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The Eldest
by
“What’d she wear?” Rose’s dull face was almost animated.
“Ah yes!” in a dreamy falsetto from Al, “what did she wear?”
“Oh, shut up, Al! Just a suit, kind of plain, and yet you’d notice it. And sables! And a Gladys Moraine hat. Everything quiet, and plain, and dark; and yet she looked like a million dollars. I felt like a roach while I was waiting on her, though she was awfully sweet to me.”
Or perhaps Al, the eel-like, would descend from his heights to mingle a brief moment in the family talk. Al clerked in the National Cigar Company’s store at Clark and Madison. His was the wisdom of the snake, the weasel, and the sphinx. A strangely silent young man, this Al, thin-lipped, smooth-cheeked, perfumed. Slim of waist, flat of hip, narrow of shoulder, his was the figure of the born fox-trotter. He walked lightly, on the balls of his feet, like an Indian, but without the Indian’s dignity.
“Some excitement ourselves, to-day, down at the store, believe me. The Old Man’s son started in to learn the retail selling end of the business. Back of the showcase with the rest of us, waiting on trade, and looking like a Yale yell.”
Pa would put down his paper to stare over his reading specs at Al.
“Mannheim’s son! The president!”
“Yep! And I guess he loves it, huh? The Old Man wants him to learn the business from the ground up. I’ll bet he’ll never get higher than the first floor. To-day he went out to lunch at one and never shows up again till four. Wears English collars, and smokes a brand of cigarettes we don’t carry.”
Thus was the world brought to Rose. Her sallow cheek would show a faint hint of colour as she sipped her tea.
At six-thirty on a Monday morning in late April (remember, nothing’s going to happen) Rose smothered her alarm clock at the first warning snarl. She was wide-awake at once, as are those whose yesterdays, to-days and to-morrows are all alike. Rose never opened her eyes to the dim, tantalising half-consciousness of a something delightful or a something harrowing in store for her that day. For one to whom the wash-woman’s Tuesday visitation is the event of the week, and in whose bosom the delivery boy’s hoarse “Groc-rees!” as he hurls soap and cabbage on the kitchen table, arouses a wild flurry, there can be very little thrill on awakening.
Rose slept on the davenport-couch in the sitting-room. That fact in itself rises her status in the family. This Monday morning she opened her eyes with what might be called a start if Rose were any other sort of heroine. Something had happened, or was happening. It wasn’t the six o’clock steam hissing in the radiator. She was accustomed to that. The rattle of the L trains, and the milkman’s artillery disturbed her as little as does the chirping of the birds the farmer’s daughter. A sensation new, yet familiar; delicious, yet painful, held her. She groped to define it, lying there. Her gaze, wandering over the expanse of the grey woollen blanket, fixed upon a small black object trembling there. The knowledge that came to her then had come, many weeks before, in a hundred subtle and exquisite ways, to those who dwell in the open places. Rose’s eyes narrowed craftily. Craftily, stealthily, she sat up, one hand raised. Her eyes still fixed on the quivering spot, the hand descended, lightning-quick. But not quickly enough. The black spot vanished. It sped toward the open window. Through that window there came a balmy softness made up of Lake Michigan zephyr, and stockyards smell, and distant budding things. Rose had failed to swat the first fly of the season. Spring had come.
As she got out of bed and thud-thudded across the room on her heels to shut the window she glanced out into the quiet street. Her city eyes, untrained to nature’s hints, failed to notice that the scraggy, smoke-dwarfed oak that sprang, somehow, miraculously, from the mangey little dirt-plot in front of the building had developed surprising things all over its scrawny branches overnight. But she did see that the front windows of the flat building across the way were bare of the Chicago-grey lace curtains that had hung there the day before. House cleaning! Well, most decidedly spring had come.