Out of the Air Part 7

Already--his back still complained of the process--he had cut the s.p.a.cious lawn.

He was at one and the same time sanely placid and wildly happy.

Every morning he awoke with the sun and the birds. Adapting himself with an instant spiritual content to the fact that he was no longer in France and would not have to fly, he turned over to take another nap. An hour or two later, he was up and eating his self-prepared breakfast. The rest of the day was reading Lutetia; musing on Lutetia; "scything" or "sickling," as he called it in his letters to Spink, in the garden; reflecting on Lutetia; exploring the neighborhood on foot; meditating on Lutetia; reading and rereading the ma.s.s of Spink's data on Lutetia; hosing the garden; making notes on Spink's data on Lutetia and thinking of his notes on Spink's data on Lutetia. He awoke in the morning with Lutetia on his mind. He fell asleep at night with Lutetia in his heart.

He had come to realize that Lutetia, the author, was even better than he had supposed her. His college thesis had described her merely as the Mrs. Gaskell of New England. Now, mentally, he promoted her to its Jane Austen. His youth had risen to the lure of her color and fecundity, but his youngness had not realized how rich she was in humor; how wise; what a tenderness for people informed her careful, realistic detail. It was a triumph to find her even better than the flattering dictum of his boyish judgment.

Exploring Lutetia's domain gave results only second in satisfaction to exploring Lutetia's mind. It was obvious at his first inspection that the garden had once stretched contrasting glories of color and perfume.

A careful study from the windows was even more productive than a close survey. There, definitely, he could trace the remains of flower-plots; pleached paths; low hedges and lichened rocks. Resurrecting that garden would be an integral part of the joy of resurrecting Lutetia. By this time also, he had explored the barn. There, a big roomy lower floor sustained only part of a broken stairway. The equally roomy upper floor seemed, from such glimpses as he could get below, to be piled with rubbish. Some day, he promised himself, he would clean it out. Beyond, and to the right of the barn, bounded by the stone wall, scrambled a miniature wilderness. That wilderness evaded every effort of exploration. Only an axe could clear a trail there. Another day he would tackle the wilderness. But in the meantime he would devote himself to garden and lawn; in the meantime also loaf and invite his soul. After all, that was his main reason for coming to Quinanog. Whenever he thought of this, he took immediately to the Gloucester hammock.

Every morning he walked briskly over the long mile of road, shaded with wine-gla.s.s elms, slashed with vistas of pasture, pond, and brook which lay between Blue Meadows and the Quinanog post-office. When he had inquired for his mail--usually he had none--he strolled over to the general store and made his few simple purchases. He had followed this routine for ten days before it occurred to him that he had not seen a newspaper since he settled himself at Blue Meadows. "I'll let it go that way, I guess," he said to himself. He noticed at first with a little embarra.s.sment and then with amus.e.m.e.nt that the groups in the post-office waiting for mail, the customers at the general store, were all quietly watching him. And one morning this floated to him from behind a pile of cracker boxes:

"He's the nut that's taken the Murray place. Lives all alone--batching it. Some sort of highbrow."

Gradually, however, he made acquaintance. Silas Turner, who owned the next farm to Blue Meadows, offered him a ride one morning on the road.

Out of a vague conversation on the weather and real estate, Mr. Turner dropped one interesting fact. He had known Lutetia Murray. This revelation kept Lindsay chatting for half an hour while Mr. Turner spilled a ma.s.s of uncorrelated details. Such as Miss Murray's neighborliness; the time her cow ran away and Art Curtis brought it back; how Miss Murray admired Mis' Turner's beach plum jelly so much that Mis' Turner always made some extra just for her. As they parted he let fall dispa.s.sionately: "She was a mighty handsome woman. Fine figure!" He added, still dispa.s.sionately but with an effect somehow of enthusiastic conviction, "She kept her looks to the last day of her life."

Useless, all this, for a biography, Lindsay reflected; but it gave him an idea. He bought that day a second-hand bicycle at the Quinanog garage; and thereafter, when the devil of restlessness stirred in his young muscles, he trundled about the countryside in search of those families mentioned in Lutetia's letters. Some were utterly gone from Quinanog, some were not affording, and some added useful detail; as when old Mrs. Apperson produced a dozen letters written from Europe during Lutetia's first trip abroad. "I'd have admired to go to Europe, but it never came so's I could," said Mrs. Apperson. "When Miss Murray went, she wrote me from every city, telling me all about it. I read 'em over a lot--makes me feel as though I'd been there too. And every Decoration Day," she added inconsequently, "I put a bunch of heliotrope on her grave. She just loved the smell of heliotrope."

Somehow, Lindsay had never even thought of Lutetia's grave. The next day he made that pilgrimage. The graveyard lay near the town center, overtopped by the pine-covered hill which bore three austere white buildings--church, town-hall, and grange. The grave itself was in a patch of modern tombstones, surrounded by the flaking slabs of two centuries ago. The stone was featureless, ill-proportioned; the inscription recorded nothing but her name and the dates of her birth and death.

The note which most often came out of these wayside gossipings was a high one--of the gaiety and the brilliancy of the Blue Meadows hospitality. Apparently people were coming and going all the time; some distinguished; some undiscovered: but all with personality. When Lindsay returned from such a talk, the old house glowed like an opal--so full did it seem of the colors of those vivacious days.

But he was not quite content to be long away from his own fireside. The friendly atmosphere of the Murray house continued to exercise its enchanting sway. He always felt that one room became occupied the instant he left it, that the one he was about to enter was already occupied--and this feeling grew day by day, augmented. It brought him back to the house always with a sense of expectancy. "Lutetia's house is my hotel-lobby, my movie, my theater, my grand opera, my cabaret," he wrote Spink. "There's a strange fascination about it--a fascination with an element of eternal promise."

At times, when he entered the trellised doorway, he found himself expecting someone to come forward to greet him. It kept occurring to him that a neighbor had stopped to call, was waiting inside for him.

Sometimes in the middle of the night he would drift slowly out of a delicious sleep to a sense, equally delicious, of being most gently and lovingly companioned in the room; sometimes in the morning he would wake up with a snap, as though the house were full of company. For a moment the whole place would seem brilliant and gay, and then--it was as though a bubble burst in the air--he was alone. "It's almost as good," he wrote Spink, "as though you were here yourself, you goggle-eyed hick, you!"

Once or twice he caught himself talking aloud; addressing the empty air.

He stifled this impulse, however. "People always have a tendency to get bughouse," he explained to Spink, "when they live alone. I used to do that in your rooms. I'm going to try to keep sane as long as possible."

Ten days increased rather than diminished this impression. By this time he had burned his thesis and was now making notes that were part the direct product of Spink's data and part the byproduct of Lutetia's own works. The syringas were beginning to run down; but the roses were coming out in great numbers. The hollyhocks had opened flares of color under the living-room window. The lawn was as close to plush as constant care could make it. The garden was not yet quite cleaned out. He was glad, for he liked working there. It was not a whit less friendly than the house. Indeed, he felt so companioned there that sometimes he looked up suddenly to see who was watching his efforts to resurrect a neglected rosebush; or to uproot a flourishing patch of poison ivy. The evenings were long, and as--consciously girlish and in quotation marks he wrote Spink--"lovely." His big lamp made a spot of golden color in the shadowy long room. One northeaster, which lasted three days, gave him dark and damp excuse for three days of roaring fire. Much of that time he sat opposite the blazing logs in the big, rush-bottomed piazza chair which he had purchased, smoking and reading Lutetia. Now and then, he looked up at Lutetia's picture, which he had finally brought down from his bedroom.

Perhaps it was the picture which made him feel more companioned here than anywhere in the house or out. The living-room was peculiarly rich with presence, so rich that he left it reluctantly at night and returned to it as quickly as possible in the morning; so rich that often he smiled, though why he could not have said; so rich that in the evening he often looked up suddenly from his book and stared into its shadowy length for a long, moveless--and breathlessly expectant--interval.

Indeed that sensation so concretely, so steadily, so persistently augmented that one evening--

He had been reading ever since dark; and it was getting late. Finally he arose; closed the door and windows. He came back to the table and stood leaning against it, idly whistling the _Sambre et Meuse_ through his teeth, while he looked at Lutetia's portrait.

He took up _The Sport of the G.o.ddesses_ just to look it over ... turned a page or two ... became immersed.... Suddenly ... he realized that he was not alone....

He was not alone. That was conclusive. That he suddenly and absolutely knew; though how he knew it he could not guess. His eyes stopped, in the midst of Lutetia's single grim murder, fixed on the printed line. He could not move them along that line. He did not mind that. But he could not move them off the page. And he did mind that; for he wanted--most intensely wanted--to lift his gaze. After lifting it, he presently discovered, he would want to project it to the left. Whoever his visitor was, it sat at the left. That he knew, completely, absolutely, and conclusively; but again, how he knew it, he did not know.

An immeasurable interval pa.s.sed.

He tried to raise his eyes. He could not accomplish it. The air grew thick; his hands, still holding the book, turned cold and hard as clamps of iron. His eyes smarted from their unwinking immobility. This was absurd. Breaking this deathly ossification was just a matter of will. He made himself turn a page. Five lines down he decided; he would look up.

But he did not look up. He could not. He wanted to see ... but something stronger than desire and will withheld him. He read; turned another page. Five lines down....

Ah ... the paralysing chill was moving off.... In a moment ... he was going to be able.... In a moment....

He lifted his eyes.... He gazed steadily to the left....

IV

Before night Susannah had found a room which exactly suited her purpose.

This was as much a matter of design as of luck. She had heard of the place before. It was a large building in the West Twenties which had formerly been the imposing parsonage of an imposing and very important church. The church had long ago gone the way of all old Manhattan buildings. But the parsonage, divided into an infinite number of cubby-hole rooms, had become a lodging-house. A lodging-house with a difference, however. For whereas in the ordinary establishment of this kind, one paid rent to a landlady who lived on the spot, here one paid it to an agent who came from somewhere, promptly every Monday morning, for the purpose of collection. It was a perfect hiding-place. You did not know your neighbor. Your neighbor did not know you. With due care, one could plan his life so that he met n.o.body.

Susannah, except for a choice of rooms, did not for an interval plan her life at all. She made that choice instantly, however. Of two rooms situated exactly opposite each other at the back of the second floor, she chose one because it overlooked a yard containing a tree. It was a tiny room, whitewashed; meagerly and nondescriptly furnished. But the door-frame and window-frame offered decoration. Following the ecclesiastical design of the whole house, they peaked into triangles of carved wood.

Susannah gave scant observation to any of these things. Once alone in her room, she locked the door. Then she removed two things from her suitcase--a nightgown and the miniature of Glorious Lutie. The latter she suspended by a thumbtack beside the mirror of her bureau. Then she undressed and went to bed. She slept fitfully all the rest of that day and all that night. Early in the morning she crept out, bought herself, at a Seventh Avenue delicatessen shop, a jar of milk and a loaf of bread. She lunched and dined in her room. She breakfasted next morning on the remains.

Her sleep was deep and dreamless; but in her waking moments her thoughts pursued the same treadmill.

"Glorious Lutie," she began one of the wordless monologues which she was always addressing to the miniature, "I ought to have known long ago that they were a gang of crooks! Why don't we trust our intuitions? I suppose it's because our intuitions are not always right. I can't quite go with anything so magic, so irrational as intuition! And then again I'm afraid I'm too logical. But I'm always having the same thing happen to me.

Perhaps I'm talking with somebody I have met for the first time.

Suddenly that person makes a statement. Instantly--it's like a little hammer knocking on my mind--something inside me says: 'That is a lie. He is lying deliberately and he knows he lies.' Now you would think that I would trust that lead, that I would follow it implicitly. But do I? No!

Never! I pay no more attention to it than as though it never happened.

And generally my intuition is right. But always I find it out too late.

Now that little hammer has been knocking its warnings about the Warner-Byan-O'Hearn bunch ever since I started to work for them. But I could not _make_ myself pay any attention to it. I did not want to believe it, for one thing. And then of course the work was awfully interesting. I kept calling myself all kinds of names for thinking-- And they _were_ kind. I _wouldn't_ believe it. But my intuition kept telling me that Warner was a hypocrite. And as for Byan--"

Perhaps Susannah could not voice, even to Glorious Lutie, the thoughts that flooded her mind when she conjured up the image of Byan. For in her heart Susannah knew that Byan admired her overmuch, that he would have liked to flirt with her, that he had started-- But Warner had called him off. The enigmatic phrase, which had come to her from Warner's office and in Warner's voice, recurred. "Keep off clients and office employ--"

Susannah knew the end of it now--"employees" of course. Warner's rule for his fellow crooks was that they must not flirt with clients or the office force. Again and again in her fitful wakefulness she saw Byan standing before her; slim, blade-like; his smartly cut suit adhering, as though pasted there, to the lithe lines of his active body. And then suddenly that revolver which came from--where? Byan was of course the most attractive of them all. That floating, pathetic smile revealed such white teeth! That deep look came from eyes so long-lashed! Warner with his pseudo-clergyman, pseudo-actor oratory, deep-voiced and vibrant, was the most obvious. O'Hearn, his lids perpetually down, except when they lifted swiftly to let his glance lick up detail, was the most mysterious. But Byan was the most attractive--

"Yes, Glorious Lutie, I was always receiving letters which started that little hammer of intuition knocking. I was always overhearing bits of conversation which started it; although often I could not understand a word. I was always trying to piece things together--wondering-- Well, the next time I'll know better. I've learned my lesson. But oh--think, think, _think_ what I've helped to do. They robbed widows and orphans and all kinds of helpless people. Of course I didn't know I was doing it. But that's going to haunt me for a long, long time. I wish there were some way I could make up. I've come out of it safe. But they--oh, I mustn't think of this. I _mustn't_. I can't stand it if I do. Oh, Glorious Lutie, believe me, my guardian angel was certainly on _that_ job. Otherwise I don't know what would have become of me. Are you my guardian angel, I wonder?"

When Susannah finally arose for good, she discovered, naturally enough, that she was hungry. She went out immediately and, in the nearest Child's restaurant, ordered a dinner which she afterward described to Glorious Lutie as "magnanimously, munificently, magnificently masculine." It consisted mainly of sirloin steak and boiled potatoes, "and I certainly ate my fill of them both." Then she took a little aimless, circ.u.mscribed walk; returned to her room. She unpacked her tightly stratified suitcase; hung her clothes in her little closet; ranged her small articles in the bureau drawer. As though she were going to start clean in her new career, she bathed and washed her hair in the public bathroom on the second floor. Coming back into her room, she sat for a long time before the window while her dripping locks dried. She sat there through the dusk.

"After all, Glorious Lutie," she reflected contentedly, "why do I ever live in anything bigger than a hall bedroom? All a girl needs is a bed, a bureau, one chair and a closet, and that is exactly what I've got. And for full measure they have thrown in all those ducky little backyards and a tree. I don't expect you to believe it, but I tell you true. A tree in Manhattan. How do you suppose it got by the censor! And just now, if you please, a tiny new moon all tangled up in its branches. It's trying its best to get out, but it can't make it. I never saw a new moon struggle so hard. Honest, I can hear it pant for breath. It looks like a silver fish that tried to leap out of this window and got caught in a green net. I suppose your Glorious Susie must be thinking of annexing a job sometime, Glorious Lutie. Or else we'll cease to eat. But for a few days I won't, if you don't mind; I'm fed up on jobs. And I've lost my taste for offices. No, I think I'll take those few days off and do a rubberneck trip around Manhattan. I feel like looking on innocent objects that can't speak or think. And for a time I don't want to go any place where I'd be likely to see my friends of the Carbonado Mining Company. After a while the thought of them won't bother me so. Probably by this time they have hired some other poor girl. Perhaps she won't mind Mr. Cowler though. Anyway, I'm free of them."

When Susannah awoke the next morning, which was the third of her occupancy of the little room, some of her normal vitality had flowed back, her spirits began to mount. She sang--she even whistled--as she bathed and dressed; and she indulged in no more than the usual number of exasperated exclamations over the uncoilableness of her freshly shampooed, sparkling hair. "Why do we launder our tresses, I ask you, Glorious Lutie?" she questioned once. "And oh, why didn't I have regular gold hair like yours instead of this garnet mane? I look like--I look like--Azinnia! But oh, I ought never to complain when I reflect that I've escaped the curse of white eyelashes."

A consideration first of the shimmery day outside, and next of the clothes hanging in her closet, deflected her attention from this grievance. She chose from her closet a salmon-colored linen gown, slightly faded to a delicate golden rose. It was a long, slim dress and it made as much as possible of every inch of Susannah's long slimness.

Moreover, it was notably successful in bringing out the blue of her brilliant eyes, the red of her brilliant hair, the contrasting white of her smooth warm skin. That face now so shone and smelled of soap that, the instant she caught sight of it in the gla.s.s, she pulled open the top drawer of her bureau and powdered it frantically.

"I always shine, Glorious Lutie, as though I had washed with bra.s.s polish. I don't remember that you ever glistened. But I do remember that you always smelled as sweet as--roses, or new-mown hay, or heliotrope. I wonder what powder you did use? And it was a very foxy move on your part, to have yourself painted in just that soft swirl of blue tulle.

You look as though you were rising from a cloud. I wonder what your dresses were like? I seem to remember pale blues and pinks; very delicate yellows and the most silvery grays. It seems to me that tulle and tarlatan and maline were your dope. Do you think, Glorious Lutie, when I reach your age, I shall be as good-looking as you?"

Glorious Lutie, with that reticence which distinguishes the inhabitants of portraits, made no answer. But an observer might have said that the young face, staring alternately at the mirror and at the miniature, would some day mature to a face very like the one which stared back at it from the gold frame. Both were blonde. But where Glorious Lutie's eyes were a misty brown-lashed azure, Glorious Susie's were a spirited dark-lashed turquoise. Glorious Lutie's hair was like a golden crown, beautifully carved and burnished. Glorious Susie's turbulent mane was red, and it made a rumpled, coppery bunch in her neck. However, family resemblances peered from every angle of the two faces, although differences of temperament made sharp contrast of their expressions.

Glorious Lutie was all soft, dreamy tenderness; Susannah, all spirit, active charm, resolution.

Susannah spent three days--almost carefree--of of what she described to the miniature as "touristing." She had very little time to converse with Glorious Lutie; for the little room saw her only at morning and night.

But she gave her confidante a detailed account of the day's adventures.

"It was the Bronx Zoo this morning, Glorious Lutie," she would say.

"Have you ever noticed how satisfactory little beasties are? They don't lay traps for you and try to put you in a tortured position that you can't wriggle out of?" Though her question was humorous in spirit, Susannah's eyes grew black, as with a sudden terror. "No, _we_ lay traps for _them_. I guess I've never before even tried to guess what it means to be trapped?" Or, "It was the Art Museum this afternoon, Glorious Lutie. I've looked at everything from a pretty nearly life-size replica of the Parthenon to a needle used by a little Egyptian girl ten million years ago. I'm so full of information and dope and facts that, if an autopsy were to be held over me at this moment, it would be found that my brain had turned into an Encyclopaedia Britannica. In fact, I will modestly admit that I know everything." Or, "It was the Aquarium this morning, Glorious Lutie. Why didn't you tell me that fish were interesting? I've always hated a fish. They won't roll over or jump through for you and practically none of them bark or sing--or anything.

I have always thought of them only as something you eat unwillingly on Fridays. But some of them are really beautiful; and interesting. I stayed there three hours; and I suppose if it hadn't been for the horrid stenchy smell I'd be there yet."

But in spite of these vivacious, wordless monologues, her spirits were a long time rising to their normal height. The frightened look had not completely left her eyes; and often on her long, lonely walks, she would stop short suddenly, trembling like a spirited horse, as though some inner consideration hara.s.sed her. Then she would take up her walk at a frantic pace. Ultimately, however, she succeeded in leaving those terrifying considerations behind. And inevitably in the end, the resilience of youth conquered. The day came when Susannah leaped out of bed as lightly as though it were her first morning in New York.