Part 5 (2/2)

”Look, Grandy,” she cried, ”it has my honey bee!”

He nodded.

He scarcely seemed to heed her, already he had risen and was pacing restlessly about the room, peering out the windows, addressing staccato questions in French to Piqueur. He pulled the shabby silken rope at the doorway and a bell trilled somewhere faintly. Margot came running.

”It is good to hear” she said as she entered. And helping Felice up the circular stairway she murmured tenderly, ”You cannot know, Miss Felicia, how glad we are, my uncle Piqueur and I, that the house is opened once more--you're not so tall as your mother, are you?” She was positively chattering now. Felice caught her arm more closely.

”Oh, where is Maman?” she demanded. Margot shook her head. She sighed.

She was opening the door of the upper room. She did not answer for a full moment. Her lips worked nervously before she spoke.

”She is not here. But this is the bed where she always slept when she was young--the bed at which she laughed so much--ah, Miss Felicia, don't you think you will like it? See how droll--” her brown wrinkled hand rested on a beautifully carved corner post, ”These are little monkeys climbing for fruit--when she was a baby Mademoiselle Octavia used to put her hands on them so--”

Felice smiled.

”I know. She used to tell me,” she confided. ”She told me that Poquelin, the father of Moliere, made it.” She was wan with fatigue, poor child, even after she lay, warm and cozy, in the great bed that had been her mother's. And the last thing she saw as she closed her eyes in the wavering candle light was Margot's fat and comfortable figure, trudging toward the fireplace to spread out her coat to dry--

It had been a fearful week for Margot, this week since the Major's curt message to make the house ready had come. For all that she was forty-five and st.u.r.dy and skilful at the myriad tasks that her uncle Piqueur's rheumatism and age had gradually let fall upon her shoulders during the slow pa.s.sing years, this had been a job that put her on her mettle. Eighteen years of dust and disorder had Margot somehow or other weeded out of that building. But even with the pale spring suns.h.i.+ne and wind to help her and even with the huge fires they had kept kindled all day in the broad fireplaces, the corridors were still damp and cold and musty. And she was weak with fatigue and excitement.

She sat down beside the fireplace, her tired body relaxing as she stared through the gloom at the figure in the canopied bed.

”She is not so beautiful as Octavia--” she thought, ”but she is very sweet--and her eyes--they have that same longing to be happy--” she sighed as she tiptoed clumsily out of the room and down the draughty stairway. She stood respectfully beside the Major's chair. ”Monsieur,”

she said gravely, ”does Miss Felicia know anything at all about all of us?”

He looked up at her quickly, his dark eyes sparkling with anger at her audacity, but something in her sober, respectful gaze quieted him.

”I do not desire that she shall--” he answered. ”It is better not to have her--but--” his voice faltered. ”I regret that she does not understand that her mother--that Miss Octavia--” his thin old hand tightened its grip on the frail arm of the chair, ”I do not know,” he ended miserably, ”just how it came about that she is expecting to find Miss Octavia here--in the garden. Perhaps you can tell her something to comfort her--perhaps--”

Gray-haired, wrinkled, her skin brown from exposure, Margot leaned forward, her eyes s.h.i.+ning with excitement.

”Sometimes I think,” she said distinctly, ”that Miss Octavia _is_ in the garden, Monsieur--” She laughed softly at his start. ”Do not think I am out of my wits--” She tapped her head significantly. ”I do not mean like a ghost--I do not see her. Only there is something, most of all in the springtime--that makes me happy. Perhaps Octavia's daughter will feel it. Perhaps that thing, whatever it is, will make it easier for me--”

she wiped her eyes, ”to answer all things she will ask me--”

Upstairs in the four-poster bed that Poquelin had carved, Felicia slept, she smiled as she stirred in her slumbers. She was very tired.

”Maman,” she muttered drowsily as the Major paused outside her door on his way to his room, ”In the garden--” and the Major listened and sighed.

She awoke to the diddling drone of Piqueur's quavering voice. In the clear sweetness of the May morning above the twittering of the birds it raised itself, the quaint measures delighting her ears. Even in Piqueur's thin falsetto the old melody sang itself--tender, graceful, spirited, never lagging--he was dropping pea seeds into the trench that Margot had prepared in the kitchen dooryard, he was always content when he was planting.

Felicia limped to the window across the moth-eaten carpet with its faded doves and roses. She flung the cas.e.m.e.nt out and listened eagerly.

”Piqueur,” she cried entreatingly ”tell me just what it says--that song you sing.” But it was Margot who leaned on her hoe and looked up at the girl and laughed.

”He sings of a girl--of more than one girl--who takes care of sheep-- the song tells them to hurry up--that time drips through the fingers like water--” Margot's own throaty voice joined l.u.s.tily into her uncle's refrain, but a second later she was translating once more.

”You must find your fun in the spring forests--when you're young--”

The girl in the window above them clapped her hands. A slender black- haired, eager-eyed dryad, whose shabby brocaded dressing gown trailed around her bandaged foot--

”Oh, wait! wait!” she cried, ”Wait until I can do it--” her lips pursed themselves delicately and a second later the lilting trill of her lovely whistle took up the refrain of Maitre Guedron's song.

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