For two days Sunny waited for Jerry to return. She was lonely and most
unhappy, but hers was a buoyant personality, and withal her hurt she
kept up a bright face before her little world of that duplex studio. In
spite of the two nights when no sleep at all came, and she lay through
the long hours trying vainly not to think of the wife of Jerry Hammond,
in the daytime she moved about the small concerns of the apartment with
a smile of cheer and found a measure of comfort in her pets.
It was all very well, however, to hug Itchy passionately to her breast,
and assure herself that she had in her arms one true and loving friend.
Always she set the dog sadly down again, saying:
"Ah, liddle honourable dog, you are jos liddle dog, thas all. How you
can know whas ache on my heart. I do nod lig' you more for to-day."
She fed Mr. and Mrs. Satsuma, and whistled and sang to them. After all,
a canary is only a canary. Its bright, hard eye is blank and cold. Even
the goldfish, swimming to the top of the honourable bowl, and picking
the crumb so cunningly from her finger, lost their charm for her. Miss
Spring Morning had long since been vanished with severe Japanese
reproaches for his inhuman treatment of Sunny's first friends, the
honourable mice, several of whose little bodies Sunny had confided to a
grave she herself had dug, with tears that aroused the janitor
gentleman's sympathy, so that he permitted the interment in the back
yard.
The victrola, working incessantly the first day, supplied merely noise.
On the second morning she banged the top impulsively down, and cried at
Caruso:
"Oh, I do not wan' hear your honourable voice to-day. Shut you up!"
Midway in an aria from "Rigoletto" the golden voice was quenched.
She hovered about the telephone, and several times lifted the receiver,
with the idea of calling one of her friends, but always she rejected the
impulse. Intuitively Sunny knew that until the first pang of her refusal
had passed her friends were better away from her.
Little comfort was to be extracted from Hatton, who was acting in a
manner that had Sunny not been so absorbed by her own personal trouble
would have caused her concern. Hatton talked incessantly and feverishly
and with tears about his Missus, and what she had driven him to, and of
how a poor man tries to do his duty in life, but women were ever trouble
makers, and it was only "yuman nature" for a man to want a little
pleasure, and he, Hatton, had made this perfectly clear to Mr. Hammond
when he had taken service with him.
"A yuman being, miss," said Hatton, "is yuman, and that's all there is
to it. Yuman nature 'as certain 'ankerings and its against yuman nature
to gainsay them 'ankerings, if you'll pardon me saying so, miss."
However, he assured Sunny most earnestly that he was fighting the Devil
and all his works, which was just what "them 'ankerings" was, and he
audibly muttered for her especial hearing in proof of his assertion
several times through the day: "Get thee be'ind me, Satan." Satan being
"them 'ankerings, miss."
In normal times Sunny's fun and cheer would have been of invaluable
assistance and diversion to Hatton. Indeed, his long abstention was
quite remarkable since she had been there; but Sunny, affect cheer as
she might, could not hide from the sympathetic Hatton's gaze the fact
that she was most unhappy. In fact, Sunny's sadness affected the
impressionable Hatton so that the second morning he could stand it no
longer, and disappeared for several hours, to return, hiccoughing
cravenly, and explaining:
"I couldn't 'elp it, miss. My 'eart haches for you, and it ain't yuman
nature to gainsay the yuman 'eart."
"Hatton," said Sunny severely, "I are smell you on my nose. You are not
smell good."
"Pardon me, miss," said Hatton, beginning to weep. "Hi'm sadly ashamed
of myself, miss. If you'll pardon me, miss, I'll betake myself to less
'appy regions than Mr. 'Ammond's studio, miss, 'as it's my desire not to
'urt your sense of smell, miss. So if you'll pardon me, I'll say
good-bye, miss, 'oping you'll be in a 'appier mood when next we meet."
For the rest of that day there was no further sign from Hatton. Left
thus alone in the apartment, Sunny was sore put to find something to
distract her, for all the old diversions, without Jerry, began to pall.
She wished wistfully that Jerry had not forbidden her to make friends
with other tenants in the house. She felt the strange need of a friend
at this hour. There was one woman especially whom Sunny would have liked
to know better. She always waved to Sunny in such a friendly way across
the court, and once she called across to her: "Do come over and see me.
I want you to see some of the sketches I have made of you at the
window." Sunny pointed the lady out to Jerry, and that young man's face
became surprisingly inflamed and he ordered Sunny so angrily not to
continue an acquaintance with her unknown friend, that the poor child
avoided going near the window for fear of giving offence.
Also, there was a gentleman who came and went periodically in the studio
building, and whose admiring looks had all but embraced Sunny even
before she scraped an acquaintance with him. He did not live in this
building, but came very frequently to call upon certain of the artists,
including the lady across the court. Like Jinx, he always wore a flower
in his buttonhole, but, unlike Jinx, his clothes had a certain
distinction that to the unsophisticated Sunny seemed to spell the last
word in style. She was especially fascinated by his tan-coloured spats,
and once, examining them with earnest curiosity while waiting for the
elevator, her glance arose to his face, and she met his all embracing
smile with one of her own engaging ones. This man was in fact a well
known dilettante and man about town, a dabbler a bit himself in the
arts, but a monument of egotism. He had diligently built up a reputation
as a patron and connoisseur of art.
One Sunday morning Sunny came in from a little walk as far as the park,
with Itchy. In spite of an unexpectedly hard shower that had fallen soon
after she had left, she returned smiling and perfectly dry; excited and
delighted moreover over the fortune that had befallen her.
"Jerry!" she cried as soon as she entered, "I are git jost to those
corner, when down him come those rain. So much blow! Futen (the wind
god) get very angery and blow me quick up street, but the rain fall down
jos' lig' cloud are burst. Streets flow lig' grade river. Me? I are run
quick and come up on steps of house, and there are five, ten other
people also stand on those step and keep him dry. One gentleman he got
beeg umberella. I feel sure that umberella it keep me dry. So I smile on
those mans----"
"You _what_?"
"I make a smile on him. Like these----" Sunny illustrated innocently.
"Don't you know better than to smile at any man on the street?"
Sunny was taken aback. The Japanese are a smiling nation, and the
interchange of smiles among the sexes is not considered reprehensible;
certainly not in the class from which Sunny had come.
"Smile are not bad. He are kind thing, Jerry. It make people feel happy,
and it do lots good on those worl'. When I smile on thad gentlemen, he
are smile ride bag on me ad once, and he take me by those arm, and say
he bring me home all nize and dry. And, Jerry, he say, he thing I am too
nize piece--er--brick-brack--" bric-a-brac was a new word for Sunny, but
Jerry recognised what she was trying to say--"to git wet. So he give me
all those umberella. He bring me ride up ad these door, and he say he
come see me very soon now as he lig' make sure I got good healt'. He are
a very kind gentleman, Jerry. Here are his card."
Jerry took the card, glared at it, and began panically walking up and
down the apartment, raging and roaring like an "angery tiger," as Sunny
eloquently described him to herself, and then flung around on her and
read her such a scorching lecture that the girl turned pale with fright,
and, as usual, the man was obliged to swallow his steam before it was
all exploded.
In parenthesis, it may be here added, that the orders given by Jerry to
that black boy at the telephone desk, embraced such a diabolical
description of the injury that was destined to befall him should the
personage in question ever step his foot across Jerry's threshold, that
Sambo, his eyes rolling, never failed to assure the caller, who came
very persistently thereafter, that "Dat young lady she am move away,
sah. Yes, sah, she am left this department."
It will be seen, therefore, that Sunny, a stranger in a strange land,
shut in alone in a studio, religiously following the instructions of
Jerry to refrain from making acquaintances with anyone about her, was in
a truly sad state. She started to houseclean, but stopped midway in
panic, recalling the Japanese superstition that to clean or sweep a
house when one of the family is absent is to precipitate bad fortune
upon the house. So she got down all of Jerry's clothes and piously
pressed and sponged them, as she had seen Hatton do, being very careful
this time to avoid her first mistake in ironing. So earnestly had she
applied herself to ironing the crease in the front of one of Jerry's
trousers that first time that a most disastrous accident was the result.
Jerry, wearing the pressed trousers especially to please her, found
himself on the street the cynosure of all eyes as he manfully strode
along with a complete split down the front of one of the legs, which the
too ardent iron of Sunny had scorched. Having brushed and cleaned all of
Jerry's clothes on this day, she prepared her solitary lunch; but this
she could not eat. Thoughts of Jerry sharing with her the accustomed
meals was too much for the imaginative Sunny, and pushing the rice away
from her, she said:
"Oh, I do nod lig' put food any more ad my insides. I givin you to my
friends."
The contents of her bowl were emptied into the pail under the sink,
which she kept always so clean, for she still was under the delusion
that said pail helped to feed the janitor gentleman and his family.
All of that afternoon hung heavily on her hands, and she vainly sought
something to interest her and divert her mind from the thought of Jerry.
She found herself unconsciously listening for the bell, but, curiously
enough, all of that day neither the buzzer, the telephone nor even the
dumbwaiter rang. She made a tour of exploration to Jerry's sacred room,
lovingly arranging his pieces on his chiffonier, and washing her hands
in some toilet water that especially appealed to her. Then she found the
bottle of hair tonic. Sniffing it, she decided it was very good, and,
painfully, Sunny deciphered the legend printed on the outside, assuring
a confiding hair world that the miraculous contents had the power to
remove dandruff, invigorate, strengthen, force growth on bald heads,
cause to curl and in every way improve and cause to shine the hair of
the fortunate user of the same.
"Thas very good stuff," said Sunny. "He do grade miracle on top those
head."
She decided to put the shampoo-tonic to the test, and accordingly washed
her hair in Jerry's basin, making an excellent job of it. Descending to
the studio, she lit the fireplace, and curled up on a big Navaho by the
fire. Wrapped in a gorgeous bathrobe belonging to Jerry, Sunny proceeded
to dry her hair.
While she was in the midst of this process, the telephone rang. Sambo at
the desk announced that visitors were ascending. Sunny had no time to
dress or even to put up her hair, and when in response to the sharp bang
upon the knocker she opened the door she revealed to the callers a
vision that justified their worst fears. Her hair unbound, shining and
springing out in lovely curling disorder about her, wrapped about in the
bright embroidered bathrobe which the younger woman recognised at once
as her Christmas gift to her fiancé, the work, in fact, of her own
hands, Sunny was a spectacle to rob a rival of complete hope and peace
of mind. The cool fury of unrequited love and jealousy in the breast of
the younger woman and the indignant anger in that of the older was
whipped at the sight of Sunny into active and violent eruption.
"What are you doing in my son's apartment?" demanded the mother of
Jerry, raising to her eyes what looked to Sunny like a gold stick on
which grew a pair of glasses, and surveying with pronounced disapproval
the politely bowing though somewhat flurried Sunny.
"I are live ad those house," said Sunny, simply. "This are my home."
"You live here, do you? Well, I would have you know that I am the mother
of the young man whose life you are ruining, and this young girl is his
fiancée."
"Ho! I am very glad make you 'quaintance," said Sunny, seeking to hide
behind a politeness her shock at the discovery of the palpable rudeness
of these most barbarian ladies. It was hard for her to admit that the
ladies of Jerry's household were not models of fine manners, as she had
fondly supposed, but on the contrary bore faces that showed no trace of
the kind hearts which the girl from Japan had been taught by her mother
to associate always with true gentility. The two women's eyes met with
that exclamatory expression which says plainer than words:
"Of all the unbounded impudence, this is the worst!"
"I have been told," went on Mrs. Hammond haughtily, "that you are a
foreigner--a Japanese." She pronounced the word as if speaking of
something extremely repellent.
Sunny bowed, with an attempted smile, that faded away as Jerry's mother
continued ruthlessly:
"You do not look like a Japanese to me, unless you have been peroxiding
your hair. In my opinion you are just an ordinary everyday bad girl."
Sunny said very faintly:
"Aexcuse me!"
She turned like a hurt thing unjustly punished to the other woman, as if
seeking help there. It had been arranged between the two women that Mrs.
Hammond was to do the talking. Miss Falconer was having her full of that
curious satisfaction some women take in seeing in person one's rival.
Her expression far more moved Sunny than that of the angry older woman.
"No one but a bad woman," went on Mrs. Hammond, "would live like this in
a young man's apartment, or allow him to support her, or take money from
him. Decent girls don't do that sort of thing in America. You are old
enough to get out and earn for yourself an honest living. Aren't you
ashamed of yourself? Or are you devoid of shame, you bad creature?"
"Yes," said Sunny, with such a look that Jerry's mother's frown relaxed
somewhat: "I are ashame. I are sawry thad I are bad--woman. Aexcuse me
this time. I try do better. I sawry I are--bad!"
This was plainly a full and complete confession of wrong and its effect
on the older woman was to arouse a measure of the Hammond compunction
which always followed a hasty judgment. For a moment Mrs. Hammond
considered the advisability of reading to this girl a lecture that she
had recently prepared to deliver before an institution for the welfare
of such girls as she deemed Sunny to be. However, her benevolent
intention was frustrated by Miss Falconer.
There is a Japanese proverb which says that the tongue three inches long
can kill a man six feet tall, but the tongue of one's enemy is not the
worst thing to fear. The cold smile of the young woman staring so
steadily at her had power to wound Sunny far more than the lacerating
tongue of the woman whom she realised believed she was fighting in her
son's behalf. Very silken and soft was the manner of Miss Falconer as
insinuatingly she brought Mrs. Hammond back to the object of their call.
She had used considerable tact and strategy in arranging this call upon
Sunny, having in fact induced Jerry to remain for at least a day or two
in Greenwich, "to think matters over," and see "whether absence would
not prove to him that what he imagined to be love was nothing but one of
those common aberrations to which men who lived in the east were said to
be addicted." Jerry, feeling that he should at least do this for her,
waited at Greenwich. Miss Falconer had called in the able and
belligerent aid of his mother.
"Mother, dear----" She already called Mrs. Hammond "mother."
"Suppose--er--we make a quick end to the matter. You know what we are
here for. Do let us finish and get away. You know, dear, that I am not
used to this sort of thing, and really I'm beginning to get a nervous
headache."
Stiffened and upheld by the young woman whom she had chosen as wife for
her son, Mrs. Hammond delivered the ultimatum.
"Young woman, I want you to pack your things and clear out from my son's
apartment at once. No argument! No excuses! If you do not realise the
shamelessness of the life you are leading, I have nothing further to
say; but I insist, insist most emphatically, on your leaving my boy's
apartment this instant."
A key turned in the lock. Hatton, dusty and bedraggled, his hat on one
side of his head and a cigarette twisting dejectedly in the corner of
his mouth, stumbled in at the door. He stood swaying and smiling at the
ladies, stuttering incoherent words of greeting and apology.
"La-adiesh, beggin' y'r pardon, it's a pleasure shee thish bright
shpring day."
Mrs. Hammond, overwhelmed with shame and grief over the revelation of
the disreputable inmates of her son's apartment, turned her broad back
upon Hatton. She recognised that man. He was the man she and Jerry's
father had on more than one occasion begged their son to be rid of. Oh!
if only Jeremy Hammond senior were here now!
Sunny, having heard the verdict of banishment, stood helplessly, like
one who has received a death sentence, knowing not which way to turn.
Hatton staggered up the stairs, felt an uncertain course along the
gallery toward his room, and fell in a muddled heap midway of the
gallery.
Sunny, half blindly, scarcely conscious of what she was doing, had moved
with mechanical obedience toward the door, when Mrs. Hammond haughtily
recalled her.
"You cannot go out on the street in that outrageous fashion. Get your
things, and do your hair up decently. We will wait here till you are
ready."
"And suppose you take that bathrobe off. It doesn't belong to you," said
Miss Falconer cuttingly.
"Take only what belongs to you," said Mrs. Hammond.
Sunny slowly climbed up to her room. Everything appeared now strange and
like a queer dream to her. She could scarcely believe that she was the
same girl who but a few days before had joyously flitted about the
pretty room, which showed evidence of her intensely artistic and
feminine hands. She changed from the bathrobe to the blue suit she had
worn on the night she had arrived at Jerry's studio. From a drawer she
drew forth the small package containing the last treasures that her
mother had placed in her hand. Though she knew that Mrs. Hammond and
Miss Falconer were impatiently awaiting her departure, she sat down at
her desk and painfully wrote her first letter to Jerry.
"Jerry sama: How I thank you three and four time for your kindness to
me. I am sorry I are not got money to pay you back for all that same,
but I will take nothing with me but those clothes on my body. Only bad
girls take money from gentleman at this America. I have hear that
to-day, but I never know that before, or I would not do so. I have pray
to Amaterasu-oho-mikami, making happy sunshine of your life. May you
live ten thousand year. Sayonara. Sunny."
She came out along the gallery, bearing her mother's little package.
Kneeling by the half-awake but helpless Hatton she thrust the letter
into his hand.
"Good-bye, kind Hatton," said Sunny. "I sawry I not see your face no
more. I sawry I are make all those trobble for you wiz those gas stove
an' those honourable mice. I never do those ting again. I hope mebbe you
missus come home agin some day ad you. Sayonara."
"Wh-wheer y're goin', Shunny. Whatsh matter?" Hatton tried vainly to
raise himself. He managed to pull himself a few paces along, by holding
to the gallery rails, but sprawled heavily down on the floor. The
indignant voice of his master's mother ascended from the stairs:
"If you do not control yourself, my good man, I will be forced to call
in outside aid and have you incarcerated."
Downstairs, Sunny, unmindful of the waiting women, ran by them into the
kitchen. From goldfish to canaries she turned, whispering softly:
"Sayonara my friends. I sawry leaving you."
She was opening the window onto the fire-escape, and Itchy with a howl
of joy had leaped into her arms, when Mrs. Hammond and Miss Falconer,
suspicious of something underhand, appeared at the door.
"What are you doing, miss? What is that you are taking?" demanded Mrs.
Hammond.
Sunny turned, with her dog hugged up close to her breast.
"I are say good-bye to my liddle dog," she said. "Sayonara Itchy. The
gods be good unto you."
She set the dog hastily back in the box, against his most violent
protests, and Itchy immediately set up such a woeful howling and baying
as only a small mongrel dog who possesses psychic qualities and senses
the departure of an adored one could be capable of. Windows were thrown
up and ejaculations and protests emanated from tenants in the court, but
Sunny had clapped both hands over her ears, and without a look back at
her little friend, and ignoring the two women, she ran through the
studio, and out of the front door.
After her departure a silence fell between Miss Falconer and Mrs.
Hammond. The latter's face suddenly worked spasmodically, and the strain
of the day overtook Jerry's mother. She sobbed unrestrainedly, mopping
up the tears that coursed down her face. Miss Falconer fanned herself
slowly, and with an absence of her usual solicitude for her prospective
mother-in-law, she refrained from offering sympathy to the older woman,
who presently said in a muffled voice:
"Oh, Stella, I am afraid that we may have done a wrong act. It's
possible that we have made a mistake about this girl. She seemed so very
young, and her face--it was not a bad face, Stella--quite the contrary,
now I think of it."
"Well, I suppose that's the way you look at it. Personally you can't
expect me to feel any sort of sympathy for a bad woman like that."
"Stella, I've been thinking that a girl who would say good-bye to her
dog like that cannot be wholly bad."
"I have heard of murderers who trained fleas," said Miss Falconer. Then,
with a pretended yawn, she added, "But really we must be going now? It's
getting very dark out, and I'm dining with the Westmores at seven. I
told Matthews we'd be through shortly. He's at the curb now."
She had picked up her gloves and was drawing them smoothly on, when Mrs.
Hammond noticed the left hand was ringless.
"Why, my dear, where is your ring?"
"Why, you didn't suppose, did you, that I was going to continue my
engagement to Jerry Hammond after what he told me?"
"But our purpose in coming here----"
"_My_ purpose was to make sure that if _I_ were not to have Jerry
neither should she--that Japanese doll!" All the bottled-up venom of the
girl's nature came forth in that single utterance. "Do let us get away.
Really I'm bored to extinction."
"You may go any time you choose, Miss Falconer," said Jerry Hammond's
mother. "I shall stay here till my son returns."
* * * * *
It was less than half an hour later that Jerry burst into the studio. He
came in with a rush, hurrying across the big room toward the kitchen and
calling aloud:
"Sunny! Hi! Sunny! I'm back!"
So intent was he in discovering Sunny that he did not see his mother,
sitting in the darkened room by the window. Through dim eyes Mrs.
Hammond had been staring into the street, and listening to the nearby
rumble of the Sixth Avenue elevated trains. Somehow the roar of the
elevated spelled to the woman the cruelty and the power of the mighty
city, out into which she had driven the young girl, whose eyes had
entreated her like a little wounded creature. The club woman thought of
her admonitions and speeches to the girls she had professionally
befriended, yet here, put to a personal test, she had failed signally.
Her son was coming through the studio again, calling up toward the
gallery above:
"Hi! Sunny, old scout, where are you?"
He turned, with a start, as his mother called his name. His first
impulse of welcome halted as he saw her face, and electrically there
flashed through Jerry a realisation of the truth. His mother's presence
there was connected with Sunny's absence.
"Mother, where is Sunny? What are you doing here? Where is Sunny, I
say?"
He shot the questions at her frantically. Mrs. Hammond began to whimper,
dabbing at her face with her handkerchief.
"For heaven's sake, answer me. What have you done with Sunny?"
"Jerry, how can I tell you? Jerry--Miss Falcon-er and I--we--we thought
it was for your good. I didn't realise that you c-cared so much about
her, and I--and we----Oh-h-h," she broke down, crying uncontrolledly,
"we have driven that poor little girl out--into the street."
"You what? What is that you say?"
He stared at his mother with a look of loathing.
"Jerry, I thought--we thought her bad and we----"
"Bad! _Sunny!_ Bad! She didn't know what the word meant. My _God_!"
He leaped up the stairs, calling the girl's name aloud, as if to satisfy
himself that his mother's story was false, but her empty room told its
own tale, and half way across the gallery he came upon Hatton. He kicked
the valet awake, and the latter raised up, stuttering and blubbering,
and extending with shaking hand the letter Sunny had left. The words
leaped up at him and smote him to the soul. He did not see his mother.
He did not hear her cries, imploring him not to go out like that.
Blindly, his heart on fire, Jerry Hammond dashed out from his studio,
and plunged into the darkening street, to begin his search for the lost
Sunny, who had disappeared into that maelstrom that is New York.