"Oh, yes. We both stayed down in a restaurant, Nellie"s got a place as waiter. That"s the best she could do. The man said I was good-looking and would catch trade. So he made me cashier. I get six dollars a week to Nellie"s three. But it"s a bad place. The men are always slipping notes in my hand when they give me their checks. Then the boss, he"s always bothering around."
"But you don"t have to work hard?"
"From nine till four. We get our lunch free. I pay three dollars on the room and Nellie pays one."
If Howard had not seen many such problems in economics before, he would have been astonished at any one even hoping to be able to get two meals a day, clothing and carfare out of two or three dollars a week. As it was, he only wondered how long a girl who had been used at least to comfort would endure this. "It"s easy for the other girl," he thought, "because she"s used to it. But this one--" and he decided that the "trouble" would begin as soon as her clothing was worn out.
He noticed that she was pulling at the third finger of her right hand where she would have worn rings if she had had any. "You"ve had to p.a.w.n your rings?" he ventured.
She looked at him startled. "Did Nellie tell you?" she asked.
"No," he replied, "I saw that you were missing your rings and suspected the rest."
"Yes; that"s so. I"ve p.a.w.ned all my jewelry except a bracelet. Nellie can"t get along on her three dollars. She eats too much."
"I should think you"d rather be at home."
"As I told you before," she said impatiently, "anything"s better than home. Besides, I"m pretty well off. I go where I please, stay out as late as I please and have all the company I want. At home I"d have to be in bed at ten o"clock."
There was a sound at the front door down in the darkness. The girl started from the chair, listened, then exclaimed: "There she comes now.
And it"s two o"clock!"
Howard took the hint, smiled and said: "Well, good-night. I"ll see you again."
"Good-night," the girl answered absently.
From his room Howard heard Nellie coming up the stairs. "You"re a nice one!" came in "Miss Black-Hair"s" indignant voice, "Where have you been?
Where did you and Jack go?"
The answer came in a sob--"Oh, Alice, you"ll never forgive me!"
Their door closed upon the two girls but Howard could still hear Nellie"s voice tearful, pleading. There was the sound of some one falling heavily upon the lounge, then sobs and cries of "Oh! Oh!"
As Howard went into his bedroom, he could hear the voices still more plainly through the thin wall. He caught the words only once. "Miss Black-Hair," her voice shaking with anger, exclaimed: "Nellie Baker, you are a wicked girl, I shall go away."
V.
ALICE.
Several nights later Howard came upon Alice at the front door, where a young man was detaining her in a lingering good-bye. Another night as he was pa.s.sing her room he saw her stretched upon the floor, her head supported by her elbows and an open book in front of her. She looked so childlike that Howard paused and said: "What is it--a fairy story?"
"No, it"s a love story," she replied, just glancing at him with a faint smile and showing that she did not wish to be interrupted. The same night as he was going to bed he heard the angry voices of the two girls.
A week later, toward the end of July, he found Alice sitting on the front stoop, when he came from dinner. She was obviously in the depths of the "blues." Her eyes, the droop of the corners of her mouth, even the colour of her skin indicated anxiety and depression. She looked so forlorn that he said gently: "Wouldn"t you like to walk in the Square?"
She rose at once. "Yes, I guess so." They crossed to the green. She was wearing the pale-blue gown and it fitted her well. Neither in the gown nor in the big hat with its coquettish flowers nodding over the brim was there much of fashion. But there was a certain distinction in her walk and her manner of wearing her clothes; and to a pretty face and a graceful form was added the charm of youth, magnetic youth.
"Do you want to walk?" she asked, la.s.situde in her voice.
"No, let us sit," he said, and they went to a bench near the arch. It was twilight. The children were still romping and shouting. Many fat elderly women--mothers and grandmothers--were solemnly marching about, talking in fat, elderly voices.
"You have the blues?" asked Howard, thinking it might make her feel better to talk of her troubles. "If I were your doctor, I should prescribe a series of good cries."
"I don"t cry," said the girl. "Sometimes I wish I could. Nellie cries and gets over things. I feel awful inside and sick and my eyes burn. But I can"t cry."
"You"re too young for that."
"Oh, in some ways I"m young; again, I"m not. I hate everybody this evening."
"What"s the matter? Has Nellie deserted you?"
"She? Not much. I had to tell her to go"--this with a joyless little laugh--"she quit work and wouldn"t behave herself. So now I"m going on alone."
"And you won"t go home?"
"Never in the world," she said with almost fierce energy; then some thought made her laugh in the same way as before. Howard decided that she had not told him everything about her home life, even though she had rattled on as if there were nothing to conceal. He sat watching her, she looking straight before her, her small bare hands clasped in her lap.
He was pitying her keenly--this child, at once stunted and abnormally developed, this stray from one of the cla.s.ses that keeps their women sheltered; and here she was adrift, without any of those resources of experience which a.s.sist the girls of the tenements.
Her features were small, sensitive, regular. Her eyes were brown with lines of reddish gold raying from the pupils. Her chin and mouth were firm enough, yet suggested weakness through the pa.s.sions. Her clear skin had the glow of youth and health upon its smooth surface. She was certainly beautiful and she certainly had magnetism.
"What do you think is going to become of you?" he asked.
"I don"t know," she said, after a deep sigh. "A girl doesn"t have a fair chance. I don"t seem to be able to have any fun without getting into trouble. I don"t know what to think. It"s all so black. I wish I was dead."
Her dreary tone put the deepest pathos into her words. Howard had seen despondency in youth before--had felt it himself. But there had always been a certain lightness in it. Here was a mere child who evidently thought, and thought with reason, that there was no hope for her; and her despair was not a pa.s.sing cloud or storm, but a settled conviction.
"There doesn"t seem to be any chance for a young girl," she repeated as if that phrase summed up all that was weighing upon her. And Howard feared that she, was right. Even the readiest of all commodities, advice, failed him. "What can she do?" he thought. "If she has no home, worth speaking of"--then he went on aloud:
"Haven"t you friends?"
She laughed again with that slight moving of the lips and with eyes mirthless. "Who wants me for a friend? n.o.body"d think I was respectable.
And I guess I"m not so very. There"s Nellie and her--friends. Oh, the girls join in with the men to drag other girls down. But I won"t do that. I don"t care what becomes of me--except that."
"Why?" he asked, curious for her explanation of this aversion.
"I don"t know why," she replied. "There doesn"t seem to be any good reason. I"ve thought I would several times. And then--well, I just couldn"t."
Howard turned the subject and tried to draw her out of this mood. They sat there for several hours and became well acquainted. He found that she had an intelligent way of looking at things, that she observed closely, and that she appreciated and understood far more than he had expected.
It was the beginning of a series of evenings spent together. He took her with him on many of his a.s.signments and they often dined together at "Le Chat Noir" or the "Restaurant de Paris," or "The Manhattan" over in Second Avenue. Late in June she bought a new gown--a pale-grey with ribbons and hat to match. Howard was amused at the anxious expression in her gold-brown eyes as she waited for his opinion. And when he said: "Well, well, I never saw you look so pretty," she looked much prettier with a slight colour rising to tint the usual pallor of her cheeks.
One Sunday he came home in the afternoon and found her helping the maid at straightening his rooms. As he lay on the lounge smoking he watched her lazily. She handled his books with a great deal of awe. She opened one of them and sat on the floor in the childlike way she often had. She read several sentences aloud. It was a tangle of technical words on the subject of political economy.
"What do you have such stupid things around for?" she said, smiling and rising. She began to arrange the books and papers on the table. He was looking at her but thinking of something else when he became conscious that she had got suddenly white to the lips. He jumped to his feet.
"What"s the matter?" he asked, "are you going to faint?"
Her eyes were shining as with fever out of a ghostly face. Her lips trembled as she answered: "Oh it"s nothing. I do this often." She went slowly into the back room where the maid was. In a few minutes she returned, apparently as usual. She flitted about uneasily, taking up now one thing, now another in a purposeless, nervous way.