THE FAMILY CHEST.
Little was said on the homeward walk. Rita walked between her two
cousins, holding fast a hand of each. She seemed hardly conscious of
their presence, however; she sobbed occasionally, dry, tearless sobs,
and murmured Spanish words to herself. Margaret caught the word
_"Madre!"_ repeated over and over, and pressed her cousin's hand, and
spoke soothing words; but Rita did not heed her. Peggy walked quickly,
head in air, cheeks glowing, and eyes shining. All the awkwardness, the
hanging head and furtive air, was gone, and Margaret looked at her in
wonder and admiration. But both girls were a piteous sight as regarded
their clothes. From head to foot they dripped with black mud, thick and
slimy. Peggy's dress gave no hint of the original colour in the entire
front, and Rita's was little better. Their very faces were bedabbled
with black, and they left a black trail behind them on the grass. In
this guise they met the astonished gaze of John Strong as he passed
through the garden on his way to the seed-house. He came hurrying toward
them with anxious looks.
"My dear children," he cried, "what has happened?" Then, in a different
tone, "I beg your pardon, young ladies! I was startled at seeing
you,--there has been some accident?"
But Rita was herself again now in an instant. Her eyes blazed with angry
pride.
"Keep your place, John Strong!" she said haughtily. "When we address
you, it will be time for you to speak to us." She swept past him into
the house, her superb bearing presenting a singular contrast to her
attire; and Peggy followed her, already beginning to giggle and look
foolish again. But Margaret lingered, distressed and mortified.
"Oh, John," she said, "there _has_ been an accident! You will
understand,--Miss Rita got into that terrible bog, and might have been
drowned there before my eyes, if Miss Peggy had not come by, and drawn
her out so cleverly." And she told him the whole story, dwelling warmly
upon Peggy's courage and presence of mind, and blaming herself for not
having perceived the danger in time.
"It is I who am to blame, Miss Margaret!" said John Strong. "Very, very
much to blame. Every one about here knows that peat-bog, and avoids it;
I had warned Miss Peggy, but did not think of your going so far in that
direction. I am very much to blame."
He seemed so much disturbed that Margaret tried to speak more lightly,
though she was still pale and trembling; but the gardener kindly begged
her to go in and rest, and she was glad enough to go.
John Strong stood looking after her a moment.
"I ought to be shot!" he said to himself. "And that is the lassie for
me! Good stuff in both the others, as I supposed, but this is the one
for me." And shaking his head, he went slowly on his way.
Margaret went straight to Peggy's room, but found it empty, and passing
by Rita's found the door shut, and heard voices within. She paused a
moment, wondering. Should she go in? No; she remembered Mrs. Cheriton's
words, "It may be that you are not to do it, after all," and she went
into her own room and shut the door.
It might have been half an hour after that she heard a whispering in the
hall outside, and then a knock at her door. She ran to open it, and
stood amazed. There was Peggy, blushing and smiling, looking as pleased
as a little child, arrayed in the rose-coloured tea-gown whose existence
she had endangered on the night of her arrival; and there beside her,
holding her hand, was Rita, in pale blue and swansdown,--Rita, also
smiling, but with the mockery for once gone from eyes and mouth, and
with traces of tears on her beautiful face. She now led Peggy forward,
and presented her formally to Margaret, with a sweeping courtesy.
"Miss Montfort," she began, "this is my sister. I desire for her the
honour and privilege of your distinguished acquaintance. She kisses your
hands and feet, as do I myself."
Then suddenly she threw herself upon Margaret's neck, still holding
Peggy's hand, so that all three were wrapped in one embrace.
"Marguerite," she cried, "behold this child! I have been a brute to her,
you know it well--" and Margaret certainly did. "A brute, a devil-fish,
what you will! and she--she has saved my life! You saw it, you heard it;
another moment, and I should have gone--" she shuddered. "I cannot speak
of it. But now, Marguerite, hear me swear!"
"Oh my!" ejaculated Peggy, in some alarm.
"Hear me swear!" repeated Rita passionately; "from this moment Peggy is
my sister. You are not jealous, no? You are also my own soul, but you
are sufficient to yourself; what do you need, piece of Northern
perfection that you are? Peggy needs me; I take her, I care for her, I
form her! so shall it be!" And once more she embraced both cousins
warmly.
Margaret's eyes filled with happy tears.
"Dear Peggy! Dear Rita!" was all she could say at first, as she returned
their embraces. Then she made them come in and sit down, and looked from
one to the other. "It is so good!" she cried. "Oh, so good! You can't
imagine, girls, how I have longed for this! It did seem so dreadful that
you should not have the pleasure of each other--but we will not speak
of that any more! No! and we will bless the black bog for bringing you
together."
But Rita shuddered again, and begged that she might never hear of the
bog again.
"Do you observe Peggy's hair?" she asked. "What do you think of it?"
The fair hair was brought smoothly up over the well-shaped head, and
wound in a pretty, fluffy Psyche knot. The effect was charming in one
way, but--
"It makes her look too grown-up," Margaret protested. "It is very
pretty, but I want her to be a little girl as long as she can. You don't
want to be a young lady yet, do you, Peggy?"
"Oh, no!" cried Peggy. "Indeed I don't! But Rita thought--"
"Rita thought!" cried that young lady, nodding her head sagely. "Rita
thought wrong, as usual, and Margaret thought right. It is too old; but
what of that? We will try another style. Ten, twenty ways of dressing
hair I know. Often and often Conchita and I have spent a whole day
dressing each other's hair, trying this effect, that effect. Ah, the
superb hair that Conchita has; it sweeps the floor,--and soft--ah, as a
bat's wool!"
A few hours ago, Peggy would have sniffed scornfully at all this; but
now she listened with interest, and something of awe, as her beautiful
cousin discoursed of braids and puffs, and told of the extraordinary
effect that might sometimes be produced by a single small curl set at
the proper curve of the neck. It sounded pretty frivolous, to be sure,
but then, Rita looked so earnest and so lovely, and it was so new and
delightful to be addressed by her as an equal,--and a beloved equal at
that; Peggy's little head was in evident danger of being turned by the
new position of affairs.
Margaret, feeling that there were limits, even to the subject of
hairdressing, presently proposed a visit to Aunt Faith, and for once
neither cousin made any objection. Peggy was mortally afraid of the
white old lady, and Rita said frankly that she did not like old people,
and saw no reason why she should put herself out, simply because her
uncle, whom she had never seen, had chosen to saddle himself with the
burden of a centenarian. But to-day, Rita was shaken and softened out
of all her waywardness, and she readily admitted the propriety of
telling Mrs. Cheriton what had happened.
Aunt Faith listened with deep interest, and was as shocked and
distressed as heart could desire. The peat-bog, she told them, did not
belong to their uncle; he had in vain tried to buy the land, in order
that he might drain or fence it, but the proprietor refused to sell it.
There was a terrible story, she said, of a man's being lost there, many
years ago; it was a dreadful place.
Then, seeing Rita shudder again, she changed the subject, and spoke of
the charming contrast of the pale blue and rose-colour, in the two
girls' dresses. "The pink suits you well, little Peggy," she said. "I
have not seen you in a delicate colour before."
"This isn't mine," said honest Peggy; "it is Rita's--" but Rita laid her
hand over her mouth.
"It _is_ hers!" she said; "a nothing! a tea-gown of last year! One is
ashamed to offer such a thing, not fit to scour floors in--"
"Certainly not!" said Mrs. Cheriton, laughing. "Ah, Rita! you have the
Spanish ways, I see. I have heard nothing of that sort since I was in
Spain sixty years ago."
"What, you have been in Spain!" cried Rita, with animation. "Ah, I did
not know! Please tell us about it."
"Another time. You would like to hear, I think, about the winter I spent
in Granada, close by the Alhambra. But now I have something else to say.
Your pretty dresses remind me that there is a chest of old gowns here
that it might interest you to look over. Some of them are quite old, two
hundred years or more."
Then, while the girls uttered cries of delight, she called Janet and
bade her open the cedar chest in the next room.
"This way, my dears!" and she led the way into a bedroom, as white and
fresh and dainty as the sitting-room. Janet was already on her knees
before a deep chest, quaintly carved, and clamped with brass. Now, at
her mistress's request, she began to lift out the contents.
"Oh! oh! oh!" cried the three girls, positively squeaking with rapture
and wonderment. The old lady looked from them to the dresses with a
pleased smile. "They are handsome!" she said.
And they were! They must have been stately dames indeed, the Montfort
ladies who wore these splendid clothes! Here was a crimson damask, so
heavily embroidered in silver that it stood alone when Janet set it up
on the floor; here, again, a velvet, somewhat rubbed by long lying in
the chest, but of so rich and glowing a purple that only a queen could
have found it becoming. Here were satins that gleamed like falling
water; one, of the faint, moonlight tint that we call aqua-marine,
another with a rosy glow like a reflected sunset. And the peach-coloured
silk! and the blue and silver brocade! and the amber velvet!
Before the bottom of the chest was reached, the girls were silent,
having exhausted their stock of words.
At last Margaret cried, "Who were these people, Aunt Faith? Were they
princesses, or runaway Indian begums, or what? They certainly cannot
have been simple gentlewomen!"
Mrs. Cheriton laughed her soft, rustling laugh.
"It is a curious old Montfort custom," she said; "it has come down
through many generations, I believe. The women have had the habit of
keeping the handsomest gown they had, or one connected with some special
great event, and laying it in this old chest. Some of them are
wedding-gowns,--those two satins, for example, and that white brocade
with the tiny rosebuds,--that was your Grandmother Montfort's
wedding-gown, my dears, and she looked like a rose in it; I was
bridesmaid at her wedding. But others,--ah! hand me the blue and silver
brocade, Janet! Yes, here is an inscription that will, I think, amuse
you, my children. This was my own mother's contribution to the family
chest."
She beckoned the girls to look, and they bent eagerly forward. Under the
rich lace in the neck of the splendid brocade, a piece of paper was
neatly stitched, and on the paper was written: "This Gown was worne at
Madam Washington's Ball. I danced with Gen. Washington, the Court
Minuet, and he praised my dancing. Afterwards the Gen. spilled Wine
uppon the Front Peece, but I put French Chalks to it, and now the Spotte
may hardly be Seen."
"Oh," sighed Margaret, "how enchanting! how perfectly delightful! Are
they all marked, Aunt Faith?"
"Not all, but a good many of them. See! Here is something on this
sea-green cloak; notice the sleeves, Rita: they are something in the
Spanish style, as it was in my youth. Let us see what is written here,
for I forget."
They bent over the yellow writing; in this case it was pinned on the
hanging sleeve, and read as follows: "This Cloak, with the flowered
satin Gown, was worn by me, Henrietta Montfort, the last time I went to
a worldly Assemblage. I lay them away, having entered upon a Life of
Retirement and Meditation since the Death of my deere Husband. Mem. The
Cloake was lined with Sabels, which I have removed, lest Moth and Rust
do corrupt, and have made them into Muffs for the Poor."
"I believe she became a great saint," said Mrs. Cheriton, "and a very
severe one. I have heard that in the coldest winter weather she would
not let her servants build fires on Sunday because she did not consider
it a necessary work. There is a story that one bitter cold Sunday some
one came to call, and found the whole family in bed, servants and all,
trying to keep warm. I know they never had any warm victuals on that
day."
"How pleasant to live now," said Margaret, "instead of then! Aren't you
glad, girls?"
"My faith!" said Rita, "I would have made a fire with the house, and
burned her in it; then I should have been warm. But what is this, Aunt
Faith? If I am truly to call you so, yes? What horror is this? Look at
the beautiful satin, all destroyed! Cut!--it is cut with knives,
Marguerite! Look!"
Janet held up a white satin gown, of quaint and graceful fashion. Sure
enough, it was cut and slashed in every direction, the sleeves hanging
in ribbons, the skirt slit and gashed down its entire length. Mrs.
Cheriton shook her head in answer to the girls' looks of amazement and
inquiry.
"I am sorry you saw that, Rita!" she said. "It recalls a sad story,
which might better be forgotten. However--well, that gown belonged to my
poor Aunt Penelope. She was a beautiful girl, but headstrong, and she
married, against her parents' wishes, a handsome, good-for-nothing man,
who made her desperately unhappy, and finally left her. She lost her
mind, poor soul, from sorrow and suffering. When her father brought her
home to Fernley, she took this, her wedding-gown, and cut it up in this
strange fashion that you see, and laid it so in the chest; as a warning,
she told her mother. She died very soon after her return; poor Aunt
Penelope!"
She signed to Janet to lay the tattered gown back; and it seemed to the
girls as if the poor lady herself were being laid back in her coffin to
rest after her troubled life.
"Does--does she walk?" asked Peggy, in an awestruck voice.
"Walk?" repeated Mrs. Cheriton. "I don't--oh, yes! her ghost, you mean,
Peggy? No, my dear. I fancy she was too tired to think of anything but
resting. There is only one Montfort ghost that I ever heard of, and that
one is not a woman's."
"Oh, tell us! Tell us, please!" cried all three girls eagerly. "A real
ghost? How thrilling!"
"I did not say it was a real ghost, you impetuous children. I do not
believe in ghosts myself, and I never saw this one. But people used to
think that the spirit of Hugo Montfort haunted one of the rooms. He died
suddenly, in great trouble about some family papers that had been lost,
and the family tradition is that he comes back from time to time to hunt
once more through desks and drawers, in hope of finding them. He has
never done so, I believe; but then, he has never been here since I came
to Fernley. Your Uncle John is no ghost-lover, any more than I am, and I
fear poor Hugo may feel the lack of sympathy. And now," she added, "this
is positively enough of old-time gossip. I do not know when I have
talked so much, children; you make me young and frivolous once more."
"Oh," cried Peggy, who had listened open-mouthed to the last tale; "but
just tell us what he looks like, when any one does see him. I have
wanted all my life to be where there was a ghost. Is he--is he in
white?"
"Oh, dear, no! Hugo Montfort is no hobgoblin ghost in a white sheet,
with a pumpkin head! He was a very elegant gentleman in his time, and I
believe his favorite wear is black velvet. By the way, his portrait is
in the long gallery upstairs. Have you been there, my dears? There are
some curious old portraits. And there is the garret; you have surely
visited the garret?"
But the girls had not, they confessed. There had been so much to do, the
days had gone so rapidly. Margaret alone realised, and she perhaps for
the first time, how little they had really seen of the house itself.
There was so much to see out of doors, and when indoors she was always
drawn irresistibly to the library and its entrancing folios and quartos.
Peggy had, one rainy day, proposed to "see if there wasn't a garret or
some place where they could have some fun." But Margaret, as she now
remembered with a pang, had just discovered the "Hakluyt Chronicles,"
and was conscious of nothing in the world save the volume before her,
and the longing wish for her father to enjoy it with her.
"We will go this very afternoon!" she cried, with animation. "Is it
unlocked? May we roam about wherever we like, Aunt Faith? It sounds
like Bluebeard! Are there no doors that we may not open?"
"None among those that you will see there," said Mrs. Cheriton. And
Margaret fancied that she looked grave for a moment. "You will find more
trunks there," she added quickly, "full of old trumpery, less valuable
than these dresses, and which you may like to amuse yourselves with.
Here are the keys of some of them--the wig trunk, the military trunk;
yes, I think you may be sure of an afternoon's amusement if you are as
fond of dressing up as I was at your age. Now we must say good-bye, my
dear children; Janet is shaking her head at me, and it is true that I
must not talk too long."
She kissed them all affectionately, and they sped away, Margaret only
lingering to look back with one parting glance at the beautiful old
figure in its white chair.
"The garret! the garret!" cried Rita. "Hurrah!" shouted Peggy. And they
flew up the stairs like swallows.