The thought of Paul was the one clear reality in Helen's life while she
blundered through the bewilderments of the first months in Sacramento.
It was the only thing that warmed her in the midst of the strangeness
that surrounded her like a thin, cold fog.
There was the school. She did not know what she had expected, but she
felt vaguely that she had not found it. Faithfully every morning at
eight o'clock she was at her table in the dingy back room, struggling
to translate the dots and dashes of the Morse alphabet into crisp, even
clicks of the sounder. There were three other pupils, farm boys who
moved their necks uncomfortably in stiff collars and reddened when they
looked at her.
There was a wire from that room into the front office. Sometimes its
sounder opened, and they knew that Mr. Weeks was going to send them
something to copy. They moved to that table eagerly. There were days
when the sounder did not click again, and after a while one of the boys
would tiptoe to the office and report that Mr. Weeks was asleep. On
other days the sounder would tap for a long time meaninglessly, while
they looked at each other in bewilderment. Then it would make a few
shaky letters and stop and make a few more.
Then for several days Mr. Weeks would not come to the school at all.
They sank into a kind of stupor, sitting in the close, warm room, while
flies buzzed on the window-pane. Helen's moist finger-tips stuck to the
hard rubber of the key; it was an effort to remember the alphabet. But
she kept at work doggedly, knowing how much depended upon her success.
Always before her was the vision of the station where she would work
with Paul, a little yellow station with housekeeping rooms up-stairs.
She thought, too, of the debt she owed her father, and the help she
could give him later when she was earning money.
Bit by bit she learned a little about the other pupils. Two of them had
come down from Mendocino County together. They had worked two summers
to earn the money, and yet they had been able to save only seventy-five
dollars for the tuition. However, they had been sharp enough to
persuade Mr. Weeks to take them for that sum. They lived together in
one room, and cooked their meals over the gas-jet. It was one of them
who asked Helen if she knew that gas would kill a person.
"If you turned it on for a long time and set fire to it, I suppose it
would burn you up," she said doubtfully.
"I don't mean that way," he informed her, excited. "It kills you if
you just breathe it long enough. It's poison." After that she looked
with terrified respect at the gas-jet in her room, and was always very
careful to turn it off tightly.
The other boy had a more knowing air and smoked cigarettes. He
swaggered a little, giving them to understand that he was a man of
the world and knew all the wickedness of the city. He looked at Helen
with eyes she did not like, and once asked her to go to a show with
him. Although she was very lonely and had never seen a show in a real
theater, she refused. She felt that Paul would not like her to go. At
the end of three months in Sacramento these were the only people she
knew, except Mrs. Brown.
She felt that she would like Mrs. Brown if she knew her better. Her
shyness kept her from saying more than "Good evening," when she handed
her meal-ticket over the restaurant counter to be punched, and for some
inexplicable reason Mrs. Brown seemed shy with her. It was her own
fault, Helen thought; Mrs. Brown laughed and talked gaily with the men
customers, cajoling them into buying cigars and chewing-gum from her
little stock.
Helen speculated about Mr. Brown. She never saw him; she felt quite
definitely that he was not alive. Yet Mrs. Brown often looked at her
wide wedding-ring, turning it on her finger as if she were not quite
accustomed to wearing it. A widow, and so young! Helen's heart ached at
the thought of that brief romance. Mrs. Brown's thin figure and bright
yellow hair were those of a girl; only her eyes were old. It must be
grief that had given them that hard, weary look. Helen smiled at her
wistfully over the counter, longing to express her friendliness and
sympathy. But Mrs. Brown's manner always baffled her.
These meetings were not frequent. Helen tried to make her three-dollar
meal ticket last a month, and that meant that only five times a week
she could sit in state, eating warm food in an atmosphere thick with
smells of coffee and stew and hamburger steak. She had learned that
cinnamon rolls could be bought for half price on Saturday nights, and
she kept a bag of them in her room, and some fruit. This made her a
little uneasy when she saw Mrs. Brown's anxious eye on the vacant
tables; she felt that she was defrauding Mrs. Brown by eating in her
room.
Mrs. Brown worked very hard, Helen knew. It was she who swept the hall
and kept the rooms in order. She did not do it very well, but Helen
saw her sometimes in the evenings working at it. She swept with quick,
feverish strokes. Her yellow hair straggled over her face; her high
heels clicked on the floor; her petticoats made a whisking sound. There
was something piteous about her, as there is about a little trained
animal on the stage, set to do tasks for which it is not fitted. Helen
stole down the hallway at night, taking the broom from its corner as if
she was committing a theft, and surreptitiously swept and dusted her
own room, so that Mrs. Brown would not have to do it.
She wished that it took more time. When she had finished there was
nothing to do but sit at her window and look down at the street. People
went up and down, strolling leisurely in the warm summer evening. She
saw girls in dainty dresses, walking about in groups, and the sight
increased her loneliness. Buggies went by; a man with his wife and
children out driving, a girl and her sweetheart. At the corner there
was the clanging of street-cars, and she watched to see them passing,
brightly lighted, filled with people. Once in a while she saw an
automobile, and her breath quickened, she leaned from the window until
it was out of sight. She felt then the charm of the city, with its
crowds, its glitter, its strange, hurried life.
Two young men passed often down that street in an automobile. They
looked up at her window when they went by and slowed the machine. If
she were leaning on the sill, they waved to her and shouted gaily. She
always pretended that she had not seen them, and drew back, but she
watched for the machine to pass again. It seemed to be a link between
her and all that exciting life from which she was shut out. She would
have liked to know those young men.
She sat at the window one evening near the end of the three months
that she had planned to spend in the telegraph school. Paul's picture
was in her hand. He had had it taken for her in Ripley. It was a
beautiful, shiny picture, cabinet size, showing him against a tropical
background of palms and ferns. He had taken off a derby hat, which he
held self-consciously; his stocky figure wore an air of prosperity in
an unfamiliar suit.
She brooded upon the firm line of his chin, the clean-cut lips, the
smooth forehead from which the hair was brushed back slickly. His neck
was turned so that his eyes did not quite meet hers. It was baffling,
that aloof gaze; it hurt a little. She wished that he would look at
her. She felt that the picture would help her more if he would, and she
needed help.
Mr. Weeks had returned from one of his long absences that day, and
she had taken courage to ask him about a job. He had listened while
she stood beside his desk, stammering out her worry and her need. Her
money was almost gone; she thought she telegraphed pretty well, she
had studied hard. She watched his shaking hand fumbling with some
papers on his desk, and felt pityingly that she should not bother him
when he was sick. But desperation drove her on. She did not suspect
the truth until he looked up at her with reddened eyes and answered
incoherently. Then she saw that he was drunk.
Her shock of loathing came upon her in a wave of nausea. She trembled
so that she could hardly get down the stairs, and she had walked a long
time in the clean sunshine before the full realization of what it meant
chilled her. She sat now confronting that realization.
She had only two dollars, a half-used meal-ticket, and a week's rent
paid in advance. She saw clearly that she could hope for nothing from
the telegraph school. It did not occur to her to blame anybody. Her
mind ran desperately from thought to thought, like a caged creature
seeking escape between iron bars.
She could not go home. She could not live there again, defeated,
knowing day by day that she had added a hundred dollars to the
mortgage. She had told Paul so confidently that she could do as well as
a boy if she had the chance, and she had had the chance. He could not
help her. The street below was full of happy people going by, absorbed
in their own concerns, careless of hers.
She had not seen the automobile with the two young men in it until it
stopped across the street. Even then she saw it dimly with dull eyes.
But the two young men were looking up at her window, talking together,
looking up again. They were getting out. They crossed the street. She
heard their voices below, and a moment later her heart began to thump.
They were coming up the stairs.
Something was going to happen. At last something was going to break the
terrible loneliness and deadness. She stood listening, one hand at her
throat, alert, breathless.
They were standing half-way up the stairs, talking. She felt indecision
in the sound of their voices. One of them ran down again. There was
an aching silence. Then she heard footsteps and the high, gay voice
of Mrs. Brown. They were laughing together. "Oh, you Kittie!" one of
the young men said. The three came up the stairs, and she heard their
clattering steps and caught a word or two as they went past her room.
Then the scratch of a match, and light gleamed through the crack of
Mrs. Brown's door.
They went on talking. It appeared that they were arguing, coaxing,
urging something. Mrs. Brown's voice put them off. There was a crash
and laughter. She gathered that they were scuffing playfully. Later she
heard Mrs. Brown's voice at the head of the back stairs, calling down
to some one to send up some beer.
Her tenseness relaxed. She felt herself falling into bottomless depths
of depression. The bantering argument was going on again. Meaningless
scraps of it came to her while she undressed in the dark and crept into
bed.
"Aw, come on, Kittie, be a sport! A stunning looker like that! What're
you after anyhow--money?"
"Cut that out. No, I tell you. What's it to you why I won't?"
She crushed her face into the pillow and wept silently. It seemed the
last unkindness of fate that Mrs. Brown should give a party and not ask
her.