The Flower Brides (50 page)

So at last he submitted to the inevitable and retired to a sleepless night, trying to persuade himself that the morrow would bring good news from the penitent. Then they could really begin to live! Then he would gently try to lead Diana and Helen to understand one another!

So the weary hours crept by but no sleep came. In the morning he looked drawn and haggard, and Helen, rousing from a late beauty sleep to take the tray he brought to her again, surveyed him with veiled vexation.

“You have no business to take things this way,” she said sharply. “It makes you look old, and you can’t afford that. You married me, and now it’s up to you to keep young. And this toast is horribly burned! It isn’t fit to eat! We’ve got to have some servants today or go to a hotel. I won’t stand for this sort of thing!”

He winced as she said that about his looking old, and a gray look passed over his face as he turned away with a sigh and went out of the room.

D
iana was really too exhausted to lie awake long that night, and she fell asleep almost as soon as she lay down in her berth. But when she awoke, quite early in the morning, her first thought was of the words she had read from the little tract the stranger girl had given her in the station. It had seemed somehow to be something strong to lean upon. She hadn’t grasped it yet, nor taken it for her own, but she wondered if it could be true, and her heart reached out in longing for something outside herself that would bear her up. For just now she felt as if she were going to crumple up and die just anywhere, as if she were utterly unable to think or decide any matter.

But next her whole pitiful situation flashed over her, and she realized that now in a few brief minutes she had to do something about a place to stay.

She glanced at her watch and found it had stopped in the night. She had forgotten to wind it, of course. She pulled aside the curtain and looked out. It was broad daylight, and she thought she recognized the landscape. Yes, there was the name of a town she had often heard that could not be more than an hour or so from her home city. She must hurry and get herself ready! And she must decide where she was going when she got there.

The little paper caught her eye as she was closing her suitcase. It had slipped down under the sheet. She picked it up carefully, put it into her purse, and stole a glimpse at her flowers in their soft wrappings. They still seemed to be alive. She must get them into water as soon as possible. She did not want to lose them. They were hardy little things. Only one of them was getting a bit brown around its fringes. They were all she had left of home now, dear mysterious flowers! Then she remembered the girl and her message. Mysterious flowers and mysterious messenger. Could they be connected in some way? Was God sending them both into her life? She gave the flowers a pitiful little smile and a touch like a caress, then closed her suitcase, put on her hat, and got ready to get out.

They were coming into the city now. The rows of cheap little houses, brick and wood and stucco, reminded her of the city where she had searched for a room yesterday. She shuddered as she drew a deep, courageous breath and tried to think what she must do first. She did not seem to be any nearer a decision than last night, but she must do something. She would probably have to go to the woman’s hotel for a day or two, anyway.

When she got out of the train and walked through the station she looked around half frightened, almost expecting to see her father and Helen standing there waiting for her. Then she remembered they did not know where she was and took courage, glad though to take refuge in the taxi. But when she arrived at the hotel her heart failed her again, for she found that even the very cheapest room in the place was far beyond what she ought to spend in her present state of finances. She was fairly frightened to realize just how much she had spent of her small hoard in just the two or three days since she had cut herself loose from home. But she must get somewhere and rest a little and freshen up before she started on another hunt.

After breakfast and a bath, arrayed in fresh garments, she felt better and started out on foot in search of a room. If she could only find a decent room where she could use her own furniture, it would be so much more comfortable.

But a couple of hours’ hunt revealed the same state of things that had been obtained in the other city she had searched. Rooms were either too expensive or in too sordid a neighborhood to seem at all possible.

As she went along the weary way from house to house she began to realize that either she must find some way to increase her income, or else she must give up her ideas of what was barely decent in the way of a residence.

Right off the start she registered a vow that she would not ask her father for money. He had made it impossible for her to stay at home and he didn’t seem to see it; therefore, she would maintain herself somehow without his aid.

The matter of money had never bulked very largely in Diana’s life. She knew that her mother had left her something, how much she had never bothered to inquire, or if she had ever been told, to remember. She had her allowance, which had been ample for her needs, and when she wanted anything extra, it had always been forthcoming. She knew that for a time their fortunes had been somewhat straitened, and she had not asked often for money. She seemed to have everything she wanted. But now, faced with the problem of providing shelter and food, her allowance suddenly shrank in proportion to her needs.

Many another girl with her income would have counted herself well off and made the allowance cover an amazing lot of needs, but Diana had no experience in such things and was moreover bound by the traditions of her family as to what was necessary. However, she had a lot of courage and character, and she faced the problems before her like a thoroughbred.

She spent the afternoon canvassing dreary boardinghouses and trying to conceive of herself as being one of their regular guests, but she turned from each one with a loathing that she had hard work to conceal from their hard-faced, weary keepers.

There were other boarding places, of course. She tried a few attractive ones but found them altogether beyond her price.

That night she came home with the evening papers and all day Sunday pored over the Want advertisements and columns of cheap apartments and rooms.

Three days she thus pursued her weary hunt, growing more desperate each day, until she finally located a large bare room on the third-story back of a shabby row of old brick houses in a crowded street of the old and unfashionable portion of the city. It wasn’t just unfashionable; it was so far away from ever having been recognized by fashion as not to be within the awareness of those who lived on the substantial, comfortable streets now far away. It was a street where a week ago Diana would have picked her way, looking questioningly at the rows of ash cans and milk bottles, and hurried out into another block to draw a free breath again. But Diana’s standards had come down a good many notches during that three-day hunt. She no longer was looking for pleasantness in surroundings or for attractiveness in a landlady or for culture in a neighborhood. The sole requirement she was determined upon now was cleanliness, and even that didn’t extend to the street anymore. She wasn’t sure as she entered that last door whether she would even require cleanliness in the halls or stairs, if she could just have a spot that she had a right to scrub clean herself, where she might lie down and cry her heart out and then sleep until this awful ache of weariness had left her breast and she could go out and try for a job. For now there was no more question, she must have a job or she could not live long even in this room.

Each night when she came back to the hotel there had been the slowly fading carnations, and in her purse the little tract, which she had read over more than once and pondered as she was dropping off to sleep. But though the hotel room contained the Bible she had wished for, she had been too tired and depressed to look up the references, and more and more the impression of the little tract had grown dim and left her with that lonely feeling again. Sometime when she was settled she would look into it, but she was too tired to think about it anymore now. So she slept through the nights and toiled through the days, looking alternately for rooms and jobs. She had learned to unite the two in certain neighborhoods and found each equally hopeless as to results, until she finally took that large bare room on the third-story back overlooking an alley and a row of kitchens belonging to an even shabbier row of houses on the next street. When she took the room she cast a thankful glance out the window at its dreary mate behind, whose open window sheltered a woman in dirty negligee who looked as if her every hope was gone. Diana was actually thankful that she hadn’t fallen quite as low as that next row of houses and had them only to look at.

The room was not heated and had only one poor electric bulb hung from a long wire in the middle, but it was still summer and she would not need heat at present, and she would just have to manage about the light.

They told her she might have possession at once, and she called up her storage company, who promised to deliver her furniture early the next morning and refund half of the storage for the month.

The room didn’t look very clean even to Diana’s inexperienced eyes, and she hated to have her pretty things come into a dirty room, so she went to the corner grocery nearby, bought a bucket, a broom, a mop, a cake of soap, and a couple of dishcloths to clean it with. The woman who waited on her suggested a scrubbing brush so she bought that.

Tired as she was it was, no easy task, even if she had ever done it before, which she hadn’t, to scrub that rough, dirty floor. She had to bring up the water from the floor below, and there wasn’t any hot water, nor any way to heat it. In her inexperience she sloshed on the soap and water and then had a terrible time wiping it up, and as for wringing that unwieldy mop, it seemed impossible. But by the time it grew dark, she had the walls wiped down, the floor mopped up in a sort of way, the baseboards wiped off, and also the windowsills. The windows would have to wait until another time. She was too tired to drag another step. With a despairing look around in the dusk, she locked her door, toiled downstairs, and could scarcely get back to her hotel.

That night she dreamed of the girl in the station with the happy eyes who had given her the tract and awoke wondering if she were real or if that experience, too, had been a dream. She had to go to her handbag and take out the tract to straighten it all out in her mind. She was so tired she could not think and so downhearted that nothing seemed worthwhile. Was there really Someone somewhere who cared? She wished she could see that girl again and talk with her a little while.

When she got to her new abode, by morning light the room looked cleaner than she had feared. At least it had lost that musty smell. The floor had dried in streaks and the ugly wall paper showed up all its defects, and they were many. She stood in the middle of the room and looked around her and tried to imagine that this was her home now, for as long as she had money to maintain it.

She went to the window and looked out on the backyards and alley. There were two cats—a gray one with a dirty white star on its forehead and a black one with a torn ear and an ugly sneer on its weird, scrawny face—sitting tucked upon the back fence at respectable distances making faces at one another and occasionally uttering guttural threats. There was a dirty old man with a burlap bag slung over one shoulder and a long iron rod in his hand, poking around among the ash cans. Someone flung a bit of garbage over the fence, and the two cats were down in a second and after it; but a sharp little nondescript dog went like a streak from some invisible place and got there first, growling his right to the tidbit. A mere baby with tousled hair was toddling down the alley with nothing on but a diminutive shirt and mud streaks over the whiteness of its undernourished body. It was scrawnier than the cats. Two women were arguing angrily over their side fence, and an old man with crutches beside him was sitting dolefully on one pair of back steps. It was not a pleasant prospect. Even so early in the morning there were flies around, swarming over a garbage can and buzzing up in a whirl now and then as if in disagreement. Diana turned from it disconsolately with a sudden memory of the broad sweep of lawn in front of her father’s home and the deep cool setting of woodland behind the house. How had her fortunes changed in these few brief hours! A few days ago she was mistress in that beautiful home that had been her mother’s wedding gift from the grandfather, and now here was her fortune laid, with alley cats and garbage cans and brawling neighbors. She turned from the window with a sudden new sinking of heart and felt as if she could not stand up another minute in that bare room.

Finally she spread out the morning paper that she had brought with her and sat down on the floor, overwhelmed with the stinging tears that rushed into her eyes. Oh, would that moving van never come?

It was half past ten before it arrived, and Diana still sat there waiting when the landlady knocked at the door to announce it. She had taken out the poor little flowers from her bag and sat with them coolly against her burning eyelids, trying to imagine herself back home among the shadows on the grass picking them up one by one, and remembering how she had walked with Bobby there that night and had seen one flower and how that stranger’s voice had interfered when Bobby grew offensive. She was wondering about that voice for the thousandth time and had almost lost her sense of her sordid surroundings.

But she sprang up quickly to unlock her door and saw with relief two men standing there, each with a chair in his arms.

They put the chairs down and hurried back downstairs, and Diana thanked the grim landlady and tried not to see the contemptuous glances of envy that she cast at the rich covering of the upholstery. After she had gone downstairs, Diana stood back and looked at her beloved chairs almost apologetically. If they could feel, what would they think of her for putting them into such surroundings? She felt like asking their pardon. And one was her mother’s big wing chair. She could see her sitting in it now, and she put her hands softly over the covering like a caress. She was still holding the precious flowers in her hand, and she put her face down on her arms over the back of the chair and gave a little heartsick moan. It seemed as if already she had been away from her home for weeks, and the sight of the dear, familiar objects filled her with exquisite joy, almost as if they had been alive.