The Thing From the Lake
Copyright© 2025 by Eleanor M. Ingram
Chapter 5
“The very room, coz she was in,
Seemed warm from floor to ceilin’.”
—The Courtin’.
I arrived at noon, when a bright sun set the country air afloat with motes like dust of gold. The place seemed drenched in golden light. Even the young grass had gold in its green, and the lake glittered hot with yellow sparkles.
The house was transformed. The cream-colored stucco that hid its homely walls, deep, arched porches that took the place of the old shallow affairs, scarlet Spanish tiles where bleached shingles had been—all united in giving it the gayest, most modern air imaginable. A gravel drive curved in beneath the new porte-cochère, inviting the wheels of my car to explore. Grass had been put in order, flower-beds laid out. The new dam was up, and the miniature lake no longer suggested a swamp. If the place had appealed to me in its dreary neglect, now it held out its arms to me and laughed an invitation.
As I stepped from my car, I heard running feet and a girl sped around the veranda to meet me. She cast herself into my arms before I fairly realized this was Phillida. A Phillida as new to my eyes as the house! After the first greetings I held her off to analyze the change.
She was tanned and actually rosy. The corners of her once sad little mouth turned up instead of down and developed—I looked twice—yes, developed a dimple. The dull hair I always had seen brushed plainly back, now was parted on one side and fluffed itself across her forehead and about her cheeks with an astonishing effectiveness. She was attired in a China-blue linen frock with a scarlet sash knotted in front quite daringly, for Phillida.
“Why, Phil, how pretty we are!” I admired.
She looked up at me like a praised little girl, and smoothed the sash. I noticed she wore above her wedding ring that “diamond” which once had adorned Vere’s finger so distastefully to me. It shone bravely in the sunlight with quite a display of fire. Tracing my gaze, she held out her hand for me to see.
“Yes, it was his, Cousin Roger. Of course, we have not very much money yet, and I do not care about all the engagement rings that ever were thought of. But, I was afraid people up here might notice that I had none and think slightingly of Ethan. So I asked him, and we went to a jeweler, who made it smaller to fit me. It is not a false stone, you know. It is a white topaz, and I love it better than the biggest diamond.”
“Then you are still happy?”
“Forever and ever, world without end,” she answered solemnly.
We went in.
Sun and sweet wind had worked white magic in the long-closed house. Quaint furniture, no longer dust-grimed but lustrous with cleanliness and polish, had quite a different air. Fresh upholstery in cheerful tints, fresh paper on the walls, good rugs, order and daintiness everywhere changed the interior out of my recognition. Already the atmosphere of home and cheer was established.
“Come see your rooms,” Phillida invited, enraptured by my admiration. “They are so pretty!”
She ran up the stairs, around the passage, and ushered me into the room of graceful adventure and grotesque nightmare. I stopped on the threshold.
I had ordered the partition removed between the two chambers on this side, giving me one large room. This, with the little bathroom attached, occupied the entire large frontage of the house. This long, spacious room; floors covered by my Chinese rugs, walls echoing the rugs’ smoke-blue, my piano in a bright corner, my special easychairs and writing-table in their due places, welcomed me with such familiar comfort that I could not identify the neglected chamber where I had slept one night in the old bed with the four pineapple-topped posts. The windows were opened, and white curtains with their over-draperies of blue silk were swinging in and out on a fresh breeze where the Horror of my dream had seemed to press itself against the black panes. Decidedly, I must have had a bad attack of indigestion that night!
“See how nice?” Phillida was urging appreciation at my side. “We swung those lovely old hangings from the arch, so they can be drawn across the bedroom end of your room, if you like. Although I do not know why you should like, everything is so pretty! Your long Venetian mirror came safely, and all your darling lamps. And—and I hope you like it so well, Cousin Roger, that you will stay here always!”
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