The Second House. V. J. Banis
you’re going to be here for a few days, and want to play hooky again, perhaps you’ll let me show you some of the local sights. There are a few interesting ones.”
“I should like that very much,” he said. I indicated the drive ahead. He turned neatly into it, and we were there.
“I suppose I should invite you in to dry off,” I said.
“I’m afraid it’s the clothes that are wet, and I think I’d look a little peculiar borrowing your things.”
We laughed together, and shook hands. “Take care of the little one,” he said. “We went to such lengths to salvage her it would be a shame not to.”
“Since it’s really you to whom she owes everything, perhaps you should pick a name for her.”
He thought for a moment, and said, “Let’s make it Hepzibah, then.”
“Hepzibah it is.” I held the now dry ball of fur up. Her eyes were open by this time, and she gave me a hesitant meow. “I think she said she approves.”
“I think she said she’s hungry,” he said. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes, tomorrow would be fine, about one.”
As I watched Mr. Forrest drive away, raising dust from the road, I thought that it was good that we both liked Hawthorne.
Chapter Two
Aunt Gwyneth was more than a little surprised to see me in my present condition. She listened in silence while I explained; afterward, she made up for the silence with a very long narrative concerning primarily my foolishness and the question of how she could be expected to keep a house clean if it was to be filled with cats.
“Not cats,” I corrected her, “Cat. Only one poor little frightened kitten. Hepzibah, meet Aunt Gwyneth.” Not all of Aunt’s scolding could lessen my good spirits.
“We’ll have hairs everywhere, in the upholstery, in the food—they never stop shedding, that’s what I know about cats. You’d better go up and change, I expect it will be back to the hospital next week; you’d better take your temperature while you’re up there. What did you say that young man’s name was?”
“Forrest.”
“I don’t remember any Forrests about here.” Had there been any, Aunt Gwyneth would certainly have remembered.
“He’s from New York,” I said, starting up the stairs. “New York State.”
“I suppose we ought to be grateful to him, of course. Still, it seems to me that you ought to have brought him in for me to meet, him being a stranger and all.”
I had reached the landing. Just as I went around the turn in the stairs, so that she would have no opportunity to reply, I called down to her, “You’ll meet him tomorrow, he’s coming to call.”
As soon as I was changed into dry clothes (my temperature was surprisingly normal), I looked after Hepzibah. My first consideration was food, and I brought some warm milk up from the kitchen. She was so very young that it was necessary to show her how to drink it, but after a few tastes of a milk-dipped finger, she got the idea, and greedily cleaned the dish, purring loudly all the time. In the meantime, I found a box and some old rags, and made up a bed for her; another box with sand provided for her needs, and she was soon quite at home.
I was in the habit of taking an afternoon nap, and this particular afternoon I felt I needed it more than usual. No sooner had I stretched out over my bed when Hepzibah began crying, and nothing would quiet her but that she be brought up onto the bed with me. Still purring happily, she curled up on the pillow beside me and gave evidence of her own exhaustion. I fell asleep with her happy rumbling in my ear.
The addition of that tiny creature made a vast change in my life. For the first time I knew what it was like to love and be loved; true, it was a far cry from the romantic dream that a young woman ordinarily entertains when she thinks of love. But my life had not been ordinary; it had been singularly lacking in any sort of affection. Now, quite suddenly, I had a living thing that idolized me, that followed me everywhere, that rubbed against me and purred for me and licked my face when I held her close. I was not only loved, I was needed. And how I adored this helpless little ball of fluff. We were two creatures who had hitherto been unwanted, had nearly died together, and now lived together. In my heart I was actually grateful to that horrid man who had abandoned that litter, although I grieved too that I had not been able to save them all.
Of course, Hepzibah was not my sole reason for being happy. Jeffrey Forrest came exactly on time that following day. I had to introduce him to Aunt Gwyneth. She was coolly observant. He was shy but quite pleasant. I think I was a little relieved that they did not especially like one another. After a civil time, Jeffrey and I went out. He had asked after Hepzibah immediately upon his arrival, and on departing he suggested we take her along. I was delighted, and she seemed equally so when I made a place for her in an old wicker basket and set her on the seat beside us.
Virtually all of my time outside of hospitals had been spent in the few miles surrounding our home, so that I knew almost every rock and tree by heart. I had said the day before that there were some sights worth seeing, and it was true. We had no skyscrapers nor massive peaks nor breathtaking gorges; ours was only a small farming community. But within an area of a few miles there were the remains of an old Indian fort, and a still working water mill. In the very heart of town was one of the state’s oldest buildings, used for nearly two hundred years as a newspaper office.
“And this,” I said at our last stop, “Has nothing to recommend it except that it’s one of the loveliest spots I know.” We had parked by a hill, and mounting this had before us a view of a rambling slope that led downward to a clear fresh stream. Beyond that were green pastures, and in the distance a farm so picturesque as to seem unreal. The lettering on the side of the barn still advised us to chew Mail Pouch.
“You’re quite right, it is lovely,” he said, putting down a robe he had brought from the car. We sat on this, and Hepzibah was quite delighted to be let out of her basket. She had no difficulty in remembering Mr. Forrest, and divided her attention between the two of us as we talked.
“You have a distinct advantage over me,” I said, chewing on a blade of grass I had plucked from the ground. “You now know virtually everything there is to know about me, my home, my life, and I know nothing about you.”
“Have you never been to upstate New York?”
“No. I’ve done very little travelling. To and from hospitals, that’s about all.”
“It’s quite a lovely area. Our home is called La Deuxième. If you were a history buff, you’d have run across the name in a book or two.”
“La Deuxième. The second?”
“The second house, in our case.”
I propped myself up on an elbow. An orange and black butterfly hovered nearby as if preparing to listen too. “It sounds intriguing,” I said. “Do go on, tell me about this history. Is it romantic?”
“Very,” he said. He seemed happy to speak of his home, and perhaps a little embarrassed by his own pride. I thought as he talked that this story was very old to him; he had heard it first when he was far too young to understand, and a hundred times since then, and when he held a child of his own on his knee, this was the story he would tell him.
“Before the second house,” he said, “There was a first house—a convent. A band of French nuns built it before this country was a country. They had set out from the coast thinking they would find a place in the West where they were most needed. Heaven knows how they survived their journey through what was then truly a wilderness. They had no guide with them, not a single man to assist them.”
“But somehow they came to a small settlement. The settlers living there were French; they had decided to make their homes in this vast fertile valley bordered with rich forests. There were numerous French settlements in the state. It was still a tossup, you recall, whether