Homing Read online

  So Jane turned her steps toward the place where she could get the best ice cream for the least money, and after she had eaten it slowly, she wandered out toward the park. But to her disappointment she found her worst fears justified. Every bench in the whole place was occupied by tired, discouraged-looking people. Some of them were dirty people, with indiscriminate garments, coatless and hatless, men in shirtsleeves, women in dresses of a bygone day, with straggling hair, a few more smartly dressed but with such a look of utter hopelessness upon them that Jane could not bear to look at them. Not one of them looked as if he had a home, or a family who cared, much less a home by the sea like the girl who had come to buy buttons. That old woman over there with the run-down shoes, and eyes that looked as if they had wept till there were no more tears, what would she say if she were invited to spend the night in a pretty room in a cottage by the sea? Suppose she had such a cottage and could go up to that poor old creature and ask her to come and spend the night with her? Or that young thing over there with the tattered dirty green frock and the three whining children, one of them a babe in arms? Didn’t she have a husband? Where was he? Why didn’t he take care of her? Well, perhaps he was out of work! Oh, this was a hard world!

  She walked briskly on past them all, feeling that in spite of her homeless lot and her little hot third-story back room, she still had something to be thankful for. And she definitely didn’t want to sit down there in the park with that tired, discouraged mess of people and class herself with them. Not unless she could do something to relieve them. Doubtless they all had some kind of habitation even if it wasn’t worthy of the name home, and they were just out here to try to get cool the way she was. There! There was one who had some sense. Another little mother with two children. She had a clean dress on. To be sure the sleeves were cut off above the elbow, and the neck turned down for coolness, but even the children were clean. They were sitting on the grass against a sheltering clump of shrubbery, one child kicking its bare feet lazily and chewing on a crust of bread, the other sound asleep by an empty bottle. Jane Scarlett wished she might find a sheltering bush and lie down and kick her feet, too, she was so tired, and it did seem a little cooler here among the green things. The sun had definitely gone down now, and there was perhaps a trifle of breeze coming up from the river way. Or was it just the sound of the splashing fountain that made her think so? Well, she had better get back to her room. She had some stockings to wash. That would cool her off for a few minutes perhaps, and if she could just get to sleep it would soon be morning. Morning was always a little relief, even in hot weather. And besides, she had that invitation to spend the night at the seashore to think about. If she went about it in the right way she could really imagine herself perhaps accepting it sometime.

  As she walked on up the street of closed offices with dim lights in the distant depths, her thoughts went back in her life, and she tried to imagine what it would have been if she had ever had a real home where she belonged.

  Then she saw a familiar figure approaching. Who was it? Somebody she ought to know? Why did he stir an unpleasant memory? Oh yes, the new floor-walker in the next department. Stockings! His jurisdiction was just across the main aisle from the buttons. He had only been with the store a couple of days, but she couldn’t help seeing him often, although she had never spoken with him. Just yesterday she had seen him in intimate conversation with Nellie Forsythe. She had inadvertently caught a snatch of a sentence, and it disgusted her. He was good looking, with hair that must be a perm, and long golden eyelashes. But she didn’t like his mouth. It didn’t seem trustworthy. Jane wasn’t a girl who lost her head over young men. There had been a mother in her life who had spent time warning her mite of a girl who was presently going to be left alone.

  However, it didn’t matter what his mouth was like. She didn’t know him and wasn’t likely to, though every other girl in his section was wild over him and made it quite apparent. He wouldn’t ever have time to notice her of course. Not that she cared.

  Then suddenly the young man turned his head, looked her full in the face and stopped.

  “Oh, I say, aren’t you somebody I’m supposed to know?” he asked engagingly.

  Jane gave him a level look and answered coolly: “I’m afraid not.” Her tone was distant.

  “Oh, but you’re from Windle and Harrower’s, aren’t you? I’m sure I’ve seen you in the store. You’re not from perfumes and sachet, are you?”

  “No,” said Jane matter-of-factly, “only buttons. I’m on the other side of the middle aisle. You wouldn’t have met me.” There was no encouragement in her voice.

  “Oh, but I’ve noticed you. Yes, I have. Buttons, of course! I’ve watched you on the side. I’ve noticed how well you do your work and how people seem to like you. Noticed your smile, you know. You’re a good saleswoman. And buttons aren’t easy, either. It takes patience to be a good button salesperson. You had a late customer tonight, didn’t you? I noticed you were charming her. It takes a real lady to be patient and smile the way you did to a latecomer on a hot night like this. But she didn’t keep you all this time surely!”

  “Oh, no. She kept me only a minute or two. I stopped on my way to get some dinner.”

  “Dinner? Oh, that’s too bad. I was going to ask you to have some dinner with me. Well, how about a movie then? I’m not keen on dinner myself tonight. It’s too hot to eat. But you and I must get together and get acquainted.”

  Jane lifted an independent young chin.

  “Thank you,” she said, “I’m busy tonight. I have work to do.”

  “Goodness! Work on a night like this? Have a heart, lady! Don’t you know this is the time for relaxation? Well, then, how about tomorrow night?”

  “Thank you, no,” said Jane coolly.

  “Now, Beautiful, that’s no way to behave. What have you got against me?”

  “Nothing whatever,” said Jane crisply. “I am not in the least acquainted with you, you know.”

  “Oh, is that it? High hat? Well, next time I’ll try and bring my credentials with me. But how about having at least a cool little drink with me somewhere? I might be able to find a mutual friend if we had the time.”

  “Excuse me,” said Jane, “I’m in a hurry,” and she smiled distantly and marched on, her proud little lifting of her chin, and her dignified carriage, covering a sudden tendency to tremble.

  So he thought he could pick her up as casually as he did those other girls in the store. Well, he would find she was not so easily picked. Of course, it wasn’t that he was exactly a stranger. He was employed in the same store with herself, and she had happened to hear his name called by cash girls and saleswomen in his department: “Mr. Gaylord! Oh, Mr. Gaylord! Will you sign this schedule for the customer, please!” He was just not the type of person she cared to companion with in any way. A young man who had his hair permed and talked to a girl that way the first time he ever spoke to her! It would have been different perhaps if she were in his department and had been formally under his management. It would even have been different if he had been in the store for some time and had been formally seeing her in the regular business gatherings. But she definitely didn’t like him anyway. She had seen him stroking Isabel Emory’s hand fondly just before the girl with the button came.

  She hurried on trying to put him entirely out of her mind, but there was a distinct uneasiness concerning him. His bold eyes darting into her quiet life disturbed her strangely, as if there were some undefined alarm connected with him, and that was absurd of course. He had nothing whatever to do with her, and never would have if she maintained her aloofness, as of course she would.

  With a sigh she entered the dingy boardinghouse where she resided. The atmosphere was of numberless dreary meals lingering at the door to meet her, the aroma of greasy fried potatoes, of ancient fried fish, of unappetizing meats, and onions, of pork, and spoiled fat that had burned. It smote her in the face on the breath of the heavy heat of the day, and made her suddenly dead tired
and heartsick.

  She climbed to the third floor to her gloomy room where the evening sun was scorching in at the single window, pricking through the worn old green window shade, burning every breath of the air out and intensifying the dusty breathlessness of the apartment till it almost seemed unbearable.

  Jane shut the door despairingly because the smell of the burning fat was even worse up here than down in the hall. Taking off her hat she flung herself down across her bed and let hot, discouraged tears pour out of her tight-shut eyes.

  Suddenly it came to her what a fool she was. Here she had been offered a chance to go down to the shore and spend a night in a lovely cool guest room by the sea, and also she had been asked to dinner by a personable young man; she could have had an appetizing meal in cheerful company, she could have attended a movie in a room that would have been air-conditioned and cool, and she had declined them all! But she still had her self-respect! Why bother about smells and breathlessness? She had this quiet place and her self-respect, even if the air wasn’t good. Someday perhaps she might be able to afford a better spot. Till then she had better be content.

  She lay a few minutes getting the ache out of her tired feet, and then she got up and washed her face in the tepid water that had stood all day in her water pitcher. It was good to get her face wet, and her wrists and arms, and summer didn’t last forever. There would be bitter cold in the winter, with no fire whatever in her room and the necessity of opening the hall door to take the intense chill from the air.

  There was cabbage coming up the hallway now, and fried apples, but she knew just how they would look, little gnarly apples, with specks in them. She was not going down to dinner at all tonight. The ice cream she had eaten was enough. She couldn’t bear the thought of the dinner that would be served in that house.

  She took her water pitcher and went down one flight to the bathroom to fill it and then got out some soap flakes and washed a pair of stockings and some underwear. After that she was so tired she lay down and went to sleep. The drying clothes broke the dry heat of the August night and made a little moisture in the room, and by and by she had a dream. She dreamed that she had gone to the shore with that lovely customer, and was lying in a beautiful soft bed with a great cool breeze blowing over her and the smell of the sea in the air. But after a time she suddenly woke up again and the room was terribly hot and breathless, the ham and cabbage were lurking on the edges of the ceiling, and a fire siren was blowing with all its might.

  Jane lay there panting with the heat and thinking how hard things were in her life. It was harder now than she ever remembered it before.

  She had been a very little girl when her father died. They were living at the time in a tiny apartment in a western city. Jane could remember the many stairs they had to climb, because her mother always had to stop and rest between landings. It seemed that she had always been climbing stairs.

  Dimly she remembered the two rooms where she and her mother lived next, and her mother took in sewing. Her mother wasn’t well. She coughed a great deal and had a pain in her side, but she was always there when Jane came home from kindergarten, and then from grammar school. And nights when they went to bed early to save light her mother would talk to her, and give her many precepts and principles, wrapped in engaging stories, which she told her were to be remembered for life. And Jane had asked questions and gained a pretty good idea of life and the way it should be lived.

  But she never remembered any time when the place they had to live in was so unbearably hot as this little room of hers. Perhaps she ought to give up saving for a nice winter coat and change her room for a cooler one. Perhaps—well perhaps she should have accepted that invitation to the shore for the night and got really cooled off and rested for once. No! She never could have done that of course. They were strangers, and she was only a poor girl whom they would have felt sorry for and despised. Probably the girl’s mother would have been cross if she had brought her home, too. Of course she could not have gone with a stranger!

  Well—perhaps—was there any possibility she ought to have put her pride in her pocket and gone with that manager of the stocking department? Got a good dinner and had a little laugh and a restful time, and perhaps been able to sleep afterward? That was what other girls did, unless they had homes, pleasant comfortable homes, where there was some way to get cool in such intolerable heat.

  No, she couldn’t do that! Not if she died of starvation and heat would she go with a man who had a perm, and held hands with all the pretty girls in the store, not even if she knew him. She couldn’t respect a man like that.

  Had her mother been right in giving her such high standards of taste and principle?

  Yes, of course! There was no question about that.

  After a time she got up and looked out her window. There wasn’t much satisfaction in looking. She could only see a limited number of redbrick walls and tin roofs and chimneys, with a high red distant glow as if the fire must have been a very bad one.

  She touched her meager wash hanging across a string from the bureau to the post of the bed and found everything dry. That was a comfort anyway. She could wear fresh garments in the morning. One was always cooler after a bath, even if it was only a sponge bath, if one could put on fresh garments.

  So she crept back to her hard, hot bed, and finally fell asleep again, but woke in the morning only half refreshed. She could smell the breakfast fumes rolling up from the open kitchen window. Codfish on a morning like this! Blistering hot! And it was spoiled codfish, too; it smelled that way! They had had it that way once before. The landlady always bought enough for two days of anything like that. Well, she would ask for a hard-boiled egg. She would not take codfish!

  If this heat lasted she must find a better place to board. It was unbearable to think of staying here any longer.

  Then her little alarm clock whizzed out a warning and Jane got sadly up and went at the work of dressing.

  Another hot day ahead of her, hard work, and nothing to relieve the monotony! Of course there was young Gaylord, the stocking manager. She might smile at him if she were that kind of girl, and perhaps he would ask her again to go out to dinner and somewhere for the evening. She was so utterly sick of the monotony of life in this awful little hot hole of a room, with no cheerful contacts anywhere except such as one could find among her department store customers.

  Well, of course that was all nonsense! She wasn’t going back on the principles her mother had taught her. She was going to go steadily on trying to do as nearly right as possible. And perhaps someday God would give her a break!

  That sounded rather irreverent, too. Mother wouldn’t have liked her to talk like that. Mother always wanted her to go to church. But she had gotten out of the habit when Mother was so terribly sick.

  Then there had been the time after Mother died, when Great-Aunt Sybil, a widow who lived in Connecticut and had two summer places, one at the mountains and one at the shore, had sent for her and looked her over for a few weeks, finally fitting her out with some indiscriminate garments belonging to her two daughters who needed more fashionable wardrobes, and sent her off to a strange stupid school in the country where you worked for your board and learned very little. But Great-Aunt Sybil had married again and had shunted Jane off by getting her a place to do kitchen work on a farm where they kept summer boarders. The two daughters had meantime married and passed out of the picture. Then when fall came and the summer boarders had departed, the farmer and his wife bought a trailer and left for Florida. Jane, obviously not wanted, took matters in her own hands and hiked by slow stages to this city where she finally got a job in a department store where now at last she had a small foothold, faithfully doing her best, and working up from cash girl to notions, and from notions to buttons.

  But this morning with the heat over everything, and the smell of the unappetizing breakfast coming up the stairs, Jane groaned within herself. Of course she was glad she had made some progress, but oh, how long at this rate
would it be before she ever had a decent place to call home? Would she ever have a home, a real home? Probably not. Other girls expected to get homes by marrying, but Jane felt she would never be willing to marry the kind of man who might ask her. She wasn’t at all pretty, she told herself, as she gave a disapproving look in her mirror and slicked her hair coolly back. It was only pretty girls who attracted nice, refined men who could provide comfortable homes. Homes where on a morning like this, one could go calmly down to breakfast expecting to find cool melon set in ice, or thin glasses of orange juice, delicate hot biscuits, cereal with real cream, and coffee that was a joy to drink.

  With a sigh Jane fastened the buttons of her thinnest shirtwaist dress and went downstairs to begin another hot day.

  Chapter 3

  Kent Havenner walked into the office that morning and went straight to the senior member of the firm.

  “Well, I’ve found a Jane Scarlett for you. Whether she’s the right Jane or not I don’t know, but she’s a Scarlett, anyway. At least she says she is.”

  “You don’t say!” said the senior lawyer, who was J. Waltham Sanderson and quite well known and respected in the world. “Now how in the world did you go about it to find one after all our combing of the country failed?”

  “Well, you see, I didn’t go about doing it at all. It wasn’t my business of course. But I heard the name mentioned so many times in connection with that case that I couldn’t get it out of my head, and when I heard my sister mention it quite casually last night it clicked of course.”

  “Your sister! Why, Havenner, does your sister know the girl?”

  “Well, no, she’s not a personal acquaintance at all, but she bought some buttons from her late yesterday afternoon at Windle and Harrower’s.”

  “Why, that’s most extraordinary! Had she known her before?”