A Woman Named Smith | Page 5

a whisper--"stretches
to the end of the world and then laps over. It hasn't been trimmed since
Adam and Eve moved out. But those crape-myrtle trees are quite the
loveliest things left over from Paradise, and I'm glad we came here to
see them with our own eyes! Brace up, Sophy! We'll feel heaps better
when we've had something to eat. Aren't you frightfully hungry, and
doesn't a chill suspicion strike you, somewhere around the wishbone,
that if that Ancient Mariner of a hackman doesn't get back soon we
shall starve?"
At that moment, from somewhere--it seemed to us from up-stairs--a
sudden flood of sweetest sound poured goldenly through that sad, dim,
dusty house, as if a blithe spirit had slipped in unawares and was
bidding us welcome. For a few wonderful moments the exquisite music
filled the dark old place and banished gloom and neglect and decay;
then, with a pattering scamper, as of the bare, rosy feet of a beloved and
mischievous child making a rush for his crib, it went as suddenly as it
had come. There was nothing to break the silence but the swishing
downpour of the outside rain.
When I could speak: "It came from up-stairs! Somebody's playing a
violin up-stairs. I'm going up-stairs to find out who it is."
Alicia demurred: "It may be a real person, Sophy!--a real person with a
real violin. But I'd rather believe it's Ariel's self, come out of those pink
crape-myrtles. Don't go up-stairs, please, Sophy!"
"Nonsense!" said I. "Somebody's played a violin and I mean to know
who he is!"
And up-stairs I went, into a huge dark hall, with the cross-passage
cutting it, and closed doors everywhere. At the front end was a most
beautiful window, opening doorlike upon a tiny iron bird-cage of a
balcony, hung up Southern fashion under the roof of the pillared front

porch. At the rear a more ordinary door opened upon the broad veranda
that ran the full width of the house. Both door and window were closed,
and bolted on the inside, and the big, dark, dusty rooms which I
resolutely entered were quite empty, their fireplaces boarded up, their
windows close-shuttered. There was no sign anywhere of violin or
player. I went down-stairs just as wise as I had gone up.
"I told you it was Ariel!" Alicia stood by the open window--our
windows are sunk into the walls, and cased with solid black walnut as
Impervious to decay as the granite itself--and leaned out to the wet and
dripping garden.
"Sophy," said she, in her high, sweet voice that carries like a thrush's.
"Sophy, the best thing about this world is, that the best things in it
aren't really real. This is one of its enchanted places. Sycorax used to
live in this house: that's what you feel about it yet. But now she's gone,
her spell is lifting, and Hynds House is going to come alive and be
young again!"
"At least," I grumbled, "admit that the dust inside and the rain outside
and the weeds and mud are real; and I'm really hungry!"
"Me too!" Alicia assented instantly and ungrammatically. "Oh, for a
square meal!" She thrust her charming head out far enough for the rain
to splatter on her bright hair and whip it into curls, and bring a deeper
shade of pink to her cheeks, and a deeper blue to her eyes. "Ariel!" she
fluted, "Spirit of the Violin, I'm hungry--earthily, worm-of-the-dustly,
unromantically hungry! Send us something to eat."
"Why don't you rap on one of the tables," I suggested ironically, "and
call up your high spirits to do your bidding?"
"My high spirits won't be above making you a soothing cup of coffee
just as soon as that ancient African returns. In the meantime, let's look
around us."
People had forests to draw from when they built rooms like those in
Hynds House. There were eight of them on the first floor. On one side

the two drawing-rooms, the library, and behind that a room evidently
used for an office. We didn't know it then, of course, but that library
was treasure trove. Almost every book and pamphlet covering the early
American settlements, that is of any value at all, is in Hynds House
library; we have some pamphlets that even the British Museum lacks.
The rooms had enough furniture to stock half a dozen antique-shops, all
of it in a shocking state, the brocades in tatters, the carvings caked with
dust. You couldn't see yourself in the tarnished mirrors, the portraits
were black with dirt, and most of the prints were badly stained. Alicia
swooped upon a pair of china dogs with mauve eyes and black spots
and sloppy red tongues, on a what-not in a corner. She said she had
been