Masquerading Mary

Chapter I

The train, southward bound from New York, moved rapidly, sometimes gliding with incred¬ ible smoothness on shining rails, sometimes rock¬ ing and swaying on a new road bed, rattling over a bridge, shrieking through a non-stop town, puffing and panting into the station of a city. It moved so rapidly that it seemed to be getting ahead of the feeble February day¬ light and catching up w T ith the darkness.

“ A day coach ain’t so bad in the day time — but believe me, it’s something fierce when it gets dark outside. I feel like I’d been born and brought up on these old red velvet cushions and haven’t ever had any ‘other home. I can t re¬ member when I wasn’t bouncing along some¬ where between New York and Baltimore with a baby crying in the next seat and a bald headed man eating peanuts and rattling a newspaper across the ’aisle. I know I ve got a ticket to 7

Richmond, Virginia, and sometime along about one in the morning I’ll get there — I know it, but I can’t believe it. I feel like I’m going to spend the rest of my young life right on these old red cushions.”

The speaker was a woman of ample figure and face, pleasing looking in spite of the in¬ human aspect of her hair, which showed unmis¬ takable signs of having gone through many and various ordeals both at the hands of the perma¬ nent waver and far from permanent dyer. Her hair was a streaked mahogany red, with purple shadows and peroxide high lights. Her re¬ marks were addressed to a young woman whom the fortune of travel had made her seat mate.

“ Oh, don’t we arrive in Richmond before that time? I fancied it would be earlier. The Bradstreet — time tables, I mean — are con¬ fusing.”

“ Umhum! English! I been wondering what you are. I reckon you won’t want to talk. My experience with the English is that they are mighty standoffish travelers no matter what class, first, second or third. Now me — I am a natural born mixer, especially when I am spending a night in a day coach. If you want me to dry up, say so. I’m not one to get huffy.”

The seat mate laughed. The laugh had a certain arresting lilt, vaguely reminding the friendly one of the song of a bird with a broken wing, granted that a bird so maimed would or could sing.

“ Please do not — er — er — dry up. I think it is exceedingly kind of you to talk to me. I might have pronounced the Americans standoffish had you gone all the way .to Rich¬ mond without speaking to me. Why do you think I am English? ”

“ I don’t think any more — I know. The word ‘ Bradstreet ’ set me to thinking, and the way you pronounced Americans ‘ Amehreecans 9 makes me know. I’ve traveled a lot in my time, in fact I keep myself broke traveling, and I like to size up the folks I meet on my journeys. Do you? ”

“Why, yes — it is interesting.”

“ I reckon you are sizing me up just the same as I am you and maybe you are getting me better than I am you. This is the way I see you. Of course I may be wrong, but you look to me like an English girl who has recently landed and landed broke, or almost broke, or you wouldn’t be on this cattle car. You ain’t used to traveling this way. How do I know that? By your grips and your shoes and your finger nails. Shoes and nails are great little indicators of character.”

Again the lilting laugh!

“But your nails are well kept, too; your shoes quite smart, and I am sure my bags are not so handsome as yours. You are not Eng¬ lish, are you? ”

“ Lord love you, no! I’m from the good old South — Virginia — not Richmond. I’m coun¬ try born and bred; but along with getting fed up on corn pone and cabbage, I got fed up on the country and when I wasn’t more than a kid I left home and started life as a cash girl. And I’m still in the same store. I’m a buyer now, but I don’t save any more money than I did hollering ‘ ca-a-sh’. Every time I go off on a trip I come back home dead broke and usually in a day coach. Of course the management al¬ lows me expense money but I spend it all on shows. I’m just naturally crazy about a show.”

“ Cinemas? ”

“You mean movies? Not on your life — speakies. I go to a movie when there is noth¬ ing else doing or I can’t raise the necessary dough for the legit. Of course that happens right often and then I patronize the cheap second run houses. I got to keep going or I might as well be back on the farm, and if I go there now there won’t be any place for me to go when I get old. I ain’t so young now, but I’m too young to be buried alive. My folks live in a great railroad center; twenty miles from three stations. ’Tain’t as bad as it used to be since Henry Ford put us on the map, but it is still bad enough. Give me the city, I say, even if the city is no larger than Richmond. At least there are jitneys and elec¬ tric lights and you can get a steam heated room with the privilege of the bath so that Saturday night doesn’t mean any more in your young life than any other night.”

“But why should it?—No, no, don’t tell me! I am not going to be the kind of for¬ eigner who is always asking questions. I am going to find out by listening. A steam heated room sounds very delightful. I am wondering if I might not procure a room in the same house — a small room with the privilege of a bath? ”

The friendly one turned and looked searchingly at her seat mate. She was pretty, ex¬ ceedingly pretty, with a royal bearing. Her hair was black and as fine as that of a blond baby. Her brows were arched, extending far on the temples. Her eyes were as blue as corn flowers, the lashes long and thick. Her nose the kind of nose every girl would like to have, with thin, sensitive nostrils. Her mouth was sweet and sad, and a dimple in one corner gave her smile the fraction of a twist. She was slender almost to emaciation, and the impression she made on her companion was that she had been ill and was recently convalescent.

“ Do you think it would be possible for me to get a room in your house?” she repeated, not at all nonplused by the searching scrutiny but returning the gaze with frank, open eyes.

“ I ain’t so sure. You see. Miss May, the lady that runs our house, is mighty par¬ ticular — ”

“ Ah, so am I — at least — but perhaps I am not. I merely want a place to go.”

“ That’s just it — Miss May ain’t in business for her health or anybody else’s health. She don’t keep roomers for comp’ny, but she’s mighty particular who she rents to and she wouldn’t stand for me bringing home a girl I just picked up on the train. I tried it once and come mighty near losing my happy home. She was a pretty little thing, too. How was I to know she had more in her past than plenty of folks have in their future?”

“ Of course! I beg your pardon,” and the girl drew her slender form closer into the third of the seat, which was all allowed by the ample figure of the lady of the streaked hair. She closed her eyes wearily. The distension of her sensitive nostrils, no doubt intended to express haughtiness, and the involuntary trembling of the lower lip, made a swift impression on the woman by her side.

“ Aw now, kid, I ain’t meaning to hurt your feelings or make you mad. I was just telling you about Miss May and how funny she is about her roomers. I ain’t a bit particular my¬ self. I take up with anybody — ”

The girl by her side laughed, bit her lip to control herself, and then laughed again.

“ You ought to have let me finish what I was saying. Miss May’s ain’t the only shelter in Richmond. There are all kinds of homes where you can light long enough to look about you. Get a job, if that’s what you are after, and then Miss May’ll be glad enough to rent you a room when I introduce you as a friend who already has a room but wants to change. Miss May is funny that way. She’s kind of leery of anybody without a regular address.”

“But I — ”

“Of course you have had an address, but just now you haven’t got one. Miss May is a great stickler for addresses, especially if a girl is young and pretty. And you know, kid, you are pretty, at least you will be when you get a little more meat on your bones. Been sick? ” “ You mean ill? ”

“ Sure! I remember now that sick means seasick to the English. Ill, then? ”

“ Yes, but I am quite strong and well now, and I do want a — position — job. Do you think I can get one in Richmond? ”

“What kind? What can you do? Want to go in a shop?”

“ I rather hoped I might get a situation as governess in a good family.”

“ Perhaps. I don’t think Richmond folks have governesses much now-a-days, but some of the ultra smart ones might. Anyhow we can see. My job brings me in right close contact with all of the swell dames in Richmond, at least all the fat ones, and they have precious few reserves where Effie Sharp Burton is con¬ cerned. You see, I’m a corset buyer and fitter, and no matter how uppity a woman is when she is dressed, she is pretty apt to unbend to her corset fitter. I reckon they feel that there is no use in putting on airs before Miss Effie. They are too dependent on her for slenderizing their lines. You just leave it to me, child, to find out if there is an opening for a governess in the city of Richmond. If there is, Effie Sharp Burton will find it.”

“And a room, with the privilege of a bath? ” “ That too! And now let’s eat. Didn’t you bring a lunch with you? ”

“ Why no, I thought — ”

“Dining car? There may be one on this train, but if there is it is a long walk from this coach and little chance of our getting in because of the crowd from the Pullman cars. They’ll rob you, too. No sirree! When they took off the dollar table de hoties, Effie Sharp Burton withdrew her patronage from dining cars. You don’t catch me paying eighty cents for one scrambled egg that wasn’t fit to cook any other way. I’ve got plenty for both of us. I always bring enough lunch for two because I have never seen the time when there wasn’t a foolish virgin on this train who had neglected to fill her lamp.”

She produced a box of generous size, filled with comfortable looking sandwiches, hard boiled eggs, doughnuts, cakes and pickles.

“ I got an old chum that I stop with in New York and she always puts me up a jimdandy snack. Poor thing, she can’t eat much herself because she’s got a job in a swell shop trying on clothes—a cloak model — and she has to keep her figure to a perfect thirty-six or lose her job. I wouldn’t be her for a pretty. I been advising her to cut loose and eat all she craves and go get a place with the stylish stouts. As for me,” she declared, helping herself to another thick sandwich, “ it’s up to me to eat all I want and keep myself up to my accustomed forty-six. You see, in this day and generation mighty few but fat women wear corsets, and they tell me they don’t like any slender young person getting on to their curves. The truth of the matter is, the thin young ones ain’t got a bit of sympathy for the fat old ones. Now me — I’ve been thin and I’ve got fat and I got kind feelings for all sizes.”

“ I believe you really and truly have,” said her companion fervently. “ I can’t tell you how grateful I am to you for your kindness to me, one of the thin ones.”

“ Oh, sucks! That’s nothing. Here, have another doughnut. I think you are good to listen to my running on so. Part of my busi¬ ness is running on. My customers expect it. I give you my word, if I ain’t gassing in a steady stream they are sure to say Miss Effie’s got a grouch or something. You wouldn’t think it, but it’s mighty important for a customer to laugh some while she’s being fitted or she might get fitted so’s she couldn’t laugh and I tell you that would be no laughing matter.”

The girl by her side laughed and leaned back comfortably in the seat. There was a little color in her pale cheeks now, produced no doubt by the combination of nourishing food and the wholesome geniality of Effie Sharp Burton.

“ Got all you want? Well, I might as well save the pieces. We might want another bite before we get to Richmond.”

She busied herself replacing what was left of the food, after having pressed a sandwich on the bald headed man across the aisle and a doughnut on a tired mother whose crying baby had at last dropped asleep.

“ One time I attended a course of lectures in psychology — but maybe you are fed up on so much talk. Just say the word if you want me to quit.”

“ Oh, please don’t! I love to hear you talk.”

“ Well, I like to hear myself right smart — anyhow I been trying ever since to use what little I learned in selling corsets. It works pretty well. I reckon many a fat Richmond woman, when I get through with her, has for¬ gotten she is fat just because I put her on the track of not thinking fat. Another thing, I have my fitting room lined with becoming mirrors — I mean the kind that slim you down a bit. I had a terrible time getting them and the boss and I mighty near came to the parting of the ways because I made myself so numerous on the subject. But I won out. Of course my fat customers don’t know about my psychic looking glasses but they buy more corsets from me because of them. Maybe you think I oughtn’t to fool the poor things that way, but I say it’s not a sin to make folks feel happy. I’d make the glasses’ rosy if it’d do any good. I do have pink shades on the lights. Do you think that kind of deception is wrong? ”

The seat mate did not answer. Her eyes were closed and as Miss Effie Sharp Burton turned to discover the reason the girl’s sleepy head nodded involuntarily and sought the com¬ fortable shoulder of her neighbor.

“Well, well! If I haven’t talked the poor child to sleep,” Miss Effie said to herself, slip¬ ping a plump arm around the tired girl, en¬ deavoring to make her more comfortable. “ Poor, pretty, little thing. She’s mighty friendly for an English girl, snuggling up to me with her head on my shoulder. Most Eng¬ lish don’t forget themselves enough even in their sleep to be friendly with us plain Americans. And bless Bob! I don’t even know her name.”

Chapter II

“All out for Richmond!” sang a man at one end of the coach, and “ All out for Rich¬ mond!” echoed a man at the other end.

Mtss Effie Sharp Burton had dozed fitfully, her head resting against the dingy plush of the day coach. Her shoulder ached and her arm had gone to sleep, but she had bravely endured the discomfort so that the tired girl by her side might have unbroken slumber.

“Wake up, honey, here we are! This is Richmond.”

“Richmond! Oh! You mean we are there, and I have slept all the way? How could I? And did I make a pillow of you without so much as by your leave? Please forgive me, Miss Burton. I don’t see how I could have been so selfish. I wanted to hear all about the fat women, too, but I must have dropped off in the midst of it. I know your shoulder is numb.”

“ Never mind all that. My side will be all right and I’m glad you got some sleep. I’ll continue in our next about my fat customers. Now we must get a porter to help us out with our grips and call us a taxi. You don’t know" yet where you are going, I reckon? Hotels are mighty dear if you are hard up. Gee, I wish Miss May wasn’t so particular and I’d take you right home with me. Well, no matter where you are going you’ve got to go. So let’s beat it. Sorry you get your first look at Rich¬ mond from this down town station, but this one g. m. train seems to fancy arriving at this end of town. There’s a masher — don’t look at him. It’s a good thing old Effie is along. However, I’m glad we saw that would-be lady’s man, be¬ cause now I know what I’ll do. I been mak¬ ing donations for years to the Travelers’ Aid and never yet had a chance to get even with ’em. There’s the T. A. lady now. She sure is on her job. Look how she’s squelching that masher! ”

The girl, in a daze, followed the capable Miss Effie, who had procured a porter and directed him to go ahead and hold a taxi. Her inter¬ view with the kindly woman at the Travelers’ Aid desk was thoroughly satisfactory. A work¬ ing girls’ home was called on the telephone and a bed guaranteed.

“ What name?” was the only question asked.

“ Mary — Mary Hill,” answered the girl.

" Miss Mary Hill? You see this home doesn’t take married women,” said the kindly employee of the Travelers’ Aid.

“ Yes, Miss Mary Hill, English governess,” put in Miss Effie, a determined gleam in her eye.

“ Have you a trunk? ”

“ A box? Yes — a very large one I am afraid.”

“ That’s all right. Give me your check and I’ll see that it gets to you.”

“ I can’t tell you how kind I think you are.”

“ Of course she is,” bustled Miss Effie Sharp Burton. “ Being kind is part of her job. Come on! Taxi has begun to chug and we’d better be moving.”

“ Now this is Main Street,” she continued as the chauffeur settled his car comfortably in the trolley tracks and speeded up the deserted street, feeling perfectly safe from traffic cops at the early hour of one. “ I reckon you’ve read the so-called great American novel: ‘ Main Street’? It’s supposed to be typical of all American towns. Maybe so, but I can’t see it. Anyhow it ain’t true of Richmond. Plenty of stupid narrowness here, I’ll admit, but lots of kindness and sweetness. I tell you I know, because I’ve been down and out here and folks have been good to me. I don’t know anything about Mr. Sinclair Lewis as a home-body. He may be a kind gentleman and a good provider but I’d hate to be in his spectacles and see ‘ Main Streets 9 in all of my travels. Funny I hadn’t even found out your name, Miss Hill. I meant to ask you before you went to sleep on me.”

“ I should have told you, but I have been in a daze since I landed. What would have hap¬ pened to me if you had not been sitting by me on the train. You have been so kind. I won¬ der if you will be still kinder and call me Mary.”

“ Sure, if you will call me Effie.”

The taxi jerked its wheels from the trolley track and turned down a broad, quiet street of comfortable looking houses.

“ This is your street. The folks in Richmond sigh over this street and say it has seen better days. That is because it is kinder gone away to boarding houses, but I say that boarders are human beings and they might as w r ell have a nice, broad street with magnolia trees on it as rich people who own their homes. The river is over yonder, the historic Jeemes; and there is a nice park at the end of the street with a monument to John Smith, who is supposed to have landed there. But here we are! This is the place. I’m not going to get out because I must get a move on me and go to my downy or I won’t be fit to fit corsets to-morrow. Here’s my card. You come to see me as soon as you get rested up. I’m going to see that you get a job teaching the young idea how to shoot. S’pose you blow in the shop sometime to-morrow at lunch time — one o’clock. I’ll be there. Up one flight and anybody will direct you to the corset department. Ask for Miss Effie and you’ll get quick service. Good-bye, Mary! ”

“Good-bye, Effie!” and the girl threw her arms as far around her new found friend as Miss Burton’s dimensions permitted, and kissed her. She could not help a sob escaping her as she did so, but the sob was followed by a sad little laugh and: “Good-bye until to¬ morrow, my best and only friend in these United States.”

Before Mary could ring, the door was opened by a woman in whose countenance sleep warred with hospitality. In a loud, hoarse whisper she bade her welcome and cautioned her to make no noise.

“ Your bed’s ready and all you gotta do is slip right into it. Two of the young ladies in that dormitory will be getting up in about two hours to go on a early morning shift. I hope they won’t disturb you. They are sure to, though, if you disturb them. Young ladies are mighty vindicertive, ’specially them working on irreg’lar shifts.”

Mary expressed her regrets at having to rouse anyone at that hour of the night, but was as¬ sured that it was all in the day’s work, and that a job was a job and if one was employed in a home for young working ladies and there happened to be arrivals at unearthly hours, then no matter how sleepy one might be it was up to one to get out of a nice warm bed and be hospitable.

“ We are paid to be pleasant and pleasant we must be,” she yawned. “ No’m, I ain’t the reg’lar matron. I am substitootin’, but it pays to be pleasant anyhow because this institootion is run by a board of lady managers and there ain’t ever any telling when a board of lady managers will fall out with itself and the matron will have to resign with the minority. That being the case I might get a reg’lar position. Anyhow, it pays to be pleasant and friendly¬ like.” She yawned again prodigiously and shiv¬ ered so that her many curl-papers trembled.

“A cold coming on from getting out of my warm bed,” she said, drawing her dingy grey blanket wrapper more closely around her. Mary could but reiterate how sorry she was.

The bed that awaited her proved to be in a room that had six other cots occupied by six sleeping girls.

“ Better undress in the hall so’s not to dis¬ turb the young ladies,” the substitute matron suggested. “Bath rooms, three of them, at the end of the hall, down one turn. Good night!” and she waddled down stairs again, her bed¬ room slippers flapping on every step and her dingy dressing gown trailing after her.

Remembering the warning her hostess had given her of the vindictiveness of those on ir¬ regular shifts, Mary undressed in cautious si¬ lence in the dimly lit upper hall. An old square piano, that had been donated to the home by one of the members of the board, served as an impromptu dressing table. The upper hall, which was fortunately quite spacious, was lined with useless things given to the institution by its well wishers. There were two hatracks, a billiard table, a broken sofa and three washstands. Mary slipped into her bed without dis¬ turbing the six sleepers.

The bed w r as clean, although both mattress and pillow were a little lumpy. The room was large, but hardly large enough to accommodate seven cots, three bureaus, two wardrobes and a sprinkling of odd chairs, to say nothing of an array of trunks and suit cases. A glow from a street light, sifting through the opened windows, illumined the apartment sufficiently for the newcomer to get a general idea of the furnishings as well as the individual tastes of her sleeping roommates in regard to hair, hygiene and complexions. Several of the girls had their heads almost under cover, with nothing showing but bristling curl papers or steel crimpers. And where a nose had come out for air it shone forth with cold cream high lights. Near the window was a curly head, bobbed and red, framing a childlike face. In the next cot a fat girl lay on her back with mouth wide open. The snore she snored was a mighty one.

“The kind of snore Jove might have snored when he nodded,” thought Mary.

Another girl coughed fitfully in her sleep and yet another talked in her’s with foolish in¬ coherence.

Sleep, on Miss Effie Sharp Burton’s shoulder, had been sweet and sound, and now Mary Hill, would-be governess in a good family, found her eyes propped open with no intention of sleep¬ ing and her brain more active than it had been for many days. She really felt refreshed and not the least bit sleepy.

“ I must think, I must think!” she said to herself, but she had been saying that ever since she left England and her tired brain had re¬ fused to think. Now, lying on this bumpy bed — where no doubt a few corn cobs had got mixed with the corn shucks — with her head on a pillow that felt as though it had been stuffed wdth the tail feathers of a turkey, and with six other noisily sleeping females lying by her; in a strange house, in a strange city, suddenly her brain began to function. Her past presented itself to her in a series of clear-cut pictures vignetted on the tablets of her memory. She saw her childhood in Ireland w T ith the gay Irish mother and more sedate English father; girl¬ hood in the select boarding school with the occasional highly prized holidays and treats; her mother’s death. Then the war, changing boys and girls into men and women, sometimes into old men and old women. Her father’s death w r hile she was still at school. After the war, England staggering to normalcy. So¬ ciety reasserting itself. Snobbishness again to the fore. Heroes without jobs. A London season with hectic rushing from one form of social function to another; dinners, balls, receptions under the wing of a hateful old woman.

Something connected with the thought of this old woman made the girl laugh. All un¬ conscious of her surroundings, she laughed aloud. It was the same clear, lilting laugh that had so impressed Miss Effie Sharp Burton. Strange it sounded here, ringing out above the noise of snoring and breathing.

“ Aw cheese it, you gumps! This ain’t no time for jokes,” muttered one of the disgruntled sleepers. “ I’ll be having to get up in less than an hour and then you can laugh all you’ve a mind to, but for Pete’s sake let a poor working girl get her hard earned rest.”

“ Oh, I beg pardon.”

“Aw, shut up! This ain’t no time for play acting either — 4 Beg pawdon’,” the complain¬ ant mocked.

Mary smothered another laugh, and strangely comforted by the human intercourse estab¬ lished with one of her room mates, she sank into a sweet and normal sleep, forgetting for the time everything connected with her past life. She was drowsily conscious of being in a home for self-supporting girls, sleeping in the room with six others, a fat girl snoring, a thin girl coughing and a grouchy one grumbling. She knew that in a short while some of those girls must get up for an early morning shift. What an early morning shift was she was not sure, but she was glad she did not have to go on it, if it happened to be something on which one went, especially since it came at early morning.