JUNE MOONLIGHT, AND A NEW BOARDINGHOUSE
There was a week in which to scurry about for a new home. The days
scampered by, tripping over one another in their haste. My sleeping
hours were haunted by nightmares of landladies and impossible
boarding-house bedrooms. Columns of “To Let, Furnished or Unfurnished”
ads filed, advanced, and retreated before my dizzy eyes. My time after
office hours was spent in climbing dim stairways, interviewing
unenthusiastic females in kimonos, and peering into ugly bedrooms
papered with sprawly and impossible patterns and filled with the odors
of dead-and-gone dinners. I found one room less impossible than the
rest, only to be told that the preference was to be given to a man who
had “looked” the day before.
“I d’ruther take gents only,” explained the ample person who carried
the keys to the mansion. “Gents goes early in the morning and comes in
late at night, and that’s all you ever see of ’em, half the time. I’ve
tried ladies, an’ they get me wild, always yellin’ for hot water to
wash their hair, or pastin’ handkerchiefs up on the mirr’r or wantin’
to butt into the kitchen to press this or that. I’ll let you know if
the gent don’t take it, but I got an idea he will.”
He did. At any rate, no voice summoned me to that haven for gents only.
There were other landladies—landladies fat and German; landladies lean
and Irish; landladies loquacious (regardless of nationality);
landladies reserved; landladies husbandless, wedded, widowed, divorced,
and willing; landladies slatternly; landladies prim; and all hinting of
past estates wherein there had been much grandeur.
At last, when despair gripped me, and I had horrid visions of my trunk,
hat-box and typewriter reposing on the sidewalk while I, homeless, sat
perched in the midst of them, I chanced upon a room which commanded a
glorious view of the lake. True, it was too expensive for my slim
purse; true, the owner of it was sour of feature; true, the room itself
was cavernous and unfriendly and cold-looking, but the view of the
great, blue lake triumphed over all these, although a cautious inner
voice warned me that that lake view would cover a multitude of sins. I
remembered, later, how she of the sour visage had dilated upon the
subject of the sunrise over the water. I told her at the time that
while I was passionately fond of sunrises myself, still I should like
them just as well did they not occur so early in the morning. Whereupon
she of the vinegar countenance had sniffed. I loathe landladies who
sniff.
My trunk and trusty typewriter were sent on to my new home at noon,
unchaperoned, for I had no time to spare at that hour of the day. Later
I followed them, laden with umbrella, boxes, brown-paper parcels, and
other unfashionable moving-day paraphernalia. I bumped and banged my
way up the two flights of stairs that led to my lake view and my bed,
and my heart went down as my feet went up. By the time the cavernous
bedroom was gained I felt decidedly quivery-mouthed, so that I dumped
my belongings on the floor in a heap and went to the window to gaze on
the lake until my spirits should rise. But it was a gray day, and the
lake looked large, and wet and unsociable. You couldn’t get chummy with
it. I turned to my great barn of a room. You couldn’t get chummy with
that, either. I began to unpack, with furious energy. In vain I turned
every gas jet blazing high. They only cast dim shadows in the murky
vastness of that awful chamber. A whole Fourth of July fireworks
display, Roman candles, sky-rockets, pin-wheels, set pieces and all,
could not have made that room take on a festive air.
As I unpacked I thought of my cosy room at Knapfs’, and as I thought I
took my head out of my trunk and sank down on the floor with a satin
blouse in one hand, and a walking boot in the other, and wanted to
bellow with loneliness. There came to me dear visions of the friendly
old yellow brocade chair, and the lamplight, and the fireplace, and
Frau Nirlanger, and the Pfannkuchen. I thought of the aborigines. In my
homesick mind their bumpy faces became things of transcendent beauty. I
could have put my head on their combined shoulders and wept down their
blue satin neckties. In my memory of Frau Knapf it seemed to me that I
could discern a dim, misty halo hovering above her tightly wadded hair.
My soul went out to her as I recalled the shining cheek-bones, and the
apron, and the chickens stewed in butter. I would have given a year out
of my life to have heard that good-natured, “Nabben’.” One aborigine
had been wont to emphasize his after-dinner arguments with a toothpick
brandished fiercely between thumb and finger. The brandisher had always
annoyed me. Now I thought of him with tenderness in my heart and
reproached myself for my fastidiousness. I should have wept if I had
not had a walking boot in one hand, and a satin blouse in the other. A
walking boot is but a cold comfort. And my thriftiness denied my tears
the soiling of the blouse. So I sat up on my knees and finished the
unpacking.
Just before dinner time I donned a becoming gown to chirk up my
courage, groped my way down the long, dim stairs, and telephoned to Von
Gerhard. It seemed to me that just to hear his voice would instill in
me new courage and hope. I gave the number, and waited.
“Dr. von Gerhard?” repeated a woman’s voice at the other end of the
wire. “He is very busy. Will you leave your name?”
“No,” I snapped. “I’ll hold the wire. Tell him that Mrs. Orme is
waiting to speak to him.”
“I’ll see.” The voice was grudging.
Another wait; then—“Dawn!” came his voice in glad surprise.
“Hello!” I cried, hysterically. “Hello! Oh, talk! Say something nice,
for pity’s sake! I’m sorry that I’ve taken you away from whatever you
were doing, but I couldn’t help it. Just talk please! I’m dying of
loneliness.”
“Child, are you ill?” Von Gerhard’s voice was so satisfyingly
solicitous. “Is anything wrong? Your voice is trembling. I can hear it
quite plainly. What has happened? Has Norah written—”
“Norah? No. There was nothing in her letter to upset me. It is only the
strangeness of this place. I shall be all right in a day or so.”
“The new home—it is satisfactory? You have found what you wanted? Your
room is comfortable?”
“It’s—it’s a large room,” I faltered. “And there’s a—a large view of
the lake, too.”
There was a smothered sound at the other end of the wire. Then—“I want
you to meet me down-town at seven o’clock. We will have dinner
together,” Von Gerhard said, “I cannot have you moping up there all
alone all evening.”
“I can’t come.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to so very much. And anyway, I’m much more cheerful
now. I am going in to dinner. And after dinner I shall get acquainted
with my room. There are six corners and all the space under the bed
that I haven’t explored yet.”
“Dawn!”
“Yes?”
“If you were free to-night, would you marry me? If you knew that the
next month would find you mistress of yourself would you—”
“Ernst!”
“Yes?”
“If the gates of Heaven were opened wide to you, and they had
‘Welcome!’ done in diamonds over the door, and all the loveliest angel
ladies grouped about the doorway to receive you, and just beyond you
could see awaiting you all that was beautiful, and most exquisite, and
most desirable, would you enter?”
And then I hung up the receiver and went in to dinner. I went in to
dinner, but not to dine. Oh, shades of those who have suffered in
boarding-houses—that dining room! It must have been patterned after the
dining room at Dotheboys’ hall. It was bare, and cheerless, and
fearfully undressed looking. The diners were seated at two long,
unsociable, boarding-housey tables that ran the length of the room, and
all the women folks came down to dine with white wool shawls wrapped
snugly about their susceptible black silk shoulders. The general effect
was that of an Old People’s Home. I found seat after seat at table was
filled, and myself the youngest thing present. I felt so criminally
young that I wondered they did not strap me in a high chair and ram
bread and milk down my throat. Now and then the door would open to
admit another snuffly, ancient, and be-shawled member of the company. I
learned that Mrs. Schwartz, on my right, did not care mooch for shteak
for breakfast, aber a leedle l’mb ch’p she likes. Also that the elderly
party on my left and the elderly party on my right resented being
separated by my person. Conversation between E. P. on right, and E. P.
on left scintillated across my soup, thus:
“How you feel this evening Mis’ Maurer, h’m?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“No wonder you got rheumatism. My room was like a ice-house all day.
Yours too?”
“I don’t complain any more. Much good it does. Barley soup again? In my
own home I never ate it, and here I pay my good money and get four time
a week barley soup. Are those fresh cucumbers? M-m-m-m. They haven’t
stood long enough. Look at Mis’ Miller. She feels good this evening.
She should feel good. Twenty-five cents she won at bridge. I never seen
how that woman is got luck.”
I choked, gasped, and fled.
Back in my own mausoleum once more I put things in order, dragged my
typewriter stand into the least murky corner under the bravest gas jet
and rescued my tottering reason by turning out a long letter to Norah.
That finished, my spirits rose. I dived into the bottom of my trunk for
the loose sheets of the book-in-the-making, glanced over the last three
or four, discovered that they did not sound so maudlin as I had feared,
and straightway forgot my gloomy surroundings in the fascination of
weaving the tale.
In the midst of my fine frenzy there came a knock at the door. In the
hall stood the anemic little serving maid who had attended me at
dinner. She was almost eclipsed by a huge green pasteboard box.
“You’re Mis’ Orme, ain’t you? This here’s for you.”
The little white-cheeked maid hovered at the threshold while I lifted
the box cover and revealed the perfection of the American beauty buds
that lay there, all dewy and fragrant. The eyes of the little maid were
wide with wonder as she gazed, and because I had known flower-hunger I
separated two stately blossoms from the glowing cluster and held them
out to her.
“For me!” she gasped, and brought her lips down to them, gently.
Then—“There’s a high green jar downstairs you can have to stick your
flowers in. You ain’t got nothin’ big enough in here, except your water
pitcher. An’ putting these grand flowers in a water pitcher—why, it’d
be like wearing a silk dress over a flannel petticoat, wouldn’t it?”
When the anemic little boarding-house slavey with the beauty-loving
soul had fetched the green jar, I placed the shining stems in it with
gentle fingers. At the bottom of the box I found a card that read: “For
it is impossible to live in a room with red roses and still be
traurig.”
How well he knew! And how truly impossible to be sad when red roses are
glowing for one, and filling the air with their fragrance!
The interruption was fatal to book-writing. My thoughts were a chaos of
red roses, and anemic little maids with glowing eyes, and thoughtful
young doctors with a marvelous understanding of feminine moods. So I
turned out all the lights, undressed by moonlight, and, throwing a
kimono about me, carried my jar of roses to the window and sat down
beside them so that their exquisite scent caressed me.
The moonlight had put a spell of white magic upon the lake. It was a
light-flooded world that lay below my window. Summer, finger on lip,
had stolen in upon the heels of spring. Dim, shadowy figures dotted the
benches of the park across the way. Just beyond lay the silver lake, a
dazzling bar of moonlight on its breast. Motors rushed along the
roadway with a roar and a whir and were gone, leaving a trail of
laughter behind them. From the open window of the room below came the
slip-slap of cards on the polished table surface, and the low buzz of
occasional conversation as the players held postmortems. Under the
street light the popcorn vender’s cart made a blot on the mystic beauty
of the scene below. But the perfume of my red roses came to me, and
their velvet caressed my check, and beyond the noise and lights of the
street lay that glorious lake with the bar of moonlight on its soft
breast. I gazed and forgave the sour-faced landlady her dining room;
forgave the elderly parties their shawls and barley soup; forgot for a
moment my weary thoughts of Peter Orme; forgot everything except that
it was June, and moonlight and good to be alive.
All the changes and events of that strange, eventful year came crowding
to my mind as I crouched there at the window. Four new friends, tried
and true! I conned them over joyously in my heart. What a strange
contrast they made! Blackie, of the elastic morals, and the still more
elastic heart; Frau Nirlanger, of the smiling lips and the lilting
voice and the tragic eyes—she who had stooped from a great height to
pluck the flower of love blooming below, only to find a worthless weed
sullying her hand; Alma Pflugel, with the unquenchable light of
gratefulness in her honest face; Von Gerhard, ready to act as buffer
between myself and the world, tender as a woman, gravely thoughtful,
with the light of devotion glowing in his steady eyes.
“Here’s richness,” said I, like the fat boy in Pickwick Papers. And I
thanked God for the new energy which had sent me to this lovely city by
the lake. I thanked Him that I had not been content to remain a burden
to Max and Norah, growing sour and crabbed with the years. Those years
of work and buffeting had made of me a broader, finer, truer type of
womanhood—had caused me to forget my own little tragedy in
contemplating the great human comedy. And so I made a little prayer
there in the moon-flooded room.
“O dear Lord,” I prayed, and I did not mean that it should sound
irreverent. “O dear Lord, don’t bother about my ambitions! Just let me
remain strong and well enough to do the work that is my portion from
day to day. Keep me faithful to my standards of right and wrong. Let
this new and wonderful love which has come into my life be a staff of
strength and comfort instead of a burden of weariness. Let me not grow
careless and slangy as the years go by. Let me keep my hair and
complexion and teeth, and deliver me from wearing soiled blouses and
doing my hair in a knob. Amen.”
I felt quite cheerful after that—so cheerful that the strange bumps in
the new bed did not bother me as unfamiliar beds usually did. The roses
I put to sleep in their jar of green, keeping one to hold against my
cheek as I slipped into dreamland. I thought drowsily, just before
sleep claimed me:
“To-morrow, after office hours, I’ll tuck up my skirt, and wrap my head
in a towel and have a housecleaning bee. I’ll move the bed where the
wash-stand is now, and I’ll make the chiffonnier swap places with the
couch. One feels on friendlier terms with furniture that one has shoved
about a little. How brilliant the moonlight is! The room is flooded
with it. Those roses—sweet!—sweet!—”
When I awoke it was morning. During the days that followed I looked
back gratefully upon that night, with its moonlight, and its roses, and
its great peace.