At Home with the Jardines
L >> Lilian Bell >> At Home with the Jardines"Well, I am, sort of half-way. But the sort of dinner-table I want to
buy is no joke. It is one which will grace an apartment or a palace.
We can be proud of it even when we are rich. Yet it is not showy, or
one which will be too screamingly prominent. It is of carved oak with
the value all in the carving. It costs--" Here I whispered the price,
for to us it was almost a crime to think of it.
The Angel looked sober when my whisper reached him. But he did not
commit himself. I eyed him anxiously.
"But to make up for that outlay, here is the way I have planned the
rest of the house. Let's have no drawing-room."
"No drawing-room? Then where will you receive guests?"
"The room will be there, and people may come into it and sit down, but
it will not be familiar ground to strangers. They will find themselves
in a cheerful room with soothing walls and comfortable chairs. There
will be books and magazines. It will not be a library, for quantities
of bookcases discourage the frivolous. It will have no gilt chairs,
because big men always want to sit in them. It will have no lace
curtains, because I hate them. The piano will be there and most of our
wedding-presents,--all which lend themselves to the decoration of a
room which will look as if people lived in it."
"If you put bric-a-brac in it people will call it a parlour in spite of
you," said the Angel.
"Not at all. It will have one distinguishing feature which will
effectually prevent the discriminating from making that mistake. I
intend to make the clock on the mantel _go_. That will settle matters."
"Of course."
"This room will lack the stiffness of a drawing-room and so invite
conversation, yet will be sufficiently dignified to prevent
familiarity. I shall endeavour to invest it with an invitation which
will practically say to your college friends, 'You may smoke here, but
you may not throw ashes on the floor.' Do you see my point?"
The Angel looked thoughtful.
"I hope it will work," he said.
"We can but try it. I am doing this because I wish our friends to meet
us together, and I don't approve of this separating men and women,--the
women remaining alone to gossip while the men go away to smoke. It is
too narrowing on us and too broadening on you."
"I like it,--in theory,--but some men are chimneys. They don't know
how to smoke when ladies are present."
"They will soon learn!" I declared, stoutly. "I shall be so attentive
to their comfort, so ready with an ash-tray, so eager to offer them the
last cigar in the jar (if I think they have smoked enough) that they
will notice my slightest cough."
Aubrey waxed enthusiastic.
"An evening spent in that room will be 'An Education in Polite
Smoking,' won't it?"
"And," I went on, "then when we are rich and want a truly handsome
drawingroom we can furnish it in pink silk and cupids with a light
heart, for behold, we will simply move all this comfort I have
described into a library, and the wear on the furniture will redeem it
from newness and give it the proper air of age and use. There is
nothing more vulgar to my mind than a perfectly new library. It
looks--well, you know!"
"It does," said the Angel, with conviction. "All of that!"
We discussed these theories in detail, made many corrections, and
finally went down to buy. But a handsome shop and money in my pocket
always excite me so that what little common sense I was born with
instantly departs, and I buy feverishly, mostly things I do not want
and could not use. So the Angel adopted a good, safe rule. When he
saw my eyes begin to glitter with a "I-must-have-that-or-die"
expression, he used to take me by the arm and say:
"Now shut your eyes, and I'll get you past this counter."
I have heard of many curious women who do not enjoy housekeeping. I am
free to confess that I do not understand why, unless they started out
in life with the conceited idea that to bend their wonderful brains
upon the silly problem of keeping a house clean and ordering dinners
was beneath women of their possibilities on club essays. I often
wonder if they attacked the proposition of housekeeping with the
intention of seeing how much fun there is in it, of how much pleasure
could be got out of making a home, not merely keeping house, and of
feeding their conceit with the fuel of a determination to keep house
better than any woman of their acquaintance. The simple but
fascinating problem of how to make each room a little prettier than it
was last week, would keep even an ingenious woman busy and interested
in something worth while, and those of us who are sensitive to
impressions would be spared the truly awful sight of certain
incongruous rooms in handsome houses. Oh, if you only knew what people
say about you--you women who "don't like to keep house!"
But I forgot. Most women have no sense of humour, and few husbands
take the intense interest in a home that the Angel does.
America, foreigners claim, is a country almost as homeless as France is
said to be. The French have no word for home in their language, but
they have homes in fact, which is much more worth while. We Americans
have the lovely word "Home," but we haven't as a nation the article in
fact. Americans have houses, but in truth we are a homeless race.
Only the unenlightened will contradict me for saying that, and for the
opinion of the unenlightened I do not care.
I am not sentimental after the fashion of women who send flowers to
murderers, but I am full of pale and sickly theories as to the making
of a home, and I am free to confess that it would give me more pleasure
to hear people say of me, "Mrs. Jardine's husband is the happiest man I
know," than to have them read on a bronze tablet under a statue in the
Louvre, "Faith Jardine, Sculptor." For if more ambitious women would
devote themselves to making one neglected husband happy the public
would be spared weak and indifferent pictures, silly and rank books,
rainy-day skirts in the house, and heaps of other foolishness and bad
taste, most of which at bottom is not the necessity to work for a
living, but simply Feminine Conceit.
Of course Aubrey and I made some mistakes in spite of all our
precautions, for, happily for me, the Angel can be led away by
enthusiasm, and is not so faultlessly perfect as to be impossible to
get on with. I revel in his weaknesses, they are so human and
companionable, and give me such a feeling of satisfaction when summing
up my own faults. We got so much fun out of shopping for the house
that we dragged out the process to make the delight of it as lingering
as possible. I had planned it all out.
My own room was to be pink. Big pink roses splashed all over the
cretonne counterpane and valance of the bed. Plain pink wall-paper
upon which to hang pictures all in black frames. Small pink roses
tumbling on the ceiling and looking as if every moment they would
scatter their curling petals on the pink rugs on the floor. The dark
furniture against the pink walls toned down the rose colour, which
returned the compliment to the furniture by bringing out the carving on
bold relief.
The guest-room, on the contrary, was to be pale blue with white
furniture. Nothing but gold-framed pictures on the walls and a blue
rug on the floor. The chairs were to be upholstered in blue for this
room, and in pink for mine. Muslin curtains with full deep ruffles,
picked out respectively with pink and blue, would flutter at the sunny
windows, and though simplicity itself, nothing ever struck me as any
more attractive, for it was all mine--my first house--my first
housekeeping! When this dream really came true, I walked around in
such a dazed condition of delight that I was black and blue from
knocking myself into things I didn't see. But even as I did not see
the obstructions, I did not feel the pain of my bruises, for they were
all got from my furniture on corners of _my_ house, and thus were
sacred.
As I gazed on the delicate beauty of my pretty little guest-chamber I
fell to wondering who would be its first occupant. Would it be a man
or a woman? Would it be Artie Beguelin, the Angel's best man, or my
sweet friend and bridesmaid, Cary Farquhar?
At any rate, he or she would be welcome--oh, so welcome! I hoped the
invisible guest would be happy, and would feel that ours was not a
compulsory hospitality, with the cost counted beforehand and the
benefits we expected in return discounted. No, whoever it was to be
would be a guest and a friend. On the wall over the bed hung these
words illuminated on vellum and framed, for I had always loved them:
"Sleep sweet, within this quiet room,
Oh thou, whoe'er thou art!
And let no mournful yesterday
Disturb thy peaceful heart,
Nor let to-morrow fret thy dreams
With thoughts of coming ill,
Thy Maker is thy changeless Friend,
His love surrounds thee still.
Sleep sweet!
Good night."
Afterward, when my first guest had come and gone, this momentary
reverie came back to me, and I looked up at this benediction with tears
in my eyes.
Of course we spent too much money on our house furnishings. We always
do, but after all--and here come my theories again. I would have fine
table and bed linen. The Angel did not believe I would stick to it,
but I did embroider it all myself. And as to hemming napkins and
table-cloths--I challenge any nun in any convent to make prettier
French hems than I put in! Would I be likely to waste all that labour
on flimsy napkins or cotton sheets and pillow-cases?
Not at all! I can find infinitely more pleasure in putting invisible
stitches into my own first linen than in going to pink teas, and people
don't get permanently angry if you invite them to dinner, and let them
eat off hemmed and embroidered damask. Believe me. You may send cards
to six receptions, and get out of six afternoons of misery and
indigestion by one judiciously arranged dinner--if you don't mix your
people. And thus we did.
So I got my linen. The Angel laughed at another of my theories, but
when I proved to him that I would really see the thing through, he was
convinced. It was on the question of beds. Our friends professed
themselves astonished that we contemplated the extravagance of a
guest-chamber, for here in New York, where rents are so abnormal,
people economize first of all upon their friends, and I am told that an
extra bedroom where a chance guest may be asked to remain overnight is
the exception with people of moderate means. Such monstrous
selfishness struck me as appalling. To provide _only_ for
ourselves--for our own comfort! To have no room in all your own luxury
to share with a friend! To be obliged to tell the woman whose
hospitality you have enjoyed in your girlhood: "Now that I am married,
I have prepared no place for you! Your kindness to me is all
forgotten!"
Well, we simply refused. What if it were a strain on us financially?
I would rather suffer that than cripple myself spiritually and suffer
from no pangs of conscience as most New Yorkers do!
However, we managed it, and in this wise. I said:
"Aubrey, if you are willing, we can save a great deal in this way."
Even at this early stage the Angel always grew deeply attentive when I
talked of saving anything.
"We can and must order the finest springs and mattresses for the beds,
for of all the meanness in this world the meanest is to put a bad bed
in the guest-chamber, and that is where most housekeepers are perfectly
willing to economize. But we can and will buy white iron beds with
brass trimmings for almost nothing,--they are all the same size as the
fine brass ones,--so that at any time when we find ourselves vulgarly
rich and able to live up to the dinner-table we shall feel perfectly
justified in discarding them, and there you are!"
"But how will it look?" said the man.
"How will our bank-account look, if we don't?"
"I know. But I thought women were afraid of what other women would
say," said the Angel.
"Now, Aubrey," I said, "If we have economized on ourselves, or rather
included ourselves in a general scheme of economy in order the better
to provide for our guests, I think even New Yorkers would hesitate to
criticize the Jardines' iron beds,--especially if they ever got a
chance to disport themselves on the Jardines' Turkish springs!"
"There's something in that," said the Angel.
CHAPTER III
ON THE SUBJECT OF JANITORS
I used to pride myself on being practical and on possessing no small
degree of that peculiar brand of sense known as "horse." However, like
most women inclined to take a rosy view of their virtues and to pass
lightly over their obvious faults, I know now that I prided myself on
the one thing in my make-up conspicuous by its absence. For I am
luxurious to a degree, and so fond of beauty and grace that I feel with
the man who said, "Give me the luxuries of life and I will do without
the necessities."
This explanation is due to any man, woman, or child who has ever lived
in a New York apartment, and who is moved to follow the fortunes of the
Jardines further. Also this conversation took place before some of the
events already narrated transpired, and while we were still at the
Waldorf.
"Now, Aubrey," I said, "to begin at the beginning, marriage is supposed
to perfect existence all around, isn't it?"
"It does," said Aubrey.
"No, now, I am speaking seriously. It has fed the mental and spiritual
side of us, why not begin life with the determination to make it oil
the wheels of daily existence? Why not bend our energies to avoiding
the pitfalls of the ordinary mortal, and let _us_ lead a perfect life."
"Very well," said the Angel.
"Now in permitting housekeeping to conquer, most people become slaves
to the small ills of life, which I wish to avoid."
"Get to the point," said Aubrey, encouragingly, fearing, I suppose,
that if he did not give the conversation a fillip, I might go on in
that strain for ever, which would be wearing.
"Well, the point is this. I've never known what it was to have good
service in a private house, except abroad. Now even when people bring
excellent servants over from London and Paris, they go all to pieces in
a year. It's in the air of America."
"Well?" said Aubrey.
"Well, of course we have perfect service here in this hotel, and it
seems to me that the nearest approach to that would be in one of those
smart apartment-houses, where everything is done for you outside of
your four walls. Then with Mary, who seems to be a delightful
creature, all we need do is to be careful in the selection of a
janitor. Do you follow me?"
"You have not finished," said Solomon.
"Quite true, oh, wise man of the East! Another of the trials of my
life has always been to get letters mailed."
"To get letters _mailed_?" said Aubrey.
"To get letters mailed," I repeated, firmly. "Every woman knows that
it is no trouble to write them, but the problem of leaving them on the
hall-table for the first person who goes out to mail, the lingering
fear when one doesn't hear promptly that the letter was lost or never
went; the danger of somebody covering them up with papers and sweeping
them off to be burned; the impossibility of running to the box with
each one; the impoliteness of refusing the friend who offers to mail
them permission even to touch them,--oh, Aubrey, really, the chief
worry of my whole life has been to get letters mailed!"
"The most expensive apartment we looked at had a mail-chute," said my
husband, thoughtfully, after a moment of silence.
"Well," I hazarded, timidly, "the only difference between a flat and an
apartment is in the rent."
"That apartment had an ice-box and a sideboard built in, and a mail
chute," repeated Aubrey.
"Yes, it did, as well as the most respectful janitor I ever saw. Did
you notice him?"
"Was he the one who was cross-eyed?"
"Well, yes, I think his eyes weren't quite straight. But that may have
been one reason why he was so gentle and deferential. I have often
noticed that persons who are afflicted in some painful way are often
the very kindest and best, as if the spiritual had developed at the
expense of the physical."
"Well, Faith, if your heart is set on that one we must have it."
"I know the rent is exorbitant, but I intend to get all of my amusement
and recreation out of my home, so count balls and receptions and
functions out--or rather count them in the rent," I said, "for instead
of going to the theatre as we have been doing, I want to give little
dinners--real dinners to people we love, and give them with a view to
the enjoyment of our guests rather than that of ourselves. I want to
make a fine art of the selection of guests in their relation to each
other."
"I'd like nothing better," declared Aubrey, "but don't you know that
you won't be called upon to do much of that sort of thing the first
winter, for everybody we know will be entertaining us."
"There's one other point I'd like to explain," I said. "And that is
that I shall never entertain anybody whom I simply 'feel called upon'
to entertain, nor, if I like people, shall I count favours with them.
I shall conform to conventionality simply as a matter of dignity. It
is the privilege of your friends to make the first advances to me
because I am a stranger to most of them. But I want to make a practice
of hospitality for my own sake. I want to see if the open house we
kept in the South cannot be accomplished in New York. I never, for the
good of my own soul, want to grow as cold and calculating as some
so-called hospitable women whom I have met in the North."
Aubrey looked at me comprehendingly.
"I know," I said, smiling, "that it sounds to a hardened New Yorker
like yourself about like the interview of a young actress who declares
that she intends to elevate the stage. But in my case, I am in the
position of one who doesn't want the stage to lower her. I don't want
to grow cold, Aubrey, and I hope never to allow a friend to leave my
house at meal-time without at least an invitation to remain and make,
if necessary, a convenience of us. What are friends for, I should like
to know?"
"From the position you have just stated I should think your definition
of a friend would be 'a man or woman who can be imposed upon with
impunity.'"
"Let them impose upon me if they want to," I declared, stoutly. "As
long as I have respectful service, I will let those I love make a
door-mat of me!"
"A slightly volcanic door-mat, I should say," observed the Angel. "You
would allow yourself to be stamped upon just about as humbly as a
charge of dynamite, and the remonstrance in both cases would be
similar."
I could not help remembering this conversation after we had moved in
and we had been settled by the efforts of the family of the cross-eyed
janitor.
I never enjoyed anything in my life as I enjoyed moving into our first
home. It was on the top floor, overlooking the park from the front
windows, while the back gave upon a stretch of neat little flower
gardens with the Hudson shining like a narrow silver ribbon between us
and the undulating Jersey shore.
Every room was light. Every room opened on the street, and the
sunlight came pouring in quite as if it did not know that in most
apartments the sun is an unexpected luxury. There were parquet floors
throughout, and the bathroom was white marble, all except a narrow
frieze of cool pale green. The woodwork was daintily carved, the
dining-room was panelled in oak with two handsome china-closets built
in. We had eleven closets with an extra storeroom for trunks in the
basement, and enough cabinets in the kitchen and butler's pantry to
stock a hotel, and as a crowning glory the front door did not open
opposite the bathroom or kitchen as is the case in most apartments, but
was near the front like the home of a Christian, and the dining-room
gave into the front room with a largeness of vista which made us feel
like millionaires.
Does this read like a fairy-tale?
As we surveyed our domain, I felt such a flood of gratitude and pride
of home sweep over my soul that I said to Aubrey:
"I actually feel like praying."
The Angel smiled an inscrutable smile, the exact meaning of which I did
not catch, but it was not one of derision. Rather I should say that it
had in it a waiting quality, as of a knowing one who intended to give
thanks after he had tested a meal, instead of a reckless wight who in
faith called down a blessing on a napkin and salt-cellars. But my
gratitude was largely "a lively appreciation of favours to come."
I have no tale of woe to relate of things which did not come in time.
Our purchases promised for a certain day arrived as scheduled, were
uncrated on the sidewalk, with Aubrey and me hanging out of the sixth
floor window to watch them. The gentle-mannered janitor and his buxom
daughter were cleaning the last of the windows, and such was the genius
of fortune and Mary that at three that same afternoon, when the best
man called to see how we were getting on, there was nothing left to do
but to hang pictures, so we set him to doing that while we sat around
in languid delight and bossed the job. But it was thirsty work, and
the best man rested often. Such perfection of planning seemed to
irritate him, although he is by nature a gentle soul, for he said, "I
must say you have done well, but I'll bet there is one thing you have
forgotten."
"Not at all," said Aubrey, who was at college with the best man.
"There are six siphons on the ice now, and six more under the kitchen
sink. The corkscrew is on the mantel."
All the pictures were hung before dinner. That is, they were hung for
the first time. The pictures in our apartment have travelled. One by
one they have journeyed from the smoking-room down the long hall,
stopping a day or two in each room, and all finding a resting-place
except one, which will not look well in any colour, any spot, on any
wall, nor in any light. It was a wedding-present from some one we
like, or Aubrey would have put his foot through it long ago. As it is,
it is under the blue room bed, whence we drag it every once in awhile
to admire the frame and say, "I wonder if it wouldn't go there."
As long as that picture remains unhung, a vacant wall space in any
house is full of interest and possibility to us, and if we ever move,
we shall select a spot for that picture first, and consider the rent
and plumbing second.
The janitor's manners continued perfect. Even Mary found no fault with
him, and as my appreciation for anything is plainly evident in my
manner, both Mary and the janitor felt that in me they had found a
friend, and they waxed confidential withal.
One day he came up to clean windows, and when he mentioned the
"parlour," I said:
"Don't call this room a parlour. I have neither parlour nor
drawing-room. This small room is a smoking-room, and this other is a
library. I wanted Mr. Jardine to feel at liberty to smoke all over the
house."
The janitor looked about him and noticed the lack of gilt chairs and
lace curtains.
"Will you excuse an old man for speaking, Mrs. Jardine, and not think
me impertinent if I make free to say that if more young ladies started
housekeeping with such ideas, homes would be happier. I make bold to
say that you will not have trouble in keeping Mr. Jardine at home
evenings."
I blushed with pleasure at having won the approval of this gentle soul.
But when I told Aubrey he said:
"Poor old fellow! I saw his wife to-day. She weighs well on to four
hundred, and has the air of an anarchist queen. She was engaged in
reducing the agent to his proper level, and _I_ fled."
Evidently the agent conquered, for, alas! within a week we had a new
janitor,--the opposite of my friend in every respect. Harris, the new
janitor, was young, sprightly, self-confident, and an American of the
type "I'm just as good as you are." This challenge lay so plainly in
his eye that almost involuntarily I said, "I know you are," before I
told him that the elevator squeaked.
I hated him from the moment I saw him, but I gave him an extra large
fee to bribe, in the cowardly manner of all citizens of the land of the
free and the home of the brave, a servant to do pleasantly the duties
he is otherwise paid to do. He had three little children, and when one
of them had a birthday I sent them ice-cream and a birthday cake. When
his wife fell ill I sent her my own doctor, for her little pale,
pinched, three-cornered face appealed to me. She did all the janitor's
work. It was her voice at the dumb-waiter instead of his, and once
Aubrey found her emptying a garbage can nearly as large as she was,
when he went down to see why Harris didn't answer our bell. Aubrey
found Harris asleep.
We discovered these things by degrees, and gradually I came to feel
that my mail-chute was the only real, continuous luxury we had gained
with this awful rent. Still we avoided discussing the matter. By
ignoring it, we could keep ourselves deceived a little longer to the
fact that we were being robbed by our own foolishness.