VII
VII
When Lindsay pulled back from the quiet gray void which had enshrouded him, he was lying on the grass. Far, far away, as though pasted against the brilliant blue sky, was a face. Gradually the sky receded. The face came nearer. It topped, he gradually gathered, the tiny slender black-silk figure of a little old lady. “Do you feel all right now?” it asked.
Lindsay wished that she would not question him. He was immensely preoccupied with what seemed essentially private matters. But the instinct of courtesy prodded him. “Very much, thank you,” he answered weakly. He closed his eyes again. He became conscious of a wet cloth sopping his forehead and cheeks. A breeze tingled on the bare flesh of his neck and chest. He opened his eyes again; sat up. “Do you mean to tell me I fainted?” he demanded with his customary vigor.
“That’s exactly what you did, young man,”the old lady answered. “The instant you looked at me! I was setting with my back to the door. You could have knocked me down with a feather, when you fell over backwards.”
“Have I been out long?”
“Not more’n a moment. I flaxed around and got some water and brought you to in a jiffy. You ain’t an invalid, are you?”
“Far from it,” Lindsay reassured her. “I’m afraid, though, I’ve been working too long in the hot sun this morning.”
“Like as not!” the little old lady agreed briskly. “I guess you’re hungry too,” she hazarded. “Now you just get up and lay in the hammock and I’m going to make you some lunch. I see there was some eggs there and milk and tea. I’ll have you some scrambled eggs fixed in no time. My name is Spash—Mrs. Spash.”
“My name is Lindsay—David Lindsay.”
Lindsay found himself submitting without a murmur to the little old lady’s program. He lay quiescent in the hammock and let the tides of vitality flow back.... Mrs. Spash’s prophecy, if anything, underestimated her energy. In anincredibly short time she had produced, in collaboration with the oil stove, eggs scrambled on bread deliciously toasted, tea of a revivifying heat and strength.
“Gee, that tastes good!” Lindsay applauded. He sighed. “It certainly takes a woman!”
“What are you doing here?” Mrs. Spash inquired. “Batching it?”
“Yes, I think that describes the process,” Lindsay admitted. After an instant, “How did you happen to be on the doorstep?”
“Well, I don’t wonder you ask,” Mrs. Spash declared. “I didn’t know the Murray place was let and—well, I was making one of my regular visits. You see, I come here often. I’m pretty fond of this old house. I lived here once for years.”
Lindsay sat upright. “Did you by chance live here when Lutetia Murray was alive?”
“Well, I should say I did!” Mrs. Spash answered. “I lived here the last twenty years of Lutetia Murray’s life. I was her housekeeper, as you might say.”
Lindsay stared at her. He started to speak.It was obvious that conflicting comments fought for expression, but all he managed to say—and ineptly enough—was: “Oh, you knew her, then?”
“Knew her!” Mrs. Spash seemed to search among her vocabulary for words. Or perhaps it was her soul for emotions. “Yes, I knew her,” she concluded with a feeble breathlessness.
“You’ve lived in this house, then, for twenty years,” Lindsay repeated, musing.
“Yes, all of that.” Mrs. Spash appeared to muse also. For an instant the two followed their own preoccupations. Then as though they led them to the sameimpasse, their eyes lifted simultaneously; met. They smiled.
“I’ve bought this house, Mrs. Spash,” Lindsay confided. “And you never can guess why.”
Mrs. Spash started what appeared to be a comment. It deteriorated into a little inarticulate murmur.
“I bought it,” Lindsay went on, “because when I was in college, I fell in love with Lutetia Murray.” And then, at Mrs. Spash’s wide-eyed, faded stare, “Not with Miss Murray herself—I never saw her—but with her books. I read everythingshe wrote and I wrote in college what we call a thesis on her.”
“Sort of essay or composition,” Mrs. Spash defined thesis to herself.
“Exactly,” Lindsay permitted.
“She was—she was—” Mrs. Spash began in a dispassionate sort of way. She concluded in a kind of frenzy. “She was an angel.”
“Oh yes, she’s that all right. I have never seen anybody so lovely.”
Mrs. Spash made a swift conversational pounce. “I thought you said you’d never seen her.”
Lindsay flushed abjectly. “No,” he admitted. “But you see I have a picture of her.” He pointed to the mantel.
“Yes, I noticed that when I came in to get some water.” Strangely enough Mrs. Spash did not, for a moment, look at the picture. Instead she stared at Lindsay. Lindsay submitted easily enough to this examination. After a while Mrs. Spash appeared to abandon her scrutiny of him. She trotted over to the fireplace; studied Lutetia’s likeness.
“I don’t know as I ever see that one—it don’t half do her justice—I hate a profile picture—” She pronounced “profile” to rhyme with “wood-pile.” “None of her pictures ever did do her justice. Her beauty was mostly in her hair and her eyes. She had a beautiful skin too, though she never took no care of it. Never wore a hat—no matter how hot the sun was. And then her expression— Well, it was just beautiful—changing all the time.”
Lindsay was only half listening. He was, with an amused glint in his eyes, studying Mrs. Spash’s spare, erect black-silk figure. She was a relic perfectly preserved, he reflected, of mid-Victorianism. Her black was of the kind that is accurately described by the word decent. And she wore fittingly a little black, beaded cape with a black shade-hat that tilted forward over her face at a decided slant. Her straight, white, abundant hair was apparently parted in the middle under her hat. At any rate, the neat white parting continued over the crown of her head to her very neck, where it concealed itself under a flat black-silk bow. Her gnarled, blue-veined hands had beencovered with the lace mitts that now lay on the table. Her little wrinkled face was neat-featured. The irises of her eyes were a faded blue and the whites were blue also; and this put a note of youthful color among her wrinkles.
But Lindsay lost interest in these details; for, obviously, a new idea caught him in its instant clutch. “Oh, Mrs. Spash,” he suggested, “would you be so good as to take me through this house? I want you to tell me who occupied the rooms. This is not mere idle curiosity on my part. You see Miss Murray’s publishers have decided to bring out a new edition of her works. They want me to write a life of Miss Murray. I’m asking everybody who knows anything about her all kinds of questions.”
Mrs. Spash received all this with that unstirred composure which indicates non-comprehension of the main issue.
“Of course I’m interested on my own account too,” Lindsay went on. “She’s such a wonderful creature, so charming and so beautiful, so sweet, so unbearably poignant and sad. I can’tunderstand,” he concluded absently, “why she is so sad.”
Mrs. Spash seemed to comprehend instantly. “It’s the way she died,” she explained vaguely, “and how everything was left!” She walked in little swift pattering steps, and with the accustomed air of one who knows her way, through the side door into the addition. “This was Miss Murray’s own living-room,” she told Lindsay. “She had that little bit of a stairway made, shesaid, so’s too many folks couldn’t come up to her room at once. Not that that made any difference. Wherever she was, the whole household went.”
With little nipping steps Mrs. Spash ascended the stairway. Lindsay followed.
“Did Miss Murray die in her room?” Lindsay asked.
“How did you know this was her room?” Mrs. Spash demanded.
“I don’t know exactly. I just guessed it,” Lindsay answered. “I sleep here myself,” he hurriedly threw off.
“Yes. She died here. She was all alone whenshe died. You see—" Mrs. Spash sat down on the one chair and, instantly sensing her mood, Lindsay sat down on the bed.
“You see, things hadn’t gone very well for Miss Murray the last years of her life. Her books didn’t sell— And she spent money like water. She was allus the most open-hearted, open-handed creature you can imagine. She allus had the house full of company! And then there was the little girl—Cherry—who lived with her. At the end, things were bad. No money coming in. And Miss Murray sick all the time.”
“You say she was alone when she died,” Lindsay gently brought her back to the track.
“Yes—except for little Cherry, who slept right through everything—childlike. Cherry had that room.” Mrs. Spash jerked an angular thumb back.
Lindsay nodded. “Yes, I guessed that—with all the drawings—”
“The Weejubs! Mr. Gale drew them pictures for Cherry. He was an artist. He used to paint pictures out in the backyard there. I didn’t fancythem very much myself—too dauby. You had to stand way off from them ’fore they’d look like anythinga-tall. But he used to get as high as five hundred dollars for them. Oh, what excitement there was in this house while he was decorating Cherry’s room! And little Cherry chattering like a magpie! Mr. Gale made up a whole long story about the Weejubs on her walls. Lord, I’ve forgotten half of it; but Cherry could rattle it all off asfast. Miss Murray had that door between her room and Cherry’s made small on purpose. She said Cherry could come into her room whenever she wanted to, as long as she was a little girl. But when Cherry grew up, she was going to make it hard for her. But she promised when Cherry was sixteen years old she shouldn’t have to call her auntie any more—she could call her jess Lutetia. Queer idea, worn’t it?”
Mrs. Spash’s old eyes so narrowed before an oncoming flood of reminiscence that they seemed to retreat to the back of her head, where they diminished to blue sparks. For a moment the room was silent. Then “Let me show yousomething! You’d oughter know it, seein’ it’s your house. There’s some, though, I wouldn’t show it to.”
She pattered with her surprising quickness to the back wall. She pressed a spot in the paneling and a small square of the wood moved slowly back.
“You see, Miss Murray’s bed ran along that wall, just as Cherry’s did in the other room. Mornings and evenings they used to open this panel and talk to each other.”
Lindsay’s eyes filmed even as Mrs. Spash’s had. Mentally he saw the two faces bending toward the opening....
“But you was asking about Miss Murray’s death— As I say, things didn’t go well with her. I didn’t understand how it all happened. Folks stopped buying her books, I guess. Anyway, when she died, there was nothing left. And there was debts. The house and everything in it was sold—at auction. It was awful to see Miss Murray’s things all out on the lawn. And a great crowd of gawks—riff-raff from everywhere—looking at ’em and making fun of ’em— She hadbeautiful things, but they went for nothing a-tall. They jess about paid her debts.”
Lindsay groaned. “But her death—”
“Oh yes, as I was sayin’. You see, Miss Murray worn’t ever the same after Mr. Lewis died. You know about that?”
Lindsay nodded. “He was drowned.”
Mrs. Spash nodded confirmatively. “Yes, in Spy Pond—over South Quinanog way. He was swimming all alone. He was taken with cramps way out in the middle of the Pond. Finally somebody saw him struggling and they put out in a boat, but they were too late. Miss Murray was in the garden when they brought him back on a shutter. I was with her. I can see the way her face looked now. She didn’t say anything. Not a word! She turned to stone. And it didn’t seem to me that she ever came back to flesh again. They was to be married in October. He was a splendid man. He came from New York.”
“Yes. Curiously enough I spent a few days in what used to be his rooms,” Lindsay informed her.
“That so?” But it was quite apparent thatnothing outside the radius of Quinanog interested Mrs. Spash deeply. She made no further comment.
“Was she very much in love with Lewis?” Lindsay ventured.
“In love! I wish you could see their eyes when they looked at each other. They’d met late. Miss Murray had always had lots of attention. But she never seemed to care for anybody—though she’d flirt a little—until she met Mr. Lewis. It was love at first sight with them.”
She proceeded.
“Well, Miss Murray died five years after Mr. Lewis. She died—well, I don’t know exactly what it was. But she hadattacks. She was a terrible sufferer. And she was worried—money matters worried her. You see, little Cherry’s mother died when she was born and her father soon after. Miss Murray’d always had Cherry and felt responsible for her. I know, because she told me. ‘It ain’t myself, Eunice Spash,’ she said to me more’n once. ‘It’s little Cherry.’ Anyway, she was alone when her last attack came. She’d sent for a cousin—I forget the name—to be with her, andshe was up in Boston getting a nurse, and I was in the other side of the house. I never heard a sound. We found her dead in the middle of the floor—there.” Her crooked forefinger indicated the spot. “Seemed she’d got up and tried to get to the door to call. But she dropped and died halfway. She was all contorted. Her face looked—Not so much suffering of the body as— Well, you could see it in her face that it come to her that she was going, and Cherry was left with nothing.”
“What became of that cousin?” Lindsay inquired. “I have asked everybody in the neighborhood, but nobody seems to know.”
“And I don’t know. She went to Boston, taking Cherry with her. For a time we heard from Cherry now and then—she’d write letters to the children. Then we lost sight of her. I don’t know whether Miss Murray’s cousin’s living or dead; Cherry either.”
Lindsay felt that he could have assured her that Cherry was alive; but his conclusion rested on premises too gauzy for him to hazard the statement.
Mrs. Spash sighed. She arose, led the way into the hall. “This was Mr. Monroe’s room; and Mr. Gale’s room was back of his. He liked the room that overlooked the garden. Mr. Monroe—”
“That’s the big man, the sculptor,” Lindsay hazarded.
“How’d you know?” Mrs. Spash pounced on him again.
“Oh, I’ve talked with a lot of people in the neighborhood,” Lindsay returned evasively.
“That Mr. Monroe,” Mrs. Spash glided on easily, “was a case and a half. Nothing but talk and laugh every moment he was in the house. I used to admire to have him come.”
“Where is he?” Lindsay asked easily. He hoped Mrs. Spash did not guess how, mentally, he hung upon her answer.
“He went to Italy—to Florence—after Miss Murray died.” Mrs. Spash stopped. “He was in love with Miss Murray. Had been for years. She wouldn’t have him though. He was an awful nice man. Sometimes I thought she would have him. But after Mr. Lewis came— Queer,worn’t it? I don’t know whether Mr. Monroe’s alive or dead.”
Again Lindsay felt that he could have assured her that he was alive, but again gauzy premises inhibited exact conclusions.
“The last I heard of him he was in Rome. ’Tain’t likely he’s alive now.Land, no! He’d be well over seventy—close onto seventy-five. Mr. Gale was in love with her too. He was younger. I don’t think he ever told Miss Murray, I neverdidknow if she knew. You couldn’t fool me though. Well, I started out to show you this house. I must be gitting on. You’ve seen the slave quarters and the whipping-post upstairs?”
“Yes.Everybodycould tell me about the whipping-post and the slave quarters. But the things I wanted to know—”
“Well, it’s natural enough that folks shouldn’t know much about her. Miss Murray was a lady that didn’t talk about her own affairs and she kept sort of to herself, as you might say. She wasn’t the kind that ran in on folks. She wrote by fits and starts. Sometimes she’d stay up late at night.Shealluswrote new-moon time. She said the light of the crescent moon inspired her. How they used to make fun of her about that! But she’d write with all of them about, laughing and talking and playing the piano or singing—and dancing even. The house was so lively those days—they was all great trainers. And yet she could fall asleep right in the midst of all that confusion. Well—so you see she wasn’t given to making calls. And then there was always so much to do and so many folks around at home. Have you been upstairs in the barn?”
“No—not yet. The stairs were all broken away. I had just finished mending them when I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”
They both smiled reminiscently.
“Let’s go up there now—there must be a lot of things—” She ended her sentence a little vaguely as the old sometimes do. But the movement with which she arose from her chair and trotted toward the stairs was full of an anticipation almost youthful.
“The garden used to be so pretty,” she sighedas they started on the well-worn trail to the barn. “Miss Murray worn’t what you might call practical, but she could make flowers grow. She never cooked, nor sewed, nor anything sensible, but she’d work in that garden till— There was certain combinations of flowers that she used to like; hollyhocks, especially the garnet ones so dark they was almost black, surrounded by them blue Canterbury bells; and then phlox in all colors, white and pink and magenta and lavender and purple. I think there was some things put out here,” she interrupted herself vaguely, “that nobody wanted at the auction. There wasn’t even a bid on them.”
She trotted up the stairs like a pony that has suddenly become aged. Lindsay followed, two steps at a time. The upper story of the barn was the confused mass of objects that the lumber room of any large household inevitably collects. Broken chairs; tables, bureaux; rejected pieces of china; kitchen furnishings; a rusty stove, old boxes; bandboxes; broken trunks; torn bags.
“There! That’s the table Miss Murray usedto do her writing at. She said there never had been a table built big enough for her. I expect that’s why nobody bought it at the auction. ’Twas too big for mortal use, you might say. The same reason I expect is why the dining-room table didn’t sell either.”
“Where did she write?” Lindsay asked, measuring the table with his eye.
“All summer in the south living-room. But when it come winter, she’d often take her things and set right in front of the fire in the living-room. Then she’d write at that long table you’re writing on.”
“This table goes back to the south living-room tomorrow,” Lindsay decided almost inaudibly. “Can you tell me the exact spot?”
“I guess Ican. Lord knows I’ve got down on my hands and knees and dusted the legs often enough. Miss Murray said, though it was soft wood, it was the oldest piece in the house. She bought it at some old tavern where they was having a sale. She said it dated back—long before Revolutionary times—to Colonial days.”
“Could you tell me, I wonder, about the rest of Miss Murray’s furniture?” Lindsay came suddenly from out a deep revery. “Do you remember who bought it? I would like to buy back all that I can get. I’d like to make the old place look, as much as possible, as it used to look.”
Mrs. Spash flashed him a quick intent look. Then she meditated. “I think I could probably tell you where most every piece went. The Drakes got the Field bed and the ivory-keyhole bureau and the ivory-keyhole desk; and Miss Garnet got the elephant and Mis’ Manson got the gazelles—”
“Elephant! Gazelles!” Lindsay interrupted.
“The gazelles,” Mrs. Spash smiled indulgently. “Well, it does sound queer, but Miss Murray used to call those little thin-legged candle tables that folks use,gazelles. The elephant was a great high chest of drawers. Mis’ Manson got the maple gazelles—” She proceeded in what promised to be an indefinite category.
“Do you think I could buy any of those things back?” Lindsay asked after listening patiently to the end.
“Some of them, I guess. I have a few things in my attic I’ll sell you—and some I’ll give you. I’d admire to see them in the old place once more.”
“You must let me buy them all,” Lindsay protested.
“Well, we’ll see about that,” Mrs. Spash disposed of this disagreement easily. “Have you seen the Dew Pond yet?”
“The Dew Pond!” Lindsay echoed.
“The little pond beyond the barn,” Mrs. Spash explained. Then, as though a great light dawned, “Oh, of course it’s all so growed up round it you’d never notice it. Come and I’ll show it to you.”
Lindsay followed her out of the barn. This was all like a dream, he reflected—but then everything was like a dream nowadays. He had lived in a dream for two months now. Mrs. Spash struck into a path which led beyond the barn.
The trail grew narrower and narrower; threatened after a while to disappear. Lindsay finally took the lead, broke a path. They came presentlyon a pond so tiny that it was not a pond at all; it was a pool. Water-lilies choked it; forget-me-nots bordered it; high wild roses screened it.
Lindsay stood looking for a long time into it. “It’s the Merry Mere ofMary Towle,” he meditated aloud. Mrs. Spash received this in the uninterrogative silence with which she had received other of his confidences. She apparently fell back easily into the ways of literary folk.
“I remember now I got a glint of water from one of the upstairs bedrooms,” Lindsay went on, “the first time I came into the house. But I forgot it instantly; and I’ve never noticed it since.”
“Wait a moment!” Mrs. Spash seemed afraid that he would leave. “There’s something else.” She attempted to push her way through the jungle in the direction of the house. For an instant her progress was easy, then bushes and vines caught her. Lindsay sprang to her assistance.
“There’s something here—that was left,” she panted. “Folks have forgotten all about—” She dropped explanatory phrases.
Heedless of tearing thorns and piercing prickers, Lindsay crashed on. Mrs. Spash watched expectantly.
“There!” she called with satisfaction.
On a cairn of rocks, filmed over by years of exposure to the weather, stood what Lindsay immediately recognized to be a large old rum-jar. The sun found exposed spots on its surface, brought out its rich olive color.
“After Mr. Lewis died,” Mrs. Spash explained, “Miss Murray went abroad for a year. She went to Egypt. She put this here when she came home. Then you could see it from the house. The sun shone on it something handsome. She told me once she went into a temple on the Nile cut out of the living-rock, where there was room after room, one right back of the other. In the last one, there was an altar; and once a year, the first ray of the rising sun would strike through all the rooms and lay on that altar. Worn’t that cute? I allus thought she had that in mind when she put this here.”
Lindsay contemplated the old rum-jar. Mrs. Spash contemplated him. And suddenly it was asthough she were looking at Lindsay from a new point of view.
Lindsay’s face had changed subtly in the last two months. The sun of Quinanog had added but little to the tan and burn with which three years of flying had crusted it. He was still very handsome. It was not, however, this comeliness that Mrs. Spash seemed to be examining. The experiences at Quinanog had softened the deliberate stoicism of his look. Rather they had fed some inner softness; had fired it. His air was now one of perpetual question. Yet dreams often invaded his eyes; blurred them; drooped his lips.
“It’s all unbelievable,” Lindsay suddenly commented, “I don’t believe it. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe myself.”
Mrs. Spash still kept her eyes fixed on the young man’s face. Her look had grown piercing.
“Have you a shovel handy?” she surprisingly asked.
“Yes, why?”
Mrs. Spash did not answer immediately. He turned and looked at her. She was still gazing at him hard; but the light from some long-harboredemotion of her dulled old soul was shining bluely in her dulled old eyes.
“I want you should get it,” she ordered briefly. “There’s something right here,” she pointed, “that I want you to dig up.”