"Careful there. Better not touch me. I'm all dirt. G'night, Fred."
"Listen, dad. Mother isn't well."
He stopped then, with one overall leg off and the other on, and looked
at her. "Huh? What d'you mean--isn't well? Mother." His mouth was open.
His eyes looked suddenly strained.
"This house--it's killing her. She could hardly keep her eyes open at
supper. It's too much for her. She ought to be enjoying herself--like
other women. She's a slave to the attic and all those huge rooms. And
you're another."
"Me?" feebly.
"Yes. A slave to this furnace. You said yourself to Fred, just now, that
it was all worn out, and needed new pipes or something--I don't know
what. And that coal was so high it would be cheaper using dollar bills
for fuel. Oh, I know you were just being funny. But it was partly true.
Wasn't it? Wasn't it?"
"Yeh, but listen here, Paula." He never called her Paula unless he was
terribly disturbed, "About mother--you said--"
"You and she ought to go away this winter--not just for a trip, but to
stay. You"--she drew a long breath and made the plunge--"you ought to
give up the house."
"Give up--"
"Permanently. Mother and you are buried alive here. You ought to come to
New York to live. Both of you will love it when you are there for a few
days. I don't mean to come to a hotel. I mean to take a little
apartment, a furnished apartment at first, to see how you like it--two
rooms and kitchenette, like a playhouse."
Hosey Brewster looked down at his own big bulk, then around the great
furnace room. "Oh, but listen--"
"No, I want you to listen first. Mother's worn out, I tell you. It isn't
as if she were the old-fashioned kind; she isn't. She loves the
theatres, and pretty hats, and shoes with buckles, and lobster, and
concerts."
He broke in again: "Sure; she likes 'em for a change. But for a steady
diet--Besides, I've got a business to 'tend to. My gosh! I've got a
business to--"
"You know perfectly well that Wetzler practically runs the whole
thing--or could, if you'd let him." Youth is cruel like that, when it
wants its way.
He did not even deny it. He seemed suddenly old. Pinky's heart smote her
a little. "It's just that you've got so used to this great barracks you
don't know how unhappy it's making you. Why, mother said to-day that she
hated it. I asked about the attic--the cleaning and all--and she said
she hated it."
"Did she say that, Paula?"
"Yes."
He dusted his hands together, slowly, spiritlessly. His eyes looked
pained and dull. "She did, h'm? You say she did?" He was talking to
himself, and thinking, thinking.
Pinky, sensing victory, left him. She ran lightly up the cellar stairs,
through the first-floor rooms, and up to the second floor. Her mother's
bedroom door was open.
A little mauve lamp shed its glow upon the tired woman in one of the
plump, gray-enamel beds. "No, I'm not sleeping. Come here, dear. What in
the world have you been doing in the cellar all this time?"
"Talking to dad." She came over and perched herself on the side of the
bed. She looked down at her mother. Then she bent and kissed her. Mrs.
Brewster looked incredibly girlish with the lamp's rosy glow on her face
and her hair, warmly brown and profuse, rippling out over the pillow.
Scarcely a thread of gray in it. "You know, mother, I think dad isn't
well. He ought to go away."
As if by magic the youth and glow faded out of the face on the pillow.
As she sat up, clutching her nightgown to her breast, she looked
suddenly pinched and old. "What do you mean, Pinky! Father--but he isn't
sick. He--"
"Not sick. I don't mean sick exactly. But sort of worn out. That
furnace. He's sick and tired of the thing; that's what he said to Fred.
He needs a change. He ought to retire and enjoy life. He could. This
house is killing both of you. Why in the world don't you close it up, or
sell it, and come to New York?"
"But we do. We did. Last winter--"
"I don't mean just for a little trip. I mean to live. Take a little
two-room apartment in one of the new buildings--near my studio--and
relax. Enjoy yourselves. Meet new men and women. Live! You're in a
rut--both of you. Besides, dad needs it. That rheumatism of his, with
these Wisconsin winters--"
"But California--we could go to California for--"
"That's only a stop-gap. Get your little place in New York all settled,
and then run away whenever you like, without feeling that this great
hulk of a house is waiting for you. Father hates it; I know it."
"Did he ever say so?"
"Well, practically. He thinks you're fond of it. He--"
Slow steps ascending the stairs--heavy, painful steps. The two women
listened in silence. Every footfall seemed to emphasize Pinky's words.
The older woman turned her face toward the sound, her lips parted, her
eyes anxious, tender.
"How tired he sounds," said Pinky; "and old. And he's only--why, dad's
only fifty-eight."
"Fifty-seven," snapped Mrs. Brewster, sharply, protectingly.
Pinky leaned forward and kissed her. "Good-night, mummy dear. You're so
tired, aren't you?"
Her father stood in the doorway.
"Good-night, dear. I ought to be tucking you into bed. It's all turned
around, isn't it? Biscuits and honey for breakfast, remember."
So Pinky went off to her own room (_sans_ slp cov) and slept soundly,
dreamlessly, as does one whose work is well done.
* * * * *
Three days later Pinky left. She waved a good-bye from the car platform,
a radiant, electric, confident Pinky, her work well done.
"_Au 'voir!_ The first of November! Everything begins then. You'll love
it. You'll be real New Yorkers by Christmas. Now, no changing your
minds, remember."
And by Christmas, somehow, miraculously, there were they, real New
Yorkers; or as real and as New York as any one can be who is living in a
studio apartment (duplex) that has been rented (furnished) from a lady
who turned out to be from Des Moines.
When they arrived, Pinky had four apartments waiting for their
inspection. She told them this in triumph, and well she might, it being
the winter after the war, when New York apartments were as scarce as
black diamonds and twice as costly.
Father Brewster, on hearing the price, emitted a long, low whistle and
said: "How many rooms did you say?"
"Two--and a kitchenette, of course."
"Well, then, all I can say is the furniture ought to be solid gold for
that; inlaid with rubies and picked out with platinum."
But it wasn't. In fact, it wasn't solid anything, being mostly of a very
impermanent structure and style. Pinky explained that she had kept the
best for the last. The thing that worried Father Brewster was that, no
matter at what hour of the day they might happen to call on the
prospective lessor, that person was always feminine and hatted. Once it
was eleven in the morning. Once five in the afternoon.
"Do these New York women wear hats in the house all the time?" demanded
Hosea Brewster, worriedly. "I think they sleep in 'em. It's a wonder
they ain't bald. Maybe they are. Maybe that's why. Anyway, it makes you
feel like a book agent."
He sounded excited and tired, "Now, father!" said Mrs. Brewster,
soothingly.
They were in the elevator that was taking them up to the fourth and
(according to Pinky) choicest apartment. The building was what is known
as a studio apartment, in the West Sixties. The corridors were done in
red flagstones, with gray-tone walls. The metal doors were painted gray.
Pinky was snickering. "Now she'll say: 'Well, _we've_ been very
comfortable here.' They always do. Don't look too eager."
"No fear," put in Hosey Brewster.
"It's really lovely. And a real fireplace. Everything new and good.
She's asking two hundred and twenty-five. Offer her one seventy-five.
She'll take two hundred."
"You bet she will," growled Hosea.
She answered the door--hatted; hatted in henna, that being the season's
chosen colour. A small, dark foyer, overcrowded with furniture; a studio
living room, bright, high-ceilinged, smallish; one entire side was
window. There were Japanese prints, and a baby grand piano, and a lot of
tables, and a davenport placed the way they do it on the stage, with its
back to the room and its arms to the fireplace, and a long table just
behind it, with a lamp on it, and books, and a dull jar thing, just as
you've see it in the second-act library.
Hosea Brewster twisted his head around and up to gaze at the lofty
ceiling. "Feel's if I was standing at the bottom of a well," he
remarked.
But the hatted one did not hear him. "No; no dining room," she was
saying, briskly. "No, indeed. I always use this gate-legged table. You
see? It pulls out like this. You can easily seat six--eight, in fact."
"Heaven forbid!" in fervent _sotto voce_ from Father Brewster.
"It's an enormous saving in time and labour."
"The--kitchen!" inquired Mrs. Brewster.
The hat waxed playful. "You'll never guess where the kitchen is!" She
skipped across the room. "You see this screen?" They saw it. A really
handsome affair, and so placed at one end of the room that it looked a
part of it. "Come here." They came. The reverse side of the screen was
dotted with hooks, and on each hook hung a pot, a pan, a ladle, a spoon.
And there was the tiny gas range, the infinitesimal ice chest, the
miniature sink. The whole would have been lost in one corner of the
Brewster's Winnebago china closet.
"Why, how--how wonderful!" breathed Mrs. Brewster.
"Isn't it? So complete--and so convenient. I've cooked roasts, steaks,
chops, everything right here. It's just play."
A terrible fear seized upon Father Brewster. He eyed the sink and the
tiny range with a suspicious eye. "The beds," he demanded, "where are
the beds?"
She opened the little oven door and his heart sank. But, "They're
upstairs," she said. "This is a duplex, you know."
A little flight of winding stairs ended in a balcony. The rail was hung
with a gay mandarin robe. Two more steps and you were in the bedroom--a
rather breathless little bedroom, profusely rose-coloured, and with
whole battalions of photographs in flat silver frames standing about on
dressing table, shelf, desk. The one window faced a gray brick wall.
They took the apartment. And thus began a life of ease and gayety for
Mr. and Mrs. Hosea C. Brewster, of Winnebago, Wisconsin.
* * * * *
Pinky had dinner with them the first night, and they laughed a great
deal, what with one thing and another. She sprang up to the balcony, and
let down her bright hair, and leaned over the railing, _à la_ Juliet,
having first decked Hosey out in a sketchy but effective Romeo costume
consisting of a hastily snatched up scarf over one shoulder, Pinky's
little turban, and a frying pan for a lute. Mother Brewster did the
Nurse, and by the time Hosea began his limping climb up the balcony,
the turban over one eye and the scarf winding itself about his stocky
legs, they ended by tumbling in a heap of tearful laughter.
After Pinky left there came upon them, in that cozy little two-room
apartment, a feeling of desolation and vastness, and a terrible
loneliness such as they had never dreamed of in the great twelve-room
house in Winnebago. They kept close to each other. They toiled up the
winding stairs together and stood a moment on the balcony, feigning a
light-heartedness that neither of them felt.
They lay very still in the little stuffy rose-coloured room, and the
street noises of New York came up to them--a loose chain flapping
against the mud guard of a taxi; the jolt of a flat-wheeled Eighth
Avenue street car; the roar of an L train; laughter; the bleat of a
motor horn; a piano in the apartment next door, or upstairs, or down.
She thought, as she lay there, choking, of the great, gracious
gray-and-blue room at home, many-windowed, sweet-smelling, quiet. Quiet!
He thought, as he lay there, choking, of the gracious gray-blue room at
home, many-windowed, sweet-smelling, quiet. Quiet!