The White Lady Read online

  “Child, you look like your father when he was a boy.” The old lady’s voice recalled Constance to a very real present, and she looked down at the sweet little aunt with a pleased smile.

  “Do I? I’m glad,” she said and stooped to kiss the sweet old face.

  It was not till she was alone for the night in the little room upstairs, all white muslin, with the faint odor of lavender flowers, that she was able to collect her thoughts and realize that she was herself and this was a real house and a real life. It seemed so peaceful and quiet and out of the world. Her aunt had been sincerely glad to see her, all helpfulness and anxiety that her niece should be rested, but Constance felt that beneath it all there was something indefinable that was going to put her own life to the test, a new standard of living beside which she was not certain her own would shine. What was it? Aunt Susan had taken the large-print Testament from the high stand, read a short psalm then knelt, and in her trembling sweet voice had thanked the Lord for the dear young soul that had come under their shelter for a little time, while “Sa’Ran,” with dutifully folded hands, listened and bowed her head over her lap.

  Constance had heard of people to whom religion was a living, vital thing, influencing every action of their daily lives. She had never come into personal contact with anyone who seemed to her to be moved by such springs of action. She wondered whether it was possible that any mere belief could make a monotonous life seem sweet and beautiful.

  There was not much in the little white house to interest Constance. The midweek prayer meeting was the one break of the quiet in which Aunt Susan lived. It was as much a duty as it was a pleasure, and severe must be the storm that would keep the old lady away. Constance was not asked whether she would go, but was taken in a quiet, matter-of-course way, just as it was announced to her that dinner was ready. It would have been no more of a surprise to Aunt Susan and Sa’Ran if she had declined to eat than it would have been for her to decline to go with them to the prayer meeting. She had opened her lips to refuse but saw by her aunt’s face that it would be a serious breach of the decorum of the house. So she was silent and went upstairs to get ready, marveling what power it was that ruled the house. A little white satin ribbon hanging on the bureau bearing a printed Bible verse seemed to answer her as she turned on the light to adjust her hat.

  “Let the peace of God rule in your hearts.” She wondered vaguely whether it was this rule that made so quiet and peaceful a break in the previous hubbub and disappointing whirl of her life.

  The prayer meeting was dull beyond expression. She had to stifle a yawn behind her glove. She wondered how Aunt Susan could have stood years of them when this, her first one, was so great a bore. She marveled once more when Aunt Susan in her prayer that night thanked her heavenly Father for “the precious meeting we have attended this evening” and asked that they all might make it a means of grace to them during the remainder of the week. What was it that made Aunt Susan feel so? Was it just that her life was so empty of all else that she could count a prayer meeting a pleasure? She could not be merely saying these things as a matter of form; her tones were too genuine, and the look on her face during the meeting had been too exalted, to be other than real.

  There was much time for thought during the few days Constance spent with her aunt. Her whole mind and body seemed to be getting rested, and she was able to take up a question and think of it intelligently. Always the old house set among the dark cedars seemed to her a very possible refuge from her scorning world. Her imagination arrayed those large square rooms with costly rugs and bric-a-brac from the city home. She felt sure that her grandmother might be made happy there and kept from any great knowledge of the state of their finances.

  The only point that troubled her was that same financial one. When the five thousand dollars should be exhausted—and she had no very definite idea how long it would last—how was she to earn more? Was that scheme of starting a tearoom feasible at all? What did things cost? Would people buy in that little town? She wished she had asked more questions. Of course, there were other towns where a tearoom would succeed, but then there would not be such old houses everywhere with ghosts to make the rent cheap! Perhaps it was a wild scheme, but what if it was? It suited her, and she could see no possible harm in trying it.

  She began to ask questions and open her eyes to little household economies. She noted that people could dress in cotton and be just as happy as if they wore silk. At last, she surprised Sa’Ran with a request that she would teach her how to make that lovely bread, and Sa’Ran, nothing loath, immediately set about her task.

  If Constance had not been a most determined young woman, and also the possessor of good brains, she would not have learned so much in the few days she remained with her aunt. But she brought her modern city methods of dealing with things to bear upon bread making, and the result was a store of knowledge that stood her in good stead later when she was ready to use it. She came to the kitchen armed with pencil and dainty tablet, and the pages that usually bore the names of society’s great lights and lists for dinners and parties, were made to tell amounts of yeast and flour and salt. Every detail Constance watched, and in her flowing hand wrote down Sa’Ran’s characteristic description of the way the bread should look when it was ready to put in the pans.

  The night before she started on her way once more, having prolonged her visit three days beyond what she had at first intended, she sat with her aunt Susan late into the night, talking. The sweet old lady opened her heart to this niece and told a little of her life story of love and hope and death, with its attendant loneliness and sorrow. The plain gold ring, worn thin by the years, that gleamed on her tiny satin-skinned hand, meant years of loyalty to a dead beau, and yet there were no lines of rebellion and fretfulness written on the smooth brow. There was a light of hope and heaven in the faded blue eyes, and Constance almost envied her aunt her life and its peace and surety of heaven. She lay awake long after her aunt had left her, thinking over the whole story and wondering whether Morris Thayer would be worth being true to all those years. She decided that he would not, at least not to her.

  Then step by step, for the first time in her life, she put plainly to herself what the future would be if spent with him. She knew that that was what he wanted. He had made it plain enough, but she had purposely been obtuse. She had not wanted to think of the matter before, and she did not wish to now, only the sense of something lost made her wish to find out just how much it was she had lost. For she felt he was lost to her now as much as if she had announced to him that her property was gone and he had turned on his heel and told her he could then have nothing more to do with her. Perhaps she did him an injustice to feel so sure that he would turn away from her, but at least she felt certain that his talk in the car revealed more of his true character than she had hitherto allowed herself to confess. Or perhaps she had been blinded in her luxury and ease.

  Yes, if she should quietly let matters go their way, telling no one of the loss of her fortune, and marry him, there would be a fine wedding, quantities of presents, guests, and much society stir; and then there would be a fine establishment turned out by the hands of the latest decorators, in an unimpeachable part of the city, and a round of social engagements and dresses and trips to Europe. In fact, anything that anybody else had would be hers—all the things she had always had and the deference of her world. She would have a handsome husband who would be a credit to her wherever she went with him and would probably be good humored and indulgent, and bother her very little.

  But her mind turned from the picture with a great weariness. There was nothing in it all to satisfy the longings that seemed to have been growing up within her during the last week. Just what those longings meant she did not understand. She only knew that life had suddenly become a more real, earnest thing to her than it had ever seemed before and that there was a zest to each new day when she awoke, and a looking forward to new delightful sensations, which she could not remember feeling since she
was a little girl.

  There was something else, too. A sweet influence had touched her through Aunt Susan; a desire to have a peaceful brow and to find out what it was that made disagreeable things become bearable. When she got home—or when she got a home, she corrected herself—she would look into it. She would attend church services more regularly and try to do good in some way, and see whether that would bring her any such halo of heavenly sweetness as seemed to rest continually upon her aunt’s tranquil brow. She wondered whether all churches had prayer meetings. She felt sure they had no such service in the fashionable church that she attended, though they possibly called it something else. She would look up her prayer book and try to fasten her thoughts on religious ideas. She wished Lent were not over, that she might attend those special services and give up something during the season of self-denial. Then she remembered again that her whole life now was to be one of self-denial, and she wondered whether possibly that would not work the desired effect upon her character. She would not even have the wherewithal to deny herself but must do it anyway with everything possible, if she would live at all and have the bare necessities of life.

  In a little book on her aunt’s bureau she had read that God sometimes had to feed prosperity to some people in very small spoonfuls, because when they had everything they wanted they straightway forgot Him, and that loss and trouble were sometimes God’s way of calling His own to Him. She wondered whether God could be calling her. Her aunt’s gentle, wistful “God be with you, my child” when she had bade her good night, stayed with her and strengthened this impression.

  It was not Miss Wetherill’s way to “talk religion” to anyone. She would not have known how, and her quavering voice might have failed her; but she lived it more than most people, and she had a way of taking it for granted that everyone else loved her Lord, and of speaking to them of heavenly things in a quiet, everyday sort of voice, as if they, too, were making heaven their goal.

  Altogether, Constance took her way into the world of frivolity again, feeling that she had had a glimpse into a bit of heaven on earth. She almost dreaded the contact with the bright world lest her newly awakened faculties should be numbed. She contemplated giving up her visit but thought better of it, remembering there might be letters awaiting her and that her grandmother would be astonished if she went home without going there at all. She did not wish to arouse suspicion, so she went on. Besides, there might be more to learn before her experiment was put into actual practice.

  The home into which she stepped that evening was a very different one from the quiet little white house she had left. The building was massive and showy, a great pile of masonry set in the midst of one of the most fashionable semi-suburban localities. The evidences of lavish spending of money were everywhere. There was a daring about effects and colorings that pleased Constance’s present state of mind, though she had been brought up as a conservative of the conservatives.

  There was a fountain splashing in the center of the great reception hall, and wide stairs ascended at the farther end, turning at either side and going up to galleries screened from below by fine Moorish carvings and latticed casement windows. The rooms opened off on either side, making the distance seem vast and the extent of the house almost unlimited. The thick Persian rugs, the myriads of palms, the tinkling of the falling water, the faint perfume of English violets from an immense bowl of purple that stood on a pillar of the stairs, the soft lights of stained glass from a costly window on the first broad stair landing, the glimpses of great paintings and costly furnishings through the open doorways on every hand, the vista of a great library with book-lined walls and many low, soft chairs in scarlet leather, the well-kept fire behind its bright brass fender—everything bespoke ease and luxury and lack of any need for care or thought.

  The young girl who was the center of all this luxury, the one daughter and child of the house, around whom, and for whom, and by the will of whom everything moved, was a sweet, bright, cheerful little thing with a voice as fresh as a schoolboy’s and eyes that had not yet grown weary of the world. Her face was like a wild rose and her ways like a wild bird of the woods. She was willful and spoiled, but charming. She did exactly as she pleased. It was a strange place to come for the purpose of studying how best to give up the world and live on the interest of five thousand dollars.

  Constance looked about her and almost shrank back, for here she recognized that which she had failed to put into her own equally luxurious life—a zest for everything. Could she go through this visit with its round of excitements, which she promptly foresaw, and not come out dispirited for the future that was so surely before her?

  She had little time, however, to think about it. She was seized upon by her young hostess and carried off to the most bewildering delight of rooms, scolded for not coming sooner, hugged and kissed for coming at all, and had poured upon her head a torrent of questions and a flood of plans for the days that were before them.

  “There’s a theater party, and a dance and supper tomorrow night, and a luncheon and dinner dance with a dear, stupid English lord, a real artist with a name, a cross old novelist, and three handsome men with unapproachable family trees for you to choose from. Isn’t it just delightful you should be here at this time? There never were so many nice things going on at once, and all of them kind of unusual in some way, you know, not just common fun. The whole week is just full. Don’t you love to have your days full? I do.”

  Constance sat and wondered at this girl who enjoyed everything in a fresh, frank, intense way. Did she never take anything seriously? What would she do if she were suddenly told that she had lost everything but five thousand dollars? And then, quickly and quite at variance with her usual impulsive self, Constance asked her.

  “You are a great child, Marion, but what would you do if you were poor?”

  “Dear me!” said Marion, laughing with a ripple of dimples all round her mouth. “I would cry my eyes out for half a day and then set to work to see what fun I could get out of it. Perhaps I’d learn typewriting, but I think that would be a bore. I’d rather be a clerk in a store. No, I think I wouldn’t do anything very long at a time. I’d sell ribbons for a month, and then I’d go out to do housework for another. I could be a lady’s maid or a waitress beautifully; and anyway, when they discharged me, I’d go to a hospital and be a nurse. There’d be lots of young doctors, and one could have a thrill a day. And then, after I’d earned money enough to live on for a year, I’d rent a garret somewhere and write a book about my experiences and make my fortune. Then I’d buy this dear old house back again and invite you to live with me, and we’d have a perfectly lovely time in it, just as we’re going to have now!” She clasped Constance in her arms and whirled her around the room until they were both out of breath.

  “You crazy child, I believe you would. I believe you’d have a good time out of anything you did,” said Constance, smoothing back her rumpled hair and laughing.

  That night Constance lay down to sleep with a perfect whirl of ideas in her head. Perhaps, after all, this pretty, flighty little girl would be a help to her. At least, she would have one more good time in the world before she went out of it into rural oblivion.

  Chapter 6

  Jimmy was writing a letter.

  It was not his first letter; that had been brief and to the point, addressed to a trust company in Philadelphia. It read:

  Deer Sire: Please tel me howe mutch you will reant your hanted property for. You ought to let it go cheep cause everybody is afrade to live there count uv the lady that hants it. but I aint afrade. Rite by return mail.

  Goode bie.

  James Abercrombie Watts

  That letter had been comparatively easy of achievement, but this second one was another matter entirely. It was to a lady, and one, he instinctively felt, of rare attainments. He wrote and rewrote, and tore up and wrote again. His fingers and face were smeared with ink, and his blond hair had a long smear also where he had wiped his pen many times.
But at last, with a dissatisfied sigh, he held the letter up, complete, and scowled at it, concluding it was the best that he could do.

  Not a soul had he told of his curious transaction. He had mailed his first letter the day after Constance left, having transcribed the address laboriously on the fence by the light of a streetlamp and with one eye looking up to the For Rent sign, while the other kept a furtive lookout for possible white ladies walking in the grass behind the house. He was afraid if he did it in the daytime he might be caught by some of “the fellers” and asked uncomfortable questions. Then he had mailed his letter and been promptly on hand at the arrival of every mail train, not excepting one that came in an hour after his letter had started. He always put his important little freckled face before the postmaster’s vision the minute the window was opened after each distribution of mail and asked whether there was anything for James Abercrombie Watts. The postmaster got almost out of patience after the first six times and told the boy to get out of the way, that if any letter came for him he would send him word, but Jimmy, undaunted, appeared as promptly at the next mail. At last the letter came, and Jimmy retired to the sacred precincts of an old barn to read it and then went home to write to “her.”

  Jimmy would have chuckled over his shrewdness, could he have looked into the Philadelphia office when his own letter was read.

  “Here’s somebody wants to rent that old house in Rushville,” said one partner, tossing the letter over to the other. “Better let ’em have it cheap. It’s some poor illiterate person, but if you can get anybody to live there for a while till that fool notion about the house being haunted can be overcome, it may be sold to advantage. It’s not worth keeping now.”