When she dropped down on her hard little bed words came to her mind that she had learned when a child:
“In my Father’s house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.”
And then it came to her that perhaps that was the only home she would ever have. Perhaps the nurse had been right and she was really run down. Perhaps she wasn’t going to live very long and was going Home to the many mansions, to where her mother was, to her Father’s house!
She closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, and over and over there rang the words in her ears:
“In my Father’s house are many mansions!”
Mansions, not just hall bedrooms!
When she awoke later in the evening she was gasping with the heat, and she stumbled up and dipped a towel in water, hanging it in her window to cool the air a little.
“In my Father’s house! My Father’s house!”
Chapter 5
Mr. Clark, the floor manager, was worried at the ghastly look in Jane’s white face. He carried the memory of her eyes and the look in them with him as he went away from the freight elevator. Was that girl taking it to heart like that about the crystal clasp? Perhaps she didn’t break it after all.
He went and hunted up Hilda and made her cry again asking her questions, till he didn’t know but he was about to precipitate another collapse in the button department. So in desperation he told her not to worry anymore, that Jane had offered to pay for it, but he would fix it so that neither of them would have to do it. It was unprecedented, such generosity from Mr. Clark. Hilda dried her eyes and beamed out a watery smile at him, and to his amazement he felt a twinge of something new in his expression. Was it joy? It didn’t seem possible. He didn’t know joy ever came from acts that were not done for one’s self. Perhaps he would try it again sometime if he didn’t forget it. Well, anyway he would settle once for all about the clasp. So he took a dollar and a quarter out of his own pocket and went up to the credit department and adjusted the matter so it would never come up again to trouble anybody. Of course, Mrs. LeClaire herself should have paid it, but as it was he suddenly felt himself rise far above the millionaire lady in his own esteem. He hadn’t suspected himself of having such generous qualities, and he left the store quite pleased with himself. He went home and gave his little three-year-old a whole dime to put in the Sunday school collection, and his wife looked at him in amazement and asked him if he really felt well.
That night there were other supper tables besides the Clark one, where Jane’s eventful day made a difference. The nurse had been invited to dine with an old school friend in a beautiful house where everything was ordered and cool and delightful. The friend’s father and mother were present and the talk was general.
“I had a young patient today who interested me greatly,” said the nurse. “She was overcome by the heat and was sent up to me. I found she had had no lunch and I imagine scarcely any breakfast. I fed her soup, and let her rest, and took her home when the store closed. But I found the poor thing lives in the most unspeakable neighborhood. Noisy and dirty and crowded. A boardinghouse of the worst possible type. How she is going to survive till cool weather I don’t see. It’s a crime to own a place like that boardinghouse. It ought to be pulled down, and a nice cool livable quarters made for poor folks.”
Her friend and her mother expressed sympathy for the poor girl and wished they could do something for her. The head of the house asked a few cautious questions, for he had great possessions, mostly in tenement property, and an atrophied conscience got up and stirred him. He told himself that he didn’t know but he would do something about some of his property sometime.
Kent Havenner came home to the seashore, and grinning announced to his sister:
“Well, I interviewed your glamorous button-vender today!” He said it in a low tone while the hostile cousin was telling their mother about her experiences that afternoon at the Woman’s Club.
“Yes?” said Audrey quickly alert. “How did you find her?”
“Haughty!” said Kent. “She answered my questions as briefly as possible and walked back to her work.”
“Kent, you didn’t annoy her in any way?” His sister studied him searchingly.
“Well, I’m not sure,” twinkled Kent. “I think I got her guessing toward the end.”
“Kent, you promised me!”
“Did I? What did I say?”
Then came the cousin:
“What are you two saying? Am I missing something?” she attacked playfully, in a kittenish manner she had.
“Yes, you are,” said Kent with a wicked grin. “You always miss something when you fail to hear what I say!” and he sauntered provokingly out of the room.
And the two girls, her fellow workwomen at the button counter, talked her over as they walked partway home that night.
“Did you know she was called up to the office this morning?” said Nellie.
“No! Was she? Don’t you suppose it was about that silly old crystal clasp?”
“No, it was before that LeClaire woman came in. A boy from Mr. Windle’s office came down to call her. I heard him. ‘Mr. Windle wants to see you in his private office!’ Just like that! And she turned as white as white—! Who is she anyway? Where did she work before she came to our store? She’s might closemouthed, I think.”
“I don’t know. Somewhere up in New England, she said. Maybe Boston. I forget. But if you ask me, I think she’s a perfectly grand girl.”
“Oh, but they never would send for her to Mr. Windle’s office unless something was wrong. You can better believe they’ve found something crooked, or else she’s been careless.”
“She isn’t careless. She’s very conscientious.”
“Well, say, she didn’t faint for nothing this afternoon, did she? There must have been something pretty awful or she wouldn’t have passed out that easy.”
“Say, look here, it’s been pretty awfully hot, and she’s been here all summer when you and I were off having a good time at the shore.”
“Well, we didn’t any of us pass out for the heat, did we? It’s my opinion she had some good reason for flopping, if you ask me.”
“Maybe she did. I’m sure I don’t know. But it’s none of our business unless she tells us, and anyhow I like her. She’s a good scout. She sold some buttons to a good customer of mine who asked for me, and she charged them up as if I’d sold them. I’ll say that was pretty decent of her when I was off on vacation.”
“Who told you?” said Nellie suspiciously. “Did she tell you herself? Because I’d check up on it if she did. That sounds pretty phony to me.”
“No, she didn’t tell me. Miss Leech at the desk told me. She said she came and asked her how to give me the credit, because she knew the woman always bought from me. But anyhow I like her, and if I were you I wouldn’t be so hard on another girl. You can’t tell what kind of a fix you or I might get into, at that.”
“I never do anything I’ll get caught at!” said the other sullenly.
“Still you might even at that, and then you wouldn’t want the rest of us to be hard on you. I think we ought to stick by each other. The work’s hard and the pay’s small. And anyhow, you know Jane Scarlett has always been square.”
“Well, yes, she makes it appear that way of course. I’m sure I hope she’s all right. But it always makes me jittery to have anything happen like this afternoon. I’d hate to faint. One always looks so washed out and unhealthy. Of course, she would anyway without any makeup. I wonder why she doesn’t use any?”
“Oh, she hasn’t got on to being smart yet, that’s all. She’d really be stunning with that dark hair and her big blue eyes if she’d get her hair done now and then. She acts as if she doesn’t care how she looks.”
The two girls separated at the subway after agreeing that Jane didn’t know
how to dress, and went on to their separate paths.
But Jane lay in her little hard white bed in her third-story back and slept.
And in the night when she stirred and turned over and sighed deeply, she kept hearing a voice far away saying:
“In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.”
Chapter 6
The old Scarlett house was high and wide and comfortable. It was built of brick with a hall through the middle. It had wide low stairs with white spindles and a mahogany rail, the kind of staircase that antique lovers rave over. It curled around at the top and made a lovely line of itself, with a nook beneath where a great old mahogany couch with claw legs and rich upholstery nestled. In front of the stairs there was a rare hall table highly polished, where many notable hats had reposed in time past. And over it hung a handsome mirror.
The front door was one of the finest specimens of the old-time doors with fanlights above, and a knocker of brass that would have been a valued museum piece.
On either side of the front door there were rooms, one on the left extending the full depth of the house with a full-length mirror at front and back between the windows. There was an old-fashioned square piano with a mother-of-pearl floral design above the keyboard, on which the generations of Scarlett children had learned to play, and there were some fine old portraits in oil of distinguished Scarlett men and women. The furniture was beautiful old wood of satin polish, the work of some of the old masters in design. The fabrics that covered the chairs were well-preserved silk brocades of quaint pattern, and there were charming tables and chairs and sofas scattered about.
Across the hall from the front room was a library, furnished with leather chairs and a sofa, a fine old secretary, and rare prints.
The dining room was behind that, with a sideboard that would make treasure-seekers gasp with joy, and a whole dinner set of willow pattern, not a piece missing. The spacious cupboard contained much fine old glass and other interesting pieces, and the kitchen that was housed in a deep gable at the back spoke of years of plenty, in pleasant working quarters.
Upstairs there were five big bedrooms, and two bathrooms that had been added in later years, with an attic overhead that looked like a fairy tale out of the past. Spinning wheels and old chairs, haircloth trunks and chests of drawers. It would be a joy just to rummage in that attic. And in one corner under the eaves, an old table of the kind known as a “stand” on which reposed an ancient Bible with a full record of all the Scarlett births and marriages and deaths. Someone had covered it with a piece of dark muslin to keep off the dust. But that was all. The years had come and gone, and the precious record of a family that had been honored in its time, lay there carelessly unguarded except by a bit of cheap calico that had once been part of a common kitchen apron!
And in that Bible record there was a name set down:
Jane Scarlett, born to John Ravenal Scarlett and Miriam Warrener Scarlett, April 17th, 19—
The old house stood in the shadow of great trees, shrouded in thick ivy, its fireplaces empty and dead, its rooms without inhabitants, save for a temerarious mouse or two that ventured in now and then and finding no food hurried away.
And Jane Scarlett, the last of the Scarletts in direct line, lay sleeping desolately in a hard little bed in the third-story hall bedroom of the cheapest boardinghouse she had been able to find.
There was myrtle growing around the edges of the yard, and lilacs overshadowing the wide back porch. The grass was neatly kept and the hedges trimmed by arrangement with the caretakers of the estate, but the garden had run wild, growing weeds and flowers and vegetables at will in one bewildering mass.
Out under a great elm tree an old swing hung, where all the little Scarletts had swung to their heart’s content during the years. It needed only a new rope to make it swingable again. And out at one side of the lawn a rustic summerhouse still stood, repaired occasionally by the caretaker, where the Scarlett girls used to have afternoon tea with their friends. But there was one Scarlett girl who had never been so privileged. Five o’clock teas had never come her way.
There was a gravel driveway from the old barn where once upon a time high-spirited horses were stabled, and victorias and surreys and phaetons rolled proudly down to the stepping-stone in front. Then the family got in and drove away. And of later years various cars used by more modern members of the clan took their place. But now the stable was empty and clean. One or two old harnesses and bridles still hung from hooks in the wall. A collection of whips lay on a high dusty shelf, hard pressed by empty oil cans of a late date. And the tool house, just behind the barn, though it still held hoes and shovels and spades galore, was huddled and disorderly, everything pushed back to make way for a couple of modern lawn mowers. It all reminded of nothing better than a well-kept cemetery, giving respect and honor to the past, but meaning nothing whatever to the present but a memorial.
So it had stood for the past seven or eight years while the last owner, Harold Scarlett, had traveled from place to place abroad, at first seeking pleasure, and finally searching for health.
There had been a caretaker all this time who kept the outside of the place immaculate, and whose wife had gone through the gesture of cleaning the inside of the house after a fashion twice every year. But the house had an unloved look, like a dog whose master was dead. It did not seem to belong anymore to the cheerful street of pleasant houses on which it was located.
Once, years ago, Jane Scarlett had been taken to that house when she was a very little girl to visit her grandmother who was very old. She retained only a dim memory of a sweet old lady with a crumpled face, kindly eyes, and hands that were startlingly soft and hot and vivid when they touched her.
But she remembered the big old house among the trees as the grandest mansion she had ever seen. At least the grandest she had ever entered. And when she heard of “In my Father’s house” she always pictured the many mansions as looking like the ivy-clad brick Scarlett house, and hoped to see more of it in heaven.
The house was located in a place called “Hawthorne,” from the many hawthorne trees in the countryside. It was a suburb of a great city, the name of which the child Jane never heard in connection with the house. The old home was always at Hawthorne. But Hawthorne had since become a part of the city itself, and the name Hawthorne was only commonly known through its broad avenue on which the house was located. Perhaps if Jane had known definitely where this dream-mansion was located she might have started out to find it when she drifted on her own and went to find a home and a job. But being only in a vague place called Hawthorne, with the likelihood that it had long ago been sold and thus obliterated from things belonging to herself and her family, it had never occurred to her as possible to go and see it. Moreover her going had depended largely upon chance. She had started out to get away from the country boarding place in whose kitchen she was no longer needed. Heaven had seemed too far away then to hunt for one of the many mansions for her immediate need. So it had never occurred to her that when she found the job at Windle and Harrower’s store, she might not be so far away from the starting place of her family. As she lay in her hot room in her narrow bed and tried to be thankful for such blessings as she had, it never occurred to her that the old house where her grandfather and her great-grandfather Scarlett had lived was not many miles away from the place where she was lying.
But even if she had known it, it would not have made any practical difference in her situation.
She was almost dropping off to sleep when she heard footsteps lagging up the stairs. The strangeness of it startled her awake again. The forlorn woman who helped in the kitchen roomed up there, with her slatternly daughter who waited on tables. But neither of them would be coming up to bed now. They hadn’t finished the dinner dishes.
But the steps came on and paused at her door, and she held her breath and listened. Then there was a hesitating tap. Then again, more insistent.
“Who is it???
? Jane managed to ask.
“It’s me,” the landlady answered belligerently. “I just wanted to find out what’s the idea of your staying away from meals this way? Was you expecting to take it off what you’ll owe me at the first of the week? You wasn’t down to dinner last night nor tanight, and I can’t afford to buy good meat and things and then not get paid for them. Besides, if you’re coming down you oughtta come on time, and not expect me to keep vittles hot for ya all night. All the other boarders have et and gone. I thought mebbe you’d got asleep and didn’t know you was lettin’ the meal hour go by.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs. Hawkins,” said Jane wearily. “I should have stopped and told you not to save anything for me. I’ve not felt so well today. The heat kind of got me, and I don’t feel like eating anything.”
“Well, that’s all right ef you don’t want nothin’, but it seems ta me you oughtta eat ta keep up yer strength. Don’t come round late at night and ast me fer a piece. I ain’t gonta be bothered that way. And by the way, I may’s well tell ya, I gotta raise the rent of yer room a buck, beginnin’ next week. They’ve raised the rent of the house, and meat’s gettin’ awful high, an’ I can’t make ends meet no way ef I don’t raise me own rents. I jes’ wanted you ta understand.”