CHAPTER VIII
CINDERELLA
It wasn"t a pleasant house, being of a dingy, bilious-yellow complexion, with narrow window eyes, and a mean slit of a doorway for a mouth; not sinister, but common, stupid, and uninteresting. If one should happen to be a house-psychologist, one would know that behind the Nottingham lace curtains looped back with soiled red ribbons, was all the tawdry, horrible junk that clutters such houses, even as mental junk clutters the minds of the people who have to live in them. One knew that the people who dwelt in that house didn"t know how to live, how to think, or how to cook; and that if by any chance a larger life, a real thought, or a bit of good cooking confronted them, they would probably reject it with suspicion.
The elderly gentleman in white linen who made acquaintance with this particular house on a very sultry noon in early August, hesitated before he rang the bell. He glanced over his shoulder at the hot, dusty street where a swarm of hot, dusty children were shrilling and shrieking, or staring at him round-eyed, dived into his pockets, fished up a handful of small change, whistled to insure their greater attention, and flung the coin among them. While they were s.n.a.t.c.hing at the money like a flock of pigeons over a handful of grain, the elderly gentleman rang the bell. He could hear it jangling through the house, but it brought no immediate response.
After a decent interval he rang again. This time the door was jerked open, and a girl in a bungalow ap.r.o.n, upon which she was wiping her hands, confronted him. She was a very young girl, a very hot, tired, perspiring, and sullen girl, fresh from a broiling kitchen and a red-hot stove.
She looked at the caller suspiciously, her glance racing over his linen suit, his white shoes, the Panama hat in his hand. She was puzzled, for plainly this wasn"t the usual applicant for board and lodging. Perhaps, then, he was a successful house-to-house agent for some indispensable necessity--say an ice-pick that would pull nails, open a can, and peel potatoes. Or maybe a religious book agent. She rather suspected him of wanting to sell her Biblical Prophecies Elucidated by a Chicago Seer, or something like that. Or, stay: perhaps he was a church scout sent out to round up stray souls.
Whatever he might be, she was bitterly resentful of having been taken from the thick of her work to answer his ring. She wasn"t interested in her soul, her hot and tired body being a much more immediate concern. Heaven is far off, and h.e.l.l has no terrors and less interest for a girl immured in a red-hot kitchen in a Middle Western town in the dog-days.
"If it"s a Bible, we got one. If it"s sewin"-machines, we ain"t, but don"t. If it"s savin" our souls, we belong to church reg"lar an"
ain"t interested. If it"s explainin" G.o.d, nothin" doin"! An" if it"s tack-pullers with nail-files an" corkscrews on "em, you can save your breath," said the girl rapidly, in a heated voice, and with a half-dry hand on the door-k.n.o.b.
Mr. Chadwick Champneys"s long, drooping mustache came up under his nose, and his bushy eyebrows twitched.
"I am not trying to sell anything," he said hurriedly, in order to prevent her from shutting the door in his face, which was her evident intention.
She said impatiently: "If you"re collectin", this ain"t our day for payin", an" you got to call again. Come next week, on Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday or Thursday or Friday or Sattiday." The door began to close.
He inserted a desperate foot.
"I wish to see Miss Simms--Miss Anne, or Nancy Simms. My information is that she lives in this house. I should have stated my errand at once, had I been allowed to do so." He looked at the girl reprovingly.
Before she could reply, a female voice from a back region rose stridently:
"Nancy! You Nancy! What in creation you mean, ga.s.sin" this hour o"
day when them biscuits is burnin" up in the oven? Send that feller about his business, whatever it is, and you come tend to yours!"
The girl hesitated, and frowned.
"If you come to see Anne Simms, same as Nancy Simms, I"m her--I mean, she"s me," said she, hurriedly. "I got no time to talk with you now, Mister, but you can wait in the parlor until I dish up dinner, and whilst they"re eatin" I"ll have time to run up and see what you want. Is it partic"ler?"
"Very."
"Come on in an" wait, then."
"Nancy! You want I should come up there after you? Oh, my stars, an"
that girl _knows_ how partic"ler Poppa is about his biscuits; they gotta be jest so or he won"t look at "em, an" her ga.s.sin" and him likely to raise the roof!" screamed the voice.
"Oh, shut up! I"m comin"," bawled the girl in reply. "You better sit over there by the winder, Mister," she told her visitor, hastily.
"There"s a breeze there, maybe. You"ll find to-day"s paper an" a fan on the table." She vanished, and he could hear her running kitchenward, and the shrieking voice subsiding into a whine.
Mr. Chadwick Champneys slumped limply into a chair. Everything he looked at added to his sense of astonishment and unease.
The outside of the house hadn"t lied: the inside matched it. Mr.
Champneys found himself staring and being stared at by the usual crayon portraits of defunct members of the family,--at least he hoped they were defunct,--the man with a long mule face and neck whiskers; and opposite him his spouse, with her hair worn like mustard-plasters on the skull. "Male and female created He them."
Placed so that you had to see it the moment you entered the door, on a white-and-gold easel draped with a silkoline scarf trimmed with pink crocheted wheels, was a virulently colored landscape with a house of unknown architecture in the foreground, and mother-of-pearl puddles outside the gate. Mr. Champneys studied those mother-of-pearl puddles gravely. They hurt his feelings. So did the ornate golden-oak parlor set upholstered in red plush; and the rug on the floor, in which colors fought like Kilkenny cats; and a pink vase with large purple plums bunched on it; and the figured wall-paper, and the unclean lace curtains, and the mantel loaded with sorry plunder, and the clothespin b.u.t.terflies, the tissue-paper parasols, and the cheap fans tacked to the walls. It was a hot and dusty room. The smell of bad cooking, of countless miserable meals eaten by men whose digestion they would ruin, clung to it and would not be gainsaid.
Mr. Champneys thought the best thing that could happen to such houses would be a fire beginning in the cellar and ending at the roof.
His mind went back to another house--an old white house in South Carolina, set in s.p.a.cious grounds, with high-ceilinged, cool, large rooms filled with fine old furniture, a few pictures, glimpses of bra.s.s and silver, large windows opening upon lawns and trees and shrubs and flowers, a flash of blue river, a vista of green marshes melting into the cobalt sky. A stately, lovely, leisurely old house, typifying the stately, leisurely life that had called it into being; both gone irrevocably into the past. He sighed.
He looked about this atrocious room, and his jaw hardened. This, for Milly"s niece! Poor girl, poor friendless girl! He had known, of course, that the girl was poor. He and Milly had been poor, too.
But, oh, never like this! This was being poor sordidly, vulgarly.
He had seen and suffered enough in his time to realize how soul-murdering this environment might be to one who knew nothing better. He himself had had the memory of the old house in which he was born, and of low-voiced, gentle-mannered men and women; he had had his fine traditions to which to hold fast. He reflected that he would have a great deal to make up for to Nancy Simms!
The noon whistle had blown. People had begun to come in, men whose first movement on entering was to peel off collars and coats. They barely glanced at the quiet, white-clad figure as they pa.s.sed the open parlor door, but stampeded for the bas.e.m.e.nt dining-room. Mr.
Champneys could hear the sc.r.a.ping of chairs, the rattling of dishes, the hum of loud conversation; then the steady clatter of knives and forks, and a dull, subdued murmur. Dinner was in full swing, a dinner of which boiled cabbage must have formed the _piece de resistance_.
Came a hurried footstep, and Nancy Simms entered the room. He was sitting with his back to the window; she sank into the chair fronting him, so that the light fell full upon her.
She was strong and well-muscled, as one could see under the enveloping ap.r.o.n. Her hands bore the marks of dish-washing and clothes-washing and floor-scrubbing and sweeping. They were shapely enough hands, even if red and calloused. The foot in the worn, down-at-the-heels shoe was a good foot, with a fine arch; and the throat rising from the checked gingham ap.r.o.n was full and strong; her face was prettily shaped, if one was observant enough to notice that detail.
She was not pretty; not even pleasant. Her discontented face was liberally peppered with the sort of freckles that accompany red and rebellious hair; her mouth was hard, the lips pressed tightly together. Under dark, uncared-for eyebrows were grayish-green eyes, their expression made unfriendly by her habit of narrowing them. She had good teeth and a round chin, and her nose would have pa.s.sed muster anywhere, save for the fact that it, too, was freckled.
Unfortunately, one didn"t have time to admire her good points; one said at first sight of her, "Good heavens, what a disagreeable girl!" And then: "Bless me, I"ve _never_ seen so many perfectly unnecessary freckles and so much fighting-red hair on one girl!"
"You"ll hafta hurry," she admonished him, fanning herself vigorously with a folded newspaper. She wiped her perspiring face on her arm, tilted back her chair, revealing undarned stockings, and waited for him to explain himself.
He handed her his card, and at the name Champneys a faint interest showed in her face.
"I had a aunt married a feller by that name," she volunteered. "Was you wishin" to find out somethin" about him or Aunt Milly? Because if so I don"t know nothin" about him, nor yet her. I never set eyes on neither of "em."
"I am your Aunt Milly"s husband," he told her. "And I have come to find out something about _you_."
"It"s took you a long time to find your way, ain"t it?" Her manner was not cordial.
"We will waive that," said he, composedly. "I _am_ here, and my visit concerns yourself. To begin with, do you like living with your mother"s step-sister? That is her relationship to your mother and to my wife, I believe?"
"No: I don"t like livin" with no step-aunt, though she ain"t that, bein" further off: an" no real kin. If you want to know why I don"t like it, it"s all work an" no pay, that"s why. First off, when I was too little to do anything else, I minded the children an" run errands an" washed doilies an" towels an" stockin"s an" sich, an"
set table an" cleared table an" washed dishes an" made beds an"
emptied slops. Then I helped cook. Now I cook. Along with plenty other things. How"d you like it yourself?" Her tone was suddenly fierce. The fierceness of a strong and young creature in galling captivity.
His wandering life had given him an insight into such conditions and situations; and once or twice he had seen orphan children raised in homes where they "helped out." Chattel slavery is easier by comparison and pleasanter in reality.
Before he could answer, "Nan-cy! You Nan-cy! Come on here an" set them pie-plates! My Gawd! that girl"s goin" to run me ravin" crazy, tryin" to keep her on her job! Nancy!"
Nancy looked at Mr. Champneys speculatively.
"Is what you got to say worth me tellin" her to set them plates herself?" she asked.
"Well worth it," said Mr. Champneys, emphatically.
She jumped for the door with cat-like quickness. Also, she lifted her voice with cat-like ferocity.
"I"m busy! I can"t co-ome. Set "em yourself!"
"Can"t come! What you doin"?" shrieked the other voice.