THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS
However good at pretending Felice might wish you to be she would never
like you to pretend you were the crumpled little person that Major
Trenton and Certain Legal Matters picked up from the narcissi border.
It wasn't only her sprained ankle that frightened her, though that
hurt dreadfully of course, but it was all of the persons running with
lanterns, the housemaids from the kitchen and Zeb and Marthy from the
stable, and from over the top of the wall had vaulted an enormously
tall young man who had insisted on dashing off for a doctor. Just
having so many persons about all at once terrified her.
But when the ankle was bandaged and the doctor had left her lying
comfortably on her own bed with Marthy beside her, Grandfather came
and sent Marthy away. It was nearly midnight, the world outside was
still save for the hoarse sounds of the shipping craft outside in the
bay.
"You may as well know," said the Major sternly, "that I happened to
look out of the window, just before you fell--this young man who was
kissing you has been chivalrous enough to insist that it was quite all
his fault, that you did not know he was going to kiss you--but of
course I am not so stupid as to believe that you did not expect
something of the sort when you climbed up to the top of the wall.
Knowing the women of your race as I do I might have suspected
something of the sort--" he folded his arms, and looked so stern in
the dim light of her bedside lamp that Felicia shivered, "et I hardly
thought you would have the opportunity, carefully guarded as you have
been. I have told the young man that he must make no further attempt
to see you. And the doctor assures me you will be able to continue the
journey that we have planned."
And when he was gone and Marthy had come back to put out the light
Felicia asked just one thing.
"Did Maman have to stay in bed because she fell off a bench?"
Marthy's gruff voice cleared itself in her throat, she wasn't sure
whether she wanted to laugh or cry at the absurd question.
"Not for that," she answered briefly, "don't let that fret ye, my
precious lamb, that foot of yours will be good as new in the matter of
a week maybe."
"Even if it wasn't evaire," Felicia persisted, "I'd be proud, proud,
proud I climbed the wall--I shall tell Maman so--"
There was a long silence in the room. The lamp was out now; Marthy was
at the door ready to go. Felice could only feel her approaching the
bed. Her rough kindly voice blurred out of the darkness.
"Precious lamb, were you thinking to see your mother?"
In spite of her aching ankle the girl sat up in the bed. She laughed
softly.
"Silly old Marthy! Don't you know? That's what we're going to the
House in the Woods for--to see how Maman has made her garden lovely--I
was so proud, proud, proud when I knew Grandy was going to take me--
I've waited so long since Maman went away--"
"God forgive him!" moaned Marthy, so softly that the girl did not hear
her, but aloud she said compassionately, "Don't be settin' your heart
too much--on seeing her--" and shut the door softly without saying
goodnight.
But when the kindly soul came to help her down the stately stairway in
the morning the tears were coursing freely over her lean and grizzled
cheeks. She talked in a husky whisper all the way down.
"We've not been in the manner of friends, him being so careful and all
of ye, but oh, Miss Felice, it's proud I am that I watched you in your
bit of a yard and it's sorry I am that you're going--and it's long the
days will be till you come back--and if there's anything that Zeb or I
could do for you--"
They were in the hallway now, the Major was waiting and some strange
men were carrying the last of the baggage outside to the carriage.
Suddenly Felice put her two arms around Marthy's neck and whispered,
whispered very softly and lifted her face away blushing,
"You can tell Dudley Hamilt I've gone to the House in the Woods--when
he comes to ask you--" she said.
The Major was very impressive in his travelling coat, so stern and
solemn that Felicia hardly dared to look at him until after they were
on the steamer. He was really very gentle with her, he tried his best
to make her comfortable, he did not refer at all to the events of the
night before as he wrapped a steamer rug about her and helped the
whining-voiced stewardess to prop a pillow under the bandaged ankle.
It was a desolate day, gray and overcast. The shore-line was blurred
out before Felicia had so much as a fair look at it. The wind blew,
raw and cold, but she shook her head when they suggested she let them
take her into the cabin. She just lay with closed eyes and cuddled a
little black velvet cap, a boy's cap, under her chin and with every
chug of the engines her heart echoed,
"This is too far for Dudley Hamilt to come--he will nevaire find me--"
She scarcely spoke to the Major. Poor Major! He walked the deck, his
thin cane, tap, tap, tapping and his great caped coat bundled tight
around him.
The morning of the second day they changed to an even smaller and
dingier steamer. That was the day that the spring rain fell heavier
and heavier. Felice lay bundled in blankets in the narrow stateroom
and cried softly. There wasn't even a stewardess on this steamer to
comfort her. Sometimes the Major stopped outside and asked her quietly
what she would like. There was nothing she liked, but in the mid-
afternoon she pulled herself together and let the Major wrap her coat
about her and leaned on his arm to limp out of her stateroom and down
the wobbling gang-plank and across a dirty, water-soaked wharf to the
platform where the local train awaited. And after that she sat another
dreary hour, while the ancient engine complainingly coughed its way
through the bleak, gray woods to the ugly brown station that was their
destination.
It was late afternoon. The rain had not really ceased to fall, but the
sky was clearing a bit in the west as the girl stared curiously about
her, while the baggage man helped the trainmen with their luggage.
Suddenly the girl cried out with joy,
"Look, there is Maman's cart--"
For around the corner of the station space crept an ox-cart driven by
a half grown boy. But in the hollow of the plains, just before he had
reached that dreary town, the boy had stopped his cart and gathered
sprawling boughs of wild cherry blossoms, those first harbingers of
spring in that bleak northern country, and fastened them to the wooden
yoke that held the oxen to the wagon and tied the lovely things sweet
with rain, to the poles at the rear and made a sort of fairy chariot
for the little lady who was coming to dwell in the woods.
He smiled at her under his slouchy cap as he stumbled stiffly toward
the Major.
"The horse," he stammered, "--her foot got sore las' thing--this were
all we had to fetch ye in--Piqueur--he's too old fur drivin' to the
village any more, so Margot--she sends me--"
There were chairs in the back of the ox cart, odd chairs built of bent
hickory with buffalo robes tucked in them. The boy swung Felice into
one of them easily. He tucked the soft fur about her vigorously.
"Better wrop up good," he warned her solemnly, "S'cold." He was
perfectly good-humored at the Major's sharp reprimand at the way he
handled the luggage. The Major clambered in, the oxen started slowly.
As soon as they had passed through the ugly village they turned out of
the woods into a narrow road through sandy plains, an interminable
road it seemed to Felice. Last year's sere leaves rattled on the scrub
oaks; the wind-blown juniper bushes made dark spots against the wet
brown of the sand and the cart swayed lumberingly through the heavy
road. The girl was cold and tired and hungry but she held her head
high and gazed straight before her into the fast falling twilight.
Up hill, the narrow winding road across that almost endless plain led.
Sometimes the boy let the oxen stop to rest and the rising steam from
their wet flanks told how hard even those sturdy beasts found the
climb. Just as she was thinking that she could endure it no longer,
Felice glimpsed a faint light on a plateau-like place above them. The
boy gestured with his whip.
"Thar, Major," he called back cheerfully over his shoulder, "We're a-
gittin' thar--"
They were through the plains at last, ascending a sharp, rocky road
for the last quarter of a mile which grew still narrower but was lined
with enormous bare trees that creaked and moaned in the evening wind.
Felice was really very frightened.
"Now that's luck," cried the boy cheerily, looking back at her. He was
pointing with his crude whip. It was quite dark now save for a faint
light below the horizon of the sand dunes, but over her shoulder as
she looked where he gestured Felice saw the thin crescent of the new
moon.
When she looked ahead again she could glimpse the dark outlines of the
great stone house. It looked cold and formidable. It was set far back
from the rising road, a long way back from the massive gate posts
beside the tiny gate house where flickering lights burned on the sills
of three little mullioned windows. They drove through the gates,
across the flagstone-paved drive of the stable yard and came to a slow
stop under the inky shadows of the wooden gallery that was built
across the front of the house. A woman was hurrying down the sagging
steps, such a fat, comfortable woman that Felice unconsciously leaned
toward her even before she could see the alert black eyes and the wide
smiling mouth. She held a lantern high above her gray curly head. It
shone upon the figure of a bent old man, who stood, his cap in his
hands, at the foot of the steps. He was weeping. His voice was throaty
with suppressed sobs and Felice couldn't understand at all what he
said because he cried out in French when he saw the Major. But she
could understand the welcome cheer of the fat woman's greeting as she
called,
"It's all ready--supper and all--just as though it were twenty years
ago, Monsieur! Ah--" sympathy rang in her voice as the Major helped
Felice descend, "I did not know--she is--lame--" Her lantern was on
the ground now, her sturdy arm had encircled the slender figure in the
coat, "Margot will help--so--"
And that was the way that Felice went into the House in the Woods.
That was the way she entered the broad and draughty hall, with the
formidably big rooms on either side dimly lighted by the queer candle
lamps and the faint glow from the fires on the chilly marble hearths.
A table was set before the fire in the dining salon. It looked
dismayingly long, with its deep lace cover and the branched
candelabra. The very height of the carved chairs that were placed at
either end seemed appalling.
But when Felice was seated in one of them, with her coat still huddled
about her, she looked around with artless curiosity, and watched as in
a dream, while the Major put his hand on Margot's sturdy shoulder.
"You've kept it well--" was all he said. But when he had dropped his
hand Margot was wiping her eyes on her apron.
Piqueur served supper, his old hands trembling as he placed the dishes
before them. A hot thin soup, that warmed Felice and made her send a
wavering smile across the table, a platter of ham boiled in apple
cider whose delicious odors made her sniff hungrily, and after he had
served the meat the old man put thin glasses beside their plates and
brought a bottle of wine, wrapped carefully in an old napkin, and
stood behind his master's place.
And the Major, standing after he had filled Felice's glass, lifted his
own high:
"Felicia," he said slowly, "We will drink to your home coming--"
It was all so, strange that she did not notice until Piqueur set a
dish of custard before her that all the silver with which she was
eating was marked with the same odd mark that had adorned her silver
drinking mug back in the nursery in Brooklyn. She stared at it as she
held a thin spoon aloft.
"Look, Grandy," she cried, "it has my honey bee!"
He nodded.
He scarcely seemed to heed her, already he had risen and was pacing
restlessly about the room, peering out the windows, addressing
staccato questions in French to Piqueur. He pulled the shabby silken
rope at the doorway and a bell trilled somewhere faintly. Margot came
running.
"It is good to hear" she said as she entered. And helping Felice up
the circular stairway she murmured tenderly, "You cannot know, Miss
Felicia, how glad we are, my uncle Piqueur and I, that the house is
opened once more--you're not so tall as your mother, are you?" She was
positively chattering now. Felice caught her arm more closely.
"Oh, where is Maman?" she demanded. Margot shook her head. She sighed.
She was opening the door of the upper room. She did not answer for a
full moment. Her lips worked nervously before she spoke.
"She is not here. But this is the bed where she always slept when she
was young--the bed at which she laughed so much--ah, Miss Felicia,
don't you think you will like it? See how droll--" her brown wrinkled
hand rested on a beautifully carved corner post, "These are little
monkeys climbing for fruit--when she was a baby Mademoiselle Octavia
used to put her hands on them so--"
Felice smiled.
"I know. She used to tell me," she confided. "She told me that
Poquelin, the father of Moliere, made it." She was wan with fatigue,
poor child, even after she lay, warm and cozy, in the great bed that
had been her mother's. And the last thing she saw as she closed her
eyes in the wavering candle light was Margot's fat and comfortable
figure, trudging toward the fireplace to spread out her coat to dry--
It had been a fearful week for Margot, this week since the Major's
curt message to make the house ready had come. For all that she was
forty-five and sturdy and skilful at the myriad tasks that her uncle
Piqueur's rheumatism and age had gradually let fall upon her shoulders
during the slow passing years, this had been a job that put her on her
mettle. Eighteen years of dust and disorder had Margot somehow or
other weeded out of that building. But even with the pale spring
sunshine and wind to help her and even with the huge fires they had
kept kindled all day in the broad fireplaces, the corridors were still
damp and cold and musty. And she was weak with fatigue and excitement.
She sat down beside the fireplace, her tired body relaxing as she
stared through the gloom at the figure in the canopied bed.
"She is not so beautiful as Octavia--" she thought, "but she is very
sweet--and her eyes--they have that same longing to be happy--" she
sighed as she tiptoed clumsily out of the room and down the draughty
stairway. She stood respectfully beside the Major's chair. "Monsieur,"
she said gravely, "does Miss Felicia know anything at all about all
of us?"
He looked up at her quickly, his dark eyes sparkling with anger at her
audacity, but something in her sober, respectful gaze quieted him.
"I do not desire that she shall--" he answered. "It is better not to
have her--but--" his voice faltered. "I regret that she does not
understand that her mother--that Miss Octavia--" his thin old hand
tightened its grip on the frail arm of the chair, "I do not know," he
ended miserably, "just how it came about that she is expecting to find
Miss Octavia here--in the garden. Perhaps you can tell her something
to comfort her--perhaps--"
Gray-haired, wrinkled, her skin brown from exposure, Margot leaned
forward, her eyes shining with excitement.
"Sometimes I think," she said distinctly, "that Miss Octavia _is_ in the
garden, Monsieur--" She laughed softly at his start. "Do not think I am
out of my wits--" She tapped her head significantly. "I do not mean like
a ghost--I do not see her. Only there is something, most of all in the
springtime--that makes me happy. Perhaps Octavia's daughter will feel
it. Perhaps that thing, whatever it is, will make it easier for me--"
she wiped her eyes, "to answer all things she will ask me--"
Upstairs in the four-poster bed that Poquelin had carved, Felicia
slept, she smiled as she stirred in her slumbers. She was very tired.
"Maman," she muttered drowsily as the Major paused outside her door on
his way to his room, "In the garden--" and the Major listened and
sighed.
She awoke to the diddling drone of Piqueur's quavering voice. In the
clear sweetness of the May morning above the twittering of the birds
it raised itself, the quaint measures delighting her ears. Even in
Piqueur's thin falsetto the old melody sang itself--tender, graceful,
spirited, never lagging--he was dropping pea seeds into the trench
that Margot had prepared in the kitchen dooryard, he was always
content when he was planting.
Felicia limped to the window across the moth-eaten carpet with its
faded doves and roses. She flung the casement out and listened
eagerly.
"Piqueur," she cried entreatingly "tell me just what it says--that
song you sing." But it was Margot who leaned on her hoe and looked up
at the girl and laughed.
"He sings of a girl--of more than one girl--who takes care of sheep--
the song tells them to hurry up--that time drips through the fingers
like water--" Margot's own throaty voice joined lustily into her
uncle's refrain, but a second later she was translating once more.
"You must find your fun in the spring forests--when you're young--"
The girl in the window above them clapped her hands. A slender black-
haired, eager-eyed dryad, whose shabby brocaded dressing gown trailed
around her bandaged foot--
"Oh, wait! wait!" she cried, "Wait until I can do it--" her lips
pursed themselves delicately and a second later the lilting trill of
her lovely whistle took up the refrain of Maitre Guedron's song.
She stretched out her young hands toward the woods. The tardy tree
tops were budding at last, their lovely bronze and red and tender
green shining in the morning light.
"'In the spring forests,'" she cried, "'you must find your fun'--are
those the words of the song, Margot?--Oh, look, look!" she pointed
joyously to a blackbird on top the swaying maple outside her window.
He whistled--she whistled, saucily back.
"Oh!" sighed Margot. "It is good to be young. It is good--go back to
your bed, little one, I'll bring your breakfast."
But Felicia couldn't go back to bed. She hobbled delightedly from
window to window, staring out at the open space in front of the house,
with its descending terraces and the gray jungle of underbrush that
hid the edge of the clearing. She turned eagerly when Margot entered
with a tray. She was bubbling with joy.
"Is Maman comfortable this morning?" she was chattering. "Will she be
in the garden? Where is the garden? I've looked and I can't see it--or
is she in her bed yet? And is it up-stairs?"
Margot's hands trembled. She put the tray down on the bedside table
and pulled the girl across the room and coaxed her into the bed,
rubbing the small bandaged foot, cuddling the quilts about her, as she
tucked the pillows. "So many questions!" she evaded. "Eat your
breakfast and I will help you dress--"
Felicia snuggled under the covers and nibbled her toast hungrily.
"Yesterday," she confided, "I was unhappy; it seemed too far to come--
I was afraid, from something Marthy said, that I wasn't going to find
Maman--she said I mustn't set my heart on it--"
Margot sighed. She came close to the bed and took Felicia's hands in
hers.
"Listen carefully," she entreated, "the thing I have to tell you is
hard. You see when Octavia went away from you she did not come here,
she--"
"Where did she go?" demanded Felicia sitting bolt upright.
"She went--" Margot's throaty voice dragged painfully, "She went where
all good women go when their work is done--"
"Her work wasn't done," objected Felice. "She said it would be a great
deal of work to build the garden over, she said she was afraid it
would be all weeds--Piqueur was so old--she said--Oh! why are you
weeping, Margot?"
"When she went away from me first," moaned Margot, "I thought I could
never stand it--it was so still and so lonely here in the woods
without her--and now, after all these years that I have learned to
live without her--it is as if she had gone away again to have to try--
to tell you--" she knelt at the bedside, her lips moved piteously.
"Try to understand, little one, she is gone--neither you nor I can
find her--"
"Nor the Major?" asked Felicia incredulously.
"The Major least of all," said Margot firmly. "She is not--"
"Not what?" demanded Felicia..
She was sitting on the edge of the bed now looking very little in the
ancient dressing gown.
"She is not living any more," sighed Margot.
There was a long pause, a pause in which the drone of Piqueur's voice,
still singing Maitre Guedron's old song, floated through the open
casement.
"Not living?" questioned Felicia, her eyes widening with frightened--
comprehension--"Oh! Oh!" her voice rose tempestuously, angrily, "You
shall not say such dreadful things! They are not true! The Major said
we should come to this house in the Woods, he said--" she paused, her
mind groped back over the years.
The rising tide of her anger swept her fear that this strange woman
was telling the truth farther and farther out of her thoughts. She
rose, absurdly majestic as she steadied herself with one slender arm
against the quaint carved post of the bed. She pointed toward the
doorway.
"You'd better go away, Margot," she ordered clearly, "You can't stay
here and talk so to me--" the childish simplicity of her phrases was
absurdly inadequate to express her scorn, "You do not know that I have
a vairee bad temper--I make myself proud, proud, proud when I lose it
--but it will make you vairee unhappy if I do--I say and I do most
dreadful things when I'm angry--If I call for the Major he will come
and send you away--for always and forevaire--as he did Mademoiselle
D'Ormy--and no matter how sorry I am afterward he will not let you
stay--"
Indeed, this idea of appealing to her grandfather had come the instant
before when she heard his voice outside interrupting Piqueur's song.
She limped swiftly across the space toward the window, she leaned far
out and called to her grandfather, who stood in the courtyard below,
gravely inspecting the lame mare that the boy had brought from the
stable. So intent was Felicia with her question that she forgot her
recent fear of the Major.
"Grandy!" she called, her clear tones ringing down to him, "Grandy,
you will have to come and send this Margot away--you will--"
He came up the stairs to her slowly, pausing formally outside her door
to tap for Margot to open for him; but even before he was in the room,
looking very pale and stern and old with his beautiful head lifted
high above the ruffled shirt and his peaked hat held in his hand, the
girl's eager appeal had begun.
"This Margot," Felicia's words tumbled impetuously, "She's been
telling me lies--she says Maman isn't here--that she isn't in the
garden--or in the house--she says she--"
"You'd better stay, Margot," said Major Trenton, "I think Miss Felicia
will need you. Felicia, let Margot wrap that gown about you, it's
chilly here. Felicia, we do not know how to make you understand about
your mother--we did not want to make you sad when you were little so I
did not tell you. It was her wish that I should not distress you--"
his face worked pitifully, "--with the manner of her going--what she
said to you about the garden--you did not understand, my dear--She had
a notion, my little Octavia, that we do not die--that only our bodies
die--many other people believe this--are you listening, Felicia? She
thought that her spirit," he groped for words, "the Something she
called the 'Happy part of her' couldn't--'stop'--as she called it--she
said-" his lips were quivering, "that part of her would always try to
stay in the house where you lived so long and in this garden and house
in which she lived when she was young--like you--that is all--What
Margot tells you is quite true--she is not living--she has not been
living since you were eleven--she died--" his words trailed miserably,
"She is not living--" he repeated feebly.
The girl's eyes had never left his since he had begun his inadequate
explanation, she did not cry out, she merely stood there, pale,
unbelieving and stared at him.
"And she said the Happy Part of her would be here?"
He nodded.
"Then," said Felicia calmly, "If she said so, she will, and you and
Margot are both stupid and bad to tell me that she won't--If you will
find my shoes--" she turned petulantly to Margot, "I will walk until I
find her--"
"But you cannot find her, she is gone--" the deep agony of his voice
rang in the great room, "Quite gone--"
"Where has she gone?" demanded Felice stubbornly.
He gestured his despair.
It was Margot who came to the rescue, sane Margot, who had collected
her senses once more. She pattered across the room to the wardrobe,
calling over her shoulder as she tugged at the door.
"Wait, wait," she entreated, "You will understand some day! Just now
we won't talk about it any more. She's not here but she has left so
many things for you! So many messages for you! So much for you to do!
Look, Miss Felicia!" She held aloft a broad sun-hat and a pair of
gauntleted gloves, "Just where she hung them--as if she knew you might
want them! These are the things she wore when she worked in the
garden--here's her wicker basket with the trowel and the hand fork--
and here's the garden book--" She was standing before Felicia now
holding out the treasures. "If you'll sit over there by the window I
can tell you about the day she found this book--"
The hurt look was fading from the girl's eyes; she reached out her
hands for these things that had been her mother's; she was quite
docile as the Major helped her to the chair by the window. She had the
garden book cuddled under her arm; she was holding the gloves against
her cheek; she looked like a child instead of a grown-up person.
You won't have to pretend you can see Felicia's great-great-
grandmother's garden book--you can really see it in the library of
Octavia House if you care to ask the Poetry Girl to show it to you--
but perhaps you'll like to pretend that you can see the seventeen year
old Felicia, wrapped in that shabby brocaded dressing gown sitting
beside the window staring at the stained title page, trying to read
the faint inked inscription. Perhaps you'll like to pretend too, that
you can hear her grandfather's voice steadying itself as he leans over
the back of the chair and translates the inscription for her. The
book's in English, you know, but that written inscription is in
French.
"It says," read her grandfather, "something like this:
"'To my little Madame Folly
Whom others call Prudence Langhorne
I present this book, for I have heard
A woman can be very happy building a garden--'"
"And whose name is this?" Felicia put her finger on the broad sprawl
after the inscription.
"It's the initial of the man who gave it to her--J.--" said her
grandfather grimly.
"And J. gave this book to Maman?"
Margot chuckled.
"No--no--" she explained. "Your Maman found this book over there in
the cupboard--it's a very old book, Cherie. It is a book that a man
gave to--" her fat fingers checked off the generations lightly, "a
lady named Prudence--she was the mother of Josepha--and Josepha was
the mother of a Louisa. It was this Louisa who was your mother's
mother--now do you see? And think, Miss Felicia--" she waved her hand
toward the opened door of the wardrobe, "what many, many things
they've left here for you! When Octavia was just as old as you she
rummaged and rummaged every day--" Margot wiped her eyes with the back
of her hand--the Major moved toward the window and looked down upon
the garden. "She put them all in order, each one's clothes in a
different place, I was the one who helped her. And she used to laugh
while we sorted the things and say what fun it would be for the next
one who came to see them--that's you, Miss Felicia--"
"Oh! Oh!" breathed Felicia, her eyes shining like stars. "How sweet of
her! How sweet of you, Margot, to keep them all for me! You are sweet,
sweet, sweet to bring me her gloves! Once she told me about this hat,
I knew its ribbons would be blue! I know how they tie in back so's it
won't make me warm under my chin--she told me--look, isn't this the
way?" Her slender hands lifted the hat to her hair, so sweetly rumpled
from her pillows, "Look, Grandy, look at me! I am wearing Maman's hat
--she told me I could wear it when I came to the House in the Woods! Do
you think it looks well on me?" Her naive vanity almost broke their
hearts. "Do you, Grandy? Look at me!"
He turned slowly. He stepped bravely toward her and lifted her hand
and kissed it.
"You look very charming, my dear," he murmured, he was breathing hard,
"very charming--I'll go back to the stable, if you'll excuse me--
Margot will show you the other things--" he was in the doorway now,
his head held high, "as she told you they've all been kept for you
carefully. I hope they will make you very happy."
He closed the door softly.
Things to make her happy! Ah! Margot! Cunning Margot! spreading the
treasures of those dear dead women before their imperious little
descendant! Wise old Margot, who must speak so carefully that she will
not break that girl's heart! Margot, who must undo all the trouble
that years of evasions from Grandy and lies from Mademoiselle D'Ormy
have stored up for her!
With what infinite tact did she bring them out, those vanities And
trinkets of those girls of bygone days; with what adroit eloquence did
she introduce all their foibles and virtues to Felicia! Oh, but she
was a fine old gossip, was Margot! She couldn't quite trust herself to
touch Octavia's clothes that first day. She plunged wildly into
Louisa's.
While Felice's hands were busy over a shagreen jewel case filled with
hideous garnet and gilt breast-pins and bracelets of the sixties,
Margot leaned from the casement and called,
"Bele, oh, Bele! You careless boy! Bring some wood for Miss Felice!
Make a fire up here! It's damp!"
And while the boy, embarrassed and awkward, was kindling the fire
Margot fled to the kitchen to juggle wildly with her pots and pans and
leave a thousand directions for Piqueur about what to serve for the
Major's lunch.
"Never tell me a man knows how to bring up a child," she scolded as
she stirred her soup, "never tell me that! He's done as well as he
could but he's made a fine mess of it--the poor child! Thinking Miss
Octavia would be here--not knowing so much as a new-born kitten--
that's as much sense as she has--as a little new-born kitten!"
And she hurried back with a delectable luncheon on a tray.
Outside the sun had hid itself and the fickle spring clouds were
dripping over the desolate garden. But at the fireside, curled up in
the winged chair with her bandaged foot propped comfortably on a foot-
stool, Felicia sat through the long afternoon and chattered and
laughed and clapped her little hands.
Oh, those foolish clothes that had belonged to Louisa! With their
silly--whaleboned waists and their grotesque basques and impossible
pleatings! Felicia couldn't get one of those bodies half around her
healthy young waist. But she liked the bonnets and the shawls. They
were adorable. The shawls were so soft, so quaintly shaped, the
bonnets were fairly ravishing. Felicia tried them on, peering into a
carved tortoise shell hand mirror, and giggled whimsically at the
little flowered ones with lacy ties and the stuffy winter ones with
velvet bows.
"Miss Louisa was very handsome," Margot informed her, "My aunt says
she was the handsomest girl she ever saw--but very high-minded, very
uppish!"
"I know about her," Felice answered easily, "Mademoiselle D'Ormy
belonged to her. Louisa went to Paris, you know, and Mademoiselle
lived there. Mademoiselle used to tell me she bought clothes and
clothes and clothes! Are these those clothes?"
Margot nodded.
"Josepha's clothes came from Paris too--" she spread a great brocaded
velvet coat before her, "Josepha wasn't pretty at all like the rest of
them, she looked like her father, they said, and he was a homely old
man--Josepha had a temper--I never saw her--I wasn't even born when
she went away, but my aunt served her and she said Mistress Josepha
had an air--a way with her--if things didn't suit her--" she lowered
her voice impressively--"Ah--what she wouldn't do, that Josepha! Once
my aunt took her an omelette--a beautiful omelette cooked with chopped
fine carrots and peas and parsley and a big tall glass of milk for her
breakfast, but Josepha, she had desired broiled chicken that morning,
so she walked straight to the window here where I'm standing and threw
the omelette out--She would always throw things--that one--her shoes--
or anything--when she was angry--"
Felicia blushed.
"Margot," she confided, "this morning when I was angry I was like
that--I wanted to throw things, only I hadn't anything just then to
throw--but when I was little I did--my bath sponge, you know, and once
a key--" she grew thoughtful, "the key to the storeroom where
Mademoiselle hid things--Margot, you won't hide these things, will
you?" she hugged a wee muff jealously to her breast, "You won't, will
you?"
Margot chuckled and shrugged her shoulders. The room was filled with
the finery she had dragged from the tall wardrobe. On the chairs, over
the bed, hanging from the pegs of the cupboard, of every conceivable
color and shape, those forgotten clothes glimmered and shone.
"These are the oldest of all--" Margot was kneeling and tugging at a
carved cedar chest that was under the bed, "These are the things that
belonged to the first one of you, the things that belonged to Prudence
Langhorne." She dragged the chest triumphantly to the girl's side. "On
top,--" the odor of the cedar was wafted out into the room like the
odor of the pine plains through which Felice had been driving
yesterday, "here, these are things she had when she came to live in
this house that was built for her--plain enough, eh?" She spread the
gray stuffs and brown linsey woolseys out scornfully. Their voluminous
skirts and long tight sleeves and queer flat yellowed collars were
stupid enough in the midst of all the splendor about them. "But look,
now look, what she wore after she came--"
Felicia looked. And not even all the frills and fabrics that she had
already exclaimed over could compare with the loveliness of these
frocks of Mistress Prudence. They were so dainty, so fragile I With
their delicate yellowed laces! They were so soft and faded with age!
Each little frock was packed by itself in a yellowed linen case, each
had shoes and stockings and sometimes a gay little head dress folded
away with it. Short-waisted, scant skirted--
"Oh! Oh!" cried Felice, "these are the ones I love best of all! These
are the ones I'll wear! Oh Margot! That darling rosy one!" She bobbed
out of the chair excitably, "Look at the little silver shoes for it!
Oh Margot, dress me in it at once! Oh, Margot! How pretty I'll be for
dinner every day--"
You should have seen her when she limped down the stairs for supper!
Margot had brought her one of the Major's canes and tied some faded
cherry ribbons on its gold handle. Piqueur was just lighting the
candles when the two descended. Grandfather sat by the fire, his head
drooping. It had been a hard day, this day he had spent with old
memories. He had grieved over Octavia, he had yearned for Louisa, he
had pondered mightily concerning Josepha who had been so angry with
him when he had married her daughter. But he'd thought not at all of
little Madame Folly in whose house he sat and brooded, not until he
looked up and saw her great-great-granddaughter standing in the
doorway, dressed in a cherry-colored gown, all gay with tarnished
silver ribbons and yellowed lace. Because she didn't know any other
way to dress her hair, she had tucked it in its usual knot at the nape
of her lovely neck, but on top the neat parting was perched a narrow
gold circlet with a tiny cherry-colored plume and she held her head
audaciously high as she swept him a mighty curtsy.
"Louisa's things aren't pretty at all," she babbled breathlessly, "and
Josepha's I can't wear--but oh, Grandy, aren't Prudence's just sweet!"
"They look like Imprudence's," he bantered as he rose.
She brought forth other treasures from under her curved arm.
"And look! Little chess men and a little chess board. Get a table!
I'll checkmate you before even dinner is ready! Margot has to go brown
the chickens--hurry Margot, I'm hungry--"
She had come into her own. She was like a young queen come to her
throne. From that very moment she ruled them all,--Grandy, Margot,
Piqueur and Bele as though they were her slaves.
She adored every inch of her domain, she could scarcely wait for the
ankle to heal so that she could rove about the overgrown paths in the
woods and tumbled walks and weed-covered lawns. She could not get up
early enough in the morning to do all her eager young heart longed to
do. Rebuilding the garden was a sacred trust; hadn't Maman told her to
do it? All day long, her serious face shaded by the old garden hat,
her slender hands encased in the gauntleted gloves, she prowled about
the terraces or rummaged in the tool house, usually with the beloved
THEORY AND PRACTISE OF GARDENING under her arm. Sometimes she spread
it open on a dilapidated bench so that she could read its solemn
dissertations. The very title page appalled one with the gravity of
the task. In flourishing type it boasted of its august contents--
Wherein Is fully handled
all that relates to the fine gardens
commonly called pleasure gardens
as Parterres, Groves, Bowling Greens.
Containing
Divers plans and general dispositions.
Methods of planting, and raising in little time,
all the plants requisite in a garden.
Done from the French original in Paris
anno domini 1709
Daytime was not long enough for its perusal. Night after night, she
sat hunched up in the Poquelin bed and pored over her beloved book.
Sometimes after she read she would run and peer out from her casement
window in the moonlight and scowl over the wilderness that lay below
her, the wilderness that had once been a garden. The cleared space
that stretched for two or three hundred yards before the house was
divided into three flat terraces whose crumbling banks had lost their
once careful outlines; and at the bottom of the lowest terrace a
tottering lattice, sagging with old vines, made a background for the
fountain in whose rubbish-filled depths a chubby cupid struggled
patiently with an impossible marble duck.
"If I could only see how it went--" she would fret, "I can't see which
one of them it is."
For in the back of the Garden book were many folded charts and maps,
so big that they stretched out enormously over the counterpane of the
bed. Sometimes Felicia thought that Mistress Prudence' garden must
have been built after "The Sixteenth Practise"--that was a brave plan
"with three terraces and a fountain at the base," but sometimes she
thought it must be after the "single star cut into cabinets."
At first she contented herself with gardening in the Bowling Green
with Piqueur feebly turning over the weedy sod and Bele tramping to
and fro with barrows of manure. Her Bowling Green was in the very
center of the second terrace. She had discovered that directly she
began.
"In France," she read, "a bowling green differs from what you call a
bowling green in England. We mean no other by this word than certain
hollow sinking and slopes of turf which are practised in the middle of
a parterre. A Bowling Green is the most agreeable compartment of a
garden, when rightly placed most pleasant to the eye beside the
pleasure it affords us of lying on its sloping banks in the shade
during hottest weather."
Only it wasn't so easy to read as it looks now we're writing it over.
For "The Theory and Practise of Gardening" made you rub your eyes and
groan, it was such a puzzling sort of book. To begin with its type was
bewildering with its s's all turned like f's and its italics so thin
you could scarcely decipher them. Besides that, the author, who
remained discreetly anonymous, but none the less unwarrantably
conceited, had a maddening way of spreading over a whole page the way
not to do things--he didn't state at the start that it was the wrong
way he was relating, he just meandered on, letting the reader suppose
that was the rightest way possible as he wrote at length pertaining
to:
"How to grow Box Trees from seed.
"The box tree is a green shrub of greatest use and one of the most
necessary in the garden. There are two sorts, the dwarf box which we
French call Buis A' Artous much used for planting the embroidery of
Parterres. It naturally does not grow very much which makes it called
dwarf box. The other kind is the Box Tree of the woods, which advances
much higher and has bigger leaves which make it fit to form Pallisades
and green Tufts for Garnishing. It comes up in the shade but is a long
time gaining any considerable height. It is put to a great many petty
uses, as making balls--as the climate of France is very different from
that of the Indies in the degree heat _it is better to raise from slips
and layers than to try to sow seed which is a great time coming up_."
The book quite frankly disclosed the terrors as well as the joys of
the game. It was most disconcerting to read of
"The Distempers and Insects that Attack....The great Enemies are
Rabbets, Garden Mise, Moles, Caterpillars, Maybugs, Ants, Snails,
Turks, Canthardies and an abundance of weeds, the names of which are
unknown to us--"
She shouted with youthful laughter as she read it, the echoes of her
merriment sounding through the empty halls. She doubled her little
fist and shook it toward the candle, flickering low in its socket.
"That's what has hidden the garden," she murmured, "that's why I can't
see it--" she wrinkled her nose in disgust. "--Abundance-of-weeds--
Piqueur and Bele will settle you!"
All through the verdant spring, all through the quick hot summer the
girl puzzled over the unanswered riddle--the scheme of the garden.
Piqueur and Bele and Margot toiled valiantly pulling up the myriad
abundance-of-weeds, but in vain. It was not until the resplendent
autumn had passed that she had any inkling of the real pattern. There
came a glorious moonlit night, a chilly night when she snuggled under
the blankets and yawned over the chapter that told her "how to mulch
plants for winter." The wind blew so chill that at midnight she
pattered across the old carpet to make the casement fast. The whole
cleared space below her glistened with the fairy glamour of the first
frost. Under the magic silvery whiteness the lost "parterres and
cabinets and lozenges" with their paths and borders stood out as
clearly in the moonlight as the day when Madame Prudence's workmen had
charted them there. She laughed aloud as she ran back and turned to
the map labelled "The twentieth and laft practife which is the most
superb and which is The Bifected Oval."
"Oh, Oh!" she murmured as she leaned across the stone sill, unmindful
of the cold, to blow a tiny kiss to the fountain cupid, "How stupid I
was not to see! You just live in half the oval and the kitchen garden
and the stables are the other half--"
She could scarcely wait for morning to impart her wonderful news to
Grandy and the others.
"Some say it can be done within five years, but ye author believes
from experiences both at Versailles and in ye south of England that a
decade or more is necessary to establish any garden--"
Which warning from the fat brown leather book made it easier for
Felice, you see, because she never hoped to accomplish the garden in a
little time. Besides, Piqueur was, as Octavia had foretold "too old."
But it was Margot--oh, heaven-sent Margot, and the adoring, clumsy
Bele who toiled like four men, and so cabinet by cabinet, parterre by
parterre, terrace by terrace, the superb old garden began to grow
lovely once more.
Think of the victory of the summer when the hedges were at last
properly trimmed! Think of the joy of the flatly rolled turf, the
spring that they found a massive iron roller in an unused shed at the
back of the carriage house! Think of the wonder of that day when the
little fountain laughed again, its pipe unchoked and its overflow
trickling neatly away under the hidden terra-cotta drains!
The busy days lost themselves in weeks, the weeks dripped endlessly
from season to season. By the time the second spring had come it was
as though Felicia had lived in the House in the Woods forever.
The only links with the old life were the two or three visits of
Certain Legal Matters; and as Felice hated him as much as ever she hid
herself all she could during his short stays.
It was during his second visit that Felicia had her first real
encounter with the doughty lawyer. It was in March that he came, and
Felicia and Margot were deep in their spring plans. They needed a
great many things that they didn't have for the garden. It was
practical Margot who suggested casually,
"Why couldn't you ask Mr. Burrel? He could send them to the junction
and I could go with the oxen--I have always asked him for vegetable
seeds when I sent the spring list of supplies--write in a paper,
Cherie, all that we need--put down the roses and the trees and the
lily bulbs and all--tell him that he must send them."
She was rather cunning about it, was Felice. She waited until the
lawyer was strolling impatiently in the gallery waiting for the cart
to drive around from the stable. She approached him boldly, holding
out her list.
"These are some things we need for our garden," she said. "You will
please have them sent at once."
He stared at the imperious young creature. It was the first time she
had ever voluntarily spoken with him. He took the list. He was very
ill at ease.
"I am not certain," he began as he stared amazed at the lengthy order,
"that I can arrange for--er--"
Inwardly quaking Felice answered him. Her low voice sounded
astonishingly calm to her.
"But we must have them," she announced. She played her trump card
valiantly, "You can give it back to me if you can't get them, I have
another person--who can attend to--Certain Legal Matters for me--" Her
voice trailed faintly, she was really rather frightened.
"May I ask whom?" the lawyer demanded in amazement.
"I know where he is," she asserted childishly. "He is in Temple Bar,
Brooklyn, and he would get them for me quickly, I'm sure. You see, in
April we shall need these things for the planting. He told me--" she
added this with delicious positiveness, "to remember to let him know
if you did not manage things properly."
The cart had clattered around now, Piqueur was waiting politely. The
lawyer frankly gaped at her, his eyes narrowed. He looked very pale in
the afternoon light. His thick hand reached out for the list.
"I--I will see that you get what you wish, Miss Felicia--" he
capitulated. "You do not need to ask any one else about it--I'm glad
to do you the favor--"
And all the way across the Pine Plains to the station he questioned
Piqueur as to whether the Major or Felice had had any visitors. But
Piqueur, who had always hated the lawyer, cunningly evaded the cross-
examination. And in less than a week after Burrel's departure Margot
drove the ox-cart across the plains and brought it back fairly laden
with florists' crates and boxes.
Life was not all easy. Keeping the Major happy grew more and more
difficult. If Felicia found the House in the Woods joyous, he did not.
He brooded restlessly save for the hours they spent together over the
chess board or at dinner; sometimes he slowly paced the long gallery
or the hallways, but more often he sat gloomily, his hand on his cane,
his chin resting on his hand and looked sadly across the terrace where
Felice directed her workers. He, like Piqueur, was growing "too old."
He was really seventy-four that summer. Margot knew when his birthday
came and tried to make a little feast but he ignored it. He tried to
pretend a polite interest in the reconstruction of the garden but his
heart was not in it. He liked better to sit indoors in his carved
chair. Even on the warmest days when evening came he wanted a fire
kindled on the chilly marble hearth.
Felicia labored patiently at "making him happy." She had long since
made him a partner in her own game that she called pretending.
"Pretending" just as in the old days when she had played with Maman.
Of course, she had to whistle to pretend and he still affected a scorn
of the whistling he had once forbidden. The "pretending" usually took
place directly after dinner. She would kiss the top of his forehead
audaciously and dance before him with a deep curtsy.
"Let's pretend, Grandy! Let's pretend I'm not Felice! Let's pretend
I'm a blanchisseuse--that's a washerlady. This is a thing that
Piqueur's mother learned in France when she was young--whenever Margot
and I spread our linen on the grass to bleach we whistle this--"
Or sometimes she would demurely assure him that she was, "--a girl
who's pulling roses to sell the man who makes perfume--" She would
snatch up her needlework basket and swing it at her hip and pull the
roses down from the mantelpiece vases and all the while she would
whistle, with her dear little chin perkily lifted and her sparkling
eyes watching to see if the Major was listening.
The song he liked best of all was the song of the hunt. I think he
liked the audacity with which she appropriated his peaked hat and
perched it jauntily on her own head and caught away his cane to use
for a riding crop. "This song," she would explain joyously, "is for
autumn, when all the men and women are waiting on their restless
horses for the master of the hunt to blow his horn--" Her cupped hands
at her lips made a beautiful horn and her whistle rang valiantly in
the great ceilinged room but the hunting song usually lost itself in a
whirr of laughter and frills as the huntress dropped breathless on the
footstool at the Major's side and put her sleek head against his knee.
"Grandy," she whispered once, "You stub-stub-stubborn man! Why don't
you learn to pretend! Why don't you make believe they're all here?"
she waved her hand toward the portraits around them! "I pretend
they're proud, proud, proud I'm here! It must have been vairee stupid
for them before I came!"
The Major was not her only audience. She frequently "pretended" for
Margot and Piqueur and Bele, prancing gaily-about them in their snug
kitchen on the long winter evenings when they huddled by their fire.
For them she whistled all the droll bits of Marthy's songs that she
remembered. Piqueur only listened solemnly, with his smothered briar
pipe held politely in his hand; but Margot, buxom, and red cheeked
with her iron gray hair tucked under her flaring cap would sit and
gape and laugh and quite forget her knitting whenever she could hear,
"He who would woo a widow must not dally He must make hay while the
sun doth shine He must not say 'Widow, be mine--be mine!--'"
Felicia's absurd whine for the timorous lover always made Bele snort
from his corner,
"But boldly cry 'Widow, thou MUST--'"
Ah, the deep contralto of that boyish voice of hers roundly mouthing
the pompous swain's wooing!
She could always make Margot cry when she "pretended" _The Wreck of the
Polly Ann_--with her gray eyes wide with excitement as she described the
rolling waves from the top of the rigging! I don't suppose she ever knew
all of the words of any of these songs or ballads, she never did any of
them quite the same any time, but she caught at the plot and she babbled
a scrap or two of the chorus and she always knew every lilting turn of
the tunes.
There was one "pretend" she could only do when she was alone. She did
not try it often. Sometimes on the spring nights when the tender
breezes let the half-awakened wistaria flutter outside her window, she
would blow out all her candles and lean far across the sill and stare
at her unfinished garden.
And when the house was still, oh, heart-breakingly still, she would
kneel beside the bed and whisper,
"Let's pretend! Let's pretend we're back in your room, Maman! Let's
pretend it's THAT NIGHT! Let's pretend they've just brought me in from
the garden! And that you're laughing a little because you've heard him
say,
"'Second cap I've lost here! Lost one when I was a little shaver!
There was a girl--why, girl--!'
"Oh Maman! Maman! If you'd only been there! You wouldn't have brought
me away!"
She kept the choir boy's black velvet cap in the lowest drawer of the
wardrobe. Once Margot saw it when she was tidying things.
"I don't remember this--" she murmured curiously.
And Felicia had snatched it away jealously and cuddled it under her
chin.
"Because that's mine!" she had retorted passionately, "It's mine!
Mine! And it didn't belong evaire to any other woman only me!"
And the years slipped away like Time in Maitre Guedron's song and
every year the garden grew a little lovelier and every year Felicia
grew a little more sedate and every year Piqueur and the Major grew
"too old." Until Piqueur no longer left his fireside and as for the
Major--well, there came a day when the Major fell prostrate by the
staircase and lay for a long time breathing very hard. That was a
terrifying time until Bele brought a doctor from the village. He was a
good little doctor, round faced and pink cheeked, quite the youngest
thing, save Bele, that Felicia had seen in many years. And he pulled
the Major back to something like life--a something that played chess
very slowly and sometimes called Felicia Octavia and sometimes
querulously murmured,
"Louisa, I forbid you to go to Paris--it's a bad business--"
She "pretended" nothing in these days, simply went gravely about the
myriad tasks that awaited her, directing the stupid Bele, helping the
white haired Margot, sitting proudly at the head of the table smiling
across at a black eyed old gentleman who muttered and fumbled
peevishly at his food or quite forgot to eat at all until she coaxed
him. She always smiled at dinner; one should smile at dinner even
though one feels very, very sad. And after dinner one must make an
attempt to give a querulous old man his game of chess. And let his
cold lips caress one's hand when Bele comes to put him to bed.
But after that, especially if it was spring, she would wander
restlessly in her garden or pace back and forth in her high ceilinged
bed chamber. And sometimes she would kneel beside her window and
murmur a little prayer--she didn't know it was a prayer, it was just a
scrap of something she remembered--
"'I can't get out--I can't get out!' cried the starling," which isn't
in any prayer book of course, save the prayer book of a woman's
imprisoned heart.
She was in the kitchen garden one morning just beside the gatehouse
showing Bele for the thousandth time how to trench the peas without
burying them, when a crumpled old man in a rough cap with a basket
under his arm, limped through the gate.
"I want to see Major Trenton--" he said firmly.
Felicia turned. No one ever came to see the Major any more. Not even
Certain Legal Matters since the time of the Major's fall. Felicia had
signed many papers at his last visit some three years before and since
then no one had bothered the Major.
"You'll have to see me," answered Felicia, coolly, "Bele, not--so--
deep! You're smothering them--what is your business?"
The man took off his cap, he put down his basket and knelt to open it
and out popped the littlest, drollest fluff of a spaniel that ever
frisked.
"Oh, oh!" cried Felicia softly and dropped to her knees. "Oh, oh, it's
a little Babiche! Oh Zeb! Zeb! To think I didn't see who you were--"
And they walked across the paved door-yard with the tears in their
eyes and Felicia took him in to Margot and brought him soup and fed
the wee doggie and fluttered about like a wild young thing instead of
a sedate person of twenty-seven.
"I want to ask you a thousand million things! I want to ask Marthy a
thousand million things--"
Zeb closed his eyes and shook his head.
Felicia patted his shoulder.
"Has she gone away, like Maman?" she asked softly. "I know how hard it
is when folks go away, Zeb."
"But that's not the matter o' my comin'--" Zeb pushed his bowl away
and stood respectfully, "That matter o' my comin' was as I must see
the Major. On your going away, Miss Felicia, he promised me rent free
for my lifetime and he gave me all the breedin' stock they was and
left me the business for what I could make, so's to speak. Which isn't
what it were, with new-fangled big dogs getting in style now. And with
Marthy gone and all. But now with Mr. Burrel skipped out like he did,
things is awful--just awful--and It seemed like I'd got to tell the
Major--"
Margot pulled out a chair for Felicia.
"Sit down, Cherie," she murmured, "Margot will get it out--have you
seen Mr. Burrel?" she questioned eagerly, "We've no sign of him this
long time--"
"He's skipped out--" repeated Zeb dully, "Things is awful--Come last
Thursday they pasted 'Auction, April 10 for Unpaid Taxes' over
everything. So's when I was packing my things I come on some writing
Miss Octavia left Marthy. As to how to get here, and I come."
He was weary and spent with his journey; he was stupider than ever,
poor old Zeb. Not even the round faced doctor, whom Margot and Felicia
called for advice, could learn anything more from his disconnected
story, save that there were "heathen, dirty filthy heathen" living in
the old house.
Felicia cuddled the new Babiche thoughtfully.
"Do you think," she asked, "that the Major would miss me, Doctor, if I
went away a little while to find out about these things?"
The doctor shook his head.
"He wouldn't," he answered, "But, Miss Day, you couldn't go!"
She smiled.
"Couldn't I just!" she breathed. She was quite calm about the details.
Her perfect poise awed both Margot and the doctor into thinking her
quite capable. "Zeb could stay here with Margot, the doctor could take
me to the station, Zeb says he didn't come on a boat, just a train.
And you know, Margot, when I get to Brooklyn, I'll go right to Temple
Bar. There was a man, as I told you, another lawyer. When I was young
he told me to go to him if anything happened. Maman had him come. He
will know what to do."
Nothing they could say would dissuade her. The touch of imperiousness
with which she silenced their objections made the blundering well-
meaning doctor want to shake her. He waited impatiently while Margot
made Felicia ready for the hasty journey. He saw nothing absurd about
the slender figure that came down the stairway toward him wrapped in
the very same traveling coat in which she had first journeyed to the
House in the Woods. She was wearing one of Louisa's ugliest bonnets
with the strings tied primly under her chin and she was fearfully
pale.
The Major was sitting by his fire, dozing gently. He did not notice
her at all. He roused himself for the doctor's perfunctorily cheerful
farewell. It was then that he noted Felicia's coat and bonnet.
"What are you pretending?" he asked.
"I'm pretending I'm going on a journey," she answered cheerfully.
"Don't you think I look like going on a journey, Grandy?"
"I think you look very charming, my dear," he murmured automatically,
his thin hand on the top of his cane. He shivered slightly. "But I
forbid you to go to Paris--bad business--it's a bad business, Louisa!"
At the gateway, just as the doctor was clucking briskly to his horse,
Felicia put out her hand and stopped him. Zeb and Margot and Bele
stood respectfully beside the gatehouse, respectfully but very
troubled.
"It's silly," faltered Felicia, "but I think--I--can't go alone--Zeb,
you bring me my new Babiche, I can carry her under my arm."
Zeb handed the dog up proudly, patting her professionally. He
scratched his head perplexedly as he stepped back from the wheel.
"Hey, wait!" he addressed the doctor as he started a second time. He
fumbled in an inner pocket of his rough coat. "I was forgetting, Miss
Felicia, a matter of a letter for you I found in Marthy's things--she
sent it off at you this long time ago but it came back at her--"
He handed it up, thin, much creased and much bestamped and postmarked.
Miss F. Day
New York.
Or return to
M. Z. Smather
2 Montrose Lane, Brooklyn, N. Y.
Pretend you were the doctor if you like, the tired country doctor,
mildly sorry for the little old maid granddaughter of your apoplectic
patient--that queer patient who lives in that stone mansion some of
those French refugees built over there across the Pine Plains. That's
an easy enough thing to pretend, but a tiresome enough thing, too, for
then you'll have to make believe you're urging your tired horse over
those heavy roads to the railway station so you can get the old maid
there in time for her train. She's quiet enough, in her seedy bonnet
and shabby coat, a nice sensible body usually, only very self-willed.
You know perfectly well she's going off on a wild goose chase and that
she shouldn't be taking that fool puppy with her.
_But oh, I hope you're good at pretending!_ For then you can pretend
you're Felicia Day! Felicia Day sitting in a lumbering local train,
quite unmindful of the atrocious rocking roadbed or the blurred spring
forests that whirl past your smoke-glazed window; quite oblivious of all
the terrors and discomforts of journeys past or journeys still to come!
For then you can pretend that you've just slowly pulled away the
envelope that was so useless because of poor old Marthy's
undecipherable handwriting and that you've kissed the inner wrapping
that reads "Please send this to Miss Trenton (if that's her name). At
once." And then--oh then, you can pretend you are reading the first
letter you ever had in all this world and that it says,
Dear Felice:
You see I've found out your first name even if I'm not sure of the
rest. Anyhow I know Major Trenton is your grandfather. He wouldn't let
me see you this morning when I went to your house and this afternoon
you'd gone away. The old woman says you've gone to a house in the
woods. Please, please tell me you'll let me come to see you. Please
tell me where it is. She doesn't seem to know exactly. The doctor says
your foot will be all right but, oh, I can't forgive myself that I let
you fall. I wish I had never, never let go of you at all--
Oh, girl, please write in a hurry where you are. I want to tell you so
many things. I want to ask you a lot of things. You can send a letter
to my house, it's 18 Columbia Heights, Brooklyn. I know you know my
name because you called it when you were falling. It was so wonderful
to have you know my name--
Oh, Felice, please write me very soon. I can't wait until I get your
letter.
_Your_ DUDLEY HAMILT.