Part 19 (1/2)
”You can't afford _not_ to have something down on this if it's only a shoestring. No? Oh--well!”
Again drawing the art-square from his pocket he lifted his pearl-gray derby and dabbed despairingly at his brow. Catching the scent hot and fresh, Susan Gluck's Orphan came das.h.i.+ng up-wind giving tongue, or rather, nose, voluptuously.
”Mm-m-m! Snmmff!” inhaled the Orphan, wrinkling ecstatic nostrils.
”Mister, lemme smell it some more!”
Graciously the dispenser of fragrance waved his balm-laden handkerchief.
”Like it, kiddie?” he said.
”Oh, it's _grand_!” She stretched out her little grimy paws. ”Please, Mister,” she entreated, ”would you flop it over 'em, just once?”
The pink man tossed it to her. ”Take it along and, when you get it all snuffed up, give it back to the Dominie here for me.”
”Oh, gracious!” said the Orphan, incredulous at this bounty. ”Can I have it till _to-morrah_?”
”Sure! What's the big idea for to-morrow?”
”I'm goin' to a funeral. I want it to cry in,” said the Orphan importantly.
”A funeral?” I asked. ”In Our Square? Whose?”
”My cousin Minnie. She's goin' to be buried in G.o.d's Acre, an' I'm invited 'cause I'm a r'lation. She married a sporting gentleman named Hines an' she died yesterday,” said the precocious Orphan.
So Minnie Munn, pretty, blithe, life-loving Minnie, whose going had hurt us so, had come back to Our Square, with all her love of life quenched.
She had promised that she would come back, in the little, hysterical, defiant note she left under the door. Her father and mother must wait and not worry. There are thousands of homes, I suppose, in which are buried just such letters as Minnie's farewell to her parents; rebellious, pa.s.sionate, yearning, pitiful. Ah, well! The moth must break its chrysalis. The flower must rend its bonds toward the light. Little Minnie was ”going on the stage.” A garish and perilous stage it was, whereon Innocence plays a part as sorry as it is brief. And now she was making her exit, without applause. Memory brought back a picture of Minnie as I had first seen her, a wee thing, blinking and smiling in the arms of her Madonna-faced mother, on a bench in Our Square, and the mother (who could not wait for the promised return--she has lain in G.o.d's Acre these three years) crooning to her an unforgettable song, mournfully prophetic:
”Why did I bring thee, Sweet Into a world of sin?-- Into a world of wonder and doubt With sorrows and snares for the little white feet-- Into a world whence the going out Is as dark as the coming in!”
Old lips readily lend themselves to memory; I suppose I must have repeated the final lines aloud, for the pink man said, wearily but politely:
”Very pretty. Something more in the local line?”
”Hardly.” I smiled. Between Bartholomew Storr's elegies and William Young's ”Wish-makers' Town” stretches an infinite chasm.
”What's this--now--G.o.d's Acre the kid was talking about?” was his next question.
”An old local graveyard.”
”Anything interesting?” he asked carelessly.
”If you're interested in that sort of thing. Are you an antiquary?”
”Sure!” he replied with such offhand prompt.i.tude that I was certain the answer would have been the same had I asked him if he was a dromedary.
”Come along, then. I'll take you there.”
To reach that little green s.p.a.ce of peace amidst our turmoil of the crowded, encroaching slums, we must pa.s.s the Bonnie La.s.sie's house, where her tiny figurines, touched with the fire of her love and her genius, which are perhaps one and the same, stand ever on guard, looking out over Our Square from her windows. Judging by his appearance and conversation, I should have supposed my companion to be as little concerned with art as with, let us say, poetry or local antiquities. But he stopped dead in his tracks, before the first window. Fingers that were like steel claws buried themselves in my arm. The other hand pointed.
”What's that?” he muttered fiercely.