To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 6
KATE decided not to begin Jodie's portrait until the tea was over—painting made such a mess in the studio—but she put the picture of Joe on the big easel, the picture begun five years ago and never finished. And on the walls her art-school studies hung, the fish, the flowers, Nellie Verlaine, onions and copper saucepans, and heads of snuffy old gentlemen that were supposed to be full of "character."
She was out in the back yard so early on the morning of the tea that the dew soaked through the soles of her old satin slippers as she cut branching sprays of larkspur to fill the studio fireplace, under the plaster cast of the Della Robbia singing boys.
Carrie Pyne came wavering in from Cedarmere on her bicycle, to help make sandwiches. They made cream-cheese and olive sandwiches, lettuce and mayonnaise, and Joe had stopped at the expensive Plunkett's and sent home tins of caviar and small yellow terrines of foie gras. It was fun making the sandwiches, except when Carrie cut her finger; it was fun companionably eating the buttery, mayonnaisy crust, or having an olive all round—Lizzie, too, and Charlotte, who had been sent to say that her mother had one of her headaches and couldn't pour tea that afternoon. The screen door banged as the delivery boys came and went with cheerful greetings, and outside was hot sunshine except for the cool pools of shade under the maple trees, and the smell of freshly sprinkled dust in the street.
If only a party was just the getting ready for it—spreading the icing thickly on small spicy cakes, setting a copper bowl of Miss Smith's big marguerites in a shadowy corner of the cool studio, buttoning Jodie into his fresh linen Russian blouse. But there was always that awful pause just before things began, when she felt really sick with shyness and apprehension.
She and Joe waited in the studio. She was sure no one was coming. Everything was ready—the flowers, the punch bowl, the tea table, the cakes she had made, and the wonderful ones Joe had brought home in light square boxes. And Joe so beautiful he made her blink, rocking from heels to toes on the hearth rug, making conversation. No one was coming! And then the first ring at the doorbell pierced them both, went right through them, so that they felt like two little birds on a skewer.
The three Misses Mortimer were the first to come. Kate urged them to have sandwiches, cakes, more tea, loving them for breaking that spell of expectancy, knowing that this would be their supper, too. Poor old frights. The way they got themselves up! Paint, and dirty white gloves, and beaded dresses with bead-laden threads hanging loose, shedding a harvest of tiny bright black berries that had clung too long to cling any more. And their hats! Picture hats, mock romantic, perched as if for flight on the tops of the three Mortimer heads. They sat there, elegant rag bags, half-starved, gallant, and ridiculous, almost trembling with eagerness as their upper lips lengthened over the thin rims of the teacups, but each remembering always to leave half a cake uneaten. "Poor old souls!" Kate thought, and because of the three Misses Mortimer the studio was brighter and more beautiful; she herself felt refreshed, young and beloved.
Aunt Sarah came next, refusing tea, looking at Kate's paintings through her lorgnette, and making no comments. And with her came Carrie Pyne, wearing a much too small green hat, that looked as if she had snatched up a St. Patrick's Day favor and put it on just to be funny. Beaming and breathless, she passed sandwiches to the people who were filling the studio now. Hatty Butterfield was taking notes for the society page of the Sunday News. Kate had to send Annie Sullivan for hot water and fresh tea over and over again. People were laughing and enjoying themselves, really staying, coming back for second cups, feeling free and Bohemian, in a studio. Mrs. Martine smoked half a cigarette, pretending to hide behind the herons and snowy willow trees of the Japanese screen, coughing and screwing up her eyes, although Kate didn't believe it was quite so new to her as all that.
Mr. Donner was there. They had waited until he was back in Westlake. He had been away for over a year, out in Colorado Springs and Cripple Creek. Dull, pompous old thing, Kate thought, and then decided she must have been mistaken as she watched him on the divan with Jodie on his knee. She could see how eagerly the little boy was talking to him, catching his breath sometimes; she could hear Mr. Donner's polite contributions: "You don't say so!" "Well, I never!"
She heard Joe's voice: "We rather think of going to Italy for the winter. No, we wouldn't travel about—just take a villa somewhere by the sea, and live very quietly. I'd like the bambino to learn Italian, and Mrs. Green would do some painting, of course."
"Mrs. Cuthbert! So good of you to come. . . . Oh, do you really? Of course it's just a sketch. . . . Well, that's so sweet of you! Cream or lemon? . . . Doctor Wells! A busy man like you! Well, I do feel complimented. Here's my big man, helping mother. See if you can carry the chocolates over to Mrs. Palmer without spilling them, darling. . . . Yes, indeed, Mrs. Thornton. Now isn't it awful of me, I can't remember whether it was one lump or two. . . . Oh, Mr. Jackson! You know, I do think they're particularly fine this year. I put soot around the roots of mine; I think it makes them bluer; but imagine you asking me anything about gardening! . . . Yes, Hatty dear? Why, I guess you'd just call it old-rose Swiss with white dots. You're not going to describe this old rag in the paper, I hope! . . . What is it, Jodie? Well, just go and tell Lizzie. . . . Mrs. Baylow!"
Thank goodness, Mr. and Mrs. Driggs were having a good time. She had asked them nervously, for she knew Mrs. Driggs was touchy about being invited only when no one else or everyone else was to be there. "Well, we'll try to get over," Mrs. Driggs had said, doubtfully; but she had been in her mauve silk dress with the Medici collar, and her hat foaming with mauve ostrich tips half an hour before the Misses Mortimer went through the gate of 29 Chestnut Street, an hour and a quarter before the Cedarmere coupé drew up and she cried to Mr. Driggs, napping uneasily among the claw-footed golden chairs and tables and blood-red brocade that made the Driggs parlor look' like the lion house at feeding time: "Come on, Papa, we're going now!" Once in the studio, Mr. Driggs went straight as a homing dove to the punch bowl. His wife was giving everyone high handshakes and saying, "Pleased to meet you." Her face gleamed with heat and pleasure; her fat pearl earrings bobbed and trembled; dark crescents appeared on the mauve silk under her arms.
"Mr. Driggs and myself drove over to call last week, but your waiter said you weren't at home, although Mr. Driggs thought he saw you on the side porch," she said to Aunt Sarah. And her husband added: "Say, that waiter of yours certainly is a sobersides, ain't he? Couldn't get him to crack a smile. How about some punch for you ladies? Good for what ails you!"
The tea was being a success. By the relief she felt, Kate knew how she had dreaded it, how frightened she had been for fear people no longer liked them because Joe had borrowed from so many of them. But they had all come, they were all friendly, the tea was a success!
But it wasn't until that evening, after supper, that the real feeling of the party came to her, back in her old clothes, going through the small gate by the hydrant with a plate of cakes for Miss Smith. The dew-cooled air, the stars, insects tremulously calling, Miss Smith so appreciative, coming to the screen door, wiping her hands on her apron.
"Why didn't you come this afternoon, you bad thing? You promised."
"Oh, Mrs. Green, I said I'd try—but Matty had the earache"
"Now you always have some excuse, and I'm very mad at you, but I suppose I'll have to forgive you this time."
"Oh, my! what wonderful little cakes!"
"This little pink one, with the silver, has squish inside—be careful when you go to eat it. Mrs. Cuthbert got some on her new dress. I felt awfully. Miss Pyne tried to get it out with hot water, but I'm afraid she only made it worse. This is the kind they call mille feuelles—French; it means a thousand leaves, those little fine layers of pastry. This has r-r-rum in it!"
"My! I never saw anything like these! But then you always have everything so lovely!"
"Mr. Green brought these home. Look at the little kisses, made like mushrooms. Aren't they cunning?"
"Me, oh my! What next?"
"Your marguerites looked lovely, really lovely, Miss Smith. Lots of people spoke of them."
"Oh, them!"
"Isn't it a heavenly night? Look at all the stars!"
Miss Smith came out on the back porch and looked at the stars, obediently. So beautiful, so remote. Pussy was trying to get the lid off the garbage can again. Kate, going back to her house through air sweet and fresh as water, looked at the stars, too. And as she looked, her panoply of self-satisfaction fell away, leaving her small and alone, forlorn. What did it matter to this night of stars and dew that she and Joe had had a successful tea, that she had been "wonderful" about remembering poor Miss Smith? What did it matter to a sky full of burning worlds whether Joe and Kate and Jodie Green and Lizzie Kelly lived or died at 29 Chestnut Street? And she felt that she must reach her husband and her child, that somehow she, helpless as they, must protect them from the indifference of the perilous beautiful night, keep them safe until the morning.