A DIFFERENT CIS
BUT for some reason which Johnnie could not fathom, Cis suddenly began
to show a great deal of interest in the flat. Indeed, she was by way of
making his life miserable, what with her constant warnings and
instructions about keeping the rooms neat and clean. And she proved that
her concern was genuine by continuing to rise early each day in order to
help him with the housework.
In her own tiny closet she brought about a really magnificent
improvement. This took place mainly on Decoration Day, a day which, just
because of its name, Johnnie regarded as particularly suitable for the
happy task in hand. Cis's ceiling and walls had never been papered (she
explained this by pointing out that paper would only have made the
little cubby-hole just that much smaller, and there was not even a mite
of room to spare). By dint of extra violet-making, she bought a can of
paint and a brush. Then borrowing a ladder from the janitress, she first
cleared her bedroom of its contents, and next wiped every inch of
plaster--sides and top--by means of a rag tied over the end of the
broom. After that, in her oldest dress, with her head wrapped up, she
tinted her retreat, the mop-boards included, a delicate blue.
Now, however, she was far from done. The paint dry, she restored her two
pieces of furniture to their rightful places. The dressing-table box she
skirted with cheesecloth dipped in blued starch; and covered the top of
it with a roll of crinkly, flower-sprinkled tissue paper. To the general
effect, her cretonne-encased pillow gave the final touch. It was
Johnnie's opinion that the pillow was one of the most beautiful things
in New York. When it was stood up stiffly against the wall at the end of
the narrow bed shelf; when the picture of Colonel Roosevelt was again in
its place of honor beside the bit of mirror, with the handsome Edwarda
leaned negligently just beneath; and when Cis had lavished upon her bed
and box the delicious scent of a whole nickel's-worth of orris root,
Johnnie, wildly enthused, signaled the flat above.
"I'll bet there ain't any room that's nicer'n this in the whole Waldorf
'Storia!" he vowed to the little Jewish lady when she came rocking down
to marvel over the transformation, hands uplifted, head wagging. "Don't
you think it's fine, Mrs. Kukor? and don't it smell 'zac'ly like Mrs.
Reisenberger?"
"Pos-i-tivvle!" agreed Mrs. Kukor.
Next, in her housewifely zeal, Cis started in to improve the kitchen.
Keeping the ladder an extra day by special permission she climbed it to
wash the eight small panes of the window, after which she hung at either
side of them a strip of the blue-tinted cheesecloth. But when Barber saw
the curtains, he called them "tomfoolery," and tore them down. So
nothing happened to the rest of the flat.
That rebuke of Barber's seemed to deflect Cis's interest from the rooms
to herself. For now upon her own person she wrought improvements. These
did not escape Johnnie, who accepted them as a part of the general
upheaval--an upheaval which she informed him was "Spring cleaning." Each
night before retiring she pressed her one dress, and freshened its
washable collar; she also brushed her hair a full hundred times,
conscientiously counting the strokes. As for her teeth, Johnnie warned
her that she would wear out both them and the ivory-handled brush in no
time, since, night and morning, she used the brush tirelessly. Also she
wasted valuable hours (in his opinion) by manicuring her fingernails
when she might better have been threading a kitchen jungle all
beast-infested.
Next, another, and the most startling change in her. She came out of her
blue room one morning looking very tall, and odd. At first Johnnie did
not see what was wrong, and stared, puzzled and bewildered.
But Barber saw. "What's the idea?" he wanted to know, and none too
pleasantly.
"I'm almost seventeen," Cis answered.
Almost seventeen! Johnnie looked at her closer, and discovered the thing
that made her different. It was her hair. Usually she wore it braided,
and tied at the nape of her neck. But now that shining braid was pinned
in a coil on the back of her head!
"Y' look foolish!" went on Barber. "And y' can't waste any more money
'round here, buyin' pins and combs and such stuff. Y' can jus' wear it
down your back for another year or so."
"All the other girls have their hair up," she argued. "And I've got to
have mine out of the way."
She did not take that coil down. Yet she was by no means indifferent to
the attitude of Big Tom. Johnnie, who understood so well her every
expression, noticed how, when the longshoreman sometimes entered
unexpectedly, Cis would go whiter than usual, as if frightened; she
would start at the mere sound of his voice, and drop whatever happened
to be in her hand.
When Big Tom was out she would walk about aimlessly and restlessly;
would halt absentmindedly with her face to a wall and not seem to see
it. She did not want to talk; she preferred to be let completely alone.
She was irritable, or she sighed a good deal. She took to watching the
clock, and wishing it were to-morrow morning. And if, giving in to
Johnnie's entreaties, she consented to take part in a think, all she
cared to do was bury the unhappy Cora, or watch lovely, and
love-smitten, Elaine breathe her last.
At other times she laughed as she had never laughed before in all the
five years or more that Johnnie had lived in the Barber flat; and broke
out in jolly choruses. If Big Tom came in, she did not stop singing
until he bade her to, and the moment he was gone, she was at it again,
with a few dance steps thrown in, the blue eyes sparkling mischievously,
and dimples showing in cheeks that were pink.
She also had dreamy spells; and if left undisturbed would sit at the
window by the hour, her eyes on the sky, her slender hands clasped, a
smile, sweet and gentle, fixing her young mouth. And Johnnie knew by
that smile that she was thinking thinks--that the kitchen was occupied
by people whom he did not see. He guessed that one of these was of Royal
blood; and came to harbor hostile thoughts toward a certain young
Prince, since never before had Cis failed to share her visions with
Johnnie. For the first time he found himself shut out.
Once he caught her talking out loud. "I wish," she murmured, "I wish, I
wish--"
"Who're you talkin' to?" he asked.
She started, and blushed. "Why--why, I'm talking to you," she declared.
"Well, then, what is it y' wish?" he persisted. "Go ahead. I'm
listenin'."
But it had slipped her mind, she said crossly. Yet the next moment, in
an excess of regret and affection, "Oh, Johnnie, you're so dear! So
dear!" she told him, and gave him a good hug.
He worried about her not a little those days; and though from a natural
delicacy he did not discuss her with Mr. Perkins, he did ask the leader
an anxious question: "Could a girl be hurt by pinnin' a hot wad of braid
right against the back of her brain?"
Mr. Perkins looked surprised. "They all do it," he pointed out.
(Evidently he did not surmise whom Johnnie had in mind.)
"But s'pose a girl ain't used to it," pressed Johnnie.
"They get used to it," assured Mr. Perkins.
But Cis got worse and worse. One day soon after this, Johnnie came upon
Edwarda, face down on the blue-room floor, and in a harrowing state of
dishevelment--Edwarda, the costly, the precious, the not-to-be-touched!
And when, on Cis's return, he tested her affection for the new doll by
swinging it unceremoniously by one leg in Letitia fashion, "Don't break
her," Cis cautioned indifferently; "because I'm going to give her away
one of these days to some poor little girl."
He gasped. She was going to give away _His namesake_!
Then his eyes were opened, and he found out the whole sad truth--this
one Sunday afternoon. Big Tom was out, and Cis was more restless than
usual. She would not hunt in goat skins with Johnnie and Crusoe, nor
capture the drifting _Hispaniola_ along with Jim Hawkins. She had no
taste even for a lively massacre. And as Johnnie was equally determined
neither to bury Cora again nor float upon a death barge with the Maid of
Astolat, they compromised upon Aladdin and the Princess Buddir al
Buddoor.
The occasion selected was that certain momentous visit to the bath, with
Aladdin and Johnnie placed behind a door in order to catch a glimpse of
the royal lady's face as she came by. Cis was in attendance upon the
Princess, the dismantled blue cotton curtains trailing grandly behind
her and getting trodden upon by the Grand Vizier (in a wheel chair). A
great crowd of ladies and slaves surrounded these celebrities as they
wound through silent streets, between shops filled with silks and jewels
and luscious fruits. The air was heavy with perfume. David, Goliath and
Buckle bore aloft palms with which they stirred this scented breeze.
Going on before, were the four millionaires, likewise a band dispensing
music----
It happened--even as the Princess lifted the mist of her veil to display
her sweet, pale beauty. Cis came short unexpectedly. A strange,
sorrowful, and almost frightened look was in her blue eyes. She held out
helpless, trembling hands to Johnnie. "Oh, what's the use of my trying
to pretend?" she cried. "Johnnie, I can't see them any more! I can't see
them! I can't see them!"
Then, a burst of weeping. Old Grandpa also began to weep. At that Cis
stumbled toward the door of her room, colliding on the way with the end
of the cookstove, since one slender arm was across her eyes, and shut
herself from sight. For some minutes after that the sound of her muffled
sobbing came from that closet over which she had so recently been
proudly happy.
Johnnie first quieted the little old soldier by rolling him to and fro
between Albany and Pittsburgh. Then he went to stand at Cis's door,
where he listened, his head bent, his heart full of tender concern. Very
wisely he said nothing, asked no questions. It was not till the sobbing
ceased that he strove to comfort her by his loving, awkward, boyish
attentions.
"Cis, can't I fetch y' a cup of nice, sugared cold tea?" he called in.
"'R a saucer with some hot beans?"
"Oh, no," she quavered.
Now he knew what had brought about all those differences in her; he
understood what her grief was about. It was indeed the hair. Yet the
hair was only an outward sign of the hidden tragedy--which was that,
for good and all, for ever and ever, she was to be shut out from all
wonderful, living, thrilling thinks.
"She's gittin' grown-up," he told himself sorrowfully.