“You’re going to take me!” she confided to him with almost the sweet and gracious air she had worn at dinner, conferring her greatest favor upon him.
Something stirred within Greg again, the old attraction. He knew he didn’t belong to this crowd. Yet he did not seem able to resist that look in Alice’s eyes. After all, why blame her so? She had lived in Paris. She had lived with men who did these things. Perhaps she was not so much to blame after all. Surely a face so lovely, so tragic in some of its moods, must have great good in it. He hesitated.
And while he hesitated, the man named Mortie came over to her with the white fur wrap her maid had brought.
“Come on then, Blair, dear!” he said possessively, holding out her wrap and folding it intimately around her shoulders.
Alice let him put the wrap around her, but she lifted her azure eyes to Greg’s face.
“You may put on my wrap, Mortie precious,” she said languidly, “but I’m going with my old sweetheart, Gregory Sterling!” and she slipped a little jeweled hand inside Greg’s arm. “Come on, folks,” she called. “We’re going out to find a nightclub.”
Chapter 10
Margaret had sat in her obscure corner of the inner waiting room embattled by her thoughts for perhaps an hour before any sort of order came out of the chaos.
It was as if that awful head nurse had followed her here and was saying over and over all that she had said to her a little while before. All the contumely and scorn were heaped upon her head, the sharp words of rebuke went deep into her soul again, and she just sat there and took it like one caught under fire.
To think that she had allowed herself to be put into such a situation! Occupying one of the best private rooms at the expense of a stranger who had told her lies to keep her satisfied! And it would appear from what the head nurse had said that he hadn’t even paid the expense, only pretended he was going to so that the nurses and the doctor would allow him to put her there! How terrible! How she had been deceived in that man! He had seemed so genuine, just as if God had sent him to her in her distress! Never again would she trust any human being whom she did not know. Her judgment was all at fault. What could possibly have been his object? Did he for some reason want to get her under his power? She shuddered at the thought.
Well, it had not been her fault in the first place. She was unconscious when he picked her up. Her only crime had been in trusting their word when they told her the room was a memorial gift for just such strangers as herself.
That nice, kind nurse, too! She must have been in on the conspiracy, if it was a conspiracy. Or perhaps the young man had deceived her also. She had certainly been on his side.
But presently the shame and humiliation of having been ordered out of a hospital on the ground of no-respectability cleared away like smoke from a battleground after the shooting is over, and she began to see more clearly.
It wasn’t her fault anyway. Sometime if she succeeded in business she might go back and pay every cent she owed that hospital. Pretty soon when she got on her feet again and was earning money enough to buy some decent stationery, she would write that head nurse a note and tell her so, or perhaps it would be better to write to the hospital and explain the whole thing. That was it—she could write and explain it all, and they would understand that she was a respectable girl and had not been to blame.
The idea seemed to ease the pain and humiliation of the whole affair and to give her back her ordinary common sense.
Now she must put it utterly out of her mind. She obviously couldn’t do anything about it just now. Her first need was to get a job and provide against the immediate future.
Nobody, of course, would pay her right away, and she would have to get along somehow till the end of the week, but how was she going to work unless she could eat? Could she get her new employer, provided there was such a person in existence, to pay her a little at the end of the day, just to tide her over a few days? She could live on very little. Some milk and crackers, a bowl of soup now and then, or an orange or banana. She had had large experience in finding out cheap meals that would last. As for a place to stay, she could spend one night at least here in this station. If she came in late in the evening, no one would notice her. She could move in the middle of the night when she might be supposed to be going to a train, from the big outer room to this one. She could even perhaps get a chance to lie down on that big couch over in the opposite corner for an hour or two, at least until the attendant asked her to move on. Yes, she could very well get comfortably through a night or two in this station. And there was another station in the other part of town. Perhaps she could change to that when it became noticeable that she was hanging around here.
Of course, when she got a real job, she would have to hunt a room, but it would have to be a very small, cheap one, and she resolved that she would never go back to Rodman Street to stay again with that old virago. She wouldn’t even go back for her things until she had the money to pay what she owed. For, of course, if that young man had been a liar, all that story about paying her room rent for her had been a lie also. What a fool she had been not to see that. As if anybody would be so silly as to pay back rent for an utter stranger who had no claim upon him! She certainly had been gullible. And how she had prided herself upon her ability to take care of herself in a big city! Well, she would be cautious enough hereafter! And she wouldn’t go near Rodman Street for sometime yet, not till she felt safe. The young man knew that had been her home. If he wanted to annoy her further, he might go there, and she might have difficulty in reading him. She could get along somehow without her things. She reflected that there were pitifully few of them left anyway. Most of the wardrobe with which she had come to the city was now represented by a few pawn tickets hidden away in a little box in her suitcase, and it would be a long time before she could hope to redeem them. But she would get alone. She must. She could not fail! God wouldn’t let that happen with those two dear old people up in Vermont utterly dependent upon her!
Then Necessity arose familiarly and stung her into action. She must not sit here another minute wasting precious time in useless thought. The day was slipping fast away, and she must get a job.
So she clutched her thin pocketbook in her hands and started up, trying not to realize how weak she felt, how her knees shook under her and her feet felt like lead when she walked. She simply must not give way to this feeling. She must get a job and go to work at once, and how could one work feeling like an invalid?
“Oh God, help me!” she breathed. Then she took a deep breath, tried to set a pleasant assured expression upon her face, and went forward.
She didn’t notice which way she was going. All ways were alike, so they did not lead in the direction of the hospital from which she had fled. She tried to remember how fortunate it was that she had finished her breakfast, or at least nearly finished it, before that terrible nurse had flung open the door and begun to rail at her. There had been one lovely last bite of toast and egg and one more swallow of coffee, she remembered, but she must not think of that or she would begin to get hungry before night, and night was the first time she dared hope to eat again. Even then it might be impossible.
So she shut her lips firmly, pleasantly, and started out.
She found herself headed into a street that she did not know, a street of small, dirty shops; printers; stencilers; grimy wholesale places where they kept electric fixtures in little dark discouraged rooms, and where their windows seemed never to have been washed. That was an idea: how would it be to go into some of those places and ask them if they didn’t want their windows washed? She could wash windows beautifully. Yet she couldn’t wash windows in the only decent clothes she had. One day would put them beyond hunting for a more lucrative job. Besides, she was too shaky for such strenuous work. She probably couldn’t last out a day at it. That would be foolishness, unless there really was nothing else.
Then just across the street she saw a window where a man was leaning over putting
a large white lettered card close to the glass. Even at that distance, she could dimly make out the words Girl Wanted, and with wondering relief, she turned and sped across the street. What marvelous luck to be the first to see it. No, not luck. God was surely being good to her! Yet perhaps it was some kind of skilled work needed that she could not do.
She entered the shop with fear and trembling and looked around her fearsomely.
It was only a tiny shop, and its shelves and counters and even the floor seemed to be cluttered with small pasteboard boxes. On the counter were several of these open, and beneath the wrappings she could see some kind of metal contrivance for household use.
There were two men in the shop, the younger one unloading more little boxes from a large packing box in the middle of the room and putting them on the shelves. The older one, an elderly man with sharp eyes and an unpleasant mouth, came forward and looked her over suspiciously.
“Can you write a good, clear hand?” was the first question he asked her.
Margaret smiled with relief.
“Oh yes!”
He shoved forward a pad and pencil.
“Show me!”
He pointed to an address, and Margaret copied it, trying to keep her hand from shaking.
“Okay,” said the man when she had finished. “Now I got a lotta circulars I want folded and addressed. I pay by the hundred.” He named a pitifully small sum. “It’s upta you how much ya make. I wantta get ‘em out as quick as possible. Ef you don’t work fast enough, I gotta get somebody else ta help. There’s all them! How fast ken ya work?”
He waved his hand toward a counter at the back where were stacked what seemed to Margaret like millions of printed sheets and quantities of envelopes.
“Oh, I can work fast!” promised Margaret breathlessly.
“Want I should get a helper fer ya, or ken ya do ‘em alone an’ make it snappy?”
“I should like to do them all,” she answered quietly. “I’m sure I can do them very fast. I’m a rapid writer.”
“Well, I’ll try ya till noon on it, but ef ya don’t get enough done, I’ll havta get a helper. Mike, take that card outta the winder, an’ stick it up on the shelf awhile. We might want it again.”
So Margaret hung her hat on a nail by the window on the dusty back end of the shop and sat down under a green shaded lamp before a stack of envelopes. The pen wasn’t very good, and the envelopes were cheap, the list was long and the surroundings were unspeakably dreary, but Margaret was exceedingly thankful. She had escaped from no telling what peril that threatened, and she had a job! It was barely enough to keep her, and it was obviously temporary, but she was glad.
By tens, she laid the addressed envelopes in long lines around her on the desk till they presently began to assemble into hundreds, and when the desk was full, she stopped and folded circulars and filled them.
Now and then one man or the other would walk by her, pause to watch her flying pen, and scan thoughtfully the piles of finished envelopes that were growing on the counter beside the desk. There was no doubt but that this new girl they had hired could work rapidly.
But as it came toward noon, the tense work was beginning to tell on her. She felt strength running from the tips of her fingers; she felt a deathly faintness stealing over her. The memory of her breakfast became very dim. This was the time that Nurse Gowen had brought her the glass of orange juice yesterday and the day before, but she must not think of that.
At noon she drank two full glasses of water, thankful that water was free, and went on with her work.
On through the afternoon she worked, a giddy faintness beginning to take hold of her. She felt shaky whenever she rose to gather up the finished work and stack it on the counter, but her hand, gripped in a nervous tension, held steadily on its way, though it ached unbearably whenever she released her hold on the pen for a moment. Could she make it? Could she keep on till night? She knew she was working on her nerve alone. She found herself praying in her heart.
“Oh God, keep me from fainting again. Oh God, help me through!”
At half past five, the men began to put up the shutters and put on their coats.
The old man came over to the desk and surveyed with satisfaction the great stack of finished work.
“You’ve worked good!” he said, nodding his approval. “I guess you’ll make the grade without a helper ef you can keep it up a day ur so longer. You better go home an’ get yer dinner now.”
Margaret looked up with a weary smile.
“Could you”—she began hesitantly—”would you be willing to let me have just a little money tonight?” she asked. “I have been out of work for several days.”
The man eyed her intently.
“Sure you’ll come back tamorra? I wouldn’t wantta break in a new hand. I gotta get these out right away.”
“Oh yes, I’ll come back,” said Margaret, wondering what he would think if she should be unable to come and somebody else would pick her up and take her to a hospital.
“Fifty cents do ya?”
“Oh yes, thank you!” she said.
He flung a fifty cent piece down on the desk beside her half reluctantly. “It ain’t my custom ta pay till the work’s done,” he said grudgingly, “but seein’ you done pretty good, I’ll chance it. Now, tamorra I’ll have the stamps here an’ we’ll mail these, see, an’ then get another batch off in the afternoon mail. Ef you work as good the next two days as you done today, there’s a dollar bonus in it fer ya, see?”
The color flooded into Margaret’s pale cheeks. It was so humiliating to be groveling for a dollar bonus. To have a man suspecting that she might not return! But she tried to answer meekly, “Thank you,” put on her brave little red-feathered hat, and went out into the dark street gripping her fifty cents in one hand and her thin pocketbook in the other. Somehow it never occurred to her to put her money into the pocketbook. She knew she must use some of it at once or collapse, and she hurried down the dusky street searching for a cheap restaurant.
A bowl of soup, a cup of coffee. It didn’t cost so much! She looked wistfully at the change. If only she could find a cheap bed and have a good night’s sleep, but she must have breakfast. There was barely enough left for a meager breakfast and perhaps a sandwich to eat at noon. She mustn’t indulge in a bed. The railroad station would do tonight.
So she dropped the few small coins into the inner pocket of her purse, never noticing how thick the pocket containing the letter from her grandmother had grown since last she saw it, and hurried away to the station.
She found a corner in the big outer waiting room, a bit sheltered from the glaring lights, and sat down, resting her head back and sleeping fitfully for a couple of hours. Then a wedding party breezed in hilariously and filled the station with clamor and merriment.
Margaret watched them a few minutes wearily, noted the happy look on the bride’s face, the pride on the bridegroom’s face, wondered how it would be to be riding away on a wedding trip, joyous, lighthearted and free, no worries about money, someone to care for you always, someone to love you and protect you!
She tried to banish the thought of Sterling and the look on his face when she had thanked him for the flowers, tried to realize that he was false and had deceived her. But somehow sleep had banished those facts and brought back the vision of his kindness only, the heavenly plans he had suggested. She let her weary mind revel for a little in the thought of what it would have been if it had all been true. A lovely second-floor room for herself, an office right downstairs in the house where she boarded. A man to work for such as Sterling had seemed to be, a chance to earn a good salary and perhaps be able to get together enough to save the old farm for Grandfather and Grandmother. Ah, that would have been heaven below. If there only were men such as Sterling had almost succeeded in making her believe he was, what joy it would be to live!
Then suddenly she became aware of a burly policeman who kept walking back and forth, looking in her direction, and panic
seized her. She knew it was against the law for vagrants to hang around a railroad station. She must not stay here too long.
She started up and looked at the big clock, noted that it was almost midnight. The wedding party had trailed off to the platform. She could hear their voices laughing; she could hear them singing jolly scraps of songs and laughing again. She could see the path of rice and rose leaves that lingered in their wake. She got up and followed out to the platform, for now an official was calling out a local train, and she went as if in answer to the call.
Out on the platform, she mingled with the crowd for a little and then found her way back by another door and entered the ladies’ waiting room.
There were not so many people in here, and it was quieter. She sat for a long time behind a big post, anxious lest that policeman should trace her. Finally, she went into the inner room and found a rocking chair unoccupied. That was a great rest, almost as good as lying down. The couch was occupied by a woman with a little baby in her arms, both sound asleep, but about two o’clock the porteress came and touched her on the shoulder, told her that her train was called, and she arose hastily and hurried away. Then Margaret, with a furtive look around, slipped into her place on the couch and stretched her weary limbs out straight. Ah, how good this was! She thought of the hospital bed she had left so hastily that morning, its clean, sweet sheets, the roses on the little bedside stand, like the roses the bride had carried to her wedding train, and she drifted off into deep sleep. By and by it came about that the wedding procession was coming back, only strangely enough, she was the bride and Sterling was the bridegroom. He was looking at her in that tender way he had looked when he told her he thought his mother would have liked him to send her the flowers, and her tired heart thrilled with the joy and peace of it, till suddenly the head nurse came with a broom and drove them all away, filling her with chagrin and humiliation, and she awoke suddenly to find the porteress tapping her on the shoulder. She looked up out of a haze of pain and loss and sleep, not knowing where she was.
THE CHRISTMAS BRIDE Page 12