Little Miss By-The-Day Part 6

She stretched out her young hands toward the woods. The tardy tree tops were budding at last, their lovely bronze and red and tender green shining in the morning light.

"'In the spring forests,'" she cried, "'you must find your fun'--are those the words of the song, Margot?--Oh, look, look!" she pointed joyously to a blackbird on top the swaying maple outside her window.

He whistled--she whistled, saucily back.

"Oh!" sighed Margot. "It is good to be young. It is good--go back to your bed, little one, I'll bring your breakfast."

But Felicia couldn't go back to bed. She hobbled delightedly from window to window, staring out at the open s.p.a.ce in front of the house, with its descending terraces and the gray jungle of underbrush that hid the edge of the clearing. She turned eagerly when Margot entered with a tray. She was bubbling with joy.

"Is Maman comfortable this morning?" she was chattering. "Will she be in the garden? Where is the garden? I've looked and I can't see it--or is she in her bed yet? And is it up-stairs?"

Margot's hands trembled. She put the tray down on the bedside table and pulled the girl across the room and coaxed her into the bed, rubbing the small bandaged foot, cuddling the quilts about her, as she tucked the pillows. "So many questions!" she evaded. "Eat your breakfast and I will help you dress--"

Felicia snuggled under the covers and nibbled her toast hungrily.

"Yesterday," she confided, "I was unhappy; it seemed too far to come-- I was afraid, from something Marthy said, that I wasn't going to find Maman--she said I mustn't set my heart on it--"

Margot sighed. She came close to the bed and took Felicia's hands in hers.

"Listen carefully," she entreated, "the thing I have to tell you is hard. You see when Octavia went away from you she did not come here, she--"

"Where did she go?" demanded Felicia sitting bolt upright.

"She went--" Margot's throaty voice dragged painfully, "She went where all good women go when their work is done--"

"Her work wasn't done," objected Felice. "She said it would be a great deal of work to build the garden over, she said she was afraid it would be all weeds--Piqueur was so old--she said--Oh! why are you weeping, Margot?"

"When she went away from me first," moaned Margot, "I thought I could never stand it--it was so still and so lonely here in the woods without her--and now, after all these years that I have learned to live without her--it is as if she had gone away again to have to try-- to tell you--" she knelt at the bedside, her lips moved piteously.

"Try to understand, little one, she is gone--neither you nor I can find her--"

"Nor the Major?" asked Felicia incredulously.

"The Major least of all," said Margot firmly. "She is not--"

"Not what?" demanded Felicia..

She was sitting on the edge of the bed now looking very little in the ancient dressing gown.

"She is not living any more," sighed Margot.

There was a long pause, a pause in which the drone of Piqueur's voice, still singing Maitre Guedron's old song, floated through the open cas.e.m.e.nt.

"Not living?" questioned Felicia, her eyes widening with frightened-- comprehension--"Oh! Oh!" her voice rose tempestuously, angrily, "You shall not say such dreadful things! They are not true! The Major said we should come to this house in the Woods, he said--" she paused, her mind groped back over the years.

The rising tide of her anger swept her fear that this strange woman was telling the truth farther and farther out of her thoughts. She rose, absurdly majestic as she steadied herself with one slender arm against the quaint carved post of the bed. She pointed toward the doorway.

"You'd better go away, Margot," she ordered clearly, "You can't stay here and talk so to me--" the childish simplicity of her phrases was absurdly inadequate to express her scorn, "You do not know that I have a vairee bad temper--I make myself proud, proud, proud when I lose it --but it will make you vairee unhappy if I do--I say and I do most dreadful things when I'm angry--If I call for the Major he will come and send you away--for always and forevaire--as he did Mademoiselle D'Ormy--and no matter how sorry I am afterward he will not let you stay--"

Indeed, this idea of appealing to her grandfather had come the instant before when she heard his voice outside interrupting Piqueur's song.

She limped swiftly across the s.p.a.ce toward the window, she leaned far out and called to her grandfather, who stood in the courtyard below, gravely inspecting the lame mare that the boy had brought from the stable. So intent was Felicia with her question that she forgot her recent fear of the Major.

"Grandy!" she called, her clear tones ringing down to him, "Grandy, you will have to come and send this Margot away--you will--"

He came up the stairs to her slowly, pausing formally outside her door to tap for Margot to open for him; but even before he was in the room, looking very pale and stern and old with his beautiful head lifted high above the ruffled shirt and his peaked hat held in his hand, the girl's eager appeal had begun.

"This Margot," Felicia's words tumbled impetuously, "She's been telling me lies--she says Maman isn't here--that she isn't in the garden--or in the house--she says she--"

"You'd better stay, Margot," said Major Trenton, "I think Miss Felicia will need you. Felicia, let Margot wrap that gown about you, it's chilly here. Felicia, we do not know how to make you understand about your mother--we did not want to make you sad when you were little so I did not tell you. It was her wish that I should not distress you--"

his face worked pitifully, "--with the manner of her going--what she said to you about the garden--you did not understand, my dear--She had a notion, my little Octavia, that we do not die--that only our bodies die--many other people believe this--are you listening, Felicia? She thought that her spirit," he groped for words, "the Something she called the 'Happy part of her' couldn't--'stop'--as she called it--she said-" his lips were quivering, "that part of her would always try to stay in the house where you lived so long and in this garden and house in which she lived when she was young--like you--that is all--What Margot tells you is quite true--she is not living--she has not been living since you were eleven--she died--" his words trailed miserably, "She is not living--" he repeated feebly.

The girl's eyes had never left his since he had begun his inadequate explanation, she did not cry out, she merely stood there, pale, unbelieving and stared at him.

"And she said the Happy Part of her would be here?"

He nodded.

"Then," said Felicia calmly, "If she said so, she will, and you and Margot are both stupid and bad to tell me that she won't--If you will find my shoes--" she turned petulantly to Margot, "I will walk until I find her--"

"But you cannot find her, she is gone--" the deep agony of his voice rang in the great room, "Quite gone--"

"Where has she gone?" demanded Felice stubbornly.

He gestured his despair.

It was Margot who came to the rescue, sane Margot, who had collected her senses once more. She pattered across the room to the wardrobe, calling over her shoulder as she tugged at the door.

"Wait, wait," she entreated, "You will understand some day! Just now we won't talk about it any more. She's not here but she has left so many things for you! So many messages for you! So much for you to do!

Look, Miss Felicia!" She held aloft a broad sun-hat and a pair of gauntleted gloves, "Just where she hung them--as if she knew you might want them! These are the things she wore when she worked in the garden--here's her wicker basket with the trowel and the hand fork-- and here's the garden book--" She was standing before Felicia now holding out the treasures. "If you'll sit over there by the window I can tell you about the day she found this book--"

The hurt look was fading from the girl's eyes; she reached out her hands for these things that had been her mother's; she was quite docile as the Major helped her to the chair by the window. She had the garden book cuddled under her arm; she was holding the gloves against her cheek; she looked like a child instead of a grown-up person.

You won't have to pretend you can see Felicia's great-great- grandmother's garden book--you can really see it in the library of Octavia House if you care to ask the Poetry Girl to show it to you-- but perhaps you'll like to pretend that you can see the seventeen year old Felicia, wrapped in that shabby brocaded dressing gown sitting beside the window staring at the stained t.i.tle page, trying to read the faint inked inscription. Perhaps you'll like to pretend too, that you can hear her grandfather's voice steadying itself as he leans over the back of the chair and translates the inscription for her. The book's in English, you know, but that written inscription is in French.

"It says," read her grandfather, "something like this:

"'To my little Madame Folly Whom others call Prudence Langhorne I present this book, for I have heard A woman can be very happy building a garden--'"

"And whose name is this?" Felicia put her finger on the broad sprawl after the inscription.

"It's the initial of the man who gave it to her--J.--" said her grandfather grimly.

"And J. gave this book to Maman?"

Margot chuckled.

"No--no--" she explained. "Your Maman found this book over there in the cupboard--it's a very old book, Cherie. It is a book that a man gave to--" her fat fingers checked off the generations lightly, "a lady named Prudence--she was the mother of Josepha--and Josepha was the mother of a Louisa. It was this Louisa who was your mother's mother--now do you see? And think, Miss Felicia--" she waved her hand toward the opened door of the wardrobe, "what many, many things they've left here for you! When Octavia was just as old as you she rummaged and rummaged every day--" Margot wiped her eyes with the back of her hand--the Major moved toward the window and looked down upon the garden. "She put them all in order, each one's clothes in a different place, I was the one who helped her. And she used to laugh while we sorted the things and say what fun it would be for the next one who came to see them--that's you, Miss Felicia--"

"Oh! Oh!" breathed Felicia, her eyes shining like stars. "How sweet of her! How sweet of you, Margot, to keep them all for me! You are sweet, sweet, sweet to bring me her gloves! Once she told me about this hat, I knew its ribbons would be blue! I know how they tie in back so's it won't make me warm under my chin--she told me--look, isn't this the way?" Her slender hands lifted the hat to her hair, so sweetly rumpled from her pillows, "Look, Grandy, look at me! I am wearing Maman's hat --she told me I could wear it when I came to the House in the Woods! Do you think it looks well on me?" Her naive vanity almost broke their hearts. "Do you, Grandy? Look at me!"