XXVI

“I suppose it’s a sign a body’s getting old when time goes by so fast,” Maggie thought, putting “Victor⁠—Many Happy Returns” and a border of scallops and dots in pink icing on Victor’s birthday cake. Forty-two candles⁠—no, she wouldn’t, she’d put on four, one for each of them to blow out and make a wish on.

Poor Aunt Priscilla had died, and people from Marcus Hook had bought Riverview, nice people, no doubt, but not Church people, and she looked⁠—well, plain, to say the least. But they had lots of money. May and Lily, who called, reported emperors’ heads on bronze placques, hung against grape-arbor paper, washbowls of Tiffany glass edged with wrought-iron lace, suspended by heavy chains, and holding electric lights, Turkish tabourets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, cushions (so fat and firm that they left little room in the chairs) covered with tapestry squares of gaming cavaliers and drinking monks, and a deerskin with the antlers left on hanging over the landing railing. And Mrs. Detweiler had played her phonograph to them⁠—that was wonderful. What an age they were living in⁠—really, it seemed as if there was nothing left to be invented. Think of the moving pictures that Victor had told them about⁠—The Tailor’s Dream, with scissors cutting out clothes by themselves, and trousers running away, Expert Bag Punching, Alaska Dog Teams at Dawson City, Winter Sports in Norway, Levi and Cohen, the Irish Comedians (that had bothered Lily until Victor explained it was a joke). How the sisters wished they could see them! But, of course, ladies couldn’t; it wouldn’t have been the thing at all to go into one of those dark mysterious places, although Maggie said she was just going to put on a thick veil and go, some day. And now here they sat and listened to Sousa’s band playing “Stars and Stripes Forever,” to someone singing a comic song about a Tattooed Man⁠—

“ ‘It is perfectly true you can beat a tattoo,
But you can’t beat the tattooed man⁠—’ ”

and to an Uncle Josh Whitcomb monologue that they couldn’t understand very well. Still, it seemed as if Uncle Josh must really and truly have his mouth at the other end of that big tin morning-glory. Mrs. Detweiler laughed so hard that little bright tears stood on her bulges of cheek, and her diamond eardrops quivered.

“Papa and the boys certainly do delight in our talking machine! I wish you ladies could hear our Le Moyne give an imitation of it⁠—he holds his nose like this⁠—see? Like this. Laugh! We nearly die!”

And when they started to go she stopped them with a mysterious wink, flung herself back in her rocking chair, and yelled over her shoulder:

“Clarence! Cla-a-a-runts! (He’s our colored waiter-man.) Bring some cup⁠—there’s some in the icebox, and say! Clarence! Some pretzels⁠—you ladies like pretzels?”

In came a tall thin cut-glass tankard full of pieces of banana and pineapple, with claret lemonade filling the cracks, and a mountain of pretzels. She was kindness itself, but somehow they didn’t go again, although Victor went once for ping-pong and a chafing dish supper and once to a box-party they gave in Philadelphia, where he saw chinks of “Everyman” between the towering hats worn by the ladies. Mrs. Detweiler nearly cracked her jaw yawning, but she knew it was “artistic,” and genteely patted the back of her gloved wrist at the end of each act. Lily found something in a newspaper: “ ‘Everyman’ will in a measure counteract the cheapness of those fatuous frivolities, the ultra modern musical comedies.” She cut it out and pinned it to Victor’s pincushion. She almost felt, hazily, dimly, that Victor was responsible for the plays he honored by attending, the books he read, the tunes he sang in the bathroom.

Victor sang “Hiawatha” and “Any Rags?”, went to germans, collected steins (three⁠—then he gave it up) read “Storiettes” in Munsey’s Magazine, with heroes named Jack Meadows and heroines named Madge Van this or that, read poems about thinking you were in love with Cora, and Dora, and Dolly, and Molly, and Bessie, and Tessie, until you met the one girl (and tried writing a few himself), made fudge in chafing-dishes and played ping-pong with young ladies with pompadours, bursts of chiffon at the backs of their necks, and straight fronts, and felt that Maude Adams would really understand him if only they could meet. His mirror was stuck full of little pencilled dance-cards, and often and often he had two invitations for the same evening. Lily put his dead carnation boutonieres in water, tried unsuccessfully to lend him her mother-of-pearl opera glasses in their blue plush case, and cut out every list that held, or should have held, his name⁠—sometimes to her indignation he was hidden under the veil of “and others.” “Everybody asks Victor everywhere!” she exulted, and May replied, “Of course! He’s a bachelor. Wait till he gets married and see if he stays so popular.”

Lily ate fudge, read “Richard Carvel” and “My Lady Peggy Comes To Town,” wishing that she had lived in the time of brocade and powdered hair, saw “If I Were King” and fell mildly in love with Mr. Sothern in an ermine toque, fell mildly in love with Gibson men, Christy men, and C. Allen Gilbert men, made bead chains and got her threads in terrible knots, and took up pyrography, burning crooked fleurs-de-lis and Art Nouveau water-lilies on wooden picture frames and glove boxes.

May had the straightest front and the biggest pompadour in Brandywine Hundred, made the three of them shirtwaists that were masses of handwork and lace insertion to wear with white piqué skirts, worked at a Battenberg lace bertha for Lily, holding the square of pink muslin close to her smarting eyes⁠—for she needed glasses dreadfully, but she wouldn’t wear them, she wouldn’t give in⁠—and spent hours locked in her room, lying on her bed with her arms around her pillow, whispering⁠—

And Maggie worked on, getting up while the east was grey to start the fire and call Victor, worked through the day worrying over May’s strangeness, the way the hens weren’t laying, the way Victor was beginning to get grey⁠—Victor! Her little brother! Admiring her own cakes, adoring her flowers, feeling patronizing towards new people in church, and frightfully annoyed with occasional squatters in their pew, and fighting off, night and day, the panic that came with the thought of how poor they were.

At last it had to be faced.

“We just can’t go on. We’ll either have to sell the house and move into a little one, or take boarders.”

“Sell The Maples?”

“Well, then, we’ll have to take boarders.”

So they put an advertisement in the paper, and were sick with terror for fear someone would answer it.

Mr. and Mrs. Hopper and Miss Hopper came first. “Oh, don’t like it! Don’t like it!” Maggie prayed in her heart, as she showed them Mamma’s room and the tiny room opening off it, where Victor had slept when he was a little boy.

“Ho-hum!” yawned old Mrs. Hopper. Her feet were tired, and Josie kept on asking so many questions⁠—weren’t the trains noisy, and could Papa have a glass of hot milk at bedtime, and how about the bathroom? She picked up a pink plush pincushion bursting out of a silver slipper, and turned it over to see if there was a sterling mark on the bottom. “Well, Mr. Hopper, you satisfied?” she asked her husband. They both of them knew it was Josie who had to be satisfied, but they liked to pretend.

And thin old-maid Miss Hopper, with her cheap little rings and bracelets and rhinestone combs, her beaver picture-hat, high on her head, and her bunchy suit covered with big fancy buttons and sandwiches of Irish lace and velvet, went on asking questions, so tired of taking care of these two helpless old babies, so tired of lagging while her slow old mother toiled along, wagging her broad behind from side to side, blocking up passageways and making audible remarks about people. “Miss Hopper is so sweet to her mother,” people said, when at a touch, Miss Hopper could have burst out screaming and shoved Mrs. Hopper along from behind, making her fat old legs trot, could have shrieked “Oh, shut up!” instead of mouthing, “She’ll hear you, Mama. I⁠—don’t⁠—know⁠—who⁠—she⁠—is⁠—”

Mrs. Mittendorf came next, because she was a friend of Mrs. Hopper’s. Just before supper, the two would put small knitted shawls around their shoulders and take little walks around the porch, their broad seats swaying, Mrs. Mittendorf calling “Hay foot! Straw foot!” Mrs. Mittendorf hadn’t been there a week before she spilled a whole bottle of essence of peppermint on the nice new mattress.

Mr. Neff had the old schoolroom. Maggie got it ready for him with a sword turning in her heart. And after him came Miss Snaith, so quickly that Miss Hopper was sure she had followed him.

Victor was hardly ever at home in the evening any more. He couldn’t stand the boarders all over the house.

“I can’t ever get into the bathroom,” he complained to Maggie.

“I know⁠—it’s Miss Snaith. She takes hours in there; I believe she washes out her underclothes on the sly. And then, of course, the others complain about there not being any hot water.”

“Well, I’d like sometimes to be able to get to my room without running into a scuttling female in bedroom slippers and curl papers.”

“They’re getting ready to dazzle you and Mr. Neff, steaming their faces under towels and smoking up the lamps with their old curling irons.”

“That double-distilled ass! Why are they so excited about him? He looks like something left over from a straw-ride⁠—and sticking out his chest as if he owned the house. It doesn’t seem like home any more.”

“It’s hard on you. I wish we didn’t have to.”

“Well, it’s harder on you,” Victor said, and suddenly hit her cheek with his lips, quickly and shyly, and ran upstairs. Her nose tingled, tears came to her eyes. “Old foolish!” she told herself severely with a loud sniff, and hid away the moment with all the other times of especial loving kindness between herself and Victor⁠—moments to wrap in tissue of gold and hide in her heart forever.

“Ain’t it cold?” complained old Mrs. Hopper. “I hope I haven’t caught a cold; these ceilings are so high seems as if the heat all went up to the top, and I believe I had a draught on my back at dinner. I guess maybe I better take some camphor, I don’t want to get a cold⁠—”

The cracked, feeble, old voice droned on.

Mrs. Mittendorf patted an enormous yawn. “Pardon me⁠—I have the gapes!” She billowed in the most comfortable chair, nearest the fire, her pink chins scalloped down to her great curve of bosom, her fat fingers, bulging from her dirty diamond rings, spread themselves tenderly, lovingly on the curve of her stomach. “Keep your stomach warm and you’ll be all right,” she advised. “I’m a great believer in taking care of the stomach⁠—that’s the important thing. Be good to your stomach if you want your stomach to be good to you.”

The Stomach. She sat there like some idol made of great globes of pink crystal and ebony, holding tenderly that thing that was before men were, that insatiable thing that men work all their lives to satisfy. Bring offerings of red meat, silver fish, sheaves of wheat, tear the grapes from the vines; hurry, hurry, or the Stomach will curl its lash of hunger around the bodies of its slaves.

Miss Snaith didn’t think all this talk about tummies was very delicate, with gentlemen in the room. She was sitting on the floor, showing her Teddy bear pictures in the fire, talking through it to Mr. Neff.

“See the pixtures in the fire, Teddy? See the little fire fairies? It just seems as if they were dancing, don’t it? Yes, Teddy sees them! Teddy says they look like they had blue and yellow skirts all going fluttery.”

“A very pretty little fancy,” said Mr. Neff kindly, rousing Mrs. Hopper to call to her daughter:

“Ain’t you going to give us some music this evening, Josie?”

Miss Snaith might be full of her fancies, but she couldn’t play the piano.

“Everybody come and sing⁠—what shall it be? ‘Just Kiss Yourself Goodbye’ or ‘The Message of the Violet?’ Come and sing, Mr. Neff, we can’t get along without you.”

“Hem! Hem! I seem to have a frog in my throat.”

“Teddy says he’s goin’ to sing too, so he is!” called Miss Snaith, scrambling up. Oop! There went some gathers! Miss Hopper took off her rings⁠—the one like a little piece of currant jelly, the four diamond chips in a row, and the turquoise forget-me-not, and put them in the swinging candle holder. And soon they were singing:

“ ‘Any rags, any bones, any bottles today,
It’s the same old story in the same old way⁠—’ ”

Mr. Neff was perfectly killing when he sang “Any Ra-a-ags!” working Teddy’s little paw up and down as if he were an opera singer. The ladies were in raptures. Mr. Hopper tapped time to the music with a thick-soled, carefully polished old boot, Mrs. Hopper yawned and applauded, and Mrs. Mittendorf sat smiling sleepily into the fire, too comfortable to move, holding her darling stomach.