CHAPTER V

Meldrum's cynicisms had been strangely opportune to the strangely opportune to the despondent old maid. He unwittingly helped her over a deep ditch and got her past a bad night.

But when she woke, the next morning was but the same old resumption of the same old day. Poverty, loneliness, and the inanity of a manless household were again her portion. The face she washed explained to her why she was not sought after by the men. The hair she combed and wadded on her cranium clouded with no romance even in her own eyes. She realized that she was not loved for the simple reason that she was not lovely. She had never been a rose, and men did not pluck dog-fennel to wear. And the camomile could never become a marguerite by wishing to be one.

Debby haled her awkward self out of her humble cot, out of her coarse and frilless nightgown, into her matter-of-fact clothes, and slumped down to a chill, bare kitchen. There she made a fire in a cold stove, that she might warm up oatmeal and fry eggs and petrify a few slices of bread into a scratchy toast.

Not hearing her mother's slippers flap and shuffle on the stairs as usual, she climbed again to learn the cause. She found her mother filled with rheumatism and bad news. A letter had come the day before, and she had concealed it from Deborah so that the child might have a nice time at the party; and did she have a nice time, and who was there? But that could wait, for never was there such news as she had now, and there was never any let-up in bad luck, and them with no man to lean on or turn to.

When Deborah finally pried the letter from the poor old talons she found an announcement that the A.G.&St.P.Ry. would pass its dividend this year. To the Larrabees the A.G.&St.P. had always been the most substantial thing in the world next to the Presbyterian Church.

Deborah's father had said that his death-bed was cheered by the fact that he had left his widow and his child several shares of that soulful corporation's stock. He called it the "Angel Gabriel & St. Peter Railway." The dividend was as sure as flowers in June. It had never failed, and the Larrabee women always spent it before it was paid. They had pledged it this year.

If they had followed the stock-market, of which they had hardly heard, they would have known that the railroad's shares had fallen from 203 to 51 in two years and that the concern was curving gracefully toward a receivership. The two women breakfasted that morning on cold dismay and hot flashes of terror. The few hundred dollars that had come to them like semi-annual manna and quails would not drop down this year, perhaps not next year, or ever again. Their creditors would probably throw them into the town jail. The poorhouse would be a paradise.

In her distraction Debby had an impulse to consult Newt Meldrum. She hurried to Shillaber's Bazar, hoping he might be there. Asaph met her himself and told her that Newt had gone back to New York on an early train. Debby broke down and told of her plight. She supposed that she would have to go to work at once somewhere. But what could she do?

Asaph was feeling amiable; he had won a reprieve from Meldrum and had made it up with his wife in private for the public quarrel. His heart melted at the thought of helping poor old Dubby Debby, whom everybody was fond of in a hatefully unflattering way. He had helped other gentlewomen in distress, and now he dumfounded Debby by saying, "Why don't you clerk here, Debby?"

"Why, I couldn't clerk in a store!" she gasped, terrified. "I don't know the least thing about it."

"You'd soon learn the stock, and the prices are all marked in plain letters that you can memorize easy. You've got a lot of friends, and we give a commission on all the sales over a certain amount. Better try it."

Debby felt now, for the first time, all the sweet panic that most women undergo with their first proposal. This offer of the job of saleswoman was as near as Debby had come to being offered the job of helpmeet. She even murmured, "This is so sudden," and, "I'll have to ask mama." It was an epoch-making decision, a terrible leap from the stagnant pool of the Larrabee cottage to the seething maelstrom of Shillaber's Bazar. She went home to her mother with the thrilling, the glorious news that henceforth she could acquire all of five dollars a week by merely being present at Shillaber's for twelve hours or so a day, except Sat'days, when the store was open evenings till the last possible customer had gone home to bed. Mrs. Larrabee apologized to Heaven for doubting its watchfulness, commended Asaph Shillaber to its attention, and bespoke for him a special invoice of blessings.

And Asaph went home to his midday dinner as cheerfully as if he had received them. First he announced the good word about Meldrum's leniency, which Josie greeted with:

"You see! I told you that the party would be the proper caper. Maybe after this you'll believe that your wife knows a thing or two."

Asaph assured her that he would never doubt that she knew at least that much. Then, like the wag he was, he said that he had added a new clerk to his staff-a lady and a beauty, whose charms would draw no end of custom to the store and dazzle the drummers from far and near.

Josie's facile temper flashed at once into glow. One of her chief interests in the Bazar had been to make sure that it never harbored any saleswoman whose beauty could possibly lure her husband's mind from his ledgers or his home ties. Under the pretext of purchases or suggestions she made frequent tours of inspection, and if a girl too young or a pair of eyes too bright gleamed behind a counter Asaph heard of it at once. Some years before he had bowed to the inevitable and made it a rule to engage no woman who could imaginably disturb Josie's delicate equipoise.

Meldrum had noticed the strange array and had been inclined to impute the decline of the store's prosperity to the appearance of its staff.

"Good Lord, Ase!" he had groaned. "What you got here-the overflow of the Home for Aged and Indignant Females? You've collected a bunch of clock-stoppers that makes a suffragette meeting look like a Winter Garden chorus. People like those can't sell pretty things. Send 'em all to the bone-yard and get in some winners."

Asaph promised, and Meldrum promised to arrange an extension of credit. But Asaph would have feared bankruptcy less than such a step. As soon as Meldrum was gone he put the cap-sheaf to his little army of relicts and remnants by engaging Debby Larrabee! She made the rest look handsome by contrast.

She was the joke that he tried to spring on his wife. Josie took the allusion seriously, and Asaph was soon trying to hold her down.

"Wait! Wait till you hear who it is!" he pleaded; but she stormed on:

"I don't care who it is. I'm not going to have you exposed to the wiles of any of those designing minxes. I won't have her, I tell you."

At length he shouted above the din: "I was only joking. It's Debby Larrabee! I've engaged Debby Larrabee! They've lost all their money."

When Josie understood, she saw the joke. She began to laugh with hysterics, to slap and push her husband about hilariously. "Aw, you old fraud, you! So you've engaged Dubby Debby! Well, you can keep her. I don't care how late you stay at the store as long as Debby's there."

Deborah was fortunate enough not to overhear this. In fact, the long drought in Debby's good luck seemed to be ending. The skies over her grew dark with the abundance of merciful rain. A gentle drizzle preceded the cloudburst. There usually is a deluge after a drought.

A few days later found Debby installed in the washable silks. The change in her environment was complete. Instead of dozing through a nightmare of ineptitude in the doleful society of her old mother in a dismal home where almost nobody ever called, and never a man, now she stood all day on the edge of a stream of people; she chattered breezily all day to women in search of beautiful fabrics. She handled beautiful fabrics. Her conversation was a procession of adjectives of praise.

Trying to live up to her surroundings, she took thought of her appearance. Dealing in fashions, with fashion-plates as her scriptures, she tried to get in touch with the contemporary styles. She bounded across eight or ten periods at one leap. First she found that she could at least put up her hair as other women did. The revolution in her appearance was amazing. Next she retrimmed her old hat, reshaped her old skirt-drew it so tightly about her ankles that she was forced to the tremendous deed of slitting it up a few inches so that she could at least walk slowly. The first time her mother noticed it she said:

"Why, Debby, what on earth! That skirt of yours is all tore up the side."

Debby explained it to her with the delicious confusion of a Magdalen confessing her entry upon a career of profligacy. Her mother almost fainted. Debby had gone wrong at this late day! She had heard that department-stores were awful places for a girl. The papers had been full of minimum wages and things.

Worse yet, Debby began to attitudinize, to learn the comfort of poses. She must be forever holding pretty things forward. She took care of her hands, polished her nails. Now and then she must drape a piece of silk across her shoulder and dispose her rigid frame into curves. She began to talk of "lines" to cold-cream her complexion.

The mental change in her was no less thorough. Activity was a tonic. Her patience was compelled to school itself. Prosperity lay in unfaltering courtesy, untarnished cheer. Cynicism does not sell goods. All day long she was praising things. Enthusiasm became her instinct.

Few men swam into her ken, but in learning to satisfy the exactions of women she built up tact. She had long since omitted malekind from her life and her plan of life. She was content. Women liked her; women lingered to talk with her; they asked her help in their vital struggle for beauty. It was enough.

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