CHAPTER I

BREAD

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

SALT

or The Education of Griffith Adams

“Ye are the salt of the earth; but if the salt have lost his savour,

wherewith shall it be salted?”

--_Matthew_ V:13

BRASS

A Novel of Marriage

“Annul a marriage? ’Tis impossible!

Though ring about your neck be brass not gold,

Needs must it clasp, gangrene you all the same!”

--_Robert Browning_

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

BREAD

BY

CHARLES G. NORRIS

AUTHOR OF “BRASS,” “SALT,” ETC.

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

681 FIFTH AVENUE

_Copyright_, 1923,

BY CHARLES G. NORRIS

_All Rights Reserved, Including that of

Translation into Foreign Languages,

Including the Scandinavian_

Printed in the United States of America

DEDICATED TO

The Working Women of America

CONTENTS

PAGE

Book I. 1

Chapter I. 3

Chapter II. 34

Chapter III. 61

Chapter IV. 89

Chapter V. 131

Chapter VI. 152

Book II. 163

Chapter I. 165

Chapter II. 190

Chapter III. 242

Chapter IV. 273

Chapter V. 287

Chapter VI. 320

Chapter VII. 331

Book III. 377

Chapter I. 379

Chapter II. 413

Chapter III. 446

Chapter IV. 470

BOOK I

BREAD

CHAPTER I

§ 1

“_One_ and two and three and four and--_one_ and two and three and four

and....”

Mrs. Sturgis had a way of tapping the ivory keys of the piano with her

pencil when she was counting the beat during a music lesson. It made

her little pupils nervous and sometimes upset them completely. Now she

abruptly interrupted herself and rapped the keys sharply.

“Mildred, dearie--it doesn’t go that way at all; the quarter note is on

‘three.’ It’s one and two and _three_ and.... You see?”

“Mama.” A tall dark girl stood in the doorway of the room.

Mrs. Sturgis affected not to hear and drew a firm circle with her

pencil about the troublesome quarter note. There was another insistent

demand from the door. Mrs. Sturgis twisted about and leaned back on the

piano bench so that Mildred’s thin little figure might not obstruct the

view of her daughter. Her air was one of martyred resignation but she

smiled indulgently. Very sweetly she said:

“Yes, dearie?” Jeannette recognized the tone as one her mother used to

disguise annoyance.

“It’s quarter to six....” Jeannette left the sentence unfinished. She

hoped her mother would guess the rest, but Mrs. Sturgis only smiled

more sweetly and looked expectant.

“There’s no bread,” Jeannette then said bluntly.

Mrs. Sturgis’ expression did not change nor did she ease her

constrained position.

“Well, dearie ... the delicatessen shop is open. Perhaps you or Alice

can run down to Kratzmer’s and get a loaf.”

“But we can’t do that, Mama.” There was a note of exasperation in the

girl’s voice; she looked hard at her mother and frowned.

“Ah....” Mrs. Sturgis gave a short gasp of understanding. Kratzmer

had been owed a little account for some time and the fat German had

suggested that his bills be settled more promptly.

“My purse is there, dearie”; she indicated the shabby imitation leather

bag on the table. Then with a renewal of her alert smile she returned

to the lesson.

“One and two and three and four and--_one_ and two and----”

“Mama, I’m sorry to interrupt....”

Mrs. Sturgis now turned a glassy eye upon her older child, and the

patient smile she tried to assume was hardly more than a grimace. It

was eloquent of martyrdom.

“I’m sorry to have to interrupt,” Jeannette repeated, “but there isn’t

any money in your purse; it’s empty.”

The expression on her mother’s face did not alter but the light died

in her eyes. Jeannette realized she had grasped the situation at last.

“Well ... dearie....” Mrs. Sturgis began.

Jeannette stood uncompromisingly before her. She had no suggestion to

offer; her mother might have foreseen they would need bread for dinner.

The little music-teacher continued to study her daughter, but presently

her gaze drifted to Mildred beside her perched on a pile of music

albums.

“You haven’t a dime or a nickel with you, dearie?” she asked the child.

“I could give you credit on your bill and your papa, you see, could pay

ten cents less next time he sends me a check....”

“I think I got thome money,” lisped Mildred, wriggling down from her

seat and investigating the pocket of her jacket which lay near on a

chair. “Mother alwath givth me money when I goeth out.” She drew forth

a small plush purse and dumped the contents into her hand. “I got

twenty thenth,” she announced.

“Well, I’ll just help myself to ten of it,” said Mrs. Sturgis, bending

forward and lifting one of the small coins with delicate finger-tips.

“You tell your papa I’ll give him credit on this bill.”

She turned to Jeannette and held out the coin.

“Here, lovie; get a little Graham, too.”

There was color in the girl’s face as she accepted the money; she drew

up her shoulders slightly, but without comment, turned upon her heel

and left the room.

Mrs. Sturgis brought her attention once more cheerfully back to the

lesson.

“Now then, Mildred dearie: _one_ and two and three and four and--_one_

and two and _three_ and four and.... Now you have it; see how easy that

is?”

§ 2

Jeannette passed through the dark intervening rooms of the apartment,

catching up her shabby velvet hat from her bed, and came upon her

sister Alice in the kitchen.

There was a marked contrast between the two girls. Jeannette, who

was several months past her eighteenth birthday, was a tall, willowy

girl with a smooth olive-tinted skin, dark eyes, brows and lashes,

and straight, lustreless braids of hair almost dead black. She gave

promise of beauty in a year or two,--of austere stateliness,--but now

she appeared rather angular and ungainly with her thin shoulders and

shapeless ankles. She was too tall and too old to be still dressed

like a schoolgirl. Alice was only a year her junior, but Alice looked

younger. She was softer, rounder, gentler. She had brown hair, brown

eyes and a brown skin. “My little brown bird,” her mother had called

her as a child. She was busy now at the stove, dumping and scraping

out a can of tomatoes into a saucepan. Dinner was in process of

preparation. Steam poured from the nozzle of the kettle on the gas

range and evaporated in a thin cloud.

“Mama makes me so mad!” Jeannette burst out indignantly. “I _wish_ she

wouldn’t be borrowing money from the pupils! She just got ten cents out

of Mildred Carpenter.”

She displayed the diminutive coin in her palm. Alice regarded it with a

troubled frown.

“It makes me so sick,” went on Jeannette, “wheedling a dime out of a

baby like that! I don’t believe it’s necessary, at least Mama ought

to manage better. Just think of it! Borrowing money to buy a loaf of

bread! ... We’ve come to a pretty state of things.”

“Aw--don’t, Janny,” Alice remonstrated; “you know how hard Mama

tries and how people won’t pay their bills.... The Cheneys have owed

eighty-six dollars for six months and it never occurs to them we need

it so badly.”

“I’d go and get it, if I was Mama,” Jeannette said with determination,

putting on her hat and bending her tall figure awkwardly to catch her

reflection in a lower pane of the kitchen door. “I wouldn’t stand it.

I’d call on old Paul G. Cheney at his office and tell him he’d have to

pay up or find someone else to teach his children!”

“Oh, no, you wouldn’t, Janny!--You know that’d never do. Paul and

Dorothy have been taking lessons off Mama for nearly three years.

Mama’d lose all her pupils if she did things like that.”

“Well--” Jeannette drawled, suddenly weary of the discussion and

opening the kitchen door into the hall, “I’m going down to Kratzmer’s.”

§ 3

In the delicatessen store she was obliged to wait her turn. The shop

was well filled with late customers, and the women especially seemed

maddeningly dilatory to the impatient girl.

“An’ fifteen cents’ worth of ham ... an’ some of that chow-chow ... and

a box of crackers....”

Jeannette studied the rows of salads, pots of baked beans, the pickled

pig’s-feet, and sausages. Everything looked appetizing to her, and the

place smelled fragrantly of fresh cold meat and creamy cheeses. Most of

the edibles Kratzmer offered so invitingly, she had never tasted. She

would have liked to begin at one end of the marble counter and sample

everything that was on it. She looked curiously at the woman near

her who had just purchased some weird-looking, pickled things called

“mangoes,” and gone on selecting imported cheeses and little oval round

cans with French and Italian labels upon them. Jeannette wondered if

she, herself, would ever come to know a time when she could order

of Kratzmer so prodigally. She was sick of the everlasting struggle

at home of what they should get for lunch or dinner. It was always

determined by the number of cents involved.

“Well, dearie,” her mother invariably remonstrated at some suggestion

of her own, “that would cost thirty cents and perhaps it would be wiser

to wait until next week.”

A swift, vague vision arose of the vital years that were close at

hand,--the vital years in which she must marry and decide the course of

her whole future life. Was her preparation for this all-important time

ever to be beset by a consideration of pennies and makeshifts?

“Vell, Miss Sturgis, vat iss it to-night?”

Fat Mrs. Kratzmer smiled blandly at her over the glass shelf above the

marble counter. Jeannette watched her as she deftly crackled thin paper

about the two loaves, tied and snapped the pink string. Kratzmer and

his wife were fat with big stomachs and round, double chins; even Elsa

Kratzmer, their daughter, who went to the High School with Jeannette

and Alice, was fat and had a double chin. The family had probably all

they wanted to eat and a great deal more; there must be an enormous

amount of food left on the platters and dishes and in the pans at the

end of each day that would spoil before morning. Kratzmer, his wife and

daughter must gormandize, stuff themselves night after night, Jeannette

reflected as she began to climb the four long flights of stairs to

her own apartment. It was disgusting, of course, to think of eating

that way,--but oh, what a feast she and Alice would have if they might

change places with the trio for a night or two!

As she reached the second landing, a thick smell of highly seasoned

frying food assailed her. This was the floor on which the Armenians

lived, and a pungent odor from their cooking frequently permeated

the entire building. The front door of their apartment was open and

as Jeannette was passing it, Dikron Najarian came out. He was a tall

young man of twenty-three or-four, of extraordinary swarthy beauty,

with black wavy masses of hair, and enormous dark eyes. He and his

sister, Rosa,--she was a few years older and equally handsome,--often

met the young Sturgis girls on the stairs or fumbling with the key to

the mail-box in the entrance-way below. Jeannette and Alice used to

giggle sillily after they had encountered Dikron, and would exchange

ridiculous confidences concerning him. They regarded the young man as

far too old to be interested in either of themselves and therefore

took his unusual beauty and odd, foreign manner as proper targets for

their laughter.

Jeannette now instinctively straightened herself as she encountered her

neighbor. Upon the instant a feminine challenge emanated from her.

“Hello,” Dikron said, taken unawares and obviously embarrassed. “Been

out?”

For some obscure reason Jeannette did not understand, she elected at

that moment to coquet. She had never given the young Armenian a serious

thought before, but now she became aware of the effect their sudden

encounter had had upon him. She paused on the lower step of the next

flight and hung for a moment over the balustrade. Airily, she explained

her errand to Kratzmer’s.

“What smells so good?” she asked presently.

She thought the odor abominable, but it did not suit her mood to say so.

“Mother’s cooking mussels to-night; they’re wonderful, stuffed with

rice and peppers.... Have you ever tasted them? Could I send some

upstairs?”

Jeannette laughed hastily, and shook her head.

“No--no,--thanks very much.... I’m afraid we wouldn’t....” She was

going to say “appreciate them” but left the sentence unfinished. “I

must go on up; Mother’s waiting for the bread.”

But she made no immediate move, and the young man continued to lean

against the wall below her. Their conversation, however, died dismally

at this point, and after a moment’s uncomfortable silence, the girl

began nimbly to mount the stairs, flinging over her shoulder a somewhat

abrupt “Good-night.”

§ 4

“Get your bread, dearie?” Mrs. Sturgis asked cheerfully as Jeannette

came panting into the kitchen and flung her package down upon the

table. Her daughter did not answer but dropped into a chair to catch

her breath.

Mrs. Sturgis was bustling about, pottering over the gas stove, stirring

a saucepan of stewing kidneys, banging shut the oven door after a brief

inspection of a browning custard. Alice had just finished setting the

table in the dining-room, and now came in, to break the string about

the bread and begin to slice it vigorously. Jeannette interestedly

observed what they were to have for dinner. It was one of the same

old combinations with which she was familiar, and a feeling of weary

distaste welled up within her, but a glimpse of her mother’s face

checked it.

Mrs. Sturgis invariably wore lace jabots during the day. These were

high-collared affairs, reinforced with wires or whalebones, and they

fastened firmly around the throat, the lace falling in rich, frothy

cascades at the front. They were the only extravagance the hard-working

little woman allowed herself, and she justified them on the ground

that they were becoming and she must be presentable at the fashionable

girls’ school where she was a teacher, and also at Signor Bellini’s

studio where she was the paid accompanist. Jeannette and Alice were

always mending or ironing these frills, and had become extremely expert

at the work. There was a drawer in their mother’s bureau devoted

exclusively to her jabots, and her daughters made it their business to

see that one of these lacy adornments was always there, dainty and

fresh, ready to be put on. Beneath the brave show of lace about her

neck and over the round swell of her small compact bosom, there was

only her “little old black” or “the Macy blue.” Mrs. Sturgis had no

other garments and these two dresses were unrelievedly plain affairs

with plain V-shaped necks and plain, untrimmed skirts. The jabots gave

the effect of elegance she loved, and she had a habit of flicking the

lacy ruffles as she talked, straightening them or tossing them with a

careless finger. The final touch of adornment she allowed herself was

two fine gold chains about her neck. From the longer was suspended her

watch which she carried tucked into the waist-band of her skirt; while

the other held her eye-glasses which, when not in use, hung on a hook

at her shoulder.

The tight lace collars creased and wrinkled her throat, and made

her cheeks bulge slightly over them, giving her face a round full

expression. When she was excited and wagged her head, or when she

laughed, her fat little cheeks shook like cups of jelly. But as soon

as her last pupil had departed for the day, off came the gold chains

and the jabot. She was more comfortable without the confining band

about her neck though her real reason for laying her lacy ruffles

aside was to keep them fresh and unrumpled. Stripped of her frills,

her daughters were accustomed to see her in the early mornings, and

evenings, with the homely V-shaped garment about her withered neck, her

cheeks, lacking the support of the tight collar, sagging loosely. Habit

was strong with Mrs. Sturgis. Jeannette and Alice were often amused at

seeing their mother still flicking and tossing with an unconscious

finger an imaginary frill long after it had been laid aside.

Now as the little woman bent over the stove, her older daughter

noted the pendant cheeks criss-crossed with tiny purplish veins, the

blue-white wrinkled neck, and the vivid red spots beneath the ears left

by the sharp points of wire in the high collar she had just unfastened.

There were puffy pockets below her eyes, and even the eyelids were

creased with a multitude of tiny wrinkles. Jeannette realized her

mother was tired--unusually tired. She remembered, too, that it was

Saturday, and on Saturday there were pupils all day long. The girl

jumped to her feet, snatched the stirring spoon out of her mother’s

hand and pushed her away from the range.

“Get out of here, Mama,” she directed vigorously. “Go in to the table

and sit down. Alice and I will put dinner on.... Alice, make Mama go in

there and sit down.”

Mrs. Sturgis laughingly protested but she allowed her younger daughter

to lead her into the adjoining room where she sank down gratefully in

her place at the table.

“Well, lovies, your old mother _is_ pretty tired....” She drew a long

breath of contentment and closed her eyes.

The girls poured the kidney stew into an oval dish and carried it and

the scalloped tomatoes to the table. There was a hurried running back

and forth for a few minutes, and then Jeannette and Alice sat down,

hunching their chairs up to the table, and began hungrily to eat. It

was the most felicitous, unhurried hour of their day usually, for

mother and daughters unconsciously relaxed, their spirits rising with

the warm food, and the agreeable companionship which to each was and

always had been exquisitely dear.

The dining-room in the daytime was the pleasantest room in the

apartment. It and the kitchen overlooked a shabby back-yard, adjoining

other shabby back-yards far below, in the midst of which, during

summer, a giant locust tree was magnificently in leaf. There were

floods of sunshine all afternoon from September to April, and a brief

but pleasing view of the Hudson River could be seen between the wall

of the house next door and an encroaching cornice of a building on

Columbus Avenue. At night there was little in the room to recommend

it. The wall-paper was a hideous yellow with acanthus leaves of a more

hideous and darker yellow flourishing symmetrically upon it. There was

a marble mantelpiece over a fireplace, and in the aperture for the

grate a black lacquered iron grilling. Over the table hung a gaselier

from the center of which four arms radiated at right angles, supporting

globes of milky glass.

Mrs. Sturgis’ bedroom adjoined the dining-room and was separated from

it by bumping folding-doors, only opened on occasions when Jeannette

and Alice decided their mother’s room needed a thorough cleaning and

airing. The latter seemed necessary much oftener than the former for

the room had only one small window which, tucked into the corner, gave

upon a narrow light-well. It was from this well, which extended clear

down to the basement, that the evil smells arose when the Najarians,

two flights below, began cooking one of their Armenian feasts.

In the center of the apartment were two dark little chambers occupied

by the girls. Neither possessed a window, but the wall separating

them was pierced by an opening, fitted with a hinged light of frosted

glass which, when hooked back to the ceiling, permitted the necessary

ventilation. These boxlike little rooms had to be used as a passageway.

The only hall was the public one outside, at one end of which was

a back door giving access to the kitchen and the dining-room, and,

opposite this, a front one, opening into the large, commodious

sitting-room, or studio--as it was dignified by the family--in which

Mrs. Sturgis gave her music lessons.

It was this generous front room, with its high ceiling, its big bay

window, its alcove ideally proportioned to hold the old grand piano,

which had intrigued the little music-teacher twelve years before,

when she had moved into the neighborhood after her husband’s death

and begun her struggle for a home and livelihood. Whether or not the

prospective pupils would be willing to climb the four long flights of

stairs necessary to reach this thoroughly satisfactory environment for

the dissemination of musical instruction was a question which only

time would answer. Mrs. Sturgis had confidently expected that they

would and her expectations had been realized. The dollar an hour, which

was all she charged, had appealed to the more calculating of their

parents; moreover Henrietta Spaulding Sturgis was a pianist of no mean

distinction. She was a graduate of the Boston Conservatory, was in

charge of the music at Miss Loughborough’s Concentration School for

Little Girls on Central Park West, and was the accompanist for Tomaso

Bellini, a well-known instructor in voice culture who had a studio

in Carnegie Hall. These facts the neighborhood inevitably learned,

and that lessons at such a price could be had from a teacher so well

equipped was confided by one shrewd mother to another. The stairs were

ignored; a little climbing, if taken slowly, never hurt _any_ child!

But while year after year it became more and more advertised that

bustling, round-faced, cheerful Mrs. Sturgis _did_ have charge of

the music at Miss Loughborough’s school on Tuesdays and Fridays of

each week, and _did_ play the accompaniments for the pupils of Signor

Bellini at his Carnegie Hall studio on Mondays and Thursdays, no one

suspected that sharp Miss Loughborough handed Mrs. Sturgis a check

for only twenty-five dollars twice a month and that thrifty Signor

Bellini paid but five dollars a day to his accompanist. Wednesdays

and Saturdays were left for private lessons at a dollar an hour, and

although Mrs. Sturgis could have filled other days of the week with

pupils, Miss Loughborough and Signor Bellini represented an income that

was certain, while nothing was more uncertain than the little pupils

whose parents sent them regularly for a few months and then moved away

or summarily discontinued the instruction often without explanation.

Jeannette and Alice had urged their mother repeatedly to drop one

or the other of her close-handed employers and take on more pupils,

but to these entreaties Mrs. Sturgis had shaken her head with firm

determination until her round little cheeks trembled.

“No--no, lovies; that may be all very well,--they may be underpaying

me,--perhaps they are, but the money’s _sure_ and that’s the comfort.

It’s worth much more to me to know _that_ than to earn twice the

amount.”

It was the dreary hot summers that Mrs. Sturgis and her daughters

dreaded when Miss Loughborough’s school closed its doors and Signor

Bellini made his annual pilgrimage to Italy, and the little pupils

who had filled the Wednesday and Saturday lesson hours drifted away

to the beaches or the mountains. July and August were empty, barren

months and against their profitlessness some provision had to be made;

a little must be put by during the year to take care of this lean and

trying period. But somehow, although Mrs. Sturgis firmly determined at

the beginning of each season that never again would she subject her

girls to the self-denials, even privations, they had endured during

the summer, every year it became harder and harder to save, while

each summer brought fresh humiliations and a slimmer purse. Even in

the most prosperous seasons the small family was in debt, always a

little behind, never wholly caught up, and as time went on, it became

evident that each year found them further and further in arrears. They

were always harassed by annoying petty accounts. Miss Loughborough’s

and Signor Bellini’s money paid the rent and the actual daily food,

and when a parent took it into his or her head to send a check for a

child’s music, the amount had to be proportioned here and there: so

much to the druggist, the dentist and doctor; so much to the steam

laundry; so much to the ice company and dairy; so much for gas and fuel.

Emerging from the chrysalis of girlhood, Jeannette and Alice were

rapidly becoming young women, with a healthy, normal appetite for

pretty clothes and amusement. These were simple enough and might so

easily have been gratified, Mrs. Sturgis often sadly thought, if her

income would keep but a lagging pace with modestly expanding needs.

It required a few extra dollars only each year, but where could she

lay her hands on them? When a business expanded and its earnings grew

proportionately, an employee’s salary was sure to be raised after a

time of faithful service. Mrs. Sturgis did not dare increase the rates

she charged for her lessons. She felt she was facing a blank wall; she

could conceive of no way whereby she might earn more. Skimping what

went on the table was an old recourse to which she and her children

were now thoroughly accustomed. She did not see how she could possibly

cut down further and still keep her girls properly nourished.

§ 5

She watched them affectionately now as they finished their dinner,

observing her older daughter’s fastidious manipulation of her fork,

the younger one’s birdlike way of twisting her small head as she ate.

A fleeting wonder of what the future held in store for each passed

through her mind. Jeannette was the more impetuous, and daring,

was shrewd-minded, clear-thinking, efficient, was headstrong, and

actuated ever by a suffering pride; she would undoubtedly grow into

a tall, beautiful woman. Alice,--her mother’s “brown bird,”--seemed

overshadowed by comparison and yet Mrs. Sturgis sometimes felt that

Alice, with her simpler, unexacting, contented nature, her gentle

faith, her meditative mind, was the more fortunate of the two. She,

herself, turned to Jeannette for advice, for discussion of ways and

means, and to Alice for sympathetic understanding and uncritical

loyalty. They were both splendid girls, she mused fondly, who would

make admirable wives. They must marry, of course; she had brought

them up since they were tiny girls to consider a successful, happy

marriage as their outstanding aim in life; she had trained them in the

duties of wives, even of mothers, but she shuddered and her heart grew

sick within her as she began dimly to perceive the time approaching

when she must surrender their bloom and innocence and her complete

proprietorship in them to some confident, ignorant young male who would

unhesitatingly set up his half-baked judgment for his wife’s welfare

against her hard-won knowledge of life. Yet both girls must marry; her

heart was set on that. Marriage meant everything to a girl, and to the

right husbands, her daughters would make ideal wives.

With the speed of long practice, the remains of the dinner were swept

away and the kitchen set to rights. Both girls attempted to dissuade

their mother from performing her customary dish-washing task, urging

her that to-night she must rest. But Mrs. Sturgis would not listen;

she was quite rested, she declared, and there was nothing to washing

up the few dishes they had used; why, it wasn’t ten minutes’ work! She

invariably insisted upon performing this dirtier, more vigorous task;

Alice’s part was to wipe; Jeannette’s to clear the table, brush the

cloth, put away the china and napkins, and replace the old square piece

of chenille curtaining which had for years done duty as a table cover.

Then there was the gas drop-light to set in its center, and connect

with the gaselier above by a long tube ending in a curved brass nozzle

that fitted over one of the burners. Where this joining occurred, there

was always a slight escape of gas, and it frequently gave Mrs. Sturgis

or her daughters a headache, but beyond an impatient comment from one

of them, such as “Mercy me! the gas smells horribly to-night!” or “Open

the window a little, dearie,--the gas is beginning to make my head

ache,” nothing was ever done about it. It was one of those things in

their lives to which they had grown accustomed and accepted along with

the rest of the ills and goods of their days.

Mother and girls used the dining-room as the place to congregate, sew,

read or idle. They rarely sat down or attempted to make themselves

comfortable in the spacious front room. It was not nearly so agreeably

intimate, and they felt it must always be kept in order for music

lessons and for rare occasions when company came. “Company” usually

turned out to be a pupil’s mother or a housemaid who came to explain

that little Edna or Gracie had the mumps or was going to the dentist’s

on Saturday and therefore would not be able to take her lesson, or a

messenger from Signor Bellini to inquire if Mrs. Sturgis could play for

one of his pupils the following evening. Such was the character of the

callers, but the fiction of “company” was maintained.

The group Mrs. Sturgis and her daughters made about the dining-room

table in the warm yellow radiance of the drop-light was intimately

familiar and dear to each of them. There was always a certain amount of

sewing going on,--mending or darning,--and hardly an evening passed

without one or another industriously bending over her needle. Usually

they were all three at it, for they made most of their own clothes.

Each had her own particular side of the table and her own particular

chair. They were extremely circumspect in the observance of one

another’s preferences, and would apologize profusely if one happened

to be found on the wrong side of the table or incorrectly seated. Mrs.

Sturgis, on the rare occasions when she found herself with nothing

particular to do, spread out a pack of cards before her and indulged

in a meditative solitaire; Alice had always a novel in which she was

absorbed. Generally three or four books were saved up in her room, and

she considered herself dreadfully behind in her reading unless she had

disposed of one of them as soon as she acquired another. Jeannette

studied the fashions in the dress magazines and sometimes amused

herself by drawing costume designs of her own.

But dressmaking occupied most of the evenings. There was usually a

garment of some kind in process of manufacture, or a dress to be ripped

to pieces and its materials used in new ways. Alice acted as model no

matter for whom the work was intended. She had infinite patience and

could stand indefinitely, sometimes with a bit of sewing in her hands,

sometimes with a book propped before her on the mantel, indifferent

and unconcerned, while her mother and sister crawled around her on

the floor, pinning, pulling and draping the material about her young

figure, or else sitting back on their heels and arguing with each

other, while they eyed her with heads first on one side, then on the

other.

§ 6

To-night Jeannette was making herself a corset cover, Alice was

struggling over a school essay on “Home Life of the Greeks in the Age

of Pericles,” and Mrs. Sturgis was darning. They had not been more than

half-an-hour at their work, when there was the sound of masculine feet

mounting the stairs, a hesitating step in the hall, and a brief ring of

the doorbell. They glanced at one another questioningly and Alice rose.

Alice always answered the bell.

“If it’s old Bellini wanting you to-night....” Jeannette began in

annoyance. But the man’s voice that reached them was no messenger’s;

it was polite and friendly, and it was for Alice’s sister he inquired.

Jeannette found Dikron Najarian in the front room. The young man was

all bashful breathlessness.

“There’s an Armenian society here in New York, Miss Sturgis. My father

was one of its organizers, has been a member for years. We’re having a

dance to-night at Weidermann’s Hall on Amsterdam Avenue, and my cousin,

Louisa, who was going with me, is ill; she has a bad toothache. I have

her ticket and ... will you come in her place? Rosa’s going, of course,

and ... tell your mother I’ll bring you home at twelve o’clock.”

It was said in an anxious rush, with hopeful eagerness. Jeannette,

bewildered, went to consult her mother. Mrs. Sturgis hastily pinned one

of her jabots around her neck and appeared to confront young Najarian

in the studio. She listened to the invitation thoughtfully, her head

cocked upon one side, her lips pursed in judicial fashion. Janny was

still very young, she explained; she had never attended anything

quite--quite so grown-up, she was used only to the parties her school

friends sometimes asked her to, and Mrs. Sturgis was afraid....

Suddenly Jeannette wanted to go. She pinched her mother’s arm, and an

impatient protest escaped her lips.

“Oh, please, Mrs. Sturgis....” pleaded the young man.

A rich contralto voice sounded from the hallway of the floor below.

The door to the apartment had been left open and now they could see

big handsome Rosa Najarian’s face through the banisters as she stood

halfway up the stairs.

“Do let your daughter come, Mrs. Sturgis. They are all nice boys and

girls. I will keep a sharp eye on her and bring her home to you safely.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Sturgis, “I just wanted to feel satisfied that

everything was right and proper.”

There were some further words. Jeannette left her mother talking with

Dikron and flew to the dining-room, to her sister.

“Quick, Alice dearie! Dikron Najarian’s asked me to a dance. I must

fly! Help me get ready. He’s waiting.”

Instantly there was a scurry, a jerking open of bureau drawers, a

general diving into crowded closets. The question immediately arose,

what was Jeannette to wear? In a mad burst of extravagance, she had

sent her dotted Swiss muslin to the laundry. There remained only her

old “party” dress, which had been done over and over, lengthened and

lengthened, until now the velvet was worn and shiny, the covering of

some of the buttons was gone and showed the bright metal beneath, the

ribbon about the waist was split in several places. Yet there was

nothing else, and while the girl was hooking herself into it, Alice

daubed the metal buttons with ink, and sewed folds of the ribbon over

where it had begun to split. Jeannette borrowed stockings from her

sister and wedged her feet into a pair of her mother’s pumps which were

too small for her. Her black lusterless locks were happily becomingly

arranged, and excitement brought a warm dull red to her olive-tinted

cheeks. She was in gay spirits when Najarian called for her some

fifteen minutes later, and went off with him chattering vivaciously.

Mrs. Sturgis stood for a moment in the open doorway of her apartment

and listened to the descending feet upon the stairs, to the lessening

sound of gay young voices. She assured herself she caught Rosa

Najarian’s warmer accents as the older girl met her brother and

Jeannette two flights below; she still bent her ear for the last sounds

of the little party as it made its way down the final flight of stairs,

paused for an interval in the lowest hallway, and banged the front door

behind it with a dull reverberation and a shiver of glass. As the house

grew still she waited a minute or two longer with compressed lips and a

troubled frown, then shook her round little cheeks firmly, turned back

into her own apartment, and without comment began to help Alice hang up

Jeannette’s discarded clothing and set the disordered room to rights.

§ 7

Jeannette found her mother sitting up for her when she returned a

little after twelve. Mrs. Sturgis was engaged in writing out bills

for her lessons which she would mail on the last day of the month. The

old canvas-covered ledger with its criss-crossed pages, its erasures

and torn edges in which she kept her accounts was a familiar sight in

her hands. She was forever turning its thumbed and ink-stained leaves,

studying old and new entries, making half-finished calculations in the

margins or blank spaces. She sat now in the unbecoming flannelette gown

she wore at night, her thin hair in two skimpy pig-tails on either side

of her neck, a tattered knitted shawl of a murderous red about her

shoulders, and a comforter across her knees. In the yellow light of the

hissing gas above her head, she appeared haggard and old, with dark

pockets underneath her scant eyebrows and even gaunt hollows in the

little cheeks that bulged plumply and bravely during the day above her

tight lace collars.

“Well,--_dear_-ie!” Bright animation struggled into the mother’s face,

and her voice at once was all eagerness and interest. “Did you have a

good time? ... Tell me about it.”

Immediately she detected something was amiss. There was none of the gay

exhilaration and youthful exuberance in her daughter’s manner, she had

confidently expected. One searching glance into the glittering dark

eyes, as the girl stooped to kiss her, told her Jeannette was fighting

tears, struggling to control a burst of pent-up feeling.

“Why, dearie! What’s the matter? ... Tell me.”

“Oh----!” There was young fury in the exclamation. Jeannette flung

herself into a chair and buried her face in her hands, plunging her

finger-tips deep into her thick coils of black hair. For several

minutes she would not answer her mother’s anxious inquiries.

“Wasn’t Mr. Najarian nice to you? Didn’t he look after you? Didn’t you

have a good time? Tell Mama,” Mrs. Sturgis persisted.

“Oh, yes,--he was very nice, ... yes, he took good care of me,--and

Rosa did, too.”

“Then what is it, dearie? What happened? Mama wants to know.”

Jeannette drew a long breath and got brusquely to her feet.

“Oh, it’s this!” she burst out, striking the gown she wore with

contemptuous fingers. “It’s these miserable things I have to wear!

There wasn’t a girl there, to-night,--not even one,--that wasn’t better

dressed. I was a laughing-stock among them! ... Oh, I know I was, I

know I was! ... They all felt sorry for me: a poor little neighbor of

Dikron Najarian’s on whom he had taken pity and whom he had asked to a

dance! ... Oh! I can’t and _won’t_ stand it, Mama.”

Tears suddenly choked her but she fought them down and stilled her

mother’s rush of expostulations.

“No--no, Mama! ... It’s _nobody’s_ fault. You work your fingers to the

bone for Allie and me; you work from daylight till dark to keep us in

school and in idleness. I’m not going to let you do it any longer....

No, Mama, I’m not going to let things go on as they are. I needed some

experience like to-night’s to make me wake up.”

“What experience? Don’t talk so wild, baby.”

“Finding out for myself I was the shabbiest dressed girl in the room!

There were a lot of other girls there,--really nice girls. I didn’t

expect it. I suppose I thought I wouldn’t find any American girls like

myself at an Armenian dance. I don’t know _what_ I thought! ... But

there were only a few like Rosa and Dikron, and all the other girls

were beautifully dressed.”

Jeannette broke off and began to blink hard for self-control. Her

mother, her face twisted with sympathy and distress, could only pat her

hand and murmur soothingly over and over: “Dearie--my poor dearie--my

dearie-girl----”

“I saw one old lady sizing me up,” Jeannette went on presently. “I

could see right into her brain and I knew every thought she was

thinking. She looked me over from my feet to my hair and from my hair

to my feet. There wasn’t a thing wrong or right with me that that old

cat missed! She didn’t mean it unkindly; she was merely interested in

noting how shabby I was.... And Mama,--it was a revelation to me! I

could just see ahead into the years that are coming, and I could see

that that was to be my fate always wherever I went: to be shabbily

dressed and be pitied.”

“Now--now, dearie,--don’t take on so. Mama will work hard; we’ll

save----”

“But that’s just what I won’t have!” Jeannette interrupted

passionately. “I’m not going to let you go on slaving for Allie and

me, making yourself a drudge.... What’s it all for? Just so Allie and

I can marry suitable rich young men! Isn’t that it? Ever since I can

remember, I’ve heard you talk about our future husbands and what kind

of men they are to be. You’ve been describing to us for years the time

when we’ll be going to dances and theatres. Going, yes, but how?

Dressed like this? Worn, shabby old clothes? To be pitied by other

women? ... No, Mama, I won’t do it. I’d rather stay home with you for

the rest of my life and grow up to be an old maid!”

“Oh, Janny, don’t talk so reckless. You take things so seriously,

and you’re always imagining the worst side of everything. There are

thousands of girls a great deal worse off than you. There are thousands

of mothers and fathers and daughters in this city right this minute who

are facing just this problem. It’s as old as the hills. But there’s

always a way out,--a way that’s right and proper. Don’t let it trouble

you, dearie; leave it to Mama; Mama’ll manage.”

“No, Mama, I _won’t_ leave it to you! I’ve got eyes in my head and

I see how hard you have to struggle. We’re always behind as it

is,--pestered by bills and the tradespeople. Why, this very afternoon

we didn’t have a cent in the house,--not even a copper,--and you had to

borrow a dime from Mildred Carpenter to buy bread! Just think of it!

_We didn’t have money enough for bread!_”

“But, dearie, I’ve got Miss Loughborough’s check in my purse.”

“Yes, and we owe ten times its amount! ... We’re running steadily

behind. I don’t see anything better ahead. It’s going to be this way

year after year, always falling a little more and a little more behind,

until--until, well--until people won’t trust us any more.”

“Perhaps we could cut down a bit somewheres, Janny.”

“Oh, Mama, don’t talk nonsense! I’m going to work,--that’s all there is

about it.”

“Jeannette! ... You can’t! ... You mustn’t!”

“Well, I am just the same. Rosa Najarian is a stenographer with the

Singer Sewing Machine Company, and she gets eighteen dollars a week!

... Think of it, Mama! Eighteen dollars a week! She took a ten weeks’

course at the Gerard Commercial School and at the end of that time they

got her a job. She didn’t have to wait a week! ... No, I’m not going to

High School another day. To-morrow I’m going down to that Commercial

School.”

“But, dearie--dearie! You don’t want to be a working girl!”

“You’re a working woman, aren’t you?”

“But, my dear, I had no other choice. I had my girls to bring up,

and I’ve grubbed and slaved, as you say, just so my daughters would

never have to take positions. I’ve worked hard to make ladies of you,

dearie,--and no lady’s a shop-girl.... Oh, I couldn’t bear it! You and

Allie shop-girls! ... Janny,--it would _finish_ me.”

“Well, Mama, you don’t feel so awfully about Rosa Najarian--do you? You

consider Rosa a lady, don’t you?”

“She’s an Armenian, Jeannette, and I know nothing about Armenians.

Besides she is not _my_ daughter. The kind of men I want for husbands

to my girls will not be looking for their wives behind shop counters!”

“But, Mama, stenographers don’t work behind counters.”

“Oh, yes, they do.... Anyway it’s the same thing.”

Jeannette felt suddenly too tired to continue the discussion. Her

mind began turning over the changes the step she contemplated would

occasion. Mrs. Sturgis’ fingers played a nervous tattoo upon her

tremulous lips. She glanced apprehensively at her daughter and in that

moment realized the girl would have her way.

“Oh, dearie, dearie!” she burst out. “I can’t _have_ you go to work!”

Jeannette knew that no opposition from her mother would alter her

purpose. Where her mind was made up, her mother invariably capitulated.

It had been so for a long time, and Jeannette, at least, was aware of

it. As she foresaw the full measure of her mother’s distress when she

put her decision into effect, she came and knelt beside her chair,

gathered the tired figure in its absurd flannelette nightgown in her

arms and kissed the thin silky hair where it parted and showed the

papery white skin of her scalp. Mrs. Sturgis bent her head against

her daughter’s shoulder, while the tears trickled down her nose and

fell upon the girl’s bare arm. Jeannette murmured consolingly but her

mother refused to be comforted, indicating her disapproval by firm

little shakes of her head which she managed now and then between watery

sniffles.

There were finally many kisses between them and many loving assurances.

The girl promised to do nothing without careful consideration, and

they would all three discuss the proposition from every angle in the

morning. When they had said a last good-night and the girl had gone to

her room, Mrs. Sturgis still sat on under the hissing gas jet with the

red, torn shawl about her shoulders, the comforter across her knees.

The tears dried on her face, and for a long time she stared fixedly

before her, her lips moving unconsciously with her thoughts.

The little suite of rooms she had known so intimately for twelve long

years grew still; the chill of the dead of night crept in; Jeannette’s

light went out. Mrs. Sturgis reached for the canvas-covered ledger

on the table beside her and began a rapid calculation of figures on

its last page. For a long time she stared at the result, then rose

deliberately, and went into her room. There she cautiously pulled

an old trunk from the wall, unlocked its lid, raised a dilapidated

tray, and knelt down. In the bottom was an old _papier-maché_ box,

battered and scratched, with rubbed corners. She opened this and began

carefully to examine its contents. There was the old brooch pin Ralph

had given her after the first concert they attended together, and

there were her mother’s coral earrings and necklace, and the little

silver buckles Jeannette had worn on her first baby shoes. There were

some other trinkets: a stud, Ralph’s collapsible gold pencil, a French

five-franc piece, a scarf-pin from whose setting the stone was missing.

Tucked into a faded leather photograph case was a sheaf of folded

pawn tickets. That was the way her rings had gone, and the diamond

pin, Ralph’s jeweled cuff-links and the gold head of her father’s

ebony cane. She picked up the pair of silver buckles and examined

them in the palm of her hand; presently she added the gold brooch and

the collapsible pencil before she put back the contents of the trunk

and locked it. For some moments she stood in the center of her room

gently jingling these ornaments together. Then her eye travelled to

her bureau; slowly she approached it, and one after another lifted

the gold chains she wore during the day. These she disengaged from her

eye-glasses and watch, and wrapped them with the buckles and the brooch

in a bit of tissue paper pulled from a lower drawer. But still she did

not seem satisfied. With the tissue-paper package in her hand, she

sat on the edge of her bed, frowning thoughtfully, her fingers slowly

tapping her lips. Presently a light came into her eyes. She lit a

candle and stole softly through the girls’ rooms, into the great gaunt

chamber that was the studio. In one corner was a bookcase, overflowing

with old novels, magazines, and battered school-books. It was a

higgledy-piggledy collection of years, a library without value save

for five substantial volumes of Grove’s Musical Dictionary on a lower

shelf. Mrs. Sturgis knelt before these, drew them out one by one, and

laid them beside her on the floor. She opened the first volume and read

the inscription: “To my ever patient, gentle Henrietta, for five trying

years my devoted wife, true friend, and loving companion, from her

grateful and affectionate husband, Ralph.” There was the date,--twelve

years ago,--and he had died within six months after he had written

those words. Her fingers moved to her trembling lips and she frowned

darkly.

She closed the book, carried the five volumes to a shelf in a closet

near at hand, and tucked them out of sight in a far corner. There was

one last business to be performed: the books in the bookcase must be

rearranged to fill the vacant place where the dictionary had stood.

Mrs. Sturgis was not satisfied until her efforts seemed convincing. At

last she picked up her wavering candle and made her way back to her

own room. As she got into bed the old onyx clock on the mantel in the

dining-room struck three blurred notes upon its tiny harsh gong. Only

when darkness had shut down and the night was silent, did tears come

to the tired eyes. There was then a blinding rush, and a few quick,

strangling sobs. Mrs. Sturgis stifled these and wiped her eyes hardily

upon a fold of the rough sheet. She steadied a trembling lip with a

firm hand and resolutely turned upon her side to compose herself for

sleep.

CHAPTER II

§ 1

It took all Jeannette’s young vigorous determination to carry into

effect the plan she had conceived the night of the Armenian dance.

She met with an unexpected degree of opposition from her mother, and

even from Alice, who was as a rule indecisive, and the vaguest of

persons in expressing opinions. It was too grave a step; Janny might

come to regret it bitterly some day, and it might be too late then to

go back; Alice thought perhaps it would be wiser to wait awhile. But

Jeannette did not want to wait. The more she thought about being a

wage-earner, and her own mistress, free to do as she pleased and spend

her money as she chose, the more eager she was to be done with school

and the supervision of teachers. She felt suddenly grown up, and looked

enviously at the young women she met hurrying to the elevated station

at Ninety-third Street in the early mornings on their way downtown to

business. She noted how they dressed and critically observed those who

carried their lunches. She thought about what she should wear, the

kind of hat and shoes she would select, when she was one of them. If

it meant skipping her noonday meal entirely, she decided, she would

never be guilty of carrying lunch with her. Alice and her intimates at

school on a sudden became drearily young to her; she was irritated by

their giggling silliness. She chose to treat them all with a certain

aloofness, and began to regard herself already as a highly-paid, valued

secretary of the president of a large corporation. In the evenings she

found excuses for visiting Rosa Najarian and eagerly listened to the

older girl’s account of the business routine of her days.

The tuition at the Gerard Commercial School for ten weeks’ instruction

in shorthand and typing was fifty dollars payable in advance, and it

was her inability to get this sum that prevented Jeannette from putting

her plan immediately into effect. She made herself unhappy and her

mother and sister unhappy by worrying about it. Mrs. Sturgis fretted

uncomfortably. She alone was aware of an easy way by which the money

could be obtained, but since she did not approve of her daughter’s

purpose, she had no inclination to divulge it.

A five thousand dollar paid-up insurance policy from a benevolent

society had become hers at the time of her husband’s death. It

represented a nest-egg, the thought of which had always been the

greatest comfort to her. In sickness or in case of her death, the girls

would have something; they would not be left absolutely destitute. She

had never mentioned this policy to her daughters, always being afraid

she might borrow on it, and many a time she had been sorely tempted to

do so. With the knowledge of its existence unshared with anyone, Mrs.

Sturgis felt herself equal to temptation; but once taking her children

into her confidence, she feared she would soon weakly make inroads upon

it.

Now as Jeannette became restive and impatient for want of fifty

dollars, her mother grew correspondingly depressed. It was to protect

herself against just such wild-goose schemes as this, she told herself

over and over, that she had refrained from telling her darlings

anything about the money.

But events, unforeseen, and from her point of view, calamitous, robbed

her of her fortitude, and forced her to play into her daughter’s hands.

Scarlet fever broke out in the neighborhood; an epidemic swept the

upper West Side; the Wednesday and Saturday lessons,--all of them,--had

to be discontinued; Miss Loughborough’s school closed its doors. Mrs.

Sturgis found some music to copy, but the money she earned in this way

was far short of the meager income upon which she and her daughters

had depended. The days stretched into weeks and still new cases were

reported in the district. The time came when there was actual want in

the little household, literally no money with which to buy food, and no

further credit to be had among the tradespeople.

Jeannette applied for and secured the promise of a job in a small

upholsterer’s shop in the neighborhood at six dollars a week, and in

the face of her firm resolution to accept the offer and go to work on

the following Monday morning, Mrs. Sturgis confessed her secret. As she

had foreseen, Jeannette had little difficulty in persuading her,--since

now she would be compelled to borrow on her store,--to make the amount

of her loan fifty dollars additional.

“Why, Mama, I’ll be earning that much a month in ten weeks, and I can

pay it back to you in no time.”

“I know--I know, dearie. But I just hate to do it.”

Eventually, she gave way before her daughter’s flood of arguments.

It was what she had feared ever since Ralph died; there would be no

stopping now the inroads upon her little capital; she saw the beginning

of the end.

But Jeannette went triumphantly to school.

§ 2

After the first few days while she felt herself conspicuous as a new

pupil, she began to enjoy herself immensely. The studies fascinated

her. Hers was an alert mind and she was unusually intelligent. She

had always been regarded as an exceptionally bright student, but she

had achieved this reputation with little application. Her school work

heretofore had represented merely “lessons” to her; it had never

carried any significance. But now she threw herself with all the

intensity of her nature upon what seemed to her a vital business.

She realized she had only ten weeks in which to master shorthand and

typing, and at the end of that time would come the test of her ability

to fill a position as stenographer. She dared not risk the humiliation

of failure; her pride,--the strongest element in her make-up,--would

not permit it. She must work, work, work; she must utilize every hour,

every minute of these precious weeks of instruction!

The girl knew in her heart that she had many of the qualifications of

a good secretary. She was pretty, she was well-mannered, intelligent,

and could speak and write good English. To find ample justification for

this estimate, she had but to compare herself with other girls in the

school. These for the most part were foreign-born. A large percentage

were Jewesses, thick-lipped and large-nosed, with heavy black coils of

hair worn over ill-disguised “rats.” Jeannette detected a finer type,

but even to these exceptions she felt herself superior. They chewed gum

a great deal, and shrieked over their confidences as they ate their

lunches out of cardboard boxes at the noon hour. She could not bring

herself to associate with such girls, and forestalled any approach to

friendliness on their part by choosing a remote corner to devote the

leisure minutes to study. In consequence she became the butt of much

of their silly laughter, and though she winced at these whisperings

and jibes, she never betrayed annoyance. There was a sprinkling of

men and boys throughout the school, but the male element was made up

of middle-aged dullards and pimply-necked raw youths, none of whom

interested her.

The weeks fled by, and Jeannette was carried along on an undiminished

wave of excitement. Everything she coveted most in the world depended

upon her winning a diploma from the school at the end of the ten weeks’

instruction. She discovered soon after her enrollment, that while this

might be physically possible, it was rarely accomplished, and most of

her fellow students had been attending the school for months. A diploma

represented to her the measure of success, and as the time grew shorter

before she was to take the final examinations, she could hardly sleep

from the intensity of her emotions.

At home, matters had materially improved. The epidemic was over; Miss

Loughborough’s school had reopened its doors, and Mrs. Sturgis was

again beginning to fill her Wednesdays and Saturdays with lessons.

But the problem of finances was still unsolved. There was a loan of

five hundred dollars now on the insurance policy, and Jeannette foresaw

her mother would not cease to fret and worry over that until it had

somehow been paid back. Everything, it seemed to her, depended on her

success at school. There was no hope for the little family otherwise.

Alice--trusting, complacent little Alice--was not the type who could

shoulder any of the burden; her mother was perceptibly not as strong as

she had been. There would always be debts, there would always be worry,

there would always be skimping and self-denial, unless she, Jeannette,

got a job and went to work.

Weary with fatigue, she would drive herself at her practice on the

rented typewriter in the studio every evening until her back flamed

with fire and her fingertips grew sore. She made Alice read aloud

to her while she filled page after page in her note-book with her

hooks and dashes, until her sister drooped with sleep. Mrs. Sturgis

protested, actually cried a little. The child was killing herself to no

purpose! There wasn’t any sense in working so hard! She was wasting her

time and it would end by their having a doctor!

Jeannette shook her head and held her peace, but when the reward came

and old Roger Mason, who had been principal of the school for nearly

twenty years, sent for her and told her he wanted to congratulate her

on the excellent showing she had made, she felt amply compensated. But

none of those who eagerly congratulated her,--not even her mother nor

Alice,--suspected how infinitely harder than mastering her lessons had

been what she had endured from the jeering, mimicking girls who had

made fun of her through the dreadful ten weeks.

But that was all behind her now. She could forget it. She had justified

herself, and stood ready to prove to her mother and sister that she

could now fill a position as a regular stenographer, could hold it,

and moreover bring them material help. She was all eagerness to

begin,--frightened at the prospect, yet confident of success.

§ 3

Graduates of the Gerard Commercial School ordinarily did not have to

wait long for a job. The demand for stenographers was usually in excess

of the supply. Little Miss Ingram, down at the school, who had in hand

the matter of finding positions for Gerard graduates, was interested

in obtaining the best that was available for Miss Sturgis who had made

such an excellent record, and Jeannette was thrilled one morning at

receiving a note asking her to report at the school without delay if

she wished employment.

Miss Ingram handed her an address on Fourth Avenue.

“It’s a publishing house. They publish subscription books, I

think,--something of that sort. I don’t urge you to take it,--something

better may come along,--but you can look them over and see how you

think you’d like it. They’ll pay fifteen.”

“Fifteen a week?” Jeanette raised delighted eyes. “Oh, Miss Ingram, do

you think I can please them? Do you think they’ll give me a chance?”

Miss Ingram smiled and squeezed Jeannette’s arm reassuringly.

“Of course, my dear, and they’ll be delighted with you. You’re a great

deal better equipped than most of our girls.”

The Soulé Publishing Company occupied a spacious floor of a tall

building on Fourth Avenue. Jeannette was deafened by the clatter of

typewriters as she stepped out of the elevator.

The loft was filled with long lines of girls seated at typewriting

machines and at great broad-topped tables piled high with folded

circulars. Figures, silhouetted against the distant windows, moved to

and fro between the aisles. It was a turmoil of noise and confusion.

As she stood before the low wooden railing that separated her from it

all, trying to adjust her eyes to the kaleidoscopic effect of movement

and light, a pert young voice addressed her:

“Who did chou want t’ see, ple-ease?”

A little Jewess of some fourteen or fifteen years with an elaborate

coiffure surmounting her peaked pale face was eyeing her inquiringly.

“I called to see about--about a position as stenographer.”

Jeannette’s voice all but failed her; the words fogged in her throat.

“Typist or regular steno?”

“Stenographer, I think; shorthand and transcription,--wasn’t that what

was wanted?”

“See Miss Gibson; first desk over there, end of third aisle.” The

little girl swung back a gate in the railing, screwed up the corners of

her mouth, tucked a stray hair into place at the nape of her neck, and

with an assumed expression of elaborate boredom waited for Jeannette to

pass through.

It took courage to invade that region of bustle and clamor. Jeannette

advanced with faltering step, felt the waters close over her head,

and herself engulfed in the whirling tide. Once of it, it did not

seem so terrifying. Already her ears were becoming attuned to the

rat-ti-tat-tating that hummed in a roar about her, and her eyes

accustomed to the flying fingers, the flashing paper, the bobbing

heads, and hurrying figures.

Miss Gibson was a placid, gray-haired woman, large-busted and severely

dressed in an immaculate shirtwaist that was tucked trimly into a snug

belt about her firm, round person.

She smiled perfunctorily at the girl as she indicated the chair beside

her desk. Jeannette felt her eyes swiftly taking inventory of her. Her

interrogations were of the briefest. She made a note of Jeannette’s

age, name and address, and schooling. She then launched into a

description of the work.

The Soulé Publishing Company sold a great many books by subscription:

_Secret Memoirs_, _The Favorites of Great Kings_, _A Compendium of

Mortal Knowledge_. Their most recent publication was a twenty-five

volume work entitled _A Universal History of the World_. This set of

books was supposed to contain a complete historical record of events

from the beginning of time, and was composed of excerpts from the

writings of great historians, all deftly welded together to make a

comprehensive narrative. A tremendous advertising campaign was in

progress; all magazines carried full-page advertisements, and a coupon

clipped from a corner of them brought a sample volume by mail for

inspection. When these volumes were returned, they were accompanied

by an order or a letter giving the reason why none was enclosed.

To the latter, a personal reply was immediately written by Mr.

Beardsley,--Miss Gibson indicated a young man seated by a window some

few desks away. He dictated to a corps of stenographers, and followed

up his first letters with others, each containing an argument in favor

of the books.

Miss Gibson enunciated this information with a glibness that suggested

many previous recitations. When she had finished, with disconcerting

abruptness, she asked Jeannette if she thought she could do the work.

The girl, taken aback, could only stare blankly; she had no idea

whether she could do it or not; she shook her head aimlessly. Miss

Gibson frowned.

“Well,--we’ll see what you can do,” she declared. “Miss Rosen,” she

called, and as a young Jewess came toward them, she directed: “Take

Miss--Miss”--she glanced at her notes,--“Sturgis to the cloak room, and

bring her back here.”

Jeannette’s mind was a confused jumble. “They won’t kill me,--they

won’t eat me,” she found herself thinking.

Presently she stood before Miss Gibson once more. The woman glanced at

her, and rose.

“Come this way.” They walked toward the young man she had previously

indicated.

“Mr. Beardsley, try this girl out. She comes from the Gerard School,

but she’s had no practical experience.”

Jeannette looked into a pleasant boy’s face. He had an even row of

glittering white teeth, a small, quaint mouth that stretched tightly

across them when he smiled, blue eyes, and rather unruly stuck-up hair.

She wanted to please him--she could please him--he seemed nice.

“Miss--Miss--I beg pardon,--Miss Gibson did not mention the name.”

“Sturgis.”

“There’s a vacant table over there. You can have a Remington or an

Underwood--anything you are accustomed to; we have all styles.... Miss

Flannigan, take charge of Miss Sturgis, will you?”

A big-boned Irish girl came toward him. She was a slovenly type but

apparently disposed to be friendly.

“I’ll lend you a note-book and pencils till you can draw your own from

the stock clerk. You have to make out a requisition for everything you

want, here. You’ll find paper in that drawer, and that’s a Remington if

you use one.”

Jeannette slipped into the straight-back chair and settled with a sense

of relief before the flimsy little table on which the typewriter stood.

She was eager for a moment’s inconspicuousness.

“This is the kind of stuff he gives you.”

Miss Flannigan leaned over from behind and offered her several yellow

sheets of typewriting.

Jeannette took them with a murmured thanks, and began to read.

“... deferred payment plan. Five dollars will immediately secure this

handsome twenty-five volume set.... On the first of May, the price of

these books, as advertised, must advance, but by subscribing now....”

She wet her dry lips and glanced at another page.

“The authenticity of these sources of historical information cannot be

doubted.... Eliminating the traditions which can hardly be accepted as

dependable chronicles, we turn to the Egyptian records which are still

extant in graven symbols.”

She couldn’t do it! It was harder than anything she had ever had in

practice! She saw failure confronting her. The sting of tears pricked

her eyes, and she pressed her lips tightly together.

Blindly she picked up a stiff bristle brush and began to clean the

type of her machine. She slipped in a sheet of paper, and, to distract

herself, rattled off briskly some of her school exercises. Those other

girls could do it! She saw them glancing at their notes, and busily

clicking at their machines. They did not seem to be having difficulty.

Miss Flannigan,--that raw-boned Irish girl with no breeding, no

education, no brains!--how was it that _she_ managed it?

She frowned savagely and her fingers flew.

“Miss Sturgis.”

Young Mr. Beardsley was smiling at her invitingly. She rose, gathering

up her pencils and note-book.

“Sit down, Miss Sturgis. This work may seem a little difficult to you

at first but you’ll soon get on to it. Most of these letters are very

much alike. There’s no particular accuracy required. The idea is to get

in closer touch with these people who have written in or inquired about

the books, and we write them personal letters for the effect the direct

message....”

He went on explaining, amiably, reassuringly. Jeannette thawed under

his pleasant manner; confidence came surging back. She made up her mind

she liked this young man; he was considerate, he was kind, he was a

gentleman.

“The idea, of course, is always to have your letters intelligible.

If you don’t understand what you have written, the person to whom it

is addressed, won’t either. I don’t care whether you get my actual

words or not. You’re always at liberty to phrase a sentence any way

you choose as long as it makes sense.... Now let’s see; we’ll try one.

Frank Curry, R.F.D. 1, Topeka, Kansas.... I’ll go slow at first, but if

I forget and get going too rapidly, don’t hesitate to stop me.”

Jeannette, with her note-book balanced on her knee, bent to her work.

Beardsley spoke slowly and distinctly. After the first moments of

agonizing despair, she began to catch her breath and concentrate on

the formation of her notes. More than once she was tempted to write a

word out long-hand; she hesitated over “historical,” “consummation,”

“inaccurate.” She had been told at school never to permit herself to do

this. Better to fail at first, they had said, than to grow to depend on

slipshod ways.

The ordeal lasted half-an-hour.

“Suppose you try that much, Miss Sturgis, and see how you get along.”

She rose and gathered up the bundle of letters. Beardsley gave her a

friendly, encouraging smile as she turned away.

“How pleasant and kind everyone is!” Jeannette thought as she made her

way back to her little table.

But her heart died within her as she began to decipher her notes.

Again and again they seemed utterly meaningless,--a whole page of

them when the curlicues, hooks and dashes looked to her like so many

aimless pencil marks. She frowned and bent over her book despairingly,

squeezing hard the fingers of her clasped hands together. What had he

said! How had he begun that paragraph? ... Oh, she hadn’t had enough

training yet, not enough experience! She couldn’t do it! She’d have to

go to him and tell him she couldn’t do the work! And he had been so

kind to her! And she would have to tell capable, friendly Miss Gibson

that a month or two more in school perhaps would be wiser before she

could attempt to do the work of a regular stenographer! And there were

her mother and sister, too! She would have to confess to them as well

that she had failed! The thought strangled her. Tears brimmed her eyes.

“Perhaps you’re in trouble? Can I help?” A gentle voice from across

the narrow aisle addressed her. Jeannette through blurred vision saw a

round, white face with kindly sympathetic eyes looking at her.

“What system do you use? The Munson? ... That’s good. Let me see your

notes. Just read as far as you can; his letters are so much alike, I

think I can help you.”

Jeannette winked away the wetness in her eyes, and read what she was

able.

“Oh, yes, I know,” interrupted this new friend; “it goes this way.” She

flashed a paper into her machine and clicked out with twinkling fingers

a dozen lines.

“See if that isn’t it,” said the girl handing her the paper.

Jeannette read the typewritten lines and referred to her notes.

“Yes, it’s just the same.” Her eyes shone. “I’m _so_ much obliged.”

“It seemed to me awfully hard at first. I thought I never could do it.”

“Did you?” Jeannette smiled gratefully.

“Oh, yes; we all had an awful time. He uses such outlandish words.”

§ 4

The morning was gone before she knew it. She went out at lunch-time,

walked a few blocks up Fourth Avenue and then turned back to the

office. She did not eat; she did not want any lunch; her mind was

absorbed in her work; she had hardly left the building before she

wanted to get back to her desk, to recopy a letter or two in which she

had made some erasures. The afternoon fled like the morning.

A whirl of confused impressions spun about in her brain as she shut

her eyes and tried to go to sleep that night. Although she ached with

fatigue, she was too excited to lose consciousness at once. The day’s

events, like a merry-go-round, wheeled around and around her. On the

whole she was satisfied. She had finished all of the letters Mr.

Beardsley had given her; he had beckoned her to come to him after he

had read them, had commended her, and given her back but one to correct

in which the punctuation was faulty.

“I’m sure you’ll do all right, Miss Sturgis,” he told her. “You’ll find

it much easier as soon as you get used to the work.”

And Jeannette felt she had made a real friend in Miss Alexander, the

girl across the aisle who had so generously, so wonderfully helped

her. Among the riff-raff of girls that surged in and out of the

office, cheaply dressed, loud-laughing, common little chits, Beatrice

Alexander was easily recognizable as belonging to Jeannette’s own

class. Each had discerned in the other a similarity of thought, of

taste and refinement that drew them immediately together.

A wonderful, tremendous feeling of importance and self-respect came to

Jeannette as she had made her way across crowded Twenty-third Street

and encountered a great tide of other workers homeward bound; as

she climbed the steep elevated station steps, and with the pushing,

jostling crowd wedged her way on board a train; as she hung to a strap

in the swaying car and squeezed herself through the jam of people about

the doorway when Ninety-third Street was reached, and as she walked the

brief block and a half that remained before she was at last at home.

Every instant of the way she hugged the soul-satisfying thought that

she had proven herself; now she was truly a full-fledged wage-earner, a

working girl. She had achieved, she felt, economic value.

§ 5

Life began to take on a new flavor. The future held hidden golden

promises. Jeannette had always had a protecting, proprietary attitude

toward her mother and Alice, but now she was acutely aware of it, and

the thought was sweet to her; she revelled in the prospect of the rôle

she must inevitably assume. All her world was centered in her eager,

hard-working, ever-cheerful, fussy little mother, and her gentle

brown-eyed sister who looked up to her with such adoration and implicit

faith. Jeannette felt she had forever established their confidence in

her by this successful step into the business world. Her mother had

been completely won by her good fortune, and her stout little bosom

swelled with pride in her daughter’s achievement. Eagerly she told her

pupils about it, and even regaled with the news fat good-natured Signor

Bellini and politely indifferent Miss Loughborough.

To Jeannette, the Soulé Publishing Company became at once a concern of

tremendous importance. Before little Miss Ingram had mentioned its name

to her, she was not sure she had ever heard it. Now she seemed to see

it wherever she turned, heard about it in chance conversations at least

once a day; it leaped at her from advertisements in the newspapers and

from the pages of magazines. Books, she casually picked up, bore its

imprint. A great pride in the big company that employed her came to

her: it was the largest and most enterprising of all publishing houses;

it was spending a million dollars advertising _The Universal History of

the World_; it had hundreds of employees on its pay-roll!

If there were less roseate aspects of the concern that paid her fifteen

dollars every Saturday, Jeannette did not see them. She never stopped

to examine critically the history she was helping to sell, nor to

glance into the pages of the _Secret Memoirs_, nor to open the leaves

of the set of books labelled _Favorites of Great Kings_. She never

thought it curious that the firm employed so many cheaply dressed,

vulgar-tongued little Jewesses, and sallow-skinned, covert-eyed girls.

Nor did she wonder that she never observed any important-looking

individuals who might be officials of the company, walking about or

up and down the aisles of the racketting, bustling loft. There was

only Mr. Kent. The others, whoever they might be, confined their

activities, she came to understand, to the main offices of the Company

on West Thirty-second Street. This great loft with its sea of life was

only a temporary arrangement,--part of the great selling campaign by

which a hundred thousand sets of the History were to be sold before

May first. Something of tremendous import was to happen on this

fateful date,--an upheaval in trade conditions, a great change in the

publishing world. Jeannette was not sure what it was all to be about,

but she was convinced that after May first, the public would no longer

have this wonderful chance to buy the twenty-five volumes of the

History at such a ridiculously low price.

Behind glass partitions in one corner of the extensive floor were the

inner offices,--the “holy of holies” Jeannette thought of them,--where

Mr. Edmund Kent existed, pulled wires, touched bells, and gave orders

that generalled the activities of the hundreds of human beings who

clicked away at their typewriters, or deftly folded thousands and

thousands of circulars, to tuck into waiting envelopes that were later

dragged away in grimy, striped-canvas mail sacks. Mr. Edmund Kent

was the Napoleon, the great King, the Far-seeing Master who in his

awesome, mysterious glass-partitioned office, ruled them with arbitrary

and benevolent power. All day long, Jeannette heard Mr. Kent’s name

mentioned. Miss Gibson quoted him; Mr. Beardsley decided this or that

important matter must be referred to him. What Mr. Kent thought, said,

did, was final. The girl used to catch a glimpse of the great man, now

and then, as he came in, in the morning, or went out to a late lunch:

a square-shouldered, firm-stepping man with a derby hat, a straight,

trim mustache, and an overcoat whose corners flapped about his knees.

He seemed wonderful to her.

“Shhhh....” a whisper would come from one of the girls near by;

“there’s Mr. Kent”; and all would watch him out of the corners of their

eyes as they pretended to bend over their work.

“Mr. Kent is President of the Company?” Jeannette one day ventured to

ask Mr. Beardsley.

“Oh, no, just the selling agent,” he replied. This was perplexing, but

it did not make Jeannette regard with any less veneration the stocky

figure in derby hat and flapping coat corners which strode in and out

of the office.

There were other mysterious persons who had desks in the “holy of

holies,” but Jeannette was never able to make out who these were, nor

what might be their duties. Miss Gibson was in charge of the girls on

the floor; Mr. Beardsley was her immediate “boss.” There was a cashier

who made up the pay-roll and whose assistants handed out the little

manila envelopes on Saturday morning containing the neatly folded

bills. She had no occasion to be concerned about anyone else.

Her “boss’s” full name was Roy Beardsley. _Roy!_ She smiled when

she heard it. He was young,--twenty-three or-four; he was a recent

Princeton graduate, was unmarried and lived in a boarding-house

somewhere on Madison Avenue. She found out so much from the girls her

second day at the office; they were glib with information concerning

any one of the force.

Jeannette liked her young boss, principally because it soon became

apparent that he treated her with a courtesy he did not accord

the other girls. She was, after all, a “lady,” she told herself,

straightening her shoulders a trifle, and he was sufficiently well-bred

himself to recognize that fact. He must see, of course, the difference

between herself and such girls as--well--as Miss Flannigan, for

instance. But more than this, Jeannette grew daily more and more

convinced that he was beginning to take a personal interest in her

for which none of these considerations accounted. Nothing definite

between them gave this justification. There was no word, no inflection

of voice that had any significance, but she saw it in a quick glimpse

of his blue eyes watching her as she sat beside his desk, in the smile

of his strange little mouth that stretched itself tightly across

his small teeth when he first greeted her in the day and wished her

“good-morning.” Some strange thrilling of her pulses beset her as she

sat near him. It irritated her; she struggled against it, even rose to

her feet and went to her desk upon a manufactured excuse to check the

subtle influence that began to steal upon her when she was near him.

All her instincts battled against this upsetting something, whatever it

was,--she could not identify it by a name--which began more and more to

trouble her.

Jeannette was a normal, healthy girl budding into womanhood, with

broadening horizons and rapidly increasing intimate associations with

the world. She was growing daily more mature, more impressive in her

bearing, and notably more beautiful. She was fully conscious of this.

Her mirror told her so, the glances of men on the street contributed

their evidence, the covert inspection of her own sex both in and out

of the office confirmed it. She was becoming aware, too, of a growing

self-confidence, of poise and power in herself that she had never

suspected.

With what constituted “crushes,” “cases,” with what was implied in

saying one was “smitten,” she was thoroughly familiar. To a confidant

she would now have frankly described Roy Beardsley as having a “crush”

on her. He was not the first youth of whom she could have truthfully

said as much. Various boys at one time or another, during her school

days, had slipped notes to her as they passed her desk, or shamblingly

trailed her home after school, carrying her books for her, and had

hung around the doorstep of the apartment house, loitering over their

leave-taking, digging the toe of a shoe into the pavement, grinning

foolishly. Some of them had confided to her that they “loved” her

and asked her to promise to be their “girl.” She, herself, had had a

“terrible case” on a vaudeville dancer named Maurice Monteagle, and on

a youth of Greek extraction who worked in Bannerman’s Drug Store on the

corner near her home, tended the soda-water counter there and whose

name she never learned.

But in none of these affairs of her young heart had there been anything

like this. She began by being somewhat flattered by Beardsley’s

attention, and was guilty of provoking him a little at first with a

smile and glance. Like all girls of her age, she had been willing, even

anxious, to whip his interest into flame. But she soon grew frightened.

There was now something in the air, something in herself she could

not quite control; she could not still the sudden throbbing of her

heart, the swimming of her senses. The moment came when she actually

dreaded meeting him in the mornings, when the minutes she was obliged

to sit beside his desk and listen to the peculiar little twang in his

voice were an ordeal. She dared not lift her eyes to meet his, but she

could see his long white fingers moving about on the desk, playing with

pencil and pen, and she could feel him looking at her when his voice

fell silent. These were the moments that disturbed her most, when she

could not--not for the life of her--control the mounting color that

began somewhere deep down within her, and swept up into her cheeks,

over her temples, to the roots of her hair. She had to rest her hand

against her note-book, to keep it from trembling. During these silences

when she felt him studying her she sometimes thought she must scream or

do something mad, unless he turned his eyes elsewhere. She seriously

considered resigning and seeking another position.

§ 6

Jeannette drank deeply of satisfaction in being a wage-earner. She

walked the streets of the city with a buoyant tread; she gazed with

pride and affection into the eyes of other working girls she passed;

she was self-supporting like them; she had something in common with

each and every one of them; there was a great bond that drew them all

together.

But while she felt thus affectionately sympathetic to these girls in

the mass, no one of them drew the line of social distinction more

rigidly, even more cruelly than did she, herself. She felt she was the

superior of the vast majority of them, and the equal of the best.

She might not be earning the salary perhaps some of them did who

were private secretaries, but she was confident that she would. Her

experience with stenography confirmed this self-confidence. With three

weeks of actual practice the trick, the knack, the knowledge,--whatever

it was,--had come to her of a sudden. Now she could sweep her pencil

across the page of her note-book, leaving in its wake an easy string

of curves, dots and dashes, setting them down automatically, keeping

pace with even the swiftest of young Beardsley’s sentences. Nothing

could stop her progress in the business world; she loved being of it,

revelled in its atmosphere, realizing that she was cleverer than most

men, shrewder, quicker, with the additional advantage of unerring

intuition.

This new-born ambition told her to keep herself aloof from other

working girls. Not that she had any inclination to associate with them;

they offended her,--not only those in the office but the giggling,

simpering girls she saw on the street, who were obviously of the same

class, teetering along on ridiculously high heels, wearing imitation

furs, and building their hair into enormous bulging pompadours. They

were the kind who did not leave the offices where they worked at the

noon hour but gathered in groups to eat their lunches out of cardboard

boxes and left a litter of crumbs on the floor; they were the kind who

crowded Childs’ restaurant, adding their shrill voices and shrieks to

the deafening clatter of banging crockery.

Jeannette, feeling that it was a working girl’s privilege to become an

habitué of Childs’, eagerly entered one of these restaurants at a noon

hour during the early days of her employment. Accustomed as she had

become to the din of an office, the noise in the eating place did not

distress her. But she shrank from rubbing elbows with neighbors whose

manner of feeding themselves horrified her. A study of the price card

and an estimate of what she could buy for fifteen cents, the amount she

decided she might properly allow herself for lunches, completed her

dissatisfaction with the restaurant and similar places. She decided

to go without lunch and to spend the leisure time of her noon-hour

wandering up and down Fifth Avenue and Broadway, looking into shop

windows,--- Lord & Taylor’s, Arnold Constable’s and even Tiffany’s on

Union Square,--and in making tours of inspection through the aisles of

Siegel-Cooper’s mammoth establishment on Sixth Avenue.

It was in the rotunda of this gigantic store, where stood a great

golden symbolic figure of a laurel-crowned woman, that there was a

large circular candy counter and soda fountain, and here the girl

discovered one might get coffee, creamed and sugared, and served in a

neat little flowered china cup, and two saltine crackers on the edge of

the saucer, for a nickel. In time, this came to constitute her daily

lunch. She could stand at the counter, sipping her drink, and nibbling

the crackers at her ease, feeling inconspicuous and comfortable,

presenting, she realized, merely the appearance of a lady shopper, who

had taken a moment from her purchasing for a bit of refreshment.

The nourishment, slight as it was, proved sufficient. On the days she

had gone lunchless, she had developed headaches late in the afternoon,

but the coffee and crackers, she found, were enough to sustain her from

a seven o’clock breakfast to dinner at six-thirty. A nickel for lunch,

a dime for carfare--sometimes she walked downtown--took less than a

dollar out of her weekly wage. That left fourteen dollars to spend as

she liked. She gave her mother nine and kept five for clothes. Five

dollars a week for new clothes! Her heart never failed to leap with joy

at the thought. Five dollars a week to save or to spend for whatever

she fancied! Oh, life was too wonderful! Just to exist these days and

to plan how she would dress herself, and what else she would do with

her earnings, filled her cup of joy to the brim.

Her little mother protested vehemently when she put nine dollars in

crisp bills into her hand at the end of the first week of work.

“Oh--dearie! What’s this? ... What’s all this money for?”

“It’s what I’m going to give you every week, Mama.”

Mrs. Sturgis for a moment was speechless, gazing with wide eyes into

her daughter’s smiling face. She wouldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t hear

of such a thing. It was the child’s own money that she had earned

herself and not one cent of it should go for any old stupid bills or

household expenses. She shook her head until her round fat cheeks

trembled like cupped jelly.

But Jeannette had her way, as she knew, and her mother knew, and

admiring, exclaiming Alice knew she would from the first. That same

evening, after the pots and pans and the supper dishes had been washed,

Mrs. Sturgis established herself under the light at the dining-room

table with the canvas-covered ledger before her and began to figure.

Thirty-six dollars a month! Thirty-six dollars a month! Six times six?

That was ...? Why, they’d almost be out of debt in six months! And they

wouldn’t need to fall behind a cent during summer! It was wonderful! It

was too--too wonderful! Tears filmed Mrs. Sturgis’ bright blue eyes;

her glasses fogged so that she had to take them off and wipe them. She

didn’t deserve such daughters! No woman ever had better girls!

They got laughing happily, excitedly over this, an hysterical sob

threatening each. They kissed each other, the girls kneeling by their

mother’s chair, their arms around one another, and clung together. And

then Alice said she had half a mind to go to work, too, and do her

share.

But there was an immediate outcry at this from both her mother and

sister. What nonsense! What a foolish idea! She mustn’t _think_ of such

a thing! Just because Jeannette had given up her schooling and gone

out into the world was no reason why both sisters should do it. There

was not the slightest necessity. Alice’s place was at school and at

home. Some one had to run the house; that was her contribution. She was

fitted for it in every way: she was domestic, she liked to cook and she

liked to clean.

A still more convincing argument that persuaded apologetic Alice that

indeed she was quite wrong, and her mother and sister were entirely

right, was voiced by Jeannette. Alice had much too retiring a nature

to be a success in business. Assurance, self-assertiveness, even

boldness were required, and Alice had none of these qualities. This

was undeniably true; they all agreed to it. It seemed to be the last

word on the matter; the topic was dismissed. Mrs. Sturgis went back to

figuring on her bills; Jeannette to speculating about Roy Beardsley as

she darned a tear in an old shirtwaist.

“I’ve often wondered,” ventured Alice after a considerable pause, “just

what I should do,--how I could support myself if both of you happened

to die. I mean--well, if Jeannette should go off somewhere,--to Europe,

maybe,--and Mother should get sick, and I should have to....”

Her voice trailed off into silence before the astonished looks turned

upon her.

“Well, upon my word ...” began Jeannette.

“Why, Alice dearie, what’s got into you?”

“You’re going to kill us both off,--is that it? I’m to run away and

leave Mother sick on your hands?”

“I mean--well, I meant----” struggled the confused Alice.

“Dearie,” said her mother, “you won’t have to worry about the future.

Mama’ll take care of you until some nice worthy young man comes along

to claim you for his own.”

“You’ll be married, Allie dear, long before I will. You’re just the

kind rich men fall madly in love with.”

“Oh, hush, Janny! ... please.”

But her sister’s thoughts were already upon a more engaging matter. She

was busy once again with Roy Beardsley.

CHAPTER III

§ 1

Spring burst upon New York with a warm breath and a rush of green.

The gentle season folded the city lovingly in its arms. Everywhere

were the evidences of its magic presence. The trees shimmered with

green, shrubbery that peeped through iron fence grillings vigorously

put forth new leaves, patches of grass in the areaways of brownstone

houses turned freshly verdant, hotels upon the Avenue took on a brave

and festal aspect with blooming flower-boxes in their windows, florist

shops exhaled delicate perfumes of field flowers and turned gay the

sidewalks before their doors with rows of potted loveliness, the Park

became an elysian field of soft invitingness, with emerald glades

and vistas of enchantment like tapestries of Fontainebleau. Spring

was evident in women’s hats, in shop windows, in the crowded tops of

lumbering three-horse buses, in the reappearance of hansom cabs, in

open automobiles, in the smiling faces of men and women, in the elastic

step of pedestrians. Spring had come to New York; the very walls of

houses and pavements of the streets flashed back joyously the golden

caressing radiance of the sun.

Walking downtown to her office on an early morning through all this

exhilarating loveliness, stepping along with almost a skip in her gait

and a heart that danced to her brisk strides, Jeannette felt rather

than saw a man’s shadow at her elbow and turned to find Roy Beardsley

beside her, lifting his hat, and smiling at her with his tight little

mouth, his blue eyes twinkling.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, her fingers pressed hard against her heart. She

had been thinking of him almost from the moment she had left home.

“Morning.... You don’t mind if I walk along? ... It’s a wonderful

morning; isn’t it glorious?”

“Oh, my, yes,--it’s glorious.” She had herself in hand by another

moment and could return his smile. They had never stood near one

another before, and the girl noticed he was half-a-head shorter than

herself. There were other things the matter with him, seen thus upon

the street while other men were passing, and with his hat on! Jeannette

could not determine just what they were. Glancing at him furtively as

they walked together down the Avenue, she was conscious of a vague

disappointment.

“Do you walk downtown every morning?” he asked.

“Oh, sometimes. How did you happen to be up this way so early?”

“I take a stroll through the Park occasionally. It’s wonderful now.”

“Yes, it’s very beautiful.”

“I think New York’s the loveliest place in the world in spring.”

“Well, I guess it is,” she agreed.

“And you have to go through a long wet winter like this last one to

appreciate it.”

“Yes, I think you do.”

“I thought we’d never get rid of the snow.”

“They clean the streets up awfully quickly though;--don’t you think so?”

“Yes, they have a great system here.”

“The poor horses have a terrible time when it’s slippery.”

“There was a big electric hansom cab stuck in the snow for four days in

front of the place where I live. They had to dig it out,” he said.

“It makes the spring all the more enjoyable when the change comes.”

“Yes, the people seem to take a personal pride in the weather.”

“It’s as though they had something to do with it themselves.”

“That’s right I noticed it the first year I was here.”

“You’re not a New Yorker, then?”

“Oh, no; my home’s in San Francisco. I only came East three years ago

to go to college.”

“I thought you were ... one of the girls at the office mentioned you

were a Princeton man.”

“I was, but I ... well, I flunked out at Christmas. I was tired of

college, anyway. I wanted to go into newspaper work, but I couldn’t get

a job with any of the metropolitan dailies, so temporarily I am trying

to help sell the _Universal History of the World_.”

They talked at random, the man inclined to give more of his personal

history; the girl, pretending indifference, commented on the steady

encroachment of stores upon these sacred fastnesses, the homes of the

rich. She interrupted him with an exclamation every now and then, to

point out some object of interest on the street, or something in a shop

window.

It was thrilling to be walking together down the brilliant Avenue

in the soft, morning sunshine. They paused at Madison Square before

beginning to weave their way through the traffic of the street, and

striking across the Park, gay with beds of yellow tulips, trees budding

into leaf, and fountains playing. Roy put his hand under the girl’s

forearm to guide her. The touch of his fingers burnt, and set her

pulses thrilling. She pointedly disengaged herself, withdrawing her

arm, when they reached the farther side of the Avenue.

Crossing the Square, she glanced at him critically once more. He seemed

absurdly young,--a mere college boy with his cloth hat at a youthful

angle, his slim young shoulders sharply outlined in the belted jacket.

It was possible he was a few years her senior, but she felt vastly

older.

He was commenting on the portentous date, May first, when the price

of the History was to advance. The company had somehow succeeded in

postponing the fateful day for two weeks, and the public was to have a

fortnight longer in which to take advantage of the low prices.

“... and after that, no one knows what will happen. Perhaps we’ll all

lose our jobs.”

“Oh,--do you really think so?” Jeannette was aghast.

“Well, some of us will go; they can’t continue to keep _that_ mob on

the pay-roll. I don’t think they’ll let you go, though, you’re such a

dandy stenographer. I shall certainly recommend them to keep you, but I

doubt if they’ll have any further use for me. They’ll let me out, all

right.”

He smiled whimsically. It was this whimsical smile the girl found so

appealing and so--so disconcerting.

“I shall be sorry if that happens,” she said slowly.

“Will you?”

“Why, of course.”

“But will you be really sorry if--if I’m no longer there?”

“We-ll,--it will be hard getting used to someone else’s dictation; I’m

accustomed to yours now.”

“Yes,--I’ll be sorry to go,” he said after a moment. “I like the work,

after a fashion, ... but, of course, it isn’t getting me anywhere. I

want to write; I’ve always been interested in that. If I could get

any kind of work on a newspaper or a magazine, it would suit me fine.

My father’s awfully sore at me for being dropped at Princeton. He’s a

minister, you know,”--Beardsley laughed deprecatingly with a glance at

his companion’s face,--“and he didn’t like it a little bit. I didn’t

want to go back home like--well--like the prodigal son, so I wrote him

I’d get a job in New York, and see what I could do for myself.”

“I see,” the girl said with another swift survey of his clean features

and tight, quaint smile. There was an extraordinary quality about him;

he was pathetic somehow; she felt oddly sorry for him.

“I’d like to make good for my father’s sake.... He’s only got his

salary.”

“I see,” she repeated.

“But summer’s the deuce of a time to get a job on a newspaper or

magazine in New York, everybody tells me.... I don’t know what I’ll do

if I don’t get something.”

Jeannette wondered what she would do herself. She had begun to enjoy so

thoroughly her daily routine, and to take such pride in herself! ...

Well, it would be too bad....

They had reached the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Twenty-third

Street where the ground was torn up in all four directions, and hardly

passable.

“I’ll say a prayer of thankfulness when they get this subway finished,

and stop tearing up the streets,” Jeannette remarked.

Once again Roy caught her elbow to help her over the pile of débris,

across the skeleton framework of exposed tracks, and again the girl

felt the touch of his young fingers like points of flame upon her arm.

She caught a shining look in his eyes. Love leaped at her from their

blueness. A moment’s giddiness seized her, and there came a terrifying

feeling that something dreadful was about to happen, that she and

this boy at her side were trembling on the brink of some dreadful

catastrophe. Instinct rose in her, strong, combative. She turned

abruptly into the open door of a candy shop and steadied herself as she

bought a dime’s worth of peppermints.

Emotions, burning, chilling, conflicting, took possession of her

the rest of the day. From her typewriter table she covertly studied

Beardsley, as he leaned back in his armed swivel-chair before his

flat-topped desk, his fingers loosely linked together across his chest,

his eyes unseeing, fixed on some distant point through the window’s

vista, dictating to the stenographer who bent over her note-book, as

she scribbled beside him. What was it about him that moved her so

strangely? What was it in his twinkling blue eyes, his quaint mouth

with its whimsical smile that stirred her, and set her senses swimming?

He was in love with her. Perhaps it was just because he cared so much

that she was thus deeply stirred. There had been others, she reminded

herself, who had been in love with her, but they had awakened no such

emotion.

Had she come to care herself?

She asked the question with a beating heart. Was this love,--the

feeling about which she had speculated so long? Love,--the _great_

love? Was she to meet her fate so soon? Was her adventure among men to

be so soon over? Was this all there was to it? The first man she met?

She and Roy Beardsley?

She denied it vehemently. No, it was nonsense,--it was ridiculous! Roy

Beardsley was a boy,--a mere youth who had been dropped from college.

She would not permit herself to become interested in him. It was

preposterous,--absurd!

She assured herself she would have no difficulty in controlling her

emotion in future, but the emotion itself continued to puzzle her. What

was it, she felt for this man? Was she in love,--_really_ in love,--in

love at last? She looked at him a long time. She wondered.

§ 2

That he would meet her on the Avenue next morning she felt was almost

certain. She said to herself a hundred times it would be much wiser

for her to take the elevated train, or at least to walk down another

street and avoid the possibility of such an encounter. If she were not

to permit herself to become further interested, it was obvious she must

see him as little as possible. But when morning came it was into Fifth

Avenue she turned.... She felt so sure of herself; she wanted to see if

he would really be there.

Once or twice she thought she recognized his distant figure coming

toward her. Each time her heart came into her throat. She stopped and

made a pretense of studying a milliner’s window, while she wrestled

with herself. She was mad, she was a fool, she had no business to let

herself play with fire this way! At the next corner she would turn

eastward, and go down Fourth Avenue. But when she reached the cross

street she decided to walk just one more block, and in that interval he

stepped from a doorway where he had been watching for her, and joined

her.

“Good-morning.”

“Oh--hello!”

The sudden sight of him, the sound of his voice affected her like

fright. She hurried on, trying to still the pounding in her breast,

turning her face toward the traffic in the street to hide her confusion.

“What’s the hurry?” he laughed. “It isn’t half past eight yet.”

“I have a personal letter to type before office hours,” Jeannette said

abstractedly, but she lessened her pace.

“I love these early walks on the Avenue,” he said.

“I always walk down if I have time,” she replied. “I wouldn’t

miss it for anything.” She gave him a quick inspection. He was

insignificant,--he had a weak, effeminate expression,--his features

were small and lacked resolution. And yet it was the same face with

its blue eyes, always brightly alight, its twisted mouth and thin

lips stretched tightly over his small, glittering, even teeth when

he smiled, that haunted her through the day, pursued her to her

home, gleamed at her from the blackness of her room after she had

gone to bed, visited her in her dreams, and greeted her with its

irresistible charm when she awoke in the mornings. She loved that

irresolute face, with all its weakness, its curious eccentricities;

she loved the grace of that slight boyish figure with its square, bony

shoulders, its tapering, slim waist; she loved those thin, almost

emaciated white wrists, and those long chalk-hued hands and attenuated

fingers. She loved the way he bore himself, the poise of his figure,

the lithesomeness and suppleness of his young body. And she despised

herself for loving, and hated him for the emotion he stirred in her.

She wanted to kiss him, she wanted to kill him, she wanted him in her

arms, she wanted never to see him again; she wanted him to be madly,

desperately in love with her, and she wanted herself to be coldly

indifferent.

The spring sunlight flooded the Avenue gloriously; the green omnibuses,

dragged by three horses harnessed abreast, rambled up and down; cabs

teetered on their high wheels, and weaved their way through the traffic

at a smart clip-clap; hurrying women, with the trimming of their

flowered hats nodding to their energetic gait bustled upon their early

morning errands; stores were being opened, shirt-sleeved porters were

noisily folding the iron gates before the doors back into their daytime

positions; shop-girls, and stenographers, briskly on their way to their

offices, half smiled at one another as they passed.

It was impossible not to respond to the infectious quality that was

in the air. Jeannette laughed happily into her companion’s face, and

he gazed at her eagerly, his eyes shining, his mouth twisted into its

whimsical smile. They were exhilarated, they were enthralled, they were

oblivious to everything in the world except themselves.

He stopped her abruptly, a block from the office.

“I think perhaps ... I believe you would prefer it, Miss Sturgis,

if--if you and I ... if you were not seen entering the building,

with--with an escort. It might be easier, pleasanter for you, if I....”

He hesitated, floundering helplessly. They stood still a moment facing

one another, each thinking of impossible things to say. Then Beardsley

murmured: “Well ...” lifted his hat, and she put her hand in his. He

held it tightly in the firm grip of his thin white fingers, until she

had to free it. She laughed shakily, as she turned away.

“That was really very nice of him,” she thought as she hurried

on. “That was really very nice. I shan’t mind walking with him

occasionally, if it doesn’t set the office gossiping.”

§ 3

Love swept them tumultuously onward. There was no time to pause, to

consider, no time to calculate, none to take stock of one’s self. In a

week Jeannette Sturgis and Roy Beardsley were friends, in ten days they

were lovers. Every morning he met her on the Avenue and walked with her

to within a block of the office, and in the evening he joined her for

the tramp homeward. He begged her again and again to lunch with him but

to this she would not agree. They knew they loved each other now, but

dared not speak of it. He was diffident, eager to ingratiate himself

with her, fearful of her displeasure; and she,--while she confessed her

love to herself,--passionately resolved he should never guess it nor

persuade her to acknowledge it. She had an unreasonable primitive dread

of what might follow if Roy should speak. Their love was all too sweet

as it was. She did not want to risk spoiling it, and trembled at the

thought of its avowal.

Yet in her heart she knew what must inevitably happen. Their attraction

for one another was stronger than either; it was rushing them both

headlong down the swift current of its precipitous course.

On the very day the words were trembling on her lover’s lips came the

staggering announcement that on the fifteenth day of May the activities

of the Soulé Publishing Company in selling the _Universal History

of the World_ would cease, and the services of all employees would

terminate on that date.

The girls told Jeannette the news the moment she arrived at the office,

and she found it confirmed on a slip of paper in an envelope on her

typewriting table.

“All? Every one?” she asked blankly. She had confidently expected that

she would be kept on,--for a month at least.

“Well, that’s what they say; Mr. Beardsley, Miss Gibson,--everybody.”

“Oh,” murmured Jeannette, betraying her disappointment.

“Did you think they’d keep you on the pay-roll after the rest of us

were fired?” asked Miss Flannigan airily.

Jeannette perceptibly straightened herself and levelled a cool glance

at the girl.

“Perhaps,” she admitted.

“Oh-h,--is that so?” mimicked Miss Flannigan. “Well, you got another

think coming,--didn’t you?”

Jeannette drowned the words by attacking her machine, her fingers

flying, the warning ping of the tiny bell sounding at half-minute

intervals. But her heart was lead within her, and her throat tightened

convulsively. She was going to lose her job! She was going to be thrown

out of work! She was going to be among the unemployed again! Her

mother! ... And Alice! ... That precious five dollars a week that was

all her own!

The rest of the day was dreary, interminable. Demoralization was in the

air. The girls whispered openly among themselves, and filtered by twos

and threes to the dressing-room, where they congregated and gossiped.

The spring sunshine grew stale, and poured brazenly through the west

windows. Miss Flannigan chewed gum incessantly as she giggled noisily

over confidences with a neighbor. Even Beardsley seemed to have lost

interest for Jeannette.

Yet when she came to his desk later in the day for the usual dictation,

he handed her a paper on which he had written:

“You mustn’t be downhearted. There is always a demand for good

stenographers. You won’t have the slightest difficulty in getting

another job. I wish I was as sure of one myself. May I walk home with

you this evening?”

She gave him no definite answer but she liked him for his encouragement

and sympathy. Whenever she sat near his desk, note-book in hand,

waiting for him to dictate to her, he was to her a superior being, one

whose judgment and perception were above her own; he was her “boss.” It

was different when she met him outside the office; he was just a boy

then,--a boy who had flunked out of college. Now he, too, had lost his

job. Like her, he would soon be unemployed. No longer need she fear his

possible censure of her work, or take pleasure in his praise of it. She

realized he had lost weight with her.

After office hours that evening, he met her outside the building and as

he walked home with her was full of philosophical counsel.

“Why, Miss Sturgis, it’s never hard for a girl to get a job,--a, girl

who’s got a profession, and who’s shown herself to be a first-rate

stenographer. The offices downtown are just crazy to get hold of girls

like you. You won’t have the slightest difficulty in finding another

position.... If you were me, you’d have something to worry about. I’ve

got to get a job that will land me somewhere,--a job in which I can

rise to something better.”

“But so have I,” said Jeannette.

“Well, yes, I know.... But girls’re different. They only want a job for

a little while,--a year, two or three years perhaps, and then they get

married. Working for girls is only a sort of stop-gap.”

“No, it isn’t; not always. There’s many a girl who perhaps doesn’t

regard matrimony with such awful importance as you men think. I mean

girls who aren’t thinking about marriage at all, and who really want to

become smart, capable business women.”

Roy smiled deprecatingly. “But I’m talking about the average girl,” he

said.

“And so am I. Girls have a right to be economically independent, and I

can’t see why they have to stop working just because they marry,--any

more than men do.”

“Girls have to stay home and run the house.”

“Oh, what nonsense!” cried Jeanette. “It’s no more her home than it is

the man’s.”

Roy shrugged his slight shoulders. He had no desire to argue with her.

He was more concerned with the thought that in the future there would

be no office to bring them together daily.

“There are only two days more. Saturday we get our last pay envelope.”

They walked on in silence.

“I hope you’ll let me come to see you. We’ve become such good friends.

I’d hate to....”

He left the sentence awkwardly unfinished.

“Oh,--I’d like to have you call some evening,” she said with apparent

indifference. “I’d like to have you meet my mother and sister.”

“I’d love to.... I want to know them both.”

“Well, come Sunday,--to--to dinner. We have it at one o’clock. I

suppose it’s really lunch, but we’re awfully old-fashioned and we

always have our Sunday dinner in the middle of the day.... You mustn’t

expect much; we live very simply.”

“Thanks, awfully....”

“We don’t keep any servant, you know.”

“I quite understand. You’re very good to invite me.”

“I’m sure my mother and sister will be glad to meet you.”

“I’m awfully anxious to know _them_.”

“Well, come Sunday.”

“You bet I will.”

“Of course, they’ve heard about ‘Mr. Beardsley.’”

“Have they? ... Do you talk about me sometimes to them?”

“Why, of course! ... Naturally.... What do you expect?”

“I hope you’ve given me a good character.”

“I daresay they think you’re an old bald-headed man with a thick curly

beard.”

“Oh, _no_! ... They’ll be terribly disappointed!”

“I’m going to tell them you’re a gruff old codger with a perpetual

grouch.”

“Miss Sturgis,--please!”

They were both laughing hilariously.

“Here’s your home. I had no idea we had walked so far.... Shall I see

you to-morrow? I’ll be waiting at the Seventy-second Street entrance to

the Park.”

“All right.”

“At eight o’clock?”

She nodded, waved her hand to him, and ran up the stone steps. He

waited until she had fitted her key into the lock, and the heavy

glass-panelled door had closed behind her.

§ 4

Saturday was their first intimate little meal by a window in a café. It

had been their last morning at the office, and by noon the activities

of the Soulé Publishing Company in selling the _Universal History of

the World_ had ceased. Pay envelopes had been distributed shortly

after eleven, and an hour later all the little Jewesses with their

absurd pompadours and high heels, the Misses Rosens and Flannigans,

the office clerks and office boys had packed the great elevators for

the last time, laughing and squeezing together, and swarmed out of the

building not to return. And Roy and Jeannette were among them.

“You will go to lunch with me?” he had written on a sheet of paper and

pushed toward her as she sat at his elbow. “I’ve got a lot of things to

talk to you about, and it’s our last day here together.”

She had tried to consider the matter dispassionately, but a glimpse of

his bright, eager eyes fixed on her had sent the blood flooding her

neck and cheeks, and before she quite knew what she had done she had

nodded.

He joined her at the street entrance and together they made a happy

progress toward Broadway.

A great felicity descended upon them. Their senses thrilled to the

beauty of the warm day and their being thus together. Roy piloted her

through the hurrying noontime throng, his hand about her arm. She

tingled again at the touch of his fingers, and loved it. Then they

entered the café of a hotel, and found a cozy table for two by the

window where, dazzled and enthralled by their great happiness, they

smiled into one another’s eyes across the white cloth, glittering with

cutlery and glasses.

Love was wonderful! He loved her; she loved him. They both knew it;

they were drunk with the thought. This was their adventure,--theirs and

theirs alone!

“I may have to go home this summer,” Roy said with a troubled air after

he had given their order to the waiter. He stared at the winding crowd

that surged back and forth beneath their window. “But I’m coming back

right away. In August.”

“You mean to San Francisco?”

“My father wants me to come West for a month or two. He sent me my

ticket.... I guess he expects me to settle down out there. Of course

he wants me to. The ticket is only a one-way one. But he’s in for a

disappointment. I can’t be happy in San Francisco; I want to come back

to New York.”

They both fell silent, thinking their own thoughts. Jeannette was

conscious of the dreariness and drabness of life once more; it was

disheartening and depressing to be unemployed. All these people

hurrying past the window, she reflected, were intent upon some

particular errand; each one had a job; the whole world had jobs

but herself. There would be nothing for her to do but “apply for

employment.”

“Please can you give me a position? ... Excuse me, sir, I’m looking for

work.... Could you use a stenographer?”

Oh, it was detestable, it was intolerable! It dragged her pride in the

dust! ... And there would be no one to sympathize, to advise her,--or

help her! She would be alone all summer in New York with no one

interested!

Roy, watching her, guessed her thoughts.

“I’m coming back....”

She flushed warmly.

“Would you like me to come back? Would it make any difference to you,

if I did? If you’ll just say you’d like me to come back, I will; ...

I’ll promise! ... Will you?”

The girl bent over her plate, hiding her face with the brim of her hat.

The giddiness she had experienced that day in the street threatened

her.

“Would you want me to come back?” Roy insisted.

She raised her eyes and met his gaze; he held them with the burning

intentness of his own, and for a long, long moment they stared at one

another.

“You know I love you,” he said tensely.

His lip quivered; his face was aglow.

“I love you with every fibre of my being! I’ll come back to you,--I’ll

come back from the ends of the earth. Only just say you love me,

too, Jeannette.... You _do_ love me, don’t you? ... You’re the most

wonderful girl I’ve ever known, Jeannette! ... God, Jeannette, you’re

just wonderful!”

Why was it that in the supreme moment of his great avowal he seemed

a little ridiculous to her? She felt suddenly like laughing. He was

so absurdly young, so juvenile, so school-boyish, leaning toward her

across the table in his youthful Norfolk jacket, with his unruly hair

sticking up on top his head!

§ 5

He kissed her when they parted from one another late that afternoon.

They had been absorbed in talk, and the hours slipped by until before

they were aware it was five o’clock. He walked home with her and just

inside the heavy glass doors of the old-fashioned apartment house where

she lived he put his arms about her, their faces came close together,

and for the briefest of moments their lips met. It was a shy kiss,

hardly more than a touch of mouth to mouth. For another moment they

stood raptly gazing into each other’s eyes, their fingers interlocked.

Then Jeannette fled, running up the stairs, nor did she grant him

another look, even when she reached the landing above and had to turn.

But on the third flight of stairs she paused, held her breath to still

the noise of her panting, and listened. There was nothing. A cautious

glance over the balustrade down through the narrow well of the stairs

revealed his shadow on the stone flagging below. She sank to the

step, and waited to catch her breath, her ears strained for a sound.

Presently she heard him moving; there was a crisp clip of his shoes;

she guessed he was searching the gloom of the stairwell for a glimpse

of her. But she would not look, and sat motionless with tightly clasped

hands. After a long interval she heard his hesitating step again. The

half-opened door swung slowly back, brightening the hallway below a

moment with yellow daylight from the street, then closed with a dull

jangle of heavy glass. She sat for a moment more, then a tiny choking

sound burst from between her close-shut lips, and she buried her

glowing face in her hot hands, pressing her fingertips hard against her

eyeballs until the force of them hurt her.

§ 6

That night Jeannette experienced all the exquisite joy and fierce agony

of young love. It was an exhausting ordeal; she lived over and over

the thrilling hours of the day that had terminated in that glorious,

intoxicating second when the boy’s thin lips were against her own, and

she had felt their warm, tingling pressure. The recollection brought

to her wave upon wave of hot flushes that began somewhere deep down

inside her being and flooded her with ecstasy. She strove against it,

yet had no wish to control her thoughts. Shame,--some curious sense of

wrong,--distressed her. It was not right;--it was all wrong! Instinct

grappled with desire. She wept deliciously, convulsively, burying her

head in her pillow and pressing its smothering softness against her

mouth to stifle her sobbing breath that neither her mother nor Alice

might hear it. Past midnight she rose and went noiselessly to the

bathroom where she washed her face, carefully brushed and re-braided

her hair. Her head ached and her swollen eyes were hot and painful. But

she felt calmer. She studied her face for a long moment in the battered

mirror that hung above the wash-stand, and as she looked a great

quivering breath was wrung from her.

“Roy ... I can’t ... it can never be ... never, never be,” she

whispered despairingly to her image.

For the moment she felt triumphant. She had conquered something, she

did not know what. She dimmed the gaslight and found her way back to

bed. Sleep came mercifully, and she did not wake until her mother

kissed her the next morning.

§ 7

It was Sunday, the day he had promised to come to dinner. Dinner,

with the Sturgises on Sunday, was always the noontime meal. Cold meat

or a levy on Kratzmer’s delicatessen counters, with weak hot tea,

constituted Sunday supper. Dinner, however, invariably involved roast

chicken and ice cream which was secured at the last moment from O’Day’s

Candy Parlor, and carried home by one of the girls, packed in a thin

pasteboard box. There was seldom ice in the leaky ice-box, and Sunday

dinner was therefore usually a hurried affair, as mother and the girls

were always acutely conscious during every minute of its duration of

the melting cream in the kitchen.

For this Mrs. Sturgis was responsible. Her frugality would not allow

her leisurely to enjoy her meal at the sacrifice of the ice cream.

The fear of its becoming soft and mushy pressed relentlessly upon her

consciousness.

“Now, dearie,--don’t talk! Eat your dinner. It’s much more digestible

if it’s eaten while it’s hot,” she would urge her daughters almost with

every mouthful.

No one ever spoke of the ice cream itself. The reason for such close

application to the business of eating was never voiced. It was part of

the ritual of Sunday dinner that it should not be mentioned. Not until

Alice had piled and crowded the aluminum tray with the soiled dishes,

carried these away, and returned with the mound of cream sagging upon

its platter, could Mrs. Sturgis and her daughters allow themselves

to relax. No matter how well the rest of the dinner might be cooked,

it must be gulped down and its enjoyment wasted for the sake of a

quarter’s worth of frozen cream.

It was upon these circumstances that Jeannette’s rebellious thoughts

centered on the morning of Roy Beardsley’s visit. She was worn out

after her troubled night, and the prospect of seeing him so soon after

the tremendous occurrences of the previous afternoon and her stormy

reflections upon them made her nervous, apprehensive. She wanted time

to think things out, to consider matters.... Anyhow--what would her

mother and sister think of him? What would he think of them?

“Dearie--dearie!” Mrs. Sturgis expostulated more than once. “Whatever

makes my lovie so cross this morning? ... You’ll get another position,

dearie,--if that’s what’s troubling you.”

“Oh, you make me tired!” thought her daughter, angrily, though the

words were unsaid.

“Well, I _do_ hope we can at least have some other kind of dessert,”

she said aloud. “We always have to rush so infernally through dinner;

it makes me sick! ... Or, I’ll tell you what,” she went on hopefully,

“we can get in a little ice.”

“It will leak all over the floor,” Alice objected. “The old thing is

full of holes.”

“There’s nothing better than O’Day’s strawberry cream,” Mrs. Sturgis

declared; “and there isn’t a thing in the house, so I can’t make a

pudding.”

Jeannette said nothing further but gloomed in silence. She elected

to be furiously energetic, and undertook a thorough cleaning of the

studio, strewing strips of damp newspaper over the floor, sweeping

vigorously, her head tied up in a towel. The broom shed its straw, and

she discovered little triangles of dirt in obscure corners which Alice

had evidently deliberately neglected. The white curtains were dingy,

the front windows needed washing, and in the midst of her cleaning,

Dikron Najarian came in upon her to ask her to walk with him in the

afternoon. In a fury she attempted to move the piano to pull loose a

rug, and in the effort, which was far beyond her strength, she hurt

herself badly. Her mother found her lying on the floor, crying weakly.

“Dearie--_dearie_! What happened to you! My darling! You shouldn’t

work so hard; there’s no necessity for your being so thorough.”

The girl had really injured herself. Mrs. Sturgis called wildly for

Alice, and between them they carried her to her room and laid her on

her bed. She had wrenched her back, but she refused to admit it. She

wouldn’t be put to bed. She was all right, she told them; just a few

moments’ rest, and she would be herself again. It was twelve o’clock

and Roy would be there at one!

She lay on her bed, and gazed blindly up at the old familiar discolored

ceiling; presently her eyes closed and two large tears stole from under

her lashes and rolled down her cheeks. She knew she had hurt herself

far more seriously than she would let her mother or sister suspect.

Something had given way in the small of her back; she made an effort

to sit up, and the pain all but tore a cry from her. But she was

determined they should not know; she would get up, and meet Roy, and go

through with dinner as though nothing was the matter!

Struggling, with tiny explosions of pent-up breath and smothered

groans, her hand at every free moment pressed to her side, she managed

to dress herself. The effort exhausted her; a film of perspiration

covered her forehead, her upper lip and the backs of her hands. She

steadied herself now and then by leaning against the dresser, until

her strength came back to her. She did not care, now, whether Roy

Beardsley found the studio clean or not, whether or not he was hustled

through dinner, thought her home cheap and poor, her mother and sister

commonplace and fussily solicitous.

He was ahead of time. She met him with careful step and a fixed smile

of welcome. He was glowing with eagerness; his hands trembled a little

as he held them out to her. At sight of him, a moment’s wave of

yesterday’s emotion swept over her, but immediately there came a sharp

stab of pain, and she caught a quick breath from between the lips that

held her smile. His anxious questions were cut short by the bustling

entrance of Mrs. Sturgis and Alice.

Jeannette’s mother was at once flatteringly hospitable, inviting the

guest to sit down and make himself comfortable, while she established

herself with an elegant spread of skirts on the davenport, and began to

toss the lacy ruffles of her best jabot with a careless finger.

Were Mr. Beardsley’s parents living? Ah, yes,--in San Francisco. They

had fogs out there a great deal, she’d heard. And he had lost his

mother. Consumption? Ah, that was indeed a pity! ... And his father

was a clergyman? Eminently laudable profession.... And he had wanted

to come East to college? Quite right and proper. Princeton was a fine

college; nice boys went there.... And he had spent some time in New

York? Wonderful city,--but a very expensive place to live,--probably

the most expensive in the world....

Jeannette recognized a favorite theme and broke in with an inquiry

about dinner. She was suffering miserably; she wondered if she

would have the strength to get to the dining-room. Alice already

had disappeared; the slam of the back door some moments before had

announced her departure for O’Day’s Candy Parlor. Mrs. Sturgis excused

herself with many profuse explanations, and departed kitchenward,

whence presently there came the bang of pots in the sink and the hiss

of running water.

Left together, Roy turned eagerly to Jeannette where she stood beside

the mantel, a white hand gripping its edge.

“Dearest, I’ve been so crazy to see you! ... Is anything wrong? You’re

not angry with me after yesterday?”

Her eyes softened, but, as if to check for that day any moment’s

tenderness, there was again a sharp twinge. Involuntarily she winced.

“Jeannette! You’re not well! What’s the matter?”

She laid her hand on his arm to reassure him and steady herself.

“Nothing,” she breathed. “I hurt my back this morning. I must have

wrenched it. It’s really nothing. Now and then it gets me.”

She managed a disarming smile.

“Mother and Allie mustn’t know a thing about it. I don’t want to

alarm them; they’re so excitable. To-morrow, I’ll be quite all right

again.... You must help me.”

“Why, surely; you know I will.... But, dearest----”

“Oh, please! Don’t make a fuss.” Her tone was sharp, and at once he

fell silent, watching her face anxiously.

“Do you love me?” he queried in a low voice.

She did not answer; she was in no mood for love-making. In a moment,

she moved with difficulty to the window, and stood there, fighting her

pain, and looking down vacantly into the street. Provokingly, tears

rose to her eyes. She was afraid she was going to cry. She could see

Allie returning with the square paper box held with a finger by its

thin wire handle, and presently the great front door of the house shut

with a jangle.

Roy’s arm stole about her waist, but its touch hurt her.

“Oh, please!” she begged crossly.

“I’m sorry,--awfully sorry. I forgot.... You’re in terrible pain,

aren’t you? ... Shall I get a doctor? ... Don’t you want to lie down?

... Would you like me to go?”

She wanted to slap him.

“Just leave me alone!”

Mrs. Sturgis’ eager step was approaching, and in a moment she presented

at the doorway a face reddened from the heat of the stove, and moist

with perspiration.

“Dinner’s ready, dearie,” she announced. “Won’t you come this way, Mr.

Beardsley? We use our bedrooms for a passage-way, although the hall

outside, I suppose, is really better, but, you see, it’s much more

convenient....”

Jeannette motioned him to precede her, and followed, holding on by

the furniture as she made her way. Her mother was in the kitchen and

Alice’s back was turned as in anguish she got into her chair.

Dinner was endless. The soup had curdled; the potatoes were scant; the

salt-cellar in front of Roy had a greenish mold about its top; Roy,

himself, kept fiddling with his silverware,--rattling knife and fork,

and fork and spoon; her mother and sister had never, in Jeannette’s

opinion, jumped up from the table so incessantly for errands to

kitchen or sideboard. The pain in her back every now and then became

excruciating. She sat through the dragging meal with a set smile

upon her lips, turning her head with assumed brightness from face to

face as each one spoke. Her mother did most of the talking, keeping

up a continual flow of chatter to fill the silences. Alice rarely

volunteered an observation when there was company, and Jeannette’s

misery made her dumb. Mrs. Sturgis rose to the occasion and supplied

conversation for all three. Jeannette, watching Roy’s face, resented

his polite show of interest. Her mother had what her daughters

described as a “company” manner. When it was upon her she interrupted

herself every little while with nervous giggles and to-day, Jeannette

decided, she had never indulged in them so often. She was eloquent

during the meal with reminiscences of her childhood’s escapades and

early cuteness, and Jeannette watched the animated face with its

jogging, pendent cheeks in an agony of spirit that matched her physical

misery.

“... Nettie,--we always called Janny, ‘Nettie,’ when she was

little,--was only six then, and she was awfully pretty and cute. We

were having dinner at a restaurant downtown,--her papa had a friend

to entertain. Allie....? I don’t remember where Allie was....”; Mrs.

Sturgis gazed in sudden perplexity at her younger daughter. “I guess

you were at home with Nora, lovie.... At any rate, we were at this

restaurant and a waiter was serving us nicely, and nobody was paying

any attention, when all of a sudden Nettie says loud and pertly to the

waiter: ‘Now that you’re up, will you please get me a glass of milk?’”

Mrs. Sturgis shut her eyes and laughed until her little round cheeks

shook. “Imagine,” she finished, “‘Now that you’re _up_!’ ... To the

_waiter_!” She went off into gales of mirth.

Roy laughed too, a thin, polite laugh, without a trace of spontaneity.

Jeannette hated him. She hated her sister, too, for her smug

complacency. Alice sat there encouraging her mother with responsive

twitterings every time Mrs. Sturgis threw her head back to chuckle.

Jeannette felt she was suffocating; the pain dug itself steadily and

cruelly into the small of her back; she could not draw one adequate

breath.

The platter and remains of the hacked and dismembered chicken, and the

soiled dishes eventually were removed; Alice brushed the table-cloth

with a folded napkin, sweeping crumbs and litter, ineffectually,

as Jeannette noted in utter desolation, into the palm of her hand,

carrying the refuse handful by handful to the kitchen, until the

operation was complete. The ice cream was borne in, in mushy

disintegration, and her mother commented on its melted condition and

the various responsible reasons, until the girl thought she would

scream in protest.

She could not eat; she could not drink; lifting her hand to her lips

was misery. Roy’s solicitous glance was more and more intently fixed

upon her; Alice, also, was beginning to send concerned looks in her

direction. She felt her strength rapidly ebbing from her. She could

endure but little more--but little, little more. Her will power was

deserting her, resolution forsaking her, she felt it going--going;

it was slipping away ... she was going to fall! ... Ah, she _WAS_

falling....!

“Janny, dearie!” Her mother’s alarmed cry faintly reached her dimming

consciousness.

CHAPTER IV

§ 1

The following summer was one of the hottest on record in New York

City. The thermometer persistently hung around ninety, and the

newspapers gave daily accounts of deaths and prostrations. Thousands

of East-siders sought Coney Island and the cool beaches to spend their

nights upon the sands. Thunderstorms brought but temporary relief.

Jeannette, slowly regaining strength and energy, declared she had never

known so many violent thunderstorms in the space of one short summer.

She hated the vivid, blinding darts and the cracking ear-splitting

detonations. She could reason convincingly with herself that there was

but the minutest atom of danger, yet the menacing crashes never failed

to bring her heart into her mouth and make her wince.

She had been in bed four weeks since the Sunday Roy had dined with the

family, and she had fainted at the table. The doctor, when he arrived,

had declared, after careful examination, that several ligaments had

been torn from the bone, and the muscles of her back had been badly

strained. She had been tightly bandaged with long strips of adhesive

tape, and put to bed in her mother’s room, where she had lain for a

month, rebellious and raging, at the mercy of a horde of disturbing

thoughts.

Roy sent flowers, a box of candy, magazines. He wrote her long letters

in a boyish hand in which he boyishly expressed his concern for her

condition, his earnest hope of her speedy recovery, his tremendous

devotion. It was for the last that she eagerly looked when she

unfolded his scrawled pages. But his words never seemed to satisfy her

wholly; they were never vehement enough. She longed for something more

vigorous, aggressive, violent.

At the end of ten days he begged to be allowed to come to see her.

There was no reason why he shouldn’t, Jeannette reflected, but she

could not bring herself to the point of asking her mother to arrange

for the visit. She did manage to say, with a light air of ridicule, one

morning, when Mrs. Sturgis brought her breakfast tray to her bedside:

“Roy’s got the nerve to want to come to see me.”

“Why don’t you let him, dearie,--if you’d like it? He seems a right

nice young fellow, and you could put on your dressing sacque, and Alice

could do your hair.... I’ll be home to-morrow,--all day, you know. It

would be quite right and proper.”

But the girl only made a grimace.

“That kid! That rah-rah boy! ... He thinks he’s got an awful case.”

“Why do you treat Mr. Beardsley so mean, Janny?” Alice asked her a

few days later, closely studying her face. “You know,” she continued

slowly, “sometimes I think you’re really in love with him.”

“Love!” cried her sister. “Hah! with _that_ kid?”

“I think he’s terribly attractive, Janny.”

“Half baked!” Jeannette said scornfully.

“Well, I think he’s _charming_.”

“You can have him!”

“Oh, Janny! ... You’re _dreadful_!”

But in the dark nights Jeannette would kiss the scrawled writing, press

the stiff note-paper to her cheek, and let her thoughts carry her back

to their first meeting, their first encounter on the Avenue, their

first kiss in the hallway downstairs, their memorable lunch together....

Ah, it was beautiful? It was all so very beautiful,--so infinitely

beautiful! Every glance, every word, every moment! She loved him! She

could not deny it. Oh,--she loved him, she loved him!

He wrote he was obliged to go to San Francisco. It was impossible

to find a position in New York during midsummer, and his father had

telegraphed him to come home. He would have to go, but he longed to

see Jeannette just once before he went. He _must_ see her, if only to

say “good-bye.” He was coming back the first of September, and then he

would.... But they must talk everything over. Wouldn’t she please let

him come?

Jeannette still hesitated. She wanted to see him again; yet she was

afraid,--afraid of disappointment, of what her mother and sister might

think, of herself and Roy. In the end, with what seemed to her a

weakness she despised, she wrote him, and named an afternoon; Although

the doctor had said she was to remain in bed for another week, she

prevailed upon her mother and sister to move her into the studio, where

with pillows about her and a comforter across her knees, and her hair

arranged in the pretty fashion Alice sometimes liked to dress it, she

received her lover.

It was as unsatisfactory an interview as she had feared. Constraint

held them both. Jeannette was intent upon not betraying the delicious

madness into which her thoughts of Roy had led her during the empty

hours of her long illness, and she sat up stiffly, unbendingly. Roy did

not understand. He thought the change in her was due to her illness,

but there was something about her that troubled him. They made their

promises to one another, they held each other’s hands, they kissed

good-bye, but there was nothing fervid about any of it. At the door,

however, when he turned, hat in hand, for a final, searching look, she

saw a glitter in his eyes, his queer little mouth was straight and

drawn harshly, unsmilingly across his teeth. It was that last look of

him, that wet gleam in his eyes which took her courage and brought

her own tears in a rush. But by then he was gone. The dull boom of

the hall-door closing downstairs announced his departure with stern

finality.

§ 2

The summer bore on, hot, unalleviated. The apartment smelled of strange

odors, was close, airless in spite of open windows. The Najarians,

with much banging and clattering, left with their trunks and boxes for

several weeks at the seashore, and on the first of the month old Mrs.

Porter, who had occupied the first floor since the building was erected

thirty years before, moved away. Only the two trained nurses, one

flight down, who were rarely at home, remained in the city during the

burning weeks of July and August.

With the Sturgises, life became dreary and grew drearier. Miss

Loughborough’s school closed, Signor Bellini departed for his beloved

Italy, the Wednesday and Saturday pupils became fewer and fewer and

by mid-July had evaporated entirely. Mrs. Sturgis, fretting over the

trivial expenses each day inevitably brought, wore a worried, harassed

air. She found some work to do, copying music, but this had to be given

up, as her teeth commenced to give her trouble. How long she was able

to disguise her discomfort from her daughters, they never guessed, but

her misery eventually was discovered, and she was summarily driven to a

dentist. It developed that her teeth were in such a decayed condition

they would all have to be pulled, and replaced by an artificial set.

Poor Mrs. Sturgis wept and protested. She objected strenuously to

anything so drastic. It wasn’t _in the least necessary_! She couldn’t

_possibly_ afford it! Her daughters urged her and argued with her until

they lost their tempers and there was almost a quarrel in the little

household. The dentist declined to modify his advice. Pain--cruel,

persistent pain, that robbed her of her sleep, and sapped her

strength--finally compelled her to give way.

“I’ll do it,--but my girlies haven’t the faintest idea what they are

letting me in for! It will be the death of me!” wailed Mrs. Sturgis.

Jeannette, able to sit up now and hobble from one room to another,

regarded her mother with frank impatience as she rocked vigorously back

and forth, weeping abjectly into a drenched little handkerchief. She

felt sorry for her, she would have made any sacrifice to alleviate her

pain to make matters easier for her, and yet it was obvious there was

no other course for her, and the sooner the teeth were out and a false

set in their place, the better it would be for them all. The girl gazed

gloomily out of the window.

“And my daughter’s no comfort to me,” continued Mrs. Sturgis,

piteously, conscious of Jeannette’s unvoiced criticism. “The child

that I’ve raised through sorrow and tribulation, through hunger and

self-denial,--the daughter for whom I’ve worked and sacrificed my

life....”

Jeannette continued to stare stonily into space, locked her fingers

more tightly together, but said nothing.

Eventually there came the terrible day when Mrs. Sturgis and Alice went

forth to the dental surgeon, and when the young girl brought her spent

and broken mother home in a cab. The four flights of stairs for the

exhausted woman were a dreadful ordeal. Jeannette, catching a glimpse

of the labored progress, as she gazed over the balustrade from the top

landing, forgot her own weakened condition, the doctor’s caution, and

hurried to her mother’s assistance. She ran down the stairs and grasped

the little woman’s almost fainting figure in her young arms. Together

the sisters dragged and pushed her up the remaining steps, but the

older girl knew before she reached the top, that she had put too great

a strain upon her own partially regained strength.

She paid for the imprudence by another three weeks in bed. It was

the longest three weeks of her life. Her mother roamed about from

room to room, toothless and inarticulate, unable to eat solid food,

waiting for her lacerated gums to heal. She complained and mumbled

almost incessantly, harassed by the thought of doctor’s and dentist’s

bills which she declared over and over she saw no way of ever paying.

Jeannette, chained to her bed, had to listen unhappily. Mrs. Sturgis

gave her no respite. She refused to leave the house for fear of meeting

a friend in the street who would discover her toothlessness. Alice

went to market and ran the errands, while Mrs. Sturgis rocked back and

forth, back and forth, beside Jeannette’s bed, picked at her darning,

and complained of life. It was not like her mother, thought the

daughter wearily; she of indomitable spirit, who had never been afraid

of hardships, but rejoiced in overcoming them.

Letters from Roy brought the only alleviating spots in these long,

tiring days. He wrote almost every day and there were numerous picture

post-cards. His letters were full of assurances and young hopes.

Jeannette loved his endearments, his underscored protestations, but

the plans which he elaborately unfolded seemed so uncertain, their

realization so improbable that they left her cold. She read the

scrawled words in the immature script, and tried to conjure up a

picture of him penning them. It eluded her. The boy in the Norfolk

jacket with the stuck-up hair, blue eyes, and whimsical smile, that

had so strangely fired her heart, had already become hazy and remote.

Her own weak back and helplessness, her mother’s trembling cheeks

and mumbled complaints were harsh realities, very close at hand. The

summer sun blazed on unsparingly, and perspiration covered her arms

and neck and trickled down between her breasts. Spring and young

love, the glittering Avenue, walks and talks and murmured confidences

that whipped the blood and caught the breath, were of a far distant

yesterday. Was there ever a time when thoughts of this boy had kept

her awake at nights, a time when at the memory of his kiss her tears

had blinded her? It was some other Jeannette,--not the one who sighed

wearily and wished Alice would keep the door shut, and not let in the

flies to bother her.

§ 3

Slowly Nature reasserted herself. Strength returned, old hopes revived,

youth throbbed again in the veins, life once more took on a pleasing

aspect. The late August day, that found Jeannette making a cautious way

toward the Park on her first venture from the house, was brilliant with

warm but not too hot sunshine, and the foliage of trees and shrubbery

in the Park vistas never appeared greener or more inviting.

Mrs. Sturgis’ false teeth had made a great improvement in her

appearance, had rounded out her face, given strength to her jaw,

and made her seem ten years younger. The little woman was delighted

with the effect, and was now evincing a gratified interest in her

appearance. Signor Bellini had returned earlier than he expected,

had already started his Monday and Thursday classes, while Miss

Loughborough’s Concentration School for Young Ladies was about to open

its doors, and pupils were flocking back from their vacations. And

lastly, and to the girl, most important of all, Roy was returning to

New York.

He would arrive in the city in a few days, and she wondered how she

would feel toward him when they met. As she sat upon a park bench,

enjoying the sun and the toddling children playing in the soft gravel

of the pathway near by, she asked herself if she cared. She could not

tell. Of far more interest to her was the prospect of work again. She

had been stifled all summer by illness and heat, but now she wanted

to get back to the business world and win her independence anew. Her

ambition was afire; she was all eagerness to have a job once more....

Roy? ... Well, it would be pleasant to have him making love to her

again, to watch him tremble at her nearness.

But she found herself thrilling on the afternoon he was to see her.

He had telephoned in the morning from the station, and his voice

had sounded wonderfully sweet and eager. When his ring at the door

announced him, her heart raced madly. Delicious tremors, one after

another, coursed through her.

He came hurrying up the stairs and she met him in the studio. Their

hands instantly found one another’s, and they stood so a moment,

smiling happily and ardently into each other’s eyes; then she drifted

into his arms, and it seemed the peace of the world had come.

Ah, she had forgotten how dear he was, how lovable, how sweet! It was

good to have him take her to himself that way, and feel his thin arms

about her, and have him hold her close against his young hard breast.

Plans--plans,--they were full of them. They were engaged now; Mrs.

Sturgis and Alice must be told, the father wired, and Roy must

immediately set about finding a job. He had some corking letters,

he told her eagerly, and he was on the trail of a splendid position

already. Jeannette was going to find work, too; they would both save,

buy all the clothes they would need, and be married,--oh, some time

in the spring! Roy, holding both her hands, gazed at her with shining

eyes, his whole face glowing with excitement.

“Oh, God, Jeannette--oh, God! Just think! You and me! Married!”

It _was_ a wonderful prospect.

§ 4

In less than a week, he had obtained a promising position with the

Chandler B. Corey Company, publishers of high-class fiction and the

best of standard books. It was a new but flourishing organization with

offices on Union Square. In addition to its book business, there were

two monthly magazines, _The Wheel of Fortune_ and _Corey’s Commentary_,

and Roy was made part of the staff that secured advertisements for

the pages of these periodicals. He was full of enthusiasm for his new

work. Mr. Featherstone, the advertising manager, who was also a member

of the firm, was the jolliest kind of a man, and the other fellows in

the department, Humphrey Stubbs and Walt Chase, were “awfully nice”

chaps. He was to receive from the start, twenty dollars a week, and Mr.

Featherstone promised him a raise of five dollars at the end of three

months, if he made good. The gods were with them. Jeannette and he

could be married early in the spring.

The girl listened and pretended to rejoice, but her heart was

sick within her. Roy, getting twenty dollars a week!--back in a

job!--independent and secure once more!--a bright future and rapid

advancement ahead of him! She was bitterly envious. She longed for

the old life of business hours, of office excitement, for her neatly

managed if frugal lunches, for the early hours in the mornings and the

tired hours at night, for the heart-warming touch of the firm, plump

little manila envelope on Saturday mornings, and, above all, she longed

for the satisfaction of being a wage-earner again, of being financially

her own mistress, and being able to contribute something toward the

household bills each week.

The next day she started out to find work. She knew it would be a

humiliating business, but she found it worse than she feared. The

advertisements for stenographers in the newspapers which she answered,

all turned out to be disappointing. The most she was offered was ten

dollars a week, and in the majority of cases only six or eight. She

had made up her mind to accept nothing less than what she had earned

before. She would walk out of an office into the glaring street with

the prick of tears smarting her eyes, with lips that trembled, but she

would vigorously shake her head, and renew her determination.

She went to interview Miss Ingram of the Gerard Commercial School, but

Miss Ingram had no vacant positions on her list.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the little teacher said with a

forlorn air; “I’ve got three girls now just waiting for something to

turn up, but all they want downtown are boys--boys--boys!”

Twice Jeannette had the unpleasant experience of having men to whom she

applied for work lay their hands on her. One slipped his arm about her,

and tried to kiss her, pressing a bushy wet mustache against her face;

the other placed his fat fingers caressingly over hers and, leering at

her, promised he would find her a good job, if she’d come back later

in the day. She was equal to these occasions but there was always a

sickening reaction that left her weak and trembling with a salt taste

in her mouth. She said nothing about them at home.

Her mother and Alice, even Roy, had urged her not to go to work again.

Mrs. Sturgis reiterated her original objection; Alice thought it was

not necessary, that Janny had better take things easy and devote her

time to wedding preparations. Roy did not like the idea, he frankly

admitted, of her associating so intimately with a lot of men in an

office, and, besides, it distracted her, made her nervous.

“In three months, sweetheart, I’ll be getting twenty-five dollars

a week and we can get married. A hundred a month is enough for a

while. You ought to run the table on ten dollars a week,--your mother

does that for the three of you!--and out of the remaining sixty, we

surely will have enough for rent, and a lot left over for clothes and

theatres.”

“Oh, yes,” Jeannette sighed wearily, “it’s plenty,--only I want--I

want to earn some money myself. I need clothes, and I ought to have

everything for a year, at least!”

September passed, and October came with a tingle of autumn, and an

early touch of yellow, drifting leaves. Jeannette missed the chance

of an excellent position in the manager’s office of a large suit and

cloak manufacturer by no more than a minute or two. She saw the other

applicant enter the office just ahead of her, and was presently told

the place was filled. The girl who had preceded her was Miss Flannigan!

There was another position in a lawyer’s office for which she eagerly

applied. She heard the salary was twenty-five dollars a week, but when

she was interviewed, and it was discovered she had no knowledge of

legal phraseology, she was rejected.

Desperate and discouraged, she was obliged to listen in the evenings

to Roy’s glowing praise of his new associates, to detailed accounts of

small happenings in the office, and gossip between desks. She learned

all about Mr. Featherstone, his devoted and adoring wife, his small,

crippled son, his own good nature, and hearty joviality. She heard a

great deal about Humphrey Stubbs and Walt Chase. Stubbs, she gathered,

was already Roy’s enemy. He had made several efforts to discredit the

newcomer, and was on the lookout for things about which to criticize

him to his chief. Walt Chase, on the contrary, was amiable and inclined

to be very friendly. Walt had been married less than a year, lived in

Hackensack, and his wife had just had a baby.

Jeannette listened enviously, with despair in her heart, when she heard

about Miss Anastasia Reubens, the editor of _The Wheel of Fortune_.

That Miss Reubens was forty-five and had spent all the working years

of her life on the editorial staff of one magazine or another made

little difference to Jeannette. She hated to inquire about her, but her

curiosity was too great.

“What do you suppose she gets?” she asked Roy with a casual air.

“Oh, I don’t know; perhaps fifty or sixty a week. I’m sure I haven’t

an idea. None of the folks down there get high salaries; everyone is

underpaid. Mr. Corey hasn’t more than got the business started. He

only began it five years ago. He tells us, we’ve got to wait with him,

until the money begins to come in, and then we’ll all share in the

profits.”

“Fifty or sixty a week?” sniffed Jeannette. “Did she tell you she got

that? ... She’s lucky, if she gets twenty-five!”

Roy shrugged his shoulders. He had an irritating way of avoiding

arguments, Jeannette noticed, by lapsing silent. She considered the

matter for a moment further, but decided it was not worth pressing.

“What kind of a man is Mr. Corey?” she asked.

“Oh, Corey? Corey’s a peach. He’s a dynamo of energy, and has all sorts

of enthusiasm. He’s got the most magnetic personality I’ve ever seen

in my life. He’s going to make a whale of a big business out of that

concern. Every Wednesday we all lunch together,--that is, the men in

the editorial and book departments,--and we go to the Brevoort; we’ve

got a private room down there, and Mr. Corey always comes and talks to

us about the business and we try to offer suggestions that will help

each other. We call it ‘The Get Together Club.’ It’s great.”

Jeannette studied her lover’s face and for a moment felt actual dislike

for him. What did _he_ know? Why should _he_ be so fortunate? Why

should everything go so smoothly for _him_? Why shouldn’t _she_ have a

chance like that?

“Mr. Featherstone may send me to Boston Friday to see the Advertising

Manager of Jordan & Marsh about some copy. He said something about it

last night. I’d hate to go, but, gee! it would be a great trip!”

Jeannette rose to her feet abruptly and lowered a hissing gas-jet. Oh,

she was unreasonable, silly, ungenerous! But she couldn’t listen any

longer. It made her sick.

§ 5

Mr. Abrahms, of Abrahms & Frank,--fur dealers and repairers of fur

garments,--would pay twelve dollars a week for a first-class “stenog,”

who “vood vork from eight till sigs.” He was very anxious that

Jeannette should accept his offer.

“I need a goil chust lige you, who c’n tage letters vot I digtate an’

put ’em into nice English, and be polide to der customers vot come in

ven I am busy,” he explained.

It was a cheap little establishment, crowded into the first floor and

basement of an old private dwelling, now devoted to similar small

enterprises. A dressmaker occupied the second floor, an electrician the

next, and a sign-painter the last and topmost. It was far from being

the kind of employment Jeannette wanted, but it was the best that had

been offered, and she promised to report on Monday.

She went dismally home on the “L,” deriving a bitter satisfaction

in picturing to herself what her days would be like, cooped up in

an ill-ventilated back office with the swarthy, none-too-clean Mr.

Abrahms, interviewing the none-too-clean customers who would be likely

to patronize such a place. Still it was a job and she was a wage-earner

again. There would be some comfort in announcing the news to Roy and to

her mother and sister.

She found a message from Roy when she reached home. It had been brought

by the clerk in Bannerman’s Drug Store. He had said, Alice repeated

for the hundredth time, that Mr. Beardsley had ’phoned and asked him to

tell Miss Jeannette Sturgis to come down at once to his office; he had

said it was important. Alice didn’t know anything more than that; there

wasn’t any use asking her questions; the clerk had just said that, and

that was all.

“Perhaps he’s got a job for me!” Jeannette exclaimed with a wild hope.

“He knows how badly I want one!”

“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea.” Her sister turned back to the

soapy water in the wash-tub where she was carefully washing some of her

mother’s jabots.

“Well, I’ll fly.”

Jeannette hurried to her room, and jerked the tissue paper out of her

best shirtwaist. Her fingers trembled as she re-dressed herself; the

tiny loops that connected with small pearl buttons on her cuffs eluded

her again and again until she was almost ready to cry with fury. She

felt sure that Roy had a job for her; he would have telephoned for no

other reason. In thirty minutes she was aboard the “L” again, rushing

downtown.

As she crossed Union Square the gold sign of the Chandler B. Corey

Company spreading itself imposingly across the façade of an ancient

office building made her heart beat faster, and her rapid, breathless

walk doubled with her excitement into almost a skip as she hurried

along. Oh, there was good news awaiting her! She felt it!

The wheezy elevator bumped and rumbled as it leisurely ascended. At the

fourth floor she stepped out into a reception room whose walls were

covered with large framed drawings and paintings. There were some

magazines arranged on a center table. The place smelt of ink and wet

paste. A smiling girl rose from a desk and came toward her.

“I’ll see if he’s in,” she said in reply to Jeannette’s query and

disappeared.

Upon an upholstered wicker seat in one corner of the room an

odd-looking woman wearing a huge cart-wheel hat was talking animatedly

to another who listened with a twisted, sour smile. They were

discussing photographs, and the woman in the cart-wheel hat was handing

them out one by one from a great pile in her lap. Jeannette was forced

to listen.

“This one is of some monks in a village monastery in Korea, and this

shows some of the Buddhist prayers for sale in a Japanese shop,--did

you ever see such a number?--and here is a group of our Bible students

at Tientsin,--could you ask for more intelligent faces? ... Wonderful

work.... these men are sacrificing their lives ... twelve thousand

dollars....” The words trailed off into an impressive whisper.

Down in the Square the trees were a mass of lovely golden brown and

golden yellow shades. Tiffany’s windows across the way sparkled with

dull silver.

Roy’s quick step sounded behind her, and Jeannette turned to meet his

grinning, eager face, his smile stretched to its tightest across his

small and even white teeth.

“Gee, I’m glad you’ve come, Janny!” he exclaimed boyishly. “Say, you

look dandy!--you look out-of-sight!” He eyed her delightedly. The woman

with the sour, twisted smile glanced toward them casually. Jeannette

was all cool dignity.

“What was it, Roy? ... Why did you send for me?”

He continued to smile at her, but at last her serious, expectant look

sobered him.

“I think I’ve got a job for you!” he said quickly, dropping his voice.

“I only heard about it this morning. I couldn’t telephone until I went

out to lunch. One of our regular stenographers is sick; she’s very sick

and is not coming back. Mr. Kipps, the business manager, was explaining

why they were short-handed upstairs and I was right there, so of course

I heard about it. I spoke to Mr. Featherstone about you, and he sent

me to Kipps, and Kipps told me to tell you to come down, so he could

talk to you. I told him what a wizard you were, and he seemed awfully

interested. I didn’t lose a minute; I telephoned as soon as I went out

to lunch. I had a deuce of a time making that drug clerk understand....

Gee, you look dandy! ... Gee, you look swell! ... Gee, I love you!”

He piloted her a few minutes later into the inner offices. Jeannette

gained a confused impression of crowded desks and clerks, the iron

grilling of a cashier’s cage, an open safe, a litter of paper, wire

baskets of letters, and stacks of bills. Before she knew it, she found

herself confronting Mr. Kipps, and Roy had abandoned her. She was aware

of a nervous, fidgety personality, with a thin, hawklike face and long,

thin fingers. He had unkempt hair and mustache, and wore round, black

tortoise-shell glasses through which he darted quick little glances

of appraisement at the girl who had seated herself at his invitation

beside his desk.

He fitted his finger-tips neatly together as he questioned her, lolled

back in his swivel armchair, and swung himself slowly from side to

side, kicking the desk gently with his feet. He asked her to spell

“privilege” and “acknowledgment,” and to tell him how many degrees

there were in a circle. He nodded with her replies.

He would give her a trial; she could report in the morning. He

dismissed her with no mention of what salary she would receive.

But Jeannette did not care. She was delighted and in high spirits. This

was just the kind of a job she wanted, just the sort of an atmosphere

she longed for; she felt certain that, whatever they paid her at first,

she would soon make them give her what she was worth.

When Roy arrived that evening there was great hilarity in the Sturgis

household. He had never seen Jeannette in such wild spirits, or found

her so affectionate with him. The coldness he sometimes met in her, the

reserve, the unyieldingness, were all absent now. He pulled the shabby

davenport up before the fire, and they sat holding hands, watching the

dying fire flicker and flicker and finally flicker out, and when the

light was gone she lay close against him, his arms about her, and every

now and then, as he bent his head over her, she raised hers to his, and

their lips met.

§ 6

Her desk, with those of the five other stenographers employed by the

publishing company, was located on the floor above the editorial

offices. Here were also the circulation and mail order departments.

Light entered from three broad front windows but it was far from

sufficient and thirty electric bulbs under green tin cones suspended

by long wire cords burned throughout the day over the rows of desks

and tables that filled the congested loft. At these were some hundred

girls and women, and half a dozen men. In the rear, where the daylight

failed almost completely to penetrate, the cones of electric radiance

flooded the dark recesses brilliantly. Old Hodgson, who was in charge

of the outgoing mail, there had his domain, and it was in this quarter

that the lumbering freight elevator occasionally made its appearance

with a bang and crash of opening iron doors. Toward the front, near the

windows, and separated from the rest by low railings, were located the

desks of Miss Holland and Mr. Max Oppenheim. The former was a tall,

thin-faced woman with iron-gray hair and a distinguished voice and

manner. Just what her duties were Jeannette could not guess. She had

her own stenographer and was forever dictating, or going downstairs

with sheaves of letters in her hands for conferences with Mr. Kipps.

Oppenheim was the Circulation Manager. He was a Jew, intelligent and

shrewd, with a pallor so pronounced it seemed unhealthy, further

emphasized by a thick mop of coal-black glistening hair that swept

straight back without a parting from his smooth white forehead.

Jeannette thought she recognized in him a type to be avoided; but she

never saw anything either in his manner toward her or the other girls

at which to take exception.

There was one other individual in the room who had a department to

herself. This was a chubby, bespectacled lady with an unpronounceable

German name who presided over a huddle of desks and conducted the

mail order department. No one ever seemed to have anything to say to

her, nor did she in her turn appear to have anything to say to anyone.

She plodded on with her work, unmolested, lost sight of. Sometimes

Jeannette suspected that Mr. Corey and Mr. Kipps and the other men

downstairs had forgotten the woman’s existence.

The stenographers with whom she was immediately and intimately thrown

were distinctly of a better class than the girls who had been her

associates in the Soulé Publishing Company. Miss Foster was red-headed

and given to shouts of infectious mirth, Miss Lopez was Spanish, pretty

and charming, Miss Bixby was a trifle hoidenish but good-natured, and

Miss Pratt was frankly an old maid for whom life had been obviously

a hard and devastating struggle; there remained Miss La Farge, who,

Jeannette suspected, was not of the world of decent women; her

be-ribboned _lingerie_ was clearly discernible through her sheer and

transparent shirtwaists, and she was given to rouge, lavish powdering,

and strong scent.

The first day in her new position was as difficult as Jeannette

anticipated. She knew she gave the impression of being cold and

condescending, but her shyness would not permit her to unbend. The

girls were politely distant with her at first, but Jeannette was fully

aware that each and every one of them was alive to her presence, and

everything they did and said was for her benefit.

She made an early friend of Miss Holland. The tall woman stopped at her

desk in passing, smiled pleasantly at her and asked if everything was

going all right. Something of quality, of good breeding in the older

woman’s face brought the girl to her feet, and it was this trifling act

of courtesy that won Miss Holland’s approval and favor, which Jeannette

never was to lose.

There were plenty of girls scattered among the tables where the

business of folding circulars, addressing envelopes, and writing cards

went on, who were of the high-heeled, pompadoured, sallow-skinned

variety with which Jeannette was already familiar, but these persons

came and went with the work; few of them were regular employees.

When a stenographer was needed in the editorial department a buzzer

sounded upstairs and the girl next in order answered the summons.

Miss Foster usually took Mr. Corey’s dictation and also that of his

secretary, Mr. Smith, but the other girls went from Mr. Featherstone to

Mr. Kipps to Miss Reubens and to the rest as they were required.

Mr. Kipps sent especially for Jeannette on her first morning. She

was nervous and her pencil trembled a little as she scribbled down

her notes. She found his dictation extremely difficult to take; he

hesitated, paused a long time to think of the word he wanted, corrected

himself, asked her to repeat what he had said, or to scratch out what

she had written and to go back and read her notes to a point where

he could recommence. But he seemed pleased when she brought him the

finished letters.

“Very good, Miss Sturgis,--very good indeed,” he said without

enthusiasm, tapping his pursed lips with the tip of his penholder as he

scanned her work.

She was jubilant. She looked for Roy; she was eager to tell him

what Mr. Kipps had said. But he was not at his desk as she passed

through the advertising department, nor was he waiting for her--as she

hoped--when five o’clock came and she started home.

Well, she was satisfied,--she had gotten just what she wanted,--she

would soon make herself indispensable.... Mr. Kipps was really a lovely

man, although one would never suspect it from his nervous manner. She

felt a sudden assurance she was going to be very happy.

Roy found her again in her sweetest, kindest mood that evening. They

began at once to discuss everyone in the entire organization of the

company from the President, himself, down to Bertram, the little Jew

office boy, who was inclined to be fresh. The publishing house had

suddenly become their entire world and everyone in it was either friend

or foe.

“I hope I make good,” sighed Jeannette.

“Make good?” repeated her lover indignantly. “Of course, you’ll make

good. Don’t _I_ know how good you are? Why, _say_, Janny dear, you’ve

got that bunch of girls skinned a mile!”

It was soon evident to Jeannette that Roy was right. The next day she

made a point of glancing at some of Miss Foster’s and Miss Lopez’s

letters; she noted two errors in the former’s, and the latter’s were

rubbed and full of erasures; the letters, themselves, were poorly

spaced and the sheets in several instances were far from being clean.

She was genuinely shocked at such slovenliness. They would not have

tolerated it at the school for a minute! The girls who had been with

her under Beardsley had done better work than that!.... She paused

over the thought and smiled. It was funny now to think of dear old Roy

as the Mr. Beardsley who had once filled her with such awe and in fear

of whose displeasure she had actually trembled.

§ 7

Her satisfaction with her new position found utter completeness when

on her first Saturday morning her pay envelope reached her, and she

discovered she was to receive fifteen dollars a week. It was the last

drop in her felicity. She flung herself into her work with all the

eagerness of an intense young nature. In turn she took dictation from

Mr. Featherstone, Miss Reubens, Mr. Olmstead, the auditor, and young

Mr. Cavendish, who edited _Corey’s Commentary_. Everyone seemed to

like her. Miss Reubens, having tried the new stenographer, thereafter

invariably asked for her, and while this was gratifying in its way,

Jeannette would have willingly foregone the distinction. Miss Reubens

was not a pleasing personality for whom to work; she referred to

Jeannette as “the new girl,” treated her like a machine, and kept her

sitting idly beside her desk while she sorted papers or carried on long

conversations at the telephone. She was a high-strung, perpetually

agitated person, given to complaining a great deal, undoubtedly

overworked, but finding consolation in pitying herself and in bemoaning

her hard lot. Jeannette recognized in her the lady with the twisted,

sour mouth who had been inspecting photographs the day she first came

to the office.

Mr. Olmstead, the auditor, was a tiresome old man, who teetered on his

toes when he talked and tapped his thumb-nail with the rim of his

eye-glasses to emphasize his words. He took a tedious time over his

dictation, and Jeannette had to shut her lips tightly to keep from

prompting him.

Mr. Cavendish, on the other hand, was charming. He was about

thirty-three or-four, Jeannette judged, handsome, with thick, very

dark red hair, and a thick, dark red mustache. He was always very

courteous, and had an ever-ready stock of pleasantries. She was aware

that he admired her, and she could not help feeling self-conscious

in his company. They joked together mildly and their eyes frequently

held one another’s in amused glances. Of all the people in the office

she liked best to take dictation from him; he never repeated himself,

his sentences were neatly phrased and to the point, and his choice of

words, she considered, beautiful. That he was unmarried did not detract

from her interest in him. She read some of the recent back numbers of

_Corey’s Commentary_ and particularly the editorials, and told Roy she

admired them enormously.

She was far happier in the environment of the editorial rooms than

upstairs where she worked with the other stenographers in the midst

of the bustle, racket and confusion of the circulation and mail order

departments. She soon discovered she had little in common with Miss

Foster or Miss Bixby; Miss Lopez was a pretty nonentity; Miss Pratt, an

elderly incompetent, and Miss La Farge, a vulgar-lipped grisette. The

girls realized she looked down on them and clannishly hung together,

to talk about her among themselves. They were not openly rude, but

Jeannette was aware she was not popular with them.

Miss Holland alone on the first floor attracted her. They smiled at

one another whenever their eyes met, and Jeannette enjoyed the feeling

that this faded, kindly gentlewoman recognized in her a girl of her own

class.

§ 8

There were a dozen other personalities in the company that the new

stenographer learned to know and with whom she came more or less

into contact. Important among these was Mr. Corey’s secretary, Mr.

Smith, whom nobody liked. He was suspected of being a tale-bearer, an

informant who tattled inconsequences to his chief. He was obviously a

toady, and treated everyone in the office, not a member of the firm,

with an air of great condescension. Mrs. Charlotte Inness of the book

department was a regal, gray-haired personage, with many floating

draperies that were ever trailing magnificently behind her as she

came and went. Miss Travers, who was cooped up all day behind the

wire grilling of the Cashier’s cage, was a waspish, merry individual,

and although sometimes common, even vulgar, was both friendly and

amusing. Francis Holme and Van Alstyne spent most of their time on

the road visiting book dealers. Van Alstyne was English and inclined

to be patronizing, but Holme was large-toothed, large-mouthed and

big-eared, bluff and frank, noisy and good-hearted. And there was also

Mr. Cavendish’s assistant, Horatio Stephens, a tall, rangy young man,

with rather a dreamy, detached air, with whom Roy shared a room at

his boarding-house. Jeannette found him vaguely repellent; there was

something about his long skinny hands and drooping eyelids that made

her creepy. And then there was Mr. Corey himself.

Chandler B. Corey was, as Roy had described him, a man of vivid

personality. Although not yet in his fifties, he had a full head of

silky white hair. In sharp contrast to this were his black bushy

eyebrows and his black mustache which curled gracefully at the ends

and which he had a habit of pulling whenever he was thinking hard. His

skin was pink and clear as a boy’s, but there was nothing effeminate in

his face with its heavy square jaw. There was a dynamic quality about

him that communicated itself to everyone who came in contact with him,

and yet with all his energy and fire, Jeannette noted there was an

extraordinary gentleness about him, somewhat suggesting sadness.

On a day toward the end of her third week, she took a long and

important letter from him. Miss Foster was struggling with a pile

of other work he had already given her, and Mr. Smith sent Bertram

upstairs with a request for Miss Sturgis to come down.

She had never been in Mr. Corey’s office before. At once she was struck

with its quality. Compared with the noisy ruggedness and bare floors

outside, it was quiet, luxurious. Sectional bookcases, filled to

overflowing, and many autographed framed photographs lined walls that

were covered with burlap. There were one or two large leather armchairs

and in the center a great flat-topped desk heaped with manuscripts

and stacks of clipped papers. A film of dust lay over many of these,

and the scent of cigar smoke was in the air. Mr. Corey’s silvery head

beyond the desk appeared as a startling blot of white against the

background of warm brown.

She was surprised to discover how tersely he dictated. There was

nothing of a literary quality about his sentences, nothing savoring of

the polish of Mr. Cavendish. He was all business and dispatch. She felt

oddly sorry for him; more than once during the brief quarter of an hour

that she was with him a great sympathy for him came over her. He seemed

weighed down with responsibilities. A paper mill was pressing him for

money; no funds would be available for another three months; his letter

offered them his note for ninety days. While he dictated, the telephone

interrupted him; something had gone wrong with the linotype machines,

and the delay would result in _The Wheel of Fortune_ being two or

three days late on the news-stands. In the midst of this conversation

Mr. Featherstone came in to report that Shreve & Baker had cancelled

their advertisement and had definitely refused to renew it. An army of

annoyances pressed around on every side.

She told Roy about it when he came to see her that night.

“Oh, C. B.’s a wonder,” he agreed; “he carries that whole concern on

his shoulders, and you can rest assured there’s nothing goes on down

there that he doesn’t know. They all depend on him.”

“He seems so over-burdened, and so--so harassed,” Jeannette said.

“I guess he’s all of that. You know he’s had an awful hard time getting

a start; the business is just about able to stand on its own feet now.”

“I don’t think Mr. Smith is much help to him. He could save him a whole

lot if he would.”

“Oh, _that_ fish! He’s no good. He told C. B. a most outrageous lie

about Mr. Featherstone; there was an awful row.”

“Then why doesn’t Mr. Featherstone have him discharged?”

“Nobody’s got anything to say down there except Mr. Corey. He owns

fifty-one per cent of the stock, I understand, and if he likes Smith,

Smith is going to stay.”

“I can’t see how Mr. Corey can put up with him.”

“How did C. B. like your work?”

“I don’t know. Mr. Smith took it when I brought it downstairs, and

carried it in to him. I didn’t hear a word; but he didn’t send it back

to me for anything.”

“He was pleased all right. You’ve made a hit with everyone. They’re

all crazy about you; Miss Reubens always wants you; and Cavendish, I

notice, seems to take a special interest in his dictation now.”

The last was said with an amused scrutiny of her face.

“Oh, don’t be silly, Roy!”

“I’m not,” he declared sensibly. “I don’t care if he admires you. Men

are always going to do that. Holme asked me the other day who the new

queen was, and I was mighty proud to tell him you were my fiancée. I

guess I appreciate the fact that the smartest, loveliest girl in the

world is going to be my wife!”

“Oh,--don’t!” Jeannette repeated. There was trouble in her face.

§ 9

Her days were packed full of interest now. She enjoyed every moment of

the time spent within the shabby portals of the publishing house. The

rest of the twenty-four hours were given to happy anticipation of new

experiences awaiting her, or in pleasant retrospect of happenings that

marked her advancement. For it was clear to her she was progressing,

daily tightening her hold upon her job, making the “big” people

like her, bringing herself nearer and nearer the goal she some day

eagerly hoped to reach: of being indispensable to these delightful,

new employers. To what end this tended, how far it would carry her,

under what circumstances she would achieve final success she could not

surmise. She was conscious these days only of an intense satisfaction,

a delight in knowing she was steadily, though blindly, attaining her

ambition.

Often she wished during these early weeks she had a dozen pairs of

hands that she might take everyone’s dictation and type all the letters

that left the office. She became interested in the subject and purpose

of these letters. Cavendish wrote an urgent note to a Mr. David Russell

Purington, who was a regular contributor to _Corey’s Commentary_ from

Washington, telling him how extremely important it was, in connection

with a certain article shortly to appear in the magazine, for him

to obtain an exclusive interview on the subject with the Japanese

plenipotentiary at that time visiting the capital. Miss Reubens fretted

and murmured complainingly as she worded a communication to Lester

Short, the author, explaining that it was impossible for _The Wheel of

Fortune_ to pay the price he asked for his story, _The Broken Jade_.

Mr. Kipps, through her, informed the Typographical Union, Number 63,

that under no conditions would the Chandler B. Corey Company reëmploy

Timothy Conboy and that if the union persisted, the Publishing Company

was prepared to declare for an open shop. Mrs. Inness confided to her

hand an enthusiastic memorandum to Mr. Corey urging him to accept and

publish at once a novel called _The Honorable Estate_ by a new writer,

Homer Deering, which she declared was of the most sensational nature.

But after typing these letters and memorandums Jeannette heard nothing

more of them. She wanted to know whether or not Mr. David Russell

Purington succeeded in obtaining the much desired interview, what

Lester Short decided to do about the seventy-five dollars Miss Reubens

offered, how the Typographical Union, Number 63, replied to Mr. Kipps’

ultimatum, and if Mr. Corey accepted Homer Deering’s significant

manuscript. Her curiosity was seldom gratified; she hardly ever saw the

replies to the letters she had typed with such interest. Miss Foster,

Miss Lopez, Miss Pratt, Miss Bixby or Miss La Farge continued the

correspondence. Often she would see a letter unwinding itself from a

neighboring machine at the top of which she would recognize a familiar

name, but she had no time to read further, and there was a certain

restraint observed among the girls about overlooking one another’s

work. Jeannette realized she was merely a small cog in a machine and

that her prejudices, enthusiasms, her interest and opinion were of

small consequence to anyone.

She rose early in the morning, sometimes at five, and her mother would

hear her thumping and pounding with an iron in the kitchen as she

pressed a shirtwaist to wear fresh to the office, or clitter-clattering

in the bathroom as she polished her shoes or washed stockings. Her

costume was invariably neat and smart, but she dressed soberly, with

knowing effectiveness for her working day. Her mother, yawning sleepily

or frowning in mild distress, would find her getting her own breakfast

at seven.

“Why, dearie,” she would plaintively remonstrate, “whatever do you want

to bother with the stove for? I’m going to get your breakfast; you

leave that to me.... I don’t see,” she might add querulously, “why you

have to get up at such unearthly hours.”

Alice would shortly make her appearance, and with wrappers trailing,

slippers clapping and shuffling about the kitchen, her mother and

sister would complete the simple preparations for her morning meal,

and set about getting their own. About the time they had borne in the

smoking granite coffee-pot again to the dining-room, and had hunched

up their chairs to the table, Jeannette would be ready to leave the

house. When she came to kiss them good-bye, she would always find them

there, her mother’s cheek soft and warm, Alice’s firm, hard face, cool

and smelling faintly of soap. She would seem so vigorously alive as

she left them, so confident and capable. There was always a tremendous

satisfaction in feeling well-dressed, well-prepared and early-started

for her day’s work. As she left the house, and filled her lungs with

the first breath of sharp morning air, there would come a tug of

excitement at the prospect of the hours ahead. She loved the trip

downtown on the bumping, whirring elevated; she loved the close contact

with fellow-passengers, wage-earners like herself; she loved the brisk

walk along Seventeenth Street and across the leaf-strewn square, where

she faced the tide of clerks and office workers that poured steadily

out of the Ghetto and lower East Side, and set itself toward the great

tall buildings of lower Fifth Avenue and Broadway, and she loved the

first glimpse of the gold sign of the Chandler B. Corey Company, with

the feeling that she belonged there and was one of its employees.

She would be at her desk half to three-quarters of an hour ahead of the

other girls. There would usually be work left over from the previous

day. She liked settling herself for the busy hours to come when no one

was around and she could do so with comfort.

She would hardly be conscious of the other girls’ arrival, and would

often greet them with a smiling good-morning, or answer their questions

with no recollection afterwards of having done so.

The whirlwind of office demands and the tide of work would soon be

about her. Miss Reubens wanted her, Mr. Kipps rang for a stenographer,

Mr. Featherstone had an important letter to get off before he went out.

Would Miss Sturgis look up that letter to the Glenarsdale Agency? Would

Miss Sturgis come down when she was free? Mr. Cavendish had an article

he wanted copied as soon as possible. Miss Bixby was busy, Miss Foster

was busy, Miss Lopez, Miss Pratt, Miss La Farge were busy; Miss Sturgis

was busiest of all. She thrilled to the rush and fury of her days.

There was never a let-up, never a lull; there was always more and more

work piling up.

At noon, at twelve-thirty, at one,--whenever she was free for a moment

about that time,--she would slip out for her lunch. She had learned

she must eat,--eat something, no matter how little, in the middle of

the day. She still patronized the soda and candy counter in the big

rotunda of Siegel-Cooper’s mammoth department store for her china cup

of coffee and two saltine crackers. Sometimes she spent another nickel

for a bag of peanut brittle. Somewhere she had read that the sugar in

the candy and the starch in the peanuts contained a high percentage of

nutritious value. She nibbled out of the bag on her way back to the

office.

She would be gone hardly more than half the hour she was allowed for

luncheon. Between one and three in the afternoon was the time she was

least interrupted, and in this interval her fingers flew, and letter

after letter,--slipped beneath its properly addressed envelope,--would

steadily augment the pile in the wire basket that stood beside her

machine. She rejoiced when it grew so tall, the stack was in danger of

falling out.

In the late afternoon came the rush and the most exacting demands. Miss

Reubens had a letter that must go off that night without fail; Mr.

Featherstone had just returned from a conference with a big advertiser

and wanted a record of the agreement typed at once; Mr. Kipps had

a communication to be instantly dispatched; Mr. Corey needed a

stenographer. The girls were all busy; they had too much to do already;

they could not finish half the letters that had been given them. Well,

how about Miss Sturgis? Could Miss Sturgis manage to get out just one

more? It was _so_ important. Yes, Miss Sturgis could,--of course she

could; it might be late, but if the writer would remain to sign it,

she’d manage to finish it somehow.

“You’re a fool,” Miss Bixby said to her one day sourly. “Nobody’s going

to thank you for it; you don’t get paid a cent more; I don’t see why

you want to make a beast-of-burden out of yourself. They just use you

like a sponge in this office; squeeze every ounce of strength out of

you, and then throw you away. Look at Linda Harris!”

Linda Harris was the girl who had sickened, and whose place Jeannette

now filled.

Perhaps Miss Bixby was right, Jeannette would say to herself, riding

home after six and sometimes after seven o’clock on the lurching train,

tired to the point where her muscles ached and her sight was blurred.

But there was something in her that rose vigorously to this battle of

work, that made her reach down and ever deeper down inside herself for

new strength and new capacity.

§ 10

Wearily, her hand dragging on the stair rail, she would pull herself

step by step up the long flights to the top floor. Tired though she

might be, her mind would still be buzzing with the events of the day:

Mr. Cavendish’s letter to Senator Slocum,--had she remembered the

enclosures? Mr. Kipps had been short with her, or so he had seemed;

perhaps he had been only vexed at the end of a long day of worry. Mr.

Corey’s smile at a comment she had ventured was consoling. Then there

was that friction between Miss Reubens and Mrs. Inness; they had had

some sharp words; she wondered which one of them eventually would

triumph. Mrs. Inness, of course.... And little Miss Maria Lopez had

confided to her in the wash-room she was going to be married!

“Hello, dearie! ... Home again?” Jeannette’s mother would call to her

cheerfully as she pushed open the door. Alice would turn her head with

a “’Lo, Sis”; she would kiss them dutifully, perfunctorily. The kitchen

would be hot and steamy; the smell of food would make her feel giddy,

perhaps faint. She would be ravenously hungry. She would go to her dark

little bedroom, light the gas, remove her hat, blouse, and skirt and

stretch herself gratefully on her bed.... Would Mrs. Inness go to Mr.

Corey about her difference with Miss Reubens? ... Miss Holland had had

a conference with Mr. Kipps all afternoon; what could it be about? ...

Would Bertram be discharged for losing that manuscript? ... Mr. Van

Alstyne had certainly been unnecessarily curt; she cordially disliked

him.... And Mr. Smith had most assuredly not given her Mr. Corey’s

message; why, she remembered distinctly....

“Dinner, dearie.” She would drag herself to her feet, rub her face

briskly with a wet wash-rag, and in her wrapper join her mother and

sister at table.

“Well, tell us how everything went to-day,” Mrs. Sturgis would say,

busy with plates and serving spoon.

“Oh,--’bout the same as usual,” Jeannette would sigh. “Bertram, the

office boy, lost a manuscript to-day. It was terribly important. We

were awfully busy upstairs, and Mrs. Inness sent the book out to be

typed, and he left the package somewheres,--on the street car, he

thinks. Mr. Kipps will probably fire him; he deserves it; he’s awfully

fresh.”

“You don’t say,” Mrs. Sturgis would murmur abstractedly. “Drink your

tea, dearie, before it gets cold.”

Jeannette dutifully sipping the hot brew would consider how to tell

them of the trouble between Mrs. Inness and Miss Reubens.

“Miss Reubens,--you know, Mother,--is the editor of _The Wheel of

Fortune_, and Mrs. Charlotte Inness runs our book department. They

dislike each other cordially and I just know some day there’s going to

be a dreadful row----”

“Alice, dearie,--get Mother another tea-cup,” Mrs. Sturgis might

interrupt, her eye on her older daughter’s face to show she was

attending. “And while you’re up, you might glance in the oven.... Yes,

dearie?” she would say encouragingly to Jeannette.

The girl would recommence her story, but she could see it was

impossible to arouse their interest. Their attention wandered; they

knew none of the people in the office; it was no concern of theirs what

happened to them.

“Kratzmer had the effrontery to charge me thirty cents for a can of

peaches to-day,” Mrs. Sturgis would remark. “I just told him they were

selling for twenty-five on the next block and I wouldn’t pay it, and

he said to me I could take my trade anywhere I chose, and I told him

that that was no way to conduct his business, and he as much as told me

that it was his business and he intended to run it the way he liked! I

wouldn’t stand for such impudence, and I just gave him a piece of my

mind.” An indignant finger tossing an imaginary ruffle at her throat

suggested what had been the little woman’s agitated manner.

“Kratzmer’s awfully obliging,” Alice commented mildly.

“Well, perhaps,--but the idea!”

“Mr. Corey was unusually nice to me to-day,” Jeannette remarked.

Her mother would smile and nod encouragingly, but her eyes would be

inspecting her daughters’ plates, considering another helping or

whether it was time for dessert.

“I couldn’t match my braid,” Alice would murmur in a disconsolate tone.

“I went to the Woman’s Bazaar and to Miss Blake’s and they had nothing

like it. I suppose I’ll have to go downtown to Macy’s. Do you remember,

Mother, where you got the first piece?”

“No, I don’t, dearie,” her mother would reply slowly. “Perhaps it was

O’Neill & Adams.... How much do you need?”

“About three yards. I could manage with two. Do you suppose you’d have

time to-morrow, Janny, to try at Macy’s?”

“Maybe; I can’t promise. You have no idea how rushed we are sometimes.”

“You know I’ve a good mind to try Meyer’s place over on Amsterdam; it

always seems so clean. Kratzmer’s getting too independent.”

“Kratzmer knows us, Mama, and sometimes it’s awfully convenient to

charge.”

“I know. That’s perfectly true. But the idea of his talking to me that

way!”

“They might have it at Siegel-Cooper’s. You could ask there to-morrow.

It would only take you five minutes. I hate to go all the way downtown,

and there’s the carfare.”

“I’ve traded with Kratzmer ever since he moved into the block. I guess

he forgets I’ve been a resident in this neighborhood for nearly

thirteen years. He shouldn’t treat me like a casual customer; it’s not

right and proper.”

“It would be the greatest help if I could get it to-morrow. I’m

absolutely at a standstill on that dress until I have it. Siegel’s sure

to keep a big stock. I’ll give you a sample.”

“I’ve always liked the look of things at Meyer’s. All the Jewesses go

there and they always know where to get the best things to eat,--but I

suppose he _is_ more expensive.”

“It oughtn’t to cost more than twenty cents a yard. Do you remember

what you paid for it, Mama?”

“Dearie,--it’s so long ago; I’m sorry.... I’d rather hate to break

with Kratzmer after all these years. You can’t help but make friends

with the trades-people. Do you think Meyer’s would really be more

high-priced, Janny?”

Jeannette would shrug her shoulders and carefully fold her napkin. They

were dears,--she loved them best of all the world,--but they seemed

so small and petty with their trifling concerns: matching braids and

disagreeing with trades-people.

The dinner dishes would be cleared away. Jeannette would brush the

cloth, put away the salt and pepper shakers, the napkins, and unused

cutlery; then she would carefully fold the tablecloth in its original

creases, replace it with the square of chenille curtaining, and climb

on a chair to fit the brass hook of the drop-light over the gas-jet

above.

Roy would arrive at eight,--he was always there promptly,--and she

would have a bare twenty minutes to get ready. She would hear her

mother and sister scraping and rattling in the kitchen as she dressed,

water hissing into the sink, the bang of the tin dishpan, their voices

murmuring.

She would be glad when her lover came. A flood of questions, surmises,

hazarded opinions about office affairs, poured from her then. She

was free at last to talk as she liked about what absorbed her so

much; she had an audience that would listen eagerly and attentively

to everything. What _would_ Mr. Kipps do about Bertram, and if the

manuscript was really lost, what _would_ Mrs. Inness do about it?

... Did he hear anything about the row between Mrs. Inness and Miss

Reubens? Well,--she’d tell him, only she wanted first to ask his advice

about whether she should go to Mr. Corey and simply tell him that Smith

had certainly _never_ given her his message?

Roy would meet this eager gossip with news of his own. Mr. Featherstone

had given Walt Chase an awful call-down for promising a preferred

position he had no right to, and Stubbs was starting on a trip to

Chicago and St. Louis. There was talk of putting Francis Holme in

charge of the Book Sales Department, and Roy hoped he’d get it instead

of Van Alstyne. And what did Jeannette think the chances would be of

Horatio Stephens getting Miss Reuben’s job if Miss Reubens quit on

account of Mrs. Inness?

Roy would tire eventually of this shop talk. He longed to reach the

love-making stage of the evening; he was eager to tell her how much

he adored her, and to have her confess she cared for him in return;

he liked to have her nestle close against him, his arms about her, to

hold her to him and have her raise her lips to his each time he bent

over her. But Jeannette grew less and less inclined these days to

surrender herself to these embraces. Each time Roy mentioned love,

she would tell him not to be silly, and would speak of another office

affair. It distressed her lover; he would fidget unhappily, not quite

understanding how she eluded him. Again and again he would return to

the question of their marriage. Did Jeannette think March would be a

good month? It was three months off. Yes, March would be all right,

but did he suppose Miss Reubens was really overworked? Roy didn’t know

whether she was or not; she complained a good deal, he admitted. But

now about where they were to live; he had heard of a little house in

Flatbush that could be rented for twenty dollars a month. How did she

feel about living in Brooklyn?

But marriage did not interest her for the present; she was too much

absorbed in the affairs of the publishing company. Weddings could wait;

hers could, anyhow. Just now she wanted Roy to help her guess the

salaries of everyone in the office.

And when, as ten and ten-thirty and eleven o’clock approached, Roy,

conscious of the passing minutes, would press his love-making to a

point where Jeannette could no longer divert him, she would send him

home. She would suddenly remember she had her stockings to wash out,

or gloves to clean before she went to bed. She would realize at the

moment, how dreadfully tired she was, and the morrow always presented a

difficult day.

“You must go now, Roy,” she would say. “You simply _must_ go. I’m dead

and I’ve got to get some sleep. Please say good-night.”

“Not until you kiss me,” he would insist.

“... There. Now go.”

“But tell me first you love me?”

“Oh, _Roy_!”

“No,--you must tell me.”

“Why, of course; you know I do.”

“Lots?”

“Yes--yes.”

“And you’ll marry me?”

“Surely.”

“When?”

“Now, Roy, you _must_ go. I tell you I’m dropping, I’m so tired.”

“But tell me when you’ll marry me?”

“Well,--whenever we’re ready.”

“You darling! Kiss me again.”

“Roy!”

“Kiss me.... Oh, kiss me _good_.”

“Good-night!”

“Good-night.... You darling!”

CHAPTER V

§ 1

Roy wanted to be married; he wanted Jeannette to set the date; he

wanted her to make up her mind where she preferred to live, and to

start making plans accordingly. Just before Christmas his salary was

raised five dollars a week and the last barrier--for him--to the

wedding was removed. There was nothing to prevent their being married

at once. Everyone agreed, even Jeannette herself, that a hundred

dollars a month would be sufficient for their needs the first year.

With a mysterious air, Mrs. Sturgis hinted at responsibilities that

might come to them, but Roy’s salary would undoubtedly be raised more

than once by that time. She liked her daughter’s promised husband; he

had such an honest, clean face, his eyes were so clear and blue. He

made her think of her Ralph. She felt she could with safety entrust

Jeannette’s happiness to him. Alice was frankly a warm admirer of her

prospective brother-in-law. She agreed with everything he said and

always sided with him in an argument. Mother, sister and future husband

shared the opinion that the marriage must soon take place; there was

no sense in Jeannette’s wearing herself to death down there at that

office; she took it all too seriously; she was undermining her health.

Jeannette, with vague misgivings, agreed. It was too bad; she liked the

business life so much. But marriage was the thing; she must make up

her mind to be married and settle down in a little house with Roy over

in Brooklyn,--presumably. She thought of the dish-washing, bed-making,

carpet-sweeping, cooking, and shuddered. She hated domesticity. Alice

would have loved it; but she was different from Alice.

Roy? ... Oh, she loved Roy, she guessed, but not with the fluttering

pulse and quickened breath he had once occasioned. She liked him; he

was sweet and companionable. Sometimes she felt very motherly toward

him, liked to brush his stuck-up hair and rest her cheek against his.

She could see herself happy with him, knowing she would always dominate

him and he was disarmingly amiable. Sometimes she thought about babies.

She wouldn’t mind having them. She had always imagined she would like

one some day, to dandle about and cuddle close to her. Roy was sure

to be a sweet-tempered father. But she sighed when she thought of

the office, the progress she was making there, her popularity, and

particularly the five dollars a week that was her own to spend just as

she pleased. She loved that five dollars; once she touched the soft

greenback to her lips.

She agreed to be married on the second of April.

§ 2

It was shortly after the beginning of the new year that the news went

around the office that Mr. Smith was going;--fired, everyone decided.

No one knew how the rumor got about, but there was universal and secret

rejoicing. It was whispered that, as Mr. Corey’s secretary, he had been

indiscreet.

There were to be other changes in the office. Miss Travers was to take

Smith’s place, Mr. Holme was to be put in complete charge of the Book

Sales department, Van Alstyne was leaving, and Miss Holland was to go

downstairs to assist Mr. Kipps.

Jeannette, excited by these readjustments, surmised that her own

news of resignation would create its particular stir. How interested

everyone would be to learn that she and Roy Beardsley of the

Advertising Department were to be married! There would be a lot of

rejoicing and good wishes. The office would consider it a happy match.

Her going would be regretted,--she knew that she was valued,--but all

would be glad nevertheless that she and young Beardsley were going to

be man and wife. An ideal couple!--Happy romance!--Miss Sturgis and Mr.

Beardsley! How delightful! Well--well!

If everyone was sure to think so well of her marriage, why should she

have any doubts about it?

She was pondering on this, one day, while mechanically folding her

letters and putting them into their proper envelopes, when there came

a summons from Mr. Corey. She found him idly thumbing the pages of an

advance dummy of one of the magazines. When she had seated herself and

flapped back her note-book for his dictation, he asked her without

preamble how she would like the idea of being his secretary. He

elaborated upon what he should expect of her: there would be plenty

of hard work, long hours sometimes, she might have to come back

occasionally in the evenings, and there must be no gossiping with other

employees of the company or outside of the office.

“What goes on in here, what you learn from my letters or see from my

correspondence, what you come to know of my business or private life,

must be kept strictly to yourself. Nothing must be repeated,--not even

what may seem to you a trivial, insignificant fact. I wish to have no

secrets from my secretary, and I do not wish my affairs discussed with

anyone, not even with members of the firm, such as Mr. Kipps, or Mr.

Featherstone. Understand? Miss Holland thinks you’re qualified to fill

the position,--recommends you warmly,--and Mr. Kipps has a good word

for you. Personally I have a feeling you will do very well, and that I

can trust you. If you think you can do the work, we will start you at

twenty-five a week.... What do you say?”

Jeannette’s throat went dry, her temples throbbed, her face burned.

Visions swift, tormenting, rose before her: she saw Roy, her mother,

sister!--she saw herself a bride, a wife, with hair hanging about her

face, bending over a steaming pan full of dirty dishes; she saw herself

sitting where Mr. Smith had sat, moving about the office, respected,

looked up to, feared and conciliated. She thought of the number of

times she had said that Smith was of small help to his chief, and the

number of times, in her secret soul, she had pictured herself in some

such post as his, helping, protecting, serving as she knew she could

help, protect and serve. She gazed at the kind face with its crown of

silvery white, and into the dark eyes studying her, as she felt rising

up strong within her the consciousness of how she could work for this

man, and be to him all he could ever expect in a secretary. The sadness

that surrounded him, the big fight he was waging to make his business

a success touched her imagination. She sensed his need of her,--his

great need of her,--and she saw in the dim future how dependent he

would grow to be on her. She would have a part in his struggle; she

could help him achieve his ambition as he could help her achieve

hers. Suddenly Roy’s stricken face interposed again. Rebellion rose

passionately! ... But it was too late. She was going to be married; she

was going to be Roy’s wife.... Yet how desperately she longed to be

this big man’s secretary! She thought of the sensation the promotion

would cause, how it would stagger Miss Foster, Miss Bixby, the other

girls,--how it would impress her mother, Alice,--_Roy_!

Her strained, hard expression brought a puzzled look to her employer’s

face. She tried to speak; her lips only moved soundlessly.

“Well, well,--you don’t have to make up your mind at once,” Mr. Corey

said. “Suppose you try it for a month or two. I don’t think you’ll find

it as hard as you anticipate. I am away for some months every year,--I

go abroad in the spring,--and while that does not mean a vacation for

you, the work is naturally easier. I would greatly appreciate loyalty

and conscientiousness. I think you have just the qualities. Try it, as

I suggest, until, say the first of March, and then we’ll see how we get

along together and whether you think the work too hard.”

She could not bring herself to tell him she was going to be married,

that she was thinking of resigning in a few weeks; she could not dash

from his hand the cup, brimming with all her ambitions realized, which

he held out to her so persuasively. No,--not just yet. He suggested she

try the position until the first of March. There was nothing to hinder

her from doing that! The glory would be hers, even if she were to enjoy

it but for six weeks. She would be “Mr. Corey’s secretary” before the

office; everyone would know of it, her mother, Alice, Roy,--all of them

would see how she had succeeded. On the first of March,--went her swift

mind,--she could talk it over with Mr. Corey, tell him the work was

beyond her strength, that she didn’t like it,--or that she was going to

be married! It wouldn’t matter then.

“Well,--what do you say?” Mr. Corey leaned forward slightly, his shrewd

eyes watching her.

She swallowed hard, and met his steady gaze.

“Yes,--I’ll try it. I--I think I can do it.”

“Good. Then we’ll start in to-morrow. Mr. Smith leaves us Saturday.

He can show you about my private filing system and some of the ropes

before he goes.”

§ 3

Quietly she told the news to her mother and sister that evening.

At once there was a hubbub; they were lavish with kisses, hugs and

congratulations. Alice, clapping palms, exclaimed:

“That will give you seventy-five--ninety dollars more to spend on your

trousseau! ... Oh, what will you _do_ with it, Janny?”

“It’s more than Roy gets,” Mrs. Sturgis commented proudly with an

elegant gesture of her hand.

“No, he was raised just before Christmas.”

“Well, it’s as much anyway. Think of it: twenty-five dollars a week!

... For a _girl_! ... Why, your father never earned much more!”

Roy was delighted, too.

“By golly!” he exclaimed enthusiastically. “I told you, didn’t I?

I guess I can tell a good stenographer when I see one. You were

worrying--remember?--when you first went down there whether you were

going to make good or not.... Well,--_say_,--isn’t that great! ... I

guess I’ve got a pretty smart girl picked out for a wife; hey, old

darling? You’re just a wonder, Janny! You can do anything. I wish

I was good enough for you, that’s all.... Poor old C. B.! He’ll be

disappointed as the deuce when you quit!”

Nevertheless, within the next few days Roy wondered if he altogether

liked the change in Jeannette’s status. Her manner towards him became

different. She no longer would gossip about office matters, and during

business hours she treated him with cold formality. There had always

been a pleased light in her eyes at a chance encounter with him and

sometimes he would find a little note on his desk she had left there.

But now she held him at a distance rather pompously, he thought. She

answered “I don’t know,” or “Mr. Corey didn’t say,” when he asked some

casual question about business. She had become close-mouthed, and gave

herself an air as she went about her work.

“I can’t act differently towards you than I do towards anybody else,”

she said in her defence when he complained. “Don’t you see, Roy, I’ve

got to be a kind of machine now. I’ve got to treat everybody alike. Mr.

Corey wouldn’t like it if he thought I was intimate with you.”

“But we’re _engaged to be married_!”

“Yes, of course,--but he doesn’t know it. And I want to make good,

even if it’s only for a few weeks. You understand, don’t you, Roy?”

Perhaps he did, perhaps he didn’t. Jeannette did not concern herself.

She was absorbed in adequately filling this coveted job which satisfied

her heart and soul and brain.

The hour of triumph when the news went abroad of her promotion was as

gratifying as she could possibly have wished. The girls crowded about

her, congratulating her, wringing her hands; Miss Foster impulsively

kissed her. Jeannette knew they envied her; she knew that, for the time

being, they even hated her; but their assumed pleasure in her good

fortune was none-the-less agreeable. Miss Reubens complained sourly

that the general office had lost its only efficient stenographer;

Mr. Cavendish charmingly expressed his personal satisfaction in

her advancement and gave her hand a warm pressure of friendliness;

Mr. Kipps and Mr. Featherstone both complimented her with hearty

enthusiasm. Jeannette was not cynical but she believed she put a

proper value on these felicitations,--particularly those of these last

two gentlemen. Mr. Corey was indeed the dominant power behind them

all; their destinies lay largely in his hands, and she was now the

go-between, the avenue of approach between the underlings and leader.

As they had feared and disliked Smith, so they would fear and perhaps

dislike her. She hoped they would learn to like her in time, but it

was natural they should feel a great respect for President Corey’s

secretary, and be anxious to gain her favor, hoping that to each of

them she might prove a “friend at court.” Still they were not wholly

insincere. Miss Holland, Jeannette felt, was genuinely pleased. The

older woman held both her hands and told her how happy the news had

made her; her eyes shone with the light of real pleasure. The girl felt

her to be indeed a friend.

Jeannette took her new work with the utmost seriousness. She

determined at the outset to treat everyone in the office with absolute

impartiality, to carry whatever anybody entrusted to her to the

President’s attention with an equal measure of fidelity, to see to

it that Mr. Kipps or Horatio Stephens would fare the same at her

hands. She planned to execute her secretarial duties automatically,

disinterestedly, with the impersonal functioning of a machine.

But she discovered the futility of this scheme of conduct within the

first few days. Miss Reubens wished to speak to Mr. Corey. Was Mr.

Corey busy? Would Miss Sturgis be so good as to tell her when she might

see him for a few minutes? Jeannette knew, as it happened, what Miss

Reubens wished to interview Mr. Corey about; Miss Reubens had already

discussed it with him, and he had already advised her. It would be

merely adding to his troubled day to go over the matter again; nothing

more would be accomplished. Besides, Jeannette knew Miss Reubens bored

Mr. Corey just as she bored everybody else. The interview did not take

place.

Again, Mr. Cavendish had promised a check to a distinguished contributor

to _Corey’s Commentary_; he had assured the author-statesman it would

be in the mail that afternoon without fail; would Miss Sturgis manage

to get Mr. Corey to sign it at once? Miss Sturgis could and did, but

a check to an engraving company, which Mr. Olmstead wished to be sent

the same day, waited until next morning for the hour which Mr. Corey

set apart for check-signing.

Her first concern was for Mr. Corey himself. She had guessed he was

harassed and harried, but had no idea how greatly harassed and harried

until she came to work at close quarters with him. He had tremendous

capacity, was an indefatigable worker, but she had not observed

his methods a week before she noted he did far too much that was

unnecessary. Insignificant things engaged and held his attention; he

frittered away his time upon trivialities. She set herself to save him

what she could and began by keeping the office force from troubling

him. Mr. Corey had a delightful personality, was a charming and

stimulating talker, a most pleasing companion; his secretary understood

quite clearly why every member of the staff liked to sit in an easy

chair in his office and spend half-an-hour with him, chatting about

details. He was too ready to squander his precious moments on anyone

who came to him. It was difficult to sidetrack these time-wasters but

in some measure she succeeded. Memorandums that came addressed to

him, she dared answer herself; she even went so far as to lift papers

from his desk and return them whence they came with a typed note

attached: “Mr. Corey thinks you had better handle this. J. S.” Her

daring frightened her sometimes. It was inevitable she should run into

difficulties.

One afternoon the “buzzer” at her desk summoned her; it sounded more

peremptory than usual.

“Miss Sturgis,” Mr. Corey addressed her, “Mr. Kipps left some

information about our insurance on my desk a day or two ago; have you

seen it?”

“Yes, sir, I returned it to him early this morning and suggested that

he take care of the matter for you.” As she spoke she felt the color

rushing to her face.

Corey’s black brows came together in an annoyed frown. He cleared his

throat with a little impatient cough, and jerked at his mustache.

“I wish, Miss Sturgis,--I wish you would not be quite so officious.”

Jeannette squared herself to the criticism, and stood very erect,

returning his look.

“I thought Mr. Kipps could take care of the matter, without bothering

you further,” she said, beginning to tremble.

There was silence in the room. The girl’s defiant figure, tall and

straight, confronted the man at the desk, and the dark frown that bore

down upon her. She was very beautiful as she stood there, with the warm

color tinging her olive-hued cheeks, her eyes clear and unwavering,

her head flung back, her small hands shut, resolute, unflinching.

Perhaps Corey saw it, perhaps it occurred to him that she showed a fine

courage, bearding him in this fashion, facing him with such spirit,

acknowledging her high-handedness yet defending it. As he considered

the matter, it came to him that she was right. Kipps was perfectly

capable of taking care of this insurance business himself.

What was passing in the man’s mind the girl never knew. Slowly she saw

the scowl drift away, the stern face relax. He swung his chair toward

the window and contemplated the horizon. The sun was setting over the

Jersey shore, and the glow of a red sky was reflected on his face.

“Very well,” he said at last. It was ungracious, it was curt, but there

was nothing more. There was no dismissal. The girl waited a few minutes

longer, then turned and quitted the room.

There were errors--serious errors--for which she was accountable. She

incorrectly addressed envelopes in the hurry of dispatching them,

she mixed letters and sent them to the wrong people, she mislaid

certain correspondence that upset the whole office, and she kept the

great Zeit Heitmüller, painter and sculptor,--of whom she had never

heard,--waiting for more than an hour in the reception room, though

Mr. Corey had begged him to call. Mr. Featherstone criticized her

sharply when she neglected sending off some advertising copy after Mr.

Corey had O.K.’d it, and she was aware that Mr. Olmstead complained of

her in great annoyance when she returned to him an inventory he had

prepared after it had lain four days on Mr. Corey’s desk. At times she

felt herself an absolute failure, and at others knew she was steadily

gaining ground in the confidence and regard of the man she served.

There were hard days, days when everything went wrong, when everybody

was cross, when it was close and suffocating in the office, and

whatever one touched felt gritty with the grime of the dusty wind that

swept the streets. There were days when Corey was short and critical,

when whatever Jeannette did, seemed to irritate him. A dozen times

during a morning or afternoon she might be near to tears and would

rehearse in her mind the words in which she would tell him that since

she could not do the work to satisfy him, he had better find someone

else to take her place. There were other days when he chatted with her

in the merriest of moods, asked how she was getting along, inquired

about herself and her family, looked up smilingly when she stood before

his desk to interrupt him, and thanked her for having protected him

from some trifling annoyance.

Her heart swelled with pride and satisfaction the first Saturday she

tore off a narrow strip from the neat, fat little envelope Miss Travers

handed her, and found folded therein two ten-and one five-dollar bills.

Twenty-five dollars a week! She rolled the words under her tongue; she

liked to hear herself whisper it. “Twenty-five dollars a week!” There

were hundreds and hundreds of men who didn’t earn so much, and a vastly

larger number of women!

Her mother, warmly seconded by Alice, refused to allow her to

contribute more than ten dollars toward the household expenses. She had

her trousseau to buy, they argued, and this was Jeannette’s own money

and she ought to spend it just as she chose and for what she chose.

Finances at the moment were much less of a problem than they had been

for the little household. A wealthy pupil of Signor Bellini with a fine

contralto voice had engaged Mrs. Sturgis as her regular accompanist,

and paid her ten dollars every time she played for her at an evening

concert.

Jeannette allowed herself to be persuaded, and Saturday afternoons

became for her orgies of shopping. She priced everything; she ransacked

the department stores. She knew what was being asked for a certain

type and finish of tailor suit on Fifth Avenue, and what “identically

the same thing” could be bought for on Fourteenth Street. She got

the tailor suit, and a new hat, a pair of smart, low walking pumps,

some half-silk stockings, be-ribboned underwear, a taffeta petticoat,

everything she wanted. She lunched at the St. Denis in what she felt to

be regal luxury, and indulged herself in a bag of chocolate caramels

afterwards. The joy of having money to spend intoxicated her; she

revelled in the glory of it; it was exciting, wonderful, marvellous.

Not one of the things she bought would she allow herself to wear;

everything was to be saved until she was married, and became Mrs. Roy

Beardsley.

Her future husband took her one Sunday to inspect the small brick

house in Flatbush which could be rented for twenty dollars a month.

The weather was unduly warm,--an exquisite day with a golden sun,--one

of those foretastes of spring that are so beguilingly deceptive. From

the janitor, who showed them over it, they learned that the house

would cost them twenty-two dollars a month. It was one of a solid,

unrelieved row of fourteen others exactly like it, all warmed by a

central heating system, and supplied similarly with water and gas. It

was dark, the floors were worn and splintery, the windows dingy; the

whole place smelled of old carpets and damp plaster. Still it had three

bedrooms upstairs, and a living-room, a really pleasant dining-room,

and a kitchen on the ground floor. Roy watched Jeannette’s face eagerly

as they stepped from room to room, but he failed to detect any sign of

enthusiasm. It impressed the girl as anything but cheerful. She saw

herself day after day alone in this place, sweeping, dusting, making

beds, washing dishes, getting herself a plate of pick-up lunch and

eating it at the end of the kitchen table, trying to read, trying to

sew, trying to amuse herself during the empty afternoons until it was

time to start dinner and wait for her husband to come home. After the

bustle and excitement of the office, it would be insufferably dull.

As they waited a moment on the front steps for the janitor to lock up

after them, Jeannette noticed a large, fat woman in a shabby negligée,

watching them from the upper window of the adjoining house, her plump,

pink elbows resting on a pillow, as she leaned out upon the sill,

enjoying the mellowness of the afternoon. On the ground floor behind

the looped lace curtains of a front window, her husband was asleep in a

large upholstered armchair, Sunday newspapers scattered about him, the

comic section across his round, fat abdomen.

“These would be the kind of neighbors she would have!” thought

Jeannette. Oh, it wasn’t what she wanted! It wasn’t her kind of a

life--_at all_! She would be lonely, lonely, lonely.

Roy was getting twenty-five dollars a week; she was getting twenty-five

dollars a week. Why couldn’t they go on working together in the same

office and have a joint income of fifty dollars a week,--two hundred

dollars a month! The idea fired her.

But she found no one to share her enthusiasm. Alice pressed a dubious

finger-tip against her lips; Roy frowned and said frankly he didn’t

think it was the right way for a couple to start in when they got

married; her mother indulged in firm little shakes of her head that set

her round cheeks quivering. When the heated discussion of the evening

was over and Roy had taken himself home, Mrs. Sturgis came to sit on

the edge of Jeannette’s bed after the girl had retired, and in the

darkness discoursed upon certain delicate matters which evidently her

dear daughter hadn’t considered.

“I hope my girl won’t have responsibilities come upon her too soon

after she’s married,” she said, after a few gentle clearings of her

throat, “but, dearie, you know about babies, and you’ll want to have

one, and it’s right and proper that you should. But where would you be

if a--if a--you found you were going to have one,--and you were working

in an office? You must consider these things. Roy’s perfectly right in

not wanting his wife at a dirty old desk all day.... And then, dearie,

there are certain decencies, certain proprieties. A bride cannot be

too careful; she must always be modest. Suppose you actually tried

this--this wild scheme of yours, and after your happy honeymoon, went

back to the office among your old associates, the men and women with

whom you’ve grown familiar; imagine how it would seem to them, and what

dreadful thoughts they might think about you and Roy! One of the lovely

things about marriage, Janny, is the dear little home waiting to shield

the young bride.”

“Oh, but Mama ...” began Jeannette in weary protest. But she stopped

there. What use was it to argue? None of them understood her; none of

them was able to grasp her point of view.

Roy voiced the only argument that had weight with her.

“I don’t think C. B. would like it; I don’t think he would want to have

a secretary who was married to somebody in the same office.”

Jeannette felt that this would be a fact. No matter how well she might

please Mr. Corey, a secretary who was married to another employee of

the company would not be satisfactory. It was highly probable that in

the event of her marriage he would be unwilling for her to continue

with him.

No, it was plain that if she married Roy, she must resign, she must

let go her ambition, her hopes for success in business, and she must

accept Flatbush, and the dismal little brick house, the unprepossessing

neighbors, and the lonely, lonely days.

Well--suppose--suppose--suppose she _didn’t_ marry!

The relief the idea brought was startling. But she couldn’t bring

herself to give up Roy,--she couldn’t hurt him! She loved him,--she

loved him dearly! Never in the last few months since he had come back

to her from California had she been so sure she loved him as now. Those

eager blue eyes of his, that unruly stuck-up hair, that quaint smile,

that supple, boyish figure,--so sinuous and young and clean,--she

couldn’t give them up!

A battle began within her. It was the old struggle,--the struggle of

ambition and independence, against love and drudgery, for marriage

meant that to her; she could think of it in no other way.

Daily in her work at the office, she felt a steady progress; daily, she

beheld herself becoming increasingly efficient; daily, more and more

important matters were entrusted to her.

“Thank you very much, Miss Sturgis.” “That’s fine, Miss Sturgis.”

“Please arrange this, Miss Sturgis.” “Miss Sturgis, will you kindly

attend to this matter yourself?”

These from Mr. Corey, and in the office she overheard:

“Well,--get Miss Sturgis to do that.” “Better ask Miss Sturgis.” “Miss

Sturgis will know.” “If you want C. B.’s O.K., get Miss Sturgis to put

it up to him.”

It was wine to her. She felt herself growing ever more confident,

established, secure.

§ 4

“Now, Janny,--what are you going to do about a house or an apartment

or something where we can begin housekeeping? Gee, I hate the idea

of boarding! We ought to have a place we can call our _home_. April

second is only two weeks off, and I don’t suppose it’s possible to find

anything now. We’ll have to go to a hotel or a boarding-house for a

while until we can look ’round.... Do you realize, Miss Sturgis, you’re

going to be Mrs. Roy Beardsley inside of a fortnight!”

“Roy--_dear_!” she exclaimed helplessly.

“But, my darling,--you’ve got to make up your mind.”

Make up her mind? She could not. She listened dumbly, miserably while

her mother and sister discussed, with the man she had promised to

marry, the details of the wedding, and what the young couple had

better do until they could find a suitable place in which to start

housekeeping.

“We’ll go over to the church on Eighty-ninth Street about six o’clock,

and Doctor Fitzgibbons will perform the ceremony and then we’ll come

back here for a happy wedding supper,” planned Mrs. Sturgis confidently.

On what was she expected to live? asked Jeannette, mutinously, of

herself. Twenty-five dollars a week for both of them? It had seemed

ample when they first discussed it. Her mother’s income for herself

and two daughters had rarely been more and frequently less. Mrs.

Sturgis paid thirty dollars a month rent for the apartment, and Alice

was supposed to have ten dollars a week on which to run the table; in

reality she provided the food that sustained the three of them at an

expenditure of one dollar a day. But at forty dollars a month for food

and twenty or twenty-five a month for rent and at least five dollars a

week for Roy’s lunches and carfare, what was she, Jeannette, to have

left to spend on clothes or amusement? She would be a prisoner in that

dismal little Flatbush house, bound hand and foot to it for the lack of

carfare across the river to indulge in a harmless inspection of shop

windows! Now she was free,--now she could get herself a gay petticoat

if she wanted one, or a new spring hat in time for Easter, or take

Alice and herself to a Saturday matinée and nibble chocolates with her,

hanging excitedly over the rail of the gallery from front row seats!

And she was to relinquish all this liberty, which now was actually

hers, actually her own to enjoy and delight in rightfully and lawfully,

and manacle her hands, rivet chains about her ankles and enter this

prison, whose door her mother, her sister and Roy held open for her,

and where they expected her to remain contentedly and happily for the

rest of her life!

It was too much! It was preposterous! It was inhuman! She didn’t love

_any_ man enough to make a sacrifice so great. She was self-supporting,

independent,--beholden to no one,--she could take care of herself for

life if necessary, and after her room and board were paid for, she

would always have fifteen dollars a week--sixty dollars a month!--to

spend as foolishly or as wisely as she chose with no one to call her

to account. She hugged her little Saturday envelopes to her breast;

they were hers, she had earned them, she would never give them

up,--never--never--never!

§ 5

She persuaded Roy to postpone the wedding. There was no special need

for hurry. It would require a lot more saving before they could

properly furnish a little house or an apartment; it was much wiser for

them to start in right; in a few months they could have two or three

hundred dollars. She presented the matter to him in a rush of words one

evening and, as she had foreseen, he was overborne by her vehemence.

Roy was sweet-tempered, he was amiable, he was always willing to give

way in an argument. Often she had felt impatient with him for this easy

tractability. He didn’t have enough backbone! Even now his readiness to

concede what she asked disappointed her. Something within her clamored

for an indignant rejection of her proposal. She wanted him to insist

with an oath that their marriage must take place at once, that she

must make good her promise without further to-do. He lost something

very definite in her regard at that moment; he never meant quite so

much to her again. It was the pivotal point in their relationship.

Alice let her hands and sewing fall into her lap when her sister

told her the marriage was to be postponed, and said anxiously: “Oh,

Janny,--I’m awfully sorry,” but her mother unexpectedly approved.

“There’s no need of your rushing into all the troubles and worries of

marriage, dearie,--until you’re quite, quite prepared. I think you’re

very wise to wait a little while; it’s right and proper; you and Roy

are showing a lot of real common sense. You’ll have some capital to

start in with, and you can take your time about finding just the right

kind of a place to live in. And then it means I’m going to have my

darling all summer.... Only,” she added with a reproachful glance at

the girl and a pout of lips and cheeks, “I wish you’d give up that

horrid, old office and stay at home with your mother and sister, and

have a few months to yourself before you fly away to be a bride.”

What a relief to know she had escaped for a time at least the net that

had been spread for her! With head held high, and a free heart, with

eager step and a pulse tuned to the joy of living, Jeannette plunged on

with her work.

CHAPTER VI

§ 1

The cold of winter clung with a tenacious grip to the city that year

until far into April. Jeannette had eagerly looked forward to the

spectacular flower-vendors’ sale of spring blooms in Union Square on

the Saturday before Easter but a bitter wind began to assert itself

early in the day and by ten o’clock had wrought pitiful havoc with the

brave show of potted lilies and azaleas. The Square was littered with

their battered petals and torn leaves. Three days before the first of

May a flurry of snow clothed the city again in white, and then, without

warning, summer breathed its hot, moist breath upon the town. The air

was heavy with water; a mist, thick and enervating, spread itself

like a miasma from a stagnant pool, through the streets. A tropical

heat,--the wet clinging heat of a conservatory,--enveloped New York.

And in June came the rain, an intermittent downpour that lasted for

weeks.

It was a trying time for everyone. The office felt damp, and there was

a constant smell all day of wet rubber and damp woolens. Black streams

of water meandered over the floor from the tips of wet umbrellas,

stacked in corners. On the fifth floor the roof leaked, and old Hodgson

had to be moved elsewhere. In the midst of the general discomfort Mr.

Corey fell sick.

It proved nothing more serious than a heavy bronchial cold, but

his physician ordered him to bed, and he was warned he must not

venture into the damp streets until the last vestige of the cold had

disappeared. The doctor consented to let him see his secretary and to

keep in touch with the office by telephone. It was thus that Jeannette

came to visit her employer in his own home.

Mr. Corey lived in one of three cream-painted brick houses on Tenth

Street, a hundred yards or so from the corner of Fifth Avenue.

The houses were quaint affairs, only two stories in height, with

square-paned glass in the shallow windows and wide, deep-panelled front

doors ornamented in the center with heavy, shining brass knockers.

They were old buildings, dating back to the early nineteenth century,

and had somewhat of a colonial atmosphere about them. The Corey family

consisted of Mrs. Corey and two children,--a boy of eighteen, Willis

Corey, in his first year at Harvard, and a girl, Helen, a year younger,

who lived at home and was called “Babs.” Jeannette was disappointed,

not to say disturbed, at meeting her employer’s wife.

“I wasn’t aware that I had a preconceived idea of her,” she said to

Alice in recounting her impressions. “Mr. Corey seems to be devoted

to her, and has a large silver-framed photograph of her on his desk.

I supposed from her picture and from the way he speaks about her that

she was the same kind of earnest, hard-headed, clear-thinking person

as himself. But she isn’t that way at all. In the first place, she’s

very tall and stately; she’s got lots of hair,--it’s quite gray and

very curly,--and she piles it up on top of her head and always wears

a bandeau or a fillet to bind it. She’s rather intense in her manner

and a trifle theatrical. She’s a handsome woman, faded of course now,

but she has very large dark eyes, that she uses effectively, and

really beautiful brows. She affects the weirdest of costumes, all lace

and floating scarf, with lots of color. She had several rings on her

fingers and bracelets dangling and jingling on her wrists. I thought

her stupid; I mean _really_ dense. When I got to the house she came out

to the hall where I was waiting, led me into the parlor and made me sit

down. She said she wanted to have a good talk with me. She was so glad

Mr. Smith had gone, and she went on at once to say how she had urged

‘Chandler!’--it was funny to hear Mr. Corey called by his first

name!--how she had urged him to make a change for a long time. She said

he said to her: ‘Where do you think I could find anybody to replace

him?’ and she said: ‘Well, how about that clever Miss Sturgis who’s

just come to you?’ She told me she had begged him for weeks to give me

a trial before he consented.

“You know, Allie, it rather puzzled me what her object could be in

romancing that way, for, of course, I don’t believe a word of it. She

never heard of me until Mr. Corey happened to tell her he had a new

secretary! And then she went on to talk about the business. My dear,

it was pathetic! She wanted me to think that she knew about everything

that went on at the office, that Mr. Corey kept nothing from her,

and talked over every important decision with her before he made up

his mind. I almost laughed in her face! She doesn’t know one single

thing about his affairs. She hasn’t the faintest idea, for instance,

that he’s in debt, that the paper company could wind up his affairs

to-morrow if it wanted to, nor what bank has helped to finance him

from the start, nor where the money comes from that buys her food and

clothing. She supposes, I presume, that it comes from profits. Profits

are a negligible quantity with the Chandler B. Corey Company and have

been ever since Mr. Corey launched it. It’s getting in better shape all

the time, and some day there _will_ be profits.

“Mrs. Corey looked brightly at me with her large soulful eyes and said:

‘Those two volumes of _The Life and Letters of Alexander Hamilton_ are

quite wonderful, aren’t they? Such beautiful bookmaking!’ and ‘We were

quite successful with _The Den_, weren’t we?’ Imagine, Alice! ‘_We!_’

What she knows about the business is about as much as she can gather

from the books Mr. Corey publishes and occasionally brings home to her!

She talked a lot about the magazines, and asked me if I didn’t think

Miss Reubens was making a very wonderful periodical out of _The Wheel

of Fortune_.

“I just nodded and agreed with her. She was trying to impress me how

well-informed she was, and I let her think she succeeded. Toward the

end she got started on Mr. Corey, and how hard he worked, and how

keenly I ought to feel it my duty to save him from petty annoyances; I

must consider myself a guard, a sentinel, stationed at the door of his

tent to keep the rabble from disturbing the great man! I let her rave

on, but it was all I could do to listen. I thought as I sat there that

in all probability she was the noisiest and most disturbing of the lot.

She wound up by telling me what the doctor had said to her about Mr.

Corey having caught cold, and she wanted to urge me particularly to

guard him against draughts. Then she asked me if Mr. Corey ever took me

to lunch! Now what do you think made her ask me a question like that?

You don’t suppose she’s jealous? It seems too ridiculous even to think

about. My goodness! When you see the kind of women some men get for

wives you wonder how they put up with them!”

§ 2

All Mr. Corey’s personal mail passed through Jeannette’s hands; she

opened and read most of it. He dictated to her his letters to his son

at Cambridge, and even those to his wife and Babs when they went to

Kennebunkport for the summer. Jeannette learned that Willis had been

madly in love with a married woman who sang in the choir of a Fifth

Avenue church, that he was given to midnight carousing, smoked far

too many cigarettes, that his mother spoiled him, and his father was

disgusted with him. With the aid of a “cramming” school, he had somehow

wiggled himself into Harvard, but Mr. Corey had made him distinctly

understand that at the first complaint concerning him he would have

to withdraw and go to work. Jeannette came to know, too, that Babs

was epileptic and that early in May she had had the first fit in two

years, and that the day after her mother and herself had arrived in

Kennebunkport, she had had another. Letters of a very agitated nature

passed between the parents as to what should now be done. Nothing was

decided. Likewise Jeannette learned that Mrs. Corey was at times

recklessly extravagant. Her husband repeatedly had to call her to

account, and sometimes they had violent quarrels about the matter.

Just before Mrs. Corey departed for Maine she had bought six hats for

herself and Babs, and had charged over three hundred dollars’ worth

of new clothing. Mr. Corey had been exasperated, as only a few weeks

before he had made a point of asking her to economize in every way

possible during the coming summer. He himself, Jeannette knew, must

shortly undergo a more or less serious operation, of which his family

was totally ignorant, that he was worried because his Life Insurance

Company had declined after an examination to increase the amount of his

insurance, and that he had successfully engineered a loan to wipe off

his indebtedness to the big Pulp and Paper Company.

There was little that concerned him with which she did not become

acquainted. She knew that his house on Tenth Street was heavily

mortgaged and that on the second loan carried by the property he was

paying an outrageous rate of interest; that on the tenth of every month

he never failed to send a check for sixty-six dollars and sixty-seven

cents to a man in Memphis, Tennessee, that his dentist threatened to

sue him unless he settled a bill that had been owing for two years;

that on the first of every month, Mr. Olmstead deposited to his account

in the Chemical National Bank five hundred dollars; that no month ever

passed without his chief sending for the old man and directing him

to deposit an additional hundred, or two hundred, or sometimes three

hundred to his account, and that these sums appeared on the books of

the company as personal indebtedness. Frequently this levy upon the

Company’s bank balance upset Mr. Olmstead, and more than once Jeannette

heard the old cashier emphatically assert as he rapped his eye-glasses

in his agitated fashion upon his thumb-nail:

“All right, Mr. Corey,--you’re the boss here, and I’ve got to do as you

say, but I won’t answer for it, Mr. Corey. I warn you, sir, we won’t

have enough for next week’s pay-roll!”

“Oh, yes, yes, yes,” Mr. Corey would soothe him. “We’ll manage

somehow; you pay the money in the bank for me and we’ll talk about it

afterwards.”

There were even more intimate things about the man she served which

became his secretary’s knowledge. He sometimes took the sixtieth of a

grain of strychnine when he was unusually tired, he dyed his mustache

and eyebrows, and wore hygienic underwear for which he paid six dollars

a garment. She had charge of his personal bank account. She drew the

checks, put them before him for his signature, and sent them out in the

mail. While Mrs. Corey was in Kennebunkport, she paid all the household

expenses of the establishment on Tenth Street: electric light and milk

bills, grocer’s and butcher’s accounts, the wages of the cook. She knew

what were Mr. Corey’s dues and expenses at the Lotus Club, what he paid

for his clothes, what he owed at Brooks Bros., and at the Everett House

where he had a charge account and signed checks for his lunches. There

were no secrets in his life that were closed to her; he had less than

most men to conceal; she considered him the most generous, the most

upright, the most admirable man in the world.

§ 3

It was on a hot Saturday afternoon in July when no one but themselves

were in the office, that Jeannette told Mr. Corey about Roy. She had

not seen quite so much of Roy lately; he had been away on a business

trip, and Horatio Stephens had asked him to spend his fortnight’s

vacation with himself and family at Asbury Park. He had written her

letters full of endearments and underscored assertions of love, and

had returned to plead eagerly that she set the day for the wedding and

begin to plan with him how and where they should live. His earnestness

made her realize she could temporize no longer.

“It isn’t that I don’t care for him,” she said to Mr. Corey; “it’s just

that I don’t want to get married, I guess.”

The windows were open and a gentle hot wind stirred the loose papers on

the desk. A lazy rumble of traffic rose from the street, punctuated now

and then by the shrill voices of children in the Square, and the merry

jingle of a hurdy-gurdy.

“You mustn’t trifle with your happiness, Miss Sturgis,” Corey said,

pulling at his mustache thoughtfully. “You know this is all very well

here for a time, but you must think of the future.”

Jeannette stared out of the window and for some minutes there was

silence; she spoke presently with knitted brows.

“Oh, I’ve gone over it and over it, again and again, and it seems

more than I can do to give up my independence and the fun of living

my own life just yet. I--I like Mr. Beardsley; I think we’d be happy

together. He’s devoted to me, and he’s most amiable,”--she glanced

with a smile at her employer’s face. “My mother and my sister are eager

to have me marry him, but I just can’t--can’t bring myself to give up

my work and my life here to substitute matrimony.”

“No consideration for me, my dear girl, ought to influence you. I’d be

sorry to lose you, of course; you’re the best secretary I ever had,

and I’d be hard put to it to find anyone who could begin to fill your

place even remotely. But you mustn’t think I couldn’t manage; I’d find

somebody. Your duty is to yourself and living your own life.”

“It isn’t that, Mr. Corey. It’s the work that I love; I don’t want to

give it up,--the excitement and the fun of it. It’s a thousand times

more exhilarating than cooking and dish-washing.... And then there’s

the question of finances, which, it seems to me, I’m bound to consider.

Mr. Beardsley’s getting twenty-five and I’m getting twenty-five; that’s

fifty dollars a week we earn, but if I marry him, we both would have to

live on just his salary.”

“Yes,--that’s very true,” the man admitted.

The girl threw him a quick glance, and went on hesitatingly:

“I don’t suppose we could marry and each of us go on holding our jobs?”

Mr. Corey considered, stroking his black mustache with a thoughtful

thumb and finger.

“Well,” he said slowly, “what do you gain? If you went on working,

you’d find it difficult to keep house; you’d have to live in a

boarding-house. And that isn’t homemaking. And then, Miss Sturgis,

there’s the, question of children. What would you do about them? You

wouldn’t care to have a child as long as you came downtown to an office

every day.... No, I wouldn’t advise it. If you love your young man well

enough, I would urge you to marry him.”

“I _don’t_!” Jeannette said to herself violently on her way home.

But did she? Almost with the denial, she began to wonder.

That night when Roy came to see her and asked her again for the

thousandth time to name the day, she took his face between her hands

and kissed him tenderly, folded his head against her breast, and with

arms tight about him, pressed her lips again and again to his unruly

hair.

Later, when he had gone and she was alone, she dropped upon her knees

before the old davenport where they had been sitting, and wept.

It was the end of the struggle. She told no one for a long time, but in

her mind she knew she would never marry him. Her work was too precious

to her; her independence too dear; to give them up was demanding of her

more than she had the strength to give.

END OF BOOK I

BOOK II

BREAD

CHAPTER I

§ 1

The Chandler P. Corey Company was moving its offices. A twenty-year

lease had been taken on a building especially designed to fit its needs

in the East Thirties. The new home was a great cavernous concrete

structure of eight spacious floors. On the ground floor were to be the

new presses destined to print the magazines, and perhaps some of the

books in the future; the next two floors were to house the bindery, the

composing room and typesetting machines; the editorial rooms were to be

located on the fourth floor, and above these would come in order the

advertising, circulation and pattern departments, each with a stratum

in the great concrete block to itself. The eighth floor was to be given

over to surplus stock, and it would also serve as a store-room for

paper and supplies.

Both _Corey’s Commentary_ and _The Wheel of Fortune_ had made money

for their owners during the past three years. It was the day of the

“muck-raking” magazine, and Cavendish had unearthed a Wall Street

scandal that sent the circulation of _Corey’s Commentary_ climbing

by leaps and bounds. _The Wheel of Fortune_ had been rechristened

_The Ladies’ Fortune_, and its contents were now devoted to women’s

interests and fashions. The pattern business, that had been launched in

connection with it, had proven from the outset immensely successful.

Horatio Stephens was now its editor, and Miss Reubens conducted the

special departments appearing among the advertising in its back

pages, always referred to in the office as “contaminated matter.”

The circulation of both periodicals had increased so rapidly that

Mr. Featherstone had been obliged to announce an advance in their

advertising rates every three months.

Other branches of the business, too, had grown and shown a profit.

Francis Holme, who was head of the Book Sales Department, and now a

member of the firm, had developed the manufacture and sale of book

premiums and school books. He sold large quantities of the former

to the publishers of other magazines, for use in their subscription

campaigns, and was even more successful with the latter among private

schools and some public ones throughout the country. One or two recent

novels had sold over the hundred thousand mark, and the general

standing of the Chandler B. Corey publications had improved. It was

conceded in the trade they had now a better “line.” Something was being

done, too, in the Mail Order Department, in charge of Walt Chase, and

more and more sets of standard works were being sold by circularizing

methods.

The installation and operation of their own presses had been a grave

undertaking. Mr. Kipps had strenuously opposed it, arguing that the new

building was enough of a responsibility, and that they should mark

time for awhile and see how they stood, rather than incur a new loan

of half a million dollars which the new presses involved. Mr. Corey

was convinced, however, that a tide had arrived in their affairs which

demanded a rapid expansion of the business, and if he and his partners

were to make the most of the opportunity thus presented, they must rise

to the occasion, and show themselves able to expand with it.

“There’s no use of our trying to crowd back into our shells after we’ve

outgrown them, is there, Miss Sturgis?” he said to his secretary, with

an amused twinkle in his eye, after a heated conference with the other

members of the firm, during which Kipps in high dudgeon had left the

room.

Jeannette smiled wisely. She believed that her chief was one of those

few men who had far-seeing vision, and could look with keen perception

and unfaltering eye into the future, and that he would carry Mr. Kipps,

Mr. Featherstone, the office, his family, herself, everybody who

attached themselves to him, to fame and fortune in spite of anything

any one of them might do. When he was right, he knew it, and knew it

with conviction, and nothing could shake him.

He had only one weakness, his secretary felt, and that was his attitude

toward his son, Willis, who, two years before, had been withdrawn

from the intellectual atmosphere of Cambridge, and put into the

business, presumably that his father might watch him. He was one of

the sub-editors of _Corey’s Commentary_ and demoralized the office by

his late hours, his disregard of office rules against smoking, and his

condescending attitude toward everyone in his father’s employ.

The three years that Jeannette Sturgis had been Mr. Corey’s secretary

had seen many changes. Poor Mrs. Inness had turned out to be a

dipsomaniac. Jeannette guessed her secret long before it was discovered

by anyone else, and she had been full of pity and sorrow when this

gray-haired, regal woman had to be dismissed. Van Alstyne was gone,

and Humphrey Stubbs as well; Max Oppenheim likewise had departed. The

new Circulation Manager was a shrewd, keen-eyed, spectacled young

Scotchman, named MacGregor, whom everyone familiarly spoke to and

of as “Sandy.” Miss Holland was still Mr. Kipps’ assistant, and now

most of the routine affairs of the business were administered by her.

Besides Mr. Holme, there was another new member of the firm, Sidney

Frank Allister, who had come into the Chandler B. Corey Company from

a rival house, and was now entrusted with the book-publishing end of

the business. It was usually his opinion that decided the fate of

a manuscript. He had his assistants: a haughty Radcliffe graduate,

named Miss Peckenbaugh, whom Jeannette heartily disliked, and old

Major Ticknor, who had a stiff leg since his Civil War days, and who

stumped into the office two or three times a week with his bundle of

manuscripts and stumped out again with a fresh supply. Very rarely Mr.

Corey was consulted; he frankly declared he hated to read a book, and

would only do so under the most vigorous pressure.

“Do I _have_ to read this, Frank?” Jeannette would often hear him ask

Allister, when the latter brought him a bulky manuscript and laid it on

his desk. “You know, I don’t know anything about literature,” he would

add, smilingly, with his favorite assumption of being only a plain

business man and lacking in appreciation of the arts.

“Well, Mr. Corey, this is really important,” Allister would say. “We

don’t agree about it in my department.”

“Has Holme read it? He can tell you whether it will sell or not.”

“Mr. Holme doesn’t think it will, but I believe this is a very

important book, and one we most assuredly ought to have on our list.”

Frequently Mr. Corey would hand the manuscript over to Jeannette after

Mr. Allister had left the room, and beg her to take it home with her,

read it, and give him a careful synopsis and her opinion. She used to

smile to herself when she would hear him quoting her, and once when he

repeated a phrase she had used in her report, he winked at her in a

most undignified fashion.

“I’m nothing but a hard-headed business man, you know,” he would say,

justifying himself to his secretary when they were alone together. “I

haven’t any time to read books. I can hire men to do that,--men with

much keener judgment about such things than I have. I’m watching the

circulation of our magazines, the advertising revenues, our daily sales

report, and seeing that our presses are being worked to their maximum

capacity. I’m negotiating with a mill for a year’s supply of paper, and

buying fifty thousand pounds of ink, and at the same time arranging for

a loan from the bank. I haven’t got time for books. Anyhow I never went

to college,”--this with a humorous twinkle as he had a general contempt

for college men,--“and I don’t know anything about ‘liter-a-choor.’”

§ 2

Jeannette took a tremendous pride in the new building. She had an

office to herself, now,--one adjoining Mr. Corey’s. He left the details

of equipping both to her. She took the greatest delight in doing so.

She bought some very handsome furniture,--a great mahogany desk covered

with a sheet of plate glass for Mr. Corey; some finely upholstered

leather armchairs, a rich moquette rug, and she had the walls

distempered, and lined on three sides with tall mahogany bookcases

with diamond-paned glass doors. She had all the authors’ autographed

photographs reframed in a uniform narrow black molding, and hung them

herself. She arranged to have some greens always on the bookcases, and

a great bunch of feathery pine boughs in a large round earthenware jar

on the floor in one corner.

There had come to exist a very warm and affectionate companionship

between the president of the publishing house and his secretary.

Jeannette thought him the finest man she knew. She admired him

tremendously, admired his shrewdness, his cleverness, his extraordinary

capacity for work. He was impatient beyond all reason, sometimes. She

had often seen him jump up with a bang of a fist on his desk and an

angry exclamation on his lips when an office boy had dallied over an

errand, or had heard these things when it was she who was keeping him

waiting, and he would come himself after the carbon of the letter, or

the report, or the book he had asked for. He would stride through the

aisles between the desks, or across the floor to somebody’s office

with great long steps, his fists swinging, his brows knit, intent upon

putting his hands at once upon what he wanted. He could be brutally

rude, when annoyed, and he gave small consideration to anyone else’s

opinion when he had a definite one of his own. But she could forgive

these shortcomings. She saw the odds against which he contended, she

saw the ultimate goal at which he aimed, and she saw the vigorous

battle he was waging toward this end,--and her esteem for him knew no

bounds.

She felt herself to be his only real ally though she did not

overestimate her services. Among those who came close to him--his

business associates and family--she was the only one not an actual drag

upon him. Mr. Featherstone and Mr. Kipps were of no more assistance

to him in conducting the affairs of the company than any two of the

salaried clerks. Frequently they hampered him, rubbing their chins or

hemming and hawing over one of his brilliant flashes of wisdom, to

rob him of his enthusiasm. As the business increased, they were more

and more inclined to demur at any new scheme he proposed. His family

were so much dead weight about his neck. The boy had proved himself

of small account, the daughter was epileptic, Mrs. Corey an exacting,

extravagant, capricious wife.

Jeannette’s surmise upon their first meeting that her employer’s

wife was already unaccountably jealous of her soon found ample

confirmation. Mrs. Corey grew more and more resentful of Jeannette’s

intimate knowledge of her personal affairs, the complete confidence of

her husband which she enjoyed, the close daily association with him.

Jeannette was aware there had been several violent quarrels over her

between husband and wife, Mrs. Corey demanding that she be dismissed,

Mr. Corey firmly declining to agree. It did not make matters any too

pleasant for the girl. Whenever Mrs. Corey encountered her, she was

effusively sweet, but her manner suggested: “You and I, my dear, _we_

know about him,” or “We women,--his secretary and his wife,--must

stand together for his protection.” Jeannette was keenly conscious of

the utter falseness and insincerity of this attitude. She knew that

Mrs. Corey hated her, and would gladly see her summarily dismissed.

She would smile with equally apparent sweetness in return, and fume

in silence. She considered she was often doing for Mr. Corey what his

wife should have been doing, that she filled the place of assistant,

philosopher and friend only because Mrs. Corey was utterly incompetent

to fill any of these rôles. If her relation to her employer had grown

to be that of companion and helpmate, if she had been obliged to assume

part of the province of a wife, none of the compensations were hers,

she reflected indignantly. Mrs. Corey lived in luxury, came and went

as she pleased, observed no hours, exercised no self-restraint, posed

as her husband’s partner in life, his guide and counsellor, spent his

money extravagantly, and enjoyed the satisfaction of being the wife

of the president of what had now become one of the big publishing

houses in New York, while she, Jeannette, who worked beside him eight,

nine, sometimes eleven or twelve hours out of every twenty-four, got

thirty-five dollars a week!

But in moments of fairer judgment she realized she received much more

than merely the contents of her pay envelope. She had an affection

and a regard from Mr. Corey that he never had given his wife. She was

closer to him than anyone else in the world; she was what both wife and

daughter should have meant to him; he loved her with a warm paternal

feeling, and her love for him in return was equally sincere, deep and

devoted. She sometimes felt that she and this man for whom she slaved

and whom she served and helped could conquer the world. There existed

no sex attraction between them; each recognized in the other the half

of an excellent team of indefatigable workers; their relation was

always that of father and daughter, but their feelings could only be

measured in terms of love,--staunch, enduring, unswerving loyalty.

§ 3

There was nothing in Jeannette’s life from which she derived more

satisfaction than the way in which she had deflected Roy Beardsley’s

interest in herself to her sister. There was a time after she had

made up her mind she could not marry him, when dark hours and aching

thoughts assailed her, when she felt she was sacrificing all her

happiness in life to a mere idea. But she had fought against these

disturbing reflections, resolutely banishing Roy from her mind, and

making herself think of ways in which their relationship could be

put upon a platonic basis. She took walks with him, made him read

aloud to her when he came in the evenings, persuaded him to take her

to lectures, and formed the habit of going with him once a week to a

vaudeville show in a neighboring theatre on upper Broadway. Her policy

was always to be _doing_ things with him, never to be idle or to sit

alone with him, for this always led to intimate talk and love-making.

She strove to keep the conversation impersonal. Roy was so easily

managed, she sometimes smiled over it. And yet there came times when it

was hard to deny herself the firm hold of his young arms.

What proved an immediate and tremendous help in conquering herself was

a discovery she made from a chance glimpse of her sister’s earnest,

brown eyes fixed upon Roy’s face. The three of them were in the studio

one evening, and happened to be discussing religion. Roy delivered

himself sententiously of a trite truism, something like: “It should

be part of everyone’s religion to respect the religion of others.” As

Jeannette was considering him rather than his words at the moment,

her gaze happened to light upon her sister’s face, and little Alice’s

secret stood revealed. The girl sat with her mouth half-open, staring

at Roy with wide eyes, and an adoring look, eloquent of her thoughts.

Jeannette was staggered. She was instantly aware of a great pain in

her own heart, a great longing and hurt. It was clear Alice did not

understand herself, had no suspicion that she was in love.

At once the elder sister began to readjust herself, “clean house,” as

she expressed it. She marvelled again and again about Alice; it was

hard to accept the idea that love had come to her little sister, yet

the look in the rapt face had been unmistakable, and as the days went

by Jeannette found plenty of evidence to confirm her suspicions. It was

surprising how much the knowledge of her sister’s secret helped her to

overcome any weakness for Roy that remained in her own heart. She saw

at once the suitableness of a match between them; Alice and Roy were

ideally suited to each other, and their coming to care for one another

would surely be the best possible solution to her own problem. She

could not, would not, marry him; the next best thing, of course, would

be for him to marry her sister.

She set about her schemes at once. The very next evening it had been

arranged Roy was to go with her to the theatre. They usually sat in one

of the back rows of the balcony. That afternoon she left a little note

on his desk to say she wanted to see him when he came in, and when he

appeared, told him she would be obliged to work with Mr. Corey that

evening, and suggested he take her sister to the show in her place.

When he came of an evening to see her at her home, she would send Alice

out to talk to him, while she dallied over her dressing. Whenever

Alice happened to join her and Roy, she found an excuse to leave them

together. She persuaded the young man frequently to include her sister

in their jaunts or walks, and in the evenings, more and more often

she complained of a headache, took herself to bed, and left Alice to

entertain him. Poor little Alice was blindly unconscious of the strings

that were being pulled about her, but she came to a full and terrifying

realization at last of where her heart was leading her. She began to

mope and weep, to talk of going away. She spoke of wanting to be a

trained nurse.

Roy was still placidly indifferent to her interest in him. His ardor

for Jeannette had cooled, but he still fancied himself in love with

her, and expected that some day they would be married. He no longer

fretted her, however, with demands or troubled her with love-making.

His days were full of interests: he had his friends, his work at the

office, his companionship with the two Sturgis girls,--all of which

was very agreeable and entertaining. Jeannette and he would be married

some day before long; he was content to let matters drift until she

was ready to name the day.... Alice? Oh, Alice was a lovely girl,--a

_deuce_ of a lovely girl. She was going to be his sister-in-law soon.

Before long Mrs. Sturgis came fluttering in great agitation to her

oldest daughter. By various circumlocutions, she approached the subject

which was causing her so much distress. It was quite evident that

Alice was not well; she was run down and getting terribly nervous. Had

Jeannette noticed anything wrong with her? Jeannette didn’t suppose it

could be a _man_, did she? The little brown bird was still her mother’s

baby after all, but you never could tell about girls. Alice was,--well,

Alice was nineteen! And if it _was_ a man,--the dear child acted

exactly as if there was one,--who could it possibly be? She didn’t see

anybody but Roy; she didn’t go any place with anybody else. Now her

mother didn’t want to say _one word_ to distress Jeannette, or to say

anything that would--would upset her.... Perhaps she was all wrong

about it anyway, but--but did Jeannette think it was possible that

Alice and Roy,--that Alice,--that Alice....

Amused, Jeannette watched her anxious little mother floundering on

helplessly. Then she suddenly took the plump and worried figure in her

arms, hugged her, and told her all about it.

Mrs. Sturgis could only stare in amazement and interject breathless

exclamations of “But, _dearie_!” “Why, _dearie_!” “Well, I don’t know

what to make of you!”

But the question now remaining was how to jog Roy’s consciousness

awake, make him see the little brown flower at his feet that looked up

at him so adoringly, only waiting to be plucked. Jeannette said nothing

to her mother, but she went to Roy direct. She felt sure of her touch

with him.

First she made him realize that she could never be satisfied with being

his wife. She explained carefully and convincingly why it could never

be, and then while he gazed tragically at the ground, twisting his lean

white fingers, she spoke to him frankly of Alice.

As she talked it came over her with fresh conviction that, had she

married him, she could have done as she liked with Roy; he was putty in

her hands. But her husband must be a man who would mold _her_, make her

do what he wished, bend her to his will. Only such a man would awaken

her love and keep it. She despised Roy for his amiability.

He looked very boyish and silly to her now, as he rumpled his stuck-up

hair, and dubiously shook his head. He was surprised to hear about

Alice, and,--Jeannette could see,--at once interested. She left the

thought with him and confidently waited for it to take hold. Mr. Corey,

she felt, would have handled the situation in just some such fashion as

she had,--direct, cutting the Gordian knot, plunging straight to the

heart of the matter.

One night at dinner she casually told her mother and sister that her

engagement with Roy had been broken by mutual consent. She explained

they both had begun to realize they did not really love one another

well enough to marry and had decided to call it off. Roy was a sweet

boy, she added, and would make some girl a splendid husband. She

glanced covertly at Alice. The girl was bending over her plate,

pretending an interest in her food, but her face was deadly white. A

rush of tenderest love flooded Jeannette’s heart. At the moment she

would have given much to have been free to take her little sister in

her arms and tell her everything, assure her that the man she loved was

beginning to love her in return and would some day make her his wife.

And that was how it turned out. A year later Roy and Alice were married

by the Reverend Doctor Fitzgibbons in the church on Eighty-ninth Street

in just the way the bride’s mother had planned for her older daughter,

and now they were living in a small but pretty four-room apartment

out in the Bronx for which they paid twenty-five dollars a month.

Happy little Mrs. Beardsley’s mother and sister were aware that very

shortly those grave responsibilities at which Mrs. Sturgis had often

mysteriously hinted were to come upon her. Alice was “expecting” in

March.

Roy was no longer an employee of the Chandler B. Corey Company. He

had found another job just before he married and was now with _The

Sporting Gazette_, a magazine devoted to athletic interests, gaming,

and fishing, where he was getting forty dollars a week as sub-editor.

He had always wanted to write and this came nearer his ambition than

soliciting advertisements. Moreover there was the increase in salary.

Of course _The Sporting Gazette_ was new and had nothing like the

circulation of the Corey publications, but Roy considered it a step

ahead. He had given Mr. Featherstone a chance to keep him, but Mr.

Featherstone had rubbed his chin and wagged his head dubiously when

asked for a raise. No,--there mustn’t be any more raises for awhile, no

more increases in salary until the company was making larger profits;

they were expanding; there was the new building with the larger

rent, and all those new presses to be paid for. So Roy had gone in

quest of another job, and had found it in one of three rough little

rooms comprising the editorial offices of _The Sporting Gazette_. He

considered himself extremely happy, extremely fortunate.

The attraction Jeannette had once felt for him was as dead as though it

had never been.

§ 4

Mrs. Sturgis no longer had to work so hard. She had given up her

position as instructor in music at Miss Loughborough’s Concentration

School for Little Girls and her work as accompanist for Signor

Bellini’s pupils. Jeannette had made her resign from both places.

With Alice married and gone, it was better for her mother to stay at

home and take charge of the housekeeping. Mrs. Sturgis gave private

lessons, now,--a few hours only in the morning or afternoon,--and

these, she asserted, were a “real delight.” It left her plenty of time

for marketing and for preparing the simple little dinners she and her

daughter enjoyed at night. She took the keenest interest in these, and

was always planning something new in the way of a surprise for her

“darling daughter when she comes home just dead beat out at the end

of the day.” Finances were no longer a problem. Jeannette contributed

twenty dollars a week to the household expenses while her mother earned

as much and sometimes more. She often reminded her daughter she could

do even better than that, especially during the winter months, but

Jeannette would not hear of her working harder.

“But what’s the use, Mama?” she would ask. “We’ve got everything we

want. I can dress as I like on what’s left out of my salary, and there

is no sense in your teaching all day. I love the idea of your being

free to go to a concert now and then, and Alice’s going to need you a

lot when the baby comes and afterwards.”

“That may be all very true, dearie, but I don’t just feel right about

having so much time to myself. I could easily do more. There was a lady

called this afternoon and just _begged_ me to take her little girl. You

know I have all Saturday morning.”

“No,” said Jeannette decisively; “I won’t consider it.”

They were really very comfortably situated, the girl would reflect.

Once a week, sometimes oftener, Mrs. Sturgis would be asked to

accompany a singer at a recital. That meant five dollars, often

ten,--ten whenever Elsa Newman sang. Then there was the twenty she,

herself, contributed weekly, and the lessons that brought in an equal

amount. Between her mother’s earnings and her own, their income was

never less than two hundred and fifty dollars a month. They were rich;

they lived in luxury; they need never worry again. Jeannette knew she

could remain with Mr. Corey for life if she wanted to; there was no

possible danger of her ever losing her job. Her mother fussed about

the apartment, cooked delicious meals, took an interest in arranging

and managing their little home in a way that previous demands upon her

time had never permitted. A new rug was bought for the studio, and some

big easy chairs, which they had talked about purchasing for years.

The piece of chenille curtaining that had done duty as a table cover

so long in the dining-room was supplanted by a square of handsomer

material; the leaky drop-light vanished and was replaced by one more

attractive and serviceable. More particularly Jeannette had seen to

it that her mother got new clothes. Mrs. Sturgis had always favored

lavender as the shade most becoming to her, and her daughter bought

her a lovely lavender velvet afternoon dress which had real lace down

the front and was trimmed with darker lavender velvet ribbon. Some

lavender silk waists followed, and a small lavender hat upon which the

lilac sprays nodded most ingratiatingly. Mrs. Sturgis was radiant over

her new apparel. Her extravagant delight touched the daughter. It was

pathetic that so little could give so much intense enjoyment.

Once or twice a month, Jeannette took her mother to a matinée. She

loved to go to the theatre herself, and studied the advertisements,

read all the daily theatrical notes and never missed a review. She

would secure seats for the play, weeks in advance, and always took her

mother to lunch downtown before the performance. These were wonderful

and felicitous occasions for both of them. They had great arguments

each time as to where they should eat, what they should select from

the magnificent menus, and later about the play itself. Jeannette liked

to startle her mother by selecting some extravagant item from the

bill-of-fare, or surprise her by handing her a little present across

the table. Sometimes as they came out of the theatre she would pilot

her without preamble toward a hansom-cab and before the excited little

woman knew what it was about, would help her in, and tell the cabby to

drive them home slowly through the Park.

“Oh, dearie, you’re not going to do this again!” Mrs. Sturgis would

expostulate drawing back from the waiting vehicle. She really wished

to protest against the needless extravagance. Jeannette would smile

lovingly at her, and urge her in. Later as they were rumbling through

the leafless Park and met a stream of automobiles and sumptuous

equipages going in the opposite direction, Mrs. Sturgis would settle

herself back with a sigh of contentment and say:

“Really, dearie, I don’t think there is anything I enjoy quite as much

as riding in a hansom. You’re very good to your old mother. We may land

in the poorhouse, but we’re having a good time while the luck lasts.”

On the occasion of the first performance of _Parsifal_ at the

Metropolitan, Jeannette, through Mr. Corey, was able to secure one

ten-dollar seat for her mother. It was the greatest event in little

Mrs. Sturgis’ life. She longed for Ralph, and wept all through the Good

Friday music.

Frequently on Sunday afternoons Jeannette’s mother made her daughter

accompany her to Carnegie Hall for a concert or a recital. Then, she

declared, it was her turn to treat and she would not allow the girl

to pay for anything. Her entertainments were never as “grand” as her

daughter’s, but she took a keen delight in playing hostess, and after

the music always suggested tea. They were both exceedingly fond of

toasted crumpets, and Mrs. Sturgis was ever on the lookout for new

places where they were served. But neither of her daughters inherited

her love for music. Jeannette went to the concerts dutifully, but the

satisfaction derived from these afternoons came from giving her mother

pleasure rather than from the jumble of sound made by the wailing

strings, tooting wood-winds and blaring trumpets. She could make

nothing out of it all. When there was a soloist she was interested,

especially if it was a woman, of whose costume she made careful notes.

Mother and daughter also went to church sometimes. Doctor Fitzgibbons

had made a deep impression upon Mrs. Sturgis when he officiated at the

marriage of Roy and Alice. She had been “flattered out of her senses”

when the clergyman called upon her a few weeks after the ceremony to

inquire for the young couple. He had talked to her about “parish work,”

and expressed the hope that she would see her way clear “to join the

church” and become interested in his “guild.” Mrs. Sturgis had laughed

violently at everything he said, and had promised all he suggested.

Thereafter she referred to him as her “spiritual adviser,” and

Jeannette was aware she called occasionally at the rectory to discuss

what she termed her “spiritual problems.”

Sunday evenings, Mrs. Sturgis and Jeannette usually invited Alice and

Roy to dinner, and sometimes they were the guests of the young couple

in the little Bronx apartment. Roy and Alice were like two children

playing at keeping house, Mrs. Sturgis said with one of her satisfied

chuckles. Jeannette, too, thought of them as children. Alice had

always seemed younger to her than she really was, and even when her

own thoughts had been filled with Roy, he had always impressed her as

a “boy.” She often wondered nowadays, when he and his happy, dimpling,

brown-eyed bride sat side by side on the sofa, their arms around one

another, their hands linked, exchanging kisses every few minutes in

accepted newly-wed fashion, what she had ever seen in him that had made

her own senses swim and her heart pound. He was just a sweet, amiable

boy to her now, with a fresh, eager manner, and rather an attractive

face. She still liked his quaint mouth, his whimsical smile, his quick

flashing blue eyes, but they no longer stirred her. She could kiss him

in affectionate sisterly fashion without a tremor.

Jeannette and Mrs. Sturgis took great delight in observing the young

couple together, in watching them in their diminutive but pretty home,

and in discussing them afterwards. They were ideally happy,--laughing,

romping, playing little jokes upon one another, deriving vast amusement

from words, signs and phrases, the meaning of which were known to them

alone. Both were affectionately demonstrative, forever holding hands,

caressing one another and kissing. Jeannette said it made her sick, was

disgusting, but her mother scolded when she betrayed her distaste, and

reminded her it was “only right and proper.”

Roy, against the prospect of his marriage to Jeannette, had saved

money; Mrs. Sturgis, urged by her older daughter, had once again placed

a loan of five hundred dollars upon the nest-egg in the savings bank;

Jeannette had contributed another hundred, and Roy’s father had shipped

from San Francisco a half car-load of family furniture which had been

in storage for many years. The wedding had awaited the arrival of

this freight, and as soon as it came the stuff had been uncrated, and

installed in the little Bronx apartment. The ceremony then followed and

Roy took his blushing, laughing, excited bride from her mother’s arms,

from the old-fashioned apartment where she had lived almost since she

could remember, and from the wedding supper, direct to the new home in

the Bronx which together they had furnished with such joy and hours of

planning and discussion.

They had nearly a thousand dollars to spend, but Alice wisely

decided, so her mother thought, that only half of it should go into

house-furnishing. The furniture shipped by the Reverend Dwight

Beardsley was designed in the style of an earlier day and much of it

was too large for the snug little rooms of the Bronx flat. A large

sideboard with a marble slab top and huge mirror could not be brought

into the apartment at all, and was sold to a second-hand furniture

dealer on Third Avenue for fifteen dollars. But most of the furniture

from California was usable, and all of it good and substantial. Alice

made the curtains for the dining and living rooms herself; she and Roy,

on their hands and knees, painted the floors a warm walnut tone. They

bought three or four rugs, a fine second-hand sofa with a rich but not

too gaudy brocaded cover, bed and table linen, and everything needed

for the kitchen. Horatio Stephens and his family sent them a colored

glass art lamp, and Mr. Corey, consulting Jeannette, presented a

beautiful clock with silvery chimes.

No young husband and wife ever took greater delight in their first

home. They were always “fixing” things, arranging and rearranging them,

cleaning and dusting. Roy bought a Boston fern during an early week of

the marriage, paid three dollars for a brass jardiniere at a Turkish

vendor’s to hold it, and the plant flourished on a small taboret in the

front windows. They took the most assiduous care of this, watering it

several times a day and digging about its roots with an old table knife

whenever either of them had an idle moment. When one of the curling

fronds began to turn brown, they had long discussions as to whether

it should be trimmed off or not. They acquired a canary, too, which

shared with the fern the young couple’s devotion. Alice had bought the

bird because she was so “miserably lonely” without Roy all day long

that she would “go out of her senses wanting him” unless there was

something alive ’round the house to keep her company. The fact that

the canary never opened his throat to make a sound,--although Alice

had been assured by the man in the bird-store that he would “sing his

head off”--did not in any wise detract from her love for the little

feathered creature that hopped about in his cage and made a great fuss

over giving himself a bath in the mornings. They called him “Sonny-boy”

and took turns at the pleasure of feeding him.

Alice was a good cook. She had a gift for the kitchen, and Jeannette

and her mother would exclaim in admiration over the delicious meals

she prepared when they came to dinner. Roy would glance from mother

to sister-in-law when the roast appeared or when a particularly

appetizing-looking pudding was brought in, and at their exclamations of

delight, he would say:

“Guess I’ve got a pretty smart wife,--hey? Guess I know a good cook

when I see one, huh? Why, Alice’s got most women I know skinned a mile!

She’s just a wonder; she can do anything. I only wish I was good enough

for her. She’s a wonder, all right--all right.”

Jeannette was deeply moved when her sister told her she was going to

have a baby. It tore at her heart to think of little Alice, to herself

so young, so immature, so tender and weak and inexperienced, bringing

a child into the world. She worried about it, wondered if Alice would

die, felt with terrifying conviction that that would be the way of it.

Her mother’s pleasure and complacency about the matter reassured her

but little. Alice was having a child much too soon after her wedding;

she ought to have waited for a year or so at least.

She watched the changes in her sister’s face and figure with growing

wonder. Child-bearing was a mystery. Jeannette had never known a woman

intimately who had had a baby; now she was both curious and concerned.

After the early months of discomfort had passed, a benign gentleness

settled upon Alice; her expression became placid, serene, beautiful. A

quality of goodness transfigured her. She moved through the days toward

her appointed time with supreme tranquillity. Whenever Alice spoke of

“my baby,” Jeannette winced, while her mother maddened her each time

with the remark that it was “only right and proper.”

One morning early in March, shortly after Jeannette had reached the

office, her mother telephoned her in a great state of excitement. She

had just heard from Roy; Alice’s baby would arrive that day; they were

taking her right away to the hospital; she wasn’t in any pain yet, but

the doctor thought it would be best to have her there; he didn’t say

when the child was likely to be born.

There was no more news. The morning stretched itself out endlessly.

Jeannette worried and suffered in silence; at noon she telephoned the

hospital and got Roy; there was little change; Alice was miserable,

but there was no talk about when the baby would be born; the doctor

had promised to be in at three; Roy would let her know if anything

happened. All afternoon there was a meeting of the members of the firm

in Corey’s office; the question of the move to the new building was

being discussed; it lasted until four, until five, until quarter to

six. Jeannette was beside herself. Alice was dead and they were afraid

to let her know!

At six o’clock her mother telephoned again. Alice was having her pains

with some regularity now; the baby ought to be there about eight or

nine o’clock, the doctor said.

As soon as she was at liberty Jeannette left the office. She did not

want to eat, but took the elevated direct to the hospital. Her mother

and Roy met her and they kissed one another again and again. Alice

was “upstairs” now. They sat with their elbows touching on a hard

leather-covered seat in the reception-room. Jeannette’s head began

to ache; she counted the sixty-three squares in the rug on the floor

twenty-two times; the black on the Welsbach burner in the lamp looked

exactly like two people kissing.

Towards midnight the baby was born.

When Jeannette first saw her niece, the upper part of the little head

and forehead were carefully bandaged. Her mother whispered that it had

been an “instrument case”; Roy was not to know for a while at any rate.

The baby was perfect,--a fine, healthy, eight-pound girl, and Alice was

doing nicely.

But Alice did not leave the hospital for six weeks and was six months

in recovering her old strength and buoyancy.