The summer days slipped by. The intense city heat of mid-August burned
itself up toward September.
Old Miss Fogg waited and waited, but there came no answer to the
letter. Julie fought against the old woman’s despairing disappointment,
buoying her up with the power of her own spirit. She had often the
feeling that wide wings spread themselves, out of the sheer force of
her devotion, and bore that broken and defeated bit of old age up into
a sunny atmosphere. Then she would be rewarded for all her pains. A
faint flush would run into the old cheeks, she would look at Julie out
of clear eyes from which all the crafty despair was momentarily gone,
and which were almost as serene as the eyes of a happy child. It was
that look which was a reward for all Julie’s efforts. She was thinking
of it, hoping for it one day as she came along the street late in the
afternoon. She was to have a little party for Miss Fogg that evening.
The old woman was coming down to have supper with Julie and Tim and
perhaps, if they could coax her into it, to go to a moving picture
afterward. For the occasion Julie had done up one of Miss Fogg’s
white muslin waists for her, earlier in the afternoon. She had done
it with especial care, and was proud of her handiwork. She took it
upstairs, holding it daintily on a coat-hanger so as not to wrinkle its
perishable freshness, and displayed it to the old woman. Miss Fogg had
looked really pleased, and had promised to put it on.
Julie was bringing home now a number of small packages for the supper
party. All the preparations filled her with an intensity of happiness.
So much so that merely doing them was not enough; she must sit down a
moment and think them all over. Accordingly, when she came to Monroe
Park on her homeward way, she sat down for a moment on one of its
benches. The park was shady, with the slanting green-gold light of
late afternoon sifting through the trees. Silver showers from the
fountain sprayed up and caught the sunlight, and groups of very small
children, looking almost unearthly in that glamour of green and gold
effulgence, ran and played upon the grass, or up and down the paths,
their laughter a whimsical undercurrent beneath the grown-up noises of
the city.
Julie let her eyes rest happily upon them, while through her mind
there drifted one pleasant picture after another: Miss Fogg’s crisp
shirt-waist, the pleased look on her old face when Julie had brought it
to her; the purchasing of the materials for the party, all of which lay
now in her market basket beside her; the little basket itself, which
had been a gift from Tim, so neat and pretty with a gay pink pattern
woven into it. Then going forward she visualized the supper-table
spread with clean linen and set forth with her rosebud china, which
also had been a gift from Tim. Julie was an artist in homemaking, and
these small and happy things were the material of her art. Out of them
she was to weave a little supper which was for her almost as much a
creative act as is the composition of a symphony for a musician. In the
ardent contemplation of her small creation, she overflowed with joy.
“Oh Lord, I’m so happy--so happy! I got to make a gift out of the
happiness!”
She rose then and made her way home. Arrived there, she put her
bundles carefully away in their little makeshift ice-box, which Tim had
devised and which was really very successful, and then passed through
into the front room to look forth and see if he might by any chance be
coming. The shutters were drawn together to exclude the heat. Stooping,
she peeped through them and, in the bright sunlight without, saw a
figure coming up the walk, the sight of which made her suddenly fall
down upon her knees beneath the window sill, crouching close against
the wall.
It was Elizabeth Bixby; and she was entering the house now.
She came so close upon Julie’s entrance that it was impossible not to
suppose she had seen her and was following. Julie crouched helplessly
beneath the window. She wanted to run to the door and lock it fast,
but she felt powerless to move. She cowered in a heap upon the floor,
waiting for Elizabeth to enter and find her.
“I must get up. I must stand up on my feet,” she kept thinking. But
still she did not rise. She felt utterly defenseless, utterly uncovered
and at the other’s mercy.
If she could only have slipped across and locked the door, that would
have given her an instant’s pause to gather herself together before
Elizabeth’s entrance; but she could not move to do it.
“I’ll stand up. I’ll stand right up on my feet and meet her as soon as
I hear her hand on the door,” she whispered to herself, every nerve in
her body keyed for the expected sound.
But the sound did not come; a miracle happened; Elizabeth did not pause
at Julie’s door. Julie heard her enter, heard her ask Mrs. Watkins
some question, and then heard her feet beat a sharp patter along the
passage and upstairs. Had she made a mistake? Been directed to the
wrong room? Very slowly Julie relaxed and got upon her feet, her knees
weak beneath her. She crept across and turned the key in the lock at
last. Now there was a momentary barrier set between herself and that
hand upon the door which she felt sure must come. Then she sat down in
a chair and waited, her hands clinging tight together in her lap. She
waited a very long time, an hour at least it seemed, and, except for
an occasional shifting in her chair, a clasping and unclasping of her
hands, or a faint dumb turning of her head from side to side, she did
not stir. There was nothing she could do. She did not know where to
find Tim, even if she had dared to slip out and search for him. He had
told her he had some errands to do for the printer, and would probably
be a little late. She did not know by which street he would return.
There was nothing therefore to do but wait--wait for the footsteps
to come down from upstairs, or for Tim’s to come up the cement walk
outside. So she sat staring helplessly down at her clasped hands. She
looked at them so long and steadfastly that they seemed at last to be
detached from herself, not to be her hands any more, but to be separate
personalities, small personalities--little people clinging very tight
together there in the world of her lap, as though some disaster
menaced. She felt dimly sorry for them.
At last she heard a door upstairs open--she was not sure which one it
was--and then the steps that she knew were Elizabeth Bixby’s came down
the stairs and down the hall. They would be at her door in an instant.
The two little personalities in her lap, that were made of her hands,
jumped desperately tight together. But again the feet did not pause,
but pattered definitely past and out into the street. Julie leaped up
and peered through the blinds. Perhaps she was mistaken: perhaps it was
not Elizabeth after all. But it was. She saw her face distinctly as she
went down the steps--and saw something else as well. Elizabeth had been
crying--was still wiping her eyes rather blindly. How strange that was!
What could have moved _her_ to tears? The surprise of this stayed for a
space the leap of relief over her departure; but in a moment it came,
and Julie relaxed all over as though a warm beneficent tide flowed
through her. Perhaps they were safe after all. Safe--
At this point there came an imperative knock and, when Julie forced
herself to go over and open the door, she found Mrs. Watkins there
eager with news.
“Well, you was right after all!” she announced. “The miracle’s
happened. Miss Fogg’s niece’s been to see her--that was her just went
down the steps.”
“_That?_” stammered Julie. “That--that lady that just went down the
steps--Miss Fogg’s niece?”
Mrs. Watkins nodded. “M--h’m, that’s the wonderful niece. She asked me
did Miss Fogg live here, and when she went away she told me she was her
niece. She’s been upstairs with the old soul a right smart spell, an’
I heard her tell her when she left she’d be back to see her again in
a couple of days. She said she was going to Camp Lee for a day or so.
When she left I seen she’d been cryin’.”
“Yes,” Julie said, “I saw that, too.”
“I reckon it must of upset her to find the old lady so bad off. Soon
as she’d gone I flew upstairs to see how the old soul was takin’ it.
But she’s got her door locked, an’ wouldn’t answer or let on she was
there when I called her name. Oh, I reckon I’m too common to hear about
the grand niece! But you go up, dearie, an’ hear the news. She’s your
baby--she’ll talk for you.”
“I--I _can’t_!” Julie gasped and put her hand to her head. “I feel
so--Oh, I feel so bad,” she faltered.
“Why, you do look real white!” Mrs. Watkins exclaimed with concern.
“What’s the matter? How do you feel bad?”
Julie sat weakly down in a chair. “I--feel--shaky,” she got out
slowly, speaking with difficulty.
“You lie right down, an’ don’t do a thing for a spell. I’ll bet it’s
the heat--you ain’t used to this city heat--an’ you seem to have a kind
of a nervous chill, too.”
“I’m--I’m all right,” Julie got out, struggling to keep her teeth from
chattering. “I reckon it is the heat. I--Oh don’t--don’t bother. I’ll
just lie--down a little bit.”
She went unsteadily over, Mrs. Watkins piloting her, and lay down
upon the sagging plush sofa, a sofa that had adjusted its spring to
accommodate the weight, and probably the sorrows also, of many human
beings before her.
“Yes--now, that’s right,” Mrs. Watkins said, giving her a pat as she
settled a cushion for her. “What you want is to keep right still. Don’t
stir now. Just lay still an’ think about nice things. Think about Miss
Fogg’s niece bein’ here at last. Ain’t that a wonder? It ought to
please you, after you worked so hard to get her here.”
Looking up at her from the sofa, Julie suddenly brought her hands tight
together, and burst into a high startling scream of laughter.
“Why, so it was! It _was_ all my doing!” she gasped, shaken by one
shuddering gust of laughter after another.
“What on earth ails you? That ain’t as funny as all that,” Mrs. Watkins
cried. “Hush, hush now! Hold on to yourself, Mis’ Freeman. Quit that!
You’ll be in hysterics d’rectly.”
“No, no! It isn’t funny. I won’t laugh. I promise not to laugh,” Julie
gasped, biting her lips hard together between sentences, and fighting
to choke back the wild paroxysms. “I won’t laugh. And _she_ was crying!
I saw her crying! Oh--” The tension broke and she collapsed into a
flood of tears.
“There now, that’s better.” Mrs. Watkins patted her shoulder. “Now
you’ll be all right in a little bit.”
“I--I am all right,” Julie affirmed presently, pressing her hand
against her shaking mouth. “Don’t mind me--don’t. I--I just get this
way sometimes.”
“We all do, us poor women--specially in this heat,” the other answered.
“You’ll be all right now the storm’s broke. Just lay right still. I’ll
be back in a little bit, an’ see if the clouds ain’t all gone, an’ the
rainbow come: maybe you’ll have found the pot of gold at the end of it
by then.”
Mrs. Watkins went off, shutting the door after her, and Julie
was alone. She did not cry or laugh any more. She was very
tired--completely spent--and a little confused also, so that as she lay
there with closed eyes, what Mrs. Watkins had said as she went out kept
repeating itself through her mind. “The end of the rainbow! The end of
the rainbow!”