CHAPTER VII

For half an hour longer Carmencita chatted gaily, offering dish after dish of imaginary food with the a.s.surance that it would cause no sickness or discomfort, and at the child's spirit and imagination Van Landing marveled. The years of ignorance and indifference, in which he had not cared to know what Frances knew all men should know, came back disquietingly, and he wondered if for him it were too late.

As Carmencita got up to clear the table he took out his watch and looked at it, then put it quickly back lest she should see. Who was going to take the note? Why couldn't he go to the place at which was held the cla.s.s of Little Big Sisters and get Frances? With a quick indrawing breath he handed his host cigars.

"I hope you smoke," he said; "that is, if Carmencita does not object."

"Oh, I don't object. Smoke!" Carmencita's hand was waved. "After I wash the dishes I'll write the note, then I'll go down and get Noodles to take it. I'll ask Mr. Robinsky to bring the harp up, Father. He brought it home for us; he's a flute-er." The explanation was made to Van Landing. "He always brings it home when Father and I are going somewhere else. Smoke, please. I love to smell smoke smell."

With a splash the remaining water in the tea-kettle was poured in the dish-pan, and for a few moments the clatter of knives and forks and spoons prevented talk. Over the blind man's face crept the content that comes from a good cigar, and in silence he and his guest smoked while Carmencita did her work. Not long was there silence, however, for very shortly the child was on a stool at Van Landing's feet, in her hands a pad of paper, and on her knee a backless magazine.

For half a minute she looked in Van Landing's face. "Isn't it nice and funny--your being here? I like you." Her voice was joyous. "If I tell you something, you won't tell?" She leaned forward, hands on his knees. "This afternoon before I went out I asked G.o.d please to let something nice happen. There hasn't anything very nice happened for so long, I was afraid He had forgot. What must I write, Mr. Van?"

Into Van Landing's face the color surged, then died away and left it strangely white. The child's eyes were holding his, and he did not try to avoid them. It didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was to get Frances quickly.

"Tell her I must see her to-night, that I must come to her. Why can't I go to her, Carmencita?"

"Because she doesn't want anybody to come to see her that she doesn't tell to come. She told me so herself, and I wouldn't break her rules for a gold ring with a ruby in it. I know. I'll tell her I'm bound to show her something to-night or I won't sleep a wink. And you'll be _It_! You can go in Father's room, and when she comes in you will come out and say--What will you say, Mr. Van?"

"I don't know. Perhaps I sha'n't say anything. Sometimes one can't."

"I'll look in that book I read once and see what he said, if you want me to. It was a beautiful book. It had an awful lot of love in it. I know what I'm going to write."

For some moments she wrote laboriously on the pad, which wabbled badly on her knees, then she folded the piece of paper and, getting up, went toward the door. Van Landing followed her.

"The boy," he said. "Will you give him this and tell him if the note is delivered to Miss Barbour personally there will be more when he comes back?" He held out his hand.

As if not seeing aright, Carmencita looked closely at what was held toward her, then up in Van Landing's face. "You must have plenty of money, if you haven't any friends," she said, and in her voice was faint suspicion. "Noodles can't have that. He'd never go anywhere for me again if he got that much." Her hand waved his away. "When he comes back, if you'll give him a quarter he'll stand on his head. It's hard and hollow, and he makes right smart standing on it and wriggling his feet." She shook her head. "It would ruin him to give him a dollar.

Please read to Father."

Her visitor's face flushed. Why couldn't he remember? "Very well," he said; "manage it your way. Tell him to hurry, will you?'"

Would she come? With his lips Stephen Van Landing was p.r.o.nouncing the words of the article he had again begun to read to the blind harpist, but in his heart, which was beating thickly, other words were surging, and every now and then he wiped his forehead lest its dampness be seen by the child's keen eyes. Would she come? Three years had pa.s.sed since senseless selfishness on his part had made her spirit flare and she had given him back his ring. For a moment he had held it, and in the dancing flames of the logs upon the hearth in the library of her beautiful old-fashioned home its stones had gleamed brilliantly, flashed protesting fire; then he had dropped it in the blaze and turned and left the room. Had she forgotten, or had she suffered, too?

With mechanical monotony the words continued to come from his lips, but his thoughts were afar off, and presently Carmencita took the magazine out of his hand.

"Excuse me," she said, "but Father is asleep, and you don't know a word you're saying. You might as well stop."

Putting the magazine on the table, Carmencita drew the stool on which she was sitting closer to Van Landing's chair, and, hands clasped around her knees, looked up into his eyes. In hers was puzzled questioning.

"I beg your pardon." His face flushed under the grave scrutiny bent upon him. "I was reading abominably, but I couldn't get my mind--"

"I know," Carmencita nodded understandingly. "I do that way sometimes when I'm saying one thing and thinking another, and Father always takes a little nap until I get out of the clouds. He says I spend a lot of my time in the clouds. I'm bound to soar sometimes. If I didn't make out I wasn't really and truly living here, on the top floor, with the Rheinhimers underneath, but just waiting for our house to be fixed up, I couldn't stand it all the time. I'd go--"

She hesitated, then again went on. "You see, it's this way. There 're a lot of things I hate, but I've got to stand them, and the only way I can do it is to get away from them in my mind sometimes. Father says it's the way we stand things that proves the kind of person we are; but Father is Father, and I am me, and letting out is a great relief.

Did you ever feel as if you're bound to say things sometimes?"

"I'm afraid I've not only felt I had to say them, but I said them."

Van Landing looked at his watch. "Your Father is doubtless right, but--"

"Noodles hasn't had time to get back yet, and she might not be there." Carmencita glanced toward the clock. "And Father is always right. He's had to sit so many hours alone and think and think and think, that he's had time to ask G.o.d about a good many things we don't take time to ask about. I pray a lot, but my kind of prayers isn't praying. They're mostly asking, and Father says prayer is receiving--is getting G.o.d in you, I mean. I don't understand, but he does, and he doesn't ask for things like I do, but for patience and courage and--and things like that. No matter what happens, he keeps on trusting. I don't. I'm not much of a truster. I want to do things my way, myself." She leaned forward. "If I tell you something will you promise not to tell anybody, not even Miss Frances when--when it's all right?"

"I promise."

Van Landing nodded at the eager little face upraised to his. It was singularly attractive and appealing, and the varying emotions that swept over it indicated a temperament that took little in life calmly, or as a commonplace happening, and a surge of protest at her surroundings swept over him.

"I promise," he repeated. "I won't tell."

"Cross your heart and shut your eyes and I will tell you."

Hands on his knees, Carmencita watched the awkward movements of Van Landing's fingers, then she laughed joyously, but when she spoke her voice was in a whisper.

"I'm writing a book."

"You are doing what?"

"Writing a book! It's perfectly grand. That is, some days it is, but most days it is a mess. It was a mess yesterday, and I burned up every single word I wrote last week. I'll show it to you if you want to see it."

Without waiting for an answer Carmencita sprang to her feet, and with noiseless movement skipped across the room, and from the middle drawer of the chest between the windows took out a large flat box.

"This is it." Again taking her seat on the stool at Van Landing's feet, she opened the box carefully. One by one she lifted out of it pieces of paper of varying size and color and held them toward her visitor, who, hands clasped between knees, was bending forward and watching with amazed interest the seemingly exhaustless contents of the box beside him.

"I use pad-paper when I have it." Several white sheets were laid in a pile by themselves. "But most of the chapters are on wrapping-paper.

Mrs. Beckwith gives me all of hers, and so does Mrs. Rheinhimer when her children don't chew it up before she can save it. That's chapter fourteen. I don't like it much, it's so squshy, but I wrote it that way because I read in a newspaper once that slops sold better than anything else, and I'm writing this to sell, if I can."

"Have you named it?" Van Landing's voice was as serious as Carmencita's. "I've been told that a good t.i.tle is a great help to a book. I hope yours will bring you a good deal of money, but--"

"So do I." Carmencita's hands came together fervently. "I'm bound to make some money, and this is the only way I can think of until I'm fourteen and can go to work. I'm just thirteen and two months, and I can't go yet. The law won't let me. I used to think it took a lot of sense to write a book, but the Damanarkist says it don't, and that anybody who is fool enough to waste time could write the truck people read nowadays. He don't read it, but I do, all I can get--I like it."

"I've never tried to write." Van Landing again glanced at the clock.

Noodles was staying an interminably long time. "Like you, I imagined it took some measure of ability--"

"Oh, but it don't. I mean it doesn't take any to write things like that." Carmencita's finger pointed to several backless magazines and a couple of paper-bound books on the table behind her. "I read once that people like to read things that make them laugh and cry and--and forget about the rent money, and tell all about love-dovies and villains and beautiful maidens, and my book's got some of all those kinds of things in it. It hasn't got any--What did you say you thought it took to write a book?"

"Ability--that is, a little of it."

"I guess that depends on the kind of book it is. I put something of everything I could think of in mine, but I didn't put any ability in.

I didn't have any to put, and, besides, I wanted it to sell. That's the chapter I love best." A large piece of brown paper was waved in the air. "It's the one in which the Princess Patricia gets ready to die because she hears her sweetheart making love to some one else, and then she comes to her senses and makes him marry the other girl so they can live miserable ever after, and the Princess goes about doing good like Miss Frances. But I'm going to marry her to somebody before I'm through--I'm--"

"You believe in marriage, then." Van Landing smiled, and, stooping, picked up several sheets of paper evidently torn from a blank-book.

"This must be the courtship chapter. It seems rather sentimental."

"It is. Regular mush slush. It's the kind of courting a man who isn't much does--that is, I guess it's the kind, but the Princess understands. She's been fooled once. Tell me"--Carmencita leaned forward and, arms again crossed on Van Landing's knees, looked anxiously in his face--"what does a man say when he's really and truly courting? I mean a nice man. When the Real one comes, the Right one--what will he say? I'm just about there, and I don't know how to go on."

"I wish I could tell you." Van Landing leaned back in his chair and, taking out his watch again, looked at it. "I shouldn't dare to try to write a novel, consequently--"

"I'll try anything while I'm waiting to go to work." Carmencita sat back dejectedly. "Is a book a novel because it has love in it?"