PAGE 9
April 25th, As Usual
by
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 grey 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,a 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 grey-and-blue room at home, many-windowed, sweet-smelling, quiet. Quiet!
He thought, as he lay there, choking, of the gracious grey-blue room at home; many-windowed, sweet-smelling, quiet. Quiet!
Then, as he had said that night in September: “Sleeping, mother?”
“N-no. Not yet. Just dozing off. ”
“It’s the strange beds, I guess. This is going to be great, though. Great!”
“My, yes!” agreed Mrs. Brewster, heartily.
They awoke next morning unrefreshed. Pa Brewster, back home in Winnebago, always whistled mournfully off key, when he shaved. The more doleful his tune the happier his wife knew him to be. Also, she had learned to mark his progress by this or that passage in a refrain. Sometimes he sang, too (also off key), and you heard his genial roar all over the house. The louder he roared, and the more doleful the tune, the happier his frame of mind. Milly Brewster knew this. She had never known that she knew it. Neither had he. It was just one of those subconscious bits of marital knowledge that make for happiness and understanding.
When he sang “The Dying Cowboy’s Lament” and came to the passage, “Oh, take me to the churchyard and lay the sod o-o-over me,” Mrs. Brewster used to say: “Gussie, Mr. Brewster’ll be down in ten minutes. You can start the eggs. ”
In the months of their gay life in Sixty-seventh Street, Hosey Brewster never once sang “The Dying Cowboy’s Lament,” nor whistled “In the Sweet By-and-By. ” No; he whistled not at all, or, when he did, gay bits of jazz heard at the theatre or in a restaurant the night before. He deceived no one, least of all himself. Sometimes his voice would trail off into nothingness, but he would catch the tune and toss it up again, heavily, as though it were a physical weight.