CHAPTER X.
LOOKING BACKWARD.
But in the twilight came Margaret"s hour of comfort. Then Peggy had her dancing-lesson from Rita, and while the two were whirling and stumping about the hall, she would steal away through the little door and down the three steps to the white rooms, where peace and quiet, gentle words and kind affection were always awaiting her. Aunt Faith always understood the little troubles, and had the right word to say, of sympathy or counsel. The two had grown very near to each other.
"How is it," Margaret asked one evening, "I seem so much nearer your age, Aunt Faith, than the girls"? Do you suppose I really belong to your generation, and got left behind by accident?"
Aunt Faith laughed. "My dear, you ought to have had half a dozen brothers and sisters!" she said. "An only child grows up too fast, especially where, as in your case, the companionship with father or mother is close and intimate. No doubt your dear father did his best to grow down to your age, when you were little; but he did not succeed, I fear, so you had to grow up to his. Was not that the way?"
Margaret nodded thoughtfully. "I remember his playing horse with me!"
she said. "Poor dear Papa! I asked him to play, and he said in his deep, slow way, "Surely! surely! the child must have play. Play is necessary for development." And then he sat and looked at me, with his Greek book in his hand, as if I were a word that he could not find the meaning of.
Oh! I remember it so well, though I must have been a little tot. Then he got up and said, "I will be a horse, Margaret! Consider me a horse!" and he gave me the ta.s.sels of his dressing-gown, and began to amble about the room slowly, among the piles of books. Oh, dear! I can see him now, dear Papa! He made a _very_ slow horse, Aunt Faith, and I felt, in a baby way, that there was something awful about it, and that he was not meant to play. I think I must have dropped the ta.s.sels pretty soon, for he came to a great book lying open on a chair, and forgot everything else, and stood there for an hour reading it. I never asked him to play again, but we used to laugh over it when we were big--I mean when I was big, and had grown up to him a little bit."
Mrs. Cheriton laid her hand on the girl"s head, and smoothed her hair tenderly.
"You must have been lonely sometimes, dear?" she said.
"Oh, no; never, I think. You see, I learned so many things that I could play by myself, and it never troubled Papa to have me in the room where he was writing; I think he rather liked it. I had the waste-paper basket; that was one of my chief delights. I might do what I wanted with the papers, if I only put them back. So I carpeted the room with them, and I laid out streets and squares, and had the pamphlets for walls and houses. Or I was a queen, with a great correspondence, and all the letters were brought to me by pages in green and gold, and when I read them (this was before I could really read, of course), they were all from my baby sister, and they told of all the lovely things she was seeing, and the wonderful countries she and Mamma were travelling in.
Aunt Faith, I never see a waste-paper basket now, without feeling as if there must be a letter for me in it."
"Was there really a baby sister, dear?"
"Yes, oh, yes! she died with Mamma, only a few days after her birth,--little Penelope! It seems such a great name for a tiny baby, doesn"t it, Aunt Faith? But it is a family name, Papa told me."
"Yes, indeed, many of the Montforts have been named Penelope. You remember the poor Aunt Penelope I told you about, who made the unhappy marriage; and there were many others."
"Oh, that reminds me!" said Margaret. "Aunt Faith, you promised to tell me some day about Aunt Phoebe. Don"t you remember? We were speaking of these white rooms, and you said it was a fancy of Uncle John"s to have them so, and you thought he remembered his Great-aunt Phoebe; and then you said you would tell me some time, and this is some time, isn"t it, Auntie dear?"
"I cannot deny that, Margaret, certainly. And I don"t know why this is not a very good time; the twilight is soft and dusky, and Aunt Phoebe"s story ought not to be told in broad daylight."
She was silent a moment, as if looking back into the past. "It is the sequel, rather than the story itself, that is singular," she said. "The first part is like only too many other stories, alas! Your Great-aunt Phoebe--your Great-great-aunt, I should say--was betrothed to a brave young officer, Lieutenant Hetherington. It was just at the breaking out of the War of 1812, and the engagement was made just as he was going into active service. She was a beautiful girl, with large dark eyes, and superb fair hair,--none of you three girls have this combination, but it is not uncommon among the Montforts; I myself had fair hair and dark eyes. Phoebe was highly romantic, and when her lover went to war, she gave him a sword-belt plaited of her own hair."
"Oh," cried Margaret, "like Sir Percival"s sister!"
"Exactly! Very likely it was from that story that she took the idea, for she was a great reader. However it might be, her mother was greatly distressed at her cutting off so much of her fine hair, and did her best to prevent it, but to no purpose, as you may imagine. Giles Hetherington joined the army, carrying the braided belt with him, and they say he never parted with it, night or day, but slept with it beside him on the pillow. Poor fellow! He was killed in a night attack by the Indians, set on by the British. He was in a hut with some other officers, and the sentry must have slept at his post, they supposed. They were surrounded, the house set on fire, and the officers all killed. One private escaped to tell the dreadful story, and he told of the gallant fight they made, and how Giles Hetherington fought for the life that was so dear to others. He defended the door while two of his comrades forced the window open, hoping to steal around and take the savages in the rear; but the window was watched, too, and these officers were shot down, and then an Indian sprang in at the window, and stabbed Hetherington in the back.
Ah, me! It is a terrible story, dear child! He staggered back to the bed, the soldier said, and caught up the belt, that was lying there while he slept. He was past speech, but he gave it to this soldier, who was a lad from this place, and motioned him to the window; then he fell back dead, and the man crept out of the window,--the Indians having run around to the front,--and crawled off, lying flat in the gra.s.s, and so escaped with his life. He brought the belt, all dabbled with blood, back to Fernley, meaning to give it to Madam Montfort quietly, that she might break the news to her daughter, but poor Phoebe chanced to come through the garden just as he was standing on the steps with the belt in his hand, and she saw it."
"Oh! oh, dear!" cried Margaret, clasping her hands. "Aunt Faith, it is too dreadful! How could she bear it?"
"My dear, she could not bear it. She had not the strength. She did not lose her mind, like poor Aunt Penelope, but really, it might almost have been as well if she had, poor soul. When she woke from the long swoon into which she had fallen at sight of the belt, she heard all the story through without a word, and then she came here, and left the world."
"Came here?" repeated Margaret.
"Here, to these rooms; but what different rooms! She sent for a painter, and had the walls painted black. She had everything with an atom of colour in it taken away; and in these black rooms she lived, and in them she died. She wept so much--partly that, and partly the want of light--that her eyes became abnormally sensitive, and she could not bear even to see anything white. As time went on--Margaret, you will hardly believe this, but it is literally true--she would not even have white china on her table. She declared it hurt her eyes. So her father, who could refuse her nothing, sent for a set of dark brown china, and she ate brown bread on it,--would not look at white bread,--and was served by a mulatto woman, an old nurse who had been in the family from her childhood."
"Aunt Faith, can it be--you say it really is true! but--how could they let her? Why did they not have an oculist?"
"My dear child, oculists did not exist in those days. If she were living to-day, it would be p.r.o.nounced a case of nervous exhaustion, and she would be taken for a sea voyage, or sent to a rest-cure, or treated in one of the hundred different ways that we know of nowadays. But then, n.o.body knew what to do for her, poor lady. To be "crossed in love," as it was called, was a thing that admitted of no cure, unless the patient were willing to be cured. People spoke of Phoebe Montfort under their breath, and called her "a blight," meaning a person whose life has been blighted. The world has gone on a good deal in the two generations since then, my dear Margaret."
"I should think so," said Margaret; "poor soul! And did she have to live very long, Aunt Faith? I hope not!"
"A good many years, my dear. She must have been an elderly woman when she died; not old, as I count age, but perhaps seventy-five, or thereabouts. I lived far away at that time, but John Montfort has often told me of the time of her death. He was a little lad, and he regarded the Black Rooms and their tenant with the utmost terror. He used to run past the door, he says, for fear the Black Aunt should come out and seize him, and take him into her dreary dwelling. Poor Aunt Phoebe was the mildest creature in the world, and would not have hurt a fly, but to him she was something awful,--out of nature. He was taken in to see her once or twice a year, and he always had nightmare after it, being a nervous child. Well, one day he was running through the Green Parlour here, and looking back at the windows of the Black Rooms, as he never could help doing; and he saw Rosalie, the coloured woman, come to the window and throw it wide open, letting in the full light of day. Then she went to the next, and so on; and the child knew what had happened before she spoke. I remember her words:
""She"s gone, honey! Her sperit"s gone. It went out"n dis window, straight by whar you"s standin", and into the cedar bush. De Lord hab mercy!"
"And poor little John took to his heels, and ran, and never stopped running till he was in his own bed upstairs.
"That is the story, Margaret; but I ought to add that the belt of hair was laid in the grave with her, at her special request."
"What a sad, sad story! Poor soul! Poor, forlorn, tortured soul! How glad she must have been to go! Aunt Faith--"
"Yes, dear Margaret!"
"Oh, nothing,--only--it seems dreadful sometimes, to feel that terrible things may be coming, coming toward one, and that one never can look forward, never know when they may come! I sometimes think, if I could see a year ahead, or even a week,--but one never knows. I suppose it is best, or it would not be!"
"a.s.suredly, dear child! When you think a little more, you will see the wisdom and the mercy of it. How could we go steadfastly along our path of every day, if some day we saw a pit at the farther end? Life would be impossible, Margaret."
"Yes, I--I suppose so!" said Margaret thoughtfully.
"And all the time," Mrs. Cheriton went on, "all the time, during the clear, calm days and years, my child, we are, or we ought to be, laying by, as it were; storing up light and strength and happiness for the dark days when we may so deeply need them. Think a moment! Think of all the happy days and years with your father! They are blessed memories, are they not, Margaret? every day is like a jewel that you take out and look at, and then put back in its case; you never lose these precious things that are all your own!"
"Oh, never! oh, how well you know, Aunt Faith! how you must have felt it all!" The girl raised her head, and saw the face of the aged woman transfigured with light and beauty. She also was looking back through the years,--who could tell how long!
"But suppose,"--it was still she who spoke,--"suppose now, Margaret, that these memories were other than they are! Suppose that instead of the blessed golden days, you had days of storm and anger and disagreement to look back on; that there had been unkindness on one side, unfaithfulness on the other; suppose it had been with you and your father as it has been with some parents and children that I have known,--how then?"
"Oh!" murmured Margaret, her eyes filling with tears, that yet had no bitterness in them; "but it could not have been so, Aunt Faith. Papa was an angel, you know; an angel of goodness and love."
"Now you see what I mean by storing up light against the dark days,"
said Mrs. Cheriton. "If he had not been loving and good,--and if you, too, had not been a good and dear daughter,--think what your possessions would be to-day. As it is, you have what can never be taken from you; and so if we go on steadfastly, as I said, content not to see before us, but cherishing and making the best of what we have to-day, the best of what to-day holds will be ours forever, till death comes to end all the partings and all the sorrow."
The last words were spoken rather to herself than to Margaret. The latter sat still, not daring to speak; for it seemed as if some beautiful vision were pa.s.sing before the eyes of the old woman. She sat looking a little upward, with her lips slightly parted, the breath coming and going so softly that one could not perceive it, her hands clasped in her lap. Now the lips moved, and Margaret heard the low words of a prayer, rather breathed than whispered. Another moment, and the brown eyes grew bright and smiling once more, and the kindly gaze fell on the girl, who sat awestruck, half afraid to breathe.
"My poor Margaret!" said Mrs. Cheriton quickly. "My poor little girl, I have frightened you. Dear, when one is so old as I am the veil seems very thin, and I often look half through it and feel the air from the other side. But you--you must not stay here too long, you must not be saddened by an old woman"s moods. You love to stay, and I love to have you, but it must not be too long. I will just tell you about the change in the rooms, and then--well, the Black Rooms remained shut up for many, many years after Aunt Phoebe"s death. Indeed, I fancy they were never used until after your grandfather"s death, when the property was divided, and your Uncle John took Fernley as his share. Then one of the first things he did was to throw open these rooms, send for a painter, and have them painted white from floor to ceiling, as you see. He had no use for them at that time, but he has told me that he did not like to be in the same house with anything black. Everything burnable was burned,--for your grandfather, as long as he lived, kept Aunt Phoebe"s belongings just as she left them,--the brown crockery was smashed--"
"Oh, that was a pity!" cried Margaret. "Just for the curiosity--"
"I have a piece, my dear!" said Mrs. Cheriton. "Elizabeth Wilson--good Elizabeth--saved a piece for me; and she kept one of the black silk gowns (she has been in the house ever since she was a child), to put in the family chest. So there, Margaret, you have the story of Aunt Phoebe from beginning to end. And now you must go out and play."
"Oh, just a moment!" pleaded Margaret. "Aunt Faith,--Uncle John must be _very_ nice."
"My dear, he is the best man in the world. There is not a doubt about it."
"Shall we see him at all, Aunt Faith?"
"You shall see him. I cannot say exactly when, but you shall see him, Margaret; that I promise you on the word of a centenarian. Now will you go, or shall Janet--"
"Oh, I will go! I will go! Good-bye, dear Aunt Faith. I have had the most delightful hour," and Janet came and closed the white door softly after her.