§ 5
Una was, she hoped, “trying to think about things.” Naturally, one who used that boarding-house phrase could not think transformingly.
She wasn’t illuminative about Romain Rolland or Rodin or village welfare. She was still trying to decide whether the suffrage movement was ladylike and whether Dickens or Thackeray was the better novelist. But she really was trying to decide.
She compiled little lists of books to read, “movements” to investigate. She made a somewhat incoherent written statement of what she was trying to do, and this she kept in her top bureau drawer, among the ribbons, collars, imitation pearl necklaces, handkerchiefs, letters from Walter, and photographs of Panama and her mother.
She took it out sometimes, and relieved the day’s accumulated suffering by adding such notes as:
“Be nice & human w. employes if ever have any of own; office wretched hole anyway bec. of econ. system; W. used to say, why make worse by being cranky.”
Or:
“Study music, it brings country and W. and poetry and everything; take piano les. when get time.”
So Una tramped, weary always at dusk, but always recreated at dawn, through one of those periods of timeless, unmarked months, when all drama seems past and unreal and apparently nothing will ever happen again.
Then, in one week, everything became startling—she found melodrama and a place of friendship.
CHAPTER XI
I’M tired of the Grays. They’re very nice people, but they can’t talk,” said Una to Bessie Kraker, at lunch in the office, on a February day.
“How do yuh mean ‘can’t talk’? Are they dummies?” inquired Bessie.
“Dummies?”
“Yuh, sure, deef and dumb.”
“Why, no, I mean they don’t talk my language—they don’t, oh, they don’t, I suppose you’d say ‘conversationalize.’ Do you see?”
“Oh yes,” said Bessie, doubtfully. “Say, listen, Miss Golden. Say, I don’t want to butt in, and maybe you wouldn’t be stuck on it much, but they say it’s a dead-swell place to live—Miss Kitson, the boss’s secretary where I was before, lived there—”
“Say, for the love o’ Mike, say it: Where?” interrupted the office-boy.
“You shut your nasty trap. I was just coming to it. The Temperance and Protection Home, on Madison Avenue just above Thirty-fourth. They say it’s kind of strict, but, gee! there’s a’ ausgezeichnet bunch of dames there, artists and everything, and they say they feed you swell, and it only costs eight bucks a week.”
“Well, maybe I’ll look at it,” said Una, dubiously.
Neither the forbidding name nor Bessie’s moral recommendation made the Home for Girls sound tempting, but Una was hungry for companionship; she was cold now toward the unvarying, unimaginative desires of men. Among the women “artists and everything” she might find the friends she needed.
The Temperance and Protection Home Club for Girls was in a solemn, five-story, white sandstone structure with a severe doorway of iron grill, solid and capable-looking as a national bank. Una rang the bell diffidently. She waited in a hall that, despite its mission settee and red-tiled floor, was barrenly clean as a convent. She was admitted to the business-like office of Mrs. Harriet Fike, the matron of the Home.
Mrs. Fike had a brown, stringy neck and tan bangs. She wore a mannish coat and skirt, flat shoes of the kind called “sensible” by everybody except pretty women, and a large silver-mounted crucifix.
“Well?” she snarled.
“Some one— I’d like to find out about coming here to live—to see the place, and so on. Can you have somebody show me one of the rooms?”
“My dear young lady, the first consideration isn’t to ‘have somebody show you’ or anybody else a room, but to ascertain if you are a fit person to come here.”
Mrs. Fike jabbed at a compartment of her desk, yanked out a corduroy-bound book, boxed its ears, slammed it open, glared at Una in a Christian and Homelike way, and began to shoot questions:
“Whatcha name?”
“Una Golden.”
“Miss uh Miss?”
“I didn’t quite—”
“Miss or Mrs., I said. Can’t you understand English?”
“See here, I’m not being sent to jail that I know of!” Una rose, tremblingly.
Mrs. Fike merely waited and snapped: “Sit down. You look as though you had enough sense to understand that we can’t let people we don’t know anything about enter a decent place like this.... Miss or Mrs., I said?”
“Miss,” Una murmured, feebly sitting down again.
“What’s your denomination?... No agnostics or Catholics allowed!”
Una heard herself meekly declaring, “Methodist.”
“Smoke? Swear? Drink liquor? Got any bad habits?”
“No!”
“Got a lover, sweetheart, gentleman friend? If so, what name or names?”
“No.”
“That’s what they all say. Let me tell you that later, when you expect to have all these male cousins visit you, we’ll reserve the privilege to ask questions.... Ever served a jail sentence?”
“Now really—! Do I look it?”
“My dear miss, wouldn’t you feel foolish if I said ‘yes’? Have you? I warn you we look these things up!”
“No, I have not.”
“Well, that’s comforting.... Age?”
“Twenty-six.”
“Parents living? Name nearest relatives? Nearest friends? Present occupation?”
Even as she answered this last simple question and Mrs. Fike’s suspicious query about her salary, Una felt as though she were perjuring herself, as though there were no such place as Troy Wilkins’s office—and Mrs. Fike knew it; as though a large policeman were secreted behind the desk and would at any moment pop out and drag her off to jail. She answered with tremorous carefulness. By now, the one thing that she wanted to do was to escape from that Christian and strictly supervised Napoleon, Mrs. Fike, and flee back to the Grays.
“Previous history?” Mrs. Fike was grimly continuing, and she followed this question by ascertaining Una’s ambitions, health, record for insanity, and references.
Mrs. Fike closed the query-book, and observed:
“Well, you are rather fresh, but you seem to be acceptable—and now you may look us over and see whether we are acceptable to you. Don’t think for one moment that this institution needs you, or is trying to lift you out of a life of sin, or that we suppose this to be the only place in New York to live. We know what we want—we run things on a scientific basis—but we aren’t so conceited as to think that everybody likes us. Now, for example, I can see that you don’t like me and my ways one bit. But Lord love you, that isn’t necessary. The one thing necessary is for me to run this Home according to the book, and if you’re fool enough to prefer a slap-dash boarding-house to this hygienic Home, why, you’ll make your bed—or rather some slattern of a landlady will make it—and you can lie in it. Come with me. No; first read the rules.”
Una obediently read that the young ladies of the Temperance Home were forbidden to smoke, make loud noises, cook, or do laundry in their rooms, sit up after midnight, entertain visitors “of any sort except mothers and sisters” in any place in the Home, “except in the parlors for that purpose provided.” They were not permitted to be out after ten unless their names were specifically entered in the “Out-late Book” before their going. And they were “requested to answer all reasonable questions of matron, or board of visitors, or duly qualified inspectors, regarding moral, mental, physical, and commercial well-being and progress.”
Una couldn’t resist asking, “I suppose it isn’t forbidden to sleep in our rooms, is it?”
Mrs. Fike looked over her, through her, about her, and remarked: “I’d advise you to drop all impudence. You see, you don’t do it well. We admit East Side Jews here and they are so much quicker and wittier than you country girls from Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, and Heaven knows where, that you might just as well give up and try to be ladies instead of humorists. Come, we will take a look at the Home.”
By now Una was resolved not to let Mrs. Fike drive her away. She would “show her”; she would “come and live here just for spite.”
What Mrs. Fike thought has not been handed down.
She led Una past a series of closets, each furnished with two straight chairs on either side of a table, a carbon print of a chilly-looking cathedral, and a slice of carpet on which one was rather disappointed not to find the label, “Bath Mat.”
“These are the reception-rooms where the girls are allowed to receive callers. Any time—up to a quarter to ten,” Mrs. Fike said.
Una decided that they were better fitted for a hair-dressing establishment.
The living-room was her first revelation of the Temperance Home as something besides a prison—as an abiding-place for living, eager, sensitive girls. It was not luxurious, but it had been arranged by some one who made allowance for a weakness for pretty things, even on the part of young females observing the rules in a Christian home. There was a broad fireplace, built-in book-shelves, a long table; and, in wicker chairs with chintz cushions, were half a dozen curious girls. Una was sure that one of them, a fizzy-haired, laughing girl, secretly nodded to her, and she was comforted.
Up the stairs to a marvelous bathroom with tempting shower-baths, a small gymnasium, and, on the roof, a garden and loggia and basket-ball court. It was cool and fresh up here, on even the hottest summer evenings, and here the girls were permitted to lounge in negligées till after ten, Mrs. Fike remarked, with a half-smile.
Una smiled back.
As they went through the bedroom floors, with Mrs. Fike stalking ahead, a graceful girl in lace cap and negligée came bouncing out of a door between them, drew herself up and saluted Mrs. Fike’s back, winked at Una amicably, and for five steps imitated Mrs. Fike’s aggressive stride.
“Yes, I would be glad to come here!” Una said, cheerfully, to Mrs. Fike, who looked at her suspiciously, but granted: “Well, we’ll look up your references. Meantime, if you like—or don’t like, I suppose—you might talk to a Mrs. Esther Lawrence, who wants a room-mate.”
“Oh, I don’t think I’d like a room-mate.”
“My dear young lady, this place is simply full of young persons who would like and they wouldn’t like—and forsooth we must change every plan to suit their high and mighty convenience! I’m not at all sure that we shall have a single room vacant for at least six months, and of course—”
“Well, could I talk to Mrs.—Lawrence, was it?”
“Most assuredly. I expect you to talk to her! Come with me.”
Una followed abjectly, and the matron seemed well pleased with her reformation of this wayward young woman. Her voice was curiously anemic, however, as she rapped on a bedroom door and called, “Oh, Mrs. Lawrence!”
A husky, capable voice within, “Yeah, what is’t?”
“It’s Mrs. Fike, deary. I think I have a room-mate for you.”
“Well, you wait’ll I get something on, will you!”
Mrs. Fike waited. She waited two minutes. She looked at a wrist-watch in a leather band while she tapped her sensibly clad foot. She tried again: “We’re waiting, deary!”
There was no answer from within, and it was two minutes more before the door was opened.
Una was conscious of a room pleasant with white-enameled woodwork; a denim-covered couch and a narrow, prim brass bed, a litter of lingerie and sheets of newspaper; and, as the dominating center of it all, a woman of thirty, tall, high-breasted, full-faced, with a nose that was large but pleasant, black eyes that were cool and direct and domineering—Mrs. Esther Lawrence.
“You kept us waiting so long,” complained Mrs. Fike.
Mrs. Lawrence stared at her as though she were an impudent servant. She revolved on Una, and with a self-confident kindliness in her voice, inquired, “What’s your name, child?”
“Una Golden.”
“We’ll talk this over.... Thank you, Mrs. Fike.”
“Well, now,” Mrs. Fike endeavored, “be sure you both are satisfied—”
“Don’t you worry! We will, all right!”
Mrs. Fike glared at her and retired.
Mrs. Lawrence grinned, stretched herself on the couch, mysteriously produced a cigarette, and asked, “Smoke?”
“No, thanks.”
“Sit down, child, and be comfy. Oh, would you mind opening that window? Not supposed to smoke.... Poor Ma Fike—I just can’t help deviling her. Please don’t think I’m usually as nasty as I am with her. She has to be kept in her place or she’ll worry you to death.... Thanks.... Do sit down—woggle up the pillow on the bed and be comfy.... You look like a nice kid—me, I’m a lazy, slatternly, good-natured old hex, with all the bad habits there are and a profound belief that the world is a hell of a place, but I’m fine to get along with, and so let’s take a shot at rooming together. If we scrap, we can quit instanter, and no bad feelings.... I’d really like to have you come in, because you look as though you were on, even if you are rather meek and kitteny; and I’m scared to death they’ll wish some tough little Mick on to me, or some pious sister who hasn’t been married and believes in pussy-footing around and taking it all to God in prayer every time I tell her the truth.... What do you think, kiddy?”
Una was by this cock-sure disillusioned, large person more delighted than by all the wisdom of Mr. Wilkins or the soothing of Mrs. Sessions. She felt that, except for Walter, it was the first time since she had come to New York that she had found an entertaining person.
“Yes,” she said, “do let’s try it.”
“Good! Now let me warn you first off, that I may be diverting at times, but I’m no good. To-morrow I’ll pretend to be a misused and unfortunate victim, but your young and almost trusting eyes make me feel candid for about fifteen minutes. I certainly got a raw deal from my beloved husband—that’s all you’ll hear from me about him. By the way, I’m typical of about ten thousand married women in business about whose noble spouses nothing is ever said. But I suppose I ought to have bucked up and made good in business (I’m a bum stenog. for Pitcairn, McClure & Stockley, the bond house). But I can’t. I’m too lazy, and it doesn’t seem worth while.... And, oh, we are exploited, women who are on jobs. The bosses give us a lot of taffy and raise their hats—but they don’t raise our wages, and they think that if they keep us till two G.M. taking dictation they make it all right by apologizing. Women are a lot more conscientious on jobs than men are—but that’s because we’re fools; you don’t catch the men staying till six-thirty because the boss has shystered all afternoon and wants to catch up on his correspondence. But we—of course we don’t dare to make dates for dinner, lest we have to stay late. We don’t dare!”
“I bet you do!”
“Yes—well, I’m not so much of a fool as some of the rest—or else more of a one. There’s Mamie Magen—she’s living here; she’s with Pitcairn, too. You’ll meet her and be crazy about her. She’s a lame Jewess, and awfully plain, except she’s got lovely eyes, but she’s got a mind like a tack. Well, she’s the little angel-pie about staying late, and some day she’ll probably make four thousand bucks a year. She’ll be mayor of New York, or executive secretary of the Young Women’s Atheist Association or something. But still, she doesn’t stay late and plug hard because she’s scared, but because she’s got ambition. But most of the women—Lord! they’re just cowed sheep.”
“Yes,” said Una.
A million discussions of Women in Business going on—a thousand of them at just that moment, perhaps—men employers declaring that they couldn’t depend on women in their offices, women asserting that women were the more conscientious. Una listened and was content; she had found some one with whom to play, with whom to talk and hate the powers.... She felt an impulse to tell Mrs. Lawrence all about Troy Wilkins and her mother and—and perhaps even about Walter Babson. But she merely treasured up the thought that she could do that some day, and politely asked:
“What about Mrs. Fike? Is she as bad as she seems?”
“Why, that’s the best little skeleton of contention around here. There’s three factions. Some girls say she’s just plain devil—mean as a floor-walker. That’s what I think—she’s a rotter and a four-flusher. You notice the way she crawls when I stand up to her. Why, they won’t have Catholics here, and I’m one of those wicked people, and she knows it! When she asked my religion I told her I was a ‘Romanist Episcopalian,’ and she sniffed and put me down as an Episcopalian—I saw her!... Then some of the girls think she’s really good-hearted—just gruff—bark worse than her bite. But you ought to see how she barks at some of the younger girls—scares’em stiff—and keeps picking on them about regulations—makes their lives miserable. Then there’s a third section that thinks she’s merely institutionalized—training makes her as hard as any other kind of a machine. You’ll find lots like her in this town—in all the charities.”
“But the girls—they do have a good time here?”
“Yes, they do. It’s sort of fun to fight Ma Fike and all the fool rules. I enjoy smoking here twice as much as I would anywhere else. And Fike isn’t half as bad as the board of visitors—bunch of fat, rich, old Upper-West-Siders with passementeried bosoms, doing tea-table charity, and asking us impertinent questions, and telling a bunch of hard-worked slaves to be virtuous and wash behind their ears—the soft, ignorant, conceited, impractical parasites! But still, it’s all sort of like a cranky boarding-school for girls—and you know what fun the girls have there, with midnight fudge parties and a teacher pussy-footing down the hall trying to catch them.”
“I don’t know. I’ve never been to one.”
“Well—doesn’t matter.... Another thing—some day, when you come to know more men— Know many?”
“Very few.”
“Well, you’ll find this town is full of bright young men seeking an economical solution of the sex problem—to speak politely—and you’ll find it a relief not to have them on your door-step.’S safe here.... Come in with me, kid. Give me an audience to talk to.”
“Yes,” said Una.