CHAPTER X

THE HOUSE OF MEMORY

After lunch the day following the dance, as it chanced to be Saturday afternoon, Jean came into the ranch girls’ sitting room looking for Olive and Frieda. She had been playing basketball for the past two hours and in spite of having known nothing of the game on her arrival at school, was already one of its acknowledged champions. But although Jean’s cheeks were glowing and her hair in a tumbled mass above her face, her expression was uncommonly serious and in her hand she held a bundle of letters. One she tossed to Frieda, who was curled up on a sofa nursing a small cold due to her frivolity, and two to Olive, keeping two for herself.

Olive quickly tore open the letter addressed to her in Jack’s handwriting and Frieda followed suit. When Jack had first been taken to the hospital and there compelled to lie always flat on her back, her handwriting had been difficult to read, but now that she had gotten used to this method of writing, her stroke was again as vigorous and characteristic as of old.

Frieda, after reading a few lines, smiled up at the other girls. “Jack says she is getting on very well and we are to see her in a few weeks—perhaps,” she announced.

Olive looked over at Jean. “It is worse than Jack writes, of course, isn’t it?” she asked. “I suppose Ruth has written you, for Jack never tells anything but the best news of herself.”

“There may be an operation or something of the sort later on,” Jean conceded, “Ruth does not say positively, for it may not be for some months yet. Only if the operation does have to take place Jack has demanded that Jim come on from the ranch to New York, leaving Ralph Merrit to look after things at the mine. Jim would come now, but things are in a bit of a tangle. I wonder how Ruth will behave if Jim does come?” And Jean sighed.

An interested expression, crossed Frieda’s face. “Why should she behave in any special way?” she inquired, sitting straight up on the couch to gaze from Olive to Jean.

Quickly the subject of conversation needed to be changed, for Frieda was the only one of the four ranch girls who knew nothing of what had happened at the ranch between Jim Colter, their overseer, and Ruth Drew, their chaperon. What had come between the two lovers only Jack Ralston understood, but Olive and Jean were both perfectly aware that Jim and Ruth had seemed to care a great deal for one another and then some mysterious misunderstanding had suddenly parted them.

“I wonder if old Jack looks very badly,” Jean suggested, knowing this would surely divert Frieda’s attention to one theme. “Sometimes I wish for Jack’s sake that we were all back at Rainbow Lodge, for there she was able to be out in the air a part of the time and now—” The vision of Jack lying helpless at the hospital was too much for the three girls, so that there was a moment of painful silence in the room. Then Jean said more cheerfully after re-reading the latter part of Ruth’s letter: “Jim says that Ralph Merrit is doing perfectly splendid work at the mine and that he is a trump. Do you know I am rather vain of having discovered Ralph that day in the wilderness, considering how well he has turned out; Jim likes him a lot better than he does Frank Kent.”

The young lady on the sofa with the cold had not yet forgiven Jean for last night’s scolding. Now she turned up her small nose a trifle more than usual. “Oh, you just say that because Ralph likes you best and Frank Kent is more fond of Jack,” she answered scornfully. And Jean flushed.

“That is not true, Frieda. Of course it is only natural that Jim should like Ralph better because Ralph is poor and has to make his own way in the world just as Jim has; and Frank Kent, though he is awfully simple and a thorough good fellow, is the son of an English Lord and may have a title himself some day.”

“Then wouldn’t it be splendid if Jack should become an English lady and own country estates and ride to hounds?” Frieda suggested more peacefully, gazing across the room at Frank Kent’s photograph, which ornamented the bookshelf. “I think I should love to be introduced into English society and talk to earls and princes and things,” she ended lamely.

A fine sarcasm curled Jean’s lips, though her eyes sparkled with mischief. “Talk to earls and princes and things about fishing worms, baby?” she queried with studied politeness.

And promptly Frieda, flushing quite up to her ears, hurled a sofa cushion at Jean, which Olive caught, saying gently:

“Please don’t let’s quarrel, children, we never used to at the Lodge. What would Ruth think of us?” And picking up a second letter that Jean had brought to her, she began to read it.

Jean sat penitently down on the sofa trying to kiss Frieda, who resolutely covered up her head. “Come on and get dressed, infant; no, your cold isn’t too bad for you to come. Olive is reading a note of invitation from Mrs. Harmon for us to come over to ‘The Towers’ to have tea and Miss Winthrop and Jessica Hunt are to go with us.”

But the rôle of invalid was too precious a one and too seldom enjoyed by the youngest Miss Ralston for her to surrender it easily.

“I am too sick, please tell Mrs. Harmon,” she protested resolutely; “only if they have any candy or cake and happen to mention sending me some you might bring it along. And I do wish both you girls would go out for a while, for Mollie is coming to spend the afternoon with me after she finishes her music lesson and we would love to have the sitting room to ourselves.”

“I hope, Olive, that you know when you are not wanted without being actually knocked over by the broadness of the hint,” Jean said, seeing that Olive was hesitating about what she should do. “Come along, it will do us both good to get away and not to sit here thinking about what we can’t help,” she ended.

While both girls were putting on their best afternoon frocks preparatory to starting forth on their visit, in the silence of her own room Olive was trying to persuade herself that her hesitation in going for the call upon the Harmons was because she dreaded to be reminded by the sight of Elizabeth of the old tragedy to Jack. But there was something more than this in her mind, for actually she dreaded entering the big white house which had given her such an uncomfortable sensation the moment her eyes had rested upon it. Yet what connection could she have ever had with an old place like “The Towers,” or any house resembling it? Her impression that she must have seen the house somewhere before was sheer madness, for was it not an old Dutch mansion, perhaps built hundreds of years ago, and certainly wholly unlike any of the ranch houses out West?

Olive resolutely put all the ridiculous ideas that had annoyed her out of her mind and with Jessica Hunt, Miss Winthrop and Jean started gayly forth on their walk. It was about four o’clock in the late November afternoon and instead of following the path through the woods, the little party set out along the lane that led through an exquisite part of the Sleepy Hollow neighborhood. Crossing a little brook they climbed a short hill and from the top of it could see at some distance off the spire of the old Sleepy Hollow church and on the other side the Hudson River with the autumn mists rising above it like breath from its deep hidden lungs.

Jessica and Olive were together, Jean and Miss Winthrop. As Olive was particularly silent, Jessica drew her arm through hers. “This is a land of legends and of dreams about here, dear, and some day I must take you western girls about the country and show you the historic places nearby. Do you know anything about them?” she asked.

But Olive was dreaming or else stupid, for she only shook her head. “I don’t know,” she answered, “the country does seem somehow familiar, yet it did not at first. Don’t you believe that all the world, at least the world of outside things, of hills and trees and valleys and water, somehow belongs alike to all of us and once we have seen a landscape and moved about in it, why we are at home. There isn’t any strangeness in nature, there can’t be; it is only people and houses and streets that are odd and unlike and fail to belong to us.”

Donald Harmon met his four guests some yards up the road on their approach to the house. As he was holding a great St. Bernard dog by the collar and as it bounded away from him all of a sudden, nearly upsetting Olive and Jessica in the rapture of its welcome, the little party entered “The Towers” with too much laughter and excitement for Olive to feel any self-consciousness or emotion. Indeed, she quite forgot all of her past foolishness in meeting Mrs. Harmon and Elizabeth again after so many eventful months. Elizabeth was able to walk about the room quite easily and of course her first inquiry was for Jack.

Without a chance for exchanging views, Jean and Olive both decided at once that the drawing room at “The Towers,” in spite of its magnificence, was one of the darkest and most unattractive rooms either of them had ever seen. For everything was very stiff and formal and without life or fragrance. Carved black furniture sat stiffly against the walls, which were hung with old portraits of men and women in high fluted ruffs, with gorgeous embroidered clothes and hard, cold faces. Over in one corner stood a tea table piled with silver and white linen and having a large arm chair near it carved like a throne. And behind this chair was a portrait of a beautiful boy of ten or twelve, who looked a little like Donald Harmon.

“My aunt will be down in a few minutes, Katherine,” Mrs. Harmon had said as soon as her guests were seated. “She has asked us to wait tea for her.” And Jean and Olive both noticed that Mrs. Harmon’s manner was a little constrained and that she kept looking at Olive as though she intended asking her some question, but as the question was never asked, the girls must have been mistaken. However, the conversation in the little company did not become general, for no one except Miss Winthrop seemed to feel at ease, until by and by the tap, tap, tap of a long stick was heard coming along the hall and with a low bow the butler flung open the drawing room door.

Everybody sat up straighter in their high-back chairs; Jean could not forbear a slight wink at Donald, but Olive felt her heart rise up in her throat. Why on earth was the old mistress of “The Towers” so formidable that the entire neighborhood felt an awe of her? Olive was rather sorry that she was competing for one of her prizes offered to the Junior students at Primrose Hall.

“Madame Van Mater,” the butler announced very distinctly and at the name of the owner of the white house, which Olive now heard for the first time since her arrival at Primrose Hall, the young girl caught at the sides of her chair, and drew in her breath sharply. Then when no one was looking at her, smiled at herself and turned her gaze curiously on their ancient hostess.