The stagnant pool of Slocum was very considerably stirred by New
York during the days when Mrs. Warrener was obliged to go in and out
to look for her servants. For she had decided that Eliza should be
replaced by two maids, one of whom should be dressed in apron and caps
such as those worn by the trim person of whom she had caught a glimpse
as she waited in Mrs. Bellamy’s drawing room.
When her husband came home one night, Gertrude was waiting for him in
the window. She had had a hard day. Timid and abashed before the new
and autocratic ladies for whom she felt no room in the house was good
enough, she had vacillated on the verge of temper and tears. One of her
characteristics was the complete control of her features and a passive
exterior which hitherto no excitements had disturbed.
“George”--she drew her husband into the parlor--“I’ve got two girls.”
She put her hand on the lapel of the overcoat he had as yet not taken
off.
“_Two_ girls!” he echoed.
She was flushed and pretty--very pretty. He vaguely thought she was
dressed up more than usual.
“I’m tired out!” she exclaimed. “Those intelligence offices are enough
to wear you to death. I got two because--the work here is too much for
any one girl.”
George looked around the microscopic room, and mentally saw, as well,
the microscopic second floor.
“Eliza got through all right.”
Mrs. Warrener exclaimed: “Don’t talk to me of Eliza. She wasn’t fit to
be seen.”
With the hope that the two servants together might not cost as much as
one, he asked:
“What’s their wages?”
She hesitated.
“Why, I’d rather make it up some way--on a dress or a hat. They’re
high. One twenty and the other twenty-five a month.”
“Gee whizz!” Warrener staggered back. “Why,” he gasped, “you’re
_crazy_, Gert!”
Her hand fell back from the lapel of his coat. Tears of vexation and
fatigue sprang to her eyes.
“Hush! _She’s_ there, in the dining room--she’ll hear you. I’m _not_
crazy, I’m sick of living like a tenement house.”
The master was prevented from saying anything further by the entrance
of a pert-faced girl in cap and apron, who said briskly:
“Dinner’s served.”
Standing there in Eliza’s place between the cheap portières, she
represented a convulsion in the clerk’s household. He had never been
thus invited to a meal in his own house before. He got off his coat and
followed his wife in to dinner.
The little, cozy room possessed for the first time an element of
unrest. In eight years it had not altered so much as this. At first
Gertrude, with a washerwoman, did her own work; then Eliza came
blithely and good-humoredly on the scene. She had grown to be like
a friend. Warrener liked her. In her oven, which she had at length
triumphantly overcome, she baked him certain favorite little breads
much to his taste. She ironed his collars and shirts “just right.” He
could say to her:
“Look here, Eliza, just run down to Pearce’s and get me a couple of
cigars.” He could never order this bustling individual in cap and gown
in this manner. “A tenement!” The word touched his contented pride in
his little household; already the golden sunlight was beginning to slip
from the wall. Change and progression were following the tired man
close on his heels to his very door.
A fortnight went by after her call at the house on the hill before the
event reverently hoped for by George Warrener’s wife transpired.
Mrs. Bellamy in her French automobile drove up Grand Street and called
on Mrs. Warrener.
Gertrude was out, and when she came home and found the bit of
pasteboard lying on the hatstand and realized that Mrs. Bellamy had
been--and had gone!--a feeling of desolation swept over her such as
might attack a lonely occupant of a desert island on rushing to his
island’s edge to see a ship slip over the horizon.
The disappointed woman could think of nothing to follow this
occurrence, no future after it. She felt deserted and very miserable.
The waitress who answered the bell her mistress rang appeared now to
be superfluous--the extravagance this splurge represented occurred to
Gertrude for the first time. What was the good of the servants after
Mrs. Bellamy had been and gone! Since Mrs. Bellamy would never come
again, Eliza might just as well be there with her blowzy hair, her blue
apron and her kind, smiling face. Gertrude felt a homesickness for her
as excitement died out of her limited sky.
Katy’s manner was less flaunting and insolent than usual. Mrs. Bellamy
in her handsome clothes and the automobile had impressed her.
“When did the lady come?”
“About half an hour ago.”
“Was there anyone else?”
Mrs. Warrener would not let herself think just who there might have
been.
“There was only a little girl in the motor car.”
“She didn’t leave any message?”
“No, ma’am.”
Well, it was all over, and she might as well make the best of it. She
had got on all right enough before the Bellamys came; she guessed she
could live without them, anyhow. She would keep the girls till George’s
summer vacation, and then they could get another place. That this
provision would leave them stranded in a bad season did not disturb her.
She “just couldn’t” go upstairs to indolently sit down and contemplate
at once the stupid days to be! There were George’s socks to mend, but
she turned about where she stood, gratefully remembering that there was
also the meeting of a card club of which she was a member. It would
at least keep her doing something, and she went out again and started
toward Mrs. Turnbull’s.
Her feet were clad in shoes then in vogue, with thick, projecting soles
and stubby ends. As her foot was ridiculously small, it looked less
like a man’s--which masculinity it seems this heavy gear is intended
to simulate--than like a sturdy little boy’s. Her short-length skirt
showed a slender ankle in coarse black stockings, the skirt itself
falling smoothly on her rounded hips; her coat lay smoothly across
a flat back and shoulders, the small, supple waist was held in by a
leather belt. Her collar, neither stiff enough nor high enough to be
“smart,” was low enough to leave visible the back of her neck and
the close growth of her hair. Men have been known more than once to
follow a woman for the charm of the nape of her neck; that soft, pretty
turn, the lovely part of the form where the head with more or less
beauty--according to type--joins the shoulder and body.
Before Mrs. Warrener was within two blocks of her destination, she
heard some one walking fast behind her, and not unnaturally turned to
see who followed her with a step so decided in the lonely street.
It was Mr. McAllister.
The unexpectedness of this appearance on the afternoon when she had
given up the idea of coming in contact with his like and circle
again--the fact of meeting him in the open street, where there was no
one but himself to critically observe her manner--gave her a shock of
pleasure. She stammered: “How do you do?” and held out her hand to him
with the _gaucherie_ of a child.
“What a dreadfully fast walker you are!” McAllister was out of breath.
“And it’s not the first time I’ve noticed it. You don’t know how I ran
down the hill behind you that night at the Golf Club.”
He had never spoken to such a painful blush before, as surprise and
flattered pleasure deepened in the woman’s cheeks.
“It’s a splendid speed,” he approved, “and it’s given you a most
glorious color.”
As he walked along by her side she managed to say:
“Your sister called to day, and I was out.”
“That’s too bad!” he exclaimed heartily. “She will be so sorry. She
wanted to take you out in the automobile--I lent it for the purpose.
Where are you going, and at such a pace--may I know?”
“I’m going to a card party at Mrs. Turnbull’s--it’s right here.”
Her companion showed plainly his disappointment. “I thought you were
out for a good walk, and that perhaps I might join you.”
More sorry than he, and thoroughly regretting having told her stupid
errand, she slowed her pace.
“Can’t I come in with you--and play as well?”
She smiled nervously. “Oh, no, there are only ladies in the club.”
“Only!” he repeated. “What better could one want? But I should
prefer it in the singular. Can’t you seriously take me in under your
protection and introduce me? What do you play? Bridge? I can play
bridge. It would amuse me hugely.” He saw that she did not understand
his use of the word and changed it. “Entertain me--do, please.”
Mrs. Warrener had not much imagination, but she could imagine the
faces of Mrs. Turnbull and her fellow club members at the sight of Mr.
McAllister and herself together under any circumstances. He looked so
tall--so laughing and at ease--his attitude as if he had known her
all his life bewildered her; her embarrassment was not yet relieved,
although her pleasure was growing.
“Oh, no, I couldn’t, Mr. McAllister.”
“Do you like cards?” he demanded, with abrupt change of topic.
“Not much; I don’t play well.”
“I hate them, personally,” he admitted. “Why, then, do you go?”
As she made him wait for an answer he urged: “It’s a crime to
sacrifice this afternoon in a hot, stuffy room before a lot of painted
pasteboards. I don’t believe they expect you--do they?”
“Well, I don’t believe they do. I don’t often go. I just pay fines all
the time.”
“Pay one this once, won’t you? Is this the house? Why, it’s a box,
nothing more. Don’t go and be shut up in it!”
Gertrude thought with a pang that Mrs. Turnbull’s was twice as large as
her own house--she had envied her.
“Don’t you want to show me one of the walks around here? There must be
lots of nice tramps. It will do you good.”
She had never been spoken to in her life like this before. Strange as
it may seem, it is, nevertheless, true that she had never exchanged
half a dozen words with any man but her husband in her life--that is,
any man save the tradespeople, whom she always talked to as long as she
could. She had once acknowledged to herself: “I guess I like men better
than women--I’d rather talk to the grocer than to any of the stupid
Slocum women. It’s common of me, but it’s true.”
McAllister’s voice was like a cradle--she seemed to rock in it.
“He’s perfectly elegant,” she said to herself; “so handsome and polite.”
She would have suffocated at the Turnbulls’; the same atmosphere that
had latterly pervaded all of her own surroundings began to surround the
unoffending little house whose porch and front gate were reached.
She nerved herself to look up at Mr. McAllister, and with some
assurance met his smiling eyes.
“I’ll go along a little further; there’s a pretty walk over along the
old Lackawanna Station.”