The Woman Who Tried to Be Good
Before she tried to be a good woman she had been a very bad
woman--so bad that she could trail her wonderful apparel up and
down Main Street, from the Elm Tree Bakery to the railroad
tracks, without once having a man doff his hat to her or a woman
bow. You passed her on the street with a surreptitious glance,
though she was well worth looking at-- in her furs and laces and
plumes. She had the only full-length mink coat in our town, and
Ganz's shoe store sent to Chicago for her shoes. Hers were the
miraculously small feet you frequently see in stout women.
Usually she walked alone; but on rare occasions, especially round
Christmastime, she might have been seen accompanied by some
silent, dull-eyed, stupid-looking girl, who would follow her
dumbly in and out of stores, stopping now and then to admire a
cheap comb or a chain set with flashy imitation stones--or,
queerly enough, a doll with yellow hair and blue eyes and very
pink cheeks. But, alone or in company, her appearance in the
stores of our town was the signal for a sudden jump in the cost
of living. The storekeepers mulcted her; and she knew it and paid
in silence, for she was of the class that has no redress. She
owned the House with the Closed Shutters, near the freight
depot--did Blanche Devine.
In a larger town than ours she would have passed unnoticed. She
did not look like a bad woman. Of course she used too much
make-up, and as she passed you caught the oversweet breath of a
certain heavy scent. Then, too, her diamond eardrops would have
made any woman's features look hard; but her plump face, in spite
of its heaviness, wore an expression of good-humored
intelligence, and her eyeglasses gave her somehow a look of
respectability. We do not associate vice with eyeglasses. So in
a large city she would have passed for a well-dressed,
prosperous, comfortable wife and mother who was in danger of
losing her figure from an overabundance of good living; but with
us she was a town character, like Old Man Givins, the drunkard,
or the weak-minded Binns girl. When she passed the drug- store
corner there would be a sniggering among the vacant-eyed loafers
idling there, and they would leer at each other and jest in
undertones.
So, knowing Blanche Devine as we did, there was something
resembling a riot in one of our most respectable neighborhoods
when it was learned that she had given up her interest in the
house near the freight depot and was going to settle down in the
white cottage on the corner and be good. All the husbands in the
block, urged on by righteously indignant wives, dropped in on
Alderman Mooney after supper to see if the thing could not be
stopped. The fourth of the protesting husbands to arrive was the
Very Young Husband who lived next door to the corner cottage that
Blanche Devine had bought. The Very Young Husband had a Very
Young Wife, and they were the joint owners of Snooky. Snooky was
three-going- on-four, and looked something like an angel--only
healthier and with grimier hands. The whole neighborhood
borrowed her and tried to spoil her; but Snooky would not spoil.
Alderman Mooney was down in the cellar, fooling with the furnace.
He was in his furnace overalls; a short black pipe in his mouth.
Three protesting husbands had just left. As the Very Young
Husband, following Mrs. Mooney's directions, descended the cellar
stairs, Alderman Mooney looked up from his tinkering. He peered
through a haze of pipe smoke.
"Hello!" he called, and waved the haze away with his open palm.
"Come on down! Been tinkering with this blamed furnace since
supper. She don't draw like she ought. 'Long toward spring a
furnace always gets balky. How many tons you used this winter?"
"Oh-five," said the Very Young Husband shortly. Alderman
Mooney considered it thoughtfully. The Young Husband leaned up
against the side of the water tank, his hands in his pockets.
"Say, Mooney, is that right about Blanche Devine's having bought
the house on the corner?"
"You're the fourth man that's been in to ask me that this
evening. I'm expecting the rest of the block before bedtime.
She bought it all right."
The Young Husband flushed and kicked at a piece of coal with the
toe of his boot.
"Well, it's a darned shame!" he began hotly. "Jen was ready
to cry at supper. This'll be a fine neighborhood for Snooky to
grow up in! What's a woman like that want to come into a
respectable street for, anyway? I own my home and pay my
taxes--"
Alderman Mooney looked up.
"So does she," he interrupted. "She's going to improve the
place--paint it, and put in a cellar and a furnace, and build a
porch, and lay a cement walk all round."
The Young Husband took his hands out of his pockets in order to
emphasize his remarks with gestures.
"Whati's that got to do with it? I don't care if she puts in
diamonds for windows and sets out Italian gardens and a terrace
with peacocks on it. You're the alderman of this ward, aren't
you? Well, it was up to you to keep her out of this block! You
could have fixed it with an injunction or somethng. I'm going to
get up a petition--that's what I'm going----"
Alderman Mooney closed the furnace door with a bang that drowned
the rest of the threat. He turned the draft in a pipe overhead
and brushed his sooty palms briskly together like one who would
put an end to a profitless conversation.
"She's bought the house," he said mildly, "and paid for it.
And it's hers. She's got a right to live in this neighborhood as
long as she acts respectable."
The Very Young Husband laughed.
"She won't last! They never do."
Alderman Mooney had taken his pipe out of his mouth and was
rubbing his thumb over the smooth bowl, looking down at it with
unseeing eyes. On his face was a queer look--the look of one who
is embarrassed because he is about to say something honest.
"Look here! I want to tell you something: I happened to be up
in the mayor's office the day Blanche signed for the place. She
had to go through a lot of red tape before she got it--had quite
a time of it, she did! And say, kid, that woman ain't so--bad."
The Very Young Husband exclaimed impatiently:
"Oh, don't give me any of that, Mooney! Blanche Devine's a town
character. Even the kids know what she is. If she's got
religion or something, and wants to quit and be decent, why
doesn't she go to another town-- Chicago or someplace--where
nobody knows her?"
That motion of Alderman Mooney's thumb against the smooth pipe
bowl stopped. He looked up slowly.
"That's what I said--the mayor too. But Blanche Devine said she
wanted to try it here. She said this was home to her.
Funny--ain't it? Said she wouldn't be fooling anybody here.
They know her. And if she moved away, she said, it'd leak out
some way sooner or later. It does, she said. Always! Seems she
wants to live like--well, like other women. She put it like
this: she says she hasn't got religion, or any of that. She says
she's no different than she was when she was twenty. She says
that for the last ten years the ambition of her life has been to
be able to go into a grocery store and ask the price of, say,
celery; and, if the clerk charged her ten when it ought to be
seven, to be able to sass him with a regular piece of her mind--
and then sail out and trade somewhere else until he saw that she
didn't have to stand anything from storekeepers, any more than
any other woman that did her own marketing. She's a smart woman,
Blanche is! God knows I ain't taking her part--exactly; but she
talked a little, and the mayor and me got a little of her
history."
A sneer appeared on the face of the Very Young Husband. He had
been known before he met Jen as a rather industrious sower of
wild oats. He knew a thing or two, did the Very Young Husband,
in spite of his youth! He always fussed when Jen wore even a
V-necked summer gown on the street.
"Oh, she wasn't playing for sympathy," went on Alderman Mooney
in answer to the sneer. "She said she'd always paid her way and
always expected to. Seems her husband left her without a cent
when she was eighteen--with a baby. She worked for four dollars
a week in a cheap eating house. The two of 'em couldn't live on
that. Then the baby----"
"Good night!" said the Very Young Husband. "I suppose Mrs.
Mooney's going to call?"
"Minnie! It was her scolding all through supper that drove me
down to monkey with the furnace. She's wild--Minnie is." He
peeled off his overalls and hung them on a nail. The Young
Husband started to ascend the cellar stairs. Alderman Mooney
laid a detaining finger on his sleeve. "Don't say anything in
front of Minnie! She's boiling! Minnie and the kids are going
to visit her folks out West this summer; so I wouldn't so much as
dare to say `Good morning!' to the Devine woman. Anyway, a
person wouldn't talk to her, I suppose. But I kind of thought
I'd tell you about her.
"Thanks!" said the Very Young Husband dryly.
In the early spring, before Blanche Devine moved in, there came
stone- masons, who began to build something. It was a great
stone fireplace that rose in massive incongruity at the side of
the little white cottage. Blanche Devine was trying to make a
home for herself.
Blanche Devine used to come and watch them now and then as the
work progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the
house, looking up at it and poking at plaster and paint with her
umbrella or finger tip. One day she brought with her a man with
a spade. He spaded up a neat square of ground at the side of the
cottage and a long ridge near the fence that separated her yard
from that of the Very Young Couple next door. The ridge spelled
sweet peas and nasturtiums to our small-town eyes.
On the day that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation
among the white-ruffed bedroom curtains of the neighborhood.
Later on certain odors, as of burning dinners, pervaded the
atmosphere. Blanche Devine, flushed and excited, her hair
slightly askew, her diamond eardrops flashing, directed the
moving, wrapped in her great fur coat; but on the third morning
we gasped when she appeared out-of-doors, carrying a little
household ladder, a pail of steaming water, and sundry voluminous
white cloths. She reared the little ladder against the side of
the house, mounted it cautiously, and began to wash windows with
housewifely thoroughness. Her stout figure was swathed in a gray
sweater and on her head was a battered felt hat--the sort of
window--washing costume that has been worn by women from time
immemorial. We noticed that she used plenty of hot water and
clean rags, and that she rubbed the glass until it sparkled,
leaning perilously sideways on the ladder to detect elusive
streaks. Our keenest housekeeping eye could find no fault with
the way Blanche Devine washed windows.
By May, Blanche Devine had left off her diamond eardrops--perhaps
it was their absence that gave her face a new expression. When
she went downtown we noticed that her hats were more like the
hats the other women in our town wore; but she still affected
extravagant footgear, as is right and proper for a stout woman
who has cause to be vain of her feet. We noticed that her trips
downtown were rare that spring and summer. She used to come home
laden with little bundles; and before supper she would change her
street clothes for a neat, washable housedress, as is our thrifty
custom. Through her bright windows we could see her moving
briskly about from kitchen to sitting room; and from the smells
that floated out from her kitchen door, she seemed to be
preparing for her solitary supper the same homely viands that
were frying or stewing or baking in our kitchens. Sometimes you
could detect the delectable scent of browning, hot tea biscuit.
It takes a determined woman to make tea biscuit for no one but
herself.
Blanche Devine joined the church. On the first Sunday morning
she came to the service there was a little flurry among the
ushers at the vestibule door. They seated her well in the rear.
The second Sunday morning a dreadful thing happened. The woman
next to whom they seated her turned, regarded her stonily for a
moment, then rose agitatedly and moved to a pew across the aisle.
Blanche Devine's face went a dull red beneath her white powder.
She never came again--though we saw the minister visit her once
or twice. She always accompanied him to the door pleasantly,
holding it well open until he was down the little flight of steps
and on the sidewalk. The minister's wife did not call.
She rose early, like the rest of us; and as summer came on we
used to see her moving about in her little garden patch in the
dewy, golden morning. She wore absurd pale-blue negligees that
made her stout figure loom immense against the greenery of garden
and apple tree. The neighborhood women viewed these negligees
with Puritan disapproval as they smoothed down their own prim,
starched gingham skirts. They said it was disgusting --and
perhaps it was; but the habit of years is not easily overcome.
Blanche Devine--snipping her sweet peas, peering anxiously at the
Virginia creeper that clung with such fragile fingers to the
trellis, watering the flower baskets that hung from her
porch--was blissfully unconscious of the disapproving eyes. I
wish one of us had just stopped to call good morning to her over
the fence, and to say in our neighborly, small-town way: "My,
ain't this a scorcher! So early too! It'll be fierce by noon!"
But we did not.
I think perhaps the evenings must have been the loneliest for
her. The summer evenings in our little town are filled with
intimate, human, neighborly sounds. After the heat of the day it
is pleasant to relax in the cool comfort of the front porch, with
the life of the town eddying about us. We sew and read out there
until it grows dusk. We call across lots to our next- door
neighbor. The men water the lawns and the flower boxes and get
together in little, quiet groups to discuss the new street
paving. I have even known Mrs. Hines to bring her cherries out
there when she had canning to do, and pit them there on the front
porch partially shielded by her porch vine, but not so
effectually that she was deprived of the sights and sounds about
her. The kettle in her lap and the dishpan full of great ripe
cherries on the porch floor by her chair, she would pit and chat
and peer out through the vines, the red juice staining her plump
bare arms.
I have wondered since what Blanche Devine thought of us those
lonesome evenings--those evenings filled with friendly sights and
sounds. It must have been difficult for her, who had dwelt
behind closed shutters so long, to seat herself on the new front
porch for all the world to stare at; but she did sit
there--resolutely--watching us in silence.
She seized hungrily upon the stray crumbs of conversation that
fell to her. The milkman and the iceman and the butcher boy used
to hold daily conversation with her. They--sociable
gentlemen--would stand on her door- step, one grimy hand resting
against the white of her doorpost, exchanging the time of day
with Blanche in the doorway--a tea towel in one hand, perhaps,
and a plate in the other. Her little house was a miracle of
cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on her
knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the
rest of us. In canning and preserving time there floated out
from her kitchen the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the
mouth-watering smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying,
divinely sticky odor that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, from her
side of the fence, often used to peer through the pickets, gazing
in the direction of the enticing smells next door.
Early one September morning there floated out from Blanche
Devine's kitchen that fragrant, sweet scent of fresh-baked
cookies--cookies with butter in them, and spice, and with nuts on
top. Just by the smell of them your mind's eye pictured them
coming from the oven-crisp brown circlets, crumbly, delectable.
Snooky, in her scarlet sweater and cap, sniffed them from afar
and straightway deserted her sand pile to take her stand at the
fence. She peered through the restraining bars, standing on
tiptoe. Blanche Devine, glancing up from her board and rolling
pin, saw the eager golden head. And Snooky, with guile in her
heart, raised one fat, dimpled hand above the fence and waved it
friendlily. Blanche Devine waved back. Thus encouraged,
Snooky's two hands wigwagged frantically above the pickets.
Blanche Devine hesitated a moment, her floury hand on her hip.
Then she went to the pantry shelf and took out a clean white
saucer. She selected from the brown jar on the table three of
the brownest, crumbliest, most perfect cookies, with a walnut
meat perched atop of each, placed them temptingly on the saucer
and, descending the steps, came swiftly across the grass to the
triumphant Snooky. Blanche Devine held out the saucer, her lips
smiling, her eyes tender. Snooky reached up with one plump white
arm.
"Snooky!" shrilled a high voice. "Snooky!" A voice of
horror and of wrath. "Come here to me this minute! And don't
you dare to touch those!" Snooky hesitated rebelliously, one
pink finger in her pouting mouth.
"Snooky! Do you hear me?"
And the Very Young Wife began to descend the steps of her back
porch. Snooky, regretful eyes on the toothsome dainties, turned
away aggrieved. The Very Young Wife, her lips set, her eyes
flashing, advanced and seized the shrieking Snooky by one arm and
dragged her away toward home and safety.
Blanche Devine stood there at the fence, holding the saucer in
her hand. The saucer tipped slowly, and the three cookies slipped
off and fell to the grass. Blanche Devine stood staring at them
a moment. Then she turned quickly, went into the house, and shut
the door.
It was about this time we noticed that Blanche Devine was away
much of the time. The little white cottage would be empty for
weeks. We knew she was out of town because the expressman would
come for her trunk. We used to lift our eyebrows significantly.
The newspapers and handbills would accumulate in a dusty little
heap on the porch; but when she returned there was always a grand
cleaning, with the windows open, and Blanche--her head bound
turbanwise in a towel--appearing at a window every few minutes to
shake out a dustcloth. She seemed to put an enormous amount of
energy into those cleanings--as if they were a sort of safety
valve.
As winter came on she used to sit up before her grate fire long,
long after we were asleep in our beds. When she neglected to
pull down the shades we could see the flames of her cosy fire
dancing gnomelike on the wall.
There came a night of sleet and snow, and wind and rattling
hail--one of those blustering, wild nights that are followed by
morning-paper reports of trains stalled in drifts, mail delayed,
telephone and telegraph wires down. It must have been midnight
or past when there came a hammering at Blanche Devine's door--a
persistent, clamorous rapping. Blanche Devine, sitting before
her dying fire half asleep, started and cringed when she heard
it, then jumped to her feet, her hand at her breast--her eyes
darting this way and that, as though seeking escape.
She had heard a rapping like that before. It had meant bluecoats
swarming up the stairway, and frightened cries and pleadings, and
wild confusion. So she started forward now, quivering. And then
she remembered, being wholly awake now--she remembered, and threw
up her head and smiled a little bitterly and walked toward the
door. The hammering continued, louder than ever. Blanche Devine
flicked on the porch light and opened the door. The half-clad
figure of the Very Young Wife next door staggered into the room.
She seized Blanche Devine's arm with both her frenzied hands and
shook her, the wind and snow beating in upon both of them.
"The baby!" she screamed in a high, hysterical voice. "The
baby! The baby----!"
Blanche Devine shut the door and shook the Young Wife smartly by
the shoulders.
"Stop screaming," she said quietly. "Is she sick?"
The Young Wife told her, her teeth chattering:
"Come quick! She's dying! Will's out of town. I tried to get
the doctor. The telephone wouldn't---- I saw your light! For
God's sake----"
Blanche Devine grasped the Young Wife's arm, opened the door, and
together they sped across the little space that separated the two
houses. Blanche Devine was a big woman, but she took the stairs
like a girl and found the right bedroom by some miraculous woman
instinct. A dreadful choking, rattling sound was coming from
Snooky's bed.
"Croup," said Blanche Devine, and began her fight.
It was a good fight. She marshaled her inadequate forces, made
up of the half-fainting Young Wife and the terrified and awkward
hired girl.
"Get the hot water on--lots of it!" Blanche Devine pinned up
her sleeves. "Hot cloths! Tear up a sheet--or anything! Got an
oilstove? I want a tea- kettle boiling in the room. She's got
to have the steam. If that don't do it we'll raise an umbrella
over her and throw a sheet over, and hold the kettle under till
the steam gets to her that way. Got any ipecac?"
The Young Wife obeyed orders, white-faced and shaking. Once
Blanche Devine glanced up at her sharply.
"Don't you dare faint!" she commanded.
And the fight went on. Gradually the breathing that had been so
frightful became softer, easier. Blanche Devine did not relax.
It was not until the little figure breathed gently in sleep that
Blanche Devine sat back, satisfied. Then she tucked a cover at
the side of the bed, took a last satisfied look at the face on
the pillow, and turned to look at the wan, disheveled Young Wife.
"She's all right now. We can get the doctor when morning
comes-- though I don't know's you'll need him."
The Young Wife came round to Blanche Devine's side of the bed and
stood looking up at her.
"My baby died," said Blanche Devine simply. The Young Wife
gave a little inarticulate cry, put her two hands on Blanche
Devine's broad shoulders, and laid her tired head on her breast.
"I guess I'd better be going," said Blanche Devine.
The Young Wife raised her head. Her eyes were round with fright.
"Going! Oh, please stay! I'm so afraid. Suppose she should
take sick again! That awful--breathing----"
"I'll stay if you want me to."
"Oh, please! I'll make up your bed and you can rest----"
"I'm not sleepy. I'm not much of a hand to sleep anyway. I'll
sit up here in the hall, where there's a light. You get to bed.
I'll watch and see that everything's all right. Have you got
something I can read out here--something kind of lively--with a
love story in it?"
So the night went by. Snooky slept in her white bed. The Very
Young Wife half dozed in her bed, so near the little one. In the
hall, her stout figure looming grotesque in wall shadows, sat
Blanche Devine, pretending to read. Now and then she rose and
tiptoed into the bedroom with miraculous quiet, and stooped over
the little bed and listened and looked--and tiptoed away again,
satisfied.
The Young Husband came home from his business trip next day with
tales of snowdrifts and stalled engines. Blanche Devine breathed
a sigh of relief when she saw him from her kitchen window. She
watched the house now with a sort of proprietary eye. She
wondered about Snooky; but she knew better than to ask. So she
waited. The Young Wife next door had told her husband all about
that awful night--had told him with tears and sobs. The Very
Young Husband had been very, very angry with her-- angry, he
said, and astonished! Snooky could not have been so sick! Look
at her now! As well as ever. And to have called such a woman!
Well, he did not want to be harsh; but she must understand that
she must never speak to the woman again. Never!
So the next day the Very Young Wife happened to go by with the
Young Husband. Blanche Devine spied them from her sitting-room
window, and she made the excuse of looking in her mailbox in
order to go to the door. She stood in the doorway and the Very
Young Wife went by on the arm of her husband. She went
by--rather white-faced--without a look or a word or a sign!
And then this happened! There came into Blanche Devine's face a
look that made slits of her eyes, and drew her mouth down into an
ugly, narrow line, and that made the muscles of her jaw tense and
hard. It was the ugliest look you can imagine. Then she
smiled--if having one's lips curl away from one's teeth can be
called smiling.
Two days later there was great news of the white cottage on the
corner. The curtains were down; the furniture was packed; the
rugs were rolled. The wagons came and backed up to the house and
took those things that had made a home for Blanche Devine. And
when we heard that she had bought back her interest in the House
with the Closed Shutters, near the freight depot, we sniffed.
"I knew she wouldn't last!" we said.
"They never do!" said we.
-THE END-
Edna Ferber's short story: The Woman Who Tried to Be Good
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