But Once a Year

== BUT ONCE  A YEAR ==
=== By Ruth O'Grady ===
Originally published in Prairie Gold-Short stories from 1917
A shabby little woman detached herself from
the steadily marching throng on the avenue and paused before a shop window,
from which solid rows of electric bulbs flashed brilliantly into the December twilight.
The ever-increasing current of Christmas shoppers flowed on. Now and then it
rolled up, like the waters of the , while a lady with rich warm
furs about her shoulders made safe passage from her car to the tropic
atmosphere of the great department store. 
Warmth, and the savory smells from a bakery
kitchen wafted up through the grating of a near-by pavement, modifying the
nipping air. The shabby little woman, only half conscious of such gratuitous comfort,
adjusted her blinking gaze to the brightness and looked hungrily at the
costumes shimmering under the lights. Wax figures draped with rainbowtinted,
filmy evening gowns caught her passing admiration, but she lingered over the
street costumes, the silk-lined coats and soft, warm furs. Elbowed by others
who like herself were eager to look, even though they could not buy, she held
her ground until she had made her choice. 
With her wistful gaze still fixed upon her
favorite, she had begun to edge her way through the crowd at the window, when
she felt, rather than saw, someone different from the rest, close at her side.
At the same instant, she caught the scent of fresh-cut flowers and looked up
into the eyes of a tall young girl in a white-plumed velvet hat, with a bunch
of English violets in her brown mink fur. 
As their glances met, the shabby little
woman checked a start, and half -defensively dropped her lids. The smile that
shone evariescently from the girl's cordial eyes had aroused in her a feeling of
something unwonted, and strangely intimate. There had flashed over the mobile
face beneath the velvet hat a look of personal interest an unmistakable impulse
to speak. 
The thrill of response that set the woman's
pulses throbbing died suddenly. The red that mottled her grayish cheeks was the
red of shame. Through the window, in a mirrored panel cruelly ablaze with
light, she saw herself: her made-over turban, her short, pigeon-tailed jacket
of a style long past, and her old otter cape with its queer caudal decorations
and its yellowed cracks grinning through the plucked and ragged fur. 
One glance at her own image was enough. The
little woman pushed determinedly into the slowmoving crush, and headed toward
the nearest elevated station, to be carried on irresistibly by the army of pedestrians.
She caught a last glimpse of the tall young
girl, coming in her direction, still watching her with that same eager look.
But what of that? She knew why women stared curiously at her. By the time her
station was reached, the occurrence had assumed in her mind a painful
significance which emphasized the sordidness of her evening's routine. She made
her way along a narrow, dimly lighted street, walking with the aimless gait of
one who neither expects nor is expected. 
But, loiter as she might, she soon reached
a neighborhood where rows of narrow brick tenements brooded over dingy,
cluttered basement shops. Here she found it necessary to accelerate her pace to
make way for romping children and bareheaded women hurrying from the shops with
their suppers in paper bags. 
In spite of the wintry chill, the section
had an air of activity all its own. Neither did it lack occasional evidences of
Christmas cheer. In the window of a little news and fruit shop, against the
smeared and partly frosted glass, a holly wreath was hanging, and within stood
a rack of gaudy, tinseled Christmas cards. The woman hesitated, as if about to
enter the shop, then abruptly passed on. She ascended one of the stoops that
were all alike. Standing in a blur of reddish light that filtered through the
broken glass above the door, she looked back the way she had come. 
For an instant her pulses quickened again
as they had done on the avenue down-town. At the corner, a tall girl with a
white-plumed velvet hat was smilingly picking her way through the swarming
element so foreign, apparently, to one of her class. As the white plume came
nearer and nearer, the tremulous little woman regained her self-control. It was
but one of the coincidences of the city, she told herself, turning resolutely
away. The door slammed shut behind her. 
Odd, she thought, as she groped her way
through the dimly lighted lower hall, and the complete darkness of the upper,
that such a girl should be living in such a neighborhood. Then, with an effort,
she dismissed the matter from her mind. 
To find a match and light the sputtering
gas required but very few steps in her tiny box of a room. When that was
accomplished, she could think of nothing more to do. Her little taste of
excitement had spoiled her zest for any of the homy rites which at other times
formed the biggest events of her day. As she sank down upon the cot without
removing her wraps, she was greeted by the usual creaking of rusty springs; her
table with its meager array of dishes, its coffee pot and little alcohol
burner, sat as ever in its corner, inviting the preparation of her evening
meal. But to-night she did not want to eat. She had not visited the bake-shop
on her way home. She had not even bought her daily paper at the corner stand
where the postcards were those gay Christmas cards that bring you greetings
from friends. 
As she slowly removed her turban, her
jacket and fur cape and, without getting up, tossed them across a chair against
the opposite wall, the dull ache of dissatisfaction in her heart grew slowly to
a sharp pain of desire. She wanted to do something, to have something happen
that might break the sordid routine of her existence. 
Still, habit and environment would continue
to force at least a part of this routine upon her. She glanced at her fingers,
stained to an oily, bluish grime by the cheap dye of the garments that
furnished her daily work. Mechanically she rose to wash. 
While her hands were immersed in the lather
of rankly perfumed toilet soap, there came a gentle knock at the door. 
" Come in," invited the woman,
expecting some famine-pressed neighbor for a spoonful of coffee or a drawing of
tea. 
The door opened slowly, a tentative
aperture. 
" May I come in ? " asked a voice
that was sweeter than the breath of violets that preceded the caller into the
room. 
With the towel clutched in her dripping
hands, the woman flung wide open the door, then hastened to unload the chair
which held her wraps her only chair. 
" Thank you ; don't bother,"
urged the visitor. " I shall like sitting on the couch." 
There was a melody of enthusiasm in this
remark, which the complaining of the cot, as the girl dropped easily upon it,
could not wholly drown. 
The woman, having absently hung her towel
on the doorknob, stared dazedly at the visitant She could hardly credit her
eyes. It was it was indeed the girl with the white ostrich plume and the
bouquet of violets in her brown mink fur. 
" I feel like an intruder/' began the
girl, " and, do you know " her appraising glance directed to the old
fur collar on the chair, was guiltily withdrawn as she spoke " do you
know, I've such a silly excuse for coming." She laughed, and the laugh brought
added music to her voice. 
The woman, now at last recalled from her
abstraction, smiled, and the weariness passed from her face. She seated herself
at the extreme end of the humpy, complaining cot. 
" I'm sure you'll understand,"
resumed the girl. "At least, I hope you'll not be offended. . . 
I heard . . . that is, I noticed you had a
rare fur-piece " her vivid glance returned to the pile of wraps on the
chair " and I want to ask a very great favor of you. I now please don't be
shocked I've been ransacking the city for something like it, and " with a
determined air of taking the plunge "I should like to buy it of you !
" 
" Buy it ! " scorned the woman,
with a sudden dull red staining her sallow cheeks. " I can't see why anyone
would want to pay money for such a thing as that." 
"It it's a rare pattern, you
know," groped the girl, her sweet tones assuming an eloquent, persuasive
quiver, " and you don't know how glad I'd be to have it." 
The indignant color faded out of the
woman's face. "If you really want the thing " abruptly she put her
bizarre possession into her strange visitor's lap " If you really want it
but I don't see " yearning crept into her work-dimmed eyes, a yearning
that seemed to struggle with disillusionment. " Tell me," she broke
off, " is that all you came here for?" 
Apparently oblivious to the question, the
young woman rose to her feet. " You'll sell it to me then ! " she
triumphed, opening her gold-bound purse. 
" But, see here," demurred the
woman, " I can't it ain't worth " 
The girl's gloved hands went fumbling into
her purse, while the old fur cape hung limply across one velvet arm. 
" You leave it to me," she
commanded, and smiled, a radiant, winning smile. 
Impulsively the woman drew close to her
guest. " Excuse me/' she faltered, " but, do you know you look
ever-so-much like a little niece of mine back home ? " 
"Do I? That's nice." The visitor
looked at her watch. A note of abstraction had crept into her beautiful voice,
but it still held the caress that invited the woman's confidence. 
" Yes, my little niece excuse me I
haven't seen her for twelve years most fifteen years, I guess. She'd be growed
up, but I thought when I saw you down-town 
" Oh, you remember me, then ! Forgive
me for following " The girl seized the woman's soapreddened hands in a
sudden fervent clasp. " I understand, " she breathed. " You must
be lonely. . . . I'll try to see you again I surely will . . . Good-bye
..." 
The girl was gone and all at once the room
seemed colder and dingier than it ever had before. But the woman was not cold.
As she sat huddled on the cot, warmth and vitality glowed within her, kindled
by the memory of a recent kindly human touch. 
The following evening, after working hours,
the shabby woman, wearing a faded scarf about her neck to replace the old fur
collar, diffidently accosted a saleslady at the department store. She wanted
to buy a brown mink collar, just like one worn by a figure in green in the
window. 
It was unusual to sell expensive furs to
such a customer. But people might send what freaks of servants they pleased to
do their Christmas shopping, provided they sent the money, too. In this case,
the shabby little woman was prepared. She produced three crisp ten-dollar bills
the fabulous sum which the girl had left in her hand at parting and two dollars
more from the savings in her worn little purse. Then, hugging the big flat box
against the tightfitting bosom of her jacket, she triumphantly left the store. 
In a sort of tender ecstasy she dallied
along until she came to a florist's window. As she paused to gaze at great
bunches of carnations and roses, tied with broad and streaming ribbons, the
anxious look that attends the doubtful shopper returned to her face. Would it
be of any use to go in? Since she must either keep moving or be carried along
by the crowd, she edged through the revolving door. 
"English violets? Fifty cents for the
small bunches," clipped off the red-cheeked salesgirl, in reply to the
woman's groping inquiry. 
The perturbed shopper turned reluctantly
away, hesitated, and then asked: 
"But the roses? A single, half-blown
rose ?" 
" Twenty-five apiece, " replied
the girl in the same mechanical tones, while she busied herself in rearranging
a basket of flowers. 
" I I'll take the rose." 
At the express office, where scores were
waiting before her, the woman had ample time to untie her box and slip the
rosebud beneath the tissue paper of the inner wrapping. Then, having retied it
securely and stuck a "Do-not-open-until-Christmas" tag in a conspicuous
place, she took her stand in line. When it finally came her turn at the desk, a
stout clerk, who worked like an automaton and breathed like an ox, tore the
package from her lingering grasp and dashed across the wrapper the address she
gave. 
She paid the charges, wadded the receipt
into her purse and turned briskly away. 
Fresh crullers she took to her room from
the bake-shop, having bought them from a dark, greasy woman, whom she wished a
" Merry Christmas " in a voice that almost sang. At dusk she had
coffee in her room. It was Christmas Eve and she must begin early to get her
full share of the season's peculiar indulgences. After she had read her paper for
an hour or so by the recklessly flaming gas jet, she bustled about to brew
another cup of coffee, and feasted upon crullers for the second time. At last
she filled a water-bottle with tepid water from a faucet in the hall, and
prepared for bed. 
The chill of the bedclothes, upon which the
tepid water-bottle had little effect, could not touch the cozy warmth about the
woman's heart. Neither were the happy memories of her strange and lovely visitor
disturbed by knowledge of an incident that was taking place at that very hour.
As she bounced into her cot, humming a little tune, she did not know that at a
down-town theater a popular young actress was just responding to an insistent
curtain call. Nor could she have recognized the graceful young girl, issuing
from the wings in a new character part an extreme type of eccentric maidenhood
except for the plucked and ragged fur-piece which formed the keynote of the
performer's quaint attire. 
No knowledge of this episode disturbed the
halfdrowsy, half -blissful state which supplanted the woman's sleep that night.
The incident cast no cloud upon her eager awakening, nor retarded her active leap
from bed when the voice of her landlady aroused her with a start on Christmas
morning. 
" Eggs-press, eggs-press ... a package
for Miss Law-lor-r-r ! " 
Full-chested and lingering, the call
reverberated up three flights of naked stairs, and by the time the woman had
donned her skirt and sweater and had emerged into the twilight of the upper
hall, frowsy, curious heads protruded from every door. 
She carried the bulky Christmas package to
her own room, moving deliberately, in shy, half -guilty triumph, and placed it
on the cot. Behind her closed door she untied it, removed the cover and
smilingly bent down to draw an eager inhalation from the tissue paper folds.
Then, with careful ringers, she parted the crisp inner wrappings and unearthed
a wilting, half-blown rose from its nest in the brown mink fur. 
==
Category:O'Grady
Category:Prairie Gold