Читать книгу Bread - Charles G. Norris - Страница 8

“Get your bread, dearie?” Mrs. Sturgis asked cheerfully as Jeannette came panting into the kitchen and flung her package down upon the table. Her daughter did not answer but dropped into a chair to catch her breath.

Mrs. Sturgis was bustling about, pottering over the gas stove, stirring a saucepan of stewing kidneys, banging shut the oven door after a brief inspection of a browning custard. Alice had just finished setting the table in the dining-room, and now came in, to break the string about the bread and begin to slice it vigorously. Jeannette interestedly observed what they were to have for dinner. It was one of the same old combinations with which she was familiar, and a feeling of weary distaste welled up within her, but a glimpse of her mother’s face checked it.

Mrs. Sturgis invariably wore lace jabots during the day. These were high-collared affairs, reinforced with wires or whalebones, and they fastened firmly around the throat, the lace falling in rich, frothy cascades at the front. They were the only extravagance the hard-working little woman allowed herself, and she justified them on the ground that they were becoming and she must be presentable at the fashionable girls’ school where she was a teacher, and also at Signor Bellini’s studio where she was the paid accompanist. Jeannette and Alice were always mending or ironing these frills, and had become extremely expert at the work. There was a drawer in their mother’s bureau devoted exclusively to her jabots, and her daughters made it their business to see that one of these lacy adornments was always there, dainty and fresh, ready to be put on. Beneath the brave show of lace about her neck and over the round swell of her small compact bosom, there was only her “little old black” or “the Macy blue.” Mrs. Sturgis had no other garments and these two dresses were unrelievedly plain affairs with plain V-shaped necks and plain, untrimmed skirts. The jabots gave the effect of elegance she loved, and she had a habit of flicking the lacy ruffles as she talked, straightening them or tossing them with a careless finger. The final touch of adornment she allowed herself was two fine gold chains about her neck. From the longer was suspended her watch which she carried tucked into the waist-band of her skirt; while the other held her eye-glasses which, when not in use, hung on a hook at her shoulder.

The tight lace collars creased and wrinkled her throat, and made her cheeks bulge slightly over them, giving her face a round full expression. When she was excited and wagged her head, or when she laughed, her fat little cheeks shook like cups of jelly. But as soon as her last pupil had departed for the day, off came the gold chains and the jabot. She was more comfortable without the confining band about her neck though her real reason for laying her lacy ruffles aside was to keep them fresh and unrumpled. Stripped of her frills, her daughters were accustomed to see her in the early mornings, and evenings, with the homely V-shaped garment about her withered neck, her cheeks, lacking the support of the tight collar, sagging loosely. Habit was strong with Mrs. Sturgis. Jeannette and Alice were often amused at seeing their mother still flicking and tossing with an unconscious finger an imaginary frill long after it had been laid aside.

Now as the little woman bent over the stove, her older daughter noted the pendant cheeks criss-crossed with tiny purplish veins, the blue-white wrinkled neck, and the vivid red spots beneath the ears left by the sharp points of wire in the high collar she had just unfastened. There were puffy pockets below her eyes, and even the eyelids were creased with a multitude of tiny wrinkles. Jeannette realized her mother was tired—unusually tired. She remembered, too, that it was Saturday, and on Saturday there were pupils all day long. The girl jumped to her feet, snatched the stirring spoon out of her mother’s hand and pushed her away from the range.

“Get out of here, Mama,” she directed vigorously. “Go in to the table and sit down. Alice and I will put dinner on.... Alice, make Mama go in there and sit down.”

Mrs. Sturgis laughingly protested but she allowed her younger daughter to lead her into the adjoining room where she sank down gratefully in her place at the table.

“Well, lovies, your old mother is pretty tired....” She drew a long breath of contentment and closed her eyes.

The girls poured the kidney stew into an oval dish and carried it and the scalloped tomatoes to the table. There was a hurried running back and forth for a few minutes, and then Jeannette and Alice sat down, hunching their chairs up to the table, and began hungrily to eat. It was the most felicitous, unhurried hour of their day usually, for mother and daughters unconsciously relaxed, their spirits rising with the warm food, and the agreeable companionship which to each was and always had been exquisitely dear.

The dining-room in the daytime was the pleasantest room in the apartment. It and the kitchen overlooked a shabby back-yard, adjoining other shabby back-yards far below, in the midst of which, during summer, a giant locust tree was magnificently in leaf. There were floods of sunshine all afternoon from September to April, and a brief but pleasing view of the Hudson River could be seen between the wall of the house next door and an encroaching cornice of a building on Columbus Avenue. At night there was little in the room to recommend it. The wall-paper was a hideous yellow with acanthus leaves of a more hideous and darker yellow flourishing symmetrically upon it. There was a marble mantelpiece over a fireplace, and in the aperture for the grate a black lacquered iron grilling. Over the table hung a gaselier from the center of which four arms radiated at right angles, supporting globes of milky glass.

Mrs. Sturgis’ bedroom adjoined the dining-room and was separated from it by bumping folding-doors, only opened on occasions when Jeannette and Alice decided their mother’s room needed a thorough cleaning and airing. The latter seemed necessary much oftener than the former for the room had only one small window which, tucked into the corner, gave upon a narrow light-well. It was from this well, which extended clear down to the basement, that the evil smells arose when the Najarians, two flights below, began cooking one of their Armenian feasts.

In the center of the apartment were two dark little chambers occupied by the girls. Neither possessed a window, but the wall separating them was pierced by an opening, fitted with a hinged light of frosted glass which, when hooked back to the ceiling, permitted the necessary ventilation. These boxlike little rooms had to be used as a passageway. The only hall was the public one outside, at one end of which was a back door giving access to the kitchen and the dining-room, and, opposite this, a front one, opening into the large, commodious sitting-room, or studio—as it was dignified by the family—in which Mrs. Sturgis gave her music lessons.

It was this generous front room, with its high ceiling, its big bay window, its alcove ideally proportioned to hold the old grand piano, which had intrigued the little music-teacher twelve years before, when she had moved into the neighborhood after her husband’s death and begun her struggle for a home and livelihood. Whether or not the prospective pupils would be willing to climb the four long flights of stairs necessary to reach this thoroughly satisfactory environment for the dissemination of musical instruction was a question which only time would answer. Mrs. Sturgis had confidently expected that they would and her expectations had been realized. The dollar an hour, which was all she charged, had appealed to the more calculating of their parents; moreover Henrietta Spaulding Sturgis was a pianist of no mean distinction. She was a graduate of the Boston Conservatory, was in charge of the music at Miss Loughborough’s Concentration School for Little Girls on Central Park West, and was the accompanist for Tomaso Bellini, a well-known instructor in voice culture who had a studio in Carnegie Hall. These facts the neighborhood inevitably learned, and that lessons at such a price could be had from a teacher so well equipped was confided by one shrewd mother to another. The stairs were ignored; a little climbing, if taken slowly, never hurt any child!

But while year after year it became more and more advertised that bustling, round-faced, cheerful Mrs. Sturgis did have charge of the music at Miss Loughborough’s school on Tuesdays and Fridays of each week, and did play the accompaniments for the pupils of Signor Bellini at his Carnegie Hall studio on Mondays and Thursdays, no one suspected that sharp Miss Loughborough handed Mrs. Sturgis a check for only twenty-five dollars twice a month and that thrifty Signor Bellini paid but five dollars a day to his accompanist. Wednesdays and Saturdays were left for private lessons at a dollar an hour, and although Mrs. Sturgis could have filled other days of the week with pupils, Miss Loughborough and Signor Bellini represented an income that was certain, while nothing was more uncertain than the little pupils whose parents sent them regularly for a few months and then moved away or summarily discontinued the instruction often without explanation. Jeannette and Alice had urged their mother repeatedly to drop one or the other of her close-handed employers and take on more pupils, but to these entreaties Mrs. Sturgis had shaken her head with firm determination until her round little cheeks trembled.

“No—no, lovies; that may be all very well,—they may be underpaying me,—perhaps they are, but the money’s sure and that’s the comfort. It’s worth much more to me to know that than to earn twice the amount.”

It was the dreary hot summers that Mrs. Sturgis and her daughters dreaded when Miss Loughborough’s school closed its doors and Signor Bellini made his annual pilgrimage to Italy, and the little pupils who had filled the Wednesday and Saturday lesson hours drifted away to the beaches or the mountains. July and August were empty, barren months and against their profitlessness some provision had to be made; a little must be put by during the year to take care of this lean and trying period. But somehow, although Mrs. Sturgis firmly determined at the beginning of each season that never again would she subject her girls to the self-denials, even privations, they had endured during the summer, every year it became harder and harder to save, while each summer brought fresh humiliations and a slimmer purse. Even in the most prosperous seasons the small family was in debt, always a little behind, never wholly caught up, and as time went on, it became evident that each year found them further and further in arrears. They were always harassed by annoying petty accounts. Miss Loughborough’s and Signor Bellini’s money paid the rent and the actual daily food, and when a parent took it into his or her head to send a check for a child’s music, the amount had to be proportioned here and there: so much to the druggist, the dentist and doctor; so much to the steam laundry; so much to the ice company and dairy; so much for gas and fuel.

Emerging from the chrysalis of girlhood, Jeannette and Alice were rapidly becoming young women, with a healthy, normal appetite for pretty clothes and amusement. These were simple enough and might so easily have been gratified, Mrs. Sturgis often sadly thought, if her income would keep but a lagging pace with modestly expanding needs. It required a few extra dollars only each year, but where could she lay her hands on them? When a business expanded and its earnings grew proportionately, an employee’s salary was sure to be raised after a time of faithful service. Mrs. Sturgis did not dare increase the rates she charged for her lessons. She felt she was facing a blank wall; she could conceive of no way whereby she might earn more. Skimping what went on the table was an old recourse to which she and her children were now thoroughly accustomed. She did not see how she could possibly cut down further and still keep her girls properly nourished.