October 24th.
Dear old Carin:
Mother McBirney has come. I have been alone with her. Of course she had been told everything by Uncle David on the way over.
“Mother-heart, mother-heart,” I said to her, “tell me what I shall do. Here we are alone, we two, and no one is listening. Whatever you decide on shall be done. No matter what anyone says, we shall do it.”
“Zalie,” she said in that lovely drawling voice of hers, “I reckon the time has come for me and you to go our separate ways.”
“Mother, do you know what I have been told? I am rich. I shall have money to spend. All at once, in one lump, right now, I canhave the money that would have been mine all during the years since my father died. I have asked them, and they say that though I am not of age, I may do what I please with that money. So, mother-heart, you and Father McBirney can go to the Springs, and Jim can go to school. You can rent out the horses and the cattle or sell them. Perhaps Annie Laurie will add them to her stock. You can sell the chickens and the bees, or take them to Annie Laurie’s too.”
“Oh, Zalie,” cried Ma, “how can you go on talking about chickens and bees?”
“Because,” said I, “sooner or later that is what the three of you will sit up late at night talking about. I’m trying to arrange it so that you will not say ‘no.’ For I can’t stand it to have Father McBirney suffering the way he is, and you going sad and poor and Jim not having school. I knew all the time that I couldn’t stand it—that I’d have to do something about it. And now here, along comes Accident—whom I shall make my goddess—and she brings me among my own folk, and gives me a fortune.”
“And parts us, Zalie.”
“No, Mother McBirney. I say no! You shall go to the Springs, you shall see Father get well. I shall visit you from time to time. Then you will go back to your own home, perhaps, and some day I shall build on that lovely spot on the little bench, halfway up the mountain-side. You remember that place with the three great tulip trees and the spring of cold water? I’ll build me a little house there, and all the mountain people and all the valley people shall visit me. It will be near you, so that every time you go to town you will be obliged to stop and have something to eat and to get a drink at my spring. You shall not lose me, no, no, no.”
I gave her such a hug that she gasped. Though she is so gentle I think she always rather liked my fierce ways.
“Will you be living in that house alone, Zalie?” she asked me, looking just like Jim when he teases. And though there wasn’t a thing to make me blush—not one thing—I got to blushing and couldn’t stop. I was perfectly furious with myself. How is it that sensible people are sometimes so silly?
“Mother McBirney,” I said at last, “is itnice of you to peer into the future like that? Don’t you think you are prying and—and—”
She wouldn’t let me finish. Anyway, I didn’t knowhowto finish.
“Don’t you do some of that kind of prying yourself?” she asked.
Would you have thought Ma McBirney could have been so naughty?
You will remember, Carin, that when your dear father and mother asked me to live with them and be a sister to you, I refused because I could not bring myself to leave Mother McBirney. But then she was all sore and suffering from the loss of her Molly; she had done the one wild and lawless thing of her life in stealing me from the terrible people who claimed me. Ihadto stay with her then. But now I am a young woman. I must make my own way, and I must help the McBirney family. Moreover, the people who now take me are my kin. In going with them I do my duty to my own family, to my grandmother; I can make amends to her for all my father made her suffer. Do you not see how different it is?
I explained it all to Mother McBirney. Sheis reconciled—very quiet and rather strange, but reconciled. She will get happier as time goes on. Oh, I mean to make her very happy.
It is interesting to see her and my uncle and aunt together. My uncle and aunt are very grand people, Carin, but they have no better manners than little Ma McBirney. You and I always said she had the nicest manners in the world. They begin and end with kindness, and gentleness and thoughtfulness, and with it all, she is so self-respectful, as if she felt it her duty to cherish her own soul and mind and body because they were God’s gift to her.
Did I tell you that Mrs. Babb, the moon-shiner’s mother, was over taking care of Father McBirney and Jim? That fierce mother of wild sons! I remember describing her that way to myself long ago. But you know how kind and nice she can be. She always was an obliging neighbor, and so, for the matter of that, were her sons. You have heard about the time her son set Hi Kitchell’s arm and was good to Jim. That was when I was kidnapped, and the whole countryside was searching for little Azalea.
The funniest thing happened to Uncle Davidand Mother McBirney when they were coming over here together. Uncle David knew, of course, about my going into the little cabin and warming myself before the fire and helping myself to soup, so he was watching out for the place. And sure enough he came to it, and he and Mother McBirney went in. There were two women there, a mother and daughter, and both were very nice looking, though one, of course, was no longer young. They seemed different from most of the mountaineers; not inclined to tell much about themselves. They showed the picture of me, and they said they had enjoyed the things I left. They talked about me quite a little, and were polite, though cold and offish. Uncle David had his camera with him, and he wanted to take pictures of them to bring to me, but they objected to that. Wasn’t that queer of them? Some day I am going to call on them, unless indeed I leave this part of the country forever and ever. I suppose I may.
Aunt Lorena doesn’t want me to go to Mallowbanks—that is the name of the old Knox place—all in my homespun. She wants to dress me out as Queen Guinevere did Enid.I have asked her to wait, but she is not very well content to do so.
“If you are presented to your grandmother in homespun,” she says, “she will remember it to the last day of her life. Your grandmother is very old, Azalea, so that she is inclined to pay too much attention to little matters. She will say to everyone who comes to the house: ‘This is Azalea, the daughter of my dear Jack. She came to me in homespun, but I have clothed her in silk—as becomes her.’ Oh, it is so easy to imagine her saying it. Truly, she will never forget the homespun nor let you forget it. What is worse, she will insist on dressing you herself, and she will probably do it out of the cedar chests in the lumber room.”
“Out of the cedar chests?” said I.
“Yes, the famous, terrible cedar chests. They are filled with loot from all over the world—old shawls and crepes and brocades and laces. Never was there such an expensive and unusable mess. Ever since David married me she has wanted me to make over these things—”
“And very lovely you would look in them,”broke in my Uncle David in gentle rebuke.
“Lovely, indeed,” cried Aunt Lorena. “I would look like a romantic scarecrow. No, David, the ladies who wore those gowns dressed in the fashion of their day, and I mean to dress in the fashion of mine. I warn Azalea right now that if she doesn’t let me send to Charleston for fit and proper clothing for her, she’ll be wearing those stiff old things to the day of her—marriage.”
“Oh, I’d be certain to have my wedding dress made out of the chests, I should think,” I said, perfectly delighted with the idea. “Hasn’t grandmother saved her wedding dress?”
“Of course she has, and her wedding chemise and slippers and veil and fan.”
“Oh,” I cried, “just let me lie still and think about it awhile. Isn’t it like a fairy tale?”
So I did. I lay still quite a while looking at the fire, and wondering if it could be true that I, Azalea Knox, who had believed myself to be little more than a waif, was coming into a home all mellow and beautiful with old customs and memories and loves—and hates, too, I suppose. Then I seemed to feel thatsomething was wrong, and looking up I saw my new Uncle David frowning at me—distinctly frowning.
So I said:
“Why do you frown, Uncle David?”
And he said:
“Why are you so interested in bridal dresses?”
“Aren’t all girls interested in bridal dresses?”
“Not when they are infants like yourself, miss.”
“I am eighteen and over,” I said. “If you don’t have daydreams when you are eighteen, when will you have them?”
“True for you, Azalea,” cried my aunt with her high laugh. “Pay no attention to him. I was just turned seventeen when we became engaged.”
“The circumstances were peculiar,” said my uncle, rather red in the face.
“They were,” said my aunt. “You wanted me, and you were afraid I might—want someone else.”
“But we waited,” said my uncle, “a long, long time.”
“Two years and three months,” said my aunt.
“Few, however, would be justified in marrying so young,” said my uncle. “But we were peculiarly suited to each other. Both families approved. You, my dear Azalea, have not been so situated as to see much of people in your own station of life, so it will probably be many years before you will have any occasion to ask my mother for her old white satin wedding gown.”
I said nothing at all but just smiled at the fire. I could feel Uncle David still watching me. At last he said:
“Why are you smiling?”
“I am happy.”
“Are you still thinking of the wedding gown?”
“Only vaguely.”
“Azalea, have you any secret to tell us?”
“None.”
“Could Mrs. McBirney throw any light on that peculiar smile of yours?”
“Ask her.”
But would dear old Ma go back on me? You know she would not.
“Zalie is like my Jim,” she drawled, “a good deal of a tease.”
I threw her a kiss. And Uncle David shook his fist at me.
Ah, Carin, why are you not here? Why can we not slip in bed side by side each night as we used up at Sunset Gap? I have so many things to tell you, and I cannot begin to make them clear merely writing them like this. Though I find I like to write. I have been reading and reading for years and thinking how hard it must be to write, and now, for the first time, I am really trying my hand at it, and I find it about as easy as breathing. Of course, writing to you, who understand me and my ways so well, makes it particularly easy. I do not say that I would dare to write for strangers or that I would like to do it. And yet, I wonder, Carin, if one were to write a book just as if one were talking to a friend, showing all one’s heart and counting on the readers to understand and sympathize, if it would not be a good book.
A book has to be human to be good, doesn’t it? And writing that way, frankly, even lovingly, I may say, letting people feel that youwho are writing are really a friend, although unknown, would make a book human, wouldn’t it?
I suppose there are a great many lonely folk in the world who have not had the good fortune to make friends, or even to find their own home, in any true and deep sense of the word, and that to such, a friendly book is a great boon. It is something to take down off the shelf at night in the quiet hours, and to read over and over again. It helps them to forget their troubles and even themselves, and they go to bed comforted and warmed at the heart, remembering that the old world is a pretty kind and genial place after all.
If I could write, it is such a book as that which I would choose to make. And do you know, the last few days as I have been lying here thinking and thinking, I’ve wondered if I might not write a little. It would do such pleasant things to my life. It would be like planting little gardens of flowers all about me. Haven’t we a right to plant flowers if we have a taste for them? Planting flowers and writing, like everything else that one does, is largely a matter of habit, don’t you think so?
To-morrow Mother McBirney is going home. Uncle David is going to take her. She is to close up the house, send Jim to school, and betake herself and Father McBirney to Bethal Springs for the winter. Uncle David has written down to engage a cosy little furnished cottage for them. He has given me a check for them. I am very happy, Carin.
I told you I was going to make Accident my goddess. I like Accident. Just turning around the corner may bring one face to face with—with something glorious. I feel all the time now as if something delightful and surprising were going to happen.
Lovingly,
Your Azalea.
* * * * * * * * *
“Little Windows,” Oct. 29.
Carin, we are off. The “little windows” are all boarded up. The servants have been driven to the station. Outside the door the touring car is standing, silent but eager. I swear it looks eager, and that I am horribly afraid of it. I expect to have a chill. My teeth chatter at this moment at the thought ofriding in that long, raging, rushing thing around these winding mountain roads. I feel as if this might be the last letter I shall ever write to you. I said I loved Accident, but that depends on how she looks. To-day I do not like the looks of her. I cut her acquaintance. If you never hear from me again, remember how I loved you.
Aunt Lorena and Uncle David are putting the last touches to things, and I am sitting on the porch scribbling in my notebook. From here we can see thirty peaks and many valleys and rivers. The rivers are silver threads in the purple distance, winding and winding. There is an eagle just above the house, probably come to see that we get safely away. I wish he would teach me how to fly so that I wouldn’t have to ride in that terrible machine.
The only thing that cheers me up is the thought that I am really going home. After so many homeless years, or years in which I had a home only by the kindness of others, I am going to my own home, to my own grandmother, blood of my blood, the mother of my father.
Do you suppose those who love us and aredead, know what is happening to us? Is my own little mother seeing me this day? Is she glad I am going to the home which never opened its doors to her? Am I loyal to her in going? These questions are too hard for me to answer. I only know that my uncle and aunt would be shocked and deeply offended if I did not go with them, and I remember that to the last my mother loved my father.
When she lay dead that day in dear Mother McBirney’s house, they found in the leather pocket book she carried, a little piece of dark hair which must have been his, with her “wedding lines,” as Mother McBirney called them, and a little blurred picture which was, no doubt, of him. But her tears or the rain had dimmed it so we could barely see it.
Your letter was brought me last night, Carin, and was the greatest sort of a comfort. Oh, I knew you would understand.
Aren’t you taking too many studies? You mustn’t wear yourself out. Never forget that you are going to be an artist and that you have to consider your talent above everything else. So be careful not to use yourself up on mathematics and physics and all those things.
I am glad you are having some good times. That young man who sent you flowers is a Southerner, is he? From Charleston? Why didn’t you tell me his name? Perhaps I shall be meeting him. For I am to meet people. I mean, I am to meet them the way you do. Aunt Lorena will give a “coming out” party for me. It rather amuses me. Poor Azalea, with her boots covered with red mud and her hands scratched with briars and burned with cooking and pricked with sewing, and her hair tumbled every which way, Azalea who can whistle through her fingers as well as Jim or Hi or any of the boys, who can climb a fence in a jiffy and shin up a tree if necessary, to stand all perfumed and proper, in a wonderful old drawing-room, saying: “Thank you, madam, you are very good to say so.” “Thank you, sir, indeed I am very much honored to meet my grandmother’s old friends.” Can you hear me? I wish you could in reality. Perhaps I can get my aunt to put off the party till Thanksgiving. If so, could you dash down to Mallowbanks? It is not far from Charleston. You could take a few extra days from college, couldn’t you?
The very thought of it puts new courage into me. You will find my new address within. Write me at once. I shall insist that Annie Laurie come to my party also. What a reunion that would be! To have the old friends and the new together would be something to remember always.
Maybe the young-man-who-sent-the-roses will be home for Thanksgiving. Then he could come too, and I would see if he was nice enough to—to be allowed to send you roses.
Do you suppose Keefe could come? But he wouldn’t, would he? At least, not unless I got an order for him to paint a portrait. And how could I do that? But maybe I can insist that he shall paint a portrait of my grandmother for me. My own grandmother!
There, Uncle David is cranking that terrible machine. I must go. Carin, we who go to die salute thee!
I will you my amber beads.
Tremblingly,
Azalea.
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, shadyroad 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 alldripping 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 itand 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 begancoming 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 clockof 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 wereonly 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, andwas 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 youlook, 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, veryown 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 ofhow 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. Makingup 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 wasmuch 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. Butit 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.
Mallowbanks, November third.
Carin,dear:
Where did I leave off? Oh, yes, where I went running down the big dark, winding corridors, knocking and knocking at the strange doors!
Well, presently one of them, far away from where I was, opened, and a voice called:
“What is it? Oh, what is it?”
“Is it you, Aunt Lorena,” I cried, running toward the voice.
“Yes, yes, Azalea. Tell me what is the matter.”
“Grandmother has gone out in the garden in her night clothes. I tried to follow her, but I’ve lost her somewhere.”
“Oh, dear,” sighed my aunt. “It is her old trouble again. I suppose your coming excited her. She has little spells of forgetfulness andshe wanders out to meet Jack, your father, secretly, forgetting that he is dead. After his father forbade him the house, she used to do that—to meet him at night and take him money and clothes—anything that she thought would help him. I don’t believe she’ll come to any harm. She never has. We’ll send old Martha for her, for it would hurt her feelings dreadfully if we were to go and if she were to realize that she has been wandering again. She’s very proud, you know.”
And, Oh, didn’t I know it, Carin! Never have I seen so much pride in such a little creature.
Aunt Lorena called old Martha, and the poor black thing, with her huge nightcap on, and a great flowered robe, and slippers that flopped at every step, ran sleepily out into the garden, calling:
“Ole Miss, ole Miss, where be ye? Cain’t ye answer Martha? She’s wanting ye bad! Please, ole Miss, where be ye?”
Aunt Lorena and I followed along behind, running down a long shaded walk which the moonlight mottled, till at last we came to a little pool. This was like a shield of brightsteel, all shining and wonderful. There were rustling noises all about us which suited the place and the hour but which I did not understand.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“The swans. We have disturbed them.”
And just then, Carin, out into that glistening pool swam a coal black swan followed by two white ones. They didn’t seem like real birds but like some sort of a vision.
“It is just beyond the pond that mother used to go to meet your father,” said Aunt Lorena tenderly. I loved her for speaking like that. She was sorry for this old mother’s grief, and sympathized with the memories that haunted her and drove her from her bed. I put my arm right around her neck and kissed her.
“Oh, Aunt Lorena,” I said, “I think you are very sweet.”
“Hush!” she warned, and turning I saw Martha coming back with her arm around poor little madam grandmother. We stepped back in the shrubbery and kept very still while they passed. Grandmother was weeping like a hurt child.
We stepped back in the shrubbery and kept very still
“Your young master wasn’t there, Martha,” she was saying. “He was to meet me there to-night and I was to give him this.” She held up something in her hand that sparkled in the moonlight. “It was my own, Martha,” she went on, “so I had a perfect right to give it away if I wanted. Oh, what do you suppose has happened to your young master?”
“Jes’ nothin’ at all, ole Miss,” Martha said, her voice sounding more like that of a wild dove than anything else I could think of. “He’s sure all right, ole Miss. He’s jes’ doin’ fine. That’s why he didn’t need for to come for yo’ pretties. Yo’ jes’ take heart, ole Miss. That Mass’ Jack, he won’t let no hahm come to him.”
“I pray heaven,” Aunt Lorena whispered to me when they had passed, “that good old Martha will outlive mother, for I have no idea how we should manage without her.”
We stole softly into the house and up a little flight of stairs, and then down the corridor to grandmother’s door. We could hear Martha still crooning to her as if she were a frightened child, and then, little by little, grandmother ceased weeping.
“Come,” whispered Aunt Lorena, and westole away to my room. She saw me back into my bed, and kissed me good night—not warmly, the way Mother McBirney used, but gently and kindly. I like her better for not pretending to what she does not feel. She will grow fonder of me if I deserve it.
“We’ll say nothing about this to your Uncle David,” she cautioned me. “It makes him wretched for days when he learns that his mother has been ‘wandering.’”
“She’ll not be ill as a result of this?”
“Probably not—only a little distrait and quiet.”
I was left alone again in my fragrant room, and still I could not sleep for thinking of how my life had changed, and how curious were these people I had come among. I saw the stars moving along in their courses, and light beginning to break in the east. And then, just to show how inconsistent I could be, I fell asleep.
I slept till noon. Think of it—me, the Early Riser!
Perhaps I wouldn’t have awakened then if Semmy hadn’t come in with chocolate and rolls and an omelet.
“Ole Miss is wanting you, Miss,” she said.
So I ate quickly and dressed in my dark blue frock with the crocheted lace collar and cuffs and was taken to her. She was in her bedroom still, or rather in her sitting room, for her bedroom is a stately alcove raised two or three feet above her sitting room. To-day she was all in purple, with studs of amethysts in her white lace chemisette and at the fastenings of her long lace sleeves. It was very difficult to imagine that this was the same little broken creature I had heard weeping aloud the night before, and being comforted like a baby.
“My dear,” she said when I went in, “I hear that you did not rest well last night.”
“Not very well, thank you, madam grandmother,” I said dropping her a curtsy as Aunt Lorena had told me to do.
“Being in a new place no doubt disturbed you,” said my grandmother. “You did well to refresh yourself with sleep this morning. At your age, my dear, I seldom arose before noon, but that was because of the many gayeties in which I participated—a ball or a rout almost every night, and gentlemen riding out in the afternoon to call. The times are not sobrilliant now, I regret to say. However, a few of the old families remain to keep alive the elegant traditions of my time, and I have called you here, Azalea, to say that I wish you to be presented to my friends.”
I curtsied again. Her queer quaint way of talking made me feel that nothing save a curtsy would suit the occasion.
“Thank you, madam grandmother; I shall be honored.”
My grandmother put up her lorgnette. “Azalea!” she said sharply.
“Yes, grandmother.”
“Your manners are admirable.”
“Thank you, dear grandmother. I dare say they are—are inherited.”
My grandmother smiled and traced her left eyebrow with her jeweled fingers.
“You may sit down near me,” she said. “I want to talk to you about your coming-out party.”
So then she told me something about her friends; who had done this and who that, and every one she mentioned was at least sixty years of age and some, as nearly as I could reckon, were eighty or over. So at last I said:
“And may I also be permitted to invite some of my own friends, dear grandmother? Carin Carson who is now in the North at college, and Annie Laurie Pace, who lives at Lee, and Mr. and Mrs. Rowantree of Rowantree Hall, and their brother, Keefe O’Connor who is at the Academy of Design in New York? And of course the McBirneys and the Summers, and—and some others.”
I couldn’t help thinking how I would like to have Haystack Thompson play at my party, and how horrified grandmother would be if she knew my thought and what Haystack is like.
“Are you sure,” said my grandmother, “that these friends of yours would find congenial surroundings at Mallowbanks, my dear Azalea? There is such a thing as propriety to be considered.”
“Would it be proper for me to neglect the friends who were faithful to me for years and years?” I asked. “I was an orphan and poor as a beggar, and they took me in to sit beside their hearths. They gave me the best they had; hospitality and love and learning. If I know anything at all, it is owing to them.”
“My dear,” said my grandmother, “you speak poetically.”
“I speak the truth.”
“You have a loyal heart.”
“Yes, madam grandmother, I admit it. When I once love, I can never forget.”
“How do you know? You are only a child.”
“I shall be like you,” I declared boldly. “I wish to be like you and never to forget!”
She looked at me sideways. Then she tilted her delicate chin and faced me straight.
“Azalea—last night—did you know? Did you see?”
“I saw, grandmother dear. Forgive me.”
“Ah, Azalea, your father was my dearest! They almost killed me when they came between him and me. He was wayward, I know, but he didn’t have the same ideas of goodness and badness that others have. I always loved him. I love him still.”
“It is beautiful of you, madam grandmother. I hope to be just like that.”
“Very well, Azalea. You shall have your friends to your party if they will come. You shall ask the humblest if you choose.”
“Thank you, thank you, grandmother; youwill be proud to know them. The humblest of them are very sweet, but some, I assure you, are not humble at all. They are accomplished enough to win even your approval.”
“No doubt they are charming, my dear granddaughter. But you must remember that you have now come into an important position. Much will be expected of you. You will probably wed a Ravanel. Many of the women of my family did. My son David did also, as you know. It is a custom with us I may say. Yes, a Ravanel or a Grévy.”
“But, dearest grandmother, I must marry the person I love. What will his last name have to do with it?”
“Everything, my dear child. Kindly fetch me yonder book.”
“Yonder book,” Carin, was very much done up in an embroidered cover and was lying on grandmother’s far cabinet. I wish you could see her cabinet of fans. Some are quite historic and all are exquisite.
I brought the book and it proved to be a genealogy of the Bryce family. (Bryce was grandmother’s maiden name.) We studied this for at least an hour, and then grandmothercalled Martha to carry it to my room that I might have it at hand to consult whenever I wished.
“You will see,” she said, “that the Bryce ladies have married Ravanels, Grévys or Knoxes from time immemorial. You are a Knox. You will marry a Bryce, a Ravanel or a Grévy.”
I tried not to laugh, but to save my life I couldn’t help it.
“Perhaps none of them will approve of me. Remember, madam grandmother, I am only a homespun mountain maid.”
“Ah, but we will transform you into a shining princess,” cried my grandmother excitedly. “I already have had that matter in mind.”
Then she clapped her jeweled old hands together as hard as she could, and when Martha came running, gasping: “Yessum, ole Miss, yessum, ole Miss,” grandmother said, like a potentate in the Arabian Nights:
“Have the chests brought.”
Then I remembered what Aunt Lorena had told me about the chests in which grandmother kept her old treasures. So I was to see these darling old brocades and crepes andembroideries! Aunt Lorena thought it would be a dreadful thing to have to dress in them, but I was wild to do it. It seemed a part of all the strange play that my life had become.
So presently two of the men servants came staggering in under the weight of a great chest, and when they had set that down they went back for another, and then for another yet.
I wouldn’t have the chests opened till I had looked all over the outside of them. One was covered with carmine leather all tooled with gilt, and it had a great clasp with cupids on it. Another was of dark carved wood, very heavy, and lined with sandalwood that filled the whole room with an old, dry perfume when it was opened. The other was a sea chest with a sailor’s name carved on it.
“‘Samuel Bings,’” said I. “What a funny name.”
My grandmother frowned.
“I see nothing funny about it,” she said. “Samuel Bings was a very distinguished and unfortunate man.”
“Oh, I should love to hear his story some time,” I said contritely.
“You shall,” said my grandmother relenting,“and when I have told it to you, you will be proud that the name of Bings appeared among your ancestry.”
Well, then, Carin, my little squirrel, we came to the opening of the chests. How shall I ever describe to you what was in them? I couldn’t—not in one letter nor three.
Shawls and dolmans, and great flounced skirts and lace petticoats and silken nubias, and beaded fascinators, and real lace and fans and slippers and silken stockings, and flowing undersleeves, and old gloves and hats and feathers, and embroidered lingerie and lace handkerchiefs and—Oh, mercy, Carin, everything a belle of long ago would wear. And a belle of to-day throw away. But, no, I must not be disrespectful to old lace and brocade, nor to China crepe and Irish poplin.
I tried on the old frocks and strutted and pranced around in them, and put on the queer, short gloves which were as freckled with mildew as Jim’s face. Of course I don’t mean that Jim is mildewed. Only that he is freckled.
I wore the shawls, and dropped preposterous curtsies in the flounced skirts, and I coquettedwith my own venerable grandmother behind the cracked old fans, and did the plumes up in my hair.
“My dear,” said my grandmother at length, “you must have these interesting fabrics made over for you. Some slight alteration will be necessary I suppose, but on the whole they become you immensely. You look completely a Bryce in them.”
Just then Aunt Lorena came in. When she saw the litter in that room and myself in a flowered silk seven yards around the bottom of the skirt, and eighteen inches around the waist—I was almost smothered by this time—she dropped in a chair and turned white.
“At last!” she gasped.
“Yes, Lorena,” said my grandmother with great dignity. “At last I have found someone who appreciates these rare things. They were offered to you as the wife of my only living son. You rejected them. You preferred to wear inferior fabrics and passing styles. But the styles in which these exquisite fabrics are made up, are historic, Lorena, historic. This however, is a point which you do not seem to appreciate. I therefore pass them on to mygranddaughter—the daughter of my second son. You will see that they are adapted to her needs, tightened perhaps—”
“No, no, dear grandmother,” I cried struggling with the hook of that terrible dress, that held me as if it were made of steel, “not tightened. Don’t say tightened! I am suffocating!”
Aunt Lorena came to my rescue and between us we got that band undone and I was able to draw a long breath.
“In my day,” said my little grandmother, “girls were more delicate than they are now. I grieve, Lorena, to discover that Azalea’s foot is far too substantial for these slippers.”
She looked regretfully at some yellowed satin slippers with tarnished sequins on them. Aunt Lorena and I looked down at my good sizable feet—they have done a powerful lot of mountain climbing, as you know—and we both laughed.
“Come,” said Aunt Lorena, “we must forget dressmaking for the day and go for a drive. You too, mother. Won’t you come in the motor just this once?”
“You know very well that I will not, Lorena. My pony cart will do for me. Have youngJames walk at the pony’s head to-day, please. Old James ruined my last drive by the way he groaned with the rheumatism.”
So all the finery was carted off to a big empty room where, as Aunt Lorena explained to grandmother, we would be able to look it over better, and I was told to dress warmly, and so got into the nice thick coat Mother McBirney had made for me, and put on my mole-skin cap, and my veil and gloves—for Aunt Lorena is terribly fussy about having people well wrapped when they go motoring—and uncle and auntie and I went off.
We were gone for an hour or two and saw many beautiful old estates, but none that I liked better than our own.
“Mother is being drawn about the garden in the pony cart,” Aunt Lorena told me. “It is curious, but she never was a horsewoman. Even as a girl she was rather timid with horses, and now she is very much afraid of them. As for an automobile, it fills her with terror. So it seems best to let her do the thing she enjoys, which is riding about the garden and scolding the gardeners.”
“My dear!” said Uncle David.
Aunt Lorena lifted her eyebrows.
“I’m sure I didn’t mean to say anything disrespectful,” she said. “I was only describing things as they are.”
That her description was quite right, we were soon to see. Grandmother was still going about the garden when we got home, and it was plain that she had “everybody by the ears.” Young James was almost in tears, the head gardener was sulky, the boys who helped him were laughing, and every one was or pretended to be quite frightened.
“Young James,” said my aunt, “you have kept Madam Knox out too long.”
“Yessum, I know it, mum. I wanted her to go in, mum, but she wouldn’t, mum.”
“Oh, mum, mum, mum!” snapped grandmother, quivering with fatigue. “Who ever heard such talk? Mum, mum, mum!”
Uncle David said nothing. He got out of the motor and gathered his little silver-headed mother up in his arms and carried her into the house as if she were a baby. She put her two arms around his neck and held on tight, and I saw him kiss her very tenderly when he put her down and called Martha to her.
“Mum, mum,” she began saying again, but Uncle David said: “Stop that, mother, please,” and she did.
So, Carin, this is the life at Mallowbanks.
My party is to be Thanksgiving Day. Say, Oh, say that you can come! To have you here, to have you see all I am so stupidly telling you about, to get off in my own room with you and laugh and talk as we used, would, perhaps, make this life seem real to me. Now, I confess, it seems like a dream.
You keep writing about that young Southerner. You say he is leaving the North and going home. He lives in Charleston? Is his name Bryce or Ravanel or Grévy? If so, I’ve got to marry him!
Aunt Lorena said, however, that the only unmarried Ravanel was at least seventy and deaf as an adder, and that she wouldn’t, if she were in my place, be so hackneyed as to marry a Grévy. As for the Bryces, they are my very own kin and out of the question. So you can imagine my distress! Tut, tut, no bridegroom. And me in long dresses with my hair up. How long must I wait?
As long, perhaps, as my coming-out party.
But it can’t be any sweeter than the birthday party Ma McBirney gave me when we danced till the moon came up—and after.
Carin, youmustcome!
Fondly
Azalea.