The next day she dressed very carefully in a fresh white waist and her
Indianhead skirt and went down to the telegraph-office to ask for a
job. She knew where to find the office; she had often looked at its
plate-glass front lettered in blue during her lonely walks on the
crowded street. Her heart thumped loudly and her knees were weak when
she went through the open door.
The big room was cut across by a long counter, on which a young man
lounged in his shirt-sleeves, a green eye-shade pushed back on his
head. Behind him telegraph instruments clattered loudly, disturbing
the stifling quiet of the hot morning. The young man looked at her
curiously.
"Manager? Won't I do?" he asked.
She heard her voice quavering:
"I'd rather see him--if he's busy--I could--wait."
The manager rose from the desk where he had been sitting. He was a
tall, thin man, with thin hair combed carefully over the top of his
head. His lips were thin, too, and there were deep creases on either
side of his mouth, like parentheses. His eyes looked her over,
interested. He was sorry, he said. He didn't need another operator. She
had experience?
She was a graduate of Weeks' School of Telegraphy, she told him
breathlessly. She could send perfectly, she wasn't so sure of her
receiving, but she would be awfully careful not to make mistakes. She
had to have a job, she just had to have a job; it didn't matter how
much it paid, anything. She felt that she could not walk out of that
office. She clung to the edge of the counter as if she were drowning
and it were a life-line.
"Well--come in. I'll see what you can do," he said. He swung open a
door in the counter, and she followed him between the tables. There was
a dusty instrument on a battered desk, back by the big switchboard. The
manager took a message from a hook and gave it to her. "Let's hear you
send that."
She began painstakingly. The young man with the eye-shade had wandered
over. He stood leaning against a table, listening, and after she had
made a few letters she felt that a glance passed between him and the
manager, over her head. She finished the message, even adding a careful
period. She thought she had done very well. When she looked up the
manager said kindly:
"Not so bad! You'll be an operator some day."
"If you'll only give me a chance," she pleaded.
He said that he would take her address and let her know. She felt that
the young man was slightly amused. She gave the manager her name and
the street number. He repeated it in surprise.
"You're staying with Kittie Brown?" Again a glance passed over her
head. Both of them looked at her with intensified interest, for which
she saw no reason. "Yes," she replied. She felt keenly that it was an
awkward moment, and bewilderment added to her confusion. The young
man turned away and, sitting down, began to send a pile of messages,
working very busily, sending with his right hand and marking off the
messages with his left. But she felt that his attention was still upon
her and the manager.
"Well! And you want to work here?" The manager rubbed one hand over his
chin, smiling. "I don't know. I might."
"Oh, if you would!"
He hesitated for an agonizing moment.
"Well, I'll think about it. Come and see me again." He held her fingers
warmly when they shook hands, and she returned the pressure gratefully.
She felt that he was very kind. She felt, too, that she had conducted
the interview very well, and returning hope warmed her while she went
back to her room.
That afternoon she had a visitor. She had written her weekly letter
to her mother, saying that she had almost finished school and was
expecting to get a job, hesitating a long time, miserably, before she
added that she did not have much money left and would like to borrow
another five dollars. She had eaten a stale roll and an apple and was
considering how long she could make the meal-ticket last when she heard
the knock on her door.
She opened it in surprise, thinking there had been a mistake. A
stout, determined-looking woman stood there, a well-dressed woman who
wore black gloves and a veil. Immediately Helen felt herself young,
inexperienced, a child in firm hands.
"You're Helen Davies? I'm Mrs. Campbell." She stepped into the room,
Helen giving way before her assured advance. She swept the place with
one look. "What on earth was your mother thinking of, leaving you in a
place like this? Did you know what you were getting into?"
"I don't--what--w-won't you take a chair?" said Helen.
Mrs. Campbell sat down gingerly, very erect. They looked at each other.
"I might as well talk straight out to you," Mrs. Campbell said, as if
it were a customary phrase. "I met Mrs. Morris, Mrs. Updike's sister,
at the lodge convention in Oakland last week, and she told me about
you, and I promised to look you up. Well, when I found out! I told Mr.
Campbell I was coming straight down here to talk to you. If you want
to stay in a place like this, well and good, it's your affair. Though
I should feel it my duty to write to your mother. I wouldn't want my
own girl left in a strange town, at your age, and nobody taking any
interest in her."
"I'm sure it's very kind." Helen murmured in bewilderment.
"Well,"--Mrs. Campbell drew a long breath and plunged,--"I suppose you
know the sort of person this Kittie Brown, she calls herself, is? I
suppose you know she's a bad woman?"
A wave of blackness went through the girl's mind.
"Everybody in town knows what _she_ is," Mrs. Campbell continued.
"Everybody knows--" She went on, her voice growing more bitter. Helen,
half hearing the words, choked back a sick impulse to ask her to stop
talking. She felt that everything about her was poisoned; she wanted to
escape, to hide, to feel that she would never be seen again by any one.
When the hard voice had stopped it was an effort to speak.
"But--what will I do?"
"Do? I should think you'd want to get out of here just as quick as you
could."
"Oh, I do want to. But where can I go? I--my rent's paid. I haven't any
money."
Mrs. Campbell considered.
"Well, you will have money, won't you? Your folks don't expect you to
live here on nothing, do they? If it's only a day or two, I could
take you in myself rather than leave you in a place like this. There's
plenty of decent places in town." She became practical. "The first
thing to do's to pack your things right away. How long is your rent
paid? Can't you get some of it back?"
She waited while Helen packed. She did not stop talking, and Helen
tried to answer her coherently and gratefully. She felt that she should
be grateful. They went down the stairs, and Mrs. Campbell waited
outside the restaurant while Helen went in to ask Mrs. Brown to refund
the week's rent.
It was noon, but there were only one or two people in the restaurant.
Mrs. Brown's smile faded when Helen stammered that she was leaving.
"You are? What's wrong? Anybody been bothering you?" Her glance fell
upon the waiting Mrs. Campbell, and her sallow face whitened. "Oh,
that's it, is it?"
"No," Helen said hastily. "That is, it's been very nice here, and I
liked it, but a friend of mine--she wants me to stay with her. I'm
sorry to leave, but I haven't much money." She struggled against
feeling pity for Mrs. Brown. She choked over asking her to refund the
rent.
Mrs. Brown said she could not do it. She offered, however, to give
Helen something in trade, two dollars' worth. They both tried to make
the transaction commonplace and dignified.
Helen, at a loss, pointed out a heap of peanut candy in the glass
counter. She had often looked at it and wished she could afford to buy
some. Mrs. Brown's thin hands shook, but she was piling the candy on
the scale when Mrs. Campbell came in.
"What's she doing?" Mrs. Campbell asked Helen. "You buying candy?"
"I don't know what business it is of yours, coming interfering with
me!" Mrs. Brown broke out. "I never did her any harm. I never even
talked to her. You ask her if I ever bothered her. You ask her if
I didn't leave her alone. You ask her if I ain't keeping a decent,
respectable, quiet place and doing the best I can and minding my own
business and trying to make a square living. You ask her what I ever
did to her all the time she's been here." Her voice was high and
shrill. Tears were rolling down her face. Mechanically she went on
breaking up the candy and piling it on the scales. "I don't know what I
ever did to you that you don't leave me alone, coming poking around."
"I didn't come here to talk to you," said Mrs. Campbell. "Come on out
of here," she commanded Helen.
"I wish to God you'd mind your own business!" Mrs. Brown cried after
them. "If you'd only tend to your own affairs, you _good_ people!" She
hurled the words after them like a curse, her voice breaking with
sobs. The door slammed under Mrs. Campbell's angry hand.
Helen, shaking and quivering, tried not to be sorry for Mrs. Brown.
She was ashamed of the feeling. She knew that Mrs. Campbell did not
have it. Hurrying to keep pace with that furious lady's haste down the
street, she was overwhelmed with shame and confusion. The whole affair
was like a splash of mud upon her. Her cheeks were red, and she could
not make herself meet Mrs. Campbell's eyes.
Even when they were on the street-car, safely away from it all, her
awkwardness increased. Mrs. Campbell herself was a little disconcerted
then. She looked at Helen, at the bulging telescope-bag, the shabby
shoes, and the faded sailor hat, and Helen felt the gaze like a burn.
She knew that Mrs. Campbell was wondering what on earth to do with her.
Pride and helplessness and shame choked her. She tried to respond to
Mrs. Campbell's efforts at conversation, but she could not, though
she knew that her failure made Mrs. Campbell think her sullen. Her
rescuer's impatient tone was cutting her like the lash of a whip before
they got off the car.
Mrs. Campbell lived in splendor in a two-story white house on a
complacent street. The smoothness of the well-kept lawns, the
immaculate propriety of the swept cement walks, cried out against
Helen's shabbiness. She had never been so aware of it. When she was
seated in Mrs. Campbell's parlor, oppressed by the velvet carpet and
the piano and the bead portieres, she tried to hide her feet beneath
the chair and did not know what to do with her hands.
She answered Mrs. Campbell's questions because she must, but she felt
that her last coverings of reticence and self-respect were being torn
from her. Mrs. Campbell offered only one word of advice.
"The thing for you to do is to go home."
"No," Helen said. "I--I can't--do that."
Mrs. Campbell looked at her curiously, and again the red flamed in
Helen's cheeks. She said nothing about the mortgage. Mrs. Campbell had
not asked about that.
"Well, you can stay here a few days."
She lugged the telescope-bag up the stairs, the wooden steps of which
shone like glass. Mrs. Campbell showed her a room at the end of the
hall. A mass of things filled it; children's toys, old baskets, a
broken chair. It was like the closets at home, but larger. It was large
enough to hold a narrow white iron bed, a wash-stand, and a chair, and
still leave room to swing the door open. These things appeared when
Mrs. Campbell had dragged out the others.
Watching her swift, efficient motions in silence, Helen tried again to
feel gratitude. But the fact that Mrs. Campbell expected it made it
impossible. She could only stand awkwardly, longing for the moment
when she would be alone. When at last Mrs. Campbell went down-stairs
she shut the door quickly and softly. She wanted to fling herself on
the sagging bed and cry, but she did not. She stood with clenched
hands, looking into the small, blurred mirror over the wash-stand.
A white, tense face looked back at her with burning eyes. She said
to it, "You're going to do something, do you hear? You're going to
do something quick!" Although she did not know what she could do,
she could keep her self-control by telling herself that she would do
something.
Some time later she heard the shouts of children and the clatter of
pans in the kitchen below. It was almost supper-time. She took a
cinnamon roll from the paper sack in her bag, but she could not eat it.
She was looking at it when Mrs. Campbell called up the back stairs,
"Miss Davies! Come to supper."
She braced herself and went down. It was a good supper, but she
could not eat very much. Mr. Campbell sat at the head of the table,
a stern-looking man who said little except to speak sharply to the
children when they were too noisy. There were two children, a girl
of nine and a younger boy in a sailor suit. They looked curiously at
Helen and did not reply when she tried to talk to them. She perceived
that they had been told to leave her alone, and she felt that her
association with a woman like Mrs. Brown was still visible upon her
like a splash of mud.
When she timidly offered to help with the dishes after supper Mrs.
Campbell told her that she did not need any help. Her tone was not
unkind, but Helen felt the rebuff, and fearing she would cry, she went
quickly up-stairs.
She looked at Paul's picture for some time before she put it back
into her bag where she thought Mrs. Campbell would not see it. Then,
sitting on the edge of the bed under a flickering gas-jet, she wrote
him a long letter. She told him that she had moved, and in describing
the street, the beautiful house, the furniture in the parlor, she drew
such a picture of comfort and happiness that its reflection warmed
her somewhat. It was a beautiful letter, she thought, reading it over
several times before she carefully turned out the gas and went to bed.
Early in the morning she went to the telegraph-office and pleaded again
for a job. Mr. Roberts, the manager, was very friendly, talking to
her for some time and patting her hand in a manner which she thought
fatherly and found comforting. He told her to come back. He might do
something.
She went back every morning for a week, and often in the afternoons.
The rest of the time she wandered in the streets or sat on a bench in
the park. She felt under such obligations when she ate Mrs. Campbell's
food that several times she did not return to the house until after
dark, when supper would be finished. She had to ring the door-bell, for
the front door was kept locked, and each time Mrs. Campbell asked her
sharply where she had been. She always answered truthfully.
At the end of the week she received a letter from her mother, telling
her to come home at once and sending her five dollars for the fare.
Mrs. Campbell had written to her, and she was horrified and alarmed.
Your father says we might have known it and saved our money, and I
blame myself for ever letting you go. I don't say it will be easy
for you here, short as we are this winter, but you ought to be glad
you have a good home to come to even if it isn't very fine, and
don't worry about the money, for your father won't say a word. Just
you come home right away. Lovingly,
YOUR MOTHER
Helen hated Mrs. Campbell. What right had that woman to worry her
mother? Helen could get along all right by herself, and she wrote her
mother that she could. She had a job at last. Mr. Roberts had made a
place for her in the office, as a clerk at five dollars a week. She did
not mention the wages to her mother; she said only that she had a job,
and her mother was not to worry. She would be making more money soon
and could send some home.
The letter had been waiting for her, propped on the hall table,
when she hurried in, eager to tell Mrs. Campbell the glad news. Her
anger when she read it was obscurely a relief. The compulsion to feel
gratitude toward Mrs. Campbell was lifted from her. She wrote her
answer and hastened to drop it in the corner mail-box.
Running back to the house, she met Mrs. Campbell returning from a
sewing-circle meeting. Mrs. Campbell was neatly hatted and gloved, and
the expression in her pale blue eyes behind the dotted veil suddenly
made Helen realize how blow-away she looked, bare-headed, her loosened
hair ruffled by the breeze, her blouse sagging under the arms. She
stood awkwardly self-conscious while Mrs. Campbell unlocked the front
door.
"Did you get your mother's letter?"
"Yes. I got it."
"Well, what did she say?"
Helen did not answer that.
"I got a job," she said. Her breath came quickly.
"You have? What kind of job?"
Helen told her. They were in the hall now, standing by the golden-oak
hat-rack at the foot of the stairs. The children watched, wide-eyed, in
the parlor door.
Perplexity and disgust struggled on Mrs. Campbell's face.
"You think you're going to live in Sacramento on five dollars a week?"
"I'm going to. I got to. I'll manage somehow. I won't go home!" Helen
cried, confronting Mrs. Campbell like an antagonist.
"Oh, I don't doubt you'll _manage_!" Mrs. Campbell said cuttingly. She
went down the hall, and the slam of the dining-room door shouted that
she washed her hands of the whole affair.
She came up the back stairs half an hour later. Helen was sitting on
the bed, her bag packed, trying to plan what to do. She had only the
five dollars. It would be two weeks before she could get more money
from the office. Mrs. Campbell opened the door without knocking.
"I'm going to talk this over with you," she said, patient firmness in
her tone. "Don't you realize you can't get a decent room and anything
to eat for five dollars a week? Do you think it's right to expect your
folks to support you, poor as they are? It isn't--"
"I don't expect them to!" Helen cried.
"As though you didn't have a good home to go back to," Mrs. Campbell
conveyed subtly that a well-bred girl did not interrupt while an older
woman was speaking. "Now be reasonable about this, my--"
"I won't go back," Helen said. She lifted miserable eyes to Mrs.
Campbell's, and the expression she saw there reminded her of a horse
with his ears laid back.
"Then you've decided, I suppose, where you _are_ going?"
"No--I don't know. Where could I begin to look for a--nice room that I
can live in on my wages?"
Mrs. Campbell exclaimed impatiently. Her almost ruthless capability
in dealing with situations did not prepare her to meet gracefully one
that she could not handle. Her voice grew colder, and the smooth cheeks
beneath the smooth, fair hair reddened while she continued to talk. Her
arguments, her grudging attempts at persuasion, her final outburst of
unconcealed anger, were futile. Helen would not go home. She meant to
keep her job and to live on the wages.
"Well, then I guess you'll have to stay here. I can't turn you out on
the streets."
"How much would you charge for the room?" said Helen.
"Charge!" Helen flushed again at the scorn in the word.
"I couldn't stay unless I paid you something. I'd have to do that."
"Well, of all the ungrateful--!"
Tears came into Helen's eyes. She knew Mrs. Campbell meant well, and
though she did not like her, she wished to thank her. But she did not
know how to do it without yielding somewhat to the implacable force of
the older woman. She could only repeat doggedly that she must pay for
the room.
She was left shaken, but with a sense of victory emphasized by Mrs.
Campbell's inarticulate exclamation as she went out. It was arranged
that Helen should pay five dollars a month for the room.
But the bitterness of living in that house, on terms which she felt
were charity, increased daily. She tried to make as little trouble as
possible, stealing in at the back door so that no one would have to
answer her ring, making her bed neatly, and slipping out early so that
she would not meet any of the family. She spent her evenings at the
office or at the library, where she could forget herself in books and
in writing long letters. For some inexplicable reason this seemed to
exasperate Mrs. Campbell, who inquired where she had been and did not
hide a belief that her replies were lies. Helen felt like a suspected
criminal. She would have left the house if she could have found another
room that she could afford.
It was only at the office that she could breathe freely. She worked
from eight in the morning to six at night, and then until the office
closed at nine o'clock she could practise on the telegraph instrument
behind the tables where the real wires came in. She worked hard at it,
for at last she was on the road to the little station where she would
work with Paul. She felt that she could never be grateful enough to
Mr. Roberts for giving her the chance.
He was very kind. Often he came behind the screen where she was
studying and talked to her for a long time. He was surprised at first
by her working so hard. He seemed to think she had not meant to do
it. But his manner was so warmly friendly that one day when he took
her hand, saying, "What's the big idea, little girl--keeping me off
like this?" she told him about everything but Paul. She told him about
the farm and the mortgage and the failure of the fruit crop, even,
shamefaced, about Mr. Weeks' drinking, and that she did not know what
she would have done if she had not got the job. She was very grateful
to him and tried to tell him so.
He said drily not to bother about that, and she felt that she had
offended him. Perhaps her story had sounded as if she were begging
for more money, she thought with burning cheeks. For several days he
gave her a great deal of hard work to do and was cross when she made
mistakes. She did her best, trying hard to please him, and he was soon
very friendly again.
His was the only friendliness she found to warm her shivering spirit,
and she became daily more grateful to him for it. Though she was
puzzled by his displays of affectionate interest in her and his sudden
cold withdrawals when she eagerly thanked him, this was only part
of the bewildering atmosphere of the office, in which she felt many
undercurrents that she could not understand.
The young operator with the green eye-shade, for instance, always
regarded her with a cynical and slightly amused eye, which she resented
without knowing why. When she laid messages beside his key, he covered
her hand with his if he could, and sometimes when she sat working he
came and put his hand on her shoulder. She was always angry, for she
felt contempt in his attitude toward her, but she did not know how to
show her resentment without making too much of the incidents.
"Mr. McCormick, leave me alone!" she said impatiently. "I want to work."
"Just what _is_ the game?" he drawled.
"What do you mean?" she asked, reddening under that cool, satirical
gaze. He looked at her, grinning until she felt only that she hated
him. Or sometimes he said something like: "Oh, well, I'm not butting
in. It's up to you and the boss," and strolled away, whistling.
Much looking at life from the back-door keyhole of the
telegraph-operator's point of view had made him blasé and wearily
worldly-wise at twenty-two. He knew that every pretty face was moulded
on a skeleton, and was convinced that all lives contained one. Only
virtue could have surprised him, and he could not have been convinced
that it existed. When he was on duty in the long, slow evenings,
Helen, practising diligently behind her screen, heard him singing
thoughtfully:
"Life's a funny proposition after all;
Just why we're here and what it's all about,
It's a problem that has driven many brainy men to drink,
It's a problem that they've never figured out."
Life seemed simple enough to Helen. She would be a telegraph-operator
soon, earning as much as fifty dollars a month. She could repay the
hundred dollars then, buy some new clothes, and have plenty to eat.
She would try to get a job at the Ripley station,--always in the back
of her mind was the thought of Paul,--and she planned the furnishing
of housekeeping rooms, and thought of making curtains and embroidering
centerpieces.
It was spring when he wrote that he was coming to spend a day in
Sacramento. He was going to Masonville to help his mother move to
Ripley. On the way he would stop and see Helen.
Helen, in happy excitement, thought of her clothes. She must have
something new to wear when they met. Paul must see in the first glance
how much she had changed, how much she had improved. She had not
been able to save anything, but she must, she must have new clothes.
Two days of worried planning brought her courage to the point of
approaching Mr. Roberts and asking him for her next month's salary
in advance. Next month's food was a problem she could meet later. Mr.
Roberts was very kind about it.
"Money? Of course!" he said. He took a bill from his own pocket-book.
"We'll have to see about your getting more pretty soon." Her heart
leaped. He put the bill in her palm, closing his hand around hers.
"Going to be good to me if I do?"
"Oh, I'd do anything in the world I could for you," she said, looking
at him gratefully. "You're so good! Thank you ever so much." His look
struck her as odd, but a customer came in at that moment, and in taking
the message she forgot about it.
She went out at noon and bought a white, pleated, voile skirt for five
dollars, a China-silk waist for three-ninety-five, and a white, straw
sailor. And that afternoon McCormick, with his cynical smile, handed
her a note that had come over the wire for her. "Arrive eight ten
Sunday morning. Meet me. PAUL."
She was so radiantly self-absorbed all the afternoon that she hardly
saw the thundercloud gathering in Mr. Roberts' eyes, and she went
back to her room that evening so confidently happy that she rang the
door-bell without her usual qualm. Mrs. Campbell's lips were drawn into
a tight, thin line.
"There's some packages for you," she said.
"Yes, I know. I bought some clothes. Thank you for taking them in,"
said Helen. She felt friendly even toward Mrs. Campbell. "A white,
voile skirt, and a silk waist, and a hat. Would--would you like to see
them?"
"No, _thank_ you!" said Mrs. Campbell, icily. Going up the stairs,
Helen heard her speaking to her husband. "'I bought some clothes,' she
says, bold as brass. Clothes!"
Helen wondered, hurt, how people could be so unkind. She knew that the
clothes were an extravagance, but she did want them so badly, for Paul,
and it seemed to her that she had worked hard enough to deserve them.
Besides, Mr. Roberts had said that she might get a raise.
She was dressed and creeping noiselessly out of the house at seven
o'clock the next morning. The spring dawn was coming rosily into the
city after a night of rain; the odor of the freshly washed lawns and
flower-beds was delicious, and birds sang in the trees. The flavor of
the cool, sweet air and the warmth of the sunshine mingled with her
joyful sense of youth and coming happiness. She looked very well, she
thought, watching her slim white reflection in the shop-windows.