Part 14 (1/2)
CHAPTER IV
THE UNFINISHED SONG
You can't imagine anything more amusing than the satisfaction with which Felicia Day awoke. The early sun was streaming in her eyes. She rubbed them drowsily and sat up in the middle of the narrow humpy bed.
At the foot of the bed Bab.i.+.c.he awoke too, yawning and stretching beautifully, reflexing her droll puppy body and wagging her wee feathery tail.
On the floor the russet bag gaped open where Felicia had dumped it the night before; her clothes lay in a limp heap beside the window. But the clear spring air, deliciously salty smelling to the woman who had been living inland so long, made her breathe deeply.
”Ah! Bab.i.+.c.he!” she murmured, smiling at the smudgy spot on the wall, ”What a naughty child I used to be!” She had a naive pride in this evidence of her early wickedness. But a moment later she was frowning, her eyes fixed on the grimy woodwork.
”What unspeakably lazy servants I must have! I shall send them away at once! Just as soon as that woman has brought my breakfast I shall say to her,
”'You are an abom-in-able housekeeper, pack your bags and go!'”
She had heard Mademoiselle D'Ormy send a servant away once. It gave a splendid sense of superiority to think that she was going to do it herself this time. She pulled her travel-stiff body over the edge of the bed, and grimacing as she swung her pavement-sore feet to the floor, she wrapped the lovely old dressing-gown about her and opened the door into the hall. She could not think of any other way in which to summon a servant whose name she did not know and so she whistled clearly as she sometimes did when she wanted to call Bele from the farther end of the orchard.
The house seemed filled with sounds, mutterings, babblings, little cries, the heavy whirr of the sewing machines, the splintering clatter of Tony, who was chopping his wares by the bas.e.m.e.nt door--it seemed impregnated with odors, smudgy, burning, unsavory, smoky smells. She whistled again.
An unkempt head, a man's head, was thrust from the nursery door, in the quick glance with which she looked at him and beyond him she seemed to see a score of persons. There were not really so many of them, merely a slovenly woman who was pedaling the sewing machine with a baby tumbling at her feet, an eight-year-old who sat on the window ledge pulling bastings while a half-grown girl cooked something on a stove that had been propped in front of the fireplace.
Zeb's phrase--”filthy dirty heathen” trembled on Felicia's lips, her eyes burned hotly. She grew furiously angry. Her breast was heaving, her bare foot tapped impatiently on the chilly floor, but the man slammed the door before she could speak.
She stepped resolutely into the hall, she whistled again, this time imperiously.
No one answered.
She crossed to the bathroom beside the nursery. She was grimly determined now, she would bathe herself and dress and go down to the kitchen and speak at once to the servant. The bathroom door was slightly open but the skylight was so dusty that she could scarcely see. She put down her hand to turn the faucet and drew back in dismay.
Her tub was already filled--with coal!
And behind her a voice e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed,
”You no taka mine fires! Get out!”
Felicia did ”get out,” speeding so recklessly back to Mademoiselle's old room that she was breathless as she shut the door behind her and leaned against it laughing weakly.
”Oh! Oh! I know it is all a dream! It's too ridiculous to be true!”
She found enough water in a pitcher on the table to bathe her face.
She sat on the edge of the bed thinking hard as she brushed her hair.
”It is not a dream”--she shuddered, ”The back yard is real--even with all the rubbish there, the back yard is real! The gate is there--the first thing I shall make them clean will be the back yard--after all, it won't be so difficult as my garden in the woods. I shall not have to wait to find the pattern, I know exactly how it all belongs. And I know that about this whole house. I shall”--she grew more determined, ”make it all as it was before. First I shall put all these filthy dirty heathen out--it will be exactly like making the garden--only I shall have people pulled out instead of weeds--they are all like weeds, these filthy dirty people--I am not afraid of weeds.”
But all the same, when she was dressed and had begun the perilous journey downward, she found herself very much afraid of the ”weeds”
that she encountered on her way to the tailor's missus.
Nor did she issue victoriously as she had planned from her attempt to send the tailor's missus away.
The tailor's missus stood her ground stoutly, she even forced Felicia to give her three dollars for room rent from Louisa's purse; the woman's awe of the night before had departed, she moaned strange things about her children's starving, she reiterated her absolute lack of belief that Felicia owned the house, she laughed toothlessly over such a thing being possible.