Mary E. Wilkins Freeman - The Green Door
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Mary E. Wilkins Freeman >> The Green Door
The Green Door
By
Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman
Illustrated by
Mary R. Bassett
New York
Dodd, Mead & Company
1931
Letitia lived in the same house where her grandmother and her
great-grandmother had lived and died. Her own parents died when she
was very young, and she had come there to live with her Great-aunt
Peggy. Her Great-aunt Peggy was her grandfather's sister, and was a
very old woman. However, she was very active and bright, and good
company for Letitia. That was fortunate, because there were no little
girls of Letitia's age nearer than a mile. The one maid-servant whom
Aunt Peggy kept was older than she, and had chronic rheumatism in the
right foot and left shoulder-blade, which affected her temper.
Letitia's Great-aunt Peggy used to play grace-hoops with her, and
dominoes and checkers, and even dolls. Sometimes it was hard for
Letitia to realize that she was not another little girl. Her Aunt
Peggy was very kind to her and fond of her, and took care of her as
well as her own mother could have done. Letitia had all the care and
comforts and pleasant society that she really needed, but she was not
a very contented little girl. She was naturally rather idle, and her
Aunt Peggy, who was a wise old woman and believed thoroughly in the
proverb about Satan and idle hands, would keep her always busy at
something.
If she were not playing, she had to sew or study or dust, or read a
stent in a story-book. Letitia had very nice story-books, but she was
not particularly fond of reading. She liked best of anything to sit
quite idle, and plan what she would like to do if she could have her
wish--and that her Aunt Peggy would not allow.
Letitia was not satisfied with her dolls and little treasures. She
wanted new ones. She wanted fine clothes like one little girl, and
plenty of candy like another. When Letitia went to school she always
came home more dissatisfied. She wanted her room newly furnished, and
thought the furniture in the whole house very shabby. She disliked to
rise so early in the morning. She did not like to take a walk every
day, and besides everything else to make her discontented, there was
the little green door, which she must never open and pass through.
The house where Letitia lived was, of course, a very old one. It had
a roof, saggy and mossy, gray shingles in the walls, lilac bushes
half hiding the great windows, and a well-sweep in the yard. It was
quite a large house, and there were sheds and a great barn attached
to it, but they were all on the side. At the back of the house the
fields stretched away for acres, and there were no outbuildings. The
little green door was at the very back of the house, toward the
fields, in a room opening out of the kitchen. It was called the
cheese-room, because Letitia's grandmother, who had made cheeses, had
kept them there. She fancied she could smell cheese, though none had
been there for years, and it was used now only for a lumber-room. She
always sniffed hard for cheese, and then she eyed the little green
door with wonder and longing. It was a small green door, scarcely
higher than her head. A grown person could not have passed through
without stooping almost double. It was very narrow, too, and no one
who was not slender could have squeezed through it. In this door
there was a little black keyhole, with no key in it, but it was
always locked. Letitia knew that her Aunt Peggy kept the key in some
very safe place, but she would never show it to her, nor unlock the
door.
"It is not best for you, my dear," she always replied, when Letitia
teased her; and when Letitia begged only to know why she could not go
out of the door, she made the same reply, "It is not best for you, my
dear."
Sometimes, when Aunt Peggy was not by, Letitia would tease the old
maid-servant about the little green door, but she always seemed both
cross and stupid, and gave her no satisfaction. She even seemed to
think there was no little green door there; but that was nonsense,
because Letitia knew there was. Her curiosity grew greater and
greater; she took every chance she could get to steal into the
cheese-room and shake the door softly, but it was always locked. She
even tried to look through the key-hole, but she could see nothing.
One thing puzzled her more than all, and that was that the little
green door was on the inside of the house only, and not on the
outside. When Letitia went out in the field behind the house, there
was nothing but the blank wall to be seen. There was no sign of a
door in it. But the cheese-room was certainly the last room in the
house, and the little green door was in the rear wall. When Letitia
asked her Great-aunt Peggy to explain that, she only got the same
answer:
"It is not best for you to know, my dear."
Letitia studied the little green door more than she studied her
lesson-books, but she never got any nearer the solution of the
mystery, until one Sunday morning in January. It was a very cold day,
and she had begged hard to stay home from church. Her Aunt Peggy and
the maid-servant, old as they were, were going, but Letitia shivered
and coughed a little and pleaded, and finally had her own way.
"But you must sit down quietly," charged Aunt Peggy, "and you must
learn your texts, to repeat to me when I get home."
After Aunt Peggy and the old servant, in their great cloaks and
bonnets and fur tippets, had gone out of the yard and down the road,
Letitia sat quiet for fifteen minutes or so, hunting in the Bible for
easy texts; then suddenly she thought of the little green door, and
wondered, as she had done so many times before, if it could possibly
be opened. She laid down her Bible and stole out through the kitchen
to the cheese-room and tried the door. It was locked just as usual.
"Oh, dear!" sighed Letitia, and was ready to cry. It seemed to her
that this little green door was the very worst of all her trials;
that she would rather open that and see what was beyond than have all
the nice things she wanted and had to do without.
Suddenly she thought of a little satin-wood box with a picture on the
lid which Aunt Peggy kept in her top bureau-drawer. Letitia had often
seen this box, but had never been allowed to open it.
"I wonder if the key can be in that box," said she.
She did not wait a minute. She was so naughty that she dared not wait
for fear she should remember that she ought to be good. She ran out
of the cheese-room, through the kitchen and sitting-room, to her
aunt's bedroom, and opened the bureau drawer, and then the satin-wood
box. It contained some bits of old lace, an old brooch, a yellow
letter, some other things which she did not examine, and, sure
enough, a little black key on a green ribbon.
Letitia had not a doubt that it was the key of the little green door.
She trembled all over, she panted for breath, she was so frightened,
but she did not hesitate. She took the key and ran back to the
cheese-room. She did not stop to shut the satin-wood box or the
bureau drawer. She was so cold and her hands shook so that she had
some difficulty in fitting the key into the lock of the little green
door; but at last she succeeded, and turned it quite easily. Then,
for a second, she hesitated; she was almost afraid to open the door;
she put her hand on the latch and drew it back. It seemed to her,
too, that she heard strange, alarming sounds on the other side.
Finally, with a great effort of her will, she unlatched the little
green door, and flung it open and ran out.
Then she gave a scream of surprise and terror, and stood still
staring. She did not dare stir nor breathe. She was not in the open
fields which she had always seen behind the house. She was in the
midst of a gloomy forest of trees so tall that she could just see the
wintry sky through their tops. She was hemmed in, too, by a wide,
hooping undergrowth of bushes and brambles, all stiff with snow.
There was something dreadful and ghastly about this forest, which had
the breathless odor of a cellar. And suddenly Letitia heard again
those strange sounds she had heard before coming out, and she knew
that they were savage whoops of Indians, just as she had read about
them in her history-book, and she saw also dark forms skulking about
behind the trees, as she had read.
Then Letitia, wild with fright, turned to run back into the house
through the little green door, but there was no little green door,
and, more than that, there was no house. Nothing was to be seen but
the forest and a bridle-path leading through it.
Letitia gasped. She could not believe her eyes. She ran out into the
path and down it a little way, but there was no house. The dreadful
yells sounded nearer. She looked wildly at the undergrowth beside the
path, wondering if she could hide under that, when suddenly she heard
a gun-shot and the tramp of a horse's feet. She sprang aside just as
a great horse, with a woman and two little girls on his back, came
plunging down the bridle-path and passed her. Then there was another
gun-shot, and a man, with a wide cape flying back like black wings,
came rushing down the path. Letitia gave a little cry, and he heard
her.
"Who are you?" he cried breathlessly. Then, without waiting for an
answer, he caught her up and bore her along with him. "Don't speak,"
he panted in her ear. "The Indians are upon us, but we're almost
home!"
Then all at once a log-house appeared beside the path, and someone
was holding the door ajar, and a white face was peering out. The door
was flung open wide as they came up, the man rushed in, set Letitia
down, shut the door with a crash, and shot some heavy bolts at top
and bottom.
Letitia was so dazed that she scarcely knew what happened for the
next few minutes. She saw there a pale-faced woman and three girls,
one about her own age, two a little younger. She saw, to her great
amazement, the horse tied in the corner. She saw that the door was of
mighty thickness, and, moreover, hasped with iron and studded with
great iron nails, so that some rattling blows that were rained upon
it presently had no effect. She saw three guns set in loopholes in
the walls, and the man, the woman, and the girl of her own age firing
them, with great reports which made the house quake, while the
younger girls raced from one to the other with powder and bullets.
Still, she was not sure she saw right, it was all so strange. She
stood back in a corner, out of the way, and waited, trembling, and at
last the fierce yells outside died away, and the firing stopped.
"They have fled," said the woman with a thankful sigh.
"Yes," said the man, "we are delivered once more out of the hands of
the enemy."
"We must not unbar the door or the shutters yet," said the woman
anxiously. "I will get the supper by candle-light."
Then Letitia realized what she had not done before, that all the
daylight was shut out of the house; that they had for light only one
tallow candle and a low hearth fire. It was very cold. Letitia began
to shiver with cold as well as fear.
Suddenly the woman turned to her with motherly kindness and
curiosity. "Who is this little damsel whom you rescued, husband?"
said she.
"She must speak for herself," replied her husband, smiling. "I
thought at first she was neighbor Adams's Phoebe, but I see she is
not."
"What is your name, little girl?" asked the woman, while the three
little girls looked wonderingly at the new-comer.
"Letitia Hopkins," replied Letitia in a small, scared voice.
"Letitia Hopkins, did you say?" asked the woman doubtfully.
"Yes, ma'am."
They all stared at her, then at one another.
"It is very strange," said the woman finally, with a puzzled,
half-alarmed look. "Letitia Hopkins is my name."
"And it is mine, too," said the eldest girl.
Letitia gave a great jump. There was something very strange about
this. Letitia Hopkins was a family name. Her grandmother, her
father's mother, had been Letitia Hopkins, and she had always heard
that the name could be traced back in the same order for generations,
as the Hopkinses had intermarried. She looked up, trembling, at the
man who had saved her from the Indians.
"Will you please tell me your name, sir?" she said.
"John Hopkins," replied the man, smiling kindly at her.
"Captain John Hopkins," corrected his wife.
Letitia gasped. That settled it. Captain John Hopkins was her
great-great-great-grandfather. Great-aunt Peggy had often told her
about him. He had been a notable man in his day, among the first
settlers, and many a story concerning him had come down to his
descendants. A queer miniature of him, in a little gilt frame, hung
in the best parlor, and Letitia had often looked at it. She had
thought from the first that there was something familiar about the
man's face, and now she recognized the likeness to the miniature.
It seemed awful, and impossible, but the little green door led into
the past, and Letitia Hopkins was visiting her great-great-great-
grandfather and grandmother, great-great-grandmother, and her
great-great-aunts.
Letitia looked up in the faces, all staring wonderingly at her, and
all of them had that familiar look, though she had no miniature of
the others. Suddenly she knew that it was a likeness to her own face
which she recognized, and it was as if she saw herself in a
looking-glass. She felt as if her head was turning round and round,
and presently her feet began to follow the motion of her head, then
strong arms caught her, or she would have fallen.
When Letitia came to herself again, she was in a great feather
bed, in the unfinished loft of the log-house. The wind blew in
her face, a great star shone in her eyes. She thought at first
she was out of doors. Then she heard a kind but commanding voice
repeating: "Open your mouth," and stared up wildly into her
great-great-great-grandmother's face, then around the strange little
garret, lighted with a wisp of rag in a pewter dish of tallow,
and the stars shining through the crack in the logs. Not a bit of
furniture was there in the room, besides the bed and an oak chest.
Some queer-looking garments hung about on pegs and swung in the
draughts of the wind. It must have been snowing outside, for little
piles of snow were scattered here and there about the room.
"Where--am--I?" Letitia asked feebly, but no sooner had she opened
her mouth than her great-great-great-grandmother, Goodwife Hopkins,
who had been watching her chance, popped in the pewter spoon full of
some horribly black and bitter medicine.
Letitia nearly choked.
"Swallow it," said Goodwife Hopkins. "You swooned away, and it is
good physic. It will soon make you well."
Goodwife Hopkins had a kind and motherly way, but a way from which
there was no appeal. Letitia swallowed the bitter dose.
"Now go to sleep," ordered Goodwife Hopkins.
Letitia went to sleep. There might have been something quieting to
the nerves in the good physic. She was awakened a little later by her
great-great-grandmother and her two great-great-aunts coming to bed.
They were to sleep with her. There were only two beds in Captain John
Hopkins's house.
Letitia had never slept four in a bed before. There was not much
room. She had to turn herself about crosswise, and then her toes
stuck into the icy air, unless she kept them well pulled up. But soon
she fell asleep again.
About midnight she was awakened by wild cries in the woods outside,
and lay a minute, numb with fright, before she remembered where she
was. Then she nudged her great-great-grandmother, Letitia, who lay
next her.
"What's that?" she whispered fearfully.
"Oh, it's nothing but a catamount. Go to sleep again," said her
great-great-grandmother sleepily. Her great-great-aunt, Phyllis, the
youngest of them all, laughed on the other side.
"She's afraid of a catamount," said she.
Letitia could not go to sleep for a long while, for the wild cries
continued, and she thought several times that the catamount was
scratching up the walls of the house. When she did fall asleep it was
not for long, for the fierce yells she had heard when she had first
opened her little green door sounded again in her ears.
This time she did not need to wake her great-great-grandmother, who
sat straight up in bed at the first sound.
"What's that?" whispered Letitia.
"Hush!" replied the other. "Injuns!"
Both the great-great-aunts were awake; they all listened, scarcely
breathing. The yells came again, but fainter; then again, and fainter
still. Letitia's great-great-grandmother settled back in bed again.
"Go to sleep now," said she. "They've gone away."
But Letitia was weeping with fright. "I can't go to sleep," she
sobbed. "I'm afraid they'll come again."
"Very likely they will," replied the other Letitia coolly. "They come
'most every night."
The little great-great-aunt Phyllis laughed again. "She can't go to
sleep because she heard Injuns," she tittered.
"Hush," said her sister Letitia, "she'll get accustomed to them in
time."
But poor Letitia slept no more till four o'clock. Then she had just
fallen into a sweet doze when she was pulled out of bed.
"Come, come," said her great-great-great-grandmother, Goodwife
Hopkins, "we can have no lazy damsels here."
Letitia found that her bedfellows were up and dressed and downstairs.
She heard a queer buzzing sound from below, as she stood in her bare
feet on the icy floor and gazed about her, dizzy with sleep.
"Hasten and dress yourself," said Goodwife Hopkins. "Here are some of
Letitia's garments I have laid out for you. Those which you wore here
I have put away in the chest. They are too gay, and do not befit a
sober, God-fearing damsel."
With that, Goodwife Hopkins descended to the room below, and Letitia
dressed herself. It did not take her long. There was not much to put
on beside a coarse wool petticoat and a straight little wool gown,
rough yarn stockings, and such shoes as she had never seen.
"I couldn't run from Injuns in these," thought Letitia miserably.
When she got downstairs she discovered what the buzzing noise was.
Her great-great-grandmother was spinning. Her great-great-aunt
Candace was knitting, and little Phyllis was scouring the hearth.
Goodwife Hopkins was preparing breakfast.
"Go to the other wheel," said she to Letitia, "and spin until the
porridge is done. We can have no idle hands here."
Letitia looked helplessly at a great spinning-wheel in the corner,
then at her great-great-great-grandmother.
"I don't know how," she faltered.
Then all the great-grandmothers and the aunts cried out with
astonishment.
"She doesn't know how to spin!" they said to one another.
Letitia felt dreadfully ashamed.
"You must have been strangely brought up," said Goodwife Hopkins.
"Well, take this stocking and round out the toe. There will be just
about time enough for that before breakfast."
"I don't know how to knit," stammered Letitia.
Then there was another cry of astonishment. Goodwife Hopkins cast
about her for another task for this ignorant guest.
"Explain the doctrine of predestination," said she suddenly.
Letitia jumped up and stared at her with scared eyes.
"Don't you know what predestination is?" demanded Goodwife Hopkins.
"No, ma'am," half sobbed Letitia.
Her great-great-grandmother and her great-great-aunts made shocked
exclamations, and her great-great-great-grandmother looked at her
with horror. "You have been brought up as one of the heathen," said
she. Then she produced a small book, and Letitia was bidden to seat
herself upon a stool and learn the doctrine of predestination before
breakfast.
The kitchen was lighted only by one tallow candle and the firelight,
for it was still far from dawn. Letitia drew her little stool close
to the hearth, and bent anxiously over the fire-lit page. She
committed to memory easily, and repeated the text like a frightened
parrot when she was called upon.
"The child has good parts, though she is woefully ignorant," said
Goodwife Hopkins aside to her husband. "It shall be my care to
instruct her."
Letitia, having completed her task, was given her breakfast. It was
only a portion of corn-meal porridge in a pewter plate. She had never
had such a strange breakfast in her life, and she did not like
corn-meal. She sat with it untasted before her.
"Why don't you eat?" asked her great-great-great-grandmother
severely.
"I--don't--like--it," faltered Letitia.
If possible, they were all more shocked by that than they had been by
her ignorance.
"She doesn't like the good porridge," the little great-great-aunts
said to each other.
"Eat the porridge," commanded Captain John Hopkins sternly, when he
had gotten over his surprise.
Letitia ate the porridge, every grain of it. After breakfast the
serious work of the day began. Letitia had never known anything like
it. She felt like a baby who had just come into a new world. She was
ignorant of everything that these strange relatives knew. It made no
difference that she knew some things which they did not, some
advanced things. She could, for instance, crochet, if she could not
knit. She could repeat the multiplication-table, if she did not know
the doctrine of predestination; she had also all the States of the
Union by heart. But advanced knowledge is not of as much value in the
past as past knowledge in the future. She could not crochet, because
there was no crochet needles; there were no States of the Union; and
it seemed doubtful if there was a multiplication-table, there was so
little to multiply.
So Letitia had set herself to acquiring the wisdom of her ancestors.
She learned to card, and hetchel, and spin and weave. She
learned to dye cloth, and make coarse garments, even for her
great-great-great-grandfather, Captain John Hopkins. She knitted
yarn stockings, she scoured brass and pewter, and, more than all,
she learned the entire catechism. Letitia had never really known
what work was. From long before dawn until long after dark, she
toiled. She was not allowed to spend one idle moment. She had no
chance to steal out and search for the little green door, even had
she not been so afraid of wild beasts and Indians.
She never went out of the house except on the Sabbath day. Then, in
fair or foul weather, they all went to meeting, ten miles through the
dense forest. Captain John Hopkins strode ahead, his gun over his
shoulder. Goodwife Hopkins rode the gray horse, and the girls rode by
turns, two at a time, clinging to the pillion at her back. Letitia
was never allowed to wear her own pretty plain dress, with the velvet
collar, even to meeting.
"It would create a scandal in the sanctuary," said Goodwife Hopkins.
So Letitia went always in the queer little coarse and scanty gown,
which seemed to her more like a bag than anything else; and for
outside wraps she had--of all things--a homespun blanket pinned over
her head. Her great-great-grandmother and her great-great-aunts were
all fitted out in a similar fashion. Goodwife Hopkins, however, had a
great wadded hood and a fine red cloak.
There was never any fire in the meeting-house, and the services
lasted all day, with a short recess at noon, during which they went
into a neighboring house, sat round the fire, warmed their half
frozen feet, and ate cold corn-cakes and pan-cakes for luncheon.
There were no pews in the meeting-house, nothing but hard benches
without backs. If Letitia fidgetted, or fell asleep, the tithing-men
rapped her. Letitia would never have been allowed to stay away from
meeting, had she begged to do so, but she never did. She was afraid
to stay alone in the house because of Indians.
Quite often there was a rumor of hostile Indians in the neighborhood,
and twice there were attacks. Letitia learned to load the guns and
hand the powder and bullets.
She grew more and more homesick as the days went on. They were all
kind to her, and she became fond of them, especially of the
great-great-grandmother of her own age, and the little
great-great-aunts, but they seldom had any girlish sports together.
Goodwife Hopkins kept them too busily at work. Once in a while, as
a special treat, they were allowed to play bean-porridge-hot for
fifteen minutes. They were not allowed to talk after they went to
bed, and there was little opportunity for girlish confidences.
However, there came a day at last when Captain Hopkins and his
wife were called away to visit a sick neighbor, some twelve miles
distant, and the four girls were left in charge of the house. At
seven o'clock the two younger went to bed, and Letitia and her
great-great-grandmother remained up to wait for the return of their
elders, as they had been instructed. Then it was that the little
great-great-grandmother showed Letitia her treasures. She had only
two, and was not often allowed to look at them, lest they wean her
heart away from more serious things. They were kept in a secret
drawer of the great chest for safety, and were nothing but a little
silver snuff-box with a picture on the top, and a little flat glass
bottle, about an inch and a half long.
"The box belonged to my grandfather, and the bottle to his mother. I
have them because I am the eldest, but I must not set my heart on
them unduly," said Letitia's great-great-grandmother.