Christmas Roses and Other Stories

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

She had never thought of such splendour as being, possibly, to anybody, a hole; but she knew what it was to feel homesick. They smiled at each other when they met after that, she and Lord Ninian, and he lent her magazines and books. When she heard that he had died,—she had not seen him for a week and had feared for him,—she felt very, very sad and her thoughts turned in great longing to Acacia Road and to her garden.

She wanted very much to live to see her garden again; but she could not help being frightened lest she should not; for, as the winter wore on, it became evident to her, and all the more because every one else was so carefully unaware of it, that one of the things that Florrie had predicted was not to come true. She was not to return cured. She was not going to get better. At first the slow burning of fever had seemed only part of the excitement, but she could not go on thinking it that when it began to leave her breathless, trembling, faint. By the time that the miracle of the Alpine flower-meadows was revealed to her and she had watched the snow recede and the jonquils and anemones advance, she knew that if she wished to die at home she must soon go. They would not consent to that at once. They said that the spring months were full of magic, and she was persuaded to stay on. They were magically beautiful and she was glad to see them, but she longed more and more to see her little garden. She dreamed sometimes of her pansies at night, and it seemed to her once that as she stooped in the moonlight and touched them she was cured; the fever fell from her; a cool white peace flowed into her veins; and when she looked up from them, the night was gone and the sun was rising over her Surrey hills.

At the beginning of June they consented that she should go. They did not tell her the truth, of course. They said that she might pass the summer in England, since she wished so much to return there, and that she must come back for next winter; but she knew that if her state had not been recognized as hopeless they would not have let her go. It was hopeless, and she summoned all her strength and resolution, that she might live until she reached Acacia Road.

IV

FLORRIE met her at Victoria. Florrie did not know that it was hopeless, though she knew that it was not as yet, a cure; but from the way that she controlled her features to a determined joviality Miss Glover could infer her shock, her grief, her consternation. The glance, too, that Jane and Florrie exchanged was revealing, had she been in need of revelations.

After a night in Florrie’s flat, however, she knew that she looked so much better that poor Florrie, when she came to see her in the morning, was quite erroneously cheered. “You’re all right,” Florrie declared. “The journey’s knocked you about a bit; but once we get you down to Surrey, Jane and I, you’ll pick up in no time. After all, there’s no place like home, is there?”

Miss Glover, from her pillows, smiled. She felt very fond of kind Florrie and sorry for her that she must, so soon, suffer sadness on her account.

It was difficult, in the train, to listen to Florrie’s talk. After her fright of the day before, Florrie had cheered up so tremendously that she talked even more than usual, of her friends, her enterprises, of how she was going yachting that autumn with the Forestalls, and of how Di Haymouth had just had a baby.

“A splendid boy, and Mr. and Mrs. Isaacson are fairly off their heads with pride and pleasure. Such a layette, my dear, you never saw! Real lace through and through—and the cradle of a regular little prince! I gave him a silver porringer for his christening; a lovely thing, all heavy repoussé work with his initials on a shield at one side. Di say it’s the prettiest porringer she ever saw.”

It was difficult to listen to Florrie and to nod and smile at the right moment when she was thinking of her garden and wondering if Florrie had really remembered to sow the sweet peas and mignonette. Even if she hadn’t, the Madame Alfred Carrière and the Prince Charlie roses would be out, and the last tulips, and the pansies, of course. And it was such a beautiful day, just such a day as that she had risen to look at when, in her dream, the pansies had cured her.