The dear pretender

CHAPTER I “ Miss Carter ! ”

Nan, hanging her hat on the small overcrowded rack provided for the stenographers at Dorf and Zuckermann's, repressed a slight start at the abrupt¬ ness of the summons. She turned to face the owner of the voice.

He stood, a thick uninviting figure, in his shirt sleeves, mopping a scowling forehead beaded with perspiration. Beneath the handkerchief were dark eyes, concentrating in their depths an ill humor that had become fixed in the lines of his face.

“ Yes, Mr. Dorf.” Nan’s pleasant face held no trace of the repugnance her employer stirred in her. “ I am quite ready.”

She picked up her pad and pencil and followed by the commiserating glances of her fellow workmen, moved swiftly through the door marked Private. As it shut upon her, the tension in the room she had left lifted.

“ Glad ’twasn't me late,” murmured Phoebe Carr as she patted her well padded ear puffs and glanced down at her revealing skirt complacently.

“ Old man’s going to raise hell to-day,” proph¬ esied the office boy, shifting his chewing gum with a noisy smack. There was a note of jubilant excitement in the words. Raising hell meant at least a change in the monotonous routine of things.

Nan, seating herself without fuss by the desk before which Dorf had heavily sunk, found herself stiffening for battle. Dorf, always disagreeable, had in his manner this hot morning a particular menace. His quiet, as he fumbled about his clut¬ tered desk for papers, was the quiet before a gather¬ ing storm.

“ Late again this morning, Miss Carter.” It was flung sidewise at her, an accusation demanding an explanation.

Nan's shoulders lifted ever so slightly.

“ There was a hold-up in the subway,” she said evenly. He might believe it or not. It was the truth.

“ Humph. Yesterday too? ”

“ No.” That was all she would give him, be¬ cause this man would never understand the simple fact of her lingering at her boarding house to do what she might for a woman taken suddenly ill. Nan was polite but uncommunicative.

“Nine o’clock is the rule in this office.” The 6 voice grated on Nan’s sensibilities. “ Anybody who comes trailing in when they—please, does it just so long and no longer. Get me? ”

The tide of anger that swept up in Nan startled her. She knew suddenly that sometime something in her would break loose, and fly openly at Dorf, not beat silently against him. Used as she was, after twelve months’ service here, to this man’s coarseness and rudeness, she found it jarring on her afresh this morning. As a rule he accorded her a politeness of sorts, a contemptuous deference for which Nan had been grateful. It marked at least a discernment of the difference between finely bred Nan Carter and the other stenographers. ,'

But Nan’s gray eyes were calm and undisturbed, hiding successfully the hot flash she had felt. There was no use in showing it, no use in risking the loss of twenty-five a week. Not at this time anyhow, with sister Betty facing the expenses of a doctor’s bill and a new baby, with David needing a suit of clothes-

Her unruffled demeanor irritated the man anew. He plunged into dictation, growling through it at a terrific rate of speed. Nan’s fingers flew, her whole self strung taut in the necessity for swiftness and accuracy. She strained her ears in an effort to un¬ derstand his thick utterance, not daring to pause for 7 thought, not daring to interrupt. An hour of this and she was dismissed with peremptory orders to “ get ’em out at once.”

Nan’s face was white when she returned to her typewriter. The heat instead of flushing her seemed to drain her of strength and color. Her smoke-gray eyes, always big, seemed larger, her fringing lashes and fine curving brows blacker in contrast to her pallor.

“Pretty fierce, was he?” Phcebe’s low-toned query held a note of sympathy. She liked Nan. Everyone liked Nan. In spite of the looks of her she was no snob, and her hair was real gold,—not fixed up a bit.

Nan nodded. Her smile, a little weary, flashed about the room. It had a way of lightening dusty comers, dispelling irritation. Subtly the atmosphere changed as Nan’s head bent over her work. A sharpness disappeared; there was a laugh or two. Nan, unaware that she was the cause for a creeping harmony, was only glad to be here in this room with its clutter and dirt and noise, rather than back in the cooler room with Dorf.

Two hours later she carried the letters in to the man. There had been a noisy conference in here, an angry exit. Miss Ferguson had fainted from the heat in the outer office and Phoebe had produced 8 sardine sandwiches at noon. All these incidents, added to her difficulty in deciphering her own short¬ hand, had put Nan on edge. It was with a sigh of relief that she laid the pile beside Dorf and turned to go.

Luncheon on a day like this was not to be thought of. Nan’s stomach revolted. The sidewalks blazed up at her a heat as intense as that which came blaz¬ ing down. She hurried to one of New York’s little parks. Here at least was shade, the restfulness of green, if one could overlook swarming, squabbling children.

For an hour Nan rested, musing. Was she always and forever to do this sort of work, she wondered? Would she never find the road to her heart’s dream? If only she knew how to go about

hunting for it- But what she wanted was so

unusual that an opening would come only once in a lifetime if it came then. In the meantime she must work to live. She threw her head back, lifting her face to the glaring blue far overhead. How many others were there doing what they didn’t want to do ? How many others were there with need keep¬ ing their feet on the earth and desire struggling to wing them to high open spaces?

A clock on a neighboring church roused Nan from her self-absorption. With dismay she saw it 9 was one o’clock. What had come over her lately to be so careless of time? Breathless and panting she arrived at the office to find it in a stir of ex¬ citement.

Zuckermann had come in with an irate customer. Someone had mixed up a large order of his and his business henceforth would be transferred elsewhere. Zuckermann was furious, Dorf’s grim ugliness a fearful thing. Miss Ferguson was to blame and she had been fired, half sick as she was, and quite re¬ gardless of her long record for good work. Every¬ one was nervous. Sudden silences fell as doors opened. Breathy groans of relief were heard as doors shut. Nan, thankful that her late return was unobserved, slipped quietly into her place.

Her relief was short lived.

“ Miss Carter back yet ? ”

The question held the knowledge of her lateness. Nan, with some trepidation, once more faced Dorf in his office. There was a triumphant leer on his face but strangely enough, he made no comment. Nan felt sure that his restraint boded no good for her. He was holding back for some purpose. Thrusting some letters at her he briefly ordered them typed again. There was heavy sarcasm in his aside to Zuckermann.

“ Maybe some people are too good for this office 10 but they’re not so good they don’t make a million mistakes.”

Nan flushed and paled. This was certainly un¬ deserved. Never once had she flaunted a belief in her superiority to the people about her. In real humility she had worked at first, feeling keenly her inexperience in the business world, giving gener¬ ously admiration and credit where they were due. She had improved swiftly and steadily. Her pride and determination had managed that, but she had also succeeded somehow in retaining her modesty. If she had drawn aside, it was a shrinking taking place entirely within herself. Outwardly she was a good mixer.

She took the letters and returned to her place. A fly buzzed persistently about her damp forehead. The odor in the small office of orange peel and chewing gum and warm, wet bodies grew more nauseating. Twice the room rocked and billowed before Nan’s tired eyes.

At last she was done and trembling with fatigue she stood before Dorf, her gray eyes in a set white face, meeting his narrow gaze quietly.

“ Now little girl, I’ll give you a change of occupa¬ tion. Just take this packet and run down to-

Street and ask for Mr. Katz.”

So this was what he had kept silence for. He 11 knew Nan’s unwillingness to go on errands. Her refusal had settled the matter early in her career there. Her cool look measured his slitted one for a while. Within her something was swelling and swelling.

“ I am not an errand boy, Mr. Dorf. I am a stenographer.”

Nan heard herself in some surprise. Her spirit unafraid of consequences had broken loose at last.

“ You’re not, eh? ” The heavy threatening face on a level with Nan’s moved closer. “ No, I know you’re not. But Charlie’s out on another trip and you like to be obliging. I’m sure you do when you know how much it means to you.” Nan’s mind registered the implication but slid over it. “ This is important. It’s got to get to Katz within an hour. I’m considerate to give you a chance to make up for coming late. Are you going? ”

A little grunt came from the man. Then his face reddened darkly.

“ All right, but I’ll tell you one place you will go. That’s out of this office quick.”

A torrent of angry abusing words fell on the stunned girl. She gathered that she had been con¬ stantly late, always careless, indifferent to office 12 rules and office courtesy. Courtesy! At that she laughed aloud and moved toward the door.

“ Shall I go now? ”

“ Yes, now! ”

Dorf was shouting at her. Nan reminded him that four days’ pay was due her. He made out a check while she went into the outer office and put on her hat. Amid a stupefied silence she met Dorf at his door, gave him a straight, direct look and said clearly with unmistakable sincerity:

“ Thank you very much for discharging me. I'm much more glad to go than you are to have me.”

Her nod and smile as she gave it to the others in the office held nothing but joyous relief. She was glad to go. She was not feeling this a dismissal but an escape.

In the subway on her way up-town she faced the situation fearlessly. She was out of a job, in the middle of the summer, with no reference from the one place she had worked. Her room rent was due in two days and because Nan had succumbed to the lure of an eider-down baby blanket for Betty, she would be unable to meet it.

Having no home to go to, she couldn't go home. The box of a room on the third floor of the board¬ ing house was all that Nan had called home for a 13 year. Of course, Betty would be awfully glad to have her come up to Connecticut, but with David there, and a trained nurse coming so soon, there wouldn’t be space. Besides she couldn’t live on the kindness of her married sister, who was having financial troubles of her own. Pride and considera¬ tion forbade that. Betty was giving their brother David a home till he finished High School. That was enough. No, clearly Nan couldn’t go to Betty. Couldn’t even write her of her dilemma, for fear of disturbing her at this time.

The twins, Bob and Harold, were boarding like herself and Ben was afar West. That ended Nan’s family. She had no one she could call a friend in the whole city of New York.

As Nan got off the subway she bought a news¬ paper. She would run through the “want-ads” as soon as she had reached her room and had cooled herself. There might, there just might be an open¬ ing somewhere waiting for her. Usually somebody wanted a stenographer.

At that Nan found herself in open rebellion. The spirit that had broken loose in her before Dorf, that had made her meet his gloating over her dis¬ aster with cool indifference, was raging in her, pos¬ sessing her. She found herself declaring she would not be a stenographer again. She would not settle 14 down to a work more than distasteful to her. She would do what she wanted to do, somehow, some¬ way.

Bright-eyed, a little breathless but with this daring new determination hardening in her she finally reached her room. It was not attractive, even with Nan’s personal possessions warming and coloring it, but it had been a refuge from detested toil and Nan had grown to love it. It boasted a narrow white iron bed, a white bureau with a cracked mirror, a table that served as desk, one chair and one window. Nan’s pictures on the whitewashed wall and the gay cretonne curtains and bed covering saved it from dreariness.

She flung up the window, pushed back the cur¬ tains and leaned out. Below her lay one of New York’s hottest streets, its narrow width a clutter of small humanity swarming to noisy play. Shops bulged their wares onto the sidewalks where fat women sat in stolid untidiness. Bits of paper, swirling in a hot breeze, fluttered up, then down again. Truck carts rattled by, vendors shouting their wares. A sickening odor of overripe fruit was borne up to Nan and she turned back to her room wrinkling a small nose in disgust.

She slipped of! her hat and dress, bathed her face, neck and hands and then, in a light kimono, 15 stretched herself on her bed with the paper. She would run through the “ want-ads”—there was time before dinner—and if there was nothing there of interest—she would—yes she would—put one in herself. And she would not offer her services as a stenographer.

With a practiced eye she ran down the list. A few stenographers, many cooks, any number of general houseworkers were desired. Nan sighed, frowned, then laughed. She laughed because she was young and untried and ignorant; because this was the first time she had ever gone job hunting; because her predicament offered adventure, a new freedom, sweet for all its danger; and myriad fan¬ tastic solutions for an imaginative mind such as Nan's. She laughed and was gloriously unafraid, serenely confident, irrevocably determined not to return to the business world.

Saturday came and Nan, firmly established in the affections of the landlady, received permission to stay a week longer. It was magnanimous, for Mrs. Brent possessed a sharp nature covering a softness that none in the house but Nan had dis¬ covered.

Nan, a little anxious now, a little sharper eyed, was sweetly grateful. She had learned a good deal in two days, had Nan, and though she still did not 16 regret the chain of circumstances that had led to her dismissal from Dorf & Zuckermann’s, was still firm in her refusal to return to an office, she never¬ theless appreciated the regularity of a weekly pay envelope from whatever source it might come. Daily visits to employment agencies, nightly scan¬ ning of a dozen newspapers jogged Nan’s courage but not her faith. Somewhere in the world was the empty place she wanted to fill, the work she wanted to do.

Sunday night Nan very earnestly worked over an “ ad ” she intended to run in the papers for a few days. It was a desperate chance, this spending of her next to last dollars, but something had to be done. Waiting, and watching were only doings of a sort. She must actively take a step to procure for herself what she so desired.

By Wednesday night Nan was hanging to her belief in the eternal allrightness of things out of sheer stubbornness. Three days left for someone to answer her ad. Three days more in which she might see one that appealed to her. After that— Nan, wondering herself,—laughed a little.

She has always believed it was the laugh that did it. Laughter always sets the Hard Luck Fairies to scampering, always acts as a clear summons for the Good Luck Fairies to gather about. But of 17 course her laugh did not put the advertisement in the paper. It was there all the time, next to hers, so startlingly close as to seem a direct answer.

Hers was making its appearance for the last time, a simple clear request.

“ Wanted—a position as Mother in a family of wealth and refinement. References given. Inter¬ view requested. Address H. A. Carter—c/o Even¬ ing Sun.”

And below it she saw a heaven-sent reply dove¬ tailing to her need.

“ Wanted—a lover of children to act as pseudo¬ mother to a boy and a girl. Education, tact, patience and culture are the only requirements. Salary generous. References asked and given. Answer XYZ c/o Evening Sun.”

Nan rose from her bed, wonder and excitement lighting her like a flame.

“ I knew it,” she whispered. “ I’ve always known it. If you wait long enough and want hard enough dreams do come true.”

It was a delicate task, this answering of the ad¬ vertisement. Nan wanted it to be unique, desired it to stand out clearly among the others that she knew would pour in to XYZ. It must interest and pique so that an interview would result.

She used up sheets of paper, scribbling away in 18 her hot little room, but nothing quite satisfied. Finally an idea came to her. She cut out the two advertisements, pasted them together on a clean sheet of paper and then wrote quite simply,—

Dear XYZ:

The first advertisement is mine. The second is yours. It seems to me that they answer each other. May we not make sure in an inter¬ view?

Yours very truly,

(Miss) Hannah-Anne Carter.

Chapter II

Nan had clung to her dream through many years, dipping it here, adding to it there as she had matured, until now it was as clear and shining and whole as a bright new penny.

What she wanted was a husbandless home and fatherless children and enough money to buy her¬ self the clothes she had been denied in her aching girlhood. The home was to be filled with every luxury man could devise, and it was to be hers by right of her position as mother make-believe; the children were to be a curly-haired girl and a sturdylimbed lad and were to be hers by the conquest of love; and the money was to be hers in payment for her intelligent, loving services.

If it sounds selfish you must know that it was not calculatingly and deliberately so. It was the nature of events, not the nature of Nan that had twisted a husband out of her dreams and had left her undesirous of the difficult adjustment to wifehood and the physical discomfort of motherhood. There was a reason back of it, the reason being a deeprooted and sincere distrust of men. In Nan's brief experience they had proved themselves cruel in their betrayal of friendship, ruthless in their material greed and in their wanton robbing of 20 women. All men were like that. Oh, Nan knew! Her whole life told her so. Men were not to be trusted, therefore not to be liked, and certainly not to be loved or married,—not by Nan Carter at any rate.

Nan's first glimpse into the selfish souls of men had been on a wintry night many years ago.

Never would she forget that dreadful time when her father came home from a place called Business and forgot to laugh. He stood knee-deep among Nan's younger brothers—there were so many! wee David, toddling Ben and the boisterous twins of four,—his face strange, his voice stranger as he said to Mother:

“ Fight’s over, Mother, and I'm beaten.”

Nan looked for signs of combat on Daddy and was mystified to find none. When the twins fought one of them always got bloody. Daddy explained later, when sister Betty and her brothers were all in bed, that it was his heart that was bleeding inside him, because he was beaten in the game of life and a dream was broken.

Nan was surprised at this. Did grown-ups dream too? About wishing wands and fairies clothed in dresses like milky moonlight ? She waited trying to fathom this new look of hurt and defeat in the eyes so like her own.

Then Daddy explained some more. How his dream had been to put on the market a machine that he and another man had spent years inventing and which was at last perfected; how just as they had been ready to do so, a combination of companies, knowing about this new machine and wanting to share in the profits it would make, had decided to force Dad's company to join them; how this had angered him so he had decided to fight the Trust; and how for three years he had played a losing game, seeing the Trust steal his best customers from him because they could afford to undersell him; how at last his money was all gone, his business wrecked and his hope of marketing the machine more of a dream than ever.

The bitterest part of it all had been the discovery that one of the men—a friend of Dad's, whom Dad believed to be the largest stockholder of the new trust,—had apparently voted with the rest of the men to force Dad to join or quit Dad had felt sure his influence could have avoided the catas¬ trophe.

Nine-year-old Nan thrilled with sympathy and throbbed with hate. She did not, of course, grasp all the business details. Two facts only were clear in her child mind. First, letting the Trust share the profits of a machine you had helped invent was 22 as bad as letting someone else name your baby. Dad had to fight. Second, having lost the fight, it meant, instead of broken bones or a bleeding nose, that they would all have to leave their lovely big home, move away to another town and squeeze into a tiny house without anybody to cook for them or cut the grass or be nurse for the children. Nan would have to be nurse and Mother would be cook and Dad would cut the grass.

That is just what happened.

While it was new it was quite fun. They all made a game of it. But as the days went by and Mother grew first silent and then bitter under the daily drudging toil, life became a thing of aching endurance.

For four years Nan did the work of a woman. Out of school it was her business to care for baby David, the twins, Ben and Betty. Nan liked the responsibility of this big task. She had an immense capacity for loving babies and a strangely mature wisdom concerning them. Day after day Nan briskly organized the play with an authority that was never questioned. She gravely administered justice and settled disputes. She capably washed hands and tied shoe-strings, tenderly bathed bumps, lovingly sang songs and patiently told stories. Most precious reward after hours of such tiring 23 service that wearied her slim little body, brushed the fairy grace from her movements and painted shadows under her brave gray eyes, was Dad’s dear hand resting on her head and his look that dove deep into her heart and set it trembling, as he said,—

“You blessed Nan-shine! We couldn’t get along without you. You stand things better than the grown-ups.”

It was true, for Nan’s imagination aided and abetted by Daddy-dearest readily transformed shrunken, faded clothes into splendid raiment, bent and broken shoes into magic boots, a bare, shabby yard into a garden inhabited by fairies. At present they were all under a spell cast by the Hard Luck Fairies—a spell that imposed work and deprivations and sordidness,—but in time the spell would be broken and the Good Luck Fairies would come trooping back bringing wealth, space, leisure and grace of spirit such as Nan remembered and longed for.

But the worst thing the Hard Luck Fairies had done was to bewitch Mother. Nan was deeply troubled over it and she could find no way to aid in breaking the evil charm that was woven about her. The fairy that did it kept on doing it,—carving ugly lines in her face, putting sour words in her mouth, dragging at her hands and her feet until she became 24 as gnarled outside as inside. Nan and Daddy disrcussed this happening at length, with sorrow rather than anger, with pity rather than fear. And it was the things that Daddy said at that time that stayed by Nan through many years to come.

“ There are Hard Luck Fairies and Good Luck Fairies, you know, Nan-shine,” he told her, “ and if the Hard Luck Fairies once get a grip on you it’s difficult to shake them off. The best way to hold them off is to keep smiling.”

“ You really do believe in fairies, don’t you, Daddy?”

“ I really do,” he told her gravely.

“ And dreams?”

There wasn’t a moment’s hesitation on the part of the man whose life dream had gone to smash.

“ And dreams,” he said steadily.

“ But yours didn’t come true.”

“ It hasn’t yet, and probably I will never be the one to make it come true. But if it’s a dream worth having, it’ll come true some day.”

“ Then dreams that aren’t worth having don’t come true ? ”

“ Well, you couldn’t blame the good fairies for not making them come true, could you? ”

“ But Daddy—yours ? ”

Daddy reflected, meeting the earnest, questioning 25 gaze of the little girl at his knee, who was trying so hard to reconcile Fancy and Reason.

“ Perhaps I was selfish about mine. Perhaps I should have shared it with the Trust. Perhaps that’s why I can’t be the one to make it come true.” Then he took Nan’s little hands in his big ones and his voice deepened. “ You will have lots of dreams. Nan-shine, but keep the dearest one a dream of service, if you can. The fairies will back you in it every time, I’m sure.”

Soon after this the long years of strain and work snapped something in Daddy. A lingering illness finally took him from them and Mrs. Carter was left to battle with life for her children.

By putting a fairly large mortgage on the little house the Carters were able to struggle along but it was difficult business at best and Nan, growing up, found life perplexing. One could not always change the facts of living for the fancy of dreams. One had to face the need for food, the anxiety of illness, the terror of unpaid bills, the increasing ugliness of her mother’s temper worn out by worry and work. Nan tried to shut her ears to daily com¬ plaints but the acidity that had become habitual to the older woman could not but have its effect on her. She came gradually to believe that the men who had ruined her father financially had been in- 26 directly the instruments of his death. With this belief came Nan’s first glimpse into the depths of her soul. If this were true then she hated those men as greatly as she had loved her father. She said nothing, but the hatred was bom and nourished by the words of her mother.

She came to believe too that if a man’s friends weren’t to be trusted, certainly strangers weren’t; that the only way to go through life was to regard with dark suspicion and intense dislike all those of the male species. Mrs. Carter practiced faithfully what she preached. Nan, shrinking, listened to squabbles with butcher and grocer; sharp-voiced bargaining over counters; soft-footed spying upon plumber and carpenter to see that idleness was not being paid for. Nan despised this way of living. She hated the worn little cottage where their lovely old mahogany furniture was such a sad misfit. She remembered distinctly her first home, its cool spaciousness, soft colors, gleaming floors and wood¬ work, remembered and craved it with the fierceness of a young girl’s desire for luxury.

Nan at fourteen was a contradiction. There were battling in her two impulses, the one an impulse to slump to the dinginess of her life, accepting it as her inevitable lot and growing bitter of speech like her mother; the other a winging desire to believe in 27 a beauty and loveliness that must some day be hers, because she wanted it so. Day by day Nan's great gray eyes darkened in mutiny at the cramping of finances, the denial of pleasures belonging to youth, the dreariness of greasy dish water and worn-out cut-over clothes, for she was a very human little girl. But the memory of her father always helped her to close her lips against audible rebellion and her inherited ability to dream kept her spirit brave and sweet.

At first Nan's dream was simply to get back into a place of beauty, to a house where she might have a room to herself and need never wash dishes. But gradually there was added to this desire for a home, a desire for money and babies. Somehow, some¬ where, Nan would acquire a couple of children who would be as much hers as though they really were!