Fog Magic

by Julia L. Sauer

  “I knew I’d have to dress inside of Government House,” Mrs. Stanton continued. “If I was to arrive on foot and unescorted, the guards would be sure to question me. Besides, I had no proper wrap to wear and I couldn’t flounce through the streets of Halifax in my brocade. And there’s where Cynthia Blackthorn helped. She had got a cousin of hers to give me lodging. One night when she went back to Government House after her time off, she took my package along. She smuggled it in and hid it in one of the linen presses.

  “I had to wait nearly a week before my chance came. It would never do to risk my plan on a small affair. But I watched the bulletin of news from Government House and Cynthia listened to all the inside chatter until a truly big ball was announced. Why, there were to be guests from as far away as Shelbourne and Digby! When the night came Cynthia smuggled me in, tucked me into a clothes press and brought me my gown. Poor young one! She was excited as a child at the idea of my masquerading as a guest, but scared, too. Such a prank might well have lost her her place. Well, I smoothed my hair, changed in the dark, and waited. When Cynthia came for me she was laughing. She was holding a perfect yellow rose. It must have dropped from some lady’s bouquet, and I took it as a sign that my plan was going to succeed. I knew it. I slipped the rose into the coil of my hair and it was all I needed with Grandmother’s earrings. Cynthia said His Highness was expected at any moment. He was driving down from his estate up at Bedford on the Basin, and an outrider had just ridden in with word that the coach had started.

  “The guests were lining up in the hall. Cynthia took me down a little stair that came out near the foot of the grand staircase. I elbowed my way, as politely as I could, into the front line. I wasn’t one to risk failure by hanging back now, so I kept my eyes fixed on the entrance and pretended I didn’t hear the indignant little snorts and questions of the ladies around me.

  “Oh, I wish you could all have seen that hall. Lights, music, mirrors, flowers and silks! It was all I could do to keep my head. His Highness arrived just in time to keep me from swooning, I guess, from something like intoxication. He is a handsome young man, tall and slender as a prince should be; and, bowing and smiling, he was a fine sight. The line swept into a deep curtsy with a swish of silk that almost drowned out the violins. When he came to me, I edged out a few inches and I saw to it that I caught his eye. He gave me a sharp glance and I could tell he had marked me. When he passed by and the lines broke up and surged up the staircase to the ball room, I declare I think my heart stopped beating. I tried to act as if I belonged there and as if my escort had only just left me for a moment. I don’t know how long it was before I felt a touch on my arm. His Highness had sent an aide for me! He wished to be presented!”

  The women had dropped their knitting. They were listening spellbound, seeing in their minds the vivid, colorful picture of a grand ball.

  “I had caught his eye. Now I knew I must catch his ear,” Mrs. Stanton went on. “I gave him no chance to discover for himself that I was an impostor. I told him at once that I came uninvited, but that I had walked two hundred miles to see him and to get justice; that I trusted him to help me. He was surprised—flattered, perhaps. He hesitated just a moment and frowned a little ; then he smiled, bowed graciously and directed his aide to take me to a reception room to await his leisure to hear my story.

  “I must have waited two hours in what seemed like another world. There was a French window in the room and it opened on the gardens. I could hear the music from the ball room. Once a servant came with refreshments. His Highness had not forgotten me. When he came at last, he was in good humor, gay and interested. There was an officer with him and a secretary to take notes. He heard me through, asked a few questions, assured me that he believed me, that he would investigate and see that justice was done. ‘Where was I staying?’ I gave my address. ‘Would it be convenient for me to remain in Halifax for a short time until he could confer with Governor Wentworth and have the necessary papers prepared?’ I assured him it would. ‘Good. He would attend to it at once. And now would I care to mingle with the guests or prefer to have his aide escort me home?’ ‘I should prefer to leave at once,’ I told him, and the interview was over.”

  Every woman in Laura Morrill’s parlor gave a little sigh of satisfaction.

  “And the papers actually came?” they asked.

  “Yes, less than a week later,” Mrs. Stanton told them. “An aide brought them, with a bouquet, a purse ‘to defray the expenses of my journey,’ and a note from His Highness to the effect that ‘he hoped to take a cruise around the province in the Zebra the following spring and would at that time assure himself that I was happily in possession of my property.’ But here they are—the note and the papers. Read them yourselves! I pressed a few of the flowers, too, to persuade myself and the children that it all happened.”

  “Well, the young man certainly does nothing by halves,” said Harriet Trask.

  “Ardis Stanton,” old Mrs. Morehouse’s cool voice broke in on the chatter and questions that filled the room as the women examined the note and the papers with their crests and seals. “Ardis Stanton, I’ve told you that you were the loveliest bride I ever saw in my lifetime. I’d like, to see you again as you looked on your wedding day in your ivory brocade. Will you put it on, my dear?”

  Mrs. Stanton looked startled. But the others urged.

  “Why, I’d just as leave,” she said. “It won’t take but a minute. No, don’t you bother to come with me, Harriet,” to Mrs. Trask. “I can manage alone. I had to at Government House, you know.”

  As soon as she was safely out of hearing, Mrs. Denton said, “Isn’t there something we can do to celebrate? It seems as if this is an occasion to remember after all Ardis’s hard times.”

  “We can have candlelight, can’t we, Laura?” Mrs. Morehouse asked Mrs. Morrill. “There was candlelight for her wedding. And her ivory gown and ivory skin will look their best by candlelight.”

  “Of course we can, Mrs. Morehouse. Will you all help? The extra candlesticks stand in the bottom of the corner cupboard. Just put them around everywhere. And, Retha, run over to the Saunders. If Grandfather Saunders is home, ask him to come quick with his fiddle. Greta, you come with me and we’ll pick honeysuckle. Get out all the ginger jars and bowls you can find, Stella,” she called back to Mrs. Denton, “and fill them with water.”

  The honeysuckle vine that covered the east side of the house was in full bloom. Mrs. Morrill stood on a cask and cut long sprays of the red and yellow blossoms with a lavish hand. She sent Greta hurrying indoors with armfuls. “These are for the ginger jars,” she told her. “Tell Stella Denton to arrange them.”

  When Greta returned, she found Mrs. Morrill shaping more of the blossoms into a stiff, old-fashioned bouquet. “This will have to serve as the bride’s bouquet,” she said. “I’m sorry it hasn’t a lace frill; but it will blend well with the ivory brocade at any rate. Run back, Greta, so you can see Ardis when she comes. I’ll take this to her.”

  Greta slipped back into the house. All in a moment it had been transformed. A dozen twinkling candles had worked their magic. Clusters of the red and yellow honeysuckle, as foreign as the ginger jars that held it, trailed from familiar shelves and cupboards and filled the room with heavy perfume. A door closed near by. “S—s—sh,” someone said, and they all stood quietly.

  There was a sound of footsteps and then Ardis Stanton appeared. From somewhere out in back, Grandfather Saunders was playing softly on his fiddle. Framed in the doorway, Mrs. Stanton stood facing her old neighbors and girlhood friends. She hardly knew whether to laugh or cry, and the little half-smile on her face was becoming; it softened and gentled the lines that bitterness had carved. Curious gold earrings that reached almost to her shoulders hung from under the smooth sweep of black hair; and her roughened hands were hidden by lace mitts and by the round bouquet of honeysuckle. But the ivory brocade! It seemed to glow with a light all its own—to give off a soft radiance like some of the strange crea
tures of the sea. Greta could see how it must have bewitched the old sea captain bargaining for it in some dim Canton warehouse. No wonder it had arrested, if not bewitched, the young Duke of Kent. Mrs. Trask put into words what she and the others were thinking.

  “I declare, Ardis, you are a beauty still. And I’m not surprised you came back with the papers. The Duke would have had to be blind in both eyes not to relish the picture you make in that gown.”

  But Mrs. Stanton was very near tears. Her mind had gone back beyond her recent triumph. She was thinking of the day of her wedding when she had stepped out in her bridal gown with fine Aubry Stanton at her side and all life ahead of them.

  Old Mrs. Morehouse had the gift of seeing with her heart as well as her eyes. Her mind, too, had traveled swiftly back, past the scene in Halifax to the girlhood of Ardis Stanton.

  “Ardis,” she said, “Aubry Stanton would be as proud of you today as he was fifteen years ago when he saw you first in that gown. Yes, and more so, my dear. The courage of a fine woman is more in the sight of God and men than the beauty of a lovely girl, and Aubry Stanton would be one to know it.”

  Mrs. Stanton sent her a grateful look that said more than any words she could force to her lips. She smiled through her tears. The moment of reminiscence was folded away—not to be forgotten but to be stored with the other treasured moments that the ivory brocade held in its luminous folds. A pleasant little buzz of conversation broke out. Grandfather Saunders swung into a gayer tune and there was soft laughter and the gentle clatter of tea things.

  Greta looked slowly from one face to another in the room. Never before had she seen so many of the folk of Blue Cove together—never before had she felt so close to them, so much a part of their life, as she did today in this candlelit room. When her eyes reached Mrs. Morrill, she found that she was beckoning to her. Greta slipped over to her side, and Mrs. Morrill drew her close to her for a moment.

  “I’m glad you have been here today,” she said. “But —the wind has changed, Greta. It will blow off the fog in another half hour. You had best be on your way over the mountain. I am sorry you can’t stay to have tea with us. But I’ll give you some bread and butter with a bit of wild strawberry preserves to eat as you go.”

  She went to the door with her. Greta stood outside looking down at the marking on the curious stone slab that lay in front of the door. She never could find words, somehow, to say good-by to Mrs. Morrill; perhaps, because the only words that wanted to come to her lips were always, “Shall I see you again?” Mrs. Morrill tilted Greta’s chin up in a quick gesture. Greta looked into the clear blue eyes so like the eyes of the old sea captains who looked on far horizons.

  “You know I wouldn’t send you away if I could help it, Greta,” Mrs. Morrill said quietly. And then she added, “I wouldn’t send you away—ever. Go now, my dear, quickly.”

  Greta turned at the end of the street to wave. The changing wind was blowing the fog in thick swirls along the street. She could see that Mrs. Morrill was still standing at the door, but her figure was blurred and indistinct—already merging into mystery. Greta did not look back again. She wanted to keep in her heart the picture of that gay room filled with happy, kindly women in their rustling best silks. But most of all she wanted to keep the picture of Laura Morrill standing in her doorway and seeing her off. She felt that she could never bear to lose that. She hurried out into the Old Road and followed it upward over the mountain.

  10.

  GRETA’S TWELFTH BIRTHDAY

  GRETA’S twelfth birthday was very near and she thought about it often. She couldn’t explain even to herself why it seemed so important. She wondered if the other girls felt about a twelfth birthday as she did, and one day she worked up her courage to ask Christine Frosst who lived next door. Christine was an older girl, serious and earnest. Greta caught her alone one morning at the well.

  “Christine, tell me something,” she began. “Do you remember how you felt on your twelfth birthday? Was it any different from other birthdays?”

  Christine set her full pail down carefully on the platform and replaced the board with the rock on it over the top of the well before she answered.

  “Yes,” she said slowly, “I can remember. My twelfth birthday seemed terribly important to me.”

  “Why?” Greta asked eagerly. “And was it different from the others when it came? Going into your ’teens, I mean?”

  “It was the nicest birthday I ever had,” Christine told her, “and yours will be, too. You’ll see. Maybe it’s just because you feel that you’ve accomplished something, like beating around the Cape in a stiff gale. Or like turning the heel of a sock,” she finished. They both laughed as Christine’s thoughts crashed so prosaically to earth. “Anyhow,” she defended herself, “I have turned the heel of a sock so I know about that, even if I haven’t rounded the Cape.”

  Greta felt better about the approaching day. She had even begun to look forward to it a little when her father brought home the word that the Committee had decided to hold the annual church picnic at Blue Cove on that day.

  “But that’s my birthday,” she protested.

  Both Walter and Gertrude laughed at her. “You didn’t expect the world would stop running to celebrate, did you?” Father teased. “However important it is to us three,” he added seriously enough to soothe her feelings. “Of course, I could ask the Trustees to reconsider the date if you like,” he went on. “But it would be too bad. The tide’s just right so that all the fishing boats will be in early. The following week wouldn’t be nearly so good for them. But it’s for you to say. It’s your birthday.”

  “Father, don’t be silly. You know you couldn’t change the picnic. Of course it doesn’t really matter, only it’s a shame to have two good times come at once. That’s all I meant. You know it is.”

  Father only grinned at her, but her mother said, “I’d planned to have you ask Hazen and Frieda, and Marguerite and Gladys and Lyman, and whoever else you want, for tea on your birthday. You can have them just as well a day or two later and that will spread the good times along.”

  “Oh, thank you, Mother. I’ll love having a party sometime in the next week. Saturday can be my private birthday—my secret one—and the day of the party will be my public one.”

  The church picnics were not held in the clearing at Blue Cove, but over on a high point to the left of the beach. It was the favorite spot of the minister of the Little Valley church. His parishioners chose it out of their fondness for him. To reach it you turned off the Old Road below the village clearing, crossed a burned patch, and followed a little footpath up across a wind-swept headland fragrant with bayberry. It led you out at last to a great open rolling space high above the sea. The ground covering of cranberries and a half dozen interwoven mosses was as springy as a mattress. It reminded the Reverend Mr. Clute of the downs of southern England, looking out across the Channel. But he liked to bring his people here for another reason. He knew that it offered everything the spirit needed for nourishment. On a clear day—with the sea a deep blue, with a crisp wind fanning the excitement of living, with gulls whirling in vast circles and mewing faintly from their great height—on such moments in this place the idea of freedom became so real that you could almost grasp it in your two hands.

  Greta decided as the afternoon sped on that it was a perfect way to spend one’s twelfth birthday. There was only one thing lacking. If she could somehow have had both her own people and her friends of the Blue Cove village, her happiness would be complete. But there seemed no chance of it. The day remained as clear as crystal. The games, the supper, the singing of familiar songs followed one after another.

  They were still singing when a change came in the air. Mothers reached for sweaters to slip on the smaller children and the men began to gather up the picnic baskets that must be carried back to the old Post Road. The little procession was soon on its way up across the headland, anxious, now that it had started, to reach the road before dusk fell. Walter
Addington was the last to leave and Greta waited for him. They followed the little path silently, listening to the laughter, the snatches of song, the fretful cries of tired children ahead. Where the path dipped down away from the sea, Greta and her father stopped to look back. They watched the sun slip quietly out of sight, leaving a pattern of opal tints.

  “Look yonder—off toward Big Gulch, Greta. Do you see?” her father asked.

  Around the point came the first billow of incoming fog. Almost at the same moment Tollerton’s hoarse blasts began down in the Passage.

  “It’s going to be a foggy night after all, isn’t it?” Greta tried to keep out of her voice the little tingle of excitement she felt, but her father must have caught it.

  “Happy?” he asked in a very casual tone of voice. “Will it do—for a twelfth birthday?”

  “It’s been a perfect day, Father, every bit of it,” Greta told him, and she gave his arm a happy squeeze as they followed the others.

  By the time they reached the Old Road and the baskets and small children were loaded into the ox carts that stood waiting for them, little tendrils of fog were noticeable on the beach. They stole around the big rocks; they blew in soft wisps up the roadway; as sure as the tide, the fog was coming to enfold them, but it was a wayward thing that must play with them first.

  The climbing was steep for the first part of the walk back and only a few of the lustier people had breath for song. The others plodded along steadily to the rhythmic sound of the distant foghorn. It was quiet enough to hear the murmur of the stream by the roadside and the sleepy chirping of the birds. As they passed the entrance to the clearing Greta looked in. It was empty. Not yet had the fog reached it to touch it with life. Greta had a sudden impulse. Like throwing out an anchor she dropped her sweater by the side of the road and went on.

  Everyone stopped for breath at the top of the mountain and looked back along the road they had come. Gone by now was the horizon, the sea and the shore. Fifty feet behind hung a thick gray curtain through which nothing showed but the dim outlines of spruce trees and the Sentinel Rocks. The ox carts began to creak again and the people got under way. They were singing again on the down hill stretch toward their warm, comfortable homes in Little Valley.