Vistas of New York Part 7

"For pity's sake," cried one of them, "I ain't seen you for a month of Sundays!"

"Addie Brown!" said the other. "And you haven't been back here to see us old friends since I don't know when."

"Addie Cameron now, if you please," and the new-comer bridled a little as she gave herself her married name. "An' I was comin' in last Sat.u.r.day, but I had to have my teeth fixed first, and I went to dentist after dentist and they were all full, and I was tired out."

"Well, it's Addie, any way you fix it," responded one of the salesladies, "and we're glad to see you back, even if we did think you'd shook us for keeps. Is this gettin' married all it's cracked up to be?"

"It's fine," the bride replied, "an' I wouldn't never come back here on no account. Not but what things ain't what I'd like altogether. I went to the Girls' Friendly last night, and there was that Miss Van Antwerp that runs our cla.s.s, and she was so interested, for all she's one of the Four Hundred. An' she wanted to know about Sam, an' I told her he was a good man an' none better, an' I was perfectly satisfied. 'But, Miss Van Antwerp,' I says to her, I says, 'don't you never marry a policeman--their hours are so inconvenient. You can't never tell when he's comin' home.' That's what I told her, for she's always interested."

The other two salesladies laughed, and one of them asked, "What did Miss Van Antwerp say to that?"

"She just said that she wasn't thinkin' of gettin' married, but she'd remember my advice."

"I ain't thinkin' of gettin' married, either," said one of the salesladies, the one with the gentler voice, "but I've had a dream an'

it may come true. I dreamed there was a young feller, handsome he was, too, and the son of a charge customer. You've seen her, the old stiff with those furs and the big diamond ear-rings, that's so fussy always and so partic'lar, for all she belongs to the Consumers' League."

"I know who you mean; horrid old thing she is, too," interrupted the other; "but I didn't know she had a son."

"I don't know it, either," was the reply. "But that's what I dreamed--and I dreamed it three nights runnin', too. Fierce, wasn't it?

An' he kept hangin' round and wantin' to make a date to take me to the opera. Said he could talk French an' he'd tell me what it was all about.

An'--"

Just then the floor-walker called "Forward!" as a customer came to the other end of the counter; and the girl with the gentle voice moved away.

Minnie Henryson wondered whether this floor-walker was Mr. Maguire or Mr. Smith. Under the suggestion of his stare, whichever he was, Addie Cameron and the other shop-girl moved away toward the door, and the rest of their conversation was lost to the listener.

She did not know how long she continued to sit there, while customers loitered before the ribbon-counter and fingered the stock and asked questions. She heard the fire-engines come slowly back; and above the murmur which arose all over the store she caught again the harsh grinding of the brakes on the Elevated in the avenue. Then she rose, as she saw her mother looking for her.

"I didn't mean to keep you waiting so long," Mrs. Henryson explained; "but I couldn't seem to find just the rug I wanted for your father. You know he's always satisfied with anything, so I have to be particular to get something he'll really like. And then I met Mrs. McKinley, and we had to have a little chat."

Minnie looked at her mother. She had forgotten that the wife of the Corporation Counsel was a friend of her mother's; and she wondered whether she could get her mother to say a good word for Addison Wyngard.

Mother and daughter threaded their way through the swarm of shoppers toward the door of the store.

"By the way, Minnie," said her mother, just as they came to the entrance, "didn't you tell me that young Mr. Wyngard sat next you at the theater the other night at that Thursday Club of yours? That's his name, isn't it?"

"Mr. Wyngard did sit next to me one evening," the daughter answered, not looking up.

"Well, Mrs. McKinley saw you, and so did the Judge. He says that this young Wyngard is a clever lawyer--and he's going to take him into his office."

And then they pa.s.sed out into the avenue flooded with spring sunshine.

Minnie took a long breath of fresh air and she raised her head. It seemed to her almost as though she could already feel a new ring on the third finger of her left hand.

(1910)

[Ill.u.s.tration: Under an April Sky]

The swirling rain bespattered the window as the fitful April wind changed about; and the lonely woman, staring vacantly upon the plumes of steam waving from the roofs below her, saw them violently twisted and broken and scattered. The new hotel towered high above all the neighboring buildings, and she could look down on the private houses that filled block after block, until the next tall edifice rose abruptly into view half a mile to the northward. Through the drizzle the prospect seemed to her drearier than ever, and the ugly monotony of it weighed on her like a nightmare. With an impatient sigh she turned from the window, but as her eye traveled around the walls she saw nothing that might relieve her melancholy.

It was not a large room, this private parlor on an upper story of the immense hotel; and its decorations, its ornaments, its furniture, its carpets, had the characterless commonplace befitting an apartment which might have a score of occupants in a single month. Yet she had spent the most of the winter in it; those were her pretty cushions (on the hard sofa), and that was her tea equipage on the low table by the fireplace (with its gas-log). The photographs in their silver frames were hers also, and so were the violets that filled a Rookwood bowl on the top of the writing-desk near the window. But as she glanced about in search of something that might make her feel at home, she found nothing to satisfy her longing. The room was a room in a hotel, after all; and she had failed wholly to impress her own individuality upon it. To recall her vain efforts only intensified her loneliness.

The hotel was full, so they said, and it held a thousand souls and more; and as she walked aimlessly to and fro within her narrow s.p.a.ce, she wondered whether any one of the thousand felt as detached and as solitary as she did then--as she had felt so often during the long winter. She paused at the window again, and gazed at the houses far down below her on the other side of the narrow street; they were at least homes, and the women who dwelt there had husbands or sons or fathers--had each of them a man of some sort for her to lean on, for her to cling to, for her to love, for her to devote herself to, and for her to sacrifice herself for.

Sometimes she had delighted in the loftiness of her position, lifted high in air; she had fancied almost that she was on another plane from the people in the thick of the struggle down below. Now as she pressed her forehead against the chill pane and peered down to watch the umbrellas that crawled here and there on the sidewalk, more than a hundred feet beneath her, she had a fleeting vision of her own mangled body lying down there on the stones, if she should ever yield to the temptation that came to her in these moments of depression. She shuddered at the sight, and turned away impetuously, while the rain again rattled against the window, as though demanding instant admission.

An observer would have declared that this woman, weary as she might be with solitude, was far too young for life already to have lost its savor. Her figure was slight and girlish yet. Her walk was brisk and youthful. Her thick, brown hair was abundant, and untouched by gray. Her dark-brown eyes kept their freshness still, although they were older than they might seem at first. She was perhaps a scant thirty years of age, although it might well be that she was three or four years younger.

No doubt the observer would have found her ill at ease and restless, as though making ready for an ordeal that she was anxious to pa.s.s through as soon as possible.

The clock on the mantelpiece began to strike, and she looked up eagerly; but when she saw that it was only three, she turned away petulantly, almost like a spoiled child who cannot bear to wait.

Her eye fell on the desk with an unfinished letter lying on it. With her usual impulsive swiftness she sat herself down and hastily ran over what she had written.

"Dear Margaret," the letter began, "it was a surprise, of course, to hear from you again, for it must be three or four years since last we corresponded. But your kindly inquiries were very welcome, and it did me good to feel that there was a woman really interested in me, even though she was thousands of miles away. It is with a glow of grat.i.tude that I think of you and your goodness to me when I was suddenly widowed. You took pity on my loneliness then, and you can't guess how often I have longed for a friend like you in these last years of bitter solitude--a friend I could go to for sympathy, a friend I could unburden my heart to."

Having read this almost at a glance, she seized her pen and continued:

"I feel as if I simply must talk out to somebody--and so I'm going to write to you, sure you will not misunderstand me, for your insight and your perceptions were always as kindly as they were keen.

"You ask me what I am going to do. And I answer you frankly. I am going to marry a man I don't love--and who doesn't love me. So we shall swindle each other!

"I can see your shocked look as you read this--but you don't know what has brought me to it. I've come to the end of my tether at last. My money has nearly all gone. I don't know how I can support myself--and so I'm going to let somebody support me, that's all!

"The settlement of poor George's affairs has dragged along all these years, and it was only last December that I got the few hundred dollars that were coming to me. I took the cash and I came here to New York to see if something wouldn't turn up. What--well, I didn't know and I didn't care. I just hoped that the luck might change at last--and perhaps I did dream of a Prince Charming at the end of the perspective; not a mere boy, of course, not the pretty little puppet Cinderella married, but a Prince Charming of middle age, with his hair dashed with gray at the temples, a man of position and sound judgment and good taste, who might still find his ideal in a thin little widow like me. Of course the dream hasn't come true; it's only the nightmares that are realized. I haven't seen any Prince Charmings, either pretty little puppets or mature men of the world. I guess the race is extinct, like the dodo. At any rate, nothing has turned up, and the winter is over, and my money is nearly all gone.

"But I don't regret the past few months. New York is very interesting, and I'd dearly love to talk it over with you. It is a sort of a stock-pot; everything goes in--good meat, and bones, and sc.r.a.ps of all sorts--and you never know just what the flavor will be like, but it's sure to be rich and stimulating and unexpected. I've been to very exclusive houses here sometimes, and I enjoyed that immensely; I think I could learn easily to live up to any income, no matter how big it was.

I've been mostly in the society absurdly called the Four Hundred; it used to be called the Upper Ten Thousand; there are pleasant men and women there, and dull ones too, just as there are everywhere else, I suppose. And I've even gone a little into artistic and literary circles--but I don't really like untidy people.

"You see, I am here at the newest and swellest hotel. It's true I have only a tiny little parlor and a teeny little bedroom, 'way up near the top of the house, with a room in the attic somewhere for my maid Jemima--you remember Jemima? Well, she's watching over me still, and she's the only real friend I have in all New York! She'd give me all her savings gladly if I was mean enough to take them; but I couldn't live on that pittance, could I?

"I brought very good letters, and I had very good advice from an old maid who knew George's father when he was a boy--Miss Marlenspuyk; dear old soul she is. Then, as it happened, somebody remembered that poor George had been interested in that strike in Gra.s.s Valley, and had received one-third of the stock when the Belinda and the Lone Star were consolidated. I've got that stock still, and I could paper a house with it--if I had one. At any rate, somebody started the story that I was immensely rich, and of course I didn't contradict it, I hope I've too much tact to refuse any help that chance throws in my way. I don't know whether it was the reported wealth, or the excellent letters I brought, or Miss Marlenspuyk's good advice, or even my own personal attractiveness--but, whatever the cause, I just walked into Society here almost without an effort; so easily, indeed, that the social strugglers who have seen doors open wide for me where they have been knocking in vain for years--well, they are mad enough to die! It's enough to make us despise ourselves even more than we do when we see the weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth there is among the outsiders who are peeking over the barbed-wire fence of Society! I'm afraid I've been horrid enough to get a good deal of satisfaction out of the envy of those outside the pale.

"And I've enjoyed the thing for its own sake, too. I like to give a little dinner here to a woman from whom I expect favors and to a couple of agreeable men. I like to go to other people's dinners, and to a ball now and then. Why is it I haven't really the half-million or more that they think I have? I'm sure I could spend it better than most of those I know who have it. As it is, I've about enough money left in the bank at the corner to carry me another month--and then? And then I wonder sometimes whether I hadn't better take the last half-dollar for a poison of some sort--painless, of course. Jemima would see me decently buried.

But of course I sha'n't do anything of the sort; I'm too big a coward!

"And the winter has almost gone, and nothing has turned up. Oh yes, I forgot--poor George's brother, who doesn't like me, and never did; he knows how poor I am, and he wouldn't give me a dollar out of his own pocket. But he wrote me last week, asking if I would like a place as matron in a girl's boarding-school in Milwaukee. Of course I haven't answered him! I don't exactly see myself as a matron. What a hideous word it is!

"_Mais il faut faire un fin_, and my end is matrimony, I suppose.

There's a man here called Stone; he's a lieutenant-commander in the navy, and I think he's going to ask me to marry him--and I'm going to accept the proposal promptly!

"He's not the mature Prince Charming of my dreams, but he is really not ill-looking. He's a manly fellow, and I confess I thought he was rather nice, until I discovered that he was after me for my money--which was a shock to my vanity, too. Little Mat Hitchc.o.c.k--you must remember that withered little old beau? Well, he is still extant, and as detestable as ever; he told me that John Stone had proposed to half the wealthy girls in New York. Of course, I don't believe that, but I thought it was very suspicious when he took me in to dinner a month ago and tried to question me about my stock in the Belinda and Lone Star. I told him I had the stock--and I have, indeed!--and I let him believe that it was worth anything you please. It wasn't what I said, of course, for I was careful not to commit myself; but I guess he got the right impression.

And since then he has been very attentive; so it must be the money he is after and not me. I rather liked him, till I began to suspect; and even now I find it hard to have the thorough contempt I ought to have for a fortune-hunter.

"Why is it that we think a man despicable who marries for money, and yet it is what we expect a woman to do? I've asked Miss Marlenspuyk about Mr. Stone, and she knows all about him, as she does about everybody else. She says he has three or four or five thousand dollars a year besides his pay--and yet he wants to marry me for my money! It will just serve him right if I marry him for his. He's at the Brooklyn Navy-Yard for a few months more, and then his sh.o.r.e duty will be up; so that if we are married, he'll be ordered to sea soon, and I shall be free from him for three years. When I write like that I don't know whether I have a greater contempt for him or for myself. _Mais il faut vivre, n'est-ce pas?_ And what am I to live on next month? I can't be a matron in Milwaukee, can I? The world owes me a living, after all, and I've simply got to collect the debt from a man. And how I hate myself for doing it!