The Dreamers

Chapter 4

SCENE FIRST

Time: Morning at Boston

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "I think it will rain to-day, but there is no need to worry about that. Robert has his umbrella and his mackintosh, and I don't think he is idiotic enough to lend both of them. If he does, he'll get wet, that's all." Mrs. Edwards is speaking to herself in the sewing-room of the apartment occupied by herself and her husband in the Hotel Hammingbell at Boston. It is not a large room, but cosey. A frieze one foot deep runs about the ceiling, and there is a carpet on the floor. Three pins are seen scattered about the room, in one corner of which is a cane-bottomed chair holding across its back two black vests and a cutaway coat. Mrs. Edwards sits before a Wilcox & Wilson sewing-machine sewing a button on a light spring overcoat. The overcoat has one outside and three inside pockets, and is single-breasted. "It is curious," Mrs. Edwards continues, "what men will do with umbrellas and mackintoshes on a rainy day. They lend them here and there, and the worst part of it is they never remember where." A knock is heard at the door. "Who's there?"

Voice (without). "Me."

Mrs. Robert Edwards (with a nervous shudder). "Come in." Enter Mary the house-maid. She is becomingly attired in blue alpaca, with green ribbons and puffed sleeves. She holds a feather duster in her right hand, and in her left is a jar of Royal Worcester. "Mary," Mrs. Edwards says, severely, "where are we at?"

Mary (meekly). "Boston, ma'am."

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "South Boston or Boston proper?"

Mary. "Boston proper, ma'am."

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "Then when I say 'Who's there?' don't say 'Me.' That manner of speaking may do at New York, Brooklyn, South Boston, or Congress, but at Boston proper it is extremely gauche. 'I' is the word."

Mary. "Yes, ma'am; but you know, ma'am, I don't pretend to be literary, ma'am, and so these little points baffles I very often." Mrs. Edwards sighs, and, walking over to the window, looks out upon the trolley-cars for ten minutes; then, picking up one of the pins from the floor and putting it in a pink silk pin-cushion which stands next to an alarm-clock on the mantel-piece, a marble affair with plain caryatids and a brass fender around the hearth, she resumes her seat before the sewing-machine, and threads a needle. Then-

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "Well, Mary, what do you want?"

Mary. "Please, Mrs. Edwards, the butcher is came, and he says they have some very fine perairie-chickens to-day."

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "We don't want any prairie-chickens. The prairies are so very vulgar. Tell him never to suggest such a thing again. Have we any potatoes in the house?"

Mary. "There's three left, ma'am, and two slices of cold roast beef."

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "Then tell him to bring five more potatoes, a steak, and-Was all the pickled salmon eaten?"

Mary. "All but the can, ma'am."

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "Well-Mr. Edwards is very fond of fish. Tell him to bring two boxes of sardines and a bottle of anchovy paste."

Mary. "Very well, Mrs. Edwards."

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "And-ah-Mary, tell him to bring some Brussels sprouts for breakfast. What are you doing with that Worcester vase?"

Mary. "I was takin' it to cook, ma'am. Sure she broke the bean-pot this mornin', and she wanted somethin' to cook the beans in."

Mrs. Robert Edwards. "Oh, I see. Well, take good care of it, Mary. It's a rare piece. In fact, I think you'd better leave that here and remove the rubber plant from the jardini re, and let Nora cook the beans in that. Times are a little too hard to cook beans in Royal Worcester."

Mary. "Very well, ma'am." Mary goes out through the door. Mrs. Edwards resumes her sewing. Fifteen minutes elapse, interrupted only by the ticking of the alarm-clock and the occasional ringing of the bell on passing trolley-cars. "If it does rain," Mrs. Edwards says at last, with an anxious glance through the window, "I suppose Robert won't care about going to see the pantomime to-night. It will be too bad if we don't go, for this is the last night of the season, and I've been very anxious to renew my acquaintance with 'Humpty Dumpty.' It is so very dramatic, and I do so like dramatic things. Even when they happen in my own life I like dramatic things. I'll never forget how I enjoyed the thrill that came over me, even in my terror, that night last winter when the trolley-car broke down in front of this house; and last summer, too, when the oar-lock broke in our row-boat thirty-three feet from shore; that was a situation that I enjoyed in spite of its peril. How people can say that life is humdrum, I can't see. Exciting things, real third-act situations, climaxes I might even call them, are always happening in my life, and yet some novelists pretend that life is humdrum just to excuse their books for being humdrum. I'd just like to show these apostles of realism the diary I could have kept if I had wanted to. Beginning with the fall my brother George had from the hay-wagon, back in 1876, running down through my first meeting with Robert, which was romantic enough-he paid my car-fare in from Brookline the day I lost my pocket-book-even to yesterday, when an entire stranger called me up on the telephone, my life has fairly bubbled with dramatic situations that would take the humdrum theory and utterly annihilate it." As Mrs. Edwards is speaking she is also sewing the button already alluded to on Mr. Edwards's coat as described. "There," taking the last stitch in the coat, "that's done, and now I can go and get ready for luncheon." She folds up the coat, glances at the clock, and goes out. A half-hour elapses. The silence is broken only by occasional noises from the street, the rattling of the wheels of a herdic over the pavement, the voices of newsboys, and an occasional strawberry-vender's cry. At the end of the half-hour the alarm-clock goes off and the curtain falls.