As I left the room, I saw that my father had taken my place by the couch. Monsieur Favart was looking out of the window, his hands folded on the head of his cane and his chin resting on them.
We played in the garden together, but much of the charm had gone out of our playing now that it was allowed. The game we played was gipsies in the forest. We gathered leaves and made a fire, pretending we were again in camp. I was G’liath; Ruthita was sometimes the gaudy woman and sometimes Lilith telling fortunes. But the pretense was tame after the reality.
“Ruthie,” I said, “we ar’n’t married. What Hettie told me was all swank. It’s only true of men and women, and not of boys and girls.”
“But we can grow older.”
“Yes. But it’ll take ages.”
She folded her hands in her pinafore nervously.
“We can go on loving till then,” she said.
On the way home my father told me that he liked Ruthita—liked her so much that he had arranged with Madam Favart to have a door cut in the wall between the two gardens so that we could go in and out. I didn’t tell him that I preferred climbing over; he could scarcely guess it for himself. There was no excitement in being pushed into the open and told to go and play with Ruthita. It was all too easy. The fun had been in no one knowing that I did play with such a little girl—not even knowing that there was a Ruthita in the world. We tried to overcome this by always pretending that we were doing wrong when we were together. We would hide when we heard anybody coming. I despised the door and only went through it when a grown person was present, otherwise I entered by way of the apple-tree and the wall. My father caught me at it, and couldn’t understand why I did it. Hetty said it was because I liked being grubby.
Through the gray autumn months I wandered the garden, listening to the dead leaves whispering together. “They’ll take you from me, but your heart will never be theirs,” Lilith had said, and I tried to fancy that the rustling of leaves was Lilith’s voice calling. It was curious how she had plucked out my affections and made them hers.
Often I would steal into the tool-house and tell the white hen all about it. But she also was a source of disillusionment. After long waiting I found one egg in her nest. I thought she must be as glad about it as I was, so left it there a little while for her to look at. I thought the sight of it would spur her on to more ambitious endeavors. But when I came back her beak was yellowy and the egg had vanished. After this unnatural act of cannibalism I told her no more secrets; she had proved herself unworthy. Shortly afterwards she died—perhaps of remorse. I made my peace with her by placing her in a cardboard shoe-box for a coffin and giving her a most handsome funeral.