CHAPTER IV

THE UNFINISHED SONG

You can't imagine anything more amusing than the satisfaction with which Felicia Day awoke. The early sun was streaming in her eyes. She rubbed them drowsily and sat up in the middle of the narrow humpy bed.

At the foot of the bed Babiche awoke too, yawning and stretching beautifully, reflexing her droll puppy body and wagging her wee feathery tail.

On the floor the russet bag gaped open where Felicia had dumped it the night before; her clothes lay in a limp heap beside the window. But the clear spring air, deliciously salty smelling to the woman who had been living inland so long, made her breathe deeply.

"Ah! Babiche!" she murmured, smiling at the smudgy spot on the wall, "What a naughty child I used to be!" She had a naive pride in this evidence of her early wickedness. But a moment later she was frowning, her eyes fixed on the grimy woodwork.

"What unspeakably lazy servants I must have! I shall send them away at once! Just as soon as that woman has brought my breakfast I shall say to her,

"'You are an abom-in-able housekeeper, pack your bags and go!'"

She had heard Mademoiselle D'Ormy send a servant away once. It gave a splendid sense of superiority to think that she was going to do it herself this time. She pulled her travel-stiff body over the edge of the bed, and grimacing as she swung her pavement-sore feet to the floor, she wrapped the lovely old dressing-gown about her and opened the door into the hall. She could not think of any other way in which to summon a servant whose name she did not know and so she whistled clearly as she sometimes did when she wanted to call Bele from the farther end of the orchard.

The house seemed filled with sounds, mutterings, babblings, little cries, the heavy whirr of the sewing machines, the splintering clatter of Tony, who was chopping his wares by the bas.e.m.e.nt door--it seemed impregnated with odors, smudgy, burning, unsavory, smoky smells. She whistled again.

An unkempt head, a man's head, was thrust from the nursery door, in the quick glance with which she looked at him and beyond him she seemed to see a score of persons. There were not really so many of them, merely a slovenly woman who was pedaling the sewing machine with a baby tumbling at her feet, an eight-year-old who sat on the window ledge pulling bastings while a half-grown girl cooked something on a stove that had been propped in front of the fireplace.

Zeb's phrase--"filthy dirty heathen" trembled on Felicia's lips, her eyes burned hotly. She grew furiously angry. Her breast was heaving, her bare foot tapped impatiently on the chilly floor, but the man slammed the door before she could speak.

She stepped resolutely into the hall, she whistled again, this time imperiously.

No one answered.

She crossed to the bathroom beside the nursery. She was grimly determined now, she would bathe herself and dress and go down to the kitchen and speak at once to the servant. The bathroom door was slightly open but the skylight was so dusty that she could scarcely see. She put down her hand to turn the faucet and drew back in dismay.

Her tub was already filled--with coal!

And behind her a voice e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed,

"You no taka mine fires! Get out!"

Felicia did "get out," speeding so recklessly back to Mademoiselle's old room that she was breathless as she shut the door behind her and leaned against it laughing weakly.

"Oh! Oh! I know it is all a dream! It's too ridiculous to be true!"

She found enough water in a pitcher on the table to bathe her face.

She sat on the edge of the bed thinking hard as she brushed her hair.

"It is not a dream"--she shuddered, "The back yard is real--even with all the rubbish there, the back yard is real! The gate is there--the first thing I shall make them clean will be the back yard--after all, it won't be so difficult as my garden in the woods. I shall not have to wait to find the pattern, I know exactly how it all belongs. And I know that about this whole house. I shall"--she grew more determined, "make it all as it was before. First I shall put all these filthy dirty heathen out--it will be exactly like making the garden--only I shall have people pulled out instead of weeds--they are all like weeds, these filthy dirty people--I am not afraid of weeds."

But all the same, when she was dressed and had begun the perilous journey downward, she found herself very much afraid of the "weeds"

that she encountered on her way to the tailor's missus.

Nor did she issue victoriously as she had planned from her attempt to send the tailor's missus away.

The tailor's missus stood her ground stoutly, she even forced Felicia to give her three dollars for room rent from Louisa's purse; the woman's awe of the night before had departed, she moaned strange things about her children's starving, she reiterated her absolute lack of belief that Felicia owned the house, she laughed toothlessly over such a thing being possible.

"You tell that to Mister Grady," she scoffed, "Mr. Grady, he is goin'

to buy this house, comes the auction next Tuesday--"

Mr. Grady, Felicia discovered, was the rent collector; this fact at last was something to seize upon. If he was the rent collector and it was her house, certainly she could go and collect from him. She learned that he lived across the street, a grimy finger indicated where and she set forth valiantly.

Breakfastless, almost moneyless, her chin in the air, she marched across the street and faced the redoubtable Mr. Grady. He wasn't a bad sort at all, though it was quite evident that he, like the tailor's missus, hadn't the slightest idea that she really owned her house. He rubbed his stubby, sandy chin and hitched his shirt sleeve garter higher,

"I hain't collecting for myself," he a.s.sured her, "I only collects for the receiver for the estate--you can see 'im if you like--he's up in th' Temple Bar buildin'." He was so good as to jot down the number of the room for her. She thanked him and departed, leaving him staring after her, scratching his chin more violently than ever.

By noon she stood quietly outside Judge Harlow's door. She presented herself without parley. There was a calm determination about her that reminded him somehow of a fanatic with a great cause. And yet there was a mirthful twinkle in her eyes.

"It's been droll," she began, "I have been trying all day to make persons understand that it's my house. I can't make anybody believe me, not the tailor's missus, nor the rent collector nor the 'receiver for the estate,'" her drawling imitation of the redoubtable Mr. Grady made the Justice smile.

"Oh, you've talked with that scamp, have you?" he flung the door open and pulled out a chair for her.

"I've talked with a great many--scamps"--she caught at new words as delightedly as though they had been new flowers, and he laughed again.

She was too absurd, this grotesquely garbed old maid! "I haven't found the Portia Person--" a note of gravity crept into her voice again, "but I'm going to do without him--I have a plan"--she leaned forward excitedly, "I thought it out--it's as good as the pattern of the garden--the reason you have to make me pay fifty dollars for-- violating that Tenement Law is because there are too many persons in my house, isn't that it?"

He nodded.

"Then," she decided triumphantly, "it's quite simple. We must just put them out!"

"Miss Daniel come to judgment!" he congratulated her.

They talked quite seriously then. The matter of identification was not really droll, for there was literally no one to vouch for Felicia Day.

He found it difficult to explain to her that while he did not in the least doubt her a.s.sertion that she was Felicia Day she would have to prove, legally, that she was.

If the "receiver for the estate" could find any of the papers that Felicia had signed for Mr. Burrel of course her signature would help, (he called a stenographer and wrote for a letter from the country doctor,) he explained regretfully that until she could prove that she was the person she claimed to be she could not actually take possession of the house.

"Then you can't 'actually' make me pay anything--those fines or taxes, until you prove that I'm the person who owes them--" She came back at him so quickly that she took his breath away.

"Again Miss Daniel comes to judgment!" he teased her. She put him in an extraordinary good humor with her alertness. Her persistence and her indomitable courage were such futile weapons against the armor of the law that they seemed pathetic, but her droll faith in herself and her absurd comments about the persons with whom she had been talking made him want to laugh as one laughs at a precocious child.

She left as abruptly as she had come, tucking Babiche under her arm in a deliciously matter-of-fact way.

"Good morning, Miss Day," he called after her.

She paused, she blushed furiously, she had forgotten Mademoiselle's manners. But she made up for it. She dropped him the most amusing curtsy with an upward glance like that of the one-eyed scrub woman who had been cleaning the corridor.

"Good marnin', yer Honor!" she groaned exactly like that rheumatic soul. He laughed silently, his head thrown back on his shoulders. How could he know that she couldn't help "pretending" that she was everybody she listened to!

"And she looks like a little old tramp," he recounted at luncheon to a friend, "Most extraordinary person, one minute she puts a lump in your throat--you're so sorry for her you could curse, and the next--Lordy!

the next minute you wonder at her impertinence--it's not exactly impertinence either,--it's absolute frankness."

"No manners, eh?" suggested his friend.