We used to eat our supper on the porch of the Empty House. It had great pillars, and it was rather awe-inspiring to sit on the front steps and look up the whole length, of those Corinthian columns. Billy and I felt dwarfed and insignificant, but we forgot it when we turned our eyes to the hills.
The big door behind us and the blank windows were shut and shuttered close. There were flying squirrels on the roof and little blue-tailed lizards on the stone flagging in front of the house; and there was an old toad who used to keep us company. I called him Prince Charming, and I am sure he was as old as Methuselah, and lived under that stone in some prehistoric age.
We just loved our little suppers. We had coffee in our thermos bottle, and cold fried chicken and bread and butter sandwiches and chocolate cake. We never changed, because we were always afraid that we shouldn't like anything else so well, and we were sure of the chicken and the chocolate cake.
And after we had eaten our suppers we would talk about what kind of house we would build when our ship came in. Billy and I both have nice tastes, and we know what we want; and we feel that the grocery store is just a stepping-stone to better things.
The sunsets were late in those spring days, and there would be pink and green and pale amethyst in the western sky, and after that deep sapphire and a silver moon. And as it grew darker the silver would turn to gold, and there would be a star--and then more stars until the night came on.
I can't tell you how we used to feel. You see we were young and in love, and life was a pretty good thing to us. There was one perfect night when the hills were flooded with moonlight. We seemed all alone in a lovely world and I whispered:
"Oh, Billy, Billy, and some folks think that there isn't any God--"
And Billy put his arm around me and patted my cheek, and we didn't say anything for a long time.
It was just a week later that Lady Crusoe came. I knew that some one was in the house as soon as we passed the second gate. The door was still closed, and the shutters were not opened, but I heard a clock strike--a ship's clock--with bells.
I clutched Billy. "Listen," I said.
He heard it, too; "Who in the dickens?" he demanded.
"There's somebody in the house--"
"Nonsense--"
"Billy, there must be, and we can't sit on the porch."
"You stay here, and I'll go around to the back."
But I wouldn't let him go alone. At the back of the house a window was open, and then we were sure.
"We'd better leave," I said, but Billy insisted that we stay. "If they are new people, I'll find out their names, and come up to-morrow and get their orders."
We went around to the front door and knocked and knocked, but nobody answered. So we sat down on the front step and presently Billy said that we might as well eat our supper, for very evidently nobody was at home.
I didn't feel a bit comfortable about it, but I opened our basket and got out our cups and plates, and Billy poured the coffee and passed the chicken and the bread and butter sandwiches. And just then the door creaked and the knob turned!
My first impulse was to gather up the lunch and tumble it into the basket; but I didn't. I just sat there looking up as calmly as if I were serving tea at my own table, and Billy sat there too looking up.
The door opened and a voice said, "Oh, if you are eating supper, may I have some?"
It was a lovely voice, and Billy jumped to his feet. A lovely head came after the voice. Just the head, peeping around--the body was hidden by the door. On the head was a lace cap with a gold rose, and the hair under the cap was gold.
"You see, I just got up," said the voice, "and I haven't had any breakfast--"
Billy and I gasped. It was seven P.M., and the meal that we were serving was supper!
"Do you mind my coming out?" said the voice. "I am not exactly clothed and in my right mind, but perhaps I'll do."
She opened the door wider and stepped down. I saw that her slippers had gold roses and that they were pale pink like the sunset. She wore a motor coat of tan cloth which covered her up, but I had a glimpse of a pink silk negligee underneath.
She sat quite sociably on the steps with us. "I am famished," she said. "I haven't had a thing to eat for twenty-four hours."
We gasped again. "How did it happen?"
"I was--shipwrecked," she said, "in a motor-car--I am the only survivor--"
Her eyes twinkled. "I'll tell you all about it presently." Then she broke off and laughed.
"But first will you feed a starving castaway?"
Yet she didn't really tell us anything. She ate and ate, and it was the prettiest thing to see her. She was dainty and young and eager like a child at a party.
"How good everything is!" she said, at last with a sigh. "I don't think I was ever so hungry in my life."
Billy and I didn't eat much. You see we were too interested, and besides we had had our dinner.
As I have said, she didn't really tell us anything. "It was an accident, and I came up here. And the old clock that you heard strike belonged to my grandfather. He was an admiral, and it was his clock. I used to listen to it as a child."
"What happened to the rest--?" Billy asked, bluntly. He was more concerned about the automobile accident than about her ancestors.
"Oh, do you mean the others in the car?" she came reluctantly back from the admiral and his ship's clock. "I am sure I don't know. And I am very sure that I don't care."
"But were any of them killed?"
"No--they are all alive--but you see--it was a shipwreck--and I floated away--by myself--and this is my island, and you are the nice friendly savages--" she touched Billy on the arm. He drew away a bit. I knew that he was afraid she had lost her mind, but I had seen her twinkling eyes. "Oh, it's all a joke!" I said.
She shook her head. "It isn't exactly a joke, but it might look like that to other people."
"Are you going to stay?"
"Yes."
"I'll come up in the morning for orders," said Billy promptly. "I keep the grocery store at Jefferson Corners."
"Oh," she said, and seemed to hesitate; "there won't be any orders."
Billy stared at her. "But there isn't any other store."
"Robinson Crusoe didn't have stores, did he? He found things and lived on the land. And I am Lady Crusoe."
"Really?" I asked her.
"I've another name--but--if people around here question you--you won't tell them, will you, that I am here--?"
She said it in such a pretty pleading fashion that of course we promised. It was late when we had to go. I insisted that we should leave what remained of the supper, and she seemed glad to get it. "You are nice friendly savages," she said, with that twinkle in her eyes, "and I am very grateful. Come into the house and let me show you my clock--"
She showed us more than the clock. I hadn't dreamed in those days when Billy and I sat alone on the steps of the treasures that were shut up behind us. The old furniture was dusty, but all the dust in the world couldn't hide its beauty. The dining-room was hung with cobwebs, but when the candles were lighted we saw the Sheffield on the old sideboard, the Chinese porcelains, the Heppelwhite chairs, the painted sheepskin screen--
She picked out a lovely little pitcher and gave it to me. I did not learn until afterward that it was pink lustre and worth a pretty penny. She paid in that way, you see, for her supper, and something in her manner made me feel that I must not refuse it.
She did not ask us to come again, yet I was sure that she liked us. I felt that perhaps it was the grocery store which had made her hesitate. But whatever it was, I must confess that I was a little lonely as I went away. You see we had come to look forward to our welcome at the Empty House. We had known that we were the honored guests of the flying squirrels and the lizards and of old Prince Charming. But now that the house was no longer empty, we would not be welcome. I was sorry that I had accepted the pink pitcher. I should have preferred to feel that I owed no favor to the lady with the twinkling eyes.
It wasn't long after our adventure at the Empty House that Billy asked William Watters to take a big load to a customer two miles out. But William couldn't. He was working, he said, at a regular place. We couldn't imagine William as being regular about anything. He and his mule were so irregular in their habits. They came and went as they pleased, and they would take naps whenever the spirit moved them. But now, as William said, he was "wukin' regular," and he refused to say for whom he worked. But we found out one day when he drove Lady Crusoe down in a queer old carriage with his mule as a prancing steed.
He helped her descend as if she had been a queen, and she came in and talked to Billy. "You see, I've hunted up my friendly savages," she said. "I've reached the end of my resources." She gave a small order, and told Billy that she wasn't at all sure when she could pay her bill, but that there were a lot of things in her old house which he could have for security.
Billy said gallantly that he didn't need any security, and that her account could run as long as she wished and that he was glad to serve her. And he got out his pad and pencil and stood in that nice way of his at attention.