THE SPIRIT OF THE ANCIENT WOOD
Agatha's first thought on awakening late in the forenoon, was the
memory of Sallie Kingsbury coaxing her to bed and tucking her in, in
the purple light of the early morning. She remembered the attention
with pleasure and gratitude, as another blessing added to the greater
one of James Hambleton's turn toward recovery. Sallie's act was mute
testimony that Agatha was, in truth, heir to Hercules Thayer's estate,
spiritual and material.
She summoned Lizzie, and while she was dressing, laid out directions
for the day. During her short stay in Ilion, Lizzie had been diligent
enough in gathering items of information, but nevertheless she had
remained oblivious of any impending crisis during the night. Her
pompadour was marcelled as accurately as if she were expecting a
morning call from Mr. Straker. No rustlings of the wings of the Angel
of Death had disturbed her sleep. In fact, Lizzie would have winked
knowingly if his visit had been announced to her. Her sophistication
had banished such superstitions. She noticed, however, that Agatha's
candles had burned to their sockets, and inquired if Miss Redmond had
been wakeful.
"Mr. Hambleton was very ill. Everybody in the house was up till near
morning," replied Agatha rather tartly.
"Oh, what a pity! Could I have done anything? I never heard a sound,"
cried Lizzie effusively.
"No, there was nothing you could have done," said Agatha.
"It's very bad for your voice, Miss Redmond, staying up all night,"
went on Lizzie solicitously. "You're quite pale this morning. And
with your western tour ahead of you!"
Agatha let these adjurations go unanswered. It occurred to Lizzie that
possibly she had allied herself with a mistress who was foolish enough
to ruin her public career by private follies, such as worrying about
sick people. Heaven, in Lizzie's eyes, was the glare of publicity; and
since she was unable to shine in it herself, she loved to be attached
to somebody who could. Her fidelity was based on Agatha's celebrity as
a singer. She would have preferred serving an actress who was all the
rage, but considered a popular singer, who paid liberally, as the next
best thing.
There was always enough common sense in Lizzie's remarks to make some
impression, even on a person capable of the folly of mourning at a
death bed. Agatha's spirits, freshened by hope and the sleep of
health, rose to a buoyancy which was well able to deal with practical
questions. She quickly formed a plan for the day, though she was wise
enough to withhold the scheme from the maid.
Agatha drank her coffee, ate sparingly of Sallie's toast, and, leaving
Lizzie with a piece of sewing to do, went first to James Hambleton's
room. After ten minutes or so, she slowly descended the stairs and
went out the front way. She circled the garden and came round to the
open kitchen door. Sallie was kneeling before her oven, inspecting
bread. Agatha, watched her while she tapped the bottom of the tin,
held her face down close to the loaf, and finally took the whole baking
out of the oven and tipped the tins on the table.
"That's the most delicious smell that ever was!" said Agatha.
Sallie jumped up and pulled her apron straight.
"Lor', Miss Redmond, how you scared me! Couldn't you sleep any longer?"
"I didn't want to; I'm as good as new. Tell me, Sallie, where all the
people are. Mr. Hand is in Mr. Hambleton's room, I know, but where are
the others?"
"I guess they're all parceled round," said Sallie with symptoms of
sniffing. "I don't wanter complain, Miss Redmond, but we ain't had any
such a houseful since Parson Thayer's last conference met here, and not
so many then; only three ministers and two wives, though, of course,
ministers make more work. But I wouldn't say a word, Miss Redmond,
about the work, if it wasn't for that young woman that puts on such
airs coming and getting your tray. I ain't used to that."
Sallie paused, like any good orator, while her main thesis gained
impressiveness from silence. It was only too evident that her feelings
were hurt.
Agatha considered the matter, but before replying came farther into the
kitchen and touched the tip of a finger to one of Sallie's loaves,
lifting it to show its golden brown crust.
"You're an expert at bread, Sallie, I can see that," she said heartily.
"I shouldn't have got over my accident half so well if it hadn't been
for your good food and your care, and I want you to know that I
appreciate it." She was reluctant to discuss the maid, but her cordial
liking for Sallie counseled frankness. "Don't mind about Lizzie. I
thought you had too much to do, and that she might just as well help
you, but if she bothers you, we won't have it. And now tell me where
Mrs. Stoddard and the others are."
Sallie's symptoms indicated that she was about to be propitiated; but
she had yet a desire to make her position clear to Miss Redmond. "It's
all right; only I've taken care of the china for seventeen years, and
it don't seem right to let her handle it. And she told me herself that
anybody that had any respect for their hands wouldn't do kitchen work.
And if her hands are too good for kitchen work, I'm sure I don't want
her messing round here. She left the tea on the stove till it
_boiled_, Miss Redmond, just yesterday."
Agatha smiled. "I'm sure Lizzie doesn't know anything about cooking,
Sallie, and she shall not bother you any more."
Sallie turned a rather less melancholy face toward Agatha. "It's been
fairly lonesome since the parson died. I'm glad you've come to the red
house." The words came from Sallie's lips gruffly and ungraciously,
but Agatha knew that they were sincere. She knew better, however, than
to appear to notice them. In a moment Sallie went on: "Mrs. Stoddard,
she's asleep in the front spare room. Said for me to call her at
twelve."
"Poor woman! She must be tired," said Agatha.
"Aunt Susan's a stout woman, Miss Redmond. She didn't go to bed until
she'd had prayers beside the young man's bed, with Mr. Hand present. I
had to wait with the coffee. And I guess Mr. Hand ain't very much used
to our ways, for when Aunt Susan had made a prayer, Mr. Hand said,
'Yes, ma'am!' instead of Amen."
There was a mixture of disapprobation and grim humor which did not
escape Agatha. She was again beguiled into a smile, though Sallie
remained grave as a tombstone.
"Mr. Hand will learn," said Agatha; and was about to add "Like the rest
of us," but thought better of it. Sallie took up her tale.
"Mr. Van Camp and his friend came in just after I'd put you to bed,
Miss Redmond, and ate a bite of breakfast right offer that table; and
'twas a mercy I'd cleared all the kulch outer the attic, as I did last
week, for Mr. Van Camp he wanted a place to sleep; and he's up there
now. Used to be a whole lot er the parson's books up there; but I put
them on a shelf in the spare room. The other man went off toward the
village."
Agatha, looking about the pleasant kitchen, was tempted to linger.
Sallie's conversation yielded, to the discerning, something of the rich
essence of the past; and Agatha began to yearn for a better knowledge
of the recluse who had been her friend, unknown, through all the years.
But she remembered her industrious plans for the day and postponed her
talk with Sallie.
"I remember there used to be a grove, a stretch of wood, somewhere
beyond the church, Sallie. Which way is it--along the path that goes
through the churchyard?"
"No, this way; right back er the yard. Parson Thayer he used to walk
that way quite often." Sallie went with Agatha to another stile beyond
the churchyard, and pointed over the pasture to a fringe of dark trees
along the farther border. "Right there by that apple tree, the path
is. But don't go far, Miss Redmond; the woods ain't healthy."
"All right, Sallie; thank you. I'll not stay long." She called Danny
and started out through the pasture, with the hound, sober and
dignified and happy, at her heels.
The wood was cool and dim, with an uneven wagon road winding in and out
between stumps. Enormous sugar-maples reared their forms here and
there; occasionally a lithe birch lifted a tossing head; and, farther
within, pines shot their straight trunks, arrow-like, up to the canopy
above.
Farther along, the road widened into a little clearing, beyond which
the birch and maple trees gave place entirely to pines and hemlocks.
The underbrush disappeared, and a brown carpet of needles and cones
spread far under the shade. The leafy rustle of the deciduous trees
ceased, and a majestic stillness, deeper than thought, pervaded the
place. At the clearing just within this deeper wood Agatha paused, sat
down on a stone and took Danny's head in her lap. The dog looked up
into her face with the wistful, melancholy gaze of his kind,
inarticulate yet eloquent.
The sun was nearly at zenith, and bright flecks of light lay here and
there over the brown earth. As Agatha grew accustomed to the shade, it
seemed pleasant and not at all uncheerful--the gaiety of sunlight
subdued only to a softer tone. The resolution which had brought her
thither returned. She stood up under the dome of pines and began
softly to sing, trying her voice first in single tones, then a scale or
two, a trill. At first her voice was not clear, but as she continued
it emerged from its sheath of huskiness clear and flutelike, and liquid
as the notes of the thrushes that inhabited the wood. The pleasure of
the exercise grew, and presently, warbling her songs there in the
otherwise silent forest, Agatha became conscious of a strange
accompaniment. Pausing a moment, she perceived that the grove was
vocal with tone long after her voice had ceased. It was not exactly an
echo, but a slowly receding resonance, faint duplications and
multiplications of her voice, gently floating into the thickness of the
forest.
Charmed, like a child who discovers some curious phenomenon of nature,
Agatha tried her voice again and again, listening, between whiles, to
the ghostly tones reverberating among the pines. She sang the slow
majestic "Lascia ch'io pianga," which has tested every singer's voice
since Händel wrote it; and then, curious, she tried the effect of the
aërial sounding-board with quick, brilliant runs up and down the full
range of the voice. But the effect was more beautiful with something
melodious and somewhat slow; and there came to her mind an
old-fashioned song which, as a girl, she had often sung with her mother:
"Oh! that we two were maying
Down the stream of the soft spring breeze."
She sang the stanza through, softly, walking up and down among the
pines. Danny, at first, walked up and down beside her gravely, and
then lay down in the middle of the path, keeping an eye on Agatha's
movements. Her voice, pitched at its softest, now seemed to be
infinitely enlarged without being made louder. It carried far in among
the trees, clear and soft as a wave-ripple. Entranced, Agatha began
the second part of the song, just for the joy of singing:
"Oh! that we two sat dreaming
On the sward of some sheep-trimmed down--"
when suddenly, from the distance, another voice took up the strain.
Danny was instantly up and off to investigate, but presently came back
wagging and begging his mistress to follow him.
In spite of her surprise in hearing another voice complete the duet,
Agatha went on with the song, half singing, half humming. It was a
woman's voice that joined hers, singing the part quite according to the
book:
"With our limbs at rest on the quiet earth's breast
And our souls at home with God!"
The pine canopy spread the voices, first one and then the other, until
the wood was like a vast cathedral filled with the softest music of the
organ pipes.
There was nobody in sight at first, but as Agatha followed the path,
she presently saw a white arm and skirt projecting from behind the
trunk of a tree. Danny, wagging slowly, appeared to wish to make
friends, and before Agatha had time to wonder, the stranger emerged and
came toward her with outstretched hand.
"Ah, forgive me! I hid and then startled you; but I was tempted by the
song. And this forest temple--isn't it wonderful?"
Agatha looked at the stranger, suddenly wondering if she were not some
familiar but half-forgotten acquaintance of years agone. She was a
beautiful dark woman, probably two or three years older than herself,
mature and self-poised as only a woman of the cosmopolitan world can
be. It might be that compared to her Agatha was a bit crude and
unfinished, with the years of her full blossoming yet to come. She had
no words at the moment, and the older woman, still holding Agatha's
hand, explained.
"I did not mean to steal in upon you; but as I came into the grove I
heard you singing Händel, and I couldn't resist listening. Your voice,
it is wonderful! Especially here!" As she looked into Agatha's face,
her sincere eyes and voice gave the praise that no one can resist, the
tribute of one artist to another.
"This is, indeed, a beautiful hall. I found it out just now by
accident, when I came up here to practice and see if I had any voice
left," said Agatha. She paused, as it suddenly occurred to her that
the visitor might be James Hambleton's sister and that she was being
delinquent as a hostess. "But come back to the house," she said.
"This is not a hospitable place, exactly, to receive a guest."
The stranger laughed gently. "Have you guessed who I am, then? No?
Well, you see I had the advantage of you from the first. You are Miss
Redmond, and I followed you here from the house, where your servant
gave me the directions. I am Miss Reynier, Mélanie Reynier, and I am
staying at the Hillside. Mr. Van Camp--" and to her own great
surprise, Mélanie blushed crimson at this point--"that is, we, my aunt
and I, were Mr. Van Camp's guests on board the _Sea Gull_. When he
heard of the wreck of the _Jeanne D'Arc_ we put in to Charlesport;
though he has probably explained all this to you. It was such a relief
and pleasure to Mr. Van Camp to find his cousin, ill as he was; for he
had feared the worst."
Agatha had not heard Miss Reynier's name before, but she knew vaguely
that Mr. Van Camp had been with a yachting party when he arrived at
Charlesport. Now that she was face to face with Miss Reynier, a keen
liking and interest, a quick confidence, rose in her heart for her.
"Then perhaps you know Mr. Hambleton," said Agatha impulsively. "The
fever turned last night. Were you told that he is better?"
"No, I don't know him," said Mélanie, shaking her head. "Nevertheless,
I am heartily glad to hear that he is better. _Much_ better, they said
at the house."
They had been standing at the place where Agatha had first discovered
her visitor, but now they turned back into the clearing.
"Come and try the organ pipes again," she begged. They walked about
the wood, singing first one strain and then another, testing the
curiously beautiful properties of the pine dome. They were quickly on
a footing of friendliness. It was evident that each was capable of
laying aside formality, when she wished to do so, and each was, at
heart, frank and sincere. Mélanie's talent for song was not small, yet
she recognized in Agatha a superior gift; while, to Agatha, Mélanie
Reynier seemed increasingly mature, polished, full of charm.
They left the wood and wandered back through the pasture and over the
stile, each learning many things in regard to the other. They spoke of
the place and its beauty, and Agatha told Mélanie of the childhood
memories which, for the first time, she had revived in their living
background.
"How our thoughts change!" she said at last. "As a child, I never felt
this farm to be lonely; it was the most populous and entertaining place
in all the world. I much preferred the wood to anything in the city.
I love it now, too; but it seems the essence of solitude to me."
"That is because you have been where the passions and restlessness of
men have centered. One is never the same after that."
"Strangely enough, the place now belongs to me," went on Agatha.
"Parson Thayer, the former owner and resident, was my mother's guardian
and friend, and left the place to me for her sake."
"Ah, that is well!" cried Mélanie. "It will be your castle of retreat,
your Sans-Souci, for all your life, I envy you! It is charming.
Pastor--Parson, do you say?--Parson Thayer was a man of judgment."
"Yes, and a man of strange and dominating personality, in his way.
Everything about the house speaks of him and his tastes. Even Danny
here follows me, I really believe, because I am beginning to appreciate
his former master."
Agatha stooped and patted the dog's head. Youth and health, helped by
the sympathy of a friend, were working wonders in Agatha. She beamed
with happiness.
"Come into the house," she begged Mélanie, "and look at some of his
books with me. But first we'll find Sallie and get luncheon, and
perhaps Mr. Van Camp will appear by that time. Poor man, he was quite
worn out. Then you shall see Parson Thayer's books and flowers, if you
will."
They strolled over the velvet lawn toward the front of the house, where
the door and the long windows stood open. Down by the road, and close
to the lilac bushes that flanked the gateway, stood a large
silver-white automobile--evidently Miss Reynier's conveyance. The
driver of the machine had disappeared.
"I mustn't trespass on your kindness for luncheon to-day, thank you,"
Mélanie was saying; "but I'll come again soon, if I may." Meantime she
was moving slowly down the walk. But Agatha would not have it so. She
clung to this woman friend with an unwonted eagerness, begging her to
stay.
"We are quite alone, and we have been so miserable over Mr. Hambleton's
illness," she pleaded quite illogically. "Do stay and cheer us up!"
And so Mélanie was persuaded; easily, too, except for her compunctions
about abusing the hospitality of a household whose first care must
necessarily be for the sick.
"I want to stay," she said frankly. "The house breathes the very air
of restfulness itself; and I haven't seen the garden at all!" She
walked back over the lawn, looked admiringly out toward the garden,
with its purple and yellow flowers, then gazed into the lofty thicket
above her head, where the high elm spread its century-old branches.
Agatha, standing a little apart and looking at Melanie, was again
struck by some haunting familiarity about her face and figure. She
wondered where she could have seen Miss Reynier before.
Aleck Van Camp, appearing round the corner of the house, made elaborate
bows to the two ladles.
"Good morning, Miss Redmond!" He greeted her cordially, plainly glad
to see her. "I slept the sleep of the blest up there in your fragrant
loft. Good morning, Miss Reynier!" He walked over and formally took
Mélanie's hand for an instant. "I knew it was decreed that you two
should be friends," he went on, in his deliberate way. "In fact, I've
been waiting for the moment when I could have the pleasure of
introducing you myself, and here you have managed to dispense with my
services altogether. But let me escort you into the house. Sallie
says her raised biscuits are all ready for luncheon."
Agatha, looking at her new friend's vivid face, saw that Mr. Van Camp
was not an unwelcome addition to their number. She had a quick
superstitious feeling of happiness at the thought that the old red
house, gathering elements of joy about its roof, was her possession and
her home.
"I've promised to show Miss Reynier some queer old books after
luncheon," she said.
Aleck wrinkled his brow. "I'll try not to be jealous of them."