Phantom Perfumes

by Ethel Watts Mumford

 

PHANTOM PERFUMES

What would you do if the scene outside your window changed suddenly to a landscape you had never seen? Phoebe Sands, struggling for her birthright of happiness, learned that no one—not even the dead—is above suspicion

By Ethel Watts Mumford

THE old mansion stood on a little eminence, shadowed by towering elms and rock-maples. Its plain Georgian front looked down to the main road, across a long slope of what had once been lawn. The narrow double-galleried porch at the back commanded a great sweep of farm-dotted valley, encircled by cradling hills that seemed to enfold the quiet spot lovingly.

Key in hand, Phoebe Sands walked around the house. Her suit-case lay on the stone slab before the front door, but as yet she had not entered into her kingdom. She wanted to comprehend it all, to realize that this was hers—this—her inheritance. Peace, beauty, security—all hers.

There was no tinge of sadness in her ecstasy of possession, not even when she passed the little enclosure where two mossy headstones recorded the names of her Great-aunt Aurelia and her Great-uncle Stephen. Aunt Cornelia, their only daughter, was not buried beside them. Phoebe did not know where the body of her benefactress reposed. She had never seen her Aunt Cornelia. The separation between the members of the family had been complete. Aunt Cornelia had clung to the home town, and her brother's determination to seek the golden West had met with her strong disapproval.

BUT, as the twilight of life had merged into the night of death, she had remembered that blood was blood and that her brother's marriage out in California had resulted in the continuance of the honored strain. Therefore, her will—a lean, hard document without even the color of affectionate hypocrisy—had left her wide acres and her tiny income to “Phoebe Sands, daughter of my deceased brother, Milton Sands.”

Phoebe's young, adventurous heart had responded eagerly to this call of a home in far-away New England. For this was romance—Cinderella's mice and pumpkin turning into coach and six. Pride in her blood, her family, her heritage, entered her heart, now that she stood in the shadow of the ancestral walls. “My land, my people, the home of my people—it belongs to me and I am part of it.”

The thrill of ownership deepened as at length she thrust the key into the lock and turned it deliberately, savoring the moment.

The sunlight leaped into the silent hall, throwing her slim shadow sharply on the worn oak flooring. The entry ran straight through to the Dutch door at the back that gave out onto the porch. To left and right opened great rooms. Solid shutters made them dark, but through the gloom Phoebe Sands could distinguish the shapes of a huge sofa, a desk-bureau, an oblong table surrounded by chairs, drawn up as if for a committee meeting of ghosts.

Light! She wanted to see the sunshine flooding in. This dusk in broad daylight was forbidding. She forced up the heavy iron hooks that secured the shutters of the nearest window and, exerting all her strength, thrust them back against the outer walls, where they jarred, with a whack, against the clapboards. A heavy smell of box swept into the room. The next window gave to her hand. Then she caught her breath sharply.

What was this? She found herself looking out upon a little lake with lily-pads dotting its polished surface, a lilac hedge, a path leading to the water, with unclipped box bushes outlining its length and willow trees in the far distance! Surely, in her wanderings about the grounds, she had seen no such place as this! She closed her eyes for a moment and gazed again. Two white butterflies were fluttering over the walk; a fish jumped in the pond, sending a crinkle of rings to the farther marge. These windows must be in an ell, she reasoned. This was a part of the grounds she had not visited.

She turned her back on the disturbing landscape and looked within the room. Now she saw the heavy, old-fashioned furniture in detail—rugs rolled, tied, and wrapped in newspapers lay against the baseboard; pictures, covered with pink mosquito-netting, adorned the walls. She noted her own footprints outlined in the dust that lay heavy on the floor.

The scent of box was overpowering! Strange, she had seen none outside! Now the window next to the fireplace yielded to her efforts. It must open upon the side lawn and the picket enclosure of the graves, she reasoned. Blinding sunlight rushed in. Shading her eyes, she stared before her. There was a garden, bright with flowers, and a high hedge with a little gate, beyond which she glimpsed feathery rows of carrots and the purple-red of beet tops. A sparkle of water, where the pond turned, glinted in the distance.

CLINGING to the sill, she leaned out. To the right the grass grew long under the branches of apple trees. It was a big orchard, for in orderly ranks it climbed a rise and marched on over it. A soft murmur of anxious bees filled the air and the scent of box lay over all.

Phoebe drew back. Certainly no orchard grew upon this elm-and-maple-planted knoll. There was no pond with willows at its brink, no box hedges, no bee-inviting garden. This was an illusion, a dream, or else the outside world she had left was utterly changed.

Hardly knowing what she did, she turned and ran, stumbling, outside the open door to the three wide granite steps before it. She glanced back at the windows of the drawing-room. They were wide open, their shutters resting against the house, and it was from these very windows that she had looked upon a lily-dotted pond and seen two white butterflies fluttering above a box-enclosed walk! This was madness! Below her fell the easy descent of the lawn till it met the highway. Maples bordered it. On either side great elms rose and drooped their fine foliage above the roof.

Steadying herself along the wall, she reached the corner of the house and stood beside that other opened window from which she had seen lush grass and the ranks of apple trees. The scent of box no longer assailed her with its aromatic fragrance. Instead, there was the perfume of peonies in their bed along the stone foundation. Between the elms she could see the edge of the iron pickets that guarded the sleep of Stephen and his wife, Aurelia.

She was not frightened; fear was absent from this strange experience. It never for a moment entered her head that she could not spend the night there, as she had planned to do. She told herself that she was simply overtired. Like all modern young women, she had a smattering of science. The “subconscious mind,” she knew, was quite capable of any freak. If one were very tired—and she was tired——

For days and nights she had been traveling. She had come straight through from California to Stonevale and, being unused to trains, she had slept but little.

Defiantly, she turned to the front door, took up her suit-cases, set them inside, and entered the drawing-room; and, still defiant, crossed to the window.

The strange pictures were were no longer there. The view corresponded to what she knew lay without. Gone were the willows and the pond. No smell of box hung on the air. Each window framed its proper outlook. There were no apple trees and no old-fashioned garden.

The sun was gliding down the sky toward the horizon. Soon night would come. She whistled a little tune as she found a lamp half full of oil and lit it. She had been informed where to find linen and blankets. In her suit-case was a comfortable packet of emergency food. She would light a fire. She would take possession—yes, possession. Again that wonderful sense of ownership and of oneness with the past came over her. She was at home! The house itself was telling her. This was her home, now and as long as she should live.

Morning found her up with the larks to greet it. She had slept refreshingly in the antique low-post bed, between the heavy linen sheets under the hand-woven blankets. She had contemplated her reflection in the wavy green mirror that hung above a massive chest of drawers in her bedroom and, with a giggle, pulled back her rebellious black hair into a hard knot, trying to imagine herself in a gray print wrapper. She must dress the part of a New England spinster, she decided, though her only experience of the type was of the theatrical variety. The pulled back hair could not dim the beauty of the soft oval of her face and her great, black eyes defied New England and all its works.

There was very little left from her last night's supper and she found that the telephone, the one concession to modernity in the place, was disconnected.

“What to do? What to do?” she inquired of the empty air as she twirled her hat on one finger. “Not a house in sight—milk—eggs—bread—the village two miles away.” Walk? She was without a pair of sensible shoes till the arrival of her trunk. Well, people in country places always gave one another a “lift.” She'd go down to the road and intercept the first village-going car. She slapped on her hat and ran down the path to the stone horse-block, where she settled herself, her feet swinging.

The scent of box was overpowering! Strange, she had seen none outside!

She had not long to wait. A roadster rounded the bend and came toward her with slackening speed as if it anticipated the appeal of her upraised hand. It was driven by a young man whose intent blue eyes seemed to catch and hold her own even from the first moment of his appearance. He compelled attention not only by the brilliant magnetism of his turquoise-colored eyes, but by his whole appearance. His hair, uncovered to the morning, glinted with high lights. His body filled the space behind the wheel with easy grace, but it was his sudden smile that set her heart beating. From him came a calm greeting, “Hello, Phoebe Sands!”

“Yes, I'm Phoebe Sands,” she admitted, somewhat taken aback, “and also, who are you?”

“I'm Clinton Wade. Thought you might want a lift to town. Am I right?” He opened the door.

“You must be a mind reader,” she said as she settled herself.

He grinned at her. “I have to be. It's important self-protection, you see. You're my Hereditary Enemy.”

He started the car before she could formulate her puzzlement.

“Hereditary Enemy?”

He frowned quizzically. “Didn't the old girl leave a curse on me? Didn't she warn you against the Wades?”

“If you mean my Aunt Cornelia,” Phoebe said testily, “she never said anything to me about you or anybody else. I'm her heir, that's all.”

“She never saw you, did she? 1 wonder——” he broke off meditatively. “You don't look like a Sands at all," he added.

She bridled. “Appearances are deceitful then. But why are you an enemy—what's the joke?"

“No joke about it,” he replied seriously. “Your aunt hated my father and mother like poison.”

“What in the world for?" she wanted to know. “I didn't know they had feuds in New England.”

“You didn't?) Well—you're in the line of one. I'm glad it wasn't deeded to you.”

“But why?” she persisted.

“It isn't nice to say of a lady that she got mad when she was jilted,” he observed abstractly.

“Po you mean to say,” she cried indignantly, “that your father jilted my Aunt Cornelia? That wasn't very nice either.”

He smiled at her. “Don't blame me. I wasn't there, and now that I know you weren't willed the Hate—I take it all back. Anyway, I'm glad you're here.”

“So am I.” she spoke with unconscious warmth. “I'm glad you're a neighbor, too. You are a neighbor, aren't you?"

“The neighest sort of a neighbor—just over the hill there,” he answered. “and at your service. Who's going to live with you?”

“Nobody,” she informed him. “I haven't anyone. I'm all alone on the family tree—the last leaf, so to speak—but 1 love the idea of being by myself in my very own house. You see, I've worked since I was seventeen. Hard work, stores and factories, and to make both ends meet I had to room with other girls—girls that I didn't like sometimes. You can guess what this freedom means to me. It's just heaven.”

He was staring out of the window, his face white, his eyes fixed in amazed wonder

“You poor kid,” he said gently. “You poor kid. Well, you've got your own house now—forget the past.” His tone changed to one of gaiety. 'And here we are in Stonevale Village. Welcome to our city.”

“Stonevale Village,” she repeated softly. “Father used to tell me about it.” She remained seated in the car, looking up the shaded Main Street with its little colonnaded shops, unchanged since the days when her father was “little Milton Sands,” running errands, barefooted and carefree, along its “feather-stitch” brick sidewalks.

“There's the Bank,” she whispered. “Red sandstone, just like he said. And there's the Doctor's house beyond, with the iron dogs in the yard. And that's the same name over the General Store: 'Madham Brothers.' Isn't it funny that he never once described his home to me? It was always the Village and the boys and girls he used to play with, but never a word about his house. I wonder why?”

Wade made no suggestion, and she descended from the automobile. He shut off the motor and swung himself to her side.

His own business could wait, he assured her. It wasn't every day that Phoebe Sands came to town and he admitted he had anticipated her coming and had planned to be on hand to help her.

Their presence together seemed to attract surprised comment; evidently, the whole town knew of the feud and had wondered whether Miss Sands had handed on a legacy of hatred with her more solid possessions. There were looks, questioning and smiling—underbrow glances that she caught from the tail of her eye—but her fellow townsmen and women proved most kind and attentive, most cordial in their offers of assistance and hospitality.

“Coming home”—yes, that's what it was—“coming back home.”

Her companion, responding to her mood, was sympathetically silent as they drove homeward. She relaxed gently in the warmth of his understanding.

He assisted her with her packages, arranging them as she directed on the pantry shelves—together they investigated the countless cupboards, the quaint ovens, the elaborately hidden back stairs and mysterious ham-closet. She watched him, wondering. Why was he so intent? Why did his face wear that strange expression, as if he listened achingly for distant voices? Why did his hands so insistently caress the worn woodwork, his fingers pass with such soft touches over the cracked paneling of the ancient walls? Could it possibly be that he, too, might see the strange visions she had seen?

She led him into the hall and through the great rooms, pausing before each window with a thrill of expectancy, but as they contemplated each outlook, no scent of box drifted into them. The long slopes with their elms and maples remained unchanging.

He turned from the window and faced the fireplace, a beautiful Georgian bit of classic architecture. Above it hung a crayon portrait in a bright gold frame, mercifully obscured by faded pink mosquito-netting.

OUR Aunt Cornelia,” he said musingly. He stared at the grim dull eyes of the picture. “This is the first time I've ever set foot in your house, Miss Cornelia Sands,” he said, “and now I've come, you won't get me out!”

He said it with such concentrated determination that Phoebe started. It was as if the picture was the actual presence of her benefactress. The black eyes stared back from behind their pink veil. Phoebe held her breath, almost fearful of an answer to the uttered defiance.

“Don't,” she said, laughing quickly. “You'll make her come alive and I don't want to live with Aunt Cornelia, I tell you flat—and I want the house to learn to like me. Don't call her back!”

“I won't,” he promised, solemnly, and turned to Phoebe with sudden smile. “I'm sure I don't want her back.” He straightened his wide shoulders and drew himself to his full height. “And now I'll leave you, Miss Sands. I'll see that they connect your phone, and don't forget, I'm right on the other end of it. Good-by.” He paused, words seemed to press behind his lips; his strange eyes were full of meaning; he was on the point of saying something—something that intimately concerned her. The look passed from his face. “Good-by,” he repeated, and turned toward the door.

She watched him as he bounded down the path to the waiting car, and waved her hand in farewell. Why had he hesitated? She returned to the living-room window, to stand gazing after the cloud of dust in his wake. The rattle of the car's departure shook the window panes. Then silence. All sound ceased, hushed to the droning of bees. The aromatic breath of sun-warmed box pervaded the room in a sudden hot breath. The highway with its bordering trees was no more. Before her, level with the stone steps of the entrance, stood a box walk to a little wharf. Beyond it, the lily-dotted pond spread its shining length, pale willows shutting off the distant view.

With a stifled cry, she fled across to the window by the fireplace and stared from the casement. Lush grass and apple trees, spikes of larkspur, poppies, and bleeding heart—a box hedge and the corner of a vegetable garden behind a white gate!

Turning her back on the peaceful vision, she flung herself at the windows sheltered by the porch, the windows that ought to look out upon the broad sweep of the valley and the distant cradling hills. But the hills were not there. A sweep of grass-grown lawn through which a brook meandered; a far meadow, its fence-line marked by a row of gnarled cedars. A clapboarded barn, with a huge fanlight on either side of the open hay-loft door. She imagined the stir of cattle and the thump of horses' hoofs. But there was no sound at all now; even the hum of anxious bees was stilled.

Phoebe Sands drew up one of the ancient chairs and sat down. Spellbound, she stared at the landscape; peace, beauty, security—all hers. It, too, was hers, this other vista. It was deeply hers. She wished it would not vanish. It came upon her that she wished it would stay always. She did not want the elms and maples to return. She wanted the house just like that, cuddled down in homely comfort with bees and flowers and countless apple trees. She wanted the gay little lily pond and the smell of sun-warmed box—oh, always, always the smell of sun-warmed box.

She took no heed of the passing hours as she watched the changing lights and shadows. Time was not. She was at peace.

DAYS passed and Phoebe Sands settled into the routine of her new life. People came to call—the minister and his wife; the president of the bank; prim old ladies and up-to-date young ones whose clothes were cut on the very latest models and whose talk was flavored with a little bit of all the world. Her Aunt Cornelia had had no friends at all, they informed her. Why, indeed, should she? She had despised the community in which she had lived, as cordially as it had despised her.

That there was something strange about the house, Phoebe could not help but gather. Several times her visitors had started to say something and had suddenly become reticent.

The enmity between her Aunt Cornelia and the Wades was touched upon not infrequently. There was no concealment about that and the constant presence of the inherited enemy came in for plenty of amused comment. But she sensed that something was being withheld.

To her inquisitive and kindly neighbors she frankly told her simply story. To them all she was friendly and welcoming. But to none did she speak of the strange duality of the house.

More and more she came to look forward to the coming of the change, whose first intimation was always the scent of box and the humming of bees.

Never did the substitution take place [when she] was out-of-doors. The moment (illegible text) across the threshhold she was (illegible text) of actuality. Sometimes she (illegible text) the high with the scent of dew-[drops and] box in her nostrils and, running away to her bedroom window, would sit for hours watching the moonlight break in over spangles on the lake and the slow-waving silhouettes of long willow fringes. It was her secret—the mysterious confidence the house gave to her alone. Something to treasure, never to reveal, not even to Clinton Wade who more and more took hold of her thoughts and longings. Dear Enemy! Surely Aunt Cornelia must have relented in her heart of hearts, since she had made no mention of the feud in her will. She must have fancied—Phoebe got no further with her musings. There was a veiled presence in her soul that she would not look at, face to face.

Summer cooled and ripened into Autumn. The maples turned to gold and crimson, and the elms crisped to bronze. She had seen the valley yellow with stubble and the hills aflame with color.

And from the windows opening into the mystic garden she had watched the blue of the larkspurs give place to the brown and yellows and wine-stained ivories of button-chrysanthemums; had seen the apples turn red and russet, and now, mingled with the scent of box, their luscious smell, clean and honest as their ruddy cheeks, made anew fragrance. The fringes of the willows had thinned. The cypress hedges gave glimpses of the green of winter wheat. The pond reflected a bluer sky. The lily-pads were darkening, and the white stars of their blooms no longer dotted the quiet surface of the pool.

AS the evenings grew chill, she no longer sat with Clint on the stone step before the door. Now they drew up to the fire, crackling and leaping behind the massive brass andirons, and chatted idly of each day's happenings. He seemed to belong there by her side, his blue, intent eyes glinting in the warm light, his strong hands quiescent on the polished arms of Aunt Cornelia's best mahogany chair.

She could not prevent the visions that crowded to her heart. He must be there always, close to her. Her husband some day. But never as his wife would she enter that stucco renovated, electric-lighted, up-to-date house of his, never! He belonged here in the old mansion, amid its faded grandeurs. He was part of its dream duality. He must come to her. She could not, would not, go to him. She could not abandon the house, not even for him.

“Nobody asked you to, sir, she said,” she quoted to herself, upbraiding her errant fancy. But she knew that the unseen ties that bound them together were as real and as mysterious as the visions of the house. They were not to be explained or argued about; they were.

Autumn burned down to its embers, and the white ash of Winter blew in snow along hill and dale. Sharp, crusty mornings followed crystal nights. Noon days sparkled like diamonds or darkened to gray dusks of bitter sleet. Now the dream pond was black with ice. The willows streamed funereal fringes before the gale. The box hedges were snow-dotted, the apple trees purple-brown with moisture and outlined with ermine. Now the long view of the valley was stained in mauves and pale yellow, varnished thinly with white. The water courses marked themselves with brittle cleanness. When the vision faded, the elms and rock-maples, divested of their gold and scarlet, held up black lace against the sky. The long lawn was glare-ice over smooth-laid snow, neat as a well-set table-cloth.

Christmas was close at hand. Her first Christmas at home, she thought happily.

The afternoon and evening of Christmas Eve, Clint had promised to spend with her. He'd come early and help her prepare. He had promised her the biggest bunch of mistletoe to be bought, the finest holly wreaths to be found. The house was to have a festival—a wreath in every window with a candle in the middle. Over every mantelpiece were fastened evergreen boughs. Not a nook or corner but had its festive sign.

“The house hasn't had a party for forty years,” they decided.

ON Christmas Eve, Phoebe stood before the glowing stove where a cake, a wonderful, pretentious cake, was baking, along with a turkey—a present from the banker's wife—stuffed according to an old and respected recipe. The plum pudding came out of a can, but what of that? The side table was loaded with “fixin's,” all the tidbits she could remember as ever being served on this occasion, First they'd have a little run-around of calls in the car, then return for dinner tête-à-tête. How shocked the town would be if it knew, which doubtless it did, after the manner of towns.

But suppose he didn't come, after all? Suppose he should jilt her first party as his father had jilted Aunt Cornelia? The absurd thought flashed through her mind and turned her heart cold just as she was removing the cake from the oven, and, in her panic, she almost dropped it to the floor. Perhaps people inherited traits like that. She set down the pan and stood beside the kitchen table, her face twisted with pain at the sudden realization of what such a disaster would mean to her. Why, she could hate in return, as long and as abominably as Aunt Cornelia! People did inherit queer things. But Clint—no, no! Her hands shook as she spread the thick chocolate between the layers. No, not Clint.

At last, all was ready for his coming. She put on her new black-and-white flowered chiffon frock and the long string of pearls.

She heard his car purr to a stop before the horse-block and the quick clip of his steps up the path. Before he could knock, she opened the door and curtseyed before him.

He came in, bringing a cold breath of outer air. He closed the door and stood looking at her as he pulled off his heavy gloves with nervous fingers. They moved into the dining room and stood for a moment by an open window, breathing the crisp air—joyous to be alive.

Neither spoke. Suddenly they were in each other's arms, straining close. A tearing, rapturous thrill passed over and engulfed them. They clung together, dizzily, caught in the age-old maelstrom.

As if on a rush of sudden wind came the sharp odor of box.

She drew away and looked up, wide-eyed.

He was staring out of the window. his face white. his eyes fixed in amazed wonder.

She twisted in his grasp, looking over her shoulder. Yes, it had come, the mysterious change! There, before them, stretched the path to the lake: the willows waving in the winter wind; the copper light of the setting sun casting royal purple shadows in patterns on the snow.

“Clint,” she cried, “don't be frightened. It comes like that often and often. Don't look that way, don't! It's nothing to hurt, really!”

She shook him frantically. He released his hold of her and covered his eyes with both hands. Then he raised his head and looked again.

“Have I gone crazy?” he ejaculated.

She threw herself upon him, panting with eagerness. She was glad, so glad, that he saw too.

“You mustn't mind it. I love it. I wait for it to come!”

“The apple orchard—the brook!” he said in an awed whisper.

Amazment fell upon her. “How did you know?” she stammered. “How could you know? You haven't looked out of the other windows.” She felt him quiver, shaken as if by an inner storm.

“And you've seen this all the time?” he asked thickly.

“Ever since I came. I never know when, till I smell the box.”

“The box—yes—the old box hedges——” he repeated in a voice so strange that her fears renewed.

“What is it? Oh, what is it?” she begged. “What does it mean?”

“But it can't be!” he cried and lurched to the other side of the room, where he leaned heavily against the sill and looked out. “But it is, it is!” He drew himself erect suddenly as if galvanized with joyous energy. “Come—come with me—now!”

He threw her coat about her, pulled her fur cap down on her head, jerked open the door, and dragged her to the car. Obediently, she sat down beside him, as with wild eyes and set lips he turned and drove recklessly down the road: For a half mile or more the car flew down the highway. Then he slowed, got out, let down a bar, and turned into a country lane. No macadam here, but frozen brown earth with tangled purple and wine-colored briar burning red in the snow. Another half mile and a pair of high stone gates came into view.

Clinton Wade stopped the car with shrieking brakes and turned to Phoebe. “Will you do as I tell you, Phoebe Sands?”

She nodded.

“Close your eyes, then, and let me lead you. Don't open them till I say when.”

HE put his arm about her shoulders and took her right hand in his. She heard their feet crunch on frosted gravel and knew it had been long neglected, for she stumbled over hummocks, and thorns tore at her skirt. They progressed slowly. Now the scent of box was in the keen air, growing stronger, and a faint, ciderish smell as stored apples. Close to her she felt his heart beating hard and fast and heard his breath in a shuddering sigh.

“Open your eyes,” he whispered.

She looked up. Green mounds of box surrounded her. A green, box-bordered alley opened before her—a path that ended in a frozen pond. Beyond were willows like whips of gold. And over on the right, rank on rank, marched the battalions of bare apple trees.

“Why, this is the place,” she whispered.

“Yes,” he said. “See.” He turned her about.

There, beyond, was the barn, whose hay-mow door swung creaking in the wind and whose fanlights gaped, glassless.

He eased her to a seat on a stone wall. Then she realized that below, half filled with débris and snow, yawned cellars. There was the place where a chimney had been. She was seated on the foundation of a house. She could trace its form and extent. Here had been a garden. The box still flourished. Yonder, through the cypress, the meadow showed, striped with white in the furrows of brown earth. She did not question it. It was within and without her, beauty, security, peace. Home—the place of the vision.

He was speaking, his lips close to her hair.

“Phoebe, dear, I didn't want you to know how your Aunt Cornelia got the house. You'd never be happy in it, if you knew. I made everybody swear not to tell you. But now this has happened, you ought to know what the house is trying to tell you.” He was silent a moment as if choosing his next words. “It, isn't the home of your people, dearest—it was the home of mine.” She gazed at him, astonished. “My father and your Aunt Cornelia were engaged to be married,” he explained. “He made over to her his old homestead as his wedding gift. And then—he met my mother. He jilted your Aunt and she never forgave him. Part of her vengeance was that she kept the house. She knew how he loved it, how much it meant to him.

“It cost her half of all she had, to do it, but she had the house put on rollers and moved to the place where it is now. The old Sands mansion had burned down two years before, and so she set it up on the stone foundation that was hers by right. And there they lived, the house and Cornelia. Now, do you understand?”

There was a long silence, then she spoke very softly. “I think she forgave.”

HE shook his head. “I won't try to explain it. I've always had the strangest feeling about the old place. Even when I was little, I used to come here and imagine how it used to be; how I could look out from the windows, if I ever got inside, and see all this around it. I wouldn't let myself think of it up there on the hill. I used to try and make myself believe the house was lonely and homesick, and wanted to come back. Just a kid's rebellious fancying, I guess, but I wanted my father's house—wanted it always. And then, when I was grown and your Aunt Cornelia died, I couldn't buy it. I tried to, but it was left to you. And since you came—well, I can't think of the house without you in it. I can't think of any house of mine except as yours.”

“You felt like that, and yet you told everybody to keep mum about how Aunt Cornelia stole your father's house—because you knew I'd feel I'd have to give it back! You couldn't know then that the house wanted us together.”

He drew her closer. “It was no fault of yours, no matter who you were. It wouldn't have been fair, that's all.”

She turned trusting, adoring eyes to him. “You're so dreadfully good,” she whispered, “that if it wouldn't hurt the house's feelings, I wouldn't marry you.”

He seemed not to hear her. His eyes were set, his head inclined as if intently listening—the familiar look she had leanred to know. She, too, bent her head. Her gaze sought the distance.

“I know,” she said softly. “I hear it, too. The House is calling. It says: 'Come here at once, you two; you'll catch your deaths of cold, and besides, my fires are burning low. Come at once and begin to make your plans to move back home.”