INTO THE ORCHARD HOUSE
Isadora opened the door for Kate as she came up the steps. There was a
yellow envelope in her hand.
“A telegram for you, Miss Kate. It came just a minute ago. Oh, I do hope
there’s no bad news.”
Kate caught a glimpse of Julia wavering at the farthest end of the hall
in shadow, and there was Effie just inside the drawing-room,
deliberately watching while she opened the envelope.
“I’m sure it’s not bad news,” Kate informed these anxious friends of her
mother’s as she tore open the end of the envelope. “I _expected_ a
wire.” She felt some importance in saying that, and she was glad to
clear the air, for it was charged with keenest apprehension.
Kate’s message had gone and Katherine’s reply arrived all within an
hour. Katherine had certainly not hesitated over a decision. Kate nodded
as she read and smiled.
Am autoing to Ludlow Junction to catch back way express Oakdale
five-five whatever situation keep cool and brave in a few hours Mother
will be with you rejoiced you’re not sick. K.
Katherine certainly had not counted the words!
When Kate looked up, the anxious watchers had vanished, dispersed by her
smile as she read. She sat down in a chair standing against the wall.
Her arms dropped at her sides and she leaned her head against the
high-carved back of the chair, crushing a little her mother’s best hat.
For the minute she was too absorbed in her own thoughts and too
fatigued—the fatigue that is apt to come with sudden complete relief of
mind—to remember such an item as a hat.
A step on the stair made her look up. Bertha was hurrying down, rustling
in a raincoat, a scarf tied over her head.
“You’re here,” she exclaimed. “I saw you coming, from a window upstairs.
Are these the things?”
Kate nodded, and Bertha took the packages and pocketbook from the floor
where Kate had carelessly dropped them to tear open her telegram.
Bearing them carefully she went away _through the drawing-room_.
“Well, she can’t get to the kitchen that way,” Kate mused, hardly
caring. “And why the raincoat? Oh, well, What’s the use of trying to
puzzle anything out any more? Mother’s coming, Mother’s coming, Mother’s
coming!”
After a little while, yawning and half asleep, she wandered into Aunt
Katherine’s own sitting-room—a graceful, comfortable little retreat
tucked away in an isolated corner of the big house. The outstanding
feature there was an oil painting of Kate’s mother at the age of sixteen
in a blue party frock standing against dark velvet portières. It was a
painting by Hopkinson in his earlier manner, executed with finish and
most delicate feeling. The painting was one of Miss Frazier’s most
valuable possessions, and Kate had surmised, when her aunt had shown it
to her, one of the dearest. Certainly it was a painting with a spell
over it, a spell of beauty and something besides, unnamable and
illusive. Perhaps it was the spirit of youth which the artist had with
such genius caught there, that gave it its magic.
Kate unfolded an afghan that lay conveniently on the foot of the sofa
beneath the portrait, and curling herself up under it, settled down for
a nap. She felt perfectly safe in losing herself for the time because
Elsie had given her promise to stay in bed until luncheon.
But at one o’clock Bertha brought down the news that the doctor had
ordered Elsie to remain in bed all afternoon, too. She was asleep now,
and Bertha thought she would sleep for several hours. Her temperature
had gone down to normal and she was comfortable. Later, when she woke,
Bertha would take her up a light meal.
Lunching alone for Kate was a rather dreary procedure in spite of the
coziness of the breakfast-room where Miss Frazier had thoughtfully
ordered the meal served, and the merry little fire crackling on the
hearth. Kate had had a good sleep and she was now so rested in body and
mind that she could think about things with some clarity. She leaned her
elbow on the table and her chin in her hand and regarded the fire as
though it were her companion at the meal.
Elsie’s father was a thief! How would it feel to have your father a
thief and in prison and everybody knowing it? Kate had never known a
father, so she found it difficult to put herself in Elsie’s place. But
suppose it were her mother? Oh, supposing that was too painful, and
certainly it wasn’t like that for Elsie. Perhaps Elsie cared as little
for her father as she had for her mother. (Kate had never recovered from
the horrid shock of that disclosure.) She certainly never mentioned him.
But she was not allowed to mention him. What had Aunt Katherine’s letter
said on that point? “Nick’s name is not mentioned here, either by Elsie
or the servants,”—something like that. But imagine consenting to forget
your father for _any one_! No, of course Elsie had no such devotion for
her father as Kate’s for her mother. Not likely. No use to try to
compare, then. Besides, the mere notion was altogether too painful.
Let’s begin at the beginning, though. Why had Elsie bought bread and
eggs and lettuce and nuts which she surely had no use for herself; and
why had she been so urgent that Kate should buy more to-day? Surely she
didn’t expect to take such perishable things with her in her flight from
Aunt Katherine’s house! There had been no sign of eatables when Kate
unpacked the runaway’s suitcase last night. Oh! An idea! Had Elsie
planned to run away only as far as the orchard house, and was the food
supply stored there? Was that the mystery about the orchard house? Had
she discovered a secret room or something and was planning to live in it
like a hermit without any one’s knowing? Kate built up quite a plot
around that idea. It would be exciting and fascinating to live right
under your guardian’s nose while that guardian was scouring the country
for you. But in spite of the possibilities of this story-like mystery,
Kate finally let it go as an explanation. It was too far-fetched.
A better solution! Had Nick, her father, escaped from prison? Elsie was
shielding him, perhaps. Why, of course, she was hiding him in the
orchard house. Kate’s heart began to hammer. Stupid, not to have thought
of that at once, just the minute Jack told her about Elsie’s father
being a thief. All the food had been for him. The book she couldn’t
afford to buy, too! She had wanted it for him. How very simple it all
was! And they were going to escape together. They would escape into
Canada or somewhere. No, vague memories of something called “extradition
papers” came to mind. They would simply hide themselves in the crowds of
some big city. They would vanish. Oh, well, from the very first Elsie
had been a vanishing comrade. When she ran away with her father she
would vanish for good.
Now, how did the detective work into this solution of the puzzle?
Suddenly there was a snag. If Nick had escaped from prison, wouldn’t
state detectives be on his trail? Mr. O’Brien, Aunt Katherine had told
her, was a private detective. And if Nick had really escaped from prison
surely Aunt Katherine would not in any way be concerned in finding him.
That would be simply a matter for the police.
Kate turned her eyes uneasily to the open door, almost expecting to see
a plain-clothes man spying upon her from the rain out there. But there
was only the drenched garden and beyond, the orchard, wreathed in a haze
of wet weather.
One more snag: surely if Nick had escaped from prison it would have got
into the papers, and someone in Oakdale have seen it. Then Jack would
know, and he had not even hinted at such a thing.
But now for the most important consideration of all: the stranger in the
garden who had given her the note for Elsie last night? Who was he, and
where did he come in? The reasonable answer was that he was Nick
himself, Elsie’s father, the thief, the man who had stolen from his own
benefactress. But Kate did not harbour this idea for the fraction of a
second. That voice was not the voice of such a one, and such a one would
hardly be quoting from “The King of the Fairies.”
Deep down in her heart, deep beyond reason, Kate had connected that
stranger in the garden with what Elsie had said about fairies in the
orchard house. This man himself, who had given her the note, was a human
being, of course, She didn’t go so far as to think him unearthly; but he
might very well know about those fairies who “were in it somehow.” He
seemed a person who would indeed be _likely_ to know. Kate was ready to
connect that stranger with any mystery so long as it was a pleasant
mystery. With an unpleasant mystery—never. His note had told Elsie not
to run away; Elsie herself had said so. But he had known that she meant
to run away. That was apparent. Where had he come from out of the wind
last night?
What of that light she had seen in the orchard house her first night
here? Those three open windows? That closing door in the second
story—closing as though a knob had been turned?
Oh, there were just too many things to think of and to fit in. The
shortest cut to clearing up some of the mystery and giving her mother a
starting point to work from with Elsie when she should get here at five
o’clock to-night was to explore the orchard house now, right away. There
was her heart whacking at her sides again! Yes, but she must do it,
escaped convict or not. That was the first step to be taken. She had the
end of the string—Jack Denton had given her that—the orchard house came
next, made the first knot to be untangled.
“No, no dessert, thank you.” You couldn’t eat with your heart hammering
like that, could you? She walked to the door. The rain was stopping, had
almost entirely stopped. The key was upstairs, back in the drawer of her
dressing table where she had replaced it after wringing it from Elsie
yesterday. If she went for it now Elsie might hear and again weep her
into a promise to keep away from the orchard house. The key had been
only a matter of form, anyway. There were always the windows. Kate was
sure they couldn’t all be locked. She would try getting in that way
before she bothered about the key.
She glanced down at her rubber-soled canvas ties. No need for rubbers.
No need for a sweater or umbrella, either: the little showers of rain
blowing down from trees and bushes would do her chintz no harm.
She crossed the terrace, hoping neither Elsie nor Bertha was looking
from a window overhead, and walked through the orchard straight to the
orchard house. Before trying the windows, better try the door. That was
only common sense. The latch lifted under her fingers! Had the house
always stood open like this, and all that fuss about the key! She pushed
the door softly open and went in.
“Something to do with fairies,” Elsie had said. Kate remembered the
words as she crossed the threshold. And she felt surely as though it
might easily have something to do with fairies; she might have been
stepping into Fairyland itself for the eerie sensation that crossing the
threshold gave her.
She left the door open behind her, and a gusty wet wind followed her
like a companion. It filled the hall with the pungent scent of the
syringa bush by the step.
There was nothing in the hall but a little oblong table standing against
the wall at the foot of the stairs, a table with curly legs and a carved
top on which stood an empty card tray, and hung above the table was a
narrow long mirror in a gilded frame.
Kate looked into the mirror. How many, many times it had reflected her
mother’s face. How very unlike Katherine her daughter was, hair bobbed
so straight, rather slanting narrow eyes, full lips, freckles across the
nose! Kate surveyed this image with her usual slight sense of annoyance
upon meeting it in a mirror. She imagined Katherine, a Katherine of her
own age, looking over her shoulder in the glass, their two heads
together. It was the Katherine of the portrait, dark curly head, wide
misty eyes, olive cheeks ever so delicately touched with rose.
Oh! Had that face actually gleamed out there for an instant? Her mental
vision had been so clear that she could not be sure it had not, just for
a flash, taken actual form.
Well, if the Katherine of sixteen years ago had joined her now and was
going to accompany her in her exploration of the orchard house, so much
the better. Kate had always longed for a girl comrade more than for
anything else in the world. Come, let’s pretend she had one at last,
Katherine at fifteen.
First the parlour. It opened on the right. The door stuck. Kate pushed
with her knee and lifted up on the knob simultaneously. It opened
explosively. And a door up in the second story somewhere opened in
sympathy with it. Kate stood very still, listening. The jarring of the
walls was the cause, of course; but even with this explanation accepted,
it was creepy.
The little parlour was stuffy, as all closed rooms are stuffy. But
almost at once the syringa-scented air from the open front door had
remedied that; it was so much more vital than the smell of dust and
mildew. But why think of the parlour as “little,” for by any ordinary
standards it was certainly a good-sized room. Only in comparison with
Aunt Katherine’s spacious drawing-room did Kate feel it now small and
quaint.
The furniture was much as it had been left when Grandfather Frazier died
and the house was closed. But the books were gone from the low bookcases
that lined the walls. Those Aunt Katherine had sent to her niece, and
Kate had grown up in their company.
The bookcases, a Franklin stove with a worn low bench in front of it, a
big square library table between the windows, some oil paintings on the
walls (Kate guessed some of these to be Aunt Katherine’s work), a
comfortable-looking but very unfashionable chintz-covered sofa, and
several very shabby, very welcoming easy chairs with deep seats and wide
arms and curving backs—that was the parlour.
And the fifteen-year-old Katherine Frazier had gone in ahead of Kate.
She was moving about the room, poking up the fire (the fire that didn’t
exist) in the grate, throwing her school books on the sofa, reading
absorbedly curled up with her feet under her in the deepest chair by the
window, making toast at the coals in the grate while the blue teapot
kept itself warm on the stove’s top. Katherine had told Kate about this
room, how she loved it and what she did in it. Her father was there
usually in the picture, too, and often Aunt Katherine. But somehow Kate
imagined neither of them now.
What a merry, comfortable, _spirited_ room it was. Its spirit had been
created by that dark-eyed girl. And the smell of the syringa! Now Kate
knew why her mother could never get by the syringa bush at the corner of
Professor Hart’s lawn without stopping for deep breaths when the syringa
was in flower.
The dining-room was across the hall. The dining table was long and
narrow, the handicraft of Great-grandfather Frazier. It was curly maple
and mirror-like with the polishings of many years. Close at one end two
chairs were drawn up to it. Several more stood with their backs against
the wall. Did Grandfather Frazier and Katherine sit close together like
that at the end of the long table those years they lived alone? Kate
wondered. Yes, she was sure they did; for there was the Katherine of her
imagination pouring tea for her father and handing it to him with a
sweet, affectionate smile. No need for Nora to come in from the kitchen
to pass it. This father and daughter could reach each other.
The kitchen failed to hold Kate’s attention. She missed Katherine there.
The young Katherine had not liked housework. Indeed, it was still a
burden to her, however gracefully she carried the burden. Perhaps that
was why Kate could not find her in the kitchen.
If stepping across the threshold into this empty house had stirred
Kate’s imagination and made her feel the possibility of fairies hiding
somewhere in the apparent emptiness, going up the stairs stirred it even
more.
It was a steep, rather narrow, little staircase, painted black and with
the wooden treads deeply worn by generations of feet. And right in the
very middle of her ascent, on the seventh stair, to be precise, there
happened to her a thing that had sometimes happened before but never
quite so _definitely_. She thought and felt that she had done this all
before, that she had come up these stairs on exactly the errand she was
on now; she remembered herself on this identical stair, with her hand on
this identical portion of the railing. More than that she knew exactly
what was going to happen to her when she reached the top—why shouldn’t
she know when she had experienced it all before?
But even as she felt this and in fact knew it, her foot had left that
seventh stair and the memory had vanished. Now she only had a memory of
a memory, or to be exact not even that. She only remembered that she
_had_ remembered. The instant itself, the connection, was lost.
She looked into the guest-room first. It was a pretty room in spite of
the absence of curtains and bedding. The furniture was painted a creamy
yellow. Katherine had painted it a few days before her marriage. By the
window there was a dainty little writing table with pens and blotters
and even ink-bottle conveniently placed. But the ink had been long
evaporated and the pens were rusty. Above the bed there hung,
passe-partouted in white, a flower-wreathed quotation. Had Aunt
Katherine or her mother painted the flowers and illuminated the letters?
The flowers were morning-glories, very realistically done, and the
quotation from “Macbeth”: “Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleave of
care.”
“Morning-glories are incongruous with the words,” Kate mused, smiling.
She felt more sophisticated than the fifteen-year-old Katherine who had
admired this crude bit of art enough to hang it in the guest-room, who
perhaps was even herself its perpetrator. “Yes, morning-glories are
incongruous with the words.”
“_Are they. Why?_”
“Perhaps they aren’t,” Kate answered, aloud. She remembered her flight
that very morning toward the slowly opening many-coloured portals of
sleep. Morning-glories might very well be growing on Sleep’s walls.
But whom had she answered? Who had spoken? No one, of course. There was
no one there _to_ speak, except Kate herself.
On either side the hall there was another bedroom. Kate merely looked in
at their doors. One had been her mother’s, and it was entirely bare now,
for all the furniture had gone to the barn-house in Ashland years ago.
The other had been Grandfather Frazier’s room, and somehow Kate felt
that she did not want to pry there. It would be like getting acquainted
with him when his back was turned.
Now there remained only the “playroom” and the upstairs “study”—a long
room at the back of the house, the room where the windows had stood open
that first night of Kate’s arrival—and ever since, for all she knew.
From her very first entrance into the house Kate had been _listening_
toward this room. It was in that room she fully expected to discover
Elsie’s secret. It was really the goal of her pilgrimage through the
house. But the nearer she drew to it physically the more she drew back
mentally. She was not exactly frightened. What did not frighten Elsie
need not frighten her. It was simply uneasiness in the face of mystery.
There was the playroom between, though. Kate was grateful to pause a
minute in the playroom.
The playroom was down a step, through a little low door. Kate had to
bend her head to go through the door. It was the smallest room she had
ever been in, about the size of a goodly closet. Shelves were built in
all around the walls, leaving space only for the one little low window
that reached the floor. Before the shelves, strung on brass rings to
brass rods, hung dusty, faded calico curtains, yellow flowers on a blue
background. Kate pushed back a curtain, jangling all its rings. The
shelves held a jumble of toys, birds, beasts, carts, engines, and on the
top shelf a row of dolls, some broken almost beyond recognition as
dolls, but two or three still healthy bisque beauties smiling blandly
over her head at the opposite wall.
There were three lilliputian chairs in the room, one a black rocker
painted on the back and seat with flowers and fruit. In one corner there
was a huge box of blocks, wooden building blocks that Great-grandfather
Frazier had made for Grandfather Frazier when he was a little boy.
Kate knelt by that box, and idly began constructing a house. She had
always adored building with blocks when she was a little girl, and now
the old fascination seized her; besides, she was putting off the minute
when she would open the door of that last room.
But as she completed the second wall of the house she turned suddenly
and looked over her shoulder. Had she heard something? A rustling, like
a dress coming down the hall and pausing at the door of the playroom?
Whom did she expect to see bending down at the low door and looking in
at her where she sat on the floor building with blocks like a little
girl? Strangely, it was not the sixteen-year-old Katherine she had been
imagining as her companion whom she pictured stooping down at that door
to look in. It was Katherine’s mother, Kate’s grandmother, who had died
when Katherine was still a little girl playing with blocks. Only she
would not look like an ordinary grandmother, of course. For she had died
when she was only twenty-four. She was a young woman, very graceful,
very gentle, lovely.
Of course she wasn’t really there at the door, wondering who had come in
her baby’s stead to play in the playroom. Of course she wasn’t there
with a spray of syringa flower at her belt. It was just Kate’s vivid
imagination. She was sensible enough to know that. The rustling of her
dress had been the leaves of the drenched apple tree boughs against the
window pane tossed by a rainy breeze. And the syringa scent had followed
Kate up here and even down into the little playroom.
It was a low little room, so low that Kate could but just stand up
straight in it. And it was entirely bare except for the shelves with
their treasure trove of toys, the box of blocks, and the lilliputian
chairs. But for all that the room was alive to Kate now. It was almost
giddy with life. And it was a life that did not concern her. She was an
intruder. She became uneasy as intruders are uneasy.
But she was not driven away precipitately. She stayed long enough to
replace the blocks in their place coolly. Then, still coolly, she stood
up and went out of the playroom, closing the door softly after her.
In the hall, however, she allowed herself to hurry. The door to the last
room, the study, was ajar. Had the figure of Kate’s imagination gone on
ahead to that room—the young mother? For an instant Kate hesitated with
her fingers on the knob.
“Psha! What are you afraid of! Silly!”
Downstairs, the hall door, which she had left open, blew shut with a
bang, A fresh downpour of rain rattled on the shingles just above her
head. (There was no attic above this part of the house.) Kate’s impulse
was to run down and secure at least the staying open of the front door,
so that she might have an unimpeded exit in case of panic. The door
fastened open, she would come back and have the fun of discovering for
herself Elsie’s secret which was the mystery of the orchard house.
But Kate did not follow her impulse. Instead, she squared her shoulders,
lifted her head a little defiantly, and pushed back that last door. She
stepped in.
“Oh! Oh!” But it was not a shriek. It was just a soft “oh! oh!” of
purest astonishment. For the room was occupied; but not by the ghost of
her grandmother.