discovery that the hotel cafe at the right of the reception-room was a
popular resort for men guests of the hotel, and his researches into
their pleasures led to an introduction to a Manhattan cocktail. He
returned to Maria's side an ardent convert to her theory that the hotel
was the pleasantest place in New York. Subsequently, as he sampled a
Martini, one or two men chatted with him for a moment, giving him a
delightful sense of easy association with his peers. Maria, in the mean
time, had formed a pleasing acquaintance with the parlor maid, and had
talked freely to several little children. It was with reluctance that
they tore themselves away from the corridor long enough to go in to
dinner.
The table d'hote dinner, served in another room, was much less
elaborate than the banquet of the night before, but neither of them
realized the difference. Good in itself, to them it was perfection, and
Maria recognized almost as old friends familiar faces of fellow hotel
guests at the tables around her. When the question of the theatre came
up she was distinctly chilling.
"We'll go if you want to, Henry," she said, "but the band's goin' to
play all evening, an' the maid said some of the young folks has got up
a dance in the little ball-room. Wouldn't you like to see it?"
Henry decided that he would. He had, in fact, no rabid wish to see a
play, and the prospect of piloting Maria safely to the centre of the
town and home was definitely strenuous. He drank another cocktail after
dinner, smoked a cigar with a Western travelling man, exchanged sage
views on politics with that gentleman, and happily spent the remainder
of the evening by his Maria's side, watching the whirling young things
in the small ball-room. The happiest of them were sad, indeed, compared
with Henry Smith.
The next morning the cheerful voice of the clerk greeted him as he came
from the dining-room.
"Where to-day, Mr. Smith?" inquired that affable youth. "How about the
Horse Show? You surely ought to look in on that." He wrote on a card
explicit directions for arriving at the scene of this diversion, and
Mr. Smith, gratefully accepting it, hastened to his bride's side. He
found her full of another project.
"Oh, Henry," she cried, "they's going to be a lecture here in the hotel
this mornin', by a lady that's been to Japan. All the money she gets
for tickets will go to the poor. I guess she'll ask as much as
twenty-five cents apiece, but I think we better go."
Sustained by a cocktail, and strengthened by the presence of his Maria,
Mr. Smith attended the lecture, cheerfully paying two dollars for the
privilege, but refraining from dampening his wife's joy by mentioning
the fact. In the afternoon he broached the Horse Show. Maria's face
paled. To her it meant an exaggerated county fair, with its attendant
fatigue.
"You go, Henry," she urged. "You jest go an' enjoy yourself. I feel too
tired--I really do. I'd rather stay home--here--an' rest. We don't
really have to do nothing we don't want to, do we?"
Honest Henry Smith, whose working-day in Clayton Centre began at five
in the morning and ended at six at night, and whose evenings were
usually spent in the sleep of utter exhaustion, found himself relaxing
deliciously under her words. It was good, very good, to rest, and to
know they didn't HAVE to do things unless they wished.
"I won't, neither, go alone," he announced. "I ain't anxious to go. I'd
ruther stay here with you. We'll go some other time."
The white-capped maid smiled as she passed them; the palms nodded as to
old friends. The seductive charms of the Berkeley corridors again
wrapped them round.
"Going to see some of the pictures to-day?" asked the clerk, on the
third morning, cheerfully doing his duty by the strangers as he
conceived it. "Better go to Central Park first and the Metropolitan
Museum, then to the private exhibitions. Here's the list. Take a
cross-town car to Fifth Avenue, and a 'bus to Eighty-first Street, and
after the Park a Fifth Avenue 'bus will drop you at the other places."
Apprehension settled over Henry Smith, rudely disturbing his
lotos-eater's sense of being. He felt almost annoyed by this
well-meaning but indefatigable young man who seemed to think folks
should be gadding all the time. His manner was unresponsive as he took
the addresses.
"I'll see what my wife says," he remarked, indifferently.
His wife said what he believed and hoped she would say.
"We ain't goin' home till to-morrow afternoon," she observed, "an' we
can see Central Park to-morrow mornin' if we want to. They's a woman
here that does up hair for fifty cents, an' I thought if yeh didn't
mind, Henry, I'd have her do mine--"
Henry urged her to carry out this happy inspiration. "She can't make
yeh look any nicer, though," he added, gallantly. Then, as Maria
surrendered herself and their room to the hairdresser's ministrations,
he visited the bar, chatted with his friend the clerk, and smoked a
good cigar. Afterward he selected a comfortable chair in the corridor
where he was to meet Maria, stretched his long legs, dozed, and found
it good to be alive.
A befrizzled Maria, whose scant hair stood out in startling Marcel
waves, confronted him at luncheon-time. A sudden inspiration shook him
to his depths.
"Don't you want to go down-town and have your picture took?" he urged.
"Let's have ours done together."
Maria was proof against even this lure. She had a better idea.
"They's a photograph man right here in the hotel," she chirped,
joyously. "He's next to the flower-shop, an' we can go right in through
that little narrow hall."
They went, subsequently carrying home with them as their choicest
treasure the cabinet photograph for which they had posed side by side,
with the excitement of New York life shining in their honest eyes. In
the evening the clerk suggested a concert.
"It's a fine one, at Carnegie Hall, right near here," he urged,
cheerfully, "and Sembrich is to sing, with the Symphony Orchestra. You
can get in for fifty cents if you don't mind sitting in the gallery.
You really ought to go, Mrs. Smith; you would enjoy it."
Mrs. Smith turned upon him an anxious eye.
"How far did you say 'twas?" she asked, warily.
"Oh, not ten minutes' ride. You take the car here at the corner--"
But the mention of the car blighted the budding purpose in Maria's soul.
"I feel real tired," she said, quickly, "but if my husband wants to
go--"
Her husband loudly disavowed any such aspiration.
"We got a long journey before us to-morrow," he said, "an' I guess we
better rest."
They rested in the Berkeley corridor, amid the familiar sights and
scenes. The following morning found them equally disinclined for
sight-seeing. Seated in their favorite chairs, they watched the throngs
of happy people who came and went around them. Henry had added to the
list of his acquaintances two more travelling men and the boy at the
news-counter. His wife had heard in detail the sad story of her
chambermaid's life, and a few facts and surmises about fellow-guests at
the hotel.
Maria drew a long sigh when, after they had paid their bill the next
day and bade farewell to the clerk and other new friends, they climbed
into the cab which was to take them to the station.
"My, but it was interestin'!" she said, softly; adding, with entire
conviction, "Henry, I 'ain't never had such a good time in my hull
life! I really 'ain't!"
"Neither have I," avowed Henry, truthfully. "Wasn't it jest bully!"
On the train a sudden thought occurred to Mrs. Smith.
"Henry," she began, uneasily, "s'pose any one asks what we've SEEN in
New York. What'll we tell 'em? You know, somehow we didn't seem t' git
time t' see much."
Henry Smith was equal to the emergency.
"We'll say we seen so much we can't remember it," he said, shamelessly.
"Don't you worry one bit about that, Maria Smith. I've always heard
that weddin' couples don't never really see nothin' on their weddin'
towers, anyhow--they gad an' gad, an' it don't do no good. We was wiser
not to try!"
X
THE CASE OF KATRINA
My memory of Katrina goes back to the morning when, at the tender age
of ten, she was violently precipitated into our classroom. The motive
power, we subsequently learned, was her brother Jacob, slightly older
than Katrina, whose nervous system had abruptly refused the ordeal of
accompanying her into the presence of the teacher. Pushing the door
ajar until the opening was just large enough to admit her, he thrust
her through, following her fat figure for a second with one anxious eye
and breathing audibly in his excitement. The next instant the cheerful
clatter of his hob-nailed boots echoed down the hall, followed by a
whoop of relief as he emerged upon the playground.
It was Katrina's bearing as she stood, thus rudely projected into our
lives, endeavoring to recover her equilibrium, and with thirty pairs of
eyes fixed unswervingly upon her, that won my heart and Jessica's.
Owing to a fervid determination of our teacher to keep us well in view,
we sat in the front row, directly facing her. Having, even in our
extreme youth, a constitutional distaste to missing anything, we
undoubtedly stared at Katrina longer and harder than any of the others.
We smiled, too, largely and with the innocent abandon of childhood; and
Katrina smiled back at us as if she also tasted a subtle flavor of the
joke, lost to cruder palates. Then she shifted her tiny school-bag from
one hand to the other, swept the room with a thoughtful glance, and
catching sight of frantic gestures I was making, obeyed them by walking
casually to an empty seat across from my own, where she sat down with
deepening dimples and an air of finality.
Several moments subsequently our teacher, Miss Merrill, aroused herself
from the trance into which she apparently had been thrown by the
expeditiousness with which this incident was accomplished, and coming
to Katrina's side, ratified the arrangement, incidentally learning the
new pupil's name and receiving from her hand a card, written by the
principal and assigning her to our special grade. But long before these
insignificant details were completed, Jessica and I had emptied
Katrina's bag, arranged her books in her desk, lent her a pencil she
lacked, indicated to her the boy most to be scorned and shunned, given
her in pantomime the exact standing of Miss Merrill in the regard of
her pupils, and accepted in turn the temporary loan of the spruce-gum
with which she had happily provided herself. At recess the acquaintance
thus auspiciously begun ripened into a warm friendship, and on the way
home from school that night we made a covenant of eternal loyalty and
love, and told one another the stories of our lives.
Jessica's and mine were distressingly matter-of-fact. We were both
supplied with the usual complement of parents, brothers, and sisters,
and, barring the melancholy condition that none of them, of course,
understood our complex natures, we had nothing unusual to chronicle.
But Katrina's recital was of an interest. She was, to begin with, an
orphan, living with two brothers and an old uncle in a large and gloomy
house we had often noticed as it stood with its faded back turned
coldly to Evans Avenue. Seemingly her pleasures and friends were few.
Once a month she went to the cemetery to put flowers on her father's
and mother's graves. Katrina herself seemed uncertain as to whether
this pilgrimage properly belonged in the field of pleasure or the stern
path of duty; but Jessica and I classified it at once, and dropped an
easy tear. We hoped her uncle was grim and stern, and did not give her
enough to eat. This, we felt, would have made the melancholy picture of
Katrina's condition most satisfyingly complete. But when we sought
eagerly for such details, Katrina, with shameless indifference to
dramatic possibilities, painted for us an unromantic, matter-of-fact
old German, kind to her when he remembered her existence, but submerged
in his library and in scientific research. We further learned that they
ate five meals a day at Katrina's home, with "coffee" and numerous
accompaniments in between. Moreover, Katrina's school-bag bulged at the
sides with German cakes of various shapes and composition. Our stern
disapproval of these was tempered in time by the fact that she freely
shared them with us. We were not surprised to discover also, though
these revelations came later, that the old house-keeper had difficulty
in keeping buttons on the child's frocks, and that Katrina was addicted
to surreptitious consumption of large cucumber pickles behind her
geography in school hours. These were small faults of an otherwise
beautiful nature, and stimulating to our youthful fancy in the
possibilities they suggested. Unquestioningly we accepted Katrina as a
being to be loved, pitied, and spared the ruder shocks of life.
Lovingly we sharpened her pencils, cheerfully we covered her books,
unenthusiastically but patiently we wrote her compositions; for
Katrina's mind worked slowly, and literature was obviously not her
forte. In return, Katrina blossomed and existed and shed on us the
radiance of a smile which illumined the dim school-room even as her
optimistic theories of life leavened our infant pessimism.
Time swept us on, out of childhood school-rooms into the dignified
shades of the academy, and Katrina developed from a fat little girl
with yellow braids into a plump young person with a rather ordinary
complexion, some taste in dress, and a really angelic smile. As a
possible explanation of her lack of interest in intellectual pursuits,
she explained to us that she continued to attend school only because
her uncle suggested nothing else. Whatever the reason, we were glad to
have her there; and though we still did most of her work, and she
carefully refrained from burdening her mind with academic knowledge,
the tie between us was strengthened, if anything, by the fact. Jessica
and I were already convinced that more was being put into us than two
small heads could hold. It was a grateful as well as a friendly task to
pass the surplus on to Katrina.
When we were seventeen, Jessica and I were told that we were to be sent
East to college, and Katrina's uncle, first stimulating thought by
pushing his spectacles back upon his brow, decided that she was already
sufficiently burdened by education, and that the useful arts of the
_Hausfrau_ should engage her attention forthwith. She should keep house
for him and her brothers, he announced, until she carried out her
proper mission in life by marrying and having babies. With this
oracular utterance he closed further discussion by burying himself once
more in his library, while Katrina came to tell us his decision.
She had looked forward to the pleasing social aspects of college life,
so she seemed slightly disappointed, did Katrina, and the end of her
nose held certain high lights. But aside from this evidence of sorrow
she made no protest against the peremptory masculine shaping of her
future. Stricken to the heart, Jessica and I stormed, begged, implored,
wept. Katrina opposed to our eloquence the impassive front of a pink
sofa-cushion.
"My uncle says it," she sighed, and was silent.
Jessica and I were not the natures to remain inactive at such a crisis.
We appealed to her brothers, who promptly declined to express any
opinion in the matter beyond a general conviction that their uncle was
right in all things. Baffled, we proceeded to beard the uncle in his
den. We found him wearing worn carpet slippers, a faded dressing-gown,
a serene expression, and an air of absorption in science which did not
materially lift at our approach. He listened to us patiently, however,
greeting our impassioned climaxes with long-drawn "ach so's," which
Jessica subsequently confided to me brought to birth in her the first
murderous impulse of a hitherto blameless life. Once we experienced
high hopes, when Jessica, whose conscience had seemingly not
accompanied us to the conference, dwelt feelingly on Katrina's unusual
intellectual achievements at the academy. Her uncle grew very grave at
this, and his "ach so's" rolled about in the bare old library like
echoes of distant thunder.
"Ach, that is bad," he sighed; "I did not think it; I was careless. I
should have taken her away sooner, is it not so? But she will quickly
forget--yes, yes." His face cleared. "It will do her no harm," he went
on. "It is not good that the women know too much. _Kirche, Kinder, und
Kuchen_--that is best for them. Ach, yes."
There being obviously little to gain by prolonging this painful
discussion, Jessica and I bore our outraged sensibilities to the
calming atmosphere of our homes. And in due time, our trunks being
packed and our farewells said, we departed to apply our thirsty lips to
the fountain of knowledge flowing at the Eastern college, leaving
Katrina to embark upon her domestic career.
Time and distance, we reminded Katrina, could be bridged by letters,
and Katrina responded nobly to the hint. She wrote every day at first,
and we consumed most of our waking hours in inditing our replies. There
seemed, indeed, little else to engage our attention in a community
which was experiencing great difficulty in recalling our names and was
in heathen darkness as to our brilliant achievements at the academy. As
time passed, however, we grew more busy. For a few months the necessity
of asserting our individuality to an extent which would at least
prevent our being trodden upon in the halls engaged our attention, and
after that a conscientious imitation of loved ones in the Junior class
occupied much time.
The great news of Katrina's engagement fanned into a fierce flame the
warm embers of our friendship. Oh, joy, oh romance, oh, young, young
love! We wrote Katrina forty pages of congratulations, and Katrina
coyly but fully replied. We could almost see her rosy blushes as she
bent over the pages of her long letters to us. Her future lord was a
German, a professor in the Lutheran college in our native city, and, it
seemed, though Katrina dwelt but lightly on the fact, somewhat past the
first fine flush of youth. So much Katrina naively conveyed to us, with
the further information that the wedding was to be early in February,
because Professor von Heller, the happy bridegroom, seemed
unaccountably to be in haste, and had bought a home, to which he was
anxious to take her.
There was much in all this to arouse our girlish enthusiasm; the charms
of our beloved Juniors paled into temporary insignificance as we
followed Katrina's love-affair. We could not go home for the wedding,
for reasons which seemed sufficient to the faculty, and this was a
bitter blow. But we spent more than we could afford on the
wedding-present we sent Katrina, and we still occupied most of our
waking hours writing to her.
The wedding, according to Katrina's account, was in the nature of a
brilliant social function. She found time during her honeymoon to write
us lengthy accounts of its splendors. She obviously had taken
considerable satisfaction in the presence of the entire faculty of
Professor von Heller's college and in the effect of her gown, which was
of white satin, with orange-blossoms. She also sent us a box of her
wedding-cake, some of which we ate and upon the rest of which we
conscientiously slumbered, experiencing horrible nightmares. Then, as
the weeks passed, her letters became less frequent, and we, in turn,
whirling in the maelstrom of spring examinations, gave to her paradise
the tribute of an occasional envious thought and respected her happy
silence.
When we went home for our summer vacation our first caller, most
properly, was Katrina. She was a subdued, rather chastened Katrina,
whose thoughtful, slightly puzzled expression might have suggested to
maturer minds that some, at least, of the vaunted joys of domestic life
had thus far escaped her. She urged us to come to her at once--the next
day, in fact--and we accepted her invitation with the alacrity it
deserved. We could not dine with her, we explained, as Jessica's sister
had thoughtlessly made another engagement for us; but we would come at
two and remain until after five, unbosoming ourselves of the year's
experiences in a long talk and listening to the wisdom that flowed from
Katrina's lips.
The next day was very beautiful, and Jessica and I, casting off a
haunting suspicion of our individual unimportance which we had not
quite succeeded in leaving behind us at college, expanded joyfully, and
lent ourselves to the charms of a sunlit world. The Lutheran fount of
knowledge was on the edge of the city, and Katrina's home was a short
distance beyond it. It was quite a country place, this home, over the
big, bare lawn of which an iron dog fiercely mounted guard. A
weather-beaten house confronted us, with a cold, forbidding expression.
We felt chilled as we opened the gate, but Katrina presented herself at
the first click of its latch, and her welcome was so hospitable and
eager that our temporary constraint vanished. Simultaneously we fell
upon her neck; loudly we assured her of our envious delight; noisily we
trooped into her hall. As we entered it, a large, cheerful room
confronted us. Through its open door we could see soft, leather-covered
easy-chairs and big windows overlooking distant hills. Jessica started
toward this, but Katrina checked her with a gentle touch.
"Not there," she said, gravely; "that is my husband's study, and he may
come in any moment. _This_ is our sitting-room."
She opened another door as she spoke, and we followed her dazedly
across the threshold into a space which, properly utilized, might have
made a comfortable single sleeping-room. It was quite seven feet by
nine and had one window, looking out on a dingy barn. The painted floor
was partly covered by a rug. Katrina's zither stood stiffly in a
corner, three chairs backed themselves sternly against the wall.
Katrina indicated two of these, and dropped on the third with her
radiant smile.
"We use this as the sitting-room," she remarked, casually, "because my
husband needs plenty of light and space when he works. Oh, my dear
girls!" she broke out; "you don't know how glad I am to see you! Tell
me everything that has happened since we met--all about college and
your friends there."
As she spoke, there was the sound of heavy footsteps in the hall,
followed by the noisy opening and shutting of a door. The pushing about
of chairs in the next room and the drop of a heavy body into one of
them suggested that the professor was at home and in his study. Katrina
corroborated this surmise.
"My husband," she murmured, with a little blush. "He is early to-day."
The words were drowned by a roar.
"Katrina," bellowed a bass voice of startling depth, "bring my
slippers!"
Katrina rose on the instant.
"You will excuse me?" she said, hastily. "Talk till I come back."
We did not talk, having some abysmal suspicion that if we talked we
might say something. I gazed steadily at a little German picture on the
wall--one I had given our hostess years before--and Jessica hummed a
college-song under her breath. We heard Katrina's feet fly up-stairs,
down again, and into the study. Almost immediately she returned to us,
her cheeks pink from her exertions.
"Now," she began, "I want to hear all about it--the nicest teachers,
the chums who have taken my place."
The voice in the next room boomed out again.
"Ka-tri-na!" it bellowed. "My pipe! It is up-stairs."
Katrina departed for the pipe. Jessica and I indulged in the luxury of
a long, comprehending gaze into the depths of each other's eyes.
Katrina returned, and we all talked at once; for five minutes
reminiscences and confidences flowed with the freedom of a mountain
stream after a thaw.
"Ka-tri-na!"
Katrina sat still. She was listening to the end of Jessica's best
story, but one willing foot went forward tentatively.
"Ka-tri-na!" Katrina should have heard that call though she lay with
folded hands beside her mother 'neath the church-yard mould.
"Katrina, get me Haeckel's _Wonders of Life!_"
Katrina got it, by the simple and effective process of going into the
room where the professor sat and taking it from its shelf. We heard the
soft murmur of her voice, fallowed by the rumble of his. When she
returned to us, Jessica finished her story in the chastened spirit
which follows such an interruption, and there were ten minutes of talk.
We forgot the bare little room; old memories softly enfolded us; the
Katrina we knew and loved dominated the situation.
"Ka-tri-na!"
Katrina's soft lips were not smiling now, but she rose at once, and
with a murmured apology left the room. We heard the suggestion of the
rest of her task as she closed the door.
"Where is that box of pens I got last week?"