Everything a bustle! People, and people, and people! Laughing, happy, chattering people who didn’t seem to know and apparently didn’t care what had happened to us out there by the bleak Pacific. I was so annoyed at them. Their life was still normal. Though I knew they had helped bounteously, I was annoyed.
But here He comes! And we jumped into a cab—with a license, but no ring. In the unusual excitement that had been forgotten, so we had to turn back in the narrow street and find a jeweler. Then we drove to Old North Church, where Paul Revere had hung out his lantern on his famous ride (which Mr. Griffith has since filmed in “America”), and our names were soon written in the register.
* * * * *
The end of June, and New York! Just blowing up for a thunderstorm. I had never heard real thunder, nor seen lightning, nor been wet by a summer rain. What horrible weather! The wind blew a gale, driving papers and dust in thick swirling clouds. Of all the miserable introductions to the city of my dreams and ambitions, New York City could hardly have offered me a more miserable one!
We lived in style for a few days at the Hotel Navarre on Seventh Avenue and Thirty-ninth Street, and then looked for a “sublet” for the summer. I’d never heard of a “sublet” before.
We ferreted around and found a ducky little place, so cheap—twenty-five dollars a month—on West Fifty-sixth Street, overlooking the athletic grounds of the Y. M. C. A., where I was tremendously amused watching the fat men all wrapped up in sweaters doing their ten times around without stopping—for reducing purposes.
But we had little time to waste in such observations. A job must be had for the fall. In a few weeks we signed with the Rev. Thomas Dixon (fresh from his successful “Clansman”); my husband as leading man and I as general understudy, in “The One Woman.” Rehearsals were to be called in about two months.
To honeymoon, or not to honeymoon—to work or not to work. Work it was, and David started on a play.
And he worked. He walked the floor while dictating and I took it down on the second-hand typewriter I had purchased somewhere on Amsterdam Avenue for twenty dollars. The only other investment of the summer had been at Filene’s in Boston where I left my Red Cross sartorial contributions and emerged in clothes that had a more personal relation to me.
They were happy days. The burdens were shared equally. My husband was a splendid cook; modestly said, so was I. He loved to cook, singing negro songs the while, and whatever he did, whether cooking or writing or washing the dishes, he did it with the same earnestness and cheerfulness. Felt his responsibilities too, and had a sort of mournful envy of those who had established themselves.