The Price She Paid Part 16

She did not believe it. Always she had had plenty to wear and to eat, and comfortable surroundings. She could no more think of herself as without those things than a living person can imagine himself dead.

"I'm a fool," she said to herself. "I'm certain to get into all sorts of trouble. How can it be otherwise, when I've no money, no friends, no experience, no way of making a living--no honest way--perhaps no way of the other kind, either?" There are many women who ecstasize their easily tickled vanities by fancying that if they were so disposed they need only flutter an eyelid to have men by the legion striving for their favors, each man with a bag of gold. Mildred, inexperienced as she was, had no such delusions. Her mind happened not to be of that chastely licentious caste which continually revolves and fantastically exaggerates the things of the body.

She could not understand her own indifference about the future. She did not realize that it was wholly due to Stanley Baird's offer. She was imagining she was regarding that offer as something she might possibly consider, but probably would not. She did not know that her soul had seized upon it, had enfolded it and would on no account let it go. It is the habit of our secret selves thus to make decisions and await their own good time for making us acquainted with them.

With her bag on the seat beside her she set out to find a temporary lodging. Not until several hotels had refused her admittance on the pretext that they were "full up" did she realize that a young woman alone is an object of suspicion in New York. When a fourth room-clerk expressed his polite regrets she looked him straight in the eye and said:

"I understand. But I can't sleep in the street. You must tell me where I can go."

"Well, there's the Ripon over in Seventh Avenue," said he.

"Is it respectable?" said she.

"Oh, it's very clean and comfortable there," said he. "They'll treat you right."

"Is it respectable?" said she.

"Well, now, it doesn't LOOK queer, if that's what you mean," replied he. "You'll do very nicely there. You can be just as quiet as you want."

She saw that hotel New York would not believe her respectable. So to the Ripon she went, and was admitted without discussion. As the last respectable clerk had said, it did not LOOK queer. But it FELT queer; she resolved that she would go into a boarding-house the very next day.

Here again what seemed simple proved difficult. No respectable boarding-house would have Miss Mary Stevens. She was confident that nothing in her dress or manner hinted mystery. Yet those sharp-eyed landladies seemed to know at once that there was something peculiar about her. Most of them became rude the instant they set eyes upon her. A few--of the obviously less prosperous cla.s.s--talked with her, seemed to be listening for something which her failing to say decided them upon all but ordering her out of the house. She, hindered by her innocence, was slow in realizing that she could not hope for admission to any select respectable circle, even of high-cla.s.s salesladies and clerks, unless she gave a free and clear account of herself--whence she had come, what she was doing, how she got her money.

Toward the end of the second day's wearisome and humiliating search she found a house that would admit her. It was a pretentious, well-furnished big house in Madison Avenue. The price--thirty-five dollars a week for board, a bedroom with a folding bed in an alcove, and a bath, was more than double what she had counted on paying, but she discovered that decent and clean lodgings and food fit to eat were not to be had for less. "And I simply can't live pig-fas.h.i.+on," said she. "I'd be so depressed that I could do nothing. I can't live like a wild animal, and I won't." She had some vague notion--foreboding--that this was not the proper spirit with which to face life. "I suppose I'm horribly foolish," reflected she, "but if I must go down, I'll go down with my colors flying." She did not know precisely what that phrase meant, but it sounded fine and brave and heartened her to take the expensive lodgings.

The landlady was a Mrs. Belloc. Mildred had not talked with her twenty minutes before she had a feeling that this name was a.s.sumed. The evening of her first day in the house she learned that her guess was correct--learned it from the landlady herself. After dinner Mrs.

Belloc came into her room to cheer her up, to find out about her and to tell her about herself.

"Now that you've come," said she, "the house is full up--except some little rooms at the top that I'd as lief not fill. The probabilities are that any ladies who would take them wouldn't be refined enough to suit those I have. There are six, not counting me, every one with a bath and two with private parlors. And as they're all handsome, sensible women, ladylike and steady, I think the prospects are that they'll pay promptly and that I won't have any trouble."

Mildred reflected upon this curious statement. It sounded innocent enough, yet what a peculiar way to put a simple fact.

"Of course it's none of my business how people live as long as they keep up the respectabilities," pursued Mrs. Belloc. "It don't do to inquire into people in New York. Most of 'em come here because they want to live as they please."

"No doubt," said Mildred a little nervously, for she suspected her landlady of hitting at her, and wondered if she had come to cross-examine her and, if the results were not satisfactory, to put her into the street.

"I know _I_ came for that reason," pursued Mrs. Belloc. "I was a school-teacher up in New England until about two years ago. Did you ever teach school?"

"Not yet," said Mildred. "And I don't think I ever shall. I don't know enough."

"Oh, yes, you do. A teacher doesn't need to know much. The wages are so poor--at least up in New England--that they don't expect you to know anything. It's all in the books. I left because I couldn't endure the life. Lord! how dull those little towns are! Ever live in a little town?"

"All my life," said Mildred.

"Well, you'll never go back."

"I hope not."

"You won't. Why should you? A sensible woman with looks--especially if she knows how to carry her clothes--can stay in New York as long as she pleases, and live off the fat of the land."

"That's good news," said Mildred. She began to like the landlady--not for what she said, but for the free and frank and friendly way of the saying--a human way, a comradely way, a live-and-let-live way.

"I didn't escape from New England without a struggle," continued Mrs.

Belloc, who was plainly showing that she had taken a great fancy to "Mary Stevens."

"I suppose it was hard to save the money out of your salary," said Mildred.

Mrs. Belloc laughed. She was about thirty-five years old, though her eyes and her figure were younger than that. Her mouth was pleasant enough, but had lost some of its freshness. "Save money!" cried she.

"I'd never have succeeded that way. I'd be there yet. I had never married--had two or three chances, but all from poor sticks looking for someone to support them. I saw myself getting old. I was looking years older than I do now. Talk about sea air for freshening a woman up--it isn't in it with the air of New York. Here's the town where women stay young. If I had come here five years ago I could almost try for the squab cla.s.s."

"Squab cla.s.s?" queried Mildred.

"Yes, squabs. Don't you see them around everywhere?--the women dressed like girls of sixteen to eighteen--and some of them are that, and younger. They go hopping and laughing about--and they seem to please the men and to have no end of a good time. Especially the oldish men.

Oh, yes, you know a squab on sight--tight skirt, low shoes and silk stockings, cute pretty face, always laughing, hat set on rakishly and hair done to match, and always a big purse or bag--with a yellow-back or so in it--as a kind of a hint, I guess."

Mildred had seen squabs. "I've envied them--in a way," said she.

"Their parents seem to let them do about as they please."

"Their parents don't know--or don't care. Sometimes it's one, sometimes the other. They travel in two sets. One is where they meet young fellows of their own cla.s.s--the kind they'll probably marry, unless they happen to draw the capital prize. The other set they travel in--well, it's the older men they meet round the swell hotels and so on--the yellow-back men."

"How queer!" exclaimed Mildred, before whose eyes a new world was opening. "But how do they--these--squabs--account for the money?"

"How do a thousand and one women in this funny town account at home for money and things?" retorted Mrs. Belloc. "Nothing's easier. For instance, often these squabs do--or pretend to do--a little something in the way of work--a little canva.s.sing or artists' model or anything you please. That helps them to explain at home--and also to make each of the yellow-back men think he's the only one and that he's being almost loved for himself alone."

Mrs. Belloc laughed. Mildred was too astonished to laugh, and too interested--and too startled or shocked.

"But I was telling you how _I_ got down here," continued the landlady.

"Up in my town there was an old man--about seventy-five--close as the bark on a tree, and ugly and mean." She paused to draw a long breath and to shake her head angrily yet triumphantly at some figure her fancy conjured up. "Oh, he WAS a pup!--and is! Well, anyhow, I decided that I'd marry him. So I wrote home for fifty dollars. I borrowed another fifty here and there. I had seventy-five saved up against sickness. I went up to Boston and laid it all out in underclothes and house things--not showy but fine and good to look at. Then one day, when the weather was fine and I knew the old man would be out in his buggy driving round--I dressed myself up to beat the band. I took hours to it--scrubbing, powdering, sacheting, perfuming, fixing the hair, fixing my finger-nails, fixing up my feet, polis.h.i.+ng every nail and making them look better than most hands."

Mildred was so interested that she was excited. What strange freak was coming?

"You never could guess," pursued Mrs. Belloc, complacently. "I took my sunshade and went out, all got up to kill. And I walked along the road until I saw the old man's buggy coming with him in it. Then I gave my ankle a frightful wrench. My! How it hurt!"

"What a pity!" said Mildred sympathetically. "What a shame!"

"A pity? A shame?" cried Mrs. Belloc, laughing. "Why, my dear, I did it a-purpose."

"On purpose!" exclaimed Mildred.

"Certainly. That was my game. I screamed out with pain--and the scream was no fake, I can tell you. And I fell down by the roadside on a nice gra.s.sy spot where no dust would get on me. Well, up comes the old skinflint in his buggy. He climbed down and helped me get off my slipper and stocking. I knew I had him the minute I saw his old face looking at that foot I had fixed up so beautifully."

"How DID you ever think of it?" exclaimed Mildred.

"Go and teach school for ten years in a dull little town, my dear--and look in the gla.s.s every day and see your youth fading away--and you'll think of most anything. Well, to make a long story short, the old man took me in the buggy to his house where he lived with his deaf, half-blind old widowed daughter. I had to stay there three weeks. I married him the fourth week. And just two months to a day from the afternoon I sprained my ankle, he gave me fifty dollars a week--all signed and sealed by a lawyer--to go away and leave him alone. I might have stood out for more, but I was too anxious to get to New York. And here I am!" She gazed about the well-furnished room, typical of that almost luxurious house, with an air of triumphant satisfaction. Said she: "I've no patience with a woman who says she can't get on. Where's her brains?"

Mildred was silent. Perhaps it was a feeling of what was hazily in the younger woman's mind and a desire to answer it that led Mrs. Belloc to say further: "I suppose there's some that would criticize my way of getting there. But I want to know, don't all women get there by working men? Only most of them are so stupid that they have to go on living with the man. I think it's low to live with a man you hate."

"Oh, I'm not criticizing anybody," said Mildred.