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_Lucy_ was written by Walter de la Mare
(1873-1956), and was included in his _Collected Stories for Children_ (1947).

Title: Collected Stories for Children -- Lucy
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
Date of first publication: 1947
Place and date of edition used as base for this ebook:
   London: Faber & Faber, 1962 (reprint of 1957 edition)
Date first posted: 10 November 2008
Date last updated: 10 November 2008
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #196

This ebook was produced by: David T. Jones, Mark Akrigg
& the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                               Lucy

by Walter de la Mare (from his _Collected Stories for Children_) [1947]


Once upon a time there were three sisters, the Misses MacKnackery--or,
better still, the Miss MacKnackeries. They lived in a large, white,
square house called Stoneyhouse; and their names were Euphemia,
Tabitha, and Jean Elspeth. They were known over Scotland for miles and
miles, from the Tay to the Grampians--from the Tay to the Grumpy Ones,
as a cousin who did not like Euphemia and Tabitha used to say.

Stoneyhouse had been built by the Miss MacKnackeries's grandfather,
Mr. Angus MacKnackery, who, from being a poor boy with scarcely a
bawbee in his breeches pocket, had risen up to be a wealthy
manufacturer of the best Scotch burlap, which is a kind of sacking. He
made twine, too, for tying up parcels. He would have made almost
anything to make money. But at last, when he was sixty-six, he felt he
would like to be a gentleman living in the country with a large garden
to walk about in, flowers in beds, cucumbers in frames, pigs in sties,
and one or two cows for milk, cream, and butter.

So he sold his huge, smoky works and warehouse, and all the twine and
burlap, hemp, jute, and whalebone still in it, for 80,000. With this
80,000 he built Stoneyhouse, purchased some fine furniture and some
carriages and horses, and invested what was over.

Jean Elspeth, when she was learning sums, and when she had come to
Interest--having sometimes heard her father and mother speak of her
grandfather and of his fortune, and how he had _invested_ it--just to
please her governess, Miss Gimp, thought she would make a sum of it.
So she wrote down in her rather straggly figures in an exercise book:


80,000 @ 4 per centum per annum
= 80,000 x 4  100 = 3,200.

It was the first really enjoyable sum she had ever done. And yet Miss
Gimp was a little put about when Jean Elspeth showed it to her father.
Still, Mr. MacKnackery, senior, had been a really rich man, and
regretted that the gentleman who bought his factory could never
afterwards make such fine burlap as himself, nor even such durable
twine.

He lived to be eighty, and then he died, leaving his money to his son,
Robert Duncan Donald David, Jean Elspeth's father. And when _he_ died,
his dear wife Euphemia Tabitha being dead too, he left all that was
over of the 80,000 (for, alas and alas! he had lost a good part of
it) to his three daughters: Euphemia, Tabitha, and Jean Elspeth.

When Jean Elspeth was old enough to breakfast with the family in the
big dining-room with the four immense windows, she used to sit
opposite the portraits of her grandfather, her father, and her mother.
They hung in heavy handsome gilt frames on the wall opposite the
windows. And while in her high chair she gobbled up her porridge--and
gobbled it up quickly, not so much because she liked it as because she
hated being put in the corner for not eating it--she would sit and
look at them.

Her grandfather's was by far the largest of the three portraits, and
it hung in the very middle of the lofty wall, under the moulded
ceiling. He was a stout and imposing man, with bushy whiskers and cold
bright blue eyes. The thumb and first finger of his right hand held a
fine thick Albert watch-chain, which the painter had painted so
skilfully that you could see it was eighteen-carat gold at a single
glance. So he hung: for ever boldly staring down on his own great
dining-room and all that was in it--yet not appearing to enjoy it very
much.

What was more, her grandfather always looked exactly as if he were on
the point of taking out his watch to see the time; and Jean Elspeth
had the odd notion that, if he ever did succeed in so doing, its hands
would undoubtedly point to a quarter to twelve. But she could no more
have told you why, than she could tell you why she used to count each
spoonful of her porridge, or why she felt happier when the last
spoonful was an odd number.

The portrait of her father was that of a man much less stout and
imposing than her grandfather. He was dark, and smiling, and he had no
whiskers. And Jean Elspeth had loved him dearly. Every morning when
she had finished her breakfast (and if nobody was looking) she would
give a tiny little secret wave of the spoon towards him, as if he
might be pleased at seeing her empty plate.

On the other side of her grandfather's portrait hung a picture of her
mother. And the odd thing about this picture was that, if you looked
long enough, you could not help seeing--as if it were almost the ghost
of Jean Elspeth--her very own small face, peeping out of the paint at
you, just like a tiny little green marmoset out of a cage all to
itself in the Zoo. Jean Elspeth had discovered this when she was only
seven; but Euphemia and Tabitha had never noticed it at all.

They knew they were far less like their mother (who had been a Miss
Reeks MacGillicuddy of Kelso) than their grandfather. Still they were
exceedingly proud of _that_. As for Jean Elspeth, they didn't think
she was like any of the family at all. Indeed, Euphemia had more than
once remarked that Jean Elspeth had 'nae deegnity', and Tabitha that
'she micht jist as weel ha' been a changeling'. Even now, when they
were elderly ladies, they always treated her as if she were still not
very far from being a child, though, after all, Jean Elspeth was only
five years younger than Tabitha.

But then, how different she was in looks! For while Tabitha had a long
pale face a little like a unicorn's, with mouse-coloured hair and
green-grey eyes, Jean Elspeth was dark and small, with red in her
cheek and a tip to her nose. And while Tabitha's face changed very
little, Jean Elspeth's was like a dark little glancing pool on an
April morning. Sometimes it looked almost centuries older than either
of her sisters', and then, again, sometimes it looked simply no age at
all.

It depended on what she was doing--whether she was sitting at seven
o'clock dinner on Great Occasions, when the Bults, and the McGaskins,
and Dr. Menzies were guests, or merely basking idly in the sunshine at
her bedroom window. Jean Elspeth would sometimes, too, go wandering
off by herself over the hills a mile or two away from the house. And
_then_ she looked not a minute older than looks a harebell, or a
whinchat, perched with his white eyebrow on a fuzz-bush near a
lichenous half-hidden rock among the heather.

However sad, too, she looked, she never looked grim. And even though
(at dinner parties) she parted her hair straight down the middle, and
smoothed the sides over as sleek as satin, she simply could not look
what is called 'superior'. Besides, she had lips that were the colour
of cherries, and curious quick hands that she was sometimes compelled
to clasp together lest they should talk even more rapidly than her
tongue.

Now in Stoneyhouse nobody--except perhaps the tweeny-maid and the
scullery-maid, Sally and Nancy McGullie, who were cousins--ever talked
_much_. It was difficult even to tell exactly how wise and sagacious
and full of useful knowledge Euphemia and Tabitha were, simply because
except at meals they so seldom opened their mouths. And never to sing.

This, perhaps, was because it is impossible to keep order if
everybody's tongue keeps wagging. It wastes time, too; for only very
few people can work hard and talk hard both at the same moment. And in
Stoneyhouse everything was in apple-pie order (except the beds), and
nobody ever wasted _any_ time (except kissing-time).

And yet, although time was never wasted, nobody seemed to be very much
the better off for any that was actually 'saved'. Nobody had ever
managed to pack some of it up in neat brown-paper parcels, or to put
it in a bank as Mr. MacKnackery, senior, had put his money, or to pour
it into jars like home-made jam. It just went. And in Stoneyhouse
(until, at least, Euphemia one morning received a certain letter) it
went very very slowly. The big hands of its clocks seemed to be
envious of the little ones. They crept like shadows. And between their
'tick' and their 'tock' at times yawned a huge hole, as dark as a
cellar. So, at least, Jean Elspeth fancied.

One glance at Stoneyhouse, even from the outside, would tell you how
orderly it was. The four high white walls, with their large square
slate roof fixed firmly on top of them, stood stiff as bombardiers on
extremely solid foundations, and they on even solider rock. No tree
dared cast a shadow upon them, no creeper crept. The glossy windows,
with their straight lines of curtains behind them, just stared down on
you as if they said, 'Find the faintest speck or smear or flaw in us
if you can!' And you hadn't the courage even to try.

It was just so inside. Everything was frozen in its place. Not only
the great solid pieces of furniture which Mr. MacKnackery had
purchased with his burlap money--wardrobes, coffers, presses,
four-posters, highboys, sideboards, tables, sofas, and oak chairs--but
even all the little things, bead-mats, foot-stools, candle-snuffers,
boot-trees, ornaments, knick-knacks, Euphemia's silks and Tabitha's
water-colours. There was a place for everything, and everything was in
its place. Yes, and it was kept there.

_Except_ in Jean Elspeth's room. She had never never learned to be
tidy, not even in her sums. She was constantly taking things out, and
either forgetting to put them away again or putting them away again in
their wrong places. And do you suppose she blamed herself for this?
Not at all. When she lost anything and had been looking for it for
hours and hours--a book, or a brooch, or a ribbon, or a shoe--she
would say to herself, laughing all over, 'Well now, there! That _Lucy_
must have hidden it!' And presently _there_ it would be, right in the
middle of her dressing-table or under a chair, as if a moment before
it had been put back there; just for fun.

And who was this '_Lucy_'? There couldn't be a more difficult
question; and Jean Elspeth had never attempted to answer it. It was
one of those questions she never even asked herself. At least, not out
loud. This, perhaps, was because she hated the thought of hurting
anybody's feelings. As if Lucy...but never mind!

It was Lucy, at any rate, who so unfortunately came into that dreadful
talk over the porridge on the morning when the fatal letter came to
Euphemia. It arrived just like any other letter. The butler, with his
mouth as closely shut as usual, had laid it beside Euphemia's plate.
Judging from its large white envelope, nobody could possibly have
thought it was as deadly as a poison and sharper than a serpent's
tooth. Euphemia opened it, too, just as usual--with her long, lean
forefinger, and her eyebrows lifted a little under her grey front of
hair. Then she read it--and turned to ice.

It was from her lawyer, or rather from her Four Lawyers, for they all
shared the same office, and at the foot of the letter one of them had
signed all their four names. It was a pitch-black letter--a
thunderbolt. It said at the beginning that the Miss MacKnackeries must
expect in future to be a little less well off than they had been in
the past, and it said at the end that they were ruined.

You see, Euphemia's grandfather had lent what remained of his 80,000
(after building his great mansion) to the British Government, for the
use of the British nation. The British Government of that day put the
money into what were called the Consolidated Funds. And to show how
much obliged they were to Mr. MacKnackery for the loan of it, they
used every year to pay him interest on it--so many shillings for every
hundred pounds. Not so much as 4 per annum, as Jean Elspeth had put
down in her sum, but as much as they could afford--and that was at
least 1,000,000 bawbees. There couldn't have been a safer money-box;
nor could Mr. MacKnackery's income have 'come in' more regularly if it
had come in by clockwork. So far the British Government resembled
Stoneyhouse itself.

But the Miss MacKnackeries's father was not only a less imposing man
than their grandfather, he had been much less careful of his money. He
enjoyed _helping_ the nation to use the Funds. He delighted in
_buying_ things and giving presents, and the more he bought the more
he wanted to buy. So he had gradually asked for his money back from
the British Government, spending most of it and lending the rest to
persons making railways and gasworks in foreign parts, and digging up
gold and diamonds, and making scent out of tar, and paint which they
said would never wear off or change colour, and everything like that.

These persons paid him for helping them like this a good deal more
than the Consolidated Funds could pay him. But then gasworks are not
always so _safe_ as the British nation. It is what is called a
speculation to lend gentlemen money to help them to dig up diamonds or
to make waterworks in Armenia, which means that you cannot be
perfectly sure of getting it back again. Often and often, indeed, the
Miss MacKnackeries's father had not got _his_ money back again.

And now--these long years after his death--the worst had befallen. The
Four Lawyers had been suddenly compelled to tell the Miss
MacKnackeries that nearly every bit left of their grandfather's
savings was gone; that their solid gold had vanished like the glinting
mists of a June morning. They had for some time been accustomed to
growing less and less rich; but that's a very different thing from
becoming alarmingly poor. It is the difference between a mouse with a
fat nugget of cheese and a mouse with a bread-crumb.

Euphemia, before opening the letter, had put on her pince-nez. As she
read, the very life seemed to ebb out of her poor old face, leaving it
cold and grey. She finished it to the last word, then with a trembling
hand took the glasses off her nose and passed the letter to Tabitha.
Tabitha could still read without spectacles. Her light eyes angled
rapidly to and fro across the letter, then she, too, put it down, her
face not pale, but red and a little swollen. 'It is the end,
Euphemia,' she said.

Jean Elspeth was sitting that morning with her back to the portraits,
and at the moment was gently munching a slice of dry toast and Scotch
marmalade (made by the Miss MacKnackeries's cook, Mrs. O'Phrump). She
had been watching a pied wagtail flitting after flies across the
smooth shorn lawn on the white stone terrace. Then her gaze had
wandered off to the blue outline of the lovely distant hills, the
Grumpy Ones, and her mind had slid into a kind of day-dream.

Into the very middle of this day-dream had broken the sound of
Tabitha's words, 'It is the end, Euphemia'; and it was as if a trumpet
had sounded.

She looked round in dismay, and saw her sisters, Euphemia and Tabitha,
sitting there in their chairs at the table, as stiff and cold as
statues of stone. Not only this, which was not so very unusual, but
they both of them looked extremely unwell. _Then_ she noticed the
letter. And she knew at once that this must be the serpent that had
suddenly bitten her sisters' minds. The blood rushed up into her
cheeks, and she said--feeling more intensely sorry for them both than
she could possibly express--'Is there anything wrong, Euphemia?'

And Euphemia, in a voice Jean Elspeth would certainly not have
recognized if she had heard it from outside the door, replied, 'You
may well ask it.' And then in a rush Jean Elspeth remembered her
strange dream of the night before and at once went blundering on:
'Well, you know, Euphemia, I had a dream last night, all dark and
awful, and, in it, _there_ was _Lucy_ looking out of a crooked stone
window over some water. And she said to me----'

But Tabitha interrupted her: 'I think, Elspeth, neither myself nor
Euphemia at this moment wishes to hear what Lucy, as you call her,
said in your dream. We have received exceedingly bad news this
morning, that very closely concerns not only Tabitha and me, but even
yourself also. And this is _no_ time for frivolity.' And it sounded
even more tragic in her Scots tongue.

Jean Elspeth had not meant to be frivolous. She had hoped merely, and
if but for a moment, to turn her sisters' minds away from this
dreadful news that had come with the postman, and to explain what her
dream had seemed to promise. But no. It was just her way. Whenever she
said anything to anyone--anything that came from the very bottom of
her heart--she always made a muddle of it. It sounded as small and
meaningless as the echo of a sparrow's cheeping against a bare stone
wall. They would look at her out of their green-grey eyes, down their
long pale noses, with an expression either grim or superior, or both.
Of course, too, at such a moment, any mention of Lucy was a dreadfully
silly mistake. Even at the best of times they despised Jean Elspeth
for her 'childishness'. What must they think of her now!

For there never was and there never could be any _real_ Lucy. It was
only a name. And yet Jean Elspeth still longed to find _some_ word of
hope or comfort that would bring back a little colour into poor
Euphemia's cheeks, and make her look a little less like an image in
marble. But no word came. She had even failed to hear what her sisters
were saying. At last she could bear herself no longer.

'I am sure, Euphemia, that you would like to talk the letter over with
Tabitha in quiet, and that you will tell me if I can be of any help. I
think I will go out into the garden.'

Euphemia bowed her head. And though, by trying to move with as little
noise as possible, Jean Elspeth made her heavy chair give a loud
screech on the polished floor, she managed to escape at last.

It was a cold, clear, spring morning, and the trees in the distance
were now tipped with their first green buds. The gardeners were
already mapping out their rows of plants in the 'arbaceous borders',
in preparation for the summer. There never was a garden 'kept' so
well. The angles of the flower-beds on the lawn--diamonds and
lozenges, octagons, squares, and oblongs--were as sharp as if they had
been cut out of cardboard with a pair of scissors. Not a blade of
grass was out of place.

If even one little round pebble pushed up a shoulder in the gravel
path, up came a vast cast-iron roller and ground him back into his
place. As for a weed, let but one poke its little green bonnet above
the black mould, it would soon see what happened.

The wide light from the sky streamed down upon the house, and every
single window in the high white wall of it seemed to be scornfully
watching Jean Elspeth as she made her way down to a little straight
green seat under the terrace. Here, at least, she would be out of
their sight.

She sat down, folded her hands in her lap, and looked straight in
front of her. She always so sat when she was in trouble. In vain she
tried to compose and fix her mind and to _think_. It was impossible.
For she had not been there more than a moment or two before her heart
knew that Lucy was haunting somewhere close beside her. So close and
so much on purpose, it seemed, that it was almost as if she wanted to
whisper something in her ear....

Now it has been said that Lucy was only a name. Yet, after all, she
was a little more than that. Years and years ago, when Jean Elspeth
was only seven, she had 'sort of' made Lucy up. It was simply because
there was no one else to play with, for Tabitha was five years older,
and at least fifty-five times more sensible and intelligent and
grown-up. So Jean Elspeth had pretended.

In those days she would sometimes sit on one flowerpot on the long hot
or windy terrace, and she would put another flowerpot for Lucy. And
they would talk, or rather she would talk, and Lucy would look. Or
sometimes they sat together in a corner of the great bare nursery. And
sometimes Jean Elspeth would pretend she was holding Lucy's hand when
she fell asleep.

And the really odd thing was that the less in those days she tried to
'pretend', the more often Lucy came. And though Jean Elspeth had never
seen her with what is called her naked eye, she must have seen her
with some other kind of eye, for she knew that her hair and skin were
fairer than the fairest of flax, and that she was dressed in very
light and queer-fashioned clothes, though she could not say _how_
queer.

Another odd thing was that Lucy always seemed to appear without
warning entirely out of nothing, and entirely of herself, when
anything mysterious or unexpected or sad or very beautiful happened,
and sometimes just before it happened. That had been why she told
Euphemia of her dream of the night before. For though everything else
in the dream had been dark and dismal, and the water had roared
furiously over its rocks, breaking into foam like snow, and Jean
Elspeth had been shaken with terror, Lucy herself appearing at the
window had been more beautiful than moonlight and as consoling as a
star.

It was a pity, of course, that Jean Elspeth had ever even so much as
mentioned Lucy at all. But that had been years and years ago, and then
she could not really help doing so. For Tabitha had crept up behind
her one morning--it was on her eighth birthday--while she herself was
sitting in a corner by the large cupboard, with her back to the
nursery door, and had over-heard her talking to someone.

'Aha! little Miss Toad-in-the-hole! So here you are! And who are _you_
talking to?' Tabitha had asked.

Jean Elspeth had turned cold all over. 'Nobody,' she said.

'Oh, Nobody, is it? Then you just tell me, Madam Skulker, Nobody's
name!'

And Jean Elspeth had refused. Unfortunately, she had been wearing that
morning a high-waisted frock, with sleeves that came down only to the
elbow, and though Tabitha, with nips and pinches of her bare skinny
arm, could not make Jean Elspeth cry, she had at least made her tell.

'Oh, so its name's Lucy, is it?' said Tabitha. 'You horrid little
frump. Then you tell her from me that if _I_ catch her anywhere about,
I'll scratch her eyes out.'

After another pinch or two, and a good 'ring-of-the-bells' at Jean
Elspeth's plait, Tabitha had gone downstairs to her father.

'Papa,' she said, 'I am sorry to interrupt you, but I think poor
Elspeth must be ill or in a fever. She is "rambling". Had we better
give her some Gregory's powder, or some castor-oil, do you think?'

Mr. MacKnackery had been worried that morning by a letter about a Gold
Mine, something like that which poor Euphemia so many years afterwards
was to receive from the Four Lawyers. But when _he_ was worried he at
once tried to forget his worry. Indeed, even at sight of what looked
like an ugly letter, he would begin softly whistling and smiling. So
it was almost with a sigh of relief that he pushed the uncomfortable
letter into a drawer and climbed the stairs to the nursery.

And when Jean Elspeth, after crying a little as she sat on his knee,
had told him about Lucy, he merely smiled out of his dark eyes, and,
poking his finger and thumb into a waistcoat pocket, had pulled out,
just as if it had been waiting there especially for this occasion, a
tiny little gold locket with a picture of a moss-rose inside, which he
asked Jean Elspeth to give to Lucy the very next time she came again.
'My dear,' he had said, 'I have my Lucy, too, though I never, never
talk about her. I keep her "for best".'

As for Tabitha, he thanked her most gratefully that morning at
luncheon for having been so thoughtful about her sister. 'But I fear,
my child,' he said, 'you must be fretting yourself without need. And
for fretting there is nothing so good as Gregory's powder. So I have
asked Alison to mix a good dose for you at bed-time, and if you are
very generous, perhaps Jenny would like to lick the spoon.'

The very moment he turned his face away, with as dreadful a grimace as
she could manage, Tabitha had put out her long pale tongue at Jean
Elspeth--which was about as much use as it would have been to put out
her tongue for their old doctor, Dr. Menzies--_after_ he had gone out
of the room....

Even now, years and years after she had become completely grown up,
whenever Jean Elspeth thought of those far-away times she always began
wool-gathering. And whenever she began wool-gathering Lucy was sure
to seem more real to her than at any other time. The gravel path, the
green lawn, the distant hills vanished away before her eyes. She was
lost as if in a region of light and happiness. There she was happy to
be lost. But spattering raindrops on her cheeks soon called her back
to herself. A dark cloud had come over the world, and for the first
time a foreboding came into her mind of what Euphemia's letter might
really mean.

She turned sharply on the little green seat almost as if she had been
caught trespassing. And at that instant she could have vowed that she
actually saw--this time with her real naked eye--a child standing and
looking at her a few paces beyond. It could not have been so, of
course; but what most surprised Jean Elspeth was that there should be
such a peculiar smile on the child's face--as if she were saying:
'Never mind, my dear. Whatever happens, whatever they say, I promise
to be with you more than _ever_ before. You just see!'

And then, for the very first time in her life, Jean Elspeth felt
ashamed of Lucy; and then, still more ashamed of being ashamed. When
they were all in such trouble, was it quite fair to Euphemia and
Tabitha? She actually went so far as to turn away in the opposite
direction and would have hastened straight back to the house if, at
that moment, she had not heard a small, curious fluttering behind her.
She glanced swiftly over her shoulder, but it was to find only that a
robin had stolen in on her to share her company, and was now eyeing
her with his bead-black eye from his perch on the green seat which she
had just vacated.

And now, of course, there was no Lucy. Not a trace. She had been
'dismissed'--would never come back.

For lunch that day the butler carried in a small soup-tureen of
porridge. When he had attended to each of the ladies, and had
withdrawn, Euphemia explained to Jean Elspeth precisely what the
lawyers' letter meant. It was a long letter, not only about the
gentlemen who had failed to find water enough for their waterworks in
Armenia, but also about some other gentlemen in Madagascar whose crops
of manioc and caoutchouc had been seized with chor-blight. Jean
Elspeth did not quite grasp the details; she did not quite understand
why the lawyers had ever taken such a fancy to caoutchouc; but she did
perfectly understand Euphemia's last sentence: 'So you see, Elspeth,
we--that is Us--are ruined!'

And would you believe it? Once more Jean Elspeth said the wrong thing.
Or rather it was her voice that was wrong. For far away in it was the
sound as of a bugle rejoicing at break of day. 'And does that mean,
Euphemia, that we shall have to _leave_ Stoneyhouse?'

'It means,' said Tabitha tartly, 'that Stoneyhouse may have to leave
_us_.'

'In either case we are powerless,' added Euphemia. And the tone in
which Euphemia uttered these words--sitting there straight and erect,
with her long white face, in her sleek grey silk morning-gown with its
pattern of tiny mauve flowers--brought tears, not to Jean Elspeth's
eyes, but to somewhere deep down inside her. It was as if somebody was
drawing water out of the very well of her heart.

'It is the _disgrace_,' said Tabitha. 'To have to turn our backs, to
run away. We shall be the talk, the laughing-stock of the county.'

'What! Laugh at us because we are ruined!' cried Jean Elspeth.

But this time Tabitha ignored her. 'This is the house,' she said, 'our
noble grandfather built for us. And here I will die, unless I am
positively driven out of it by these systematic blood-suckers.'

'Tabitha!' pleaded Euphemia. 'Surely we should not demean ourselves so
far as even to call them by their right name.'

'Systematic blood-suckers,' cried Tabitha fiercely. 'I will sell the
very rings off my fingers rather than be an exile from the house where
I was born. And _he_--_he_ at least shall never witness the ruin into
which our father's folly has betrayed us.'

She rose from the table, and mounting one of the expensive damask
chairs that, unless guests were present, were accustomed to stand in a
stately row along the wall, she succeeded, after one or two vain
attempts, in turning the immense gilt-framed portrait of her
grandfather with its face to the wall.

Then tears really came into Jean Elspeth's eyes. But they were tears
of anger rather than of pity. 'I think,' she said, 'that is being
dreadfully unkind to Father.'

'By this time,' said Tabitha sternly, 'I should have supposed that you
would have given up the notion that you are capable of "thinking".
What right have you to defend your father, pray, simply because you
take after him?'

Jean Elspeth made no answer. Her father at any rate continued to smile
at her from _his_ nail--though it was not a very good portrait,
because the painter had been unable to get the hair and the waistcoat
quite right. And if--even at this unhappy moment--Jean Elspeth had had
her porridge spoon in her hand, she would certainly have given it a
little secret wave in his direction.

But he was not to smile down for very long. The Miss MacKnackeries's
grandfather continued to hang with his face to the wall. But the two
other portraits, together with the wardrobes, coffers, presses,
sideboards, bead-mats, samplers, and even the Indian workboxes, were
all taken off in a few weeks, to be sold for what they would fetch.
And Euphemia now, instead of five, wore but one ring, and that of
turquoises.

In a month all the servants, from the butler to Sally McGullie, and
all the gardeners were gone. Mrs. O'Phrump alone remained--first
because she was too stout to be likely to be comfortable in any new
place, and next, because she wasn't greedy about wages. That was all.
Just Mrs. O'Phrump and the gardener's boy, Tom Piper, whose mother
lived in the village, and who slept at home. But he was a lazy boy,
was Tom Piper, and when he was not fast asleep in the tool-shed, he
was loafing in the deserted orchard.

Nevertheless, it was from this moment that Jean Elspeth seemed to have
become completely alive.

It was extraordinary to find herself so much herself in so empty a
house. The echoes! Why, if you but walked alone along a corridor, you
heard your own footsteps pit-a-pattering after you all the way down.
If by yourself, in 'your ain, ain companie,' you but laughed out in a
room, it was like being the muffled clapper of a huge hollow bell. All
Stoneyhouse seemed endlessly empty now; and perhaps the emptiest
place of all was the coach-house.

And then the stables. It was simply astonishing how quickly stray
oats, that had fallen by chance into the crannies, sprang up green
among the cobble-stones in front of their walls. And if for a little
while you actually stood in the stables beside one of the empty
mangers, the call of a bird was as shrill as early cock-crow. And you
could almost see ghostly horses with their dark eyes looking round at
you out of their long narrow heads, as if to say: 'So this is what you
have done for us!'

Not that Jean Elspeth had very much time to linger over such little
experiences. No; and she seemed to have grown even smaller in the
empty house. But she was ten times more active. And, though she tried
not to be selfish by showing it, she was more than ten times happier.
Between Jean Elspeth herself and the eagle-surmounted gateposts,
indeed, she now secretly confessed that she had always hated
Stoneyhouse. How very odd, then, that the moment it ceased to be a
place in which _any_ fine personage would be proud to be offered a
pillow, she began to be friends with it. She began to pity it.

No doubt Tabitha was right. Their grandfather would assuredly have
'turned in his grave', poor creature, at the sound of those enormous
vans, those hideous pantechnicons, as their wheels ground down the
gravel in the lingering twilight evenings. And yet, after all, that
grandfather had been born--a fact that very much shocked Tabitha,
whenever her father had smilingly related it--their grandfather had
been born in a two-roomed cottage so cramped that, if only you could
have got it through the window, it would have fitted quite comfortably
even into the breakfast-room of the great house he had lived to build.

Then there had been not two bawbees in his breeches pocket,
and--having been such a good man, as both Euphemia and Tabitha--agreed
he did not need a bawbee now. _Would_ he then--once the pantechnicons
were out of the way--would he, thought Jean Elspeth, have been so very
miserable to see all this light and sunshine in the house and to
listen to these entrancing echoes.

There were other advantages, too. It was easy to sweep the dining-room
now; and much easier to dust it. And one day, more out of kindness
than curiosity, after busily whisking over its gilt frame with her
feather cornice-broom, Jean Elspeth climbed on to a chair, and,
tilting it, looked in at the portrait. A spider had spun its web in
one corner, but otherwise (it was almost disappointing) the picture
was unchanged. Nor had Mr. MacKnackery yet taken his watch out of his
pocket, even though (for his three granddaughters at any rate) the
time was now--well, a good way past a quarter to twelve.

Jean Elspeth had had ridiculous thoughts like these as long as she
could remember. But now they came swarming into her head like
midsummer bees into a hive. Try as she might, she could not keep them
all to herself, and though on this account alone Tabitha seemed to
dislike her more than ever, Euphemia seemed sometimes to wish for her
company. But then Euphemia was by no means well. She had begun to
stoop a little, and sometimes did not hear what was said to her. To
watch her visibly grow older like this gave Jean Elspeth dreadful
anxiety. Still, in most things--and she all but said it out loud every
morning at her first early look out of her upper window--she was far
happier than when Stoneyhouse stood in all its glory. It seemed rather
peculiar, but it was true.

Also, there was no time to be anything else; and even if there had
been a complete cupboard _full_ of neat packages of time _saved_, she
would have used them all up in a week. Euphemia, being so poorly, did
very little. She helped to make the beds and with the mending. Only
the mending, for, fortunately, the making of any new clothes would be
unnecessary for years and years to come; they had so many old ones.
Tabitha did what she could manage of the lighter work, but although
she had a quick tongue, she had slow, clumsy hands. And it is quite
certain, though nobody, naturally, would have been so unkind as to say
so, that she would never have got even as low wages as Sally McGullie,
if she had been in need of a place.

Mrs. O'Phrump did the cooking; but sat on a chair in the kitchen for
so many hours together that she became almost like a piece of
furniture herself--the heaviest piece in the house. For the cooking
of water-porridge and potatoes does not require very much time, and
these were now pretty much all that the Miss MacKnackeries had to eat,
except for the eggs from Jean Elspeth's three Cochin-Chinas. And Mrs.
O'Phrump needed most of these, as there was so much of her to sustain.
As for the apples and pears in the orchard, since Mrs. O'Phrump was
too stout to stoop to make dumplings, Jean Elspeth, having two
wonderful rows of small sharp teeth, shared these raw with Tom
Piper--though _he_ had all the stomach-aches.

All the rest of the work fell to Jean Elspeth. She slaved from morning
till night. And to slave the more merrily, she had taught herself to
whistle. She never asked herself why she was so happy. And no doubt it
was chiefly by contrast with having been so cramped in, and kept
under, and passed over in days gone by.

Still, certain things did now happen in Stoneyhouse that had not
happened before, and some of these may have helped. For one thing,
Jean Elspeth had always dreaded 'company'. Dressing-up made her feel
awkward. The simplest stranger made her shy. She much preferred the
company even of her two sisters. None came now, except Dr. Menzies,
who of his kindness sometimes called to feel Euphemia's pulse and
mutter, 'H'm h'm'--though he did not charge for it.

Jean Elspeth, too, had never liked servants, not because they were
servants, but because Euphemia and Tabitha seemed to think they
oughtn't to be talked to much. Just given their orders. Now Jean
Elspeth could easily have given everything else in the world: but not
orders. And if there ever _had_ been an interesting creature in
Stoneyhouse, even though she was so stupid in some things, it was
Sally McGullie.

Then, again, Jean Elspeth, being by nature desperately untidy, never
showed it now. For it's all but impossible to be untidy in a room that
contains only a table and three chairs!

Then, yet again, Jean Elspeth, before the gentlemen in Armenia and
Madagascar had been disappointed in their waterworks and caoutchouc,
had had very little to do. She was scarcely even allowed to read. For
Tabitha was convinced that most reading was a waste of time, and trash
at that; while improving books had never the least bit improved Jean
Elspeth. But now she had so many things to do that it was a perfect
joy to fit them all in (like the pieces of a puzzle). And the
perfectest joy of all was to scramble into her truckle bed, which had
formerly been Sally McGullie's bed, and, with a tallow candle stuck by
its own grease to the lefthand knob, to read and read and read.

The hours she spent like this, with no living company but roving mice
and flitting moths and, in autumn, perhaps a queen wasp. When her
upper parts grew cold in winter weather, she spread her skirt over the
quilt. One thin blanket, indeed, is not much comfort on cold nights
when one is lying up North there, almost in positive view of the
Grumpy Ones. As for her feet, she used to boil some water in the great
solitary kitchen in a kettle and fill a wine-bottle.

This, of course, broke a good many bottles; and it was an odd thing
that until there was only one left, Tabitha (whose feet were like
slabs of ice) refused to hear of anything so vulgar. And _then_ she
changed her mind. And medicine-bottles are too small.

Apart from all this, queer things now happened in Stoneyhouse. Little
things, but entrancing. The pantechnicon men, for example, had broken
a window on a lower staircase as they were heaving down old Mr.
MacKnackery's best wardrobe. A sweetheart pair of robins in the
springtime noticed this hole, and decided to build their nest in a
nook of the cornice. Jean Elspeth (with her tiny whistling) was
accepted as the bosom friend of the whole family.

There was, too, a boot cupboard, one too far from the kitchen for Mrs.
O'Phrump to range. Its window had been left open. And when, by chance,
Jean Elspeth looked in one sunny afternoon, there hung within it a
marvellous bush of Traveller's Joy, rather pale in leaf, but actually
flowering there; and even a butterfly sipping of its nectar. After
that, not a day passed now but she would peep in at this delicate
green visitor, and kiss her hand. It was, too, an immense relief to
Jean Elspeth to have said good-bye for ever to lots of things in the
house that seemed to her to have been her enemies ever since she was
five years old.

She wandered up into rooms she had never seen before, and looked out
of windows whose views had never before lain under her eyes. Nor did
she cease to day-dream, but indulged in only tiny ones that may come
and go, like swifts, between two ticks of a clock. And although, of
course, Tabitha strongly disapproved of much that delighted Jean
Elspeth now, there was not nearly so much time in which to tell her
so.

Besides, Jean Elspeth was more useful in that great barracks of a
place than ten superior parlour-maids would have been. She was much
more like a steam-engine than a maiden lady. And, like a steam-engine,
she refused to be angry; she refused to sulk; and she usually refused
to answer back. When nowadays, however, she _did_ answer back, her
tongue had a sting to it at least as sharp (though never so venomous)
as that of the busy bee.

And last, but no less, there was the _outside_ of the house. As soon
as ever Mr. McPhizz and his under-gardeners had departed with their
shears and knives and edging-irons and mowing machines, wildness had
begun to creep into the garden. Wind and bird carried in seeds from
the wilderness, and after but two summers, the trim barbered lawns
sprang up into a marvellous meadow of daisies and buttercups,
plantains, dandelions, and fools' parsley, and then dock, thistle,
groundsel and feathery grasses. Ivy, hop, briony, convolvulus roved
across the terrace; Hosts of the Tiny blossomed between the stones.
Moss, too, in mats and cushions of a green livelier than the emerald,
or even than a one-night-old beech-leaf. Rain-stains now softly
coloured the white walls, as if a stranger had come in the night and
begun to paint pictures there. And the roses, in their now hidden
beds, rushed back as fast as ever they could to bloom like their
wild-briar sisters again.

And not only green things growing. Jean Elspeth would tip-toe out to
see complete little immense families of rabbits nibbling their
breakfast or supper of dandelion leaves on the very flagstones under
the windows. Squirrels nutted; moles burrowed; hedgehogs came
beetle-hunting; mice of every tiny size scampered and twinkled and
danced and made merry.

As for the birds--birds numberless! And of so many kinds and colours
and notes that she had to sit up half the night looking out their
names in the huge birdbook her father had given her on her eleventh
Christmas. This was the one treasure she had saved from the
pantechnicon men. She had wrapped it up in two copies of the
_Scotsman_, and hidden it in the chimney. She felt a little guilty
over it at times, but none the less determined that the Four Lawyers
should never hear of _that_.

It was strange, exceedingly strange, to be so happy; and Jean Elspeth
sometimes could hardly contain herself, she was so much ashamed of it
in the presence of her sisters. Still, she now drew the line, as they
say, at Lucy.

And that was the strangest and oddest thing of all. After the dreadful
shock of the Four Lawyers' letter, after the torment and anxiety and
horror, the pantechnicons and the tradespeople, poor Tabitha and
Euphemia--however brave their faces and stiff their backs--had drooped
within like flowers in autumn nipped by frost. In their pride, too,
they had renounced even the friends who would have been faithful to
them in their trouble.

They shut themselves up in themselves more than ever, like birds in
cages. They scarcely ever even looked from the windows. It was only on
Sundays they went out of doors. Euphemia, too, had sometimes to keep
her bed. And Jean Elspeth would cry to herself, 'Oh, my dear! oh, my
dear!' at the sight of Tabitha trailing about the house with a large
duster and so little to dust. To see her sipping at her water-porridge
as if she were not in the least hungry, as if it was the daintiest
dish in Christendom, was like having a knife stuck in one's very
breast.

Yet, such was Tabitha's 'strength of mind' and hardihood, Jean Elspeth
never dared to comfort her, to cheer her up, to wave her spoon by so
much as a quarter of an inch in _her_ direction.

In these circumstances it had seemed to Jean Elspeth it would be
utterly unfair to share Lucy's company, even in her hidden mind. It
would be like stealing a march, as they say. It would be cheating. At
any rate, it might hurt their feelings. They would see, more stark
than ever before, how desolate they were. They would look up and
realize by the very light in her eyes that her old playmate had not
deserted her. No. She would wait. There was plenty of time. She would
keep her wishes down. And the little secret door of her mind should be
left, not, as it once was, wide open, but just ajar.

How, she could not exactly say. And yet, in spite of all this, Lucy
herself, just as if she were a real live ghost, seemed to be
everywhere. If in her scrubbing Jean Elspeth happened to glance up
suddenly out of the window--whether mere fancy or not--that fair
gentle face might be stealthily smiling in. If some moonlight night
she leaned for a few precious sweet cold moments over her bedroom
sill, as likely as not her phantom would be seen wandering,
shadowless, among the tall whispering weeds and grasses of the lawn.

Phantoms and ghosts are usually very far from welcome company. Lucy
was nothing but gentleness and grace. The least little glimpse of her
was like hearing a wild bird singing--black-bird or black-cap, not in
the least like the solitary hoot-owl whose long, bubbling, grievous
notes seem to darken the darkness. Having this ghost, then, for
company, however much she tried not to heed it, all that Jean Elspeth
had to do in order just to play fair--and she did it with all her
might--was not to _look_ for Lucy, and not to _show_ that she saw her,
when there she was, plain to be seen, before her very eyes. And when
at last she realized her plan was succeeding, that Lucy was gone from
her, her very heart seemed to come into her mouth.

And so the years went by. And the sisters became older and older, and
Stoneyhouse older and older too. Walls, fences, stables, coach-house,
hen-house, and the square lodge crept on steadily to rack and ruin.
Tabitha kept more and more to herself, and the sisters scarcely spoke
at meal-times.

Then at last Euphemia fell really ill; and everything else for a while
went completely out of Jean Elspeth's life and remembrance. She hadn't
a moment even to lean from her window or to read in her bed. It was
unfortunate, of course, that Euphemia's bedroom was three
stair-flights up. Jean Elspeth's legs grew very tired of climbing
those long ladders, and Tabitha could do little else but sit at the
window and knit--knit the wool of worn-out shawls and stockings into
new ones. So she would stay for hours together, never raising her eyes
to glance over the pair of horn-rimmed spectacles that had belonged
to her grandfather, and now straddled her own lean nose. Dr. Menzies,
too, was an old man now, and could visit them very seldom.

Jean Elspeth herself seldom even went to bed. She sat on a chair in
Euphemia's room and snatched morsels of sleep, as a hungry dog
snatches at bits of meat on a butcher's tray. It was on such a night
as this, nodding there in her chair, that, after having seemed to fall
into a long narrow nightmare hole of utter cold and darkness, and to
have stayed there for centuries without light or sound, she was
suddenly roused by Euphemia's voice.

It was not Euphemia's usual voice, and the words were following one
another much more rapidly than usual, like sheep and lambs running
through a gate. Daybreak was at the window. And in this first chill
eastern light Euphemia was sitting up in bed--a thing she had been
unable to do for weeks. And she was asking Jean Elspeth to tell her
who the child was that was now standing at the end of her bed.

Euphemia described her, too--'A fair child with straight hair. And she
is carrying a bundle of gorse, with its prickles, and flowers wide
open. I can smell the almond smell. And she keeps on looking and
smiling first at me, and then at you. Don't you _see_, Elspeth? Tell
her, please, to go away. Tell her I don't want to be happy like that.
She is making me afraid. Tell her to go away at once, please.'

Jean Elspeth sat shivering, colder than a snail in its winter shell.
The awful thing was to know that this visitor must be Lucy, and yet
not to be able to see her--not a vestige, nothing but the iron bed and
the bedpost, and Euphemia sitting there, just gazing. How, then, could
she tell Lucy to go away?

She scurried across the room, and took Euphemia's cold hands in hers.
'You are dreaming, Euphemia. _I_ see nothing. And if it is a pleasant
dream, why drive it away?'

'No,' said Euphemia, in the same strange, low, clear voice. 'It is not
a dream. You are deceiving me, Elspeth. She has come only to mock at
me. Send her away!'

And Jean Elspeth, gazing into her sister's wide light eyes, that now
seemed deeper than the deepest well that ever was on earth, was
compelled to answer her.

'Please, please, Euphemia, do not think of it any more. There is
nothing to fear--nothing at all. Why, it sounds like Lucy--that old
silly story; do you remember? But I have not seen her myself for ever
so long. I _couldn't_ while you are ill.'

The lids closed gently down over the wide eyes, but Euphemia still
held tight to Jean Elspeth's work-roughened hand. 'Never mind, then,'
she whispered, 'if that is all. I had no wish to take her away from
you, Elspeth. Keep close to me. One thing, we are happier now, you and
I.'

'Oh, Euphemia, do you mean that?' said Jean Elspeth, peering closer.

'Well,' Euphemia replied; and it was as if there were now two voices
speaking: the old Euphemia's and this low, even, dream-like voice. 'I
mean it. There is plenty of air now--a different place. And I hope
your friend will come as often as she pleases. There's room for us
all.'

And with that word 'room', and the grim smile that accompanied it, all
the old Euphemia seemed to have come back again, though a moment after
she dropped back upon her pillow and appeared to be asleep.

Seeing her thus quiet once more, Jean Elspeth very, very cautiously
turned her head. The first rays of the sun were on the window. Not the
faintest scent of almond was borne to her nostrils on the air. There
was no sign at all of any company. A crooked frown had settled on her
forehead. She was cold through and through, and her body ached; but
she tried to smile, and almost imperceptibly lifted a finger just as
if it held a teaspoon and she was waving it in her own old secret
childish way to her father's portrait on the wall.

Now and again after that Jean Elspeth watched the same absent far-away
look steal over Euphemia's face, and the same fixed smile, dour and
grim, and yet happy--like still deep water under waves. It was almost
as if Euphemia were amused at having stolen Lucy away.

'You see, my dear,' she said suddenly one morning, as if after a long
talk, 'it only proves that we all go the same way home.'

'Euphemia, please don't say that,' whispered Jean Elspeth.

'But why not?' said Euphemia. 'So it is. And _she_ almost laughing out
loud at me. The hussy!...'

None of their old friends knew when Euphemia died, so it was only Dr.
Menzies and his sister who came to Stoneyhouse for the funeral. And
though Jean Elspeth would now have been contented to do _all_ the work
in the house and to take care of Tabitha and her knitting into the
bargain, they persuaded her at last that this would be impossible. And
so, one blazing hot morning, having given a little parting gift to Tom
Piper and wept a moment or two on Mrs. O'Phrump's ample shoulder, Jean
Elspeth climbed with Tabitha into a cab, and that evening found
herself hundreds of miles away from Stoneyhouse, in the two upper
rooms set apart for the two ladies by Sally McGullie, who had married
a fisherman and was now Mrs. John Jones.

Jean Elspeth could not have imagined a life so different. It was as if
she had simply been pulled up by the roots. Whenever Tabitha could
spare her--and that was seldom now--she would sit at her window
looking on the square stone harbour and the sea, or in a glass shelter
on its narrow front. But now that time stretched vacantly before her,
and she was at liberty if she pleased to 'pretend' whenever she
wished, and to fall into day-dreams one after another just as they
might happen to come, it was life's queer way that she could scarcely
picture Lucy now, even with her inward eye, and never with her naked
one.

It was, too, just the way of this odd world that she should pine and
long for Stoneyhouse beyond words to tell. She felt sometimes she must
die--suffocate--of homesickness, and would frown at the grey moving
sea, as if that alone were the enemy who was keeping her away from it.
Not only this, but she saved up in a tin money-box every bawbee which
she could spare of the little money the Four Lawyers had managed to
save from the caoutchouc. And all for one distant purpose.

And at length, years and years afterwards, she told Mrs. Jones that
she could bear herself no longer, that--like the cat in the
fairy-tale--she must pay a visit, and must go alone....

It was on an autumn afternoon, about five o'clock, and long shadows
were creeping across the grasses of the forsaken garden when Jean
Elspeth came into sight of Stoneyhouse again, and found herself
standing some little distance from the gaunt walls beside a shallow
pool of water that now lay in a hollow of the garden. Her father had
delighted in water; and, putting to use a tiny stream that coursed
near by, had made a jetting fountain and a fishpond. The fountain
having long ceased to flow and the pond having become choked with
water-weeds, the stream had pushed its way out across the hollows, and
had made itself this last dark resting-place. You might almost have
thought it was trying to copy Jean Elspeth's life in Sallie Jones's
seaside cottage. On the other hand, the windows of the great house did
not stare so fiercely now; they were blurred and empty like the eyes
of a man walking in his sleep. One of the chimney-stacks had toppled
down, and creepers had rambled all over the wide expanse of the walls.

Jean Elspeth, bent-up old woman that she now was, in her dingy black
bonnet and a beaded mantle that had belonged to Euphemia, stood there
drinking the great still scene in, as a dry sponge drinks in salt
water.

And after hesitating for some little time, she decided to venture
nearer. She pushed her way through the matted wilderness of the
garden, crossed the terrace, and presently peered in through one of
the dingy dining-room windows. Half a shutter had by chance been left
unhasped. When her eyes were grown accustomed to the gloom within, she
discovered that the opposite wall was now quite empty. The portrait of
her grandfather must have slowly ravelled through its cord. It had
fallen face upwards on to the boards beneath.

It saddened her to see this. She had left the picture hanging there
simply because she felt sure that Euphemia would so have wished it to
hang. But though she wearied herself out seeking to find entry into
the house, in order, at least, to lean her grandfather up again
against the wall, it was in vain. The doors were rustily bolted; the
lower windows tight-shut. And it was beginning to be twilight when she
found herself once more beside the cold stagnant pool.

All this while she had been utterly alone. It had been a dreadful and
sorrowful sight to see the great house thus decaying, and all this
neglect. Yet she was not unhappy, for it seemed with its trees and
greenery in this solitude to be uncomplaining and at rest. And so,
too, was she. It was as if her whole life had just vanished and
flitted away like a dream, leaving merely her body standing there in
the evening light under the boughs of the great green chestnut-tree
overhead.

And then by chance, in that deep hush, her eyes wandered to the
surface of the water at her feet, and there fixed themselves, her
whole mind in a sudden confusion. For by some curious freak of the
cheating dusk, she saw gazing back at her from under a squat old crape
bonnet, with Euphemia's cast-off beaded mantle on the shoulders
beneath it, a face not in the least like that of the little old woman
inside them, but a face, fair and smiling, as of one eternally young
and happy and blessed--Lucy's. She gazed and gazed, in the darkening
evening. A peace beyond understanding comforted her spirit. It was by
far the oddest thing that had ever happened to Jean Elspeth in all the
eighty years of her odd long life on earth.


Transcriber's Note:

1. page 157: ending double quote mark changed to single--...anywhere
about, I'll scratch her eyes out.'

2. page 172: typo 'steam' changed to 'stream' in sentence '...putting
to use a tiny stream that coursed...'


[End of _Lucy_ by Walter de la Mare]