Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer (9 page)

There was a moment of awkwardness, which Mrs. Vernon quickly covered with talk; and now that Caroline had left, Martin yielded entirely to the warm friendliness of the little circle in the lamplit parlor. When the evening ended nearly an hour later, with Martin’s discovery that it was practically midnight, he felt that an understanding had been reached: they liked each other, they had begun a friendship. And he had learned one fact that struck him: it was Caroline who was the older daughter, by two years, though she looked five years younger. Perhaps it was her small and almost childish features, especially her little girl’s nose, that made her seem younger than Emmeline, whose strong straight nose and black thick eyebrows gave her a look of masculine energy; her shoulders were broader, her voice deeper and more resonant, than Caroline’s. It struck him too that Emmeline in some sense watched over her sister, filled in gaps left by Caroline’s silence, took upon herself the task of speaking for both of them—while Caroline, with her pale hair pulled tightly back, so that it seemed to pull painfully against the skin of her temples, Caroline, with her delicate pale face and small mouth and large brown eyes looking away, Caroline Vernon, sunk in her dream,
seemed the younger sister, protected by mother and older sister from unwelcome disturbances and intrusions.

Now every evening when Martin returned to the Bellingham after late hours at his office in the Vanderlyn, or supper with his parents in the small kitchen over the cigar store, on the familiar old plates with the blue Dutch children on them, or his weekly visit to the brothel on West Twenty-fifth Street, he would glance in at the lamplit parlor off the main lounge. There the Vernon women sat night after night, sipping bright-colored liquids from thin glasses. At a smile from Mrs. Vernon or a wave from Emmeline he would enter the parlor and sink into a waiting armchair, before the dark-gleaming table with its glowing dome-shaded lamp, an ivory-colored lamp with little Nile-green sailboats and a Nile-green island on the translucent porcelain shade and, on the porcelain body, little Nile-green houses on a Nile-green hillside—an admirable lamp, a really first-rate lamp that, he assured the Vernon women, with its removable oil fount and its excellent center-draft burner, was as hopelessly antiquated in the new world of incandescent lighting as the stage coach in a world of steam trains. Had they noticed, incidentally, that the overhead lights in the lobby and dining room were all electric, even the chandeliers? For it was interesting, it was a subject that never ceased to fascinate him, how the two worlds existed together, the world of oil lamps and incandescent lights, of horsecars and steam trains, one world gradually crowding out the other. Mrs. Vernon and Emmeline encouraged him to continue such discussions, Emmeline putting in a sharp, thoughtful
question whenever something wasn’t absolutely clear to her, and both continued to question him closely about his work. Martin felt pleased and soothed to recount the minor adventures of his day: the resistance of Mr. Westerhoven to everything new, along with a secret willingness to give way in the face of superior argument; the slackness of the new bellboy, who had been caught smoking a cigarette in a fourth-floor corridor; Dundee’s brilliantly meticulous mind, which foresaw every expense and left nothing to chance, but which resisted anything daring or unusual, such as Martin’s suggestion that one of the two floors of billiard tables be reserved for women. His own father, a tobacco man of the old stamp, they didn’t make them like that any more, his own father still wouldn’t hear of stocking cigarettes—could anyone believe it? And he turned to Caroline, as if he were asking whether she was able to believe it; and Caroline lowered her eyes.

Caroline Vernon’s quietness had quickly come to seem part of the nature of things, a form of reserve rather than of sullenness. Besides, she was by no means silent, but now and then spoke a few quiet words, to which Martin listened with deep attention, as if a remark such as “I prefer warm weather, but not too warm,” or “It was the Sunday we were walking in the park and there was a sudden shower” were a revelation of her innermost nature. She no longer ignored Martin, but nodded at him when he joined the group or rose to go—a small, not unfriendly nod and a brief brushing of his face with her large, half-closed eyes, which shone vividly in the lamplight and might have seemed startlingly
vivid had it not been for the heavy eyelids, which gave her a languorous and almost sleepy air.

One evening when Martin returned from the Vanderlyn a little later than usual—it was getting on toward eleven, he had been studying the report of expenses provided by the head of housekeeping—he glanced in at the parlor and was surprised to see four empty armchairs about the familiar table. He hesitated, then stepped inside. At the far end of the parlor an elderly woman looked up from a book. Martin, who recognized her from the dining room, nodded and sat down. He unbuttoned his coat and removed from his vest pocket a silver-cased watch. At the touch of a pin the lid opened. It was 10:52; they had often sat until midnight. He closed the watch cover, replaced the watch in his vest pocket, and settled back. A moment later he sprang up and looked into the lobby, where a few guests sat reading newspapers. Martin glanced in at the other parlor and the small library, returned to the first parlor, and at last checked with the night clerk, who said that the Vernons had taken a late supper, gone for a walk, and returned to their rooms a little past nine. They had not come down.

Martin sat in the lamplit parlor for twenty minutes, looking at the three empty armchairs, in which he could almost see the three Vernon women: Mrs. Vernon, with her dark combs glinting in the lamplight as she laughed; Emmeline, with her sharp intelligent eyes and slightly too large mouth; Caroline, with her hair pulled back tight and her eyelids lowered. As he stared at Caroline’s chair, which showed in the dark-red gold-flowered seat a faint depression that
seemed to hold her ghostly form, he saw on the red-and-gold arm of the chair a single long yellow hair. Martin rose, looked quickly about, and bent down to examine it. He saw that it was a trick of the light on the raised gold flowers of the dark-red arm. He felt such an unexpected shock of desolation that a few minutes later when he stepped from the elevator and began walking down the corridor he couldn’t remember whether he had said good night to old Jackson, the elevator man, and later that night he woke from a dream in which he bent to kiss the hand of Mrs. Vernon and saw, on the back of her long black glove, a bright yellow hair that suddenly began to wriggle away.

T
HEY WERE THERE THE NEXT EVENING, SEATED
around the little table with its dome-shaded lamp, and as Martin stepped through the open doorway Mrs. Vernon looked at him anxiously, as if to implore his forgiveness. Caroline had been unwell—a headache and low fever—and she and Emmeline had stayed with her in her room, even though Caroline had told them she only needed rest, had in fact urged them to go down and wait for Mr. Dressler in the parlor. But Emmeline had insisted on staying by Caro’s side, and she herself—well, the truth of the matter was that they were all rather fatigued after a long day of walking. But it was so good to see Mr. Dressler again. They had missed him, indeed they had. For surely she did not
exaggerate if she said that he had become a regular member of their little family.

Martin, who had been irritable all day, felt so soothed by her words that he experienced a sharp desire to leave immediately for his room, so that he could lie down with his arm over his eyes and repeat the words carefully to himself, listening to them with close attention, examining them for meanings that might have escaped him in the pressure of the moment.

Instead he turned abruptly to Caroline and said, a little too loudly, “I hope you’re feeling better tonight.”

“Yes,” said Caroline, “a little better, thank you,” looking at him a moment with her heavy-lidded, slightly moist eyes, with their dark lashes that did not match her straw-colored hair and, in the lamplight, shone with a faint blue sheen; and as she returned her gaze to the small table, Martin seemed to feel, in the skin of his cheeks, in the tips of his fingers, a faint prickle, as if she had brushed the edges of those sharp lashes across his face and fingertips.

One Saturday afternoon when he returned to the Bellingham from the Vanderlyn, he saw the three Vernon women in the parlor, drinking tea. Martin had been planning to have lunch at a riverside roadhouse near the railroad yards and then walk up Riverside Drive to watch men blasting a twenty-foot-high ledge of rock to make way for a new shipping magnate’s mansion. Instead he asked the Vernons whether they would like to walk over to the Boulevard and watch the Sunday bicyclists. “Oh, I’d love to!” cried Emmeline, clapping her hands; Caroline lowered her eyes;
and Mrs. Vernon said she thought it would make a lovely excursion.

It was a bright blue day in late March. On the bare-looking branches of the thin new trees in front of the Bellingham, a yellow-green shimmer showed against the sky, like an exhalation. A few brown leaves hung down like scraps of old wrapping paper. They walked two by two along the new cut-stone sidewalk that ended at a vacant lot, Martin and Mrs. Vernon in front of Emmeline and Caroline. Martin, feeling splendid in his new chocolate-brown derby and his new chocolate-brown spring overcoat, looked admiringly at Mrs. Vernon, all decked out in her flower-heaped hat tied with a green ribbon under the chin, her long green coat with its black cape. The weather, Mrs. Vernon said, was simply treacherous, hot one minute and cold the next—a person had no idea how to dress. She had insisted that Emmy and Caro dress for winter, and now it would be her fault if both of them had to take to their beds with a cold. As she spoke she glanced back at her daughters, and Martin followed her glance, struck with admiration at the sight of the two sun-brightened Vernon daughters with their faces in shadow under flower-heaped hats tied under their chins: Emmeline in a long dark-blue coat trimmed with black wool, Caroline in a long brown coat with a black shoulder cape and a small black muff pushed up onto one wrist.

They crossed West End Avenue and came to a built-up block. Sunlight shone on red brick and tawny brick and cream-colored brick, flashed on copper and tile trim, sparkled
on the tall second-floor bay windows. In the windows Martin could see reflections of black branches and red brick and blue sky, and through the branches and the brick a dim vase, the glowing top of a chair, a shadowy oval photograph on a dark piano. Streaks of old snow lay in the shadows of stoops and on the dark squares of dirt under the yellow-green leaf buds. At the end of the street, on the Boulevard, Martin saw high-seated cyclists passing on their tall wheels. People stood watching on the corner, watching and cheering on the wide strip of grass and elms that divided the Boulevard into two cycling roads. On the other side of the grass, cyclists passed the other way. Behind Martin, steamboat whistles sounded on the river, beyond the Boulevard he heard the rumble of the El on Columbus Avenue, somewhere an organ grinder played his bright, melancholy tune, and in the mild air chilled by river breezes he caught a faint peppery smell of horsedung from the daily wagonloads stored down by the wharves. Suddenly a burst of brassy music filled the air. As Martin turned the corner onto the broad sidewalk running along the elm-lined Boulevard he saw a German band under the trees on the central strip, and above the watching faces the high-seated cyclists moved on sun-sparkling spinning-spoked wheels, and past the tall bare elms and the riders in their cycling costumes he could see down the far street to the dark band of the El track and, farther away, the bare trees of the Park hung with a pale green haze; and turning excitedly to look for Emmeline and Caroline, who might, he thought, wish to walk along the sidewalk in search of a better place from which to view the
pageant of cyclists, he felt his turning shoulder strike the brim of a hat and saw Caroline’s suddenly exposed sun-dazzled pale hair and startled eyes before she raised both hands and pulled the hat in place, shading her face as he shouted an apology in a blare of trumpets and trombones.