Chapter VIII: Seven Pillars

Nathalie, seated in a low chair at one end of the broad white veranda, gazed with rapt intentness at the sun-hazed landscape, rising in green, undulating waves against the purple blur of the towering mountain-heights, that stretched in wide expanse before her, with a strange, mystical beauty.

Into her eyes, city-tired, came rest, as they swept over the velvet green of the meadow, splashed with the bloom of wild flowers, its scrubby bushes aglow with pink spires, and its spruces and maples standing upright with the slimness of youth, as it sloped gently down to the glen below. The trees of the glen, closely massed in a rich, feathery green, sombered by the darker line of the pines and firs, to the girl seemed weird and mysterious.

Her eyes quickly gathered in the stillness of the sunny slopes that rose from the darker hollow in squares of yellow cornfields, or the light green of unripe wheat or grain, and the brown of mountain meadow-land, dotted with browsing cows. Here and there a lone farmhouse stood forth on some higher knoll, or, from a background of forest land, came the bright red of a solitary barn; while still higher, a hotel, its gables and chimneys spying upward, glimmered picturesquely from the green. And beyond all, high and dark, with majestic brooding silences, rose the jagged ridge of mountain blue, its peaks looming with a strange distinctness against the clear, soft blue of the sky, while sweeps of white cloudlets trailed like films of spun silk across their tops.

The girl closed her eyes as if to imprint upon her subconsciousness the rare loveliness of the scene, and then, as if fearful that in some passing, whimsical mood the picture would flash out of view, she opened them quickly. At that moment a passing breeze fluttered the pages of a letter lying on a table by her side. With sudden recollection she caught them up, and then as if to impress upon her mind what she had written, in a soft, low tone read:

“Dear Helen:

“I presume you are now in glorious _La France_, wondering why
you have not heard from me. But my excuse is this magnificent
mountain scenery, and my new duties, which have taken every
minute of my time until to-day. We came up on the fifteenth from
New York. Mother knitted and read during the ten-hour ride,
while I wished inexpressibly good things for Mrs. Van Vorst for
renting our little dovecote, and planned liberty work. I have
decided to adopt the club’s motto, ‘Liberty and Humanity—our
best,’ for the summer’s watchword. As it means to try and be
helpful and kind to people, whether I like them or not, wish me
success, for I have undertaken something big.

“Mr. Banker, my aunt’s lawyer, met us at the Littleton station
with his car. He is a tall, lean man, but his brown eyes have a
quizzical gleam in them that makes you feel that you are
affording him some amusement. The seven-mile ride up one
mountain slope and down another, in the shade of the woods that
gloomed dark and weird on each side of the road, with the hush
of the gloaming in their moist depths, was most enjoyable.

“From out of their rustling shadows the white birches and
poplars peered at us like ghosts, while the resinous aroma from
the pines made us sniff with delight. Mountain villages with a
straggle of white cottages, and grizzly gray churches in a
setting of purple mountain-peaks, strangely somber and still, as
they stood forth from feathery masses of clouds tinted with
sunset’s glow, with gossamer wreaths of mist floating above
them, stilled us to a mute ecstasy of sheer joy.

“Stone gate-posts, beds of old-time posies, backed by
cobble-stone walls with hedges of green, and a little white
house, like a keeper’s lodge, peered curiously out of the silver
shadows of the rising moon as we whizzed up the roadway to Seven
Pillars, and came to a stop under the _porte-cochère_ of a
large, white mansion, set on a green knoll, facing the rocky
heights of far-distant mountains. Here square glass lanterns
threw yellowish gleams on the wide, low veranda, with its seven
magic pillars,—round, fluted columns reaching high above the
second-story windows, as with lofty stateliness they held the
pointed dome above the portico.

“Passing through the quaint, white-columned doorway, with its
tiny panes of glass and shiny brass knocker, we stood, dazed and
tired, in a broad, gloomy hall, where, in the flare from a
snapping log-fire, numerous trophies of the hunt eyed us
glassily, as we were welcomed by my cousin, Janet Page, and her
sister, Cynthia.

“Janet is a winsome thing. We have already become great chums,
although she is a few years older than your lonesome. She is
short and plump, with a white, satiny skin, and apple-blossom
cheeks that make you feel that you want to kiss the pink of
them. Her eyes fairly beam with kindliness as she looks at you
from under her short, wavy brown hair. She’s a pacifist and a
suffragist, and aims to be a farmerette. Although she has
decided ideas on the war and voting questions, they are rather
vague on farming, but she goes about saying, ‘God speed the plow
and the woman who drives it.’

“Cynthia Loretto Stillwell—she always insists on the Loretto,
as it is the sole heritage from some Italian ancestor, famed for
his noble birth and deeds of valor—is not my own cousin, as she
is the daughter of my uncle’s wife, who was a widow when they
married. She is distinctively tall, somewhat angular, with sharp
features, a drooping, discontented mouth, and a sallow skin
which she endeavors to hide by dabs of white and pink powder.
Her eyes are large and dark, and would be handsome, if they did
not repel you at times by their hard, metallic glitter. Her
coiffure is a wonderful combination of braids, curls, and puffs,
and made me wonder how she did it. She greeted us effusively,
but somehow its warmth seemed cold and artificial, and—well, I
don’t believe I’m going to like her.

“After our hunger was appeased,—Janet said she got the supper,
as we shall have to be our own maids up here,—Mr. Banker
‘personally conducted’ us through many high-ceiled rooms with
recessed window-seats, big doors, and dark closets, up winding
stairways and through rambling corridors. The antique furniture,
carved and black-looking, musty-smelling and stuffy, made one
feel as if long-ago-dead people were peering at you from the
eerie shadows of the hide-and-seeky nooks.

“Mr. Banker then read my aunt’s letter of instruction,—an odd
document, as it stated that each one of ‘we girls,’—as Cynthia
calls us,—she’s almost as old as mumsie,—during our stay is to
search the house for the most valuable thing in it. And the
lucky finder of the ‘mysterious it,’ as Jan and I call the
valuable thing, is to inherit something. Whether this something
is property, or money, or just some personal effects of my
aunt’s, I don’t know, for that letter was so queer it made me
feel creepy. And once when I glanced up, it really seemed as if
her eyes were glaring menacingly at me from a large portrait of
her which hangs over the library mantel.

“Each one of us is to keep a diary, and if we have not looked
for ‘It’ each day, we are to state what particular thing
prevented us. We can search every nook and corner in the house
but one room, the _mystery room_, as we call it, which is on the
second floor, and barred and locked so that no one can enter.
Mother only laughs when Janet and I talk about ‘It,’ and
declares that the whole thing is just my aunt’s eccentric way of
doing things. You know mother spent a summer up here with her
when I was a wee tot, and my aunt grew very fond of me.

“Although I have had no time as yet to search for the mystery of
mysteries, my first entry in my diary reads: ‘Arose at 7 A. M.
and prepared breakfast. Cooked three meals and did housework all
day, and am too tired to do anything but go to bed. Jan meant to
help me, but she had to hurry with her plowing, and Cynthia
Loretto says she never does housework, as it makes her hands
rough.’

“You would laugh if you could see Jan scratching the earth with
a baby rake. She was going to plant before she plowed, and
hadn’t the slightest idea as to the proper time and way of
planting her seeds. But she looks a dear in a smock and a big
pink sunbonnet that matches the pink in her cheeks and on her
nose, for her dear little snub has burned to the same color.

“It is great sport to see her take the stump, as I call it, and
hold forth on woman suffrage. She talks beautifully, is so
earnest and looks so sweet, and, as mumsie says, knows so little
about it from a commonsense point of view. But when Cynthia
Loretto suddenly appears and squelches her eloquence by
witheringly ordering her to do something for her,—she bosses
her dreadfully,—poor Jan drops from her pedestal and crawls
about with the meekness of a mouse for the rest of the day.

“I was afraid my dreams of teaching liberty were doomed to
oblivion, for there don’t seem to be any girls about to form a
club, when one day, while reading the paper, an inspiration
came. _Fi-fo-fum_, I have written to Mrs. Van Vorst, and she is
going to send me three little slum boys, and I am not only going
to give them the joy-time of their lives, but teach them
‘Liberty and Humanity—your best.’ When I asked Mr. Banker if
there would be any objection to having these little waifs, he
not only consented, but said he would pay their way up here.
Isn’t that the dandiest thing going?

“Mother objected at first, but when I said I would teach them to
wash the dishes—how I hate that job!—and to do chores about
the house, she only said, ‘Well, you will have to make the bread
then, for three hulking boys will eat a cartful,’—you know
mother is the bread-maker. Then her eyes twinkled, and I had to
hug her good and tight, for I knew she was just testing my ‘I
can’ motto.

“Janet thought the idea fine, but when Cynthia Loretto heard of
it she declared that she hated boys, they were such horrid,
smelly things,—one would have thought they were weeds,—and
that _she_ would not have them in the house. Well, I was not
going to be bossed by her, so promptly told her in my bestest
manner—I am always very cool and sweet when _awfully mad_—what
Mr. Banker had said. Well, that silenced _her_, but I can
foresee that she will make trouble for my little liberty kids,
for that’s what they’re going to be.

“Did I tell you that Cynthia is an artist? Her studio is up in
the little square cupola, or tower that crowns the house. Here
she paints, and sleeps until all hours of the morning, for she
slumbers in a beauty-mask—Janet let that out—and it has to be
kept on until noon. Janet has to bring up her coffee every
morning. At dinner my lady with ‘the manner’ and artistic
temperament appears in a freakish get-up. Yesterday she was a
Neapolitan maiden in a red skirt and blue bodice, with a rug for
an apron, and a white cloth on her head. She dresses this way to
create atmosphere, she declares, as she is her own model, and
paints herself in a big mirror, that she got Sam to lug up from
one of the lower rooms.

“She can be extremely disagreeable, for yesterday, while I was
on one of my mountain prowls—mother was taking a nap—she was
sitting on the veranda in one of her outlandish costumes, when
an odd, little old lady came along in a black poke-bonnet,
carrying a basket on her arm. As soon as Cyn saw that basket she
jumped up and ordered the old lady off the premises, saying that
we could not be bothered with peddlers.

“The poor old soul immediately turned about and hobbled away,
muttering and mumbling to herself, for Jan heard her as she came
up the path from her miniature hillside farm. Mother was quite
annoyed when she heard about it, for she said that she was
undoubtedly one of the neighbors, and had brought us something
in a basket to be friendly, as country people do. I think
Cynthia should have allowed her to rest on the veranda, even if
she was a peddler.

“I must close my letter if I want to get it in this mail, as I
have to walk almost a mile to post it. So, with a bushel of
kisses and good wishes, I am as ever your friend

“Nathalie Page.

“P. S. Be sure you tell me all about your work, and if you are
anywhere near the front-line trenches. I am wild to know. Again,
with love,

“Blue Robin.”

As Nathalie stood by the window putting on her hat in front of the old-fashioned dresser, her eyes suddenly widened. “Why, isn’t that the strangest?” she queried, as she stepped nearer the casement and stared down at the farther end of the lawn, where, from between the fringe of woodland on the side dividing their garden from their neighbor’s, came the glimmer of a little red house, fronting the road.

“Why,” said the girl, almost wonderingly, “that red house glimmers through the trees in the form of a cross.” Then her eyes brightened with the sudden thought, “I do believe it has come that way on purpose, and, yes, I am going to let it be my Red Cross insignia, warning me that I have work to do this summer by not losing my temper, and by being kind to people, even if it is _that irritating Cynthia Loretto_.

“I wonder who lives in that little red house,” soliloquized the girl. “I must ask Sam. Ah, I remember now. I saw an old lady with silver-gray hair, the other day, poking about in that little flower-garden; she seemed to be weeding. Well, those flowers certainly repay her for her care, for they are a mass of bloom and color.” And then Nathalie, humming a snatch of melody, turned away and hurried down the stairway.

Some time later, on her way to the post-office at the near-by village of Sugar Hill, as she passed the red house she again saw the old lady with the silver hair, in a flopping sunbonnet, digging in the garden. She raised her head as she heard Nathalie’s footsteps, and the girl, with smiling eyes, pleasantly bowed a good-afternoon. But, to her surprise, the old lady stared at her rudely for a moment, and then, without returning her greeting, went on with her weeding.

“What a disagreeable old lady!” was the girl’s sudden thought, the blood rushing to her cheeks in a crimson flood. “Why, I always thought country people were pleasant and chatty with their neighbors. Well,” she murmured ruefully, in an attempt to ignore the slight “perhaps the poor old thing is near-sighted. No, I won’t worry, for, as mumsie says, it is just as well not to be in a hurry to think that people mean to be rude to you.”

So the little incident was forgotten, as she wended her way along the road, cool and dark with the moisture and shade from the woodland that fringed it on each side. On one side the trees screened green hills and sloping meadows, while on the other they guarded Lovers’ Lane, a narrow footpath, skirting the base of Garnet Mountain, that rose upward in scrubby, brownish pasture-land to its summit, crowned with dense masses of green foliage.

Nathalie hummed softly, in tune to the ripple of a tiny brooklet from a spring near by, that trickled and splashed in a low murmur over its pebbly bed in the ditch fringed with straggling wild flowers in flaunting July bloom. They were too luring to be resisted, and presently the beautiful dull pink of the Joe-Pye weed, saucy black-eyed Susans, yellow buttercups, wild carrot, and blue violets, nodded gayly from the nosegay pinned to her blouse.

A short walk and the woods had been left behind, as the girl stood on a wide-spreading knoll with the rock-lit eyes of Garnet Mountain peering down at her on her right, while on the left grassy meadows stretched away into velvety slopes. Their green was crossed by low stone walls, patched with the gray of apple orchard, and ribboned with avenues of stately trees, or fringes of woodland, but always ending in the rugged grandeur of craggy summit.

Nathalie drew a deep breath of the sweet-scented mountain breezes, as her eyes dwelt on the scene before her, for to her every blade of grass, or feathery fern, as well as each peeping floweret, wide-spreading tree, or gray bowlder, were but details that added to the charm of each day’s mountain-picture. The rare splendor of the scene inspired her, as it were, to new thoughts and feelings, vague and undefined, but the shadow of things to come, in the birth of ideals and words that were to find expression later on.

But now she was strolling along under an avenue of stately maples, bordered by a stone wall almost hidden with clambering vines, until presently she had passed by another silent greenwood, to arrive at a little white church, set on rising ground. A swift turn and she was walking down the flagged street of the mountain village, sheltered with friendly old trees, and lined with the usual straggle of white cottages, blurred with the red of an old barn, while just beyond, against the pearl gray of the horizon, rose the jagged line of the Green Mountains.

She glanced admiringly at the tiny Memorial Library perched conspicuously on a terrace opposite, and then she was at the post-office, once a small white cottage, but now used by Uncle Sam as a mail distributor, the lounging-resort of aged mountaineers and sons of the soil. Here, too, the village gentry, as well as the citified summer folk from the boarding-houses and hotels on the upper slopes of Sugar Hill, lingered for a chat or a word of greeting when they came for the mail.

After slipping her letter into the box, Nathalie found that although the mail had come in it had not been distributed, so she decided to wait for it. With ill-concealed impatience, for she hated to linger in the stuffy little store, she leaned idly against a glass case, in which one saw the yellow-brown of maple-sugar cakes, the red and white of peppermint sticks, as well as post-cards of mountain views, and pine pillows. As it was the only store within a radius of some miles its wares were numerous and varied, as almost anything, from a loaf of bread, a lollypop, or a case of needles, to a bottle of patent medicine, was on sale.

Suddenly, as if impelled by some unknown power, the girl raised her eyes to encounter the bold stare of a tall young man in a gray Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers, and high leather boots, who was nonchalantly leaning against the opposite counter, with his cap pushed on the back of his head, smoking a cigar.