Happy House Part 4

Someone had opened one of the blinds so here there was more light.

Nancy, looking about, thought that it was the most dreadfully tidy room she had ever seen. It had a starched look--the heavy lace curtains at the window were so stiff that they could have stood quite alone without pole or ring; the stiff-backed cus.h.i.+oned chairs were covered with stiff linen "tidies," edged with stiff lace; the bureau and washstand were likewise protected and a newly starched and ruffled strip, of a sister pattern, protected the wall behind the bowl.

"I think you'll find it comfortable--here. There is a pleasant land breeze at night and it is quiet," Miss Sabrina was saying.

"_Quiet_!" thought Nancy. Was there any noise anywhere on the whole Island? She gave herself a little mental shake. She must say _something_ to this very tall, very stately woman--she was uncomfortably conscious that a pair of cold gray eyes was closely scrutinizing her.

"Oh, I shall love it," she cried with an enthusiasm she did not feel.

"And it is so nice in you--to want me!"

The gray eyes kindled for a moment.

"I wanted you to know us--and to know Happy House. In spite of all that has happened you _are_ a Leavitt and I felt that it was wrong that you should have grown up to womanhood out of touch with the traditions of your forefathers. We are one of the oldest families on this Island--Leavitts have always been foremost in making the history of the state from the days when they fought side by side with Ethan Allen.

Any one of them would have laid down his life for the honor of his name and his country. You will want to wash, Anne--the roads are dusty.

And no family in all Vermont is held in higher esteem than the Leavitts since the first Leavitt came down from Montreal and settled here in the wilderness. Put on a cooler dress, if you wish, and then come down to the dining-room. We always eat dinner at twelve-thirty, but B'lindy has kept something warm. Yes, if you are a true Leavitt you will soon grow to revere the family pride and honor for which we Leavitts live!"

And with stately steps, as measured as her words, Miss Sabrina withdrew from the room.

"_Whe-w_! Can you just _beat_ it!" Nancy flung at the closed door.

She turned a complete circle, taking in with one sweeping glance the heavy walnut furniture, dark and uninviting against the ugly wallpaper and the equally ugly though spotlessly clean carpet; then threw out both hands despairingly.

"Well, Nancy, you _are_ in for it--forefathers and everything--family pride and honor!" she finished with a groan. "So be a sport!" And taking herself thus sternly in hand she went to the wash bowl and fell to scrubbing off the dust as Miss Sabrina had bidden her.

The clean, cool water and a change of dress restored her confidence.

At least Aunt Sabrina had accepted her without a question--_that_ ordeal was over. Everything would go easier now. As she opened the door there came up from below a tempting smell of hot food--Nancy suddenly remembered that she had not eaten a crumb since her hasty, early breakfast in Burlington.

The dining-room was as dim and cool as the rest of the house and as quiet. Miss Sabrina herself placed a steaming omelette at Nancy's place. Then she sat down stiffly at the other end of the table. The omelette was very good; Nancy relished, too, eating it from a plate of rare old blue and white china; her quick eyes took in with one appraising glance the beautiful lines of the old mohogany highboy and the spindle-legged chairs which one of the "forefathers" must have brought over from England, years and years ago.

"The meat pie was cold so B'lindy beat up an omelette," Miss Sabrina was saying. "I guess you must be hungry, Anne."

And then, because there had been the slightest tremble in the older woman's voice Nancy realized, in a flash, that Miss Sabrina was as nervous as she! Of course she had dreaded the coming of this strange grand-niece whom she had invited to Happy House merely from her sense of duty to Leavitt traditions. In her relief Nancy wanted more than anything to laugh loudly--instead she flashed a warm smile and said coaxingly:

"I wish you'd call me Nancy! Everyone does and it sounds--oh, jollier."

But Miss Sabrina's long face grew longer. She shook her head disapprovingly. "We've never called Anne Leavitts anything but Anne since the first one and I guess in every generation there's been _one_ Anne Leavitt! My mother gave the name to an older sister who died when she was a baby. My own name is Sabrina Anne. Eat the strawberries!

Jonathan says they're the last from the garden."

Rebuked Nancy bent her head over the fruit. "I am ashamed to know so little--of my family! You will forgive me, won't you, when I seem ignorant? I _do_ want to learn." And she said this with all her heart, for unless she could either get Aunt Sabrina quickly away from the beloved subject of family or learn something about them, she was sure to make some dreadful blunder.

Making little patterns on the tablecloth with the end of one thin finger, Miss Sabrina cleared her throat twice, as though she wanted to say something and found it difficult to speak. Her eyes, as she levelled them upon Nancy, turned steely gray with cold little glints in their depths.

"As I wrote to you, I believe, I struggled--for a long time--with my conscience before I took the unwarranted step of inviting you to Happy House. Now I must make one command. Never, while you are here, are you to mention the name of your father or grandfather--and I likewise will refrain from so doing!" She stood up stiffly as she finished her singular words.

Nancy had lifted a round strawberry to her lips. She was so startled that the hand that guided it dropped suddenly and the berry rolled over the cloth, leaving a tiny red trail across the white surface.

Was there ever anything in the world as strange as this? Why shouldn't she mention Anne's father or her grandfather? To be sure, as all she knew about them was the little Anne had told her during the last two weeks, she was not likely to want to say much about them--nevertheless she was immensely curious. Why _should_ Miss Sabrina make such a singular command and _why_ should she be so agitated?

Nancy knew she must say something in reply. "I--I'll be glad to do just--what you want me to do!" she stammered. "I just want to--make you like me--if I can."

Nancy said this so humbly and so sincerely that it won a smile from Miss Sabrina. Nancy did not know, of course, that the old woman had been trying hungrily to find something in Nancy's face that was "like a Leavitt!" And as Nancy had spoken she had suddenly seen an expression cross the young face that, she said to herself, was "all Leavitt!" So her voice was more kindly and she laid an affectionate hand upon the girl's shoulder.

"I am sure I shall grow very fond of you, my dear. Now I must leave you to amuse yourself--this is my rest hour. Make yourself at home and go about as you please!"

Nancy did not move until the last sound of her aunt's footstep died away. A door shut, then the house was perfectly still. She drew a long, quivery breath.

"Thank goodness--she _does_ have to rest! Nancy Leavitt, how are you ever going to stand all that pomposity--for days and days. Wouldn't it be _funny_ if I took to talking to myself in this dreadful stillness?

Happy House--_Happy_, indeed."

It was not at all difficult for Nancy to know what each room, opening from the long hall, was or what it looked like. The parlor opened from one side, the sitting-room from the other; the dining-room was behind the sitting-room and the kitchen in a wing beyond that. The parlor with its old mahogany and walnut furniture, its faded pictures and ugly carpeting was, of course, just like the sitting-room, except that, to give it more of a homey air, in the sitting-room there were some waxed flowers under a gla.s.s, a huge old Bible on the marble-topped table, a bunch of peac.o.c.k feathers in a corner and crocheted tidies on the horsehair chairs--and the old mantel that had come from England, Webb had said, was in the "sittin'-room."

She tip-toed through the hall and opened the door on the right.

Accustomed now to the prevailing dimness, her eyes swept immediately to the old fireplace. The marble mantel stood out in all its purity against the dark wall; age had given a mellow l.u.s.tre to its glossy surface. Nancy, remembering Webb's story about that Anne Leavitt who, ages ago had placed it there, went to it and touched it reverently.

"H-a-p-p-y H-o-u-s-e," she spelled softly, her finger tracing the letters graven into the marble. Doubtless it had come across the sea on one of those slow-sailing s.h.i.+ps of long ago--that other Anne Leavitt had waited impatiently months and months for it!

Had that Anne Leavitt, like poor old Aunt Sabrina, worried and fussed over Leavitt traditions? Of course not--she had _made_ them.

A curiosity seized Nancy to find B'lindy. Webb had said she knew everything. She must be somewhere beyond that last closed door in the long hallway--the omelette had come from that direction.

Under Nancy's pressure the door opened into a pantry and beyond, in a big, sunny kitchen, s.h.i.+ny in its spotlessness, stood B'lindy before a table, putting the last touches to a pie. She turned at the sound of Nancy's step. Nancy paused in the doorway.

"May I come in?" she asked. "Are you B'lindy?" She imitated Webb's abbreviation.

"Yes," the woman at the table answered shortly. "And you're the niece." She gave Nancy a long, steady look. "Ain't a bit like a Leavitt's I can see! Miss Sabriny would have you come, I hope you'll like it."

"The hateful creature," thought Nancy. Why couldn't _some one_ in Happy House act natural and kind and jolly?

Like Miss Sabrina, B'lindy was tall and almost as old; her forbidding manner came not from a Roman nose but from heavy brows that frowned down over deep-set eyes--eyes that pierced in their keenness. Like Miss Sabrina she had a certain dignity, too, which seemed to set her apart from her fellow creatures--the result, no doubt, as Nancy thought, of having been born in the Leavitt household.

"Of course I'm going to love it. It's so--so quiet! And that omelette you made me was delicious. I was dreadfully hungry. And oh, there is so much I want to know about Happy House. Webb told me--coming here--that you knew everything. I've just gone in and looked at the old fireplace. Tell me all about that Anne Leavitt."

Nancy's coaxing tone covered the fire that was within her heart. To herself she was saying: "The old iceberg--I'll thaw her out now or never!"

B'lindy set her pie down; her voice warmed a little. She rested her hands on her hips and a.s.sumed what Webb would have called her "speakin'

air."

"Well, now, if it's _pryin'_ B'lindy Guest don't know nothin', but if it's hist'ry--Webb's just about right. Justin Leavitt brought Anne Leavitt down from Montreal 'slong ago as 1740, when there was first a settlement up to Isle la Motte. He bought most this whole Island, I guess, from the Indians and when they wanted a home Anne Leavitt laid her finger on this very spot we're sittin' on. Justin built the house out of the stone they dug from the Island itself. And she planned that there mantel--just set her heart on it and it seems how a Leavitt could have anything--anyways they hed it made in England and brought over here jest's she planned with Happy House spelled on it all carved like 'tis now. And she helped put it up with her own little hands. The house's been changed a lot sence but no one's ever touched that mantel!"

"And then she died," put in Nancy, breathlessly.

"Yes--she was just nothin' more'n a child and delicate at that and wa'n't built to stand them pi'neer hards.h.i.+ps, hidin' from the Indians and eatin' corn and roots and the like when she was used to food as good as the king's, for n.o.ble blood she had--the book over at North Hero says so! She just seemed to live 'til that there mantel come and she saw it with her very own eyes. She was brave as any man and she hung on spite of everything 'til she'd got that done and then jest 'sif she was tuckered out she laid down and died!"

"In what room, B'lindy?"

"What's now the guest room--so the book says." B'lindy ignored Nancy's stifled, "Oh, goodness me!" "That next year the Indians attacked all the settlers and Justin Leavitt and his brother Remembrance was killed along with a half-dozen other pi'neers beatin' back the red men while Robert's wife and the other women folk escaped in an open boat across the lake and Robert's wife hid little Justin under her cape. Then Happy House was empty 'til little Justin growed up and came back."

"And had the Indians gone then?"

"No, but they were friendly like and a good thing it was for they'd never been worse en'mies than the Yorkers was then. I guess Ethan Allen, and his Green Mountain Boys slept right here many a time, for there wasn't much they did fightin' the Yorkers without consultin' a Leavitt! But here I am rattlin' on and the oven waitin' for them pies."

"Oh, B'lindy--it's like a wonderful story! Will you show me the book that tells all about it? I'm so glad my name is Anne, too. If you're busy I'll run out and look at the garden--and find Jonathan. Webb told me about him, too."