Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer

11. A Sunday Afternoon Stroll

THEY 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.