Little Miss By-The-Day Part 30

It was the Architect who rescued her. He was in such a temper that he completely forgot that Felicia was to be kept at the top of the house until the hour for the "party."

"It's all very well, Miss Felicia Day," he sputtered, "for you to pick up a lot of poor old half-blind carpenters that n.o.body will hire because they're old--it's a nice sweet philanthropic idea! But they're absolutely ruining everything! It would cheaper to pay 'em for their time and let 'em sit outside while we hire some regular persons to work! What they've done today is spoiling the whole scheme--the yard looks like a Swiss cheese--come and see--its simply awful!"

She winked archly at the Painter Boy. She gathered up her green skirts daintily and descended the broad stairs.

"Sssssh!" she whispered, "walk lightly, Mr. Architect or you'll wake up little Miss Architect--besides, we'll have to sneak by the kitchen or Janet and Molly will see us. They really don't know that I know there's going to be a party, though I should think--" she paused to sniff critically as they pa.s.sed the pantry door, "that Molly would know that anybody could guess there was a party with celestial smells like that." She had soothed him somewhat even before they reached the back yard and of course the lattices weren't really so bad as they had seemed to his fastidious eye. They did deviate from his neat blueprints. Even the sullen old carpenters admitted that they did, but presently things were adjusted and the workmen had departed bearing the offending trelliage with them with absurd little newspaper patterns pinned to the tops.

Felicia was flushed and panting from having cut those ridiculous patterns. She waved her shears slowly to and fro, and the Architect shouted with boyish glee.

"Silliest way I ever heard of," he chortled, "perfectly silly, but the old ducks did seem to take to it. Felicia Day, you are a little old wonder."

She gazed up at him mournfully.

"Old!" she echoed and shivered.

"I didn't mean 'old' really," he stammered, "I just meant, well, I just meant you were--" he paused awkwardly.

"I don't look awfully old, do I?" she asked it with such delicious anxiety that he laughed. "I mean, I don't look so awfully old as I did, do I?"

He thought he was saying a perfectly satisfactory thing when he answered.

"You look just like your wonderful self and we wouldn't have you changed for worlds. Why, you're our fairy grandmother."

Her little hand crept to the back of the bench. She steadied herself.

And decided something very quietly.

"Do this for me," she commanded. "Telephone Mr. Ralph. Tell him I said that I didn't want him to keep the engagement that I had him make for me this evening. That I won't be here at nine o'clock, that I have to go out. That he mustn't bring the visitor I asked him to bring. That I've changed my mind about seeing that visitor."

And when he had gone away whistling atrociously and cheerfully she sat down on the bench and buried her face in her hands. The air was soft and warm and sweet. It almost threatened rain. And at her feet in the border of that rebuilt garden little pansies shriveled in the heat of the afternoon sun. All her life long she would hate the odor of those dying pansies. She sat very still. She thought that she had come to the very end. There was nothing more in the world that she wanted to pretend. Except perhaps that she was hearing Dudley Hamilt's voice singing, very woodenly, "But my heart's grown numb and my soul is dumb--" Like Dudley Hamilt, she couldn't bear to think of the rest of the song, there wasn't any hope of "After years"; the most precious thing in life, the soul of their youth, had been s.n.a.t.c.hed away from them and there was nothing left that mattered. And so she sat for a long time underneath the ivy-locked gate, unheeding the happy babble of voices that floated out from the windows of the dear old house.

The Sculptor Girl almost shook her to make her look up.

"There's a man wants to see you. Awfully theatrical looking person.

I've a hunch it's that beast Graemer. He wouldn't say. Just said he must see you."

Felicia stiffened.

"It's stupid of him to come here. We did send for him, the Portia Person and I. I wanted to try once more about 'the Juggler.' I said dreadful things, Dulcie, to the little lawyer man that he sent. I told the little lawyer man that I thought his wicked Mr. Graemer was afraid to come to see us--so that's why he's come now, I suppose. I don't want to see him half so much as I did. I feel vairee cowardly. You must send your Majesty-of-the-Law down to me. I am a little afraid alone. And tell Blythe to come. Tell him quickly. I do not like this job, so I must do it quickly."

Felicia was absolutely wrong about why the erratic Graemer had come to see her. He hadn't the remotest intention of bothering to answer the oft-reiterated claims of the persistent Miss Modder; he wasn't at all interested in any unknown Miss Day. The person he had come to see was Mademoiselle Folly and he had come purely on impulse. His agents had been able to make no headway with Mademoiselle Folly's agents. It had aroused his curiosity when he discovered that the actress was living with all those queer geniuses who were dwelling in the much discussed Octavia House and he a.s.sumed that she was merely one of the proteges of the mysterious wealthy backers of that unusual enterprise. He thought it very good business indeed that the clever young woman had known enough to disappear for a brief time that she might whet her audiences' appet.i.te while she let her agents lift her prices. It didn't at all occur to him that she was actually abandoning such a career as her extraordinary success seemed to foretell. He had in mind a romantic play in which she should make her bow as a legitimate actress and he had a flattering mountain-to-Mahomet speech ready with which to introduce his august self to her. He was debonnaire in his smart summer clothing. He felt rather Lord Bountifullish. And besides, he was in a very good humor because he had come directly from a rehearsal of "The Heart of a Boy." The play was scheduled to open very shortly and it seemed to him that it was going to be an easy success.

All the way over to Brooklyn he had contemplated bill posters who were slapping their dripping brushes over great posters--corking posters Graemer thought them, with their effective color scheme of dull greens and pale yellows.

Almost any one would have commended those posters. A charming little figure in the shadows of a wall stood tiptoe with her arms upstretched and her blonde head shone in the light from a church window above her as a florid choir boy leaned over the wall to embrace her.

"Felicia, I love you with all my heart and soul!" the choir boy was declaring in large red letters, which was rather versatile of him considering that his lips were pressed firmly upon the blonde lady's.

The placard further announced that he was embracing "America's foremost romantic actress Edwina Ely" and though there was nothing about their posture that could have offended even the ghost of Anthony Comstock, it had an almost galvanic effect upon a stalwart man who had stopped to look upon it.

It was just about the moment that Miss Ely's manager had stepped into the taxicab that was to bear him to Brooklyn, that the outraged citizen had paused before a side wall at a theater entrance to gape sceptically at a paste-glistening sheet. That particular poster was not yet in place. The fair lady still lacked her feet and a painstaking artisan was just delicately attaching them to her knees.

He never finished attaching them.

"Dat guy you see going around de coiner," he explained to the gathering crowd who helped to pick him up. "I wasn't doing nothing to him, I was justa stooping over when all to onct he hit me and threw me paste in the street and grabbed me brush and trew it after me paste and just as I was going to lam him one he ups and shoves some money in me fists and groans, 'Beg your pardon, of course you aren't responsible' and off he goes--and somebody better watch after him for he must have a heluva jag."

The stalwart citizen did not stop to reason even after he had vented the first edge of his rage upon the innocent bill poster. He let himself intuitively guess at the whole d.a.m.ning chain of the Fat Baritone and his eternal gossiping and the pretty actress and the acquisitive manager. The intensity of his manner when he pulled open the manager's door frightened the manager's stenographer into an unwilling admission that Mr. Graemer had just left for Brooklyn. And a dazed taxi starter, who decided that somebody's life must be at stake, remembered with much distinctness that the address, which Mr. Graemer had given some half hour before was Montrose Place, Brooklyn. He remembered it because they'd had to look it up in a street guide.

If Dudley Hamilt had been in a temper before he heard that address he was literally enraged when he did hear it. Of what had happened in Montrose Place during the spring months while he had been in the West he had not the faintest inkling. The last time he had seen the little street it had looked as desolate and forlorn as on the day when Felicia had come back to it. He a.s.sumed with that rapidity with which an angry mind makes decisions, that Graemer was proceeding to Montrose Place for more of the d.a.m.nably clever "local color" with which he was wont to dress his plays; that not content with having dramatized Hamilt's youthful woes to the orchestra circle he wanted to reproduce the whole thing photographically.

Hamilt's thoughts raced turbulently as his own taxi followed the route of Graemer's. He was keenly aware that his frenzy was utterly illogical, that he hadn't a reasonable argument to present against the play, that there was no possible way in which he could prevent any man from writing any play he wished or naming his heroine any name he chose and yet he grew angrier and angrier as his cab b.u.mped over the old bridge.

"There's not a chance in a thousand of my getting my hands on him, but, oh, if I only could--" he thought vindictively.

As a matter of fact his "chance in a thousand" was a very good one, since he was able to direct his driver explicitly because of his familiarity with the neighborhood.

Moreover, the astute manager was not making very speedy headway in his interview with the erstwhile Mademoiselle Folly. His quick eyes commended the charming figure that the lady made in her quaint frock against the crumbling garden wall. He spoke a very pretty speech about her appearance. But he found her haughty indeed considering that she was nothing but an upstart vaudeville performer. She had no manners at all, he decided, for she did not even suggest that he sit down. He actually had to make his proposition standing.

"Your agent let us know that you're starting for abroad. That's a nice little plan but it won't get you anywhere at all," he began tersely.

"Except of course that you may get a little fun out of it if you've never been on the other side. But the best thing for you to do before you go off for your vacation is to have a contract, signed and sealed, in your inside pocket. Frankly, I'm charmed with your--er-- personality. I saw you a couple of months ago at the Palace and I like the way you get hold of people. I should say that with the right kind of training you ought to go quite a long way: who knows?" he was laughing so good humoredly that he did not see her wince, "some of these days I might pick up a nice little play for you--"

The lady was standing perfectly still. He decided that she had admirable repose. Her wide eyes looked straight into his. The intensity of her low voice was a bit thrilling.

"If evaire I did want a play," she answered coolly, "I would know exactly where I would 'pick it up,' as you call it. I would not 'pick it up' the way you 'pick up' plays, M'sieur Graemer. I have a friend whose play you 'picked up'--" she gestured toward the house. Her deliberate reiteration of his chance phrase was irritating to say the least. He turned uncomfortably to look at the stairway toward which she was motioning. And he did have the grace to look rather disconcerted when he saw Miss Blythe Modder approaching. He glanced quickly back to the woman he had come to see.

Felicia stepped close to him.

"I did not want you to come to my house," she began pa.s.sionately. "I just wanted you to see the lawyer who attends to certain legal matters for me." The little breathless rush of her words fascinated him, the alluring way she slurred her syllables together, the quick staccato with which she paused on short words! At first he hardly grasped what she was saying, so intent was he upon her extraordinary manner of speaking. It made him feel somehow like a child. It irritated and soothed him at the same time. "I did not want you to come here at all." She stamped her foot for emphasis. "It is insulting for you to be in Maman's garden! But now that you're here and Blythe is here and I am here, why, I think we must talk things ovaire. With this lawyer who lives here with us. It is Blythe's play 'The Magician' that we will talk about. It was in your offices for almost a year and you had it there at least two years before you wrote 'The Juggler,' didn't you? Tell me!"

"The two plays are utterly dissimilar--"

"The two plays are utterly similar." Felicia's cool voice corrected him. She had an exasperating directness of manner! "Whenever you are counting how vairee much money you did have from 'The Juggler' do you not sometimes think that the girl who wrote the play ought to have some of those moneys?"

"The two plays were totally dissimilar--" he repeated hotly.

"Felice! Felice!" groaned the Poetry Girl. "You're just wasting your breath! It's no use talking to him! Why, I almost got down on my knees to him! I wept--"

"I shall not weep," said Felicia calmly. "I shall just tell him how vairee simple it would be for him to explain. He can just tell people that it is her play and that some of it is her moneys and then he can give you the money. Oh, you couldn't have understood how bad, bad, bad you made things for her! Even this spring, while you were still getting money from her play, she was poor and sick and almost starving--just like the girl in her 'Magician'--"

She paused eloquently but she never let her eyes leave his. He fidgeted with his hat. He tried to avoid that clear gaze, but whatever the faint stirrings of his conscience might have prompted him to say the blundering but well meaning lawyer prevented. That indiscreet person stepped briskly forward.

"I am one of Miss Modder's legal advisors," he began importantly. "You probably know that we are antic.i.p.ating bringing another and much stronger action against you. But if you should happen to feel that you wanted to enter into some sort of negotiations for an adjustment of--"

Graemer caught his breath.

"I'll be d.a.m.ned if I do--" he e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. He was white with chagrin to think that his stupidity had trapped him into such an annoying situation. He was moving blindly toward the stairway; all he wanted was a quick termination of the whole irritating interview.

Felicia stopped him. She put her hand on his arm.

"Let me explain for you a little," she pleaded, "I am sorry that these lawyer men do not understand. I know exactly how you happened to do it. You didn't mean to take it at first, did you? I know because I once took something that was not mine. It was food," she smiled a little at the memory. "It did not seem like stealing because it was just a little food. It just seemed like something I wanted and that I must have and so I took it. Maybe that was the way it was with you about 'The Magician.' It was something that you wanted and must have!

Perhaps it didn't seem like stealing because it was only something that was written on a paper. It wasn't even like something you could hold in your hand. It was just something somebody wrote down on some pieces of paper. Maybe you didn't understand that it was all of her hopes and dreams--"

"Gad! What a Sunday School you do keep!" he sneered. He tried to pa.s.s her. He had jammed his hat back upon his head. Perhaps he would have actually gotten away from her only that that was the moment that Dulcie Dierckt opened the long French doors at the head of the little outside stairway and motioned down the steps to the excited man who was following her.