The Street of the City (13 page)

So Marietta got up early the next morning and wrote out all the plans she had made the night before. She intended to go at once to that little brick house across the river and at least see that little sneak of a girl who seemed to think she could take over the really most eligible young man in the neighborhood. Scores had gone to camp and there weren’t so many to depend on as there used to be.

After she had her list written out carefully so that she would be provided with an idea in a hurry that would fit any contingency, she arrayed herself in her most stunning uniform and started out in her shining new car.

M
arietta drove up the road to the bridge and over the bridge to the despised “other side,” turned down the old river road, past the tiny new houses that represented “the laboring class” to her aristocratic mind, and at last reached the little brick house.

She sat a moment in her car surveying the place. This was the place where that obnoxious girl lived! It needed painting terribly. Strange that even a laboring man should be willing to live in such a run-down looking house. If he was worth anything surely he could find a few minutes a day to paint at least around the windows and the door. The door was simply terrible. Dirty fingermarks and scratches as if heavy boots had kicked it for years. Well, of course no decent girl could come out of a house like this. Poor Val! What had possessed him to take up with a girl from a house of this sort? It probably was just another case of the scrub woman’s child. Well, she would have to do her best. She turned to get out of her car and then looked back at the windows. Why, there were curtains at the windows! That was astonishing! Perhaps somebody in the house had ideas.

Slowly she went up the path and tapped on the door. She could hear hurrying little feet coming from the region of the back of the house. A child! Well, perhaps it would be as well to meet a child first, then she would not have to stand at the door in this cold wind and talk. Getting in would give her an advantage.

Bonnie opened the door and smiled up at the beautiful girl in the lovely fur coat and a real uniform showing beneath. She was charmed with the haughty visitor and opened the door a little wider. Marietta stepped in and looked around her curiously. Why, the curtains which had looked rather nondescript from outside, were clean and quite attractive, as if someone with taste had selected them. Probably some rich person for whom the mother worked, washing or scrubbing perhaps, had donated them. Or they might even have been stolen from some clothes lines in the wealthy part of the city. Such things had been done.

“Won’t you sit down?” said Bonnie politely. “We aren’t in very good order yet. We just moved in last week.” The child did the honors in a quaint old-fashioned way, and Marietta looked at her astonished.

“Is your—mother, or your—sister at home?” she asked sharply.

“My mamma is sick,” said Bonnie. “She’s been very sick upstairs in her room. The doctor said she mustn’t see anybody yet.” Marietta instantly decided that the mother was drunk and this was probably an excuse.

“Well, haven’t you a sister?” she asked.

“Yes, I have a sister, Frannie, but she has gone to her work in the city. She is a secretary down at a munitions plant. She won’t be home till supper time. She goes to her work on her skates. She’s a very nice skater.” And Bonnie smiled engagingly.

Ah! That was the girl. Then she did skate. Probably Val had been lured by her skating.

“Well, isn’t there anybody here at all that I can talk to? Someone who is older than you are?”

“Oh yes, there’s the nurse. She’s very nice. She could talk to you, only I think she’s giving my mamma a bath now. You could wait for her, or I will talk to you. I know more about the family than she does, because she’s only been here since yesterday.”

“A nurse!” said Marietta. “Do you have a nurse?”

“Yes, we had to, ’cause my mamma got so sick and Frannie had to go to her job.”

“Oh!” said Marietta, wondering what she had got into. Was the woman sick with some contagious disease, perhaps? Marietta had a good imagination and could always go a step ahead of the facts. “What is the matter with your mother? Has she got anything that’s catching? Any contagious disease?” Marietta involuntarily stepped toward the door—her hand on the knob—preparatory to escape if necessary.

“Oh, you mean anything like measles or whooping cough? Oh no, it’s nothing like that. She just fell down when she was clearing off the breakfast dishes, and her eyes shut and she couldn’t answer me. They said she fainted. The doctor said she was all tired out and needed a rest.”

“Oh,” said Marietta relaxing from her alarm and dropping down in the haircloth chair by the door. It was then that she noticed that several of the chairs in the room looked like simple, old antiques. Could they have been given to these people? Where did they get fine old chairs? There was nothing to show that they had money. If they had they would never have come to live in this dreadful little house, whose wallpaper was dirty and faded and looked as if it had served large families for a century or two. “And you have a nurse?” asked the bewildered caller. “Is she some relative who is living with you?”

“Oh no,” said Bonnie with her sunny smile. “She’s just a nurse. The nice doctor sent for her and she came and she’s wonderful. She knows how to do almost everything.”

“Yes, nurses usually do,” said Marietta dryly. “But this nurse, is she an old woman? Somebody without any home?”

“Oh no,” said Bonnie affably, “she’s a nice lady, and she has a home somewhere I guess, only she’s staying here now because my mamma is sick and she wants to help her get well. She loves to help people. She has a pretty white uniform. It’s not like yours, it’s white all over with a pretty white cap, and she always smiles. But say, are you a soldier?”

“Well no, not exactly. I’m just a person who has signed up to help in the war.”

“But you have a uniform like a soldier. What do you do? Go out and pick up dead soldiers and take them to the hospital to be mended?”

“Mercy no!” said Marietta, shivering. “What put that idea into your head, you crazy child?”

“Why, because our nurse said people in uniforms were all doing something to help the poor soldiers, and I wondered what you do to help them.”

Then suddenly there was a step on the stairs and the nurse came down bringing a tray.

“Oh Bonnie, have you a guest?” the nurse said cheerily. “Why didn’t you call me? Was something wanted?”

“Why I don’t know,” said Bonnie. “I forgot to ask that. But I did tell her to sit down. Was that right?”

“Yes, that was right, dear. Why, Miss Hollister, is it you? Aren’t you lost over on this side of the river?”

“Well, almost,” laughed Marietta unpleasantly. “But I might ask the same thing of you, Miss Branner. You don’t usually nurse over on this side, do you?”

“Why, I nurse wherever I’m needed,” said the nurse calmly.

“But isn’t it unusual for people in these walks of life to be able to pay a nurse of your class?”

“Well I really couldn’t answer that question, Miss Hollister,” said Nurse Branner with dignity. “I’ve never happened to see any statistics in that line. Is there anything I can do for you? Whom did you want to see?”

“I understood there was a young girl living here,” said Marietta haughtily. “I came to see her.”

“Yes, Miss Fernley lives here, but she is not at home at present. She does not usually return until a little after five.”

“Oh! Every day?”

“Yes, every day.”

“Very well. I’ll call again.”

And so Marietta took herself out of the little red house angrily, as if it was definitely someone’s fault that she could not attain her object at once. But she did not dismiss her plans. Instead she began to turn over new ones which should further her investigations.

Why, for instance, shouldn’t this dance program that she had proposed work out for girls like this? If the girls of her crowd thought they were really doing something to uplift other girls less favored than themselves they might even be moved to give larger sums for the furtherance of the idea. That would be the very thing! Invite a favored few of these working girls to the dances and entertainments and give them the privilege of seeing how the wealthy and aristocratic girls lived. And they, the promoters, could go on and have their own good time while the guests had the privilege of watching them. Of course, there would have to be a few young men of the underprivileged class to provide partners for their guests. It would have to be worked out very carefully or the outsiders might take advantage and make unpleasantness, but she was satisfied she could work it out. So she went to her committees and told some of the other girls about her idea. But she did not find a very enthusiastic response to her suggestions.

“Oh, forget it, Mari,” one girl said. “Haven’t we got enough unpleasant things to do in this war-torn world without your dragging in something like that? Who wants to do good to every green, awkward girl in the county? When I go to a dance I want to have a good time myself and not have to worry about any forlorn wallflowers who don’t know what it’s all about anyway.”

“And there’s another thing, Hollister,” sounded another dissenting voice. “They won’t come if you do invite them, those freaks who haven’t any social life of their own. They don’t want to be patronized and told how the other half lives. They think they are as good as anybody, and a little better than some. It wouldn’t be a success even if you did try it. I’m against it, Holly! Don’t do it!”

But Marietta was of the type that always grew stronger under opposition, therefore she determined to go ahead with her plans.

“It all depends on the approach you make when you invite them,” she said contemptuously. “You’ve got to sell them the idea of coming in the first place. Make them see it will be a privilege to come. I know one girl that I’m certain I can bring, and I’ll make her dig up some others.”

And so, without having even seen Frannie Fernley, Marietta determined to make her the center around which she would organize the whole scheme.

She spent most of the rest of the day in perfecting her plans. In bullying enough of the girls into contributing money for the initial expenses, getting lists of names of young people who were eligible material on which to begin their uplifting work, in hunting up a suitable hall for their gatherings, and inquiring prices; also interviewing orchestra leaders and getting them down to a price commensurate with the amount pledged. Oh, Marietta was most efficient when it came to carrying out her own way. And all this just to find out and nip in the bud this girl who had dared to be seen with Valiant Willoughby.

Marietta did not waste any time in interviewing Frannie Fernley. She was on hand at the little brick house quite before five o’clock, sitting in the dim little front room filled with the dusk of the evening and listening to the high-pitched sweet voice of Bonnie in the kitchen talking with the nurse while they prepared the pleasant evening meal that was sending out such delightful odors: the delicious mingling of molasses and butter and a bit of fat browning over the top of a pan of baked beans; the tang of a fresh raw onion cut across a salad of lettuce, green pepper, and tomato, with lemon in the dressing; the rich, spicy fragrance of cinnamon on the top of a custard pie just being taken out of the oven.

Marietta sat back in the old comfortable chair, in the gathering dusk of a room lit only by a single dim lamp, and realized that she was both tired and hungry. Those things they were cooking smelled good and tempted her. She didn’t try to identify the different smells, but they certainly seemed like an expensive dinner, here in this little tumble-down brick house. What did it mean? Had the neighbors sent in these things because the mother was sick? But then she remembered that the laboring class always were good eaters and probably insisted on having plenty.

It was almost dark when Frannie at last came home. Marietta had been watching occasionally out the window for her arrival, but a great drowsiness had come upon her, for she certainly had worked hard all day. So Frannie glided up to the wooden steps and changed her skates to her shoes without being seen or heard. She entered the house by the kitchen door left unlocked for her.

It happened, therefore, that she had a moment or two to smooth her dark curls, straighten her collar, and wash her hands and face before she entered the front room to speak to the guest, whom Bonnie and Nurse Branner had had no opportunity to describe to her. And the big, beautiful car had been parked across the street where Frannie could not see it as she entered from the river side of the house. So without any warning, except Bonnie’s soft whisper, “There’s a beautiful lady waiting for you,” she went in to meet the girl who had prepared to hate and humiliate her as far as she could.

But there was about Frannie a grace and gentleness that gave a natural loveliness to her movements, and she was not self-conscious. She had no reason to dread this caller, perhaps just some kindly neighbor like Lady Winthrop, she thought. So the two girls met in the dim room. “Oh,” said Frannie, “you are sitting almost in the dark. And are you warm enough? That fireplace is always needing another log.” She stopped in passing and flung a small stick on the dying coals, and it presently blazed up and flung lights and shadows through the room and over the faces of the two girls. “You are Miss Hollister, they said. I’m sorry, that doesn’t tell me anything because I am almost a stranger here.”