'Boston Calling'

MRS. NEVIN was frankly put out. As she never made any attempt to hide her feelings, she was particularly unsparing of the man who, three years before, had murmured the all-inclusive words, ‘for better, for worse.’

Don’t misunderstand me. She was not bad-tempered; in no sense was she hard to get along with. She was a charming, whimsical creature, whose brisk changes of mood and alarming directness were a delight to her husband. Living with her would have killed a sentimental man; but H. P. Nevin was not sentimental. He was even-tempered and demanded little. There was a vein of obstinacy running through his nature, however, which would have killed a sensitive woman. But Mrs. Nevin was not sensitive.

‘ If you feel you have to go to Boston, go along; but I think you are foolish to stop over for your Commencement.’

Mrs. Nevin, in the act of sewing a button on a pair of sadly creased whiteflannel trousers, stabbed the button at every word.

‘Oh no, Mollie, not when I am right there.’

‘Silly, Bert! I call it very silly. You ’ll just see all your old friends, and drink a lot — '

‘What more could you want?’ interrupted her husband jovially. ‘Sounds bang-up to me.’

Mollie was quick to destroy at one stroke the rosy picture she had unconsciously painted. ‘They ’ll all tell you how fat and bald you are getting.’

‘No fatter and balder than they!’

Fifteen minutes of argument followed. Mollie felt that it was only a matter of time before her husband would agree to give up his idiotic idea. Surely he was convinced that it would ‘only tire him out and make him cross and cost a lot of money.’ Her patient husband answered very little. He was one of those maddening people who seem to those who do not know them always on the point of giving in. But underneath an apparently sliding surface, there is a rock foundation which no one can move. Three years of married life ought to have taught Mollie that arguing with her husband was energy thrown away. But she never had been quite convinced that his mind was made up from the beginning.

This evening, while he was packing, while he was changing his collar, and even while he was locking the windows and shooing out the reluctant cat, she followed him, full of words, eloquent, but utterly unconvincing. Bert interrupted her at last without ceremony.

‘Good night, dear. Just time to catch the ten-twenty for town. That connects with the midnight.’

Mollie turned a cheek made warm and red with heated argument.

‘ I suppose I ’ll be back on Monday or so. Telegraph me at the Copley Plaza if you need me. Don’t forget to buy that mosquito netting for the baby’s crib.’

‘Oh, hush up, Bert, and run along. I want to go to bed. Good night.'

‘Give your love to the boys?’ called out Bert from the darkness.

There was almost a laugh at this; but Mrs. Nevin managed to turn it into an impatient cluck, and closed the door.

Mollie knew that she was in for a lonely few days. The very fact that she would miss her clumsy, unimaginative husband, as she knew she would, vexed her independent spirit. The chaos of newspapers and ashes and clotheshangers that he had left in their room brought a little lump to her throat. This softness, however, she soon converted into the vigor with which she attacked the matter of straightening up.

Bert was a maddening man. She did n’t suppose any woman had more to put up with than she. Of course, Bert was a thoroughly good man; and he was not a failure, like Geoff Evans. But he had a great many annoying habits. He talked too loud and waked the baby. He splashed so in the tub, that every morning she had to go down on her knees and mop and wring out and mop again. He never would dance or play bridge. He hated to read aloud. When it came to changing the baby’s wails into gurgles, he was quite wonderful. But he spoiled her by picking her up all the time. And he would take the light over to the crib and peer at her soft closed eyelids with their little straight fringe. Of course, the baby always waked up.

Flashlight in hand, Mollie tiptoed into the next room. As she dimmed its light with her fingers, she looked long at the littleness and limpness of her baby girl. Her mouth turned down at the corners, like Bert’s, she thought, and she had his fine high forehead. Two slate-blue eyes flew open, blinked twice, and in a jiffy the baby ‘tuned up’ (that was Bert’s expression), and was off in those screams that suggest murder, which a baby can turn on with no preparation and no warning.

‘Idiot!’ Mollie exclaimed to herself. But it was twenty minutes before the baby was asleep, and an hour and a half before she was.

At half-past ten the next morning, Mollie had finished all her morning chores. With a feeling of complacency, she had deftly balanced a chair on a rickety table, and was cleaning the highest shelves in the big closet. When the sound of the telephone reached her ears, she gave a little jump. The table tottered and she just avoided being propelled into the middle of the floor, on her face. She was in one of her moods of quick irritation when she took up the receiver.

‘Boston calling.’

Boston! Mollie’s heart stopped beating. Then it gave a great flop as she heard a well-known voice.

‘Hello, Mollie. Is that you?’

‘Hello, Bert! Are you sick?’ In her anxiety Mollie sounded provoked.

‘Sick? Heavens no!’

‘ Are you all right ? ’

Bert was provoked. ‘Certainly I’m all right. What do you mean? I have n’t been to Commencement yet.’

This was an unfortunate reference.

‘Well, what did you call up for?’

With a slight effort Bert dropped his voice as he used to when he was courting Mollie. It never failed to thrill her.

‘To hear your voice.’

This time his words stunned her so that she did n’t even notice the tone.

‘What? Well! Bert Nevin! For goodness’ sake! You must think we ’re millionaires, calling up from Boston!’

‘Listen, dear. I had a dream last night. I dreamed that you loved me.’

There was a perceptible pause while Mollie struggled with an impatient impulse to put down the receiver. — How much was a Boston call ? — Then she answered, in amazed disgust, —

‘I’m glad you dreamed true.— Dreamed the truth! — Dreamed the truth! ! — Bert, can’t you hear me? — Are you really trying? — I said, dreamed true. Had a true dream — Yes, true.’

She was red in the face, and furious with Bert for not understanding her one half-gracious remark. It had been such an effort. She repeated it at least ten times, with increasing vigor and in different forms. Bert seemed incapable of grasping it. When he did n’t say, ‘What?’ he asked frantically if she really meant it.

‘Dreamed the truth!’ she shouted. ‘Yes, I do mean it. Of course I mean it.— The TRUTH! — Yes, indeed, I mean it. — Hello! — Hello! — Hello, Bert! — HELLO! — Oh, darn! ’

With this mild oath, Mollie dropped the receiver and flew back to her job. On the way, she glanced at the baby, who lay on the sleeping-porch with the morning sun streaming over her. Her lips brushed the feathery-soft cheek.

‘Sweet! Sweet!' she whispered.

Then her flitting mind went back to her crazy telephone conversation. Silly of Bert. Must have cost him more than a dollar. What an odd fellow he was! Not knowing why life seemed such a merry thing to her, she sang ‘The Palms’ in triumph all morning, as she sorted and dusted and threw away. It was a busy day, and she started early for bed. The baby’s crib she wheeled into her room, to keep her company. Then she made the eerie round of the downstairs windows, which was followed by the cat-ritual. She never had the heart to push the cat gently out with her foot, as Bert did. When she picked him up, he stiffened his legs in the frightening way cats have, and one of his claws caught in her wool dressinggown. At last, everything was locked that should be locked, and she was in bed. One final tuck in at the baby’s neck, and Mollie was asleep.

H. P. Nevin did not linger in the model brick station of the model suburban town of Glendale. The theatre local had hardly pulled out before he had disappeared in the shadows of the maples that were the boast of Glendale’s main street. There is a flatness about coming home before one is expected that makes the home-comer hesitate at the doorstep. But there was nothing flat about H. P. Nevin’s return, and no hesitation; he was driven home by the flail of an overwhelming fear.

The house loomed up black, like the future he was sure was ahead of him. A feeling of desolation settled over him. An empty house. Empty. No Mollie. No baby. No Mollie.

What a curious girl he had married! Nervous, but full of life. A bit fussy about details; she worried more than most men’s wives. There was Mabel Coates for instance — pretty, gay, never gave a darn. But, heavens, what a fool! Mollie was no fool. And what a marvelous pal she was when she did snap her fingers at the daily grind and go on a spree with him. People always noticed Mollie. Men in restaurants and waiters. He had never been able to decide whether he liked it or not — but it was a fact. It was her fair hair, he supposed, and the way she carried her small head. — Oh, well — no more Mollie.

These dreary thoughts, repeated with variations, carried him into the hall, where he turned on the light, and almost unconsciously looked up at the electric-light fixture. Mollie always left notes there — terse, and often cryptic, notes about the furnace, or where the baby was sleeping; a word about hanging his raincoat on the newel-post so that it should be dry in the morning. Something characteristic about them — there was a trace of her vivid personality in everything Mollie touched — always made him smile. But there was no smiling to-night, and no note.

Was n’t there always a note ? He had read in a book of a heroine who had left the note for her husband against the decanter — ‘where you were sure to find it,’ she explained ten years later. H. P. Nevin did n’t own a decanter, but wandered into the dining-room nevertheless, and gave a weary glance at the sideboard. — The pincushion was the only other possibility.

He thumped noisily upstairs, unhampered by any fear of the baby’s tuning up, or by his usual wholesome respect for Mollie’s vigorous tongue. At the door of his room he hesitated a second; it was all he could do to go in to emptiness and silence. He turned on the light, and fixed a strange glassy stare at the bed. Then, hardly believing, he rushed forward with hands outstretched.

Mollie was sitting there, her back bravely straight, her eyes staring wide with fear. They had not lost the look of trying to see in the dark. Of the two, Bert was the more surprised. Certainly Mollie recovered quickest.

‘Bert,’ she whispered, ‘you nearly killed me with fright.’ She had to gasp the words between the happy, bear-like hugs which were almost crushing her. ‘What brought you home?’

‘You darling! You did n’t leave your old man!’

Bert’s voice was its usual cheerful roar, made louder and stronger with happiness. Mollie, as always, was on the alert.

‘Sh-sh-sh! You ’ll wake the baby. Do give me a chance to breathe. And do explain all this nonsense you are talking.’

Bert sat on the bed and clutched his wife’s hands.

‘Darling! Dear Mollie! Good old girl!’ he murmured.

Mollie, who thought she was familiar with all his eccentricities, found this a new line.

‘Do shut the blinds, if you are going to act this way. Heavens, Bert, I believe you’ve been drinking.’

In his feeling of exaltation, Bert found this accusation not worth bothering with.

‘Mollie.’ He was shutting the blinds with a subdued clatter. His voice was hushed and excited. ‘Why did you say you were leaving me?’

‘Bert! Say I was leaving you? When, dear? This is the way you act when you wake up from a nightmare. I begin to think — ’

‘That’s just it. A nightmare. I dreamed you left me,—you must remember my calling you up, — and you said it was true. A true dream.’

There was a moment of blank silence while Mollie struggled to make some sense out of what seemed to her as fantastic as a chapter from Alice in Wonderland. She had been waked up, suddenly; she had been hideously frightened; and now, apparently, her husband had lost his reason. Then the light of memory found its way to her befogged mind.

‘I said I loved you, dear. You asked me —

‘Now listen — ’

‘I did n’t hear — ’

‘Now, Mollie — ’

‘Bert, I tell you I — ’

‘Now listen here, dearie — ’

‘Bert, will you let me speak?’

A restless stirring in the crib made Mollie drop her voice from the shrill insistent whisper it had reached to a less penetrating tone. Bert surrendered ungraciously.

‘All right. Let’s hear your story.’

Mollie began with the deliberateness of one who is sure she has the floor.

‘Well. You called me up and asked if I loved you.’

‘I asked if —’

‘Give me a chance! You said some nonsense about dreaming I loved you. And I said yes, you had dreamed true. I thought you were awfully stupid at the time. I don’t know what to think now.’

Bert’s honest eyes had a light of madness in them. He was nearly distracted. After all — he often pulled himself together by this sententious thought — he was a trained lawyer. He must n’t expect his wife to have as logical a mind as his.

‘Mollie. You may have thought I said loved. As a matter of fact, I said I dreamed you left me, and you said I dreamed true. Now’ — he deftly headed off an interruption — ‘don’t say I said I loved you — I mean you loved me — I said you left me.’

He had risen and was taking off his coat and vest with quick angry motions. Mollie flopped back in the bed in impatience.

‘What nonsense, Bert! Why in heaven’s name did you ring off? If you made such an idiotic mistake, I should think you would at least ask why I was leaving you.’

Bert paused with both hands in full swing at a collar button. In his effort to be impressive, his voice fell an octave.

‘Mollie. We were cut off. I spent nearly an hour trying to get you back. Can’t you imagine my feelings? I was nearly crazy. I called again and again. Each time the operator said you did n’t answer. You see it all fitted in. I supposed you had walked from the telephone straight out the door.’

‘With the baby tucked under my arm, or left crying in her crib?’

Mollie resorted to sarcasm.

‘ I figured you’d take the baby with you. — Good Heavens, how I rushed for that train!’

The memory of the past fear-haunted hours made Bert groan aloud, unconsciously. Mollie looked at him as he bent over his shabby suitcase. He looked tired and far too thin. She was a very poor wife to him, she thought. As she felt a tightening at the throat, which always preceded an almost hysterical cry, she jumped out of bed and into her soft blue dressing-gown. With both hands she smoothed the hair back from her husband’s forehead.

‘Dear daddie! Did you get to Commencement? '

‘Commencement? I should say not. That’s day after to-morrow. I saw Mr. Sears for a most unsatisfactory halfhour, and hopped the next train after my fleeing wife.’

Mollie, deeply touched, turned away from his affectionate kiss.

‘Oh, you queer fellow! “Didn’t answer!” I don’t suppose I was more than fifty feet away from the telephone during the whole morning. I ’ll never get used to your strange ways.’

Bert was combative once more.

‘My strange ways? I call it darn funny of you to make that mistake.’

‘I didn’t — Mistake? You said LOVE.’

There was no wavering on Mollie’s part.

‘ I said LEAVE — but apparently it sounded like love.’

This diplomacy won the day — or night.

‘I think that ’s the last time I try any sentimental long-distance calls,’he added with conviction.

‘I certainly hope so.’ Mollie was investigating the suitcase. ‘Here are those flannel trousers. They are worse than when you left. You ’re the worst packer, Bert. You ruin your clothes.’

Her voice was a bit muffled. When Bert’s only response was a quiet remark, full of content, that home looked pretty good to him, she suddenly felt for the hem of the flannel trousers, where untidy husbands sometimes drop ashes — and dropped a few unobserved tears.