Red Striped Roses.

I know that if I have heaven
there is nothing to desire.
Rain and river, a world of wonder
may be paradise to me.
Enya- China Roses, from the album "Only Time".

It was the queerest thing, it was, once I got me’self up Bag End and back inta the garden there. Sam-lad had taken out the square buildings Sharkey’s men’d put up, o’course, and let light back inta the windows, but the yellow spots in the sod hadn’t filled in yet. It’d be a while, o’course, by end o’ summer on the early side. The vegetable patch too, wasn’t lost entirely either. If anythin’, a year left fallow as it was was good for it, though I saw that Sam-lad turned it and planted just as he woulda’ in the fall. No good changin’ the rotation tryin’ to squeak more out of it only to bleed that good dark soil dry.

So we sowed the corn in last year’s bean patch and the beans in where the ‘maters and pickles and cabbages had been, well, Sam-lad did, and added here an’ there a pinch o’ stuff he says the Elf Queen give ‘im. Soil from her very own garden that he carried in his rucksack clear to the mountain of fire and back, he says. Any other Da’d think whatever fairy stories the lad’d heard from Master Bilbo as a faunt might’ve addled him, those first few months back. But no other Da heard my Sam-lad wi’ his nightmares an’ cryin’ out for Young Master Frodo in the night. Didn’ see the hauntin’ around his eyes when he looked off west or southward neither. Where ever they was gone wi’ them Big Folks, it put Sam-lad through a terrible somethin’. Worse even then what we been through here, ye’understand me. That’s why they all come back queer in their ways, with them young lads all in armor an’ ridin’ ever’where, and Young Master Frodo shy a finger. A terrible somethin’, they seen, those lads.

But the roses, now, they’d been just fine, coddled as they been through the years. A year o’ hard times made ‘em better, if anythin’. Windward side fared a little the harder for not bein’ properly mulched and wrapped, but the leeward didn’t look ta’ve taken any mind of the cold an’ snow a’tall as the summer went on. Been protected from the most of it by one o’ them sheds the Big Folk had built, Sam pointed out. Dunno when he did it, but he become a right smart lad in most ways. Got it from ‘is Ma I should think.

But, with the lads back just at the height o’ spring opening things up, gettin’ folks freed and back into their gardens again, I kep’ my eye on them roses. Folks’d be wantin’ cuttings come next season, replacin’ what’d been destroyed by those thieven’ cowards o’ Sharkey’s, and The Baggins always had right beautiful roses. So I been watchin’ those roses start to green up an’ bud out, and there were some fine lookin’ fat buds on ‘em come Midsummer. An’ just when I’d been thinkin’ they’d open in time to go into Bag End , they disappeared. Cut, SNIP, in the middle o’ the night. An’ I didn’ think anythin’ of it at first. Young Master Frodo was back where he belonged; surely he’d the right to cut his own rosebuds. So I’d look, when I was there with Sam-lad, seein’ which ones was ready to pop next an’ how they looked to hip, seein’ about startin’ from seed now I don’t walk so good an’ have the time wi’em. But then I noticed somethin’ right queer indeed.

There weren’t no roses inside Bag End . Not a single budvase, there weren’t. I’d gone up askin’ after Sam-lad, thinkin’ he’s seein’ to a meal for the young Master, an’ rapped at the kitchen door to poke my head in. Weren’t really lookin’ for ‘em, but the Young Master’d been scarce those days, what with rebuildin’ and doin’ the mayorin’ an’ all, and I hadn’t seen the lad in a while. I s’pose I was a mite worried after ‘im, after what they done and how they was after it. But the Young Master hadn’t seen Sam-lad all that day.

“He’s gone walking with Miss Cotton,” Young Master Frodo said, an’ I thought that odd, ‘cause o’course, middle of the day as it was, even a lad in love’d be concerned for a meal. But he’d been down their place so much durin’ the cleanin’ up and routin’ out, it weren’t odd he’d be with the Cottons, only queer he’d be walkin’ at dinner time, if ye’ understand me.

So I says to the Young Master, I says, “Master Frodo, then, if’n you’re well, I’ll be beholden’ if I might borrow that old goat cart o’ yourn and take me’self down there. Been an inquiry ‘bout some o’ that dirt o’ my Sam’s an’ the Widow Proudfoot’s flax field.”

So then he says nonsense an’ he’d drive me himself in that pony cart o’ his an’ I weren’t too pleased wi’ that a’tall, but the Young Master insisted an’ it wouldn’ be proper to refuse the favor then. Made a quick trip of it, leastways, an’ the weather was fine. Good ta’ see what folks had already gotten put to rights, too. An’ I’d started feelin’ rather fine me’self, which isn’t such a regular thing these days, when we got there to the Cotton place an’ Tom come out ta’ greet us. See, I happen ta’ look off toward the smial an’ I see a bowl o’ yellow roses in the window.

“Odd,” I’m thinkin’ then, “those look like the roses from under the Young Master’s kitchen window.” So Tom, he says like the Young Master that Sam-lad’s off walkin’ with young Rosie in the middle o’ the day. An’ that, combined wi’ them roses strikes me as considerable queer, though I didn’ say nothin’, o’course. Wouldn’ be proper. So we go in and sit an take a bite an’ sup, and after payin’ Lily the proper compliments toward her victuals, I see sittin’ on the kitchen sill another bowl o’ roses what look familiar. An’ these I knew ‘cause they’d turned up from that mistake I’d made before Sam-lad was a twinkle. You know the ones I mean, the red roses planted next window down from the ivory white, them ones that the bees take the color off an’ leave red streaks all down the ivory petals. I’d thought to tear the bush out and move it, but Master Bilbo, he’d liked it, an Young Master Frodo kep’ ‘em since Master Bilbo’d liked ‘em so, but o’course nobody seen what happened when that bush flowered save Sam-lad an them that lived in Bag End .

So, I’m thinkin’ then, there’s only two ways I see that those roses been endin’ up on the Cottons’ window sills. One’s that the Young Master been sendin’ ‘em down with Sam-lad. The other’s that Sam-lad’s been takin’ ‘em himself. An I didn’ like that one little bit, I didn’. An’ then, the queerest thing happened.

Young Rosie walked into the kitchen, an’ Sam-lad behind her, an’ I happened ta’ look down an’ there on her finger don’t I see a daisy ring. So there it is then, I think. The answer right in front o’ my nose. An’ that’s how I knew he was gettin’ fixed to marry ‘er, ye see. Isn’t nobody else he’d steal flowers for. Never. So I made up my mind then that night to find this old ring and give it to ‘im, on the promise he wasn’t stealin’ no more roses, though o’course I didn’ say nothin’ at the time.

Was on the way back up Bag End that the Young Master mentioned it. “I do so enjoy those striped roses of yours, Gaffer,” he said. “I was looking at them there on the window sill as we ate and thought they’d never looked prettier.”

Weren’t nothin’ to say to that, though wouldn’t be proper not to reply so I says somethin’ about them lookin’ right nice against Lily’s blue curtains before the Young Master commenced talkin’ again.

“I’m very glad I encouraged Sam to take them to her,” he says. An’ there weren’t nothin’ to say to that neither. That was a load off my mind then, it was. If the Young Master’d said to, there weren’t nothin’ improper about it. An’, surprised as I was, I guessed them red striped roses did look nice against them curtains. Thought I should tell you, anyhow, it bein’ your ring an’ all. But you knew the Cotton girl when they was all faunts, and the Cottons is good people, Stoors for the most part. And Sam-lad, Bell, you wouldn’ believe, him lookin’ at her, how much he looks like his old Gaffer. Even I see it an’ I’m half blind. Don’ know quite what the girl sees in him, but then again, I never quite knew what you saw in me neither. But, with your blessin’, I’m givin’ Sam-lad the ring. The lass deserves more than flowers, she does.