Partners (3 page)

"I don't know anything about that, but I think you're awfully presumptive to be so sure your parents were God's children, and got to
heaven
when they died! I don't suppose they were any better than the general run of folks, even if they were your parents. However, I wish you'd take your things and get out before you do any more damage in my house! Now I shan't have a bit of peace till this year is out! I'm glad it's so near Christmas. I shan't sleep a wink tonight thinking of that raised umbrella."

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bartlett. I'll be going at once. Could you please tell me where my trunk is?"

"It's out there at the back end of the hall," said the indignant woman. "But I don't see how you're going to carry that! It took a man to carry it in. And you needn't go off and think you can come back again in a little while to get it, for
I'm
going out and I don't know
when
I'm coming back. If my friend invites me to stay to dinner I may stay. I can't come running home just to wait on you! I've wasted half my day on you as it is, watching for you to come home."

"I'm sorry!" said Dale with gentle dignity. "Well, then, could I telephone for a taxi?"

"I s'pose you can!" said the woman grudgingly.

Dale turned to the telephone and called for a taxi at once, and then carefully laid a fifty-cent piece and a nickel on the telephone table.

"There's the money for the trunk, and for the phone call," she said quietly. "Thank you. Now, I'll put these things in the trunk!"

She took out her little bunch of keys and they jingled as she walked into the back hall, her arms full of garments.

She put them all carefully into her trunk, including the jacket and cap she had been wearing, and then came back and put on her coat and hat from Mrs. Bartlett's big chair. By that time the taxi driver was outside.

"Good-bye, Mrs. Bartlett," said Dale as she stepped to the door. "I'm sorry I've troubled you so much. Thank you for what you've done for me!" And then she summoned the taxi driver to get her trunk, and gathering up her bags she followed him out to the cab, thankful in her heart to be out and away from it all.

But as she climbed into the taxi it came to her that she had nowhere to go, and the driver would want to know where to take her. What was she going to do next?

"Where to, lady?" asked the taxi man as he swung himself into his seat and turned back to get his direction.

"Just a minute," said Dale, frantically searching through her handbag for a clipping she had taken from the paper that morning. There had been two or three likely advertisements. She would just have to go and try one or two of them. She gave the address of the first one that had attracted her and wondered what it would be like. She knew very little about the streets of this great city in which she had been living for nearly eight months. The Bakers hadn't given her time to go anywhere except back and forth from their house to the office. Every spare minute had been occupied. They had certainly got their money's worth out of Dale Hathaway.

But when she drew up at the address given and noted the fine old brownstone fronts, and the neat appearance of the whole street, her heart sank. This would be a lovely neighborhood in which to live, but it would be far beyond her purse. She had set her limit, and she must not go over it.

They tried several others, but found they had all been rented.

The last in the newspaper list was a sordid gloomy house in a dirty street, with hoards of children screaming on the doorsteps, and a drunken man leering at one corner.

"No!" said Dale. "No, I couldn't come here! It looks dreadful!"

She hadn't intended to speak aloud, not to call the attention of her driver to her troubles, but she had spoken and he could not help hearing.

"No, lady, this ain't no place for the likes of yous! What ya huntin', lady! Mebbe I cud he'p ya. Is it a house yer wantin'?"

"Oh, no, just a room in a plain rooming house where it would be quiet and respectable, and not cost too much. That first house was wonderful, but the price was way more than I could afford."

"Well, thur ain't sa many!" mused the driver. "But I might know of one. I took a party to the station from back here in the twenty-three hundreds. Her room might do. It might be too small for ye, though, but it was only up one flight. I went up ta get her trunk, an' I give it the once-over as I passed out. It ain't so fancy, but I shouldn't think it would come so high as some others. I cud take ya ta see it, though o'course it might be rented by now. It was 'leven o'clock this mornin' when she left it."

"Oh," said Dale, "that sounds good. I'd like to see it. Is it a respectable neighborhood? I wouldn't want to go anywhere where I would be afraid to come home at night."

"Course ya wouldn't, lady. An' I ain't takin' ya ta any such a place as that. Sure, it's respectable. There's a church next door, an' that usually makes a neighborhood a little tastier, ya know. Right down this way. It ain't sa fur! I'll show ya!"

He turned the taxi down a quiet street. Rows and rows of what used to be fine old houses, in a neighborhood that wasn't fashionable now. It wasn't far from the business section. That would be all the more desirable for Dale.

But her heart sank as she got out and went in. Likely it would be too much. Oh, if it only would be a place where she could afford to stay! If she could just have her things brought in and lock her door and lie down and sleep a little while, before she had to get up and go on hunting for a job. She was so tired and bewildered!

As she went up the steps the door opened and a young man came out and hurried down the street. She wondered if he was a roomer there. He had a nice, pleasant face, though preoccupied. He wasn't noticing her, and that made her feel more comfortable. She wouldn't like to be in a house where the people were unpleasantly friendly. However, in a rooming house one couldn't select all the fellow-lodgers. Also it might be this man was only a salesman, or just stopping at the door on business. But he looked sensible, and furnished a bit of background to build a faint hope upon. If this only turned out to be the right kind of place!

But the room, when she had climbed the steep stair, which was really the height of two flights, wasn't so grand as she had hoped. It was at the back of the house overlooking a dreary alley of ash barrels, with a view of a multiplicity of untidy back doors from the next street. However, what was a view? A curtain would shut it out. And she would mostly be asleep when she stayed in her room. A more serious difficulty developed when she discovered that there was no radiator. But there was an oil stove that the landlady declared "het up the room real well" and "didn't smoke." She suggested also that she wouldn't say anything if the young lady wanted to make coffee "of a morning" on it. As the price was within her means, that settled it. If she could get her own breakfasts it would save quite a little.

So she hurried down to her taxi driver and presently saw her steamer trunk traveling up on his stout shoulder.

When the taxi had rattled away down the street, Dale felt as if she had parted with her last friend. He had been such a cheerful, friendly soul, and he really had helped her out of a predicament. She looked down at the soiled card he had left in her hand as he grinned farewell saying:

"Anytime ya need me just call that number, an' I'll be comin' as fast as I can ta serve ya."

An investigating glance out the window showed that her cheap room was a recent addition built out over the back kitchen of an old house. Further inspection revealed no closet in the room, only a shelf with a calico curtain nailed around it, and some hooks driven into the wall upon which to hang her garments. The only light was a single electric bulb, bald and unshaded, hanging on a cord from the ceiling. Well, that didn't matter. She could easily manage a cheap little lamp shade.

There was no running water in the room, only a frail old-fashioned washstand with rods across the arms for towel racks. The landlady had pointed to the bathroom down the hall. There was a tin basin and water pitcher on the washstand. It was all more primitive than one would expect in a city house, but hence the cheapness, and she looked about the bleak place and tried to tell herself that she was fortunate to get it. There were two chairs, cane-seated, rather shackly, a cot bed, a small table known in former days as a "stand," and an old chest of drawers with a crazy mirror hanging over them. Dale looked into the mirror, shrugged her shoulders at the image of herself she saw there, laughed a weak little tired laugh and turned away. Well, at least she was placed somewhere in probable safety and comparative decency for the night. If she didn't like it by morning she would have a whole day to find some other place, even if she had to forfeit the small deposit she had made on the room.

Perhaps she had better go out and purchase a coffeepot before it got dark, and some coffee and bread, or something for her breakfast.

The entrance of a shiftless-looking maid carrying a coal-oil stove that reeked of kerosene gave her pause until the stove was placed and lighted and she was inducted into its mysteries; for she never had met a kerosene stove before.

She asked the woman a few questions about the neighborhood, where she could purchase a coffeepot and a few eatables, and discovered that the maid was not a maid at all, only a cleaning woman who came in by the day as needed.

When the woman, who said her name was Ida, had departed, Dale locked her door and went out in search of what she needed. She discovered a restaurant about a block and a half away, although it didn't look inviting.

She came back with her coffeepot, bread, butter, some cereal, a tin box of crackers, half a dozen oranges, and a bottle of milk. She felt that she would rather get her own breakfasts than to be always going out for them.

She examined the bedding on the cot, found it fairly clean, decided she would have to ask for more blankets if the weather grew any colder, drew out the little stand and sat down to write a letter and looked about her in the dim light with some satisfaction that she was out of the Baker house at last. Perhaps someday she would be glad to get out of this house, too, but tonight she was amazingly glad to have found it, and to be able after she had hung up a few of the things from her trunk, to get into her hard little bed and drop off to sleep, knowing that for this one time at least she needn't get up in the morning until she felt like it.

So at last she turned out the stranger-stove, which
did
smoke in spite of what the landlady had said, snapped off her light, and got into bed.

Yet tired as she was she found it wasn't so easy to fall asleep in this strange new room, in a hard shivery bed, with the odor of kerosene smoke lingering on the air. Even the sharp winter wind that came in from that back alley when the window was open did not clear the air.

It wasn't easy to forget the noises that were coming in continually from the street, voices, sometimes in strange languages, clamoring, occasional yells, drunken outcries, screaming babies, and neighborhood radios. What a world she had come to, and must stay in, until she could find a way to work herself into one that would be more pleasant!

Yet on that night when she had just drifted off into sleep she heard the front door open. Heard footsteps up the stairs, other doors down the hall opening and closing, a babble of voices high and shrill, and others thick, illucid. What kind of a home had she found for herself? But she must stay here until she had found a real job. She
must
, if she
possibly
could stand it.

Then there came the sound of a fire siren, and fire engines clattering down the street, a red light showing through the window at the foot of her bed. She recalled that the room was a wooden affair, but tried to comfort herself with the fact that it wasn't any higher than the second story, and so went off to sleep again.

It was late when she woke in the morning, woke with a sense that she was all wrong and would be reproved for being late. Then she came to herself and realized that there was nobody just at present who had a right to reprove her. She was free of the Bakers, free from the office, and out on her own. There might be others soon, she hoped there would be, who would have a right to find fault with her if she did not do their work on time, but just this morning there was no one, and her heart breathed a little thankful sigh.

All the noises were going on outside, the sounds from the other houses. All but the radios. They were silent for the time being. But there were footsteps, many, on the sidewalk. Loud conversations, dogs barking, hucksters calling. A noisy world! She would have to learn to detach her mind from all sound to hope for any rest in a place like this. Well, she would probably get used to it.

She got up and closed her window, lighted her wicked little stove and shivered through her morning dressing. By the time she was ready for her breakfast the worst of the chill was off the room, but there was the distinct smell of kerosene. Was that going to be the price of warmth? Perhaps if she stopped at a place where they sold such stoves she might find out the secret of how to take care of it. It wasn't an ideal heat, of course, but if there was a way to keep it from smoking, at least it was heat she could control and have when she needed it.

By the time she had finished her orange and cereal, and the cup of coffee she allowed herself, she felt a little more cheerful. She decided that as soon as she had cleared away her breakfast things and washed her dishes--a cup and saucer, plate and spoon from home that she treasured in her trunk--she would go out to walk. She wouldn't even pretend to hunt for a job, not till tomorrow. She wanted just one day free. Oh, of course if she saw a notice in a shop window,
Help Wanted
, she might go in and inquire about it.

But just as she was ready to put on her hat and coat and go out, the landlady tapped at the door and came in. She ensconced herself in the other chair and sat down to get acquainted with her new roomer. She introduced herself as Mrs. Beck, widow, and said she had run a rooming house for a good many years.