Window on the Square

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  It was hard to resist her coaxing ways, and I smiled. “I won’t know until I’ve had a chance to talk to your mother. Then I’ll tell you all about it and we can plan it together.”

  She started to clap her hands and fumbled because of one closed fist. Suddenly suspicious, I took her delicate wrist between my fingers and turned her hand over. The child did not resist me, but only laughed as I opened the fingers to reveal a small red emery strawberry. I held it up for the boy to see.

  “Your sister was teasing you, I think. See—here’s what she thought she had lost. You didn’t have it after all.”

  “Of course I didn’t have it,” the boy said scornfully and went on with his reading.

  Miss Garth glanced at him impatiently and then turned a fond look upon the little girl. “You mustn’t tease us like that, dear,” she said and came to watch my measuring with a critical air. There was an aura of violet scent about her that I found a little oppressive in the stuffy room.

  Everything I observed here increased my feeling that what Mr. Reid had asked of me was impossible. No matter what the boy’s need might be, he would welcome no further supervision, and Miss Garth would clearly resent any filching away of her authority. I would make this dress for Selina and end the matter there, I told myself firmly.

  “Who was it in your family that died?” the boy asked, fixing me again with his queerly avid gaze.

  I made no attempt to evade his question, but answered him simply before the governess could interfere. “My mother and my brother were killed in an accident a few months ago. By a runaway horse.”

  The child’s eyes were dark and fixed, the iris almost as black as the pupils, and I sensed in him a thirst for horror that troubled me. In a moment he would ask for details, and I changed the subject quickly.

  “Your face seems familiar to me, Jeremy. Perhaps I’ve seen you playing when I’ve walked through Washington Square.”

  The dark eyes flickered and excitement came into them. “I never play in the square,” he said. “But my picture was in all the papers a couple of years ago—drawings of me. That’s where you must have seen me.”

  “That is quite enough, Jeremy,” Miss Garth snapped. “If you are through, Miss Kincaid, you had better go. The boy is becoming unduly excited. I can’t think why you were brought to this room in the first place. Selina could have come to you in the schoolroom.”

  I put my things away in silence. There was nothing to be said to this woman, but my heart went out to the sullen, morbidly excited boy. His trouble was very different from Richard’s, and I felt myself untutored for so disturbing an assignment. In spite of my pity, it was impossible for me to accept this post.

  As I went into the gloomy hall, closing behind me the door to that overheated, tension-filled room, I had a sense of escape and at the same time the feeling that I was abandoning someone in dire need. If I did not try to help that boy, who would?

  At the top of the stairway leading down to the second floor, where Mr. Reid awaited my decision in the library, I hesitated, torn and uncertain. The words Miss Garth had spoken flashed through my mind again—that phrase no one should use to a child, no matter what the provocation—“wicked boy.” And suddenly I remembered. Jeremy had been right. The papers, spilling sensation across their pages, had first shown me his face. I recalled his father’s name and identity now. Dwight Reid, the younger brother, had enjoyed a brief and brilliant career as District Attorney in New York, a career ended by a tragic accident with a gun—at the hands of this very boy. Yet, remembering, I found my sorrow mainly for the child, who must carry so terrible a guilt through the rest of his life.

  Further indignation against Miss Garth for terming him wicked stirred in me. She would be a formidable woman to oppose, and I had no desire to enter a life of tumult and emotional conflict. Jeremy Reid had no suspicion that he had sent my way a plea for help. Indeed, if I offered him the slightest assistance, he would undoubtedly reject me at once. And yet … I had no choice. I’d had none since my first glance fell upon that face of a very young angel, dark and lost.

  Resolutely I put doubt and reason behind me and followed my heart down the stairs to the library where Mr. Reid sat behind his desk, looking as though he had not stirred since I had left him there.

  He rose when I entered the room, waiting in silence as I came toward him.

  “I don’t know whether there is anything I can do,” I told him, “but I see the need. I would like to try—for a time at least. I will not stay if I find myself failing.”

  He came round from behind the desk and held out his hand. His smile did not light his eyes. “Thank you, Miss Kincaid. All I have learned about you indicates courage. This acceptance most of all.”

  It was disconcerting to realize that I must have been covertly observed, that questions must have been asked about me, and all the small details of my life looked into.

  I put my hand into the one he proffered, and his fingers closed over mine. There was a strange instant in which I sensed through his clasp something of the stormy force of this man, and it alarmed me. I drew my hand away too hurriedly and was aware that he noted the fact.

  “I must tell you,” I said, “that I have remembered the story the papers printed—though I don’t know how much of it was true. I believe it was through an accident that your nephew shot and killed his father two years ago when he was seven.”

  A stiffening seemed to run through Brandon Reid. “Very little of what was printed during that unfortunate time was true,” he assured me, his tone bitter.

  I asked no questions then. Eventually I would have to know the full story. I would need to learn all I could about Jeremy Reid. If his uncle imagined that I would respect a natural reticence regarding the past, he would have to discard that notion. But this, I knew, was not the moment to press for information. There would be time later on.

  “When would you like me to come, Mr. Reid?” I asked.

  “As soon as possible. When may we expect you?”

  There was nothing to keep me longer in the two rooms my young brother, my mother, and I had occupied in a boardinghouse. It would be possible, I said, to come by the middle of next week. But if I were to approach the boy gradually and win his trust, I would prefer to come as a resident seamstress and appear to be working on frocks for Selina.

  Mr. Reid thought this an excellent plan. There was a room I might have on the third floor next to Jeremy’s. He would see that it was made ready. And he would send a carriage for me whenever I wished.

  There was one point about which I felt uneasy. “I wonder,” I began, “would it be wise to return for an interview with Mrs. Reid before …”

  He broke in upon my words decisively. “The matter is settled, Miss Kincaid. We will expect you next Wednesday in the afternoon, if you can be ready by then.”

  He saw me to the door himself and added a last word before I left. “Would you mind very much if I request that you give up your mourning dress before you come here? The women in this house avoid black. It is better for Jeremy not to be reminded of death.”

  “Of course,” I said. “I understand.”

  I did not mind. Black was something one wore in order to conform to custom. Grief for those who had gone was not based on the color of a dress, or the wearing of a black veil.

  He opened the door for me and said a polite “Good day,” but he did not offer his hand again. I went down the steep flight of marble steps and walked toward Broadway, where I could find transportation home. With every step away from the house, I could feel his eyes upon me and it was an effort not to look back.

  TWO

  There was pain for me in the next few days. Once the dress order was completed I could give myself to packing my few possessions and to disposing of what it would not be wise to keep. My brother Richard’s things were the hardest for me to touch. I gave away his toys except for a small music box carrousel he had loved. This I packed along with a few pieces of my mother’s jewelry and my own t
rinkets and clothing.

  By Wednesday afternoon, when Fuller, the Reid coachman, came to carry a portmanteau and small trunk to the carriage, I was ready. It was pleasant to travel in a victoria instead of by horsecar, and I tried not to look back, or to think of the ties with the past I was breaking.

  This time the haughty butler was busy elsewhere and the little maid, who said her name was Kate, came cheerfully to let me in. She would not allow me to carry my portmanteau upstairs but took it herself. Mr. Reid was not in evidence, and I was led at once to the small room that had been prepared for me at the third-floor rear.

  Kate set down my bag, murmured doubtfully that she hoped I would be comfortable, and hurried away. As before, she seemed eager to escape the third floor.

  The small room had a bare, unwelcoming look, as though it had been prepared hastily with necessities rather than comforts. There was a narrow brass bedstead, with one of its brass head knobs missing, and a worn rag rug on the floor beside it. A plain, square table, its surface scarred and without covering, had been set before the window at the rear, a single straight chair drawn up to it. The bureau was tall and severe, topped by a somewhat watery mirror. The washstand needed varnishing, but the basin and pitcher upon its marble top were flowered and not unattractive. At least the room had a fireplace and a narrow mantel, and there was a good drop-front secretary, though paper had been folded under one leg to prevent its wobbling.

  I told myself resolutely that the plain little room could be made attractive and I did not mind being given what came to hand. Nevertheless, the lack of tempering touches to indicate that someone thought kindly of my coming, left me, in my present mood, a little depressed. I took off my hat and hung my cloak on one of the bare hooks provided for my clothes. Today I wore a dress of gray-blue, serviceable, but not by any means the color of mourning.

  I was about to approach the window and look out when a tap on the open door behind me made me turn. Miss Garth stood there, impressive in dark green, with an elaborate, bow-trimmed bustle, her heavy hair as fancifully combed as I had seen it before. She greeted me formally and without a smile. As I had sensed, I would find no welcome here.

  “Mrs. Reid wishes to see you,” she said curtly. “If you will come at once, please, since she is going out.”

  I nodded agreeably and followed her to the floor below. It had disturbed me that I had not seen Jeremy’s mother on my previous visit and I was glad to have this matter remedied without delay.

  As she walked ahead of me, I could not help but observe Miss Garth’s high, proud carriage of shoulders and head. Again I would have found her handsome had she been less formidable.

  She opened a door off the middle of the hall and showed me into a small, very feminine boudoir in which a lamp burned on a table and a fire was dying to red coals. A cushioned chaise longue of brocade and gilt, brocaded chairs, and a small marble-topped table, bearing a vase of flowers, made up its attractive furnishings. The single window looked out upon an air shaft shared with the next house and introducing gray-filtered daylight into the room. On my left hung long draperies of light-green velvet, perhaps hiding a door. On the right were similar draperies, half parted to reveal the adjoining bedroom.

  Miss Garth stepped to this opening to announce my presence, and a woman came through to greet me. I could see at once that she was a great beauty, and she looked amazingly young to be the mother of two children. She was dressed for the street and her high-piled red hair gleamed beneath iridescent brown feathers on her hat. Her skin was pale and clear—the fair skin that went so delicately with that shade of hair. Her eyes, wide beneath dark lashes, had an amber tinge. Her gown was of a rich, deep violet, and over one arm she carried a sealskin cape. A muff of the same fur dangled from one slender hand. A knot of hothouse violets had been pinned to the fur, and there was a faint, delicious scent of violets about her. The odor made me wonder if Miss Garth had borrowed her perfume the other day when she had worn it so copiously.

  In spite of the governess’ urgent summons and the fact that Mrs. Reid was about to go out, there was no haste in her movements. She seemed rather languid and lacking in vitality. Her amber eyes were indifferent as she turned them upon me, and she brushed a hand across her forehead, as if troubled by pain. Nevertheless, when she spoke, her words recalled the imperious handwriting of the note she had sent me and I realized that this woman was not likely to condescend to friendliness.

  “I must tell you, Miss Kincaid, that I do not approve of this experiment of my husband’s. If Miss Garth is unable to help Jeremy, it is unlikely that a stranger can do any better. Naturally I will not oppose my husband’s wishes, but I think it wise for you to understand my own feelings in the matter.”

  I was dazzled by her beauty and would have liked to win her respect and liking. I repeated what I had told Mr. Reid—that I would not stay if I found there was nothing I could do for the boy. But first I would like to try. Miss Garth sniffed audibly, and her mistress’ eyes flicked her way, then back to my face.

  “I am late for tea at Sherry’s,” Mrs. Reid said. “If you will excuse me …”

  But I would not let her go as quickly as that. “Will you tell me when I may see you?” I said hurriedly. “There are matters I would like to consult you about as soon as possible.”

  She seemed surprised and reluctant, but she set the time of ten o’clock the following morning. Then she went gracefully past me to the door and Miss Garth and I stood looking after her.

  The governess spoke aloud, though more to herself than to me. “A good thing it is for Miss Leslie to get out of this house and see her friends now and then. These days she stays too close to home.”

  “Isn’t she well?” I asked.

  Miss Garth remembered my presence with an impatient glance, but before she could answer there was a sound on the stairs and I turned to watch the encounter that took place. Mr. Reid was mounting from the lower floor, momentarily blocking his wife’s descent.

  My first glimpse of Brandon and Leslie Reid together was a picture I was to carry in my mind for a long while. How handsomely they were matched, those two! How right that his sort of man should have so beautiful a wife. Mr. Reid took his wife’s hand affectionately, and the look he turned upon her was hardly less than ardent.

  “You’re off for tea, aren’t you? Have a pleasant afternoon, darling,” he said.

  She turned her head languidly so that his kiss just grazed her cheek, and drew her slim, ringed hand from his touch. She did not answer him and a moment later she had moved out of sight down the stairs. Mr. Reid glanced at Miss Garth and me standing in the doorway of his wife’s boudoir. He nodded to us casually and went by before I could so much as say, “Good afternoon.” His look in my direction carried with it no recognition, and I must confess to a certain annoyance. After all, I had come here at his request. Yet apparently he had forgotten my face, or was now indifferent to my presence in this house.

  Miss Garth flicked her handkerchief beneath her nose as if in disdain, and I caught a scent of lavender that was less lavish than the violet she had used the other day.

  “Come,” she said to me. “I’ll show you where you can do your sewing on our floor upstairs. This is not a large house, you understand. It will be necessary to arrange some sharing.”

  Again we climbed the stairs, and she led me into a room at the back that was being used for lessons. A tutor came in to instruct the children five days a week, she explained. Naturally, she taught them French, deportment, and other graces. Since lessons were held only in the morning, the room was empty now. It could be used for my sewing as well as lessons, Miss Garth said, and pointed out the long table suitable for spreading materials, and the sewing machine that had been placed in a corner. It was a bare room, with an odor of books and chalk about it that was not unpleasant. To me it seemed a more comfortable place than the hot, crowded nursery at the front of the house. Nevertheless, there was a bleakness here that I regretted. It had always seemed to me that child
ren respond best to cheerful surroundings and work better in them. At least it was so with my young brother Richard.

  Well, we should see. I would have to move slowly, I knew. My mere presence was apparently a revolution in this house, and if Mr. Reid had not even recognized me at our second meeting, I might find myself with less backing than I had hoped for.

  Miss Garth left me, and I returned to my own small room. This time I went at once to see what view I might have from the window. Its curtains were fresh and crisply white, and I looked out between their folds upon the mews behind our row of buildings. Across an alleyway were the stables and coach houses that serviced this block. There was brick paving and little in the way of vegetation, except for a hardy ailanthus tree that reached its branches toward my window. The long leaves were turning brown, and clusters of them had drifted on the bare ground beneath. Looking through the branches I could see Fuller the coachman rubbing down one of the horses. Beyond were nearby rooftops, but no great expanse of view. At least there would be human activity within sight, and the coming and going of domestics. The thought made me feel less alone.

  Now I must unpack and begin to make something of this desolate little room. There was an insistent voice in my mind all too ready to ask how I had dared to give up a life that was at least familiar for the uncertain task that faced me in this house. My meeting with Mrs. Reid, her admission that she did not want me here, the indifference Mr. Reid had shown on our second encounter were far from reassuring. But I thrust these thoughts aside and went to work.

  I could almost hear my mother’s voice after the news of Father’s death had reached us. “We must work, dearest—keep busy. It’s the only way to lessen pain.”

  My first move was to light the coal fire, ready laid in the grate. The kindling caught at once, and lizard tongues of flame licked upward through the coals. No room could remain completely cheerless with a fire burning. Now that I had its gentle humming for company, I opened my portmanteau and began to hang up my clothes, set out a few of my possessions.