Chapter VI: The Interview

Sherry did feel a little shaky as she went up the steps to No. — West Twenty-fourth Street and touched the bell. The _lark_ did not look quite so funny as it had at first. But with her usual strong will, she put aside any regret she might have felt. It was too late to go back; there was nothing to do but go forward. Her ring was answered, and she was soon face to face with Mrs. Groves, a woman of fifty-five or sixty, who had forgotten her youth, if she ever had any, and thought of nothing except to maintain her position with dignity and discharge her duties conscientiously. She felt it an honor to be chosen as the matron at Maplehurst by the Marshes, and did not shrink at all from the responsibility of choosing the waitresses. She had already dismissed a dozen or more as wholly unfitted for the place, and her forehead was puckered in a frown when Sherry’s card was handed to her.

“Fanny Sheridan Sherman,” she read. “A pretentious name. I remember her writing to me. Show her in.”

This last to the bell boy, who pushed aside the portière and Sherry entered and bowed to the lady rustling in black satin, with a bit of Duchess lace at her throat and gold-rimmed eye-glasses on her nose. There was no servility in Sherry’s manner or appearance of timidity. She was always self-possessed, and never more so than now, when answering Mrs. Groves’ questions.

“What is your name? Oh, yes, I know,—Fanny Sheridan Sherman. Fanny will be sufficient, if I take you. Superfluities like Miss, as some girls like, will not be permitted.”

Sherry bowed and said she was twenty years old, that her home was in Buford, Massachusetts, that she had never been in service and had no references.

“No references!” Mrs. Groves repeated, rather severely, and Sherry replied: “None except what mother might give you. I have never worked out, but have done a good deal at home.”

“What can you do?”

“All that is required of a waitress, I think,” Sherry said. “You can try me, and if I do not suit you can dismiss me.”

“Are you willing to wear a cap?” was Mrs. Groves’ next question.

Two or three applicants for the place had refused caps and been promptly dismissed by Mrs. Groves, who looked curiously at Sherry, waiting for her answer.

“Why, yes, I’ll wear a cap if you wish it and think I’ll do my work any better.”

“It isn’t that,” Mrs. Groves said. “It is not a matter of work. It is a badge,—a sign,—a distinction——”

“Yes, I know,” Sherry replied. “I know what the cap means. I’ll wear it,” and she laughed inwardly as she saw herself in a cap waiting upon a table and imagined Katy’s indignation when she heard of it.

Something of the laugh showed in her eyes, and Mrs. Groves saw it and was puzzled. This was no ordinary girl seeking a situation, and she might make trouble with that high head and that look in her eyes which she could not fathom. But she must begin to make a choice. Alex. had said to her, “Get nice-looking girls, not low-down truck. You know I want everything first-class.” Sherry certainly was first-class and nice looking and not “low-down truck,” and Mrs. Groves decided to take her on trial. “It is settled then, and you will be at Maplehurst the last week in June, where I shall meet you and the other girls and break you in,” she said, after a little further questioning, which elicited nothing from Sherry with regard to Mrs. Pledger, or her father having been a clergyman and her family one of the best in Buford, three points upon which Katy had laid great stress.

She was equal to herself and going to run herself, and when she said good-morning to Mrs. Groves she left that lady in a very perplexed state of mind as to whether she had done well to engage a girl with Sherry’s face and manner, and who had never been in any kind of service.

“I can dismiss her if I do not like her,” she thought, and as she was the first she had accepted, she wrote her down in her book, “Fanny Sherman, Buford, Massachusetts, No. 1. Seems capable but airy, with her head too high. There is something behind, but trust me to manage her!”

Mrs. Pledger was not expecting Sherry, but she was thinking about her as she sat darning Joel’s socks in her basement kitchen and watching the soup simmering on the range. As usual, Huldah was out; she generally was in the afternoon, and evening both, for that matter. Mrs. Pledger’s humanitarian principles carrying her so far as to think a poor girl who worked in the basement all the morning should have a good share of the rest of the day for fresh air and recreation.

“Now, for the land’s sake, who can that be, and Huldah gone!” she said, as Sherry’s ring echoed through the house. “Miss Ellett, I do believe, and she’s come for my subscription to the Humane Society. She always catches me in my everyday clothes. I’ll whip off my big apron anyway.”

She took off her apron, and hurrying up the stairs opened the door to Sherry.

“For goodness’ sake,” she exclaimed, “where did you drop from? Think of angels,—you know the rest, and I was thinking of you. Come in and take off your things. Have you come shopping?” she continued, with a feeling of disquiet as she thought that if Sherry went shopping she must go with her and see that she did not spend her money foolishly.

“Shopping!” Sherry repeated. “No, indeed! I’ve nothing to shop with, but I’m going to have as much as forty dollars. Think of it!” and very rapidly she told of her plan and asked what her aunt thought of it.

“And so you are going out to work?” Mrs. Pledger said, and her under jaw dropped a little, as if she did not quite know whether she liked it or not.

She had been much pleased with Sherry during the two weeks she had been her guest, and had often thought of inviting her again for a longer visit and including Kate in the invitation. But the habits of years are not easily broken, and she shrank from anything which would change her quiet ways as two young girls would do.

“Too much trouble, and costly, too,” she said to herself, thinking of the expense when Sherry was with them the previous year.

They had done the handsome thing then, and it must suffice for a while at least. And still Mrs. Pledger often found herself thinking of the girl who had filled the house with so much brightness, and was making up her mind to take her to some cheap watering place when Sherry appeared and made the startling announcement that she was going as a waitress for the summer to Maplehurst!

“You don’t mean it!” she said, and Sherry replied, “I do, most certainly. I want to do something; and lots of nice girls go as waitresses to these places, and it don’t hurt them any. Nothing hurts that is respectable, and I shall still be Fanny Sherman, and I want to see the world away from Buford.”

In her admiration of the girl Mrs. Pledger came near offering to take her to some fashionable watering place where she could see the world far better than at Maplehurst, but the expense came up as a hindrance. Perhaps it was just as well to let her try her wings a little, and the Marshes were sure to recognize in her a superiority over the other girls and treat her accordingly, she thought, and suppressed her first impulse and began to speak of Maplehurst as it was when she was there as a girl.

“A grand old house, with big rooms and wide halls and fine views,” she said. Sherry’s great-grandmother, Mrs. Crosby, was a beautiful lady, with lovely clothes. “Her wedding dress was a cream brocade,” she continued, “with roses scattered over it, and would almost stand alone, and there was some rich lace with it and some jewels, and she looked like a queen at a reception your uncle gave. All the élite of the different hotels were there, with an ex-governor, and we lighted a hundred wax candles, and the affair was long talked of as the great Crosby party. Your grandmother died the next winter, and Uncle Crosby had her gowns and laces and jewels put away in a big cedar chest, where she kept her best linen. I was there once for a day after I was married. Mr. Marsh owned the place then. He had bought it of your grandfather Crosby, who soon after was killed in a railway accident. They are both buried in a little enclosure on the hillside opposite the house,—Mr. and Mrs. Crosby, I mean,—and Mr. Marsh erected a monument to their memory. You’ll see it, and the chest, if it hasn’t been taken away. It is more than thirty years since I was there. The place has been rented since and abandoned, and there’s no telling what is there and what isn’t. The gowns and things belong to you and Kate. Mr. Marsh told me I could have them, but as I was Mr. Crosby’s niece, not Mrs. Crosby’s, they didn’t belong to me, I said; if Cousin Henry,—that was your father,—ever married, they should go to his wife and children if he had any, I said. ‘All right,’ he answered, but most likely forgot it, he was so absent-minded and queer. Did your mother ever get anything?”

“Never that I know of. I think, though, I have heard that father received something when studying for the ministry. Mr. Marsh sent it, perhaps,” was Sherry’s reply, and Mrs. Pledger went on:

“That would be like him. People wondered what became of the money he paid Mr. Crosby for the farm. Probably your grandfather spent it or gave it away. He was very free handed, and there was barely enough to pay funeral expenses and outstanding debts. If you find the chest, ask Mr. Marsh to open it. The key used to hang on a big tack driven in the back of the chest. It may be there now, though it’s a miracle if it is. The things belong to you and Katy. Tell Mr. Marsh I said so. He has heard of your uncle if he hasn’t of me. Everybody knows Joel by reputation and he knows everybody. The Marshes are first class people,—not fast,—at least the young man isn’t. He is a friend of Craig Saltus, you know.”

Mrs. Pledger had talked very rapidly, while Sherry listened with absorbing interest, more glad than ever that she was going to what was once her great grandfather’s home, and in which she felt she had some rights, especially in the cedar chest, if it was still in existence. She doubted, though, if she should speak of her relationship to Mr. Crosby or the Pledgers.

“I am going just like the other girls, a common waitress, to see how it seems,” she said to her mother and Kate when, on her return from New York, she repeated the particulars of her interview with Mrs. Pledger and Mrs. Groves, the latter of whom she did not quite like. “She acted as if there was an immeasurable distance between us, and said that at Maplehurst I would be known as No. 1 among the waitresses, because she had accepted me first, and I am to wear caps. She laid great stress on that.”

“The snob! I hope you told her you’d never wear that badge of servitude,” Kate said, with a stamp of her foot.

Caps were not common in Buford. Even the Saltus servants did not wear them, and Kate was hot with indignation. But Sherry only laughed, saying she would as soon wear a cap as not, but when Kate asked suddenly, “Did you tell her that you sometimes walked in your sleep?” she was startled, and replied: “Why should I, when I haven’t walked for years, and why did you put it into my mind to think about it? Perhaps I shall now get up some night and frighten them to death.”

“I hope you will. That would be jolly. Caps and snobs!” Kate said, but Sherry’s face was clouded by this reminder of a disagreeable habit of her childhood, which she believed she had outgrown, but which might come back if she allowed her thoughts to dwell upon it.

Her will and nerves, however, were strong, and in the weeks which passed before she was due at Maplehurst she had so much to think about that the sleep-walking was nearly forgotten, or remembered only as something which had been, but would never be again.