Читать книгу Bread - Charles G. Norris - Страница 11

Jeannette found her mother sitting up for her when she returned a little after twelve. Mrs. Sturgis was engaged in writing out bills for her lessons which she would mail on the last day of the month. The old canvas-covered ledger with its criss-crossed pages, its erasures and torn edges in which she kept her accounts was a familiar sight in her hands. She was forever turning its thumbed and ink-stained leaves, studying old and new entries, making half-finished calculations in the margins or blank spaces. She sat now in the unbecoming flannelette gown she wore at night, her thin hair in two skimpy pig-tails on either side of her neck, a tattered knitted shawl of a murderous red about her shoulders, and a comforter across her knees. In the yellow light of the hissing gas above her head, she appeared haggard and old, with dark pockets underneath her scant eyebrows and even gaunt hollows in the little cheeks that bulged plumply and bravely during the day above her tight lace collars.

“Well,—dear-ie!” Bright animation struggled into the mother’s face, and her voice at once was all eagerness and interest. “Did you have a good time? ... Tell me about it.”

Immediately she detected something was amiss. There was none of the gay exhilaration and youthful exuberance in her daughter’s manner, she had confidently expected. One searching glance into the glittering dark eyes, as the girl stooped to kiss her, told her Jeannette was fighting tears, struggling to control a burst of pent-up feeling.

“Why, dearie! What’s the matter? ... Tell me.”

“Oh——!” There was young fury in the exclamation. Jeannette flung herself into a chair and buried her face in her hands, plunging her finger-tips deep into her thick coils of black hair. For several minutes she would not answer her mother’s anxious inquiries.

“Wasn’t Mr. Najarian nice to you? Didn’t he look after you? Didn’t you have a good time? Tell Mama,” Mrs. Sturgis persisted.

“Oh, yes,—he was very nice, ... yes, he took good care of me,—and Rosa did, too.”

“Then what is it, dearie? What happened? Mama wants to know.”

Jeannette drew a long breath and got brusquely to her feet.

“Oh, it’s this!” she burst out, striking the gown she wore with contemptuous fingers. “It’s these miserable things I have to wear! There wasn’t a girl there, to-night,—not even one,—that wasn’t better dressed. I was a laughing-stock among them! ... Oh, I know I was, I know I was! ... They all felt sorry for me: a poor little neighbor of Dikron Najarian’s on whom he had taken pity and whom he had asked to a dance! ... Oh! I can’t and won’t stand it, Mama.”

Tears suddenly choked her but she fought them down and stilled her mother’s rush of expostulations.

“No—no, Mama! ... It’s nobody’s fault. You work your fingers to the bone for Allie and me; you work from daylight till dark to keep us in school and in idleness. I’m not going to let you do it any longer.... No, Mama, I’m not going to let things go on as they are. I needed some experience like to-night’s to make me wake up.”

“What experience? Don’t talk so wild, baby.”

“Finding out for myself I was the shabbiest dressed girl in the room! There were a lot of other girls there,—really nice girls. I didn’t expect it. I suppose I thought I wouldn’t find any American girls like myself at an Armenian dance. I don’t know what I thought! ... But there were only a few like Rosa and Dikron, and all the other girls were beautifully dressed.”

Jeannette broke off and began to blink hard for self-control. Her mother, her face twisted with sympathy and distress, could only pat her hand and murmur soothingly over and over: “Dearie—my poor dearie—my dearie-girl——”

“I saw one old lady sizing me up,” Jeannette went on presently. “I could see right into her brain and I knew every thought she was thinking. She looked me over from my feet to my hair and from my hair to my feet. There wasn’t a thing wrong or right with me that that old cat missed! She didn’t mean it unkindly; she was merely interested in noting how shabby I was.... And Mama,—it was a revelation to me! I could just see ahead into the years that are coming, and I could see that that was to be my fate always wherever I went: to be shabbily dressed and be pitied.”

“Now—now, dearie,—don’t take on so. Mama will work hard; we’ll save——”

“But that’s just what I won’t have!” Jeannette interrupted passionately. “I’m not going to let you go on slaving for Allie and me, making yourself a drudge.... What’s it all for? Just so Allie and I can marry suitable rich young men! Isn’t that it? Ever since I can remember, I’ve heard you talk about our future husbands and what kind of men they are to be. You’ve been describing to us for years the time when we’ll be going to dances and theatres. Going, yes, but how? Dressed like this? Worn, shabby old clothes? To be pitied by other women? ... No, Mama, I won’t do it. I’d rather stay home with you for the rest of my life and grow up to be an old maid!”

“Oh, Janny, don’t talk so reckless. You take things so seriously, and you’re always imagining the worst side of everything. There are thousands of girls a great deal worse off than you. There are thousands of mothers and fathers and daughters in this city right this minute who are facing just this problem. It’s as old as the hills. But there’s always a way out,—a way that’s right and proper. Don’t let it trouble you, dearie; leave it to Mama; Mama’ll manage.”

“No, Mama, I won’t leave it to you! I’ve got eyes in my head and I see how hard you have to struggle. We’re always behind as it is,—pestered by bills and the tradespeople. Why, this very afternoon we didn’t have a cent in the house,—not even a copper,—and you had to borrow a dime from Mildred Carpenter to buy bread! Just think of it! We didn’t have money enough for bread!”

“But, dearie, I’ve got Miss Loughborough’s check in my purse.”

“Yes, and we owe ten times its amount! ... We’re running steadily behind. I don’t see anything better ahead. It’s going to be this way year after year, always falling a little more and a little more behind, until—until, well—until people won’t trust us any more.”

“Perhaps we could cut down a bit somewheres, Janny.”

“Oh, Mama, don’t talk nonsense! I’m going to work,—that’s all there is about it.”

“Jeannette! ... You can’t! ... You mustn’t!”

“Well, I am just the same. Rosa Najarian is a stenographer with the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and she gets eighteen dollars a week! ... Think of it, Mama! Eighteen dollars a week! She took a ten weeks’ course at the Gerard Commercial School and at the end of that time they got her a job. She didn’t have to wait a week! ... No, I’m not going to High School another day. To-morrow I’m going down to that Commercial School.”

“But, dearie—dearie! You don’t want to be a working girl!”

“You’re a working woman, aren’t you?”

“But, my dear, I had no other choice. I had my girls to bring up, and I’ve grubbed and slaved, as you say, just so my daughters would never have to take positions. I’ve worked hard to make ladies of you, dearie,—and no lady’s a shop-girl.... Oh, I couldn’t bear it! You and Allie shop-girls! ... Janny,—it would finish me.”

“Well, Mama, you don’t feel so awfully about Rosa Najarian—do you? You consider Rosa a lady, don’t you?”

“She’s an Armenian, Jeannette, and I know nothing about Armenians. Besides she is not my daughter. The kind of men I want for husbands to my girls will not be looking for their wives behind shop counters!”

“But, Mama, stenographers don’t work behind counters.”

“Oh, yes, they do.... Anyway it’s the same thing.”

Jeannette felt suddenly too tired to continue the discussion. Her mind began turning over the changes the step she contemplated would occasion. Mrs. Sturgis’ fingers played a nervous tattoo upon her tremulous lips. She glanced apprehensively at her daughter and in that moment realized the girl would have her way.

“Oh, dearie, dearie!” she burst out. “I can’t have you go to work!”

Jeannette knew that no opposition from her mother would alter her purpose. Where her mind was made up, her mother invariably capitulated. It had been so for a long time, and Jeannette, at least, was aware of it. As she foresaw the full measure of her mother’s distress when she put her decision into effect, she came and knelt beside her chair, gathered the tired figure in its absurd flannelette nightgown in her arms and kissed the thin silky hair where it parted and showed the papery white skin of her scalp. Mrs. Sturgis bent her head against her daughter’s shoulder, while the tears trickled down her nose and fell upon the girl’s bare arm. Jeannette murmured consolingly but her mother refused to be comforted, indicating her disapproval by firm little shakes of her head which she managed now and then between watery sniffles.

There were finally many kisses between them and many loving assurances. The girl promised to do nothing without careful consideration, and they would all three discuss the proposition from every angle in the morning. When they had said a last good-night and the girl had gone to her room, Mrs. Sturgis still sat on under the hissing gas jet with the red, torn shawl about her shoulders, the comforter across her knees. The tears dried on her face, and for a long time she stared fixedly before her, her lips moving unconsciously with her thoughts.

The little suite of rooms she had known so intimately for twelve long years grew still; the chill of the dead of night crept in; Jeannette’s light went out. Mrs. Sturgis reached for the canvas-covered ledger on the table beside her and began a rapid calculation of figures on its last page. For a long time she stared at the result, then rose deliberately, and went into her room. There she cautiously pulled an old trunk from the wall, unlocked its lid, raised a dilapidated tray, and knelt down. In the bottom was an old papier-maché box, battered and scratched, with rubbed corners. She opened this and began carefully to examine its contents. There was the old brooch pin Ralph had given her after the first concert they attended together, and there were her mother’s coral earrings and necklace, and the little silver buckles Jeannette had worn on her first baby shoes. There were some other trinkets: a stud, Ralph’s collapsible gold pencil, a French five-franc piece, a scarf-pin from whose setting the stone was missing. Tucked into a faded leather photograph case was a sheaf of folded pawn tickets. That was the way her rings had gone, and the diamond pin, Ralph’s jeweled cuff-links and the gold head of her father’s ebony cane. She picked up the pair of silver buckles and examined them in the palm of her hand; presently she added the gold brooch and the collapsible pencil before she put back the contents of the trunk and locked it. For some moments she stood in the center of her room gently jingling these ornaments together. Then her eye travelled to her bureau; slowly she approached it, and one after another lifted the gold chains she wore during the day. These she disengaged from her eye-glasses and watch, and wrapped them with the buckles and the brooch in a bit of tissue paper pulled from a lower drawer. But still she did not seem satisfied. With the tissue-paper package in her hand, she sat on the edge of her bed, frowning thoughtfully, her fingers slowly tapping her lips. Presently a light came into her eyes. She lit a candle and stole softly through the girls’ rooms, into the great gaunt chamber that was the studio. In one corner was a bookcase, overflowing with old novels, magazines, and battered school-books. It was a higgledy-piggledy collection of years, a library without value save for five substantial volumes of Grove’s Musical Dictionary on a lower shelf. Mrs. Sturgis knelt before these, drew them out one by one, and laid them beside her on the floor. She opened the first volume and read the inscription: “To my ever patient, gentle Henrietta, for five trying years my devoted wife, true friend, and loving companion, from her grateful and affectionate husband, Ralph.” There was the date,—twelve years ago,—and he had died within six months after he had written those words. Her fingers moved to her trembling lips and she frowned darkly.

She closed the book, carried the five volumes to a shelf in a closet near at hand, and tucked them out of sight in a far corner. There was one last business to be performed: the books in the bookcase must be rearranged to fill the vacant place where the dictionary had stood. Mrs. Sturgis was not satisfied until her efforts seemed convincing. At last she picked up her wavering candle and made her way back to her own room. As she got into bed the old onyx clock on the mantel in the dining-room struck three blurred notes upon its tiny harsh gong. Only when darkness had shut down and the night was silent, did tears come to the tired eyes. There was then a blinding rush, and a few quick, strangling sobs. Mrs. Sturgis stifled these and wiped her eyes hardily upon a fold of the rough sheet. She steadied a trembling lip with a firm hand and resolutely turned upon her side to compose herself for sleep.