To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 18
KATE felt, when she jumped from sleep at the alarm clock's ringing, that the tide had turned, that life was coming back to her. The air brought a smell of spring, of manure, wet earth, through the open window. It had rained in the night, but the sun was shining now. Each bud on the maple trees looked as if water was welling from it, wet branches were netted against a robin's-egg-blue sky. She loved the cold water she dashed on her face, the smell of coffee coming up the stairs; she whistled fuzzily, with much breath and little sound, as she pulled on her stockings.
After that night when she had realized she was not first in the world to anyone, the night she had opened her hands and let her darling go, she thought everything had left her. She helped Joe pack; she got ready for Aunt Sarah and Carrie; she soothed disapproving Effa. Heavy with lassitude, she dragged through days full of duties—empty days
And to-day life was coming back to her, flooding her, lifting her up.
"5 l chops
amonnia ammonia amonia
½ pk spin
pk mac
5 gran sug"
she wrote on the back of Edith Roberts' wedding invitation after breakfast. "Could you make a rice pudding for lunch, Effa?" Gone were the days when she could have tea and lettuce and bread and butter, happy and alone with a book spread open by her plate. "And remember Mrs. Whipple likes lots of raisins in it—how any one can!"
"You need tea."
"Why, I got some on Saturday!"
"There's plenty of your kind, but Mis' Whipple won't drink that."
"Oh dear! So she won't. All right."
"Knock, knock, knock!" Carrie lilted from the door. "Tan I tum in? Effa, I wouldn't be in your way if I put some water on to heat, would I? I just thought I'd Twink my old cream waist periwinkle; it looks kind of horrid since I spilled hot chocolate on it at the Wednesday Club."
"Why don't you wait till this afternoon?" Kate suggested, looking apprehensively at Effa's glum expression.
"Tause I want to wear it dis afternoon, lady fair, dat's why! Dood reason? Now you just run along. Effa and I understand each other, don't we, Ef—Oh, mercy!"
Pots and pans crashed to the floor.
"Me's werry naughty dirl! Me didn't doe for to do it! Boo-hoo! Boo-hoo!"
Carrie just about embarrasses me to death when she acts this way. What's the matter with her? She's been sort of light-headed ever since she's been here.
"What do you want, Carrie?"
"A pot for my Twink—this'll do."
"That's the stock pot, Miss Carrie; I gotta have it for soup. Here."
"Thank you muchly!"
Well, I only hope and pray Effa can stand it, Kate thought, stooping in the sunny parlor window to pick up a banana skin that Benjie had dropped. Where was that bird? She looked around cautiously, and then jumped as he suddenly screamed from the top of the piano. Horrid thing! No wonder he nearly drove Carrie crazy, following her all over the house and nipping at her ankles.
Some one had been at the box of chocolates Hoagland had given her; the lace paper edge stuck out from under the lid. Aunt Sarah again, biting into the different kinds and putting back halves she didn't like. Poor old thing, she really isn't responsible, Kate thought, but her nose wrinkled in disgust as she fished out two half pistachios and one nougat that had proved too hard for anything but mangling. She popped the last chocolate marshmallow into her mouth, to make sure of it. Candy at ten o'clock in the morning! How dreadful! How delicious!
"Kate!"
"Yes, Aunt Sarah!"
"Kate! Kate!"
"Yes!"
"It's very cold in the house."
She was always cold, even when heat was puffing up through the scroll-work registers.
"Oh no, Aunt Sarah; it's almost like summer to-day."
"I'm very cold."
"All right. I'll fill the oil stove and bring it up to your room."
The studio was Aunt Sarah's room now, crowded with furniture she had saved from Cedarmere. She kept the skylight covered; the curtains were drawn for fear of draughts. So warm, so dark, so over-full; she had gone into it like a burrowing animal into a warm hole full of feathers and dead grass and nutshells. But she wasn't there now. Kate tried the bathroom door, and found it locked. Aunt Sarah laughed soundlessly to herself as the knob turned. She loved the bathroom, not for baths, which she considered weakening, but for quiet and meditation. Here was the one place nobody could get at her to suggest that she do anything she didn't want to.
Oh, bother! Kate thought, putting on her hat. Gloves, purse, my letter to Joe; I'm afraid that's overweight—but I must try to be patient, she's so old. Oh, bother the telephone!
"Hello! . . . No—this is 172, party J. . . . Dear me! Please excuse me for living! Carrie, I've just insulted somebody by having the wrong number."
"But, Kate, how could they blame?"
She laughed suddenly, happily, and gave Carrie's arm a squeeze. Poor old goose, she couldn't help lov ing her.
Delicious air! The grass was getting quite green. "Hello, Hatty Butterfield! Isn't this a heavenly moming?"
"Oh, Kate! Good morning! Do tell me, any news of the honeymooners I could use?"
"They're in the south of France just now. I was just taking this letter down to mail to Joe."
"My! what a fat one! Do you mind if I copy the address? Villa Miramare"
That would look well on the Sunday society page.
"They're coming home the first of May, and they're going to visit me until they find a house."
"But, Kate, how can you have them, with Mrs. Whipple and Carrie?"
"Oh, I can manage."
"Really, Kate, I sometimes think your wings must be beginning to sprout, the way you act with Mrs. Whipple—not that I don't mean she isn't a lovely old lady"
"Nonsense, Hatty!" laughed Kate. She was making real self-sacrifices; it was sweet to be loved and admired for them. So many people had said, "How lovely for you to have Mrs. Whipple and Miss Pyne; To-morrow "Morning they must be such company for you:" She walked lightly on to the butcher's, the grocer's—a banana for Benjie, because she was almost happy again.
"Good morning, Mrs. Roberts. I haven't seen you since Edith's wedding, to tell you how lovely it was! Where did they go? Oh—Washington— Good morning, Mrs. Harrison; that's very nice, isn't it? And those famous cherry trees ought to be in bloom now, oughtn't they? My two are in the south of France just now. Aren't they the lucky children? They write me that everything's in bloom, almond trees and sheets of forget-me-nots, and it's warm enough for bathing. Evelyn's very much at home in France, she's lived abroad so much, and Joe was there during the war, of course."
"Really, the way Mrs. Green's going on about Joe and his wife makes me smile," Mrs. Roberts said, bitterly, to Mrs. Harrison. "I guess no one in Westlake's been allowed to forget that they're in France! Amusing! . . . Mr. Turben, have you any eatable Potato chips? Those last were just plain soggy"
I believe I will have the parlor papered, Kate thought, pausing before the New Art Company's shop, with its three samples of wall paper in the window, a satin stripe with a cut-out frieze of wistaria, a brown imitation leather with a frieze of grapes, and the pattern of Little Bo-Peep and Little Boy Blue that Charlotte had in her nursery. I can do it all right if I make over my old voile and put off getting a new lawn mower. I want the house to make a good impression on Evelyn.
And she went in and sat before samples of red cabbage roses, imitation tapestry, birds of paradise, flapped over by Mr. Holmquist.
"Wait—that last one was pretty—those sea gulls."
"That's for bathrooms only."
"Oh! No—no—yes, I know, they're very nice, only not just exactly what I was thinking of."
"If you could sort of tell me what you were thinking of, Mrs. Green?"
"Well, I really haven't the least idea."
"Here's one in excellent taste." He displayed oatmeal paper, dull as dishwater.
"No, not quite. Perhaps I don't want paper at all. Ive often thought I'd like to panel the parlor white, and have orange curtains."
But she knew she never would. Everything new had to be dull browns and greens so that everything else wouldn't look too old and shabby for anything.
A pile of mail waited on the hall table, and her heart jumped as she looked for a letter from Joe. But there was none. "Oh, well," she thought. "Perhaps to-morrow morning"
"Hurry yup, Joe! Dinner'll be over!"
"I can't bust into tears because of that; I know too well what it's going to be. Hard potatoes, fish bones"
"Veal!"
"String beans"
"Soft custard"
"And paper-weight peaches of beautiful green marble. Aren't you dressed?"
"Practically. I have on my chemise and my earrings. Oh, Joe, wasn't it a heavenly walk?"
"Swell. Do you want this mass of dead vegetation you've put in the bowl, or can I wash my face?"
"Oh, are they all dead? They were such pretty wildflowers. Throw them away. I loved them when I picked them."
The personally conducted party from Manchester was having a musical evening in the lounge of the Villa Miramare when Joe and Evelyn came out for coffee after dinner. A contralto was singing about a weary heart as if her mouth were full of mashed potato. "Evelyn, you mustn't laugh," Joe whispered, severely. Then there was a sea song from a small elderly man in alpaca.
"I ought to write to mother to-night."
But he sat where he was, sleepy from the long walk, smiling at Evelyn through cigarette smoke, too con= tented to move.
"Joe, did you ever see such dancing?"
The couples hopped about, continually talking in their difficult ugly voices. "Eough, I sye!" "Eough, fahncy!" "Eough, I sye, Gwen, down't stop ply-ing—I do call thet jolly unkahnd!" The young ladies were in bunchy taffetas, with handkerchiefs stuck into their armlets, and underwear straps hanging down. One sat alone, with a supercilious expression, and called out to a man hurrying past:
"Mr. Wallace. I rahther fahncy I shall just drop out of the saight-seeing excursion to-morrow."
"Much Mr. Wallace cares!" said Evelyn to Joe. "Poor thing."
"Evelyn! My Gawd! Look, isn't this a new lot?"
More tourists, in tweeds instead of taffetas, were being led about by a friend who had gotten there first. Eager, excited, important, he was insisting on showing the others the grandeurs of the pension. "But wyte! You 'aven't seen the dahning room yet!" And the flock was forced reluctantly to look at the dining room.
"Evelyn! Naughty! You mustn't laugh at people right in front of them! Oh, gosh! I meant to write to mother to-night."
"That's all you've said all evening. Joe! Be careful! You'll dislocate your jaw!"
"I'm too sleepy to-night. I'll write to-morrow morning."
He opened the shutters of the long French windows and stepped out on a balcony made of a scrap of lettuce-green iron lace. Warm sunlight flooded him as he looked down at the personally conducted party squeezing into a char-à-bancs and amusing an old woman wearing a hat like a mother pancake carrying its baby pancake on its back, who stopped beating a gray mouse of a donkey with panniers full of cabbages in order to have a good laugh. And then they were off along the road that was like a road through the sky, running above silver-gray clouds, the tops of olive trees, falling away to a still sea of intense purple blue that held other clouds, clear-colored clouds of peacock blue and turquoise.
"Joe, come to breakfast!"
Sunlight poured into the room. Their big bed under its net was like a white waterfall. On a table covered with a cloth in checks of pink and pale pink was the breakfast tray, edged with Evelyn's shade hat, a package of cigarettes, some books, and a drinking glass holding a spray of lemon blossoms, as a glacier is edged with rocks it has pushed before it. On the tray lay Kate's fat letter, straining the seams of its white waistcoat.
"Isn't it wonderful how they enamel these cast-iron rolls to look like real ones? Have some honey?"
He watched the thick gold thread spread into a pool, spin thin.
"Let's go in bathing in that cove we found."
"Let's! More coffee, Joey? Joe-y! I'm speaking to you!"
He kissed the inside of her outstretched arm; with a groan he pressed his closed eyes against it. Kate's letter was knocked to the floor and lay there unnoticed.
"They're due to-morrow!"
The paperers were gone. The parlor really did look nice; it was worth the expense and the trouble, and the complaints about strange men in the house and the smell of paint that had gone on in Aunt Sarah's feeble old voice that always seemed about to die away, but never did, quite. Carrie had been moved into a curtained corner of the studio; Kate herself was in Carrie's little room. Her own room was ready for the children, fresh paper in bureau drawers, freshly washed curtains billowing in the windows.
"You'd a right to take a little rest," Effa told her.
"I can't, Effa. I have an awful headache, but I can't seem to keep still."
"You're nervous. I don't blame you. Looky, you sit down here and I'll make you a nice hot cup—a tea; it'll do you good."
"It would be nice. Oh, Effa! I feel so queer!"
"There! An' here's a nice piece—a cawfee cake. You didn't eat no lunch at all."
"That does make me feel better. Do you know, I think I'll send them a telegram to welcome them. I could just telephone it to the office, couldn't I? Mr. Joe wrote they'd stay over one night in New York."
So she telephoned. "Mr. J. M. Green, Jr.—oh, wait a minute, Mr. and Mrs. J. M. Green, Jr. . . . I for giraffe—no, no, I mean for jelly. M for mignonette—not minuet, mignonette. . . . Oh, well, it's the same thing. . . . I say all right, minuet. . . . Yes—G for giraffe; r. . . . Yes, rrr—double e—n—Green, the color. . . . That's right. . . . Welcome. . . . I beg your pardon? . . . Oh yes, Biltmore—b for baby"
"Yes?" Carrie called, coming in the front door.
"Nothing! Biltmore. . . . Oh, you have it . . . I'm telephoning. . . . Hotel, New York. Welcome. . . . Yes—welcome home—love—l-o-v-e—Mother."
"We're due to-morrow."
Darkness lay under the surge of waves, the smother of foam, ageless and indifferent. Yet it held, lightly rocking in its hand, all the little ships, men in yellow oilskins, the other set of men in blue with gold braid, pots of jam, swaying artificial palms, cockroaches waving nervous feelers, swinging rows of teacups on their hooks, homesick cabin boys, Joe and Evelyn turning to each other in the warm lighted cabin. There they swung, washed over by the waves of that other ocean of the air, upheld toward heaven by dark desolation.