Chapter IV: The Unfinished Song (2)

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.

It happened this way. She set forth on a cloudy, threatening over-warm morning, Babiche under her arm, toward a new address, a morning so palpably "growing" that she longed to be planting. She had promised herself eagerly that the very day when the heathen were gone she would plant some ivies. She was pretending vehemently that the heathen were gone and that she didn't have to be a "by-the-day" yet before night she was exclaiming passionately, "I am proud, proud, proud I was a by- the-day--"

The new place was not a hard one. A fat, seemingly good natured employer awaited her, a boarding house mistress who had curtains to be mended and napkins to be hemmed, who was dubious about taking the applicant when she discovered she could not use a sewing machine but who decided on second reflection (aided by the fact that she had just discovered that her sewing machine was not in repair) to allow Felicia her day's work.

The vestibule doors were embellished with gilt lettering that proclaimed the place to be

"Seeley's"

Mrs. Seeley did not object to Babiche. Indeed she kissed the top of her nose so resoundingly that Babiche was terrified and Felicia stared with amazement. It had never occurred to her that any one ever kissed a dog. If Felicia had been left comfortably to her own devices at her previous "places" she quickly discovered that the Seeley household made rather an event of the seamstress' coming. There was no necessity for stealing a lunch. Indeed, when lunchtime arrived she was ushered into the basement dining-room and invited to eat with the rest of the family and as many of the "select boarders" as appeared. It was not a good luncheon. But to Felicia it was an extraordinarily gay function. For at the table was Mr. Perry, immaculately groomed in a discreet uniform. Mrs. Seeley introduced them with a matter-of-fact statement of their occupations.

"Miss Day, meet Mrs. J. Furthrington's chauffeur--Miss Day is sewing for me--" she poured their teas impartially. It appeared that Mrs. J. Furthrington's chauffeur did not often grace the boarding house for his meals. He usually, as he expressed it "ate wherever the run was." He talked with whimsical despondency of his job which, it appeared, was new.

"Good gracious," chaffed Mrs. Seeley, "I thought you'd felt grand from associating with swells and changing your rooms--"

"Well I feel swell," he admitted dubiously, "but in a way the job gets my goat. Munition millionaires, that's what I'm working for, can you beat it? Last year in a Canarsie bungalow and this year a-riding in a Rolls Royce! Everybody to his taste--mine wouldn't be for nobody else driving my car no matter how much spondulex come my way. It will be me for the little old low down 'steen cylinder racer when I get my pile--" he slid his long body under the table and grasped his plate as a steering wheel, "'Poor, get out of muh way!' my horn will yell--"

His fellow boarders laughed uproariously, his landlady wiped tears from her eyes.

"Hain't he comical?" she appealed to her sewing woman.

Felicia viewed the redoubtable Mr. Perry with amused eyes.

"He's vairee good at pretending--" her shy approbation came. He winked at her.

"Any time you want a joy-ride, call on me!"

Which fresh sally seemed to explode uncontrollable mirth about the basement dining-room. Flapping his wonderful gauntlets together he called a farewell from the doorway.

"Only get a different bunnet--" he waved Louisa's from the peg on the hall rack, Felicia didn't mind in the least, she was mouthing this new phrase "Joy-ride," it sounded delightful. All the same she rescued her bonnet and carried it upstairs with her. "I love that boy like a plate of fudge," confided Mrs. Seeley as she and Felicia were ascending to the ornate bedroom where the sewing was waiting. "He's the life of the place. Everybody likes him. I don't know what there is about him, he hain't so handsome but he certainly is poplar. Yet Dulcie won't stand for him--Dulcie thinks he's fresh."

It appeared that Dulcie was not pleased with anything or anybody. Especially when she was having one of her "spells." Mrs. Seeley rocked violently as she recounted to her new seamstress her trials with Dulcie.

"She's a caution. In a way I do owe her a livin'. She's my husband's niece I know, that is by his first wife y'understand. She wasn't even exactly his niece. But on account of his havin' to use Dulcie's money in his plumbin' business we agreed to give her her livin'. Al kept her in a nart school, a swell art school when we was first married. That was a mistake. I said to him many a time to mark-my-words, it would be a mistake. Of course when he died I didn't feel it was up to me to keep her in a nart school. So I took her right into the family, same's I'd take you or anybody. But it's no use. All she does is mope. Even Mr. Perry can't cheer her up, though he tries.

"Says he to her only last night, 'Cheer up, I'll take you a nice ride down to the morgue.' I thought everybody'd die laughing to hear him but she just got up and stalked out of the dining-room like somebody had insulted her. And I can't get a peep out of her today. Just this noon I says to her, pleasant enough, because I was short of help, wouldn't she come down and wait on table, but would she?" demanded Mrs. Seeley bitterly, "She would not. She said she was no scullery maid and slammed the door in my face and went back to her wet mud--"

"Oh, is she building a garden?" asked Felice eagerly.

"Nothing so useful as a garden," snorted Mrs. Seeley, "it's clay she's fussin' with, thinkin' she's going to be able to make statues some day. Statues! What kind of a job is that nowadays! Artist jobs is impractical. Dulcie is awful impractical. I offered to send her to business college, she could make a good living, but no, she's gotta make statues! With the parks all full of 'em now and that kind of thing going out of style for parlors! I put both my Rogers groups upstairs in the attic when I bought the phonograph--there's no style to a statue any more. And she wants to learn to make 'em!"

"But I should think," breathed the seamstress her eyes glowing as she lifted them from her work, "that you'd be proud to have her want to try to make something."

What Mrs. Seeley thought expressed itself in the bang of the door as she left to answer a strident summons below stairs. But after she had gone Felice became aware of continued sobbing in the next room, a sobbing as penetrating, for all it was not so loud, as that of the noisy Italian baby at home.

For a long time the weeping was sustained and dreary. It never ceased save when Mrs. Seeley came back to give Felicia instructions about her work, but usually after her footfalls had clattered down the stairway the crying would begin again, very softly. Frequently Felicia could hear the pad, pad, pad of stockinged feet. She knew that whenever the crying stopped the grieving one walked to and fro restlessly. After a longer interval of silence than usual Felicia became aware that Babiche was sniffing excitably. The nervous sniff that had always characterized the wee doggies on days when the carbolic water was ready for the rinsing.

Felicia wrinkled her own nose tentatively. Presently she got up and opened the door to the next room. It was empty. But adjoining it was an untidy bathroom with a dark wainscoting and a grimy enameled tub and standing over near the uncurtained window was a boyish figure, wrapped in a man's overcoat, with a bottle in her hand. She had wept so long, poor girl, that Felicia couldn't tell very much about how she really looked, except that it seemed to her she had never seen any one so unhappy.

Felicia stood there, an absurdly dowdy figure, Babiche clasped in her arm, and smiled timorously.

"Where is your dog?" she asked sweetly.

"What dog?" demanded a sulky voice.

"The dog you were going to wash--" Felicia's voice was casual. "With the 'scarbolic.'"

"I wasn't--trying to wash any dog--" the girl breathed dully.

Felicia moved quickly, she took the bottle from the girl's hand. "Then I wish you'd lend me your--'scarbolic,'" she entreated sweetly, "Babiche really needs a bath."

The youthful sufferer stared from her tear-stained eyes, stared with all her might at the shabby, frumpy, middle-aged looking little person who had taken the bottle from her hand.

"I can't stand it--" she sobbed bitterly, "I've got to quit--you don't know how I feel--I feel as if--"

"When you feel that way," interrupted Felicia quietly, "you mustn't have a 'scarbolic' bottle, that's a thing that will make you go dead--"

"It's my own business if I do--I'd rather be dead than the way I am--" she stretched out her arms passionately, "I haven't room to breathe! I did have that top floor front you know, it was a peach of a place to work. But she rented it to a chauffeur and put me in this hole--oh, oh, when all I asked was room for my model stand and room for my clay --when all I wanted was room for Pandora--you can't know how I feel--"

"But I do know how you feel!" slender hands cupped the girl's face. Felicia's eyes looked through into the girl's soul. "You feel like 'I can't get out, I can't get out, sang the starling'! Once I did. Perhaps every one of us comes to a time when she feels all shut in--I went out into my garden when I felt that way. It is a big garden but it felt smaller than this room. I cried in it all night long, walking up and down and up and down--quite sure I didn't want to live any more. But when it was getting to be morning I saw a rosebush by the wall. In a jar. I'd forgotten to take care of it and Bele--he is good, you know, but stupid--had been tending it. Poor Rosebush!

"It was much too big for its jar. Its roots were all cramped and its top all cut back so it couldn't bloom--you mustn't prune some roses too much, you know--I've just been thinking, that you're rather like my rosebush. You're Dulcie, aren't you? I think I know exactly what you need. If you'd just come along with me--I've a big room--I mean I will have as soon as I get the abundance-of-weeds-for-which-we-have- no-name out--I'd just love you to come with me. You'd be proud, proud, proud if you did--

"Listen, that's Mrs. Seeley coming back up the stairs. She's bringing me my two dollars. You put on your shoes and when she's down the stairs I'll whistle--so--vairee softly. And then you will come out and down we'll go. It will really be a great favor if you will--it's a big house, my house and I'm ra-_ther_ lonely--"

It wasn't until they were outside in the shadowy, rain-sweet street that Dulcie realized she had been coaxed that far. She drew back. "I've no hat," she whimpered, "It's no use--I don't want to go--"

"You would," the seamstress insisted, "if you only knew what fun it's going to be. And we'll stop in the Exchange and buy you a cap. It's a darling cap. I've wanted it evaire since I saw it, it's velvet, rather like a choir boy's, only it has a tassel." Her arm was through Dulcie's, they were really walking along. "And we shall buy our supper there too. Miss Susan has fat jars of baked beans and little round corn muffins and I think she has quince jelly--"

She actually managed to get her hysterical guest as far as the shop without further parley. The girl took the cap and the parcels that Felicia handed her, turning her head away when she fancied Miss Susan was eyeing her sharply. They walked around the corner and into the gateway of that unspeakably dirty house. The girl drew back in dismay.

"Oh, it's altogether too dreadful--" she exclaimed. "It's worse than Aunt Seeley's--I can't go in--"

But she did go in and up the stairs too, protesting weakly all the way. She was plainly exhausted from her emotions, and clung to Felicia's arm. And when they were safe in Mademoiselle's room she looked about her wildly. "It's an awful place--" she moaned.

"It's going to be lovely," promised Felicia stoutly, "It used to be lovely. Look here," she drew the girl to the window and pointed out across the gleaming river, "that's what you'll see every night from your windows. You won't be in this little room, you'll be in the big room next, the room that used to be my nursery."

She wheedled the tired girl into eating a bit. She coaxed her to lie on the bed and watch the stars. She did not talk any more, just listened to sobbing breaths that the girl drew--listened as she sat in the wicker chair with Babiche cuddled in her arms. And presently the girl slept. And Felicia sighed and slept too.

Morning was droll and difficult. An enormous bumping and thumping awakened the sleepers. Cramped and dazed from her uncomfortable night in the chair Felicia jumped up startled; drowsy and bewildered in her unaccustomed bed, Dulcie sat up and stared at her.

"Whatever is it?" Dulcie stammered.

Felicia clapped her hands.

"It's the weeds--this is going to be a wonderful, wonderful day, Dulcie, you're going to be so glad--just think! The tailor and the tailor's missus and all of them are going--"

They were not only going, they had already started. All day long the old house groaned under their leave-taking. All day long Felicia chattered to Dulcie of her plans of how they should find where the old furniture had gone and bring it back; of how they should make the whole house lovely.

Dulcie was shy and silent most of the time, her eyes were still red, she was still numb from her nerve-racking day before, still shamed by the fact that this queer little creature had given her her bed and slept in a chair beside her. Late afternoon found the two of them standing in the empty room that had been the nursery. They had been laughing a little over the absurdity of their situation; the tailor's missus had removed the bed and chair from Mademoiselle's room, and they were furnitureless. But Dulcie was waking up mentally after her day of stupor. "Impractical" as her aunt had proclaimed her, she proved the contrary very quickly.

"Steamer chairs," she decided instantly, "I left two steamer chairs and some rugs over on Ella Slocum's back porch--I'll bet we could get a grocery boy to bring them over for us--"

"Only what good will it do?" she tramped about the great room restlessly, "It's no use, Miss Day, you might better have let me quit --you've got troubles enough without bothering with me--"

"Isn't there room enough?" asked Felicia shyly. "Isn't it big enough?"

"It's big enough for the model stand--" she admitted moodily. "It's a good light. I could paint these silly papered walls--" Felicia sighed. Dear old shepherds and shepherdesses! It was not the gathering twilight alone that let them mist away as she looked.

"Are they so silly?" she asked. "I didn't know." But the girl did not answer her.

"It's no use," that moody creature was muttering despondently. "There's space enough but it's no use. I don't seem to want to do it any more--I used to sit and dream about how I'd do it and how it would make other people dream just to look--it wasn't going to be any ordinary Pandora--it was to be a symbol--a symbol of what goes on in your heart when you're young--before you know about life--oh, I can't chitter-chatter about it--but I used to think I could make it--"

"Of course you can make it," Felicia insisted. "Not just now--" she led the girl to the window, "right now, the first thing you'll have to do is to help me in the garden. Doesn't it look ugly down there? It used to be lovely. Probably as soon as it's lovely again you will walk around in it and dream about your Pandora. I used to dream a lot of things in that garden. Some day, while I'm off sewing on my stupid sewing, you'll come dashing upstairs--and begin! Think what fun it will be when I get home that night! I'll call out, 'Where's my sculptor girl?' And you'll call out--'Here, I've begun!'" Felicia waved her hand into the gloom behind them as though Pandora were already mysteriously there. Perhaps she was!

At any rate that was the moment that Felicia won!

The Sculptor Girl laughed, a nervous little laugh, and dashed off to arrange for the steamer chairs. Presently she came back with them and found Felicia had kindled a fire in the Peggoty grate. It was delightfully cosy with two candles burning recklessly on the mantel- shelf and Felicia and Dulcie sitting by the embers of the little fire. They'd had a supper of sandwiches and milk. Babiche was curled at their feet and they were planning excitably what they'd do with the house, when from the depths of the empty hall the old bell shrilled. They'd bolted the doors an hour before when the last of the tailor's tribe had departed. It was the Sculptor Girl who mustered courage to go down.

"It's all right," she called up to Felicia, "it's Miss Sarah from the Exchange. There's a Mr. Alden with her--will you come down?"

He was a very apologetic Mr. Alden.

"I know it's after eight," he said, "but I've had a time finding you. It's Uncle Peter. He's--well, Miss Grant and the doctor think he's pretty bad tonight. He's a notion he wants to play chess with you, he's been asking all day. I couldn't find you till now. Would you come along for an hour or two to pacify him?"

The Sculptor Girl decided for her.

"Babiche and I will wait up for you," she said. "We'll wait--"

It was as comfortable a motor as the Judge's. Little Miss Day let herself rest in its cushions. She felt rather lonely without Babiche, but she was glad she had had her to leave with the Sculptor Girl.

"Maybe the dear old duffer will be asleep when we get there and I can send you right back," Mr. Alden suggested hopefully. "He was so darned good to me when I was a kid that I can't let him miss anything I can get for him--Lord knows that's not much--I thought I could get you right away but I didn't have any name and I couldn't find out where you came from--my wife didn't have your address--"

They entered quietly and were up the stairway quickly. Outside the door he paused, "Just as soon as he is asleep," he whispered, "you come out and let me know--I'll be in the library downstairs with some chaps and I'll phone for the car to come around for you--you're awfully good to come--" he was a bit awkward.

"Uncle Peter" looked no more miserable than, he had the week before when she had met him, save that his eyes burned deeper. His voice was more petulant, he wasted no time in preliminaries, merely ejaculated a grateful,

"Ah! Why didn't you come earlier?"

The nurse sat by her light, reading; the chess board lay on the small table; Uncle Peter was propped in his cushions and the game began.

From below stairs Felicia could hear faint echoes of conversations. She had heard the mistress of the house departing in the same motor that had brought them, but a steady rumble of men's voices and a faint aroma of cigars floated up the stairway. You can't think what exultation it gave her, just having a sense of nearness to sturdy masculinity after a lifetime of invalids and old folks! She liked the spirit of argument that dimly arose, the eager confab--"It's not feasible"--"It couldn't be pulled off"--"Quixotic plan"--"take a mint of money--"

The sheltered sick room was like all her life, but below stairs there were--men! She moved her pawns quietly, watching Uncle Peter's adroit game. She watched too, something else, the light in Uncle Peter's eyes. They sparkled.

The room was impossibly hot yet the old man shivered, just as Grandy shivered, and drew his dressing gown closer. Felicia was very tired from her exciting day. She grew paler and paler; the circles under her eyes grew deeper; her forehead was moist; her hand trembled a bit. But presently she heard.

"Check!" She roused herself, she had been playing badly, he had caught her! But he laughed, a feeble, senile laugh, and leaned back, altogether pleased with himself.

"A drink," he panted and closed his eyes. "Come again, Miss Whadda- you-call-it-"

The nurse's eyes reproached her as she tiptoed out.

A pert maid arose, from the hall chair,

"Mr. Alden said for me to 'phone the garage, that the car would be here for you directly--will you sit down--"

There was a bench on the stair landing below them beside an open window. Felicia gestured toward it, and the maid nodded.

She could hear the voices more clearly now, she could even see two of the speakers through an arched doorway. They were sprawled easily in big chairs, a blue haze of smoke floating over them. One of them was laughing,

"That's all right--we agree with you--we'll go in your wild scheme if you can find some other fools too--only, I say Dud, before you beat it just sing a couple things, will you? You might be gone six months instead of three and that's too long between songs. I know you aren't singing and you haven't any voice and all that, but just a couple to show there's no hard feeling--those things you used to--the one that the darkey boy wrote--that Dunbar chap--'The Sum'--and that other one--"

Others added to the appeal. Some one objected. Felicia caught a brief glimpse of a tall figure, over-coat on arm, the doorway, and a hand pulling him back. But on he came, protesting vibrantly that he never sang any more. He looked up toward the figure on the stairs,

"I believe I'll run up to say Howdy and Good-by to your Uncle Peter--"

One step, two steps he had ascended before she could actually see him. Then with her heart in her eyes she looked to him--he was so tall, so broad shouldered, so superb in his ruddy blondeness!

"Oh, Dudly Hamilt!" her lips moved. But she leaned back against the shadow of the curtains as he drew nearer.

He was so close she could touch him, he was so close that at last he saw her--that is he saw a little drab person whose figure was lost in a caped coat.

"Beg pardon," he murmured--and passed her--

She buried her face in her hands. She was too weak to move. She was still sitting with her face thus hidden when he came down the stairway a moment later, calling back to the invalid,

"You'll be as good as ever when it's summer--"

The others were waiting for him at the foot of the stairway.

"Un-cle Pe-ter-" called Freddie Alden, "ask Dud to sing 'Who Knows' for you." Uncle Peter did.

And so with her pulse racing madly, with her throat so dry it seemed as though she could not breathe, Felicia Day sat and listened, listened with her trembling hand over her mouth to keep her lips from crying out. Listened to the first firm chords as Dudley Hamilt's long fingers moved over the keys, listened as he began to sing. He wasn't using very much voice, just enough to let the melody ring upward to Uncle Peter, round and smooth and inexpressibly caressing. He wasn't singing as though it mattered especially what he sang, indeed at first the phrasing was careless. But presently his voice soared more freely, it grew vibrant with longing.

"Thou art the soul of a summer's day,
Thou art the breath of a rose;
But the summer is fled and the rose is dead;
Where are they gone, who knows, who knows?

"Thou art the blood of my heart of hearts,
Thou art my soul's repose;
But my heart's grown numb and my soul is dumb--"

The song stopped abruptly.

"Sorry. Can't sing it.--'Night, Uncle Peter. 'Night everybody--" A door banged.

"Gad, he's a queer chap! If I had his voice I'd sing--" she caught the fatuous phrases of the man who had laughed but after that she was no longer sure of herself. She could only hear the muffled rise of her own sobbing.

The chauffeur asked a respectful question at the doorway.

"Why, yes," answered Freddie Alden, "the maid 'phoned--wait a minute-- Hullo--" he called. But a second later he was racing upward,

"I say, Miss Grant--this little woman here--she's fainted--"