THE HONOR GIRL Read Online Free

finger played haltingly “The Star Spangled Banner”—was closed and covered with dust. Half a dozen pieces of ragtime, illumined jazzily, stood on the rack, and an old overcoat had been thrown over the top, upsetting a Dresden shepherdess vase containing ancient hydrangeas, dry and crumbling.
    With an expression of disgust on her face, she turned to flee upstairs, get her book and depart as quickly as possible. To think this was her home! The house where she was born! The place where her father and brothers still lived. To think that her own flesh and blood were satisfied to live like this. It was too dreadful! What if those people last night could have had a glimpse of this, just before her performance? Would they have given her as much praise?
    Then with sudden determination to know the worst, Elsie went through the dining room to the kitchen beyond.
    Confusion and destruction met her gaze. A gaunt cat greeted her with a weak protest from a hunched-up position on the kitchen table beside the debris of a hasty breakfast wherein eggs had played a prominent part. A bottle half filled with thick milk long past the stage of sourness stood on the dresser, menacing the atmosphere with its green and pink coloring. The old sink clogged and half filled with waste water fairly reeked with bits of garbage from the last attempt at dish washing. The cooking utensils on the cold range were filled with sticky messes of varying ages and stages, some burned almost beyond recognition, some sour mashed potatoes, some pasty stewed tomatoes filled with soggy bread, some canned corn burned to the sauce pan, its empty can still on the back of the range.
    Sick at heart, the girl drew back the bolt of the outer kitchen to let in the air. The cat sprang down and hauled from behind the refrigerator a bit of old dried fish with a stench unspeakable and began to gnaw at it starvedly. Outside the back door a company of dogs held high carnival over the forlorn upturned garbage pail.
    Elsie slammed the kitchen door shut again and retreated, wondering frantically whether she could catch the next car back. She hurried upstairs, shutting her eyes to all the sights.
    Her own old room had been at the head of the stairs, opening from the front one belonging to her mother and father. It was the only place in the house where any semblance of order prevailed. Everything was in its place just as she had left it, the bedspread up with an old cover that had once been white. The pictures on the walls, her childish treasures on the bureau, her books in the little bookshelves strung up by cords on the wall, her little rocking chair. Everything was thick with dust, of course; but it seemed to be the only spot in the house where the finger of ruin and despair had not been laid. It was desolate, of course, and utterly unattractive; yet looked like an oasis in the desert compared to the rest of the place.
    Elsie found her book, selected one or two others, and turned to go downstairs; but at the top step something compelled her to go back and look into the other rooms. Her father’s room, with the bedclothes in a heap, his own garments scattered wildly about, a brandy-flask openly standing on the bureau!
    She fled hastily. Something had caught her eye hanging over the headboard close by the pillow. Her mother’s old dressing gown of flowered flannelette, faded and torn. Did her father keep it there because it reminded him of her? They had been very fond of each other. Was he lonely? It was the first time the thought had ever occurred to her. She had always pitied herself, a motherless child. She had never thought of him as one to be pitied.
    Something forced her to go on and see the rooms.
    The bathroom was as desolate as such a spot can become when no one cares for it. Smeared marble black with grime and soap, no towels save two worn soiled ones in a heap on the floor, the oilcloth worn into holes, shoe polish and shaving articles strewn inharmoniously together, the