“Thank you,” said Katherine, smiling.
“My sister’s boy was born like her,” he said, standing straight and pulling down Katherine’s suitcase.
Katherine started to say, Oh, I’m so sorry. She paused and said: “They’re a blessing from God, aren’t they?”
“Yes, ma’am, they surely are,” the porter replied. “And I surely believe they’re sent down here to Earth for a good reason.”
Katherine stepped down from the train, with her daughter and her suitcase. She had come to the land where miracles happened to ordinary people. She lifted Bette Jean to her shoulder and walked away down the platform, into the sunlight.
OH, FALSE YOUNG MAN!
“Push that lighter over here, will you, Dick?” said Madame Rigby, out of the corner of her mouth.
“Right away, ma’am,” said her assistant, hopping up from his workbench. Four paces from Madame Rigby’s chair stood a squat column on casters, the top of which was surmounted by the little tin figure of a grinning devil, standing amid a heap of painted coals. “May I wind him for you?”
“Sure,” said Madame Rigby, not looking up from her task.
Dick pushed the column within her easy reach and, fitting a crank into its socket just under the devil’s left hoof, wound it three or four times. The devil shivered briskly, as though waking; then, tilting its head and winking once, it thrust its pitchfork out. There was an audible click and a tiny jet of flame danced on the centermost tine of the fork.
Dick, who had not worked for Madame Rigby very long, applauded in delight. Madame Rigby scarcely noticed; she merely leaned over until the tip of her cigarette touched the flame. Two or three puffs obscured her in smoke; when it cleared, Dick saw that she was once again preoccupied with the work before her.
“It’s looking very nice, ma’am,” he said. “Makes you wonder how so much dust could get into a sealed glass case, though, doesn’t it?”
“Mm,” she said.
The object of his admiration was a glass-fronted box, fully six feet long and eighteen inches high, resting on a wooden case of roughly the same size. It was a mechanical diorama, a set of six miniature tableaux. The style of clothing worn by the tiny manikins within made it plain the thing had been built some twenty years earlier; that, and the dust, and the faded paint.
However, all was being made new by Madame Rigby. Scene by scene, the dust was being cleaned away with diminutive sponges; the wax faces of the dolls given fresh and lifelike tints with a delicate brush. Already the first scene in the little play, He Comes A-Courting, glowed like an immortal memory.
It depicted a clock shop, with its walls lined with clocks of all descriptions, and when the scene was in motion all the little hands must have spun round and round on the dial faces, and pendulums rocked to and fro. A tiny calendar gave the month and year as January 1880. Through a rear doorway was represented an horologist’s workbench, at which a lean, old man sat, peering through a jeweler’s loupe at a gold watch. His neck was clearly jointed to permit his head to nod.
In the showroom, however, a petite beauty stood behind the counter. She wore midnight blue satin with a bustle and train, and her upswept chignon and ringlets were a glossy black, rather as Madame Rigby’s might have once been. The object of her smiling attention was the handsome young man before the counter, whose jointed arm was raised to his hat; clearly he was meant to sweep it from his head and bow to her.
Beneath the second scene was painted He Vows To Be True. Here the same little man stood in a painted representation of a front parlor, and by the action of a pin and lever in his jointed leg might well be made to kneel before the little beauty, whose hand was placed in his. His neck was cleverly jointed as well, and perhaps enabled the head to drop forward upon the beloved’s hand when he knelt, in imitation of a kiss.
It was plain that the painted furnishings behind this demonstration of affection were meant to represent a certain threadbare gentility. And what could the artist have meant to imply, by showing a lady’s boudoir so plainly through the painted arch to the rear of the room? And was that a gentleman’s waistcoat, finely embroidered, draped over the foot of the bed?
The third scene was Upon Reflection He Grows Cold, and here was another public location: an expanse of painted lawn, and in the background an admirable representation of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park, with the delicate tracery of its spires and glittering dome. Charming; less so was the action in the foreground, where the young man stood stiffly upright. His face was turned from the young lady, his left hand extended in a gesture of repulsion that would become more emphatic when the forearm rose and dropped, as its jointed elbow clearly permitted it to do.
The young lady’s arms were jointed too; they must permit her to raise them in a beseeching motion. She clutched a handkerchief no bigger than a postage stamp. Infinitesimal tears were painted on her pale cheeks. And could the dollmaker have really meant to present the young lady in a gown cut so loosely about the waist? What a shocking implication!
The next scene, He Seeks a Wealthy Bride, showed the little gentleman at the seaside; he wore a straw hat, and the flush of sunburn on his cheeks was very well rendered. He stood with his hands in his pockets on the gray sand, apparently one of a party. Here, seated upon a checkered cloth, were three dolls, two meant to represent a well-to-do older couple; or so one might assume from the expanse of the old man’s waistcoat with its gleaming golden watch chain, and the ostentation of the old woman’s hat, and the richness of the painted wine, cake and roast chicken in the miniature picnic basket between them. The third doll was clearly their golden-haired daughter, smiling up at the young man without expression in her great, flat blue eyes.
In the distance behind them rose Cliff House, not Sutro’s splendid castle, but the little boxy structure that had been there before it; and if one looked very carefully one might spot the tiny, woeful figure in midnight blue, standing poised on its parapet as though she were about to jump into the saw-edged wooden waves—a proceeding sure to grind her to a pinch of sad dust, were they moving back and forth on their respective tracks, as presently they were not. The artificial perspective made it difficult to ascertain the young lady’s condition, but managed to suggest a reason for her desperation.
The fifth scene was titled Oh, False Young Man! Here was the interior of a grand church, seen through its open door; perhaps Grace Church. Real painted glass had been used in the windows, and perhaps there was an electric lamp behind them when the mechanism was switched on. If so, this would backlight the tiny, tiny figures of the groom and his golden-haired bride, standing one step below the tinier minister all in black, holding an open prayerbook.
All this through the door; without, on the church steps, sat the wretched doll in midnight blue, bowed forward in a transport of grief. Her body was jointed at its unmistakable waist; when she rocked back and forward, as she must, and raised her handkerchief and lowered it, there could be no question of her particular sorrow.
The sixth and final scene was titled She Meditates upon Her Vengeance, but was represented at present by a bare and dusty void, into which gears and wires protruded. Madame Rigby had removed the little scene which once occupied the space, and it sat unrestored to her left: a graveyard by night, with a solemn moon casting blue radiance over the doll in mourning black. She stood beside an infant’s grave, with her clasped hands lifted as in prayer. A black cat, perched on one of the tombstones, arched its jointed back when in motion; perhaps its glass eyes were lit from within too. Hinges on certain of the tomb lids suggested that the spectral occupants might emerge to regard the young lady’s anguish.