CHAPTER XVI
WhenJoyce awoke the next morning it was with a feeling of trepidation lest she had overslept and would not be able to accomplish all that she must before twelve o’clock.
She hurried around anxiously, folding her newspaper bed into an innocent-looking pile, putting away her things carefully for any possible scrutiny, and eating a hasty breakfast of crackers, cheese and what was left of her bottle of milk.
When everything was neat and trim she took out her dress and sat down to sew, wondering if perhaps she ought not to run out and find what time it was before she started to work. But fortunately the town clock settled the matter by chiming out nine o’clock. Three hours before she must be at Mrs. Powers! Well, there was only the collar and cuffs to sew on, the skirt to hem and the pockets to make. She could get along without pockets if necessary, but she really needed them. If only the collar would fit and not have to be made over again or cut down or anything.
She put in the hem swiftly. That was plain sailing, as it was carefully pinned. Then she put on the cuffs and tacked them in place, and donned the gown. Yes, the collar fitted nicely. With a relieved mind she took it off again and faced on the collar. While she was doing so the clock struck ten. If she hurried there would be time to make the pockets. It was half past before shefinished the collar and tacked on the girdle. Somehow her fingers seemed terribly slow. She cut two strips from the organdie, bound them with blue and sewed them at the top of two patch pockets. It was striking eleven as she pinned the pockets in place and began to sew them on with strong, firm little stitches, but ten minutes would see it finished. She drew a long breath and began to think of what was before her. Mrs. Powers had sounded pleasant but condescending. Well, one could keep still and obey orders, and after all, condescension didn’t hurt anything but one’s pride. What was pride? She could stand almost anything for just once.
She must stop at the store on her way and get a clean gingham apron. She ought to have a white one for table waiting also. If there was anything cheap enough she would get it. If there was only another two hours she could easily make one. But there wasn’t. She broke off her thread for the finish, and laid aside her thimble and scissors happily. Well, the dress was done anyway.
She wasted little time in putting on the new garment and smoothing her hair, feeling quite neat and trim as she locked her door and hurried down the street. Mrs. Bryant eyed her approvingly from her kitchen window.
“She certainly is a pretty little thing,” she said to herself. “I wish I had a daughter like that. It’s going to be a real comfort having her right near this winter when Jim is away. I’m glad we let her have the lot.”
Joyce bought her other gingham apron, and found a tiny white one, coarse, but neat, for fifty cents, and with her two aprons presented herself at Mrs. Powers’ door at exactly twelve o’clock.
Mrs. Powers herself opened the door, her hair in crimpers, herself attired in a somewhat soiled pink silk kimona:
“I forgot to mention that you might come to the side door,” she said loftily, “but it doesn’t matter this time.”
Joyce paused on the threshold and surveyed her silently. She had never met anything quite like this, nor dreamed that people who served others had to endure it. She was minded to flee at once, till she remembered that she had promised to get the dinner and that it was probably too late for the woman to get any one else now. She must be a lady, even if her employer was not.
Before she could speak, however, Mrs. Powers entered upon her introduction to the work.
“You don’t object to washing dishes I hope. The lunch and breakfast dishes will have to be cleared away before you can do much. Here’s the menu for tonight, I’ve written it out so there won’t be any mistake. I never like to have to give directions twice. Fruit cup. You’ll find the things in the store room, oranges, grape fruit, some white grapes skinned and seeded, I like plenty of grapes in it, and there’s a can of pineapple. Then we’ll have a clear soup. Do you know how to make soup? I’m sure I don’t know what you’ll make it out of. You can look around and see. Perhaps there’s some stock. Then for the meat course we’ll have chops and creamed potatoes and peas. There’s lettuce in the garden, and tomatoes in the refrigerator. You make mayonnaise, do you? Mrs. Bryant spoke of that I think. Well, that fixes the salad all right. Then ice cream and cake and coffee. I’veordered the ice cream, of course, but I’ll need two kinds of cake. I always like to have two kinds. That’s all, I believe. Now, I’m going up to lie down. I really must or I’ll look like a rag, but I shall expect you to have the diningroom and kitchen cleaned, the peas shelled, and the mayonnaise on the ice by the time I come down. Then I shall feel easy. You’ll need to scald and skin the tomatoes too, and get at your cake as soon as possible. It’ll need to get cold before icing. Now, do you think you understand it all?”
Joyce looked at her with frank amusement as she rolled out the sentences, tolling off the tasks as if they were trifles and expecting, actually expecting all that work to be done. In spite of her a fresh young laugh rang out as if it were all a joke. The lady eyed her curiously, uneasily. What kind of a young working person was this anyway that laughed at her tasks and came to the front door for admission?
“I want dinner promptly at seven,” she said haughtily. “Do you feel sure you will remember all I have told you?”
“I’ll do my best to accomplish as much as possible, Mrs. Powers,” said Joyce, remembering the ten dollars and sobering down. “There isn’t any too much time, I guess.”
Joyce undid her bundle and enveloped herself in her clean gingham apron as she spoke:
“Now, if you’ll show me where to find your materials.”
“Yes,” sighed the lady comfortably, leading the way to the kitchen. “I hope you’ll let me know right away if there’s anything else you need, because I hate to be disturbed when I’m taking a nap.”
She trailed away from the scene before Joyce realized the whole situation, or it is doubtful if she might not have fled even yet.
The kitchen was stacked with soiled dishes in every available spot, and soiled dish towels, grocery bags huddled together between piles of plates and pans and potato peelings. It was evident that not only the breakfast and lunch dishes were unwashed but also the dinner dishes of the night before, and possibly some from lunch of the day before. It was a wreck of a kitchen and no mistake. Joyce stood still in her pretty new blue dress in the midst of it all, appalled at what was expected of her. It seemed to her that no two girls could accomplish all that had been given her to do before seven o’clock. The cooking alone was enough to keep her on the jump, without all the cleaning. She was minded to get at the preparations for dinner first and leave the clearing up to take care of itself when the lady came down again, only that absolutely nothing could be done until there was a clean place in which to work.
Joyce had been in hard places before, with a meal ahead to get for company in a short time, and had rather enjoyed the sharpening of her wits to win the game and get it done in time. But never had she had such a kitchen as this to deal with. At first glance her soul revolted from having to touch it. The floor was grimy and messy with things spilled on it. Numerous dishes standing under the sink out of the way with fragments of food burned hard to them showed discouraging impossibilities ahead. The sink was filthy with grease and the dish-pan filledwith greasy water. It was all simply unspeakable. She scarcely knew where to begin.
Investigation showed there was no hot water, and that the source of it was in a tank heated by a small laundry stove in the cellar, which was out. Joyce descended the cellar stairs, found an axe, and split up a box, and finally got the laundry fire going. Then she came upstairs, and put three pans and the teakettle full of water to heat on the gas range. While they were heating she went to the refrigerator to see what was on hand for that soup which she was supposed to make.
The refrigerator proved worse than anything she had yet seen in the house, and greatly needed a good cleaning, but there was no time for refrigerators. She was weary in every bone and sinew now thinking of all that must be done before six o’clock. But she gathered out whatever was worth using, some chicken bones, a small piece of boiled beef, a left-over lamb chop, a bowl of chicken gravy, a few lima beans, and a cup of mashed potatoes. Not a very promising array. She cleared a spot on the kitchen table, skimmed the grease from the gravy, cut the fat from the meat, and put the whole array on to simmer with a little water. A little foraging brought some onions and carrots to light, which she diced and put in with the mixture. By this time the water was hot and she scalded the tomatoes and skinned them, putting them on the ice to harden. Then, with her soup and salad well under way, she felt more at her ease to go at the cleaning.
The first job was the sink, and it took fully ten minutes to reduce it and the dish pans to order. Then, as she could not find any clean dish towels, she washed out thosethat were soiled and hung them out in the back yard. They would be dry by the time she needed them, for there was a good breeze blowing. She glanced at the clock as she came in. Forty minutes of the precious seven hours was gone and scarcely an impression made on the dreadful-looking place. She looked around in despair. The second relay of hot water was ready, and she went to work gathering first all the soiled silver and putting it to soak in a pan full of suds while she scraped up the dishes and sorted them in orderly files. Everything would have to soak before it was washed, for food had been smeared over them all and left to dry. By the time the sorting was done the silver washed easily, and she put them into the rinsing pan, and filled the first pan with a pile of plates to soak while she washed off the drain board and shelf and made room to drain her dishes. Inch by inch she cleared places and filled them with clean, steaming dishes, filling her pans again and again with hot water. The laundry stove was getting in its work by this time and the water from the faucet facilitated matters, nevertheless, it was half past two before she had every dish subdued and standing in clean, dry rows on a clean, dry table ready to be marshaled into pantry shelves that sadly needed cleaning, but could not have it now. She must get that fruit dug out and on the ice at once.
She turned her attention to cake next, and when it was in the oven went at the mayonnaise dressing. She had made a chocolate layer cake, rich and dark, with a transparent chocolate filling and thick, white icing, and was just taking a sponge cake, light as a feather, out of the oven when the mistress arrived, fine and cool in a lightcrêpe de chine, her hair marcelled and her face powdered to the last degree, leaving a perfume of luxury in her wake as she moved.
“Mercy!” she exclaimed. “Is that all the cake you’ve made? And look at the time. You’ll have to frost that, of course. It’s too plain that way. Have you fixed the salad? And, oh, I forgot to say—There’ll have to be hot biscuits. I hope you can make good ones. Mr. Powers is very particular about his biscuits. He likes them light. I must say you might have scrubbed this floor a little bit, and by the way, I wish you’d run up by and by while your vegetables are cooking and wipe up the bath room tiles. My son took a bath this morning just before he went off on a trip and he left water all over the floor.”
Joyce turned suddenly from setting the hot cake carefully on a cake-cooler and faced the lady. Her cheeks were two pink flames and her eyes were bits of blue ice. For just one second words trembled on her lips, words that were not humble nor gentle. Here was a woman much like Nannette, who appeared, to think the world was made all for herself. Joyce longed to lay down the knife with which she had loosened the cake from its pan and walk out of the kitchen as she had walked out of her cousin’s kitchen a few days before, never to return, but she reflected that she could not go on walking out of situations all her life that she did not like, and moreover it would be a mean thing to leave the lady with her dinner only half got and company coming. It was obvious the lady was unfitted to get it. And then, she had promised to do it. The lady had depended upon her and she must stick. Why not make a game of it, something that hadto be overcome and won? So she let her lips soften into a smile and answered with a twinkle of amusement:
“Why, I’m not sure I’ll have time, Mrs. Powers, but I’ll do my best. Things were pretty badly messed up here, you know, and it all took time. By the way, Mrs. Powers, Mrs. Bryant told me that your husband was on the School Board. I wonder if you could tell me whether there is likely to be any opening for a teacher next fall? You know I am a teacher. That is, that’s what I’ve been getting ready to be.”
There was something, just a shade of fineness perhaps, in the way Joyce spoke, a kind of sense of being above littleness and an air of being there to help her purely as a favor, that made the lady the least bit ashamed of having asked her to wipe up the bath room floor. She stared at Joyce a minute in that superior sort of surprised way, as if suddenly some ribbon or powder puff or bit of lace she had been using had risen up and claimed a personality, and then she answered in a cold little tone:
“Why, I’m sure I don’t know. There might be. If you put this dinner over well and get it all done on time I’ll try and remember to speak to him about it. Mr. Powers loves good dinners, and he might do something for you. I’m going down in my car now to meet my friend and I wish you’d answer the telephone while I’m gone and keep an eye on the front door. And don’t for mercy’s sake let anything burn. I just hate to have the house smell of burned food when guests arrive. Don’t forget the bath room floor, and have plenty of biscuits.”
The lady sailed away again after having peered into the refrigerator at the tomatoes and fruit cup gettingchilled, and sniffed at the kettle of soup on the back of the range, with never a word of commendation. Something strangely like tears came into the girl’s eyes as she turned back to the kitchen and reviewed the work still to be done, looking despairingly at the clock. Quarter to five! Could she do it? One thing she was sure of, she would never work for this woman again if she could help it. There seemed to be no pleasing her. It had been quite another thing to get dinner for Mrs. Bryant, who was delighted with everything she did. This woman treated her as if she were the very dust under her feet. Perhaps she had made a mistake in consenting to do kitchen work. Perhaps she had lowered herself in the woman’s eyes and hurt her chance of getting a school. Well, she must forget it now. It was all in the game and she was out to win. It was just another hindrance put in her way, a net to get her ball over, a wicket through which she must pass. She would win out in spite of it. So, trying to coax a laugh into her throat instead of a sob, she went to work with redoubled vigor.
When the cake was frosted and standing white and beautiful in the window to dry she slipped up to the bath room, wiped up the floor and tidied it a bit. It needed a vigorous cleaning but she had no time to give it. Then she hurried down to shell the peas and scrape the potatoes. When they were on she would feel easier in her mind. There was a stalk of celery in the store room and a few English walnuts. The salad would look prettier if she diced the celery and stuffed the tomatoes with celery and nuts. She must try to get time. It wouldn’t takea minute. Then the lettuce must be got from the garden. It ought to be in salt water this instant.
The next hour was a wild whirl. It seemed, as she rushed from table to range and from refrigerator back to the kitchen, that she had been rushing, rushing, ever since she left home, and she was tired, oh, so tired.
The biscuits were in the oven and the potatoes and peas bubbling gaily on the stove, the chops were in the broiler and Joyce was trying to set the table, when Mrs. Powers returned with her guest. After taking her to the guest room upstairs she came languidly down to see how the dinner was getting on. She said no word of commendation, but a look of satisfaction dawned in her eyes as she saw the orderly row of salad plates, daintily and appetizingly arrayed on the kitchen side table, and caught a glimpse of the two cakes in the pantry window smooth and glistening in deep frosting. Joyce caught the look or perhaps she would not have been able to go on through the next trying hour.
“Mrs. Powers, I can’t find but one of those rose napkins you said you wanted to use. Could you tell me where else to look?” she asked as the lady returned to the diningroom.
“Why, I’m sure they are in the drawer,” said the lady sharply as if somehow Joyce must have lost them herself. “They’re always right there.” She came and looked herself.
“Well, I guess they didn’t get sent to the laundry,” she admitted at last reluctantly after a hasty slamming of sideboard drawers. “Oh, here they are. How tiresome! Well, you’ll just have to take them down to thelaundry and rub them out. There’s no other way. The others simply aren’t fit. Here, take these. You’ll find the electric iron right down there and you can iron them dry.”
Joyce paused aghast.
“But the dinner,” she said. “Things will burn, and I’m afraid it won’t be on time if I wait to do that.”
“Well, you’ll have to manage somehow. I’m sure I don’t know what else you can do. We’ll have to have dinner late then I suppose, although Mr. Powers hates that. He always says never hire a person twice who can’t get meals on time. It’s the worst fault—”
But Joyce had seized the napkins and was already on her way down to the laundry, her lips set in a hard, determined little line. The School Board should never be able to say she couldn’t be on time, even if it was the School Board’s wife’s fault that she couldn’t be. She would win out and have dinner on time anyway.
So with a quick turn of the faucets, and a fling of the soap, she rubbed out the necessary napkins, and while they were soaking for a minute, hunted out the electric iron and set it heating. Up the stairs again to her dinner to watch the chops and turn the lights under the vegetables a little lower, breathlessly down again, such a wild scramble! Quarter to seven it was when she came up again with the three neatly ironed napkins in her hand and wildly flew into the diningroom to finish setting the table. The sweet potatoes were browning in their sugar bath and she had to watch them closely that they did not burn. It meant flying back and forth continually—and oh, there were the olives, the ice water, and cream for the coffee.Would the dinner ever be ready and served? And where was her apron?
The last five minutes were a nightmare. She could hear the front door open and the voice of the two gentlemen as they entered. Which one would be Mr. Powers? The gruff, deep one, or the high falsetto? And then came the awful minute when she donned the new white apron, and came to sign to Mrs. Powers that all was ready. The clock in the living room was chiming seven with silvery tones as she signalled her readiness, and she thought she saw a look of surprise and relief in the languid eye of the hostess, but she stayed not to make further discoveries. She would have her hands full for the next few minutes without knowing whether the lady was pleased or not.
“Surely He shall deliver thee—”
What was it that Bible verse said that ran through her head with every pulsation of her racing blood? Why should a Bible verse come so persistently into her mind just now when she was too busy to think about anything? “Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence”—that was it. The snare of the fowler was the little things that caught one. Well, He had delivered her. He had helped her to smile instead of to be annoyed. Was she winning out? Dinner was on time anyway.