Meldrum's cynicisms had been strangely opportune to the strangely
opportune to the despondent old maid. He unwittingly helped her over a
deep ditch and got her past a bad night.
But when she woke, the next morning was but the same old resumption of
the same old day. Poverty, loneliness, and the inanity of a manless
household were again her portion. The face she washed explained to her
why she was not sought after by the men. The hair she combed and wadded
on her cranium clouded with no romance even in her own eyes. She
realized that she was not loved for the simple reason that she was not
lovely. She had never been a rose, and men did not pluck dog-fennel to
wear. And the camomile could never become a marguerite by wishing to be
one.
Debby haled her awkward self out of her humble cot, out of her coarse
and frilless nightgown, into her matter-of-fact clothes, and slumped
down to a chill, bare kitchen. There she made a fire in a cold stove,
that she might warm up oatmeal and fry eggs and petrify a few slices of
bread into a scratchy toast.
Not hearing her mother's slippers flap and shuffle on the stairs as
usual, she climbed again to learn the cause. She found her mother
filled with rheumatism and bad news. A letter had come the day before,
and she had concealed it from Deborah so that the child might have a
nice time at the party; and did she have a nice time, and who was there?
But that could wait, for never was there such news as she had now, and
there was never any let-up in bad luck, and them with no man to lean on
or turn to.
When Deborah finally pried the letter from the poor old talons she found
an announcement that the A.G.&St.P.Ry. would pass its dividend this
year. To the Larrabees the A.G.&St.P. had always been the most
substantial thing in the world next to the Presbyterian Church.
Deborah's father had said that his death-bed was cheered by the fact
that he had left his widow and his child several shares of that soulful
corporation's stock. He called it the "Angel Gabriel & St. Peter
Railway." The dividend was as sure as flowers in June. It had never
failed, and the Larrabee women always spent it before it was paid. They
had pledged it this year.
If they had followed the stock-market, of which they had hardly heard,
they would have known that the railroad's shares had fallen from 203 to
51 in two years and that the concern was curving gracefully toward a
receivership. The two women breakfasted that morning on cold dismay and
hot flashes of terror. The few hundred dollars that had come to them
like semi-annual manna and quails would not drop down this year, perhaps
not next year, or ever again. Their creditors would probably throw them
into the town jail. The poorhouse would be a paradise.
In her distraction Debby had an impulse to consult Newt Meldrum. She
hurried to Shillaber's Bazar, hoping he might be there. Asaph met her
himself and told her that Newt had gone back to New York on an early
train. Debby broke down and told of her plight. She supposed that she
would have to go to work at once somewhere. But what could she do?
Asaph was feeling amiable; he had won a reprieve from Meldrum and had
made it up with his wife in private for the public quarrel. His heart
melted at the thought of helping poor old Dubby Debby, whom everybody
was fond of in a hatefully unflattering way. He had helped other
gentlewomen in distress, and now he dumfounded Debby by saying, "Why
don't you clerk here, Debby?"
"Why, I couldn't clerk in a store!" she gasped, terrified. "I don't
know the least thing about it."
"You'd soon learn the stock, and the prices are all marked in plain
letters that you can memorize easy. You've got a lot of friends, and we
give a commission on all the sales over a certain amount. Better try
it."
Debby felt now, for the first time, all the sweet panic that most women
undergo with their first proposal. This offer of the job of saleswoman
was as near as Debby had come to being offered the job of helpmeet. She
even murmured, "This is so sudden," and, "I'll have to ask mama." It
was an epoch-making decision, a terrible leap from the stagnant pool of
the Larrabee cottage to the seething maelstrom of Shillaber's Bazar.
She went home to her mother with the thrilling, the glorious news that
henceforth she could acquire all of five dollars a week by merely being
present at Shillaber's for twelve hours or so a day, except Sat'days,
when the store was open evenings till the last possible customer had
gone home to bed. Mrs. Larrabee apologized to Heaven for doubting its
watchfulness, commended Asaph Shillaber to its attention, and bespoke
for him a special invoice of blessings.
And Asaph went home to his midday dinner as cheerfully as if he had
received them. First he announced the good word about Meldrum's
leniency, which Josie greeted with:
"You see! I told you that the party would be the proper caper. Maybe
after this you'll believe that your wife knows a thing or two."
Asaph assured her that he would never doubt that she knew at least that
much. Then, like the wag he was, he said that he had added a new clerk
to his staff-a lady and a beauty, whose charms would draw no end of
custom to the store and dazzle the drummers from far and near.
Josie's facile temper flashed at once into glow. One of her chief
interests in the Bazar had been to make sure that it never harbored any
saleswoman whose beauty could possibly lure her husband's mind from his
ledgers or his home ties. Under the pretext of purchases or suggestions
she made frequent tours of inspection, and if a girl too young or a pair
of eyes too bright gleamed behind a counter Asaph heard of it at once.
Some years before he had bowed to the inevitable and made it a rule to
engage no woman who could imaginably disturb Josie's delicate equipoise.
Meldrum had noticed the strange array and had been inclined to impute
the decline of the store's prosperity to the appearance of its staff.
"Good Lord, Ase!" he had groaned. "What you got here-the overflow of the
Home for Aged and Indignant Females? You've collected a bunch of
clock-stoppers that makes a suffragette meeting look like a Winter
Garden chorus. People like those can't sell pretty things. Send 'em all
to the bone-yard and get in some winners."
Asaph promised, and Meldrum promised to arrange an extension of credit.
But Asaph would have feared bankruptcy less than such a step. As soon
as Meldrum was gone he put the cap-sheaf to his little army of relicts
and remnants by engaging Debby Larrabee! She made the rest look
handsome by contrast.
She was the joke that he tried to spring on his wife. Josie took the
allusion seriously, and Asaph was soon trying to hold her down.
"Wait! Wait till you hear who it is!" he pleaded; but she stormed on:
"I don't care who it is. I'm not going to have you exposed to the wiles
of any of those designing minxes. I won't have her, I tell you."
At length he shouted above the din: "I was only joking. It's Debby
Larrabee! I've engaged Debby Larrabee! They've lost all their money."
When Josie understood, she saw the joke. She began to laugh with
hysterics, to slap and push her husband about hilariously. "Aw, you old
fraud, you! So you've engaged Dubby Debby! Well, you can keep her. I
don't care how late you stay at the store as long as Debby's there."
Deborah was fortunate enough not to overhear this. In fact, the long
drought in Debby's good luck seemed to be ending. The skies over her
grew dark with the abundance of merciful rain. A gentle drizzle
preceded the cloudburst. There usually is a deluge after a drought.
A few days later found Debby installed in the washable silks. The
change in her environment was complete. Instead of dozing through a
nightmare of ineptitude in the doleful society of her old mother in a
dismal home where almost nobody ever called, and never a man, now she
stood all day on the edge of a stream of people; she chattered breezily
all day to women in search of beautiful fabrics. She handled beautiful
fabrics. Her conversation was a procession of adjectives of praise.
Trying to live up to her surroundings, she took thought of her
appearance. Dealing in fashions, with fashion-plates as her scriptures,
she tried to get in touch with the contemporary styles. She bounded
across eight or ten periods at one leap. First she found that she could
at least put up her hair as other women did. The revolution in her
appearance was amazing. Next she retrimmed her old hat, reshaped her
old skirt-drew it so tightly about her ankles that she was forced to the
tremendous deed of slitting it up a few inches so that she could at
least walk slowly. The first time her mother noticed it she said:
"Why, Debby, what on earth! That skirt of yours is all tore up the
side."
Debby explained it to her with the delicious confusion of a Magdalen
confessing her entry upon a career of profligacy. Her mother almost
fainted. Debby had gone wrong at this late day! She had heard that
department-stores were awful places for a girl. The papers had been
full of minimum wages and things.
Worse yet, Debby began to attitudinize, to learn the comfort of poses.
She must be forever holding pretty things forward. She took care of her
hands, polished her nails. Now and then she must drape a piece of silk
across her shoulder and dispose her rigid frame into curves. She began
to talk of "lines" to cold-cream her complexion.
The mental change in her was no less thorough. Activity was a tonic.
Her patience was compelled to school itself. Prosperity lay in
unfaltering courtesy, untarnished cheer. Cynicism does not sell goods.
All day long she was praising things. Enthusiasm became her instinct.
Few men swam into her ken, but in learning to satisfy the exactions of
women she built up tact. She had long since omitted malekind from her
life and her plan of life. She was content. Women liked her; women
lingered to talk with her; they asked her help in their vital struggle
for beauty. It was enough.