Part 16 (1/2)

She did not believe it. Always she had had plenty to wear and to eat, and comfortable surroundings. She could no more think of herself as without those things than a living person can imagine himself dead.

”I'm a fool,” she said to herself. ”I'm certain to get into all sorts of trouble. How can it be otherwise, when I've no money, no friends, no experience, no way of making a living--no honest way--perhaps no way of the other kind, either?” There are many women who ecstasize their easily tickled vanities by fancying that if they were so disposed they need only flutter an eyelid to have men by the legion striving for their favors, each man with a bag of gold. Mildred, inexperienced as she was, had no such delusions. Her mind happened not to be of that chastely licentious caste which continually revolves and fantastically exaggerates the things of the body.

She could not understand her own indifference about the future. She did not realize that it was wholly due to Stanley Baird's offer. She was imagining she was regarding that offer as something she might possibly consider, but probably would not. She did not know that her soul had seized upon it, had enfolded it and would on no account let it go. It is the habit of our secret selves thus to make decisions and await their own good time for making us acquainted with them.

With her bag on the seat beside her she set out to find a temporary lodging. Not until several hotels had refused her admittance on the pretext that they were ”full up” did she realize that a young woman alone is an object of suspicion in New York. When a fourth room-clerk expressed his polite regrets she looked him straight in the eye and said:

”I understand. But I can't sleep in the street. You must tell me where I can go.”

”Well, there's the Ripon over in Seventh Avenue,” said he.

”Is it respectable?” said she.

”Oh, it's very clean and comfortable there,” said he. ”They'll treat you right.”

”Is it respectable?” said she.

”Well, now, it doesn't LOOK queer, if that's what you mean,” replied he. ”You'll do very nicely there. You can be just as quiet as you want.”

She saw that hotel New York would not believe her respectable. So to the Ripon she went, and was admitted without discussion. As the last respectable clerk had said, it did not LOOK queer. But it FELT queer; she resolved that she would go into a boarding-house the very next day.

Here again what seemed simple proved difficult. No respectable boarding-house would have Miss Mary Stevens. She was confident that nothing in her dress or manner hinted mystery. Yet those sharp-eyed landladies seemed to know at once that there was something peculiar about her. Most of them became rude the instant they set eyes upon her. A few--of the obviously less prosperous cla.s.s--talked with her, seemed to be listening for something which her failing to say decided them upon all but ordering her out of the house. She, hindered by her innocence, was slow in realizing that she could not hope for admission to any select respectable circle, even of high-cla.s.s salesladies and clerks, unless she gave a free and clear account of herself--whence she had come, what she was doing, how she got her money.

Toward the end of the second day's wearisome and humiliating search she found a house that would admit her. It was a pretentious, well-furnished big house in Madison Avenue. The price--thirty-five dollars a week for board, a bedroom with a folding bed in an alcove, and a bath, was more than double what she had counted on paying, but she discovered that decent and clean lodgings and food fit to eat were not to be had for less. ”And I simply can't live pig-fas.h.i.+on,” said she. ”I'd be so depressed that I could do nothing. I can't live like a wild animal, and I won't.” She had some vague notion--foreboding--that this was not the proper spirit with which to face life. ”I suppose I'm horribly foolish,” reflected she, ”but if I must go down, I'll go down with my colors flying.” She did not know precisely what that phrase meant, but it sounded fine and brave and heartened her to take the expensive lodgings.

The landlady was a Mrs. Belloc. Mildred had not talked with her twenty minutes before she had a feeling that this name was a.s.sumed. The evening of her first day in the house she learned that her guess was correct--learned it from the landlady herself. After dinner Mrs.

Belloc came into her room to cheer her up, to find out about her and to tell her about herself.

”Now that you've come,” said she, ”the house is full up--except some little rooms at the top that I'd as lief not fill. The probabilities are that any ladies who would take them wouldn't be refined enough to suit those I have. There are six, not counting me, every one with a bath and two with private parlors. And as they're all handsome, sensible women, ladylike and steady, I think the prospects are that they'll pay promptly and that I won't have any trouble.”

Mildred reflected upon this curious statement. It sounded innocent enough, yet what a peculiar way to put a simple fact.

”Of course it's none of my business how people live as long as they keep up the respectabilities,” pursued Mrs. Belloc. ”It don't do to inquire into people in New York. Most of 'em come here because they want to live as they please.”

”No doubt,” said Mildred a little nervously, for she suspected her landlady of hitting at her, and wondered if she had come to cross-examine her and, if the results were not satisfactory, to put her into the street.

”I know _I_ came for that reason,” pursued Mrs. Belloc. ”I was a school-teacher up in New England until about two years ago. Did you ever teach school?”

”Not yet,” said Mildred. ”And I don't think I ever shall. I don't know enough.”

”Oh, yes, you do. A teacher doesn't need to know much. The wages are so poor--at least up in New England--that they don't expect you to know anything. It's all in the books. I left because I couldn't endure the life. Lord! how dull those little towns are! Ever live in a little town?”

”All my life,” said Mildred.

”Well, you'll never go back.”

”I hope not.”

”You won't. Why should you? A sensible woman with looks--especially if she knows how to carry her clothes--can stay in New York as long as she pleases, and live off the fat of the land.”

”That's good news,” said Mildred. She began to like the landlady--not for what she said, but for the free and frank and friendly way of the saying--a human way, a comradely way, a live-and-let-live way.