I had written several couplets imploring the protection of the gods
for the Lady of the Lane, and these I had sketched upon a large sheet
of cardboard the better to scrutinize them. And thereby hangs the
saddest of revelations. My friend the architect had sent me a number
of advertisements with a request that I should persuade Banzai to
attach them to the adjacent landscape. Returning from a tramp I beheld
Olive (as I shall not scruple to call her) studying a placard on a
telephone-post in the lane a little beyond her bungalow. It struck me
as odd that she should be so interested in a mere advertisement of
bungalows, when she was already cosily domiciled in the prettiest one
the addition boasted. She laughed aloud, then turned guardedly, saw me,
and marched demurely home without so much as glancing a second time in
my direction.
After she had tripped up the steps and vanished I saw the grievous
thing that Banzai had done. By some inadvertence he had thrust the
card bearing my verses among the advertisements, and with all the
posts and poles and tree-boxes in Christendom to choose from, he had
with unconscious malevolence nailed my couplets to the telephone-pole
nearest the Manderson bungalow. It was an unpardonable atrocity, the
enormity of which I shall not extenuate by suppressing the verses:
“Spirits that guard all lovely things
Bend o’er this path thy golden wings.
Shield it from storms and powers malign:
Make stars and sun above it shine.
May none pass here on evil bent:
Bless it to hearts of good intent,
And when (like some bright catch of song
One hears but once though waiting long)
Lalage suddenly at the door
Views the adoring landscape o’er,
O swift let friendly winds attend
And faithful to her errands bend!
Then when adown the lane she goes
Make leap before her vine and rose!
From elfin land bring Ariel
To walk beside and guard her well.
Defend her, pray, from faun and gnome
Till through the Lane she wanders home!”
It was bad enough to apostrophize my neighbor’s wife in song; but to
publish my infamy to the world was an even more grievous sin. I tore
the thing down, bore it home, and thrust it into the kitchen range
before the eyes of the contrite Banzai. Across the way Olive played,
and I thought there was mockery in her playing.
Realism is, after all, on much better terms with Romance than the
critics would have us believe. If Manderson had not thawed sufficiently
to borrow the realistic monkey-wrench which Banzai used on our
lawn-mower, and if Olive had not romantically returned it a week
later with a card on which she had scribbled “Many apologies for the
long delay,” I might never have discovered that she was not in fact
Manderson’s wife but his sister. Hers was the neatest, the best-bred of
cards, and bore the name incontrovertibly----
+--------------------------------+
| |
| |
| MISS OLIVE MANDERSON |
| |
| 44 LANDOR LANE |
+--------------------------------+
I throw this to the realists that they may chortle over it in the
way of their grim fraternity. Were I cursed with the least taint of
romanticism I should not disclose her maiden state at this point, but
hold it for stirring dramatic use at the moment when, believing her to
be the wife of the mournful tile-grate man, I should bid her good-by
and vanish forever.
The moment that card reached me by the hand of her housemaid she was
playing a Chopin polonaise, and I was across the lane and reverently
waiting at the door when the last chord sounded. It was late on an
afternoon at the threshold of October, but not too cool for tea _al
fresco_. When the wind blew chill from the lake she disappeared, and
returned with her hands thrust into the pockets of a white sweater.
It was amazing how well we got on from the first. She explained herself
in the fewest words. Her brother’s wife had died two years before, and
she had helped to establish a home for him in the hope of mitigating
his loneliness. She spoke of him and the child with the tenderest
consideration. He had been badly broken by his wife’s death, and was
given to brooding. I accused myself bitterly for having so grossly
misjudged him as to think him capable of harshness toward the fair
lady of his bungalow. He came while I still sat there and greeted me
amiably, and when I left we were established on the most neighborly
footing.
Thenceforth my work prospered. Olive revealed, with the nicest
appreciation and understanding of my needs, the joys and sorrows of
suburban bungalowhood. The deficiencies of the trolley service, the
uncertainties of the grocer’s delivery she described in the aptest
phrases, her buoyant spirit making light of all such vexations.
The manifold resources and subterfuges of bungalow housekeeping were
unfolded with the drollest humor. The eternal procession of cooks,
the lapses of the neighborhood hired man, the fitfulness of the
electric light--all such tragedies were illuminated with her cheery
philosophy. The magazine article that I had planned expanded into a
discerning study of the secret which had baffled and lured me, as to
the flowering of the bungalow upon the rough edges of the urban world.
The aspirations expressed by the upright piano, the perambulator, the
new book on the arts-and-crafts table, the card-case borne through
innumerable quiet lanes--all such phenomena Olive elucidated for my
instruction. The shrewd economies that explained the occasional theatre
tickets; the incubator that robbed the grocer to pay the milliner; the
home-plied needle that accounted for the succession of crisp shirt
waists--into these and many other mysteries Olive initiated me.
Sherwood Forest suddenly began to boom, and houses were in demand.
My architect friend threatened me with eviction, and to avert the
calamity I signed a contract of purchase, which bound me and my heirs
and assigns forever to certain weekly payments; and, blithe opportunist
that I am, I based a chapter on this circumstance, with the caption
“Five Dollars a Month for Life.” I wrote from notes supplied by Olive a
dissertation on “The Pursuit of the Lemon”--suggested by an adventure
of her own in search of the fruit of the _citrus limonum_ for use in
garnishing a plate of canned salmon for Sunday evening tea.
Inspired by the tender, wistful autumn days I wrote verses laboriously,
and boldly hung them in the lane in the hope of arresting my Rosalind’s
eye. One of these (tacked to a tree in a path by the lake) I here
insert to illustrate the plight to which she had brought me:
“At eve a line of golden light
Hung low along the west;
The first red maple bough shone bright
Upon the woodland’s breast.
The wind blew keen across the lake,
A wave mourned on the shore;
Earth knew an instant some heartache
Unknown to earth before.
The wandering ghosts of summers gone
Watched shore and wood and skies;
The night fell like a shadow drawn
Across your violet eyes.”
V
Olive suffered my rhyming with the same composure with which she met
the unpreluded passing of a maid of all work, or the ill-natured
smoking of the furnace on the first day it was fired. She preferred
philosophy to poetry, and borrowed Nietzsche from the branch library.
She persuaded me that the ladies of the bungalows are all practical
persons, and so far as I am concerned, Olive fixed the type. It had
seemed to me, as I viewed her comings and goings at long range, that
she commanded infinite leisure; and yet her hours were crowded with
activities. I learned from her that cooks with diplomas are beyond
the purses of most bungalow housekeepers; and as Olive’s brother’s
digestive apparatus was most delicate she assumed the responsibility
of composing cakes and pastries for his pleasure. With tea (and we
indulged in much teaing) she gave me golden sponge-cake of her own
making which could not have failed to delight the severest Olympian
critic. Her sand tarts established a new standard for that most
delectable item of the cook-book. She ironed with her own hands the
baby’s more fragile frocks. Nor did such manual employments interfere
in any way whatever with the delicacy of her touch upon the piano. She
confided to me that she made a practice of reviewing French verbs at
the ironing-board with a grammar propped before her. She belonged to
a club which was studying Carlyle’s _French Revolution_, and she was
secretary of a musical society--formed exclusively of the mistresses
of bungalows, who had nobly resolved to devote the winter to the study
of the works of John Sebastian Bach.
It gradually became clear that the romance of the American bungalow was
reinforced and strengthened by a realism that was in itself romance,
and I was immensely stimulated by this discovery. It was refreshing to
find that there are, after all, no irreconcilable differences between
a pie well made and a Chopin polonaise well played. Those who must
quibble over the point may file a demurrer, if they so please, with the
baby asleep in the perambulator on the nearest bungalow veranda, and
the child, awaking, will overrule it with a puckered face and a cry
that brings mama on the run with Carlyle in her hand.