Mallowbanks, Brent County, S. C.,
November first.

Poor neglected Carin:

I know it, Carin. I know I have treated you badly. I know that you have been expecting and wondering and scolding because I have not written.

But when you say that I have forgotten you because of my new friends, well—I haven’t any answer to that. Nothing pleasant ever happens to me that I do not wish you were with me to share it, and nothing bad ever happens that I do not think in the midst of all my trouble:

“I will make a story out of that to tell to Carin and—well, Annie Laurie or any other person whom I love.”

But you first, Carin.

As you may have guessed, we got here alive. I was really very much surprised. Between shivers and shudders I enjoyed the ride tremendously. We had two days and a half of it, sleeping at night in inns where my uncle and aunt were welcomed very warmly, and where everybody marveled over me very much as they did in the old days when Mother McBirney first took me over and carried me with her everywhere to exhibit me so lovingly and triumphantly.

Only this time there were differences; very great differences. I soon realized that to be the daughter of the house of Knox was no small matter, and though I had insisted on keeping to my homespun, and still do think it very nice, I was a trifle worried about it. But my riding suit is well cut, and it fits like a dream, and the homespun is almost as soft as camel’s hair, and the color of it, a bottle green, becomes me very well. I was wearing the little dark green Alpine hat you brought me from Switzerland, and that was becoming too.

Yet, girl-o’-my-heart, I felt frightened and insignificant enough when, having passed by way of many charming old towns and wide plantations, we came at last to the long, shady road which they told me belonged to the Knox estate. The part we passed through was all in fine old trees, not so near together but that the sun could make bright carpets in between them. Here and there, where the ground lifted, we could see the plantations, now of course in their autumn bareness, stretching in three directions.

I have always loved to read about princes and princesses who have wandered, poor and forlorn, in strange lands, and who finally return to their royal homes and live happy ever after amid a loving people. I think that is the nicest sort of a story in the world, and I often have played, when it was cold and windy in my little loft on Tennyson Mountain, and when Jim teased me, and all the family was looking at something in a different way from what I was able to do, that I was a lost princess and that by and by I would come into my own.

But I never really thought it anything but a silly, silly dream. I played with it as I used, a few years before, to play with paper dolls.

Yet here I was, Carin, being swept up to the door of my ancestral mansion. We turned a bend in the road, and then saw the house across a stretch of lawn. It was all dripping with Virginia creeper; the leaves hung red as flame from the hooded windows, and bannerets of the scarlet vine fluttered from the wide door. Did uncle tell me the house was Georgian in its style? I do not remember. At any rate, it is of old-rose brick and “I am glad, mother,” said, as mellow as a soft sunset. There are six hooded windows and the beautiful door down below, and seven windows above; then at each end of the main part of the building is an L, running obliquely out into the lawn, and here, too, are the hooded windows above, but below are galleries, and they are roofed in some places and uncovered in others, so that you can stay under cover if you like, or right out under the stars.

I found myself clasping my hands tight over my heart as I looked.

“Do you like it, dear?” asked Aunt Lorena gently.

I seized her hand.

“Oh, Aunt Lorena, did you come here a bride? Did Uncle David bring you here? Had you ever seen it before?”

“I had known it ever since I was a child, but notwithstanding that, the day I entered it and knew it for my own to live in was one of the happiest of my life.”

“All on account of the house, I suppose,” growled Uncle David from the front seat of the car. Aunt Lorena laughed like a bird and said nothing.

“Oh, the years must have rolled sweetly by, Lorena,” said I under my breath.

She smiled at me beautifully, and then we got out of the car, and there were people running from out of the house and from around the house to help us—kind, affectionate, capable black people, happy and well placed.

They all looked at me, open-eyed, like children, and they bowed and smiled, but all the time I could see they were wondering. Then Uncle David took me by the hand and led me up the steps and turned with me and said:

“This is Miss Azalea Knox, the daughter of my brother John. She has come here to be the daughter of the house and your young mistress.”

In the old days—or at least in story books—my “faithful retainers” would have cheered. These did not cheer, but there were murmurs of interest and pleasure, and then they began coming up to wish me happiness with the sweetest manners imaginable. So I shook hands with them all, and liked them, and felt I would enjoy doing things for them and that I could ask them to do things for me. All the while, inside, deep down, there was a curious chuckling going on in me. I couldn’t help having that laugh with myself.

“So the poor homespun princess really has come to her ancestral halls,” I kept thinking. I wondered that it didn’t strike Uncle David and Aunt Lorena and that they didn’t laugh. But no, Carin, they were quite serious and grand, and I soon saw how well their stately ways went with that beautiful place.

I mustn’t take time to describe all the place to you, must I? But I cannot pass on without telling you my first impression of the great hall by which we entered. There was a high paneling in carved wood, and a sweeping staircase, with carved panels, and a fireplace, all beautifully carved too. The dark, shining floor was covered with strips of gray carpeting, and at the doors and the great window of leaded glass on the landing were silvery curtains with bands of white and black. Then there was the clock of teakwood, and a lovely statue of a Diana in pinky-white marble, so delicate the light came through her arm.

An unusual room, you must admit that. To the returning princess, who has seen no grandeur save that to be found in your beautiful home, Carin, it was rather—well, rather overpowering.

Mother McBirney had sent my clothes to me, of course, and now my little bag was taken up to my room, and I was told to follow Mary Greenville Female Seminary Simms—Semmy for short—the old benevolent-faced colored woman.

We went up the wonderful stairway, I saying nothing and breathing pretty hard, but trying not to let anyone know it, and then along the upper hallway to a shuttered door. It was opened for me and I went in to what was to be my room.

So quaint, so complete was it, Carin, that I hardly know how to describe it to you. The walls were papered with a design of pine leaves on pearly white; the draperies were white muslin and green silk; the furniture was of white wood, upholstered in green. There were only two pictures, both of the sea; one with wild waves dashing over a rock in the bright sunshine, the other a quiet, wonderful picture of rippling miles of water the color of the inside of a shell. The sun must have been rising, but one did not see it—only banks of soft cloud, with a gray veil before them.

Can you imagine it all?

Then, as each drawer was opened, or the closets, or the armoire, sweet odors of dried herbs came forth. Everywhere was fragrance and peace.

“You-all trunks will be comin’ along by express I reckon,” said Semmy as she began to unpack my bag. I wondered what Aunt Lorena would wish me to say. Should I let my black maid know that all I owned was there before her—not enough to fill two of the drawers in the deep bureau? Then it occurred to me that it was not necessary to tell her anything at all.

“How nicely you have put everything away,” I said to her. “Here is a little basket that I made with my own hands. Will you let me give it to you?”

So I got rid of Semmy and her questions, and was left alone wondering what I should do next. Nothing I possessed went in any way with my grand surroundings, but I reflected that Mother McBirney would have decided, in such circumstances, that one could at least be neat and clean.

So I bathed in my beautiful bathroom, and I donned fresh clothes. It was rather chilly, and I hardly knew what to wear. But at last I put on the low-necked white frock Aunt Zillah Pace made for me—every stitch hand sewn—and the amber beads your mother gave me, and a scarf of yellow silk that was Barbara Summers’ Christmas present to me. I had some white slippers and silk stockings—gifts from your dear mother, Carin. So I managed fairly well, I thought.

Out in the corridor I met my aunt coming to my room.

“I have told your grandmother,” she whispered. “She is terribly excited. I ought to have waited, perhaps—to let her get acquainted with you and then to tell her after she became fond of you. Oh, I wish I had! But it is too late now. Anyway, we mustn’t keep her waiting a minute. How lovely you look, Azalea! Just as a young girl should. Will you come with me now? Your uncle is with his mother.”

I had never seen Aunt Lorena excited before, and I could hardly understand why she should be so now, though I will confess that I felt very strange myself. I had to take hold of Aunt Lorena’s arm going down that long flight of stairs.

Then, once we were down, the old black butler bowed us into the drawing-room, which was glittering with old-time luster candelabra, and at the end of the room, all in gray and white and diamonds, with hair of pure silver, was the littlest, proudest, stateliest lady I ever saw or dreamed of. You cannot imagine how small she was or how regal. She sat in a high-backed carved chair on a dais, like a queen, and Uncle David stood by her quite as if he were her prime minister and were terribly worried over some affair of state.

I saw him looking at me anxiously, and I knew he was doubting my power to please this little queenly lady. But at that very moment all of my own fears departed and I only remembered that at last here was one of my very, very own folk, and I ran down the room and lifted her hand in mine and kissed it. Yes, I knelt right there on that queer little dais and held her hand to my lips. I was going to call her “grandmother,” but she looked so regal that I could not quite speak that familiarly, so I called her “madam grandmother” instead.

“Madam grandmother,” I cried, “I am your own granddaughter. Please, please love me!”

“Arise, my child,” she said as if I were indeed the long lost daughter of a queen—as I so often had pretended to be—and she lifted me up and looked at me through her little gold-rimmed lorgnette.

“David,” she said proudly, “she is the living image of our dear Jack!”

“Yes, mother,” said Uncle David gently. “I was sure you would think that, and indeed I agree with you, and so does Lorena.”

“Lorena,” said madam grandmother in a voice of command, “I confide this child to your keeping. She must be your especial care. You will rear her, Lorena, to be worthy of her name.”

“I am glad, mother,” said Aunt Lorena, “that you think me capable of performing such an important and delicate task.”

“Lorena, you were a Ravanel, and the Ravanels have no need to doubt themselves. I could place her in no better hands.”

“My Aunt Lorena has already been looking after me more kindly than I can say, madam grandmother,” I said. “I cannot tell you how good she was to me when I was ill.”

“Hah!” cried my grandmother, “I like your voice, Azalea. Moreover, I like your manner; and I admire your name. I wish to hear something of your life. David and Lorena, you have, no doubt, already heard this story. If you wish to withdraw you may do so. Please close the doors as you go. My granddaughter and myself will have a conference.”

Carin, would you have supposed anyone could speak in this manner in the present day and generation? I would never have believed it myself if I had not heard it.

Sampson, the old butler, was summoned to bring up a low, comfortable chair for me, and sitting in this, holding my grandmother’s little wrinkled, jeweled hands in mine, I told her all the story.Once she asked me to ring to have the fire lighted in the great fireplace, and “old James,” as the utility man is called, came in and did it. Otherwise we were left quite to ourselves. Callers came, but she asked to be excused.

“I have been receiving callers all my life,” she said to me, “but never, never before have I sat with a granddaughter of my own—and as true a Knox as ever drew the breath of life. Every tone of your voice, my dear, reminds me of your father; every look and gesture is like him. This is the happiest day I have had for many years.”

“You do not question my identity at all, madam grandmother,” I said. “It is very gracious of you.”

“The story your Uncle David told me was convincing, my child. But aside from that, your face is a confirmation of the truth of your story. But continue, please. I wish to hear everything you have to say.”

So I talked on and on, and she listened seriously and kindly, sometimes with her head drooping a little, other times proudly, with her little gold-bound glasses raised. I could see that she suffered horribly when I told of how my sweet mother and I had struggled on, how we had gone hungry and cold and had had to associate with drunken, coarse, cruel people. But I told her everything. I seemed to owe that much to my little mother.

Then, after a long time, I finished. She looked at me with a strange, sad, wistful air that made me, for all her pride, think of a child who had done wrong and who wished to be forgiven.

“I am sorry,” she said, “that you did not know your father, Azalea. You would have loved him. No one could help loving him. Please, for my sake, do not hate his memory.”

“No, no,” I answered, “I will not hate him, or anyone. I haven’t time to hate anyone.”

Just then a beautiful sound stole through the room. I could not tell what it was or where it came from, but grandmother smiled at my surprise and told me that it was only the dinner gong. So she arose and said:

“Your arm, Azalea, please,” and we went down the long drawing-room together, and when we reached the door the old butler threw wide the leaves of it for us, and we crossed the great corridor and went to the dining room. It was all glittering with silver and glass and shining with white linen and glowing with flowers, and there was the butler and a man to help him, and Martha, grandmother’s own woman, to stand behind her chair.

Try to think of your own rough and ready Azalea, sitting there amid that grandeur, acting as if she were used to it. But it is asking too much of you, isn’t it, honey? Everyone talked very softly, and when they laughed they seemed to do so rather cautiously, and the servants moved about as if it would be a terrible crime to make a noise, though I could see perfectly well by the expression of their faces, that they took an interest in everything. Of course we had delicious things to eat. There was some kind of a frozen dessert that Aunt Lorena said was made in my honor.

“We have this only on notable occasions,” she declared.

After dinner we went back to the drawing-room again, and my grandmother asked me to sing. So I did, but not very well, and she asked me to dance, and I did that, too, with Aunt Lorena playing for me. But I don’t believe I danced very well either. Making up a solo dance as you go along isn’t easy, is it, Carin? But at any rate, grandmother seemed pleased, and I am sure it helped her to pass the evening. The last hour I sat beside her, telling her stories of Mother McBirney and all my friends, and she kept her hand on my arm, and now and then cried to Uncle David:

“Isn’t it incredible that we have found her? Isn’t she the picture of your brother Jack?”

Finally Aunt Lorena said it was time for us all to go to bed, and when grandmother protested, she reminded her how weary we were from our long journey. So old Martha was called for grandmother, and Semmy was called for me, and we all went off to our rooms. I had to laugh a little—at least, I think I laughed, but maybe I cried, too—to think of my little loft at home, and the pieces of round tin nailed over the mouse holes. And then to look around at this new room of mine!

The bed was soft as down, and scented with lavender, and there was an eiderdown comfort to snuggle under. It was such a wonderful bed that I couldn’t go to sleep for thinking about it, but lay awake for a long time, as I never had done in my little loft. There was much to think over, Carin—so much. And always I kept wondering: “Have I done right? Is this going to help me weave my silver web?”

I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I heard, without hearing, a certain little soft, stealthy sound for several seconds before I realized that something unusual was happening. Then, when that fact really came to me, I sat up in bed to listen.

Someone, it was evident, was stealing along the hall. Then I heard the soft, creeping steps down the stairs, and after a while a door opened—a little door right beneath my window.

I slipped out of bed and looked from my window, and I could see a little white figure gliding away from the house. It was no larger than that of a child, but the motions it made were not a child’s, and that is how I came to know that it was grandmother. I couldn’t think it right for her to be going out into the garden in the middle of the night in her night clothes, so I ran down the stairs. I found the little door opened from a cloak room, and I stumbled out into the darkness after her. But it was very dark and I did not know the garden, so in a few moments I found myself quite hopelessly lost amid the hedges. I was afraid something dreadful might happen if I wasted any more time, so I got back to the house, and ran upstairs to try to find Aunt Lorena’s room.

But all of the bedroom doors in the house have shutters to them, and these shutters were closed, so I could not possibly tell which rooms were occupied and which were not, and all I could do was to run up and down, knocking at each one and calling:

“Oh, Aunt Lorena, Uncle David, come!”

It was like a horrible nightmare. It seemed as if more doors kept coming into existence right there before my eyes. The place was so dark—I had no idea where to find the electric buttons—that if the doors had not been white I could not have seen them at all. Truly, Carin, it was the most frightening thing that ever happened to me.

But I hear the dinner gong. I will send this off, there is so much of it, and to-morrow I will write you again.

Your own

Azalea.