Bread — Book1 Chapter2 Sections4-6
§ 4 The morning was gone before she knew it.
She went out at lunch-time, walked a few blocks up Fourth Avenue and then turned back to the office.
She did not eat; she did not want any lunch; her mind was absorbed in her work; she had hardly left the building before she wanted to get back to her desk, to recopy a letter or two in which she had made some erasures.
The afternoon fled like the morning.
A whirl of confused impressions spun about in her brain as she shut her eyes and tried to go to sleep that night.
Although she ached with fatigue, she was too excited to lose consciousness at once.
The day’s events, like a merry-go-round, wheeled around and around her.
On the whole she was satisfied.
She had finished all of the letters Mr. Beardsley had given her; he had beckoned her to come to him after he had read them, had commended her, and given her back but one to correct in which the punctuation was faulty.
“I’m sure you’ll do all right, Miss Sturgis,” he told her.
“You’ll find it much easier as soon as you get used to the work.
” And Jeannette felt she had made a real friend in Miss Alexander, the girl across the aisle who had so generously, so wonderfully helped her.
Among the riff-raff of girls that surged in and out of the office, cheaply dressed, loud-laughing, common little chits, Beatrice Alexander was easily recognizable as belonging to Jeannette’s own class.
Each had discerned in the other a similarity of thought, of taste and refinement that drew them immediately together.
A wonderful, tremendous feeling of importance and self-respect came to Jeannette as she had made her way across crowded Twenty-third Street and encountered a great tide of other workers homeward bound; as she climbed the steep elevated station steps, and with the pushing, jostling crowd wedged her way on board a train; as she hung to a strap in the swaying car and squeezed herself through the jam of people about the doorway when Ninety-third Street was reached, and as she walked the brief block and a half that remained before she was at last at home.
Every instant of the way she hugged the soul-satisfying thought that she had proven herself; now she was truly a full-fledged wage-earner, a working girl.
She had achieved, she felt, economic value.
§ 5 Life began to take on a new flavor.
The future held hidden golden promises.
Jeannette had always had a protecting, proprietary attitude toward her mother and Alice, but now she was acutely aware of it, and the thought was sweet to her; she revelled in the prospect of the rôle she must inevitably assume.
All her world was centered in her eager, hard-working, ever-cheerful, fussy little mother, and her gentle brown-eyed sister who looked up to her with such adoration and implicit faith.
Jeannette felt she had forever established their confidence in her by this successful step into the business world.
Her mother had been completely won by her good fortune, and her stout little bosom swelled with pride in her daughter’s achievement.
Eagerly she told her pupils about it, and even regaled with the news fat good-natured Signor Bellini and politely indifferent Miss Loughborough.
To Jeannette, the Soulé Publishing Company became at once a concern of tremendous importance.
Before little Miss Ingram had mentioned its name to her, she was not sure she had ever heard it.
Now she seemed to see it wherever she turned, heard about it in chance conversations at least once a day; it leaped at her from advertisements in the newspapers and from the pages of magazines.
Books, she casually picked up, bore its imprint.
A great pride in the big company that employed her came to her: it was the largest and most enterprising of all publishing houses;
it was spending a million dollars advertising _The Universal History of the World_; it had hundreds of employees on its pay-roll!
If there were less roseate aspects of the concern that paid her fifteen dollars every Saturday, Jeannette did not see them.
She never stopped to examine critically the history she was helping to sell, nor to glance into the pages of the _Secret Memoirs_, nor to open the leaves of the set of books labelled _Favorites of Great Kings_.
She never thought it curious that the firm employed so many cheaply dressed, vulgar-tongued little Jewesses, and sallow-skinned, covert-eyed girls.
Nor did she wonder that she never observed any important-looking individuals who might be officials of the company, walking about or up and down the aisles of the racketting, bustling loft.
There was only Mr. Kent.
The others, whoever they might be, confined their activities, she came to understand, to the main offices of the Company on West Thirty-second Street.
This great loft with its sea of life was only a temporary arrangement,--part of the great selling campaign by which a hundred thousand sets of the History were to be sold before May first.
Something of tremendous import was to happen on this fateful date,--an upheaval in trade conditions, a great change in the publishing world.
Jeannette was not sure what it was all to be about, but she was convinced that after May first, the public would no longer have this wonderful chance to buy the twenty-five volumes of the History at such a ridiculously low price.
Behind glass partitions in one corner of the extensive floor were the inner offices,--the “holy of holies” Jeannette thought of them,--where Mr. Edmund Kent existed, pulled wires, touched bells, and gave orders that generalled the activities of the hundreds of human beings who clicked away at their typewriters, or deftly folded thousands and thousands of circulars, to tuck into waiting envelopes that were later dragged away in grimy, striped-canvas mail sacks.
Mr. Edmund Kent was the Napoleon, the great King, the Far-seeing Master who in his awesome, mysterious glass-partitioned office, ruled them with arbitrary and benevolent power.
All day long, Jeannette heard Mr. Kent’s name mentioned.
Miss Gibson quoted him; Mr. Beardsley decided this or that important matter must be referred to him.
What Mr. Kent thought, said, did, was final.
The girl used to catch a glimpse of the great man, now and then, as he came in, in the morning, or went out to a late lunch: a square-shouldered, firm-stepping man with a derby hat, a straight, trim mustache, and an overcoat whose corners flapped about his knees.
He seemed wonderful to her.
“Shhhh....
” a whisper would come from one of the girls near by;
“there’s Mr. Kent”; and all would watch him out of the corners of their eyes as they pretended to bend over their work.
“Mr. Kent is President of the Company?
” Jeannette one day ventured to ask Mr. Beardsley.
“Oh, no, just the selling agent,” he replied.
This was perplexing, but it did not make Jeannette regard with any less veneration the stocky figure in derby hat and flapping coat corners which strode in and out of the office.
There were other mysterious persons who had desks in the “holy of holies,” but Jeannette was never able to make out who these were, nor what might be their duties.
Miss Gibson was in charge of the girls on the floor; Mr. Beardsley was her immediate “boss.
” There was a cashier who made up the pay-roll and whose assistants handed out the little manila envelopes on Saturday morning containing the neatly folded bills.
She had no occasion to be concerned about anyone else.
Her “boss’s” full name was Roy Beardsley.
_Roy!
_ She smiled when she heard it.
He was young,--twenty-three or-four; he was a recent Princeton graduate, was unmarried and lived in a boarding-house somewhere on Madison Avenue.
She found out so much from the girls her second day at the office; they were glib with information concerning any one of the force.
Jeannette liked her young boss, principally because it soon became apparent that he treated her with a courtesy he did not accord the other girls.
She was, after all, a “lady,” she told herself, straightening her shoulders a trifle, and he was sufficiently well-bred himself to recognize that fact.
He must see, of course, the difference between herself and such girls as--well--as Miss Flannigan, for instance.
But more than this, Jeannette grew daily more and more convinced that he was beginning to take a personal interest in her for which none of these considerations accounted.
Nothing definite between them gave this justification.
There was no word, no inflection of voice that had any significance, but she saw it in a quick glimpse of his blue eyes watching her as she sat beside his desk, in the smile of his strange little mouth that stretched itself tightly across his small teeth when he first greeted her in the day and wished her “good-morning.
” Some strange thrilling of her pulses beset her as she sat near him.
It irritated her; she struggled against it, even rose to her feet and went to her desk upon a manufactured excuse to check the subtle influence that began to steal upon her when she was near him.
All her instincts battled against this upsetting something, whatever it was,--she could not identify it by a name--which began more and more to trouble her.
Jeannette was a normal, healthy girl budding into womanhood, with broadening horizons and rapidly increasing intimate associations with the world.
She was growing daily more mature, more impressive in her bearing, and notably more beautiful.
She was fully conscious of this.
Her mirror told her so, the glances of men on the street contributed their evidence, the covert inspection of her own sex both in and out of the office confirmed it.
She was becoming aware, too, of a growing self-confidence, of poise and power in herself that she had never suspected.
With what constituted “crushes,” “cases,” with what was implied in saying one was “smitten,” she was thoroughly familiar.
To a confidant she would now have frankly described Roy Beardsley as having a “crush” on her.
He was not the first youth of whom she could have truthfully said as much.
Various boys at one time or another, during her school days, had slipped notes to her as they passed her desk, or shamblingly trailed her home after school, carrying her books for her, and had hung around the doorstep of the apartment house, loitering over their leave-taking, digging the toe of a shoe into the pavement, grinning foolishly.
Some of them had confided to her that they “loved” her and asked her to promise to be their “girl.
” She, herself, had had a “terrible case” on a vaudeville dancer named Maurice Monteagle, and on a youth of Greek extraction who worked in Bannerman’s Drug Store on the corner near her home, tended the soda-water counter there and whose name she never learned.
But in none of these affairs of her young heart had there been anything like this.
She began by being somewhat flattered by Beardsley’s attention, and was guilty of provoking him a little at first with a smile and glance.
Like all girls of her age, she had been willing, even anxious, to whip his interest into flame.
But she soon grew frightened.
There was now something in the air, something in herself she could not quite control; she could not still the sudden throbbing of her heart, the swimming of her senses.
The moment came when she actually dreaded meeting him in the mornings, when the minutes she was obliged to sit beside his desk and listen to the peculiar little twang in his voice were an ordeal.
She dared not lift her eyes to meet his, but she could see his long white fingers moving about on the desk, playing with pencil and pen, and she could feel him looking at her when his voice fell silent.
These were the moments that disturbed her most, when she could not--not for the life of her--control the mounting color that began somewhere deep down within her, and swept up into her cheeks, over her temples, to the roots of her hair.
She had to rest her hand against her note-book, to keep it from trembling.
During these silences when she felt him studying her she sometimes thought she must scream or do something mad, unless he turned his eyes elsewhere.
She seriously considered resigning and seeking another position.
§ 6 Jeannette drank deeply of satisfaction in being a wage-earner.
She walked the streets of the city with a buoyant tread; she gazed with pride and affection into the eyes of other working girls she passed;
she was self-supporting like them; she had something in common with each and every one of them; there was a great bond that drew them all together.
But while she felt thus affectionately sympathetic to these girls in the mass, no one of them drew the line of social distinction more rigidly, even more cruelly than did she, herself.
She felt she was the superior of the vast majority of them, and the equal of the best.
She might not be earning the salary perhaps some of them did who were private secretaries, but she was confident that she would.
Her experience with stenography confirmed this self-confidence.
With three weeks of actual practice the trick, the knack, the knowledge,--whatever it was,--had come to her of a sudden.
Now she could sweep her pencil across the page of her note-book, leaving in its wake an easy string of curves, dots and dashes, setting them down automatically, keeping pace with even the swiftest of young Beardsley’s sentences.
Nothing could stop her progress in the business world; she loved being of it, revelled in its atmosphere, realizing that she was cleverer than most men, shrewder, quicker, with the additional advantage of unerring intuition.
This new-born ambition told her to keep herself aloof from other working girls.
Not that she had any inclination to associate with them;
they offended her,--not only those in the office but the giggling, simpering girls she saw on the street, who were obviously of the same class, teetering along on ridiculously high heels, wearing imitation furs, and building their hair into enormous bulging pompadours.
They were the kind who did not leave the offices where they worked at the noon hour but gathered in groups to eat their lunches out of cardboard boxes and left a litter of crumbs on the floor; they were the kind who crowded Childs’ restaurant, adding their shrill voices and shrieks to the deafening clatter of banging crockery.
Jeannette, feeling that it was a working girl’s privilege to become an habitué of Childs’, eagerly entered one of these restaurants at a noon hour during the early days of her employment.
Accustomed as she had become to the din of an office, the noise in the eating place did not distress her.
But she shrank from rubbing elbows with neighbors whose manner of feeding themselves horrified her.
A study of the price card and an estimate of what she could buy for fifteen cents, the amount she decided she might properly allow herself for lunches, completed her dissatisfaction with the restaurant and similar places.
She decided to go without lunch and to spend the leisure time of her noon-hour wandering up and down Fifth Avenue and Broadway, looking into shop windows,--- Lord & Taylor’s, Arnold Constable’s and even Tiffany’s on Union Square,--and in making tours of inspection through the aisles of Siegel-Cooper’s mammoth establishment on Sixth Avenue.
It was in the rotunda of this gigantic store, where stood a great golden symbolic figure of a laurel-crowned woman, that there was a large circular candy counter and soda fountain, and here the girl discovered one might get coffee, creamed and sugared, and served in a neat little flowered china cup, and two saltine crackers on the edge of the saucer, for a nickel.
In time, this came to constitute her daily lunch.
She could stand at the counter, sipping her drink, and nibbling the crackers at her ease, feeling inconspicuous and comfortable, presenting, she realized, merely the appearance of a lady shopper, who had taken a moment from her purchasing for a bit of refreshment.
The nourishment, slight as it was, proved sufficient.
On the days she had gone lunchless, she had developed headaches late in the afternoon, but the coffee and crackers, she found, were enough to sustain her from a seven o’clock breakfast to dinner at six-thirty.
A nickel for lunch, a dime for carfare--sometimes she walked downtown--took less than a dollar out of her weekly wage.
That left fourteen dollars to spend as she liked.
She gave her mother nine and kept five for clothes.
Five dollars a week for new clothes!
Her heart never failed to leap with joy at the thought.
Five dollars a week to save or to spend for whatever she fancied!
Oh, life was too wonderful!
Just to exist these days and to plan how she would dress herself, and what else she would do with her earnings, filled her cup of joy to the brim.
Her little mother protested vehemently when she put nine dollars in crisp bills into her hand at the end of the first week of work.
“Oh--dearie!
What’s this?
...
What’s all this money for?
” “It’s what I’m going to give you every week, Mama.
” Mrs. Sturgis for a moment was speechless, gazing with wide eyes into her daughter’s smiling face.
She wouldn’t accept it.
She wouldn’t hear of such a thing.
It was the child’s own money that she had earned herself and not one cent of it should go for any old stupid bills or household expenses.
She shook her head until her round fat cheeks trembled like cupped jelly.
But Jeannette had her way, as she knew, and her mother knew, and admiring, exclaiming Alice knew she would from the first.
That same evening, after the pots and pans and the supper dishes had been washed, Mrs. Sturgis established herself under the light at the dining-room table with the canvas-covered ledger before her and began to figure.
Thirty-six dollars a month!
Thirty-six dollars a month!
Six times six?
That was ...?
Why, they’d almost be out of debt in six months!
And they wouldn’t need to fall behind a cent during summer!
It was wonderful!
It was too--too wonderful!
Tears filmed Mrs. Sturgis’ bright blue eyes;
her glasses fogged so that she had to take them off and wipe them.
She didn’t deserve such daughters!
No woman ever had better girls!
They got laughing happily, excitedly over this, an hysterical sob threatening each.
They kissed each other, the girls kneeling by their mother’s chair, their arms around one another, and clung together.
And then Alice said she had half a mind to go to work, too, and do her share.
But there was an immediate outcry at this from both her mother and sister.
What nonsense!
What a foolish idea!
She mustn’t _think_ of such a thing!
Just because Jeannette had given up her schooling and gone out into the world was no reason why both sisters should do it.
There was not the slightest necessity.
Alice’s place was at school and at home.
Some one had to run the house; that was her contribution.
She was fitted for it in every way: she was domestic, she liked to cook and she liked to clean.
A still more convincing argument that persuaded apologetic Alice that indeed she was quite wrong, and her mother and sister were entirely right, was voiced by Jeannette.
Alice had much too retiring a nature to be a success in business.
Assurance, self-assertiveness, even boldness were required, and Alice had none of these qualities.
This was undeniably true; they all agreed to it.
It seemed to be the last word on the matter; the topic was dismissed.
Mrs. Sturgis went back to figuring on her bills; Jeannette to speculating about Roy Beardsley as she darned a tear in an old shirtwaist.
“I’ve often wondered,” ventured Alice after a considerable pause, “just what I should do,--how I could support myself if both of you happened to die.
I mean--well, if Jeannette should go off somewhere,--to Europe, maybe,--and Mother should get sick, and I should have to....
” Her voice trailed off into silence before the astonished looks turned upon her.
“Well, upon my word ...
” began Jeannette.
“Why, Alice dearie, what’s got into you?
” “You’re going to kill us both off,--is that it?
I’m to run away and leave Mother sick on your hands?
” “I mean--well, I meant----” struggled the confused Alice.
“Dearie,” said her mother, “you won’t have to worry about the future.
Mama’ll take care of you until some nice worthy young man comes along to claim you for his own.
” “You’ll be married, Allie dear, long before I will.
You’re just the kind rich men fall madly in love with.
” “Oh, hush, Janny!
...
please.
” But her sister’s thoughts were already upon a more engaging matter.
She was busy once again with Roy Beardsley.
CHAPTER III
