CHAPTER III
In the dimness of the early morning Louise Copley awoke with a sigh to consciousness, and softly slid her hand down to the floor under the bed, where she had hidden the old alarm-clock. With a sense that her elder sister was still company she had not turned on the alarm as usual, and now with clock-like regularity and a sense of responsibility far beyond her years she had wakened at a quarter to six as promptly as if the whir of the alarm had sounded underneath her pillow.
She rubbed her eyes open, and through the half-lifted fringes took a glance. Yes it was time to get up. With one more lingering rub at her sleepy young eyes she put the clock back under the bed out of the way, and stole quietly over the footboard, watching furtively her sleeping sister. How pretty Nellie was even in the early gray light of morning, with all that wavy mane of hair sweeping over the pillow, and her long lashes lying on the pink curve of her cheek! Louise wondered incredulously whether she would be half as pretty as that when she was as old as her sister.
It was nice to have a big sister at home, but now she was here Louise wondered in a mature little housewifely way what in the world they were going to do with her. She didn’t look at all fit for cooking and things like that, and Louise sighed wearily as she struggled with the buttons, and thought of the day before her, and the endlessweeks that must go by before they could hope for the return of the dear mother who had made even poverty sweet and cheerful. And there was that matter of a spring hat, and a costume to wear at the school entertainment. She stole another glance at the lovely sleeping sister, and decided it would not do to bother her with little trifles like that. She would have to manage them somehow herself. Then, with the last button conquered, and a hasty tying back of her yellow curls with a much-worn ribbon, she tiptoed responsibly from the room, taking care to shut the latch securely and silently behind her.
She sped downstairs, and went capably at the kitchen stove, coaxing it into brightness and glancing fearfully at the kitchen clock. It was six o’clock, and she could hear her father stirring about in his room. He would be down soon to look after the furnace; and then she must have breakfast on the table at once, for he must catch the six-fifty-five car. The usual morning frenzy of rush seized her, and she flew from dining-room to pantry, to the refrigerator for butter, out to the front door for the bottle of milk that would be there, back to the pantry cutting bread, and back to the stove to turn the bacon and be sure it did not burn. It was a mad race, and sometimes she felt like crying by the time she sat down to the table to pour her father’s coffee, which somehow, try as she would, just would not look nor taste like mother’s. She was almost relieved that her sister had given no sign of awakening yet; for she had not had time to make the breakfast table look nice, and it wasso kind of exciting to try to eat in a hurry and have “sort of company” to think about at the same time.
The father came downstairs peering into the dining-room anxiously, with an apology on his lips for his eldest child.
“That’s right, Louie; I’m glad you let her sleep. She looked all wearied out last night with her long journey, and then I guess it’s been a kind of a shock to her, too.”
“I guess it has,” said the little girl comfortably, and passed him his cup of coffee and the bread-plate. They both had a sense of relief that Cornelia was not there and that there was a legitimate reason for not blaming her for her absence. Neither had yet been willing to admit to their loyal selves that Cornelia’s attitude of apathy to the family strait had been disappointing. They kept hoping against hope.
Mr. Copley finished his coffee hurriedly, and looked at his watch.
“Better let her sleep as long as she will,” he said. “She’ll likely be awake before you need to go to school; and, if she isn’t, you can leave a note telling her where to find things. Where’s Harry? Isn’t he up?”
“Oh, yes, he went to the grocery for the soup-bone he forgot to get last night. I was going to put it on cooking before I left. I thought maybe she wouldn’t know to——”
“That’s right! That’s right! You’re a good little girl, Louie. Your sister’ll appreciate that. Make Harry eat a good breakfast when he gets back. It isn’t good togo out on an empty stomach; and we must all keep well, and not worry mother, you know.”
“Yes, I know,” sighed the little girl with a responsible look; “I made him take a piece with him, and I’m saving something hot for him when he comes back. He’ll help me with the dishes, he said. We’ll make out all right. Don’t you worry, father, dear.”
The father with a tender father-and-mother-both smile came around, and kissed her white forehead where the soft baby-gold hair parted, and then hurried away to his car, thankful for the mother’s look in his youngest girl’s face; wondering whether they had chased it forever away from the eldest girl’s face by sending her too young to college.
It was to the soft clatter of pots and pans somewhere in the near distance that Cornelia finally awakened with a sense of terrible depression and a belated idea that she ought to be doing something for the family comfort. She arose hastily, and dressed, with a growing distaste for the new day and what was before her. Even the view from the grimy little bedroom window was discouraging. It was a gray day, and one could see there were intentions of rain in the mussy clouds that hurled themselves across the distant roof-tops. The window looked out into the back yard, a small enclosure with a fence needing paint, and dishearteningly full of rusty tin cans and old, weather-stained newspapers and rubbish. Beyond the narrow dirty alley were rows of other similar back yards, with now and then a fluttering dishclothhanging on a string on a back porch, and plenty of heaped-up ash cans everywhere you looked. They were the back doors of houses of the poorer class, most of them two-story and old. Farther on there was an excellent view of a large and prosperous dump-heap in a wide, cavernous lot that looked as if it had suffered from earthquake sometime in the dim past and lost its bottom, so capacious it seemed as its precipitous sides sloped down, liberally coated with “dump.” Cornelia gave a slight shiver of horror, and turned from the window. To think of having to look at a view like that all summer. A vision of the cool, leafy camp where she had spent two weeks the summer before floated tantalizingly before her sad eyes as she slowly went downstairs.
It was a plaintive little voice that arrested her attention and her progress half-way down, a sweet, tired young voice that went to her heart, coming from the open kitchen door and carrying straight through the open dining-room and through the hall up to her:
“I guess she doesn’t realize how much we needed her,” it said sadly; “and I guess she’s pretty disappointed at the house and everything. It’s pretty much of a change from college, of course.”
Then a young, indignant high tenor growl:
“H’m! What does she think she is, anyway? Some queen? I guess the house has been good enough for us. How does she think we’ve stood being poor all these years just to keep her in college? I’d like to know. This house isn’t so much worse’n the last one we were in. It’sa peach beside some we might have had to take if these folks hadn’t been just moving out now. What does she want to do anyhow? Isn’t her family good enough for her, or what? If I ever have any children, I shan’t send ’em to college, I know that. It spoils ’em. And I don’t guess I’ll ever go myself. What’s her little old idea, anyway? Who crowned her?”
“Why, she wants to be an interior decorator,” said the little sister, slowly hanging up the dishcloth. “I guess it’s all right, and she’d make money and all; only we just couldn’t help her out till she got through her course.”
“Interior decorator!” scornfully said the boy. “I’d be satisfied if she’d decorate my interior a little. I’d like some of mother’s waffles, wouldn’t you? And some hash and johnny-cake. Gee! Well, I guess we better get a hustle on, or we’ll be called down for tardiness. You gotta wake her up before you go?”
“Father said not to; I’m just going to leave a note. It’s all written there on the dining-room table. You put some coal on the range, and I’ll get my hat and coat”; and the little sister moved quickly toward the hall.
Cornelia in sudden panic turned silently, and sped back to her room, closing the door and listening with wildly beating heart till her young brother and sister went out the door and closed it behind them. Then, obeying an impulse that she did not understand, she suddenly flung her door open, and flew to her father’s front bedroom window for a sight of them as they trudged off with piles of books under their arms, two valiant young comrades,just as she and Carey used to be in years so long ago and far away that she had almost forgotten them. And how they had stabbed her, her own brother and sister, talking about her as if she were a selfish alien, who had been living on their sacrifices for a long time! What could it possibly mean? Surely they were mistaken. Children always exaggerated things, and of course the few days or perhaps weeks since their father had lost his money had seemed a long time to them, poor little souls. Of course it had been hard for them to get along even a few days without mother, and in this awful house. But—how could they have talked that way? How terrible of them! There were tears in her eyes and a pain in her heart from the words, for, after all, in spite of her self-centred abstraction she did love them all; they were hers, and of course dearer than anything else on earth. Yes, even than interior decorating, and of course it was right that she should come home and make them comfortable, only—if only!
But the old unrest was swept back by the memory of those cutting words in the young high voices. She sank down in an old armchair that stood by the window, and let the tears have their way for a minute. Somehow she felt abused by the words of the children. They had misjudged her, and it wasn’t fair! It was bad enough to have to give up everything and come home, without being misjudged and called selfish.
But presently the tears had spent themselves, and she began to wipe her eyes and look around. Her father’sroom was as desolate as any other. There was no evidence of an attempt to put comfort into it. The upper part of the heavy walnut bureau, with its massive mirror that Cornelia remembered as a part of the furniture of her mother’s room since she was a baby, had not been screwed to the bureau, but was standing on the floor as if it had just moved in. The bureau-top was covered with dust, worn, mussed neckties, soiled collars, and a few old letters. Her father’s few garments were strewn about the room and the open closet door revealed some of her mother’s garments, old ones that Cornelia remembered she had had before she herself went to college.
On the unmade bed, close beside the pillow, as if it had been cherished for comfort, was one of mother’s old calico wrappers. It was lying where a cheek might conveniently rest against it. Somehow Cornelia didn’t think of that explanation of its presence there at first; but later it grew into her consciousness, and the pathetic side of it filled her with dismay. Was life like this always, or was this a special preparation for her benefit?
Somehow, as she sat there, her position as a selfish, unloving daughter became intolerable. Could it be possible that the children had spoken truly and that the family had been in straightened circumstances for a longer time than just a few weeks, on account of keeping her in college? The color burned in her cheeks, and her eyes grew heavy with shame. How shabby everything looked! She didn’t remember it that way. Her home had always seemeda comfortable one as she looked back upon it. Somehow she could not understand. But the one thought that burned into her soul was that they had somehow felt her lacking, ungrateful.
Suddenly she was stung into action. They should see that she was no selfish, idle member of the family group. At least, she could be as brave as they were. She would go to work and make a difference in things before they came home. She would show them!
She flew to the tumbled bed, and began to straighten the rumpled sheets and plump up the pillows. In a trice she had it smoothly made. But there was no white spread to put over it, and there were rolls of dust under the bed and in the corners. The floor had not even a rug to cover its bareness. Worn shoes and soiled socks trailed about here and there, and several old garments hung on bedposts, drifted from chairs, and even lay on the floor. Cornelia went hastily about, gathering them up, sorting out the laundry, setting the shoes in an even row in the closet, straightening the bureau, and stuffing things into the already overflowing drawers, promising them an early clearing out as soon as she had the rest of the work in hand. Poor father! of course he was not used to keeping things in order. How a woman was missed in a house! She hadn’t realized it before. The whole house looked as if the furniture had just been dumped in with no attempt to set things right, as her father had said. She must get the broom, and begin.
She hurried out into the hall, and a glimpse of thenarrow stairway winding above her drew her to investigate. And then a sudden thought. Carey. Where was Carey? Hadn’t he come home at all last night? She had no recollection of hearing him, and yet she might have fallen asleep earlier than she thought. She mounted the stairs, and stood aghast before the desolation there.
The little closet Louise had spoken of with its skylight, and its meagre cot of twisted bedclothes, its chair with a medley of Harry’s clothes, and its floor strewn with a varied collection, was dreary enough; but there was yet some semblance of attempt at order. The muddy shoes stood in a row; some garments were in piles, and some hung on nails as if there had been an attempt at good housekeeping by the young owner. There was even a colored picture of a baseball favorite, and a diagram of a famous game. One could feel that the young occupant had taken possession with some sense of ownership in the place. But the front room was like a desert of destruction whereon lay bleaching the bones of a former life as if swept there by a whirlwind.
The headboard and footboard of the iron bedstead stood against the wall together like a corpse cast aside and unburied. On the floor in the very middle of the room lay the springs, and upon it the worn and soiled mattress, hardly recognizable by that name now because of the marks of heavy, muddy shoes, as if it had been not only slept upon but walked over with shoes straight from the contact of the street in bad weather. Sheets there were none, and the pillow soiled and with a hole burnt inone corner of its ticking lay guiltless of a pillow-case, with a beaten, sodden impression of a head in its centre. There was a snarl of soiled blanket and torn patchwork quilt across the foot, tossed to one side; and all about this excuse for a bed was strewn the most heterogeneous mass of objects that Cornelia had ever seen collected. Clothes soiled and just from the laundry, all in one mass, neckties tangled among books and letters, cheap magazines and parts of automobiles, a silk hat and a white evening vest keeping company with a pair of greasy overalls and two big iron wrenches; and over everything cigarette-stumps.
The desolation was complete. The bureau had turned its back to the scene in despair, and was face to the wall, as it had been placed by the movers. It was then and not till then that Cornelia understood how recent had been the moving, and how utter the rout of the poor, patient mother, whose wonderful housekeeping had always been the boast of the neighborhood where they had lived, and whose fastidiousness had been almost an obsession.
Cornelia stood in the door, and gasped in horror as her eyes travelled from one corner of the room to another and back again, and her quick mind read the story of her brother’s life and one deep cause of her dear mother’s breakdown. She remembered her father’s words about Carey, and how he hoped she would be able to help him; and then her memory went back to the days when she and Carey had been inseparable. She saw the bright, eager face of her brother only two years younger thanherself, always merry, with a jest on his lips and a twinkle in his eyes, but a kind heart and a willingness always to serve. Had Carey in three short years fallen to this? Because there was no excuse for an able-bodied young man to live in a mess like this. No young man with a mite of self-respect would do it. And Carey knew better. Carey had been brought up to take care of himself and his things. Nobody could mend a bit of furniture, or fix the plumbing, or sweep a room, or even wash out a blanket for mother, better than Carey when he was only fifteen. And for Carey as she knew him to be willing to lie down for at least more than one night in a room like this and go off in the morning leaving it this way, was simply unthinkable. How Carey must have changed to have come to this! As her eyes roved about the room, she began to have an insight into what must be the trouble. Self-indulgence of a violent type must have got hold of him. Look at the hundreds of cigarette-stumps, ashes everywhere. The only saving thing was the touch of machinery in the otherwise hopeless mass; and that, too, meant only that he was crazy about automobiles, and likely fussed with them now and then to repair them so that he would have opportunity to ride as much as he liked. And Carey—where was Carey now?
She turned sadly away from the room, and shut the door. It was a work of time to think of getting that mess straightened out into any sort of order, and it made her heart-sick and hopeless. She must look farther and learn the whole story before she began to do anything.
She stumbled blindly downstairs, only half glancing into the messy bathroom where soap and toothbrushes got standing room indiscriminately where they could; took a quick look into the small enclosure that Louise had described as a “linen-closet,” probably on account of a row of dirty-looking shelves at one end of the apartment; looked hesitatingly toward the door of her own room, wondering whether to stop there long enough to make the bed and tidy up, but shook her head and went on downstairs. She must know the whole thing before she attempted to do anything.
The stairs ascended at the back of the hall, with a cloak-closet under them now stuffed with old coats and hats belonging to the whole family. Opposite this closet the dining-room door opened. All the space in front was devoted to the large front room known as the “parlor.” Cornelia flung the door open wide, and stepped in. The blinds were closed, letting in only a slant ray of light from a broken slat over the desolation of half-unpacked boxes and barrels that prevailed. Evidently the children had mauled everything over in search of certain articles they needed, and had not put back or put away anything. Pictures and dishes and clothing lay about miscellaneously in a confused heap, and a single step into the room was liable to do damage, for one might step into a china meat-platter under an eider-down quilt, or knock over a cut-glass pitcher in the dark. Cornelia stopped, and rescued several of her mother’s best dishes from a row about the first barrel by the door, transferring them to the hall-rack before she dared go in to look around.
The piano was still encased in burlap, standing with its keyboard to the wall, an emblem of the family’s desolation. As her eyes grew accustomed to the dim light, Cornelia gradually began to identify various familiar objects. There were the old sofa and upholstered chairs that used to be in the nursery when Louise and Harry were mere babies. The springs were sagging and the tapestry faded.
She searched in vain for the better suite of furniture that had been bought for the living room before she went to college. Where was it? It hadn’t been in the dining-room the night before, she was sure; and of course it couldn’t be in the kitchen. Could there be a shed at the back somewhere, with more things that were not as yet unpacked? With a growing fear she slipped behind some barrels, and tried to find the big bookcase with the glass doors, and the mahogany tables that mother had been so proud of because they had belonged to her great-grandmother, and the claw-legged desk with the cabinet on the top. Not one of them was to be found.
A horrible suspicion was dawning in her mind. She waited only to turn back the corners of several rolls of carpet and rugs, and make sure the Oriental rugs were missing, before she fled in a panic to the back of the house.
Through the bare little kitchen she passed without even noticing how hard the children had worked to clear it up. Perhaps she would not have called it cleared up, her standard being on an entirely different scale from theirs. Yes, there was a door at the farther side. Sheflung it open, and found the hoped-for shed, but no furniture. Its meagre space was choked with tubs and an old washing-machine, broken boxes and barrel-staves, a marble table-top broken in two, and a rusty wash-boiler. With a shiver of conviction she stood and stared at them, and then slammed the door shut, and, flinging herself into a kitchen chair, burst into tears.
She had not wept like that since she was a capable, controlled little girl; but the tears somehow cleared the cobwebs from her eyes and heart. She knew now that those beautiful things of her mother’s were gone, and her strong suspicions were that she was the cause of it all. Some one else was enjoying them so that the money they brought could be used to keep her in college! And she had been blaming her father for not having managed somehow to let her stay longer! All these months, or perhaps years for aught she knew, he had been straining and striving to keep her from knowing how hard he and her dear mother were saving and scrimping to make her happy and give her the education she wanted; and she selfish, unloving girl that she was, had been painting, drawing, studying, directing class plays, making fudge, playing hockey, reading delightful books, attending wonderful lectures and concerts, studying beautiful pictures, and all the time growing farther and farther away from the dear people who were giving their lives—yes, literally giving their lives, for they couldn’t have had much enjoyment in living at this rate—to make it all possible for her!
Oh! she saw it all clearly enough now, and she hated herself for it. She began to go back over last night and how she had met them. She visualized their faces as they stood at the gate eagerly awaiting her; and she, little college snob that she was, was ashamed to greet them eagerly because she was with a fine lady and her probably snobbish son. Her suddenly awakened instinct recalled the disappointed look on the tired father’s face and the sudden dulling of the merry twinkles of gladness in the children’s eyes. Oh! she could see it all now, and each new memory and conviction brought a stab of pain to her heart. Then, as if the old walls of the house took up the accusation against her, she began to hear over again the plaintive voices of Louise and Harry as they wiped the dishes and talked her over. It was all too plain that she had been weighed in the balances and found wanting. Something in the pitiful wistfulness of Harry’s voice as he had made that quick turn about interior decoration roused her at last to the present and her immediate duty. It was no use whatever to sit here and cry about it when such a mountain of work awaited her. The lady on the train had been right when she told her there would be plenty of chance for her talents. She had not dreamed of any such desolation as this, of course; but it was true that the opportunity, if one could look on it as an opportunity, was great, and she would see what she could do. At least things could be clean and tidy. And there should be waffles! That was a settled thing, waffles for the first meal. And she arose and looked about her with the spirit ofvictory in her eyes and in the firm, sweet line of her quivering lips.
What time was it, and what ought she to do first? She stepped to the dining-room door to consult the clock which she could hear ticking noisily from the mantel, and her eye caught her sister’s note written large across the corner of a paper bag.
“Dear Nellie, I had to go to school. I’ll get back as soon after four as I can. You can heet the fride potatoes, and there are some eggs.
Louie.”
Suddenly the tears blurred into her eyes at thought of the little disappointed sister yet taking care for her in her absence. Dear little Louie! How hard it must have been for her! And she remembered the sigh she had heard from the kitchen a little while ago. Well, she was thankful she had been awakened right away and not allowed to go on in her selfish indifference. She glanced at the clock. It was a quarter to nine. She had lost a lot of time mooning over her own troubles. She had but seven hours in which to work wonders before any one returned. She must go to work at once.