Mrs. Kennedy got up from her knees, wrung out the filthy and dripping
cloth in her hands, and looked back with a sigh over the stairs she had
just cleaned.
"It’ll have to do," she said, "until to-morrow."
Then, pail in hand, she descended to the basement and pushed open with
her foot the door of her flat--three black little rooms with barred
windows on a lugubrious air-shaft, where great ash-cans stood and cats
prowled and tradesmen went whistling by with bags and bottles. A tiny
jet of gas flickered in the passage to light her as she staggered along
to the kitchen, there to set down the heavy pail with a jerk that sent a
flood of dirty water over her feet.
"Oh, Lord!" she sighed again, patiently.
She lit the gas and looked about her. There in the sink were the dishes
from breakfast; and across the tin covers of the wash-tubs scurried a
multitude of roaches, disturbed as they feasted on the crumbs there. All
this deeply disturbed her, for she was a good housewife, and a neat
little body altogether; but she knew herself to be blameless. It
couldn’t be helped.
As janitress of this Harlem apartment-house, she was permitted to live
rent free in exchange for certain services, and her honour was engaged.
She had to keep up the appearance of the place. She had to scrub the
stairs, the corridors, the vestibule, to clean the windows on the five
landings. She had also to sweep the vacant flats and display them to any
one who came to look at them.
After this was done, there was still her living to make. She did
"charing" by the day and half-day; she took home washing to be done at
night; she did all those dirty and unpleasant tasks which even the
shabby tenants of this shabby house couldn’t endure to do for
themselves. There were many days when she left her dismal little place
early in the morning and wasn’t able to re-enter it until after dark. It
gave her a feeling of terrible discouragement to come home to it like
this, all in disorder and sordid confusion. The thought of it would
haunt her all day as she worked.
It was late, as she saw by the clock, but she felt obliged to rest, just
for a minute. She sat down and closed her eyes. She couldn’t really rest
until fatigue was gone and she was refreshed; the best she might expect
was some little respite from her labour.
She was a thin little woman of limitless endurance; she could suffer
everything; but her drawn, hollow-cheeked face, her faded eyes, gave
testimony to the cost of her dreadful and heroic struggle. She was
forty, but she looked sixty. She had a blurred look, like a partially
erased drawing. She seemed literally worn out, rubbed thin, part of her
vanished.
The clock struck six, and she jumped up.
"Oh, Lord!" she sighed again. "Well, I’ll make myself a cup of tea first
thing; then I’ll run out to the corner and get a bite of something for
Angelica’s supper."
The tea did her good. She felt warmed and comforted, and a little less
reluctant to undertake more work. Then, with a shawl over her head, she
hurried out into the windy March street, to the little grocer’s on the
corner.
It was a sore temptation to linger there, where it was warm and brightly
lighted, and there were people to talk with, and the young man was so
agreeable to her. She was a favourite of his, in spite of her buying so
little, for she was a civil little woman who gave no trouble and always
had her mind made up before coming into the shop. But, with her usual
little sigh, she tore herself away, bade the young man good night, and
hurried home again.
To her eyes even Eighth Avenue, with the tawdry little shops crowded
with the very poor, or the very careless, buying their dinners at the
last instant, looked festive, looked enticing. She didn’t get out much;
she hadn’t even a window through which she could see the street. She
thought to herself that it would be nice to take a walk after supper
with Angelica, to look in the windows to see what the fruit-seller had
to offer, to view the absorbing display in the five-and-ten-cent store;
but she was quite sure that Angelica couldn’t be induced to do any such
thing. _She_ required something better than that!
It was the spur of Angelica’s requirements that drove forward the weary
Mrs. Kennedy. If she didn’t have things nice, Angelica would rearrange
and do over until she was suited. She didn’t complain much, but wasn’t
she exacting! Like a man, her mother used to say. She’d never be
satisfied with a cup of tea and some little thing you’d maybe have left
from the day before. Plenty of variety there must be, and a clean cloth,
too.
She was brisk and deft about her preparations when she got home; but she
wasn’t quite prepared when the bell rang three times, by way of
announcement only, as the door was always unlatched, and into the
kitchen came her daughter Angelica--her only child.
Angelica was not regarded by her peers as beautiful, for the quality of
her beauty was not obvious. She was looked at, stared at, fiercely
desired; she was often enough followed in the street; and yet not one of
these admirers would have called her beautiful. There was "something
about her," that was all--something not to be resisted. She herself was
only dimly aware of it. She knew well enough that she was alluring,
that she possessed some enchantment to enthrall men. She knew by some
instinct how to use her charm, but she didn’t comprehend it or
appreciate it. She regarded herself with a pleased and wondering
interest. A pale, narrow face with strange black eyes, not quite alike;
a rich, scornfully curling mouth; the mysterious, adorable languor of an
old Italian Madonna--an exciting languor, like that of a drowsy panther;
and with this curious and touching beauty went a swaggering impudence,
the speech, the gestures of a thorough gamine. Then there was her walk,
the exaggerated suppleness of her thin young body, the rakish tilt of
her broad-brimmed hat, the movement of her skirts, and a naïve
wickedness that seemed shocking, almost blasphemous, in conjunction with
that wonderful face.
And it was this air of bravado, this gamine swagger, which she fancied
was her charm. The poetry of her, the exquisite subtleness of her face,
she didn’t recognize. Her mother alone had some inexpressible and
formless idea of this. She saw something rare and heart-breaking in her
child, something that robbed her of any pretense of authority.
"Tired?" she asked her now.
"No!" said Angelica scornfully. "Bacon? That’s nice. Have it good and
crisp, mommer. No, I’m not tired--only sort of _sick_ of things."
She sat down before the table and waited, her chin on her hand, somber,
frowning, in a mood which her mother knew well and dreaded. She put the
plates on the table and stood, waiting, too nervous to eat. She could
see that Angelica had something on her mind, and there would be no peace
till she had got rid of it.
"Hurry up and eat, mommer," she said impatiently; "so we can go to the
movies after."
"I haven’t any money, deary."
"I’ll pay."
Her mother was startled. How could Angelica have money to spare on a
Thursday?
"I got paid off," said Angelica.
"_Discharged_, Angie? I thought you were doing so well----”
"Discharged nothing! I quit."
"But what in the world---- It was a good job, wasn’t it? You said it
was."
A sudden and vivid expression of disgust lit up her child’s face.
"My Gawd, mommer! I got so _sick_ of it! Sitting at that machine, all
day and every day. Those girls--and the fellers! So blame sick of it,
mommer! _I_ don’t know--I got thinking. It seems to me maybe I could do
better somewhere else."
"They’re all about the same, I guess--those factories. I can’t see what
good it’ll do you to be changing so often, Angelica. The girls are all
the same; unless maybe you could get into one of the big stores, and
they don’t pay near as much."
"What’s the good of that? Just as bad. No, mommer, I want--something
different. Oh, mommer, I want to get something _out_ of life!"
Her mother looked at her in silence. She comprehended her perfectly.
Hadn’t she been like that herself long, long ago--restless, hungry for
life, forever seeking something new? Not, of course, in this foreign and
vehement way. She had never been capable of speaking so crudely, so
violently, as her child; but though they hadn’t a feature, a gesture, an
intonation alike, they partook of the same indomitable spirit.
"_I_ know!" she said. "It’s hard--terrible hard; but it’s only worse if
you’re always fighting against it. There’s no chance for people like us,
and we’ve got to put up with it. We can’t get what we want. Whatever
kind of work you choose, it’ll be just as hard."
Angelica, her head in her hands, was looking straight before her.
"I don’t see," she began, "why I shouldn’t _try_, anyway, to go up
instead of down."
"There’s no call to go down," said her mother; "but you’ll find it hard
enough just to keep the same. You’ve got to be--well, Angelica, as my
mother used to say she’d been taught in the old country--you’ve got to
be contented to stay in the station where it has pleased God to put
you."
"God made a mistake, then. He’s put me in the wrong station, and I won’t
stay in it. And anyway, mommer, haven’t you ever thought? We’re not
staying--we’re going down, down, all the time. You’re not where your
mother was, and I’m not where you used to be."
"You’ve got more brains than me, and----”
"I’m not talking about brains. You’re _better_ than me; you talk better,
and you’ve got nicer ways. You’re----” She flushed a little. "You’re
more like a--lady than me."
Mrs. Kennedy flushed, too, but couldn’t deny it. She had before her
mind’s eye the descent of her family--how she had sunk below her
parents’ level, just as Angelica had grown up coarser and more ignorant
than herself. Unaccountably there came to her the memory of another
afternoon when she had been scrubbing stairs, like to-day, but in the
home of her girlhood; a summer afternoon, long, long ago. She remembered
that she had complained of being tired out, and her mother had bidden
her go up-stairs and lie down. And she remembered--how well!--stretching
herself out on the bed in the neat, darkened room, and her stout, kindly
mother bringing her up a cup of tea.
Her thoughts lingered with her mother, a sober Scotch-woman, living out
her life in the shelter of her own home. A nice home, too; a little
frame house in Brooklyn, comfortably furnished, modest, but not without
dignity. The suppers there, her mother, her sandy-haired, anxious little
father--assistant to a grocer--and herself, sitting at the little round
table covered with a red checked cloth, with the bland light of the lamp
on their faces--she saw it painfully, bitterly well; and her father
asking who was that young chap who had walked home from the chapel with
her, and her mother pretending to frown. They were so proud and pleased
with her prettiness and briskness, so hopeful for her!
For just a moment she passionately resented her rôle of parent, forever
giving and giving. She wanted to have one person on earth concerned with
_her_ fatigue, _her_ sorrow. She sat quite still before her little
supper, lost in her thought. Then some slight movement of her child’s
brought her back to life, and she looked up with her little sigh.
Poor, poor Angelica! Poor lovely, unhappy thing, working in a factory!
Wouldn’t that have shocked her grandparents? Wouldn’t they have been
shocked at Angelica, anyway--her swagger, her language, her point of
view! Her heart melted with pity for her child.
"I don’t blame you, Angelica," she said. "I know how hard it is to get
on with that sort; but, deary, what better can you do? One job’s as bad
as another. The thing is to do your best and trust in Providence. I’ll
do the best I can to make things happy for you here at home. We’ll have
our little treats. We’ve always been happy together, haven’t we? It’s
our lot in life to have to work hard and get very little. We’ve got to
put up with it, and just be as happy as we can."
"No, I’m not like that. I’m--no, I _won’t_!"
She wasn’t able to express her rebellion, her vehement longings, but her
mother understood her very well.
"I was just like you," she said mournfully; "restless--always after
something new--anything for a change. I wanted--the Lord knows _what_ I
wanted!"
She poured out another cup of tea.
"Eat a bit more," she said. "You’re tired and worked up like. Yes!" she
added. "I was like you, Angelica; and you can see what it did for me. I
was a nice-looking girl in those days. There was more than one young
fellow who wanted to marry me; but I wouldn’t have any of them. I
thought they weren’t good enough. I was a great one for reading books,
and my head was full of nonsense.
"Then I met your father. He was a fine-looking man, Angelica. You can’t
remember him when he was well. He was a big, handsome man, a barber. My
folks were terrible set against it, and I don’t wonder. There he was, an
I-talian, and twenty years older than me, and nothing in the world but a
barber, and a kind of a Socialist. He was always talking about killing
the rich people. I think he’d have been willing enough to do something
like that with his own hands, he used to get so worked up. He was a
queer man, Angelica. And yet, for all his talk about killing, and the
awful things he’d say against religion and churches, why, he wasn’t a
bad man. He was generous. He’d share his last penny with a friend. He
often did; we’d have to go without ourselves if one of his precious
‘comrades’ was in a tight corner. He was a smart man, too. He spent all
his spare time in the free library, reading; but that never gets you
anywhere, Angelica. He had no knack for earning money, and he never
could save. What’s more, he wasn’t fond of work. He’d rather read or
talk. He could talk all night, I do believe.
"It nearly broke my mother’s heart when I went off with Angelo. My
father, he said he’d never speak to me again, nor have my name spoken in
the house, on account of my marrying an atheist, you see. But I didn’t
seem to care. There was something about him----”
She was silent for a time, recalling her startling foreign lover, with
his caressing voice, his mandolin-playing, his anti-clerical passions,
and the brisk, pretty young girl who had been herself.
"I was terrible headstrong. I wouldn’t listen to any one. I _would_ have
him, and I did. Well, I was punished for my folly and wickedness, I can
tell you. It’s always the way when you won’t listen to your own dear
parents and those that are wiser than yourself. We never got on. From
the very day we were married--you don’t know what it’s like, Angelica.
We were always owing money. He wouldn’t hand what he made over to me,
for me to manage. I never knew where we stood. All of a sudden he’d say,
‘No more money!’ and there we’d be, without a penny. We had to live in
such a mean, poor way that I lost my health. One time we were turned out
of our rooms, out into the street, bag and baggage, with all the
neighbors looking on.
"When you were born, I’d hardly so much as a blanket to wrap you in. I
never had a bow of ribbon or a thing to dress you up pretty, like the
other little babies. And when your father took sick, there wasn’t even a
fresh sheet for him. ‘Take him off to the hospital,’ says the doctor.
‘He can’t be looked after in a place like this. He’ll die.’ ‘Very good,
I die!’ says he. ‘But I die home!’ Poor man! There he lay, so hot and
wretched, and you in a clothes-basket beside him fretting all day and
all night, so he couldn’t get any rest and peace. We’d only the one
room.
"Well, when he was taken sick, of course there was no money at all
coming in. His precious ‘comrades’ never came near him, least of all the
ones that owed him money; so I began going out by the day, and I left an
old I-talian woman to take care of you and him. Every morning, when I’d
go out, I’d feel sure and certain neither of you’d be alive and safe
when I got back. Both of you sick, and no good food or proper care! And
I’d think of her setting the place on fire, or leaving the gas turned
on. Then I’d come home, tired as a dog, and not a soul to speak to: you
a tiny little baby crying in your basket, and your poor father moaning
in his bed; everything dirty and upset. You can’t think what it was
like.
"I’m not blaming your poor father, Angelica. I’m only telling you this
to show you how those high-flown notions--where they’ll lead you. In
this world, you’ve got to be sensible, and not follow your own notions."
Not follow romance was what she meant, and what Angelica understood; for
wasn’t that what she had done? And had won it, to see it perish in a
long agony, as romance must always perish, whether won or lost. She
wanted so passionately to make it all clear to her child, to tell her
how she had seen the hard, the dull, the greedy, attain their heart’s
desire; but the romantic, the generous, never. She wanted to tell her
how hideous is the death of illusion, how merciless is the world. How
her splendid hero, black-eyed Angelo with the flashing smile, had fallen
from splendour--had, so to speak, dwindled into a miserable invalid,
duped by his friends, and deprived of all courage by the knowledge of
their treachery. How she had seen her youth go by unnoticed,
unappreciated, in that struggle for bread; of the loneliness and the
frightful indignities of poverty.
"It was a mistake," she said. "The whole thing was a big mistake!"
"I don’t know," said Angelica. "Maybe you wouldn’t have been any happier
with a different man."
"I’d certainly have been happier with enough to eat. If I’d listened to
my parents, I’d taken a sober, hard-working----”
"Bah!" cried Angelica, with the sudden fierceness that always startled
her mother. "You married the man you wanted, didn’t you? He didn’t make
any money, so you were poor. Well, what of it? You’ve--anyway you’ve got
a memory of him, to look back at, haven’t you?"
And her mother hadn’t the heart to tell her the truth--that even in
memory the ardent, enchanting lover was supplanted by the querulous and
unshaven sufferer who lay dying for months and months of some disease
which they didn’t understand, and which the busy doctor didn’t trouble
to explain to them.
"I hope you’ll be sensible, Angelica," she said.
She saw well enough that her story had made no sort of impression upon
her child. Angelica was still so young that what happened to other
people and what happened to her had no connection in her mind. She
fancied that all her experiences, as well as all her ideas, were unique.
Her mother could read in her face that she was thinking now, not of her
mother’s past, but of her own future.
"I hope you’ll be sensible," she said again. "Try to learn to be
satisfied with your lot in life. That’s how all my troubles began--being
discontented. Try to be satisfied."
"No, I shan’t," said her rebellious child. "Listen, mommer!"
"Well?"
"I was thinking. I don’t know--but I thought--maybe there’s something in
this."
She handed her mother a scrap torn from a newspaper.
CHEERFUL young lady wanted as companion for invalid; experience
unnecessary. Apply Thursday morning to Mrs. Russell, Buena Vista,
Baycliff, Westchester.
"But, deary, don’t you see?" cried her mother, startled. "You don’t mean
that _you’d_ try for that?"
"Why not, mother?" demanded Angelica, flushing.
"But, deary, don’t you see? It’s--they’ll--they wouldn’t want a girl
like you."
"_Why not?_" she asked again, still more fiercely.
But her mother wouldn’t say it. Anyway, she knew that Angelica
understood her meaning perfectly.
"A waste of carfare," she said. "All that money--there’s no sense at all
in your going. There’ll be dozens after the place--girls that--that’ll
suit better."
Her object was to spare her child the humiliation she foresaw for her--a
factory girl, a bold-eyed, ignorant young thing in the cheapest sort of
clothes, offering herself to a lady as a companion! Herself brought up
in a quite different way, accustomed to recognizing, without snobbery
and without resentment, that there were in the world groups of people
better and groups worse than her own sort, she could not comprehend
Angelica’s attitude. Angelica envied without admiring. In fact, she
despised "rich people" almost as much as her father had, but her
ambition in life was to be one of them.
"I’ll risk the carfare," she said. "I’m going to try, anyway.
You know, mommer, maybe they’re sick of those silly little
dolls--‘ladies’--especially if it’s an invalid. They said ‘cheerful,’
you know."
"All ladies aren’t silly dolls," said Mrs. Kennedy, displeased. "And I
don’t know as you’re so cheerful, Angelica."
"I could be, if I wanted. Anyway, I’m going to try. I’ll just take the
fare. I’ll give you all the rest, mommer."
She took out a shabby little purse, counted her money, put some back,
and laid the rest on the tub tops. Such a pitiful sum! It hurt her
mother.
"It’s all yours," she said. "You’ve worked for it. Do as you please. If
you really want to go---- I’m sure I hope you’ll get the place."
After a moment she added:
"I hope you know, Angie, that I want you to have the best--the very best
there is. I think you deserve it. Only, deary, I don’t want you to be
disappointed; and I don’t see how you can help being. I want you to
know, deary, that I’m----”
She couldn’t think of a word. She stood anxiously frowning, looking at
the ground for a minute.
"I’m always--on your side," she ended.
Angelica sprang up from the table and seized her mother in a fierce
embrace.
"_Mamma mia!_" she whispered, as her father had taught her, long ago.
Her mother was curiously thrilled and touched. She looked up with
brimming eyes at the dark and foreign face bending above her.
"What’s that he used to say--_feeliar_, or something?" she murmured,
embarrassed. "You’re a good girl, Angelica. I hope you’ll be lucky!"