Chapter THREE: I

Behold Mrs. Kennedy answering an advertisement for a janitress, far over on the lower West Side, in the Chelsea district.

"I have the best of references," she told Mr. Steinberg, the landlord. "I’ve been where I am now for twelve years, and no complaints."

"Den vy do you leaf?"

"I don’t like living ’way up there," she answered calmly. "I’ve got more friends down around here. And my married daughter’s coming to live with me, and she’d rather be down here. She’s real lonely, now her husband’s gone to the war."

This was her ruse to preserve that respectability which no one valued or even observed.

She got the place, because of her decency and her references. There was nothing to be said against her in any quarter. What is more, Mr. Steinberg felt from the look of her that she was a hard worker. Like her other place, it was a "cold water" flat; there was a man to look after the furnace, but everything else was to be done by her, for her rent and an incredibly small stipend. She agreed. Her sole asset was her readiness to undertake hard and unremitting labour. There was not a thing which she could do better than the average woman, so that her boast, her credit, must be that she did _more_.

"My married daughter’s thinking of taking in sewing," she said. "Maybe you could put a little work in her way."

"Ve’ll see," said Mr. Steinberg, "later on, maybe."

Now that she had secured a refuge, where Angelica might assume respectability among complete strangers, the poor woman’s next preoccupation was to find some way of having her pitiful furniture moved. She went about for days, trying to drive bargains with any one who possessed a cart; but war-time prices and conditions prevailed, and no one cared to accept so unprofitable a task.

In the end she found an Italian who sold ice, coal, and wood in a near-by cellar, and who agreed to do what she wished. She paid him at least six visits, trying to persuade him to take less money, or to promise great care with her scanty belongings, or to reassure herself that he really understood the new address. In order to pay him and to settle her few little bills, she was obliged to sell her parlour furniture, blue lamp and all.

Winter was beginning to set in when they moved. It was a raw and bitter day, blankly gray overhead. Mrs. Kennedy lingered in the old flat where she had lived for twelve years, watching the Italian carry out her things, her heart sick with shame to be leaving the place in this fashion, her parlour furniture sold, her daughter "in trouble." There was nothing left now but the barest essentials--things to sleep on, to be covered with, to cook with, and a chair or two.

Angelica had gone by surface-car to the new home, to await the arrival of the cart. For the moment each of them was alone in a dismal bare flat, hopelessly similar. It was a day of gloom. The removal had brought home to them most forcibly their desperate position, their helplessness, their desolation. They had only each other--no other friend, no other resource.

They set to work at once, in the dusk, to arrange their furniture; and when a barren sort of order had been achieved, Mrs. Kennedy went out in search of the usual little shop where she might buy a bite for Angelica’s supper. She tried her best to be calm, resolute, strong; but her heart was like lead as she hurried through the unfamiliar streets, chilled by a cold wind from the river, and by a far colder and bleaker apprehension.

She caught sight of a brightly lighted little grocery-store, and she went in. Another pang! Here she was no one; simply a poorly dressed stranger with a paltry handful of change. She remembered her own cheerful young grocer with positive anguish. It was almost the last straw.

She came back, half running, with her little bag under her arm, entered the strange doorway, rang the strange bell. Her daughter admitted her.

"I didn’t do much," Angelica said. "I started to scrub the shelves, but I felt tired. Anyway, what does it matter?"

She had been sitting in a dreadful apathy in the forlorn kitchen; she sank down again on the old step-ladder chair.

"If only I had a bit of linoleum for the floor!" began Mrs. Kennedy, looking down at the filthy boards. "A nice check pattern, like Mrs. Stone had----”

Angelica stopped her.

"I prayed," she said.

"Oh, my deary! I’m so glad. God’ll hear you and----”

"I prayed it would die."

"_Angie!_"

"You didn’t think I wanted it, did you?"

"You’ll feel different when it’s here."

"I sha’n’t. Lots of people don’t. It’s a curse to me, a _curse_! A baby--me with a living to earn the rest of my life! No--I’ll hate it. I do now. I’d have to hate any child with _his_ blood in it. I hope it’ll die!"

"That’s a wicked, wicked thing to say, Angie."

"Maybe you’d be surprised to know how wicked I feel. My Gawd, what I’ve done! The chance I’ve thrown away!"

"That’s not like you, my deary."

"_I’m_ not like me--not like the me I thought I was. I thought I was--oh, I don’t know--kind of a wonder; and after all, I’m nothing but--this. Going to have a baby--pretending to be married--not a cent! It’s a grand end, all right!"

"End, Angie?"

"Yes, end. I’m done--finished!"

II

Not her suffering, though. That had just begun. All that winter and through the spring she lived in a misery without relief or solace. She could think of nothing in all the universe but her own torment. She was ashamed to go out, in spite of her mother’s account of her as a married daughter with a husband gone to war, in spite of the wedding-ring the poor embarrassed woman had bought for her at the ten-cent store. She felt that she had in no way the appearance of a young wife. She felt herself to be obviously and flagrantly an outcast.

She was ill, too, and so hopeless, so profoundly dejected, that she saw no sense in getting up. She lay on her cot in the bedroom, dark as the former one, day after day. Now and then a bit of sewing was brought to her to do, and then she would drag herself into the kitchen and sit by the window, where there was a little more light, until the work was done. Otherwise she simply lay there, her black hair uncombed, an old shawl about her shoulders, in fathomless despair.

Life was too ghastly to contemplate. She could see nothing before her worth living for. Vincent was gone, and with him love and youth; Eddie was gone, and with him security and hope. Whether the baby lived or died, she was disgraced. She could never, never forget that she had been cast aside.

They were bitterly poor, and seldom had enough to eat. There was nothing to relieve their monotonous pain and anxiety; not a neighbour to exchange a word with, not a bit of gossip to amuse them--nothing, nothing, nothing, from morning till night but their own sad faces, their own listless voices, their own leaden hearts, their own undying apprehension.

"It’ll all seem different, deary, when you’re well again," Mrs. Kennedy told her child. "Then you’ll go to work again, and we won’t be so pinched. You’ll go back to the factory and see your friends, and go out, like you used to, to the movies, and dances."

"I won’t. There’ll be a child to look after and feed. Just to work in a factory till I’m too old, and then--I don’t know--die in the poorhouse, I guess!"

"There’s lots of things might happen, Angie. Maybe you’ll marry. There’s men that would be willing to over-look----”

"Well, I don’t want ’em. I’m through with men."

"Then maybe you’ll get on fine in some kind of business."

"No chance of that! I haven’t any education. I’m too ignorant. Don’t try to make up things to comfort me; I know how it’ll be."

But still she didn’t, she couldn’t, want to die. No matter how terrible her future looked, her strong spirit clung to life, even the most repulsive life. It wasn’t that she feared death, but she resented it. It was the complete defeat, the final outrage.

As her time drew near, she began greatly to dread dying. She would lie by the hour, thinking of death, in a sort of silent fury.

III

At last it came upon her, one July morning, that most shocking and insensate of nature’s cruelties. Her mother sat by her in fatalistic patience, knowing well that there was no escape, no alleviation. There was a doctor whom Mrs. Kennedy had summoned--not the noble and kindly physician of Angelica’s romance, but an indifferent and callous one accustomed to the poor and their profitless agonies. He was very cheerful. He was able to look down upon that young face distorted in brutal anguish, and smile.

"Nothing to be done now," he said. "I’ll look in again in an hour or so."

He returned too late. The protesting little spirit had entered the world without him, and lay crying, wrapped in an old flannel night-dress, in Mrs. Kennedy’s lap, while the young mother watched it with unfathomable eyes.