CHAPTER VIII
IT was five o'clock on a Saturday afternoon in late March. In a certain little oblong room, so narrow that the bed could be placed only horizontal to the long dimension, beside a window that looked out over a range of roofs, and a forest of chimneys, water-tanks, sky-lights and escape-pipes of one kind or another, Rebecca Jerome sat on the edge of a straight-backed bedroom chair, and sewed—nervously, eagerly, glancing out at the great face of a clock on a building opposite, every now and then, and making her stitches longer and bolder as the time gained on her.
She was shortening her white muslin dress. Mamie Blake, who roomed next door, had told her the evening before, when she had tried the dress on in preparation for Saturday's entertainment, that the length was what ailed it most; and Mamie had pinned up five inches of it in two deep tucks, above the flounce of ruffles. Reba hadn't had a chance to finish the alteration until after lunch to-day. Her gymnasium class met Friday evenings, and Saturday mornings her course in domestic science kept her busy until twelve; and always the noon-hour was claimed by instruction in modern dancing—especially essential to-day, Reba felt, in view of the nature of the evening's entertainment.
Reba's heart hammered at the thought of that entertainment, so close at hand now. She had been away from Ridgefield only a little over seven weeks, and here she was getting ready for a dancing-party—a dancing-party with young men! Reba had never danced with a young man! Her stitches were disgraceful! They would have distressed Aunt Augusta. They troubled even Reba; but it was after five, and the party began at half-past seven.
The little room Reba was sitting in, although in shape and size and furnishings the exact replica of a dozen or so other little rooms, in the long row of which it was one, had absorbed, during the seven weeks that Reba had been its occupant, much of the atmosphere of her room at home. There was the same neatness, the same perfection about the erect pillow and wrinkleless bedspread. On top of the little humpbacked trunk back of the door appeared the fringed afghan which Reba's mother had crocheted twenty years ago, folded squarely. One of Reba's round, hand-crocheted washcloths was hanging to dry, in correct and sanitary position, on a small hook on the side of the commode, and, just as she had always been taught to arrange clean towels, like crossed hands on top of the water-pitcher at home, so they were placed here. The top of the oak chiffonier had a chaste look, like an altar—no array of bottles, cosmetics, cold-cream jars, powder-cans, or powder-puffs. A large, tightly-stuffed, red-satin pin-cushion, square with a white "tidy" on it, was in the center, and on either side an empty, white-frosted cologne bottle, decorated with red stripes. And back of the cushion appeared a picture of Christ, framed in brown plush with a moss rose painted in oils on the plush. On the little wabbly oblong table beside the chiffonier, lay Reba's Bible, half-way up in one of the two neat pyramids of books.
"Make an excuse and worm yourself into that queer little Miss Jerome's room sometime," Miss Bartholomew, the gymnasium instructor, had one day laughingly told Miss Park, who held the position of Social Secretary at the Women's Alliance. "It's like stepping into a corner of your dear little old grandmother's room, 'way off in some little quiet, tucked-away New England village. I'd love to see the house she stepped out of."
"I wish I could make her out," Miss Park replied, with a sigh. "She puzzles me. No job, and here now for over six weeks."
"I know," agreed Miss Bartholomew. "You wouldn't think a little prim old maid like that would care about drills and athletic stunts, but she hasn't missed an evening. At first I couldn't get her elbows away from her sides. She was held in and restrained all over. I had to teach her even how to run. It's amusing to watch her on the track, going at it so earnestly for a solid half-hour after class, and appealing to me every few minutes to know if it's right. And really, in the tank she's little less than a martyr—petrified by water, really, I believe, but determined to overcome her fright. The first time I made her jump off the diving-board, she looked a veritable Joan of Arc at the stake. But she jumped!"
"It's the same with dancing," took up Miss Park. "She has been as determined to master the art as if there were a degree attached to it. She has joined Ida's folk-dancing class too. At first I thought the poor little thing must be in poor health, and that a doctor had prescribed persistent exercise. But that doesn't explain her interest in all the other courses she is taking too. She's taking practically all of them, you know."
It was true Reba was taking all the courses which her schedule would allow. It was a thrilling experience to her to be one of a class of a certain number of individuals, who met together periodically. The joy of feeling herself included, naturally and with no effort, in various little groups, was something she had never known before. It gave her a strange deep feeling of pleasure just to answer, "Here," to her name as it was read off from a list of others.
It was all so different from what she had prepared herself for. She had come steeled for rebukes, armored for all the old tortures she had endured at the summer hotels—being left out, ignored, avoided, smarting with the conspicuousness of her isolation; and instead people moved over and made a place for her when she entered her various classes, received her as a matter of course, even nodded to her, and smiled occasionally.
She had chosen wisely. For a super-sensitive nature such as hers there didn't exist an organization better suited to receive her. The heterogeneity of the members of the Women's Alliance concealed any one individual's peculiarities. There were all kinds and descriptions of women in Reba's classes—young girls, who chewed gum and had to be asked to stop; married women with gray hair, who came in from the suburbs; clerks; stenographers; shop-girls of fourteen; school-teachers of forty. Reba was just one of a dozen or so different types in groups made up of dissimilar elements.
Of course at first she felt shy, awkward, shrank from asking questions; but Miss Park—a wonderful, goddess-like creature, whose particular gift seemed to be discovering the girl or woman whom she might help somehow or other—had taken Reba in charge by her second day at the Alliance, and made everything clear and understandable. All Reba's apprehensions as to the good taste of joining certain classes—dancing, for instance, at her time of life—were not as much as recognized by Miss Park, laughed, pooh-poohed away.
It was one of the sweet surprises of her life that the tortures she had so dreaded were spared her. The city itself seemed inclined toward kindliness, she thought. It didn't frighten her. She liked the sound of it at night from her high bedroom window, which, after she had put out the light, she would open and sit beside in her warm wool kimona. The sound of the city at night was like the cheerful hum of the mills, Reba thought, only bigger, deeper, significant of greater vitality. She took the same shy pleasure in listening to it, in gazing at its mysterious lights and flashing electric signs, glimpses of which she could see from her window, as in watching the activities of the mills at home. More—for she was part of the city. She smiled to think that if she clapped her hands, or spoke outloud, the little sound she made would become part of the great ocean-like drone.
Of course Reba had been to the city before, but as an alien—unsympathetically. Several times she and Aunt Augusta had spent a night in Boston on their way to one of the summer resorts. But the city to Aunt Augusta was a dangerous place, full of robbers, horrible traffic catastrophes, fires, germs and filth. Aunt Augusta always clutched her shopping-bag in Boston as if she expected it to be snatched from her grasp at every corner, and lay awake half the night between her hotel sheets (washed no doubt, in the same tub with hundreds of others) sniffing for smoke and wondering if she could possibly descend the skeleton-like fire-escape outside the window at the end of the hall. She suspected everybody in the city, from hotel-managers to ribbon-clerks, of cheating her, or trying to, if she gave them half a chance, and she always drew a sigh of relief when she had escaped in safety from the perilous place.
But Reba delighted in mingling in the city crowds. It gave her secret pleasure just to be convoyed across a crowded thoroughfare by a big, bluff policeman, as if she were one of a thousand equally precious logs to be safely guided around the curve of a river. Nobody observed her, or selected her to stare at, in the city. She found herself taken for granted by the busy crowds, and she thrived, as the timidest of garden flowers will thrive quietly under the impartial sun.
It amazed Reba that it was possible for her to be so happy in her adventure, when so much disfavor was hanging over her. For she well knew that she was still unforgiven by her mother and aunts. In answer to her weekly letters to them she hadn't received a reply of any sort. But she was happy! She was fairly intoxicated sometimes! The folk-dances affected her so—clapping hands with a partner, romping and skipping at her side, nodding at her—that she could hardly keep the tears out of her eyes. She had always looked on before. Now, now she was in the game herself. It made her tingle all over. What if—oh, what if—by working diligently, trying hard—the very hardest she knew how—she might lure back her vanishing youth, just for a little while!
She expected no intimacies, and the night that Mamie Blake had abruptly burst in upon her with an unceremonious, "Say, hook me, will you? Gosh, but I'm late," it seemed to Reba as if her cup were running over with good things. She was not accustomed to such spontaneous expressions of friendliness from next-door neighbors.
Eagerly her fingers had fastened what few hooks and eyes corresponded on the back of Mamie's dress, over a mass of coarse and rather grimy lace underneath. Mamie worked in a downtown five-and-tencent store. She was not very refined. She used "darn it," and "damn" about as much as she did "gosh," but that did not cloud Reba's joy at being burst in upon by her.
"You're a lamb!" Mamie had exclaimed, when Reba had finished with the hooks. "Thanks. Say, you'll find some molasses-kisses in my top drawer. Help yourself." Then abruptly, "You couldn't lend me an umbrella, could you? I'm out of one, and look at it!" The rain was beating hard against the window-pane.
"Why, of course I can!" replied Reba ardently.
She went into her closet. Her two umbrellas—the cheap cotton one, and the silk, with the carved ivory handle, were hanging side by side on two hooks. She took down the one with the carved ivory handle, and came out with it. She had never lent anything to a friend before!
"Here it is," she said, shiningly.
Mamie grabbed it without a glance. "Thanks. Well, I'm off. I got to meet my 'friend' up at the Gayety at eight sharp. Movies. Top bureau drawer. Don't forget." And down the hall she clattered, while Reba, quivering and exalted, softly closed the door.
Reba had not planned to the entertainment to-night. She had no wish to put her good fortune to too severe a test. She hesitated to expose herself to obvious disappointments. The nature of the entertainment had been explained some two weeks before, and it had frightened her.
The Women's Alliance, it seemed, had issued an invitation to a similar organization of young men in the city, asking its members to a "party with dancing" on a certain Saturday night, in late March. They had accepted, and Miss Park, in addressing the girls en masse one evening, had asked all those who wanted to come to the party to put their names on a paper that she had posted on the bulletin-board.
During the dancing-hour one noon Miss Park had said to Reba, as she guided her over the floor in a one-step, "You're doing so well! You'll be all ready for Saturday, won't you?"
"Oh, but I'm not going. I didn't put down my name," blushed Reba.
But why not? You must. Of course you must."
"I don't dance well enough yet."
"Of course you do. Lots better than many. We need you, too. We want to have the number of girls and men as even as possible, and we've lots more men now. I'm going to put your name down myself."
And she did. Reba found it there that same evening. She didn't cross it out, and when she went to bed that night she lay awake a long while in the dark, from sheer anxiety.
"I'm going to dance with a young man!" she whispered. "Just think, Rebecca Jerome,—just think!"
And "just thinking" she had almost forgotten to say her prayers.
As she stood before her mirror on the momentous evening, and gazed at herself in her shortened white muslin, she wasn't very well satisfied.
"I'm afraid I look just what I am," she sighed—"an old maid! I know I do! I wish I knew how to do my hair." (It was crimped, and pompadoured over an artificial foundation, and in the back it was rolled into a tiny tight wad, held firmly by long wire hairpins.) "I wish—I wish," she went on, "that I had short sleeves!" Aunt Augusta had always maintained that bare forearms suggested dish-washing to her. "And I feel sure that these ruffles over the shoulders are out of date. Oh, I wish" A wave of self-consciousness swept over her. She had just been hooking Mamie into a nile-green chiffon, low-necked—very low-necked—she had had to pin it up behind to the firm foundation of Mamie's corsets. Reba's white muslin fastened up to the tight roll of hair at the back of her neck. "I don't believe I'll go down. Nobody'll miss me. I may be dressed differently from anybody else there." She stood uncertainly by the door with her hand upon the knob. Then, "Coward," she whispered, and if Miss Bartholomew had been there she would have seen the same Joan-of-Arc expression on Reba's face that she had worn when she had jumped off the diving-board, as she opened the door and went out into the hall.
She felt reassured the moment she got downstairs. There seemed to be little uniformity of costume. Miss Park, her idol, Miss Katherine Park herself, was in simple white net. Some of the young ladies wore shirt-waists and dark skirts.
The young men had already arrived. A large dark phalanx of them occupied one corner of the Assembly-hall. Miss Park was on the platform, when Reba entered, greeting the assembly in that full vibrant voice of hers. She was smiling and flushed, perfectly poised. After her pretty "good evening" she explained the course of procedure for obtaining partners.
Upon entering the hall everybody had been presented with a colored piece of card-board with a number on it. (Reba had hers safe in her hand—a red 33.) There were four colors—yellow, green, red, and blue, and two numbers of each color. The two people whose cards corresponded in color and number were partners. To facilitate matters, all those with red cards were asked to go to that corner of the room in which had been hung a red streamer; all those with green cards, to the corner of the room with the green streamer, and so on. After everybody had found his or her partner, then Miss Park would announce in what order the four groups might dance. The hall was too small to accommodate everybody at once.
"Now," she finished, "please all go to your proper corners, and find your partners."
There followed a general intermingling. Reba started for the red streamer which was hanging diagonally across the hall from her. She threaded her way around the edge, passing through the green territory, and the yellow, on the way. Everybody was talking and laughing, eager and interested. She saw several of the yellow partners discover each other as she passed along. She saw one girl—a dark, big-eyed, bright-cheeked creature (she knew her by sight. Lollie Terrence, they called her. She could dance on the tip end of her toes in gymnasium shoes)—she saw Lollie back up to one of the large wall-radiators and, giggling, slip her number behind it.
"It will mix things up, Lollie," warned the girl that was with her.
"I don't care. If you could have seen him, my dear! Gee! I'm going to streak it, till this funny business is over." She shrugged, and flashed out of one of the doors.
Reba went on her way. She approached the red group a little anxiously. There was no need of her knees wabbling like that, of course. He wouldn't eat her up. Oh, but she must do well! She must remember to keep her left hand light, to be ready to turn, to slide, to dip at any moment, to keep high on her toes, so as to be better able to follow wherever he wanted to lead, just at the instant he indicated. Where was he, she wondered—the man to whom fate had allotted her for this first real dance of hers. How strange to feel oneself hunted for by a man, like this, and to be hunting for a man yourself! Perhaps it would be better form, Reba thought, to sit down in one of the chairs up against the wall, and wait until she was found. She approached them.
Suddenly one of the Alliance's hostesses tapped on something.
"Listen, Reds, a moment please," she said, in a hurried, business-like voice. "Will all the girls in this group with a number over twenty-seven, please go over in front of the platform. We have more girls than men here to-night, and all reds over number twenty-seven will be given girls for partners, just as soon as we can get at it."
Reba glanced down at her thirty-three. Until that moment she hadn't realized how much she had been counting on this golden opportunity. She had drawn a luckless number! A girl for a partner! Why, she danced with girls every noon! A girl! How cruel! She sank down in one of the empty chairs behind her. And just chance too, she protested—no fault of hers.
Two months before, Reba would have dumbly accepted the unfortunate circumstance as inevitable. But the new spirit within her rebelled, groped for a way out. What was there to do? Was there anything? Was there any way to change the number? Abruptly, Lollie Terrence and the discarded yellow card back of the radiator flashed across her mind. Dared she? "You must find the roundabout ways to the thing you want," Cousin Pattie had said. "In spite of," was Cousin Pattie's motto. There was time enough. Nobody had seen her number. Nobody would know. What wouldn't suit Lollie might be very acceptable to her. Reba crushed the useless "thirty-three" inside her pink sash, got up, and threaded her way around the edge of the hall again.
She would! She could! It was perfectly honest—perfectly fair. She approached the radiator with that new expression of defiance on her face, stooped abruptly, groped in the dust, and drew forth a smudgy yellow four.
Miss Bartholomew had charge of the yellow group.
"Hello," she said kindly to Reba, who was all a-flush now, and somewhat excited. "Do you belong here? What is your number? Four? Oh, yes. He's over there by the door. Sixteen?" she went on, turning to somebody else. "Sixteen? Saw him a second ago by that chair."