At last the room was as bare as a desert and almost as uninhabitable. A room without furniture is a ghostly place. Sounds made therein are uncanny; even the voice puts off its humanity and rings back with a bleak and hollow note, an empty resonance tinged with the frost of winter. There is no other sound so deadly, so barren and dispiriting, as the echoes of an empty room. The gaunt woman in the bed seemed less gaunt than her residence, and there was nothing more to be sent to the pawnbroker or the secondhand dealer.
A postcard came from Mrs. O’Connor requesting, in the peremptory language customary to such communications, that Mrs. Makebelieve would please call on her the following morning before eight o’clock. Mrs. Makebelieve groaned as she read it. It meant work and food and the repurchase of her household goods, and she knew that on the following morning she would not be able to get up. She lay a while thinking, and then called her daughter.
“Dearie,” said she, “you will have to go to this place in the morning and try what you can do. Tell Mrs. O’Connor that I am sick, and that you are my daughter and will do the work, and try and do the best you can for a while.”
She caught her daughter’s head down to her bosom and wept over her, for she saw in this work a beginning and an end—the end of the little daughter who could be petted and rocked and advised; the beginning of a womanhood which would grow up to and beyond her, which would collect and secrete emotions and aspirations and adventures not to be shared even by a mother; and she saw the failure which this work meant, the expanding of her daughter’s life ripples to a bleak and miserable horizon where the clouds were soapsuds and floor-cloths, and the beyond a blank resignation only made energetic by hunger.
“Oh, my dear,” said she, “I hate to think of you having to do such work, but it will only be for a while, a week, and then I will be well again. Only a little week, my love, my sweetheart, my heart’s darling.”
XVII
Early on the following morning Mary Makebelieve awakened with a start. She felt as if someone had called her, and lay for a few moments to see had her mother spoken. But her mother was still asleep. Her slumber was at all times almost as energetic as her wakening hours. She twisted constantly and moved her hands and spoke ramblingly. Odd interjections, such as “Ah, well!” “No matter!” “Certainly not!” and “Indeed aye!” shot from her lips like bullets, and at intervals a sarcastic sniff fretted or astonished her bedfellow into wakefulness. But now as she lay none of these strenuous ejaculations were audible. Sighs only, weighty and deep-drawn and very tired, broke on her lips and lapsed sadly into the desolate room.
Mary Makebelieve lay for a time wondering idly what had awakened her so completely, for her eyes were wide open and every vestige of sleep was gone from her brain; and then she remembered that on this morning, and for the first time in her life, she had to go to work. That knowledge had gone to bed with her and had awakened her with an imperious urgency. In an instant she sprang out of bed, huddled on sufficient clothing for warmth, and set about lighting the fire. She was far too early awake, but could not compose herself to lie for another moment in bed. She did not at all welcome the idea of going to work, but the interest attaching to a new thing, the freshness which vitalises for a time even the dreariest undertaking, prevented her from rueing with any bitterness her first day’s work. To a young person even work is an adventure, and anything which changes the usual current of life is welcome. The fire also went with her; in quite a short time the flames had gathered to a blaze, and matured, and concentrated to the glowing redness of perfect combustion; then, when the smoke had disappeared with the flames, she put on the saucepan of water. Quickly the saucepan boiled, and she wet the tea. She cut the bread into slices, put a spoonful of condensed milk into each cup, and awakened her mother.
All through the breakfast her mother advised her on the doing of her work. She cautioned her daughter when scrubbing woodwork always to scrub against the grain, for this gave a greater purchase to the brush, and removed the dirt twice as quickly as the seemingly easy opposite movement. She told her never to save soap—little soap meant much rubbing—and advised that she should scrub two minutes with one hand and then two minutes with the other hand; and she was urgent on the necessity of thoroughness in the wringing out of one’s floor-cloth, because a dry floor-cloth takes up twice as much water as a wet one, and thus lightens labour; also she advised Mary to change her positions as frequently as possible to avoid cramp when scrubbing, and to kneel up or stand up when wringing her cloths, as this would give her a rest, and the change of movement would relieve her very greatly; and above all to take her time about the business, because haste seldom resulted in clean work, and was never appreciated by one’s employer.
Before going out Mary Makebelieve had to arrange for someone to look after her mother during the day. This is an arrangement which, among poor people, is never difficult of accomplishment. The first to whom she applied was the labouring man’s wife in the next room; she was a vast woman with six children and a laugh like the rolling of a great wind, and when Mary Makebelieve advanced her request she shook six children off
