EVEN BEFORE I REACHED my one hundredth birthday, I had made several wills, and yet just before I put down my signature

                                   Delia Mattlock

my hand refused to form the letters. My attorney was in despair. I had outlived everyone and there was only one person to whom I could bequeath much, my young godson, and he was not yet twenty-one.
     I am putting all this down more to explain the course of events to myself than to leave this as a document to posterity, for as I say, outside of my godson, Clyde Furness, even my lifelong servants have departed this life.
     The reason I could not sign my name then is simply this: piece by piece my family jewels have been disappearing over the last few years, and today as I near my one hundred years all of these precious heirlooms one by one have vanished into thin air.
     I blamed myself at first, for even as a young girl I used to misplace articles, to the great sorrow of my mother. My great grandmother's gold thimble is an example. You would lose your head if it wasn't tied on, Mother would joke rather sourly. I lost my graduation watch, I lost my diamond engagement ring, and, if I had not taken the vow never to remove it, my wedding ring to Will Mattlock would have also taken flight. I will never remove it and will go to my grave wearing it.
     But to return to the jewels. They go back in my family over two hundred years, and yes, piece by piece, as I say, they have been disappearing. Take my emerald necklace -- its loss nearly finished me. But what of my diamond earrings, the lavaliere over a century old, my ruby earrings -- oh, why mention them? For to mention them is like a stab in the heart.
     I could tell no one for fear they would think I had lost my wits, and then they would blame the servants, who were I knew blameless, such perfect, even holy, caretakers of me and mine.
     But there came the day when I felt I must at least hint to my godson that my jewels were all by now unaccounted for. I hesitated weeks, months before telling him.
     About Clyde now. His Uncle Enos told me many times that it was his heartbroken conviction that Clyde was somewhat retarded. "Spends all his time in the forest," Enos went on, "failed every grade in school, couldn't add up a column of figures or do his multiplication tables."
     "Utter rot and nonsense," I told Enos. "Clyde is bright as a silver dollar. I have taught him all he needs to know, and I never had to teach him twice because he has a splendid memory. In fact, Enos, he is becoming my memory."
     Then of course Enos had to die. Only sixty, went off like a puff of smoke while reading the weekly racing news.
     So then there was only Clyde and me. We played cards, chess, and then one day he caught sight of my old Ouija board.
     I went over to where he was looking at it. That was when I knew I would tell him -- of the jewels vanishing, of course.
     Who else was there? Yet Clyde is a boy, I thought, forgetting he was now twenty, for he looked only fourteen to my eyes.
     "Put the Ouija board down for a while," I asked him. "I have something to tell you, Clyde."
     He sat down and looked at me out of his handsome hazel eyes.
     I think he already knew what I was to say.
     But I got out the words.
     "My heirloom jewels, Clyde, have been taken." My voice sounded far away and more like Uncle Enos's than mine.
     "All, Delia?" Clyde whispered, staring still sideways at the Ouija board.
     "All, all. One by one over the past three years they have been slipping away. I have almost wondered sometimes if there are spirits, Clyde."
     He shook his head.
     That was the beginning of even greater closeness between us.
     I had given out, at last, my secret. He had accepted it; we were, I saw, like confederates, though we were innocent, of course, of wrongdoing ourselves. We shared secretly the wrongdoing of someone else.
     Or was it wrongdoing, I wondered. Perhaps the disappearance of the jewels could be understood as the work of some blind power.
     But what kind?
     My grandfather had a great wine cellar. I had never cared for wine, but in the long winter evenings I finally suggested to Clyde we might try one of the cellar wines.
     He did not seem very taken with the idea, for which I was glad, but he obeyed docilely, went down the interminable steps of the cellar and brought back a dusty bottle.
     It was a red wine.
     We neither of us relished it, though I had had it chilled in a bucket of ice, but you see it was the ceremony we both liked. We had to be doing something as we shared the secret.
     There were cards, dominoes, pachisi and finally, alas, the Ouija board, with which we had no luck at all. It sat wordless and morose under our touch.
     Often as we sat at cards, I would blurt out some thoughtless remark: once I said, "If we only knew what was before us!"
     Either Clyde did not hear or he pretended I had not spoken.
     There was only one subject between us. The missing jewels. And yet I always felt it was wrong to burden a young man with such a loss. But then I gradually saw that we were close, very close. I realized that he had something for me that could only be called love. Uncle Enos was gone, Clyde had never known either mother or father. I was his all, he was my all. The jewels in the end meant nothing to me. A topic for us -- no more.
     I had been the despair of my mother because, as she said, I cared little for real property, farmlands, mansions, not even dresses. Certainly not jewels.
     "You will be a wealthy woman one day," mother said, "and yet look at you, you care evidently for nothing this world has to offer." My two husbands must have felt this also. Poring over their ledgers at night, they would often look up and say, "Delia, you don't care if the store keeps or not, do you?"
     "You will be a wealthy woman in time, if only by reason of your jewels," my mother's words of long ago began to echo in my mind when I no longer had them.
     My real wealth was in Clyde. At times when I would put my hand through his long chestnut hair a shiver would run through his entire body.
     He suffered from a peculiar kind of headache followed by partial deafness, and he told me the only thing that helped the pain was when I would pull tightly on his curls.
     "Pull away, Delia," he would encourage me. How it quickened the pulse when he called me by my first name.
     Yes, we came to share everything after I told him without warning that bitter cold afternoon.
     "Clyde, listen patiently. I have only my wedding ring now to my name."
     I loved the beautiful expression in his hazel eyes and in the large, almost fierce black pupils as he stared at me.
     "Do you miss Uncle Enos?" I wondered later that day when we were together.
     "No," he said in a sharp loud voice.
     I was both glad and sad because of the remark. Why I felt both things I don't exactly know. I guess it was his honesty.
     He was honest like a pane of the finest window glass. I loved his openness. Oh, how I trusted him. And that trust was never betrayed.
     I saw at last there was someone I loved. And my love was as pure as his honesty was perfect.
     My secret had given us a bond one to the other.

In those long winter evenings on the edge of the Canadian wildlands, there was little to do but doze, then come awake and talk, sip our wine so sparingly (I would not allow him to have more than half a glass an evening), and there was our talk. We talked about the same things over and over again, but we never wearied one another. We were always talking at length on every subject -- except the main one. And I knew he was waiting to hear me on that very one.
     "How long has it been now, Delia?" His voice sounded as if it were coming from a room away.
     At first I was tempted to reply, "How long has it been from what?" Instead I answered, "Three years more or less."
     "And you told no one in all this time?"
     "I could not tell anyone because for a while I thought maybe I had mislaid them, but even as I offered this excuse, Clyde, I knew I could not be mistaken. I knew something, yes let that word be the right one, something was taking my jewels. Oh, why do I say 'my'? They never belonged to me, dear boy. I never affected jewels. I did not like the feel of them against my skin or clothes. Perhaps they reminded me of the dead."
     "So that is all you know, then," he spoke after minutes of silence.
     I had to laugh almost uproariously at his tone. "I am laughing, dear Clyde, because you spoke so like an old judge just then. Addressing me as a dubious witness! And dubious witness I am to myself! I accuse myself -- of not knowing anything!"
     "Could we go to the room where you kept them?" he wondered.
     I hesitated.
     "No?" he said in a forthright, almost ill-humored way.
     "It's a long way up the stairs, and I have never liked that big room where I kept them. Then there are the keys. Many many keys to bother and fumble with."
     "Then we won't go," he muttered.
     "No, we will, Clyde. We will go."
     Ah, I had forgotten indeed what a long way up to the big room it was. Even Clyde got a bit tired. Four or five or more flights.
     "Well it's a real castle we live in, my dear," I encouraged him as we toiled upward.
     "You must have a good heart and strong lungs," he said, and he smiled and brought his face very close to mine.
     Then I pulled out my flashlight, or, as my grandfather would have called it, my torch.
     "Now the next flight," I explained, "has poor illumination."
     As we approached that terrible door, I brought out the heavy bunch of keys.
     "Put this long key, Clyde, in the upper lock. Then this smaller key when you've unlocked the top one, place it in the lower one here."
     He did it well, and we went through the door, where, of course, another bigger door awaited us.
     "Now, Clyde, here is the second bunch of keys. Put the upper key to the large keyhole above, give the door a good shove and we can go in."
     He fumbled a little and I believe I heard him swear for the first time. (Well, his Uncle Enos was a profane old cuss.)
     We entered. There were fewer cobwebs now than when I had come in so many months before.
     "See all those red velvet cases spread out over the oak table there?" I said. "In the cases were the jewels. Their jewels."
     He looked around and I gave him my torch. But then I remembered there was an upper light and I turned it on.
     He shut off the torch. He seemed in charge of it all, and much older than his twenty years then. I felt safe, comfortable, almost sleepy from my trust in him.
     "Look there, will you!" he exclaimed.
     I put on my long-distance glasses and looked where he pointed.
     He bent down to touch something on the floor under the red velvet cases.
     I took off my glasses and stared.
     "What is it, Clyde?" I said.
     "Don't you see?" he replied in a hushed way. "It's a white feather. A white bird's feather. Very pretty, isn't it?" He raised up the feather toward my trembling hand.

A strange calm descended on us both after Clyde found the white feather. At first I was afraid to touch it. Clyde coaxed me to take it in my hand, and only after repeated urgings on his part did I do so.
     At that moment the calm descended on me as it had many years ago when, during one of my few serious illnesses, old sharp-eyed Doctor Noddy had insisted I take a tincture of opium.
     Why, I wondered, did the glimpse of a white bird's feather confer upon both me and Clyde this unusual calm? As if we had found the jewels, or at least had come to understand by what means the jewels had been taken. I say "us" advisedly, for by now Clyde and I were as close as mother and son, even husband and wife. We were so close that sometimes at night I would shudder in my bed and words I was unaware from where they came filled my mouth.
     Clyde, more than the jewels, then -- let me repeat -- was my all, but the jewels were important, I realized dimly, only because they were the bond holding us together.
     That evening I allowed Clyde a little more than half a glass of red wine.
     "The only pleasure, Clyde," I addressed him, "is in sipping. Gulping, swallowing, spoils all the real delicate pleasure."
     I saw his mind was on the white feather.
     He had put it on the same table the Ouija board rested on.
     "We should see it in a safe place," Clyde said, gazing at the feather.
     His statement filled me with puzzlement. I wanted to say, Why ever should we? But I was silent. I spilled some wine on my fresh white dress. He rose at once and went to the back kitchen and came forward with a little basin filled with water. He carefully and painstakingly wiped away the red stain.
     "There," Clyde said, looking at where the stain had been.
     When he had taken back the basin he sat very quietly for a while, his eyes half-closed, and then:
     "I say we should put it in a safe place."
     "Is there any such, Clyde, now that the jewels have been taken?"
     "Just the same, I think we should keep the feather out where it is visible, don't you?"
     "It is certainly a beautiful one," I remarked.
     He nodded faintly and then raising his voice said, "It's a clue." My calm all at once disappeared. I put the wineglass down for fear I might spill more.
     "Had you never seen the feather before, Delia?" he inquired.
     The way he said my name revealed to me that we were confederates, though I would never have used this word to his face. It might have pained him. But we were what the word really meant.
     "I think it will lead us to find your jewels," he finished, and he drank, thank heavens, still so sparingly of the wine.
     I dared not ask him what he meant.
     "I think the place for the feather," I spoke rather loudly, "is in that large collection of cases over there where Cousin Berty kept her assortment of rare South American butterflies."
     "I don't think so," Clyde said after a bit.
     "Then where would you want it?" I said.
     "On your music stand by your piano where it's in full view."
     "Full view?" I spoke almost crossly.
     "Yes, for it's the clue," he almost shouted. "The feather is our clue. Don't you see?"
     He sounded almost angry, certainly jarring if not unkind.
     I dared not raise my wineglass, for I would have surely at that moment spilled nearly all of it, and I could not have stood for his cleaning my white dress again that evening. It was too great a ceremony for ruffled nerves.
     "There it shall be put, Clyde," I said at last, and he smiled.

Have I forgotten to tell how else we whiled away the very long evenings? Near the music stand where we had placed the feather stood the unused old grand piano, by some miracle still fairly in tune.
     Clyde Furness had one of the most beautiful voices I have ever heard. In my youth I had attended the opera. In my day I heard all the great tenors, but it was Clyde's voice which moved me almost to a swoon. We played what is known as parlor songs, ancient, ageless songs. My hands surprised him when he saw how nimble and quick they still were on the keys. My hands surprised me, as a matter of fact. When he sang my fingers moved like a young woman's. When I played the piano alone they were stiff and hit many wrong keys.
     But I saw then what he meant. As I played the parlor songs my eyes rested not only on him but on the feather. What he called the clue.
     I had suggested one or two times that now that Uncle Enos had departed, Clyde should move in with me. "There's lots of room here; you can choose what part of the house you like and make yourself at home, godson."
     Whenever I'd mentioned his moving in up till then he had always pouted like a small boy. The day we found the feather I felt not only that something had changed in me, in the house, in the very air we breathed, but that something had changed in him.
     As I went up to kiss him goodnight that evening I noticed that over his upper lip there was beginning to grow ever so softly traces of his beard.
     "What is it?" I inquired when he hesitated at the door. He touched the place on his cheek where I had kissed him.
     "Are you sure as sure can be you still want me to move my things here?" Clyde asked.
     "I want you to, of course. You know that. Why should you walk two miles every day to Uncle Enos's and back when it's here the welcome mat is out?"
     "You certainly have the room, don't you?" he joked. "How many rooms have you got?" he grinned.
     "Oh, I've almost forgotten, Clyde."
     "Forty?" he wondered.
     I smiled. I kissed him again.
     The feather had changed everything. I must have looked at it every time I went near the piano. I touched it occasionally. It seemed to move when I picked it up as if it had breath. It was both warm and cool and so soft except for its strong shaft. I once touched it to my lips and some tears formed in my eyes.
     "To think that Clyde is going to be under my roof," I spoke aloud and put the feather back on the music stand.

Dr. Noddy paid his monthly visit shortly after Clyde had come to stay with me.
     Dr. Noddy was an extremely tall man but, as if apologetic for his height, he stooped and was beginning to be terribly bent so that his head was never held high but always leaned over like he was everlastingly writing prescriptions.
     This visit was remarkable for the fact that he acted unsurprised to see Clyde Furness in my company. One would have thought from the doctor's attitude that Clyde had always lived with me.
     He began his cursory examination of me, pulse, listening to my lungs and heart, rolling back my eyelids, having me stick out my tongue.
     "The tongue and the whites of the eyes tell everything," he once said.
     Then he gave me another box of the little purple pills to be taken on rising and on getting into bed.
     "And shan't we examine the young man then?" Dr. Noddy spoke as if to himself.
     He had Clyde remove his shirt and undershirt much to the poor boy's embarrassment. I went into an adjoining closet and brought out one of my grandfather's imported dressing gowns and insisted Clyde put this on to avoid further humiliation.
     Dr. Noddy examined Clyde's ears carefully, but his attention seemed to wander over to the music stand. After staring at it for some time and changing his eyeglasses, he then looked at Clyde's hair and scalp and finally took out a pocket comb of his own and combed the boy's hair meticulously.
     "Delia, he has parted his hair wrong. Come over here and see for yourself."
     I took my time coming to where the doctor was examining my godson, and my deliberateness annoyed him. But all the time nonetheless he kept looking over at the music stand.
     "I want you to part his hair on his left side, not on his right. His hair is growing all wrong as a result. And another thing, look in his right ear. See all that wax?"
     Dr. Noddy now went over to his little doctor's bag and drew out a small silver instrument of some kind.
     "I will give you this for his ear. Clean out the wax daily, just as I am doing now." Clyde gave out a little cry, more of surprise than of pain, as the doctor cleaned his ear of the wax.
     "Now then, we should be fine." But Dr. Noddy was no longer paying any attention to us. He was staring at the music stand and finally he went over to it. He straightened up as much as age and rheumatism would permit.
     It was the feather, of course, he had been staring at so intently, so continuously!
     He picked the feather up and came over to where I was studying the instrument he had recommended for Clyde's ear.
     "Where did this come from?" he spoke in almost angry, certainly accusatory tones.
     "Oh, that," I said and I stuttered for the first time since I was a girl.
     "Where did it come from?" he now addressed Clyde in a tone of rage.
     Well, sir," Clyde began, but failed to continue.
     "Clyde and I found it the other day when we went to the fourth story, Dr. Noddy."
     "You climbed all the way up there, did you?" the old man mumbled, but all his attention was on the feather.
     "May I keep this for the time being?" he said, turning brusquely to me.
     "If you wish, doctor, of course," I told him when I saw his usual bad temper was asserting itself.
     "Unless, Delia, you have some use for it."
     Before I could think I said, "Only as a clue, Dr. Noddy."
     "What?" Dr. Noddy almost roared.
     Taking advantage of his deafness, I soothed him by saying, "We thought it rather queer, didn't we, Clyde, that there was a feather in the room where I used to keep my grandmother's jewels."
     Whether Dr. Noddy heard this last statement or not I do not know. He put the feather in his huge leather wallet and returned the wallet inside his outer coat with unusual and irritable vigor.
     "I will be back then, in a month. Have Clyde here drink more well water during the day." Then, staring at me he added, "I take it he's good company for you, Delia Mattlock."
     Before I could even say yes, he was gone, slamming the big front door behind him.

Dr. Noddy's visit had spoiled something. I do not know exactly how to describe it otherwise. A kind of gloom settled over everything.
     Clyde kept holding his ear and touching his beautiful hair and his scalp.
     "Does your ear pain you, Clyde?" I finally broke the silence.
     "No," he said after a very long pause. "But the funny thing is I hear better now."
     "We always called earwax beeswax when I was a girl," I said. Clyde snickered a little but only, I believe, to be polite.
     "He took the feather, didn't he?" Clyde said, coming out of his reverie.
     "And I wonder why, Clyde. Of course Dr. Noddy is, among other things, a kind of outdoor man. A naturalist, they call it. Studies animals and birds."
     "Oh, that could explain it then, maybe."
     "Not quite," I disagreed. "Did you see how he kept staring at the feather on the music stand?"
     "I did. That's about all he did while he was here."
     I nodded. "I never take his pills. Oh, I did at the beginning, but they did nothing for me that I could appreciate. Probably they are made of sugar. I've heard doctors often give some of their patients sugar pills."
     "He certainly changed the part in my hair. Excuse me while I look in the mirror over there now, Delia."
     Clyde went over to the fifteen-foot-high mirror brought from England so many years gone by. He made little cries of surprise or perhaps dismay as he looked at himself in the glass.
     "I don't look like me," he said gruffly and closed his eyes.
     "If you don't like the new part in your hair we can just comb it back the way it was."
     "No, I think maybe I like the new way it's parted. Have to get used to it I suppose, that's all."
     "Your hair would look fine with any kind of a part you choose. You have beautiful hair."
     He mumbled a thank-you and blushed.
     "I had a close girl chum at school, Irma Stairs. She had the most beautiful hair in the world. The color they call Titian. She let it grow until it fell clear to below her knees. When she would let it all down sometimes just to show me, I could not believe my eyes. It made me a little uneasy. I like your hair, though, Clyde, even better."
     "What do you think he wants to keep the white feather for?" Clyde wondered.
     We walked toward the piano just then as if from a signal.
     I opened the book of parlor songs and we began our singing and playing hour.
     He sang "Come Where My Love Lies Dreaming." It made the tears come. Then he sang a rollicking sailor's song.
     But things were not right after the doctor's visit.
     "It's time for our glass of wine," I said rising from the piano. "We need it after old Dr. Noddy."

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