To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 11
"CHARLOTTE, I'm just going to slip over to Aunt Sarah's for a minute. If the grocer comes before I get back, will you put it in the ice box? What time are you going to Gladys's?"
"Half past six, Aunt Kate. Can I do anything for you before I go?"
"Well, if I'm not home by six—I will be, but just if I should possibly happen not to be—you might put a couple of potatoes in to bake."
"Yes, Aunt Kate."
Why didn't she say something about the armful of pear blossoms that Kate had forced in the sunny window? Well, if she doesn't want to mention them, she needn't. I'm sure it makes no difference to me
"Aren't these lovely, Charlotte? I thought I'd take them over to cheer Aunt Sarah up, poor old thing."
"Yes, indeed, they're very pretty."
Very pretty! Well, Charlotte never had been an enthusiastic girl. But she had lots of splendid qualities—so sensible and dependable. She would remember those potatoes. Kate paused at the bottom of the stairs.
"Char-lut!"
"Yes, Aunt Kate?"
"Better put in three potatoes; Joe can always eat two."
Charlotte was in the studio, firm as lichen on a rock, with most of Kate's studies piled up behind a green denim curtain—"You're sure you don't mind, Aunt Kate?"—and their places taken by passe-partouted Gibson pictures: "Is a Caddy Always Necessary?" "The Eternal Question," and the rest, class photographs, and the big Princeton pennant Hoagland Driggs had given her. Lulu had died nine years ago, leaving her few thousand dollars to Charlotte, and Charlotte to Kate.
Well, Charlotte had turned into a splendid woman with no nonsense about her, Kate thought, walking along through fine spring rain that made her cheeks glow, made the pear blossoms shine. There never had been any nonsense about her, thought Kate, remembering the Charlotte who practiced conscientiously to the wagging metronome, the Charlotte whose reports were always marked Excellent, the Charlotte she couldn't make fluffy and vivacious, like the rest of the girls. She thought of the way the others had gone on when they were sixteen or seventeen, Dotty and Gladys and Mary Katherine and Marjorie, with their pompadours and their flowered dimities and their shirred satin girdles: "Oh, my dear—oh, how ghastly, I called this man my dear! I simply shriek my head off at a football game, I get so excited, my dear; I haven't any voice left; I'm simply crazy; I just grab the person in front of me even if it's an wfter stranger, I know everyone thinks I'm crazy! And the mildest remark had been answered by, "Oh, I think that's so awf'ly true!" or, "How simply wonderful!" or, "Oh nnnnno!" They were all so animated, and Charlotte was so heavy—good and polite and heavy, heaviest of all when she tried to talk like the other girls. Kate had been sorry for her and exasperated by her. She tried hard to make Charlotte's little parties gay, and they remained proper and polite, sedate—solemn, really. And fluffy clothes on Charlotte were all wrong, with her thick waist, and smooth heavy hair that wouldn't "pomp."
She was better-looking now since she had taken off her glasses. She had a complexion of apples and snow, and people often spoke of her pleasant expression. A respectable number of people always danced with her, but no one ever asked for the encores or the extras. She would dance encore after encore with the same man, applauding heartily at the end of each dance, more heartily than her partner. She was apt to have the supper dance with one of the girls' fathers, or with some "pill" like J. Hartley Harrison. Kate suffered for her, suffered far more than Charlotte.
Never any nonsense about Charlotte. But Kate hadn't known about Charlotte's "crush" on Lilian Simpson, when she went to church just to see her, to try to copy the way she stood, bust out, stomach in, her finger tips on the pew in front, fingers pressed back, wrists arching. Lilian had been the belle of Westlake. A jutting ledge of hat sprang out from over her pompadour; her shirtwaist was dragged down in a kangaroo pouch to a deep point; her high-boned collar foamed at the top with puckered Valenciennes lace. Charlotte, gazing at her, hated her own old traveler's ruching, and longed for a straight-front corset instead of a Ferris waist. She was a scarlet mass of joy when Lilian said, "Hello, Charlotte"; she wore an artificial violet, dropped from Lilian's muff, in a small muslin bag hung around her neck, and kissed it good night every night.
After that she "had a case on" Herbert Watts. She knew him only by sight, a pretty youth of sixteen, with curly black hair, who carried the processional cross at St. Stephen's, and took up the collection in Sunday school. Dotty Jackson and Gladys Blunt knew all about it, and always put his name into apples, when seeds were to be counted, or wrote it on slips to dream on with wedding cake. And often they accompanied her on her shaken pilgrimages past the Watts' small pale-pink house, on the other side of the railroad tracks, where the sacred flame of the Watts' parlor stove could be seen between draped lace curtains. Charlotte dreamed of being run over outside that house, and being carried in to die, while Herbert knelt beside her. Or perhaps spending years of inspirational invalidism on the Watts' sofa—a new and beautiful Charlotte, large-eyed through suffering, golden-haired through a miracle, the light of Herbert's life.
But her two passions had gotten her into the habit of going to all the services at St. Stephen's, and now Mrs. Partridge said they couldn't get along without her on the Altar Guild and in the Sunday school.
Kate turned the corner of West Street, and went up the path. She could hear scuttling inside, and whispering, after she rang the bell, and then the door was opened by messy Norah Nolan, with stove polish on her cheek, a whitish apron over her gingham one, and her sleeves rolled up.
"Howda do, Norah! Are the ladies— Oh, there you are, Carrie!"
Carrie emerged from a bulge of portière like a moth from a cocoon, and Kate laid her rain-glowing cheek against the ash-soft one.
"Kate Green! This rainy day! Well, if you aren't the greatest girl! Here, let me help you take off your rubbers. Kate! What marveelious cherry blossoms! Where did you get them?"
"They're pear blossoms, Carrie. I simply forced them in a sunny window, I thought Aunt Sarah might like them."
"A sunny window! Well, I suppose it's easy to have ideas if you can only think of them. Oh, Norah"
Norah would never have heard that faint cry if she hadn't stopped to listen at the dining-room door instead of going back to the kitchen.
"Oh, you might just put these in the pail, please, and I'll fix them when Mrs.— Kate, she's terrible, worse than the last one. We had an omelet for lunch that was just the color of a stove lid and about as tough. I'm nearly distracted. I said to Mrs. Whipple I just wished we could get into some nice boarding house, and, Kate Green, what do you think she said to me?"
"What?"
"Really, it's so awful, I don't believe I ought to repeat it. Well, you know her ears are as sharp as—as anything, but she pretended not to understand, and she said, 'Well, Carrie, that's a pretty suggestion, taking up our abode in a bawdy house! But I'm afraid we'd find some difficulty in being taken in!' Imagine saying such a thing at her age! Eighty-one years old! I was so embarrassed I nearly died!"
"Goodness! Where is she?"
"I think she's taking a nap. Don't look at the room. It's a sight, and I knocked over the card table when you rang the bell. I was trying to do a new solitaire Violetta Mortimer taught me. It's called Idiot's Delight, but I can't make it come out. Oh, Kate! I do feel so badly! Evangeline Mortimer wants to give me the darlingest Angora kitten; its fur is so thick that when it walks it shakes all over, and I do want it terribly"
Her face glowed with the wonder of the kitten, its pink triangle of mouth opening in a soundless mew, the vibration of its purring.
"And of course I can't have it, because Benjie would simply kill it. A cook we had at Cedarmere had the darlingest little gray kitten once, with a little white shirt front, and Benjie got it—I couldn't sleep for nights! And Mrs. Whipple won't chain him or put him in a cage. She cares a million times more for that parrot than she does for me, or anyone, and I want that little kitten so terribly. It seems to me if I only had something of my own, I wouldn't feel so blue and lonely"
I'd better stop at the Vienna Bakery on the way home, Kate thought, and get some rolls. Mercy! How this room does look, with cards all over the floor and every picture crooked. They say that shows they've been dusted. Maybe! Leaf-green Benjie was the only bright thing in the room, curling his claw around his bill and twisting his head on one side to look at her from a round eye of black and amber glass—nasty cruel thing! Poor Carrie! She didn't have much fun. But trust an old maid to want a cat! Every time!
"Kate, whatever in the world happened yesterday at the Wednesday Club? You went off so quickly after tea I didn't get a chance to ask you. I thought you were going to give your talk on art. I told everyone"
"Well, my dear, I was very much relieved not to; in fact, I was overjoyed, but it certainly makes me laugh! First place, Mrs. Roberts said to me, 'Oh, Mrs. Green, I want you to give us a little talk on art at the next meeting'"
"I know; you told me"
"And I said, I simply couldn't"
"You could, too, Kate, you could do it marvelously, very well indeed."
"I said I'd never done such a thing in my life, I'd be scared to death, but Mrs. Roberts said she wouldn't take no for an answer, Well, and so I just mentioned it to one or two people, and they all said Mrs. Roberts never took no for an answer, and I'd better be ready, and Mrs. Jackson told me that after they came home from their trip to Italy, Mrs. Roberts asked her to give a talk on 'My Rambles in Rome,' and Mrs. Jackson said she couldn't; but Mrs. Roberts called on her just the same, and Mrs. Jackson said she thought she was going to faint, and she was absolutely unprepared, but she had to do it. You remember that time, Carrie?"
"I guess no one has much of a chance to forget any: thing connected with the Jacksons' trip to Italy; the poor things have certainly talked enough about it," said Carrie, pitying in order not to envy.
"So, my dear, I saw her on Monday in Small's, and she said she knew I really wouldn't mind just saying a few words, just simply and naturally as I would to a few friends in conversation, about art from an artist's point of view, and of course I said I simply couldn't; and she said nonsense, she never took no for an answer. So then I got to thinking, and I thought maybe I ought to on account of art having meant so much to me always—you know, I'm funny that way—so if she had called on me I was going to say a few words; but, mercy! I certainly didn't want to, and I was very much relieved, it was exactly what I wanted, only, as I say, it makes me laugh"
No need to tell Carrie that she had fixed up her blue-and-white foulard, just in case, and bought new white gloves, and couldn't sleep, and practiced on Joe—she couldn't give her talk in front of Charlotte, but Joe thought she was grand. And she had bought some Perry pictures, just to illustrate. She left them hidden by her coat in Mrs. Baylow's hall. There were always two talks, and first the pretty Miss Anderson—so called not because she was pretty for a person, but because she was pretty for an Anderson—gave hers on "The Feminine Invasion of the Field of Literature," while Kate couldn't hear a word because the blood was pounding in her ears and her heart was lurching and her stomach feeling queer, and she was saying over and over to herself, "Some one has said that Art is the embodiment of beautiful thought in visible form"—and then Mrs. Roberts said: "Now we are going to have a great treat—Mrs. Skilling is going to share with us the pleasures of a visit to Mount Vernon."
A visit to Mount Vernon! Not that Kate cared—in fact, she was very much relieved—overjoyed! So she assured Joe and Carrie, over and over again. Only it made her laugh! And Mrs. Roberts saying casually while they were having tea, "I was so sorry you didn't feel you could talk to us, Mrs. Green. Maybe some other time." And she had told heaps of people that she was afraid she wasn't going to be able to get out of it, and they all wanted to know what had happened, and thought it was so queer!
Carrie thought it was queer. She thought Mrs. Roberts had acted outrageously.
"Of course, Carrie, you know I was delighted, only, as I said, it makes me laugh."
"Why didn't you tell her you were dying to talk?" said Aunt Sarah, suddenly speaking up, hidden in an armchair with its back to them, making the ladies jump and search their memories, while Carrie cried:
"Mercy! Were you there all the time, Lady Whipple?"
What a way for Aunt Sarah to behave, Kate thought, walking home with a light step. Poor Carrie! Poor Aunt Sarah, too! Infuriating Aunt Sarah, of course, hiding away in her armchair and letting them talk. Thank goodness, Carrie had hardly let Kate get a word in edgewise! But it can't be much fun to be old, with your friends all gone just when you need them for help and courage. Who cared, really, how Aunt Sarah was feeling? People were kind and bright, telling her in lilting voices how young she looked; they took devoted care of her when she was ill, but who really cared? Who could understand?
The moment of true vision passed. "Of course we all care!" Kate reassured herself, planning to take Aunt Sarah a jar of her brandied peaches to-morrow. No, not to-morrow; she had promised to help Charlotte with her blue serge to-morrow; but some day very soon.
The rain had stopped. The air smelled of it, and of the manure spread on sopping lawns. The bare branches of the trees came pouring, streaming down against a wet flowing sky, but with a lovely upward lift at their very tips. Enchanting sky—who else in Westlake ever looks at it? She walked along, complacent yet adoring, feeling that expectant happiness that flowed into her like a tide sometimes, the feeling of something wonderful coming soon, just a little way ahead. Painting, sewing, cooking, working in the garden, didn't leave her much time to think about the future, but believing in it took no separate time; it colored all her life as the sky is colored pink before the sun rises. Something wonderful is going to happen—what? Oh, what are you saying, what are you trying to tell me, beautiful voice speaking so far away?
Mrs. Joe Green in her rubbers and her rain coat. Sometimes she didn't feel at all the Mrs. Green who has homemade raspberry jam and the biggest dahlias in Westlake, who has brought up those two children so wonderfully and gotten along on so little. "Good evening, Mr. Bascom! No, I don't believe it's really cleared up yet. Bad weather for colds—yes, indeed!" Mr. Bascom would be astonished if he knew that at this minute she was thinking of living in Paris, in the Latin Quarter—the Quartier Latin sur le—la?—le Rive Gauche. Painting in an attic studio among gray roofs, having café at round green tables on which chestnut blossoms fell. She longed to travel. She used to pore over the maps in the children's geographies, and she took so many travel books out of the library Miss Fish got quite interested. Some day, some day, she would go, she and Joe, when Charlotte was married—perhaps she'd better say if—still, Hartley Harrison was very attentive.
"Good evening, Mr. Hoare." I'm not what you think I am, Mr. Hoare, I'm not what anybody in Westlake thinks I am. But there's no way of showing except by painting—really serious painting. I believe I could do it that way. Autumn after next, when Joe goes to college, I'll have more time and space, and get back to it in earnest
A crescent moon in the sky reminded her to go in to the Vienna Bakery for crescent rolls, and there was Mrs. Driggs, with something like a pongee sponge bag on her head, goggles, long dust-colored veil, and pongee duster, buying cream puffs.
"Hop into the auto and I'll ride you home."
So Kate, pleased and self-conscious and hoping people would see her, climbed in through the door in the middle of the back of the Driggs' automobile, and Mrs. Driggs heaved and squeezed after her.
"When do you expect Hoagland for his spring vacation?" Kate asked, clutching her hat, bowing involuntarily now and then as Noble drove them jerkily home. For Hoagland was a grown-up young man, in his last year at Princeton, coming back for the holidays bland and fat, wearing matching ties and socks, and boutonnieres that were almost corsage bouquets. He made Kate feel five years old when he replied to her observations with his tolerant, "I see." A steady young man, very different from the sixteen-year-old Hoagland who had to be sent away to boarding school because of his infatuation for Opal Mendoza. The Driggses had had an awful time with him then. Mr. Driggs had nearly had a stroke, he was so angry, and Mrs. Driggs went around with her face all puffed up and her eyes nearly shut from crying, and the Greens no longer heard "Tell Me, Pretty Maiden" and "The Rosary" from the Driggs' pianola across the street. Kate used to say they would drive her crazy, but she missed them when they stopped. And Opal, with blue stuff smeared on her eyelids, although she was only sixteen, and cheap perfume, strong enough to knock you down, just laughed, and went walking at night in the graveyard with other boys. But now that affair seemed all blown over.
"Thank you ever so much, Mrs. Driggs. Just let me hop out at your gate."
"All right, if you'd just as soon; it's kind of hard for Noble to turn round. Good night!"
"Good night!"
The house was dark, not glowing to meet her, as it used to be in Lizzie's time. Lizzie had married. Kate had hardly been able to persuade her that she must, with Dan Healey waiting for her ten years and getting a good new job in Syracuse. Now Kate sometimes had Effa Ashburn in to help, and sometimes no one. Effa wasn't worth much—too young and so fat and lazy. But you couldn't get a good girl for what Kate could pay, any more.
She switched on the hall ceiling light in its strawberries-and-cream glass globe. She could smell potatoes baking. She called up the stairs:
"Joe-ho!"
"Hello!"
"Are you home?"
"Yeh!"
Her Joe! Heart of her heart! So beautiful to her in spite of the steel-rimmed spectacles that covered his clear blue eyes, his stick-out ears that shone like rosy shells when he stood in front of a strong light, his cowlick, his large dusty shoes, his unpressed suit—why was one trousers leg always caught up? So sensitive, so dreamy. And so artistic, Kate thought, watching him trying to make scenery for the old toy theater with its "Cinderella's Kitchen" and "Ballroom in the Palace," rummaging in Kate's piece box at the top of the stairs that held patterns and rolls of tan pongee, dimity with forget-me-nots on it, and kitchen-apron gingham, covering an electric bulb with violet or green crêpe paper, giving everything up in despair, and then starting in again.
She had gone through so much with him: when he fell through the ice and nearly drowned, skating on the lake; when the boys were on the barn roof and Laddie Baylow said, "Jump, why don't you?" and Jodie jumped; when he burned his eyebrows off after he had gotten enough subscriptions to The Youth's Companion to win Fun with Chemistry. His body had grown hard from roaming in the woods, swimming, fighting, and playing with the other boys, but the inside Joe seemed more tender, more helpless, more easily hurt, than when he was a baby or little Jodie. Kate was in despair sometimes. From loud laughter, tearing spirits, his eyes would suddenly fill with tears. What was it? What had she said or done?
But one thing about him she did know, that he had no nonsense in his head about girls, never thought of them. She boasted of it to the other mothers, rather meanly sometimes.
Up in his room Joe sat reading passionate poems, his legs wound about each other, thrilling, biting great chunks of apple. When he was with other people he was shy and unhappy, anxiously trying with nervous laughter to fit in. But here, alone, he was happy and reassured.
Jimmy Roberts had recommended Swinburne as hot stuff, but Joe forgot he was looking for that as he read:
Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,
But the world shall end when I forget.
Already the age-old cry, "Remember me!" was part of a language he dimly understood. "I will never forget you!" he said out loud, but cautiously, while he gazed starry-eyed, blindly, at the picture of Sir Galahad Kate had hung over his bed for his inspiration, the picture that had been invisible to him for years. Then he added, experimentally, "I have never forgotten you, my darling"
"Joe-ho! Oh, Joe!"
"Yessum!"
"We aren't going to have anything for supper, because Charlotte's out, and I thought it would be fun just to have a sort of picnic on the card table in front of the fire—what?"
"I didn't say anything!"
"So would you rather have scrambled eggs, or shall I just open a can of baked beans?"
"Baked beans!"
"If you'd rather have the eggs just say so, because they aren't any trouble."
"No, I wouldn't."
"All right, then, it's beans?"
"Beans!"
India's Love Lyrics. Jimmy had lent him those.
There is a flower that I fear
Here was another. "Less than the dust" That was what J. Hartley Harrison was always singing, going up on his toes like a ballet dancer, with his eyeglasses shining and the veins standing out on his forehead. Joe couldn't read it without seeing him. But this one was different:
So hopelessly, so far apart?
Oh, I implore you, come to me!
Come, Consolation of my heart!
"Supper, Joe!" cried Kate, beating upon the Chinese gong.
For a moment he flung himself down beside his chair. He pressed his face against his folded arms; his heart ached with vague happy pain. Then he ran downstairs, falling over his feet, to baked beans and crescent rolls and the potatoes Charlotte had remembered.