The Flower Brides (53 page)

“Then I’ll stay,” said Diana with relief. “I—had breakfast rather late, anyway,” she added, and then she drove her pen rapidly on in clear, graceful writing.

The manager looked a bit troubled but turned away, and most of the workers went out by twos and threes for their noon hour. Only two others remained, and presently they went up to the dressing room with their neat little packages of lunch. One of them came down with a luscious pear in her hand and came over to Diana shyly. “My sister put two pears in my lunch box today, and I couldn’t possibly eat them both. I wondered if you wouldn’t like to help me out. I noticed you didn’t go out to lunch, and I do hate to carry it back home again.”

It was on Diana’s lips to give a haughty “No thank you!” but she lifted her eyes to the girl’s face and found such kindly good will that the words died on her lips and instead she smiled. After all, why should she hold herself aloof? She was a working girl now like the rest. Moreover, she was hungry, and this was true kindliness. So she reached out her hand with a sudden smile.

“Thank you!” she said heartily. “That looks wonderful!” She ate the pear gratefully, and then wrote the faster to make up for the brief loss of time. But a strange thought came to her while she was eating. Did God send this job to her? It wasn’t a very big answer to her prayer, of course, but it was something. And did He send the pear? It seemed almost irreverent to think such a thought, but there was a warming of her heart, a stealing in of a bit of comfort like a warm ray of sun. And it certainly was good to have eaten that pear, for in case the work lasted another day they likely wouldn’t pay her until it was done, and there was only one cracker left in her room for dinner tonight. How long could one live and go on working without food?

But the manager came to her just before closing time and smiled.

“You’ve worked well, Miss Disston,” she said. “It really was quite important to get off as many of these as possible. I thought perhaps you’d like your pay tonight for the day, but we’d like you to come back in the morning if you will. Some new lists have just come in by the late mail, and there is a prospect that we shall have work for you for several more days.”

Diana’s face lit up.

“Oh, I’m so glad,” she said earnestly. “And it is good of you to let me have today’s money now. I really need it.”

“That’s quite all right,” Miss Prince said, smiling, “and I’ll see you in the morning.”

It wasn’t a large sum of money that she carried away with her, but it meant all the difference between starvation and life. Diana went at once to a restaurant, the cheapest decent one she knew, and ate a real dinner. To be sure, its price was very small, but she chose wholesome things that would sustain life a long time. She mustn’t allow herself to get so near to nothing again. She recalled the sinking feeling she had in the pit of her stomach at noon before that girl gave her the pear. And how dizzy her head had been! Sometimes she could hardly see what she was writing. One glass of milk couldn’t keep one working all day. She must provide a lunch!

So while she was eating she studied the menu and, on her way out, purchased the cheapest sandwich they had and two nice red apples. Then at the little grocery near her room she bought a pint bottle of milk and a box of dry cereal. Now she was provided with food for breakfast and a lunch like the others, with an extra apple to repay her friend for the pear, and she had money left to keep her, if she was careful, for a couple of days longer. Not that she could live very expensively, of course, but she had demonstrated by this time that a fifteen-cent plate of soup and a few crackers would keep one alive for quite a length of time.

When she reached her room she put her bottle of milk in the open window with a wet cloth around it to keep it cool, stowed her sandwich in a small tin box she had, put the bag of apples beside it, and then looked around her room with a deep breath of relief. She wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t. She had had her first success, and she was grateful. It wouldn’t do to sit down and think from what state she had fallen, nor to sit and blame her poor father. She mustn’t let herself think about her troubles or she would give way, and one couldn’t work well if one cried half the night. She had tried trusting in God that morning and wonderful things had happened. She must keep on trusting.

Before Diana had left her home, in fact that last morning when she went down to the village to telephone the moving van, she had stopped at the post office and asked them to hold her mail, after that afternoon’s delivery, until she should send them another address. She had even left money for forwarding second-class matter. Not that she had so much mail, but she dreaded to have anything that belonged to her fall into Helen’s hands. There was Bobby Watkins, for instance. Suppose he should take it into his head to write her a voluminous letter, as he had done more than once, and try to argue with her about her attitude toward him? He had called up twice during that last day to berate her for the way she treated him going down the drive and to try to explain how much he loved her. She no longer wished to protect Bobby Watkins from Helen’s mocking laughter, Bobby could take care of himself, but she couldn’t bear the thought of Helen’s opening letters and reading
anything
addressed to her and laughing over it as she would laugh. For she knew Helen would have no scruples against opening her letters if she chose to do so. She had seen her do it several times.

Also, there would be invitations and a few letters from her friends. Nothing that would amount to anything or that she really cared much about, but she did not want Helen reading them and destroying them.

So now that she had a job, at least for a few days, she sat down and wrote an order to the postman at home to forward her mail. The post office was not allowed to tell others her address, so she felt she was perfectly safe in doing this. Of course, by and by, she would write to her father as she had promised to do, but not until she was sure of a job that would pay for her food and room. Never should he be allowed to think that he could break her resolve by holding back her money. Her heart was full of bitterness toward him as she thought of what he had done, although there was more grief at having lost his love and her feeling that he trusted her than bitterness. And if she could have known what anxiety he was suffering about her, she would have forgotten to pity herself and would have somehow managed to get in touch with him at least to let him know she was safe. She felt that he had Helen and that was enough for him. Not for an instant did she take as sincere what the banker had said to her about his anxiety to know where she was.

His refusal to come to her when she pled with him, or to have any discussion with her before it was forever too late, was still strong in her mind. It had cut her to the heart.

So she wrote her few lines to the postmaster at home and then, because the postbox was only a block and a half down the street, she went out and mailed it. It would get there in the morning, and perhaps by tomorrow night she would have some mail. It would be more like living to be getting something of her own, even if it was nothing she cared about.

Out in the street, with its dismal half-lit shadows, she almost regretted going out but quickened her steps to a run, deposited her letter, and flew back to safety. She did not notice a lank, awkward young man slouching against a closed grocery doorway across the corner. She did not see him look up and peer across at her, nor know that he had followed her noiselessly on the other side of the street, keeping in the shadows and hiding in a deep doorway until he saw where she went in, and that later he walked by on her side of the street and studied the house, taking note of the number before he melted into darkness again and went on his unknown way.

Diana went upstairs, locked herself into her haven, and went to bed. But before she slept, she tried to pray.

“Oh, God, if You really care and have helped me today, I thank You!” she said softly into her pillow. “Oh, God, if You really do care, I would be so glad!”

D
iana worked in the publishing office for nearly a week, and then one morning the manager came to her just as she had begun her work for the day and asked her if she could run a typewriter. Diana looked dismayed and told her no.

“I’m sorry,” said the manager. “I hoped you could. This work you have been doing is about finished. It won’t last longer than today. I thought if you were a typist we could use you right along, for one of our girls is getting married next week.”

“I could learn,” said Diana, with a desperate look in her eyes.

The manager shook her head.

“We need experienced typists, you know,” she said. “But if you will leave your address, we’ll promise to send for you whenever we have any extra work that we think you could do. The editor was very much pleased with the way you took hold of things. I’m sorry,” she said again with a pitying smile as she walked away.

Diana sat and worked all day, her heart as heavy as lead. She did not go out to lunch as she had been in the habit of doing. She said she had a headache when one of the girls asked her to go with her. In reality, she was frightened. She wouldn’t waste even fifteen cents to buy lunch. The money she would get tonight would not be enough to carry her many days, and here she was plunged back into the blackness of despair again, with visions of that awful restaurant in her mind. Perhaps she would have to get a job like that yet. Perhaps she wouldn’t even be able to get one like that now, for likely that was gone long ago.

She received her pay envelope and the kind words of the manager that night with as brave a look as she could summon, but her feet dragged heavily as she went on her way home, and instead of stopping to get a good dinner, she bought bread and cheese and went on to her room. Why waste money on a dinner that she could not eat? Oh, why did she have to go on living? Where was the God in whom she had been trying to trust? Had He forgotten her? No one cared anymore. Her father seemed to be making no further move to try to find her. Helen doubtless had told him that she would come home when she got good and tired of wandering around without money, and likely he had believed her.
Oh, God, God, God, do You care at all? How could You care? I’m just nobody!

The tears were in her eyes as she rounded the corner to the dismal rooming house, and all her life looked drab and dreary before her. Would there ever be anything ahead to make her feel happy again?

But as she came to the steps of the house, she saw that the door stood open and a postal delivery car was at the door.

“Here she comes!” said the landlady grimly. “Let her sign it herself. I’ve got too much to do to bother. I smell my dinner burning!”

Diana stared at the landlady and then at the postal delivery, and then she saw a large parcel lying on the hall chair. In the dim light permitted in that dismal place, she could not read the name clearly, but the boy was holding out a card and pencil to her.

“Sign here,” he said, and he thrust the pencil into her hand.

Diana, filled with wonder, signed her name, and the boy vanished. Then she turned to take up her parcel and came face-to-face with her landlady again.

“That’s from a florist’s, isn’t it?” she asked belligerently.

Diana gazed at her, astonished.

“I don’t know what it is,” she replied. “I haven’t opened it yet. I wasn’t expecting anything.”

“Well, if you’re getting that many flowers in your position, I think you oughtta be payin’ more rent for your room.”

Diana laughed. It struck her as remarkably original logic.

“Just how do you make that out?” She tried to say it pleasantly, trying to remember that this was only a poor, ignorant woman in a semitenement. “I couldn’t really help it, could I, if someone chose to send me some flowers by mail? It wouldn’t make me any better able to pay more rent, would it? Unless you think I might sell them to somebody.” She laughed with a little tremble in the tail of it that gave a strange pathetic sound even to herself.

“Is he your steady, or is he just a pick-up?” asked the landlady, fixing her with a cold eye. There was a strong smell of fried potatoes and onions burning that almost stifled Diana, but she paused with her foot on the lower step of the stair and stared at the woman.

“What is a steady?” she asked, mildly interested.

“If you don’t know, it ain’t likely he is. Well then, I thought mebbe you wasn’t so awful respectable after all as you set up to be.”

“I really don’t know what you mean,” said Diana, almost ready to cry.

“You must be awful dumb, then. I’m askin’ you if the flowers you got in that there package is from a regular sweetie you go with all the time or just from some bum you picked up at a nightclub? I like ta know what kinda character my tenants has. This has always been counted a respectable house. It looks kinda suspicious, you havin’ all that furniture and now gettin’ a stack o’ flowers.”

Diana suddenly froze into dignity.

“Really,” she said, “I’m sorry, but I can’t answer any more questions. I haven’t opened this package yet, and I haven’t the slightest idea where it came from or what it contains. But if renting a room from you gives you a right to pry into all my private affairs, I shall certainly move out tomorrow!” And she sailed upstairs carrying her big parcel with her, and suddenly remembered as she rounded the head of the stairs and prepared to ascend the next flight that she had no job and almost no money, and if she were to move out tomorrow she could only do so by dragging her furniture to the window and flinging it out in the alley with her own hands, for she certainly couldn’t pay a mover, nor rent another room, not until she got a job.

She was so filled with shame and distress by the time she reached her room that she locked the door and flung herself down on her bed without waiting to open her unexpected parcel and had a good cry all in the dark by herself. That awful old woman and her horrible room! Oh, that she might take her precious possessions and fly to the ends of the earth away from here! Anything,
any
thing would be better than this!