“We must simply look on it as a--a lark!” said Mrs. De Haaven,
resolutely. But her voice was not very steady, and her smile was
somewhat strained, for in her heart she saw this, not as a lark, but as
something very close to a tragedy.
“It’s wonderfully light and airy,” her sister Rose began.
This was true; a fresh sea breeze went blowing through the rooms,
fluttering the curtains and stirring the dark hair on Rose’s temples.
The tiny house was sweet with sun and salt wind. Both Mrs. De Haaven and
her sister could appreciate this, and they were sternly determined to
appreciate every possible good point about their new home.
But--it was so tiny, so bare, so terribly strange; a sitting room, a
bedroom, and a kitchen, divided by partitions which did not reach to the
unstained rafters; painted floors, badly scuffed, the queerest
collection of scarred, weather-beaten furniture.
“It will be like--camping out!” Mrs. De Haaven decided.
The trouble was, that neither of them had had any sort of experience in
camping out, and, what is more, had never desired any such experience.
They had led the most casual, pleasant existence; when they had wanted
to be in the city, they had occupied Mrs. De Haaven’s charming little
flat; when it occurred to them that they would enjoy the country, they
had gone out to the old De Haaven farm on Long Island; if the impulse
seized them to travel, travel they did, in a comfortable and leisurely
fashion.
Wherever they had been, in town or in the country, in Paris, in Cairo,
in Nice, there always had been plenty of people about to do all the
disagreeable and difficult things for them, and to do them willingly,
because not only had the two ladies paid well for all services rendered
them, but they were polite, kind and appreciative.
And now, with a jolt and a jar, that smooth-moving existence had
stopped. Their lawyer, who had had complete charge of their nice little
fortune inherited from their father, had either done something terrible,
or something terrible had happened to him. They preferred, in charity,
to believe the latter, and anyhow, it did not matter.
The money had dwindled down to almost nothing, the flat was sublet, the
farm rented, and the poor ladies had taken this beach bungalow on Staten
Island for the summer. They took it because it was cheap, and because it
was their tradition that one had to leave the city in the summer, and
because they hoped in this obscure little place to be let alone, to get
accustomed to their new life in peace.
So here they were in their new home, all paid for, all furnished, all
ready for them to begin living in. It was certainly quiet enough, yet
somehow it did not impress Mrs. De Haaven as being peaceful; on the
contrary, there was something alarming, almost terrible, in the
quietness.
Nobody was doing anything or preparing anything for them; nothing would
be done until she and Rose did it; the house simply stood there, waiting
for them to begin. How did one begin?
She was a little shocked with Rose for turning her back on the house and
sitting down on the veranda railing.
“Oh, Rose!” she said. “Shouldn’t we set to work--get things in order?”
But Rose only reached out and caught her sister by the arm and pulled
her down beside her.
“Look, darling!” she remarked. “That is _something_, isn’t it?”
“That” was the sea before them--the North Atlantic, which rolled into
the bay and broke upon the sands. They had looked upon the Pacific, upon
the blue Mediterranean; they had seen many harbors, many beaches, beyond
comparison lovelier than this flat shore.
But this, after all, was the great salt sea, the very source of life,
and the sun made it glitter, and the wind blew off it, fresh and
invigorating. It _was_ something.
There they sat, with their arms about each other, such forlorn and
lovely creatures! Nina De Haaven, dark and delicate; Rose taller,
stronger, with a beautiful eagerness in her face, as if she waited in
trust and delight for whatever her destiny might bring. She was
twenty-four, and she had never really feared anything in her life.
Rose was not afraid, now, of this new existence, only a little puzzled,
because she would have to be the one to start it. Nina was five years
older, but she was too gentle, too easily rebuffed; she had never quite
trusted life again after her beloved husband died.
“There’s dinner,” thought Rose. “I’m sure they don’t supply food with
furnished bungalows. I’ll have to buy it and cook it. Mercy!”
She had to do it, though, and she would.
“Bread and butter,” she also thought, “and eggs and milk, and tea and
coffee, and sugar and spice. Everything goes in pairs! Coal and wood--”
Nina, less abstracted, started up.
“Somebody’s knocking somewhere!” she said. “I believe it’s our own back
door. I’ll go.” And she vanished into the house. Rose followed promptly,
and found her in the little kitchen, stooping over a basket on the
table.
“It must be the dinner!” Nina declared, very much pleased. “There are
all sorts of things here.”
“How can it be the dinner?” Rose asked. She, too, bent over the basket
and was enchanted by the varied assortment therein.
“Perhaps the tradespeople do that when some one new moves in,” Mrs. De
Haaven suggested. “As a sort of sample. A boy just left it without a
word.”
Rose shook her head.
“I don’t think that’s likely,” she said. “I’m afraid it must be a
mistake. But--” She was busy cataloguing these household things in her
mind. Salt--she hadn’t thought of that; and a box of bacon, and matches.
“I wish I’d kept house when Julian was alive,” said Mrs. De Haaven, “and
not lived in hotels. Then I shouldn’t be so--useless.”
Rose gave her a little shake.
“Encumberer of the earth!” she said, smilingly. “The thing is--whether I
dare to pretend to be as artless as you really are.”
“What do you mean, Rose?”
“I want to keep that basket!”
“Oh, Rose! When you think it’s a mistake!”
“Yes!” said Rose, firmly. “I’ll pay for it, of course, when I find out
who it belongs to. But it’s such a wonderful collection. I want it!
Here’s a package of pancake flour, and it tells you exactly how to make
them. And the tin of coffee has directions on it, too. We could get on
indefinitely, with pancakes and coffee.”
“It would be terrible for our complexions,” Nina objected.
“We can’t afford complexions, any more,” said Rose. And she began
unpacking the basket, setting the tins and packages in neat rows on the
dresser. The effect delighted them both; they were beginning to feel
really at home now.