The Fifth Wheel Part 20

"Oh, please," almost shuddered Bob, "don't let's talk about it. I don't want to think about it. She has been such a beautiful memory, and now--please don't talk about it."

"All right," I said and leaned back and gazed out of the window, stunned by his news, frightened more than I dared to show.

We rumbled on in silence for half an hour. I was dimly aware that Bob bought a magazine. Will joined us later, sat down, and fell off to sleep. Bob got up and announced that he was going into the smoking-car.

His composure of the early afternoon had left him. He appeared nervous and disturbed. He looked distressed. Just outside Providence he returned to the car with a porter and began gathering up his belongings.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Nothing much," he replied shortly, "only I'm going back to New York.

I'm going back now--tonight, that's all."

CHAPTER XIX

RUTH RESUMES HER OWN STORY

I had no idea what I was undertaking when I went to New York. I had had no experience with the difficulties that exist between announcing you intend to live your own life, and living it. The world is a bewildering place for one unused to it. All the savoir-faire and sophistication acquired in reception-rooms didn't stand me in very good stead when it came to earning my own living in New York City. I was timid, full of fears--imaginary and real. I had been to New York many times before, but the realization that I was in the big city alone, unanch.o.r.ed, afloat, filled me with panic. I was like a young bird, featherless, naked, trembling, knocked out of its nest before it could fly. Every sound, every unknown shape was a monster cat waiting to devour me. I was acutely aware of dangers lurking for young girls in big cities. For two or three days I had all I could do to control myself and keep my nerve steady.

I arrived on a cold, gray, cloudy morning; unaccustomed to reaching destinies unmet; my heart torn and bleeding; n.o.body to turn to for help and advice; no plan formed in my confused mind; afraid even to trust myself to the care of a taxicab driver. For such a timid pilgrim in quest of freedom, to start out in search of an address she treasures because of the golden apple of immediate employment that it promises, and to learn on arrival that the position already has been filled, is terribly disheartening. To wake up the second morning in a two-dollar hotel room, which she has locked and barred the night before with all the foolish precautions of a young and amateurish traveler, to pay a dollar for a usual breakfast served in her room and a dollar-and-a-half for a luncheon of nothing but a simple soup and chicken-a-la-King, and then to figure out on a piece of paper that at such a rate her fifty dollars will last just about two weeks, is enough to make any young fool of a girl wish she had been taught something else besides setting off expensive gowns. I didn't know what I ought to do. I didn't know how to begin. I was so self-conscious, at first, so fearful that my being at that hotel, alone, unchaperoned, might be questioned and cause unpleasant comment, that I stayed in my room as much as possible. When I look back and see myself those first few days I have to smile out of self-pity. If it hadn't been for my lacerated pride, for the memory of Tom's arrogance and Edith's taunts, I might have persuaded myself to give up my dangerous enterprise, but every time I rehea.r.s.ed that scene at the Homestead (and, imprisoned as I was, I rehea.r.s.ed it frequently), something flamed up in me higher and higher each time. I could not go back with self-respect. It was impossible. I concluded that I might as well get singed in New York, as bound in slavery by Tom and Edith.

As soon as I became fully convinced that my lot was cast, I ventured out to look for cheaper accommodations.

Ever since I have been allowed alone on a railroad train, the Y. W. C. A. has been preached to me as a perfectly safe place to ask advice in case of being stranded in a strange city. So I trudged down there one late afternoon and procured a list of several lodging-houses, where my mother's young parlor-maid could stay for a week with safety while we were moving from our summer house. I didn't know whether I could bring myself really to undress and get into the little cot in the room which I finally engaged, but at least the room had a window.

I could sit by that. I had been a.s.sured that the place was reputable.

I moved down there in a taxicab one rainy Sat.u.r.day afternoon. Lucy had sent me my trunk, and I had to convey it somehow. I didn't sleep at all the first night. There was a fire-escape immediately outside my open window, and there was not a sign of a lock on the door. On Monday I bought a screw-eye and hook for fifteen cents, and put nails in the sash for burglar stops.

At first I used to crawl back to that smelly little hall bedroom at the earliest sign of dusk; at first, if a man on the street spoke to me, I would tremble for five minutes afterward; at first the odor of the continual boiling of mutton bones and onions that met me every time I opened the door of Mrs. Plummet's lodging-house used to make me feel sick to my stomach. I became hardened as time went on, but at first it was rather awful. I don't like to recall those early experiences of mine.

I learned a great deal during my first fortnight at Mrs. Plummet's. I never knew, for instance, that one meal a day, eaten at about four o'clock in the afternoon, takes the place of three, very comfortably, if aided and abetted in the morning by crackers spread with peanut b.u.t.ter, and a gla.s.s of milk, a whole bottle of which one could buy for a few cents at the corner grocery store. The girl who roomed next door to me gave me lots of such tips. I had no idea that there were shops on shabby avenues, where one could get an infinitesimal portion of what one paid for a last season's dinner-gown; that furs are a wiser investment than satin and lace; and that my single emerald could be more easily turned into dollars and cents than all the enameled jewelry I owned put together. The feeling of reenforcement that the contents of my trunk gave me did a lot in restoring confidence. The girl next door and I reckoned that their value in secondhand shops would see me through the summer, at least. Surely, I could become established somewhere by fall.

I didn't know how to approach my problem. I didn't know what advertis.e.m.e.nts in the newspapers were the false ones. I felt shy about applying for work at stores and shops. For whom should I ask? To what department present myself? What should I say first? One day I told a benevolent-looking woman, one of the officers at the Y. W. C. A., the truth about myself, that I, and not my mother's parlor-maid, was occupying the room in the lodging-house. Not until that woman put her hand kindly on my shoulder and advised me to go home--did I realize how determined I had become. New York had not devoured me, the lodging-house had not harmed me. I had found I could sleep, and very well, too, on the lumpy, slumped-in cot with the soiled spread. No one climbed the fire-escape, no one tried my locked door at night. I had p.a.w.ned my last winter's furs, but my character seemed quite clean and unsmirched. Go home! Of course I wasn't going home. Not yet. The lady gave me a list of reputable employment agencies at last. If Mrs. Plummet's hadn't daunted me, employment offices couldn't either, I said. I was told to provide suitable references.

Now references were just what I couldn't very well provide. I had left home under disagreeable circ.u.mstances. I tried to make it clear without too much detail that, except for my sister, my connections with my people were severed, and I couldn't apply to Lucy. I hadn't even given her my actual address. She would be sure to come looking me up, or send some one in her place. Very likely she would ask my brother Malcolm to drop in on me sometime. I was in deadly fear I would run across him on the street, and if Malcolm had ever smelled the inside of the house where I roomed, I fear his nose never would have come down. If Lucy had ever seen the dirt on the stairs she would have p.r.o.nounced the house disreputable, and dragged me home. Secrecy was my only chance for success, at least for a while. I would have to discover what could be done without references.

It was due to a little new trick I learned of looking on at myself that it was not impossible for me to seek a position through an employment agency. I had become, you see, one of those characters I had read about in short stories dozens of times before--an unemployed girl in New York, even to the hall-bedroom, the handkerchiefs stuck on my window-pane in process of ironing, the water-bugs around the pipes in the bath-room. It was this consciousness of myself that made many of the hards.h.i.+ps bearable--this and the grim determination not to give up.

I told the lady in charge of the intelligence office where I first applied that I was willing to try anything, but thought I was best suited as a mother's-helper, or a sort of governess. She shrugged when I told her I had no reference, but occasionally she gave me an opportunity for an interview.

There was something about me that, lacking a reference, impressed my would-be employers unfavorably; possibly it was the modish cut of the hundred-dollar spring suit I wore, or the shape of my hat. Anyhow, they all decided against me. If I had persisted long enough, I might have found some sort of place, but on the fourth or fifth day of my ordeal in intelligence offices, something happened.

I was sitting with the rest of my unemployed sisters in the little inner room provided for us off the main office, when I glanced through the door to see Henrietta Morgan and her mother. I looked hastily away. Here I had been avoiding Fifth Avenue and the region of shops, for fear some of my old friends about New York (and I have many) might run across me, and stupidly I had walked into the very place infested by them. I accomplished my escape easily enough. Naturally Mrs. Morgan wasn't looking for me in such a place, but I didn't take the chance again.

I was lonely and discouraged many times during that first bitter summer of mine in New York. I felt no charity for Edith, no forgiveness for Tom. I hadn't wanted to leave home--not really--I hadn't sought an experience like this. They had forced me to it. If only Tom hadn't treated me like a naughty child! If only Bob--oh if _only_ Bob--(no, there were some things I could not dwell upon. It was wiser not to).

Some pains are dull and steady. One can endure them and smile. Others recur at intervals, occasioned by some unimportant detail like a man on the street selling roasted chestnuts, which reminds one of saffron woods in late October. Such pain is like the stab of a sharp stiletto.

Mine is the same old story of hope and despair, of periods of courage occasioned by opportunities that flickered for a while and went out. I was not utterly without employment. The first three dollars I earned at directing envelopes in a department store made me happy for a fortnight. It was a distinct triumph. I felt as if I had been initiated into a great society. I had been paid money for the labor of my hands!

The girl who roomed next to me had helped me to get the position. I was not without a.s.sociates. There were twenty-five girls besides myself who carried away in their clothes each morning the odor of Mrs. Plummet's soup-stock. Mrs. Plummet let rooms to girls only, and only rooms. We didn't board with Mrs. Plummet. I wondered how she and old Mr. Plummet ever consumed, alone, so much lamb broth.

For a fortnight I was a model for trying on suits in a down-town wholesale house; several times the Y. W. C. A. found opportunities for me to play accompaniments; in October when the suffrage activities began I was able to pick up a few crumbs of work in the printing office of one of their papers. But such a thing as permanent employment became a veritable will-o'-the-wisp. I was strong and willing, and yet I could not--absolutely _could not_--support myself. I tried writing fiction. I had always yearned to be literary, but the magazines sent all my stuff back. I tried sewing in a dressmaker's shop, but after three days the Madam announced that her shop would be closed during August, the dull season. She had hired me simply to rush a mourning order. From one thing to another I went, becoming more and more disheartened as fall approached, and my stock of clothes and jewelry, on the proceeds of which I was living, became lower and lower. My almost empty trunk stared at me forlornly from its corner; it foretold failure. What should I do when the last little frumpery of my old life had been turned into money to support my new one? To whom turn? I could not ask for help from those who had admonished and criticized. I had written Lucy weekly that I was prospering. I could not acknowledge failure even to her. I bent every nerve to the effort.

One day in a magazine that some one had discarded in a subway train I ran across an advertis.e.m.e.nt for "a young lady of education and good family, familiar with social obligations, to act as a private secretary to a lady in a private home." I answered that advertis.e.m.e.nt. I had answered dozens similar before. This, like the others no doubt, would end in failure. But I couldn't sit and fold my hands. I must keep on trying. I answered it--and six others at the same time. Of the seven I had a reply only from the one mentioned above.

It was a unique reply. It was typewritten. "If still interested in the position referred to in attached clipping reply by complying to requirements enclosed--and mail answer by the evening of the day that this communication is received.

"1st. Write a formal acceptance to a formal dinner.

2nd. Write a few words on suffrage appropriate to an older woman who is mildly opposed.

3rd. Write a polite note of refusal to the treasurer of a charitable inst.i.tution in reply to a request to donate sum of money.

4th. Write a note of condolence to an acquaintance upon the death of a relative.

5th. Write a note of congratulation to a debutante announcing her engagement.

6th. Write an informal invitation to a house-party in the country.

7th. Acknowledge a gift of flowers sent to you during an illness."

I sat down with zest to this task. It was an original way to weed out applicants. I spent the whole afternoon over it. It was late in the evening before I had all my questions answered, neatly copied, sealed, and dropped inside a green letter-box.

A day or two later I received in the same non-committal typewritten form a brief summons to appear the following morning between twelve and one o'clock at a certain uptown hotel, and to inquire at the desk for Miss A. S. Armstrong.

It was a clear starry night. I pinned a towel over my suit, put it on a coat-hanger, and hung it securely to the blind-catch outside my window.

I didn't know who Miss A. S. Armstrong was, but at any rate I would offer up to the stars what I possessed of Mrs. Plummet's soup-stock.

CHAPTER XX

THE FIFTH WHEEL GAINS WINGS

Miss A. S. Armstrong proved to be a thin angular creature with no eyelashes. She saw me come in through the revolving doors of the hotel at sharp twelve o'clock. When I enquired for her at the desk, she was at my elbow. She was not the lady I had come to be interviewed by; she was merely her present private secretary; the lady herself, she explained, was upstairs awaiting me.

"You're younger than we thought," she said, eyeing me critically. She was a very precise person. Her accent was English. My hopes dimmed as I looked upon her. If she had been selected as desirable, then there was little chance for me. My short experience in employment offices had proved to me the undesirability of possessing qualities that impress a would-be employer as too attractive.

"Do you have young men callers?" "Do you like 'to go'?" "Do you want to be out late?" Such inquiries were invariably made when I was trying to obtain a position as a mother's-helper or child's-companion; and though I was able to reply in the negative, my inquisitors would look at me suspiciously, and remain unconvinced. Now, again, I felt sure as we ascended to the apartment above that my appearance (Miss Armstrong had called it my youth) would stand in my way.

I was ushered into a room high up in the air, flooded with New York suns.h.i.+ne. It dazzled me at first. Coming in from the dimness of the corridor, I could not discern the features of the lady sitting in an easy chair.

"I beg your pardon," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Miss Armstrong at sight of her, "I thought you were in the other room. Shall we come in?"

"Certainly, certainly." There was a note of impatience.