Part 28

"Well, you'll never go back."

"I hope not."

"You won't. Why should you? A sensible woman with looks--especially if she knows how to carry her clothes--can stay in New York as long as she pleases, and live off the fat of the land."

"That's good news," said Mildred. She began to like the landlady--not for what she said, but for the free and frank and friendly way of the saying--a human way, a comradely way, a live-and-let-live way.

"I didn't escape from New England without a struggle," continued Mrs. Belloc, who was plainly showing that she had taken a great fancy to "Mary Stevens."

"I suppose it was hard to save the money out of your salary," said Mildred.

Mrs. Belloc laughed. She was about thirty-five years old, though her eyes and her figure were younger than that. Her mouth was pleasant enough, but had lost some of its freshness. "Save money!" cried she. "I'd never have succeeded that way. I'd be there yet. I had never married--had two or three chances, but all from poor sticks looking for someone to support them. I saw myself getting old. I was looking years older than I do now. Talk about sea air for freshening a woman up--it isn't in it with the air of New York. Here's the town where women stay young. If I had come here five years ago I could almost try for the squab class."

"Squab class?" queried Mildred.

"Yes, squabs. Don't you see them around everywhere?--the women dressed like girls of sixteen to eighteen--and some of them are that, and younger. They go hopping and laughing about--and they seem to please the men and to have no end of a good time. Especially the oldish men. Oh, yes, you know a squab on sight--tight skirt, low shoes and silk stockings, cute pretty face, always laughing, hat set on rakishly and hair done to match, and always a big purse or bag--with a yellow-back or so in it--as a kind of a hint, I guess."

Mildred had seen squabs. "I've envied them--in a way," said she. "Their parents seem to let them do about as they please."

"Their parents don't know--or don't care. Sometimes it's one, sometimes the other. They travel in two sets. One is where they meet young fellows of their own class--the kind they'll probably marry, unless they happen to draw the capital prize. The other set they travel in--well, it's the older men they meet round the swell hotels and so on--the yellow-back men."

"How queer!" exclaimed Mildred, before whose eyes a new world was opening. "But how do they--these--squabs--account for the money?"

"How do a thousand and one women in this funny town account at home for money and things?" retorted Mrs. Belloc. "Nothing's easier. For instance, often these squabs do--or pretend to do--a little something in the way of work--a little canvassing or artists' model or anything you please. That helps them to explain at home--and also to make each of the yellow-back men think he's the only one and that he's being almost loved for himself alone."

Mrs. Belloc laughed. Mildred was too astonished to laugh, and too interested--and too startled or shocked.

"But I was telling you how I got down here," continued the landlady. "Up in my town there was an old man--about seventy-five--close as the bark on a tree, and ugly and mean." She paused to draw a long breath and to shake her head angrily yet triumphantly at some figure her fancy conjured up. "Oh, he WAS a pup!--and is! Well, anyhow, I decided that I'd marry him. So I wrote home for fifty dollars. I borrowed another fifty here and there. I had seventy-five saved up against sickness. I went up to Boston and laid it all out in underclothes and house things--not showy but fine and good to look at. Then one day, when the weather was fine and I knew the old man would be out in his buggy driving round--I dressed myself up to beat the band. I took hours to it--scrubbing, powdering, sacheting, perfuming, fixing the hair, fixing my finger-nails, fixing up my feet, polishing every nail and making them look better than most hands."

Mildred was so interested that she was excited. What strange freak was coming?

"You never could guess," pursued Mrs. Belloc, complacently. "I took my sunshade and went out, all got up to kill. And I walked along the road until I saw the old man's buggy coming with him in it. Then I gave my ankle a frightful wrench. My! How it hurt!"

"What a pity!" said Mildred sympathetically. "What a shame!"

"A pity? A shame?" cried Mrs. Belloc, laughing. "Why, my dear, I did it a-purpose."

"On purpose!" exclaimed Mildred.

"Certainly. That was my game. I screamed out with pain--and the scream was no fake, I can tell you. And I fell down by the roadside on a nice grassy spot where no dust would get on me. Well, up comes the old skinflint in his buggy. He climbed down and helped me get off my slipper and stocking. I knew I had him the minute I saw his old face looking at that foot I had fixed up so beautifully."

"How DID you ever think of it?" exclaimed Mildred.

"Go and teach school for ten years in a dull little town, my dear--and look in the glass every day and see your youth fading away--and you'll think of most anything. Well, to make a long story short, the old man took me in the buggy to his house where he lived with his deaf, half-blind old widowed daughter. I had to stay there three weeks. I married him the fourth week. And just two months to a day from the afternoon I sprained my ankle, he gave me fifty dollars a week--all signed and sealed by a lawyer--to go away and leave him alone. I might have stood out for more, but I was too anxious to get to New York. And here I am!" She gazed about the well-furnished room, typical of that almost luxurious house, with an air of triumphant satisfaction. Said she: "I've no patience with a woman who says she can't get on. Where's her brains?"

Mildred was silent. Perhaps it was a feeling of what was hazily in the younger woman's mind and a desire to answer it that led Mrs. Belloc to say further: "I suppose there's some that would criticize my way of getting there. But I want to know, don't all women get there by working men? Only most of them are so stupid that they have to go on living with the man. I think it's low to live with a man you hate."

"Oh, I'm not criticizing anybody," said Mildred.

"I didn't think you were," said Mrs. Belloc. "If I hadn't seen you weren't that kind, I'd not have been so confidential. Not that I'm secretive with anybody. I say and do what I please. Anyone who doesn't like my way or me can take the other side of the street. I didn't come to New York to go in society. I came here to LIVE."

Mildred looked at her admiringly. There were things about Mrs. Belloc that she did not admire; other things--suspected rather than known things--that she knew she would shrink from, but she heartily admired and profoundly envied her utter indifference to the opinion of others, her fine independent way of walking her own path at her own gait.

"I took this boarding-house," Mrs. Belloc went on, "because I didn't want to be lonesome. I don't like all--or even most of--the ladies that live here. But they're all amusing to talk with--and don't put on airs except with their men friends. And one or two are the real thing--good-hearted, fond of a joke, without any meanness. I tell you, New York is a mighty fine place if you get 'in right.' Of course, if you don't, it's h-e-l-l." (Mrs. Belloc took off its unrefined edge by spelling it.) "But what place isn't?" she added.