The Heather-Moon. C. N. Williamson
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soul and save it from death by inanition, because if romance died, then indeed the Outer Life at Hillard House would be no longer bearable.
Barrie paid her respects to the keyhole o' mornings, for two reasons. The first and commonplace reason was because Mrs. Muir was busy downstairs and had no eye to spare to see whether other eyes were glued to the wrong places. The second and more charming reason was because in the morning the golden haze floated behind the keyhole like shimmering water with the sun shining deep into it. By afternoon there was nothing left to peer into but cold gray shadow, which meant that the fairies and other inhabitants were not at home.
Mrs. Muir's motive for visiting the garret out of season was a simple one, but it was well that Barrie did not know this, for it was not at all interesting, and would have broken the music, thrown cold water on the thrill. Moths, no respecters of persons or judges of high religious reputations, had dared to nest in Mrs. MacDonald's best black cashmere dress, which had not been worn and would not be worn, except on great occasions, until next season, and had mechanically reduced it to the rate of second best. Moth-powder and moth-balls were exhausted in downstairs regions, but there was a store of both in the garret; and in her annoyance at having to ascend at an unprecedented time, and her vexation at an accident such as must happen in the best regulated families, Mrs. Muir had hurriedly returned with the wanted box, forgetting to lock the door.
Barrie could not be sure that the housekeeper was not even now in the garret; but she had to find out: and the awful thrill of uncertainty made her next step a high adventure, the adventure of her life. It was a step onto the garret stairs, and though it meant dangers of all sorts, she risked them every one, and closed the door behind her. You see, if she had not done this, any person passing along the landing—a person such as Grandma, or Janet Hepburn—would at once have seen the streak of gold, a mere yellow crack to them, and then and there would have arisen a clamour for the key.
Even with the door closed the risk remained in a lesser degree. Mrs. Muir, if she were not at this moment in the garret, might suddenly remember that she had left the door ajar, taking away the key; then she would rush back like a stout round whirlwind, and in a minute more Barrie would be a prisoner, almost like the fair bride in "The Mistletoe Bough," only there was more air in the garret than in the oak chest that shut with a spring. But Barrie was used to taking risks—risks insignificant compared with this, yet big enough to supply salt and sugar for the dry daily bread of existence.
The door shut softly, but—mercy, what creaks those steps had in them! They seemed to be vying with each other, the heartless brutes, as to which could shriek the loudest under a girl's light foot. Probably they had never seen a girl before, or if they had, it was so long ago they had forgotten. Fancy Grandma a girl! No wonder, if the steps remembered her, that they yelled——But by this time Barrie's head had arrived at the top of the steep stairs, and her eyes were peering cautiously through clouds of gold dust along the level of a floor, mountainous in its far horizon with piled chests, trunks, and furniture.
The gold poured through three very high, small dormer-windows which until now Barrie had known only from outside, staring up at the ivied house wall from the east garden. The dust lived in the garret air, and was different from, more wonderful and mysterious than, any other dust, except perhaps the dust far off in the distance at sunset, where motor-cars you could not see passed along a road invisible.
Barrie couldn't be quite certain at first whether the garret was empty of human life, or whether Mrs. Muir was likely to pounce upon her with reproaches from behind one of those immense oak posts which went up like trees to meet the high beamed roof. Or she might be concealed by an oasis of furniture. There were several such oases in the large wilderness of garret, which covered the whole upper story of the old house. But a lovely garret it was, a heavenly garret! even better than Barrie had dreamed it might be, with her eye at the keyhole of the stairway door. It was peopled with possibilities—glorious, echoing, beckoning possibilities—which made her heart beat as she could not remember its beating before.
She climbed the remaining steps regardless of squeaks, because she could not any longer bear the suspense concerning Mrs. Muir. Nothing moved in answer to the old wood's complainings, and there was no other sound, or rather there were no real sounds such as are made by people; but when Barrie reached the head of the stairs the whole garret was full, to her ears, of delicate rustlings and whisperings, sighs and footfalls and breathings, and scurryings out of sight.
No, Mrs. Muir was not here, or by this time she would be out in the open and scolding hard.
Barrie drew in deep breaths of the strange, still atmosphere which was like air that had been put to sleep years and years ago. It must have smelt exactly like this, she thought quietly, in the lost palace of La Belle Dormante when the Prince found his way in through barricading thickets. Barrie would hardly have been surprised if she had stumbled upon a Sleeping Beauty. If she had, she would have said to herself, "So that's the secret Mrs. Muir's been hiding, by keeping the door locked up. I told you so!"
The scent of the garret fascinated Barrie, and made her heart beat heavily, as if she were on the threshold of a mystery. It was made up of many odours: a faint, not unpleasant mustiness, the smell of dust, a perfume of old potpourri, and spices, cloves, and camphor for moths, a vague fragrance of rosewood and worm-eaten oak, a hint of beeswax, a tang of unaired leather and old books.
Barrie suddenly felt perfectly happy. For to-day this wonderful place with all its secrets was hers. She hardly knew what to explore first. All the really interesting things in the house seemed to have risen to the top, like cream on milk. Along a part of one wall opposite the stairs and under the east windows whence came the morning gold were ranged rough old bookcases, a kind of alms-house for indigent books, or a prison for condemned volumes. But what books! Barrie was drawn to them as by many magnets, and almost tremulously taking down one after another, she understood the reason of their banishment. Here were all the darling books which used to live down in the library, and had been exiled because she dipped into them, they being (according to Grandma and Miss Hepburn) "most unsuitable for nice-minded girls." Barrie had mourned her friends as dead, but they had been only sleeping. And there were others, apparently far more unsuitable for nice-minded girls—old leather-bound books with quaint wood engravings and thick yellow pages printed with old-fashioned "s's" like "f's." Barrie could have browsed among this company for hours, but there were so many things to see in the garret, so little time for seeing them, that she felt compelled merely to say "How do you do, and good-bye," to each allurement.
Her eyes, roaming like a pair of crusading knights in search of romance, lighted suddenly on a pile or group of furniture in a distant corner. There was other furniture in the garret, certainly more interesting to a connoisseur and hunter of antiquities; but Barrie was neither. She had contrived to seize upon a good deal of queer miscellaneous knowledge outside lesson hours, yet she did not know the difference between Sheraton and Hepplewhite. Chairs and sideboards and settees of Georgian days and earlier had been relegated to this vast pound of unwanted things, while their places were dishonourably filled downstairs by mid-Victorian monstrosities which Mrs. MacDonald instinctively approved, no doubt because they could offer no temptation to the eye. Barrie might have felt the beauty of the graceful lines if she had given her attention to these scattered relics of a past before there was a Grandma; but a group of very different furniture beckoned her curiosity.
The fact that there was a group, and that it seemed in the dimness to be alike in colour and design, suggested mystery of some sort; and, besides, it was almost impossible to imagine such furniture adorning this house.
Evidently it had been taken bodily out of one room. Why? As she asked herself this question Barrie threaded her way delicately along narrow paths between chairs, extraordinary leather or hairy cowhide trunks and thrilling bandboxes of enormous size, made quaintly beautiful with Chinese wall-paper. She wanted to examine the grouped furniture whose pale coverings and gilded wood glimmered attractively even in the darkest corner of the garret.
It certainly was the darkest and farthest. Was this a coincidence, or had there been a special reason for huddling these things out of sight? There was not even a clear path to them, though there seemed to have been method in planning most of the lanes that led from one luggage or furniture