Ladybird (35 page)

The couch was occupied by a tired-looking woman with a baby in her arms, but there was a vacant rocking chair, and Fraley sank into it gratefully. She was not at all sure she would be allowed to stay here long, but at least she would rest until someone told her to move on.

By this time the gnawing hunger had ceased to trouble her. She was only utterly weary. She let her head rest back and closed her eyes, too tired even to think of her recent horrible experiences.

The next thing she knew, someone touched her on the shoulder, and she opened her eyes and started up. It seemed a long time since she had sat down, and she knew by the feeling of her eyes that she must have been asleep. She looked around, half bewildered. Perhaps they were going to arrest her for having dared to go to sleep here.

But it was only the woman who had been lying on the couch. She was smiling at her.

“I just thought maybe you’d like to take the couch,” she said in a kindly tone. “You look awfully tired, and I’m leavin’ in a few minutes. I take the midnight train, and if you get on here before I leave, nobody else will get ahead of you.”

“Oh,” said Fraley, relieved. “That’s very kind of you. Would I be allowed to lie there the rest of the night?”

“Sure, I think you would, unless somebody was to come in real sick. Anyhow, you can stay till someone puts you off.”

So Fraley curled herself gratefully on the hard leather couch, watched her benefactor trudge off with her sleeping baby, and then dropped promptly off to sleep herself, too dazed to worry over her present situation, too drugged with trouble and weariness to even remember much about it.

She had two good hours of sleep on the couch before the caretaker roused her to give the couch to a woman more in need. But afterward, dozing in another rocker, she began to come to her senses again.

Then it came to her that life in a big city with no friends was not going to be much better than life in a desert hiding from enemies. There seemed to be enemies on every hand everywhere.

As morning dawned grayly and the time drew nearer when she would have to leave this brief haven and go out to find a new place in the world, she thought of the advice her friend of the desert had given her. The travelers’ aid! She would go to the travelers’ aid and ask advice!

She dozed in her chair until morning was fully come and the rush of the workday world began to breeze through the waiting room. Then she tidied herself, picked up her little package, and went to the restaurant.

A cup of coffee and some toast seemed to be about the cheapest thing she could get to eat, and after it was swallowed, she felt courage rising within her.

During her morning mediations, it had occurred to her that there was still an unknown grandfather who might be applied to perhaps, for advice. But her proud young spirit shrank from going to her relatives a pauper. Not for worlds would she reveal her present condition to the family who had turned against her father for marrying her precious, saintly mother, even if she could find them. She had set her feet to walk a thorny path and did not falter.

The travelers’ aid asked several questions—where she had come from and where she was going. Fraley was not fond of giving information about herself, but she managed to evade the main issue very cleverly.

“I’m from the West, and my parents are dead,” she stated quietly. This in answer to a query why she had come to the city. “Yes, I had work, but the lady wanted me to do something that I did not think was right, and I had to leave her. No, I would not feel like asking for a reference. I would rather find something for myself. Yes, I have some relatives in the city but they are not in a position that is, I do not wish to ask help from them. I have very little money, and I want to get a decent room where I will not be afraid, and something to do. I was told you could direct me.”

There was a grave, sweet dignity about the child that stopped further questions, and the travelers’ aid with secret admiration began to look over her list of rooms.

“There are rooms, of course, as low as twenty-five cents a night, but they are not very nice. They are clean, but they are small and dark and up several flights of stairs.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Fraley with relief. “I can climb stairs. I’ll take one, if you please.”

“They are not in a very pleasant neighborhood, and there is very little furniture—only a cot and a table, perhaps a chair,” said the woman, eyeing the rich material of Fraley’s imported dress, trim shoes, and chic hat.

“Do you mean there would be bad men in the neighborhood?” asked Fraley, a frightened look coming in her eyes.

“Oh no!” said the woman kindly. “We only recommend rooms in a respectable neighborhood, of course. I mean the houses are not very attractive, and the rooms are quite bare.”

“I don’t mind that!” said Fraley with a relieved sigh. “Now, do you know how I should go about getting a job? I’m willing to do anything.”

“But you know you can’t get a really good job without a reference, my dear.”

The fright came back to the girl’s eyes.

“Not
anything?”
she asked pathetically.

“Well, not anything that pays very well. There are a few places, of course, that are not so very particular. I’ll give you a list and you can try.”

Armed with the list and promising to come back if she got into difficulties, Fraley went on her way, full of good advice and directions.

The first three places on the list were filled, but the fourth turned out to be still vacant. Fraley shrank from the eyes of the proprietor, who looked her over as if she were a piece of merchandise and finally hired her at an exceedingly small wage, so small that she knew that she must take the very cheapest room that was to be had in the city and then scrimp at every turn. Even then she must eke out her needs with the few dollars left from her store brought from the West.

Her duties began that afternoon. She was to pull bastings from coarse finished garments that a dozen other women in the grimy room were making, on a dozen noisy sewing machines.

The room she finally took after a long search was on the fourth floor, overlooking chimney roofs and chimney pots through its tiny, grimy window. It contained a gaunt cot, scantily furnished, and absolutely nothing else. There were lavatory privileges on the floor below, all very dismal and utterly repelling. But the sad, sharp-faced, sick-looking proprietress looked decent, at least, and Fraley took the room because it was cheap.

In a cheap little shop not far away, she purchased a dark cotton dress for a dollar; paid ten cents at a grocery for an empty orange box; purchased a box of crackers, some cheese, and a bottle of milk; and set up housekeeping. The orange box she set on end for a combined table and pantry, put her Bible on the top and her supplies on the shelf below. Then she changed into the cotton dress, ate a hasty lunch, and hurried off to her work.

The atmosphere of the first workroom was almost unbearable, both morally and physically. The air was bad, reeking of the unwashed; the language that her fellow workwomen used was worse, and their hostile manner reminded her of the women who had sent her into the dance hall the night before. Moreover, the proprietor was half drunk most of the time and so cross that one could never please him, though Fraley tried with all her might. Her fingers were cut with the threads and sore from contact with the rough fabric, and her spirit was sore with the alien atmosphere around her.

When, at the end of a week, the proprietor refused to pay her but half the scanty wage promised her because he said that was all she was worth to him while she had been learning her job, she turned aghast and walked out of the shop.

Her next employment was in a small forlorn shop where derelict furniture found harbor and changed hands occasionally. The wages were a few cents more than in the tailor shop, but the proprietor required her to lie about the furniture, producing all sorts of fairy tales concerning articles on display, stories about former owners of renown, and finally dismissing her without pay because she had refused to lie about a chair with a broken leg when a customer asked if it hadn’t been mended.

She grew thin and sorrowful as one experience of this sort after another met her. Her rounded cheeks lost their curves and rose tints, her eyes wore no more glints of happiness. Yet it never once entered her mind to go back to Violet Wentworth and give in to her conditions.

At last Fraley got a position as a waitress in a restaurant. It was not a high-class restaurant. In fact, Fraley did not know how very low-class it was. A girl who roomed in the same house with her had told her of it. Her predecessor had died the night before of pneumonia, and the restaurant needed someone at once. The wages were better than any she had had so far, and though the hours were long and the duties heavy, she started in happily.

Just one small pleasure she permitted herself. She did answer Jimmie MacPherson’s letter, and his breezy reply gave her much comfort.

But a new trouble rose on the horizon when the proprietor began to grow fond of her and insisted on making love to her.

She avoided him as much as possible, at first, and went on her way, keeping to herself, doing her hard work well and quickly, moving among her sordid surroundings like a young queen, and breaking her heart at night when she crept to her cot, too weary to even grieve long over the situation. Like her mother before, she seemed to be caught on the wheel of circumstance and to be condemned to go on because there was no way of getting off.

But a crisis arose late in November when Max, the dark-browned Russian proprietor, asked her to go to a movie with him that night.

It was during the six o’clock supper rush that it occurred. The head waiter told her to go up to the desk, that Max wanted to see her.

With fear and trembling she obeyed, thinking perhaps she was to be dismissed, for she had broken some dishes that morning when the cook ran against her full tray. Also, she knew that he had been cross at her ever since she had refused to go to a dance with him the week before. But she had tried to be smiling and pleasant about it and not anger him. She had told him that time that she did not feel well and wanted to get straight home to bed. Now she watched him anxiously as she threaded her way among the tables toward the desk. It was not that she dreaded leaving, for the work was terrible and the hours almost unbearable, but even such work was better than none at all, and the cold weather was at hand. She needed a warm coat. She had nothing but a thin sweater for a wrap that she had bought at a secondhand store for fifty cents and carefully washed and mended.

So when Max spoke in his most winning tones and asked her how she was feeling that night, she gave him a relieved smile. She did not see a dark fellow with lowering eyes across the room at a table in her own territory, who watched her narrowly with an evil gaze.

“Well, how about a picture tonight?” smiled Max, wetting his voluptuous red lips and watching the pretty color drain out of the smooth cheeks. “You and me has gotta get tagether, birdie. I let you off tonight at seven, see? You can get dolled up and I meet you here at ten ta eight. See?”

Fraley’s face was white now, and her eyes troubled and earnest.

“Oh, Mr. Kirschmann, I couldn’t. I really couldn’t. I have some work I have to do this evening, and I really can’t do my work here well if I stay up late nights…”

But she could see that her excuses were not getting her anywhere, and she drew back in dismayed protest.

“I ain’t takin’ no excuses. See?” went on Max, and reaching out his great grimy paw, he caught both her hands and held them like a vise. “What I say goes. If you’ve gotta date with some other guy, break it. See? You’re goin’ out with me tonight an’ that’s straight. We’re mebbe takin’ dinner in a cabaret afterwards, too, so put on yer best rags an’ do me proud.”

“But…” said Fraley, wide eyed and struggling to get free, aware of the hostile glances of her fellow laborers.

“Ain’t no buts,” said Max gruffly. “You gotta date ’ith me tonight. Ef you’re too high hat ta go with Max, you c’n leave the job
tonight!
See? But ef you do the right thing by me I’ll see you sit pretty, my cherry! Now, run back ta yer table. There’s a bird ben waitin’ there five minutes an’ he looks mad enough ta shoot. Run!”

Fraley ran, a great fear growing in her soul. Trouble was looming ahead of her. She could see that plainly. She must either go with this wild Russian fellow or she must give up her job. There was no use trying to get out of it. She could see that he was quite determined. She had seen enough men of this type to know and fear.

She was so concerned with her own thoughts that she scarcely noticed where she was going and, arriving at her table, handed a grubby-looking menu card to her customer without noticing him.

But when he spoke—“Get me a beef stew, and make it snappy!”—her eyes came around to look into his with horror, and he looked up and met her gaze with a dark insolence that searched her to the soul. It was Pierce Boyden himself sitting before her at the table!

For an instant it seemed to Fraley that she hung suspended between life and death. This surely was the end! He had searched her out, forlorn and helpless! There was no one in the world to whom she could turn for protection unless she chose to appeal to her employer and accept his repulsive attentions. Perhaps he might be strong enough to outwit even Pierce Boyden, though she doubted it.

All this flew through her consciousness while she stood for that instant wondering if she were about to fall, and then to her surprise, she turned and walked away from the table with the menu card in her hand, back to the kitchen. She was perfectly conscious, every step she took, that Pierce Boyden’s eyes were upon her as she walked, and yet she was able to go steadily as if nothing unusual had happened. She felt that some power beyond herself was enabling her to do this, for in herself she had only awful weakness.

Back in the kitchen out of sight for the moment, she seized the arm of a waitress just returning with a tray laden with dirty dishes.

“Anna, take my customer! I don’t feel well. He wants a beef stew in a hurry. You may have my tip.”