_ CHAPTER I. IN THE BARRED GARDEN
She was a distinctly droll looking child at the age of seven, our little Felicia Day! With straight black hair brushed smoothly back and bound with a "circle comb," with short-waisted dresses that left her neck and arms bare. Her slender feet were encased in short white socks and low black slippers. And at her dear little feet was usually-- Babiche.
Babiche was so old that she whined at the evening chill; she perpetually teased to be taken back to her comfortable cushion at the foot of her mistress's bed. She was really very amusing when she sat up on her haunches and begged to be carried. For she was so fat that she hated to walk and she was a very spoiled doggy, that wee spaniel! A sort of a dowager queen of a doggy, a nice little old grandma lady of a dog.
The gentle yap-yap-yapping that could always be heard beyond the rear wall was from the throats of some score or more of her expensive great-great-great offspring who lived in the stable in tiny stalls with their pedigree cards tacked neatly under their elaborate kennel names.
It was a cross to Felice that she was not allowed to go through the small arched doorway at the back of the garden that led to the stable that opened on the narrow cobblestone "Tradespersons' Street." The Major didn't approve of the manners of Zeb Smathers the kennel man, or Zeb's wife Marthy, though he knew there wasn't a pair with their patience and skill to be found for miles around. All the same Felice adored the stable yard and would have dearly loved to climb the narrow stairs up to the low-ceilinged rooms above the stables where Marthy liked to sit.
Lean, grizzled old Marthy! There was usually a dog or two in her lap, either a sickly pup or a grieving-eyed mother dog whose babies had been taken away from her. Such tiny creatures, even the mother dogs-- those little Blenheim spaniels! Snub-nosed, round-headed with long silky flopping ears, soft curly coats and feathery tails. Felice liked the yellow and white ones, and always reached for them, but her grandfather coolly "weeded them out," as Zeb expressed it, because the Trenton ideal was a white dog marked with red.
Felicia knew when the dogs were going away. They always went the day after the Basket Man came with a pole tied full of oval gilded wicker hampers. Sometimes she, was allowed to stand in the gateway and watch them have their farewell bath, only of course she sniffed uncomfortably when Zeb let brown drops drip into the rinsing water from a fat bottle with a gay red skull and cross-bones on the label. "Scarbolic" was what she understood it to be, she mustn't touch it or she'd "go dead," whatever that was. But she forgot all about the smell as she watched the fluffy doggies drying in the sunny stable yard while Marthy sang vociferously to cheer her own drooping spirits; the silly old woman never could bear the days the dogs went away.
And so Felice on her side of the gate could listen rapturously to the throaty drone in which Marthy asked the world
"What's this dull town to me?
Rob-in's not here--"
or warbled heavily
"Churry Ripe, Churry Ripe,
Who'll buy my churries--"
or wailed
"Where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?
Where have you been, charming Billy?"
It almost made up for not being allowed to go out of the garden.
If Felice only could have been allowed to go around into the Tradespersons' Street just once! I wish she could have gone--just once! On one of the days when the swinging sign, that was gilded and painted so beautifully, was hung outside to announce
"KING CHARLES AND BLENHEIM SPANIELS
For sale within."
I'm sure she would have loved the line of carriages waiting in the cobble-stoned alley when the fine ladies came to buy. I think she would have clapped her hands at the gay boxes of geraniums and the crisp white curtains in Marthy's shining windows over the stable door.
But she could only stay in the garden with the thin visaged old French woman who taught her to read and to write and to embroider and to play upon an old lute and to curtsy and to dance. One thing she learned that the French woman did not teach her--to whistle! She remembers answering the sea-gulls who mewed outside in the harbor and the sparrows who twittered in the ivy and the tiny pair of love-birds who dwelt in a cage at her mother's bedroom window. She learned to whistle without distorting her lips because her grandfather had forbidden her to whistle and if she held her mouth almost normal he couldn't tell when he looked out into the garden whether it was Felice or the birds who were twittering.
Her first memories of her mother were extremely vague. She remembers she was pretty and smiling and that most of the time she lay in a "sleighback" bed and that in the morning she would say,
"Go out into the garden and be happy," and that at twilight she would say, "You look as though you had been very happy in the garden--"
Sometimes Maman wasn't awake when Felicia came in from her long day in the garden. And the little girl always knew if her mother's door were closed that she must tiptoe softly so as not to disturb her. There was a reward for being quiet. In the niche of the stairway Felice would find a good-night gift--sometimes a cooky in a small basket or an apple or a flower,--something to make a little girl smile even if her mother was too tired or too ill to say good-night. She never clambered past the other niches that she didn't whimsically wish there was a Maman on every floor to leave something outside for her. So after a time the canny child began leaving things for herself, tucked slyly back where the housemaids wouldn't find them. She used to hide her silver mug with water at the very top stair because she was so thirsty from the climb.
She was always happy in Maman's room and in the garden but she had many unhappy times in that nursery. It was at the very top of the back of the house. From the barred windows under the carved brownstone copings she could peer out at the ships in the harbor and the shining green of Battery Park. The nursery had a fireplace just opposite the door that connected with the tiny room in which the old French woman slept. Both these rooms had been decorated with a landscape paper peopled with Watteau shepherds and shepherdesses and oft-repeated methodical groups of lambs. On the cold mornings she was bathed beside the fire--which she very much hated--and once when she was especially angry at the sharp dash of the bath sponge against her thin shoulders she clutched at the flabby dripping thing with all her might and sent it hurtling through the doorway where it splashed against the side wall of the tiny room and smudged out the flock of a simpering shepherdess. And instead of being sorry that she had obliterated the paper lambs she remembers shaking her fist at the discolored spot and shrieking "Nevaire come back, nevaire!"
Mademoiselle D'Ormy made her tell Maman. Mademoiselle's disapproval made it seem an admirable crime until Maman said ever se gently,
"I'm sorry you were unhappy!"
"
I was happy," persisted Felicia, "I was proud, proud, proud when I threw it!"
"But you made Mademoiselle unhappy and you've made me unhappy--and you can't be truly happy, Felicia, when you're making some one else unhappy--"
Felicia discovered that she couldn't. Not with Maman's gentle eyes looking into hers, so she threw herself on her knees and kissed her mother's hand. Just as she had seen her grandfather kiss it.
"Let's pretend!" she whispered, "Let's pretend I didn't do it! Now let's pretend I'm Grandy!"
Pretending she was her Grandfather Trenton was one of their most delicious games. She would tap on the door, delicately, and ask in mincing imitation of the French woman,
"Madame, will you see ze Major?" Then, with great dignity she would advance to the bedside.
"Ah! Octavia!" she would say, eloquently, "How charming you look to- day!"
For that was what Grandy always said when he came into the room to see Maman.
You'd have liked Major Trenton. You'd have liked him a lot. But you could have liked him more if he'd been a little kinder to Felice. For by one of those strange, unexplained twists of human nature this fine gentleman, who was so tolerant with his uncouth servants and so admirably gentle with his wee dogs, was unconsciously cruel to the small grand-daughter who so adored him. She adored his immaculate neatness, the ruddy pinkness of his skin; she loved his wavy white hair and the deep sparkle of his dark eyes. She saw nothing droll about the peaked felt hat and long black coat that he persisted in wearing, or about the ruffled shirt, with its absurd flaring collar and black satin stock. She even loved the empty coat sleeve pinned inside his breast pocket. She thought him the most beautiful human in the whole world. She lived in constant dread of what Grandy would or would not be pleased to have her do. And though she was unaware of it, her everyday behavior was exactly what that silent man had so ordered. She did not know there was a God because the Major was an atheist--who out-Ingersolled Robert G. in the violence of his denial of deity. She did not know there was a world of reality outside the garden because he did not choose to have her mingle with that world. She was not taught French because he vowed he hated France and the French and all their ways. She was taught to curtsy and to dance because it pleased him to have a woman walk well and he believed dancing kept the figure supple. She was taught needlework because he thought it seemly for a woman to sew and he liked the line of the head and neck bent over an embroidery frame. She was taught to knit because he remembered that his mother had told him that delicate finger tips were daintily polished by an hour's knitting a day. He was--though he wouldn't have admitted it--proud of her slender hands--they looked exactly as his wife's had looked. It was the only trait she had inherited from that particular ancestor and he had been inordinately vain of his wife's hands. Mademoiselle had been ordered never to let the child "spread her hand by opening door knobs or touching the fire-stones--or--er-- any clumsy thing--" and it was droll to see the little girl, digging in her bit of garden with those lovely hands incased in long flopping cotton gloves--not to forget the broad sunbonnet that shaded her earnest little face. In short, he was jealous of her complexion and her manners--But beyond that and the desire that she absolutely efface herself, he did not concern himself with his granddaughter.
It was really her mother's gentle tact that fostered love for the stern old man. While Felice was still young, Octavia began to teach her child pride of race. The pretty invalid was pathetically eager to have Felice impressed with the dignity of Major Trenton's family.
"If you look over the dining-room fireplace you can see how fine his father was--"
So the child stared up the stately panelled wall at the gloomy old portrait of Judge Trenton with his much curled wig and black satin gown and the stiff scroll of vellum with fat be-ribboned seals attached and asked naively,
"If your father was a judge-man why aren't we judge-mens?" Grandy laughed his short, hard laugh.
"Oh, because we've gone straight to the dogs--and very small bow-wows at that--"
It was about this time that Octavia began to teach Felice to play chess. The child hated it. It must have taken a sort of magnificent patience to teach her. For a long time no one save Mademoiselle D'Ormy had known what a struggle it meant for that gay little invalid to make herself lovely for that afternoon hour over the chess board. Yet, when the Major entered he would always find his daughter smiling from her heap of gay rose-colored cushions, her thin hair curled prettily under her lace cap and her hand extended for his courteous kiss. They were almost shyly formal with each other, those two, while Mademoiselle D'Ormy screwed the tilt table into place and brought the ebony box of carved chess men. It was leaning forward to move the men that took so much strength. Octavia was too proud to admit how weak she was growing. So she coaxed her small daughter,
"It will be a little stupid at first, Cherie, but we will try to make it go--and think what fun it will be that day when we tell the Major, 'It is Felice and not stupid old Octavia who is going to play with you.' First you shall learn where to move the pieces and how to tell me what Grandy has moved--then, we shall tie a handkerchief over my eyes--as we do when you and I play hide the thimble--my hands shall not touch the men at all. I shall say 'Pawn to Queen's Rook's square' and you shall put this little man here--this is the Queen's Rook's square--" It must have been the oddest game in the world, really, between that stern old man and the blindfolded invalid and the grave little girl who was learning to play. Of course it was easier for Octavia--she didn't have to move her hands or keep her eyes open. She could lie lower on the pillows--she smiled--a wavering smile when her father's triumphant "Check!" would ring out.
"Alas, Felice!" she would murmur gaily, "are we not stupid! Together we can't checkmate him--" They talked a great deal about chess. And how you can't expect to do so much with pawns and how you mustn't mind if you lose them. But how carefully you must guard the queen--or else you'll lose your king--and how if "You just learn a little day by day soon you'll have a gambit," and how "even if you don't care much about doing the silly game, you like it because you know that it gives Grandy much happiness."
It was in those days that Felice learned that not only must she keep very happy herself but she must keep other people happy.
"It's not easy," Octavia assured her, "but it's rather amusing. It's a game too. You see some one who is tired or cross or worried and you think 'This isn't pleasant for him or for me!' Then you think of something that may distract the tiredness or the worry--maybe you play softly on the lute--maybe you suggest chess--maybe you tell something very droll that happened in the garden or the kennel--he doesn't suspect why you're telling him, at first he scarcely seems to hear you and then--when he does stop thinking about the unpleasantness--he smiles!--Watch Grandfather when he says 'Check!' and you will see what I mean--"
One comfort was, Felice didn't have to play chess all of the days. Never on the days when Certain Legal Matters came. Then Grandfather disappeared into the gloomy depths of the library and from the garden Felice could hear the disagreeable grumble of the burly lawyer as he consulted with his extraordinary old client.
"Absolutely no! Absolutely no!" her grandfather's voice would ring out, "I tell you I will not! A man who takes a pension for doing his duty to his country is despicable! And as for the other matter--I do not have to touch anything that was my wife's! I do not approve of the manner whereby she obtained that income--if Octavia wishes it, that is a different matter--it can be kept for the child if Octavia chooses to look at the matter that way--but for myself I will not touch it! I do not require it--I will not touch it--it was a bad business--There is nothing quixotic about my refusal, nothing whatever, sir! We differ absolutely on that point, as we do on most others!"
Felicia heard that speech so often that she could almost have recited it, she heard it nearly every time that Certain Legal Matters appeared, he always put the Major in a temper. Grandy couldn't get himself sufficiently calm for chess on such days.
Nor did she play chess on the days when the Wheezy came to sew.
The advent of the Wheezy was an enormous affair in Felice's life. It was one of the first times that the child was taken outside of the house or the garden--that blustery March day when she and Mademoiselle walked around the corner to a small house in whose basement window rested a sign, WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT AGENCY. A tiny bell jingled as they entered and from behind the curtains at the rear emerged a little woman whose face looked like the walnuts that were served with grandpapa's wine, very disagreeable indeed. Felice always spoke of her as The Disagreeable Walnut. It was in this shop that she saw her first doll, a ridiculous fat affair constructed of a hank of cotton with shoe buttons for eyes and a red silk embroidered mouth and an enormous braid of string for hair. And it was while she was rapturously contemplating it that she heard the wizened proprietor say, "Do you wish to have the work done by the job or by the day?" Then the Disagreeable Walnut pompously consulted a huge dusty ledger from which she decided that a certain Miss Pease would suit their requirements.
"Two dollars a day and lunch," she informed them curtly and that was the way that Wheezy came into Felicia's life.
Short, fat, asthmatic and crotchety, she grumbled incessantly because there wasn't anything so modern as a sewing machine in the house and said that for her part she didn't see how people thought they could get along on nothing except what had done for their ancestors, that she certainly couldn't.
"Haven't you any ancestors?" Felice asked her eagerly. The Wheezy snorted.
"Of course. And they have been poor but they were honest," she added deeply.
Which Felice repeated gravely to Grandy in the garden and added eagerly, "Were our ancestors poor but honest?"
He smiled grimly.
"I shouldn't say," he answered her curtly, "that they were either conspicuously poor or conspicuously honest."
The Wheezy not only remodeled ancient dresses into stiff pinafores for Felice but she had to make the cushions that fitted in the dog hampers, down-stuffed oval affairs covered with heavy dull blue silk. The Wheezy sputtered that she couldn't see why "under the shining heavens, dogs should sleep on things traipsed out like comp'ny bedroom pin-cushions with letters tied onto their collars--"
Which so puzzled Felice that on one of those furtive occasions when she managed a few words with Zeb she demanded an answer. Zeb slapped his sides and chuckled.
"Because, Missy, putting on the frills and writing out the pedigree in French like he does makes folks pay jes' about twict as much for those dogs--"
Which was very bewildering, for Felice had not the remotest idea in this world what to pay for anything meant. How could she?
There was one very vivid recollection of Octavia. The recollection of the only time that the child remembered seeing her mother in a chair. How this miracle was accomplished only Octavia and Mademoiselle D'Ormy could have told, but on a certain day in a chair she was and the heavy rose silk curtains were drawn before the bed alcove and the room was gay with flowers and a ruddy fire glowed in the iron grate under the carved white mantlepiece. Felice sat adoringly on a footstool at her feet and they talked a great deal about a time when Maman should not only sit in a chair but should walk. It seemed that Octavia hoped to take her daughter to a place she referred to rather vaguely as The House in the Woods. Octavia had lived in this house in the woods when she was a girl and she was very much worried about what might have happened to the garden of that house. She thought that she and Felice ought to make it lovely again--if Piqueur were only still strong enough to help them. But before Felice had had time to find out just who Piqueur was, Mademoiselle had ushered in a curly-haired young man who carried a portfolio exactly like the one that Certain Legal Matters carried. And it was while Mademoiselle was taking Felice back to the garden that she heard her mother say,
"You must be patient with the silly fears of a woman who mistrusts all lawyers--these deeds are duplicates of those that another--"
In the garden Felice told Mademoiselle D'Ormy who the curly-haired person was--it was not for nothing that Felice had been staring at the pictures in the big Shakespeare Illustrated on the drawing-room table.
"It's the Portia Person who is talking with Maman--" she assured Mademoiselle gravely, "she looks like a man but she's really a lady--"
The Portia Person was surely as gentle as a lady when he hurried into the garden a little later and sent Mademoiselle back to his client by the fireside. He looked down at Felice--she was embroidering that day, seated primly before the ebony tambour frame.
"Felicia," he said chokily, "will you try to remember something? Will you try to remember--if--if your mother goes away and you're ever in trouble that you're to come to see me? That my name is Ralph--John Ralph? And that you'll find me at Temple Bar, here in Brooklyn?"
"Yes, Portia Person," she answered sweetly, after she had risen as Mademoiselle had told her to when a visitor should arrive. Although she must have been eleven she was trembling with excitement, because he was her first visitor. "Yes, Portia Person, I will--only, how will I know--that I am in--Trouble--where is Trouble?"
Which seemed to make it hard for the Portia Person.
"I mean, if there's anything you need that you haven't--if there's anything you want some one to tell you about--now do you know?"
She nodded thoughtfully.
"Why, there are things right now that I want some one to tell me about--"
Before he could tell her any of them Mademoiselle came swiftly and let him out through the stable gate talking excitably and softly in French, which Felicia thought most unfair of her.
It is not at all strange that she does not remember when her mother died. You see sometimes there were several days when her mother was too tired or too ill to see such a vigorous person as Felice must have been. She merely remembers that there came a time when she was no longer asked to tiptoe past the door on the second floor landing. But she does remember that the thin visaged old French woman wept one day when she asked her,
"Shall we not go tell Maman I was happy today in the garden?"
She remembers it because they were the first tears she had ever seen and she clapped her hands and said "How queer, Mademoiselle! There are little rains in your eyes."
She did not ask to see her mother any more, for when she did Mademoiselle would answer "Not to-day." It was somehow a rather difficult time for them all; the Major was morose and sullen and Mademoiselle often had "little rains" in her eyes. She was not very patient with the lively young person who had grown tall enough to reach even the topmost drawer of the high walnut bureau.
Felicia was exploring them thoroughly one rainy afternoon while Mademoiselle dozed by the nursery fireside. She found a beautiful box with an inlaid cover that was filled with all sorts of fascinating trinkets; earrings and breastpins and droll bracelets of tarnished silver set with jade and coral--queer little letters folded in triangles with gay red wax seals, addressed in French, most of them--a soft black lace shawl--Felicia was trailing about grandly when Mademoiselle awoke to rage and scold.
The child was beginning to long for freedom, she was constantly questioning. Octavia's gentle raillery, Octavia's delicious half answers to the "Whys and wheres and whens and whats" had satisfied, but Mademoiselle's abrupt, "I can't tell you--" "It does not concern you--" "Zat is not of consequence--" were teaching the child to scheme. She was perpetually trying to find out for herself the things that Mademoiselle declined to tell her. She was especially curious about Maman's closed door. Mademoiselle refused to open it.
But there came a day, when Mademoiselle wasn't looking, when Felice tapped gently at her mother's door and opened it and went in. And when she saw the empty bed and the empty chair she ran in great glee to her grandfather.
"Oh, Oh," she cried, "Why didn't you tell me that Maman had gone to the House in the Woods? Why didn't you let me go with her? For she said we would make the garden together!"
He did not answer her at once.
"How did you know?"
"Because Babiche is gone," she answered triumphantly. "And Babiche wouldn't be gone from the house unless Maman were gone--so they've gone to the House in the Woods--to attend to the garden--with--" she frowned until she remembered "with Piqueur--unless he is too old to help--and now I will go--"
It was curious how his voice faltered, he looked tireder and more unhappy than in the days when Octavia had made a game of making him happy.
"Felicia," he groped for words as he faced the questioning-eyed child, "I--we--you--cannot go to the House in the Woods just now--I have Certain Legal Matters that must be attended to--but we--we will go some day--"
She accepted this with all the earnestness of her eleven years. But at the door she paused, shyly. He looked very "cross and worried."
"This afternoon, if you wish," she said, "I will play chess with you. I can do three gambits. I tried them alone yesterday. We'll not play in Maman's room--but in the garden--"
But for some strange reason he did not smile at all when he called "Check!" He only bent his head over her hand and kissed it as he had kissed her mother's. It was the first caress he had ever given her. She put the hand against her cheek and loved it when he was gone. And clambering up to bed she paused outside her mother's door.
"Maman, we were a little happy in the garden--" she whispered, "were you happy in your garden?"
Interminable days followed, dreary days punctuated with quarrel after quarrel. It sometimes seemed to Octavia's unhappy daughter that there was nothing she could touch without Mademoiselle's disapproval.
The garments that had hung in the wardrobes, lovely things that tempted the beauty-loving child, were all packed away in the storeroom back of the linen closet; the bits of ornaments and jewelry that Octavia had let the child play with were all tucked away.
"It was Maman's--do not touch it!" "That was Louisa's, you cannot have it!" Or most fearful cry of all, "Put that shawl back, Felicia! It was Madame Josepha's--Louisa herself never wore it, it cost so much!"
The storeroom key was kept in the pocket of Mademoiselle's black silk apron. Gradually the miserly soul locked away all that seemed desirable or lovely to Felicia.
Of course there came a day when she stole the key and when she hid herself a whole blissful afternoon and rummaged joyously through dusty bandboxes and huge curved-top trunks. She had opened an iron-bound box last. And in the top had found a case marked,
"Mme. J. Trenton,
8 Rue de la--"
the rest was blurred. There were a lot of papers--all of them in French, in a queer old case of crushed leather. And when she thrust them carelessly underneath she found the tiniest muslin garments she had ever seen. They puzzled her greatly; she held one against her cheek instinctively.
"What a very little woman must have worn you--" she whispered, "As little as--" she frowned, "the thing made of string in the shop where we got the Wheezy--as little as Babiche. I wish--I wish I could have seen as little a woman as that--"
She sprang up startled, Mademoiselle was coming. Felicia had the door locked and was standing outside, a slim, dusty, shining-eyed figure when the woman began berating her. The girl slid cunningly along the wall, for Mademoiselle's wrinkled, trembling hand was stretched out as she demanded the key.
There was a grating, a round bronze grating in the side wall for the furnace pipe. Felice moved toward it. She was not answering Mademoiselle; just breathing hard, just staring.
Suddenly the key dropped. The two could hear it tinkling, down, down, through the rusty metal of the furnace pipe.
And that was the moment that the infuriated little French woman struck Felice.
The child was nearly as tall as the woman, she could have struck back, but instead she ran. She fled down the stairway, her angry breath coming in choking gasps. She flung herself against the door of her mother's room.
"Maman! Maman!" she screamed.
And that was where the Major found her.
"I hate--hate--hate--Mademoiselle!" And down the stair came the thin visaged French woman crying.
"And I monsieur, I hate zis ongrateful child! I theenk I hate your whole ongrateful race--I served your wife like one slave! And for Miss Octavia I was like two slaves! Zis child has ever hated me! I am weary of your whole race--I shall go back to ze country where I belong--"
So there they stood, those two antagonists, the woman with her eyes snapping and the outraged child with the tears streaming.
"Felicia," the Major's tone was terrifying, "you must apologize at once!"
Felicia was silent. She shook her head. The Major bowed to the French woman. "I apologize for her," he continued. "But I think Mademoiselle D'Ormy, you are right. She is growing into a woman and you are growing into a child--" And whatever else he said after Felice had fled to the garden doesn't matter. Yet two days later when Mademoiselle bade her farewell the two enemies flung themselves on each others' necks and wept. Much to the disgust of the Major, who fairly shoved Mademoiselle away and who appeared not to see the sobbing and impetuous young person who dashed headlong to the nursery.
But after that life was much more serene, much sweeter. To be sure she could no longer ransack the storeroom. She never had to explain to the Major what had occasioned that last tempestuous quarrel but she roamed at will through the whole dusty house and possessed herself gloriously of all its treasures.
You should have seen her in those days, tricking herself out in what finery she could muster from the walnut bureau. For after Mademoiselle's departure the afternoon chess prolonged itself into twilight and Felicia proudly dined with the Major instead of in the nursery.
She knew how one should look for dinner because there was Maman's portrait over the drawing-room fireplace, in the frock she'd worn when she had dined "with her family in France--" Mademoiselle had dressed Octavia for that wonderful party and she had never tired of telling Felicia how beautiful the eighteen-year Octavia had been.
"It is a woman's duty to think of her charms," Mademoiselle had said, "that is what the husband of Julie, Madame Recamier, said, it is what Madame Louise taught Miss Octavia--"
And so Felicia naively parted her hair and brushed it satin-smooth and coiled it neatly on the nape of her white neck with the same big carved coral Spanish comb tucked into the shining mass that Octavia had worn when she sat for the portrait. Sometimes she wore the lovely black lace shawl, sometimes the creamy white embroidered silk one, and always the delicate coral and silver jewelry. Yet she couldn't possibly have known from the pale image that stared back at her from the dim shimmer of the drawing-room mirrors, how exquisitely lovely she was, not even when the Major bent over her hand and said, as he had said so often to her mother,
"You are very charming today, my dear!"
He did not know himself, the grim old stoic, how much he adored her.
At length there came a certain spring, seductive, too early warm, when the Major grew thoughtful, when Certain Legal Matters came frequently in the evening and left Felicia to ponder over her embroidery frame or wander restlessly in the bit of garden. She was seventeen now, a glowing, radiant seventeen, so divinely happy that the Major smiled whenever he looked at her.
For it had come, the Beautiful, Wonderful time when they were going to the House in the Woods! Already the rooms were filled with trunks and packing boxes, Marthy and Zeb and the housemaids were sorting and folding incessantly. And around them, wandered, starry-eyed, a useless young person who hugged to her heart a joyous dream of a woman in a garden--a woman in a little lace cap and a trailing rose-colored dressing-gown, a woman who would say,
"Oh Felicia! I hope you'll be happy today in the garden!"
You mustn't blame the Major too much that he did not know what a cruel thing he had done--he did not even dream that Felicia believed she was going to find Octavia in the garden. Those long ago evasions that had silenced her little-girl questions he had forgotten. Indeed I think he never let himself remember those days in which the child had asked, "Where is she gone?"
And so they had come to the last night of all, the night before they should start their journey.
Inside the gloomy library grandfather and Certain Legal Matters discussed stupid details about where the furniture should go to storage and whether they should change the route and instead of going around the coast by steamer and down the St. Lawrence, travel part of the way overland--they consulted long yellow time-tables.
Felicia drifted across the dismantled library. She was pulling Octavia's adorable white lace shawl about her firm young shoulders, the flickering gas lights made her rather pale.
"It's hot--" she remarked plaintively. "I think I'll go into the garden--" Her grandfather nodded. She slipped through the French windows out to the narrow balcony and down the circular iron stairway.
A thousand million stars above her, shining through the tops of the old trees of heaven--a tender breeze that blew Marthy's curtains ever so gently and let the wistaria banners stream back and forth--if she shoved it carefully, that smallest iron bench, and then stood tiptoe upon it, she could peer through the top of the gate into the rectory yard.
Fairy land! A score of merry young humans dashing about--a babble of noise and laughter and the dyspeptic choir master nearly wild with the confusion--"Order! Order!" he screamed, "Ladies and gentlemen! Boys! Kindly remember this is the last rehearsal, the final rehearsal! When the organist begins the choir should file in very slowly--the principals remain outside until the choir is in--I would like the tenor and the baritone soloists' voices to sound as far off as possible as they approach--will those gentlemen be so good as to stand at the extreme end of the yard?"
Felicia, behind the ivied gate, caught her breath. For as the rather disorderly procession drifted away through the arch the soloists moved easily toward her. One of them was disgracefully fat, he puffed as he mopped his brow, but the other walked lightly, tossing his cap boyishly as he walked. Close to the wall, he laughed, a youthful, buoyant laugh,
"Jove!" he ejaculated, "Now I
have done it--my cap's on top of the wall--"
The music was growing softer, fainter, the fat man had cleared his throat for singing.
Felicia's heart stood still. The moon shone gloriously, it made little white eyes of the narcissi that stared up at her from the garden border. The wind stirred in the ivy. Felicia sighed. His head, beautifully rumpled, topped the wall, he was still laughing softly, talking to the man below.
"Second cap I lost here, lost one when I was a little shaver--there was a girl--"
He was looking straight into her eyes now, he caught at the rusty top of the gate and stared.
"Why--girl!" he murmured.
Oh! if you could have seen Felice! Felice, with her hair coifed smoothly on her dear little head! Felice, with the big carved Spanish comb holding that hair in place! And her white, white throat and the tangle of old lace about it! He stared into her grave young eyes, he looked at that lovely young mouth of hers, that mouth that was wide enough for laughter but small enough for kisses. They swayed toward each other, those two, as naturally as a butterfly sways toward a flower. He kissed her.
As she leaned toward him the treacherous bench toppled too far. She dropped away from his caress as suddenly as a star falls in the heavens. She lay in a little crumpled heap crushing the sweetness of the narcissi. She didn't know what had happened to her, she just lay there and laughed softly and put her hand to her mouth gently.
A perfect din of voices blotted out her consciousness. After all you know, a sprained ankle is a sprained ankle even if you don't know you have it. _