Since the coming of the Fords the house in Waverly Place had awakened.
Sue’s presence had had its effect from cellar to roof. No sunbeam that
ever smiled into a dungeon could have been more welcome. The gloomy
old stairs zigzagging up to the top floor seemed more cheerful, and
the narrow hallways it led to less dingy. Even Aunt Matilda’s cat--a
scared and fat-headed old mouser who had refused half through January
to leave its warm refuge under her stove in the basement--could now be
seen nibbling and cleaning her paws as far up as the top carpeted step
on Enoch’s floor.
There radiates from the personality of a pure young girl like Sue
something strangely akin to sunshine, something indefinable, luminous,
and warm, which no one yet has been quite able to describe--any more
than one can define “charm”--that which touches the heart, neither
can we place our finger upon that thin, wavering border line between
friendship and love--a pressure of the hand, a glance of the eyes, a
smile, a sudden gaze of sympathy and understanding, and we stumble
headlong across the frontier into the land of adoration. To _fall_
in love! What nonsense! We _rise_, with love tingling through our
veins--pounding at our temples, its precious treasure our own, safe
forever, we believe, in our beating hearts.
Ah! yes indeed, it has ever been so, and it always will be. Why is it
that Cupid, the god of love, has always been depicted as a frail little
cherub, when the truth is he is a giant, dominating, relentless, strong
as death--who swings the whole world at his beck and call. How much
misery, doubt, and happiness he has conceived and fashioned to suit him
since the world began (bless his little heart!) it is quite impossible
to compute. Eve and Adam are unfortunately dead, or we should have it
at first-hand from both of them.
Sue was not only beautiful--she was fresh, and young, and cheery,
with a frank gleam in her clear blue eyes, a complexion like a rose,
the sheen of gold in her fair hair--a lithe grace to her slim, active
body--pearly teeth, and a kind word for every one who deserved it.
No wonder that Joe Grimsby impulsively lost his head and his heart to
Sue at first sight of her. More than a week had elapsed, and although
he had had from that young lady little more encouragement than his
buoyant imagination supplied, he was far from disheartened. What really
had occurred, was that he had met his ideal face to face on the stairs
the day after the party, and she had thanked him for inviting her,
rather coldly, Joe thought. Indeed it had been quite a formal little
meeting after all. He had expressed his sorrow at her not being able
to come, and she had expressed hers--quite as formally as a strange
girl at a tea might, and he being too innately well-bred a gentleman
to force matters, had accepted her proffered little hand with more
added regrets, and shaken it as punctiliously as he was wont to do the
hands of his various hostesses in bidding them good night. And so she
went up-stairs and he went down, not, however, without a beating heart
over the interview, brief and unsatisfactory as it had been, and a firm
resolution to call on her mother--which he did the very next day, and
received word from the Irish maid of all work who opened the door, that
“Mrs. Ford begged to be excused.” The truth was that this Southern lady
did not care to know the young men in the house, and as for Sue, the
oversudden invitation to meet the young architects of the third floor
had left more of an impression of distrust than desire.
As for Joe, Sam Atwater’s better sense and advice had only the effect
it usually does in such painful cases, of fanning into a blaze Joe’s
infatuation and spiriting on his stubborn determination to convince Sue
Preston of its sincerity. Alas! Joe had reached that stage among young
architects in love, of covering half the margins of his quarter-scale
drawings with pictorial memories of Sue--sketching with his HB lead
pencil her clean-cut, refined profile, detailing with infinite pains
the exact curve of her lovely mouth, expressing as best he could the
tenderness in her eyes, and the precise way in which she wore her
hair, half hiding her small, pink ears--in fact, he got to dreaming
hopelessly over her as he drew, and forgot in the second draft of the
Long Island woman’s cottage important members of cornices, windows, and
doors, laying in cross-sections and elevations in a scandalous, sloppy
way, until Atwater finally had to call a halt over his shoulder with:
“For Heaven’s sake, old man, cut it out,” at which Joe grinned, and
with good-natured embarrassment promised to really get down to work.
He had declared to Sam Atwater in his outburst of enthusiasm at the
office that Sue could not sing. He was positive of this--“She did
not look like a girl who could sing”--whereas if Sue possessed one
great gift, it was her splendid soprano voice. Her voice was her very
life, her whole ambition, a possession far more valuable than the
whole worthless lot of Ebner Ford’s business ventures combined, and
wisely enough Sue realized that, whatever might happen to the always
uncertain budget of the Ford family, at least with her concert work
and her teaching, she could make her own living. When her stepfather’s
six-house venture had failed, it was Sue who came to the rescue--with
what she had earned during the two years previous, singing in the
smaller towns of Connecticut, giving lessons wherever she could, mostly
in Ebner Ford’s home town of Clapham, the very town in which her mother
had married him ten years before to escape from impending poverty.
It may be seen, therefore, that the hard struggle the stepdaughter had
gone through had left her with a far more serious knowledge and view of
life than either Joe or the rest of the inmates of No. 99 Waverly Place
were in the least conscious of.
Sue thoroughly understood her stepfather; briefly, she regretted
his methods, and still wondered how her mother could have ever
married him, poor as they were. Inwardly, too, she trembled over
his wildcat schemes, none too overscrupulous at best, while his
hail-fellow-well-met manner, which he assumed upon any occasion when he
saw a commission for himself hanging loose about the stranger, grated
upon her. Indeed she knew him thoroughly, just as he was, bombastic
varnish, vagaries, common self-assurance, and all. Behind closed doors
in the intimacy of his home, before her mother and herself, Ebner Ford
was a different man. His respect for his stepdaughter’s wishes and
better judgment was often one of ill-tempered resignation.
He dared not disagree with his wife--a short, thick-set little woman,
several years his senior, addicted to side-combs, opinions of her own,
and an extravagant way of boasting to others of her South Carolinian
ancestry, and carefully avoiding any mention of her husband’s from
central Connecticut.
Now it happened that that dear little old spinster, Miss Ann Moulton,
who lived with her invalid sister on the second floor, was the first to
really know Sue.
These two unmarried sisters had lived together since they were girls.
They had a little property, just enough to provide for the modest
apartment they were living in, and were anywhere from fifty to sixty
years old. You could not possibly tell their exact age by looking at
them, and, of course, they would not have told you had you asked them.
They were both small, very much alike--little, gray, dried-up women.
Both very refined, very gentle in their manners, gentle of voice, too.
Miss Ann was the stronger of the two. She was the manager. Upon her
frail, little person fell all the responsibility, their only relative
being a brother who lived West, and who managed what little property
they had. She had no one else to look after her affairs, and he was a
lazy brother at that.
As for Miss Jane, the sister, she had always been an invalid. Her
frail hands were strangely transparent when held to the light, her
voice weak, her step uncertain, and her hair, like Miss Ann’s, nearly
silver-white. On the street you could hardly tell the two sisters
apart. They were so much alike, and dressed alike, which they had
always done since they were children, and yet they were not twins.
There _was_ a difference, however; Miss Jane’s cheeks were sunken,
and there were dark circles under her patient, gray eyes. She never
let any one know she was an invalid; neither did Miss Ann mention
it. It had all happened so many years ago, but it was as clear in
Jane Moulton’s memory as if it had happened yesterday: Her gasping
for breath, her failing strength as she fought on in the grip of an
ebb-tide. His sharp cry to her to keep her head, then his strong arm
about her--blackness--then the beach, and he whom she loved, who had
given his life for hers, lying drowned upon it.
A small daguerreotype of him hung above her bed; one taken when he was
eighteen, the year they were engaged.
* * * * *
The Misses Moulton’s apartment was furnished in a various and curious
collection of quaint little round tables with spindle legs, a Franklin
stove burning wood, some old family portraits in oval gilt frames,
and high-post bedsteads for each of the bedrooms, the sunny one being
Miss Jane’s. There were big easy chairs covered with chintz in the
sitting-room, and an assortment of different kinds of china, suggesting
relics of several family collections; none of them matched--three
teacups and saucers of one set, and four of another, some in gold
and lustre. They had but one servant--Mary--an American, who came
from up New York State, a motherly woman of fifty, fat, serious, and
good-natured.
Sue had been giving a singing lesson as far up-town as East 46th
Street, to the daughter of a wealthy alderman, who owned a brownstone,
high-stooped house, grafted intact from the last political election.
This house was a block above the railroad bridge on Lexington Avenue,
and there being no cars running to-day, owing to a strike on the Third
Avenue horse-car line, Sue had been obliged this wretched January day,
with the streets swimming in slush under a fine, drizzling rain, to
reach her destination on foot. After her lesson she had crossed the
bridge spanning the Grand Central tracks, and found her way back to
Waverly Place by way of Madison Avenue.
* * * * *
Stairs have a habit of forcing acquaintanceships, and making friends,
a way of introducing strangers, who otherwise would not dare speak to
each other, of bringing neighbors face to face, and providing them
with a firm foothold until they knew each other better. Where Joe
Grimsby had failed on the stairs, Miss Ann Moulton succeeded. Miss
Ann had put on her bonnet to do an errand, closed the door of her
sitting-room, and stood in the dim light of the landing, buttoning a
new pair of lisle-thread gloves she had purchased the day before at the
big Stewart store, just as Sue, wet and tired from her lesson up-town,
came up the stairs, her cloak and hat glistening with rain. As she
neared the Moultons’ landing, she caught sight of the little old maid
nervously struggling over the top button of her left-hand glove.
“Won’t you let me help you?” ventured Sue, as she reached the landing.
“New gloves are so difficult to button.”
“Oh, please--I pray you--don’t bother,” returned Miss Ann, flushing
with embarrassment, but Sue insisted, briskly laid the thin wrist in
the palm of her hand, quickly extracted a hairpin from where it had
nestled in her fair hair, and so deftly buttoned the new gray glove,
that before Miss Ann could further protest the button was snug and safe
in its buttonhole.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you so much,” stammered the little spinster. Then
both glanced into each other’s eyes, and both smiled. “I’m so sorry to
have troubled you,” added Miss Ann sweetly.
There was a friendly gleam in her aged gray eyes now that won Sue’s
heart before the little woman before her, standing with her back to her
sitting-room door, had uttered another word.
Sue laid her wet umbrella against the banisters next to Miss Ann’s dry
one, and brushed the wet from her skirt.
“You are Miss Moulton, aren’t you?” she asked with a cheery smile.
“Yes, my child. How did you know? Except for Mr. Crane we know no one
here at present. My sister and I live here; we have lived here nearly
as long as Mr. Crane.”
“I know,” nodded Sue. “Moses told me.” There was something so gentle,
frank, and sincere, especially in the word “child,” that Sue already
felt they were friends. The frail, gloved hand lingered in Sue’s. “You
don’t know how glad I am to meet you, Miss Moulton,” said she, pressing
it firmly.
“And I to meet you, my dear. It’s such a joy to have a young girl come
into this dreadful gloomy place,” sighed Miss Ann.
“It _is_ gloomy to-day, isn’t it?” Sue declared. “If you don’t really
have to go out I wouldn’t, Miss Moulton. It’s simply dreadful out. The
streets are simply swimming in slush, and it’s just that kind of a
drizzling rain that soaks you through and through.” Sue hesitated. “Do
you really have to go out?” she asked seriously. “Please tell me, is
there anything I can do? Do let me go if there is. _Must_ you go?--and
without your rubbers, too! I feel like scolding you,” she laughed.
“But, but I was only going to the druggist’s,” explained Miss Ann. “My
sister has been quite wretched and in bed since yesterday with a cold.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Sue. “I hope it isn’t serious.”
“Of course it’s nothing,” returned Miss Ann; “but you see, dear, she is
not very strong, and I’m always a little anxious about her.”
“Now you _must_ let me go,” pleaded Sue. “You’ll be drenched, Miss
Moulton. I’m drenched already, so it doesn’t matter, I’m used to
getting wet.”
In reply Miss Ann patted the girl’s shoulder affectionately. “I should
not think of letting you go, my child. I’ll send Moses instead and,
unless your dear mother is waiting for you, won’t you come in and see
me? Mary will take care of your wet things. Then we can have some tea
and a good chat before the wood fire.”
“Oh, how nice! Of course I’ll come. A wood fire!” Sue exclaimed, as
Miss Ann opened the door of the cosey old-fashioned sitting-room. “It’s
a long time since I’ve seen a real wood-fire--not since we lived in
Clapham. Don’t you love them?”
“Yes, my child; all my life I have loved them. They are like old
friends,” she added, as she led the young girl across her threshold,
whereupon she sent Mary down for Moses, with instructions and a
prescription, laid aside Sue’s wet things in the kitchen to dry,
poked into a blaze the dying embers of the sitting-room fire, put on
two fresh logs, ensconced Sue in a big armchair full of eider-down
cushions, insisted on relieving her of her shoes and rubbers, tucked
her trim stockinged feet upon a low settle before a glorious hickory
blaze, and called to her sister Jane through the half-closed door of
her bedroom, announcing their visitor--all as naturally as if Sue had
been visiting them for years.
* * * * *
There was a restful, cosey atmosphere about the Misses Moulton’s
apartment that appealed keenly to the young girl before the cheery
fire. She could not help realizing the slovenly air and bad taste of
their own belongings; that sordid collection of trash that had always
accompanied them in their various movings. Some of these modern horrors
had been acquired on the instalment plan, and stood out incongruously
among their meagre store of family mahogany. Imitation oak and cherry
made no difference to Ebner Ford as long as the drawers worked and
there was room enough for his scanty wardrobe. As for her mother,
despite her Southern training, she had no taste whatever. A Nile-green
bow tied on a nickel-plated picture easel went far from shocking her
sense of the artistic. Mrs. Ford had purchased two of them, in fact,
one serving to uphold a crayon portrait of Ebner, showing the great
promoter wearing his white tie, and laboring under an expression
calculated to convey to the mind of the spectator absolute honesty
and business acumen; and the other sustaining a gilt wicker basket,
filled with dyed pampas grass, and further embellished with silvered
sea-shells spelling “Welcome.”
And so Sue and the little spinster chatted on, while the fragrant tea
brewed in the daintiest of white porcelain teapots, Miss Jane putting
here and there a word in the conversation through the door ajar of her
bedroom, an effort which ended in a fit of coughing, a gentle protest
from her sister, silence, and a nap.
Miss Ann rose from the tea-table, softly closed the door of Miss Jane’s
bedroom, and resumed:
“So you see, dear, my sister Jane and I have lived here so long that
we have become attached to the old house, gloomy as it is. I don’t
think I should have the courage to move again among strangers--when I
think of all the people we have seen settled here,” smiled Miss Ann
reminiscently, while she paused to pour a second cup of tea for Sue.
“Oh! please go on,” pleaded Sue eagerly, as she recovered her boots,
now warm and dry. “Do tell me all about them,” she added as she laced
them. “Don’t you love to study people? They are all so different,
you know. You were speaking of Mr. Crane and his top floor when I
interrupted you. Do tell me more of the history of the house; it’s
simply fascinating.”
“Well, let me see. Then, there was old Mr. Peapod.”
“Peapod!” laughed Sue. “Delicious!”
“Simon Peapod. Such an eccentric, withered-up old man, who used to
stutter with embarrassment, I remember, every time we met him on the
stairs. Somebody in the house, Mr. Crane says, once invited him (Shy
Simon we used to call him) to dinner, and he stole down-stairs, sneaked
around a corner to a lamp-post box, and mailed a regret,” chuckled
Miss Ann, “although he lived on the floor above them--where the young
men are now.”
“And so _they_ succeeded Mr.--oh, delicious name!--Mr. Peapod?”
“No, my dear, a Miss Green succeeded Mr. Peapod.”
“I knew a Miss Anna Green, from New York, a sculptress. She used to
come to Clapham to visit an aunt--a tall girl with dark hair. I wonder
if it could have been she,” Sue ventured.
“No, my child. The Miss Green I speak of was an actress--dear, it isn’t
a very happy history--she’s dead, poor girl.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Sue. “And did she die here, poor thing?”
“She died in Bellevue Hospital,” said Miss Ann very quietly, and for a
moment the little woman ceased speaking. She did not refer to what she
herself had meant to the poor girl in question; how time and time again
she had stood by this poor inebriate; how she would go out at night and
hunt her up in the cafés and restaurants and take her home and put her
to bed; how at last she became hopeless and desperately ill, with no
one to appeal to save Miss Ann, and then her death in Bellevue, and the
funeral which Miss Ann arranged and paid for.
“Tell me--how long have the architects--Mr. Atwater and Mr. Grimsby, I
mean--been here?” asked Sue, breaking the silence.
“Well, my dear--let me see--all of six months, I should say.”
“You won’t think it strange in my asking, will you, Miss Moulton?--but,
you see, we had hardly gotten settled before they asked mother and
me and Mr. Ford to a musicale in their rooms. My stepfather went,
but--well, mother and I declined. It seemed so forced and sudden. Can’t
you understand, Miss Moulton? I just couldn’t.”
“I dare say they meant no harm,” declared Miss Ann. Then, after a brief
reflective pause: “Of course, dear, as you say, it _was_ a little
sudden. When I was your age, my child, the young men were different
than they are nowadays--as for these young fellows, they both seem
to be gentlemen and of good family. At least what little I have seen
of them leads me to believe so. Mr. Grimsby is always so exceedingly
polite.”
“Oh! it’s easy to be polite,” returned Sue hastily. “It isn’t that,
Miss Moulton. I--I don’t believe I can quite explain it to you; I don’t
believe you’d understand it if I did. I’m foolish, I suppose; and then
it’s so different in New York--but I just couldn’t go the other night.
The next day I met Mr. Grimsby on the stairs, I told him I was sorry--I
guess he understood--but the very next day he persisted in calling on
mother.”
“And may I ask what was your dear mother’s impression, my dear?”
“Mother didn’t see him,” confessed Sue without turning her head, her
blue eyes gazing at the fire. “Mother told Bridget to tell him she
begged to be excused,” she added, turning and flushing slightly.
“Mother did not like the idea of his calling, anyway. It seemed so
forced; we were hardly settled and perfect strangers, you see.”
“And your stepfather--he went, you say, my dear?”
“Yes, Mr. Ford went,” replied the young girl nervously, twining and
untwining her fingers.
“And did he enjoy himself?” asked the little spinster quietly.
“Mr. Ford always enjoys himself where strangers are concerned,”
returned Sue, her breath coming quick. Then with a toss of her pretty
head: “My--my stepfather and I do not always agree about--well, about
lots of things, Miss Moulton.” The tears were fast welling into Sue
Preston’s eyes. Again she gave a brave little toss of her head,
brushing the tears away with the back of her hand--her lips quivering.
Miss Ann rose quietly, went over to the young girl, put an arm tenderly
about her neck, bent down and kissed her flushed cheek. Sue’s small
hand crept into hers.
“There! there! you’re tired, child,” murmured the little old maid
affectionately. “Your dear mother will be wondering, I fear, what has
become of you.”
“I’m--I’m going now,” Sue managed to say. “You’ve been so good and
kind to me,” she added tensely, her voice none too steady as she left
the comfortable old chair and its eider-down cushions, and stood up
straight, her hands clasped behind her, her blue eyes gazing gratefully
into Miss Ann’s.
“And you’ll come again, won’t you?” ventured the little spinster, “and
bring your dear mother.”
She summoned Mary for Sue’s dry things from the kitchen, and when
finally she opened the sitting-room door leading out to the gloomy
hallway, Sue lingered for an instant on its threshold. Then impulsively
she flung her arms about the little woman’s neck, kissed her withered
cheek, and flew down the stairs.