Read Ebook: Bread by Norris Charles G Charles Gilman

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 2184 lines and 136856 words, and 44 pages

"What smells so good?" she asked presently.

She thought the odor abominable, but it did not suit her mood to say so.

"Mother's cooking mussels to-night; they're wonderful, stuffed with rice and peppers.... Have you ever tasted them? Could I send some upstairs?"

Jeannette laughed hastily, and shook her head.

"No--no,--thanks very much.... I'm afraid we wouldn't...." She was going to say "appreciate them" but left the sentence unfinished. "I must go on up; Mother's waiting for the bread."

But she made no immediate move, and the young man continued to lean against the wall below her. Their conversation, however, died dismally at this point, and after a moment's uncomfortable silence, the girl began nimbly to mount the stairs, flinging over her shoulder a somewhat abrupt "Good-night."

? 4

"Get your bread, dearie?" Mrs. Sturgis asked cheerfully as Jeannette came panting into the kitchen and flung her package down upon the table. Her daughter did not answer but dropped into a chair to catch her breath.

Mrs. Sturgis was bustling about, pottering over the gas stove, stirring a saucepan of stewing kidneys, banging shut the oven door after a brief inspection of a browning custard. Alice had just finished setting the table in the dining-room, and now came in, to break the string about the bread and begin to slice it vigorously. Jeannette interestedly observed what they were to have for dinner. It was one of the same old combinations with which she was familiar, and a feeling of weary distaste welled up within her, but a glimpse of her mother's face checked it.

Mrs. Sturgis invariably wore lace jabots during the day. These were high-collared affairs, reinforced with wires or whalebones, and they fastened firmly around the throat, the lace falling in rich, frothy cascades at the front. They were the only extravagance the hard-working little woman allowed herself, and she justified them on the ground that they were becoming and she must be presentable at the fashionable girls' school where she was a teacher, and also at Signor Bellini's studio where she was the paid accompanist. Jeannette and Alice were always mending or ironing these frills, and had become extremely expert at the work. There was a drawer in their mother's bureau devoted exclusively to her jabots, and her daughters made it their business to see that one of these lacy adornments was always there, dainty and fresh, ready to be put on. Beneath the brave show of lace about her neck and over the round swell of her small compact bosom, there was only her "little old black" or "the Macy blue." Mrs. Sturgis had no other garments and these two dresses were unrelievedly plain affairs with plain V-shaped necks and plain, untrimmed skirts. The jabots gave the effect of elegance she loved, and she had a habit of flicking the lacy ruffles as she talked, straightening them or tossing them with a careless finger. The final touch of adornment she allowed herself was two fine gold chains about her neck. From the longer was suspended her watch which she carried tucked into the waist-band of her skirt; while the other held her eye-glasses which, when not in use, hung on a hook at her shoulder.

The tight lace collars creased and wrinkled her throat, and made her cheeks bulge slightly over them, giving her face a round full expression. When she was excited and wagged her head, or when she laughed, her fat little cheeks shook like cups of jelly. But as soon as her last pupil had departed for the day, off came the gold chains and the jabot. She was more comfortable without the confining band about her neck though her real reason for laying her lacy ruffles aside was to keep them fresh and unrumpled. Stripped of her frills, her daughters were accustomed to see her in the early mornings, and evenings, with the homely V-shaped garment about her withered neck, her cheeks, lacking the support of the tight collar, sagging loosely. Habit was strong with Mrs. Sturgis. Jeannette and Alice were often amused at seeing their mother still flicking and tossing with an unconscious finger an imaginary frill long after it had been laid aside.

Now as the little woman bent over the stove, her older daughter noted the pendant cheeks criss-crossed with tiny purplish veins, the blue-white wrinkled neck, and the vivid red spots beneath the ears left by the sharp points of wire in the high collar she had just unfastened. There were puffy pockets below her eyes, and even the eyelids were creased with a multitude of tiny wrinkles. Jeannette realized her mother was tired--unusually tired. She remembered, too, that it was Saturday, and on Saturday there were pupils all day long. The girl jumped to her feet, snatched the stirring spoon out of her mother's hand and pushed her away from the range.

"Get out of here, Mama," she directed vigorously. "Go in to the table and sit down. Alice and I will put dinner on.... Alice, make Mama go in there and sit down."

Mrs. Sturgis laughingly protested but she allowed her younger daughter to lead her into the adjoining room where she sank down gratefully in her place at the table.

The girls poured the kidney stew into an oval dish and carried it and the scalloped tomatoes to the table. There was a hurried running back and forth for a few minutes, and then Jeannette and Alice sat down, hunching their chairs up to the table, and began hungrily to eat. It was the most felicitous, unhurried hour of their day usually, for mother and daughters unconsciously relaxed, their spirits rising with the warm food, and the agreeable companionship which to each was and always had been exquisitely dear.

The dining-room in the daytime was the pleasantest room in the apartment. It and the kitchen overlooked a shabby back-yard, adjoining other shabby back-yards far below, in the midst of which, during summer, a giant locust tree was magnificently in leaf. There were floods of sunshine all afternoon from September to April, and a brief but pleasing view of the Hudson River could be seen between the wall of the house next door and an encroaching cornice of a building on Columbus Avenue. At night there was little in the room to recommend it. The wall-paper was a hideous yellow with acanthus leaves of a more hideous and darker yellow flourishing symmetrically upon it. There was a marble mantelpiece over a fireplace, and in the aperture for the grate a black lacquered iron grilling. Over the table hung a gaselier from the center of which four arms radiated at right angles, supporting globes of milky glass.

Mrs. Sturgis' bedroom adjoined the dining-room and was separated from it by bumping folding-doors, only opened on occasions when Jeannette and Alice decided their mother's room needed a thorough cleaning and airing. The latter seemed necessary much oftener than the former for the room had only one small window which, tucked into the corner, gave upon a narrow light-well. It was from this well, which extended clear down to the basement, that the evil smells arose when the Najarians, two flights below, began cooking one of their Armenian feasts.

In the center of the apartment were two dark little chambers occupied by the girls. Neither possessed a window, but the wall separating them was pierced by an opening, fitted with a hinged light of frosted glass which, when hooked back to the ceiling, permitted the necessary ventilation. These boxlike little rooms had to be used as a passageway. The only hall was the public one outside, at one end of which was a back door giving access to the kitchen and the dining-room, and, opposite this, a front one, opening into the large, commodious sitting-room, or studio--as it was dignified by the family--in which Mrs. Sturgis gave her music lessons.

It was the dreary hot summers that Mrs. Sturgis and her daughters dreaded when Miss Loughborough's school closed its doors and Signor Bellini made his annual pilgrimage to Italy, and the little pupils who had filled the Wednesday and Saturday lesson hours drifted away to the beaches or the mountains. July and August were empty, barren months and against their profitlessness some provision had to be made; a little must be put by during the year to take care of this lean and trying period. But somehow, although Mrs. Sturgis firmly determined at the beginning of each season that never again would she subject her girls to the self-denials, even privations, they had endured during the summer, every year it became harder and harder to save, while each summer brought fresh humiliations and a slimmer purse. Even in the most prosperous seasons the small family was in debt, always a little behind, never wholly caught up, and as time went on, it became evident that each year found them further and further in arrears. They were always harassed by annoying petty accounts. Miss Loughborough's and Signor Bellini's money paid the rent and the actual daily food, and when a parent took it into his or her head to send a check for a child's music, the amount had to be proportioned here and there: so much to the druggist, the dentist and doctor; so much to the steam laundry; so much to the ice company and dairy; so much for gas and fuel.

Emerging from the chrysalis of girlhood, Jeannette and Alice were rapidly becoming young women, with a healthy, normal appetite for pretty clothes and amusement. These were simple enough and might so easily have been gratified, Mrs. Sturgis often sadly thought, if her income would keep but a lagging pace with modestly expanding needs. It required a few extra dollars only each year, but where could she lay her hands on them? When a business expanded and its earnings grew proportionately, an employee's salary was sure to be raised after a time of faithful service. Mrs. Sturgis did not dare increase the rates she charged for her lessons. She felt she was facing a blank wall; she could conceive of no way whereby she might earn more. Skimping what went on the table was an old recourse to which she and her children were now thoroughly accustomed. She did not see how she could possibly cut down further and still keep her girls properly nourished.

? 5

She watched them affectionately now as they finished their dinner, observing her older daughter's fastidious manipulation of her fork, the younger one's birdlike way of twisting her small head as she ate. A fleeting wonder of what the future held in store for each passed through her mind. Jeannette was the more impetuous, and daring, was shrewd-minded, clear-thinking, efficient, was headstrong, and actuated ever by a suffering pride; she would undoubtedly grow into a tall, beautiful woman. Alice,--her mother's "brown bird,"--seemed overshadowed by comparison and yet Mrs. Sturgis sometimes felt that Alice, with her simpler, unexacting, contented nature, her gentle faith, her meditative mind, was the more fortunate of the two. She, herself, turned to Jeannette for advice, for discussion of ways and means, and to Alice for sympathetic understanding and uncritical loyalty. They were both splendid girls, she mused fondly, who would make admirable wives. They must marry, of course; she had brought them up since they were tiny girls to consider a successful, happy marriage as their outstanding aim in life; she had trained them in the duties of wives, even of mothers, but she shuddered and her heart grew sick within her as she began dimly to perceive the time approaching when she must surrender their bloom and innocence and her complete proprietorship in them to some confident, ignorant young male who would unhesitatingly set up his half-baked judgment for his wife's welfare against her hard-won knowledge of life. Yet both girls must marry; her heart was set on that. Marriage meant everything to a girl, and to the right husbands, her daughters would make ideal wives.

With the speed of long practice, the remains of the dinner were swept away and the kitchen set to rights. Both girls attempted to dissuade their mother from performing her customary dish-washing task, urging her that to-night she must rest. But Mrs. Sturgis would not listen; she was quite rested, she declared, and there was nothing to washing up the few dishes they had used; why, it wasn't ten minutes' work! She invariably insisted upon performing this dirtier, more vigorous task; Alice's part was to wipe; Jeannette's to clear the table, brush the cloth, put away the china and napkins, and replace the old square piece of chenille curtaining which had for years done duty as a table cover. Then there was the gas drop-light to set in its center, and connect with the gaselier above by a long tube ending in a curved brass nozzle that fitted over one of the burners. Where this joining occurred, there was always a slight escape of gas, and it frequently gave Mrs. Sturgis or her daughters a headache, but beyond an impatient comment from one of them, such as "Mercy me! the gas smells horribly to-night!" or "Open the window a little, dearie,--the gas is beginning to make my head ache," nothing was ever done about it. It was one of those things in their lives to which they had grown accustomed and accepted along with the rest of the ills and goods of their days.

Mother and girls used the dining-room as the place to congregate, sew, read or idle. They rarely sat down or attempted to make themselves comfortable in the spacious front room. It was not nearly so agreeably intimate, and they felt it must always be kept in order for music lessons and for rare occasions when company came. "Company" usually turned out to be a pupil's mother or a housemaid who came to explain that little Edna or Gracie had the mumps or was going to the dentist's on Saturday and therefore would not be able to take her lesson, or a messenger from Signor Bellini to inquire if Mrs. Sturgis could play for one of his pupils the following evening. Such was the character of the callers, but the fiction of "company" was maintained.

The group Mrs. Sturgis and her daughters made about the dining-room table in the warm yellow radiance of the drop-light was intimately familiar and dear to each of them. There was always a certain amount of sewing going on,--mending or darning,--and hardly an evening passed without one or another industriously bending over her needle. Usually they were all three at it, for they made most of their own clothes. Each had her own particular side of the table and her own particular chair. They were extremely circumspect in the observance of one another's preferences, and would apologize profusely if one happened to be found on the wrong side of the table or incorrectly seated. Mrs. Sturgis, on the rare occasions when she found herself with nothing particular to do, spread out a pack of cards before her and indulged in a meditative solitaire; Alice had always a novel in which she was absorbed. Generally three or four books were saved up in her room, and she considered herself dreadfully behind in her reading unless she had disposed of one of them as soon as she acquired another. Jeannette studied the fashions in the dress magazines and sometimes amused herself by drawing costume designs of her own.

But dressmaking occupied most of the evenings. There was usually a garment of some kind in process of manufacture, or a dress to be ripped to pieces and its materials used in new ways. Alice acted as model no matter for whom the work was intended. She had infinite patience and could stand indefinitely, sometimes with a bit of sewing in her hands, sometimes with a book propped before her on the mantel, indifferent and unconcerned, while her mother and sister crawled around her on the floor, pinning, pulling and draping the material about her young figure, or else sitting back on their heels and arguing with each other, while they eyed her with heads first on one side, then on the other.

? 6

To-night Jeannette was making herself a corset cover, Alice was struggling over a school essay on "Home Life of the Greeks in the Age of Pericles," and Mrs. Sturgis was darning. They had not been more than half-an-hour at their work, when there was the sound of masculine feet mounting the stairs, a hesitating step in the hall, and a brief ring of the doorbell. They glanced at one another questioningly and Alice rose. Alice always answered the bell.

"If it's old Bellini wanting you to-night...." Jeannette began in annoyance. But the man's voice that reached them was no messenger's; it was polite and friendly, and it was for Alice's sister he inquired. Jeannette found Dikron Najarian in the front room. The young man was all bashful breathlessness.

"There's an Armenian society here in New York, Miss Sturgis. My father was one of its organizers, has been a member for years. We're having a dance to-night at Weidermann's Hall on Amsterdam Avenue, and my cousin, Louisa, who was going with me, is ill; she has a bad toothache. I have her ticket and ... will you come in her place? Rosa's going, of course, and ... tell your mother I'll bring you home at twelve o'clock."

It was said in an anxious rush, with hopeful eagerness. Jeannette, bewildered, went to consult her mother. Mrs. Sturgis hastily pinned one of her jabots around her neck and appeared to confront young Najarian in the studio. She listened to the invitation thoughtfully, her head cocked upon one side, her lips pursed in judicial fashion. Janny was still very young, she explained; she had never attended anything quite--quite so grown-up, she was used only to the parties her school friends sometimes asked her to, and Mrs. Sturgis was afraid....

Suddenly Jeannette wanted to go. She pinched her mother's arm, and an impatient protest escaped her lips.

"Oh, please, Mrs. Sturgis...." pleaded the young man.

A rich contralto voice sounded from the hallway of the floor below. The door to the apartment had been left open and now they could see big handsome Rosa Najarian's face through the banisters as she stood halfway up the stairs.

"Do let your daughter come, Mrs. Sturgis. They are all nice boys and girls. I will keep a sharp eye on her and bring her home to you safely."

"Well," said Mrs. Sturgis, "I just wanted to feel satisfied that everything was right and proper."

There were some further words. Jeannette left her mother talking with Dikron and flew to the dining-room, to her sister.

"Quick, Alice dearie! Dikron Najarian's asked me to a dance. I must fly! Help me get ready. He's waiting."

Instantly there was a scurry, a jerking open of bureau drawers, a general diving into crowded closets. The question immediately arose, what was Jeannette to wear? In a mad burst of extravagance, she had sent her dotted Swiss muslin to the laundry. There remained only her old "party" dress, which had been done over and over, lengthened and lengthened, until now the velvet was worn and shiny, the covering of some of the buttons was gone and showed the bright metal beneath, the ribbon about the waist was split in several places. Yet there was nothing else, and while the girl was hooking herself into it, Alice daubed the metal buttons with ink, and sewed folds of the ribbon over where it had begun to split. Jeannette borrowed stockings from her sister and wedged her feet into a pair of her mother's pumps which were too small for her. Her black lusterless locks were happily becomingly arranged, and excitement brought a warm dull red to her olive-tinted cheeks. She was in gay spirits when Najarian called for her some fifteen minutes later, and went off with him chattering vivaciously.

Mrs. Sturgis stood for a moment in the open doorway of her apartment and listened to the descending feet upon the stairs, to the lessening sound of gay young voices. She assured herself she caught Rosa Najarian's warmer accents as the older girl met her brother and Jeannette two flights below; she still bent her ear for the last sounds of the little party as it made its way down the final flight of stairs, paused for an interval in the lowest hallway, and banged the front door behind it with a dull reverberation and a shiver of glass. As the house grew still she waited a minute or two longer with compressed lips and a troubled frown, then shook her round little cheeks firmly, turned back into her own apartment, and without comment began to help Alice hang up Jeannette's discarded clothing and set the disordered room to rights.

? 7

Jeannette found her mother sitting up for her when she returned a little after twelve. Mrs. Sturgis was engaged in writing out bills for her lessons which she would mail on the last day of the month. The old canvas-covered ledger with its criss-crossed pages, its erasures and torn edges in which she kept her accounts was a familiar sight in her hands. She was forever turning its thumbed and ink-stained leaves, studying old and new entries, making half-finished calculations in the margins or blank spaces. She sat now in the unbecoming flannelette gown she wore at night, her thin hair in two skimpy pig-tails on either side of her neck, a tattered knitted shawl of a murderous red about her shoulders, and a comforter across her knees. In the yellow light of the hissing gas above her head, she appeared haggard and old, with dark pockets underneath her scant eyebrows and even gaunt hollows in the little cheeks that bulged plumply and bravely during the day above her tight lace collars.

Immediately she detected something was amiss. There was none of the gay exhilaration and youthful exuberance in her daughter's manner, she had confidently expected. One searching glance into the glittering dark eyes, as the girl stooped to kiss her, told her Jeannette was fighting tears, struggling to control a burst of pent-up feeling.

"Why, dearie! What's the matter? ... Tell me."

"Wasn't Mr. Najarian nice to you? Didn't he look after you? Didn't you have a good time? Tell Mama," Mrs. Sturgis persisted.

"Oh, yes,--he was very nice, ... yes, he took good care of me,--and Rosa did, too."

"Then what is it, dearie? What happened? Mama wants to know."

Jeannette drew a long breath and got brusquely to her feet.

Tears suddenly choked her but she fought them down and stilled her mother's rush of expostulations.

"What experience? Don't talk so wild, baby."

"I saw one old lady sizing me up," Jeannette went on presently. "I could see right into her brain and I knew every thought she was thinking. She looked me over from my feet to my hair and from my hair to my feet. There wasn't a thing wrong or right with me that that old cat missed! She didn't mean it unkindly; she was merely interested in noting how shabby I was.... And Mama,--it was a revelation to me! I could just see ahead into the years that are coming, and I could see that that was to be my fate always wherever I went: to be shabbily dressed and be pitied."

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet