The Flower Brides (57 page)

D
iana went back to her hot third-story room in the city early Monday morning before the rest of the weekend party was awake.

She had had much fuss to prevent their taking her wherever she was going and had to resort to strategy to keep them from knowing her present place of residence. She was utterly aghast at the thought of Jerry or any of the others escorting her to her train, for she had told them she had an engagement for the day in another part of the city. So in the very early morning, quite before any of the servants were stirring in the great beautiful house, except perhaps a sleepy cook down in the kitchen, she arose, wrote a hasty note, slipped it under Edith’s door, and went silently down the velvet-shod stairs and out of the house without disturbing anyone.

The note said:

So Diana had slipped around the corner from the house and waited in the next street for the bus, while the morning dawned in rosy glory and most of the city was still sleeping.

Diana had gone through the Sabbath as in a pleasant dream, taking as little part as possible in the hilarity and fun that was the atmosphere of the gathering, smiling sweetly at everybody, but in reality not absorbed in what went on.

The young men had arrived again early in the day, and Jerry was as devoted as ever but failed to get the overwhelming interest from this girl that was actually accorded him everywhere. Diana was a nice, good comrade, but she seemed somehow remote. He couldn’t quite understand it. He looked for an engagement ring, but there was none. And perhaps her attitude only intrigued him the more, for he was most devoted all the day and evening and quite insisted that she let him come with his car in the morning and drive her home. She had succeeded in putting him off at last by saying her plans were not fully made yet, she wasn’t sure just what time she would be going, and so he said good night with a warning that he would be back early the next day to be ready for whatever plan she made.

So Diana escaped them all and went to the rooming house to change from her festive garments into the plainest black dress she owned.

She had ripped off the only pretense at decoration it had and cut the sleeves to the elbow, with just a plain hem, but even so she had a stylish look as she surveyed herself in the mirror before leaving for her day’s work. Even when she enveloped herself in the big white apron she had brought, she looked a thing apart from that restaurant. Not a ring on her finger, not even a string of beads around her neck nor a pin at her throat to fasten the plain white collar, yet there were “lines” unmistakable to the simple dress that showed it well cut and tailored. There was a trimness to her plain black pumps and a delicacy of face and figure that showed she was not the usual waitress in a cheap restaurant.

Even her watch had to be left in her room. It was a pretty toy, platinum set with diamonds around its face and in the delicate links of the bracelet. It would never do to pass ham and cabbage and baked beans with such a wristwatch. She would be suspected at once, as well as being a prey for thieves.

So she locked her watch into her bureau and went her way through the noisy waking streets, dreading what was before her yet not thinking about it as much as she had expected, for in her mind there lingered the memory of a voice, a strong face with wonderful eyes, and a prayer that seemed following her out into this new unknown world, which she was to enter today.

And then she prayed to herself before she left her room, a little, trembling prayer, shyly, as if the man who had once prayed for her were there before God with her and listening to what she said. Just a shy claiming of God’s guidance, an affirmation that she was trusting, and then, after a pause, an “I thank you!” She didn’t say for what, but in her heart it was that she had seen the one who had prayed that night and whose words had lingered all these days in her heart. It seemed to her that the earth did not reel quite as much under her untried way as it had on Saturday, nor was the way quite as dark and empty and long since she knew there was a man like that and he had prayed for her, even just once.

So she entered her new world and was suddenly faced with all its sordidness anew.

The other waitresses were coming in, yawning, heavy eyed, loud voiced, discontented. She heard them telling one another where they had been the night before and how late they had been up. She heard their half-finished confidences, their bitter laughter; their faces wore heavy makeup, their garments were cheap but gaudy; and most of them had dark circles of unhappiness and exhaustion under their eyes. Looking at them, it suddenly occurred to Diana that these were all a part of God’s world as much as she was, that He must love them, since He died for all, and the thought was startling. It made her look at them from a new standpoint, so that their commonness and coarseness and lack of culture did not stand out to her gaze as they otherwise would have done. They were dear to her God; she must not turn from them as her natural instincts would have had her do!

But those girls had no such common bond to bind them to her. They looked at her with hostile eyes. She was an intruder from another world. She had once been rich, they could see that from the very way she wore her clothes, from her walk, and from the delicacy of her lovely hands that showed no sign of having worked. They called all such girls snobs and hated them. They resolved to make it too hard for her so that she would have to leave and make room for one of their own kind. They began at once, drawing away from her and whispering with furtive eyes upon her, aloof and cold.

It had not occurred to her that she would have to have much to do with the other waitresses, but she found at the start that she was somewhat dependent upon them. She approached one girl, the least disagreeable-looking one of the lot, and asked where she should put her hat. And the girl shrugged her shoulders with a wink at the others and said, “Ask the boss! I ain’t got time to show ya.” Diana stepped back bewildered, feeling as if she had been slapped in the face.

Later she discovered that her very voice was an offense to these girls who had very little education. Most of them had left school to go to work even before the law allowed.

She approached the boss for information and found a beetling brow and an ugly jaw. He scarcely glanced at her.

“Ask one o’ the girls,” he growled. “I ain’t got time! Here you, Lily, you show this new number the cloak room. Mame, what’cha standin’ round for? Don’tcha see that customer over ta the corner? Get a hustle on ya. There’s plenty other girls if ya don’t find it convenient ta work today!”

The girl gave a frightened glance and started toward the table over in the corner where the waiting customer sat, and Diana learned a startling lesson. She stood a second waiting uncertainly for the Lily girl to show her the cloak room, but Lily had hunched her shoulders and vanished into the kitchen.

Diana shrank from asking any of the others who so obviously considered her an intruder. Then she saw another girl hurrying in out of breath, taking her hat off as she came. She resolved to follow her and ask no questions.

“Hey you, Ruby! This is a pretty time a day ta be comin’ ta work!” roared the manager.

“Oh, is it late?” panted the girl, turning and almost colliding with Diana. “I—you see—my grandmother was sick!”

“Yeah? Yer grandmother again! Ain’t it so? Ya can’t put that over on me! Don’t let it happen again!” he snapped. “Get a hustle on! Make it snappy!”

Diana shrank into the shadows of the back of the room and disappeared after Ruby. Perhaps Ruby would be kinder than the rest. She might ask her what to do.

But Ruby had slung her hat on a hook and dashed out again tying on her apron, and Diana perceived that she had better do the same. As she went out she reflected that she couldn’t have that terrible man roaring her name out everywhere. What should she do? Take another name? Her middle name was Dart. She had registered as Miss Dart. But apparently that man would never call her Miss Dart. Well, let him call her Jane.

Her decision was none too soon, for he met her at the door of the cloak room with a card and pencil.

“Write yer name an’ address,” he commanded, “an’ be quick about it! Then take a tray an’ get ta work! There’s a customer comin’ in now. The menu’s on the wall, but some of ’em can’t read. Ya’ll have ta memorize it as ya go. Getta hustle on! And don’t bother me with questions. Use yer head!” He glanced at the card and added, “Jane!”

Diana gave him one quick, startled look, caught up a tray from the frame beside her, and went over to the table in the corner.

The man sitting there was rough and uncouth. He had a deep, stubby growth of hair on his face, and his eyes were bleared and fierce-looking. She glanced away toward the menu on the wall as she approached him and then turned beside the table to see his hateful eyes fixed upon her. She controlled a little shiver of horror and forced herself to look at him steadily and impersonally, and suddenly that same question came to her again. Did God love this man, too? Did He die for him? What a strange world she had come into! She had never questioned that before about anyone. The people she had known had been on the same social level with herself, and her contacts had been carefully guarded. She had never thought about people like this, and here she was serving them! But why should she resent them? The Son of God died for them!

But his first words and his offensive glance made her shudder again.

“You a new un, ain’t ye?’” he said, and his voice was offensive also.

She gave him a frightened glance.

“I beg your pardon,” she said with the least little bit of haughtiness in her voice.

“Whatcha beggin’ my pardon for?” His eyes narrowed and seemed to be boring into her soul like gimlets. She gave a swift glance toward the manager and saw him watching her with an amused grin on his ugly, thick face, and instantly she rallied. Here was her testing. She must not fail.

“Will you have ham and eggs, sausages, or liver?” she asked in a voice that sounded even to herself as if it came from very far away.

“H’m! Snooty, are ye?” said the man contemptuously. “Well, make it hot cakes an’ sausage with plenty o’ syrup and a pot o’ coffee, an’
scram
, for I’m in a hurry!”

Diana didn’t know what
scram
meant, but she fairly flew, lifting her tray above the mulling crowd of customers that was beginning to pour into the miserable little eating place now in numbers too many for the accommodations, lifting her highborn chin a bit haughtily. She was here to serve, and if she lost her job, she would have to get another, perhaps worse than this. If God had died for all these dreadful people and loved her, too, He could surely protect her. And, of course, mere words or looks could not really hurt her. She had read something in her Bible the other day about being kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation. She hadn’t known what it meant at the time, but now a dim vision of what it might mean came to her. She couldn’t see any keeping hand nor any guiding hand. It all had to be done by faith, faith that God loved her, had sent His beloved Son to die for her, and had thought her soul worth saving. It was therefore inconceivable, since all that was true, that He would let her be lost in any way, since He was all-powerful, all-seeing, and
cared
!

While she was waiting for the hot cakes and preparing the tray as she saw the other girls do, she was thinking these things, and a memory of the man last night standing in the bright doorway of the little stone cottage by the home gate came to her. It lifted her out of her fright and gave her a kind of peace to think that a man like that had been praying for her. She liked to think that perhaps he was doing it now.

Inside the breast of her plain black dress she had pinned a single carnation, as a kind of talisman. Its breath stole up faintly like the far fragrance of another world and comforted her.

The manager was watching her. When she brought her tray back so swiftly, he seemed surprised. She was not clumsy as some of those other girls had been at the start. Her fingers were deft and worked quickly. As soon as she had learned where the knives and forks and spoons were kept and where to fill the glasses with water, her tray was arranged by the time the food was ready, and she carried it without slopping the coffee, too, not that the manager cared so much about that, however.

Before the day was over, the manager had learned that even though she was “classy” she seemed to have a better mind for her work than some of the others. Moreover, she didn’t dally, and there wasn’t a lazy hair on her attractive brown head. The manager decided he liked her, and he saw to it that she had a chair at a table when she ate her swift meals. The other girls noticed this and hated her for it. The manager knew that she was worth more than some of the others when she got in training, and he called her for some of his best customers, “Jane! Take that number, Jane!” and the other girls would pause and cast malevolent glances. He was giving her some of the people who gave the biggest tips, and they hated her more. They talked about it as they passed one another or when they lingered at the counter waiting for their orders.

“Next he’ll be takin’ her out to a movie,” they whispered, “an’ what’ll Gwendolyn think o’ that?”

But Diana went on her swift way not noticing either them or him, intent only on doing her work and not getting fired, though she was weary and footsore, with aching arms unused to lifting heavy trays and a tired back that rebelled at the unusual strain put upon it. At lunch she ate a small portion of the unattractive greasy food that was given to her, but when dinnertime came she was too tired to swallow but a few mouthfuls. The long, hurried hours were telling on her. Would the day never be done? And there would be other days, succeeding one another, day after day, working like this for her existence. And there was no end ahead. It would go on and on and on, unless God did something about it, for she had no home anymore, only that room that she must keep or be put out on the street!