The Hired Girl(28)

Then I saw — oh, so clearly! — that I couldn’t go home, no matter how bad it was in Baltimore. At home, there’s no hope. Father will never change, and he’ll never let me have anything. I covered my head with my arm and began to pray.

It had been a while since I prayed. I’d been feeling a little disappointed in God, because I’d asked Him not to let Father be rude to Miss Chandler — but Father was — and then I’d prayed that my strike would succeed — but it didn’t, because Father burned my books. I know God can’t answer every prayer exactly the way you want Him to. But I couldn’t help thinking that He hadn’t been doing very well by me lately.

Even so, I prayed. It wasn’t a proper prayer, just a cry for help, but I felt He was listening. I recited Hail Marys. Then I recommenced crying. All of a sudden — I’d sobbed so hard I never heard him approach — a voice said, “Please let me help you.”

I sat bolt upright, ready to jump up and run away. But I didn’t — I guess because the man who’d spoken wasn’t looming over me. He was hunkered down in front of the bench, balanced on the balls of his feet. It was such a precarious position that I could have stuck out one foot and knocked him over. He was holding his hat in his hands — he’d taken off his hat to show respect. I thought that was nice.

He had a beard, and that surprised me because it’s usually older men who have beards, and he was young. His beard was dark and curly and so was his hair. He was solidly built and his shoulders were broad, and he had a large head — not too large, but the kind of head that reminded me of Jupiter, the Roman god. His clothes were handsome and he was well-groomed. In short, he didn’t look like the sort of man a girl has to run from — I mean, the sort of man from whom a girl has to run.

“Can I be of any use to you?” he said.

If I am to write the truth — and I vowed that I would when Miss Chandler gave me this book — I wanted to say yes right away. I wanted him to take care of me. Then I remembered how stupid I’d been with the yellow-haired man, and I saw I was in danger of being stupid again. So I didn’t answer. He took a clean handkerchief out of his coat and offered it to me.

That reminded me of Miss Chandler. I started crying again, and while I cried, the man made noises. They were sympathetic noises, and they were also, somehow, foreign. His voice wasn’t foreign; he spoke like an American. But his sympathetic noises weren’t like anything I’d heard before. And something about them made me cry harder. Oh, I’m like Florence Dombey; I cry too much. After a little, I wiped my eyes and tried to pull myself together. Men don’t like it when women cry, and I wanted that man to like me.

“Won’t you tell me —” the man began, but I interrupted him.

“I’m lost,” I blurted out. “I came to Baltimore to find work as a hired girl, but the train was late, so I didn’t get to town until dark, and I couldn’t find a respectable boardinghouse, and I asked a man who seemed kind, but he —” Then I stopped. I couldn’t tell this stranger what that man did. “He frightened me,” I said pitifully, because that was true, though it wasn’t the whole truth.

He nodded as if he understood. “Is he the one who hurt you?”

I thought for a minute he was reading my mind, because that awful man had hurt me. Then I saw that he was staring at my face, seeing the bruises that Cressy gave me. “Oh, no!” I said quickly, and touched the swollen place. “That’s from home. That happened a week ago.”

“Did you run away from home?”

I wished he hadn’t asked me that. I ought to have said no, right away, but I didn’t, and that was as good as saying yes. “I had to. My father —” I started to say burned my books, but my throat closed. It was a moment before I could speak. “I had to run away.”

He looked very upset. “What about your mother? Won’t she worry?”

“My mother’s dead,” I said, and he looked downright stricken and made more of those sympathetic noises. I added, “But I’m not that young. I’m eighteen.” I don’t know why I said eighteen. I’d meant to lie about my age, of course, but I’d planned to say I was sixteen, maybe seventeen. But for some reason, eighteen was what came out of my mouth. “Do you know where I might find a respectable boardinghouse?”

He shook his head regretfully. “I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve never needed one, not in Baltimore. Perhaps tomorrow —” He shook his head again. “That’s no use; you need a place to stay tonight.” He stood up. “I have an idea.”