“Toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty months old infant.”
“Toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty months old infant.”
The boy cast an indifferently polite eye on these gifts as their charms were exhibited to him, and clasped the brown and scarlet rooster to his breast. There were moments, half hours even, when he became sufficiently diverted from his fowl to cease from making it crow, but at intervals throughout the day the family were given to understand once for all that it is not the most expensive and ornate toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty-months-old infant. Even the automobile presented by Dr. Roger Barnes, and warranted to go three times around the room without stopping, was a tame affair to the recipient compared with the rooster’s shrill salute.
“Remember, Tony,” Juliet had said, a month before Christmas, “you are not to give me any expensive personal gift this year. I care for nothing half so much as for making the home complete. If—if—you cared to give me something toward the bathroom fund——”
“All right,” said Anthony promptly, for hehad learned by this time to know his wife well. The bathroom fund was dear to her heart. The small room at the front of the house upstairs, which had been left unfurnished, had been temporarily fitted up as a bathroom by sundry ingenious devices in the way of a tin bath and a hot and cold water connection, but a full equipment of the best sort was to be put in as soon as practicable, and there was a growing fund therefor.
On Christmas morning, nevertheless, in addition to a generous addition to the fund, Juliet found beside her plate an exceedingly “personal gift” in the shape of a little pearl-and-turquoise brooch of rare design, bearing the stamp of a superior maker.
“Must I scold you?” she asked, smiling up at him as he stood beside her, watching her face flush with pleasure.
“Kiss me, instead,” he answered promptly. “And don’t expect me to give up making you now and then a real present, even though it has to be a small one. It’s too much fun.”
Beside his own plate he found her gift, a set of histories he had long wanted. It was a beautiful edition, and he would have looked reproachfully at the giver if shehad not forestalled him by running around the table to say softly in his ear, both arms about his neck: “Just at Christmas time, dearest, let me have my way.”
The day was a happy one. Mr. Horatio Marcy and Mrs. Dingley arrived on the morning train and stayed until evening. At the Christmas dinner Judith and Wayne Carey and Dr. Roger Barnes were the additional guests, and Mary McKaim was in the kitchen. Dinner over, everybody sat about the fireplace talking, when Juliet came in to carry little Tony off to bed.
“Five minutes more,” begged Dr. Barnes, on whose knee the child sat, a willing captive to the arts of his entertainer. His eyes, bright with the excitement of this great day, were fixed upon the doctor’s face.
“And so”—Barnes continued the story he had begun—“the rooster climbed right up the man’s leg”—the toy obeyed his command and scaled the eminence from the floor where it had been hiding behind a Noah’s ark—“and perched on his knee, and cried”—the rooster crowed lustily and little Tony laughed ecstatically. “Then the rooster flew up on the man’s shoulderand flapped his wings, and all at once he fell right over backwards and tumbled on his head on the floor.—Got to go to bed, Tony? Shall the rooster go too? All right. May I carry him up for you, Juliet? Anthony’s deep in that discussion. Get on my back, old man—that’s the way!”
Everybody looked after the two as the doctor mounted the stairs.
“That rooster has captivated the child more than all the mechanical toys he has had to-day,” said Mrs. Dingley.
“What a handsome fellow he is,” said Carey, his eyes following little Tony till he disappeared. “I never saw a healthier, happier child. How sturdy he is on his legs—have you noticed? He’s saying a good many words, too. It was as good as a play to see him imitate that rooster.”
Juliet’s father and Mrs. Dingley left on an early evening train, and only the three younger guests remained when Juliet came downstairs after putting her boy to bed. She set about gathering up the toys scattered over the floor, and Barnes helped her. In the midst of this labour, during which they all made merry with some of the more elaborate mechanical affairs, Juliet suddenlysaid “What’s that?” and went to the bottom of the stairs.
“Let me go,” offered Anthony. “He’s probably too excited to get to sleep easily after all this dissipation.—Hullo!—he’s crowing with the rooster yet.”
But Juliet went up, and he followed her, saying from the landing to his guests, “Excuse me for a little. I’ll get the boy quiet, and let his mother come down. I’ve a fine talent for that sort of thing. That rooster will have to be given some soothing syrup—he’s too lively a fowl.”
“I never saw a man fonder of his youngster than Tony,” Carey observed.
“The child is a particularly fine specimen,” the doctor said. “I think I never saw a more ideal development than he shows.”
He began to tell an incident in which little Tony had been involved, when he was interrupted.
“Barnes!”—called Anthony’s voice from the top of the stairs. “Come up here, please.”
There was something in the imperative quality of this summons which made the doctor run up the stairs, two at a time.Judith and Wayne listened. The rooster could still be heard crowing, faintly but distinctly.
“Perhaps he’s grown too excited over it,” Judith suggested. “They ought to take it away.”
Carey went to the bottom of the stairs and listened. There were rapid movements overhead. The doctor’s voice could be heard giving directions through which sounded the steady crowing of the toy. “Hold him so—now move him that way as I thump—now the other——”
Carey turned pale. “He’s got that rooster in his throat,” he said solemnly. The rooster was nearly life-size, but the incongruity of this suggestion did not strike him. Judith hastily rose from her chair and went to him.
“Had we better go up?” he whispered.
“Heavens—no!” Judith clutched his arm. “We couldn’t do any good. The doctor’s there. Such things make me ill. They ought not to have let him have the toy to take to bed with him. How could it get into his throat? Perhaps they are making it crow to divert him. Perhaps he’s hurt himself somehow.”
“He’s got the crow part of that thing in his throat,” Carey persisted in an anxious whisper. “The manufacturers ought to be prosecuted for making a toy that will come apart like that.”
“Don’t stand there,” protested his wife. “Maybe it’s nothing. Come here and sit down.”
But Carey stood still. Presently Anthony came to the head of the stairs.
“Wayne,” said he rapidly, “telephone Roger’s office. Ask the trained nurse, Miss Hughes, to send a messenger with the doctor’s emergency surgical case by the first train—he can catch the 9:40 if he’s quick. Tell Miss Hughes to follow as soon as she can get ready, prepared to stay all night.”
Then he disappeared. His voice had been steady and quiet, but his eyes had showed his friend that the order was given under tension. Carey sprang to the telephone, and his hand shook as he took down the receiver.
Upstairs Roger Barnes, in command, was giving cool, concise orders, his eyes on his little patient. When he had despatched Juliet for various things, including boilingwater which she must get downstairs, he said to Anthony in a conversational tone:
“It will probably not be safe to wait till my instruments get here, and there’s no surgeon near enough to call. I’m not going to take any chances on this boy. If I see the necessity I’m going to get into that throat and give him air. I shall want you and Carey to hold him. Juliet must be downstairs.”
Anthony nodded. He did not quite understand; but a few minutes later, when Juliet had brought the boiling water, he suddenly perceived what his friend meant.
“Alcohol, now, please,” said the doctor. When Juliet had disappeared again Barnes drew from his pocket a pearl-handled pocket-knife and tried its blades. “It’s a fortunate thing somebody made me a present of such a good one to-day,” he observed, “but it needs sharpening a bit. Have you an oil-stone handy?”
With tightly shut lips Anthony watched the doctor put a bright edge on his smallest blade, then, satisfied, drop the open knife into the water bubbling over a spirit-lamp. Anthony turned his head away for an instantfrom the struggling little figure on the bed. Barnes eyed him keenly.
“You’re game, of course?” he said.
Anthony’s eyes met his and flashed fire. “Don’t you know me better than that?”
“All right,” and the young surgeon smiled. “But I’ve seen a medical man himself go to pieces over his own child. This is a simple matter,” he went on lightly. “Luckily, boiling water is a more potent antiseptic than all the drugs on the market—and alcohol’s another. I shall want a new hairpin or two—if Juliet has a wire one.—That the alcohol? Thank you. Now if you’ve the hairpins, Juliet—ah—a silver one—all the better.”
This also he dropped into the boiling water. Then he spoke very quietly to Tony’s mother, as she bent over her child, fighting for his breath.
“It’s a bit tough to watch,” he said, “but we’ll have him all right presently. Suppose you go and get his crib ready for him. You might fill some hot-water bags and bottles and have things warm and comfortable.”
The telephone-bell rang below. After a minute Carey dashed upstairs. He lookedinto the room and spoke anxiously. “The messenger just missed the 9:40. He and the nurse will come on the 10:15.”
“All right,” said the doctor, as if the delay were of small consequence. “We’re going to want your help presently, Carey, I think. Just ask Mrs. Carey to keep Mrs. Robeson with her for a few minutes, if she can.”
Carey went down and gave his wife the message, then he hurried back and stood waiting just outside the door. And all at once the summons came. In a breath the doctor had changed his rôle. He spoke sharply:
“Now, Robeson—now, Carey—we’ve waited up to the limit. Keep cool—hold him like a rock—”
Wayne Carey came down to his wife, ten minutes later, smiled tremulously, sank into a chair, and fell to crying like a baby—softly, so that he could not be heard.
“But Juliet says he’ll be all right,” murmured Judith unsteadily.
“Yes, yes——” Carey wiped his eyes and blew his nose. “I’m just a little unnerved, that’s all. Lord—and he’s droppedoff to sleep as quiet as a lamb—with Barnes holding the gash in his throat open with a hairpin to let the air in. When it comes to emergency surgery I tell you it’s a lucky thing to have an expert in the house. Completely worn out—the little chap. When the nurse comes they’ll get out the whistle and sew the place up. She ought to be here—I’ll go meet that train.”
He sprang to his feet and hurried out of the house. Presently he was back, followed by an erect young woman who wore a long coat over the uniform she had not taken time to change. Carey carried the long black bag she had brought with her.
By and by Anthony and Roger Barnes came down. The former was pale, but as quietly composed as ever; the latter nonchalant, yet wearing that gleam of satisfaction in his eye which is ever the badge of the successful surgeon.
“Well, Mrs. Carey,” said the doctor, smiling, “why not relax that tension a bit? The youngster is right as a trivet.”
“I suppose that’s your idea of being right as a trivet,” Judith retorted. “In bed, with a trained nurse watching you,and a doctor staying all night to make sure.”
“Bless you—what better would you have? If it were any other boy the doctor would have been home and in bed an hour ago, I assure you. Carey—if you don’t stop acting like a great fool I’ll put you to bed too.”
For Carey was wringing Barnes’ hand, and the tears were running unashamed down his cheeks. “I gave him that rooster myself,” he said, and choked.
Upstairs all was quiet. The little life was safe, rescued at the crucial moment when interference became necessary, by the skill and daring which do not hesitate to use the means at hand when the authorized tools can not be had. Every precaution had been taken against harm from these same unconventional means, and the doctor, when he left his patient in the hands of his nurse, felt small anxiety for the ultimate outcome.
He said this very positively to the boy’s father and mother, holding a hand of each and bidding them go peacefully to sleep. He would have slipped away then, but they would not let him go. There were notears, no fuss; but Juliet said, her eyes with their heavy shadows of past suspense meeting his steadily, “Roger, nothing can ever tell you what I feel about this,” and Anthony, gripping his friend’s hand with a grip of steel, added: “We shall never thank the Lord enough for having you on hand, Roger Barnes.”
But when the young surgeon had gone, warm with pleasure over the service he had done those he loved this night, the ones he had left behind found their self-control had reached the ragged edge. Turning to her husband Juliet flung herself into his arms, and met there the tenderest reception she had ever known. So does a common anxiety knit hearts which had thought they could be no tighter bound.
Judith and Wayne Carey, walking along silent streets in the early dawn of the day after Christmas on their way to take their train home, had little to say. Only once Judith ventured an observation to her heavy-eyed companion:
“Surely, such a scene as you went through last night must diminish a trifle that envyyou are always possessed with, when you’re at that house.”
But Wayne, staring up at the wintry sky, answered, more roughly than his wife had ever heard him speak: “No—God knows I envy them even at a time like this!”
XXIII.—Two Not of a Kind
“Yes, they are very pleasant rooms,” Juliet admitted, with the air of one endeavouring to be polite. She sat upon a many-hued divan, and glanced from the blue-and-yellow wall-paper to the green velvet chairs, the dull-red carpet and the stiff “lace” curtains. “You get the afternoon sun, and the view opposite isn’t bad. The vestibule seemed to be well kept, and I rang only three times before I made you hear.”
“The janitor promised to fix that bell,” said Judith hastily. “Oh, I know the colour combinations are dreadful, but one can’t help that in rented rooms. Of course our things look badly with the ones that belong here. But as soon as we can we are going to move into a still better place.”
“Going to keep house?”
“No-o, not just yet.” Judith hesitated. “You seem to think there’s nothing in the world to do but to keep house.”
“I’m sure of it.”
“I can’t see why. A girl doesn’t need to assume all the cares of life the minute she marries. Why can’t she keep young and fresh for a while?”
Juliet glanced toward a mirror opposite. “How old and haggard I must be looking,” she observed, with—it must be confessed—a touch of complacency. The woman who could have seen that image reflected as her own without complacency must have been indifferent, indeed.
“Of course, you manage it somehow—I suppose because Anthony takes such care of you. But you wait till five years more have gone over your head, and see if you’re not tired of it.”
“If I’m as tired of it as you are—” began Juliet, and stopped. “But seriously, Judith, is it nothing to you to please Wayne?”
“Why, of course.” Judith flushed. “But Wayne is satisfied.”
“Are you sure of it?”
“Certainly. Oh, sometimes, when we go to see you, and you make things so pleasant with your big fire and your good things to eat, he gets a spasm of wishing we were by ourselves, but——”
Juliet shook her head. “Wayne doesn’tsay a word,” she said, “and he’s as devoted to you as a man can be. But, Judith, if I know the symptoms, that husband of yours is starving for a home, and—do I dare say it?”
Judith was staring out of the window at the ugly walls opposite. It was her bedroom window, and the opposite walls were not six feet away.
“I suppose you dare say anything,” she answered, looking as if she were about to cry. “I’m sure I envy you, you’re so supremely contented. I don’t think I was made to care for children.”
“That might come,” said Juliet softly. “I’m sure it would, Judith. As for Wayne, if you could see the look on his face I’ve surprised there more than once, when he had little Anthony, and he thought nobody noticed, it would make your heart ache, dear. Don’t deny him—or yourself—the best thing that can happen to either of you. At least, don’t deny it for lack of a home. I’m sure I can’t imagine Tony, Junior, in these rooms of yours. They don’t look,” she explained, smiling, “exactly babyish.”
She rose to go. She looked so young and fair and sweet as she spoke her gentle homilythat Judith, half doubting, half believing, admitted to herself that of one thing there could be no question: Mrs. Anthony Robeson envied nobody upon the face of the earth.
The visits of the Robesons to the various apartments which were in rotation occupied by the Careys were few. Somehow it seemed much easier and simpler for the pair who had no children, and no housekeeping to hamper them, to run out into the suburbs than for their friends to get into town. So the Careys came with ever increasing frequency, always warmly welcomed, and enjoyed the hours within the little house so thoroughly that in time the influence of the content they saw so often began to have its inevitable effect.
“I’ve great news for you,” said Anthony, coming home one March day, when little Tony was nearing his second birthday. “It’s about the Careys. Guess.”
“They are going to housekeeping.”
“How did you know?”
“I didn’t know, but Judith told me weeks ago she supposed she should have to come to it. Have they found a house?”
“Carey thinks he has. Judith doesn’tlike the place, for about fifty good and sufficient reasons—to her. He’s trying to persuade her. He has an option on it for ten days. He wants us to come out and look at it with them.”
“Where is it?”
“About as far east of the city as we are north. If to-morrow is a good day I promised we would run out with them on the ten-fifteen. I suspect they need us badly. Wayne looks like a man distracted. The great trouble, I fancy, is going to be that Judith Dearborn Carey is still too much of a Dearborn to be able to make a home out of anything. And Carey can’t do it alone.”
“Indeed he can’t, poor fellow. I never saw a man in my life who wanted a home as badly as Wayne does. Let’s do our best to help them.”
“We will. But the only way to do it thoroughly is to make Judith over. Even you can’t accomplish that.”
“There’s hope, if she has agreed at all to trying the experiment,” Juliet declared, and thought about her friends all the rest of the day.
It was but five minutes’ walk, from thesuburban station where the party got off next morning, to the house which Carey eagerly pointed out as the four approached.
“There it is,” he said. “Don’t tell me what you think of it till you’ve seen the whole thing. I know it doesn’t look promising as yet, but I keep remembering the photographs of your home, Robeson, before you went at it. I’m inclined to think this can be made right, too.”
Anthony and Juliet studied Carey’s choice with interest. Judith looked on dubiously. It was plain that if she should consent it would be against her will.
“It looks so commonplace and ugly,” she said aside to Juliet, as the four completed the tour around the house and prepared to enter. “Your home is old-fashioned enough to be interesting, but this is just modern enough to be ugly. Look at that big window in front with the cheap coloured glass across the top. What could you do with that?”
“Several things,” said her friend promptly. “You might put in a row of narrow casement windows across the front, with diamond panes. No—the porch isn’t attractive with all that gingerbread work,but you could take it away and have something plain and simple. The general lines of the house are not bad. It has been an old-fashioned house, Judith, but somebody who didn’t know how has altered it and spoiled it. People are always doing that. There must have been a fanlight over this door. You could restore it. And do you see that quaint round window in the gable? Probably they looked at that and longed to do away with it, but happily for you didn’t know how.”
Carey glanced curiously at his friend’s wife, then anxiously at his own. Juliet’s face was alight with interest; Judith’s heavy with dissatisfaction. He wondered for the thousandth time what made the difference. He would have given a year’s salary to see Judith look interested in this desire of his heart. It was hard to push a thing like this against the will of the only person whose help he could not do without. Carey was determined to have the home. Even Judith acknowledged that she had not been happy in any of the seven apartments they had tried during the less than four years of their married life. Carey believed with all his heart that their onlychance for happiness lay in getting away from a manner of living which was using up every penny he could earn without giving them either satisfaction or comfort. His salary would not permit him to rent the sort of thing in the sort of neighbourhood which Judith longed for. And if it should, he did not believe his wife would find such environments any more congenial than the present one. Carey had a theory that a woman, like a man, must be busy to be contented. He meant to try it with his handsome, discontented wife.
“Oh, what a pretty hall!” cried Mrs. Robeson, with enthusiasm. “How lucky that the vandals who made the house over didn’t lay their desecrating hands on that staircase.”
“The hall looks gloomy to me,” said Mrs. Carey, with a disapproving glance at the walls.
“Of course—with that dingy brown paper and the woodwork stained that hideous imitation of oak. You can scrape all that off, paint it white, put on a warm, rich paper, restore your fanlight, and you’ll have a particularly attractive hall.”
“I wish I could see things that are notvisible, as you seem to be able to,” sighed Judith, looking unconvinced. “I never did like a long, straight staircase like that. And there’s not room to make a turn.”
“You don’t want to, do you? It’s so wide and low it doesn’t need to turn, and the posts and rails are extremely good. How about this front room?”
She stood in the center of the front room, and the two men, watching her vivid face as it glowed above her furs, noting the capable, womanly way she had of looking at the best side of everything and discerning in a flash of imagination and intuition what could be done with unpromising material, appreciated her with that full masculine appreciation which it is so well worth the trouble of any woman to win.
Judith was not blind; she saw little by little as Juliet went from room to room—seizing in each upon its possibilities, ignoring its poorer features except to suggest their betterment, giving her whole-hearted, friendly counsel in a way which continually took the prospective homemakers into consideration—that she herself was losing something immeasurably valuable in not attempting to cultivate these same winningcharacteristics. And in the same breath Judith was forced to admit to herself that she did not know how to begin.
“There is really a very pretty view from the dining-room,” she said, as a first effort at seeing something to admire. Both Juliet and Anthony agreed to this statement with a cordiality which came very near suggesting that it was a relief to find Mrs. Carey on the optimistic side of the discussion even in this small detail. As for Carey, he looked so surprised and grateful that Judith’s heart smote her with a vigour to which she was unaccustomed.
“I suppose you could use this room as a sort of den?” she was prompted to suggest to her husband; and such a delighted smile illumined Carey’s face that the sight of it was almost pathetic to his friends, who understood his situation rather better than he did himself. In his pleasure Carey put his arm about his wife’s shoulders.
“Couldn’t I, though?” he agreed enthusiastically. “And you could use it for a retreat while I was away for the day.”
“A retreat from what? Too much excitement?” began Judith, the old habit of scorn of everything which was not of thecity returning upon her irresistibly. But it chanced that she caught Juliet’s eyes, unconsciously wearing such an expression of solicitude to see her friend complaisant in this matter which meant so much, that Judith hurriedly followed her ironic question with the more kindly supplement: “But doubtless I should have plenty, and be glad to get away.”
“You certainly would,” asserted Anthony. “We never guessed how much there would be to occupy us in the country, but there seems hardly time to write letters. Nobody can believe, till he tries, how much pleasure there is in wheedling a garden into growing, nor how well the labour makes him sleep o’ nights.”
“Yes—I think I could sleep here,” said Carey, and passed a hand over a brow which was aching at that very moment. “I haven’t done that satisfactorily for six months.”
“You’ll do it here,” Anthony prophesied confidently. “It’s a fine air with a good breath of the salt sea in it, which we don’t get. Your sleeping rooms are all well aired and lighted—a thing you don’t always find in more pretentious houses. Andwhen the paint and paper go on you’ll own yourselves surprised at the transformation. I was never so astonished in my life as I was at the change in the little bedroom in our house which has that pale yellow-and-white stripe on the wall. It was a north room, and the old wall was a forlorn slate, like a thundercloud. My little artist here, with her eye for colours, instantly announced that she would get the sunshine into that room. And so she did—with no more potent a charm than that fifteen-cent paper and a fresh coat of white paint.”
Carey looked at Juliet with longing in his eye. He wanted to ask her to supervise the alterations in his purchase, if he should make it. But he remembered other occasions when he had held the sayings and doings of Mrs. Robeson before the eyes of Mrs. Carey with disastrous result, and he dared not make the suggestion. He hoped, however, that Judith might be inclined to ask the assistance of her friend, and himself hinted at it, cautiously. But Judith, beyond inquiring what Juliet thought of certain possible changes, seemed inclined to shoulder her own responsibilities.
Anthony left his wife upon the home-boundtrain, to return to his work; the Careys accompanied him, so that he had no chance to talk things over until he came home to dinner at night. But when he saw Juliet again almost her first words showed him where her thoughts were.
“Tony, I can’t get those people off my mind. Do you suppose they will ever make a home out of anything?”
“They haven’t much genius for utilizing raw material, I’m very much afraid,” Anthony responded thoughtfully. “Carey has the will, and he can furnish a moderate amount of funds, but whether Judith can furnish anything but objections and contrariety I don’t dare to predict. If her heart were in it I should have more hope of her. There’s one thing I can tell her. If she doesn’t set her soul to the giving the old boy a taste of peace and rest she’ll have him worn out before his time. A fellow who doesn’t know how it feels to sleep soundly, and whose head bothers him half the time, needs looking after. He’s a slave to his office desk, and needs far more than an active chap like me to get out of the city as much as he can.”
“Yes, he’s worried and restless, Tony.He’s so devoted to Judith and so anxious to make her happy, her dissatisfaction rests on him like a weight. Don’t you see that every time you see them together?”
“Every time—and more plainly. What’s the matter with her anyhow, Julie? She seemed promising enough as a girl. You certainly found enough in her to make you two congenial. She’s no more like you than—electric light is like sunshine,” said Anthony, picking up the simile with a laugh and a glance of appreciation.
“Judith shines in the surroundings she was born and brought up in, misses them, and doesn’t know how to adapt herself to any others. She ought to have been the wife of some high official—she could entertain royally and have everybody at her feet.”
“Magnificent characteristics, but mighty unavailable in the present circumstances. It carries out my electric-light comparison. I prefer the sunlight—and I have it.—Poor Carey!”
“We’ll hope,” said Juliet. “And if we have the smallest chance to help, we’ll do it.”
But, as Anthony had anticipated, there was small chance to help. Meeting Careya fortnight later, Anthony inquired after the new home, and Carey replied with apparent lack of enthusiasm that the house had been leased for a term of three years, with refusal of the purchase at the expiration of the time. He explained that Judith had been unwilling to burn her bridges by buying the place outright, and that he thought perhaps the present plan was the better one—under these conditions. But the fact that the house was not their own made it seem unwise to expend very much upon alterations beyond those of paint and paper. With the prospect of a sale the owner had unwillingly consented to replace the gingerbread porch with one in better style, but refused to do more. The big window, with its abominable topping of cheap coloured glass, was to remain for the present.
“And I think this whole arrangement is bound to defeat my purpose,” said Carey unhappily. “The very changes we can’t afford to make in a rented house are the ones Judith needs to have made to reconcile her to the experiment. She says she feels ill every time she comes to the house and sees that window. She wants a porcelainsink in the kitchen. She would like speaking-tubes and a system of electric bells. We’re to have a servant—if we can find her. We’ve put green paper on all the downstairs rooms, and it turns out the wrong green. I wanted a sort of corn-colour that looked more cheerful, but it seems green is the only thing. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. Perhaps I’m bilious. Green seems to be all right in your house, but in mine it makes me want to go outdoors.”
“That’s precisely what you should do,” Anthony advised cheerfully. “Get outdoors all you can. Start your garden. Mow your lawn yourself. Make over that gravel path to your front door.”
“I’ve only evenings,” objected Carey. “And we’re not settled yet. The paper’s only just on. We haven’t moved. We’re buying furniture. We bought a sideboard yesterday. It cost so much we had to get a cheaper range for the kitchen than seemed desirable, but Judith liked the sideboard so well I was glad to buy it. I don’t know when we shall get to living there permanently. This furnishing business knocks me out. We don’t seem to knowwhat we want. I’d like—” he hesitated—“I hoped Mrs. Robeson might be able to give us the advantage of her experience, but it turns out that Judith has a sort of pride in doing it herself, and of course—I presume you made some mistakes yourselves, eh?” He suggested this with eagerness.
“Oh, of course,” agreed Anthony readily, though he wondered what they were, and inwardly begged Juliet’s pardon for this answer, given out of masculine sympathy with his friend’s helplessness. “You’ll come out all right,” he hastily assured Carey. “Once you are living in the new place things will adjust themselves. Keep up your courage. Your daily walk to and from the train will do wonders. Lack of exercise will make a rainbow look gloomy to a fellow. I think you’ve great cause for rejoicing that Judith has agreed to try the experiment at all. And as with all experiments, you must be patient while it works itself out.”
“That’s so,” agreed Carey, a gleam of hope in his eyes; and Anthony got away. But by himself the happier man shook his head doubtfully. “Where everything dependson the woman,” he said to himself, “and you’ve married one that her Maker never fashioned for domestic joys, you’re certainly up against a mighty difficult proposition!”
XXIV.—The Careys Are at Home
Wayne and Judith Carey had been keeping house for two months before Judith was willing to accede to her husband’s often repeated request that they entertain the Robesons.
“We’ve been there, together and separately, till it’s a wonder their hospitality doesn’t freeze up,” he urged. “Let’s have them out to-morrow night, and keep them over till next day, at least. I’d like to have them sleep under this roof. They’d bring us good luck.”
“One would think the Robesons were the only people worth knowing,” said Judith, with a petulance of which she had the grace, as her husband stared at her, to be ashamed.
“They’re the truest friends we have in the world,” he said, with a dignity of manner unusual with him. “Sometimes I think they are the only people worth knowing—out of all those on your calling list.”
“We differ about that. Your ideas ofwho are worth knowing are very peculiar. Heaven knows I’m fond of Juliet, but I get decidedly tired of having her held up as a model. And I haven’t been anxious to entertain her until we were in order.”
“We’re certainly as much in order now as we shall be for some time. Let’s have them out. You’ll find they’ll see everything there is to praise. It’s their way.”
So Anthony and Juliet were asked, and came. Wayne’s prophecy was proven a true one—even Judith grew complacent as her friends admired the result of her house-furnishing. And in truth there was much to admire. Judith was a young woman of taste and more or less discretion, and if she could have had full sway in her purchasing the result might have been admirable. As it was, the unspoken criticism in the minds of both the guests, as they followed their hosts about the house, was that Judith had struck a key-note in her construction of a home a little too ambitious to be wholly satisfactory.
“I believe in buying the best of everything as far as you go,” she said, indicating a particularly costly lounging chair in a corner of the living-room. “Of coursethat was very expensive, but it will always be right, and we can get others to go with it. The bookcases were another high-priced purchase, but they give an air to the room worth paying for.”
“I’ve only one objection to this room,” said Wayne with some hesitation. “As Judith says, the things in it seem to be all right, and it certainly looks in good taste, if I’m any judge, but—I don’t know just how to explain it——” he hesitated again, and smiled deprecatingly at his wife.
“Speak out,” said Judith. She was in a very good humour, for her guests had shown so fine a tact in their commendation that she was in quite a glow of satisfaction, and for the first time felt the pleasure of the hostess in an attractive home. “It can’t be a serious objection, for you’ve liked every single thing we’ve put into it.”
“Indeed I have,” agreed Carey, eagerly glancing about the brilliantly lit room. “I like it all awfully well—especially in the daylight. The corner by the window is a famous place for reading. But, you see, I’m so little here in the daytime, except on Sundays. Of course I know we lack the fireplace that makes your living-roomjolly, but it seems as if we lack something besides that we might have, and for the life of me I can’t tell what it is.”
Anthony knew by a certain curve in the corner of his wife’s mouth that she longed to tell him what it was. For himself, he could not discover. He studied the room searchingly and was unable to determine why, attractive as it really was, it certainly did, upon this cool May evening, lack the look of warm comfort and hospitality of which his own home was so full.
“Possibly it’s because everything is so new,” he ventured. “Rooms come to have a look of home, you know, just by living in them and leaving things about. It’s a pretty room, all right, and I fancy it will take on the friendly expression you want when you get to strewing your books and magazines around a little more, and laying your pipe down on the corner of the mantel-piece, you know—and all that. I can upset things for you in half a minute if you’ll give me leave.”
“You have my full permission,” said Judith, laughing. “I fancy it’s just as you say: Wayne isn’t used to it yet. He always likes his old slippers better than the handsomestnew ones I can buy him. Come—dinner has been served for five minutes. No more artistic suggestions till afterward.”
The dinner was perfect. It should have been so, for a caterer was in the kitchen, and a hired waitress served the viands without disaster. As a delectable meal it was a success; as an exhibition of Mrs. Carey’s capacity for home making, it was something of a failure. It certainly did not for a moment deceive the guests. For the life of her, as Juliet tasted course after course of the elaborate meal, she could not help reckoning up what it had cost. Neither could she refrain from wondering what sort of a repast Judith would have produced without help.
After dinner, as Wayne and Anthony smoked in front of the fireless mantel-piece in the den, each in a more luxurious chair than was to be found in Anthony’s whole house, Judith took Juliet to task.
“You may try to disguise it,” she complained, “but I’ve known you too long not to be able to read you. You would rather have had me cook that dinner myself and bring it in, all red and blistered from being over the stove.”
“As long as the dinner wasn’t red and blistered you wouldn’t have been unhappy,” Juliet returned lightly. “But you mustn’t think that she who entertains may read my ingenuous face, my dear. It isn’t necessary that I attempt to convert the world to my way of thinking. And I haven’t told you that when Auntie Dingley goes abroad with father again this winter I’m to have Mary McKaim for eight whole months. I can assure you I know how to appreciate the comfort of having a competent cook in the kitchen.”
She got up and crossed the room. “Judith, what an exquisite lamp,” she observed. “I’d forgotten that you had it. Was it one of your wedding presents?”
Judith followed her to where she stood examining an imposing, foreign-looking lamp, with jeweled inlets in the hand-wrought metal shade. “Yes,” she said carelessly, “it’s pretty enough. I don’t care much for lamps.”
“Not to read by?”
“It’s bright enough for anybody but a blind man to read, here.” Judith glanced at the ornate chandelier of electric lights in the centre of the ceiling. “The roomsaren’t so high that the lights are out of reach for reading.”
“But this is beautiful. Have you never used it?”
“It might be used with an electric connection, I suppose. No, I’ve never used it as an oil lamp. I hate kerosene oil.”
“But you have some in the house?”
“Oh, yes, I think so. Wayne insisted on getting some little hand-lamps. Something’s always happening to the wires out here. That’s one of the numerous joys of living in the suburbs.”
“Let’s fill this and try it,” Juliet suggested, turning a pair of very bright eyes upon her friend. “If you’ve never lit it I don’t believe you’ve half appreciated it. You’re neglecting one of the prettiest sources of decoration you have in the house. Out of sympathy for the giver, whoever he was, you ought to let his gift have a chance to show you its beauty.”
“Stevens Cathcart gave it to us, I believe,” said Judith. “Here, let me have it. I’ll fill it, since you insist. But I never thought very much of it. It was put away in a closet until we came here. It took up so much room I never found a place for it.”
“Mr. Cathcart gave it to you? That proves my point, that it’s worth admiring. If there’s a connoisseur in things of this sort, it’s he. He probably picked it up in some out-of-the-ordinary European shop.”
Smiling to herself, as if something gave her satisfaction, Juliet awaited the return of her hostess. She understood, from the manner of Judith’s exit with the lamp, that the free and easy familiarity with which guests invaded every portion of Anthony’s little home, was not to be made a precedent for the same sort of thing in Judith’s.
The lamp reappeared, accompanied by a lamentation over the disagreeable qualities of kerosene oil for any use whatever.
“You can put electricity into this and use it as a drop-light, if you prefer,” said Juliet, as she lit it and adjusted the shade. “May I set it on the big table over here? Right in the center, please, if you don’t mind moving that bowl of carnations. There!—Of course you can send it back to oblivion over there on the bookcase if you really don’t like it.—But you do like it—don’t you?”
“It’s handsomer than I thought it was,” Judith admitted without enthusiasm. Julietglanced up at the blazing chandelier overhead.
“May I turn off some of this light?” she asked. “You won’t get the full beauty of your lamp till you give it a chance by itself.”
Judith assented. Juliet snapped off three out of the four lights, and smiled mischievously at her friend. Then she extinguished the fourth, so that the only luminary left in the room was the lamp. Judith groaned.
“Maybe you like a gloomy room like this. I don’t. Look at it. I can hardly see anything in the corners.”
“Wait a little bit. You’re so used to the glare your eyes are not good for seeing what I mean. Study the lamp itself a minute. Did you ever see anything so fascinating as the gleam through those jewels? An electric bulb inside would add to the brilliancy, though it’s not so soft a light to read by, and the effect in the room isn’t so warm. Observe those carnations under the lamplight, honey? Come over here to the doorway and look at your whole room under these new conditions. Isn’t it charming?—enticing?—Let’s draw that lovely Morris chair up close to the table, as ifyou were expecting Wayne to come in and read the evening paper by the lamp.There!”
Juliet softly clapped her hands, her face shining with friendly enthusiasm. There could be no question that the whole room, as she had said, had taken on a new look of homelike comfort and cheer which it had lacked before. Even Judith was forced to see it.
“It looks very well,” she admitted. “But I should have more light from above. I like plenty of light.”
“So do I, if you manage it well.” Whereupon the guest, having gained her point and made sufficient demonstration of it, turned the conversation into other channels. But the lamp was not yet through with its position of reformer. The two men, having finished their cigars, and hearing sounds of merriment from the adjoining room, came strolling in. Anthony, comprehending at a glance the change which had come over the aspect of the room and the cause thereof, advanced, smiling. But Carey came to a standstill upon the threshold, his lips drawn into an astonished whistle.
“What’s happened?” he ejaculated, and stood staring.
“Do you like it?” asked his wife.
“I should say I did. But what’s done it? What makes the room look so different? It looks—why it looks like your rooms!” he cried, gazing at Anthony.
“He can say nothing more flattering than that,” said Judith, evidently not altogether pleased. “It’s the highest compliment he knows.”
Carey stared at the lamp. “I didn’t know we had that,” he said. “Is it that that does it?”
“I fancy it is,” said Anthony. “I never understood it till I was taught, but it seems to be a fact that a low light in a room gives it a more homelike effect than a high one. I don’t know why. It’s one of my wife’s pet theories.”
“Well, I must say this is a pretty convincing demonstration of it,” Carey agreed, sitting down in a chair in a corner, his hands in his pockets, still studying this, to him, remarkable transformation. “It certainly does look like a happy home now. Before, it was a place to receive calls in.” He turned, smiling contentedly, to his wife.Something about the glance which she returned warned him that further admiration was unnecessary. The contented smile faded a little. He got up and came over to the table. “Now, let’s have a good four-handed talk,” he proposed.
Two hours later, in the seclusion of the guest-room upstairs, Anthony said under his breath:
“They’re coming on, aren’t they? Don’t you see glimmerings of hope that some day this will resemble a home, in a sort of far-off way? Isn’t Judith becoming domesticated a trifle? She didn’t get up that dinner?”
Juliet turned upon him a smiling face, and laid her finger on her lip. “Don’t tempt me to discuss it,” she warned him. “My feelings might run away with me, and that would never do under their very roof.”
“Exemplary little guest! May I say as much as this, then? I’d give a good deal to see Wayne speak his mind once in a way, without a side glance to see if Her Royal Majesty approves.”
But Juliet shook her head. “Don’t tempt me,” she begged again. “There’s something inside of me that boils and boilswith rage, and if I should just take the cover off——”
“Might I get scalded? All right—I’ll leave the cover on. Just one observation more. When I get inside our own four walls again I’m going to give a tremendous whoop of joy and satisfaction that’ll raise the roof right off the house!”