At length there came a certain spring, seductive, too early warm, when the Major grew thoughtful, when Certain Legal Matters came frequently in the evening and left Felicia to ponder over her embroidery frame or wander restlessly in the bit of garden. She was seventeen now, a glowing, radiant seventeen, so divinely happy that the Major smiled whenever he looked at her.
For it had come, the Beautiful, Wonderful time when they were going to the House in the Woods! Already the rooms were filled with trunks and packing boxes, Marthy and Zeb and the housemaids were sorting and folding incessantly. And around them, wandered, starry-eyed, a useless young person who hugged to her heart a joyous dream of a woman in a garden—a woman in a little lace cap and a trailing rose-colored dressing-gown, a woman who would say,
"Oh Felicia! I hope you'll be happy today in the garden!"
You mustn't blame the Major too much that he did not know what a cruel thing he had done—he did not even dream that Felicia believed she was going to find Octavia in the garden. Those long ago evasions that had silenced her little-girl questions he had forgotten. Indeed I think he never let himself remember those days in which the child had asked, "Where is she gone?"
And so they had come to the last night of all, the night before they should start their journey.
Inside the gloomy library grandfather and Certain Legal Matters discussed stupid details about where the furniture should go to storage and whether they should change the route and instead of going around the coast by steamer and down the St. Lawrence, travel part of the way overland—they consulted long yellow time-tables.
Felicia drifted across the dismantled library. She was pulling Octavia's adorable white lace shawl about her firm young shoulders, the flickering gas lights made her rather pale.
"It's hot—" she remarked plaintively. "I think I'll go into the garden—" Her grandfather nodded. She slipped through the French windows out to the narrow balcony and down the circular iron stairway.
A thousand million stars above her, shining through the tops of the old trees of heaven—a tender breeze that blew Marthy's curtains ever so gently and let the wistaria banners stream back and forth—if she shoved it carefully, that smallest iron bench, and then stood tiptoe upon it, she could peer through the top of the gate into the rectory yard.
Fairy land! A score of merry young humans dashing about—a babble of noise and laughter and the dyspeptic choir master nearly wild with the confusion—"Order! Order!" he screamed, "Ladies and gentlemen! Boys! Kindly remember this is the last rehearsal, the final rehearsal! When the organist begins the choir should file in very slowly—the principals remain outside until the choir is in—I would like the tenor and the baritone soloists' voices to sound as far off as possible as they approach—will those gentlemen be so good as to stand at the extreme end of the yard?"