I Know a Secret/Chapter 12

by Christopher Darlington Morley

The Story of Louise's Garden

OF COURSE it was a great day when we got gas in the Roslyn Estates. But Fourchette still liked to remember and talk about old times before the kitchen was rebuilt and enlarged and the beautiful big gas stove put in. She often spoke of those long winter evenings of her youth, when the coal range filled the kitchen with a warm steady glow. She used to lie, drowsed with supper and comfort, in the corner behind the hot water boiler. Outside there was the frosty song of wind in the bare trees, and the glitter of winter stars. The hours went softly by. Sometimes there was the stir of coals in the grate, the tinkle of a falling cinder as the fire settled itself for the night—like a child turning over and dropping her doll out of bed as she falls asleep. The alarm clock went on steadily with its joggling count, trickery, trickery, trickery. Floors creaked overhead, the hot water rustled in the tall boiler. Fourchette lay so peaceful in warm trance that the mouse Ferdinand came out of the pot-closet or an athletic roach emerged from the old sink and waved his feelers at her. She paid no attention. It is good for a cat—or for anyone else—to have long dreamy evenings like that in youth.

She lay so until, about midnight, Mr. Mistletoe would come through the kitchen, wearing his long gray dressing gown, to say good-night to the furnace. When she heard him go down the cellar stairs she got up and stretched, the graceful curving stretch of a handsome young cat. Donny always followed Mr. Mistletoe, pushing the swinging door open with his heavy body. Fourchette envied him being able to do that. She could not go through that door unless someone opened it for her. She had a trick of going through with Donny, slipping under his legs as he pushed the door, which always made him furious.

She and Donny would sniff at each other a little suspiciously, in the dark, until Mr. Mistletoe returned from the cellar. Then, as he moved to and fro getting out some supper for all three, they would both rub against his legs. Fourchette particularly was so clever at getting between his feet that he often tripped in his long dressing gown and had to make absurd skips and capers to keep from falling. Fourchette was a very young cat in those days, and had not really learned that feet are dangerous.

But then came the exciting summer when the Gas actually arrived. Harry Smith and his carpenters and Mr. Penny and his plumbers came to remodel the kitchen. There was crashing and hammering and dust and confusion. The faithful coal range that had cooked so many good meals was taken in pieces and put out by the back steps. It stood there a long time, rusting in summer showers, until someone could be found to take it away. The old boiler that had heated the water for so many grimy children's baths was given to Mrs. Spaniel, the washerwoman, who needed a bigger boiler for washing so many clothes.

What a time it was! It seemed to Fourchette that the strong foundations of life itself were shaken. The stove, the boiler, the good old kitchen sink, were lying about by the back steps. Cockroaches were homeless. Perez, the Filipino cook, had need of all his good humour: he had to do his cooking on an oil stove on the kitchen porch. Because of course the Gas was not ready to go in on the date appointed, and there were several days when the family lived chiefly on cold boiled ham. But at last the pipes were connected, and the new shining gas stove installed. When the burners were lit for the first time all the animals gathered by the back steps and gave a cheer. The workmen from the gas-office in Port Washington were much surprised.

Perhaps the most thrilling part of all this affair was the tearing-down of the old kitchen chimney. Mr. Mistletoe had long been worried about that chimney, which was very tall and slender and supported by iron braces bolted to the roof. It looked dangerous, some of the bricks were loose, and they were glad to have it removed. But what a mess when they began battering it down and bricks and mortar came tumbling into the garden. And, as if there weren't enough happening anyway, Mr. Mistletoe had chosen just that time to have a new sleeping porch built, and the back lawn was piled with lumber and boards of all sizes.

Not long before this upheaval Louise and Helen had suddenly decided to have gardens of their own. They dug up a patch of earth and bought a packet of seeds. They bought zinnias, because the picture on the seed-packet looked so pretty, though not any prettier than the young gardeners themselves bending and raking and arranging a border of stones. But once dug and planted the gardens had been rather neglected, except by Donny who evidently thought them twin beds and slept in them by turns. Blythe, learning to ride a velocipede, used to trundle through them. In fact, few people realized that they were gardens at all; they simply thought them two more patches where the grass hadn't happened to grow. So, when the workmen were looking about for a convenient place to pile the bricks from the kitchen chimney, they dumped them all on top of the two gardens.

I don't think the gardeners worried much about this, for now so many interesting things were happening, and the zinnia seeds, still underground, said nothing. But presently Mr. Mistletoe, who had plans of his own for those bricks, hired Christopher and Buzzy to help him (at the rate of one cent for every twenty-five bricks) and they stacked them up neatly against the side of the garage.

Helen, by this time, had abandoned any thoughts of raising flowers; but Louise, remembering the picture on the seed-packet, tidied up her patch once more. It looked a bit bruised, but she swept away the brick-dust and poured several cans of water on the earth to encourage the zinnias. Now the garden looked like a small accidental mud-hole, and the workmen, wanting somewhere to pile all their lumber, thought that was the obvious place. Once more Louise's zinniabed was covered up, this time with masses of beams and boards, where the workmen sat cheerfully in the sunshine eating their lunch. Donny and Fourchette too lay about on the warm planks, with that enjoyment that all animals have in watching work going on.

So, in the general hullabaloo of tearing down and building up, Louise's garden was quite forgotten. But there was something obstinate about those zinnias. You'd have thought they were poison ivy, the way they hung on. For one day, in a chink among the litter of boards, what should stick up its head but a bright scarlet flower. Everyone was amazed. It didn't last long, though, for in shifting off the planks it got bashed.

Perhaps there was something queer about the particular spot that Louise had chosen for a garden. Perhaps there was some special luck about it that attracted dogs and cats and velocipedes and workmen. But what happened now was most curious of all. Mr. Mistletoe and Perez had been cutting down trees in the back lot. One of these trees, tall and very straight, had been trimmed and stripped of its bark and sandpapered and varnished. One day, while Louise was away on a picnic, a deep hole was dug and the new shining pole was put up. Of course you can guess what happened. The place where the pole was set was the exact spot where the unsuccessful zinnia garden had been. When Louise came home that afternoon she forgot all about the bad luck she had had. For a surprising flower had shot up, bigger than any zinnia, brighter than any picture on a seed-packet. Tall and straight and clean, the stalk rose thirty feet into the air. At the top was the gayest and prettiest of flowers. Brilliant with colour, it floated gently in the breeze—the American flag.

 

Probably no one except Louise remembers the courageous little zinnia that once grew where the flagpole now is. But the old kitchen chimney has its memorial too. Mr. Mistletoe took all its bricks and built them into a wall at the back of the croquet ground. He was not very skilful mixing mortar or laying bricks, and all the carpenters and everyone else who came to the house gave him all sorts of advice about doing it. They wanted him to use strings and plumb-lines and spirit-levels and get it nice and even. But his idea, which he was a little afraid to mention to more capable people, was that the wall, when finished, should look like a beautiful old ruin, an antique Long Island relic. Well, it does. It has only been there a year, but it looks a century old.