PHILADELPHIA AT LAST
"Open this door!" she commanded. "Let me out of here at once."
The pale girl started to do so, but the pretty one held her back. "No,
Nellie; Madam will be angry with us all if you open that door." Then she
turned to Elizabeth, and said:
"Whoever enters that door never goes out again. You are nicely caught, my
dear."
There was a sting of bitterness and self-pity in the taunt at the end of
the words. Elizabeth felt it, as she seized her pistol from her belt, and
pointed it at the astonished group. They were not accustomed to girls with
pistols. "Open that door, or I will shoot you all!" she cried.
Then, as she heard some one descending the stairs, she rushed again into
the room where she remembered the windows were open. They were guarded by
wire screens; but she caught up a chair, and dashed it through one,
plunging out into the street in spite of detaining hands that reached for
her, hands much hindered by the gleam of the pistol and the fear that it
might go off in their midst.
It took but an instant to wrench the bridle from its fastening and mount
her horse; then she rode forward through the city at a pace that only
millionaires and automobiles are allowed to take. She met and passed her
first automobile without a quiver. Her eyes were dilated, her lips set;
angry, frightened tears were streaming down her cheeks, and she urged her
poor horse forward until a policeman here and there thought it his duty to
make a feeble effort to detain her. But nothing impeded her way. She fled
through a maze of wagons, carriages, automobiles, and trolley-cars, until
she passed the whirl of the great city, and at last was free again and out
in the open country.
She came toward evening to a little cottage on the edge of a pretty
suburb. The cottage was covered with roses, and the front yard was full of
great old-fashioned flowers. On the porch sat a plain little old lady in a
rocking-chair, knitting. There was a little gate with a path leading up to
the door, and at the side another open gate with a road leading around to
the back of the cottage.
Elizabeth saw, and murmuring, "O 'our Father,' please hide me!" she dashed
into the driveway, and tore up to the side of the piazza at a full gallop.
She jumped from the horse; and, leaving him standing panting with his nose
to the fence, and a tempting strip of clover in front of him where he
could graze when he should get his breath, she ran up the steps, and flung
herself in a miserable little heap at the feet of the astonished old lady.
"O, please, please, won't you let me stay here a few minutes, and tell me
what to do? I am so tired, and I have had such a dreadful, awful time!"
"Why, dearie me!" said the old lady. "Of course I will. Poor child; sit
right down in this rocking-chair, and have a good cry. I'll get you a
glass of water and something to eat, and then you shall tell me all about
it."
She brought the water, and a tray with nice broad slices of brown bread
and butter, a generous piece of apple pie, some cheese, and a glass
pitcher of creamy milk.
Elizabeth drank the water, but before she could eat she told the terrible
tale of her last adventure. It seemed awful for her to believe, and she
felt she must have help somewhere. She had heard there were bad people in
the world. In fact, she had seen men who were bad, and once a woman had
passed their ranch whose character was said to be questionable. She wore a
hard face, and could drink and swear like the men. But that sin should be
in this form, with pretty girls and pleasant, wheedling women for agents,
she had never dreamed; and this in the great, civilized East! Almost
better would it have been to remain in the desert alone, and risk the
pursuit of that awful man, than to come all this way to find the world
gone wrong.
The old lady was horrified, too. She had heard more than the girl of
licensed evil; but she had read it in the paper as she had read about the
evils of the slave-traffic in Africa, and it had never really seemed true
to her. Now she lifted up her hands in horror, and looked at the beautiful
girl before her with something akin to awe that she had been in one of
those dens of iniquity and escaped. Over and over she made the girl tell
what was said, and how it looked, and how she pointed her pistol, and how
she got out; and then she exclaimed in wonder, and called her escape a
miracle.
They were both weary from excitement when the tale was told. Elizabeth ate
her lunch; then the old lady showed her where to put the horse, and made
her go to bed. It was only a wee little room with a cot-bed white as snow
where she put her; but the roses peeped in at the window, and the box
covered with an old white curtain contained a large pitcher of fresh
water and a bowl and soap and towels. The old lady brought her a clean
white nightgown, coarse and mended in many places, but smelling of rose
leaves; and in the morning she tapped at the door quite early before the
girl was up, and came in with an armful of clothes.
"I had some boarders last summer," she explained, "and, when they went
away, they left these things and said I might put them into the
home-mission box. But I was sick when they sent it off this winter; and,
if you ain't a home mission, then I never saw one. You put 'em on. I guess
they'll fit. They may be a mite large, but she was about your size. I
guess your clothes are about wore out; so you jest leave 'em here fer the
next one, and use these. There's a couple of extra shirt-waists you can
put in a bundle for a change. I guess folks won't dare fool with you if
you have some clean, nice clothes on."
Elizabeth looked at her gratefully, and wrote her down in the list of
saints with the woman who read the fourteenth chapter of John. The old
lady had neglected to mention that from her own meagre wardrobe she had
supplied some under-garments, which were not included in those the
boarders had left.
Bathed and clothed in clean, sweet garments, with a white shirt-waist and
a dark-blue serge skirt and coat, Elizabeth looked a different girl. She
surveyed herself in the little glass over the box-washstand and wondered.
All at once vanity was born within her, and an ambition to be always thus
clothed, with a horrible remembrance of the woman of the day before, who
had promised to show her how to earn some pretty clothes. It flashed
across her mind that pretty clothes might be a snare. Perhaps they had
been to those girls she had seen in that house.
With much good advice and kindly blessings from the old lady, Elizabeth
fared forth upon her journey once more, sadly wise in the wisdom of the
world, and less sweetly credulous than she had been, but better fitted to
fight her way.
The story of her journey from Chicago to Philadelphia would fill a volume
if it were written, but it might pall upon the reader from the very
variety of its experiences. It was made slowly and painfully, with many
haltings and much lessening of the scanty store of money that had seemed
so much when she received it in the wilderness. The horse went lame, and
had to be watched over and petted, and finally, by the advice of a kindly
farmer, taken to a veterinary surgeon, who doctored him for a week before
he finally said it was safe to let him hobble on again. After that the
girl was more careful of the horse. If he should die, what would she do?
One dismal morning, late in November, Elizabeth, wearing the old overcoat
to keep her from freezing, rode into Philadelphia.
Armed with instructions from the old lady in Chicago, she rode boldly up
to a policeman, and showed him the address of the grandmother to whom she
had decided to go first, her mother's mother. He sent her on in the right
direction, and in due time with the help of other policemen she reached
the right number on Flora Street.
It was a narrow street, banked on either side by small, narrow brick
houses of the older type. Here and there gleamed out a scrap of a white
marble door-step, but most of the houses were approached by steps of dull
stone or of painted wood. There was a dejected and dreary air about the
place. The street was swarming with children in various stages of the
soiled condition.
Elizabeth timidly knocked at the door after being assured by the
interested urchins who surrounded her that Mrs. Brady really lived there,
and had not moved away or anything. It did not seem wonderful to the girl,
who had lived her life thus far in a mountain shack, to find her
grandmother still in the place from which she had written fifteen years
before. She did not yet know what a floating population most cities
contain.
Mrs. Brady was washing when the knock sounded through the house. She was a
broad woman, with a face on which the cares and sorrows of the years had
left a not too heavy impress. She still enjoyed life, even though a good
part of it was spent at the wash-tub, washing other people's fine clothes.
She had some fine ones of her own up-stairs in her clothes-press; and,
when she went out, it was in shiny satin, with a bonnet bobbing with jet
and a red rose, though of late years, strictly speaking, the bonnet had
become a hat again, and Mrs. Brady was in style with the other old ladies.
The perspiration was in little beads on her forehead and trickling down
the creases in her well-cushioned neck toward her ample bosom. Her gray
hair was neatly combed, and her calico wrapper was open at the throat even
on this cold day. She wiped on her apron the soap-suds from her plump arms
steaming pink from the hot suds, and went to the door.
She looked with disfavor upon the peculiar person on the door-step attired
in a man's overcoat. She was prepared to refuse the demands of the
Salvation Army for a nickel for Christmas dinners; or to silence the
banana-man, or the fish-man, or the man with shoe-strings and pins and
pencils for sale; or to send the photograph-agent on his way; yes, even
the man who sold albums for post-cards. She had no time to bother with
anybody this morning.
But the young person in the rusty overcoat, with the dark-blue serge Eton
jacket under it, which might have come from Wanamaker's two years ago, who
yet wore a leather belt with gleaming pistols under the Eton jacket, was a
new species. Mrs. Brady was taken off her guard; else Elizabeth might have
found entrance to her grandmother's home as difficult as she had found
entrance to the finishing school of Madame Janeway.
"Are you Mrs. Brady?" asked the girl. She was searching the forbidding
face before her for some sign of likeness to her mother, but found none.
The cares of Elizabeth Brady's daughter had outweighed those of the
mother, or else they sat upon a nature more sensitive.
"I am," said Mrs. Brady, imposingly.
"Grandmother, I am the baby you talked about in that letter," she
announced, handing Mrs. Brady the letter she had written nearly eighteen
years before.
The woman took the envelope gingerly in the wet thumb and finger that
still grasped a bit of the gingham apron. She held it at arm's length, and
squinted up her eyes, trying to read it without her glasses. It was some
new kind of beggar, of course. She hated to touch these dirty envelopes,
and this one looked old and worn. She stepped back to the parlor table
where her glasses were lying, and, adjusting them, began to read the
letter.
"For the land sakes! Where'd you find this?" she said, looking up
suspiciously. "It's against the law to open letters that ain't your own.
Didn't me daughter ever get it? I wrote it to her meself. How come you by
it?"
"Mother read it to me long ago when I was little," answered the girl, the
slow hope fading from her lips as she spoke. Was every one, was even her
grandmother, going to be cold and harsh with her? "Our Father, hide me!"
her heart murmured, because it had become a habit; and her listening
thought caught the answer, "Let not your heart be troubled."
"Well, who are you?" said the uncordial grandmother, still puzzled. "You
ain't Bessie, me Bessie. Fer one thing, you're 'bout as young as she was
when she went off 'n' got married, against me 'dvice, to that drunken,
lazy dude." Her brow was lowering, and she proceeded to finish her letter.
"I am Elizabeth," said the girl with a trembling voice, "the baby you
talked about in that letter. But please don't call father that. He wasn't
ever bad to us. He was always good to mother, even when he was drunk. If
you talk like that about him, I shall have to go away."
"Fer the land sakes! You don't say," said Mrs. Brady, sitting down hard in
astonishment on the biscuit upholstery of her best parlor chair. "Now you
ain't Bessie's child! Well, I _am clear_ beat. And growed up so big! You
look strong, but you're kind of thin. What makes your skin so black? Your
ma never was dark, ner your pa, neither."
"I've been riding a long way in the wind and sun and rain."
"Fer the land sakes!" as she looked through the window to the street. "Not
on a horse?"
"Yes."
"H'm! What was your ma thinkin' about to let you do that?"
"My mother is dead. There was no one left to care what I did. I had to
come. There were dreadful people out there, and I was afraid."
"Fer the land sakes!" That seemed the only remark that the capable Mrs.
Brady could make. She looked at her new granddaughter in bewilderment, as
if a strange sort of creature had suddenly laid claim to relationship.
"Well, I'm right glad to see you," she said stiffly, wiping her hand again
on her apron and putting it out formally for a greeting.
Elizabeth accepted her reception gravely, and sat down. She sat down
suddenly, as if her strength had given way and a great strain was at an
end. As she sat down, she drooped her head back against the wall; and a
gray look spread about her lips.
"You're tired," said the grandmother, energetically. "Come far this
morning?"
"No," said Elizabeth, weakly, "not many miles; but I hadn't any more
bread. I used it all up yesterday, and there wasn't much money left. I
thought I could wait till I got here, but I guess I'm hungry."
"Fer the land sakes!" ejaculated Mrs. Brady as she hustled out to the
kitchen, and clattered the frying-pan onto the stove, shoving the boiler
hastily aside. She came in presently with a steaming cup of tea, and made
the girl drink it hot and strong. Then she established her in the big
rocking-chair in the kitchen with a plate of appetizing things to eat, and
went on with her washing, punctuating every rub with a question.
Elizabeth felt better after her meal, and offered to help, but the
grandmother would not hear to her lifting a finger.
"You must rest first," she said. "It beats me how you ever got here. I'd
sooner crawl on me hands and knees than ride a great, scary horse."
Elizabeth sprang to her feet.
"The horse!" she said. "Poor fellow! He needs something to eat worse than
I did. He hasn't had a bite of grass all this morning. There was nothing
but hard roads and pavements. The grass is all brown, anyway, now. I found
some cornstalks by the road, and once a man dropped a big bundle of hay
out of his load. If it hadn't been for Robin, I'd never have got here; and
here I've sat enjoying my breakfast, and Robin out there hungry!"
"Fer the land sakes!" said the grandmother, taking her arms out of the
suds and looked troubled. "Poor fellow! What would he like? I haven't got
any hay, but there's some mashed potatoes left, and what is there? Why,
there's some excelsior the lamp-shade come packed in. You don't suppose
he'd think it was hay, do you? No, I guess it wouldn't taste very good."
"Where can I put him, grandmother?"
"Fer the land sakes! I don't know," said the grandmother, looking around
the room in alarm. "We haven't any place fer horses. Perhaps you might get
him into the back yard fer a while till we think what to do. There's a
stable, but they charge high to board horses. Lizzie knows one of the
fellers that works there. Mebbe he'll tell us what to do. Anyway, you lead
him round to the alleyway, and we'll see if we can't get him in the little
ash-gate. You don't suppose he'd try to get in the house, do you? I
shouldn't like him to come in the kitchen when I was getting supper."
"O no!" said Elizabeth. "He's very good. Where is the back yard?"
This arrangement was finally made, and the two women stood in the kitchen
door, watching Robin drink a bucketful of water and eat heartily of the
various viands that Mrs. Brady set forth for him, with the exception of
the excelsior, which he snuffed at in disgust.
"Now, ain't he smart?" said Mrs. Brady, watching fearfully from the
door-step, where she might retreat if the animal showed any tendency to
step nearer to the kitchen. "But don't you think he's cold? Wouldn't he
like a--a--shawl or something?"
The girl drew the old coat from her shoulders, and threw it over him, her
grandmother watching her fearless handling of the horse with pride and
awe.
"We're used to sharing this together," said the girl simply.
"Nan sews in an up-town dressmaker's place," explained Mrs. Brady by and
by, when the wash was hung out in fearsome proximity to the weary horse's
heels, and the two had returned to the warm kitchen to clean up and get
supper. "Nan's your ma's sister, you know, older'n her by two year; and
Lizzie, that's her girl, she's about 's old 's you. She's got a good place
in the ten-cent store. Nan's husband died four years ago, and her and
me've been livin' together ever since. It'll be nice fer you and Lizzie to
be together. She'll make it lively fer you right away. Prob'ly she can get
you a place at the same store. She'll be here at half past six to-night.
This is her week to get out early."
The aunt came in first. She was a tall, thin woman with faded brown hair
and a faint resemblance to Elizabeth's mother. Her shoulders stooped
slightly, and her voice was nasal. Her mouth looked as if it was used to
holding pins in one corner and gossiping out of the other. She was one of
the kind who always get into a rocking-chair to sew if they can, and rock
as they sew. Nevertheless, she was skilful in her way, and commanded good
wages. She welcomed the new niece reluctantly, more excited over her
remarkable appearance among her relatives after so long a silence than
pleased, Elizabeth felt. But after she had satisfied her curiosity she was
kind, beginning to talk about Lizzie, and mentally compared this thin,
brown girl with rough hair and dowdy clothes to her own stylish daughter.
Then Lizzie burst in. They could hear her calling to a young man who had
walked home with her, even before she entered the house.
"It's just fierce out, ma!" she exclaimed. "Grandma, ain't supper ready
yet? I never was so hungry in all my life. I could eat a house afire."
She stopped short at sight of Elizabeth. She had been chewing gum--Lizzie
was always chewing gum--but her jaws ceased action in sheer astonishment.
"This is your cousin Bessie, come all the way from Montana on horseback,
Lizzie. She's your aunt Bessie's child. Her folks is dead now, and she's
come to live with us. You must see ef you can't get her a place in the
ten-cent store 'long with you," said the grandmother.
Lizzie came airily forward, and grasped her cousin's hand in mid-air,
giving it a lateral shake that bewildered Elizabeth.
"Pleased to meet you," she chattered glibly, and set her jaws to work
again. One could not embarrass Lizzie long. But she kept her eyes on the
stranger, and let them wander disapprovingly over her apparel in a pointed
way as she took out the long hat-pins from the cumbersome hat she wore and
adjusted her ponderous pompadour.
"Lizzie'll have to help fix you up," said the aunt noting Lizzie's glance.
"You're all out of style. I suppose they get behind times out in Montana.
Lizzie, can't you show her how to fix her hair pompadour?"
Lizzie brightened. If there was a prospect of changing things, she was not
averse to a cousin of her own age; but she never could take such a
dowdy-looking girl into society, not the society of the ten-cent store.
"O, cert!" answered Lizzie affably. "I'll fix you fine. Don't you worry.
How'd you get so awful tanned? I s'pose riding. You look like you'd been
to the seashore, and lay out on the beach in the sun. But 'tain't the
right time o' year quite. It must be great to ride horseback!"
"I'll teach you how if you want to learn," said Elizabeth, endeavoring to
show a return of the kindly offer.
"Me? What would I ride? Have to ride a counter, I guess. I guess you won't
find much to ride here in the city, 'cept trolley-cars."
"Bessie's got a horse. He's out in the yard now," said the grandmother
with pride.
"A horse! All your own? Gee whiz! Won't the girls stare when I tell them?
Say, we can borrow a rig at the livery some night, and take a ride. Dan'll
go with us, and get the rig for us. Won't that be great?"
Elizabeth smiled. She felt the glow of at last contributing something to
the family pleasure. She did not wish her coming to be so entirely a wet
blanket as it had seemed at first; for, to tell the truth, she had seen
blank dismay on the face of each separate relative as her identity had
been made known. Her heart was lonely, and she hungered for some one who
"belonged" and loved her.
Supper was put on the table, and the two girls began to get a little
acquainted, chattering over clothes and the arrangement of hair.
"Do you know whether there is anything in Philadelphia called 'Christian
Endeavor'?" asked Elizabeth after the supper-table was cleared off.
"O, Chrishun'deavor! Yes, I used t' b'long," answered Lizzie. She had
removed the gum from her mouth while she ate her supper, but now it was
busy again between sentences. "Yes, we have one down to our church. It was
real interesting, too; but I got mad at one of the members, and quit. She
was a stuck-up old maid, anyway. She was always turning round and scowling
at us girls if we just whispered the least little bit, or smiled; and one
night she was leading the meeting, and Jim Forbes got in a corner behind a
post, and made mouths at her behind his book. He looked awful funny. It
was something fierce the way she always screwed her face up when she sang,
and he looked just like her. We girls, Hetty and Em'line and I, got to
laughing, and we just couldn't stop; and didn't that old thing stop the
singing after one verse, and look right at us, and say she thought
Christian Endeavor members should remember whose house they were in, and
that the owner was there, and all that rot. I nearly died, I was so mad.
Everybody looked around, and we girls choked, and got up and went out. I
haven't been down since. The lookout committee came to see us 'bout it;
but I said I wouldn't go back where I'd been insulted, and I've never been
inside the doors since. But she's moved away now. I wouldn't mind going
back if you want to go."
"Whose house did she mean it was? Was it her house?"
"O, no, it wasn't her house," laughed Lizzie. "It was the church. She
meant it was God's house, I s'pose, but she needn't have been so
pernickety. We weren't doing any harm."
"Does God have a house?"
"Why, yes; didn't you know that? Why, you talk like a heathen, Bessie.
Didn't you have churches in Montana?"
"Yes, there was a church fifty miles away. I heard about it once, but I
never saw it," answered Elizabeth. "But what did the woman mean? Who did
she say was there? God? Was God in the church? Did you see Him, and know
He was there when you laughed?"
"O, you silly!" giggled Lizzie. "Wouldn't the girls laugh at you, though,
if they could hear you talk? Why, of course God was there. He's
everywhere, you know," with superior knowledge; "but I didn't see Him. You
can't see God."
"Why not?"
"Why, because you can't!" answered her cousin with final logic. "Say,
haven't you got any other clothes with you at all? I'd take you down with
me in the morning if you was fixed up."