MADAM GRANDMOTHER
Mallowbanks, Brent County, S. C.,
November first.
_Poor neglected Carin_:
I know it, Carin. I know I have treated you badly. I know that you have
been expecting and wondering and scolding because I have not written.
But when you say that I have forgotten you because of my new friends,
well—I haven’t any answer to that. Nothing pleasant ever happens to me
that I do not wish you were with me to share it, and nothing bad ever
happens that I do not think in the midst of all my trouble:
“I will make a story out of that to tell to Carin and—well, Annie Laurie
or any other person whom I love.”
But you first, Carin.
As you may have guessed, we got here alive. I was really very much
surprised. Between shivers and shudders I enjoyed the ride tremendously.
We had two days and a half of it, sleeping at night in inns where my
uncle and aunt were welcomed very warmly, and where everybody marveled
over me very much as they did in the old days when Mother McBirney first
took me over and carried me with her everywhere to exhibit me so lovingly
and triumphantly.
Only this time there were differences; very great differences. I soon
realized that to be the daughter of the house of Knox was no small
matter, and though I had insisted on keeping to my homespun, and still do
think it very nice, I was a trifle worried about it. But my riding suit
is well cut, and it fits like a dream, and the homespun is almost as soft
as camel’s hair, and the color of it, a bottle green, becomes me very
well. I was wearing the little dark green Alpine hat you brought me from
Switzerland, and that was becoming too.
Yet, girl-o’-my-heart, I felt frightened and insignificant enough when,
having passed by way of many charming old towns and wide plantations, we
came at last to the long, shady road which they told me belonged to the
Knox estate. The part we passed through was all in fine old trees, not
so near together but that the sun could make bright carpets in between
them. Here and there, where the ground lifted, we could see the
plantations, now of course in their autumn bareness, stretching in three
directions.
I have always loved to read about princes and princesses who have
wandered, poor and forlorn, in strange lands, and who finally return to
their royal homes and live happy ever after amid a loving people. I
think that is the nicest sort of a story in the world, and I often have
played, when it was cold and windy in my little loft on Tennyson
Mountain, and when Jim teased me, and all the family was looking at
something in a different way from what I was able to do, that I was a
lost princess and that by and by I would come into my own.
But I never really thought it anything but a silly, silly dream. I
played with it as I used, a few years before, to play with paper dolls.
Yet here I was, Carin, being swept up to the door of my ancestral
mansion. We turned a bend in the road, and then saw the house across a
stretch of lawn. It was all dripping with Virginia creeper; the leaves
hung red as flame from the hooded windows, and bannerets of the scarlet
vine fluttered from the wide door. Did uncle tell me the house was
Georgian in its style? I do not remember. At any rate, it is of
old-rose brick and “I am glad, mother,” said, as mellow as a soft sunset.
There are six hooded windows and the beautiful door down below, and seven
windows above; then at each end of the main part of the building is an L,
running obliquely out into the lawn, and here, too, are the hooded
windows above, but below are galleries, and they are roofed in some
places and uncovered in others, so that you can stay under cover if you
like, or right out under the stars.
I found myself clasping my hands tight over my heart as I looked.
“Do you like it, dear?” asked Aunt Lorena gently.
I seized her hand.
“Oh, Aunt Lorena, did you come here a bride? Did Uncle David bring you
here? Had you ever seen it before?”
“I had known it ever since I was a child, but notwithstanding that, the
day I entered it and knew it for my own to live in was one of the
happiest of my life.”
“All on account of the house, I suppose,” growled Uncle David from the
front seat of the car. Aunt Lorena laughed like a bird and said nothing.
“Oh, the years must have rolled sweetly by, Lorena,” said I under my
breath.
She smiled at me beautifully, and then we got out of the car, and there
were people running from out of the house and from around the house to
help us—kind, affectionate, capable black people, happy and well placed.
They all looked at me, open-eyed, like children, and they bowed and
smiled, but all the time I could see they were wondering. Then Uncle
David took me by the hand and led me up the steps and turned with me and
said:
“This is Miss Azalea Knox, the daughter of my brother John. She has come
here to be the daughter of the house and your young mistress.”
In the old days—or at least in story books—my “faithful retainers” would
have cheered. These did not cheer, but there were murmurs of interest
and pleasure, and then they began coming up to wish me happiness with the
sweetest manners imaginable. So I shook hands with them all, and liked
them, and felt I would enjoy doing things for them and that I could ask
them to do things for me. All the while, inside, deep down, there was a
curious chuckling going on in me. I couldn’t help having that laugh with
myself.
“So the poor homespun princess really has come to her ancestral halls,” I
kept thinking. I wondered that it didn’t strike Uncle David and Aunt
Lorena and that they didn’t laugh. But no, Carin, they were quite
serious and grand, and I soon saw how well their stately ways went with
that beautiful place.
I mustn’t take time to describe all the place to you, must I? But I
cannot pass on without telling you my first impression of the great hall
by which we entered. There was a high paneling in carved wood, and a
sweeping staircase, with carved panels, and a fireplace, all beautifully
carved too. The dark, shining floor was covered with strips of gray
carpeting, and at the doors and the great window of leaded glass on the
landing were silvery curtains with bands of white and black. Then there
was the clock of teakwood, and a lovely statue of a Diana in pinky-white
marble, so delicate the light came through her arm.
An unusual room, you must admit that. To the returning princess, who has
seen no grandeur save that to be found in your beautiful home, Carin, it
was rather—well, rather overpowering.
Mother McBirney had sent my clothes to me, of course, and now my little
bag was taken up to my room, and I was told to follow Mary Greenville
Female Seminary Simms—Semmy for short—the old benevolent-faced colored
woman.
We went up the wonderful stairway, I saying nothing and breathing pretty
hard, but trying not to let anyone know it, and then along the upper
hallway to a shuttered door. It was opened for me and I went in to what
was to be my room.
So quaint, so complete was it, Carin, that I hardly know how to describe
it to you. The walls were papered with a design of pine leaves on pearly
white; the draperies were white muslin and green silk; the furniture was
of white wood, upholstered in green. There were only two pictures, both
of the sea; one with wild waves dashing over a rock in the bright
sunshine, the other a quiet, wonderful picture of rippling miles of water
the color of the inside of a shell. The sun must have been rising, but
one did not see it—only banks of soft cloud, with a gray veil before
them.
Can you imagine it all?
Then, as each drawer was opened, or the closets, or the armoire, sweet
odors of dried herbs came forth. Everywhere was fragrance and peace.
“You-all trunks will be comin’ along by express I reckon,” said Semmy as
she began to unpack my bag. I wondered what Aunt Lorena would wish me to
say. Should I let my black maid know that all I owned was there before
her—not enough to fill two of the drawers in the deep bureau? Then it
occurred to me that it was not necessary to tell her anything at all.
“How nicely you have put everything away,” I said to her. “Here is a
little basket that I made with my own hands. Will you let me give it to
you?”
So I got rid of Semmy and her questions, and was left alone wondering
what I should do next. Nothing I possessed went in any way with my grand
surroundings, but I reflected that Mother McBirney would have decided, in
such circumstances, that one could at least be neat and clean.
So I bathed in my beautiful bathroom, and I donned fresh clothes. It was
rather chilly, and I hardly knew what to wear. But at last I put on the
low-necked white frock Aunt Zillah Pace made for me—every stitch hand
sewn—and the amber beads your mother gave me, and a scarf of yellow silk
that was Barbara Summers’ Christmas present to me. I had some white
slippers and silk stockings—gifts from your dear mother, Carin. So I
managed fairly well, I thought.
Out in the corridor I met my aunt coming to my room.
“I have told your grandmother,” she whispered. “She is terribly excited.
I ought to have waited, perhaps—to let her get acquainted with you and
then to tell her after she became fond of you. Oh, I wish I had! But it
is too late now. Anyway, we mustn’t keep her waiting a minute. How
lovely you look, Azalea! Just as a young girl should. Will you come
with me now? Your uncle is with his mother.”
I had never seen Aunt Lorena excited before, and I could hardly
understand why she should be so now, though I will confess that I felt
very strange myself. I had to take hold of Aunt Lorena’s arm going down
that long flight of stairs.
Then, once we were down, the old black butler bowed us into the
drawing-room, which was glittering with old-time luster candelabra, and
at the end of the room, all in gray and white and diamonds, with hair of
pure silver, was the littlest, proudest, stateliest lady I ever saw or
dreamed of. You cannot imagine how small she was or how regal. She sat
in a high-backed carved chair on a dais, like a queen, and Uncle David
stood by her quite as if he were her prime minister and were terribly
worried over some affair of state.
I saw him looking at me anxiously, and I knew he was doubting my power to
please this little queenly lady. But at that very moment all of my own
fears departed and I only remembered that at last here was one of my
very, very own folk, and I ran down the room and lifted her hand in mine
and kissed it. Yes, I knelt right there on that queer little dais and
held her hand to my lips. I was going to call her “grandmother,” but she
looked so regal that I could not quite speak that familiarly, so I called
her “madam grandmother” instead.
“Madam grandmother,” I cried, “I am your own granddaughter. Please,
please love me!”
“Arise, my child,” she said as if I were indeed the long lost daughter of
a queen—as I so often had pretended to be—and she lifted me up and looked
at me through her little gold-rimmed lorgnette.
“David,” she said proudly, “she is the living image of our dear Jack!”
“Yes, mother,” said Uncle David gently. “I was sure you would think
that, and indeed I agree with you, and so does Lorena.”
“Lorena,” said madam grandmother in a voice of command, “I confide this
child to your keeping. She must be your especial care. You will rear
her, Lorena, to be worthy of her name.”
“I am glad, mother,” said Aunt Lorena, “that you think me capable of
performing such an important and delicate task.”
“Lorena, you were a Ravanel, and the Ravanels have no need to doubt
themselves. I could place her in no better hands.”
“My Aunt Lorena has already been looking after me more kindly than I can
say, madam grandmother,” I said. “I cannot tell you how good she was to
me when I was ill.”
“Hah!” cried my grandmother, “I like your voice, Azalea. Moreover, I
like your manner; and I admire your name. I wish to hear something of
your life. David and Lorena, you have, no doubt, already heard this
story. If you wish to withdraw you may do so. Please close the doors as
you go. My granddaughter and myself will have a conference.”
Carin, would you have supposed anyone could speak in this manner in the
present day and generation? I would never have believed it myself if I
had not heard it.
Sampson, the old butler, was summoned to bring up a low, comfortable
chair for me, and sitting in this, holding my grandmother’s little
wrinkled, jeweled hands in mine, I told her all the story.
Once she asked me to ring to have the fire lighted in the great
fireplace, and “old James,” as the utility man is called, came in and did
it. Otherwise we were left quite to ourselves. Callers came, but she
asked to be excused.
“I have been receiving callers all my life,” she said to me, “but never,
never before have I sat with a granddaughter of my own—and as true a Knox
as ever drew the breath of life. Every tone of your voice, my dear,
reminds me of your father; every look and gesture is like him. This is
the happiest day I have had for many years.”
“You do not question my identity at all, madam grandmother,” I said. “It
is very gracious of you.”
“The story your Uncle David told me was convincing, my child. But aside
from that, your face is a confirmation of the truth of your story. But
continue, please. I wish to hear everything you have to say.”
So I talked on and on, and she listened seriously and kindly, sometimes
with her head drooping a little, other times proudly, with her little
gold-bound glasses raised. I could see that she suffered horribly when I
told of how my sweet mother and I had struggled on, how we had gone
hungry and cold and had had to associate with drunken, coarse, cruel
people. But I told her everything. I seemed to owe that much to my
little mother.
Then, after a long time, I finished. She looked at me with a strange,
sad, wistful air that made me, for all her pride, think of a child who
had done wrong and who wished to be forgiven.
“I am sorry,” she said, “that you did not know your father, Azalea. You
would have loved him. No one could help loving him. Please, for my
sake, do not hate his memory.”
“No, no,” I answered, “I will not hate him, or anyone. I haven’t time to
hate anyone.”
Just then a beautiful sound stole through the room. I could not tell
what it was or where it came from, but grandmother smiled at my surprise
and told me that it was only the dinner gong. So she arose and said:
“Your arm, Azalea, please,” and we went down the long drawing-room
together, and when we reached the door the old butler threw wide the
leaves of it for us, and we crossed the great corridor and went to the
dining room. It was all glittering with silver and glass and shining
with white linen and glowing with flowers, and there was the butler and a
man to help him, and Martha, grandmother’s own woman, to stand behind her
chair.
Try to think of your own rough and ready Azalea, sitting there amid that
grandeur, acting as if she were used to it. But it is asking too much of
you, isn’t it, honey? Everyone talked very softly, and when they laughed
they seemed to do so rather cautiously, and the servants moved about as
if it would be a terrible crime to make a noise, though I could see
perfectly well by the expression of their faces, that they took an
interest in everything. Of course we had delicious things to eat. There
was some kind of a frozen dessert that Aunt Lorena said was made in my
honor.
“We have this only on notable occasions,” she declared.
After dinner we went back to the drawing-room again, and my grandmother
asked me to sing. So I did, but not very well, and she asked me to
dance, and I did that, too, with Aunt Lorena playing for me. But I don’t
believe I danced very well either. Making up a solo dance as you go
along isn’t easy, is it, Carin? But at any rate, grandmother seemed
pleased, and I am sure it helped her to pass the evening. The last hour
I sat beside her, telling her stories of Mother McBirney and all my
friends, and she kept her hand on my arm, and now and then cried to Uncle
David:
“Isn’t it incredible that we have found her? Isn’t she the picture of
your brother Jack?”
Finally Aunt Lorena said it was time for us all to go to bed, and when
grandmother protested, she reminded her how weary we were from our long
journey. So old Martha was called for grandmother, and Semmy was called
for me, and we all went off to our rooms. I had to laugh a little—at
least, I think I laughed, but maybe I cried, too—to think of my little
loft at home, and the pieces of round tin nailed over the mouse holes.
And then to look around at this new room of mine!
The bed was soft as down, and scented with lavender, and there was an
eiderdown comfort to snuggle under. It was such a wonderful bed that I
couldn’t go to sleep for thinking about it, but lay awake for a long
time, as I never had done in my little loft. There was much to think
over, Carin—so much. And always I kept wondering: “Have I done right?
Is this going to help me weave my silver web?”
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I heard, without hearing, a
certain little soft, stealthy sound for several seconds before I realized
that something unusual was happening. Then, when that fact really came
to me, I sat up in bed to listen.
Someone, it was evident, was stealing along the hall. Then I heard the
soft, creeping steps down the stairs, and after a while a door opened—a
little door right beneath my window.
I slipped out of bed and looked from my window, and I could see a little
white figure gliding away from the house. It was no larger than that of
a child, but the motions it made were not a child’s, and that is how I
came to know that it was grandmother. I couldn’t think it right for her
to be going out into the garden in the middle of the night in her night
clothes, so I ran down the stairs. I found the little door opened from a
cloak room, and I stumbled out into the darkness after her. But it was
very dark and I did not know the garden, so in a few moments I found
myself quite hopelessly lost amid the hedges. I was afraid something
dreadful might happen if I wasted any more time, so I got back to the
house, and ran upstairs to try to find Aunt Lorena’s room.
But all of the bedroom doors in the house have shutters to them, and
these shutters were closed, so I could not possibly tell which rooms were
occupied and which were not, and all I could do was to run up and down,
knocking at each one and calling:
“Oh, Aunt Lorena, Uncle David, come!”
It was like a horrible nightmare. It seemed as if more doors kept coming
into existence right there before my eyes. The place was so dark—I had
no idea where to find the electric buttons—that if the doors had not been
white I could not have seen them at all. Truly, Carin, it was the most
frightening thing that ever happened to me.
But I hear the dinner gong. I will send this off, there is so much of
it, and to-morrow I will write you again.
_Your own_
_Azalea_.