see his features that it was my 
 mate. And everywhere I went was the same 
 answer made to my questions: "He is not 
 here!" 
 
 Finally I came to the edge of the world, 
 against whose purple shore a white-winged
 
 The Garden of Drec.ms dp 
 
 boat stood ready; but ere I entered it I looked 
 reluctantly back, not satisfied to go until 
 I heard a voice that said: "He whom you 
 seek is not on earth!" 
 
 In the boat I sailed to Heaven and the 
 interval of sailing was as a flash of lightning. 
 And there again began my search, and some- 
 one halted me and said: "What is he like 
 this man you seek?" 
 
 And I answered: "I do not know; but 
 when I see him I shall know." 
 
 And after I had sought through Heaven in 
 vain I went to Hell; and there it was I cried 
 bitter tears of fear and dread. But he was 
 not there, and even as my father woke me a 
 voice cried out: " The man you seek is not yet 
 born!" 
 
 Was it not a strange, uncanny dream? 
 When I had told it to Mr. Winters the silence 
 that followed seemed very long. Then he 
 said gently: 
 
 "Are you superstitious, Miranda?" 
 
 "I think not. Why?" 
 
 "Do you believe that dream?" 
 
 "Oh no; though I've sometimes thought 
 that well, of course, it might prove true." 
 
 I could have bitten out my tongue that had
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 led me into so morbidly personal a conversa- 
 tion when he said : 
 
 "Don't believe it, Miranda. You must 
 not believe it; it would be too sad for you 
 and me." 
 
 I don't know what I answered. I know 
 that after a frightened silence I caught up 
 my courage and my wits in both hands and 
 gave the conversation a mighty wrench, and 
 set it spinning safely and tamely again on 
 barnyard subjects; but oh, how my heart 
 did beat! 
 
 It was all my fault, of course; mine and 
 that silly dream's But how I should hate 
 it if Mr. Winters, whom I really like and 
 admire very much, should think the occasion 
 demanded flattery and pretty speeches; 
 should leave his attitude of sensitive, friendly 
 scholarliness for that of the middle-aged 
 gallant. Oh dear! It must never happen 
 again. I must keep my dreams under lock 
 and key hereafter. Or better still, tell them 
 only to you. Dear Daddy, if only I knew 
 how it is with you to-night. It is always at 
 night that I want you most. Sometime I 
 know that I shall go out into the garden, down 
 between the lilacs you loved so much, to meet
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 you as I used to do. If only I could know 
 that you would not fail me then. It is al- 
 most midnight, and there is no other light in 
 the house. Even the lamp in Mr. Winters' 
 study went out some time ago. As for mother, 
 she has been asleep for hours little dream- 
 ing what foolish fancies possess me. Such a 
 blessed darkness broods about the house. 
 How can people in the cities bear the imperti- 
 nent intrusion of electric lights and gas 
 lamps into the sacred privacy of the night? 
 Presently I shall blow out my lamp and dark- 
 ness will fall upon me like a benison. 
 
 Good-night, Father, Good-night. God love 
 and bless you, dear, in that mysterious beyond.
 
 PART III
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 THE DESERTED ORCHARD 
 
 [A letter from Samuel Garth Winters'} 
 to his friend, Mathilde Burseyl 
 
 August loth, 19. 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 A last your welcome letter! Oh, I 
 know I've been remiss and deserved 
 no better at your hands, but Mathilde, 
 you were never one for treating "every man 
 according to his deserts," so that I really felt 
 quite alarmed at your long silence. Fancy 
 then how delighted we were when we heard 
 of you indirectly through Miranda's friend, 
 Miss Dorothy Roscome. Such a glowing 
 account of your trip together up Casco Bay, 
 and the sweet hospitality of the little bunga- 
 low among the hackmatacks! She is really 
 a most appreciative little person is Miss 
 Dorothy. She writes of you " Such a won- 
 derful grandmother with such a young 
 face and figure, and such beautiful white hair, 
 such merry eyes and humorous chin, such 
 firm white hands so large and capable, 
 
 75
 
 76 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 so warm and vital." I shall certainly have 
 to know Miss Dorothy. 
 
 And then on top of her letter came yours 
 and evidently the good impression was mu- 
 tual. But you must not form any impres- 
 sion of Miranda from her chum. We have 
 many pictures of Miss Dorothy, and nothing 
 further from Miranda could be imagined than 
 that roly-poly little person. You say that 
 she sings Miranda's loveliness in every key 
 imaginable. Now listen while I join in the 
 chorus. I have never tried to describe her, 
 because while with her I have always found 
 myself seeing the soul the lovely per- 
 sonality of her rather than the body, and 
 afterwards catch myself wondering just what 
 color her eyes are anyway. Such a confes- 
 sion from a lover! but Miranda would under- 
 stand it. Because her eyes are gray deep 
 gray, shadowy, velvety in certain lights, the 
 eyes of the dreamer, the mystic, the scholar, 
 and yet saved from impracticability by the 
 alertness of the brows. Indeed Miranda's 
 eyes are deceiving. I have discovered that 
 there is no little living thing along the road 
 that ever escapes her, though I may feel quite 
 easy with a faded necktie or an unshaved
 
 The Garden of Dreams 77 
 
 chin. A comfortable sort of a girl you will 
 admit, Mathilde, to live with. 
 
 She is like a fawn so slender, so supple, 
 so graceful. Her hair shines like a fresh horse- 
 chestnut in a pool of sunlight. I need not 
 tell you that she neither crimps nor waves 
 it, nor otherwise tortures it into standing 
 on end, but wears it softly framing her face 
 as God meant women's hair to grow. Her 
 skin why I believe she's golden clear 
 through! So tenderly have the elements 
 dealt with her that you would not guess she 
 was tanned unless you caught a glimpse of 
 the white flesh beneath the golden throat. 
 For the rest, she is perhaps five feet four 
 an adorable height in a woman, that allows 
 you to think of them as short or tall, as the 
 occasion or your mood demands. 
 
 Do you wonder at the audacity that would 
 dare offer in exchange for this dryad's heart 
 the middle-aged tenderness of a romantic 
 bachelor? Sometimes I grow afraid and want 
 to run away and leave her to the virginal 
 calm in which I found her. At other times 
 I am bold, daring to believe that no one could 
 understand Miranda so well as I do. She, 
 dear child, looks at me from such frank, un-
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 troubled eyes that I am often tortured with 
 doubts. I can imagine that just so may she 
 have looked at her father. On such occasions 
 she does not seem her age she will be 
 twenty-four next week and I think wild 
 schemes for suggesting to Mrs. Rowen that 
 I adopt her. At other moments, when the 
 sweet laughter ripples from her round throat 
 at some idiocy of mine, I throw my forty 
 years to the winds and vow that if only Mi- 
 randa will love me I will be a boy again. 
 
 I note all that you say of The Afterglow. 
 I am glad indeed that you like it, for in spite 
 of all that you can urge, I feel that it is the 
 last I shall write the last novel, I mean. 
 Oh, I do not promise to abstain entirely. I 
 am too wedded to the pen, and besides, the 
 habit of self-expression is a persistent one 
 that may not always be indulged at the ex- 
 pense of one's friends. 
 
 Good-bye, Mathilde; my love to all your 
 dear ones. I suppose the wonder-boy is more 
 cherubic than ever. Tell Eloise that I shall 
 expect her to bring him for a long visit some 
 time soon. So far as I am concerned she 
 need not wait till he has passed what she is 
 pleased to call the caveman stage. I like
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 cavemen when they wear golden curls and 
 blue-checked rompers. 
 
 I am, as ever, dear Mathilde, 
 
 Yours most devotedly, 
 SAMUEL GARTH WINTERS. 
 
 tA letter from Samuel Garth Winters'] 
 to his friend, Mathilde Burseyl 
 
 September 9th, 19 
 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 A OTHER love of a gray morning. It 
 must have rained during the night, or 
 else the dew is unsually heavy for 
 everything is jeweled. A cobweb that hangs 
 from the eaves aslant across my window has 
 dipped with the weight of dewdrops till it 
 forms a fairy hammock. Anything quite 
 so perfect I never saw; diamonds caught 
 upon an invisible thread, with here and there 
 a moonstone, perhaps. What a hair-net for 
 Titania! The nasturtiums in the great stone 
 basin beneath my window hold such a display 
 upon their silvered leaves as would turn a 
 lapidary green with envy. I can imagine 
 the jewel-weeds along the brook; it is on
 
 8o The Garden of Dreams 
 
 such a morning as this that they justify their 
 name. 
 
 Just now I spied Miranda rubber-booted, 
 rubber-coated, an old sou'wester on her 
 chestnut locks sallying forth through the 
 drizzle, a little basket on her arm. I know 
 well what that means Mushrooms! Broiled 
 mushrooms garnishing a Spanish omelette, 
 or mushrooms drunk with cream in which 
 to smother the fried chicken. Ah! do I 
 make you hungry? Wretch! I would fain 
 make you hungry; we live here! Our vege- 
 tables, our fruits come to us rich in the earth 
 salts; you cannot say as much for your 
 Broadway cafe. 
 
 I would dearly love to join Miranda in her 
 hunt for the toothsome agarics, but that I 
 know the dear women are planning to sur- 
 prise me. Miranda thinks me snug abed, and 
 so I would have been but for the witchery of 
 the morning. 
 
 What nonsense you talk, Mathilde. Don't, 
 I pray you, do Miranda such a wrong. She is 
 as eager to hear of you as I am to talk. Why, 
 when Miss Roscome's letter came she fairly 
 danced into the library. "What do you 
 think?" she cried. "You never would guess
 
 The Garden of Dreams 8l 
 
 in a hundred years. My Dorothy and your 
 Mathilde have met. It must be the same. 
 See, she says 'A Mrs. Bursey who is here 
 with her son and married daughter.' Oh, I 
 am so pleased. Having Dorothy meet her 
 is the next best thing to meeting her myself. 
 Here! Of course you will want to read the 
 letter; it's almost all about your friend." 
 Then suddenly she flushed, and added, in 
 confusion "Or, perhaps I'd better read it 
 to you." 
 
 I notice that she omitted the last page. I 
 wonder what girlish secret was hidden on that 
 page? I am growing older and sillier each 
 day; I swear I fancy that I saw my name. 
 
 Here comes Miranda back again. She has 
 robbed the peach orchard and investigated 
 the edges of the cornfield. Is there any 
 music to compare with the silken rustle of the 
 wind through a cornfield on a September 
 day? Also I shouldn't wonder if she had 
 paid her respects to the fairy-ring, where 
 little fawn-colored god-children of the same 
 name cluster thickly on a rainy morning. 
 
 Since Jim leaves immediately after break- 
 fast with the mail I will cut short my mean- 
 derings. When do you get back to New
 
 82 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 York? Next week, I suppose at latest. 
 Surely then we may hope to see you. 
 As ever, affectionately yours, 
 
 SAMUEL WINTERS. 
 
 [A letter from Samuel Garth Winters'] 
 to his friend, Mathilde Bursey] 
 
 September 28th, 19 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 A MOST as much, indeed, as you do, 
 I find myself wondering if this mood of 
 rustic contentment will prove transi- 
 tory, and even as all other fulfilled desires 
 breed its own reaction. Shall I presently, 
 when winter winds, sweeping down from 
 the four corners of the heavens upon my bit 
 of mountain, pile snowdrifts waist deep around 
 my door, find myself longing for my bache- 
 lor quarters in town, the street-car banging 
 along around the corner, the dust and noise, 
 and the busy traffic that make up the life of 
 the city square? I hardly think so but 
 we shall see. Certain it is that the long sum- 
 mer days have flown by upon golden wings. 
 Several times Miranda thought to chide me, 
 to spur me on to great endeavor, but although
 
 The Garden of Dreams 83 
 
 we have talked over life and its purposes 
 (she, shyly at first, but with ever broadening 
 frankness and fearlessness, as she comes to 
 know me better), it has not blinded her to the 
 corollary that I would rather talk than work. 
 
 In the meantime I have been "learning" 
 Miranda "studying" would express a de- 
 gree of intention that has never existed in my 
 thoughts thus far. I have merely chosen to 
 keep my soul receptive and my mind empty 
 (in the last I have succeeded admirably), that 
 Miranda, when she chose, might fill me with 
 herself; and at the present writing, though I be 
 accused of levity, I should say that so gener- 
 ously overflowing with Miranda am I that 
 were she to withdraw herself I should be a 
 wilderness, more than ever like the deserted 
 orchard we visited this afternoon. 
 
 It came about in this fashion: The old 
 owner of the Hall had also quite a bit of land 
 twelve miles back in the mountains. Being 
 so far distant from a railroad and indeed 
 from habitation of any eort he allowed it 
 to be farmed after a fashion by some very 
 poor backwoodsmen, exacting in place of rent 
 toll on the orchard products, which were very 
 fine. Years ago, before even my recollection,
 
 84 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 the farmhouse burned down one cold winter's 
 night. It must have been a terrible exper- 
 ience for those poor people, helpless before 
 the element they had no means to fight. I 
 never heard just what became of them, but 
 the place was not rebuilt. It was too in- 
 accessible, absolutely cut off from all com- 
 munication during the long snowy season. 
 
 When I purchased the Hall I was strongly 
 urged to take also this fifty acres at, it is true, 
 a ridiculously small sum for so much of God's 
 good earth. I allowed myself to be per- 
 suaded, the agent representing that it was an 
 excellent site for a hunting and fishing club, 
 and that he had already been approached by 
 several would-be purchasers who would gladly 
 consider it if it could be acquired apart from 
 the Hall. I commissioned him to find a buyer 
 at anything like a reasonable figure, but I 
 notice that his enthusiasm has strangely 
 abated now that the long unsold estate is at 
 last off his hands. 
 
 Remembering the fame of the orchard and 
 acting upon Jim's assurance that the apple 
 crop would be a very fine one this year, I 
 decided to take Miranda with me and esti- 
 mate the prospects and the advisability of
 
 The Garden of Dreams 85 
 
 sending a team after *ny apples, which, from 
 a partiality to the fruit of my boyhood, I 
 hated to think of as rotting on the ground. 
 The weather being hot we put off the expedi- 
 tion from day to day, but at last came the 
 first tang of autumn, tripping in its impatience 
 upon the skirts of summer, and having dis- 
 posed of a hasty luncheon, Miranda and I 
 started for well, strangely enough, the old 
 place has absolutely no name, being ap- 
 parently unknown to the younger generation, 
 and still designated by those of the older yet 
 alive as "back to Beeman's" Beeman being 
 the name of the family who lived in it, more 
 than thirty years ago. 
 
 So back we went; back indeed! If I wanted 
 to I might easily write a paragraph full to 
 overflowing of symbolic touches; but that, 
 alas ! I am no Maeterlinck. 
 
 Enough if I say that after the first six miles 
 we turned off the turnpike road and bumped 
 and rattled along the lumber trail that runs 
 straight or rather crookedly back into 
 the heart of the forest. And such a road! 
 For the greater part of it so narrow that we 
 touched the trees on either side though here 
 and there wide enough for two teams to pass;
 
 86 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 always either up hill or down and for the 
 most part up, with deep ruts that clutched 
 the wheels and refused to let them go. 
 
 As for Joan, she went picking her way among 
 the rough, loose stones, very careful of her 
 feet (poor dear!) and utterly regardless of the 
 boulders over which she precariously tilted 
 our buggy wheels. Indeed she looked back 
 at us now and then when of her own 
 accord she paused for breath, or pretended 
 with much equine histrionicism that she could 
 not possibly take another hill with a mild 
 reproof in her big soft eyes, as though to say: 
 "Where on earth are you two imbeciles going? 
 Is this a decent road for a poor horse to 
 travel?" 
 
 Once we startled a copper head, coiled 
 asleep in a nice, round mat alongside the road. 
 I can't think where Joan's instincts were 
 perhaps she was too intent on the long, hard 
 stretch ahead of her. We would not have 
 seen it had it not raised a sudden inquisitive 
 head, and then, with almost leisurely uncon- 
 cern, undulated its way through the bushes 
 abreast of us. Miranda in all her tramps had 
 never encountered one before, and even when 
 I was a boy copperheads were nearly extinct
 
 The Garden of Dreams 87 
 
 in the country round, although occasionally 
 a few were brought in by the lumbermen 
 who sold their dried skins to summer visitors. 
 Ugh ! I'm glad Miranda has no such unpleas- 
 ant fancies. I may be foolish, but I can not 
 imagine living comfortably with a woman 
 who wore a dead snake around her waist; 
 though, inconsistently enough, I have no 
 such objection to a bit of seal or alligator. 
 
 Once we passed a lumber wagon drawn up 
 close to the side of the road, its patient mules 
 eyeing us or so we fancied with a faint 
 surprise and interest; and we heard in the 
 distance the rhythmic sound of axes. We 
 counted on that hillside seven marked trees, 
 chalked with an ugly cross, and Miranda 
 prayed that it might rain that night and oblit- 
 erate the mark on one splendid hickory, at 
 least. But for the last five miles we came 
 across no sign of human habitation, and then 
 the woods began to grow thinner and we 
 dipped down into a little hollow the road 
 suddenly meandered into an ancient meadow 
 and lost itself in a vague indication of what 
 had once been a grassy lane. Here we 
 tethered Joan, and together crossed the 
 meadow to the decrepit stone wall that
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 marked its furthermost boundary. If there 
 is anything more suggestive of the disinte- 
 grating effects of age than an old stone wall 
 fallen together into a shapeless mass of nig- 
 gerheads I do not know it. Beyond the 
 wall was a half-acre of ground overgrown with 
 weeds, the site of what had once been the 
 homestead. Of the barns and outbuildings 
 there was of course no trace, but the founda- 
 tions of the farmhouse were still standing 
 the stones fire-blackened and weather-worn. 
 Beyond was a wilderness where at one time 
 had flourished a vegetable garden, and cross- 
 ing this we found ourselves on the gentle 
 southern slope which had once borne the fa- 
 mous orchard. I think I mentioned that the 
 afternoon had been full of symbolism: that 
 deserted orchard was a sermon! The trees 
 were there to be sure, but of all those splendid 
 apples that had once been noted for their 
 size and flavor there was no suggestion. The 
 fruit had retrograded till the knotty, worm- 
 eaten, tough and tasteless things were scarcely 
 fit for pigs. It was, of course, too soon to 
 judge severely of the winter apples, but among 
 the early varieties we found only one tree 
 that did not disgrace its name. There had
 
 The Garden of Dreams 89 
 
 been no careful gardener there to graft or 
 prune, and although Miranda, eagerly examin- 
 ing the bark, began talking scientifically of 
 some parasitic scale, I knew better. 
 
 "Don't, Miranda!" I pleaded, taking her 
 hand away from the branch she was already 
 examining with all the professional interest 
 of the trained horticulturist. "Don't make 
 it any worse; it's moral is sufficiently terrible 
 without the San Jose scale." 
 
 "Why what is it?" asked Miranda, in- 
 stantly transferring her sympathy from the 
 trees to me. " Do you feel so sorry for them ?" 
 
 "It is my heart, Miranda. My own heart 
 is like this orchard; for it has no gardener 
 either to tend the trees, to prune, to nourish, 
 or to gather in the fruit." 
 
 "Oh, see there!" she cried. "Did you see 
 them? Bluebirds at this time of year and 
 I never saw so many together before. Oh, 
 isn't it wonderful?" 
 
 And it did indeed seem wonderful. For 
 with us, bluebirds rarely linger more than 
 a few days in passing. Occasionally a pair 
 will nest near us, and the orchard will be made 
 glad with their tender, elusive song and waver- 
 ing flights; but like Miranda, I'm sure I had
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 never seen half a dozen of them together be- 
 fore. These were down at the foot of the 
 orchard among some plum trees, and the silent 
 flash of their blue wings that wonderful 
 blue which is like nothing else that I can think 
 of kept us entranced, until a sound borne 
 on the still mountain air made us look at each 
 other with amazement. Finally Miranda 
 laughed. 
 
 "Well," she said, "Pm no logician, but a 
 cow-bell usually means a cow; and a cow 
 would mean that we are not so far from a 
 house as I had imagined." 
 
 I helped Miranda over the wall and we ran 
 down the hill to where a little ravine sheltered 
 the tiny brook which we crossed, and up 
 the other sloping side, and so came out upon 
 a straggly road. Down it, driving two cows 
 before him, came a freckle-faced, bare-legged 
 boy who might have been the ghost of myself 
 till he opened his mouth. He told us 
 rather sullenly as though he resented 
 questioning that he lived " a half-mile over." 
 He had been pasturing his cows on my land, 
 but much I cared; and when I told him to 
 tell his father that he would do me a favor if 
 he would send over and gather as many of the
 
 The Garden of Dreams pi 
 
 apples as were fit to use, he thanked me rather 
 sheepishly, so that I imagine they had never 
 before felt the need of getting permission. 
 
 "Fancy " said Miranda, as more soberly 
 we made our way back to the now thoroughly 
 disgusted Joan "what it would mean to 
 live in a little four-room bit of a house with 
 perhaps five or six children in an out of the 
 way corner of the world like this. Fd rather 
 have the Hall wouldn't you ?" 
 
 "Would you, Miranda?" I 'cried eagerly. 
 "I'd like to give you the Hall and the gar- 
 den and the fern-nest and the woods 
 and the old cow-pond you're so anxious to 
 make a water-garden of, and the books, and 
 of course you you wouldn't mind if I threw 
 myself in for good measure?" 
 
 Miranda looked at me with as much dis- 
 pleasure as I had ever seen on her sweet, 
 grave face. 
 
 "Don't jest!" she said. Then rapping the 
 reins over Joan's indignant back, she added 
 crisply: "Come Joan, old girl, you must 
 hurry up." 
 
 "But I'm not jesting!" I protested. "And 
 don't hurry Joan; I shouldn't care if we 
 never got home."
 
 92 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 I hoped Miranda would look at me again, 
 but she didn't. Instead she made a very 
 palpable attempt at changing the conversa- 
 tion by addressing sundry sympathetic re- 
 marks to Joan. 
 
 "But " said I "it will do her good. She 
 ought to be brought up here every day for ex- 
 ercise; she's growing too fat and lazy entirely." 
 
 That won me what I sought a second 
 quick glance from Miranda. 
 
 "Of course, you know," I said, "Joan goes 
 in with the rest of the live-stock; so I'd like 
 her to be in good condition." 
 
 "0A/" cried Miranda, her cheeks burning. 
 "That is unbearable; it's not like you. How 
 can you make a jest of such things?" 
 
 "Sweetheart! Sweetheart!" I cried. "What 
 else dare a man do but jest when he's fairly 
 crazed with fear?" 
 
 "Fear?" said Miranda, "of what?" 
 
 "Of you!" I whispered, so low that she 
 looked at me quickly to make sure she had 
 heard aright. 
 
 "Why " she faltered "why should you 
 fear me ?" 
 
 "Tell me how else a man should feel when 
 he sees before him the culmination of all his
 
 The Garden of Dreams pj 
 
 hopes and ambitions, the desire of his life, the 
 realization of his dreams and knows he is 
 not worthy to attain them ?" 
 
 "Why are you not worthy?" 
 
 "Were any man?" 
 
 "That is temporizing " 
 
 "You are so young." 
 
 A faint smile flickered momentarily over 
 Miranda's face. 
 
 "In the language of someone whose name 
 I have forgotten *That is a defect that time 
 will remedy.' ' 
 
 "And you are so rare a being, Miranda." 
 
 "Are you exalting me to depreciate your- 
 self by implication ?" 
 
 "Partly perhaps; how else should we 
 select the baser metals than by comparison 
 with gold?" 
 
 For a long time Miranda did not answer. 
 When she spoke it was as though she thought 
 aloud. 
 
 "I do not know how love would make a 
 man feel; I should imagine it would make a 
 woman very proud. Why should it not? 
 After all, it is the chrism life's consecrated 
 oil that sets her apart " 
 
 "Would it be such to you, Miranda?"
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 She sent me a quick, beseeching glance; 
 then rallied bravely. 
 
 "Joan is taking advantage of us; if we per- 
 sist in so serious a topic she will never get 
 home." 
 
 "Bother Joan!" said I. 
 
 It was quite dark when we drove into the 
 barn and turned the tired Joan over to Jim. 
 We knew Miranda's mother would have 
 supper ready for us, yet we lingered a moment, 
 as by mutual consent, at the side of the house 
 where the rose mallows, pink and white, are 
 banked and the asters edge the walk. 
 
 "I am thinking," I said softly, "of that 
 poor deserted orchard. No, of my heart, 
 I mean. All the big brave hopes, the high 
 ideals, the generous instincts, the honest 
 ambitions, retrograding and degenerating into 
 mean little snarly actualities because there 
 is no careful gardener to prune and nourish, 
 to watch the ripening fruits and gather them. 
 Won't you be the gardener, Miranda ?" 
 
 Miranda's answer was inarticulate, but she 
 left off caressing the sleepy asters and found 
 her way, somehow, into my arms. Presently 
 she whispered, with her head upon my heart: 
 "Poor old orchard!" and then, triumphantly,
 
 The Garden of Dreams 95 
 
 raising eyes that matched the stars: "But it 
 wasn't deserted! You've forgotten the blue- 
 birds." 
 
 Ah, Mathilde! I am too happy to write 
 more! Miranda has promised to marry me! 
 Not a thousand years from now but soon, 
 very soon. Her face was divinely tender 
 as she said: "After all, why should I make 
 you wait? What have I to get ready? All 
 my life has been but a getting-ready for you; 
 and you, you have waited so long for your 
 life's fulfillment." 
 
 Ah, Mathilde! Not even to you can I tell 
 what I answered. Bless us, Mathilde, for 
 without your benediction even this one bliss- 
 ful moment would be incomplete. 
 Affectionately yours, 
 
 SAMUEL WINTERS.
 
 PART IV
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 THE NIGHT GARDEN 
 
 TA letter from Miranda"] 
 LRowen to Dorothy Roscomfl 
 
 October ist, 19 
 Dearest Dorothy: 
 
 I HAVE lived in such a dream these last 
 three days that I hardly know how to 
 marshal anything so matter-of-fact as 
 words into order sufficiently intelligible to 
 carry my news to you. Dear girl, it must all 
 sound so very abrupt, I fear, and yet What 
 is the use ? You've guessed it already, haven't 
 you? And you won't suggest that Pm "too 
 rash, too sudden, too ill-advised" when I tell 
 you that we are to be married very soon 
 the end of this month in fact. 
 
 It is just five months to-day since I met Mr. 
 Winters, and yet let me whisper it to you, 
 Dorothy: Five months is quite a while to get 
 used to an idea, especially if every hour of the 
 day the thought, tenderly persuasive and 
 omnipresent, laps you around with its unob- 
 trusive suggestion. I admit to myself now 
 oo
 
 loo The Garden of Dreams 
 
 that at the very moment when I stepped be- 
 fore the great dogwoods that spread pink and 
 white snowstorms on the grass beneath them, 
 and found a stranger down on his knees among 
 the violets, I knew that he had come into my 
 life to stay that he cupped my soul in the 
 hollow of his hand as surely as he held the 
 solitary flower he had plucked, and I'm very 
 certain my face must have gone as white 
 as the violets; so frightened and so awed 
 was I. 
 
 So, after all, it is not sudden. On the con- 
 trary, Mr. Winters says that it has taken me 
 an unpardonably long time to grow used to 
 the idea and wonders slyly if it will take me 
 as long to learn to drop the formal "Mr. 
 Winters." I shall write you at greater length 
 in a day or two this is only to say that we 
 want you. Mr. Winters is writing to ask 
 Mrs. Bursey, for we have decided that of all 
 the world we each need to complete our happi- 
 ness but one friend. You will come, won't 
 you? We haven't fixed the date, but it will 
 be the last week in October the thirtieth, 
 most likely. 
 
 Congratulate me, dear; I am so very happy. 
 And yet so quiet with it all, so much at peace
 
 The Garden of Dreams 101 
 
 that I sometimes wonder if I am really quite 
 awake. Mother is very glad for me, very 
 confident of my future, but I think she mourns 
 the lack of ante-nuptial excitement. She 
 would like to see me just for once exer- 
 cised over my clothes, forgetting that I can 
 hardly care greatly for such matters, being her 
 child as well as father's. Dear Mother! 
 Ever since I can remember I have simply had 
 to force her to get herself the necessities of 
 life, yet I think it would give her a real thrill 
 of delight if I would go out sometime and 
 buy myself half a dozen pairs of silk stock- 
 ings or something equally frivolous. Per- 
 haps I shall, just to please her, some 
 day; but at present I'm too deeply joyous 
 to care very much whether I'm married 
 in cheese cloth or peau de soie so long 
 as I'm not called upon to sew the tedious 
 thing myself. 
 
 I shall feel a certain trepidation till I get 
 your letter. If you were not such a dear I 
 should expect from you a dubious lecture for 
 my empressement, and, dear that you are, you 
 can scarcely be expected to realize never 
 having seen the gentleman that Mr. Win- 
 ters is a person I have known for centuries.
 
 IO2 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 But you, too, will understand some day, so 
 be merciful. 
 
 Lovingly, 
 
 MIRANDA . 
 
 * * * 
 
 VA letter from Samuel Garth"} 
 L Winters to Miranda Rowen\ 
 
 Thursday Night. 
 Dear Love: 
 
 I AM catching the early morning train to 
 New York, so will be slipping out of the 
 house before you are well awake. I have 
 only just made up my mind to go, and the 
 decision having been reached I must act upon 
 it at once or I will weaken. For it is not easy 
 to leave you, Miranda, even for a few brief 
 days. Brief did I say? when each hour that 
 I am away my soul clamors for you with an 
 intensity that strangles all else, with a love 
 that is savage at the edges but that within 
 holds ever a core of perfect peace, secure con- 
 tent, and deep, still joy. Ah, Miranda! I 
 shall never write you a love letter. I shall 
 spend my life too closely at your feet. 
 
 Your light has been out hours ago. Dear 
 child! I wonder if you are sleeping. Some-
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 how, I fancy not. Dear little girl wide- 
 eyed in the dark I read the trouble in your 
 voice, the doubt in your sweet eyes. You 
 may sleep, my darling. Your problem will 
 have solved itself long ere I return. At least, 
 so prays your lover. 
 
 S. G. W. 
 
 * * * 
 
 VA letter from Miranda"] 
 LRowen to her dead father! 
 
 Sunday Night. 
 
 SOMEHOW I have always felt that if 
 I needed you very much, dear father, 
 you would come to me, you would give 
 me a sign if only in my dreams. You used 
 to say that writing a thing all out even if 
 it was very much involved in one's mind 
 would clear up the puzzling places much more 
 satisfactorily than aeons of purposeless and 
 profitless rumination. Darling, I know why 
 Garth went away. I feel that I can guess why 
 he's staying away. He sent me a line yester- 
 day saying he was detained and mentioning his 
 address. Mother expected him this after- 
 noon and was quite vexed with me for being
 
 104 
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 so phlegmatic, but although my heart beat 
 suffocatingly as it neared train time, I felt 
 that intuition having served him in his 
 going would not fail him in his return. 
 For dear, dear father, I know that Garth read 
 my anxious questionings aright. A word, 
 a look, a touch, a kiss from him that somehow 
 were different, and I who love him so well 
 drew back aghast at the sea of passion I had 
 not suspected. I have loved him so quietly, 
 so so tamely, it seems now, and perhaps it 
 is not a quiet love like mine that he needs. 
 We have taken each other so much for granted 
 that for the first time to-night! I have 
 asked myself if, after all, I really know what 
 I am doing. Always he has been so calm, 
 so tender, so self-restrained, that I did not 
 know him in a new guise, and I have an un- 
 comfortable suspicion that he let me get this 
 glimpse of Garth, the lover, not because as 
 he repentingly pretended he was carried out 
 of himself, but to wake me to the fact that with 
 just such a Garth I should have to live. There 
 was something splendid primitive savage 
 even (it is his own word) about it, and oh, the 
 bitterness of the thought! I was not at all 
 attuned to such a mood was not prepared,
 
 The Garden of Dreams 705 
 
 did not respond, was plainly frightened even. 
 And so poor Garth has gone off by himself, 
 doubting if I really love him, wondering if 
 perhaps I have not mistaken my own heart, 
 and waiting patiently for me to find myself 
 out. By the acuteness of my own distress I 
 gauge his misery. At the same time, way 
 down in a little corner of my extremely non- 
 sensical soul, I feel quite sure that we are 
 both suffering needlessly; since no matter 
 how we differed, no matter what ages and 
 weary voids separated us each from the other, 
 I should have to come to him in the end. Ah, 
 but I had dreamt of a flawless oneness in 
 which there would be no need of concessions 
 and compromises hateful words, for all 
 their tactfulness, that yet hide ugly skeletons 
 of discord beneath their graceful diplomacy. 
 
 I suppose that mother would say all that 
 ails me is the weather. Mother is a great 
 believer in the moral effects of atmospheric 
 conditions, you know, and certainly this is 
 odd weather for October. The day began 
 with a cold, gray dawn, a driving rain storm, 
 high winds that sent "the flying gold of the 
 maples" broadcast. Then the sun came out 
 and beamed moistly on a steaming earth;
 
 io6 
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 and now the night puts a whimsical end to the 
 unrestful day. 
 
 It is a night full of mystery; there is portent 
 in the wind tossing the tree-tops, in the moon 
 not yet full grown riding breezily among 
 the scurrying clouds, in the unquiet air, so 
 warm, so moist, so full of electricity. 
 The lightning is everywhere at once, not in 
 flashes, nor yet in sheets; the whole atmos- 
 phere palpitates for a moment like a luminous 
 fog between you and the objects that stand 
 out clearly enough under the light sky, then 
 quivers an instant and is gone. It is weird, 
 uncanny, and fills one with a creeping sense 
 of dread which the warm breeze fans to 
 terror; altogether a most unpromising night 
 in spite of its beauty. I do not think that I 
 harbor many fears; the woods, these moun- 
 tain roads, are my friends in any guise of 
 storm or sunshine, yet to say that there is 
 nothing in natural phenomena to terrify seems 
 very absurd to me. All nature is too near 
 akin to the Great Mystery, too much a part 
 of the infinite raison d'etre to be ever consid- 
 ered commonplace. It would be like boasting 
 that one was unafraid of God! Yet the fear 
 is not unwholesome. It sets one searching
 
 The Garden of Dreams 107 
 
 searching out the weak places, the shams, 
 the trivialities. 
 
 So perhaps it is to the magical night of un- 
 rest, of little panting portents, that I am to 
 attribute the strangely insistent feeling that 
 somewhere down there in the garden you are 
 waiting for me, dear. I have never before 
 felt it so strongly never at all, in fact, 
 except in June your month. Are you there, 
 dear? pacing the lilac walk or hovering un- 
 certainly among the dogwoods? I have al- 
 ways felt sure that if you did come to me, it 
 would be when the flowering dogwoods spread 
 their snowy panoplies above the early violets; 
 but now their leaves are scarlet and gold, with 
 vivid red berries borne proudly aloft till 
 the first deep snow shall drive the hungry 
 birds to bolt the hostile fare. Ever and again 
 from among the rugged, jutting clouds sails 
 out the moon triumphantly. Every shrub 
 throws its shadow across the path. Strange! 
 I could swear that there was something mov- 
 ing down there something that 
 
 All the house is dark; even mother, who 
 keeps late hours these nights, has long since 
 ceased fretting as to whether a tucked chemi- 
 sette or a shirred one would be most becom-
 
 lo8 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 ing. My light is out, too, for I love to write in 
 the semi-darkness. It's so irrevocable the 
 words slip from my pencil into long lines of 
 thought that I cannot read. So I feel almost 
 as though they had gone to you, as though 
 your spirit leaning over me could read what I 
 
 cannot see, and Daddy! I must go! 
 
 I must know what is waiting for me down there 
 near the gate. Be with me! Give me a sign 
 that all is well; that you approve that you 
 are satisfied with me. 
 
 Dear darling, it is quite two o'clock in the 
 morning. I have just satisfied myself of that 
 by the little silver watch you gave me on 
 my tenth birthday. And this that I write 
 you is in the nature of a thank-offering and 
 because I must write, must tell myself again 
 it all is true, before I sleep. Dear, I went to 
 the tryst but you were not there. In- 
 stead oh dear, dead father, I was wrong. 
 I believe that you were with me all the time, 
 urging me to be brave, to dare to see for my- 
 self, to be unafraid of aught that God might 
 reveal. I slipped out of the old house as 
 lightly as a ghost. The wind caught the 
 dead leaves and sent them swirling with little 
 sighs and moans around my feet. The late
 
 The Garden of Dreams 109 
 
 asters and chrysanthemums rubbed their 
 sleepy heads together with little ghostly 
 murmurs, the wind seemed to redouble its 
 moist fury and the moon went out as com- 
 pletely as though she had been blown out for 
 good. But although the individual shrubs 
 and trees retreated into a serried mass at 
 once, there was still light enough to find one's 
 way about the garden even if the frequent 
 lightning had not flooded every corner of it. 
 I had gotten down almost to the gate when in 
 a sheet of light I made out the dogwoods and 
 someone, I was positive, walking among 
 them. Tall, broad shouldered, yet a trifle 
 stooped, the figure seemed. I do not know 
 what I expected; I know that I turned and 
 ran across the strip of lawn; that in the shadow 
 of the shrubbery I felt my way between the 
 trees and bushes; that panting, sobbing, mur- 
 muring things only half-articulate, I ran 
 directly into the arms of Garth Garth who 
 had turned sharply towards me as he heard 
 my voice. < 
 
 Oh, how close he held me ! How warm and 
 real his arms were! I did not know that I 
 was crying till I felt his kisses mingling with 
 the tears.
 
 no The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "Miranda! Dear, dear child! how did you 
 come here?" And then, as I could not answer, 
 he continued remorsefully: "I should not 
 have lingered outside; I never dreamt that 
 I might be seen. Were you frightened ?" 
 
 No_ " I shook my head "exalted!" 
 
 I felt his arms about me tighten, knew him 
 studying my answer. Then, very softly: 
 "You did not know I was here?" 
 
 "No I don't understand now how you 
 came here." 
 
 "Missed connections at the junction 
 came on by the 10:30, which was late, of 
 course. They accommodated me by stop- 
 ping. I've been here since midnight watching 
 the storm gather. Besides, I had your 
 window to guard, and you to think of. But 
 you?" 
 
 I breathed a sigh of relief. I knew then, 
 dear darling, that I was glad you had not 
 returned to me as I had wished. I could 
 not have borne it; to believe you in the 
 dear form of old, hovering ever just beyond 
 the veil of human sight would, I think, have 
 broken something within me. How good it is 
 that God does not always answer our prayers. 
 Garth waited till I could speak connectedly,
 
 The Garden of Dreams in 
 
 soothing me with tenderness. After I had 
 told him all, I felt his hand in mine tremble 
 a little. 
 
 " Dear, brave, lonely, little child " he 
 whispered, "I wish I could think that your 
 loneliness was over." 
 
 "Think it then "I answered. And when 
 he hesitated, continued earnestly: "It is over, 
 Garth. How could I ever be lonely again, 
 when I have you ?" 
 
 I felt him smile. 
 
 "Then your doubts?" ' 
 
 "I have no doubts." 
 
 "Yet a few moments ago when you prayed 
 your father for a sign?" 
 
 It dawned on me with a great gladness then 
 that I had received the sign. I had sought 
 my father I had found my lover! I think 
 I had found something else the woman I 
 was to be ! but I could not tell him that. 
 
 "Dear heart," he whispered, "pacing here 
 so close to you yet so far that I could 
 easily imagine what it might be to lose you 
 I had made up my mind never to frighten 
 you again." 
 
 "You never can again," I said; "so your 
 heroism is quite superfluous."
 
 I 12 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "Not even if Pm savage? It's only the 
 edges "he entreated. 
 
 "Not even if you're savage," I assured 
 him bravely. "Would you know why?" 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "Then, dear sir," I said, "in that first 
 moment in your arms I awoke to a new cer- 
 tainty. It is this: While my love is very 
 quiet at the edges, a sort of dreamy, poppy- 
 eyed content, there is something savage for 
 you at the core. It's just a new-born savage 
 
 I caught only a breathless peep at him 
 myself, but he's very lusty for an infant, and 
 
 and I shouldn't wonder if he would 
 grow." And with that I kissed him straight 
 upon the lips and fled. 
 
 Oh, but he caught up with me by the moon- 
 dial, and though we had no need for explana- 
 tions they were very sweet to hear. 
 
 The storm has blown off to the south after 
 all, and the moon-lit garden is quieter now. 
 From the friendly porch, as we said our late 
 good-nights, it seemed anything but the weird 
 and ghostly place it had been an hour earlier; 
 for with Garth's arm around me, I had no 
 longer any doubt that I was home.
 
 PART V
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 THE HEARTH 
 
 [A letter from Mrs. Samuel G. Winters'] 
 to her friend, Mathilde Burseyl 
 
 November 5th, 19 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 A PER all, I am glad you gave me per- 
 mission to call you so. I may have 
 stammered rather ungracefully that 
 first night, but believe me, my heart has al- 
 ways called you by that dear name. For 
 weren't you Garth's "Mathilde"? I only 
 wish that my French wasn't so rusty that I 
 might correspond with you in that beloved 
 tongue. Then indeed, you might be chere 
 Mathilde, and there is something about c here 
 Mathilde that just suits you, even as the 
 frame suits the lovely minature you gave 
 Garth. By the way, isn't it a funny thing 
 about names? Did Garth ever tell you how 
 he hit upon mine without really knowing it? 
 Now "Samuel" doesn't seem to suit him at 
 all. He teases me dreadfully about it, but 
 he has never yet heard me call him by his 
 
 "5
 
 Il6 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 first name though, in confidence, Mathilde, 
 I may tell you that I sometimes practice 
 it softly in the dark. When I first met him 
 I used to wonder if ever I would know him well 
 enough to call him Samuel (Sam seemed quite 
 too dreadful), and you can't imagine how re- 
 lieved I was when I found out that all the 
 country people about here who remembered 
 him as a boy called him Garth. It was his 
 mother's maiden name you know, and the 
 Garths were among the first settlers of the 
 county; so that when he was a tiny freckle- 
 faced boy the image of his mother's people 
 the old folks always referred to him as 
 "one of the Garths, her's as married that 
 young Winters, y* know." So Garth he will 
 remain for me even though you shamed me 
 by your gracious, sweet- voiced "Samuel." 
 
 How good you were to us ! Mother is quite 
 as bad as we are you have become the sub- 
 ject of a three-cornered eulogy. Mother, 
 you know, in spite of having lived thirty years 
 with the most unconventional of men, re- 
 tains a certain love for things seemly and 
 usual. So our short engagement and our de- 
 termination to be married quietly and with- 
 out any fuss seemed how shall I say?
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 sort of unfestive and not sufficiently era- 
 marking. She would willingly have slaved 
 for weeks ahead of time to make the occasion 
 a noteworthy one for Garth's friends. But 
 after you came she grew quite suddenly satis- 
 fied, admitting confidently to me that you 
 were a host in yourself. As for me, with you 
 and Dorothy there, I felt that the rest of the 
 world was well forgot. 
 
 We are settling into the winter season early. 
 I am not sorry. There is something gloomy 
 about that interval between the last leaf's 
 fall and the first snowflake. All day the wind, 
 tossing dead leaves about the denuded garden, 
 has made me think of the ocean. Occasion- 
 ally, it happens so; the air blows straight across 
 the mountains and valleys from the north- 
 east and brings to us, all these many miles 
 away, a breath of the sea. With it comes a 
 strange restlessness born of breaking waves 
 and well-remembered stretches of white sand. 
 Then for several hours, perhaps, or a day 
 or two at most I am absent in spirit from 
 this dear spot where I have been so happy; 
 happier, since I have come to know it as 
 Garth's home and mine than I had ever 
 thought it possible to be.
 
 n8 
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 Don't you love a log fire? Of course you 
 do, or you would not be "Mathilde." On 
 great occasions as a sort of a sacrament 
 we burn birch in our fire-place; and really of 
 late I fear the occasions are growing too fre- 
 quent for our supply. We have lots of gray 
 birch on the hillside, but the white is scarce, 
 and both are so beautifully decorative we 
 cannot bear to make of them a sacrificial 
 offering even to our hearth. Most of our 
 fire-wood comes from a strip of woodland 
 back in the mountains which Garth is having 
 thinned out scientifically, and although it is 
 rich in red spruce and pine, there is but little 
 birch. The dead pine and cedar make a 
 glorious fire, full of vim and vigor, with lots 
 of snap and little crackling forest noises and 
 lavish display of sparks; and when to such 
 is added a huge oak log, or great blocks of 
 maple, we can be sure of fire on our hearth 
 all night in the dead of winter with 
 nothing to show for it in the morning but a 
 little heap of fine white ash, so perfect 
 Garth says is the combustion. The other 
 day he came back from a tramp up the moun- 
 tain with a beatific expression and an armful 
 of dried sumac branches . Such a white blaze
 
 The Garden of Dreams IIQ 
 
 as the satiny yellow-green wood made, and 
 such a fusilade of noise. Garth, like the van- 
 dal he was, stood and chortled with glee. 
 The Major, it seemed, aware of the commer- 
 cial possibilities of sumac, had never 
 permitted a stick of it, no matter how 
 crooked, to be burnt. 
 
 You would love Garth's expression when 
 he rises to tend the fire; there is the radiance 
 and worship and wonder of possession, and a 
 dozen times of an evening he will bend solici- 
 tously over it, weighing with almost maternal 
 anxiety our chances for seeing the backlog 
 fall into a glowing ruin as the grandfather's 
 clock in the hall chimes ten. For we gauge 
 our logs by the exigencies of our own private 
 ritual, which requires that Garth shall lay 
 the fire (I lacking both the nice sense of 
 adjustment and the necessary strength to 
 handle the Major's ancestral tongs); that 
 together we shall light it, extracting all the 
 comfortable forest music that has lain so long 
 silent; and that when at last the fire eats deep 
 into the wood, lovingly, caressingly, Garth 
 and I shall sit for a while in happy, 
 contented silence, worshiping at the altar of 
 our home.
 
 120 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 But to-night the fire lacks its usual allure; 
 it serves only to make me more restless. I 
 am not exactly unaware of the cause; it's 
 the first snowstorm of the season, and when 
 have I ever failed to welcome the oncoming 
 mantle of winter from the crest of the wooded 
 hill beyond the meadow? Father always 
 humored my childish longing to get out in the 
 snow, for he, too, loved the gale and the driving 
 blizzards, as well as the splendid rages of our 
 mountain thunderstorms. It was such joy 
 to trudge beside him through the blinding, 
 softly falling flurry, past the barn and the 
 tightly closed chicken house, through the 
 forlorn relics of what had been a thriving 
 vegetable garden, across the little lane, over 
 the bars wave-crested with snow, through 
 the pasture, taking careful observations of 
 well-known distances in order to keep the 
 spring and the drinking-hole to windward, 
 and then struggle up through the sparsely 
 wooded little hill that terminates in a gor- 
 geous battle-ground for the four winds of 
 heaven, where you may watch the swirl of the 
 blizzard and be buffeted about to your heart's 
 delight. You, dear lady, with your contented 
 joy in all things sane and mild, would hardly
 
 The Garden of Dreams 121 
 
 seek of your own accord, I fancy the 
 buffets of the gale. But oh, how mellow and 
 warm and comforting is the fire afterward! 
 
 Garth sends his very dear love. He will 
 write in a day or two. For me, I am, as I 
 shall always remain, your adoring, 
 
 MIRANDA. 
 
 I" A letter from Miranda Win-~( 
 Lters to her dead father J 
 Dear Father: 
 
 A you once laughingly remarked, I have 
 not the plodding persistence neces- 
 sary for the keeping of a journal, yet 
 I find that this habit of writing to you in 
 moments of stress or great joy, or of indecision, 
 grows on me. It is like communing with 
 one's own heart, yet there is something in 
 the thought of you that keeps one free from 
 the egoism that becomes the unconscious 
 menace of the keeper of diaries. 
 
 I suppose that it is, perhaps, this transi- 
 tion from individual life to blending halves 
 of a harmonious whole that has set one of 
 the halves, at least, probing about in her own 
 consciousness. The transition is so subtle
 
 122 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 that sometimes I am stung into a sudden ter- 
 ror, reaching blindly after the lost entity that 
 was Miranda Rowen your daughter, dear. 
 It's not that I desire her back, you know, I 
 would not recall her if I could, yet the 
 ghost of myself that was my girlhood haunts 
 me at times as, for instance, to-night 
 with a gentle sort of reproach that grows 
 with the storm. For it is snowing outside, 
 darling, and I hear your voice in the soft 
 swish of the flakes against the library window. 
 It started in at sunset a mere smudge 
 against a hard, gray sky. We seem so snugly 
 shut in, the world so comfortably excluded. 
 Martha is about, of course; in the kitchen, 
 I imagine, setting her sponge for the morn- 
 ing's baking. We can hear her voice in en- 
 ergetic protest to Snooks, who is very apt 
 at such times to become overly affectionate 
 for an elderly feline Then, too, Jim's lan- 
 tern just bobbed past the bay window, so 
 that I know he has gone to say good-night 
 to Joan and dear, patient-eyed Griselda, and 
 her calf now no longer a baby 
 
 As for mother, she is across the valley on 
 an errand of mercy. A little child's first 
 cry will pierce a mother's heart to-night. God
 
 The Garden of Dreams 123 
 
 send her many happy years to hear its laugh- 
 ter .... The wind is rising. 
 
 I am back in my old corner dedicated 
 to the books and pictures you loved. Garth 
 prefers an easy chair by the open fire. I 
 wonder what he is reading. What concen- 
 tration men have! I could never be as un- 
 aware of him as he appears to be of me .... 
 Oh! Fm glad I wrote appears, for just then 
 Garth looked up and caught my eyes upon 
 hina and smiled. 
 
 " I shall have to get more weather-stripping 
 for those windows if you're going to sit away 
 over there, Miranda. Why don't you come 
 nearer the fire ? Your chair looks so empty 
 not to mention my arms." 
 
 "What is your book?" 
 
 "Rest Harrow ', and yours?" 
 
 I blushed a little and thrust it back 
 among the papers. Garth shook his head 
 playfully. 
 
 "I should think you guilty of a naughty 
 French novel if I did not know you better. 
 I suppose it is nothing more dangerous than 
 a flower catalogue." 
 
 Ordinarily I hate equivocation, but the 
 opportunity was too good.
 
 124. The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "It is after a fashion," said I, smiling 
 enigmatically at my order-list of baby caps 
 and socks that were to go across the valley 
 if all went well. "But I was not reading; 
 I've been writing to Mathilde, scribbling a 
 bit and thinking." 
 
 "Wonderful Miranda!" he cried, "to be 
 able to think. With you so near, I can only 
 feel." He held out his arms to me with such 
 a simple, longing gesture that I fled straight 
 from my outer darkness into the warmth and 
 security of them and the glow of the log fire. 
 
 And so we sat a while in silence, Garth's 
 arm about my waist, his long legs stretched 
 luxuriously towards the glow. And presently, 
 when I stole a sidelong glance at him, I was 
 aware that once more his thoughts coquetted 
 deliciously around the maddening Sanchia 
 and her poet lover. He felt my stirring, and 
 instantly his attention came back to me, while 
 his smile enveloped me like a blessing. 
 
 "Uncomfortable?" he asked solicitously. 
 
 "N no " 
 
 "Shall I stop reading, or read to you?" 
 
 "No, no," I said, "but would you mind 
 if can you get along without me for a 
 while?"
 
 The Garden of Dreams 12$ 
 
 "My dear child! what an unanswerable 
 question! But run along, of course." 
 
 I felt his puzzled gaze upon me as I fled. 
 If he did not ache to get out in the storm I 
 could never bring myself to make the sugges- 
 tion; but for me, your memory and the girl 
 I used to be were waiting on the hill. 
 
 Martha looked a bit askance when I emerged 
 from the old closet behind the kitchen stairs 
 with the result of my rummaging, but I ex- 
 plained, with some incoherence, I imagine, 
 that I had some things which required look- 
 ing over, and fled with my armful of con- 
 traband to the deserted dining room. There, 
 in the dark, laughing to myself in my excite- 
 ment, I put them on; wool leggings, a pair 
 of arctics, a short skirt, the warm old reefer 
 of my school-girl days, a tam-o-shanter, with 
 a long muffler to protect my forehead and tie 
 tightly across my ears. The venerable golf 
 gloves were still in my coat pocket; I drew 
 them on, and I was ready. 
 
 I opened the hall door stealthily; it creaked 
 a little, and a swirl of arctic air swept down 
 the passageway and rattled the library door 
 with tugging insistence. I drew back guiltily. 
 I ought, of course, to tell Garth, though for
 
 126 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 the life of me I could not see why I should 
 drag him from a warm fire and a fascinating 
 book, in pursuit of a lure he did not feel; 
 and if he could be persuaded not to come, he 
 would worry all the time I was out. I de- 
 termined upon a concession; I would slip 
 around the house and get Fidelity. She 
 would be all the guard I needed, and quite 
 beside herself at being so honored. 
 
 I closed the door carefully behind me. 
 There was a joyous bark from somewhere on 
 the lawn, and a wild scampering of canine 
 feet; at the same time a figure detached itself 
 from one of the porch pillars, a figure muffled 
 and mantled into unfamiliarity all but the 
 dear voice. 
 
 "Well, are you ready?" it said. 
 
 "How on earth did you guess ?" I stammered. 
 
 "My dear child! you are of a transparency 
 that is epatant; do you know that in the hour 
 and a half since supper you have worn a thread- 
 bare path from the fireside to the window?" 
 
 "Not more than five times or six, at the 
 most," I protested. 
 
 "And when your restless little body was 
 still, your soul stood staring longingly out 
 into the storm," he laughed.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "Why, then, didn't you invite me out?" I 
 asked reproachfully. 
 
 " I wanted to see what you would do. You 
 are an awful coward, Miranda." 
 
 "And I called you a fireside sluggard," I 
 retaliated. 
 
 "Besides, I didn't think you could be so 
 selfish shutting me out of the night and the 
 storm," he chided. 
 
 "Instead of into it, as you richly deserve." 
 
 I snuggled close to his conifortable shoulder 
 and he peered at me rather anxiously. 
 
 "Are you sure you're warm enough? That 
 coat " 
 
 "Hot as toast! It ought to be it's 
 chinchilla." 
 
 "Goodness!" His hand traveled tenderly 
 down the length of my arm. " Isn't that very 
 extravagant?" 
 
 "The cloth, goosie! not the fur. One of 
 my school-girl relics that will not wear out; 
 impossible in the daylight but consecrated 
 to such times as this." After a moment, 
 something constrained me to add: "Father 
 bought it for me, years ago," and I felt the 
 brooding tenderness with which Garth always 
 surrounds me when I talk or think of you.
 
 128 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 When once we had stepped out from the 
 comforting light of the library windows, we 
 could scarcely see each other three feet apart. 
 Between the darkness and the snow, which 
 fell in great, silent flakes that mantled us as 
 in a fog, we were not nearly as well off as 
 Fidelity, who, no matter how widely she 
 capered, could always find her way back. 
 So, as a concession to the elements, we stopped 
 at the barn and got a lantern. 
 
 The snow had not been falling long enough 
 to make heavy walking, although it was as- 
 tonishing how deeply it had already piled up 
 in the hollow places. The choke cherries 
 and elder bushes that border the lane had their 
 branches interlaced and weighted down by 
 a cottony nightcap; while poor Fidelity was 
 quite buried under a heavy avalanche when 
 Garth let down one of the snow-crested bars 
 to the meadow. 
 
 Strange how difficult we civilized beings 
 find it to steer a straight course for anything. 
 We were headed, as we supposed, for the 
 little path that leads up the hillside, yet we 
 brought up, instead, among the birches that 
 grace the slope some twenty yards to the 
 right; the "Pleiades," Garth calls them.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 Fidelity was already darting through the 
 sumac and hazel bushes, scattering shovelfuls 
 of snow on her fat, lazy back as she went. 
 I think that Garth was for turning back, 
 afraid that I might stumble on some gnarled 
 root and sprain an ankle, or otherwise come 
 to grief, but while he was debating whether 
 or not to call a halt, Fidelity and I had emerged 
 from the tangle of bushes into which we had 
 somewhat rashly plunged, and found our- 
 selves on the edge of a bit of woodland, wait- 
 ing for him and his lantern to catch up. 
 
 It was not nearly so cold aftei we passed the 
 first hickories; although the timber is light 
 it broke the wind, so that we scarcely felt its 
 force at all; the ground was firmer and barely 
 covered with a thin layer of snow, and the 
 walking was not nearly so heavy as it had been 
 in the meadow. 
 
 The air was so clean, so frosty, so life-giv- 
 ing, one could fairly taste the tang of the 
 balsams in it. We stood still and drew it 
 in long, tingling breaths that sent the 
 blood racing to our finger-tips. Then, very 
 carefully, and depending wholly upon our 
 lantern, for our ascent through the bushes 
 had bewildered us, we began to pick our way
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 upwards, keeping a sharp lookout for the 
 little patch of hemlocks for through them 
 ran our errant path. It wasn't really hard 
 to find; Garth pretended that he had known 
 where it was all along, but that he had wanted 
 to see how much good my woodcraft would 
 be in a snowstorm. 
 
 As we neared the top of the hill we began 
 to catch the force of the wind again. When 
 we came out suddenly from the shelter of the 
 straggling fringe of trees upon the open ridge 
 heads lowered to the gale, we found that the 
 nature of the snow had changed while we had 
 been under comparative cover. Little, hard, 
 white spheres came tearing and tumbling 
 down the wind like so many millions of sugar 
 pellets that stung and cut our faces; they 
 filled up the hollow places and slapped the 
 angle of the ridge, spraying out from it into 
 a blinding spoondrift at our feet. 
 
 I caught my breath and steadied myself, 
 shoulder to shoulder with Garth. Far be- 
 neath us we knew the land rolled away in 
 beautiful sweeping curves to the river, but 
 we could see nothing but a dizzy blur as we 
 gazed into the driving snow. Even the lan- 
 tern's rays were powerless to pierce it, though
 
 The Garden of Dreams 131 
 
 when we turned our backs to the wind, every 
 tree and shrub was brought out sharply in the 
 soft light. 
 
 When Garth finally broke the silence, it 
 was by a commonplace: 
 
 "Are you cold?" 
 
 "No but I suppose we'd better start 
 back. The meadow will be pretty bad by 
 now, it is piling up so." 
 
 Not a word did he say on the descent, ex- 
 cept when I bumped against a sapling and was 
 given a frozen shower-bath for my clumsiness. 
 Once at the foot, we decided on the more 
 sheltered if longer way home through 
 the lane and around the front, rather than 
 face the fury of the wind across the meadow 
 again. We turned in at the carriage drive, 
 where your splendid Weymouth pine, still 
 proudly erect, spread its broad shoulders to 
 the threatened burden, and up the path be- 
 tween the ghostly, hoop-skirted rose bushes, 
 asleep 'neath their snug straw petticoats. 
 
 Jim was found waiting for Fidelity and the 
 lantern. Martha had gone to bed. Garth 
 began talking enticingly of something warm 
 and stimulating mulled wine, accomplished 
 with the aid of a poker drawn red-hot from
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 among the embers of our deserted fire and 
 meanwhile we stamped the snow from our 
 feet and shook it from coats and caps, while 
 the light from the open hall door our 
 door! shone welcomingly upon us. 
 
 At the threshold Garth stopped me. 
 
 "Have you had enough? Are you quite 
 satisfied, little gypsy?" 
 
 "Quite and thank you." I felt shy as 
 a child. "You'll forgive me for running 
 away?" 
 
 "Always! if you will take me with you." 
 
 "I did not know; I was afraid you would 
 not care to come." 
 
 "Am I so old?" 
 
 "No no." 
 
 "So sensible?" 
 
 "You are divinely foolish," I murmured, 
 my face against his coat sleeve. 
 
 "Then do not run away again, dear heart. 
 I cannot bear to let you go through any ex- 
 periences alone." 
 
 "You might have to sometime!" 
 
 The silence tingled between us. Then: 
 
 "Miranda!" Against the ruddy lamplight 
 his face shone white, and I knew he thought 
 of the woman in the valley.
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "God made women so," I said, my voice 
 trembling a bit, though I tried to keep it 
 steady. 
 
 Oh, the silence! the rush and whirl of the 
 falling snow! the infinite mystery of the com- 
 monplace life we live ! 
 
 The warmth of the hall, stinging lips and 
 cheeks a-tingle with healthy blood; the mys- 
 tery of our presence here who were not here 
 yesterday, and must needs be gone to-morrow, 
 that others may wonder and theorize as we 
 did! 
 
 Something hummed in my ears; it was 
 Garth's voice, vibrating, tender. But he had 
 to speak twice before I heard him rightly. 
 
 Dear, dead father, the great "why "of life 
 grows clearer. Sometimes I catch faint echoes 
 of the answer and always, always, it is in 
 the voice of a little child.
 
 PART VI
 
 THE GARDEN OF DREAMS 
 
 YE DARKLYNGE WO D E 
 
 [A letter from Samuel Garth Winters'] 
 to his friend, Mathilde Bursey\ 
 
 June 1 2th, 19 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 HOW provoking that, after all, I had 
 to leave New York without saying 
 good-bye. As you know, I had an 
 appointment with Merrick in the afternoon, 
 but as he was to have the contracts in readi- 
 ness I did not anticipate being more than an 
 hour at most; instead of which it was nearly 
 five o'clock before I got away. They had 
 arranged that Kaufman the young man 
 who is to make the illustrations should be 
 there. He's an ingenuous young fellow, as 
 yet utterly unspoiled. This is his first big 
 commission, and he's engagingly anxious to 
 make good. I was glad to meet him and give 
 him what suggestions I could ; thus the after- 
 noon was gone before I knew it. 
 
 So you were glad that I had justified your 
 opinion of me? How could a man do other- 
 137
 
 138 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 wise, with two such women as you and Mi- 
 randa looking into his eyes and swearing that 
 he was no idle parasite and must eventually 
 take up his work where he had laid it down? 
 Miranda suggested the theme, knowing in- 
 tuitively it must possess me and drive me back 
 to my desk again. I am more than grateful 
 to her for it, for without some such work to 
 anchor my imaginings upon, they would do me 
 havoc, I fear, in the months that are before 
 me. Ah Mathilde, how shall I tell you what 
 has befallen your friend? how shall I make 
 you share in the mystery that has crowned 
 me richest among men? I run to you as to 
 a mother, for have you not indeed mothered 
 all that was best in my soul since first I met 
 you? 
 
 Always, Mathilde, I have loved the woods 
 at night; always, then, the forest- world 
 seemed to hold some special message for 
 me; but that life's consummation should 
 be wrought so sweetly, so simply, so absolutely 
 in sacred harmony with God's great plan, 
 has stirred in me a mood of grateful wonder 
 in which the rest of my days shall be spent. 
 
 As once before I had come back to the little 
 village that had given me birth at sunrise,
 
 The Garden of Dreams 139 
 
 so yesterday I came at sunset, and started 
 to walk home up the mountain, choosing 
 instead of the longer way by the high-road 
 to cut through the woods, a road Miranda and 
 I always take from the station. I had had 
 the full glory of the setting sun through the 
 car windows. So poignant its beauty like 
 quick ascending thirds upon a violin that 
 seem unbearably sweet that I loitered along 
 the road in the afterglow, prolonging the 
 home-coming till I should grow calm. I 
 thought of the house waiting for me all 
 the doors set open to welcome the evening 
 freshness; the scared gathering twilight bath- 
 ing with mystery familiar corners; the frag- 
 rance of the mountain-laurel which Miranda 
 would have brought in bodily from the woods; 
 and on the porch or somewhere out in the 
 garden Miranda, the marvelous! 
 
 At the thought I quickened my pace. I 
 shook the riotous evening scents from my 
 nostrils, blinked away the memory of pines 
 and jutting outlined hill a-drip with sunset, 
 and in time to the duet of a pair of hoarse- 
 voiced tree-toads, and the answering chorus 
 of the crickets, growing bolder as the twilight 
 faded, turned sharply off the high-road, leav-
 
 140 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 ing the last iridescent shimmering light a 
 dust of mother-of-pearl, that floated, impalp- 
 able yet transfiguring, over all the familiar 
 landscape behind me. 
 
 But chancing upon a talkative neighbor 
 I did not, after all, enter the woods till the 
 stars peeped out one by one and the last 
 sleepy little robin had said its drowsy good- 
 night. 
 
 How sweet the air was! How intoxicat- 
 ingly fragrant the woods are on a summer 
 evening. Especially when the breeze, blowing 
 fitfully, brings whiffs of Betram's haycocks 
 and spicy puffs of mint from the upland pas- 
 ture, to mingle with the oily redolence of the 
 witch-hazel, a scent of sweet-fern like the 
 flick of Miranda's handkerchief fresh from the 
 basket where she keeps them, or fragrance 
 from the elders by the lane. Even the weeds 
 that border the high-road give out a pungent 
 odor which at so great a distance is far from 
 unpleasant. 
 
 I stumbled along slowly, my hands in my 
 pockets, sniffing luxuriously as I went. Turn- 
 ing suddenly where the road begins to ascend 
 between two great boulders that sentinel the 
 path, I saw, some fifteen yards ahead of me,
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 a light that was too high for a glow-worm and 
 too large for a lightning-bug, and much too 
 steady in its advance for a will-o'-the-wisp; 
 and all my soul cried out "Miranda!" 
 and wondered that I had not felt her coming 
 before. 
 
 "What are you doing in *y e darklynge 
 wode,' dear gadabout?" I cried, content that 
 it was she though the lantern searched out 
 my form and left hers unrevealed. 
 
 Mine be ye howlets eies to-night, 
 Ye sailynge moone my sonne, 
 
 Ye glo-bugge for my lanterne brite, 
 And humanite my gunne. 
 
 she quoted back, gayly enough. But her 
 voice had an unearthly brilliancy that struck 
 weirdly across the space between us, so that 
 I was glad to have her in my arms to know 
 her very real and warm and mobile to my 
 kisses. 
 
 " If you must come prowling about disturb- 
 ing the sleeping wood," I chided jestingly, 
 "at least you should be content with the glo- 
 bugge's light; you should not come into the 
 forest nursery with a lantern." 
 
 "It is incongruous, isn't it?" asked Miranda 
 softly. 
 
 "Horribly!" I whispered. "Put it out."
 
 142 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "And yet no mother fears to wake her babes 
 by peering too searchingly into their faces." 
 
 "How do you know?" I scoffed, taking the 
 lantern from Miranda's unresisting hand. I 
 held it aloft to study her face a single blessed 
 moment before I should put out the light, and 
 at something I saw there, forgot it entirely. 
 
 "Have you been well?" I asked with sudden 
 brusque anxiety. 
 
 "Yes quite well. It is a nursery, isn't 
 it, Garth?" 
 
 "Have you missed me?" 
 
 " No," she fibbed unblushingly. " I've been 
 much too busy. There! Did you say the 
 woods were asleep ?" 
 
 We broke into sudden laughter. From 
 somewhere up above us in the branches, 
 no doubt, of the tree under which we stood 
 a fretful catbird reproachfully squawked 
 that we would wake her babies. A white 
 moth sailed majestically past, mildly interested 
 in our lantern ; the leaves pattered and rustled 
 overhead, a thousand little insect noises spoke 
 to our acutely-tuned perception. 
 
 "Do you catch it, the fragrance?" asked 
 Miranda in an awed whisper. 
 
 "Which one? There are so many."
 
 The Garden of Dreams 143 
 
 "The warm, loamy smell, the spiciness of 
 wet tree-bark, the dank moldiness of lichens 
 somewhere about, the earth smell! I know 
 of nothing more intoxicating. I could get 
 down on my knees and press my face to the 
 ground but that you miss it so, just as 
 burying your nose in a rose is by no means 
 the best way to get its sweetness." 
 
 "You have forgotten the smell of the moun- 
 tain-laurel," I reproached playfully. I held 
 the lantern up over my head, for the rhododen- 
 drons were above us on the hillside, growing 
 thicker, with more rope-like, ancient roots 
 towards the summit where the rain washes 
 away the earth from around its feet. The 
 beautiful clusters of pink-white blooms always 
 tempt me in spite of the sticky fingers you 
 get in plucking them. 
 
 "I'll get you those," I said, "though I 
 suppose you have the house filled with them 
 as usual." 
 
 "Not now," said Miranda softly, with face 
 I thought averted from my gaze. " I 
 have not brought a single branch into the 
 house since you left." 
 
 "Why?" I exclaimed, studying Miranda's 
 profile in genuine bewilderment. There was
 
 144 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 something I had never seen there before; 
 something alluring, mysterious, compelling. 
 Her gray eyes, as she turned them on me, 
 seemed fuller, more liquid; her brow more 
 noblej 
 
 " Why ?" I repeated. " I thought you loved 
 the laurel so." 
 
 "Not half well enough," she protested. 
 "But then I never understood before. Now 
 that I do, I could not bear to bring a single 
 branch into the house to cheat it of its 
 mission. Haven't you ever noticed how long 
 they keep fresh indoors ?" 
 
 "Isn't that most desirable?" 
 
 She hesitated. I confess that I did not 
 follow her. My wood-lore was of the prac- 
 tical country-boy variety; Miranda has seen 
 the world of growing things through the sen- 
 sitive eyes of her father. Her face flushed 
 adorably under my gaze, and she moved a 
 little up the slope to the first clump of rho- 
 dodendrons. 
 
 "Don't you understand?" she whispered 
 shyly. "They keep longer in the house be- 
 cause they are waiting; waiting with hopeful 
 hearts for a possible release. Oh, can't you 
 see the pity of it?" She laughed; there was
 
 The Garden of Dreams 145 
 
 a little hysterical ring in her voice. "The 
 dear things ! You will think me silly, perhaps. 
 They are like sweet old ladies who keep their 
 virginal hearts fresh and young for the lovers 
 who never come." 
 
 "Why Miranda!" I cried; and again 
 " Why Miranda ! Sweetheart !" 
 
 "Hush! Look there!" she whispered. 
 
 A tiny, narrow-winged moth was hovering 
 over a flower. It was a fresh flower, newly 
 opened; one could see that from its color, 
 and also from the snug, taut way in which 
 the anthers were tucked into their little cradle- 
 like pouches. But even as Miranda spoke, 
 the little visitor lighted softly on the blossom, 
 and though you would have said so gentle a 
 touch could never waken anything, the sta- 
 mens bent over and above the sweet robber, 
 caging him long enough to shower their gold 
 upon him, so that when he finally emerged 
 Miranda and I declared that he looked quite 
 breathless and distraught. 
 
 She bent and brushed with her lips the rifled 
 bloom. 
 
 "You sweet thing!" she whispered. "You 
 sweet thing! To-morrow you will be quite 
 old and withered, perhaps. But don't you
 
 14.6 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 care you will not have lived in vain." 
 Then, her face all a-brim with tender trouble, 
 her eyes swimming in happy tears, she turned 
 and threw herself into my arms. 
 
 "Oh Garth! Garth!" she sobbed. 
 
 My heart stood still. A wave of flame shot 
 downwards to my feet, Mathilde, then up to 
 my heart, and stayed there. I no longer 
 needed to ask what was the mysterious al- 
 chemy that had changed my violet to a rose. 
 I had no need for words at all nor had 
 Miranda. Thus was life's accolade bestowed 
 upon me; the chrism, night and silence. 
 
 Bless us, Mathilde. We are so wholly 
 wrapt in wonder, we are like little children 
 who for the first time see the stars. 
 Affectionately, 
 
 SAMUEL. 
 * * *
 
 The Garden of Dreams 14.7 
 
 TA letter from Samuel Garth Winters'] 
 Lto his friend, Mathilde Burseyl 
 
 October 5th, 19 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 HOW shall we thank you, Miranda and 
 I? For me, I am lost in wonder be- 
 fore such marvels of needlework. 
 Pray, Madam, is it a trousseau for a fairy? 
 Miranda, at my side, is still harping on the 
 stitches. Such tiny stitches she affirms, 
 could never have been made by anyone but 
 you. And though you so modestly remind us 
 that your eyes grow old and that you can no 
 longer do credit to the French sister who 
 painstakingly taught you, we are disposed 
 to doubt you. There was not in all that con- 
 vent class your peer, Mathilde; and sweet 
 fibber that you are, you know it. 
 
 Miranda, with many a dubious frown, has 
 gone back to her own work. Poor child! 
 I believe she is honestly distressed that she 
 cannot live up to your standard, for just now 
 she showed me a damp and mussed-up little 
 yoke, and indicating yours, whispered: "You 
 don't think he'll see the difference, do you?" 
 And when I mumbled my assurance to the
 
 14-8 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 roughened forefinger, she chid me gently for 
 laughing at her dreams. 
 
 "Your seams, you mean," I teased. At 
 which she pricked once more her unaccus- 
 tomed fingers. For Miranda, while in all 
 the essentials the most womanly creature 
 alive, has always had a curious disdain of 
 the purely feminine arts. She would rather 
 plant cabbages than cook them; could easier 
 weed a garden than sweep a room; prefers 
 currying Joan to washing dishes. Such being 
 the case, her voluntary announcement that 
 she would leave to no other hands than hers 
 the preparation of that wonderful wardrobe, 
 filled me with a curious misgiving a mere 
 man's clumsy fear that herein was something 
 from which he was to be excluded. It was 
 wholly selfish, I admit; for so long as I knew 
 her reading with me, writing with me, tramp- 
 ing miles at my side, or sitting silent before 
 the fire at my knee, I was content to speak 
 no word. I was secretly proud, too, of the 
 manner in which I accomplished certain 
 unusual tasks: the enameling of a pretty 
 wicker basket Miranda had ordered, and the 
 rigging up of certain ridiculous ruffles and 
 curtains for it; the choice of a room for a
 
 The Garden of Dreams 149 
 
 nursery, and the evolving of screens and 
 shelves of enameled wood. But when Mi- 
 randa retired behind a pile of snowy, billowy 
 things, and proceeded to tease the patient 
 goods with absurd tucks and puckers her 
 brow all furrowed up the while, and not a 
 thought for me I confess to a left-out-in- 
 the-cold feeling, a suspicion that right here was 
 where I became entirely superfluous. Mi- 
 randa, looking up from a puzzling problem of 
 lace or embroidery, pink ribbons or blue, 
 saw me perched on the hearth-rug in some- 
 thing of the attitude of the traditional stork 
 that was supposed to be hovering over my 
 roof-tree. She broke into a low ripple of 
 delicious laughter. 
 
 " You dear boy! If you don't go to work 
 instead of standing there glooming I shall 
 set you to sewing on buttons." 
 
 "Do you think I could?" I cried, eagerly 
 enough little dreaming what I was getting 
 into. For I sewed them on, Mathilde that 
 is, as soon as I could get hold of the ridicu- 
 lously tiny things, and educate my clumsy 
 fingers to hold so fragile an implement as a 
 needle fine enough to go through their absurd 
 holes.
 
 150 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 It took me an hour to sew on three buttons. 
 Dear Lord! What patience women have. 
 Miranda said with demure lips and hidden 
 eyes that I had done very well. But since 
 then I have been content to write away on the 
 story that is to bring luxuries and wonderful 
 electric toys for the boy. Miranda laughs 
 when I tell her that. She says he will need 
 no toys for the first year except his own little 
 toes and fingers and the sun-birds on the floor 
 and wall. Ah well! what matter? I pretend 
 to myself that I must finish this novel before 
 next Christmas, that he may have the most 
 gorgeous tree and the most wonderful stock- 
 ing that ever a baby boy possessed. And the 
 pretense is an inspiring one; for oh, the 
 joy of planning something to do for the tiny 
 being that is to be mine as well as Miranda's. 
 
 I chafe at the thought that his father can 
 do nothing absolutely nothing for him 
 now. But later ah, later we shall see! 
 I am quite sure that I have never written 
 anything worth writing before; I am equally 
 certain that after the boy comes I shall write 
 with a pen of fire. 
 
 Miranda joins me in sending her very dear- 
 est love. She would have me say that she
 
 The Garden of Dreams 151 
 
 will write tomorrow, and that she wants to 
 be remembered to all your dear ones. For 
 me, I am always, 
 
 Your devoted friend, 
 SAMUEL GARTH WINTERS. 
 
 'A letter from Samuel Garth W inter s"\ 
 ,to his friend, Mathilde Bursey] 
 
 December nth, 19 
 Dear Mathilde: 
 
 ONCE more we are "enclosed in a 
 tumultuous privacy of storm," but 
 this time no short-skirted gypsy braves 
 the driving blizzard with me. Instead, dear 
 child, how she sleeps! sleeps for the babe and 
 herself (the boy, I had almost said, for some- 
 how we are both very sure it will be a boy). 
 
 For two days now the blizzard has raged 
 from the northeast. Jim has shoveled a path 
 to the barns, but except for that the house is 
 up to its knees in snow, all its fair propor- 
 tions lost. The library windows, for instance, 
 look exceedingly ridiculous, opening as they 
 do directly on a new ground-level, the veranda 
 steps are playing hide and seek, while no one 
 would suspect the presence of a back porch,
 
 1 52 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 for the snow, swept across the meadow by a 
 driving wind, is much higher than the railings. 
 
 During the day the sun came out and chased 
 deep indigo shadows across the lawn, and a 
 brisk breeze swept the fine snow in playful 
 scurries before it. "A soft, white baby- 
 world, all done up in cotton-batting and 
 swansdown capes," Miranda called it; and 
 little wretch ! I had much ado to keep her 
 from sallying forth with broom and shovel. As 
 it is, I suspect her of having snowballed 
 Jim longer than was judicious though she 
 chided me for an old molly-coddle when I 
 brought her in. 
 
 We watched a flamboyant red-rimmed sun 
 sink behind the utmost pinkish-purple hill 
 this afternoon. For a while a single copper- 
 burnished light lingered; then vanished sud- 
 denly as though a puff of wind had put it 
 out. The pines, a bit more purply black then 
 the purplish mountains, the snow a little 
 lighter gray than the sky; we shall revel 
 please God! in these impressionistic studies 
 all winter. 
 
 Your solicitude for Miranda is very dear 
 to me, Mathilde. But you need have no fear 
 for her. No blossom in her garden ever
 
 The Garden of Dreams 153 
 
 matured more sweetly. I have found no 
 trace of the whims and moods that our in- 
 tensive civilization breeds in most women; 
 only an added sweetness as the days go by. 
 I have watched her closely probing with 
 anxious heart for a trace of that dread which 
 would be but natural. One day I found her 
 sitting in the sunset glow, her eyes on the 
 purple hills beyond. Her face, in the hallow- 
 ing light, was filled with awe, a wonder so 
 profound, that I almost cried out. She heard 
 the half-repressed exclamation and turned. 
 
 "I startled you," I murmured apologetic- 
 ally. "I did not know you were here." 
 
 "Oh, Garth, isn't it wonderful? I'm so 
 bewilderingly happy and so frightened." 
 
 "Frightened?" I had gathered her up in 
 my arms in a moment. " Frightened of what? 
 You must not think of that, beloved; you 
 must not let ' ; 
 
 "Oh! You thought I meant of death? 
 Dear heart, I shall not die; I never think of 
 that. I believe God must have promised 
 me sometime in my sleep that He would not 
 let me die; I feel so certain of it so relieved 
 from any doubt." 
 
 "Of what, then?"
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 "The mystery, dear; the maddening, elu- 
 sive, unsolvable 'Whyness of the Why,' as 
 Father used to call it. Sometimes the thought 
 of it bears me to a Heaven in which I can 
 scarce breathe for joy; at other times I am so 
 frightened, so overawed, so crushed be- 
 wildered confused that I want to cry 
 aloud, to run out into the dark and hide in 
 the woods Oh ! so Eve must have felt that 
 first bewildered night outside of Eden." 
 
 I hushed her gently in my arms. I could 
 sympathize because I could understand ; only, 
 I had breasted the perplexing sea of questions 
 years ago, and landed safely on the other shore 
 with you to help me. That for most of 
 us life goes on unconsciously, is no doubt for- 
 tunate. Weak brains unhinge when, for the 
 first time, they catch a glimpse of inexorable 
 law. 
 
 But Miranda is not weak nor is she 
 cowardly. Very soon she was laughing with 
 me as we strove to outdo each other in de- 
 scriptions of the very tangible reality that 
 would soon be the balance-wheel for two 
 erratic natures. Suddenly she shook her head. 
 
 "He won't help matters one little bit. He 
 will be just such a wonderer as you and I,
 
 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 and some day we will catch him pinching his 
 rosy limbs black and blue to make very sure 
 that he's wide awake." 
 
 "He will never be wide awake," I amended. 
 "How could he be in the Garden of 
 Dreams ?" 
 
 Miranda drew her straight brows into a 
 becoming little line of maternal decisiveness 
 that I am learning to watch for, as she an- 
 swered : 
 
 "Then we will have to put him outside the 
 Garden just long enough to wake him up. 
 Oh yes, dear heart; don't shake your head 
 and look reproaches. It is wrong though 
 very comfortable, I admit to go through 
 life in a gray haze." 
 
 "Even when it is rose-lined?" 
 
 " Even when it reflects the glories of a thou- 
 sand sunsets. I am more truly awake than I 
 ever was before, and even now " she smiled 
 shyly "my days are poppy-seasoned." 
 Then, with a little catch in her breath: "I 
 shall welcome even pain that quickens me to 
 life!" 
 
 What I answered does not matter. I am 
 ashamed to say that I am the cowardly one, 
 needing constant encouragement and support.
 
 1 56 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 Oh, Mathilde if if I should lose her! 
 Write to me, Mathilde, comfort me, encourage 
 me. She is so divinely dear and sweet as the 
 time approaches that the thought of what she 
 must bear for me maddens me with self- 
 reproach and fear. I cannot write more. 
 I must pretend to be busy with some trifle 
 in her service; must see that she sleeps com- 
 fortably, that the windows are as she likes 
 them. If I might bear it for her! If I might 
 bear it for her! 
 
 SAMUEL. 
 
 * * * 
 
 VA letter from Samuel Garth Winters'} 
 Lto his friend, Mathilde Bursey\ 
 
 January 29th, 19 
 
 YOU will want to know at once, Ma- 
 thilde. Somewhere, far back in my 
 consciousness is the thought. I hold 
 on to it, as a child holds its mother's hand 
 in the dark. I force myself to write that I 
 may not entirely exhaust the patience of the 
 household. 
 
 How garrulous that old clock is! It ticks 
 above the stillness of the library with an 
 inexorable rhythm that is maddening. There
 
 The Garden of Dreams 157 
 
 is no wind stirring across the muffled valley, 
 and within, no sound except the occasional 
 light tread of the nurse. 
 
 The doctor has just been down. He is a 
 dear old fellow, whom I remember as a boy. 
 He offered to sit with me a while, but I could 
 not stand his chatter thinking of the flight 
 of stairs and the long hall that separated him 
 from Miranda. 
 
 Martha comes in from time to time to fresh- 
 en the fire or to force on me some coffee; her 
 hearty country manners have softened 
 down to a quiet, unobtrusive sympathy. 
 Miranda's mother does not leave her for a 
 moment. What a selfish convention that per- 
 mits man to screen himself from sight of pain 
 in such an hour! Mothers of mankind! 
 what have they not borne for us ? 
 
 I thought I heard Oh, do they think 
 they can keep me out, with Miranda's soul 
 crying out to mine through the darkness? 
 
 Morning. 
 
 There's a ghostly, reluctant dawn streaking 
 the east behind the snow-swathed hills, Ma- 
 thilde; but I read the promise of spring into 
 everything, for a moment since, across the 
 head of our little son, Miranda stretched out
 
 1 $8 The Garden of Dreams 
 
 a weak hand to me, and whispered adoringly: 
 
 "He's real! He doesn't vanish when I 
 touch him, Garth!" 
 
 "Our little son!" I whispered back my 
 soul worshiping. 
 
 "All our dreams come true!" she 
 murmured reverently; and like a tired child, 
 with sweetly drowsy eyes, floated off to fresh 
 dreamlands filled with promise for the mor- 
 row. 
 
 So has been born to us, and to our Garden 
 of Dreams, a little son. God keep his heart 
 forever clean as now, that he may never cause 
 his mother pain, that he may never be cast 
 without the Garden and find himself groping 
 blindly for the gate. 
 
 From our Garden we salute you, Mathilde! 
 Bless us from yours !
 
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