Frankie was quite desperate with grief and anxiety. She rushed into the old lady’s room, bare-footed, in her nightdress, and denounced her in a storm of sobs.
“How could you!” she cried. “How could you! How did you and Minnie dare to arrange my life for me that way?... You didn’t know.... You couldn’t know—what plans I had.... How could you! You don’t know what you’ve done!”
The old lady said that no great harm had been done.
“It has! It has!” Frankie cried. “You don’t know! You’ve spoiled everything!”
This the old lady didn’t believe; she asked for an explanation, and Frances would give none.
“But Grandma!” she implored, “Grandma, trust me! Believe me when I say I’ve got to go back! It’s terribly important. It means my whole life. Oh, Grandma, please, please write to Minnie and make her come home!”
“My dear child, I can’t. She wouldn’t come. And I must say I think she’s entitled to a little Don’t you think you’re rather selfish, Frances?”
“Oh, stop!” Frances interrupted, rudely. “You don’t understand. It’s something ... I have to see about, something important.”
“What can it be?”
The old lady was indulgent; she fancied she scented a sentimental interest.
“I can’t tell you—just now, anyway.”
Frances dried her eyes and looked at her grandmother with a new look, hard and clear.
“You’ll have to make out alone for a few hours,” she said, “I’ve got to go in on that four-eight train. I’ll be back some time to-night.”
She went into her room and, closing the door, flung herself down on the creaking bed, not to cry, but to think, to plan for him. All morning the breakfast dishes were unwashed, the beds unmade, nothing touched in the house. It was noon when a curious sound startled Frankie. She fancied she heard a step in the passage.
She flung open the door, to see a poor, trembling little figure come out of her grandmother’s room.
“Grandma!” she shrieked, and flew to catch her and half carry her back to her bed, reproaching her bitterly, tenderly, while she got her clothes off. She noticed with intolerable remorse how clumsily the things were put on and the scanty hair twisted up.
“Grandma,” she cried. “You know you shouldn’t! Suppose you had slipped! It was dreadful of you!”
She saw to her horror that there were tears in the poor thing’s eyes and her feeble voice quavered.
“Frances,” she said, “I couldn’t stand it. Both of you going off ... neither of you wanting to stay with me.... I felt I didn’t care what happened to me.... And” she broke into a weak little sob as she came to her last and worst grief, “one o’clock and the house not touched! I just couldn’t lie abed any longer!”
“No, Granny dear, I know! I’ll do everything right away. Only lie down and rest, won’t you? I’ll do everything before I go.”
The old lady patted her hand.
“Won’t you ask Sally Washington to sit in the kitchen while you’re gone?” she asked. “I’m so nervous about fire.”
Frankie hurried across to the cottage, but Sally couldn’t come; she was sick in bed and there was no one available but young Norman Washington, aged nine, who was guaranteed by his mother to be trustworthy.
The old lady, however, rejected him.
“Worse than no one!” she cried. “A boy! He’ll eat up all my preserves. And goodness knows what he’ll break.”
It also occurred to her that he was quite likely, in his quality as boy, to set fire to the house; in fact, as she considered it longer, she declared it certain that he would do so.
She was in a pitifully nervous state. She entreated Frances to dress her again and help her downstairs, so that she could wait there, where, in case of fire, she could manage somehow to get out. She couldn’t eat anything for lunch. She sat propped up in bed, her trembling fingers moving ceaselessly, her watery eyes staring vacantly, in dim anxiety, consumed with dread, with the horror of her own helplessness. As she passed by the door, Frances could see her there, each time more intolerably pitiful. Until, one time, she saw her press her poor, clawlike hand against her mouth.... Somehow that decided Frances; she couldn’t leave her; couldn’t endure the idea of her alone there until two in the morning, when the last train would have brought her back. No; she couldn’t go. She went into the room, hard and brusque again.
“I won’t go to the city,” she said. “I’ll just harness up Bess somehow and go to the village and send a telegram.”
All over—all finished. She knew it. She had no hope, no illusion about the matter, only the certainty that her terribly brief time of happiness was done.
Happiness which existed now only in her memory, in time to grow incredible even there....
One year!
She remembered very well when she had made that first visit to Miss Eppendorfer. She had never before been alone in New York, didn’t know how to find the address, had to ask one policeman after another, and try in a sort of agony to comprehend the directions they gave. And when she had arrived, her terror of the unknown city was supplanted by a worse one; suppose she didn’t get the job, that the authoress didn’t like her, and she had to return home, shamefully defeated.
She had plenty of time to contemplate this, waiting in the sitting-room of Miss Eppendorfer’s flat. An insolent coloured girl showed her in and left her there without a word. She was almost ill from nervousness; she watched the door without stirring for fifteen minutes or so, then, when no one came, grew bold enough to look about her. It was a small and rather dark room, furnished in a style new to her—the ubiquitous Mission style. Little square chairs of imitation weathered oak, with imitation leather seats, studded with gilt nails, fit for an authoress from the Middle West to sit in while she laughed indulgently at Victorian mahogany. Mock austerity, mock simplicity, a crowd of cheap and monotonous stuff, all square and squat; plain curtains, bookcases with sets of books selected always by authorities, and never by the owner. Replica of a thousand rooms, mirror of a thousand souls, a room which signified and expressed nothing. It was the first cheaply-furnished room Frances had ever entered, and she was innocently impressed with it. The good taste she possessed was not innate, it was traditional; she wasn’t able to judge the unknown.
The mistress of all this came in an hour late. She was a thin, blonde woman with hollow cheeks and a sweet, sweet smile; she hurried forward, holding out both hands with a profuse cordiality that surprised Frances.
“Is this the little country girl who’s going to do so much for me?”
Blushing but courageous, Frances made some sort of answer, her candid eyes fixed on the face before her. If she hadn’t known, she might have thought that this haggard woman with bleached hair was “not quite nice.” But she knew that her rural standards couldn’t be applied everywhere. She wasn’t a bumpkin....
“Sit down,” Miss Eppendorfer invited, “and we’ll have tea while we chat.”
It was the first time Frances had ever had tea; it was an institution as yet unknown in the suburbs during her girlhood, and utterly undeveloped in Brownsville Landing; there, when one had guests in the afternoon, they were splendidly served with lemonade and good cake. Tea and toast would have been almost an insult.
The authoress had to fetch everything herself from the kitchen.
“I don’t dare to disturb that black wretch,” she whispered to Frances. “She’s only looking for an excuse to go, and then where shall I be? I couldn’t boil an egg, could you?”
Frances said that she could.
“Well, my dear,” said the authoress, when she had got her samovar started, “tell me about yourself.”
But she didn’t need much telling; aside from the letter she had had from the librarian in Brownsville Landing, she could see in one shrewd glance that Frances would “do”; was able to realise, as only an imitation could, how honest, how genuine was this girl.
She engaged her then and there, said she was “strangely attracted” by her. And urged her to take up her duties at once.
“Send home for your things,” she advised, “and settle right down to-night in your comfy little room. That’s the way I always like to do things—on the spur of the moment.”
“I’d like to, but I couldn’t. They’d worry at home.”
“Send a telegram, honey,” Miss Eppendorfer suggested.
It was her first telegram, too, and it gave her a delightful sense of adventure, and of defiance, for she knew that Minnie would disapprove.
Miss Eppendorfer opened the door of a tiny room, which, she said, was to be Frankie’s “very own.”
“Isn’t it dear?” she asked. “I think I must have known when I furnished it, that someone just like you was coming to me some day. It expresses you, don’t you think so?”
At first Frances thought it a delightful room, furnished all in wicker even to the bed and decorated in gay chintz; there were candles on the dressing table with rose-covered shades which at once took her eye, and a brocade glove box. She felt that she would be tremendously happy in such a nest.
And then, as she laid her hat on the bed, she was startled, dismayed, at the sight of the pillow-cases. Suspicions aroused, her glance travelled from corner to corner, and she apprehended the appalling griminess of the place. Griminess not confined to this room of “her very own,” as she was soon to discover.
She had turned back the lace-trimmed chintz bedspread and was suspiciously examining the sheets when Miss Eppendorfer came in again with a filmy nightdress decorated with pale green ribbons, a boudoir cap and an elaborate negligee.
“Put these on now and be comfy,” she urged, “and we’ll have a nice little supper, all alone together.”
She herself had got into a lace tea-gown over a torn lace petticoat and quilted satin slippers which weren’t high enough to hide the holes in her stockings....
“Thank you,” said Frances, “but I’m quite comfortable as I am.”
She felt that her neat linen blouse and dark skirt gave her a sort of advantage; anyway she couldn’t have gone trailing about in a wrapper, she wasn’t that sort.
Disillusionment progressed rapidly. She sat down at the supper table, hungry and curious, and disposed to be charitable; but the dirtiness of the tablecloth was flagrant and her napkin had obviously been used before. And her glass had a milky ring inside it.... She was not over-fastidious, or inclined to give great importance to domestic matters, but she had a genuine passion for cleanliness. She couldn’t help being disgusted. Still, she reflected, it was no doubt all due to the scornful coloured girl, and she consoled herself by thinking that perhaps, when not engaged in literary work, she could look after things a bit.
She put on the ribbon-trimmed nightdress and went to sleep between the dubious sheets, a little homesick for the big, airy bedroom where Minnie was lying, and the darkness and the quiet. Her window opened on to a court; she could hear voices talking and phonographs playing, and the light from Miss Eppendorfer’s room shone under her door and disturbed her. She couldn’t compose herself, she was excited and confused, and imagined that she lay awake for hours.
Miss Eppendorfer came in to wake her up the next morning, in a state of great excitement, still wearing the trailing tea-gown. She told Frankie that the coloured girl had gone; and she related a long story of wrongs and grievances; the girl drank, lied, pilfered, was even engaged in complicated plots against one of the best and kindest mistresses extant. Miss Eppendorfer gave a list of her benefactions: a pink hat, a dotted veil, blouses, shoes, and still!
“She used to say all sorts of things about me over the telephone, if anyone rang up when I was out. And, my dear, the things she told that hall-boy!”
Frankie pitied her distress and was eager to soothe her excitement.
“Never mind!” she said, “We’ll find another. And now wouldn’t you like me to make a cup of coffee for you?”
“Oh, I would, my dear! I’m no good till I’ve had my coffee, and I can’t make it decently myself.”
She sat down on the bed, and though Frances waited impatiently for a chance to get up, she showed no signs of moving. Nothing could have induced Frankie to dress in her presence. A faint annoyance crept over her. She got out of bed on the other side, gathered up her clothes and went into the bathroom, with a brusque excuse.
She came out, stiffer and straighter than ever, and went into the tiny kitchen to make the coffee. It was the filthiest place; roaches running over everything, grease, dust, crumbs.
“That girl was a very poor servant,” she said severely.
Miss Eppendorfer was sitting on a corner of the table, swinging her slippered feet.
“I spoil them,” she said. “I’m too good to them. And then I don’t keep after them. You have to, if you want anything done.... But with my writing, of course I can’t keep my mind on that sort of thing very well.”
She praised the coffee extravagantly, and, as she drank it, explained to Frankie that she was very, very nervous, and that a scene such as she had had with that dreadful girl upset her beyond measure. Frances noticed her trembling hands, her quick breath, and accepted this nervousness, and, in her competent way, went about making her comfortable.
They had a rather pleasant day together. The hall-boy was sent to fetch “Jennie” who had often before come to fill in gaps, and while she was creaking and wheezing, scrubbing and mopping her faithful way round the flat, the authoress lay on a sofa and talked to Frankie. She told her about her work, which so far consisted of three short stories and two very successful novels.
“But I’m really only beginning,” she said.
(Frances thought privately that she was rather old for any sort of beginning.)
Her latest book was called “The Lonely Woman.” She gave a copy to Frances and begged for a candid opinion after she had read it.
“But I’m not a judge,” Frances told her earnestly, “I don’t know anything about literature. Only that I love books and reading.”
“My dear,” said Miss Eppendorfer, “I saw at once how sensible and level-headed you were. I want your opinion!”
Noon came. Miss Eppendorfer sighed as the clock struck.
“I do not feel equal to going out,” she said, “I’d rather do without lunch. Of course, there’s plenty in the house, but Jennie can’t cook a thing.”
Frances was quite willing to get a lunch ready, and to bring it on a tray to the nervous authoress. Also tea and supper. Otherwise there was nothing to do but sit and talk.
Frances would have found it difficult to explain what her secretarial duties were during that year. Principally to go with Miss Eppendorfer everywhere that she went—to the shops, the bank, the dentist. She was too nervous to go out alone; she wouldn’t stir without her “little pal”; and, as far as Frances could see, she had no other friends. There were a few people who telephoned, and who very rarely dropped in to see her, but she never got invitations of any sort. It puzzled Frances; she could see no reason why Miss Eppendorfer shouldn’t be popular; in the first place, she was a quite successful writer, which should have brought some sort of fame, and in the second place, she had an excellent disposition. They lived together, all day and every day, month after month, those two women, without a sharp or a violent word, with the exception of the two famous Scenes, to be described later. And these didn’t exactly count, for the authoress was not altogether responsible, altogether herself then.... Of course, there were times when relations were a bit strained, but not often. And the remarkable, the admirable thing was, that they were not congenial, not in any way suited to each other; it was simply their common kindliness and good temper that so preserved harmony.
Lack of friends was not the only point to puzzle Frankie; there were other mysteries. It was a long time before she could understand Miss Eppendorfer, or appraise her with any justice. At first she saw much to disgust her. The slatternliness, above all, the shameless lack of pride. She used to look across the supper table at the pallid, faded blonde creature, with uncombed hair, still dressed in a wrapper over her nightdress, and wonder how, how ...! Even this, though, she learned to condone when she saw that it sprang not so much from neglect as from awful weariness. The poor soul was either hectic with excitement, flying from shop to shop, restaurant to restaurant, taking every meal away from home for perhaps a week, or else she couldn’t make up her mind even to walk round the corner for a breath of air, would stay shut up in the flat for days. She dressed well enough when she went out; she spent money lavishly on her clothes and wore them with a conspicuous and rather vulgar sort of style, but she didn’t really care; had no sort of decent pride in her body. Didn’t trouble much about cleanliness, for instance.
Her book, too, was a shock to Frances. It was the story of a woman living on the prairies—the Lonely Woman—alone with a stolid husband; then a young clergyman stopped there on his way somewhere, and chapter after chapter recounted the wiles, the lures of the lonely woman to rouse his passion, to destroy his honour. In the end she got him, triumphed for a few lurid days, and then tried to run away with him. But they were overtaken by a blizzard and died, frozen to death. The pursuing husband saw them, sitting clasped in each other’s arms, and shot them, not knowing that they were already dead, and then gave himself up to the police and was hanged. It was what her publishers called “palpitating”—very. Nothing was left to the imagination.
Frances thought it awful; she hadn’t been trained to see the poetry in lust. All she could say in praise was that the prairie scenes seemed very true to life, and Miss Eppendorfer assured her that they were.
“I’ve lived out there,” she said. She often told scraps of her past life, but they wouldn’t piece together; sometimes one story directly contradicted another. She had been married, sometimes she said once, sometimes twice, and her husband—or first husband—had been “unspeakable.” She had divorced him, or he her. Sometimes she described her childhood as ideally happy, her parents as wealthy and indulgent; then, once, she told Frances she was the daughter of a wretched woman who had lived with a worker in the Chicago stockyards. Yet all this didn’t impress Frances as lying; it was too vague, too aimless; she couldn’t help a stupid feeling that Miss Eppendorfer didn’t know exactly what had happened to her. Which was of course absurd.... And she was sure that the stories which told of want, pain, and struggle were the true ones, that the poor woman had suffered.
Talent she undoubtedly possessed. Although Frances detested the persistent fleshliness of her stories, she had a generous admiration for the gift itself. She would watch her writing, almost with awe, wondering where the ideas came from, from what unfathomable reservoir she drew so easily. She had no style, little art, couldn’t even use the language properly; simply she put on paper the visions of her curious mind. She sometimes used to cry as she wrote. And, although her books were oversensual, her talk wasn’t. She avoided those topics which distressed the austere Frances.
It was not for six months that Frances got her first clue to this baffling creature. She tried to study her, to understand her, why she had no friends, no “circle” such as she had imagined literary people always had, why she was sometimes so slovenly, sometimes so extravagantly dressed, why sometimes she couldn’t bear to go out, and sometimes couldn’t endure staying at home.
It was after one of her infrequent visits home. Miss Eppendorfer hated to let her go, and would never go out during her absence, which naturally used to distress Frankie and cause her to cut her time at home unduly short. She did everything possible before leaving, and always saw to it that Jennie was there, under a solemn promise not to leave for a minute until she got back; then with soothing assurances, as if Miss Eppendorfer were a very nervous child, she would pack her bag and hurry off, oppressed and serious, worrying over the household she had left.
This time, when she came back, Jennie didn’t answer the bell. She rang again and again, but couldn’t hear a sound. Then she questioned the hall-boy and he told her Jennie had left that morning, but that Miss Eppendorfer was at home.
“Maybe she’s asleep,” he said, with a grin.
Frances turned white, remembering all the stories she had read of suicides and murders.
“Isn’t there any way I can get in?” she cried.
The boy leisurely suggested going to the flat below and asking leave to go up through the fire escape. He didn’t offer to do it for her; he was, on the contrary, as indifferent, as contemptuous as he could well be.
Fortunately the window on the fire escape was open and Frances got in without difficulty. And rushed into Miss Eppendorfer’s room.
She was asleep, her mouth open, her hair in her eyes, lying on the outside of the bed with no covering but a gauzy nightdress. The room was full of a smell unfamiliar to Frances, but she surmised, even before she saw the empty bottle.
Whiskey.
Somehow she got the poor thing warmly and decently covered up and the horrible littered room tidied. Then she went into her own room and sank into a chair, for her knees would support her no longer. She couldn’t think about it, her intelligence seemed to have fled, to be suspended, waiting. She was conscious of nothing but horror and a reluctant and painful compassion. She felt that now, after this, she could never, never leave Miss Eppendorfer.