"Yes, they are very pleasant rooms," Juliet admitted, with the air of one
endeavouring to be polite. She sat upon a many-hued divan, and glanced
from the blue-and-yellow wall-paper to the green velvet chairs, the
dull-red carpet and the stiff "lace" curtains. "You get the afternoon sun,
and the view opposite isn't bad. The vestibule seemed to be well kept, and
I rang only three times before I made you hear."
"The janitor promised to fix that bell," said Judith hastily. "Oh, I know
the colour combinations are dreadful, but one can't help that in rented
rooms. Of course our things look badly with the ones that belong here. But
as soon as we can we are going to move into a still better place."
"Going to keep house?"
"No-o, not just yet." Judith hesitated. "You seem to think there's nothing
in the world to do but to keep house."
"I'm sure of it."
"I can't see why. A girl doesn't need to assume all the cares of life the
minute she marries. Why can't she keep young and fresh for a while?"
Juliet glanced toward a mirror opposite. "How old and haggard I must be
looking," she observed, with--it must be confessed--a touch of
complacency. The woman who could have seen that image reflected as her own
without complacency must have been indifferent, indeed.
"Of course, you manage it somehow--I suppose because Anthony takes such
care of you. But you wait till five years more have gone over your head,
and see if you're not tired of it."
"If I'm as tired of it as you are--" began Juliet, and stopped. "But
seriously, Judith, is it nothing to you to please Wayne?"
"Why, of course." Judith flushed. "But Wayne is satisfied."
"Are you sure of it?"
"Certainly. Oh, sometimes, when we go to see you, and you make things so
pleasant with your big fire and your good things to eat, he gets a spasm
of wishing we were by ourselves, but----"
Juliet shook her head. "Wayne doesn't say a word," she said, "and he's as
devoted to you as a man can be. But, Judith, if I know the symptoms, that
husband of yours is starving for a home, and--do I dare say it?"
Judith was staring out of the window at the ugly walls opposite. It was
her bedroom window, and the opposite walls were not six feet away.
"I suppose you dare say anything," she answered, looking as if she were
about to cry. "I'm sure I envy you, you're so supremely contented. I don't
think I was made to care for children."
"That might come," said Juliet softly. "I'm sure it would, Judith. As for
Wayne, if you could see the look on his face I've surprised there more
than once, when he had little Anthony, and he thought nobody noticed, it
would make your heart ache, dear. Don't deny him--or yourself--the best
thing that can happen to either of you. At least, don't deny it for lack
of a home. I'm sure I can't imagine Tony, Junior, in these rooms of yours.
They don't look," she explained, smiling, "exactly babyish."
She rose to go. She looked so young and fair and sweet as she spoke her
gentle homily that Judith, half doubting, half believing, admitted to
herself that of one thing there could be no question: Mrs. Anthony Robeson
envied nobody upon the face of the earth.
The visits of the Robesons to the various apartments which were in
rotation occupied by the Careys were few. Somehow it seemed much easier
and simpler for the pair who had no children, and no housekeeping to
hamper them, to run out into the suburbs than for their friends to get
into town. So the Careys came with ever increasing frequency, always
warmly welcomed, and enjoyed the hours within the little house so
thoroughly that in time the influence of the content they saw so often
began to have its inevitable effect.
"I've great news for you," said Anthony, coming home one March day, when
little Tony was nearing his second birthday. "It's about the Careys.
Guess."
"They are going to housekeeping."
"How did you know?"
"I didn't know, but Judith told me weeks ago she supposed she should have
to come to it. Have they found a house?"
"Carey thinks he has. Judith doesn't like the place, for about fifty good
and sufficient reasons--to her. He's trying to persuade her. He has an
option on it for ten days. He wants us to come out and look at it with
them."
"Where is it?"
"About as far east of the city as we are north. If to-morrow is a good day
I promised we would run out with them on the ten-fifteen. I suspect they
need us badly. Wayne looks like a man distracted. The great trouble, I
fancy, is going to be that Judith Dearborn Carey is still too much of a
Dearborn to be able to make a home out of anything. And Carey can't do it
alone."
"Indeed he can't, poor fellow. I never saw a man in my life who wanted a
home as badly as Wayne does. Let's do our best to help them."
"We will. But the only way to do it thoroughly is to make Judith over.
Even you can't accomplish that."
"There's hope, if she has agreed at all to trying the experiment," Juliet
declared, and thought about her friends all the rest of the day.
It was but five minutes' walk, from the suburban station where the party
got off next morning, to the house which Carey eagerly pointed out as the
four approached.
"There it is," he said. "Don't tell me what you think of it till you've
seen the whole thing. I know it doesn't look promising as yet, but I keep
remembering the photographs of your home, Robeson, before you went at it.
I'm inclined to think this can be made right, too."
Anthony and Juliet studied Carey's choice with interest. Judith looked on
dubiously. It was plain that if she should consent it would be against her
will.
"It looks so commonplace and ugly," she said aside to Juliet, as the four
completed the tour around the house and prepared to enter. "Your home is
old-fashioned enough to be interesting, but this is just modern enough to
be ugly. Look at that big window in front with the cheap coloured glass
across the top. What could you do with that?"
"Several things," said her friend promptly. "You might put in a row of
narrow casement windows across the front, with diamond panes. No--the
porch isn't attractive with all that gingerbread work, but you could take
it away and have something plain and simple. The general lines of the
house are not bad. It has been an old-fashioned house, Judith, but
somebody who didn't know how has altered it and spoiled it. People are
always doing that. There must have been a fanlight over this door. You
could restore it. And do you see that quaint round window in the gable?
Probably they looked at that and longed to do away with it, but happily
for you didn't know how."
Carey glanced curiously at his friend's wife, then anxiously at his own.
Juliet's face was alight with interest; Judith's heavy with
dissatisfaction. He wondered for the thousandth time what made the
difference. He would have given a year's salary to see Judith look
interested in this desire of his heart. It was hard to push a thing like
this against the will of the only person whose help he could not do
without. Carey was determined to have the home. Even Judith acknowledged
that she had not been happy in any of the seven apartments they had tried
during the less than four years of their married life. Carey believed with
all his heart that their only chance for happiness lay in getting away
from a manner of living which was using up every penny he could earn
without giving them either satisfaction or comfort. His salary would not
permit him to rent the sort of thing in the sort of neighbourhood which
Judith longed for. And if it should, he did not believe his wife would
find such environments any more congenial than the present one. Carey had
a theory that a woman, like a man, must be busy to be contented. He meant
to try it with his handsome, discontented wife.
"Oh, what a pretty hall!" cried Mrs. Robeson, with enthusiasm. "How lucky
that the vandals who made the house over didn't lay their desecrating
hands on that staircase."
"The hall looks gloomy to me," said Mrs. Carey, with a disapproving glance
at the walls.
"Of course--with that dingy brown paper and the woodwork stained that
hideous imitation of oak. You can scrape all that off, paint it white, put
on a warm, rich paper, restore your fanlight, and you'll have a
particularly attractive hall."
"I wish I could see things that are not visible, as you seem to be able
to," sighed Judith, looking unconvinced. "I never did like a long,
straight staircase like that. And there's not room to make a turn."
"You don't want to, do you? It's so wide and low it doesn't need to turn,
and the posts and rails are extremely good. How about this front room?"
She stood in the center of the front room, and the two men, watching her
vivid face as it glowed above her furs, noting the capable, womanly way
she had of looking at the best side of everything and discerning in a
flash of imagination and intuition what could be done with unpromising
material, appreciated her with that full masculine appreciation which it
is so well worth the trouble of any woman to win.
Judith was not blind; she saw little by little as Juliet went from room to
room--seizing in each upon its possibilities, ignoring its poorer features
except to suggest their betterment, giving her whole-hearted, friendly
counsel in a way which continually took the prospective homemakers into
consideration--that she herself was losing something immeasurably valuable
in not attempting to cultivate these same winning characteristics. And in
the same breath Judith was forced to admit to herself that she did not
know how to begin.
"There is really a very pretty view from the dining-room," she said, as a
first effort at seeing something to admire. Both Juliet and Anthony agreed
to this statement with a cordiality which came very near suggesting that
it was a relief to find Mrs. Carey on the optimistic side of the
discussion even in this small detail. As for Carey, he looked so surprised
and grateful that Judith's heart smote her with a vigour to which she was
unaccustomed.
"I suppose you could use this room as a sort of den?" she was prompted to
suggest to her husband; and such a delighted smile illumined Carey's face
that the sight of it was almost pathetic to his friends, who understood
his situation rather better than he did himself. In his pleasure Carey put
his arm about his wife's shoulders.
"Couldn't I, though?" he agreed enthusiastically. "And you could use it
for a retreat while I was away for the day."
"A retreat from what? Too much excitement?" began Judith, the old habit of
scorn of everything which was not of the city returning upon her
irresistibly. But it chanced that she caught Juliet's eyes, unconsciously
wearing such an expression of solicitude to see her friend complaisant in
this matter which meant so much, that Judith hurriedly followed her ironic
question with the more kindly supplement: "But doubtless I should have
plenty, and be glad to get away."
"You certainly would," asserted Anthony. "We never guessed how much there
would be to occupy us in the country, but there seems hardly time to write
letters. Nobody can believe, till he tries, how much pleasure there is in
wheedling a garden into growing, nor how well the labour makes him sleep
o' nights."
"Yes--I think I could sleep here," said Carey, and passed a hand over a
brow which was aching at that very moment. "I haven't done that
satisfactorily for six months."
"You'll do it here," Anthony prophesied confidently. "It's a fine air with
a good breath of the salt sea in it, which we don't get. Your sleeping
rooms are all well aired and lighted--a thing you don't always find in
more pretentious houses. And when the paint and paper go on you'll own
yourselves surprised at the transformation. I was never so astonished in
my life as I was at the change in the little bedroom in our house which
has that pale yellow-and-white stripe on the wall. It was a north room,
and the old wall was a forlorn slate, like a thundercloud. My little
artist here, with her eye for colours, instantly announced that she would
get the sunshine into that room. And so she did--with no more potent a
charm than that fifteen-cent paper and a fresh coat of white paint."
Carey looked at Juliet with longing in his eye. He wanted to ask her to
supervise the alterations in his purchase, if he should make it. But he
remembered other occasions when he had held the sayings and doings of Mrs.
Robeson before the eyes of Mrs. Carey with disastrous result, and he dared
not make the suggestion. He hoped, however, that Judith might be inclined
to ask the assistance of her friend, and himself hinted at it, cautiously.
But Judith, beyond inquiring what Juliet thought of certain possible
changes, seemed inclined to shoulder her own responsibilities.
Anthony left his wife upon the home-bound train, to return to his work;
the Careys accompanied him, so that he had no chance to talk things over
until he came home to dinner at night. But when he saw Juliet again almost
her first words showed him where her thoughts were.
"Tony, I can't get those people off my mind. Do you suppose they will ever
make a home out of anything?"
"They haven't much genius for utilizing raw material, I'm very much
afraid," Anthony responded thoughtfully. "Carey has the will, and he can
furnish a moderate amount of funds, but whether Judith can furnish
anything but objections and contrariety I don't dare to predict. If her
heart were in it I should have more hope of her. There's one thing I can
tell her. If she doesn't set her soul to the giving the old boy a taste of
peace and rest she'll have him worn out before his time. A fellow who
doesn't know how it feels to sleep soundly, and whose head bothers him
half the time, needs looking after. He's a slave to his office desk, and
needs far more than an active chap like me to get out of the city as much
as he can."
"Yes, he's worried and restless, Tony. He's so devoted to Judith and so
anxious to make her happy, her dissatisfaction rests on him like a weight.
Don't you see that every time you see them together?"
"Every time--and more plainly. What's the matter with her anyhow, Julie?
She seemed promising enough as a girl. You certainly found enough in her
to make you two congenial. She's no more like you than--electric light is
like sunshine," said Anthony, picking up the simile with a laugh and a
glance of appreciation.
"Judith shines in the surroundings she was born and brought up in, misses
them, and doesn't know how to adapt herself to any others. She ought to
have been the wife of some high official--she could entertain royally and
have everybody at her feet."
"Magnificent characteristics, but mighty unavailable in the present
circumstances. It carries out my electric-light comparison. I prefer the
sunlight--and I have it.--Poor Carey!"
"We'll hope," said Juliet. "And if we have the smallest chance to help,
we'll do it."
But, as Anthony had anticipated, there was small chance to help. Meeting
Carey a fortnight later, Anthony inquired after the new home, and Carey
replied with apparent lack of enthusiasm that the house had been leased
for a term of three years, with refusal of the purchase at the expiration
of the time. He explained that Judith had been unwilling to burn her
bridges by buying the place outright, and that he thought perhaps the
present plan was the better one--under these conditions. But the fact that
the house was not their own made it seem unwise to expend very much upon
alterations beyond those of paint and paper. With the prospect of a sale
the owner had unwillingly consented to replace the gingerbread porch with
one in better style, but refused to do more. The big window, with its
abominable topping of cheap coloured glass, was to remain for the
present.
"And I think this whole arrangement is bound to defeat my purpose," said
Carey unhappily. "The very changes we can't afford to make in a rented
house are the ones Judith needs to have made to reconcile her to the
experiment. She says she feels ill every time she comes to the house and
sees that window. She wants a porcelain sink in the kitchen. She would
like speaking-tubes and a system of electric bells. We're to have a
servant--if we can find her. We've put green paper on all the downstairs
rooms, and it turns out the wrong green. I wanted a sort of corn-colour
that looked more cheerful, but it seems green is the only thing. I don't
know what's the matter with me. Perhaps I'm bilious. Green seems to be all
right in your house, but in mine it makes me want to go outdoors."
"That's precisely what you should do," Anthony advised cheerfully. "Get
outdoors all you can. Start your garden. Mow your lawn yourself. Make over
that gravel path to your front door."
"I've only evenings," objected Carey. "And we're not settled yet. The
paper's only just on. We haven't moved. We're buying furniture. We bought
a sideboard yesterday. It cost so much we had to get a cheaper range for
the kitchen than seemed desirable, but Judith liked the sideboard so well
I was glad to buy it. I don't know when we shall get to living there
permanently. This furnishing business knocks me out. We don't seem to know
what we want. I'd like--" he hesitated--"I hoped Mrs. Robeson might be
able to give us the advantage of her experience, but it turns out that
Judith has a sort of pride in doing it herself, and of course--I presume
you made some mistakes yourselves, eh?" He suggested this with eagerness.
"Oh, of course," agreed Anthony readily, though he wondered what they
were, and inwardly begged Juliet's pardon for this answer, given out of
masculine sympathy with his friend's helplessness. "You'll come out all
right," he hastily assured Carey. "Once you are living in the new place
things will adjust themselves. Keep up your courage. Your daily walk to
and from the train will do wonders. Lack of exercise will make a rainbow
look gloomy to a fellow. I think you've great cause for rejoicing that
Judith has agreed to try the experiment at all. And as with all
experiments, you must be patient while it works itself out."
"That's so," agreed Carey, a gleam of hope in his eyes; and Anthony got
away. But by himself the happier man shook his head doubtfully. "Where
everything depends on the woman," he said to himself, "and you've married
one that her Maker never fashioned for domestic joys, you're certainly up
against a mighty difficult proposition!"