Investigation showed there was no hot water, and that the source of it was a tank heated by a small laundry stove in the cellar, which was out. Joyce descended the cellar stairs, found an ax, split up a box, and finally got the laundry fire going. Then she came upstairs and put three pans and the teakettle full of water to heat on the gas range. While they were heating, she went to the refrigerator to see what was on hand for that soup she was supposed to make.
The refrigerator proved worse than anything she had yet seen in the house and greatly needed a good cleaning, but there was no time for refrigerators. She was weary in every bone and sinew now, thinking of all that must be done before six o’clock. But she gathered out whatever was worth using—some chicken bones, a small piece of boiled beef, a leftover lamb chop, a bowl of chicken gravy, a few lima beans, and a cup of mashed potatoes. Not a very promising array. She cleared a spot on the kitchen table, skimmed the grease from the gravy, cut the fat from the meat, and put the whole array on to simmer with a little water. A little foraging brought some onions and carrots to light, which she diced and put in with the mixture. By this time, the water was hot, and she scalded the tomatoes and skinned them, putting them on the ice to harden. Then, with her soup and salad well under way, she felt more at her ease to go at the cleaning.
The first job was the sink, and it took fully ten minutes to reduce it and the dishpans to order. Then, as she could not find any clean dish towels, she washed out those that were soiled and hung them out in the backyard. They would be dry by the time she needed them, for there was a good breeze blowing. She glanced at the clock as she came in. Forty minutes of the precious seven hours was gone, and scarcely an impression made on the dreadful-looking place. She looked around in despair. The second relay of hot water was ready, and she went to work gathering first all the soiled silver and putting it to soak in a panful of suds while she scraped up the dishes and sorted them in orderly piles. Everything would have to soak before it was washed, for food had been smeared over them all and left to dry. By the time the sorting was done, the silver washed easily, and she put them into the rinsing pan. She filled the first pan with a pile of plates to soak while she washed off the drain board and shelf and made room to drain her dishes. Inch by inch she cleared places and filled them with clean, steaming dishes, filling her pans again and again with hot water. The laundry stove was getting in its work by this time, and the water from the faucet facilitated matters; nevertheless, it was half past two before she had every dish subdued and standing in clean, dry rows on a clean, dry table ready to be marshaled into pantry shelves that sadly needed cleaning but could not have it now. She must get that fruit dug out and on the ice at once.
She turned her attention to the cake next, and when it was in the oven, went at the mayonnaise dressing. She had made a chocolate layer cake, rich and dark, with a transparent chocolate filling and thick, white icing, and was just taking a sponge cake, light as a feather, out of the oven when the mistress arrived, fine and cool in a light crepe de chine, her hair in a wave and her face powdered to the last degree, leaving a perfume of luxury in her wake as she moved.
“Mercy!” she exclaimed. “Is that all the cake you’ve made? And look at the time. You’ll have to frost that, of course. It’s too plain that way. Have you fixed the salad? And, oh, I forgot to say there’ll have to be hot biscuits. I hope you can make good ones. Mr. Powers is very particular about his biscuits. He likes them light. I must say you might have scrubbed this floor a little bit. By the way, I wish you’d run up by and by while your vegetables are cooking and wipe up the bathroom tiles. My son took a bath this morning just before he went off on a trip, and he left water all over the floor.”
Joyce turned suddenly from setting the hot cake carefully on a cake cooler and faced the lady. Her cheeks were two pink flames, and her eyes were bits of blue ice. For just one second, words trembled on her lips, words that were not humble nor gentle. Here was a woman much like Nannette, who appeared to think the world was made all for herself. Joyce longed to lay down the knife with which she had loosened the cake from its pan and walk out of the kitchen as she had walked out of her cousin’s kitchen a few days before, never to return, but she reflected that she could not go on walking out of situations all her life that she did not like, and moreover, it would be a mean thing to leave the lady with her dinner only half prepared and company coming. It was obvious the lady was unfit to make it. And then, she had promised to do it. The lady had depended on her, and she must stick. Why not make a game of it, something that had to be overcome and won? So she let her lips soften into a smile and answered with a twinkle of amusement. “Why, I’m not sure I’ll have time, Mrs. Powers, but I’ll do my best. Things were pretty badly messed up here, you know, and it all took time. By the way, Mrs. Powers, Mrs. Bryant told me that your husband is on the school board. I wonder if you could tell me whether there is likely to be any opening for a teacher next fall? You know, I am a teacher. That is, that’s what I’ve been getting ready to be.”
There was something, just a shade of fineness perhaps, in the way Joyce spoke, a kind of sense of being above littleness and an air of being there to help her purely as a favor, that made the lady the least bit ashamed of having asked her to wipe up the bathroom floor. She stared at Joyce a minute in that superior sort of surprised way, as if suddenly some ribbon or powder puff or bit of lace she had been using had risen up and claimed a personality, and then she answered in a cold little tone, “Why, I’m sure I don’t know. There might be. If you put this dinner over well and get it all done on time, I’ll try and remember to speak to him about it. Mr. Powers loves good dinners, and he might do something for you. I’m going down in my car now to meet my friend, and I wish you’d answer the telephone while I’m gone and keep an eye on the front door. And don’t for mercy’s sake let anything burn. I just hate to have the house smell of burned food when guests arrive. Don’t forget the bathroom floor, and have plenty of biscuits.”
The lady sailed away again after having peered into the refrigerator at the tomatoes and fruit cup getting chilled, and sniffed at the kettle of soup on the back of the range, with never a word of commendation. Something strangely like tears came into the girl’s eyes as she turned back to the kitchen and reviewed the work still to be done, looking despairingly at the clock. Quarter to five! Could she do it? One thing she was sure of, she would never work for this woman again if she could help it. There seemed to be no pleasing her. It had been quite another thing to get dinner for Mrs. Bryant, who was delighted with everything she did. This woman treated her as if she were the very dust under her feet. Perhaps she had made a mistake in consenting to do kitchen work. Perhaps she had lowered herself in the woman’s eyes and hurt her chance of getting a school. Well, she must forget it now. It was all in the game, and she was out to win. It was just another hindrance put in her way, a net to get her ball over, a wicket through which she must pass. She would win out in spite of it. So, trying to coax a laugh into her throat instead of a sob, she went to work with redoubled vigor.
When the cake was frosted and standing white and beautiful in the window to dry, she slipped up to the bathroom, wiped up the floor, and tidied it a bit. It needed a vigorous cleaning, but she had no time to give it. Then she hurried down to shell the peas and scrape the potatoes. When they were on, she would feel easier in her mind. There was a stalk of celery in the storeroom and a few English walnuts. The salad would look prettier if she diced the celery and stuffed the tomatoes with celery and nuts. She must try to get time. It wouldn’t take a minute. Then the lettuce must be got from the garden. It ought to be in salt water this instant.
The next hour was a wild whirl. It seemed, as she rushed from table to range and from refrigerator back to the kitchen, that she had been rushing, rushing, ever since she left home, and she was tired, oh, so tired.
The biscuits were in the oven, the potatoes and peas bubbling cheerfully on the stove, the chops in the broiler, and Joyce was trying to s
et the table when Mrs. Powers returned with her guest. After taking her to the guest room upstairs, she came languidly down to see how the dinner was getting on. She said no word of commendation, but a look of satisfaction dawned in her eyes as she saw the orderly row of salad plates, daintily and appetizingly arrayed on the kitchen side table, and caught a glimpse of the two cakes in the pantry window smooth and glistening in deep frosting. Joyce caught the look, or perhaps she would not have been able to go on through the next trying hour.
“Mrs. Powers, I can’t find but one of those rose napkins you said you wanted to use. Could you tell me where else to look?” she asked as the lady returned to the dining room.
“Why, I’m sure they are in the drawer,” said the lady sharply as if somehow Joyce must have lost them herself. “They’re always right there.” She came and looked herself.
“Well, I guess they didn’t get sent to the laundry,” she admitted at last reluctantly after a hasty slamming of sideboard drawers. “Oh, here they are. How tiresome! Well, you’ll just have to take them down to the laundry and rub them out. There’s no other way. The others simply aren’t fit. Here, take these. You’ll find the electric iron right down there, and you can iron them dry.”
Joyce paused, aghast.
“But the dinner,” she said. “Things will burn, and I’m afraid it won’t be on time if I wait to do that.”
“Well, you’ll have to manage somehow. I’m sure I don’t know what else you can do. We’ll have to have dinner late then, I suppose, although Mr. Powers hates that. He always says never hire a person twice who can’t get meals on time. It’s the worst fault—”
But Joyce had seized the napkins and was already on her way down to the laundry, her lips set in a hard, determined little line. The school board should never be able to say she couldn’t be on time, even if it was the school board’s wife’s fault that she couldn’t be. She would win out and have dinner on time anyway.
So with a quick turn of the faucets and a fling of soap, she rubbed out the necessary napkins and, while they were soaking for a minute, hunted out the electric iron and set it heating. Up the stairs again to her dinner to watch the chops and turn the heat under the vegetables a little lower, breathlessly down again—such a wild scramble! Quarter to seven it was when she came up again with the three neatly ironed napkins in her hand and wildly flew into the dining room to finish setting the table. The sweet potatoes were browning in their sugar bath, and she had to watch them closely that they did not burn. It meant flying back and forth continually—and, oh, there were olives, the ice water, and cream for the coffee. Would dinner ever be ready and served? And where was her apron?
The last five minutes were a nightmare. She could hear the front door open and the voice of the two gentlemen as they entered. Which one would be Mr. Powers? The gruff, deep one, or the high falsetto? And then came the awful minute when she donned the new white apron and came to sign to Mrs. Powers that all was ready. The clock in the living room was chiming seven with silvery tones as she signaled her readiness, and she thought she saw a look of surprise and relief in the languid eyes of the hostess, but she stayed not to make further discoveries. She would have her hands full for the next few minutes without knowing whether the lady was pleased or not.
“Surely he shall deliver thee—”
What was it that Bible verse said that ran through her head with every pulsation of her racing blood? Why should a Bible verse come so persistently into her mind just now when she was too busy to think about anything? “Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence”—that was it. The snare of the fowler was the little things that caught one. Well, He had delivered her. He had helped her to smile instead of to be annoyed. Was she winning out? Dinner was on time anyway.
Chapter 17
The guests were eating away at the fruit cup with a relish. It was delicious, Joyce knew, for she had tasted it when it was finished. She was hot and thirsty, and she longed for some of it now, but there was none left. She had filled the glass as full as possible. She heard one of the guests say how delicious it was and the hostess reply in her languid drawl that it wasn’t what it ought to be, that she had a new maid, and she was sure she didn’t know whether they were to have anything fit to eat or not. She was brand new, and green, and what was worse, she was literary. “Imagine that, Hatfield”—the lady turned to the tall man with the deep, growling voice, and her laugh rang out—“imagine that she wants you to recommend her as a teacher in the high school! Isn’t that the limit?”
Joyce was just coming in to take the glasses and replace them with the bouillon cups filled with a delicious concoction that came out of that mixture of bones and meats and vegetables with the addition of a bit of tomato, onion, celery top, and parsley, and she stopped short in the pantry with flaming cheeks and quick tears in her eyes, and then stepped hastily back into the kitchen and paused in dismay. What should she do? How could she face that tableful of hateful people with their laughter still upon their lips?
There before her stood the kitchen door wide open to a garden path that led around the house to the gate. She could walk out and leave this impossible woman to her fate. Let her get up and serve her own guests and wash her own dishes afterward and keep her own ten-dollar bill and, yes, her school positions, too. There were other people in the world—and the tears rolled down her hot, angry cheeks.
“Surely he shall deliver thee…. Surely … Surely …”
It rang in her ears like a voice, a reminder.
“Yes, I know,” said her tired heart. She mustn’t get into the habit of walking out back doors when she didn’t like things. She really mustn’t. “Dear Jesus, please give me strength, courage—” She dashed the tears away and splashed cold water on her hot cheeks. Then, in answer to the third ringing of the buzzer, she appeared in the dining room as if nothing had happened and quietly removed the glasses from the table.
In her pretty little blue dress with her white collar and apron, she looked a slender vision as she entered with her tray. She was conscious at once that every eye was fixed upon her, whereupon her cheeks flamed the rosier, but she kept her eyes down upon her work and managed to get through the door with her heavy tray of glasses without breaking down.
“Jove!” she heard the gruff voice say. “She looks as if she could teach if she wanted to.”
“Yes, yes,” chimed in the falsetto, “quite pretty for a kitchen maid, I should say.”
“Quite too pretty, I should say,” said the cool voice of the lady guest, like a sharp, dividing steel, significant, insulting.
Joyce trembled as she heard Mrs. Powers respond in her affected drawl. “Yas, I thought so myself. But what could I do? I’d have had to get dinner myself—”
“Well, she seems to know how to cook,” growled Mr. Powers. By this time, his soup was steaming at his place and he was regarding it with interest.
Joyce caught his glance fixed pleasantly upon her as she went about placing the soup, and took heart. Perhaps all hope of a chance through Mr. Powers was not lost after all.
“Surely he shall deliver thee. Surely—” The words kept ringing as she went back and forth from kitchen to dining room, dreading each encounter more than the last.
As the meal progressed, it became evident that all were enjoying it, and the men at least were loud in their praises of each new dish as it arrived.
“Well, I say. These peas taste as if they had just been picked,” said the guest, and his host replied, “Say, Anne, these sweet potatoes beat anything we ever had. Get her to stay if you can. Pay her fifty dollars a week if you want to, only get her to stay!”
Mrs. Powers turned a languid smile of disgust on her woman guest and answered scornfully, “Now, isn’t that just like a man? Candied sweet potatoes and a pretty face! That’s all they think about. I wish you’d see how she left the kitchen floor! And she had plenty of time to clean it up before she began to get dinner.”
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p; “Well, if you ask me,” said her husband heartily, “I’d say cleaning kitchen floors wasn’t her job.”
All these things Joyce heard in stage whispers that were not intended for her ears, as she went back and forth bringing dishes and serving new courses.
At the salad, even the ladies waxed a little kindly, but when the ice cream came on and with it the two great, luscious cakes, there was loud applause from the gentlemen, and it was evident that if a position in the high school depended upon making good cake, Joyce had won it. She hastily placed the last coffee cup and retired precipitately from the dining room, afraid that after all she was going to break down and cry. She was so tired!
But cry she wouldn’t. She had one more thing yet to do before anybody had a chance to come out in that kitchen. She would scrub that kitchen floor if it took the last bit of force she had left in her body.
So she closed the pantry and kitchen doors, donned her gingham apron again, and got down on her knees with hot water, soap, and scrubbing brush, and a great drying cloth she had found in the laundry. Such a scrubbing as that inlaid linoleum had it never had had before and never would likely have again!
She laid a newspaper down by the sink to keep it clean when she was done and then straightened herself up for a moment, wondering if the ache would ever go out of her back and knees again. It wasn’t just scrubbing the floor or working hard to get dinner; it was the culmination of the days since she had left home.
But she must not take time to think how tired she was. There were dishes yet to wash and the table to clear. All those dishes! How long the evening looked ahead! They were rising from the table at last, and she must hurry with the dishes already there and get them out of the way.
So she went at the dishpan again, her fingers flying as though she had just begun after a good night’s rest. And one by one, dozen by dozen, those dishes were marshaled again into shining freshness and the table cleared.