Mary Waller - A Cry in the Wilderness

"You Juggernaut!"

That's exactly what I said, and said aloud too.

I was leaning from the window in my attic room in the old district of New York known as "Chelsea"; both hands were stemmed on the ledge.

"You Juggernaut of a city!" I said again, and found considerable satisfaction in repeating that word. I leaned out still farther into the sickening September heat and defiantly shook my fist, as it were into the face of the monster commercial metropolis of the New World.

I felt the blood rush into my cheeks—thin and white enough, so my glass told me. Then I straightened myself, drew back and into the room. The quick sharp clang of the ambulance gong, the clatter of running hoofs sounded below me in the street.

"And they keep going under—so," I said beneath my breath; and added, but between my teeth:

"But I won't—I won't !"

Turning from the window, I took my seat at the table on which was a pile of newspapers I kept for reference, and searched through them until I found an advertisement I remembered to have seen a week before. I had marked it with a blue pencil. I cut it out. Then I put on my hat and went down into the city that lay swooning in the intense, sultry heat of mid-September.

The sun, dimmed and blood red in vapor, was setting behind the Jersey shore. The heated air quivered above the housetops. Wherever there was a stretch of asphalt pavement, innumerable hoof-dents witnessed to the power of the sun's rays. The shrivelled foliage in the parks was gray with dust.

I knew well enough that on the upper avenues for blocks and blocks the houses were tightly boarded as if hermetically sealed to light and air; but I was going southward, and below and seaward every door and window yawned wide. To the rivers, to the Battery, to the Bridge, the piers, and the parks, the sluggish, vitiated life of the city's tenement districts was crawling listless. The tide was out; and I knew that beneath the piers—who should know better than I who for six years had taken half of my recreation on them?—the fetid air lay heavy on the scum gathered about the slime-covered piles.

The advertisement was a Canadian "want", and in reading it an overpowering longing came upon me to see something of the spaciousness of that other country, to breathe its air that blows over the northern snow-fields. I had acted on an impulse in deciding to answer it, but that impulse was only the precipitation of long-unuttered and unfilled desires. I was realizing this as I made my way eastward into one of the former Trinity tenement districts.

I found the flag-paved court upon which the shadows were already falling. It was not an easily discoverable spot, and I was a little in doubt as to entering and inquiring further; I didn't like its look. I took out the advertisement; yes, this was the place: "No. 8 V– Court."

"Don't back down now," I said to myself by way of encouragement and, entering, rang the bell of an old-fashioned house with low stoop and faded green blinds close shut in sharp contrast to the gaping ones adjoining. The openly neglected aspect of its neighbors was wanting, as was, in fact, any indication of its character. Ordinarily I would have shunned such a locality.

The door was opened by a woman apparently fifty. Her strong deeply-lined face I trusted at once.

"What do you want?" The voice was business-like, neither repellent nor inviting.

"I 've come in answer to this," I said, holding out the clipping. The woman took it.

"You come in a minute, till I get my glasses."

She led the way through a long, unlighted hall into a back room where the windows were open.

"You set right down there," she said, pushing me gently into a rocking-chair and pressing a palm-leaf fan into my hand, "for you look 'bout ready to drop."

She spoke the truth; I was. The sickening breathlessness of the air, nine hours of indoor work, and little eaten all day for lack of appetite, suddenly took what strength I had when I started out.

As the woman stood by the window reading the slip in the fading light, my eyes never left her face. It seemed to me—and strangely, too, for I have always felt my independence of others' personal help—that my life itself was about to depend on her answer.

"Yes, this is the place to apply; but now the first thing I want to know is how you come to think you 'd fit this place? You don't look strong."

"Oh, yes, I am;" I spoke hurriedly, as if a heavy pressure that was gradually making itself felt on my chest were forcing out the words; "but I haven't been out of the hospital very long—"

"What hospital?"

"St. Luke's."

"What was the matter with you?"

"Typhoid pneumonia with pleurisy."

"How long was you there?"

"Ten weeks, to the first of July; I've been at work since—but I want to get away from here where I can breathe; if I don't I shall die."

There was a queer flutter in my voice. I could hear it. The woman noticed it.

"Ain't you well?"

"Oh, yes, I am, and want work—but away from here."

There must have been some passionate energy left in my voice at least, for the woman lifted her thick eyebrows over the rim of her spectacles.

"H'm—let's talk things over." She drew up a chair in front of me. "I won't light up yet, it's so hot. I guess we 'll get a tempest 'fore long."

She sat down, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forward to look more closely at my face. I seemed to see her through a fog, and passed my hand across my eyes to wipe it away.

"There 's no use beating 'round the bush when it comes to business," she said bluntly but kindly; "I 've got to ask you some pretty plain questions; the parties in this case are awful particular."

"Yes." I answered with effort. The fog was still before my eyes.

"You see what it says." She began to read the advertisement slowly: "'Wanted: A young girl of good parentage, strong, and country raised, for companion and assistant to an elderly Scotchwoman on a farm in Canada, Province of Quebec. Must have had a common school education. Apply at No. 8 V– Court, New York City.' You say you 've been in St. Luke's?"

"Yes."

"Did you know the one they call Doctor Rugvie there? He 's the great surgeon."

"No, I don't know him; but I 've heard so much of him. He was pointed out to me once when I was getting better."

"Well, by good rights you ought to be applying for this place to him."

"To him?" I asked in surprise. I could n't make this fact rhyme in connection with this woman and Canada.

"Yes, to him; I'm only a go-between he trusts. He 's in Europe now and is n't coming home till late this year, so he left this with me," she indicated the advertisement, "and told me not to put it in till a week ago. I ain't had many applications. Folks in this city don't take to going off to a farm in Canada, and those I 've had would n't have suited. But, anyway, Doctor Rugvie is reference for this place that's advertised, and I guess he 's good enough for anybody. I thought I 'd tell you this to relieve your mind. 'T ain't every girl would come down here to this hole looking for a place.– Where was you born?"

"Here in New York, but I have lived most of my life in the country, northern New England, just this side of the Canada line. I 've been here seven years, five in the Public Library; that's my reference."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-six next December—the third."

"I would n't have thought it. Mother living?"