To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 22
EVELYN had thought she and Joe would always speak and answer really, be crystal clear to each other. But now they were married there were stretches of muddle, of fog; sometimes she was filled with a panic of nervousness. There were times when she didn't know what to say to him, how to interest and please him. Easy enough to say, "Just be yourself," but what is yourself? And she missed the old life.
Sitting high in the muddy Ford, in the prim upright position that Fords demand, she remembered lying back in Ralph's Hispano-Suiza, tearing around corners, making peasants jump and run. Mimosa trees in golden showers, a painted cart crammed with grass, the horse nodding with feathers and chiming with bells, a saint in a faded blue-plaster heaven, and Ralph beside her, making her feel beautiful and exquisite, as he always could.
Now instead of that, the maple trees turning red, Plunkett's delivery automobile, the Christian Science Church, Joe saying: "Darling, do wipe off your mouth. I hate that color."
She had felt that her soul's desire was for a country life, away from the turmoil of town. And when Joe was with her the sun-hot pine needles were silky soft, squirrels in the trees tossed and twirled the cones in their little hands, and rippled and quivered their tails; she heard the cry under the waterfall and through the sound of the pines. But when she was alone the woods were silent with a silence that threatened.
"All I ask from life is a book and a brook and a pine tree," she had said once to Ralph Levinson in his mother's box at the opera. And now she had all three. But the ground under the pine needles turned hard so quickly. She twisted around, trying to get comfortable, propping herself against a scratchy tree trunk; she lit a cigarette and began to read Christina Rossetti. Beautiful thoughts would be good for the baby.
Good-by, and all in vain,
Never to meet again, my dear—
Never to part again.
Good-by to-day, good-by to-morrow"
Good heavens! This was awful! And yet this was the same place where she and Joe had been so blissful last Sunday, when the ground had felt like a feather bed. They had laughed and been silly all the shining day, in a warm intimacy.
She heard a crackling behind her. Tramps? Silent now, except for the waterfall, smooth as glass, then plunging. Ferns quivered in the spray. She would look at falling water and quivering dripping fern, and think about her baby.
But what was there to think? I'm going to have a baby; I'm glad I'm going to. I hope it's a boy. I hope it's going to act like Joe and look like me. What else? That couldn't have taken half a minute. Women in books had beautiful thoughts beginning, "Oh, my little baby—" But how to go on?
She yawned until tears stood in her eyes. Oh, what were her old friends doing now? Where were they making a noise? She longed for a noise, loud voices, screams of laughter, ice in a cocktail shaker
Had she ordered anything for dinner, or had she just made a list and left it beside the telephone? Had she the nerve to give poor Joe baked beans again? There were the blackberries she had bought from old Tom Davis because he was so old and had a long white beard and had come to the door like a gnome from a fairy tale—partly, too, because of the color of the small scarlet leaves stuck here and there to the wet blackberries as he poured them from his basket into her trembling scales. A silly reason for buying blackberries, when Joe said he would just as soon eat solidified ink.
Come on, Christina, I'll give you one more chance!
To sit alone upon a thorn"
Well that's what it feels like! It must be nearly time for Joe to come home. I've been here enjoying nature for hours! She had forgotten to wind her wrist watch. But when she reached home it was ten minutes past three.
It was heavenly to flop down on the Chinese-pagoda sofa with an armful of literature—the new Cosmopolitan, the new Vogue—there was a picture of Ralph at the races, with that Ludlow girl with the fat legs, and Rene de Villiers—a new movie magazine, some French novels Ralph had sent. Joe found her there when he came home. She pulled him down to her, nearly strangling him.
"Joe, darling, I've missed you so—the day lasted forever! Only I thought it was about four, and it's half past six! Golly! I haven't started to get supper"
"Didn't the new girl show up?"
"Not a sign of her."
"Hard luck! Did the laundry come back?"
"I guess so—I haven't been out in the kitchen. Why?"
"I wanted to change my shirt, and I haven't any with buttons. Do you suppose you could put one or two on for me? If I could just have the top ones. I don't ask for them all the way down, just the top?"
"Why don't you leave them out? I always tell you to leave them out."
"I do; they're out all over the place."
"Well, of course I'll sew them on, only they don't seem to stay. Joe"
"Hello!"
"I'm terribly afraid I forgot to order— Would you mind awfully if we had nice lovely delicious baked beans?"
"Fine!" said Joe, who had had them for the past three nights.
After the beans and blackberries and two cups of tepid mud and water, Joe settled at his desk with a handful of papers.
"Joey, don't work to-night."
"I must. This means a little extra, and fixing up the house cost so much more than I expected."
"Don't work to-night! I've been so lonely all day."
"Now be a good child and keep quiet."
"You're the most selfish man I ever knew. You never think of me!"
"Don't be silly."
His papers rustled; she yawned on the sofa, sighing now and then.
"Evelyn, don't you ever like to read?"
"I'm sick of reading! I'm sick of everything!"
He made no answer. She moved about the room, picking up books, putting them down, twitching a curtain. She looked at his head bent over his writing, and wanted to scream.
"It's all right for you, seeing people and everything, but here I am all by myself all day"
"We can live in Westlake if you'd rather."
"Pff! Westlake!"
"Westlake's all right. You've just made up your mind not to like the people."
She hated him as he began to write again; they were hard against each other, and far apart. I have ruined my life, she thought. And Joe thought, oh, Evelyn, keep still and stop being so sorry for yourself. They were strangers, lost to each other, as they said good night.
But hearing her crying in the dark, he came to comfort her.
"Oh, Joe, Joe, is it all right again?"
"Of course it is—everything's all right. Don't cry, my own."
"Do you love me again?"
"I always loved you."
"We must never lose each other that way again, never, never! Hold me! Hold me closer, Joe. We might lose the way back to each other!"
Waves of the night lifted them off the jagged day, floated them out into the dark, the deep.
"Well, Hatty, have you heard our thrilling news? . . . No, I haven't been waited on. I want some broad pale-pink satin ribbon, please . . . no, really pale pink. If she calls that pale, I wonder what she calls bright! Joe has a little girl!"
"No! A little girl! How marvelous!" Nothing else could have surprised me, Miss Butterfield's tone implied, but a little girl—who ever heard of such a thing? 4
"I'm getting this to bind some crib blankets. I was telling Miss Butterfield my son's just had a little girl. Yes, indeed it is! Don't you think this is pretty, Hatty? So delicate. Let's see—I calculated eight times from my nose to my hand—how many yards would that be?"
"What are they going to call her?" asked Miss Butterfield, getting out her notebook.
"Hope. I simply wouldn't hear of them naming her after me"
"Hope. That's very sweet. I'll be wanting a picture of her little ladyship for my page, Kate."
"We're going to have her taken with Aunt Sarah. You know it's her ninety-sixth birthday next week."
Hope lay in Aunt Sarah's arms, blowing bubbles. Mr. Minty's son, who took the photographs, said he had never seen such a good baby.
The reproduction in the Sunday News was rather black, but it was large and impressive and the only picture on the society page except a tiny one of Mrs. Elmer Kress, chairman of the musical department of the Woman's Club, which didn't really count. Under Aunt Sarah and the baby was printed:
A new and charming photograph of Mrs. Elisha Whipple and her winsome wee great-grandniece Hope, lovely little daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Montgomery Green, Jr. Mrs. Green will be remembered as Miss Evelyn Thorne of New York and Paris. Mrs. Whipple, one of Westlake's most gracious grande dames, received the congratulations of her hosts of friends on the celebration of her g6th birthday last Wednesday, while little Miss Hope is still a very young lady, having been born November 7th. Home Portrait by. Alfred Ernest Minty.
Aunt Sarah ordered six copies of the News to send to friends. But after Carrie had cut out the pictures for her they lay on the table in her room. Who were the friends, and where were they? She couldn't remember.
Joe could hardly believe this little fragrant rose was his, holding out her hands to him, clinging to his finger, going to sleep in his arms. The way her silk hair was rubbed up into a fuzz in the back—her whole-hearted pink yawn
Evelyn was better than ever after the birth of her child. She needed strength for that bitter winter, when the food froze in the kitchen, and the iron latches of the doors were so cold they burned the hand. Pipes froze; buckets of frozen water had to be melted on the stove. "If anyone had ever told me I'd be excited over having enough hot water to take a bath in!" she cried. At night they would not dare to move from the spots in the icy sheets their bodies had heated; their drawn-up legs were cramped; their hips ached. Joe got up stiffly in the morning, his breath puffing out in clouds, and lit the oil stove before Evelyn, shivering, scrambled into her clothes and ran down to the kitchen, carrying Hope wrapped in blankets. They spent most of their time in the kitchen. It was the warmest room in the house, and generally empty of maids, although now and then a Delia or an Oscarina came for a few days. But the house was lonely and inconvenient, and people still called it haunted. "Sure, I'm sorry to say, Mrs. Green—" or, "Ay bane leavin'—" or, sometimes, without farewell, they never came back from their Thursday out.
Evelyn struggled with the cookbook; tears and cigarette ashes fell into the frying pan; hot grease spat out and burnt her wrists. Snow piled against the windows, filled the empty road, fell silently in the gathering dusk. "Everybody's here," her mother wrote from Palm Beach, where she was staying with Mrs. Prather. "Ralph L. gave a big fancy-dress dance for the youngest du Moulin girl; he was a Rajah in purple with a tight cloth-of-silver turban. I wore that old black tulle Pierrette thing, and Lotta Prather was a white peacock with a long train of feathers that turned up when she pulled a string—you never saw such a sight in your life. R. had a dancing floor built out under the palms, with colored lanterns, and everyone went in swimming at sunrise"
"Oh, Joe, I must dance or I'll burst!" Evelyn cried. So they went into town with Hope and a suit case, and in Charlotte's good-taste guest room with its empty Venetian-glass perfume bottles and empty painted tin match box, and Pathways to Peace and A Wanderer in Florence on the bedside table, Evelyn got into the black gown she had worn in Venice and the pearls that still worried Westlake—could they be real? And then they all went to the Subscription Dance at the Golf Club, and Hoagland danced with Evelyn while Joe danced with Charlotte, and then Jimmy Roberts danced with Evelyn, while Joe danced with Gladys.
The winter mornings were so still that the silence hummed. The birch trees were white against white. Joe carried out Hope, wrapped in white wool and fur. Their bright blue shadows followed them across the meadow; the snow squeaked under his feet. The little girl's cheeks were as red as the berries cased in ice along the frozen stream.
Evelyn loved her baby. She bathed her by the kitchen stove, she washed bottles, she even tried—once—to make a little dress. "I must say she is a changed girl," Kate said. But life raged through Evelyn's body; she felt, as she sat by Hope's crib trying to keep her mind on The Care and Feeding of Infants, as a rocket must feel as it splits the sky the second before it bursts. And then Joe would come home, and be content to sit all evening reading, too tired to keep awake after ten o'clock.