CHAPTER VII.
BACK TO THE MAINLAND.
WITHIN a month old Miss Bromfield was again with her sister at Stockbridge; the house in Stoughton was sold; there were twenty-two hundred dollars to Emily’s credit in the Stoughton National Bank—her whole capital except a hundred and fifty dollars which she had with her; and she herself was standing at the exit from the Grand Central Station in New York City, facing with a sinking heart and frightened eyes the row of squalid cabs and clamourous cabmen. One of these took her to the boarding-house in East Thirty-first Street near Madison Avenue where her friend, Theresa Duncan, lived.
“Of course there’s a chance,” Theresa had written. “Come straight on here. Something is sure to turn up. And there’s nothing like being on the spot.”
Of the women of her acquaintance who made their own living, Theresa alone was in an independent position—with her time her own, and with no suggestion of domestic service in her employment. They had been friends at school and had kept up the friendship by correspondence. Before Mr. Bromfield died, Theresa’s father had been swept under by a Wall Street tidal wave and, when it receded, had been found on the shore with empty pockets and a bullet in his brain. Emily wrote to her at once, but the answer did not come until six months had passed. Then Theresa announced that she was established in a small but sufficient commission business. “I shop for busy New York women and have a growing out-of-town trade,” she wrote. “And I am almost happy. It is fine to be free.”
At the boarding-house Emily looked twice at the number to assure herself that she was not mistaken. She had expected nothing so imposing as this mansion-like exterior. When a man-servant opened the door and she saw high ceilings and heavy mouldings, she inquired for Miss Duncan in the tone of one who is sure there is a mistake. But before the man answered, her illusion vanished. He was a slattern creature in a greasy evening coat, a day waistcoat, a stained red satin tie, its flaming colour fighting for precedence with a huge blue glass scarf pin. And Emily now saw that the splendours of what had been a fine house in New York’s modest days were overlaid with cheap trappings and with grime and stain and other evidences of slovenly housekeeping.
The air was saturated with an odour of inferior food, cooking in poor butter and worse lard. It was one of the Houses of the Seem-to-be. The carpets seemed to be Turkish or Persian, but were made in Newark and made cheaply. The furniture seemed to be French, but was Fourteenth street. The paper seemed to be brocade, but was from the masses of poor stuff tossed upon the counters of second-class department stores for the fumblings of noisome bargain-day crowds. The paintings seemed to be pictures, but were such daubs as the Nassau street dealers auction off to swindle-seeking clerks at the lunch hour. In a corner of the “salon” stood what seemed to be a cabinet for bric-a-brac but was a dilapidated folding bed.
“Dare I sit?” thought Emily. “What seems to be a chair may really be some hollow sham that will collapse at the touch.”
“A vile hole, isn’t it?” was one of Theresa’s first remarks, after an enthusiastic greeting and a competent apology for not meeting her at the station. “We may be able to take a flat together. I would have done it long ago, if I’d not been alone.”
“Yes,” said Emily, “and I may persuade Aunt Ann to come and live with us as chaperon.”
“Oh, that will be so nice,” replied Theresa in a doubtful, reluctant tone, with a quizzical look in her handsome brown eyes. “If there is a prime necessity for a working-woman, it is a chaperon.”
“You’re laughing at me,” said Emily, flushing but good-humoured. “I meant simply that my aunt could look after the flat while we’re away. You don’t know her. She’d never bother us. She understands how to mind her own business.”
“Well, the flat and the chaperon are still in the future. The first question is, what are you going into? You used to write such good essays at school and your letters are clever. Why not newspaper work?”
“But what could I do?”
“Get a trial as a reporter.”
Before Emily’s mind came a vision of a ball she had attended in Washington less than two years before—the lofty entrance, the fashionable guests incrowding from their carriages; at one side, a dingy group, two seedy-looking men and a homely, dowdy woman, taking notes of names and costumes. She shuddered.
Theresa noted the shudder, and laid her hand on Emily’s arm. “You must drop that, my dear—you must, must, must.”
Emily coloured. “I will, will, will,” she said with a guilty laugh. “But, Theresa, you understand, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, I remember. But I’ve left all that behind—at least I’ve tried to. You’ve got to be just like a man when he makes the start. As Mr. Marlowe was saying the other night, it’s no worse than being a bank messenger and presenting notes to men who can’t pay; or being a lawyer’s clerk and handing people dreadful papers that they throw in your face. No matter where you start there are hard knocks. And——”
“I know it, I expect it, and I’m not sorry that it is so. It’s part of the price of learning to live. I’m not complaining.”
“I hope you’ll be able to say that a year from now. I confess I did, and do, complain. I can’t get over my resentment at the injustice of it. Why doesn’t everybody see that we’re all in the same boat and that snubbing and sneering only make it harder all round?”
Emily had expected to find the Theresa of school days developed along the lines that were promising. Instead, she found the Theresa of school days changed chiefly by deterioration. She was undeniably attractive—a handsome, magnetic, shrewd young woman full of animal spirits. But her dress was just beyond the line of good taste, and on inspection revealed tawdriness and lapses; her manners were a little too pronounced in their freedom; her speech barely escaped license. Her effort to show hostility to conventions was impudent rather than courageous. Worst of all, she had lost that finish of refinement which makes merits shine and dims even serious defects. She had cultivated a shallow cynicism—of the concert hall and the “society” play. It took all the brightness of her eyes, all the brilliance of her teeth, all her physical charm to overcome the impression of this gloze of reckless smartness.
In her room were many copies of a weekly journal of gossip and scandal, filled with items about people whom it called “the Four Hundred” and “the Mighty Few” and of whom it spoke with familiarity, yet with the deference of pretended disdain. Emily noticed that Theresa and her acquaintances in the boarding-house talked much of these persons, in a way which made it clear that they did not know them and regarded the fact as greatly to their own discredit.
The one subject which Theresa would not discuss was her shopping business. Emily was eager to hear about it, and, as far as politeness permitted, encouraged her to talk of it, but Theresa always sheered off. Nor did she seem to be under the necessity of giving it close or regular attention.
“It looks after itself,” she said, with an uneasy laugh. “Let’s talk of your affairs. We’re going to dine Thursday night with Frank Demorest and a man we think can help you—a man named Marlowe. He writes for the Democrat. He goes everywhere getting news of politics and wars. I see his name signed every once in a while. He’s clever, much cleverer to talk with than he is as a writer. Usually writers are such stupid talkers. Frank says they save all their good wares to sell.”
On Thursday at half-past seven the two men came. Demorest was tall and thin, with a languid air which Emily knew at once was carefully studied from the best models in fiction and in the class that poses. One could see at a glance that he was spending his life in doing deliberately useless things. His way of speaking to admiring Theresa was after the pattern of well-bred insolence. Marlowe was not so tall, but his personality seemed to her as vivid and sincere as Demorest’s seemed colourless and false. He had the self-possession of one who is well acquainted with the human race. His eyes were gray-green, keen, rather small and too restless—Emily did not like them. He spoke swiftly yet distinctly. Demorest seemed a man of the world, Marlowe a citizen of the world.
They got into Demorest’s open automobile, Marlowe and Emily in the back seat, and set out for Clairmont. For the first time in nearly two years Emily was experiencing a sensation akin to happiness. The city looked vast and splendid and friendly. Wherever her eyes turned there were good-humoured faces—the faces of well-dressed, healthy women and men who were out under that soft, glowing summer sky in a determined search for pleasure. She saw that Marlowe was smiling as he looked at her.
“Why are you laughing at me?” she asked, as the automobile slowed down in a press of cabs and carriages.
“Not at you, but with you,” he replied.
“But why?”
“Because I’m as glad to be here as you are. And you are very glad indeed, and are showing it so delightfully.” He looked frank but polite admiration of her sweet, delicate face—she liked his expression as much as she had disliked the way in which Demorest had examined her face and figure and dress.
She sighed. “But it won’t last long,” she said, pensively rather than sadly. She was thinking of to-morrow and the days thereafter—the days in which she would be facing a very different aspect of the city.
“But it will last—if you resolve that it shall,” he said. “Why make up your mind to the worst? Why not the best? Just keep your eyes on the present until it frowns. Then the future will be bright by contrast, and you can look at it.”
“This city makes me feel painfully small and weak.” Emily hid her earnestness in a light tone and smile. “And I’m not able to take myself so very seriously.”
“You should be glad of that. It seems to me absurd for one to take himself seriously. It interferes with one’s work. But one ought always to take his work seriously, I think, and sacrifice everything to it. Do you remember what Cæsar said to the pilot?”
“No—what was it?”
“The pilot said, ‘It’s too stormy to cross the Adriatic to-night. You will be drowned.’ And Cæsar answered: ‘It is not important whether I live or die. But it is important that, if I’m alive to-morrow morning, I shall be on the other shore. Let us start!’ I read that story many years ago—almost as many as you’ve lived. It has stood me in good stead several times.”
At the next slowing down, Marlowe went on:
“You’re certain to win. All that one needs to do is to keep calm and not try to hurry destiny. He’s sure to come into his own.” He hesitated, then added. “And I think your ‘own’ is going to be worth while.”
They swung into the Riverside Drive—the sun was making the crest of the wooded Palisades look as if a forest fire were raging there; the Hudson, broad and smooth and still, was slowly darkening; the breeze mingled the freshness of the water and the fragrance of the trees. And Emily felt a burden, like an oppressively heavy garment, falling from her.
“What are you thinking?” asked Marlowe.
“Of Stoughton—and this,” she replied.
“Was Stoughton very bad, as bad as those towns usually are to impatient young persons who wish to live before they die?”
“Worse than you can imagine—a nightmare. It seems to me that hereafter, whenever I feel low in my mind, I’ll say ‘Well, at least this is not Stoughton,’ and be cheerful again.”
They were at Clairmont, and as Emily saw the inn and its broad porches and the tables where women and men in parties and in couples were enjoying themselves, as she drank in the lively, happy scene of the summer and the city and the open air, she felt like one who is taking his first outing after an illness that thrust him down to death’s door. They went round the porch and out into the gravelled open, to a table that had been reserved for them under the big tree at the edge of the bluff.
There was enough light from the electric lamps of the inn and pavilions to make the table clearly visible, but not enough to blot out the river and the Palisades. It was not an especially good dinner and was slowly served, so Frank complained. But Emily found everything perfect, and astonished Theresa and delighted the men with her flow of high spirits. Theresa drank more, and Emily less, than her share of the champagne. As Emily had nothing in her mind which the frankness of wine could unpleasantly reveal, the contrast between her and Theresa became strongly, perhaps unjustly, marked with the progress of the “party,” as Theresa called it; for Theresa, who affected and fairly well carried off a man-to-man frankness of speech, began to make remarks at which Demorest laughed loudly, Marlowe politely, and which Emily pretended not to hear. Demorest drank far too much and presently showed it by outdoing Theresa. Marlowe saw that Emily was annoyed, and insisted that he could stay no longer. This forced the return home.
As they were entering the automobile, Demorest made a politely insolent observation to Theresa on “her prim friend from New England,” which Emily could not help overhearing. She flushed; Marlowe frowned contemptuously at Demorest’s back.
“Don’t think about him,” said he to Emily, when they were under way. “He’s too insignificant for such a triumph as spoiling your evening.”
Emily laughed gaily. “Oh, it is a compliment to be called prim by some men,” she said, “though I’d not like to be thought prim by those capable of judging.”
“Only low-minded or ignorant people are prim,” replied Marlowe.
“There’s one thing worse,” said Emily.
“And what is that?”
“Why, the mask off a mind that is usually masked by primness. I like deception when it protects me from the sight of offensive things.”
At the boarding-house Marlowe got out. “Frank and I are going to supper,” said Theresa to Emily. “You’re coming?”
“Thanks, no,” answered Emily. “I’m tired to-night.”
Marlowe accompanied her up the steps and asked her to wait until he had returned from giving the key to Theresa. When he rejoined her, he said:
“If you’ll come to my office to-morrow at two, I think I can get you a chance to show what you can or can’t do.”
Emily’s eyes shone and her voice was a little uncertain as she said, after a silence:
“If you ever had to make a start and suddenly got help from some one, as I’m getting it from you, you’ll know how I feel.”
“I’m really not doing you a favour. If you get on, I shall have done the paper a service. If you don’t, I’ll simply have delayed you on your way to the work that’s surely waiting for you somewhere.”
“I shall insist upon being grateful,” said Emily, as she gave him her hand. She was pleased that he held it a little longer and a little more tightly than was necessary.
“I don’t like his eyes,” she thought, “but I do like the way he can look out of them. They must belie him.”