University of Virginia Library

THE TEA ROSE.

There it stood, in its little green vase, on a high
ebony stand, in the window of the drawing-room
The rich satin curtains, with their costly fringes,
swept down on either side of it, and around it glittered
every rare and fanciful trifle which wealth can
offer to luxury, and yet that simple rose was the
fairest of them all. So pure it looked, its white
leaves just touched with that delicious creamy tint
peculiar to its kind; its cup so full, so perfect; its
head bending as if it were sinking and melting
away in its own richness—oh! when did ever man
make anything to equal the living, perfect flower!

But the sunlight that streamed through the window
revealed something fairer than the rose. Reclined
on an ottoman, in a deep recess, and intently
engaged with a book, rested what seemed the
counterpart of that so lovely flower. That cheek
so pale, that fair forehead so spiritual, that countenance
so full of high thought, those long, downcast
lashes, and the expression of the beautiful mouth,
sorrowful, yet subdued and sweet—it seemed like
the picture of a dream.

“Florence! Florence!” echoed a merry and musical
voice, in a sweet, impatient tone. Turn your
head, reader, and you will see a light and sparkling
maiden, the very model of some little wilful elf, born
of mischief and motion, with a dancing eye, a foot
that scarcely seems to touch the carpet, and a
smile so multiplied by dimples that it seems like
a thousand smiles at once. “Come, Florence, I
say,” said the little sprite, “put down that wise,
good, and excellent volume, and descend from your
cloud, and talk with a poor little mortal.”

The fair apparition, thus adjured, obeyed; and,
looking up, revealed just such eyes as you expected
to see beneath such lids—eyes deep, pathetic,
and rich as a strain of sad music.

“I say, cousin,” said the “light ladye,” “I have
been thinking what you are to do with your pet rose
when you go to New-York, as, to our consternation,
you are determined to do; you know it would
be a sad pity to leave it with such a scatterbrain as
I am. I do love flowers, that is a fact; that is, I
like a regular bouquet, cut off and tied up, to carry
to a party; but as to all this tending and fussing,
which is needful to keep them growing, I have no
gifts in that line.”

“Make yourself easy as to that, Kate,” said Florence,
with a smile; “I have no intention of calling
upon your talents; I have an asylum in view
for my favourite.”

“Oh, then you know just what I was going to
say. Mrs. Marshall, I presume, has been speaking
to you; she was here yesterday, and I was quite
pathetic upon the subject, telling her the loss your
favourite would sustain, and so forth; and she said
how delighted she would be to have it in her greenhouse,
it is in such a fine state now, so full of buds.
I told her I knew you would like to give it to her,
you are so fond of Mrs. Marshall, you know.”

“Now, Kate, I am sorry, but I have otherwise
engaged it.”

“Who can it be to? you have so few intimates
here.”

“Oh, it is only one of my odd fancies.”

“But do tell me, Florence.”

“Well, cousin, you know the little pale girl to
whom we give sewing.”

“What! little Mary Stephens? How absurd!
Florence, this is just another of your motherly, old-maidish
ways—dressing dolls for poor children, making
bonnets and knitting socks for all the little
dirty babies in the region round about. I do believe
you have made more calls in those two vile,
ill-smelling alleys back of our house, than ever you
have in Chestnut-street, though you know everybody
is half dying to see you; and now, to crown
all, you must give this choice little bijou to a sempstress
girl, when one of your most intimate friends,

in your own class, would value it so highly. What
in the world can people in their circumstances want
of flowers?”

“Just the same as I do,” replied Florence, calmly.
“Have you not noticed that the little girl
never comes here without looking wistfully at the
opening buds? And, don't you remember, the other
morning she asked me so prettily if I would let
her mother come and see it, she was so fond of
flowers?”

“But, Florence, only think of this rare flower
standing on a table with ham, eggs, cheese, and
flour, and stifled in that close little room where
Mrs. Stephens and her daughter manage to wash,
iron, cook, and nobody knows what besides.”

“Well, Kate, and if I were obliged to live in one
coarse room, and wash, and iron, and cook, as you
say—if I had to spend every moment of my time
in toil, with no prospect from my window but a brick
wall and dirty lane, such a flower as this would be
untold enjoyment to me.”

“Pshaw! Florence—all sentiment: poor people
have no time to be sentimental. Besides, I don't
believe it will grow with them; it is a greenhouse
flower, and used to delicate living.”

“Oh, as to that, a flower never inquires whether
its owner is rich or poor; and Mrs. Stephens,
whatever else she has not, has sunshine of as good

quality as this that streams through our window.
The beautiful things that God makes are his gift
to all alike. You will see that my fair rose will
be as well and cheerful in Mrs. Stephens's room as
in ours.”

“Well, after all, how odd! When one gives to
poor people, one wants to give them something
useful—a bushel of potatoes, a ham, and such
things.”

“Why, certainly, potatoes and ham must be supplied;
but, having ministered to the first and most
craving wants, why not add any other little pleasures
or gratifications we may have it in our power
to bestow? I know there are many of the poor
who have fine feeling and a keen sense of the beautiful,
which rusts out and dies because they are too
hard pressed to procure it any gratification. Poor
Mrs. Stephens, for example: I know she would enjoy
birds, and flowers, and music as much as I do.
I have seen her eye light up as she looked on these
things in our drawing-room, and yet not one beautiful
thing can she command. From necessity, her
room, her clothing, all she has, must be coarse and
plain. You should have seen the almost rapture
she and Mary felt when I offered them my rose.”

“Dear me! all this may be true, but I never
thought of it before. I never thought that these
hard-working people had any ideas of taste!”

“Then why do you see the geranium or rose so
carefully nursed in the old cracked teapot in the
poorest room, or the morning-glory planted in a box
and twined about the window. Do not these show
that the human heart yearns for the beautiful in all
ranks of life? You remember, Kate, how our
washerwoman sat up a whole night, after a hard
day's work, to make her first baby a pretty dress
to be baptized in.”

“Yes, and I remember how I laughed at you for
making such a tasteful little cap for it.”

“Well, Katy, I think the look of perfect delight
with which the poor mother regarded her baby in
its new dress and cap, was something quite worth
creating: I do believe she could not have felt more
grateful if I had sent her a barrel of flour.”

“Well, I never thought before of giving anything
to the poor but what they really needed, and I have
always been willing to do that when I could without
going far out of my way.”

“Well, cousin, if our heavenly Father gave to
us after this mode, we should have only coarse,
shapeless piles of provisions lying about the world,
instead of all this beautiful variety of trees, and
fruits, and flowers.”

“Well, well, cousin, I suppose you are right—
but have mercy on my poor head; it is too small
to hold so many new ideas all at once—so go on

your own way.” And the little lady began practising
a waltzing step before the glass with great
satisfaction.

It was a very small room, lighted by only one
window. There was no carpet on the floor; there
was a clean, but coarsely-covered bed in one corner;
a cupboard, with a few dishes and plates, in the
other; a chest of drawers; and before the window
stood a small cherry stand, quite new, and, indeed,
it was the only article in the room that seemed so.

A pale, sickly-looking woman of about forty was
leaning back in her rocking-chair, her eyes closed
and her lips compressed as if in pain. She rocked
backward and forward a few minutes, pressed her
hand hard upon her eyes, and then languidly resumed
her fine stitching, on which she had been
busy since morning. The door opened, and a slender
little girl of about twelve years of age entered,
her large blue eyes dilated and radiant with delight
as she bore in the vase with the rose-tree in it.

“Oh! see, mother, see! Here is one in full
bloom, and two more half out, and ever so many
more pretty buds peeping out of the green leaves.”

The poor woman's face brightened as she looked,
first on the rose and then on her sickly child, on
whose face she had not seen so bright a colour for
months.

“God bless her!” she exclaimed, unconsciously.

“Miss Florence—yes, I knew you would feel so,
mother. Does it not make your head feel better
to see such a beautiful flower? Now you will not
look so longingly at the flowers in the market, for
we have a rose that is handsomer than any of them.
Why, it seems to me it is worth as much to us as
our whole little garden used to be. Only see how
many buds there are! Just count them, and only
smell the flower! Now where shall we set it up?”
And Mary skipped about, placing her flower first
in one position and then in another, and walking
off to see the effect, till her mother gently reminded
her that the rose-tree could not preserve its
beauty without sunlight.

“Oh yes, truly,” said Mary; “well, then, it must
stand here on our new stand. How glad I am
that we have such a handsome new stand for it;
it will look so much better.” And Mrs. Stephens
laid down her work, and folded a piece of newspaper,
on which the treasure was duly deposited.

“There,” said Mary, watching the arrangement
eagerly, “that will do—no, for it does not show
both the opening buds; a little farther around—a
little more; there, that is right;” and then Mary
walked around to view the rose in various positions,
after which she urged her mother to go with
her to the outside, and see how it looked there.

“How kind it was in Miss Florence to think of
giving this to us!” said Mary; “though she had
done so much for us, and given us so many things
yet this seems the best of all, because it seems as
if she thought of us, and knew just how we felt
and so few do that, you know, mother.”

What a bright afternoon that little gift made in
that little room. How much faster Mary's fingers
flew the livelong day as she sat sewing by her
mother; and Mrs. Stephens, in the happiness of her
child, almost forgot that she had a headache, and
thought, as she sipped her evening cup of tea, that
she felt stronger than she had done for some time.

That rose! its sweet influence died not with the
first day. Through all the long cold winter, the
watching, tending, cherishing that flower awakened
a thousand pleasant trains of thought, that beguiled
the sameness and weariness of their life. Every
day the fair, growing thing put forth some fresh
beauty—a leaf, a bud, a new shoot, and constantly
awakened fresh enjoyment in its possessors. As it
stood in the window, the passer-by would sometimes
stop and gaze, attracted by its beauty, and
then proud and happy was Mary; nor did even the
serious and careworn widow notice with indifference
this tribute to the beauty of their favourite.

But little did Florence think, when she bestowed
the gift, that there twined about it an invisible

thread that reached far and brightly into the web
of her destiny.

One cold afternoon in early spring, a tall and
graceful gentleman called at the lowly room to pay
for the making of some linen by the inmates. He
was a stranger and wayfarer, recommended through
the charity of some of Mrs. Stephens's patrons. As
he turned to go, his eye rested admiringly on the
rose tree, and he stopped to gaze at it.

“How beautiful!” said he.

“Yes,” said little Mary, “and it was given to
us by a lady as sweet and beautiful as that is.”

“Ah,” said the stranger, turning upon her a pair
of bright dark eyes, pleased and rather struck by
the communication; “and how came she to give it
to you, my little girl?”

“Oh, because we are poor, and mother is sick,
and we never can have anything pretty. We used
to have a garden once, and we loved flowers so
much, and Miss Florence found it out, and so she
gave us this.”

“Florence!” echoed the stranger.

“Yes—Miss Florence l'Estrange—a beautiful
lady. They say she was from foreign parts; but
she speaks English just like other ladies, only
sweeter.”

“Is she here now? Is she in this city?” said the
gentleman, eagerly.

“No; she left some months ago,” said the
widow, noticing the shade of disappointment on his
face; “but,” said she, “you can find out all about
her at her aunt's, Mrs. Carlysle's, No. 10 —
street.”

A short time after, Florence received a letter in
a handwriting that made her tremble. During the
many early years of her life spent in France, she
had well learned to know that writing—had loved as
a woman like her loves only once; but there had
been obstacles of parents and friends, long separation,
long suspense, till, after anxious years,
she had believed the ocean had closed over that
hand and heart; and it was this that had touched
with such pensive sorrow the lines in her lovely
face.

But this letter told that he was living, that he
had traced her, even as a hidden streamlet may be
traced, by the freshness, the verdure of heart,
which her deeds of kindness had left wherever she
had passed. Thus much said, our readers need
no help in finishing my story for themselves.