“THE GOLDEN EGG”
By what she could see in the October moonlight of the open spaces,
Marcia Peters, pounding over the highway, surrounded by her belongings,
imagined that she was on the way to the second largest town of the
county, Bluffport, a dozen or so miles from Ashwater. She recognized the
village when she was driven into it. She saw that she was passing the
business part of the town and the better residences, and at last, as in
Ashwater, she found herself on the extreme outskirts.
The dray stopped before a small house. The drayman unlocked the door,
carried in, and with small ceremony, dumped her clothing and furnishings
on the floor. Then he climbed on his wagon and drove away without having
spoken a word.
Marcia closed the door behind him, and from force of habit, turned the
key. She had been riding through the night until her eyes were
accustomed to the darkness. She had no provision for light, but through
the uncurtained windows she could see enough to distinguish the mattress
of her bed. As she was desperately tired, she pulled it to a bare spot
upon the floor, hunted a pillow, and lying down in her clothing, covered
her shoulders with her coat, and mental strain culminated in the blessed
surcease of tears.
Marcia whimpered to the darkness: “What had I to do with it? What is
fair or just about treating me like this?”
And again: “Where in the world can Jason have gone? I didn’t think he’d
have the spunk. He might have killed him.”
And later: “After the wreck of my life, after all the lies he’s told
me—to be cast off among strangers like this—I might have known!”
Then a last sobbing breath: “I did know. It’s been coming for a long
time. This is only a poor excuse—I did know!”
She was awakened in the morning by a burning ray of sunlight falling on
her face. At first she was too dazed to realize where she was or how she
came to be there. Slowly she arose and went to a window. She saw that
she was on a pretty street of a village, the outskirts of which gave
promise of being more attractive than had been her corresponding
location in Ashwater. Turning slowly, she went through the small house.
There were only three rooms, but they were much more attractive than the
rooms in which she had been living. Mechanically she began picking up
the expensive furnishings of her private room that had been hurriedly
bundled together and dumped roughly anywhere there was space to drop
them. In working at this business a few minutes, she collected her
thoughts and remembered that she had been through tense excitement and
nerve strain. She was dreadfully hungry. Through no fault of her own
that she could recall, she had been picked up in one place and set down
in another as if she were a piece of furniture instead of a woman
endowed with some degree of intelligence. She had not been asked whether
she would go, or, if she must move, where she wanted to locate. She had
not been given time to exercise any care with the really beautiful
things which had furnished her personal room. She had only a small sum
in her purse. There was no one in Bluffport with whom she was
acquainted. For over fifteen years she had cared for Jason. She had
become accustomed to him. One of the very greatest fights of her
difficult life had been to keep herself from becoming fond of him. The
threat that he would be taken from her any day had been constant. Dimly
she had realized for a long time that this hour was coming; and now it
had arrived. For a mistake of her youth, for the giving of her heart
when only her body had been coveted, she had paid the price of menial
position, of isolation, of spiritual degradation. She realized that
speedily she must face the town asking work with which to keep up her
long-time pretense of being self-supporting.
Her stomach reminded her that she must have food, or very speedily,
torturing headache would ensue. Marcia sat down on the mattress, took
her head between her hands, and for the first time in eighteen years
thought about herself instead of Martin Moreland. Suddenly there came to
her the sickening realization that she was no longer young. Looking her
mental problem in the face, she admitted that she was thirty-six. As
youth was reckoned in her day, a woman was considered reasonably aged at
forty. No doubt this was Martin Moreland’s first step in letting her
know that her reign was over. In retrospect, what a sorry reign it had
been!—veiled suspicion, mental humiliation, isolating employment,
heart-hunger for freedom to lift up her head and walk abroad with pride.
She felt reasonably certain that the problem facing her now was not one
of further concealment, but the necessity of being equal to taking over
the entire care of herself and making provision for hopeless old age.
Under the urge of hunger, she arose, found her hat, straightened her
clothing as best she could, and hunted her mirror. Setting it up, she
studied herself, not the self that Jason had known for nearly sixteen
years, but the secret self which was her real self—Marcia Peters without
the disfiguration of unbecomingly dressed hair and concealing clothing.
Every fibre of womanhood in her being rebelled against a return to the
disguise in which she had faced Jason and Ashwater all her life with
Martin Moreland. In starting a new life, in strange environment, whether
as formerly or alone, why should she not appear before the people as she
was? Why should she not seek occupation less humiliating than that of
washing the dirty clothes of another village? Staring into the mirror
and thinking, Marcia began pulling out drawers from her dresser, and
when she emerged from the house presently and locked its door behind
her, she was not a figure that Jason would have recognized before his
night of illumination.
She followed the street to the heart of the village, and entering a
restaurant, secured her breakfast. Then she decided, under the spiritual
reinforcement that developed from nourishing food, that she would at
least step into a few of the stores in Bluffport and look around her.
Possibly she could summon courage to ask if any of them were in need of
help. There, too, was her needle. She knew herself to be expert with
that. With small practice in fitting, she could make dresses for other
women as beautifully as she made them for herself. Why not a room over
some of these down-town stores, a modest sign announcing herself as a
dressmaker? Some attractive, progressive occupation, the stimulus of
ever so small a degree of human association, some relation—no matter how
remote—to the lives of other people. Never before had she allowed a
cloud of doubt and protest to gather to a storm head. Now the
culmination came quickly in a tempest that shook her being. She knew
that she was facing men, walking straightly; she felt as if she were at
the mercy of a tornado, half-blinded, feeling her way before her with
protesting, outstretched hands. For the first time in her thwarted,
unnatural life she needed friends so badly, that she felt the despair
and the hunger of that need, and while she walked mechanically, as the
storm in her heart grew in intensity, she realized that even more than
she needed friends, she needed God. That need made her think of Rebecca,
scorching under summer suns, struggling through winter snows, on her
self-imposed task of urging her world to pass under an emblem of
purity—poor Rebecca, demented, isolated, searching, ever searching, for
what? Preaching—scourged by the whips of adversity into thrusting her
timid self before the gaze of her world, preaching purity—why? Who sent
her on those missions? Marcia said to herself: “At least, it is a mercy
that her brain is dulled. Maybe she does not suffer mentally.”
As she went slowly along the street, after a time she found herself
interestedly studying the windows she passed. Her feet stopped in front
of a small wooden building centrally located. In either window of it,
flanking the entrance door, there were examples of exceedingly
attractive fall millinery miserably displayed. Marcia gripped her purse
tighter.
“A veil. I’ll say I need a veil,” she told herself.
Then she opened the door and stepped inside. Her quick eyes searched the
length of the store on either hand. As she looked her fingers itched to
use a dust cloth, to pick up the really beautiful hats and display them
to advantage, to rearrange the ribbon counter so that clashing colours
would not set her teeth in protest.
She glanced around her, and seeing no one, she slowly walked to the back
of the store. Everywhere it was stamped with what Marcia in her soul
denominated “skimpiness.” Even the hats that had been conceived in
beauty, fell short of culmination because of cheap material, too frugal
use of trimming. Pausing near the door that opened into the back room,
Marcia looked ahead, and there she saw the form of a small woman,
sitting beside a table piled with a disorderly array of wire forms and
linings, ribbon and velvet, and glaring autumnal flowers. Her arms were
crossed upon the table, her head buried in them, her shoulders shaking
with sobs. For one long minute Marcia surveyed the bowed head; then she
slowly turned her back and started down the aisle.
“Hm-m-m-m,” she said softly. “Two of us. I wonder what’s the matter with
her?”
She made her way to the front door and opened it; then she closed it
with sufficient force to be heard the length of the building, and with
firm steps she went toward the back room again. Half the length of the
aisle, she leaned on a display case, drumming with her fingers. Without
turning her head, from the corner of her eye, she saw the woman in the
back room rise and dab frantically at her face with her handkerchief.
Presently, she came toward Marcia and asked in a voice she was making
visible effort to control: “Was there something?”
Marcia looked at her intently. “Drab” was the adjective that sprang to
her mind. Hair lacking the lustre of life, skin needing manipulation and
the concealments of pink powder, deep facial lines of anxiety, eyes red
with futile tears, a disappointed flat chest, rounded shoulders; a woman
bilious from improper food and lack of exercise. Marcia smiled
brilliantly. The smile was child of the thought that had just occurred
to her. Washing might be a disqualifying occupation socially, but the
bent back, the rise and fall over the board, the muscular wringing, the
stretch to the line in hanging out and taking in, the steaming open of
the pores of the face and neck, the exercise on foot, the swing of the
iron—washing had no social standing, but daily exercise the round of the
year at its exactions never bred a Nancy Bodkin. Marcia could have wrung
Nancy like a wet sheet and hung her in the fresh air and sunshine to her
great benefit. Suddenly, she was thankful for the steaming and exercise
of every muscle of her body that had made and kept her a creature of
fresh face and perfect health.
“Yes,” she said deliberately to Nancy, “there are a number of things. I
wanted to see if I could find a veil. I’m a stranger in town. I came
this morning. I intend staying here. I noticed what a good central
location you’ve got and I wondered whether you’d like to rent me half of
your space and let me do dressmaking—or, maybe, you’d like a partner in
the millinery business?”
The woman behind the counter stared at Marcia with widely opened eyes
while her lower lip drooped.
“You—you’re a milliner?” she asked.
“No,” said Marcia, “I’m not a milliner. I never made a hat in my life.
But I can make stylish dresses. I do know how to keep a room clean, how
to display goods in an attractive manner.”
“Do you know anything,” asked the woman, her hands gripping the inner
edge of the showcase, “about keeping even—bills, and money, and things
like that?”
For the first time, in she could not remember when, Marcia laughed
aloud. Laughter was an unaccustomed sound on her lips. When she heard
the tones of it, she was so shocked that she stopped abruptly as if she
had committed an indiscretion.
“Yes,” she said, “I do know enough about business to run a place like
this without the least difficulty. To tell the truth, I’ve had a lot of
schooling on how business should be done to be successful. What have you
been doing? Letting your customers take away your goods without paying
for them, and now the bills are due, and you’ve no money to meet them?”
The woman nodded.
“Hm-m-m,” said Marcia. “Well, I could go out and collect all that I
could pry out of people. I could clean up this place. Maybe I could
convince your banker that he’d be safe in letting you have what you’d
need to tide you over till we could get things started on a new and safe
basis. Would you like to have me come in with you and try to help you
into really prosperous business?”
Suddenly the little woman across the counter, clasping a pair of
needle-roughened, shaking hands against her defrauded chest, looked with
the beseeching eyes of a starving creature at the face of the woman
opposite her.
“Oh, would you? Oh, would you, please?” she begged.
Marcia was taken unaware. She did not know that there was a soft place
remaining in her heart capable of the response she felt herself making
to that artless appeal.
“I certainly would,” she answered. “I’d be mighty glad for the chance. I
don’t know a thing in the world about you. You don’t know a thing in the
world about me. Shall we agree to take each other on trust, to ask no
questions, but start from now together and see what we can make out of
life?”
“I’d be tickled to death!” said the little woman, recklessly toppling
preconceptions and precautions of a lifetime.
“Is there room for me here?” inquired Marcia.
“Come and see what you think. And my name is Miss Nancy Bodkin,” said
the milliner, leading the way to the back room.
“Very well, Miss Nancy,” said Marcia. “My name is Miss Marcia Peters.
Let’s explore your living arrangements.”
Then she followed into the work room and found that there opened from it
a bedroom sufficiently large for two people, and back of it was the
combined dining room and kitchen in which Miss Nancy Bodkin had been
existing for many years. Looking about her, the fingers of the capable
Marcia tingled for order, cleanliness, fresh wall paper and paint, but
she sensibly reasoned that these things could come later.
“You know the ropes here,” she said. “Find me a drayman. I’ll go and
bring my things and we’ll begin business right away.”
That was how it happened that an hour later Marcia was back in the house
in the suburbs with a stout drayman standing at her elbow. There was no
possible way in which the drayman could know that Marcia was saying in
her soul as she handed him an article, “Soapsuds,” or that she was
saying as she discarded a certain piece of furniture or attractive
clothing, “Scarlet.” All he realized was that the woman was making a
division of the goods before them, and that the greater number and the
better part of the things he saw, she was leaving.
When Marcia had satisfied herself, she found a sheet of paper and a
pencil and she wrote: “I have bowed my head and passed under the White
Flag. I have taken nothing that was purchased with your money, since you
are far poorer than I.” There was no beginning to the note and no
signature.
When the drayman had carried the last load from the house, Marcia locked
the doors on the inside. She propped the note in a conspicuous place on
one of the pieces of furniture she was leaving and laid the key beside
it. Then going to the kitchen, she raised a window and climbing from it,
closed it behind her and followed down the street to the millinery shop.
There was such a fluttering in the breast of Nancy Bodkin that she could
scarcely breathe. She was scared to death over what she had done. Why
should a woman as attractive as this one, and having as fine clothing,
want to live with her and to share her business? She felt that she had
been wildly impractical. She should have consulted her minister and her
banker and several of her best customers. She should have learned who
the woman was and where she came from. And just when she was in a panic
of uncertainty and nervous doubts, Marcia returned and lifted the hat
from her head. She ran her fingers through her red-gold hair and drew a
deep breath.
“Now, then, in about two shakes we’ll get right down to the business of
straightening you out,” she said.
Nancy, a lean doubter, the victim of frustrated nature and business
unsuccess, heard in golden wonder. Such assurance! So heartening! After
all, whose business was this save her own? Why should she start any one
to gabbling? Why not dignify herself and her affairs by reticence?
Possibly the good God had seen fit to answer in this way the
salt-tinctured appeal she had been clammily venturing in frank disbelief
that He really would hear or answer when Marcia appeared. What if He
were greater than she had thought? What if He had heard and cared? Such
strength! Such energy! So capable! Some one to share the long, lonely
hours—— Ask questions that might prove disastrous and spoil things when
they were none of her real business? She guessed not! What was that
about taking the gifts the gods provided? Who cared a whoop concerning
the past of the gosling that had developed into the goose that laid the
historical egg? It was the egg that really mattered—the egg!
Miss Nancy vibrated; she positively fluttered. Thinking of eggs made her
want to cackle, but since it was the golden egg of a goose she
craved—how did a goose voice rejoicings on such a momentous achievement?
If she quacked, Miss Nancy was quite willing to quack. What she lacked
was knowledge, not incentive.
All the time the drayman was carrying in furniture and bundles. Marcia
opened a dresser drawer and took therefrom a dress, an apron of clean
calico, and a pair of easy shoes. Standing in the back room, she
stripped off the clothing she was wearing and put these on instead.
Nancy was struggling to keep from asking Marcia where she came from, why
she had brought furniture before she knew for certain that she would
find work, but the lure of the Egg was upon her. She looked at the arms
and shoulders and the curves of Marcia’s bust with eyes of frank envy.
“My goodness, you are the prettiest thing!” she said. “And your clothes
are so tasty.”
Marcia smiled quietly, thinking of certain garments she had discarded.
“Now, the first thing to do is to arrange this bedroom and kitchen the
best we can to accommodate my things,” she said, “then we’ll begin at
the front and go straight through. When I’ve gotten everything clean,
and in order, then you can tell me about who owes you and where they
live and I’ll see what I can collect. And then, we’ll try to arrange the
show windows more attractively, and since I can’t make hats, maybe I’d
better try them on and sell them, while you go on making them. You
really do make beautiful hats, but be as speedy as you can, because I
feel it in my bones that I am going to sell lots of them.”
Then, with strong arms and assumed assurance, coupled with inborn
abhorrence of dirt and disorder, Marcia Peters advanced to the rescue of
the Bodkin Millinery.
The first visible sign of any change in that establishment came to the
town of Bluffport when a good-looking woman emerged from the door with a
bucket of foaming suds, a rag in her hand and a towel over her shoulder,
and by standing on an empty packing case for necessary height, she
polished the glass fronts and the glass of the door to iridescent sheen.
After that it was evident from the outside that the activities of the
newcomer included the vigorous use of a rag-covered broom on the ceiling
and the side walls, the inner glass of the door and windows following.
And then the shelves and the cases came in for their share of cleaning.
The next day the front windows were filled with an appealing array of
fall and winter hats judiciously and advantageously displayed. Between
the stands that held the hats there wound lengths of ribbon of alluring
colour and texture, while here and there were masses of colour from
roses of velvet, the glitter of beads and bright leaves.
Straight back through the building went Marcia, every hour growing more
interested, every hour given to intense thought as to what could be
done, how it could best be done, and what the utmost financial return
that could be extracted from it might be. One hard day’s work consisted
in emptying the bedroom, thoroughly cleaning it and rearranging it with
such of Marcia’s possessions as she had purchased herself. A small table
that held a lamp was installed in the centre of the room, comfortable
chairs placed on either side of it. The beds were attractively made and
covered. Then the kitchen received attention.
The next Bluffport saw of the new venture was Marcia again mounted on
her packing case with a bucket of white paint and a brush, energetically
applying it to the window casings and the door. Pleased with results,
Marcia recklessly painted as high as she could reach and then realized
that the remainder of the false front, which reached two-story height
with no backing in the dubious assumption that the building appealed to
the eye of the beholder as what it was not, was out of her province. She
had funds to hire a painter to complete the job, so she used them,
although Nancy protested that she would pay half.
By that time, the change in appearance of the Bodkin Millinery was so
great that parties interested in fall millinery and innovations, were
beginning to come in. In the most attractive dress she possessed
suitable for such use, with her really pretty hair drawn back loosely
and coiled becomingly on her head, Marcia proved herself equal to the
tongue of each newcomer. She had the advantage of not being taken
unawares. She knew how the wolves of society harried the sheep of
adventure; she had no intention of becoming their prey. Who she was,
where she had come from, why she was there, she evaded, as slickly as
the dews of night roll from the cabbage leaf of dawn. The qualities of
satin and velvet, the colouring of ribbons and flowers, she found
engrossing subjects. She had a way of picking up a wreath of artificial
flowers and twisting the leaves into the most attractive shapes. Before
she offered any hat for sale, she set it upon her own head and walked up
and down behind the counter, turning and twisting to show the customer
how it looked upon the head of a woman. When the customer had tried it
upon her own head, if it did not fit or was not becoming, Marcia said so
frankly. In these cases she ended by telling the purchaser that the
shape of her head and her face were so individual that the only thing to
do was to build a hat to suit her. She was capable of picking up a piece
of buckram and with the shears deftly cutting therefrom a pattern for a
hat, that with a little twist here and there, and trimming, would evolve
into a shape that comfortably fitted and greatly enhanced the facial
lines for which it was intended. Often she suggested a change in hair
dressing, at times made a friend for life by deftly making the
improvement herself.
It took Marcia six weeks to make Bodkin’s Millinery the most attractive
hat store in the flourishing town of Bluffport. With the first money
that the firm could spare, the entire front of the building got a second
coat of paint and the interior both paint and paper. The one thing that
surprised Nancy Bodkin and caused the townspeople a minute of wonder,
was the fact that when the freshly painted sign went up, it was an exact
duplicate of the old one. Said Nancy: “Now that sign must have your name
on it, too, and from the start we must share equally in the profits.
It’s a sure thing that all the work you are doing and the wonderful way
you can sell things, is worth as much to me as the use of the building
is to you.”
But Marcia said authoritatively that she thought the best thing to do
was merely to go on using the old sign, with which people were familiar.
She had noticed that human nature was so perverse and contrary that it
did not take kindly to changes. She thought the sign had much better be
left merely “Bodkin Millinery.”
Marcia had her surprise, equally as great, from an entirely different
source. It had two ramifications. For days, at each opening of the door,
her eyes had turned toward it, while fear gripped her heart, but as time
went on and she neither saw nor heard from Martin Moreland, she
concluded that she had been right in her surmise. He was as sick of his
part of their bad bargain as she had become of hers; he was probably as
glad to give freedom to her as she had been to accept it.
The other thing which amazed Marcia unspeakably was the fact that she
was deriving intense enjoyment from the life she was living. There had
been no sufficient reason why she should not go occasionally to the
church services that Nancy attended. It seemed ungracious to refuse. It
was good business to go. Adroitly Nancy adduced reasons as to why it
would be better economy to run into a mite society or a church supper
for a meal than to take of their time to prepare their own food, while
they were benefiting the church and charity organizations as well. On
these occasions she made a point of introducing Marcia to every man and
woman with whom she was acquainted—and her years of business in the
village had made her acquainted with every soul who homed there and
hundreds from the country as well. Presently, Marcia found herself
stopping for a minute at the bank to say a word about the weather or
political conditions; occasionally business men dropped in to solicit a
subscription to some enterprise the town had undertaken. In a short
time, Marcia was feeling thoroughly at home. She was really enjoying the
life she was living. She was interested in the people she was meeting;
she was truly concerned about what they were doing. In her heart she
knew that she was delighted to return to church as she had gone in her
girlhood. One point she made definite in her mind and kept scrupulously.
She never opened her lips to ask a question or to take the slightest
interest in anything that might have been related to the life of Nancy
Bodkin previous to their arrangement of their partnership. Naturally,
she set the same seal upon Nancy’s lips that she wore upon her own.
Nancy, frail in body and in parts of her brain, was surprisingly strong
in others. In the back of her head she knew that when a woman of
Marcia’s appearance and ability walked into such a shop as she had been
keeping, and regenerated it and straightened the business into a hopeful
concern in a few weeks’ time, she was not an ordinary woman; she had
reasons of her own for being where she was and doing what she did. But
the results were so gratifying to Nancy Bodkin that she shut her lips
tight and drove her capable needle through flower stems, folded velvet,
and buckram with precision and force. She said to her heart: “I don’t
care where she came from. I don’t care who she is. I don’t care what any
one thinks about her. She’s awful pretty. She’s smart as a whip. She’s
clean as a ribbon, and what’s it of my business, or any one else’s
except her own, as to why she’s here? I am good and thankful to have
her, and there had better not any one poke around and hurt her feelings
or they’ll get a piece of my mind. The present and the Golden Egg are
good enough for me.”
That night Marcia capped the climax that she had reached in Nancy
Bodkin’s heart by a masterly stroke. In the privacy of their mutual
room, after the store was closed for the day, she washed Nancy’s hair,
dried and brushed it to silkiness. The following morning she curled it
and laid it in becoming waves and braids upon her well-shaped head. She
applied some of the powder that she used upon her own nose to the nose
of Nancy Bodkin, and performed a sleight-of-hand miracle upon her lips
and cheeks. When Nancy looked into her mirror, she did not know herself.
She did not ever want to know herself again as she had been. She was so
perfectly delighted with what she saw within her grasp by a few months
of work, that she had no words in which to express her feeling. The next
thing she knew, Marcia came into the store with a piece of goods that
she cut up, and in spare time, fashioned into a most attractive dress
for Nancy.
That did settle the matter. Marcia might talk if she wanted to talk; she
might keep her mouth shut if she so desired. It was patent that she was
perfectly capable, honest, and attractive in appearance. Very shortly
Nancy Bodkin worshipped her as she never had worshipped any human being
in all her life. These feelings broadened and deepened because she
realized, whenever she walked abroad attractively clothed and with all
of her best points pronouncedly intensified, that people showed her a
deference and a kindliness that she never before had experienced. In a
bewildered way, Nancy slowly figured out the situation. If she had spent
a small share of the time on herself that she had been accustomed to
spending on hats for her townspeople, a larger share of their respect
would have been bestowed upon her. It was a new viewpoint for Nancy. She
had been thinking that she might earn the highest esteem by spending
herself upon her profession to the exclusion of everything else, and now
she was forced to learn, by overwhelming evidence, that the degree of
respect she received from the village was going to depend very largely
upon the height of the degree to which she respected herself.