Part 90 (1/2)

The St. Francesca was built of light-brown stone and decorated with much ornate molding. It was fourteen stories high, and was supplied with ornamental fire-escapes. It was ”no slouch of a building.”

Everything decorative which could be done for it had been done. The entrance was almost imposing, and a generous lavishness in the way of cement mosaic flooring and new and thick red carpet struck the eye at once. The grill-work of the elevator was of fresh, bright blackness, picked out with gold, and the colored elevator-boy wore a blue livery with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons. Persons of limited means who were willing to discard the excitements of ”downtown” got a good deal for their money, and frequently found themselves secretly surprised and uplifted by the atmosphere of luxury which greeted them when they entered their red- carpeted hall. It was wonderful, they said, congratulating one another privately, how much comfort and style you got in a New York apartment- house after you pa.s.sed the ”150ths.”

On a certain afternoon T. Tembarom, with his hat on the back of his head and his arms full of parcels, having leaped off the ”L” when it stopped at the nearest station, darted up and down the iron stairways until he reached the ground, and then hurried across the avenue to the St. Francesca. He made long strides, and two or three times grinned as if thinking of something highly amusing; and once or twice he began to whistle and checked himself. He looked approvingly at the tall building and its solidly bal.u.s.traded entrance-steps as he approached it, and when he entered the red-carpeted hall he gave greeting to a small mulatto boy in livery.

”h.e.l.lo, Tom! How's everything?” he inquired, hilariously. ”You taking good care of this building? Let any more eight-room apartments? You've got to keep right on the job, you know. Can't have you loafing because you've got those bra.s.s b.u.t.tons.”

The small page showed his teeth in gleeful appreciation of their friendly intimacy.

”Ya.s.sir. That's so,” he answered. ”Mis' Barom she's waitin' for you.

Them carpets is come, sir. Tracy's wagon brought 'em 'bout an hour ago. I told her I'd help her lay 'em if she wanted me to, but she said you was comin' with the hammer an' tacks. 'Twarn't that she thought I was too little. It was jest that there wasn't no tacks. I tol' her jest call me in any time to do anythin' she want done, an' she said she would.”

”She'll do it,” said T. Tembarom. ”You just keep on tap. I'm just counting on you and Light here,” taking in the elevator-boy as he stepped into the elevator, ”to look after her when I'm out.”

The elevator-boy grinned also, and the elevator shot up the shaft, the numbers of the floors pa.s.sing almost too rapidly to be distinguished.

The elevator was new and so was the boy, and it was the pride of his soul to land each pa.s.senger at his own particular floor, as if he had been propelled upward from a catapult. But he did not go too rapidly for this pa.s.senger, at least, though a paper parcel or so was dropped in the transit and had to be picked up when he stopped at floor fourteen.

The red carpets were on the corridor there also, and fresh paint and paper were on the walls. A few yards from the elevator he stopped at a door and opened it with a latch-key, beaming with inordinate delight.

The door opened into a narrow corridor leading into a small apartment, the furniture of which was not yet set in order. A roll of carpet and some mats stood in a corner, chairs and tables with burlaps round their legs waited here and there, a cot with a mattress on it, evidently to be transformed into a ”couch,” held packages of bafflingly irregular shapes and sizes. In the tiny kitchen new pots and pans and kettles, some still wrapped in paper, tilted themselves at various angles on the gleaming new range or on the closed lids of the doll-sized stationary wash-tubs.

Little Ann had been very busy, and some of the things were unpacked.

She had been sweeping and mopping floors and polis.h.i.+ng up remote corners, and she had on a big white pinafore-ap.r.o.n with long sleeves, which transformed her into a sort of small female chorister. She came into the narrow corridor with a broom in her hand, her periwinkle-blue gaze as thrilled as an excited child's when it attacks the arrangement of its first doll's house. Her hair was a little ruffled where it showed below the white kerchief she had tied over her head. The warm, daisy pinkness of her cheeks was amazing.

”h.e.l.lo!” called out Tembarom at sight of her. ”Are you there yet? I don't believe it.”

”Yes, I'm here,” she answered, dimpling at him.

”Not you!” he said. ”You couldn't be! You've melted away. Let's see.”

And he slid his parcels down on the cot and lifted her up in the air as if she had been a baby. ”How can I tell, anyhow?” he laughed out.

”You don't weigh anything, and when a fellow squeezes you he's got to look out what he's doing.”

He did not seem to ”look out” particularly when he caught her to him in a hug into which she appeared charmingly to melt. She made herself part of it, with soft arms which went at once round his neck and held him.

”Say!” he broke forth when he set her down. ”Do you think I'm not glad to get back?”

”No, I don't, Tem,” she answered, ”I know how glad you are by the way I'm glad myself.”

”You know just everything!” he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, looking her over, ”just every darned thing--G.o.d bless you! But don't you melt away, will you?

That's what I'm afraid of. I'll do any old thing on earth if you'll just stay.”

That was his great joke,--though she knew it was not so great a joke as it seemed,--that he would not believe that she was real, and believed that she might disappear at any moment. They had been married three weeks, and she still knew when she saw him pause to look at her that he would suddenly seize and hold her fast, trying to laugh, sometimes not with entire success.

”Do you know how long it was? Do you know how far away that big place was from everything in the world?” he had said once. ”And me holding on and gritting my teeth? And not a soul to open my mouth to! The old duke was the only one who understood, anyhow. He'd been there.”

”I'll stay,” she answered now, standing before him as he sat down on the end of the ”couch.” She put a firm, warm-palmed little hand on each side of his face, and held it between them as she looked deep into his eyes. ”You look at me, Tem--and see.”

”I believe it now,” he said, ”but I shan't in fifteen minutes.”

”We're both right-down silly,” she said, her soft, cosy laugh breaking out. ”Look round this room and see what we've got to do. Let's begin this minute. Did you get the groceries?”