Patchwork Part 30

When I tried to express my grat.i.tude for her goodness Miss Lee hushed me with a kiss and said she antic.i.p.ated as much joy from my presence in the city as I did, that I was so genuine and refreshing that it would be a pleasure to have me around. I don't know just what she means. I'm just Phbe Metz, nothing wonderful about me, unless it's my voice, and I hope that is. She said, too, that I would make her very happy if I'd let her be a real friend to me, and if I'd call her Virginia. Why, that's just what I've been wishing for! I told her so. She is just twelve years older than I am, so she's near the thirty mark yet, and I like a friend who is older. She seems just the same Miss Lee, no older than she was when I walked down the street of Greenwald in my gingham dress and checked sunbonnet and buried my nose in the pink rose David gave me. How lucky that little country girl is! I'm here in Philadelphia, in a beautiful house, with Virginia Lee for my friend, and glorious visions of music and good times flashing before my eyes. I put my hands to my head to keep it from going dizzy!

There's a little speck of cloud in the blue of my joy right now, though.

I'm afraid I've blundered already. Miss Lee--Virginia, I mean--said as she turned to leave my room that they have dinner at six and I'd have plenty of time to get ready for it. I had to tell her that I couldn't change my dress, that I hadn't thought to bring any light dress in my bag but had packed them all in the trunk. She hurried to a.s.sure me that my dark skirt and white blouse would do very well, that she would not dress for dinner to-night. But I feel sure that she seldom appears at the dinner table in a blouse and tailored skirt. Guess Aunt Maria'd say I'm in a place too tony for me, but I know I can learn how to do here. I might have remembered that some people make of their evening meal a formal one. I've read about "dressing for dinner" and when my first opportunity comes to do so it finds me with all my dress-up dresses packed in a trunk in the express office! Perhaps it serves me right for wanting to "put on style," but I remember an old saying about "doing as the Romans do." At any rate, I'm going to make the best of it and quit worrying about it, or I'll be so fussed I'll eat with my knife or pour my coffee into my saucer!

_Later in the evening._

What a whirl my brain is in! Things happen so fast that I scarcely know where to begin again to write about them. But it began with the dinner.

That was the grandest dinner I ever tasted but I don't remember a single thing I ate, though I do know there was no bread or jelly. What would Aunt Maria think of that! The delicate china, fine linen and silver were the loveliest I have ever seen. There were electric lights with soft-colored shades and there was a colored waiter who seemed to move without effort. The forks and spoons for the different courses bothered me. I had to glance at Virginia to see which one to use. Once during the dinner I thought of the time Mollie Brubaker told Aunt Maria about a dinner she had in the home of a city relative. I remember how Aunt Maria sniffed, "Humph, if abody's right hungry you can eat without such dumb style put on. I say when you cook and carry things to the table for people you don't need to feed them yet, they can help themselves. Just so it's clean and cooked good and enough to go round, that's all I try for when I get company to eat." I felt like a fish out of water at the Lee dinner table, but Mrs. Lee and the others were so kind and tactful that I could not be embarra.s.sed, not enough to show it. However, I thought to myself as we rose from the table, "Thank Heaven!"

Mrs. Lee asked me whether I like music. We were in the sitting-room and Mr. Lee stood by the piano, his hand on his violin case.

"Yes, indeed!" I told her, for I was anxious to hear him play. I have never heard any great violinist but the sound of a violin sets me thrilling. I could listen to it for hours.

Mr. Lee smiled at my enthusiasm, lifted the instrument to his shoulder and began to play. If I live to be a hundred I'll never forget that music! Like the soothing winds of summer, the subtle fragrance of a wild rose, the elusive phantoms of our dreams, it stirred my soul. I sat as one dazed when he ended.

"You say nothing. Don't you like my music?" he asked me.

"Like your music? Like is too poor a word!" And I tried to tell him how I loved it. He smiled again, that calling, hypnotizing smile, that made me want to rush to him and ask him to be my friend. But I restrained myself and turned to listen to Virginia. The music haunted me. It sounded like the voice of a soul searching for something it could never find. I was still dreaming about it when I heard Mr. Lee say, "Now, Aunt, shall we have some cribbage?" I watched him uncomprehendingly as he arranged a small table and brought out cards and boards for a game.

The full significance of his actions dawned upon me--they were going to play cards! I had never seen a game of cards, but Aunt Maria taught me long ago that cards are the instrument of the Evil One. My first impulse was to run from the room, away from the cards, but I hated to be so rude.

"Do you play cards?" Royal Lee asked me.

"No, oh, no!" I gasped.

"You should learn. I'm sure you would enjoy playing."

I know my face flushed. He did not notice my bewilderment and went on, "We'll teach you to play, Miss Metz." Then he turned to the game.

Virginia came to my rescue and drew me to a seat near her. She asked me questions about Greenwald. Goodness only knows what I answered her. My attention was a variant. Troubled thoughts distressed me. In Aunt Maria's category of sins dancing, card playing and theatre-going rank side by side with lying, stealing and idolatry. As I sat there I tried to reconcile my opinion of these worldly pleasures with the conduct of my new friends. The tangle is too complicated to unravel at once. I could feel blushes of shame staining my cheeks as the game progressed.

What would Aunt Maria say, what would daddy say, what would even tolerant Mother Bab say, if they knew I sat pa.s.sively by and watched a game of cards? After a little while I asked Virginia whether I could write a letter to Aunt Maria and tell her of my safe arrival. I just had to get out of that room! I don't know if she saw through my ruse but she smiled as she put her arm around me and led me to the stairs.

"There's a desk in your room, Phbe. You can be undisturbed there. Tell your aunt we are going to help you find a comfortable home and that we are going to take care of you. I'll be up presently to visit with you."

When I got up-stairs I felt like crying. Those cards actually scared me.

I shrank from being so near the evil things. But after a while as I came to think more calmly I decided that cards couldn't hurt me if I didn't play them. I promised myself to keep from being contaminated with the wickedness of the city the while I enjoyed its harmless pleasures. The first horror of the cards soon pa.s.sed but it left me sobered. I wrote a long letter to Aunt Maria and then turned off the lights and looked down into the city street. It seemed wonderful to me to see so many lights stretched off until some of them were mere specks. There was a wedding across the street. I saw the guests and caught a glimpse of the bride, dressed all in white. But later, when Virginia came up to my room and I asked her about it she didn't know a thing about the wedding. Why, at home, if there's a big wedding and the neighbors don't know about it or are not invited to it, they feel slighted. But Virginia says a city is different, that you don't really have neighbors like in Greenwald.

Virginia told me, too, how she came to teach in our school on the hill.

When she finished college she wanted to earn money, just to prove that she could. Her father wanted her to stay home and live the life of a b.u.t.terfly, she says. One day he said, more in jest than earnest, that if she insisted upon earning money he'd give his consent to her being a teacher in a rural school. She accepted the challenge and through her cousin she secured the place on the hill and became my teacher. When her father died and her mother became a semi-invalid she gave up her work and took up the old life again. She said that as if it were not really a desirable life, this going to teas, dances, plays, musicals, lectures, and having no cares or worries. Of course I know many of her pleasures are forbidden fruit for me, but if I ever can wear pretty clothes like hers and go off to an evening musical or concert I know I'll be as excited as a Jenny Wren.

CHAPTER XVII

DIARY--THE NEW HOME

_September 16._

I'VE dreamed my first dreams in Philadelphia. Such dreams as they were!

Whatever it was I ate for supper it must have been richer than our Lancaster County sausage and fried mush, for I dreamed all night. My old-fashioned walnut bed with its red and green calico quilt seemed to swing before me while Mother Bab and Aunt Maria talked to me. A clanging trolley car woke me and I remembered that I had been dreaming of Phares and the tanager's nest. I slept again and heard the strains of Royal Lee's violin till another car clanged past and woke me. I woke once to find myself saying, "Braid it straight, Davie. Aunt Maria's awful mad."

When I slept again I thought I heard Royal Lee say, "We'll teach you to play cards," and speared tails and horned heads seemed mixed promiscuously with little pieces of cardboard bearing red and black symbols and the words "I'll get you if you don't watch out" rang in my ears. "Ugh, what awful dreams," I thought as I lay awake and listened for sounds of activity in the house. I missed Aunt Maria's five o'clock call. The luxury of an eight o'clock breakfast couldn't be appreciated the first morning, as I was wide awake at five. I'll soon learn to sleep later. There are many things I shall learn before I go back to the farm.

This morning Virginia and I started out on a glorious adventure, looking for a boarding place. She laughed when I called it that.

"I like the uncertainty of it," I told her. "The charm of the unknown appeals to me. I do not know under whose roof I shall sleep to-night yet I'm happy because I know I am going to meet new people and see new things. Of course, if I did not have you to help me I would remember Aunt Maria's dire tales of the evils and dangers of a big city and should feel afraid. As it is, I feel only curious and gay. No matter where I find a place to live it's bound to be quite different from the farm, not better, necessarily, but different."

But my "high hopes of youth" received a jolt at the very first interview with a boarding-house mistress. She wouldn't take young ladies who were studying music, their practice would annoy the other boarders. I had never thought of that!

The second quest was equally unsatisfactory. One room was vacant, a pleasant room--at twelve dollars a week! The sum left me speechless.

Virginia had to explain that the amount was a _trifle_ more than I expected to pay.

The third proved to be a smaller house on a narrower street. A charming old lady led us into a sitting-room. All my life I've been accustomed to the proverbial cleanliness of the Pennsylvania Dutch but I'm certain I never saw a place as clean as that house. I said something like that to its mistress and she informed me with a gentle firmness I never heard before that she expected every guest in her house to help to keep it in that condition. She had several rules she wanted all to obey, so that the sunshine would not have a chance to fade the rugs and the dust from the street could not ruin things. I knew I would not be happy there. I like clean rooms, but if it's a matter of choosing between foul air _without_ dust and fresh air _with_ dust I'll take the dust every time.

I'd feel like a funeral to live in a house where the curtains and shades were down every day, summer and winter, to keep the sunshine out of the rooms and prevent the jade-green and china-blue and old-rose of the rugs from fading.

The fourth place was in suburban Philadelphia, fifty minutes' ride from the heart of the city. It was a big colonial house set in a great yard, a relic of the days when gardens still flourished in the city and the breathing s.p.a.ces allotted to householders were larger than at the present time. As we went up the shrubbery-bordered walk to the pillared porch I said, "I want to live here."

Mrs. McCrea, the boarding-house mistress, did not object to the music, provided I took the large room on the third floor and did all my practicing between the hours of eight and five, when the other boarders were gone to business. The price of the room is seven dollars a week.

I took the room at once, before Mrs. McCrea had any chance of changing her mind. I thought it was a very pleasant room, with its two windows looking out on the green yard.

But later, after Virginia had gone and I was left alone in the room, the queerest feeling came over me. I never knew what it meant to be homesick, but I think I had a touch of it this afternoon in this room. I hated this place for about half an hour. I saw that the paint is soiled, the rug worn, the pictures cheap, the bed and bureau trimmed with gingerbready scrolls and k.n.o.bs. It's so different from the blue and white room I slept in last night, so different from my plain, old-fashioned room at home. "It's all right," I said to myself, half crying, "but it's so different."

Fortunately the word _different_ struck a responsive chord in my memory.

I remembered that I wanted different things, and smiled again and dashed the tears away. I arranged my own pictures and few belongings about the room and felt more at home. After I had dressed and stood ready to go down for my first dinner in my new home I felt happier. To be living, to be young and enthusiastic, to possess the colossal courage of youth, was enough to bring happiness into my heart again. I'm going to like this place. I'm going to work and play and live in this wonderful city.

Mrs. McCrea introduced the "New boarder" and I took my a.s.signed place at a long table in the dining-room. I remembered that I once read that the average boarding-house is a veritable school for students of human nature. I wondered what I would learn from the people I met there. The fat man across the table from me gave me no opportunity for any mental ramblings. He launched me right into conversation by asking my opinion of the war in Europe and whether or not we would be dragged into the trouble.

"Really," I answered him, "I don't know much about it. I don't think of it any more than I can help."

Of course that was the wrong thing to say. It started a deluge. A studious-looking woman wearing heavy tortoise-sh.e.l.l rimmed spectacles took my answer as a personal affront. "Why not, Miss Metz?" she demanded. "Why should we not think about it? We women of America need to wake up! In this country we are lolling in ease and safety while other nations bleed and die that we might remain safe. We have no thoughts higher than our hats or deeper than our boots if the catastrophe across the sea does not waken in us an earnest desire to help the stricken nations."

Others took up the argument and I sat quiet and helpless, for I know too little about the cause and progress of the war to talk intelligently about it. A sense of responsibility grazed my soul. I wished I were able to help France and Belgium, but what can I do? The constant harping on the subject of war irritated me. I felt relieved when a young girl near me asked, "Miss Metz, do you like the movies? There's a place near here where they show fine pictures, funny ones to make you forget the war for several hours, at least."

On the whole, I think I'm going to like life at Mrs. McCrea's boarding-house. I hear the views of so many different sorts of people.

And it certainly is different from my life on the farm.

CHAPTER XVIII

DIARY--THE MUSIC MASTER

_September 19._

MY four days in Philadelphia have just been one exclamation point after another! The most wonderful thing happened to me last night! Mrs. Lee invited me over for dinner. I glided through the courses a little more gracefully--one can learn if the will is there. I always loved dainty things. I suppose that is why I delight in the Lee home and am eager to adopt the ways of my new friends.