CHAPTER I

Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks

and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.

LITTLE MISS BY-THE-DAY

BY

LUCILLE VAN SLYKE

_Author of "Eve's Other Children"_

_With A Frontispiece In Color By MABEL HATT_

1919

TO GEORDIE

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PROLOGUE

I IN THE BARRED GARDEN

II THE HOUSE IN THE WOODS

III LOST DREAMS

IV THE UNFINISHED SONG

V "CERTAIN LEGAL MATTERS"

VI THE LAST PRETENDING

PROLOGUE

The older I get the more convinced I become that the most fascinating

persons in this world are those elusive souls whom we know perfectly

well but whom we never, as children say, "get to meet." They slip out

of countries, or towns--_or rooms even,_--just before we arrive,

leaving us with an inexplicable feeling of having been cheated of

something that was rightfully and divinely ours. That's the way I

still feel about little Miss By-the-Day. Perhaps you, too, have been

baffled by the will-o'-the-wispishness of that whimsical young person.

Perhaps you, too, tried to find her but never did.

She sounded so casual and commonplace when I first began hearing about

her that I let her slip through my fingers. She was just a little

seamstress who had a "vairee" odd way of speaking; it was quite a long

time before I realized that everybody who spoke about her was

unconsciously trying to imitate her drawling voice. And then I noticed

that everybody who mentioned her smiled dreamily and wondered where on

earth she'd come from. I kept hearing, just as you probably did, odd

scraps of things she had said, droll adventures in which she had

figured, extraordinary and fantastic tales about the house in which

she lived. And presently, when it was too late, I found myself

listening to regretful murmurings of scores of baffled persons who

couldn't find out what had become of her. She suddenly vanished,

leaving nothing behind her save her delectable house.

If you'll lend me your pencil a minute I'll show you on the back of

this envelope just how that house was situated. You can understand the

whole amazing story better if you keep in mind how the church on the

corner and the rectory were tucked in beside that great house. For it

_is_ a big house, so huge that the six prim brownstones across the

street from it look like toy houses. But I've been told that in

Brooklyn's early days there was no street, just a long terraced garden

that sloped down to the river.

For all that the streets have crowded so disrespectfully about it the

whole place still has a sort of "world-with-out-end-amen" air--perhaps

because of the impressive squareness of its structure, great blocks of

brownstone joined solidly; perhaps because of the enormous gnarled

wistaria vines that stretch above its massive cornices--but one does

feel as Felicia Day herself did when some one asked her how long she

thought it had been there. She said she thought it must have been

there "Much, much more than Always--it must have been _jamais au grand_

--forevaire and more than evaire!"

Maybe, like me, you've passed that house a dozen times and shuddered

at the filth of the little street.

[Illustration: Town map.]

I used to hold my breath as I hurried by that dismal old rookery. I

thought it the most hideous purgatory that ever sheltered a horde of

miserable humans. But you needn't be afraid to pass it now! The

immaculate sweetness and serenity of that wee street is like a miracle

and the old house is a fairy dream come true.

Its marble steps are softly yellowed with age, an exquisitely wrought

iron balcony stretches across the front above the high ceilinged

basement and great carved walnut doors open into a wide vestibule with

a marble floor exactly like a bit of a gigantic chessboard. The

transformation had so astounded me that I was almost afraid to touch

the neatly polished beaten silver bell for fear the whole house would

vanish.

"Coom in!" cried a Scotchy voice from the basement. So I stepped

across the tessellated floor of the hall into the broad drawing-room

and stared out through the long French doors of the glass room at the

green smudge of Battery Park beyond the river. There wasn't a soul in

sight in any of the rooms and yet I felt as if some one was there.

Perhaps it was just that I was awed by the disconcerting loveliness of

the portrait of the brunette lady that hung in a tarnished oval frame

above the drawing-room mantel. I looked at her and waited. Presently I

coughed apologetically.

"Could I please find out if a--er--Miss Day lives here? Or--if anybody

here knows her?"

The Scotchy voice lifted itself grudgingly above the vigorous swish of

a scrubbing brush.

"I dinna think ony one's home but th' Sculptor Girl--she's on th' top

floor an' it's not I that knows whether she's in a speaking humor, but

you're weelcoom to try her--"

It was raining, a miserable spring drizzle, yet the spacious hall

seemed flooded with sunlight. There's an oval skylight fitted with

amber glass; silhouetted against its leaded rims are outlined flying

birds.

"Hark, hark! The lark at heaven's gate sings!" I read beneath the

margins when I looked up to find the sunlight. I knew that I ought to

feel like an impertinent intruder but I just couldn't! And I defy any

one to go up those wonderful circling stairs and not smile! For at the

head of each flight of steps is a recessed niche such as used to be

built to hold statuary and in the one near the second floor is a flat

vase filled with flowers--little saffron rosebuds the day I passed by

--with an ever so discreet card engraved in sizable old English script

that hinted:

"One's for you."

I was still sniffing at my buttonhole when I reached the second niche.

There was a black varnished wicker tray heaped with fruit and a

Brittany platter filled with raison cookies.

"Aren't you hungry?" the card above them suggested. I nibbled an

apricot all the way up the third flight and almost laughed aloud when

I reached the top, though of course I was expecting something. There's

a yellow glazed vase there,

"For pits and stones

Or skins and bones"

and above it in the back of the niche through a marble dolphin's mouth

cold water trickles into a bronze holder with a basket of cups beside

it.

"Thirsty?" asks the dolphin.

"Dulcie Dierck" I read on the Sculptor Girl's doorplate. It took me a

full minute to get the courage to tap her gargoyle knocker because I

was so awestricken at remembering that she was the girl who won the

Ambrose Medal and the Pendleton Prize and goodness only knows how much

other loot and glory.

The door jerked open to let me peer into the cleanest, barest skylit

spot,--with flat creamy walls and a little old fireplace with a

Peggoty grate just like the pictures in "David Copperfield." And a

trig young person who didn't look a bit like an artist, because she

was so neatly belted and so smoothly coiffed, waved a clayey thumb tip

toward a bench by the fire.

"Sit down and get your breath," she suggested chirkily, "then you

won't feel quite so dumfoundered--"

An overwhelming sense of my colossal cheekiness made me stammer.

"Do--do you h-happen to know--" I burst forth desperately, "if there's

really any such person as a--a Miss Day?"

"Does that fire look real?"

I nodded.

"Well, then put another stick on that fire and hang the kettle on the

hob--" she was washing the clay from her hands in an old brass basin.

"Don't get peeved with me because I'm grouchy and bossy--" she flung

over her shoulder at me. "I always start off badly when I'm tired and

that fool question always makes me just darned tireder!"

She reached for a fat brown teapot and dumped in tea-leaves

recklessly. "I'll be decenter directly I'm fed. I'm a beast just

before tea--you won't find me half bad half an hour from now--"

We were both silent while the water boiled. She shoved her table

nearer the fire, so near that I found myself looking down at the

writing things that were arranged so primly at one end. There was an

ink bottle on a gray blotter, a pewter tray for pens and a queer

shaped lump of bronze, a paper weight I supposed. I wouldn't have been

human if I could have kept my fingers off that bit of metal. I

pretended to pick it up accidentally but I did it as guiltily as a

child touches something forbidden. She didn't say a word, just watched

me mischievously while she arranged the tea cups on the other end of

the table. Presently she lighted a tiny temple lamp, melted a dab of

sealing wax in its wavering blue flames--rose-colored wax it was--and

it splashed out on the gray blotter like molten fire.

She took the bit of bronze from my fingers and pressed it firmly on

the wax.

"It's a mouth--" I murmured. "It's lips--"

"It's her kiss," she answered me. "That's the most beautiful and the

most difficult thing I ever made. It's Felicia Day's letter seal."

"Then she really is a real person--" I stammered fatuously.

"Real?" The girl's low voice lifted itself belligerently. "What do you

think she is? Imitation? Why, she's the one REAL thing in this whole

sham world! I guess you've never met anybody who knew her or you

wouldn't keep gulping out idiotic things like that! I guess if you

ever talked with her even a minute you'd understand how real she is.

She has the crispest--the sincerest way of speaking. Though of course

it's not a bit like other people's ways. She probably doesn't talk

like anybody you've ever listened to. Not like anybody I've ever heard

of anyway." The girl's eyes were glowing. "Are you musical?" she

demanded. "Because I need a musical word to tell you how she talks.

She talks _rubato_. Her short words drawl ever so long and her long ones

hurry so's to let her make up for the stolen time. And she has a sort of

trace of accent like--well, it's not like anything except herself

really. You see, her mother wasn't French but she was brought up with

French people and Felice says 'evaire' and 'nevaire' and uses funny

little Frenchy phrases she heard her mother use though she doesn't

really talk French at all. And she has a bossy way of speaking, kind of

--well, humbly bossing, if you can get me. Talks like a Lady Pied Piper

and sweeps you along with her just about six minutes after she's begun

coaxing you to do whatever she's decided is the best thing for you to

do. Believe me, I know she does it! Because I was one of the first ones

she swept along!" The girl's words were tumbling so fast now that I

could hardly follow.

"Did you ever find yourself in heaps of trouble? Too much trouble to

stand? Did you? I was that way the day she opened my door. It made me

perfectly furious to have her open my door. And she looked so little

and so old and so frumpy--she'd been sewing all day for my beastly

step-aunt and I'd been trying all day to get the courage to--to--" the

girl's tears were streaming now and she didn't bother to wipe them

away, she seemed utterly unashamed of them, "to get rid of myself. And

just the minute I got the cork out of the bottle that little old angel

opened the door. She was so darned different from anybody I'd ever

seen in all my life and she talked so differently from anybody I'd

ever listened to, I--well, I sort of forgot wanting to die because I

was curious to find out where on earth she'd come from--or where on

earth she was going to! She had a funny little dog under her arm; she

gave it to me to hold. And the next thing I knew she was inviting me

to go home with her. She thought I might like this room, she said. She

told me it was filled 'with-an-abundance-of-weeds-we-have-not-any-

names-for--' Wasn't that an absolute corker? That was her way of

describing the Italian family with too many brats that were living

here. She'd got that apology for 'em out of her great-great-grandma's

garden book! Can you beat it? She talks about everybody as if they

belonged in a garden. She called me--" the girl's lips quivered,--"a

rosebush that had been pruned too much--roots cramped--she said--

anyway she picked me up to transplant me! Marched me into the

'orrible, messy, noisy, smelly hutch that this house used to be, up

all those eighty 'leven stairs, and she kept her chin in the air as

though it was a royal palace she was taking me into! She just kept

saying,

"'Come! You'll love, love, love it! And you're going to be proud,

proud, proud to live here--'

"I was proud, all right," the girl's voice choked. "I wouldn't have

missed living here those next two months, not for all the marble that

was ever quarried nor for all the glory that was Greece! That first

night we both slept in this room--" she paused dramatically and threw

open the door in the east wall to let me peer into the narrow hall

room, "there--see--"

Ah! that bare little room! So tidy! With faded discolored wall paper

and a scrubbed pine floor! With its battered iron bed! There's an old

table by the one window with a child's silver mug and plate and spoon

on it, each of them with a great bee carved upon it. That's all there

is in that room save a low chair and a superb but shabby walnut bureau.

"She loved it so much that she wouldn't change it when she was

building Octavia House over--"

"Octavia House!" I cried. "Why, that's that queer house where all the

young geniuses live! The one that the Peter Alden money built--"

"It's not a queer house!" the girl defied me. "It's--it's this house!

And you can't say Money built this house! Money couldn't have done it!

Not all the money in the world, couldn't! It wasn't Money! It was--

Pride! Not the sort of pride that goeth before _de_struction but that

mightier pride that goeth before _con_struction! No, no!" she murmured

vehemently, "it wasn't Money! It was really almost done before the money

came! And she didn't just build the house over, she built all of us

over. And built the whole world over for us all. Just with her pride in

us! Just with the pride she made us feel in ourselves! And do you know,

we were all such self-centered idiots, that it wasn't until after she

was gone that we grasped what she'd done with us? We didn't know the

glory and the wonder of her until after she was gone--"

"She's not--?"

The Sculptor Girl answered my half-asked question almost ferociously.

"Of course she's not dead! She is the alivest person in this whole

world--aliver than you or I can ever be! And yet,--we've lost her. She

isn't just _ours_ any more. And when she was blessedly, absolutely just

ours--we didn't appreciate her. You see, she was so frumpy and absurd

and quiet we didn't think about her--we scarcely saw her. But oh--the

minute when we did see her! It came in a flash for me! I just knew, all

of a sudden, that she was perfectly beautiful--as beautiful as her own

whistle--her lovely, lovely Mademoiselle Folly whistle--"

"Oh! Oh!" I gasped, "_You can't mean that she was--is--Mademoiselle

Folly?_"

"Mean it? Didn't you know it? Didn't you ever hear her whistle? Oh,

even now that she's gone it seems to me that I can still hear her

whistling! And no matter what any one has said about it--they couldn't

all of them, put together, say half enough--not even if they all said

things as gushy as the Poetry Girl--she said it was like water

trickling in a moonlit fountain! I only know it's like what I tried to

put into my little Pandora--that it was like what Barrie was thinking

when he let Peter Pan cry, 'I'm Joy! Joy! Joy!'--Even the Painter Boy,

who has a silly pose that he hates music, used to hang around to hear

her whistle--he pretended he was just looking at her so's he could

paint her, but that didn't fool me--Listen, there's Nor' stumping up

stairs now--he's awfully lame on these rainy days and _that_ moody--"

"Do you mean Noralla? The one who did 'The Spirit of Romance'? Does he

live here?"

She nodded impishly.

"And Thad, the cartoonist and Blythe Modder and--" she began reeling

off a victorious list of young celebrities.

"And that one little dressmaker discovered you all?" I asked, quite

awestricken, "How could she? What sort of a wonder was she? How can

you explain it?"

The girl swung her lithe self up on the table, clasped her narrow

hands about her knees and smiled benignly down upon me. She seemed

naively content with herself, relaxed and quiet after her tempestuous

storm of words.

"You can't explain it, you just accept it--just as you accept sunshine

and rain--you can't explain any more than you can describe. And she's

the sort of woman that all of us who dwell within this house will go

on all the rest of our lives trying to describe and I'll bet that not

all of us put together can tell more'n half that there is to tell

about her. Why, her very faults are different than other people's

faults! She has a pippin of a temper and such stub-stub-stubborn ways!

Don't you think Thad's cartoons of 'Temperamental Therese' are

peaches? Well, they are nothing but Felice in her illogical crotchety

unfair minutes--Thad says the only way to explain such heavenly

rudeness as Felicia's is to remember that she began being rude in

1817--"

"How old is she?" I fairly shouted, "Oh, please get down to earth and

tell me something definite about her! You're perfectly maddening!"

The girl jumped lightly to the floor and slipped across the room to

swing the casement in the north wall and let me peer down into

Felicia's garden. If you'll look on the back of your envelope you can

see just how it was, just how the walls shut off the rectory yard.

"She's exactly twenty-seven," she sighed, "the most perfect age to be!

And if you were really going to tell her story you wouldn't have to go

back all the way to 1817, you'd begin it about--well, let me see--

you'd begin it about 1897, I think, and right down there in that wee

little garden. And of course you'd begin it with her whistling. And

you'd ask anybody you were trying to tell about her whether they'd

ever heard Mademoiselle Folly whistle--"

Did you? For if you have, I'm sure you've never forgotten the droll

way that Mademoiselle Folly stepped out upon a stage in her quaint

green frock and made her frightened curtsy. Can you recall her low

contralto drawl and her inevitable,

"Oh, my dears, I do _so_ hope that you're going to be good at

pretending! You all of you look as though you could pretend if you

just started! So let's you and I pretend that--"

Oh, I do so hope that you, too, are going "to be good at pretending"!

That you can make yourself pretend that it's twenty years ago and that

you're a nice invisible somebody standing down in a wee back yard of

Felicia's. From the garden you can't see the river because the walls

are too high. But now you're so close to them you see that they're

crumbly brick walls almost covered with vines and that at prim

intervals along their tops there are elaborate wrought-iron urns, each

filled with a huge dusty century plant. And in the side wall toward

the rectory yard of the church you can see an unused iron gate, its

rusty lock and hinges matted through and through with ancient ivy.

Pretend that it's moon-light and it's spring and that it's early

evening in the year of our Lord 1897 and that over there by the gate

is Felicia Day, about seven years old, peering through the gate into

the rectory yard, laughing softly as she always laughs on choir

practise nights. There was a certain bald dyspeptic choirmaster who

was most irritable as he drilled his unruly boy choir and on warm

evenings, when the oaken door under the heavy Gothic arches of the

church was ajar, she could watch their garbed figures and wide opened

mouths as they giggled over Gregorian chants under the swaying altar

lights.

Once the tallest, naughtiest boy of all, the one with the cherubic

"soprano" voice that was just threatening to break into piping

uselessness, had climbed to the top of the wall and dropped his little

black velvet cap at her feet.

"Get down from that wall!" the choirmaster had shouted.

Though the boy had ducked from view as suddenly as he had appeared he

had managed to demand of the small person under the wall,

"Who are you, girl?"

She was holding the cap tightly while she answered,

"I don't know, 'zactly who I are--" when she heard the choirmaster

shrieking,

"Dudley Hamilt! Come here at once!"

And though she watched every choir-practise night for ever so long she

never caught another glimpse of the mischievous-eyed boy, a nasal-

voiced woman sang in his stead and she never, never climbed walls.

But Felicia always waited patiently with the small black cap in her

hands until a night when she summoned courage to call softly through

the barred gate,

"Dudley! Dudley Hamilt!"

A fat boy ran to her and jeered,

"He's expelled! He can't come back till he's a tenor!"

So that's what you must pretend! That you can smile in the shadows of

that moonlit garden, that you can smile at a dear little stupid who is

waiting joyously for the time when Dudley Hamilt will come back a

tenor!

CHAPTER I

IN THE BARRED GARDEN

She was a distinctly droll looking child at the age of seven, our

little Felicia Day! With straight black hair brushed smoothly back and

bound with a "circle comb," with short-waisted dresses that left her

neck and arms bare. Her slender feet were encased in short white socks

and low black slippers. And at her dear little feet was usually--

Babiche.

Babiche was so old that she whined at the evening chill; she

perpetually teased to be taken back to her comfortable cushion at the

foot of her mistress's bed. She was really very amusing when she sat

up on her haunches and begged to be carried. For she was so fat that

she hated to walk and she was a very spoiled doggy, that wee spaniel!

A sort of a dowager queen of a doggy, a nice little old grandma lady

of a dog.

The gentle yap-yap-yapping that could always be heard beyond the rear

wall was from the throats of some score or more of her expensive

great-great-great offspring who lived in the stable in tiny stalls

with their pedigree cards tacked neatly under their elaborate kennel

names.

It was a cross to Felice that she was not allowed to go through the

small arched doorway at the back of the garden that led to the stable

that opened on the narrow cobblestone "Tradespersons' Street." The

Major didn't approve of the manners of Zeb Smathers the kennel man, or

Zeb's wife Marthy, though he knew there wasn't a pair with their

patience and skill to be found for miles around. All the same Felice

adored the stable yard and would have dearly loved to climb the narrow

stairs up to the low-ceilinged rooms above the stables where Marthy

liked to sit.

Lean, grizzled old Marthy! There was usually a dog or two in her lap,

either a sickly pup or a grieving-eyed mother dog whose babies had

been taken away from her. Such tiny creatures, even the mother dogs--

those little Blenheim spaniels! Snub-nosed, round-headed with long

silky flopping ears, soft curly coats and feathery tails. Felice liked

the yellow and white ones, and always reached for them, but her

grandfather coolly "weeded them out," as Zeb expressed it, because the

Trenton ideal was a white dog marked with red.

Felicia knew when the dogs were going away. They always went the day

after the Basket Man came with a pole tied full of oval gilded wicker

hampers. Sometimes she, was allowed to stand in the gateway and watch

them have their farewell bath, only of course she sniffed

uncomfortably when Zeb let brown drops drip into the rinsing water

from a fat bottle with a gay red skull and cross-bones on the label.

"Scarbolic" was what she understood it to be, she mustn't touch it or

she'd "go dead," whatever that was. But she forgot all about the smell

as she watched the fluffy doggies drying in the sunny stable yard

while Marthy sang vociferously to cheer her own drooping spirits; the

silly old woman never could bear the days the dogs went away.

And so Felice on her side of the gate could listen rapturously to the

throaty drone in which Marthy asked the world

"What's this dull town to me?

Rob-in's not here--"

or warbled heavily

"Churry Ripe, Churry Ripe,

Who'll buy my churries--"

or wailed

"Where have you been, Billy Boy, Billy Boy?

Where have you been, charming Billy?"

It almost made up for not being allowed to go out of the garden.

If Felice only could have been allowed to go around into the

Tradespersons' Street just once! I wish she could have gone--just

once! On one of the days when the swinging sign, that was gilded and

painted so beautifully, was hung outside to announce

"KING CHARLES AND BLENHEIM SPANIELS

For sale within."

I'm sure she would have loved the line of carriages waiting in the

cobble-stoned alley when the fine ladies came to buy. I think she

would have clapped her hands at the gay boxes of geraniums and the crisp

white curtains in Marthy's shining windows over the stable door.

But she could only stay in the garden with the thin visaged old French

woman who taught her to read and to write and to embroider and to play

upon an old lute and to curtsy and to dance. One thing she learned

that the French woman did not teach her--to whistle! She remembers

answering the sea-gulls who mewed outside in the harbor and the

sparrows who twittered in the ivy and the tiny pair of love-birds who

dwelt in a cage at her mother's bedroom window. She learned to whistle

without distorting her lips because her grandfather had forbidden her

to whistle and if she held her mouth almost normal he couldn't tell

when he looked out into the garden whether it was Felice or the birds

who were twittering.

Her first memories of her mother were extremely vague. She remembers

she was pretty and smiling and that most of the time she lay in a

"sleighback" bed and that in the morning she would say,

"Go out into the garden and be happy," and that at twilight she would

say, "You look as though you had been very happy in the garden--"

Sometimes Maman wasn't awake when Felicia came in from her long day in

the garden. And the little girl always knew if her mother's door were

closed that she must tiptoe softly so as not to disturb her. There was

a reward for being quiet. In the niche of the stairway Felice would

find a good-night gift--sometimes a cooky in a small basket or an

apple or a flower,--something to make a little girl smile even if her

mother was too tired or too ill to say good-night. She never clambered

past the other niches that she didn't whimsically wish there was a

Maman on every floor to leave something outside for her. So after a

time the canny child began leaving things for herself, tucked slyly

back where the housemaids wouldn't find them. She used to hide her

silver mug with water at the very top stair because she was so thirsty

from the climb.

She was always happy in Maman's room and in the garden but she had

many unhappy times in that nursery. It was at the very top of the back

of the house. From the barred windows under the carved brownstone

copings she could peer out at the ships in the harbor and the shining

green of Battery Park. The nursery had a fireplace just opposite the

door that connected with the tiny room in which the old French woman

slept. Both these rooms had been decorated with a landscape paper

peopled with Watteau shepherds and shepherdesses and oft-repeated

methodical groups of lambs. On the cold mornings she was bathed beside

the fire--which she very much hated--and once when she was especially

angry at the sharp dash of the bath sponge against her thin shoulders

she clutched at the flabby dripping thing with all her might and sent

it hurtling through the doorway where it splashed against the side

wall of the tiny room and smudged out the flock of a simpering

shepherdess. And instead of being sorry that she had obliterated the

paper lambs she remembers shaking her fist at the discolored spot and

shrieking "Nevaire come back, nevaire!"

Mademoiselle D'Ormy made her tell Maman. Mademoiselle's disapproval

made it seem an admirable crime until Maman said ever se gently,

"I'm sorry you were unhappy!"

"_I was happy_," persisted Felicia, "I was proud, proud, proud when I

threw it!"

"But you made Mademoiselle unhappy and you've made me unhappy--and you

can't be truly happy, Felicia, when you're making some one else

unhappy--"

Felicia discovered that she couldn't. Not with Maman's gentle eyes

looking into hers, so she threw herself on her knees and kissed her

mother's hand. Just as she had seen her grandfather kiss it.

"Let's pretend!" she whispered, "Let's pretend I didn't do it! Now

let's pretend I'm Grandy!"

Pretending she was her Grandfather Trenton was one of their most

delicious games. She would tap on the door, delicately, and ask in

mincing imitation of the French woman,

"Madame, will you see ze Major?" Then, with great dignity she would

advance to the bedside.

"Ah! Octavia!" she would say, eloquently, "How charming you look to-

day!"

For that was what Grandy always said when he came into the room to see

Maman.

You'd have liked Major Trenton. You'd have liked him a lot. But you

could have liked him more if he'd been a little kinder to Felice. For

by one of those strange, unexplained twists of human nature this fine

gentleman, who was so tolerant with his uncouth servants and so

admirably gentle with his wee dogs, was unconsciously cruel to the

small grand-daughter who so adored him. She adored his immaculate

neatness, the ruddy pinkness of his skin; she loved his wavy white

hair and the deep sparkle of his dark eyes. She saw nothing droll

about the peaked felt hat and long black coat that he persisted in

wearing, or about the ruffled shirt, with its absurd flaring collar

and black satin stock. She even loved the empty coat sleeve pinned

inside his breast pocket. She thought him the most beautiful human in

the whole world. She lived in constant dread of what Grandy would or

would not be pleased to have her do. And though she was unaware of it,

her everyday behavior was exactly what that silent man had so ordered.

She did not know there was a God because the Major was an atheist--who

out-Ingersolled Robert G. in the violence of his denial of deity. She

did not know there was a world of reality outside the garden because

he did not choose to have her mingle with that world. She was not

taught French because he vowed he hated France and the French and all

their ways. She was taught to curtsy and to dance because it pleased

him to have a woman walk well and he believed dancing kept the figure

supple. She was taught needlework because he thought it seemly for a

woman to sew and he liked the line of the head and neck bent over an

embroidery frame. She was taught to knit because he remembered that

his mother had told him that delicate finger tips were daintily

polished by an hour's knitting a day. He was--though he wouldn't have

admitted it--proud of her slender hands--they looked exactly as his

wife's had looked. It was the only trait she had inherited from that

particular ancestor and he had been inordinately vain of his wife's

hands. Mademoiselle had been ordered never to let the child "spread

her hand by opening door knobs or touching the fire-stones--or--er--

any clumsy thing--" and it was droll to see the little girl, digging

in her bit of garden with those lovely hands incased in long flopping

cotton gloves--not to forget the broad sunbonnet that shaded her

earnest little face. In short, he was jealous of her complexion and

her manners--But beyond that and the desire that she absolutely efface

herself, he did not concern himself with his granddaughter.

It was really her mother's gentle tact that fostered love for the

stern old man. While Felice was still young, Octavia began to teach

her child pride of race. The pretty invalid was pathetically eager to

have Felice impressed with the dignity of Major Trenton's family.

"If you look over the dining-room fireplace you can see how fine his

father was--"

So the child stared up the stately panelled wall at the gloomy old

portrait of Judge Trenton with his much curled wig and black satin

gown and the stiff scroll of vellum with fat be-ribboned seals

attached and asked naively,

"If your father was a judge-man why aren't we judge-mens?" Grandy

laughed his short, hard laugh.

"Oh, because we've gone straight to the dogs--and very small bow-wows

at that--"

It was about this time that Octavia began to teach Felice to play

chess. The child hated it. It must have taken a sort of magnificent

patience to teach her. For a long time no one save Mademoiselle D'Ormy

had known what a struggle it meant for that gay little invalid to make

herself lovely for that afternoon hour over the chess board. Yet, when

the Major entered he would always find his daughter smiling from her

heap of gay rose-colored cushions, her thin hair curled prettily under

her lace cap and her hand extended for his courteous kiss. They were

almost shyly formal with each other, those two, while Mademoiselle

D'Ormy screwed the tilt table into place and brought the ebony box of

carved chess men. It was leaning forward to move the men that took so

much strength. Octavia was too proud to admit how weak she was

growing. So she coaxed her small daughter,

"It will be a little stupid at first, Cherie, but we will try to make

it go--and think what fun it will be that day when we tell the Major,

'It is Felice and not stupid old Octavia who is going to play with

you.' First you shall learn where to move the pieces and how to tell

me what Grandy has moved--then, we shall tie a handkerchief over my

eyes--as we do when you and I play hide the thimble--my hands shall

not touch the men at all. I shall say 'Pawn to Queen's Rook's square'

and you shall put this little man here--this is the Queen's Rook's

square--" It must have been the oddest game in the world, really,

between that stern old man and the blindfolded invalid and the grave

little girl who was learning to play. Of course it was easier for

Octavia--she didn't have to move her hands or keep her eyes open. She

could lie lower on the pillows--she smiled--a wavering smile when her

father's triumphant "Check!" would ring out.

"Alas, Felice!" she would murmur gaily, "are we not stupid! Together

we can't checkmate him--" They talked a great deal about chess. And

how you can't expect to do so much with pawns and how you mustn't mind

if you lose them. But how carefully you must guard the queen--or else

you'll lose your king--and how if "You just learn a little day by day

soon you'll have a gambit," and how "even if you don't care much about

doing the silly game, you like it because you know that it gives

Grandy much happiness."

It was in those days that Felice learned that not only must she keep

very happy herself but she must keep other people happy.

"It's not easy," Octavia assured her, "but it's rather amusing. It's a

game too. You see some one who is tired or cross or worried and you

think 'This isn't pleasant for him or for me!' Then you think of

something that may distract the tiredness or the worry--maybe you play

softly on the lute--maybe you suggest chess--maybe you tell something

very droll that happened in the garden or the kennel--he doesn't

suspect why you're telling him, at first he scarcely seems to hear you

and then--when he does stop thinking about the unpleasantness--he

smiles!--Watch Grandfather when he says 'Check!' and you will see what

I mean--"

One comfort was, Felice didn't have to play chess all of the days.

Never on the days when Certain Legal Matters came. Then Grandfather

disappeared into the gloomy depths of the library and from the garden

Felice could hear the disagreeable grumble of the burly lawyer as he

consulted with his extraordinary old client.

"Absolutely no! Absolutely no!" her grandfather's voice would ring

out, "I tell you I will not! A man who takes a pension for doing his

duty to his country is despicable! And as for the other matter--I do

not have to touch anything that was my wife's! I do not approve of the

manner whereby she obtained that income--if Octavia wishes it, that is

a different matter--it can be kept for the child if Octavia chooses to

look at the matter that way--but for myself I will not touch it! I do

not require it--I will not touch it--it was a bad business--There is

nothing quixotic about my refusal, nothing whatever, sir! We differ

absolutely on that point, as we do on most others!"

Felicia heard that speech so often that she could almost have recited

it, she heard it nearly every time that Certain Legal Matters

appeared, he always put the Major in a temper. Grandy couldn't get

himself sufficiently calm for chess on such days.

Nor did she play chess on the days when the Wheezy came to sew.

The advent of the Wheezy was an enormous affair in Felice's life. It

was one of the first times that the child was taken outside of the

house or the garden--that blustery March day when she and Mademoiselle

walked around the corner to a small house in whose basement window

rested a sign, WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT AGENCY. A tiny bell

jingled as they entered and from behind the curtains at the rear

emerged a little woman whose face looked like the walnuts that were

served with grandpapa's wine, very disagreeable indeed. Felice always

spoke of her as The Disagreeable Walnut. It was in this shop that she

saw her first doll, a ridiculous fat affair constructed of a hank of

cotton with shoe buttons for eyes and a red silk embroidered mouth and

an enormous braid of string for hair. And it was while she was

rapturously contemplating it that she heard the wizened proprietor say,

"Do you wish to have the work done by the job or by the day?" Then the

Disagreeable Walnut pompously consulted a huge dusty ledger from which

she decided that a certain Miss Pease would suit their requirements.

"Two dollars a day and lunch," she informed them curtly and that was

the way that Wheezy came into Felicia's life.

Short, fat, asthmatic and crotchety, she grumbled incessantly because

there wasn't anything so modern as a sewing machine in the house and

said that for her part she didn't see how people thought they could

get along on nothing except what had done for their ancestors, that

she certainly couldn't.

"Haven't you any ancestors?" Felice asked her eagerly. The Wheezy

snorted.

"Of course. And they have been poor but they were honest," she added

deeply.

Which Felice repeated gravely to Grandy in the garden and added

eagerly, "Were our ancestors poor but honest?"

He smiled grimly.

"I shouldn't say," he answered her curtly, "that they were either

conspicuously poor or conspicuously honest."

The Wheezy not only remodeled ancient dresses into stiff pinafores for

Felice but she had to make the cushions that fitted in the dog

hampers, down-stuffed oval affairs covered with heavy dull blue silk.

The Wheezy sputtered that she couldn't see why "under the shining

heavens, dogs should sleep on things traipsed out like comp'ny bedroom

pin-cushions with letters tied onto their collars--"

Which so puzzled Felice that on one of those furtive occasions when

she managed a few words with Zeb she demanded an answer. Zeb slapped

his sides and chuckled.

"Because, Missy, putting on the frills and writing out the pedigree in

French like he does makes folks pay jes' about twict as much for those

dogs--"

Which was very bewildering, for Felice had not the remotest idea in

this world what to pay for anything meant. How could she?

There was one very vivid recollection of Octavia. The recollection of

the only time that the child remembered seeing her mother in a chair.

How this miracle was accomplished only Octavia and Mademoiselle D'Ormy

could have told, but on a certain day in a chair she was and the heavy

rose silk curtains were drawn before the bed alcove and the room was

gay with flowers and a ruddy fire glowed in the iron grate under the

carved white mantlepiece. Felice sat adoringly on a footstool at her

feet and they talked a great deal about a time when Maman should not

only sit in a chair but should walk. It seemed that Octavia hoped to

take her daughter to a place she referred to rather vaguely as The

House in the Woods. Octavia had lived in this house in the woods when

she was a girl and she was very much worried about what might have

happened to the garden of that house. She thought that she and Felice

ought to make it lovely again--if Piqueur were only still strong

enough to help them. But before Felice had had time to find out just

who Piqueur was, Mademoiselle had ushered in a curly-haired young man

who carried a portfolio exactly like the one that Certain Legal

Matters carried. And it was while Mademoiselle was taking Felice back

to the garden that she heard her mother say,

"You must be patient with the silly fears of a woman who mistrusts all

lawyers--these deeds are duplicates of those that another--"

In the garden Felice told Mademoiselle D'Ormy who the curly-haired

person was--it was not for nothing that Felice had been staring at the

pictures in the big Shakespeare Illustrated on the drawing-room table.

"It's the Portia Person who is talking with Maman--" she assured

Mademoiselle gravely, "she looks like a man but she's really a lady--"

The Portia Person was surely as gentle as a lady when he hurried into

the garden a little later and sent Mademoiselle back to his client by

the fireside. He looked down at Felice--she was embroidering that day,

seated primly before the ebony tambour frame.

"Felicia," he said chokily, "will you try to remember something? Will

you try to remember--if--if your mother goes away and you're ever in

trouble that you're to come to see me? That my name is Ralph--John

Ralph? And that you'll find me at Temple Bar, here in Brooklyn?"

"Yes, Portia Person," she answered sweetly, after she had risen as

Mademoiselle had told her to when a visitor should arrive. Although

she must have been eleven she was trembling with excitement, because

he was her first visitor. "Yes, Portia Person, I will--only, how will

I know--that I am in--Trouble--where is Trouble?"

Which seemed to make it hard for the Portia Person.

"I mean, if there's anything you need that you haven't--if there's

anything you want some one to tell you about--now do you know?"

She nodded thoughtfully.

"Why, there are things right now that I want some one to tell me

about--"

Before he could tell her any of them Mademoiselle came swiftly and let

him out through the stable gate talking excitably and softly in

French, which Felicia thought most unfair of her.

It is not at all strange that she does not remember when her mother

died. You see sometimes there were several days when her mother was

too tired or too ill to see such a vigorous person as Felice must have

been. She merely remembers that there came a time when she was no

longer asked to tiptoe past the door on the second floor landing. But

she does remember that the thin visaged old French woman wept one day

when she asked her,

"Shall we not go tell Maman I was happy today in the garden?"

She remembers it because they were the first tears she had ever seen

and she clapped her hands and said "How queer, Mademoiselle! There are

little rains in your eyes."

She did not ask to see her mother any more, for when she did

Mademoiselle would answer "Not to-day." It was somehow a rather

difficult time for them all; the Major was morose and sullen and

Mademoiselle often had "little rains" in her eyes. She was not very

patient with the lively young person who had grown tall enough to

reach even the topmost drawer of the high walnut bureau.

Felicia was exploring them thoroughly one rainy afternoon while

Mademoiselle dozed by the nursery fireside. She found a beautiful box

with an inlaid cover that was filled with all sorts of fascinating

trinkets; earrings and breastpins and droll bracelets of tarnished

silver set with jade and coral--queer little letters folded in

triangles with gay red wax seals, addressed in French, most of them--a

soft black lace shawl--Felicia was trailing about grandly when

Mademoiselle awoke to rage and scold.

The child was beginning to long for freedom, she was constantly

questioning. Octavia's gentle raillery, Octavia's delicious half

answers to the "Whys and wheres and whens and whats" had satisfied,

but Mademoiselle's abrupt, "I can't tell you--" "It does not concern

you--" "Zat is not of consequence--" were teaching the child to

scheme. She was perpetually trying to find out for herself the things

that Mademoiselle declined to tell her. She was especially curious

about Maman's closed door. Mademoiselle refused to open it.

But there came a day, when Mademoiselle wasn't looking, when Felice

tapped gently at her mother's door and opened it and went in. And when

she saw the empty bed and the empty chair she ran in great glee to her

grandfather.

"Oh, Oh," she cried, "Why didn't you tell me that Maman had gone to

the House in the Woods? Why didn't you let me go with her? For she

said we would make the garden together!"

He did not answer her at once.

"How did you know?"

"Because Babiche is gone," she answered triumphantly. "And Babiche

wouldn't be gone from the house unless Maman were gone--so they've

gone to the House in the Woods--to attend to the garden--with--" she

frowned until she remembered "with Piqueur--unless he is too old to

help--and now I will go--"

It was curious how his voice faltered, he looked tireder and more

unhappy than in the days when Octavia had made a game of making him

happy.

"Felicia," he groped for words as he faced the questioning-eyed child,

"I--we--you--cannot go to the House in the Woods just now--I have

Certain Legal Matters that must be attended to--but we--we will go

some day--"

She accepted this with all the earnestness of her eleven years. But at

the door she paused, shyly. He looked very "cross and worried."

"This afternoon, if you wish," she said, "I will play chess with you.

I can do three gambits. I tried them alone yesterday. We'll not play

in Maman's room--but in the garden--"

But for some strange reason he did not smile at all when he called

"Check!" He only bent his head over her hand and kissed it as he had

kissed her mother's. It was the first caress he had ever given her.

She put the hand against her cheek and loved it when he was gone. And

clambering up to bed she paused outside her mother's door.

"Maman, we were a little happy in the garden--" she whispered, "were

you happy in your garden?"

Interminable days followed, dreary days punctuated with quarrel after

quarrel. It sometimes seemed to Octavia's unhappy daughter that there

was nothing she could touch without Mademoiselle's disapproval.

The garments that had hung in the wardrobes, lovely things that

tempted the beauty-loving child, were all packed away in the storeroom

back of the linen closet; the bits of ornaments and jewelry that

Octavia had let the child play with were all tucked away.

"It was Maman's--do not touch it!" "That was Louisa's, you cannot have

it!" Or most fearful cry of all, "Put that shawl back, Felicia! It was

Madame Josepha's--Louisa herself never wore it, it cost so much!"

The storeroom key was kept in the pocket of Mademoiselle's black silk

apron. Gradually the miserly soul locked away all that seemed

desirable or lovely to Felicia.

Of course there came a day when she stole the key and when she hid

herself a whole blissful afternoon and rummaged joyously through dusty

bandboxes and huge curved-top trunks. She had opened an iron-bound box

last. And in the top had found a case marked,

"Mme. J. Trenton,

8 Rue de la--"

the rest was blurred. There were a lot of papers--all of them in

French, in a queer old case of crushed leather. And when she thrust

them carelessly underneath she found the tiniest muslin garments she

had ever seen. They puzzled her greatly; she held one against her

cheek instinctively.

"What a very little woman must have worn you--" she whispered, "As

little as--" she frowned, "the thing made of string in the shop where

we got the Wheezy--as little as Babiche. I wish--I wish I could have

seen as little a woman as that--"

She sprang up startled, Mademoiselle was coming. Felicia had the door

locked and was standing outside, a slim, dusty, shining-eyed figure

when the woman began berating her. The girl slid cunningly along the

wall, for Mademoiselle's wrinkled, trembling hand was stretched out as

she demanded the key.

There was a grating, a round bronze grating in the side wall for the

furnace pipe. Felice moved toward it. She was not answering

Mademoiselle; just breathing hard, just staring.

Suddenly the key dropped. The two could hear it tinkling, down, down,

through the rusty metal of the furnace pipe.

And that was the moment that the infuriated little French woman struck

Felice.

The child was nearly as tall as the woman, she could have struck back,

but instead she ran. She fled down the stairway, her angry breath

coming in choking gasps. She flung herself against the door of her

mother's room.

"Maman! Maman!" she screamed.

And that was where the Major found her.

"I hate--hate--hate--Mademoiselle!" And down the stair came the thin

visaged French woman crying.

"And I monsieur, I hate zis ongrateful child! I theenk I hate your

whole ongrateful race--I served your wife like one slave! And for Miss

Octavia I was like two slaves! Zis child has ever hated me! I am weary

of your whole race--I shall go back to ze country where I belong--"

So there they stood, those two antagonists, the woman with her eyes

snapping and the outraged child with the tears streaming.

"Felicia," the Major's tone was terrifying, "you must apologize at

once!"

Felicia was silent. She shook her head. The Major bowed to the French

woman. "I apologize for her," he continued. "But I think Mademoiselle

D'Ormy, you are right. She is growing into a woman and you are growing

into a child--" And whatever else he said after Felice had fled to the

garden doesn't matter. Yet two days later when Mademoiselle bade her

farewell the two enemies flung themselves on each others' necks and

wept. Much to the disgust of the Major, who fairly shoved Mademoiselle

away and who appeared not to see the sobbing and impetuous young

person who dashed headlong to the nursery.

But after that life was much more serene, much sweeter. To be sure she

could no longer ransack the storeroom. She never had to explain to the

Major what had occasioned that last tempestuous quarrel but she roamed

at will through the whole dusty house and possessed herself gloriously

of all its treasures.

You should have seen her in those days, tricking herself out in what

finery she could muster from the walnut bureau. For after

Mademoiselle's departure the afternoon chess prolonged itself into

twilight and Felicia proudly dined with the Major instead of in the

nursery.

She knew how one should look for dinner because there was Maman's

portrait over the drawing-room fireplace, in the frock she'd worn when

she had dined "with her family in France--" Mademoiselle had dressed

Octavia for that wonderful party and she had never tired of telling

Felicia how beautiful the eighteen-year Octavia had been.

"It is a woman's duty to think of her charms," Mademoiselle had said,

"that is what the husband of Julie, Madame Recamier, said, it is what

Madame Louise taught Miss Octavia--"

And so Felicia naively parted her hair and brushed it satin-smooth and

coiled it neatly on the nape of her white neck with the same big

carved coral Spanish comb tucked into the shining mass that Octavia

had worn when she sat for the portrait. Sometimes she wore the lovely

black lace shawl, sometimes the creamy white embroidered silk one, and

always the delicate coral and silver jewelry. Yet she couldn't

possibly have known from the pale image that stared back at her from

the dim shimmer of the drawing-room mirrors, how exquisitely lovely

she was, not even when the Major bent over her hand and said, as he

had said so often to her mother,

"You are very charming today, my dear!"

He did not know himself, the grim old stoic, how much he adored her.

At length there came a certain spring, seductive, too early warm, when

the Major grew thoughtful, when Certain Legal Matters came frequently

in the evening and left Felicia to ponder over her embroidery frame or

wander restlessly in the bit of garden. She was seventeen now, a

glowing, radiant seventeen, so divinely happy that the Major smiled

whenever he looked at her.

For it had come, the Beautiful, Wonderful time when they were going to

the House in the Woods! Already the rooms were filled with trunks and

packing boxes, Marthy and Zeb and the housemaids were sorting and

folding incessantly. And around them, wandered, starry-eyed, a useless

young person who hugged to her heart a joyous dream of a woman in a

garden--a woman in a little lace cap and a trailing rose-colored

dressing-gown, a woman who would say,

"Oh Felicia! I hope you'll be happy today in the garden!"

You mustn't blame the Major too much that he did not know what a cruel

thing he had done--he did not even dream that Felicia believed she was

going to find Octavia in the garden. Those long ago evasions that had

silenced her little-girl questions he had forgotten. Indeed I think he

never let himself remember those days in which the child had asked,

"Where is she gone?"

And so they had come to the last night of all, the night before they

should start their journey.

Inside the gloomy library grandfather and Certain Legal Matters

discussed stupid details about where the furniture should go to

storage and whether they should change the route and instead of going

around the coast by steamer and down the St. Lawrence, travel part of

the way overland--they consulted long yellow time-tables.

Felicia drifted across the dismantled library. She was pulling

Octavia's adorable white lace shawl about her firm young shoulders,

the flickering gas lights made her rather pale.

"It's hot--" she remarked plaintively. "I think I'll go into the

garden--" Her grandfather nodded. She slipped through the French

windows out to the narrow balcony and down the circular iron stairway.

A thousand million stars above her, shining through the tops of the

old trees of heaven--a tender breeze that blew Marthy's curtains ever

so gently and let the wistaria banners stream back and forth--if she

shoved it carefully, that smallest iron bench, and then stood tiptoe

upon it, she could peer through the top of the gate into the rectory

yard.

Fairy land! A score of merry young humans dashing about--a babble of

noise and laughter and the dyspeptic choir master nearly wild with the

confusion--"Order! Order!" he screamed, "Ladies and gentlemen! Boys!

Kindly remember this is the last rehearsal, the final rehearsal! When

the organist begins the choir should file in very slowly--the

principals remain outside until the choir is in--I would like the

tenor and the baritone soloists' voices to sound as far off as

possible as they approach--will those gentlemen be so good as to stand

at the extreme end of the yard?"

Felicia, behind the ivied gate, caught her breath. For as the rather

disorderly procession drifted away through the arch the soloists moved

easily toward her. One of them was disgracefully fat, he puffed as he

mopped his brow, but the other walked lightly, tossing his cap

boyishly as he walked. Close to the wall, he laughed, a youthful,

buoyant laugh,

"Jove!" he ejaculated, "Now I _have_ done it--my cap's on top of the

wall--"

The music was growing softer, fainter, the fat man had cleared his

throat for singing.

Felicia's heart stood still. The moon shone gloriously, it made little

white eyes of the narcissi that stared up at her from the garden

border. The wind stirred in the ivy. Felicia sighed. His head,

beautifully rumpled, topped the wall, he was still laughing softly,

talking to the man below.

"Second cap I lost here, lost one when I was a little shaver--there

was a girl--"

He was looking straight into her eyes now, he caught at the rusty top

of the gate and stared.

"Why--girl!" he murmured.

Oh! if you could have seen Felice! Felice, with her hair coifed

smoothly on her dear little head! Felice, with the big carved Spanish

comb holding that hair in place! And her white, white throat and the

tangle of old lace about it! He stared into her grave young eyes, he

looked at that lovely young mouth of hers, that mouth that was wide

enough for laughter but small enough for kisses. They swayed toward

each other, those two, as naturally as a butterfly sways toward a

flower. He kissed her.

As she leaned toward him the treacherous bench toppled too far. She

dropped away from his caress as suddenly as a star falls in the

heavens. She lay in a little crumpled heap crushing the sweetness of

the narcissi. She didn't know what had happened to her, she just lay

there and laughed softly and put her hand to her mouth gently.

A perfect din of voices blotted out her consciousness. After all you

know, a sprained ankle is a sprained ankle even if you don't know you

have it.