Dear me! What a time we had of it at Christmas. My midday meal took place at my sister's, in Weehawken, but the dinner was at Frieda's, where I was permitted to contribute the turkey. It could not be made to penetrate the exiguous oven of the little gas-stove, but we bribed the janitress to cook it for us. I had been in grave consultation with my dear old friend in regard to the toys I might purchase for Baby Paul, being anxious that his first experience of the great day should be a happy one, but Frieda frowned upon woolly lambs, teddy bears and Noah's Arks.
"If you will insist, Dave," she told me, "you can go and buy him a rubber elephant or some such thing, but he is altogether too young to play games. I know you have a sneaking desire to teach him checkers. If you will persist in wasting your money on presents, give me a five-dollar bill and I'll go around and buy him things he really needs. I'll put them in a box and send them with your best love."
"What about Frances?" I asked.
"A good pair of stout boots would be wisest," she informed me, "but perhaps you had better make it flowers, after all. More useful things might remind her too much of present hardship and poverty. A few American Beauties will give her, with their blessed fragrance, some temporary illusion of not being among the disinherited ones of the earth. I—I can give her the boots."
And so we had that dinner, just the three of us together, with Baby Paul just as good as gold and resting on Frieda's sofa. There was a box of candy sent by Kid Sullivan to his benefactress, and, although the contents looked positively poisonous, they came from a grateful heart, and she appreciated them hugely. I had brought a little present of flowers in a tiny silver vase, and they graced the table. I wore a terrible necktie Frieda had presented me with. It was a splendid refection.
The little dining-room was a thing of delight. From the walls hung many pictures, mostly unframed. They were sketches and impressions that had met favor from their gifted maker and been deemed worthy of the place. The table was covered with a lovely white cloth, all filmy with lace, and there was no lack of pretty silver things holding bonbons and buds. It all gave me a feeling of womanly refinement, of taste mingled with the freedom of an artistic temperament unrestrained by common metes and bounds.
Frances had one of my roses pinned to her waist, and often bent down to inhale its fragrance. When will some profound writer give us an essay on the Indispensability of the Superfluous?
Again we had a feast on New Year's eve, in my room. Gordon, who was going to a house-party at Lakewood, lent me his chafing-dish. I'll say little about the viands we concocted; at least they were flavored with affection and mutual good wishes, with the heartiest hopes for good things to come. It was not very cold, that night, and on the stroke of twelve I threw my window wide open. We listened to the orgy of sound from steam-whistles and tin horns. There floated to us, through the din, a pealing of faraway chiming bells. When I closed the window again, Frieda took the chafing-dish for a housewifely cleaning. Baby Paul had been sleeping on my bed and Frances was kneeling beside him, looking at the sleeping tot. For a moment she had forgotten us and the trivialities of the entertainment, and was breathing a prayer for her man-child.
Thus passed the New Year's eve, and on the next morning Frances was up early, as usual, and went off to work. I pottered idly about my room till Mrs. Milliken chased me out. On the afternoon of the first Sunday of the year Gordon came in again.
Until last Autumn he had invaded my premises perhaps once in a couple of months, but, now, he is beginning to come as regularly as Frieda herself. He gives me the impression of being rather tired, and I explain this by the fact that he leads too active a life and takes too much out of himself. I am sure few men ever painted harder than he does. When I watch him at his work, it looks very easy, of course, but I know better. His is powerful, creative work, such as no man can accomplish without putting all his energy into his toil. I am often exhausted after a few hours of writing, and I am sure that Gordon also feels the drag and the travail of giving birth to the children of his soul. Then, after a day of this sort of thing, he goes out to the theatres or the Opera and prolongs the night at the club and delves into books, for he is a great reader, especially of what he terms modern thought and philosophy. The first rays of good working light find him again at his canvas, sometimes pleased and sometimes frowning, giving me often the impression of a latter-day Sisyphus.