oil-lamp that sat on the mantelshelf above the stove, and which cast a
ghastly light upon a row of empty bottles--the sole burden of the once
spotless, but now sadly soiled, vestal virgins.
Henrietta was bending over the smoking skillet, with the lamp-light
falling across her pale face. As she boiled the coffee and fried the
eggs I studied her profile sketched against the blue, smoky background,
and tried in vain to grasp the secret of its fleeting, evanescent
beauty. For beautiful Henrietta was--beautiful with a beauty quite her
own and all the more potent because of its very indefinableness. I
watched her as one horribly fascinated,--that high, wide white forehead,
that weak chin, those soft, tremulous lips, on which a faint smile would
so often play, and those great, wide eyes of blue that now looked purple
in the lamp-light. And then, gradually, I saw, as I watched, an
expression I had never seen there before; the wavering suggestion of the
smile left the lips and they fell apart, loose and bloodless, with a
glimpse of the missing front tooth. It was an expression that lasted but
the fraction of a second, but it stamped her whole countenance with
something sinister.
Then Henrietta lifted the eggs, carried the coffee-pot across to the
table, which was none other than the board-capped barrel, and went back
for the lamp. All these things she insisted upon doing herself, just as
she had stubbornly refused to allow me to help with the cooking of the
supper.
Setting the lamp down upon the improvised table, she threw open one of
the shutters to let in a breath of fresh air, and as she did so the room
was filled with the roar and dust of the elevated train which passed so
close to our windows, and after it came a cold draft of air caused by
the suction of the cars. Henrietta closed the window and returned to the
table.
Then I answered her question: "Well, that depends upon what you mean by
gentleman-friend," I said.
"I mean just what I said," replied Henrietta, sliding an egg upon her
plate and passing the remaining one to me. "I mean a _special_
gentleman-friend."
"Well, no; I guess I haven't. I used to know lots of boys in the country
where I lived, but there isn't one of them I could call my special
gentleman-friend, and I don't know any men here." I uttered this speech
carefully, so as not to imply any criticism of Henrietta's use of the
expression "gentleman-friend," nor to call down upon my own head her
criticism for using any other than the box-factory vernacular in
discussing these delicate amatory affairs.
"Oh, go and tell that to your grandmother!" she retorted, with a sly
little laugh. "Don't none of the girls there have gentlemen-friends, or
is farmers so different that they never stand gentlemen-friends to
them?"
"Oh, dear me, yes!" I answered hastily, trying to avoid the unpleasant
_double entendre_, and choosing to accept it in its strictly explicit
phase. "Why, certainly, the girls get married there every day. There are
hardly any old maids in my part of the country. They get engaged almost
as soon as they are out of short dresses, and the first thing you know,
they are married and raising families." Then I added, "but have you got
a gentleman-friend yourself?"
"Yep," she answered, nodding and pouring out the coffee; "I have a very
particular gentleman-friend what's been keeping company with me for
nearly a year, off and on."
"Oh!" I cried, eager to turn the conversation toward Henrietta's
personal affairs instead of my own, which I felt she completely
misconstrued. "Do tell me about him; what is his name--and are you
engaged to him yet?"
"My! ain't you fresh, though?" she said; but there was cordiality in the
rebuff. "I met him at the mission where I teach Sundays," she went on.
"He's brother Mason, and he's the Sunday-school superintendent. He give
me all that perfume on the mantel," and she pointed a dripping knife
toward the row of empty bottles.
"Why, is he in the perfumery business?" I asked innocently, my eyes
ranging over the heterogeneous collection on the mantel. Henrietta took
the remark as exceedingly funny, for she immediately fell into a
paroxysm of tittering, choking over a mouthful of food before she could
attain gravity enough to answer.
"Lord! no; you do ask the funniest questions!"
Thus checked, I did not press for further information as to brother
Mason's vocation, but proceeded to satisfy my hunger, which was not
diminished by the unappetizing appearance of the food on the barrel.
It was a matter of great surprise to me to see how little Henrietta ate,
and I was likewise ashamed of my own voracious appetite. Henrietta
noticed this and frowned ominously.
"God! but you do eat!" she commented frankly, poising her knife in air.
"I'm hungry. I've worked hard to-day," I replied with dignity.
"Maybe you won't eat so much, though, after a while," she said
hopefully.
"Maybe not," I agreed. "But you, Henrietta--you are not eating
anything!"
"Me? Oh, I'm all right. I'm eating as much as I ever do. The works takes
away my hunger. If it didn't, I don't know how I'd get along. If I eat
as much as you, I'd be likely to starve to death. I couldn't make enough
to feed me. When I first begun to work in the factory I'd eat three or
four pieces of bread across the loaf, and potatoes and meat, and be
hungry for things besides; but after a while you get used to being
hungry for so long, you couldn't eat if you had it to eat."
"How long have you been working?" I ventured.
Henrietta put her cup on the table and shot a suspicious glance at me
before she answered:
"Oh, off and on, and for five or six years, ever since my uncle died. He
was my guardian--that's his house up there."
I looked in the direction of Henrietta's pointed finger to a cheap
chromolithograph that was tacked on the wall between the windows and
immediately over the barrel where we were eating. I recognized it at
once as a reproduction of a familiar scene showing a castle on the
Rhine. I had seen the same picture many times, once as a supplement with
a Sunday newspaper. That this stately pile of green and yellow
variegated stones should be the residence of Henrietta's uncle and
guardian seemed obviously but a bit of girlish fun, of a piece with her
earlier talk regarding her aristocratic ancestry; for by this time I had
construed that strange story into a hoax that was never meant to be
taken seriously.
But one glance now at Henrietta's face showed me my mistake. It was
plainly to be seen that she had come to believe every word of what she
had told me.
My eye had traveled to the row of garments on the pegs behind the door
and had rested with curiosity upon a "lassie" bonnet and cloak.
Henrietta did not wait for the question on my lips.
"Them's my adjutant's uniform," she said, with a touch of pride. "You
didn't know I used to be an adjutant in the Salvation Army, did you?"
I shook my head.
"Well, I was, all right. Adjutant Faith Manners, that's what I was," and
rising, she limped across the floor, and burrowing in the depths of the
trunk, returned in a moment with an envelop which she handed me with the
command to read its contents. The envelop, postmarked "Pittsburg, Pa.,"
was addressed to Adjutant Faith Manners.
"But how does it come you have two names?" I inquired.
"Well," the girl replied slowly, "I thought as how it sounded better for
a professing Christian to have some name like that, than Henrietta.
Henrietta is kind of fancy-sounding, specially when you was an adjutant
officer and was supposed to have give yourself to Jesus."
I read the letter; it was a curious epistle, written in a beautiful,
flowing hand, well worded, and complimenting Adjutant Manners upon her
"persistence in the good work for Jesus," and winding up with the offer
of a small post, at a salary to be determined later on, in the Pittsburg
barracks of the Salvation Army. The name of the writer, which for
obvious reasons it is best not to divulge, was that of an officer who, I
have since discovered, is well and favorably known in Pittsburg. The
whole thing was a bewildering paradox. There was no doubt of its being a
bona-fide letter, nor of Adjutant Faith Manners and my room-mate being
one and the same person. And yet, how explain the ludicrous
inconsistency of such an experience in the life of such a girl?
I had opened my mouth to ask some question to this end, when we started
as a heavy step resounded in the hallway outside. Then the latch
rattled, the door swung open, and a thick-set, burly, bearded man stood
upon the threshold. I screamed before I noticed that Henrietta regarded
the new-comer quite as a matter of course.
The man stood in the doorway, evidently surprised for the moment at
seeing me there; then, closing the door behind him, he advanced
awkwardly, tiptoeing across the floor, and sat down upon the edge of the
bed without so much as a word.
"Will you have a cup of coffee, brother Mason?" asked Henrietta,
shaking the pot to determine whether its contents would warrant the
invitation.
"I don't care if I do, sister Manners," returned brother Mason, removing
his hat as if it were an afterthought, and drawing forth a large red
handkerchief with which he mopped his forehead and thick red neck.
"This is my lady-friend, Rose Fortune," said Henrietta as she drained
the coffee-pot, and nodding first to the visitor, then to myself; "my
gentleman-friend, brother Mason."
Brother Mason had risen and tiptoed forward, his hands thrust into the
bulging pockets of his overcoat, whence he proceeded gravely to draw
forth and deposit upon the barrel-top a heterogeneous love-offering, as
follows: two oranges; a box of mustard; a small sack of nutmegs; a box
of ground pepper; a package of allspice; a box containing three dozen
bouillon capsules; a bottle of the exact size and label as the
innumerable empty vessels on the mantel; a package of tea done up in
fancy red-and-gold paper; and, last, a large paper sack of pulverized
coffee.
Henrietta now handed a cup to the donor of these gifts, which he
accepted meekly and carried on tiptoe back to his place on the edge of
the bed.
Brother Mason drank his coffee with a great deal of unnecessary noise,
while Henrietta gathered up the dishes, after again rebuffing me almost
rudely for presuming to offer my services. Thus there was nothing left
for me to do, apparently, but to sit on the soap-box and look at brother
Mason, who regarded me in rather sheepish fashion over the top of his
cup.
I judged him to be a good-natured man on the near side of fifty. His
close-cropped hair was an iron-gray, and his stubby beard and mustache a
fierce red, the ferocity of which was tempered by the mildness of
deep-set, small blue eyes. His general appearance would, I thought, have
been more in accord with the driver of a beer-truck than anything so
comparatively genteel as driving a grocer's wagon--his occupation, I
discovered, which explained the source of his offerings to Henrietta.
Despite the burliness of brother Mason, there was that about him which
rather encouraged confidence than aroused suspicion, although it was
difficult to reconcile him with the superintendence of a mission
Sunday-school. The latter incongruity had just popped into my mind when
he broke the silence by asking in a deep guttural, and with a vigorous
nod in my direction as he put down his empty cup:
"Ha! Cat'lic?"
"Oh, no," I answered, eager to break the embarrassing silence--"oh, no;
I'm a Protestant."
"Ha! But you be Irish, ben't you?"
I laughed. "No; American!"
"Ha! Father and mother Irish, mebbe?"
"No, they were American, too; but my great-great-grandfather
and-grandmother were Irish."
"Aye, that's it! I knowed you was Irish the minute I seen them red
cheeks, eh! sister Manners?" chuckled brother Mason in a rich brogue,
rubbing his hands and looking across at my room-mate, who had been
apparently oblivious to our conversation, as she washed and wiped the
dishes out of a tin basin which I recognized as that from which we had
washed our hands and faces after we got home from work. She now fixed
the visitor with her periwinkle eyes, and replied severely:
"I ain't got nothing to say against my lady-friend's looks, as you
certainly know, brother Mason."
Something in this answer--no doubt, a hint of smothered jealousy--made
brother Mason throw his hand to his mouth and duck his head as he darted
a sly look toward me. But I met the look with a serious face, and indeed
I felt serious enough without getting myself into any imbroglio with
this strange pair of lovers.
"You're Irish, I suppose, Mr. Mason?" I asked when he had recovered his
gravity after this mirth-provoking incident.
"Me? I'm from County Wicklow, but I ain't no Cat'lic Irish. I'm a
Methody. Cat'lic in the old country, Methody here. Got converted twenty
years ago at one of them Moody and Sankey meetings--you've heard tell of
Moody and Sankey, mebbe? Eh? Ha!"
These latter ejaculations the Catholic apostate repeated alternately and
with rhythmic precision as he proceeded to press tobacco into a clay
pipe with numerous deft movements of his large red thumb, regarding me
fixedly all the while.
"Yes, yes," I repeated many times, but not until he had lighted the pipe
and drawn a deep whiff of it did brother Mason choose to regard his
question as answered.
"Well, it was them that brought me to the mourners' bench, for fair. It
was Moody and Sankey that did the damage; and I've got to say this much
for them gentlemen, I've never seen the day I was sorry they did it. I'm
the supe of a mission Sunday-school now, meself; and I've done me dirty
best to push the gospel news along." Here he turned to Henrietta. "Be
your lady-friend coming over to-morrow afternoon, sister Manners?"
"I don't hinder her, nor nobody's, doing what they like!" answered
Henrietta, again with that air of severity, not to say iciness, in her
manner; and I shifted myself uncomfortably on the box as I met her
glance of patient scorn. She had now finished her dish-washing, and
seated herself upon the edge of the box, which brother Mason had already
appropriated with his large, clumsy bulk.
"Come now, you do care, ye know you care!" he said gruffly, as he threw
an arm carelessly across the girl's shoulder and patted her kindly; the
scowl immediately left her face and her head dropped upon his brawny,
red-shirted breast and snugly settled itself there, much to my
embarrassment. Then, between long-drawn whiffs of the rank-smelling
pipe, brother Mason descanted upon himself and his achievements,
religious, social, financial, and political, with no interruption save
frequent fits of choking on the part of poor Henrietta, whom even the
clouds of rank smoke could not drive from her position of vantage.
Brother Mason, so he informed me, was not only an Irishman and a
Methodist, but a member of Tammany Hall and a not unimportant personage
in the warehouses of the wholesale grocers for whom he drove the
delivery wagon, and from whom, I now haven't a doubt in the world, he
had stolen for the benefit of his lady-love many such an offering of
sweet perfume and savory spice as he had carried her that Easter Eve. I
found his talk eminently entertaining, with the charm that often goes
with the talk of an unlettered person who knows much of life and of men.
He was densely ignorant from the schoolmaster's point of view, and
openly confessed to an inability to write his name; but his ignorance
was refreshing, as the ignorance of man is always refreshing when
compared with the ignorance of woman; which fact, it has often appeared
to me, is the strongest argument in favor of the general superiority of
the male sex. For hidden somewhere within brother Mason's thick, bullet
head there seemed to be that primary germ of intelligence which was
apparently lacking in the fair head snuggled on his breast. It was
therefore with a mingled feeling of relief and regret that, after a
couple of hours of conversation, I saw him gently push Henrietta away
and announce his departure,--relief from the embarrassment which this
open love-making had caused me, and regret that I was once more to be
left alone with Henrietta in that dark, cavernous house. It was then
after midnight, and Henrietta suggested, as brother Mason drew on his
overcoat, that she accompany him as far as the corner saloon, where she
wanted to buy a quarter-pint of gin; and they went off together, leaving
me alone.
When their resounding footsteps had died away down the stairs, I picked
up the lamp and walked about, examining the shadowy corners of the room,
peering into the black abyss of the alcove where the unwholesome bed
stood, and not neglecting, like the true woman I was, to look underneath
and even to poke under it with the handle of a broom. I raised the
windows and threw open the batten-shutters, and through the darkness
tried to measure the distance to the street below. Not only that, but I
also speculated upon being able to climb out upon the railroad tracks,
should the worst come to the worst.
What worst? What did I fear? I don't know. I did not exactly know then,
and I scarcely know now. It may have been the promptings of what is
popularly termed "woman's intuition." No more do I know why I then and
there resolved that I should sleep with my shoes and stockings on; and
further, if possible, I determined to keep awake through the long night
before me.
I closed the windows and returned to a further inspection of the room,
stopping before the open trunk to examine some of the many books it
contained. One by one I opened and examined the volumes; a few of them
were romances of the Laura Jean Libbey school of fiction, but the
majority were hymnals inscribed severally on the fly-leaf with the names
"Faith Manners," "Hope Manners," "Patience Manners." Across the room the
bottles on the mantel shone vaguely in the shadow. I carried the lamp
over, and placing it in the little cleared-out space among them, began
to examine the bottles with idle curiosity. "Wild Crab Apple," "Jockey
Club," "Parma Violet," "Heliotrope," I read on the dainty labels,
lifting out the ground-glass corks and smelling the lingering fragrance
which yet attached to each empty vial. Of these there must have been two
dozen or more.
And there were other bottles, also empty, but not perfume-bottles. Of
these others there were more than a dozen. At first I did not quite
comprehend the purport of the printing on their labels, and it was not
until I had studied some half a dozen of them that the sickening horror
of their meaning dawned upon me fully. There was no mistaking them; the
language was too unblushingly plain. They were the infamous nostrums of
the malpractitioner; and in the light of this loathsome revelation there
was but one thing for me to do: I had to get out of that room, and
before Henrietta should return; and so, grabbing up my hat and jacket, I
rushed in a panic out of the awful place into the midnight blackness of
the empty street.
X
IN WHICH I FIND MYSELF A HOMELESS WANDERER IN THE NIGHT
In making my escape I had not counted upon my chances of meeting
Henrietta returning from the saloon. I had thought of nothing but to get
as far away as possible from the horror of it all. Dashing headlong down
the street, I was going I knew not where, when suddenly Henrietta's
vacuous "tee-hee" rang out in the darkness and echoed among the iron
girders of the elevated trestle; and, looking ahead of me, I saw her in
the light of the corner gas-jet coming toward me, a man on either side
of her, and all three evidently in the best of spirits. I sank back into
the darkness of a doorway that stood open, motionless until they had
passed and their voices had died away.
In the few minutes of waiting, I had collected my wits sufficiently to
determine upon a plan of action. I would find my way back to the
Jefferson Market, and stay there until daylight, and then go to the
Working Girls' Home recommended by the police matron.
But no sooner had I determined on this plan, which was really the only
thing I could have done, than I heard women's voices close at hand; and
before I could creep out of the doorway, two figures, groping up to it
through the darkness, dropped down upon the threshold. They muttered and
mumbled to each other for a little while, then their deep breathing told
me they had fallen into a doze.
Again and again I had crept out of my hiding-place, looked at the two
bowed, crouching figures, which I could see only in vague outline, and
then withdrew again into the comparative safety of the black hallway. I
hesitated to waken them, and I could not creep over them asleep--not
until I heard the low, guttural voice of a drunken man in the darkness
above, and the uncertain shuffle of feet feeling their way to the head
of the staircase. Then, my heart in my mouth, quite as much for the fear
of what was before me as for what was fumbling about in the darkness
behind, I came boldly out and stood over the huddled figures. Now I saw
that they were old women, very old, and both fast asleep, with their
arms locked about each other for protection against the cold. Both were
bare-headed and scantily dressed, and each wore a little wisp of gray
hair drawn into a button at the back of her head, just as Mrs. Pringle
had worn hers. I touched the nearest bundle on the shoulder. She awoke
with a start, and peered around at me with a pitiful whimper. I
explained that I only wanted to pass, and that she would oblige me very
much to allow me to do so.
"You want to git out, do ye, dearie? Well, you jist shall git out," came
the rejoinder in a high, quavering voice, and slowly the old woman
lifted herself, with many groans and "ouches" for her stiffened joints.
"Dearie! dearie! I thought ye wuz the cop," the old crone went on, as
she grasped my arm in a hand whose thinness I could feel through my thin
jacket. "A nice arm it is ye have got, and yit ye don't speak as if ye
be one of we uns, be you?" The withered hand held me as though in a
vise, while I could feel the gin-laden breath of the unfortunate
creature as she peered close into my face.
"Please--please let me go!" I whispered, for I could hear the stumbling
footsteps within near the bottom of the stairs. "Please let me go! I
must go to the drug-store to find a doctor; some one is sick."
"Sure, dearie, sure!" and the thin fingers relaxed their hold. "Do ye
know where the drug-store is? and mightn't I make bold enough to ask to
go with ye? It's late for a lady to be out, with the streets full of
drunks and lazy longshoremen; and I know you _be_ a lady."