Before long, a servant knocked at the door, and announced that my room was ready. Then succeeded a pleasant bustle and excitement incident to my removal to it. Kitty insisted upon considering me a perfectly helpless invalid, and would have carried me, if I had not remonstrated, and Mrs. Roberts had not sneered at the idea. As it was, she wrapped me up so that I could hardly move, and supporting me with her arm, preceded by Mrs. Roberts, we crossed the hall, and stopped at the door of the apartment a.s.signed to me.

"Oh, what a pretty room!" I exclaimed, as we entered it. Kitty was charmed that I liked it, and proceeded with great satisfaction to do the honors. Wheeling toward me an easy-chair, and settling me in it before the bright fire that blazed on the hearth, she said with animation:

"Isn't it a pretty room, miss? I've always said, that though the others were bigger and finer, there wasn't one that had such a sweet pretty look about it as the blue room had. It's just fit for a young lady like you."

Kitty was not wrong about its being a pretty room; I never saw a prettier myself. It was not large, but well-proportioned and airy.

Opposite the door there was a bay window, with white curtains trimmed with blue, and the same at the other two windows. The bed at the end of the room stood in a recess, curtained in the same manner. The walls were papered with a delicate blue paper, the wood-work about the room was oak, and all the furniture was oak and light blue. The carpet, which was in itself a study, was an arabesque pattern of oak upon a light-blue ground. The slender vases on the mantel, the pictures in their carved oak frames, had an inexpressible charm for eyes so long accustomed to the bare walls and wooden presses of a boarding school dormitory. And even to a maturer taste, I think it would have been pleasing; for I do not remember ever to have seen a room more entirely in keeping, and in which there was less out of place and inharmonious. Indeed, this impression was so strong, that I involuntarily begged Kitty to put away my dark plaid shawl, the sight of which, upon the delicate blue sofa, annoyed me exceedingly; and I thought with satisfaction of a certain blue morning dress in my trunk, that I could put on to-morrow, by way of being in keeping with the room. And the white lava pin and earrings, Agnes' parting gift, which I had never worn yet, and admired beyond expression, would come in play exactly.

While Kitty made herself delightfully busy in unpacking my trunk, which stood in the little dressing-room at the right, and bestowing my modest wardrobe in the drawers and closets thereof, I lay nestling in the soft depths of that marvellous Sleepy Hollow of a chair, that holding me lovingly in its capacious arms, seemed to perform every office of a good old nurse, even to the singing of lullabies. Though that kind attention, I think, really emanated from the glowing, merry fire, which sung, crackled, and blazed most hospitably at my feet.

The headache that an hour ago had seemed so insupportable, had now subsided to a dull throbbing that was comparatively ease and comfort; and to lie there, and look at the fire, and think about nothing, and speak to n.o.body, and be sure that Kitty was near me, and Mrs. Roberts and "the master" very far away, was all I asked or desired.

This negative sort of bliss found a temporary interruption in the necessary departure of Kitty to the kitchen, to procure my tea and bring up candles. I felt rather babyishly about it, and nothing but shame kept me from telling Kitty that I had rather do without my tea, and go to bed by firelight, than have her leave me. She did not stay away very long, however, and the nice cup of tea and crisp thin slice of toast, that she brought back with her, quite compensated me for the self-denial I had had to exercise in letting her go. These edibles, Kitty, with all the pomp and circ.u.mstance of war, arranged upon the little table beside me, placing the tall wax candles in the centre, and distributing the diminutive pieces of the dainty little tete-a-tete set in the most advantageous manner. The tea tasted very nicely out of the thin china cup, that felt like a play-thing when I lifted it, accustomed as I was to the heavy bluish-white crockery of boarding-school, and though I lacked the vigorous appet.i.te, that had made the primitive meals of that establishment enjoyable, still, the delicate food before me had a decided relish. Kitty very much enjoyed my appreciation of it, and was very sorry she could not go down and bring me another slice of toast, but Mr. Rutledge had said I must not have any more.

"I couldn't eat any more, thank you," I said, rather haughtily, though Mr. Rutledge, and not the kind Kitty, inspired the hauteur. Mrs. Roberts made us a call soon after this, and said it was high time I went to bed, and told Kitty sharply, she knew it was her work, keeping me up so long, and hurried up the preparations for retiring, with energy. Kitty looked saucy, but did not dare to rebel, and only indulged in defiance after the door was closed behind the intruder. She again returned, however, on a final tour of inspection, after I was comfortably arranged in the fair white delicious bed, that seemed to be a special partner of tired nature's sweet restorer, who was good for any amount on its demand. She "poked in every corner" as Kitty expressed it, and found a dozen things to object to in her arrangements, pulled open drawers, and set Kitty poutingly at work to settle them properly, and made my temples throb again with alarm lest she should find something objectionable among my clothes, some rent in my school frock, or an undarned stocking smuggled through the vigilant scrutiny of last week's wash. She sent Kitty for her mattress and blankets, and superintended the arrangement of them, though I could see she did not enter cordially into the plan; but as Mr.

Rutledge had ordered that Kitty should sleep beside me, I was sure she would not dare to oppose it.

At last there was no excuse for a longer tarry, and she withdrew; Kitty, with a triumphant gesture, slid the bolt upon her, and we "settled our brains for a long winter's nap." A nap not altogether uninterrupted on my part, by troubled dreams, and sudden starts, and foolish fears; but my waking was always met by Kitty's ready care and soothing sympathy; and toward morning quieted into a long refreshing sleep.

CHAPTER III.

"O Time! thou must untangle this, not I, 'Tis too hard a knot for me to untie."

When I awoke, it was to the pleasant reality of morning and sunshine, that had found their way through the light curtains of my pleasant room, and made it pleasanter than ever. Kitty was at my side in an instant, and a brighter fresher face to greet one's waking vision could not be desired. She managed, by prompt and clever measures, to keep off Mrs.

Roberts till I had had my breakfast, and risen and been dressed. It was matter of great astonishment to me to find myself so absurdly weak, my strength and spirits at school having pa.s.sed into a proverb. This sudden illness had reduced me extremely, however, as I found whenever I attempted any exertion, and all Kitty's services were required.

While she was dressing me, she chatted very confidentially, though always with a tone of deference that counterbalanced the liberty she took in talking at all. Our distaste for Mrs. Roberts was potent in putting us on as good terms as young lady and young lady's maid could well be, and there is a sort of freemasonry in youth that sets at defiance the restrictions of rank, and that drew us, the two youngest things in the stately old house, together, naturally and irresistibly.

I call it an old house, because it impressed me at first as such. It was solid and dark, and excepting my room and one or two others on the same floor, had very little that was light and modern-looking about it. It had been built, Kitty said, in the time of Mr. Rutledge's father, and was called the finest house in the country. Loads of money, she informed me, he had spent upon it; workmen had been sent for, hundreds of miles, to do the carving and paint the walls, and no money and no labor was spared to make it a fine place, and indeed there was none like it anywhere around; and now to think of its being shut up like a prison half the year, and sometimes all the year; it was a shame, Kitty thought, upon her honor it was.

I asked her why Mr. Rutledge did not live there?

She did not know; she supposed it was lonesome; he never stayed home for over a couple of months, and then would be off, for no one knew how long. Sometimes he went to Europe, and was gone two or three years at a time. And such dull times as it was _then_ at Rutledge, if you please!

n.o.body but Mrs. Roberts, and the cook, and dairy-woman, besides the farm hands. Nothing to do but stand Mrs. Roberts' preaching from morning till night. She only wished she'd lived in the old times that her father talked about, when Rutledge was the gayest of the gay. (Her father, she explained, had been gardener there for thirty years, and had lived on the place from a boy.) Such fine doings! Ah! if Mr. Rutledge would only take it into his head to have such times now! It was when he was very young, and Mr. Richard and Miss Alice, and there was nothing but b.a.l.l.s and picnics and pleasure-parties all the time, company staying in the house, and visitors from the neighborhood for miles around. Ah! it was mighty different now!

"What has become of the others? Is Mr. Rutledge the only one left?"

Mr. Rutledge, Kitty told me, was the youngest of the three. Mr. Richard died when he was just twenty-four--a month after his father--and so Mr.

Rutledge came into the property when he was a mere lad.

"But the daughter, Alice, what became of her?"

"I don't know exactly," said Kitty, lowering her voice, and looking anxiously toward the door. "They never talk about her; something must have happened very strange, for there's always a mystery about Miss Alice. The old servants on the place will never say a word about her; and though I've teased father again and again, I never could get anything out of him."

"But, Kitty," I exclaimed eagerly, my curiosity thoroughly excited, "what makes you think she isn't dead?"

"Oh! that much I know, that she didn't die then, and that she didn't die at home in this house, and isn't buried there below in the churchyard by the others; and I know she was away when old Mr. Rutledge died; because once father said it was an awful thing, when he lay so ill, and out of his head, to hear him call upon her to come home. All that night before he died, he would call 'Alice! Alice!' till you could hear it all over the house. And father says," continued the girl, in a still lower tone, "that sometimes of wild dark nights, when he's coming past the house late from his work, he could swear for all the world that he hears the old man still calling 'Alice! Alice!' till it makes his blood freeze to listen to it. And then, when I say 'Where was she, father, all the time, and why didn't she come to him?' he always says, 'that's not for the like of you to hear about; it's none of your business, child, nor mine,'

and sends me off about something else."

"But, Kitty," I persisted, "is that all you know of her? Tell me all you've ever heard; was she pretty?"

"Oh, so pretty! You can't think how white her skin was, and her eyes like violets, so large and blue, and curls all over her head--loose, shiny curls."

"How do you know," I said quickly; "surely you never saw her, did you?"

Kitty blushed and stammered, and said, "No, not exactly; but there was something she had seen she'd never told anybody about; she didn't know whether she ought to;" but the result was, she at last imparted to me the following:

When Kitty was about twelve years old, it appeared, from her account, the demon of curiosity was stronger in her even than it was now, and her keen young eyes had detected long before that time, what had escaped many maturer observers, viz., that at the end of the upper hall there was a room, that was ignored in all descriptions of the house, and might well, indeed, have been overlooked. A huge wardrobe stood in the middle of the s.p.a.ce between the corner room on the east, and the corner room on the west, of the hall; and none but a very inquiring mind like Kitty's would have investigated the exact dimensions of these rooms, whether they met and were separated but by a part.i.tion, or whether a distinct room, the width of the hall, and corresponding to Mr. Rutledge's dressing-room at the opposite end, existed between them. Kitty crept down on the lawn and looked up on the outside, and discovered a large window, the shutters of which were closed and dusty; and on exploring the corner rooms, they corroborated her suspicions--they did not extend across the hall. Behind that wardrobe, Kitty knew, then, existed a door; and night and day the insane desire to penetrate beyond it, haunted the child.

At length, circ.u.mstances seemed to favor the fulfillment of her wishes.

It was a beautiful, mild May day, and the untiring energy of Mrs.

Roberts was enjoying a full swing in the pursuit of her favorite _divertiss.e.m.e.nt_ of house-cleaning. Doors and windows were thrown open; all manner of scouring and scrubbing was going on in all parts of the house. Step-ladders and water-pails graced the hall; the odor of soap-suds and lime filled the air. Serene amid the confusion, Mrs.

Roberts applied herself to the overlooking and rearranging the identical wardrobe in the hall, that had so long been the fascination and torment of little Kitty, who, it may well be supposed, was "on hand" during the operation. Demure and useful, she made herself very officious in a.s.sisting Mrs. Roberts in her labors, standing, for hours together, to be loaded with the heavy piles of rich old curtains from the shelves, faded long ago, and antiquated table-covers, heavy Ma.r.s.eilles coverlets, that must have made the sleepers of old time ache to turn over under; great packages folded up in linen, through the ends of which Kitty's eager eyes caught glimpses of satin and brocade, and the tarnished b.u.t.tons of military clothes. Kitty never thought of her aching arms, or her tired little feet; she never took her eyes away, and never lost a movement of Mrs. Roberts, nor a sight of anything before her; and after dinner, following like a kitten at the housekeeper's heels, came back to the fascinating business of disinterring the faded glories of the past.

By three o'clock, the shelves were all emptied and the drawers all taken out; and Mrs. Roberts was just beginning the important business of dusting and wiping them, and restoring their precious contents, when a man from the fields came posting up to the house in the greatest haste, with the intelligence that a pair of the farm-horses had run away, and done no end of damage to themselves and to the man who was driving them, who was now lying below the barn in a state of insensibility, and Mrs.

Roberts' a.s.sistance was instantly required. It was not a case that admitted of a demur, and the housekeeper bustled off, leaving Kitty with orders to stay where she was, and take care of the things left about till she came back, and, taking the only woman who was upstairs with her, left Kitty in possession of the field.

She did not mean to move the wardrobe, but it was so natural just to try how heavy it was, and if it would really stir! And to her surprise and guilty pleasure, the wardrobe, lightened of its weighty contents, yielded to her touch, and moved a little--a very little--way forward; but enough to show to her eager eyes, in the dark wood-work, a door, over which generations of painstaking spiders had spun their webs unchecked, and where the scourge of Mrs. Roberts' eye had failed, or feared to penetrate. Kitty, holding her breath for fear, turned the k.n.o.b; it resisted; it was locked, of course, possibly on the outside, and the key might have been taken out. An expedient struck the child's fertile brain; and she darted across the hall, and, possessing herself of the key of the corresponding room, darted back again and applied it to the lock. It fitted, and turned in it; the k.n.o.b yielded to her eager grasp, and, too near the completion of her wishes now to pause, she wound her lithe figure through the narrow aperture, and pushing open the door, stood within the mysterious room! For a moment, Kitty's heart beat quick; an awe crept over her; for a moment she longed to be out in the sunshine again. But her elastic spirits and indomitable curiosity soon triumphed over the transitory dread inspired by the darkness and solemnity of the deserted chamber, and the close, dead atmosphere, and the unearthly stillness; and, gaining courage every moment, she made her way, with what caution she might, toward the window, undid the fastening, and, pushing up a very little way the heavy sash, turned the blind, and let in a ray of G.o.d's blessed sunlight, dim and dull enough, though, through the dusty panes, into this strange room, deserted these many, many years, it would seem, both of G.o.d and man. Kitty was a bold child, little given to nervousness or timidity, or she would have shrunk in terror from the weird, fantastic shadows that the dim light showed about the room. But that was not Kitty's way; and, sitting down on a divan by the window, she rested her elbows on her knees and her chin upon her hands, in contemplative fashion, and proceeded to look about her.

What a strange sight it must have been! the slow sunbeam creeping over the faded carpet, and lighting up the dust-covered furniture and the dusky walls. Kitty's glance first turned, naturally enough, to the bed, which, richly curtained and s.p.a.cious, stood on the left of the door. The curtains were swept back and the bed was made, but it was apparent that some one had occupied it, lying on the outside; the pillows were displaced and crushed, and the coverlet was deranged. That, since the occupation of that _some one_, the room had never been arranged or touched, seemed evident, from the confusion and disorder that prevailed.

The door of the wardrobe on the right was partly open, and a dress was hanging out from it. A shawl, faded beyond recognition, hung upon the chair near Kitty, and at her feet lay a slipper--such a slim, pretty little slipper! while on the toilette table, you could have sworn, a hasty hand had just dropped the stopper in that odor-bottle, and pushed back the glove-box that stood open under the gla.s.s.

Pins rusted in the embroidered cushion; dust inch thick on the mirror and over all, told of a dreary s.p.a.ce since any human face had been reflected there. Upon a little table by the window stood a work-box and some books, and in a slender vase, the ghosts of some flowers that fell to dust at Kitty's touch. But what most excited her wonder, was a picture, that, with its face to the wall, was placed on the floor near the door. It evidently did not belong to the furniture of the room, and had been put there hastily, and to be out of the way. Kitty surveyed it from her seat curiously, and at last crept up to it, and turned it around, then slipping down on the carpet before it, was soon lost in admiration of the lovely face it presented to her.

The l.u.s.tre of the dark-blue eyes, and the delicate outline of the oval face, from which large wavy curls of fair hair were pushed back with girlish freedom, stamped themselves indelibly upon Kitty's retentive memory. It must have been an odd sight; the eager child, in that dark, uncanny room, upon her hands and knees before the picture, watching it in utter fascination, forgetful of the pa.s.sing moments, and of all save the sweet face so strangely banished from the light.

But the heavy shutting of the hall door, and the sound of voices in the hall below, put a sudden period to these fancies, and brought her to her feet with a desperate start and a pang of genuine fear. This was a tangible terror, and as such, Kitty's common sense succ.u.mbed to it. With nervous haste, she restored the picture, flew across the room and drew down the window, and made the best of her way back toward the door. But in her haste, her feet became entangled in something, and tripping up, in an instant she lay at full length on the floor. She disengaged her feet from the impediment that had caused her fall; it was a long ribbon, and a locket was attached to it; hastily thrusting them into her bosom, she picked herself up, and sprang toward the door. Steps were already mounting the stairs; a voice she knew too well was already audible; the unused lock grated and creaked cruelly under the nervous hands that struggled with it; but, with the strength of terror, she mastered it at last--locked it, dropped the key in her pocket, slipped through the narrow s.p.a.ce between the wall and the wardrobe, with an eager push restored the latter to its place, and before Mrs. Roberts reached the landing, stood, a pallid, trembling, but undetected culprit, among the piles of valuables she had been left to guard. The habitual darkness of that end of the hall, increased by the near approach of twilight, screened her white cheeks from the scrutiny of Mrs. Roberts' searching eyes, and the haste that lady was in to restore the wardrobe to its ancient and uninterrupted order, further favored her escape.

But she fully paid the penalty of her crime--she acknowledged, in the dread she felt lest it should be discovered, and the unaccustomed alarm she endured, when on dark nights, her ruthless mistress sent her candleless to bed; and she, with suspended breath and strained ear, would creep past the mysterious chamber to her own little loft above, to lie whole hours awake and trembling. Her fertile imagination had supplied the wanting links in the chain of fact; and the fair-haired Alice, the banished daughter of the house, was her dream of beauty by day and her haunting terror by night.

"But Kitty," I exclaimed, breathlessly, "does no one else know of the room? Does no one ever go in it?"

"Oh yes! Mrs. Roberts must know of it, for she lived here long before the present Mr. Rutledge was master; she knows all the family secrets, I'll warrant. But neither she nor any one else ever troubles _that_ room, I'm pretty sure. I've watched it close enough, and the wardrobe never has been stirred since that day I did it, six years ago last spring. Hardly any one goes to that end of the hall; the corner rooms are shut up and not used, and Mr. Rutledge's own rooms, and Mrs.

Roberts', and this one for visitors, being all on this side of the house, there's very little occasion for anybody to go near the others in the rear."

"What was in the locket you picked up?" I asked.

"It was a miniature, tied by a long narrow blue ribbon, and that night, when I got upstairs, I bolted the door and looked at it; it was the picture of a gentleman, young and so"----

CHAPTER IV.