Part 11

Now Judy was really very fortunate in these random proceedings, for she had found a good home under an exceptionally kind and understanding mistress. And therefore perhaps it was unreasonable of her to be so unhappy. But no one has ever demonstrated that human affairs are much controlled by reason. Judy was dumbly and piteously miserable. She was homesick and lonely, and half-mad with strangeness. She was not really slow-witted; but the confusion of her spirits put her into a kind of black stupor. Everything was uncouth to her: steam heat, electric light, gas-stove, telephone--even the alarm clock in her bedroom. Not knowing how to turn off her radiator, and having the simple person's distrust of opening windows in a strange place, the first few nights she was sick with heat and suffocation. In her sleep she cried out indistinguishable words about being shot. In spite of Mrs. Leland's patient tuition, she made every possible kind of mistake. The children, with the quickness of youth, realized her inexperience and uncertainty, and played a thousand impish pranks. Mrs. Leland could see that the girl had been through distresses at home, and kept the evening papers, with their headlines about Ireland, out of sight. But one evening, in the kitchen, Judy came upon a Sunday rotogravure section with pictures of burnt streets in Cork. The look of the people in those photographs went through her heart. The men wearing caps, the women in shawls, something even in the shape of trouser legs and heavy shoes, reminded Judy how far she was from all that she understood. It's the little things you take for granted at home that come back to hurt you when you're away. That night, sitting in her bedroom next the nursery, she shook herself ill with sobs.

One who might have helped her greatly took pains to add to her bewilderment. Hattie, Mrs. Leland's coloured cook, a retainer of long standing, was sharply disgruntled at this new addition to the household. Jealousy was the root of Hattie's irritation, and it shot up a rapid foliage of poison ivy. The previous nurse, a bosom friend of Hattie's own race, had been discharged in December for incompetence. Moreover, Hattie had not forgotten poor naïve Judy's startled look when they first encountered. Judy had hardly seen a coloured person before, and was honestly alarmed. Hattie, though loyal to Mrs. Leland in her own primitive fashion, deeply resented this interloper. The invasion proved that Mrs. Leland was no longer entirely dependent on the particular clique of Heathwood coloured society in which Hattie moved. The cook's logic was narrow but rigorous. The sooner the intruder could be discouraged out of the house, the sooner the Black Hussars (as Heathwood ladies called the coloured colony on whom they largely relied for assistance) would resume undivided sway. Mrs. Leland had had a Polish girl as a stop-gap for a few days after the coloured nurse left; and observing the cook's demeanour toward this unfortunate, Mr. Leland had remarked that Hattie was working for a black Christmas.

So Hattie, who was sharp-tongued and very capable, hectored Judy whenever she entered the kitchen, and by all the black arts at her command (which were many) added to the girl's distress. Judy, in spite of her mistress's kindness, grew more and more wretched. As Mr. Leland said in private (pursuing the train of his previous pun), the maids were black and blue. Mrs. Leland, much goaded by domestic management and the care of a very small baby, began to wonder whether she had not added another child to look after rather than lightening her burdens. And then she saw that Judy was on the verge of nervous collapse. She tried to hearten the girl by giving her an extra holiday. Judy was given some money, packed off to the station in a taxi, and sent on her maiden trip to town in the hope that city sights and shop windows would revive her interest in life. Mrs. Flaherty, the lodging-house lady in Brooklyn, was telephoned to, and promised to send her small boy to meet the girl at the station.

It happened to be the eve of the genial Saint Valentine's Day. Shop windows were gay with pleasantly exaggerated symbols of his romantic power. Winter afternoons in the city are cruel to the unfortunate, for the throng of the streets the light and lure of the scene, make loneliness all the worse if there is trouble in your heart.

Judy sat in the waiting room of the Long Island terminal in Brooklyn, and tears were on her face. She had somehow missed Mrs. Flaherty's lad. Then she had tried to find her way to the lodging-house, but grew more and more frightened and bewildered as she strayed. Giving that up, she had gone into a movie, and there, for a while, she had been happy. The favourites of the screen are the true internationalists: they speak a language, crude though it often is, which is known from Brooklyn to Bombay. But then pictures were shown of scenes in Ireland. She came out with cold hands, and wandered vaguely along the streets until dusk. Finally, in despair, she groped back to the station at Flatbush Avenue, and sat forlornly on a bench, too weary and sorry even to ask how to get home.

With the unerring instinct of the stranger for choosing the wrong place, she had blundered into the downstairs station, by the train-gates, missing the waiting room above where departures are duly announced by orotund men in blue and silver. In that chilly cavern she sat, dumbly watching the press of homeward commuters laden with parcels and papers. Red signboards clattered up and down over the iron gates, and she puzzled doubtfully over such names as _Speonk_, and _Far Rockaway_. The last somehow recalled a nursery rhyme and made her feel even more lost and homesick. Occasionally, with a gentle groan and rumble, an electric train slid up to the railing and stared at her with two fierce hostile eyes. The soda fountain in the corner was doing a big business: timidly she went over, feeling cold, and asked for tea. To her amazement, there were no hot drinks to be had. The people, all gulping iced mixtures, stared at her curiously. Sure, this is a mad country, she thought. The clock telling the time was the only thing she could properly understand.

So it was the clock, at last, that brought her to startled action. It was getting late. A tall, good-looking fellow in a blue uniform came out of a room at the back of the station, carrying two lighted lanterns. He halted not far from where she was sitting, and compared his watch with the Western Union clock. Of all the hundreds she had seen, he was the first who looked easily questionable. With a sudden impulse Judy got up, clutching her coin-purse.

“If you please, where will I be after taking the train to Heathwood?” she said, nervously.

“Heathwood? The 6:18 makes Heathwood. Right over there, the gate's just opening. Change at Jamaica.”

He looked down at her, wondering but kindly. He was puzzled at the frightened way she was staring at his coat-collar; he could hardly have guessed that to wet eyes the embroidered letters had at first seemed to be _liar_. Her puny, pinched face was streaked with tears, the red knitted muffler made her pallor even whiter. The little imitation fur trimmings on her coat sleeves and collar were worn and shabby.

“Thank you,” she said, blindly, and started off for the wrong gate.

“Hey!” he called, and overtook her in a few long strides. “This way, miss. Got your ticket?”

In a sudden panic she opened her purse, and could not find it.

“Oh, surely I've lost it,” she cried. “Where's the booking office?”

“The booking office?” he said. “D'you mean the news-stand? Here you are.” He picked up the ticket, which she had dropped in her nervousness.

“That's all right,” he said, encouragingly. “This train, over here. I'm one of the crew. I'll see you get there. Don't worry.”

He escorted her through the gate, and found her a seat on the train, beside a stout commuter half buried in parcels.

“Now you stay right here,” he said. “I'll tell you when we get to Jamaica, and show you the Heathwood train.” He smiled genially, and left her.

Judy got out her wet handkerchief and wiped her face. As the train ran through the tunnel, she wished she had been on the inside of the seat, for the dark window would have been useful as a mirror. “He saw me crying,” she kept repeating to herself. The man beside her blanketed himself with a newspaper, and the pile of packages on his knees kept sliding over onto her lap, but she was oblivious. She was thinking of the tall man in blue with the queer cap. How kind he had been. The first real kindness she had met in all that nightmare afternoon.

Presently he came through the car. She could see him far down the aisle, leaning courteously over each seat. At first she thought he was just saying a friendly word to all the passengers. Sure, that's like him, she said to herself: he has a grand way with him. Then she saw that he was punching tickets with a silver clipper. Glory, it's the Guard himself, she thought. I wonder will he speak to me again?

The man beside her thrust an arm out from his mass of bundles and held a large oblong of red-striped cardboard across in front of her face. This reminded Judy of her own ticket, which was so different from her neighbour's that she worried for a moment lest it should not be valid. Here was her friend, bending above her with a smile.

“Everything all right?” he said. “The next stop's Jamaica. That's where you get off. Watch for me at this door, and I'll show you the Heath-wood train.” Click, click: the two tickets were punched, and he went on. Judy shut up her coin purse with a snap, and began to notice the hat worn by the lady in the seat in front.

At Jamaica she found him in the vestibule, his head overtopping the pushing crowd. “This way,” he said, and led her quickly across the platform. “Jack,” he said to the brakeman on the other train, “tell this lady when you get to Heathwood.”

“Well, Judy,” said Mrs. Leland when her nursemaid got back to the house. “How much better you look! Did you have a good time?”

“Oh, a grand time,” said Judy. Her face had a touch of colour and indeed even her awkward bog-trotting gait seemed lighter and more sprightly. “That's good,” said her mistress. “You'd better run down and get some supper before Hattie puts everything away. You can put Jack to bed after you've had something to eat.”

“Pretty late for supper,” grumbled Hattie, as Judy came into the kitchen. “Doan' you think I got nothing to do but wait on you?”

“I'll get my own supper,” said Judy, politely. “Don't you bother.”

“You've got a head on your shoulders,” said Hattie, banging some dishes on to the kitchen table. “Whyn't you use it and get back on time?”

“The black banshee's up in arms again,” said Judy to herself. “I'll hold my peace.”

“That's the trouble with foreigners,” growled Hattie. “They ain't got no sense. These Irish micks come over here, puttin' on airs, where nobody wants 'em.”

Judy's sallow cheek began to burn a darker tint.

“Ah, nabocklish!” she said. “There's somebody loves me, at any rate.”

She hurried through supper, and ran upstairs to put Jack to bed. The six-year-old was amusing himself by snapping open and shut something that gleamed in the lamplight.

“Here!” she said. “What are you doing with Judy's purse?”

Jack looked up in surprise. It was the first time that he had heard that note of command in the meek Judy's voice.

“I found it on your bureau,” he said.

“Well, leave it be, darlin'.” She took it from him. “Glory above, what's become of----?”

She fell on her knees on the floor and began searching.

“Ah, here, 'tis!” she cried, gladly. From the rug she picked up a tiny red cardboard heart, and replaced it carefully in one of the sockets of her purse.

“What is it?” said Jack, yawning.

“Sure, it's my Valentine!” said Judy. “It ain't many girls that gets a Valentine from a big handsome man like that the first time he sees them.”

I have often wondered how many of the Long Island trainmen use a heart-shaped punch.

REFERRED TO THE AUTHOR

YES, “Obedience” is a fine play. I'm glad they've revived it. Did you know that the first time it was produced, Morgan Edwards played the part of Dunbar? It's rather an odd story.

I never think of Edwards without remembering the dark, creaky stairs in that boarding-house on Seventy-third Street. That was where I first met him. We had a comical habit of always encountering on the stairs. We would pass with that rather ridiculous murmur and sidling obeisance of two people who don't know each other but want to be polite. I was interested in him at once. Even on the shadowy stairway I could see that he had a fine head, and there was something curiously attractive about his pale, preoccupied face. There was a touch of the unworldly about him, and a touch of the tragic, too. You know how you divine things about people. “He has troubles of his own” was the banal phrase that came into my mind. Also there was something queerly familiar about him. I wondered if I had seen Him before, or only imagined him. I was busy writing, at that time, and my mind was peopled with energetic phantoms. The thought struck me that perhaps he was someone I had invented for a story, but had never given life to. I wondered, was this pale and rather reproachful spectre going to haunt me until the tale was written? At any rate, whatever the story was, I had forgotten it.

One day, as I creaked up the first flight, I saw that he was standing at the head of the stairs, waiting for me to pass. A door was open behind him, and there was light enough to see him clearly. Tall, thin, beautifully shaven on a fine angular jaw that would not be easy to shave, I was surprised to see an air of sudden cheerfulness about him that was almost incongruous. Having thought of him only as a sort of melancholy hallucination living on a dingy stairway, it was quite startling to see him with his face lit up like a lyric poet's, a glow of mundane exhilaration in his eyes. For the first time in our meetings he looked as though to speak to him would not break in upon his secret thoughts. He was the kind of chap, you know, who usually looked as though he was busy thinking. I remember what I said because it was so inane. Some people don't like to cross on the stairs. I looked up as I came to the turn in the steps, and said, “Superstitious?” He smiled and said “No, I guess not!”

“Only in the literal sense, at this moment,” I said. An absurd remark, and a horrible pun which I regretted at once, for I thought I would have to explain it. Nothing more humiliating than having to explain a bad pun. But if I didn't explain it, it would seem rude. He looked puzzled, then his face lit up charmingly. “Superstitious--standing above you, eh? I never thought of the meaning before!”

I came up the last steps. “Pardon the vile pun,” I said. Then I knew where I had seen him before, and recognized him. “Aren't you Morgan Edwards?” I asked. “Yes,” he said.

“I thought so. I remember you in 'After Dinner'. I wrote the notice in the _Observer_ .”

“By Jove, did you? I _am_ glad to meet you. I think that was the nicest thing any one ever said.” His gaunt and pensive face showed a quick flash of that direct and honest friendliness which is so appealing. We found that we were both living on the fourth floor. For similar reasons, undoubtedly. I'm afraid he thought, at first, that I was a dramatic critic of standing. Afterward I explained that the “After Dinner” notice had been only a fluke. I was on the _Observer_ when the show was put on, and one of the dramatic men happened to be ill.

Wait a minute: give me a chance! I'll tell it exactly as it came to me, in snips and shreds. At first I didn't pay much attention. I had problems of my own that summer. You know what a fourth-floor hall bedroom is in hot weather. I had given up my newspaper job, and was trying to finish a novel. I couldn't work late at night, when it was cool, because if I kept my typewriter going after nine-thirty the old maid in the next room used to pound on the partition. I didn't get on very well with the work, and the money was running low. Every now and then I would meet Edwards in the hall. He looked ill and worried, and I used to think there was a touching pathos in his careful neatness. My own habits run the other way--my Palm Beach suit was a wreck, I remember--but Edwards was always immaculate. I could see--having made it my business to observe details--how cunningly he had mended his cuffs and soft collars. Poor devil! I used to see him going out about noon, with his cane and Panama hat. I dare say he scrubbed his hat with his toothbrush. Summer is a hard time for an actor who hasn't had a job all spring. Of course there are the pictures, and summer stock, but I gathered that he had been ill, and then had turned down several offers of that sort on account of something coming along that he had great hopes for. I remembered his really outstanding work in “After Dinner”, that satiric comedy that fell dead the winter before. Most of the critics gave it a good roasting, but knowing what I do now I expect the real trouble was poor direction. Fagan was the director, and what did he know of sophisticated comedy? As I say, I had reviewed the piece for the _Observer_, and had been greatly struck by Edwards's playing. Not a leading part, but exquisitely done.

But just at that time I was absorbed in my own not-too-successful affairs. For several years I had been saying to myself that I would do great stuff if I could only get away from the newspaper grind for a few months. And then, when I had saved up five hundred dollars, and buried myself there on Seventy-third Street to write, I couldn't seem to make any headway. I got half through the novel, and then saw that it was paltry stuff. It was flashy, spurious, and raw. One warm evening I was sitting at my window, smoking mournfully and watching some girls who were laughing and talking in a big apartment house that loomed over our lodgings like an ocean liner beside a tugboat. There was a tap at the door. Edwards asked if he could come in. I was surprised, and pleased. He kept very much to himself.

“Glad to see you,” I said. “Sit down and have a pipe.”

“I didn't want to intrude,” he said. “I just wanted to ask you something. You're a literary man. Do you know anything about Arthur Sampson?”

I had to confess that I had never heard the name. No one had, at that time, you remember.

“He's written a play,” Edwards said. “A perfectly lovely piece of work. I've got a part in it. By heaven, it seems too good to be true--after a summer like this: illness, the actors' strike, and all that--to get into something so fine. I've just read the whole script. I'm so keen about it, I'm eager to know who the author is. I thought perhaps you might know something about him.”

“I guess he's a new man,” I said. “What's the play called?”

“'Obedience.' You know, I've never had such a stroke of luck--it's as if the part had been written for me.”

“Splendid,” I said, and I was honestly pleased to hear of his good fortune. “Is it the lead?”

“Oh, no. Of course they want a big name for that. Brooks is the man. My part is only the foil--provides the contrast, you know--on the payroll as well as on the stage.” He laughed, a little cynically.

“Who's producing it?”

“Upton.”

“You don't mean to tell me Upton's got anything good?” I knew little enough about theatrical matters, but even outsiders know Upton's sort of producing, which mostly consists of musical shows where an atrocious libretto is pulled through by an opulent chorus and plenty of eccentric dancing. “A chorus that outstrips them all” was one of his favourite advertising slogans.

“That's why I was wondering about the author, Sampson. This must be his first, or he'd never have given it to Upton. Or is Upton going to turn over a new leaf?”

“The only leaves Upton is likely to turn over are figleaves,” I said, brutally. Upton's previous production had been called “The Figleaf Lady”.

“That's the amazing part of it,” said Edwards. “This thing is really exquisite. It is beautifully written: quiet, telling, nothing irrelevant, not a false note. What will happen to it in Upton's hands, God knows. But he seems enthusiastic. He's a likable cutthroat: let's hope for the best. You're busy--forgive me for breaking in.”

*****

Well, of course some of you have seen “Obedience” since that time, and you know that what Edwards told me was true. The play _was_ lovely; not even Upton could kill it altogether. It was Sampson's first. Have any of you read it in printed form? It reads as well as it plays. And the part that Edwards was cast for--Dunbar--is, to any competent spectator, the centre of the action. You remember the lead: the cold, hard, successful hypocrite; and then Dunbar, the blundering, kindly simpleton whose forlorn attempts to create happiness for all about him only succeed in bringing disaster to the one he loves best. It's a great picture of a fine mind and heart, a life of rich, generous possibilities, frittered and wasted and worn out by the needless petty obstinacies of destiny. And all the tragedy (this was the superb touch) because the wretched soul never had courage enough to be unkind. What was it St. Paul, or somebody, said about not being disobedient to the heavenly vision? Dunbar, in the play, was obedient enough, and his heavenly vision made his life a hell. It was the old question of conflicting loyalties. How are you going to solve that?

I suppose the tragic farce is the most perfect conception of man's mind--outside the higher mathematics, I dare say. Everyone knows Sampson's touch now, but it was new then. Some of his situations came pretty close to the nerve-roots. The pitiful absurdity of people in a crisis, exquisite human idiocy where one can't smile because grotesque tragedy is so close... those were the scenes that Upton's director thought needed “working up”. But I'm getting ahead of my story.

Well, now, let me see. I'd better be a little chronological. It must have been September, because I know I took Labour Day off and went to Long Beach for a swim. I had just about come to the conclusion that my novel was worthless, and that I'd better get a job of some sort. At the far end of the boardwalk, you remember, there's a quiet hotel where one gets away from the crowd, and where you see quite nice-looking people. After I'd had my swim, I thought I'd stroll up that way and have supper there. It's not a cheap place, but I had been living on lunch-counter food all summer, and I felt I owed myself a little extravagance. I was on my way along the boardwalk, enjoying the cool, strong whiff that comes off the ocean toward sunset, when I saw Edwards, on the other side of the promenade, walking with a girl. My eye caught his, and we raised our hats. I was going on, thinking that perhaps he wasn't so badly off as I had imagined, when to my surprise he ran after me. He looked very haggard and ill, and seemed embarrassed.

“Look here,” he said, “it's frightfully awkward: I must have had my pocket picked somehow. I've lost my railroad tickets and everything. Could you possibly lend me enough to get back to town? I've got a lady with me, too.”

I didn't need to count my money to know how much I had. It was just about five dollars, and, as you know, that doesn't go far at Long Beach. I told him how I stood. “I can give you enough for the railroad fares, and glad to,” I said. “But how about supper?”

“Oh, we're not hungry,” he said; “we had a big lunch.” I knew this was probably bravado, but I liked him for saying it. While I was feeling in my pocket for some bills, and wondering how to pass them over to him unobtrusively, he said, “I'd like to introduce you to Miss Cunningham. We're going to be married in the autumn.”