Sidney could not remember when her Aunt Harriet had not sat at the
table. It was one of her earliest disillusionments to learn that Aunt
Harriet lived with them, not because she wished to, but because Sidney's
father had borrowed her small patrimony and she was “boarding it out.”
Eighteen years she had “boarded it out.” Sidney had been born and grown
to girlhood; the dreamer father had gone to his grave, with valuable
patents lost for lack of money to renew them--gone with his faith in
himself destroyed, but with his faith in the world undiminished: for he
left his wife and daughter without a dollar of life insurance.
Harriet Kennedy had voiced her own view of the matter, the after the
funeral, to one of the neighbors:--
“He left no insurance. Why should he bother? He left me.”
To the little widow, her sister, she had been no less bitter, and more
explicit.
“It looks to me, Anna,” she said, “as if by borrowing everything I had
George had bought me, body and soul, for the rest of my natural life.
I'll stay now until Sidney is able to take hold. Then I'm going to live
my own life. It will be a little late, but the Kennedys live a long
time.”
The day of Harriet's leaving had seemed far away to Anna Page. Sidney
was still her baby, a pretty, rather leggy girl, in her first year
at the High School, prone to saunter home with three or four
knickerbockered boys in her train, reading “The Duchess” stealthily, and
begging for longer dresses. She had given up her dolls, but she still
made clothes for them out of scraps from Harriet's sewing-room. In the
parlance of the Street, Harriet “sewed”--and sewed well.
She had taken Anna into business with her, but the burden of the
partnership had always been on Harriet. To give her credit, she had not
complained. She was past forty by that time, and her youth had slipped
by in that back room with its dingy wallpaper covered with paper
patterns.
On the day after the arrival of the roomer, Harriet Kennedy came down to
breakfast a little late. Katie, the general housework girl, had tied
a small white apron over her generous gingham one, and was serving
breakfast. From the kitchen came the dump of an iron, and cheerful
singing. Sidney was ironing napkins. Mrs. Page, who had taken advantage
of Harriet's tardiness to read the obituary column in the morning paper,
dropped it.
But Harriet did not sit down. It was her custom to jerk her chair out
and drop into it, as if she grudged every hour spent on food. Sidney,
not hearing the jerk, paused with her iron in air.
“Sidney.”
“Yes, Aunt Harriet.”
“Will you come in, please?”
Katie took the iron from her.
“You go. She's all dressed up, and she doesn't want any coffee.”
So Sidney went in. It was to her that Harriet made her speech:--
“Sidney, when your father died, I promised to look after both you and
your mother until you were able to take care of yourself. That was five
years ago. Of course, even before that I had helped to support you.”
“If you would only have your coffee, Harriet!”
Mrs. Page sat with her hand on the handle of the old silver-plated
coffee-pot. Harriet ignored her.
“You are a young woman now. You have health and energy, and you have
youth, which I haven't. I'm past forty. In the next twenty years, at the
outside, I've got not only to support myself, but to save something to
keep me after that, if I live. I'll probably live to be ninety. I don't
want to live forever, but I've always played in hard luck.”
Sidney returned her gaze steadily.
“I see. Well, Aunt Harriet, you're quite right. You've been a saint to
us, but if you want to go away--”
“Harriet!” wailed Mrs. Page, “you're not thinking--”
“Please, mother.”
Harriet's eyes softened as she looked at the girl
“We can manage,” said Sidney quietly. “We'll miss you, but it's time we
learned to depend on ourselves.”
After that, in a torrent, came Harriet's declaration of independence.
And, mixed in with its pathetic jumble of recriminations, hostility to
her sister's dead husband, and resentment for her lost years, came
poor Harriet's hopes and ambitions, the tragic plea of a woman who must
substitute for the optimism and energy of youth the grim determination
of middle age.
“I can do good work,” she finished. “I'm full of ideas, if I could get a
chance to work them out. But there's no chance here. There isn't a woman
on the Street who knows real clothes when she sees them. They don't even
know how to wear their corsets. They send me bundles of hideous stuff,
with needles and shields and imitation silk for lining, and when I
turn out something worth while out of the mess they think the dress is
queer!”
Mrs. Page could not get back of Harriet's revolt to its cause. To her,
Harriet was not an artist pleading for her art; she was a sister and a
bread-winner deserting her trust.
“I'm sure,” she said stiffly, “we paid you back every cent we borrowed.
If you stayed here after George died, it was because you offered to.”
Her chin worked. She fumbled for the handkerchief at her belt. But
Sidney went around the table and flung a young arm over her aunt's
shoulders.
“Why didn't you say all that a year ago? We've been selfish, but we're
not as bad as you think. And if any one in this world is entitled to
success you are. Of course we'll manage.”
Harriet's iron repression almost gave way. She covered her emotion with
details:--
“Mrs. Lorenz is going to let me make Christine some things, and if
they're all right I may make her trousseau.”
“Trousseau--for Christine!”
“She's not engaged, but her mother says it's only a matter of a short
time. I'm going to take two rooms in the business part of town, and put
a couch in the backroom to sleep on.”
Sidney's mind flew to Christine and her bright future, to a trousseau
bought with the Lorenz money, to Christine settled down, a married
woman, with Palmer Howe. She came back with an effort. Harriet had two
triangular red spots in her sallow cheeks.
“I can get a few good models--that's the only way to start. And if you
care to do hand work for me, Anna, I'll send it to you, and pay you the
regular rates. There isn't the call for it there used to be, but just a
touch gives dash.”
All of Mrs. Page's grievances had worked their way to the surface. Sidney
and Harriet had made her world, such as it was, and her world was in
revolt. She flung out her hands.
“I suppose I must do something. With you leaving, and Sidney renting her
room and sleeping on a folding-bed in the sewing-room, everything seems
upside down. I never thought I should live to see strange men running in
and out of this house and carrying latch-keys.”
This in reference to Le Moyne, whose tall figure had made a hurried exit
some time before.
Nothing could have symbolized Harriet's revolt more thoroughly than her
going upstairs after a hurried breakfast, and putting on her hat and
coat. She had heard of rooms, she said, and there was nothing urgent in
the work-room. Her eyes were brighter already as she went out. Sidney,
kissing her in the hall and wishing her luck, realized suddenly what
a burden she and her mother must have been for the last few years. She
threw her head up proudly. They would never be a burden again--never, as
long as she had strength and health!
By evening Mrs. Page had worked herself into a state bordering on
hysteria. Harriet was out most of the day. She came in at three o'clock,
and Katie gave her a cup of tea. At the news of her sister's condition,
she merely shrugged her shoulders.
“She'll not die, Katie,” she said calmly. “But see that Miss Sidney eats
something, and if she is worried tell her I said to get Dr. Ed.”
Very significant of Harriet's altered outlook was this casual summoning
of the Street's family doctor. She was already dealing in larger
figures. A sort of recklessness had come over her since the morning.
Already she was learning that peace of mind is essential to successful
endeavor. Somewhere Harriet had read a quotation from a Persian poet;
she could not remember it, but its sense had stayed with her: “What
though we spill a few grains of corn, or drops of oil from the cruse?
These be the price of peace.”
So Harriet, having spilled oil from her cruse in the shape of Dr. Ed,
departed blithely. The recklessness of pure adventure was in her blood.
She had taken rooms at a rental that she determinedly put out of her
mind, and she was on her way to buy furniture. No pirate, fitting out
a ship for the highways of the sea, ever experienced more guilty and
delightful excitement.
The afternoon dragged away. Dr. Ed was out “on a case” and might not be
in until evening. Sidney sat in the darkened room and waved a fan over
her mother's rigid form.
At half after five, Johnny Rosenfeld from the alley, who worked for a
florist after school, brought a box of roses to Sidney, and departed
grinning impishly. He knew Joe, had seen him in the store. Soon the
alley knew that Sidney had received a dozen Killarney roses at three
dollars and a half, and was probably engaged to Joe Drummond.
“Dr. Ed,” said Sidney, as he followed her down the stairs, “can you
spare the time to talk to me a little while?”
Perhaps the elder Wilson had a quick vision of the crowded office
waiting across the Street; but his reply was prompt:
“Any amount of time.”
Sidney led the way into the small parlor, where Joe's roses, refused by
the petulant invalid upstairs, bloomed alone.
“First of all,” said Sidney, “did you mean what you said upstairs?”
Dr. Ed thought quickly.
“Of course; but what?”
“You said I was a born nurse.”
The Street was very fond of Dr. Ed. It did not always approve of him.
It said--which was perfectly true--that he had sacrificed himself to his
brother's career: that, for the sake of that brilliant young surgeon,
Dr. Ed had done without wife and children; that to send him abroad
he had saved and skimped; that he still went shabby and drove the old
buggy, while Max drove about in an automobile coupe. Sidney, not at
all of the stuff martyrs are made of, sat in the scented parlor and,
remembering all this, was ashamed of her rebellion.
“I'm going into a hospital,” said Sidney.
Dr. Ed waited. He liked to have all the symptoms before he made a
diagnosis or ventured an opinion. So Sidney, trying to be cheerful, and
quite unconscious of the anxiety in her voice, told her story.
“It's fearfully hard work, of course,” he commented, when she had
finished.
“So is anything worth while. Look at the way you work!”
Dr. Ed rose and wandered around the room.
“You're too young.”
“I'll get older.”
“I don't think I like the idea,” he said at last. “It's splendid work
for an older woman. But it's life, child--life in the raw. As we get
along in years we lose our illusions--some of them, not all, thank God.
But for you, at your age, to be brought face to face with things as
they are, and not as we want them to be--it seems such an unnecessary
sacrifice.”
“Don't you think,” said Sidney bravely, “that you are a poor person to
talk of sacrifice? Haven't you always, all your life--”
Dr. Ed colored to the roots of his straw-colored hair.
“Certainly not,” he said almost irritably. “Max had genius; I
had--ability. That's different. One real success is better than two
halves. Not”--he smiled down at her--“not that I minimize my usefulness.
Somebody has to do the hack-work, and, if I do say it myself, I'm a
pretty good hack.”
“Very well,” said Sidney. “Then I shall be a hack, too. Of course, I had
thought of other things,--my father wanted me to go to college,--but I'm
strong and willing. And one thing I must make up my mind to, Dr. Ed; I
shall have to support my mother.”
Harriet passed the door on her way in to a belated supper. The man in
the parlor had a momentary glimpse of her slender, sagging shoulders,
her thin face, her undisguised middle age.
“Yes,” he said, when she was out of hearing. “It's hard, but I dare say
it's right enough, too. Your aunt ought to have her chance. Only--I wish
it didn't have to be.”
Sidney, left alone, stood in the little parlor beside the roses. She
touched them tenderly, absently. Life, which the day before had called
her with the beckoning finger of dreams, now reached out grim insistent
hands. Life--in the raw.