menu_book Chapter 2

Book 1, Chapter 1, Sections 5-7 of Bread. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Read by Wild Shimmering Path. Bread by Charles G. Norris. Book 1, Chapter 1, Sections 5-7. She watched them affectionately now as they finished their dinner,

observing her older daughter's fastidious manipulation of her fork, the younger one's bird-like way of twisting her small head as she ate. A fleeting wonder of what the future held in store for each passed through her mind. Jeanette was more impetuous and daring, was shrewd-minded, clear-thinking, efficient, was headstrong, and actuated ever by a suffering pride.

She would undoubtedly grow into a tall, beautiful woman. Alice, her mother's brown bird, seemed overshadowed by comparison, and yet Mrs. Sturgis sometimes felt that Alice, with her simpler, unexacting, contented nature, her gentle faith, her meditative mind, was the more fortunate of the two. She herself turned to Jeanette for advice, for discussion of ways and means, and to Alice for sympathetic understanding and uncritical

loyalty. They were both splendid girls, she mused fondly, who would make admirable wives. They must marry, of course. She had brought them up since they were tiny girls to consider a successful, happy marriage as their outstanding aim in life. She had trained them in the duties of wives, even of mothers, but she shuddered, and her heart grew sick within her, as she began dimly to perceive the time approaching when she must surrender their bloom and innocence, and her

complete proprietorship in them to some confident, ignorant young male who would unhesitatingly set up his half-baked judgment for his wife's welfare against her hard-won knowledge of life. Yet both girls must marry, her heart was set on that. Marriage meant everything to a girl, and to the right husbands, her daughters would make ideal wives. With the speed of long practice, the remains of the dinner were swept away and the kitchen set to rights. Both girls attempted to dissuade their

mother from performing her customary dishwashing task, urging her that to-night she must rest. But Mrs. Sturgis would not listen. She was quite rested, she declared, and there was nothing to washing up the few dishes they had used. Why, it was ten minutes' work. She invariably insisted upon performing this dirtier, more vigorous task. Alice's part was to wipe, Jeanette's to clear the table, brush the cloth, put away the china and napkins, and replace the old square piece of

chenille curtaining, which had for years done duty as a table cover. Then there was the gas drop light to set in its center and connect with the gasolier above a long tube ending in a curved brass nozzle that fitted over one of the burners. Where this joining occurred there was always a slight escape of gas, and it frequently gave Mrs. Sturgis or her daughters a headache, but beyond an impatient comment from one of them, such as, Mercy me, the gas smells horribly tonight, or

Open the window a little, dearie! The gas is beginning to make my head ache! Nothing was ever done about it. It was one of those things in their lives to which they had grown accustomed and accepted along with the rest of the ills and goods of their days. Mother and girls used the dining room as the place to congregate, sew, read, or idle. They rarely sat down or attempted to make themselves comfortable in the spacious front room. It was

not nearly so agreeably intimate, and they felt it must always be kept in order for music lessons, and for rare occasions when company came. Company usually turned out to be a pupil's mother or a housemaid who came to explain that little Edna or Gracie had the mumps or was going to dentists on Saturday, and therefore would not be able to take her lesson, or a messenger from Signor Bellini to inquire if Mrs. Sturgis could play for one of his pupils the following evening. Such was the

character of the callers, but the fiction of company was maintained. The group Mrs. Sturgis and her daughters made about the dining-room table in the warm yellow radiance of the drop-light was intimately familiar and dear to each of them. There was always a certain amount of sewing going on, mending or darning, and hardly an evening passed without one or another industriously bending over her needle. Usually they were all three at it, for they made most of their own

clothes. Each had her own particular side of the table and her own particular chair. They were extremely circumspect in the observance of one another's preferences, and would apologize profusely if one happened to be found on the wrong side of the table or incorrectly seated. Mrs. Sturgis, on the rare occasions when she found herself with nothing particular to do, spread out a pack of cards before her and indulged in a meditative solitaire.

Alice had always a novel in which she was absorbed. Generally, three or four books were saved up in her room, and she considered herself dreadfully behind in her reading unless she had disposed of one of them as soon as she acquired another. Jeanette studied the fashions in the dress magazines,

and sometimes amused herself by drawing costume designs of her own. But dressmaking occupied most of the evenings. There was usually a garment of some kind in process of manufacture, or a dress to be ripped to pieces and its materials used in new ways. Alice acted as model no matter for whom the work was intended. She had infinite patience and could stand

indefinitely, sometimes with a bit of sewing in her hands, sometimes with a book propped before her on the mantle, indifferent and unconcerned, while her mother and sister crawled around her on the floor, pinning, pulling, and draping the material about her young figure, or else sitting back on their heels and arguing with each other while they eyed her with heads first on one side, then on the other. Tonight, Jeanette was making herself a corset cover. Alice was struggling over

a school essay on home life of the Greeks in the age of Pericles, and Mrs. Sturgis was darning. They had not been more than half an hour at their work, when there was the sound of masculine feet mounting the stairs, a hesitating step in the hall, and a brief ring of the doorbell. They glanced at one another questioningly, and Alice rose. Alice always answered the bell. If it's old Bellini wanting you tonight, Jeanette began in annoyance. But the man's voice that

reached them was no messenger's. It was polite and friendly. It was for Alice's sister, he inquired. Jeanette found Dikron Najarian in the front room. The young man was all bashful breathlessness. There's an Armenian society here in New York, Miss Sturgis. My father was one of the organizers, has been a member for years. We're having a dance tonight at Widerman's Hall on Amsterdam Avenue, and my cousin Louisa, who was going with me, is ill. She has a bad toothache. I have her ticket,

and will you come in her place? Rosa's going, of course, and tell your mother I'll bring you home at twelve o'clock. It was said in an anxious rush, with hopeful eagerness. Jeanette, bewildered, went to consult her mother. Mrs. Sturgis hastily pinned one of her jabots around her neck, and appeared to confront young Najarian in the studio. She listened to the invitation thoughtfully, her head cocked upon one side, her lips pursed in judicial fashion.

Jani was still very young, she explained. She had never attended anything quite so grown up. She was usually only to the parties her school friends sometimes asked her to, and Mrs. Sturgis was afraid. Suddenly, Jeanette wanted to go. She pinched her mother's arm, and an impatient protest escaped her lips. Oh, please, Mrs. Sturgis, pleaded the young man. A rich contralto voice sounded from the hallway of the floor below. The door to the apartment

had been left open, and now they could see big handsome Rosa Najarian's face through the banisters as she stood halfway up the stairs. Do let your daughter come, Mrs. Sturgis. They are all nice boys and girls. I will keep a sharp eye on her and bring her home to you safely. Well, said Mrs. Sturgis, I just wanted to feel satisfied that everything was right and proper. There were some further words. Jeanette left her mother talking with Dicron and flew to the

dining room to her sister. Quick, Alistiri, Dicron Najarians asked me to a dance. I must fly. Help me get ready. He's waiting. Instantly, there was a scurry, a jerking open of bureau drawers, a general diving into crowded closets. The question immediately arose, what was Jeanette to wear? In a mad burst of extravagance she had sent her dotted Swiss muslin to the laundry. There remained only her old party dress, which had been done over and over, lengthened and

lengthened, until now the velvet was worn and shiny. The covering of some of the buttons was gone and showed the bright metal beneath. The ribbon about the waist was split in several places. Yet there was nothing else, and while the girl was hooking herself into it, Alice daubed the metal buttons with ink and sewed folds of the ribbon over where it had begun to split. Jeanette borrowed stockings from her sister and wedged her feet into a pair of her mother's pumps, which were too small

for her. Her black lusterless locks were happily becomingly arranged, and excitement brought a warm dull red to her olive-tinted cheeks. She was in gay spirits when Najarian called for her some 15 minutes later and went off with him chattering vivaciously. Mrs. Sturgis stood for a moment in the open doorway of her apartment and listened to the descending feet upon the stairs, to the lessening sound of gay young voices. She assured herself she caught Rosa Najarian's warmer accents

as the older girl met her brother and Jeanette two flights below. She still bent her ear for the last sounds of the little party as it made its way down the final flight of stairs, paused for an interval in the lowest hallway, and banged the front door behind it with a dull reverberation and a shiver of glass. As the house grew still, she waited a minute or two longer with compressed lips and a troubled frown, then shook her round little cheeks firmly, turned back into her own

apartment, and without comment began to help Alice hang up Jeanette's discarded clothing and set the disordered room to rights. Jeanette found her mother sitting up for her when she returned a little after twelve. Mrs. Sturgis was engaged in writing out bills for her lessons, which she would mail on the last day of the month. The old canvas-covered ledger, with its criss-crossed pages, its erasures, and torn edges in which she kept her accounts, was a familiar sight in her

hands. She was forever turning its thumbed and inked stained leaves, studying old and new entries, making half-finished calculations in the margins or blank spaces. She sat now in the unbecoming flannelette gown she wore at night, her thin hair and two skimpy pigtails on either side of her neck, a tattered knitted shawl of a murderous red about her shoulders, and a comforter across her knees. In the yellow light of the hissing gas above her head, she appeared haggard and old, with dark

pockets underneath her scant eyebrows and even gaunt hollows in the little cheeks that bulged plumply and bravely during the day above her tight lace collars. Well, dearie! Bright animation struggled into the mother's face, and her voice at once was all eagerness and interest. Did you have a good time? Tell me about it. Immediately she detected something was amiss. There was none of the gay exhilaration and youthful exuberance in her daughter's manner she had confidently expected.

One searching glance into the glittering dark eyes as the girl stooped to kiss her, told her Jeanette was fighting tears, struggling to control a burst of pent-up feeling. Why, dearie, what's the matter? Tell me. Oh! There was young fury in the exclamation. Jeanette flung herself into a chair and buried her face in her hands, plunging her fingertips deep into her thick coils of black hair.

For several minutes, she would not answer her mother's anxious inquiries. Wasn't Mr. Najarian nice to you? Didn't he look after you? Didn't you have a good time? Tell Mama, Mrs. Sturgis persisted. Oh, yes, he was very nice. Yes, he took good care of me. And Rosa did, too. Then what is it, dearie? What happened? Mama wants to know. Jeanette drew a long breath and got brusquely to her feet. Oh, it's this, she burst out,

striking the gown she wore with contemptuous fingers. It's these miserable things I have to wear. There wasn't a girl there tonight, not even one, that wasn't better dressed. I was a laughing stock among them. Oh, I know I was, I know I was. They all felt sorry for me. A poor little neighbor of Dicron Najarian's on whom he had taken pity and whom he had asked to a dance. Oh, I can't and won't stand it, Mama. Tears suddenly choked her, but she fought them down and stilled her mother's

rush of expostulations. No, no, Mama. It's nobody's fault. You work your fingers to the bone for Allie and me. You work from daylight till dark to keep us in school and in idleness. I'm not going to let you do it any longer. No, Mama, I'm not going to let things go on as they are. I needed some experience like tonight's to make me wake up. What experience? Don't talk so wild, baby. Finding out for myself I was the shabbiest dressed girl in the room. There were a lot of other girls

there. Really nice girls. I didn't expect it. I suppose I thought I wouldn't find any American girls like myself at an Armenian dance. I don't know what I thought, but there were only a few like Rosa and Dikron, and all the other girls were beautifully dressed. Jeanette broke off and began to blink hard for self-control. Her mother, her face twisted with sympathy and distress, could only pat her hand and murmur soothingly over and over,

Dearie, my poor dearie, my dearie girl, I saw one old lady sizing me up, Jeanette went on presently. I could see right into her brain and I knew every thought she was thinking. She looked me over from my feet to my hair and from my hair to my feet. There wasn't a thing wrong or right with me that that old cat missed. She didn't mean it unkindly. She was merely interested in noting how shabby I was. And Mama, it was a revelation to me. I could just see ahead into the years that are coming,

and I could see that that was to be my fate always wherever I went, to be shabbily dressed and be pitied. Now, now, dearie, don't take on so. Mama will work hard, we'll save. But that's just what I won't have, Jeanette interrupted passionately. I'm not going to let you go on slaving for Allie and me, making yourself a drudge. What's it all for? Just so Allie and I can marry suitable rich young men? Isn't that it? Ever since I can remember, I've heard you talk about our future

husbands and what kind of men they are to be. You've been describing to us for years the time when we'll be going to dances and theatres. Going, yes, but how? Dressed like this? Worn, shabby old clothes, to be pitied by other women? No, Mama, I won't do it. I'd rather stay home with you for the rest of my life and grow up to be an old maid. Oh, Janie, don't talk so reckless. You take things so seriously and you're always imagining the worst side of everything.

There are thousands of girls a great deal worse off than you. There are thousands of mothers and fathers and daughters in this city right this minute who are facing just this problem. It's as old as the hills, but there's always a way out, a way that's right and proper. Don't let it trouble you, dearie. Leave it to Mama. Mama'll manage. No, Mama, I won't leave it to you. I've got eyes in my head and I see how hard you have to struggle. We're always behind as it is, pestered by bills

and the tradespeople, why this very afternoon we didn't have a cent in the house, not even a copper, and you had to borrow a dime from Mildred Carpenter to buy bread. Just think of it. We didn't have money enough for bread. But, dearie, I've got Miss Lauberow's check in my purse. Yes, and we owe ten times its amount. We're running steadily behind. I don't see anything better ahead. It's going to be this way year after year, always falling a little more and a

little more behind until, until, well, until people won't trust us anymore. Perhaps we could cut down a bit somewheres, Jenny. Oh, Mama, don't talk nonsense. I'm going to work. That's all there is about it. Jeanette, you can't. You mustn't. Well, I am just the same. Rosana Jarian is a stenographer with the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and she gets $18 a week. Think of it, Mama. Eighteen dollars a week! She took a ten weeks course at the Gerald Commercial School,

and at the end of that time they got her a job. She didn't have to wait a week. No, I'm not going to high school another day. Tomorrow I'm going down to that commercial school. But dearie, dearie, you don't want to be a working girl. You're a working woman, aren't you? But, my dear, I had no other choice. I had my girls to bring up, and I've grubbed and Slaved, as you say, just so my daughters would never have to take positions.

I've worked hard to make ladies of you, dearie, and no lady's a shop girl. Oh, I couldn't bear it. You and Ali's shop girls, Janie. It would finish me. Well, Mama, you don't feel so awful about Rosa Najarian, do you?

You consider Rosa a lady, don't you? She's an Armenian, Jeanette, and I know nothing about Armenians. Besides, she's not my daughter. The kind of men I want for husbands to my girls will not be looking for their wives behind shop counters. But, Mama, stenographers don't work behind counters.

Oh, yes, they do. Anyway, it's the same thing. Jeanette felt suddenly too tired to continue the discussion. Her mind began turning over the changes the steps she contemplated would occasion. Mrs. Sturgis's fingers played a nervous tattoo upon her tremulous lips. She glanced apprehensively at her daughter, and in that moment realized the girl would have her way.

Oh, dearie, dearie, she burst out, I can't have you go to work. Jeanette knew that no opposition from her mother would alter her purpose. Where her mind was made up, her mother invariably capitulated. It had been so for a long time, and Jeanette, at least, was aware of it. As she foresaw the full measure of her mother's distress when she put her decision into effect,

She came and knelt beside her chair, gathered the tired figure in its absurd flannelette nightgown in her arms, and kissed the thin silky hair where it parted and showed the papery white skin of her scalp. Mrs. Sturgis bent her head against her daughter's shoulder while the tears trickled down her nose and fell upon the girl's bare arm. Jeanette murmured consolingly, but her mother refused to be comforted, indicating her disapproval by firm little shakes of her head while she managed now and then between watery sniffles.

There were finally many kisses between them and many loving assurances. The girl promised to do nothing without careful consideration, and they would all three discuss the proposition from every angle in the morning. When they had said a last good night and the girl had gone to her room, Mrs. Sturgis still sat on under the hissing gas jet with the red torn shawl about her shoulders.

the comforter across her knees. The tears dried on her face, and for a long time she stared fixedly before her, her lips moving unconsciously with her thoughts. The little suite of rooms she had known so intimately for twelve long years grew still. The chill of the dead of night crept in. Jeanette's light went out. Mrs. Sturgis reached for the canvas-covered ledger on the table beside her and began a rapid calculation of figures on its last page. For a long time she stared at the

result, then rose deliberately and went into her room. There she cautiously pulled an old trunk from the wall, unlocked its lid, raised a dilapidated tray, and knelt down. In the bottom was an old papier-mâché box, battered and scratched, with rubbed corners. She opened this and began carefully to examine its contents. There was the old brooch pin Ralph had given her after the first concert they attended together, and there were her mother's coral earrings and

necklace, and the little silver buckles Jeanette had worn on her first baby shoes. There were some other trinkets, a stud, Ralph's collapsible gold pencil, a French five-franc piece, a scarf pin from whose setting the stone was missing. Tucked into a faded leather photograph case was a sheaf of folded pawn tickets. That was the way her rings had gone, and the diamond pin, Ralph's jeweled cufflinks, and the gold head of her father's ebony cane. She picked up the pair of silver

buckles and examined them in the palm of her hand. Presently she added the gold brooch and the collapsible pencil before she put back the contents of the trunk and locked it. For some moments she stood in the center of her room, gently jingling these ornaments together. Then her eye traveled to her bureau. Slowly she approached it and one after another lifted the gold chains she wore during the day. These she disengaged from her eyeglasses and watch, and wrapped them with the buckles and

the brooch in a bit of tissue paper pulled from a lower drawer. But still she did not seem satisfied. With the tissue paper package in her hand she sat on the edge of her bed, frowning thoughtfully, her fingers slowly tapping her lips. Presently a light came into her eyes. She lit a candle and stole softly through the girls' rooms into the great gaunt chamber that was the studio. In one corner was a bookcase, overflowing with old novels, magazines, and battered schoolbooks.

It was a higgledy-piggledy collection of years, a library without value, save for five substantial volumes of Grove's Musical Dictionary on a lower shelf. Mrs. Sturgis knelt before these, drew them out one by one, and laid them beside her on the floor. She opened the first volume and read the inscription, To my ever-patient, gentle Henrietta, for five years my devoted wife, true friend, and loving companion, from her grateful and affectionate husband, Ralph.

There was the date, twelve years ago, and he had died within six months after he had written those words. Her fingers moved to her trembling lips, and she frowned darkly. She closed the book, carried the five volumes to a shelf in a closet near at hand, and tucked them out of sight in a far corner. There was one last business to be performed. The books in the bookcase must be arranged to fill the vacant place where the dictionary had stood. Mrs. Sturgis was not

satisfied until her efforts seemed convincing. At last she picked up her wavering candle and made her way back to her own room. As she got into bed, the old onyx clock on the mantle in the dining room struck three blurred notes upon its tiny harsh gong. Only when darkness had shut down and the night was silent did tears come to the tired eyes. There was then a blinding rush and a few quick strangling sobs. Mrs. Sturgis stifled these and wiped her eyes heartily upon

a fold of the rough sheet. She steadied a trembling lip with a firm hand and resolutely turned upon her side to compose herself for sleep. End of Book One, Chapter One, Sections Five through Seven. Instantly there was a scurry, a jerking open of bureau drawers, a general diving into crowded closets.