The Puzzleheaded Girl Read online

  Debrett had not liked the blouse being given away, it was Beatrice’s. He spoke to Tom Zero about raising the girl’s wages. He began wondering if he could spare her a little out of his own salary. Impossible. He gave all but a few dollars for lunches to his wife; and indeed, they were beginning to need more money at home. He had worries. The firm had begun honest and gained repute, but was taking a short cut to riches, selling its stock and increasing the stock when necessary. It had entered upon fraud. Farmers, investors, small-towners, countryfolk who had invested in the firm, bought the stock and could not sell it back; this was illegal. But the company paid good dividends, kept straight accounts, and the legal situation, handled by Tom Zero and Saul Scott, was always unassailable. All these talented young men could have made money honestly; crooked money seemed gayer and cleverer. Debrett had no heart for it. He did not care for money at all. He could make money for others, invent schemes of any colour, but never for himself. “The firm’s making money; if you hang on, you bunch of crooks, you can sell out for a big price to the Chicago Farmers’ Supplies,” he said, with a laugh. But they hung on for quick profit and an early bankruptcy. He had no stomach for fraud or financial investigators; he decided to move. He was looking about, both for a new job with good pay and a new home downtown, so that he could see his family early in the evening. Beatrice was very unhappy.

  When he had decided to move he realized that he would be leaving Miss Lawrence on her own. He took her to lunch to try to work out her problems and give her some advice. Not to be misconstrued, he mentioned it to Tom Zero. He went to a lunch-room pleasing to New York women, intending to spend more money than he ever did for himself. There was a lofty room with decorated walls, menus, flowers, a lot of small tables and he expected her to be delighted. But she looked about slightly in her dignified way; and he admired her, though he was disappointed. Halfway through the meal, which he selected to suit her limited tastes, he was greeted by a woman passing close to the table; it was Beatrice. Miss Lawrence looked up, smiled and put out her hand, “Oh, I am so glad you came, too.” Beatrice behaved with the good and distant manners he admired, greeted them both and walked out. When he got home, she said, “Augustus, I would not do that again, if I were you.” “Beatrice, you must understand—” “Let us say no more about it.” For days he did not ask for Miss Lawrence.

  She had been there nearly a year: it was August. She had refused her holiday, asking to be allowed to work during the fortnight. “And you can pay me the money extra.” Debrett was also working, his wife having gone to Morristown to her mother’s. Three engineers arrived from the Middle West to test a new piece of apparatus, a gas generator, which the firm wanted to market. Two of them were busy in town; the third, hanging about the office, found the young filing clerk interesting. He was nearly sixty, had a long soft red nose, and often he would sit down at one of the empty desks and begin designing a piece of apparatus. “And what do you do?” “I file the letters, I fill in at the switchboard, I type personal letters.” “You’re new, aren’t you?” “I’ve been here since November.” “I’m going to a little restaurant near here for a bite of lunch. Would you like to go with me?” “Yes, thank you.” “What time do they let you out?” “What do you mean?” She seemed hurt. “What time do you lunch?” “Half past twelve.” He took her to a large old-fashioned restaurant on the ground floor of a warehouse. “Oysters?” “What is that?” “Tomato juice?” “Yes, please.” “Chicken a la king?” “What is that?” “You don’t get around much, do you?” “Oh, I go around a lot; but I eat with friends, at their homes.” “You have a lot of friends, then. Boy friends, too, I expect.” “Boys? I don’t like boys. I like men. I have a lot of men friends.” “It doesn’t surprise me.” He touched the hair on her shoulder; and she gave a loud cry and bounded out of her chair. “Good grief, don’t do that! What did I do?” he said, looking about. “I don’t want men to touch me.” He was frightened. “I didn’t mean any harm; don’t you understand? I admire you. I respect you.” She was very sweet. “I forgive you. I know you didn’t mean any harm.” He said, “I’m a real honest man, girlie; if you scream at me again because I happen to touch your arm I think I’d fall through the floor. I don’t go out with girls. I just like to talk.” And he went on to talk. He told her about Celinda, his wife, a farm girl who was a good bit younger than himself, a fine wife and mother, and could do anything. She ran the farm and had the children obedient and doing the chores. He talked about his children, two girls and a boy; and his well-managed little farm, ten acres, with fruit, poultry and vegetables, a tractor, horse and cow, near Hamilton, an Ohio village, some distance from Cincinnati. “My wife’s as good as two hired men.” He had to travel about the country; his wife put up with it and was good to him, very good. “I wish you knew her; you’d like her and she’d like you. But this is all about me.”

  She told him what she was interested in: modern painting, painters, new trends in poetry. “That’s very unusual and advanced for a filing clerk.” “I won’t be there long. It’s temporary. I’m looking for the right place for me.” “Aren’t they good to you there?” “Yes, they’re good to me, but it means nothing. It’s an ugly dreadful life.”

  “You’re a country girl, I suppose.” She did not answer. “Well, if you’re a country girl, I know how you feel. When you look up at all those tall buildings, you think, but in what corner do they grow the corn and the potatoes; and where do they keep the hens?”

  On the way back to the office he said he’d like to buy her a little gift, what would she like? She said, a book about Gauguin, small and comparatively cheap. “You meet me at Brentano’s, and I’ll give it to you; no strings to it. I think a lot of you. You remind me of my wife.”

  The next day, a Saturday, the office was working overtime again. There was an unpredicted storm, with a fiery sky; a fireball bumped over the skyscrapers into the street. No one had a raincoat. They sent the office boy out for coffee and sandwiches; but Miss Lawrence went out into the downpour. She said she had an important appointment. She returned at the end of lunch-hour, drenched, her wet face absorbed. They got her partly dry; they fussed around her, asked, laughing, “How was your appointment? How did it turn out?” She did not answer. A new job, a boy, a runaway match? She did not come to work the next Monday, nor during the week. She was not seen again in the Farmers’ Utilities Corporation.

  During the week, Walter Lawrence, her brother, telephoned and when he heard she was no longer working for them, he seemed relieved. “That’s good, then.” “It’s good?” said Tom Zero, surprised. “I mean, I know where to look.” But on the following Monday a worn-out bent old man asked to see Mr. Zero. His name was Tommaseo. Miss Magna sent him to Mr. Debrett. “An old man here insists that his daughter works for us. He hardly speaks any English and I don’t understand him,” she said proudly, for she was the daughter of an Italian immigrant and spoke no Italian. Debrett knew no Italian but his sympathy with strange human beings enabled him to understand that Mr. Tommaseo bought fruit and vegetables early in the morning in the Gansevoort Market, east of Twentieth Avenue, and took them to a small shop he had near Bleecker Street, where he had a cut-rate trade. His daughter had stolen money from him and run away to the streets; his wife, son and other daughter had also taken money from him and never paid him back. Now he had nothing but debts and nothing to look forward to. The firm, the Farmers’ Utilities, owed him money, his daughter’s pay, which was his, because of what she owed him. Debrett explained that his daughter had never worked for him. “She did, she did, and you owe me her wages,” cried the old man. Debrett was ashamed to call for the bouncer and eventually persuaded Tommaseo to leave; but he left, crying bitterly and exclaiming, “All thieves, all cheats.” Debrett turned back shaking his head. “Crazed poverty; it tears your heart,” he said to Tom Zero who was looking at this scene.

  “Gus, you’ll never be rich,” said Zero. “I hope not,” said Debrett. “That is a wish always granted,” said Zero, wi
thout smiling. “But he did know something about us,” said Maria Magna; “though he got all the names wrong. He’s an old crook, I think; wanted to frighten you, pretend you’d stolen his daughter. The old men think up all sorts of tricks. I know them.” “Why say that, Maria? All he said to me was, I’ve always worked hard and starved.” And as he walked home that night, Debrett wished he had given five dollars to the old man, bent, grasping, perhaps a crook or deluded, casting his eyes about furiously, calling out names, “Dibretti, Seer, Scotti, I know, I know—” Debrett, Zero and Scott, names on the door-plate.

  Later, Walter Lawrence called to see Debrett. His name and his sister’s was Tommaseo; they had changed to Lawrence. Their father was an Italian immigrant, at home a mason, here a man with fruit and vegetables on a barrow, who by hard work and cruel pinching had been able to rent a small store, where he sold seconds and rejects. This man had become a miser, a man who watched every bite they took, and shrieked, “You’re killing me, you’re ruining me, don’t eat so much”; horrible scenes, frightful gestures. When he went out he took the key with him and they waited for his return; either on the staircase or in neighbours’ apartments. They scarcely ever bought anything. They dressed in the cast-offs of tenement neighbours. It was not only that he would not give the money, it was the unbearable scenes he made on a shopping expedition. He would trudge ahead, muttering, even shouting at them. If they stopped at a window, he would slowly come back, look in, say, “Why are you stopping here? Is there anything else you can think of to ruin me? What else do you want?” When they reached the store, no one, not even the storekeepers and assistants, though they were used to haggling, could stand the horror of his cries and insults. “I know it was poverty, but every slum father does not do that; I simply can’t forgive him. My mother put up with it. My mother was afraid we would die of exposure to hunger and cold; and when the last of us could earn a living, she put an end to it. He had to pay for the gas she used then. He sold the stove and all their cooking was done on a gas ring. My sister Honor’s name was Rosina. She never had any clothing till she went to school. She was wrapped up in a shawl or a skirt. She actually does not know even now, I think, what it is to go into a shop and buy something for herself. As for hair, face, any feminine thing, she knows they exist, but does not think they are for her. It doesn’t matter much yet. She’s not sixteen yet; and in spite of the life she’s led, or because of it, she’s austere, pure and high-minded. She believes in what she says.”

  “But where is the child?” cried Debrett.

  “In a way, I don’t care; anywhere is better than that inferno. But I expect she will knock at my door in a day or two.”

  “You take it very calmly. I can’t be so cool. I’m worried about a girl of fifteen—you say she’s not sixteen?—alone all night in the streets.”

  “Oh, I know Honor. She’s found herself some hole or corner. She’s a surprising girl. She has a memory as long as your arm for people and addresses. She may even be with one of our neighbours up at home. But I know she will come to no harm—of the sort you mean—she’s as safe as a saint; she’s quite a rare human being.”

  “I wouldn’t be so calm if it were my sister. I had a sister once. She died of tenement life; and I’ve never forgotten it. It haunts me.”

  “I know she’ll come to me,” said the brother. “I know she will be all right.”

  Not long after this, Farmers’ Utilities began to break up. Debrett was the first to go. He found a job in Wall Street and was able to move his family downtown. Tom Zero quit and set up his own law firm. Scott went to work with a judge. Palmer, the old engineer, was in Chicago doing business with his old firm, when he got a letter from his wife Celinda, on the farm near Hamilton, Ohio. “A slip of a girl, not more than sixteen, I am sure, has come to stay with me here. She says she worked for you in New York and that you raved about me and said she should live on a farm. She had not eaten or slept decently for five days, but I cannot get out of her how she got here. She has no money. She said, I thought I’d like to forget everything; but she had no object, just to wander, and she found out in a day or two that she is not strong enough for the hobo life, so she came to the nearest home.”

  Celinda, a strong smooth-boned girl with thick bronze hair, who looked ten years younger than she was and was twenty years younger than her husband, accepted the visitor with curiosity. “My husband says you have a family and a job in New York.” “I can’t go back there.” “Why?” “My father shut me out—I got home late.” “Where had you been?” “To see—a friend of mine, for dinner; and I had to walk home.” “What sort is your father?” She was apparently thinking it over. “Well—your father?” “I don’t know,” she said at last, sitting in her chair serenely and as if amused. “What does he do?” “He sells things, I suppose, things like you have here, vegetables.” “Well, and where were you working?” But there the visitor was quite clear. She gave the name of the office, the address, the private addresses of all the partners and senior employees, the salesmen on both sides of the house (that is, for goods and for stock); and very vivaciously, she gave the names of the various firms Celinda’s husband, Palmer, worked for. “What a wonderful memory you have!” The girl was startled and became quiet. “How do you remember all that?” “I don’t remember them—they were in the files and the telephone book.” “And you can’t go back there?” “Where?” “To the firm, Farmers’ Utilities.” For a long time she was silent, pondering. “Did something happen there?” “Where?” “In the firm? Did something happen to you? Were they disagreeable to you? Did someone hurt your feelings?” “I don’t think about them.” No matter how much Celinda questioned her, she got this kind of answer.

  At first Honor did nothing and Celinda thought her too weak to work. She very rarely spoke about herself, but she would volunteer remarks suddenly, such as, “My brother is not as fine as he thinks; there are other painters too.” “Is he a painter?” “I suppose he is. Yes, he is. But he’s overrated, particularly by himself. He’s an architect of his own fame, the same kind of architect as a woodworm.” After such tart, unexpected sentences, she would retire into herself, sit peacefully. And as suddenly, “My brother is a mean, slobbery little man. I don’t like him at all. He is all for himself. He left my father. He never paid him back the money he owed him for his keep.” “Did he owe him money?” “My father paid for his food and rent when he was a child.” Once or twice, sitting in the chair Mrs. Palmer had put out for her under an apple-tree in the rough grass at the side of the house, she spoke about herself. “I have finer perceptions than my brother. He will use anyone. I won’t have anything to do with stupid people. My senses are delicate. I’m an artist by nature, but I haven’t the means, my brother says. He says it’s a complex type of human being. People worry me. I need this country quiet. I feel better than I ever did in my life. Your husband said I was to stay here and forget the city, see where the corn grows. I’ll never go home again.”

  The farmhouse in Ohio suited her and she was going to stay with them a long time, she said. “Don’t you think you should help me with the chores to cover your keep?” Honor stared at the woman. “Are you like my father?” The Ohio wife wrote again to her husband and waited. Here was a young unfortunate, she thought; so young that she could not send her out on to the roads. She measured her hospitality, but was not unkind. Honor did almost no work in the house or farm. She sat on the dry grass or the veranda, moping. She ate sparingly, drank water and milk and had her share of things that were quite different, she said, from any she had had before; fruit, vegetables, eggs. She did not want to be a nuisance and insisted upon sleeping rolled up in a quilt on the floor. “I’m used to it; and I read somewhere that it is good for the nerves.” She played with the children and told them stories of town life.

  “My brother stabbed himself in the foot with a railing and nearly died. In our house was a little boy who lived by himself in the daytime. His parents went to work. He climbed up and down the stairs
all day, rubbing his hands on the wood and crying. My father nailed up the windows in our room so that the sparrows could not get the crumbs we put out. One day I got a prize at school and my father sold it for two dollars. My brother kept a rat in a can in the yard; but a dog got it. My mother and my brother and I used to sit on the landing and my mother told us stories about her home. It was very cold in winter and hot in summer and there were miles of stone arches to keep the sun and snow off you. Arcades they are. And in the arcades are stores with lace, and diamonds and money, stores with money in the windows, you can go in and get it; and cakes and things like that; roast chickens, too, and shoes, with red and green stripes and leather lace on them. My mother said if she ever had the money she would take us home with her. If she had had the money we would be there now. But I’ll go one day.”

  In this way, Honor stayed till autumn. The husband returned home once. The day before he returned, Honor went away; she returned after he left, without saying where she had been, or how she knew he had gone. The second time, he was coming home for a longer stay. This time she went and did not return. She did not say good-bye, or thanks, and they never heard of her again. In the spring, they found traces of her in a shed full of lumber; but they did not know when she had stayed there. No one in the east heard of Honor again for two years or more, that is till she was nearly eighteen.

  It was then that Augustus Debrett received a message in his Wall Street office that a woman wanted to see him in the waiting room. “No, not your wife.” At first glance she seemed as before, the sweet sober face, the swinging skirt and then he saw that she was older; she was thin and nervous. She held herself withdrawn, standing as usual away from the centre, using the shadow for her mystery. She was dressed with taste. “Miss Lawrence!” She looked at the people doing business in the outer office, at the machine, through the half-glazed partitions. “Not here! Can you meet me in the front hall of the New York Public Library, where we used to meet?” “We used to? Can’t you speak to me here? I’m very busy, Honor.” “No, not here. I must see you. You must come.” “I’m busy at lunchtime, Honor.” “Well, at six then. I’ll wait for you there.” “All right, but are you sure there’s nothing now? Have you money?” “Yes, plenty of money.” They glanced at him in the office and he did not like that. He was always kind to girls, treated them as equals, made no coarse jokes, never flirted or took them to drinks after work, was devoted to his wife. But the girl attracted attention.