Hotel Barstow*
JEAN STAFFORD
B ECAUSE WE
were very poor and could not buy another bed,
I
used to sleep on a pallet made of old coats and comforters in the
same room with my mother and father. When I played wishing games
or said "Star light, star bright," my first wish always was that I might
have a room of my own, and the one I imagined was Miss Pride's at
the Hotel Barstow which I sometimes had to clean when my mother,
the chambermaid, was not feeling well. I knew its details so thorough–
ly that I had only to say to myself the words "Miss Pride's room"
and at once my feet stood on the tawny rug with its huge faded
peonies, and before me was the window seat covered with flat, flowered
cushions, at one end of which was a folded afghan, at the other, three
big soft pillows on which cherubs floated amongst blue daisies, hold–
ing up in their dimpled hands a misty picture of a castle. And I could
gaze through the windows which overlooked the bay. On a clear
morning, looking across the green, excited water, littered with dories
and lobster-pots and buoys, I could see Boston and its State House
dome, gleaming like a golden blister.
Often at night, I pretended that I was sleeping in the big brass
bed, under the fringed white counterpane, my head upon the in–
flexible bolster. Turning over, I imagined I could hear the rattling
of the loose balls which decorated the foot-rail and which, when I
tucked in the sheets, gave the Spartan bed, with its hard mattress
and thin blankets, a kind of saucy vitality. Suddenly, as
if
it were
borne on a wind, there came to me the fresh, acrid odor
pf
Miss
Pride's costly soap which she kept in a large carton under the bed.
She was part owner of a soap factory, I had heard, and so, of course,
it cost her nothing.
Some nights, though, my vanities were driven off, and I could
not hold in my mind a picture of the room nor could I summon up
the rich old lady. For on those nights, I lay terrified at the sound of
my parents' quarreling voices. I mocked the deep breathing they ex-
*
This is the first chapter of
Boston Adventure,
a novel scheduled for early
publication by Harcourt, Brace.
