Felix O'Day Part 8

"I see an old gold frame in your window," began the new customer. "Might I measure it?"

"Which one, sir?" replied Felix. "There are half a dozen of them, I believe."

"Well; will you please come outside? And I will point it out. It is the Florentine, there in the corner--perhaps a reproduction, but it looks to me like the real thing."

"It is a Florentine," answered Felix. "There are two or three pictures in the Uffizi with similar frames, if I recall them aright. Would you like a look at it?"

"I don't want to trouble you to take it out," said the old man apologetically. "It might not do, and I can't afford to pay much for it anyway. But I would like to measure it; I've got an Academy picture which I think will just fit it, but you can't always tell. No, I guess I'll let it go. It's all covered up, and you would have to move everything to reach it."

"No, I won't have to move a thing. Here, you bunch of sunshine! Squeeze in there, Masie, dear, and let me know how wide and high that frame is--the one next the gla.s.s. Take this rule."

The child caught up the rule and, followed by Fudge, who liked nothing so well as rummaging, crept among the jars, mirrors, and candelabra crowding the window, her steps as true as those of a kitten. "Twenty inches by thirty-one--no, thirty," she laughed back, tucking her little skirts closer to her shapely limbs so as to clear a tiny table set out with cups and saucers.

"You're sure it's thirty?" repeated the painter.

"Yes, sir, thirty," and she crept back and laid the rule in O'Day's hand.

"Thank you, my dear young lady," bowed the old gnome. "It is a pleasure to be served by one so obliging and bright. And I am glad to tell you,"

he added, turning to O'Day, "that it's a fit--an exact fit. I thought I was about right. I carry things in my eye. I bought a head once in Venice, about a foot square, and in Spain three months afterward, on my way down the hill leading from the Alhambra to the town, there on a wall outside a bric-a-brac shop hung a frame which I bought for ten francs, and when I got to Paris and put them together, I'll be hanged if they didn't fit as if they had been made for each other."

"And I know the shop!" broke out Felix, to Masie's astonishment. "It's just before you get to the small chapel on the left."

"By cracky, you're right! How long since you were there?"

"Oh, some five years now."

"Picking up things to sell here, I suppose. Spain used to be a great place for furniture and stuffs; I've got a lot of them still--bought a whole chest of embroideries once in Seville, or rather, at that hospital where the big Murillo hangs. You must know that picture--Moses striking water from the rock--best thing Murillo ever did."

Felix remembered it, and he also remembered many of the important pictures in the Prado, especially the great Velasquez and the two Goyas, and that head of Ribera which hung on the line in the second gallery on the right as you entered. And before the two enthusiasts were aware of what was going on around them, Masie and Fudge had slipped off to dine upstairs with her father, Felix and the garrulous old painter still talking--renewing their memories with a gusto and delight unknown to the old artist for years.

"And now about that frame!" the gnome at last found time to say. "I've got so little money that I'd rather swap something for it, if you don't mind. Come down and see my stuff! It's only in 10th Street--not twenty minutes' walk. Maybe you can sell some of my things for me. And bring that blessed little girl--she's the dearest, sweetest thing I've seen for an age. Your daughter?"

Felix laughed gently. "No, I wish she were. She is Mr. Kling's child."

"And your name?"

"O'Day."

"Irish, of course--well, all the same, come down any morning this week.

My name is Ganger; I'm on the fourth floor--been there twenty-two years.

You'll have to walk up--we all do. Yes, I'll expect you."

Kling, whom Felix consulted, began at once to demur. He knew all about the building on 10th Street. More than one of his old frames--part of the clearing-out sale of some Southern homestead, the portraits being reserved because unsalable--had resumed their careers on the walls of the Academy as guardians and protectors of masterpieces painted by the denizens of this same old rattletrap, the Studio Building. Some of its tenants, too, had had accounts with him--which had been running for more than a year. Bridley, the marine painter; Manners, who took pupils; Springlake, the landscapist; and half a dozen others had been in the habit of dropping into his shop on the lookout for something good in Dutch cabinets at half-price, or no price at all, until Felix, without knowing where they had come from, had put an end to the practice.

"Got a fellow up to Kling's who looks as if he had been a college athlete, and knows it all. Can't fool him for a cent," was the talk now, instead of "Keep at the old Dutchman and you may get it. He don't know the difference between a Chippendale sideboard and a shelf rack from Harlem. Wait for a rainy day and go in. He'll be feeling blue, and you'll be sure to get it."

Kling, therefore, when he heard some days later, of Felix's proposed visit, began turning over his books, looking up several past-due accounts. But Felix would have none of it.

"I'm going on a collecting tour, Mr. Kling, this lovely June morning,"

he laughed, "but not for money. We will look after that later on. And I will take Masie. Come, child, get your hat. Mr. Ganger wanted you to come, and so do I. Call Hans, Mr. Kling, if the shop gets full. We will be back in an hour."

"Vell, you know best," answered Kling in final surrender. "Ven it comes to money, I know. You go 'long, little Beesvings. I mind de shop."

"And I'll take Fudge," the child cried, "and we'll stop at Gramercy Park."

Fudge was out first, scampering down the street and back again before they had well closed the door, and Masie was as restless. "Oh, I'm just as happy as I can be, Uncle Felix. You are always so good. I never had any one to walk with until you came, except old Aunty Gossberger, and she never let me look at anything."

Days in June--joyous days with all nature brimful with laughter--days when the air is a caress, the sky a film of pearl and silver, and the eager mob of bud, blossom, and leaf, having burst their bonds, are flaunting their glories, days like these are always to be remembered the world over. But June days about Gramercy Park are to be marked in big Red Letters upon the calendar of the year. For in Gramercy Park the almanac goes to pieces.

Everything is ahead of time. When little counter-panes of snow are still covering the baby crocuses away off in Central Park, down in Gramercy their pink and yellow heads are popping up all over the enclosure. When the big trees in Union Square are stretching their bare arms, making ready to throw off the winter's sleep, every tiny branch in Gramercy is wide awake and tingling with new life. When countless dry roots in Madison Square are still slumbering under their blankets of straw, dreading the hour when they must get up and go to work, hundreds of tender green fingers in Gramercy are thrust out to the kindly sun, pleading for a chance to be up and doing.

And the race keeps up, Gramercy still ahead, until the goal of summer is won, and every blessed thing that could have burst into bloom has settled down to enjoy the siesta of the hot season.

Masie was never tired of watching these changes, her wonder and delight increasing as the season progressed.

In the earlier weeks there had been nothing but flower-beds covered with unsightly clods, m.u.f.fled shrubs, and bandaged vines. Then had come a blaze of tulips, exhausting the palette. And then, but a short time before--it seemed only yesterday--every stretch of brown gra.s.s had lost its dull tints in a coat of fresh paint, on which the benches, newly scrubbed, were set, and each foot of gravelled walks had been raked and made ready for the little tots in new straw hats who were then trundling their hoops and would soon be chasing their first b.u.t.terflies.

And now, on this lovely June morning, summer had come--REAL SUMMER--for a mob of merry roses were swarming up a trellis in a mad climb to reach its top, the highest blossom waving its petals in triumph.

Felix waited until she had taken it all in, her face pressed between the bars (only the privileged possessing a key are admitted to the gardens within), Fudge scampering up and down, wild to get at the two gray squirrels, which some vandal has since stolen, and then, remembering his promise to Ganger, he called her to him and continued his walk.

But her morning outing was not over. He must take her to the marble-cutter's yard, filled with all sorts of statues, urns, benches, and columns, and show her again the ruts and grooves cut in the big stone well-head, and tell her once more the story of how it had stood in an old palace in Venice, where the streets were all water and everybody went visiting in boats. And then she must stop at the florist's to see whether he had any new ferns in his window, and have Felix again explain the difference between the big and little ferns and why the palms had such long leaves.

She was ready now for her visit to the two old painters, but this time Felix lingered. He had caught sight of a garden wall in the rear of an old house, and with his hand in hers had crossed the street to study it the closer. The wall was surmounted by a solid, wrought-iron railing into which some fifty years or more ago a gardener had twisted the tendrils of a wistaria. The iron had cut deep, and so inseparable was the embrace that human skill could not pull them apart without destroying them both.

As he reached the sidewalk and got a clearer view of the vine, tracing the weave of its interlaced branches and tendrils, Masie noticed that he stopped suddenly and for a moment looked away, lost in deep thought. She caught, too, the shadow that sometimes settled on his face, one she had seen before and wondered over. But although her hand was still in his, she kept silent until he spoke.

"Look, dear Masie," he said at last, drawing her to him, "see what happens to those who are forced into traps! It was the big knot that held it back! And yet it grew on!"

Masie looked up into his thoughtful face. "Do you think the iron hurts it, Uncle Felix?" she asked with a sigh.

"I shouldn't wonder; it would me," he faltered.

"But it wasn't the vine's fault, was it?"

"Perhaps not. Maybe when it was planted n.o.body looked after it, nor cared what might happen when it grew up. Poor wistaria! Come along, darling!"

At last they turned into 10th Street, Fudge scurrying ahead to the very door of the grim building, where a final dash brought him to Ganger's, his nose having sniffed at every threshold they pa.s.sed and into every crack and corner of the three flights of stairs.

Felix's own nostrils were now dilating with pleasure. The odor of varnish and turpentine had brought back some old memories--as perfumes do for us all. A crumpled glove, a bunch of withered roses, the salt breath of an outlying marsh, are often but so many fairy wands reviving comedies and tragedies on which the curtains of forgetfulness have been rung down these many years.

Something in the aroma of the place was recalling kindred spirits across the sea, when the door was swung wide and Ganger in a big, hearty voice, cried:

"Mr. O'Day, is it? Oh, I am glad! And that dear child, and--h.e.l.lo! who invited you, you restless little devil of a dog? Come in, all of you!

I've a model, but she doesn't care and neither do I. And this, Mr.

O'Day, is my old friend, Sam Dogger--and he's no relation of yours, you imp!"--with a bob of his grizzled head at Fudge--"He's a landscape-painter and a good one--one of those Hudson River fellows--and would be a fine one if he would stick to it. Give me that hat and coat, my chick-a-biddy, and I'll hang them up. And now here's a chair for you, Mr. O'Day, and please get into it--and there's a jar full of tobacco, and if you haven't got a pipe of your own you'll find a whole lot of corncobs on the mantelpiece and you can help yourself."