FETZER ENGAGES A NEW MAID
Ellen spent a dreary Sunday within doors and from time to time shed
tears. She had not minded rain in the country, but this day was
intolerable. All the afternoon Mrs. Lebber and Mrs. Sassaman sat at the
parlor windows looking out into the dingy street and alternating sigh
with sigh. She went with them to evening service in a little church,
where the singing was wretched and the sermon grim. The scanty and
spiritless congregation dispersed silently and she bit her lips to keep
from crying.
The following morning she started out once more to find a position.
In the sordid district behind the Capitol she saw, next to a Jewish
synagogue with strange lettering above its door, a laundry whose sign
announced "Girl Wanted," and there applied. The second of her assets,
physical strength, was to serve her now. In a few minutes she found
herself engaged and being instructed in the art of running wet towels
through a hot mangle. She put into her work a fierce, triumphant
repudiation of Mr. Goldstein.
Steam laundries are run like jewelry stores for the benefit of their
owners, and steady work is required. At the end of the second day
Ellen, aching from head to foot, walked home in a cold wind. The third
evening she cried with pain, but she went back, believing that if she
failed now she would fail altogether.
Mrs. Sassaman wept over her, brought her hot herb tea, and finally in
an excess of emotion told what was on her mind.
"That one toward Lancaster, he has been here."
Ellen was puzzled.
"You knew there was a man there, Ellen." Mrs. Sassaman blushed as she
tried to explain the extent of her suitor's devotion. "I used to know
him, he is a lame man, but kind. He will have me, it seems."
"You mean a lover?" said Ellen.
"Something like that."
"Are you going to take him?" A humorous glance made Ellen's eyes look
like her father's.
"I don't know." Mrs. Sassaman now wept outright.
"Of course you are!"
"He isn't like your father."
Ellen did not understand the implication--no one was like her father.
At the thought of him she was overcome. She had been here for two
months and had learned nothing; the exhausting work at the laundry took
all one's time, and even Sundays had been profitless, spent as they
were in weariness and idleness. Her life was narrower than it had been
at home and Mrs. Sassaman and Mrs. Lebber were even less congenial
than the companions she had left behind. The amount of her savings was
growing, but very slowly.
She wished Mrs. Sassaman well, bought her a wedding present which she
could ill afford, and on Thanksgiving Day accompanied her and her
farmer to the preacher's. Mrs. Lebber provided a heavy and bountiful
dinner which she felt to be a waste.
"She will be back," she prophesied. "I don't mean that anything will go
wrong between them; that is not what I mean at all. I mean that she and
I do not have good luck with husbands. Between us we have already lost
three. I think this one is so yellow. It is not that I cannot marry
that I sit here."
On the Sunday afternoon following Thanksgiving Ellen went to walk. The
air was mild, and the holiday on Thursday had saved her from Sunday's
usual exhaustion. She walked down to the railroad station, intending,
none too cheerfully, to go over the course which she and her father had
followed on a happy day. In the Capitol she walked from room to room
reconsecrating herself to the divinity which she worshiped.
Then she sought the river street. It was not yet twilight and she
walked slowly as she and her father had walked. She crossed a bridge
and looked back at the domes and spires. The city, nestling against a
background of blue hills, took on in the afternoon sunshine the rich
colors of a much older settlement. She returned slowly, conscious of
the beauty and of her own misery and went northward as she and her
father had gone.
Here in the park, opposite the gray house which she had admired, they
had stood. The house remained exactly as it was. She sat down, no
suspicion of its ownership, no premonition of a strange future stirring
her, and looked now out across the quiet river and now at the house.
Only a few of the shades were raised--had the occupants died also?
Presently she believed that she saw at a window in the third story a
face with a black mark upon it, but she did not regard it curiously
or wonder whether it was in some way disfigured, or whether a shadow
fell upon it; it was a face dull to her and her miseries. She dried her
eyes at first gently and then with an angry pressure, fearing that she
was going to cry hysterically as she had done several times after her
father's death.
The gathering twilight made her the more conspicuous and a man
presently took a place on the other end of the bench and asked her her
trouble. His motive was simple friendliness, but he reminded her of the
creatures who had come at the stupid beckoning of her eyes into the
jewelry store, and rising quickly she crossed the street, blind to a
rapidly approaching automobile. She escaped all but a glancing blow of
the fender, but that threw her against the curb.
Picking herself up, bruised and angry and tremulous, she found herself
surrounded by the driver of the automobile, the stranger from whom she
had flown, and Fetzer, the owner of the shadowy face which she had
seen at the upper window. Fetzer was alone and lonely and she had been
watching Ellen. She had a passion to which all else was subservient,
the finding of persons as trustworthy as herself to serve Stephen, and
she had been looking at Ellen critically from across the street as she
often looked at strong, plainly dressed young women. Ellen assured them
that she was not hurt.
"It was my own fault. I was in a hurry and I didn't watch."
The stranger came forward.
"I saw you were in some trouble and I thought I might help you. I
didn't mean to frighten you."
"Oh, I understand," said Ellen earnestly.
The chauffeur protested his innocence to Fetzer.
"You saw her run across, didn't you?"
"Yes." Fetzer laid her hand on Ellen's arm and spoke in an idiom
familiar to her. "Come in here once a little where I live."
The chauffeur was still disturbed.
"I don't want to put the blame on any one else and run off."
Fetzer saw three boys approaching rapidly.
"I saw how it happened--it'll be all right. Now you come with me."
With authority she led Ellen through a little door at the back of the
house, and there in a small room Ellen saw a sofa and sank down upon it.
When she opened her eyes again it seemed to her that she was at home
and that Mrs. Sassaman was attending to some childish injury. Gradually
the articles of furniture appeared, and presently she realized that the
woman bending over her was not Mrs. Sassaman, but a stranger.
"You just lay still," Fetzer insisted with authority. "I watched you
and I said to myself, 'There's one in trouble'; and I know what trouble
is. I was coming to speak to you when you ran across the street. Did
you eat already?"
Ellen shook her head.
"I'll bet that's what ails you. Is any one expecting you?"
Again Ellen shook her head.
"Then stay where you are."
Fetzer moved about a small adjoining dining-room. Presently she
appeared in Ellen's field of vision wearing a white apron.
"Can you walk into the other room?"
With the help of a firm arm Ellen made the journey. Now she saw Fetzer
plainly, her neat little figure, her dreadfully scarred cheek, the
black patch across her eye, and the quick, queer motions of her little
head.
She ate slowly and with appetite. Tears threatened to interfere with
the process of swallowing, but she choked down food and tears together.
The little room with its white cloth and a few pictures and blooming
geraniums was, after Mrs. Lebber's grimy dining-room, like paradise.
She had heard from Millie enough stories about the luring of girls into
magnificent and evil resorts to have been very uneasy, but she was not
uneasy in the least.
After a while she ventured a pleasantry.
"My father used to tell about a man who said there were three things he
would never give up, the Democratic party, his hope of salvation, and
his good cup of coffee."
"That's me," said Fetzer, swallowing a long draught, "except I'm no
Democrat."
When the dishes were disposed of, she sat down by Ellen, an invitation
to confidence in her one-sided glance. She believed in special
dispensations of Providence, and she was sure that Providence had
brought Ellen here.
"Do you live in Harrisburg?" she asked.
"I do now," answered Ellen after a tearful pause. "I was born near
Ephrata. My parents are dead. I lived with Mrs. Sassaman and Mrs.
Lebber, but now Mrs. Sassaman is married. I worked in a store at first,
but now I work in a laundry."
"What is your name?"
"Ellen Levis."
There was a brightening sparkle in Fetzer's eye. She liked Ellen and
she leaned forward and gazed at her more earnestly.
"Would you consider other work, perhaps?"
"If I could better myself."
Fetzer's eye gleamed still more brightly.
"I'm housekeeper here. The family is away now, but they will soon
be back. The cook and the downstairs girl are colored and they live
outside. We need an upstairs girl who will live here. The pay is eight
dollars a week and you would have a good deal of time to yourself,
especially since you come from Lancaster County and know how to work. I
saw you sitting out there and you looked like a reliable girl."
Eight dollars a week! Mrs. Sassaman had received three. And she could
save it all! Other considerations were forgotten.
"Do you think I could fill the place?"
"You can try. When can you come?"
"I could come to-morrow."
"Could you walk upstairs to see your room?"
Ellen believed the journey was possible, and Fetzer led the way into
the narrow hall through which they had entered and up two flights of
stairs. There she pointed to a large bedroom.
"That is mine, and yours is here."
Ellen saw a small room with a narrow bed, a white bureau and a chair.
She saw also the river with its reflected lights.
"Oh, I believe I should like it!" she said earnestly.
As they went downstairs Fetzer announced her intention of calling
for an automobile and accompanying her guest home. Ellen was not able
to go alone--that was one reason. In the second place now that Ellen
stood erect and lifted her head Fetzer felt her contract to be a little
precipitate.
But Fetzer found nothing amiss--indeed, she discovered that she had
known Mrs. Lebber's husband. From a place so dreary she was glad to
escape. She trusted Mrs. Lebber because of the dinginess of her house
and Mrs. Lebber trusted her because of her homeliness. She told Mrs.
Lebber the name of her employer, but neither to her nor to Ellen did
"Lanfair" carry any significance.
Ellen lay uncomfortably on her hard bed. She was bruised and sore, but
she was excited and happy. No one else would have contemplated the
change in her fortunes with satisfaction. From being the center of the
world, she had become merely an unmarried sister-in-law, then a clerk
in a store, then a mangler in a laundry, and now a housemaid, written
down in Mrs. Fetzer's housekeeping book as "Ellen Lewis."
But she believed that the tide of fortune had turned. She counted on
her fingers the black and white employees whom Fetzer had mentioned.
Fetzer had also said that extra women came to do the hardest cleaning.
Surely there would be time to study!
Kept awake by her aching bones she saw a smoothly flowing river and a
little table with books and tablets and neatly sharpened pencils.