Part 24 (1/2)

Mabel had told Martie that ”Grandma Curley” was a ”character.” She was a plain, shrewd, kindly old woman, who lived in an old brownstone house that had been acquired after his death, Martie learned, for a bad debt of her husband's making. She liked everybody and believed in n.o.body; smiling a deep, mysterious smile when her table or her management was praised. She eyed Martie's fresh beauty appraisingly, immediately suspected her condition, was given the young wife's unreserved confidence, and, with a few brief pieces of advice, left her new boarders entirely to their own devices. Wallace's daring compliments fell upon unhearing ears; she would not lower her prices for anybody, she said. They could have the big room for eighteen, or the little one for fourteen dollars a week.

”Sixteen for the big one! You know you like our looks,” said Wallace.

”I'd be losing money on it, Mr. Bannister. You can take it or leave it, just as you like.”

He was a little daunted by her firmness, but in the end he told Martie that eighteen was cheap enough, and as she scattered her belongings about, his wife gave a happy a.s.sent. It was fun to be married and be boarding in New York.

She was too confused, too excited, to eat her dinner. They were both in wild spirits; and went out after dinner to take an experimental ride on the elevated train. That evening the trunk came, and Martie, feeling still in a whirl of new impressions, unpacked in the big bare bedroom; as pleased as a child to arrange her belongings in the empty bureau or hang them in the shallow closet. She had been looking forward, for five hot days, to the pleasure of a bath and a quiet bed. The bath was not to be had; neither faucet in the bathroom ran hot; but the bed was deliciously comfortable, and Martie tumbled into it with only one thought in her head:

”Anyway, whatever happens now--I'm here in New York!”

The first few days of exploration were somewhat affected by the fact that Wallace had almost no money; yet they were glorious days, filled with laughter and joy. The heat of summer had no terrors for Martie as yet, she was all enthusiasm and eagerness. They ate b.u.t.ter cakes and baked apples at Child's, they bought fruit and ice cream bricks and walked along eating them. All New York was eating, and panting, and gasping in the heat. They went to Liberty Island, and climbed the statue, and descended into the smothering subway to be rushed to the Bronx Zoo.

And swiftly the city claimed Martie's heart and mind and body, swiftly she partook of its freedom, of its thousand little pleasures for the poor, of its romance and pathos and ugliness and beauty. Even to the seasoned New Yorkers she met, she seemed to hold some key to what was strange and significant.

Italian women, musing bareheaded and overburdened in the cars, Rabbis with their patriarchal beards, slim saleswomen who wore ma.s.ses of marcelled curls and real Irish lace, she watched them all. She drank in the music of the Park concerts, she dreamed in the libraries, she eagerly caught the first bra.s.sy mutter of the thunder storms.

”If five million other people can make a living here, can't we?” she amused Wallace by asking with spirit.

”There's something in that!” he a.s.sured her.

A day came when Wallace shaved and dressed with unusual care, and went to see Dawson. Hovering about him anxiously at his toilet, his wife had reminded him bravely that if Dawson failed, there were other managers; Dawson was not the only one! The great thing was that he was HERE, ready for them.

Dawson, however, did not fail him. Wallace came back buoyantly with the contract. He had been less than a week in New York, and look at it!

Seventy-five dollars a week in a new play. Rehearsals were to start at once.

The joy that she had always felt awaited her in New York was Martie's now! She told Wallace that she had KNOWN that New York meant success.

She went to his rehearsals, feeling herself a proud part of the whole enterprise, keenly appreciative of the theatre atmosphere. When he went away with his company in late August, Martie saw him off cheerfully, moved to a smaller room, and began to plan for his return, and for the baby. She was in love with life--she wrote Sally.

”You're lucky our climate don't affect you no more than it does,”

observed Mrs. Curley comfortably. ”I suffer considerable from the heat, myself; but then, to tell you the honest truth, I'm fleshy.”

”I like it!” Martie answered buoyantly. ”The thunder storms are delicious! Why, at home the gardens are as dry as bones, now, and look at Central Park--as green as ever. And I love the hurdy-gurdies and the awnings and the elevated trains and the street markets!”

”I like the city,” said the old woman, with a New Yorker's approval of this view. ”My daughter wants me to go down and open a house in Asbury; she has a little summer place there, with a garage and all. But I tell her there's almost n.o.body in the house now, and we get a good draf'

through the rooms. It's not so bad!”

”It's better for me,” said the young wife, ”because of the uncertainty of Mr. Bannister's plans.”

”They're all uncertain--men,” submitted Mrs. Curley thoughtfully. ”That is, the nice ones are,” she added. ”You show me a man whose wife isn't always worrying about him and I'll show you a fool!”

”Which was Mr. Curley?” Martie asked, twinkling. For she and his relict were the only women in the big boarding-house during the hot months, and they had become intimate.

”Curley,” said his widow solemnly, ”was one of G.o.d's own. A better father seven children never had, nor a better neighbour any man! He'd be at his place in church on a Sunday be the weather what it might, and that strong in his opinions that the boys would ask him this and that like the priest himself! I'm not saying, mind you, that he wouldn't take a drop too much, now and then, and act very harshly when the drink was on him, but he'd come out of it like a little child----”

She fell into a reverie, repeating dreamily to herself the words ”a--little--child----” and Martie, dreaming, too, was silent.

The two women were in one of the cool back bedrooms. For hot still blocks all about the houses were just the same; some changed into untidy flats, some empty, some with little shops or agencies in their bas.e.m.e.nts, and some, like this one, second-cla.s.s boarding-houses. On Second and Third avenues, under the elevated trains, were miles of shops; all small shops, crowded upon each other. Every block had its two or three saloons, its meat market, its delicacy store, its tiny establishments where drygoods and milk and shoes and tobacco and fruit and paints and drugs and candies and hats were sold, and the women who drifted up and down all morning shopping usually patronized the nearest store. In the bas.e.m.e.nts were smaller stores where ice and coal and firewood and window-gla.s.s and tinware might be had, and along the street supplementary carts of fruit and vegetables were usually aligned, so that, especially to inexperienced eyes like Martie's, the whole presented a delightfully distracting scene.