No. 13 Washington Square Part 21

Matilda had a double impulse to explain, first to clear Mrs. De Peyster of this unmerited indignity, and second to prevent their being once more turned away as servants. But something kept her still. And perhaps it was just as well. Mrs. Gilbert, considering the two, did have a moment's thought about refusing them; she, too, liked to maintain the social tone of her establishment, and certainly servants as guests did not help; but then the arid season for boarding-houses was at hand, and she was not one to sacrifice real money to mere principle.

"How long do you want to stay?"

"We don't know yet. Per--perhaps several months."

This was agreeable news to Mrs. Gilbert. But it was not boarding-house policy to show it.

"When would you want to come in?"

"Now."

"To-night!" The penciled eyebrows lifted in surprise. "And your baggage?"

"We came to New York without any," Matilda lied desperately.

"We're--we're going to buy some things here."

"Naturally, then, you expect to pay in advance."

"Ah--er--at least a deposit."

"One room or two?"

"One." One would come cheaper.

"Excuse me, Mr. Pyecroft," she called again to the clergyman. "This way." And she collected her silken skirt, and swished up two flights of stairs and into a bedroom at the back, where she turned on the light. "A very comfortable room," she went on in the voice of a tired and very superior auctioneer. "Just vacated by a Wall Street broker and his wife; very well-connected people. Bed and couch; easy-chairs; running hot and cold water. And for it I'm making a special summer rate, with board, of only twenty-five dollars a week for two."

"We'll take it," said Matilda.

"Very well. Now the deposit--how much can you pay?"

"Ah--er--say fifteen dollars?"

Mrs. Gilbert's hands that tried to seem indifferent to money and that yet were remarkably prompt, took the bills Matilda held out and thrust them into the folds of her voluminous gown.

"Thank you. Breakfast Sunday mornings from eight to ten. Good-night."

And with that her large pink-tinted ladys.h.i.+p made a rustling exit.

Mrs. De Peyster sank overcome into a chair, drew up her veil, and gazed about her. The other of Mrs. Gilbert's "easy"-chairs had a seat of faded and frayed cotton tapestry; there was a lumpy and unstable-looking couch; a yellow washstand with dandruffy varnish and cracked mirror; wall-paper with vast, uncataloguable flowers gangrenous in suggestion; on the ceiling a circle of over-plump dancing Cupids; and over against one wall a huge, broad, dark box that to Mrs. De Peyster's amazed vision suggested an upended coffin, contrived for the comfort of some deceased with remarkable width of shoulder.

"Matilda!" she s.h.i.+veringingly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. "I didn't know there was anything like it in the world!"

"I know, ma'am, that it's not fit for you," grieved Matilda.

"But--it's better than nothing."

"And that thing there!" pointing a shaking finger at the abnormal coffin. "What's that?"

"That's your bed, ma'am."

"My bed!"

"It lets down, ma'am. Like this."

Whereupon Matilda proceeded to let down that _sine qua non_ of a profitable boarding-house, while Mrs. De Peyster, dismayed, looked for the first time in her life upon the miracle of the unfolding of a folding-bed. Her mistress's slumber prepared for Matilda then softened the inaccuracies of the couch's surface for her own more humble repose.

Neither felt like talking; there was too much to talk about. So soon both were in their beds, the lights out. Mrs. De Peyster lay dazed upon this strange bed that operated like a lorgnette: tremulously existing, awake, yet hardly capable of coherent thought.

For a s.p.a.ce she heard Matilda toss about, draw long, tremulous breaths; then from the couch of that elderly virgin sounded the incontrovertible tocsin of deep sleep. But for Mrs. De Peyster there was no sleep; not yet.

She now was thinking; casting up accounts. Exactly twenty-four hours since, she had officially sailed. Jack and that Mary person were now in sweet and undisturbed possession of her house; Olivetta, on board the Plutonia, was this minute reposing at ease amid the luxuries of her _cabin de luxe_; and she, herself, Mrs. De Peyster, was lying on a folding-bed, a most k.n.o.bby bed,--the man who invented cobblestone paving must have got his idea from such a bed as this,--in a boarding-house the like of which till this night she had never imagined to exist.

And only twenty-four hours!...

She stared up toward where, in the dark, the corpulent Cupids were dancing their aerial May-ring ... and stared ... and stared....

CHAPTER X

PEACE--OF A SORT

The next morning there was a long, whispered discussion as to whether Mrs. De Peyster should go down to breakfast or have all her meals sent up to this chamber of distempered green. In the end two considerations decided the matter. In the first place, meals sent to the room would undoubtedly be charged extra. In the second, it was possible that Mrs.

De Peyster's remaining in her room might rouse suspicion. It seemed the cheaper and safer course to try to merge herself, an unnoticed figure, in the routine of the house.

The dining-room was low-ceilinged and occupied the front bas.e.m.e.nt and seemed to be ventilated solely through the kitchen. Mrs. De Peyster hazily saw perhaps a dozen people; from among whom a bare arm, slipping from the sleeve of a pink silk wrapper, languidly waved toward a small table. Into the two chairs Mrs. Gilbert indicated the twain sank.

A colored maid who had omitted her collar dropped before Mrs. De Peyster a heavy saucer containing three shriveled black objects immured in a dark, forbidding liquor that suggested some wry tincture from a chemist's shop. In response to Mrs. De Peyster's glance of shrinking inquiry Matilda whispered that they were prunes. Next the casual-handed maid favored them with thin, underdone oatmeal, and with thin, bitter coffee; and last with two stacks of pancakes, which in hardly less substantial incarnation had previously been served them by every whiff of kitchen air.

While she pretended to eat this uneatable usurper of her dainty breakfasts, Mrs. De Peyster glanced furtively at the company. Utterly common. And with such she had to a.s.sociate--for months, perhaps!--she who had mixed and mingled only with the earth's best!

Mrs. Gilbert--naturally Mrs. Gilbert was a widow--did not give Mrs.

De Peyster a second glance. The other boarders, after their first scrutiny, hardly looked at her again. The effect was as if all had turned their backs upon her.

Certainly this was odd behavior.

Then, in a flash, she understood. They were snubbing her as a social inferior!

Mrs. De Peyster was beginning to flame when the clergyman they had glimpsed the night before entered and p.r.o.nounced a sonorous good-morning, all-inclusive, as though intended for a congregation. He seated himself at a small table just beyond Mrs. De Peyster's and was unfolding his napkin when his eyes fell upon Mrs. De Peyster. And then Mrs. De Peyster saw one of the oddest changes in a man's face imaginable. Mr. Pyecroft's eyes, which had been large with benedictory roundness, flashed with a smile. And then, at an instant's end, his face was once more grave and clerically benign.

But that instant-long look made her s.h.i.+ver. What was in this clergyman's mind? She watched him, in spite of herself--strangely fascinated; stole looks at him during this meal, and the next, and when they pa.s.sed upon the stairway. He had a confusingly contradictory face, had the Reverend Herbert E. Pyecroft--for such she learned was his full name; a face customarily sedate and elderish, and then, almost without perceptible change, for swift moments oddly youthful; with a wide mouth, which would suddenly twist up at its right corner as though from some unholy quip of humor, and whose as sudden straightening into a solemn line would show that the unseemly humor had been exorcised. In manner he was bland, ornate, gestureish, ample; giving the sense that in nothing less commodious than a church could he loose his person and his powers to their full expression. He was genially familiar; the church-man who is a good fellow. Yet never did he let one forget the respect that was due his cloth.

He was at present without a charge, as she learned later. It was understood that he was waiting an almost certain call from a church in Kansas City.

As Mrs. De Peyster came out of her room that first Sunday at supper-time, there emerged from the room in front of hers the Reverend Mr. Pyecroft. He held out his hand, and smiled parochially.

"Ah, Miss Thompson,"--that was the name she had given the landlady,--"since we are neighbors we should also be friends." And on he went, voluminously, in his full, upholstered voice.

Somehow Mrs. De Peyster got away from him. But thereafter he spoke to her whenever he could waylay her in the hallway or upon the stairs.