“The last I heard of him he was in Rome. ’Tain’t likely he’s alive now. Land, no! He’d be well over seventy—close onto seventy-five. Mr. Gale was in love with her too. He was younger. I don’t think he ever told Miss Murray, I never did know if she knew. You couldn’t fool me though. Well, I started out to show you this house. I must be gitting on. You’ve seen the slave quarters and the whipping-post upstairs?”
“Yes. Everybody could tell me about the whipping-post and the slave quarters. But the things I wanted to know—”
“Well, it’s natural enough that folks shouldn’t know much about her. Miss Murray was a lady that didn’t talk about her own affairs and she kept sort of to herself, as you might say. She wasn’t the kind that ran in on folks. She wrote by fits and starts. Sometimes she’d stay up late at night. She allus wrote new-moon time. She said the light of the crescent moon inspired her. How they used to make fun of her about that! But she’d write with all of them about, laughing and talking and playing the piano or singing—and dancing even. The house was so lively those days—they was all great trainers. And yet she could fall asleep right in the midst of all that confusion. Well—so you see she wasn’t given to making calls. And then there was always so much to do and so many folks around at home. Have you been upstairs in the barn?”
“No—not yet. The stairs were all broken away. I had just finished mending them when I had the pleasure of making your acquaintance.”
They both smiled reminiscently.
“Let’s go up there now—there must be a lot of things—” She ended her sentence a little vaguely as the old sometimes do. But the movement with which she arose from her chair and trotted toward the stairs was full of an anticipation almost youthful.
“The garden used to be so pretty,” she sighed as they started on the well-worn trail to the barn. “Miss Murray worn’t what you might call practical, but she could make flowers grow. She never cooked, nor sewed, nor anything sensible, but she’d work in that garden till— There was certain combinations of flowers that she used to like; hollyhocks, especially the garnet ones so dark they was almost black, surrounded by them blue Canterbury bells; and then phlox in all colors, white and pink and magenta and lavender and purple. I think there was some things put out here,” she interrupted herself vaguely, “that nobody wanted at the auction. There wasn’t even a bid on them.”
She trotted up the stairs like a pony that has suddenly become aged. Lindsay followed, two steps at a time. The upper story of the barn was the confused mass of objects that the lumber room of any large household inevitably collects. Broken chairs; tables, bureaux; rejected pieces of china; kitchen furnishings; a rusty stove, old boxes; bandboxes; broken trunks; torn bags.
“There! That’s the table Miss Murray used to do her writing at. She said there never had been a table built big enough for her. I expect that’s why nobody bought it at the auction. ’Twas too big for mortal use, you might say. The same reason I expect is why the dining-room table didn’t sell either.”
“Where did she write?” Lindsay asked, measuring the table with his eye.