Little Miss By-The-Day Part 2

It almost made up for not being allowed to go out of the garden.

If Felice only could have been allowed to go around into the Tradespersons' Street just once! I wish she could have gone--just once! On one of the days when the swinging sign, that was gilded and painted so beautifully, was hung outside to announce

"KING CHARLES AND BLENHEIM SPANIELS For sale within."

I'm sure she would have loved the line of carriages waiting in the cobble-stoned alley when the fine ladies came to buy. I think she would have clapped her hands at the gay boxes of geraniums and the crisp white curtains in Marthy's s.h.i.+ning windows over the stable door.

But she could only stay in the garden with the thin visaged old French woman who taught her to read and to write and to embroider and to play upon an old lute and to curtsy and to dance. One thing she learned that the French woman did not teach her--to whistle! She remembers answering the sea-gulls who mewed outside in the harbor and the sparrows who twittered in the ivy and the tiny pair of love-birds who dwelt in a cage at her mother's bedroom window. She learned to whistle without distorting her lips because her grandfather had forbidden her to whistle and if she held her mouth almost normal he couldn't tell when he looked out into the garden whether it was Felice or the birds who were twittering.

Her first memories of her mother were extremely vague. She remembers she was pretty and smiling and that most of the time she lay in a "sleighback" bed and that in the morning she would say,

"Go out into the garden and be happy," and that at twilight she would say, "You look as though you had been very happy in the garden--"

Sometimes Maman wasn't awake when Felicia came in from her long day in the garden. And the little girl always knew if her mother's door were closed that she must tiptoe softly so as not to disturb her. There was a reward for being quiet. In the niche of the stairway Felice would find a good-night gift--sometimes a cooky in a small basket or an apple or a flower,--something to make a little girl smile even if her mother was too tired or too ill to say good-night. She never clambered past the other niches that she didn't whimsically wish there was a Maman on every floor to leave something outside for her. So after a time the canny child began leaving things for herself, tucked slyly back where the housemaids wouldn't find them. She used to hide her silver mug with water at the very top stair because she was so thirsty from the climb.

She was always happy in Maman's room and in the garden but she had many unhappy times in that nursery. It was at the very top of the back of the house. From the barred windows under the carved brownstone copings she could peer out at the s.h.i.+ps in the harbor and the s.h.i.+ning green of Battery Park. The nursery had a fireplace just opposite the door that connected with the tiny room in which the old French woman slept. Both these rooms had been decorated with a landscape paper peopled with Watteau shepherds and shepherdesses and oft-repeated methodical groups of lambs. On the cold mornings she was bathed beside the fire--which she very much hated--and once when she was especially angry at the sharp dash of the bath sponge against her thin shoulders she clutched at the flabby dripping thing with all her might and sent it hurtling through the doorway where it splashed against the side wall of the tiny room and smudged out the flock of a simpering shepherdess. And instead of being sorry that she had obliterated the paper lambs she remembers shaking her fist at the discolored spot and shrieking "Nevaire come back, nevaire!"

Mademoiselle D'Ormy made her tell Maman. Mademoiselle's disapproval made it seem an admirable crime until Maman said ever se gently,

"I'm sorry you were unhappy!"

"_I was happy_," persisted Felicia, "I was proud, proud, proud when I threw it!"

"But you made Mademoiselle unhappy and you've made me unhappy--and you can't be truly happy, Felicia, when you're making some one else unhappy--"

Felicia discovered that she couldn't. Not with Maman's gentle eyes looking into hers, so she threw herself on her knees and kissed her mother's hand. Just as she had seen her grandfather kiss it.

"Let's pretend!" she whispered, "Let's pretend I didn't do it! Now let's pretend I'm Grandy!"

Pretending she was her Grandfather Trenton was one of their most delicious games. She would tap on the door, delicately, and ask in mincing imitation of the French woman,

"Madame, will you see ze Major?" Then, with great dignity she would advance to the bedside.

"Ah! Octavia!" she would say, eloquently, "How charming you look to- day!"

For that was what Grandy always said when he came into the room to see Maman.

You'd have liked Major Trenton. You'd have liked him a lot. But you could have liked him more if he'd been a little kinder to Felice. For by one of those strange, unexplained twists of human nature this fine gentleman, who was so tolerant with his uncouth servants and so admirably gentle with his wee dogs, was unconsciously cruel to the small grand-daughter who so adored him. She adored his immaculate neatness, the ruddy pinkness of his skin; she loved his wavy white hair and the deep sparkle of his dark eyes. She saw nothing droll about the peaked felt hat and long black coat that he persisted in wearing, or about the ruffled s.h.i.+rt, with its absurd flaring collar and black satin stock. She even loved the empty coat sleeve pinned inside his breast pocket. She thought him the most beautiful human in the whole world. She lived in constant dread of what Grandy would or would not be pleased to have her do. And though she was unaware of it, her everyday behavior was exactly what that silent man had so ordered.

She did not know there was a G.o.d because the Major was an atheist--who out-Ingersolled Robert G. in the violence of his denial of deity. She did not know there was a world of reality outside the garden because he did not choose to have her mingle with that world. She was not taught French because he vowed he hated France and the French and all their ways. She was taught to curtsy and to dance because it pleased him to have a woman walk well and he believed dancing kept the figure supple. She was taught needlework because he thought it seemly for a woman to sew and he liked the line of the head and neck bent over an embroidery frame. She was taught to knit because he remembered that his mother had told him that delicate finger tips were daintily polished by an hour's knitting a day. He was--though he wouldn't have admitted it--proud of her slender hands--they looked exactly as his wife's had looked. It was the only trait she had inherited from that particular ancestor and he had been inordinately vain of his wife's hands. Mademoiselle had been ordered never to let the child "spread her hand by opening door k.n.o.bs or touching the fire-stones--or--er-- any clumsy thing--" and it was droll to see the little girl, digging in her bit of garden with those lovely hands incased in long flopping cotton gloves--not to forget the broad sunbonnet that shaded her earnest little face. In short, he was jealous of her complexion and her manners--But beyond that and the desire that she absolutely efface herself, he did not concern himself with his granddaughter.

It was really her mother's gentle tact that fostered love for the stern old man. While Felice was still young, Octavia began to teach her child pride of race. The pretty invalid was pathetically eager to have Felice impressed with the dignity of Major Trenton's family.

"If you look over the dining-room fireplace you can see how fine his father was--"

So the child stared up the stately panelled wall at the gloomy old portrait of Judge Trenton with his much curled wig and black satin gown and the stiff scroll of vellum with fat be-ribboned seals attached and asked naively,

"If your father was a judge-man why aren't we judge-mens?" Grandy laughed his short, hard laugh.

"Oh, because we've gone straight to the dogs--and very small bow-wows at that--"

It was about this time that Octavia began to teach Felice to play chess. The child hated it. It must have taken a sort of magnificent patience to teach her. For a long time no one save Mademoiselle D'Ormy had known what a struggle it meant for that gay little invalid to make herself lovely for that afternoon hour over the chess board. Yet, when the Major entered he would always find his daughter smiling from her heap of gay rose-colored cus.h.i.+ons, her thin hair curled prettily under her lace cap and her hand extended for his courteous kiss. They were almost shyly formal with each other, those two, while Mademoiselle D'Ormy screwed the tilt table into place and brought the ebony box of carved chess men. It was leaning forward to move the men that took so much strength. Octavia was too proud to admit how weak she was growing. So she coaxed her small daughter,

"It will be a little stupid at first, Cherie, but we will try to make it go--and think what fun it will be that day when we tell the Major, 'It is Felice and not stupid old Octavia who is going to play with you.' First you shall learn where to move the pieces and how to tell me what Grandy has moved--then, we shall tie a handkerchief over my eyes--as we do when you and I play hide the thimble--my hands shall not touch the men at all. I shall say 'p.a.w.n to Queen's Rook's square'

and you shall put this little man here--this is the Queen's Rook's square--" It must have been the oddest game in the world, really, between that stern old man and the blindfolded invalid and the grave little girl who was learning to play. Of course it was easier for Octavia--she didn't have to move her hands or keep her eyes open. She could lie lower on the pillows--she smiled--a wavering smile when her father's triumphant "Check!" would ring out.

"Alas, Felice!" she would murmur gaily, "are we not stupid! Together we can't checkmate him--" They talked a great deal about chess. And how you can't expect to do so much with p.a.w.ns and how you mustn't mind if you lose them. But how carefully you must guard the queen--or else you'll lose your king--and how if "You just learn a little day by day soon you'll have a gambit," and how "even if you don't care much about doing the silly game, you like it because you know that it gives Grandy much happiness."

It was in those days that Felice learned that not only must she keep very happy herself but she must keep other people happy.

"It's not easy," Octavia a.s.sured her, "but it's rather amusing. It's a game too. You see some one who is tired or cross or worried and you think 'This isn't pleasant for him or for me!' Then you think of something that may distract the tiredness or the worry--maybe you play softly on the lute--maybe you suggest chess--maybe you tell something very droll that happened in the garden or the kennel--he doesn't suspect why you're telling him, at first he scarcely seems to hear you and then--when he does stop thinking about the unpleasantness--he smiles!--Watch Grandfather when he says 'Check!' and you will see what I mean--"

One comfort was, Felice didn't have to play chess all of the days.

Never on the days when Certain Legal Matters came. Then Grandfather disappeared into the gloomy depths of the library and from the garden Felice could hear the disagreeable grumble of the burly lawyer as he consulted with his extraordinary old client.

"Absolutely no! Absolutely no!" her grandfather's voice would ring out, "I tell you I will not! A man who takes a pension for doing his duty to his country is despicable! And as for the other matter--I do not have to touch anything that was my wife's! I do not approve of the manner whereby she obtained that income--if Octavia wishes it, that is a different matter--it can be kept for the child if Octavia chooses to look at the matter that way--but for myself I will not touch it! I do not require it--I will not touch it--it was a bad business--There is nothing quixotic about my refusal, nothing whatever, sir! We differ absolutely on that point, as we do on most others!"

Felicia heard that speech so often that she could almost have recited it, she heard it nearly every time that Certain Legal Matters appeared, he always put the Major in a temper. Grandy couldn't get himself sufficiently calm for chess on such days.

Nor did she play chess on the days when the Wheezy came to sew.

The advent of the Wheezy was an enormous affair in Felice's life. It was one of the first times that the child was taken outside of the house or the garden--that bl.u.s.tery March day when she and Mademoiselle walked around the corner to a small house in whose bas.e.m.e.nt window rested a sign, WOMAN'S EXCHANGE AND EMPLOYMENT AGENCY. A tiny bell jingled as they entered and from behind the curtains at the rear emerged a little woman whose face looked like the walnuts that were served with grandpapa's wine, very disagreeable indeed. Felice always spoke of her as The Disagreeable Walnut. It was in this shop that she saw her first doll, a ridiculous fat affair constructed of a hank of cotton with shoe b.u.t.tons for eyes and a red silk embroidered mouth and an enormous braid of string for hair. And it was while she was rapturously contemplating it that she heard the wizened proprietor say, "Do you wish to have the work done by the job or by the day?" Then the Disagreeable Walnut pompously consulted a huge dusty ledger from which she decided that a certain Miss Pease would suit their requirements.

"Two dollars a day and lunch," she informed them curtly and that was the way that Wheezy came into Felicia's life.

Short, fat, asthmatic and crotchety, she grumbled incessantly because there wasn't anything so modern as a sewing machine in the house and said that for her part she didn't see how people thought they could get along on nothing except what had done for their ancestors, that she certainly couldn't.

"Haven't you any ancestors?" Felice asked her eagerly. The Wheezy snorted.

"Of course. And they have been poor but they were honest," she added deeply.

Which Felice repeated gravely to Grandy in the garden and added eagerly, "Were our ancestors poor but honest?"

He smiled grimly.

"I shouldn't say," he answered her curtly, "that they were either conspicuously poor or conspicuously honest."

The Wheezy not only remodeled ancient dresses into stiff pinafores for Felice but she had to make the cus.h.i.+ons that fitted in the dog hampers, down-stuffed oval affairs covered with heavy dull blue silk.

The Wheezy sputtered that she couldn't see why "under the s.h.i.+ning heavens, dogs should sleep on things traipsed out like comp'ny bedroom pin-cus.h.i.+ons with letters tied onto their collars--"

Which so puzzled Felice that on one of those furtive occasions when she managed a few words with Zeb she demanded an answer. Zeb slapped his sides and chuckled.

"Because, Missy, putting on the frills and writing out the pedigree in French like he does makes folks pay jes' about twict as much for those dogs--"

Which was very bewildering, for Felice had not the remotest idea in this world what to pay for anything meant. How could she?

There was one very vivid recollection of Octavia. The recollection of the only time that the child remembered seeing her mother in a chair.

How this miracle was accomplished only Octavia and Mademoiselle D'Ormy could have told, but on a certain day in a chair she was and the heavy rose silk curtains were drawn before the bed alcove and the room was gay with flowers and a ruddy fire glowed in the iron grate under the carved white mantlepiece. Felice sat adoringly on a footstool at her feet and they talked a great deal about a time when Maman should not only sit in a chair but should walk. It seemed that Octavia hoped to take her daughter to a place she referred to rather vaguely as The House in the Woods. Octavia had lived in this house in the woods when she was a girl and she was very much worried about what might have happened to the garden of that house. She thought that she and Felice ought to make it lovely again--if Piqueur were only still strong enough to help them. But before Felice had had time to find out just who Piqueur was, Mademoiselle had ushered in a curly-haired young man who carried a portfolio exactly like the one that Certain Legal Matters carried. And it was while Mademoiselle was taking Felice back to the garden that she heard her mother say,

"You must be patient with the silly fears of a woman who mistrusts all lawyers--these deeds are duplicates of those that another--"