Just before dinner time I donned a becoming gown to chirk up my courage, groped my way down the long, dim stairs, and telephoned to Von Gerhard. It seemed to me that just to hear his voice would instill in me new courage and hope. I gave the number, and waited.
“Dr. von Gerhard?” repeated a woman’s voice at the other end of the wire. “He is very busy. Will you leave your name?”
“No,” I snapped. “I’ll hold the wire. Tell him that Mrs. Orme is waiting to speak to him.”
“I’ll see.” The voice was grudging.
Another wait; then—“Dawn!” came his voice in glad surprise.
“Hello!” I cried, hysterically. “Hello! Oh, talk! Say something nice, for pity’s sake! I’m sorry that I’ve taken you away from whatever you were doing, but I couldn’t help it. Just talk please! I’m dying of loneliness.”
“Child, are you ill?” Von Gerhard’s voice was so satisfyingly solicitous. “Is anything wrong? Your voice is trembling. I can hear it quite plainly. What has happened? Has Norah written—”
“Norah? No. There was nothing in her letter to upset me. It is only the strangeness of this place. I shall be all right in a day or so.”
“The new home—it is satisfactory? You have found what you wanted? Your room is comfortable?”
“It’s—it’s a large room,” I faltered. “And there’s a—a large view of the lake, too.”
There was a smothered sound at the other end of the wire. Then—“I want you to meet me down-town at seven o’clock. We will have dinner together,” Von Gerhard said, “I cannot have you moping up there all alone all evening.”
“I can’t come.”
“Why? ”
“Because I want to so very much. And anyway, I’m much more cheerful now. I am going in to dinner. And after dinner I shall get acquainted with my room. There are six corners and all the space under the bed that I haven’t explored yet.”
“Dawn!”
“Yes?”
“If you were free tonight, would you marry me? If you knew that the next month would find you mistress of yourself would you—”
“Ernst!”
“Yes?”
“If the gates of Heaven were opened wide to you, and they had `Welcome!’ done in diamonds over the door, and all the loveliest angel ladies grouped about the doorway to receive you, and just beyond you could see awaiting you all that was beautiful, and most exquisite, and most desirable, would you enter?”
And then I hung up the receiver and went in to dinner. I went in to dinner, but not to dine. Oh, shades of those who have suffered in boarding-houses— that dining room! It must have been patterned after the dining room at Dotheboys’ hall. It was bare, and cheerless, and fearfully undressed looking. The diners were seated at two long, unsociable, boarding-housey tables that ran the length of the room, and all the women folks came down to dine with white wool shawls wrapped snugly about their susceptible black silk shoulders. The general effect was that of an Old People’s Home. I found seat after seat at table was filled, and myself the youngest thing present. I felt so criminally young that I wondered they did not strap me in a high chair and ram bread and milk down my throat. Now and then the door would open to admit another snuffly, ancient, and be-shawled member of the company. I learned that Mrs. Schwartz, on my right, did not care mooch for shteak for breakfast, aber a leedle l’mb ch’p she likes. Also that the elderly party on my left and the elderly party on my right resented being separated by my person. Conversation between E. P. on right, and E. P. on left scintillated across my soup, thus:
“How you feel this evening Mis’ Maurer, h’m?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“No wonder you got rheumatism. My room was like a ice-house all day. Yours too?”
“I don’t complain any more. Much good it does. Barley soup again? In my own home I never ate it, and here I pay my good money and get four time a week barley soup. Are those fresh cucumbers? M-m-m-m. They haven’t stood long enough. Look at Mis’ Miller. She feels good this evening. She should feel good. Twenty-five cents she won at bridge. I never seen how that woman is got luck.”
I choked, gasped, and fled.
Back in my own mausoleum once more I put things in order, dragged my typewriter stand into the least murky corner under the bravest gas jet and rescued my tottering reason by turning out a long letter to Norah. That finished, my spirits rose. I dived into the bottom of my trunk for the loose sheets of the book-in-the-making, glanced over the last three or four, discovered that they did not sound so maudlin as I had feared, and straightway forgot my gloomy surroundings in the fascination of weaving the tale.
In the midst of my fine frenzy there came a knock at the door. In the hall stood the anemic little serving maid who had attended me at dinner. She was almost eclipsed by a huge green pasteboard box.
“You’re Mis’ Orme, ain’t you? This here’s for you.”
The little white-cheeked maid hovered at the threshold while I lifted the box cover and revealed the perfection of the American beauty buds that lay there, all dewy and fragrant. The eyes of the little maid were wide with wonder as she gazed, and because I had known flower-hunger I separated two stately blossoms from the glowing cluster and held them out to her.
“For me!” she gasped, and brought her lips down to them, gently. Then—“There’s a high green jar downstairs you can have to stick your flowers in. You ain’t got nothin’ big enough in here, except your water pitcher. An’ putting these grand flowers in a water pitcher—why, it’d be like wearing a silk dress over a flannel petticoat, wouldn’t it?”
When the anemic little boarding-house slavey with the beauty-loving soul had fetched the green jar, I placed the shining stems in it with gentle fingers. At the bottom of the box I found a card that read: “For it is impossible to live in a room with red roses and still be traurig”
How well he knew! And how truly impossible to be sad when red roses are glowing for one, and filling the air with their fragrance!
The interruption was fatal to book-writing. My thoughts were a chaos of red roses, and anemic little maids with glowing eyes, and thoughtful young doctors with a marvelous understanding of feminine moods. So I turned out all the lights, undressed by moonlight, and, throwing a kimono about me, carried my jar of roses to the window and sat down beside them so that their exquisite scent caressed me.
The moonlight had put a spell of white magic upon the lake. It was a light-flooded world that lay below my window. Summer, finger on lip, had stolen in upon the heels of spring. Dim, shadowy figures dotted the benches of the park across the way. Just beyond lay the silver lake, a dazzling bar of moonlight on its breast. Motors rushed along the roadway with a roar and a whir and were gone, leaving a trail of laughter behind them. From the open window of the room below came the slip-slap of cards on the polished table surface, and the low buzz of occasional conversation as the players held postmortems. Under the street light the popcorn vender’s cart made a blot on the mystic beauty of the scene below. But the perfume of my red roses came to me, and their velvet caressed my check, and beyond the noise and lights of the street lay that glorious lake with the bar of moonlight on its soft breast. I gazed and forgave the sour-faced landlady her dining room; forgave the elderly parties their shawls and barley soup; forgot for a moment my weary thoughts of Peter Orme; forgot everything except that it was June, and moonlight and good to be alive.