The Real Adventure
lived, without any molestation whatever. The small towns that she had
visited with the company had been different of course. She'd been stared
at in the streets and not infrequently addressed. She'd forgiven that
because she was a member of the company. It was natural enough for
people to stare at a girl they'd paid to see on the stage the night
before, or were going to see to-night.
Now she discovered that the company had been an immense protection to
her; had accounted for her, caused her to be taken, to a certain extent,
for granted. The wild beast that comes to town with the circus, though
an object of legitimate curiosity, does not excite the hostile and
fearful speculation that he would if he were left behind after the
circus had gone.
People got together in groups and nodded at her, pointed at her. A few
of them leered, but more of them scowled. There seemed to be a sense of
outrage that she hadn't left the town when the rest did.
There was a dry-goods store on the principal corner of the street, which
she'd selected as she walked along as the place to begin her quest. She
made a detour around two or three blocks in order to avoid retracing her
steps down Main Street and slipped into the door of this establishment
as unostentatiously as she could.
She was saved inquiring for the proprietor by the conviction that the
rather dapper-looking gray-haired man who came blinking toward her in a
near-sighted way as she paused in the main aisle, was he. He had a good
deal of manner and was evidently proud of it. But he looked neither weak
nor foolish.
"My name's Rose Stanton," she said as he came up. "I've come to see if I
can get employment in your store."
His manner changed instantly. He came a step closer and stared at her
with a surprise he didn't try to conceal.
"I haven't had any experience as a saleswoman," she went on, "and I know
there's a lot to learn. But I'd work hard and learn as fast as ..."
"Excuse me," he said, "but aren't you a member of that theatrical
company that was here last night?"
The intensity with which he was staring at her made her look away and
her eyes rested on a young man whose strong family likeness to the
proprietor identified him for her as his son; he had come up and was
waiting for a word with his father. At this question he stared at her
too.
The older man whipped around on his son. "Clear out, Jim," he said
sharply. And then to Rose: "You haven't answered my question."
"I was a member of that company," she said. "But ..."
"We have no vacancy at present," he said sharply. "Good day."
She flinched a little but stood her ground. "I said I wasn't experienced
as a saleswoman," she said, "but there are some things I know a good
deal about--clothes and hats...."
He hadn't stayed to listen; had walked straight to the door and opened
it. Reluctantly she followed him.
"There's no place," he said, "in this store, or I trust in the town
either, for young women of your sort. Good day!"
Rose made five more applications for work on Main Street, all with the
same result. Some of those who refused her were panicky about it; one
threatened to have her put in jail. One looked knowing and after he had
expressed in jocular though emphatic terms, his sense of her
impossibility as a publicly acknowledged employee, intimated a desire to
prosecute a personal acquaintance with her further.
She had left the first store incredulous rather than angry, under the
impression that she had encountered a chance fanatic. It seemed
impossible that anybody with a well-balanced mind, could treat her as if
she carried contamination, merely because she had earned a living for a
while in the chorus of a musical comedy. It was fortunate for her that
her first applications were met by anger, rude discourtesy, and openly
avowed suspicion, because this treatment roused in her, for the first
time in months, a strong surge of indignation. Her blood came up after
these encounters, nearer and nearer the boiling point. The man who
smiled at her like a satyr, was shriveled by the blaze of her blue eyes,
and was left, red-faced, blustering weakly after her.
When she walked back to the hotel along Main Street the lassitude that
had so long held her half-paralyzed was gone. She was the old Rose
again; the Rose whom Galbraith would have recognized.
She didn't know it. She was conscious of nothing but a hot determination
that had not, as yet, even expressed itself in terms. It was just a
newly kindled fire that warmed her shivering spirit; that made her
fearless; in a quite unreasoning way, confident.
The only touch of self-conscious thought about her was a vague wonder at
her long submission. What had she been doing all that while, drifting
like that, letting herself be beaten like that, consenting to live amid
the shabby degradations of the life that had surrounded her ever since
the company had gone on the road? The sense of the unreality of those
past weeks grew stronger. She felt like a person just waking out of a
long troubled dream.
She mode her way among the loungers in the lobby of the hotel, not
unmindful of their stares, but magnificently impervious to them; came up
to the desk and told the clerk she wanted to see the proprietor.
"Nothing doing," said the clerk.
Then as he got the straight look of her eyes, he amended his speech a
little.
"It won't do you any good to see him," he said sulkily.
"I'll see him, if you please," said Rose. "Will you have him called?"
The clerk hesitated. Stranded "actresses" weren't in the habit of
talking like that. They always wanted to see the proprietor, they were
always on the point of receiving an ample remittance from some generally
distant place. They were often very queenly, incredibly outraged that
their solvency should be questioned. But their voices never had the cool
confident ring that this girl's voice had, nor the look in their eyes,
the purposeful thrust.
He hesitated uncomfortably. Then his difficulty was solved for him.
"There he goes now," he said. "You can talk to him if you like."
The proprietor was sixty years old, perhaps; gray, stooped, stringy of
neck. He had a short-cropped mustache, one corner of which he was always
caressing with a protruding under-lip. He had a good shrewd pair of
eyes, not altogether unkindly. Rose had seen him before, but hadn't
known who he was.
He was making, just now, for a little office he had, that opened into
the railed-off space behind the desk, and, by another door, into the
corridor. He had another man with him, but it was evident that their
business wasn't going to take long. The door into the corridor was left
open behind them, and there Rose waited. When the other man came out,
she stepped inside.
There was nothing kindly about the look the proprietor's eyes directed
at her when he saw who she was. He looked up at her with a frown of
resignation.
"So you didn't go to Chicago with the rest of the troupe?" he said.
"That's where you made a mistake, I guess."
"I didn't want to go to Chicago," she said.
"I suppose," he drawled ironically, "you've written or telegraphed to
some friends for money, and that it's surely coming, and that you want
to stay here in my hotel on credit till it does. Well, there's not a
chance in the world. The clerk could have told you that. I suppose he
did."
"I haven't sent for money," said Rose. "There's no one I could send to.
I've got to earn it for myself and I thought there was as good a chance
to earn it here as in Chicago."
"Well, by God!" said the proprietor. "You've got your nerve with you at
any rate. But I'll tell you, young woman, the town of Centropolis don't
take kindly to the efforts of young women of your sort to make a living
nor to the way they make it."
"You're wrong," said Rose, dangerously quiet, "if you think I mean to
make a living in any other than a decent honest way. I have already
asked for work in five places on Main Street and I have been refused as
if I were the--sort of person you've just called me. I'm going to keep
on until I find somebody in this town who's clean enough minded to
recognize decency when he sees it. There are people like that, of
course, even in Centropolis. I didn't come in here to borrow money of
you, nor to ask for credit. I came to ask for a job as a waitress."
The proprietor stared at her. "Well," he said, "you are a new one on
John Culver. I never got up against _your_ game before."
"I haven't any game," said Rose. "I've told you the exact truth."
Culver twisted around uneasily in his chair and began biting
thoughtfully on the end of a lead-pencil.
"Well," he said at last, "I'll take a chance. I'll tell you about a job
I think you can get. Only it won't do you any good to use my name. If
the man you go to comes to me, I can't tell him anything about you but
what I know. His name's Albert Zeider and he's got a picture house three
doors down the street. He's just put in a glass cage out in front, and
he wants a pretty girl to sit in it and sell tickets. He hasn't been
able to get anybody yet that filled the bill. So maybe he'd take a
chance on you. Only, mind, don't tell him I recommended you."
"I won't," said Rose. "I won't go to him at all. I've walked the length
of Main Street and back this morning, and I won't sit in Mr. Zeider's
glass cage. I'll wash dishes or scrub floors, but I won't do that."
The proprietor flung out his hands with the air of a man of whom nothing
more could be expected.
"Well, then," he said, "if you won't take a decent job that's offered to
you ..."
"It's not a decent job," said Rose. "Not for me; not for a girl who's
looked on in this town as I am. I want work! Don't you understand?"
Then, after a pause, "Won't you give it to me?"
"Well, I should say not," said John Culver. "Look here! What's the use?
Suppose you are what you say ..."
"You know I am," interrupted Rose.
"Well, I say, suppose it's true. What's the use? Do you think any decent
store-keeper on Main Street would risk his reputation by giving a job to
a stranded actress that had come here with a rotten show like the one
you was with; or that I could have you in my dining-room? This is a
respectable hotel, I tell you."
He broke off to wave his hand genially to a man who was walking slowly
by the door on his way down to the dining-room.
"There!" he went on to Rose. "That's what I mean! That's Judge Granger
of the Supreme Court of this state. He's come here regularly for meals,
when he ain't in Springfield, for the last fifteen years. He's the
biggest man in this county. Do you suppose he'd stand for it, if I asked
him to give his order to a busted actress?"
"Would you stand for it if he did?" demanded Rose. "If he told you that
I was all right and asked you to give me a job, would you do it?"
The proprietor laughed impatiently. "What's the good of talking
nonsense?" he demanded. "Yes, I would, if that'll satisfy you. But you'd
better take the next train for Chicago. And if ..." He hesitated,
stroked his mustache again with his under-lip, and went on,--"Oh, I
suppose I'm a damned fool, but if a couple of dollars will help you
out ..."
"No, thank you," said Rose. "I'm going to see the judge." And she cut
off John Culver's exclamation of protest by walking out of the office.
Rose went back to the desk, told the clerk she wanted dinner, and
forestalled the objection she saw him preparing to make, by laying a
dollar bill on the counter. He even hesitated a little over that, but
he took it and gave her a quarter in change.
"That'll be all right," he said, and she went the way the judge had
gone, down the corridor to the dining-room. A glance showed her where he
sat, and without waiting for the assistance of the head waitress, she