CHAPTER III
ZELDA RECEIVES A VISITOR
The front door-bell rang—it was an old-fashioned contrivance, on a wire, and pealed censoriously—and Zelda thrust the book back into the trunk and ran to the second-floor landing to listen. Polly, the colored maid-of-all-work, admitted Mrs. Forrest warily, though Mrs. Forrest was a woman for whom doors were usually flung wide.
“Good morning, Aunt Julia! Welcome to your ancestral home! Come on up!” Zelda called from the top of the stairs. “Leave the door open, Polly, so Mrs. Forrest can see the way.”
There was something reluctant and difficult about the Dameron front door. It swung open so close to the newel post that ingress was difficult, and when you were once in, the hall was a narrow, dark and inhospitable place.
“What on earth are you doing, Zee?” demanded Mrs. Forrest, gathering up her skirts and beginning the ascent.
“I’m cleaning house a little. The steps are rather steep, but it’s nothing when you get used to it.” Zelda bent over the railing and contemplated her aunt critically.
“I’m not sure that your clothes will do for these upper regions.” Zelda looked down commandingly. She had twisted a handkerchief round her head; a big gingham apron and a dusting cloth in her hand bore further testimony to her serious intentions.
“I suppose you won’t kiss me in these togs, beloved; it would be unseemly.”
“My dear Zee, this will never do!” And Mrs. Forrest, having reached the second floor, surveyed her niece with disapproval.
“Do you mean the clothes?” asked Zelda, putting her hand to her turban. “I flattered myself that I looked rather well. I’m exploring the garret. I’m not really doing anything but poke about; and it’s great fun, raking in the dust of the past—a very remote past, too!”
Mrs. Forrest sniffed contemptuously.
“I’m sure there are stunning antiques up here that beat anything you ever saw. I’ve only touched the crust. Better come up and look it over. Oh, Polly,”—the old colored woman lingered below—“you needn’t wait. It’s around this way, auntie, if you’re rested enough. Those lodgings we had in Florence last winter were three flights up, and we didn’t mind a bit. You see, father gave me a basket of old keys and told me to rummage anywhere I liked. I never expected to find anything so much fun as this. Take your hand off the rail there, and save your gloves,—I’m going to dust it soon. And here we are! Don’t the candles give a fine touch? Lamps up here would be sacrilegious. It’s been swept, and there’s a place over there on that box where you can sit down without spoiling your clothes. If you’re very good, I might let you read some of your old love-letters. There’s a lot of them—”
“Don’t be silly; of course they’re not mine.”
“Some of the gentlemen would probably like to have them back—to read to their children,” persisted Zelda, who liked to plague her aunt.
“This is a horrible hole, Zee. You must go right down.” Mrs. Forrest was staring about frowningly.
“I might read a few extracts to help you remember,—”
A trunk stood within the arc of the candle’s flame. It was filled with old papers and letters, and Zelda flung up the lid to pique her aunt’s curiosity.
“Don’t trouble! You must burn all these old things. Your grandfather never destroyed anything, and your mother kept all he left. Old letters ought never to be kept; they’re dangerous. I’m about settled myself. I came in to see how you’re getting on, Zee. What kind of a cook have you?”
Zelda hesitated. “Oh, she’s very good; very good indeed,” she declared with sudden ardor.
“Black?”
“Yes, black. There isn’t any other kind here, is there? I don’t remember any other kind,” Zelda added vaguely, as though making an effort to recall the complexion of domestic service in Mariona.
“The blacks are not inevitable. I have Swedes. You remember, I had our consul at Stockholm get them for me. Your Uncle Rodney has two Japanese who do everything. How many of these blacks does your father keep?”
“Well, there’s Aunt Polly,” Zelda answered slowly.
“Is she the slattern that let me in?”
“Yes, but don’t call names; she’s a dear old soul. You mustn’t talk that way about her. She’s devoted to me.”
“I should think she would be.”
“Thank you, very kindly.” And then, as if recalling the list of servants with difficulty: “There’s the cook! Did I mention her?”
“What’s she like?”
“A good deal like Polly. Yes, very much like her.”
“Can she cook?”
“Oh yes; well enough. Father’s tastes are very simple; and you know I never did eat much.”
“I don’t remember anything of the kind. Most of our family are hard to please.”
“I’ve heard that Uncle Rodney is an epicure. I hope he’ll invite me down to dinner very soon.”
“It’s possible that he may. His home is perfectly managed; he runs it like a club; a club is a man’s idea of Heaven, they say: anything, when you ring; no apologies and no questions asked.”
“It sounds attractive. Just think of being able to command chocolates by pushing a button!”
“Well, you have a housemaid?”
“Yes; there’s a housemaid.”
“Black?”
“Yes,—a good deal like Polly,” answered Zee, cheerfully.
“What else do you keep?”
“There’s the laundress. She’s like Polly, too,—the same dusky race. They all look alike to me.”
“They use chemicals,” observed Mrs. Forrest. “All American laundresses use chemicals. What else?”
“There’s a man. He’s Polly’s grandfather or uncle—something like that. He’s a general utility, and only comes on call.”
“Better get rid of the whole lot.”
“In time, of course. I’m going to see what I can do with this old furniture first.”
“You’d better buy what you need new. I never had any patience with this idea of gathering up old rubbish just because it’s old. And then there’s the microbe theory; it sounds reasonable and there’s probably a good deal in it.”
“Horrors! The garret’s probably full. Perhaps there are some in those love-letters.” Zelda laughed; her mirth was seemingly spontaneous, and bubbled up irrelevantly.
“If there’s anything of mine up here, for heaven’s sake burn it right away. And now clean yourself up and come out with me. You must show yourself or people won’t know you’re in town. And come home to luncheon with me afterward.”
“I’d like to, Aunt Julia, but I really mustn’t. Father comes home to luncheon.”
“Oh, he does, does he? Well, he has had a good many meals alone and the shock wouldn’t kill him.”
“He’s perfectly splendid! He’s just as kind and thoughtful as can be. I didn’t know that anybody’s father could be so nice.”
Mrs. Forrest rose and swept the garret disapprovingly with her lorgnette; and there may have been an excess of disapproval that was meant for something else. Julia Forrest was a woman without sentiment, for there are such in the world. The lumber-room did not interest her, and she was anxious to get out into the sunlight. She was too indolent by nature to have much curiosity: she was not a woman who spent all her rainy days poring over lavender-scented trifles and weeping over old letters. She was born in this old house, and she had played as a girl in the wooded pasture that once lay east of it. Her father’s fields were now forty-foot lots, through which streets had been cut, and the houses that had been built up thickly all about were of a formal urban type. The Merriam homestead was to Julia Forrest merely an old, shabby and uncomfortable house, whose plumbing was doubtless highly unsanitary. She had been married there; her father and mother had died there; but the place meant nothing to her beyond the fact that it was now her niece’s home. It occurred to her that she ought to see Zelda’s room, to be sure the girl was comfortable; but Zelda did not invite her in when they reached the second floor.
“The letters were beautiful; they wrote lovely letters in those days,” Zelda persisted ironically. “I wish I could have some half as nice.”
“Do get your things, Zee; it’s fine outdoors and the outing will do you good.”
“I’m very sorry, but I can’t go this morning, ma tante. I have a lot to do. I’ll be freer after a little.”
“You’re foolish, very foolish. When shall I see you, then?”
“I’ll be along late in the afternoon sometime.”
“And then stop to dinner—”
“Very sorry; but father will expect me. It doesn’t seem quite kind to forsake him—when he’s so nice to me.”
“I suppose not; but bring him along. We’re all an unsociable lot. They say the Merriams and their connections are queer—I don’t like the word. Your uncle and I want you to raise the fallen reputation of the family. Do be conventional, whatever you do.”
“Oh, I shall be that,—commonplace even.”
“Don’t come down in those clothes!” Mrs. Forrest was descending the stairs.
“All right, Aunt Julia. Good-by!”
When the front door had closed, Zelda sat down on the stairs and laughed softly to herself.
“Oh, Polly,” she called.
The black woman shuffled slowly into the hall and looked up gravely at the girl.
“Polly, I wish to see the footman the moment he returns to the house. And the butler’s work is very unsatisfactory; I shall have to let him go. And please say to the cook that there will be pie for dinner until further notice,—apple-pie with cheese. And the peasants,—they will be received by My Majesty on the lawn at five as usual, and largess will be distributed. Will you execute these commissions at once, Polly? Stand not on the order of your going—” She laughed down at the amazed colored woman and then ran swiftly up stairs.
She did not pause until she reached the candle-lighted table in the garret and knelt before it, with her face against her mother’s little book, and sobbed as though her heart would break.