To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 21
EVELYN lay soaking in sunlight on the hill over looking the pine woods, crushed grasses and wild strawberries staining her dress. She watched a blue-green beetle traveling through the forest of grass stalks, she rolled over on her back and saw two butterflies quivering together, saw piled golden-white clouds—what a large egg beater God must use! Life tingled about her, within her.
Joe was gathering fragrant wild strawberries that were scarlet through the grass. He moved from patch to patch; he went over the edge of the hill and was hidden. Yet he was no more separated from her than her hand was when she lifted it to shield her eyes from the sun. If the world was between them they would be together.
No need to tell each other how happy they were, off this way by themselves. But she hadn't been happy at 29 Chestnut Street.
Mrs. Green was kind. Evelyn dreaded going out, because when she came back she was sure to find that Kate had washed her silk stockings for her, or blancoed her shoes. Every day there were exhausting contests in nobility, always won by Kate. One place in Mrs. Driggs' car—Evelyn must have the ride. One perfect peach, and the others beginning to go—Evelyn must eat it. "You've given me all the heart of the lettuce, Mrs. Green!" And Kate, eating the large limp outside leaves, would say, "I like these every bit as well." There were unstrained moments of laughter and loving-kindness between them, but most of the time they were on their guard with each other. "How wonderfully Kate Green and Joe's wife get on together," people said, watching the two women speaking to each other through their smiling masks.
Then there was poor old Carrie, oozing sentiment until Evelyn felt sticky. She and Joe couldn't look at each other without Carrie yearning toward them with understanding smiles.
And Aunt Sarah, poking and prying. But she only poked and pried into Evelyn's perfume bottles and cold-cream jar and the big box of marrons glacés Ralph Levinson had sent from New York. She didn't sniff and nibble at emotions.
Evelyn had tried to find a house that Joe could afford and she could bear to live in. Time after time J. Hartley Harrison escorted her to Colonial cottages and Mission bungalows.
"How does this strike your artistic eye, madame?"
"Oh, dreadful! Like a ticket booth for a Spanish bull fight!"
"Delicious! Good afternoon, Mrs. Pratt! Nice doggy, nice doggy! Well, then, he was a nice doggy"
"Chum! Down, sir! He just acts that way when he sees folks are scared of him."
"Oh, I guess he just wants to pal up with me. Mrs. Green, Mrs. Pratt. I brought Mrs. Green to see your cozy little home."
"You folks'll have to excuse the way the place looks. Junior's been in the house with the pink eye."
"I see. Here's a very sunny, bright little living room, Mrs. Green. Of course, you with your taste could fix it up so it would look very different"
"Dining alcove!" said Mrs. Pratt, crossly. "Get outa the way, you Chum. China closet."
"Ce n'est pas possible," Evelyn murmured to Hartley.
"Quoi? Pardonnez-moi? Oh! Je vwar," Hartley murmured back.
Mrs. Pratt let the swing door fly at him. "Kitchen."
"Mais je pense que vous trouvez que cette maison avez tous les convenances, Mrs. Green. Le—Le—electricity, modern plumbing—broom closet"
He opened the door, and a dust pan slid on to his head.
"Sun porch. Look out, Mr. Harrison!"
Something small and wheeled shot from under Hartley's foot as he clutched a plant stand.
"Junior Pratt, what did mamma tell you about leaving your things laying round?"
"No harm done, Mrs. Pratt; no bones broken! Well, sir, how do you do?"
"Junior!"
"Huh?"
"Didn't you hear the gentleman?"
"Ah-huh."
"Well, then, answer him."
"Enswer him w-h-a-t?"
"I said how do you do, sir?"
"I got the pink eye."
"So I see. Well, well, that's too bad! Now I wonder if I have anything here that's good for pink eye. Well! Now I wonder what this can be?"
"Lemme see!"
"Junior!"
"It's chawclut!"
"Junior!"
"W-h-a-t?"
"What what? What mamma. Say thank you to the gentleman."
"That's a great little fellow you have there!"
"I'll show you upstairs now."
"Really, Mr. Harrison—there's no use wasting any more time"
"No trouble at all, Mrs. Green. A great little fellow! I always enjoy being with the kiddies. My mother—she has a delicious sense of humor—bathroom—always says with a twinkle in her eye that it's because I'm nothing but a kid myself. You know we're never grown up to our mothers. And mother and I have always been great pals"
"Spare room."
"I see! Guest room, Mrs. Green. One of my favorite songs is Kipling's 'Mother o' Mine,' really simply because of the way it's written, and the subject. Doubtless you're familiar with it"
"Linen clawset."
"Hm! Hm!
Mother o' mine, oh, mother o' mine'"
"Hired girl's room."
Mother o' mine, oh, mother o' mine.'
Lovely thing, isn't it?"
"I really am afraid"
"Je comprends absolument que vous ne pensez pas que la maison est très jolie maintenant, mais vous pouvez il faire très charmant, je suis sure, avec votre—er—uh—own furniture. Elle est une très bien dame, je suis sure, mais vous voyez pas avec un—uh—background de culture, et il est—qu'est-ce que c'est le mot? Sugar! Isn't that funny how rusty one gets? I don't get much opportunity to keep up my French—but, anyway, I mean you could make it very very attractive."
"I'm sorry"
"Well, thank you, Mrs. Pratt, thank you very much. So long, young fellow. That's a wonderful little kiddie, Mrs."
And bang! The door would shut.
Evelyn would come back from house hunting exhausted and despairing. And she had felt so ill almost all the time since she knew she was going to have a child. Joe had never known whether he would come home in the evening to a brave, noble Evelyn, hiding the ache in her heart in a manner not to be ignored, or to a despairing Evelyn ready to burst into tears, pouring out her troubles in his arms. But now she felt well again, and happy because just she and Joe were together.
Faint on the warm wind she heard the church bells. She could almost see the little procession leaving 29 Chestnut Street—Hoagland in his golf clothes and diamond-patterned stockings, leading Aunt Sarah out to where Charlotte and Charlie the chauffeur waited in the closed car; Aunt Sarah bundled up in her cloth mantle, cold in spite of the warm sun, her head nodding, her lips moving, her old hands trembling in their nice kid gloves. Hoagland helping her patiently. "Take your time, Aunt Sarah. My goodness! you're spryer than any of us—you'd better come on out to the Club and have a game of golf with me." After them Carrie, fastening a sleeve, turning an ankle, dropping a prayer book and hymnal that showered the path with little cards and snips of palm and pressed lilies of the valley, pleased because she was going to church in an automobile. And last of all, Kate, in the hat trimmed with blue morning-glories that Joe had chosen for her last summer and that she still considered rather too conspicuous, slamming the door shut and hiding the key under the mat.
Joe, coming back through the grasses, looked toward his wife with a pure flooding out of love. "Evelyn," he said to himself, silently, answering everything.
The ground was beginning to develop hard bumps; insects strolled ticklingly across her face. She sat up, yawning, stretching her arms to reach the sun, the sky.
"Evelyn! Come here! Here's a wonderful patch!"
"Bring some here!"
"Lazybones!"
"Joe!"
"What?"
"You come here! I want to say something tender, and I can't yell it across a field and a half. And bring the strawberries. Gosh! what a bandanna! Really, Mr. Green dearie, do you expect me to eat them out of that?"
"Hey! Leave me some!"
"Joe—I'm too happy—it frightens me."
"Are you, darling?"
"Hear the church bells."
"You ought to be there telling God you're a miserable sinner."
"You ought to be there in a cutaway coat putting old ladies into pews and marching up the aisle with the collection plate."
"What else do you hear?"
"Cowbells—running water"
"That's the stream in the woods. And bees humming."
"Something else."
"What?"
"I don't know—things growing. I wish we could live out here."
"Evelyn!"
"What?"
"We could! See the gray house down there? We could get that for nothing, almost, because it's supposed to be haunted. There was a crazy old woman lived alone there for years, and she died alone, too; they found her lying face down in a shower of wormy little apples at the bottom of the cellar steps. She must have been there for days"
"Joe darling! You're making it sound so inviting and homelike!"
"Think of having a pine woods for a back yard."
"Think of being out of Westlake—think of being away from bridge lamps and fruit cocktails!"
"Evelyn, would you try it?"
"It might be quite fun."
"Would you be lonely?"
"Wouldn't you live there, too?"
He suddenly bent and kissed her foot. Her eyes filled with tears. "Oh, Joe, my darling, don't!"
"Their little nest," thought Carrie, joggling gently on the back seat of Charlotte's closed car. Curtain rings, samples of chintz, double boiler, picture wire, garbage pail—she hadn't forgotten anything. How comfortable the cushions were; how easily the car took the steep hill. She flapped a gracious hand at a stolid child. Perhaps not quite respectful of Charlie to wear his cap so far on the back of his head? Would he, if Charlotte or Hoagland were in the car? But the small cloud passed. The day was so lovely; she felt so helpful and important. Oh! Oh! The blue flags along the stream were out! That winding strip of blue through the wet green—heaven couldn't be more beautiful. "Our Father which art in heaven—" she began, squeezing her eyes tight in ecstasy, then opening them. Mustn't be sacrilegious, praying out-of-doors in an automobile, not even kneeling down.
That cap! But probably Charlie just didn't know any better. She thanked him very pleasantly as she got out of the car and went into the haunted house, bowing with gracious dignity to the workmen sunning themselves after lunch. So many legs, stretched out all over the place—but workmen seemed so refined nowadays, with their automobiles and their thermos bottles. That young one with curly hair might easily be a college graduate doing it for the psychological experience—or did she mean physiological?
Charlie gave them a wink as he followed her with the garbage pail. "How happy they sound!" Carrie thought, smiling, as she heard their laughter.
"Hoo-hoo!" she sang on a falling note.
"Upstairs!"
Though my head am bending low.
I hear those angel voices calling'
oop! Of course I had to step on my skirt. Hey-oh, girls! Did you think I'd eloped? I thought they'd never wait on me at Trenchard's; the store was simply jammed; and then just as that red-headed clerk was going to wait on me, this loud-looking woman simply pushed right in front of me, really pushed, and said she wanted to look at lawn mowers! I simply looked at her—I think she felt it, too. I had a lovely ride out, Charlotte, thank you muchly. Did you girls notice the mountain laurel? I never saw so much bloom, and so pink—the daintiest thing!"
"It looks like fat pink sheep all through the pines."
"I know, Kate; that's exactly what I mean. My! But we're gettin' to look booful!"
But I wouldn't live here for a million dollars, she thought. Of course, I don't believe in ghosts, but, goodness! And then way off from everybody. And queer things do happen. It might be all right by day, but by night—no, thank you! Yet with some one you loved perhaps you wouldn't be afraid even at night.
Kate was perched on a stepladder; Charlotte was pushing rods through curtains. They had done wonders, Kate especially, since their first horrified outcries when Joe and Evelyn bought the haunted house. Then the old woman's life work of cut paper still rustled at windows, at doors, from mantelpieces, fly-spotted and torn. The house was curtained with stars, flowers, patterns of snowflakes, filth. It spoke in sighs, and with a small complaining voice as the wind ran up and down its uncarpeted stairs or cried through the broken windows. When rain fell and the staring eyes streamed with tears, milk pails had to be set here and there, under leaks, and the plop-plop of the drops sounded like plucked strings. The attic, the crazy brain of the house, swarmed with mice and weaving spiders. But now Joe and Evelyn had been living there for a week, and after to-day there would be nothing more for Kate to do.
She had her white walls and orange curtains at last, though they were in Joe's house. She had suggested them, because Evelyn seemed so vague about what she did want, so indifferent to all the practical details. Perhaps I'm doing too much, Kate thought. Perhaps I'm being a regular Mrs. Buttinsky. But somebody's got to do things, and Evelyn won't. And, anyway, I want to save her as much as I can just now. I'll leave them alone after to-morrow, though goodness knows how they'll manage.
"Tack hammer! Tack hammer!" she called to Carrie.
"Here you are. Oh, bother! Of course I had to upset the whole saucer of tacks! My goodness! Katiekins, I think you're wonderful to be able to sit way up there without being dizzy. I'd love to do it, to help, but I absolutely couldn't. It's the funniest thing about me—when I get on a high place I have this insane desire to jump off. They say very highly strung people do feel that way."
Who's Carrie showing off to now? Oh, the curly-haired young electrician. Poor old Carrie, so excited, with her head tied up in a gypsy handkerchief, and her eyes shining behind her glasses.
"Sometimes I have these vivid dreams that I'm falling. Well, I simply wake up trembling all over"
"Hammy 'at cur'u', pleash," said Kate through tacks.
"What, Kate?"
"'At!" Kate prodded the air with her forefinger.
"I don't—I—oh! The curtain! I remember when I was in St. Paul's in London, dear old St. Paul's, it was almost irresistible just to fling myself down"
"Did you get the samples of chintz for the sofa, Carrie?" Charlotte asked.
"Indeed I did, Lottchen! That reminds me, I must measure again. Mr. Totten calculated how much'd be needed for a sofa they have there, but I told him my seat was wider. Wouldn't you say it was more than five feet six inches? And then he wanted to know whether we wanted a frill to hide our legs or not, and I wasn't posilutely absotively certain. Here the samples are. I know they're awful; I don't know why. I bothered to bring them out. Here's one. No, that color's dreadful"
"Why, no, I think it's pretty."
"Well, yes, it is pretty; now that I really look at it, I think it's fascinating"
"I didn't mean that one; I meant the one with the Chinese pagodas."
"Oh yes! That is handsome! I think the sofa would be wonderful done in that, really! That other one is much too wishy-washy, no character. I hate wishy-washy things. I knew it wouldn't do; I just let them put it in at Small's; but the pagoda one I was positive you'd like. Shall I call up and tell them that one'll do?"
"I think it's all right. Don't you, Aunt Kate?"
"What does Evelyn think?"
"Oh, of course! What does Evelyn think?"
"Where is she?"
"She was in here. Evelyn! Well, I guess she'll be back."
"There, Aunt Kate, I don't believe there's anything more I can do, and I have to call for the children; they're at Bunny Roberts's birthday party. You and Carrie are about ready, aren't you?"
"You two go on. I think I'll just go down and finish putting in the books for them, and then everything really will be done. Joe won't mind running me in when he gets home. It won't take him a minute."
The workmen were going, too. The house grew silent. Kate sat idle among the books, realizing how tired she was, remembering the fun, the excitement of those first days at 29 Chestnut Street. Where to put the big chair? Where to hang the saucepan and onions? Waiting, when twilight came, for the click of the gate
She roused herself, and began pushing in Joe's old bound volumes of Saint Nicholas that had left such a big gap in the bookcase at home. Pictures of little girls with deep silky bangs and little boys with broad collars—"Denise and Ned Toodles"—she had worried because Jodie liked that better than the more virile "Boys of the Rinkum Ranch".
In tissue, with a card to say
From Santa Claus and Uncle John,
And not a stitch the child had on!"
"Dear St. Nicholas.
I am one of your little readers in far-away Australia—"
Jodie had written a letter to St. Nicholas once. "Dear St. Nicholas,
I am eight years old. I have a dog named Shep—" They had all been so excited when it was printed. They had had cream puffs from the Vienna Bakery for supper, to celebrate.
Where is my little lost boy?
Well, it was peaceful at home, now, anyway. Evelyn didn't make a restful atmosphere. She was either quivering with life or silent and depressed. But she had made meal times exciting—almost terrifying. Kate never knew when she was going to talk about her baby, right in front of Joe, or swear. What did Aunt Sarah think? But, after all, did Aunt Sarah think of anything any more, except food and warmth? Then Evelyn might drop into French at any moment. Kate hadn't meant to tell a story, but, somehow, just at first, she had let Evelyn get the impression that French or English, it was all one to her, and she had had miserable moments since. It sometimes seemed to her that Evelyn must have guessed
Now they sat through meals, Aunt Sarah never speaking, lifting her cup with both trembling old hands, sucking in her tea, a tepid trickle of talk flowing from Carrie.
Kate had her own room again. But it was haunted. Something quivered in the air.
She heard the roar outside that meant Joe and the Ford had come home, and put on her hat. The last book was in place; the fresh sweet room waited for Joe's and Evelyn's appreciation. She went out of the door, saw Evelyn coming from the woods and Joe going to meet her, saw the long still embrace.
She almost ran until she was around the curve. Then she hurried along the empty road through twilight that blotted up the colors of earth and sky.