As she stepped over the threshold of her girlhood sanctum, clinging to Marjorie’s arm, she steered the young girl across the room and brought her to a forced, playful halt before a very large black teakwood chest. It was purely Chinese in character, the lid being decorated with an intricate gold pattern, the spiral complicated curves of which emanated from the wide-open jaws of a gold dragon.
Marjorie had always greatly admired the chest. Once she had asked Miss Susanna if it had not been brought from China by Brooke Hamilton. The old lady had replied “Yes, my dear,” with a peculiar brevity which Marjorie had early learned to recognize as a sign that Miss Hamilton preferred to close the subject before it had hardly been broached.
“I brought you here with me this morning, dear child, to show you something that belongs to the long ago. It’s something I’ve often debated letting you see. I have decided as many times against it as for it. But after I knew that you were going to put a cranky old person named Hamilton in the seventh heaven of delight by getting married at the Arms, I knew I should show you this chest, and what’s in it, and tell you the history of it. This is only for you, Marjorie. But you may tell your Captain, and Hal, for you must never have secrets from either your mother, or your husband.”
“Then Mystified Manager said to Goldendede, the keeper of the castle, ‘I will obey you in all things, Goldendede, for I know you to be a wise woman.’” Marjorie laughingly improvised. “That’s the way I feel. The enchantment of the castle hangs over me, and I am on the way to marvelous revelations.”
“Marvelous? I don’t know.” The old lady’s head tilted to its bird-like angle. “I believe the only marvelous part is that I did not get married. Now perhaps you can guess what’s in that chest.” She eyed Marjorie shrewdly.
“Miss Susanna!” Light had suddenly dawned upon Marjorie. “You mean—” She stopped, then cried: “Was that chest your hope—”
“It was,” came the crisp response. “In it is my wedding dress.” She threw back the lid as she spoke, then removed a white linen cover arranged over the contents of the chest as a protection.
Marjorie gasped in girl admiration as she caught sight of fold upon fold of heavy pearl-seeded white satin. “Oh!” she exhaled rapturously. “How beautiful!”
Miss Susanna lifted the billows of satin from the box. “I’ll lay out the dress on my bed.” She gathered the creamy folds in her arms and trotted over to her bed. Looking in the box, Marjorie saw a teakwood tray that extended across the box. In it were a pair of long white gloves, a pair of the most exquisitely embroidered white silk stockings she had ever seen and an underslip of thin white Chinese silk embroidered in a pattern of orange blossoms. The stockings also bore the same pattern embroidered in a straight strip up and down the fronts.
“Bring over the accessories which I didn’t need, child,” Miss Susanna directed, matter-of-fact in the midst of reminders of her own romance.