THE BOOK OF EVELYN

The star of the occasion was calm and confident

THE
BOOK OF EVELYN

By

GERALDINE BONNER

Author of
TOMORROW’S TANGLE, THE PIONEER
RICH MEN’S CHILDREN, ETC.

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY

ARTHUR WILLIAM BROWN

INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright 1913
The Bobbs-Merrill Company

PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS
BROOKLYN, N. Y.

THE BOOK OF EVELYN

I

I have moved. I am in.

The household gods that have lain four years in storage are grouped round me, showing familiar faces. It’s nice of them not to have changed more, grown up as children do or got older like one’s friends. They don’t harmonize with the furniture—this is an appartement meublé—but I can melt them in with cushions and hangings.

It’s going to be very snug and cozy when I get settled. This room—the parlor—is a good shape, an oblong ending in a bulge of bay window. Plenty of sun in the morning—I can have plants. Outside the window is a small tin roof with a list to starboard where rain-water lodges and sparrows come to take fussy excited baths. Across the street stands a row of brownstone fronts, blank-visaged houses with a white curtain in every window. The faces of such houses are like the faces of the people who live in them. They tell you nothing about what’s going on inside. It’s a peculiarity of New York—after living in a house with an expressionless front wall you get an expressionless front wall yourself.

From the windows of the back room I look out on the flank of the big apartment-house that stands on the corner, and little slips of yard, side by side, with fences between. Among them ours has a lost or strayed appearance. Never did an unaspiring, city-bred yard look more homesick and out of place. It has a sun-dial in the middle, circled by a flagged path, and in its corners, sheltered by a few discouraged shrubs, several weather-worn stone ornaments. It suggests a cemetery of small things that had to have correspondingly small tombstones. I hear from Mrs. Bushey, the landlady, that a sculptress once lived on the lower floor and spent three hundred dollars lifting it out of the sphere in which it was born.

I am going to like it here. I am going to make myself like it, get out of the negative habit into the positive. That’s why I came back from Europe, that a sudden longing for home, for Broadway, and the lights along the Battery, and dear little Diana poised against the sky. Four years of pension tables and third-class railway carriages do not develop the positive habit. I was becoming negative to the point of annihilation. I wanted to be braced by the savage energies of my native city. And also I did want some other society than that of American spinsters and widows. The Europeans must wonder how the land of the free and the home of the brave keeps up its birth-rate— But I digress.

When you have an income of one hundred and sixty-five dollars a month and no way of adding to it, are thirty-three and a widow of creditable antecedents, the difficulties of living in New York are almost insurmountable. If you were a pauper or a millionaire it would be an easy matter. They represent the upper and the nether millstones between which people like me are crushed.

And then your friends insist on being considered. I had a dream of six rooms on the upper West Side. “But the upper West Side, my dear! You might as well be in Chicago.” Then I had revolutionary longings for a tiny old house with no heat and a sloping roof in Greenwich Village— “I could never go to see you there. They would stone the motor,” ended that. There is just one slice in the center of the city in which a poor but honest widow can live to the satisfaction of everybody but herself. So here I am in the decorous Seventies, between Park Avenue and Lexington, in an eighteen-foot dwelling with floors for light housekeeping.

To enter you go down three steps to a little front door that tries to keep up to the neighborhood by hiding its decrepitude behind an iron grill. That lets you into the smallest vestibule in the world, where four bells are ranged along the door-post and four letter-boxes cling to the wall. Out of this open two more doors, one that gives egress to a narrow flight of stairs without a hand-rail, and the other to the ground-floor apartment, inhabited, so Mrs. Bushey tells me, by a trained nurse and her aunt. There was a tailor there once, but Mrs. Bushey got him out— “Cockroaches, water bugs, and then the sign! It lowered the tone of the house. A person like you,” Mrs. Bushey eyed me approvingly, “would never have stood for a tradesman’s sign.”

I murmured an assent. I always do when credited with exclusive tastes I ought to have and haven’t. It was the day I came to look the place over, and I was nervously anxious to make a good impression on Mrs. Bushey. Then we mounted a narrow stair that rose through a well to upper stories. As it approached the landing it took a spirited curve, as if in the hope of finding something better above. The stairway was dark and a faint thin scent of many things (I know it now to be a composite of cooking, gas leakage and cigars) remained suspended in the airless shaft.

“On this floor,” said Mrs. Bushey, turning on the curve, as if in the hope of finding something better up behind her, “the gas is never put out.”

I took that floor. I don’t know whether the gas decided it, or Mrs. Bushey’s persuasive manners, or an exhaustion that led me to look with favor upon anything that had a chair to sit on and a bed to sleep in. Anyway, I took it, and the next day burst in upon Betty Ferguson, trying to carry it off with a debonair nonchalance: “Well, I’ve got an apartment at last.”

Betty looked serious and asked questions: Was it clean? Did the landlady seem a proper person? Had I seen any of the other lodgers? Then dwelt on the brighter side: It’s not quite a block from Park Avenue. If you don’t like it you can find some excuse to break your lease. There is a servant on the premises who will come in, clean up and cook you one good meal so you won’t starve. Well, it doesn’t sound so bad.

And now I’m in I think it’s even less bad than it sounded. The front room is going to make the impression. It is already getting an atmosphere, the individuality of a lady of uncultivated literary tastes is imposing itself upon the department-store background. The center table—mission style—is beginning to have an air, with Bergson in yellow paper covers and two volumes of Strindberg. No more of him for me after Miss Juliet, but he has his uses thrown carelessly on a table with other gentlemen of the moment. If I am ever written up in the papers I feel sure the reporters will say, “Mrs. Drake’s parlor gave every evidence of being the abode of a woman of culture and refinement.”

The back room (there are only two) is more intimate. I am going to eat there and also sleep. Friends may come in, however; for the bed, during the day, masquerades as a divan. A little group of my ancestors—miniatures and photographs of portraits—hangs on the wall and chaperons me. Between the two rooms stretches a narrow connecting neck of bathroom and kitchenette.

There is only one word that describes the kitchenette—it is cute. When I look at it with a gas stove on one side and tiers of shelves on the other, “cute” instinctively rises to my lips, and I feel that my country has enriched the language with that untranslatable adjective. No one has ever been able to give it a satisfactory definition, but if you got into my kitchenette, which just holds one fair-sized person, and found yourself able to cook with one hand and reach the dishes off the shelves with the other, you would get its full meaning.

Before the house was cut into floors the kitchenette must have been a cupboard. I wonder if a lady’s clothes hung in it or the best china was stored there. There is a delightful mystery about old houses and their former occupants. Haven’t I read somewhere that walls absorb impressions from the lives they have looked on and exhale them to the pleasure or detriment of later comers?

Last night, as I was reading in bed—a habit acquired at the age of twelve and adhered to ever since—I remembered this and wondered what the walls would exhale on me. The paper has a trailing design of roses on it, very ugly and evidently old. I wondered if the roses had bloomed round tragedy or comedy, or just that fluctuation between the two which makes up the lives of most of us—an alternate rise and fall, soaring upward to a height, dropping downward to a hollow.

Five years ago mine dropped to its hollow, and ever since has been struggling up to the dead level where it is now—the place where things come without joy or pain, the edge off everything. Thirty-three and the high throb of expectancy over, the big possibilities left behind. The hiring of two rooms, the hanging of a curtain, the placing of a vase—these are the things that for me must take the place that love and home and children take in other women’s lives.

I got this far and stopped. No, I wouldn’t. I came back from Europe to get away from that. I put out the light and cuddled down in the new bed. Quite a good bed if it is a divan, and the room is going to be fairly quiet. Muffled by walls I could hear the clanging passage of cars. And then far away it seemed, though it couldn’t have been, a gramophone, the Caruso record of La Donna e Mobile. What a fine swaggering song and what an outrageous falsehood! Woman is changeable—is she? That’s the man’s privilege. We, poor fools, haven’t the sense to do anything but cling, if not to actualities to memories. I felt tears coming—that hasn’t happened for years. My memories don’t bring them, they only bring a sort of weary bitterness. It was the new surroundings, the loneliness, that did it. I stopped them and listened to the gramophone, and the wretched thing had begun on a new record, Una Lagrima Furtiva—a furtive tear!

With my own furtive tears, wet on the pillow, I couldn’t help laughing.

II

There is one thing in the front room I must get rid of—the rug. It is a nightmare with a crimson ground on which are displayed broken white particles that look like animalcula in a magnified drop of water. I had just made up my mind that it must be removed when Mrs. Bushey opportunely came in.

Mrs. Bushey lives next door (she has two houses under her wing) and when not landladying, teaches physical culture. I believe there is no Mr. Bushey, though whether death or divorce has snatched him from her I haven’t heard. She is a stout dark person somewhere from twenty-eight to forty-eight—I can’t tell age. I am thirty-three and have wrinkles round my eyes. She has none. It may be temperament, or fat, or the bony structure of the skull, or an absence of furtive tears.

She talks much and rapidly which ought to tend to a good combination between us, as listening is one of the things I do best. From our conversation, or perhaps I ought to say our monologue, I got an impressionistic effect of my fellow lodgers past and present. The lady who lived here before me was a writer and very close about money. It was difficult to collect her rent, also she showed symptoms of inebriety. I gathered from Mrs. Bushey’s remarks and expression that she expected me to be shocked, and I tried not to disappoint her, but I couldn’t do much with a monosyllable, which was all she allowed me.

A series of rapid sketches of the present inmates followed. Something like this:

“Mrs. Phillips, the trained nurse, and her aunt, in the basement are terrible cranks, always complaining about the plumbing and the little boys who will stop on their way home from school and write bad words on the flags. They think they own the back garden, but they don’t. We all do, but what’s the use of fighting? I never do, I’ll stand anything rather than have words with anybody.”

I edged in an exclamation, a single formless syllable.

“Of course, I knew you would. Then on the floor below you are two young Westerners in the back room, Mr. Hazard, who’s an artist, and Mr. Weatherby, who’s something on the press. The most delightful fellows, never a day late with their rent. And in the front room is Miss Bliss, a model—artist not cloak. She isn’t always on time with her money, but I’m very lenient with her.”

I tried to insert a sentence, but it was nipped at the second word.

“Yes, exactly. You see just how it is. On the floor above you, in the back, is Mr. Hamilton, such a nice man and so unfortunate. Lost every cent he had in Wall Street and is beginning all over again. Fine, isn’t it? Yes, I feel it and don’t say anything when he’s behind with his rent. How could I?” Though I hadn’t said a word she looked at me reprovingly as if I had suggested sending the delinquent Mr. Hamilton to jail. “That’s not my way. I know it’s foolish of me. You needn’t tell me so, but that’s how I’m made.”

I began to feel that I ought to offer my next month’s rent at once. I have a bad memory and might be a day or two late.

“The room in front, over your parlor, is vacant. Terrible, isn’t it? I tried to make Mr. Hamilton take the whole floor through. Even if he isn’t good pay—”

I broke in, determined to hear no more of Mr. Hamilton’s financial deficiencies.

“Who’s on the top floor?”

There was a slight abatement of Mrs. Bushey’s buoyancy. She looked at me with an eye that expressed both curiosity and question.

“Miss Harris lives there,” she answered. “Have you seen her?”

I hadn’t.

“Perhaps you’ve heard her?”

I had heard a rustle on the stairs, was that Miss Harris?

“Yes. She’s the only woman above you.”

“Does she leave a trail of perfume?”

I was going to add that it didn’t mix well with the gas leakage, the cigars and last year’s cooking but refrained for fear of Mrs. Bushey’s feelings.

“Yes, that’s Miss Harris. She’s a singer—professional. But you won’t hear her much, there’s a floor in between. That is, unless you leave the register open.”

I said I’d shut the register.

“I don’t take singers as a rule,” Mrs. Bushey went on, “but Mr. Hamilton being away all day and the top floor being hard to rent, I made an exception. One must live, mustn’t one?”

I could agree to that.

“She’s a Californian and rather good-looking. But I don’t think she’s had much success.”

A deprecating look came into her face and she tilted her head to one side. I felt coming revelations about Miss Harris’ rent and said hastily:

“What does she sing, concert, opera, musical comedy?”

“She’s hardly sung in public at all yet. She’s studying, and I’m afraid that it’s very uncertain. Last month—”

I interrupted desperately.

“Is she a contralto or soprano?”

“Dramatic mezzo,” said Mrs. Bushey. “She’s trying to get an opening, but,” she compressed her lips and shook her head gloomily, “there are so many of them and her voice is nothing wonderful. But she evidently has some money, for she pays her rent regularly.”

I felt immensely relieved. As Mrs. Bushey rose to her feet I too rose lightly, encouragingly smiling. Mrs. Bushey did not exhibit the cheer fitting to the possession of so satisfactory a lodger. She buttoned her jacket, murmuring:

“I don’t like taking singers, people complain so. But when one is working for one’s living—” Her fingers struggled with a button.

“Of course,” I filled in, “I understand. And I for one won’t object to the music.”

Mrs. Bushey seemed appeased. As she finished the buttoning she looked about the room, her glance roaming over my possessions. For some obscure reason I flinched before that inspection. Some of them are sacred, relics of my mother and of the years when I was a wife—only a few of these. Mrs. Bushey’s look was like an auctioneer’s hand fingering them, appraising their value.

Finally it fell to the rug. I had forgotten it; now was my chance. Suddenly it seemed a painful subject to broach and I sought for a tactful opening. Mrs. Bushey pressed its crimson surface with her foot.

“Isn’t this a beautiful rug?” she said. “It’s a real Samarcand.”

I smothered a start. I had had a real Samarcand once.

Mrs. Bushey, eying the magnified insects with solicitude, continued:

“I wouldn’t like to tell you how much I paid for this. It was a ridiculous sum for me to give. But I love pretty things, and when you took the apartment I put it in here because I saw at once you were used to only the best.”

I murmured faintly.

“So I was generous and gave you my treasure. You will be careful of it, won’t you? Not drop anything on it or let people come in with muddy boots.”

I said I would. I found myself engaging with ardor to love and cherish a thing I abhorred. It’s happened before, it’s the kind of thing I’ve been doing all my life.

Mrs. Bushey gave it a loving stroke with her foot.

“I knew you’d appreciate it. You don’t often find a real Samarcand in a furnished apartment.”

After she had gone I sat looking dejectedly at it. Of course I would have to keep it now. I might buy some small rugs and partly cover it up, but I suppose, when she saw them, she would be mortally hurt. And I can’t do that. I’d rather have those awful magnified insects staring up at me for the rest of my life than wound her pride so.

As to its being a Samarcand—I took up one corner and lo! attached to it by a string was a price-tag bearing the legend, Scotch wool rug, $12.75.

It was somewhat of a shock. Suppose I had found it while she was there! The thought of such a contretemps made me cold. To avoid all possibilities of it ever happening I stealthily detached the tag and tore it into tiny pieces. As I dropped them in the waste-basket I had a fancy that had I made the discovery while she was present, I would have been the more embarrassed of the two.

All afternoon I have been putting things in order, trying them and standing back to get the effect. It’s a long time since I’ve had belongings of my own to play with. I hung my mother’s two Kriegolf’s (Kriegolf was a Canadian artist who painted pictures of habitan life) in four different places. They finally came to anchor on the parlor wall on either side of a brass-framed mirror with candle branches that belongs to Mrs. Bushey. Opposite, flanking the fireplace, are Kitty O’Brien and The Wax Head of Lille. I love her best of all, the dreaming maiden. I like to try and guess what she’s thinking of. Is it just the purposeless reverie of youth, or is she musing on the coming lover? It can’t be that, because, while he’s still a dream lover, a girl is happy, and she looks so sad.

I was trying to pierce the secret of that mysterious face when the telephone rang. It was Roger Clements, a kind voice humming along the line—“Well, how’s everything?” Roger wanted to come up and see me and the kitchenette, and I told him Madame would receive to-morrow evening.

He would be my first visitor and I was fluttered. I spent at least an hour trying to decide whether I’d better bring the Morris chair from the back room for him. When the dread of starvation is lifted from you by one hundred and sixty-five dollars a month and life offers nothing, you find your mental forces expending themselves on questions like that. I once knew a man who told me he sat on the edge of his bed every morning struggling to decide whether he’d put on a turned-down or a stand-up collar. He said it was nerves. In my case it’s just plain lack of interests.

It’s natural for me to try and make Roger comfortable. He’s one of the best friends I have in the world. I’m not using the word to cover sentiment, I do really mean a friend. He knew me before I was married, was one of the reliable older men in those glowing days when I was Evelyn Carr, before I met Harmon Drake. He has been kind to me in ways I never can forget. In those dark last years of my married life (there were only five of them altogether) when my little world was urging divorce and I stood distracted amid falling ruins, he never said one word to me about my husband, never forced on me consolation or advice. I don’t forget that, or the letter he wrote me when Harmon died—the one honest letter I got.

Everybody exclaimed when I said I was going alone to Europe. Roger was the only one who understood and told me to go. I’ll carry to my grave the memory of his face as he stood on the dock waving me good-by. He was smiling, but under the smile I could see the sympathy he wanted me to know and didn’t dare to put in words. That’s one of the ties between us—we’re the silent kind who keep our feelings hidden away in a Bluebeard’s chamber of which we keep the key.

I used to hear from him off and on in Europe, and I followed him in the American papers. I remember one sun-soaked morning in Venice, when I picked up an English review in the pension and read a glowing criticism of his book of essays, Readjustments. How proud I was of him! He’s become quite famous in these last few years, not vulgarly famous but known among scholars as a scholar and recognized as one of the few stylists we have over here. I can’t imagine him on the news-stalls, or bound in paper for the masses. I think he secretly detests the masses though he won’t admit it. The mob, with its easily swayed passions, is the sort of thing that it’s in his blood to hate. If he had to sue for its support like Coriolanus he would act exactly as Coriolanus did. Fortunately he doesn’t need it. The Clements have had money for generations, not according to Pittsburgh standards, but the way the Clements reckon money. He has an apartment on Gramercy Park, lined with books to the ceilings, with a pair of old servants to fuss over him and keep the newspaper people away.

There he leads the intellectual life, the only one that attracts him. He rarely goes into society. The recent invasion of multi-millionaires have spoiled it, his sister, Mrs. Ashworth, says, and on these points he and she think alike. And he doesn’t care for women, at least to fall in love with them. When he was a young man, twenty-four to be accurate, he was engaged to a girl who died. Since then his interest in the other sex has taken the form of a detached impersonal admiration. He thinks they furnish the color and poetry of life and in that way have an esthetic value in a too sober world.

But what’s the sense of analyzing your friend? He’s a dear kind anchorite of a man, just a bit set, just a bit inclined to think that the Clements’ way of doing things is the only way, just a bit too contemptuous of cheapness and bad taste and bounce, but with all his imperfections on his head, the finest gentleman I know. I will move the Morris chair.

III

Love of flowers is one of the gifts the fairies gave me in my cradle. It’s a great possession, fills so many blanks. You can forget you’ve got no baby of your own when you watch the flowers’ babies lifting their little faces to the sun.

I bought four plants at Bloomingdales and put them in the front window, a juniper bush, a Boston fern, a carrot fern and a rubber plant. I like the ferns best, the new shoots are so lovely, pushing up little green curly tops in the shelter of the old strong ones. I remind myself of Miss Lucretia Tox in Dombey and Son, with a watering can and a pair of scissors to snip off dead leaves. There’s one great difference between us—Miss Tox had a Mr. Dombey across the way. I’ve nothing across the way. The only male being that that discreet and expressionless row of houses has given up to my eyes is the young doctor opposite. He does the same thing every morning, runs down the steps with a bag and a busy air, walks rapidly to Lexington Avenue, then, when he thinks he’s out of sight, stands on the corner not knowing which way to go.

I feel that, in a purely neighborly spirit, I ought to have an illness. I would like to help all young people starting in business, take all the hansoms that go drearily trailing along Fifth Avenue, especially if the driver looks drunken and despondent, and give money to every beggar who accosts me. They say it is a bad principle and one is always swindled. Personally I don’t think that matters at all. Your impulse is all right and that’s all that counts. But I digress again—I must get over the habit.

This morning I was doing my Miss Lucretia Tox act when Betty Ferguson came in. Betty is one of my rich friends; we were at school together and have kept close ever since. She married Harry Ferguson the same year that I married Harmon Drake. Now she has three children, and a house on Fifth Avenue, not to mention Harry. Her crumpled rose leaf is that she is getting fat. Every time I see her she says resolutely, “I am going to walk twice round the reservoir to-morrow morning,” and never does it.

She came in blooming, with a purple orchid among her furs, and the rich rosy color in her face deepened by the first nip of winter. She has a sharp eye, and I expected she would immediately see the rug and demand an explanation. I was slightly flustered, for I have no excuse ready and I never can confess my weaknesses to Betty. She is one of the sensible people who don’t see why you can’t be sensible, too.

She did not, however, notice the rug, but clasping my hand fixed me with a solemn glance that made me uneasy. Betty oblivious to externals—what had I done?

“Who was the woman I met coming out of here just now?” she said abruptly.

“Mrs. Bushey,” I hazarded, and then remembered Mrs. Bushey was off somewhere imparting physical culture.

“Is Mrs. Bushey very tall and thin with black hair and a velvet dress, and a hat as big as a tea tray?”

“No, she’s short and stout and—”

“Evie,” interrupted Mrs. Ferguson, sounding a deep note, “that woman wasn’t Mrs. Bushey. Nobody who looked like that ever leased an eighteen-foot house and rented out floors.”

I had a sudden surge of memory—

“It must have been Miss Harris.”

Betty loosed my hand and sank upon the sofa, that is, she subsided carefully upon the sofa, as erect as a statue from the waist up. She threw back her furs with a disregard for the orchid that made me wince.

“Who’s Miss Harris?” she said sternly.

I told her all I knew.

“That’s just what she looked like—the stage. Are there any more of them here?”

I assured her there were not. She gazed out of the window with a pondering air.

“After all, there are respectable people on the stage,” she said, following some subterranean course of thought.

I knew my Betty and hastened to reassure her—

“She’s on the top floor. Her contaminating influence, if she has one, would have to percolate through another apartment before it got to me.”

She did not smile and I did not expect it. Mrs. Ferguson has no sense of humor, and that’s one of the reasons I love her. There is an obsession in the public mind just now about the sense of humor. People ask anxiously if other people have it as Napoleon used to ask if attractive ladies he had wooed in vain “were still virtuous.” It’s like being a bromide— Give me a bromide, a humorless, soft, cushiony bromide, rather than those exhausting people who have established a reputation for wit and are living up to it. Betty is not soft and cushiony, but she is always herself.

“I wish you could live in a house of your own like a Christian,” she said.

We have talked over this before. This subject has an embarrassing side—I’ll explain it later—so I hastened to divert her.

“Why should you be wrought up over Miss Harris? I’m sure from what Mrs. Bushey tells me she’s a very nice person,” and then I remembered and added brightly: “She always pays her rent.”

Betty gave me a somber side glance.

“She’s very handsome.”

“There are handsome people who are perfectly convenable. You’re handsome, Betty.”

Betty was unmoved.

“At any rate you needn’t know her,” she said.

“Don’t you think I ought to say ‘Howd’ye do’ if I meet her on the stairs?”

“No, why should you? The next thing would be she’d be coming into your rooms and then, some day, she’d come when somebody you liked was there.”

She clasped her hands in her lap and drew herself up, her head so erect the double chin she fears was visible. In this attitude she kept a cold eye on me.

“And all because she’s handsome and wears a hat as big as a tea tray,” I said, trying to treat the subject lightly, but inwardly conscious of a perverse desire to champion Miss Harris.

Betty, wreathing her neck about in the tight grip of her collar, removed her glance to the window, out of which she stared haughtily as though Miss Harris was standing on the tin roof supplicating an entrance.

“We can’t be too careful in this town,” she murmured, shaking her head as if refusing Miss Harris’ hopes. Then she looked down at the floor. I saw her expression changing as her eye ranged over the rug.

“Where did you get this rug, Evie?” she asked in a quiet tone.

I grew nervous.

“It came with the apartment.”

“Get rid of it, dear, at once. I can send you up one from the library. Harry’s going to give me a new Aubusson.”

I became more nervous and faltered:

“But I ought to keep this.”

“Why? Is there a clause in your lease that you’ve got to use it?”

When Betty gets me against the wall this way I become frightened. Timid animals, thus cornered, are seized with the courage of despair and fly at their assailant. Timid human beings show much less spirit—I always think animals behave with more dignity than people—they tell lies.

“But—but—I like it,” I stammered.

“Oh,” said Betty with a falling note, “if that’s the case—” She stopped and rose to her feet, too polite to say what she thought. “Put on your things and come out with me. I’m shopping, and afterward we’ll lunch somewhere.”

I went out with Betty in the car, a limousine with two men and a chow dog. We went to shops where obsequious salesladies listened to Mrs. Ferguson’s needs and sought to satisfy them. They had a conciliating way of turning to me and asking my opinion which, such is the poverty of my spirit, pleased me greatly. I get a faint reflex feeling of what it is to be the wife of one of New York’s rising men. Then we lunched richly and clambered back into the limousine, each dropping languidly into her corner while the footman tucked us in.

We were rolling luxuriously down Fifth Avenue when Betty rallied sufficiently from the torpor of digestion to murmur.

“To-morrow morning, after breakfast, I’ll walk three times round the reservoir.”

Roger came at eight. It was the first cold night of the season and the furnace was not broken in. In spite of lamps the room was chilly. It was good to see him again—in my parlor, in my Morris chair. He isn’t handsome, a long thin man, with a long thin face, smooth shaven and lined, and thick, sleek, iron-gray hair. Some one has said all that a man should have in the way of beauty is good teeth. Roger has that necessary asset and another one, well-shaped, gentlemanly hands, very supple and a trifle dry to the touch. And, yes, he has a charming smile.

He is forty-two and hasn’t changed a particle in the last fifteen years. Why can’t a woman manage that? When I was dressing to-night I looked in the glass and tried to reconstruct my face as it was fifteen years ago. I promised to be a pretty girl then, but it was just the fleeting beauty that nature gives us in our mating time, lends us for her own purposes. Now I see a pale mild person with flat-lying brown hair and that beaten expression peculiar to females whom life conquers. I don’t know whether it’s the mouth or the eyes, but I see it often in faces I pass on the street.

It was a funny evening—conversation varied by chamber music. We began it sitting in the middle of the room on either side of the table like the family lawyer and the heroine in the opening scene of a play. Then, as the temperature dropped, we slowly gravitated toward the register, till we finally brought up against it. A faint warm breath came through the iron grill and we leaned forward and basked in it. We were talking about women. We often do, it’s one of our subjects. Of course Roger is of the old school. He’s got an early Victorian point of view; I know he would value me more highly if I swooned now and then. He doesn’t call women “the weaker vessel,” but he thinks of them that way.

“I don’t see why you can’t be content with things as they are,” he said, spreading his hands to the register’s meager warmth. “Why should you want to go into politics and have professions? Why aren’t you willing to leave all that to us and stay where you belong?”

“But we may not have anything to do where we belong. Roger, if you move nearer the corner you’ll get a little more heat.”

Roger moved.

“Every woman has work in her own sphere,” he said, while moving.

“I haven’t.”

“You, dear Evie,” he looked at me with a fond indulgent smile. “You have plenty of work and it’s always well done—to bring romance and sweetness into life.”

There is something quite maddening about Roger when he talks this way. I could find it in me to call him an ass. All the superiority of countless generations of men who have ordered women’s lives lies behind it. And he is impregnable, shut up with his idea. It is built round him and cemented with a thousand years of prejudice and tradition.

“I don’t want to bring romance and sweetness into life,” I said crossly, “I want to get something out of it.”

“You can’t help it. It’s what you were put in the world for. We men don’t want you in the struggle. That’s for us. It’s our business to go down into the arena and fight for you, make a place for you, keep you out of it all.”— He moved his foot across the register and turned it off.

“You’ve turned off the heat,” I cried.

He turned it on.

—“Keep you out of it all. Sheltered from the noise and glare of the world by our own firesides.”

“Some of us would rather have a little more noise and glare by our own register.”

“All wrong, Evie, all wrong. You’re in a niche up there with a lamp burning before it. If you come down from your niche you’re going to lose the thing that’s made you worshipful—your femininity, your charm.”

“What does our charm matter to us? What good is our femininity to us?”

He looked surprised.

“What good?”

“Look here, Roger, I feel certain that Shem, Ham and Japheth talked this way to their wives on those rainy days in the Ark. It’s not only a pre-glacial point of view, but it’s the most colossally selfish one. All you men are worried about is that we’re not going to be so attractive to make love to. The chase is going to lose its zest—”

I stopped short, cut off by a flood of sound that suddenly burst upon us from the register.

It was a woman’s voice singing Musetta’s song, and by its clearness and volume seemed to be the breath of the register become vocal. We started back simultaneously and looked about the room, while Musetta’s song poured over us, a rich jubilant torrent of melody.

“What is it?” said Roger, rising as if to defend me.

“Miss Harris,” I answered, jumping up.

“Who’s Miss Harris?”

“A singer. She lives here.”

“Does she live in there?” He pointed to the register.

“No, on the top floor, but it connects with her room.”

We stood still and listened, and as the song rose to its brilliant climax, Roger looked at me smiling, and nodded approvingly. In his heart he thinks he is something of a musician, has season seats at the opera and goes dutifully to the Symphony. I don’t think he is any more musical than I am. I don’t think literary people ever are. They like it with their imaginations, feel its sensuous appeal, but as to experiencing those esoteric raptures that the initiated know—it’s a joy denied.

The song came to an end.

“Not a bad voice,” said Roger. “Who is she?”

“A lady who is studying to be a professional.” And then I added spitefully: “Do you think she ought to give up her singing to be sheltered by somebody’s fireside?”

Roger had turned to get his coat. He stopped and looked at me over his shoulder, smiling—he really has a delightful smile.

“I except ladies with voices.”

“Because they add to the pleasure of gentlemen with musical tastes?”

He picked up his coat.

“Evie, one of the things that strengthens me in my belief is that when you get on that subject you become absolutely acid.”

I helped him on with his coat.

My sitting-room door opens close to the head of the stairs. If my visitors back out politely they run a risk of stepping over the edge and falling down-stairs on their backs. The one gas-jet that burns all the time is a safeguard against this catastrophe, but, as it is an uncertain and timid flicker, I speed the parting guest with caution.

Roger was backing out with his hat held to his breast when I gave a warning cry. It went echoing up the stairway and mingled with the sound of heavy descending feet. A head looked over the upper banister, a dark masculine head, and seeing nothing more alarming than a lady and gentleman in an open doorway, withdrew itself. The steps descended, a hand glided down the rail, and a large overcoated shape came into view. The frightened gas-jet shot up as if caught in a dereliction of duty, and the man, advancing toward us, was clearly revealed.

I am a person of sudden attractions and antipathies and I had one, sharp and poignant, as I looked at him. It was an antipathy, the “I-do-not-like-you-Doctor-Fell” feeling in its most acute form. It was evidently not reciprocal, for, as he drew near, he smiled, an easy natural smile that disclosed singularly large white teeth. He gave me an impression of size and breadth, his shoulders seemed to fill the narrow passage and he carried them with an arrogant swagger. That and the stare he fixed on us probably caused the “Doctor Fell” feeling. The stare was bold and hard, a combination of inspection and curiosity.

He added a nod to his smile, passed us and went down the stairs. We looked down on his wide descending shoulders and the top of his head, with the hair thin in the middle.

“Who’s that bounder?” said Roger.

“I haven’t the least idea.”

“Didn’t he bow to you?”

“Yes, but that doesn’t make me know him. He must be some one living in the house.”

Roger looked after him.

“I’m coming up here to see you often,” he said after a moment’s pause.

After he had gone I went into the back room and lit lights and peeled off the outer skins of my divan bed. I felt quite gay and light-hearted. I am going to like it here. With the student lamp lighted the back room is very cozy. I lay in bed and surveyed it admiringly while my ancestors looked soberly down on me. They are a very solemn lot, all but the French Huguenot lady with her frivolous curls and the black velvet round her neck. She has a human look. I’m sure her blood is strong in me. None of the others would ever have lived in an eighteen-foot house with a prima donna singing through the register, and a queer-looking man, with large white teeth, smiling at one in the passage.

IV

I have seen her—and I don’t wonder!

It was on Tuesday evening just as the dusk was falling. I had come home from a walk, and as I climbed the first narrow stair I saw in the hall above me, a woman standing under the gas, reading a letter. I caught her in silhouette, a black form, very tall and broadening out into a wide hat, but even that way, without feature or detail, arresting. Then, as she heard me, she stepped back so that the light fell on her. I knew at once it was Miss Harris, tried not to stare, and couldn’t help it.

She is really remarkably good-looking—an oval-faced, dark-eyed woman, with black hair growing low on her forehead and waving backward over her ears. Either the size of the hat, or her earrings (they were long and green), or a collarless effect about the neck, gave her a picturesque, unconventional air. The stage was written large all over her. When I got close I saw details, that she had beautifully curly lips—most people’s come together in a straight line like a box and its lid—and a fine nose, just in the right proportion to the rest of her face. Also she wore a gray fur coat, unfastened, and something in her appearance suggested a hurried dressing, things flung on.

She looked up from the letter and eyed me with frank interest. I approached embarrassed. A secret desire to have all people like me is one of my besetting weaknesses. I am slavish to servants and feel grateful when salesladies condescend to address me while waiting for change. The fear that Betty would find it out could not make me pass Miss Harris without a word. So I timidly smiled—a deprecating, apologetic smile, a smile held in bondage by the memory of Mrs. Ferguson.

Miss Harris returned it brilliantly. Her face suddenly bore the expression of one who greets a cherished friend. She moved toward me radiating welcome.

“You’re on the third floor,” she said in a rich voice, “Mrs. Harmon Drake.”

I saw a hand extended and felt mine enclosed in a grasp that matched the smile and manner. Miss Harris towered over me—she must be nearly six feet high—and I felt myself growing smaller and paler than the Lord intended me to be before that exuberantly beaming presence. My hand was like a little bundle of cold sticks in her enfolding grip. I backed against the banisters and tried to pull it away, but Miss Harris held it and beamed.

“I’ve read your name on your door every time I’ve passed,” she said, “and I’ve hoped you’d some day open the door and find me standing there and ask me to come in.”

I could see Betty’s head nodding at me, I could hear her grim “I told you so.”

I made polite murmurs and pressed closer to the banister.

“But the door was never opened,” said Miss Harris, bending to look into my face with an almost tender reproach. I felt I was visibly shrinking, and that the upward gaze I fastened on her was one of pleading. Unless she let go my hand and ceased to be so oppressively gracious I would diminish to a heap upon the floor.

“Never mind,” she went on, “now I know you I’ll not stand outside any more.”

I jerked my hand away and made a flank movement for the stairs. Five minutes more and she would be coming up and taking supper with me. She did not appear to notice my desire for flight, but continued talking to me as I ascended.

“We’re the only two women in the upper part of this house. Do I chaperon you, or do you chaperon me?”

I spoke over the banisters and my tone was cold.

“Being a married woman, I suppose I’m the natural chaperon.”

The coldness glanced off her imperturbable good humor:

“You never can tell. These little quiet married women—”

I frowned. The changed expression stopped her and then she laughed.

“Don’t be offended. You must never mind what I say. I’m not half so interesting if I stop and think.”

I looked down at her and was weak enough to smile. Her face was so unlike her words, so serenely fine, almost noble.

“That’s right, smile,” she cried gaily. “You’ll get used to me when you know me better. And you’re going to do that, Mrs. Drake, for I warn you now, we’ll soon be friends.”

Before I could answer she had turned and run down the stairs to the street.

I let myself into the sitting-room and took off my things. I have neat old-maidish ways, cultivated by years of small quarters. Before I can sit with an easy conscience I have to put away wraps, take off shoes, pull down blinds and light lamps. When I had done this I sat before the register and thought of Miss Harris.

There was something very unusual about her—something more than her looks. She has a challenging quality; maybe it’s magnetism, but whatever it is that’s what makes people notice her and speak of her. Nevertheless, she was not de notre monde—I apologize for the phrase which has always seemed to me the summit of snobbery, but I can’t think of a better one. It was not that she was common—that didn’t fit her at all—unsensitive would be a fairer word. I felt that very strongly, and I felt that it might be a concomitant of a sort of crude power. She didn’t notice my reluctance at all, or I had a fancy that she might have noticed it and didn’t care.

I was sitting thus when Mrs. Bushey came bounding ebulliently in. Mrs. Bushey bounds in quite often, after physical culture, or when the evenings in the other house pall. She wore a red dress under a long fur-lined coat and stopped in pained amaze when she saw me crouched over the register.

“Cold!” she cried aghast, “don’t tell me you haven’t enough heat?”

It was just what I intended telling her, but when I saw her consternation I weakened.

“It is a little chilly this evening,” I faltered, “but perhaps—”

Mrs. Bushey cut me short by falling into the Morris chair as one become limp from an unexpected blow.

“What am I to do?” she wailed, looking up at the chandelier as though she expected an answer to drop on her from the globes. “I’ve just got four tons of the best coal and a new furnace man. I pay him double what any one else on the block pays—double—and here you are cold.”

I felt as if I was doing Mrs. Bushey a personal wrong—insulting her as a landlady and a woman—and exclaimed earnestly, quite forgetting the night Roger and I had frozen in concert.

“Only this evening, Mrs. Bushey, I assure you.”

But she was too perturbed to listen:

“And I try so hard—I don’t make a cent and don’t expect to. I want you all to be comfortable, no matter how far behind I get. That’s my way—but I’ve always been a fool. Oh, dear!” She let her troubled gaze wander over the room— “Isn’t that a beautiful mirror? It came from the Trianon, belonged to Marie Antoinette. I took it out of my room and put it in here for you. What shall I do with that furnace man?”

I found myself telling her that an arctic temperature was exactly to my taste, and making a mental resolution that next time Roger came he could keep on his overcoat, and after all, spring was only six months off.

“No,” said Mrs. Bushey firmly, “I’ll have it right if I go to the poorhouse, and that’s where I’m headed. I had a carpenter’s bill to-day—twenty-six dollars and fourteen cents—and I’ve only eleven in the bank. It was for your floor”—she looked over it—“I really didn’t need to have it fixed, it’s not customary, but I was determined I’d give you a good floor no matter what it cost.”

I was just about suggesting that the carpenter’s bill be added to my next month’s rent when she brightened up and said an Italian count had taken the front room on the floor above.

“Count Mario Delcati, one of the very finest families of Milan. A charming young fellow, charming, with those gallant foreign manners. He’s coming here to learn business, American methods. I’m asking him nothing—a young man in a strange country. How could I? And though his family’s wealthy they’re giving him a mere pittance to live on. Of course I won’t make anything by it, I don’t expect to. His room’s got hardly any chairs in it, and I can’t buy any new ones with that carpenter’s bill hanging over me.” She smoothed the arm of the Morris chair and then looked at the floor. “It’s really made your floor look like parquet.”

I agreed, though I hadn’t thought of it before.

“You have a good many chairs in this room,” she went on, “more than usually go in a furnished apartment, even in the most expensive hotels.”

I had two chairs and a sofa. Mrs. Bushey rose and drew together her fur-lined coat.

“It’s horrible to think of that boy with only one chair,” she murmured, “far from his home, too. Of course I’d give him any I had, but mine are all gone. I’d give the teeth out of my head if anybody wanted them. It’s not in my nature to keep things for myself when other people ought to have them.”

I gave up the Morris chair. Mrs. Bushey was gushingly grateful.

“I’ll tell him it was yours and how willingly you gave it up,” she said, moving toward the door. Then she stopped suddenly and looked at the center-table lamp. “He’s a great reader, he tells me—French fiction. He ought to have a lamp and there’s not one to spare in either house.”

She looked encouragingly at me. I wanted the lamp.

“Can’t he read by the gas?” I pleaded.

“My dear,” said Mrs. Bushey, with a reproving look, “can you read by the gas?”

Conquered by her irrefutable argument, I surrendered the lamp. She was again grateful.

“It’s so agreeable, dealing with the right sort of people,” she said, fastening the last button of her coat. “All the others in the house are so selfish—wouldn’t give up anything. But one doesn’t have to ask you. You offer it at once.”

The count arrived yesterday afternoon, and we are now fast friends. Our meeting fell out thus:— I was reading and heard a sound of footsteps on the stairs, footsteps going up and down, prowling restless footsteps to which I paid no attention, as they go on most of the time. Presently there was a knock at my door and that, too, was a common happening, as most things and people destined for our house find refuge at my portal—intending lodgers for Mrs. Bushey, the seedy man who has a bill for Mr. Hamilton, the laundress with Mr. Hazard’s wash, the artist who is searching for Miss Bliss and has forgotten the address, the telegraph boy with everybody’s telegrams, the postman with the special deliveries, and Miss Harris’ purchases at the department stores.

I called, “Come in,” and the door opened, displaying a thin, brown, dapper young man in a fur-lined overcoat and a silk hat worn back from his forehead. He had a smooth dark skin, a dash of hair on his upper lip, and eyes so black in the pupil and white in the eyeball that they looked as if made of enamel.

At the sight of a lady the young man took off his hat and made a deep bow. When he rose from this obeisance he was smiling pleasantly.

“I am Count Delcati,” he said.

“How do you do?” I responded, rising.

“Very well,” said the count in careful English with an accent. “I come to live here.”

“It’s a very nice place,” I answered.

“That is why I took the room,” said the count. “But now I am here I can’t get into it or find any one who will open the door.”

He was locked out. Mrs. Bushey was absent imparting the mysteries of physical culture and Emma, the maid, was not to be found. In the lower hall was a pile of luggage that might have belonged to an actress touring in repertoire, and the count could think of nothing better to do than sit on it till some one came by and rescued him. Not at all sure that he might not be a novel form of burglar, I invited him into my parlor and set him by the register to thaw out. He accepted my hospitality serenely, pushing an armchair to the heat, and asking me if I objected to his wrapping himself in my Navajo blanket.

“How fortunate that I knocked at your door,” he said, arranging the blanket. “Otherwise I should surely be froze.”

I had an engagement at the dentist’s and disappeared to put on my things. When I came back he rose quickly to his feet, the blanket draped around his shoulders.

“I am going out,” I said. “I have to—it’s the dentist’s.”

“Poor lady,” he murmured politely.

“But—but you,” I stammered; “what will you do while I’m gone?”

Holding the blanket together with one hand he made a sweeping gesture round the room with the other.

“Stay here till you come back.”

I thought of Roger or Betty chancing to drop in and looked on the ground hesitant. There was a slight pause; I raised my eyes. The count, clasping the two ends of the blanket together over his breast, was regarding me with mild attention.

“But if any of my friends come in to see me?”

“I will receive them—varri nicely,” said the count.

We looked at each other for a solemn second and then burst out laughing.

“All right,” I said. “There are the books and magazines, there are the cigarettes, the matches are in that Japanese box and that cut glass bowl is full of chocolates.”

I left him and was gone till dark. At six I came back to find the room illuminated by every gas-jet and lamp and the count still there. He had quite a glad welcoming air, as if I might have been his mother or his maiden aunt.

“You here still,” I cried in the open doorway.

He gave one of his deep deliberate bows.

“I have been varri comfortable and warm,” he designated the center table with an expressive gesture, “I read magazines, I eat candy and I smoke—yes”—he looked with a proud air into the empty box—“yes, I smoke all the cigarettes.”

Then we went into the next house to find Mrs. Bushey.

My supper—eggs and cocoa—is cooked by me in the kitchenette. It is eaten in the dining-room or bedroom (the name of the apartment varies with the hour of the day) on one end of the table. The effect is prim and spinsterly—a tray cloth set with china and silver, a student lamp, and in the middle of the table, a small bunch of flowers. People send them sometimes and in the gaps when no one “bunches” me I buy them. To keep human every woman should have one extravagance.

I was breaking the first egg when a knock came on the door, and Miss Harris entered. She came in quickly, the gray fur coat over her arm, a bare hand clasping gloves, purse and a theater bag, all of which she cast on the divan-bed, revealing herself gowned in black velvet.

“Good evening, dearie,” she said, patting at her skirt with a preoccupied air, “would you mind doing me a service?”

I rose uneasily expectant. I should not have been surprised if she had asked for anything from one of my eggs to all my savings.

“Don’t look so frightened,” she said, and wheeled round disclosing the back of her dress gaping over lingerie effects: “Hook me up, that’s all.”

As I began the service Miss Harris stood gracefully at ease, throwing remarks over her shoulder:

“It’s a great blessing having you here, not alone for your sweet little self,” she turned her head and tried to look at me, pulling the dress out of my hands, “but because before you came I had such a tragic time with the three middle hooks.”

“What did you do?”

“Went unhooked sometimes and at others walked up and down the stairs hoping I’d find one of the inhabitants here, or a tramp, or the postman. He’s done it twice for me—a very obliging man.”

I did not approve, but did not like to say so.

“There’s an eye gone here.”

“Only one,” said Miss Harris in a tone of surprise, “I thought there were two.”

“Shall I pin it?”

“Please don’t. How could I get out a pin by myself, and I won’t wake you up at midnight.”

“But it gaps and shows your neck.”

“Then if the play’s dull, the person behind me will have something interesting to look at.”

“But really, Miss Harris—”

“My dear, good, kind friend, don’t be so proper, or do be proper about yourself if it’s your nature and you can’t help it, but don’t be about me. When I’m on the stage I’ll have to show much more than my neck, so I may as well get used to it.”

“Miss Harris!” I said in a firm cold tone, and stopped the hooking.

I caught the gleam of a humorous gray eye.

“Mrs. Drake!” She whirled round and put her hands on my shoulders and looked into my face with a sweetness that was quite bewitching. “You dear little mouse, don’t you know you’re one kind and I’m another. Both are nice kinds in their way, so don’t let’s try to mix them up.”

There is something disarmingly winning about this woman. I think for the first time in my life I have met a siren. I pulled my shoulders from the grasp of her hands, as I felt myself pulling my spirit from the grasp of her attraction.

“I’ve not finished your dress,” I said.

She turned her back to me and gave a sigh.

“Go on, Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi,” she said, and then added: “Are you the mother of anything?”

“No,” I answered.

“Too bad,” she murmured, “you ought to be.”

I didn’t reply to that. In the moment of silence the sound of feet on the stairs was audible. They came up the passage and began the ascent of the next flight. Miss Harris started.

“That’s my man, I guess,” she said quickly and tore herself from my hands.

She ran to the door and flung it open. I could see the man’s feet and legs half-way up the stairs.

“Jack,” she cried in a joyous voice, “I’m here, in Mrs. Drake’s room. Come down;” then to me: “It’s Mr. Masters. I’m going to the theater with him.”