The Green Door.

by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman.

Let.i.tia lived in the same house where her grandmother and her great-grandmother had lived and died. Her own parents died when she was very young, and she had come there to live with her Great-aunt Peggy. Her Great-aunt Peggy was her grandfather's sister, and was a very old woman. However, she was very active and bright, and good company for Let.i.tia. That was fortunate, because there were no little girls of Let.i.tia's age nearer than a mile. The one maid-servant whom Aunt Peggy kept was older than she, and had chronic rheumatism in the right foot and left shoulder-blade, which affected her temper.

Let.i.tia's Great-aunt Peggy used to play grace-hoops with her, and dominoes and checkers, and even dolls. Sometimes it was hard for Let.i.tia to realize that she was not another little girl. Her Aunt Peggy was very kind to her and fond of her, and took care of her as well as her own mother could have done. Let.i.tia had all the care and comforts and pleasant society that she really needed, but she was not a very contented little girl. She was naturally rather idle, and her Aunt Peggy, who was a wise old woman and believed thoroughly in the proverb about Satan and idle hands, would keep her always busy at something.

If she were not playing, she had to sew or study or dust, or read a stent in a story-book. Let.i.tia had very nice story-books, but she was not particularly fond of reading. She liked best of anything to sit quite idle, and plan what she would like to do if she could have her wish--and that her Aunt Peggy would not allow.

Let.i.tia was not satisfied with her dolls and little treasures. She wanted new ones. She wanted fine clothes like one little girl, and plenty of candy like another. When Let.i.tia went to school she always came home more dissatisfied. She wanted her room newly furnished, and thought the furniture in the whole house very shabby. She disliked to rise so early in the morning. She did not like to take a walk every day, and besides everything else to make her discontented, there was the little green door, which she must never open and pa.s.s through.

The house where Let.i.tia lived was, of course, a very old one. It had a roof, saggy and mossy, gray shingles in the walls, lilac bushes half hiding the great windows, and a well-sweep in the yard. It was quite a large house, and there were sheds and a great barn attached to it, but they were all on the side. At the back of the house the fields stretched away for acres, and there were no outbuildings. The little green door was at the very back of the house, toward the fields, in a room opening out of the kitchen. It was called the cheese-room, because Let.i.tia's grandmother, who had made cheeses, had kept them there. She fancied she could smell cheese, though none had been there for years, and it was used now only for a lumber-room. She always sniffed hard for cheese, and then she eyed the little green door with wonder and longing. It was a small green door, scarcely higher than her head. A grown person could not have pa.s.sed through without stooping almost double. It was very narrow, too, and no one who was not slender could have squeezed through it. In this door there was a little black keyhole, with no key in it, but it was always locked. Let.i.tia knew that her Aunt Peggy kept the key in some very safe place, but she would never show it to her, nor unlock the door.

"It is not best for you, my dear," she always replied, when Let.i.tia teased her; and when Let.i.tia begged only to know why she could not go out of the door, she made the same reply, "It is not best for you, my dear."

Sometimes, when Aunt Peggy was not by, Let.i.tia would tease the old maid-servant about the little green door, but she always seemed both cross and stupid, and gave her no satisfaction. She even seemed to think there was no little green door there; but that was nonsense, because Let.i.tia knew there was. Her curiosity grew greater and greater; she took every chance she could get to steal into the cheese-room and shake the door softly, but it was always locked. She even tried to look through the key-hole, but she could see nothing.

One thing puzzled her more than all, and that was that the little green door was on the inside of the house only, and not on the outside. When Let.i.tia went out in the field behind the house, there was nothing but the blank wall to be seen. There was no sign of a door in it. But the cheese-room was certainly the last room in the house, and the little green door was in the rear wall. When Let.i.tia asked her Great-aunt Peggy to explain that, she only got the same answer:

"It is not best for you to know, my dear."

Let.i.tia studied the little green door more than she studied her lesson-books, but she never got any nearer the solution of the mystery, until one Sunday morning in January. It was a very cold day, and she had begged hard to stay home from church. Her Aunt Peggy and the maid-servant, old as they were, were going, but Let.i.tia shivered and coughed a little and pleaded, and finally had her own way.

"But you must sit down quietly," charged Aunt Peggy, "and you must learn your texts, to repeat to me when I get home."

After Aunt Peggy and the old servant, in their great cloaks and bonnets and fur tippets, had gone out of the yard and down the road, Let.i.tia sat quiet for fifteen minutes or so, hunting in the Bible for easy texts; then suddenly she thought of the little green door, and wondered, as she had done so many times before, if it could possibly be opened. She laid down her Bible and stole out through the kitchen to the cheese-room and tried the door. It was locked just as usual.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Let.i.tia, and was ready to cry. It seemed to her that this little green door was the very worst of all her trials; that she would rather open that and see what was beyond than have all the nice things she wanted and had to do without.

Suddenly she thought of a little satin-wood box with a picture on the lid which Aunt Peggy kept in her top bureau-drawer. Let.i.tia had often seen this box, but had never been allowed to open it.

"I wonder if the key can be in that box," said she.

She did not wait a minute. She was so naughty that she dared not wait for fear she should remember that she ought to be good. She ran out of the cheese-room, through the kitchen and sitting-room, to her aunt's bedroom, and opened the bureau drawer, and then the satin-wood box. It contained some bits of old lace, an old brooch, a yellow letter, some other things which she did not examine, and, sure enough, a little black key on a green ribbon.

Let.i.tia had not a doubt that it was the key of the little green door.

She trembled all over, she panted for breath, she was so frightened, but she did not hesitate. She took the key and ran back to the cheese-room. She did not stop to shut the satin-wood box or the bureau drawer. She was so cold and her hands shook so that she had some difficulty in fitting the key into the lock of the little green door; but at last she succeeded, and turned it quite easily. Then, for a second, she hesitated; she was almost afraid to open the door; she put her hand on the latch and drew it back. It seemed to her, too, that she heard strange, alarming sounds on the other side.

Finally, with a great effort of her will, she unlatched the little green door, and flung it open and ran out.

Then she gave a scream of surprise and terror, and stood still staring. She did not dare stir nor breathe. She was not in the open fields which she had always seen behind the house. She was in the midst of a gloomy forest of trees so tall that she could just see the wintry sky through their tops. She was hemmed in, too, by a wide, hooping undergrowth of bushes and brambles, all stiff with snow.

There was something dreadful and ghastly about this forest, which had the breathless odor of a cellar. And suddenly Let.i.tia heard again those strange sounds she had heard before coming out, and she knew that they were savage whoops of Indians, just as she had read about them in her history-book, and she saw also dark forms skulking about behind the trees, as she had read.

Then Let.i.tia, wild with fright, turned to run back into the house through the little green door, but there was no little green door, and, more than that, there was no house. Nothing was to be seen but the forest and a bridle-path leading through it.

Let.i.tia gasped. She could not believe her eyes. She ran out into the path and down it a little way, but there was no house. The dreadful yells sounded nearer. She looked wildly at the undergrowth beside the path, wondering if she could hide under that, when suddenly she heard a gun-shot and the tramp of a horse's feet. She sprang aside just as a great horse, with a woman and two little girls on his back, came plunging down the bridle-path and pa.s.sed her. Then there was another gun-shot, and a man, with a wide cape flying back like black wings, came rushing down the path. Let.i.tia gave a little cry, and he heard her.

"Who are you?" he cried breathlessly. Then, without waiting for an answer, he caught her up and bore her along with him. "Don't speak,"

he panted in her ear. "The Indians are upon us, but we're almost home!"

Then all at once a log-house appeared beside the path, and someone was holding the door ajar, and a white face was peering out. The door was flung open wide as they came up, the man rushed in, set Let.i.tia down, shut the door with a crash, and shot some heavy bolts at top and bottom.

Let.i.tia was so dazed that she scarcely knew what happened for the next few minutes. She saw there a pale-faced woman and three girls, one about her own age, two a little younger. She saw, to her great amazement, the horse tied in the corner. She saw that the door was of mighty thickness, and, moreover, hasped with iron and studded with great iron nails, so that some rattling blows that were rained upon it presently had no effect. She saw three guns set in loopholes in the walls, and the man, the woman, and the girl of her own age firing them, with great reports which made the house quake, while the younger girls raced from one to the other with powder and bullets.

Still, she was not sure she saw right, it was all so strange. She stood back in a corner, out of the way, and waited, trembling, and at last the fierce yells outside died away, and the firing stopped.

"They have fled," said the woman with a thankful sigh.

"Yes," said the man, "we are delivered once more out of the hands of the enemy."

"We must not unbar the door or the shutters yet," said the woman anxiously. "I will get the supper by candle-light."

Then Let.i.tia realized what she had not done before, that all the daylight was shut out of the house; that they had for light only one tallow candle and a low hearth fire. It was very cold. Let.i.tia began to shiver with cold as well as fear.

Suddenly the woman turned to her with motherly kindness and curiosity. "Who is this little damsel whom you rescued, husband?"

said she.

"She must speak for herself," replied her husband, smiling. "I thought at first she was neighbor Adams's Phoebe, but I see she is not."

"What is your name, little girl?" asked the woman, while the three little girls looked wonderingly at the new-comer.

"Let.i.tia Hopkins," replied Let.i.tia in a small, scared voice.

"Let.i.tia Hopkins, did you say?" asked the woman doubtfully.

"Yes, ma'am."

They all stared at her, then at one another.

"It is very strange," said the woman finally, with a puzzled, half-alarmed look. "Let.i.tia Hopkins is my name."

"And it is mine, too," said the eldest girl.

Let.i.tia gave a great jump. There was something very strange about this. Let.i.tia Hopkins was a family name. Her grandmother, her father's mother, had been Let.i.tia Hopkins, and she had always heard that the name could be traced back in the same order for generations, as the Hopkinses had intermarried. She looked up, trembling, at the man who had saved her from the Indians.

"Will you please tell me your name, sir?" she said.

"John Hopkins," replied the man, smiling kindly at her.

"Captain John Hopkins," corrected his wife.

Let.i.tia gasped. That settled it. Captain John Hopkins was her great-great-great-grandfather. Great-aunt Peggy had often told her about him. He had been a notable man in his day, among the first settlers, and many a story concerning him had come down to his descendants. A queer miniature of him, in a little gilt frame, hung in the best parlor, and Let.i.tia had often looked at it. She had thought from the first that there was something familiar about the man's face, and now she recognized the likeness to the miniature.

It seemed awful, and impossible, but the little green door led into the past, and Let.i.tia Hopkins was visiting her great-great-great- grandfather and grandmother, great-great-grandmother, and her great-great-aunts.

Let.i.tia looked up in the faces, all staring wonderingly at her, and all of them had that familiar look, though she had no miniature of the others. Suddenly she knew that it was a likeness to her own face which she recognized, and it was as if she saw herself in a looking-gla.s.s. She felt as if her head was turning round and round, and presently her feet began to follow the motion of her head, then strong arms caught her, or she would have fallen.

When Let.i.tia came to herself again, she was in a great feather bed, in the unfinished loft of the log-house. The wind blew in her face, a great star shone in her eyes. She thought at first she was out of doors. Then she heard a kind but commanding voice repeating: "Open your mouth," and stared up wildly into her great-great-great-grandmother's face, then around the strange little garret, lighted with a wisp of rag in a pewter dish of tallow, and the stars shining through the crack in the logs. Not a bit of furniture was there in the room, besides the bed and an oak chest.

Some queer-looking garments hung about on pegs and swung in the draughts of the wind. It must have been snowing outside, for little piles of snow were scattered here and there about the room.