The glorious hope

Chapter I

Evelyn Kerwin waved good-bye to “ the crowd ” at the little railway station and shook herself like a cat after a nap under the parlor stove. After all, she had been asleep, if not under, then beside the parlor stove for some twenty-two years. Ugh ! How she hated that parlor stove with its red isinglass teeth eternally grinning at her and her dream. All the memories of her life were bound up with that parlor stove. As a little thing she could remember being bathed in front of it. As a school girl she had learned her lessons on winter nights snuggled up beside it, and from graduation day onward she had flirted across its grin with the various beaux of the village.

And now it was sold. Tony Crack, the Italian farmer, had purchased it. “ Goody, goody, goody ! ” she murmured. “ It’s sold ! ” Then she smiled as she thought of all the little Cracks being bathed and educated and courted in the glare of those halffriendly, half-sneering red teeth.

Only the tiniest little pull came at her throat as the train wound out of Port Illington. More for sentimentality than for any real emotion she wandered to the back platform oif the train and watched the tracks come to a point and dwindle away like her own past.

“ Well, that’s over at last,” she said, going to her seat and making herself comfortable for the journey. “ There isn’t a single thing in Port Illington that I want. Thank all the gods, I’m through with it!” She folded her veil neatly and tucked it into her suit case. Her coat and hat she covered with a cretonne bag (stitched up especially for the journey), then settling down comfortably against a pillow she drooped her eyelids and looked at the snow that billowed by in rivers of whiteness on either side of the onrushing train.

Sometimes it seemed to her that the succession of mounds were little graves, and she shuddered at the thought of how cold it must be under them. At other moments the bouncing hillocks were white hopes, all virgin pure without any mud spots of disappointment to tarnish them.

The farm-houses hurried by, sending out cosy little streamers of orange light, but Evelyn knew all about the loneliness that haunted the people on the home side of those little orange streamers, and her heart went out to them. Her heart went out to a farmer who spun by the window dangling a lantern from his freezing fingers. Her heart went out to the horses stumbling along uncertainly over the creaking road. She felt sorry for everything in the world that was tied down and could not get away. That meant that she felt sorry for everything but herself. She felt glad, very glad, for herself.

There were various reasons why she should feel glad for herself. She was so glad that she began to sob a happy kind of sob, that came from burying a crotchety old guardian and selling all her household goods, including the parlor stove with the red teeth, for one thousand dollars and a railway ticket to New York.

Rupert Hughes says that for every five minutes of the day and night, one girl comes to New York to make her life. Nine-tenths of these little heroines have never seen Fifth Avenue, or a yacht, or a butler, or a glass of champagne, or the ocean, or a person of social importance, but if this is true, at least the other one-tenth are girls like Evelyn Kerwin, of good education and family: girls who have most probably had a Cook’s Tour Abroad: girls who are by no means inexperienced, or ordinary, or poor : girls who are not satisfied to marry their first beau and settle down to the monotony of life in a small town, but whose hearts cry out for the chance to get somewhere and be somebody.

A modem psychologist has offered a theory that all young things should be pushed out of their homes at the age of eighteen. Evelyn Kerwin had waited

IO THE GLORIOUS HOPE

four years past the scheduled time. During those four years she had twice been on the verge of an absurd marriage, but each time some of that glorious hope of youth — call it energy, love, passion — had whispered things about a great career, and she had broken the engagement. So she was still free and now, in addition, she was rich in the possession of a thousand dollars. Young, rich, and independent, she had looked about her for a great career, and it had taken very little looking to* convince her that at Port Ulington, Wisconsin, she would never find any career whatever.

New York! Other cities are important for this or that, but there is only one New York. Chicago, for instance, is a place to know. One visits there, one shops there. But New York! New York is the pot of gold that lures one on to the very end of the rainbow ! New York is the dream that slumbers in the brain of every imaginative youth in America. New York is the top of the world ! There is nothing beyond New York !

Evelyn knew the Chicago cobblestones by heart, and she begrudged the time it took to ride from one station to the other. She begrudged the slowness of the fastest train she could take to New York. She begrudged all the daytime because it dragged, but she loved the night because it brought the glory nearer.

At last the earth that had been like a weddingcake frosted with the January snow, began to show ii a dusting of grime. The beautiful rivers of whiteness that billowed by on either side, turned black and dirty. Tin cans poked up; in a ditch some cast-off shoes, still holding the shape of the last wearer’s feet, flashed stiffly by.

Evelyn looked down at her own neatly laced boots. How smooth they were! They showed none of those hideous lumpy joints that spell drudgery and long hours. She felt sorry for those shoes in the ditch just as she had felt sorry for the lonely little farm-houses a few hours before. She was so happy that she felt sorry for everything and everybody in the wide world but herself.

The New York crowds seemed more aggressive than the Chicago crowds. Uniformed men tried to grab her bags. Boys jostled her. Women stepped on her toes. The mass of people swung up the iron stairs to the main floor of the Pennsylvania station and she swung with them. The back of her skirt kept working around in front of her feet just on purpose to make her stumble. There was a squeeze in her throat and a panic in the pit of her stomach. For the first time she was a little awed and frightened at her boldness in daring to come.

“Pm not the slightest bit afraid of anything!” she said to herself, and, breathing deeply and throwing back her head, she mumbled something that she dimly remembered about “ The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold, and his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold ; and the sheen of their spears was like stars on the sea, where the blue wave rolls nightly on deep Galilee.”

There was a conquering little turban of purple and gold on her head, and she felt a very wolf indeed coming valiantly down on the artistic fold of New York.

The second verse of the poem she had entirely forgotten —

“ Like the leaves of the forest when summer is green,

That host with their banners at sunset were seen ;

Like the leaves of the forest when autumn hath blown,

That host on the morrow lay withered and strown.”

Then the last triumphant line popped conveniently into her head —

“ Hath melted like snow in the glance of the Lord ! ”

The mere fact that she had unconsciously twisted the meaning to suit her own case in no way disturbed her workaday mind. She was far too clever to admit publicly that she felt equally mighty with the glance of the Lord, but she saw no reason why she shouldn’t think it just to herself. It gave her courage ; it made her thrill with the thrill of “ See the Conquering Hero Comes ! ”

It was five o’clock, and a dark winter night. Thirty-Third Street was dingy in spite of its glare of electric lights.

Nothing is so compelling as the first sight of a strange city. One must stop and stare even if the penalty be the guillotine.

Evelyn looked up at a second-story window on Seventh Avenue and watched a hunchbacked seamstress cover up her sewing machine for the night. Other women appeared out of the dark street doorways, stopped a moment for courage, then drawing themselves up tightly, rushed off and disappeared into the cold.

The little hunchback came down and, without even a second's hesitation, opened the street door and walked straight away into the shadows, her thin coat unbuttoned and flying in the wind. Probably she courted disaster.

Little droves of Je wish-looking men, bent-shouldered and nodding, shuffled along in the melting snow. Across the street a gay yellow restaurant advertised a seventy-five-cent table d'hote on its painted front.

Evelyn waited for a break in the flow of vehicles, then crossed over and peeped through the window. It was all very gorgeous and glittery. People were swinging in through the revolving door, and swinging out were faint whiffs of music and food.

O for an invisible cap that she might wander about looking into windows all night long !

“Alone, Miss ? ” asked a sleek-looking gentleman.

This was so cheap to have happened to her. It was like a cheap novel and she wasn't in the least interested in that type of literature. She wasn't afraid of him. She wasn’t afraid of anything, but, nevertheless, her body trembled and her heart thumped, and she felt hanging over her the power of broad pavements, tall buildings, rushing motors, great cities — something that she had never glimpsed before — something bigger and more powerful than her own desires.

The uncertainty of things began to smother her. She clutched the handle of her brown bag with cramped vigor. Inside its darkness, among handkerchiefs and stockings and lingerie and blouses, nestled her letter of introduction to Anna Dickenson. Arguing that at least for her the road was friendly, she stepped up to a policeman and inquired the way to 540 East Seventy-Seventh Street.

The policeman towered above her like the Charter Oak, extending two of its branches for her suit cases.

“ Did you check your baggage, Miss? ”

She beamed very charmingly and assured him that what he had in his hands was all she possessed — lock, stock, and barrel. He must have thought her really nice, because he left his post and walked up to Thirty-Fourth Street and put her on a cross-town car and told her to change to the Second Avenue car, and get off at Seventy-Seventh Street and walk two blocks east.

And she was nice in a way, and above the average — like brussels sprouts when you think of them in a world of cabbages.

Chapter II

“ Will you please tell me which way is up town? ” she asked of an old chestnut man on Thirty-Fourth Street and Second Avenue. After he told her she stood on the far side instead of the near side, and the first five cars slid by haughtily before she discovered that the slight wasn’t personal. But on the whole, Seventy-Seventh Street was creditably reached if it wasn’t creditably crossed.

That swarm of little human beings ! Where in God’s name did they come from? Who were they? . . . She tried to escape trampling them,

but invariably she would step aside from one of them only to collide with another.

“Aw, lee me carry yuh baggage, Miss ! Fi’ cents, Miss! Lee me carry it for fi’ cents, Miss! ”

She. was on the verge of yielding, when she hazily remembered something about child-labor laws, and decided that a young person was more in need of a sound back than he was of five cents’ worth of lollipops. And then they were such filthy children! Imagine living with one’s bag after the handle had got intimate with one of those germy little squirmers !

i6

“No! No! Children!” she said determinedly, thereupon expecting them to fall away in Indian file to the side.

Had Evelyn Kerwin known more about mob psychology she would have broken all the child-labor laws on the calendar and risked living with a septic bag for the remainder of her natural days. How those cut-throats in miniature had loved her the moment before! Now as she repeated “ No! ” they tore at her coat tails, kicked at her luggage, and shouted ridicule in her ears.

“ Baggage man ! Baggage man ! Adams Express Company ! Lady truck horse ! ”

She was deeply hurt. “ This, then, is the reward of altruism,” she murmured, and as a sentimentalist walks over an ant hill she marched bravely on, never looking back, but hoping that not too many had been crushed in her passage.

It was comforting to talk out loud. “ Never mind,” she said, “ I wouldn't go back to Wisconsin for ten million dollars!” But inside at that very moment she wished miserably that her dead mother were rocking beside the old red-toothed stove so that she might crawl right under the well-remembered big white apron and cry her eyes out.

In New York, people always live in the last house on the block, and (when there is no lift, and the mercury is trying to slink out of the bottom of the thermometer) on the top floor

1 7

To Evelyn the big East Side tenement was like a seven-story monster. The entrance was a huge open mouth that swallowed her suddenly, and there she stood shivering at the bottom of a grey sky-topped well, with four winding outside stairways probably leading straight up to the golden streets of heaven.

The longer she hesitated the more frightened she became. She mightn’t have been so brave about adventuring if it hadn’t just happened that old lady Pritchard had had a friend, Carrie Dickenson, whose daughter, Anna, lived quietly at 540 East Seventy- Seventh Street in what were called the “ Model Dwellings.”

Of course, Evelyn didn’t know Anna — but then, after all, that didn’t much matter, because Anna’s mother was Carrie, and Carrie was old lady Pritchard’s friend, and Evelyn knew old lady Pritchard so well that anybody recommended by her was sure to be highly respectable and kind.

Evelyn selected the stairway that included flat Fifty-Nine, and began to ascend. She panted and climbed, and climbed and panted for interminable centuries it seemed to her, and still the card-holders on the doors refused to show the homely name of Anna Dickenson.

On the fifth landing Evelyn drew her skirts tightly about her and sat down on one of the bags to rest. She looked carefully about. It all seemed quite clean and nice to the naked eye, but when one coni8 siders the microscopic secrets of a drop of ordinary water, one can’t be too careful.

Somebody shrieked. Heads popped out of the court windows. Folks grew neighborly in Italian, Bohemian, Scandinavian, and Yiddish. It didn’t at all matter that nobody was listening. Everybody talked.

Evelyn pressed her hands over her ears. She knew there would be a pistol shot or a bomb! But nothing happened. Presently the heads all turtled back into their shells; windows banged shut; and Evelyn, clutching her luggage, started up again.

At last, like a diver rising to the surface, she reached the top floor. There was flat Fifty-Nine facing her, but instead of a door-plate with the solid name of Anna Dickenson this saucy sign painted in orange and vermilion :

Marj Prouty.

IF YOU ARE TIRED, SIT DOWN AND REST.

IF YOU ARE VERY TIRED,

COME IN AND HAVE A CUP OF TEA.

No Charges.

Standing at the door was a lovely little chair of Chinese lacquer with a black satin seat embroidered in golden pagodas. Anybody might have flitted it away on the tip of his thumb, yet it wasn’t even fastened to the wall.

Evelyn's fingers were purplish with cold, She blew on them and stuffed them deep into her pockets. Then, as she was tired, she sat down on the little Chinese chair to rest.

Suddenly she stood up and read the sign again :

Marj Prouty.

IF YOU ARE TIRED, SIT DOWN AND REST.

IF YOU ARE VERY TIRED,

COME IN AND HAVE A CUP OF TEA.

No Charges.

It all sounded very sweet and generous, but New York hadn’t the reputation for being sweet and generous. Besides, Evelyn had read that dreadful report of the Chicago Vice Committee, and as she had a cumulative brain she had pigeon-holed what she read.

So she was just about to descend those many stairs and search out the local Y. W. C. A., when the door flew open to the music of Chinese jingle bells, and a slim young girl in a transparent kimono appeared.

“Are you just tired or very tired?” asked the young girl.

“ I’m not particularly either, but I must say I’m a bit upset because I can’t find the girl I had a letter to.”

“ Who’d you have a letter to? ”

“A Miss Dickenson, Miss Anna Dickenson.”

The young girl laughed and pushed her bobbed hair out of her eyes.

“ Short-waisted Anna ! Bless her old religious heart, she used to live here, but she’s gone over with a ship-load of Holy Bibles to China.”

“ Oh, is that so! ” said Evelyn, because she actually didn’t know what else to say with her mind racing around like a rat in a pantry trying to puzzle out this charming-looking, Hat-chested little girl-woman.

“ I suppose you’re Marj Prouty?” she ventured.

The other nodded. Then she bowed low and, spreading her arms out straight from her sides, said : “ I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, come within my tent and my servants shall bathe thy weary feet and thou shalt receive presents at my hand. In other words, you’re alone in a wicked city, so pick up your bags and come on inside and make yourself comfortable.”

As Evelyn remembered afterwards, this probably was the moment to recall that dreadful report of the Chicago Vice Committee, bid this plausible young woman good day, and depart. Instead, she permitted herself and her luggage to be drawn inside the gaily painted door, she allowed herself to be seated in a spreading willow chair, and presently, when the little brass tea-kettle began to boil, eagerly accepted a hot cup of lemony tea and asked for two lumps.

“ Now then, Miss What’s-your-name, from I don’t know where,” her strange hQstess remarked, “ don’t you go worrying.”

“I’m not!” Evelyn cried quickly. “And I’m Evelyn Irene Kerwin, from Port Illington, Wisconsin.”

“ Whatche doin’ so far from home? ” asked Marj, flopping down on the floor in front of Evelyn and gathering a big bundle of black Persian cat into her lap.

All warmed inside with the tea, Evelyn reached into her brown bag and pulled out a huge roll of paper.

“ I’ve come to New York because I’m a writer ! ” she said excitedly. “Short stories! You see, I became a regular orphan only last week. So here I am ! I’ve only got a thousand dollars, but I’ll be making loads more before that’s gone. I’m disappointed, though. Mrs. Pritchard was sure that — Oh, you ought to know Mrs. Pritchard ! She’s the dearest old colonial thing that ever paddled around in hand-knit stockings — well, she was positive Anna Dickenson would put me up till I found some place to live ! ”

Marj jumped and clapped her hands with delight. The black cat, decidedly offended, spilled out on the floor and sulked away.

“ Woman ! ” Marj screamed, clapping her hands again, “ you talk faster and more incoherently than even I! You’re a real find!” Then she put on a sanctimonious face. “Anna was my friend — longlegged, virtuous Anna, who is now heckling the pitiful Chinese. Well, for her sake, I will put you up for the night. And to-morrow ? As Mr. Kipling might have said, to-morrow is another day.”

Marj began pulling out dresser drawers and dancing about the flat.

“ Here’s a bath towel and there’s one for your face, and behind that door is the tub. Chuck your pack in the little room, and if there’s anything else you want, scream ! ”

Evelyn began to thrill with excitement. Marj was certainly different from anything she had ever seen at Port Illington: or Madison or even Chicago. But then, that was just why she had come away — to see things and people that were different from people and things at Port Illington or Madison or even Chicago. This was no ten-cent movie. This was real life !

In the tub she splashed and gurgled and thanked God for His wisdom in calling Anna to the heathen Chinese. Anna was probably Port Illington or worse, but Marj Prouty — why, Marj was a million fiction stories a minute !

As a bath in a strange house leaves one a stranger no longer, Evelyn emerged flushed and reassured, and Marj plucked at the damp curls that clung to her guest’s forehead and pouted.

“ Lovely hair ! Mine is stiff as a picket fence. Fall into your clothes now. Party here to-night.

Fancy dress ball afterwards. I’ll say you’re my old college chum, Eve.”

“ You’re awfully good to me,” said Eve. “ Why, I’m a perfect stranger to you.”

“ Stale stuff, kid. Great in the golden ’forties, but won’t go in New York now. You’re fresh and new and I’m bored — that’s the only reason on God’s green footstool I’m taking you in. I want a thrill! My kingdom for a thrill ! ”

And then the girl-woman came close up to Eve and spoke tight-throatedly : “ There isn’t a day in the year that I don’t drag in a weeping Italian or a Jew and water him with a cup of Orange Pekoe tea and let him talk his hands and feet off! Bored, bored ! I do these things because I’m bored ! ”

“ I thought,” said Eve cautiously, “ maybe you were a writer, too, and looking for atmosphere.”

“Atmosphere ! ” shrieked Marj, twirling about on one foot and landing in a lump on the mulberry taffeta divan. “Atmosphere! Why, there’s more atmosphere in that Charles Dickens family of mine that I left back there in Texas than there is on the whole island of Manhattan ! ”

“ I suppose that’s true about everybody’s family,” sighed Eve, undoing her hair and shaking it out into a large dark fan ; “ but the trouble is that one never suspects one’s own family of being interesting, one’s time is so occupied trying to escape them.”

“ Spring is coming, and this is no time for melarp choly retrospect. Hurry, Eve, or they’ll be here before you’re dressed.”

Eve flew to the little room and fumbled about in her once orderly bags for a certain white chiffon blouse.

“ Say, you hostess lady!” she called. “May I say, Marj ? Guess I’ll have to if we’re to be old college chums. Say, Marj, girl, what do you do for a living? ”

“ Oh, I’m an interior decorator person. Funny how you can get automobile trade over to the East Side if you have something new to offer them. Ever heard about Eddie Goodman and the Washington Square Players? Bunch of writers and artists mad enough at Broadway to start an East Side Theatre of their own. You ought to see the Pierce Arrows crowding around that entrance. Half the mutts that paddle over there don’t understand the plays, but it’s new. Hang it all, the world would break the whole Ten Commandments if you could show ’em a new way to do it.”

Eve emerged buttoning up her blouse. “You know, Marj, I really suspected you the moment I saw those blue-grey curtains and that orange taffeta frill on your white book-shelf. I’m just plain stupid when it comes to decoration. If I try to arrange a bath-room, it simply laughs in my face.”

“All bunk! ” answered Marj, straightening a print of old Sogi who had suddenly got tipsy in the breeze.

“Absolutely all bunk ! Never studied it in my life. Simply had to do something, so< I went to the library one afternoon and spent two solid hours learning how to decorate. More feeling in me for that than for litrature. Notice how I pronounce it. That’s how they say it in Greenwich Village. You’ll have to know the Village ! ”

“ I want to know everything,” said Eve, running her fingers over the big golden lampshade as though she had high hopes of coaxing some of the painted peacocks to strut off into her hands. “A big city is glorious. I thrilled all over when I came into Pennsylvania station. I’m thrilling now because you took me in. I’ll never, never want to go out West again.”

“ Don’t be a fool, Eve Kerwin ! ” and Marj’s voice was a little trembly. “ You will want to go back — that’s just the sad part of it.”

Marj stood at the window, her eyes on the oily grey river where a big mud-scow was floating out toward the ocean.

“ You will want to go back,” she repeated half to herself. “ You’ll cry big wet tears all over the page when you write to the girls at home, and then some day, when you can’t stand it any longer, you’ll go.” Marj turned suddenly with her little fists clenched tight. “And then you’ll find you don’t fit in any more! ”

Suddenly they both found themselves crying some of those big wet tears.

Marj spoke again : “ Oh, it isn’t that I still want Texas. It’s too little, too 1 cramped, too set in its ideas ; but way off here it’s so big and unstable and so horribly all alone. Sometimes I get perfectly frantic for something to cling to. . . . Put on

your belt ! ”

Eve went into the other room and hunted for her belt. Suddenly she noticed a little black clock that was ticking its life away on the green-painted chest of drawers,

“ Marj ! ” she called out in fright, “ it’s eight o’clock now ! ”

Marj came to the door.

“ Eight o’clock? Well, what of it? You don’t think folks in New York dine at six, do you? My child, this is not Port Illington. Folks here — that is, my kind of folks — dine when they’re hungry.”

“Yes,” faltered Eve, “I know; but you haven’t even begun preparing anything ! Can’t I do something to help? ”

“ Yes. You water the cretonne flowers on the bedspread ! ”

Chapter III

Just then the Chinese bells began to jingle and Marj raced to the door, her kimono floating wide.

“ Hello, Marj ! ”

“ Hello!”

“ Here’s the eats ! ”

“ Look what I brang ! ”

“ Look what he brang! ”

“ Look what the Pij brang ! ”

Five men marched in, and Marj kissed them each as a Contessa Montessori might kiss her kindergarten babies.

Eve snatched a pearl brooch from her own bosom and pinned Marj’s kimono together over her envelope chemise.

“ You poor little provincial,” purred Marj, patting Eve’s head, “ you remind me of something I had quite forgotten — my own body!” Turning, she announced: “Boys, this is Eve, an old friend of mine ! ” Then she leaped to the centre of the table, waved both hands, and barked : “ This creature was caught in the wilds of Wisconsin by the desire to be one of us in New York! At present she’s horribly tame and unmade, but shows promise of great possibilities. What am I bid? What am I bid? ”

“Three pounds of chicken salad!” howled the Pigeon, dropping his donation to the supper at Marj’s feet.

“ Blessed old Pij ! ” said Marj, doubling over and kissing his bald spot. “ He always brings something expensive! He’s the only man in the bunch with money, and therefore the only one who is being done to a crisp all the time. But he loves it ! Well, Pij, this is Eve Kerwin. Eve, this is the Pij.”

He bowed low.

“ Welcome to the garden, Eve, and may you find the serpent entertaining.”

Marj pulled forward the next man.

“ This is Daffodil. See his lovely yellow curls ? Being a boy and knowing he can’t overcome it, we excuse him for not being a girl.”

The Daffodil was a tall blue-eyed youth who wrote verse and starved to death. He kissed Eve’s finger-tips with affectionate and becoming melancholy.

“And this is Butts, the tight-wad ! ”

Butts’ two arms were laden with packages, and Eve thought Marj unjust and blushed rosily for Butts ; but seeing that the others, including the laden Butts himself, were howling at what they seemed to consider a family joke, she hastily withdrew her sympathy.