IX
The Bixbyssettled themselves down in Mrs. Johnson’s rooms over Julie Rose’s little shop, and thereafter the lives of these two new people were constantly crossing the thread of Julie’s life, all of them together weaving that unseen pattern in the garment of existence.
Elizabeth Bixby and her landlady fell into an indifferent intimacy. Aunt Sadie was a sociable person well up in her sixties. The immediate pressure of life was over for her, except when some one of her children, all of whom were married, needed her in an emergency. The years had drifted her into a rather pleasant backwater where she had leisure to look about her and to enjoy what small diversions Hart’s Run had to offer. Her gray eyes, set in a broad, weather-beaten face, were shrewd but tolerant. She viewed human nature clearly, but not unkindly.
“You got to take people like you find ’em,” she was apt to state. Of Elizabeth Bixby she said, “Oh, well, the poor thing, maybe I’d’veput a little more sweetening in, if I’d had the makin’ of her; but I didn’t mix her batter, so it’s no concern of mine. I’m kind of sorry for her, she craves so to have people notice her, an’ wants her own way so bad; but she’s right good company, too, when everything’s going to suit her.” Thus she explained their intimacy, and together they went almost nightly to the moving pictures.
Elizabeth was lonesome, and had a good deal of spare time to kill. Some of it she killed in Aunt Sadie’s society. The rest she made away with by lying in bed late,—Mr. Bixby always got his own breakfast,—by fitful housekeeping, by gossip and cheap fiction, and by much attention to her clothes. And all that she did went by to the blare of popular songs ground out on her gramophone, for, as she told Aunt Sadie, “If there’s one thing I hate more’n another it’s nothin’ doin’. I got to have some kind of stir goin’ on all the time, if it’s nothin’ more’n the gramophone.”
Her uncertain and slovenly habits were the very antithesis of Julie’s well-ordered and conscientious ones. At a certain early hour Juliearose; at another certain hour she had her breakfast; and by another her rooms were tidied and her shop open for the day. After the Bixbys moved in, she became accustomed to hearing Mr. Bixby every morning at a regular time getting his own breakfast; his habits, when they did not depend on Elizabeth, were as methodical as her own. His breakfast varied in time not more than five minutes from morning to morning, but his dinner, which Elizabeth prepared, swung backward and forward across the face of the clock.
As Julie finished her own breakfast and started her house-cleaning for the day, she was used now to hearing Mr. Bixby’s tiptoe footsteps creeping about overhead. The footsteps were so timid, so stealthy, that she guessed he went in terror of an outburst of irritability from Elizabeth if he awakened her. He was not always successful in keeping quiet. One morning there was a sudden clatter and crash of tinware, and immediately on the heels of it, a flood of abuse from his wife.
When Mr. Bixby came down the outside stairs that morning Julie was sweeping her front steps. He paused after they had exchanged their customary shy good morning.
“I was mighty sorry I made all that racket right over your head just now,” he apologized awkwardly.
“Oh, that was all right,” she assured him quickly. “A person can’t help pans falling down sometimes.”
“It was the pie plates,” he confided. “Seems like they just stand there on edge watching their chance to jump down on a feller, and they ain’t never satisfied to let one of the bunch go alone, but all of ’em got to rattle down together.” There was in his eyes now that rueful twinkle which she had seen before. He offered it tentatively to her, a deprecatory, whimsical comment on his own inaptitude.
It was like a shy animal peeping forth from its hole, ready to whisk away at the first unsympathetic gesture.
Julie smiled. “Yes, I know,” she said, although she really had no whimsical twist like that in her own make-up. When pie plates fell for her, they fell, and there was no alleviating mirth about their descent.
He still lingered, looking at her wistfully, relaxing his nerves in her sympathetic atmosphere.
The street was almost empty. The little gardens up and down it made joyful bits of color, and the fresh morning air danced through the shimmering trees, and twinkled its feet over the sparkling grass. Here and there, spread on the small lawns, or depending from the garden fences or from the branch of a shrub, spider webs showed their lace, an ephemeral loveliness which would presently disappear as the day advanced. For a time life seemed to turn a kindly side to them both, and in the friendliness of each other’s presence, their real personalities—which were usually as invisible as the gossamer webs upon the grass—came forth in shy intercourse.
“I’m mightily afraid I’ll disturb you in the mornings, stepping around right over your head like that,” he confided.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” she reassured him. “I’m always up and through my breakfast before you commence, and I think it’s nice to hear other folks stirring around and getting ready for the day, too.”
“Well, I made stir enough this morning, didn’t I?” He laughed. Then he was emboldened to a further confession. “I scared myself sobad I didn’t have the nerve to go on and get my breakfast.”
“Why! You haven’t had anything to eat?” she exclaimed.
He flushed. “Oh, it’s all right. I’ll get me some coffee over at the Monroe House. I didn’t want to disturb my wife again. She’s mighty apt to have one of her bad headaches in the morning,” he said, unconsciously revealing the real reason for his abandoning any further attempt at breakfast.
“I got some fresh coffee right on my stove this minute, an’ some hot biscuits still in the oven. I’d be mighty glad to give you a bite,” she offered impulsively.
At that, a quick embarrassed flush mounted to his forehead. “I’m much obliged,” he answered stiffly, “but I wouldn’t trouble you.”
His embarrassment communicated itself to her, entrapping them both in their frozen self-consciousness and destroying the little moment of friendly spontaneity.
“I must be going,” he said.
“Well,” she answered awkwardly, “I’m sorry you won’t try my coffee.”
For a moment more they lingered uncertainly, their real selves staring forth wistfully through the formality that their conventional selves were hastily assuming, like friendly children being dragged apart by stiff grown-ups. Then she began to sweep again, and he, with a constrained gesture toward his hat, went on his way.