“But you must hear the new Victrola records!” Mother cried. And so I lay back in a deep chair with my face to the fire, and listened—listened with my soul, I think, to some of the world’s great music: Sembrich and Melba and Homer and Gluck; Paderewski and Pachmann, orchestras, operas, and old, old songs; and finally my favorites—the violin ones. There was Kreisler, with his perfect art, playing old Vienna waltzes, haunting Provence folk songs, quaint seventeenth-century gavottes and dances; Maud Powell putting new beauty into the Schubert Ave Maria, and that exquisite tone-picture of Saint-Saëns called The Swan; and last of all Mischa Elman, with his deep, passionate singing of Bach’s Air for the G String and Tschaikovsky’s Ye Who Have Yearned Alone. There’s a beauty about those last ones that is almost terrible, so close is it to the heart of human sorrow.
“Well,” said Dad, a little later, “I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m going to bed. And first I mean to have some milk and a piece of pumpkin pie. Does that attract a city girl?”
It did—to the extent of three glasses of milk, besides the pie. “You’ll not sleep,” warned Mother; but I retorted that I didn’t care; I was too happy to sleep, anyhow. And, besides, the kitchen, in its immaculate gray and whiteness, was so refreshing that I wanted to stay there awhile. Large baskets of grape fruits and oranges and red apples stood on the pantry shelves; the stove was polished until it looked like a Sapolio advertisement; and a clock, ticking loudly, gave the room that curious sense of loneliness that a kitchen needs. I can conceive of a library without books, or a fireplace without a fire, but never of a kitchen without a loud-ticking clock.
After a while we all trooped up to bed—up the white staircase with the mahogany rail, and into fresh white bedrooms in such perfect harmony with the snow outside.
“This house is positively sensuous!” I told Mother. “It’s an emotional adventure just to come into it....”
I climbed into a big mahogany four-poster; but not to sleep—oh no! I sat bolt upright with the silk comfortlet (oh luxury of luxuries!) around my knees, and gazed out the windows: for from both of them I saw a fairyland. It was all white—all except the amethyst shimmerings of boulevard lights; and white flakes dropped one by one through the amethyst. Away in the distance on both sides were faint outlines of woods—bare, brown woods now covered warmly with snow. And over it all a complete and absolute stillness. Just as in spring I used to feel fairies leaping from every separate violet and tulip and hyacinth for their twilight dance on the wet grass, so now I felt a great company of snow fairies dancing in the faint rays of amethyst that darted into the woods—dancing and singing and glittering in their silver frostiness. And then a slow quiet wind would sound far off in the branches of the oak trees; and gradually the fairy carnival ceased and I went ecstatically to sleep.
The next morning, after breakfast in a dining-room of old blue and white and mahogany, I stated my ideas of what one ought to do in such a house. “I don’t want to go anyplace or see anyone or do anything. Don’t plan luncheons or teas or other things. It will take a week to store up all the impressions I want to. So please just let me stay here quietly and absorb the atmosphere.”
And so my precious week began. In the mornings I’d put on boots—for the snow was deep by this time—and take long tramps through the woods. Then each afternoon had its distinct adventure: sometimes it would be a mere wandering about from room to room standing before a specially-loved picture or buried in a favorite old book. And what an enchanting thing it is to read in such a setting: to look up from your book knowing that wherever your eyes fall they will be rested; to feel your imagination sinking into the soft depths of a reality that is almost dream stuff!
Sometimes the afternoon would have its hard-fought game of cards between Dad and me—with the table drawn close to the fire, and Bertha running in from the kitchen with a hearty offering of cider and hot doughnuts. (Bertha always seemed to sense the exact moment when we declared, with groans, that to wait another hour for dinner would be a physical impossibility.) Sometimes at four o’clock I’d conceal myself in a mass of cushions in the big swing on the porch, and wait for the darkness to come on, loving every change of tone in the grayness until the boulevard lights blossomed like flowers and made another fairyland. And always we’d have tea by candle-light—on the porch in deep wicker chairs, or before the leaping fire.
Sometimes after tea I’d take a two-mile tramp down town, stopping at the post-office (because a post-office in a small town is a place worth seeing at five o’clock in the evening) and trying deliberately to get cold and tired before reaching home again, so that the warmth and comfort would come as a fresh shock and joy. And then a quite wonderful thing would happen: namely, the miracle of a superlatively good dinner. I shall never forget those dinners! Not the mere physical pleasure of them, but their setting: Mother feeling a little gossipy, and talking cozily of the day’s small happenings; Dad in a mood of tolerant amusement at our chatter; and Betty, usually in white, looking so adorable that even the roses on the table couldn’t rival her.