Little Miss By-The-Day Part 12

He did not wear a white curly wig and he did not wear a black satin gown the way Grandy's father had. Nor were there any scrolls of vellum with fat beribboned seals in this Judge's hands. Instead, alert slender fingers riffled their way rapidly through a ma.s.s of papers that a clerk put before him. Felicia watched the fingers until the close cropped head was lifted and keen gray eyes glanced straight through hers.

The abrupt phrase with which he had intended to dismiss her died. He stared at her curiously. He noted the traveling bag at her feet, the absurd old coat and bonnet, the dark circles under her beseeching eyes--

"She looked," as he explained afterward, "like a daguerreotype--old and youthful all at once, faded yet s.h.i.+ning--most extraordinary little person--"

"You are the Felicia Day mentioned here?" he asked gravely tapping the papers.

Felicia tried to smile. She managed it so far as her eyes were concerned but her lips were too tired. She nodded.

"And have you any other lawyer than Mr. Burrel--the lawyer who has disappeared?"

She nodded again. She spoke to him for the first time, her low contralto, her clear enunciation, her perfect poise of manner, startled him even more than the childlike simplicity--almost absurdity--of her words.

"There's the Portia Person in Temple Bar."

"A woman lawyer?" he was very patient with her.

"No, he's a man. I only thought he was a woman when I was little. I can't quite think of his name but he is in Temple Bar and he came to see Maman and he told me if there was trouble to come to him--I've looked and looked, but I can't find him today."

"I see--" the Justice looked out of the window thoughtfully, "but in the meantime, while you're finding him, don't you think you'd better have some other lawyer? Is there some other one you know about?"

"Maman only had that one."

It was going to be harder than he thought to make her understand. But somehow or other he did it, talking slowly and very gently as though he were talking to a child.

"I'm sorrier than I can tell that you are having this trouble. This house in Montrose Place, Miss Day, has been your own property since you were eighteen years of age. It was formerly the property of your mother--" he consulted the papers, "Octavia Trenton Day. This Mr.

Burrel who had charge of your property has paid neither the taxes on it, nor the interest on some mortgages that he arranged on it, for about seven years back. Can you understand that? And the house has been rented in the meantime to a great many families, it is technically a tenement house. The present trouble is not only about these unpaid taxes and the unpaid interest, but you have violated the Tenement House laws. You have not installed proper fire escapes or plumbing, you have not answered any of the notices that have been sent you. This court had to fix an arbitrary fine--which you have not paid."

"I nevaire do pay things," answered Felicia, greatly bewildered, "you see Mademoiselle D'Ormy did not teach me much about money and Margot only knows a little about money. Grandy paid for things until he fell and now Margot pays for them. But you see Margot gets our money from Mr. Burrel, he has all of our money so I just think--" she ended with a businesslike decision, "you will have to get all that money for the taxes and other things that I owe from the money that he has."

"But that is what I have been trying to explain. This Mr. Burrel has been missing for over three years. This Margot you speak of must have had some other way of getting funds for you."

"Margot hasn't vairee much," Felicia told him, "I can't ask her for anything more. I think Mr. Judge, you'll just have to take my house."

He answered this seemingly absurd suggestion with deliberation.

"These papers show," he explained, "that Mr. Burrel offered your equity in the house to the holder of the mortgage some six months or so before Burrel himself disappeared. But the value of the property in Montrose Place has depreciated to such an extent and the unpaid taxes have piled up so alarmingly that the mortgager refused to agree to that. The only way I can see just now to help you at all is to arrange for a stay of thirty days in this matter of the proceedings against you for the violation of the Tenement House Law together with a thirty day Injunction preventing the sale of the house for unpaid taxes. That will give you thirty days to arrange to pay that fine--which I have made as light as possible but which amounts to fifty dollars." "And the rest of it?" asked Felicia coolly.

He consulted the papers.

"Is eighteen thousand eight hundred and forty-two dollars and seventy- eight cents."

She pulled open the strings of Louisa's beaded purse, she let the money and bills therein slide into a heap on the desk between them.

She frowned at it.

"That's all there is now," she remarked, almost cheerfully, "except some that Margot had to keep for buying sugar and flour and things in the village--" She was so calm that he knew she was utterly unaware of the enormity of the amount. "If I am going to have thirty days more,"

she concluded, "I'm quite sure I can get the rest for you, I'll find the Portia Person, I know, evaire so many lawyers weren't in Temple Bar today. He might be there tomorrow, you know." She nodded confidently. "But that's all I can give you now. You've been vairee good to try to make me understand. I'm rather stupid about it because Mademoiselle did not teach me those things. And Maman arranged for the Portia Person to attend to it." She rose, she cuddled her dog under her arm and stooped for her bag.

He gestured for her to put the bag down, he scooped her small pile of bills and silver into his hand and reached for her reticule and tucked the money in slowly.

"My dear Miss Day," he stammered, "if you do not find this--er-- lawyer, you mention, a lawyer will be a.s.signed by the court to attend to things, and you would have to make your payments through him. In the meantime--" he put the purse in her hand. "I am more sorry than I can tell you that I have had to fix this fine--it is purely arbitrary --I am very sorry--"

"Of course you would be," said Felicia slowly, her clear eyes looking at him without malice and without scorn. "You must be sorry a great deal of the time, aren't you? You couldn't be really happy making so many people unhappy as I've watched go to talk with you today--they looked vairee unhappy."

The gentle unfairness of her rebuke was most disconcerting.

"Perhaps I make some of them happy," he protested.

She shook her head.

"I didn't see a happy one," she answered simply.

An odd feeling that he wanted her to think well of him worried him.

Why he should have cared what this bedraggled, bankrupt little creature thought he did not fathom, perhaps it was just that she looked so helpless and so old that his heart smote him. Awkward as a boy he stared out through the bedrizzled windowpane into the spring rain.

"I hope you won't think I'm impertinent," he suggested suddenly, "but I believe you said you arrived from out of town this morning and came directly here. Have you some friend to whom you are going?"

From beneath Louisa's ridiculous old bonnet her hair scraggled untidily, her pallor accentuated the dark circles under her drooping eyelids. Yet when she looked up at him, the glory in those tired eyes surprised him.

"I'm going,"--oh, how she wanted to say "to Dudley Hamilt"! It took all her reserve to finish her sentence calmly! "To eighteen Columbia Heights."

"That's not far," he felt an inexpressible relief that she had somewhere to go, "I'm not quite ready to go home myself, but my car is waiting for me. Suppose we have one of these boys take your bag down for you and that you let my chauffeur drive you to Columbia Heights while he is waiting for me--I should be very glad if you would--"

She did not answer him until he opened the door for her. When she looked up at him he was fairly startled by her wide ingenuous smile.

"I was just pretending," she said clearly, "that I had my ox-cart so that I wouldn't have to walk to find Columbia Heights--I was just thinking how delightful it would be if I did for I'm afraid--as afraid as Margot is of a bat--of all of the things in the street--you are indeed kind--" ah, the stilted phrases with which Mademoiselle had instructed her so many years ago!--"to suggest a drive for me--"

He went back to his papers positively chuckling.

"She's refres.h.i.+ngly different," he thought. "Refres.h.i.+ngly different."

But he sighed as he handed the papers to the clerk. The whole case seemed a hopeless tangle. And now that she was gone Felicia herself seemed absolutely unreal. He rubbed his eyes and plunged into the next thing.

But Felicia, resting comfortably on the wide seat of the judge's car shut her tired eyes and let her head sink against the cus.h.i.+ons. Her heart was racing faster than this swiftly moving motor, she felt as though she could not breathe.

They came to a slow halt before a pile of bricks and mortar. Above them loomed a huge unfinished apartment house, from which were tramping forth the home-going laborers. The smell of the wet lime as they tracked across the rather narrow street was over-powering. The chauffeur opened the door and spoke to her respectfully.

"There must be some mistake in your address, Madam, this is eighteen Columbia Heights." She was overwhelmed, she could think nothing whatever to say to him. He came to the rescue himself with a quiet, "Perhaps if you have the name of the person you wanted to see--"

"It's Dudley Hamilt."

There was a drug store on the opposite corner. He disappeared within its door and it was several minutes before he came back. This time he had a definite word.

"The druggist says that the Hamilt house stood where this apartment is being built, Madam. He says he understands that the elder Mr. Hamilt is dead but that the younger one has an office somewhere in Manhattan.

Perhaps you could speak with him on the telephone--"

Speak with him! Her face glowed with sudden color.

"How nice of you!" she rose obediently to follow him, putting Bab.i.+.c.he carefully on the cus.h.i.+oned seat. "Will you tell the druggist that I'd like to?"