Perhaps it was the wind—yes, it must have been the wind with its threat of winter—that roused her sluggish blood, that whipped thought into action. Anything—anything would be right, if it promised escape. Right—wrong! Hypocritical words for comfortable people!
That Friday night, after her supper of half-cooked corn meal and tea, she went instantly to work at washing out clothes. Mrs. Tucker spent the evening gossiping with the janitress, came in about midnight. As usual she was full to the brim with news of misery—of jobs lost, abandoned wives, of abused children, of poisoning from rotten "fresh" food or from "embalmed" stuff in cans, of sickness and yet more sickness, of maiming accidents, of death—news that is the commonplace of tenement life. She loved to tell these tales with all the harrowing particulars and to find in each some evidence of the goodness of God to herself. Often Susan could let her run on and on without listening. But not that night. She resisted the impulse to bid her be silent, left the room and stood at the hall window. When she returned Mrs. Tucker was in bed, was snoring in a tranquillity that was the reverse of contagious. With her habitual cheerfulness she had adapted herself to her changed condition without fretting. She had become as ragged and as dirty as her neighbors; she so wrought upon Susan's sensibilities, blunted though they were, that the girl would have been unable to sleep in the same bed if she had not always been tired to exhaustion when she lay down. But for that matter only exhaustion could have kept her asleep in that vermin-infested hole. Even the fiercest swarms of the insects that flew or ran or crawled and bit, even the filthy mice squeaking as they played upon the covers or ran over the faces of the sleepers, did not often rouse her.
While Mrs. Tucker snored, Susan worked on, getting every piece of at all fit clothing in her meager wardrobe into the best possible condition. She did not once glance at the face of the noisy sleeper—a face homely enough in Mrs. Tucker's waking hours, hideous now with the mouth open and a few scattered rotten teeth exposed, and the dark yellow-blue of the unhealthy gums and tongue.
At dawn Mrs. Tucker awoke with a snort and a start. She rubbed her eyes with her dirty and twisted and wrinkled fingers—the nails were worn and broken, turned up as if warped at the edges, blackened with dirt and bruisings. "Why, are you up already?" she said to Susan.
"I've not been to bed," replied the girl.
The woman stretched herself, sat up, thrust her thick, stockinged legs over the side of the bed. She slept in all her clothing but her skirt, waist, and shoes. She kneeled down upon the bare, sprung, and slanting floor, said a prayer, arose with a beaming face. "It's nice and warm in the room. How I do dread the winter, the cold weather—though no doubt we'll make out all right! Everything always does turn out well for me. The Lord takes care of me. I must make me a cup of tea."
"I've made it," said Susan.
The tea was frightful stuff—not tea at all, but cheap adulterants colored poisonously. Everything they got was of the same quality; yet the prices they paid for the tiny quantities they were able to buy at any one time were at a rate that would have bought the finest quality at the most expensive grocery in New York.
"Wonder why Mrs. Reardon don't come?" said Mrs. Tucker. Mrs.
Reardon had as her only work a one night job at scrubbing.
"She ought to have come an hour ago."
"Her rheumatism was bad when she started," said Susan. "I guess she worked slow."