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The Munsey Magazine, August 1926, with "Miss Cigale"
Louisa, the long-absent, impulsive, and chronically unsuccessful sister of the dignified Mrs. Russell, arrives unexpectedly at Bella Russell's home, disheveled and emotional, after years of silence. Her appearance and manner instantly recall her youthful, chaotic charm. She confesses she has "failed at everything"—music, teaching, office work, selling soap—and has come with no money, hoping to rest with her sister like the grasshopper in La Fontaine's fable "La Cigale et la Fourmi."
MRS. RUSSELL sat on the veranda, waiting for her son. A handsome and dignified woman she was, and a very calm one, but her calmness did not suggest patience.
On the contrary, she looked like one of those persons who wait until exactly the right moment, and then proceed to do whatever is exactly the right thing to be done, leaving late or careless persons to their well-deserved fate. Half past six was the dinner hour; at half past six she would go into the dining room, and if her son were not home—
He always was home, though. For twenty-three years he had been trained in punctuality, neatness, and economy, and his mother was satisfied with the result. She turned her eyes toward the west, where the sun was preparing to leave, gathering together his gorgeous, filmy raiment.
She was not looking at, or thinking of, any sunset, however, but looked in that direction because the railway station lay there, and she had heard a train whistle. It was not Geordie's regular train, but once in awhile he came a little earlier; and, though Mrs. Russell was too reasonable to expect such a thing, she hoped he was coming now.
It was nice to have an extra half hour with her boy; nice to walk about the lawn with him, to talk to him, to listen to him, even just to look at him, as long as he didn't catch her at it.
No; he wasn't coming early to-night. The long tree lined street was empty, except for a woman who had just crossed the road. She was an odd figure; even the judicial Mrs. Russell had to smile a little at her frantic progress. A flower crowned hat had slipped far to the back of her head, a gray dust coat, unbuttoned, flew out behind her.
She walked bent by the weight of two heavy bags, pressing forward in haste, as if struggling against a mighty wind. She came nearer, and through the branches of a tree a shaft from the setting sun fell upon her wild fair hair.
"But—goodness gracious!" said Mrs. Russell, half aloud. "But—no! Nonsense! It can't be!"
For there had been somebody else, with wild fair hair like that, shining not gold, but silver when the sun lay on it; somebody else slight and tall, and always in a desperate hurry. That was years and years ago.
She got up and came to the edge of the veranda, a queer flutter in her heart. Could there be any one else with quite that air—distinguished, and yet a little ridiculous, and somehow so touching?
"Louie!" she said, incredulously.
Down went the bags on the pavement. The newcomer stood where she was for an instant, then, headlong, rushed through the gate, up the steps, and clasped Mrs. Russell in her arms so violently that the flower crowned hat fell off and rolled down the steps. It lay on the gravel walk like a poor dry little flowerpot.
"Oh, Bella!" she cried. "Oh, Bella! Oh, Bella!"
"There—" said Mrs. Russell. "Sit down, my dear! Try to control yourself!"
As a matter of fact, she was crying herself, in a quiet, dignified sort of way. But, by the time she had gone down the steps and fetched her sister's lively hat, she had put an end to all such nonsense, and was quite calm again.
"I'm very happy to see you, Louie—" she began, but the other interrupted her.
"After all these years!" she cried, with a sob. "It doesn't seem possible, does it, Bella? We were young then, Bella. Oh, think of that! Young, Bella—"
"I shan't think of any such thing," said Mrs. Russell, tartly. "Do stop crying, Louie, please, and tell me something about yourself."
"It isn't me yet, Bella; not the poor, silly forty-five-year-old me. It's the other Louie, with her hair down her back, sitting here with the old Bella in that plaid dress. Do you remember that plaid gingham, Bella, that mother made for you? With the bias—"
"No!" Mrs. Russell replied. "I do not. I don't want to, either. What I want to hear is something about yourself, Louie—something sensible and intelligible."
"I remember you, Bella, so well—sitting at the piano, with a great black braid over your shoulder, playing that 'Marche Aux Flambeaux,' and poor father keeping time with his pipe. And that duet, Bella! You and I—the Grande Fantasia for Les Huguenots—" She giggled through her tears, and that giggle was more than Mrs. Russell could bear. It made the plaid dress and the duet and a hundred heartbreaking, dusty, forgotten things rise up before her.
"Louie!" she said. "I'm ashamed of you! When two sisters haven't met for—"
"For two lifetimes!" said the incorrigible Louie. "I don't care, Bella! The old things are the best."
"What," interrupted Mrs. Russell, sternly, "have you been doing all these years, Louie? Why didn't you ever write to me?"
"I never had time, Bella. I've been too busy, failing. I've failed at everything, Bella, everything! I gave my recital—and you must have read how quickly and thoroughly I failed there. Then I tried giving music lessons, but I was always late, or I forgot to come at all, or I'd feel not in the mood for teaching. Then I studied filing and indexing, and oh, Bella, you should have seen the awful things I did! You know I never was exactly methodical! Then I learned typing. I was a little frightened then, Bella. I really tried, at that. But, you see, I wasn't young any more then, and not good at the work. That failed, too. Then I tried to peddle things—scented soap, from door to door."
"Louie! I—I'm very sorry, my dear!"
"Well, you needn't be!" said her sister, drying her eyes. "It's been very wonderful—sometimes, Bella. I've been happy most of the time—because, you see, I never minded failing."
"Are you—" Mrs. Russell began, with no little embarrassment. "Are you—in difficulties now, Louie?"
"I haven't a penny in the world, Bella. You remember that fable of La Fontaine's we used to recite in school? 'La Cigale et La Fourmis'? (The Grasshopper and the Ant.) I'm Miss Cigale, Bella, and you're Mrs. Fourmis. I'm the poor, silly grasshopper who danced the summer away—and here I am, Bella. It's winter—for me—and I want to rest, here with you, until the summer comes back."
"Oh, don't be so—'highfalutin''!" cried Mrs. Russell, stung by emotion into using a long-forgotten word. "Try to talk sensibly, Louie."
This was all so typical of her sister; all her memories of Louisa were made up of these queer little storms, these showers of tears, these rainbow smiles.
"Always so upsetting!" she thought, half angry. Yet there never had been any one dear to her in the way Louisa was.
"Come upstairs," she said, firmly, "and get ready for dinner, and then—Oh! There's Geordie!"
"Oh, Bella! Your son!"
"Louie, listen to me! You must not be—silly about Geordie. He won't understand it, and he won't like it. Do, for goodness' sake, pull yourself together!"
But Louie couldn't. She tried; she sat up very straight in her chair, and smiled, but Mrs. Russell was not satisfied. She wished that she had had time to put Louie in order before the boy saw her. He was so fastidious; what would he think of this unexpected aunt, with her wild, fair hair, her blue eyes swimming in tears, her trembling smile?
"She looks worn," thought Mrs. Russell, "but not—well, somehow, not grown up!"
Geordie had come up the steps now; a good-looking young fellow, and somehow touching, with his sulky mouth and his sulky blue eyes.
"Louisa!" said Mrs. Russell, in a threatening voice. "This is my son, George. Geordie, your Aunt Louisa!"
Poor Louisa said nothing at all, for fear of bursting into tears, but Geordie could be trusted to behave with decorum. He said something about this being an unexpected pleasure; said it punctiliously. But Mrs. Russell knew at once, by the tone of his voice, that he didn't like this aunt. She saw him cast a quick glance at her lamentable untidiness.
"Are those your bags, out in the street?" he inquired. "Shan't I get them?"
"Oh, no!" cried Louie. "Please don't bother! I'll get them!" And she made a sort of rush forward, which Mrs. Russell checked.
"Louie!" she said, sternly, and after Geordie had gone down the steps: "Louie! You must have more dignity!"
THERE was no dinner at half past six that evening, or at seven, either. When the clock struck the hour, there was Mrs. Russell sitting on the veranda, while her son paced up and down, hands in his pockets, and his face sulkier than ever. The sun was gone, now, and the clear sky was fading from lemon-yellow into gray; the honeysuckle was coming to life in the quiet dusk.
"How long is she going to stay?" he demanded.
Mrs. Russell didn't like that tone.
"Naturally I didn't ask her," she answered, stiffly. "She's had a great many—difficulties, and she's come here, to me, for a rest."
"D'you mean she's going to live here?"
She was hurt and amazed at his manner, but it was not her way to show it.
"Your aunt hasn't mentioned her plans for the future," she replied.
He walked up and down in silence for a time, and to his mother there was something ominous in his steady footfall; it was, she thought, as if he were going away from her, miles and miles away. Suddenly he spoke again, from the other end of the veranda:
"Isn't it hard enough for us to get on as it is?" he asked. "Without an extra—"
"George!" she cried, too hurt to stifle the cry. "Your own aunt!"
"Oh, let's look at the thing from a practical point of view!" he suggested, impatiently. "You know what my salary is, mother, and you know how far it goes, or doesn't go."
"Please!" said Mrs. Russell, curtly. "Surely we needn't discuss this now—before your aunt has been in the house an hour."
"Just as you please!" said he. "But—" Again he walked down to the other end of the veranda. "All I mean is"—he went on, in a strained unsteady voice—"that I can't do any more. I've—I've done my best, and I can't do any more."
Mrs. Russell sat like a statue in the gathering darkness. She had come face to face with sorrow and anxiety more than once in her life; she had had her full share of all that; but never, never before had anything wounded her like this. So she was a burden to her son.
All the little money left her by her husband she had used for the boy's education and welfare, with all her love, her time, all her life thrown, unconsidered, into the bargain. And now she was a burden to him.
"I've lived too long," she said as if to herself.
Geordie had stopped in his restless pacing to and fro.
"Mother!" he said. "You know I didn't mean it. Mother! I'm sorry."
"Very well, my boy!" she answered, in her composed way. "We'll say no more about it."
He came a few steps nearer, but halted; he hadn't been bred to the habit of affection. A hundred thousand old impulses that had been stifled by cool common sense made a great barrier now, just there, a few steps away from his mother. He turned away again, and Mrs. Russell did not stir.
It was over; that was their sensible way of dealing with all such matters; not to take them out into the daylight and destroy them, but to shut them up, to weigh down the heart for many and many a day. They had ten minutes more alone there in the dusk together, ten long minutes, and neither of them spoke.
They were, of course, waiting for their luckless guest, and both silently condemning her unpardonable delay. But, if they could have seen her just then, down on the floor on her knees beside the neat little bed in the neat, strange little room, not weeping, but very still, as if a ruthless hand had struck into quietude all her flutterings.
She had come downstairs, quite airy, quite gay, in a fresh blouse and a not too dingy skirt, and, standing unnoticed in the doorway, she had heard her nephew's words. She had rushed up the stairs again, silent as a moth, except for the tinkle of countless small hairpins dropping from her riotous hair, and had sunk down on the floor like this, to taste failure again.
The clear chiming of the clock roused her. She got up, a little bewildered for a moment.
"I'll go away!" she thought, at first. But, after all, her failure had taught her something. She put more pins into her hair, a little more powder on her nose; she tried a smile or two before the mirror, and down the stairs she went, airy as before.
"The only really terrible thing," she said to herself, "is to fail because you haven't tried."
And so she did try. She sat at the table with her unsmiling and calm sister, her unsmiling and sulky nephew, and she smiled for three; she talked, and in the end she made them smile, not because she was especially witty, but because her sweet, light spirit gave a glimmer to all her words. She was ridiculous, but she was charming; she made of that sober family dinner a high festival. And when they had finished:
"Oh, let's have coffee in the garden, Bella!" she said.
"No!" said Mrs. Russell, startled. "We don't have coffee, Louie. I think it keeps one awake."
"But who doesn't want to be awake on a night like this? Let's be awake! Let's have a little table on the lawn, and candles—candlelight under the trees is so wonderful, Bella!"
"Mary won't like it!" whispered Mrs. Russell. "It means extra work for her."
"I'll do it! All alone!"
Mrs. Russell might have protested more, if she had not observed her son pushing the books and papers off the top of a small table in the next room. If he wanted it so, or if he were trying to atone, very well; she would agree to this absurd proposal.
So the table was placed in the back garden, and there Mrs. Russell and her son sat, to wait for Louie and the coffee. They sat there under the great dark beeches that rustled solemnly in the night wind and set the candles to flickering.
Candlelight wonderful under the trees? It was horrible; it was the most sorrowful, gloomy, bitter thing. Was that the leaves stirring, or a sigh from the boy? Mrs. Russell wanted to look at him, but dared not, for fear that their eyes should meet, and with what lay between them, they must not look into each other's eyes. A burden to him—a burden too heavy for his young shoulders—
Louie came across the grass with the tray, and this time Geordie's sigh was quite audible as he arose to take it from her.
"There!" she cried. "Isn't this nice?"
Her gay voice sounded very pitiful in the dark. Mrs. Russell resolved to make an effort to help the poor creature.
"Yes," she said. "It is—very nice." But no other words came.
There could be no silence where Louie was, though; even if no one spoke, there was a swarm of dainty little sounds, the clink of a porcelain cup on its saucer, the musical ring of a silver spoon on the brass tray; the sugar tongs against the crystal bowl.
"There!" Louie cried again. "Don't you smoke, Geordie?"
"Thanks!" said he, gloomily, and taking a cigarette from his case, he leaned forward to light it at the candle.
"Mercy!" exclaimed Mrs. Russell. The two others looked inquiringly at her, but she said hastily that it was nothing. For she certainly did not intend to explain what had startled her.
It was the sight of Geordie's face as he had leaned over the candle. His blue eyes had seemed to dance and gleam, the flickering light had given him a look as if smiling in impish glee—altogether, he had looked so much, so very much, as Louie had looked years ago.
He had drawn back into the shadows, tilting his chair against the trunk of a tree, and, feeling herself deserted, Mrs. Russell tried to talk to her sister. Useless! Geordie was there, and could hear if he wished.
She understood what Louie was thinking about—what things she had in her queer, pitiful life to think about, what compensations she had found for missing wifehood and motherhood?
"Because she's not unhappy," thought Mrs. Russell. "She hasn't anything at all, as far as I can see, and yet she's not unhappy. Perhaps I'm as much a failure as she is. I meant to help him—to make him happy. But he's miserable. I've done the best I can; I can't do any more. It's as if his heart was breaking. Why? He has a good salary. I've only taken just enough to keep his home as he likes it. He has plenty for his clothes and whatever else he wants. I thought—I made him—happy."
Not one minute more could she endure this soft, dark silence; she wanted to get into the house, in the lamplight, safely shut into her home, away from the vast summer night.
"What time is it, Geordie?" she asked, so suddenly that he started.
"Nine," he replied.
"But what watch is that?"
"A new one."
"Then where's the one they gave you at the office, Geordie? Such a handsome one, Louie! A present to him on his twenty-fourth birthday. Engraved. Geordie, I hope you haven't left it about, anywhere. It's not a thing to be careless with."
"No; it's safe," he said, briefly.
"Where? In your room?"
"It's perfectly safe!" he answered, with such a note of exasperation in his voice that Louie pitied him.
"I'm sure—" she began happily, but her sister interrupted.
"Well, I'm not. You don't know what a boy that age is capable of. And it's a handsome watch. Geordie, I wish—There! Now you've broken this new one! Oh, my dear—"
For, as he arose, his foot had caught in the chair; he stumbled, and dropped the watch with a thud. It was Louie who recovered it; Louie who hastily gathered together the small oblong papers that fluttered out of his breast pocket. One had fallen at Mrs. Russell's feet; she stooped.
"What—" she began; but Louie fairly snatched it out of her fingers.
"Here, Geordie!" she said, gayly.
Mrs. Russell did not know what these tickets were, but Louie did. Louie knew well.
INDEED, all the three inmates of the house were heavy at heart that night, each with some especial knowledge not shared by the others. The night grew sultry, too, and when the morning came, it was the first day of real summer, hot and still. It was a day to make any one jaded who had not slept well.
Geordie was down first, and walking up and down the veranda; smoking, too, his aunt noticed.
"You shouldn't, before breakfast!" she admonished him, cheerfully. "And you can't smell the flowers, either, if you do."
He smiled, a forced, strained sort of smile, but civil enough, considering how unwelcome the sight of her was. He stopped walking up and down, too, and, after a moment, said, in a perfunctory voice:
"It's going to be a hot day."
"Geordie!" said she. "Let me talk to you!"
As much as his mother, did he hate and dread that note of fervor, of intimacy. He moved his shoulders restlessly, and smiled again.
"About time for breakfast," he murmured evasively.
"No, it's not. Geordie, you won't mind if I stay here with you and your mother for a little while, will you?"
He turned scarlet.
"No. Of course not," he replied. "Very glad."
"I want to stay—ever so much. But only if it can be my way. Because I'm a frightfully obstinate creature, Geordie; absolutely unmanageable. And I can't bear not to be independent. I'm going to find myself a job—"
"No!" he interrupted, with a frown. "Please don't."
She seated herself on the rail of the veranda, a most undignified attitude for one of her years, and yet, as always, there was a debonair grace about her; something unconquerably girlish.
"I will get a job, Geordie!" she announced. "That's settled. No matter where I live, I'll do that. But I want so much to stay here, if you'll let me stay on my own terms. Let me pay my board and feel like a nice, independent business woman!"
"No!" he said, again. "I—it can't be that way."
"But why, Geordie?" she asked, smiling a little.
And he couldn't endure her smile; he couldn't endure her proposal; it was the final straw for his already mutinous and unhappy spirit. If she had any faint idea of what he already suffered from this talk about being "an independent business woman"; if she had imagined what a sore subject that was.
"No!" he said. "If you want to stay here and make mother a visit, you're more than welcome. But—I don't approve of women going out to work."
"What!" she cried. "Oh, but my dear boy!"
There was something in her good-humored protest that made him hot with resentment. She wasn't laughing at him—and yet, she might as well have been; she couldn't have pointed out more plainly the absurdity of his words and his attitude. Just by some little inflection of the voice, she made him the youngest twenty-five that ever lived—a boy, a child, a silly, pompous, impertinent young ass.
"I won't have it!" he said.
She saw her mistake then—she was always quick to recognize her failures—but it was too late to remedy it.
"I'm sorry you feel like that, George," she said, gravely. "Because, you see, I couldn't stay here unless it could be that way."
"Suit yourself!" he answered, briefly.
But he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.
"I only meant—" he began, but when he turned he found her gone, vanished in her own quick, quiet way. He hurried into the house to find her, and looked for her everywhere, but in vain.
And it seemed to him that he could not go off to the city with this new burden upon his conscience. It was bad enough that he should have hurt his mother the evening before; bad enough to endure the other harassments that had tried him so sorely, for so long, without this new misery. He thought of his aunt's sprightliness; her gay and touching friendliness toward him; he remembered how grave her face had become.
"She might have known I didn't mean that," he thought, dismayed. "I don't like her, and she'll be a bore and a nuisance; but I didn't mean to offend her."
And all the time he was perfectly aware that she wasn't "offended," any more than a clover blossom is offended if you tread it underfoot. It was he who had been offended at the idea of his mother's sister going out to work every day from under his roof—of any woman doing so, in whom he was interested. Come to think of it, he was glad he had said he "wouldn't have it"; he meant that. He had told Nell also that he wouldn't have it.
"Still," he admitted, "I might have been a little more—well, more cordial to her. Because I can see that she's another one of those people."
For lately the poor fellow had been learning something about that other sort of people—people not sensible and restrained, but full of fancies and notions and feelings; people who needed careful handling, unless you were willing to see that look of pain and disappointment in their eyes.
Mrs. Russell thought that her son looked pale and jaded that morning, and noticed, with a heavy heart, how little he ate.
"I suppose he's working too hard," she said to herself. "Wearing himself out, and wasting all his youth—to take care of me. I suppose what he wants is—"
But she couldn't quite imagine what he might want.
"Perhaps he'd rather go off and live in the city with one of his friends, like Dick Judson," she thought. "I wonder if I couldn't—" So there she sat, calm and composed as ever, making the most absurd plans for living on her own private income of thirty dollars a month.
"Perhaps Louie and I together might manage something," she thought. "Louie knows more than I do about things of that sort. I'll speak to her."
Geordie went off, and still Mrs. Russell sat at the breakfast table, waiting for her sister, and silently condemning this sloth that kept her so late abed.
As a matter of fact, Louie was half a mile away from the house, picking daisies in a wide, sunny field. Seen from the road, you might have thought that tall and slender creature with fair hair shining in the sun was a care-free young girl; she moved so lightly, and now and then she sang a snatch of song.
But all this was mere bravado, her own especial method of preparing herself for a painful ordeal. She had something to do that morning which she dreaded, and instead of taking an extra cup of coffee, or anything of that sort, the silly creature forgot all about breakfast and wandered off into a daisy field. No wonder she was such a failure!
She had peculiar compensations, though. The fierce hot sun, and the rank, sweet smell of the humble little field flowers and weeds, even the troublesome insects that crawled out from the daisies onto her hands, and the little winged nuisances that flew in her face, amused and solaced her, and did her, or so she fancied, more good than ten breakfasts.
And after a time she felt strong and tranquil enough to face her day. From a pocket in her skirt she drew out a bit of paper—one of those dropped by her nephew the evening before, and she looked at it carefully.
It was a pawn ticket, marked:
Gold Watch. $50.00
NOW it happened that Miss Cigale, although she had said she hadn't a penny in the world, really did have sixty-five dollars. Considered as the savings of a lifetime, it might pretty well be called nothing, and in her careless way she had so thought of it; but now she saw it in a quite different light.
She had kept that ticket when she had picked up the others, for her idea was to get back the watch for her nephew and make him happy. And to make him, perhaps, a little fond of her. She had thought it possible last night; had thought that if she brought him his watch, and told him that she was going to take a position, he would see she wouldn't be simply an extra person to feed, but a friend and a helper; that he would like her, and they would all three live together in that dear little house, in that sweet, dear garden, in the jolliest way. She didn't expect any of that now, though.
"No," she said to herself. "I irritate and annoy him. I can see that. I'm afraid he belongs to the ants, and he can't endure grasshoppers. Oh, I'm sorry! He's such a dear boy!"
She didn't cry, for her tears were far more apt to be brought by joy than by pain; but she was certainly unhappy, all by herself there in the daisy field. To tell the truth, Miss Cigale was very tired, and had of late been haunted by specters. Wan failure she knew and didn't mind, but when loneliness and uselessness came out hand in hand, she trembled.
"I'll get the watch," she decided. "I'll do that, anyhow. But I shan't come back. He doesn't want me here, and—he's a dear boy, but I don't think I want to come."
It was characteristic of her that she didn't tell her sister she would not return. If she had to do anything unpleasant, well, then, she did it, as gallantly as she could; but if unpleasant things could be avoided, right gladly would she sheer off. So she only said that she had to "run into town," and hugged and kissed her rather unresponsive sister, and off she went, leaving behind her those heavy bags which contained all the clothes and books and ridiculous, sentimental rubbish she had in the world.
"I can send for them," she thought, "when I decide where I'm going." And she troubled her head no more about them. What did trouble her was a memory. It was a memory of a girl—a tall, slender, fair-haired girl, a music student in New York, living on an allowance from home. And living all too carelessly on it, so that one day she found herself penniless, and very hungry, and with four days to wait before the allowance could arrive. And this girl—in the persistent memory—had taken a little gold locket and a silver watch to the pawnbroker. She had thought it rather a joke, until she had got there.
"It's silly to feel like that," she said to herself this morning. "Very silly. There's nothing dishonorable or disgraceful in—in being temporarily short of money. The most important business men have to get loans. Heads of trusts and—every one. People go to their banks to get loans, and they're not ashamed of it. Well, this is exactly the same thing. I simply walk in, repay the loan, take the watch, and go. Exactly like paying a note at the bank."
Was it, though? Exactly like a bank—this queer, dark little shop, with barred windows—and the man behind the counter was exactly like the cashier her father used to bring home to dinner. She handed the ticket across the counter, with the money; but the man pushed the money back to her.
"Wait a moment!" said he, with a curious glance at her.
Then he disappeared, and Miss Cigale stood there, trying desperately hard not to feel like a criminal, an outlaw, a highly suspicious character. If she had been a man she would certainly have whistled; but, as it was, she stared about her with the most casual, offhand air.
Oh, but it was pitiful! To think that there were people so hard pressed that they must bring here a cotton quilt, or a dingy umbrella, or, worst of all, a child's pair of rubber boots. Hanging on a line from the ceiling were guitars and banjos and mandolins and ukeleles—music sold into bondage.
"Is this your own ticket, madam?" asked a voice, and, turning, she saw a severe little elderly man looking at her through his spectacles. The question dismayed her. He appeared so very much displeased; perhaps it was a wrong sort of ticket, which Geordie shouldn't have had.
"Yes. Oh, yes!" she answered, with a very poor attempt at sprightliness. "It's mine."
"You didn't buy it—or find it?" he asked.
"Oh, no!" Miss Cigale replied, quite certain now that there was something wrong. "It's my own!"
The elderly man looked at her steadily for a moment.
"Wait a minute, please!" he said. "Be seated, madam!"
So Miss Cigale sat down on a chair in a black corner, where a fur neckpiece, smelling terribly of moth balls, brushed her shoulder, and waited and waited. A little girl came in, gave up a ticket, and while she, too, waited, stared at Miss Cigale, and diligently chewed gum.
Such a queer little girl, with wispy hair, and a pale, drawn little face, and so very nonchalant an air. At last she was given a small gas stove, and went off with it. A young man came in with a traveling bag to dispose of; a stout woman came and drove a hard bargain over a ring. Nobody else had to wait, only Miss Cigale.
"Something is wrong!" she thought. "Oh, what has the poor boy done?"
Her hands and feet were very cold, her thin cheeks flushed and hot; she wished now that she had taken a cup of coffee. For she was very far away now from any such consolations as daisy fields. A burly man, with a straw hat at the back of his head, entered the shop; he spied her, and, to her horror, came directly over to her.
"You, the one with this here ticket; what's the number?" he asked.
"I don't remember the number," said Miss Cigale faintly. He went over to the counter and spoke to the elderly man in a voice too low for her to hear. Then he sat down beside her, tipping his chair, and lit a cigar. The smoke blew into her face, and his boot, crossed on his knee, brushed her skirt.
"I can't stand this," thought she. "I'll take the ticket, and come back later. I can't bear this." And she got up to go to the counter and ask for the ticket.
"Here!" said the man beside her. "Where you goin'?"
Miss Cigale didn't trouble to answer, but, to her amazement, he sprang up and barred her way.
"Go away!" she cried, in a trembling voice, but with a jerk of the thumb he turned back his coat lapel and revealed a badge.
Miss Cigale sank back into her chair again, in the dark corner. The man was speaking to her, but she did not hear him.
"What has he done?" she thought. "A detective! If I can only make them think it was me. But, oh! How can I bear this?"
Because, for all her failures, Miss Cigale had never before encountered disgrace. She had suffered the crudest disappointments, she had been hungry, cold, shabby, sleepless with anxiety, and all this she had endured gallantly. But to be arrested by a detective in a pawnshop!
Her idea of what was going to be done to her might have been laughable if there could be found on earth any one able to laugh at the stricken, heartsick creature. She thought that she would presently be taken before a judge, and that, if she kept silent, as she intended to do, she would be put into prison for whatever unimaginable offense the real owner of the ticket had committed.
"I can't be brave about it!" she said to herself. "I can't; I'm—I'm frightened."
Why must she sit here so long? Why didn't they take her away? It would be almost better to be in prison than here, where the door opened and closed, and people came in and out, and every one had a glance, casual or curious, at her corner. The detective was writing in a notebook. What was he waiting for?
"Handcuffs!" thought Miss Cigale. "Or—or a—warrant." Imagination carried her very far; she would not have been surprised by the entrance of a file of soldiers, or white-coated doctors with a strait-jacket. The most astounding images of things read or heard of filled her mind; she lost track of time and space; what she suffered was a timeless, universal thing, such as had been suffered these thousands of years by how many dazed and trembling victims. The law—The Law!
"Here she is!" said the detective to some one who had just entered. "Claims it's her own ticket."
"Oh—good—Lord!" cried a voice which reached Miss Cigale from very far away.
"Well, come along!" said the detective. "Come over to the station an' you can make your charge."
Miss Cigale did not understand; all she knew was that Geordie was here, and in danger.
"I—I don't know that man," she said, faintly.
"Never mind!" the detective retorted, laughing. "You will, soon enough!"
"No! Look here! It's—it's a mistake!" said Geordie. "It's—I'll drop it."
Miss Cigale moved nearer to him.
"Pretend you don't know me!" she whispered. "I'll—"
THAT was the end of Miss Cigale's struggle; at the critical moment she failed again, most shamefully. She fainted. That is what comes of preferring daisies to breakfast; of carrying romantic Victorian sentiments over into modern life. She fainted.
As long as she had failed, she thought she might as well do it thoroughly. She could have come to before she did; she could have opened her eyes before she did, only that there was nothing she cared to see. She could hear, too. She heard her nephew calling "Aunt Louisa!" but his low, furious tones did not make her in a hurry to answer. No; better to lie here, like this, for as long a time as she could.
"Aunt Louisa!" he said again, and this time his voice was quite desperate. She opened her eyes.
"If you'd only pretended," she whispered chidingly.
"Can you walk?" demanded the young man. "As far as a taxi?"
"But—" she began, and, raising her head, looked about her. The man behind the counter was writing in a book, the shop was empty. "The—the detective?" she asked.
He didn't even answer; but, helping her to rise, and holding her very firmly by the arm, led her out into the street. No one molested them.
"But—Geordie!" she said. "Is it—postponed?"
"I don't know what you mean," he replied, curtly. "I've arranged the thing, anyhow, so that there'll be no trouble for you. But if you wanted that watch—why didn't you tell me? I'd have done anything, rather than have this happen."
"George!" cried Miss Cigale. "Is it possible? No; it can't be! You can't think that I—" She stopped short, looking into his stern face, and with an expression on her own that somehow troubled him.
Out here, in the bright sun, she seemed so different. It was hard to think of her as a muddle-headed, desperate creature, trying, very clumsily, to get possession of a watch that didn't belong to her. No; there was something about her that was—rather impressive. She didn't look ridiculous now, or pathetic.
"I see!" she said. "You thought I wanted the thing for myself. Well, that was quite a natural thing to think, George." She spoke without the slightest trace of rancor, simply admitting that it was natural—to some human beings—to think as he did, and she could not blame him.
"Well!" said he, surprised. "You see, when I couldn't find the ticket, I telephoned to the pawnbroker, and to the police. I thought it had been stolen, and I said that if any one brought it in, to let me know."
"Yes," said Miss Cigale. "It was a perfectly natural way for you to think, my dear boy. And I was frightfully stupid to try to do it that way. I meant to help you a little bit, but—" She smiled. "Anyhow, it's all over and done with now, and I hope we'll part good friends."
"Part!" said he. "But aren't you coming back?"
"I'd rather not."
There they stood, on the street corner, all idea of a taxi forgotten.
"But, look here!" said Geordie. "You did that for me—and I behaved—I behaved—like a—" His voice broke. "I didn't know," he went on, unsteadily. "Because, you see—I didn't think any one could—any one in the world."
"Oh, there are lots of people like me!" Miss Cigale assured him. "Lots of grasshoppers. They dance the summer away, and then, when the winter comes, they're a horrible nuisance to the ants, but they're inclined to be pretty sympathetic toward any one else who has grasshopperish troubles. Not that I think you're the least bit of a grasshopper, my dear boy! I'm quite sure you're far too intelligent and sensible for that!"
"No!" said Geordie, vehemently. "I am a grasshopper! Nobody knows what a grasshopper—and a fool—I am!"
"I'm sure it was just a temporary difficulty."
"I've been doing my best, for nearly a year, to make it permanent," he said, grimly. "You see, there's a girl."
"I'm so glad!" cried Miss Cigale.
"Glad? But I can't afford to think about girls."
"I don't care! As soon as I saw you, I hoped there was a girl," Miss Cigale went on. "Because you're such a dear, obstinate, helpless, splendid boy, and I hoped there was some one to see all that. She does, doesn't she?"
Geordie had grown very red.
"She sees the obstinacy, anyhow," he answered. "You see, she's a secretary, and—" His jaw set doggedly. "She won't give up her job!" he said. "And I won't get married unless she does."
"Too many won'ts!" said Miss Cigale.
"Well, all of them together make a pretty big can't," said he. "We can't get married, that's all. I've tried to make her see that we could manage, but she says we can't. Those—those tickets, you know. I bought her a ring, and a—" He had to stop for a moment. "A little inlaid writing desk for our home. Only—it's nearly a year, and she won't see that we can manage without her salary, and I won't—"
"Oh, Geordie!" protested Miss Cigale.
"I won't!" said he. "I won't!" And a more mulish expression was never seen on a young man before.
"Do get a taxi!" Miss Cigale suggested.
AND not one of them realized the outrageous folly of that dinner! There they sat, Miss Cigale, and Geordie, and Nell, who was the girl in the case, in that expensive restaurant, eating all sorts of expensive dishes, and all fancying themselves so businesslike! There was some excuse for Miss Cigale, but Geordie, who was considered a practical and level-headed young man by his business superiors, and Nell, whose employer could not say enough in praise of her good sense and ability—they should have known better.
"He offered the position to me," Miss Cigale was saying. "He almost begged me to take it. To be his personal assistant in his booking agency for musicians and concert singers, and so on. He said—" An odd change came over her face; she looked for an instant remarkably handsome and dignified.
"He said," she went on, calmly, "that no one else could handle his clients as I could—no one else would have just the right manner, and the sympathy and understanding of their problems. He always was very flattering, years ago, when I gave my unlucky concert. It's really a very good position. But I wouldn't take it then, because I was so sick and tired of jobs that didn't do the least bit of good to any one except myself. I'm so tired of working just for myself. But now, if we arrange this thing in a really businesslike way, you could take that sweet, tiny house at the end of your mother's street, Geordie. Nell could stay at home, to look after things, and I'd contribute toward the expenses, of course. It would be very much to my advantage—because then I'd have a home, you see."
There was a silence.
"Unless I'd be a nuisance?" Miss Cigale remarked.
"You couldn't be!" cried Nell. "There never was any one so kind and dear!"
"Unless Geordie objects?" said Miss Cigale.
He glanced at her, and then stared. For there was a light of the most charming malice in Miss Cigale's eyes, and such a significant hint of a smile on her lips. She was laughing at him! She was getting the better of him!
She was giving him a chance to get married in his own, obstinate way, with Nell safely at home, and, in return, she demanded absolute surrender from him. He could have his way—but only if Miss Cigale had her way, and defiantly went out to work every day from under his roof. Could he allow this? He looked at his Nell.
This time Miss Cigale didn't fail; she triumphed.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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