Alley Ways

Helen R. Hull

Author of “The Fire”

Illustrations by Edna L. Crompton

The Century Magazine, vol. 95, Feb. 1918, pp. 561-571.

Cynthia hurried between the sheeted counters toward the door. She had lingered so long that the other clerks had gone, and Mr. Bell himself stood, just shaking off his managerial airs, in final directions to the basement man. He unlatched the door for Cynthia, who slipped past him with a grave good night. Within her gravity, though, hung streamers of delight; she was proud of Mr. Bell’s black-haired suaveness, proud of it as something belonging to her, since he managed the store where she clerked; she delighted in her own importance in being thus let out of the secretive, closed shop. She glanced down the street to see whether any one had noticed her emergence. At the sight of a girl loitering before the windows a few stores ahead she shivered, a forbidden streamer fluttering out. Queenie wouldn’t take a hint, then. Cynthia walked slowly toward her, framing bits of self-defense. She had waited as long as she could; Queenie should have been blocks ahead of her. Instead, there she was, dropping into step beside her, a sick furtiveness glinting in wide, blue eyes.

“Don’t be a silly!” exclaimed Cynthia, and the relief that chased off the furtiveness in Queenie’s face banished her own faint resolve. She couldn’t strike at her brutally, as her mother had demanded.

“If you tried to shake me now, after all I told you,—” her plaintive voice came over Cynthia’s shoulder,—“I don’ know what I’d do.”

“Say, you don’t need to run home, do you?” She plucked at Cynthia’s arm, and with a little laugh Cynthia slackened her stride.

“I acted like I didn’t see him; and then—I tried to run; and then I got home somehow.”

“And you said you couldn’t help it; and now you’ve proved you could.” Cynthia’s voice rang out in young triumph.

“I was afraid he’d wait for me to-night.” Queenie glanced at the warehouses they were passing. “He turns me all to water. You don’t know.”

“I knew, if you wanted to do it, you could.” Cynthia nodded wisely at Queenie. She glowed with her triumph; she had projected her own strength into this girl. “I’ll walk down your street with you, and then if he comes—” She ended with a note of scorn.

“What things?” Queenie’s full lips twitched. “You can pretend you ain’t thinking about it, but it’s right there.” She seized Cynthia’s arm, a curious gurgle in her throat. “See! Is that him?” She pulled Cynthia to a stop in front of a little drug-store, peering in between the red and blue bottles.

“’T wasn’t.” Queenie turned her face slowly back to Cynthia. Little blotches of color showed under the soft, pale cheeks. She clung to Cynthia’s arm, pressing it against her body. “Oh, I don’ know how to bear it!”

“Don’t act so here on the street,” she said gently. “Some one will notice you.”

They were almost to the river. A wagon passed them, the pitch of its rumble changing hollowly as it came to the wooden bridge.

“You see,” Cynthia went on as the girls reached the bridge, “it is wicked to feel like that, now you know he has a wife.” Queenie’s emotion was strange wine on her lips, dizzying her.

“I didn’t know that when I got to loving him.” Queenie stared down at the muddy, sluggish current.

A group of workmen straggled past them, one of them grinning, teeth white in the grime and tan of his face.

“Oh, I hear you. But what am I going to do?” Queenie clung to the rail. “Sometimes—” she flung up her hand—“I think I’ll jump in. Living so handy to the river, I think of it.”

“Nonsense!” Cynthia drew her again into a slow walk. “Don’t you talk that way. You’ve got a job, and there are lots of things for you to do.”

“Job! It’s all right for you to talk, coming in for two weeks of the sale. How’d you like selling notions all the time? ‘Yes, ’m, these are five cents. No; them are ten.’ Fine way to live, ain’t it!”

“Well,”—Cynthia hesitated,—“the family wouldn’t let me. It was all I could do to make them let me do it these two weeks. But I think I’d like it. You could get to be head of a department.”

They had reached the end of the bridge, and Cynthia stopped impatiently. Queenie’s apathy roiled the clear water of her wisdom—a lip wisdom that she echoed unquestioningly.

“If you won’t make any effort yourself!” she cried. Queenie sucked in the corners of her mouth; an incongruous dimple flickered in one cheek. Her huge sailor-hat had slipped back, and her fair hair lay in moist curls around her forehead and ears. She looked almost like a baby, thought Cynthia, pityingly, so that she hurried on. “But of course you want to. Now let’s think. If you don’t like the store, why not try something else?”

“I set out to be a private secret’ry, but I didn’t have the mem’ry. I saved up, and took a course, but I couldn’t learn it.”

“Well,”—Cynthia walked on,—“there must be something. I’ll think about it.”

“Would you—” Queenie hesitated—“would you have time to come down a piece with me?”

There was nothing beyond the sheds, though, but a mud path close along the river, with a cluster of shacks.

“Third one’s where I live,” said Queenie, defiantly. “’T ain’t much and it’s full of kids. You better go back now.” She clutched at Cynthia’s arm. “You won’t shake me, will you? Just feelin’ there’s somebody knows, gives me more spunk.”

“SHE CLUTCHED AT CYNTHIA’S ARM. ‘YOU WON’T SHAKE ME, WILL YOU? JUST FEELIN’ THERE’S SOMEBODY KNOWS, GIVES ME MORE SPUNK’”

“Of course not. I’ll help you, Queenie.” Cynthia flung up her head, her voice vibrating in her throat. The squalor of the houses by the river, the strange, dirty alley, this soft, trembling Queenie—all became an entrancing mystery lying in her hands for her to shape. “Good night,” she whispered. “I’ll see you to-morrow.”

She ran back through the alley, half expecting to be halted by a stranger, by him, perhaps.

As, breathless, she reached the street she heard a loud “Cynthia!” and there was her father pulling up his horse. She climbed in beside him, her “Hello, Father!” as nonchalant as her quick breath permitted. Confusion whirled within her for a moment, and then quieted enough to be recognized as despair. What were all her defenses, now that she had been seen coming out of the alley itself?

In the pause that followed, Cynthia set her chin, her eyes on the smooth, rapid motion of Daffy’s flanks. She wouldn’t say a thing. He could go ahead, if he had to. After a moment he did, casually.

“I tried to get rid of her to-night—” At her father’s glance a flush prickled in her eyelids, and she went on: “I did. I waited until the store was locked up. She was still hanging around. She begged me to go down the alley.”

“Well,”—he touched up the horse,—“you’ve had enough of the store. Your mother needs you around the house.”

A lurch of the road-cart threw Cynthia against her father, and she saw, incredulously, the lines down his lean cheeks deepen. He wasn’t joking. He had swung over to the other side, then. She had lost her amused ally.

“Bell’s won’t go out of business. If you won’t play fair, you can’t do what you want to.”

“You can’t do that girl any good. She’s a poor lot. Your mother told you to drop her. That’s all there is to it.”

He turned the horse under the elm-trees of the drive, and walked her in silence to the steps of the house. There he waited for Cynthia to get out. She stood for an instant by the wheel, her eyes entreating him. But with a flick of the lines he said:

“I’ll just tell your mother you aren’t going to work any more,” and Cynthia, lagging up the steps, knew bitterly he meant that as a concession, the only one he could make her.

As she splashed her eyes with cold water she pressed her fingers against them, so that the blood in the tips pounded on the eyeballs.

Through the desultory supper-talk she was aware of her mother’s gaze drifting about her, retreating if she looked up restively. Robert, eyeing her over his bread and butter, announced between bites:

Later, in a dark corner of the porch, Cynthia looked into her black mood. It was all distorted images of herself: the self Mr. Bell would think her for “quitting her job,” when she had said she could work two weeks; the self he would think her if he learned that she was being dragged away like a baby; the self—this all a shattered image—that Queenie would think her when she failed to appear in the morning, failed to keep that promise to stand by her. Gone were the bright images she loved of herself as a person of independence, as a superior saleswoman, and, brightest of all, sharpest, as a wise benefactor. Within the house voices droned, her father and mother talking. A little impotent rage blew through her, blurring the distorted images into a microcosm of humiliation. The screen-door opened, and Cynthia, at the sight of her mother’s figure, large in the dusk, drew back into her corner, a hard shell closing to about her heart.

“Oh, there you are.” She settled into a chair near Cynthia, rocking leisurely. “Your father says you aren’t going to the store any more.”

There was a silence, in which Cynthia felt tiny flames of antagonism lick out from her contracted heart. Then her mother spoke again in the tone of one offering diversion to a sulky child.

“Rachel Meredith came in this afternoon. She said her dresses had come home. Why don’t you go over now to see them, if you aren’t too tired? You won’t have much more chance to see Rachel.”

Cynthia stirred in her chair. She did want to see Rachel. She wanted to refuse her mother’s suggestion, but after a moment of perversity she knew she wished more to see Rachel.

“Don’t stay too late, although you won’t need to get up early to-morrow.”

Until she was out of sight of the house Cynthia walked slowly; then she quickened her steps until she was almost running. The huge elms gathered the night in pools under their branches; waves of light ran out from the windows she passed, breaking into curious white foam on rosebushes or dropping on smooth, pale lawns. The self of humiliation drifted away from her. Rachel would help her, would know what to do for Queenie. The thought of Rachel sang through her—tall, sweet Rachel, with white, light-touching hands.

She crept noiselessly across the grass to the side of the Meredith house. The French windows stood open to the screened porch, and just within one of them Rachel sat reading. Cynthia caught her breath in a second of hushed adoration; mystery lay about Rachel, like the soft light on her dark hair and graceful neck. To-night and to-morrow she could sit there reading; then she would be gone, changed. The thought of the strange man who was to come Friday to marry Rachel stirred in Cynthia jealous wonder. She wanted Rachel to look up, to see her standing there. Suddenly, with the breath of some warm night scent, Queenie seemed to press against her, quivering, imploring—Queenie in love, too. Her image dimmed the mystery about Rachel, and Cynthia moved impatiently away from such disloyalty. At the sound Rachel glanced up, and, with a soft “Cynthia!” came out to the edge of the veranda.

Her voice was a warm rain of confusion falling deliciously upon Cynthia. She stumbled on the step, and then Rachel drew her inside the screens, laying an arm about her shoulders, and led her up the broad stairway to her own room. There was mystery here, too, in the disorder of the quiet, spacious chamber, in half-filled trunks, and piles of soft colors and textures on low chairs. Two nights more, and the beautiful disorder would be gone.

“Sit here, child.” Rachel pushed to the floor a mass of tissue-paper, and Cynthia crouched on a corner of the couch.

Cynthia watched mutely, her eyes on the slender hands which caressed the fabrics, shaking out folds of silk, touching bits of embroidery. Rachel slipped her arms into a bright mandarin coat, and wheeled in front of Cynthia. Incongruously, Queenie seemed to fling up her hands there, clumsy, short-fingered. Rachel, turning back to Cynthia, paused.

The coat dropped from her shoulders, and she stepped near the couch. Cynthia shook her head; Queenie had no place here.

“I believe you’d like me not to be married, little dumb thing!” Rachel touched Cynthia’s cheek with cool fingers. “Is that it?”

“Rachel!” At Rachel’s laugh Cynthia flushed. Perhaps Rachel guessed how she reveled in the exotic pain of losing her.

“There, I won’t torment you. Come, we’ll go out on the porch. This is all, except loads of silver. Mother can show you that, if you like, afterward.”

On the veranda again, Rachel sank into her hammock, and bade Cynthia pull her chair close.

“I can’t go back to the store.” Cynthia plucked at the fringe of the hammock. “Father saw me—coming out the alley where Queenie lives. She’s that girl, you know.”

“O Cynthia,” Rachel’s voice rallied her, “your heart’s too great for the world. That little alley girl doesn’t need my Cynthia.”

“Cynthia dear, Lottie used to live down there near the river. I asked her if she knew these McQuades.”

“It’s a stepmother. And, Rachel, she wants to—to do what’s right. I know.”

“It’s you that’s good, dear. You can’t understand yet. You can’t alter mud. You just get smirched yourself.”

“But suppose—you fell in love,”—she sought for tangible form to give her confused thoughts,—“and then—he was married. Wouldn’t it be hard?”

“Cynthia,” said Rachel, releasing her hand, “you are an absurd child. If the girl were decent, she wouldn’t be in love with a married man.”

For a shivering moment Cynthia sat silent. Bending over a deep, lovely pool to touch it, she had found it polished glass. Then Rachel, with a sudden movement, drew her out of her chair to her knees by the hammock. The bewildering sweetness of Rachel’s arms around her, of Rachel’s throat against her hot cheek, sent that moment scuttling away, an ugly spider, to some remote corner of her being. She needn’t know it was there. With a little sob she relaxed into the fragrant darkness.

“Don’t think about it.” Rachel’s lips brushed her ear. “We have so few hours left. You are worn out—that horrid store!”

Think? She could think of nothing with Rachel lavishing light hands about her. Cynthia, sitting by the swaying hammock, felt the mystery creep about her, too. Rachel was so rich in love she could pour it out until the swimming joy became pain within you.

When Cynthia came slowly up the walk to her own house, voices on the porch ceased, and the red star of her father’s cigar glowed out.

“Yes, the things were very nice,” she said in a vague way, moving on toward the door.

Later, lying in bed, she heard that interrupted talk picked up again. She was too drowsy to care. With her mind full of the drifting images at the border of sleep, she was sinking, sinking, when, unguarded, out scuttled the horrid spider of doubt, rousing her to full wakefulness. Her mother and Rachel had talked that very day. Rachel had connived with her mother. There was surely something wrong in such easeful dispensing with Queenie. But Rachel’s good-night kiss was there on her lips, seducing her to languor, and she slept.

The next morning she bent to household tasks with eager humility. She was unconsciously trying to force herself back to an old order of things, as though only thus could she be sure of loyalty to Rachel, of matter-of-fact tranquility at home. Her father was to stop at Bell’s to say she wouldn’t be down. Who would be given her counter? And Queenie—she saw her fumble with the cord of a parcel, count change into some customer’s outstretched hand, always with her eyes toward the door, watching for her. At her mother’s approach her thoughts would scatter, a swarm of flies driven from a bit of refuse, to gather black as soon as she was left alone.

“I’m going after my money,” she said stubbornly. “Mr. Bell might not be in this afternoon.”

Her mother lifted her eyes from the white stuff she was sewing. For a second her needle continued its little pricking sound along a seam.

“I wanted you to try on this skirt,” she suggested. “You want it for Rachel’s wedding, don’t you?”

The street was hot and still. The shadows huddled close about the trees, and the sweetish odor of tar swam in the glare. Cynthia’s hurrying body sucked in the heat, grew heavy with it; but the discomfort gave her a dim relief. When she came at last to the bridge she stopped, peering off at the gray huddle of shacks. A breath from the river touched her moist forehead, and she looked down at the water, above which hung a wavering glow like molten air. Then she went on more slowly until she stopped again inside the doors of Bell’s store.

It seemed dark and cool after the street, the aisles stretching back empty, interminable. She made her way between the counters, a dull sense of severance moving in her. The woman behind the silks nodded to her; she could see Mr. Bell’s sleek head over the office partition.

Some one seized her arm. Queenie, with reproachful, swollen eyelids, made a grimace of caution toward the office, and drew Cynthia into the shelter of the tall thread-cases.

“Has a bad name.” Cynthia seemed to hear Rachel’s low voice. Poor Queenie! She looked as if she had melted a little and sagged down.

“Why not?” Queenie thrust her face close. “Is it—me? They won’t have you seeing me?”

“They think the work’s too hard.” Cynthia’s quick words fell back from Queenie’s grin of contempt.

“Oh, I know; I ain’t such a fool. You’re too good.” She leaned heavily on the counter, her eyelids growing redder. “Well, Bell’s kicked me out, too. ‘Won’t need your services, Miss McQuade, after to-night.’ They’s just two things left.” She broke off at the approach of a customer, who looked curiously at the two girls, fingered some ribbons, and trailed on. Cynthia waited tensely. “One’s the river, th’ other’s him. Anyhow, he wants me.”

“I’ll ask Mr. Bell.” Cynthia’s fingers clenched into Queenie’s arm. “When he knows I’m going to leave—”

Had she felt that echoing speech—“You can’t alter mud”? Cynthia drooped. Her power had run out of her; she had somehow lost her grip on Queenie. With a shrug Queenie tucked her blouse into her tight belt, and presented herself to the customer who had drifted back.

“‘MR. BELL, THERE’S SOMETHING I WANTED TO ASK YOU.... COULDN’T YOU KEEP QUEENIE McQUADE ON?’”

After an irresolute moment Cynthia made a rush toward the office. Awkward, aware of the dust on her shoes, she seated herself by Mr. Bell’s desk. He looked up from his papers.

“Oh, yes. Your father stopped in this morning. So you’ve had enough of salesmanship?” He smiled, and Cynthia saw him changed to the Mr. Bell of church socials, his authority dropping away.

“Next time you want a job,”—he pulled open a drawer,—“I’ll give you a recommendation.” He counted out three half-dollars. “Up to last night, wasn’t it?”

Cynthia drew her finger along the edge of the desk. Into her manner came an alloy of flattery. Instinctively, to gain her request, she sought to please his suave maleness.

“Mr. Bell, there’s something I wanted to ask you.” Her breath fluttered. “As long as I have to—resign,”—she offered that phrase as a small jest, and at his smile hastened on,—“couldn’t you keep Queenie McQuade on? She needs work, oh, very much! She’ll do her best.”

“She’s not an efficient clerk,” he said shortly. He dropped the three coins into Cynthia’s lap, and as she gathered them into her hand, added: “I’m sorry she’s presumed upon your being in the store. I told your father and Miss Meredith this morning I regretted it. We don’t mean to hire such girls.”

“She must have work. She hasn’t done anything.” Did she say the words or only attempt them?

“Don’t you bother your pretty head about her, Miss Bates. You can see it isn’t fair to our patrons or our other clerks.”

Then with a little nod he had dismissed her. Her furtive glance as she hurried from the store disclosed no glimpse of Queenie. Ducking across the street, she stopped in the shelter of the wooden Indian in front of the tobacco shop. No Queenie stalking her. Slowly she walked on in the swimming heat, the world and her own inner self swooning in a sort of suspended life.

When she dragged herself into the house, the glistening pallor of her face brought a sharp order from her mother.

“You lie down. I shouldn’t have let you traipse down-town in this heat. This is the last bit of your foolishness.”

She lay on the couch in the library. The shrill of locusts outside and the clatter of dishes in the dining-room seemed remote and unreal.

Doubling down the crooked ways of sleep, she sought for Queenie, while something formless and horrible pursued her. Its tentacles reached for her at her very heels. She tried to scream. It clutched her shoulder, and she wrenched herself free of dream and sleep, to find her mother looking down at her.

The rest of that day Cynthia gave herself with wistful docility to her mother’s suggestions. She stood before the mirror while her mother knelt to adjust the folds of the white dress, a tall, thin girl with drooping shoulders.

“There, that’s the best I can do.” Her mother rose stiffly. “You don’t seem to like it.”

“Yes, I do, Mother. It’s pretty.” Cynthia let the dress slide to the floor and stepped out of the white pile, a flush touching her cheeks. She felt the somber weight of ingratitude that her mother should kneel there, working for her, while she had no joy even in the dress.

“If you’d just fill out a little—” Her mother’s eyes were on her shoulders. “After the wedding you’ve got to rest up. You’re like a rail.”

After supper, to Robert’s glee, she offered to play checkers. Something inside her lay numb, with faint pricklings, like a cramped foot. As she bent over the black and yellow squares she heard her mother say:

Rachel’s lover had come that afternoon. Cynthia was full of fierce relief that there was no chance of seeing Rachel again.

But at last she walked slowly, in order that she might not grow warm and red, under the elms and up the path to the Meredith house. Mrs. Meredith herself opened the door. Unexpectedly she kissed Cynthia, sighing, “Your turn some day soon.” For the first time Cynthia saw her as Rachel faded and hardened by the years. She led Cynthia into the parlor, heavy with the sweetness of many roses. Cynthia was the only outsider. She sank into a chair, pulling her feet close to the rockers; Rachel’s aunt, in stiff gray silk, her father, florid and strident, the minister in formal black, regarded her solemnly, almost hostilely. Then, after a long moment, Rachel stood between the curtains. Her eyes sought Cynthia’s over the great cluster of roses in her arms, caressed her swiftly, and lifted to the man beside her. Back flooded the beautiful mystery, and Cynthia abandoned herself to it. She scarcely saw the man, after one glance at his blond head over Rachel’s. She saw only Rachel’s face, the rise and fall of the lace at her breast. Incredibly soon it was over; Rachel lifted her face to the man, and a jealous ecstasy racked Cynthia at their grave kiss. Rachel turned to her people, laughing; her arms held Cynthia for an instant.

Presently the machine whirled up to the door, and in a flash Rachel was gone, slim, tailored, beside the straight, proud figure of her husband.

Cynthia started slowly toward home, Rachel’s roses filling her arms, their fragrance swimming up in the heat. Insidiously another odor mixed with theirs, until, with a shiver, Cynthia halted. Stripped quivering from her, naked, rose the hidden impulse. She must see Queenie. Unless she did, she couldn’t endure this beauty. It wasn’t fair. Forgetting the heat, shaking away the little thought of her mother waiting to hear about the wedding, she turned down the long street to the river.

Even at the entrance to the alley she did not hesitate. The third house, Queenie had said. It stood nearer the river than the others, down a sloping bank. Cynthia walked straight to the door, the roses drooping against her dress. Scraggly hens scurried off the doorstep. Inside, at her knock, came a scuffling sound, a smart slap, followed by a child’s cry. The door opened, and a woman, wiping reddened arms on her drab wrapper, faced her.

“How do you do?” Cynthia peered past her into a room full of the sour smell of wash-water. “I’m Cynthia Bates.” She tried to smile against the woman’s grim stare. “Is—is Queenie here?”

Cynthia shrank back, her roses and white dress suddenly strident with mockery. The woman snatched at a buzzing fly, and shook her skirts clear of the clutching child who had crept to her feet. He pursed his dirty little mouth for a cry, and she jerked him into her arms.

“Working! Her! Folks won’t keep her. Expectin’ us to feed her—a grown woman.”

The woman returned to her tubs, setting the child on a chair. Cynthia saw round eyes, pale like Queenie’s, staring at her from behind the tubs.

“I don’t know where she is, and, what’s more, I don’t want to.” The woman broke into irritated volubility. “I says to her, if you can’t work, you needn’t eat. Crazy about the fellows she was, wanting to dress up fine and run with ’em. I stood it till she mixed up with a married man; then I says, ‘this is enough of you.’”

“She ain’t been here since yesterday morning. She needn’t show her face here again.”

Cynthia climbed the slope, the roses slipping from her arms. She glanced back once. The baby had crept to the step, and sat gravely pulling the red petals from one of them. She felt curious eyes nibble at her from the other shacks.

As she entered the alley, she looked back at the river, catching a sob at the sight of a bit of white. Only a paper sluggishly drifting; not Queenie’s round, pleading face.

In the alley the air hung stagnant, rotting with the old buildings. Queenie was gone, Rachel was gone. She came out to the glare of the street, and after a second’s pause went on to the bridge. Leaning on the railing, she forced her eyes back to the squalid shore. For the first time she saw it without a hovering vision of herself as ministering angel. There it lay. Somewhere else Rachel was hurried off to shining happiness. And Queenie—

A grinding moment, and stark and undisguised that dormant thing within her stood up. They had done it, Rachel and the rest—pushed Queenie back into her mud. Under goodness lay that festering.

She would confront them with that terrible accusation. Her head high, she started swiftly toward her home. Presently her steps lagged again. The hard brilliance of her judgment dimmed. They would only repeat the things they had said. She could hear her mother’s scorn. With her white skirts swinging limply about her ankles she came to the quiet, comfortable houses, in one of which she lived. A strange aloofness filled her. If she tried to tell them, her father and her mother, they would drag her back, shut her in safely, keep her cabined, good. She would keep silent.

She came to the steps of the house, a pale light in her tired face. Her quest had begun, secret, bewildering.

Transcriber’s Notes

Transcribed from the first publication in: The Century Magazine, vol. 95, Feb. 1918, pp. 561-571.

The original spelling and punctuation were mostly preserved. Minor typesetting mistakes were silently corrected. All other changes (before/after) are listed here:

... became an enhancing mystery lying in ...
... became an entrancing mystery lying in ...
... you trapes down-town in this heat. This ...
... you traipse down-town in this heat. This ...