Part 25 (1/2)
”You said you'd give me a joy-ride sometime if I had a new bonnet--I have. I really look like anybody else now. I do need that joy-ride just now, could you come for me?”
But can't you see that chauffeur's rueful smile when he reached the address she gave him and saw a nurse bringing the palefaced Painter Boy out the hospital door? Felice ran ahead of them, breathless with achievement.
”He is doing vairee nicely. His leg is better. It's only his spirit that's rather drowned, so I thought if he had a joy-ride and we took him home--”
At least Janet found comfort from the fact that the Painter Boy was the last pauper to be added to the list--there weren't any rooms or beds for any more! But the house hummed with their activities, rang with their arguments and theories, echoed with their laughter--and sighed with their midnight tears. They were so young! So impatient! So eager to set the river of life afire!
Dinner time was a joy. They usually had dinner in the garden and dinner was always THE DIs.h.!.+ Even with Janet's fingers on the purse strings and Molly's capable hands in the mixing the slender funds would not stretch to more than--THE DISH. It might be a huge Irish stew, or something Molly called Dago Puddin' (there never was such spaghetti as her Dago Puddin') or a gigantic pie made of pigeons that had to cook all day to become edible. Sometimes Molly ”slipped 'em somethin'” that she claimed was left from her catering business, but usually they ate only what their pooled funds could pay for and leaned back content to listen while Felice ”pretended” or scolded or encouraged them; her leaders.h.i.+p was utterly unconscious, her calm a.s.sumption that she was a very old lady hypnotized them into thinking she was. She made no rules or regulations. She frankly let them know that perhaps they could live there a day or perhaps a century; that the length of residence depended on the finding of the elusive, untraceable Portia Person. They all searched ardently for him. They all knew that when they ”made good” they would have to find some fellow who hadn't and help him. Already Octavia's motto was lettered under her lovely portrait over the drawing-room fireplace in the charming simulation of medieval script that the Poetry Girl loved to make,
”She would like you to be happy here.
You can't be truly happy if you are making anyone else unhappy.”
The days swept by so fast, Felicia brave as she was, didn't dare count them! Twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, oh, it seemed as though they surely must find the Portia Person now that they were all looking! Yet each one in his heart generously hoped it would be Felicia herself who found him.
In spite of her high resolves to learn to ”like to be a by-the-day”
she found some days impossible.
She grew to hate Thursdays. Sometimes it seemed as though she couldn't please anybody on Thursday. Thursday meant that she sewed in households that suffered from a feverish complaint known as Maid's- Day-Out. Thursdays always seemed to be a.s.sociated with worse and more hurried luncheons than other days--Thursdays she had to open doors and answer telephones--she used to think sometimes she could have stood all the other days if it hadn't been for Thursdays.
One Thursday in particular stood out as a terrific day. To begin with it rained. A drizzling, penetrating, gloomy kind of a rain that brought her into the Woman's Exchange exceedingly moist, and seemed to have permanently warped whatever courtesy time had left in the soul of the Disagreeable Walnut.
”--to Eighteen Willow Court--” grumbled the cross old woman sliding a card with the address across the littered counter to Felice.
One comfort was, Willow Court was not far and the ”Eighteen” was emblazoned in enormous gilt letters over an elaborate plate-gla.s.s entrance. It was Felice's first apartment house experience. She walked with humble awe through an enormous mirrored hallway lined with the largest, dustiest, artificial foliage that ever disgraced vegetation.
An intolerant colored boy, pompous in green-and-gilt livery eyed her insolently. She stated her errand.
”The help's entrance is on the side street,” he informed her impudently. ”You turn right around and go right out where you just came in and go around to the side where I tells you and go in there and you tell Joe I sent you. If he hain't too busy maybe he'll run you up on the freight elevator, but if he is you can walk. It's apartment 41, fourth floor, front.”
Ah, you should have seen Octavia's daughter, tired and little and dripping and frumpy, lift her chin and look through and through that impudent Senegambian! He confessed afterward she looked so like somebody's high-toned ghost that it had sent the s.h.i.+vers down his spine. And just when he was ready to hear the wrath that her eyes threatened she turned abruptly and walked away so regally that he found himself muttering,
”I didn't notice she was such a high-stepping lady--”
The service entrance and Joe and the freight elevator conquered, she found herself face to face with new insolence, this time from a frowsy maid who led her grudgingly into the living-room that stretched across the front of the apartment. From ornate curtains a plump and fretful woman emerged,
”You're fifteen minutes late--she said she'd send some one at eight o'clock--but come along, sew in the children's bedroom--”
Felice followed through the whole untidy apartment into the narrow cluttered room. It appeared that the children were not yet dressed nor had their beds been put in order and they sat, two weedy pallid- looking mites, in the midst of a tremendous heap of broken toys and fought desperately for the possession of an eyeless, hairless carca.s.s of a doll. A sewing machine piled high with garments was in front of the one broad window that opened on the gloomy whiteness of the court.
An overturned basket, from which oozed tangled spools and myriads of b.u.t.tons, lay on the floor in front of the machine. A stiff-backed gilt chair stood beside it.
”I cut out some pinafores yesterday,” continued the fretful voice, ”I wish you would run up the seams of those on the machine--french-seam them, please--and if I get time I'll show you how I want the collars-- ”
Felicia stood, absurdly little beside her plump employer, and spoke the first words she'd been given opportunity to utter,
”Good morning, Madame,” she said in her clear contralto, ”I think you do not understand. The Exchange should have told you that I am a needle-woman--that I do only hand work--I do not understand sewing machines--”
”Not understand sewing machines!” shrilled the kimonoed one, ”why anybody with any sense at all can run a sewing machine--”
Felicia smiled her wide ingenuous smile.