In the Closed Room | Page 6

habitual sociable half-laugh. "But seems to me it always feels
that way in a house people's left. It's cheerful enough down in that big
basement with all the windows open. We can sit in that room they've
had fixed to play billiards in. We shan't hurt nothing. We can keep the
table and things covered up. Tell you, Judy, this'll be different from last
summer. The Park ain't but a few steps away an' we can go and sit there
too when we feel like it. Talk about the country--I don't want no more
country than this is. You'll be made over the months we stay here."

Judith felt as if this must veritably be a truth. The houses on either side
of the street were closed for the summer. Their occupants had gone to
the seaside or the mountains and the windows and doors were boarded
up. The street was a quiet one at any time, and wore now the aspect of a
street in a city of the dead. The green trees of the Park were to be seen
either gently stirring or motionless in the sun at the side of the avenue
crossing the end of it. The only token of the existence of the Elevated
Railroad was a remote occasional hum suggestive of the flying past of a
giant bee. The thing seemed no longer a roaring demon, and Judith
scarcely recognized that it was still the centre of the city's rushing,
heated life.
The owners of the house had evidently deserted it suddenly. The
windows had not been boarded up and the rooms had been left in their
ordinary condition. The furniture was not covered or the hangings
swathed. Jem Foster had been told that his wife must put things in
order.
The house was beautiful and spacious, its decorations and appointments
were not mere testimonies to freedom of expenditure, but expressions
of a dignified and cultivated thought. Judith followed her mother from
room to room in one of her singular moods. The loftiness of the walls,
the breadth and space about her made her, at intervals, draw in her
breath with pleasure. The pictures, the colours, the rich and beautiful
textures she saw brought to her the free--and at the same time
soothed--feeling she remembered as the chief feature of the dreams in
which she "fell awake." But beyond all other things she rejoiced in the
height and space, the sweep of view through one large room into
another. She continually paused and stood with her face lifted looking
up at the pictured things floating on a ceiling above her. Once, when
she had stood doing this long enough to forget herself, she was startled
by her mother's laugh, which broke in upon the silence about them with
a curiously earthly sound which was almost a shock.
"Wake up, Judy; have you gone off in a dream? You look all the time
as if you was walking in your sleep."
"It's so high," said Judy. "Those clouds make it look like the sky."

"I've got to set these chairs straight," said Jane. "Looks like they'd been
havin' a concert here. All these chairs together an' that part of the room
clear."
She began to move the chairs and rearrange them, bustling about
cheerfully and talking the while. Presently she stooped to pick
something up.
"What's this," she said, and then uttered a startled exclamation. "Mercy!
they felt so kind of clammy they made me jump. They HAVE had a
party. Here's some of the flowers left fallen on the carpet."
She held up a cluster of wax-white hyacinths and large heavy rosebuds,
faded to discoloration.
"This has dropped out of some set piece. It felt like cold flesh when I
first touched it. I don't like a lot of white things together. They look too
kind of mournful. Just go and get the wastepaper basket in the library,
Judy. We'll carry it around to drop things into. Take that with you."
Judith carried the flowers into the library and bent to pick up the basket
as she dropped them into it.
As she raised her head she found her eyes looking directly into other
eyes which gazed at her from the wall. They were smiling from the face
of a child in a picture. As soon as she saw them Judith drew in her
breath and stood still, smiling, too, in response. The picture was that of
a little girl in a floating white frock. She had a deep dimple at one
corner of her mouth, her hanging hair was like burnished copper, she
held up a slender hand with pointed fingers and Judith knew her. Oh!
she knew her quite well. She had never felt so near any one else
throughout her life.
"Judy, Judy!"