The Shorn Lamb
Chapter 1
A MULTIPLICITY OF PARENTS
"I'll be hanged if I give up my lower to her even though she is a hundred years old," muttered Philip Bolling to himself as he tried to make room for his belongings in the Pullman section, already overflowing with a miscellaneous collection of boxes and bags. Crouched in the corner was a tiny little old lady. She held a newspaper before her face with trembling hands, encased in black cotton gloves several sizes too large.
"I reckon I'll have to, though," he added. "Such an old lady would be more trouble over one than under—and then, besides, I shouldn't be grouchy."
Suddenly he burst out laughing, and then to hide his merriment he pretended to sneeze. The little old woman, who dropped her newspaper as the train started, turned out to be not a little old woman at all but a little girl in her early teens. She was a sallow-faced little creature who seemed to be all eyes. Her little figure was lost in the folds of a black cotton blouse, much too large for her, and on her head was a mourning bonnet of the type usually worn by widows, with white niching showing in a line next to her face and a heavy crepe veil hanging down behind.
"I hope you haven't caught cold, sir," she said as Philip pretended to sneeze. "Mrs. O'Shea told me sleeping cars were mighty good places to catch colds in and she put in some castor oil in case I should feel a cold coming on. There'll be plenty for you to have some, too, and I'd be delighted to give it to you."
"Thank you! I wouldn't deprive you for worlds," smiled Philip. "I don't believe it is a cold—just train smoke."
"Well, if you want some you must ask me for it. You see I have never had the pleasure of giving anybody a dose of castor oil, and I'd simply love to do it. It must be delightful to be the one to do the giving. When the Bible says it is more blessed to give than receive, maybe it means castor oil."
"Maybe!" assented Philip.
"I believe we are to keep house together for the journey. Mrs. O'Shea told me someone would occupy the apartment with me, but she was sure it would be a lady. Mrs. O'Shea is most particular. She is the most ladyfiedish person in the world. She told me I mustn't talk to anyone on the train unless it was the lady who was in the apartment with me or a man in brass buttons. Of course since you are not a lady I shall have to pretend you are to talk to you. Mrs. O'Shea would not have me to be rude to the person who was going to keep house with me. Mrs. O'Shea is terribly particular about manners."
"And who is Mrs. O'Shea?" asked Philip, who was feeling like laughing again and wondering how he would hide it.
"Oh! she is a lady friend," replied the child primly, "almost the only perfect lady friend Daddy and I had. We had lots of nice men friends and a few painty and modelly girls we liked a lot, but Mrs. O'Shea can't abide 'em, and after Daddy died she wouldn't let me see any of them. She just took matters in her own hands and managed some mourning clothes for me, and wrote to my grandfather down in Virginia, and got me a ticket and put me on the train. Mrs. O'Shea is a terribly managy person. Not that I am not very grateful to her for taking so much interest in me, but I wanted to see some of the others before I left New York."
The child's lip trembled and her eyes filled. She felt in her pocket and produced a handkerchief with a broad black hem and wiped away the tears; then blew her nose.
"You must excuse me, but sometimes I have to leak a little. Mrs. O'Shea says it is quite ladylike to cry, but one must do it without blowing one's nose. I haven't learned how yet. Of course Mrs. O'Shea has had so much practice. She has lost four husbands, besides a mother and father, two stepmothers and one stepfather and quite a batch of uncles and aunts and cousins and some stepchildren, but I don't believe she had to keep from blowing her nose when they died. She never said so—she's too ladylike to say anything, even about stepchildren, but she used to tell me all the things she wouldn't say about them. I felt kind of sad about the stepchildren because I'm some myself."
"Some of hers?" asked Philip.
"Oh, my, no! None of my fathers would have married Mrs. O'Shea, even if she had sighed herself to death. You see she used to clean up our studio, and darn our stockings, and wash up the tea things, and brush my hair, and do all kinds of odd jobs for us. No, I am Daddy's stepchild—at least I was." Again the pocket was found and the mourning bordered handkerchief brought into play. "And I was papa's stepchild and then mamma's."
"Daddy and I weren't much like steps, though. He wasn't a bit particular and neither was I, so we got along something scrumptious. Of course Daddy had a few rules of conduct, and I tried not to break them, unless it seemed wisest. He used to tell me to use my judgment about such matters. You see Daddy was an individualist, and he believed in everybody's living his own life."
"I see!" said Philip. "But what were the few rules?"
"One of them was, I must watch the traffic cop and wait till he gave the signal before I crossed the street."
"A good rule of conduct," laughed the young man.
"And another rule was that I mustn't sass old people until they first sassed me."
"Excellent!"
"One reason Daddy was so inclined to feel that I must work out my own destiny—that is the way he put it—was that he and I were so terribly far removed as far as blood went, but we got along just fine. Would you like to hear all about my funny relations to poor Daddy?"
The young man expressed his desire to hear. The little girl was more entertaining than his own dull musings. Philip Bolling's own rather lonely boyhood had sharpened his sympathies, instead of stunting them. The little creature whom Fate had decreed was to set up "housekeeping" with him for the journey would have touched a harder heart than his, with her pathetic mouth and her great dark eyes that one moment showed unfathomed depths of despair and another sparkled with humor.
"Won't you take off your hat first?" he suggested. "One can't go to housekeeping very well in a great bonnet. Let me hang it up for you."
"We-ell, it is rather heavy, but Mrs. O'Shea did not tell me whether I was to take it off or not. Mrs. O'Shea spent a night on a sleeper once, a long, long time ago, when she was married to her first. Of course she could tell me just what I must and mustn't take off, but she didn't mention my bonnet. She told me particularly not to leave anything in the dressing room because the porter would steal it. I don't believe the porter would want a widow's bonnet though, do you?"
Philip thought not, but assured her he would hang the bonnet on a hook right in their section.
"Mrs. O'Shea doesn't like colored persons and always takes for granted they will steal; but as for me, I simply adore them. Daddy said I inherit liking them from my first father, who was a Southern man. He liked 'em a whole lot."
'You promised to tell me about your relations to your stepfather," suggested Philip as he settled the bonnet on a safe hook and then smiled into the eyes of his little companion. She had drawn off her huge cotton gloves, disclosing small, delicately shaped hands, which she folded primly in her lap. Her little face was much more childlike now that the ugly bonnet was gone. The corners of her mouth came up as though the weight of the bonnet had held them down. Her blue-black hair had broken from the tight braids into which Mrs. O'Shea had plaited it and curled rebelliously over the small, well-shaped head.
"Well," she said, settling herself comfortably and smiling into the frank blue eyes of her new friend, "I might just as well begin at the beginning. I always went with the studio, kind of like a cat or the gas range. Maybe that isn't the beginning, though. I guess my mother and father are the beginning, although the studio is something that kept on staying, and I believe I'm going to miss it something awful.
"My Father, my first father, I mean, was a great big man, with shiny yellow hair, and he was an artist. Daddy says he would have been a great artist if he had lived long enough. Daddy used to know him real well and used to sigh and sigh when he turned over his drawings in the big portfolio."
"Then the studio must have started with your father," suggested Philip.
"Yes, he was the first. It was a great big studio down on West Tenth, and you had to go through somebody's house to get to it, unless you wanted to go over the roof and down the Mygatts' fire escape. Sometimes Daddy and I chose that route, when we were hard up and didn't want to meet the person in the house in front who had a way of collecting rents. It was the charmingest studio in the whole village because it had outside steps and a little porch. Just think of a porch in New York! One time it used to be over a stable, but by and by the stable got to be a garage. Things changed all around, but the studio was always just the same. It was big and had side windows and a skylight, too, and all kinds of nice cubby holes and corners, and we had a gas stove in one corner behind a screen, and a bath tub in another, and nice soft divans all around and you could sleep on any one you'd a mind to.
"My first father married my first mother in Paris. I was born on shipboard on the way back to New York. I was always sorry I wasn't born in the studio. Mother was a singer and a Bohemian, I mean a really, truly Bohemian, not just a villager. I can remember her real well, and can remember my father some. I can remember how shiny his hair was when he stood under the skylight and painted my mother, and I can remember the way he laughed. He was always laughing. He used to laugh at the way my mother talked and the way I walked. You see I was only about half past four when he died. He used to tell jokes and stories all about the colored people from down South, and everybody loved him. We had parties all the time, because my mother was so gay. She used to sing at the parties and I'd go to sleep on any divan where there was room. I used to be very happy.
"Then when my first father died my first mother pretty near died too. She screamed and screamed, and wanted to kill herself, but Mrs. O'Shea, who lived in the back room in the house in front of us, came over and talked to her and comforted her, because you see Mrs. O'Shea had lost so many husbands she knew all about how hard it was, and there was nothing she couldn't tell about what to do. Mrs. O'Shea has always come over and 'tended to our funerals.
"By and by my mother smiled again, and we had parties again, and one day she came in and kissed me and said: 'Rebecca, here is a new father for you!' The new father was the kind of Bohemian mother was, and he didn't like to work a bit. He was very handsome, with a black mustache and white teeth. Mother had to sing awfully hard to keep my new father comfortable, and she got so thin with engagements that she was afraid she would fall down the cracks in the studio floor. Then she caught cold and before you know it Mrs. O'Shea had to come over and look after another funeral."
"How old were you then?" asked Philip.
"I was seven. I felt very lonesome and miserable when my mother was gone. She was the gayest mother in the world and never was cross, but my second father was not a bit gay, just lazy. He was kind enough and he loved me—maybe because I waited on him so much. Mrs. O'Shea wanted me to come and sleep at her house, but he wouldn't let me, and he wept over me, and begged me not to leave him all forlorn and lonesome, and besides, I didn't want to leave the studio because I loved it."
The child paused a moment and her eyes looked as full of mystery and as unfathomable as the corners of the beloved studio of which she was dreaming.
"But this second father of mine—I called him Papa—got over being so sad after a while, and he brought a very pretty lady home one day and told me I had a new mamma. She was a Southerner, from Georgia. I called her Mamma. She was kind sometimes, and sometimes she was cross. She used to get very angry with Papa because he was so lazy. Mamma was a dancer and made a great deal of money. She wanted Papa to learn to dance with her, and he could do it beautifully, but he would get so tired and refuse to practice. He wouldn't even play the piano for her, and she got a Victrola, and he wouldn't even wind it up. I learned to do that, though, and I used to make her coffee and take it to her in the morning and she would pet me and praise me. Papa got lazier and lazier and one morning he just refused to get out of bed. You should have heard Mamma quarrel with him then! 'Loafer! Rapscallion! Sponger.' There were worse things, too, but Mrs. O'Shea told me I must try to forget the bad things, and I'm trying to.
"Mamma was learning a dance with a dagger in it, and it had a wild tune that kind of got on Papa's nerves, and she practiced it all the time, and danced and danced. I had to keep the Victrola going for hours at a time and play the same record over and over, and she would whirl around and around and pretend to stick the dagger in Papa. She was just teasing him and I knew it and laughed, until I saw he was scared of her. My, she was pretty when she whirled around! The dagger wasn't anything but a paper knife and couldn't have hurt him even if she had struck real hard. One day she had practiced her dance until she knew it almost perfectly, and was just going to stop. She signaled to me to stop the Victrola and then she gave a final whirl and twirled on her toes right by Papa's couch. He had not been off it for weeks then. Every morning he bathed and dressed and got back on his couch, where he smoked and dozed all day. As I was saying, Mamma gave a twirl and cried out: 'Loafer!' and pretended to stick the dagger in Papa's heart. But just before she touched him she saw his eyes and gave a scream and dropped by his side, and I didn't know it wasn't part of her dance, and I clapped my hands the way she liked me to do because she said one could dance so much better if some one applauded.
"Mrs. O'Shea had to come over and look after another funeral. The doctor said Papa had died of heart disease and must have had it a long time, and that was what made him so lazy. Poor Mamma cried and cried and said her heart was broken, too, just like Papa's, and that she could never dance again, but by and by she did, and she made a big hit with the very dance she had been studying so hard.
"Now this is where Daddy comes in and he was the best of all. Of course my first father was best but I can't remember him the way I can Daddy. Mrs. O'Shea says it is proper always to say you love your own mother and father better than any steps. Daddy saw Mamma do the dagger dance and he fell head over heels in love with her and came to call on her at the studio where she just stayed on after Papa died because it was big and gave her room for practice, and the lease wasn't up, and then I loved it so and hated to think of moving.
"Daddy got to coming to see us every day and he fell in love with me, too, so he said, and by and by he and Mamma went to the Little Church Around the Corner and got married, with me for a bridesmaid. I was awfully glad, but I felt real mean not to warn Daddy about how cross Mamma got sometimes. He thought she was an angel and used to tell her so, and she would look like one, too. Mamma was as pretty as pretty can be, and Daddy used to make poetry to her. Daddy was a poet, you know, but he didn't make a living writing poetry, but had to write what he called 'rot' for Sunday papers to make money.
"We got along pretty well for awhile, although every now and then Mamma would fly off the handle and make things hum for Daddy and me, and then we'd go out walking, and sometimes go spend the day at the Zoo or down to Coney Island, and when we'd come back she would have quieted down. I was nine then. I don't know what I'd have done without Daddy. He was the dearest little man and so kind and so clever I think he got over being in love with Mamma because she had a limited intelligence. I got that from him, but he was sorry he said it and asked me to forget it. She had more sense in her toes than in her head.
"Suddenly Mamma got so she didn't like me any more. I had been the biggest kind of pet, and all of a heap she began treating me like she did poor Papa, only she couldn't call me loafer because I was doing things for her all the time, but she got to calling me 'sponger' and 'brat' and 'poor-house trash,' and said in the South they would call me 'po' kin.' And Daddy got as mad as fire and up and told her to stop. I would have gone away if there had been any place to go to, but Mrs. O'Shea was off burying some of her folks and I just had to stay, so I crawled way down in a crack back under the eaves of the studio and I stayed there, but I could hear them quarreling. She told Daddy he could 'choose between us,' and he said, 'Melodramatic nonsense!' And she told him there were other men of her acquaintance quite as attractive as he was. He said, 'No doubt! You are quite welcome to choose between us, or rather among us.' You see Daddy was mighty particular about his English," said the child proudly. She rattled on:
"Then he persuaded me to come out from the crack where I was hiding, and smoothed my hair and kissed me, and made me wash my face, and we got on the subway and went out to see where Edgar Allan Poe lived in a cunning little cottage, but when Poe lived there it was country with green fields and a little stream of water. Now there is nothing but a great sewer where the stream used to be, and all the fields are built up with great high buildings that make the cottage look like a doll-baby house."
"Yes, I have been there often," put in Philip. "I had the honor of bumping my head on three different lintels in the Poe cottage, but I am too tall for a doll-baby house."
"I am so glad you know the place. You can understand how nice it was to go there and get in what Daddy called 'another atmosphere' after Mamma had been quarreling so loud. Daddy told me all about Poe and recited a lot of his poetry, and told me when I got a little older I could read all his tales. I have read them all now, even 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue,' but I had fearful dreams after it, and thought an orang-outang had come up the Mygatts' fire escape and carried off Daddy.
"Well, then we started home, having comforted each other a whole lot and decided we would try to be mighty nice to poor Mamma, who didn't mean to be so cross. Daddy got a box of chocolates for her, and I borrowed some money from him and bought a bunch of violets from a man on the corner. They were not quite fresh, but they smelled fine, and I thought Mamma would not notice how they looked she would be so glad we were home. And Daddy got some French chops for dinner, and some eclairs, and we planned to have a kind of make-up party.
"When we got home the studio was dark and I felt a funny creepy feeling down my back. I was kind of scared and held on tight to Daddy's hand. When we lit the gas we didn't know at first what was the matter; things were in such a mess. But when we got used to the light and looked around a hit we found all of Mamma's pretty dresses were gone, and her three big trunks that used to be shoved back in one of the largest closets, and then Daddy saw a letter stuck in the mirror, and when he read it he whistled a long whistle and then he laughed a kind of hard laugh.
"'Well, Beck child, Mamma has gone and left me to hold the bag.'
"And I said, 'Am I the bag, Daddy?'
"No, honey, let's say the studio is the bag and you are the strings to the bag.'
"Then we got busy and had dinner. We put the violets on the table and they spried up a lot. I cooked the chops and we had the eclairs for dessert, and Daddy opened a bottle of champagne in honor of the occasion. Altogether the make-up party was a great success. The next day we got Mrs. O'Shea over to straighten us up, and it was kind of like a funeral, the way she went around, only there wasn't any corpse.
"Daddy and I had mighty peaceful times after that. He taught me, so I didn't have to go to school, and Mrs. O'Shea looked after my manners and morals. We began to have nice talky parties again. Poor Mamma wouldn't have talky parties. She liked the kind where people danced and made a noise, but Daddy and I liked the talky ones. Painting and writing people used to come, and nice girls who petted me. Mrs. O'Shea said they were dangerous persons, but Mrs. O'Shea is something of a 'fraid cat. Such happy times!" This time the handkerchief had to be used in good earnest.
"Isn't it funny that we cry over good times more than bad ones? Daddy was the charmingest person that ever was. He had a great sense of responsibility, too, and was determined I mustn't forget my first father and mother. He had known them very well, and he used to tell me all kinds of sweet things about them. He remembered the funny stories my first father told about the colored people at home and he used to tell them to me. Such ridiculous things about a dear old black woman! And he would sing some of the songs too—'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' and 'I'm a Rollin' Through an Onfriendly World.' Daddy said he wanted me to realize I was a Southern lady and not just studio property.
"He felt very sad that I didn't know any children, but there weren't very many children to know, because Daddy's friends were most of them so busy being individualists they didn't stop to have any children. They had theories about children, but no children. We planned to go to live in the country some day and have a cat and a dog, and maybe a cow, but the day never came because Daddy began to get sick. By and by he got so sick he couldn't write and he used to dictate to me. I tell you it was hard work to cross my t's and dot my i's and keep up with Daddy at first, but after a while he got so slow I could do it easily. I would take the copy over to one of the nice girls who came to our parties, and she would type it and see that it got to the Sunday paper on Friday.
"Then Daddy got so he couldn't dictate and the money got low, but he felt so sick he didn't know anything about the money and I didn't tell him. I began to pawn things. I started in on the Apostle spoons. My first father had a collection of them and I felt as I sold them that the Saints were looking after us. Then my first mother's jewelry! That kept us a long time. I hated to let that go because I could remember the way she loved the little bangly things that tinkled like sweet bells, but for Daddy's sake I would have pawned my eyes and gone around the rest of my life being led by a little dog on a string.
"Then I started in on the dress suits, long-tailed and dinner coats too. First went father's! That had to go cheap because the waiter at The Golden Calf, who bought it, complained that it was out of style, with the tails too long and the trousers a bit too full. Papa had three dress suits and we lived a long time on them. I didn't sell Daddy's dress suit until the doctor had an expression on his face that made me know Daddy would never want it again. Daddy never liked it much, anyhow, and hated to dress up. Mrs. O'Shea didn't like my selling it at all. I knew what she was thinking about, but I pretended I didn't. I was determined that Daddy shouldn't be laid to rest in something he didn't like."
The child paused, looking at her listener with great eyes that seemed to hold the woe of centuries. Philip leaned forward and took one of her tiny hands in his. To think of such a little girl's having gone through so much misery!
"It is funny for me to be telling you all this. I can't think what got me going so. I am afraid you are tired to death and won't want to keep house with me at all."
Philip protested at this:
"Not a bit of it, my dear! I am as interested as can be and want to hear all of your story. Did your daddy live much longer?"
"No, not so very long, but long enough for me to have to sell or pawn most everything in the studio."
"Why didn't your friends help you?"
"They would have, but I didn't let them know. Daddy and I always hated to be helped. I was careful not to get rid of anything that he could see. He didn't know about it, even when I rolled up rugs and dragged them off. I didn't sell any of his books. Somehow I felt that he would know about their going even if he couldn't see. It was a good thing I didn't because just the very day he died he asked me to read to him, little bits from various books. Just suppose I had sold those very books! Wouldn't it have been awful?"
Philip agreed that it would have been sad indeed.
"Mrs. O'Shea came over and 'tended to that funeral too. She found the widow's bonnet among some things Mamma forgot to take away with her and she said it would be 'propriate for me to wear it because I was most like a widow anyhow."
"And now where are you going?" asked Philip.
"To a grandfather in Virginia!"
"And why hasn't he been looking after you all these years?"
"I don't know. You see I just found out I had a grandfather. Mrs. O'Shea discovered him when we cleared out the studio. There were letters to my first father from my grandfather. The letters were all quarreling letters. Some of them begged him to come home and be a manufacturer of hubs, whatever they are, and one of them was so angry because Father had married Mother. That one said he needn't ever come home again and that his father had disowned him. He must be a terrible old man to have written such letters. I feel so miserable at the thought of going to him, but Mrs. O'Shea would have it this way and here I am on the train and going. There is nothing left to pawn but the books and I couldn't let them go, and I don't know how to earn a living yet. I mean to some day, though."
"Has your grandfather written to you?" asked Philip.
"Oh, Mrs. O'Shea didn't give him time. She just wrote to him and put me on the train. I think the letter will get to him a day or so before I do, as she put a special delivery stamp on it. Mrs. O'Shea is a mighty managy person and she acts very quickly when she makes up her mind. The minute she found the bunch of letters to Father she got started and before I knew it the ticket was bought and I was here in the sleeper, keeping house with you."