At Eighth Street she turned west; at Third Avenue she paused, waiting for chance to direct her. Was it not like the maliciousness of fate that in the city whose rarely interrupted reign of joyous sunshine made her call it the city of the Sun her critical turn of chance should have fallen in foul weather?
Evidently fate was resolved on a thorough test of her endurance. In the open square, near the Peter Cooper statue, stood a huge all-night lunch wagon. She moved toward it, for she suddenly felt hungry. It was drawn to the curb; a short flight of ladder steps led to an interior attractive to sight and smell. She halted at the foot of the steps and looked in.
The only occupant was the man in charge. In a white coat he was leaning upon the counter, reading a newspaper which lay flat upon it. His bent head was extensively and roughly thatched with black hair so thick that to draw a comb through it would have been all but impossible. As Susan let down her umbrella and began to ascend, he lifted his head and gave her a full view of a humorous young face, bushy of eyebrows and mustache and darkly stained by his beard, close shaven though it was. He looked like a Spaniard or an Italian, but he was a black Irishman, one of the West coasters who recall in their eyes and coloring the wrecking of the Armada.
"Good morning, lady," said he. "Breakfast or supper?"
"Both," replied Susan. "I"m starved."
The air was gratefully warm in the little restaurant on wheels.
The dominant odor was of hot coffee; but that aroma was carried to a still higher delight by a suggestion of pastry. "The best thing I"ve got," said the restaurant man, "is hot corn beef hash. It"s so good I hate to let any of it go. You can have griddle cakes, too--and coffee, of course."
"Very well," said Susan.
She was ascending upon a wave of reaction from the events of the night. Her headache had gone. The rain beating upon the roof seemed musical to her now, in this warm shelter with its certainty of the food she craved.
The young man was busy at the shiny, compact stove; the odors of the good things she was presently to have grew stronger and stronger, stimulating her hunger, bringing joy to her heart and a smile to her eyes. She wondered at herself. After what she had pa.s.sed through, how could she feel thus happy--yes, positively happy? It seemed to her this was an indication of a lack in her somewhere--of seriousness, of sensibility, of she knew not what. She ought to be ashamed of that lack. But she was not ashamed. She was shedding her troubles like a child--or like a philosopher.
"Do you like hash?" inquired the restaurant man over his shoulder.
"Just as you"re making it," said she. "Dry but not too dry.
Brown but not too brown."
"You don"t think you"d like a poached egg on top of it?"
"Exactly what I want!"
"It isn"t everybody that can poach an egg," said the restaurant man. "And it isn"t every egg that can be poached. Now, my eggs are the real thing. And I can poach "em so you"d think they was done with one of them poaching machines. I don"t have "em with the yellow on a slab of white. I do it so that the white"s all round the yellow, like in the sh.e.l.l. And I keep "em tender, too. Did you say one egg or a pair?"
"Two," said Susan.
The dishes were thick, but clean and whole. The hash--"dry but not too dry, brown but not too brown"--was artistically arranged on its platter, and the two eggs that adorned its top were precisely as he had promised. The coffee, boiled with the milk, was real coffee, too. When the restaurant man had set these things before her, as she sat expectant on a stool, he viewed his handiwork with admiring eyes.
"Delmonico couldn"t beat it," said he. "No, nor Oscar, neither. That"ll take the tired look out of your face, lady, and bring the beauty back."
Susan ate slowly, listening to the music of the beating rain.
It was like an oasis, a restful halt between two stretches of desert journey; she wished to make it as long as possible.
Only those who live exposed to life"s buffetings ever learn to enjoy to the full the great little pleasures of life--the halcyon pauses in the storms--the few bright rays through the break in the clouds, the joy of food after hunger, of a bath after days of privation, of a jest or a smiling face or a kind word or deed after darkness and bitterness and contempt. She saw the restaurant man"s eyes on her, a curious expression in them.
"What"s the matter?" she inquired.
"I was thinking," said he, "how miserable you must have been to be so happy now."
"Oh, I guess none of us has any too easy a time," said she.
"But it"s mighty hard on women. I used to think different, before I had bad luck and got down to tending this lunch wagon.
But now I understand about a lot of things. It"s all very well for comfortable people to talk about what a man or a woman ought to do and oughtn"t to do. But let "em be slammed up against it. They"d sing a different song--wouldn"t they?"
"Quite different," said Susan.
The man waved a griddle spoon. "I tell you, we do what we"ve got to do. Yes--the thieves and--and--all of us. Some"s used for foundations and some for roofing and some for inside fancy work and some for outside wall. And some"s used for the rubbish heap. But all"s used. They do what they"ve got to do.
I was a great hand at worrying what I was going to be used for.
But I don"t bother about it any more." He began to pour the griddle cake dough. "I think I"ll get there, though," said he doggedly, as if he expected to be derided for vanity.
"You will," said Susan.
"I"m twenty-nine. But I"ve been being got ready for something.
They don"t chip away at a stone as they have at me without intending to make some use of it."
"No, indeed," said the girl, hope and faith welling up in her own heart.
"And what"s more, I"ve stood the chipping. I ain"t become rubbish; I"m still a good stone. That"s promising, ain"t it?"
"It"s a sure sign," declared Susan. Sure for herself, no less than for him.
The restaurant man took from under the counter several well-worn schoolbooks. He held them up, looked at Susan and winked. "Good business--eh?"
She laughed and nodded. He put the books back under the counter, finished the cakes and served them. As he gave her more b.u.t.ter he said:
"It ain"t the best b.u.t.ter--not by a long shot. But it"s good--as good as you get on the average farm--or better. Did you ever eat the best b.u.t.ter?"
"I don"t know. I"ve had some that was very good."
"Eighty cents a pound?"
"Mercy, no," exclaimed Susan.
"Awful price, isn"t it? But worth the money--yes, sir! Some time when you"ve got a little change to spare, go get half a pound at one of the swell groceries or dairies. And the best milk, too. Twelve cents a quart. Wait till I get money. I"ll show "em how to live. I was born in a tenement. Never had nothing. Rags to wear, and food one notch above a garbage barrel."
"I know," said Susan.
"But even as a boy I wanted the high-cla.s.s things. It"s wanting the best that makes a man push his way up."
Another customer came--a keeper of a butcher shop, on his way to market. Susan finished the cakes, paid the forty cents and prepared to depart. "I"m looking for a hotel," said she to the restaurant man, "one where they"ll take me in at this time, but one that"s safe not a dive."
"Right across the square there"s a Salvation Army shelter--very good--clean. I Don"t know of any other place for a lady."
"There"s a hotel on the next corner," put in the butcher, suspending the violent smacking and sipping which attended his taking rolls and coffee. "It ain"t neither the one thing nor the other. It"s clean and cheap, and they"ll let you behave if you want to."
"That"s all I ask," said the girl. "Thank you." And she departed, after an exchange of friendly glances with the restaurant man. "I feel lots better," said she.
"It was a good breakfast," replied he.
"That was only part. Good luck!"
"Same to you, lady. Call again. Try my chops."
At the corner the butcher had indicated Susan found the usual Raines Law hotel, adjunct to a saloon and open to all comers, however "transient." But she took the butcher"s word for it, engaged a dollar-and-a-half room from the half-asleep clerk, was shown to it by a colored bellboy who did not bother to wake up. It was a nice little room with barely s.p.a.ce enough for a bed, a bureau, a stationary washstand, a chair and a small radiator. As she undressed by the light of a sad gray dawn, she examined her dress to see how far it needed repair and how far it might be repaired. She had worn away from Forty-third Street her cheapest dress because it happened to be of an inconspicuous blue. It was one of those suits that look fairly well at a glance on the wax figure in the department store window, that lose their bloom as quickly as a country bride, and at the fourth or fifth wearing begin to make frank and sweeping confession of the cheapness of every bit of the material and labor that went into them. These suits are typical of all that poverty compels upon the poor, all that they in their ignorance and inexperience of values accept without complaint, fancying they are getting money"s worth and never dreaming they are more extravagant than the most prodigal of the rich. However, as their poverty gives them no choice, their ignorance saves them from futilities of angry discontent.
Susan had bought this dress because she had to have another dress and could not afford to spend more than twelve dollars, and it had been marked down from twenty-five. She had worn it in fair weather and had contrived to keep it looking pretty well. But this rain had finished it quite. Thereafter, until she could get another dress, she must expect to be cla.s.sed as poor and seedy--therefore, on the way toward deeper poverty--therefore, an object of pity and of prey. If she went into a shop, she would be treated insultingly by the shopgirls, despising her as a poor creature like themselves. If a man approached her, he would calculate upon getting her very cheap because a girl in such a costume could not have been in the habit of receiving any great sum. And if she went with him, he would treat her with far less consideration than if she had been about the same business in smarter attire. She spread the dress on bureau and chair, smoothing it, wiping the mud stains from it. She washed out her stockings at the stationary stand, got them as dry as her remarkably strong hands could wring them, hung them on a rung of the chair near the hot little radiator. She cleaned her boots and overshoes with an old newspaper she found in a drawer, and wet at the washstand. She took her hat to pieces and made it over into something that looked almost fresh enough to be new. Then, ready for bed, she got the office of the hotel on the telephone and left a call for half-past nine o"clock--three hours and a half away. When she was throwing up the window, she glanced into the street.
The rain had once more ceased. Through the gray dimness the men and women, boys and girls, on the way to the factories and shops for the day"s work, were streaming past in funereal procession. Some of the young ones were lively. But the ma.s.s was sullen and dreary. Bodies wrecked or rapidly wrecking by ignorance of hygiene, by the foul air and foul food of the tenements, by the monotonous toil of factory and shop--mindless toil--toil that took away mind and put in its place a distaste for all improvement--toil of the factories that distorted the body and enveloped the soul in sodden stupidity--toil of the shops that meant breathing bad air all day long, meant stooped shoulders and varicose veins in the legs and the arches of the insteps broken down, meant dull eyes, bad skin, female complaints, meant the breeding of desires for the luxury the shops display, the breeding of envy and servility toward those able to buy these luxuries.