I
In the days when New York's traffic moved at the pace of the drooping
horse-car, when society applauded Christine Nilsson at the Academy of
Music and basked in the sunsets of the Hudson River School on the walls
of the National Academy of Design, an inconspicuous shop with a
single show-window was intimately and favourably known to the feminine
population of the quarter bordering on Stuyvesant Square.
It was a very small shop, in a shabby basement, in a side-street
already doomed to decline; and from the miscellaneous display behind the
window-pane, and the brevity of the sign surmounting it (merely “Bunner
Sisters” in blotchy gold on a black ground) it would have been difficult
for the uninitiated to guess the precise nature of the business carried
on within. But that was of little consequence, since its fame was so
purely local that the customers on whom its existence depended were
almost congenitally aware of the exact range of “goods” to be found at
Bunner Sisters'.
The house of which Bunner Sisters had annexed the basement was a private
dwelling with a brick front, green shutters on weak hinges, and a
dress-maker's sign in the window above the shop. On each side of its
modest three stories stood higher buildings, with fronts of brown stone,
cracked and blistered, cast-iron balconies and cat-haunted grass-patches
behind twisted railings. These houses too had once been private, but now
a cheap lunchroom filled the basement of one, while the other announced
itself, above the knotty wistaria that clasped its central balcony, as
the Mendoza Family Hotel. It was obvious from the chronic cluster
of refuse-barrels at its area-gate and the blurred surface of its
curtainless windows, that the families frequenting the Mendoza Hotel
were not exacting in their tastes; though they doubtless indulged in
as much fastidiousness as they could afford to pay for, and rather more
than their landlord thought they had a right to express.
These three houses fairly exemplified the general character of the
street, which, as it stretched eastward, rapidly fell from shabbiness to
squalor, with an increasing frequency of projecting sign-boards, and of
swinging doors that softly shut or opened at the touch of red-nosed men
and pale little girls with broken jugs. The middle of the street was
full of irregular depressions, well adapted to retain the long swirls of
dust and straw and twisted paper that the wind drove up and down its sad
untended length; and toward the end of the day, when traffic had been
active, the fissured pavement formed a mosaic of coloured hand-bills,
lids of tomato-cans, old shoes, cigar-stumps and banana skins, cemented
together by a layer of mud, or veiled in a powdering of dust, as the
state of the weather determined.
The sole refuge offered from the contemplation of this depressing waste
was the sight of the Bunner Sisters' window. Its panes were always
well-washed, and though their display of artificial flowers, bands of
scalloped flannel, wire hat-frames, and jars of home-made preserves, had
the undefinable greyish tinge of objects long preserved in the show-case
of a museum, the window revealed a background of orderly counters and
white-washed walls in pleasant contrast to the adjoining dinginess.
The Bunner sisters were proud of the neatness of their shop and content
with its humble prosperity. It was not what they had once imagined it
would be, but though it presented but a shrunken image of their earlier
ambitions it enabled them to pay their rent and keep themselves alive
and out of debt; and it was long since their hopes had soared higher.
Now and then, however, among their greyer hours there came one not
bright enough to be called sunny, but rather of the silvery twilight hue
which sometimes ends a day of storm. It was such an hour that Ann Eliza,
the elder of the firm, was soberly enjoying as she sat one January
evening in the back room which served as bedroom, kitchen and parlour
to herself and her sister Evelina. In the shop the blinds had been drawn
down, the counters cleared and the wares in the window lightly covered
with an old sheet; but the shop-door remained unlocked till Evelina, who
had taken a parcel to the dyer's, should come back.
In the back room a kettle bubbled on the stove, and Ann Eliza had laid a
cloth over one end of the centre table, and placed near the green-shaded
sewing lamp two tea-cups, two plates, a sugar-bowl and a piece of pie.
The rest of the room remained in a greenish shadow which discreetly
veiled the outline of an old-fashioned mahogany bedstead surmounted by a
chromo of a young lady in a night-gown who clung with eloquently-rolling
eyes to a crag described in illuminated letters as the Rock of Ages;
and against the unshaded windows two rocking-chairs and a sewing-machine
were silhouetted on the dusk.
Ann Eliza, her small and habitually anxious face smoothed to unusual
serenity, and the streaks of pale hair on her veined temples shining
glossily beneath the lamp, had seated herself at the table, and was
tying up, with her usual fumbling deliberation, a knobby object wrapped
in paper. Now and then, as she struggled with the string, which was too
short, she fancied she heard the click of the shop-door, and paused
to listen for her sister; then, as no one came, she straightened her
spectacles and entered into renewed conflict with the parcel. In honour
of some event of obvious importance, she had put on her double-dyed and
triple-turned black silk. Age, while bestowing on this garment a patine
worthy of a Renaissance bronze, had deprived it of whatever curves the
wearer's pre-Raphaelite figure had once been able to impress on it;
but this stiffness of outline gave it an air of sacerdotal state which
seemed to emphasize the importance of the occasion.
Seen thus, in her sacramental black silk, a wisp of lace turned over
the collar and fastened by a mosaic brooch, and her face smoothed into
harmony with her apparel, Ann Eliza looked ten years younger than behind
the counter, in the heat and burden of the day. It would have been as
difficult to guess her approximate age as that of the black silk, for
she had the same worn and glossy aspect as her dress; but a faint tinge
of pink still lingered on her cheek-bones, like the reflection of sunset
which sometimes colours the west long after the day is over.
When she had tied the parcel to her satisfaction, and laid it with
furtive accuracy just opposite her sister's plate, she sat down, with an
air of obviously-assumed indifference, in one of the rocking-chairs near
the window; and a moment later the shop-door opened and Evelina entered.
The younger Bunner sister, who was a little taller than her elder, had
a more pronounced nose, but a weaker slope of mouth and chin. She still
permitted herself the frivolity of waving her pale hair, and its
tight little ridges, stiff as the tresses of an Assyrian statue,
were flattened under a dotted veil which ended at the tip of her
cold-reddened nose. In her scant jacket and skirt of black cashmere she
looked singularly nipped and faded; but it seemed possible that under
happier conditions she might still warm into relative youth.
“Why, Ann Eliza,” she exclaimed, in a thin voice pitched to chronic
fretfulness, “what in the world you got your best silk on for?”
Ann Eliza had risen with a blush that made her steel-browed spectacles
incongruous.
“Why, Evelina, why shouldn't I, I sh'ld like to know? Ain't it your
birthday, dear?” She put out her arms with the awkwardness of habitually
repressed emotion.
Evelina, without seeming to notice the gesture, threw back the jacket
from her narrow shoulders.
“Oh, pshaw,” she said, less peevishly. “I guess we'd better give up
birthdays. Much as we can do to keep Christmas nowadays.”
“You hadn't oughter say that, Evelina. We ain't so badly off as all
that. I guess you're cold and tired. Set down while I take the kettle
off: it's right on the boil.”
She pushed Evelina toward the table, keeping a sideward eye on her
sister's listless movements, while her own hands were busy with the
kettle. A moment later came the exclamation for which she waited.
“Why, Ann Eliza!” Evelina stood transfixed by the sight of the parcel
beside her plate.
Ann Eliza, tremulously engaged in filling the teapot, lifted a look of
hypocritical surprise.
“Sakes, Evelina! What's the matter?”
The younger sister had rapidly untied the string, and drawn from
its wrappings a round nickel clock of the kind to be bought for a
dollar-seventy-five.
“Oh, Ann Eliza, how could you?” She set the clock down, and the sisters
exchanged agitated glances across the table.
“Well,” the elder retorted, “AIN'T it your birthday?”
“Yes, but--”
“Well, and ain't you had to run round the corner to the Square every
morning, rain or shine, to see what time it was, ever since we had to
sell mother's watch last July? Ain't you, Evelina?”
“Yes, but--”
“There ain't any buts. We've always wanted a clock and now we've got
one: that's all there is about it. Ain't she a beauty, Evelina?” Ann
Eliza, putting back the kettle on the stove, leaned over her sister's
shoulder to pass an approving hand over the circular rim of the clock.
“Hear how loud she ticks. I was afraid you'd hear her soon as you come
in.”
“No. I wasn't thinking,” murmured Evelina.
“Well, ain't you glad now?” Ann Eliza gently reproached her. The rebuke
had no acerbity, for she knew that Evelina's seeming indifference was
alive with unexpressed scruples.
“I'm real glad, sister; but you hadn't oughter. We could have got on
well enough without.”
“Evelina Bunner, just you sit down to your tea. I guess I know what
I'd oughter and what I'd hadn't oughter just as well as you do--I'm old
enough!”
“You're real good, Ann Eliza; but I know you've given up something you
needed to get me this clock.”
“What do I need, I'd like to know? Ain't I got a best black silk?” the
elder sister said with a laugh full of nervous pleasure.
She poured out Evelina's tea, adding some condensed milk from the jug,
and cutting for her the largest slice of pie; then she drew up her own
chair to the table.
The two women ate in silence for a few moments before Evelina began to
speak again. “The clock is perfectly lovely and I don't say it ain't a
comfort to have it; but I hate to think what it must have cost you.”
“No, it didn't, neither,” Ann Eliza retorted. “I got it dirt cheap, if
you want to know. And I paid for it out of a little extra work I did the
other night on the machine for Mrs. Hawkins.”
“The baby-waists?”
“Yes.”
“There, I knew it! You swore to me you'd buy a new pair of shoes with
that money.”
“Well, and s'posin' I didn't want 'em--what then? I've patched up the
old ones as good as new--and I do declare, Evelina Bunner, if you ask me
another question you'll go and spoil all my pleasure.”
“Very well, I won't,” said the younger sister.
They continued to eat without farther words. Evelina yielded to her
sister's entreaty that she should finish the pie, and poured out a
second cup of tea, into which she put the last lump of sugar; and
between them, on the table, the clock kept up its sociable tick.
“Where'd you get it, Ann Eliza?” asked Evelina, fascinated.
“Where'd you s'pose? Why, right round here, over acrost the Square, in
the queerest little store you ever laid eyes on. I saw it in the window
as I was passing, and I stepped right in and asked how much it was, and
the store-keeper he was real pleasant about it. He was just the nicest
man. I guess he's a German. I told him I couldn't give much, and he
said, well, he knew what hard times was too. His name's Ramy--Herman
Ramy: I saw it written up over the store. And he told me he used to work
at Tiff'ny's, oh, for years, in the clock-department, and three years
ago he took sick with some kinder fever, and lost his place, and when
he got well they'd engaged somebody else and didn't want him, and so he
started this little store by himself. I guess he's real smart, and he
spoke quite like an educated man--but he looks sick.”
Evelina was listening with absorbed attention. In the narrow lives of
the two sisters such an episode was not to be under-rated.
“What you say his name was?” she asked as Ann Eliza paused.
“Herman Ramy.”
“How old is he?”
“Well, I couldn't exactly tell you, he looked so sick--but I don't
b'lieve he's much over forty.”
By this time the plates had been cleared and the teapot emptied, and
the two sisters rose from the table. Ann Eliza, tying an apron over
her black silk, carefully removed all traces of the meal; then, after
washing the cups and plates, and putting them away in a cupboard, she
drew her rocking-chair to the lamp and sat down to a heap of mending.
Evelina, meanwhile, had been roaming about the room in search of
an abiding-place for the clock. A rosewood what-not with ornamental
fret-work hung on the wall beside the devout young lady in dishabille,
and after much weighing of alternatives the sisters decided to dethrone
a broken china vase filled with dried grasses which had long stood
on the top shelf, and to put the clock in its place; the vase, after
farther consideration, being relegated to a small table covered with
blue and white beadwork, which held a Bible and prayer-book, and an
illustrated copy of Longfellow's poems given as a school-prize to their
father.
This change having been made, and the effect studied from every angle
of the room, Evelina languidly put her pinking-machine on the table,
and sat down to the monotonous work of pinking a heap of black silk
flounces. The strips of stuff slid slowly to the floor at her side, and
the clock, from its commanding altitude, kept time with the dispiriting
click of the instrument under her fingers.