Gloria and Treeless Street
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Annie Hamilton Donnell >> Gloria and Treeless Street
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GLORIA AND TREELESS STREET
_By Annie Hamilton Donnell_
1910
By ANNIE HAMILTON DONNELL
CHAPTER I.
Gloria sat in her favorite chair on the broad veranda. The shadow of the
vines made a delicate tracery over her white dress. Gloria was lazily
content. She had been comfortable and content for seventeen years.
"There's that queer little thing again, going off with her queer little
bag!" Gloria's gaze dwelt on the house across the wide street. Down its
steps a small, neat figure was tripping. Gloria recognized it as an old
sight-acquaintance.
"I wish I could find out where she goes at just the same time every day!
In all the blazing sun--ugh! I'll ask Aunt Em sometime. And that makes
me think of what I want to ask Uncle Em!" It was natural that Aunt
Em should remind one of Uncle Em. Gloria's thought of the two as the
composite guardian of her important young peace and happiness--as well
as money. For Gloria was rich.
"I suppose I might go down and ask him this morning. It's a bore, but
perhaps it will pay. Abou Ben Adhem, I'll do it!"
Abou Ben Adhem, the great silver cat in her lap, blinked indifferently.
He was Gloria's newest pet, so named with the superstitious fancy that
it might have the effect of making "his tribe increase," and Abou Ben
Adhem's "tribe" was exceedingly valuable. Gloria set the big, warm
weight gently down upon its embroidered cushion.
"Good-by, old dear. Be glad you aren't a human and don't have to go down
town in a blazing sun!"
A few moments later the dainty girlish figure came out again, gloved and
hatted. Aunt Em followed it to the door.
"Walk slowly, dear--just measure your steps! And be sure to take the car
at the corner. Perhaps you can bring Uncle Walter back with you."
It was only Gloria who called him Uncle Em. He was not really uncle
anyway to Gloria, being merely her kind, good-natured, easily-coaxed
guardian. But for ten years he and this sweet-faced elderly woman in the
doorway had been father and mother to the orphaned girl.
"Of course he'll come, if I tell him to!" laughed back Gloria from the
sidewalk. "Auntie, please ask Bergitta to come out and move Abou Ben's
cushion into the shade when the sun gets round to him. He'd never
condescend to move without the cushion."
At the corner no car was in sight and Gloria proceeded at a leisurely
pace to the settee that offered a comfortable waiting-place a block
above. The small, neat person of the House Across the Street was there
with her big, shabby bag. She moved over invitingly.
"But you'd better not sit down!" she said laughingly. "If you do, no car
will ever come! I've been here a small age."
The shabby bag between them attracted Gloria's curious gaze. It might
contain so many different things--even a kit of unholy tools, jimmies
and things! It looked decidedly like that kind of a bag.
"A fright, isn't it? If I ever got time, I could black it, or ink it, or
something, but I never shall get the time. I don't wonder you look at
it--everybody does." "Oh!" Gloria hurried apologetically, "I didn't
mean to be rude! I was just trying to make up my mind what was in it."
[Illustration: "I DON'T KNOW WHAT I DO SEE."]
"Well, did you?" The face of the small, neat person bubbled with
soft laughter. Her hand went out and stroked the old bag's sides
affectionately. "Give you three guesses!"
"I don't need but one!" laughed Gloria. A pleasant little intimacy
seemed already established between the two of them.
"Well, guess one, then?"
"A--jimmy!"
"Gracious!" laughed the Small Person. "Do I look as bad as that? No,"
growing suddenly quite grave, "you will have to guess again. I'll give
you a cue--absorbent cotton."
"Absorb--" began Gloria in surprise, but stopped. The bag was open
under her eyes. She caught a confused glimpse of bottles and rolls of
something carefully done up in white tissue, of a dark blue pasteboard
box with a red cross on the visible end, of curiously-shaped scissors.
"See any jimmy?" queried the one beside her.
"No, but I don't know what I _do_ see."
"My dear--there's our car! Let me introduce you. The workbag, if you
please, of the District Nurse, Mary Winship. I have not the pleasure--"
"Gloria Abercrombie," bowed Gloria politely, but her eyes danced. She
liked this small, neat Mary Winship. They got into the car together.
"I live right across the street," Gloria added, when they were safely
seated.
"So do I! I've seen you over there rocking a magnificent gray cat. Does
it feel good?"
"The cat--Abou Ben Adhem? He's the warmest, softest thing!"
"No, sitting. I hardly ever do it, so I'm not a good judge. You always
look so rested over there--it rests me to see you."
The pleasant laugh jostled with the lurching of the car; it had the
effect of being tremulous with some emotion, but there was nothing
tremulous about the placid face beside Gloria.
"You poor dear!" Gloria burst out impetuously. "How tired to pieces you
must get! I've pitied you every one of these hot days."
"Don't!" smiled the other. "Pity my poor folks. Why, here's my street so
soon!" She clambered down with her heavy bag and nodded back.
Gloria watched her trip away. The street she had stopped at was not a
pleasant looking one; Gloria had time to see that it was lined with
houses that leaned toward each other in an unattractive manner. And the
children--the swift impression Gloria got was of a street lined, too,
with little unattractive children.
"Not a tree on it," she mused as the car jolted her on to Uncle Em's.
"Think of no trees! And whole mobs of children, and such a day as this!"
It was terribly hot. "I wonder what a District Nurse is? Well, I like
'em!"
Arrived at the great building among whose offices was that of Walter
McAndrew, Attorney-at-Law, Gloria's thoughts were turned into a new
channel. She remembered that she had come down town on important
business, and it was up two flights in this office building where she
was to transact it. Uncle Em was Walter McAndrew, Attorney-at-Law.
She took the elevator and was presently at the right door. She went
in unceremoniously; it was one of her favorite visiting-places. Mr.
McAndrew looked up and gravely bowed.
"Take a seat, madam, and I will be at liberty in a few moments," he
began politely. But "Madam's" small, white hand, placed over his lips,
interrupted. "You are at liberty now--this minute, Uncle Em!" said
Gloria.
The man at the desk shrugged his shoulders, then, helping her to a
comfortable seat on the arm-chair, said:
"All right. What is it, Rosy Posie?"
"Uncle Em, am I rich?"
"Er--what's that? Oh, well," judiciously, "you'll do."
"Very rich? How rich, Uncle Em?"
The big swing-chair revolved with rapidity, to the peril of the young
lady on its arm. The face of Walter McAndrew, Attorney-at-Law, expressed
surprise.
"What's the drive?" he asked.
"That's what I want to know. How am I to drive? Uncle Em, see here. I
want a runabout--wait, please wait! A nice, shiny runabout, that I can
'run' myself. I'll take you some of the time. Now, when can I have it?"
"You talk as if I had one concealed about me somewhere, and could
produce it at a moment's notice."
"All right, hand over my nice, shiny little auto!" laughed the young
woman. "Honest, I'm in earnest, Uncle Em. I dreamed I had one last
night, and I intended to ask you at breakfast, but I was sound asleep.
Don't say anything for answer just now. Just think about it, then drop
into the place where they keep 'em, on your way to supper, and order
one! That's all--I'll let you off easy!"
Gloria got up and wandered about the little room. Its barrenness
reminded her of Treeless Street, lined with little children, and her
busy thoughts traveled back to that.
"What's a District Nurse, Uncle Em?" she asked suddenly; "with a
rusty-black bag full of bottles and absorbent cotton? There's one across
the street from us."
"Bag or nurse?"
"Both. She's a dear, but what does she do?"
"Why," explained Uncle Em, "she visits the poor and takes care of them
if they are sick, you know. It's rather a new institution here in
Tilford, but seems to be working finely. The city pays the nurse's
salary, or else it's done by private subscriptions."
"But I don't see how one nurse gets time to take care of a whole
city--mercy!" Gloria's personal experience with nurses had been two to
one girl. She remembered them now--the gentle day-nurse and the gentle
night-nurse, who had moved soft-footedly about her bed, performing
soothing little offices. Uncle Em smiled at her puzzled face.
"No wonder you don't 'see,'" he said, interpreting her thoughts. "But in
this case the sick person gets but an hour's care, perhaps, a day. The
nurse goes from house to house, doing what she can in a little time.
She has to divide up her care, you see. But it is a merciful work--a
merciful work."
Gloria's face was thoughtful. Treeless Street haunted her.
"Do you know a street that hasn't a single tree on it, Uncle Em? The
awfulest street! Just children and children and children and tenement
houses. I suppose I've been by it hundreds of times, but I never saw it
till to-day. It must have a name to it."
"What do you want to know its name for, my dear? It isn't the kind of
a street to run about on!" Uncle Em laughed. To Gloria the note of
uneasiness in his voice was not noticeable.
She nodded a gay little good-by and was gone.
CHAPTER II.
After leaving her uncle's office the fancy seized Gloria to walk home
instead of taking a car. She would find Treeless Street and explore
it--perhaps meet the neat little figure of the District Nurse somewhere
in its dismal depths. She wanted to know more of this new manner of
helping people an hour a day. It was characteristic of Gloria to indulge
her fancies and to find out what she wished to know. She walked slowly
away, searching every cross street for the special one she wanted.
They were all dismal streets for a little way, but none of them
were absolutely devoid of trees. Scanty grass-spots relieved their
dreariness, and the swarms of children were comfortably enough dressed.
It was some little time before Gloria reached Treeless Street, but when
she did, she knew it at once. Without hesitation she turned into it.
Topply tenement after tenement--was there no end to them? Was there no
end to the children with little old faces? Babies trundled other babies
in rickety carts; the clamor of sharp little voices filled the street.
Gloria, in a new world, threaded her way among the children and thought
her new thoughts. They were confused, unwelcome thoughts, but she
entertained them valiantly.
"Think of coming here every day, perhaps, and living right along!"
A small boy in grotesque man-trousers, reefed and rolled, intruded
himself and his baby-charge in her way. Gloria gazed down into the
boy's face with a sort of fascination. He was so small, yet had such a
protecting way with the baby.
"What is your name, little man?" she asked. "Dinney. What's the name o'
youse?"
Gloria ignored the question.
"Is this your little brother?" gently.
"Well, I guess!" said the boy.
"Can he walk?" more gently still.
"Yep, o' course--I mean when his legs gets stronger he'll walk, won't
youse, Hunkie? De doctor-woman says as wot he needs is plenty o' milk.
Wid its coat on--Hunkie ain't never had none wid its coat on till de
doctor-woman come."
"Its coat on?" murmured Gloria. Then by an inspiration she knew that
the boy meant cream--milk with the cream on. A sob rose unannounced in
Gloria's throat as she looked again at the mite in the cart who would
walk when his legs were stronger.
"Who is the doctor-woman?" she asked; but as she asked the question she
knew the answer and said, "Is she the District Nurse?"
"Yes, she is. She's good to my mother, and Hunkie's the baby. Rosy does
nice things, too. She showed Rosy how to be nice. Me mother's got de
consumption." The boy spoke as though discreetly proud of the fact.
"And who is Rosy?" Gloria asked.
"Sure--de girl wot lives 'cross de hall. She's got eyes like your eyes,
she has."
Across the hall on Treeless Street. A girl with eyes like hers! It was
like finding herself there. Gloria shivered. She had a sudden inward
vision of herself living in Treeless Street.
A little crowd of interested children had gathered. One, bolder than
the rest, had drawn unpleasantly close, and was smoothing Gloria's soft
white dress with timid little fingers. Gloria wondered why she did not
draw away, but stood still instead.
"Are youse a doctor-woman? W'ere's yer bag? Yer ain't t'rew yer bag
away?"
Illustrat[ion: "And who is Rosy?"]
"Huh! She ain't no doctor-woman." This from Dinney, who had the
advantage of early acquaintance. "She's on'y a cuttin' roun' de street.
Youse better not be smudgin' up her dress, Carrots--gwan off, now! All
o' youse gwan an' let de lady 'lone. Me 'n' Hunkie's de on'y ones as she
wants roun'."
Dinney and Hunkie escorted Gloria to the end of the street and back.
Gloria returned on the opposite side with the idea of more thoroughly
exploring. But she might as well have kept to the one side; both sides
were alike in tenements and children--dreariness and poverty. There was
no choice. It was with a long breath of relief that Gloria emerged again
upon the main street. She filled her lungs with the cleaner air, and
gazed with a new admiration at the well-to-do buildings.
The grotesque little figure of Dinney tramping back into Treeless Street
with his rattling cart lurching behind him, was all that remained of
what seemed to Gloria now must have been a dream. She glanced up at
the street's name, at its juncture with the main street, and started
suddenly, in very astonishment. The name she read pointed playful,
jeering letters at her. She had always known there was a street in
Tilford by that name--but not this, _this_ street! Pleasant Street!
Gloria walked the rest of the way as in a dream.
* * * * *
"Uncle Em, aren't tenements unsafe to live in," Gloria asked at supper,
"when they lean every which way? Oughtn't there to be a law to tear them
down?" Gloria was too intent on her own musings to intercept the swift
glance her guardian gave her.
"Supposing one tumbled down, with little children in it and outside it!
What did they name that awful street Pleasant Street for?"
Aunt Em's comely face wore a queer expression. She began to speak, then
stopped.
"Don't you want to hear what kind of a runabout I ordered on the way
home, Rosy-Posie?" What freak of fate made Uncle Em call her Rosy-Posie?
Gloria winced as if with pain at thought of the girl Rosie--with eyes
like hers--on Treeless Street.
"There's a girl named Rosie with eyes like mine, on Pleasant Street!"
she cried. "A boy told me so. I hate that street!" She got up suddenly
and went away.
The two left behind exchanged glances. Aunt Em's eyes were troubled.
"Walter, whatever started the child up to go round exploring streets?"
she said.
"Goodness knows! But don't get worked up over nothing."
"Poor child--you know I've always felt just the way she does, Walter."
Aunt Em's gentle sigh came once more.
The next morning Aunt Em appeared in Gloria's room before that leisurely
young person had decided to get up. She was lying in one of the pleasant
intervals between dozes, drowsily conscious that the sunshine was
streaming across her feet in a warm flood, and that somewhere children
were playing.
'"Lazy girl!" cried Aunt Em in the door. The lazy girl turned without
surprise. She was used to early visits. "Perhaps you might like to know
the time of day--"
"Oh, say it's 'most bedtime, auntie, then I won't have to get up at
all!"
"Nine o'clock!"
Gloria laughed. "Call that late! Why, it might be ten, eleven, twelve!
Besides, I had to make up for my nightmares--auntie, I spent nearly all
night walking up Treeless Street. I couldn't get out; I thought I'd got
to stay there always. The little ragamuffins wouldn't any of them tell
me the way out, not even Dinney. I wouldn't have believed it of Dinney!"
Aunt Em's face smiled down at the girl among the tumbled pillows. "Poor
dear! You have so many troubles!" Aunt Em sympathized in gentle irony.
Gloria sat up straight. "You're making fun! Well, I don't suppose I
can complain. It isn't to be wondered at that you can't believe I'd be
troubled at other folks' troubles. Honest, auntie, I never was till
yesterday on that street!"
"Aren't you ever going to talk about anything else, Rosy-Posie?"
"Don't say 'Rosy,' or you'll set me off again! I won't mention it again
to-day if you'll promise to go down there with me some day, Aunt Em. If
you won't, I shall go with the District Nurse. I'm going into one of
those houses and see if it feels as bad as it looks."
"You can't go very soon, my dear, for we are going out West with Uncle
Walter to-night."
"Auntie!--honest?" Gloria was on her feet in a sudden access of energy.
Drowsiness and laziness were past things. The trips that she and Aunt Em
took occasionally with her guardian were her delight; it was always an
occasion of gratitude when a "case" called him away during the long
summer vacation.
"We decided last night, dear. You know how Uncle Walter loves to take us
along."
"Will it be a nice long case? Say yes!"
"Yes," smiled the elder woman, "three or four weeks, probably, and maybe
longer. You never can tell how long lawyers will be, threshing out
justice."
"Where? Where? Oh, I call this fine!" Gloria was pulling out the
contents of a bureau drawer. "Where are we going, auntie?"
"To Cheyenne. Gloria, what in the world are you up to?"
"Packing. Cheyenne! I'll dress in a jiffy, auntie, and when I've got my
trunk packed I'll pack you."
CHAPTER III.
Walter McAndrew, Attorney-at-Law, was in rather frequent demand in
distant places, when the services of an especially acute lawyer were
in demand. When these "cases," as Gloria termed them, called him to
locations worth visiting, Mr. McAndrews delighted in taking his wife
and ward with him. The evening preceding the packing-scene in Gloria's
bedroom, he and his good wife had come to the rapid decision that a
trip to the West just now would be good for Gloria--more likely than
anything else to eradicate impressions of unpleasant Pleasant Street.
Gloria's impressions were apt to come and go easily, they reasoned, and
it was important for this one to go.
"You were going away, anyway, and I suppose I can go too, even if it is
hot," his wife had sighed in gentle renunciation of her own comfort. As
for Gloria--the child was always delighted with variety and change. No
trouble about Gloria!
Ten years earlier, when, close upon the death of his beloved young wife,
Gloria's father had slipped out of life, the orphan of seven years had
been given into Mr. McAndrews' charge, to be loved and petted, while Mr.
McAndrews was given her generous little fortune to husband and watch
over. It had been a beautiful home for Gloria; unquestioningly she had
accepted all its comforts and love. Yet Gloria was not selfish--only
young. Gloria's father had been a keen business man, and the investments
of his money as he earned it had been of the kind that fatten men's
pocketbooks, however lean they may make the bodies of other men.
For the time, Treeless Street, lined with little children, vanished from
Gloria's mind. The journey she began so promptly was a new one to her,
and with the first appearance of daylight the first morning she was
ready to enjoy it. Unlike Aunt Em, she was fresh and vigorous after the
night in the sleeper; she did not even dream of her recent discoveries
in streets. No old-faced little boys in reefed man-trousers appealed to
her sleeping pity.
[Illustration: It would be something interesting to do.]
"Best thing we could have done," whispered Uncle Em to his wife,
watching the girl's animated face. "But I'm afraid it's going to be
tough on you, my dear."
"Never mind me," smiled back his wife cheerfully. She was at that moment
warm and wearied, with a dull headache with which to begin the day. But
Aunt Em was the sort of woman who courts discomforts which to her loved
ones masquerade in the guise of comforts. She had never been given a
daughter of her own to make sacrifices for; she must make the most of
Gloria.
"I wish you liked to travel as well as Gloria and I do, my dear." His
wife did not like to travel at all; it was a species of torture to her.
"I like to have you and Gloria like it," she smiled.
* * * * *
A few days after the newness of Cheyenne had worn off a little, Gloria
sat in the window of her hotel room writing a letter. It had come to her
suddenly that she would write to the District Nurse. It would at any
rate be something interesting to do, and if the letter elicited an
answer, how very interesting that would be! What kind of letters did
District Nurses write?
Gloria had gone back, in convenient interstices of her new life in
this strange city, to mild musings on streets where poverty dwelt
undisguised. At this distance, Dinney and little Hunkie were faint
wraiths rather than realities.
Gloria's musings now were tinted with a comfortable impersonality that
robbed them of the power to sting. It was more as if she had recently
read a story full of pathos, whose chief characters were named Hunkie
and Dinney, and whose background was a dreary street. She would tell the
story to the District Nurse and perhaps evoke a sequel to it from her.
"_Dear Miss Winship_: My uncle and aunt spirited me away the next day,
and here I am in this 'Undiscovered Country'! Do you mind if I write
you? You will be too busy to answer. Maybe you won't even have time
to read it! I found out about one of your sick persons that same
day--Dinney's mother. He seemed almost proud that she had consumption,
the poor little boy! He had the baby with him. I never saw such a
perfectly dreadful street. The idea of calling it Pleasant Street!
Somebody ought to climb up and print an 'Un' before it, and even that
wouldn't be bad enough!
"I wish I knew who Rose is. All I do know is that you taught her to be
good to Hunkie--Dinney said so. He said that Rosy lived across the hall,
and that she had eyes like mine!
"Uncle Em has a protracted case here, so we may be here quite a while
longer, but when I get home will you let me go district-visiting
sometime with you? And introduce me to the girl with eyes like mine, and
whose name is Rose--my middle name. It makes me feel queer every time I
think of her--I don't know exactly how to describe it, but it seems a
little as if there were two Rose Abercrombies. Suppose I lived down on
that Un-Pleasant street--across the hall!
"Lovingly yours,
"GLORIA ROSE ABERCROMBIE."
To Gloria's surprise, she received an answer to her letter, with a
considerable degree of promptness, but it was not postmarked Tilford.
"_My dear Miss Gloria Rose_: Perhaps you didn't know District Nurses
could be prompt in answering letters! But, you see, I am having my two
weeks' vacation up here in this little hilly place. I get two weeks off
every summer--and actually sit down! I'm doing it now--if my writing
joggles now and then it is because I am rocking. I want to make the most
of my opportunities. This is the quietest place to sit and rock I was
ever in.
"Your letter was such a delightful surprise. Of course, I'll take you
with me. I'll do more than introduce you to my assistant Rose. No, I'll
not describe her to you. I will wait and let you see her for yourself.
Well, Dinney's mother is very sick. I could not bear to leave her. What
do you think she said to me the last thing? 'I'll wait'--just those two
words--when waiting will be so cruelly hard. I would not have come now,
but the doctor put his foot down. I suppose I was worn out.
"My dear, if I loved anyone very much I should say to her: 'Never be a
District Nurse!' It's so terribly hard on the heart-strings.
"There is another Dinney on Pleasant Street, but his name is Straps. I
don't know why, unless because of his one suspender, and then it ought
to be _Strap_. He looks like Dinney, but his 'baby' he leads by the
elbow instead of drags in a cart. The baby of Straps is very old and
blind, the shoestrings he sells on the corner are very poor ones, but
when you need shoestrings I wish you would buy those. Din--I mean
Straps--leads him back and forth and loves him. There doesn't seem any
reason in all the world why he should--or could--but he does.
"There, I must stop.
"Lovingly,
"MARY S. WINSHIP,
"District Nurse."
The letter of the District Nurse reawakened all Gloria's interest in the
street she had "discovered." She thought about it a great deal while
she and Aunt Em were driven about sightseeing. Her preoccupation was a
source of gentle worriment to Aunt Em, and would have been even more
so had that dear person suspected Gloria's designs against Un-Pleasant
Street. These designs were unbosomed in a second letter to the District
Nurse.