Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad woman--so
bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and down Main Street,
from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad tracks, without once having a
man doff his hat to her or a woman bow. You passed her on the street
with a surreptitious glance, though she was well worth looking at--in
her furs and laces and plumes. She had the only full-length mink coat
in our town, and Ganz's shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. Hers
were the miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women.
Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round
Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some silent,
dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her dumbly in and out
of stores, stopping now and then to admire a cheap comb or a chain set
with flashy imitation stones--or, queerly enough, a doll with yellow
hair and blue eyes and very pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her
appearance in the stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump
in the cost of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it
and paid in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She
owned the House with the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot--did
Blanche Devine.
In a larger town than ours she would have passed unnoticed. She did
not look like a bad woman. Of course she used too much make-up, and as
she passed you caught the oversweet breath of a certain heavy scent.
Then, too, her diamond eardrops would have made any woman's features
look hard; but her plump face, in spite of its heaviness, wore an
expression of good-humored intelligence, and her eyeglasses gave her
somehow a look of respectability. We do not associate vice with
eyeglasses. So in a large city she would have passed for a
well-dressed, prosperous, comfortable wife and mother who was in danger
of losing her figure from an overabundance of good living; but with us
she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard, or the
weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug-store corner there
would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers idling there, and
they would leer at each other and jest in undertones.
So, knowing Blanche Devine as we did, there was something resembling a
riot in one of our most respectable neighborhoods when it was learned
that she had given up her interest in the house near the freight depot
and was going to settle down in the white cottage on the corner and be
good. All the husbands in the block, urged on by righteously indignant
wives, dropped in on Alderman Mooney after supper to see if the thing
could not be stopped. The fourth of the protesting husbands to arrive
was the Very Young Husband who lived next door to the corner cottage
that Blanche Devine had bought. The Very Young Husband had a Very
Young Wife, and they were the joint owners of Snooky. Snooky was
three-going-on-four, and looked something like an angel--only healthier
and with grimier hands. The whole neighborhood borrowed her and tried
to spoil her; but Snooky would not spoil.
Alderman Mooney was down in the cellar, fooling with the furnace.
He was in his furnace overalls; a short black pipe in his mouth. Three
protesting husbands had just left. As the Very Young Husband,
following Mrs. Mooney's directions, descended the cellar stairs,
Alderman Mooney looked up from his tinkering. He peered through a haze
of pipe smoke.
"Hello!" he called, and waved the haze away with his open palm.
"Come on down! Been tinkering with this blamed furnace since supper.
She don't draw like she ought. 'Long toward spring a furnace always
gets balky. How many tons you used this winter?"
"Oh-five," said the Very Young Husband shortly. Alderman Mooney
considered it thoughtfully. The Young Husband leaned up against the
side of the water tank, his hands in his pockets. "Say, Mooney, is that
right about Blanche Devine's having bought the house on the corner?"
"You're the fourth man that's been in to ask me that this evening. I'm
expecting the rest of the block before bedtime. She bought it all
right."
The Young Husband flushed and kicked at a piece of coal with the toe of
his boot.
"Well, it's a darned shame!" he began hotly. "Jen was ready to cry at
supper. This'll be a fine neighborhood for Snooky to grow up in!
What's a woman like that want to come into a respectable street for,
anyway? I own my home and pay my taxes--"
Alderman Mooney looked up.
"So does she," he interrupted. "She's going to improve the
place--paint it, and put in a cellar and a furnace, and build a porch,
and lay a cement walk all round."
The Young Husband took his hands out of his pockets in order to
emphasize his remarks with gestures.
"What's that got to do with it? I don't care if she puts in diamonds
for windows and sets out Italian gardens and a terrace with peacocks on
it. You're the alderman of this ward, aren't you? Well, it was up to
you to keep her out of this block! You could have fixed it with an
injunction or something. I'm going to get up a petition--that's what
I'm going----"
Alderman Mooney closed the furnace door with a bang that drowned the
rest of the threat. He turned the draft in a pipe overhead and brushed
his sooty palms briskly together like one who would put an end to a
profitless conversation.
"She's bought the house," he said mildly, "and paid for it. And it's
hers. She's got a right to live in this neighborhood as long as she
acts respectable."
The Very Young Husband laughed.
"She won't last! They never do."
Alderman Mooney had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was rubbing his
thumb over the smooth bowl, looking down at it with unseeing eyes. On
his face was a queer look--the look of one who is embarrassed because
he is about to say something honest.
"Look here! I want to tell you something: I happened to be up in the
mayor's office the day Blanche signed for the place. She had to go
through a lot of red tape before she got it--had quite a time of it,
she did! And say, kid, that woman ain't so--bad."
The Very Young Husband exclaimed impatiently:
"Oh, don't give me any of that, Mooney! Blanche Devine's a town
character. Even the kids know what she is. If she's got religion or
something, and wants to quit and be decent, why doesn't she go to
another town--Chicago or someplace--where nobody knows her?"
That motion of Alderman Mooney's thumb against the smooth pipe bowl
stopped. He looked up slowly.
"That's what I said--the mayor too. But Blanche Devine said she wanted
to try it here. She said this was home to her. Funny--ain't it? Said
she wouldn't be fooling anybody here. They know her. And if she moved
away, she said, it'd leak out some way sooner or later. It does, she
said. Always! Seems she wants to live like--well, like other women.
She put it like this: she says she hasn't got religion, or any of that.
She says she's no different than she was when she was twenty. She says
that for the last ten years the ambition of her life has been to be
able to go into a grocery store and ask the price of, say, celery; and,
if the clerk charged her ten when it ought to be seven, to be able to
sass him with a regular piece of her mind--and then sail out and trade
somewhere else until he saw that she didn't have to stand anything from
storekeepers, any more than any other woman that did her own marketing.
She's a smart woman, Blanche is! God knows I ain't taking her
part--exactly; but she talked a little, and the mayor and me got a
little of her history."
A sneer appeared on the face of the Very Young Husband. He had been
known before he met Jen as a rather industrious sower of wild oats. He
knew a thing or two, did the Very Young Husband, in spite of his youth!
He always fussed when Jen wore even a V-necked summer gown on the
street.
"Oh, she wasn't playing for sympathy," went on Alderman Mooney in
answer to the sneer. "She said she'd always paid her way and always
expected to. Seems her husband left her without a cent when she was
eighteen--with a baby. She worked for four dollars a week in a cheap
eating house. The two of 'em couldn't live on that. Then the baby----"
"Good night!" said the Very Young Husband. "I suppose Mrs. Mooney's
going to call?"
"Minnie! It was her scolding all through supper that drove me down to
monkey with the furnace. She's wild--Minnie is." He peeled off his
overalls and hung them on a nail. The Young Husband started to ascend
the cellar stairs. Alderman Mooney laid a detaining finger on his
sleeve. "Don't say anything in front of Minnie! She's boiling!
Minnie and the kids are going to visit her folks out West this summer;
so I wouldn't so much as dare to say 'Good morning!' to the Devine
woman. Anyway, a person wouldn't talk to her, I suppose. But I kind
of thought I'd tell you about her.
"Thanks!" said the Very Young Husband dryly.
In the early spring, before Blanche Devine moved in, there came
stone-masons, who began to build something. It was a great stone
fireplace that rose in massive incongruity at the side of the little
white cottage. Blanche Devine was trying to make a home for herself.
Blanche Devine used to come and watch them now and then as the work
progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the house,
looking up at it and poking at plaster and paint with her umbrella or
finger tip. One day she brought with her a man with a spade. He
spaded up a neat square of ground at the side of the cottage and a long
ridge near the fence that separated her yard from that of the Very
Young Couple next door. The ridge spelled sweet peas and nasturtiums
to our small-town eyes.
On the day that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation among
the white-ruffed bedroom curtains of the neighborhood. Later on certain
odors, as of burning dinners, pervaded the atmosphere. Blanche Devine,
flushed and excited, her hair slightly askew, her diamond eardrops
flashing, directed the moving, wrapped in her great fur coat; but on
the third morning we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, carrying a
little household ladder, a pail of steaming water, and sundry
voluminous white cloths. She reared the little ladder against the side
of the house, mounted it cautiously, and began to wash windows with
housewifely thoroughness. Her stout figure was swathed in a gray
sweater and on her head was a battered felt hat--the sort of
window--washing costume that has been worn by women from time
immemorial. We noticed that she used plenty of hot water and clean
rags, and that she rubbed the glass until it sparkled, leaning
perilously sideways on the ladder to detect elusive streaks. Our
keenest housekeeping eye could find no fault with the way Blanche
Devine washed windows.
By May, Blanche Devine had left off her diamond eardrops--perhaps it
was their absence that gave her face a new expression. When she went
downtown we noticed that her hats were more like the hats the other
women in our town wore; but she still affected extravagant footgear, as
is right and proper for a stout woman who has cause to be vain of her
feet. We noticed that her trips downtown were rare that spring and
summer. She used to come home laden with little bundles; and before
supper she would change her street clothes for a neat, washable
housedress, as is our thrifty custom. Through her bright windows we
could see her moving briskly about from kitchen to sitting room; and
from the smells that floated out from her kitchen door, she seemed to
be preparing for her solitary supper the same homely viands that were
frying or stewing or baking in our kitchens. Sometimes you could
detect the delectable scent of browning, hot tea biscuit. It takes a
determined woman to make tea biscuit for no one but herself.
Blanche Devine joined the church. On the first Sunday morning she came
to the service there was a little flurry among the ushers at the
vestibule door. They seated her well in the rear. The second Sunday
morning a dreadful thing happened. The woman next to whom they seated
her turned, regarded her stonily for a moment, then rose agitatedly and
moved to a pew across the aisle.
Blanche Devine's face went a dull red beneath her white powder. She
never came again--though we saw the minister visit her once or twice.
She always accompanied him to the door pleasantly, holding it well open
until he was down the little flight of steps and on the sidewalk. The
minister's wife did not call.
She rose early, like the rest of us; and as summer came on we used to
see her moving about in her little garden patch in the dewy, golden
morning. She wore absurd pale-blue negligees that made her stout figure
loom immense against the greenery of garden and apple tree. The
neighborhood women viewed these negligees with Puritan disapproval as
they smoothed down their own prim, starched gingham skirts. They said
it was disgusting--and perhaps it was; but the habit of years is not
easily overcome. Blanche Devine--snipping her sweet peas, peering
anxiously at the Virginia creeper that clung with such fragile fingers
to the trellis, watering the flower baskets that hung from her
porch--was blissfully unconscious of the disapproving eyes. I wish one
of us had just stopped to call good morning to her over the fence, and
to say in our neighborly, small-town way: "My, ain't this a scorcher!
So early too! It'll be fierce by noon!"
But we did not.
I think perhaps the evenings must have been the loneliest for her. The
summer evenings in our little town are filled with intimate, human,
neighborly sounds. After the heat of the day it is pleasant to relax
in the cool comfort of the front porch, with the life of the town
eddying about us. We sew and read out there until it grows dusk. We
call across lots to our next-door neighbor. The men water the lawns
and the flower boxes and get together in little, quiet groups to
discuss the new street paving. I have even known Mrs. Hines to bring
her cherries out there when she had canning to do, and pit them there
on the front porch partially shielded by her porch vine, but not so
effectually that she was deprived of the sights and sounds about her.
The kettle in her lap and the dishpan full of great ripe cherries on
the porch floor by her chair, she would pit and chat and peer out
through the vines, the red juice staining her plump bare arms.
I have wondered since what Blanche Devine thought of us those lonesome
evenings--those evenings filled with friendly sights and sounds. It
must have been difficult for her, who had dwelt behind closed shutters
so long, to seat herself on the new front porch for all the world to
stare at; but she did sit there--resolutely--watching us in silence.
She seized hungrily upon the stray crumbs of conversation that fell to
her. The milkman and the iceman and the butcher boy used to hold daily
conversation with her. They--sociable gentlemen--would stand on her
door-step, one grimy hand resting against the white of her doorpost,
exchanging the time of day with Blanche in the doorway--a tea towel in
one hand, perhaps, and a plate in the other. Her little house was a
miracle of cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on
her knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the
rest of us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her
kitchen the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering
smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying, divinely sticky odor
that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, from her side of the fence, often
used to peer through the pickets, gazing in the direction of the
enticing smells next door.
Early one September morning there floated out from Blanche Devine's
kitchen that fragrant, sweet scent of fresh-baked cookies--cookies with
butter in them, and spice, and with nuts on top. Just by the smell of
them your mind's eye pictured them coming from the oven-crisp brown
circlets, crumbly, delectable. Snooky, in her scarlet sweater and cap,
sniffed them from afar and straightway deserted her sand pile to take
her stand at the fence. She peered through the restraining bars,
standing on tiptoe. Blanche Devine, glancing up from her board and
rolling pin, saw the eager golden head. And Snooky, with guile in her
heart, raised one fat, dimpled hand above the fence and waved it
friendlily. Blanche Devine waved back. Thus encouraged, Snooky's two
hands wigwagged frantically above the pickets. Blanche Devine hesitated
a moment, her floury hand on her hip. Then she went to the pantry shelf
and took out a clean white saucer. She selected from the brown jar on
the table three of the brownest, crumbliest, most perfect cookies, with
a walnut meat perched atop of each, placed them temptingly on the
saucer and, descending the steps, came swiftly across the grass to the
triumphant Snooky. Blanche Devine held out the saucer, her lips
smiling, her eyes tender. Snooky reached up with one plump white arm.
"Snooky!" shrilled a high voice. "Snooky!" A voice of horror and of
wrath. "Come here to me this minute! And don't you dare to touch
those!" Snooky hesitated rebelliously, one pink finger in her pouting
mouth.
"Snooky! Do you hear me?"
And the Very Young Wife began to descend the steps of her back porch.
Snooky, regretful eyes on the toothsome dainties, turned away
aggrieved. The Very Young Wife, her lips set, her eyes flashing,
advanced and seized the shrieking Snooky by one arm and dragged her
away toward home and safety.
Blanche Devine stood there at the fence, holding the saucer in her
hand. The saucer tipped slowly, and the three cookies slipped off and
fell to the grass. Blanche Devine stood staring at them a moment.
Then she turned quickly, went into the house, and shut the door.
It was about this time we noticed that Blanche Devine was away much of
the time. The little white cottage would be empty for weeks. We knew
she was out of town because the expressman would come for her trunk. We
used to lift our eyebrows significantly. The newspapers and handbills
would accumulate in a dusty little heap on the porch; but when she
returned there was always a grand cleaning, with the windows open, and
Blanche--her head bound turbanwise in a towel--appearing at a window
every few minutes to shake out a dustcloth. She seemed to put an
enormous amount of energy into those cleanings--as if they were a sort
of safety valve.
As winter came on she used to sit up before her grate fire long, long
after we were asleep in our beds. When she neglected to pull down the
shades we could see the flames of her cosy fire dancing gnomelike on
the wall. There came a night of sleet and snow, and wind and rattling
hail--one of those blustering, wild nights that are followed by
morning-paper reports of trains stalled in drifts, mail delayed,
telephone and telegraph wires down. It must have been midnight or past
when there came a hammering at Blanche Devine's door--a persistent,
clamorous rapping. Blanche Devine, sitting before her dying fire half
asleep, started and cringed when she heard it, then jumped to her feet,
her hand at her breast--her eyes darting this way and that, as though
seeking escape.
She had heard a rapping like that before. It had meant bluecoats
swarming up the stairway, and frightened cries and pleadings, and wild
confusion. So she started forward now, quivering. And then she
remembered, being wholly awake now--she remembered, and threw up her
head and smiled a little bitterly and walked toward the door. The
hammering continued, louder than ever. Blanche Devine flicked on the
porch light and opened the door. The half-clad figure of the Very
Young Wife next door staggered into the room. She seized Blanche
Devine's arm with both her frenzied hands and shook her, the wind and
snow beating in upon both of them.
"The baby!" she screamed in a high, hysterical voice. "The baby! The
baby----!"
Blanche Devine shut the door and shook the Young Wife smartly by the
shoulders.
"Stop screaming," she said quietly. "Is she sick?"
The Young Wife told her, her teeth chattering:
"Come quick! She's dying! Will's out of town. I tried to get the
doctor. The telephone wouldn't---- I saw your light! For God's
sake----"
Blanche Devine grasped the Young Wife's arm, opened the door, and
together they sped across the little space that separated the two
houses. Blanche Devine was a big woman, but she took the stairs like a
girl and found the right bedroom by some miraculous woman instinct. A
dreadful choking, rattling sound was coming from Snooky's bed.
"Croup," said Blanche Devine, and began her fight.
It was a good fight. She marshaled her inadequate forces, made up of
the half-fainting Young Wife and the terrified and awkward hired girl.
"Get the hot water on--lots of it!" Blanche Devine pinned up her
sleeves. "Hot cloths! Tear up a sheet--or anything! Got an oilstove?
I want a tea-kettle boiling in the room. She's got to have the steam.
If that don't do it we'll raise an umbrella over her and throw a sheet
over, and hold the kettle under till the steam gets to her that way.
Got any ipecac?"
The Young Wife obeyed orders, white-faced and shaking. Once Blanche
Devine glanced up at her sharply.
"Don't you dare faint!" she commanded.
And the fight went on. Gradually the breathing that had been so
frightful became softer, easier. Blanche Devine did not relax. It was
not until the little figure breathed gently in sleep that Blanche
Devine sat back, satisfied. Then she tucked a cover at the side of the
bed, took a last satisfied look at the face on the pillow, and turned
to look at the wan, disheveled Young Wife.
"She's all right now. We can get the doctor when morning comes--though
I don't know's you'll need him."
The Young Wife came round to Blanche Devine's side of the bed and stood
looking up at her.
"My baby died," said Blanche Devine simply. The Young Wife gave a
little inarticulate cry, put her two hands on Blanche Devine's broad
shoulders, and laid her tired head on her breast.
"I guess I'd better be going," said Blanche Devine.
The Young Wife raised her head. Her eyes were round with fright.
"Going! Oh, please stay! I'm so afraid. Suppose she should take sick
again! That awful--breathing----"
"I'll stay if you want me to."
"Oh, please! I'll make up your bed and you can rest----"
"I'm not sleepy. I'm not much of a hand to sleep anyway. I'll sit up
here in the hall, where there's a light. You get to bed. I'll watch
and see that everything's all right. Have you got something I can read
out here--something kind of lively--with a love story in it?"
So the night went by. Snooky slept in her white bed. The Very Young
Wife half dozed in her bed, so near the little one. In the hall, her
stout figure looming grotesque in wall shadows, sat Blanche Devine,
pretending to read. Now and then she rose and tiptoed into the bedroom
with miraculous quiet, and stooped over the little bed and listened and
looked--and tiptoed away again, satisfied.
The Young Husband came home from his business trip next day with tales
of snowdrifts and stalled engines. Blanche Devine breathed a sigh of
relief when she saw him from her kitchen window. She watched the house
now with a sort of proprietary eye. She wondered about Snooky; but she
knew better than to ask. So she waited. The Young Wife next door had
told her husband all about that awful night--had told him with tears
and sobs. The Very Young Husband had been very, very angry with
her--angry, he said, and astonished! Snooky could not have been so
sick! Look at her now! As well as ever. And to have called such a
woman! Well, he did not want to be harsh; but she must understand that
she must never speak to the woman again. Never!
So the next day the Very Young Wife happened to go by with the Young
Husband. Blanche Devine spied them from her sitting-room window, and
she made the excuse of looking in her mailbox in order to go to the
door. She stood in the doorway and the Very Young Wife went by on the
arm of her husband. She went by--rather white-faced--without a look or
a word or a sign!
And then this happened! There came into Blanche Devine's face a look
that made slits of her eyes, and drew her mouth down into an ugly,
narrow line, and that made the muscles of her jaw tense and hard. It
was the ugliest look you can imagine. Then she smiled--if having one's
lips curl away from one's teeth can be called smiling.
Two days later there was great news of the white cottage on the corner.
The curtains were down; the furniture was packed; the rugs were rolled.
The wagons came and backed up to the house and took those things that
had made a home for Blanche Devine. And when we heard that she had
bought back her interest in the House with the Closed Shutters, near
the freight depot, we sniffed.
"I knew she wouldn't last!" we said.
"They never do!" said we.