The Scarecrow and Other Stories Part 15

FLOWERS

The night wind brought him the smell of flowers.

For a moment he fought against the smothering oppression of the thing he hated; for a second the same struggle against its stifling weight.

His eyes closed with the brows above them drawn and tight. His teeth caught savagely at his lower lip, gnawing at it until the blood came.

His hands, the fingers wide spread, the veins purple and standing out, moved slowly and tensely to his throat.

How he dreaded it! How he abominated the thing! How he loathed the subtle, insidious fragrance! How he abhorred flowers--flowers!

With a tremendous, forcing effort he opened his eyes.

The same garden. The same sweeping reach of flowers. Flowers as far as he could see. Gigantic blossoming clumps of rhododendron. Slender, fragile lilies of the valley showing white and faint on the deep green leaves. Violets somewhere. He got the sickeningly sweet scent of them.

Early roses growing riotously. He detested the perfume of roses.

Overhead the darkening sky that held in the west the thin gray crescent of the coming moon.

And all through the garden the first dull blue shadows of evening.

Shadows that blurred around the shapes of flowers; shadows that spread over the flowers, smearing out the spotting color of them until they were a gloom-splotched, ghostly ma.s.s. Shadows that brought out in all its pungent power the a.s.sailing, suffocating smell of the flowers.

He stood there waiting.

He could feel his heartbeats throbbing in his temples. His breath came in long racking gasps. His one thought was to breathe regularly.

One--two--He tried to think of something other than his breathing. The intangible odor of the flowers choked him with their stealthy cunning.

It was always like this at first. He had always to contend silently and with all his strength against this illusive, abominated thing poured out to him by the flowers.

His strangling intaking of breath. One--two--

Never in all his life had he been without his horror of flowers; never until now had he known why he hated them. Lately he had begun to wonder if they hated him.

It would be better when she came.

They were her flowers. Her flowers that took all her time; all her thoughts; all her caring and affection. Her flowers that grew all about her. Her flowers that held her away from him. He hated her flowers.

One. Two.

It would be quite all right when she was there.

Her flowers would not harm her.

And then he heard the soft, uneven rustling of her skirts.

He looked up to see her walking toward him down the long lane of her flowers. Through the drenching grayness he could see that she wore the same light dress that made her tall and clung to her in folds so that her figure seemed to bend. He could distinguish the heavy shadowy ma.s.s of her uncovered hair. Her eyes, set far apart and dark, fixed themselves on him. A quick light flooded into them. In the dusk he saw that her hands were clasped together and that they were filled with lilies.

"Throw them away," he said when she stood beside him.

"They're so pretty," she told him, staring down at the lilies. "You'll let me keep these; just this once?"

"Throw them away," he repeated. "I can't stand the sight of them. You know that. Why must you go on picking the things and picking them?"

She shrugged her shoulders. Her eyes left his face.

"I love them," she said simply.

"Love?" He laughed. "How can you love flowers?"

"Oh, but I can."

"Well, I can't!" He had been wanting her to know that for a long while.

"Why not?" She asked him.

He could not bring himself to tell her why not.

"Throw them away!"

She let the lilies sift through her fingers one by one. And then the last fell to the ground.

"Are you satisfied?"

"No," he said. "What good does it do, anyway? The next time it'll be the same again. It always is."

She reached out a hand and touched his arm.

"But I never know when you're coming. If I knew I wouldn't be picking flowers. I can't help having them in my hands when you come, if I don't know, can I?"

"It isn't that."

He covered her hand lying on his arm with his hand.

"What is it, then?"

She pulled her fingers from under his and drew away a bit.

He made up his mind to try and tell her.

"It's the flowers. I should have told you long ago. Even at the beginning when we first--When I first came here, I--"

She interrupted him.

"When was that? How long ago?"

"How can I tell? Ages ago."