LOST DREAMS
Perhaps you remember the fat boy who teased little Felice through the
gate of the rectory yard. He didn't grow up like the rest of the choir
boys, he merely expanded until he was a droll larger edition of his
small tubby self; perhaps you've heard him singing at St. Patrick's
and smiled at the bland and childlike face from which his beautiful
big round baritone pours forth--he surely can sing! And eat! It's
really rather fun to go to the Brevoort with him and watch his
pleasingly plump wife remonstrate while he orders luncheon.
"Oh Tomothy Tom!" she groaned one showery April day, "those are all
starchy, sweety, fatty things! Don't order another food! Or I'll want
to eat them too, I shouldn't have another ounce, I shouldn't!"
"Not if you're going to take that jump over the fence in the second
act," said Graemer who was lunching with them. He was her manager,
Edwina Ely was a much better known person than her fat husband. And a
good bit older, too, if you must know it, though of course she did not
look so with her almost too blonde hair coiffed elaborately under the
wicked wings of her impertinent toque and her pleasure-loving chin
nestled in her white furs.
"I hate for us to eat here, the food's so good," she murmured with the
same plaintive note that makes the audience weep at the end of the
third act of "The Juggler."
"But I had a very special reason for wanting to come here," Graemer
explained. He had to be a bit wary of the starchy things too, though
he still had a figure in spite of his weight. He was complacently vain
of his prematurely gray hair, his fresh youthful skin and his dark
eyes. He reminded one somehow of a husky widow, he was so feminine in
spite of his size. He looked leisurely enough for a busy man. You
wondered how he had time to manage so many player folk, write so many
plays and yet dawdle over his luncheon as he did. He leaned forward to
ask Edwina's husband something. The fat man laughed uneasily.
"Well, he does usually lunch here," he admitted, "and I did use to
know him rather well, but I'm not exactly the person to introduce you
if you want anything from him--he's not overly fond of me--"
"I understood from Edwina that you were boyhood friends."
The fat man smiled and deliberately and delicately chucked his wife
under her rosy little chin.
"Tattle-tale!" he taunted her.
"You were!" she persisted, "you know you were!"
"If you ever were," said Graemer earnestly, "Permit me to suggest that
you renew your youth. What I want him for is partly on Edwina's
account. "The Juggler" isn't going as well as it ought to--I haven't
anything new in sight for her and I'd like to keep this going until I
have. What we need is a press agent like Dudley Hamilt."
"He's not a press agent--" gasped the fat man.
"He's the prince of press agents," answered Graemer easily, "he gets
more publicity, favorable publicity, for anything he touches than any
one I've ever watched work. Look what he did for the coal interests--
and look at that work of his in last fall's campaign--"
"But that was politics--" protested the fat man. "He wouldn't call
that being a press agent and I doubt if you could interest him in
anything theatrical."
"I can if I can get at him. Some one's bound to if I don't. It isn't
only for 'The Juggler' that I want him, it's for all my things--what
I'm going to offer him is something big--about the biggest end of the
game--but I don't want to seem to go to him so I thought that if there
was some casual way--if you should ask him to lunch with us--"
"He probably wouldn't--of course he might--" the baritone ruminated,
"Our fuss was a long time ago." He settled himself comfortably, he
dearly loved to gossip. "He's a queer chap, Dud is. Always was. We
used to sing in the same boy choir when we were kids. Little church
over in Brooklyn. He was an angel terror, regulation boy sopran'. Into
everything. Nearly drove the old choir master to drink. Was always
being expelled. Our families both belonged to the church so Brownly
always took us back after a row blew over. And carried us along while
our voices were changing. When I first began doing baritone Dudley was
singing all the tenor solos, had a peach of a voice, but he never did
anything with it afterwards."
"After what?" asked Edwina irritably.
Her husband chuckled.
"Wait, I'm telling you. It's a long story and a funny one even if the
joke is on me. You see Dud had a sweetheart on the other side of the
rectory wall. He was everlastingly edging toward it, tossing things
around to attract her attention and showing off generally. Funny
little girl. I didn't think she looked like much when we used to see
her first but gee, she certainly did come along when she got older!
Grew into a young peach! Dud just hung around silently worshipping,
pretending all the time he didn't know there was anybody picking
posies in the garden. I didn't know that she'd so much as noticed him
until one night in the spring when we were rehearsing for a special
oratorio. Some night!" The fat man sighed reminiscently. "All to the
Romeo and Juliet! Choir forming on the outside, old Brownly having a
tempermental fit as usual and Dud and I stationed over by the wall
ready to split our epiglottises; on our marks, set all ready to go
when Dud tosses up his cap, just as he used to when he was a little
shaver and Bing! Cap lands on top of the wall. So up clambers Dud--"
the raconteur smiled, "and I hope I may never see anything so pretty
pulled off as what happened next! That girl's head over the top of the
gate! Big dreamy eyes shining in the moonlight, hair parted, big comb
tucked in, lace dewdaddles around her shoulders! And Dud had been
languishing about her since he was twelve! First and only love! In
about one minute three seconds he had disappeared over said gate. It
was no place for a fat boy. Besides old Brownly was fairly roaring
from the chancel door, so I trotted along like a good child and left
Dud to his philandering. Brownly nearly had apoplexy getting along
without his pet tenor. After rehearsal I made a try for Dud, chirruped
under that blooming wall for about half an hour until an old gentleman
came out and requested me--er--more than requested me to go away.
"Old Major Trenton. Ever hear of him? Civil War hero. The fellow who
raised all that rumpus about chaps taking pensions if they'd wits
enough to earn their salt. He wouldn't touch one. Seems he'd gone to
war after having a row with his wife, she'd lit out for Paris just
before war was declared. Died over there leaving an infant daughter
that he had his own troubles getting away from some of her mother's
French relations. I used to hear my grandmother tell about the Trenton
case by the hour. There was some kind of a queer will, something about
the mother's money going to female descendants and a lot of talk about
a bunch of property the dying wife had mysteriously acquired in
France. The old Major only had one arm left after the war was over but
he fought a duel with a chap who insinuated that his wandering wife
wasn't all she might have been. By the time he'd got things settled he
was the finest old grouch you'd meet in a lifetime. Had the recluse
business down to a fine point. Summers he used to go off to the wilds
of Canada or the Adirondacks or somewhere that his wife's will had
specified their daughter must live and winters he used to lock the
girl up in that mansion next to our church. Wouldn't touch a penny of
his daughter's funds, actually paid rent to her, my grandmother said.
Made his living raising dogs, lap-dogs, in an old stable back of the
church. They were all the style. The fair customers used to hope
always that they were going to see the fascinating recluse widower.
But they never did. The only time he ever came to the surface that the
public knew about was the morning after the daughter eloped with the
rector's son. Grandmother says the Major smashed up a couple of
reporters the _Hawk_ sent over to interview him but he did tell 'em what
he thought on the woman question. Nobody had the nerve to go near him
for quite a while. Not for a couple of years or so. And then somebody
found the daughter starving in an attic. The rector's son had been a
nice enough chap but he hadn't enough grit to earn his living and the
girl, though she wasn't so young, couldn't touch her property without
the Major's consent and as she was as stiff-necked as he, she hadn't
made any effort at getting that consent. The rector's son had died of
pneumonia and their baby was just recovering from it and the girl
herself never did get over the strain. Somebody carried her home to die,
which it seems she took some years doing. Dud's sweetheart the other
side of the rectory wall was her daughter. The Major had lost a wife and
a daughter and he evidently had made up his mind he wasn't going to let
the last generation slip away. So you can just about guess how popular
Dudley Hamilt was when he broke into the Major's back yard.
"The old soldier didn't take a chance. He abso-bally-lutely
disappeared the next day. Took the girl with him, of course. Dud went
around like a wild man. He was twenty-one that spring, tall as he is
now and had about seven times as much pep as he has now, if you can
imagine that much. Evangeline looking for Gabriel was a paper chase
compared to Dudley trying to find his lady-love. He spent months at
it. Got haggard and wan, had a couple of fights with Burrel, a lawyer
who was the only person who knew where Major Trenton had gone. Funny
thing, it was that same Burrel who absconded with the American Trust
Company's stuff two or three years ago. Trenton must certainly have
made it worth the lawyer's while not to tell--for that lawyer was as
crooked as a corkscrew and yet Dud couldn't bribe him with everything
he could muster--which was quite some, for in those days the Hamilt
family had scads of money.
"I made a sort of break one night--" The fat man felt of his neck
ruefully. "Tried to joke with Dud a little, it was a year or so
afterward and I thought he'd gotten over things--but--er--he hadn't.
He--" He paused and blushed. "That's he though, coming through the
door," he ended. "Want me to try for him?"
It was the fair Edwina who dared however. She lifted her head
charmingly and beckoned.
"Don't ball things up, Tommy," she murmured under her breath, "Leave
it to us--get out if you see he's still miffed with you--Please come
over here, Mr. Hamilt," she called softly. "I want you to meet Mr.
Graemer."
He looked as blonde as she, almost, ruddy, lithe, but somehow old. He
did not smile at her greeting, he merely nodded. She gestured again,
so imperiously that he obeyed, but with scant courtesy, and he did not
look at all overjoyed at meeting the illustrious Mr. Graemer. He sat
down however, ordered his luncheon and listened gravely enough to
Edwina's chatter.
"Have you seen me in 'The Juggler'? Aren't you willing to say I can
act now? He never would--" she turned to Graemer. "He always said I
couldn't--but, don't you think I do in 'The Juggler'?" she entreated
Hamilt.
"It's an actress-proof part, isn't it?" he bantered, watching her
lazily.
"Brute!" she pouted.
"Perhaps he is complimenting me," teased Graemer.
"Not at all," promptly answered the rude Mr. Hamilt. "You've all but
ruined the play with your everlasting managing. It's a peach up to the
last act. Until you chuck that maudlin bunch of slush and scenery at
us. Where did you get that play, anyhow?" he asked insolently.
"Why, he wrote it last summer," protested Edwina.
"Yes?" his uplifted eyebrows were insulting as he glanced quizzically
at Graemer. "Then he was about twenty-five years younger last summer
than he is now. The first two acts of that play--Gad, it got me up
till then, but the rest of it--" he broke a bit off a crusty roll and
buttered it carefully, "I can readily believe, Mr. Graemer," he added
deliberately, "that you did write the rest of the play."
"You have to give the public what it wants," suggested Graemer
blandly.
"No, you don't," said Dudley Hamilt. "You have to make the public want
what it's going to get--or what it needs."
"Which is exactly what I wanted to see you about," drawled the manager
significantly.
Hamilt shrugged.
"If I ever did get into the theatrical game," he answered rather more
good-humoredly than he had yet spoken, "I wouldn't insult the public
by a perpetual bluff that they were getting something new. I wouldn't
keep handing out things that assumed the public all had salacious
minds or else no minds at all. I don't mean that I'd go in for uplift
stuff--that isn't what the theater is for--it's to amuse--to thrill--
to wake up our emotions--it's to _play_--But as you chaps who control
the thing have it going now it's so damnably mechanical there's no sense
of play left in it. Why don't you find something that admits the
audience has an imagination?"
"As for instance?" Graemer put in adroitly.
"I don't know--" Hamilt sighed, "I haven't the least idea what. Only
it ought to be something that everybody is unconsciously hankering
for--something that we miss all the while--something we lack in this
machine-age. Something that will come across the footlights by itself
instead of having to have the spotlight show it to us, something that
would make us feel the way we did when we were kids--I guess it's
romance--and perhaps the spirit of it is gone--"
Graemer smiled. He nodded to Edwina. Then he drew a long breath and
put his case bluntly.
"I came in here rather deliberately, Mr. Hamilt, because I've been
wanting to have a talk with you for a long time. It isn't only about
'The Juggler' that I wanted to talk with you but about all of my
productions. There are so many of them and I am so busy with them that
there are a lot of angles of the game that I do not have time to
touch. The thing I need is what you have aptly described--some one who
will make the public want what it's going to get. Some one who will
make it think it's going to get what it wants. The kind of thing you
did last fall in politics--making the whole thing seem something any
regular fellow must find out about and something he'd have a lot of
fun finding out. It's struck me all the while you were pulling your
strings that that sort of work about the stage would wake up the
theater-goer the same way you waked up the voter."
"It might," agreed Mr. Hamilt cautiously. "There might be ways--if you
had something to back your statements that the game was worth while--I
mean to the theater-goer--"
"Well, wouldn't you be willing to think it over and have another talk
with me? I don't mean immediately and I do mean on a big scale. I'm
sure you understand that--"
Hamilt motioned for the waiter, coolly insisted on paying his own
check and rose.
"What you suggest is rather interesting," was all the answer he
vouchsafed, "I might."
But after he'd gone Graemer looked after him and laughed.
"Middle name is Cynic--but he's pretty young yet."
"And the best looking thing," sighed Edwina pulling on her gloves,
bored with her long silence.
Graemer was thoughtful.
"He's given me an idea," he announced suddenly. "Or perhaps it was
Tom's gossip about him. How'd you like to do an ingenue part like that
missing lady affair--start with your head over a garden wall--call it
'The Heart of a Boy,' say--fill it up with this stuff Hamilt calls
youth--"
Tommie absorbed his last pastry.
"I've just remembered the girl's name," he announced, wiping a crumb
from his moist lips. "It was Felicia something or other--sort of sad,
wasn't it?"
"Maybe it would have been sadder if she'd married him," suggested
Edwina ironically. "He is a grouch, you can't get around that."
And the grouch, striding briskly up the avenue, was trying to be fair.
"Poor old Tommie!" he thought ruefully, "I don't know why I should go
on hating him because he will blab--it's the nature o' the beast--that
stupid little much-divorced animal that married him--" he glared at
two innocent young shoppers who were passing, "Gad, women are such
sophisticated cows nowadays--" Spring always made him wretched, spring
always made him fretful, spring always sent him off for the woods
somewhere, any woods so long as it was woods. He pondered over whether
he could get away Friday or would have to wait till Saturday morning,
and eventually decided on Saturday, consulting a memorandum book
scowlingly as he did so, jotting down appointments. He noted that he
would have to be in his office at five o'clock on Friday. Somebody or
other was going to telephone him about something. Which made him
reflect irritably that of all the mechanical devices of a mechanical
age the thing he hated most of all was a telephone! He could scarcely
endure the stupid way everybody shrieked "Hello!" through it. He
wished morosely that he could take a week-end trip without any luggage
whatever because he always had a row about his luggage. He wished
there was some system whereby one needn't always lose half one's
luggage.
Felicia could have told him! Infrequent traveler that she was she had
been properly educated on that point. However much she may have
yawned, at the tender age of ten, over a certain dissertation on the
etiquette of travel, given one summer afternoon by Mademoiselle
D'Ormy, Felicia aged twenty-seven, embarked upon her first journey
alone, found herself musing with mighty comfort upon the charming
definiteness of those never-to-be-forgotten axioms. For Mademoiselle
had made the small Felicia recite them over and over until she was
letter perfect.
"On a journey the traveler should enumerate all the traveling
equipment in fives to avoid the confusion caused by losing one's
belongings. Count upon the fingers what one has possessed upon
starting."
All unconscious of the amused glances of her fellow passengers,
Felicia Day, in her absurd bonnet and antiquated traveling coat sat
primly in the Pullman section that the doctor's thoughtfulness had
provided for her and counted her "five" just before her train reached
New York. She smiled as she counted, a whimsical smile--
Item one. A letter! A beautiful letter, reposing next her heart under
the stiff bodice of a frock that had once belonged to Josepha, mother-
in-law of Major Trenton.
Item two. One fluffy, sleepy Blenheim spaniel hidden in the capacious
sleeve of a coat that had been Octavia's.
Item three. A long and narrow knitted reticule, once carried by
Louisa, wife of Major Trenton, now containing bills and coins placed
there by Margot, said reticule held firmly, as Margot had directed,
with the center twisted firmly around Felicia's left wrist.
Item four. One russet leather traveling bag once used by Major
Trenton, now containing modest rolls of ancient lingerie, Octavia's
massive silver brushes and combs, a faded India dressing-gown
belonging to whom even Margot couldn't remember, on top of which was
tucked a flat wicker basket containing small cakes and sandwiches
wrapped neatly in a napkin and weighted over all these contents, where
Felicia herself had placed it when Margot wasn't looking--THE THEORY
AND PRACTISE OF GARDENING!
"Perhaps the wistaria will have to be pruned--perhaps the ivy around
the fountain will need trimming--maybe the narcissi will need thinning
out when they're through blossoming--I'm stupid about narcissi. I've
been living so long where there weren't any--" Her thoughts had raced
longingly toward the back yard of her childhood while Margot had been
packing the bag.
Item five. "Myself," decided Felicia nodding, "I must be careful not
to lose myself."
Which, droll as it seemed when she enumerated, proved to be the most
difficult item to remember.
"_Likewise on a journey especially of a business nature, one should
keep clearly in mind the exact order of destination, choosing the most
urgent first._"
Destination first. "Temple Bar" where one may find the Portia Person
who long ago promised to help should one ever be "in Trouble."
Destination second. The address at the bottom of a grimy handbill that
announced "To be sold at auction for unpaid taxes--By the order of J.
K. Harlow, Justice of the--"
Destination _really_! Eighteen Columbia Heights!
"First," Felicia at least began her thinking clearly, "I shall go to
see the Judge and I shall say 'Don't sell Grandy's house because
Certain Legal Matters hasn't attended to things. Just wait. I know
another lawyer, he's in Temple Bar. He will attend to everything.' Oh
no! First I'll go find the Portia Person and while he is attending to
everything I will send a letter to Dudley Hamilt's house--then I will
go to Grandy's house and wait for Dudley Hamilt to come--oh! oh!
Babiche--I can't arrange things clearly in mind, I can't no matter how
I try! Only I must--"
So over and over to the roar of the train she tried to drill herself.
"First the Portia Person--then the Judge--"
It was nine o'clock in the morning when, tired and bewildered, she
emerged from the subway at Borough Hall, Brooklyn. The little hand,
that "had never spread itself over a doorknob or a fire-iron or any
clumsy thing" struggled valiantly with the russet bag; the new
Babiche, cramped and shaken from her day and night of travel, poked
her snubby nose from under the traveling coat and sniffed and
squeakingly yawned. Louisa's bonnet had worked itself askew, the sharp
wind from the river was flapping the heavy clothing about her slender
ankles and displaying the outlandish old "Congress gaiter" shoes. A
distressed and ridiculous figure, she stood and shuddered at the roar
of the elevated above her and the jangle of the surface cars that
clattered past her and trembled at the disconcerting honk of the
motors that barely escaped crushing her.
Officer Brennan, pompously regulating the congested traffic watched
the grotesque person on the curbstone and chuckled.
"For the love of hivin," he thought, "Thim movie actors will dress
like annything for the money--" and glanced about automatically to see
the camera man. But something in the terror of the little woman's
glance flashed over the crowded crossing to his warm Irish heart,
"Hullo, she's no acterine!" He ploughed through the river of travel
and caught at her arm and felt her slight weight sag against him.
"Annybody as turned her loose--" he continued his soliloquy after he'd
jollied a newsboy into escorting her across to the Temple Bar
Building, "Ought to be sent up--" He vented his disgust at the
"annybody" on a daring chauffeur and watched until the newsboy came
panting back to his stand to nod a triumphant grinning affirmative
"'Nd her head up in the air like a queen--" he held his own head
regally to signal the cross-town traffic, "Queer lot!" and forgot her.
It was noon when she came back to him, looking older and queerer and
whiter faced than ever. Temple Bar is a large office building and
Felicia Day had tramped courageously from floor to floor, from office
to office, persistently seeking the Portia Person. She had been
laughed at, had been almost insulted, had been treated with deference
and treated with indifference; she had talked with scores and scores
of lawyers, looking searchingly into their faces, asking her question
firmly and sweetly. She had asked it of busy lawyers, lazy lawyers,
suave lawyers, thin lawyers, fat lawyers, rude lawyers, young lawyers,
old lawyers; she had talked to dozens of clerks and stenographers,
appealed to elevator men, janitors, scrub women, any one who would
listen--she wanted to find the Portia Person, he had curly hair and he
was quite tall and he had had a client whose name was Octavia, who was
pretty and ill and who had given him some papers sixteen years ago. He
had talked with Mademoiselle D'Ormy, in a house in Montrose Place. Of
this business that she had for him the little woman was
extraordinarily canny, it was no one's affair save hers and the Portia
Person's.
The patient girl at the news stand in the main hallway looked up and
down a list of tenants, checking them off with an over-manicured
finger as she tried to suggest. She had taken charge of Felicia's bag,
had offered to keep Babiche. Her good humor shone in a dreary morning.
Felicia began to have faith in her.
"If I was you," said the girl, "I'd go get myself a bite to eat. It's
noon, everybody's going out--don't you see?"
Felicia saw, she saw also that the patient newsstand girl was tired.
"Do you go to get yourself 'a bite'?" she asked curiously.
"Not till two o'clock," sighed the girl.
"I wish," decided Felicia whimsically, "that Margot had cooked
_de_-licious foods for us--broiled chicken and baked potatoes and
a caramel custard and that we could go and sit by the Bowling Green
and have Bele bring our lunch out on the little folding table--for
you have been most kind to me--"
The girl stared after her in amazement.
"Well, I'll be darned!" she announced frankly to the elevator starter,
"that woman is the limit! She's certainly got me guessing! One minute
she seems as intelligent as anybody--only she can't remember the name
of the man she's looking for--but gee, I forget names myself--and the
next minute she's asking me to lunch on Bowling Green, as pleasant as
you please! Can you beat it? And I can't for the life of me make out
whether she's young or old--her voice's dandy and young. Honest, I
like to hear her talk, she talks so comical--but don't she look like
the last rose of summer, now don't she?"
The elevator starter agreed that she did and whistled "She May Have
Seen Better Days" till the news-stand girl giggled and told him he was
"Too comical" but they both of them commented about her when she did
not return.
"She may be a nut," admitted the girl, "But she's kinda got me going.
Gee I'd like to find the lawyer for her just to find out was she
Dorothy Arnold come back--or somebody like that."
It was Officer Brennan who had dissuaded her from her attempt to find
the Portia Person. He had spied her, standing undecided outside the
office building and hailed her as he was about to go off his beat.
"Did you find what you were looking for?"
His sureness of manner and his uniform impressed her.
"I couldn't find the man I wanted," she confided, "so I think I'll
just have to see the Judge Person, myself, wouldn't you?"
He cogitated. Did she know what judge she wanted to see?
She unfolded the grimy hand bill, the "To be sold for unpaid taxes"
that Zeb had brought to her. He read it slowly till he came to the
"Order of Justice Harlow" at the bottom.
"That's an easy one," he cheered her, "I'll take you over there right
now and put you next to a fellow who works there. He'll slip you
through to his Honor himself and you can tell him your troubles."
But in spite of being "slipped through" there was a deal of waiting,
sometimes in anterooms, sometimes in corridors, a deal of answering
the questions of not overly intelligent clerks, and late afternoon
found her sitting primly cuddling her restless doggie, waiting for
some one to bring the tax records. She was a little tireder, a little
hungrier, a little less sure of herself than when the friendly news
girl had advised her to "get a bite." She was keeping her courage high
by thinking over and over to herself,
"After I see the Judge then I'll go to Dudley Hamilt."
It had not occurred to her that this busy place was a court room. It
had no stately panelled walls like those that had been painted in the
background of the portrait of Grandy's father. Nor did she understand
when she was at last ushered into the Justice's presence that he was
the man she had been waiting to see.
He did not wear a white curly wig and he did not wear a black satin
gown the way Grandy's father had. Nor were there any scrolls of vellum
with fat beribboned seals in this Judge's hands. Instead, alert
slender fingers riffled their way rapidly through a mass of papers
that a clerk put before him. Felicia watched the fingers until the
close cropped head was lifted and keen gray eyes glanced straight
through hers.
The abrupt phrase with which he had intended to dismiss her died. He
stared at her curiously. He noted the traveling bag at her feet, the
absurd old coat and bonnet, the dark circles under her beseeching
eyes--
"She looked," as he explained afterward, "like a daguerreotype--old
and youthful all at once, faded yet shining--most extraordinary little
person--"
"You are the Felicia Day mentioned here?" he asked gravely tapping the
papers.
Felicia tried to smile. She managed it so far as her eyes were
concerned but her lips were too tired. She nodded.
"And have you any other lawyer than Mr. Burrel--the lawyer who has
disappeared?"
She nodded again. She spoke to him for the first time, her low
contralto, her clear enunciation, her perfect poise of manner,
startled him even more than the childlike simplicity--almost
absurdity--of her words.
"There's the Portia Person in Temple Bar."
"A woman lawyer?" he was very patient with her.
"No, he's a man. I only thought he was a woman when I was little. I
can't quite think of his name but he is in Temple Bar and he came to
see Maman and he told me if there was trouble to come to him--I've
looked and looked, but I can't find him today."
"I see--" the Justice looked out of the window thoughtfully, "but in
the meantime, while you're finding him, don't you think you'd better
have some other lawyer? Is there some other one you know about?"
"Maman only had that one."
It was going to be harder than he thought to make her understand. But
somehow or other he did it, talking slowly and very gently as though
he were talking to a child.
"I'm sorrier than I can tell that you are having this trouble. This
house in Montrose Place, Miss Day, has been your own property since
you were eighteen years of age. It was formerly the property of your
mother--" he consulted the papers, "Octavia Trenton Day. This Mr.
Burrel who had charge of your property has paid neither the taxes on
it, nor the interest on some mortgages that he arranged on it, for
about seven years back. Can you understand that? And the house has
been rented in the meantime to a great many families, it is
technically a tenement house. The present trouble is not only about
these unpaid taxes and the unpaid interest, but you have violated the
Tenement House laws. You have not installed proper fire escapes or
plumbing, you have not answered any of the notices that have been sent
you. This court had to fix an arbitrary fine--which you have not
paid."
"I nevaire do pay things," answered Felicia, greatly bewildered, "you
see Mademoiselle D'Ormy did not teach me much about money and Margot
only knows a little about money. Grandy paid for things until he fell
and now Margot pays for them. But you see Margot gets our money from
Mr. Burrel, he has all of our money so I just think--" she ended with
a businesslike decision, "you will have to get all that money for the
taxes and other things that I owe from the money that he has."
"But that is what I have been trying to explain. This Mr. Burrel has
been missing for over three years. This Margot you speak of must have
had some other way of getting funds for you."
"Margot hasn't vairee much," Felicia told him, "I can't ask her for
anything more. I think Mr. Judge, you'll just have to take my house."
He answered this seemingly absurd suggestion with deliberation.
"These papers show," he explained, "that Mr. Burrel offered your
equity in the house to the holder of the mortgage some six months or
so before Burrel himself disappeared. But the value of the property in
Montrose Place has depreciated to such an extent and the unpaid taxes
have piled up so alarmingly that the mortgager refused to agree to
that. The only way I can see just now to help you at all is to arrange
for a stay of thirty days in this matter of the proceedings against
you for the violation of the Tenement House Law together with a thirty
day Injunction preventing the sale of the house for unpaid taxes. That
will give you thirty days to arrange to pay that fine--which I have
made as light as possible but which amounts to fifty dollars." "And
the rest of it?" asked Felicia coolly.
He consulted the papers.
"Is eighteen thousand eight hundred and forty-two dollars and seventy-
eight cents."
She pulled open the strings of Louisa's beaded purse, she let the
money and bills therein slide into a heap on the desk between them.
She frowned at it.
"That's all there is now," she remarked, almost cheerfully, "except
some that Margot had to keep for buying sugar and flour and things in
the village--" She was so calm that he knew she was utterly unaware of
the enormity of the amount. "If I am going to have thirty days more,"
she concluded, "I'm quite sure I can get the rest for you, I'll find
the Portia Person, I know, evaire so many lawyers weren't in Temple
Bar today. He might be there tomorrow, you know." She nodded
confidently. "But that's all I can give you now. You've been vairee
good to try to make me understand. I'm rather stupid about it because
Mademoiselle did not teach me those things. And Maman arranged for the
Portia Person to attend to it." She rose, she cuddled her dog under
her arm and stooped for her bag.
He gestured for her to put the bag down, he scooped her small pile of
bills and silver into his hand and reached for her reticule and tucked
the money in slowly.
"My dear Miss Day," he stammered, "if you do not find this--er--
lawyer, you mention, a lawyer will be assigned by the court to attend
to things, and you would have to make your payments through him. In
the meantime--" he put the purse in her hand. "I am more sorry than I
can tell you that I have had to fix this fine--it is purely arbitrary
--I am very sorry--"
"Of course you would be," said Felicia slowly, her clear eyes looking
at him without malice and without scorn. "You must be sorry a great
deal of the time, aren't you? You couldn't be really happy making so
many people unhappy as I've watched go to talk with you today--they
looked vairee unhappy."
The gentle unfairness of her rebuke was most disconcerting.
"Perhaps I make some of them happy," he protested.
She shook her head.
"I didn't see a happy one," she answered simply.
An odd feeling that he wanted her to think well of him worried him.
Why he should have cared what this bedraggled, bankrupt little
creature thought he did not fathom, perhaps it was just that she
looked so helpless and so old that his heart smote him. Awkward as a
boy he stared out through the bedrizzled windowpane into the spring
rain.
"I hope you won't think I'm impertinent," he suggested suddenly, "but
I believe you said you arrived from out of town this morning and came
directly here. Have you some friend to whom you are going?"
From beneath Louisa's ridiculous old bonnet her hair scraggled
untidily, her pallor accentuated the dark circles under her drooping
eyelids. Yet when she looked up at him, the glory in those tired eyes
surprised him.
"I'm going,"--oh, how she wanted to say "to Dudley Hamilt"! It took
all her reserve to finish her sentence calmly! "To eighteen Columbia
Heights."
"That's not far," he felt an inexpressible relief that she had
somewhere to go, "I'm not quite ready to go home myself, but my car is
waiting for me. Suppose we have one of these boys take your bag down
for you and that you let my chauffeur drive you to Columbia Heights
while he is waiting for me--I should be very glad if you would--"
She did not answer him until he opened the door for her. When she
looked up at him he was fairly startled by her wide ingenuous smile.
"I was just pretending," she said clearly, "that I had my ox-cart so
that I wouldn't have to walk to find Columbia Heights--I was just
thinking how delightful it would be if I did for I'm afraid--as afraid
as Margot is of a bat--of all of the things in the street--you are
indeed kind--" ah, the stilted phrases with which Mademoiselle had
instructed her so many years ago!--"to suggest a drive for me--"
He went back to his papers positively chuckling.
"She's refreshingly different," he thought. "Refreshingly different."
But he sighed as he handed the papers to the clerk. The whole case
seemed a hopeless tangle. And now that she was gone Felicia herself
seemed absolutely unreal. He rubbed his eyes and plunged into the next
thing.
But Felicia, resting comfortably on the wide seat of the judge's car
shut her tired eyes and let her head sink against the cushions. Her
heart was racing faster than this swiftly moving motor, she felt as
though she could not breathe.
They came to a slow halt before a pile of bricks and mortar. Above
them loomed a huge unfinished apartment house, from which were
tramping forth the home-going laborers. The smell of the wet lime as
they tracked across the rather narrow street was over-powering. The
chauffeur opened the door and spoke to her respectfully.
"There must be some mistake in your address, Madam, this is eighteen
Columbia Heights." She was overwhelmed, she could think nothing whatever
to say to him. He came to the rescue himself with a quiet, "Perhaps if
you have the name of the person you wanted to see--"
"It's Dudley Hamilt."
There was a drug store on the opposite corner. He disappeared within
its door and it was several minutes before he came back. This time he
had a definite word.
"The druggist says that the Hamilt house stood where this apartment is
being built, Madam. He says he understands that the elder Mr. Hamilt
is dead but that the younger one has an office somewhere in Manhattan.
Perhaps you could speak with him on the telephone--"
Speak with him! Her face glowed with sudden color.
"How nice of you!" she rose obediently to follow him, putting Babiche
carefully on the cushioned seat. "Will you tell the druggist that I'd
like to?"
The man helped her respectfully through the doorway, he was thinking
as had his employer and as Officer Brennan had, that this odd little
woman shouldn't have to go around alone, and yet, it was puzzling, she
didn't seem to mind doing it. He obligingly found the telephone
number, turned and asked her if she would like him to call Mr.
Hamilt's office for her. The telephone was screwed to a small table
near the door. Felicia waited, her heart throbbing. Beside her at the
marble counter two giggling young things ordered soda water from a
white-coated clerk. They were garbed in the triggest and gayest of
spring clothing, they were as impeccably immaculate as the smiling
ladies on the perfume bottles in the window. Back of the telephone was
a long mirror that reflected their pretty smartness and Felicia's
impossible dowdiness. But Felicia did not see anything at all save the
round black hole through which she was to speak to Dudley Hamilt. She
was awed by it as she had been surprised by everything in this amazing
day. She watched closely the way the man held the receiver; not for
worlds would she have admitted her ignorance. She took the receiver,
she sat down quietly, she drew a long breath. The chauffeur was
already disappearing through the door, the drug clerk was joking with
his giggling young patrons. Suddenly her rapturous ear caught Dudley
Hamilt's resonant voice speaking,
"Who is it?" he demanded impatiently.
Her low sweet laughter purred over the wires to him.
"Can't you remember?" she asked quietly. "I am Felice.--Yes, I _am_
Felice. I have been trying to find your house, Dudley Hamilt, but it's
gone, they are building a vairee big house there. I didn't have your
letter, that letter that you sent me. Not till Zeb brought it to me day
before yesterday. That was why I didn't write to you where I was."
"Where are you now?" the excitement in his voice frightened her. "Tell
me, where are you?"
The giggling back of her grew so insistent that it broke in upon even
the solitude of her wonderous moment. She raised her eyes to the
mirror before her. She caught a swift glimpse of laughing faces, the
impishness of their mischievous eyes made her shiver. She
instinctively glanced into the looking glass to see where their gaze
rested. And looked straight at--herself!
At Louisa's ugly bonnet, at the damp and shapeless shoulders of the
gray coat, at her own pallor, at the deep shadows under her tired
eyes, into her own eyes, and saw the whole drab mirrored ghost of the
woman who had been the young Felicia. And through the telephone rang
Dudley Hamilt's eager voice, as eager as it had been that night when
he clambered over the gate.
"Tell me quickly where you are--I must see you--oh, your voice sounds
as though I'd not lost you at all--" he laughed nervously like an
embarrassed boy, "I want to see you--" he repeated inadequately.
She thought quickly, she could think of only one thing and that was
that Dudley Hamilt must NOT see her.
"Let's pretend," she interrupted him, her low contralto voice
trembling, "Let's pretend that I'm somewhere you can't see me--I only
wanted--to tell you that I had your letter. I wanted you to know how
happy it made me to have it. Dudley Hamilt--"
The receiver dropped from her hand; somewhere back of her the giggling
grew fainter and farther away. She shook her head weakly when the drug
clerk hurried with a glass of water. She was swaying, dimly conscious
of the awe in the face of the girl who was hastening toward her.
"Oh, she looks awfully ill--" she heard a dismayed voice.
"I'm not ill--" her proud chin lifted. She was pulling herself
together again, she even managed to stand by holding one hand on the
edge of the table.
The whirling blackness of the moment had passed. Even while the clerk
was hastily calling back the judge's chauffeur, the drooping little
figure had straightened itself.
"I think the lady was kinda faint," mumbled the clerk, mechanically
replacing the dangling receiver. "She's O.K. now--ain't you?"
"Did you find where you wanted to go?" the man's respectful query
helped her.
"If it's not too far," she answered with dignity, "I think I'd like to
go to my own house--it's in a street called Montrose Place."
Inside the car her head drooped, she felt the new Babiche licking her
lifeless hand, she felt the whir of the motor. It vibrated through
every jangling nerve of her weary body. The whole impossible journey
was like a nightmare.
"That wasn't I, I saw in there--" her thoughts blurred, "it's just a
dreadful dream--that wasn't Felice I saw--oh, Dudley Hamilt--I was so
pretty that night! And now I'm just old--like Grandy--like Piqueur--"
After a million years--or was it after one little minute?--the car
stopped easily. Like the dream that Felicia had hoped the whole
dreadful day had been. She opened her eyes as though she might have
been waking up in the bed that Poquelin, the father of Moliere, had
carved.
"This," said the judge's chauffeur dubiously, "is Montrose Place."
She got out slowly, tucking Babiche mechanically under her arm. The
man lifted out her bag and touched his cap,--she did not even see him
go.
The huge willows still arched above Montrose Place, but they were shabby
and dying. And the mossy bricked sidewalk was gone but on its
muddy concrete successor, scores and scores of noisy, dirty, alien
children squabbled and cried. Some of them were pushing against this
strange woman who had descended from the motor, some of them fingered
her coat, one bolder than the rest sat down upon her bag. It seemed to
her as though more children than she had known there were in the whole
world were crowding against her. Wherever she looked there were
children. They hung from the once lovely old windows, they slid down
the once beautiful balustrade, they tumbled out of every doorway. And
wherever there were not children there were signs. Blatant, dingy
signs. The first one she glimpsed was propped before the basement
gate through which the housemaids had been wont to enter. It was shaped
like a tombstone and with amateur lettering announced:
"TONY HE SELLA COAL WOOD ICE"
And from the rusty iron balcony hung a ragged pair of trousers into
which had been inserted a board, the legs flapped dispiritedly in the
gusty wind from the river. Painted in scraggling white paint across
the seat of the trousers was written
"A. Cohen. Pressing 25 and 50 cents."
It was twilight. The tailor had lighted a single flickering gas jet
beside the basement window. In the old days the front basement had
been the housemaids' sitting room with a channel-coal fire glowing in
the grate and a tidy white cloth on the table and neat rows of
geraniums in the windows--a cheery sort of place. Not at all like this
stuffy, overcrowded, ill ventilated place with the two silent shirt-
sleeved men humped over steaming ironing boards and with a dozen more
clattering away at noisy sewing machines.
A grizzled man scowled at her through thick glasses.
"Vell," he rasped, "Vat do you vant, madam?"
"I want to stay here."
"You vant to rent a room? I calls mine missus--" he called stridently,
"I think she gotta room for three dollars, I don' know--"
From the doorway of the once shining and immaculate kitchen a frowsy
head protruded, "Four we should get," whined a nasal voice "it is only
that it is on the top floor that we can make it so cheap--"
"This," announced Felicia to the slatternly woman "--is my house. How
dare you let it get so dirty!"
Her rising anger swept into her heart like a reviving fire. She
thought of Zeb, mouthing his scorn of the "dirty filthy heathen," she
thought of Mademoiselle D'Ormy scolding a housemaid who left so much
as a speck of dust on the hall balustrades, she did not see the
grinning woman gesturing to her husband, touching her forehead to
indicate Felicia's lack of wits.
"That ain't my business," the woman shrugged when she saw Felicia
looking at her. "We pays out rent by a receiver since the Mister
Burrel goes avay--I gotta get mine renta in adwance. I gotta nice room
if you vant to stay."
"But it's my house, of course I'll stay."
"It's a nice room, three dollars a veek--you vant to see it?"
The color blazed in Felicia's cheeks.
"I should like you to take me to it at once," she announced with
dignity. "You'll carry my bag, please."
The tailor's wife grumbingly obeyed her, preceding her new lodger with
ill concealed temper, her lumpy person almost blocking the ample
stairway.
Up they passed from the basement to the once stately hallway. Not even
the encrusted dirt could hide the beauty of the old tessellated marble
floors and arched doorways but where the oval topped doors had once
swung hospitably wide their gloomy panels now hid the drawing-rooms,
and where the long mirror had once made the hallway bright with
reflected light a dingy ill-painted wall made the passage so gloomy
that one could scarcely see above the first landing. Silently
Felicia's weary feet carried her along behind her untidy conductor.
Unconsciously she tiptoed as she passed the closed door of her
mother's room, tiptoed as gently as though that frail sufferer were
still lying listlessly on the "sleighback" bed. Quietly around the
bend of the upper hall she followed, past the upstairs sitting room
and up the second flight toward the sleeping chambers, her heart
beating from the unwonted climb, her breath coming in quick gasps and
her damp hair clinging to her aching forehead.
"Maybe," she exulted secretly, "it will be the nursery that I'll have
--maybe I left something--" she smiled as she caught herself thinking
it on the stairway--"perhaps there will be a little fire in the
Peggoty grate and I can shut the door and sit down and think clearly."
But it wasn't the nursery. As they passed its closed door she could
hear the wrangle of many voices, a baby's fretful cry and the hurrying
whir of other sewing machines. The frowsy woman opened the door at the
head of the stairs. The-three-dollar-a-week-room was the hall bedroom.
The small room where Mademoiselle D'Ormy's bed had been wont to stand
in the old days--with the door left ajar so that Felicia would not be
frightened when she awoke in the night.
With the door to the adjoining room closed it looked twice as narrow
as she remembered it. And it was not a nice clean room. It held an old
iron bed and a pine table and a cheap wicker rocking chair. Yet
Felicia could almost have kissed the dingy walls for they were covered
with exactly the same droll paper that had always decorated them--the
paper on which the oft repeated group of fat faced shepherdesses
danced about their innumerable May poles and alternating with these
perpetual merry makers were the methodical flocks of lambs. Spang over
the middle of the space back of the bed was the discolored spot where
she had thrown the large and dripping bath sponge.
She felt suddenly very small and very, very helpless--she was utterly
spent. But there was something in her wide gray eyes--a dignity and a
command--that completely dominated the shrewish wife of the hump-
shouldered tailor, something that made the slatternly creature back
out of the room, for Felicia Day, with her hand on the battered iron
railing of the bed, had said clearly, "Woman, go at once."
And when the door was shut she sat down in one chair and put Babiche
carefully on the bed. She untied Louisa's bonnet and dropped it to the
floor; she loosed the cumbersome traveling coat. Far out on the river
the ferry boats and tugs were signaling; across the water the glamour
of a million lights shone toward her. It was quite dark now; she
stumbled to the window and looked down into the back yard. The dusk
had mercifully blurred out for her the heaps of refuse and ashes that
were dumped upon the spot where the narcissus border had been. The
great iron pots on the top of the garden wall loomed out of the
shadows. She looked straight down on the gate to the rectory yard.
She sunk in a crumpled heap and rested her weary head on the window
sill, then groped for the wee doggie as she heard the faint click of
its tiny paws coming toward her over the bare floor.
"Oh, Babiche!" she whispered, "Babiche, how happy--we should be--to be
home!"