A PANSY OF HARTWELL.
I was a Pansy of Hartwell, a dainty little thing, with gold and purple petals, touched with white, and leaves of tender green—“a dear, delicate thing, but fair,” so Louise said. I grew below her chamber window, where she had prepared a rich, warm bed of mother earth for me and for hundreds of my kindred. “But none,” she said, “no, not one of my kind, was ever so beautiful as I.”
I remember my birthland well. Our old home in Hartwell, where Louise and I were born, was surrounded by a wide, rolling lawn, filled with blooming flowers from the time of the first peep of the early March crocus to the stately bloom and decay of the autumn flowers. Here, too, near her window grew a straight, tall maple tree, whose branches stretched far and wide and even touched her window.
I liked this tree because it gave us a pleasant shade when the sun’s rays were inclined to be too warm and made us droop and feel so languid and so tired. Delicate, dainty things, as Louise and I, must not have too much sunshine, else we droop and die.
One day I asked Louise if this tree was old. I knew it was by the many deep furrows in its bark, but I loved the music of her voice so much that I often asked her useless questions that I might lift up my head and listen to its melody. Louise then told me its age and much else that I had never heard. She said that with each returning springtime this tree sent up the life-giving sap from its roots, which ran swiftly through the trunk to the branches. Soon on these branches little red buds appeared, then a bloom and finally leaves, and wonderful little wing-like looking keys which held the seeds of the maple tree.
These were strange, wonderful things for me to hear, but I knew them to be true, because Louise told them to me. No one ever doubted Louise, for all her life long she had worshiped at the altar of truth, and, because of her truthfulness, her beauty and her goodness, all things loved her.
Besides giving us moisture and shade, the south wind told me that this same fine old tree held in its forks a home for some little friends of Louise. When the March winds left us and the skies became clear and blue and warm, her friends the robins would return to their old home as they had done for many seasons past, and there under her kindly, watchful care would raise their brood of young.
One day I saw her—I was always watching her—drop a bit of cotton and several strings down from her window. The cotton fell near my bed. I wondered and wondered why she had done this thing. A long time afterward I was told that it was for the use of Mother Robin in making her nest. Father Robin thanked my dear Louise for her thoughtfulness by singing for her his most beautiful notes at the dawn, the noon-time and the evening.
I lived in happiness in that quaint old town of Hartwell, caring naught for its bright skies, wide rolling plains, its peaceful waters, its fruits of tree and vine. I was young; I was happy; I lived near Louise; it was all that I desired.
I remember—but why should I tell you? I am only a little pansy, born, perhaps, for an hour or a day, to bloom and be gathered and die—so the south wind has told me. It must know. “God gave the flowers and birds and all things for man’s use and abuse,” so you say; but I had thought it different, for I lived in the sunshine of Louise’s love and tender care. One day—how well I remember it!—it was a day in sunny, coquettish April—when I heard voices approaching. Nearer and nearer they came, until I felt the presence of my dear Louise with her dark haired friend. I could not see them, for one of my sister pansies held her head so high and haughty that a little pansy such as I could not see or be seen.
This day Louise was more tender than usual. Alas! why is it ever true that dearest love is bought at the price of death and separation?
She bent down, half hesitatingly, and kissed me, touched my petals lovingly, and whispered so gently—only I could hear: “My beauty, my golden-hearted pansy, shall I—must I—give you to my friend?”
The wind gave back my answer. I was sacrificed on the altar of friendship.
Then I felt my heartstrings slowly tugged at, and quivering and wounded and bleeding I was taken from my home, the home Louise had made for me, and placed in a basket with my cousins, the violets, to be carried to a new home, to meet new faces and perhaps make new friends.
Louise and this friend loved each other very dearly. Alas! for me, they loved pansies, too.
Perhaps it was an honor for Louise to have chosen me from among a hundred others, for to her a pansy was the dearest, the daintiest and most coquettish of all the flowers that bloom and die. But, though I felt the honor, I would a thousand times rather have lived to lift my petals to the breezes in my native land without glory and without pain; or better still, death on Louise’s breast, with her smiles and caresses, was preferable to honor and glory in a stranger’s land. I say this was preferable, but how foolish I am; we pansies have no preference. We of the flower family must take what you of the human family choose to give us.
This friend of Louise’s, I knew not her name and cared not to know, carried me very gently with the violets, protecting me from the sun and dust as we went; and when I awoke from my misery and my long, long journey, I found myself an exile, with my kindred, in the far south-land where the birds are always singing, and the flowers are ever blooming, and youth and beauty and old age go hand in hand.
It was a beautiful home to which I was brought. Here I was surrounded with all that a pansy’s heart should long for; but I was not happy. I was not content. Soon my face looked sad; my shining green leaves began to wither and droop, and the breath of the south wind became so hot I felt as though I could not live. Then the battle against death began. I longed to live that I might see Louise once more. Then I tried to live for her to whom she had sacrificed me. I made a brave struggle for life, but all in vain. It was the battle of the weak against the strong.
Since life has left me and I have become a spirit flower with my earthly body caged between the pages of a musty old book, which my spirit may enter at will, Louise’s friend often holds communion with me. It is then I ask, “Does she love me, or is it Louise, of whom she thinks, for whom she longs when she looks at me so lovingly and talks to me of the old days?”
Laura Cravens.