Everybody"s Lonesome.
by Clara E. Laughlin.
I
DISAPPOINTED IN LIFE
Mary Alice came home quietly from the party. Most of the doors in the house were closed, because it was cold, and the halls were hard to heat. Mary Alice knew exactly what she should see and hear if she opened that door at her right as she entered the house, and went into the sitting-room. There was a soft-coal fire in the small, old-fashioned grate under the old, old-fashioned white marble mantel.
Dozing--always dozing--on the hearth-rug, at a comfortable distance from the fire, was Herod, the big yellow cat. In the centre of the room, under the chandelier, was a table, with a cover of her mother"s fancy working, and a drop-light with a green shade. By the unbecoming light of this, her mother was sewing. What day was this? Tuesday!
She was mending stockings. Mary Alice could see it all. She had been seeing it for twenty years during which nothing--it seemed to her--had changed, except herself. If she went in there now, her mother would ask her the same questions she always asked: "Did you have a nice time?" "Who was there?" "Anybody have on anything new?" "What refreshments did they serve?"
Mary Alice was tired of it all--heartsick with weariness of it--and she stole softly past that closed sitting-room door and up, through the chilly halls where she could see her own breath, to her room.
She did not light the gas, but took off in the dark her "good" hat and her "best" gloves and her long black cloth coat of an ugly "store-bought" cut, which was her best and worst. Then, in an abandon of grief which bespoke real desperation in a careful girl like Mary Alice, she threw herself on her bed--without taking off her "good"
dress--and buried her head in a pillow, and _hated everything_.
It is hard to be disappointed in love, but after all it is a rather splendid misery in which one may have a sense of kinship with earth"s greatest and best; and it has its hopes, its consolations. There is often the hope that this love may return; and, though we never admit it, there is always--deep down--the consolation of believing that another and a better may come.
But to be disappointed in the love of life is not a splendid misery.
And Mary Alice was disappointed in her love of life. To be twenty, and not to believe in the fairies of Romance; to be twenty and, instead of the rosy dreams you"ve had, to see life stretching on and on before you, an endless, uninspired humdrum like mother"s, darning stockings by the sitting-room fire--that is bitterness indeed.
Hardship isn"t anything--while you believe in life. Stiff toil and scant fare are nothing--while you expect to meet at any turning the Enchanter with your fortune in his hands. But to be twenty and not to believe----!
Mary Alice had never had much, except the wonderful heart of youth, to feed her faith with. She wasn"t pretty and she wasn"t clever and she had no accomplishments. Her people were "plain" and perpetually "pinched" in circ.u.mstance. And her life, in this small town where she lived, was very narrow.
In the mornings, Mary Alice helped her mother with the housework. In the afternoons, after the midday dinner was cleared away, Mary Alice had a good deal of time on her hands. Sometimes she sewed--made new clothes or remade old ones; sometimes she read. Once in a while she took some fancy work and went to see a girl friend, or a girl friend brought some fancy work and came to see her. Occasionally she and another girl went for a walk. Semi-occasionally there was a church social or a sewing circle luncheon, or somebody gave a party.
Somebody had given a party to-day, and Mary Alice had gone to it with high hope of finding it "interesting" and had come away from it with a deep despair of ever finding in life that which would make the monotony of it worth while.
Many another girl, feeling as Mary Alice did, would have gone away from home seeking "life" in a big city. But Mary Alice, besides having no qualifications for earning her way in a big city, had a most unhappy shyness. She was literally afraid of strangers, and never got very well acquainted even with persons she had a.s.sociated with for a long time.
At the party to-day--it was an afternoon tea--Mary Alice had been more bitterly conscious than ever before of her lack of charms and the bleak prospect that lack entailed upon her. For the tea was given for a girl who was visiting in town, a girl of a sort Mary Alice had never seen before. She was pretty, that visiting girl, and she was sweet; she had a charm that was irresistible; she seemed to like everybody, and there was no mistake about everybody liking her. Even the town girls liked her and were not jealous. Even Mary Alice liked her, and was not afraid of her. But there she was--that girl!--vital, radiant, an example of what life might be, at twenty. And Mary Alice came away hating as she had never done before, life as it was for her and as it promised to continue.
Presently she withdrew her head from the pillow and lay looking into the dark where, as we all know, the things that might be, that should have been, shape themselves so much more readily than in any light.
And, lying there, Mary Alice wondered if there were any fairy power on earth that could make of her a being half so sweet as that girl she had seen this afternoon.
Then she heard her mother open the sitting-room door and call her. It was time to get their simple supper ready.
"In a minute!" she called back. "I"m changing my dress." And she jerked at the hooks of her blue taffeta "jumper dress" with uncareful haste; bathed her face in cold water; put on her dark red serge which had been "good" last year; and went down-stairs to help her mother.
She could see it all as she went--all she was to do. There was the threadbare blanket they used for a silence cloth, and the table-cloth with the red stain by Johnny"s place where he had spilled cranberry jelly the night before last, when the cloth was "span clean." There were the places to set, as always, with the same old dishes and the same old knives and forks; and with the mechanical precision born of long practice she would rightly place, without half looking at them, the various napkins each in its slightly different wooden ring. The utmost variety that she could hope for would be hot gingerbread instead of the last of Sunday"s layer-cake, and maybe frizzled beef, since they had finished Sunday"s roast in a meat pie this noon.
"I didn"t hear you come in," said her mother as Mary Alice opened the sitting-room door, "and I was listening for you."
"I went right up-stairs to change my things," said Mary Alice, hoping that would end the matter.
"That"s what I knew you must have done when it got to be six o"clock and I didn"t hear you. I could hardly wait for you to come. I"ve such a surprise for you."
Mary Alice could hardly believe her ears. "A surprise?" she echoed, incredulously.
"Yes. I got a letter this afternoon from your dear G.o.dmother."
"Oh!" Mary Alice"s tone said plainly: Is that all? She had her own opinion of her G.o.dmother, whom she had not seen since she was a small child, and it was not an enthusiastic one. Her name--which she hated--was her G.o.dmother"s name. And aside from that, all she had ever got from her G.o.dmother was an occasional letter and, on Christmas and birthdays, a handkerchief or turnover collar or some other such trifle as could come in an envelope from Europe where her G.o.dmother lived.
Even in the matter of a G.o.dmother, it seemed, it was Mary Alice"s luck to have one without any of the fairy powers. For although Mary Alice"s mother had dearly loved, in her girlhood, that friend for whom she had called her first baby, she had always to admit, to Mary Alice"s eager questioning, that the friend was neither beautiful nor rich nor gifted.
She was a "spinster person" and years ago some well-to-do friend had taken her abroad for company. And there she had stayed; while the friend of her girlhood, whose baby was called for her, heard from her but desultorily.
"Your G.o.dmother has come back," said Mary Alice"s mother, her voice trembling with excitement; "she"s in New York. And she wants you to come and see her."
For a moment, visions swam before Mary Alice"s eyes. Then, "How kind of her!" she said, bitterly; and turned away.
Her mother understood. "She"s sent a check!" she cried, waving it.
After that, until Mary Alice went, it was nothing but talk of clothes and other ways and means. Just what the present circ.u.mstances of G.o.dmother were, they could not even conjecture; but they were probably not very different than before, or she would have said something about them. And the check she sent covered travelling expenses only. Nor did she write: Never mind about clothes; we will take care of those when she gets here.
"I haven"t the least idea what kind of a time you"ll have," Mary Alice"s mother said, "but you mustn"t expect many parties or much young society. Your G.o.dmother has been abroad so long, she can"t have many acquaintances in this country now. But you"ll see New York--the crowds and the shops and the great hotels and the places of historic interest.
And even if you don"t meet many people, you"ll probably have a very interesting time."
"I don"t care about people, anyway," returned Mary Alice.
Her mother looked distressed. "I wouldn"t say that, if I were you,"
she advised. "Because you _want_ to care about people--you _must_!
Sights are beguiling, but they"re never satisfying. We all have to depend on people for our happiness--for love."
"Then I"ll never be happy, I guess," said Mary Alice.
"I"m afraid, sometimes, that you"ve started out not to be," her mother answered, gravely, "but we"ll hope for the best."
II
YOUR OWN IS WAITING
Mary Alice dreaded to meet her G.o.dmother. The excitement of getting away was all very well. But once she was alone in the Pullman, and the friendly faces on the station platform were left behind, she began to think apprehensively of what she was going to. She was sure to feel "strange" with her G.o.dmother, and there was at least a pretty good chance that she might actually dislike her. Also, there was every reason to doubt if her G.o.dmother would like Mary Alice. Mary Alice had several times met persons who had "been to Europe," and she had never liked them; their conversation was all about things she did not know, and larded with phrases she could not understand. Those years in Europe made her doubly dread her G.o.dmother.
But the minute she saw her G.o.dmother at the Grand Central Station, she liked her; and before they had got home, in the Fourth Avenue car, she liked her very much; and when she lay dozing off to sleep, that first night in New York, she was blissfully conscious that she loved her G.o.dmother.
G.o.dmother lived in an apartment in Gramercy Park. It was an old-fashioned apartment, occupying one floor of what had once been a handsome dwelling of the tall "chimney" type common in New York. All around the Square were the homes of notable persons, and clubs frequented by famous men. G.o.dmother was to point these out in the morning; but this evening, before dinner was served, while she and Mary Alice were standing in the window of her charming drawing-room, she showed which was The Players, and indicated the windows of the room where Edwin Booth died. It seemed that she had known Edwin Booth quite well when she was a girl, and had some beautiful stories of his kindness and his shyness to tell.
Mary Alice was surprised and delighted, and she looked over at the windows with eager, shining eyes. "He must have been wonderful to know," she said. "Do you suppose there are many other great people like that?"
"A good many, I should say," her G.o.dmother replied. And as they sat at dinner, served by G.o.dmother"s neat maid-of-all-work, it "kind o" came out," as Mary Alice would have said, how many delightful people G.o.dmother had counted among her friends.
"You"ve had a beautiful time, all your life, haven"t you?" Mary Alice commented admiringly, when they were back in the cozy drawing-room and G.o.dmother was serving coffee from the copper percolator.