Gale Zona
A Daughter of the Morning
CHAPTER IV
It was past one o'clock when we got to the city, and we hadn't had anything to eat. We found a lunch place near the depot, and then I spent a penny for a paper, and we set there in the restaurant and tried to find where to go. It wasn't much of any fun, getting to the city, not the way you'd think it would be, because Mis' Bingy and I didn't know where we were going.
The Furnished Room page all sounded pleasant, but when we asked the restaurant keeper where the cheap ones were, most of them was quite far to walk. Finally we picked out some near each other and started out to find them. I carried my valise and Mis' Bingy's, and she had the baby. It was a hot day, with a feel of thunder in the air.
We walked for two hours, because neither of us thought we'd ought to begin by spending car-fare. Mis' Bingy had sixteen dollars that she'd saved, off and on, for two years. I had five dollars. So neither of us was worried very much about money; but we wanted to save all we could. We went to five or six places that were nice, but they cost too much; and to two that we could have taken, only the lady said she didn't want a baby in the house.
"If they're born in your house, do you turn 'em out?" I says to one of 'em.
Pretty soon we found a little grassy place with trees, and big buildings around it, and we went in that and sat down on the grass.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, "was you ever in the city before?"
"Sure I was," she says, proud, "twelve years ago. We come to his uncle's funeral. But he didn't leave him anything."
"I was here once," I says, "when I was 'leven. To have my eyes done to. And once when I was eighteen, when Mother got her teeth. Did you ever go to the theater here?" I ask' her.
"No," says she.
"Did you ever see in a jewelry store here?"
"No," says she.
"Or in stores with low-neck dresses and light colors?"
"No," says she.
"Nor the Zoo with the animals, nor a store where they sell just flowers, nor the band?" I says.
"No," says she. "But he used to tell me, when he come up sometimes," she tacks on.
The sun kept coming out and going under. The trees moved pleasant and folks went hurrying by. It kind of come over me:
"Mis' Bingy," I says, "you ain't ever had anything in your whole life, and neither have I. And now it's the city!"
But she put her head down on the baby and begun to cry.
"I don't know what's going to become of us," she says. "It's awful."
I jumped up and stood on the grass and looked off down the street toward the city.
"And I don't know what's going to become of us!" I says. "Ain't it grand?"
I laughed, and whirled on my toe. A woman was going along the walk that cut through the grassy place where we was. She looked nice, like pictures of women.
"Excuse me," I says to her, "can you tell us somebody that has a room to rent, a cheap room?"
"I'm sorry," she says, and bent her head and went on.
It give me a little cold feeling. It come to me that maybe everything wasn't the way it looked.
"Come on, Mis' Bingy," I says, "it's getting late. We don't want to sleep out here to-night."
The room that we finally found was at the back and up two stairways, and it cost fifty cents more than we thought we'd pay, but we took it.
And now the singing in me that I'd been keeping down while there was things to do, come up through, the little funny singing that was all over me. I took out the two cards – that I'd got only that morning, that seemed, lifetimes back – and laid one of 'em on the bureau. It was Mr. Ember's card. The other one I wouldn't look up till to-morrow when I started out to find my work. But this one was his card, that he'd told me would find him. He'd been on his way back to the city that morning. By now he would be here. And I wasn't going to wait.
I put on my other shoes and a clean waist, and I told Mis' Bingy that I'd be back in a little while. She was going to try to go to sleep. I heard her lock the door before I got to the stairs, and I knew that she'd be afraid all the time that Keddie was going to find her.
Out on the street I asked how to get to the address on the card. It was on the far edge of the town: the policeman begun to tell me which car to take.
"I'll walk," I says.
"It'll take you an hour," says he.
"It's my hour," says I, and I started. But it come to me that that wasn't the way Mr. Ember would have thought anybody ought to answer, and I felt kind of sick. I thought, How was I going to remember to do all the ways I knew he'd want?
It took me more than an hour to walk it. It was 'most six o'clock when I finally turned in the little street, just a block long, where he lived. My heart begun to beat, while I walked along slow, looking at the numbers. It come to me that maybe he wouldn't be glad to see me.
Sixteen … eighteen … twenty-two … twenty-four, and that was his. It had a high brick fence – I could just see the roof over it – and a little picket gate standing open. I went along a short walk with green and yellow bushes on each side to a low porch with a door, that was standing open, too. And on the door was two cards: "Mr. Arthur Gordon" was on one. The other was his. Below them it said: "Visitors Enter."
So I went in, the way it said, through a low, bare, dim hall, and through a door on the right to a little room; and beyond was a big room, with a queer, sloping window all over the ceiling. The room had pictures on the walls. And it was full of folks.
I stood by the door looking for him. It didn't seem possible that we could meet here, now, when I'd left him such a little while ago, there in Twiney's pasture. There was a good many different kinds of men, most of them smiling. They were looking at the pictures, or drinking from cups round a white table. I looked at them first, one after another; but none of them was him.
Then I begun noticing the women. They looked like the kind I'd seen in the Weekly, Saturdays, when there was pictures. They were all light-colored, with dresses that you couldn't tell how they were made, and hair that you couldn't remember how it was done up, and soft voices that went up and down, different from any I'd ever heard. I could hear what some of them near me were saying, but there was none of it that I could understand, nor what it was about, nor what the names meant. And all of a sudden I see through it: These folks must all have done the things he had done – Asia, Europe, volcanoes – and they could talk about it his way. These were the kind of people he was used to.
Right near me was a woman in a dress that looked like I've seen the clouds look like, all showing through pink, with a hat like I'd never seen except once in a window when I was waiting for Mother and her teeth. I remember just what the woman said – I stood saying it over, like when I was learning a piece for elocution class, home. She says:
"I beg your pardon? But I fancy Mr. Ember would call that effect far from artificial…"
They walked by me. I stood there, saying over and over what she had just said about Mr. Ember. I didn't know what it meant, but it made me remember something. It made me remember the way I'd talked to him that morning, and the song I'd sung him, running backward on the road and trying to flirt with him; and that about his not giving me his right name.
"Pardon me," somebody near me said, "I wonder if I may serve you in any way?"
I didn't half see the man who spoke to me. I just shook my head, and slipped out the door and out of the little yard.
CHAPTER V
It was that night that I begun this book. I'd brought in a loaf of bread and a little warming pan and a can of baked beans. We het the beans over the gas-jet and made a good supper – the water in the wash pitcher was all right to drink. Then Mis' Bingy went to bed with the baby, and I got out the paper I'd fixed, and I started. It seemed as though I must. I had the feeling that I wanted to get out from the place I was in. Home, when I felt like that, I used to sweep the parlor or shampoo my hair, or try to get Father to leave me earn some money, helping him. Once I took my egg money and started lessons on our organ. But such things don't get you anywheres. And it seemed as though the book would help.
I didn't know anything to write about, only just me. It come to me that I ought to tell about me. But nothing worth writing had ever happened to me till just that morning. So I started in, and wrote near all night – down to the part where we got to the city. The gas smelled bad. I always remember that night. Before I knew it, it was getting light in the window. Then I put up the paper and crawled over back of Mis' Bingy and the baby, and went to sleep. And when I went to sleep, and when I woke up in the morning, the same thing was in my head right along – that mebbe I could get to be enough different so's I could see him again, some day. Because I knew I wasn't never going to let him see me again while I was the way I was now. But I wondered how to get different.
"Mis' Bingy," I says next morning, "how do folks get different?"
"Hard work and trouble, mostly," she says.
"I don't mean backward," I says. "I mean frontward."
She shook her head. "I donno," she says. "I used to think about that, some."
We had the rest of the beans and bread, and then I started out. After she got the baby dressed, Mis' Bingy was going out to set in the green place where we'd been yesterday.
"I could work," she says, "if it wasn't for the baby. She's lots of work, too. But that don't earn us nothing."
She was always making lace, and she'd brought along a lot she made – the bottom drawer of the washstand was full of it. Making that, and tending the baby, kep' her occupied; but, as she said, it didn't earn us anything.
I had the other card that Mr. Ember had given me, and that morning I started out to find the man. John Carney, the name was, and it was a long ways to walk. It was in a big office building. And when I got to the right door, a smart young guy behind a fence says, What did I want to see Mr. Carney about, and wouldn't one of the men in the office do? I just give him Mr. Ember's card to take in, and when he'd gone I felt glad; because if it had been the day before, when I hadn't seen that room full of folks nor heard the woman in the pinkish dress speak like she done, I bet I'd of said to that young guy: "You go and chase yourself to the pasture and quit your fresh lip." Just like Lena Curtsy would have said.
I had to wait quite a while till they sent for me. And when I went in the office, long and like a parlor in a picture, I stood in front of a big gray man whose shoulders were the principal part. And there was a little young man there, sitting loose in a big easy chair, looking at a newspaper. I noticed the little young man particular, because he didn't look like anything, and he acted like so much. He didn't belong in the office. He just happened.
"What can I do for you, madam?" says the big gray man, with Mr. Ember's card in his hand. "Mr. Carney is absent in Europe."
"Oh," I says, "then I don't know. Mr. Ember thought Mr. Carney'd maybe help me to get a job."
The little young man spoke up.
"I expect you'll meet up with a good deal of that kind of thing, Bliss," he says, glancing up from his newspaper and glancing down again. "Everybody sends 'em to my uncle. He – makes it a point to know of things. He's a regular employment agency, d'y'see, for the jobless friends of his friends. I – er – shouldn't let it bother me."
The big gray man was real nice and regretful.
"I'm genuinely sorry," he said. "I really am. I happen to know Ember a little – I'd be glad to oblige him. But this – we don't need a thing here. I'm sorry Mr. Carney is away. It's unfortunate, but he is away, for some months."
He said a few more things polite, and he took down my name and address and said if anything should turn up… And I happened to think of something. If we had to wait very long, it might bother some about the rent.
"You don't think it would be very long, do you?" I says. "On account of Mis' Bingy and my rent."
"I wish I could promise something more," says the big gray man, looking back on his desk papers. "I'm sorry. Good morning."
I didn't think till afterward that he'd never even troubled to ask me what I could do.
Then the little young man that had been setting loose in his chair, sat up loose, and spoke loose, too.
"I say," he said, "if she's a friend of Ember's, I might give her a card to the factory."
"I shouldn't trouble if I were you, Arthur," says the big gray man, sharp; which I didn't think was very nice of him.
But the little young man, tipping his cigar so's the smoke would keep out of his eyes, and squinting back from it, took out a card and scrawled on it and tossed it across the table toward me.
"You might try that," he says. And shook himself, loose again, and strolled out the door. He walked loose, too.
I thanked him and put the card away, and went down in the elevator. It was the same elevator, it turned out, that the little young man had taken, but of course he didn't notice me. When I got down I asked the man at the door how to get to the address of the factory that was written on the card. He said it was about two miles, and told me with his thumb which way. While I was trying to make out which way he meant, I stood for a minute in the street doorway. And there was the little young man again.
"Do you know how to get to the factory?" he asked.
"Yes. On my two feet," I says back, and started.
"You don't mean to say you're going to walk all that way?" he says, following me a step or two.
"No," I says, "I don't mean to say it, as I know of."
"Look here," he says, "my car is here at the side door. I'm on my way over to the factory now. Can't I give you a lift?"
I thought for a minute. I was awful tired. If I walked all that way and then home, I'd have to spend ten cents for lunch that would be enough for Mis' Bingy and me both at night. The little young man was a friend of Mr. Carney's, that was a friend of Mr. Ember's…
"We'll be there in ten minutes," he says.
"Much obliged," I says, and went with him.
He had a nice little shiny two-seated car that he engineered himself. When we was headed down the avenue he says:
"My name is Arthur Carney. I'm Mr. Carney's nephew."
I remembered about the awful things I'd said to Mr. Ember, so I answered just as nice as I knew how: "I'm Cosma Wakely."
"Do you live here in town?" he ask' me.
"No," I says. "I just come from Katytown last night. Yes, I do live here now – I forgot."
"Really," he says.
The car went so quick and smooth and even I could have sung because I was in it. I'd never been in an automobile before.
"Oh," I says, "ain't this just grand?"
He looked over at me – he had a real white face and gold glasses and not much of any hair showed. His clothes and his gloves was like new, and some white cuffs peeked out.
"I think so," he says. "I'm glad you do."
"I meant the car," I says; and then I was afraid I'd made another mistake, like I had with Mr. Ember, and that the car was what the little young man had meant, too.
But he was looking at me and laughing.
"You're awfully sure what you mean, aren't you?" he says. "Are you always that sure?"
I kept thinking that he was Mr. Carney's nephew, and that Mr. Carney was Mr. Ember's friend. I wanted to answer him like I knew Mr. Ember would like. I'd answered him saucy when he first spoke to me, but that was part because I was embarrassed. So I didn't say anything at all. I didn't care whether he thought I was a country girl and a stick or not. I wanted to act nice.
"What made you run away from me yesterday?" he says.
"Yesterday?" I ask' him.
"At Gordon's studio," he says. "You don't mean to say you've forgotten that I spoke to you when you stood in the doorway? And you ran away."
I ask' him, before I meant to, "Was Mr. Ember there?"
"Ember? No," he says; "he's never here. He works off in God-forsaken spots. How are you going to like the city?"
I looked down the shiny crowded street. All to once I saw it different. Before that I'd been thinking he might be in every crowd.
"It's awful lonesome here," I says.
The policeman at the corner held up his hand, and we had to sit still and wait. The little young man leaned on the wheel.
"I hope you'll let me keep you from getting too lonesome," he says.
I turned round on him. In another minute I'd have given him the thing I always tried to say back, smart and quick. "When I'm that lonesome, I'll go traveling back home again," was what come in my head. Instead of that, all at once I wondered what the woman in the pinkish dress and hat in the studio would have said. And I said what she did say:
"I beg your pardon?"
He laughed. "All right," he said, and started the car. "I do go pretty fast. But, by jove, you know, you bowl a fellow over."
I didn't say anything. I was thinking. Here was a man that had been with all those people yesterday, the people that were the way I wanted to be. He had always been with them. He had money, I thought – his clothes and his cuffs, and then the car, looked as if he had. Probably he knew the same things, almost, that Mr. Ember knew. He ought to be able to help me.
"Mr. Carney," I says, "have you been to see Europe, and Asia – and volcanoes?"
"Have I what?" says he.
"Oh," I says, "traveled. Well, I guess you have seen all the things and places there are to see, haven't you?"
"I've done a turn or two," he says. "Why? Are you interested in travel?"
"Oh, yes," I says; "but – of course – "
"Do you want to travel?" he says, turning to look at me.
"Why," I says; "but I mean – "
He stopped the car for the policeman at the next corner.
"Because," he says, leaning on the wheel again, "if you want to travel, you shall travel."
It was almost what Mr. Ember had said. I was so thankful that now I knew enough to answer nice, and not the awful way I had done to Mr. Ember.
"I hope so," I says. "I do want to."
I thought he was waiting for me to look round at him; but there was a little dog in the automobile next to us, and I was watching that.
"When?" he says. "When?"
I says, "The gentleman blew his whistle."
He laughed, and started the car, and I went on with what I'd been wanting to say.
"I was thinking," I says, "you've probably seen a whole lots of folks, like I mean about. Well, I wanted to ask you: How do folks get different? I mean, when they've started in being like me?"
"What do you mean, child?" he says.
"Get different," I says. "Get like those women there yesterday."
"There wasn't a woman in the room yesterday who could hold a candle to you, and you know it," he says. "Ever since yesterday I've been cursing myself that I didn't follow you. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw you come into that office this morning. Why in the world would you want to be different?"
I wanted to say, "Because I want something more than that in mine!" But I didn't. I spoke just regular.
"No," I says, "I mean true. I mean, learn things. Not school things, but how to do. How do you start out? I mean, if it's me?"
He kept looking at me, in between guiding his car.
"So that's it!" he says. "And you want me to tell you?"
"Yes!" I says. "More than anything else." He turned his car into a side street, and run it slow. We was almost to the factory, I judged. I could see smoke and big walls.
"You can have whatever schooling or training there is in this town that you want – or anywhere else," he says to me, "if you just say the word."
It was just the way Mr. Ember had spoken, and Mr. Ember had meant that I mustn't think there was nothing else for me only just what I'd got, if I was willing to work for something more. So I see the little young man must think as he did.
"It's nice to think so," I says.
"Do you mean it?" says he.
"Why, of course," I says. "Is this the factory?"
"You insist on trying for a job?" he says.
"Why, yes," I says. "Don't you think I can get one?"
"Sure you can get one," he says, "if I say the word."
I wondered how he done what he done. It wasn't five minutes that I waited in the stuffy dirty room by the gate into the factory yard, before a man come and told me to go up to the next floor.
When I crossed the yard the little young man come out of a door and he says to me:
"Good-by, and good luck to you." And he adds low, "I'll be waiting for you at six o'clock at the door we came in."
"Oh," I says, "don't you do that, Mr. Carney! Mr. Ember wouldn't want me to trouble the other Mr. Carney or you either, not that much."
He scowled. "This isn't exactly on his account, you know."
And when he went off he didn't take off his hat to me, like Mr. Ember had done, and like I thought city men always done.
I kept thinking all that over while they started me in to work, punching holes in a card. I thought about it so hard that when night came I asked the forewoman if I could walk to the car with her. I thought I could take the street-car, now I had a job. She was a big red woman. "That don't work with me, you'll find," she says, and went past me. I guess she didn't understand what I said. So I went out with some of the other girls, and it just happened that I got out another door than the one I went in, and on to the street-car.
I bought a can of peas and four rolls and five cents butter, to celebrate.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, when I went in, "scratch a match, and start the cook stove up there on the wall! I've got a job for three dollars a week, from eight till six. Didn't I tell you everything'd be easy?"
