Diverging roads

by Rose Wilder Lane

These meetings were not frequent. Helen tried to make her three-dollar meal ticket last a month, and that meant that only five times a week she could sit in state, eating warm food in an atmosphere thick with smells of coffee and stew and hamburger steak. She had learned that cinnamon rolls could be bought for half price on Saturday nights, and she kept a bag of them in her room, and some fruit. This made her a little uneasy when she saw Mrs. Brown's anxious eye on the vacant tables; she felt that she was defrauding Mrs. Brown by eating in her room.

Mrs. Brown worked very hard, Helen knew. It was she who swept the hall and kept the rooms in order. She did not do it very well, but Helen saw her sometimes in the evenings working at it. She swept with quick, feverish strokes. Her yellow hair straggled over her face; her high heels clicked on the floor; her petticoats made a whisking sound. There was something piteous about her, as there is about a little trained animal on the stage, set to do tasks for which it is not fitted. Helen stole down the hallway at night, taking the broom from its corner as if she was committing a theft, and surreptitiously swept and dusted her own room, so that Mrs. Brown would not have to do it.

She wished that it took more time. When she had finished there was nothing to do but sit at her window and look down at the street. People went up and down, strolling leisurely in the warm summer evening. She saw girls in dainty dresses, walking about in groups, and the sight increased her loneliness. Buggies went by; a man with his wife and children out driving, a girl and her sweetheart. At the corner there was the clanging of street-cars, and she watched to see them passing, brightly lighted, filled with people. Once in a while she saw an automobile, and her breath quickened, she leaned from the window until it was out of sight. She felt then the charm of the city, with its crowds, its glitter, its strange, hurried life.

Two young men passed often down that street in an automobile. They looked up at her window when they went by and slowed the machine. If she were leaning on the sill, they waved to her and shouted gaily. She always pretended that she had not seen them, and drew back, but she watched for the machine to pass again. It seemed to be a link between her and all that exciting life from which she was shut out. She would have liked to know those young men.

She sat at the window one evening near the end of the three months that she had planned to spend in the telegraph school. Paul's picture was in her hand. He had had it taken for her in Ripley. It was a beautiful, shiny picture, cabinet size, showing him against a tropical background of palms and ferns. He had taken off a derby hat, which he held self-consciously; his stocky figure wore an air of prosperity in an unfamiliar suit.

She brooded upon the firm line of his chin, the clean-cut lips, the smooth forehead from which the hair was brushed back slickly. His neck was turned so that his eyes did not quite meet hers. It was baffling, that aloof gaze; it hurt a little. She wished that he would look at her. She felt that the picture would help her more if he would, and she needed help.

Mr. Weeks had returned from one of his long absences that day, and she had taken courage to ask him about a job. He had listened while she stood beside his desk, stammering out her worry and her need. Her money was almost gone; she thought she telegraphed pretty well, she had studied hard. She watched his shaking hand fumbling with some papers on his desk, and felt pityingly that she should not bother him when he was sick. But desperation drove her on. She did not suspect the truth until he looked up at her with reddened eyes and answered incoherently. Then she saw that he was drunk.

Her shock of loathing came upon her in a wave of nausea. She trembled so that she could hardly get down the stairs, and she had walked a long time in the clean sunshine before the full realization of what it meant chilled her. She sat now confronting that realization.

She had only two dollars, a half-used meal-ticket, and a week's rent paid in advance. She saw clearly that she could hope for nothing from the telegraph school. It did not occur to her to blame anybody. Her mind ran desperately from thought to thought, like a caged creature seeking escape between iron bars.

She could not go home. She could not live there again, defeated, knowing day by day that she had added a hundred dollars to the mortgage. She had told Paul so confidently that she could do as well as a boy if she had the chance, and she had had the chance. He could not help her. The street below was full of happy people going by, absorbed in their own concerns, careless of hers.