On the unmade bed, close beside the pillow, as if it had been cherished for comfort, was one of mother’s old calico wrappers. It was lying where a cheek might conveniently rest against it. Somehow Cornelia didn’t think of that explanation of its presence there at first; but later it grew into her consciousness, and the pathetic side of it filled her with dismay. Was life like this always, or was this a special preparation for her benefit?
Somehow, as she sat there, her position as a selfish, unloving daughter became intolerable. Could it be possible that the children had spoken truly and that the family had been in straightened circumstances for a longer time than just a few weeks, on account of keeping her in college? The color burned in her cheeks, and her eyes grew heavy with shame. How shabby everything looked! She didn’t remember it that way. Her home had always seemed a comfortable one as she looked back upon it. Somehow she could not understand. But the one thought that burned into her soul was that they had somehow felt her lacking, ungrateful.
Suddenly she was stung into action. They should see that she was no selfish, idle member of the family group. At least, she could be as brave as they were. She would go to work and make a difference in things before they came home. She would show them!
She flew to the tumbled bed, and began to straighten the rumpled sheets and plump up the pillows. In a trice she had it smoothly made. But there was no white spread to put over it, and there were rolls of dust under the bed and in the corners. The floor had not even a rug to cover its bareness. Worn shoes and soiled socks trailed about here and there, and several old garments hung on bedposts, drifted from chairs, and even lay on the floor. Cornelia went hastily about, gathering them up, sorting out the laundry, setting the shoes in an even row in the closet, straightening the bureau, and stuffing things into the already overflowing drawers, promising them an early clearing out as soon as she had the rest of the work in hand. Poor father! of course he was not used to keeping things in order. How a woman was missed in a house! She hadn’t realized it before. The whole house looked as if the furniture had just been dumped in with no attempt to set things right, as her father had said. She must get the broom, and begin.
She hurried out into the hall, and a glimpse of the narrow stairway winding above her drew her to investigate. And then a sudden thought. Carey. Where was Carey? Hadn’t he come home at all last night? She had no recollection of hearing him, and yet she might have fallen asleep earlier than she thought. She mounted the stairs, and stood aghast before the desolation there.
The little closet Louise had spoken of with its skylight, and its meagre cot of twisted bedclothes, its chair with a medley of Harry’s clothes, and its floor strewn with a varied collection, was dreary enough; but there was yet some semblance of attempt at order. The muddy shoes stood in a row; some garments were in piles, and some hung on nails as if there had been an attempt at good housekeeping by the young owner. There was even a colored picture of a baseball favorite, and a diagram of a famous game. One could feel that the young occupant had taken possession with some sense of ownership in the place. But the front room was like a desert of destruction whereon lay bleaching the bones of a former life as if swept there by a whirlwind.
The headboard and footboard of the iron bedstead stood against the wall together like a corpse cast aside and unburied. On the floor in the very middle of the room lay the springs, and upon it the worn and soiled mattress, hardly recognizable by that name now because of the marks of heavy, muddy shoes, as if it had been not only slept upon but walked over with shoes straight from the contact of the street in bad weather. Sheets there were none, and the pillow soiled and with a hole burnt in one corner of its ticking lay guiltless of a pillow-case, with a beaten, sodden impression of a head in its centre. There was a snarl of soiled blanket and torn patchwork quilt across the foot, tossed to one side; and all about this excuse for a bed was strewn the most heterogeneous mass of objects that Cornelia had ever seen collected. Clothes soiled and just from the laundry, all in one mass, neckties tangled among books and letters, cheap magazines and parts of automobiles, a silk hat and a white evening vest keeping company with a pair of greasy overalls and two big iron wrenches; and over everything cigarette-stumps.
The desolation was complete. The bureau had turned its back to the scene in despair, and was face to the wall, as it had been placed by the movers. It was then and not till then that Cornelia understood how recent had been the moving, and how utter the rout of the poor, patient mother, whose wonderful housekeeping had always been the boast of the neighborhood where they had lived, and whose fastidiousness had been almost an obsession.
Cornelia stood in the door, and gasped in horror as her eyes travelled from one corner of the room to another and back again, and her quick mind read the story of her brother’s life and one deep cause of her dear mother’s breakdown. She remembered her father’s words about Carey, and how he hoped she would be able to help him; and then her memory went back to the days when she and Carey had been inseparable. She saw the bright, eager face of her brother only two years younger than herself, always merry, with a jest on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes, but a kind heart and a willingness always to serve. Had Carey in three short years fallen to this? Because there was no excuse for an able-bodied young man to live in a mess like this. No young man with a mite of self-respect would do it. And Carey knew better. Carey had been brought up to take care of himself and his things. Nobody could mend a bit of furniture, or fix the plumbing, or sweep a room, or even wash out a blanket for mother, better than Carey when he was only fifteen. And for Carey as she knew him to be willing to lie down for at least more than one night in a room like this and go off in the morning leaving it this way, was simply unthinkable. How Carey must have changed to have come to this! As her eyes roved about the room, she began to have an insight into what must be the trouble. Self-indulgence of a violent type must have got hold of him. Look at the hundreds of cigarette-stumps, ashes everywhere. The only saving thing was the touch of machinery in the otherwise hopeless mass; and that, too, meant only that he was crazy about automobiles, and likely fussed with them now and then to repair them so that he would have opportunity to ride as much as he liked. And Carey—where was Carey now?
She turned sadly away from the room, and shut the door. It was a work of time to think of getting that mess straightened out into any sort of order, and it made her heart-sick and hopeless. She must look farther and learn the whole story before she began to do anything.