When Lindsay pulled back from the quiet gray void which had enshrouded
him, he was lying on the grass. Far, far away, as though pasted against
the brilliant blue sky, was a face. Gradually the sky receded. The face
came nearer. It topped, he gradually gathered, the tiny slender
black-silk figure of a little old lady. "Do you feel all right now?" it
asked.
Lindsay wished that she would not question him. He was immensely
preoccupied with what seemed essentially private matters. But the
instinct of courtesy prodded him. "Very much, thank you," he answered
weakly. He closed his eyes again. He became conscious of a wet cloth
sopping his forehead and cheeks. A breeze tingled on the bare flesh of
his neck and chest. He opened his eyes again; sat up. "Do you mean to
tell me I fainted?" he demanded with his customary vigor.
"That's exactly what you did, young man," the old lady answered. "The
instant you looked at me! I was setting with my back to the door. You
could have knocked me down with a feather, when you fell over
backwards."
"Have I been out long?"
"Not more'n a moment. I flaxed around and got some water and brought you
to in a jiffy. You ain't an invalid, are you?"
"Far from it," Lindsay reassured her. "I'm afraid, though, I've been
working too long in the hot sun this morning."
"Like as not!" the little old lady agreed briskly. "I guess you're
hungry too," she hazarded. "Now you just get up and lay in the hammock
and I'm going to make you some lunch. I see there was some eggs there
and milk and tea. I'll have you some scrambled eggs fixed in no time. My
name is Spash--Mrs. Spash."
"My name is Lindsay--David Lindsay."
Lindsay found himself submitting without a murmur to the little old
lady's program. He lay quiescent in the hammock and let the tides of
vitality flow back.... Mrs. Spash's prophecy, if anything,
underestimated her energy. In an incredibly short time she had produced,
in collaboration with the oil stove, eggs scrambled on bread deliciously
toasted, tea of a revivifying heat and strength.
"Gee, that tastes good!" Lindsay applauded. He sighed. "It certainly
takes a woman!"
"What are you doing here?" Mrs. Spash inquired. "Batching it?"
"Yes, I think that describes the process," Lindsay admitted. After an
instant, "How did you happen to be on the doorstep?"
"Well, I don't wonder you ask," Mrs. Spash declared. "I didn't know the
Murray place was let and--well, I was making one of my regular visits.
You see, I come here often. I'm pretty fond of this old house. I lived
here once for years."
Lindsay sat upright. "Did you by chance live here when Lutetia Murray
was alive?"
"Well, I should say I did!" Mrs. Spash answered. "I lived here the last
twenty years of Lutetia Murray's life. I was her housekeeper, as you
might say."
Lindsay stared at her. He started to speak. It was obvious that
conflicting comments fought for expression, but all he managed to
say--and ineptly enough--was: "Oh, you knew her, then?"
"Knew her!" Mrs. Spash seemed to search among her vocabulary for words.
Or perhaps it was her soul for emotions. "Yes, I knew her," she
concluded with a feeble breathlessness.
"You've lived in this house, then, for twenty years," Lindsay repeated,
musing.
"Yes, all of that." Mrs. Spash appeared to muse also. For an instant the
two followed their own preoccupations. Then as though they led them to
the same _impasse_, their eyes lifted simultaneously; met. They smiled.
"I've bought this house, Mrs. Spash," Lindsay confided. "And you never
can guess why."
Mrs. Spash started what appeared to be a comment. It deteriorated into a
little inarticulate murmur.
"I bought it," Lindsay went on, "because when I was in college, I fell
in love with Lutetia Murray." And then, at Mrs. Spash's wide-eyed, faded
stare, "Not with Miss Murray herself--I never saw her--but with her
books. I read everything she wrote and I wrote in college what we call a
thesis on her."
"Sort of essay or composition," Mrs. Spash defined thesis to herself.
"Exactly," Lindsay permitted.
"She was--she was--" Mrs. Spash began in a dispassionate sort of way.
She concluded in a kind of frenzy. "She was an angel."
"Oh yes, she's that all right. I have never seen anybody so lovely."
Mrs. Spash made a swift conversational pounce. "I thought you said you'd
never seen her."
Lindsay flushed abjectly. "No," he admitted. "But you see I have a
picture of her." He pointed to the mantel.
"Yes, I noticed that when I came in to get some water." Strangely enough
Mrs. Spash did not, for a moment, look at the picture. Instead she
stared at Lindsay. Lindsay submitted easily enough to this examination.
After a while Mrs. Spash appeared to abandon her scrutiny of him. She
trotted over to the fireplace; studied Lutetia's likeness.
"I don't know as I ever see that one--it don't half do her justice--I
hate a profile picture--" She pronounced "profile" to rhyme with
"wood-pile." "None of her pictures ever did do her justice. Her beauty
was mostly in her hair and her eyes. She had a beautiful skin too,
though she never took no care of it. Never wore a hat--no matter how hot
the sun was. And then her expression-- Well, it was just
beautiful--changing all the time."
Lindsay was only half listening. He was, with an amused glint in his
eyes, studying Mrs. Spash's spare, erect black-silk figure. She was a
relic perfectly preserved, he reflected, of mid-Victorianism. Her black
was of the kind that is accurately described by the word decent. And she
wore fittingly a little black, beaded cape with a black shade-hat that
tilted forward over her face at a decided slant. Her straight, white,
abundant hair was apparently parted in the middle under her hat. At any
rate, the neat white parting continued over the crown of her head to her
very neck, where it concealed itself under a flat black-silk bow. Her
gnarled, blue-veined hands had been covered with the lace mitts that now
lay on the table. Her little wrinkled face was neat-featured. The irises
of her eyes were a faded blue and the whites were blue also; and this
put a note of youthful color among her wrinkles.
But Lindsay lost interest in these details; for, obviously, a new idea
caught him in its instant clutch. "Oh, Mrs. Spash," he suggested, "would
you be so good as to take me through this house? I want you to tell me
who occupied the rooms. This is not mere idle curiosity on my part. You
see Miss Murray's publishers have decided to bring out a new edition of
her works. They want me to write a life of Miss Murray. I'm asking
everybody who knows anything about her all kinds of questions."
Mrs. Spash received all this with that unstirred composure which
indicates non-comprehension of the main issue.
"Of course I'm interested on my own account too," Lindsay went on.
"She's such a wonderful creature, so charming and so beautiful, so
sweet, so unbearably poignant and sad. I can't understand," he concluded
absently, "why she is so sad."
Mrs. Spash seemed to comprehend instantly. "It's the way she died," she
explained vaguely, "and how everything was left!" She walked in little
swift pattering steps, and with the accustomed air of one who knows her
way, through the side door into the addition. "This was Miss Murray's
own living-room," she told Lindsay. "She had that little bit of a
stairway made, she _said_, so's too many folks couldn't come up to her
room at once. Not that that made any difference. Wherever she was, the
whole household went."
With little nipping steps Mrs. Spash ascended the stairway. Lindsay
followed.
"Did Miss Murray die in her room?" Lindsay asked.
"How did you know this was her room?" Mrs. Spash demanded.
"I don't know exactly. I just guessed it," Lindsay answered. "I sleep
here myself," he hurriedly threw off.
"Yes. She died here. She was all alone when she died. You see--" Mrs.
Spash sat down on the one chair and, instantly sensing her mood, Lindsay
sat down on the bed.
"You see, things hadn't gone very well for Miss Murray the last years of
her life. Her books didn't sell-- And she spent money like water. She
was allus the most open-hearted, open-handed creature you can imagine.
She allus had the house full of company! And then there was the little
girl--Cherry--who lived with her. At the end, things were bad. No money
coming in. And Miss Murray sick all the time."
"You say she was alone when she died," Lindsay gently brought her back
to the track.
"Yes--except for little Cherry, who slept right through
everything--childlike. Cherry had that room." Mrs. Spash jerked an
angular thumb back.