building in Foley Street, and was directed to a door through which came
the sounds of a crying child. Her knock was answered, and the caller
gradually realized through the shadows that she was being grinned at.
She smiled back, wondering if the shoeless creature were Fanny’s sister
or mother. She wore no outer waist and a heavy plaid skirt that was
splashed with wash water. An infant shrank into the hollow curve of her
body, and another child sat wailing on the wet floor behind.
“I thought you’d come, Musser.”
It was Fanny herself. Pidge had crossed the threshold to look into
eyes in which hate and hunger moved in a narrow orbit; narrow like the
wet spot on the floor, in which the first-born played. Tired back,
draggled hair, merely a stretched and faded vestige of a girl was Fanny
Gallup now. Laugh and street talk were gone for the time, at least;
gone as Albert, the barber, as much a myth as ever, so far as Pidge was
concerned, though the place hypothecated a male parent. These three
remaining seemed purposeless bits of life which a perverted scheme
permitted to live on.
Pidge hated herself for becoming involved in the complication. For the
moment, she hated New York that could not keep itself clean. No rent,
no food, somebody else’s washing in the tubs, and the rags of Fanny and
her children unwashed.
“... No, it ain’t no good to think of staying, Musser, because they’re
tearing the buildin’ down.”
“How much rent do you owe?”
“Five weeks. But it ain’t no good to pay that, because I got to get out
anyway. Gawd, Redhead, you look like a doll in a window!”
“Is there any place around here where you can go?”
“It’s hard to get in with the two, and you’d have to pay a month in
advance,” Fanny said.
“How soon do you have to leave here?”
“Four days. That’s why I sent the letter.”
“Have you got any--anything to eat?”
“That’s why I sent the letter. That’s why they keep squalling all the
time.”
“I’ll be back before dark,” Pidge said, turning into the hall.
“You’ll--sure--come--back?”
“Sure,” called Pidge.
She returned with her arms full of groceries, and went home promising
to come back the next afternoon.
* * * * *
“... Bring them here. There is no other way,” Miss Claes said.
“But they’re not clean!” Pidge moaned. “They are too sick to keep
clean.”
“We can freshen them up a little,” said Miss Claes.
“But there’s nothing Fanny can do, unless the two children are taken
from her. I mean she’s held to the room with them now, and they’ve been
crying so long that they can’t stop. They both cry at once, and she
doesn’t hear them; they look and listen for a second and then go on
crying. If one stops, he hears the other. The place smelled like a sty,
and the packages of food I brought got wet and spoiled before they were
opened.”
“Forget about them until to-morrow, Pidge, and then get a taxicab and
bring them here. I’ve got a second-floor room toward the back.”
XVIII
AN OUTER CHANGE
MISS CLAES standing by the table in her own room heard a step upon
an upper stairway; not on the immediate basement stairs, but of
one descending from the second to the first landing. The tread was
deliberate. She heard it now in the hall directly above. Miss Claes
moved to the door, her hand against her cheek; then back to stand by
the table again. Now the step was on the basement stairs. A fire was
burning in her grate, and that was the main light of the room, for the
winter morning was very gray. The table was prepared for one--plate
and cup of ruddy gold, a cutting of white hyacinth in a purple vase.
The footsteps approached in the basement hall; a heavy bag was placed
down outside Miss Claes’ door; then Nagar appeared, a dark hat and an
overcoat upon his arm. He came forward, and the two stood together for
a moment.
“At least this once, I can serve you,” Miss Claes said.
Nagar smiled as he sat down to the table. Miss Claes went into the
kitchen and presently brought a pot of tea in a Chinese basket and a
covered dish. She filled a goblet from the water bottle, and stood
behind his chair while Nagar ate. The house was strangely silent.
Nagar arose. They stood together again for a moment by the mantel. He
spoke in Hindi, and she listened, like one already weary, hearing of
more things to do. Not until she smiled, did he turn away. She did not
follow to the door, nor look toward the window, as he passed up the
steps to the street. After a long time, she stepped to the cabinet for
a cigarette and lit it standing by the fireplace.
XIX
FANNY DRIES HER TEARS
FANNY GALLUP was taking life easy. She had not been separated from her
children, but relieved for the present from the hunger drive to support
them. Pidge helped to pay Fanny’s room and board, but didn’t miss the
fact that the main expense fell upon Miss Claes.
“There is a little fund back of me for just such cases, Pidge,” Miss
Claes said. “I rarely divulge the fact, but there is no reason in the
world why you should be inconvenienced.”
“Except that I brought her here----”
“I asked you to.”
“Except that she called on _me_ in her trouble, and I worked elbow to
elbow with her for four months, and she pulls out the very devil from
me every time I see her.”
“Your feeling of responsibility is what makes you what you are--I never
miss that, Pidge. If you weren’t so hard and straight on all the tricky
little matters of dollars and cents, you can be very sure I’d never
tell you my secret of secrets, about the fund.”
“I’ll have to pay what I can, if only because I hate to so. But I can
never pay for bringing her to your house.”
Miss Claes laughed. “That is only the way you see it. Fanny isn’t heavy
on us here. Not at all. It’s the dear, possessive Pidge that is hurt.
Do you suppose I am torn by what goes on in the rooms and halls? Not
torn beyond repair from day to day, at least. Fanny’s only a little
more simple than most, a little less secretive.”
“She’s unmoral,” Pidge declared solemnly. “The awful thing is, she
doesn’t learn. Life passes through her like a sieve, leaves its muck on
her, and she doesn’t learn.”
Philosophy seldom helped Pidge; she had heard too much of it, and money
was invariably a serious affair. In the California life there had
never been enough money for all needs. Adolph Musser was unable to do
without what he wanted, even though the immediate tradespeople of the
neighborhood were frequently forced to. The metaphysician relied upon
the Law of Providence to take care of them; and this had hacked and
hewed into Pidge’s disposition; this had meant red war to her soul up
to the last hour in her father’s house.
Here in New York the fight had been different. Even with Miss Claes
mysteriously back of her from the beginning, she had faced, in her
first few months in New York, the ugly candor of starvation. There was
established in Pidge both from Los Angeles and New York experiences,
a determination to fix herself unrockingly on her own feet in a
financial way; and now, just as she might have gotten a bit ahead, was
the expense of Albert’s children, and the claims of their mother, which
were getting to look as interminable to Pidge as a ninety-nine years’
lease.
Another trouble was that Fanny was beginning to show fresh traces of
her sense of the “fun of the thing.” Her spine was stiffening a little
with good food and rest, and curious little suggestions of starch
showed in lips and hair and breast that had been utterly draggled. She
was often seen hanging over the banisters; sure indication of renewal
of life and hope. She didn’t weep over the departed Albert; in fact,
Pidge Musser observed, as an added revelation of the hatefulness
of life, that Fanny was back on the scene looking for a man--not
earnestly, not passionately, but without compunction and entirely
unwhipped. Fanny granted that she was nobody, that she never had been;
but that was no sign why she should pass up anything that was going by.
Pain and hunger were forgotten like a sickness.
One night as she was coming in, Pidge heard Fanny’s low laugh on the
floor above, as she ran upstairs in time to shoo a lodger from Fanny’s
arms in the doorway. Then she followed into the littered room and a
light was made. The two women faced. The laugh remained unwithered on
Fanny’s cheerful face.
“Oh, Musser, you look so cross,” she panted.
“Don’t you remember--?” Pidge began.
“Remember wot?”
“What you were in that beast’s nest in Foley Street?”
“That’s what you always want, Musser, always want me to keep
rememberin’, just as I’m getting straightened out.”
The fashion of Fanny’s straightening out settled upon Pidge, as she
looked around the room. Its awfulness was beyond tears to her, even
beyond laughter.
“Fanny Gallup, if you bring another baby here, I’ll--I’ll----”
“There ain’t going to be no other baby here, Musser. I ain’t nobody’s
chicken like that.”
XX
THEY WALK IN CIRCLES
ONE day just as Pidge was finishing luncheon with John Higgins, she
was startled to hear Melton’s voice. He moved around their table with
a fling of his coat tails and held out both his hands. It actually
sounded, though she never was sure, as if he said something like, “I’ve
been looking everywhere for you.”
Pidge fancied a sort of rueful wonder on the old editor’s face, as he
announced his haste to get back to the office, and bolted out.... She
was recalling the baby carriage in Santa Monica. Melton’s face was
slightly broader, she thought, and the poise of young success was upon
it. One thing she had never known before was how remarkably well his
curly head was placed upon its shoulders. The neck was not merely a
nexus, but a thing of worth in itself, with arch and movement which
made him look taller and intimated something light and fleet, touching
memories which Pidge could not quite grip.
They were together in the street. Melton had asked her to walk with him
to his bank. He seemed on both sides of her at once, his hand drawing
her deftly this way and that through the crowd, his chat and laughter
in her ears, and an old indescribable weariness and helplessness in
herself.
“... Sure, I could have hunted you up. In fact, I would have done it
eventually, but I haven’t been in New York all the time; running back
west to get my stuff up, now and then.”
“I thought you lived in New York,” Pidge said.
“I keep an apartment in East Twenty-fourth Street,” he granted.
A lull for just an instant before he went on:
“You see, it’s handy to my publishers, and my bank is only a square or
two away.”
Pidge wished she could accept him for just what he seemed--the upstart
American in literature. She wished to forget everything else, save the
youth who said, in effect, “This is my bank, this is my solicitor,
this is my publisher.” But she could not smile her scorn and pass on.
She felt like the parent of a child showing off. Back of the tinkle
and flush of these big days of his, which he seemed to be drinking
in so breathlessly, she felt more than ever that thing about him
which was imprisoned. A thing it was that called to her, kept calling
beseechingly.
“I’ll never forget,” he said, speaking of the fifty dollars--“I’ll
never forget that night, when I left you--and the fog in the Square.
Everything was different, after that.”
“You didn’t go to Cleveland that night, as you said,” she declared,
watching the curve of his black lashes.
The eyes darted her way.
“Lucky, I didn’t,” he said. “God! How I wanted to! New York had me
bluffed that night, before you came to the rescue.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“I was up close to Grand Central with my bag, when the idea struck
me--the idea that has since come out in the story series that has
caught on. I could hardly realize that I had your money. I kept it in
my hand--the hand in my pocket. That was a turning point in a life. New
York had frightened me pretty nearly to death--the hunger thing, you
know. All I wanted on earth was to crawl into that train for Cleveland,
but it was as if you were calling on me to stay.”
She turned in pain and amazement. He was looking straight ahead and
talking softly. She saw every twist and drive of his mind as he
dramatized the situation unfolding to him. He was deeply absorbed in
the pictures which his fertile brain uncovered one by one. It hurt her
like the uncovering of something perverted in herself.
“Don’t go on like that,” she said. “You’re not working now. You are
just walking in the street. You mustn’t make stories when you talk.”
He glanced at her sorrowfully, as one realizing in himself a truth so
big that he is willing to wait for it to be believed.
“It is God’s truth,” he said. “That was the turning point in my
career--that night--the night I turned back from the train. It was as
if you were calling me, and it was as if the idea came from you. I knew
I had to stay on and do the work here, close to the markets.”
She looked into his face and laughed.
“And you could forget me--forget the fifty dollars for nearly a year!”
“I don’t blame you for talking that way. I expect to be
misunderstood--not me, but the thing I stand for.”
She was hushed. Could he mean that he suffered in conscious conflict?
Could it be that he was aware at all of that imprisoned thing she saw
back of his eyes? He had halted, and now she turned again for him to go
on.
“I hoped that you, you of all, might understand,” he said. “Why, it was
from you that the whole thing started.”
He seemed actually to be making himself believe it. She felt herself
trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Do you know you’re changed?” he said, in sudden exultation. “Do you
know you’re five times as charming? What’s happened?”
“Nothing has happened,” said Pidge.
“It was the strangest shock, in the restaurant when I saw you. I knew
it was you, and yet you’ve put on something--out of the ordinary.”
“Oh, don’t.... I must go back to the office now.”
“The bank is just half a block. We’ve been walking in circles. I hadn’t
a check in my pocket.... I wanted to walk with you anyway. Do you
really have to get back to the office?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Couldn’t you--couldn’t we go down on the river or to a show somewhere?
I know what you’re thinking: that if this meant so much to me, how
could I let it go for nearly a year. But you’ll understand. You’ll see
what I mean and what I’m up against. The thing was too big for me to
rush in. I had to wait. But now that you’ve come, I can’t let you go.”
“I must go back.”
“To-night then. Couldn’t I meet you at _The Public Square_ at five and
have supper?”
“Oh no. I must go home--first.”
“May I call for you at Harrow Street, say at seven, or before that?
Say, couldn’t we go to that old restaurant where we went that night?”
This idea had come to Pidge before he spoke; exactly, perhaps, as it
caught his fancy.
“Yes, I could----” Pidge cleared her voice, and spoke again above the
roar of the street. “Yes, I could.”
Then because she had lifted her voice, she seemed to hear her own tones
unforgetably, as if her soul echoed back the words.
“But I must hurry back now,” she added.
“Let’s get this bank thing finished.”
But when they reached the door of the bank they found it closed for the
rest of the day.
XXI
THE DINNER COAT
JOHN HIGGINS came up through the newspapers and magazine editorial
rooms in those brave days when a typewriter did not always go with a
man’s desk, but a cuspidor nearly always. Even yet, the editor of _The
Public Square_ tucked a piece of fine-cut between his cheek and lower
jaw after breakfast in the morning, and forgot about it just so long
as it was there. The fact that he smoked from time to time caused no
inconvenience to the wad of shredded leaf. He complained of indigestion
and gave himself wholeheartedly to various forms of diet.
He kept Pidge Musser close at hand during these trying war days. His
former stenographer languished. John Higgins found a singular peace in
working with Pidge and was innocent enough to discuss it. He was an
old integer so far as women were concerned, never getting beyond the
rare confession (when a few drinks ripened his mind) that he had had
a mother once. He didn’t hate women; nothing like that. He had just
merely walked around them as you walk around the shore of an ocean. He
wasn’t born with a bathing suit and the idea of taking off his shoes
and stockings made him hoarse with fright. Pidge, however, had crept
in through the business door, and John Higgins awoke to find her at his
side.
Pidge found him like a somber relative of the elder generation, when
she returned from her hectic walk with Melton that afternoon, but for
once she could forget John Higgins easily. Twenty times in her mind, at
least, Pidge went over the talk and walk with Melton, her face often
turned away to the window with a sad but scornful smile. She thought
it out with hard sophistication, all that he had said of receiving
inspiration from her, but underneath she wanted it to be so; and deep
among the secrets of herself, she felt that what he said was possibly
truer than he knew.
Had he known that the bank would be closed? She would soon learn about
that, for he had promised to bring the check to-night. Even if he
didn’t, she could never forget that _calling_ to her, back of his actor
eyes--calling like a child of her own. New York whirled by below; the
manuscripts were piled high in front and side. A Mecca letter came in
from Richard Cobden, intimating that he might go to India. Even that
did not arouse John Higgins, nor startle Pidge Musser from the painful
web she was in.
Melton was at the basement entrance at seven. As Pidge went down to
meet him, Fanny Gallup was coming up. They met in the second hall.
Fanny stood in the gaslight, her arms open wide, her dress open at the
breast, her eyes laughing.
“I saw him, Redhead. He’s a God-awful, that boy. Don’t you bring no
little baby to this house! I won’t stand for it.”
* * * * *
Melton wore a black cape coat, a dinner coat beneath. Pidge felt as
if she had left all her light in the second hall. She was exasperated
with herself for pushing past Fanny and not taking the joke gracefully,
exasperated with Melton for togging up to come to Harrow Street, to
take her to that old eating house. Couldn’t he resist showing off for
just one hour?
Some awe seemed to have fallen upon him, or rather between them. In
silence they rounded the almost empty curve of Harrow Street, and
presently entered the crowds and lights and crashes of trestled Sixth
Avenue. On the corner, as they crossed Eighth Street, Pidge heard a
newsboy behind say, “There goes a movie actor.” Pidge deeply knew what
that grimed child-face had seen.... It troubled Melton to find the
restaurant, and she didn’t help, though she had located it a score of
times since that other night. At the table, while they waited, he took
a fifty-dollar check from his pocket and handed it over, saying that
the real part of the favor he would try to pay bit by bit through the
years.
“Because I’ll never get very far from you again,” he added queerly.
“Find it very funny, don’t you? Sit there chuckling, don’t you? You can
laugh, but it’s true.”
Now Melton began to ask for things which weren’t on the bill-of-fare.
He told the waitress how things should be prepared and served--this in
a side-street eating house, that specialized in beans and encouraged
counter trade. There were hard lines around the mouth of the waitress
which Melton commented upon, as she turned her back. Pidge had a
warning to hold her temper, and yet she would have died first.
“I’ve never worked in a restaurant,” she said, “but I’ve worked in a
factory, and I know what those lines come from. They come from dealing
with people like you, people who forget where they are, forget what
they come for.”
“How do I forget where I am?” he asked.
“Because you don’t know that this is a place where they serve ‘eats.’
‘Eats’ are cooked all one way. ‘Eats’ are served fast in business
hours, and the waiters sit around and gasp the other times, trying to
catch up with themselves. And you don’t know where you are, because you
try to show these people and me that you’ve seen how it was done in
uptown hotels.”
A trace of sullenness showed in his eyes, and then a warmth of almost
incredible delight.
“It’s great! I never was scolded in my life!”
“It wasn’t for supper alone--that wasn’t why I fell into the idea of
coming here,” she said. “You forget it entirely. You dare to come in a
dress suit--here--here!”
“Listen,” he begged, “don’t run away with that idea. I thought we might
go to a theater afterward. I didn’t think so much about where we were
going as I did that I was coming to you. I didn’t have anything better
than this to put on, and so I came this way.”
A moment before it had seemed the most righteous and perfect thing
under heaven to vent a few scathing remarks, but now she felt twisted
and diminished. Long and religiously she had tried to keep her rages to
herself. Neither spoke while the plates were being served, and then he
said:
“I was horribly out of true, in telling these people how to do it, but
I wanted it good for you,” he added simply.
She looked at him hard, but the intensity of her trying that instant
kept her from reading what was really back of his eyes.
“It’s plenty good enough for me,” she said. “I came here once when I
had only twenty cents to live on that day--I remember the stool, that
fifth stool, I sat on. I spent my twenty cents all at once,” she added,
“and the grub was so good that I could have wept in the arms of the
woman on the other side of the counter.”
“Was that when you were working in the factory?” he asked.
“No,” said Pidge, “it was before I got the job. I ate regularly after
that.”
“Where was the factory?”
“Oh, way up in the other end of town. I labeled tins, salmon tins,
baking powder tins, cocoa tins.”
“To get local color?” he asked.
“To get food. I sat at a big table with a lot of girls, and in the
hours and hours, in the monotony of the days, I found out how easy it
is to get hard lines around the mouth. I learned to understand just
enough to learn that I know nothing, and that’s a lot.”
She was thinking of what a tension she had been in to escape from Fanny
Gallup.
“I worked on a ranch in Wyoming,” Melton observed, “cattle ranch.”
“What were you doing on the Tunisian sands?”
“Just ramming around the world. I got in bad with an Arab sheik. It was
while running away from him that I got lost in the desert.”
She saw his eyes kindle in the prospect of narration, his faculties
forming a fresh tale, which she could not bear to hear that moment. She
forestalled his fruitfulness.
They were in the streets.
“No, I don’t want to go uptown,” said Pidge. “I don’t feel like the
theater to-night----”
“Wouldn’t you like a ride on the harbor? The ferries are empty this
time of night.”
“No, we’ll cross over to Harrow Street.”
“May I come in? There’s so much to say. It’s just--finding you
again--Pan.”
“Not to-night. I want to be alone.”
He didn’t answer. She felt a little better after that. She had thought
it might be harder to have her way. There seemed always something he
could not say behind his words. It wasn’t _all_ lies. It became clear
for a moment that he would follow after her--so long as she could run
ahead; that he would only turn away and forget when she paused to
breathe or play.
“I feel strange,” he said in the silence of Harrow Street. “It is
strange to-night. It’s like finding the house one has been looking
for so long--the house, even the door, but not the key. Pan,” he said
suddenly, “give it to me. Give me the key. It’s you--it’s yours----”
His strength was without strain, the strength that is effortless,
the strength of laughter. He had taken her to him suddenly, and she
dwelt in it, though resisting; something ecstatic, even in holding
out.... She heard voices in herself and faces flashed through her
mind--Cobden’s, Fanny Gallup’s--but her arms and shoulders and breast
knew a terrible sweetness from his strength. It wasn’t hateful. It was
like her own boy, not a stranger. His laughing face was nearer. It was
coming to hers. In the dark she could see it, eyes and eyelids, curving
nostrils and laughing lips. She knew something would die in her when it
touched ... that she was dying now of the slowness of its coming. She
ceased to struggle, and all that she had known and been arose within
her to meet his lips.
* * * * *
She was on the second flight of stairs. She almost prayed that Fanny’s
door would not open. She wanted to be in her own little room, the
smaller the better to-night--no touch or voice upon her. The key turned
in her trembling hand. She was safe, the door locked again. She stood
in the dark. Her lips moved audibly:
“Am I--is it because I am my father’s child?”
XXII
A LETTER FROM PIDGE