Cornelia Meigs

“ Humphrey would say, "and you never even knew if you could build her. What a dreamer you are!"
"It takes dreaming to keep a man at his work," Jonathan would answer. "How do you think I would have had the patience, all these years, to drive wooden pins into cross-timbers, or to mend the rigging of limping coastwise schooners if I had not been thinking of just such a ship as this, and seen her, in my mind's eye, putting to sea under full sail, to smash every sailing record that has been known?" ”

“ The sunny garden on the hillside was being planted on the afternoon that she came to the cottage again. She had said good-by to Aunt Susan that morning and had seen her depart in a great flutter of veils and furs and feathers. The train had rolled away carrying with it Betsey’s last vision of snow-capped mountains, sparkling blue seas, tropical shores and white, flower-crowned cliffs. Her mind would still linger, in spite of herself, on the pleasures that she had renounced so that she was glad to find some absorbing diversion and to turn her abundant energy to helping Miss Miranda. ”

“ Houghton’s departure, Betsey’s Aunt Susan, growing weary of the life of her quiet country place, big and luxurious though it was, had pressed upon her niece a dazzling invitation. It was to accompany her on a journey that would include Bermuda, Panama, California, and, when hot weather came, the Canadian Rockies. It became difficult for Elizabeth even to think of more months of plodding study, when, sitting at her desk, she could picture the flowers and palms of Bermuda, its coral caves with floors of rippling water, or the lazy breakers tumbling in on some California beach. ”

“ The rain had almost ceased, so Elizabeth laid aside her hoe, stretched her cramped fingers and went to stand in front of Michael and ply him with questions. Such a talkative mood was so rare in him that she feared, any second, it might pass away, and, since here at last was some one who could and would tell her more of Miss Miranda, she trembled lest silence should come suddenly upon him before she had heard what she wished to know. The rain was pattering from her skirts, her feet sank every moment deeper into the mud, but she feared to move or turn away lest the spell should break. ”

“ If Michael had been in his proper senses, Ted very well knew, he would never have permitted without protest such an expedition as the boy was planning. As it was, however, he lay back in his bunk again, his mind wandering off once more into feverish dreams.
“If it was in the Old Country,” he muttered, “the very Little People themselves would rise up to help a man in such a plight. You could be feeling the rush of their wings in the air and could hear the cry of the fairy hounds across the hills. America is a good country, but ah—it’s not the same!” ”

“ He would say no more and she was forced to go about her errand. As she crossed the lawn by the house she saw that the workshop door was open to the warm night air and that Mr. Reynolds was as busy as ever inside. It made a quaint picture, the shadowy room, the brilliant circle of light, the old man’s intent, intelligent face bent over his work, the black crow sitting immovable as a statue on the corner of the table. A pleasant noise of quietly whirring wheels came out of the door, a peaceful, comfortable song that mingled with the cheery chirp of a cricket in the grass. ”

“ RUNNING WATER
IT was a thrush, singing in the early morning rain, that awakened Betsey next day. She had slept at the cottage, on the couch beside the toy-cupboard and had seen through the window, as she dropped asleep, the sky all bright with stars and had thought vaguely of how they must be shining in the pool. Through her dreams, however, she had heard, toward the dawn, the patter of rain on the sloping roof above her head and she had remembered how dry the grass was growing and how thirsty the garden, and had smiled to hear it fall. ”

“ She began to feel, as she climbed the hill, a good deal of curiosity concerning this Miss Miranda of whom her father had said so much and whom she should have gone to see long ago. Would she be all stiff manners and critical eyes, she wondered, the kind of person to make you feel awkward and tongue-tied the moment you crossed the threshold? It was the feeling that she must be something of the sort that had kept Betsey from coming for all this time. For some distance the lane wound and twisted so that she could not catch any glimpse of the white cottage that she sought. ”

“ It was thither that the West Wind was to sail, with dispatches for the Commodore of the Mediterranean Fleet. At last the ship was ready, a rare and beautiful sight with her slim hull, her rows of guns and her towering reach of silvery new canvas.
She sailed with the early tide, at daybreak of a mid-April morning, a ghostly fairy-like thing, slipping away in the gray light and the mist of dawn. Miranda stood on the dock to watch her go, with Jonathan beside her staring fixedly after his winged dream, flying at last beyond the seas. ”

“ Stars glinted now and again in the pool also, long beams of light in the ruffled water, although, as she came near, there chanced to be quiet for a moment so that she saw reflected the irregular circle of light that Miss Miranda had told her was the Northern Crown.
She stood still by the pool for a long minute, her heart beating very loud, the pulses throbbing in her ears as it does after running. Very keenly she was peering into the dark at the long lines of ruined walls, seeing nothing at first, but by and by catching glimpses of a tiny, moving light. ”

“ With great dignity he stepped across the grass to sit on the rim of the pool.
“Is it deep?” Elizabeth asked, looking down into the quiet water that reflected Dick’s image so clearly.
“It is at one side, but not at the other,” Miss Miranda answered. “Just here you can touch the bottom if you stretch your arm, but it slopes sharply and is deep enough for swimming over at the other edge. Watch the water and, as it grows darker, you will see the stars come out. Just above the reflection of that tallest pine tree will be the big stars of the Lion, and the curve of the Sickle.” ”

“ After the basket was delivered, Elizabeth lingered at the door, unwilling to say good night, while Miss Miranda, too, seemed reluctant to have her go. When at last Betsey took her departure and the car moved away from the gate, she found that her wavering doubts, felt so keenly at Aunt Susan's, had vanished again. She would not be too lonely if she had Miss Miranda, of that she now felt doubly assured; but there was something more. She had an odd, protective feeling for her new friend, as though she were staying at home, not only to carry out her own plans, but to take care of Miss Miranda. ”

“ Elizabeth often found school dull and oppressive, with the air of the room close, with her feet shuffling beneath her desk from the long hours of quiet and with her thoughts wandering so far away that the page of her book was only a blur before her. Every day, when she walked home, she would make a detour up Somerset Lane just to look at the cottage, to notice how green the vegetable garden was growing, how the pea vines were tall enough to be swinging in the wind. ”

“ For a moment Ted could hear nothing save the pat-pat of the snow against the window, but the collie dog bristled and growled as he lay upon the hearth and pricked his ears sharply. Then the boy heard it too, a faint cry and far off, not the sharp yelping of the coyotes, though that was ominous enough, but the long hungry howl of a timber wolf.
Tears of weakness and terror were running down the Irishman’s face.
“My poor sheep, I must save them,” he cried. “What’s the value of a man’s life alongside of the creatures that’s trusted to him. ”

“ He has forgotten how to be kind to Miss Miranda, he has forgotten how good she was to him when he was a snub-nosed boy with long legs and skinned knees and the both of them with no mother. Yes, he has forgotten all that, has Mr. Donald Reynolds."
"And you think she has gone somewhere to consult him?" Elizabeth asked.
"She goes to see him rarely, more often he comes here. And she dreads his coming always. I begin to know when it is time for another visit from him, when she starts at the creaking of the gate and begins to look frightened when she hears a step coming up the path. ”

“ For very weariness with pondering her own problem, she began to let her mind wander away in vague curiosity as to how such destruction had come about and how the fire had looked as it had swept blazing across the long roofs until they crashed and fell, had glowed behind the empty windows and had gone up in columns of sparks and flame above the dark trees. Her father had told her nothing of this big ruined house at the top of the hill, he had merely directed her to look for the Reynolds cottage half way up the slope among the maple trees. ”

“ The world was very clean and glittering and very still, with only the old cock strutting across the poultry yard and lifting his voice in a loud, full crow that sounded far through the quiet of the dawn. It was a pleasant, homely, familiar sound after the strange adventures and unrealities of the night. Betsey began to wonder if it had not indeed been all a dream and she would not presently discover that she had dropped asleep before the toy-cupboard, the tree of jade or the silver Saint Christopher in her hand. ”

“ David, who was lying stretched out at Miss Miranda’s feet was busy at a task of his own. It seemed that he was a persistent boy who would never lay aside a piece of work until every detail that he could think of had been added to make it complete. He had fetched some clay from the far end of the garden and was modeling the frustum of a pyramid and those three confusing portions into which it could be divided. Betsey watched him idly, quite content that he should have the labor and she the benefit. He demonstrated them with a flourish on the smooth rim of the pool. ”

“ For long months the American warships would lie off these ports, keeping a watchful eye upon the doings of the dusky potentates and arch-pirates who ruled them. The officers and men would go ashore to stare at the strange sights and to bargain for souvenirs among the street vendors, seemingly oblivious of the scowling, hostile faces about them.
It was in Tripoli on a day when Captain Reynolds was walking from one dark cupboard of a shop to another, looking for some fitting gift to take home to Miranda, that he was suddenly startled by the sight of a pale face among all those dusky ones. ”

“ They seemed to be more closely bound up with her daily life, with Michael’s superstition and with that steadfast purpose that dwelt in the Reynolds’ blood. From the two friends who built their clipper ship in the face of all opposition down to Miss Miranda and her father, all were willing to sacrifice so much and work so untiringly to put into reality the substance of a dream. She set the tree on the shelf again and in doing so brushed Saint Christopher to the ground. Poor Michael, what strange ideas had taken possession of his faithful old Irish soul! ”

“ As she opened the gate beside the lane and walked up the path to the house, she felt, almost in spite of herself, an immediate liking for the place. It was a tiny white cottage with a wide-eaved roof, with two big red brick chimneys that told of broad hearthstones inside, with swinging windows and clambering vines and a square lawn skirted at one side by a high stone wall. Beyond this wall she could see again the blackened ruins that had aroused her curiosity as she sat at the crossroads below. ”

“ The real end came seven years later, when Humphrey had risen to be Commodore Reynolds and when, between two cruises, he was spending a holiday at home. One summer afternoon, a small, bent figure toiled up the driveway of the big house above the Susquehanna. Humphrey, with Miranda, was sitting in the shade of the high-columned veranda and for a moment did not recognize the strange face, so covered with dust that the yellow skin and slanting eyes were scarcely visible. But the old Chinaman walked straight to Miranda and laid his offering on her lap. ”

“ Aunt Susan was a person much accustomed to having her own way and was dangerously skillful at persuading people to do her bidding.
"Think how lonely you will be," she began immediately.
Once this had been the single thought that made staying at home seem unendurable, but now even that difficulty, it seemed, could be faced. In one short afternoon at Miss Miranda's, Elizabeth had felt herself surrounded by such a warmth of friendliness that already she felt certain that here would be a refuge where she would be welcome and at home, no matter how empty and deserted her own house might seem. ”

“ The pressure of excitement and distress became greater and greater instead of less, became almost unendurable. She sat down before Miss Miranda’s desk and lifted her hand to the key of the toy-cupboard How often she had read in fairy stories of how the heroine of the tale, when in complete despair, would break the magic nut, uncover the enchanted box for a charm to bring help in time of need. She felt as though it were much the same thing she was doing when she opened the doors of the toy cupboard. ”

“ David asked.
“It is on this house that the ill luck lies, for it was in its burning that the evil fortune began and it is only through its building up again that happiness can come back to Miss Miranda. And so—and so—just to make the luck change, it is the old way to take a candle in your hand and to walk through every part of the house saying spells as you go. And the last of the spells must be said in the hour before midnight in the dark of the moon. But Miss Betsey stopped me,” he concluded regretfully. ”

“ Down the slope they came like an avalanche, one only separating himself from the others for a moment to fling himself upon Ted, to lick his face in ecstatic greeting and to rub a cold nose against his cheek. That nimble puppy nose it was that had lifted the latch of a gate not too securely fastened, and so set the whole pack free. Then Pedro ran to join his brothers who were sweeping on to battle. Wolfhounds are taught to catch, not to kill their quarry, but the thirst for blood was in the hearts of the dogs of Arran that night. ”

“ The dropping sunlight was falling on David's uncovered head and turning it from red-brown to coppery gold. They reached the crest of the slope where an opening in the trees afforded a wide view of that same stretch of valley across which Betsey had sat gazing that day she was caught by the shower before her first visit to Miss Miranda. Here, without a word of bidding the big horse came to a stop. David laughed, and laid an affectionate hand on his neck.
"Dobbin always knows where I like to stand and look over the valley," he said. "We stop here so often that now he never goes by. ”