A Top-Floor Idyl Part 18

They came to my room, hurrying across the landing. The young mother looked at me, one corner of her lips twitching nervously.

"David!" she cried. "Oh, David! There--there are two women called Madame Paul Dupont and--and the other one got my letter! She came to the Consulate early this morning."

"But how do you know that it was your letter, then?" I asked.

"Well! Of course, I don't really know, but--but it should have been for me, of course. They gave me the other woman's address. She lives in Little Ferry in New Jersey, and I'm going there at once."

CHAPTER XII

GORDON BECOMES ENGAGED

Frances and I started away on the trip, immediately, for there was not a moment to lose. That letter must at once be retrieved. The dreadful woman had evidently seized upon one never meant for her, and must be bearded in her den. From her the missive must be rescued, by force of arms if necessary; it must be s.n.a.t.c.hed from the burning, seized and brought back, even at the cost of bloodshed.

This, it may be, is but the vague impression I gathered from the profuse and simultaneous conversation of my two dear friends. When I humbly suggested again that the Jersey person might perhaps have a perfect equity in the doc.u.ment, they looked at me with the pitying condescension accorded the feebleminded and the very young by the gentler s.e.x. Also, I proposed to hie me to Little Ferry alone, interview the termagant in question and make her disgorge, in case she was illegally detaining words meant for another.

This was once more met by a look from Frieda to Frances, and vice-versa, which was then turned upon me and made me feel like an insignificant and, I hope, a harmless microbe.

"My dear Dave," said Frieda, tolerantly, "you are not Madame Paul Dupont. Why should that abominable woman give up the letter to you?"

"When she sees me and Baby," declared Frances, "she will not have the heart to refuse."

The upshot of it was that we departed, leaving Frieda behind. For the first time in his life little Paul was shot through a tunnel, emerged in Jersey, none the worse for his experience, and was taken aboard a train.

Soon afterwards we were observing the great meadows and the Hackensack River, a vacillating, sluggish stream, running either up or down, at the behest of a tide that always possesses plenty of leisure, through banks winding in a great valley of cat-tails and reeds among which, in the summertime, legions of grackles and redwings appear to find a plenteous living. But at this time the stream was more than usually turbid, filled with aimlessly floating cakes of ice, and the green of fairer weather had given place to a drab hue of discouraged weeds awaiting better days. While waiting at the station, I had found that the Telephone Directory contained at least a dozen Duponts, that the City Directory held a small regiment of them, and considered that New Jersey had a right to its share of citizens of that name.

The train stopped, and we got out in a place that was mostly const.i.tuted by a bridge, small houses lining a muddy pike and a vista of many houses partly concealed among trees. After consultation with a local butcher, followed by the invasion of a grocer's shop, we were directed to a neat frame cottage within a garden. I opened the gate and walked in, first, deeming it my duty to face the dangers and protect the convoy in my rear.

There was no need to ring a bell. The front door opened and a white-haired woman appeared, her locks partly hidden under a white cap that was the counterpart of many I had seen in the Latin Quarter, among janitresses or ladies vending vegetables from barrows. Her form was concealed in a wide, shapeless garment, of the kind adopted by French women whom age has caused to abandon the pomps and vanities. I believe they call it a _caraco_. The cotton skirt was unadorned and the slippers ample for tender feet. Also, the smile on her face was welcoming in its sweetness. Near her a fat blind dog wheezed some sort of greeting.

"Madame Paul Dupont?" I asked.

"_Pour vous servir_," she answered politely.

So this was the Gorgon in question, the purloiner of correspondence, to be placated if possible and defeated _vi et armis_ in case of rebellion!

Frances hastily pushed me to one side, though with all gentleness. She spoke French very fluently. I easily understood her to say that she was also Madame Paul Dupont, that her husband had been to the war, that she had heard of his being killed, that--that----

She was interrupted. The white-bonneted old woman took her to her bosom, planting a resounding kiss on her cheek, and clamored in admiration of the baby.

"Come in the house," she said. "I am delighted to see you. I shall have to ask Paul if he ever had any cousins or nephews who came to this country. But no; he would have told me. I am sorry that Paul is not here to see you. He is the pastry-cook at the Netherlands; you should taste his puff-paste and his _Baba au Rhum_. He did not go to the war because he is fifty-nine and has a bad leg. But I have a son over there. He has killed many Boches. I have thirty-seven postal cards from him."

"But, Madame," I put in, "we came on account of a letter written in care of the Consulate, and we were informed----"

"That was a letter from my niece Petronille, whose husband keeps a _cafe_ in Madagascar. She wanted to let me know of the birth of her fourth daughter. Have you ever seen a letter from there? It is a country very far away, somewhere in China or Africa. I will show you."

She sought her spectacles, looked over a large and orderly pile of papers, and brought us the doc.u.ment.

"Please read it," she said, "it is very interesting."

Frances glanced over it, looking badly disappointed, and pa.s.sed it to me. It contained vast information as to Petronille's growing family and the price of chickens and Vermouth in Antanarivo, also certain details as to native fas.h.i.+ons, apparently based on the principle of least worn, soonest mended.

Before we left, we were compelled to accept a thimbleful of _ca.s.sis_, most delectable, and to promise to return very soon. Her husband would make us a _vol-au-vent_, for which he had no equal. He would be sorry to have been absent. She wished her son had been married to such a nice woman as Frances and had possessed a son like Baby Paul. Alas! She might never see the boy again, and then there would be nothing left of him, no little child to be cherished by the old people. It was such a pity!

She insisted on seeing us all the way back to the station and on carrying Paul, whom she parted with after many embraces. Peace be on her good old soul, and may the son come back safely and give her the little one her heart longs for!

"She is a darling," said Frances sorrowfully, "and, oh! I'm so terribly disappointed."

The poor child had so hoped for news, for some details as to the manner in which her own Paul had been sacrificed to his motherland, and this visit made her very sad. For many days afterwards her thoughts, which had perhaps begun to accept the inevitable with resignation, turned again to the loved one buried somewhere in France.

Neither Frieda, who came in after suppertime, nor I, was able to give her much consolation. Again, I wished I had never seen that announcement and deplored my well-intended folly in calling her attention to it. She seemed very weary, as if the short trip had been a most fatiguing one, and retired very soon, alleging the need to rise early to do some mending of Baby's clothes, and acknowledging the fact that she felt headachy and miserable.

Frieda looked at me indulgently, but I suspect that she blamed me strongly for the whole occurrence. Doubtless, I ought not to have looked at that paper, I should not have spoken of it, and my permitting Frances to go to Jersey had been a sinful act of mine.

But, after all, Frieda is the best old girl in the world, I believe and declare. She patted my shoulder as if I had promised her never to be wicked again, and permitted me to see her home, as some snow had fallen and she was dreadfully afraid of slipping. I prevailed on her to accept pair of old rubbers of mine and, once in the street, she grasped my arm with a determination that left a blue mark next day.

"So she is going again to the studio," she said, after I had piloted her to her flat, which she invited me to invade. "Do you really think that Gordon has the slightest idea that he can improve on that first picture?"

"I suppose that he just hopes to," I replied. "Whenever I begin a new story, I haven't the slightest idea whether it will be good or not.

Sometimes, I don't even know after it is finished. Take the 'Land o'

Love,' for instance; I really thought it a good piece of work, but Jamieson looks positively gloomy about it."

"He must be a very silly man," said Frieda, unswerving in her loyalty to me, but swiftly changing the subject. "Baby Paul is becoming very heavy.

He'll be seven months old, come next Friday, and Frances looks dreadfully tired. It is hard for her to take him every day to that studio and back."

"I could get up early in the morning and help her," I suggested recklessly.

"And then you could wait outside for two or three hours and help her back," she laughed. "No, Dave, it isn't so bad as all that. But I'm afraid she's badly discouraged. That little Dr. Porter is still fiddling away at her throat, training it, he calls it, but she's not a bit better. In fact, she thinks it's getting worse. And she says she can never pay him for all he's done and she might as well stop going. On Sunday morning he says he's going to do something to it, that may hurt a little, and she's afraid. She asked me to go with her."

"I'll go with you, if she will let me and Porter doesn't chase me out,"

I proposed. "I have great confidence in that boy."

"So have I, but he hasn't a.s.sured her that it will bring her voice back."

I told her that this showed the man was not a c.o.c.ksure humbug, and expressed fervent hopes as to the result, after which Frieda made a disreputable bundle of my rubbers and I left with them, in a hard flurry of snow. My room, after I reached it, seemed unusually cold. The landlady's ancient relative sometimes juggles rather unsuccessfully with the furnace, and she bemoaned before me, yesterday, the dreadful price of coal. Hence, I went to work and warmed myself by writing the outline of a tale with a plot unfolding itself during a hot wave of August. So kindly is my imagination that, by midnight, I was wiping my brow and sitting in my s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, till a sudden chill sent me to bed. This, I am glad to say, had no serious consequence. I remember wondering about the new picture Gordon would begin and, before I fell asleep, some trick of my mind presented the thing to me. It was a queer composite of the Murillo in the Louvre, of Raphael's Madonna of the Chair and of Frances herself. From the canvas she was looking at me, with lids endowed with motion and smiling eyes. There came to me, then, a dim recollection of some strange Oriental belief, to the effect that on the Day of Judgment sculptured and painted figures will crowd around their makers, begging in vain for the souls that have been denied them. But I felt that Gordon's "Mother and Child" will never thus clutch despairingly at their painter's garment. The very soul of them is in that picture, already endowed with a life that must endure till the canvas fritters itself away into dust.

When I awoke, I found, with shamed dismay, that it was nearly ten o'clock. On leaving my room I saw that the door opposite was wide open, with Mrs. Milliken wrestling with a mattress. Frances was gone, bearing her little Paul, through the still falling snow, to that studio where Gordon would again spread some of her beauty and soul on the magic cloth.

A few hours after, she returned in a taxicab.

"He insisted that I must take it," she explained. "He came downstairs with me and told the man to charge it to him, at the club. The light was very poor and he could do no painting. Spent the time just drawing and rubbing the charcoal out again. I think he must be working very hard, for he looks nervous and worried. No, I'm not hungry. He made me take lunch at the studio, while he went out to the club. He--he seems very impatient when I hesitate or don't wish to--to accept his kindnesses, and becomes very gruff. He hardly said a word from the time when he returned, till he bade me go home in the taxi. And--and now I must do some sewing."

I left her, having an appointment with my literary agent, who has asked me for a story for a new magazine. I reached his office and was asked to wait for a few minutes, as he was busy with an author whose words are worth much gold.

On the oaken table in the waiting-room, among other publications, there was a weekly of society and fas.h.i.+on. I took it up for a desultory glance at the pages. The first paragraph my eyes fell upon stated that the most distinguished of our younger painters, it was whispered, was about to announce his engagement to a fair Diana whose triumphs over hurdles, on the links and on the tennis courts were no less spoken of than her wealth and beauty.

I supposed that Gordon had seen those lines, for he takes that paper.