The quest for the rose of Sharon

The sun was nearly down, and the long shadows from the trees cut the lawn into alternate aisles of light and shade. The afternoon was almost gone, and I saw that I had no time to lose. Since the first object of my search was a rose of Sharon, it was evident that it must begin in the garden and I made my way into it through an opening in the hedge. The hedge was very close and thick, though spraggly and badly kept, and must have been planted many years before. The garden, as I have said, was a desolate place enough, but not without evidences of ancient beauty. Just inside the hedge was a perfect tangle of dead flower-stocks of hollyhocks with the fresh new plants springing at their base, of phlox and pinks and candytuft. Inside this, and around the whole garden ran a broad path, grass-grown and sadly in need of repair, while two narrower paths extended at right angles across the garden, meeting at a large depressed circle in the centre, which had once evidently been the basin of a fountain. But no fountain had played there for many years, and the basin was overgrown with weeds. At the corners against the hedge were masses of shrubbery, and the wall at the farther side was overgrown with ivy.

I realized that I needed a guide in this wilderness, and set out in search of Abner, whom I finally found in the kitchen garden, busily engaged in digging up some horse-radish. He heard me coming, and stood up, leaning on his spade, as I drew near.

“Oh, Mr. Smith,” I began, “is there a rose of Sharon anywhere about the place?”

“A rose o’ Sharon? Why, yes, miss; bless your heart, they’s a dozen o’ them, I reckon.”

“A dozen!” Here was a complication, indeed! “But isn’t there some particular one,” I persisted, “which is larger than all the rest, or which is peculiarly situated, or which grandaunt was particularly fond of, or something of that sort?”

He scratched his head in perplexity, while I watched him in a very agony of excitement and suspense.

“Well, miss,” he answered slowly, at last, “they is one th’ missus used t’ think a good deal of, though lately she didn’t take much interest in anything about th’ place—just let it run along anyhow. It’s about the biggest one we’ve got, an’ it’s set in a kind o’ rockery over there in the garding near the wall. Mebbe that’s the one you mean.”

“Maybe it is,” I said, controlling myself as well as I could, for my heart leaped at his words. “Will you show it to me, Mr. Smith?”

“Why, of course,” he said good-naturedly. “An’, miss, my name’s Abner, an’ I like t’ be called by it,” and shouldering his spade, he hobbled away toward the garden. I could have flown, but I managed somehow to accommodate my pace to his.

Near the wall which bounded the garden on that side, a somewhat elaborate rockery had been laid out years before, with stones of different colours carefully arranged in rows, after a fashion once thought beautiful. Vines were running over them, myrtle principally, and shrubs of various kinds were growing among them; some had been misplaced and others buried in the ground; the whole forming a kind of tangle which proved that however much grandaunt had once thought of the spot, Abner was right in saying that she had completely neglected it in recent years.

“Y’ see,” explained Abner, apologetically, reading my thought, perhaps, “we was both a gittin’ old, miss; an’ they’s a mighty lot o’ work t’ do around a place like this. They was a lot thet had t’ be done—thet th’ missus allers made it a point t’ see was done—so this here rockery—an’ the hull garding fer thet matter—had t’ look out fer itself. We hadn’t no time fer flub-dubs.”

“Yes,” I interrupted, “but which is the rose of Sharon?”

“This here is th’ rose o’ Sharon, miss,” and he pointed with his spade to a tall shrub in the middle of the rockery, upon which the spring had not yet succeeded in coaxing forth any hint of green. The old, brown seed-pods of the year before still clung to it, and, on the whole, it did not look very promising of beauty.

“Now I must go, miss,” added my companion. “Jane’s waitin’ fer thet horse-radish, an’ I’ve got t’ help with th’ milkin’.”

“Very well,” I said; “only leave me your spade, please. Perhaps I can straighten things out here a little.”

“I doubt it, miss,” he said; “them vines need a good, sharp pair of clippers more’n anything, an’ a man behind ’em thet ain’t afeard t’ use ’em.” But he leaned his spade against the wall and shuffled away.

Close against the wall, a rustic seat had been built in some bygone year, and although it had crumbled somewhat and come apart in places under wind and weather, it would still bear my weight, as I found upon cautiously testing it. So I sat down to think out my plan of action. The lengthening shadows warned me that I had no time to lose; but I believed that I had my finger on the key of the puzzle, and I was determined to test my theory at once.

The spot had evidently at one time been a favourite resort of somebody; and grandaunt had lived here so long that it must have been she who had the rustic seat built and arranged the rockery. I could fancy her sitting here in the cool afternoons, when she was younger, knitting placidly, perhaps, or working some piece of embroidery. Perhaps it was here, where she was first married—but my imagination was not equal to the flight. Grandaunt a bride! The idea seemed to me preposterous—which only shows how young and thoughtless I was, for grandaunt, of course, had, once upon a time, been a girl like any other, with a girl’s heart and a girl’s hopes.

I know now more of her life than I knew then. She was married when quite young to a man much older than herself, who brought her to this house, and shut himself up with her there; a crabbed and high-tempered man, who set his stamp upon her and moulded her to his fashion. He had died many years before, but grandaunt had gone on living as she had lived, so compelling is the force of habit! And if she came to regard all the world with suspicion, and to fall into queer prejudices and beliefs, why, she was not so much to blame, after all!

But, for whatever cause, it was evident that grandaunt had at one time been fond of the garden, with its fountain and rockery and rustic seat. They offered her a distraction and relief from the sordidness of her life—a distraction which she came to need less and less, as she grew accustomed to it. Just at first, no doubt, she had often come here; the spot had once held a prominent place in her affections; and it was to it that her thoughts turned when she had been seeking a hiding-place for the treasure. But just where had she chosen to conceal it?

As I have said, a large number of stones were arranged symmetrically about the foot of the rose of Sharon. According to the doggerel grandaunt had left us, I must count four to the right and three diagonally, and the treasure would be ours. What could she have meant, unless she was referring to these very stones? Flushed with excitement at the thought, I looked at them more carefully. Four to the right, diagonally three—but from which direction must I face the shrub in determining which was right and which left?

I decided at last that the most sensible solution of this question was to face the shrub from the main path, which led to it across the garden, just as anyone would face it who approached it from the direction of the house. I did so, and then, dropping to my knees, tore away the tangle of vines, cleared away the accumulated refuse, and counted four stones to the right.

Here, again, there was a choice of diagonals—the correct one might be any one of several. I chose one at random and raised the third stone with hands not wholly steady. Then I leaned forward and peered into the hole. The earth from which I had lifted the stone seemed hard and undisturbed. I counted three diagonally in another direction, and lifted another stone, with the same result. Again I counted three diagonally, raised the stone, and found myself peering into a shallow hole with hard dirt at the bottom.

I brought the spade and dug down, as well as I could, in the places from which I had removed the stones; but after a few moments, it was evident, even to me, that the earth had not been disturbed for many years, and that there could not by any possibility be a treasure of any kind buried beneath it.

But I did not even yet despair. It might very well be that grandaunt had approached the rockery from the kitchen garden, in which case I must count in the other direction. I did so, and at the second venture my heart bounded into my throat, for the stone I hit upon was loose in its place, and the dirt beneath it soft and yielding. With hands trembling so that I could scarcely hold the spade, I began to throw the loose dirt out from the hole. I found it was not large enough to work in to advantage, and removed the adjoining stones. The earth under all of them seemed loose, and I worked feverishly, expecting every instant that the spade would strike a metal box or receptacle of some sort, in which the securities had been placed. For a few inches, it was easy digging; then the earth became hard again. But suddenly the spade did hit something that rang sharply against it. I cleared away the earth quickly, and found that I had struck—a rock! It was a large one, as I soon discovered by trying to get around it. And then I saw what I had not perceived before—little tunnels running away under the stones on either side, and I knew that the earth had been loosened, not by Grandaunt Nelson, but by a mole!

It was a heavy blow. I had been so confident that I had solved the mystery; it had seemed so certain from the very situation of the rose of Sharon that it marked the treasure’s hiding-place; I had even fancied myself running to the house with the precious package in my hands, bursting in upon mother with the great news, lying in wait for Dick—and now—now—

Despite myself, the tears would come. I let the spade fall and sat down again upon the seat, and sobbed for very disappointment. Ah, what a triumph it would have been to be able, the very first day, to discomfit that horrid Silas Tunstall by finding the treasure and setting at rest, at once and for all time, the question of the ownership of this beautiful place!

“Oh, I say,” exclaimed a low voice just over my head, “you mustn’t do that, you know! Can’t I help you?”

I jumped up with a little cry, for the voice was so near it frightened me. There, sitting on the wall just above me, was a boy. He had his cap in his hand, and I saw that his hair was brown and very curly.

“I’d like to help you,” he repeated earnestly; “that is, if you’ll let me.”

He waved his cap to me with a half-timid, friendly, reassuring gesture.

“Oh!” I said, turning red with shame at the thought that I had been caught crying. “Oh, I must go!”

“No, don’t go,” he protested. “If you’re going because I’m here, I’ll go myself.”

“Oh, no; it’s not at all on your account,” I explained politely. “But it must be very nearly dinner-time,” and I glanced at the brilliant afterglow which transfigured the western heavens.

Then I glanced at him. He was distinctly a nice-looking boy, and after the surprise of the first moment, I felt no very great desire to go away.

“It isn’t late,” he reassured me. “It can’t be dinner-time, yet. May I come down?”

I eyed him doubtfully. He seemed rather a self-assured boy, and I wondered what Dick would think of him. I wondered if he thought me a molly-coddle because he had seen me crying. I shared all Dick’s horror of girls or boys who cry. Then I wondered if my eyes were very red, and wiped them with my handkerchief.

“The wall,” I ventured, “was probably put there to keep people out.”

“Not to keep one’s friends out,” he protested. “One ought to be glad if one’s friends are willing to climb over such a high wall to see one.”

He was smiling in the pleasantest way, and I really couldn’t help smiling back.

“But one’s friends can come in at the gate,” I pointed out, quickly suppressing the smile, “so there is no reason why they should climb the wall. No one likes one’s friends to do unnecessary things.”

“How about the lady who dropped her glove over the barrier among the lions?” he inquired.

“She was a minx,” I answered warmly.

“And the fellow who jumped after it?”

“He was a fool!”

“Thank you,” he said, with bright eyes.

“Oh, you know I didn’t mean that,” I cried. “I should be very glad to have you come down, but I really must go.”

“But it isn’t dinner-time yet.”

“I know it isn’t,” I hastened to explain, anxious not to hurt his feelings again. “But you see we’re going out to dinner this evening, and it will take a little time to get ready, and of course I don’t want to be late. Mother wouldn’t like it.”

“But what were you digging there for?” he persisted, looking at the little piles of dirt I had thrown up. “It seems a queer place to be digging. Looking for fishing-worms?”

“No,” I said. “I—I was just digging.”

“Are you going to dig any more?”

“Perhaps.”

“Then you must let me help you,” he said. “I’m first-rate at digging.”

“Are you? Well, perhaps I shall. But, you see, I’ll have to know you a little better first.”

“May I introduce myself?”

“Oh, no; I’ll ask Mr. Chester about you—”

“Mr. Chester?” he interrupted quickly.

“Yes.”

“Is that where you’re going to dinner?”

“Yes—why?”

He burst into a sudden shout of laughter and waved his cap around his head. I thought for an instant, with a sudden leap of the heart, that he was going to lose his balance and fall; but he caught a branch above his head and saved himself.

“I think I’ll come down,” he said, when he had regained his breath; and he calmly jumped down on our side of the wall. Then he looked at me, grinning broadly. “Please don’t believe all Mr. Chester tells you about me,” he said. “He’s prejudiced.”

“I certainly shall believe what he tells me,” I retorted.

“All the same, I’m glad you’re going to dinner there to-night,” he added, grinning still more broadly.

“Why?” I demanded.

“No matter,” he said. “No matter,” and he looked at me, still laughing.

I felt my cheeks burning, for I could never bear to be laughed at, especially by a boy. Boys are so dense.

“Very well,” I said, and turning on my heel, I marched away, head in air.

But I could hear him laughing till I got clear across the garden to the opposite hedge. I thought it very rude. Perhaps if he had not kept on laughing, I might have stopped before I got so far away. At last, when I stole a glance over my shoulder toward the wall, he was gone.