At fourteen I knew enough about such terms as vertebra of the back, spinal-column, spinal-cord, sheath of cord, spinal-marrow, axial nervous system, curvatures, flexes and reflexes to have nicely established an energetic quack as a specialist in spinal trouble; and, alas! after all these years no one has added to my list of flexes and reflexes the words "fixed or refixed," so my poor spine and I go struggling on, and I sometimes think, if it could speak, it might declare that I am as dented, crooked, and wavering as it is. However, I suppose that state of uncertain health may have caused the capricious appetite that tormented me. Always poor, I had yet never been able to endure coarse food. Heavy meats, cabbage, turnips, beets, fried things filled me with cold repulsion. Crackers and milk formed my dinner, day in and day out. Now and then crackers and water had to suffice me; but I infinitely preferred the latter to a meal of roast pork or of corned beef, followed by rice-pudding.
But the trouble from the fastidious appetite came when it suddenly demanded something for its gratification—imperiously, even furiously demanded it. If anyone desires a thing intensely, the continual denial of that craving becomes almost a torture. So, when that finical appetite of mine would suddenly cry out for oysters, I could think of nothing else. Quick tears would spring into my eyes as I approached the oysterless table. Again and again I would dream of them, cans and cans would be piled on my table (I lived far from shell-oysters then), and when I awoke I would turn on my lumpy bed and moan like a sick animal. I mention this because I wish to explain what that little odd pile of money had been saved for.
At the approach of hot weather a craving for ice-cream had seized upon me with almost agonizing force. It is a desire common to all young things, but the poverty of my surroundings, the lack of the more delicate vegetables, of fruits, of sweets, added to the intensity of my craving. I had found a place away up on the market where for ten cents one could get quite a large saucer of the delicate dainty. Fifteen or twenty-five cents was charged elsewhere for no better cream, but a more decorative saucer.
But, good gracious! what a sum of money—ten cents for a mere pleasure! though the memory of it afterward was a comfort for several days, and then, oh, unfortunate girl! the sick longing would come again! And so, in a sort of despair, I tried to save thirty cents, with the deliberate intention of spending the whole sum on luxury and folly. Six long, blazing-hot, idle weeks I should have to pass in the "torture-chamber," but with that thirty cents by me I could, every two weeks, loiter deliciously over a plate of cream, feel its velvety smoothness on my lips and its icy coldness cooling all my weary, heat-worn body. One week I could live on memory, and the next upon anticipation, and so get through the long vacation in comparative comfort.
There was no lock upon my room door, but I said nothing about it, as the door would not close anyway; and at night, for security, I placed the lignum-vitæ chair against it. In the day-time I had to entrust my belongings to the honor of my house-mates, as it were.
The six little piles of wash-money I had, after the manner of a squirrel, buried here and there at the bottom of my trunk, which I securely locked; but my precious thirty cents I carried about with me, tied in the corner of a handkerchief. It generally rested in the bosom of my dress, but there came a day when, for economy's sake, I washed a pair of stockings as well as my three handkerchiefs, and Mrs. Miller said I might hang them on the line in the yard below. My tiny window opened in that direction. The day was fiercely hot. I put the money in my pocket and carefully hung my dress up opposite the window, and, in a little white jacket, did out my washing; then, singing happily, I ran down-stairs, two long flights, to hang the articles on the line. As I was putting a clothes-pin in place I glanced upward at the musk-plant on my window-sill—and then my heart stood still in my breast. I could neither breathe nor move for the moment. I could see my dress-skirt depending from its nail, and oh, dear God! a man's great red hand was grasping it—was clutching it, here and there, in search of the pocket! Suddenly I gave a piercing cry, and bounding into the house, I tore madly up the stairs—too late. The dress lay in the doorway—the pocket was empty! On the floor, with my head against the white-washed wall, I sat with closed eyes. The smell of a musk-plant makes me shudder to this day. I sat there stupidly till dusk; then I crept to my sliver of a bed, and cried, and cried, and sobbed the whole weary, hot night through. Next day I simply could not rise, and so for weeks I dragged heavily up and down the stairs, loathing the very sight of the dining-room, and driven half wild with that never-sleeping craving for ice-cream.
It was purgatory, it was the very tragedy of littleness. And that was my first theatrical vacation.
CHAPTER NINTH
The Season Reopens—I meet the Yellow Breeches and become a Utility Man—Mr. Murdock Escapes Fits and my "Luck" Proves to be Extra Work.
The exuberance of my joy over the opening of the new season was somewhat modified by my close relations with a certain pair of knee-breeches—and I wish to say right here that when Gail Hamilton declared inanimate things were endowed with powers of malice and general mischievousness, she was not exaggerating, but speaking strictly by the card.