Читать книгу Bread - Charles G. Norris - Страница 17

Jeannette drank deeply of satisfaction in being a wage-earner. She walked the streets of the city with a buoyant tread; she gazed with pride and affection into the eyes of other working girls she passed; she was self-supporting like them; she had something in common with each and every one of them; there was a great bond that drew them all together.

But while she felt thus affectionately sympathetic to these girls in the mass, no one of them drew the line of social distinction more rigidly, even more cruelly than did she, herself. She felt she was the superior of the vast majority of them, and the equal of the best. She might not be earning the salary perhaps some of them did who were private secretaries, but she was confident that she would. Her experience with stenography confirmed this self-confidence. With three weeks of actual practice the trick, the knack, the knowledge,—whatever it was,—had come to her of a sudden. Now she could sweep her pencil across the page of her note-book, leaving in its wake an easy string of curves, dots and dashes, setting them down automatically, keeping pace with even the swiftest of young Beardsley’s sentences. Nothing could stop her progress in the business world; she loved being of it, revelled in its atmosphere, realizing that she was cleverer than most men, shrewder, quicker, with the additional advantage of unerring intuition.

This new-born ambition told her to keep herself aloof from other working girls. Not that she had any inclination to associate with them; they offended her,—not only those in the office but the giggling, simpering girls she saw on the street, who were obviously of the same class, teetering along on ridiculously high heels, wearing imitation furs, and building their hair into enormous bulging pompadours. They were the kind who did not leave the offices where they worked at the noon hour but gathered in groups to eat their lunches out of cardboard boxes and left a litter of crumbs on the floor; they were the kind who crowded Childs’ restaurant, adding their shrill voices and shrieks to the deafening clatter of banging crockery.

Jeannette, feeling that it was a working girl’s privilege to become an habitué of Childs’, eagerly entered one of these restaurants at a noon hour during the early days of her employment. Accustomed as she had become to the din of an office, the noise in the eating place did not distress her. But she shrank from rubbing elbows with neighbors whose manner of feeding themselves horrified her. A study of the price card and an estimate of what she could buy for fifteen cents, the amount she decided she might properly allow herself for lunches, completed her dissatisfaction with the restaurant and similar places. She decided to go without lunch and to spend the leisure time of her noon-hour wandering up and down Fifth Avenue and Broadway, looking into shop windows,—- Lord & Taylor’s, Arnold Constable’s and even Tiffany’s on Union Square,—and in making tours of inspection through the aisles of Siegel-Cooper’s mammoth establishment on Sixth Avenue.

It was in the rotunda of this gigantic store, where stood a great golden symbolic figure of a laurel-crowned woman, that there was a large circular candy counter and soda fountain, and here the girl discovered one might get coffee, creamed and sugared, and served in a neat little flowered china cup, and two saltine crackers on the edge of the saucer, for a nickel. In time, this came to constitute her daily lunch. She could stand at the counter, sipping her drink, and nibbling the crackers at her ease, feeling inconspicuous and comfortable, presenting, she realized, merely the appearance of a lady shopper, who had taken a moment from her purchasing for a bit of refreshment.

The nourishment, slight as it was, proved sufficient. On the days she had gone lunchless, she had developed headaches late in the afternoon, but the coffee and crackers, she found, were enough to sustain her from a seven o’clock breakfast to dinner at six-thirty. A nickel for lunch, a dime for carfare—sometimes she walked downtown—took less than a dollar out of her weekly wage. That left fourteen dollars to spend as she liked. She gave her mother nine and kept five for clothes. Five dollars a week for new clothes! Her heart never failed to leap with joy at the thought. Five dollars a week to save or to spend for whatever she fancied! Oh, life was too wonderful! Just to exist these days and to plan how she would dress herself, and what else she would do with her earnings, filled her cup of joy to the brim.

Her little mother protested vehemently when she put nine dollars in crisp bills into her hand at the end of the first week of work.

“Oh—dearie! What’s this? ... What’s all this money for?”

“It’s what I’m going to give you every week, Mama.”

Mrs. Sturgis for a moment was speechless, gazing with wide eyes into her daughter’s smiling face. She wouldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t hear of such a thing. It was the child’s own money that she had earned herself and not one cent of it should go for any old stupid bills or household expenses. She shook her head until her round fat cheeks trembled like cupped jelly.

But Jeannette had her way, as she knew, and her mother knew, and admiring, exclaiming Alice knew she would from the first. That same evening, after the pots and pans and the supper dishes had been washed, Mrs. Sturgis established herself under the light at the dining-room table with the canvas-covered ledger before her and began to figure. Thirty-six dollars a month! Thirty-six dollars a month! Six times six? That was ...? Why, they’d almost be out of debt in six months! And they wouldn’t need to fall behind a cent during summer! It was wonderful! It was too—too wonderful! Tears filmed Mrs. Sturgis’ bright blue eyes; her glasses fogged so that she had to take them off and wipe them. She didn’t deserve such daughters! No woman ever had better girls!

They got laughing happily, excitedly over this, an hysterical sob threatening each. They kissed each other, the girls kneeling by their mother’s chair, their arms around one another, and clung together. And then Alice said she had half a mind to go to work, too, and do her share.

But there was an immediate outcry at this from both her mother and sister. What nonsense! What a foolish idea! She mustn’t think of such a thing! Just because Jeannette had given up her schooling and gone out into the world was no reason why both sisters should do it. There was not the slightest necessity. Alice’s place was at school and at home. Some one had to run the house; that was her contribution. She was fitted for it in every way: she was domestic, she liked to cook and she liked to clean.

A still more convincing argument that persuaded apologetic Alice that indeed she was quite wrong, and her mother and sister were entirely right, was voiced by Jeannette. Alice had much too retiring a nature to be a success in business. Assurance, self-assertiveness, even boldness were required, and Alice had none of these qualities. This was undeniably true; they all agreed to it. It seemed to be the last word on the matter; the topic was dismissed. Mrs. Sturgis went back to figuring on her bills; Jeannette to speculating about Roy Beardsley as she darned a tear in an old shirtwaist.

“I’ve often wondered,” ventured Alice after a considerable pause, “just what I should do,—how I could support myself if both of you happened to die. I mean—well, if Jeannette should go off somewhere,—to Europe, maybe,—and Mother should get sick, and I should have to....”

Her voice trailed off into silence before the astonished looks turned upon her.

“Well, upon my word ...” began Jeannette.

“Why, Alice dearie, what’s got into you?”

“You’re going to kill us both off,—is that it? I’m to run away and leave Mother sick on your hands?”

“I mean—well, I meant——” struggled the confused Alice.

“Dearie,” said her mother, “you won’t have to worry about the future. Mama’ll take care of you until some nice worthy young man comes along to claim you for his own.”

“You’ll be married, Allie dear, long before I will. You’re just the kind rich men fall madly in love with.”

“Oh, hush, Janny! ... please.”

But her sister’s thoughts were already upon a more engaging matter. She was busy once again with Roy Beardsley.