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THE LITTLE ROOM
AND OTHER STORIES
[Illustration:
“You don’t
s’pose
she _set_ it
on fire?”]
THE LITTLE ROOM
AND OTHER STORIES
BY
MADELINE YALE WYNNE
[Illustration]
CHICAGO
WAY & WILLIAMS
1895
COPYRIGHT
BY WAY AND WILLIAMS
MDCCCXCV
_Decorations by the Author_
CONTENTS.
PAGE
THE LITTLE ROOM 7
THE SEQUEL TO THE LITTLE ROOM 41
MY GHOST OF A CHANCE 77
IN GRANADA 91
THE VOICE 105
THE SCARF 119
[_Thanks are due to the Editors of “Harper’s Magazine” for
permission to reprint “The Little Room” from the number for
August, 1895._]
THE LITTLE ROOM.
‘How would it do for a smoking-room?’
‘Just the very place! only, you know, Roger, you must not think of
smoking in the house. I am almost afraid that having just a plain,
common man around, let alone a smoking man, will upset Aunt Hannah. She
is New England--Vermont New England--boiled down.’
‘You leave Aunt Hannah to me; I’ll find her tender side. I’m going to
ask her about the old sea-captain and the yellow calico.’
‘Not yellow calico--blue chintz.’
‘Well, yellow _shell_ then.’
‘No, no! don’t mix it up so; you won’t know yourself what to expect,
and that’s half the fun.’
‘Now you tell me again exactly what to expect; to tell the truth, I
didn’t half hear about it the other day; I was wool-gathering. It was
something queer that happened when you were a child, wasn’t it?’
‘Something that began to happen long before that, and kept happening,
and may happen again; but I hope not.’
‘What was it?’
‘I wonder if the other people in the car can hear us?’
‘I fancy not; we don’t hear them--not consecutively, at least.’
‘Well, mother was born in Vermont, you know; she was the only child by
a second marriage. Aunt Hannah and Aunt Maria are only half-aunts to
me, you know.’
‘I hope they are half as nice as you are.’
‘Roger, be still; they certainly will hear us.’
‘Well, don’t you want them to know we are married?’
‘Yes, but not just married. There’s all the difference in the world.’
‘You are afraid we look too happy!’
‘No; only I want my happiness all to myself.’
‘Well, the little room?’
‘My aunts brought mother up; they were nearly twenty years older than
she. I might say Hiram and they brought her up. You see, Hiram was
bound out to my grandfather when he was a boy, and when grandfather
died Hiram said he “s’posed he went with the farm, ’long o’ the
critters,” and he has been there ever since. He was my mother’s only
refuge from the decorum of my aunts. They are simply workers. They make
me think of the Maine woman who wanted her epitaph to be: “She was a
_hard_ working woman.”’
‘They must be almost beyond their working-days. How old are they?’
‘Seventy, or thereabouts; but they will die standing; or, at least, on
a Saturday night, after all the house-work is done up. They were rather
strict with mother, and I think she had a lonely childhood. The house
is almost a mile away from any neighbors, and off on top of what they
call Stony Hill. It is bleak enough up there, even in summer.
‘When mamma was about ten years old they sent her to cousins in
Brooklyn, who had children of their own, and knew more about bringing
them up. She staid there till she was married; she didn’t go to Vermont
in all that time, and of course hadn’t seen her sisters, for they never
would leave home for a day. They couldn’t even be induced to go to
Brooklyn to her wedding, so she and father took their wedding trip up
there.’
‘And that’s why we are going up there on our own?’
‘Don’t, Roger; you have no idea how loud you speak.’
‘You never say so except when I am going to say that one little word.’
‘Well, don’t say it, then, or say it very, very quietly.’
‘Well, what was the queer thing?’
‘When they got to the house, mother wanted to take father right off
into the little room; she had been telling him about it, just as I am
going to tell you, and she had said that of all the rooms, that one was
the only one that seemed pleasant to her. She described the furniture
and the books and paper and everything, and said it was on the north
side, between the front and back room. Well, when they went to look
for it, there was no little room there; there was only a shallow
china-closet. She asked her sisters when the house had been altered and
a closet made of the room that used to be there. They both said the
house was exactly as it had been built--that they had never made any
changes, except to tear down the old wood-shed and build a smaller one.
‘Father and mother laughed a good deal over it, and when anything was
lost they would always say it must be in the little room, and any
exaggerated statement was called “little-roomy.” When I was a child I
thought that was a regular English phrase, I heard it so often.
‘Well, they talked it over, and finally they concluded that my mother
had been a very imaginative sort of a child, and had read in some book
about such a little room, or perhaps even dreamed it, and then had
“made believe,” as children do, till she herself had really thought the
room was there.’
‘Why, of course, that might easily happen.’
‘Yes, but you haven’t heard the queer part yet; you wait and see if you
can explain the rest as easily.
‘They staid at the farm two weeks, and then went to New York to live.
When I was eight years old my father was killed in the war, and mother
was broken-hearted. She never was quite strong afterwards, and that
summer we decided to go up to the farm for three months.
‘I was a restless sort of a child, and the journey seemed very long
to me; and finally, to pass the time, mamma told me the story of the
little room, and how it was all in her own imagination, and how there
really was only a china-closet there.
‘She told it with all the particulars; and even to me, who knew
beforehand that the room wasn’t there, it seemed just as real as
could be. She said it was on the north side, between the front and
back rooms; that it was very small, and they sometimes called it an
entry. There was a door also that opened out-of-doors, and that one
was painted green, and was cut in the middle like the old Dutch doors,
so that it could be used for a window by opening the top part only.
Directly opposite the door was a lounge or couch; it was covered with
blue chintz--India chintz--some that had been brought over by an old
Salem sea-captain as a “venture.” He had given it to Hannah when she
was a young girl. She was sent to Salem for two years to school.
Grandfather originally came from Salem.’
‘I thought there wasn’t any room or chintz.’
‘_That is just it._ They had decided that mother had imagined it all,
and yet you see how exactly everything was painted in her mind, for
she had even remembered that Hiram had told her that Hannah could have
married the sea-captain if she had wanted to!
‘The India cotton was the regular blue stamped chintz, with the peacock
figure on it. The head and body of the bird were in profile, while
the tail was full front view behind it. It had seemed to take mamma’s
fancy, and she drew it for me on a piece of paper as she talked.
Doesn’t it seem strange to you that she could have made all that up, or
even dreamed it?
‘At the foot of the lounge were some hanging shelves with some old
books on them. All the books were leather-colored except one; that was
bright red, and was called the _Ladies’ Album_. It made a bright break
between the other thicker books.
‘On the lower shelf was a beautiful pink sea-shell, lying on a mat
made of balls of red shaded worsted. This shell was greatly coveted
by mother, but she was only allowed to play with it when she had been
particularly good. Hiram had shown her how to hold it close to her ear
and hear the roar of the sea in it.
‘I know you will like Hiram, Roger; he is quite a character in his way.
‘Mamma said she remembered, or _thought_ she remembered, having been
sick once, and she had to lie quietly for some days on the lounge; then
was the time she had become so familiar with everything in the room,
and she had been allowed to have the shell to play with all the time.
She had had her toast brought to her in there, with make-believe tea.
It was one of her pleasant memories of her childhood; it was the first
time she had been of any importance to anybody, even herself.
‘Right at the head of the lounge was a light-stand, as they called it,
and on it was a very brightly polished brass candlestick and a brass
tray, with snuffers. That is all I remember of her describing, except
that there was a braided rag rug on the floor, and on the wall was a
beautiful flowered paper--roses and morning-glories in a wreath on a
light blue ground. The same paper was in the front room.’
‘And all this never existed except in her imagination?’
‘She said that when she and father went up there, there wasn’t
any little room at all like it anywhere in the house; there was a
china-closet where she had believed the room to be.’
‘And your aunts said there had never been any such room.’
‘That is what they said.’
‘Wasn’t there any blue chintz in the house with a peacock figure?’
‘Not a scrap, and Aunt Hannah said there had never been any that she
could remember; and Aunt Maria just echoed her--she always does that.
You see, Aunt Hannah is an up-and-down New England woman. She looks
just like herself; I mean, just like her character. Her joints move
up and down or backward and forward in a plain square fashion. I
don’t believe she ever leaned on anything in her life, or sat in an
easy-chair. But Maria is different; she is rounder and softer; she
hasn’t any ideas of her own; she never had any. I don’t believe she
would think it right or becoming to have one that differed from Aunt
Hannah’s, so what would be the use of having any? She is an echo,
that’s all.
‘When mamma and I got there, of course I was all excitement to see the
china-closet, and I had a sort of feeling that it would be the little
room after all. So I ran ahead and threw open the door, crying, “Come
and see the little room.”
‘And Roger,’ said Mrs. Grant, laying her hand in his, ‘there really
was a little room there, exactly as mother had remembered it. There
was the lounge, the peacock chintz, the green door, the shell, the
morning-glory, and rose paper, _everything exactly as she had described
it to me_.’
‘What in the world did the sisters say about it?’
‘Wait a minute and I will tell you. My mother was in the front hall
still talking with Aunt Hannah. She didn’t hear me at first, but I ran
out there and dragged her through the front room, saying, “The room
_is_ here--it is all right.”
‘It seemed for a minute as if my mother would faint. She clung to me in
terror. I can remember now how strained her eyes looked and how pale
she was.
‘I called out to Aunt Hannah and asked her when they had had the closet
taken away and the little room built; for in my excitement I thought
that that was what had been done.
‘“That little room has always been there,” said Aunt Hannah, “ever
since the house was built.”
‘“But mamma said there wasn’t any little room here, only a
china-closet, when she was here with papa,” said I.
“No, there has never been any china-closet there; it has always been
just as it is now,” said Aunt Hannah.
‘Then mother spoke; her voice sounded weak and far off. She said,
slowly, and with an effort, “Maria, don’t you remember that you told
me that there had _never been any little room here_? and Hannah said so
too, and then I said I must have dreamed it?”
‘“No, I don’t remember anything of the kind,” said Maria, without the
slightest emotion. “I don’t remember you ever said anything about any
china-closet. The house has never been altered; you used to play in
this room when you were a child, don’t you remember?”
‘“I know it,” said mother, in that queer slow voice that made me feel
frightened. “Hannah, don’t you remember my finding the china-closet
here, with the gilt-edged china on the shelves, and then _you_ said
that the _china-closet_ had always been here?”
‘“No,” said Hannah, pleasantly but unemotionally--“no, I don’t think
you ever asked me about any china-closet, and we haven’t any gilt-edged
china that I know of.”
‘And that was the strangest thing about it. We never could make them
remember that there had ever been any question about it. You would
think they could remember how surprised mother had been before, unless
she had imagined the whole thing. Oh, it was so queer! They were
always pleasant about it, but they didn’t seem to feel any interest
or curiosity. It was always this answer: “The house is just as it was
built; there have never been any changes, so far as we know.”
‘And my mother was in an agony of perplexity. How cold their gray eyes
looked to me! There was no reading anything in them. It just seemed to
break my mother down, this queer thing. Many times that summer, in the
middle of the night, I have seen her get up and take a candle and creep
softly down-stairs. I could hear the steps creak under her weight.
Then she would go through the front room and peer into the darkness,
holding her thin hand between the candle and her eyes. She seemed to
think the little room might vanish. Then she would come back to bed and
toss about all night, or lie still and shiver; it used to frighten me.
‘She grew pale and thin, and she had a little cough; then she did not
like to be left alone. Sometimes she would make errands in order to
send me to the little room for something--a book, or her fan, or her
handkerchief; but she would never sit there or let me stay in there
long, and sometimes she wouldn’t let me go in there for days together.
Oh, it was pitiful!’
‘Well, don’t talk any more about it, Margaret, if it makes you feel
so,’ said Mr. Grant.
‘Oh yes, I want you to know all about it, and there isn’t much more--no
more about the room.
‘Mother never got well, and she died that autumn. She used often to
sigh, and say, with a wan little laugh, “There is one thing I am glad
of, Margaret: your father knows now all about the little room.” I
think she was afraid I distrusted her. Of course, in a child’s way, I
thought there was something queer about it, but I did not brood over
it. I was too young then, and took it as a part of her illness. But,
Roger, do you know, it really did affect me. I almost hate to go there
after talking about it; I somehow feel as if it might, you know, be a
china-closet again.’
‘That’s an absurd idea.’
‘I know it; of course it can’t be. I saw the room, and there isn’t any
china-closet there, and no gilt-edged china in the house, either.’
And then she whispered: ‘But, Roger, you may hold my hand as you do
now, if you will, when we go to look for the little room.’
‘And you won’t mind Aunt Hannah’s gray eyes?’
‘I won’t mind _anything_.’
It was dusk when Mr. and Mrs. Grant went into the gate under the two
old Lombardy poplars and walked up the narrow path to the door, where
they were met by the two aunts.
Hannah gave Mrs. Grant a frigid but not unfriendly kiss; and Maria
seemed for a moment to tremble on the verge of an emotion, but she
glanced at Hannah, and then gave her greeting in exactly the same
repressed and non-committal way.
Supper was waiting for them. On the table was the _gilt-edged china_.
Mrs. Grant didn’t notice it immediately, till she saw her husband
smiling at her over his teacup; then she felt fidgety, and couldn’t
eat. She was nervous, and kept wondering what was behind her, whether
it would be a little room or a closet.
After supper she offered to help about the dishes, but, mercy! she
might as well have offered to help bring the seasons round; Maria and
Hannah couldn’t be helped.
So she and her husband went to find the little room, or closet, or
whatever was to be there.
Aunt Maria followed them, carrying the lamp, which she set down, and
then went back to the dish-washing.
Margaret looked at her husband. He kissed her, for she seemed troubled;
and then, hand in hand, they opened the door. It opened into a
_china-closet_. The shelves were neatly draped with scalloped paper;
on them was the gilt-edged china, with the dishes missing that had
been used at the supper, and which at that moment were being carefully
washed and wiped by the two aunts.
Margaret’s husband dropped her hand and looked at her. She was
trembling a little, and turned to him for help, for some explanation,
but in an instant she knew that something was wrong. A cloud had come
between them; he was hurt; he was antagonized.
He paused for an appreciable instant, and then said, kindly enough, but
in a voice that cut her deeply:
‘I am glad this ridiculous thing is ended; don’t let us speak of it
again.’
‘Ended!’ said she. ‘How ended?’ And somehow her voice sounded to her as
her mother’s voice had when she stood there and questioned her sisters
about the little room. She seemed to have to drag her words out. She
spoke slowly: ‘It seems to me to have only just begun in my case. It
was just so with mother when she--’
‘I really wish, Margaret, you would let it drop. I don’t like to hear
you speak of your mother in connection with it. It--’ He hesitated, for
was not this their wedding-day? ‘It doesn’t seem quite the thing, quite
delicate, you know, to use her name in the matter.’
She saw it all now: _he didn’t believe her_. She felt a chill sense of
withering under his glance.
‘Come,’ he added, ‘let us go out, or into the dining-room, somewhere,
anywhere, only drop this nonsense.’
He went out; he did not take her hand now--he was vexed, baffled, hurt.
Had he not given her his sympathy, his attention, his belief--and his
hand?--and she was fooling him. What did it mean?--she so truthful, so
free from morbidness--a thing he hated. He walked up and down under the
poplars, trying to get into the mood to go and join her in the house.
Margaret heard him go out; then she turned and shook the shelves; she
reached her hand behind them and tried to push the boards away; she
ran out of the house on to the north side and tried to find in the
darkness, with her hands, a door, or some steps leading to one. She
tore her dress on the old rose-trees, she fell and rose and stumbled,
then she sat down on the ground and tried to think. What could she
think--was she dreaming?
She went into the house and out into the kitchen, and begged Aunt Maria
to tell her about the little room--what had become of it, when had they
built the closet, when had they bought the gilt-edged china?
They went on washing dishes and drying them on the spotless towels with
methodical exactness; and as they worked they said that there had never
been any little room, so far as they knew; the china-closet had always
been there, and the gilt-edged china had belonged to their mother, it
had always been in the house.
‘No, I don’t remember that your mother ever asked about any little
room,’ said Hannah. ‘She didn’t seem very well that summer, but she
never asked about any changes in the house; there hadn’t ever been any
changes.’
There it was again: not a sign of interest, curiosity, or annoyance,
not a spark of memory.
She went out to Hiram. He was telling Mr. Grant about the farm. She had
meant to ask him about the room, but her lips were sealed before her
husband.
Months afterwards, when time had lessened the sharpness of their
feelings, they learned to speculate reasonably about the phenomenon,
which Mr. Grant had accepted as something not to be scoffed away,
not to be treated as a poor joke, but to be put aside as something
inexplicable on any ordinary theory.
Margaret alone in her heart knew that her mother’s words carried a
deeper significance than she had dreamed of at the time. ‘One thing I
am glad of, your father knows now,’ and she wondered if Roger or she
would ever know.
Five years later they were going to Europe. The packing was done; the
children were lying asleep, with their travelling things ready to be
slipped on for an early start.
Roger had a foreign appointment. They were not to be back in America
for some years. She had meant to go up to say good-by to her aunts; but
a mother of three children intends to do a great many things that never
get done. One thing she had done that very day, and as she paused for a
moment between the writing of two notes that must be posted before she
went to bed, she said:
‘Roger, you remember Rita Lash? Well, she and Cousin Nan go up to the
Adirondacks every autumn. They are clever girls, and I have intrusted
to them something I want done very much.’
‘They are the girls to do it, then, every inch of them.’
‘I know it, and they are going to.’
‘Well?’
‘Why, you see, Roger, that little room--’
‘Oh--’
‘Yes, I was a coward not to go myself, but I didn’t find time, because
I hadn’t the courage.’
‘Oh! _that_ was it, was it?’
‘Yes, just that. They are going, and they will write us about it.’
‘Want to bet?’
‘No; I only want to know.’
Rita Lash and Cousin Nan planned to go to Vermont on their way to the
Adirondacks. They found they would have three hours between trains,
which would give them time to drive up to the Keys farm, and they could
still get to the camp that night. But, at the last minute, Rita was
prevented from going. Nan had to go to meet the Adirondack party, and
she promised to telegraph her when she arrived at the camp. Imagine
Rita’s amusement when she received this message: ‘Safely arrived; went
to the Keys farm; it is a little room.’
Rita was amused, because she did not in the least think Nan had been
there. She thought it was a hoax; but it put it into her mind to carry
the joke further by really stopping herself when she went up, as she
meant to do the next week.
She did stop over. She introduced herself to the two maiden ladies,
who seemed familiar, as they had been described by Mrs. Grant.
They were, if not cordial, at least not disconcerted at her visit, and
willingly showed her over the house. As they did not speak of any other
stranger’s having been to see them lately, she became confirmed in her
belief that Nan had not been there.
In the north room she saw the roses and morning-glory paper on the
wall, and also the door that should open into--what?
She asked if she might open it.
‘Certainly,’ said Hannah; and Maria echoed, ‘Certainly.’
She opened it, and found the china-closet. She experienced a certain
relief; she at least was not under any spell. Mrs. Grant left it a
china-closet; she found it the same. Good.
But she tried to induce the old sisters to remember that there had at
various times been certain questions relating to a confusion as to
whether the closet had always been a closet. It was no use; their stony
eyes gave no sign.
Then she thought of the story of the sea-captain, and said, ‘Miss Keys,
did you ever have a lounge covered with India chintz, with a figure of
a peacock on it, given to you in Salem by a sea-captain, who brought it
from India?’
‘I dun’no’ as I ever did,’ said Hannah. That was all. She thought
Maria’s cheeks were a little flushed, but her eyes were like a stone
wall.
She went on that night to the Adirondacks. When Nan and she were alone
in their room she said, ‘By-the-way, Nan, what did you see at the
farm-house? and how did you like Maria and Hannah?’
Nan didn’t mistrust that Rita had been there, and she began excitedly
to tell her all about her visit. Rita could almost have believed Nan
had been there if she hadn’t known it was not so. She let her go on for
some time, enjoying her enthusiasm, and the impressive way in which she
described her opening the door and finding the ‘little room.’ Then Rita
said: ‘Now, Nan, that is enough fibbing. I went to the farm myself on
my way up yesterday, and there is _no_ little room, and there _never_
has been any; it is a china-closet, just as Mrs. Grant saw it last.’
She was pretending to be busy unpacking her trunk, and did not look up
for a moment; but as Nan did not say anything, she glanced at her over
her shoulder. Nan was actually pale, and it was hard to say whether she
was most angry or frightened. There was something of both in her look.
And then Rita began to explain how her telegram had put her in the
spirit of going up there alone. She hadn’t meant to cut Nan out. She
only thought--Then Nan broke in: ‘It isn’t that; I am sure you can’t
think it is that. But I went myself, and you did not go; you can’t have
been there, for _it is a little room_.’
Oh, what a night they had! They couldn’t sleep. They talked and
argued, and then kept still for a while, only to break out again,
it was so absurd. They both maintained that they had been there,
but both felt sure the other one was either crazy or obstinate
beyond reason. They were wretched; it was perfectly ridiculous, two
friends at odds over such a thing; but there it was--‘little room,’
‘china-closet,’--‘china-closet,’ ‘little room.’
The next morning Nan was tacking up some tarlatan at a window to keep
the midges out. Rita offered to help her, as she had done for the past
ten years. Nan’s ‘No, thanks,’ cut her to the heart.
‘Nan,’ said she, ‘come right down from that step-ladder and pack your
satchel. The stage leaves in just twenty minutes. We can catch the
afternoon express train, and we will go together to the farm. I am
either going there or going home. You better go with me.’
Nan didn’t say a word. She gathered up the hammer and tacks, and was
ready to start when the stage came round.
It meant for them thirty miles of staging and six hours of train,
besides crossing the lake; but what of that, compared with having a
lie lying round loose between them! Europe would have seemed easy to
accomplish, if it would settle the question.
At the little junction in Vermont they found a farmer with a wagon full
of meal-bags. They asked him if he could not take them up to the old
Keys farm and bring them back in time for the return train, due in two
hours.
They had planned to call it a sketching trip, so they said, ‘We have
been there before, we are artists, and we might find some views worth
taking; and we want also to make a short call upon the Misses Keys.’
‘Did ye calculate to paint the old _house_ in the picture?’
They said it was possible they might do so. They wanted to see it,
anyway.
‘Waal, I guess you are too late. The _house_ burnt down last night, and
everything in it.’
[Illustration]
THE SEQUEL TO THE LITTLE ROOM.
‘For the land’s sake! What’ll Maria do now!’
‘That’s just what Hiram said--“What’ll Maria do now!” It aint as if she
had folks belongin’ to her, and now the house is burnt, and Hannah is
_as_ she is, it does seem as if Maria’d find it hard gittin’ on alone
and doin’ her own thinkin’.’
‘There wan’t nothin’ saved, I s’pose.’
‘Next door to nothin’; one washtub, I believe, and the old gray
horse that was out to pasture, that’s about all; I did hear, though,
something about the men-folks’ having saved a blue-chintz sofy--’twas
the only thing they could get out of the house before the roof fell
in; they couldn’t seem to get a holt of anythin’ else, ’twas so hot,
and the old house burnt like tinder; Hannah she was that scairt she
seemed dazed, and this mornin’ Miss Fife, she that married Ben Fife
down on the Edge farm, at the foot of the hill, they took ’em in and
did for ’em; and when Lucindy Fife went to call ’em to breakfast at
five o’clock, there was Maria cryin’ like a baby, and Hannah lyin’,
like an image, with her eyes starin’ wide open; she must a had a shock
in the night.’
‘Fur the land’s sake!’ said the other woman again.
‘Yes, and Miss Fife she tried to get Maria to eat somethin’, but she
wouldn’t eat a thing; she just sat and cried; you know she was always
sort of a shadder to Hannah, and now she’s just like a baby.’
‘I declair! I believe I’ll go up to Miss Fife’s; I hate to lose the
time, I ought to stir butter to-day; but just as likely as not lots of
folks’ll drop in, and I sort of want to hear it all at first hand.’
‘I believe you’re right, and if you’ll set a while, I’ll hurry up these
doughnuts and be ready in no time; it’s a sort of lonesome walk up
there.’
The Widder Luke turned the light side of a doughnut under, the fat
sizzled, and Jane Peebles said: ‘Did you hear what sofy ’twas that they
saved?’
‘I don’t rightly know myself which one ’twas. Miss Culver she said it
was the blue chintz one, but I don’t recollect as they had no blue
sofy; I don’t seem to know exactly what they did have. Hannah never was
just the same to me after we had that tiff over the raspberry jam she
and I made for the church sale; but I aint goin’ to bring that up agin
her, now she’s laid low; I shall go up there just the same in their
time of trouble.’
‘I s’pose the sofy must have been a new one, or they wouldn’t have been
so keen to save it.’
‘I guess ’twas;--seems as if these doughnuts wouldn’t never brown; it’s
always so when you’re in a hurry.’
‘I guess I’ll ask Maria about that sofy,’ said Jane; ‘it’s likely that
she’ll tell all she knows when she gets used to the situation; I always
thought Maria was a sight nicer than she seemed. I know once she came
near tellin’ me how they made that soft soap, that special kind you
know, so white, and it keeps like jell, year after year; ’twas at a
sewin’-bee, and Maria she warmed up and was just goin’ to tell me, when
Hannah she came in, and Maria she shet up as quick as anythin’. It was
sort of curious how she knuckled down to Hannah. Did you ever think
Hannah was sort of set?’ added Jane, in a low, mysterious tone.
‘Hannah _set_! She was sotter’n a meetin’-house, and you know it, Jane
Peebles, for all you sided with her about that raspberry jam.’
Widder Luke’s eyes flashed as she lifted the kettle of hot fat. She got
in a good stroke on an old score, and Jane did not dare to retort. Soon
after twelve she and Jane Peebles were walking through the lane towards
the Fifes’--there was a Sunday air about their dresses, but a Monday
decision in their faces; the reporting in hill towns is done mostly by
such volunteers, and one must ‘git up airly’ for the first news.
Widder Luke carried a plate of doughnuts as a neighborly tribute to the
occasion.
At the Corners the women paused a moment; they could see from where
they stood the black skeleton of the burned barn silhouetted against
the sky, beyond ‘Huckleberry Hill.’
Just then Si Briggs came along in his spring wagon, with two strange
ladies on the back seat. They took the right-hand road that led to the
old Keys place, and as they passed, Mr. Briggs drew his reins with an
osh-sh-sh to his horse.
‘Won’t you get in and ride up the hill?’
Widder Luke and Miss Peebles decorously hesitated a moment, and
then climbed over the wheel and sat on either side of Mr. Briggs,
who settled himself leisurely between the two women with neighborly
familiarity. Then pointing backward with the butt-end of his whip to
indicate and introduce his passengers, he said: ‘These ladies were
pretty well disappointed to find the Keys house burnt up; they come
all the way from--where did you say ’twas you come from?’
‘We came down from the Adirondacks,’ said Rita. ‘We wanted to call on
Miss Hannah and Maria, and if possible to get a sketch of the house, to
paint a picture of it.’
‘You don’t say so! well I declair for it, it’s too bad!’ said the
Widder Luke; ‘but there’s sights of houses older’n that one you might
paint; there’s the Fife house, where they are stoppin’ now; that’s as
old agin and more tumble-down, if that’s what you want. I read a piece
in the “Greentown Gazette” about artists; it said they always took the
worst-lookin’ houses to paint, though it does seem queer to me.’
‘Did you know the Keys house very well, and can you tell us how the
rooms were built?’
‘Why, certain!’ said Mr. Briggs. ‘I’ve been in it a hundred times if I
have once.’
Rita and Nan bent forward to listen; the horse jogged slowly up the
hill, Mr. Briggs flicking his whip from side to side to encourage the
steady walk.
‘There was a hall a-runnin’ right through the middle, from front to
back--an awful waste of space to my thinkin’; when my brother Joel
built his house he sot out to have just such a hall, and I said to
him, sez I: “While you’re about it why don’t you build a house, or
else build a hall and let it out for dancin’?” Joel was dead set agin
dancin’ and it kind of stuck in his mind, so he built his’n without any
hall; you jest step right out of doors into the settin’-room; it’s nice
in summer, but a _leetle_ cold in winter.’
‘Yes, I should think it might be. What were the other rooms in the Keys
house?’
‘Wall, there was the family settin’-room, on the right-hand side of
the hall, and back of that the bed-room for the old folks; Hannah
she’s slep’ there for some years now; on the north side there was the
keepin’-room, and back of that the dinin’-room, though I’ll be blessed
if I know why it wasn’t a kitchen, that is, if a kitchen is where folks
cook. Them Keyses, way back to Jonathan Keys, was always folks for
high-flyin’ names, ’specially Hannah.’
‘Was that all the rooms there were in the lower part?’
‘Pretty much all, except a shed they used for a kitchen in old times.’
‘Wasn’t there a little room between the front and back rooms on the
north side?’ asked Nan, a little hesitatingly, while Rita gave her a
pinch of excitement.
‘I don’no’ as there was,’ said Mr. Briggs.
Jane Peebles spoke up:
‘I believe there was some sort of a room there. I remember once Maria
said she kept that north door a leetle crack open in fly-time, and it
did seem to rid the little room of flies considerble.’
‘I don’t recollect,’ said Mr. Briggs, ‘as there was a door on the north
side, but I aint sure; them pine-trees was so dark and the rose-bushes
so thick; I can’t remember as I’ve been round there lately; it didn’t
seem any special place to go to.’
‘Well!’ said Jane Peebles, decisively, ‘I guess there aint nobody in
Titusville that knows any more about that house than I do, unless it’s
the Keyses themselves; and I _know_ there was a little room.’
‘Now Jane!’ said Widder Luke (Jane wilted a little); ‘if there was a
little room there, where was the door to it--on the inside I mean? I
guess I haven’t been to the Baptist Sewing Circle for forty years for
nothin’, and the Keyses have had it once every year, in January; and I
venture to say I’ve set and sewed in that front room scores of times,
and the only door in the front room was the door into the china-closet,
except, of course, the door into the hall-way; and as to the
dinin’-room, as they called it’ (Si Briggs was a widower, and this was
a subtle compliment to him), ‘there wan’t no door at all on that side
of the room, just blank wall, with them black pictures of the family
done in ink, under glass. I always was struck with that one of Jonathan
Keys, it did look exactly like Hannah--just so set and stubborn about
the mouth. Poor Hannah, she has had her day though. I have often heard
my mother say that Hannah was the prettiest girl in Titusville when she
was sixteen, though she was always that stiff. She was sixteen just
before she went down to Salem.’
Here was an opening, and Nan plunged in.
‘I heard something about that: didn’t she meet an old sea-captain down
there and come near marrying him?’
‘I don’t know how near she came to marrying him, I know he never came
to Titusville. Now I wonder how you ever came to hear that old story;
it seems a hundred years ago since my mother told me.’
‘Here we be!’ called out Mr. Briggs, as he stopped his horse with the
soothing down-east osh-sh-sh.
Beyond them yawned the black pit where the cellar of the Keys house had
been; the ashes still guarded the mystery of the Little Room.
‘My! but don’t it look mournful!’ ejaculated Widder Luke, and then she
continued: ‘My mother said ’twas rumored round Titusville that Hannah
had caught a beau down to Salem. Of course that made a stir and folks
wanted to know all the particulars, but all they could find out by hook
or by crook was that ’twas a sea-captain, and that he was after his
third wife, having buried his two others, and that he had asked Hannah
to marry him; he gave her lots of heathenish stuff that he had brought
from India for his first wife. They couldn’t seem to find out much more
than that, when suddenly Hannah came home, without any warnin’; she
brought an extry trunk back with her, but she did look dreadful peakid;
she was sort of pale, and her eyes had a look just like her Grandfather
Keys’; she hadn’t never looked like any of the Keyses before. She
didn’t let on that anything had happened, and she went everywhere just
the same, and nobody knew what she had brought home in that extry
trunk, till one day, when the family had all gone to meetin’, Nancy
Stack--she was Hannah’s mother’s sister--she went and peeked in the
trunk and she saw a lot of trash, sea-shells and queer sorts of calico;
but just as she went to lift the tray to see what else there was, she
heard the folks comin’, so she shut it up quicker’n lightnin’; ’twas a
snap-lock and her apron got caught; she couldn’t take time to open it,
so she just tore off a piece of the hem to get away, meanin’ to go and
get the scrap out some other time; but Hannah must have been in the
habit of goin’ to that trunk, and before night she found the checked
gingham caught in the lid, and Nancy Stark she left very sudden that
afternoon and didn’t never set foot in the house again. It’s queer
how it all comes back to me. I s’pose it’s seein’ the house gone and
knowin’ how Hannah was took last night.’
‘Oh, do tell us more,’ said Rita, breathlessly. ‘We know Mrs. Grant,
their niece, and it is all so interesting.’
‘Wall, folks _is_ generally interested in what they are interested in,
but I don’t know that there’s much more to tell. The captain he never
turned up to get his third wife. Nancy Stark she died, and Hannah and
Maria here always lived up there alone since the old folks died, and a
pretty lonesome spot it was, to be sure.’
‘Did anybody ever dare to ask Miss Hannah about the captain?’
‘No, I guess not; folks up here mind their own business pretty much.’
There was a silence after this rebuke; but Nan, who always began to
hold on when other people let go, said:
‘I heard once that they had some beautiful china in the china-closet,
some that had belonged to their grandmother.’
Nobody volunteered any remark about this. Mr. Briggs had got out and
was poking round with a stick in the ashes.
Nan persisted:
‘Did you ever see the china?’
‘_I_ did’ said Jane Peebles, ‘sights of times.’
‘What kind was it?’
‘Oh, just blue willer pattern,--but there was sights of it.’
‘Then they didn’t have any other kind, white with a gilt edge, for
instance?’
‘Wall, up _here_, blue willer, _if_ it’s the real old kind, is
considered good ’nough for most folks.’
‘Why, of course; I only wish I had any half so nice,’ said Rita,
politely.
‘Be you a chaney collector?’ asked Widder Luke, with a defiant note.
‘Not at all, oh no; but I do wish we could find out whether they ever
did have a gilt-edged set.’
‘Sakes alive! if you really want to know particular, I shouldn’t make
any bones myself about asking Maria. I should like her to know I don’t
bear any grudge against ’em, though we did have a fallin’-out about
that jam, Hannah and me, come ten years ago next August. I shouldn’t
mind showin’ I had friendly interest in them--now, they’re in trouble.’
The ruins of the old house looked small and insignificant in the broad
sunshine. The poplars were shrivelled by the fire, and the thicket of
roses was blackened and trampled; it was as dehumanized as if no one
had lived there for a century.
Mr. Briggs came back to the wagon and said, briskly:
‘Wall! where’ll you go next?’
Rita and Nan hesitated; then Rita said:
‘Do you suppose Miss Maria would like to see us? We met her niece just
before she sailed for Europe. She asked us to call and give her aunts
some messages, but if you think they are too much broken down by the
fire and all--’
‘Oh, no; it will do Maria good--it’s no use cryin’ over spilt milk, or
burnt houses for that matter, and I guess you could look at Hannah too;
she can’t speak, I hear it said, but she lies right in the bed off of
the livin’-room, and most everybody goes in to look at her.’
‘The theatre is nowhere,’ whispered Nan to Rita; ‘but isn’t it ghastly!’
Miss Maria sat in state in the front room at the Fifes’; her black
dress, borrowed from a neighbor, was large for even her plump figure,
and it had a tendency to make her look as if she had been ill for
a long time and had grown thin; her face was pale with the recent
excitement, and wore the air of one who was waiting; she sat quite
erect in the rocking-chair, with her plump hands folded on her lap;
there was an appealing look in her eyes--she missed Hannah; there was
no one to give her a pattern for thought or act. Neighbors passed
in and out, and there was something so passive in Maria’s look that
they talked of her freely as _she_ as if she were not there. There
was plenty of sympathy for her, but it was swept out of sight by the
tide of curiosity and detail,--how the house had caught fire; who had
seen it first; how Hannah slept so heavily she could not be roused
for a long time; how it happened that the well was so low; how the
pump-handle broke; how the men tried to save something, but how little
had been got out! and then, ‘how bad Hannah looks,’ and how old Simeon
Bissell lived ten years after his stroke, and Hannah was younger than
he, and the Keyses were a long-lived family.
They passed in and out of Hannah’s room, Lucinda Fife asking each
new-comer to ‘just step in and look at Hannah!’
Borne along by their sympathy and curiosity, Rita and Nan went in and
looked on poor Hannah, stiff and uncompromising as of old, lying in her
unwonted bed. She eyed them with her impenetrable gray gaze, and it was
evident that the mystery of the Little Room would never be revealed by
her, even if one could be bold enough to storm that granite citadel.
They talked with Maria. She heard the messages from her niece in gentle
silence. Rita took her passive hand and tried to tell her how they
sympathized with her in her troubles, and to explain how it was they
had happened to come at this time, but it evidently did not get below
the surface of Maria’s consciousness. She seemed most taken with Nan,
however, and to like to have her near her. Just before they left her,
Rita ventured to ask if any of their gilt-edged china was saved.
‘No, I guess not,’ said Maria.
‘Did they save the blue-chintz sofa?’ impetuously asked Nan.
‘No, I didn’t hear as they did.’
‘You _did_ have a gilt-edged china set, didn’t you?’ said Nan.
‘And a blue sofa?’ persuaded Rita.
‘I don’t seem to remember anything much,’ said Maria, with an appealing
glance towards the room where Hannah lay. It would be barbarity to
press her further just then.
Rita and Nan went away--not to the Adirondacks, however, but to spend a
few days with Jane Peebles, who gladly acceded to their petition to be
boarded there for a time.
‘Miss Peebles, where is that man Hiram who always lived at the Keys’?’
asked Rita, as Jane helped them to apple-sauce and ginger-bread at
supper.
‘Hiram? I guess he’s pretty well tuckered out, what with the fire and
Hannah’s stroke; he come over here this mornin’ and wanted a piece
of my huckleberry pie; he said he couldn’t seem to relish any other
food; he always did set a great store by my pie; it wan’t any better
than what Hannah made, so fer as I could see, but he always ’lotted on
havin’ the corner-piece when he brought me eggs from the farm.’
Miss Jane’s secret was not so hard to discover as was the secret of the
Little Room.
‘I would like to talk with Hiram,’ said Nan.
‘Oh, Hiram he’ll talk till doomsday, once set him goin’, and say
pretty smart things too, for a man.’
‘Hiram, can’t you tell us something about the old house?’ asked Nan the
next morning, as Hiram rose from the kitchen table where he had been
taking the solace of a corner-piece of Jane’s huckleberry pie.
‘That depends,’ said Hiram, ‘upon what you want to know. I s’pose I can
tell as much as anybody.’
‘What we really want to know,’ said Rita, candidly, ‘is whether there
was a closet or a little room on the north side of the Keys house,
between the front and the back rooms.’
Hiram rubbed his ear carefully and began in a judicial way:
‘When Jonathan Keys first built that house, some time way back in 1700,
he planned to have--’
‘Jane Peebles! Jane Peebles! you’re wanted right off, up to the Fifes’,
and Hiram too; Hannah she’s took worse, and Maria she’s no more use
than a babe unborn. I’m on my way up there now,’ concluded the Widder
Luke, as she hurried up the hill.
When Rita and Nan went to say good-bye to Maria, a few days later,
Maria clung to them. She had begun to like these new friends who had
taken it upon themselves to try and do for her what Mrs. Grant would
have done had she been there. She followed them to the door, and said,
in a whisper:
‘I asked Hannah, only the day before her last shock, whether she _did_
have any gilt-edged china, and she sort of nodded. Then I asked her if
we had a blue sofy, and she nodded again; but come to think it over by
myself, I don’t think it really meant anything, because you know Hannah
couldn’t do anything else but nod after she had that first stroke; she
couldn’t shake her head; but I thought I would tell you, you have been
so kind and you seemed so interested.’
Out on the stone wall at the Corners Nan and Rita sat and laughed and
cried; the tragedy and the comedy appealed to them, and not even when
Nan said, as they walked down to Jane Peebles’ house, ‘All the same, _I
saw the Little Room_,’ and Rita said, ‘_I saw the china-closet_,’ did
they feel any bitterness.
‘Good-bye,’ said Hiram; ‘I’m real glad you came, and I want you to
tell Miss Grant, when you write to her, that Hiram--she’ll remember
Hiram fast enough--Hiram is going to marry Jane Peebles, and that Maria
shan’t never want for a home so long as Jane can make huckleberry pies.’
‘Oh, we are so glad; and you will send us a piece of wedding-cake,
won’t you?’
‘I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Hiram.
‘Won’t you please tell us what you started to that time when Miss
Hannah was taken worse so suddenly? we do so want to know whether there
was a room or a china-closet there on the north side.’
‘I do remember now that I started in to tell you that; it wan’t much
anyhow, only when their Grandfather Keys built the house he boasted
that he intended to build the _en_tire house of timber that hadn’t a
knot in it. He spent ten years a-gettin’ the timber ready, and when
it was done he found that right in the front-room closet they had put
a piece of board with a great knot in it. He was dreadful mad, but he
kept it there all the same--on purpose, he said, to show folks it wan’t
no use to set out to do anythin’ perfect in this world.’
‘Then there was a china-closet--’
‘Wall, yes, there certainly was a closet there.’
‘Oh, Nan!’ said Rita, as the cars moved away from where Hiram stood,
‘he didn’t say exactly what kind of a closet even then.’
‘No; but we can write to Jane and ask her to answer our questions with
just yes or no. When she is Mrs. Hiram (I wonder if he ever had a last
name) she will get it out of him if we can only interest her.’
* * * * *
‘Jane,’ said Hiram that evening, ‘if you could manage to wash on
Saturday, so as to have an off-day on Monday, I don’no but we might as
well be married then as any other time. I should feel sort of easier in
my mind if Maria came down to live with us before they think her room
is better than her company up to the Fifes’, if Hannah should die.’
‘That’s so, Hiram. I’ll hurry round and fix things, and you better stop
to-night and tell Maria that I’ll be real glad to have her come and
live with us; and Hiram, I’ve been thinking that if the men folks did
save that blue-chintz sofy--’
‘Wait a minute, Jane, I sort of want to tell you somethin’; ’taint
anythin’ I should want you to repeat, but it’s somethin’ that sort of
troubles me some. You see, Miss Hannah she’s always been good to me,
and I shouldn’t want to say anythin’ to set folks a-talkin’; but Miss
Hannah haint been exactly well for some weeks, and only the day before
the fire she came to me and she says she thought ’twas about time she
put that old trunk full of duds, the one she’s always kept in her
closet, out of the way, and she guessed she’d have me burn it up. I
thought ’twas most a pity to destroy the trunk--it was a real good one,
and hadn’t never seen no travel to speak of--and so I said I’d take
the things out and burn ’em; that seemed to trouble her, and she was
real short with me. She said I was no better than all the other folks,
that I was pryin’ round to see what she kep’ in it. I sort of soothed
her, and then she said she’d been pestered most to death by folks
always askin’ her about some old blue chintz, and about a little room;
and she guessed that if she could put that trunk out of sight, mebby
folks would mind their own business and let her have some peace. So
when Maria was out to the garden for some stuff for dinner, Miss Hannah
she got me to help her carry the trunk out of her room and put it in
the hall-closet; it wan’t no kind of a place to keep it, but I thought
it was better to humor her a mite, seein’ she was out of sorts.