It pleased him more, and was better for his inward welfare, that Phoebe
should talk, and make passing occurrences vivid to his mind by her
accompanying description and remarks. The life of the garden offered
topics enough for such discourse as suited Clifford best. He never
failed to inquire what flowers had bloomed since yesterday. His
feeling for flowers was very exquisite, and seemed not so much a taste
as an emotion; he was fond of sitting with one in his hand, intently
observing it, and looking from its petals into Phoebe's face, as if the
garden flower were the sister of the household maiden. Not merely was
there a delight in the flower's perfume, or pleasure in its beautiful
form, and the delicacy or brightness of its hue; but Clifford's
enjoyment was accompanied with a perception of life, character, and
individuality, that made him love these blossoms of the garden, as if
they were endowed with sentiment and intelligence. This affection and
sympathy for flowers is almost exclusively a woman's trait. Men, if
endowed with it by nature, soon lose, forget, and learn to despise it,
in their contact with coarser things than flowers. Clifford, too, had
long forgotten it; but found it again now, as he slowly revived from
the chill torpor of his life.
It is wonderful how many pleasant incidents continually came to pass in
that secluded garden-spot when once Phoebe had set herself to look for
them. She had seen or heard a bee there, on the first day of her
acquaintance with the place. And often,--almost continually,
indeed,--since then, the bees kept coming thither, Heaven knows why, or
by what pertinacious desire, for far-fetched sweets, when, no doubt,
there were broad clover-fields, and all kinds of garden growth, much
nearer home than this. Thither the bees came, however, and plunged
into the squash-blossoms, as if there were no other squash-vines within
a long day's flight, or as if the soil of Hepzibah's garden gave its
productions just the very quality which these laborious little wizards
wanted, in order to impart the Hymettus odor to their whole hive of New
England honey. When Clifford heard their sunny, buzzing murmur, in the
heart of the great yellow blossoms, he looked about him with a joyful
sense of warmth, and blue sky, and green grass, and of God's free air
in the whole height from earth to heaven. After all, there need be no
question why the bees came to that one green nook in the dusty town.
God sent them thither to gladden our poor Clifford. They brought the
rich summer with them, in requital of a little honey.
When the bean-vines began to flower on the poles, there was one
particular variety which bore a vivid scarlet blossom. The
daguerreotypist had found these beans in a garret, over one of the
seven gables, treasured up in an old chest of drawers by some
horticultural Pyncheon of days gone by, who doubtless meant to sow them
the next summer, but was himself first sown in Death's garden-ground.
By way of testing whether there were still a living germ in such
ancient seeds, Holgrave had planted some of them; and the result of his
experiment was a splendid row of bean-vines, clambering, early, to the
full height of the poles, and arraying them, from top to bottom, in a
spiral profusion of red blossoms. And, ever since the unfolding of the
first bud, a multitude of humming-birds had been attracted thither. At
times, it seemed as if for every one of the hundred blossoms there was
one of these tiniest fowls of the air,--a thumb's bigness of burnished
plumage, hovering and vibrating about the bean-poles. It was with
indescribable interest, and even more than childish delight, that
Clifford watched the humming-birds. He used to thrust his head softly
out of the arbor to see them the better; all the while, too, motioning
Phoebe to be quiet, and snatching glimpses of the smile upon her face,
so as to heap his enjoyment up the higher with her sympathy. He had
not merely grown young;--he was a child again.