Madeline Yale Wynne

“ Grant, laying her hand in his, ‘there really was a little room there, exactly as mother had remembered it. There was the lounge, the peacock chintz, the green door, the shell, the morning-glory, and rose paper, everything exactly as she had described it to me.’
‘What in the world did the sisters say about it?’
‘Wait a minute and I will tell you. My mother was in the front hall still talking with Aunt Hannah. She didn’t hear me at first, but I ran out there and dragged her through the front room, saying, “The room is here—it is all right.” ”

“ I saw an old tinker yesterday—a tinker and umbrella-mender combined—a little gray tramp of a fellow, about sixty years old, stubby beard, dirty, self-possessed, master of himself and of the world so far as he was concerned in it, with an optimistic vein in spite of some hard luck, and with the most beautiful clear eyes I ever saw. ”

“ Rob folded the scarf slowly. It clung to his fingers; it caught wherever chance blew it; it was fluttered against his face while he carefully squared the corners together and patiently rolled its misty length into pocket size.
‘Mabel,’ he said, meditatively and impartially, ‘is much too good for me; she is moral, without being morbid; she is dignified, without being stiff; she is generous, but not weak. She reads people as she reads books. ”

“ The house has never been altered; you used to play in this room when you were a child, don’t you remember?”
‘“I know it,” said mother, in that queer slow voice that made me feel frightened. “Hannah, don’t you remember my finding the china-closet here, with the gilt-edged china on the shelves, and then you said that the china-closet had always been here?”
‘“No,” said Hannah, pleasantly but unemotionally—“no, I don’t think you ever asked me about any china-closet, and we haven’t any gilt-edged china that I know of.” ”

“ Jane Peebles! you’re wanted right off, up to the Fifes’, and Hiram too; Hannah she’s took worse, and Maria she’s no more use than a babe unborn. I’m on my way up there now,’ concluded the Widder Luke, as she hurried up the hill.
When Rita and Nan went to say good-bye to Maria, a few days later, Maria clung to them. She had begun to like these new friends who had taken it upon themselves to try and do for her what Mrs. Grant would have done had she been there. ”

“ Then came the impression that she could not speak,75 but that she wanted to convey some thought to me; and then these words came to me—not as if a voice spoke them, but as if they were being printed on my mind or consciousness:
‘“Margaret, you must not worry any more about the Little Room, it has no connection with you or your mother, and it never had any: it all belongs to me. I am sorry that my secret ever troubled anyone else; I tried to keep it to myself, but sometimes it would get out. ”

“ IT is interesting to see a man handle delicate fabrics. The mind involuntarily estimates the strength of the man in its superabundance, comparing it to the task. The contrast makes it picturesque.
Mark watched his friend Rob as he sat drawing the thin, Eastern-looking scarf through his hands; his hands were good to look at—firm and shapely. The scarf was sheer, almost of the texture of a cobweb; it was white, with an ivory tint where the folds gave it substance. It clung now and then to his hand, or yielded reluctantly as he drew it from his sleeve where it had floated. ”

“ And I didn’t break the engagement; an engagement, to my thinking, is not breakable; breaking121 suggests force; an engagement dissolves. What is it but the outward wording of an inward state of mind existing between two mutually attracted people? the state of mind being changed—lo!—pff!’
‘You exasperate me beyond words, Rob, with your this and your that, all of it as thin as your scarf; and, what is worse, you do not seem to feel the gravity of it all, not in the least. You say in August, “Mark, congratulate me, I am the happiest man alive; I am going to be married.” ”

“ Aunt Hannah and Aunt Maria are only half-aunts to me, you know.’
‘I hope they are half as nice as you are.’
9 ‘Roger, be still; they certainly will hear us.’
‘Well, don’t you want them to know we are married?’
‘Yes, but not just married. There’s all the difference in the world.’
‘You are afraid we look too happy!’
‘No; only I want my happiness all to myself.’
‘Well, the little room?’
‘My aunts brought mother up; they were nearly twenty years older than she. I might say Hiram and they brought her up. ”

“ I don’t believe she ever leaned on anything in her life, or sat in an easy-chair. But Maria is different; she is rounder and softer; she hasn’t any ideas of her own; she never had any. I don’t believe she would think it right or becoming to have one that differed from Aunt Hannah’s, so what would be the use of having any? She is an echo, that’s all.
‘When mamma and I got there, of course19 I was all excitement to see the china-closet, and I had a sort of feeling that it would be the little room after all. So I ran ahead and threw open the door, crying, “Come and see the little room.” ”

“ Yes, is there ever a minute in my life when I am not conforming my acts, my thoughts, my very self, to a vision that is as unsubstantial as his own? What if the being whose eidolon he lives for is thousands of miles away? ”

“ I should feel sort of easier in my mind if Maria came down to live with us before they think her room is better than her company up to the Fifes’, if Hannah should die.’
68 ‘That’s so, Hiram. I’ll hurry round and fix things, and you better stop to-night and tell Maria that I’ll be real glad to have her come and live with us; and Hiram, I’ve been thinking that if the men folks did save that blue-chintz sofy—’
‘Wait a minute, Jane, I sort of want to tell you somethin’; ’taint anythin’ I should want you to repeat, but it’s somethin’ that sort of troubles me some. ”

“ I read a piece in the “Greentown Gazette” about artists; it said they always took the worst-lookin’ houses to paint, though it does seem queer to me.’
‘Did you know the Keys house very well, and can you tell us how the rooms were built?’
‘Why, certain!’ said Mr. Briggs. ‘I’ve48 been in it a hundred times if I have once.’
Rita and Nan bent forward to listen; the horse jogged slowly up the hill, Mr. Briggs flicking his whip from side to side to encourage the steady walk.
‘There was a hall a-runnin’ right through the middle, from front to back—an awful waste of space to my thinkin’ ”

“ She was sotter’n a meetin’-house, and you know it, Jane Peebles, for all you sided with her about that raspberry jam.’
Widder Luke’s eyes flashed as she lifted the kettle of hot fat. She got in a good stroke on an old score, and Jane did not dare to retort. Soon after twelve she and Jane Peebles were walking through the lane towards the Fifes’—there was a Sunday air about their dresses, but a Monday decision in their faces; the reporting in hill towns is done mostly by such volunteers, and one must ‘git up airly’ for the first news. ”

“ It aint as if she had folks belongin’ to her, and now the house is burnt, and Hannah is as she is, it does seem as if Maria’d find it hard gittin’ on alone and doin’ her own thinkin’.’
‘There wan’t nothin’ saved, I s’pose.’
‘Next door to nothin’; one washtub, I believe, and the old gray horse that was out to pasture, that’s about all; I did hear, though, something about the men-folks’ having saved a blue-chintz sofy—’twas the only thing they42 could get out of the house before the roof fell in; they couldn’t seem to get a holt of anythin’ else, ’twas so hot, and the old house burnt like tinder ”

“ Hannah she was that scairt she seemed dazed, and this mornin’ Miss Fife, she that married Ben Fife down on the Edge farm, at the foot of the hill, they took ’em in and did for ’em; and when Lucindy Fife went to call ’em to breakfast at five o’clock, there was Maria cryin’ like a baby, and Hannah lyin’, like an image, with her eyes starin’ wide open; she must a had a shock in the night.’
‘Fur the land’s sake!’ said the other woman again. ”

“ I don’t suppose there’s a ghost of a chance of that.’
‘Here I am!’
‘Oh, there you are! yes, to be sure, so you are. And how do you do? I hope you will excuse my saying it, but aren’t you an uncommonly small ghost?’
‘Yes, I am slim; but I’ve seen smaller chances, and you know I am all the one you have got.’
78 ‘Why, yes, as William has it, “A poor thing, but mine own.” Allow me to help you up on the table; there, how is that? Do you think you could sit on that cuff-box and rest your feet on the pen-wiper? I am afraid the table is rather bare and cold, and you don’t look very well. ”

“ But she forgot how beautiful she was, and she would not eat anything, or even sleep.
‘Two nights after Seraphita died, and was93 lying as white and beautiful as an angel, with wax candles at her head and feet and with a white flower in her hand, her mother went quietly into the room, and sent the old nurse, who was watching over Seraphita, away. Then she closed the door and threw herself on her knees, and prayed so hard that her prayers could not get up to Heaven, for they were more like curses than prayers,—and, Señora Maria Madalena, it is not good to pray like that ”

“ You see, Hiram was bound out to my grandfather when he was a boy, and when grandfather died Hiram said he “s’posed he went with the farm, ’long o’ the critters,” and he has been there ever since. He was my mother’s only refuge from the decorum of my aunts. They are simply workers. ”

“ Nan didn’t mistrust that Rita had been there, and she began excitedly to tell her all36 about her visit. Rita could almost have believed Nan had been there if she hadn’t known it was not so. She let her go on for some time, enjoying her enthusiasm, and the impressive way in which she described her opening the door and finding the ‘little room.’ Then Rita said: ‘Now, Nan, that is enough fibbing. I went to the farm myself on my way up yesterday, and there is no little room, and there never has been any; it is a china-closet, just as Mrs. ”

“ Hannah never was just the same to me after we had that tiff over the raspberry jam she and I made for the church sale; but I aint goin’ to bring that up agin44 her, now she’s laid low; I shall go up there just the same in their time of trouble.’
‘I s’pose the sofy must have been a new one, or they wouldn’t have been so keen to save it.’
‘I guess ’twas;—seems as if these doughnuts wouldn’t never brown; it’s always so when you’re in a hurry.’
‘I guess I’ll ask Maria about that sofy,’ said Jane; ‘it’s likely that she’ll tell all she knows when she gets used to the situation ”

“ There’ll never be any Little Room to trouble anybody else any more.”
‘All the time I was hearing these words I felt Aunt Hannah’s eyes; and then she began to move backward, slowly, and she seemed to vanish down a long, long distance, till I lost sight of her. The last thing I saw was her gray eyes fastened on my face. I awoke, and found myself sitting up, with my head bent76 forward, looking right between the foot-posts of the bed.’
‘Your Aunt Hannah seems to be more fond of travelling than she used to be. Paris is further from Titusville than Brooklyn,’ said Mr. Grant, lightly. ”

“ I can remember now how strained her eyes looked and how pale she was.
‘I called out to Aunt Hannah and asked her when they had had the closet taken away and the little room built; for in my excitement I thought that that was what had been done.
‘“That little room has always been there,” said Aunt Hannah, “ever since the house was built.”
‘“But mamma said there wasn’t any little room here, only a china-closet, when she was here with papa,” said I.
“No, there has never been any china-closet there; it has always been just as it is now,” said Aunt Hannah.
‘Then mother spoke ”

“ You see, Miss Hannah she’s always been good to me, and I shouldn’t want to say anythin’ to set folks a-talkin’; but Miss Hannah haint been exactly well for some weeks, and only the day before the fire she came to me and she says she thought ’twas about time she put that old trunk full of duds, the one she’s always kept in her closet, out of the way, and she guessed she’d have me burn it up. I thought ’twas most a pity to destroy the trunk—it was a real good one, and hadn’t69 never seen no travel to speak of—and so I said I’d take the things out and burn ’em ”

“ Nancy Stark she died, and Hannah and Maria here always lived up there alone since the old folks died, and a pretty lonesome spot it was, to be sure.’
‘Did anybody ever dare to ask Miss Hannah about the captain?’
‘No, I guess not; folks up here mind their own business pretty much.’
There was a silence after this rebuke; but Nan, who always began to hold on when other people let go, said:
56 ‘I heard once that they had some beautiful china in the china-closet, some that had belonged to their grandmother.’
Nobody volunteered any remark about this. Mr. ”

“ Then pointing backward with the butt-end of his whip to indicate and introduce his passengers, he said: ‘These ladies were pretty well disappointed to find the Keys house burnt up;47 they come all the way from—where did you say ’twas you come from?’
‘We came down from the Adirondacks,’ said Rita. ‘We wanted to call on Miss Hannah and Maria, and if possible to get a sketch of the house, to paint a picture of it.’
‘You don’t say so! well I declair for it, it’s too bad!’ said the Widder Luke; ‘but there’s sights of houses older’n that one you might paint ”

“ There was a door also that opened out-of-doors, and that one was painted green, and was cut in the middle like the old Dutch doors, so that it could be used for a window by opening the top part only. Directly opposite the door was a lounge or couch; it was covered with blue chintz—India chintz—some that had been brought over by an old Salem sea-captain as a “venture.” He had given it to Hannah when she was a young girl. She was sent to Salem for two years to school. ”