To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 13

by Anne Parrish

Chapter Thirteen

"TELEPHONE, mother! Charlotte."

"Oh, bother! Turn off the hose, Joe, will you, dear? I wish to goodness Charlotte would get over thinking she has to call me up every day. It always comes just when I'm at the bottom of the back yard or in the middle of a cake or something. . . . Hello!"

"Well, Aunt Kate! I hope you weren't doing anything."

"Oh, hello, dear! No, indeed, I was just doing a little sprinkling. It was too hot for it till after supper. How are you? I was sort of worried when you didn't telephone all day——"

"I was at a bridge lunch at Marian Cressy's."

"Oh yes, I know; you told me you were going. How was it?"

"Oh, very nice."

"Who was there, Charlotte? What did you wear?"

"Oh, just the usual crowd."

"Did you have a nice lunch? It's been so hot I haven't wanted a thing but iced tea all day, myself, but to-night Mrs. Driggs sent over a bowl of homemade ice cream; it tasted awfully good. What did Marian have?"

"Oh, I don't remember exactly, but it was very nice. Well, Aunt Kate, don't go too hard this hot weather, and then you'll be all right. I——"

"How's the baby?"

"She's very well, thank you."

"I finished the little dress for her, and, oh, Charlotte, just the tiny little tucks looked so cunning I didn't put on the lace——"

"I see. Well, thank you very much, Aunt Kate."

"I'll try to get it over to you to-morrow some time. Oh, Charlotte, isn't this news about the war terrible? I can't think about another thing. What does Hoagland think?"

"Aunt Kate says what do you think about the war? . . . He's right here. I was just telling him you were asking what he thought about it. He says to tell you it won't last long. It's lucky we didn't go across this summer, isn't it? We have Nancy Lou to thank for that. Well, Hoagland says take care of yourself."

"That was Charlotte," she told Joe, sitting down on the porch steps beside him. His cigarette glowed in the dark. She could hear the cool drip-drip of watered plants.

"No!"

"She was at a bridge luncheon at Marian Cressy's to-day."

"My God!"

"Joe! What a way to talk! While I think of it, would you very much mind leaving a little package there to-morrow as you go by? I'll wrap it up so that it'll be just a teeny weeny little one. It's a little dress I made for Nancy Lou; she's getting so fat none of her clothes fit her."

"All right."

"Well, you needn't. I can take it myself. I only thought it was so hot and you were going right by."

"I said all right."

"I know you did, but you didn't sound very enthusiastic."

"Nancy Lou scares me. She's so grand and bland in her baby carriage she looks like a dowager in an opera box."

"Well, I guess you can get over your terrible fright. What's the war news to-night, Joe? It's too hot to light the lights to see the paper."

"France——"

"Listen! Wasn't that the telephone? No, I guess it was next door. Charlotte says it's going to be over soon. Hoagland says so."

But on an April morning, nearly three years later, it was not over when Charlotte telephoned to Kate dutifully, brightly, as she had telephoned almost every day.

"Well, Aunt Kate——"

"Oh, Charlotte! Hello! The most awful thing has happened. E's just broken the big Chinese bowl—the great big one with all the little pink and green and blue men and women—you know, the one I always kept the strawberry stemmers in—E did. . . . Oh, Charlotte, not he, E—Effa! I don't dare say much, I'm afraid she'll hear me. The Palmers gave it to your Uncle Joe and me when we were married. I'm just broken-hearted, but I'm ashamed of myself to be feeling so badly over it with this terrific news about us going to war. I can't help feeling thankful with my whole soul that there isn't any chance of Joe's going, on account of his eyes. It seems too awful. I can't get my mind on anything else—all the poor young men. What does Hoagland say?"

"He says it's high time we did go in. He's going to try for a commission."

"Oh, Charlotte! With the baby coming?"

"Well, we mustn't think of ourselves at a time like this, Aunt Kate."

"I know—but still—How are you, dear?"

"I'm getting on all right, thank you."

"I finished knitting a couple of little sacques. I made one pink and one blue, so we're safe either way. I'll bring them over some time to-day, or why don't you come to lunch with me? I'm not having anything but——"

"I promised to have lunch with Mother Driggs, thank you, Aunt Kate."

"Well, come over afterward. Oh, how did your dinner party go off last night? Winnie came in for a minute with Nancy Lou—she looks sweet in that little new coat, Charlotte—and she said you had a——"

"Oh, just Gladys and Jimmy Roberts."

"Well, you'll have to tell me all about it."

"There isn't very much to tell, they just came to dinner and then we played bridge. Well, take care of yourself, Aunt Kate; don't catch cold this changeable weather."

"Good-by, dear. Don't forget to come in this afternoon. I want you to see my scillas; they're a sight!"

She felt so safe about Joe, because of his eyes. But—one day he came home and told her he had been accepted.

The world slipped under her feet, whirling from Monday to Tuesday, from Tuesday to Wednesday, so fast that she was dizzy, whirling her to the day when she must say good-by to him.

Do things! Do things! Don't stop to think! Don't let yourself remember that Joe is going to-morrow.

"Effa!"

"Yeh-a?"

Yeh-a! That girl! But you couldn't say a word to the Ashburns; they were so independent. Kate had to content herself with speaking in a voice full of quiet dignity, meant to convey her reproach.

"Please use a glass of the wild-grape jelly with the chicken to-night, Effa. Mr. Joe likes it better than currant. How's the oven for my cake?"

"Seems bout right, Mis' Green."

"I thought I'd try Mrs. Baylow's recipe. Mr. Joe liked her cake so much the other day. Eggs—lemon—Effa, would you get me some butter? Oh, never mind; it says bake in an ungreased angel— Effa! Never mind, I don't need it!"

Whirrr, went the egg beater; the white of egg thickened into smooth foam. Don't think! Don't think!

"Oh, mercy! Were, Effa, just take this a minute. I forgot to telephone Goff's, and I'm afraid they'll be sending out the last delivery——"

Once more in the kitchen, she hesitated, hurried to the telephone.

"Goff's? . . . Oh, this is Mrs. Green again, 29 Chestnut Street. I just ordered a quart of ice cream for this evening, half chocolate ice cream and half orange water ice. . . . No, no! I did order it. I want to change the order to all orange water ice. . . . Yes—a quart. . . . Yes—Mrs. J. M. Green, 29 Chestnut Street. All orange water ice; no chocolate ice cream. . . . Yes, that's right."

A nice mother she was, ordering half ice cream when Joe liked water ice so much better! Ordering chocolate ice cream for herself, whose heart was going to break to-morrow, when Joe was gone and she could give way.

When Joe came in she was marching through the house with a flaming screw of brown paper held out before her.

"What are you doing, mother? Being the Spirit of Rattle?"

"We're going to have cauliflower. I'm trying to get rid of the smell. Dinner's ready when you are, darling."

Her Jodie! His blue eyes behind the steel-rimmed spectacles, the young bulge of his cheeks when he smiled at her across the bowl of greenish double daffodils from the garden. Don't think! Say anything, do anything, but don't think.

"Did you get in to say good-by to Aunt Sarah, Joe?"

"Oh, gosh!" cried Joe, with his mouth too full of hot biscuit.

"Oh, darling! It means so much to her. Well, I'll tell her you tried to, but you were too busy. Have just a teeny other little piece, just this little bit of breast?"

She was brave up to the last minute. And then she went to pieces, just because Joe had saved his cake icing for last. Her little boy, her Jodie! Tears poured over her face; her body shivered and shuddered; every wall went down.

 

It was anguish to Kate that Joe was sent to France; it was glory, too. Service flags hung in the glass panel of the Driggs' front door and in the back window of the Driggs' limousine, but the mother of Joe, fighting in France, could condescend to the mother of Hoagland, safe in America, although Joe was only a private and Hoagland was a lieutenant. She condescended to her; she envied her wildly.

Hoagland was at Camp Sevier, dreadfully bored, and getting fatter than ever, but looking well in his puttees and Sam Browne belt. And Charlotte was busy with Red Cross committees and canteens and surgical dressings, in spite of the fact that Hoagland Driggs, Third, was born in July.

The studio at 29 Chestnut Street was a splendid toom to make surgical dressings in. Twice a week the Westlake women met there, in white aprons and veils, to cut absorbent cotton and fold gauze.

One October morning Carrie Pyne stayed to help tidy up after a meeting. "I had a letter from Joe to-day," Kate told her. "Look! Will you just kindly look at these pads? That's Violetta Mortimer! I'll have to make every single one over again. Honestly——"

"You didn't see my scissors anywhere, did you, Kate? Oh, dear! I hope I haven't folded them into a surgical dressing——"

"Poor Mrs. Baylow, she looked awfully. Did you notice? I didn't dare ask her if she'd heard from Laddie lately. You know I think waiting at home must be almost worse than the fighting. Anyway, they're in France! That's always been the dream of my life——"

"Kate, speaking of letters, if I tell you something, will you promise not to tell? I decided I wasn't doing my bit, just knitting and surgical dressings, so I'm a marron now."

"A what, Carrie?"

"A marron. That's what they call them—a godmother," said Carrie, blushing. "I'm a godmother, not really, you know, but the way they do now, to one of our boys over there. I just sort of write to him and send him things, you know, Kate, little things like chocolate and trench mirrors—don't tell Mrs. Whipple! And try to be—well—kind of an—oh, I don't know—sort of an inspiration, only that sounds so conceited. And then he writes to me, and I—oh, just sort of help him with his problems—at least, I do if I can get him to tell me any—and send him little poems I cut out, and things, anything that might be an inspiration, or interesting items about things—well, at least—mine's named Harold Finkelstein. I don't quite understand all of his answers, I think they must be slang or something, or maybe he's a little shell-shocked, but anyway——"

"Why, I think that's awfully nice."

"It isn't anything, really, only I—don't tell, Kate!—I just thought—maybe— Of course you have Joe——"

"I had a letter—oh, I told you. Guess who he's seen? Hartley Harrison. He's over there with the Y. M. C. A.—Joe says Hartley's having a lovely, lovely time——"

"Mercy! How can——?"

"Joe's joking, you know. He's the bravest thing, Carrie; he's joking all the time, and he never complains a bit except about things like having to march miles to be entertained when they're tired out and cold and sleepy."

Kate wrote fat letters to Joe, launched packages of socks and cigarettes and chocolates into space, and lay at night staring with aching eyes at flaming pictures painted on the dark. And Joe wrote back about sleeping in a barn and having a hen lay an egg beside him, and told her that the star shells were pretty, only one couldn't give them calm undivided attention. He never wrote to her about the agony of unbearable, unceasing noise, the exhaustion of long marches when nothing was left conscious but huge feet lead-heavy with mud, carrying them on—where? Of stumbling through mist and fever-mist, tripping over huddled bodies, lost, far behind the others, with a bullet in his thigh, trying to keep up, as Jodie used to try to keep up with the older children.

"Hoagland has ptomaine poisoning from eating lobster in Greenville," Kate wrote to Joe, and Joe wrote back from the base hospital: "Give Hoagland my sympathy, and tell him what I heard J. Hartley Harrison telling a gent from the Bronx—'We're all of us soldiers under the same great Captain, Buddy!'"

And then the endless War was ended. Joe was coming home.

Kate, who had shown smiling courage during the months she was stretched on the rack, wept because her old hat was such a sight, and a scheme of steaming the velvet over the teakettle and putting a feather "fancy" on the side resulted in a worse mess than before.

"You'd a right to buy a new hat, with Joe comin home," Effa told her.

"I can't afford it, and I guess Mister Joe won't care what an old woman like me looks like."

"Now, listen, Mis' Green, you're just talkin' foolish cause you're nervous. You wash your eyes and go on down to Small's. I'll feed the both of yuh on boiled rice till we make it up."

Oh, it was cold! Tiny flakes sifted from a lead-gray sky. Suppose there was a blizzard, and Joe's train was held up? Well, if it was, she would die, that was all there was to it.

"I don't suppose it's any use asking you for something inexpensive, Miss Minnie."

"Well, if it isn't Mrs. Green! You're quite a stranger!"

"My son's coming home to-morrow!"

"Is that a fact? Well, now, we'll have to find something real pretty to celebrate. How about this little black-and-gold wrap-around turban?"

"Now, Miss Minnie, you know me better than that! I'm ages too old."

"Goodness! how you talk! Why, Mrs. Jackson was just in and bought a little hat in the new le diable red—this is the front, dear. Look, it looks lovely behind. Well, there's lots of others."

She bought a toque of cornflower-blue velvet finally. "I'm getting giddy in my old age," she told herself, carrying home the round box with "J. M. Small & Son, Modes, Manteaux, & Dry Goods" on the cover; but her cheeks were pink and her eyes shone. She stopped at Clark's for some flowers. What if she couldn't afford them? Mr. Clark stopped working on the sheaf of palms, white roses, and purple ribbon that he was always arranging, and waited on her himself, waving aside his assistants.

"Joe's coming home to-morrow morning, Mr. Clark!"

"Well, that's great news, Mis' Green; it surely is! I read a piece in the paper about how he got wounded in the limb; my wife cut it out. We all think a lot of Joe, always hev since he was a little feller and used to be down here alla time——"

She followed him as he hobbled down the greenhouse aisles. Warm moist heat, hissing pipes, pots of calceolarias, hideous, like the things you had to pull out when you were cleaning chickens. Spicy-sweet carnations brushing her cheek. Why did she suddenly remember her husband?

"Mr. Green used to be a great one for comin' in, in the old days. He was certainly one fine gentleman. Always liked to hev a carnation for his buttonhole."

"Yes, he did. What kind are these, Mr. Clark, these pale-pink ones?"

"Daybreak."

"What a lovely name!"

"'Tain't quite so lovely when the alarm clock's ringin'. I've cut a few extra teas, Mis' Green; 'tain't every day Joe comes home."

His train would get in at half past seven in the morning. What an hour!

"Good night, Effa. Now you'll surely be here at seven?"

"Sure, I'll be here all righty."

To-morrow morning! To-morrow morning! How could she live through the night?

I'd better make a list—I know I won't remember a thing to-morrow. Let's see. Tell Effa to light parlor fire. Call up Goff's and order orange water ice——

She was trembling so that she couldn't write. Better go to bed; she would have to get up so early to-morrow.

But her legs shook so that half-way up the stairs she had to crumple down. The tension of months relaxed; tears of relief poured through her shaking fingers. To-morrow morning Joe would be home again.