LITTLE SHOES
The Vicarage stands at the bottom of the market place, inside high walls and entered by wooden gates which generally stand open. Thus the passer-by can, for a moment, feast his eyes upon the perfect garden within.
The Vicaress was dead-heading her roses. She does this carefully every summer afternoon just after lunch. She had reached the bush of cabbage roses close to the gate, and her long lath basket lay on the drive beside her.
The market place was empty and still; nobody was shopping, for all the world rested preparatory to attending the Earl’s garden-party later on. Road and houses alike glared white in the hot June sunshine, while in contrast the Vicarage garden seemed doubly cool and shady. The yew hedge just inside the gates threw long green shadows on drive and lawn. Such a lawn it was! Plantains or dandelions were a thing unknown. Other lawns might get brown or worn in a drought, but the Vicarage lawn was watered every night by a specially constructed hose, that the beauty of its velvet turf might never vary. The Vicar was wont to excuse his exceeding pride in his lawn by quoting: “The green hath two pleasures: the one,because nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass finely shorn; the other, because it will give you a fair alley in the midst.” It was a sunken lawn surrounded by smoothly shaven banks and reached by broad stone steps.
The Vicar and like-minded clerics occasionally played bowls upon it; but to think of lawn tennis or croquet in connection with such grass were little short of sacrilege.
Presently the Vicaress became aware that a woman stood in the doorway, a woman carrying a baby, while a little girl of some three years clung to her skirts.
They stood gazing wistfully into the garden. As both mother and child wore red kerchiefs instead of hats, the Vicaress looked for the inevitable organ, but could not see it.
As she strongly disapproved of indiscriminate charity she shook her head at them, saying: “We never give at the door!”
Wearily shifting the baby to her other arm, the woman answered, with a touch of gentle dignity: “I have not ask the senora for money, but if she permit that we rest on the seat in the shade; we do no harm.”
Her voice was soft, and her English refined by its foreign accent. The Vicaress pointed to a rustic seat under the yews, saying: “You may certainly come in and rest.” Then she continued to deadhead the cabbage rose—it was an untidy bush that cabbage rose.
As the child toddled past her to climb into the seat the Vicaress noticed that the little feet madered marks on the gravel. The woman pointed to them with an apologetic shrug: “The little Zita she wear out her shoes, her feet bleed. The senora has a pair of old shoes of her children? Yes?”
The Vicaress shook her head, and a spasm of pain crossed her face. There were no children at the Vicarage now. But shoes? Yes! there were shoes. She bent down to look at the ragged little feet, and very gently took off Zita’s shoes. “Her feet must be washed,” she announced. “Will she come with me?”
Zita shook her curls out of her eyes, but on further inspection of the senora declined to budge. “Then I must bring the water here,” said the Vicaress, marching away to fetch it.
She was a tall, thin woman, with keen grey eyes and a lined, hard face, framed in hair that Nature had intended to break into fluffy rings of sunlight round her brow. But the Vicaress coerced her hair with some abomination that kept it flat and close to her head. It was only when a shaft of sunlight struck the tight braid at the back that one realized it was of the true Titian color. She went up the wide oak staircase into her cool, sweet-scented bedroom, where theGloire de Dijonroses nodded into the windows. Stopping in front of a big Chippendale wardrobe, she pulled out one of the deep drawers.
“I can’t bear to do it!” she murmured, “but I never give money, and her little feet were cut and bleeding.”
In that drawer lay many pairs of half-worn little shoes—shoes that had pattered gaily down theVicarage stairs and danced across the sacred lawn. Her eyes were very soft as she chose out a pair of little strap shoes and some woollen socks. Had the Murillo cherub, chattering in her sweet jargon of Pyrenean Spanish under the shade of the yew trees, seen the face of the Vicaress just then, she would not have refused to go with her. But the Vicaress kept what Mr. Barrie tenderly calls her “soft face” for solitary places. The best that people could say of her was, that if her manner was hard her deeds were often kindly. She filled a basin with warm water and went through the silent house into the garden again. Zita laughed and showed her white teeth as she dabbled her feet in the water, becoming quite friendly; then the Vicaress dried her brown legs and arrayed her in the new shoes and socks. On the party being regaled with Vicarage cake and milk, the mother informed her hostess that they purposed to go on to Gloucester that day—a fifteen-mile walk.
“Have you no money to go by train?” asked the Vicaress.
“Oh, no, senora! My ’usban’ sell ze ice cream there, he cannot send me large money.”
“But you can’t get there to-night; where will you sleep?”
The woman shrugged her shoulders, turning her unoccupied hand outward with an expressive gesture. “In the hedge, senora, it is cool and dry.”
“But the children?”
“Oh, zay sleep—and Zita, she walk well till her foots come to ze ground.” Then turning to the child she said something rapidly in Spanish, adding:“She sing for you, senora, you so kind for her.”
“A la puerta del cielos, venden zapatos,” crooned Zita in her funny little nasal chant, and sang the lullaby right through.
“What is it all about?” demanded her hostess with a queer little catch in her voice.
“Senora! it is that zay sell shoes at ze doorway of heaven, to ze ragged little angels who have none!”
The woman rose, and shouldering the brown baby, prepared to depart. But the baby, who approved of Vicarage cake, choked alarmingly, and delayed matters for a while.
The baby’s equanimity restored, they bade their hostess farewell. They had not gone very far, however, when hearing hasty footsteps behind them, they turned. It was the Vicaress. She thrust something into little Zita’s hand, exclaiming breathlessly: “I wish you to go by train; it is not safe for such babies to be out all night!” Then she turned and fairly ran home.
An hour later, as she stood in front of her looking-glass, smoothing her hair till it looked like a yellow skull-cap, she said to herself: “To pay for a person’s railway journey is not indiscriminate charity!” and her eyes grew tender as she thought of the little shoes.