Brides

Lower East and Lower West were both rented to brides. The brides sat in their living-rooms with only a wall dividing; they looked out at the same view. They did not know each other.

In the East flat, the young husband was trying to accommodate himself to a difficult and neurotic wife.

In the West flat a middle-aged groom was trying to slow a bright young girl down to his dullness. The girl drooped, was home-sick, in spite of all the pretty things he gave her and the smart hats she made for herself (she had been a milliner in New York before she married the middle-aged man). It was freedom she thought she was marrying–freedom from the drudgery of bread-and-butter-earning. When he dangled a “home of her own” before her eyes, she married him and was numbed; now came the pins and needles of awaking.

I had known the other bride since she was a child. When I welcomed her into my house, she chilled as if to remind me that she was a popular young bride–I a landlady; I took the hint. I had put the best I had into her flat, but she scornfully tossed my things into her woodshed, replacing them with things of her own. The rain came, and spoiled my things. When I asked her to hand back what she did not want, so that I might store them safely, she was very insulting, as if my things were beyond contempt or hurting.

The little New York bride was very, very lonely, with her dull, heavy husband. She came up to my flat on any excuse whatever. One day she cried and told me about it. She said that she knew no one. “The girl next door is a bride too; she’s smart; she has lots of friends. I see them come and go. Oh, I do wish I knew her.” Then she said, “You know her; couldn’t you introduce me? Please!”

“I have known her since she was a child, but I could not introduce you to each other.”

“Why?”

“It is not my place to introduce tenants. People make opportunities of speaking to each other if they are neighbours, but they would resent being compelled by their landlady to know each other.”

“But you have known this girl since she was little–couldn’t you? I have no friends at all. Please, please.”

“Listen, it would not make you happy. She is a snob.”

I would not subject this unhappy, ill-bred, little bride, with her ultra clothes worn wrong, her overdone make-up and her slangy talk, to the snubs of the stuck-up bride next door.

“You’ll come and see me, won’t you? Come often-he is out so much.”

“I will come when I can.”

She went slowly down to her empty flat, this lonely little bride who had sold her pretty face for laziness and a home.

Next day she ran up, all excitement.

“My opportunity came! The postman asked me to deliver a registered letter, because my neighbour was out; you are all wrong, she is lovely. I expect we shall see a lot of each other now. I am so happy.”

She flew down-stairs, hugging her joy.

I missed her for some days. I went to see if she were ill, found her crumpled into a little heap on the sofa. She had red eyes.

“Hello! Something wrong?”

She gulped hard. “It is as you said-she is a snob. We met in the street. They saw me coming. When I was close they looked the other way and talked hard. Her husband did not even raise his hat!”

“Perhaps they did not see it was you.”

“They could not help seeing–not if they’d been as blind as new kittens. I spoke before I saw how they felt,” she sobbed.

“Pouf! Would I care? She is not worth a cry! What pretty hats you make!”

She had been working on one–it lay on the table half finished.

“You like them? I make them all myself. I was a milliner in New York–head of all the girls. They gave me big pay because I had knack in designing–big fine store it was too!”

“Here you are crying because a snob who couldn’t make one ‘frump’s bow’ did not speak to you! Come, let’s go into garden and play with the pups.”

She was soon tumbling with them on the lawn, kind whole-hearted clumsy pups, much more her type than the next-door bride.