"What a wilderness was this Seigniory of Lamoral!
and yet—I liked it." Frontispiece. [See Page 92].
A CRY IN
THE WILDERNESS
BY
MARY E. WALLER
Author of "The Wood-carver of 'Lympus," "Flamsted
Quarries," "A Year Out of Life," etc.
WITH FRONTISPIECE IN COLOR BY
ARTHUR I. KELLER
TORONTO
MCCLELLAND & GOODCHILD
LIMITED
Copyright, 1912,
BY MARY E. WALLER.
All rights reserved
Published, October, 1912
THE COLONIAL PRESS
C. H. SIMONDS & CO., BOSTON, U. S. A.
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE
BOOK TWO
BOOK THREE
BOOK ONE
THE JUGGERNAUT
A Cry in the Wilderness
I
"You Juggernaut!"
That's exactly what I said, and said aloud too.
I was leaning from the window in my attic room in the old district of New York known as "Chelsea"; both hands were stemmed on the ledge.
"You Juggernaut of a city!" I said again, and found considerable satisfaction in repeating that word. I leaned out still farther into the sickening September heat and defiantly shook my fist, as it were into the face of the monster commercial metropolis of the New World.
I felt the blood rush into my cheeks—thin and white enough, so my glass told me. Then I straightened myself, drew back and into the room. The quick sharp clang of the ambulance gong, the clatter of running hoofs sounded below me in the street.
"And they keep going under—so," I said beneath my breath; and added, but between my teeth:
"But I won't—I won't!"
Turning from the window, I took my seat at the table on which was a pile of newspapers I kept for reference, and searched through them until I found an advertisement I remembered to have seen a week before. I had marked it with a blue pencil. I cut it out. Then I put on my hat and went down into the city that lay swooning in the intense, sultry heat of mid-September.
The sun, dimmed and blood red in vapor, was setting behind the Jersey shore. The heated air quivered above the housetops. Wherever there was a stretch of asphalt pavement, innumerable hoof-dents witnessed to the power of the sun's rays. The shrivelled foliage in the parks was gray with dust.
I knew well enough that on the upper avenues for blocks and blocks the houses were tightly boarded as if hermetically sealed to light and air; but I was going southward, and below and seaward every door and window yawned wide. To the rivers, to the Battery, to the Bridge, the piers, and the parks, the sluggish, vitiated life of the city's tenement districts was crawling listless. The tide was out; and I knew that beneath the piers—who should know better than I who for six years had taken half of my recreation on them?—the fetid air lay heavy on the scum gathered about the slime-covered piles.
The advertisement was a Canadian "want", and in reading it an overpowering longing came upon me to see something of the spaciousness of that other country, to breathe its air that blows over the northern snow-fields. I had acted on an impulse in deciding to answer it, but that impulse was only the precipitation of long-unuttered and unfilled desires. I was realizing this as I made my way eastward into one of the former Trinity tenement districts.
I found the flag-paved court upon which the shadows were already falling. It was not an easily discoverable spot, and I was a little in doubt as to entering and inquiring further; I didn't like its look. I took out the advertisement; yes, this was the place: "No. 8 V—— Court."
"Don't back down now," I said to myself by way of encouragement and, entering, rang the bell of an old-fashioned house with low stoop and faded green blinds close shut in sharp contrast to the gaping ones adjoining. The openly neglected aspect of its neighbors was wanting, as was, in fact, any indication of its character. Ordinarily I would have shunned such a locality.
The door was opened by a woman apparently fifty. Her strong deeply-lined face I trusted at once.
"What do you want?" The voice was business-like, neither repellent nor inviting.
"I 've come in answer to this," I said, holding out the clipping. The woman took it.
"You come in a minute, till I get my glasses."
She led the way through a long, unlighted hall into a back room where the windows were open.
"You set right down there," she said, pushing me gently into a rocking-chair and pressing a palm-leaf fan into my hand, "for you look 'bout ready to drop."
She spoke the truth; I was. The sickening breathlessness of the air, nine hours of indoor work, and little eaten all day for lack of appetite, suddenly took what strength I had when I started out.
As the woman stood by the window reading the slip in the fading light, my eyes never left her face. It seemed to me—and strangely, too, for I have always felt my independence of others' personal help—that my life itself was about to depend on her answer.
"Yes, this is the place to apply; but now the first thing I want to know is how you come to think you 'd fit this place? You don't look strong."
"Oh, yes, I am;" I spoke hurriedly, as if a heavy pressure that was gradually making itself felt on my chest were forcing out the words; "but I haven't been out of the hospital very long—"
"What hospital?"
"St. Luke's."
"What was the matter with you?"
"Typhoid pneumonia with pleurisy."
"How long was you there?"
"Ten weeks, to the first of July; I've been at work since—but I want to get away from here where I can breathe; if I don't I shall die."
There was a queer flutter in my voice. I could hear it. The woman noticed it.
"Ain't you well?"
"Oh, yes, I am, and want work—but away from here."
There must have been some passionate energy left in my voice at least, for the woman lifted her thick eyebrows over the rim of her spectacles.
"H'm—let's talk things over." She drew up a chair in front of me. "I won't light up yet, it's so hot. I guess we 'll get a tempest 'fore long."
She sat down, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forward to look more closely at my face. I seemed to see her through a fog, and passed my hand across my eyes to wipe it away.
"There 's no use beating 'round the bush when it comes to business," she said bluntly but kindly; "I 've got to ask you some pretty plain questions; the parties in this case are awful particular."
"Yes." I answered with effort. The fog was still before my eyes.
"You see what it says." She began to read the advertisement slowly: "'Wanted: A young girl of good parentage, strong, and country raised, for companion and assistant to an elderly Scotchwoman on a farm in Canada, Province of Quebec. Must have had a common school education. Apply at No. 8 V—— Court, New York City.' You say you 've been in St. Luke's?"
"Yes."
"Did you know the one they call Doctor Rugvie there? He 's the great surgeon."
"No, I don't know him; but I 've heard so much of him. He was pointed out to me once when I was getting better."
"Well, by good rights you ought to be applying for this place to him."
"To him?" I asked in surprise. I could n't make this fact rhyme in connection with this woman and Canada.
"Yes, to him; I'm only a go-between he trusts. He 's in Europe now and is n't coming home till late this year, so he left this with me," she indicated the advertisement, "and told me not to put it in till a week ago. I ain't had many applications. Folks in this city don't take to going off to a farm in Canada, and those I 've had would n't have suited. But, anyway, Doctor Rugvie is reference for this place that's advertised, and I guess he 's good enough for anybody. I thought I 'd tell you this to relieve your mind. 'T ain't every girl would come down here to this hole looking for a place.— Where was you born?"
"Here in New York, but I have lived most of my life in the country, northern New England, just this side of the Canada line. I 've been here seven years, five in the Public Library; that's my reference."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-six next December—the third."
"I would n't have thought it. Mother living?"
"No; she died when I was born."
"Any father?"
"I—I don't know whether my father is living or not."
I began to wish I had n't come here to be questioned like this; yet I knew the woman was asking only what was necessary in the circumstances. I feared my answers would seal my fate as an applicant.
"What was your father's name?"
"I don't know." Again I caught the sound of that strange flutter in my voice. "I never knew my father."
"Humph! Then your mother wasn't married, I take it."
The statement would have sounded heartless to me except that the woman's voice was wholly businesslike, just as if she had asked that question a hundred times already of other girls.
"Oh, yes—yes, she was."
"Before you was born?"
"Yes."
"What was her husband's name then?"
"Jackson."
"Christian name?"
"George."
"Jackson—Jackson—George Jackson." The woman repeated the name, dwelling upon it as if some memory were stirred in the repetition. "And you say you don't know who your father was?"
"No—". I could n't help it—that word broke in a half hysterical sob. I kept saying to myself: "Oh, why did I come—why did I come?"
"Now, look here, my dear," and it seemed as if a flood of tenderness drowned all those business tones in her voice, "you stop right where you are. There ain't no use my putting you into torment this way, place or no place—Doctor Rugvie wouldn't like it; 't ain't human. If you can tell me all you know, and want to, just you take your own time,"—she laid a hand on my shoulder,—"and if you don't, just set here a while till the tempest that's coming up is over, and I 'll see you safe home afterwards. You ain't fit to be out alone if you are twenty-six. You don't look a day over twenty. There 's nothing to you."
She leaned nearer, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her palms. I tried to see her face, but the fog before my eyes was growing thicker, the room closer; her voice sounded far away.
"See here—will it make it any easier if I tell you I 've got a girl consider'ble older than you as has never known her father's name either? And that there ain't no girl in New York as has a lovinger mother, nor a woman as has a lovinger daughter for all that?"
I could not answer.
A flash of red lightning filled the darkening room. It was followed by a crash of thunder, a rush of wind and a downpour as from a cloud-burst. I saw the woman rise and shut both windows; then for me there was a blank for two or three minutes.
She told me afterwards that when she turned from the window, where she stood watching the rain falling in sheets, she saw me lying prone beside her chair. I know that I heard her talking, but I could not speak to tell her I could.
"My gracious!" she ejaculated as she bent over me, "if this don't beat all! Jane," she called, but it sounded far away, "come here quick. Here, help me lift this girl on to the cot. Bring me that camphor bottle from the shelf; I 'll loosen her clothes.—Rub her hands.—She fell without my hearing her, there was such an awful crash.—Light the lamp too...
"There now, she's beginning to come to; guess 't was nothing but the heat after all, or mebbe she 's faint to her stomach; you never can tell when this kind 's had any food. Just run down and make a cup of cocoa, but light the lamp first—I want to see what she 's like."
I heard all this as through a thick blanket wrapped about my head, but I could n't open my eyes or speak. The woman's voice came at first from a great distance; gradually it grew louder, clearer.
"Now we 'll see," she said.
She must have let the lamplight fall full on my face, for through my closed and weighted lids I saw red and yellow. I felt her bend over me; her breath was on my cheek. Still I could not speak.
"She 's the living image," I heard her say quite distinctly; "I guess I 've had one turn I shan't get over in a hurry."
I found myself wondering what she meant and trying to lift my eyelids. She took my hand; I knew she must be looking at the nails.
"She 's coming round all right—the blood 's turning in her nails." She took both my hands to rub them.
I opened my eyes then, and heard her say: "Eyes different."
Then she lifted my head on her arm and fed me the cocoa spoonful by spoonful.
"Thank you, I 'm better now," I said; my voice sounded natural to myself, and I made an effort to sit up. "I 'm so sorry I 've made you all this trouble—"
"Don't talk about trouble, child; you lay back against those pillows and rest you. I 'll be back in a little while." She left the room.
II
When she returned, shortly after, I had regained my strength. She found me with my hat on and sitting in the rocking-chair. The woman drew up her own, and began in a matter-of-fact voice:
"Now we 'll proceed to business. I 've been thinking like chain lightning ever since that clap of thunder, and I can tell you the storm 's cleared up more 'n the air. I ain't the kind to dodge round much when there 's business on hand. Straight to the point is the best every time; so I may as well tell you that this place,"—she held out the advertisement,—"is made for you and you for the place, even if you ain't quite so strong as you might be."
I felt the tension in my face lessen. I was about to speak, but the woman put out her hand, saying:
"Now, don't say a word—not yet; let me do the talking; you can have your say afterwards, and I 'll be only too glad to hear it. But it's laid on me like the Lord's hand itself to tell you what I 'm going to. It 'll take long in the telling, but if you go out to this place, you ought to know something why there is such a place to go to, and to explain that, I 've got to begin to tell you what I 'm going to. You 're different from the others, and it's your due to know. I should judge life had n't been all roses for you so far, and if you should have a few later on, there 'll be plenty of thorns—there always is. So just you stand what I 'm going to tell you. This was n't in the bargain when I told Doctor Rugvie I 'd see all the applicants and try to get the right one,—but I can make it all right with him. It's a longer story than I wish 't was, but I 've got to begin at the beginning.
"And begin with myself, too, for I was country raised. Father and mother both died when I was young, and I brought myself up, you might say. I come down here when I was nineteen years old, and it wasn't more 'n a year 'fore I found myself numbered with the outcasts on this earth—all my own fault too. I 've always shouldered the blame, for a woman as has common sense knows better, say what you 've a mind to; but the knowledge of that only makes green apples sourer, I can tell you.
"I mind the night in December, thirty years ago, when I found myself in the street, too proud to beg, too good to steal. There was n't nothing left—nothing but the river; there 's always enough of that and to spare. So I took a bee line for one of the piers, and crouched down by a mooring-post. I 'd made up my mind to end it all; it did n't cost me much neither. I only remember growing dizzy looking down at the foam whirling and heaving under me, and kinder letting go a rope I 'd somehow got hold of...
"The next thing I knew I was hearing a woman say:
"'You leave her to me; she'll be as quiet as a lamb now.' She put her arms around me. 'You poor child,' she said, 'you come along with me.' And I went.
"Well, that woman mothered me. She took in washing and ironing in two rooms on Tenth Avenue. She never left me night or day for a week running till my baby come. And all she 'd say to me, when I got sort of wild and out of my head, was:
"'You ain't going to be the grave of your child, be you?' And that always brought me to myself. I was so afraid of murdering the child that was coming. That's what she kept saying:
"'You ain't going to be so mean as not to give that innercent baby a chance to live! Just you wait till it comes and you 'll see what life 's for. 'T ain't so bad as you think, and some folks make out; and that child has a right to this world. You give it the right, and then die if you think it's best.' So she kept at me till my baby come, and then—why, I got just fierce to live for its sweet little sake.
"'Bout six months after that I got religion—never mind how I got it; I got it, that's the point, and I 've held on to it ever since. And when I 'd got it, the first thing I did was to take my baby in my arms and go down to that pier, clear out to the mooring-post, and kneel right down there in the dark and vow a vow to the living God that I 'd give my life to saving of them of His poor children who 'd missed their footing, and trying to help 'em on to their feet again.
"And I 've kept it; brought my girl right up to it too. She 's been my mainstay through it all these last ten years. I took in washing and ironing in the basement of this very house,—my saving angel helped me to work,—and when it was done, late at night between eleven and twelve, I 'd go down to the rivers, sometimes one, sometimes t' other, and watch and wait, ready to do what come in my way.
"At first the police got on to my track thinking something was wrong; but it took 'bout two words to set 'em right, as it did every other man that come near me; and soon I went and come and no questions asked.
"One night I 'd been down to one of the North River piers. It was in December, and a howling northeaster had set in just before sundown. It was sleeting and snowing and blowing a little harder than even I could stand. I had just crossed the street from the pier and was thanking God, as I covered my head closer with my shawl, that, so far as I knew, no one of His children was tired of living, when something—I did n't see what for I was bending over against the wind—went by me with a rush, and I thought I heard a groan. I turned as quick as a flash, and see something dark running, swaying, stumbling across the street, headed for the pier. That was enough for me.
"I caught up my skirt and give chase. How the woman, for it was one, could get over the ground so fast was a mystery, except that she was running with the wind. She was on to the pier in no time. I cried 'Stop!' and 'Watch!' I don't think she heard me. Once she nearly fell, and I thought I had her I was so close to her; but she was up and off again before I could lay hand on her. Then I shouted; and the Lord must have lent me Gabriel's trump, for the woman turned once, and when she see me she threw out her hands and fairly flew.
"The Sound steamer had n't gone out, the night was so thick and bad, and the cabin lights alongside shone out bright enough for me to mark her as she dodged this way and that trying to get to the end of the pier.
"She knew I was after her, and I was n't going to give up. But when I see the make-fast, and all around it the yeasting white on water as black as ink, and she standing there with her arms up ready to jump, my knees knocked together. Somehow I managed to get hold of her dress—but she did n't move; and all of a sudden, before I could get my arms around her, she dropped in a heap, groaning: 'My child—my child—'
"I 've always thought 't was then her heart broke.
"A deck-hand on the steamer heard me screech, and together we got her on the floor of the lower deck. We did what we could for her, and when she 'd come to, they got me a hack and I took her home, laid her on my bed, and sent the hackman for Doctor Rugvie. He 's been my right-hand man all these years. He stayed with her till daylight. He told me she 'd never come through alive; the heart action was all wrong.
"After he 'd gone, she spoke for the first time and asked for some paper and a pencil. I propped her up on the pillows, and all that day between her pains she was writing, writing and tearing up. Towards night she grew worse. I asked her name then, and if she had any friends. She looked at me with a look that made my heart sink; but she give me no answer. About six, she handed me a slip of paper—'A telegram,' she said, and asked me if I would send it right off. I could n't leave her, but when the Doctor come about eight, I slipped out and sent it. The name on it was the one you say was your mother's husband's and the message said:
"'I am dying and alone among strangers. Will you come to me for the sake of my child,' and she give me the address.
"Come here, my dear," said the woman suddenly to me. I was staring at her, not knowing whether I drew breath or not; "come here to me."
I rose mechanically. The woman drew me down upon her knee and put her two strong arms about me. I knew I was in the presence of revelation.
"At midnight her child, a girl, was born—the third of December just twenty-six years ago. Doctor Rugvie fought for her life, but he could n't save her. At one she died—of a broken heart and no mistake, so the Doctor said. She refused to give him her name and he left her in peace—that's his way. But before she died she give him an envelope which she filled with some things she 'd been writing in the afternoon, and said:
"'Keep them—for my daughter. I trust you.'
"Oh, my dear, my dear, the sorrow in this God's earth! I ain't got used to it yet and never shall. That dying face was like an angel's. Doctor Rugvie said he 'd never seen the like before. She spoke only once to him in all her agony, then she said: 'The little life that is coming is worth all this—all—all.'
"The next morning there come a telegram from somewhere in New England—I forget where—'Will be with you at two.'
"And sure enough, a little after two, a young feller come to the door. He did n't look more 'n twenty, but it seemed from his face as if those twenty years had done something to him 't would generally take a man's lifetime to do, and said he 'd come to claim her who was his wife. That's just what he said, no more, no less: 'I've come to claim her who was my wife. Where is she?' And he give me the telegram.
"It was 'bout the hardest thing I 've ever had to do, but I had to tell him just as things was. I thought for a minute he was going to fall he shook so; but he laid hold of the door-jamb and, straightening himself, looked me square in the eye just as composed as Doctor Rugvie himself, and says:
"'In that case I have come to claim the body of her who was my wife.'
"Those are his very words. I took him into the back room and left 'em alone together. I did n't dare to say a word for his face scairt me.
"When he come out he said he would relieve me of all further responsibility, which I took pains to inform him included a day-old baby, thinking that would fetch some explanation from him. But he did n't seem to lay any weight on that part of it. He made all the arrangements himself, and I took a back seat. I see I was n't any more necessary to him than if I had n't been there. He went out for an hour and come back with a nurse; and at six that afternoon he drove away in a hack with her and the baby, an express cart with the body following on behind.
"I told him the last thing 'fore he went that his wife had given an envelope with some papers to Doctor Rugvie, and that they were for his child. He turned and give me a look that was beyond me. I never could fathom that look! It said more 'n any living human being's look that I ever see—if only I could have read it! But he never spoke a word, not even a word of thanks—not that I was expecting or wanted any after seeing his face as he stood hanging on to the door-jamb. I knew then he did n't really see me nor anything else except the body of his wife somewhere in that basement. He did everything as if he 'd been a machine instead of a human being; and when I see him drive off I did n't know much more 'n I did when I took the woman in, except that she was married."
She was silent. I drew a long breath.
"Is that all you know?" I felt I could not be left so, suspended as it were over the abyss of the unknown in my life.
She sighed. "My dear, this great city is full of just such mysteries that no human being can fathom. I, for one, don't try to. I can only lend a helping hand, and ask no questions; 't ain't best. Well, I 've been talking a blue streak for a half an hour, but I 've had to. When you laid there on the cot, you was the living image of that other, only thinner, smaller like. You told me you was born in this city twenty-six years ago come the third of next December; that you did n't know who your father was, but that your mother was married. Her husband's name was the same as the one on the telegram. I 've put two and two together, and perhaps I 've made five out of it. Anyway it's your right to know. I 'm sure Doctor Rugvie will back me up in this."
For a moment I made no answer. Then I spoke:
"Are you sure there is no more? You can't recall anything that Doctor Rugvie said about that paper in the envelope?"
"Well, yes, I can; a little more. After all, it's what will help you most—and yet I ain't sure—"
"Tell me, do—do." My hands clasped each other nervously.
"Why, it's just this: Doctor Rugvie was called away out of the city on a case as soon as he 'd got through here, and meantime the young feller had come and gone. When the Doctor come back I told him what had been going on while he was away, and I give him the envelope. He told me he found her marriage certificate in it—but not to the man whose name was on the telegram. I never could make head nor tail of it."
"Married—my mother married—" I repeated. I drew away from the woman's restraining arms and slipping to my knees beside her, buried my face in her lap and began to sob. I could not help it. I was broken for the time both physically and mentally by the force of my unpent emotion.
The woman laid her hand protectingly, tenderly on my quivering shoulders, and waited. She must have seen spring freshets before, many a one during the past thirty years, and have known both their benefit and injury to the human soul. Gradually I regained my control.
"Oh, you don't know what this means to me!" I exclaimed, lifting my face swollen with weeping to the kindly one that looked down into mine. "You don't know what this means to me—it has lifted so much, so much—has let in so much light just at a time when I needed it so—when everything looked so black. Sometime I will tell you; but now I want to know when, where, how I can get hold of that marriage certificate. It belongs to me—to me."
I rose with an energy that surprised the woman and, stooping, took her face between my hands and kissed her. I smiled down into that face. She sat speechless. I smiled again. She passed her hand over her eyes as if trying to clear her mind of confusing ideas. I spoke again to her:
"The tempest is over; why should n't we look for a bright to-morrow?" I could hear the vibrant note of a new hope in my voice. The woman heard it too. She continued to stare at me. I drew up my chair to hers and, laying my hand on her knee, said persuasively:
"Now, let's talk; and let me ask some questions."
"To be sure; to be sure," the woman replied. I know she was wondering what would be the next move on the part of her applicant.
"Don't you want to know my name?" I said. "That's rather an important matter when you take a new position; and you said the place was mine, didn't you?"
The woman smiled indulgently. "To be sure it's yours; and what is your name?" she asked, frankly curious at last.
"Marcia Farrell, but I took my great-grandmother's maiden name. There are none of the family left; I 'm the last."
"What was you christened?"
"I never was christened. And what is your name?"
"Delia Beaseley."
"And your daughter's?"
"Jane."
"And when does Doctor Rugvie return?"
"The last of November. You want that certificate?"
"I must have it; it is mine by right." I spoke with decision.
"Well, you 'll get it just as soon as the Doctor can find it; like enough it's locked up in some Safe Deposit with his papers; you mustn't forget it's been nearly twenty-six years since he's had it.—I can't for the life of me think of that name."
"Never mind that now; tell me about the place. Where is it? Who are the people? Or is there only one—it said 'an elderly Scotchwoman'. Do you know her?"
"No, my dear, I don't know any one of them, and Doctor Rugvie does n't mean I should; that's where he trusts me. I can tell you where the place is: Lamoral, Province of Quebec; more 'n that I don't know."
"But," I spoke half in protest, "does n't Doctor Rugvie think that any one taking the position ought to know beforehand where she is going and whom she 's going to live with?"
"He might tell you if he was here himself, and then again he mightn't. You see it's this way: he trusts me to use my common sense in accepting an applicant, and he expects the applicant to trust his name for reference to go to the end of the world if he sends her there, without asking questions."
"Oh, the old tyrant!" I laughed a little. "What does he pay?" was my next question.
"Doctor Rugvie! You think he pays? Good gracious, child, you are on the wrong track."
"Then put me on the right one, please." I laid my hand on the hard roughened one.
"I s'pose I might as well; I don't believe the Doctor would mind."
"Of course he would n't." I spoke with a fine, assumed assurance. Delia Beaseley smiled.
"You know I told you that young feller who come here went away without saying so much as 'Thank you'?"
I merely nodded in reply. That question suddenly quenched all the new hope of a new life in me.
"Along the first of the New Year, that was twenty-five years ago, I got a draft by mail from a national bank in this city; the draft was on that bank; it was for five hundred dollars. And ever since, in December, I have had a check for one hundred in the same way. I always get Doctor Rugvie to cash them for me, and he says no questions are answered; after the first year he did n't ask any. The Doctor 's in the same boat. He 's got a draft on that same bank for five hundred dollars every year for the last twenty-five years. He says it's conscience money; and he feels just as I do, that it comes either from the man who claimed to be the woman's husband, or from that other she was married to according to the certificate.—I can't think of that name!
"He don't care much, I guess, seeing the use he 's going to put the money to. He 's hired a farm for a term of years, up in the Province of Quebec, somewhere near the St. Lawrence, with some good buildings on it; and when he knows of somebody that needs just such a home to pick up in he is going to send 'em up there. And the conscience money is going to help out. This is the place where you 're to help the Scotchwoman, as I understand it. Now that's all I can tell you, except the wages is twenty-five dollars a month besides room and keep. I s'pose you 'll go for that?"
"Go! I can't wait to get away; I 'd like to go to-morrow, but I must stay two or three weeks longer in the library. But, I don't understand—how am I to accept the place without notification? And you don't know even the name of the Scotch-woman?"
"I 'll tend to that. My girl writes all the letters for me, and the letters to this place go in the care of the 'Seigniory of Lamoral', whatever that may mean. They get there all right. You come round here within a week, and I 'm pretty sure that the directions will be here with the passage money."
I felt my face flush from my chin to the roots of my hair; and I knew, moreover, that Delia Beaseley was reading that sign with keen accustomed eyes; she knew there was sore need for just that help.
III
Do you who are reading these life-lines know what it is to be alone in a world none too mindful of anyone, even if he be somebody? Never to experience after the day's work the rest and joy of home-coming to one's own?
Do you know what it is to acknowledge no tie of blood that binds one life to another and makes for a common interest in joy or sorrow? To ask yourself: Do I belong here? To wonder, perhaps, why, in fact, you are here? To feel your isolation in a crowded thoroughfare, your remoteness in the midst of an alien family life? To feel, in truth, a stranger on this earth?
If you have known this, if you have experienced this, or, even if, at times, you have been only dimly conscious of this for another, then you will understand these my life-lines, and it may be they will interpret something of yourself to yourself.
Delia Beaseley walked with me as far as the Bowery. There I insisted on her leaving me. I assured her I was used to the streets of New York in the evening. However, she waited with me for the car.
When I said good night to the woman, who twenty-six years ago saved another woman, "one who had missed her footing",—those words seem to ring constantly in my ears,—in order that I, Marcia Farrell, that stranger's child, might become the living fact I am, I began to realize that during the last hour I had been acting a part, and acting it well; that, without sacrificing the truth at any stage of the evening's developments, I had been able to obtain all this information, which pointed to a crisis in my life, yet had given but little return in kind. I felt justified in withholding it.
Now, as soon as I had left her and entered the car, there was a reaction from the intensity of my emotion. I felt a strange elation of spirit, a rising courage to face the new conditions in that other country, and a consequent physical recuperation. The lassitude that had burdened me since my long illness seemed to have left me. My mind was alert. I felt I had been able to take advantage of a promising circumstance and, in so doing, the mental inertia from which I had been suffering for three months was overcome.
Without being able to find any special reason for it, my life began to assume importance in my thoughts. I suppose this is the normal condition of youth; only, I never felt that I had had much youth. With the thought of this new future, unknown, untried as it was, opening before me, I experienced an unaccountable security, an unwonted serenity of existence. All these thoughts and feelings crowded upon me as I rode up through the noisy Bowery.
All my life hitherto had been undefined to me on the side of expansion; only its limitations impressed me as being ever present, sharply outlined, hedging me in with memories that gave no scope for anticipation. Sometimes it seemed to me as if I had always been old; the seven years in New York, my daily encounter with metropolitan life and its problem of "keep" had intensified this feeling.
When I came down to the city to look for work I was nearly twenty. I had left what to me was a makeshift for a home—and I regretted nothing. I had done my whole duty there in caring for my grandfather, imbecile for years, and my aunt, the last of my family, until they died. Then I was free.
After paying all the debts, I found I had just thirty dollars of my own. With these I started for the city. On my arrival this amount was diminished by nine.
At twenty I was facing life for the first time alone, unfriended, in new conditions; poor, too, but that I had always been. I knew that money must be had somehow, must be forthcoming in a few days at most. But at that time my spirit was indomitable, my courage high. I was my own mistress; and my only feeling, as I sat in the Grand Central Station on that morning of my arrival, reading through the various columns of "wants" in the early newspapers, was that I had escaped, at last, from all associations that were hateful to me.
I was thinking of all this as the car passed with frequent haltings along the noisy Bowery, and of that first experience of this city: its need-driven herds of human beings, the thoroughfares crowded with traffic, its nightmare crossings, the clank and deafening roar of the overhead railroad, when, suddenly, mingled with the steam rising from the pavements, that were cooling rapidly after the recent shower, I smelt the acrid heaviness of fresh printer's ink. That smell visualized for me the column of leaded "Wants," the dismal waiting-room, the uncompromising daylight that spared no wrinkle, no paint, no moth-spot on the indifferent faces about me. That was nearly seven years ago—and now—
I found I was at Union Square, and got out; walked a block to Broadway and waited on the corner for an uptown car. During that minute of waiting, a woman spoke to me:
"If I take a car here can I get up to West Sixty-first street?"
"Yes." My answer was short and sharp. I had heard the kind of question put in that oily voice too many times to pay any further heed to it. I stepped out into the street to take the car.
"If you 're going up that way I might as well go 'long too. I like comp'ny," said the woman, keeping abreast of me and nudging me with an elbow.
The car was nearly full, and the crowd waiting for it made a running assault upon the few vacancies. Just before it stopped I saw some one leave the seat behind the motor-man; I made a rush to secure the place. As I sat down the woman mounted the step.
"You don't get rid of me so easy, duckie," she said with a leer.
I turned squarely to her, looking beneath the wide brim of the tawdry bedraggled hat to find her eyes; her gin-laden breath was hot on my cheek.
"You go your way and I 'll go mine," I said in a low hard voice.
With a curse the woman swung off the step just as the two signal bells rang.
I took off my hat. The night was cooling rapidly after the tempest. The motion of the car created a movement of air against my face. It was grateful to me. I drew a long breath of relief; these evening rides in the open cars were one of my few recreations.
As the car sped along the broad thoroughfare, now so long familiar to me, so wonderful and alluring to my country eyes in those early years, so drearily artificial and depressing in the later ones, I found myself dwelling again on that first experience in this city; I recalled the first time I was accosted by a woman pander. It was when I was reading the wants that morning of my arrival. I looked up to find her taking a seat beside me—a woman who tried by every dives' art of which she was possessed to entice me to go with her on leaving the station. Oh, she was awful, that woman! I never knew there were such till then.
The searchlight of memory struck full upon my thought at that time: And they said my mother was like this!
That thought, horrible as it was to me, was my safeguard then and has been ever since. Such as they said my mother was, I would never be. Nor am I aware that any moral factor was the lever in this decision. Rather it was my pride that had been scourged for many years by a girl's half knowledge of her mother's career, my sensitiveness that was ever ready at the least outside touch to make me close in upon myself, the horror of thinking it might be possible that my name could be used as I had heard my mother's, that had panoplied my nature and warped it until that nature had narrowed to its armor. I was proud, sensitive, cold, or thought I was—and I was glad of it.
It had come to a point, at last, now when I was nearly twenty-six, that in what I termed my strength, lay my weakness. But of this I was, as yet, unaware.
I shut my eyes as the car sped onwards that I might not see the swift succession of glaring lights—the many flashing, changing, nerve-tormenting electric signs and advertisements, the brilliant globes, stars, and whirligigs of all kinds. How they tired me now! And the summer theatre throngs streaming in under the entrance arches picked out in glowing red and white, the saloons flashing a well-known signal to customers—I knew it all and was glad to close my eyes to it all. Now and then I caught a strain of music from the orchestra of some roof-garden.
At Seventy-second Street I changed for Amsterdam Avenue. I wanted to get away to the heights. The air was becoming fresher and I needed more of it. Another twenty minutes and the car stopped near the brow of the hill. I left it and walked a cross block till I came to Morningside Heights, the small, irregular, but beautiful promenade behind St. Luke's.
I leaned on the massive stone coping that crowns the wall of the escarpment; below me the hill sloped sharply to the flats of the Harlem. I looked off over the city.
East, and north-east in the direction of the Sound, great cloud masses, the wrack of the tempest, were piled high towards the zenith; but beneath them there was a clear zone near the city's level. A moon nearly two thirds to the full, was heralding its appearance above them by lighted rifts, bright-rimmed haloes, and the marvellous play of direct shaft light that struck downwards behind the clouds into the clear space above the city and shot white radiance upon its roofs. The sky, also, while yet the moon was invisible, was radiant, but with starlight.
Against this background, I watched the glow-worm lights of the elevated trains winding along the high invisible trestle-work. Beneath me lay Morningside Park, the foliage and its shadows blackened in masses beneath the glaring white of the arc-lights; and beyond, in seemingly interminable perspective, the long converging lines of parallel street lights led my gaze across the city to some large, unknown, uncertain flarings somewhere near the East River shore.
And from all this wide-stretching housing-place of a vast population, there rose into my ears a continuous, dull, peculiar sound, as of the magnified stertorous breathing of a hived and stifled humanity.
I had come here many times in the last four years, at all seasons, at all times. I drew strength and inspiration from this view in all its aspects, until my almost fatal illness in the late spring. After that there came upon me a powerful longing for change. I wanted to get away from this city, its sights and sounds; to escape from the conditions that were sapping my life. And the way was, at last, opened. How I exulted in this thought!
There were others on the promenade, and I was withdrawn from thought of myself by hearing voices, a man's and a woman's, below me on the winding walk that leads down the slope past the poplars to the level of the Harlem streets. The woman's was pleading, strident from excitement; it broke at last in a dry hard sob. The man's was hateful; the tones and accents like a vicious snarl.
I turned away sickened, indignant.
"It's always so in this city!" I said to myself while I walked rapidly towards the hospital. "If I get a chance for a breath of fresh air, or if I take a walk in the park, or have an outlook that, for a moment, is free from all suggestions of crime and horror—then beware! For then I have to shut my ears not to hear the fatal sounds of human brutishness; or I hear a shot in the park, and a life goes out in some thick-foliaged path; or I have to turn away my eyes from a sight in the gutter that offends three of my senses—and so my day is ruined. It's merciless, merciless—and I loathe it!" I cried within myself as I passed the hospital.
I lifted my eyes to the massive purity of noble St. Luke's, the windows rising tier upon tier above me. A light showed here and there. At the sight my mood softened.
"Oh, I know it is merciful too—it is merciful," I murmured; then I stopped short and turned back to the entrance. I entered the main vestibule, mounted the marble steps that lead to the chapel, opened the noiseless heavily-padded doors, and sat down near the entrance.
The air was close and hot after the outer freshness; the lights few. The stained-glass window behind the altar was a meaningless confused mass of leaded opacity. I knew that the daylight was needed to ensoul it, to give to the dead unmeaning material its spiritual symbolism. And because I knew this, I realized, as I sat there, what a long distance in a certain direction I had travelled since that morning in the Grand Central Station, seven years ago.
But the air was very close. I felt depressed, disappointed, that the time and the place yielded me nothing. I was faint, too; I had taken nothing but the cocoa since noon. Without realizing it, another reaction from that strange elation of spirit was setting in. I knew I ought to be in the attic room in Chelsea rather than where I was. It was already nine, and an hour's ride before me on the surface car.
I went out to Amsterdam Avenue. No car was in sight. I walked on down the hill, knowing that one would soon overtake me.
A man and woman were just behind me talking—at least, the woman was. I recognized her voice as one of those I had heard on the winding path by the poplars. A moment after, they passed me in a noticeably peculiar fashion: the man sauntering by on my right, the woman hurrying past on my left. At the same moment I heard the car coming down the hill. I turned at once, but only to see the man, who had passed me, running swiftly along the pavement and up the hill to meet it; the woman was running after him.
I saw that the car was over full. The platform and steps were black with human beings clinging to the guard rails like swarming bees alight. I saw the man struggle madly to catch the guards and gain a footing on the lower step, the woman still running beside him and holding him by the coat. Then I was aware of a sudden sweeping movement of the man's free arm, the roar of the car as it sped down the incline, and of the woman lying, hatless from the force of the man's blow, on the pavement beside the track. He had freed himself so!
Before I could reach her the woman was up and off again, running hatless after the quickly receding car. Only one cry, no scream, escaped her.
I shivered. There was nothing to be done with such as these, no rescue possible. A sudden thought half paralyzed me; I stood motionless: Had my own mother ever been cast off like this? Had such treatment been the cause of her seeking the river? Had I, Marcia Farrell, been fathered by such a brute?
For the second time in my life, I felt my hardness of heart towards the mother I had never known soften with pity; a sob rose in my throat. I shook my shoulders as if freeing them from some nightmare clutch, and hurried to the next corner to meet the car that was following the other closely.
IV
I unlocked my attic room in the fourth storey of the old Chelsea house and lighted the lamp. In contrast to what both ear and eye had been witness during the evening: Delia Beaseley's account of my mother's rescue and death, and that scene of life's brutality on Columbia Heights, the sight of the small plain interior gave me, for the first time in all the seven years, a home-sense, a feeling of welcome and refuge.
I looked at the cretonne-covered cot, the packing boxes curtained with the same, the white painted hanging box-shelves, the one chair—a flour barrel, cut to the required form, well padded and upholstered; all these were the work of my hands in free hours. And I was about to exchange the known for the unknown! This thought added to my depression.
I put out the lamp and sat down by the one window. The night air was refreshingly cool. The many lights on the river gleamed clear; the roar in the streets was subdued. Gradually, my antagonism to the physical features of the metropolis, to its heedless crowds, its overpowering mechanism, its thoroughfares teeming with human beings who passed me daily, knowing little of their own existence and nothing of mine, its racial divergencies, grew less intense; in fact, the whole life of this city, in its aspect of mere Juggernaut, was being unconsciously modified for me as I realized I was about to go forth into a strange country.
I was recalling those ten weeks of mortal weakness and suffering at St. Luke's, the kindness of nurses and physicians. No matter if I had paid my way; theirs was a ready helpfulness, a steady administration of the tonic of human kindness that never could be bought and paid for in the Republic's money. I thought of Delia Beaseley and her noble work among those "who had missed their footing". I relived in imagination that rescue of my own mother, with all of the horror and all of the merciful pity it entailed. I found myself wondering if Doctor Rugvie would be able to lay his hand on those papers immediately after his arrival. I dwelt upon the many kindly advances from my co-workers in the Library; few of these women I had met, for I felt strangely old, apart from them, and the struggle to live and at the same time accomplish my purpose had been so hard. My landlady, too, came in for a share of my softening mood; exacting, but scrupulously honest, she had lodged under this same roof a generation of theological students, yet her best dress remained a rusty alpaca. I thought of the various types of students for the ministry—
I smiled at that thought, a smile that proved the latent youth in me was sufficiently appreciative, at least of that phase of life.
I left the window and, after closing the lower half of the inside shutters, partly undressed and relighted the lamp. Then I took two paper-covered blank books from my trunk. I sat down in my one easy chair of home manufacture and, resting my feet on the cot, began to read.
These two books were my journal, my confidante, my most intimate companion for seven years. I had written in them intermittently only, and, as I turned a page here and there, my eye dwelt longest, not on the few high lights, as it were, in my uneventful life of work and struggle, but on the many shadows they deepened and emphasized.
Nov. 4, 1902. My first day in New York. I took a hack from the station to this house in the old "Chelsea district" they call it. My first hack-ride; it was pretty grand for me, but I was afraid to try the street cars after a horrid woman had tried her best to get me to go with her after I left the station—oh, it was awful! I never knew there could be such women before—not that kind. I shall look for work to-morrow.
Nov. 5. I have to pay a dollar and a half for this room in the attic. There isn't any heat, and there is no gas in it. I have to furnish it myself. My landlady is a queer little old woman, Mrs. Turtelot, who has kept lodgers here for thirty years. She has her house filled with the students from the Theological Seminary near by. It's lucky I have this place to come to. I wondered to-day how girls ever get on in this city, without having someone to go to they know is all right. She seems like a Frenchwoman, perhaps a French Canadian. I think she must be, for her mother used to work at Seth White's tavern up home; it was through his neighbors I got her address. She says the students have to furnish their own bed clothes and towels. I 'm glad I brought mine with me. It's awfully cold here to-night, but Mrs. Turtelot has given me a lamp, till I can get one, and that warms up some. Anyway, I feel safe here from that other kind. I 'll soon earn enough to fix up a little.
Nov. 6. I 've been tramping about all day answering advertisements. Mrs. Turtelot told me not to go into any strange place, like up stairs, and not to go over a door sill. I have n't found that so easy.
I 've been afraid all day of getting lost, but she told me to-night to ask every time for West Twenty-third Street and follow it to the river; then I could always find my way here.
I slept in her room on the sofa the first night; she says I can sleep with her for a few nights till I can get a cot. A student is leaving here in a few days and he will sell his second hand. But I don't want to sleep with her, and I asked her as a favor to let me have two pillows. She didn't have any extra ones, but let me have hers; so I have a good bed on the floor. Could n't find work.
Nov. 8. Mrs. T. told me to-day that it is a bad time of year to find work. It is late in the season and help is being turned off, and, besides, it is going to be a hard winter, so everybody says. What do the turned-off ones do, then, for a living?— No job yet! But I won't go out to service in a private family unless I have to. I 've had enough of that in the past.
Nov. 9. Since I came here I have answered fifty-two advertisements. I get the same answer every time: "You have n't been trained and you have n't had any experience." How am I to get training and experience if I don't have the chance? That's what I want to know.
Nov. 10. I 've bought the cot and the mattress. I paid four dollars for them. There is a small stove hole in the chimney on one side of my room; when I get to earning, I 'm going to have a little stove here and do my own cooking. Thank fortune, I can cook as well as chop wood if I have to! So far I 've heated my things on Mrs. T.'s stove. She lives, that is, cooks, eats, sleeps, and washes in her back basement; the front one she rents to a barber. He makes his living from the students round here and the professors at the Seminary. She says the students cook most of their meals in their rooms on their gas stoves. I wish I had one.
Nov. 13. A bad lot of a date! No work yet, and I 've tramped all day in the slush and snow. I dried my things down in Mrs. T.'s room. I did n't dare to spend any more in car fares, for I must have a stove.
I know to a cent just what I 've spent since I came, but I 'm going to put it down so I can see the figures; it will make me more cautious about spending. The car fare is more than I meant it should be, but, to save it, I walked the first three days from Eighty-sixth Street and Fourth Avenue—a bakery that advertised for a woman to sell the early morning bread in the shop; three hours of work only, at twenty cents an hour—down as far as the Washington Market where they wanted a girl to sell flowers in a sidewalk booth, for two weeks before Christmas. I found then that the soles of my boots were beginning to wear and that it saves something to ride.
Car fare . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $ .75
Bread . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
Cheese . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .10
1 tin pail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .15
6 eggs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
1 can baked beans . . . . . . . . . . . .17
2 pints soup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .26
Oil . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .13
Tin lamp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .50
Cot and mattress . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.00
Room rent, two weeks in advance . . . . 3.00
Total . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . $9.51
And I have ten dollars and ninety-three cents left. I can hold the fort another two weeks on this.
Nov. 15. No work yet. I 'm going to keep a stiff upper lip and find work, or starve in doing it. This city sha'n't beat me, not if I can use my two arms and hands and legs, two eyes, one tongue and a brain! No!
Nov. 17. I scrubbed down the three flights of stairs for Mrs. T. to-day. She has the rheumatism in her wrists, and I was glad to do it for her to help pay for her loan of the pillows and for letting me heat my things on her stove. I must buy my own to-morrow. I feel ashamed to ask favors of her any longer, for I have put off the buying of it till I could get work.
Friday. Now I have just four dollars left; for I bought it to-day and set it up myself. A little second hand one with one hole on top—and no coals to put in it! I don't dare use the last four dollars, for the rent is due soon and I have to pay in advance. I suppose it's all right to secure herself, but it's hard on me.
Nov. 30. I believe I 'm hungry, and I don't remember to have been hungry before in all my life, without having enough ready to fill my stomach. But I don't dare to spend another cent till I get work. It must come, it must—
I 've lived three days on a half a pound of walnuts, half a pound of cheese and a loaf of bread—and walked my feet sore looking for a place. I know I could have had two places, but I dared not engage to the women. That woman in the Grand Central Station haunts me; these two women had a look of her! One wanted me in private manicure rooms to learn the trade; she said I had the right kind of fingers after the rough had worn off. The other wanted me to show rooms to rent in a queer looking house. Mrs. T. told me to keep away from it and all like it.
Dec. 1. I 'm not only hungry, I 'm cold too. I bought two pails of coals, and paid high for them so Mrs. T. says. They say there is going to be a coal famine from the great strike. It makes me mad that it should all pile up on me in this way! Why can't I have work? Why, when I am willing, can't I find a place?
An awful feeling comes over me sometimes, when I am turned down at a place I 've applied for: I want to throttle the first well-dressed man or woman I meet and say, "Give me work or I 'll make it the worse for you!" Then I turn all dizzy and sick after that feeling, and hate myself for the thought; it's so unjust.
Dec. 10. I asked Mrs. T. if I might n't pay by the week and at the end of each week. I think she knew what the trouble was. She hesitated for a minute, and that was enough for me.
"Oh, I can pay you," I said, "only it's a little more convenient."
"Then I 'd like you to," she said in her queer dry voice.
I hated her at that moment. I went up stairs to my bare room and took off the knit woollen petticoat I made for myself at home, just before coming down; I took that and a set of gold beads, that were my grandmother's, and went out with them to a pawnbroker's just around the corner on the avenue. I got eight dollars for the two of them, and made the time in which to redeem them one month. Then I went back to the house and paid her. She looked surprised, but her skinny hand closed upon the money as if she, too, had no more for the morrow. I don't know that she has. The students come and go.
Dec. 14. I stood on Twentieth Street near Broadway to-day, watching the teamsters unload the heavy drays at the back of a department store. I found myself envying them—they had work.
Dec. 15. I am not up to date with my clothes, and I have no money to make myself so. I find it is for this reason I am "turned down" at so many places where I apply. I read it in men's eyes, in the women's hard stare.
Dec. 17. A man offered to clothe me for a position in a shop, if I would—
I know I looked at him; I think I saw him, or perhaps the beast that was in him. Then I saw queer lights before me, red and yellow—if I had been a man I would have taken him by the throat. When, at last, I could see again, the man was gone. Good riddance! There is such a thing as day nightmare.
Dec. 19. I am beginning to understand how it is done; how the fifteen dollar waists, the diamond rings, the theatre, and the suppers after, can be had without work.
Dec. 20. The strike is on. I should have to do without coals, strike or no strike, for I have nothing to buy them with. Mrs. Turtelot offered to let me heat my food on her stove—my food! I 've lived on one loaf of bread and a can of baked beans for seven days—and to-day I 've been down to the Washington Market just to smell the evergreens that, for all I have no home, give me a homesick longing for the country. But I will not go back; I 'll starve here first.
Afterwards I walked up to Twenty-third Street, and lost myself there in the holiday crowds. What throngs!—jostled, pushed, beset by vendors, loaded with bundles, yet so good natured! No one looked hungry. I stood on the kerb to watch the men selling toys and birds; to listen to the strange cries, the shrilling of the wooden canaries and the trill of the real ones; to peep into the rabbit hutch, and the basket of kittens; to stroke an armful of sleeping puppies; to smell the fragrance of roses and violets and carnations; to smile a little at the slow-moving turtles, the leaping frogs, the Jack-in-the-box, the mechanical toys of all kinds that performed on the sidewalk, each the centre of a small crowd. Then, at twilight, the flare from the chestnut vendor's stand, the little electric lights of the Punch and Judy sidewalk show, the electric torches that the children were carrying, the brilliant whirligigs for advertisements, gave to the whole scene a strange unreal appearance. Men, women, children, Christmas trees, dogs, birds, electric cars, rabbits, kittens, a goat, cabs, automobiles, express carts, surged into the flare and glare, first of one light then of another, till what was shadow and what was substance I failed to make out.
Dec. 21. At last, oh, at last, there is work for me,—for me, too, among all these millions! But it makes me sick to know there must be some who are trying and never find.
I have taken a place in a small writing-paper factory. It's down near Barclay Street, in the loft of a crazy old building, three wooden flights from the street. The loft is lighted at both ends by windows and in the top by skylights. It is heated by a large cylinder stove in the centre, and a small glue box-pot at one end. The air is close, but I don't care much, for it is so warm. I get four dollars a week.
I can manage to live, at least, on this. I can think about nothing else to-night.
Jan. 15, 1903. The coal strike is on. It is cold in the loft, for we have to be saving of fuel. It takes all I can save to buy three pailfuls of coal a week for my little stove. I kindle my fire at night, heat water, cook my cereal, or bean soup, and am comfortable till morning; the room is decently warm to dress in. I am off to work at seven. Fuel and rent and some necessary underclothes leave little for food. I cannot redeem my petticoat, and gold beads which my grandmother had from her mother, Marcia Farrell.
July 6. Hot, hotter, hottest in the old fire-trap of a loft. The sun beats down through the skylights till we get sick. Two of the girls fainted this afternoon.
Aug. 4. I discovered the Public Library to-day! It means so much to me that I simply can't write a word about it.
Nov. 4. Just a year ago to-day since I came here. I am able to draw a free breath for the first time, to look about me and plan a little for my future. I 've made up my mind to study for the examinations for a place in the Public Library. My district school was no bad training, after all, for this work. It taught me one lesson: to put my mind on what was given me to do—and I have not forgotten it.
The extra time for study at night will take more fuel and oil, but I can make that up by living a few more days every week on bean soup. I 've made living on four dollars a week an art this last year. An art? Yes, rather than a science; and, like an art, it accomplishes surprisingly satisfactory results—results that science, with all its proven facts, from which it deduces laws of hygiene, fails to produce.
I honestly believe that I 'm better fed than half the theological students. They scrimp and save—for a theatre ticket! They're a queer lot! I 've asked half a dozen to tell me what they 're aiming at, and not one of the six could give me a sensible answer. If they had said right out—"It's an easy way to get a small living," I would have respect for them. We all have to earn our living in one way or another.
March, 1904. Desk assistant in a branch of the Library—at last!
October, 1906. When I came down here I made a vow to put everything behind me; forget what I had left in New England, the memories of those hard-worked years, and start afresh; cut loose from all the old associations. I have succeeded fairly well. This new life of books is a wonderful one. I like my work as desk assistant in the Library, and I get nine dollars a week. This is wealth for me; I am saving. I have so much besides: the river and the ferries for a change; one trip up the Hudson—a thing to live on for years until I get another. Sometime I mean to travel—sometime! Meanwhile, I go on saving in every possible way.
Jan. 8, 1907. What luck for me! I don't have to buy a book. The whole Library is mine for the asking. How I have read these last three years! As if I could never read enough; read while I 've been standing and eating; read before getting up and long after I have been in bed. It has been a hunger and thirst for this kind of food—and there has been enough of this! Enough!
Feb. 1908. I am studying French now daily, and beginning Latin by myself, for I want to take the higher examinations for the cataloguing department. That will mean more pay and the prospect of a vacation sometime.
March 16, 1908. How I gloat like a miser over my savings-bank book! Just one hundred and seventy-five dollars to my credit. I have visions of—oh, so much in ten years!
May, 1908. I was at the Metropolitan this morning. I feel rich when I realize that all this treasure-house is open to me—is mine for the entering. I am taking the whole museum, room by room. A year's work on Sundays.
August, 1908. I have not seen fit to change my method of expenditure since I entered the Library; I have continued to spend as I spent when I had four dollars a week, with the exception that I allow, necessarily, a little more for clothing.
For housing:—
Room, $1.50 a week.
Fuel and oil in winter, $ 0.75
Oil in summer, .26
Now for my art:—
I have allowed for my food exactly one dollar a week and allow the same now. I go down to the Washington Market early in the morning. I revel in the sight of the fresh vegetables, of the flowers and fruits. The market-people know me now, and many a gift-flower I have brought back with me to my room, and several times a pot of herbs or spring bulbs; now and then a few sprays of parsley or thyme. These I look upon as my commission! Without leaving the market, I buy a loaf of bread for ten cents; a knuckle of veal, or a beef bone, a pound and a half of sausages, or a pound of salt pork, for fifteen cents; I vary my purchases from time to time that I may have variety. Ten cents for vegetables—I vary these, also, as much as possible; these, with a pound of rice, nine cents, a half a pound of butter, eighteen cents, and a quart of beans for another ten cents, give me satisfying combinations. When eggs are cheap I vary this diet with them, lettuce and bacon. I buy things that are cheapest in their season. In summer, I drop out all meat and substitute milk. I allow myself one pound of sugar a week; no tea, no coffee; the city water is the only thing of which I can have enough free. With what is left of my hundred cents,—for in my art it is the cents with which I reckon, not dollars,—I buy fruit in its season, a bit of cheese, sometimes even a Philadelphia squab! At times, they are cheaper than meat in the Market. In the season I can get one for ten cents.
I have an extra treat when I buy that last, for the old man at the poultry stall, who draws the chickens and various fowl, is a model from the old Italian masters. An Italian himself, he speaks little English, wears a skull cap and, to my delight, looks like one of Fra Angelico's saints. I learn all this from the Metropolitan Museum, and apply it in the Washington Market!
At times I haunt the fish stalls, select good sea food for a change, and am rewarded by the play of color on the zinc counters—the mottled green of live lobsters, the scarlet of boiled ones, the silver and rose of pompano, the pomegranate of salmon. I have stood by the half hour to watch the slow-moving turtles, the scuttling crabs in the tanks. I have good friends throughout the Market—men and women. They confide in me at times, like the cod-and-hake man, dealer in dried fish, who told me he had "a girl once down on Cape Cod". He seemed relieved by this confession. He was serving me at the time, and his two hundred or more pounds, his red face and his cordiality were delightful. My butter-egg-and-cheese man also confides to me that he is a commuter; has purchased a home on the instalment plan; has three children, and his wife runs a private laundry.
What remains of the four dollars after the weekly bills are paid, I lay aside for clothes. I make my own shirt waists. It took me eleven months to earn a good skirt of brown Panama cloth; but it has lasted me four years.
I think I live well, considering; but, in living thus, there is no denying I cross the bridge of mere sustenance every day, and am obliged to burn my bridge behind me! I don't like it—but am thankful for work. I 'm not beneath adding to my reserve fund five cents at a time.
Dec. 18, 1908. They 're nice boys, the theological students—but queer, some of them. I 've watched different sets of them come and go during these six years. Two or three have attempted to make a little love to me; a few have adopted me—so they said—for their sister. I 'm forgotten with their graduation and their flitting! One or two are really friends; they 're younger than I, of course, and I can patronize and quiz them.
Johnny is my favorite. There is little theological nonsense about him, and there is an inquisitive disposition to see New York and make the most of his time here. He 's from the north part of the state; likes books, likes people, likes a good time, whenever he can get it, on his limited income to which he adds by helping the basement barber two days in the week, canvassing for books in the summer, and on Saturdays waiting on the patrons of a book stall in a corridor of one of the big hotels.
Taken altogether, Johnny is a man who has not as yet found his calling, although he is anchored for the present, through affection for his father, to "Chelsea" and a career that, at times, irks him. We 've had many a good talk about this matter. I tell him he 's not dragging anchor, but weighing it.
I like to see New York through Johnny's eyes—Adirondack eyes, keen, honest, and blue; they take in all the metropolitan sights, from the Hippodrome, to the Bowery vaudevilles and the Cathedral of St. John.
It's fun to "do" the city with him, with no expense except car fares.