The Garden of Memories

by Henry St. John Cooper

Mrs. Crozier had been very kind to the timid and shy girl. She had had Betty to tea with her in her own private room, she had introduced her to the other servants, and had kept a motherly eye on Betty till the time came for Betty to retire to her own small room in the servant's quarters.

And she was here! actually here, sleeping in this old house, which she had seen so often, watched so often by sunlight and moonlight. She remembered it as it had been then, with its broken windows, with the ivy and the creepers growing over it in one great tangle.

But the garden, she had not seen the garden yet! How would it look when she saw it? What terrible changes would there be there? Her dear garden, what harm had they done to it? How strange and altered would it be?

She could not sleep that night, she lay awake on the strange unfamiliar bed, tossing restlessly.

Her ladyship had said, and how sweet and good was her ladyship, she had said that the stone maiden was still there in the old lake, so she would find one familiar friend.

After a long, sleepless, troubled night for Betty, the daylight dawned at last, and then she rose and dressed very quietly and before the other servants were waking, she crept down the steep stairs to the kitchen.

She did not hesitate for a moment, she seemed to know her way perfectly, yet she had never been inside the house before. The House had always repelled her, its gloom and its silence and its dust had forbidden any desire on her part to explore it. Yet now she made her way unerringly through the great kitchen through the vast and cold scullery, down a long passage till she came to a little door, a door that she knew must be there. And it was there and then she drew a ponderous bolt that had been fashioned by a hand that had been dust for two centuries. She unfastened a huge lock, by a key that required all her strength to turn, and so she opened the door and stepped out into the garden as the rising sun flung its first ray of primrose and gold across the heavens.

Only two steps Betty took, then stood still. The light was dim yet, yet through the grey mists she could see it—not as she had seen it last—yet as she had seen it perhaps in her dreams. It was all so familiar, not as she had dreaded, strange and cold, but it, was as the face of an old friend suddenly grown young again, young and beautiful and sweet.

Her garden—yes it was hers! Changed and yet not changed, even more hers, it seemed to her, now, than had been the weed grown, tangled desert she remembered. Yet she remembered that she had seen it thus in dreams and now, as the sun rose, as the sky was flooded with the glory of the dawn, she saw her garden in all its beauty, in all its reality, as sometimes she had seen it in those strange dreams that had come to her.

Had she not seen it like this when those figures, those strange, beautiful, unreal figures of her imagination had promenaded these old walks, those gracious ladies with their strange old world costumes, their hair dressed so high on their heads, their tiny slim waists, their great bell-like skirts and their little red heeled shoes. Those men in their rich deep skirted coats, their stockinged legs, their swords, their wigs—all those visions that had come to her in dreams, had they not moved and lived in a garden like this, this same garden as it was now, all trim and sweet and gay with flowers?