第174章

While Mrs.Tucker snored, Susan worked on, getting every piece of at all fit clothing in her meager wardrobe into the best possible condition.She did not once glance at the face of the noisy sleeper--a face homely enough in Mrs.Tucker's waking hours, hideous now with the mouth open and a few scattered rotten teeth exposed, and the dark yellow-blue of the unhealthy gums and tongue.

At dawn Mrs.Tucker awoke with a snort and a start.She rubbed her eyes with her dirty and twisted and wrinkled fingers--the nails were worn and broken, turned up as if warped at the edges, blackened with dirt and bruisings."Why, are you up already?" she said to Susan.

"I've not been to bed," replied the girl.

The woman stretched herself, sat up, thrust her thick, stockinged legs over the side of the bed.She slept in all her clothing but her skirt, waist, and shoes.She kneeled down upon the bare, sprung, and slanting floor, said a prayer, arose with a beaming face."It's nice and warm in the room.How Ido dread the winter, the cold weather--though no doubt we'll make out all right! Everything always does turn out well for me.The Lord takes care of me.I must make me a cup of tea.""I've made it," said Susan.

The tea was frightful stuff--not tea at all, but cheap adulterants colored poisonously.Everything they got was of the same quality; yet the prices they paid for the tiny quantities they were able to buy at any one time were at a rate that would have bought the finest quality at the most expensive grocery in New York.

"Wonder why Mrs.Reardon don't come?" said Mrs.Tucker.Mrs.

Reardon had as her only work a one night job at scrubbing.

"She ought to have come an hour ago."

"Her rheumatism was bad when she started," said Susan."Iguess she worked slow."

When Mrs.Tucker had finished her second cup she put on her shoes, overskirt and waist, made a few passes at her hair.

She was ready to go to work.

Susan looked at her, murmured: "An honest, God-fearing working woman!""Huh?" said Mrs.Tucker.

"Nothing," replied Susan who would not have permitted her to hear.It would be cruel to put such ideas before one doomed beyond hope.

Susan was utterly tired, but even the strong craving for a stimulant could not draw that tea past her lips.She ate a piece of dry bread, washed her face, neck, and hands.It was time to start for the factory.

That day--Saturday--was a half-holiday.Susan drew her week's earnings--four dollars and ten cents--and came home.Mrs.

Tucker, who had drawn--"thanks to the Lord"--three dollars and a quarter, was with her.The janitress halted them as they passed and told them that Mrs.Reardon was dead.She looked like another scrubwoman, living down the street, who was known always to carry a sum of money in her dress pocket, the banks being untrustworthy.Mrs.Reardon, passing along in the dusk of the early morning, had been hit on the head with a blackjack.The one blow had killed her.

Violence, tragedy of all kinds, were too commonplace in that neighborhood to cause more than a slight ripple.An old scrubwoman would have had to die in some peculiarly awful way to receive the flattery of agitating an agitated street.Mrs.

Reardon had died what was really almost a natural death.So the faint disturbance of the terrors of life had long since disappeared.The body was at the Morgue, of course.

"We'll go up, right away," said Mrs.Tucker.

"I've something to do that can't be put, off," replied Susan.

"I don't like for anyone as young as you to be so hard,"reproached Mrs.Tucker.

"Is it hard," said Susan, "to see that death isn't nearly so terrible as life? She's safe and at peace.I've got to _live_."Mrs.Tucker, eager for an emotional and religious opportunity, hastened away.Susan went at her wardrobe ironing, darning, fixing buttonholes, hooks and eyes.She drew a bucket of water from the tap in the hall and proceeded to wash her hair with soap; she rinsed it, dried it as well as she could with their one small, thin towel, left it hanging free for the air to finish the job.

It had rained all the night before--the second heavy rain in two months.But at dawn the rain had ceased, and the clouds had fled before the sun that rules almost undisputed nine months of the year and wars valiantly to rule the other three months--not altogether in vain.A few golden strays found their way into that cavelike room and had been helping her wonderfully.She bathed herself and scrubbed herself from head to foot.She manicured her nails, got her hands and feet into fairly good condition.She put on her best underclothes, her one remaining pair of undarned stockings, the pair of ties she had been saving against an emergency.And once more she had the charm upon which she most prided herself--the charm of an attractive look about the feet and ankles.She then took up the dark-blue hat frame--one of a lot of "seconds"--she had bought for thirty-five cents at a bargain sale, trimmed it with a broad dark-blue ribbon for which she had paid sixty cents.

She was well pleased--and justly so--with the result.The trimmed hat might well have cost ten or fifteen dollars--for the largest part of the price of a woman's hat is usually the taste of the arrangement of the trimming.

By this time her hair was dry.She did it up with a care she had not had time to give it in many a week.She put on the dark-blue serge skirt of the between seasons dress she had brought with her from Forty-fourth Street; she had not worn it at all.With the feeble aid of the mirror that distorted her image into grotesqueness, she put on her hat with the care that important detail of a woman's toilet always deserves.