THE LAST PRETENDING
The Portia Person and the young lawyer bent over a long table littered
with papers from the young lawyer's portfolio and the storeroom
trunks. They were sitting in the young lawyer's room, the room that
had been Grandy's and from the mantelpiece the portrait of Grandy's
father looked down upon them. His faintly ironical smile seemed to
mock their baffled efforts to disentangle the mystery. The tide wind
blew in softly from the river; the lights in the quaint old gas
fixtures flared waveringly, but the wide room was very still.
In Grandy's "forty winks" leather chair by the fireside sat Felicia,
her hair smoothly parted, her tiny figure trig in one of the Sculptor
Girl's much mended frocks. She sat primly upright as she always sat,
but her sleek head bent itself charmingly--Felicia was knitting. She
was weaving a shawl for the Wheezy, a gay red shawl. The warm glow of
the wool cast a faint tinge of color upward over her pale cheeks;
whenever the Portia Person or the young lawyer asked her a question,
as they frequently did, she let her work rest in her lap and answered
quietly, her great eyes lifted hopefully.
From the garden they could hear the faint rumble of men's voices, the
Architect and the Inventor and the Cartoonist and the Painter Boy and
the two new chaps, slender Syrians; (Felicia had found them a few days
before starving in a cellar where they were experimenting with
reproductions of antique pottery and had brought them and their
potter's wheels and their kiln home to live in the glassed-in room. It
was there in the autumn following that they perfected those wonderful
bronze and turquoise glaze ceramics that delighted the whole art
world)--from the nursery above came trailing the high sweet murmur of
the Sculptor Girl and the Poetry Girl and the Architect's wife and the
Milliner and the folk-dance teacher--in the kitchen Janet MacGregor
and Molly O'Reilly wrangled half-heartedly over religious differences
but each and every one of these inimitable persons cared not a whit
about the thing he or she pretended to be discussing. Each of them
wanted to scream,
"What's happening? Why don't you say what you've found out? Why don't
you tell us something?"
Eight o'clock, nine o'clock, ten o'clock--Molly O'Reilly couldn't
endure the suspense any longer. She cunningly stacked a tray with nut-
bread sandwiches and a pitcher of milk and strode bravely up the
stairs to Grandy's room.
"Miss Day, darlint," she called through the half opened door, "I've
the matter of a nibble of food here--"
Felicia did not put down the knitting, she merely lifted her head.
"How sweet of you, Molly O'Reilly, come in--this is Mr. Ralph. Mr.
Ralph, I know you'll like Molly O'Reilly--" Molly put down the tray,
her hands were trembling so she couldn't trust them.
"It's dying we all are wid curiosity, Mr. Portia Ralph. You should
have a heart--" her speech was bolder than her beseeching eyes, "what
wid the men all rarin' about the bit of garden, calling, 'Molly, isn't
she coming down?' and the girls, calling down the kitchen tube, 'Molly
aren't they through talking?' I'm fair getting nervous myself--we feel
like witches we're that flighty--"
"The poor children!" Felicia sighed heavily. "Are you sure we couldn't
tell them anything?" she consulted the Portia Person anxiously. He was
biting absent-mindedly into the sandwich Molly had almost shoved into
his hand; he was eyeing the milk which that astute person was pouring
out for him.
"Just a word, maybe," wheedled Molly.
He smiled, a wry smile.
"We're making some headway," he vouchsafed, "but of course we've only
begun really--" Molly took to herself no comfort from his casual tone.
She fixed an inquiring eye on the lawyer's despondent shoulders and
went out without another word. But back in the kitchen she thumped her
bread outrageously as she kneaded it,
"Lawyers is the numbskull boys," she grumbled, "I belave none of them
know their business--"
Half past ten o'clock, eleven o'clock, half past eleven--Felicia still
knitted, she could no longer see what she was knitting. Her eyes were
blurred with unshed tears. It wasn't for herself that she cared, it
was for all of the rest of them. From the stairway she could hear
Molly's voice comforting the Architect's wife as they helped her down
from the nursery to Maman's room,
"Sure, they's no need to worry. Take a peep through the door at Miss
Felice. She's just knitting whilst they confab. Sure wid a couple o'
hundred papers alyin' there they couldn't get through in no hurry now,
could they?"
She managed to wave her hand gaily as they passed but her heart beat
rebelliously. "I just can't, can't, can't give up their house--oh,
wherever could I put them all? I couldn't take them to the House in
the Woods. I couldn't let them go back--oh, oh, I can't lose their
house--"
Out of the mass of things that the Portia Person had tried to make
clear to her Felicia could only grasp this; that the house was hers
but the taxes and interest and fines must all be paid if it were to
remain hers; that Certain Legal Matters had really taken everything
that had been left her from the Montrose estate; that he couldn't be
found; that there was some other property and money somewhere in
France; that the Portia Person had seen some of the papers concerning
it when he was a young lawyer, when Felice was a little girl; that
these papers had been put into Mademoiselle's hands for safe-keeping
when Maman went away; that Mademoiselle D'Ormy was to give them to
Felicia when Felicia was eighteen. But though they had ransacked every
paper that they could find in the old boxes and the cupboards they
could find nothing that had any bearing on the case.
Of course there was more than a possibility that Felicia might find
something among Major Trenton's effects. The Portia Person was sure
that another thirty days' stay could be secured to enable Felicia to
go to the House in the Woods and see if she could find anything, but
she made it quite clear to them that the old man's mental condition
precluded the probability that he could be of any help to them.
"It's not fair--it's not fair--" her tempestuous heart beat angrily,
"Always when I seem to find what I must have, it is as though I had
found nothing. This is worse than when I lost Dudley Hamilt--it's not
fair--"
She spoke the last three words aloud in her intensity, so bitterly,
that the two men, packeting together the papers, turned quickly.
"It's beastly," agreed the Portia Person inadequately, "but you
mustn't lose hope yet--"
She caught at his glib words eagerly.
"How silly of me! It was only the Tired part of me that spoke!" She
smiled. "I am like Dulcie's Pandora a little. I have opened the box
and let out all the troubles--but perhaps I haven't let out Hope--
probably everything is as right as right can be--in some of Grandy's
papers--"
She was grateful that she had this hope to hold out to her "children"
--she thought of them always now as children, these folk who dwelt
about her. Perhaps she caught that feeling from Molly, who mothered
every one of them.
Of course the journey to the House in the Woods availed nothing. It
only brought Felicia back, graver and quieter than ever. The Majorhadn't
recognized her at all. He had merely called her Louisa and
forbade her to go to Paris, and Piqueur, Margot, Bele, and Zeb had
poured out their little troubles to her so that the trip had left her
despondent.
She went back to her work dully; she stitched as daintily and
carefully as ever, but her whole spirit drooped. This was the end of
all her high hopes and great dreams,--that in less than a fortnight
she would have to give up the struggle.
At least she was very busy during those warm April days. She had
amusing things to sew upon, little tarltan skirts for children who
were to appear in a huge charitable "May Day" entertainment. They were
of gay colors, those frills, like big holly-hocks, she thought as she
flung the finished things into a hamper. She helped to make other
costumes too, sitting with a score of seamstresses in the auditorium
of one of the churches. These women talked a great deal about the
entertainment. Naturally, each one of them talked only about the
person or the committee who had hired her.
Yet engrossed in her anxieties for her household as she stitched and
stitched Felicia listened not at all to the chatter about her. It was
merely like the humming of the bees in her garden in the woods. She
heard it but heeded it not, because her heart was intent upon her
roses.
Because she was aware that the House would soon be taken away from her
"children" she strove mightily to make these last days in it the most
wonderful days in the garden of their lives. She never let them see
that she feared. Just to hear her when she came home in the late
afternoon was like listening to a symphony of inspiration. It began at
the basement door. How she braced herself for it! How she advanced,
head up, lips smiling!
A word to Janet, grumbling over her cleaning; a quick grasp of Molly's
warm hand--Molly was her hold on life in those discouraging days!
Molly, God bless her, would never admit defeat! Who fought out her
part in the battle! She made their slender funds nourish their hungry
bodies and she took nothing from Felicia but gave herself as royally
as her little lady poured out herself to the others.
There was nothing sanctimonious about Felicia's handling of them. Like
the old woman in the shoe, she scolded them "roundly." The Sculptor
Girl still laughs over a never-to-be-forgotten-day, when Felice
drifted into the nursery, her arms outstretched in droll swimming
motions.
"Dulcie Dierckx! How dare you let me find you weeping again! When
Pandora is almost here! I do declare you'll have to learn to swim and
so will all of us if you're going to drip tears regularly, every day
at five thirty--Molly says you're only hungry, nobody else is
snivelling all over the place--"
"No, the lawyer c-c-cusses--" sobbed Dulcie.
"Then learn to cuss!" admonished Felice, but her eyes twinkled and the
emotional Sculptor Girl's eyes twinkled back through her tears--all of
them were for Felice, if that despotic person had only known it. For
the young lawyer had been upstairs pouring out his despondent feelings
on Dulcie,
"She has just about eight days more before she'll be dumped in the
gutter, for there's no possible way out--"
A limp lot they were in the late afternoon, after they'd struggled all
day with their unruly Muses and Pegasuses!
"Wouldn't it be droll," Felice asked Molly one day, "if I came home
too tired some night and mixed them all up! And told the Inventor I
thought his feeling was poetic and told Dulcie that she was getting a
wonderful color into her work and talked about soul to the
Cartoonist!" Sometimes it seemed to her that of all of them the
Architect, with his head bent over his drawings under his evening
lamp, typified the hopelessness of the whole scheme, as he wrought so
painstakingly at his detailed drawings for the re-construction of the
house, drawings that couldn't possibly ever be used! From some absurd
fragment he would dreamily reconstruct--his adventures filled the
house with nervous laughter.
As on the night when he discovered, high above the doorway in the bare
old drawing-room, an ornate bit of copper grating that had escaped the
clutches of the dirty filthy heathen. Most of the quaint old hot-tair
registers--they had been wonderful bronze things--had been removed and
ugly modern ones that did not fit had been substituted. But this one
grating--a delightful oval affair whereon chubby Vestal Virgins lifted
delicate torches, had remained intact. The reason was plain enough, it
was almost impossible to dislodge it. Even with the lawyer and the
Cartoonist to help him, the enthusiastic Architect, balanced
dangerously on one of Janet's ladders, could scarcely pry it loose. It
was just after dinner. It had rained during the day so that the little
garden was too damp for the evening and the whole household lingered
idly in the bare drawing-room to tease the Architect. When the
register was finally loosened, showers of ancient dust descended. The
room echoed as with one mighty sneeze. Janet shrieked her dismay.
"Now look at the du-urt!" she wailed, "It's fairly in loomps and
choonks!"
The Cartoonist stopped with an heroic sneeze to lift one of the
"choonks." He dusted the bit of metal and bowed before Felicia.
"Here is the key to the secret chamber--" but Felicia instead of
playing back with some mocking pretense as she usually did when any of
them made melodramatic speeches to her, clasped her hands.
"Oh, how stupid I've been! That's the storeroom key! The one I threw
away the day I was angry at Mademoiselle D'Ormy! And it tinkled down,
down, down--" she was hurrying out of the room." All of us, now, we
can go up--the store-room will be fun and maybe--" They were
scrambling up the stairways, a laughing crew. "Bring something to
break wood with you," called Felice over her shoulder, "for those
shelves that Dulcie put over the door that we thought went into the
front room--it doesn't go there! Wasn't I stupid! That's the door into
the storeroom--it's the long narrow space between the two walls and it
had trunks and a bureau--"
It still had them! The men folks pulled out the dusty boxes into the
immaculate neatness of the nursery floor and for the next two hours
they delved and delved through the forgotten treasures. The Poetry
Girl called it the "Night of a Thousand Hopes" but the Inventor
sardonically added at midnight "of Blasted Hopes--"
The nursery looked like a New England attic when they had finished
mauling. Felice gave things away recklessly, whenever one of them
admired anything.
How they all shouted at the Painter Boy when he triumphantly pulled
forth a sage green taffeta frock with long bell sleeves, voluminous
skirts and quaintly square-cut neck.
"Look! all of us!" he shouted buoyantly as he limped across the room
to hold it against Felicia's shoulders, "here's her color!"
"Put it on her!" begged the Architect's wife. In the end the women
dressed her in it while the men folk trooped down stairs to mess
Molly's speckless kitchen with their masculine ideas of how to make
lemonade.
She curtsied to the Painter Boy good-humoredly.
"I don't feel at all like me! I feel like Josepha or Louisa or whoever
she was who wore it--" she laughed. Her laughter was tremulous in
spite of her bravest efforts. They were all of them on the ragged edge
of tears. They'd hoped so that the storeroom would give the house back
to them! Only the Painter Boy seemed not to care. He waited, his eyes
gleaming, until after the others had trooped off to their own
quarters, each with his or her bit of the loot. He caught at the
hanging green sleeve. For that was the night the Painter Boy came into
his own. The night he knew that he was going to paint The Spirit of
Romance.
"You're so paintable!" he begged, "I know it's rotten to ask you to
sit for me, you're so busy now with all of us on your mind and the
sewing and posing for Dulcie that you'll think you just can't--but oh,
Dulcie Dierckx--look at her! Isn't she paintable!"
Dulcie agreed she was.
Felicia shook her head.
"It's only the frock, Nor'. I'll lend it to you, I can't quite give it
to you, I love it so--but you shall have a really model--we'll manage
somehow--and you shall paint the frock--that's what's paintable--"
Of course in the end she didn't refuse him. She never refused them
anything she could possibly manage, but it was rather difficult to
find the time. She never knew exactly how she found it.
It was in the "paintable" green dress that she "pretended" her way to
fame and it came about this way. Without actually realizing it she was
getting accustomed to a fairly large audience on the Sunday afternoons
when she whistled for the Wheezy's friends. They were so eager to hear
her and their chance visitors were so numerous that the Matron
arranged for her to do her "pretending" in the chapel hall at the
front of the Home. And it was there that an enthusiastic member of the
May Day committee chanced to hear her, one sunshiny April Day, an
enterprising member who bluntly asked Felicia Day if she wouldn't
"pretend" for the May Day program at the Academy of Music. It didn't
occur to Felicia to make excuses, especially when the committee member
explained things a bit. The only thing at which she balked at all was
when the energetic person murmured, "Name please?"
"I'm not--anybody--" explained Felicia, "I'm not even sure myself who
I am--"
"But we have to have a name to print on the program--"
This was the first time that anybody who'd been asked to appear hadn't
eagerly supplied much information as to middle initials!
"Vairee well," suggested Felicia, "we shall make up a name. I shall be
called Madame Folie--no, Mademoiselle Folly--will that suit? Then if
it has been a mistake to put me on your program that will be a small
joke, eh?"
It looked very well indeed, "Vairee business-like"--
"Number 17--DIVERTISSEMENT--Mademoiselle Folly in PRETENSES"
She didn't even bother to tell them about it at home. It seemed to her
as casual as the Sunday afternoons when she whistled for [her
accustomed audience of] the Wheezy and her friends. That is until the
hectic morning when she obeyed a summons to rehearsal in the empty,
auditorium--Felicia always says that the rehearsal was worse than May
Day night! So too were the behind-the-scenes confusions and the
nervous moments while the makeup artist dabbled her cheeks with rouge
and pencilled her eyes--_that_ left her limp with stage fright.
After all, she thought as she waited her turn, "It's only for ten
minutes! And an encore if they like me!"
The moment when she actually faced her first big audience--a tired and
fluttering and yawning audience, for two hours of Brooklyn amateur
talent will wilt even the most valiant listeners!--she had but one
thought, and that was--that there wasn't any pattern to an audience!
Other thoughts raced like lightning.
"But I must remember to smile. They are persons and I have to please
them, they're sounding rather fretty--"
Perhaps you happened to see her when she stepped out on that vast
stage, looking tinier than she really was, with the lights shining on
her satin-smooth hair and white neck, with the coral comb and the
carved bracelets making bright spots of color. Do you remember how her
wide green skirts spread about her as she made her deep curtsy? Do you
remember her smile? Or were you rustling your program until you heard
that deep contralto voice of hers beginning with,
"What I am going to do for you I shall have to explain a little."
There was a bald grouchy human in the front row, he honestly believed
she was talking just to him! He leaned forward. "I am going to do some
songs for you but I can't exactly sing--" The bald man grunted, he
considered that plain foolishness and it was! "But I can play this
lute a little--and I can whistle--"
"Louder!" called the voices at the rear.
She lifted her chin defiantly.
"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Maybe some of them are deaf like the Wheezy's
friends, oh dear! How slowly I must speak!" she admonished herself in
her thoughts. Her knees were shaking. But her voice lifted itself a
bit; she enunciated carefully,
"These are not new songs, they are just songs you know. So you'd
better not look at me while I do them. You'd better shut your eyes and
pretend--oh, I _do_ hope you're good at pretending--you must pretend
that you are seeing the first person you heard sing these songs for you
when you were little. The first one I heard, Marthy sang. Marthy was
lean and small and ra-ther old. She lived over our stable in the
cleanest rooms! With red geraniums in the windows!"
Oh, do you remember the adorable way she took you into her confidence?
Do you remember how strangely familiar she seemed?
"Marthy used to sing 'Cherry Ripe.' Do you know it?" she asked so
anxiously that one sympathetic soul murmured "yes" and hid her
confusion in a cough as Mademoiselle Folly began,
"It's about a young man who thinks his sweetheart's lips are like big
ripe cherries, so he sings,
"'Cherry Ripe,
Cherry Ripe,
Who will buy my cherries?'"
She hummed the tune tentatively. She swung the narrow green ribbon of
the lute over her shoulders and her fingers touched the strings. And
then suddenly the soft flute-like trill of her wonderful whistle was
wafted out toward them.
Ah, who can describe the miracle, the mystery whereby her simple songs
made them all feel young again! She was just a little seamstress, aged
twenty-seven, who had lived an unreal life of sentiment and dreams and
memories and they were just a sophisticated, tired, jaded audience.
Some of them twisted their lips and scoffed. Some of them weren't
especially moved by "Cherry Ripe," but the bald man in the front row
pattered his hands together before she was through bowing and noisily
told his neighbors,
"Gee, that's the stuff. You can't beat the old stuff! S'lovely stuff--"
A few pioneers about him pattered too. It was enough to encourage
Felicia. She smiled.
She was still frightened but her voice was firmer. "If you liked that
one, maybe you will like the song about Robin Adair. There was a young
woman a long time ago, who loved a man named Robin Adair. You see he
went on a journey, I imagine a long journey--" Ah, Felice! he'd gone
on a very long journey, that Robin Adair! A journey that a generation
of rag-times and turkey-trots and walkin'-dogs had almost obliterated.
Yet from the tone of her voice they suddenly were very sorry that
Robin had gone a journey. "So the young lady sang a song asking
'What's this dull town to me?
Robin's not here--'
Like this it goes."
This time she did not use the lute but put it down carefully and
folded her hands quietly together. Her own repose made it easy for her
listeners to rest until the last questioning trill had died away. The
applause was louder this time. Some of them were talking delightedly
and the rising murmur of their approval warmed her trembling heart.
"Another! Another!" called her excitable bald friend.
"It's vairee good of you to like them. Do you think you'd enjoy a
French one now? That is if it isn't ten minutes. They told me to do
this for ten minutes--"
The intimate way she took them into her thoughts made even the most
sceptical of them lean back and smile. If they felt like questioning
the genuineness of her feeling it could only be explained on the
ground of consummate art and either way it was something they didn't
want to lose.
"Margot taught me this one. It is about a forest. I heard it first
vairee early in the morning, the first morning I evaire did see a
forest. Pretend you can see it. It was spring before the leaves had
come but the tops of the trees were swaying and the branches had the
colors you see when you dream--and the wind was warm and sweet and
sighing. And on a maple tree a blackbird whistled--so--and in the
shining melted snow-pools the little green frogs made this kind of
noises--and down in the old stone stable two little new lambs were
crying--it was a wonderful spring! You must pretend you can see Margot
sitting in a gray stone doorway sorting seed in a little broken brown
basket. Margot is ra-ther brown herself, but she has gray hair and
black eyes and she's fat and she wears a blue dress, vairee old and
clean and faded and a big white apron. Her voice isn't pretty I'm
afraid, but her song is. Her song is the oldest song I've evaire
heard. There was a Frenchman, Maitre Guerdon, who made it a long time
ago. He was a fine gentleman with ruffles of lace on his sleeves and
he had a lute--perhaps like this--" she picked up hers again "and what
he says in his song is that he wants every shepherdess to hasten to
pleasure and to be vairee careful about time for Youth alone has time
to have fun with. Because, as he tells them, time slips through your
fingers like water and then you have nothing left but a sorry old sad
feeling. So the best thing that you and the shepherdesses can do is to
run around in the spring forests and spend all the time you can--" her
voice faltered "--loving--"
The absurdity of the thing never struck them. Most of them couldn't
have endured a forest ten minutes. But she had them completely under
her spell and it suddenly seemed the most fascinating thing in this
world to be young and "--run around in a spring forest--loving--"
Her melody began. It matched the dainty spirit of the words and I
think if Maitre Guedron, in that heaven where all music makers, good
men or bad, should go, could have heard her, he would have bowed his
admiration just to hear the tender graceful spirit that her softly
muted whistle gave his quaint old song. It was a spirit never lagging,
that tripped ahead of the faint strum of the lute strings.
The plaudits were coming whole-heartedly now. Felicia adored them for
liking her--she leaned forward to catch what a man in the side box was
saying. Bolder than the rest, he coughed and let his desire overcome
his temerity as he cried out,
"Do you know--er--'Ever of thee I am fondly dreaming'?"
Felice came quite close to the footlights and peered at him,
"Is it like this?" she hummed it over softly--
"That's the ticket," he nodded; "do you know the words?"
She shrugged.
"I just know it's about a person--who was thinking about some one he
used to see," she translated dreamily, "and he thinks he can hear her
voice and that cheers him up vairee much when he's feeling low
spirited and so it's like this--" She whistled it.
After that they just shouted at her, as eager as children. She never
failed one of them--save once, when a gasping person demanded "After
the Ball."
That _did_ puzzle her.
"The ball," she echoed regretfully, "I think I don't know about it--
what sort of a ball, was it, M'sieur--a little tennis ball?"
But the puffy old lady who asked for "White Wings" was rewarded with
the gentlest smile--
"It is stupid of me, I think I never heard the words except those two
lines 'White wings they never grow weary--I'll think of my dearie--'"
and she finished the "Fly away home," with a charming gesture of her
little hands and a triumphant warbling of the tune.
Can you wonder that they loved this amazing person who tugged their
hearts this way and that with ail the dear old songs that those they'd
loved best had once sung to them? Janet's crooning Scotch songs,
Molly's wistful Irish ballads, Margot's naughty French and Marthy's
sentimental loves, Grandy's English favorites too, it seemed as though
she could never give them enough of them--ten minutes! They'd have
kept her an hour if they could! She talked, she hummed, she played her
lute--but best of all she whistled for them because they liked her--
little Mademoiselle Folly!
Last of all, she stood very quietly and looked at them while they were
still laughing over something she'd picked up from Zeb, a ridiculous
scrap of New England,
"Pretend I'm Eunice making the gol-_dern_est huckleberry pie and that
I'm singing,
"'Once upon a time I had a feller
Way down in Maine. AND
He took me home under his umbreller--'
"There is just one more I can do for you. I am a vairee little tired,
perhaps you are too. This song you have heard before tonight. I heard
this music playing it. Perhaps we can make them play it again. It was
Piqueur who told me this song. Piqueur is a vairee old gardener, who
once was a soldier. He fought in battle. He was hurt vairee much. His
head has nevaire been quite right since then. But some one taught him
to be a vairee good gardener and that made him forget how frightful
war had been. But in the spring, because spring makes all of us
remember when we were young, Piqueur would remember--war. He used to
tell me about it while we planted the garden. Early in the morning
when the sun was rising. And he would sing this song, in French of
course. It was Margot who told me what the words meant. You know them--
"Ye sons of France, awake to Glory!
Hark! Hark! what myriads bid you rise!
Your children, wives and grandsires hoary--"
The violinist caught up his bow, the orchestra leader was on his feet.
Felicia was not smiling any more; her great eyes burned with
excitement; she saw Piqueur singing; she heard Piqueur trying to tell
her about war--she did not mute her whistle. She let it ring--
And after that they stood on their feet and whistled and sang and
cheered with her while she poured out her whole heart at them, gave
them her whole self until her tears blinded her and she turned and ran
away. To the blessed shelter of the wings where some one opened
comfortable arms and let her weep.
Nor could her rapturous audience get so much as even a little glimpse
of her again.
"Ladies and gentlemen!" called the chairman of the committee, "I beg
of you to be lenient. Mademoiselle Folly thanks you but she cannot
whistle any more tonight--she says--" he cleared his throat, "to thank
you--to tell you her lips and her heart are too much puckered up!"
I think of all her audience perhaps the Portia Person was the happiest
and the proudest. She took him absolutely by surprise. He hadn't
remotely connected the Mademoiselle Folly of the program with his
shabby client, but it was he who took her back in triumph to her
"children" and let them understand something about what had happened
and it was he who protected her interests during the excitable days
that followed. It took more tact to manage this new Mademoiselle Folly
than to arrange matters with the strange persons who sought her out.
Mademoiselle Folly still measured the value of her services by the
same standards that had governed Little Miss By-the-Day's. She
couldn't understand at all why one should be paid what seemed to be
fabulous sums for a brief half hour of "pretending" that one loved,
when a whole day's work that one hated meant only two dollars. I think
if it hadn't been for the dire necessity of those last days before the
impending auction they could never have made her consent to do it for
money. Impossible mathematician that she was, she could see the
multiple of even the lowest salary that vaudeville managers offered,
meant hope that she could sometime pay the appalling sum total of the
debts on the house in Montrose Place; that is, if, as the young lawyer
pointed out, she could "keep things coming her way." Surely it seemed
during those first delightful weeks of her amazing vogue that she
could "keep them coming" forever!
She was so flushed with enthusiasm, so joyous over these unexpected
opportunities! She was so earnest in her desire to give "for value
received"!
Never for a moment did she rest on her laurels. In spite of vast
hoards of songs in her amazing memory she set herself very humbly to
finding more.--The Wheezy's friends helped her so joyously! Her
audiences helped her so artlessly! And the Poetry Girl fairly lived in
the library unearthing treasures for her! It was a wonderful,
wonderful month, that month of May! She whistled and sang and talked
and gestured her way into thousands of hearts, she smiled naively at
her audiences' delight in her. She constantly varied her methods. Some
of her happiest results were merely lucky accidents--as on the day
when Babiche followed her out on the stage and sat at attention like a
trick dog. After that Babiche appeared at all the children's matinees
and oh, what a delicious lot of animal and children songs the Poetry
Girl discovered! And did you ever see her do "Battledore and
Shuttlecock" to minuet time?
But it was Uncle Peter, with whom she still played chess whenever she
could steal the time, who found out in some mysterious way about the
house and its difficulties and it was Uncle Peter, (who wasn't half
dead, not by a long shot) who sat up and forgot his ailments and held
long conferences with the young lawyer and the Portia Person. And it
was Uncle Peter whose own generous gift, coupled with what he coerced
from his friends, who made it possible for the burden of taxes and
interests on that great house to be lifted. It was "vairee
businesslike," the same sort of "businesslike" that Felice herself had
been when she made the bargain with the Poetry Girl to pay double rent
if she should ever be earning anything. The stockholders in the new
corporation that took over the house were to sell their stock back at
par whenever the house should be put on a paying basis, or whenever
Miss Day should have earned enough to pay them back. She was immensely
pleased with that idea. She was sure that even though it should take
her as long as it had to rebuild the garden of the House in the Woods
that she would some day be able to do it.
The "children" revelled in her reflected glory. They all of them loved
knowing that their little Miss-By-the-Day was the mysterious
Mademoiselle Folly who'd set the whole town talking.
The Sculptor Girl fairly chortled her glee when she came back from
Manhattan after a walk down the avenue and brought an amusing census
of the shops that sold "Mademoiselle Folly" novelties!
"Lordy," she related to the Architect's wife, who couldn't even go
into the garden these days, "When I think of it I could shout! The toy
shops have battledores and shuttlecocks! They're actually selling lace
mits like Louisa's and coral combs like Octavia's and the hair
dressers' shops have windows full of silly wax-headed figures with
their hairs all neatly coiffed in the middles and knots tucked down
behind like Felice--and the darling doesn't even know it!"
How could she? She never had time for walks down the avenue--it was
hard enough to find time for "pretending" these busy days when the
carpenters and painters and masons and plumbers descended upon the
house to carry out the architect's beautiful plans--the house fairly
hummed with activity.
Yet there came a day when the house was still when all the workmen
were sent away, when all that dwelt in the house walked restlessly in
the garden; a night when Mademoiselle Folly hurried back from her
audience with her little fists clinched and when she made Molly come
sit and hold her hand. That was the night when in Maman's room the
architect's feeble wife fought out her battle; a night that seemed
interminable. But early in the morning, after all of them had gone to
bed save the doctors and the nurses and Felice, Molly came running up
to Mademoiselle D'Ormy's room with the honest tears coursing down her
cheeks.
"It's you she wants, darlint, it's you they says can see her--it's a
little girl she has--" and Felicia went down the stairway with her
gift under her arms, the gift she had found that night when they
ransacked the treasures of the storeroom and that she had hidden
because she knew directly she peeped at it, what she would do with it.
She knelt by the old sleighback bed and took a thin hand in hers. She
smiled into the proud and happy eyes.
"I brought something for her, Mary, I brought her first present. It's
vairee old, it is--clothes--I found them first when I was ra-_ther_
little myself." She talked softly, her slender fingers busied themselves
with the old leather case. She held up the beautiful wee garments. Even
by the dim bedside light the Architect's wife could glimpse their
fragile loveliness. She protested faintly,
"You shouldn't give them away--they're so old they're sacred."
"I know they are but I want her to have them. They were Josepha's
first clothes, I found that out from Mademoiselle D'Ormy."
"I mustn't take them--"
Felicia laughed softly.
"The nicest part of our all being poor together is that we can give
each other anything we have. And I'm proud, proud, proud I have these
for her. Isn't she--little--" she touched the tiny cheek longingly,
"Oh, Mary, I wish she was mine--she makes me understand something.
It's this. About the Poetry Girl and the Sculptor Girl and you and me.
It's that women aren't half so happy making statues and poems as they
are making--gardens--and babies--"
The Architect brought the leather case back to her door as soon as
daylight came. He thrust it into her hands as she stood, with her
beautiful old dressing gown about her. What they said to each other
neither of them remembers. But after he was gone and she had spread
out the opened case before her Felicia Day reverently unfolded the
papers that had been hidden. They were such yellowed, faded papers
with their ancient seals! Those papers that Louisa had found in Madam
Folly's boudoir, those papers that Louisa had taken to Paris! Those
papers that Octavia had tucked away, smiling to think how Felicia
would smile when she found them. Indeed it was Octavia's letter that
made everything clear.
Dear Daughter:
Now that you are old enough to understand and Grandy is himself old
enough to be more patient I think perhaps you will be the one who will
be able to make him forgive Louisa for going to France. He would never
let me tell him; I tried to but he wouldn't listen because he thought
it was going to be painful; he would only say that the past was over
and done with and then he would walk away from me.
We've had such an unfortunate habit, Felice! We women of this family!
We would run away with the men we loved! The first of us to run away
was Prudence Langhorne who ran away with an old Frenchman who came to
America to try to forget the miserable troubles of his country.
There were many reasons, some of them political, why she couldn't
explain who this Frenchman was--and besides I think she was so happy
and so busy that she never minded what people thought. She was a
little careless about explaining things until it was too late--for she
died and left a daughter, Josepha, who never knew that her mother had
been really and truly married to her father and who was bitter and
unhappy because there was a deal of gossip about her. This Josepha was
not asked about whom she wanted to marry. She was just taken to France
and married to a man whom she never learned to love and sometimes
people taunted her so that after he died she took just one of his
names and came back to America with her daughter Louisa and built this
house in Montrose Place. She did not think it was time for Louisa to
marry. She meant to arrange things carefully when it was--but Louisa
was like the rest of us--she fell in love when she was still very
young and she ran away with her man--(that was Grandy) and she
promised him that she'd always like to be poor with him. She would
have, of course, only after her mother died she learned there was a
great deal of money that belonged to us and when she knew that I was
coming she wanted things for me. So she made a silly mistake. She kept
everything a secret from Grandy; she used to go to the lawyer's when
he didn't know about it and then some one told Grandy about her going
and Grandy misunderstood--he thought she loved her lawyer. So they
quarreled and quarreled, for Louisa was furious because he mistrusted
her and in the end she was so angry that she sailed away for France
with her lawyer. She couldn't make Grandy believe that it was true
that she really had business in Paris; he thought it was only an
excuse of the lawyer's to take her away. So Grandy went away to war
and Louisa stayed in France and that's where I was born and that's
where I lived until Louisa died and the Major came for me.
Sometime I hope that Grandy will take you to France and let you live a
little while at least in that house. I loved it so--sometimes I think
I loved it even more than I loved the House in the Woods or this
house.
It was in this house that your father learned to love me--it was in
this house here that I waited a long time hoping that the Major would
let us marry. You see Louisa, my mother, did leave me these houses and
a great deal of money, some of it in France, and Grandy thought your
father wanted to get it, so in the end, after we had all been unhappy
and wasted many precious years I did like the rest of them--I ran
away.
You must not blame Grandy too much. I know that Louisa and her mother
Josepha were as much to blame as he.
Felix and I were not patient. We all of us made many, many mistakes.
They look so silly now that we are older but they seemed so necessary
when they happened.
When we knew you were coming, your father and I, we used to laugh
because you see, I had so many names and a title too--and I'd run away
from everything just to be with Felix and I'd no way to get at what I
owned without going back to Grandy. Besides it seemed to me that what
I owned had made all of us unhappy. So we used to say all we'd give
you would be the names and the titles but we'd keep you away from the
rest of it--and that we were glad the days of princesses were gone for
both our countries, America and France.
But I think that when the time comes, for you to marry you will like
to have all these papers that tell you who you are and I think too,
that if you are wise, having the houses and the money that belongs to
you cannot make you unhappy--I like to think you will find some way to
be happier than the rest of us have been, for you have something that
none of us had, something that was your legacy from your father. He
was very poor, Felice, but everyone loved him because he never let
himself be morose or unhappy. He taught me that you can't be happy
yourself if you are making anyone else unhappy. He said the delightful
thing about not possessing much was that one could be prodigal and
extravagant about being happy. He said he had no obligation in this
world except to be happy.
He made a game of everything he did whether it was something he liked
to do or something he hated to do. Toward the end he had to do many
things he hated, that he wasn't strong enough to do. But he did them
gaily. He made everyone around him laugh as he did.
When the time comes for you to go out of this world you will have
found that so little in it really matters and that everything in it
matters so much! It is not until we are ready to go that we know how
precious is the thing within us that men call--self. It is made up of
all the loves and hates and good and bad of the men and women who went
before us. It does not really belong to us. It belongs to all of the
people who will come after us. There happened to be only a little of
me left to give you, Felice, but the part that is left is the happy
part--the rest of me was lost a long time ago. And the titles and the
names that they called me were not any of them so dear as the one you
gave me--that is
MAMAN.
Which think you Felicia Day loved more? That letter or the thick old
parchments that told her that she was the great-great-granddaughter of
a king?
It was the end of June. If you wanted to get little Miss By-the-Day to
sew for you the Disagreeable Walnut would tell you that she'd gone
away without leaving an address. If you wanted to hear Mademoiselle
Folly at the theaters you discovered that she wasn't playing.
But in the house in Montrose Place a shining eyed woman made a new
"pattern" for the garden of her life--for the garden of the lives of
all the folks she had taken into that house. They did not know all
about her. They did not know how large the fortune was that was coming
to her. They merely knew that there would be enough to take away the
irritating fight for bread and butter and that each one of them would
be taken care of until each one of them had taught his or her
particular art to provide, and they knew, too, that each one was
expected to repay in a "vairee" businesslike way--by helping some
other fellow. They all of them knew that Miss By-the-Day was planning
to sail for France. They knew it was about something in connection
with the French property but they did not know that she was planning
the most wonderful "pretend" of her whole life.
The Portia Person was the only one who shared her secret--it was to
the Portia Person that she always confided her troubles.
"There is a man I know," she told him, "a man named Dudley Hamilt.
When we were both of us vairee young--he--liked me vairee much. But I
went away. And when I came back and he saw me again he did not know me
at all. It was vairee hard for me--that time. You see, I looked vairee
funny and old. Much more funny than when you saw me. As funny as those
little pictures Thad makes so that people will laugh.--I wore Louisa's
bonnet and coat--they were such vairee ugly things--and so--he just
didn't know me.--But now! I--I want to pretend something! This man--I
asked it in the telephone--has been gone away for many weeks in the
west on business and he is coming back soon--and I want you to make a
way--to bring him to the little rectory yard some evening. It is only
a 'pretend' of mine--" she blushed adorably, "perhaps, I can't do it.
But I will try. I will be by the gate and you shall say, 'Here's a
girl you used to know, Dudley Hamilt!' And then you'll hurry off and
leave it for me--I can't pretend I'm young and pretty but I can
pretend I'm--I'm a little amusing--and it will be the last night
before I go to France that I do it--so that if--he doesn't--find--me
amusing--it won't really matter, because the next day I'll be gone and
it will just have been--a 'pretending'--do you mind helping me?"
The Portia Person didn't mind at all. He wiped his eyeglasses and
coughed and didn't look at her at all. But he promised.
There was so much for them all to do in those brief days before she
sailed. She took a quick journey to the House in the Woods. She rushed
back to settle a thousand details about the house in Montrose Street--
joyous details of which perhaps the happiest was the moment she found
that the Poetry Girl had named it Octavia's House.
She awoke very early that last day of all. She still slept in the
little room at the top of the house. Her modest traveling bags were
packed and ready. Over the back of the chair hung her demure traveling
coat and veil. But tucked away out of sight in the walnut bureau were
a scarf and a carved Spanish comb. The very thoughts of them gave her
stage fright. It was only by keeping her mind sternly upon her journey
that she could steady herself at all. She dressed herself absent-
mindedly in one of Dulcie's much mended frocks,
"Maybe there's a garden with my French house," she thought as she
looked down into the back yard. She reached for _The theory and practise
of gardening_ and tucked it into the top of Grandy's bag.
All day long the house seethed with the excitement of her leave-
taking. Most of the morning belonged to Dulcie, who was still working
feverishly on Pandora. The Painter Boy made believe sulk because it
was late afternoon before Felice would come to sit for him for the
last time. He was really quite through with his painting. It was only
because they were all longing to have her in the green gown and he'd
promised the women folk that he would keep her so occupied that she
wouldn't know what a wonderful farewell party her "children" were
planning for her.
She shook her head when she stood looking at the picture.
"It's not I you've painted, Nor', it's some one who's young! Shall I
tell you a secret? I do wish you could take all your brushes and make
me as lovely as that girl in the picture--oh, Nor'--she hasn't a gray
hair!"
"Pouf! Those two or three little gray things that you got worrying
about us!" he touched them lightly, "Why do you care how old you are--
"
He kissed the edge of her sleeve awkwardly. His eyes were dancing.
"I guess something--" he teased her. "I guess you only 'pretend'
you're old--"
It was the Architect who rescued her. He was in such a temper that he
completely forgot that Felicia was to be kept at the top of the house
until the hour for the "party."
"It's all very well, Miss Felicia Day," he sputtered, "for you to pick
up a lot of poor old half-blind carpenters that nobody will hire
because they're old--it's a nice sweet philanthropic idea! But
they're absolutely ruining everything! It would cheaper to pay 'em for
their time and let 'em sit outside while we hire some regular persons
to work! What they've done today is spoiling the whole scheme--the
yard looks like a Swiss cheese--come and see--its simply awful!"
She winked archly at the Painter Boy. She gathered up her green skirts
daintily and descended the broad stairs.
"Sssssh!" she whispered, "walk lightly, Mr. Architect or you'll wake
up little Miss Architect--besides, we'll have to sneak by the kitchen
or Janet and Molly will see us. They really don't know that I know
there's going to be a party, though I should think--" she paused to
sniff critically as they passed the pantry door, "that Molly would
know that anybody could guess there was a party with celestial smells
like that." She had soothed him somewhat even before they reached the
back yard and of course the lattices weren't really so bad as they had
seemed to his fastidious eye. They did deviate from his neat
blueprints. Even the sullen old carpenters admitted that they did, but
presently things were adjusted and the workmen had departed bearing
the offending trelliage with them with absurd little newspaper
patterns pinned to the tops.
Felicia was flushed and panting from having cut those ridiculous
patterns. She waved her shears slowly to and fro, and the Architect
shouted with boyish glee.
"Silliest way I ever heard of," he chortled, "perfectly silly, but the
old ducks did seem to take to it. Felicia Day, you are a little old
wonder."
She gazed up at him mournfully.
"Old!" she echoed and shivered.
"I didn't mean 'old' really," he stammered, "I just meant, well, I
just meant you were--" he paused awkwardly.
"I don't look awfully old, do I?" she asked it with such delicious
anxiety that he laughed. "I mean, I don't look so awfully old as I
did, do I?"
He thought he was saying a perfectly satisfactory thing when he
answered.
"You look just like your wonderful self and we wouldn't have you
changed for worlds. Why, you're our fairy grandmother."
Her little hand crept to the back of the bench. She steadied herself.
And decided something very quietly.
"Do this for me," she commanded. "Telephone Mr. Ralph. Tell him I said
that I didn't want him to keep the engagement that I had him make for
me this evening. That I won't be here at nine o'clock, that I have to
go out. That he mustn't bring the visitor I asked him to bring. That
I've changed my mind about seeing that visitor."
And when he had gone away whistling atrociously and cheerfully she sat
down on the bench and buried her face in her hands. The air was soft
and warm and sweet. It almost threatened rain. And at her feet in the
border of that rebuilt garden little pansies shriveled in the heat of
the afternoon sun. All her life long she would hate the odor of those
dying pansies. She sat very still. She thought that she had come to
the very end. There was nothing more in the world that she wanted to
pretend. Except perhaps that she was hearing Dudley Hamilt's voice
singing, very woodenly, "But my heart's grown numb and my soul is
dumb--" Like Dudley Hamilt, she couldn't bear to think of the rest of
the song, there wasn't any hope of "After years"; the most precious
thing in life, the soul of their youth, had been snatched away from
them and there was nothing left that mattered. And so she sat for a
long time underneath the ivy-locked gate, unheeding the happy babble
of voices that floated out from the windows of the dear old house.
The Sculptor Girl almost shook her to make her look up.
"There's a man wants to see you. Awfully theatrical looking person.
I've a hunch it's that beast Graemer. He wouldn't say. Just said he
must see you."
Felicia stiffened.
"It's stupid of him to come here. We did send for him, the Portia
Person and I. I wanted to try once more about 'the Juggler.' I said
dreadful things, Dulcie, to the little lawyer man that he sent. I told
the little lawyer man that I thought his wicked Mr. Graemer was afraid
to come to see us--so that's why he's come now, I suppose. I don't
want to see him half so much as I did. I feel vairee cowardly. You
must send your Majesty-of-the-Law down to me. I am a little afraid
alone. And tell Blythe to come. Tell him quickly. I do not like this
job, so I must do it quickly."
Felicia was absolutely wrong about why the erratic Graemer had come to
see her. He hadn't the remotest intention of bothering to answer the
oft-reiterated claims of the persistent Miss Modder; he wasn't at all
interested in any unknown Miss Day. The person he had come to see was
Mademoiselle Folly and he had come purely on impulse. His agents had
been able to make no headway with Mademoiselle Folly's agents. It had
aroused his curiosity when he discovered that the actress was living
with all those queer geniuses who were dwelling in the much discussed
Octavia House and he assumed that she was merely one of the proteges
of the mysterious wealthy backers of that unusual enterprise. He
thought it very good business indeed that the clever young woman had
known enough to disappear for a brief time that she might whet her
audiences' appetite while she let her agents lift her prices. It
didn't at all occur to him that she was actually abandoning such a
career as her extraordinary success seemed to foretell. He had in mind
a romantic play in which she should make her bow as a legitimate
actress and he had a flattering mountain-to-Mahomet speech ready with
which to introduce his august self to her. He was debonnaire in his
smart summer clothing. He felt rather Lord Bountifullish. And besides,
he was in a very good humor because he had come directly from a
rehearsal of "The Heart of a Boy." The play was scheduled to open very
shortly and it seemed to him that it was going to be an easy success.
All the way over to Brooklyn he had contemplated bill posters who were
slapping their dripping brushes over great posters--corking posters
Graemer thought them, with their effective color scheme of dull greens
and pale yellows.
Almost any one would have commended those posters. A charming little
figure in the shadows of a wall stood tiptoe with her arms upstretched
and her blonde head shone in the light from a church window above her
as a florid choir boy leaned over the wall to embrace her.
"Felicia, I love you with all my heart and soul!" the choir boy was
declaring in large red letters, which was rather versatile of him
considering that his lips were pressed firmly upon the blonde lady's.
The placard further announced that he was embracing "America's
foremost romantic actress Edwina Ely" and though there was nothing
about their posture that could have offended even the ghost of Anthony
Comstock, it had an almost galvanic effect upon a stalwart man who had
stopped to look upon it.
It was just about the moment that Miss Ely's manager had stepped into
the taxicab that was to bear him to Brooklyn, that the outraged
citizen had paused before a side wall at a theater entrance to gape
sceptically at a paste-glistening sheet. That particular poster was
not yet in place. The fair lady still lacked her feet and a
painstaking artisan was just delicately attaching them to her knees.
He never finished attaching them.
"Dat guy you see going around de coiner," he explained to the
gathering crowd who helped to pick him up. "I wasn't doing nothing to
him, I was justa stooping over when all to onct he hit me and threw me
paste in the street and grabbed me brush and trew it after me paste
and just as I was going to lam him one he ups and shoves some money in
me fists and groans, 'Beg your pardon, of course you aren't
responsible' and off he goes--and somebody better watch after him for
he must have a heluva jag."
The stalwart citizen did not stop to reason even after he had vented
the first edge of his rage upon the innocent bill poster. He let
himself intuitively guess at the whole damning chain of the Fat
Baritone and his eternal gossiping and the pretty actress and the
acquisitive manager. The intensity of his manner when he pulled open
the manager's door frightened the manager's stenographer into an
unwilling admission that Mr. Graemer had just left for Brooklyn. And a
dazed taxi starter, who decided that somebody's life must be at stake,
remembered with much distinctness that the address, which Mr. Graemer
had given some half hour before was Montrose Place, Brooklyn. He
remembered it because they'd had to look it up in a street guide.
If Dudley Hamilt had been in a temper before he heard that address he
was literally enraged when he did hear it. Of what had happened in
Montrose Place during the spring months while he had been in the West
he had not the faintest inkling. The last time he had seen the little
street it had looked as desolate and forlorn as on the day when
Felicia had come back to it. He assumed with that rapidity with which
an angry mind makes decisions, that Graemer was proceeding to Montrose
Place for more of the damnably clever "local color" with which he was
wont to dress his plays; that not content with having dramatized
Hamilt's youthful woes to the orchestra circle he wanted to reproduce
the whole thing photographically.
Hamilt's thoughts raced turbulently as his own taxi followed the route
of Graemer's. He was keenly aware that his frenzy was utterly
illogical, that he hadn't a reasonable argument to present against the
play, that there was no possible way in which he could prevent any man
from writing any play he wished or naming his heroine any name he
chose and yet he grew angrier and angrier as his cab bumped over the
old bridge.
"There's not a chance in a thousand of my getting my hands on him,
but, oh, if I only could--" he thought vindictively.
As a matter of fact his "chance in a thousand" was a very good one,
since he was able to direct his driver explicitly because of his
familiarity with the neighborhood.
Moreover, the astute manager was not making very speedy headway in his
interview with the erstwhile Mademoiselle Folly. His quick eyes
commended the charming figure that the lady made in her quaint frock
against the crumbling garden wall. He spoke a very pretty speech about
her appearance. But he found her haughty indeed considering that she
was nothing but an upstart vaudeville performer. She had no manners at
all, he decided, for she did not even suggest that he sit down. He
actually had to make his proposition standing.
"Your agent let us know that you're starting for abroad. That's a nice
little plan but it won't get you anywhere at all," he began tersely.
"Except of course that you may get a little fun out of it if you've
never been on the other side. But the best thing for you to do before
you go off for your vacation is to have a contract, signed and sealed,
in your inside pocket. Frankly, I'm charmed with your--er--
personality. I saw you a couple of months ago at the Palace and I like
the way you get hold of people. I should say that with the right kind
of training you ought to go quite a long way: who knows?" he was
laughing so good humoredly that he did not see her wince, "some of
these days I might pick up a nice little play for you--"
The lady was standing perfectly still. He decided that she had
admirable repose. Her wide eyes looked straight into his. The
intensity of her low voice was a bit thrilling.
"If evaire I did want a play," she answered coolly, "I would know
exactly where I would 'pick it up,' as you call it. I would not 'pick
it up' the way you 'pick up' plays, M'sieur Graemer. I have a friend
whose play you 'picked up'--" she gestured toward the house. Her
deliberate reiteration of his chance phrase was irritating to say the
least. He turned uncomfortably to look at the stairway toward which
she was motioning. And he did have the grace to look rather
disconcerted when he saw Miss Blythe Modder approaching. He glanced
quickly back to the woman he had come to see.
Felicia stepped close to him.
"I did not want you to come to my house," she began passionately. "I
just wanted you to see the lawyer who attends to certain legal matters
for me." The little breathless rush of her words fascinated him, the
alluring way she slurred her syllables together, the quick staccato
with which she paused on short words! At first he hardly grasped what
she was saying, so intent was he upon her extraordinary manner of
speaking. It made him feel somehow like a child. It irritated and
soothed him at the same time. "I did not want you to come here at
all." She stamped her foot for emphasis. "It is insulting for you to
be in Maman's garden! But now that you're here and Blythe is here and
I am here, why, I think we must talk things ovaire. With this lawyer
who lives here with us. It is Blythe's play 'The Magician' that we
will talk about. It was in your offices for almost a year and you had
it there at least two years before you wrote 'The Juggler,' didn't
you? Tell me!"
"The two plays are utterly dissimilar--"
"The two plays are utterly similar." Felicia's cool voice corrected
him. She had an exasperating directness of manner! "Whenever you are
counting how vairee much money you did have from 'The Juggler' do you
not sometimes think that the girl who wrote the play ought to have
some of those moneys?"
"The two plays were totally dissimilar--" he repeated hotly.
"Felice! Felice!" groaned the Poetry Girl. "You're just wasting your
breath! It's no use talking to him! Why, I almost got down on my knees
to him! I wept--"
"I shall not weep," said Felicia calmly. "I shall just tell him how
vairee simple it would be for him to explain. He can just tell people
that it is her play and that some of it is her moneys and then he can
give you the money. Oh, you couldn't have understood how bad, bad, bad
you made things for her! Even this spring, while you were still
getting money from her play, she was poor and sick and almost
starving--just like the girl in her 'Magician'--"
She paused eloquently but she never let her eyes leave his. He
fidgeted with his hat. He tried to avoid that clear gaze, but whatever
the faint stirrings of his conscience might have prompted him to say
the blundering but well meaning lawyer prevented. That indiscreet
person stepped briskly forward.
"I am one of Miss Modder's legal advisors," he began importantly. "You
probably know that we are anticipating bringing another and much
stronger action against you. But if you should happen to feel that you
wanted to enter into some sort of negotiations for an adjustment of--"
Graemer caught his breath.
"I'll be damned if I do--" he ejaculated. He was white with chagrin to
think that his stupidity had trapped him into such an annoying
situation. He was moving blindly toward the stairway; all he wanted
was a quick termination of the whole irritating interview.
Felicia stopped him. She put her hand on his arm.
"Let me explain for you a little," she pleaded, "I am sorry that these
lawyer men do not understand. I know exactly how you happened to do
it. You didn't mean to take it at first, did you? I know because I
once took something that was not mine. It was food," she smiled a
little at the memory. "It did not seem like stealing because it was
just a little food. It just seemed like something I wanted and that I
must have and so I took it. Maybe that was the way it was with you
about 'The Magician.' It was something that you wanted and must have!
Perhaps it didn't seem like stealing because it was only something
that was written on a paper. It wasn't even like something you could
hold in your hand. It was just something somebody wrote down on some
pieces of paper. Maybe you didn't understand that it was all of her
hopes and dreams--"
"Gad! What a Sunday School you do keep!" he sneered. He tried to pass
her. He had jammed his hat back upon his head. Perhaps he would have
actually gotten away from her only that that was the moment that
Dulcie Dierckt opened the long French doors at the head of the little
outside stairway and motioned down the steps to the excited man who
was following her.
"There's Mr. Graemer," she said; "here's some one to see you," she
called wickedly, as she leaned across the balcony.
It was all over so quickly that afterward neither the Poetry Girl nor
the lawyer could tell how it happened. Dulcie could tell a little more
because she watched it from above.
Dudley Hamilt went down that narrow stairway in a sort of running
leap. He faced the agitated Mr. Graemer squarely but he gave him
something less than half a minute in which to defend himself. And then
he proceeded with a most satisfying thoroughness to pummel and pound
and thump. Their struggling figures shoved to and fro in the pebbled
paths. Janet and Molly O'Reilly ran screaming from their kitchen. The
Poetry Girl scrambled out of their way by jumping to an iron bench.
She dragged Felicia up after her.
"Stop them! Stop them!" shrieked the Poetry Girl.
But beside her Felicia clasping her little hands under her chin,
watched with shining eyes; her anger was as the anger of the man who
was fighting. She did not realize who he was or why he had come to the
defense of her Blythe. She only knew that he was doing exactly what
she had been longing to do ever since she had first heard about the
acquisitive Mr. Graemer. And when she heard Blythe Modder shouting
beside her she began to shout too. Only she did not entreat them to
stop fighting. A curious thrill of victory made her voice vibrant with
rapture.
"Do not stop striking him! Do not stop!"
And then suddenly, she saw to whom she was calling. And with her new
found joy in her heart she shouted still louder, "Strike him much,
much more, Dudley Hamilt!"
He stopped, absolutely dazed. He thought that he must be struggling in
a dream. He actually stepped across his fallen antagonist as he strode
toward her. His blonde hair was rumpled from wrestling, his eyes shone
with the light of victory. He stretched out his arms.
"Are you real--" he stammered, "tell me quickly, are you real--"
"I am vairee real--" she answered breathlessly, "but I am old--"
Old! She was agelessly young as she stood there, smiling at him from
her perch on the little iron bench. Her slender figure in the sage
green frock was silhouetted against the wall, her head was lifted
joyously.
It was the young lawyer who came to his senses first. He shoved the
disheveled Graemer out through the rear gate, the stable gate--it
happened to be open and he took an immense satisfaction in after years
in remembering that it was the stable gate, did that cocky young
lawyer!
The rest of them fled through the kitchen doorway, or rather Molly
O'Reilly adroitly pushed them through it and for the next half hour
the household babbled discreetly behind drawn blinds.
But outside in the wee garden the years slipped back as though they
had been Time in Maitre Guedron's song.
"Dudley Hamilt! Dear Dudley Hamilt! You are hurting my arms a little--
"
"Felice! Forgive me! I didn't mean to--it's only that I am afraid you
are not real--I am afraid to let you go--"
Ineffably content she stood tiptoe to put her hands on his shoulders.
She lifted her adorable head and smiled.
"Nevaire do--" she murmured with her lips on his.
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's Little Miss By-The-Day, by Lucille Van Slyke