II
Thereis one thing in the front room I must get rid of—the rug. It is a nightmare with a crimson ground on which are displayed broken white particles that look like animalcula in a magnified drop of water. I had just made up my mind that it must be removed when Mrs. Bushey opportunely came in.
Mrs. Bushey lives next door (she has two houses under her wing) and when not landladying, teaches physical culture. I believe there is no Mr. Bushey, though whether death or divorce has snatched him from her I haven’t heard. She is a stout dark person somewhere from twenty-eight to forty-eight—I can’t tell age. I am thirty-three and have wrinkles round my eyes. She has none. It may be temperament, or fat, or the bony structure of the skull, or an absence of furtive tears.
She talks much and rapidly which ought to tend to a good combination between us, as listening is one of the things I do best. From our conversation, or perhaps I ought to say our monologue, I got an impressionisticeffect of my fellow lodgers past and present. The lady who lived here before me was a writer and very close about money. It was difficult to collect her rent, also she showed symptoms of inebriety. I gathered from Mrs. Bushey’s remarks and expression that she expected me to be shocked, and I tried not to disappoint her, but I couldn’t do much with a monosyllable, which was all she allowed me.
A series of rapid sketches of the present inmates followed. Something like this:
“Mrs. Phillips, the trained nurse, and her aunt, in the basement are terrible cranks, always complaining about the plumbing and the little boys who will stop on their way home from school and write bad words on the flags. They think they own the back garden, but they don’t. We all do, but what’s the use of fighting? I never do, I’ll stand anything rather than have words with anybody.”
I edged in an exclamation, a single formless syllable.
“Of course, I knew you would. Then on the floor below you are two young Westerners in the back room, Mr. Hazard, who’s an artist, and Mr. Weatherby, who’s something on the press. The most delightful fellows, never a day late with their rent.And in the front room is Miss Bliss, a model—artist not cloak. She isn’t always on time with her money, but I’m very lenient with her.”
I tried to insert a sentence, but it was nipped at the second word.
“Yes, exactly. You see just how it is. On the floor above you, in the back, is Mr. Hamilton, such a nice man and so unfortunate. Lost every cent he had in Wall Street and is beginning all over again. Fine, isn’t it? Yes, I feel it and don’t say anything when he’s behind with his rent. How could I?” Though I hadn’t said a word she looked at me reprovingly as if I had suggested sending the delinquent Mr. Hamilton to jail. “That’s not my way. I know it’s foolish of me. You needn’t tell me so, but that’s how I’m made.”
I began to feel that I ought to offer my next month’s rent at once. I have a bad memory and might be a day or two late.
“The room in front, over your parlor, is vacant. Terrible, isn’t it? I tried to make Mr. Hamilton take the whole floor through. Even if he isn’t good pay—”
I broke in, determined to hear no more of Mr. Hamilton’s financial deficiencies.
“Who’s on the top floor?”
There was a slight abatement of Mrs. Bushey’s buoyancy. She looked at me with an eye that expressed both curiosity and question.
“Miss Harris lives there,” she answered. “Have you seen her?”
I hadn’t.
“Perhaps you’ve heard her?”
I had heard a rustle on the stairs, was that Miss Harris?
“Yes. She’s the only woman above you.”
“Does she leave a trail of perfume?”
I was going to add that it didn’t mix well with the gas leakage, the cigars and last year’s cooking but refrained for fear of Mrs. Bushey’s feelings.
“Yes, that’s Miss Harris. She’s a singer—professional. But you won’t hear her much, there’s a floor in between. That is, unless you leave the register open.”
I said I’d shut the register.
“I don’t take singers as a rule,” Mrs. Bushey went on, “but Mr. Hamilton being away all day and the top floor being hard to rent, I made an exception. One must live, mustn’t one?”
I could agree to that.
“She’s a Californian and rather good-looking. But I don’t think she’s had much success.”
A deprecating look came into her face and she tilted her head to one side. I felt coming revelations about Miss Harris’ rent and said hastily:
“What does she sing, concert, opera, musical comedy?”
“She’s hardly sung in public at all yet. She’s studying, and I’m afraid that it’s very uncertain. Last month—”
I interrupted desperately.
“Is she a contralto or soprano?”
“Dramatic mezzo,” said Mrs. Bushey. “She’s trying to get an opening, but,” she compressed her lips and shook her head gloomily, “there are so many of them and her voice is nothing wonderful. But she evidently has some money, for she pays her rent regularly.”
I felt immensely relieved. As Mrs. Bushey rose to her feet I too rose lightly, encouragingly smiling. Mrs. Bushey did not exhibit the cheer fitting to the possession of so satisfactory a lodger. She buttoned her jacket, murmuring:
“I don’t like taking singers, people complain so.But when one is working for one’s living—” Her fingers struggled with a button.
“Of course,” I filled in, “I understand. And I for one won’t object to the music.”
Mrs. Bushey seemed appeased. As she finished the buttoning she looked about the room, her glance roaming over my possessions. For some obscure reason I flinched before that inspection. Some of them are sacred, relics of my mother and of the years when I was a wife—only a few of these. Mrs. Bushey’s look was like an auctioneer’s hand fingering them, appraising their value.
Finally it fell to the rug. I had forgotten it; now was my chance. Suddenly it seemed a painful subject to broach and I sought for a tactful opening. Mrs. Bushey pressed its crimson surface with her foot.
“Isn’t this a beautiful rug?” she said. “It’s a real Samarcand.”
I smothered a start. I had had a real Samarcand once.
Mrs. Bushey, eying the magnified insects with solicitude, continued:
“I wouldn’t like to tell you how much I paid forthis. It was a ridiculous sum for me to give. But I love pretty things, and when you took the apartment I put it in here because I saw at onceyouwere used to only the best.”
I murmured faintly.
“So I was generous and gave you my treasure. You will be careful of it, won’t you? Not drop anything on it or let people come in with muddy boots.”
I said I would. I found myself engaging with ardor to love and cherish a thing I abhorred. It’s happened before, it’s the kind of thing I’ve been doing all my life.
Mrs. Bushey gave it a loving stroke with her foot.
“I knew you’d appreciate it. You don’t often find a real Samarcand in a furnished apartment.”
After she had gone I sat looking dejectedly at it. Of course I would have to keep it now. I might buy some small rugs and partly cover it up, but I suppose, when she saw them, she would be mortally hurt. And I can’t do that. I’d rather have those awful magnified insects staring up at me for the rest of my life than wound her pride so.
As to its being a Samarcand—I took up one corner and lo! attached to it by a string was a price-tag bearing the legend, Scotch wool rug, $12.75.
Itwassomewhat of a shock. Suppose I had found it while she was there! The thought of such a contretemps made me cold. To avoid all possibilities of it ever happening I stealthily detached the tag and tore it into tiny pieces. As I dropped them in the waste-basket I had a fancy that had I made the discovery while she was present, I would have been the more embarrassed of the two.
All afternoon I have been putting things in order, trying them and standing back to get the effect. It’s a long time since I’ve had belongings of my own to play with. I hung my mother’s two Kriegolf’s (Kriegolf was a Canadian artist who painted pictures of habitan life) in four different places. They finally came to anchor on the parlor wall on either side of a brass-framed mirror with candle branches that belongs to Mrs. Bushey. Opposite, flanking the fireplace, areKitty O’BrienandThe Wax Head of Lille. I love her best of all, the dreaming maiden. I like to try and guess what she’s thinking of. Is it just the purposeless reverie of youth, or is she musing on the coming lover? It can’t be that, because, while he’s still a dream lover, a girl is happy, and she looks so sad.
I was trying to pierce the secret of that mysteriousface when the telephone rang. It was Roger Clements, a kind voice humming along the line—“Well, how’s everything?” Roger wanted to come up and see me and the kitchenette, and I told him Madame would receive to-morrow evening.
He would be my first visitor and I was fluttered. I spent at least an hour trying to decide whether I’d better bring the Morris chair from the back room for him. When the dread of starvation is lifted from you by one hundred and sixty-five dollars a month and life offers nothing, you find your mental forces expending themselves on questions like that. I once knew a man who told me he sat on the edge of his bed every morning struggling to decide whether he’d put on a turned-down or a stand-up collar. He said it was nerves. In my case it’s just plain lack of interests.
It’s natural for me to try and make Roger comfortable. He’s one of the best friends I have in the world. I’m not using the word to cover sentiment, I do really mean a friend. He knew me before I was married, was one of the reliable older men in those glowing days when I was Evelyn Carr, before I met Harmon Drake. He has been kind to me in ways I never can forget. In those dark last years of mymarried life (there were only five of them altogether) when my little world was urging divorce and I stood distracted amid falling ruins, he never said one word to me about my husband, never forced on me consolation or advice. I don’t forget that, or the letter he wrote me when Harmon died—the one honest letter I got.
Everybody exclaimed when I said I was going alone to Europe. Roger was the only one who understood and told me to go. I’ll carry to my grave the memory of his face as he stood on the dock waving me good-by. He was smiling, but under the smile I could see the sympathy he wanted me to know and didn’t dare to put in words. That’s one of the ties between us—we’re the silent kind who keep our feelings hidden away in a Bluebeard’s chamber of which we keep the key.
I used to hear from him off and on in Europe, and I followed him in the American papers. I remember one sun-soaked morning in Venice, when I picked up an English review in the pension and read a glowing criticism of his book of essays,Readjustments. How proud I was of him! He’s become quite famous in these last few years, not vulgarly famous but known among scholars as a scholar andrecognized as one of the few stylists we have over here. I can’t imagine him on the news-stalls, or bound in paper for the masses. I think he secretly detests the masses though he won’t admit it. The mob, with its easily swayed passions, is the sort of thing that it’s in his blood to hate. If he had to sue for its support like Coriolanus he would act exactly as Coriolanus did. Fortunately he doesn’t need it. The Clements have had money for generations, not according to Pittsburgh standards, but the way the Clements reckon money. He has an apartment on Gramercy Park, lined with books to the ceilings, with a pair of old servants to fuss over him and keep the newspaper people away.
There he leads the intellectual life, the only one that attracts him. He rarely goes into society. The recent invasion of multi-millionaires have spoiled it, his sister, Mrs. Ashworth, says, and on these points he and she think alike. And he doesn’t care for women, at least to fall in love with them. When he was a young man, twenty-four to be accurate, he was engaged to a girl who died. Since then his interest in the other sex has taken the form of a detached impersonal admiration. He thinks they furnishthe color and poetry of life and in that way have an esthetic value in a too sober world.
But what’s the sense of analyzing your friend? He’s a dear kind anchorite of a man, just a bit set, just a bit inclined to think that the Clements’ way of doing things is the only way, just a bit too contemptuous of cheapness and bad taste and bounce, but with all his imperfections on his head, the finest gentleman I know. Iwillmove the Morris chair.