WITHIN a month old Miss Bromfield was again with her sister at Stockbridge; the house in Stoughton was sold; there were twenty-two hundred dollars to Emily’s credit in the Stoughton National Bank—her whole capital except a hundred and fifty dollars which she had with her; and she herself was standing at the exit from the Grand Central Station in New York City, facing with a sinking heart and frightened eyes the row of squalid cabs and clamourous cabmen. One of these took her to the boarding-house in East Thirty-first Street near Madison Avenue where her friend, Theresa Duncan, lived.
“Of course there’s a chance,” Theresa had written. “Come straight on here. Something is sure to turn up. And there’s nothing like being on the spot.”
Of the women of her acquaintance who made their own living, Theresa alone was in an independent position—with her time her own, and with no suggestion of domestic service in her employment. They had been friends at school and had kept up the friendship by correspondence. Before Mr. Bromfield died, Theresa’s father had been swept under by a Wall Street tidal wave and, when it receded, had been found on the shore with empty pockets and a bullet in his brain. Emily wrote to her at once, but the answer did not come until six months had passed. Then Theresa announced that she was established in a small but sufficient commission business. “I shop for busy New York women and have a growing out-of-town trade,” she wrote. “And I am almost happy. It is fine to be free.”
At the boarding-house Emily looked twice at the number to assure herself that she was not mistaken. She had expected nothing so imposing as this mansion-like exterior. When a man-servant opened the door and she saw high ceilings and heavy mouldings, she inquired for Miss Duncan in the tone of one who is sure there is a mistake. But before the man answered, her illusion vanished. He was a slattern creature in a greasy evening coat, a day waistcoat, a stained red satin tie, its flaming colour fighting for precedence with a huge blue glass scarf pin. And Emily now saw that the splendours of what had been a fine house in New York’s modest days were overlaid with cheap trappings and with grime and stain and other evidences of slovenly housekeeping.
The air was saturated with an odour of inferior food, cooking in poor butter and worse lard. It was one of the Houses of the Seem-to-be. The carpets seemed to be Turkish or Persian, but were made in Newark and made cheaply. The furniture seemed to be French, but was Fourteenth street. The paper seemed to be brocade, but was from the masses of poor stuff tossed upon the counters of second-class department stores for the fumblings of noisome bargain-day crowds. The paintings seemed to be pictures, but were such daubs as the Nassau street dealers auction off to swindle-seeking clerks at the lunch hour. In a corner of the “salon” stood what seemed to be a cabinet for bric-a-brac but was a dilapidated folding bed.
“Dare I sit?” thought Emily. “What seems to be a chair may really be some hollow sham that will collapse at the touch.”
“A vile hole, isn’t it?” was one of Theresa’s first remarks, after an enthusiastic greeting and a competent apology for not meeting her at the station. “We may be able to take a flat together. I would have done it long ago, if I’d not been alone.”
“Yes,” said Emily, “and I may persuade Aunt Ann to come and live with us as chaperon.”
“Oh, that will be so nice,” replied Theresa in a doubtful, reluctant tone, with a quizzical look in her handsome brown eyes. “If there is a prime necessity for a working-woman, it is a chaperon.”
“You’re laughing at me,” said Emily, flushing but good-humoured. “I meant simply that my aunt could look after the flat while we’re away. You don’t know her. She’d never bother us. She understands how to mind her own business.”