An Alabaster Box Part 23

She followed the girl up the broad stair, once more safe and firm, talking steadily all the way.

There were four large chambers, their windows framing lovely vistas of stream and wood and meadow, with the distant blue of the far horizon melting into the summer sky. Mrs. Daggett stopped in the middle of the wide hall and looked about her wonderingly.

"Why, yes," she said slowly. "You certainly did show good sense in buying this old house. They don't build them this way now-a-days.

That's what I said to Mrs. Deacon Whittle-- You know some folks thought you were kind of foolish not to buy Mrs. Solomon Black's house down in the village. But if you're going to live here all alone, dearie, ain't it going to be kind of lonesome--all these big rooms for a little body like you?"

"Tell me about it, please," begged Lydia. "I--I've been wondering which room was his."

"You mean Andrew Bolton's, I s'pose," said Mrs. Daggett reluctantly.

"But I hope you won't worry any over what folks tells you about the day he was taken away. My! seems as if 'twas yesterday."

She moved softly into one of the s.p.a.cious, sunny rooms and stood looking about her, as if her eyes beheld once more the tragedy long since folded into the past.

"I ain't going to tell you anything sad," she said under her breath.

"It's best forgot. This was their room; ain't it nice an' cheerful? I like a southwest room myself. And 'tain't a bit warm here, what with the breeze sweeping in at the four big windows and smelling sweet of clover an' locust blooms. And ain't it lucky them trees didn't get blown over last winter?"

She turned abruptly toward the girl.

"Was you thinking of sleeping in this room, dearie? It used to have blue and white paper on it, and white paint as fresh as milk. It'd be nice and pleasant for a young lady, I should think."

Lydia shook her head.

"Not," she said slowly, "if it was _his_ room. I think I'd rather--which was the little girl's room? You said there was a child?"

"Now, I'm real sorry you feel that way," sympathized Mrs. Daggett, "but I don't know as I blame you, the way folks talk. You'd think they'd have forgot all about it by now, wouldn't you? But land! it does seem as if bad thoughts and mean thoughts, and like that, was possessed to fasten right on to folks; and you can't seem to shake 'em off, no more than them spiteful little stick-tights that get all over your clo'es.... This room right next belonged to their baby. Let me see; she must have been about three and a half or four years old when they took her away. See, there's a door in between, so Mrs.

Bolton could get to her quick in the night. I used to be that way, too, with my children.... You know we lost our two little girls that same winter, three and five, they were. But I know I wanted 'em right where I could hear 'em if they asked for a drink of water, or like that, in the night. Folks has a great notion now-a-days of putting their babies off by themselves and letting them cry it out, as they say. But I couldn't ever do that; and Mrs. Andrew Bolton she wa'n't that kind of a parent, either-- I don't know as they ought to be called _mothers_. No, she was more like me--liked to tuck the blankets around her baby in the middle of th' night an' pat her down all warm and nice. I've often wondered what became of that poor little orphan child. We never heard. Like enough she died. I shouldn't wonder."

And Mrs. Daggett wiped the ready tears from her eyes.

"But I guess you'll think I'm a real old Aunty Doleful, going on this way," she made haste to add.

"There's plenty of folks in Brookville as 'll tell you how stuck-up an' stylish Mrs. Andrew Bolton was, always dressed in silk of an afternoon and driving out with a two-horse team, an' keeping two hired girls constant, besides a man to work in her flower garden and another for the barn. But of course she supposed they were really rich and could afford it. _He_ never let on to _her_, after things begun to go to pieces; and folks blamed her for it, afterwards. Her heart was weak, and he knew it, all along. And then I suppose he thought mebbe things would take a turn.... Yes; the paper in this room was white with little wreaths of pink roses tied up with blue ribbons all over it. 'Twas furnished up real pretty with white furniture, and there was ruffled muslin curtains with dots on 'em at the windows and over the bed; Mrs. Andrew Bolton certainly did fix things up pretty, and to think you're going to have it just the same way. Well, I will say you couldn't do any better.... But, land! if there isn't the sun going down behind the hill, and me way out here, with Henry's supper to get, and Dolly champing his bit impatient.

There's one lucky thing, though; he'll travel good, going towards home; he won't stop to get his tail over the lines, neither."

An hour later, when the long summer twilight was deepening into gloom, Jim Dodge crossed the empty library and paused at the open door of the room beyond. The somber light from the two tall windows fell upon the figure of the girl. She was sitting before Andrew Bolton's desk, her head upon her folded arms. Something in the spiritless droop of her shoulders and the soft dishevelment of her fair hair suggested weariness--sleep, perhaps. But as the young man hesitated on the threshold the sound of a m.u.f.fled sob escaped the quiet figure. He turned noiselessly and went away, sorry and ashamed, because unwittingly he had stumbled upon the clew he had long been seeking.

Chapter XI

"Beside this stone wall I want flowers," Lydia was saying to her landscape-gardener, as she persisted in calling Jim Dodge.

"Hollyhocks and foxgloves and pinies--I shall never say peony in Brookville--and pansies, sweet williams, lads' love, iris and sweetbrier. Mrs. Daggett has promised to give me some roots."

He avoided her eyes as she faced him in the bright glow of the morning sunlight.

"Very well, Miss Orr," he said, with cold respect. "You want a border here about four feet wide, filled with old-fashioned perennials."

He had been diligent in his study of the books she had supplied him with.

"A herbaceous border of that sort in front of the stone wall will give quite the latest effect in country-house decoration," he went on professionally. "Ramblers of various colors might be planted at the back, and there should be a mixture of bulbs among the taller plants to give color in early spring."

She listened doubtfully.

"I don't know about the ramblers," she said. "Were there ramblers--twenty years ago? I want it as nearly as possible just as it was. Mrs. Daggett told me yesterday about the flower-border here.

You--of course you don't remember the place at all; do you?"

He reddened slightly under her intent gaze.

"Oh, I remember something about it," he told her; "the garden was a long time going down. There were flowers here a few years back; but the gra.s.s and weeds got the better of them."

"And do you--remember the Boltons?" she persisted. "I was so interested in what Mrs. Daggett told me about the family yesterday.

It seems strange to think no one has lived here since. And now that I--it is to be my home, I can't help thinking about them."

"You should have built a new house," said Jim Dodge. "A new house would have been better and cheaper, in the end."

He thrust his spade deep, a sign that he considered the conversation at an end.

"Tell one of the other men to dig this," she objected. "I want to make a list of the plants we need and get the order out."

"I can do that tonight, Miss Orr," he returned, going on with his digging. "The men are busy in the orchards this morning."

"You want me to go away," she inferred swiftly.

He flung down his spade.

"It is certainly up to me to obey orders," he said. "Pardon me, if I seem to have forgotten the fact. Shall we make the list now?"

Inwardly he was cursing himself for his stupidity. Perhaps he had been mistaken the night before. His fancy had taken a swift leap in the dark and landed--where? There was a sort of scornful honesty in Jim Dodge's nature which despised all manner of shams and petty deceits. His code also included a strict minding of his own business.

He told himself rather sharply that he was a fool for suspecting that Lydia Orr was other than she had represented herself to be. She had been crying the night before. What of that? Other girls cried over night and smiled the next morning--his sister f.a.n.n.y, for example. It was an inexplicable habit of women. His mother had once told him, rather vaguely, that it did her good to have a regular crying-spell.

It relieved her nerves, she said, and sort of braced her up....

"Of course I didn't mean that," Lydia was at some pains to explain, as the two walked toward the veranda where there were chairs and a table.

She was looking fair and dainty in a gown of some thin white stuff, through which her neck and arms showed slenderly.

"It's too warm to dig in the ground this morning," she decided. "And anyway, planning the work is far more important."

"Than doing it?" he asked quizzically. "If we'd done nothing but plan all this; why you see--"

He made a large gesture which included the carpenters at work on the roof, painters perilously poised on tall ladders and a half dozen men busy spraying the renovated orchards.

"I see," she returned with a smile, "--now that you've so kindly pointed it out to me."

He leveled a keen glance at her. It was impossible not to see her this morning in the light of what he thought he had discovered the night before.

"I've done nothing but make plans all my life," she went on gravely.

"Ever since I can remember I've been thinking--thinking and planning what I should do when I grew up. It seemed such a long, long time--being just a little girl, I mean, and not able to do what I wished. But I kept on thinking and planning, and all the while I _was_ growing up; and then at last--it all happened as I wished."