A hasty survey of the larder showed a scant supply of materials.
There were flour and sugar and half a basket of potatoes. Some cans
of tomatoes and corn, a paper bag of dried beans, another of rice,
two eggs in a basin, and a dish of discouraged-looking fried potatoes
with burnt edges completed the count. A small bit of butter on a
plate and the end of a baker’s loaf of bread had evidently been left
on the dining-room table for her. There were a good many things
needed from the store, and she began to write them down on the other
side of her sister’s note. A further investigation revealed half a
bottle of milk that had soured. Cornelia’s face brightened. That
would make a wonderful gingerbread, and she wrote down “Molasses,
soda, brown sugar, baking-powder,” on her list.
It wasn’t as if Cornelia hadn’t spent the first sixteen years of her
life at home with her mother, for she knew how to cook and manage
quite well before she went away to school; only of course she hadn’t
done a thing at it since she left home, and like most girls she
thought she hated the very idea of kitchen work.
“Now, where do they buy things?” she wondered aloud to the clock as
if it were alive. “I shall have to find out. I suppose if I take a
basket and go far enough, I shall come to a store. If I don’t I can
ask somebody.”
She ran upstairs, and got her hat and coat, and patted her pocketbook
happily. At least she was not penniless, and did not have to wait
until her father came home for what she wanted to get; for she had
almost all of the last money her mother had sent before her illness.
It had been sent for new spring clothes, and Cornelia had been so
busy she had not had time to buy them. It sent a glad thrill through
her heart now, strangely mingled with a pang at the things that she
had planned and that now would not be hers. Yet, after all, the
pang did not last; for already her mind was taken up with the new
interests and needs of home, and she was genuinely glad that she had
the money still unspent.
Down the dull little street she sped, thinking of all she had to do
in the house before the family came home, trying not to feel the
desolation of the night before as she passed the little commonplace
houses and saw what kind of a neighborhood she had come to live
in, trying not to realize that almost every house showed neglect
or poverty of some kind. Well, what of it? If she did live in a
neighborhood that was utterly uncongenial, she could at least make
their little home more comfortable. She knew she could. She could
feel the ability for it tingling to her very finger-tips, and she
smiled as she hurried on to the next corner, where the gleam of a
trolley track gave hint of a possible business street. She paused
at the corner and looked each way, a pretty picture of girlhood,
balancing daintily on her neat little feet and looking quite out of
place in that neighborhood. Some of her new neighbors eyed her from
behind their Nottingham lace curtains and their blue paper shades,
and wondered unsympathetically where she came from and how she had
strayed there, and a young matron in a dirty silver lace boudoir-cap
with fluttering pink and blue ribbons came out with her market
basket, and gave a cool, calculating stare, so far in another world
that she did not mind being caught at it.
The boudoir-cap was almost too much for Cornelia, bobbing about the
fat, red face of the frowsy woman; but the market basket gave her
a hint, and she gracefully fell in behind her fellow shopper, and
presently arrived at a market.
About this time Mrs. Knowlton and her son sat in the hotel
dining-room downtown, eating their breakfast. A telegram had just
been laid beside the son’s plate, and he looked up from reading it
with a troubled brow.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to upset our plans again,” he said.
“I’m awfully sorry, mother; but Brown is coming on from Boston
expecting to meet me at noon; and I guess there’s nothing to do but
wait until the two o’clock train. Shall you mind very much?”
“Not at all,” said his mother, smiling. “Why should I mind? I came
on to be with you. Does it matter whether I’m in Philadelphia or
Washington?”
“Is there anything you would like to do this morning? Any shopping?
Or would you like to drive about a bit?”
She shook her head.
“I can shop at home. I came here to be with you.”
“Then let’s drive,” he decided with a loving smile. “Where would you
like to go? Anything you want to see?”
“No—or wait. Yes, there is. I’ve a fancy I’d like to drive past the
house where that little girl I met on the train lives. I’d like to
see exactly what she’s up against with her firm little chin and her
clear, wise eyes and her artistic ways.”
“At it again, aren’t you, mother? Always falling in love and chasing
after your object. You’re worse than a young man in his teens”; and
he smiled understandingly. “All right; we’ll hunt her up, mother;
only we shan’t have much time to stop, for I have to be here sharp at
twelve thirty. Do you know where she lives?”
“Yes, I have her address here,” said his mother, searching in her
silver bag for the card on which Cornelia had written it. “But I
don’t want to stop. It wouldn’t do. She would think me intruding.”
The young man took the address, and ordered a taxicab; and five
minutes after Cornelia entered the door of her home with her arms
full of bundles from market and grocery a taxicab crawled slowly by
the house, and two pairs of eyes eagerly scanned the high, narrow,
weather-stained building with its number over the front door the only
really distinct thing about it.
“The poor child!” murmured the lady.
“Well, she sure is up against it!” growled the son, sitting back with
an air of not looking, but taking it all in out of the tail end of
his eye the way young men can do.
“And she wants to be an interior decorator!” said the mother, turning
from her last look out the little window behind.
“She’s got some task this time, I’ll say!” answered the son. “It may
show up more promisingly from the interior, but I doubt it. And you
say she’s been to college? Dwight Hall, didn’t you say, where Dorothy
Mayo graduated? Some come-down! It’s a hard world. Well, mother, I
guess we’ve got to get back or I’ll miss my appointment;” and he gave
the chauffeur directions to turn about.
More rapidly they passed this time, but the eyes of the woman took
in all the details, the blank side wall where windows ought to have
abounded, the shallow third story obviously with room for only one
apartment, the lowly neighbors, the dirty, noisy children in the
street. She thought of the girl’s lovely refined face, and sighed.
“One might, of course, do a great deal of good in such a
neighborhood. It is an opportunity,” she murmured thoughtfully.
Her son looked amused.
“I imagine she’ll confine her attention to the interior of her own
home if she does anything at all. I’m afraid, if I came home from
college to a place like that, I’d beat it, mother mine.”
His mother looked up with a trusting smile.
“You wouldn’t, though!” she said sunnily, and added thoughtfully:
“And she won’t either. She had a true face. Sometime I’m coming back
to see how it came out.”
Meantime, Cornelia in the kitchen started the fire up brightly, put
on the tea-kettle, and began to concoct a soft gingerbread with the
aid of the nice thick sour milk. When it was in the oven, she hunted
out her mother’s old worn breadraiser, greased the squeaking handle
with butter, and started some bread. She remembered how everybody
in the family loved mother’s home-made bread; and, if there was one
thing above another in which she had excelled as a little girl in the
kitchen, it was in making bread. Somehow it did not seem as though
things were on a right basis until she had some bread on the way. As
she crumbled the yeast cake into a sauce dish and put it a-soak, she
began to hum a little tune; yet her mind was so preoccupied with what
she had to do that she scarcely remembered it was the theme of the
music that ran all through the college play. College life had somehow
receded for the present, and in place of costumes and drapery she
was considering what she ought to make and bake in order to have the
pantry and refrigerator well stocked, and how soon she might with a
clear conscience go upstairs and start clearing up Carey’s bedroom.
She couldn’t settle rightly to anything until that awful mess was
straightened out. The consciousness of the disorder up there in the
third story was like a bruise that had been given her, which made
itself more and more felt as the minutes passed.
When the cover was put down tight on the breadraiser, Cornelia looked
about her.
“I really ought to clean this kitchen first,” she said thoughtfully,
speaking aloud as if she and herself were having it out about the
work. “There aren’t enough dishes unpacked for the family to eat
comfortably, but there’s not room on those shelves for them if they
were unpacked.”
So, with a glance at the rapidly rising gingerbread that let out a
whiff of delicious aroma, she mounted on a chair, and began to clear
off the top shelves of the dresser. It seemed as if there had been
no system whatever in placing things. Bottles of shoe-blacking,
a hammer, a box of gingersnaps, a can of putty, and several old
neckties were settled in between glass sauce-dishes and the electric
iron. She kept coming on little necessities. With small ceremony she
swept them all down to an orderly row on the floor on the least-used
side of the room, and with soap, hot water, and a scrubbing-brush
went at the shelves. It didn’t take long, of course; but she put a
great deal of energy into the work, and began to feel actually happy
as she smelled the clean soap-suds, and beheld what a difference it
made in the shabby, paintless shelves to get rid of the dirt.
“Now, we’ve at least got a spot to put things!” she announced as
she took the gingerbread-tins out of the oven, and with great
satisfaction noted that she had not forgotten how to make gingerbread
in the interval of her college days.
The gingerbread reminded her that she had as yet had no breakfast,
but she would not mar the velvet beauty of those fragrant loaves of
gingerbread by cutting one now. She cut off a slice of the dry end
of a loaf, and buttered it. She was surprised to find how good it
tasted as she ate it going about her work, picking up what dishes on
the floor belonged back on the shelves, washing and arranging them.
Later, if there was time, she would unpack more dishes; but she must
get up to Carey’s room. It was like leaving something dead about
uncovered, to know that that room looked so above her head.
It was twelve o’clock when she at last got permission of herself
to go upstairs; and she carried with her broom, mop, soap,
scrubbing-brush, and plenty of hot water and old cloths. She paused
at the door of the front room long enough to rummage in the bureau
drawers and get out an old all-over gingham apron of her mother’s,
which she donned before ascending to the third floor.
In the doorway of her brother’s room she stood appalled once more,
scarcely knowing where to begin. Then, putting down her brushes
and pails in the hall, she started in at the doorway, picking up
the first things that came in her way. Clothes first. She sorted
them out quickly, hanging the good things on the railing of the
stairs, the worn and soiled ones in piles on the floor, ready for
the laundry, the rag-man, and the mending-basket. When the garments
were all out, she turned back; and the room seemed to be just as
full and just as messy as it had been before. She began again, this
time gleaning the newspapers and magazines. That made quite a hole
in the floor space. Next she dragged the twisted bedclothes off the
mattress, and threw them down the stairs. Somehow they must be washed
or aired or duplicated before that bed would be fit to sleep in.
After a thoughtful moment of looking over the banisters at them she
descended, and carried them all to the little back yard, where she
hung them on a short line that had been stretched from the fence to
the house. They made a sorry sight, but she would have to leave them
till later. The sun and air would help. There wasn’t much sun, and
there was still a sharp tang of rain in the air; it had been raining
at intervals all the morning. Well, if it rained on them, they
certainly needed it; and anyhow it was too late in the day for her to
try to wash any of them. She must do the best she could this first
day.
Thus she reasoned as she frowningly surveyed the grimy blankets, her
eyes lingering on a scorched place near the top of one. Suddenly
her expression changed: “You’ve just _got_ to be washed!” she said
firmly, and snatching the blankets from the line, rushed in to
arrange for large quantities of hot water, cleared off the stationary
tubs, and dumped in the blankets, shaved up the only bar of soap
she could find, and then went rummaging in the front room while the
water was heating. Of course all this took strength, but she was not
realizing how weary she was growing. Her mettle was up, and she was
working on her nerve. It was a mercy with all she had before her that
she was well and strong, and fresh from gymnasium and basketball
training. It would take all her strength before she was done.
She emerged from the parlor twenty minutes later triumphant, with a
number of things that she was sure would be needed. She went to work
at the blankets with vigor, rubbing and pulling away at the scorched
place until it was almost obliterated. Did Carey smoke in his sleep
she wondered, or did he have guests that did? How dreadful that Carey
had come to this, and she away at college improving herself and
complacently expecting to make her mark in the world!
The blankets were cleanly steaming on the line in half an hour more,
and she glanced at the clock. A whole hour had gone, and she must
hasten. She sped back upstairs, and went to work again, dragging
out the furniture to the hall, picking up books and magazines from
the floor, till the room was stark and empty save for cigarette
stumps. She surveyed them in disgust, and then assailed the room
with brushes, brooms, and mop. She threw the windows wide open, and
swept the walls down vigorously. Before her onslaught dust and ashes
disappeared, and even the dismal wall-paper took on a brighter hue.
“It’s got to come off and be repapered or painted some pretty, soft,
pastel shade,” she threatened in an undertone to herself as she
surveyed the room after soap and water had done their best on floor,
woodwork, and windows. She was looking at the bleary wall-paper with
a troubled frown.
Of course she couldn’t do everything in a day, but Carey’s room must
be clean and inviting before she would be satisfied. No wonder he
stayed out late nights, or didn’t come home at all, perhaps, with
such a room as that. There ought to be more windows, too. What a pity
the builder had been so stingy with them! It was a dark, ugly hole;
and there was no need for it, for the room occupied the whole end,
and could have had openings on three sides and been delightful.
Suddenly she began to feel a great weariness stealing over her, and
tears coming into her eyes. She was overwhelmed with all that was
before her. She sat down on the upper stair, and looked about her
discouragedly. All these things to be put somewhere! And time going
so fast! Then she remembered her bread, and with an exclamation
rushed down to put it into the pans.
It had risen almost to the top of the breadraiser, and with a mental
apology for her forgetfulness she hastened to mold it out into
loaves and put it into the greased tins. When it was neatly tucked
up under a bit of old linen, she had found in the sideboard drawer,
she began to prepare the meat for dinner and put it on to cook, a
beautiful big pot-roast. She deftly seared it with an onion in a hot
frying-pan, and put it to simmer in boiling water with the rinsings
of the browned pan, being careful to recall all her mother’s early
instruction on the subject. She could remember that pot-roast was
always a favorite dish at home, and she herself had been longing for
a taste of real home-cooked pot-roast ever since she had been away.
She fixed the fire carefully so that the meat would simmer just
enough, and not boil too hard and make it tough, and gave a
despairing glance at the clock. How fast the minutes flew! She
ought to go back upstairs, but it was a quarter to three, and she
wanted to get the table set for dinner before she left, so that the
dining-room would have a pleasant look to the children when they
came home. She was quite breathless and excited over their coming.
She felt as if she would be almost embarrassed before them after the
conversation she had overheard in the morning.
So she attacked the dining-room with broom and duster, wiped off
the window-panes, and straightened the shade, swept away a mass
of miscellaneous articles from the clock-shelf, cleared off the
sideboard, hunted out a clean old linen cover, polished the mirror,
and found a clean tablecloth. But the tablecloth had a great hole in
it, and fifteen valuable minutes were wasted in finding a patch and
setting it hastily in place with a needle and thread that also had to
be hunted for. Then some of the dishes had to be washed before they
were fit for use, as they were covered with dust from packing; and
all together it was five minutes to four before Cornelia finally had
that table set to her satisfaction, and could stand back for a brief
minute and take it in with tired but shining eyes. Would they notice
the difference and be a little glad that she had come? They had taken
her for a lazy snob in the morning. Would they feel any better about
it now?
And the table did look pretty. It was set as a table should be set,
with dishes and glasses and silver in the correct places, and napkins
neatly folded; and in the centre was a small pot of pink primroses
in full bloom. For it would not have been Cornelia if there had not
been a bit of decoration about somewhere, and it was like Cornelia
when she went out to market, and thought of meat and bread and milk
and butter and all the other necessities, to think also of that bit
of brightness and refinement, and go into a small flower-shop she was
passing to get this pretty primrose.
Then in panic the weary big sister brought out one loaf of
gingerbread, cut several generous slices, left it on the sideboard in
a welcome attitude, and fled upstairs to finish Carey’s room.
Five minutes later, as she was struggling with the bedsprings trying
to bring them into conjunction with the headboard, she heard their
hurrying feet, and, leaning from the window, called:
“Children! Come up here a minute, and help me.”
“I can’t,” shouted Harry with a frown; “I got a job afternoons, and I
gotta hustle. I’m late a’ready, and I have to change my clo’es!” and
he vanished inside the door.
“I have to go to the store for things for dinner!” reproved the
younger sister stiffly, and vanished also.
Cornelia felt suddenly in her weariness like sitting down on the
floor in a fit of hysterical laughter or tears. Would they never
forgive her? She dropped on the floor with her head wearily back
against the window and closed her eyes. She had meant to tell them
about the gingerbread, but they had been in such a hurry; and somehow
the spirit seemed gone out of her surprise.
Downstairs it was very still. The children had been halted at the
entrance by the appetizing odor of cooking.
“Sniff!”
“Oh, gee!” said Harry. “It smells like mother was home.”
Louise stalked hurriedly to the dining-room door.
“Harry Copley, just look here! Now, what did I tell you about college
girls?”
Harry came and stood entranced.
“Oh, gee!” he murmured. “Isn’t that just great? Oh, say, Lou Copley,
just gaze on that sideboard! I’ll tell the world this is some day!”
and he strode to the sideboard, and stopped all further speech by
more than a mouthful of the fragrant ginger-cake.
The little housewife took swift steps to the kitchen door, and
sniffed. She took in the row of plump bread-tins almost ready to go
into the oven, the gently bubbling kettle with its fragrant steam,
the shining dresser with its neat rows of dishes that she had never
been able to find; and then she whirled on her astonished brother.
“Harry Copley! You answered her real mean! You go upstairs and
apologize quick! And then you beat it, and change your clothes, and
get to work. I’ll help her. We’re going to work _together_ after
this, she and I”; and, seizing a large slice of gingerbread in her
passing, she flew up the stairs to find her sister.