Chapter XIV: The Next Night

MY DEARS,

You know, the woman who runs the Stupidity Bureau didn't think me a
heroine at all! Quitting your job at the end of the first week, going
off explosively, as I did, doesn't endear the Honest Working Girl to
the management. It simply isn't done. She was so frigid that I
decided to scratch domestic labor from my list. I shall join the
gainful army in the busy marts.

Mrs. Mussel telephoned to the Stranger's Friend and the kind little
S.F. bustled right out and took me to a stereopticon lecture on the
bee. Subtle, wasn't it? Treatment by indirection.

And she gave me a note to a department store which will probably take
me on.

Meanwhile,

G--N--

J.

_Next Night._

They did, dear people, they did. In the basement. In the kitchen
ware. All day long I was learning to sell clothespins and eggbeaters
and wringers and cookie cutters and I wish you could see my hands! I
wonder if they'd consider me up stage if I wore gloves? I'd better
not chance it.

They were all ever so decent about helping me. The floorwalker was
especially kind. (I can see you fling up your head like a warhorse at
the smell of powder, Emma Ellis, but he's a meek young thing who
likes to burble of his baby.)

But I'm a woman of my word and this chronicle is faithful and true.
Coming home on the L, I saw the beamish Buffalo, and he saw me and
plunged to me through the crowd, saying gleefully, "Say, girlie, I've
thought of you a million times, and I--say, listen, I got in awful
Dutch with the wife about you, and she said"--but I slipped nimbly
into my local and the door slapped shut between us.

Your heroines, Emma, were not so light on their feet. But I honestly
felt mean,--he did look so friendly and fat.

I'm to have eight a week in my basement. Mrs. Mussel gets five of it
and the rest I may waste in riotous living.

Good night!

JANE.

_Three Nights Later._

DEAR M.D. AND E.E.,

Please dash downtown and have a million service medals struck off and
then rush around and pin them on all the shop girls in the world! The
unutterable weariness--the aching, burning, sagging, sickening, faint
_tiredness_!

If ever again, as long as I live, I'm cross to a saleswoman, no
matter how cross she may be to me, then may God send a sudden angel
down to grasp me by the hair and bear me far and drop me into the
kitchen ware on eight a week and my throbbing feet!

JANE.

_Saturday Night._

MY DEARS, I'm turned off. After all the trying and enduring and the
dead-tiredness, I'm turned off. The kind little floorwalker hated to
do it. "Say, listen, sister," he said, "it's like this. We gotter let
somebuddy go. Holidays comin', people ain't goin' to buy kitchen
ware. Sure they ain't. Plug up th' leakin' kettle an' buy Mummer th'
rhinestone combs! Well, you're the last to come, see? You gotter be
the first to go."

I bought Mrs. Mussel a shrinking bunch of violets to soften the blow,
but she wondered if I couldn't get my money back (_her_ money she
figures, poor thing!) if I hurried right downtown with them and
explained that I'd changed my mind.

Heavens, but we had a horrible supper.

Very down indeed,

JANE.

_Monday Night._

DEAR PEOPLE,

I'm doing my best to uplift Mrs. Mussel, but she's the undisputed
Queen of all the Glooms and my sprightly efforts fall on stony
ground. For her peace of mind I divulged the fact that I have nearly
thirty dollars left which makes me really a capitalist, but in her
eyes I am simply an Unemployed.

I rush into the house glowing and braced from a brisk walk but my
cheer soon gutters out,--I might as well try to illuminate a London
fog with a Christmas tree candle.

I try to help her with her errands and marketing and to-day I was
staggering home under a load of parcels and slipped on the glassy
pavement just in front of the house and fell flat. A smart motor
which was spinning by slid to a standstill and the driver jumped out
and ran back to me. He was a beautiful big youth and the machine was
one of those low, classy, dachshund effects in mauve. THE MAIDEN'S
DREAM picked me up and all my packages and looked us all over to make
sure we weren't damaged. One of the parcels contained liver, and it
became unwrapped.... (Dost like the picture, Jane Vail bearing home
the liver for her frugal evening meal?) He did it up very deftly and
then he asked me if he couldn't give me a lift. I said he certainly
could but for the fact that I was already arrived at my destination.
Then he said, "I'll give you a hand with the plunder, then. Which
house?"--and THE MAIDEN'S DREAM and the liver and I mounted Mrs.
Mussel's steps together. He was as big and bonny as the impossible
young persons in the backs of magazines, and he said it was tough
weather to be walking and I said it was tough weather to be out of a
job, and he said that was tough luck. (See how I gave him an opening,
E.E.?) I thanked him and he said it was nothing and sped down to his
speedster and I went in to my Christian room. Mrs. Mussel had been
doing her regular Sister Anne act at the window and had "seen it
all," she assured me ... I will omit her Phillipic....

JANE.

_Wednesday._

Still no gainful occupation, people! Compared to her present
attitude, Mrs. Mussel was Jest and Youthful Jollity before. And the
blacker things get the earlier we rise. It seems to me that no sooner
have I fitted myself compactly into my doll's-size bed and closed my
eyes than I hear her mournful summons to another day. Oh, the inky
gloom of these murky mornings! I know that the young woman who said
so lyrically, "_If you're waking, call me early, call me early,
Mother dear!_" is popularly supposed to have died without issue,
but that is a misconception. I shrink from putting a Spoon River
scandal on her mossy tombstone, but my Mrs. Mussel is her lineal
descendant.

To-day I was racked by a yearning for the flesh-pots. I made myself
as near smart as possible and flew for the smartest tea-room on
Michigan Avenue. If I could stay me with Orange Pekoe and comfort me
with toasted crumpets and English marmalade--But just as I was
blithely footing it across the threshold the S.F. rose up behind me
like a genie from a bottle and plucked me back.

"Edna Miles," she gasped, "my poor child, you can't eat in there!
It's the most expensive place in the city. Besides,--it is half-past
four,--you'll spoil your dinner!"

_Very_ peevishly and hollowly,

JANE.

_Thursday Night. On the Joyful New Job._

Oh, my dear people, but I do believe in Fairies! I've met one
personally! While we sat at melancholy mending this morning, my
doleful landlady and I, after my fruitless tour of the agencies, who
should dash up to our dull door but THE MAIDEN'S DREAM! In his
shining chariot! Mrs. Mussel said, "Edna, you go straight upstairs
and lock yourself in your room and _I'll_ 'tend to him!" But I was at
the door before he had time to ring the bell.

"Great luck," he said, "'fraid you'd be gone. Got a job yet?"

"No."

"Well, I was telling my sister about you, and she thinks she has just
the place for you. Want to hop in the boat and run out to see her now
and talk it over?"

Mrs. Mussel said of course he hadn't any sister, and that I ought to
be ashamed of myself and I would probably never be seen or heard of
again, and she knew he had a poison needle and she rang up the
Stranger's Friend, but before she got her connection I was spinning
up the North Shore. THE MAIDEN'S DREAM lives in a young palace and
Miss Marjorie, his sister, is also Peter Pan's sister. He explained
to me, as we went, that she had been thrown from her horse and would
never walk again, and so she "did things for girls, you know--keeps
her busy----"

She looks exactly like a Fra Angelico angel! She kept me to luncheon
in her room with her--oh, flesh-pots!--hot broth and tiny chops and
pop-overs and magic salad and chocolate and ginger-bread--and told me
about this extraordinary job. Then THE MAIDEN'S DREAM whizzed me home
for my things (I found Mrs. M. and the S.F. holding an agitated
Directors' Meeting), but when the S.F. heard Miss Marjorie's last
name, she beamed and brought me out here.

Miss Marjorie explained that I'm to be more or less of a
maid-companion to my pretty little mistress. She's a limp and lovely
nymph who's quarreled with her husband and is in hiding in this funny
old house which belonged to her family, in a weird neighborhood where
none of her own set would ever discover her. The house is comfortable
enough inside, but the locality is a rather rough one, and there is
not even a telephone. There is a cook and a cleaner-by-the-day, and
the new maid-companion, so she should be reasonably well looked
after.

Whoops, my dears! Fifty dollars a month and almost nothing to do!
This is the Promised Land!

Joyfully,

JANE.

_Monday._

DEAR PEOPLE,

The cook is cross because she drinks and she drinks because she is
cross, and I have persuaded my nymph to let her go and give me a try
at it. The cleaner-by-the-day will do the grubby things and I shall
like it. Time to get luncheon! Wish you might drop in to sample my
fare!

JANE.

P.S. There is the most engaging grocery boy with red hair and a
heart-twisting grin. I'm not sure I wasn't considering him when I
turned kitchen mechanic. Denny Dolan is his name and God loves the
Irish!

J.

_Wednesday._

It's fun, my dears, every inch of it, from my little lady's breakfast
tray to Denny's extra trips with things he "forgot."

She wanted to give me the cook's wages in addition to mine, because
she says I do all the work of both places, but I modestly compromised
on seventy-five and on my first day out I'm going to take Mrs. Mussel
a regal present.

Opulently,

JANE.

_Friday._

MY DEAR PEOPLE,

My nymph is ill and unhappy and grieving for her husband, but she
won't send for him, and it's the time of all times when he should be
with her. I went the five blocks to the drug store and telephoned
Miss Marjorie about her, and she sent the old family doctor, and when
he left her eyes were red, and I suppose he was urging her to make it
up.

She's such a vague, sweet, helpless thing! This dreary neighborhood
is bad for her.

Denny Dolan says "there's a hard-boiled bunch hangin' around here,"
and warns me against venturing out after dark, even to the post-box.

JANE.

P.S. He brought me a paper bag of gum drops to-day!

_A Week Later._

Almost too busy to write, my dears, what with cooking and catering
and maiding and companioning. Besides, I'll have you to know I'm
keeping company! It's walking out with Denny Dolan I am! I get the
cleaning woman to stay with my nymph for an hour, and I'm stepping
out with my young man. Twice to the movies we've been, and had
dripping ice-cream cones afterwards!

So no more at present, for a girl would be thinking of her beau the
way she has no time to be palavering on paper and he waiting in the
alley!

DENNY'S GIRL.

_The Next Night._

I went into town to-day and I met the Buffalo just as I was leaving a
Loop car, and it seemed only the fair and sporting thing to let him
speak to me.

He beamed more beamishly than ever. "Say, listen, girlie," he said,
"I've had the deuce of a time, losin' you every time I find you! Say,
I was startin' to tell you the other day,--the wife gimme fits when I
told her about you. Sure, she did." I stood very still and looked at
him and listened. "Yeah. Calls me a big boob. 'You big boob,' she
says. 'You sleeper! Her tellin' you she was a stranger and all that,
and lookin' for work, an' you never give her my address!' Honest, she
trimmed me for fair. I got to beat it now, but here's her card,
see?--Telephone'n everything, and she wants you to call her up. She
wants to have you out to dinner, Aggie does, and have you meet some
of her lady friends and get you acquainted. Say, ring her up, will
you, sure? Gee, she was some sore at the old man! Bye!"

He leaped into his Express, and vanished, and I could have sat down
in the midst of the scurrying crowd and wept with shame and joy and
gratitude. I rang Aggie up at once, and I could just _see_ her,
from her cozy voice.

How about it, Emma Ellis? Do I score? I'm dining with them soon.

JANE.

P.S.--Do you realize that my month is up? And my point is won? But
I'm going to stay on and see my nymph safely through her dark days.

_A Week Later._

Denny and I went to see "Twin Hearts" this evening and in the
meltingest part of the film he held my hand. I thought it was about
time to unmask, so I said--retrieving my hand--that I wasn't a
regular kitchen mechanic but a volunteer.

"My real job," I said, "is writing. I'm a writer."

"Sure you are!" he chuckled delightedly. "You'n me both! I wrote this
spiel here! I'm Henry W. Dickens!"

I couldn't seem to convince him of anything but that I was "some
little kidder." He undertook to tell the world about that. To-morrow,
in the garish light of day, when he dumps his neat parcels on my
spotless table, I must really explain that----

_The Next Afternoon._

DEAR E.E. AND M.D.,

I'm perished for sleep, but I'll write what I can. Just as I got to
"that" above, my nymph called me. She was ill,--terribly,
terrifyingly ill, and even I saw that there wasn't an instant to
lose. And not a soul to send to the telephone.

I couldn't leave her--but I had to leave her! It didn't enter my head
to be afraid--only of not getting the doctor in time. Denny's
warnings were forgotten. I had done one block of the five when a man
stepped out of a dark hallway, and halted in front of me.

Even then, until he spoke, I wasn't really frightened. But when he
did,--I tell you, Emma Ellis and Michael Daragh, all the horror and
wickedness, all the filth and sin of the world seemed to be closing
in on me, stifling me, blinding me, hobbling my feet. All the windows
about me were blank and black; a block and a half ahead of me was a
blaze of light--Boldini's Saloon--"a rotten bad one," Denny had said.

I ran, oh, how I ran, but he ran, too, faster, faster. I tried to
reach out for something to cling to--for a shield--Just fragments
came--"_angels charge over thee ... snare of the fowler ... terror
by night_...."

We were almost at Boldini's Saloon, and I couldn't run any faster,
and twice he had caught hold of my arm.... Suddenly another fragment
came--"_in all thy ways_ ..." _All!_ I ran through the swinging
doors into the saloon, out of the horrid, dark night into the horrid
light, and I stumbled and went down onto my knees and pulled myself
up by the bar, and I heard my voice--"Men--men--_Please_--I was
going to the drug store to telephone--a woman is sick--a baby--she's
all alone there--and this man--this man--" I hung onto the edge of
the bar and everything spun dizzily round with me, but I saw three
men bolt through the door and fall upon him.

Michael Daragh, I suppose some day I can remember with horror how
they beat him, but I can't now. I can't be sorry for him. I can't be
anything but gloatingly glad. They were drunk, all of them, but when
they finished with him they escorted me to the drug store, one on
each side and one marching on before and banged up the night man and
while I telephoned the doctor they waited for me, and then they took
me home.

I wanted to scream with laughter--they couldn't walk straight, two of
them--and I wanted more to cry,--"_angels charge over thee_--" They
were! I shook hands with them and thanked them, and they mounted
guard outside the house and I flew in to my lady.

Well, presently the doctor came, and then the nurse came, and then
Roderick Frost III came, a frantic young man with penitent eyes, and
presently Roderick Frost _IV_ came, a bad-tempered young tenor who
protested lustily at being born in a spot so far removed from his
own rightful social orbit, and then morning came, and I fell into
bed for three hours of sodden sleep.

Now the haughty chef from the Lake Shore Drive is here, taking royal
charge, and Edna Miles' job is over. I'm going to see little Miss
Marjorie and 'fess up, and take farewell of Mrs. Mussel and my kind
S.F., and then, my dears, I'm coming home,--home with palms of
victory.

Haven't I won, Emma Ellis? Haven't I won, Michael Daragh? Do you dare
to count the one exception that gloriously proved the rule? Didn't my
three unsteady angels more than make up for one poor devil? Nearly
six weeks alone in the wide, cold world, dozens of kindly conductors
and policemen and L guards and clerks and fellow citizens, the kind
little floorwalker and Denny Dolan, and the beamish Buffalo and THE
MAIDEN'S DREAM, and my three avenging knights!

Own up, old dears! Admit you're beaten! I have walked _The Narrow
Path_ and found it clean and safe and good!

Triumphantly--gloatingly--

JANE.