|I'LL be glad to get at this kitchen,” said Mary when we went down
to survey the scene of our impromptu labors; “those old women were
abominably careless. Why, they left enough food about and wasted enough
to feed an army. I would n't wonder, miss, if some of them blacks from
outside come in here and make a fine meal off of pickin's. They could
easy enough, and Mrs. Brane never miss it.”
“I dare say,” said I, inspecting the bright, cheerful place with real
pleasure; “but, at any rate, Delia was a clean old soul. Everything's as
bright as a new pin.”
Mary begrudged Delia this compliment. “Outside, miss,” she said, “but
it's a whited sepulchre”--she pronounced it “sepoolcur”--“Look in here a
moment. There's a closet that's just a scandal.”
She threw open a low door in the far end of the kitchen and, bending, I
peered in.
“Why,” I said, “it's been used as a storehouse for old junk. One end is
just a heap of broken-down furniture and old machinery. It would be a
job to clear out, too, heavy as lead. I doubt if a woman could move most
of it. I think Delia tried, for I see that things have been pushed to
one side. Let me have a candle. You go on with your bread-making, while
I get to work in here. I might do a little to straighten things out.”
Mary lit a candle and handed it to me, and I went poking about amongst a
clutter of broken implements, pots and kettles, old garden tools, even
a lawn-mower, and came against a great mass of iron, which turned out to
be a lawn-roller. However did it get in here, and why was it put here? I
gave it a push, and found that it rolled ponderously, but very silently
aside. In the effort I lost my balance a little, and put my hand out to
the wall. It went into damp darkness, and I fell. There was no wall at
the narrow, low end of the closet under the stairs, but a hole.
“Oh, miss,” called Mary, coming to the door, her hands covered with
flour, “Mrs. Brane says she wants you, please, to take tea up to the
drawing-room. There's company, I fancy, and my hands are in the dough.”
I came out, a little jarred by my fall, a little puzzled by that closet
with its dark, open end so carefully protected by a mass of heavy
things. Then, for the first time, I began really to suspect that
something was not quite right at “The Pines.” I said nothing to Mary.
Her steady, cheerful sanity was invaluable. Hastily I washed my rusty,
dusty hands, smoothed my hair, prepared the tea-tray, and went upstairs.
Mrs. Brane was entertaining two men in the drawing-room.
I came in and set the tray down on the little table at Mrs. Brane's
elbow. As I did so, I glanced at the two men. One was a large, stout
man with gray hair and a gray beard and a bullying manner, belied by the
kindly expression of his eyes. I liked him at once. The other, for
some reason, impressed me much less favorably. He had an air of lazy
indifference, large, demure eyes, black hair very sleekly groomed,
clothes which even my ignorance of such matters proclaimed themselves
just what was most appropriate for an afternoon visit to a Southern
country house, and a low, deprecatory, pleasant voice. He gave me a
casual look when Mrs. Brane very pleasantly introduced me--she made much
more of a guest of me than of a housekeeper--and dropped his eyes again
on the cup between his long, slim hands. He dropped them, however, not
before I had time to notice that his pupils had grown suddenly large.
Otherwise, his expression did not change--indeed, why should it?--but
this inexplicable look in his eyes gave me an unpleasant little shock.
“Mr. Dabney,” Mrs. Brane was saying, “has been sent over by Mrs. Rodman,
one of our distant neighbors, to enliven our dulness. He wants to study
my husband's Russian library, and, as my husband made it an especial
request that his books should not be lent, this means that we shall see
Mr. Dabney very often. Dr. Haverstock has been looking Robbie over. The
poor little fellow's nerves are in a pretty bad condition--”
“You'll let me see him, won't you?” murmured young Dabney; “I rather
adore young children.”
“Oh,” laughed the big doctor in his noisy way, “any one who hasn't red
hair may see Robbie. I hear he has a violent objection to red hair, eh,
Miss Gale! Very pretty red hair, too.”
Of course it was friendly teasing, but it angered me unreasonably, and
I felt the color rising to my conspicuous crop. Especially as Mr. Dabney
looked at me with an air of mildly increasing interest.
“How very odd!” he said.
“Would you mind taking Mr. Dabney to the bookroom when he's finished his
tea, Miss Gale,” asked Mrs. Brane in her sweet way. “I'd like to talk
Robbie over a little longer with Dr. Haverstock, if you'll excuse me,
Mr. Dabney. Show him the card catalogue, Miss Gale. Thank you.”
It was an unwelcome duty, and I intended to make it as short as
possible. I had not reckoned on young Mr. Dabney's ability as an
entertainer.
He began to talk as we crossed the hall.
“Splendid house, isn't it, Miss Gale? The sort of place you read about
and would like to write about if you had the gift. Have you ever been in
the South before?”
“No,” I said discouragingly. “This is the room.”
“I know the country about here very well. Have you been able to get
around much?”
“Naturally not. As a housekeeper--”
For a moment, as we came into the book-room he had stood looking gravely
down; now he gave me a sudden frank, merry look and laughed. “Oh,” he
said, “it's absurd, too absurd, you know,--your being a housekeeper, I
mean. You're just playing at it, are n't you?”
“Indeed, Mr. Dabney,” I said, “I am not. I am very little likely to play
at anything. I am earnestly trying to earn my living. The card catalogue
is over there between the front windows. Is there anything else?”
“Was I rude?” he asked with an absurdly boyish air; “I am sorry. I did
n't mean to be. But surely you can't mind people's noticing it?”
I fell into this little trap. “Noticing what?” I could n't forbear
asking him.
“Why,” said he, “the utter incongruity of your being a housekeeper at
all. I believe that that is what frightened Robbie.”
There was a strange note in his voice now, an edge. Was he trying to be
disagreeable? I could not make out this young man. I moved away.
“Miss Gale,”--he was perfectly distant and casual again,--“I'll have to
detain you just a moment. This bookcase is locked, you see--”
“I'll ask Mrs. Brane.”
I came back in a few minutes with the key. Mr. Dabney was busy with the
card catalogue, but, for some reason,--I have always had a catlike
sense in such matters,--I felt that he had only just returned to this
position, and that he wanted me to believe that he had spent the entire
time of my absence there.
“These other housekeepers,” he said, “were n't very earnest about
earning their living, were they? Mrs. Brane was telling me--”
“Oh,” I smiled, rather surprised that Mrs. Brane had been so
confidential. To me she had never mentioned the other housekeepers.
“They were very nervous women. You see, I am not.”
He turned the key about in his hand, looked down, then up at me
demurely. He had the most disarming and trust-inspiring look.
“No,” he said, “you are not nervous. It's a great thing to have a steady
nerve. You're not easily startled.” Then, turning to the bookcase, he
added sharply, looking back at me as he spoke, “Do you know anything
about Russia?”
“No,” I answered; “that is, very little.” There were reasons why this
subject was distasteful to me. Again I moved away.
He opened the bookcase.
“Phew!” he said,--“the dust of ages here! I'll have to ask Mrs. Brane to
let you--”
I went out and shut the door.
But I was not so easily to escape young Dabney's determination to see
more of me. Mrs. Brane, that very evening, asked me to spend my mornings
dusting, her husband's books and cataloguing them. At first I dreaded
these hours with our visitor, but as the days went by I came more and
more to enjoy them. I found myself talking to Mr. Dabney freely, more
about my thoughts and fancies than about my life, which holds too
much that is painful. And he was, at first, a most frank and engaging
companion. I was young and lonely, I had never had such pleasant
intercourse. Well, there is no use apologizing for it, trying to
explain it, beating about the bush,--I lost my heart to him. It went
out irrevocably before the shadow fell. And I thought that his heart had
begun to move towards mine. Sometimes there was the strangest look of
troubled feeling in his eyes.
This preoccupation kept me from thinking of other things. I was
always going over yesterday's conversation with Mr. Dabney, planning
to-morrow's, enjoying to-day's. Mrs. Brane seemed to watch us with
sympathy. After a week or so, she put an end to what she called “Paul
Dabney's short comings and long goings” and invited him to stay with
us. He accepted, and I was wonderfully happy. I felt very young for the
first time in my whole sad life. I remember this period as a sort of
shadowy green stretch in a long, horrible, rocky journey. It came--the
quiet, shady stretch--soon enough to an end.