BACK TO THE MAINLAND.
WITHIN a month old Miss Bromfield was again with her sister at
Stockbridge; the house in Stoughton was sold; there were twenty-two
hundred dollars to Emily’s credit in the Stoughton National Bank--her
whole capital except a hundred and fifty dollars which she had with
her; and she herself was standing at the exit from the Grand Central
Station in New York City, facing with a sinking heart and frightened
eyes the row of squalid cabs and clamourous cabmen. One of these took
her to the boarding-house in East Thirty-first Street near Madison
Avenue where her friend, Theresa Duncan, lived.
“Of course there’s a chance,” Theresa had written. “Come straight on
here. Something is sure to turn up. And there’s nothing like being on
the spot.”
Of the women of her acquaintance who made their own living, Theresa
alone was in an independent position--with her time her own, and with
no suggestion of domestic service in her employment. They had been
friends at school and had kept up the friendship by correspondence.
Before Mr. Bromfield died, Theresa’s father had been swept under by
a Wall Street tidal wave and, when it receded, had been found on the
shore with empty pockets and a bullet in his brain. Emily wrote to her
at once, but the answer did not come until six months had passed. Then
Theresa announced that she was established in a small but sufficient
commission business. “I shop for busy New York women and have a growing
out-of-town trade,” she wrote. “And I am almost happy. It is fine to be
free.”
At the boarding-house Emily looked twice at the number to assure
herself that she was not mistaken. She had expected nothing so imposing
as this mansion-like exterior. When a man-servant opened the door and
she saw high ceilings and heavy mouldings, she inquired for Miss Duncan
in the tone of one who is sure there is a mistake. But before the man
answered, her illusion vanished. He was a slattern creature in a greasy
evening coat, a day waistcoat, a stained red satin tie, its flaming
colour fighting for precedence with a huge blue glass scarf pin. And
Emily now saw that the splendours of what had been a fine house in New
York’s modest days were overlaid with cheap trappings and with grime
and stain and other evidences of slovenly housekeeping.
The air was saturated with an odour of inferior food, cooking in poor
butter and worse lard. It was one of the Houses of the Seem-to-be. The
carpets seemed to be Turkish or Persian, but were made in Newark and
made cheaply. The furniture seemed to be French, but was Fourteenth
street. The paper seemed to be brocade, but was from the masses of poor
stuff tossed upon the counters of second-class department stores for
the fumblings of noisome bargain-day crowds. The paintings seemed to be
pictures, but were such daubs as the Nassau street dealers auction off
to swindle-seeking clerks at the lunch hour. In a corner of the “salon”
stood what seemed to be a cabinet for bric-a-brac but was a dilapidated
folding bed.
“Dare I sit?” thought Emily. “What seems to be a chair may really be
some hollow sham that will collapse at the touch.”
“A vile hole, isn’t it?” was one of Theresa’s first remarks, after an
enthusiastic greeting and a competent apology for not meeting her at
the station. “We may be able to take a flat together. I would have done
it long ago, if I’d not been alone.”
“Yes,” said Emily, “and I may persuade Aunt Ann to come and live with
us as chaperon.”
“Oh, that will be so nice,” replied Theresa in a doubtful, reluctant
tone, with a quizzical look in her handsome brown eyes. “If there is a
prime necessity for a working-woman, it is a chaperon.”
“You’re laughing at me,” said Emily, flushing but good-humoured. “I
meant simply that my aunt could look after the flat while we’re away.
You don’t know her. She’d never bother us. She understands how to mind
her own business.”
“Well, the flat and the chaperon are still in the future. The first
question is, what are you going into? You used to write such good
essays at school and your letters are clever. Why not newspaper work?”
“But what could I do?”
“Get a trial as a reporter.”
Before Emily’s mind came a vision of a ball she had attended in
Washington less than two years before--the lofty entrance, the
fashionable guests incrowding from their carriages; at one side, a
dingy group, two seedy-looking men and a homely, dowdy woman, taking
notes of names and costumes. She shuddered.
Theresa noted the shudder, and laid her hand on Emily’s arm. “You must
drop that, my dear--you must, must, must.”
Emily coloured. “I will, will, will,” she said with a guilty laugh.
“But, Theresa, you understand, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I remember. But I’ve left all that behind--at least I’ve
tried to. You’ve got to be just like a man when he makes the start.
As Mr. Marlowe was saying the other night, it’s no worse than being a
bank messenger and presenting notes to men who can’t pay; or being a
lawyer’s clerk and handing people dreadful papers that they throw in
your face. No matter where you start there are hard knocks. And----”
“I know it, I expect it, and I’m not sorry that it is so. It’s part of
the price of learning to live. I’m not complaining.”
“I hope you’ll be able to say that a year from now. I confess I did,
and do, complain. I can’t get over my resentment at the injustice of
it. Why doesn’t everybody see that we’re all in the same boat and that
snubbing and sneering only make it harder all round?”
Emily had expected to find the Theresa of school days developed
along the lines that were promising. Instead, she found the Theresa
of school days changed chiefly by deterioration. She was undeniably
attractive--a handsome, magnetic, shrewd young woman full of animal
spirits. But her dress was just beyond the line of good taste, and on
inspection revealed tawdriness and lapses; her manners were a little
too pronounced in their freedom; her speech barely escaped license.
Her effort to show hostility to conventions was impudent rather than
courageous. Worst of all, she had lost that finish of refinement which
makes merits shine and dims even serious defects. She had cultivated a
shallow cynicism--of the concert hall and the “society” play. It took
all the brightness of her eyes, all the brilliance of her teeth, all
her physical charm to overcome the impression of this gloze of reckless
smartness.
In her room were many copies of a weekly journal of gossip and scandal,
filled with items about people whom it called “the Four Hundred” and
“the Mighty Few” and of whom it spoke with familiarity, yet with the
deference of pretended disdain. Emily noticed that Theresa and her
acquaintances in the boarding-house talked much of these persons, in
a way which made it clear that they did not know them and regarded the
fact as greatly to their own discredit.
The one subject which Theresa would not discuss was her shopping
business. Emily was eager to hear about it, and, as far as politeness
permitted, encouraged her to talk of it, but Theresa always sheered
off. Nor did she seem to be under the necessity of giving it close or
regular attention.
“It looks after itself,” she said, with an uneasy laugh. “Let’s talk of
your affairs. We’re going to dine Thursday night with Frank Demorest
and a man we think can help you--a man named Marlowe. He writes for the
_Democrat_. He goes everywhere getting news of politics and wars. I
see his name signed every once in a while. He’s clever, much cleverer
to talk with than he is as a writer. Usually writers are such stupid
talkers. Frank says they save all their good wares to sell.”
On Thursday at half-past seven the two men came. Demorest was tall and
thin, with a languid air which Emily knew at once was carefully studied
from the best models in fiction and in the class that poses. One could
see at a glance that he was spending his life in doing deliberately
useless things. His way of speaking to admiring Theresa was after
the pattern of well-bred insolence. Marlowe was not so tall, but his
personality seemed to her as vivid and sincere as Demorest’s seemed
colourless and false. He had the self-possession of one who is well
acquainted with the human race. His eyes were gray-green, keen, rather
small and too restless--Emily did not like them. He spoke swiftly yet
distinctly. Demorest seemed a man of the world, Marlowe a citizen of
the world.
They got into Demorest’s open automobile, Marlowe and Emily in the back
seat, and set out for Clairmont. For the first time in nearly two years
Emily was experiencing a sensation akin to happiness. The city looked
vast and splendid and friendly. Wherever her eyes turned there were
good-humoured faces--the faces of well-dressed, healthy women and men
who were out under that soft, glowing summer sky in a determined search
for pleasure. She saw that Marlowe was smiling as he looked at her.
“Why are you laughing at me?” she asked, as the automobile slowed down
in a press of cabs and carriages.
“Not _at_ you, but _with_ you,” he replied.
“But why?”
“Because I’m as glad to be here as you are. And you are very glad
indeed, and are showing it so delightfully.” He looked frank but polite
admiration of her sweet, delicate face--she liked his expression as
much as she had disliked the way in which Demorest had examined her
face and figure and dress.
She sighed. “But it won’t last long,” she said, pensively rather than
sadly. She was thinking of to-morrow and the days thereafter--the days
in which she would be facing a very different aspect of the city.
“But it will last--if you resolve that it shall,” he said. “Why make up
your mind to the worst? Why not the best? Just keep your eyes on the
present until it frowns. Then the future will be bright by contrast,
and you can look at it.”
“This city makes me feel painfully small and weak.” Emily hid her
earnestness in a light tone and smile. “And I’m not able to take myself
so very seriously.”
“You should be glad of that. It seems to me absurd for one to take
himself seriously. It interferes with one’s work. But one ought always
to take his work seriously, I think, and sacrifice everything to it. Do
you remember what Cæsar said to the pilot?”
“No--what was it?”
“The pilot said, ‘It’s too stormy to cross the Adriatic to-night. You
will be drowned.’ And Cæsar answered: ‘It is not important whether
I live or die. But it _is_ important that, if I’m alive to-morrow
morning, I shall be on the other shore. Let us start!’ I read that
story many years ago--almost as many as you’ve lived. It has stood me
in good stead several times.”
At the next slowing down, Marlowe went on:
“You’re certain to win. All that one needs to do is to keep calm
and not try to hurry destiny. He’s sure to come into his own.” He
hesitated, then added. “And I think your ‘own’ is going to be worth
while.”
They swung into the Riverside Drive--the sun was making the crest of
the wooded Palisades look as if a forest fire were raging there; the
Hudson, broad and smooth and still, was slowly darkening; the breeze
mingled the freshness of the water and the fragrance of the trees. And
Emily felt a burden, like an oppressively heavy garment, falling from
her.
“What are you thinking?” asked Marlowe.
“Of Stoughton--and this,” she replied.
“Was Stoughton very bad, as bad as those towns usually are to impatient
young persons who wish to live before they die?”
“Worse than you can imagine--a nightmare. It seems to me that
hereafter, whenever I feel low in my mind, I’ll say ‘Well, at least
this is not Stoughton,’ and be cheerful again.”
They were at Clairmont, and as Emily saw the inn and its broad porches
and the tables where women and men in parties and in couples were
enjoying themselves, as she drank in the lively, happy scene of the
summer and the city and the open air, she felt like one who is taking
his first outing after an illness that thrust him down to death’s door.
They went round the porch and out into the gravelled open, to a table
that had been reserved for them under the big tree at the edge of the
bluff.
There was enough light from the electric lamps of the inn and pavilions
to make the table clearly visible, but not enough to blot out the
river and the Palisades. It was not an especially good dinner and was
slowly served, so Frank complained. But Emily found everything perfect,
and astonished Theresa and delighted the men with her flow of high
spirits. Theresa drank more, and Emily less, than her share of the
champagne. As Emily had nothing in her mind which the frankness of wine
could unpleasantly reveal, the contrast between her and Theresa became
strongly, perhaps unjustly, marked with the progress of the “party,” as
Theresa called it; for Theresa, who affected and fairly well carried
off a man-to-man frankness of speech, began to make remarks at which
Demorest laughed loudly, Marlowe politely, and which Emily pretended
not to hear. Demorest drank far too much and presently showed it by
outdoing Theresa. Marlowe saw that Emily was annoyed, and insisted that
he could stay no longer. This forced the return home.
As they were entering the automobile, Demorest made a politely
insolent observation to Theresa on “her prim friend from New England,”
which Emily could not help overhearing. She flushed; Marlowe frowned
contemptuously at Demorest’s back.
“Don’t think about him,” said he to Emily, when they were under way.
“He’s too insignificant for such a triumph as spoiling your evening.”
Emily laughed gaily. “Oh, it is a compliment to be called prim by
some men,” she said, “though I’d not like to be thought prim by those
capable of judging.”
“Only low-minded or ignorant people are prim,” replied Marlowe.
“There’s one thing worse,” said Emily.
“And what is that?”
“Why, the mask off a mind that is usually masked by primness. I like
deception when it protects me from the sight of offensive things.”
At the boarding-house Marlowe got out. “Frank and I are going to
supper,” said Theresa to Emily. “You’re coming?”
“Thanks, no,” answered Emily. “I’m tired to-night.”
Marlowe accompanied her up the steps and asked her to wait until he had
returned from giving the key to Theresa. When he rejoined her, he said:
“If you’ll come to my office to-morrow at two, I think I can get you a
chance to show what you can or can’t do.”
Emily’s eyes shone and her voice was a little uncertain as she said,
after a silence:
“If you ever had to make a start and suddenly got help from some one,
as I’m getting it from you, you’ll know how I feel.”
“I’m really not doing you a favour. If you get on, I shall have done
the paper a service. If you don’t, I’ll simply have delayed you on your
way to the work that’s surely waiting for you somewhere.”
“I shall insist upon being grateful,” said Emily, as she gave him her
hand. She was pleased that he held it a little longer and a little
more tightly than was necessary.
“I don’t like his eyes,” she thought, “but I do like the way he can
look out of them. They must belie him.”