The following summer was one of the hottest on record in New York City. The thermometer persistently hung around ninety, and the newspapers gave daily accounts of deaths and prostrations. Thousands of East-siders sought Coney Island and the cool beaches to spend their nights upon the sands. Thunderstorms brought but temporary relief. Jeannette, slowly regaining strength and energy, declared she had never known so many violent thunderstorms in the space of one short summer. She hated the vivid, blinding darts and the cracking ear-splitting detonations. She could reason convincingly with herself that there was but the minutest atom of danger, yet the menacing crashes never failed to bring her heart into her mouth and make her wince.
She had been in bed four weeks since the Sunday Roy had dined with the family, and she had fainted at the table. The doctor, when he arrived, had declared, after careful examination, that several ligaments had been torn from the bone, and the muscles of her back had been badly strained. She had been tightly bandaged with long strips of adhesive tape, and put to bed in her mother’s room, where she had lain for a month, rebellious and raging, at the mercy of a horde of disturbing thoughts.
Roy sent flowers, a box of candy, magazines. He wrote her long letters in a boyish hand in which he boyishly expressed his concern for her condition, his earnest hope of her speedy recovery, his tremendous devotion. It was for the last that she eagerly looked when she unfolded his scrawled pages. But his words never seemed to satisfy her wholly; they were never vehement enough. She longed for something more vigorous, aggressive, violent.
At the end of ten days he begged to be allowed to come to see her. There was no reason why he shouldn’t, Jeannette reflected, but she could not bring herself to the point of asking her mother to arrange for the visit. She did manage to say, with a light air of ridicule, one morning, when Mrs. Sturgis brought her breakfast tray to her bedside:
“Roy’s got the nerve to want to come to see me.”
“Why don’t you let him, dearie,—if you’d like it? He seems a right nice young fellow, and you could put on your dressing sacque, and Alice could do your hair.... I’ll be home to-morrow,—all day, you know. It would be quite right and proper.”
But the girl only made a grimace.
“That kid! That rah-rah boy! ... He thinks he’s got an awful case.”
“Why do you treat Mr. Beardsley so mean, Janny?” Alice asked her a few days later, closely studying her face. “You know,” she continued slowly, “sometimes I think you’re really in love with him.”
“Love!” cried her sister. “Hah! with that kid?”
“I think he’s terribly attractive, Janny.”
“Half baked!” Jeannette said scornfully.
“Well, I think he’s charming.”
“You can have him!”
“Oh, Janny! ... You’re dreadful!”
But in the dark nights Jeannette would kiss the scrawled writing, press the stiff note-paper to her cheek, and let her thoughts carry her back to their first meeting, their first encounter on the Avenue, their first kiss in the hallway downstairs, their memorable lunch together....
Ah, it was beautiful? It was all so very beautiful,—so infinitely beautiful! Every glance, every word, every moment! She loved him! She could not deny it. Oh,—she loved him, she loved him!
He wrote he was obliged to go to San Francisco. It was impossible to find a position in New York during midsummer, and his father had telegraphed him to come home. He would have to go, but he longed to see Jeannette just once before he went. He must see her, if only to say “good-bye.” He was coming back the first of September, and then he would.... But they must talk everything over. Wouldn’t she please let him come?
Jeannette still hesitated. She wanted to see him again; yet she was afraid,—afraid of disappointment, of what her mother and sister might think, of herself and Roy. In the end, with what seemed to her a weakness she despised, she wrote him, and named an afternoon; Although the doctor had said she was to remain in bed for another week, she prevailed upon her mother and sister to move her into the studio, where with pillows about her and a comforter across her knees, and her hair arranged in the pretty fashion Alice sometimes liked to dress it, she received her lover.
It was as unsatisfactory an interview as she had feared. Constraint held them both. Jeannette was intent upon not betraying the delicious madness into which her thoughts of Roy had led her during the empty hours of her long illness, and she sat up stiffly, unbendingly. Roy did not understand. He thought the change in her was due to her illness, but there was something about her that troubled him. They made their promises to one another, they held each other’s hands, they kissed good-bye, but there was nothing fervid about any of it. At the door, however, when he turned, hat in hand, for a final, searching look, she saw a glitter in his eyes, his queer little mouth was straight and drawn harshly, unsmilingly across his teeth. It was that last look of him, that wet gleam in his eyes which took her courage and brought her own tears in a rush. But by then he was gone. The dull boom of the hall-door closing downstairs announced his departure with stern finality.
The summer bore on, hot, unalleviated. The apartment smelled of strange odors, was close, airless in spite of open windows. The Najarians, with much banging and clattering, left with their trunks and boxes for several weeks at the seashore, and on the first of the month old Mrs. Porter, who had occupied the first floor since the building was erected thirty years before, moved away. Only the two trained nurses, one flight down, who were rarely at home, remained in the city during the burning weeks of July and August.
With the Sturgises, life became dreary and grew drearier. Miss Loughborough’s school closed, Signor Bellini departed for his beloved Italy, the Wednesday and Saturday pupils became fewer and fewer and by mid-July had evaporated entirely. Mrs. Sturgis, fretting over the trivial expenses each day inevitably brought, wore a worried, harassed air. She found some work to do, copying music, but this had to be given up, as her teeth commenced to give her trouble. How long she was able to disguise her discomfort from her daughters, they never guessed, but her misery eventually was discovered, and she was summarily driven to a dentist. It developed that her teeth were in such a decayed condition they would all have to be pulled, and replaced by an artificial set.
Poor Mrs. Sturgis wept and protested. She objected strenuously to anything so drastic. It wasn’t in the least necessary! She couldn’t possibly afford it! Her daughters urged her and argued with her until they lost their tempers and there was almost a quarrel in the little household. The dentist declined to modify his advice. Pain—cruel, persistent pain, that robbed her of her sleep, and sapped her strength—finally compelled her to give way.
“I’ll do it,—but my girlies haven’t the faintest idea what they are letting me in for! It will be the death of me!” wailed Mrs. Sturgis.
Jeannette, able to sit up now and hobble from one room to another, regarded her mother with frank impatience as she rocked vigorously back and forth, weeping abjectly into a drenched little handkerchief. She felt sorry for her, she would have made any sacrifice to alleviate her pain to make matters easier for her, and yet it was obvious there was no other course for her, and the sooner the teeth were out and a false set in their place, the better it would be for them all. The girl gazed gloomily out of the window.
“And my daughter’s no comfort to me,” continued Mrs. Sturgis, piteously, conscious of Jeannette’s unvoiced criticism. “The child that I’ve raised through sorrow and tribulation, through hunger and self-denial,—the daughter for whom I’ve worked and sacrificed my life....”
Jeannette continued to stare stonily into space, locked her fingers more tightly together, but said nothing.
Eventually there came the terrible day when Mrs. Sturgis and Alice went forth to the dental surgeon, and when the young girl brought her spent and broken mother home in a cab. The four flights of stairs for the exhausted woman were a dreadful ordeal. Jeannette, catching a glimpse of the labored progress, as she gazed over the balustrade from the top landing, forgot her own weakened condition, the doctor’s caution, and hurried to her mother’s assistance. She ran down the stairs and grasped the little woman’s almost fainting figure in her young arms. Together the sisters dragged and pushed her up the remaining steps, but the older girl knew before she reached the top, that she had put too great a strain upon her own partially regained strength.
She paid for the imprudence by another three weeks in bed. It was the longest three weeks of her life. Her mother roamed about from room to room, toothless and inarticulate, unable to eat solid food, waiting for her lacerated gums to heal. She complained and mumbled almost incessantly, harassed by the thought of doctor’s and dentist’s bills which she declared over and over she saw no way of ever paying. Jeannette, chained to her bed, had to listen unhappily. Mrs. Sturgis gave her no respite. She refused to leave the house for fear of meeting a friend in the street who would discover her toothlessness. Alice went to market and ran the errands, while Mrs. Sturgis rocked back and forth, back and forth, beside Jeannette’s bed, picked at her darning, and complained of life. It was not like her mother, thought the daughter wearily; she of indomitable spirit, who had never been afraid of hardships, but rejoiced in overcoming them.
Letters from Roy brought the only alleviating spots in these long, tiring days. He wrote almost every day and there were numerous picture post-cards. His letters were full of assurances and young hopes. Jeannette loved his endearments, his underscored protestations, but the plans which he elaborately unfolded seemed so uncertain, their realization so improbable that they left her cold. She read the scrawled words in the immature script, and tried to conjure up a picture of him penning them. It eluded her. The boy in the Norfolk jacket with the stuck-up hair, blue eyes, and whimsical smile, that had so strangely fired her heart, had already become hazy and remote. Her own weak back and helplessness, her mother’s trembling cheeks and mumbled complaints were harsh realities, very close at hand. The summer sun blazed on unsparingly, and perspiration covered her arms and neck and trickled down between her breasts. Spring and young love, the glittering Avenue, walks and talks and murmured confidences that whipped the blood and caught the breath, were of a far distant yesterday. Was there ever a time when thoughts of this boy had kept her awake at nights, a time when at the memory of his kiss her tears had blinded her? It was some other Jeannette,—not the one who sighed wearily and wished Alice would keep the door shut, and not let in the flies to bother her.
Slowly Nature reasserted herself. Strength returned, old hopes revived, youth throbbed again in the veins, life once more took on a pleasing aspect. The late August day, that found Jeannette making a cautious way toward the Park on her first venture from the house, was brilliant with warm but not too hot sunshine, and the foliage of trees and shrubbery in the Park vistas never appeared greener or more inviting.
Mrs. Sturgis’ false teeth had made a great improvement in her appearance, had rounded out her face, given strength to her jaw, and made her seem ten years younger. The little woman was delighted with the effect, and was now evincing a gratified interest in her appearance. Signor Bellini had returned earlier than he expected, had already started his Monday and Thursday classes, while Miss Loughborough’s Concentration School for Young Ladies was about to open its doors, and pupils were flocking back from their vacations. And lastly, and to the girl, most important of all, Roy was returning to New York.
He would arrive in the city in a few days, and she wondered how she would feel toward him when they met. As she sat upon a park bench, enjoying the sun and the toddling children playing in the soft gravel of the pathway near by, she asked herself if she cared. She could not tell. Of far more interest to her was the prospect of work again. She had been stifled all summer by illness and heat, but now she wanted to get back to the business world and win her independence anew. Her ambition was afire; she was all eagerness to have a job once more.... Roy? ... Well, it would be pleasant to have him making love to her again, to watch him tremble at her nearness.
But she found herself thrilling on the afternoon he was to see her. He had telephoned in the morning from the station, and his voice had sounded wonderfully sweet and eager. When his ring at the door announced him, her heart raced madly. Delicious tremors, one after another, coursed through her.
He came hurrying up the stairs and she met him in the studio. Their hands instantly found one another’s, and they stood so a moment, smiling happily and ardently into each other’s eyes; then she drifted into his arms, and it seemed the peace of the world had come.
Ah, she had forgotten how dear he was, how lovable, how sweet! It was good to have him take her to himself that way, and feel his thin arms about her, and have him hold her close against his young hard breast.
Plans—plans,—they were full of them. They were engaged now; Mrs. Sturgis and Alice must be told, the father wired, and Roy must immediately set about finding a job. He had some corking letters, he told her eagerly, and he was on the trail of a splendid position already. Jeannette was going to find work, too; they would both save, buy all the clothes they would need, and be married,—oh, some time in the spring! Roy, holding both her hands, gazed at her with shining eyes, his whole face glowing with excitement.
“Oh, God, Jeannette—oh, God! Just think! You and me! Married!”
It was a wonderful prospect.
In less than a week, he had obtained a promising position with the Chandler B. Corey Company, publishers of high-class fiction and the best of standard books. It was a new but flourishing organization with offices on Union Square. In addition to its book business, there were two monthly magazines, The Wheel of Fortune and Corey’s Commentary, and Roy was made part of the staff that secured advertisements for the pages of these periodicals. He was full of enthusiasm for his new work. Mr. Featherstone, the advertising manager, who was also a member of the firm, was the jolliest kind of a man, and the other fellows in the department, Humphrey Stubbs and Walt Chase, were “awfully nice” chaps. He was to receive from the start, twenty dollars a week, and Mr. Featherstone promised him a raise of five dollars at the end of three months, if he made good. The gods were with them. Jeannette and he could be married early in the spring.
The girl listened and pretended to rejoice, but her heart was sick within her. Roy, getting twenty dollars a week!—back in a job!—independent and secure once more!—a bright future and rapid advancement ahead of him! She was bitterly envious. She longed for the old life of business hours, of office excitement, for her neatly managed if frugal lunches, for the early hours in the mornings and the tired hours at night, for the heart-warming touch of the firm, plump little manila envelope on Saturday mornings, and, above all, she longed for the satisfaction of being a wage-earner again, of being financially her own mistress, and being able to contribute something toward the household bills each week.
The next day she started out to find work. She knew it would be a humiliating business, but she found it worse than she feared. The advertisements for stenographers in the newspapers which she answered, all turned out to be disappointing. The most she was offered was ten dollars a week, and in the majority of cases only six or eight. She had made up her mind to accept nothing less than what she had earned before. She would walk out of an office into the glaring street with the prick of tears smarting her eyes, with lips that trembled, but she would vigorously shake her head, and renew her determination.
She went to interview Miss Ingram of the Gerard Commercial School, but Miss Ingram had no vacant positions on her list.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” the little teacher said with a forlorn air; “I’ve got three girls now just waiting for something to turn up, but all they want downtown are boys—boys—boys!”
Twice Jeannette had the unpleasant experience of having men to whom she applied for work lay their hands on her. One slipped his arm about her, and tried to kiss her, pressing a bushy wet mustache against her face; the other placed his fat fingers caressingly over hers and, leering at her, promised he would find her a good job, if she’d come back later in the day. She was equal to these occasions but there was always a sickening reaction that left her weak and trembling with a salt taste in her mouth. She said nothing about them at home.
Her mother and Alice, even Roy, had urged her not to go to work again. Mrs. Sturgis reiterated her original objection; Alice thought it was not necessary, that Janny had better take things easy and devote her time to wedding preparations. Roy did not like the idea, he frankly admitted, of her associating so intimately with a lot of men in an office, and, besides, it distracted her, made her nervous.
“In three months, sweetheart, I’ll be getting twenty-five dollars a week and we can get married. A hundred a month is enough for a while. You ought to run the table on ten dollars a week,—your mother does that for the three of you!—and out of the remaining sixty, we surely will have enough for rent, and a lot left over for clothes and theatres.”
“Oh, yes,” Jeannette sighed wearily, “it’s plenty,—only I want—I want to earn some money myself. I need clothes, and I ought to have everything for a year, at least!”
September passed, and October came with a tingle of autumn, and an early touch of yellow, drifting leaves. Jeannette missed the chance of an excellent position in the manager’s office of a large suit and cloak manufacturer by no more than a minute or two. She saw the other applicant enter the office just ahead of her, and was presently told the place was filled. The girl who had preceded her was Miss Flannigan!
There was another position in a lawyer’s office for which she eagerly applied. She heard the salary was twenty-five dollars a week, but when she was interviewed, and it was discovered she had no knowledge of legal phraseology, she was rejected.
Desperate and discouraged, she was obliged to listen in the evenings to Roy’s glowing praise of his new associates, to detailed accounts of small happenings in the office, and gossip between desks. She learned all about Mr. Featherstone, his devoted and adoring wife, his small, crippled son, his own good nature, and hearty joviality. She heard a great deal about Humphrey Stubbs and Walt Chase. Stubbs, she gathered, was already Roy’s enemy. He had made several efforts to discredit the newcomer, and was on the lookout for things about which to criticize him to his chief. Walt Chase, on the contrary, was amiable and inclined to be very friendly. Walt had been married less than a year, lived in Hackensack, and his wife had just had a baby.
Jeannette listened enviously, with despair in her heart, when she heard about Miss Anastasia Reubens, the editor of The Wheel of Fortune. That Miss Reubens was forty-five and had spent all the working years of her life on the editorial staff of one magazine or another made little difference to Jeannette. She hated to inquire about her, but her curiosity was too great.
“What do you suppose she gets?” she asked Roy with a casual air.
“Oh, I don’t know; perhaps fifty or sixty a week. I’m sure I haven’t an idea. None of the folks down there get high salaries; everyone is underpaid. Mr. Corey hasn’t more than got the business started. He only began it five years ago. He tells us, we’ve got to wait with him, until the money begins to come in, and then we’ll all share in the profits.”
“Fifty or sixty a week?” sniffed Jeannette. “Did she tell you she got that? ... She’s lucky, if she gets twenty-five!”
Roy shrugged his shoulders. He had an irritating way of avoiding arguments, Jeannette noticed, by lapsing silent. She considered the matter for a moment further, but decided it was not worth pressing.
“What kind of a man is Mr. Corey?” she asked.
“Oh, Corey? Corey’s a peach. He’s a dynamo of energy, and has all sorts of enthusiasm. He’s got the most magnetic personality I’ve ever seen in my life. He’s going to make a whale of a big business out of that concern. Every Wednesday we all lunch together,—that is, the men in the editorial and book departments,—and we go to the Brevoort; we’ve got a private room down there, and Mr. Corey always comes and talks to us about the business and we try to offer suggestions that will help each other. We call it ‘The Get Together Club.’ It’s great.”
Jeannette studied her lover’s face and for a moment felt actual dislike for him. What did he know? Why should he be so fortunate? Why should everything go so smoothly for him? Why shouldn’t she have a chance like that?
“Mr. Featherstone may send me to Boston Friday to see the Advertising Manager of Jordan & Marsh about some copy. He said something about it last night. I’d hate to go, but, gee! it would be a great trip!”
Jeannette rose to her feet abruptly and lowered a hissing gas-jet. Oh, she was unreasonable, silly, ungenerous! But she couldn’t listen any longer. It made her sick.
Mr. Abrahms, of Abrahms & Frank,—fur dealers and repairers of fur garments,—would pay twelve dollars a week for a first-class “stenog,” who “vood vork from eight till sigs.” He was very anxious that Jeannette should accept his offer.
“I need a goil chust lige you, who c’n tage letters vot I digtate an’ put ’em into nice English, and be polide to der customers vot come in ven I am busy,” he explained.
It was a cheap little establishment, crowded into the first floor and basement of an old private dwelling, now devoted to similar small enterprises. A dressmaker occupied the second floor, an electrician the next, and a sign-painter the last and topmost. It was far from being the kind of employment Jeannette wanted, but it was the best that had been offered, and she promised to report on Monday.
She went dismally home on the “L,” deriving a bitter satisfaction in picturing to herself what her days would be like, cooped up in an ill-ventilated back office with the swarthy, none-too-clean Mr. Abrahms, interviewing the none-too-clean customers who would be likely to patronize such a place. Still it was a job and she was a wage-earner again. There would be some comfort in announcing the news to Roy and to her mother and sister.
She found a message from Roy when she reached home. It had been brought by the clerk in Bannerman’s Drug Store. He had said, Alice repeated for the hundredth time, that Mr. Beardsley had ’phoned and asked him to tell Miss Jeannette Sturgis to come down at once to his office; he had said it was important. Alice didn’t know anything more than that; there wasn’t any use asking her questions; the clerk had just said that, and that was all.
“Perhaps he’s got a job for me!” Jeannette exclaimed with a wild hope. “He knows how badly I want one!”
“I’m sure I haven’t the faintest idea.” Her sister turned back to the soapy water in the wash-tub where she was carefully washing some of her mother’s jabots.
“Well, I’ll fly.”
Jeannette hurried to her room, and jerked the tissue paper out of her best shirtwaist. Her fingers trembled as she re-dressed herself; the tiny loops that connected with small pearl buttons on her cuffs eluded her again and again until she was almost ready to cry with fury. She felt sure that Roy had a job for her; he would have telephoned for no other reason. In thirty minutes she was aboard the “L” again, rushing downtown.
As she crossed Union Square the gold sign of the Chandler B. Corey Company spreading itself imposingly across the façade of an ancient office building made her heart beat faster, and her rapid, breathless walk doubled with her excitement into almost a skip as she hurried along. Oh, there was good news awaiting her! She felt it!
The wheezy elevator bumped and rumbled as it leisurely ascended. At the fourth floor she stepped out into a reception room whose walls were covered with large framed drawings and paintings. There were some magazines arranged on a center table. The place smelt of ink and wet paste. A smiling girl rose from a desk and came toward her.
“I’ll see if he’s in,” she said in reply to Jeannette’s query and disappeared.
Upon an upholstered wicker seat in one corner of the room an odd-looking woman wearing a huge cart-wheel hat was talking animatedly to another who listened with a twisted, sour smile. They were discussing photographs, and the woman in the cart-wheel hat was handing them out one by one from a great pile in her lap. Jeannette was forced to listen.
“This one is of some monks in a village monastery in Korea, and this shows some of the Buddhist prayers for sale in a Japanese shop,—did you ever see such a number?—and here is a group of our Bible students at Tientsin,—could you ask for more intelligent faces? ... Wonderful work.... these men are sacrificing their lives ... twelve thousand dollars....” The words trailed off into an impressive whisper.
Down in the Square the trees were a mass of lovely golden brown and golden yellow shades. Tiffany’s windows across the way sparkled with dull silver.
Roy’s quick step sounded behind her, and Jeannette turned to meet his grinning, eager face, his smile stretched to its tightest across his small and even white teeth.
“Gee, I’m glad you’ve come, Janny!” he exclaimed boyishly. “Say, you look dandy!—you look out-of-sight!” He eyed her delightedly. The woman with the sour, twisted smile glanced toward them casually. Jeannette was all cool dignity.
“What was it, Roy? ... Why did you send for me?”
He continued to smile at her, but at last her serious, expectant look sobered him.
“I think I’ve got a job for you!” he said quickly, dropping his voice. “I only heard about it this morning. I couldn’t telephone until I went out to lunch. One of our regular stenographers is sick; she’s very sick and is not coming back. Mr. Kipps, the business manager, was explaining why they were short-handed upstairs and I was right there, so of course I heard about it. I spoke to Mr. Featherstone about you, and he sent me to Kipps, and Kipps told me to tell you to come down, so he could talk to you. I told him what a wizard you were, and he seemed awfully interested. I didn’t lose a minute; I telephoned as soon as I went out to lunch. I had a deuce of a time making that drug clerk understand.... Gee, you look dandy! ... Gee, you look swell! ... Gee, I love you!”
He piloted her a few minutes later into the inner offices. Jeannette gained a confused impression of crowded desks and clerks, the iron grilling of a cashier’s cage, an open safe, a litter of paper, wire baskets of letters, and stacks of bills. Before she knew it, she found herself confronting Mr. Kipps, and Roy had abandoned her. She was aware of a nervous, fidgety personality, with a thin, hawklike face and long, thin fingers. He had unkempt hair and mustache, and wore round, black tortoise-shell glasses through which he darted quick little glances of appraisement at the girl who had seated herself at his invitation beside his desk.
He fitted his finger-tips neatly together as he questioned her, lolled back in his swivel armchair, and swung himself slowly from side to side, kicking the desk gently with his feet. He asked her to spell “privilege” and “acknowledgment,” and to tell him how many degrees there were in a circle. He nodded with her replies.
He would give her a trial; she could report in the morning. He dismissed her with no mention of what salary she would receive.
But Jeannette did not care. She was delighted and in high spirits. This was just the kind of a job she wanted, just the sort of an atmosphere she longed for; she felt certain that, whatever they paid her at first, she would soon make them give her what she was worth.
When Roy arrived that evening there was great hilarity in the Sturgis household. He had never seen Jeannette in such wild spirits, or found her so affectionate with him. The coldness he sometimes met in her, the reserve, the unyieldingness, were all absent now. He pulled the shabby davenport up before the fire, and they sat holding hands, watching the dying fire flicker and flicker and finally flicker out, and when the light was gone she lay close against him, his arms about her, and every now and then, as he bent his head over her, she raised hers to his, and their lips met.
Her desk, with those of the five other stenographers employed by the publishing company, was located on the floor above the editorial offices. Here were also the circulation and mail order departments. Light entered from three broad front windows but it was far from sufficient and thirty electric bulbs under green tin cones suspended by long wire cords burned throughout the day over the rows of desks and tables that filled the congested loft. At these were some hundred girls and women, and half a dozen men. In the rear, where the daylight failed almost completely to penetrate, the cones of electric radiance flooded the dark recesses brilliantly. Old Hodgson, who was in charge of the outgoing mail, there had his domain, and it was in this quarter that the lumbering freight elevator occasionally made its appearance with a bang and crash of opening iron doors. Toward the front, near the windows, and separated from the rest by low railings, were located the desks of Miss Holland and Mr. Max Oppenheim. The former was