II

It is not surprising that Madeleine came to her twelfth and thirteenth

years without any real understanding of the great world about her and

without any definite knowledge or skill. Her drunken mother was now

more or less dependent upon her, her father having died of pneumonia

and her brother and sister having disappeared to do for themselves.

Aside from petty beginners’ tasks in shops or stores, or assisting her

mother at washing or cleaning, there was little that she could do at

first. Mrs. Kinsella, actually compelled by the need for rent or food

or fuel after a time, would get occasional work in a laundry or kitchen

or at scrubbing or window-cleaning, but not for long. The pleasure of

drink would soon rob her of that.

At these tasks Madeleine helped until she secured work in a candy

factory in her thirteenth year at the wage of three-thirty a week. But

even with this little money paid in regularly there was no assurance

that her mother would add sufficient to it to provide either food or

warmth. Betimes, and when Madeleine was working, her mother cheered her

all too obvious sorrows with the bottle, and at nights or week-ends

rewarded Madeleine with a gabble which was all the more painful because

no material comfort came with it.

The child actually went hungry at times. Usually, after a few drinks,

her mother would begin to weep and recite her past ills: a process

which reduced her timorous and very sympathetic daughter to complete

misery. In sheer desperation the child sought for some new way in

her own mind. A reduction in the working-force of the candy factory,

putting her back in the ranks of the work-seekers once more, and a

neighbor perceiving her wretched state and suggesting that some extra

helpers were wanted in a department store at Christmastime, she applied

there, but so wretched were her clothes by now that she was not even

considered.

Then a man who had a restaurant in a nearby street gave her mother and

Madeleine positions as dishwashers, but he was compelled to discharge

her mother, although he wished to retain Madeleine. From this last,

however, because of the frightening attentions of the cook, she had to

flee, and without obtaining a part of the small pittance which was due

her. Again, and because in times past she had aided her mother to clean

in one place and another, she was able to get a place as servant in a

family.

Those who know anything of the life of a domestic know how thoroughly

unsatisfactory it is—the leanness, the lack of hope. As a domestic,

wherever she was—and she obtained no superior places for the time

being—she had only the kitchen for her chief chamber or a cubby-hole

under the roof. Here, unless she was working elsewhere in the house or

chose to visit her mother occasionally, she was expected to remain.

Pots and pans and scrubbing and cleaning and bed-making were her world.

If any one aside from her mother ever wanted to see her (which was

rare) he or she could only come into the kitchen, an ugly and by day

inconvenient realm.

She had, as she soon came to see, no privileges whatsoever. In the

morning she was expected to be up before any one else, possibly after

working late the night before. Breakfast had to be served for others

before she herself could eat—what was left. Then came the sweeping

and cleaning. In one place which she obtained in her fifteenth year

the husband annoyed her so, when his wife was not looking, that she

had to leave; in another it was the son. By now she was becoming more

attractive, although by no means beautiful or daring.

But wherever she was and whatever she was doing, she could not help

thinking of her mother and Tina and Frank and her father, and of the

grim necessities and errors and vices which had seemed to dominate

them. Neither her brother nor her sister did she ever see again. Her

mother, she felt (and this was due to a sensitiveness and a sympathy

which she could not possibly overcome), she would have with her for the

rest of her days unless, like the others, she chose to run away.

Daily her mother was growing more inadequate and less given to

restraint or consideration. As “bad” as she was, Madeleine could not

help thinking what a “hard” time she had had. From whatever places she

obtained work in these days (and it was not often any more) she was

soon discharged, and then she would come inquiring after Madeleine,

asking to be permitted to see her. Naturally, her shabby dress and

shawl and rag of a hat, as well as her wastrel appearance, were an

affront to any well-ordered household. Once in her presence, whenever

Madeleine was permitted to see her, she would begin either a cozening

or a lachrymose account of her great needs.

“It’s out o’ oil I am, me dear,” or “Wurra, I have no wood” or “bread”

or “meat”—never drink. “Ye won’t let yer pore old mother go cold or

hungry, now, will ye? That’s the good girl now. Fifty cents now, if ye

have it, me darlin’, or a quarter, an’ I’ll not be troublin’ ye soon

again. Even a dime, if ye can spare me no more. God’ll reward ye. I’ll

have work o’ me own to-morra. That’s the good girl now—ye won’t let me

go away without anything.”

Oscillating between shame and sympathy, her daughter would take

from the little she had and give it to her, tremulous for fear the

disturbing figure would prove her undoing. Then the old woman would go

out, lurching sometimes in her cups, and disappear, while an observant

fellow servant was probably seeing and reporting to the mistress, who,

of course, did not want her to come there and so told the girl, or,

more practical still, discharged her.

Thus from her fourteenth to her sixteenth year she was shunted from

house to house and from shop to shop, always in the vain hope that this

time her mother might let her alone.

And at the very same time, life, sweetened by the harmonies of youth

in the blood, was calling—that exterior life which promised everything

because so far it had given nothing. The little simple things of

existence, the very ordinary necessities of clothing and ornament,

with which the heart of youth and the inherent pride of appearance are

gratified, had a value entirely disproportionate to their worth. Yes,

already she had turned the age wherein the chemic harmonies in youth

begin to sing, thought to thought, color to color, dream to dream. She

was being touched by the promise of life itself.

And then, as was natural, love in the guise of youth, a rather

sophisticated gallant somewhat above the world in which she was moving,

appeared and paid his all but worthless court to her. He was physically

charming, the son of a grocer of some means in the vicinity in which

she was working, a handsome youth with pink cheeks and light hair and

blue eyes, and vanity enough for ten. Because she was shy and pretty he

became passingly interested in her.

“Oh, I saw you cleaning the windows yesterday,” this with a radiant,

winning smile; or “You must live down toward Blake Street. I see you

going down that way once in a while.”

Madeleine acknowledged rather shamefacedly that it was true. That so

dashing a boy should be interested in her was too marvelous.

In the evenings, or at any time, it was easy for a youth of his skill

and _savoir-faire_ to pick her out of the bobbing stream of humanity in

which she occasionally did errands or visited her mother in her shabby

room, and to suggest that he be permitted to call upon her. Or, failing

that, because of her mother’s shabby quarters and her mother herself,

that the following Sunday would be ideal for an outing to one of those

tawdry, noisy beaches to which he liked to go with other boys and girls

in a car.

A single trip to Wonderland, a single visit to one of its halls

where music sounded to the splash of the waves and where he did his

best to teach her to dance, a single meal in one of its gaudy, noisy

restaurants, a taste of its whirly pleasures, and a new color and

fillip were given to hope, a new and seemingly realizable dream of

happiness implanted in her young mind. The world was happier than she

had thought, or could be made so; not all people fought and screamed

at each other. There were such things as tenderness, soft words, sweet

words.

But the way of so sophisticated a youth with a maid was brief and

direct. His mind was of that order which finds in the freshness of

womankind a mere passing delight, something to be deflowered and then

put aside. He was a part of a group that secured its happiness in

rifling youth, the youth of those whose lives were so dull and bleak

that a few words of kindness, a little change of scene, the mere

proximity of experience and force such as they had never known, were

pay ample for anything which they might give or do.

And of these Madeleine was one.

Never having had anything in her own life, the mere thought of a man so

vigorous and handsome, one with knowledge enough to show her more of

life than she had ever dreamed of, to take her to places of color and

light, to assure her that she was fitted for better things even though

they were not immediately forthcoming, was sufficient to cause her to

place faith where it was least worthy of being placed. To win his way

there was even talk of marriage later on, that love should be generous

and have faith—and then—