“Oh,” she exclaimed, “I believe that’s the bell; the four o’clock bell that Pleasance was to ring for me. I must go. It will take me a good while to get home,” and she looked rather distressed.
“No, it won’t. We will show you a short-cut,” said both the Cooies together. This time she had no doubt that both were speaking. “Do not be afraid. We knew it was about time for you to go home, and we were just going to tell you so when you heard the bell. This is only a first visit, to teach you the way, as it were.”
“Then may I come again very soon, and see all over, and peep into all the little arbours and everything?” asked Mary, her spirits rising again.
“Of course you may. It will be all arranged, you will see,” said Mr Coo. “There are plans which we will tell you about, all in good time. But you may stay a few minutes longer. Pleasance will not expect you back the very moment she has rung for you.”
And Mary was pleased to lean back in her mossy chair for a little bit.
“It is the warm feeling that is so nice here,” she said presently. “Just right – neither too hot nor too cold. I don’t mind its being a little cold, now the winter is coming, of course. Out-of-doors one can run, and in the house Pleasance says my godmother is sure to give me a fire in my own room as soon as I like, so I daresay I shall be warmer even than at auntie’s house. But it is nice to have the summery feeling back again.”
“Coo-coo,” the wood-pigeons replied, which meant that they quite agreed with her.
“Is it always mild and warm in this funny place?” Mary went on.
“Always, just as you feel it,” said Mr Coo.
“How nice!” said Mary. “I don’t wonder you removed to the forest from the Square gardens. Yet you never seemed cold there. I used to watch you last spring, soon after the winter, before it had begun to get warm, you know, and wish I was dressed in feathers like you. That was before I knew you, or had learnt to talk to you. It is cold in the nursery early in the morning sometimes, if the fire hasn’t burnt up well, and the little ones sit at the warm side of the table, you see. I shall love to come back here again,” she went on. “You’ll promise to settle about it soon, won’t you? I do so want to see everything you can show me.”
“We won’t forget,” was the reply. “But it is time for you to be going. Lean back a little more.”
Mary did so, though wondering why, for she was quite getting into the way of obeying her little friends without hesitation.
And to her surprise she felt that the chair, which had seemed almost as if growing out of the ground, tilted back with her, though gently, as if on rockers. Then it swung forwards again, though gently still, and ended by very politely, so to say, though decidedly, turning her out. The surprise, it was all too gentle to make her start, confused her a little. Afterwards she felt almost sure that she must have shut her eyes for half a second, for the next thing she knew, she was standing quite steadily just on the forest-side of the small wicket-gate through which one entered into the garden of Dove’s Nest.
“Dear me, Cooies,” exclaimed Mary, “that was a short-cut. Now, you can never say you are not.”
But before she had time to add “fairies,” she found she was talking to the air, or at any rate not to the wood-pigeons, for they had disappeared.
Mary almost laughed, though she felt a tiny bit provoked too.
“They do treat me rather too babyishly,” she thought. “They might explain what they are going to do, a little more. But then, after all, in fairy stories they never do, and I am now quite sure that I am in a sort of fairy story – that is to say in all to do with the Cooies. If it was the night I should think I was dreaming; but it isn’t the night, and I am very glad of it. It is much nicer to have really to do with fairies.”
And she ran across the lawn in good spirits, not sorry to have missed the chilly walk through the wood.
“It couldn’t but have felt cold after that deliciously warm place,” she thought to herself. “Perhaps that is why they brought me home in that magic way. They wouldn’t like me to get a sore throat, or a sneezing cold, or any of these horrible things. Yes, I may be quite sure they are very, very kind fairies, whatever sort they are exactly.”
Pleasance was in the hall as Mary came in. She looked up brightly.
“Well, you have come home punctually, Miss Mary,” she said. “I suppose you heard the bell quite distinctly?”
“Quite,” said Mary, “both times.”
“That is very nice,” said the maid. “Now we can feel quite comfortable about you when you are amusing yourself in the forest. And you don’t feel chilly, I hope, Miss? It would never do for you to catch cold while you are with us.”
“No, indeed,” said Mary, smiling. “I shouldn’t like it at all. But you needn’t be afraid. It felt quite warm in – the forest. At least after the first it did. Shall I get ready for tea now? I suppose godmother will be home soon.”
“Sure to be so,” replied Pleasance. “My lady is always punctual. Indeed I thought I heard the ponies’ bells in the distance just before you came in. It will be nice for Miss Verity to find you back and ready to welcome her.”
Chapter Nine.
“That Means Good Luck, I am Sure.”
Pleasance’s last words were Miss Verity’s first ones.
“It is nice to find you back,” she said to Mary, as she drove up, with a cheery ting-ting from the ponies’ bells. “And I hope tea is quite ready, for I have had rather a cold drive,” she added, as she got out.
“Yes, yes, godmother, dear,” said Mary, who was standing in the porch. “I’m sure it is. And I’m so glad I was here just a few minutes before you.”
“I can see you managed to amuse yourself in the forest,” said Miss Verity, when she had taken off her wraps and they were sitting together in the drawing-room, the tea-table in its “winter place” near the fire. “You are looking so rosy and bright.”
“I did enjoy myself very much indeed,” said Mary.
“I thought you would; indeed I knew you would,” her godmother said. But she did not ask any questions, and there was rather a dreamy tone in her voice and a look in her eyes as she leant back in her chair and gazed into the fire, which made Mary again think to herself, as she had thought several times already, that “godmother herself knows something about the fairy secrets of the forest.”
And Mary felt still surer of this when, after a little silence, Miss Verity said quietly —
“I shall never feel uneasy about you when you are in the forest – even quite alone – now that I see that you are obedient and thoughtful about keeping promises, my little Cinderella,” and she smiled the pretty smile that made her face look quite young again.
“But Cinderella did forget,” said Mary, laughing; “at least she only remembered just in time, didn’t she?”
“She had no Pleasance to ring a big bell,” replied her godmother. “Still, she did not mean to disobey, and the very moment she found how late it was, she ran off, even at the risk of offending the prince. I have always thought that one of the nicest parts of the story. For so many would have said to themselves, ‘Oh, I’m sure to be too late, so I’ll just stay on and enjoy myself a little longer.’ If I had not satisfied myself that you are to be trusted, my Mary, I could not let you stay alone in the forest, though for a good dutiful child there can be no safer place.” Mary felt very pleased. And – was it fancy – just then a tiny “coo-coo!” seemed to breathe itself across the room from the side where the window on to the lawn was.
“How brightly the fire is burning!” Miss Verity went on, after a little pause. “I wonder if there is frost in the air.”
“I don’t know,” said Mary, adding merrily, “but I can tell you, godmother, these are fir-cones in the fire! Perhaps it is that.”
“No doubt of it,” said Miss Verity. “I might have guessed it. Did you bring any in with you?”
“Not to-day, but I brought some, a few at a time, before. And I think some of the servants have been gathering them. I saw Myrtle with some in her apron, and I have scented them several times about the house. It is such a nice smell.”
“Yes, and they burn so beautifully. I have never known any fir-cones like those in our forest, not even in Germany,” replied her godmother.
“They’re like everything else about here, I think,” said Mary.
Miss Verity looked pleased.
“Do look, godmother,” Mary added quickly. “There are such funny pictures in the fire. There, over at your side, do you see? It is like the edge – what should I call it? – of a ship, and somebody looking up as if he was watching something. I know what it makes me think of; it is Michael, I wonder if it is the middle of the night just now where he is, and if perhaps he is standing at the side of his ship looking up at the stars?”
“And thinking of home and the dear ones there, and of his little cousin Mary,” added Miss Verity. “Perhaps so, though I think sailors are generally too busy, or too glad to go to sleep when their busy time is over, to have much leisure for star-gazing.”
“But I am sure Michael is always, nearly, thinking of home,” said Mary, with a touch of reproach in her voice. “You don’t know, godmother, how very loving and kind he is.”
“I am sure of it,” said Miss Verity, quickly. “Do not mistake me, dear. The brother I loved best of all, long ago, was a sailor, and it is very rarely that sailors have not loving faithful hearts, I think. Does Michael know that you are here with me?”
“Oh yes,” said Mary. “He knew it before he went away. He was very glad I was coming. He was sure I would be happy here. You see it is a little lonely sometimes at auntie’s when Michael’s away for such a long time. The little ones are so little.”
“Yet here you haven’t even little ones,” said her godmother, smiling. “How is it you are not lonely then?”
“I have you” said Mary, “and – and the forest, and you let me go about by myself. And I like the country much better than a town.”
“Even in winter?” asked Miss Verity.
Mary hesitated.
“Yes, I think so,” she said, “though the shops are very pretty about Christmas time, and the streets lighted up when it begins to get dark in the afternoons, do look so nice. But I daresay, godmother, here it is never dull or gloomy, even in winter. The forest must look lovely with snow on the branches, and shiny icicles, and I should think it’s always rather dry to walk about there, on the fir needles.”
“It is never wet for very long, certainly, in the forest,” said her godmother, “but still we have dull gloomy days, and days when it never leaves off raining at all, and one is glad to stay at home beside a bright cheery fire like this.”
Mary glanced at the fire again – the picture she had seen in it had melted or changed by this time, but in another corner she saw what seemed to her like a sort of arbour, with a bird at the entrance. This reminded her of the secret of the forest, and she wondered to herself what it was like inside the white gate on a dull rainy day such as Miss Verity had been speaking of. Was it always warm and bright there? Yes, she could not remember if the wood-pigeons had said so, but she felt sure it must be so.
“Otherwise,” she thought, “it would not be even the edge of fairy-land.”
Then her mind strayed to other things. She began wondering if she would soon have a letter from Michael, and if the picture in the fire could have been a sort of fairy message from him, and she quite started when her godmother spoke again.
“The next time you are in the forest, Mary dear,” she said, “or the first time you feel at a loss for anything to amuse yourself with, I should be very glad of more fir-cones. I like to make a provision of them while they are still perfectly dry and crisp.”
“Yes, I am very fond of picking them up,” said Mary. “I might have brought some in already, if I had had a basket with me.”
“Pleasance has one or two nice light ones on purpose,” said Miss Verity. “She will show you where she keeps them. If to-morrow is fine again, like to-day,” she went on, “I should like you to go a drive with me. I think Jackdaw and Magpie were very surprised at my not taking you to-day: I often fancy they go along with more spirit when there is some one with me; they like to hear our voices, and little Thomas and I seldom converse.” Little Thomas was the small groom who sat in the back seat, and he was noted for his silence, an uncommon quality in a boy!
Mary laughed.
“No,” she said, “I couldn’t fancy you having much conversation with little Thomas, certainly.”
She felt in her heart just a tiny bit disappointed that there was no likelihood of her going to the forest again the next day. But then her godmother was so good to her that she knew it would be very wrong and ungrateful not to be glad to do all she wished. And besides —
“If I wasn’t quite good, or at least trying to be so,” she said to herself, “the Cooies wouldn’t care for me, or make plans for me or show me things or anything. I am quite sure they would not.”
This was her last waking thought that night, and almost, I think, her first the next morning.
And when she was dressed, and stood for a moment or two at the casement window, which she had opened a little to have a breath of the forest air, there seemed to come an answer to her thought.
“Coo-coo, coo,” sounded softly from the direction of the trees, and Mary just at first hoped that it would be followed by the rustle of little wings and a morning visit from her two friends. But no, only the sweet voices again, this time a little farther off, and Mary, who was getting wonderfully quick at understanding her Cooies’ ways, knew that this meant they were not coming to visit her to-day, but that they were pleased with what she meant to try to do and feel.
The morning passed pleasantly, and the sky, which had been rather grey and overcast early in the day, cleared up about noon and promised to be bright and sunny for the remaining hours.
So Mary felt quite light-hearted when, shortly after luncheon, Miss Verity sent her to get ready for their drive.
“Wrap yourself up warmly,” her godmother said. “It gets chilly in the afternoon – or stay – I have an idea,” and with a smile on her kind face Miss Verity went upstairs, and Mary heard her talking to Pleasance.
In a few minutes she came back, carrying something over her arm which looked to Mary as if her Cooies and all their numerous relations had helped to make it! It was a little cape – made, not of fur, but of tiny feathers, too soft and small to bristle or break, of every shade of bluey-grey, and lined with white, still quite clean, though the cape was evidently old, and the white had grown rather creamy-coloured through lying by for many years.
“It was mine when I was a little girl like you,” said her godmother. “It was considered my very best, and somehow it never got dirty or seemed to need cleaning, though some of the shades are very delicate, as you see. It will be just the thing for you to wear when you drive with me these chilly afternoons.”
Mary eyed the cloak with great interest and approval.
“It is lovely,” she said, “and wonderful I don’t think you could get one like it in any shop now, godmother, could you?”
Miss Verity shook her head.
“I doubt if you could,” she said. “And I do not even know if it came from a shop long ago. It was given to my mother for me when I was only a baby by some friend of her mother’s, and it came ‘from abroad,’ which was all I ever knew about it. But we must be quick, dear; Jackdaw and Magpie are not fond of waiting at the door.”
Nor were they; as Mary ran downstairs she heard their bells tinkling impatiently. And when she called out cheerfully —
“We’re coming, ponies, we’re coming,” it seemed as if the little satisfied toss of their heads meant that they were pleased that she was coming too!
It was a cold day, but dry and crisp, and Mary felt very cosy with the soft grey cape on the top of her own little scarlet cloth jacket. Miss Verity drove quickly, though, as she told Mary, they had not so very far to go.
“But I shall have to stay half-an-hour or so at Crook Edge, the house I want to call at,” she added. “I am going to say good-bye to two girls, who have lived there for some years with their father. He died last year, and now they are leaving for good. Blanche, the elder, is going to be married, and her younger sister, who is scarcely grown-up, is to live with her. They are very sweet girls.”
“Are you very sorry to say good-bye to them?” Mary asked.
Miss Verity hesitated.
“For my own sake, yes. But I am glad for them. It would have been too quiet a life at Crook Edge. It is an out-of-the-way place, at the side of the loneliest part of the forest.”
“Everywhere about here seems to have to do with the forest, doesn’t it?” said Mary.
“Yes, it never lets itself be forgotten,” her godmother replied, glancing as she spoke at the dark green line a little distance off, which seemed as it were to follow them as they went, “and we who love it and almost feel as if we were its children, don’t want ever to forget it.”
“No, no, of course not,” said Mary eagerly. “I feel like that too, though I haven’t been very long here. I know quite how you mean.”
Miss Verity smiled, the very pleased kind of smile that, as Mary had learnt to know, told of her liking to feel that her little god-daughter understood and sympathised in feelings that some children would not have been able to share.
They did not talk much more till they reached Crook Edge, where Miss Verity’s young friends were looking out for them. The elder of the two girls, whose name was Blanche, was very pretty, almost the prettiest person, Mary thought, that she had ever seen. She was tall and slight and very fair; perhaps the black dress she still wore made her seem taller and slighter and fairer than if she had been in colour, and her expression was very sweet. She looked so lovingly at her younger sister, who was also pretty, though not as pretty as Blanche, that Mary could not help thinking to herself that it must be very nice to have a kind grown-up sister! And also felt very pleased when both the girls kissed her as she sprang out of the pony-carriage.
“What a delicious cloak,” said Blanche, as she was helping her visitors to take off some of their wraps in the hall. “It suits your house, Miss Verity. It is really like a dove’s mantle.”
“Yes,” Miss Verity replied, “it is a rather remarkable cloak, and the odd thing is that though I have had it nearly all my life, I do not really know its history, and there is no one who can tell it to me.”
“I have never seen a cloak the least like it,” said Blanche, stroking the soft feathers as she spoke. “But then,” she went on, half-laughingly, “it only suits Dove’s Nest. Nothing there seems quite like anywhere else: don’t you think so, Mary?”
“Yes,” said Mary. “Everything is prettier and funnier than anywhere else.”
“I always envy the name,” said Blanche. “Our name is so ugly and rough – Crook Edge; but it doesn’t matter now, as it will so soon be our home no longer,” and she gave just a little sigh.
“Are you sorry to go away?” asked Mary, looking up gently with her wistful hazel eyes.
“One is always sorry to go away from what has been a home,” said Blanche. “And Milly and I love the forest. By the bye, Miss Verity, we have had the white dove here again since I saw you, – the large white dove.”
“Have you, my dear?” said Miss Verity, looking interested. “That means good luck, I feel sure.”
“Good luck and good-bye,” said Blanche. “Yes, she came and perched on a tree in the garden, and cooed so sweetly. The gardener says she is too large for a dove; that she must be some kind of wood-pigeon only.”
“Unless,” added Milly, “unless, as he says, ‘she’s one as has strayed from furrin parts.’ But I don’t think so. She looks quite at home, and not at all cold or starved. Anyway Blanche and I always call her the white dove. She is so pretty, and one day we thought we saw something gleaming on her neck, like a tiny gold chain – that almost seems as if she was a pet bird, doesn’t it?”
“Or a fairy one?” said Miss Verity, smiling.
They had lingered at Crook Edge rather longer than Mary’s godmother had intended, and though the day was still fine, it was beginning to get dark and the clouds were massing as if rain might be not very far off. Mary gave a little shiver, and Miss Verity looked a trifle uneasy.
“You are not cold, dear?” she said.
“Oh no,” said the little girl, “I don’t think I could be, with this cloak. It was just a sort of feeling, you know, when the night seems to be coming.”
All the same, she said to herself, though Miss Verity whipped up the ponies and they went along at a good pace:
“I wish we were at home.”
And, wonderful to tell, before she had time to wish it again, there they were! For the next words Mary heard were, —
“Wake up, dear. We are at Dove’s Nest.”
And when she opened her eyes, there was Miss Verity’s face smiling down on her, as she half-lay, half-sat in her place with her head on her godmother’s shoulder, and Myrtle and Pleasance looking a little concerned, as “the ladies” had been later of returning than usual, but rather amused too, and both quite ready to lift “Miss Mary” out and carry her to the warmth and brightness indoors.
How Miss Verity had managed to drive with her godchild peacefully making a pillow of her arm is a puzzle I cannot explain.
But as Mary slipped off the feather cloak, feeling as warm as a toast, she looked at it rather curiously, for she had her own thoughts about it.
“Shall I keep it in my room, godmother?” she asked. “That is to say, if you mean to lend it me again.”
“You may count it yours as long as you are here,” Miss Verity replied. “I am sure you will take care of it. And – then we shall see.”
“Thank you very much,” said Mary, adding, “I don’t think I should like to take it away with me. It would get dirty in a town, and that would make me unhappy. I have one drawer upstairs with nothing in. I should like to keep it in there.”
“Very well, you may, and Pleasance will give you some nice tissue-paper to cover it with.”
Pleasance did not forget to do so. Mary found two or three large sheets of pale-blue paper lying ready on her bed late that evening, in which she carefully wrapped the mantle.
Perhaps it was because she did this the last thing before going to sleep, that she had strange dreams that night, in which the cloak, and the wood-pigeons, and pretty Blanche and her cousin Michael and her godmother all seemed to be mixed up together, though in the morning she could not distinctly remember anything except that the dreams had been interesting and pleasant.
“I wonder if my Cooies could tell anything about the feather cloak,” she thought, “and oh, I do wonder if the white dove is any relation of theirs, or if they know her.”
And this morning too she jumped out of bed the very moment Pleasance came to call her, so that she might dress quickly and have a minute or two to stand at the window before the bell rang, so that if the wood-pigeons were anywhere near, they could come to talk to her.