THE HOUSE OF MEMORY
After lunch the day following the dance, as it chanced to be Saturday
afternoon, Jean came into the ranch girls’ sitting room looking for
Olive and Frieda. She had been playing basketball for the past two hours
and in spite of having known nothing of the game on her arrival at
school, was already one of its acknowledged champions. But although
Jean’s cheeks were glowing and her hair in a tumbled mass above her
face, her expression was uncommonly serious and in her hand she held a
bundle of letters. One she tossed to Frieda, who was curled up on a sofa
nursing a small cold due to her frivolity, and two to Olive, keeping two
for herself.
Olive quickly tore open the letter addressed to her in Jack’s
handwriting and Frieda followed suit. When Jack had first been taken to
the hospital and there compelled to lie always flat on her back, her
handwriting had been difficult to read, but now that she had gotten used
to this method of writing, her stroke was again as vigorous and
characteristic as of old.
Frieda, after reading a few lines, smiled up at the other girls. “Jack
says she is getting on very well and we are to see her in a few
weeks—perhaps,” she announced.
Olive looked over at Jean. “It is worse than Jack writes, of course,
isn’t it?” she asked. “I suppose Ruth has written you, for Jack never
tells anything but the best news of herself.”
“There may be an operation or something of the sort later on,” Jean
conceded, “Ruth does not say positively, for it may not be for some
months yet. Only if the operation does have to take place Jack has
demanded that Jim come on from the ranch to New York, leaving Ralph
Merrit to look after things at the mine. Jim would come now, but things
are in a bit of a tangle. I wonder how Ruth will behave if Jim does
come?” And Jean sighed.
An interested expression, crossed Frieda’s face. “Why should she behave
in any special way?” she inquired, sitting straight up on the couch to
gaze from Olive to Jean.
Quickly the subject of conversation needed to be changed, for Frieda was
the only one of the four ranch girls who knew nothing of what had
happened at the ranch between Jim Colter, their overseer, and Ruth Drew,
their chaperon. What had come between the two lovers only Jack Ralston
understood, but Olive and Jean were both perfectly aware that Jim and
Ruth had seemed to care a great deal for one another and then some
mysterious misunderstanding had suddenly parted them.
“I wonder if old Jack looks very badly,” Jean suggested, knowing this
would surely divert Frieda’s attention to one theme. “Sometimes I wish
for Jack’s sake that we were all back at Rainbow Lodge, for there she
was able to be out in the air a part of the time and now—” The vision of
Jack lying helpless at the hospital was too much for the three girls, so
that there was a moment of painful silence in the room. Then Jean said
more cheerfully after re-reading the latter part of Ruth’s letter: “Jim
says that Ralph Merrit is doing perfectly splendid work at the mine and
that he is a trump. Do you know I am rather vain of having discovered
Ralph that day in the wilderness, considering how well he has turned
out; Jim likes him a lot better than he does Frank Kent.”
The young lady on the sofa with the cold had not yet forgiven Jean for
last night’s scolding. Now she turned up her small nose a trifle more
than usual. “Oh, you just say that because Ralph likes you best and
Frank Kent is more fond of Jack,” she answered scornfully. And Jean
flushed.
“That is not true, Frieda. Of course it is only natural that Jim should
like Ralph better because Ralph is poor and has to make his own way in
the world just as Jim has; and Frank Kent, though he is awfully simple
and a thorough good fellow, is the son of an English Lord and may have a
title himself some day.”
“Then wouldn’t it be splendid if Jack should become an English lady and
own country estates and ride to hounds?” Frieda suggested more
peacefully, gazing across the room at Frank Kent’s photograph, which
ornamented the bookshelf. “I think I should love to be introduced into
English society and talk to earls and princes and things,” she ended
lamely.
A fine sarcasm curled Jean’s lips, though her eyes sparkled with
mischief. “Talk to earls and princes and things about fishing worms,
baby?” she queried with studied politeness.
And promptly Frieda, flushing quite up to her ears, hurled a sofa
cushion at Jean, which Olive caught, saying gently:
“Please don’t let’s quarrel, children, we never used to at the Lodge.
What would Ruth think of us?” And picking up a second letter that Jean
had brought to her, she began to read it.
Jean sat penitently down on the sofa trying to kiss Frieda, who
resolutely covered up her head. “Come on and get dressed, infant; no,
your cold isn’t too bad for you to come. Olive is reading a note of
invitation from Mrs. Harmon for us to come over to ‘The Towers’ to have
tea and Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt are to go with us.”
But the rôle of invalid was too precious a one and too seldom enjoyed by
the youngest Miss Ralston for her to surrender it easily.
“I am too sick, please tell Mrs. Harmon,” she protested resolutely;
“only if they have any candy or cake and happen to mention sending me
some you might bring it along. And I do wish both you girls would go out
for a while, for Mollie is coming to spend the afternoon with me after
she finishes her music lesson and we would love to have the sitting room
to ourselves.”
“I hope, Olive, that you know when you are not wanted without being
actually knocked over by the broadness of the hint,” Jean said, seeing
that Olive was hesitating about what she should do. “Come along, it will
do us both good to get away and not to sit here thinking about what we
can’t help,” she ended.
While both girls were putting on their best afternoon frocks preparatory
to starting forth on their visit, in the silence of her own room Olive
was trying to persuade herself that her hesitation in going for the call
upon the Harmons was because she dreaded to be reminded by the sight of
Elizabeth of the old tragedy to Jack. But there was something more than
this in her mind, for actually she dreaded entering the big white house
which had given her such an uncomfortable sensation the moment her eyes
had rested upon it. Yet what connection could she have ever had with an
old place like “The Towers,” or any house resembling it? Her impression
that she must have seen the house somewhere before was sheer madness,
for was it not an old Dutch mansion, perhaps built hundreds of years
ago, and certainly wholly unlike any of the ranch houses out West?
Olive resolutely put all the ridiculous ideas that had annoyed her out
of her mind and with Jessica Hunt, Miss Winthrop and Jean started gayly
forth on their walk. It was about four o’clock in the late November
afternoon and instead of following the path through the woods, the
little party set out along the lane that led through an exquisite part
of the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood. Crossing a little brook they climbed
a short hill and from the top of it could see at some distance off the
spire of the old Sleepy Hollow church and on the other side the Hudson
River with the autumn mists rising above it like breath from its deep
hidden lungs.
Jessica and Olive were together, Jean and Miss Winthrop. As Olive was
particularly silent, Jessica drew her arm through hers. “This is a land
of legends and of dreams about here, dear, and some day I must take you
western girls about the country and show you the historic places nearby.
Do you know anything about them?” she asked.
But Olive was dreaming or else stupid, for she only shook her head. “I
don’t know,” she answered, “the country does seem somehow familiar, yet
it did not at first. Don’t you believe that all the world, at least the
world of outside things, of hills and trees and valleys and water,
somehow belongs alike to all of us and once we have seen a landscape and
moved about in it, why we are at home. There isn’t any strangeness in
nature, there can’t be; it is only people and houses and streets that
are odd and unlike and fail to belong to us.”
Donald Harmon met his four guests some yards up the road on their
approach to the house. As he was holding a great St. Bernard dog by the
collar and as it bounded away from him all of a sudden, nearly upsetting
Olive and Jessica in the rapture of its welcome, the little party
entered “The Towers” with too much laughter and excitement for Olive to
feel any self-consciousness or emotion. Indeed, she quite forgot all of
her past foolishness in meeting Mrs. Harmon and Elizabeth again after so
many eventful months. Elizabeth was able to walk about the room quite
easily and of course her first inquiry was for Jack.
Without a chance for exchanging views, Jean and Olive both decided
at once that the drawing room at “The Towers,” in spite of its
magnificence, was one of the darkest and most unattractive rooms either
of them had ever seen. For everything was very stiff and formal and
without life or fragrance. Carved black furniture sat stiffly against
the walls, which were hung with old portraits of men and women in high
fluted ruffs, with gorgeous embroidered clothes and hard, cold faces.
Over in one corner stood a tea table piled with silver and white linen
and having a large arm chair near it carved like a throne. And behind
this chair was a portrait of a beautiful boy of ten or twelve, who
looked a little like Donald Harmon.
“My aunt will be down in a few minutes, Katherine,” Mrs. Harmon had said
as soon as her guests were seated. “She has asked us to wait tea for
her.” And Jean and Olive both noticed that Mrs. Harmon’s manner was a
little constrained and that she kept looking at Olive as though she
intended asking her some question, but as the question was never asked,
the girls must have been mistaken. However, the conversation in the
little company did not become general, for no one except Miss Winthrop
seemed to feel at ease, until by and by the tap, tap, tap of a long
stick was heard coming along the hall and with a low bow the butler
flung open the drawing room door.
Everybody sat up straighter in their high-back chairs; Jean could not
forbear a slight wink at Donald, but Olive felt her heart rise up in her
throat. Why on earth was the old mistress of “The Towers” so formidable
that the entire neighborhood felt an awe of her? Olive was rather sorry
that she was competing for one of her prizes offered to the Junior
students at Primrose Hall.
“Madame Van Mater,” the butler announced very distinctly and at the name
of the owner of the white house, which Olive now heard for the first
time since her arrival at Primrose Hall, the young girl caught at the
sides of her chair, and drew in her breath sharply. Then when no one was
looking at her, smiled at herself and turned her gaze curiously on their
ancient hostess.