XVI
Itwas not, however, an easy matter to make friends with old Miss Fogg, as Julie discovered, in spite of her ardent longing to do so. The next morning, full of friendly desire, she went up the stairs to the bare third floor where the old woman had her room, and knocked upon her door. There was no answer. The empty hall was deserted and still save for the complaint of a few flies upon the dim unwashed window at one end, which gave what little light there was. Behind the closed door that faced her there was no sound. Julie waited there, the bearer of a cup of life that was brimful and eager to pour itself out in self-donation. A second time she knocked and waited, and finally a third time. Then at last she heard a noise within the room. The bed creaked, and footsteps came toward the door. The handle was turned and old Miss Fogg looked forth. In spite of herself Julie fell back a step or two. The old face staring out at her was so startling, so haggard, so defiant, and so horrible with despair, that she was speechlessbefore it. For an instant the head was thrust out at her, its gray unbrushed hair, its withered neck set in torn nightgown-ruffles, looking like some grotesque despairing Jack-in-the-box. Then before Julie could muster a word, the face was withdrawn, the door banged shut, and the key twisted in the lock.
Julie turned and fled down to her own room, her heart pounding, and her knees rather weak beneath her. “But I will get in to her yet. I will, I will!” she told herself.
Later in the day she confessed her failure to Mrs. Watkins.
“Well, didn’t I tell you that was just the way it would be?” the other said, taking a gloomy satisfaction in the coming true of her prediction.
“But I will get in to help her yet,” Julie persisted. “She scares me; but I won’t let her shut herself up and suffer like that all alone. I can’t bear to think of it: it hurts me all through.”
“Well, she’s not the only one suffering these days,” Mrs. Watkins returned sombrely. “Look at the awful things happening in Europe: young men being killed, an’ children starving, an’ old folks driven out of their homes.” Mrs. Watkinswas holding her youngest child, a little boy of two, in her arms and rocking as she spoke.
“I know,” Julie assented, “but that’s ’way off there across the ocean; Miss Fogg’s right here, right up over my head, suffering. The things that are happenin’ over there don’t seem so close.”
“Don’t it seem close when it’s our own men, our own boys, fightin’?” Mrs. Watkins challenged. “My Lord! my youngest brother’s over there right this minute! It don’t seem far away tome—nor to my mother.”
“I know, I know,” Julie answered hastily, breathlessly. “I know; but—”
“You’re lucky that your man don’t have to go. Why was it you said they turned him down?”
“It was—it was flat foot,” Julie said. She cleared her throat after she had said it, swallowing nervously, her eyes fixed upon her sewing.
“Well, if I was you, I’d be glad he had it,” Mrs. Watkins went on, rocking her child in her arms. “I seen you in the crowd last night watching the soldiers. You didn’t see me, but I was noticing Mr. Freeman, an’ the way he looked after them men made me think he wished he was with ’em.”
“Oh, no, he doesn’t!” Julie protested sharply.
“Well, helookedlike he did, an’ if I was you I’d be glad he had that flat foot.”
Julie did not reply. She went on earnestly setting the gathers she was running, and scratching them into place with her needle, and did it without looking up.
“You’re lucky, an’ I’m lucky that my old man don’t have to go,” Mrs. Watkins continued. “But look at my little sister-in-law. There’s my brother had to leave her, an’ she lookin’ for her first baby any day, an’ no more’n a child herself. No, I’m sorry for Miss Fogg. She is a poor old derelict all right, but I don’t think of her first these days.”
“I’m going to see her again to-morrow,” Julie said. “I’m going to get in to see her yet. She’s got to let me in to help her.”
The next morning Julie went to market early, and purchased a little nosegay of summer flowers. She lingered some time in the cool shadow of the arcade where the flower stalls were. It was pleasant to come out of the dazzle of the street into the relief under the arches, where the colored women sold herbs and simple flowers, gatheredfrom the fields or from their own small gardens outside the city. It was a place of lovely color, refreshing the eye and enlightening the heart. Here were pot marigolds, orange and yellow and straw color, all in a great basin together, with an old black woman in a blue checked apron bending her dark wrinkled face over them. There was a drift of white marguerites, and again crimson and pink zinnias in stiff bunches. Beyond them a big bunch of althea, goldenrod in yellow masses, and still farther on, with a streak of sunlight falling over them, a tub of cosmos, the pink and white blossoms feathered with the green of their foliage. The flowers were up on stalls or down upon the floor in tubs and buckets in long rainbows of color, with the dark faces of the Negro women beside them, and every now and then some added flash of pink or blue from the bright summer frock or parasol of a purchaser.
Julie wished that Tim were there to share the delight with her. She would have liked to stand and look across the flower stalls with him beside her. It was hard to know what to buy, but at last she chose a little bunch of blue nigella, “love-in-a-mist,” and made her way home.
Later in the morning she ventured upstairs again and, holding the flowers, which she had put into a glass of water, in one hand, she knocked upon Miss Fogg’s door with the other and waited as before, standing in the empty uncarpeted hall with her heart fluttering.
There was no response to her knock; yet Julie could hear the sound of some one stirring in the room. Again she knocked and again there was no answer; yet Julie was sure that Miss Fogg was within. She waited a moment more, and then turned the handle tentatively. To her surprise the door was unlocked, and greatly daring, she pushed it open and walked in. Her first impression was of the ill-smelling and wretchedly untidy room; the next of old Miss Fogg standing by the side of her bed, glaring at her with furious, sunken eyes. She had on a soiled and torn nightgown, her gray hair fell wildly upon her neck, and her feet were bare on the floor.
“Oh—oh please excuse me,” Julie faltered.
“An’ who might you be?” the old woman demanded in a cold fury.
“I’m—I’m Julie—Julie Freeman,” Julie said hastily, getting her words out as fast as possiblebefore the storm broke. “I’m living here in the house. I brought you some flowers. I thought—”
“You thought!” the other screamed. “You thought nothin’! You wanted to come pushin’ an’ pryin’ in here, sticking your nose where you got no business, an’ nobody wants you, just so’s you could run out in the street an’ tell everybody how old Miss Fogg lives!”
“I didn’t, I didn’t!” Julie cried. “Of course I wouldn’t do such a thing.”
But in truth she was so painfully aware of the whole dreadful state of the room that she dropped her eyes perforce before the faded glare of the other’s, and found herself staring down at the bare old feet.
“Yes,” the old woman cried shrilly. “Look at my feet! Look at ’em good! Look at ’em, I tell you! An’ then run out an’ tell the world how you found old Miss Fogg in her dirty nightgown an’ her bare feet! Yes, look at ’em! Look at ’em, I tell you!”
The distracted old creature began a sudden fantastic dance of rage and mortification, standing first upon one foot, and then on the other,while the free leg kicked defiantly out at Julie, the nightgown falling back from the withered shin. “Yes, look at ’em,” she screamed. “Yes, they’re dirty. Oh, my Lord! Go on, tell everybody what you seen!”
“Oh, my dear, my dear,” Julie cried pitifully, “you know I didn’t come for that! I—I just wanted to bring you these flowers. I’m so sorry.” Her heart was jumping violently up and down; she wanted to turn and flee; but she forced herself to stay. “She’s crazy,” she thought. “She must be crazy. Oh, poor thing, poor thing! It was awful of me to push in like this, but now I am in, I’ve got to stay an’ help her.”
“Look, I brought you some flowers,” she repeated. “I came to make friends.”
“Friends!” the old woman shrieked at her. “Friends!Oh, my God!” But her rage and her wild dance had exhausted her, and she sank down now upon the edge of the tumbled, unmade bed, trembling and shaken. “Oh,” she moaned, “ain’t it a cruel thing that a person can’t be left alone—not one minute—sick an’ miserable like I am! But strangers got to come pushin’ an’ crowdin’ their way in here to stare at my dirt an’my rags! Take your eyes off my feet!” she broke out violently, beginning once more to dance her feet up and down upon the floor, as though shaking something off. “Take ’em off, I tell you—I feel ’em—I feel ’em lookin’, burnin’ holes in my feet!”
With shaking hands she dragged at her nightgown, endeavoring to pull it down and cover her naked feet. But the material was old and rotten. It gave way under the violence of her hands, and a long tear was wrenched in it. For a moment old Miss Fogg stared at it, clutching the torn stuff and peering stupidly at her bare old knees exposed by the rent. Then she burst into impotent tears. “Look,” she wept. “Now just look what I done to my gown!” All the rage and defiance were gone. She was a despairing, helpless old woman weeping upon the edge of her bed, incapable any more of coping with the difficulties of life.
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” she wept, her shoulders shaking convulsively beneath her straggling hair.
The tears leaped into Julie’s eyes. She came quickly and laid a tender hand on her shoulder.
“Never mind, never mind about your gown,” she comforted. “I’ll mend it for you.”
“It ain’t my gown,” the other wept. “It ain’tjustmy gown! It’s—O God Almighty!It’s everything!”
“I know! I know!” Julie cried poignantly. “You’re sick. I understand.”
“I’m crazy. I’m all in a kind of a daze.” The old woman wept convulsively. “O God, what’s the matter with me? I can’t seem to find myself.”
She looked up at Julie, her mouth tremulous and her old eyes filmed with despairing tears.
“I can’t find myself, I—I b’lieve I’m crazy,” she repeated desperately. “I can’t fix up no more. I ain’t got no heart left for nothing.” She turned her head dumbly from side to side. “I know everything’s dirty: it’s all in a mess. But I can’t fix up no more.”
“You’re tired.”
“Tired! I’m so tired I wish’t I was dead,” the other cried.
“I know; I understand,” Julie’s tender hand still caressed her. “But I’ve come to help you. I’m your friend. I’ll fix everything up for you,an’ then you won’t feel so bad. Look at the flowers I brought you.”
She held the gay, alluring little nosegay out. The old woman took her clinched hands down from her face, and stared dimly at it. Her cheeks were smudged with tears, and she swallowed convulsively, like a child when its storm of grief is past.
“See,” Julie went on, her compassionate voice soothing her. “See, honey, I got them in market for you this morning. Look how nice an’ fresh they are.”
The flowers with their blue blossoms peeping through the netted greenery, like faces looking through latticed windows, seemed a lodestone to draw the old creature’s attention away from her despair. She put out one trembling finger and touched them uncertainly, and although she did not speak, she let her gaze linger upon them.
“Where shall I set them?” Julie questioned, now for the first time daring to raise her eyes and look about the unhappy room. The whole place was in disorder. Dust lay everywhere; clothes were upon the floor and tumbled on chairs; the window was dim and smudged with dirt; a sickcanary bird drooped in its cage, and a geranium plant was withered and dead in the window. The life had gone out of every small attempt at homemaking. The curtains, which had once been clean and festive, were soiled and torn now, and the white covers upon the bureau were crumpled. The spirit in the old woman which should have informed her dwelling place with life and cheer was as withered at its roots as the geranium in the window. There was just one thing which caught Julie’s eye amid all the squalor. That was the photograph of a young girl on the mantel shelf. Unlike the rest, it was dusted and cared for. The frame was bright and the glass clean. It appeared to stand as the last pinnacle of hope, over which the despair that had engulfed the rest of the room had not as yet surged.
“Where shall I put the flowers?” Julie questioned again, and the old woman raised her eyes and pointed to the picture. “There,” she commanded.
Julie stepped across and placed the nosegay before the picture. It was that of a young girl, dressed in a fashion of some fifteen years ago.
“What a pretty little girl,” she said. “Who is she?”
Old Miss Fogg stared at the picture through dim eyes. “My little baby child—all I got in the world,” she muttered at length and broke into fresh tears. “She’s all the kin I got in the world, but she’s married an’ gone, and I ain’t seen her for ten years,” she wept. “Oh, my baby, my honey! Why don’t you come see your old Tannie no more? O Sweetness, I want to see you so bad!”
“You haven’t seen her for ten years!” Julie exclaimed. Instantly she saw the thin old shoulders stiffen, and felt an unseen veil drawn. Miss Fogg looked up in quick defiance, a crafty challenge in her eyes.
“Who said she ain’t been to see me for ten years?” she demanded.
“Why you said—” Julie faltered.
“I ain’t saidnothing!” the other stormed. “Folks tells lies. I don’t know what’s got into people. They ain’t got no idea about the truth no more. What business they got telling tales about my little honey, saying she ain’t coming to see me no more? They don’t know,” she spokemysteriously, “but I’m expecting her most any day now. She’ll come to me soon, my baby’ll come soon to her old Tannie.” Her tone changed, she looked up at Julie, and spoke with a pathetic dignity, “I’m looking for a visit from my little niece,” she said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if she was to come to-day.”
She made the statement defiantly, yet there lurked in her eyes an anguish of entreaty that implored Julie to confirm her.
“Why, yes, indeed!” Julie answered eagerly. “Why, yes, she’s liable to come almost any day now.”
“But shedon’tcome! She don’t come! Oh, my baby! My honey! I want to see you so bad!” Once more the old woman began to rock herself to and fro hopelessly.
“But she will come! She’ll come soon now,” Julie promised.
Old Miss Fogg gazed up into her face, her mouth hanging open and tremulous with eagerness, as she gathered encouragement from Julie’s assurance. Then her eyes wandered away over the room.
“But look!” she cried. “If she was to come,how’m I going to see her in this pigsty? I ought to fix up; but I ain’t got the heart—I ain’t even got the heart to wash my face,” she confessed looking at Julie piteously, the slow impotent tears gathering in her eyes.
“Never mind, never mind,” Julie comforted her quickly. “You don’t have to worry. I’ll fix it all up for you. You lie down now,” she coaxed. “Lie down and rest a while, an’ I’ll get things straight.”
To her surprise the old woman yielded, and let herself be helped back into bed, where exhausted by all her storms of emotion, she fell asleep almost immediately.
That was the beginning of Julie Rose’s friendship with old Miss Fogg. Thereafter, as the days went by, tenderly, persistently, baffled sometimes by the old woman’s outbreaks of rage and suspicion, or worse still by the terrible inertia of depression which constantly settled over her, Julie gradually won her way further and further with the other, and by the sheer indomitable persistency of her compassion managed to drag her back occasionally almost to the shore of normal life. At least her room and her person were cleanand in order, and Julie saw to it that she had regular meals—dainty little lunches cooked by herself. Sometimes she was rewarded by an outburst of gratitude, that usually ended in tears. “You’re good!” the old woman would cry seizing Julie’s hand convulsively. “I don’t know what you want to be so good to a poor old wreck like me for.”
But sometimes she pushed her food away, and refused to eat. “What’s the use of eatin’?” she would weep. “Oh my Lord! What’s the use ofanythingin this world? Oh, I wish’t I was dead! But I ain’t even got ambition enough to die!”
Sometimes Julie coaxed her with flattery, into tidying herself up. “That black dress certainly is a handsome piece of goods, and that gray one, too,” she said.
“Why, of course I got handsome clothes,” Miss Fogg retorted with a proud jerk of her head. “Why, who do you take me for? I don’t belong with all the common trash that lives in this house. I’ve sewed for all the best people in town. I ain’t used to common people; I’m used to quality. But these folks here—they’re as common as pig-tracks. You don’t s’pose I’drun with them, do you? An’ I’ve always been used to keeping myself nice an’ elegant. I wasn’t one to lay around in wrappers all day. But now—Oh my Lord!”
“Look,” Julie hastily interposed, forestalling the rising tears. “Just see how nice you look with your hair fixed like I’ve done it to-day.”
She held a mirror up, and Miss Fogg peered blindly at herself for a moment in silence. But as she looked a dim satisfaction grew in her face.
“Why that looks real nice, don’t it?” she said, turning her head to one side with self-conscious shyness.
Indeed, with her indomitable persistency Julie had won out of this human ruin some of the mellowed grace of a more fortunate old age. With the creative power of her devotion she had gone forth into the dark waters engulfing the old woman, had struggled there, and dragged her back into life; and having won a precarious hold upon her affection, she poured forth the overflowing joy of her heart in her service.
Miss Fogg continued to stare at her reflection, her lip trembling slightly. It seemed as though the vision of her past self was given faintly backto her out of the mirror. She bent over and looked still closer. “Why,” she said slowly, “that’sme—that’s the way I used to be ’fore I lost my ambition.” She raised her eyes to Julie with a faltering surprise. “Why,” she cried, “Why you’ve give me back to myself.”
She patted the ruffles at her neck, and smoothed her hair with a fleeting return of vanity.
“I was always a great hand to keep myself fixed up nice,” she boasted. “An’ now you’ve put new life into me.”
Julie looked at her suddenly, her eyes wide and shining.
“That was what I came for,” she said solemnly. She took the old withered hand and pressed it against her own breast that was so warm and full of living happiness. “I came to bring you life,” she repeated. “I have so much—I’m so happy, so alive! I want you to share it.” She still pressed the withered hand against her breast with her warm and eager ones. “It’s all here in my heart, all the happiness and the life that any one in the world could need. It’s here for you. Don’t you feel it running out to you?”
It seemed to Julie in that moment of intensedonation as though indeed something out of her very heart rushed forth for the other’s re-creation. Her eyes burning with an almost unearthly light, she gazed down at the old woman and wrung a flickering response even out of that half dead personality, so that she leaned her head against Julie’s breast. “If anybody could put life into my old carcass, it would be you,” she said. “You couldn’t be any sweeter to me if I was your own mother.”
“Youaremy mother!” Julie cried passionately. “My mother, an’ my sister, an’ my child!” With the words, something seemed to open within her and she was conscious of so tremendous an inrush of life and insight that she was half frightened and made giddy by the swirl of it.
She tried to tell Tim about it that night after supper. “I don’t know what it was,” she said, still half frightened, “but it was like something broke inside of me. I wasn’t just myself any more. An’ when I said that about her being my mother, it wastrue. An’ she was more than that even: she was my very self. It was like—like—” she hesitated; “like all my happiness and love had broke over and some of it flowed intoher. It did flow into her, some of me did spill over into her. And just for a moment it was like the whole world was rushing through me. I was down at the heart of all the world. At the red-hot centre of us all. There wasn’t anybody so low I couldn’t understand ’em, or so high up my happiness couldn’t reach to them. We were all brothers an’ sisters together there. Just for a minute—just for a second, Tim, the whole world was running through me. My love—ourlove—had broken open the doors, an’ let in all the rest of the world. But it—it scares me,” she faltered, gripping his hand tight. “It’s like a channel had been plowed straight through me by a river in freshet, an’ it’ll never close up.”
“I know,” he returned, with the same awe. “I understand. I saw it, too.”
“You saw it, too?”
He nodded, looking at her strangely. “Yes, that time the soldiers went by, an’ I stood on the side of the street an’ let them pass; an’ another time too, when we were at the pictures, an’ there were American boys goin’ up to the front. There was one—”
But she would not let him finish. His lookfrightened her. It was aloof and far away as it had been when he watched the line of marching men go by. She caught his hand and began to talk very fast.
“Oh, Tim,” she begged, “think of Miss Fogg! She’s getting better: I know she is. She kissed my hand to-day an’ said I’d given her back life.”
“Julie—” he began again, but again she cut him short.
“Think what our love’s done,” she persisted. “It’s given life to her: it’s our love that’s done it.”
His expression was still aloof, and he struggled once more to speak. “Julie,” he began, but she would not have it.
“Oh, Tim—honey!Don’t!” she begged; and with a little sob she buried her face against his breast. He stooped and kissed her then, and said no more.