CHAPTER VIII

THE TURN OF THE LANE

Jessamy and Barbara were ready for their expedition in search of peace by nine o'clock the next morning. Phyllis had solemnly promised to prepare for herself and her aunt alternate cups of beef-tea and malted milk for every two hours of their absence, a task to which she protested she was quite equal, especially as she would be sustained by the remembrance of the errand on which they were bound. If they were detained over lunch-hour, the willing but overworked maid was engaged to serve them, a provision for possibilities suggested by Phyllis, who realized that Harlem was a long distance away and flat-seeking consuming of time.

"Phyllis is rather like the centurion in the gospel: she tells one to go, and she goeth, and another to do this, and she doeth it. That isn't irreverent, because the centurion was only a Roman soldier, not even a prophet," said Bab, as she and Jessamy toiled up the elevated-road steps at Thirty-third Street. "I wonder what it is about Phyl that we all yield to?"

"She is very decided, with all her quiet manner, for one thing," said Jessamy; "and we have learned that she is generally right, and pulls us out of difficulties for another. Wait till I get up, Bab; I think I've two tickets."

"What does it matter? Keep them; we shall need them when we've moved up town," said Bab, airily, as she dashed ahead and deposited ten cents at the ticket-seller's window.

They had a list of apartments to rent, cut from the paper, and they decided, after consulting it, to make One Hundred and Fourth Street what Bab called "their distributing-point," whence they would scatter themselves impartially over the neighborhood.

It is not wholly an attractive section of the city; Jessamy and Bab felt their ardor somewhat dampened after they had rung several janitors' bells, in uniformly small vestibules decorated with stencil-work on the ceilings and walls, and with little brass speaking-tubes, and electric bells, and, in many cases, with several small children munching cookies and staring, round-eyed, at the strangers. The apartments they were shown were not what they had dreamed of the previous night. They were tiny, with chambers "just about large enough to iron a pocket handkerchief on the floor," said Jessamy, forlornly.

But Barbara said, "Where there's scope there's hope, and New York is large," and kept on cheerfully. At last they discovered a house further up, but still below the bend of the elevated road, around which, the girls felt sure, they would never be able to persuade their mother to travel. It looked very neatly kept; the janitor's wife, a ruddy German, showed them the rooms, up two flights, with no elevator, it was true, but the stairs were not steep ones. There were seven rooms in the little place, not large, but not as small as the others they had seen; the outlook was on a quiet street, the chambers were not all dark and aired from a well, and the upper entrance to Central Park was but two blocks away. The rent of the apartment, they were told, was forty-five dollars a month; but, since it was February, the janitor thought it could be had for forty. Jessamy and Barbara were unversed in the ways of landlords, and did not know that this was a method frequently resorted to in trying to enhance the attractiveness of unrented property; it had its desired effect in their case, and they quite trembled lest some one else should secure their bargain before they had time to report it to their mother.

"We will go to see the landlord," said Jessamy, making a note of his address, and hoping she did not seem too eager.

They got home, tired but triumphant, to be greeted by two faces so much brighter than the ones they had left that they were amazed, until Mrs. Wyndham and Phyllis told them in a breath that Mrs. Van Alyn had come home, and had been to see them.

"And, oh, girls!" cried Phyllis, giving them each a rapturous squeeze. "I got her in this room all alone and told her our plan, and where you had gone, and she thought it the wisest move we could make. And--and--oh, Jess--oh, Bab, I'm half crazy! She's had some of our dearest things stored away for us, and we never knew it! Uncle's big chair, Bab's piano, our desks, tables--oh, I don't know what they are--and photographs and casts out of our own dear, lovely old rooms; and now they will be all ready for this little home!"

Bab turned white, then took a header into the pillows to smother the cry of joy which she could not keep back, but which her mother must not hear, while Jessamy, who had silently mourned her lost treasures as neither of the others had, dropped into the rocking-chair, crying for joy.

Mrs. Van Alyn had advised the girls to settle the matter without consulting their mother. She was so weak, so dead to all interest around her, that her friend thought it would be better to take her into the little apartment when it was ready to receive her, without giving her a chance to worry over the difficulties in their path--difficulties which, in her condition, would impress her more than the advantages of the plan.

Jessamy took Mrs. Van Alyn to see their discovery, and she approved; that made it somewhat better if matters went wrong later, for Jessamy did not like to assume all responsibility for such a radical change of which her mother was to be ignorant.

So the flat was taken, and then arose the question of "Only necessities, dear girls, at first, if you are guided by my advice," said Mrs. Van Alyn; "but buy good things, and select wisely. The articles I have saved for you out of your old home are rather of the nature of luxuries, so you will have almost as much as your little nest will hold of pretty things, which is fortunate."

The new apartment was repapered from front to back, and the girls had the pleasure of selecting the colors. A soft gray-green in the parlor, a rich red, olive, and brown tapestry in the dining-room, light, cheery papers in the darker bedrooms were their choice, and entirely changed the effect given by the ugly papers which had preceded them. The floors were stained in the parlor and dining-room, and for the floors of the little chambers Jessamy bought tasteful denims, which were not only pretty, but would save labor in sweeping. The three-feet-wide hall running through the apartment was stained also, and black goatskin rugs bought to lay at intervals; they were real of their kind, and Jessamy abhorred imitations. The parlor had a pretty Wilton rug to cover it, and the dining-room likewise. Curtains were not among the first necessities, though the girls thought longingly of their softening effect against the woodwork, which was not of the best quality. However, there must be many things left for time to supply; the outlay for dining-room and chamber furniture was all their first quarter's income could spare.

Ruth was called into consultation for the kitchen; she and Barbara had a delightful morning in a hardware shop, buying bright tins and fascinating japanned boxes, and all the other homely articles--homely in the English sense, for they looked beautiful to the homesick girls--which go to furnish the most important room in the house.

Jessamy, Phyllis, and Bab were wild with delight during these last days; they hardly knew how to get through them, so impatient were they for the day to come when they should take possession of their kingdom. Tom was not less excited than they. Not a day passed without his bringing home some wonderful contribution to the coöperative housekeeping, in which he claimed his full share of coöperation. And at last, on the day before the Wyndhams were to move up town, Mrs. Van Alyn carried Tom off with her to the apartment, forbidding the girls entrance to their own precincts, and with his help set in place the priceless treasures of old association which her kindness had kept for them from a past more splendid, but which the present promised to equal in happiness.

And so the great day came. Mrs. Wyndham had been told only two days before of the home awaiting her, and received the news with rather more apprehension than pleasure.

Aunt Henrietta had been to see them, and had scolded the girls roundly for their madness, prophesying utter failure and expense far beyond their calculations, and telling them that it was quite evident they meant to kill their poor mother, putting a burden upon her she was so unequal to bearing, for of course it was ridiculous to consider them, inexperienced, spoiled children, as either housekeepers or cooks.

But though there was a little time after this interview that Jessamy especially, having been the one who was inclined to doubt, felt her ardor somewhat dampened, it passed quickly, for Tom came, bringing in a patent washboard which did everything but iron the clothes laid in a tub in which it stood; and in the nonsense talked over it, and the lecture Tom gave on its merits, Aunt Henrietta was forgotten.

Phyllis had given up her position with Mrs. Haines. They hoped to save as much as she had earned there under the new arrangements, and her services were needed at home to do this. "Besides, you couldn't possibly be a nursery governess, Phyllis Wyndham," said Bab. "Won't it be blissful if we can earn money by saving it, and by making a home for ourselves into the bargain?"

Mrs. Van Alyn sent her carriage once more for her old friend's service. Mrs. Black "assembled," Tom said, to see them off; this time it was Phyllis who accompanied her aunt, and the two invalids were furnished with refreshments for the drive, and the coachman was ordered to take them up through the park at an easy pace. And so, in the carriage which had borne her away from her first home, poor Mrs. Wyndham, full of the recollection, too ill and too sad to share the girls' enthusiasm, rode away to her new one.

The trunks and all Tom's mad contributions to the apartment had gone away early, and as soon as the door had closed on their mother and Phyllis, Jessamy and Barbara tore up the long flights to get their hats and jackets and hasten after them.

Bab seized Jessamy around the waist and waltzed her all over both empty rooms, singing at the top of her voice. The chambermaid pushed her reddish bang out of her eyes to see better, and grinned sympathetically; she liked the Wyndhams, who had been considerate of her, and she would have been glad to escape bondage herself.

"Oh, Nellie, here is our parting gift to you," said Jessamy. "We're much obliged to you for what you have done for us since we came here."

"Sure, 'twa'n't anything to thank me for, miss, thanks to you; an' it's sorry I am to see you goin'," said Nellie, wiping her forehead with her apron, for she knew from long experience that it was dusty without looking to see.

"Don't say it, Nellie, don't say it," cried Bab, wriggling into her jacket, both arms at a time. "I'm so glad I think I shall die before I get home--home, Nellie, home! Only think of that--_home_, and we have been boarding here since September! Come on, Jess! Don't stop for gloves; put them on in the train! Got everything? Oh, hurry! We must be there to look after Madrina and Phyl, and I'm wild to see what Mrs. Van Alyn and that boy did up there yesterday. Don't stop for gloves; I'm going crazy."

"You're crazy now," said Jessamy, but she tucked her gloves into her coat pocket, and her voice shook, and her cheeks were crimson. "Come, then. Good-by, Nellie; I hope you will be well and happy. Good-by, old room; we might have left you sorrowful instead of rejoicing, and I thank you for that."

Barbara was already half way down-stairs; Jessamy ran after her, and they reached the front door breathless, to find Mrs. Black and Mrs. Hardy waiting to say farewell.

"I wish you luck," said Mrs. Black, with an air that seemed to imply it was a hopeless desire for any one mad enough to leave her sheltering roof. "You'll find housekeeping very different from having no cares and being free to enjoy yourself. I hope you may be happy, and your ma won't break down under the strain; she can't stand much."

"Good-by, Miss Wyndham and Miss Barbara," said Mrs. Hardy. "I thought, maybe, the young medical student might board with you. I hope you won't forget to send us cards to your wedding, my dear. I think you make a mistake to leave here, but I hope you know best."

"Did you ever dream of such a horrible old woman?" said Bab, walking indignantly down the street to Sixth Avenue. But these last shafts from the quiver which had pricked them so often in the past months could not annoy Jessamy and Barbara long, because they were the last; were they not going home, home, and is not home a word to conjure evils away?

The ride seemed endless to the two girls, feverish with impatience; the train dragged around the curve at Fifty-third Street, and loitered as it had never done before at each station. But at last--at last the tedious journey ended, and once they had turned east out of crowded Columbus Avenue, Jessamy and Bab fairly ran down the street where their apartment waited them.

They let themselves into the house with their own latch-key; the janitor's wife was cleaning brasses, and said good morning pleasantly, but with no notion of what a great event was happening before her Swabian eyes. How could she have, poor soul, since people move in and out of apartments every day, and few of them are young exiles, hungry for a home, come to take possession of their Land of Promise?

Jessamy's heart beat so she could hardly get up the stairs, but Bab honorably waited for her, and would not put the key in the lock--not the general, common lock of the outer door, solemn as that ceremony had been, but the sacred, blessed lock of their own private-hall door.

She threw the door open, clutched Jessamy's hand, who returned the pressure with interest, and together they entered their home.

How beautiful, peaceful, homelike everything looked! There stood Bab's piano, Jessamy's desk, and the pictures they had loved welcomed them from the walls like living things.

They ran from room to room, calling to each other, sobbing and laughing and kissing the inanimate things like crazy girls. Phyllis's desk stood in her room, and the little rocking-chair Bab loved best held out its arms to her beside her bed. In the dining-room they found silver they had thought never to see again, and dishes which, empty or full, they knew would be equal to food to their mother.

They made their excited way back to the parlor finally, and Jessamy dropped exhausted in the window, which was mysteriously draped with white lace, though they had made up their minds to self-denial in the matter of curtains. Her eyes rested on her father's chair, and her lips trembled with joy and gratitude. "Oh, God bless that dear, dear Mrs. Van Alyn!" she said, though she usually found such expression impossible.

Barbara opened the piano, and laid her hands on the keys. She struck two or three chords of "Home, Sweet Home," and then laid her head down on the pretty case to cry the happiest tears she had ever shed.

It was fortunate that Jessamy and Barbara had more than half an hour to await the arrival of the invalids, for neither Phyllis nor their mother was strong enough to encounter them while their excitement was at its height. When they arrived the girls had calmed down enough to open the door quietly and say, with only a little tremor in each voice: "Welcome home, mama and Phyllis!"

Phyllis looked white after her drive, but the color rushed from her throat to her short hair at the sight that met her eyes. She did not attempt to go further than the parlor sofa, where Bab led her, and let her cousin take off her wraps without an effort to help herself. She lay still in a trance of delight, looking from one dear picture to another, letting the soothing green tone of the room sink into her brain and rest her as if a quiet hand had been laid upon her nerves.

Mrs. Wyndham got no further than her husband's chair. She sank into it, laid her tired head against its cool leather, and burst into quiet tears. But even the girls, inexperienced as they were, recognized that they were tears which would restore her, that they stood for the breaking up of the apathy which had been the worst phase of their mother's illness, over which Doctor Jerome had looked gravest. And they felt certain that they had done well in taking matters into their own hands, and giving the frail little mother a home once more.

Bab, getting to herself again, saw that the taking possession must be keyed lower, and that they must get into the commonplace as quickly as possible if they wanted their mother and Phyllis to feel no ill effect of the drive.

"We shall now proceed, Miss Wyndham and I, to prove to you that we can build a fire and cook," she said. "We are going into our kitchen, and shall turn on our gas, which is the way we always build a fire, and light it with a safety match, and we shall take our new saucepan and heat for both of you ladies a fresh glass of milk. You will perceive, without my mentioning it, that everything we propose to do is new and up-to-date. You shall be served within fifteen minutes, Mrs. Wyndham, ma'am, with crisp, fresh crackers, hot milk, and a thimbleful of brandy, then you and your niece will be mildly but firmly compelled to lie down on your beds until luncheon." A program which was carried out to the letter.

Oh, the joy of preparing that luncheon, when for the first time Jessamy deposited the carefully measured tea--measured by the old rule of a teaspoonful to each cup and one for the pot--into the fat little Japanese teapot, and the unutterable bliss of peeping in afterward, with an air of experience, to see if it had "drawn" sufficiently! And the happiness of broiling the chops on the broiler of the gas-range, new and lovely to behold, if it was black! And the greater happiness of making cocoa for the invalids in the alluring agate saucepan, brought forth from the under part of the kitchen closet, to be useful for the first time in its gray, satin-finish life!

Bab was delirious, cut a slice of bread, and flew off to turn the chops; cut two more slices, and ran away to hug her mother. She set the cold water running, and Jessamy just stopped her afterward from filling the water-pitcher from the hot-water faucet. She set the table in a whirl, darting here and there with rapturous squeals at the discovery of some treasure she had not yet seen; on the whole, did all a mad child could do to prove that Aunt Henrietta was right, and that she was "flighty" and unreliable.

Jessamy took her happiness in another way. She went about with an uplifted look on her lovely face, touched everything with a kind of reverence, brooding over the teacups and lifting the butter-jar as if they were little babies. She forgot nothing, left nothing undone, and when she went in to say, with an assumption of what she intended for a commonplace manner, though her voice would quiver: "Lunch is ready, mama; come, Phyllis," she called them to a meal perfect, so far as it went, thanks to her and in spite of Bab's temporary insanity.

Tom and Ruth came to that first dinner. Tom had camped out, and insisted on cooking the steak. Ruth showed the girls how to boil potatoes so that they would neither crumble to bits nor emerge water-soaked from the hot water. Ruth also taught them to prepare the canned peas so that the flavor of the tin would be taken from them; and more than this they did not attempt, beyond cutting oranges into flower shapes for dessert, and making black coffee, which the girls had supposed a simple accomplishment until Ruth explained to them the many ways in which they could spoil it.

Nixie had a brilliant red bow, which he despised, on his collar for the occasion, and was fed in turn by every one till he could eat no more and retired to the front of the radiator to meditate on the advantages of housekeeping.

Mrs. Wyndham made an effort, and took her place at the head of her table to please the girls, and really showed such an improved appetite that Jessamy and Barbara forgot theirs in the joy of watching her. And Phyllis did her duty by the tender steak as only fever and half a year of "Blackboard" steaks could make her. Jessamy and Bab made a dinner chiefly of rapture; it was all so wonderful, so blissful, that they did not crave ordinary food, but beamed on their family in satisfaction that was as nourishing--for once--as steak.

Tom donned one of the new plaid gingham aprons provided for the young housekeepers and helped with the dishes. It was only a game, new and fascinating, this first time to wash even the greasy broiler; but Ruth had shown them the charm of ammonia and a patent preparation of potash, and even dainty Jessamy faced the prospect of future pans fearlessly.

"Now, I've one more contribution to this mansion," said Tom. "I wanted to show it to you when I came, but I feared for my dinner. Your mother has it in the parlor. It's for you, Phyllis."

"Is it--" began Phyllis, but Tom interrupted her. "Don't guess; come and see, all of you."

Phyllis fairly jumped from the rocking-chair, where she had been installed in range of the kitchen door to watch the dish-washing, and ran, as if she had never been ill, into the parlor. There sat her aunt, and in her lap, curled up like a powder-puff, the tiniest, whitest kitten ever seen. Phyllis had it in her hands and cuddled in her neck in a moment. "Oh, Tom, it's lovely! Oh, if you only knew how I've been wanting a kitten! How did you get such a white one?" she cried rapturously.

"I've had it engaged for you for ten days; we've been waiting for it to learn to eat; it's only a month old," said Tom, looking very happy at Phyllis's pleasure. "His mother is a white lady of most honorable reputation and perfect manners; they say all her kittens are models in every way. Hope he'll do you credit."

"He shall be called Truce," cried Phyllis; "because he's all white and we're at peace."

"Truce is not peace; however, it's a jolly name," said Tom. "I called him Antiseptic Cotton, but I don't mind if you change the name. He looks precisely like the little packages of cotton we use in the hospital."

"Horrid!" said Bab, decidedly. "Truce is pretty. I think you might let some one else see just the tip of his tail, Phyl. We like kittens, too."

"He adds the very last touch to the hominess of everything," said Phyllis, generously handing the kitten over to Bab. "Bless you, Tom, for getting him!"