Produced by Paul Hollander, Juliet Sutherland, CharlesFranks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
IN THE CLOSED ROOM
by
FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT
Author of Little Lord Fauntleroy and The Little Princess
Illustrations by
Jessie Willcox Smith
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
The playing today was even a lovelier, happier thing than it hadever been before . . . . Frontispiece
She often sat curving her small long fingers backward
They gazed as if they had known each other for ages of years
"Come and play with me"
She must go and stand at the door and press her cheek against thewood and wait--and listen
She began to mount the stairs which led to the upper floors
The ledge of the window was so low that a mere step took heroutside
"I'm going up to play with the little girl, mother . . . Youdon't mind, do you?"
PART ONE
In the fierce airless heat of the small square room the childJudith panted as she lay on her bed. Her father and mother sleptnear her, drowned in the heavy slumber of workers after theirday's labour. Some people in the next flat were quarrelling,irritated probably by the appalling heat and their miserablehelplessness against it. All the hot emanations of the sun-bakedcity streets seemed to combine with their clamour and unrest, andrise to the flat in which the child lay gazing at the darkness.It was situated but a few feet from the track of the ElevatedRailroad and existence seemed to pulsate to the rush and roar ofthe demon which swept past the windows every few minutes. No oneknew that Judith held the thing in horror, but it was a truththat she did. She was only seven years old, and at that age it isnot easy to explain one's self so that older people canunderstand.
She could only have said, "I hate it. It comes so fast. It isalways coming. It makes a sound as if thunder was quite close. Ican never get away from it." The children in the other flatsrather liked it. They hung out of the window perilously to watchit thunder past and to see the people who crowded it pressedclose together in the seats, standing in the aisles, hanging onto the straps. Sometimes in the evening there were people in itwho were going to the theatre, and the women and girls weredressed in light colours and wore hats covered with whitefeathers and flowers. At such times the children were delighted,and Judith used to hear the three in the next flat calling out toeach other, "That's MY lady! That's MY lady! That one's mine!"
Judith was not like the children in the other flats. She was afrail, curious creature, with silent ways and a soft voice andeyes. She liked to play by herself in a corner of the room and totalk to herself as she played. No one knew what she talked about,and in fact no one inquired. Her mother was always too busy. Whenshe was not making men's coats by the score at the whizzingsewing machine, she was hurriedly preparing a meal which wasalways in danger of being late. There was the breakfast, whichmight not be ready in time for her husband to reach his "shop"when the whistle blew; there was the supper, which might not bein time to be in waiting for him when he returned in the evening.The midday meal was a trifling matter, needing no specialpreparation. One ate anything one could find left from supper orbreakfast.
Judith's relation to her father and mother was not a veryintimate one. They were too hard worked to have time for domesticintimacies, and a feature of their acquaintance was that thoughneither of them was sufficiently articulate to have foundexpression for the fact--the young man and woman felt the childvaguely remote. Their affection for her was tinged with somethingindefinitely like reverence. She had been a lovely baby with apeculiar magnolia whiteness of skin and very large, sweetlysmiling eyes of dark blue, fringed with quite black lashes. Shehad exquisite pointed fingers and slender feet, and though Mr.and Mrs. Foster were--perhaps fortunately--unaware of it, she hadbeen not at all the baby one would have expected to come to lifein a corner of the hive of a workman's flat a few feet from theElevated Railroad.
"Seems sometimes as if somehow she couldn't be mine," Mrs. Fostersaid at times. "She ain't like me, an' she ain't like Jem Foster,Lord knows. She ain't like none of either of our families I'veever heard of--'ceptin' it might be her Aunt Hester--but SHE diedlong before I was born. I've only heard mother tell about her.She was a awful pretty girl. Mother said she had that kind oflily-white complexion and long slender fingers that was so suppleshe could curl 'em back like they was double-jointed. Her eyeswas big and had eyelashes that stood out round 'em, but they wasbrown. Mother said she wasn't like any other kind of girl, andshe thinks Judith may turn out like her. She wasn't but fifteenwhen she died. She never was ill in her life--but one morning shedidn't come down to breakfast, and when they went up to call her,there she was sittin' at her window restin' her chin on her hand,with her face turned up smilin' as if she was talkin' to someone. The doctor said it had happened hours before, when she hadcome to the window to look at the stars. Easy way to go, wasn'tit?"
Judith had heard of her Aunt Hester, but she only knew that sheherself had hands like her and that her life had ended when shewas quite young. Mrs. Foster was too much occupied by thestrenuousness of life to dwell upon the passing of souls. To herthe girl Hester seemed too remote to appear quite real. Thelegends of her beauty and unlikeness to other girls seemed ratherlike a sort of romance.
As she was not aware that Judith hated the Elevated Railroad, soshe was not aware that she was fond of the far away Aunt Hesterwith the long-pointed fingers which could curl backwards. She didnot know that when she was playing in her corner of the room,where it was her way to sit on her little chair with her faceturned towards the wall, she often sat curving her small longfingers backward and talking to herself about Aunt Hester. Butthis--as well as many other things--was true. It was notsecretiveness which caused the child to refrain from speaking ofcertain things. She herself could not have explained the reasonsfor her silence; also it had never occurred to her thatexplanation and reasons were necessary. Her mental attitude wasthat of a child who, knowing a certain language, does not speakit to those who have never heard and are wholly ignorant of it.She knew her Aunt Hester as her mother did not. She had seen heroften in her dreams and had a secret fancy that she could dreamof her when she wished to do so. She was very fond of dreaming ofher. The places where she came upon Aunt Hester were strange andlovely places where the air one breathed smelled like flowers andeverything was lovely in a new way, and when one moved one feltso light that movement was delightful, and when one wakened onehad not quite got over the lightness and for a few moments feltas if one would float out of bed.
The healthy, vigourous young couple who were the child's parentswere in a healthy, earthly way very fond of each other. They hadmade a genuine love match and had found it satisfactory. Theyoung mechanic Jem Foster had met the young shop-girl Jane Hardy,at Coney Island one summer night and had become at once enamouredof her shop-girl good looks and high spirits. They had married assoon as Jem had had the "raise" he was anticipating and had fromthat time lived with much harmony in the flat building by whichthe Elevated train rushed and roared every few minutes throughthe day and a greater part of the night. They themselves did notobject to the "Elevated"; Jem was habituated to uproar in themachine shop, in which he spent his days, and Jane was too muchabsorbed in the making of men's coats by the dozens to observeanything else. The pair had healthy appetites and slept wellafter their day's work, hearty supper, long cheerful talk, andloud laughter over simple common joking.
"She's a queer little fish, Judy," Jane said to her husband asthey sat by the open window one night, Jem's arm curvedcomfortably around the young woman's waist as he smoked his pipe."What do you think she says to me to-night after I put her tobed?"
"Se
arch ME!" said Jem oracularly.
Jane laughed.
"'Why,' she says, 'I wish the Elevated train would stop.'
"'Why?' says I.
"'I want to go to sleep,' says she. 'I'm going to dream of AuntHester.'"
"What does she know about her Aunt Hester," said Jem. "Who's beentalkin' to her?"
"Not me," Jane said. "She don't know nothing but what she'spicked up by chance. I don't believe in talkin' to young onesabout dead folks. 'Tain't healthy."
"That's right," said Jem. "Children that's got to hustle aboutamong live folks for a livin' best keep their minds out ofcemeteries. But, Hully Gee, what a queer thing