Little Miss By-The-Day Part 21

"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 cus.h.i.+ons 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 st.u.r.dy 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 p.a.w.ns 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 s.h.i.+vered, just as Grandy s.h.i.+vered, 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 pa.s.sed 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 m.u.f.fled 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--"

CHAPTER V

"CERTAIN LEGAL MATTERS"

Of Janet MacGregor and why she couldn't abide Mrs. Freddie Alden the Poetry Girl once said epics could have been written. Janet was gaunt and wiry, the relict of the late Jock MacGregor, who had cared for Uncle Peter Alden's horses for a lifetime and died leaving his savings and a bit of life insurance to Janet, together with an admonition to "keep an eye on Mr. Peter."

Janet did. She dropped into the Alden kitchen frequently of an evening to glean a melancholy satisfaction from the morbid details of Uncle Peter's lingering betwixt life and death. Whenever--which was frequent--there was an upheaval in the Alden's domestic arrangements, Janet filled in the gaps, spoke her mind freely to Mrs. Freddie, secure in the knowledge that Mrs. Freddie wouldn't talk back until a new cook arrived, and usually departed in a wholesome rage--which didn't at all deter her from accepting Mr. Freddie's sizable peace offering.

To see her "was.h.i.+ng oop" after dinner on an evening when she was about to depart FOREVER--or anyhow until Mr. Freddie came for her again--was a tremendous sight. Especially on an evening when at the highest moment of her justifiable wrath Mr. Freddie would appear and nonchalantly suggest a "few eats for some chaps who'd dropped in" as casually as though Janet were not already on the verge of explosion.

Of course she would prepare the lunch, stabbing the bread-saw viciously into the defenseless loaf and muttering dark things as she a.s.sembled something she called "old doves" on a big Sheffield platter.

Janet couldn't cook at all but she could arrange things as beautifully as her ancestors did--and they had been a race of public park gardeners! There wasn't anything she couldn't do with some parsley, a can of sardines and the cheese that was left from dinner. And then she would wait grimly for the platter. Not for anything, even though she were leaving FOREVER, would Janet let the remnants remain to stain that sacred platter. Besides if she waited she always had a fine chance to growl whimpering things about what an hour it was for a decent widow woman to be a-walkin' the roads and to agree, feebly, oh very feebly, that maybe Mr. Freddie was right, that it wouldn't hurt the chauffeur to drive her back to her tiny flat.

This particular evening Janet had been speaking her mind so freely that the new dining-room girl had fled absolutely dazed by Janet's dark threat that, Mr. Peter or no Mr. Peter, she, Janet MacGregor, would never let her shadow rest again on the Alden walls. She would tell Mr. Freddie that, she would let him understand that she didn't have to take Miss' Alden's lip, that she, at least, wasn't married to her, that she had some spirit left even if she was a widow woman. And that she wasn't dependent on the Aldens nor anybody else. That she was going to quit service of any kind--day of week or month. She had a grand chance to open a window-cleaning emporium. She could get the ladders and harnesses and chamois scrubs for almost nothing from the widow of a boss cleaner who had cleaned a twenty-second story window without the aid of one of his own reliable harnesses. She didn't care so much for her flat anyhow. She was going to find a bas.e.m.e.nt, she was, with a long hall to keep the ladders in and a sunny front room for her to live in and put her sign in the window. But with the Aldens she was through--unless, of course, Mr. Freddie wanted to give her a window-cleaning contract.

She had been loitering near the pantry door shamelessly eavesdropping during Dudley Hamilt's song because she hoped that meant the gentlemen would be going and that she could air her grievances while Mr. Freddie smoked and chuckled at her grumbling. So that when Mr. Freddie called for Miss Grant, Janet was on the stairs a good three seconds before that professionally calm person appeared.

Janet sat on the landing window seat and cuddled Felicia in her thin arms, crooning over her like a setting hen.

"There, there--don't ye mind her--" she lifted glum eyes to Mr.

Freddie as she soothed the sobbing woman, "It's this that Miss'

Freddie's tantrums brings the help to! Many a time have I masel' felt like givin' way the way this poor soul is givin' way. It's on'y ma fierce pride that saves me--don't ye cry over Miss' Freddie's way o'

speakin'--"

"It wasn't Mrs. Freddie, it wasn't anybody--" Felicia lifted her streaming eyes from Janet's spare bosom. She was deeply chagrined that the group hovering on the stairway could see her tears. "It was just that--I was tired--that Uncle Peter's room was rather hot--that I liked to hear the man sing--I'm vairee well--" Her drawling "vairee"

sounded anything but well, it was almost a sob in itself. "Truly vairee well--"

She was still "very well" a few moments later when she and Janet settled themselves in the luxurious car. They were the oddest pair.

Janet's bonnet and shawl were as battered as Felicia's garb; exhausted as she was Felicia found herself whimsically wondering how she'd tell herself from Janet when it was time to get out. Felicia's tears had dissolved in little smothered hysterical sniffs. She was laughing at Janet's scolding because the seamstress had refused to take what Mr.