Part 19 (1/2)
They fluttered after her as she walked down the corridor, the Matron walked beside her and the Wheezy's arm was through hers. Of course she was coming again, she promised them she would, they accepted her promises with eager queries like children.
”I'll come another visiting day--” she patted the Wheezy's shoulders, ”I like to! You all are _so_ good at pretending!”
”Do you know,” she told Judge Harlow in the morning, ”I did find some one who knows who I am?” Her face was glowing with achievement,
”Even if you get so old that you don't look at all as you used to there's some part of you that people can't forget. Some Happy Part of you! You really ought to try it! Perhaps there is some old lady up there who used to know you when you were little! If you'd go there some visiting day and whistle for her she'd know you, just as quick!
You try it!”
She went away thrilling with antic.i.p.ation. He had a young lawyer there, who had a great many papers. The young lawyer explained to her that the Justice had asked him to keep track of things for her. And they were arranging it so that in another week, she would possess her house, mortgages, taxes, fines and all, and the thirty days ”to straighten things” but she would actually possess it and the tailor and the tailor's missus and all their dreadful tenants would have to go out, bag and baggage.
She trotted into The Woman's Exchange at noon, positively buoyant.
”You'll have to find me another by-the-day,” she announced to Miss Sarah.
”How'd you make out Sat.u.r.day?”
”I--made--_out_--” Felicia laughed back at her. ”She was a WEED, that woman. The old man played chess with me but she didn't like us to do it.
I couldn't take the two dollars--”
”I'm afraid you aren't businesslike,” Miss Sarah chided, ”you said you needed the money.”
”I do,” Felicia a.s.sured her, ”that's why I'm back for another by-the- day.”
Miss Sarah found another job for her, indeed she jotted down several possible places in a small notebook whose florid cover extolled the virtues of d.i.n.kle's Cough Syrup.
”This would be a good book for anybody so unbusinesslike as you,” she confided as she presented her client with it. ”In the back here are pages to write what you earn and what you spend and to keep track of the days you are going out.”
It fitted nicely into the reticule. Felicia felt competent with it there. She used to take it out at night and write in it. It had double entry pages labelled grandly ”INCOME” ”EXPENDITURES.” With the first pages Felicia wrote a letter to Margot, a masterly letter in which she bade her servant tell Zeb that the filthy dirty heathen were going to be sent away, a letter in which she warned Margot that unless Grandy were too unhappy she would not go back to the House in the Woods until the house in the city was clean once more. She explained that certain legal matters had to be attended to. The round stroke of her pen seemed to proclaim her complete confidence that they could be attended to satisfactorily. But the postscript begged Margot to tell Bele to stay all he could with Grandy, ”If Grandy looks at the chess board tell Bele to put the men on it and shove a man every time Grandy pushes one--you must all keep Grandy happy.” And the last postscript of all said, ”The narcissi are lovely, I have them in my room!”
Which was quite truthful. She did have narcissi in her room! Their fragrance almost overpowered her. She lay in the darkness and pretended that they were in the garden and that she was lying on them.
She had been most businesslike about them. If you could have audited her accounts in d.i.n.kle's Cough Syrup you would have seen on the page where she first began her reckoning,
”INCOME EXPENDITURES Two dollars Bone--five cents Apples, cakes and sandwiches forty five cents Narcissi One dollar.”
It is delightful to relate that no one ever in all this world purchased more narcissi for one dollar than Felicia bought at the florist's stand that wonderful evening when she made her first expenditure from money she had actually earned. She looked so tired and wan in her frumpy old clothes that the florist's clerk, who was a sentimental young thing, a.s.sumed she must be purchasing them for some one's grave. Even though he might be foredoomed to lose his job, he recklessly tied up the whole bundle that her hand had indicated.
”Honest, she made me feel like I oughta be giving things away instead of selling 'em,” he apologized to his astounded boss, who had met the new customer on her way out, ”Honest, she got me hipped!”
In spite of the ”heathen,” in spite of taxes and fines--in spite of the fatigue that still remained from those days of travel and hunger, in spite of the strangeness of sitting all day st.i.tching, in spite of even the fierce longing, whenever she pa.s.sed a telephone, to speak with Dudley Hamilt, Felicia found herself--happy, happy with the same haunting happiness with which she had long ago untangled the puzzle of the lost garden, happy with the aching happiness that longs to attain and trembles lest it cannot.
”Bab.i.+.c.he,” she chattered, ”When I was young, like the girls in Piqueur's song I found my fun in spring forests; but now--” she was looking out across the river at the gleaming towers of Manhattan, glimpsing the jewel-like line of trolleys crawling slowly over the lighted bridges, watching the busy s.h.i.+pping that scurried over the harbor in the violet and bronze evening, ”Now I find it in spring cities--”
She consulted the garden book much, peering bravely down into the appalling rubbish heaps of her beloved back yard.
”All of the ivy isn't gone and there's wistaria and we can make new ivies from slips, next spring it must be just as it used to be.
Perhaps we can find the old benches, I know exactly where to build the paths. We will have to get some pebbles to make the paths. We must plant plenty of narcissi again, Bab.i.+.c.he. Because some day, there might be some other girl who lived in this house and who walked in the garden and when Her Night came we would want it to be just as lovely as it was That Night--”
She had no definite girl in mind, she had not really, although she thought she had found the ”pattern” of what the house was to be, she only longed to get the ”filthy dirty heathen” out and make things orderly as they once had been. I doubt if she had yet visualized anybody as living in that house, save Maman and Grandy and herself.
Yet even before the heathen were out she had brought home a girl--the Sculptor Girl, the first of those starry-eyed young humans who were to call the house their own.