Part 1

Chapter 14,325 wordsPublic domain

THE BOOK OF EVELYN

_By_ GERALDINE BONNER _Author of_ TOMORROW’S TANGLE, THE PIONEER RICH MEN’S CHILDREN, ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN

INDIANAPOLIS THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY PUBLISHERS

PRESS OF BRAUNWORTH & CO. BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.

THE BOOK OF EVELYN

I HAVE moved. I am in.

The household gods that have lain four years in storage are grouped round me, showing familiar faces. It’s nice of them not to have changed more, grown up as children do or got older like one’s friends. They don’t harmonize with the furniture--this is an _appartement meublé_--but I can melt them in with cushions and hangings.

It’s going to be very snug and cozy when I get settled. This room--the parlor--is a good shape, an oblong ending in a bulge of bay window. Plenty of sun in the morning--I can have plants. Outside the window is a small tin roof with a list to starboard where rain-water lodges and sparrows come to take fussy excited baths. Across the street stands a row of brownstone fronts, blank-visaged houses with a white curtain in every window. The faces of such houses are like the faces of the people who live in them. They tell you nothing about what’s going on inside. It’s a peculiarity of New York--after living in a house with an expressionless front wall you get an expressionless front wall yourself.

From the windows of the back room I look out on the flank of the big apartment-house that stands on the corner, and little slips of yard, side by side, with fences between. Among them ours has a lost or strayed appearance. Never did an unaspiring, city-bred yard look more homesick and out of place. It has a sun-dial in the middle, circled by a flagged path, and in its corners, sheltered by a few discouraged shrubs, several weather-worn stone ornaments. It suggests a cemetery of small things that had to have correspondingly small tombstones. I hear from Mrs. Bushey, the landlady, that a sculptress once lived on the lower floor and spent three hundred dollars lifting it out of the sphere in which it was born.

I am going to like it here. I am going to make myself like it, get out of the negative habit into the positive. That’s why I came back from Europe, that a sudden longing for home, for Broadway, and the lights along the Battery, and dear little Diana poised against the sky. Four years of pension tables and third-class railway carriages do not develop the positive habit. I was becoming negative to the point of annihilation. I wanted to be braced by the savage energies of my native city. And also I did want some other society than that of American spinsters and widows. The Europeans must wonder how the land of the free and the home of the brave keeps up its birth-rate-- But I digress.

When you have an income of one hundred and sixty-five dollars a month and no way of adding to it, are thirty-three and a widow of creditable antecedents, the difficulties of living in New York are almost insurmountable. If you were a pauper or a millionaire it would be an easy matter. They represent the upper and the nether millstones between which people like me are crushed.

And then your friends insist on being considered. I had a dream of six rooms on the upper West Side. “But the upper West Side, my dear! You might as well be in Chicago.” Then I had revolutionary longings for a tiny old house with no heat and a sloping roof in Greenwich Village-- “I could never go to see you there. They would stone the motor,” ended that. There is just one slice in the center of the city in which a poor but honest widow can live to the satisfaction of everybody but herself. So here I am in the decorous Seventies, between Park Avenue and Lexington, in an eighteen-foot dwelling with floors for light housekeeping.

To enter you go down three steps to a little front door that tries to keep up to the neighborhood by hiding its decrepitude behind an iron grill. That lets you into the smallest vestibule in the world, where four bells are ranged along the door-post and four letter-boxes cling to the wall. Out of this open two more doors, one that gives egress to a narrow flight of stairs without a hand-rail, and the other to the ground-floor apartment, inhabited, so Mrs. Bushey tells me, by a trained nurse and her aunt. There was a tailor there once, but Mrs. Bushey got him out-- “Cockroaches, water bugs, and then the sign! It lowered the tone of the house. A person like you,” Mrs. Bushey eyed me approvingly, “would never have stood for a tradesman’s sign.”

I murmured an assent. I always do when credited with exclusive tastes I ought to have and haven’t. It was the day I came to look the place over, and I was nervously anxious to make a good impression on Mrs. Bushey. Then we mounted a narrow stair that rose through a well to upper stories. As it approached the landing it took a spirited curve, as if in the hope of finding something better above. The stairway was dark and a faint thin scent of many things (I know it now to be a composite of cooking, gas leakage and cigars) remained suspended in the airless shaft.

“On this floor,” said Mrs. Bushey, turning on the curve, as if in the hope of finding something better up behind her, “the gas is never put out.”

I took that floor. I don’t know whether the gas decided it, or Mrs. Bushey’s persuasive manners, or an exhaustion that led me to look with favor upon anything that had a chair to sit on and a bed to sleep in. Anyway, I took it, and the next day burst in upon Betty Ferguson, trying to carry it off with a debonair nonchalance: “Well, I’ve got an apartment at last.”

Betty looked serious and asked questions: Was it clean? Did the landlady seem a proper person? Had I seen any of the other lodgers? Then dwelt on the brighter side: It’s not quite a block from Park Avenue. If you don’t like it you can find some excuse to break your lease. There _is_ a servant on the premises who will come in, clean up and cook you one good meal so you won’t starve. Well, it doesn’t sound so bad.

And now I’m in I think it’s even less bad than it sounded. The front room is going to make the impression. It is already getting an atmosphere, the individuality of a lady of uncultivated literary tastes is imposing itself upon the department-store background. The center table--mission style--is beginning to have an air, with Bergson in yellow paper covers and two volumes of Strindberg. No more of him for me after _Miss Juliet_, but he has his uses thrown carelessly on a table with other gentlemen of the moment. If I am ever written up in the papers I feel sure the reporters will say, “Mrs. Drake’s parlor gave every evidence of being the abode of a woman of culture and refinement.”

The back room (there are only two) is more intimate. I am going to eat there and also sleep. Friends may come in, however; for the bed, during the day, masquerades as a divan. A little group of my ancestors--miniatures and photographs of portraits--hangs on the wall and chaperons me. Between the two rooms stretches a narrow connecting neck of bathroom and kitchenette.

There is only one word that describes the kitchenette--it is cute. When I look at it with a gas stove on one side and tiers of shelves on the other, “cute” instinctively rises to my lips, and I feel that my country has enriched the language with that untranslatable adjective. No one has ever been able to give it a satisfactory definition, but if you got into my kitchenette, which just holds one fair-sized person, and found yourself able to cook with one hand and reach the dishes off the shelves with the other, you would get its full meaning.

Before the house was cut into floors the kitchenette must have been a cupboard. I wonder if a lady’s clothes hung in it or the best china was stored there. There is a delightful mystery about old houses and their former occupants. Haven’t I read somewhere that walls absorb impressions from the lives they have looked on and exhale them to the pleasure or detriment of later comers?

Last night, as I was reading in bed--a habit acquired at the age of twelve and adhered to ever since--I remembered this and wondered what the walls would exhale on me. The paper has a trailing design of roses on it, very ugly and evidently old. I wondered if the roses had bloomed round tragedy or comedy, or just that fluctuation between the two which makes up the lives of most of us--an alternate rise and fall, soaring upward to a height, dropping downward to a hollow.

Five years ago mine dropped to its hollow, and ever since has been struggling up to the dead level where it is now--the place where things come without joy or pain, the edge off everything. Thirty-three and the high throb of expectancy over, the big possibilities left behind. The hiring of two rooms, the hanging of a curtain, the placing of a vase--these are the things that for me must take the place that love and home and children take in other women’s lives.

I got this far and stopped. No, I wouldn’t. I came back from Europe to get away from that. I put out the light and cuddled down in the new bed. Quite a good bed if it is a divan, and the room is going to be fairly quiet. Muffled by walls I could hear the clanging passage of cars. And then far away it seemed, though it couldn’t have been, a gramophone, the Caruso record of _La Donna e Mobile_. What a fine swaggering song and what an outrageous falsehood! Woman is changeable--is she? That’s the man’s privilege. We, poor fools, haven’t the sense to do anything but cling, if not to actualities to memories. I felt tears coming--_that_ hasn’t happened for years. My memories don’t bring them, they only bring a sort of weary bitterness. It was the new surroundings, the loneliness, that did it. I stopped them and listened to the gramophone, and the wretched thing had begun on a new record, _Una Lagrima Furtiva_--a furtive tear!

With my own furtive tears, wet on the pillow, I couldn’t help laughing.

THERE is 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 impressionistic effect 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 for this. 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 once _you_ were 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.

It _was_ somewhat 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, are _Kitty O’Brien_ and _The 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 mysterious face 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 my married 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 and recognized 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 furnish the 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. I _will_ move the Morris chair.

III

LOVE of flowers is one of the gifts the fairies gave me in my cradle. It’s a great possession, fills so many blanks. You can forget you’ve got no baby of your own when you watch the flowers’ babies lifting their little faces to the sun.

I bought four plants at Bloomingdales and put them in the front window, a juniper bush, a Boston fern, a carrot fern and a rubber plant. I like the ferns best, the new shoots are so lovely, pushing up little green curly tops in the shelter of the old strong ones. I remind myself of Miss Lucretia Tox in _Dombey and Son_, with a watering can and a pair of scissors to snip off dead leaves. There’s one great difference between us--Miss Tox had a Mr. Dombey across the way. I’ve nothing across the way. The only male being that that discreet and expressionless row of houses has given up to my eyes is the young doctor opposite. He does the same thing every morning, runs down the steps with a bag and a busy air, walks rapidly to Lexington Avenue, then, when he thinks he’s out of sight, stands on the corner not knowing which way to go.