Saturday\'s Child

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THE WORKS OF KATHLEEN NORRIS

SATURDAY'S CHILD

VOLUME IV

"Friday's child is loving and giving;
But Saturday's child must work for her living."

To C. G. N.

How shall I give you this, who long have known
Your gift of all the best of life to me?
No living word of mine could ever be
Without the stirring echo of your own.
Under your hand, as mine, this book has grown,
And you, whose faith sets all my musing free,
You, whose true vision helps my eyes to see,
Know that these pages are not mine alone.

Not mine to give, not yours, the happy days,
The happy talks, the hoping and the fears
That made this story of a happy life.
But, in dear memory of your words of praise,
And grateful memory of four busy years,
Accept her portion of it, from your wife.

PART ONE

Poverty

SATURDAY'S CHILD

CHAPTER I

Not the place in which to look for the Great Adventure, the dingy,
narrow office on the mezzanine floor of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
great wholesale drug establishment, in San Francisco city, at the
beginning of the present century. Nothing could have seemed more
monotonous, more grimy, less interesting, to the outsider's eye at
least, than life as it presented itself to the twelve women who were
employed in bookkeeping there. Yet, being young, as they all were,
each of these girls was an adventuress, in a quiet way, and each one
dreamed bright dreams in the dreary place, and waited, as youth must
wait, for fortune, or fame, or position, love or power, to evolve
itself somehow from the dulness of her days, and give her the key
that should open--and shut--the doors of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's
offices to her forever.

And, while they waited, working over the unvaried, stupid columns of
the company's books, they talked, confided, became friends, and
exchanged shy hints of ambition. The ill-ventilated, neglected room
was a little world, and rarely, in a larger world, do women come to
know each other as intimately as these women did.

Therefore, on a certain sober September morning, the fact that Miss
Thornton, familiarly known as "Thorny," was out of temper, speedily
became known to all the little force. Miss Thornton was not only the
oldest clerk there, but she was the highest paid, and the longest in
the company's employ; also she was by nature a leader, and generally
managed to impress her associates with her own mood, whatever it
might be. Various uneasy looks were sent to-day in her direction,
and by eleven o'clock even the giggling Kirk sisters, who were
newcomers, were imbued with a sense of something wrong.

Nobody quite liked to allude to the subject, or ask a direct
question. Not that any one of them was particularly considerate or
reserved by nature, but because Miss Thornton was known to be
extremely unpleasant when she had any grievance against one of the
younger clerks. She could maintain an ugly silence until goaded into
speech, but, once launched, few of her juniors escaped humiliation.
Ordinarily, however, Miss Thornton was an extremely agreeable woman,
shrewd, kindly, sympathetic, and very droll in her passing comments
on men and events. She was in her early thirties, handsome, and a
not quite natural blonde, her mouth sophisticated, her eyes set in
circles of a leaden pallor. An assertive, masterful little woman,
born and reared in decent poverty, still Thorny claimed descent from
one of the first families of Maryland, and talked a good deal of her
birth. Her leading characteristic was a determination never, even in
the slightest particular, to allow herself to be imposed upon, and
she gloried in stories of her own success in imposing upon other
people.

Miss Thornton's desk stood at the inner end of the long room,
nearest the door that led out to the "deck," as the girls called the
mezzanine floor beyond, and so nearest the little private office of
Mr. George Brauer, the arrogant young German who was the
superintendent of the Front Office, and heartily detested by every
girl therein.

When Miss Thornton wanted to be particularly annoying to her
associates she would remark casually that "she and Mr. Brauer"
thought this or that, or that "she suggested, and Mr. Brauer quite
agreed" as to something else. As a matter of fact, she disliked him
as much as they did, although she, and any and every girl there,
would really have been immensely pleased and flattered by his
admiration, had he cared to bestow it. But George Brauer's sea-blue
eyes never rested for a second upon any Front Office girl with
anything but annoyed responsibility. He kept his friendships
severely remote from the walls of Hunter, Baxter & Hunter, and was
suspected of social ambitions, and of distinguished, even noble
connections in the Fatherland.

This morning Miss Thornton and Mr. Brauer had had a conference, as
the lady called it, immediately after his arrival at nine o'clock,
and Miss Murray, who sat next to Miss Thornton, suspected that it
had had something to do with her neighbor's ill-temper. But Miss
Thornton, delicately approached, had proved so ungracious and so
uncommunicative, that Miss Murray had retired into herself, and
attacked her work with unusual briskness.

Next to friendly, insignificant little Miss Murray was Miss Cottle,
a large, dark, morose girl, with untidy hair, and untidy clothes,
and a bad complexion. Miss Cottle was unapproachable and insolent in
her manner, from a sense of superiority. She was connected, she
stated frequently, with one of the wealthy families of the city,
whose old clothes, the girls suspected, she frequently wore. On
Saturday, a half-day, upon which all the girls wore their best
clothes to the office, if they had matinee or shopping plans for the
afternoon, Miss Cottle often appeared with her frowsy hair bunched
under a tawdry velvet hat, covered with once exquisite velvet roses,
and her muscular form clad in a gown that had cost its original
owner more than this humble relative could earn in a year. Miss
Cottle's gloves were always expensive, and always dirty, and her
elaborate silk petticoats were of soiled pale pinks and blues.

Miss Cottle's neighbor was Miss Sherman, a freckled, red-headed,
pale little girl, always shabby and pinched-looking, eager, silent,
and hard-working. Miss Sherman gave the impression--or would have
given it to anyone who cared to study her--of having been
intimidated and underfed from birth. She had a keen sense of humor,
and, when Susan Brown "got started," as Susan Brown occasionally
did, Miss Sherman would laugh so violently, and with such agonized
attempts at suppression, that she would almost strangle herself.
Nobody guessed that she adored the brilliant Susan, unless Miss
Brown herself guessed it. The girls only knew of Miss Sherman that
she was the oldest of eight brothers and sisters, and that she gave
her mother all her money every Saturday night.

Miss Elsie Kirk came next, in the line of girls that faced the room,
and Miss Violet Kirk was next to her sister. The Kirks were pretty,
light-headed girls, frivolous, common and noisy. They had a
comfortable home, and worked only because they rather liked the
excitement of the office, and liked an excuse to come downtown every
day. Elsie, the prettier and younger, was often "mean" to her
sister, but Violet was always good-natured, and used to smile as she
told the girls how Elsie captured her--Violet's--admirers. The
Kirks' conversation was all of "cases," "the crowd," "the times of
their lives," and "new crushes"; they never pinned on their
audacious hats to go home at night without speculating as to
possible romantic adventures on the car, on the street, everywhere.
They were not quite approved by the rest of the Front Office staff;
their color was not all natural, their clothes were "fussy." Both
wore enormous dry "rats," that showed through the thin covering of
outer hair, their stockings were quite transparent, and bows of pink
and lavender ribbon were visible under their thin shirt-waists. It
was known that Elsie had been "spoken to" by old Mr. Baxter, on the
subject of a long, loose curl, which had appeared one morning,
dangling over her powdered neck. The Kirks, it was felt, never gave
an impression of freshness, of soapiness, of starched apparel, and
Front Office had a high standard of personal cleanliness. Miss
Sherman's ears glowed coldly all morning long, from early ablutions,
and her fingertips were always icy, and Miss Thornton and Susan
Brown liked to allude casually to their "cold plunges" as a daily
occurrence--although neither one ever really took a cold bath,
except, perhaps, for a few days in mid-summer. But all of
cleanliness is neither embraced nor denied by the taking of cold
baths, and the Front Office girls, hours and obligations considered,
had nothing on this score of which to be ashamed. Manicuring went on
in every quiet moment, and many of the girls spent twenty minutes
daily, or twice daily, in the careful adjustment of large sheets of
paper as cuffs, to protect their sleeves. Two elastic bands held
these cuffs in place, and only long practice made their arrangement
possible. This was before the day of elbow sleeves, although Susan
Brown always included elbow sleeves in a description of a model
garment for office wear, with which she sometimes amused her
associates.

"No wet skirts to freeze you to death," Susan would grumble, "no
high collar to scratch you! It's time that the office women of
America were recognized as a class with a class dress! Short
sleeves, loose, baggy trousers--"

A shriek would interrupt her.

"Yes, I SEE you wearing that in the street, Susan!"

"Well, I WOULD. Overshoes," the inventor would pursue, "fleece-lined
leggings, coming well up on your--may I allude to limbs, Miss
Wrenn?"

"I don't care what you allude to!" Miss Wrenn, the office prude, a
little angry at being caught listening to this nonsense, would
answer snappily.

"Limbs, then," Susan would proceed graciously, "or, as Miss Sherman
says, legs---"

"Oh, Miss Brown! I DIDN'T! I never use that word!" the little woman
would protest.

"You don't! Why, you said last night that you were trying to get
into the chorus at the Tivoli! You said you had such handsome--"

"Oh, aren't you awful!" Miss Sherman would put her cold red fingers
over her ears, and the others, easily amused, would giggle at
intervals for the next half hour.

Susan Brown's desk was at the front end of the room, facing down the
double line. At her back was a round window, never opened, and never
washed, and so obscured by the great cement scrolls that decorated
the facade of the building that it gave only a dull blur of light,
ordinarily, and no air at all. Sometimes, on a bright summer's
morning, the invading sunlight did manage to work its way in through
the dust-coated ornamental masonry, and to fall, for a few moments,
in a bright slant, wheeling with motes, across the office floor. But
usually the girls depended for light upon the suspended green-hooded
electric lights, one over each desk.

Susan though that she had the most desirable seat in the room, and
the other girls carefully concealed from her the fact that they
thought so, too. Two years before, a newcomer, she had been given
this same desk, but it faced directly against the wall then, and was
in the shadow of a dirty, overcrowded letter press. Susan had turned
it about, straightened it, pushed the press down the room, against
the coat-closet, and now, like all the other girls, she faced the
room, could see more than any of them, indeed, and keep an eye on
Mr. Brauer, and on the main floor below, visible through the glass
inner wall of the office. Miss Brown was neither orderly nor
industrious, but she had an eye for proportion, and a fine
imagination. She loved small, fussy tasks, docketed and ruled the
contents of her desk scrupulously, and lettered trim labels for
boxes and drawers, but she was a lazy young creature when regular
work was to be done, much given to idle and discontented dreams.

At this time she was not quite twenty-one, and felt herself to be
distressingly advanced in years. Like all except a few very
fortunate girls of her age, Susan was brimming with perverted
energy--she could have done a thousand things well and joyously,
could have used to the utmost the exceptional powers of her body and
soul, but, handicapped by the ideals of her sex, and lacking the
rare guidance that might have saved her, she was drifting, busy with
work she detested, or equally unsatisfied in idleness, sometimes
lazily diverted and soothed by the passing hour, and sometimes stung
to her very soul by longings and ambitions.

"She is no older than I am--she works no harder than I do!" Susan
would reflect, studying the life of some writer or actress with
bitter envy. But how to get out of this groove, and into another,
how to work and fight and climb, she did not know, and nobody ever
helped her to discover.

There was no future for her, or for any girl here, that she knew.
Miss Thornton, after twelve years of work, was being paid forty-five
dollars, Miss Wrenn, after eight years, forty, and Susan only thirty
dollars a month. Brooding over these things, Susan would let her
work accumulate, and endure, in heavy silence, the kindly, curious
speculations and comments of her associates.

But perhaps a hot lunch or a friendly word would send her spirits
suddenly up again, Susan would forget her vague ambitions, and
reflect cheerfully that it was already four o'clock, that she was
going with Cousin Mary Lou and Billy Oliver to the Orpheum to-night,
that her best white shirtwaist ought by this time to have come back
from the laundry.

Or somehow, if depression continued, she would shut her desk, in
mid-afternoon, and leave Front Office, cross the long deck--which
was a sort of sample room for rubber goods, and was lined with long
cases of them--descend a flight of stairs to the main floor, cross
it and remount the stairs on the other side of the building, and
enter the mail-order department. This was an immense room, where
fifty men and a few girls were busy at long desks, the air was
filled with the hum of typewriters and the murmur of low voices.
Beyond it was a door that gave upon more stairs, and at the top of
them a small bare room known as the lunch-room. Here was a great
locker, still marked with the labels that had shown where senna
leaves and tansy and hepatica had been kept in some earlier stage of
Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's existence, and now filled with the girls'
lunch-boxes, and rubber overshoes, and hair-brushes. There was a
small gas-stove in this room, and a long table with benches built
about it. A door gave upon a high strip of flat roof, and beyond a
pebbled stretch of tar were the dressings-rooms, where there were
wash-stands, and soap, and limp towels on rollers.

Here Susan would wash her hands and face, and comb her bright thick
hair, and straighten belt and collar. There were always girls here:
a late-comer eating her luncheon, two chatter-boxes sharing a bit of
powdered chamois-skin at a mirror, a girl who felt ill drinking
something hot at the stove. Here was always company, and gossip,
Susan might stop for a half-cup of scalding hot tea, or a chocolate
from a striped paper bag. Returning, refreshed and cheered, to the
office, she would lay a warm, damp hand over Miss Thornton's, and
give her the news.

"Miss Polk and Miss French are just going it up there, Thorny, mad
as hops!" or "Miss O'Brien is going to be in Mr. Joe Hunter's office
after this."

"'S'at so?" Miss Thornton would interestedly return, wrinkling her
nose under the glasses she used while she was working. And perhaps
after a few moments she would slip away herself for a visit to the
lunch-room. Mr. Brauer, watching Front Office through his glass
doors, attempted in vain to discourage these excursions. The bolder
spirits enjoyed defying him, and the more timid never dared to leave
their places in any case. Miss Sherman, haunted by the horror of
"losing her job," eyed the independent Miss Brown and Miss Thornton
with open awe and admiration, without ever attempting to emulate
them.

Next to Susan sat severe, handsome, reserved little Miss Wrenn, who
coldly repelled any attempts at friendship, and bitterly hated the
office. Except for an occasional satiric comment, or a half-amused
correction of someone's grammar, Miss Wrenn rarely spoke.

Miss Cashell was her neighbor, a mysterious, pretty girl, with
wicked eyes and a hard face, and a manner so artless, effusive and
virtuous as to awaken the basest suspicions among her associates.
Miss Cashell dressed very charmingly, and never expressed an opinion
that would not well have become a cloistered nun, but the girls read
her colorless face, sensuous mouth, and sly dark eyes aright, and
nobody in Front Office "went" with Miss Cashell. Next her was Mrs.
Valencia, a harmless little fool of a woman, who held her position
merely because her husband had been long in the employ of the Hunter
family, and who made more mistakes than all the rest of the staff
put together. Susan disliked Mrs. Valencia because of the jokes she
told, jokes that the girl did not in all honesty always understand,
and because the little widow was suspected of "reporting" various
girls now and then to Mr. Hunter.

Finishing the two rows of desks, down opposite Miss Thornton again
were Miss Kelly and Miss Garvey, fresh-faced, intelligent Irish
girls, simple, merry, and devoted to each other. These two took
small part in what did not immediately concern them, but went off to
Confession together every Saturday, spent their Sundays together,
and laughed and whispered together over their ledgers. Everything
about them was artless and pure. Susan, motherless herself, never
tired of their talk of home, their mothers, their married sisters,
their cousins in convents, their Church picnics and concerts and
fairs, and "joshes"--"joshes" were as the breath of life to this
innocent pair. "Joshes on Ma," "joshes on Joe and Dan," "joshes on
Cecilia and Loretta" filled their conversations.

"And Ma yells up, 'What are you two layin' awake about?'" Miss
Garvey would recount, with tears of enjoyment in her eyes. "But we
never said nothing, did we, Gert? Well, about twelve o'clock we
heard Leo come in, and he come upstairs, and he let out a yell--'My
God!' he says--"

But at the recollection of Leo's discovery of the sheeted form, or
the pail of water, or whatever had awaited him at the top of the
stairs, Miss Garvey's voice would fail entirely, and Miss Kelly
would also lay her head down on her desk, and sob with mirth. It was
infectious, everyone else laughed, too.

To-day Susan, perceiving something amiss with Miss Thornton,
sauntered the length of the office, and leaned over the older
woman's desk. Miss Thornton was scribbling a little list of edibles,
her errand boy waiting beside her. Tea and canned tomatoes were
bought by the girls every day, to help out the dry lunches they
brought from home, and almost every day the collection of dimes and
nickels permitted a "wreath-cake" also, a spongy, glazed confection
filled with chopped nuts and raisins. The tomatoes, bubbling hot and
highly seasoned, were quite as much in demand as was the tea, and
sometimes two or three girls made their entire lunch up by enlarging
this list with cheese, sausages and fruit.

"Mad about something," asked Susan, when the list for to-day was
finished.

Miss Thornton, under "2 wreath" wrote hastily, "Boiling! Tell you
later," and turned it about for Susan to read, before she erased it.

"Shall I get that?" she asked, for the benefit of the attentive
office.

"Yes, I would," answered her fellow-conspirator, as she turned away.

The hour droned by. Boys came with bills, and went away again.
Sudden sharp pangs began to assert themselves in Susan's stomach. An
odor of burning rubber drifted up from below, as it always drifted
up at about this time. Susan announced that she was starving.

"It's not more than half-past eleven," said Miss Cottle, screwing
her body about, so that she could look down through the glass walls
of the office to the clock, on the main floor below. "Why, my
heavens! It's twelve o'clock!" she announced amazedly, throwing down
her pen, and stretching in her chair.

And, in instant confirmation of the fact, a whistle sounded shrilly
outside, followed by a dozen more whistles, high and low, constant
and intermittent, sharp on the silent noon air. The girls all jumped
up, except Miss Wrenn, who liked to assume that the noon hour meant
nothing to her, and who often finished a bill or two after the hour
struck.

But among the others, ledgers were slammed shut, desk drawers jerked
open, lights snapped out. Miss Thornton had disappeared ten minutes
before in the direction of the lunch-room; now all the others
followed, yawning, cramped, talkative.

They settled noisily about the table, and opened their lunches. A
joyous confusion of talk rose above the clinking of spoons and
plates, as the heavy cups of steaming tea were passed and the sugar-
bowl went the rounds; there was no milk, and no girl at Hunter,
Baxter & Hunter's thought lemon in tea anything but a wretched
affectation. Girls who had been too pale before gained a sudden
burning color, they had been sitting still and were hungry, now they
ate too fast. Without exception the Front Office girls suffered from
agonies of indigestion, and most of them grew used to a dull
headache that came on every afternoon. They kept flat bottles of
soda-mint tablets in their desks, and exchanged them hourly. No
youthful constitution was proof against the speed with which they
disposed of these fresh soft sandwiches at noon-time, and gulped
down their tea.

In ten minutes some of them were ready to hurry off into sunny Front
Street, there to saunter past warehouses, and warehouses, and
warehouses, with lounging men eyeing them from open doorways.

The Kirks disappeared quickly to-day, and some of the others went
out, too. When Miss Thornton, Miss Sherman, Miss Cottle and Miss
Brown were left, Miss Thornton said suddenly:

"Say, listen, Susan. Listen here--"

Susan, who had been wiping the table carefully, artistically, with a
damp rag, was arrested by the tone.

"I think this is the rottenest thing I ever heard, Susan," Miss
Thornton began, sitting down at the table. The others all sat down,
too, and put their elbows on the table. Susan, flushing
uncomfortably, eyed Miss Thornton steadily.

"Brauer called me in this morning," said Miss Thornton, in a low
voice, marking the table with the handle of a fork, in parallel
lines, "and he asked me if I thought--no, that ain't the way he
began. Here's what he said first: he says, 'Miss Thornton,' he says,
'did you know that Miss Wrenn is leaving us?'"

"What!" said all the others together, and Susan added, joyfully,
"Gee, that means forty for me, and the crediting."

"Well, now listen," Miss Thornton resumed. "I says, 'Mr. Brauer,
Miss Wrenn didn't put herself out to inform me of her plans, but
never mind. Although,' I says, 'I taught that girl everything she
ever knew of office work, and the day she was here three weeks Mr.
Philip Hunter himself came to me and said, "Miss Thornton, can you
make anything of her?" So that if it hadn't been for me--'"

"But, Thorny, what's she leaving for?" broke in Susan, with the
excited interest that the smallest change invariably brought.

"Her uncle in Milwaukee is going to pay her expenses while she takes
a library course, I believe," Miss Thornton said, indifferently.
"Anyway, then Brauer asked--now, listen, Susan--he asked if I
thought Violet Kirk could do the crediting--"

"Violet Kirk!" echoed Susan, in incredulous disappointment. This
blow to long-cherished hopes gave her a sensation of actual
sickness.

"Violet Kirk!" the others broke out, indignant and astonished. "Why,
she can't do it! Is he crazy? Why, Joe Hunter himself told Susan to
work up on that! Why, Susan's done all the substituting on that!
What does she know about it, anyway? Well, wouldn't that honestly
jar you!"

Susan alone did not speak. She had in turn begun to mark the table,
in fine, precise lines, with a hairpin. She had grown rather pale.

"It's a rotten shame, Susan," said Rose Murray, sympathetically.
Miss Sherman eyed Susan with scared and sorrowful eyes. "Don't you
care--don't you care, Susan!" said the soothing voices.

"I don't care," said Susan presently, in a hard, level voice. She
raised her somber eyes. "I don't care because I simply won't stand
it, that's all," said she. "I'll go straight to Mr. Baxter. Yes, I
WILL, Thorny. Brauer'll see if he can run everything this way! Is
she going to get forty?"

"What do you care if she does?" Miss Thornton said, hardily.

"All right," Susan answered. "Very well. But I'll get forty next
month or I'll leave this place! And I'm not one bit afraid to go
straight to old 'J. G.' and tell him so, too! I'll--"

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