Re-Creations (6 page)

About this time Mrs. Maxwell and her son sat in the hotel dining room downtown, eating their breakfast. A telegram had just been laid beside the son’s plate, and he looked up from reading it with a troubled brow.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to upset our plans again,” he said. “I’m awfully sorry, Mother, but Brown is coming on from Boston expecting to meet me at noon, and I guess there’s nothing to do but wait until the two o’clock train. Shall you mind very much?”

“Not at all,” said his mother, smiling. “Why should I mind? I came on to be with you. Does it matter whether I’m in Philadelphia or Washington?”

“Is there anything you would like to do this morning? Any shopping? Or would you like to drive about a bit?”

She shook her head.

“I can shop at home. I came here to be with you.”

“Then let’s drive,” he decided with a loving smile. “Where would you like to go? Anything you want to see?”

“No—or wait. Yes, there is. I’ve a notion I’d like to drive past the house where that little girl I met on the train lives. I’d like to see exactly what she’s up against with her firm little chin and her clear, wise eyes and her artistic ways.”

“At it again, aren’t you, Mother? Always falling in love and chasing after your object. You’re worse than a young man in his teens.” He smiled understandingly. “All right. We’ll hunt her up, Mother, only we shan’t have much time to stop, for I have to be here sharp at twelve thirty. Do you know where she lives?”

“Yes, I have her address here,” said his mother, searching in her silver bag for the card on which Cornelia had written it. “But I don’t want to stop. It wouldn’t do. She would think me intruding.”

The young man took the address and ordered a taxicab, and five minutes after Cornelia entered the door of her home with her arms full of bundles from the market and grocery, a taxicab crawled slowly by the house, and two pairs of eyes eagerly scanned the high, narrow, weather-stained building, with its number over the front door the only really distinct thing about it.

“The poor child!” murmured the lady.

“Well, she sure is up against it!” growled the son, sitting back with an air of not looking but taking it all in out of the tail end of his eye the way young men can do.

“And she wants to be an interior decorator!” said the mother, turning from her last look out the little window behind.

“She’s got some task this time, I’ll say!” answered the son. “It may show up more promisingly from the interior, but I doubt it. And you say she’s been to college? Dwight Hall, didn’t you say, where Dorothy Mayo graduated? Some comedown! It’s a hard world. Well, Mother, I guess we’ve got to get back or I’ll miss my appointment,” and he gave the chauffeur directions to turn about.

More rapidly they passed this time, but the eyes of the woman took in all the details: the blank sidewall where windows ought to have abounded; the shallow third story obviously with space for only one room; the lowly neighbors; the dirty, noisy children in the street. She thought of the girl’s lovely refined face and sighed.

“One might, of course, do a great deal of good in such a neighborhood. It is an opportunity,” she murmured thoughtfully.

Her son looked amused.

“I imagine she’ll confine her attention to the interior of her own home if she does anything at all. I’m afraid if I came home from college to a place like that, I’d beat it, mother mine.”

His mother looked up with a trusting smile.

“You wouldn’t, though!” she said sunnily and added thoughtfully, “And she won’t either. She had a true face. Sometime I’m coming back to see how it came out.”

Meantime, Cornelia in the kitchen started the fire up brightly, put on the teakettle, and began to concoct a soft gingerbread with the aid of the nice thick sour milk. When it was in the oven, she hunted out her mother’s old worn bread raiser, greased the squeaking handle with butter, and started some bread. She remembered how everybody in the family loved Mother’s homemade bread, and if there was one thing above another in which she had excelled as a little girl in the kitchen, it was in making bread. Somehow it did not seem as though things were on a right basis until she had some bread on the way. As she crumbled the yeast cake into a sauce dish and put it a-soak, she began to hum a little tune, yet her mind was so preoccupied with what she had to do that she scarcely remembered it was the theme of the music that ran all through the college play. College life had somehow receded for the present, and in place of costumes and drapery she was considering what she ought to make and bake in order to have the pantry and refrigerator well stocked, and how soon she might with a clear conscience go upstairs and start clearing up Carey’s bedroom. She couldn’t settle rightly to anything until that awful mess was straightened out. The consciousness of the disorder up there in the third story was like a bruise that had been given her, which made itself more and more felt as the minutes passed.

When the cover was put down tight on the bread-raiser, Cornelia looked about her.

“I really ought to clean this kitchen first,” she said thoughtfully, speaking aloud as if she and herself were having it out about the work. “There aren’t enough dishes unpacked for the family to eat comfortably, but there’s not room on those shelves for them if they were unpacked.”

So, with a glance at the rapidly rising gingerbread that let out a whiff of delicious aroma, she mounted on a chair and began to clear off the top shelves of the dresser. It seemed as if there had been no system whatever in placing things. Bottles of shoe polish, a hammer, a box of gingersnaps, a can of putty, and several old neckties were settled in between glass sauce dishes and the electric iron. She kept coming on little necessities. With small ceremony she swept them all down to an orderly row on the floor on the least-used side of the room, and with soap, hot water, and a scrubbing brush went at the shelves. It didn’t take long, of course, but she put a great deal of energy into the work and began to feel actually happy as she smelled the clean soapsuds and saw what a difference it made in the shabby, paintless shelves to get rid of the dirt.

“Now, we’ve at least got a spot to put things!” she announced as she took the gingerbread tins out of the oven and with great satisfaction noted that she had not forgotten how to make gingerbread in the interval of her college days.

The gingerbread reminded her that she had as yet had no breakfast, but she would not mar the velvet beauty of those fragrant loaves of gingerbread by cutting one now. She cut off a slice of the dry end of a loaf and buttered it. She was surprised to find how good it tasted as she ate it going about her work, picking up what dishes on the floor belonged back on the shelves, and washing and arranging them. Later, if there was time, she would unpack more dishes, but she must get up to Carey’s room. It was like leaving something dead about uncovered, to know that that room looked so above her head.

It was twelve o’clock when she at last got permission of herself to go upstairs, and she carried with her broom, mop, soap, scrubbing brush, and plenty of hot water and old cloths. She paused at the door of the front room long enough to rummage in the bureau drawers and get out an old allover gingham apron of her mother’s, which she donned before ascending to the third floor.

In the doorway of her brother’s room she stood appalled once more, scarcely knowing where to begin. Then, putting down her brushes and pails in the hall, she started in at the doorway, picking up the first things that came in her way. Clothes first. She sorted them out quickly, hanging the good things on the railing of the stairs, the worn and soiled ones in piles on the floor, ready for the laundry, the ragman, and the mending basket. When the garments were all out, she turned back, and the room seemed to be just as full and just as messy as it had been before. She began again, this time gleaning the newspapers and magazines. That made quite a hole in the floor space. Next she dragged the twisted blankets off the mattress and threw them down the stairs. Somehow they must be washed or aired or replaced before that bed would be fit to sleep in. After a thoughtful moment of looking over the banisters at them, she descended and carried them all to the little backyard, where she hung them on a short line that had been stretched from the fence to the house. They made a sorry sight, but she would have to leave them till later. The sun and air would help. There wasn’t much sun, and there was still a sharp tang of rain in the air; it had been raining at intervals all the morning. Well, if it rained on them, they certainly needed it, and anyhow it was too late in the day for her to try to wash any of them. She must do the best she could this first day.

Thus she reasoned as she frowningly surveyed the grimy blankets, her eyes lingering on a scorched place near the top of one. Suddenly her expression changed. “You’ve just
got
to be washed!” she said firmly, and snatching the blankets from the line, rushed in to arrange for large quantities of hot water, cleared off the stationary tubs and dumped in the blankets, shaved up the only bar of soap she could find, and then went rummaging in the front room while the water was heating. Of course all this took strength, but she was not realizing how weary she was growing. Her mettle was up, and she was working on her nerve. It was a mercy with all she had before her that she was well and strong, and fresh from gymnasium and basketball training. It would take all her strength before she was done.

She emerged from the parlor twenty minutes later triumphant, with a number of things that she was sure would be needed. She went to work at the blankets with vigor, rubbing and pulling away at the scorched place until it was almost obliterated.
Did Carey smoke in his sleep,
she wondered,
or did he have guests that did?
How dreadful that Carey had come to this, and she away at college improving herself and complacently expecting to make her mark in the world!

The blankets were drying on the line in half an hour more, and she glanced at the clock. A whole hour had gone, and she must hasten. She sped back upstairs and went to work again, dragging out the furniture to the hall, picking up books and magazines from the floor, till the room was stark and empty except for cigarette buds. She surveyed them in disgust and then assailed the room with brushes, brooms, and mop. She threw the windows wide open and swept the wall down vigorously. Before her onslaught dust and ashes disappeared, and even the dismal wallpaper took on a brighter hue.

“It’s got to come off and be repapered or painted some pretty, soft, pastel shade,” she threatened in an undertone to herself as she surveyed the room after soap and water had done their best on floor, woodwork, and windows. She was looking at the bleary wallpaper with a troubled frown.

Of course she couldn’t do everything in a day, but Carey’s room must be clean and inviting before she would be satisfied. No wonder he stayed out late nights, or didn’t come home at all, perhaps, with such a room as that. There ought to be more windows, too. What a pity the builder had been so stingy with them! It was a dark, ugly hole, and there was no need for it, for the room occupied the whole end and could have had openings on three sides and been delightful.

Suddenly she began to feel a great weariness stealing over her and tears coming into her eyes. She was overwhelmed with all that was before her. She sat down on the upper stair and looked about her discouragedly. All these things to be put somewhere! And time going so fast! Then she remembered her bread and with an exclamation rushed down to put it into the pans.

It had risen almost to the top of the bread raiser, and with a mental apology for her forgetfulness she hastened to mold it out into loaves and put it into the greased tins. When it was neatly tucked up under a bit of old linen she had found in the sideboard drawer, she began to prepare the meat for dinner and put it on to cook—a beautiful big pot roast. She deftly seared it with an onion in a hot frying pan and put it to simmer in boiling water with the rinsings of the browned pan, being careful to recall all her mother’s early instruction on the subject. She could remember that pot roast was always a favorite dish at home, and she herself had been longing for a taste of real home-cooked pot roast ever since she had been away.

She fixed the fire carefully so that the meat would simmer just enough and not boil too hard and make it tough, and gave a despairing glance at the clock. How fast the minutes flew! She ought to go back upstairs, but it was a quarter to three, and she wanted to get the table set for dinner before she left so that the dining room would have a pleasant look to the children when they came home. She was quite breathless and excited over their coming. She felt as if she would be almost embarrassed before them after the conversation she had overheard in the morning.

So she attacked the dining room with broom and duster, wiped off the windowpanes and straightened the shade, swept away a mass of miscellaneous articles from the clock shelf, cleared off the sideboard, hunted out a clean old linen cover, polished the mirror, and found a clean tablecloth. But the tablecloth had a great hole in it, and fifteen valuable minutes were wasted in finding a patch and setting it hastily in place with a needle and thread that also had to be hunted for. Then some of the dishes had to be washed before they were fit for use, as they were covered with dust from packing. And all together it was five minutes to four before Cornelia finally had that table set to her satisfaction and could stand back for a brief minute and take it in with tired but shining eyes. Would they notice the difference and be a little glad that she had come? They had taken her for a lazy snob in the morning. Would they feel any better about it now?