Out of the Air Part 12

VII

When Lindsay pulled back from the quiet gray void which had enshrouded him, he was lying on the gra.s.s. Far, far away, as though pasted against the brilliant blue sky, was a face. Gradually the sky receded. The face came nearer. It topped, he gradually gathered, the tiny slender black-silk figure of a little old lady. "Do you feel all right now?" it asked.

Lindsay wished that she would not question him. He was immensely preoccupied with what seemed essentially private matters. But the instinct of courtesy prodded him. "Very much, thank you," he answered weakly. He closed his eyes again. He became conscious of a wet cloth sopping his forehead and cheeks. A breeze tingled on the bare flesh of his neck and chest. He opened his eyes again; sat up. "Do you mean to tell me I fainted?" he demanded with his customary vigor.

"That's exactly what you did, young man," the old lady answered. "The instant you looked at me! I was setting with my back to the door. You could have knocked me down with a feather, when you fell over backwards."

"Have I been out long?"

"Not more'n a moment. I flaxed around and got some water and brought you to in a jiffy. You ain't an invalid, are you?"

"Far from it," Lindsay rea.s.sured her. "I'm afraid, though, I've been working too long in the hot sun this morning."

"Like as not!" the little old lady agreed briskly. "I guess you're hungry too," she hazarded. "Now you just get up and lay in the hammock and I'm going to make you some lunch. I see there was some eggs there and milk and tea. I'll have you some scrambled eggs fixed in no time. My name is Spash--Mrs. Spash."

"My name is Lindsay--David Lindsay."

Lindsay found himself submitting without a murmur to the little old lady's program. He lay quiescent in the hammock and let the tides of vitality flow back.... Mrs. Spash's prophecy, if anything, underestimated her energy. In an incredibly short time she had produced, in collaboration with the oil stove, eggs scrambled on bread deliciously toasted, tea of a revivifying heat and strength.

"Gee, that tastes good!" Lindsay applauded. He sighed. "It certainly takes a woman!"

"What are you doing here?" Mrs. Spash inquired. "Batching it?"

"Yes, I think that describes the process," Lindsay admitted. After an instant, "How did you happen to be on the doorstep?"

"Well, I don't wonder you ask," Mrs. Spash declared. "I didn't know the Murray place was let and--well, I was making one of my regular visits.

You see, I come here often. I'm pretty fond of this old house. I lived here once for years."

Lindsay sat upright. "Did you by chance live here when Lutetia Murray was alive?"

"Well, I should say I did!" Mrs. Spash answered. "I lived here the last twenty years of Lutetia Murray's life. I was her housekeeper, as you might say."

Lindsay stared at her. He started to speak. It was obvious that conflicting comments fought for expression, but all he managed to say--and ineptly enough--was: "Oh, you knew her, then?"

"Knew her!" Mrs. Spash seemed to search among her vocabulary for words.

Or perhaps it was her soul for emotions. "Yes, I knew her," she concluded with a feeble breathlessness.

"You've lived in this house, then, for twenty years," Lindsay repeated, musing.

"Yes, all of that." Mrs. Spash appeared to muse also. For an instant the two followed their own preoccupations. Then as though they led them to the same _impa.s.se_, their eyes lifted simultaneously; met. They smiled.

"I've bought this house, Mrs. Spash," Lindsay confided. "And you never can guess why."

Mrs. Spash started what appeared to be a comment. It deteriorated into a little inarticulate murmur.

"I bought it," Lindsay went on, "because when I was in college, I fell in love with Lutetia Murray." And then, at Mrs. Spash's wide-eyed, faded stare, "Not with Miss Murray herself--I never saw her--but with her books. I read everything she wrote and I wrote in college what we call a thesis on her."

"Sort of essay or composition," Mrs. Spash defined thesis to herself.

"Exactly," Lindsay permitted.

"She was--she was--" Mrs. Spash began in a dispa.s.sionate sort of way.

She concluded in a kind of frenzy. "She was an angel."

"Oh yes, she's that all right. I have never seen anybody so lovely."

Mrs. Spash made a swift conversational pounce. "I thought you said you'd never seen her."

Lindsay flushed abjectly. "No," he admitted. "But you see I have a picture of her." He pointed to the mantel.

"Yes, I noticed that when I came in to get some water." Strangely enough Mrs. Spash did not, for a moment, look at the picture. Instead she stared at Lindsay. Lindsay submitted easily enough to this examination.

After a while Mrs. Spash appeared to abandon her scrutiny of him. She trotted over to the fireplace; studied Lutetia's likeness.

"I don't know as I ever see that one--it don't half do her justice--I hate a profile picture--" She p.r.o.nounced "profile" to rhyme with "wood-pile." "None of her pictures ever did do her justice. Her beauty was mostly in her hair and her eyes. She had a beautiful skin too, though she never took no care of it. Never wore a hat--no matter how hot the sun was. And then her expression-- Well, it was just beautiful--changing all the time."

Lindsay was only half listening. He was, with an amused glint in his eyes, studying Mrs. Spash's spare, erect black-silk figure. She was a relic perfectly preserved, he reflected, of mid-Victorianism. Her black was of the kind that is accurately described by the word decent. And she wore fittingly a little black, beaded cape with a black shade-hat that tilted forward over her face at a decided slant. Her straight, white, abundant hair was apparently parted in the middle under her hat. At any rate, the neat white parting continued over the crown of her head to her very neck, where it concealed itself under a flat black-silk bow. Her gnarled, blue-veined hands had been covered with the lace mitts that now lay on the table. Her little wrinkled face was neat-featured. The irises of her eyes were a faded blue and the whites were blue also; and this put a note of youthful color among her wrinkles.

But Lindsay lost interest in these details; for, obviously, a new idea caught him in its instant clutch. "Oh, Mrs. Spash," he suggested, "would you be so good as to take me through this house? I want you to tell me who occupied the rooms. This is not mere idle curiosity on my part. You see Miss Murray's publishers have decided to bring out a new edition of her works. They want me to write a life of Miss Murray. I'm asking everybody who knows anything about her all kinds of questions."

Mrs. Spash received all this with that unstirred composure which indicates non-comprehension of the main issue.

"Of course I'm interested on my own account too," Lindsay went on.

"She's such a wonderful creature, so charming and so beautiful, so sweet, so unbearably poignant and sad. I can't understand," he concluded absently, "why she is so sad."

Mrs. Spash seemed to comprehend instantly. "It's the way she died," she explained vaguely, "and how everything was left!" She walked in little swift pattering steps, and with the accustomed air of one who knows her way, through the side door into the addition. "This was Miss Murray's own living-room," she told Lindsay. "She had that little bit of a stairway made, she _said_, so's too many folks couldn't come up to her room at once. Not that that made any difference. Wherever she was, the whole household went."

With little nipping steps Mrs. Spash ascended the stairway. Lindsay followed.

"Did Miss Murray die in her room?" Lindsay asked.

"How did you know this was her room?" Mrs. Spash demanded.

"I don't know exactly. I just guessed it," Lindsay answered. "I sleep here myself," he hurriedly threw off.

"Yes. She died here. She was all alone when she died. You see--" Mrs.

Spash sat down on the one chair and, instantly sensing her mood, Lindsay sat down on the bed.

"You see, things hadn't gone very well for Miss Murray the last years of her life. Her books didn't sell-- And she spent money like water. She was allus the most open-hearted, open-handed creature you can imagine.

She allus had the house full of company! And then there was the little girl--Cherry--who lived with her. At the end, things were bad. No money coming in. And Miss Murray sick all the time."

"You say she was alone when she died," Lindsay gently brought her back to the track.

"Yes--except for little Cherry, who slept right through everything--childlike. Cherry had that room." Mrs. Spash jerked an angular thumb back.

Lindsay nodded. "Yes, I guessed that--with all the drawings--"

"The Weejubs! Mr. Gale drew them pictures for Cherry. He was an artist.

He used to paint pictures out in the backyard there. I didn't fancy them very much myself--too dauby. You had to stand way off from them 'fore they'd look like anything _a-tall_. But he used to get as high as five hundred dollars for them. Oh, what excitement there was in this house while he was decorating Cherry's room! And little Cherry chattering like a magpie! Mr. Gale made up a whole long story about the Weejubs on her walls. Lord, I've forgotten half of it; but Cherry could rattle it all off as _fast_. Miss Murray had that door between her room and Cherry's made small on purpose. She said Cherry could come into her room whenever she wanted to, as long as she was a little girl. But when Cherry grew up, she was going to make it hard for her. But she promised when Cherry was sixteen years old she shouldn't have to call her auntie any more--she could call her jess Lutetia. Queer idea, worn't it?"