“BLUE WEDNESDAY”
The first Wednesday in every month was a Perfectly Awful Day--a day
to be awaited with dread, endured with courage and forgotten with
haste. Every floor must be spotless, every chair dustless, and every
bed without a wrinkle. Ninety-seven squirming little orphans must be
scrubbed and combed and buttoned into freshly starched ginghams; and
all ninety-seven reminded of their manners, and told to say, “Yes,
sir,” “No, sir,” whenever a Trustee spoke.
It was a distressing time; and poor Jerusha Abbott, being the oldest
orphan, had to bear the brunt of it. But this particular first
Wednesday, like its predecessors, finally dragged itself to a close.
Jerusha escaped from the pantry where she had been making sandwiches
for the asylum’s guests, and turned upstairs to accomplish her
regular work. Her special care was room F, where eleven little tots,
from four to seven, occupied eleven little cots set in a row.
Jerusha assembled her charges, straightened their rumpled frocks,
wiped their noses, and started them in an orderly and willing line
toward the dining-room to engage themselves for a blessed half hour
with bread and milk and prune pudding.
Then she dropped down on the window seat and leaned throbbing
temples against the cool glass. She had been on her feet since five
that morning, doing everybody’s bidding, scolded and hurried by a
nervous matron. Mrs. Lippett, behind the scenes, did not always
maintain that calm and pompous dignity with which she faced an
audience of Trustees and lady visitors. Jerusha gazed out across a
broad stretch of frozen lawn, beyond the tall iron paling that
marked the confines of the asylum, down undulating ridges sprinkled
with country estates, to the spires of the village rising from the
midst of bare trees.
The day was ended--quite successfully, so far as she knew. The
Trustees and the visiting committee had made their rounds, and read
their reports, and drunk their tea, and now were hurrying home to
their own cheerful firesides, to forget their bothersome little
charges for another month. Jerusha leaned forward watching with
curiosity--and a touch of wistfulness--the stream of carriages and
automobiles that rolled out of the asylum gates. In imagination she
followed first one equipage then another to the big houses dotted
along the hillside. She pictured herself in a fur coat and a velvet
hat trimmed with feathers leaning back in the seat and nonchalantly
murmuring “Home” to the driver. But on the door-sill of her home the
picture grew blurred.
Jerusha had an imagination--an imagination, Mrs. Lippett told her,
that would get her into trouble if she didn’t take care--but keen
as it was, it could not carry her beyond the front porch of the
houses she would enter. Poor, eager, adventurous little Jerusha, in
all her seventeen years, had never stepped inside an ordinary house;
she could not picture the daily routine of those other human beings
who carried on their lives undiscommoded by orphans.
Je-ru-sha Ab-bott
You are wan-ted
In the of-fice,
And I think you’d
Better hurry up!
Tommy Dillon who had joined the choir, came singing up the stairs
and down the corridor, his chant growing louder as he approached
room F. Jerusha wrenched herself from the window and refaced the
troubles of life.
“Who wants me?” she cut into Tommy’s chant with a note of sharp
anxiety.
Mrs. Lippett in the office,
And I think she’s mad.
Ah-a-men!
Tommy piously intoned, but his accent was not entirely malicious.
Even the most hardened little orphan felt sympathy for an erring
sister who was summoned to the office to face an annoyed matron; and
Tommy liked Jerusha even if she did sometimes jerk him by the arm
and nearly scrub his nose off.
Jerusha went without comment, but with two parallel lines on her
brow. What could have gone wrong, she wondered. Were the sandwiches
not thin enough? Were there shells in the nut cakes? Had a
lady visitor seen the hole in Susie Hawthorn’s stocking?
Had--O horrors!--one of the cherubic little babes in her own
room F “sassed” a Trustee?
The long lower hall had not been lighted, and as she came
downstairs, a last Trustee stood, on the point of departure, in the
open door that led to the porte-cochère. Jerusha caught only a
fleeting impression of the man--and the impression consisted
entirely of tallness. He was waving his arm toward an automobile
waiting in the curved drive. As it sprang into motion and
approached, head on for an instant, the glaring headlights threw his
shadow sharply against the wall inside. The shadow pictured
grotesquely elongated legs and arms that ran along the floor and up
the wall of the corridor. It looked, for all the world, like a huge,
wavering daddy-long-legs.
Jerusha’s anxious frown gave place to quick laughter. She was by
nature a sunny soul, and had always snatched the tiniest excuse to
be amused. If one could derive any sort of entertainment out of the
oppressive fact of a Trustee, it was something unexpected to the
good. She advanced to the office quite cheered by the tiny episode,
and presented a smiling face to Mrs. Lippett. To her surprise the
matron was also, if not exactly smiling, at least appreciably
affable; she wore an expression almost as pleasant as the one she
donned for visitors.
“Sit down, Jerusha, I have something to say to you.”
Jerusha dropped into the nearest chair and waited with a touch of
breathlessness. An automobile flashed past the window; Mrs. Lippett
glanced after it.
“Did you notice the gentleman who has just gone?”
“I saw his back.”
“He is one of our most affluential Trustees, and has given large
sums of money toward the asylum’s support. I am not at liberty to
mention his name; he expressly stipulated that he was to remain
unknown.”
Jerusha’s eyes widened slightly; she was not accustomed to being
summoned to the office to discuss the eccentricities of Trustees
with the matron.
“This gentleman has taken an interest in several of our boys.
You remember Charles Benton and Henry Freize? They were both sent
through college by Mr.--er--this Trustee, and both have repaid with
hard work and success the money that was so generously expended.
Other payment the gentleman does not wish. Heretofore his
philanthropies have been directed solely toward the boys; I have
never been able to interest him in the slightest degree in any of
the girls in the institution, no matter how deserving. He does not,
I may tell you, care for girls.”
“No, ma’am,” Jerusha murmured, since some reply seemed to be
expected at this point.
“To-day at the regular meeting, the question of your future was
brought up.”
Mrs. Lippett allowed a moment of silence to fall, then resumed in a
slow, placid manner extremely trying to her hearer’s suddenly
tightened nerves.
“Usually, as you know, the children are not kept after they are
sixteen, but an exception was made in your case. You had finished
our school at fourteen, and having done so well in your studies--not
always, I must say, in your conduct--it was determined to let you go
on in the village high school. Now you are finishing that, and of
course the asylum cannot be responsible any longer for your support.
As it is, you have had two years more than most.”
Mrs. Lippett overlooked the fact that Jerusha had worked hard for
her board during those two years, that the convenience of the asylum
had come first and her education second; that on days like the
present she was kept at home to scrub.
“As I say, the question of your future was brought up and your
record was discussed--thoroughly discussed.”
Mrs. Lippett brought accusing eyes to bear upon the prisoner in the
dock, and the prisoner looked guilty because it seemed to be
expected--not because she could remember any strikingly black pages
in her record.
“Of course the usual disposition of one in your place would be to
put you in a position where you could begin to work, but you have
done well in school in certain branches; it seems that your work in
English has even been brilliant. Miss Pritchard who is on our
visiting committee is also on the school board; she has been talking
with your rhetoric teacher, and made a speech in your favor. She
also read aloud an essay that you had written entitled, ‘Blue
Wednesday.’”
Jerusha’s guilty expression this time was not assumed.
“It seemed to me that you showed little gratitude in holding up to
ridicule the institution that has done so much for you. Had you not
managed to be funny I doubt if you would have been forgiven. But
fortunately for you, Mr. ----, that is, the gentleman who has just
gone--appears to have an immoderate sense of humor. On the strength
of that impertinent paper, he has offered to send you to college.”
“To college?” Jerusha’s eyes grew big.
Mrs. Lippett nodded.
“He waited to discuss the terms with me. They are unusual. The
gentleman, I may say, is erratic. He believes that you have
originality, and he is planning to educate you to become a writer.”
“A writer?” Jerusha’s mind was numbed. She could only repeat Mrs.
Lippett’s words.
“That is his wish. Whether anything will come of it, the future will
show. He is giving you a very liberal allowance, almost, for a girl
who has never had any experience in taking care of money, too
liberal. But he planned the matter in detail, and I did not feel
free to make any suggestions. You are to remain here through the
summer, and Miss Pritchard has kindly offered to superintend your
outfit. Your board and tuition will be paid directly to the college,
and you will receive in addition during the four years you are
there, an allowance of thirty-five dollars a month. This will enable
you to enter on the same standing as the other students. The money
will be sent to you by the gentleman’s private secretary once a
month, and in return, you will write a letter of acknowledgment once
a month. That is--you are not to thank him for the money; he
doesn’t care to have that mentioned, but you are to write a letter
telling of the progress in your studies and the details of your
daily life. Just such a letter as you would write to your parents if
they were living.
“These letters will be addressed to Mr. John Smith and will be sent
in care of the secretary. The gentleman’s name is not John Smith,
but he prefers to remain unknown. To you he will never be anything
but John Smith. His reason in requiring the letters is that he
thinks nothing so fosters facility in literary expression as
letter-writing. Since you have no family with whom to correspond, he
desires you to write in this way; also, he wishes to keep track of
your progress. He will never answer your letters, nor in the
slightest particular take any notice of them. He detests
letter-writing, and does not wish you to become a burden. If any
point should ever arise where an answer would seem to be
imperative--such as in the event of your being expelled, which I
trust will not occur--you may correspond with Mr. Griggs, his
secretary. These monthly letters are absolutely obligatory on your
part; they are the only payment that Mr. Smith requires, so you must
be as punctilious in sending them as though it were a bill that you
were paying. I hope that they will always be respectful in tone and
will reflect credit on your training. You must remember that you are
writing to a Trustee of the John Grier Home.”
Jerusha’s eyes longingly sought the door. Her head was in a whirl of
excitement, and she wished only to escape from Mrs. Lippett’s
platitudes, and think. She rose and took a tentative step backwards.
Mrs. Lippett detained her with a gesture; it was an oratorical
opportunity not to be slighted.
“I trust that you are properly grateful for this very rare good
fortune that has befallen you? Not many girls in your position ever
have such an opportunity to rise in the world. You must always
remember--”
“I--yes, ma’am, thank you. I think, if that’s all, I must go and
sew a patch on Freddie Perkins’s trousers.”
The door closed behind her, and Mrs. Lippett watched it with dropped
jaw, her peroration in mid-air.