"Louise," demanded Esther, with a frightened look, "are you crazy?"
"No. Read this!" She handed the other girl a clipping from the advertising columns of a newspaper.
CHAMBERMAID AND WAITRESS.--WANTED, A NEAT and willing girl, for light work. Apply to Mme. Remy, The Midlothian, ... Broadway.
"I saw it just by accident, Sat.u.r.day, after I left you. Papa had left his paper in the coupe. I was going up to my First Aid to the Injured Cla.s.s--it"s at four o"clock now, you know. I made up my mind right off--it came to me like an inspiration. I just waited until it came to the place where they showed how to tie up arteries, and then I slipped out. Lots of the girls slip out in the horrid parts, you know. And then, instead of waiting in the ante-room, I put on my wrap, and pulled the hood over my head and ran off to the Midlothian--it"s just around the corner, you know. And I saw his wife."
"What was she like?" queried Esther, eagerly.
"Oh, I don"t know. Sort of horrid--actressy. She had a pink silk wrapper with swansdown all over it--at four o"clock, think! I was _awfully_ frightened when I got there; but it wasn"t the least trouble. She hardly looked at me, and she engaged me right off. She just asked me if I was willing to do a whole lot of things--I forgot what they were--and where I"d worked before. I said at Mrs. Barcalow"s."
"Mrs. Barcalow"s?"
"Why, yes--my Aunt Amanda, don"t you know--up in Framingham. I always have to wash the teacups when I go there. Aunty says that everybody has got to do _something_ in _her_ house."
"Oh, Louise!" cried her friend, in shocked admiration; "how can you think of such things?"
"Well, I did. And she--his wife, you know--just said: "Oh, I suppose you"ll do as well as any one--all you girls are alike.""
"But did she really take you for a--servant?"
"Why, yes, indeed. It was raining. I had that old ulster on, you know.
I"m to go at twelve o"clock next Sat.u.r.day."
"But, Louise!" cried Esther, aghast, "you don"t truly mean to go!"
"I do!" cried Louise, beaming triumphantly.
"_Oh, Louise!_"
"Now, listen, dear," said Miss Latimer, with the decision of an enthusiastic young lady with New England blood in her veins. "Don"t say a word till I tell you what my plan is. I"ve thought it all out, and you"ve got to help me."
Esther shuddered.
"You foolish child!" cried Louise. Her eyes were sparkling: she was in a state of ecstatic excitement; she could see no obstacles to the carrying out of her plan. "You don"t think I mean to _stay_ there, do you? I"m just going at twelve o"clock, and at four he comes back from the matinee, and at five o"clock I"m going to slip on my things and run downstairs, and have you waiting for me in the coupe, and off we go. Now do you see?"
It took some time to bring Esther"s less venturesome spirit up to the point of a.s.sisting in this undertaking; but she began, after a while, to feel the delights of vicarious enterprise, and in the end the two girls, their cheeks flushed, their eyes shining feverishly, their voices tremulous with childish eagerness, resolved themselves into a committee of ways and means; for they were two well-guarded young women, and to engineer five hours of liberty was difficult to the verge of impossibility. However, there is a financial manoeuvre known as "kiting checks," whereby A exchanges a check with B and B swaps with A again, playing an imaginary balance against Time and the Clearing House; and by a similar scheme, which an acute student of social ethics has called "kiting calls," the girls found that they could make Sat.u.r.day afternoon their own, without one glance from the watchful eyes of Esther"s mother or Louise"s aunt--Louise had only an aunt to reckon with.
"And, oh, Esther!" cried the bolder of the conspirators, "I"ve thought of a trunk--of course I"ve got to have a trunk, or she would ask me where it was, and I couldn"t tell her a fib. Don"t you remember the French maid who died three days after she came here? Her trunk is up in the store-room still, and I don"t believe anybody will ever come for it--it"s been there seven years now. Let"s go up and look at it."
The girls romped upstairs to the great unused upper story, where heaps of household rubbish obscured the dusty half-windows. In a corner, behind Louise"s baby chair and an unfashionable hat-rack of the old steering-wheel pattern, they found the little brown-painted tin trunk, corded up with clothesline.
"Louise!" said Esther, hastily, "what did you tell her your name was?"
"I just said "Louise"."
Esther pointed to the name painted on the trunk,
LOUISE LEVY
"It is the hand of Providence," she said. "Somehow, now, I"m _sure_ you"re quite right to go."
And neither of these conscientious young ladies reflected for one minute on the discomfort which might be occasioned to Madame Remy by the defection of her new servant a half-hour before dinner-time on Sat.u.r.day night.
"Oh, child, it"s you, is it?" was Mme. Remy"s greeting at twelve o"clock on Sat.u.r.day. "Well, you"re punctual--and you look clean. Now, are you going to break my dishes or are you going to steal my rings? Well, we"ll find out soon enough. Your trunk"s up in your room. Go up to the servant"s quarters--right at the top of those stairs there. Ask for the room that belongs to apartment 11. You are to room with their girl."
Louise was glad of a moment"s respite. She had taken the plunge; she was determined to go through to the end. But her heart _would_ beat and her hands _would_ tremble. She climbed up six flights of winding stairs, and found herself weak and dizzy when she reached the top and gazed around her. She was in a great half-story room, eighty feet square. The most of it was filled with heaps of old furniture and bedding, rolls of carpet, of canvas, of oilcloth, and odds and ends of discard of unused household gear--the dust thick over all. A little s.p.a.ce had been left around three sides, to give access to three rows of cell-like rooms, in each of which the ceiling sloped from the very door to a tiny window at the level of the floor. In each room was a bed, a bureau that served for wash-stand, a small looking-gla.s.s, and one or two trunks. Women"s dresses hung on the whitewashed walls. She found No. 11, threw off, desperately, her hat and jacket, and sunk down on the little brown tin trunk, all trembling from head to foot.
"h.e.l.lo," called a cheery voice. She looked up and saw a girl in a dirty calico dress.
"Just come?" inquired this person, with agreeable informality. She was a good-looking large girl, with red hair and bright cheeks. She leaned against the door-post and polished her finger-nails with a little brush.
Her hands were shapely.
"Ain"t got onto the stair-climbing racket yet, eh? You"ll get used to it. "Louise Levy,"" she read the name on the trunk. "You don"t look like a sheeny. Can"t tell nothin" "bout names, can you? My name"s Slattery.
You"d think I was Irish, wouldn"t you? Well, I"m straight Ne" York. I"d be dead before I was Irish. Born here. Ninth Ward an" next to an engine house. How"s that? There"s white Jews, too. I worked for one, pickin"
sealskins down in Prince Street. Most took the lungs out of me. But that wasn"t why I shook the biz. It queered my hands--see? I"m goin" to be married in the Fall to a German gentleman. He ain"t so Dutch when you know him, though. He"s a grocer. Drivin" now; but he buys out the boss in the Fall. How"s that? He"s dead stuck on my hooks, an" I have to keep "em lookin" good. I come here because the work was light. I don"t have to work--only to be doin" somethin", see? Only got five halls and the lamps. You got a fam"ly job, I s"pose? I wouldn"t have that. I don"t mind the Sooprintendent; but I"d be dead before I"d be bossed by a woman, see? Say, what fam"ly did you say you was with?"
The stream of talk had acted like a nerve-tonic on Louise. She was able to answer:
"M--Mr. Remy."
"Ramy?--oh, lord! Got the job with His Tonsils? Well, you won"t keep it long. They"re meaner"n three b.a.l.l.s, see? Rent their room up here and chip in with eleven. Their girls don"t never stay. Well, I got to step, or the Sooprintendent"ll be borin" my ear. Well--so long!"
But Louise had fled down the stairs. "His Tonsils" rang in her ears.
What blasphemy! What sacrilege! She could scarcely pretend to listen to Mme. Remy"s first instructions.
The household _was_ parsimonious. Louise washed the caterer"s dishes--he made a reduction in his price. Thus she learned that a late breakfast took the place of luncheon. She began to feel what this meant. The beds had been made; but there was work enough. She helped Mme. Remy to sponge a heap of faded finery--_her_ dresses. If they had been _his_ coats!
Louise bent her hot face over the tawdry silks and satins, and clasped her parboiled little finger-tips over the wet sponge. At half-past three Mme. Remy broke the silence.
"We must get ready for Musseer," she said. An ecstatic joy filled Louise"s being. The hour of her reward was at hand.
Getting ready for "Musseer" proved to be an appalling process. First they brewed what Mme. Remy called a "teaze Ann." After the _tisane_, a host of strange foreign drugs and cosmetics were marshalled in order.
Then water was set to heat on a gas-stove. Then a little table was neatly set.
"Musseer has his dinner at half-past four," Madame explained. "I don"t take mine till he"s laid down and I"ve got him off to the concert.
There, he"s coming now. Sometimes he comes home pretty nervous. If he"s nervous, don"t you go and make a fuss, do you hear, child?"
The door opened, and Musseer entered, wrapped in a huge frogged overcoat. There was no doubt that he was nervous. He cast his hat upon the floor, as if he were Jove dashing a thunderbolt. Fire flashed from his eyes. He advanced upon his wife and thrust a newspaper in her face--a little pinky sheet, a notorious blackmailing publication.
"Zees," he cried, "is your work!"
"What _is_ it now, Hipleet?" demanded Mme. Remy.