O. Henry
The Trimmed Lamp
Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We
often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who
work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation
into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on
Fifth Avenue as "marriage-girls."
Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work because
there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around. Nancy was nineteen;
Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active, country girls who had no ambition to
go on the stage.
The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and respectable
boarding-house. Both found positions and became wage-earners. They remained
chums. It is at the end of six months that I would beg you to step forward and
be introduced to them. Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss
Lou. While you are shaking hands please take notice - cautiously - of their
attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a stare as a lady in a
box at the horse show is.
Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a badly-
fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too long; but her ermine
muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts will be ticketed in the windows
at $7.98 before the season is over. Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue
eyes bright. Contentment radiates from her.
Nancy you would call a shop-girl - because you have the habit. There is no
type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so this is what the
type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour, and the exaggerated
straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the correct flare. No furs protect
her against the bitter spring air, but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as
jauntily as though it were Persian lamb! On her face and in her eyes,
remorseless type-seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression. It is a look of
silent but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood; of sad prophecy of
the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the look is still there. The
same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian peasants; and those of us left
will see it some day on Gabriel's face when he comes to blow us up. It is
a look that should wither and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it
and offer flowers - with a string tied to them.
Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery "See you
again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems, somehow, to miss you
and go fluttering like a white moth up over the housetops to the stars.
The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou's steady company.
Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire a dozen
subpoena servers to find her lamb.
"Ain't you cold, Nance?" said Lou. "Say, what a chump you are for working
in that old store for $8. a week! I made $l8.50 last week. Of course ironing
ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a counter, but it pays. None of us
ironers make less than $10. And I don't know that it's any less respectful
work, either."
"You can have it," said Nancy, with uplifted nose. "I'll take my eight
a week and hall bedroom. I like to be among nice things and swell people. And
look what a chance I've got! Why, one of our glove girls married a Pittsburg -
steel maker, or blacksmith or something - the other day worth a million
dollars. I'll catch a swell myself some time. I ain't bragging on my looks or
anything; but I'll take my chances where there's big prizes offered. What show
would a girl have in a laundry?"
"Why, that's where I met Dan," said Lou, triumphantly. "He came in for his
Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first board, ironing. We all try to
get to work at the first board. Ella Maginnis was sick that day, and I had her
place. He said he noticed my arms first, how round and white they was. I had my
sleeves rolled up. Some nice fellows come into laundries. You can tell 'em by
their bringing their clothes in suit cases; and turning in the door sharp and
sudden."
"How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?" said Nancy, gazing down at the
offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes. "It shows fierce
taste."
"This waist?" cried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. "Why, I paid $16. for
this waist. It's worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be laundered, and never
called for it. The boss sold it to me. It's got yards and yards of hand
embroidery on it. Better talk about that ugly, plain thing you've got on."
"This ugly, plain thing," said Nancy, calmly, "was copied from one that
Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in the store last
year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me $1.50. Ten feet away you
couldn't tell it from hers."
"Oh, well," said Lou, good-naturedly, "if you want to starve and put on
airs, go ahead. But I'll take my job and good wages; and after hours give me
something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able to buy."
But just then Dan came - a serious young man with a ready-made necktie, who
had escaped the city's brand of frivolity - an electrician earning 30 dollars
per week who looked upon Lou with the sad eyes of Romeo, and thought her
embroidered waist a web in which any fly should delight to be caught.
"My friend, Mr. Owens - shake hands with Miss Danforth," said Lou.
"I'm mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth," said Dan, with outstretched
hand. "I've heard Lou speak of you so often."
"Thanks," said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her cool ones,
"I've heard her mention you - a few times."
Lou giggled.
"Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance?" she
asked.
"If I did, you can feel safe in copying it," said Nancy.
"Oh, I couldn't use it, at all. It's too stylish for me. It's intended to
set off diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait till I get a few and then I'll
try it."
"Learn it first," said Nancy wisely, "and you'll be more likely to get the
rings."
"Now, to settle this argument," said Dan, with his ready, cheerful smile,
"let me make a proposition. As I can't take both of you up to Tiffany's and do
the right thing, what do you say to a little vaudeville? I've got the rickets.
How about looking at stage diamonds since we can't shake hands with the real
sparklers?"
The faithful squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a little
peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the inside, slender, and
soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the true Van Alstyne Fisher walk -
thus they set out for their evening's moderate diversion.
I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an
educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was something like
that to her. She was surrounded by beautiful things that breathed of taste and
refinement. If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether
your money pays for it, or another's.
The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and position
in the social world were quoted as criterions. From them Nancy began to take
toll - the best from each according to her view.
From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an eloquent
lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of carrying a purse,
of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing "inferiors in station." From
her best beloved model, Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, she made requisition for that
excellent thing, a soft, low voice as clear as silver and as perfect in
articulation as the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the aura of this high social
refinement and good breeding, it was impossible for her to escape a deeper
effect of it. As good habits are said to be better than good principles, so,
perhaps, good manners are better than good habits. The teachings of your
parents may not keep alive your New England conscience; but if you sit on
a straight-back chair and repeat the words "prisms and pilgrims" forty times
the devil will flee from you. And when Nancy spoke in the Van Alstyne Fisher
tones she felt the thrill of noblesse oblige to her very bones.
There was another source of learning in the great departmental school.
Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch and jingle their
wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently frivolous conversation, do not
think that they are there for the purpose of criticizing the way Ethel does her
back hair. The meeting may lack the dignity of the deliberative bodies of man;
but it has all the importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first
daughter first put their heads together to make Adam understand his proper
place in the household. It is Woman's Conference for Common Defense and
Exchange of Strategical Theories of Attack and Repulse upon and against the
World, which is a Stage, and Man, its Audience who Persists in Throwing
Bouquets Thereupon. Woman, the most helpless of the young of any animal - with
the fawn's grace but without its fleetness; with the bird's beauty but without
its power of flight; with the honey-bee's burden of sweetness but without its -
Oh, let's drop that simile - some of us may have been stung.
During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and exchange
stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the tactics of life.
"I says to 'im," says Sadie, "ain't you the fresh thing! Who do you suppose
I am, to be addressing such a remark to me? And what do you think he says back
to me?"
The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the answer
is given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be used by each
thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy, man.
Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful defense
means victory.
The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perhaps no other
college could have fitted her as well for her life's ambition - the drawing of
a matrimonial prize.
Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near enough
for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the best composers - at
least to acquire the familiarity that passed for appreciation in the social
world in which she was vaguely trying to set a tentative and aspiring foot. She
absorbed the educating influence of art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of
adornments that are almost culture to women.
The other girls soon became aware of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes your
millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man who looked the
role approached her counter. It got to be a habit of men, who were hanging
about while their women folk were shopping, to stroll over to the handkerchief
counter and dawdle over the cambric squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air
and genuine dainty beauty was what attracted. Many men thus came to display
their graces before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were
certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy learned to discriminate.
There was a window at the end of the handkerchief counter; and she could see
the rows of vehicles waiting for the shoppers in the street below. She looked
and perceived that automobiles differ as well as do their owners.
Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and wooed her
across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had gone one of the girls
said:
"What's wrong, Nance, that you didn't warm up to that fellow. He looks the
swell article, all right, to me."
"Him?" said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van Alstyne
Fisher smile; "not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A 12 H. P. machine and
an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of handkerchiefs he bought - silk!
And he's got dactylis on him. Give me the real thing or nothing, if you
please."
Two of the most "refined" women in the store - a forelady and a cashier -
had a few "swell gentlemen friends" with whom they now and then dined. Once
they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner took place in a spectacular
cafe whose tables are engaged for New Year's eve a year in advance. There were
two "gentlemen friends" - one without any hair on his head - high living ungrew
it; and we can prove it - the other a young man whose worth and sophistication
he impressed upon you in two convincing ways - he swore that all the wine was
corked; and he wore diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived irresistible
excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and here was one that added
the voice and manners of his high social world to the franker charms of her own
caste. So, on the following day, he appeared in the store and made her
a serious proposal of marriage over a box of hem-stitched, grass-bleached Irish
linens. Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away had been using her eyes
and ears. When the rejected suitor had gone she heaped carboys of upbraidings
and horror upon Nancy's head.
"What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow's a millionaire - he's
a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the level, too.
Have you gone crazy, Nance?"
"Have I?" said Nancy. "I didn't take him, did I? He isn't a millionaire so
hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family only allows him $20,000
a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was guying him about it the other night
at supper."
The brown pompadour came nearer and narrowed her eyes.
"Say, what do you want?" she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack of
chewing-gum. "Ain't that enough for you? Do you want to be a Mormon, and marry
Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the King of Spain and the whole bunch?
Ain't $20,000 a year good enough for you?"
Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow eyes.
"It wasn't altogether the money, Carrie," she explained. "His friend caught
him in a rank lie the other night at dinner. It was about some girl he said he
hadn't been to the theater with. Well, I can't stand a liar. Put everything
together - I don't like him; and that settles it. When I sell out it's not
going to be on any bargain day. I've got to have something that sits up in
a chair like a man, anyhow. Yes, I'm looking out for a catch; but it's got to
be able to do something more than make a noise like a toy bank."
"The physiopathic ward for yours!" said the brown pompadour, walking away.
These high ideas, if not ideals - Nancy continued to cultivate on $8. per
week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown "catch," eating her dry
bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her face was the faint, soldierly,
sweet, grim smile of the preordained man-hunter. The store was her forest; and
many times she raised her rifle at game that seemed broad-antlered and big; but
always some deep unerring instinct - perhaps of the huntress, perhaps of the
woman - made her hold her fire and take up the trail again.
Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid $6. for
her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her opportunities for
bettering her taste and manners were few compared with Nancy's. In the steaming
laundry there was nothing but work, work and her thoughts of the evening
pleasures to come. Many costly and showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it
may be that her growing fondness for dress was thus transmitted to her through
the conducting metal.
When the day's work was over Dan awaited her outside, her faithful shadow
in whatever light she stood.
Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou's clothes that
increased in conspicuity rather than in style; but this was no disloyalty; he
deprecated the attention they called to her in the streets.
And Lou was no less faithful to her chum. There was a law that Nancy should
go with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore the extra burden
heartily and in good cheer. It might be said that Lou furnished the color,
Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the distraction-seeking trio. The escort,
in his neat but obviously ready-made suit, his ready-made tie and unfailing,
genial, ready-made wit never startled or clashed. He was of that good kind that
you are likely to forget while they are present, but remember distinctly after
they are gone.
To Nancy's superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures was
sometimes a little bitter: but she was young; and youth is a gourmand, when it
cannot be a gourmet.
"Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away," Lou told her once. "But
why should I? I'm independent. I can do as I please with the money I earn; and
he never would agree for me to keep on working afterward. And say, Nance, what
do you want to stick to that old store for, and half starve and half dress
yourself? I could get you a place in the laundry right now if you'd come. It
seems to me that you could afford to be a little less stuck-up if you could
make a good deal more money."
"I don't think I'm stuck-up, Lou," said Nancy, "but I'd rather live on half
rations and stay where I am. I suppose I've got the habit. It's the chance that
I want. I don't expect to be always behind a counter. I'm learning something
new every day. I'm right up against refined and rich people all the time - even
if I do only wait on them; and I'm not missing any pointers that I see passing
around."
"Caught your millionaire yet?" asked Lou with her teasing laugh.
"I haven't selected one yet," answered Nancy. "I've been looking them
over."
"Goodness! the idea of picking over 'em! Don't you ever let one get by you
Nance - even if he's a few dollars shy. But of course you're joking -
millionaires don't think about working girls like us."
"It might be better for them if they did," said Nancy, with cool wisdom.
"Some of us could teach them how to take care of their money."
"If one was to speak to me," laughed Lou, "I know I'd have a duck-fit."
"That's because you don't know any. The only difference between swells and
other people is you have to watch 'em closer. Don't you think that red silk
lining is just a little bit too bright for that coat, Lou?"
Lou looked at the plain, dull olive jacket of her friend.
"Well, no I don't--but it may seem so beside that faded-looking thing
you've got on."
"This jacket," said Nancy, complacently, "has exactly the cut and fit of
one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing the other day. The material cost
me $3.98. I suppose hers cost about $100. more."
"Oh, well," said Lou lightly, "it don't strike me as millionaire bait.
Shouldn't wonder if I catch one before you do, anyway."
Truly it would have taken a philosopher to decide upon the values of the
theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain pride and
fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with girls working for the
barest living, thumped away gaily with her iron in the noisy and stifling
laundry. Her wages supported her even beyond the point of comfort; so that her
dress profited until sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the
neat but inelegant apparel of Dan - Dan the constant, the immutable, the
undeviating.
As for Nancy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels and
laces and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world of good-
breeding and taste - these were made for woman; they are her equitable portion.
Let her keep near them if they are a part of life to her, and if she will. She
is no traitor to herself, as Esau was; for she keeps he birthright and the
pottage she earns is often very scant.
In this atmosphere Nancy belonged; and she throve in it and ate her frugal
meals and schemed over her cheap dresses with a determined and contented mind.
She already knew woman; and she was studying man, the animal, both as to his
habits and eligibility. Some day she would bring down the game that she wanted;
but she promised herself it would be what seemed to her the biggest and the
best, and nothing smaller.
Thus she kept her lamp trimmed and burning to receive the bridegroom when
he should come.
But, another lesson she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard of
values began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew blurred in her
mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that spelled such words as "truth"
and "honor" and now and then just "kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who
hunts the moose or elk in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and
embowered, where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these
times the spear of Nimrod himself grows blunt.
So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at its
market value by the hearts that it covered.
One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth Avenue
westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and Dan to a musical
comedy.
Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived. There was a queer,
strained look on his face.
"I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her," he said.
"Heard from who?" asked Nancy. "Isn't Lou there?"
"I thought you knew," said Dan. "She hasn't been here or at the house where
she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from there. She told one of
the girls in the laundry she might be going to Europe."
"Hasn't anybody seen her anywhere?" asked Nancy.
Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in his
steady gray eyes.
"They told me in the laundry," he said, harshly, "that they saw her pass
yesterday - in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I suppose, that you
and Lou were forever busying your brains about."
For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand that
trembled slightly on Dan's sleeve.
"You've no right to say such a thing to me, Dan - as if I had anything to
do with it!"
"I didn't mean it that way," said Dan, softening. He fumbled in his vest
pocket.
"I've got the tickets for the show to-night," he said, with a gallant show
of lightness. "If you - "
Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it.
"I'll go with you, Dan," she said.
Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again.
At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the border of
a little quiet park. She heard her name called, and wheeled about in time to
catch Lou rushing into her arms.
After the first embrace they drew their heads back as serpents do, ready to
attack or to charm, with a thousand questions trembling on their swift tongues.
And then Nancy noticed that prosperity had descended upon Lou, manifesting
itself in costly furs, flashing gems, and creations of the tailors' art.
"You little fool!" cried Lou, loudly and affectionately. "I see you are
still working in that store, and as shabby as ever. And how about that big
catch you were going to make - nothing doing yet, I suppose?"
And then Lou looked, and saw that something better than prosperity had
descended upon Nancy - something that shone brighter than gems in her eyes and
redder than a rose in her cheeks, and that danced like electricity anxious to
be loosed from the tip of her tongue.
"Yes, I'm still in the store," said Nancy, "but I'm going to leave it next
week. I've made my catch - the biggest catch in the world. You won't mind now
Lou, will you? - I'm going to be married to Dan - to Dan! - he's my Dan now -
why, Lou!"
Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop, smooth-faced
young policemen that are making the force more endurable - at least to the eye.
He saw a woman with an expensive fur coat, and diamond-ringed hands crouching
down against the iron fence of the park sobbing turbulently, while a slender,
plainly-dressed working girl leaned close, trying to console her. But the
Gibsonian cop, being of the new order, passed on, pretending not to notice, for
he was wise enough to know that these matters are beyond help so far as the
power he represents is concerned, though he rap the pavement with his
nightstick till the sound goes up to the furthermost stars.
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