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diff --git a/old/wc05v10.txt b/old/wc05v10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f3853ce --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wc05v10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15250 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light--complete +#5 in our series by this Winston Churchill + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.06/12/01*END* +[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + + + + + +This etext was produced by Pat Castevans <Patcat@ctnet.net> +and David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +NOTE: This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister +of England during World War II. + + + + + +THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT + +(complete) + +BY WINSTON CHURCHILL + +1917 + + + + +VOLUME 1. + +CHAPTER I + +In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to boast, +a certain glacier-like process may be observed. The bewildered, the helpless-- +and there are many--are torn from the parent rock, crushed, rolled smooth, and +left stranded in strange places. Thus was Edward Bumpus severed and rolled +from the ancestral ledge, from the firm granite of seemingly stable and lasting +things, into shifting shale; surrounded by fragments of cliffs from distant +lands he had never seen. Thus, at five and fifty, he found himself gate-keeper +of the leviathan Chippering Mill in the city of Hampton. + +That the polyglot, smoky settlement sprawling on both sides of an historic +river should be a part of his native New England seemed at times to be a +hideous dream; nor could he comprehend what had happened to him, and to the +world of order and standards and religious sanctions into which he had been +born. His had been a life of relinquishments. For a long time he had clung to +the institution he had been taught to believe was the rock of ages, the +Congregational Church, finally to abandon it; even that assuming a form +fantastic and unreal, as embodied in the edifice three blocks distant from +Fillmore Street which he had attended for a brief time, some ten years before, +after his arrival in Hampton. The building, indeed, was symbolic of a decadent +and bewildered Puritanism in its pathetic attempt to keep abreast with the age, +to compromise with anarchy, merely achieving a nondescript medley of rounded, +knob-like towers covered with mulberry-stained shingles. And the minister was +sensational and dramatic. He looked like an actor, he aroused in Edward Bumpus +an inherent prejudice that condemned the stage. Half a block from this +tabernacle stood a Roman Catholic Church, prosperous, brazen, serene, flaunting +an eternal permanence amidst the chaos which had succeeded permanence! + +There were, to be sure, other Protestant churches where Edward Bumpus and his +wife might have gone. One in particular, which he passed on his way to the +mill, with its terraced steeple and classic facade, preserved all the outward +semblance of the old Order that once had seemed so enduring and secure. He +hesitated to join the decorous and dwindling congregation,--the remains of a +social stratum from which he had been pried loose; and--more irony--this +street, called Warren, of arching elms and white-gabled houses, was now the +abiding place of those prosperous Irish who had moved thither from the +tenements and ruled the city. + +On just such a street in the once thriving New England village of Dolton had +Edward been born. In Dolton Bumpus was once a name of names, rooted there +since the seventeenth century, and if you had cared to listen he would have +told you, in a dialect precise but colloquial, the history of a family that by +right of priority and service should have been destined to inherit the land, +but whose descendants were preserved to see it delivered to the alien. The God +of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards had been tried in the balance and found +wanting. Edward could never understand this; or why the Universe, so long +static and immutable, had suddenly begun to move. He had always been prudent, +but in spite of youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a +sectarian college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may +prosper in a static world, it is a futile virtue in a dynamic one. Experience +even had been powerless to impress this upon him. For more than twenty years +after leaving college he had clung to a clerkship in a Dolton mercantile +establishment before he felt justified in marrying Hannah, the daughter of +Elmer Wench, when the mercantile establishment amalgamated with a rival--and +Edward's services were no longer required. During the succession of precarious +places with decreasing salaries he had subsequently held a terrified sense of +economic pressure had gradually crept over him, presently growing strong +enough, after two girls had arrived, to compel the abridgment of the family +....It would be painful to record in detail the cracking-off process, the +slipping into shale, the rolling, the ending up in Hampton, where Edward had +now for some dozen years been keeper of one of the gates in the frowning brick +wall bordering the canal,--a position obtained for him by a compassionate but +not too prudent childhood friend who had risen in life and knew the agent of +the Chippering Mill, Mr. Claude Ditmar. Thus had virtue failed to hold its +own. + +One might have thought in all these years he had sat within the gates staring +at the brick row of the company's boarding houses on the opposite bank of the +canal that reflection might have brought a certain degree of enlightenment. It +was not so. The fog of Edward's bewilderment never cleared, and the unformed +question was ever clamouring for an answer--how had it happened? Job's cry. +How had it happened to an honest and virtuous man, the days of whose forebears +had been long in the land which the Lord their God had given them? Inherently +American, though lacking the saving quality of push that had been the making of +men like Ditmar, he never ceased to regard with resentment and distrust the +hordes of foreigners trooping between the pillars, though he refrained from +expressing these sentiments in public; a bent, broad shouldered, silent man of +that unmistakable physiognomy which, in the seventeenth century, almost wholly +deserted the old England for the new. The ancestral features were there, the +lips--covered by a grizzled moustache moulded for the precise formation that +emphasizes such syllables as el, the hooked nose and sallow cheeks, the +grizzled brows and grey eyes drawn down at the corners. But for all its +ancestral strength of feature, it was a face from which will had been +extracted, and lacked the fire and fanaticism, the indomitable hardness it +should have proclaimed, and which have been so characteristically embodied in +Mr. St. Gaudens's statue of the Puritan. His clothes were slightly shabby, but +always neat. + +Little as one might have guessed it, however, what may be called a certain +transmuted enthusiasm was alive in him. He had a hobby almost amounting to an +obsession, not uncommon amongst Americans who have slipped downward in the +social scale. It was the Bumpus Family in America. He collected documents +about his ancestors and relations, he wrote letters with a fine, painful +penmanship on a ruled block he bought at Hartshorne's drug store to distant +Bumpuses in Kansas and Illinois and Michigan, common descendants of Ebenezer, +the original immigrant, of Dolton. Many of these western kinsmen answered: not +so the magisterial Bumpus who lived in Boston on the water side of Beacon, whom +likewise he had ventured to address,--to the indignation and disgust of his +elder daughter, Janet. + +"Why are you so proud of Ebenezer?" she demanded once, scornfully. + +"Why? Aren't we descended from him?" + +"How many generations?" + +"Seven," said Edward, promptly, emphasizing the last syllable. + +Janet was quick at figures. She made a mental calculation. + +"Well, you've got one hundred and twenty-seven other ancestors of Ebenezer's +time, haven't you?" + +Edward was a little surprised. He had never thought of this, but his ardour +for Ebenezer remained undampened. Genealogy--his own--had become his religion, +and instead of going to church he spent his Sunday mornings poring over papers +of various degrees of discolouration, making careful notes on the ruled block. + +This consciousness of his descent from good American stock that had somehow +been deprived of its heritage, while a grievance to him, was also a comfort. +It had a compensating side, in spite of the lack of sympathy of his daughters +and his wife. Hannah Bumpus took the situation more grimly: she was a logical +projection in a new environment of the religious fatalism of ancestors whose +God was a God of vengeance. She did not concern herself as to what all this +vengeance was about; life was a trap into which all mortals walked sooner or +later, and her particular trap had a treadmill,--a round of household duties +she kept whirling with an energy that might have made their fortunes if she had +been the head of the family. It is bad to be a fatalist unless one has an +incontrovertible belief in one's destiny,--which Hannah had not. But she kept +the little flat with its worn furniture,--which had known so many journeys--as +clean as a merchant ship of old Salem, and when it was scoured and dusted to +her satisfaction she would sally forth to Bonnaccossi's grocery and provision +store on the corner to do her bargaining in competition with the Italian +housewives of the neighborhood. She was wont, indeed, to pause outside for a +moment, her quick eye encompassing the coloured prints of red and yellow +jellies cast in rounded moulds, decked with slices of orange, the gaudy boxes +of cereals and buckwheat flour, the "Brookfield" eggs in packages. +Significant, this modern package system, of an era of flats with little storage +space. She took in at a glance the blue lettered placard announcing the +current price of butterine, and walked around to the other side of the store, +on Holmes Street, where the beef and bacon hung, where the sidewalk stands were +filled, in the autumn, with cranberries, apples, cabbages, and spinach. + +With little outer complaint she had adapted herself to the constantly lowering +levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped that in Fillmore +Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so. Her unbetrayed regret was +for the loss of what she would have called "respectability"; and the giving up, +long ago, in the little city which had been their home, of the servant girl had +been the first wrench. Until they came to Hampton they had always lived in +houses, and her adaptation to a flat had been hard--a flat without a parlour. +Hannah Bumpus regarded a parlour as necessary to a respectable family as a +wedding ring to a virtuous woman. Janet and Lise would be growing up, there +would be young men, and no place to see them save the sidewalks. The fear that +haunted her came true, and she never was reconciled. The two girls went to the +public schools, and afterwards, inevitably, to work, and it seemed to be a part +of her punishment for the sins of her forefathers that she had no more control +over them than if they had been boarders; while she looked on helplessly, they +did what they pleased; Janet, whom she never understood, was almost as much a +source of apprehension as Lise, who became part and parcel of all Hannah deemed +reprehensible in this new America which she refused to recognize and +acknowledge as her own country. + +To send them through the public schools had been a struggle. Hannah used to +lie awake nights wondering what would happen if Edward became sick. It worried +her that they never saved any money: try as she would to cut the expenses down, +there was a limit of decency; New England thrift, hitherto justly celebrated, +was put to shame by that which the foreigners displayed, and which would have +delighted the souls of gentlemen of the Manchester school. Every once in a +while there rose up before her fabulous instances of this thrift, of Italians +and Jews who, ignorant emigrants, had entered the mills only a few years before +they, the Bumpuses, had come to Hampton, and were now independent property +owners. Still rankling in Hannah's memory was a day when Lise had returned +from school, dark and mutinous, with a tale of such a family. One of the +younger children was a classmate. + +"They live on Jordan Street in a house, and Laura has roller skates. I don't +see why I can't." + +This was one of the occasions on which Hannah had given vent to her +indignation. Lise was fourteen. Her open rebellion was less annoying than +Janet's silent reproach, but at least she had something to take hold of. + +"Well, Lise," she said, shifting the saucepan to another part of the stove, "I +guess if your father and I had put both you girls in the mills and crowded into +one room and cooked in a corner, and lived on onions and macaroni, and put four +boarders each in the other rooms, I guess we could have had a house, too. We +can start in right now, if you're willing." + +But Lise had only looked darker. + +"I don't see why father can't make money--other men do." + +"Isn't he working as hard as he can to send you to school, and give you a +chance?" + +"I don't want that kind of a chance. There's Sadie Howard at school--she don't +have to work. She liked me before she found out where I lived..." + +There was an element of selfishness in Hannah's mania for keeping busy, for +doing all their housework and cooking herself. She could not bear to have her +daughters interfere; perhaps she did not want to give herself time to think. +Her affection for Edward, such as it was, her loyalty to him, was the logical +result of a conviction ingrained in early youth that marriage was an +indissoluble bond; a point of views once having a religious sanction, no less +powerful now that--all unconsciously--it had deteriorated into a superstition. +Hannah, being a fatalist, was not religious. The beliefs of other days, when +she had donned her best dress and gone to church on Sundays, had simply lapsed +and left--habits. No new beliefs had taken their place.... + +Even after Janet and Lise had gone to work the household never seemed to gain +that margin of safety for which Hannah yearned. Always, when they were on the +verge of putting something by, some untoward need or accident seemed to arise +on purpose to swallow it up: Edward, for instance, had been forced to buy a new +overcoat, the linoleum on the dining-room floor must be renewed, and Lise had +had a spell of sickness, losing her position in a flower shop. Afterwards, +when she became a saleslady in the Bagatelle, that flamboyant department store +in Faber Street, she earned four dollars and a half a week. Two of these were +supposed to go into the common fund, but there were clothes to buy; Lise loved +finery, and Hannah had not every week the heart to insist. Even when, on an +occasional Saturday night the girl somewhat consciously and defiantly flung +down the money on the dining-room table she pretended not to notice it. But +Janet, who was earning six dollars as a stenographer in the office of the +Chippering Mill, regularly gave half of hers. + +The girls could have made more money as operatives, but strangely enough in the +Bumpus family social hopes were not yet extinct. + +Sharply, rudely, the cold stillness of the winter mornings was broken by +agitating waves of sound, penetrating the souls of sleepers. Janet would stir, +her mind still lingering on some dream, soon to fade into the inexpressible, in +which she had been near to the fulfilment of a heart's desire. Each morning, +as the clamour grew louder, there was an interval of bewilderment, of +revulsion, until the realization came of mill bells swinging in high cupolas +above the river,--one rousing another. She could even distinguish the bells: +the deep-toned, penetrating one belonged to the Patuxent Mill, over on the west +side, while the Arundel had a high, ominous reverberation like a fire bell. +When at last the clangings had ceased she would lie listening to the overtones +throbbing in the air, high and low, high and low; lie shrinking, awaiting the +second summons that never failed to terrify, the siren of the Chippering Mill,- +-to her the cry of an insistent, hungry monster demanding its daily food, the +symbol of a stern, ugly, and unrelenting necessity. + +Beside her in the bed she could feel the soft body of her younger sister +cuddling up to her in fright. In such rare moments as this her heart melted +towards Lise, and she would fling a protecting arm about her. A sense of +Lise's need of protection invaded her, a sharp conviction, like a pang, that +Lise was destined to wander: Janet was never so conscious of the feeling as in +this dark hour, though it came to her at other times, when they were not +quarreling. Quarreling seemed to be the normal reaction between them. + +It was Janet, presently, who would get up, shivering, close the window, and +light the gas, revealing the room which the two girls shared together. Against +the middle of one wall was the bed, opposite this a travel-dented walnut bureau +with a marble top, with an oval mirror into which were stuck numerous magazine +portraits of the masculine and feminine talent adorning the American stage, a +preponderance of the music hall variety. There were pictures of other artists +whom the recondite would have recognized as "movie" stars, amazing yet veridic +stories of whose wealth Lise read in the daily press: all possessed limousines- +-an infallible proof, to Lise, of the measure of artistic greatness. Between +one of these movie millionaires and an ex-legitimate lady who now found +vaudeville profitable was wedged the likeness of a popular idol whose +connection with the footlights would doubtless be contingent upon a triumphant +acquittal at the hands of a jury of her countrymen, and whose trial for murder, +in Chicago, was chronicled daily in thousands of newspapers and followed by +Lise with breathless interest and sympathy. She was wont to stare at this lady +while dressing and exclaim:-- + +"Say, I hope they put it all over that district attorney!" + +To such sentiments, though deeply felt by her sister, Janet remained cold, +though she was, as will be seen, capable of enthusiasms. Lise was a truer +daughter of her time and country in that she had the national contempt for law, +was imbued with the American hero-worship of criminals that caused the +bombardment of Cora Wellman's jail with candy, fruit and flowers and +impassioned letters. Janet recalled there had been others before Mrs. Wellman, +caught within the meshes of the law, who had incited in her sister a similar +partisanship. + +It was Lise who had given the note of ornamentation to the bedroom. Against +the cheap faded lilac and gold wall-paper were tacked photo-engravings that had +taken the younger sister's fancy: a young man and woman, clad in scanty bathing +suits, seated side by side in a careening sail boat,--the work of a popular +illustrator whose manly and womanly "types" had become national ideals. + +There were other drawings, if not all by the same hand, at least by the same +school; one, sketched in bold strokes, of a dinner party in a stately +neo-classic dining-room, the table laden with flowers and silver, +the bare-throated women with jewels. A more critical eye than Lise's, +gazing upon this portrayal of the Valhalla of success, might have detected in +the young men, immaculate in evening dress, a certain effort to feel at home, +to converse naturally, which their square jaws and square shoulders belied. +This was no doubt the fault of the artist's models, who had failed to live up +to the part. At any rate, the sight of these young gods of leisure, the +contemplation of the stolid butler and plush footmen in the background never +failed to make Lise's heart beat faster. + +On the marble of the bureau amidst a litter of toilet articles, and bought by +Lise for a quarter at the Bagatelle bargain counter, was an oval photograph +frame from which the silver wash had begun to rub off, and the band of purple +velvet inside the metal had whitened. The frame always contained the current +object of Lise's affections, though the exhibits--as Janet said--were subject +to change without notice. The Adonis who now reigned had black hair cut in the +prevailing Hampton fashion, very long in front and hanging down over his eyes +like a Scottish terrier's; very long behind, too, but ending suddenly, shaved +in a careful curve at the neck and around the ears. It had almost the +appearance of a Japanese wig. The manly beauty of Mr. Max Wylie was of the +lantern-jawed order, and in his photograph he conveyed the astonished and +pained air of one who has been suddenly seized by an invisible officer of the +law from behind. This effect, one presently perceived, was due to the high, +stiff collar, the "Torture Brand," Janet called it, when she and her sister +were engaged in one of their frequent controversies about life in general: the +obvious retort to this remark, which Lise never failed to make, was that Janet +could boast of no beaux at all. + +It is only fair to add that the photograph scarcely did Mr. Wylie justice. In +real life he did not wear the collar, he was free and easy in his manners, sure +of his powers of conquest. As Lise observed, he had made a home-run with her +at Slattery's Riverside Park. "Sadie Hartmann was sure sore when I tangoed off +with him," she would observe reminiscently .... + +It was Lise's habit to slight her morning toilet, to linger until the last +minute in bed, which she left in reluctant haste to stand before the bureau +frantically combing out kinks of the brown hair falling over her shoulders +before jamming it down across her forehead in the latest mode. Thus occupied, +she revealed a certain petulant beauty. Like the majority of shop-girls, she +was small, but her figure was good, her skin white; her discontented mouth gave +her the touch of piquancy apt to play havoc with the work of the world. In +winter breakfast was eaten by the light of a rococo metal lamp set in the +centre of the table. This was to save gas. There was usually a rump steak and +potatoes, bread and "creamery" butterine, and the inevitable New England +doughnuts. At six thirty the whistles screeched again,--a warning note, the +signal for Edward's departure; and presently, after a brief respite, the heavy +bells once more began their clamour, not to die down until ten minutes of +seven, when the last of the stragglers had hurried through the mill gates. + +The Bumpus flat included the second floor of a small wooden house whose owner +had once been evilly inspired to paint it a livid clay-yellow--as though +insisting that ugliness were an essential attribute of domesticity. A bay ran +up the two stories, and at the left were two narrow doorways, one for each +flat. On the right the house was separated from its neighbour by a narrow +interval, giving but a precarious light to the two middle rooms, the diningroom +and kitchen. The very unattractiveness of such a home, however, had certain +compensations for Janet, after the effort of early rising had been surmounted, +felt a real relief in leaving it; a relief, too, in leaving Fillmore Street, +every feature of which was indelibly fixed in her mind, opposite was the blind +brick face of a warehouse, and next to that the converted dwelling house that +held the shop of A. Bauer, with the familiar replica of a green ten-cent +trading stamp painted above it and the somewhat ironical announcement--when +boar frost whitened the pavement--that ice-cold soda was to be had within, as +well as cigars and tobacco, fruit and candy. Then came a tenement, under which +two enterprising Greeks by the name of Pappas--spelled Papas lower down-- +conducted a business called "The Gentleman," a tailoring, pressing, and dyeing +establishment. Janet could see the brilliantined black heads of the two +proprietors bending over their boards, and sometimes they would be lifted to +smile at her as she passed. The Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in +this drab environment as they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of +Hellas, and Janet sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her +education in the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful. + +She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to dwell in +exile, unacquainted with what they love. Desire was incandescent within her +breast. Desire for what? It would have been some relief to know. She could +not, like Lise, find joy and forgetfulness at dance ,halls, at the "movies," at +Slattery's Riverside Park in summer, in "joy rides" with the Max Wylies of +Hampton. And beside, the Max Wylies were afraid of her. If at times she +wished for wealth, it was because wealth held the magic of emancipation from +surroundings against which her soul revolted. Vividly idealized but unconfided +was the memory of a seaside village, the scene of one of the brief sojourns of +her childhood, where the air was fragrant with the breath of salt marshes, +where she recalled, through the vines of a porch, a shining glimpse of the sea +at the end of a little street.... + +Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners' Hall, +that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the store of +Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes, sheet iron and +cooking utensils. Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was happy, too: unlike the +Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he throve. He was very proud of +the business in which he had invested his savings, but he seemed to have other +affairs lying blithely on his mind, affairs of moment to the community, as the +frequent presence of the huge policemen, aldermen, and other important looking +persons bore witness. He hailed by name Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Syrians, +and "French"; he hailed Janet, too, with respectful cheerfulness, taking off +his hat. He possessed the rare, warm vitality that is irresistible. A native +of Hampton, still in his thirties, his sharp little nose and twinkling blue +eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is born and not made; his stiff hair had a +twist like the bristles in the cleaning rod of a gun. + +He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her. And she did not +understand herself! + +By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red from exertion, +had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists. She disliked winter, +the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but one day she was moved by a +quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the delicate tracery against the sky made by +the slender branches of the great elms and maples. She halted on the pavement, +her eyes raised, heedless of passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the +longing that could be so oddly and unexpectedly aroused. + +Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip of +asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous edifices +indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity. There were +long stretches of "ten foot" buildings, so called on account of the single +story, their height deceptively enhanced by the superimposition of huge and +gaudy signs, one on top of another, announcing the merits of "Stewart's +Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's Oats, the Digestible Breakfast Food," of +graphophones and "spring heeled" shoes, tobacco, and naphtha soaps. "No, We +don't give Trading Stamps, Our Products are Worth all You Pay." These "ten +foot" stores were the repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and +millinery, and interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The +Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and an +occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner. Here, during +those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a scaffolding spanning the +window of the store, might be seen a perspiring young man in his shirt sleeves +chalking up baseball scores for the benefit of a crowd below. Then came the +funereal, liver-coloured, long-windowed Hinckley Block (1872), and on the +corner a modern, glorified drugstore thrusting forth plate glass bays--two on +Faber Street and three on Stanley--filled with cameras and candy, hot water +bags, throat sprays, catarrh and kidney cures, calendars, fountain pens, +stationery, and handy alcohol lamps. Flanking the sidewalks, symbolizing and +completing the heterogeneous and bewildering effect of the street were long +rows of heavy hemlock trunks, unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees +bearing webs of wires. Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs, trucks +rumbled across the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches behind +startled pedestrians. Janet was always galvanized into alertness here, Faber +Street being no place to dream. By night an endless procession moved up one +sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically at the flash-in and flash-out +electric, signs that kept the breakfast foods and ales, the safety razors, +soaps, and soups incessantly in the minds of a fickle public. + +Two blocks from Faber Street was the North Canal, with a granite-paved roadway +between it and the monotonous row of company boarding houses. Even in bright +weather Janet felt a sense of oppression here; on dark, misty mornings the +stern, huge battlements of the mills lining the farther bank were menacing +indeed, bristling with projections, towers, and chimneys, flanked by heavy +walls. Had her experience included Europe, her imagination might have seized +the medieval parallel,--the arched bridges flung at intervals across the water, +lacking only chains to raise them in case of siege. The place was always +ominously suggestive of impending strife. Janet's soul was a sensitive +instrument, but she suffered from an inability to find parallels, and thus to +translate her impressions intellectually. Her feeling about the mills was that +they were at once fortress and prison, and she a slave driven thither day after +day by an all-compelling power; as much a slave as those who trooped in through +the gates in the winter dawn, and wore down, four times a day, the oak treads +of the circular tower stairs. + +The sound of the looms was like heavy rain hissing on the waters of the canal. + +The administrative offices of a giant mill such as the Chippering in Hampton +are labyrinthine. Janet did not enter by the great gates her father kept, but +walked through an open courtyard into a vestibule where, day and night, a +watchman stood; she climbed iron-shod stairs, passed the doorway leading to the +paymaster's suite, to catch a glimpse, behind the grill, of numerous young men +settling down at those mysterious and complicated machines that kept so +unerring a record, in dollars and cents, of the human labour of the operatives. +There were other suites for the superintendents, for the purchasing agent; and +at the end of the corridor, on the south side of the mill, she entered the +outer of the two rooms reserved for Mr. Claude Ditmar, the Agent and general- +in-chief himself of this vast establishment. In this outer office, behind the +rail that ran the length of it, Janet worked; from the window where her +typewriter stood was a sheer drop of eighty feet or so to the river, which ran +here swiftly through a wide canon whose sides were formed by miles and miles of +mills, built on buttressed stone walls to retain the banks. The prison-like +buildings on the farther shore were also of colossal size, casting their +shadows far out into the waters; while in the distance, up and down the stream, +could be seen the delicate web of the Stanley and Warren Street bridges, with +trolley cars like toys gliding over them, with insect pedestrians creeping +along the footpaths. + +Mr. Ditmar's immediate staff consisted of Mr. Price, an elderly bachelor of +tried efficiency whose peculiar genius lay in computation, of a young Mr. +Caldwell who, during the four years since he had left Harvard, had been +learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet. Miss Ottway was the +agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable woman with immense +reserves seemingly inexhaustible. She had a deep, masculine voice, not +unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a masculine manner of taking to +any job that came to hand. Nerves were things unknown to her: she was granite, +Janet tempered steel. Janet was the second stenographer, and performed, +besides, any odd tasks that might be assigned. + +There were, in the various offices of the superintendents, the paymaster and +purchasing agent, other young women stenographers whose companionship Janet, +had she been differently organized, might have found congenial, but something +in her refused to dissolve to their proffered friendship. She had but one +friend,--if Eda Rawle, who worked in a bank, and whom she had met at a lunch +counter by accident, may be called so. As has been admirably said in another +language, one kisses, the other offers a cheek: Janet offered the cheek. All +unconsciously she sought a relationship rarely to be found in banks and +business offices; would yield herself to none other. The young women +stenographers in the Chippering Mill, respectable, industrious girls, were +attracted by a certain indefinable quality, but finding they made no progress +in their advances, presently desisted they were somewhat afraid of her; as one +of them remarked, "You always knew she was there." Miss Lottie Meyers, who +worked in the office of Mr. Orcutt, the superintendent across the hall, +experienced a brief infatuation that turned to hate. She chewed gum +incessantly, Janet found her cheap perfume insupportable; Miss Meyers, for her +part, declared that Janet was "queer" and "stuck up," thought herself better +than the rest of them. Lottie Meyers was the leader of a group of four or five +which gathered in the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly +into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange +persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to relate, +sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical laughter. +Janet detested these conversations. And the sex question, subtly suggested if +not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to +ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be degraded. Her feelings, concealed under +an exterior of self-possession, deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes +became molten, and she was frightened by a passion that made her tremble--a +passion by no means always consciously identified with men, embodying all the +fierce unexpressed and unsatisfied desires of her life. + +These emotions, often suggested by some hint of beauty, as of the sun glinting +on the river on a bright blue day, had a sudden way of possessing her, and the +longing they induced was pain. Longing for what? For some unimagined +existence where beauty dwelt, and light, where the ecstasy induced by these was +neither moiled nor degraded; where shame, as now, might not assail her. Why +should she feel her body hot with shame, her cheeks afire? At such moments she +would turn to the typewriter, her fingers striking the keys with amazing +rapidity, with extraordinary accuracy and force,--force vaguely disturbing to +Mr. Claude Ditmar as he entered the office one morning and involuntarily paused +to watch her. She was unaware of his gaze, but her colour was like a crimson +signal that flashed to him and was gone. Why had he never noticed her before? +All these months, for more than a year, perhaps,--she had been in his office, +and he had not so much as looked at her twice. The unguessed answer was that +he had never surprised her in a vivid moment. He had a flair for women, though +he had never encountered any possessing the higher values, and it was +characteristic of the plane of his mental processes that this one should remind +him now of a dark, lithe panther, tensely strung, capable of fierceness. The +pain of having her scratch him would be delectable. + +When he measured her it was to discover that she was not so little, and the +shoulder-curve of her uplifted arms, as her fingers played over the keys, +seemed to belie that apparent slimness. And had he not been unacquainted with +the subtleties of the French mind and language, he +might have classed her as a fausse maigre. Her head was small, her hair like a +dark, blurred shadow clinging round it. He wanted to examine her hair, to see +whether it would not betray, at closer range, an imperceptible wave,--but not +daring to linger he went into his office, closed the door, and sat down with a +sensation akin to weakness, somewhat appalled by his discovery, considerably +amazed at his previous stupidity. He had thought of Janet--when she had +entered his mind at all--as unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this +demureness as repression. Her qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude +Ditmar, had seen them struck with fire. He wondered whether any other man +had been as fortunate. + +Later in the morning, quite casually, he made inquiries of Miss Ottway, who +liked Janet and was willing to do her a good turn. + +"Why, she's a clever girl, Mr. Ditmar, a good stenographer, and conscientious +in her work. She's very quick, too. + +"Yes, I've noticed that," Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have it +thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet's aptitude for business. + +"She keeps to herself and minds her own affairs. You can see she comes of good +stock." Miss Ottway herself was proud of her New England blood. "Her father, +you know, is the gatekeeper down there. He's been unfortunate." + +"You don't say--I didn't connect her with him. Fine looking old man. A friend +of mine who recommended him told me he'd seen better days ...." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +In spite of the surprising discovery in his office of a young woman of such a +disquieting, galvanic quality, it must not be supposed that Mr. Claude Ditmar +intended to infringe upon a fixed principle. He had principles. For him, as +for the patriarchs and householders of Israel, the seventh commandment was only +relative, yet hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity, laying down the +sound doctrine that women and business would not mix: or, as he put it to his +intimates, no sensible man would fool with a girl in his office. Hence it may +be implied that Mr. Ditmar's experiences with the opposite sex had been on a +property basis. He was one of those busy and successful persons who had never +appreciated or acquired the art of quasi-platonic amenities, whose idea of a +good time was limited to discreet excursions with cronies, likewise busy and +successful persons who, by reason of having married early and unwisely, are +strangers to the delights of that higher social intercourse chronicled in +novels and the public prints. If one may conveniently overlook the joys of a +companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible to have a taste in women as +in champagne or cigars. Mr. Ditmar preferred blondes, and he liked them rather +stout, a predilection that had led him into matrimony with a lady of this +description: a somewhat sticky, candy-eating lady with a mania for card +parties, who undoubtedly would have dyed her hair if she had lived. He was not +inconsolable, but he had had enough of marriage to learn that it demands a +somewhat exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained. + +He was left a widower with two children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of +twelve, both somewhat large for their ages. Amy attended the only private +institution for the instruction of her sex of which Hampton could boast; George +continued at a public school. The late Mrs. Ditmar for some years before her +demise had begun to give evidence of certain restless aspirations to which +American ladies of her type and situation seem peculiarly liable, and with a +view to their ultimate realization she had inaugurated a Jericho-like campaign. +Death had released Ditmar from its increasing pressure. For his wife had +possessed that admirable substitute for character, persistence, had been expert +in the use of importunity, often an efficient weapon in the hands of the female +economically dependent. The daughter of a defunct cashier of the Hampton +National Bank, when she had married Ditmar, then one of the superintendents of +the Chippering and already a marked man, she had deemed herself fortunate among +women, looking forward to a life of ease and idleness and candy in great +abundance,--a dream temporarily shattered by the unforeseen discomfort of +bringing two children into the world, with an interval of scarcely a year +between them. Her parents from an excess of native modesty having failed to +enlighten her on this subject, her feelings were those of outraged +astonishment, and she was quite determined not to repeat the experience a third +time. Knowledge thus belatedly acquired, for a while she abandoned herself to +the satisfaction afforded by the ability to take a commanding position in +Hampton society, gradually to become aware of the need of a more commodious +residence. In a certain kind of intuition she was rich. Her husband had +meanwhile become Agent of the Chippering Mill, and she strongly suspected that +his prudent reticence on the state of his finances was the best indication of +an increasing prosperity. He had indeed made money, been given many +opportunities for profitable investments; but the argument for social pre- +eminence did not appeal to him: tears and reproaches, recriminations, when +frequently applied, succeeded better; like many married men, what he most +desired was to be let alone; but in some unaccountable way she had come to +suspect that his preference for blondes was of a more liberal nature than at +first, in her innocence, she had realized. She was jealous, too, of his +cronies, in spite of the fact that these gentlemen, when they met her, treated +her with an elaborate politeness; and she accused him with entire justice of +being more intimate with them than with her, with whom he was united in holy +bonds. The inevitable result of these tactics was the modern mansion in the +upper part of Warren Street, known as the "residential" district. Built on a +wide lot, with a garage on one side to the rear, with a cement driveway divided +into squares, and a wall of democratic height separating its lawn from the +sidewalk, the house may for the present be better imagined than described. + +A pious chronicler of a more orthodox age would doubtless have deemed it a +judgment that Cora Ditmar survived but two years to enjoy the glories of the +Warren Street house. For a while her husband indulged in a foolish optimism, +only to learn that the habit of matrimonial blackmail, once acquired, is not +easily shed. Scarcely had he settled down to the belief that by the +gratification of her supreme desire he had achieved comparative peace, than he +began to suspect her native self-confidence of cherishing visions of a career +contemplating nothing less than the eventual abandonment of Hampton itself as a +field too limited for her social talents and his business ability and bank +account--at which she was pleased to hint. Hampton suited Ditmar, his passion +was the Chippering Mill; and he was in process of steeling himself to resist, +whatever the costs, this preposterous plan when he was mercifully released by +death. Her intention of sending the children away to acquire a culture and +finish Hampton did not afford,--George to Silliston Academy, Amy to a +fashionable boarding school,--he had not opposed, yet he did not take the idea +with sufficient seriousness to carry it out. The children remained at home, +more or less--increasingly less--in the charge of an elderly woman who acted as +housekeeper. + +Ditmar had miraculously regained his freedom. And now, when he made trips to +New York and Boston, combining business with pleasure, there were no questions +asked, no troublesome fictions to be composed. More frequently he was in +Boston, where he belonged to a large and comfortable club, not too exacting in +regard to membership, and here he met his cronies and sometimes planned +excursions with them, automobile trips in summer to the White Mountains or +choice little resorts to spend Sundays and holidays, generally taking with them +a case of champagne and several bags of golf sticks. He was fond of shooting, +and belonged to a duck club on the Cape, where poker and bridge were not +tabooed. To his intimates he was known as "Dit." Nor is it surprising that +his attitude toward women had become in general one of resentment; matrimony he +now regarded as unmitigated folly. At five and forty he was a vital, +dominating, dust-coloured man six feet and half an inch in height, weighing a +hundred and ninety pounds, and thus a trifle fleshy. When relaxed, and in +congenial company, he looked rather boyish, an aspect characteristic of many +American business men of to-day. + +His head was large, he wore his hair short, his features also proclaimed him as +belonging to a modern American type in that they were not clear-cut, but rather +indefinable; a bristling, short-cropped moustache gave him a certain efficient, +military look which, when introduced to strangers as "Colonel," was apt to +deceive them into thinking him an army officer. The title he had once received +as a member of the staff of the governor of the state, and was a tribute to a +gregariousness and political influence rather than to a genius for the art of +war. Ex officio, as the agent of the Chippering Mill and a man of substance to +boot, he was "in" politics, hail fellow well met with and an individual to be +taken into account by politicians from the governor and member of congress +down. He was efficient, of course; he had efficient hands and shrewd, +efficient eyes, and the military impression was deepened by his manner of +dealing with people, his conversation being yea, yea and nay, nay,--save with +his cronies and those of the other sex from whom he had something to gain. His +clothes always looked new, of pronounced patterns and light colours set aside +for him by an obsequious tailor in Boston. + +If a human being in such an enviable position as that of agent of the +Chippering Mill can be regarded as property, it might be said that Mr. Claude +Ditmar belonged to the Chipperings of Boston, a family still owning a +controlling interest in the company. His loyalty to them and to the mill he so +ably conducted was the great loyalty of his life. For Ditmar, a Chippering +could do no wrong. It had been the keen eye of Mr. Stephen Chippering that +first had marked him, questioned him, recognized his ability, and from the +moment of that encounter his advance had been rapid. When old Stephen had been +called to his fathers, Ditmar's allegiance was automatically, as it were, +transferred to the two sons, George and Worthington, already members of the +board of directors. Sometimes Ditmar called on them at their homes, which +stood overlooking the waters of the Charles River Basin. The attitude toward +him of the Chipperings and their wives was one of an interesting adjustment of +feudalism to democracy. They were fond of him, grateful to him, treating him +with a frank camaraderie that had in it not the slightest touch of +condescension, but Ditmar would have been the first to recognize that there +were limits to the intimacy. They did not, for instance--no doubt out of +consideration--invite him to their dinner parties or take him to their club, +which was not the same as that to which he himself belonged. He felt no +animus. Nor would he, surprising though it may seem, have changed places with +the Chipperings. At an early age, and quite unconsciously, he had accepted +property as the ruling power of the universe, and when family was added thereto +the combination was nothing less than divine. + +There were times, especially during the long winters, when life became almost +unbearable for Janet, and she was seized by a desire to run away from Fillmore +Street, from the mills, from Hampton itself. Only she did not know where to +go, or how to get away. She was convinced of the existence in the world of +delightful spots where might be found congenial people with whom it would be a +joy to talk. Fillmore Street, certainly, did not contain any such. The office +was not so bad. It is true that in the mornings, as she entered West Street, +the sight of the dark facade of the fortress-like structure, emblematic of the +captivity in which she passed her days, rarely failed to arouse in her +sensations of oppression and revolt; but here, at least, she discovered an +outlet for her energies; she was often too busy to reflect, and at odd moments +she could find a certain solace and companionship in the river, so intent, so +purposeful, so beautiful, so undisturbed by the inconcinnity, the clatter and +confusion of Hampton as it flowed serenely under the bridges and between the +mills toward the sea. Toward the sea! + +It was when, at night, she went back to Fillmore Street--when she thought of +the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in at the +door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew leaden. In +spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and prided herself on +cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with the smell of cooking, and Janet, from +the upper hall, had a glimpse of a thin, angular woman with a scrawny neck, +with scant grey hair tightly drawn into a knot, in a gingham apron covering an +old dress bending over the kitchen stove. And occasionally, despite a +resentment that fate should have dealt thus inconsiderately with the family, +Janet felt pity welling within her. After supper, when Lise had departed with +her best young man, Hannah would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet +to help her with the dishes. + +"You work all day, you have a right to rest." + +"But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the harder. +With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized. Mother and +daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet had a secret +contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism. She loved her mother, in a way, +especially at certain times,--though she often wondered why she was unable to +realize more fully the filial affection of tradition; but in moments of +softening, such as these, she was filled with rage at the thought of any woman +endowed with energy permitting herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such +a fate as Hannah's: divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been +better--anything but to be cheated out of life. Feeling the fires of rebellion +burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and driving necessity +she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether it were possible that +Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung by inexpressible desires,-- +desires in which the undiscovered spiritual was so alarmingly compounded with +the undiscovered physical. She would have died rather than speak to Hannah of +these unfulfilled experiences, and the mere thought of confiding them to any +person appalled her. Even if there existed some wonderful, understanding being +to whom she might be able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of +that kenosis was too troubling to be dwelt upon. + +She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no Virgil had +as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that realm. Her +schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating taste for literature; +and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public Library opposite the Common +it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of books whose authors and titles +offered no clue to their contents. Her few choices had not been happy, they +had failed to interest and thrill... + +Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement in +the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose +heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims. Lise went out into it, +became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,--a tendency Hannah found +unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism was not wholly proof. +Scarce an evening went by without an expression of uneasiness from Hannah. + +"She didn't happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?" Hannah +would query, when she had finished her work and put on her spectacles to read +the Banner. + +"To the movies, I suppose," Janet would reply. Although well aware that her +sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add to +Hannah's disquietude. And if she had little patience with Lise, she had less +with the helpless attitude of her parents. + +"Well," Hannah would add, "I never can get used to her going out nights the way +she does, and with young men and women I don't know anything about. I wasn't +brought up that way. But as long as she's got to work for a living I guess +there's no help for it." + +And she would glance at Edward. It was obviously due to his inability +adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced to +toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him. If he heard, +he acquiesced humbly, and in silence: more often than not he was oblivious, +buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his papers spread out on the +red cloth of the dining-room table, under the lamp. Sometimes in his +simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands listeners he would read aloud +to them a letter, recently received from a distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus, +let us say, who had migrated to California in search of wealth and fame, and +who had found neither. In spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude +of these western members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to +Edward. + +"He tells me they're going to give women the ballot,--doesn't appear to be much +concerned about his own womenfolks going to the polls." + +"Why shouldn't they, if they want to?" Janet would exclaim, though she had +given little thought to the question. + +Edward would mildly ignore this challenge. + +"He has a house on what they call Russian Hill, and he can watch the vessels as +they come in from Japan," he would continue in his precise voice, emphasizing +admirably the last syllables of the words "Russian," "vessels," and "Japan." +"Wouldn't you like to see the letter?" + +To do Hannah justice, although she was quite incapable of sharing his passion, +she frequently feigned an interest, took the letter, presently handing it on to +Janet who, in deciphering Alpheus's trembling calligraphy, pondered over his +manifold woes. Alpheus's son, who had had a good position in a sporting goods +establishment on Market Street, was sick and in danger of losing it, the son's +wife expecting an addition to the family, the house on Russian Hill mortgaged. +Alpheus, a veteran of the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his +reminiscences, but the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters +of solid worth, and so far had refused to publish them.... Janet, as she read, +reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures, of +disappointed hopes; she wondered at her father's perennial interest in +failures,--provided they were those of his family; and the next evening, as he +wrote painfully on his ruled paper, she knew that he in turn was pouring out +his soul to Alpheus, recounting, with an emotion by no means unpleasurable, to +this sympathetic but remote relative the story of his own failure! + +If the city of Hampton was emblematic of our modern world in which +haphazardness has replaced order, Fillmore Street may be likened to a back eddy +of the muddy and troubled waters, in which all sorts of flotsam and jetsam had +collected. Or, to find perhaps an even more striking illustration of the +process that made Hampton in general and Fillmore Street in particular, one had +only to take the trolley to Glendale, the Italian settlement on the road +leading to the old New England village of Shrewsbury. Janet sometimes walked +there, alone or with her friend Eda Rawle. Disintegration itself--in a +paradoxically pathetic attempt at reconstruction--had built Glendale. Human +hands, Italian hands. Nor, surprising though it may seem, were these +descendants of the people of the Renaissance in the least offended by their +handiwork. When the southern European migration had begun and real estate +became valuable, one by one the more decorous edifices of the old American +order had been torn down and carried piecemeal by sons of Italy to the bare +hills of Glendale, there to enter into new combinations representing, to an eye +craving harmony, the last word of a chaos, of a mental indigestion, of a colour +scheme crying aloud to heaven for retribution. Standing alone and bare amidst +its truck gardens, hideous, extreme, though typical of the entire settlement, +composed of fragments ripped from once-appropriate settings, is a house with a +tiny body painted strawberry-red, with scroll-work shutters a tender green; +surmounting the structure and almost equalling it in size is a sky-blue cupola, +once the white crown of the Sutter mansion, the pride of old Hampton. The +walls of this dwelling were wrested from the sides of Mackey's Tavern, while +the shutters for many years adorned the parsonage of the old First Church. +Similarly, in Hampton and in Fillmore Street, lived in enforced neighbourliness +human fragments once having their places in crystallized communities where +existence had been regarded as solved. Here there was but one order,--if such +it may be called,--one relationship, direct, or indirect, one necessity +claiming them all--the mills. + +Like the boards forming the walls of the shacks at Glendale, these human planks +torn from an earlier social structure were likewise warped, which is to say +they were dominated by obsessions. Edward's was the Bumpus family; and Chris +Auermann, who lived in the flat below, was convinced that the history of +mankind is a deplorable record of havoc caused by women. Perhaps he was right, +but the conviction was none the less an obsession. He came from a little +village near Wittenburg that has scarcely changed since Luther's time. Like +most residents of Hampton who did not work in the mills, he ministered to those +who did, or to those who sold merchandise to the workers, cutting their hair in +his barber shop on Faber Street. + +The Bumpuses, save Lise, clinging to a native individualism and pride, +preferred isolation to companionship with the other pieces of driftwood by +which they were surrounded, and with which the summer season compelled a +certain enforced contact. When the heat in the little dining-room grew +unbearable, they were driven to take refuge on the front steps shared in common +with the household of the barber. It is true that the barber's wife was a mild +hausfrau who had little to say, and that their lodgers, two young Germans who +worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings at a bowling club; but +Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay rum, would arrive promptly at +quarter past eight, take off his coat, and thus, as it were stripped for +action, would turn upon the defenceless Edward. + +"Vill you mention one great man--yoost one--who is not greater if the vimmen +leave him alone?" he would demand. "Is it Anthony, the conqueror of Egypt and +the East? I vill show you Cleopatra. Und Burns, and Napoleon, the greatest +man what ever lived--vimmen again. I tell you there is no Elba, no St. Helena +if it is not for the vimmen. Und vat vill you say of Goethe?" + +Poor Edward could think of nothing to say of Goethe. + +"He is great, I grant you," Chris would admit, "but vat is he if the vimmen +leave him alone? Divine yoost that." And he would proceed to cite endless +examples of generals and statesmen whose wives or mistresses had been their +bane. Futile Edward's attempts to shift the conversation to the subject of his +own obsession; the German was by far the more aggressive, he would have none of +it. Perhaps if Edward had been willing to concede that the Bumpuses had been +brought to their present lowly estate by the sinister agency of the fair sex +Chris might conditionally have accepted the theme. Hannah, contemptuously +waving a tattered palm leaf fan, was silent; but on one occasion Janet took +away the barber's breath by suddenly observing:-- + +"You never seem to think of the women whose lives are ruined by men, Mr. +Auermann." + +It was unheard-of, this invasion of a man's argument by a woman, and by a young +woman at that. He glared at her through his spectacles, took them off, wiped +them, replaced them, and glared at her again. He did not like Janet; she was +capable of what may be called a speaking silence, and he had never been wholly +unaware of her disapproval and ridicule. Perhaps he recognized in her, +instinctively, the potential qualities of that emerging modern woman who to him +was anathema. + +"It is somethings I don't think about," he said. + +He was a wizened little man with faience-blue eyes, and sat habitually hunched +up with his hands folded across his shins. + +"Nam fuit ante Helenam"--as Darwin quotes. Toward all the masculine residents +of Fillmore Street, save one, the barber's attitude was one of unconcealed +scorn for an inability to recognize female perfidy. With Johnny Tiernan alone +he refused to enter the lists. When the popular proprietor of the tin shop +came sauntering along the sidewalk with nose uptilted, waving genial greetings +to the various groups on the steps, Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly +change to one of fatuous playfulness. + +"What's this I hear about giving the girls the vote, Chris?" Johnny would +innocently inquire, winking at Janet, invariably running his hand through the +wiry red hair that resumed its corkscrew twist as soon as he released it. And +Chris would as invariably reply:-- + +"You have the dandruffs--yes? You come to my shop, I give you somethings...." + +Sometimes the barber, in search of a more aggressive adversary than Edward, +would pay visits, when as likely as not another neighbour with profound +convictions and a craving for proselytes would swoop down on the defenceless +Bumpuses: Joe Shivers, for instance, who lived in one of the tenements above +the cleaning and dyeing establishment kept by the Pappas Bros., and known as +"The Gentleman." In the daytime Mr. Shivers was a model of acquiescence in a +system he would have designated as one of industrial feudalism, his duty being +to examine the rolls of cloth as they came from the looms of the Arundel Mill, +in case of imperfections handing them over to the women menders: at night, to +borrow a vivid expression from Lise, he was "batty in the belfry" on the +subject of socialism. Unlike the barber, whom he could not abide, for him the +cleavage of the world was between labour and capital instead of man and woman; +his philosophy was stern and naturalistic; the universe--the origin of which he +did not discuss--just an accidental assemblage of capricious forces over which +human intelligence was one day to triumph. Squatting on the lowest step, his +face upturned, by the light of the arc sputtering above the street he looked +like a yellow frog, his eager eyes directed toward Janet, whom he suspected of +intelligence. + +"If there was a God, a nice, kind, all-powerful God, would he permit what +happened in one of the loom-rooms last week? A Polak girl gets her hair caught +in the belt pfff!" He had a marvellously realistic gift when it came to +horrors: Janet felt her hair coming out by the roots. Although she never went +to church, she did not like to think that no God existed. Of this Mr. Shivers +was very positive. Edward, too, listened uneasily, hemmed and hawed, making +ineffectual attempts to combat Mr. Shivers's socialism with a deeply-rooted +native individualism that Shivers declared as defunct as Christianity. + +"If it is possible for the workingman to rise under a capitalistic system, why +do you not rise, then? Why do I not rise? I'm as good as Ditmar, I'm better +educated, but we're all slaves. What right has a man to make you and me work +for him just because he has capital?" + +"Why, the right of capital," Edward would reply. + +Mr. Shivers, with the manner of one dealing with an incurable romanticism and +sentimentality, would lift his hands in despair. And in spite of the fact that +Janet detested him, he sometimes exercised over her a paradoxical fascination, +suggesting as he did unexplored intellectual realms. She despised her father +for not being able to crush the little man. Edward would make pathetic +attempts to capture the role Shivers had appropriated, to be the practical +party himself, to convict Shivers of idealism. Socialism scandalized him, +outraged, even more than atheism, something within him he held sacred, and he +was greatly annoyed because he was unable adequately to express this feeling. + +"You can't change human nature, Mr. Shivers," Edward would insist in his +precise but ineffectual manner. "We all want property, you would accept a +fortune if it was offered to you, and so should I. Americans will never become +socialists." + +"But look at me, wasn't I born in Meriden, Connecticut? Ain't that Yankee +enough for you?" Thus Mr. Shivers sought blandly to confound him. + +A Yankee Shades of the Pilgrim fathers, of seven, generations of Bumpuses! A +Yankee who used his hands in that way, a Yankee with a nose like that, a Yankee +with a bald swathe down the middle of his crown and bunches of black, moth- +eaten hair on either side! But Edward, too polite to descend to personalities, +was silent.... + +In brief, this very politeness of Edward's, which his ancestors would have +scorned, this consideration and lack of self-assertion made him the favourite +prey of the many "characters" in Fillmore Street whose sanity had been +disturbed by pressure from above, in whose systems had lodged the germs of +those exotic social doctrines floating so freely in the air of our modern +industrial communities .... Chester Glenn remains for a passing mention. A +Yankee of Yankees, this, born on a New Hampshire farm, and to the ordinary +traveller on the Wigmore branch of the railroad just a good-natured, round- +faced, tobacco-chewing brakeman who would take a seat beside ladies of his +acquaintance aid make himself agreeable until it was time to rise and bawl out, +in the approved manner of his profession, the name of the next station. +Fillmore Street knew that the flat visored cap which his corporation compelled +him to wear covered a brain into which had penetrated the maggot of the Single +Tax. When he encountered Mr. Shivers or Auermann the talk became coruscating.. + +Eda Rawle, Janet's solitary friend of these days, must also be mentioned, +though the friendship was merely an episode in Janet's life. Their first +meeting was at Grady's quick-lunch counter in Faber Street, which they both +frequented at one time, and the fact that each had ordered a ham sandwich, a +cup of coffee, and a confection--new to Grady's--known as a Napoleon had led to +conversation. + +Eda, of course, was the aggressor; she was irresistibly drawn, she would not be +repulsed. A stenographer in the Wessex National Bank, she boarded with a Welsh +family in Spruce Street; matter-of-fact, plodding, commonplace, resembling--as +Janet thought--a horse, possessing, indeed many of the noble qualities of that +animal, she might have been thought the last person in the world to discern and +appreciate in Janet the hidden elements of a mysterious fire. In appearance +Miss Rawle was of a type not infrequent in Anglo-Saxon lands, strikingly +blonde, with high malar bones, white eyelashes, and eyes of a metallic blue, +cheeks of an amazing elasticity that worked rather painfully as she talked or +smiled, drawing back inadequate lips, revealing long, white teeth and vivid +gums. It was the craving in her for romance Janet assuaged; Eda's was the love +content to pour out, that demands little. She was capable of immolation. +Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in +moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to +give such a meagre return for the wealth of its offering. + +In other moments, when the world seemed all disorder and chaos,--as Mr. Shivers +described it,--or when she felt within her, like demons, those inexpressible +longings and desires, leaping and straining, pulling her, almost irresistibly, +she knew not whither, Eda shone forth like a light in the darkness, like the +beacon of a refuge and a shelter. Eda had faith in her, even when Janet had +lost faith in herself: she went to Eda in the same spirit that Marguerite went +to church; though she, Janet, more resembled Faust, being--save in these hours +of lowered vitality--of the forth-faring kind .... Unable to confess the need +that drove her, she arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's +arms. Janet was immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the +masculine trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one +of those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues come +as naturally as sun or air. Passion, when sanctified by matrimony, was her +ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it, having read +about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never +having experienced deeply its discomforts. Sanctified or unsanctified, Janet +regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently broached the subject she +recoiled. Once Eda exclaimed:-- + +"When you do fall in love, Janet, you must tell me all about it, every word!" + +Janet blushed hotly, and was silent. In Eda's mind such an affair was a kind +of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a volcanic +eruption to turn the world red. Such was the difference between them. + +Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or +sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra. Stereotyped on Eda's +face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was an expression +of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that vertical line in her +cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of white teeth and red gums. +It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom it appeared as the logical +reflection of what was passing on the screen; she averted her glance from both, +staring into her lap, filled with shame that the relation between the sexes +should be thus exposed to public gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded.... +There were, however, marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and +ships,--once a fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic tongues of +orange flame leaping from tree to tree. The movies brought the world to +Hampton, the great world into which she longed to fare, brought the world to +her! Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets and muezzins from the +Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow resembling gilded beets turned +upside down; grey houses of parliament by the Thames, the Tower of London, the +Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal. Strange lands indeed, and stranger peoples! +booted Russians in blouses, naked Equatorial savages tattooed and amazingly +adorned, soldiers and sailors, presidents, princes and emperors brought into +such startling proximity one could easily imagine one's self exchanging the +time of day! Incredible to Janet how the audiences, how even Eda accepted with +American complacency what were to her never-ending miracles; the yearning to +see more, to know more, became acute, like a pain, but even as she sought to +devour these scenes, to drink in every detail, with tantalizing swiftness they +were whisked away. They were peepholes in the walls of her prison; and at +night she often charmed herself to sleep with remembered visions of wide, +empty, treeshaded terraces reserved for kings. + +But Eda, however complacent her interest in the scenes themselves, was thrilled +to the marrow by their effect on Janet, who was her medium. Emerging from the +vestibule of the theatre, Janet seemed not to see the slushy street, her eyes +shone with a silver light like that of a mountain lake in a stormy sunset. And +they walked in silence until Janet would exclaim: + +"Oh Eda, wouldn't you love to travel!" + +Thus Eda Rawle was brought in contact with values she herself was powerless to +detect, and which did not become values until they had passed through Janet. +One "educative" reel they had seen had begun with scenes in a lumber camp high +in the mountains of Galicia, where grow forests of the priceless pine that +becomes, after years of drying and seasoning, the sounding board of the +Stradivarius and the harp. Even then it must respond to a Player. Eda, though +failing to apply this poetic parallel, when alone in her little room in the +Welsh boarding-house often indulged in an ecstasy of speculation as to that +man, hidden in the mists of the future, whose destiny it would be to awaken her +friend. Hampton did not contain him,--of this she was sure; and in her efforts +to visualize him she had recourse to the movies, seeking him amongst that +brilliant company of personages who stood so haughtily or walked so +indifferently across the ephemeral brightness of the screen. + +By virtue of these marvels of the movies Hampton ugly and sordid Hampton! -- +actually began for Janet to take on a romantic tinge. Were not the strange +peoples of the earth flocking to Hampton? She saw them arriving +at the station, straight from Ellis Island, bewildered, ticketed like dumb +animals, the women draped in the soft, exotic colours many of them were +presently to exchange for the cheap and gaudy apparel of Faber Street. She +sought to summon up in her mind the glimpses she had had of the wonderful lands +from which they had come, to imagine their lives in that earlier environment. +Sometimes she wandered, alone or with Eda, through the various quarters of the +city. Each quarter had a flavour of its own, a synthetic flavour belonging +neither to the old nor to the new, yet partaking of both: a difference in +atmosphere to which Janet was keenly sensitive. In the German quarter, to the +north, one felt a sort of ornamental bleakness--if the expression may be +permitted: the tenements here were clean and not too crowded, the scroll-work +on their superimposed porches, like that decorating the Turnverein and the stem +Lutheran Church, was eloquent of a Teutonic inheritance: The Belgians were to +the west, beyond the base-ball park and the car barns, their grey houses +scattered among new streets beside the scarred and frowning face of Torrey's +hill. Almost under the hill itself, which threatened to roll down on it, and +facing a bottomless, muddy street, was the quaint little building giving the +note of foreign thrift, of socialism and shrewdness, of joie de vivre to the +settlement, the FrancoBelgian co-operative store, with its salle de reunion +above and a stage for amateur theatricals. Standing in the mud outside, Janet +would gaze through the tiny windows in the stucco wall at the baskets prepared +for each household laid in neat rows beside the counter; at the old man with +the watery blue eyes and lacing of red in his withered cheeks who spoke no +English, whose duty it was to distribute the baskets to the women and children +as they called. + +Turning eastward again, one came to Dey Street, in the heart of Hampton, where +Hibernian Hall stood alone and grim, sole testimony of the departed Hibernian +glories of a district where the present Irish rulers of the city had once lived +and gossiped and fought in the days when the mill bells had roused the +boarding-house keepers at half past four of a winter morning. Beside the hall +was a corner lot, heaped high with hills of ashes and rubbish like the +vomitings of some filthy volcano; the unsightliness of which was half concealed +by huge signs announcing the merits of chewing gums, tobaccos, and cereals. +But why had the departure of the Irish, the coming of the Syrians made Dey +Street dark, narrow, mysterious, oriental? changed the very aspect of its +architecture? Was it the coffee-houses? One of these, in front of which Janet +liked to linger, was set weirdly into an old New England cottage, and had, +apparently, fathomless depths. In summer the whole front of it lay open to the +street, and here all day long, beside the table where the charcoal squares were +set to dry, could be seen saffron-coloured Armenians absorbed in a Turkish game +played on a backgammon board, their gentleness and that of the loiterers +looking on in strange contrast with their hawk-like profiles and burning eyes. +Behind this group, in the half light of the middle interior, could be discerned +an American soda-water fountain of a bygone fashion, on its marble counter +oddly shaped bottles containing rose and violet syrups; there was a bottle- +shaped stove, and on the walls, in gilt frames, pictures evidently dating from +the period in American art that flourished when Franklin Pierce was President; +and there was an array of marble topped tables extending far back into the +shadows. Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard--suggestive of the Arabian +Nights, which Janet had never read--from which, occasionally, the fat +proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes. + +When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby. The street swarmed with +babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps. And in this teeming, +prolific street one could scarcely move without stepping on a fat, almond eyed +child, though some, indeed, were wheeled; wheeled in all sorts of queer +contrivances by one another, by fathers with ragged black moustaches and eagle +noses who, to the despair of mill superintendents, had decided in the morning +that three days' wages would since to support their families for the week .... +In the midst of the throng might be seen occasionally the stout and comfortable +and not too immaculate figure of a shovel bearded Syrian priest, in a frock +coat and square-topped "Derby" hat, sailing along serenely, heedless of the +children who scattered out of his path. + +Nearby was the quarter of the Canadian French, scarcely now to be called +foreigners, though still somewhat reminiscent of the cramped little towns in +the northern wilderness of water and forest. On one corner stood almost +invariably a "Pharmacie Francaise"; the signs were in French, and the elders +spoke the patois. These, despite the mill pallor, retained in their faces, in +their eyes, a suggestion of the outdoor look of their ancestors, the coureurs +des bois, but the children spoke English, and the young men, as they played +baseball in the street or in the corner lots might be heard shouting out +derisively the cry of the section hands so familiar in mill cities, "Doff, you +beggars you, doff!" + +Occasionally the two girls strayed into that wide thoroughfare not far from the +canal, known by the classic name of Hawthorne, which the Italians had +appropriated to themselves. This street, too, in spite of the telegraph poles +flaunting crude arms in front of its windows, in spite of the trolley running +down its middle, had acquired a character, a unity all its own, a warmth and +picturesqueness that in the lingering light of summer evenings assumed an +indefinable significance. It was not Italy, but it was something--something +proclaimed in the ornate, leaning lines of the pillared balconies of the yellow +tenement on the second block, in the stone-vaulted entrance of the low house +next door, in fantastically coloured walls, in curtained windows out of which +leaned swarthy, earringed women. Blocking the end of the street, in stern +contrast, was the huge Clarendon Mill with its sinister brick pillars running +up the six stories between the glass. Here likewise the sidewalks overflowed +with children, large-headed, with great, lustrous eyes, mute, appealing, the +eyes of cattle. Unlike American children, they never seemed to be playing. +Among the groups of elders gathered for gossip were piratical Calabrians in +sombre clothes, descended from Greek ancestors, once the terrors of the +Adriatic Sea. The women, lingering in the doorways, hemmed in by more +children, were for the most part squat and plump, but once in a while Janet's +glance was caught and held by a strange, sharp beauty worthy of a cameo. + +Opposite the Clarendon Mill on the corner of East Street was a provision store +with stands of fruit and vegetables encroaching on the pavement. Janet's eye +was attracted by a box of olives. + +"Oh Eda," she cried, "do you remember, we saw them being picked--in the movies? +All those old trees on the side of a hill?" + +"Why, that's so," said Eda. "You never would have thought anything'd grow on +those trees." + +The young Italian who kept the store gave them a friendly grin. + +"You lika the olives?" he asked, putting some of the shining black fruit into +their hands. Eda bit one dubiously with her long, white teeth, and giggled. + +"Don't they taste funny!" she exclaimed. + +"Good--very good," he asserted gravely, and it was to Janet he turned, as +though recognizing a discrimination not to be found in her companion. She +nodded affirmatively. The strange taste of the fruit enhanced her sense of +adventure, she tried to imagine herself among the gatherers in the grove; she +glanced at the young man to perceive that he was tall and well formed, with +remarkably expressive eyes almost the colour of the olives themselves. It +surprised her that she liked him, though he was an Italian and a foreigner: a +certain debonnair dignity in him appealed to her--a quality lacking in many of +her own countrymen. + +And she wanted to talk to him about Italy,--only she did not know how to +begin,--when a customer appeared, an Italian woman who conversed with him in +soft, liquid tones that moved her .... + +Sometimes on these walks--especially if the day were grey and sombre--Janet's +sense of romance and adventure deepened, became more poignant, charged with +presage. These feelings, vague and unaccountable, she was utterly unable to +confide to Eda, yet the very fear they inspired was fascinating; a fear and a +hope that some day, in all this Babel of peoples, something would happen! It +was as though the conflicting soul of the city and her own soul were one.... + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Lise was the only member of the Bumpus family who did not find uncongenial such +distractions and companionships as were offered by the civilization that +surrounded them. The Bagatelle she despised; that was slavery--but slavery out +of which she might any day be snatched, like Leila Hawtrey, by a prince +charming who had made a success in life. Success to Lise meant money. +Although what some sentimental sociologists might call a victim of our +civilization, Lise would not have changed it, since it produced not only Lise +herself, but also those fabulous financiers with yachts and motors and town and +country houses she read about in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers. It +contained her purgatory, which she regarded in good conventional fashion as a +mere temporary place of detention, and likewise the heaven toward which she +strained, the dwelling-place of light. In short, her philosophy was that of +the modern, orthodox American, tinged by a somewhat commercialized Sunday +school tradition of an earlier day, and highly approved by the censors of the +movies. The peculiar kind of abstinence once euphemistically known as +"virtue," particularly if it were combined with beauty, never failed of its +reward. Lise, in this sense, was indeed virtuous, and her mirror told her she +was beautiful. Almost anything could happen to such a lady: any day she might +be carried up into heaven by that modern chariot of fire, the motor car, driven +by a celestial chauffeur. + +One man's meat being another's poison, Lise absorbed from the movies an element +by which her sister Janet was repelled. A popular production known as "Leila +of Hawtrey's" contained her creed,--Hawtrey's being a glittering metropolitan +restaurant where men of the world are wont to gather and discuss the stock +market, and Leila a beautiful, blonde and orphaned waitress upon whom several +of the fashionable frequenters had exercised seductive powers in vain. They +lay in wait for her at the side entrance, followed her, while one dissipated +and desperate person, married, and said to move in the most exclusive circles, +sent her an offer of a yearly income in five figures, the note being reproduced +on the screen, and Leila pictured reading it in her frigid hall-bedroom. There +are complications; she is in debt, and the proprietor of Hawtrey's has +threatened to discharge her and in order that the magnitude of the temptation +may be most effectively realized the vision appears of Leila herself, wrapped +in furs, stepping out of a limousine and into an elevator lifting her to an +apartment containing silk curtains, a Canet bed, a French maid, and a +Pomeranian. Virtue totters, but triumphs, being reinforced by two more visions +the first of these portrays Leila, prematurely old, dragging herself along +pavements under the metallic Broadway lights accosting gentlemen in evening +dress; and the second reveals her in the country, kneeling beside a dying +mother's bed, giving her promise to remain true to the Christian teachings of +her childhood. + +And virtue is rewarded, lavishly, as virtue should be, in dollars and cents, in +stocks and bonds, in pearls and diamonds. Popular fancy takes kindly to rough +but honest westerners who have begun life in flannel shirts, who have struck +gold and come to New York with a fortune but despising effeteness; such a one, +tanned by the mountain sun, embarrassed in raiment supplied by a Fifth Avenue +tailor, takes a table one evening at Hawtrey's and of course falls desperately +in love. He means marriage from the first, and his faith in Leila is great +enough to survive what appears to be an almost total eclipse of her virtue. +Through the machinations of the influential villain, and lured by the false +pretence that one of her girl friends is ill, she is enticed into a mysterious +house of a sinister elegance, and apparently irretrievably compromised. The +westerner follows, forces his way through the portals, engages the villain, and +vanquishes him. Leila becomes a Bride. We behold her, at the end, mistress of +one of those magnificent stone mansions with grilled vestibules and negro +butlers into whose sacred precincts we are occasionally, in the movies, +somewhat breathlessly ushered--a long way from Hawtrey's restaurant and a hall- +bedroom. A long way, too, from the Bagatelle and Fillmore Street--but to Lise +a way not impossible, nor even improbable. + +This work of art, conveying the moral that virtue is an economic asset, made a +great impression on Lise. Good Old Testament doctrine, set forth in the Book +of Job itself. And Leila, pictured as holding out for a higher price and +getting it, encouraged Lise to hold out also. Mr. Wiley, in whose company she +had seen this play, and whose likeness filled the plush and silver-plated frame +on her bureau, remained ironically ignorant of the fact that he had paid out +his money to make definite an ambition, an ideal hitherto nebulous in the mind +of the lady whom he adored. Nor did Lise enlighten him, being gifted with a +certain inserutableness. As a matter of fact it had never been her intention +to accept him, but now that she was able concretely to visualize her Lochinvar +of the future, Mr. Whey's lack of qualifications became the more apparent. In +the first place, he had been born in Lowell and had never been west of +Worcester; in the second, his salary was sixteen dollars a week: it is true she +had once fancied the Scottish terrier style of hair-cut abruptly ending in the +rounded line of the shaven neck, but Lochinvar had been close-cropped. Mr. +Wiley, close-cropped, would have resembled a convict. + +Mr. Wiley was in love, there could be no doubt about that, and if he had not +always meant marriage, he meant it now, having reached a state where no folly +seems preposterous. The manner of their meeting had had just the adventurous +and romantic touch that Lise liked, one of her favourite amusements in the +intervals between "steadies" being to walk up and down Faber Street of an +evening after supper, arm in arm with two or three other young ladies, all +chewing gum, wheeling into store windows and wheeling out again, pretending the +utmost indifference to melting glances cast in their direction. An exciting +sport, though incomprehensible to masculine intelligence. It was a principle +with Lise to pay no attention to any young man who was not "presented," those +venturing to approach her with the ready formula "Haven't we met before?" being +instantly congealed. She was strict as to etiquette. But Mr. Wiley, it +seemed, could claim acquaintance with Miss Schuler, one of the ladies to whose +arm Lise's was linked, and he had the further advantage of appearing in a large +and seductive touring car, painted green, with an eagle poised above the hood +and its name, Wizard, in a handwriting rounded and bold, written in nickel +across the radiator. He greeted Miss Schuler effusively, but his eye was on +Lise from the first, and it was she he took with, him in the front seat, +indifferent to the giggling behind. Ever since then Lise had had a motor at +her disposal, and on Sundays they took long "joy rides" beyond the borders of +the state. But it must not be imagined that Mr. Whey was the proprietor of the +vehicle; nor was he a chauffeur,--her American pride would not have permitted +her to keep company with a chauffeur: he was the demonstrator for the Wizard, +something of a wizard himself, as Lise had to admit when they whizzed over the +tarvia of the Riverside Boulevard at fifty or sixty miles an hour with the +miner cut out--a favourite diversion of Mr. Whey's, who did not feel he was +going unless he was accompanied by a noise like that of a mitrailleuse in +action. Lise, experiencing a ravishing terror, hung on to her hat with one +hand and to Mr. Wiley with the other, her code permitting this; permitting him +also, occasionally, when they found themselves in tenebrous portions of +Slattery's Riverside Park, to put his arm around her waist and kiss her. So +much did Lise's virtue allow, and no more, the result being that he existed in +a tantalizing state of hope and excitement most detrimental to the nerves. + +He never lost, however,--in public at least, or before Lise's family,--the fine +careless, jaunty air of the demonstrator, of the free-lance for whom seventy +miles an hour has no terrors; the automobile, apparently, like the ship, sets a +stamp upon its votaries. No Elizabethan buccaneer swooping down on defenceless +coasts ever exceeded in audacity Mr. Wiley's invasion of quiet Fillmore Street. +He would draw up with an ear-splitting screaming of brakes in front of the +clay-yellow house, and sometimes the muffler, as though unable to repress its +approval of the performance, would let out a belated pop that never failed to +jar the innermost being of Auermann, who had been shot at, or rather shot past, +by an Italian, and knew what it was. He hated automobiles, he hated Mr. Wiley. + +"Vat you do?" he would demand, glaring. + +And Mr. Wiley would laugh insolently. + +"You think I done it, do you, Dutchie--huh!" + +He would saunter past, up the stairs, and into the Bumpus dining-room, often +before the family had finished their evening meal. Lise alone made him +welcome, albeit demurely; but Mr. Wiley, not having sensibilities, was proof +against Hannah's coldness and Janet's hostility. With unerring instinct he +singled out Edward as his victim. + +"How's Mr. Bumpus this evening?" he would genially inquire. + +Edward invariably assured Mr. Wiley that he was well, invariably took a drink +of coffee to emphasize the fact, as though the act of lifting his cup had in it +some magic to ward off the contempt of his wife and elder daughter. + +"Well, I've got it pretty straight that the Arundel's going to run nights, +starting next week," Lise's suitor would continue. + +And to save his soul Edward could not refrain from answering, "You don't say +so!" He feigned interest in the information that the Hampton Ball Team, owing +to an unsatisfactory season, was to change managers next year. Mr. Wiley +possessed the gift of gathering recondite bits of news, he had confidence in +his topics and in his manner of dealing with them; and Edward, pretending to be +entertained, went so far in his politeness as to ask Mr. Wiley if he had had +supper. + +"I don't care if I sample one of Mis' Bumpus's doughnuts," Mr. Wiley would +reply politely, reaching out a large hand that gave evidence, in spite of +Sapolio, of an intimacy with grease cups and splash pans. "I guess there's +nobody in this burg can make doughnuts to beat yours, Miss Bumpus." + +If she had only known which doughnut he would take; Hannah sometimes thought +she might have been capable of putting arsenic in it. Her icy silence did not +detract from the delights of his gestation. + +Occasionally, somewhat to Edward's alarm, Hannah demanded: "Where are you +taking Lise this evening?" + +Mr. Wiley's wisdom led him to be vague. + +Oh, just for a little spin up the boulevard. Maybe we'll pick up Ella Schuler +and one or two other young ladies." + +Hannah and Janet knew very well he had no intention of doing this, and Hannah +did not attempt to conceal her incredulity. As a matter of fact, Lise +sometimes did insist on a "party." + +"I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock. That's late enough for a +girl who works to be out. It's late enough for any girl." + +"Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily. + +Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley and +Lise understood she had no power. Lise went to put on her hat; if she skimped +her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening when she came home +from the store, and was often late for supper. In the meantime, while Lise was +in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward would contemptibly continue +the conversation, fingering the Evening Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. +Wiley helped himself boldly to another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed-- +elaborate precautions to spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to +be the last creation in male attire. Behind a plate glass window in Faber +Street, belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded every +important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college" men, only the +week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically folded, combined +with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and "torture" collar--lures for the +discriminating. Owing to certain expenses connected with Lise, he had been +unable to acquire the shirt and the tie, but he had bought the suit in the hope +and belief that she would find him irresistible therein. It pleased him, too, +to be taken for a "college" man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened +shoulders and diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been +spent in vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite his infatuation for +the younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent--would mistake him for +an undergraduate of Harvard,--an imposition concerning which he had no +scruples. But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated..... + +When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure, +triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval of +silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah snatched +up. + +"I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her +shoulder once to Edward. + +"Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously. + +"Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as you can." + +Edward would grow warm with a sense of injustice, the inference being that he +was to blame for Mr. Wiley; if he had been a different kind of father another +sort of suitor would be courting Lise. + +"I have to be civil," he protested. He pronounced that, word "civil" +exquisitely, giving equal value to both syllables. + +"Civil!" Hannah scoffed, as she left the room; and to Janet, who had followed +her into the kitchen, she added: "That's the trouble with your father, he's +always be'n a little too civil. Edward Bumpus is just as simple as a child, +he's afraid of offending folks' feelings .... Think of being polite to that +Whey!" In those two words Hannah announced eloquently her utter condemnation +of the demonstrator of the Wizard. It was characteristic of her, however, when +she went back for another load of dishes and perceived that Edward was only +pretending to read his Banner, to attempt to ease her husband's feelings. She +thought it queer because she was still fond of Edward Bumpus, after all he had +"brought on her." + +"It's Lise," she said, as though speaking to Janet, "she attracts 'em. +Sometimes I just can't get used to it that she's my daughter. I don't know who +she takes after. She's not like any of my kin, nor any of the Bumpuses." + +"What can you do?" asked Edward. "You can't order him out of the house. It's +better for him to come here. And you can't stop Lise from going with him-- +she's earning her own money...." + +They had talked over the predicament before, and always came to the same +impasse. In the privacy of the kitchen Hannah paused suddenly in her energetic +rubbing of a plate and with supreme courage uttered a question. + +"Janet, do you calculate he means anything wrong?" + +"I don't know what he means," Janet replied, unwilling to give Mr. Wiley credit +for anything, "but I know this, that Lise is too smart to let him take +advantage of her." + +Hannah ruminated. Cleverness as the modern substitute for feminine virtue did +not appeal to her, but she let it pass. She was in no mood to quarrel with any +quality that would ward off disgrace. + +"I don't know what to make of Lise--she don't appear to have any +principles...." + +If the Wiley affair lasted longer than those preceding it, this was because +former suitors had not commanded automobiles. When Mr. Wiley lost his +automobile he lost his luck--if it may be called such. One April evening, +after a stroll with Eda, Janet reached home about nine o'clock to find Lise +already in their room, to remark upon the absence of Mr. Wiley's picture from +the frame. + +"I'm through with him," Lise declared briefly, tugging at her hair. + +"Through with him?" Janet repeated. + +Lise paused in her labours and looked at her sister steadily. "I handed him +the mit--do you get me?" + +"But why?" + +"Why? I was sick of him--ain't that enough? And then he got mixed up with a +Glendale trolley and smashed his radiator, and the Wizard people sacked him. I +always told him he was too fly. It's lucky for him I wasn't in the car." + +"It's lucky for you," said Janet. Presently she inquired curiously: "Aren't +you sorry?" + +"Nix." Lise shook her head, which was now bowed, her face hidden by hair. +"Didn't I tell you I was sick of him? But he sure was some spender," she +added, as though in justice bound to give him his due. + +Janet was shocked by the ruthlessness of it, for Lise appeared relieved, almost +gay. She handed Janet a box containing five peppermint creams--all that +remained of Mr. Wiley's last gift. + +One morning in the late spring Janet crossed the Warren Street bridge, the +upper of the two spider-like structures to be seen from her office window, +spanning the river beside the great Hampton dam. The day, dedicated to the +memory of heroes fallen in the Civil War, the thirtieth of May, was a legal +holiday. Gradually Janet had acquired a dread of holidays as opportunities +never realized, as intervals that should have been filled with unmitigated +joys, and yet were invariably wasted, usually in walks with Eda Rawle. To-day, +feeling an irresistible longing for freedom, for beauty, for adventure, for +quest and discovery of she knew not what, she avoided Eda, and after gazing +awhile at the sunlight dancing in the white mist below the falls, she walked +on, southward, until she had left behind her the last straggling houses of the +city and found herself on a wide, tarvia road that led, ultimately, to Boston. +So read the sign. + +Great maples, heavy with leaves, stood out against the soft blue of the sky, +and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls, the thatches +of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted pine a pungent, +reviving perfume. Sometimes she stopped to rest on the pine needles, and +walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because it was the easiest way. +There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards, masses of lilacs whose purple +she drank in eagerly; the air, which had just a tang of New England sharpness, +was filled with tender sounds, the clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of +birds, the rustling of maple leaves in the fitful breeze. A chipmunk ran down +an elm and stood staring at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save +for bas quivering tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as +though he held the secret of life she craved. But he darted away. + +She looked around her unceasingly, at the sky, at the trees, at the flowers and +ferns and fields, at the vireos and thrushes, the robins and tanagers gashing +in and out amidst the foliage, and she was filled with a strange yearning to +expand and expand until she should become a part of all nature, be absorbed +into it, cease to be herself. Never before had she known just that feeling, +that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine discontent .... Occasionally, +intruding faintly upon the countryside peace, she was aware of a distant +humming sound that grew louder and louder until there shot roaring past her an +automobile filled with noisy folk, leaving behind it a suffocating cloud of +dust. Even these intrusions, reminders of the city she had left, were +powerless to destroy her mood, and she began to skip, like a schoolgirl, +pausing once in a while to look around her fearfully, lest she was observed; +and it pleased her to think that she had escaped forever, that she would never +go back: she cried aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back," +keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost intoxicated, +delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly, on a bank of ferns, +burying her face in them. She had really stopped because a pebble had got into +her shoe, and as she took it out she looked at her bare heel and remarked +ruefully:-- + +"Those twenty-five cent stockings aren't worth buying!" + +Economic problems, however, were powerless to worry her to-day, when the sun +shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running through the +culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour reminding her of the +flower store where her sister Lise had once been employed. But at length she +arose, and after an hour or more of sauntering the farming landscape was left +behind, the crumbling stone fences were replaced by a well-kept retaining wall +capped by a privet hedge, through which, between stone pillars, a driveway +entered and mounted the shaded slope, turning and twisting until lost to view. +But afar, standing on the distant crest, through the tree trunks and foliage +Janet saw one end of the mansion to which it led, and ventured timidly but +eagerly in among the trees in the hope of satisfying her new-born curiosity. +Try as she would, she never could get any but disappointing and partial +glimpses of a house which, because of the mystery of its setting, fired her +imagination, started her to wondering why it was that some were permitted to +live in the midst of such beauty while she was condemned to spend her days in +Fillmore Street and the prison of the mill. She was not even allowed to look +at it! The thought was like a cloud across the sun. + +However, when she had regained the tarvia road and walked a little way the +shadow suddenly passed, and she stood surprised. The sight of a long common +with its ancient trees in the fullness of glory, dense maples, sturdy oaks, +strong, graceful elms that cast flickering, lacy shadows across the road filled +her with satisfaction, with a sense of peace deepened by the awareness, in the +background, ranged along the common on either side, of stately, dignified +buildings, each in an appropriate frame of foliage. With the essence rather +than the detail of all this her consciousness became steeped; she was naturally +ignorant of the great good fortune of Silliston Academy of having been spared +with one or two exceptions--donations during those artistically lean years of +the nineteenth century when American architecture affected the Gothic, the +Mansard, and the subsequent hybrid. She knew this must be Silliston, the seat +of that famous academy of which she had heard. + +The older school buildings and instructors' houses, most of them white or +creamy yellow, were native Colonial, with tall, graceful chimneys and classic +pillars and delicate balustrades, eloquent at once of the racial inheritance of +the Republic and of a bygone individuality, dignity, and pride. And the modern +architect, of whose work there was an abundance, had graciously and intuitively +held this earlier note and developed it. He was an American, but an American +who had been trained. The result was harmony, life as it should proceed, the +new growing out of the old. And no greater tribute can be paid to Janet Bumpus +than that it pleased her, struck and set exquisitely vibrating within her +responsive chords. For the first time in her adult life she stood in the +presence of tradition, of a tradition inherently if unconsciously the innermost +reality of her being a tradition that miraculously was not dead, since after +all the years it had begun to put forth these vigorous shoots.... + +What Janet chiefly realized was the delicious, contented sense of having come, +visually at least, to the home for which she had longed. But her humour was +that of a child who has strayed, to find its true dwelling place in a region of +beauty hitherto unexplored and unexperienced, tinged, therefore, with +unreality, with mystery,--an effect enhanced by the chance stillness and +emptiness of the place. She wandered up and down the Common, whose vivid green +was starred with golden dandelions; and then, spying the arched and shady +vista of a lane, entered it, bent on new discoveries. It led past one of the +newer buildings, the library--as she read in a carved inscription over the +door--plunged into shade again presently to emerge at a square farmhouse, +ancient and weathered, with a great square chimney thrust out of the very +middle of the ridge-pole,--a landmark left by one of the earliest of +Silliston's settlers. Presiding over it, embracing and protecting it, was a +splendid tree. The place was evidently in process of reconstruction and +repair, the roof had been newly shingled, new frames, with old-fashioned, tiny +panes had been put in the windows; a little garden was being laid out under the +sheltering branches of the tree, and between the lane and the garden, half +finished, was a fence of an original and pleasing design, consisting of pillars +placed at intervals with upright pickets between, the pickets sawed in curves, +making a line that drooped in the middle. Janet did not perceive the workman +engaged in building this fence until the sound of his hammer attracted her +attention. His back was bent, he was absorbed in his task. + +"Are there any stores near here?" she inquired. + +He straightened up. "Why yes," he replied, "come to think of it, I have seen +stores, I'm sure I have." + +Janet laughed; his expression, his manner of speech were so delightfully +whimsical, so in keeping with the spirit of her day, and he seemed to accept +her sudden appearance in the precise make-believe humour she could have wished. +And yet she stood a little struck with timidity, puzzled by the contradictions +he presented of youth and age, of shrewdness, experience and candour, of +gentility and manual toil. He must have been about thirty-five; he was +hatless, and his hair, uncombed but not unkempt, was greying at the temples; +his eyes--which she noticed particularly--were keen yet kindly, the irises +delicately stencilled in a remarkable blue; his speech was colloquial yet +cultivated, his workman's clothes belied his bearing. + +"Yes, there are stores, in the village," he went on, "but isn't it a holiday, +or Sunday--perhaps--or something of the kind?" + +"It's Decoration Day," she reminded him, with deepening surprise. + +"So it is! And all the storekeepers have gone on picnics in their automobiles, +or else they're playing golf. Nobody's working today." + +"But you--aren't you working?" she inquired. + +"Working?" he repeated. "I suppose some people would call it work. I--I +hadn't thought of it in that way." + +"You mean--you like it," Janet was inspired to say. + +"Well, yes," he confessed. "I suppose I do." + +Her cheeks dimpled. If her wonder had increased, her embarrassment had flown, +and he seemed suddenly an old acquaintance. She had, however, profound doubts +now of his being a carpenter. + +"Were you thinking of going shopping?" he asked, and at the very ludicrousness +of the notion she laughed again. She discovered a keen relish for this kind of +humour, but it was new to her experience, and she could not cope with it. + +"Only to buy some crackers, or a sandwich," she replied, and blushed. + +"Oh," he said. "Down in the village, on the corner where the cars stop, is a +restaurant. It's not as good as the Parker House in Boston, I believe, but +they do have sandwiches, yes, and coffee. At least they call it coffee." + +"Oh, thank you," she said. + +"You'd better wait till you try it," he warned her. + +"Oh, I don't mind, I don't want much." And she was impelled to add: "It's such +a beautiful day." + +"It's absurd to get hungry on such a day--absurd," he agreed. + +"Yes, it is," she laughed. "I'm not really hungry, but I haven't time to get +back to Hampton for dinner." Suddenly she grew hot at the thought that he +might suspect her of hinting. "You see, I live in Hampton," she went on +hurriedly, "I'm a stenographer there, in the Chippering Mill, and I was just +out for a walk, and--I came farther than I intended." She had made it worse. + +But he said, "Oh, you came from Hampton!" with an intonation of surprise, of +incredulity even, that soothed and even amused while it did not deceive her. +Not that the superior intelligence of which she had begun to suspect him had +been put to any real test by the discovery of her home, and she was quite sure +her modest suit of blue serge and her $2.99 pongee blouse proclaimed her as a +working girl of the mill city. "I've been to Hampton," he declared, just as +though it were four thousand miles away instead of four. + +"But I've never been here before, to Silliston," she responded in the same +spirit: and she added wistfully, "it must be nice to live in such a beautiful +place as this!" + +"Yes, it is nice," he agreed. "We have our troubles, too,--but it's nice." + +She ventured a second, appraising glance. His head, which he carried a little +flung back, his voice, his easy and confident bearing--all these contradicted +the saw and the hammer, the flannel shirt, open at the neck, the khaki trousers +still bearing the price tag. And curiosity beginning to get the better of her, +she was emboldened to pay a compliment to the fence. If one had to work, it +must be a pleasure to work on things pleasing to the eye--such was her +inference. + +"Why, I'm glad you like it," he said heartily. "I was just hoping some one +would come along here and admire it. Now--what colour would you paint it?" + +"Are you a painter, too?" + +"After a fashion. I'm a sort of man of all work--I thought of painting it +white, with the pillars green." + +"I think that would be pretty," she answered, judicially, after a moment's +thought. "What else can you do?" + +He appeared to be pondering his accomplishments. + +"Well, I can doctor trees," he said, pointing an efficient finger at the +magnificent maple sheltering, like a guardian deity, the old farmhouse. "I put +in those patches." + +"They're cement," she exclaimed. "I never heard of putting cement in trees." + +"They don't seem to mind." + +"Are the holes very deep?" + +"Pretty deep." + +"But I should think the tree would be dead." + +"Well, you see the life of a tree is right under the bark. If you can keep the +outer covering intact, the tree will live." + +"Why did you let the holes get so deep?" + +"I've just come here. The house was like the tree the shingles all rotten, but +the beams were sound. Those beams were hewn out of the forest two hundred and +fifty years ago." + +"Gracious!" said Janet. "And how old is the tree?" + +"I should say about a hundred. I suppose it wouldn't care to admit it." + +"How do you know?" she inquired. + +"Oh, I'm very intimate with trees. I find out their secrets." + +"It's your house!" she exclaimed, somewhat appalled by the discovery. + +"Yes--yes it is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an +indescribably comical manner down at his clothes. His gesture, his expression +implied that her mistake was a most natural one. + +"Excuse me, I thought--" she began, blushing hotly, yet wanting to laugh again. + +"I don't blame you--why shouldn't you?" he interrupted her. "I haven't got +used to it yet, and there is something amusing about--my owning a house. When +the parlour's finished I'll have to wear a stiff collar, I suppose, in order to +live up to it." + +Her laughter broke forth, and she tried to imagine him in a stiff collar.... +But she was more perplexed than ever. She stood balancing on one foot, poised +for departure. + +"I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a formal +visit. + +"Don't hurry," he protested cordially. "Why hurry back to Hampton?" + +"I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to +contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, passionate quality which +had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar. She stood transformed. "I hate it!" she +declared. "It's so ugly, I never want to see it again." + +"Yes, it is ugly," he confessed. "Since you admit it, I don't mind saying so. +But it's interesting, in a way." Though his humorous moods had delighted her, +she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more serious. + +"It is interesting," she agreed. She was almost impelled to tell him why, in +her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton interesting, but +a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she divined in him +restrained her. She was curious to know what this man saw in Hampton. His +opinion would be worth something. Unlike her neighbours in Fillmore Street, he +was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty"; he had an air of fine sanity, +of freedom, of detachment,--though the word did not occur to her; he betrayed +no bitter sense of injustice, and his beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession +of a single panacea. "Why do you think it's interesting?" she demanded. + +"Well, I'm always expecting to hear that it's blown up. It reminds me of +nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling. + +She repeated the word. + +"An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite. They say a man once made it +by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never went back." + +"I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement. "All those +foreigners! I've felt it that something would happen, some day, it frightened +me, and yet I wished that something would happen. Only, I never would have +thought of--nitro-glycerine." + +She was unaware of the added interest in his regard. But he answered lightly +enough:-- + +"Oh, not only the foreigners. Human chemicals--you can't play with human +chemicals any more than you can play with real ones--you've got to know +something about chemistry." + +This remark was beyond her depth. + +"Who is playing with them?" she asked. + +"Everybody--no one in particular. Nobody seems to know much about them, yet," +he replied, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject. A robin with a worm +in its bill was hopping across the grass; he whistled softly, the bird stopped, +cocking its head and regarding them. Suddenly, in conflict with her desire to +remain indefinitely talking with this strange man, Janet felt an intense +impulse to leave. She could bear the conversation no longer, she might burst +into tears--such was the extraordinary effect he had produced on her. + +"I must go,--I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said. + +"Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand .... When she had +walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him leaning idly +against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in friendly fashion. + +For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously, keeping time +with her racing thoughts. She walked about the Common, seeing nothing, paying +no attention to the passers-by, who glanced at her curiously. But at length as +she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and vigorous body became imperative, +and realizing suddenly that she was tired and hungry, sought and found the +little restaurant in the village below. She journeyed back to Hampton +pondering what this man had said to her; speculating, rather breathlessly, +whether he had been impelled to conversation by a natural kindness and +courtesy, or whether he really had discovered something in her worthy of +addressing, as he implied. Resentment burned in her breast, she became +suddenly blinded by tears: she might never see him again, and if only she were +"educated" she might know him, become his friend. Even in this desire she was +not conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed +rather than transformed what she meant by "education." She thought of it not +as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of the +freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of +understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world open up +to one like a flower filled with colour and life. She thought of the robin, of +the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range including even that +medley of human beings amongst whom she lived. And the fact that something of +his meaning had eluded her grasp made her rebel all the more bitterly against +the lack of a greater knowledge .... + +Often during the weeks that followed he dwelt in her mind as she sat at her +desk and stared out across the river, and several times that summer she started +to walk to Silliston. But always she turned back. Perhaps she feared to break +the charm of that memory .... + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Our American climate is notoriously capricious. Even as Janet trudged homeward +on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like adventure in Silliston +the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming moist and tepid, white +clouds with dark edges were piled up in the western sky. The automobiles of +the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly over the tarvia. Valiantly as she +strove to cling to her dream, remorseless reality was at work dragging her +back, reclaiming her; excitement and physical exercise drained her vitality, +her feet were sore, sadness invaded her as she came in view of the ragged +outline of the city she had left so joyfully in the morning. Summer, that most +depressing of seasons in an environment of drab houses and grey pavements, was +at hand, listless householders and their families were already, seeking refuge +on front steps she passed on her way to Fillmore Street. + +It was about half past five when she arrived. Lise, her waist removed, was +seated in a rocking chair at the window overlooking the littered yards and the +backs of the tenements on Rutger Street. And Lise, despite the heaviness of +the air, was dreaming. Of such delicate texture was the fabric of Janet's +dreams that not only sordid reality, but contact with other dreams of a +different nature, such as her sister's, often sufficed to dissolve them. She +resented, for instance, the presence in the plush oval of Mr. Eustace +Arlington; the movie star whose likeness had replaced Mr. Wiley's, and who had +played the part of the western hero in "Leila of Hawtrey's." With his burning +eyes and sensual face betraying the puffiness that comes from over-indulgence, +he was not Janet's ideal of a hero, western or otherwise. And now Lise was +holding a newspaper: not the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a +popular Boston sheet to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and +labelled "Three O'clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the +top of the page:-- + + "JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY'S FAVOR." + +As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:-- + +"Say, that Nealy girl's won out!" + +"Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly. + +"You are from the country, all right," was her sister's rejoinder. "I would +have bet there wasn't a Reub in the state that wasn't wise to the Ferris breach +of promise case, and here you blow in after the show's over and want to know +who Nelly Nealy is. If that doesn't beat the band!" + +"This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?" + +"A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by her +sister's ignorance. "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the biggest +copper man in Boston. He could buy Hampton, and never feel it, and they say +his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars. Nelly Nealy put her damages +at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him for seventy five. I wish I'd +been in court when that jury came back! There's her picture." + +To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself that +evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and approval of +Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent. However, she took the sheet, +gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure +stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner," the +envied of thousands of working girls all over New England. Miss Nealy, in +spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up admirably under +the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three meals a day and give +some thought to her costumes. Her smile under the picture hat was coquettish, +if not bold. The special article, signed by a lady reporter whose sympathies +were by no means concealed and whose talents were given free rein, related how +the white-haired mother had wept tears of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been +awhile too overcome to speak, and then had recovered sufficiently to express +her gratitude to the twelve gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American +womanhood. Mr. Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she lived +would she be able to forget how she had loved and believed in him, and how, +when at length she unwillingly became convinces of his perfidy, she had been +"prostrated," unable to support her old mother. She had not, naturally, yet +decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage, that had +been suggested, but she had made no plans. "Scores of women sympathizers" had +escorted her to a waiting automobile.... + +Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and flinging +the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper. But presently, +when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no longer. + +"I don't see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed. "It's--it's +horrible." + +"Horrible?" Lise repeated. + +Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping. + +"Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred and +feathered. She's nothing but a blackmailer." + + +Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain't he a millionaire?" + +"What difference does that make?" Janet retorted. "And you can't tell me she +didn't know what she was up to all along--with that face." + +"I'd have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly. + +"Then you'd be a blackmailer, too. I'd sooner scrub floors, I'd sooner starve +than do such a thing--take money for my affections. In the first place, I'd +have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a man, seventy five +thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn't help me any. Where do you +get such ideas? Decent people don't have them." + +Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face vigorously--ceasing +for an instance to make sure of the identity of a sound reaching her ears +despite the splashing of water. Lise was sobbing. Janet dried her face and +hands, arranged her hair, and sat down on the windowsill; the scorn and anger, +which had been so intense as completely to possess her, melting into a pity and +contempt not unmixed with bewilderment. Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious +to such reproaches, holding her own in the passionate quarrels that +occasionally took place between them yet there were times, such as this, when +her resistance broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control. She +rocked to and fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in her +hands. Janet reached out and touched her. + +"Don't be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was a +disgrace to have such ideas. Well, it is." + +"I'm not silly," said Lise. "I'm sick of that job at the Bagatelle " sob-- +"there's nothing in it--I'm going to quit--I wish to God I was dead! Standing +on your feet all day till you're wore out for six dollars a week--what's there +in it?"--sob--"With that guy Walters who walks the floor never lettin' up on +you. He come up to me yesterday and says, `I didn't know you was near sighted, +Miss Bumpus' just because there was a customer Annie Hatch was too lazy to wait +on"--sob--"That's his line of dope--thinks he's sarcastic--and he's sweet on +Annie. Tomorrow I'm going to tell him to go to hell. I'm through I'm sick of +it, I tell you"--sob--"I'd rather be dead than slave like that for six +dollars." + +"Where are you going?" asked Janet. + +"I don't know--I don't care. What's the difference? any place'd be better than +this." For awhile she continued to cry on a ridiculously high, though subdued, +whining note, her breath catching at intervals. A feeling of helplessness, of +utter desolation crept over Janet; powerless to comfort herself, how could she +comfort her sister? She glanced around the familiar, sordid room, at the +magazine pages against the faded wall-paper, at the littered bureau and the +littered bed, over which Lise's clothes were flung. It was hot and close even +now, in summer it would be stifling. Suddenly a flash of sympathy revealed to +her a glimpse of the truth that Lise, too, after her own nature, sought beauty +and freedom! Never did she come as near comprehending Lise as in such moments +as this, and when, on dark winter mornings, her sister clung to her, terrified +by the siren. Lise was a child, and the thought that she, Janet, was powerless +to change her was a part of the tragic tenderness. What would become of Lise? +And what would become of her, Janet?... So she clung, desperately, to her +sister's hand until at last Lise roused herself, her hair awry, her face +puckered and wet with tears and perspiration. + +"I can't stand it any more--I've just got to go away anywhere," she said, and +the cry found an echo in Janet's heart.... + +But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the mill.... + +The fact that Lise's love affairs had not been prospering undoubtedly had +something to do with the fit of depression into which she had fallen that +evening. A month or so before she had acquired another beau. It was +understood by Lise's friends and Lise's family, though not by the gentleman +himself, that his position was only temporary or at most probationary; he had +not even succeeded to the rights, title, and privileges of the late Mr. Wiley, +though occupying a higher position in the social scale--being the agent of a +patent lawn sprinkler with an office in Faber Street. + +"Stick to him and you'll wear diamonds--that's what he tries to put across," +was Lise's comment on Mr. Frear's method, and thus Janet gained the impression +that her sister's feelings were not deeply involved. "If I thought he'd make +good with the sprinkler I might talk business. But say, he's one of those +ginks that's always tryin' to beat the bank. He's never done a day's work in +his life. Last year he was passing around Foley's magazine, and before that he +was with the race track that went out of business because the ministers got +nutty over it. Well, he may win out," she added reflectively, "those guys +sometimes do put the game on the blink. He sure is a good spender when the +orders come in, with a line of talk to make you holler for mercy." + +Mr. Frear's "line of talk" came wholly, astonishingly, from one side of his +mouth--the left side. As a muscular feat it was a triumph. A deaf person on +his right side would not have known he was speaking. The effect was secretive, +extraordinarily confidential; enabling him to sell sprinklers, it ought to have +helped him to make love, so distinctly personal was it, implying as it did that +the individual addressed was alone of all the world worthy of consideration. +Among his friends it was regarded as an accomplishment, but Lise was critical, +especially since he did not look into one's eyes, but gazed off into space, as +though he weren't talking at all. + +She had once inquired if the right side of his face was paralyzed. + +She permitted him to take her, however, to Gruber's Cafe, to the movies, and +one or two select dance halls, and to Slattery's Riverside Park, where one +evening she had encountered the rejected Mr. Wiley. + +"Say, he was sore!" she told Janet the next morning, relating the incident with +relish, "for two cents he would have knocked Charlie over the ropes. I guess +he could do it, too, all right." + +Janet found it curious that Lise should display such vindictiveness toward Mr. +Wiley, who was more sinned against than sinning. She was moved to inquire +after his welfare. + +"He's got one of them red motorcycles," said Lise. "He was gay with it too-- +when we was waiting for the boulevard trolley he opened her up and went right +between Charlie and me. I had to laugh. He's got a job over in Haverhill you +can't hold that guy under water long." + +Apparently Lise had no regrets. But her premonitions concerning Mr. Frear +proved to be justified. He did not "make good." One morning the little office +on Faber Street where the sprinklers were displayed was closed, Hampton knew +him no more, and the police alone were sincerely regretful. It seemed that of +late he had been keeping all the money for the sprinklers, and spending a good +deal of it on Lise. At the time she accepted the affair with stoical +pessimism, as one who has learned what to expect of the world, though her moral +sense was not profoundly disturbed by the reflection that she had indulged in +the delights of Slattery's and Gruber's and a Sunday at "the Beach" at the +expense of the Cascade Sprinkler Company of Boston. Mr. Frear inconsiderately +neglected to prepare her for his departure, the news of which was conveyed to +her in a singular manner, and by none other than Mr. Johnny Tiernan of the tin +shop,--their conversation throwing some light, not only on Lise's +sophistication, but on the admirable and intricate operation of Hampton's city +government. About five o'clock Lise was coming home along Fillmore Street +after an uneventful, tedious and manless holiday spent in the company of Miss +Schuler and other friends when she perceived Mr. Tiernan seated on his steps, +grinning and waving a tattered palm-leaf fan. + +"The mercury is sure on the jump," he observed. "You'd think it was July." + +And Lise agreed. + +"I suppose you'll be going to Tim Slattery's place tonight," he went on. "It's +the coolest spot this side of the Atlantic Ocean." + +There was, apparently, nothing cryptic in this remark, yet it is worth noting +that Lise instantly became suspicious. + +"Why would I be going out there?" she inquired innocently, darting at him a +dark, coquettish glance. + +Mr. Tiernan regarded her guilelessly, but there was admiration in his soul; not +because of her unquestioned feminine attractions,--he being somewhat amazingly +proof against such things,--but because it was conveyed to him in some +unaccountable way that her suspicions were aroused. The brain beneath that +corkscrew hair was worthy of a Richelieu. Mr. Tiernan's estimate of Miss Lise +Bumpus, if he could have been induced to reveal it, would have been worth +listening to. + +"And why wouldn't you?" he replied heartily. "Don't I see all the pretty young +ladies out there, including yourself, and you dancing with the Cascade man. +Why is it you'll never give me a dance?" + +"Why is it you never ask me?" demanded Lise. + +"What chance have I got, against him?" + +"He don't own me," said Lise. + +Mr. Tiernan threw back his head, and laughed. + +"Well, if you're there to-night, tangoin' with him and I come up and says, +`Miss Bumpus, the pleasure is mine,' I'm wondering what would happen." + +"I'm not going to Slattery's to-night," she declared having that instant +arrived at this conclusion. + +"And where then? I'll come along, if there's a chance for me." + +"Quit your kidding," Lise reproved him. + +Mr. Tiernan suddenly looked very solemn: + +"Kidding, is it? Me kiddin' you? Give me a chance, that's all I'm asking. +Where will you be, now?" + +"Is Frear wanted?" she demanded. + +Mr. Tiernan's expression changed. His nose seemed to become more pointed, his +eyes to twinkle more merrily than ever. He didn't take the trouble, now, to +conceal his admiration. + +"Sure, Miss Bumpus," he said, "if you was a man, we'd have you on the force to- +morrow." + +"What's he wanted for?" + +"Well," said Johnny, "a little matter of sprinklin'. He's been sprinklin' his +company's water without a license." + +She was silent a moment before she exclaimed:-- + +"I ought to have been wise that he was a crook!" + +"Well," said Johnny consolingly, "there's others that ought to have been wise, +too. The Cascade people had no business takin' on a man that couldn't use but +half of his mouth." + +This seemed to Lise a reflection on her judgment. She proceeded to clear +herself. + +"He was nothing to me. He never gave me no rest. He used to come 'round and +pester me to go out with him--" + +"Sure!" interrupted Mr. Tiernan. "Don't I know how it is with the likes of +him! A good time's a good time, and no harm in it. But the point is " and +here he cocked his nose--"the point is, where is he? Where will he be +tonight?" + +All at once Lise grew vehement, almost tearful. + +"I don't know--honest to God, I don't. If I did I'd tell you. Last night he +said he might be out of town. He didn't say where he was going." She fumbled +in her bag, drawing out an imitation lace handkerchief and pressing it to her +eyes. + +"There now!" exclaimed Mr. Tiernan, soothingly. "How would you know? And he +deceivin' you like he did the company--" + +"He didn't deceive me," cried Lise. + +"Listen," said Mr. Tiernan, who had risen and laid his hand on her arm. "It's +not young ladies like you that works and are self-respecting that any one would +be troublin', and you the daughter of such a fine man as your father. Run +along, now, I won't be detaining you, Miss Bumpus, and you'll accept my +apology. I guess we'll never see him in Hampton again...." + +Some twenty minutes later he sauntered down the street, saluting acquaintances, +and threading his way across the Common entered a grimy brick building where a +huge policeman with an insignia on his arm was seated behind a desk. Mr. +Tiernan leaned on the desk, and reflectively lighted a Thomas-Jefferson-Five- +Cent Cigar, Union Label, the excellencies of which were set forth on large +signs above the "ten foot" buildings on Faber Street. + +"She don't know nothing, Mike," he remarked. "I guess he got wise this +morning." + +The sergeant nodded.... + + + + +CHAPTER V + +To feel potential within one's self the capacity to live and yet to have no +means of realizing this capacity is doubtless one of the least comfortable and +agreeable of human experiences. Such, as summer came on, was Janet's case. +The memory of that visit to Silliston lingered in her mind, sometimes to flare +up so vividly as to make her existence seem unbearable. How wonderful, she +thought, to be able to dwell in such a beautiful place, to have as friends and +companions such amusing and intelligent people as the stranger with whom she +had talked! Were all the inhabitants of Silliston like him? They must be, +since it was a seat of learning. Lise's cry, "I've just got to go away, +anywhere," found an echo in Janet's soul. Why shouldn't she go away? She was +capable of taking care of herself, she was a good stenographer, her salary had +been raised twice in two years,--why should she allow consideration for her +family to stand in the way of what she felt would be self realization? +Unconsciously she was a true modern in that the virtues known as duty and self +sacrifice did not appeal to her,--she got from them neither benefit nor +satisfaction, she understood instinctively that they were impeding to +growth. Unlike Lise, she was able to see life as it is, she did not expect of +it miracles, economic or matrimonial. Nothing would happen unless she made it +happen. She was twenty-one, earning nine dollars a week, of which she now +contributed five to the household,--her father, with characteristic +incompetence, having taken out a larger insurance policy than he could +reasonably carry. Of the remaining four dollars she spent more than one on +lunches, there were dresses and underclothing, shoes and stockings to buy, in +spite of darning and mending; little treats with Eda that mounted up; and +occasionally the dentist--for Janet would not neglect her teeth as Lise +neglected hers. She managed to save something, but it was very little. And +she was desperately unhappy when she contemplated the grey and monotonous vista +of the years ahead, saw herself growing older and older, driven always by the +stern necessity of accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by +little drying up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of +enjoyment with which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and +frightened her. Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution; +marriage meant dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in her +existence, drab and necessitous though it were, was still a remnant of freedom +that marriage would compel her to surrender.... + +One warm evening, oppressed by such reflections, she had started home when she +remembered having left her bag in the office, and retraced her steps. As she +turned the corner of West Street, she saw, beside the canal and directly in +front of the bridge, a new and smart-looking automobile, painted crimson and +black, of the type known as a runabout, which she recognized as belonging to +Mr. Ditmar. Indeed, at that moment Mr. Ditmar himself was stepping off the end +of the bridge and about to start the engine when, dropping the crank, he walked +to the dashboard and apparently became absorbed in some mechanisms there. Was +it the glance cast in her direction that had caused him to delay his departure? +Janet was seized by a sudden and rather absurd desire to retreat, but Canal +Street being empty, such an action would appear eccentric, and she came slowly +forward, pretending not to see her employer, ridiculing to herself the idea +that he had noticed her. Much to her annoyance, however, her embarrassment +persisted, and she knew it was due to the memory of certain incidents, each in +itself almost negligible, but cumulatively amounting to a suspicion that for +some months he had been aware of her: many times when he had passed through the +outer office she had felt his eyes upon her, had been impelled to look up from +her work to surprise in them a certain glow to make her bow her head again in +warm confusion. Now, as she approached him, she was pleasantly but rather +guiltily conscious of the more rapid beating of the blood that precedes an +adventure, yet sufficiently self-possessed to note the becoming nature of the +light flannel suit axed rather rakish Panama he had pushed back from his +forehead. It was not until she had almost passed him that he straightened up, +lifted the Panama, tentatively, and not too far, startling her. + +"Good afternoon, Miss Bumpus," he said. "I thought you had gone." + +"I left my bag in the office," she replied, with the outward calmness that +rarely deserted her--the calmness, indeed, that had piqued him and was leading +him on to rashness. + +"Oh," he said. "Simmons will get it for you." Simmons was the watchman who +stood in the vestibule of the office entrance. + +"Thanks. I can get it myself," she told him, and would have gone on had he not +addressed her again. "I was just starting out for a spin. What do you think +of the car? It's good looking, isn't it?" He stood off and surveyed it, +laughing a little, and in his laugh she detected a note apologetic, at variance +with the conception she had formed of his character, though not alien, indeed, +to the dust-coloured vigour of the man. She scarcely recognized Ditmar as he +stood there, yet he excited her, she felt from him an undercurrent of something +that caused her inwardly to tremble. "See how the lines are carried through." +He indicated this by a wave of his hand, but his eyes were now on her. + +"It is pretty," she agreed. + +In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his acquaintance had +adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish nature, this self-collected +manner was new and spicy, challenging to powers never as yet fully exerted +while beneath her manner he felt throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in +women, a temperament, for which men have given their souls. This conviction of +her possession of a temperament,--he could not have defined the word, emotional +rather than intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to +sense. He had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the +other sex, and he found the experience delicious. + +"You like pretty things, I'm sure of that," he hazarded. But she did not ask +him how he knew, she simply assented. He raised the hood, revealing the +engine. "Isn't that pretty? See how nicely everything is adjusted in that +little space to do the particular work for which it is designed." + +Thus appealed to, she came forward and stopped, still standing off a little +way, but near enough to see, gazing at the shining copper caps on the +cylinders, at the bright rods and gears. + +"It looks intricate," said Mr. Ditmar, "but really it's very simple. The +gasoline comes in here from the tank behind--this is called the carburetor, it +has a jet to vaporize the gasoline, and the vapour is sucked into each of these +cylinders in turn when the piston moves--like this." He sought to explain the +action of the piston. "That compresses it, and then a tiny electric spark +comes just at the right moment to explode it, and the explosion sends the +piston down again, and turns the shaft. Well, all four cylinders have an +explosion one right after another, and that keeps the shaft going." Whereupon +the most important personage in Hampton, the head of the great Chippering Mill +proceeded, for the benefit of a humble assistant stenographer, to remove the +floor boards behind the dash. "There's the shaft, come here and look at it." +She obeyed, standing beside him, almost touching him, his arm, indeed, brushing +her sleeve, and into his voice crept a tremor. "The shaft turns the rear +wheels by means of a gear at right angles on the axle, and the rear wheels +drive the car. Do you see?" + +"Yes," she answered faintly, honesty compelling her to add: "a little." + +He was looking, now, not at the machinery, but intently at her, and she could +feel the blood flooding into her cheeks and temples. She was even compelled +for an instant to return his glance, and from his eyes into hers leaped a flame +that ran scorching through her body. Then she knew with conviction that the +explanation of the automobile had been an excuse; she had comprehended almost +nothing of it, but she had been impressed by the facility with which he +described it, by his evident mastery over it. She had noticed his hands, how +thick his fingers were and close together; yet how deftly he had used them, +without smearing the cuffs of his silk shirt or the sleeves of his coat with +the oil that glistened everywhere. + +"I like machinery," he told her as he replaced the boards. "I like to take +care of it myself." + +"It must be interesting," she assented, aware of the inadequacy of the remark, +and resenting in herself an inarticulateness seemingly imposed by inhibition +connected with his nearness. Fascination and antagonism were struggling within +her. Her desire to get away grew desperate. + +"Thank you for showing it to me." With an effort of will she moved toward the +bridge, but was impelled by a consciousness of the abruptness of her departure +to look back at him once--and smile, to experience again the thrill of the +current he sped after her. By lifting his hat, a little higher, a little more +confidently than in the first instance, he made her leaving seem more gracious, +the act somehow conveying an acknowledgment on his part that their relationship +had changed. + +Once across the bridge and in the mill, she fairly ran up the stairs and into +the empty office, to perceive her bag lying on the desk where she had left it, +and sat down for a few minutes beside the window, her heart pounding in her +breast as though she had barely escaped an accident threatening her with +physical annihilation. Something had happened to her at last! But what did it +mean? Where would it lead? Her fear, her antagonism, of which she was still +conscious, her resentment that Ditmar had thus surreptitiously chosen to +approach her in a moment when they were unobserved were mingled with a +throbbing exultation in that he had noticed her, that there was something in +her to attract him in that way, to make his voice thicker and his smile +apologetic when he spoke to her. Of that "something-in-her" she had been aware +before, but never had it been so unmistakably recognized and beckoned to from +without. She was at once terrified, excited--and flattered. + +At length, growing calmer, she made her way out of the building. When she +reached the vestibule she had a moment of sharp apprehension, of paradoxical +hope, that Ditmar might still be there, awaiting her. But he had gone.... + +In spite of her efforts to dismiss the matter from her mind, to persuade +herself there had been no significance in the encounter, when she was seated at +her typewriter the next morning she experienced a renewal of the palpitation of +the evening before, and at the sound of every step in the corridor she started. +Of this tendency she was profoundly ashamed. And when at last Ditmar arrived, +though the blood rose to her temples, she kept her eyes fixed on the keys. He +went quickly into his room: she was convinced he had not so much as glanced at +her.... As the days went by, however, she was annoyed by the discovery that +his continued ignoring of her presence brought more resentment than relief, she +detected in it a deliberation implying between them a guilty secret: she hated +secrecy, though secrecy contained a thrill. Then, one morning when she was +alone in the office with young Caldwell, who was absorbed in some reports, +Ditmar entered unexpectedly and looked her full in the eyes, surprising her +into answering his glance before she could turn away, hating herself and hating +him. Hate, she determined, was her prevailing sentiment in regard to Mr. +Ditmar. + +The following Monday Miss Ottway overtook her, at noon, on the stairs. + +"Janet, I wanted to speak to you, to tell you I'm leaving," she said. + +"Leaving!" repeated Janet, who had regarded Miss Ottway as a fixture. + +"I'm going to Boston," Miss Ottway explained, in her deep, musical voice. +"I've always wanted to go, I have an unmarried sister there of whom I'm very +fond, and Mr. Ditmar knows that. He's got me a place with the Treasurer, Mr. +Semple." + +"Oh, I'm sorry you're going, though of course I'm glad for you," Janet said +sincerely, for she liked and respected Miss Ottway, and was conscious in the +older woman of a certain kindly interest. + +"Janet, I've recommended you to Mr. Ditmar for my place." + +"Oh!" cried Janet, faintly. + +"It was he who asked about you, he thinks you are reliable and quick and +clever, and I was very glad to say a good word for you, my dear, since I could +honestly do so." Miss Ottway drew Janet's arm through hers and patted it +affectionately. "Of course you'll have to expect some jealousy, there are +older women in the other offices who will think they ought to have the place, +but if you attend to your own affairs, as you always have done, there won't be +any trouble." + +"Oh, I won't take the place, I can't!"Janet cried, so passionately that Miss +Ottway looked at her in surprise. "I'm awfully grateful to you," she added, +flushing crimson, "I--I'm afraid I'm not equal to it." + +"Nonsense," said the other with decision. "You'd be very foolish not to try +it. You won't get as much as I do, at first, at any rate, but a little more +money won't be unwelcome, I guess. Mr. Ditmar will speak to you this +afternoon. I leave on Saturday. I'm real glad to do you a good turn, Janet, +and I know you'll get along," Miss Ottway added impulsively as they parted at +the corner of Faber Street. "I've always thought a good deal of you." + +For awhile Janet stood still, staring after the sturdy figure of her friend, +heedless of the noonday crowd that bumped her. Then she went to Grady's Quick +Lunch Counter and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk, which she consumed +slowly, profoundly sunk in thought. Presently Eda Rawle arrived, and noticing +her preoccupation, inquired what was the matter. + +"Nothing," said Janet.... + +At two o'clock, when Ditmar returned to the office, he called Miss Ottway, who +presently came out to summon Janet to his presence. Fresh, immaculate, yet +virile in his light suit and silk shirt with red stripes, he was seated at his +desk engaged in turning over some papers in a drawer. He kept her waiting a +moment, and then said, with apparent casualness:-- + +"Is that you, Miss Bumpus? Would you mind closing the door?" + +Janet obeyed, and again stood before him. He looked up. A suggestion of +tenseness in her pose betraying an inner attitude of alertness, of defiance, +conveyed to him sharply and deliciously once more the panther-like impression +he had received when first, as a woman, she had come to his notice. The +renewed and heightened perception of this feral quality in her aroused a sense +of danger by no means unpleasurable, though warning him that he was about to +take an unprecedented step, being drawn beyond the limits of caution he had +previously set for himself in divorcing business and sex. Though he was by no +means self-convinced of an intention to push the adventure, preferring to leave +its possibilities open, he strove in voice and manner to be business-like; and +instinct, perhaps, whispered that she might take alarm. + +"Sit down, Miss Bumpus," he said pleasantly, as he closed the drawer. + +She seated herself on an office chair. + +"Do you like your work here?" he inquired. + +"No," said Janet. + +"Why not?" he demanded, staring at her. + +"Why should I?" she retorted. + +"Well--what's the trouble with it? It isn't as hard as it would be in some +other places, is it?" + +"I'm not saying anything against the place." + +"What, then?" + +"You asked me if I liked my work. I don't." + +"Then why do you do it?" he demanded. + +"To live," she replied. + +He smiled, but his gesture as he stroked his moustache implied a slight +annoyance at her composure. He found it difficult with this dark, self- +contained young woman to sustain the role of benefactor. + +"What kind of work would you like to do?" he demanded. + +"I don't know. I haven't got the choice, anyway," she said. + +He observed that she did her work well, to which she made no answer. She +refused to help him, although Miss Ottway must have warned her. She acted as +though she were conferring the favour. And yet, clearing his throat, he was +impelled to say:-- + +"Miss Ottway's leaving me, she's going into the Boston office with Mr. Semple, +the treasurer of the corporation. I shall miss her, she's an able and reliable +woman, and she knows my ways." He paused, fingering his paper knife. "The +fact is, Miss Bumpus, she's spoken highly of you, she tells me you're quick and +accurate and painstaking--I've noticed that for myself. She seems to think you +could do her work, and recommends that I give you a trial. You understand, of +course, that the position is in a way confidential, and that you could not +expect at first, at any rate, the salary Miss Ottway has had, but I'm willing +to offer you fourteen dollars a week to begin with, and afterwards, if we get +along together, to give you more. What do you say?" + +"I'd like to try it, Mr. Ditmar," Janet said, and added nothing, no word of +gratitude or of appreciation to that consent. + +"Very well then," he replied, "that's settled. Miss Ottway will explain things +to you, and tell you about my peculiarities. And when she goes you can take +her desk, by the window nearest my door." + +Ditmar sat idle for some minutes after she had gone, staring through the open +doorway into the outer office.... + +To Ditmar she had given no evidence of the storm his offer had created in her +breast, and it was characteristic also that she waited until supper was nearly +over to inform her family, making the announcement in a matter-of-fact tone, +just as though it were not the unique piece of good fortune that had come to +the Bumpuses since Edward had been eliminated from the mercantile establishment +at Dolton. The news was received with something like consternation. For the +moment Hannah was incapable of speech, and her hand trembled as she resumed the +cutting of the pie: but hope surged within her despite her effort to keep it +down, her determination to remain true to the fatalism from which she had +paradoxically derived so much comfort. The effect on Edward, while somewhat +less violent, was temporarily to take away his appetite. Hope, to flower in +him, needed but little watering. Great was his faith in the Bumpus blood, and +secretly he had always regarded his eldest daughter as the chosen vessel for +their redemption. + +"Well, I swan!" he exclaimed, staring at her in admiration and neglecting his +pie, "I've always thought you had it in you to get on, Janet. I guess I've +told you you've always put me in mind of Eliza Bumpus--the one that held out +against the Indians till her husband came back with the neighbours. I was just +reading about her again the other night." + +"Yes, you've told us, Edward," said Hannah. + +"She had gumption," he went on, undismayed. "And from what I can gather of her +looks I calculate you favour her--she was dark and not so very tall--not so +tall as you, I guess. So you're goin'" (he pronounced it very slowly) "you're +goin' to be Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer! He's a smart man, Mr. Ditmar, +he's a good man, too. All you've got to do is to behave right by him. He +always speaks to me when he passes by the gate. I was sorry for him when his +wife died--a young woman, too. And he's never married again! Well, I swan!" + +"You'd better quit swanning," exclaimed Hannah. "And what's Mr. Ditmar's +goodness got to do with it? He's found-out Janet has sense, she's willing and +hard working, he won't" (pronounced want) "he won't be the loser by it, and +he's not giving her what he gave Miss Ottway. It's just like you, thinking +he's doing her a good turn." + +"I'm not saying Janet isn't smart," he protested, "but I know it's hard to get +work with so many folks after every job." + +"Maybe it ain't so hard when you've got some get-up and go," Hannah retorted +rather cruelly. It was thus characteristically and with unintentional +sharpness she expressed her maternal pride by a reflection not only upon +Edward, but Lise also. Janet had grown warm at the mention of Ditmar's name. + +"It was Miss Ottway who recommended me," she said, glancing at her sister, who +during this conversation had sat in silence. Lise's expression, normally +suggestive of a discontent not unbecoming to her type, had grown almost sullen. +Hannah's brisk gathering up of the dishes was suddenly arrested. + +"Lise, why don't you say something to your sister? Ain't you glad she's got +the place?" + +"Sure, I'm glad," said Lise, and began to unscrew the top of the salt shaker. +"I don't see why I couldn't get a raise, too. I work just as hard as she +does." + +Edward, who had never got a "raise" in his life, was smitten with compunction +and sympathy. + +"Give 'em time, Lise," he said consolingly. "You ain't so old as Janet." + +"Time!" she cried, flaring up and suddenly losing her control. "I've got a +picture of Waiters giving me a raise I know the girls that get raises from +him." + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Hannah declared. "There--you've spilled +the salt!" + +But Lise, suddenly bursting into tears, got up and left the room. Edward +picked up the Banner and pretended to read it, while Janet collected the salt +and put it back into the shaker. Hannah, gathering up the rest of the dishes, +disappeared into the kitchen, but presently returned, as though she had +forgotten something. + +"Hadn't you better go after her?" she said to Janet. + +"I'm afraid it won't be any use. She's got sort of queer, lately--she thinks +they're down on her." + +"I'm sorry I spoke so sharp. But then--" Hannah shook her head, and her +sentence remained unfinished. + +Janet sought her sister, but returned after a brief interval, with the news +that Lise had gone out. + +One of the delights of friendship, as is well known, is the exchange of +confidences of joy or sorrow, but there was, in Janet's promotion, something +intensely personal to increase her natural reserve. Her feelings toward Ditmar +were so mingled as to defy analysis, and several days went by before she could +bring herself to inform Eda Rawle of the new business relationship in which she +stood to the agent of the Chippering Mill. The sky was still bright as they +walked out Warren Street after supper, Eda bewailing the trials of the day just +ended: Mr. Frye, the cashier of the bank, had had one of his cantankerous fits, +had found fault with her punctuation, nothing she had done had pleased him. +But presently, when they had come to what the Banner called the "residential +district," she was cheered by the sight of the green lawns, the flowerbeds and +shrubbery, the mansions of those inhabitants of Hampton unfamiliar with +boardinghouses and tenements. Before one of these she paused, retaining Janet +by the arm, exclaiming wistfully: + +"Wouldn't you like to live there? That belongs to your boss." + +Janet, who had been dreaming as she gazed at the fagade of rough stucco that +once had sufficed to fill the ambitions of the late Mrs. Ditmar, recognized it +as soon as Eda spoke, and dragged her friend hastily, almost roughly along the +sidewalk until they had reached the end of the block. Janet was red. + +"What's the matter?" demanded Eda, as soon as she had recovered from her +surprise. + +"Nothing," said Janet. "Only--I'm in his office." + +"But what of it? You've got a right to look at his house, haven't you?" + +"Why yes,--a right," Janet assented. Knowing Eda's ambitions for her were not +those of a business career, she was in terror lest her friend should scent a +romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the symptoms Ditmar had +betrayed. She attempted to convey to Eda the doubtful taste of staring point- +blank at the house of one's employer, especially when he might be concealed +behind a curtain. + +"You see," she added, "Miss Ottway's recommended me for her place--she's going +away." + +"Janet!" cried Eda. "Why didn't you tell me?" + +"Well," said Janet guiltily, "it's only a trial. I don't know whether he'll +keep me or not." + +"Of course he'll keep you," said Eda, warmly. "If that isn't just like you, +not saying a word about it. Gee, if I'd had a raise like that I just couldn't +wait to tell you. But then, I'm not smart like you." + +"Don't be silly," said Janet, out of humour with herself, and annoyed because +she could not then appreciate Eda's generosity. + +"We've just got to celebrate!" declared Eda, who had the gift, which Janet +lacked, of taking her joys vicariously; and her romantic and somewhat medieval +proclivities would permit no such momentous occasion to pass without an +appropriate festal symbol. "We'll have a spree on Saturday--the circus is +coming then." + +"It'll be my spree," insisted Janet, her heart warming. "I've got the +raise...." + +On Saturday, accordingly, they met at Grady's for lunch, Eda attired in her +best blouse of pale blue, and when they emerged from the restaurant, despite +the torrid heat, she beheld Faber Street as in holiday garb as they made their +way to the cool recesses of Winterhalter's to complete the feast. That +glorified drug-store with the five bays included in its manifold functions a +department rivalling Delmonico's, with electric fans and marble-topped tables +and white-clad waiters who took one's order and filled it at the soda fountain. +It mattered little to Eda that the young man awaiting their commands had +pimples and long hair and grinned affectionately as he greeted them. + +"Hello, girls!" he said. "What strikes you to-day?" + +"Me for a raspberry nut sundae," announced Eda, and Janet, being unable to +imagine any more delectable confection, assented. The penetrating odour +peculiar to drugstores, dominated by menthol and some unnamable but ancient +remedy for catarrh, was powerless to interfere with their enjoyment. + +The circus began at two. Rather than cling to the straps of a crowded car they +chose to walk, following the familiar route of the trolley past the car barns +and the base-ball park to the bare field under the seared face of Torrey's +Hill, where circuses were wont to settle. A sirocco-like breeze from the +southwest whirled into eddies the clouds of germladen dust stirred up by the +automobiles, blowing their skirts against their legs, and sometimes they were +forced to turn, clinging to their hats, confused and giggling, conscious of +male glances. The crowd, increasing as they proceeded, was in holiday mood; +young men with a newly-washed aspect, in Faber Street suits, chaffed +boisterously groups of girls, who retorted with shrill cries and shrieks of +laughter; amorous couples strolled, arm in arm, oblivious, as though the place +were as empty as Eden; lady-killers with exaggerated square shoulders, wearing +bright neckties, their predatory instincts alert, hovered about in eager search +of adventure. There were men-killers, too, usually to be found in pairs, in +startling costumes they had been persuaded were the latest Paris models,-- +imitations of French cocottes in Hampton, proof of the smallness of our modern +world. Eda regarded them superciliously. + +"They'd like you to think they'd never been near a loom or a bobbin!" she +exclaimed. + +In addition to these more conspicuous elements, the crowd contained sober +operatives of the skilled sort possessed of sufficient means to bring hither +their families, including the baby; there were section-hands and foremen, +slashers, mule spinners, beamers, French-Canadians, Irish, Scotch, Welsh and +English, Germans, with only an occasional Italian, Lithuanian, or Jew. Peanut +and popcorn men, venders of tamales and Chile-con-carne hoarsely shouted their +wares, while from afar could be heard the muffled booming of a band. Janet's +heart beat faster. She regarded with a tinge of awe the vast expanse of tent +that rose before her eyes, the wind sending ripples along the heavy canvas from +circumference to tent pole. She bought the tickets; they entered the circular +enclosure where the animals were kept; where the strong beams of the sun, in +trying to force their way through the canvas roof, created an unnatural, +jaundiced twilight, the weirdness of which was somehow enhanced by the hoarse, +amazingly penetrating growls of beasts. Suddenly a lion near them raised a +shaggy head, emitting a series of undulating, soul-shaking roars. + +"Ah, what's eatin' you?" demanded a thick-necked youth, pretending not to be +awestricken by this demonstration. + +"Suppose he'd get out!" cried Eda, drawing Janet away. + +"I wouldn't let him hurt you, dearie," the young man assured her. + +"You!" she retorted contemptuously, but grinned in spite of herself, showing +her gums. + +The vague feeling of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its +fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by the +juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying or staring +in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes never left these +morsels beyond the bars. The two girls wandered about, their arms closely +locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the beasts, the ineffable, +pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled with the effluvia of animals, +had aroused an excitement that was slow in subsiding. Some time elapsed before +they were capable of taking a normal interest in the various exhibits. + +"`Adjutant Bird,'" Janet read presently from a legend on one of the +compartments of a cage devoted to birds, and surveying the somewhat dissolute +occupant. "Why, he's just like one of those tall mashers who stay at the +Wilmot and stand on the sidewalk,--travelling men, you know." + +"Say-isn't he?" Eda agreed. "Isn't he pleased with himself, and his feet +crossed!" + +"And see this one, Eda--he's a 'Harpy Eagle.' There's somebody we know looks +just like that. Wait a minute--I'll tell you--it's the woman who sits in the +cashier's cage at Grady's." + +"If it sure isn't!" said Eda. + +"She has the same fluffy, light hair--hairpins can't keep it down, and she +looks at you in that same sort of surprised way with her head on one side when +you hand in your check." + +"Why, it's true to the life!" cried Eda enthusiastically. "She thinks she's +got all the men cinched,--she does and she's forty if she's a day." + +These comparisons brought them to a pitch of risible enjoyment amply sustained +by the spectacle in the monkey cage, to which presently they turned. A +chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly searching a +friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering and screeching and +chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on by their companions. + +"Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your relations--have +ye?" + +Eda giggled hysterically. An elderly man was standing beside them. He was +shabbily dressed, his own features were wizened, almost simian, and by his +friendly and fatuous smile Janet recognized one of the harmless obsessed in +which Hampton abounded. + +"Relations!" Eda exclaimed. + +"You and me, yes, and her," he answered, looking at Janet, though at first he +had apparently entertained some doubt as to this inclusion, "we're all +descended from them." His gesture triumphantly indicated the denizens of the +cage. + +"What are you giving us?" said Eda. + +"Ain't you never read Darwin?" he demanded. "If you had, you'd know they're +our ancestors, you'd know we came from them instead of Adam and Eve. That +there's a fable." + +"I'll never believe I came from them," cried Eda, vehement in her disgust. + +But Janet laughed. "What's the difference? Some of us aren't any better than +monkeys, anyway." + +"That's so," said the man approvingly. "That's so." He wanted to continue the +conversation, but they left him rather ruthlessly. And when, from the entrance +to the performance tent, they glanced back over their shoulders, he was still +gazing at his cousins behind the bars, seemingly deriving an acute pleasure +from his consciousness of the connection.... + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Modern business, by reason of the mingling of the sexes it involves, for the +playwright and the novelist and the sociologist is full of interesting and +dramatic situations, and in it may be studied, undoubtedly, one phase of the +evolution tending to transform if not disintegrate certain institutions +hitherto the corner-stones of society. Our stage is set. A young woman, +conscious of ability, owes her promotion primarily to certain dynamic feminine +qualities with which she is endowed. And though she may make an elaborate +pretense of ignoring the fact, in her heart she knows and resents it, while at +the same time, paradoxically, she gets a thrill from it,--a sustaining and +inspiring thrill of power! On its face it is a business arrangement; +secretly,--attempt to repudiate this as one may,--it is tinged with the colours +of high adventure. When Janet entered into the intimate relationship with Mr. +Claude Ditmar necessitated by her new duties as his private stenographer her +attitude, slightly defiant, was the irreproachable one of a strict attention to +duty. All unconsciously she was a true daughter of the twentieth century, and +probably a feminist at heart, which is to say that her conduct was determined +by no preconceived or handed-down notions of what was proper and lady-like. +For feminism, in a sense, is a return to atavism, and sex antagonism and sex +attraction are functions of the same thing. There were moments when she +believed herself to hate Mr. Ditmar, when she treated him with an aloofness, an +impersonality unsurpassed; moments when he paused in his dictation to stare at +her in astonishment. He, who flattered himself that he understood women! + +She would show him!--such was her dominating determination. Her promotion +assumed the guise of a challenge, of a gauntlet flung down at the feet of her +sex. In a certain way, an insult, though incredibly stimulating. If he +flattered himself that he had done her a favour, if he entertained the notion +that he could presently take advantage of the contact with her now achieved to +make unbusinesslike advances--well, he would find out. He had proclaimed his +desire for an able assistant in Miss Ottway's place--he would get one, and +nothing more. She watched narrowly, a l'affut, as the French say, for any +signs of sentiment, and indeed this awareness of her being on guard may have +had some influence on Mr. Ditmar's own attitude, likewise irreproachable.... A +rather anaemic young woman, a Miss Annie James, was hired for Janet's old +place. + +In spite of this aloofness and alertness, for the first time in her life Janet +felt the exuberance of being in touch with affairs of import. Hitherto the +mill had been merely a greedy monster claiming her freedom and draining her +energies in tasks routine, such as the copying of meaningless documents and +rows of figures; now, supplied with stimulus and a motive, the Corporation +began to take on significance, and she flung herself into the work with an +ardour hitherto unknown, determined to make herself so valuable to Ditmar that +the time would come when he could not do without her. She strove to memorize +certain names and addresses, lest time be lost in looking them up, to +familiarize herself with the ordinary run of his correspondence, to recall what +letters were to be marked "personal," to anticipate matters of routine, in +order that he might not have the tedium of repeating instructions; she acquired +the faculty of keeping his engagements in her head; she came early to the +office, remaining after hours, going through the files, becoming familiar with +his system; and she learned to sort out his correspondence, sifting the +important from the unimportant, to protect him, more and more, from numerous +visitors who called only to waste his time. Her instinct for the detection of +book-agents, no matter how brisk and businesslike they might appear, was +unerring--she remembered faces and the names belonging to them: an individual +once observed to be persona non grata never succeeded in passing her twice. On +one occasion Ditmar came out of his office to see the back of one of these +visitors disappearing into the corridor. + +"Who was that?" he asked. + +"His name is McCalla," she said. "I thought you didn't want to be bothered." + +"But how in thunder did you get rid of him?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I just wouldn't let him in," she replied demurely. + +And Ditmar went away, wondering.... Thus she gtudied him, without permitting +him to suspect it, learning his idiosyncrasies, his attitude toward all those +with whom daily he came in contact, only to find herself approving. She was +forced to admit that he was a judge of men, compelled to admire his adroitness +in dealing with them. He could be democratic or autocratic as occasion +demanded; he knew when to yield, and when to remain inflexible. One morning, +for instance, there arrived from New York a dapper salesman whose jauntily tied +bow, whose thin hair--carefully parted to conceal an incipient baldness--whose +wary and slightly weary eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan +atmosphere of high pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged. He +had a machine to sell; an amazing machine, endowed with human intelligence and +more than human infallibility; for when it made a mistake it stopped. It was +designed for the express purpose of eliminating from the payroll the skilled +and sharp-eyed women who are known as "drawers-in," who sit all day long under +a north light patiently threading the ends of the warp through the heddles of +the loom harness. Janet's imagination was gradually fired as she listened to +the visitor's eloquence; and the textile industry, which hitherto had seemed to +her uninteresting and sordid, took on the colours of romance. + +"Now I've made up my mind we'll place one with you, Mr. Ditmar," the salesman +concluded. "I don't object to telling you we'd rather have one in the +Chippering than in any mill in New England." + +Janet was surprised, almost shocked to see Ditmar shake his head, yet she felt +a certain reluctant admiration because he had not been swayed by blandishments. +At such moments, when he was bent on refusing a request, he seemed physically +to acquire massiveness,--and he had a dogged way of chewing his cigar. + +"I don't want it, yet," he replied, "not until you improve it." And she was +impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the machine as the +salesman himself. In spite of protests, denials, appeals, he remained firm. +"When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come back, Mr. Hicks--but don't +come back until then." + +And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited.... + +Ditmar knew what he wanted. Of the mill he was the absolute master, familiar +with every process, carrying constantly in his mind how many spindles, how many +looms were at work; and if anything untoward happened, becoming aware of it by +what seemed to Janet a subconscious process, sending for the superintendent of +the department: for Mr. Orcutt, perhaps, whose office was across the hall--a +tall, lean, spectacled man of fifty who looked like a schoolmaster. + +"Orcutt, what's the matter with the opener in Cooney's room?" + +"Why, the blower's out of order." + +"Well, whose fault is it?".... + +He knew every watchman and foreman in the mill, and many of the second hands. +The old workers, men and women who had been in the Chippering employ through +good and bad times for years, had a place in his affections, but toward the +labour force in general his attitude was impersonal. The mill had to be run, +and people to be got to run it. With him, first and last and always it was the +mill, and little by little what had been for Janet a heterogeneous mass of +machinery and human beings became unified and personified in Claude Ditmar. It +was odd how the essence and quality of that great building had changed for her; +how the very roaring of the looms, as she drew near the canal in the mornings, +had ceased to be sinister and depressing, but bore now a burden like a great +battle song to excite and inspire, to remind her that she had been snatched as +by a miracle from the commonplace. And all this was a function of Ditmar. + +Life had become portentous. And she was troubled by no qualms of logic, but +gloried, womanlike, in her lack of it. She did not ask herself why she had +deliberately enlarged upon Miss Ottway's duties, invaded debatable ground in +part inevitably personal, flung herself with such abandon into the enterprise +of his life's passion, at the same time maintaining a deceptive attitude of +detachment, half deceiving herself that it was zeal for the work by which she +was actuated. In her soul she knew better. She was really pouring fuel on the +flames. She read him, up to a certain point--as far as was necessary; and +beneath his attempts at self-control she was conscious of a dynamic desire that +betrayed itself in many acts and signs,--as when he brushed against her; and +occasionally when he gave evidence with his subordinates of a certain shortness +of temper unusual with him she experienced a vaguely alarming but delicious +thrill of power. And this, of all men, was the great Mr. Ditmar! Was she in +love with him? That question did not trouble her either. She continued to +experience in his presence waves of antagonism and attraction, revealing to her +depths and possibilities of her nature that frightened while they fascinated. +It never occurred to her to desist. That craving in her for high adventure was +not to be denied. + +On summer evenings it had been Ditmar's habit when in Hampton to stroll about +his lawn, from time to time changing the position of the sprinkler, smoking a +cigar, and reflecting pleasantly upon his existence. His house, as he gazed at +it against the whitening sky, was an eminently satisfactory abode, his wife was +dead, his children gave him no trouble; he felt a glow of paternal pride in his +son as the boy raced up and down the sidewalk on a bicycle; George was manly, +large and strong for his age, and had a domineering way with other boys that +gave Ditmar secret pleasure. Of Amy, who was showing a tendency to stoutness, +and who had inherited her mother's liking for candy and romances, Ditmar +thought scarcely at all: he would glance at her as she lounged, reading, in a +chair on the porch, but she did not come within his range of problems. He had, +in short, everything to make a reasonable man content, a life nicely compounded +of sustenance, pleasure, and business,--business naturally being the greatest +of these. He was--though he did not know it--ethically and philosophically +right in squaring his morals with his occupation, and his had been the good +fortune to live in a world whose codes and conventions had been carefully +adjusted to the pursuit of that particular brand of happiness he had made his +own. Why, then, in the name of that happiness, of the peace and sanity and +pleasurable effort it had brought him, had he allowed and even encouraged the +advent of a new element that threatened to destroy the equilibrium achieved? an +element refusing to be classified under the head of property, since it involved +something he desired and could not buy? A woman who was not property, who +resisted the attempt to be turned into property, was an anomaly in Ditmar's +universe. He had not, of course, existed for more than forty years without +having heard and read of and even encountered in an acquaintance or two the +species of sex attraction sentimentally called love that sometimes made fools +of men and played havoc with more important affairs, but in his experience it +had never interfered with his sanity or his appetite or the Chippering Mill: it +had never made his cigars taste bitter; it had never caused a deterioration in +the appreciation of what he had achieved and held. But now he was experiencing +strange symptoms of an intensity out of all proportion to that of former +relations with the other sex. What was most unusual for him, he was alarmed +and depressed, at moments irritable. He regretted the capricious and +apparently accidental impulse that had made him pretend to tinker with his +automobile that day by the canal, that had led him to the incomparable idiocy +of getting rid of Miss Ottway and installing the disturber of his peace as his +private stenographer. + +What the devil was it in her that made him so uncomfortable? When in his +office he had difficulty in keeping his mind on matters of import; he would +watch her furtively as she went about the room with the lithe and noiseless +movements that excited him the more because he suspected beneath her outward +and restrained demeanour a fierceness he craved yet feared. He thought of her +continually as a panther, a panther he had caught and could not tame; he hadn't +even caught her, since she might escape at any time. He took precautions not +to alarm her. When she brushed against him he trembled. Continually she +baffled and puzzled him, and he never could tell of what she was thinking. She +represented a whole set of new and undetermined values for which he had no +precedents, and unlike every woman he had known--including his wife--she had an +integrity of her own, seemingly beyond the reach of all influences economic and +social. All the more exasperating, therefore, was a propinquity creating an +intimacy without substance, or without the substance he craved for she had +magically become for him a sort of enveloping, protecting atmosphere. In an +astonishingly brief time he had fallen into the habit of talking things over +with her; naturally not affairs of the first importance, but matters such as +the economy of his time: when, for instance, it was most convenient for him to +go to Boston; and he would find that she had telephoned, without being told, to +the office there when to expect him, to his chauffeur to be on hand. He never +had to tell her a thing twice, nor did she interrupt--as Miss Ottway sometimes +had done--the processes of his thought. Without realizing it he fell into the +habit of listening for the inflections of her voice, and though he had never +lacked the power of making decisions, she somehow made these easier for him +especially if, a human equation were involved. + +He had, at least, the consolation--if it were one--of reflecting that his +reputation was safe, that there would be no scandal, since two are necessary to +make the kind of scandal he had always feared, and Miss Bumpus, apparently, had +no intention of being the second party. Yet she was not virtuous, as he had +hitherto defined the word. Of this he was sure. No woman who moved about as +she did, who had such an effect on him, who had on occasions, though +inadvertently, returned the lightning of his glances, whose rare laughter +resembled grace notes, and in whose hair was that almost imperceptible kink, +could be virtuous. This instinctive conviction inflamed him. For the first +time in his life he began to doubt the universal conquering quality of his own +charms,--and when such a thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of +hell-fire. He indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and excursions +that hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if his cronies +inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed to answer with his +usual geniality. + +"Everything going all right up at the mills, Colonel?" he was asked one day by +Mr. Madden, the treasurer of a large shoe company, when they met on the marble +tiles of the hall in their Boston club. + +"All right. Why?" + +"Well," replied Madden, conciliatingly, "you seem kind of preoccupied, that's +all. I didn't know but what the fifty-four hour bill the legislature's just +put through might be worrying you." + +"We'll handle that situation when the time comes," said Ditmar. He accepted a +gin rickey, but declined rather curtly the suggestion of a little spree over +Sunday to a resort on the Cape which formerly he would have found enticing. On +another occasion he encountered in the lobby of the Parker House a more +intimate friend, Chester Sprole, sallow, self-made, somewhat corpulent, one of +those lawyers hail fellows well met in business circles and looked upon askance +by the Brahmins of their profession; more than half politician, he had been in +Congress, and from time to time was retained by large business interests +because of his persuasive gifts with committees of the legislature--though +these had been powerless to avert the recent calamity of the women and +children's fifty-four hour bill. Mr. Sprole's hair was prematurely white, and +the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes were not the result of legal +worries. + +"Hullo, Dit," he said jovially. + +"Hullo, Ches," said Ditmar. + +"Now you're the very chap I wanted to see. Where have you been keeping +yourself lately? Come out to the farm to-night,--same of the boys'll be +there." Mr. Sprole, like many a self-made man, was proud of his farm, though +he did not lead a wholly bucolic existence. + +"I can't, Ches," answered Ditmar. "I've got to go back to Hampton." + +This statement Mr. Sprole unwisely accepted as a fiction. He took hold of +Ditmar's arm. + +"A lady--eh--what?" + +"I've got to go back to Hampton," repeated Ditmar, with a suggestion of +truculence that took his friend aback. Not for worlds would Mr. Sprole have +offended the agent of the Chippering Mill. + +"I was only joking, Claude," he hastened to explain. Ditmar, somewhat +mollified but still dejected, sought the dining-room when the lawyer had gone. + +"All alone to-night, Colonel?" asked the coloured head waiter, obsequiously. + +Ditmar demanded a table in the corner, and consumed a solitary meal. + +Very naturally Janet was aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the cause of +it. Her feelings were complicated. He, the most important man in Hampton, the +self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and unattainable head of +the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill, of which she was an +insignificant unit, at times became for her just a man--a man for whom she had +achieved a delicious contempt. And the knowledge that she, if she chose, could +sway and dominate him by the mere exercise of that strange feminine force +within her was intoxicating and terrifying. She read this in a thousand signs; +in his glances; in his movements revealing a desire to touch her; in little +things he said, apparently insignificant, yet fraught with meaning; in a +constant recurrence of the apologetic attitude--so alien to the Ditmar formerly +conceived--of which he had given evidence that day by the canal: and from this +attitude emanated, paradoxically, a virile and galvanic current profoundly +disturbing. Sometimes when he bent over her she experienced a commingled +ecstasy and fear that he would seize her in his arms. Yet the tension was not +constant, rising and falling with his moods and struggles, all of which she +read--unguessed by him--as easily as a printed page by the gift that dispenses +with laborious processes of the intellect. On the other hand, a resentment +boiled within her his masculine mind failed to fathom. Stevenson said of John +Knox that many women had come to learn from him, but he had never condescended +to become a learner in return--a remark more or less applicable to Ditmar. She +was, perforce, thrilled that he was virile and wanted her, but because he +wanted her clandestinely her pride revolted,divining his fear of scandal and +hating him for it like a thoroughbred. To do her justice, marriage never +occurred to her. She was not so commonplace. + +There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax, when some +incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise that had +absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill. One day in September, for +instance, after an absence in New York, he returned to the office late in the +afternoon, and she was quick to sense his elation, to recognize in him the +restored presence of the quality of elan, of command, of singleness of purpose +that had characterized him before she had become his stenographer. At first, +as he read his mail, he seemed scarcely conscious of her presence. She stood +by the window, awaiting his pleasure, watching the white mist as it rolled over +the floor of the river, catching glimpses in vivid, saffron blurs of the lights +of the Arundel Mill on the farther shore. Autumn was at hand. Suddenly she +heard Ditmar speaking. + +"Would you mind staying a little while longer this evening, Miss Bumpus?" + +"Not at all," she replied, turning. + +On his face was a smile, almost boyish. + +"The fact is, I think I've got hold of the biggest single order that ever came +into any mill in New England," he declared. + +"Oh, I'm glad," she said quickly. + +"The cotton cards--?" he demanded. + +She knew he referred to the schedules, based on the current prices of cotton, +made out in the agent's office and sent in duplicate to the selling house, in +Boston. She got them from the shelf; and as he went over them she heard him +repeating the names of various goods now become familiar, pongees, poplins, +percales and voiles, garbardines and galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and +Madras shirtings, while he wrote down figures on a sheet of paper. So complete +was his absorption in this task that Janet, although she had resented the +insinuating pressure of his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical +sensation of jealousy. Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up +the Boston office and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton buyer; and she learned +from the talk over the telephone though it was mostly about "futures"--that +Ditmar had lingered for a conference in Boston on his way back from New York. +Afterwards, having dictated two telegrams which she wrote out on her machine, +he leaned back in his chair; and though the business for the day was ended, +showed a desire to detain her. His mood became communicative. + + +"I've been on the trail of that order for a month," he declared. "Of course it +isn't my business to get orders, but to manage this mill, and that's enough for +one man, God knows. But I heard the Bradlaughs were in the market for these +goods, and I told the selling house to lie low, that I'd go after it. I knew I +could get away with it, if anybody could. I went to the Bradlaughs and sat +down on 'em, I lived with 'em, ate with 'em, brought 'em home at night. I +didn't let 'em alone a minute until they handed it over. I wasn't going to +give any other mill in New England or any of those southern concerns a chance +to walk off with it--not on your life! Why, we have the facilities. There +isn't another mill in the country can turn it out in the time they ask, and +even we will have to go some to do it. But we'll do it, by George, unless I'm +struck by lightning." + +He leaned forward, hitting the desk with his fist, and Janet, standing beside +him, smiled. She had the tempting gift of silence. Forgetting her twinge of +jealousy, she was drawn toward him now, and in this mood of boyish exuberance, +of self-confidence and pride in his powers and success she liked him better +than ever before. She had, for the first time, the curious feeling of being +years older than he, yet this did not detract from a new-born admiration. + +"I made this mill, and I'm proud of it," he went on. "When old Stephen +Chippering put me in charge he was losing money, he'd had three agents in four +years. The old man knew I had it in me, and I knew it, if I do say it myself. +All this union labour talk about shorter hours makes me sick--why, there was a +time when I worked ten and twelve hours a day, and I'm man enough to do it yet, +if I have to. When the last agent--that was Cort--was sacked I went to Boston +on my own hook and tackled the old gentleman--that's the only way to get +anywhere. I couldn't bear to see the mill going to scrap, and I told him a +thing or two,--I had the facts and the figures. Stephen Chippering was a big +man, but he had a streak of obstinacy in him, he was conservative, you bet. I +had to get it across to him there was a lot of dead wood in this plant, I had +to wake him up to the fact that the twentieth century was here. He had to be +shown--he was from Boston, you know--" Ditmar laughed--"but he was all wool and +a yard wide, and he liked me and trusted me. + +"That was in nineteen hundred. I can remember the interview as well as if it +had happened last night--we sat up until two o'clock in the morning in that +library of his with the marble busts and the leather-bound books and the double +windows looking out over the Charles, where the wind was blowing a gale. And +at last he said, `All right, Claude, go ahead. I'll put you in as agent, and +stand behind you.' And by thunder, he did stand behind me. He was quiet, the +finest looking old man I ever saw in my life, straight as a ramrod, with a +little white goatee and a red, weathered face full of creases, and a skin that +looked as if it had been pricked all over with needles--the old Boston sort. +They don't seem to turn 'em out any more. Why, I have a picture of him here." + +He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a photograph. Janet gazed at it +sympathetically. + +"It doesn't give you any notion of those eyes of his," Ditmar said, +reminiscently. "They looked right through a man's skull, no matter how thick +it was. If anything went wrong, I never wasted any time in telling him about +it, and I guess it was one reason he liked me. Some of the people up here +didn't understand him, kow-towed to him, they were scared of him, and if he +thought they had something up their sleeves he looked as if he were going to +eat 'em alive. Regular fighting eyes, the kind that get inside of a man and +turn the light on. And he sat so still--made you ashamed of yourself. Well, +he was a born fighter, went from Harvard into the Rebellion and was left for +dead at Seven Oaks, where one of the company found him and saved him. He set +that may up for life, and never talked about it, either. See what he wrote on +the bottom--'To my friend, Claude Ditmar, Stephen Chippering.' And believe me, +when he once called a man a friend he never took it back. I know one thing, +I'll never get another friend like him." + +With a gesture that gave her a new insight into Ditmar, reverently he took the +picture from her hand and placed it back in the drawer. She was stirred, +almost to tears, and moved away from him a little, as though to lessen by +distance the sudden attraction he had begun to exert: yet she lingered, half +leaning, half sitting on the corner of the big desk, her head bent toward him, +her eyes filled with light. She was wondering whether he could ever love a +woman as he loved this man of whom he had spoken, whether he could be as true +to a woman. His own attitude seemed never to have been more impersonal, but +she had ceased to resent it; something within her whispered that she was the +conductor, the inspirer.. .. + +"I wish Stephen Chippering could have lived to see this order," he exclaimed, +"to see the Chippering Mill to-day! I guess he'd be proud of it, I guess he +wouldn't regret having put me in as agent." + +Janet did not reply. She could not. She sat regarding him intently, and when +he raised his eyes and caught her luminous glance, his expression changed, she +knew Stephen Chippering had passed from his mind. + +"I hope you like it here," he said. His voice had become vibrant, +ingratiating, he had changed from the master to the suppliant--and yet she was +not displeased. Power had suddenly flowed back into her, and with it an +exhilarating self-command. + +"I do like it," she answered. + +"But you said, when I asked you to be my stenographer, that you didn't care for +your work." + +"Oh, this is different." + +"How?" + +"I'm interested, the mill means something to me now you see, I'm not just +copying things I don't know anything about." + +"I'm glad you're interested," he said, in the same odd, awkward tone. "I've +never had any one in the office who did my work as well. Now Miss Ottway was a +good stenographer, she was capable, and a fine woman, but she never got the +idea, the spirit of the mill in her as you've got it, and she wasn't able to +save me trouble, as you do. It's remarkable how you've come to understand, and +in such a short time." + +Janet coloured. She did not look at him, but had risen and begun to straighten +out the papers beside her. + +"There are lots of other things I'd like to understand," she said. + +"What?" he demanded. + +"Well--about the mill. I never thought much about it before, I always hated +it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him. "It was just +drudgery. But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd like to see the +machinery." + +"I'll take you through myself--to-morrow," he declared. + +His evident agitation made her pause. They were alone, the outer office +deserted, and the Ditmar she saw now, whom she had summoned up with ridiculous +ease by virtue of that mysterious power within her, was no longer the agent of +the Chippering Mill, a boy filled with enthusiasm by a business achievement, +but a man, the incarnation and expression of masculine desire desire for her. +She knew she could compel him, if she chose, to throw caution to the winds. + +"Oh no!" she exclaimed. She was afraid of him, she shrank from such a +conspicuous sign of his favour. + +"Why not?" he asked. + +"Because I don't want you to," she said, and realized, as soon as she had +spoken, that her words might imply the existence of a something between them +never before hinted at by her. "I'll get Mr. Caldwell to take me through." +She moved toward the door, and turned; though still on fire within, her manner +had become demure, repressed. "Did you wish anything more this evening?" she +inquired. + +"That's all," he said, and she saw that he was gripping the arms of his +chair.... + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Autumn was at hand. All day it had rained, but now, as night fell and Janet +went homeward, the white mist from the river was creeping stealthily over the +city, disguising the familiar and sordid landmarks. These had become +beautiful, mysterious, somehow appealing. The electric arcs, splotches in the +veil, revealed on the Common phantom trees; and in the distance, against the +blurred lights from the Warren Street stores skirting the park could be seen +phantom vehicles, phantom people moving to and fro. Thus, it seemed to Janet, +invaded by a pearly mist was her own soul, in which she walked in wonder,--a +mist shot through and through with soft, exhilarating lights half disclosing +yet transforming and etherealizing certain landmark's there on which, formerly, +she had not cared to gaze. She was thinking of Ditmar as she had left him +gripping his chair, as he had dismissed her for the day, curtly, almost +savagely. She had wounded and repelled him, and lingering in her was that +exquisite touch of fear--a fear now not so much inspired by Ditmar as by the +semi-acknowledged recognition of certain tendencies and capacities within +herself. Yet she rejoiced in them, she was glad she had hurt Ditmar, she would +hurt him again. Still palpitating, she reached the house in Fillmore Street, +halting a moment with her hand on the door, knowing her face was flushed, +anxious lest her mother or Lise might notice something unusual in her manner. +But, when she had slowly mounted the stairs and lighted the gas in the bedroom +the sight of her sister's clothes cast over the chairs was proof that Lise had +already donned her evening finery and departed. The room was filled with the +stale smell of clothes, which Janet detested. She flung open the windows. She +took off her hat and swiftly tidied herself, yet the relief she felt at Lise's +absence was modified by a sudden, vehement protest against sordidness. Why +should she not live by herself amidst clean and tidy surroundings? She had +begun to earn enough, and somehow a vista had been opened up--a vista whose end +she could not see, alluring, enticing.... In the dining-room, by the cleared +table, her father was reading the Banner; her mother appeared in the kitchen +door. + +"What in the world happened to you, Janet?" she exclaimed. + + +"Nothing," said Janet. "Mr. Ditmar asked me to stay--that was all. He'd been +away." + +"I was worried, I was going to make your father go down to the mill. I've +saved you some supper." + +"I don't want much," Janet told her, "I'm not hungry." + +"I guess you have to work too hard in that new place," said Hannah, as she +brought in the filled plate from the oven. + +"Well, it seems to agree with her, mother," declared Edward, who could always +be counted on to say the wrong thing with the best of intentions. "I never saw +her looking as well--why, I swan, she's getting real pretty!" + +Hannah darted at him a glance, but restrained herself, and Janet reddened as +she tried to eat the beans placed before her. The pork had browned and +hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered the potatoes. +When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and her mother went back into +the kitchen she began to speculate rather resentfully and yet excitedly why it +was that this adventure with a man, with Ditmar, made her look better, feel +better,--more alive. She was too honest to disguise from herself that it was +an adventure, a high one, fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and +delights. Her promotion had been merely incidental. Both her mother and +father, did they know the true circumstances,--that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was +perhaps in love with her--would be disturbed. Undoubtedly they would have +believed that she could "take care" of herself. She knew that matters could +not go on as they were, that she would either have to leave Mr. Ditmar or--and +here she baulked at being logical. She had no intention of leaving him: to +remain, according to the notions of her parents, would be wrong. Why was it +that doing wrong agreed with her, energized her, made her more alert, cleverer, +keying up her faculties? turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one? +To abandon Ditmar would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from +which she had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she +sat; by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs with +the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing protruded, the +tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had bought at a bargain at +the Bagatelle.... The wooden clock with the round face and quaint landscape +below--the family's most cherished heirloom--though long familiar, was not so +bad; but the two yellowed engravings on the wall offended her. They had been +wedding presents to Edward's father. One represented a stupid German peasant +woman holding a baby, and standing in front of a thatched cottage; its +companion was a sylvan scene in which certain wooden rustics were supposed to +be enjoying themselves. Between the two, and dotted with flyspecks, hung an +insurance calendar on which was a huge head of a lady, florid, fluffy-haired, +flirtatious. Lise thought her beautiful. + +The room was ugly. She had long known that, but tonight the realization came +to her that what she chiefly resented in it was the note it proclaimed--the +note of a mute acquiescence, without protest or struggle, in what life might +send. It reflected accurately the attitude of her parents, particularly of her +father. With an odd sense of detachment, of critical remoteness and contempt +she glanced at him as he sat stupidly absorbed in his newspaper, his face +puckered, his lips pursed, and Ditmar rose before her--Ditmar, the embodiment +of an indomitableness that refused to be beaten and crushed. She thought of +the story he had told her, how by self-assertion and persistence he had become +agent of the Chippering Mill, how he had convinced Mr. Stephen Chippering of +his ability. She could not think of the mill as belonging to the Chipperings +and the other stockholders, but to Ditmar, who had shaped it into an expression +of himself, since it was his ideal. And now it seemed that he had made it hers +also. She regretted having repulsed him, pushed her plate away from her, and +rose. + +"You haven't eaten anything," said Hannah, who had come into the room. "Where +are you going?" + +"Out--to Eda's," Janet answered.... + +"It's late," Hannah objected. But Janet departed. Instead of going to Eda's +she walked alone, seeking the quieter streets that her thoughts might flow +undisturbed. At ten o'clock, when she returned, the light was out in the +diningroom, her sister had not come in, and she began slowly to undress, +pausing every now and then to sit on the bed and dream; once she surprised +herself gazing into the glass with a rapt expression that was almost a smile. +What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar? No other man had ever noticed +it. She had never thought herself good looking, and now--it was astonishing!-- +she seemed to have changed,and she saw with pride that her arms and neck were +shapely, that her dark hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to +her waist. She caressed it; it was fine. When she looked again, a radiancy +seemed to envelop her. She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, +looking shyly in the mirror and always seeing that radiancy.... + +Suddenly it occurred to her with a shock that she was doing exactly what she +had despised Lise for doing, and leaving the mirror she hurried her toilet, put +out the light, and got into bed. For a long time, however, she remained +wakeful, turning first on one side and then on the other, trying to banish from +her mind the episode that had excited her. But always it came back again. She +saw Ditmar before her, virile, vital, electric with desire. At last she fell +asleep. + +Gradually she was awakened by something penetrating her consciousness, +something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she could not +define. The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving peculiarly about +the room. Janet watched her. She stood in front of the bureau, just as Janet +herself had done, her hands at her throat. At last she let them fall, her head +turning slowly, as though drawn, by some irresistible, hypnotic power, and +their eyes met. Lise's were filmed, like those of a dog whose head is being +stroked, expressing a luxuriant dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate. + +"Say, did I wake you?" she asked. "I did my best not to make any noise--honest +to God." + +"It wasn't the noise that woke me up," said Janet. + +"It couldn't have been." + +"You've been drinking!" said Janet, slowly. + +Lise giggled. + +"What's it to you, angel face!" she inquired. "Quiet down, now, and go bye- +bye." + +Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her. She was +limp. She began to whimper. + +"Cut it out--leave me go. It ain't nothing to you what I do--I just had a +highball." + +Janet released her and drew back. + +"I just had a highball--honest to God!" + +"Don't say that again!" whispered Janet, fiercely. + +"Oh, very well. For God's sake, go to bed and leave me alone--I can take care +of myself, I guess--I ain't nutty enough to hit the booze. But I ain't like +you--I've got to have a little fun to keep alive." + +"A little fun!" Janet exclaimed. The phrase struck her sharply. A little fun +to keep alive! + +With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise approached a +chair, and sank into it,--jerking her head in the direction of the room where +Hannah and Edward slept. + +"D'you want to wake 'em up? Is that your game?" she asked, and began to fumble +at her belt. Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to nausea, Janet +approached her sister again, little by little undressing her, and finally +getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into a profound slumber. +Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible: the odour lurked like a +foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the stagnant, damp air that came in +at the open window, fairly saturating her with horror: it seemed the very +essence of degradation. But as she lay on the edge of the bed, shrinking from +contamination, in the throes of excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she +grew hot, she could feel and almost hear the pounding of her heart. She rose, +felt around in the clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the +door, crept through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit +the lamp; darkness had become a terror. A cockroach scurried across the +linoleum. The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale food, +but at least she found relief from that other odour. She sank down on the +sofa. + +Her sister was drunk. That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was not the +drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion of something +else. Where had Lise been? In whose company had she become drunk? Of late, +in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been singuarly secretive as +to her companions, and the manner in which her evenings were spent; and she, +Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be curious. Lise, with her shopgirl's +cynical knowledge of life and its pitfalls and the high valuation at which she +held her charms, had seemed secure from danger; but Janet recalled her +discouragement, her threat to leave the Bagatelle. Since then there had been +something furtive about her. Now, because that odour of alcohol Lise exhaled +had destroyed in Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she +had begun to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for +her sister no strain of pity. A proof, had she recognized it, that immorality +is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual emotions. A few hours +before she had seen nothing wrong in her relationship with Ditmar: now she +beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing her for one end, his own gratification. +As a man, he had become an enemy. Ditmar was like all other men who exploited +her sex without compunction, but the thought that she was like Lise, asleep in +a drunken stupor, that their cases differed only in degree, was insupportable. + +At last she fell asleep from sheer weariness, to dream she was with Ditmar at +some place in the country under spreading trees, Silliston, perhaps--Silliston +Common, cleverly disguised: nor was she quite sure, always, that the man was +Ditmar; he had a way of changing, of resembling the man she had met in +Silliston whom she had mistaken for a carpenter. He was pleading with her, in +his voice was the peculiar vibrancy that thrilled her, that summoned some +answering thing out of the depths of her, and she felt herself yielding with a +strange ecstasy in which were mingled joy and terror. The terror was +conquering the joy, and suddenly he stood transformed before her eyes, +caricatured, become a shrieking monster from whom she sought in agony to +escape.... In this paralysis of fear she awoke, staring with wide eyes at the +flickering flame of the lamp, to a world filled with excruciating sound--the +siren of the Chippering Mill! She lay trembling with the horror of the +dreamspell upon her, still more than half convinced that the siren was Ditmar's +voice, his true expression. He was waiting to devour her. Would the sound +never end?... + +Then, remembering where she was, alarmed lest her mother might come in and find +her there, she left the sofa, turned out the sputtering lamp, and ran into the +bedroom. Rain was splashing on the bricks of the passage-way outside, the +shadows of the night still lurked in the corners; by the grey light she gazed +at Lise, who breathed loudly and stirred uneasily, her mouth open, her lips +parched. Janet touched her. + +"Lise--get up!" she said. "It's time to get up." She shook her. + +"Leave me alone--can't you?" + +"It's time to get up. The whistle has sounded." + +Lise heavily opened her eyes. They were bloodshot. + +"I don't want to get up. I won't get up." + +"But you must," insisted Janet, tightening her hold. "You've got to--you've +got to eat breakfast and go to work." + +"I don't want any breakfast, I ain't going to work any more." + +A gust of wind blew inward the cheap lace curtains, and the physical effect of +it emphasized the chill that struck Janet's heart. She got up and closed the +window, lit the gas, and returning to the bed, shook Lise again. + +"Listen," she said, "if you don't get up I'll tell mother what happened last +night." + +"Say, you wouldn't--!" exclaimed Lise, angrily. + +"Get up!" Janet commanded, and watched her rather anxiously, uncertain as to +the after effects of drunkenness. But Lise got up. She sat on the edge of the +bed and yawned, putting her hand to her forehead. + +"I've sure got a head on me," she remarked. + +Janet was silent, angrier than ever, shocked that tragedy, degradation, could +be accepted thus circumstantially. Lise proceeded to put up her hair. She +seemed to be mistress of herself; only tired, gaping frequently. Once she +remarked:-- + +"I don't see the good of getting nutty over a highball." + +Seeing that Janet was not to be led into controversy, she grew morose. + +Breakfast in Fillmore Street, never a lively meal, was more dismal than usual +that morning, eaten to the accompaniment of slopping water from the roofs on +the pavement of the passage. The indisposition of Lise passed unobserved by +both Hannah and Edward; and at twenty minutes to eight the two girls, with +rubbers and umbrellas, left the house together, though it was Janet's custom to +depart earlier, since she had farther to go. Lise, suspicious, maintained an +obstinate silence, keeping close to the curb. They reached the corner by the +provision shop with the pink and orange chromos of jellies in the window. + +"Lise, has anything happened to you?" demanded Janet suddenly. "I want you to +tell me." + +"Anything happened--what do you mean? Anything happened?" + +"You know very well what I mean." + +"Well, suppose something has happened?" Lise's reply was pert, defiant. +"What's it to you? If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't it?" + +Janet approached her. + +"What are you trying to do?" said Lise. "Push me into the gutter?" + +"I guess you're there already," said Janet. + +Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury. She turned on Janet and thrust her +back. + +"Well, if I am who's going to blame me?" she cried. "If you had to work all +day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six a week, I +guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either. It's easy for you to shoot off your +mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar." + +Janet was outraged. She could not restrain her anger. + +"How dare you say that?" she demanded. + +Lise was cowed. + +"Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything. Just +because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of gentlemen--they +were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as Ditmar--you come at me and tell +me I'm all to the bad." She began to sob. "I'm as straight as you are. How +was I to know the highball was stiff? Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on +the queer, and everything in the joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came +home with me." + +Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and resentment: +relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the truth, anxiety +because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because Ditmar had been +mentioned. Still, what she had feared most had not come to pass. Lise left +her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a back entrance of the +Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way. Where, she wondered, would it all end? +Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was an ominous sign. And "gentlemen"? +What kind of gentlemen had taken her sister to Gruber's? Would Ditmar do that +sort of thing if he had a chance? + +The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was plastered +with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving rain in the night. +The sky above the mills was sepia. White lights were burning in the loom +rooms. When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the watchman, informed her that +Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left for Boston. + +Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointment on learning +that Ditmar had gone to Boston. She knew he had had no such intention the +night before; an accumulated mail and many matters demanding decisions were +awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an act directed personally +against her, in the nature of a retaliation, since she had offended and +repulsed him. Through Lise's degrading act she had arrived at the conclusion +that all adventure and consequent suffering had to do with Man--a conviction +peculiarly maddening to such temperaments as Janet's. Therefore she +interpreted her suffering in terms of Ditmar, she had looked forward to +tormenting him again, and by departing he had deliberately balked and cheated +her. The rain fell ceaselessly out of black skies, night seemed ever ready to +descend on the river, a darkness--according to young Mr. Caldwell--due not to +the clouds alone, but to forest fires many hundreds of miles away, in Canada. +As the day wore on, however, her anger gradually gave place to an extreme +weariness and depression, and yet she dreaded going home, inventing things for +herself to do; arranging and rearranging Ditmar's papers that he might have +less trouble in sorting them, putting those uppermost which she thought he +would deem the most important. Perhaps he would come in, late! In a world of +impending chaos the brilliantly lighted office was a tiny refuge to which she +clung. At last she put on her coat and rubbers, faring forth reluctantly into +the wet. + +At first when she entered the bedroom she thought it empty, though the gas was +burning, and them she saw Lise lying face downward on the bed. For a moment +she stood still, then closed the door softly. + +"Lise," she said. + +"What?" + +Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand. Unconsciously she began to +stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own. + +"Lise," she said, "I understand why you--" she could not bring herself to +pronounce the words "got drunk,"--"I understand why you did it. I oughtn't to +have talked to you that way. But it was terrible to wake up and see you." + +For awhile Lise did not reply. Then she raised herself, feeling her hair with +an involuntary gesture, regarding her sister with a bewildered look, her face +puckered. Her eyes burned, and under them were black shadows. + +"How do you mean--you understand?" she asked slowly. "You never hit the +booze." + +Even Lise's language, which ordinarily offended her, failed to change her +sudden impassioned and repentant mood. She was astonished at herself for this +sudden softening, since she did not really love Lise, and all day she had hated +her, wished never to see her again. + +"No, but I can understand how it would be to want to," Janet said. "Lise, I +guess we're searching--both of us for something we'll never find." + +Lise stared at her with a contracted, puzzled expression, as of a person +awaking from sleep, all of whose faculties are being strained toward +comprehension. + +"What do you mean?" she demanded. "You and me? You're all right--you've got +no kick coming." + +"Life is hard, it's hard on girls like us--we want things we can't have." +Janet was at a loss to express herself. + + +"Well, it ain't any pipe dream," Lise agreed. Her glance turned involuntarily +toward the picture of the Olympian dinner party pinned on the wall. "Swells +have a good time," she added. + +"Maybe they pay for it, too," said Janet. + +"I wouldn't holler about paying--it's paying and not getting the goods," +declared Lise. + +"You'll pay, and you won't get it. That kind of life is--hell," Janet cried. + +Self-centered as Lise was, absorbed in her own trouble and present physical +discomfort, this unaccustomed word from her sister and the vehemence with which +it was spoken surprised and frightened her, brought home to her some hint of +the terror in Janet's soul. + +"Me for the water wagon," she said. + +Janet was not convinced. She had hoped to discover the identity of the man who +had taken Lise to Gruber's, but she did not attempt to continue the +conversation. She rose and took off her hat. + +"Why don't you go to bed?" she asked. "I'll tell mother you have a headache +and bring in your supper." + +"Well, I don't care if I do," replied Lise, gratefully. + +Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the human +organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so called, is as +sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected by lack of sleep, by +smells and sounds, by food, by the weather--whether a day be sapphire or +obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood are thwarted by the +actions of the next. Janet had observed this phenomenon, and sometimes, when +it troubled her, she thought herself the most inconsistent and vacillating of +creatures. She had resolved, far instance, before she fell asleep, to leave +the Chippering Mill, to banish Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, +whence she could send some of her wages home: and in the morning, as she made her +way to the office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and unity. But the +northwest wind was blowing. It had chased away the mist and the clouds, the smoke +from Canada. The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of the Common cast +sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when she reached the office +and looked out of his window she saw the blue river covered with quicksilver +waves chasing one another across the current. Ditmar had not yet returned to +Hampton. About ten o'clock, as she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price, +young Mr. Caldwell approached her. He had a Boston newspaper in his hand. + +"Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?" he asked. + +"About Mr. Ditmar? No." + +"It's quite a send-off for the Colonel," said Caldwell, who was wont at times +to use the title facetiously. "Listen; `One of the most notable figures in the +Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar, Agent of the Chippering +Mill.'" Caldwell spread out the page and pointed to a picture. "There he is, +as large as life." + +A little larger than life, Janet thought. Ditmar was one of those men who, as +the expression goes, "take" well, a valuable asset in semi-public careers; and +as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of the building where they had "snap- +shotted" him he appeared even more massive, forceful, and preponderant than she +had known him. Beholding him thus set forth and praised in a public print, he +seemed suddenly to have been distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at +a bound the dizzy importance he had possessed for her before she became his +stenographer. She found it impossible to realize that this was the Ditmar who +had pursued and desired her; at times supplicating, apologetic, abject; and +again revealed by the light in his eyes and the trembling of his hand as the +sinister and ruthless predatory male from whom--since the revelation in her +sister Lise she had determined to flee, and whom she had persuaded herself she +despised. He was a bigger man than she had thought, and as she read rapidly +down the column the fascination that crept over her was mingled with +disquieting doubt of her own powers: it was now difficult to believe she had +dominated or could ever dominate this self-sufficient, successful person, the +list of whose achievements and qualities was so alluringly set forth by an +interviewer who himself had fallen a victim. + +The article carried the implication that the modern, practical, American +business man was the highest type as yet evolved by civilization: and Ditmar, +referred to as "a wizard of the textile industry," was emphatically one who had +earned the gratitude of the grand old Commonwealth. By the efforts of such +sons she continued to maintain her commanding position among her sister states. +Prominent among the qualities contributing to his success was openmindedness, +"a willingness to be shown," to scrap machinery when his competitors still +clung to older methods. The Chippering Mill had never had a serious strike,-- +indication of an ability to deal with labour; and Mr. Ditmar's views on labour +followed: if his people had a grievance, let them come to him, and settle it +between them. No unions. He had consistently refused to recognize them. +There was mention of the Bradlaugh order as being the largest commission ever +given to a single mill, a reference to the excitement and speculation it had +aroused in trade circles. Claude Ditmar's ability to put it through was +unquestioned; one had only to look at him,--tenacity, forcefulness, +executiveness were written all over him.... In addition, the article contained +much material of an autobiographical nature that must--Janet thought--have been +supplied by Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder +self-eulogy of an interview. But she recognized several characteristic +phrases. + +Caldwell, watching her as she read, was suddenly fascinated. During a trip +abroad, while still an undergraduate, he had once seen the face of an actress, +a really good Parisian actress, light up in that way; and it had revealed to +him, in a flash, the meaning of enthusiasm. Now Janet became vivid for him. +There must be something unusual in a person whose feelings could be so intense, +whose emotions rang so true. He was not unsophisticated. He had sometimes +wondered why Ditmar had promoted her, though acknowledging her ability. He +admired Ditmar, but had no illusions about him. Harvard, and birth in a social +stratum where emphasis is superfluous, enabled him to smile at the reporter's +exuberance; and he was the more drawn toward her to see on Janet's flushed face +the hint of a smile as she looked up at him when she had finished. + +"The Colonel hypnotized that reporter," he said, as he took the paper; and her +laugh, despite its little tremor, betrayed in her an unsuspected, humorous +sense of proportion. "Well, I'll take off my hat to him," Caldwell went on. +"He is a wonder, he's got the mill right up to capacity in a week. He's agreed +to deliver those goods to the Bradlaughs by the first of April, you know, and +Holster, of the Clarendon, swears it can't be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. +Well, I stand to lose twenty-five dollars on him." + +This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving loyalty in +her. She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence. He was a self- +contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly hair, cordial and +friendly yet never intimate with the other employer; liked by them--but it was +tacitly understood his footing differed from theirs. He was a cousin of the +Chipperings, and destined for rapid promotion. He went away every Saturday, it +was known that he spent Sundays and holidays in delightful places, to return +reddened and tanned; and though he never spoke about these excursions, and put +on no airs of superiority, there was that in his manner and even in the cut of +his well-worn suits proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs, to a +category of fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are sustained +from above. Even Ditmar was not of these. + +"I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told Janet. +"They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics." + +And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:-- + +"Will you take me through sometime, Mr. Caldwell?" + +"You've never been through?" he exclaimed. "Why, we'll go now, if you can +spare the time." + +Her face had become scarlet. + +"Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged. "You see--he wanted to take me himself." + +"Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went +downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department. The +showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but now his +curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen stimulation +when he glanced at Janet's face. Its illumination perplexed him. The effect +was that of a picture obscurely hung and hitherto scarcely noticed on which the +light had suddenly been turned. It glowed with a strange and disturbing +radiance.... + +As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a miracle +in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before suspected; the +miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature. In the brief space of +an hour she beheld the dirty bales flung off the freight cars on the sidings +transformed into delicate fabrics wound from the looms; cotton that only last +summer, perhaps, while she sat typewriting at her window, had been growing in +the fields of the South. She had seen it torn by the balebreakers, blown into +the openers, loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed +into batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp of +white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can. Once more it was +flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres, removing with +superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short, thrusting it forth +again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing frames. Six of these +gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six. Then came the Blubbers and the +roving frames, twisting and winding, the while maintaining the most delicate of +tensions lest the rope break, running the strands together into a thread +constantly growing stronger and finer, until it was ready for spinning. + +Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while she +strained to follow them. But she was bewildered and entranced by the +marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex +machines, fed by human hands, performed its function. These human hands were +swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the ringspinning +frames to be twisted into yarn. She saw a woman, in the space of an instant, +mend a broken thread. Women and boys were here, doffer boys to lift off the +full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on the empty bobbins with the other: +while skilled workmen, alert for the first sign of trouble, followed up and +down in its travels the long frame of the mule-spinner. After the spinning, +the heavy spools of yarn were carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a +huge spider's web, where hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and +wound evenly, side by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric +to be woven on the loom. First, however, this warp must be stiffened or +"slashed" in starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally wound +around one great beam from which the multitude of threads are taken up, one by +one, and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses by women who sit all +day under the north windows overlooking the canal--the "drawers-in" of whom +Ditmar had spoken. Then the harnesses are put on the loom, the threads +attached to the cylinder on which the cloth is to be wound. The looms absorbed +and fascinated Janet above all else. It seemed as if she would never tire of +watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the harnesses,--each rapid movement +making a V in the warp, within the angle of which the tiny shuttles darted to +and fro, to and fro, carrying the thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness +so great the eye could scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when +the angle closed, and flung back, and back again! And in the elaborate +patterns not one, but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its turn for +the impulse bidding it rise and fall!... Abruptly, as she gazed, one of the +machines halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the warp for the broken thread, +tied it, and started the loom again. + +"That's intelligent of it," said Caldwell, in her ear. But she could only nod +in reply. + +The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive. She began +to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain all day long. +She had never thought much about them before save to compare vaguely their +drudgery with that from which now she had been emancipated; but she began to +feel a new respect, a new concern, a new curiosity and interest as she watched +them passing from place to place with indifference between the whirling belts, +up and down the narrow aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering, +clattering machinery whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back +the light of the electric bulbs on the ceiling. How was it possible to live +for hours at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and +thrusting hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf? She had never +before realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents. +But these people--even the children--seemed oblivious to the din and the +danger, intent on their tasks, unconscious of the presence of a visitor, save +occasionally when she caught a swift glance from a woman or girl a glance, +perhaps, of envy or even of hostility. The dark, foreign faces glowed, and +instantly grew dull again, and then she was aware of lurking terrors, despite +her exaltation, her sense now of belonging to another world, a world somehow +associated with Ditmar. Was it not he who had lifted her farther above all +this? Was it not by grace of her association with him she was there, a +spectator of the toil beneath? Yet the terror persisted. She, presently, +would step out of the noise, the oppressive moist heat of the drawing and +spinning rooms, the constant, remorseless menace of whirling wheels and cogs +and belts. But they?... She drew closer to Caldwell's side. + +"I never knew--" she said. "It must be hard to work here." + +He smiled at her, reassuringly. + +"Oh, they don't mind it," he replied. "It's like a health resort compared to +the conditions most of them live in at home. Why, there's plenty of +ventilation here, and you've got to have a certain amount of heat and moisture, +because when cotton is cold and dry it can't be drawn or spin, and when it's +hot and dry the electricity is troublesome. If you think this moisture is bad +you ought to see a mill with the old vapour-pot system with the steam shooting +out into the room. Look here!" He led Janet to the apparatus in which the +pure air is forced through wet cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the +ventilation and humidity were regulated automatically, how the temperature of +the room was controlled by a thermostat. + +"There isn't an agent in the country who's more concerned about the welfare of +his operatives than Mr. Ditmar. He's made a study of it, he's spent thousands +of dollars, and as soon as these machines became practical he put 'em in. The +other day when I was going through the room one of these shuttles flew off, as +they sometimes do when the looms are running at high speed. A woman was pretty +badly hurt. Ditmar came right down." + +"He really cares about them," said Janet. She liked Caldwell's praise of +Ditmar, yet she spoke a little doubtfully. + +"Of course he cares. But it's common sense to make 'em as comfortable and +happy as possible--isn't it? He won't stand for being held up, and he'd be +stiff enough if it came to a strike. I don't blame him for that. Do you?" + +Janet was wondering how ruthless Ditmar could be if his will were crossed.... +They had left the room with its noise and heat behind them and were descending +the worn, oaken treads of the spiral stairway of a neighbouring tower. Janet +shivered a little, and her face seemed almost feverish as she turned to +Caldwell and thanked him. + +"Oh, it was a pleasure, Miss Bumpus," he declared. "And sometime, when you +want to see the Print Works or the Worsted Department, let me know--I'm your +man. And--I won't mention it." + +She did not answer. As they made their way back to the office he glanced at +her covertly, astonished at the emotional effect in her their tour had +produced. Though not of an inflammable temperament, he himself was stirred, +and it was she who, unaccountably, had stirred him: suggested, in these +processes he saw every day, and in which he was indeed interested, something +deeper, more significant and human than he had guessed, and which he was unable +to define.... + +Janet herself did not know why this intimate view of the mills, of the people +who worked in them had so greatly moved her. All day she thought of them. And +the distant throb of the machinery she felt when her typewriter was silent +meant something to her now--she could not say what. When she found herself +listening for it, her heart beat faster. She had lived and worked beside it, +and it had not existed for her, it had had no meaning, the mills might have +been empty. She had, indeed, many, many times seen these men and women, boys +and girls trooping away from work, she had strolled through the quarters in +which they lived, speculated on the lands from which they had come; but she had +never really thought of them as human beings, individuals, with problems and +joys and sorrows and hopes and fears like her own. Some such discovery was +borne in upon her. And always an essential function of this revelation, +looming larger than ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar. It was for Ditmar +they toiled, in Ditmar's hands were their very existences, his was the +stupendous responsibility and power. + +As the afternoon wore, desire to see these toilers once more took possession of +her. From the white cupola perched above the huge mass of the Clarendon Mill +across the water sounded the single stroke of a bell, and suddenly the air was +pulsing with sounds flung back and forth by the walls lining the river. +Seizing her hat and coat, she ran down the stairs and through the vestibule and +along the track by the canal to the great gates, which her father was in the +act of unbarring. She took a stand beside him, by the gatehouse. Edward +showed a mild surprise. + +"There ain't anything troubling you--is there, Janet?" he asked. + +She shook her head. + +"I wanted to see the hands come out," she said. + +Sometimes, as at present, he found Janet's whims unaccountable. + +"Well, I should have presumed you'd know what they look like by this time. +You'd better stay right close to me, they're a rough lot, with no respect or +consideration for decent folks--these foreigners. I never could see why the +government lets 'em all come over here." He put on the word "foreigners" an +emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic because of its peculiar note of +futility. Janet paid no attention to him. Her ears were strained to catch the +rumble of feet descending the tower stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it +came from the doorway--the first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled +the yard and swept onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge +of the gates. Impossible to realize this as the force which, when distributed +over the great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and useful task! for +it was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of its swollen powers, +menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold. It seemed to Janet indeed a torrent +as she clung to the side of the gatehouse as one might cling to the steep bank +of a mountain brook after a cloud-burst. And suddenly she had plunged into it. +The desire was absurd, perhaps, but not to be denied,--the desire to mix with +it, feel it, be submerged and swept away by it, losing all sense of identity. +She heard her father call after her, faintly--the thought crossed her mind that +his appeals were always faint,--and then she was being carried along the canal, +eastward, the pressure relaxing somewhat when the draining of the side streets +began. + +She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams met and +mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington and the +Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations, hurried thither, +reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until she had gained the +middle, where she stood grasping the rail. The great structure was a-tremble +from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway overrun with workers, dodging +between trolleys and trucks,--some darting nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along +the steel girders. Doffer boys romped and whistled, young girls in jaunty, +Faber Street clothes and flowered hats, linked to one another for protection, +chewed gum and joked, but for the most part these workers were silent, the +apathy of their faces making a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their +feet and set intentness of their bodies as they sped homeward to the tenements. +And the clothes of these were drab, save when the occasional colour of a hooded +peasant's shawl, like the slightly faded tints of an old master, lit up a group +of women. Here, going home to their children, were Italian mothers bred +through centuries to endurance and patience; sallow Jewesses, gaunt, bearded +Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and wrinkled brows, broad-faced +Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy Italian men and pale, blond Germans +mingled with muddy Syrians and nondescript Canadians. And suddenly the bridge +was empty, the army vanished as swiftly as it came! + +Janet turned. Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball of +fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent. The delicate lines of the upper +bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant the cupola of +the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in the azure a cloud of +pink jeweller's cotton. Even as she strove to fix these colours in her mind +they vanished, the western sky faded to magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor +of the river darkened, on either side pale lights sparkled from the windows of +the mills, while down the deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent +suds from the washing of the wools. It was given to her to know that which an +artist of living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things.... + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily are +called "spiritual," though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning of the +term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire organism. It left +her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness, brought her nearer to high +discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice out of the past called upon her to +forego, a voice somehow identified with her father! It was faint, ineffectual. +In obeying it, would she not lose all life had to give? When she came in to +supper her father was concerned about her because, instead of walking home with +him she had left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers. +Her evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his +comprehension. And how could she explain the motives that led to it? She was +sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the something +within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more rebellious, +more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature timorous and less +vitalized. + +After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the spirit of +adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already thronging with +people. It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered, and she wandered from +window to window until she found herself staring at a suit of blue cloth hung +on a form, beneath which was a card that read, "Marked down to $20." And +suddenly the suggestion flashed into her mind, why shouldn't she buy it? She +had the money, she needed a new suit for the winter, the one she possessed was +getting shabby...but behind the excuse of necessity was the real reason +triumphantly proclaiming itself--she would look pretty in it, she would be +transformed, she would be buying a new character to which she would have to +live up. The old Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit +would announce to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released all +those longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become insupportable! +This was what the purchase meant, a change of existence as complete as that +between the moth and the butterfly; and the realization of this fact, of the +audacity she was resolved to commit made her hot as she gazed at the suit. It +was modest enough, yet it had a certain distinction of cut, it looked +expensive: twenty dollars was not cheap, to be sure, but as the placard +announced, it had the air of being much more costly--even more costly than +thirty dollars, which seemed fabulous. Though she strove to remain outwardly +calm, her heart beat rapidly as she entered the store and asked for the +costume, and was somewhat reassured by the comportment of the saleswoman, who +did not appear to think the request preposterous, to regard her as a +spendthrift and a profligate. She took down the suit from the form and led +Janet to a cabinet in the back of the shop, where it was tried on. + +"It's worth every bit of thirty dollars," she heard the woman say, "but we've +had it here for some time, and it's no use for our trade. You can't sell +anything like that in Hampton, there's no taste here, it's too good, it ain't +showy enough. My, it fits you like it was made for you, and it's just your +style--and you can see it wants a lady to wear it. Your old suit is too tight- +-I guess you've filled out some since you bought it." + +She turned Janet around and around, patting the skirt here and there, and then +stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression almost rapturous. +Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror and buttoned up the coat. +Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned? this image she beheld an illusion? +or did she really look different, distinguished? and if not beautiful-- +alluring? She had had a momentary apprehension, almost sickening, that she +would be too conspicuous, but the saleswoman had anticipated that objection +with the magical word "lady." + +"I'll take it," she announced. + +"Well, you couldn't have done better if you'd gone to Boston," declared the +woman. "It's one chance in a thousand. Will you wear it?" + +"Yes," said Janet faintly.... "Just put my old suit in a box, and I'll call +for it in an hour." + +The woman's sympathetic smile followed her as she left the shop. She had an +instant of hesitation, of an almost panicky desire to go back and repair her +folly, ere it was too late. Why had she taken her money with her that evening, +if not with some deliberate though undefined purpose? But she was ashamed to +face the saleswoman again, and her elation was not to be repressed--an elation +optically presented by a huge electric sign on the farther side of the street +that flashed through all the colours of the spectrum, surrounded by running +fire like the running fire in her soul. Deliciously self-conscious, her gaze +fixed ahead, she pressed through the Wednesday night crowds, young mill men and +women in their best clothes, housewives and fathers of families with children +and bundles. In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement +staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read. "Five Millionaire +Directors Indicted in New York," "State Treasurer Accused of Graft," "Murdock +Fortune Contested by Heirs." The phrases seemed meaningless, and she hurried +on again.... She was being noticed! A man looked at her, twice, the first +glance accidental, the second arresting, appealing, subtly flattering, +agitating--she was sure he had turned and was following her. She hastened her +steps. It was wicked, what she was doing, but she gloried in it; and even the +sight, in burning red letters, of Gruber's Cafe failed to bring on a revulsion +by its association with her sister Lise. The fact that Lise had got drunk +there meant nothing to her now. She gazed curiously at the illuminated, +orange-coloured panes separated by curving leads, at the design of a harp in +green, at the sign "Ladies' Entrance"; listened eagerly to the sounds of voices +and laughter that came from within. She looked cautiously over her shoulder, a +shadow appeared, she heard a voice, low, insinuating.... + +Four blocks farther down she stopped. The man was no longer following her. +She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to Eda's--not quite. +Of late her conscience had reproached her about Eda, Janet had neglected her. +She told herself she was afraid of Eda's uncanny and somewhat nauseating flair +for romance; and to show Eda the new suit, though she would relish her friend's +praise, would be the equivalent of announcing an affair of the heart which she, +Janet, would have indignantly to deny. She was not going to Eda's. She knew +now where she was going. A prepared but hitherto undisclosed decree of fate +had bade her put money in her bag that evening, directed her to the shop to buy +the dress, and would presently impel her to go to West Street--nay, was even +now so impelling her. Ahead of her were the lights of the Chippering Mill, in +her ears was the rhythmic sound of the looms working of nights on the Bradlaugh +order. She reached the canal. The white arc above the end of the bridge cast +sharp, black shadows of the branches of the trees on the granite, the thousand +windows of the mill shone yellow, reflected in the black water. Twice she +started to go, twice she paused, held by the presage of a coming event, a +presage that robbed her of complete surprise when she heard footsteps on the +bridge, saw the figure of a man halting at the crown of the arch to look back +at the building he had left, his shoulders squared, his hand firmly clasping +the rail. Her heart was throbbing with the looms, and yet she stood +motionless, until he turned and came rapidly down the slope of the arch and +stopped in front of her. Under the arc lamp it was almost as bright as day. + +"Miss Bumpus!" he exclaimed. + +"Mr. Ditmar" she said. + +"Were you--were you coming to the office?" + +"I was just out walking," she told him. "I thought you were in Boston." + +"I came home," he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never leaving +her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back again to her +face. "I got here on the seven o'clock train, I wanted to see about those new +Blubbers." + +"They finished setting them up this afternoon," she said. + +"How did you know?" + +"I asked Mr. Orcutt about it--I thought you might telephone." + +"You're a wonder," was his comment. "Well, we've got a running start on that +order," and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill. "Everything going +full speed ahead. When we put it through I guess I'll have to give you some of +the credit." + +"Oh, I haven't done anything," she protested. + +"More than you think. You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't get +along without you." His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices of those +who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone. It sounded absurd, yet +it did not repel her: something within her responded to it. "Which way were +you going?" he inquired. + +"Home," she said. + +"Where do you live?" + +"In Fillmore Street." And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a little +street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street." + +"Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood. "I'll come with +you as far as the bridge--along the canal. I've got so much to say to you." + +"Can't you say it to-morrow?" + +"No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many interruptions, I +mean. And then, you never give me a chance." + +She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her. He had proposed the +route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize them, and her +pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the sweet allurement of the +adventure she craved, which indeed she had come out to seek and by a strange +fatality found--since he had appeared on the bridge almost as soon as she +reached it. The sense of fate was strong upon her. Curiosity urged her, and, +thanks to the eulogy she had read of him that day, to the added impression of +his power conveyed by the trip through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than +ever in her consciousness. + +"What do you want to say?" she asked. + +"Oh, lots of things." + +She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but +firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power stronger +than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm seemed to burn where +he touched her. + +"Have I done something to offend you?" she heard him say. "Or is it because +you don't like me?" + +"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him. "I don't like seeing +you--this way. And why should you want to know me and see me outside of the +office? I'm only your stenographer." + +"Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met. You +don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself." + +"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer," she +informed him. + +"For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed. "I've been afraid of that. Don't go--I +don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful--I won't get you talked about." + +"Talked about!" She tore herself away from him. "Why should you get me talked +about?" she cried. + +He was frightened. "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--" + +"What did you mean?" + +"Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we +shouldn't be friends. I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our +friendship the subject of gossip." + +Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and penitence, +she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over him. + +"Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any advantages- +-and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper about you today--Mr. +Caldwell gave it to me--" + +"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively. + +"Well, in some places it was rather funny." + +"Funny? How?" + +"Oh, I don't know." She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic lack of +restraint hinted at by Caldwell. "I liked it, but I thought it praised you too +much, it didn't criticize you enough." + +He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing. From +the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got anything but +flattery. + +"I want you to criticize me," he said. + +But she went on relentlessly:-- + +"When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you'd got +everything you'd started out to get, and how some day you might be treasurer +and president of the Chippering Mill, well--" Despairing of giving adequate +expression to her meaning, she added, "I didn't see how we could be friends." + +"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly. + + +"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly. But I +didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived--in a little flat +that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a tenement. +It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking. You +couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is? And you wouldn't care +to be talked about yourself, either," she added vehemently. + +This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words. + +"Listen!" he urged. "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and +honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on you. +And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I thought of +you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to put it over.'" + +She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to +herself, to take her arm again. + +"How could I help you?" + +"Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of thinking for +me, and you can help me by just being there. I can't explain it, but I feel +somehow that things will go right. I've come to depend on you." + +He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not +intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing with +the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently abandoned +him. He was appalled at the possibility of losing her. + +"I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent. "You're +different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are." His voice was low, +caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder pressed against her +shoulder. "I've never had a woman friend before, I've never wanted one until +now." + +She wondered about his wife. + +"You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains." + +"Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed. + +"You're beautiful," he whispered. "It's queer, but I didn't know it at first. +You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you." + +They had come almost to Warren Street. Suddenly realizing that they were +standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end of the +bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently. + +"Let's walk back a little way," he proposed. + +"I must go home--it's late." + +"It's only nine o'clock." + +"I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me. Good night." + +"Just one more turn!" he pleaded. + +But she shook her head, backing away from him. + +"You'll see me to-morrow," she told him. She didn't know why she said that. +She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her shoulder; her +feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of music was in her ears, +the lights sparkled. She had had an adventure, at last, an adventure that +magically had transformed her life! She was beautiful! No one had ever told +her that before. And he had said that he needed her. She smiled as, with an +access of tenderness, in spite of his experience and power she suddenly felt +years older than Ditmar. She could help him!... + +She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street. + +"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said. + + +"Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman. She was seated +quietly sewing under the lamp. + +"I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried this?" +Janet asked. + +The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as she rose, +brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face. She felt that her secret had been +guessed. The change effected, Janet went homeward swiftly, to encounter, on +the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise, whose attention was immediately +attracted by the bundle. + +"What have you got there, angel face?" she demanded. + +"A new suit," said Janet. + +"You don't tell me--where'd you get it? at the Paris?" + +"No, at Dowling's." + +"Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!" + +"Well, what if it was?" + +Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of whistling +through her teeth. + +"Twenty bucks! Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next. Well, as +sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when they first knocked +it down I said to Sadie, `those are the rags Janet would buy if she had the +ready.' Have you got another raise out of Ditmar?" + +"If I have, it isn't any business of yours," Janet retorted. "I've got a right +to do as I please with my own money." + +"Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you look +well." + +After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when they +reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that Janet had +bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it. And finally, when they had got to +bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against this new expression of +the sordidness and lack of privacy in which she was forced to live, made the +more intolerable by the close, sultry darkness of the room and the snoring of +Lise. + +In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness during the +ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness and alertness. It +had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note had somehow become +exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life; and Lise's sarcastic +comments as to the probable reasons why she did not put on the new suit had +host their power of exasperation. Janet compromised, wearing a blouse of china +silk hitherto reserved for "best." The day was bright, and she went rapidly +toward the mill, glorying in the sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air; +and her thoughts were not so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of +which he was the medium. She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that. +When she reached the office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she took off +her hat and jacket and began to sort out the mail. And she had to calm herself +with the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar had undergone no change. +She had merely met him by the canal, and he had talked to her. That was all. +He had, of course, taken her arm: it tingled when she remembered it. But when +he suddenly entered the room her heart gave a bound. He closed the door, he +took off his hat, and stood gazing at her--while she continued arranging +letters. Presently she was forced to glance at him. His bearing, his look, +his confident smile all proclaimed that he, at least, believed things to be +changed. He glowed with health and vigour, with an aggressiveness from which +she shrank, yet found delicious. + +"How are you this morning?" he said at last--this morning as distinguished +from all other mornings. + +"I'm well, as usual," she answered. She herself was sometimes surprised by her +ability to remain outwardly calm. + +"Why did you run away from me last night?" + +"I didn't run away, I had to go home," she said, still arranging the letters. + +"We could have had a little walk. I don't believe you had to go home at all. +You just wanted an excuse to get away from me." + +"I didn't need an excuse," she told him. He moved toward her, but she took a +paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room. + +"I thought we were going to be friends," he said. + +"Being friends doesn't mean being foolish," she retorted. "And Mr. Orcutt's +waiting to see you." + +"Let him wait." + +He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the typewritten +words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as grasping the meaning +of them. From time to time he glanced up at Janet as she flitted about the +room. By George, she was more desirable than he had ever dared to imagine! He +felt temporarily balked, but hopeful. On his way to the mill he had dwelt with +Epicurean indulgence on this sight of her, and he had not been disappointed. +He had also thought that he might venture upon more than the mere feasting of +his eyes, yet found an inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means +absolutely repulsed him. Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle +transformation. There could be no doubt of that. She was almost coquettish. +His eyes lingered. The china silk blouse was slightly open at the neck, +suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the outline of her +shoulders. Overcome by an impulse he could not control, he got up and went +toward her, but she avoided him. + +"I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come," she said, rather breathlessly, as she +reached the door and opened it. Ditmar halted in his steps at the sight of the +tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the threshold. + +Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other. + +"I've been waiting for you," he said, after a moment, "the rest of that lot +didn't come in this morning. I've telephoned to the freight agent." + +Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly. Orcutt repeated the information. + +"Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them." + +"I'm doing that," replied the conscientious Orcutt. + +"How's everything else going?" Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for geniality. +"You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear yourself out." + +Mr. Orcutt was relieved. He had expected an outburst of the exasperation that +lately had characterized his superior. They began to chat. Janet had escaped. + +"Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you up," +Ditmar informed him. + +"She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," Orcutt +observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her going +through the mill with young Caldwell." + +Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held. + +"Oh, she went through, did she?" + +After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular +musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk. + +That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning to +confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve. She sat by her +window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she was swept by +surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were strangely commingled. +A voice within her said, "This can't go on, this can't go on! It's too +terrible! Everyone in the office will notice it--there will be a scandal. I +ought to go away while there is yet time--to-day." Though the instinct of +flight was strong within her, she was filled with rebellion at the thought of +leaving when Adventure was flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill +across the waters was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun. +She had made at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was +inconceivable without him. + +Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one hand and +what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when, toward the middle +of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning her to take his letters; +and went palpitating, leaving the door open behind her, seating herself on the +far side of the desk, her head bent over her book. Her neck, where her hair +grew in wisps behind her ear, seemed to burn: Ditmar's glance was focussed +there. Her hands were cold as she wrote.... Then, like a deliverer, she saw +young Caldwell coming in from the outer office, holding a card in his hand +which he gave to Ditmar, who sat staring at it. + +"Siddons?" he said. "Who's Siddons?" + +Janet, who had risen, spoke up. + +"Why, he's been making the Hampton `survey.' You wrote him you'd see him-- +don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?" + +"Don't go!" exclaimed Ditmar. "You can't tell what those confounded reformers +will accuse you of if you don't have a witness." + +Janet sat down again. The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating +reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or less +to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his manner on +such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his dependence, of her own +usefulness. Besides, she had been curious about the `survey' at the time it +was first mentioned, she wished to hear Ditmar's views concerning it. Mr. +Siddons proved to be a small and sallow young man with a pointed nose and +bright, bulbous brown eyes like a chipmunk's. Indeed, he reminded one of a +chipmunk. As he whisked himself in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused +impression of polite self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion; +he had the air of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring +it, is prepared to deal with it. Janet smiled. She had a sudden impulse to +drop the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he would jump. + +"How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?" he said. "I've been hoping to have this +pleasure." + +"My secretary, Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. + +Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed. Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his chair, +seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened a drawer of +his desk and offered the visitor a cigar. + +"Thanks, I don't smoke," said Mr. Siddons. + +Ditmar lit one for himself. + +"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked. + +"Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an +examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the operatives +in the city of Hampton. I'm sure you'd be interested in hearing something of +the situation we found." + +"I suppose you've been through our mills," said Ditmar. + +"No, the fact is--" + +"You ought to go through. I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a slight +emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making things +comfortable and healthy for our people." + +"I've no doubt of it--in fact, I've been so informed. It's because of your +concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured to come +and talk to you of how most of them live when they're at home," replied +Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly. "Perhaps, though living in Hampton, +you don't quite realize what the conditions are. I know a man who has lived in +Boston ten years and who hasn't ever seen the Bunker Hill monument." + +"The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair," retorted Ditmar, "anybody can go +there who has enough curiosity and interest. But I don't see how you can +expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up their garbage and +wash their babies. I shouldn't want anybody to interfere with my private +affairs." + +"But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace?" +Siddons objected. "Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of tenements ready +to crumble. There are no provisions for foundations, thickness of walls, size +of timbers and columns, and if these houses had been deliberately erected to +make a bonfire they couldn't have answered the purpose better. If it were not +for the danger to life and the pity of making thousands of families homeless, a +conflagration would be a blessing, although I believe the entire north or south +side of the city would go under certain conditions. The best thing you could +do would be to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding +grounds for disease. In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of +rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases with +only four-foot courts littered with refuse,--houses without light, without +ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking and eating +and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to put dogs in. You've got +some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the acre, and your average +density is considerably over a hundred." + +"Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?" asked Ditmar. + +"That isn't the point," said Siddons. "The point is that they're bad, they're +dangerous, they're inhuman. If you could go into these tenements as I have +done and see the way some of these people live, it would make you sick the +Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially. You wouldn't treat cattle that +way. In some households of five rooms, including the kitchen, I found as many +as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people living. You've got an alarming +infant death-rate." + +"Isn't it because these people want to live that way?" Ditmar inquired. "They +actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a pig-sty--they had +'em in Europe. And what do you expect us to do? Buy land and build flats for +them? Inside of a month they'd have all the woodwork stripped off for +kindling, the drainage stopped up, the bathtubs filled with ashes. I know, +because it's been tried." + +Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and his +eyes sought Janet's. She avoided them, resenting a little the assumption of +approval she read in them. Her mind, sensitive to new ideas, had been keenly +stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began patiently to dwell once more +on the ill effect of the conditions he had discovered on the welfare of the +entire community. She had never thought of this. She was surprised that +Ditmar should seem to belittle it. Siddons was a new type in her experience. +She could understand and to a certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing +exasperation with him; he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he +spent most of his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off +Ditmar's objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as, +"Before we come to that, let me say a word just here." Ditmar hated words. +His outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not unlike the futile +charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a smaller and more agile +one. With nimble politeness, with an exasperating air of deference to Ditmar's +opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only to return to the charge; yet, despite a +manner and method which, when contrasted to Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous, +Mr. Siddons had a force and fire of his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he +dwelt on the misery he had seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of +his feeling, Janet began to be moved. It was odd, considering the struggle for +existence of her own family, that these foreigners had remained outside the +range of her sympathy. + +"I guess you'll find," Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, "I guess you'll +find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people have got +millions tucked away. And they send a lot of it to the other side, they go +back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they manage to buy land. +Ask the real estate men. Why, I could show you a dozen who worked in the mills +a few years ago and are capitalists to-day." + +"I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar," Siddons gracefully conceded. "But what does it +prove? Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on ruthless competition. +The great majority who are unable to survive the test pay the price. And the +community also pays the price, the state and nation pay it. And we have this +misery on our consciences. I've no doubt you could show me some who have grown +rich, but if you would let me I could take you to families in desperate want, +living in rooms too dark to read in at midday in clear weather, where the +husband doesn't get more than seven dollars a week when the mills are running +full time, where the woman has to look out for the children and work for the +lodgers, and even with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to go into +the mills to earn money for winter clothing. I've seen enough instances of +this kind to offset the savings bank argument. And even then, when you have a +family where the wife and older children work, where the babies are put out to +board, where there are three and four lodgers in a room, why do you suppose +they live that way? Isn't it in the hope of freeing themselves ultimately from +these very conditions? And aren't these conditions a disgrace to Hampton and +America?" + +"Well, what am I to do about it?" Ditmar demanded. + +"I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings in the +mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances. That's more than a +good many mills I could mention attempt." + +"You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than any +man in Hampton. You can bring pressure to bear on the city council to enforce +and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a campaign of public +opinion against certain property owners." + +"Yes," retorted Ditmar, "and what then? You raise the rents, and you won't get +anybody to live in the houses. They'll move out to settlements like Glendale +full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're accustomed to. What +you reformers are actually driving at is that we should raise wages--isn't it? +If we raised wages they'd live like rats anyway. I give you credit for +sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want you to think I'm not as much +interested in the welfare of these people as you and the men behind you. The +trouble is, you only see one side of this question. When you're in my +position, you're up against hard facts. We can't pay a dubber or a drawing +tender any more than he's worth, whether he has a wife or children in the mills +or whether he hasn't. We're in competition with other mills, we're in +competition with the South. We can't regulate the cost of living. We do our +best to make things right in the mills, and that's all we can do. We can't +afford to be sentimental about life. Competition's got to be the rule, the +world's made that way. Some are efficient and some aren't. Good God, any man +who's had anything to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that +drummed into him hard. You talk about ordinances, laws--there are enough laws +and ordinances in this city and in this state right now. If we have any more +the mills will have to shut down, and these people will starve--all of 'em." +Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and he flung his cigar away. "Send +me a copy of your survey when it's published. I'll look it over." + +"Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?" Ditmar exploded, +when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out. "Comes in here to advise me that it's +my business to look out for the whole city of Hampton. I'd like to see him up +against this low-class European labour trying to run a mill with them. They're +here one day and there the next, they don't know what loyalty is. You've got +to drive 'em--if you give 'em an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite +your property. Why, there's nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend +on them, I'd build 'em houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home. As it +is, I do my best, though they don't deserve it,--in slack seasons I run half +time when I oughtn't to be running at all." + +His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had been +increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the sympathy on which +he had counted. She sat silent, gazing searchingly at his face. + +"What's the matter?" he demanded. "You don't mean to say you agree with that +kind of talk?" + +"I was wondering--" she began. + +"What?" + +"If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to work in +order to keep alive?" + +"Understand them! Why not?" he asked. + +"Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're pretty +much your own master--and that makes it different. I'm not blaming you--in +your place I'd be the same, I'm sure. But this man, Siddons, made me think. +I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is, in a way." + +"Not like these foreigners!" he protested. + +"Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped suddenly in +his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the startled air of the +male who has inadvertently touched off one of the many hidden springs in the +feminine emotional mechanism. "How do you know what it is to live in a +squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms that smell of cooking, and not be +able to have any of the finer, beautiful things in life? Unless you'd wanted +these things as I've wanted them, you couldn't know. Oh, I can understand what +it would feel like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!" + +"You can!" he exclaimed in amazement. "You!" + +"Yes, me. You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for them +any more than you could feel sorry for me. You want them to run your mills for +you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they live, and you just want +me--for your pleasure." + +He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in his +experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not the type +of man to be shocked by it. On the contrary, it swept away his irritation, and +as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a fever heat as he +approached and stood over her. + +"You little--panther!" he whispered. "You want beautiful things, do you? +Well, I'll give 'em to you. I'll take care of you." + +"Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears. "Do you +think I want anybody to take care of me? That shows how little you know me. I +want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I get." + +Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings. +Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would indeed +have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of the red-blooded +man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook her with a wild appeal. +"What do I care about any others--I want you!" such was its message. And +against this paradoxical wish to be conquered, intensified by the magnetic +field of his passion, battled her self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire +to be free, to escape now from a domination the thought of which filled her +with terror. She felt his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers +straying along her arm; for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously +powerless. Then the emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and +she sprang away, dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she +stood swaying. + +"Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say. "For God's sake, why can't you +trust me?" + +She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to twinkle +fantastically in the distant mills. Presently she turned. Ditmar was in his +chair. She crossed the room to the electric switch, turning on the flood of +light, picked up her tote-book and sat down again. + +"Don't you intend to answer your letters?" she asked. + +He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized the +topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely. She experienced a certain +exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took down his +words. + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V1 +by Winston Churchill + + + + + + +THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT + +BY WINSTON CHURCHILL + + +VOLUME 2 + + +CHAPTER IX + +At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension +her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's +ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being +able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young +woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement that +the leash might break--and then what? Here was a situation, she knew +instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of +possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that +very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to +think about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of +anomalies and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her +knowledge and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which is +rapidly discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to +achieve the morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance. +Tradition, convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the +movies, even her mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom +with which the sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her. The +thought, however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise, +despite a fancied superiority, did occasionally shake her and bring about +a revulsion against Ditmar. Janet's problem was in truth, though she +failed so to specialize it, the supreme problem of our time: what is the +path to self-realization? how achieve emancipation from the commonplace? + +Was she in love with Ditmar? The question was distasteful, she avoided +it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to +cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused in +her. It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her +resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that +he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage. Plainly, he did not +intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so, a +profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her present +mood, have led her to refuse. She felt a fine scorn for the woman who, +under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all a man's worldly +goods in return for that which it was her privilege to give freely; while +the notion of servility, of economic dependence--though she did not so +phrase it--repelled her far more than the possibility of social ruin. + +This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton and +Ditmar had nothing to do with that.... + +Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind, +invaded her dreams. When she likened herself to the other exploited +beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,--of whom Mr. +Siddons had spoken--her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite +ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours. + +In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her +and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having +hesitated. A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to hurt +him before she left. At such times, however, unforeseen events +invariably intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans. One +evening at supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have achieved +the comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after struggle, she +gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah concerning the stove, +the condition of which for many months had been a menace to the welfare +of the family. Edward, it appeared, had remarked mildly on the absence +of beans. + +"Beans!" Hannah cried. "You're lucky to have any supper at all. I just +wish I could get you to take a look at that oven--there's a hole you can +put your hand through, if you've a mind to. I've done my best, I've made +out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in. He +says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything. A new one'll cost +thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy it. +And the fire-box is most worn through." + + +"Well, mother, we'll see what we can do," said Edward. + +"You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do +anything," retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply. +Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to +time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many +sheets. + +"It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with +asthma," he observed presently. "His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of +Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816, +and fought in the war of 1812. I've told you about him. This Caleb was +born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in +Detroit.... Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction +company. Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's +descendants. He married Sarah Styles" (reading painfully) "`and they had +issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet. John went to Middlebury, +Vermont, and married '" + +Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily. + +"A lot of good it does us to have all that information about Eben +Wheeler's asthma!" she complained. "It'll buy us a new stove, I guess. +Him and his old Bumpus papers! If the house burned down over our heads +that's all he'd think of." + +As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's +lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous. Accustomed as +Janet was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it +was gradually borne in upon her now--despite a preoccupation with her own +fate--that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect +a family crisis of the first magnitude. She was stirred anew to anger +and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be threatened in +its continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when, glancing at her +sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of self-disgust. Was +she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed? Lise, in her +evening finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was awaiting the hour +set for a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the Boston evening sheet +whose glaring red headlines stretched across the page. When the +newspaper fell to her lap a dreamy expression clouded Lise's eyes. She +was thinking of some man! Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only +to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered +on his face as he bent over the letter once more. Suddenly she +experienced an overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's +plight,--the destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in +the confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs. Never had a +destiny seemed so appalling. And yet Janet resented that pity. The +effect of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion +she was no longer a free agent, to leave Hampton and Ditmar when she +chose. Without her, this family was helpless. She rose, and picked up +some of the dishes. Hannah snatched them from her hands. + +"Leave 'em alone, Janet!" she said with unaccustomed sharpness. "I guess +I ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet." + +And a flash of new understanding came to Janet. The dishes were +vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had +been cheated by fate. A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something of +a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers.... Janet left the room +swiftly, entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out. +Across the street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and +through the window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his +chair, his feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at the +ceiling. When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down his +chair on the floor with a bang. + +"Why, it's Miss Janet!" he exclaimed. "How are you this evening, now? I +was just hoping some one would pay me a call." + +Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper of +pessimism, and she was moved to reply:-- + +"You know you were having a beautiful time, all by yourself." + +"A beautiful time, is it? Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some +young lady a-coming to pay me a visit." + +"Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?" + +"Then it's dreaming I am, still," retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly. + +Janet laughed. His tone, though bantering, was respectful. One of the +secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability to +estimate his fellow creatures. His manner of treating Janet, for +instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise. +In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing +her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to +attempt to pull wool over his eyes. Janet had the intelligence to trust +him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her +with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above +all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble. It +was his great quality. Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning +greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some +unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her, +and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a +certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and +self-respect. For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes +as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless +family in the clay-yellow flat across the street. And there was nothing, +she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family. So she +said:-- + +"I've come to see about the stove." + +"Sure," he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected. +"Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet. I've got a stove here I +know'll suit your mother. It's a Reading, it's almost new. Ye'd better +be having a look at it yourself." + +He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the +store. + +"It's in need of a little polish," he added, as he turned on a light, +"but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal." He opened +the oven and took off the lids. + +"I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves," she told him. "But I'll +trust your judgment. How much is it?" she inquired hesitatingly. + +He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture. + +"Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars. If that's +too much--mebbe we can find another." + +"Can you put it in to-morrow morning?" she asked. + +"I can that," he said. She drew out her purse. "Ye needn't be paying +for it all at once," he protested, laying a hand on her arm. "You won't +be running away." + +"Oh, I'd rather--I have the money," she declared hurriedly; and she +turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the +bills, how little was left in her purse. + +"I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon," he said, as he escorted +her to the door. And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until +she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had +in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went +straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had +brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been +equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,--a part +which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become +convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was indeed a +bewildering thing.... + +The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints continued, +Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her return home +in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of +protector and preserver of the family. She would have preferred, if +possible, to give the stove anonymously. Not that the expression of +Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the +dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and done it!" + +And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:-- + +"Somebody had to do it--didn't they? Who else was there?" + +"It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things. You'd ought to +save it you'll need it," Hannah continued illogically. + +"It's lucky I had the money," said Janet. + +Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other, +were the explosive expressions of deep feeling. Janet knew that her +mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice. She herself was moved by +Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed +sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation. + +"I hope the stove's all right, mother," she said. "Mr. Tiernan seemed to +think it was a good one." + +"It's a different thing," declared Hannah. "I was just wondering this +evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the +other. Come and see how nice it looks." + +Janet followed her into the kitchen. As they stood close together gazing +at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a +little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again. +She seized her apron and clapped it to her face. + +"You hadn't ought to be made to do it!" she sobbed. + +And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their +intercourse. She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the +room.... + +Supper was an ordeal. Janet did not relish her enthronement as a +heroine, she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her +father, which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie +her affection for him. Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took +on the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as +compared with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in +some sort to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder +daughter's act. + +"I guess you notice the difference in that pork," she would exclaim, and +when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah +observed: "As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a +daughter like her!" + +Janet squirmed. Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness +was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned +him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him +powerless before her mother's reproaches. After the meal was over he sat +listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured, +pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found +refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy. That +evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner, +untouched. + +What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who +also came in for her share of implied reproach. Of late Lise had become +an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to +make this occasion an object lesson. And though parental tenderness had +often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness in +failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite +relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the +nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise, might +do well to cultivate. Lise was equally determined to withhold any such +acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that Hannah +invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with it another-- +the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and ridicules the lack +of such knowledge in others. Its implication was made certain when the +two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper. Lise, feverishly +occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the silence there by +inquiring:-- + +"Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy a stove, too. How much does +Ditmar give you, sweetheart?" + +Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister. Lise struggled to escape. + +"Leave me go" she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was +released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which +had flopped to one side of her head. "I didn't mean nothin', I was only +kiddie' you--what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?" + +"I'm not like-you," said Janet. + +"I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her +mouth. "Forget it." + +When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to +rock agitatedly. What had really made her angry, she began to perceive, +was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's +intimation concerning Ditmar. Why should she have, in Lise, continually +before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals? +or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the +truth about herself? For some time Janet had more than suspected that +her sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from +discussing; an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her +conquests before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with +an engaging though cynical freedom. Although the existence of this +gentleman was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined +to believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the +fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular +inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton. What +was he like? It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways +possibly resemble Ditmar. Thus he became the object of a morbid +speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself +in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him. Janet, also, had +recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable +tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man. The very next +Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the +blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber +Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler +and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three +successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the +whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple, on three sides were +massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was +caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones. Shortly +after this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The Paris had alluringly +and craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak +ordained by providence to "go" with the hat. Miss Schuler declared it +would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity but the +trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two more pay-days and endure +the suspense arising from the possibility that some young lady of taste +and means might meanwhile become its happy proprietor. Had not the +saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had it on credit; but she did +succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing Saturday, in having it +withdrawn from public gaze. The second Saturday Lise triumphantly +brought the cloak home; a velvet cloak,--if the eyes could be believed,-- +velvet bordering on plush, with a dark purple ground delicately and +artistically spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged +with a material which--if not too impudently examined and no questions +asked--might be mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white +fox. Both investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of +Janet's increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before +the bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself with +a defiant apology. + +"I just had to have something--what with winter coming on," she declared, +seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back. "You might as well +get your clothes chick, while you're about it--and I didn't have to dig +up twenty bones, neither--nor anything like it--" a reflection on Janet's +moest blue suit and her abnormal extravagance. For it was Lise's habit +to carry the war into the enemy's country. "Sadie's dippy about it--says +it puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last Sunday's +supplement. Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?" and she wheeled +around for her sister's inspection. + +"If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the +rain." + + +"What's chewin' you now?" demanded Lise. She was not lacking in +imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its +purpose of summoning up a somwhat abject image of herself in wet velvet +and bedraggled feathers--an image suggestive of a certain hunted type of +woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror. And she was the more +resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this +suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like a +canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes. She +swung on Janet furiously. + +"I get you, all right!" she cried. "I guess I know what's eatin' you! +You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy what +I need. You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of them +Polak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look nice." + +And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:-- + +"If I were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an +introduction. You asked me what I thought. I don't care about the +money!" she exclaimed passionately. "I've often told you you were pretty +enough without having to wear that kind of thing--to make men stare at +you." + +"I want to know if I don't always look like a lady! And there's no man +living would try to pick me up more than once." The nasal note in Lise's +voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger. +"You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher." + +"I'd rather look like a floorwasher than--than another kind of woman," +Janet declared. + +"Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart," said Lise. "You needn't be +scared anybody will pick you up." + +"I'm not," said Janet.... + +This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the +stove. Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also been +moved to protest; futile protest. Its only effect on Lise was to +convince her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to +make her more secretive and sullen than ever before. + +"Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter," Hannah said +dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after +Lise had gone out. "I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and +blood--I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it. I guess it's what the +minister in Dolton used to call a visitation. I suppose I deserve it, +but sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might +have been able to put a stop to the way she's going on. She ain't like +any of the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find +out. She just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong. +Well, the world has got all jumbled up--it beats me." + +Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink. + +"I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit +hopin'. I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I +could honestly wish him to have her." + +"Mother!" protested Janet. Sometimes, in those conversations, she was +somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister. + +"Well, I don't," insisted Hannah, "that's a fact. I'll tell you what she +looks like in that hat and cloak--a bad woman. I don't say she is--I +don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my +daughter to look like one." + +"Oh, Lise can take care of herself," Janet said, in spite of certain +recent misgivings. + +"This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one," declared Hannah who, +from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels. +And after a moment's silence she inquired: "Who's this man that's payin' +her attention now?" + +"I don't know," replied Janet, "I don't know that there's anybody." + +"I guess there is," said Hannah. "I used to think that that Wiley was +low enough, but I could see him. It was some satisfaction. I could know +the worst, anyhow.... I guess it's about time for another flood." + +This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so frequent +in her recent experience. Her mother had used the words "right" and +"wrong." But what was "right," or "wrong?" There was no use asking +Hannah, who--she perceived--was as confused and bewildered as herself. +Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong? because, if +she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be +punished in an after life? She was not at all sure whether she believed +in an after life,--a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled her +friend Eda Rawle, who had "got religion" from an itinerant evangelist and +was now working off, in a "live" church, some of the emotional idealism +which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young unmarried women of +a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks. This was not, of +course, Janet's explanation of the change in her friend, of whom she now +saw less and less. They had had arguments, in which neither gained any +ground. For the first time in their intercourse, ideas had come between +them, Eda having developed a surprising self-assertion when her new +convictions were attacked, a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that +Janet found neither inspiring nor convincing. She resented being prayed +for, and an Eda fervent in good works bored her more than ever. Eda was +deeply pained by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her +heroine-worship persisted. Her continued regard for her friend might +possibly be compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has +developed a hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte. + +Janet was not wholly without remorse. She valued Eda's devotion, she +sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that +it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in +any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had felt instinctively +from the first that the friendship was not founded on, mental harmony, +and now it was brought home to her that Eda's solution could never be +hers. Eda would have been thrilled on learning of Ditmar's attentions, +would have advocated the adoption of a campaign leading up to matrimony. +In matrimony, for Eda, the soul was safe. Eda would have been horrified +that Janet should have dallied with any other relationship; God would +punish her. Janet, in her conflict between alternate longing and +repugnance, was not concerned with the laws and retributions of God. She +felt, indeed, the need of counsel, and knew not where to turn for it,-- +the modern need for other than supernatural sanctions. She did not +resist her desire for Ditmar because she believed, in the orthodox sense, +that it was wrong, but because it involved a loss of self-respect, a +surrender of the personality from the very contemplation of which she +shrank. She was a true daughter of her time. + +On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his +correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived and +interrupted him. Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to file +away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from her +work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder. The two men +were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that +struck her as dramatic. Both were vital figures, dominant types which +had survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle +for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been +projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize. +She surveyed Holster critically. He was short, heavily built, with an +almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and +kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun. His nasal voice was +complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by +gestures. The veins stood out on his forehead. She wondered what his +history had been. She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face +she was quick to detect a look she had seen before--a contraction of the +eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw. That look, and the +peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a +responsive sense of championship. + +"All right, Ditmar," she heard the other exclaim. "I tell you again +you'll never be able to pull it off." + +Ditmar's laugh was short, defiant. + +"Why not?" he asked. + +"Why not! Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January." + +"What's that got to do with it?" Ditmar demanded. + +"You'll see--you'll remember what I told you fellows at the conference +after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor +insisted on signing it. I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a +fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in +Hampton,--didn't I? I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and +make all the other strikes we've had here look like fifty cents. Didn't +I say that? Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool +people. You remember? You were the man who stood out against it, and +they listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing +about it. Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that law +goes into effect. You'll see what'll happen! You'll never be able to +fill that Bradlaugh order in God's world." + +"Oh hell," retorted Ditmar, contemptuously. "You're always for lying +down, Holster. Why don't you hand over your mill to the unions and go to +work on a farm? You might as well, if you're going to let the unions run +the state. Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony? +When they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to +fifty-four and we kept on payin' 'em for fifty-six, against my advice, +what happened? Did they thank us? I guess not. Were they contented? +Not on your life. They went right on agitating, throwing scares into the +party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,--and now it's +fifty-four hours. It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then we'll +have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South and +donate our mills to the state for insane asylums." + +"No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side. +They're getting sick of the unions now." + +Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it. + +"The public!" he exclaimed contemptuously. "A whole lot of good they'll +do us." + +Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost +touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the +Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar. She held her breath, her blood +ran faster,--the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal. + +"All right--remember what I say--wait and see where you come out with +that order." Holster's voice trembled with anger. He hesitated, and +left the office abruptly. Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and +then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and +seated himself in his chair. His eyes, still narrowed, had in them a +gleam of triumph that thrilled her. Combat seemed to stimulate and +energize him. + +"He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with +the Clarendon," Ditmar exclaimed. "Well, he'll have to guess again. +I've got his number." He began to turn over his letters. "Let's see, +where were we? Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the +door." + +Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a pencil +on a pad. The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea of +Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the +Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever that +hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that strange +surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had +experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against +him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited, had +wholly disappeared. Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she, somehow, +enlisted once again on his side. + +"By the way," he said abruptly, "you won't mention this--I know." + +"Won't mention what?" she asked. + +"This matter about the pay envelopes--that we don't intend to continue +giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-four when this law +goes into effect. They're like animals, most of 'em, they don't reason, +and it might make trouble if it got out now. You understand. They'd +have time to brood over it, to get the agitators started. When the time +comes they may kick a little, but they'll quiet down. And it'll teach +'em a lesson." + +"I never mention anything I hear in this office," she told him. + +"I know you don't," he assured her, apologetically. "I oughtn't to have +said that--it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it +spoken of. You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator +might make by getting them stirred up? You can see what it means to me, +with this order on my hands. I've staked everything on it." + +"But--when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that +they are not receiving their full wages--as Mr. Holster said?" Janet +inquired. + +"Why, they may grumble a little--but I'll be on the lookout for any move. +I'll see to that. I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push +this business of shorter hours and equal pay. It's the unskilled workers +who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized. If +we can keep out the agitators, we're all right. Even then, I'll show 'em +they can't come in here and exploit my operatives." + +In the mood in which she found herself his self-confidence, his +aggressiveness continued to inspire and even to agitate her, to compel +her to accept his point of view. + +"Why," he continued, "I trust you as I never trusted anybody else. I've +told you that before. Ever since you've been here you've made life a +different thing for me--just by your being here. I don't know what I'd +do without you. You've got so much sense about things--about people,-- +and I sometimes think you've got almost the same feeling about these +mills that I have. You didn't tell me you went through the mills with +Caldwell the other day," he added, accusingly. + +"I--I forgot," said Janet. "Why should I tell--you?" She knew that all +thought of Holster had already slipped from his mind. She did not look +up. "If you're not going to finish your letters," she said, a little +faintly, "I've got some copying to do." + +"You're a deep one," he said. And as he turned to the pile of +correspondence she heard him sigh. He began to dictate. She took down +his sentences automatically, scarcely knowing what she was writing; he +was making love to her as intensely as though his words had been the +absolute expression of his desire instead of the commonplace mediums of +commercial intercourse. Presently he stopped and began fumbling in one +of the drawers of his desk. + +"Where is the memorandum I made last week for Percy and Company?" + +"Isn't it there?" she asked. + +But he continued to fumble, running through the papers and disarranging +them until she could stand it no longer. + +"You never know where to find anything," she declared, rising and darting +around the desk and bending over the drawer, her deft fingers rapidly +separating the papers. She drew forth the memorandum triumphantly. + +"There!" she exclaimed. "It was right before your eyes." + +As she thrust it at him his hand closed over hers. She felt him drawing +her, irresistibly. + +"Janet!" he said. "For God's sake--you're killing me--don't you know it? +I can't stand it any longer!" + +"Don't!" she whispered, terror-stricken, straining away from him. "Mr. +Ditmar--let me go!" + +A silent struggle ensued, she resisting him with all the aroused strength +and fierceness of her nature. He kissed her hair, her neck,--she had +never imagined such a force as this, she felt herself weakening, +welcoming the annihilation of his embrace. + +"Mr. Ditmar!" she cried. "Somebody will come in." + +Her fingers sank into his neck, she tried to hurt him and by a final +effort flung herself free and fled to the other side of the room. + +"You little--wildcat!" she heard him exclaim, saw him put his +handkerchief to his neck where her fingers had been, saw a red stain on +it. "I'll have you yet!" + +But even then, as she stood leaning against the wall, motionless save for +the surging of her breast, there was about her the same strange, feral +inscrutableness. He was baffled, he could not tell what she was +thinking. She seemed, unconquered, to triumph over her disarray and the +agitation of her body. Then, with an involuntary gesture she raised her +hands to her hair, smoothing it, and without seeming haste left the room, +not so much as glancing at him, closing the door behind her. + +She reached her table in the outer office and sat down, gazing out of the +window. The face of the world--the river, the mills, and the bridge--was +changed, tinged with a new and unreal quality. She, too, must be +changed. She wasn't, couldn't be the same person who had entered that +room of Ditmar's earlier in the afternoon! Mr. Caldwell made a +commonplace remark, she heard herself answer him. Her mind was numb, +only her body seemed swept by fire, by emotions--emotions of fear, of +anger, of desire so intense as to make her helpless. And when at length +she reached out for a sheet of carbon paper her hand trembled so she +could scarcely hold it. Only by degrees was she able to get sufficient +control of herself to begin her copying, when she found a certain relief +in action--her hands flying over the keys, tearing off the finished +sheets, and replacing them with others. She did not want to think, to +decide, and yet she knew--something was trying to tell her that the +moment for decision had come. She must leave, now. If she stayed on, +this tremendous adventure she longed for and dreaded was inevitable. +Fear and fascination battled within her. To run away was to deny life; +to remain, to taste and savour it. She had tasted it--was it sweet?-- +that sense of being swept away, engulfed by an elemental power beyond +them both, yet in them both? She felt him drawing her to him, and she +struggling yet inwardly longing to yield. And the scarlet stain on his +handkerchief--when she thought of that her blood throbbed, her face +burned. + +At last the door of the inner office opened, and Ditmar came out and +stood by the rail. His voice was queer, scarcely recognizable. + +"Miss Bumpus--would you mind coming into my room a moment, before you +leave?" he said. + +She rose instantly and followed him, closing the door behind her, but +standing at bay against it, her hand on the knob. + +"I'm not going to touch you--you needn't be afraid," he said. Reassured +by the unsteadiness of his voice she raised her eyes to perceive that his +face was ashy, his manner nervous, apprehensive, conciliatory,--a Ditmar +she had difficulty in recognizing. "I didn't mean to frighten, to offend +you," he went on. "Something got hold of me. I was crazy, I couldn't +help it--I won't do it again, if you'll stay. I give you my word." + +She did not reply. After a pause he began again, repeating himself. + +"I didn't mean to do it. I was carried away--it all happened before I +knew. I--I wouldn't frighten you that way for anything in the world." + +Still she was silent. + +"For God's sake, speak to me!" he cried. "Say you forgive me--give me +another chance!" + +But she continued to gaze at him with widened, enigmatic eyes--whether of +reproach or contempt or anger he could not say. The situation +transcended his experience. He took an uncertain step toward her, as +though half expecting her to flee, and stopped. + +"Listen!" he pleaded. "I can't talk to you here. Won't you give me a +chance to explain--to put myself right? You know what I think of you, +how I respect and--admire you. If you'll only let me see you somewhere-- +anywhere, outside of the office, for a little while, I can't tell you how +much I'd appreciate it. I'm sure you don't understand how I feel--I +couldn't bear to lose you. I'll be down by the canal--near the bridge-- +at eight o'clock to-night. I'll wait for you. You'll come? Say you'll +come, and give me another chance!" + +"Aren't you going to finish your letters?" she asked. + +He stared at her in sheer perplexity. "Letters!" he exclaimed. "Damn +the letters! Do you think I could write any letters now?" + +As a faint ray in dark waters, a gleam seemed to dance in the shadows of +her eyes, yet was gone so swiftly that he could not be sure of having +seen it. Had she smiled? + +"I'll be there," he cried. "I'll wait for you " + +She turned from him, opened the door, and went out. + +That evening, as Janet was wiping the dishes handed her by her mother, +she was repeating to herself "Shall I go--or shan't I?"--just as if the +matter were in doubt. But in her heart she was convinced of its +predetermination by some power other than her own volition. With this +feeling, that she really had no choice, that she was being guided and +impelled, she went to her bedroom after finishing her task. The hands of +the old dining-room clock pointed to quarter of eight, and Lise had +already made her toilet and departed. Janet opened the wardrobe, looked +at the new blue suit hanging so neatly on its wire holder, hesitated, and +closed the door again. Here, at any rate, seemed a choice. She would +not wear that, to-night. She tidied her hair, put on her hat and coat, +and went out; but once in the street she did not hurry, though she knew +the calmness she apparently experienced to be false: the calmness of +fatality, because she was obeying a complicated impulse stronger than +herself--an impulse that at times seemed mere curiosity. Somewhere, +removed from her immediate consciousness, a storm was raging; she was +aware of a disturbance that reached her faintly, like the distant +throbbing of the looms she heard when she turned from Faber into West +Street She had not been able to eat any supper. That throbbing of the +looms in the night! As it grew louder and louder the tension within her +increased, broke its bounds, set her heart to throbbing too--throbbing +wildly. She halted, and went on again, precipitately, but once more +slowed her steps as she came to West Street and the glare of light at the +end of the bridge; at a little distance, under the chequered shadows of +the bare branches, she saw something move--a man, Ditmar. She stood +motionless as he hurried toward her. + +"You've come! You've forgiven me?" he asked. + +"Why were you--down there?" she asked. + +"Why? Because I thought--I thought you wouldn't want anybody to know--" + +It was quite natural that he should not wish to be seen; although she had +no feeling of guilt, she herself did not wish their meeting known. She +resented the subterfuge in him, but she made no comment because his +perplexity, his embarrassment were gratifying to her resentment, were +restoring her self-possession, giving her a sense of power. + +"We can't stay here," he went on, after a moment. "Let's take a little +walk--I've got a lot to say to you. I want to put myself right." He +tried to take her arm, but she avoided him. They started along the canal +in the direction of the Stanley Street bridge. "Don't you care for me a +little?" he demanded. + +"Why should I?" she parried. + +"Then--why did you come?" + +"To hear what you had to say." + +"You mean--about this afternoon?" + +"Partly," said Janet. + +"Well--we'll talk it all over. I wanted to explain about this afternoon, +especially. I'm sorry--" + +"Sorry!" she exclaimed. + +The vehemence of her rebuke--for he recognized it as such--took him +completely aback. Thus she was wont, at the most unexpected moments, to +betray the passion within her, the passion that made him sick with +desire. How was he to conquer a woman of this type, who never took +refuge in the conventional tactics of her sex, as he had known them? + +"I didn't mean that," he explained desperately. "My God--to feel you, to +have you in my arms--! I was sorry because I frightened you. But when +you came near me that way I just couldn't help it. You drove me to it." + +"Drove you to it!" + +"You don't understand, you don't know how--how wonderful you are. You +make me crazy. I love you, I want you as I've never wanted any woman +before--in a different way. I can't explain it. I've got so that I +can't live without you." He flung his arm toward the lights of the +mills. "That--that used to be everything to me, I lived for it. I don't +say I've been a saint--but I never really cared anything about any woman +until I knew you, until that day I went through the office and saw you +what you were. You don't understand, I tell you. I'm sorry for what I +did to-day because it offended you--but you drove me to it. Most of the +time you seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate +me, and then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other night, +as you seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a chance, and +then, when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why, I didn't know +what I was doing. I just had to have you. A man like me can't stand +it." + +"Then I'd better go away," she said. "I ought to have gone long ago." + +"Why?" he cried. "Why? What's your reason? Why do you want to ruin my +life? You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it. I +never knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you. There's +that mill," he repeated, naively. "I've made it the best mill in the +country, I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you +went away I wouldn't care a continental about it. If you went away I +wouldn't have any ambition left. Because you're a part of it, don't you +see? You--you sort of stand for it now, in my mind. I'm not literary, I +can't express what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of that +mill as a woman--and now you've come along--" Ditmar stopped, for lack of +adequate eloquence. + +She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of +the successful Ditmar, the Ditmar of great affairs, that appealed to her +most strongly. She was softened, touched; she felt, too, a responsive +thrill to such a desire as his. Yet she did not reply. She could not. +She was learning that emotion is never simple. And some inhibition, the +identity of which was temporarily obscured still persisted, pervading her +consciousness.... + +They were crossing the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by +common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail. The +hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,--only +the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river. Against +the flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the +power plant. Ditmar's shoulder touched hers. He was still pleading, but +she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters +falling over the dam. His words were like that, suggestive of a torrent +into which she longed to fling herself, yet refrained, without knowing +why. Her hands tightened on the rail; suddenly she let it go, and led +the way toward the unfrequented district of the south side. It was the +road to Silliston, but she had forgotten that. Ditmar, regaining her +side, continued his pleading. He spoke of his loneliness, which he had +never realized. He needed her. And she experienced an answering pang. +It still seemed incredible that he, too, who had so much, should feel +that gnawing need for human sympathy and understanding that had so often +made her unhappy. And because of the response his need aroused in her +she did not reflect whether he could fulfil her own need, whether he +could ever understand her; whether, at any time, she could unreservedly +pour herself out to him. + +"I don't see why you want me," she interrupted him at last. "I've never +had any advantages, I don't know anything. I've never had a chance to +learn. I've told you that before." + +"What difference does that make? You've got more sense than any woman I +ever saw," he declared. + +"It makes a great deal of difference to me," she insisted--and the sound +of these words on her own lips was like a summons arousing her from a +dream. The sordidness of her life, its cruel lack of opportunity in +contrast with the gifts she felt to be hers, and on which he had dwelt, +was swept back into her mind. Self-pity, dignity, and inherent self- +respect struggled against her woman's desire to give; an inherited racial +pride whispered that she was worthy of the best, but because she had +lacked the chance, he refrained from offering her what he would have laid +at the feet of another woman. + +"I'll give you advantages--there's nothing I wouldn't give you. Why +won't you come to me? I'll take care of you." + +"Do you think I want to be taken care of?" She wheeled on him so swiftly +that he started back. "Is that what you think I want?" + +"No, no," he protested, when he recovered his speech. + +"Do you think I'm after--what you can give me?" she shot at him. " What +you can buy for me?" + +To tell the truth, he had not thought anything about it, that was the +trouble. And her question, instead of enlightening him, only added to +his confusion and bewilderment. + +"I'm always getting in wrong with you," he told her, pathetically. +"There isn't anything I'd stop at to make you happy, Janet, that's what +I'm trying to say. I'd go the limit." + +"Your limit!" she exclaimed. + +"What do you mean?" he demanded. But she had become inarticulate-- +cryptic, to him. He could get nothing more out of her. + +"You don't understand me--you never will!" she cried, and burst into +tears--tears of rage she tried in vain to control. The world was black +with his ignorance. She hated herself, she hated him. Her sobs shook +her convulsively, and she scarcely heard him as he walked beside her +along the empty road, pleading and clumsily seeking to comfort her. Once +or twice she felt his hand on her shoulders.... And then, unlooked for +and unbidden, pity began to invade her. Absurd to pity him! She fought +against it, but the thought of Ditmar reduced to abjectness gained +ground. After all, he had tried to be generous, he had done his best, he +loved her, he needed her--the words rang in her heart. After all, he did +not realize how could she expect him to realize? and her imagination +conjured up the situation in a new perspective. Her sobs gradually +ceased, and presently she stopped in the middle of the road and regarded +him. He seemed utterly miserable, like a hurt child whom she longed to +comfort. But what she said was:-- + +"I ought to be going home." + +"Not yet!" he begged. "It's early. You say I don't understand you, +Janet--my God, I wish I did! It breaks me all up to see you cry like +that." + +"I'm sorry," she said, after a moment. "I--I can'tmmake you understand. +I guess I'm not like anybody else I'm queer--I can't help it. You must +let me go, I only make you unhappy." + +"Let you go!" he cried--and then in utter self-forgetfulness she yielded +her lips to his. A sound penetrated the night, she drew back from his +arms and stood silhouetted against the glare of the approaching headlight +of a trolley car, and as it came roaring down on them she hailed it. +Ditmar seized her arm. + +"You're not going--now?" he said hoarsely. + +"I must," she whispered. "I want to be alone--I want to think. You must +let me." + +"I'll see you to-morrow?" + +"I don't know--I want to think. I'm--I'm tired." + +The brakes screamed as the car came joltingly to a stop. She flew up the +steps, glancing around to see whether Ditmar had followed her, and saw +him still standing in the road. The car was empty of passengers, but the +conductor must have seen her leaving a man in this lonely spot. She +glanced at his face, white and pinched and apathetic--he must have seen +hundreds of similar episodes in the course of his nightly duties. He was +unmoved as he took her fare. Nevertheless, at the thought that these +other episodes might resemble hers, her face flamed--she grew hot all +over. What should she do now? She could not think. Confused with her +shame was the memory of a delirious joy, yet no sooner would she give +herself up, trembling, to this memory when in turn it was penetrated by +qualms of resentment, defiling its purity. Was Ditmar ashamed of her?... +When she reached home and had got into bed she wept a little, but her +tears were neither of joy nor sorrow. Her capacity for both was +exhausted. In this strange mood she fell asleep nor did she waken when, +at midnight, Lise stealthily crept in beside her. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Ditmar stood staring after the trolley car that bore Janet away until it +became a tiny speck of light in the distance. Then he started to walk +toward Hampton; in the unwonted exercise was an outlet for the pent-up +energy her departure had thwarted; and presently his body was warm with a +physical heat that found its counterpart in a delicious, emotional glow +of anticipation, of exultant satisfaction. After all, he could not +expect to travel too fast with her. Had he not at least gained a signal +victory? When he remembered her lips--which she had indubitably given +him!--he increased his stride, and in what seemed an incredibly brief +time he had recrossed the bridge, covered the long residential blocks of +Warren Street, and gained his own door. + +The house was quiet, the children having gone to bed, and he groped his +way through the dark parlour to his den, turning on the electric switch, +sinking into an armchair, and lighting a cigar. He liked this room of +his, which still retained something of that flavour of a refuge and +sanctuary it had so eminently possessed in the now forgotten days of +matrimonial conflict. One of the few elements of agreement he had held +in common with the late Mrs. Ditmar was a similarity of taste in +household decoration, and they had gone together to a great emporium in +Boston to choose the furniture and fittings. The lamp in the centre of +the table was a bronze column supporting a hemisphere of heavy red and +emerald glass, the colours woven into an intricate and bizarre design, +after the manner of the art nouveau--so the zealous salesman had informed +them. Cora Ditmar, when exhibiting this lamp to admiring visitors, had +remembered the phrase, though her pronunciation of it, according to the +standard of the Sorbonne, left something to be desired. The table and +chairs, of heavy, shiny oak marvellously and precisely carved by +machines, matched the big panels of the wainscot. The windows were high +in the wall, thus preventing any intrusion from the clothes-yard on which +they looked. The bookcases, protected by leaded panes, held countless +volumes of the fiction from which Cora Ditmar had derived her knowledge +of the great world outside of Hampton, together with certain sets she had +bought, not only as ornaments, but with a praiseworthy view to future +culture,--such as Whitmarsh's Library of the Best Literature. These +volumes, alas, were still uncut; but some of the pages of the novels--if +one cared to open them--were stained with chocolate. The steam radiator +was a decoration in itself, the fireplace set in the red and yellow tiles +that made the hearth. Above the oak mantel, in a gold frame, was a large +coloured print of a Magdalen, doubled up in grief, with a glory of loose, +Titian hair, chosen by Ditmar himself as expressing the nearest possible +artistic representation of his ideal of the female form. Cora Ditmar's +objections on the score of voluptuousness and of insufficient clothing +had been vain. She had recognized no immorality of sentimentality in the +art itself; what she felt, and with some justice, was that this +particular Magdalen was unrepentant, and that Ditmar knew it. And the +picture remained an offence to her as long as she lived. Formerly he had +enjoyed the contemplation of this figure, reminding him, as it did, of +mellowed moments in conquests of the past; suggesting also possibilities +of the future. For he had been quick to discount the attitude of bowed +despair, the sop flung by a sensuous artist to Christian orthodoxy. He +had been sceptical about despair--feminine despair, which could always be +cured by gifts and baubles. But to-night, as he raised his eyes, he felt +a queer sensation marring the ecstatic perfection of his mood. That +quality in the picture which so long had satisfied and entranced him had +now become repellent, an ugly significant reflection of something-- +something in himself he was suddenly eager to repudiate and deny. +It was with a certain amazement that he found himself on his feet with +the picture in his hand, gazing at the empty space where it had hung. +For he had had no apparent intention of obeying that impulse. What +should he do with it? Light the fire and burn it--frame and all? The +frame was an integral part of it. What would his housekeeper say? But +now that he had actually removed it from the wall he could not replace +it, so he opened the closet door and thrust it into a corner among relics +which had found refuge there. He had put his past in the closet; yet the +relief he felt was mingled with the peculiar qualm that follows the +discovery of symptoms never before remarked. Why should this woman have +this extraordinary effect of making him dissatisfied with himself? He +sat down again and tried to review the affair from that first day when he +had surprised in her eyes the flame dwelling in her. She had completely +upset his life, increasingly distracted his mind until now he could +imagine no peace unless he possessed her. Hitherto he had recognized in +his feeling for her nothing but that same desire he had had for other +women, intensified to a degree never before experienced. But this sudden +access of morality--he did not actually define it as such--was +disquieting. And in the feverish, semi-objective survey he was now +making of his emotional tract he was discovering the presence of other +disturbing symptoms such as an unwonted tenderness, a consideration +almost amounting to pity which at times he had vaguely sensed yet never +sought imaginatively to grasp. It bewildered him by hampering a +ruthlessness hitherto absolute. The fierceness of her inflamed his +passion, yet he recognized dimly behind this fierceness an instinct of +selfprotection--and he thought of her in this moment as a struggling bird +that fluttered out of his hands when they were ready to close over her. +So it had been to-night. He might have kept her, prevented her from +taking the car. Yet he had let her go! There came again, utterly to +blot this out, the memory of her lips. + +Even then, there had been something sorrowful in that kiss, a quality he +resented as troubling, a flavour that came to him after the wildness was +spent. What was she struggling against? What was behind her resistance? +She loved him! It had never before occurred to him to enter into the +nature of her feelings, having been so preoccupied with and tortured by +his own. This realization, that she loved him, as it persisted, began to +make him uneasy, though it should, according to all experience, have been +a reason for sheer exultation. He began to see that with her it involved +complications, responsibilities, disclosures, perhaps all of those things +he had formerly avoided and resented in woman. He thought of certain +friends of his who had become tangled up--of one in particular whose bank +account had been powerless to extricate him.... And he was ashamed of +himself. + +In view of the nature of his sex experience, of his habit of applying his +imagination solely to matters of business rather than to affairs of the +heart,--if his previous episodes may be so designated,--his failure to +surmise that a wish for marriage might be at the back of her resistance +is not so surprising as it may seem; he laid down, half smoked, his third +cigar. The suspicion followed swiftly on his recalling to mind her +vehement repudiation of his proffered gifts did he think she wanted what +he could buy for her! She was not purchasable--that way. He ought to +have known it, he hadn't realized what he was saying. But marriage! +Literally it had never occurred to him to image her in a relation he +himself associated with shackles. One of the unconscious causes of his +fascination was just her emancipation from and innocence of that herd- +convention to which most women--even those who lack wedding rings--are +slaves. The force of such an appeal to a man of Ditmar's type must not +be underestimated. And the idea that she, too, might prefer the sanction +of the law, the gilded cage as a popular song which once had taken his +fancy illuminatingly expressed it--seemed utterly incongruous with the +freedom and daring of her spirit, was a sobering shock. Was he prepared +to marry her, if he could obtain her in no other way? The question +demanded a survey of his actual position of which he was at the moment +incapable. There were his children! He had never sought to arrive at +even an approximate estimate of the boy and girl as factors in his life, +to consider his feelings toward them; but now, though he believed himself +a man who gave no weight to social considerations--he had scorned this +tendency in his wife--he was to realize the presence of ambitions for +them. He was young, he was astonishingly successful; he had reason to +think, with his opportunities and the investments he already had made, +that he might some day be moderately rich; and he had at times even +imagined himself in later life as the possessor of one of those elaborate +country places to be glimpsed from the high roads in certain localities, +which the sophisticated are able to recognize as the seats of the +socially ineligible, but which to Ditmar were outward and visible emblems +of success. He liked to think of George as the inheritor of such a +place, as the son of a millionaire, as a "college graduate," as an +influential man of affairs; he liked to imagine Amy as the wife of such +another. In short, Ditmar's wife had left him, as an unconscious legacy, +her aspirations for their children's social prestige.... + +The polished oak grandfather's clock in the hall had struck one before he +went to bed, mentally wearied by an unwonted problem involving, in +addition to self-interest, an element of ethics, of affection not wholly +compounded of desire. + +He slept soundly, however. He was one of those fortunate beings who come +into the world with digestive organs and thyroid glands in that condition +which--so physiologists tell us--makes for a sanguine temperament. And +his course of action, though not decided upon, no longer appeared as a +problem; it differed from a business matter in that it could wait. As +sufficient proof of his liver having rescued him from doubts and qualms +he was able to whistle, as he dressed, and without a tremor of agitation, +the forgotten tune suggested to his consciousness during the unpleasant +reverie of the night before,--"Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage!" It was +Saturday. He ate a hearty breakfast, joked with George and Amy, and +refreshed, glowing with an expectation mingled with just the right amount +of delightful uncertainty that made the great affairs of life a gamble, +yet with the confidence of the conqueror, he walked in sunlight to the +mill. In view of this firm and hopeful tone of his being he found it all +the more surprising, as he reached the canal, to be seized by a +trepidation strong enough to bring perspiration to his forehead. What if +she had gone! He had never thought of that, and he had to admit it would +be just like her. You never could tell what she would do. + +Nodding at Simmons, the watchman, he hurried up the iron-shod stairs, +gained the outer once, and instantly perceived that her chair beside the +window was empty! Caldwell and Mr. Price stood with their heads together +bending over a sheet on which Mr. Price was making calculations. + +"Hasn't Miss Bumpus come yet?" Ditmar demanded. He tried to speak +naturally, casually, but his own voice sounded strange, seemed to strike +the exact note of sickening apprehension that suddenly possessed him. +Both men turned and looked at him in some surprise. + +"Good-morning, Mr. Ditmar," Caldwell said. "Why, yes, she's in your +room." + +"Oh!" said Ditmar. + +"The Boston office has just been calling you--they want to know if you +can't take the nine twenty-two," Caldwell went on. "It's about that +lawsuit. It comes into court Monday morning, and Mr. Sprole is there, +and they say they have to see you. Miss Bumpus has the memorandum." + +Ditmar looked at his watch. + +"Damn it, why didn't they let me know yesterday?" he exclaimed. "I won't +see anybody, Caldwell--not even Orcutt--just now. You understand. I've +got to have a little time to do some letters. I won't be disturbed--by +any one--for half an hour." + +Caldwell nodded. + +"All right, Mr. Ditmar." + +Ditmar went into his office, closing the door behind him. She was +occupied as usual, cutting open the letters and laying them in a pile +with the deftness and rapidity that characterized all she did. + +"Janet!" he exclaimed. + +"There's a message for you from Boston. I've made a note of it," she +replied. + +"I know--Caldwell told me. But I wanted to see you before I went--I had +to see you. I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking +of you. Aren't you glad to see me?" + +She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his +approach--a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to +strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of +inner values. He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as +they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by +those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness--but when she turned away +her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek, +spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft +contour of her arm, his passion conquered.... Still he was acutely +conscious of a resistance within her--not as before, physically directed +against him, but repudiating her own desire. She became limp in his +arms, though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential +self of her he craved still evaded and defied him. And he clung to her +the more desperately--as though by crushing her peradventure he might +capture it. + +"You're hurting me," she said at last, and he let her go, standing by +helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment +instinctive to women. Even in these he read the existence of the +reservation he was loth to acknowledge. + +"Don't you love me?" he said. + +"I don't know." + +"You do!" he said. "You--you proved it--I know it." + +She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay +idle in her hand. + +"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" he exclaimed. "I can't +stand this. Janet, aren't you happy?" + +She shook her head. + +"Why not? I love you. I--I've never been so happy in my life as I was +this morning. Why aren't you happy--when we love each other?" + +"Because I'm not." + +"Why not? There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy--you know +that. Tell me!" + +"You wouldn't understand. I couldn't make you understand." + +"Is it something I've done?" + +"You don't love me," she said. "You only want me. I'm not made that +way, I'm not generous enough, I guess. I've got to have work to do." + +"Work to do! But you'll share my work--it's nothing without you." + +She shook her head. "I knew you couldn't understand. You don't realize +how impossible it is. I don't blame you--I suppose a man can't." + +She was not upbraiding him, she spoke quietly, in a tone almost lifeless, +yet the emotional effect of it was tremendous. + +"But," he began, and stopped, and was swept on again by an impulse that +drowned all caution, all reason. "But you can help me--when we are +married." + +"Married!" she repeated. "You want to marry me?" + +"Yes, yes--I need you." He took her hands, he felt them tremble in his, +her breath came quickly, but her gaze was so intent as seemingly to +penetrate to the depths of him. And despite his man's amazement at her +hesitation now that he had offered her his all, he was moved, disturbed, +ashamed as he had never been in his life. At length, when he could stand +no longer the suspense of this inquisition, he stammered out: "I want you +to be my wife." + +"You've wanted to marry me all along?" she asked. + +"I didn't think, Janet. I was mad about you. I didn't know you." + +"Do you know me now?" + +"That's just it," he cried, with a flash of clairvoyance, "I never will +know you--it's what makes you different from any woman I've ever seen. +You'll marry me?" + +"I'm afraid," she said. "Oh, I've thought over it, and you haven't. A +woman has to think, a man doesn't, so much. And now you're willing to +marry me, if you can't get me any other way." Her hand touched his coat, +checking his protest. "It isn't that I want marriage--what you can give +me--I'm not like that, I've told you so before. But I couldn't live as +your--mistress." + +The word on her lips shocked him a little--but her courage and candour +thrilled him. + +"If I stayed here, it would be found out. I wouldn't let you keep me. +I'd have to have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all +I've got--I'd kill myself." She spoke as calmly as though she were +reviewing the situation objectively. "And then, I've thought that you +might come to believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't realize +what you were doing, or what might happen if we were married. I've tried +to tell you that, too, only you didn't seem to understand what I was +saying. My father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer than some of +the operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in Hampton +wouldn't understand. Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--" she +spoke with more effort, "there are your children. When I've thought of +them, it all seems impossible. I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear it, +I wouldn't stay with you. You see, I ought to have gone away long ago." + +Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of +the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made +matters far less difficult. But these scruples of hers, so startlingly +his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a +momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that +might become extremely troublesome and complicated. His very reluctance +to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had +been swept into deep waters. On the other hand, her splendid resistance +appealed to him, enhanced her value. And accustomed as he had been to a +lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme +desire was not to be borne. Such were the shades of his feeling as he +listened to her. + +"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished. "You're a lady-- +I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your +father came here--it's as good as any in New England. What do you +suppose I care, Janet? We love each other--I've got to have you. We'll +be married in the spring, when the rush is over." + +He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that +embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her +will--and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own. Her +lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him +and hid her face in his shoulder. His sensations in the presence of this +thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he +had ever known. It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman +he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and +suffering, of creation and life--of the universe itself. + +"Janet--aren't you happy?" he said again. + +She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears. + +"I don't know. What I feel doesn't seem like happiness. I can't believe +in it, somehow." + +"You must believe in it," he said. + +"I can't,--perhaps I may, later. You'd better go now," she begged. +"You'll miss your train." + +He glanced at the office clock. "Confound it, I have to. Listen! I'll +be back this evening, and I'll get that little car of mine--" + +"No, not to-night--I don't want to go--to-night." + +"Why not?" + +"Not to-night," she repeated. + + Well then, to-morrow. To-morrow's Sunday. Do you know where the Boat +Club is on the River Boulevard? I'll be there, to-morrow morning at ten. +I'd come for you, to your house," he added quickly, "but we don't want +any one to know, yet--do we?" + +She shook her head. + +"We must keep it secret for a while," he said. "Wear your new dress--the +blue one. Good-bye--sweetheart." + +He kissed her again and hurried out of the office.... Boarding the train +just as it was about to start, he settled himself in the back seat of the +smoker, lit a cigar, inhaling deep breaths of the smoke and scarcely +noticing an acquaintance who greeted him from the aisle. Well, he had +done it! He was amazed. He had not intended to propose marriage, and +when he tried to review the circumstances that had led to this he became +confused. But when he asked himself whether indeed he were willing to +pay such a price, to face the revolution marriage--and this marriage in +particular--would mean in his life, the tumult in his blood beat down his +incipient anxieties. Besides, he possessed the kind of mind able to +throw off the consideration of possible consequences, and by the time the +train had slowed down in the darkness of the North Station in Boston all +traces of worry had disappeared. The future would take care of itself. + +For the Bumpus family, supper that evening was an unusually harmonious +meal. Hannah's satisfaction over the new stove had by no means subsided, +and Edward ventured, without reproof, to praise the restored quality of +the pie crust. And in contrast to her usual moroseness and self- +absorption, even Lise was gay--largely because her pet aversion, the +dignified and allegedly amorous Mr. Waiters, floor-walker at the +Bagatelle, had fallen down the length of the narrow stairway leading from +the cashier's cage. She became almost hysterical with glee as she +pictured him lying prone beneath the counter dedicated to lingerie, +draped with various garments from the pile that toppled over on him. +"Ruby Nash picked a brassiere off his whiskers!" Lise shrieked. "She +gave the pile a shove when he landed. He's got her number all right. +But say, it was worth the price of admission to see that old mutt when he +got up, he looked like Santa Claus. All the girls in the floor were +there we nearly split trying to keep from giving him the ha-ha. And Ruby +says, sympathetic, as she brushed him off, `I hope you ain't hurt, Mr. +Waiters.' He was sore! He went around all afternoon with a bunch on his +coco as big as a potato." So vivid was Lise's account of this affair +which apparently she regarded as compensation for many days of drudgery- +that even Hannah laughed, though deploring a choice of language symbolic +of a world she feared and detested. + +"If I talked like you," said Lise, "they wouldn't understand me." + +Janet, too, was momentarily amused, drawn out of that reverie in which +she had dwelt all day, ever since Ditmar had left for Boston. Now she +began to wonder what would happen if she were suddenly to announce "I'm +going to marry Mr. Ditmar." After the first shock of amazement, she +could imagine her father's complete and complacent acceptance of the news +as a vindication of au inherent quality in the Bumpus blood. He would +begin to talk about the family. For, despite what might have been deemed +a somewhat disillusionizing experience, in the depths of his being he +still believed in the Providence who had presided over the perilous +voyage of the Mayflower and the birth of Peregrine White, whose +omniscient mind was peculiarly concerned with the family trees of +Puritans. And what could be a more striking proof of the existence of +this Providence, or a more fitting acknowledgment on his part of the +Bumpus virtues, than that Janet should become the wife of the agent of +the Chippering Mills? Janet smiled. She was amused, too, by the thought +that Lise's envy would be modified by the prospect of a heightened social +status; since Lise, it will be remembered, had her Providence likewise. +Hannah's god was not a Providence, but one deeply skilled in persecution, +in ingenious methods of torture; one who would not hesitate to dangle +baubles before the eyes of his children--only to snatch them away again. +Hannah's pessimism would persist as far as the altar, and beyond! + +On the whole, such was Janet's notion of the Deity, though deep within +her there may have existed a hope that he might be outwitted; that, by +dint of energy and brains, the fair things of life might be obtained +despite a malicious opposition. And she loved Ditmar. This must be love +she felt, this impatience to see him again, this desire to be with him, +this agitation possessing her so utterly that all day long she had dwelt +in an unwonted state like a somnambulism: it must be love, though not +resembling in the least the generally accepted, virginal ideal. She saw +him as he was, crude, powerful, relentless in his desire; his very faults +appealed. His passion had overcome his prudence, he had not intended to +propose, but any shame she felt on this score was put to flight by a +fierce exultation over the fact that she had brought him to her feet, +that he wanted her enough to marry her. It was wonderful to be wanted +like that! But she could not achieve the mental picture of herself as +Ditmar's wife--especially when, later in the evening, she walked up +Warren Street and stood gazing at his house from the opposite pavement. +She simply could not imagine herself living in that house as its +mistress. Notwithstanding the testimony of the movies, such a +Cinderella-like transition was not within the realm of probable facts; +things just didn't happen that way. + +She recalled the awed exclamation of Eda when they had walked together +along Warren Street on that evening in summer: "How would you like to +live there!"--and hot with sudden embarrassment and resentment she had +dragged her friend onward, to the corner. In spite of its size, of the +spaciousness of existence it suggested, the house had not appealed to her +then. Janet did not herself realize or estimate the innate if +undeveloped sense of form she possessed, the artist-instinct that made +her breathless on first beholding Silliston Common. And then the vision +of Silliston had still been bright; but now the light of a slender moon +was as a gossamer silver veil through which she beheld the house, as in a +stage setting, softening and obscuring its lines, lending it qualities of +dignity and glamour that made it seem remote, unreal, unattainable. And +she felt a sudden, overwhelming longing, as though her breast would +burst.... + +Through the drawn blinds the lights in the second storey gleamed yellow. +A dim lamp burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary. And then, as +though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in +the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of the +living room at the north end of the house. Two figures chased one +another around the centre table--Ditmar's children! Was Ditmar there? +Impelled irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she +went forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement, +stepped over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the +lawn, feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid +fascination. The children continued to romp. The boy was strong and +swift, the girl stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her +body; he caught her and twisted her arm, roughly--Janet could hear her +cries through the window-=when an elderly woman entered, seized him, +struggling with him. He put out his tongue at her, but presently +released his sister, who stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in +evident recrimination and complaint. The faces of the two were plain +now; the boy resembled Ditmar, but the features of the girl, heavy and +stamped with self-indulgence, were evidently reminiscent of the woman who +had been his wife. Then the shade was pulled down, abruptly; and Janet, +overcome by a sense of horror at her position, took to flight.... + +When, after covering the space of a block she slowed down and tried to +imagine herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those +children, she found it impossible. Despite the fact that her attention +had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had +included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the +farther wall, the music rack. Evidently the girl was learning to play. +She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was +aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the +woman who had been her mother had possessed--that in her, Janet, had +lacked the advantages of development. Could it--could it ever be +developed now? Had this love which had come to her brought her any +nearer to the unknown realm of light she craved?... + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose +sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and +dispersed. And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat, +felt resurging in her the divine recklessness that is the very sap of +life. The future, save of the immediate hours to come, lost its power +over her. The blue and white beauty of the sky proclaimed all things +possible for the strong; and the air was vibrant with the sweet music of +bells, calling her to happiness. She was going to meet happiness, to +meet love--to meet Ditmar! The trolley which she took in Faber Street, +though lagging in its mission, seemed an agent of that happiness as it +left the city behind it and wound along the heights beside the tarvia +roadway above the river, bright glimpses of which she caught through the +openings in the woods. And when she looked out of the window on her +right she beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps" +built by residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more +elaborate summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with +queer names that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug +Harbour," "Buena Vista,"--of course,--which she thought pretty, though +she did not know its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing, +"Klein aber Mein." Though the windows of these places were now boarded +up, though the mosquito netting still clung rather dismally to the +porches, they were mutely suggestive of contentment and domestic joy. + +Scarcely had she alighted from the car at the rendezvous he had +mentioned, beside the now deserted boathouse where in the warm weather +the members of the Hampton Rowing Club disported themselves, when she saw +an automobile approaching--and recognized it as the gay "roadster" Ditmar +had exhibited to her that summer afternoon by the canal; and immediately +Ditmar himself, bringing it to a stop and leaping from it, stood before +her in the sunlight, radiating, as it seemed, more sunlight still. With +his clipped, blond moustache and his straw-coloured hair--as yet but +slightly grey at the temples--he looked a veritable conquering berserker +in his huge coat of golden fur. Never had he appeared to better +advantage. + +"I was waiting for you," he said, "I saw you in the car." Turning to the +automobile, he stripped the tissue paper from a cluster of dark red roses +with the priceless long stems of which Lise used to rave when she worked +in the flower store. And he held the flowers against her suit her new +suit she had worn for this meeting. + +"Oh," she cried, taking a deep, intoxicating breath of their fragrance. +"You brought these--for me?" + +"From Boston--my beauty!" + +"But I can't wear all of them!" + +"Why not?" he demanded. "Haven't you a pin?" + +She produced one, attaching them with a gesture that seemed habitual, +though the thought of their valuerevealing in some degree her own worth +in his eyes-unnerved her. She was warmly conscious of his gaze. Then he +turned, and opening a compartment at the back of the car drew from it a +bright tweed motor coat warmly lined. + +"Oh, no!" she protested, drawing back. "I'll--I'll be warm enough." But +laughingly, triumphantly, he seized her and thrust her arms in the +sleeves, his fingers pressing against her. Overcome by shyness, she drew +away from him. + +"I made a pretty good guess at the size--didn't I, Janet?" he cried, +delightedly surveying her. "I couldn't forget it!" His glance grew more +concentrated, warmer, penetrating. + +"You mustn't look at me like that!" she pleaded with lowered eyes. + +"Why not--you're mine--aren't you? You're mine, now." + +"I don't know. There are lots of things I want to talk about," she +replied, but her protest sounded feeble, unconvincing, even to herself. +He fairly lifted her into the automobile--it was a caress, only tempered +by the semipublicity of the place. He was giving her no time to think-- +but she did not want to, think. Starting the engine, he got in and +leaned toward her. + +"Not here!" she exclaimed. + +"All right--I'll wait," he agreed, tucking the robe about her deftly, +solicitously, and she sank back against the seat, surrendering herself to +the luxury, the wonder of being cherished, the caressing and sheltering +warmth she felt of security and love, the sense of emancipation from +discontent and sordidness and struggle. For a moment she closed her +eyes, but opened them again to behold the transformed image of herself +reflected in the windshield to confirm the illusion--if indeed it were +one! The tweed coat seemed startlingly white in the sunlight, and the +woman she saw, yet recognized as herself, was one of the fortunately +placed of the earth with power and beauty at her command! And she could +no longer imagine herself as the same person who the night before had +stood in front of the house in Warren Street. The car was speeding over +the smooth surface of the boulevard; the swift motion, which seemed to +her like that of flying, the sparkling air, the brightness of the day, +the pressure of Ditmar's shoulder against hers, thrilled her. She +marvelled at his sure command over the machine, that responded like a +live thing to his touch. On the wide, straight stretches it went at a +mad pace that took her breath, and again, in turning a corner or passing +another car, it slowed down, purring in meek obedience. Once she gasped: +"Not so fast! I can't stand it." + +He laughed and obeyed her. They glided between river and sky across the +delicate fabric of a bridge which but a moment before she had seen in the +distance. Running through the little village on the farther bank, they +left the river. + +"Where are you going?" she asked. + +"Oh, for a little spin," he answered indulgently, turning into a side +road that wound through the woods and suddenly stopping. "Janet, we've +got this day--this whole day to ourselves." He seized and drew her to +him, and she yielded dizzily, repaying the passion of his kiss, forgetful +of past and future while he held her, whispering brokenly endearing +phrases. + +"You'll ruin my roses," she protested breathlessly, at last, when it +seemed that she could no longer bear this embrace, nor the pressure of +his lips. "There! you see you're crushing them!" She undid them, and +buttoning the coat, held them to her face. Their odour made her faint: +her eyes were clouded. + +"Listen, Claude!" she said at last,--it was the first time she had called +him so--getting free. "You must be sensible! some one might come along." + +"I'll never get enough of you!" he said. "I can't believe it yet." And +added irrelevantly: "Pin the roses outside." + +She shook her head. Something in her protested against this too public +advertisement of their love. + +"I'd rather hold them," she answered. "Let's go on." He started the car +again. "Listen, I want to talk to you, seriously. I've been thinking." + +"Don't I know you've been thinking!" he told her exuberantly. "If I +could only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours! +If you keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm. +And now do you know what you are? One of those dusky red roses just +ready to bloom. Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em." + +"Listen!" she repeated, making a great effort to calm herself, to regain +something of that frame of mind in which their love had assumed the +proportions of folly and madness, to summon up the scruples which, before +she had left home that morning, she had resolved to lay before him, which +she knew would return when she could be alone again. "I have to think-- +you won't," she exclaimed, with a fleeting smile. + +"Well, what is it?" he assented. "You might as well get it off now." + +And it took all her strength to say: "I don't see how I can marry you. +I've told you the reasons. You're rich, and you have friends who +wouldn't understand--and your children--they wouldn't understand. I--I'm +nothing, I know it isn't right, I know you wouldn't be happy. I've never +lived--in the kind of house you live in and known the kind of people you +know, I shouldn't know what to do." + +He took his eyes off the road and glanced down at her curiously. His +smile was self-confident, exultant. + +"Now do you feel better--you little Puritan?" he said. + +And perforce she smiled in return, a pucker appearing between her +eyebrows. + +"I mean it," she said. "I came out to tell you so. I know--it just +isn't possible." + +"I'd marry you to-day if I could get a license," he declared. "Why, +you're worth any woman in America, I don't care who she is, or how much +money she has." + +In spite of herself she was absurdly pleased. + +"Now that is over, we won't discuss it again, do you understand? I've +got you," he said, "and I mean to hold on to you." + +She sighed. He was driving slowly now along the sandy road, and with his +hand on hers she simply could not think. The spell of his nearness, of +his touch, which all nature that morning conspired to deepen, was too +powerful to be broken, and something was calling to her, "Take this day, +take this day," drowning out the other voice demanding an accounting. +She was living--what did it all matter? She yielded herself to the +witchery of the hour, the sheer delight of forthfaring into the unknown. + +They turned away from the river, crossing the hills of a rolling country +now open, now wooded, passing white farmhouses and red barns, and +ancient, weather-beaten dwellings with hipped roofs and "lean-tos" which +had been there in colonial days when the road was a bridle-path. Cows +and horses stood gazing at them from warm paddocks, where the rich, black +mud glistened, melted by the sun; chickens scratched and clucked in the +barnyards or flew frantically across the road, sometimes within an ace of +destruction. Janet flinched, but Ditmar would laugh, gleefully, +boyishly. + +"We nearly got that one!" he would exclaim. And then he had to assure +her that he wouldn't run over them. + +"I haven't run over one yet,--have I?" he would demand. + +"No, but you will, it's only luck." + +"Luck!" he cried derisively. "Skill! I wish I had a dollar for every +one I got when I was learning to drive. There was a farmer over here in +Chester--" and he proceeded to relate how he had had to pay for two +turkeys. "He got my number, the old hayseed, he was laying for me, and +the next time I went back that way he held me up for five dollars. I can +remember the time when a man in a motor was an easy mark for every reuben +in the county. They got rich on us." + +She responded to his mood, which was wholly irresponsible, exuberant, and +they laughed together like children, every little incident assuming an +aspect irresistibly humorous. Once he stopped to ask an old man standing +in his dooryard how far it was to Kingsbury. + +"Wal, mebbe it's two mile, they mostly call it two," said the patriarch, +after due reflection, gathering his beard in his band. "Mebbe it's +more." His upper lip was blue, shaven, prehensile. + +"What did you ask him for, when you know?" said Janet, mirthfully, when +they had gone on, and Ditmar was imitating him. Ditmar's reply was to +wink at her. Presently they saw another figure on the road. + +"Let's see what he'll say," Ditmar proposed. This man was young, the +colour of mahogany, with glistening black hair and glistening black eyes +that regarded the too palpable joyousness of their holiday humour in mute +surprise. + +"I no know--stranger," he said. + +"No speaka Portugueso?" inquired Ditmar, gravely. + +"The country is getting filthy with foreigners," he observed, when he had +started the car. "I went down to Plymouth last summer to see the old +rock, and by George, it seemed as if there wasn't anybody could speak +American on the whole cape. All the Portuguese islands are dumped there- +-cranberry pickers, you know." + +"I didn't know that," said Janet. + +"Sure thing!" he exclaimed. "And when I got there, what do you think? +there was hardly enough of the old stone left to stand on, and that had a +fence around it like an exhibit in an exposition. It had all been +chipped away by souvenir hunters." + +She gazed at him incredulously. + +"You don't believe me! I'll take you down there sometime. And another +thing, the rock's high and dry--up on the land. I said to Charlie Crane, +who was with me, that it must have been a peach of a jump for old Miles +Standish and Priscilla what's her name." + +"How I'd love to see the ocean again!" Janet exclaimed. + +"Why, I'll take you--as often as you like," he promised. "We'll go out +on it in summer, up to Maine, or down to the Cape." + +Her enchantment was now so great that nothing seemed impossible. + +"And we'll go down to Plymouth, too, some Sunday soon, if this weather +keeps up. If we start early enough we can get there for lunch, easy. +We'll see the rock. I guess some of your ancestors must have come over +with that Mayflower outfit--first cabin, eh? You look like it." + +Janet laughed. "It's a joke on them, if they did. I wonder what they'd +think of Hampton, if they could see it now. I counted up once, just to +tease father--he's the seventh generation from Ebenezer Bumpus, who came +to Dolton. Well, I proved to him he might have one hundred and twenty- +six other ancestors besides Ebenezer and his wife." + +"That must have jarred him some," was Ditmar's comment. "Great old man, +your father. I've talked to him--he's a regular historical society all +by himself. Well, there must be something in it, this family business. +Now, you can tell he comes from fine old American stock-he looks it." + +Janet flushed. "A lot of good it does!" she exclaimed. + +"I don't know," said Ditmar. "It's something to fall back on--a good +deal. And he hasn't got any of that nonsense in his head about labour +unions--he's a straight American. And you look the part," he added. +"You remind me--I never thought of it until now--you remind me of a +picture of Priscilla I saw once in a book of poems Longfellow's, you +know. I'm not much on literature, but I remember that, and I remember +thinking she could have me. Funny isn't it, that you should have come +along? But you've got more ginger than the woman in that picture. I'm +the only man that ever guessed it isn't that so?" he asked jealously. + +"You're wonderful!" retorted Janet, daringly. + +"You just bet I am, or I couldn't have landed you," he asserted. "You're +chock full of ginger, but it's been all corked up. You're so prim-so +Priscilla." He was immensely pleased with the adjective he had coined, +repeating it. "It's a great combination. When I think of it, I want to +shake you, to squeeze you until you scream." + +"Then please don't think of it," she said. + +"That's easy!" he exclaimed, mockingly. + +At a quarter to one they entered a sleepy village reminiscent of a New +England of other days. The long street, deeply shaded in summer, was +bordered by decorous homes, some of which had stood there for a century +and a half; others were of the Mansard period. The high school, of +strawberry-coloured brick, had been the pride and glory of the Kingsbury +of the '70s: there were many churches, some graceful and some hideous. +At the end of the street they came upon a common, surrounded by stone +posts and a railing, with a monument in the middle of it, and facing the +common on the north side was a rambling edifice with many white gables, +in front of which, from an iron arm on a post, swung a quaint sign, +"Kingsbury Tavern." In revolutionary and coaching days the place bad +been a famous inn; and now, thanks to the enterprise of a man who had +foreseen the possibilities of an era of automobiles, it had become even +more famous. A score of these modern vehicles were drawn up before it +under the bare, ancient elms; there was a scene of animation on the long +porch, where guests strolled up and down or sat in groups in the rocking- +chairs which the mild weather had brought forth again. Ditmar drew up in +line with the other motors, and stopped. + +"Well, here we are!" he exclaimed, as he pulled off his gauntlets. "I +guess I could get along with something to eat. How about you? They +treat you as well here as any place I know of in New England." + +He assumed their lunching together at a public place as a matter of +course to which there could not possibly be an objection, springing out +of the car, removing the laprobe from her knees, and helping her to +alight. She laid the roses on the seat. + +"Aren't you going to bring them along?" he demanded. + +"I'd rather not," she said. "Don't you think they'll be safe here?" + +"Oh, I guess so," he replied. She was always surprising him; but her +solicitation concerning them was a balm, and he found all such +instinctive acts refreshing. + +"Afraid of putting up too much of a front, are you?" he asked smilingly. + +"I'd rather leave them here," she replied. As she walked beside Ditmar +to the door she was excited, unwontedly self-conscious, painfully aware +of inspection by the groups on the porch. She had seen such people as +these hurrying in automobiles through the ugliness of Faber Street in +Hampton toward just such delectable spots as this village of Kingsbury-- +people of that world of freedom and privilege from which she was +excluded; Ditmar's world. He was at home here. But she? The delusion +that she somehow had been miraculously snatched up into it was marred by +their glances. What were they thinking of her? Her face was hot as she +passed them and entered the hall, where more people were gathered. But +Ditmar's complacency, his ease and self-confidence, his manner of owning +the place, as it were, somewhat reassured her. He went up to the desk, +behind which, stood a burly, red-complexioned man who greeted him +effusively, yet with the air of respect accorded the powerful. + +"Hullo, Eddie," said Ditmar. "You've got a good crowd here to-day. Any +room for me?" + +"Sure, Mr. Ditmar, we can always make room for you. Well, I haven't laid +eyes on you for a dog's age. Only last Sunday Mr. Crane was here, and I +was asking him where you'd been keeping yourself." + +"Why, I've been busy, Eddie. I've landed the biggest order ever heard of +in Hampton. Some of us have to work, you know; all you've got to do is +to loaf around this place and smoke cigars and rake in the money." + +The proprietor of the Kingsbury Tavern smiled indulgently at this +persiflage. + +"Let me present you to Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. "This is my friend, +Eddie Hale," he added, for Janet's benefit. "And when you've eaten his +dinner you'll believe me when I say he's got all the other hotel men +beaten a mile." + +Janet smiled and flushed. She had been aware of Mr. Hale's discreet +glance. + +"Pleased to meet you, Miss Bumpus," he said, with a somewhat elaborate +bow. + +"Eddie," said Ditmar, "have you got a nice little table for us?" + +"It's a pity I didn't know you was coming, but I'll do my best," declared +Mr. Hale, opening the door in the counter. + +"Oh, I guess you can fix us all right, if you want to, Eddie." + +"Mr. Ditmar's a great josher," Mr. Hale told Janet confidentially as he +escorted them into the dining-room. And Ditmar, gazing around over the +heads of the diners, spied in an alcove by a window a little table with +tilted chairs. + +"That one'll do," he said. + +"I'm sorry, but it's engaged," apologized Mr. Hale. + +"Forget it, Eddie--tell 'em they're late," said Ditmar, making his way +toward it. + +The proprietor pulled out Janet's chair. + +"Say," he remarked, "it's no wonder you get along in business." + +"Well, this is cosy, isn't it?" - said Ditmar to Janet when they were +alone. He handed her the menu, and snapped his fingers for a waitress. + +"Why didn't you tell me you were coming to this place?" she asked. + +"I wanted to surprise you. Don't you like it?" + +"Yes," she replied. "Only--" + +"Only, what?" + +"I wish you wouldn't look at me like that--here." + +"All right. I'll try to be good until we get into the car again. You +watch me! I'll behave as if we'd been married ten years." + +He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress hurried up to take their +orders. + +"Kingsbury's still dry, I guess," he said to the girl, who smiled +sympathetically, somewhat ruefully. When she had gone he began to talk +to Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fusel oil +distributed on the sly. "I'll bet I could go out and find half a dozen +rum shops within a mile of here!" he declared. + +Janet did not doubt it. Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he +wanted, had amused and distracted her. She was growing calmer, able to +scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the +other tables, only to discover that she and Ditmar were not the objects +of the universal curiosity she had feared. Once in a while, indeed, she +encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration +in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as +she regained her poise. She must be nice looking--more than that--in her +new suit. On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which +Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair. This new and amazing adventure +began to go to her head like wine.... + +When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while +Ditmar smoked his cigar. His digestion was good, his spirits high, his +love-making--on account of the public nature of the place--surreptitious +yet fervent. The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on +occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be +detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely +disquieting. At last she said: + +"Oughtn't we to be going home?" + +"Home!" he ridiculed the notion. "I'm going to take you to the prettiest +road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls. I only wish it was +summer." + +"I must be home before dark," she told him. "You see, the family don't +know where I am. I haven't said anything to them about--about this." + +"That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation: + +"I didn't think you would. There's plenty of time for that--after things +get settled a little--isn't there?" + +She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they +walked to the motor. He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the +tweed coat, and she humoured him. The winter sun had already begun to +drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in +the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun +fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky, +distant copses were stained lilac. And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at +a world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such +strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic. At +times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air: +it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of +the beauty so poignantly revealed to her. + +Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence +of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired. +Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand, +to reassure himself that she was at least physically present. And though +she did not resent these tokens, submitting passively, he grew perplexed +and troubled; his optimistic atheism concerning things unseen was +actually shaken by the impression she conveyed of beholding realities +hidden from him. Shadows had begun to gather in the forest, filmy mists +to creep over the waters. He asked if she were cold, and she shook her +head and sighed as one coming out of a trance, smiling at him. + +"It's been a wonderful day!" she said. + +"The greatest ever!" he agreed. And his ardour, mounting again, swept +away the unwonted mood of tenderness and awe she had inspired in him, +made him bold to suggest the plan which had been the subject of an +ecstatic contemplation. + +"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "we'll take a little run down to +Boston and have dinner together. We'll be there in an hour, and back by +ten o'clock." + +"To Boston!" she repeated. "Now?" + +"Why not?" he said, stopping the car. "Here's the road--it's a boulevard +all the way." + +It was not so much the proposal as the passion in his voice, in his +touch, the passion to which she felt herself responding that filled her +with apprehension and dismay, and yet aroused her pride and anger. + +"I told you I had to be home," she said. + +"I'll have you home by ten o'clock; I promise. We're going to be +married, Janet," he whispered. + +"Oh, if you meant to marry me you wouldn't ask me to do this!" she cried. +"I want to go back to Hampton. If you won't take me, I'll walk." + +She had drawn away from him, and her hand was on the door. He seized her +arm. + +"For God's sake, don't take it that way!" he cried, in genuine alarm. +"All I meant was--that we'd have a nice little dinner. I couldn't bear +to leave you, it'll be a whole week before we get another day. Do you +suppose I'd--I'd do anything to insult you, Janet?" + +With her fingers still tightened over the door-catch she turned and +looked at him. + +"I don't know," she said slowly. "Sometimes I think you would. Why +shouldn't you? Why should you marry me? Why shouldn't you try to do +with me what you've done with other women? I don't know anything about +the world, about life. I'm nobody. Why shouldn't you?" + +"Because you're not like the other women--that's why. I love you--won't +you believe it?" He was beside himself with anxiety. "Listen--I'll take +you home if you want to go. You don't know how it hurts me to have you +think such things!" + +"Well, then, take me home," she said. It was but gradually that she +became pacified. A struggle was going on within her between these doubts +of him he had stirred up again and other feelings aroused by his +pleadings. Night fell, and when they reached the Silliston road the +lights of Hampton shone below them in the darkness. + +"You'd better let me out here," she said. "You can't drive me home." + +He brought the car to a halt beside one of the small wooden shelters +built for the convenience of passengers. + +"You forgive me--you understand, Janet?" he asked. + +"Sometimes I don't know what to think," she said, and suddenly clung to +him. "I--I forgive you. I oughtn't to suspect such things, but I'm like +that. I'm horrid and I can't help it." She began to unbutton the coat +he had bought for her. + +"Aren't you going to take it?" he said. "It's yours." + +"And what do you suppose my family would say if I told them Mr. Ditmar +had given it to me?" + +"Come on, I'll drive you home, I'll tell them I gave it to you, that +we're going to be married," he announced recklessly. + +"Oh, no!" she exclaimed in consternation. "You couldn't. You said so +yourself--that you didn't want, any one to know, now. I'll get on the +trolley." + +"And the roses?" he asked. + +She pressed them to her face, and chose one. "I'll take this," she said, +laying the rest on the seat.... + +He waited until he saw her safely on the trolley car, and then drove +slowly homeward in a state of amazement. He had been on the verge of +announcing himself to the family in Fillmore Street as her prospective +husband! He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he +found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal. And +the ever-recurring question presented itselfwas he prepared to go that +length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she +was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him +intensely--the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his +children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in +spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty. + +When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the +wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she +had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the +back of a drawer. Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed +emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love.... + +The weeks that immediately followed were strange ones. All the elements +of life that previously had been realities, trivial yet fundamental, her +work, her home, her intercourse with the family, became fantastic. There +was the mill to which she went every day: she recognized it, yet it was +not the same mill, nor was Fillmore Street the Fillmore Street of old. +Nor did the new and feverish existence over whose borderland she had been +transported seem real, save in certain hours she spent in Ditmar's +company, when he made her forget--hers being a temperament to feel the +weight of an unnatural secrecy. She was aware, for instance, that her +mother and even her father thought her conduct odd, were anxious as to +her absences on certain nights and on Sundays. She offered no +explanation. It was impossible. She understood that the reason why they +refrained from questioning her was due to a faith in her integrity as +well as to a respect for her as a breadwinner who lead earned a right to +independence. And while her suspicion of Hannah's anxiety troubled her, +on the occasions when she thought of it, Lise's attitude disturbed her +even more. From Lise she had been prepared for suspicion, arraignment, +ridicule. What a vindication if it were disclosed that she, Janet, had a +lover--and that lover Ditmar! But Lise said nothing. She was remote, +self-absorbed. Hannah spoke about it on the evenings Janet stayed at +home. + +She would not consent to meet Ditmar every evening. Yet, as the days +succeeded one another, Janet was often astonished by the fact that their +love remained apparently unsuspected by Mr. Price and Caldwell and others +in the office. They must have noticed, on some occasions, the manner in +which Ditmar looked at her; and in business hours she had continually to +caution him, to keep him in check. Again, on the evening excursions to +which she consented, though they were careful to meet in unfrequented +spots, someone might easily have recognized him; and she did not like to +ponder over the number of young women in the other offices who knew her +by sight. These reflections weighed upon her, particularly when she +seemed conscious of curious glances. But what caused her the most +concern was the constantly recurring pressure to which Ditmar himself +subjected her, and which, as time went on, she found increasingly +difficult to resist. He tried to take her by storm, and when this method +failed, resorted to pleadings and supplications even harder to deny +because of the innate feminine pity she felt for him. To recount these +affairs would be a mere repetition of identical occurrences. On their +second Sunday excursion he had actually driven her, despite her +opposition, several miles on the Boston road; and her resistance only +served to inflame him the more. It seemed, afterwards, as she sat +unnerved, a miracle that she had stopped him. Then came reproaches: she +would not trust him; they could not be married at once; she must +understand that!--an argument so repugnant as to cause her to shake with +sobs of inarticulate anger. After this he would grow bewildered, then +repentant, then contrite. In contrition--had he known it--he was nearest +to victory. + +As has been said, she did not intellectualize her reasons, but the core +of her resistance was the very essence of an individuality having its +roots in a self-respecting and self-controlling inheritance--an element +wanting in her sister Lise. It must have been largely the thought of +Lise, the spectacle of Lise--often perhaps unconsciously present that +dominated her conduct; yet reinforcing such an ancestral sentiment was +another, environmental and more complicated, the result in our modern +atmosphere of an undefined feminism apt to reveal itself in many +undesirable ways, but which in reality is a logical projection of the +American tradition of liberty. To submit was not only to lose her +liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to +lose Ditmar's love.... + +No experience, however, is emotionally continuous, nor was their intimacy +by any means wholly on this plane of conflict. There were hours when, +Ditmar's passion leaving spent itself, they achieved comradeship, in the +office and out of it; revelations for Janet when he talked of himself, +relating the little incidents she found most illuminating. And thus by +degrees she was able to build up a new and truer estimate of him. For +example, she began to perceive that his life outside of his interest in +the mills, instead of being the romance of privileged joys she had once +imagined, had been almost as empty as her own, without either unity or +direction. Her perception was none the less keen because definite terms +were wanting for its expression. The idea of him that first had +captivated her was that of an energized and focussed character +controlling with a sure hand the fortunes of a great organization; of a +power in the city and state, of a being who, in his leisure moments, +dwelt in a delectable realm from which she was excluded. She was still +acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of +direction--save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills. The +rest of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance +to the sea. + +As was quite natural, this gradual discovery of what he was--or of what +he wasn't--this truer estimate, this partial disillusionment, merely +served to deepen and intensify the feeling he had aroused in her; to +heighten, likewise, the sense of her own value by confirming a belief in +her possession of certain qualities, of a kind of fibre he needed in a +helpmate. She dwelt with a woman's fascination upon the prospect of +exercising a creative influence--even while she acknowledged the fearful +possibility of his power in unguarded moments to overwhelm and destroy +her. Here was another incentive to resist the gusts of his passion. She +could guide and develop him by helping and improving herself. Hope and +ambition throbbed within her, she felt a contempt for his wife, for the +women who had been her predecessors. He had not spoken of these, save +once or twice by implication, but with what may seem a surprising +leniency she regarded them as consequences of a life lacking in content. +If only she could keep her head, she might supply that content, and bring +him happiness! The thought of his children troubled her most, but she +was quick to perceive that he got nothing from them; and even though it +were partly his own fault, she was inclined to lay the heavier blame on +the woman who had been their mother. The triviality, the emptiness of +his existence outside of the walls of the mill made her heart beat with +pure pity. For she could understand it. + +One of the many, and often humorous, incidents that served to bring about +this realization of a former aimlessness happened on their second Sunday +excursion. This time he had not chosen the Kingsbury Tavern, but another +automobilists' haunt, an enlightening indication of established habits +involving a wide choice of resorts. While he was paying for luncheon and +chatting with the proprietor, Ditmar snatched from the change he had +flung down on the counter a five dollar gold coin. + +"Now how in thunder did that get into my right-hand pocket? I always +keep it in my vest," he exclaimed; and the matter continued to disturb +him after they were in the automobile. "It's my lucky piece. I guess I +was so excited at the prospect of seeing you when I dressed this morning +I put it into my change. Just see what you do to me!" + +"Does it bring you luck?" she inquired smilingly. + +"How about you! I call you the biggest piece of luck I ever had." + +"You'd better not be too sure," she warned him. + +"Oh, I'm not worrying. I has that piece in my pocket the day I went down +to see old Stephen Chippering, when he made me agent, and I've kept it +ever since. And I'll tell you a funny thing--it's enough to make any man +believe in luck. Do you remember that day last summer I was tinkering +with the car by the canal and you came along?" + +"The day you pretended to be tinkering," she corrected him. + +He laughed. "So you were on to me?" he said. "You're a foxy one!" + +"Anyone could see you were only pretending. It made me angry, when I +thought of it afterwards." + +"I just had to do it--I wanted to talk to you. But listen to what I'm +going to tell you! It's a miracle, all right,--happening just at that +time--that very morning. I was coming back to Boston from New York on +the midnight, and when the train ran into Back Bay and I was putting on +my trousers the piece rolled out among the bed clothes. I didn't know +I'd lost it until I sat down in the Parker House to eat my breakfast, and +I suddenly felt in my pocket. It made me sick to think it was gone. +Well, I started to telephone the Pullman office, and then I made up my +mind I'd take a taxi and go down to the South Station myself, and just as +I got out of the cab there was the nigger porter, all dressed up in his +glad rags, coming out of the station! I knew him, I'd been on his car +lots of times. `Say, George,' I said, `I didn't forget you this morning, +did I?' + +"`No, suh,' said George, 'you done give me a quarter.' + +"`I guess you're mistaken, George,' says I, and I fished out a ten dollar +bill. You ought to have seen that nigger's eyes." + +"`What's this for, Mister Ditmar?' says he. + +"`For that lucky gold piece you found in lower seven,' I told him. +`We'll trade.' + +"`Was you in lower seven? --so you was!' says George. Well, he had it +all right--you bet he had it. Now wasn't that queer? The very day you +and I began to know each other!" + +"Wonderful!" Janet agreed. "Why don't you put it on your watch chain?" + +"Well, I've thought of that," he replied, with the air of having +considered all sides of the matter. "But I've got that charm of the +secret order I belong to--that's on my chain. I guess I'll keep it in my +vest pocket." + +"I didn't know you were so superstitious," she mocked. + +"Pretty nearly everybody's superstitious," he declared. And she thought +of Lise. + +"I'm not. I believe if things are going to happen well, they're going to +happen. Nothing can prevent it." + +"By thunder" he exclaimed, struck by her remark. "You are like that +You're different from any person I ever knew...." + +From such anecdotes she pieced together her new Ditmar. He spoke of a +large world she had never seen, of New York and Washington and Chicago, +where he intended to take her. In the future he would never travel +alone. And he told her of his having been a delegate to the last +National Republican Convention, explaining what a delegate was. He +gloried in her innocence, and it was pleasant to dazzle her with +impressions of his cosmopolitanism. In this, perhaps, he was not quite +so successful as he imagined, but her eyes shone. She had never even +been in a sleeping car! For her delectation he launched into an +enthusiastic description of these vehicles, of palatial compartment cars, +of limited, transcontinental trains, where one had a stenographer and a +barber at one's disposal. + +"Neither of them would do me any good," she complained. + +"You could go to the manicure," he said. + +There had been in Ditmar's life certain events which, in his anecdotal +moods, were magnified into matters of climacteric importance; high, +festal occasions on which it was sweet to reminisce, such as his visit as +Delegate at Large to that Chicago Convention. He had travelled on a +special train stocked with cigars and White Seal champagne, in the +company of senators and congressmen and ex-governors, state treasurers, +collectors of the port, mill owners, and bankers to whom he referred, as +the French say, in terms of their "little" names. He dwelt on the +magnificence of the huge hotel set on the borders of a lake like an +inland sea, and related such portions of the festivities incidental to +"the seeing of Chicago" as would bear repetition. No women belonged to +this realm; no women, at least, who were to be regarded as persons. +Ditmar did not mention them, but no doubt they existed, along with the +cigars and the White Seal champagne, contributing to the amenities. And +the excursion, to Janet, took on the complexion of a sort of glorified +picnic in the course of which, incidentally, a President of the United +States had been chosen. In her innocence she had believed the voters to +perform this function. Ditmar laughed. + +"Do you suppose we're going to let the mob run this country?" he +inquired. "Once in a while we can't get away with it as we'd like, we +have to take the best we can." + +Thus was brought home to her more and more clearly that what men strove +and fought for were the joys of prominence, privilege, and power. +Everywhere, in the great world, they demanded and received consideration. +It was Ditmar's boast that if nobody else could get a room in a crowded +New York hotel, he could always obtain one. And she was fain to concede- +-she who had never known privilege--a certain intoxicating quality to +this eminence. If you could get the power, and refused to take it, the +more fool you! A topsy-turvy world, in which the stupid toiled day by +day, week by week, exhausting their energies and craving joy, while +others adroitly carried off the prize; and virtue had apparently as +little to do with the matter as fair hair or a club foot. If Janet had +ever read Darwin, she would have recognized in her lover a creature +rather wonderfully adapted to his environment; and what puzzled her, +perhaps, was the riddle that presents itself to many better informed than +herself--the utter absence in this environment of the sign of any being +who might be called God. Her perplexities--for she did have them--took +the form of an instinctive sense of inadequacy, of persistently recurring +though inarticulate convictions of the existence of elements not included +in Ditmar's categories--of things that money could not buy; of things, +too, alas! that poverty was as powerless to grasp. Stored within her, +sometimes rising to the level of consciousness, was that experience at +Silliston in the May weather when she had had a glimpse--just a glimpse! +of a garden where strange and precious flowers were in bloom. On the +other hand, this mysterious perception by her of things unseen and +hitherto unguessed, of rays of delight in the spectrum of values to which +his senses were unattuned, was for Ditmar the supreme essence of her +fascination. At moments he was at once bewildered and inebriated by the +rare delicacy of fabric of the woman whom he had somehow stumbled upon +and possessed. + +Then there were the hours when they worked together in the office. Here +she beheld Ditmar at his best. It cannot be said that his infatuation +for her was ever absent from his consciousness: he knew she was there +beside him, he betrayed it continually. But here she was in the presence +of what had been and what remained his ideal, the Chippering Mill; here +he acquired unity. All his energies were bent toward the successful +execution of the Bradlaugh order, which had to be completed on the first +of February. And as day after day went by her realization of the +magnitude of the task he had undertaken became keener. Excitement was in +the air. Ditmar seemed somehow to have managed to infuse not only +Orcutt, the superintendent, but the foremen and second hands and even the +workers with a common spirit of pride and loyalty, of interest, of +determination to carry off this matter triumphantly. The mill seemed +fairly to hum with effort. Janet's increasing knowledge of its +organization and processes only served to heighten her admiration for the +confidence Ditmar had shown from the beginning. It was superb. And now, +as the probability of the successful execution of the task tended more +and more toward certainty, he sometimes gave vent to his boyish, +exuberant spirits. + +"I told Holster, I told all those croakers I'd do it, and by thunder I +will do it, with three days' margin, too! I'll get the last shipment off +on the twenty-eighth of January. Why, even George Chippering was afraid +I couldn't handle it. If the old man was alive he wouldn't have had cold +feet." Then Ditmar added, half jocularly, half seriously, looking down +on her as she sat with her note-book, waiting for him to go on with his +dictation: "I guess you've had your share in it, too. You've been a +wonder, the way you've caught on and taken things off my shoulders. If +Orcutt died I believe you could step right into his shoes." + +"I'm sure I could step into his shoes," she replied. "Only I hope he +won't die." + +"I hope he won't, either," said Ditmar. "And as for you--" + +"Never mind me, now," she said. + +He bent over her. + +"Janet, you're the greatest girl in the world." + +Yes, she was happiest when she felt she was helping him, it gave her +confidence that she could do more, lead him into paths beyond which they +might explore together. She was useful. Sometimes, however, he seemed +to her oversanguine; though he had worked hard, his success had come too +easily, had been too uniform. His temper was quick, the prospect of +opposition often made him overbearing, yet on occasions he listened with +surprising patience to his subordinates when they ventured to differ from +his opinions. At other times Janet had seen him overrule them +ruthlessly; humiliate them. There were days when things went wrong, when +there were delays, complications, more matters to attend to than usual. +On one such day, after the dinner hour, Mr. Orcutt entered the office. +His long, lean face wore a certain expression Janet had come to know, an +expression that always irritated Ditmar--the conscientious superintendent +having the unfortunate faculty of exaggerating annoyances by his very +bearing. Ditmar stopped in the midst of dictating a peculiarly difficult +letter, and looked up sharply. + +"Well," he asked, "what's the trouble now?" + +Orcutt seemed incapable of reading storm signals. When anything +happened, he had the air of declaring, "I told you so." + +"You may remember I spoke to you once or twice, Mr. Ditmar, of the talk +over the fifty-four hour law that goes into effect in January." + +"Yes, what of it?" Ditmar cut in. "The notices have been posted, as the +law requires." + +"The hands have been grumbling, there are trouble makers among them. A +delegation came to me this noon and wanted to know whether we intended to +cut the pay to correspond to the shorter working hours." + +"Of course it's going to be cut," said Ditmar. "What do they suppose? +That we're going to pay 'em for work they don't do? The hands not paid +by the piece are paid practically by the hour, not by the day. And +there's got to be some limit to this thing. If these damned demagogues +in the legislature keep on cutting down the hours of women and children +every three years or so--and we can't run the mill without the women and +children--we might as well shut down right now. Three years ago, when +they made it fifty-six hours, we were fools to keep up the pay. I said +so then, at the conference, but they wouldn't listen to me. They +listened this time. Holster and one or two others croaked, but we shut +'em up. No, they won't get any more pay, not a damned cent." + +Orcutt had listened patiently, lugubriously. + +"I told them that." + +"What did they say?" + +"They said they thought there'd be a strike." + +"Pooh! Strike!" exclaimed Ditmar with contemptuous violence. "Do you +believe that? You're always borrowing trouble, you are. They may have a +strike at one mill, the Clarendon. I hope they do, I hope Holster gets +it in the neck--he don't know how to run a mill anyway. We won't have +any strike, our people understand when they're well off, they've got all +the work they can do, they're sending fortunes back to the old country or +piling them up in the banks. It's all bluff." + +"There was a meeting of the English branch of the I. W. W. last night. +A committee was appointed," said Orcutt, who as usual took a gloomy +satisfaction in the prospect of disaster. + +"The I. W. W.! My God, Orcutt, don't you know enough not to come in here +wasting my time talking about the I. W. W.? Those anarchists haven't got +any organization. Can't you get that through your head?" + +"All right," replied Orcutt, and marched off. Janet felt rather sorry +for him, though she had to admit that his manner was exasperating. But +Ditmar's anger, instead of cooling, increased: it all seemed directed +against the unfortunate superintendent. + +"Would you believe that a man who's been in this mill twenty-five years +could be such a fool?" he demanded. "The I. W. W.! Why not the Ku Klux? +He must think I haven't anything to do but chin. I don't know why I keep +him here, sometimes I think he'll drive me crazy." + +His eyes seemed to have grown small and red, as was always the case when +his temper got the better of him. Janet did not reply, but sat with her +pencil poised over her book. + +"Let's see, where was I?" he asked. "I can't finish that letter now. Go +out and do the others." + +Mundane experience, like a badly mixed cake, has a tendency to run in +streaks, and on the day following the incident related above Janet's +heart was heavy. Ditmar betrayed an increased shortness of temper and +preoccupation; and the consciousness that her love had lent her a +clairvoyant power to trace the source of his humours though these were +often hidden from or unacknowledged by himself--was in this instance +small consolation. She saw clearly enough that the apprehensions +expressed by Mr. Orcutt, whom he had since denounced as an idiotic old +woman, had made an impression, aroused in him the ever-abiding concern +for the mill which was his life's passion and which had been but +temporarily displaced by his infatuation with her. That other passion +was paramount. What was she beside it? Would he hesitate for a moment +to sacrifice her if it came to a choice between them? The +tempestuousness of these thoughts, when they took possession of her, +hinting as they did of possibilities in her nature hitherto unguessed and +unrevealed, astonished and frightened her; she sought to thrust them +away, to reassure herself that his concern for the successful delivery of +the Bradlaugh order was natural. During the morning, in the intervals +between interviews with the superintendents, he was self-absorbed, and +she found herself inconsistently resenting the absence of those +expressions of endearment--the glances and stolen caresses--for +indulgence in which she had hitherto rebuked him: and though pride came +to her rescue, fuel was added to her feeling by the fact that he did not +seem to notice her coolness. Since he failed to appear after lunch, she +knew he must be investigating the suspicions Orcutt had voiced; but at +six o'clock, when he had not returned, she closed up her desk and left +the office. An odour of cheap perfume pervading the corridor made her +aware of the presence of Miss Lottie Myers. + +"Oh, it's you!" said that young woman, looking up from the landing of the +stairs. "I might have known it you never make a get-away until after +six, do you?" + +"Oh, sometimes," said Janet. + +"I stayed as a special favour to-night," Miss Myers declared. "But I'm +not so stuck on my job that I can't tear myself away from it." + +"I don't suppose you are," said Janet. + +For a moment Miss Myers looked as if she was about to be still more +impudent, but her eye met Janet's, and wavered. They crossed the bridge +in silence. "Well, ta-ta," she said. "If you like it, it's up to you. +Five o'clock for mine,"--and walked away, up the canal, swinging her hips +defiantly. And Janet, gazing after her, grew hot with indignation and +apprehension. Her relations with Ditmar were suspected, after all, made +the subject of the kind of comment indulged in, sotto voce, by Lottie +Myers and her friends at the luncheon hour. She felt a mad, primitive +desire to run after the girl, to spring upon and strangle her and compel +her to speak what was in her mind and then retract it; and the motor +impulse, inhibited, caused a sensation of sickness, of unhappiness and +degradation as she turned her steps slowly homeward. Was it a +misinterpretation, after all--what Lottie Myers had implied and feared to +say?... + +In Fillnore Street supper was over, and Lise, her face contorted, her +body strained, was standing in front of the bureau "doing" her hair, her +glance now seeking the mirror, now falling again to consult a model in +one of those periodicals of froth and fashion that cause such numberless +heart burnings in every quarter of our democracy, and which are filled +with photographs of "prominent" persons at race meetings, horse shows, +and resorts, and with actresses, dancers,--and mannequins. Janet's eyes +fell on the open page to perceive that the coiffure her sister so +painfully imitated was worn by a young woman with an insolent, vapid face +and hard eyes, whose knees were crossed, revealing considerably more than +an ankle. The picture was labelled, "A dance at Palm Beach--A flashlight +of Mrs. 'Trudy' Gascoigne-Schell,"--one of those mysterious, hybrid names +which, in connection with the thoughts of New York and the visible rakish +image of the lady herself, cause involuntary shudders down the spine of +the reflecting American provincial. Some such responsive quiver, akin to +disgust, Janet herself experienced. + +"It's the very last scream," Lise was saying. "And say, if I owned a +ball dress like that I'd be somebody's Lulu all right! Can I have the +pleasure of the next maxixe, Miss Bumpus?" With deft and rapid fingers +she lead parted her hair far on the right side and pulled it down over +the left eyebrow, twisted it over her ear and tightly around her head, +inserting here and there a hairpin, seizing the hand mirror with the +cracked back, and holding it up behind her. Finally, when the operation +was finished to + +her satisfaction she exclaimed, evidently to the paragon in the picture, +"I get you!" Whereupon, from the wardrobe, she produced a hat. "You +sure had my number when you guessed the feathers on that other would get +draggled," she observed in high good humour, generously ignoring their +former unpleasantness on the subject. When she had pinned it on she bent +mockingly over her sister, who sat on the bed. "How d'you like my new +toque? Peekaboo! That's the way the guys rubberneck to see if you're +good lookin'." + +Lise was exalted, feverish, apparently possessed by some high secret; her +eyes shone, and when she crossed the room she whistled bars of ragtime +and executed mincing steps of the maxixe. Fumbling in the upper drawer +for a pair of white gloves (also new), she knocked off the corner of the +bureau her velvet bag; it opened as it struck the floor, and out of it +rolled a lilac vanity case and a yellow coin. Casting a suspicious, +lightning glance at Janet, she snatched up the vanity case and covered +the coin with her foot. + +"Lock the doors!" she cried, with an hysteric giggle. Then removing her +foot she picked up the coin surreptitiously. To her amazement her sister +made no comment, did not seem to have taken in the significance of the +episode. Lise had expected a tempest of indignant, searching questions, +a "third degree," as she would have put it. She snapped the bag +together, drew on her gloves, and, when she was ready to leave, with +characteristic audacity crossed the room, taking her sister's face +between her hands and kissing her. + +"Tell me your troubles, sweetheart!" she said--and did not wait to hear +them. + +Janet was incapable of speech--nor could she have brought herself to ask +Lise whether or not the money had been earned at the Bagatelle, and +remained miraculously unspent. It was possible, but highly incredible. +And then, the vanity case and the new hat were to be accounted for! The +sight of the gold piece, indeed, had suddenly revived in Janet the queer +feeling of faintness, almost of nausea she had experienced after parting +with Lottie Myers. And by some untoward association she was reminded of +a conversation she had had with Ditmar on the Saturday afternoon +following their first Sunday excursion, when, on opening her pay +envelope, she had found twenty dollars. + +"Are you sure I'm worth it?" she had demanded--and he had been quite +sure. He had added that she was worth more, much more, but that he could +not give her as yet, without the risk of comment, a sum commensurate with +the value of her services.... But now she asked herself again, was she +worth it? or was it merely--part of her price? Going to the wardrobe and +opening a drawer at the bottom she searched among her clothes until she +discovered the piece of tissue paper in which she had wrapped the rose +rescued from the cluster he had given her. The petals were dry, yet they +gave forth, still, a faint, reminiscent fragrance as she pressed them to +her face. Janet wept.... + +The following morning as she was kneeling in a corner of the room by the +letter files, one of which she had placed on the floor, she recognized +his step in the outer office, heard him pause to joke with young +Caldwell, and needed not the visual proof--when after a moment he halted +on the threshold--of the fact that his usual, buoyant spirits were +restored. He held a cigar in his hand, and in his eyes was the eager +look with which she had become familiar, which indeed she had learned to +anticipate as they swept the room in search of her. And when they fell +on her he closed the door and came forward impetuously. But her +exclamation caused him to halt in bewilderment. + +"Don't touch me!" she said. + +And he stammered out, as he stood over her:-- + +"What's the matter?" + +"Everything. You don't love me--I was a fool to believe you did." + +"Don't love you!" he repeated. "My God, what's the trouble now? What +have I done?" + +"Oh, it's nothing you've done, it's what you haven't done, it's what you +can't do. You don't really care for me--all you care for is this mill-- +when anything happens here you don't know I'm alive." + +He stared at her, and then an expression of comprehension, of intense +desire grew in his eyes; and his laugh, as he flung his cigar out of the +open window and bent down to seize her, was almost brutal. She fought +him, she tried to hurt him, and suddenly, convulsively pressed herself to +him. + +"You little tigress!" he said, as he held her. "You were jealous--were +you--jealous of the mill?" And he laughed again. "I'd like to see you +with something really to be jealous about. So you love me like that, do +you?" + +She could feel his heart beating against her. + +"I won't be neglected," she told him tensely. "I want all of you--if I +can't have all of you, I don't want any. Do you understand?" + +"Do I understand? Well, I guess I do." + +"You didn't yesterday," she reproached him, somewhat dazed by the +swiftness of her submission, and feeling still the traces of a lingering +resentment. She had not intended to surrender. "You forgot all about +me, you didn't know I was here, much less that I was hurt. Oh, I was +hurt! And you--I can tell at once when anything's wrong with you--I know +without your saying it." + +He was amazed, he might indeed have been troubled and even alarmed by +this passion he had aroused had his own passion not been at the flood. +And as he wiped away her tears with his handkerchief he could scarcely +believe his senses that this was the woman whose resistance had demanded +all his force to overcome. Indeed, although he recognized the symptoms +she betrayed as feminine, as having been registered--though feebly +compared to this! by incidents in his past, precisely his difficulty +seemed to be in identifying this complex and galvanic being as a woman, +not as something almost fearful in her significance, outside the bounds +of experience.... + +Presently she ceased to tremble, and he drew her to the window. The day +was as mild as autumn, the winter sun like honey in its mellowness; a +soft haze blurred the outline of the upper bridge. + +"Only two more days until Sunday," he whispered, caressingly, +exultantly.... + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +It had been a strange year in Hampton, unfortunate for coal merchants, +welcome to the poor. But Sunday lacked the transforming touch of +sunshine. The weather was damp and cold as Janet set out from Fillmore +Street. Ditmar, she knew, would be waiting for her, he counted on her, +and she could not bear to disappoint him, to disappoint herself. And all +the doubts and fears that from time to time had assailed her were +banished by this impulse to go to him, to be with him. He loved her! +The words, as she sat in the trolley car, ran in her head like the lilt +of a song. What did the weather matter? + +When she alighted at the lonely cross-roads snow had already begun to +fall. But she spied the automobile, with its top raised, some distance +down the lane, and in a moment she was in it, beside him, wrapped in the +coat she had now come to regard as her own. He buttoned down the +curtains and took her in his arms. + +"What shall we do to-day," she asked, "if it snows?" + +"Don't let that worry you, sweetheart," he said. "I have the chains on, +I can get through anything in this car." + +He was in high, almost turbulent spirits as he turned the car and drove +it out of the rutty lane into the state road. The snow grew thicker and +thicker still, the world was blotted out by swiftly whirling, feathery +flakes that melted on the windshield, and through the wet glass Janet +caught distorted glimpses of black pines and cedars beside the highway. + +The ground was spread with fleece. Occasionally, and with startling +suddenness, other automobiles shot like dark phantoms out of the +whiteness, and like phantoms disappeared. Presently, through the veil, +she recognized Silliston--a very different Silliston from that she had +visited on the fragrant day in springtime, when the green on the common +had been embroidered with dandelions, and the great elms whose bare +branches were now fantastically traced against the flowing veil of white- +-heavy with leaf. Vignettes emerged--only to fade!--of the old-world +houses whose quaint beauty had fascinated and moved her. And she found +herself wondering what had become of the strange man she had mistaken for +a carpenter. All that seemed to have taken place in a past life. She +asked Ditmar where he was going. + +"Boston," he told her. "There's no other place to go." + +"But you'll never get back if it goes on snowing like this." + +"Well, the trains are still running," he assured her, with a quizzical +smile. "How about it, little girl?" It was a term of endearment +derived, undoubtedly, from a theatrical source, in which he sometimes +indulged. + +She did not answer. Surprisingly, to-day, she did not care. All she +could think of, all she wanted was to go on and on beside him with the +world shut out--on and on forever. She was his--what did it matter? +They were on their way to Boston! She began, dreamily, to think about +Boston, to try to restore it in her imagination to the exalted place it +had held before she met Ditmar; to reconstruct it from vague memories of +childhood when, in two of the family peregrinations, she had crossed it. +Traces remained of emotionally-toned impressions acquired when she had +walked about the city holding Edward's hand--of a long row of stately +houses with forbidding fronts, set on a hillside, of a wide, tree-covered +space where children were playing. And her childish verdict, persisting +to-day, was one of inaccessibility, impenetrability, of jealously guarded +wealth and beauty. Those houses, and the treasures she was convinced +they must contain, were not for her! Some of the panes of glass in their +windows were purple--she remembered a little thing like that, and asking +her father the reason! He hadn't known. This purple quality had somehow +steeped itself into her memory of Boston, and even now the colour stood +for the word, impenetrable. That was extraordinary. Even now! Well, +they were going to Boston; if Ditmar had said they were going to Bagdad +it would have been quite as credible--and incredible. Wherever they were +going, it was into the larger, larger life, and walls were to crumble +before them, walls through which they would pass, even as they rent the +white veil of the storm, into regions of beauty.... + +And now the world seemed abandoned to them alone, so empty, so still were +the white villages flitting by; so empty, so still the great parkway of +the Fells stretching away and away like an enchanted forest under the +snow, like the domain of some sleeping king. And the flakes melted +silently into the black waters. And the wide avenue to which they came +led to a sleeping palace! No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar told +her, as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches and +fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the far +side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles. And +here at last was Boston--Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it, as one +chose. Ditmar, removing one of the side curtains that she might see, +with just a hint in his voice of a reverence she was too excited to +notice, pointed out the stern and respectable facades of the twin +Chippering mansions standing side by side. Save for these shrines--for +such in some sort they were to him--the Back Bay in his eyes was nothing +more than a collection of houses inhabited by people whom money and +social position made unassailable. But to-day he, too, was excited. +Never had he been more keenly aware of her sensitiveness to experience; +and he to whom it had not occurred to wonder at Boston wondered at her, +who seemed able to summon forth a presiding, brooding spirit of the place +from out of the snow. Deep in her eyes, though they sparkled, was the +reflection of some mystic vision; her cheeks were flushed. And in her +delight, vicariously his own, he rejoiced; in his trembling hope of more +delight to come, which this mentorship would enhance,--despite the fast +deepening snow he drove her up one side of Commonwealth Avenue and down +the other, encircling the Common and the Public Garden; stopping at the +top of Park Street that she might gaze up at the State House, whose +golden dome, seen through the veil, was tinged with blue. Boston! Why +not Russia? Janet was speechless for sheer lack of words to describe +what she felt.... + +At length he brought the car to a halt opposite an imposing doorway in +front of which a glass roof extended over the pavement, and Janet +demanded where they were. + +"Well, we've got to eat, haven't we?" Ditmar replied. She noticed that +he was shivering. + +"Are you cold?" she inquired with concern. + +"I guess I am, a little," he replied. "I don't know why I should be, in +a fur coat. But I'll be warm soon enough, now." + +A man in blue livery hurried toward them across the sidewalk, helping +them to alight. And Ditmar, after driving the car a few paces beyond the +entrance, led her through the revolving doors into a long corridor, paved +with marble and lighted by bulbs glowing from the ceiling, where benches +were set against the wall, overspread by the leaves of potted plants set +in the intervals between them. + +"Sit down a moment," he said to her. "I must telephone to have somebody +take that car, or it'll stay there the rest of the winter." + +She sat down on one of the benches. The soft light, the warmth, the +exotic odour of the plants, the well-dressed people who trod softly the +strip of carpet set on the marble with the air of being at home--all +contributed to an excitement, intense yet benumbing. She could not +think. She didn't want to think--only to feel, to enjoy, to wring the +utmost flavour of enchantment from these new surroundings; and her face +wore the expression of one in a dream. Presently she saw Ditmar +returning followed by a boy in a blue uniform. + +"All right," he said. At the end of the corridor was an elevator in +which they were shot to one of the upper floors; and the boy, inserting a +key in a heavy mahogany door, revealed a sitting-room. Between its +windows was a table covered with a long, white cloth reaching to the +floor, on which, amidst the silverware and glass, was set a tall vase +filled with dusky roses. Janet, drawing in a deep breath of their +fragrance, glanced around the room. The hangings, the wall-paper, the +carpet, the velvet upholstery of the mahogany chairs, of the wide lounge +in the corner were of a deep and restful green; the marble mantelpiece, +with its English coal grate, was copied--had she known it--from a mansion +of the Georgian period. The hands of a delicate Georgian clock pointed +to one. And in the large mirror behind the clock she beheld an image she +supposed, dreamily, to be herself. The bell boy was taking off her coat, +which he hung, with Ditmar's, on a rack in a corner. + +"Shall I light the fire, sir?" he asked. + +"Sure," said Ditmar. "And tell them to hurry up with lunch." + +The boy withdrew, closing the door silently behind him. + +"We're going to have lunch here!" Janet exclaimed. + +"Why not? I thought it would be nicer than a public dining-room, and +when I got up this morning and saw what the weather was I telephoned." +He placed two chairs before the fire, which had begun to blaze. "Isn't +it cosy?" he said, taking her hands and pulling her toward him. His own +hands trembled, the tips of his fingers were cold. + +"You are cold!" she said. + +"Not now--not now," he replied. The queer vibrations were in his voice +that she had heard before. "Sweetheart! This is the best yet, isn't it? +And after that trip in the storm!" + +"It's beautiful!" she murmured, gently drawing away from him and looking +around her once more. "I never was in a room like this." + +"Well, you'll be in plenty more of them," he exulted. "Sit down beside +the fire, and get warm yourself." + +She obeyed, and he took the chair at her side, his eyes on her face. As +usual, she was beyond him; and despite her exclamations of surprise, of +appreciation and pleasure she maintained the outward poise, the +inscrutability that summed up for him her uniqueness in the world of +woman. She sat as easily upright in the delicate Chippendale chair as +though she had been born to it. He made wild surmises as to what she +might be thinking. Was she, as she seemed, taking all this as a matter +of course? She imposed on him an impelling necessity to speak, to say +anything--it did not matter what--and he began to dwell on the +excellences of the hotel. She did not appear to hear him, her eyes +lingering on the room, until presently she asked:-- + +"What's the name of this hotel?" + +He told her. + +"I thought they only allowed married people to come, like this, in a +private room." + +"Oh!" he began--and the sudden perception that she had made this +statement impartially added to his perplexity. "Well," he was able to +answer, "we're as good as married, aren't we, Janet?" He leaned toward +her, he put his hand on hers. "The manager here is an old friend of +mine. He knows we're as good as married." + +"Another old friend!" she queried. And the touch of humour, in spite of +his taut nerves, delighted him. + +"Yes, yes," he laughed, rather uproariously. "I've got 'em everywhere, +as thick as landmarks." + +"You seem to," she said. + +"I hope you're hungry," he said. + +"Not very," she replied. "It's all so strange--this day, Claude. It's +like a fairy story, coming here to Boston in the snow, and this place, +and--and being with you." + +"You still love me?" he cried, getting up. + +"You must know that I do," she answered simply, raising her face to his. +And he stood gazing down into it, with an odd expression she had never +seen before...."What's the matter?" she asked. + +"Nothing--nothing," he assured her, but continued to look at her. +"You're so--so wonderful," he whispered, "I just can't believe it." + +"And if it's hard for you," she answered, "think what it must be for me!" +And she smiled up at him. + +Ditmar had known a moment of awe.... Suddenly he took her face between +his hands and pressed his rough cheek against it, blindly. His hands +trembled, his body was shaken, as by a spasm. + +"Why, you're still cold, Claude!" she cried anxiously. + +And he stammered out: "I'm not--it's you--it's having you!" + +Before she could reply to this strange exclamation, to which, +nevertheless, some fire in her leaped in response, there came a knock at +the door, and he drew away from her as he answered it. Two waiters +entered obsequiously, one bearing a serving table, the other holding +above his head a large tray containing covered dishes and glasses. + +"I could do with a cocktail!" Ditmar exclaimed, and the waiter smiled as +he served them. "Here's how!" he said, giving her a glass containing a +yellow liquid. + +She tasted it, made a grimace, and set it down hastily. + +"What's the trouble?" he asked, laughing, as she hurried to the table and +took a drink of water. + +"It's horrid!" she cried. + +"Oh, you'll get over that idea," he told her. "You'll be crazy about +'em." + +"I never want to taste another," she declared. + +He laughed again. He had taken his at a swallow, but almost nullifying +its effect was this confirmation--if indeed he had needed it--of the +extent of her inexperience. She was, in truth, untouched by the world-- +the world in which he had lived. He pulled out her chair for her and she +sat down, confronted by a series of knives, forks, and spoons on either +side of a plate of oysters. Oysters served in this fashion, needless to +say, had never formed part of the menu in Fillmore Street, or in any +Hampton restaurant where she had lunched. But she saw that Ditmar had +chosen a little fork with three prongs, and she followed his example. + +"You mustn't tell me you don't like Cotuits!" he exclaimed. + +She touched one, delicately, with her fork. + +"They're alive!" she exclaimed, though the custom of consuming them thus +was by no means unknown to her. Lise had often boasted of a taste for +oysters on the shell, though really preferring them smothered with red +catsup in a "cocktail." + +"They're alive, but they don't know it. They won't eat you," Ditmar +replied gleefully. "Squeeze a little lemon on one." Another sort of +woman, he reflected, would have feigned a familiarity with the dish. + +She obeyed him, put one in her mouth, gave a little shiver, and swallowed +it quickly. + +"Well?" he said. "It isn't bad, is it?" + +"It seems so queer to eat anything alive, and enjoy it," she said, as she +ate the rest of them. + +"If you think they're good here you ought to taste them on the Cape, +right out of the water," he declared, and went on to relate how he had +once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won a +bet. He was fond of talking about wagers he had won. Betting had lent a +zest to his life. "We'll roll down there together some day next summer, +little girl. It's a great place. You can go in swimming three times a +day and never feel it. And talk about eating oysters, you can't swallow +'em as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open 'em. It's +some trick to open 'em." + +He described the process, but she--scarcely listened. She was striving +to adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience; +to the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot +plates before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a creamy +soup, a fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully +disguised, a breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of +coffee. Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were +aroused in her. What would it be like always to be daintily served, to +eat one's meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner? As her physical +hunger was satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank +in the caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the +heavy scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to +the storm without,--so the storm flinging itself against the windows, +powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold, +black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and +limitations. Had her existence been like that? or was it a dream, a +nightmare from which she had awakened at last? From time to time, deep +within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this +illusion, but she fought it down. She wanted--oh, how she wanted to +believe in the illusion! + +Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from +that existence, who had at his command these delights to bestow. She +loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband--yet there were +moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an +objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from +the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place. And once it +crossed her mind--what would she think of another woman who did this? +What would she think if it were Lise? She could not then achieve a sense +of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling +her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity. And little +by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known, +that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an +expression of the man himself. He was the source of it. More and more, +as he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand, +as he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her. When the +waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she +rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains, +the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light; +and she paused before the grand piano in the corner. + +"I'd like to be able to play!" she said. + +"You can learn," he told her. + +"I'm too old!" + +He laughed. And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly. + +Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded +tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal +Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand. +At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding +them. The picture fascinated Janet. + +"It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?" she asked. + +"What? That? I guess so." He got up and came over to her. "Sure," he +said. "I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel, +which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown to +the lions just as we like to see football games. I'll get the book +again--we'll read it together." + +Janet shivered.... "Here's another picture," he said, turning to the +other side of the room. It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern +portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and a +small, aristocratic head. Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of +pearls. + +"Isn't she beautiful!" Janet sighed. + +"Beautiful!" He led her to the mirror. "Look!" he said. "I'll buy you +pearls, Janet, I want to see them gleaming against your skin. She can't +compare to you. I'll--I'll drape you with pearls." + +"No, no," she cried. "I don't want them, Claude. I don't want them. +Please!" She scarcely knew what she was saying. And as she drew away +from him her hands went out, were pressed together with an imploring, +supplicating gesture. He seized them. His nearness was suffocating her, +she flung herself into his arms, and their lips met in a long, swooning +kiss. She began instinctively but vainly to struggle, not against him-- +but against a primal thing stronger than herself, stronger than he, +stronger than codes and conventions and institutions, which yet she +craved fiercely as her being's fulfilment. It was sweeping them dizzily +--whither? The sheer sweetness and terror of it! + +"Don't, don't!" she murmured desperately. "You mustn't!" + +"Janet--we're going to be married, sweetheart,--just as soon as we can. +Won't you trust me? For God's sake, don't be cruel. You're my wife, +now--" + +His voice seemed to come from a great distance. And from a great +distance, too, her own in reply, drowned as by falling waters. + +"Do you love me? --will you love me always--always?" + +And he answered hoarsely, "Yes--always--I swear it, Janet." He had found +her lips again, he was pulling her toward a door on the far side of the +room, and suddenly, as he opened it, her resistance ceased.... + +The snow made automobiling impossible, and at half past nine that evening +Ditmar had escorted Janet to the station in a cab, and she had taken the +train for Hampton. For a while she sat as in a trance. She knew that +something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic, which had +irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left Hampton that +same morning--an age ago. But she was unable to realize the +metamorphosis. In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime, +exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless to +feel any more. The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of +people returning to homes scattered through the suburbs and smaller +cities north of Boston--a mixed, Sunday-night crowd; and presently she +began, in a detached way, to observe them. Their aspects, their speech +and manners had the queer effect of penetrating her consciousness without +arousing the emotional judgments of approval or disapproval which +normally should have followed. Ordinarily she might have felt a certain +sympathy for the fragile young man on the seat beside her who sat moodily +staring through his glasses at the floor: and the group across the aisle +would surely have moved her to disgust. Two couples were seated vis-a- +vis, the men apparently making fun of a "pony" coat one of the girls was +wearing. In spite of her shrieks, which drew general attention, they +pulled it from her back--an operation regarded by the conductor himself +with tolerant amusement. Whereupon her companion, a big, blond Teuton +with an inane guffaw, boldly thrust an arm about her waist and held her +while he presented the tickets. Janet beheld all this as one sees +dancers through a glass, without hearing the music. + +Behind her two men fell into conversation. + +"I guess there's well over a foot of snow. I thought we'd have an open +winter, too." + +"Look out for them when they start in mild!" + +"I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until +morning. I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got +to watch every minute...." + +Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed at +the time to strike Janet as having any significance. They were +discussing with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by the +fifty-four hour law which was to come into effect on Monday. They +denounced the mill owners. + +"They speed up the machine and make work harder," said one. "I think we +goin' to have a strike sure." + +"Bad sisson too to have strike," replied the second pessimistically. "It +will be cold winter, now." + +Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the +countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed +out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms. +Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again +the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that +journey through the whiteness to Boston.... Awakened, listening, she +heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves +of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of +music. She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming +to behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little +and great, great and little. She was seated once more leaning back in +the corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt Ditmar's +hand working in her own, and she heard his voice pleading forgiveness-- +for her silence alarmed him. And she heard herself saying:-- + +"It was my fault as much as yours." + +And his vehement reply:-- + +"It wasn't anybody's fault--it was natural, it was wonderful, Janet. I +can't bear to see you sad." + +To see her sad! Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken +those words--or was it three times? Was there a time she had forgotten? +And each time she had answered: "I'm not sad." What she had felt indeed +was not sadness,--but how could she describe it to him when she herself +was amazed and dwarfed by it? Could he not feel it, too? Were men so +different?... In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to +be compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he +himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise. She had +actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached +the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace. Even as +he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the +quality of his touch. Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were +these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of +life?--not life itself? Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though +she divined the secret. And yet she loved him--loved him with a +fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her.... + +At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common, +following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to +Fillmore Street. She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room +door, and paused on the threshold. Hannah and Edward sat there under the +lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday +newspaper. On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap. + +"Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!" she exclaimed. +"Thank goodness you're home, anyway. You haven't seen Lise, have you?" + +"Lise?" Janet repeated. "Hasn't she been home?" + +"Your father and I have been alone all day long. Not that it is so +uncommon for Lise to be gone. I wish it wasn't! But you! When you +didn't come home for supper I was considerably worried." + +Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her +gloves. + +"I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced. + +For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the old- +fashioned clock. + +"Mr. Ditmar!" said Hannah, at length. "You're going to marry Mr. +Ditmar!" + +Edward was still inarticulate. His face twitched, his eyes watered as he +stared at her. + +"Not right away," said Janet. + + Well, I must say you take it rather cool," declared Hannah, almost +resentfully. "You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar +just like you were talking about the weather." + +Hannah's eyes filled with tears. There had been indeed an unconscious +lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen +like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope. The result was a +suffocating flame. Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift +perception of this. She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and +kissed her. It was as though the relation between them were reversed, +and the daughter had now become the mother and the comforter. + +"I always knew something like this would happen!" said Edward. His words +incited Hannah to protest. + +"You didn't anything of the kind, Edward Bumpus," she exclaimed. + +"Just to think of Janet livin' in that big house up in Warren Street!" +he went on, unheeding, jubilant. "You'll drop in and see the old people +once in a while, Janet, you won't forget us?" + +"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father," said Janet. + +"Well, he's a fine man, Claude Ditmar, I always said that. The way he +stops and talks to me when he passes the gate--" + +"That doesn't make him a good man," Hannah declared, and added: "If he +wasn't a good man, Janet wouldn't be marrying him." + +"I don't know whether he's good or not," said Janet. + +"That's so, too," observed Hannah, approvingly. "We can't any of us tell +till we've tried 'em, and then it's too late to change. I'd like to see +him, but I guess he wouldn't care to come down here to Fillmore Street." +The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their +own suggested appalling complications to her mind. "I suppose I won't +get a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then." + +"There's plenty of time to think about that, mother," answered Janet. + +"I'd want to have everything decent and regular," Hannah insisted. "We +may be poor, but we come of good stock, as your father says." + +"It'll be all right--Mr. Ditmar will behave like a gentleman," Edward +assured her. + +"I thought I ought to tell you about it," Janet said, "but you mustn't +mention it, yet, not even to Lise. Lise will talk. Mr. Ditmar's very +busy now,--he hasn't made any plans." + +"I wish Lise could get married!" exclaimed Hannah, irrelevantly. "She's +been acting so queer lately, she's not been herself at all." + +"Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother," Edward exclaimed. He +could not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with +benevolence. "Lise'll get married some day. I don't suppose we can +expect another Mr. Ditmar...." + +"Well," said Hannah, presently, "there's no use sitting up all night." +She rose and kissed Janet again. "I just can't believe it," she +declared, "but I guess it's so if you say it is." + +"Of course it's so," said Edward. + +"I so want you should be happy, Janet," said Hannah.... + +Was it so? Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of +Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more. And--what would they +say if they knew what had happened to her this day? When she had reached +her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents. Had it not +been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the +score of her recent absences from home? Yes, that was it, and because +the news would make them happy. And then the mere assertion to them that +she was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself. But, now +that reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the +scope of her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered +circumstance long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized that +she was tired--too tired to think any more. But despite her exhaustion +there remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her, +unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her +to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived. When her head touched the +pillow she fell asleep.... + +When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay +awhile groping in the darkness. Where was she? Who was she? The +discovery of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right +hand was broken, gave her a clew. She had broken that nail in reaching +out to save something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses on +a table with a white cloth. Ditmar had tipped it over. The sudden +flaring up of this trivial incident served to re-establish her identity, +to light a fuse along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating +redly all the events of the day before. It was sweet to lie thus, to +possess, as her very own, these precious, passionate memories of life +lived at last to fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given herself +and taken--all. A longing to see Ditmar again invaded her: he would take +an early train, he would be at the office by nine. How could she wait +until then? + +With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out +her hand to arouse her sister. The coldness of the sheets on the right +side of the bed sent a shiver through her--a shiver of fear. + +"Lise!" she called. But there was no answer from the darkness. And +Janet, trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed, searched +for the matches, and lit the gas. There was no sign of Lise; her +clothes, which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were +nowhere to be seen. Janet's eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence +of several knick-knacks, including a comb and brush, and with a sudden +sickness of apprehension she darted to the wardrobe and flung open the +doors. In the bottom were a few odd garments, above was the hat with the +purple feather, now shabby and discarded, on the hooks a skirt and jacket +Lise wore to work at the Bagatelle in bad weather. That was all.... +Janet sank down in the rocking-chair, her hands clasped together, +overwhelmed by the sudden apprehension of the tragedy that had lurked, +all unsuspected, in the darkness: a tragedy, not of Lise alone, but in +which she herself was somehow involved. Just why this was so, she could +not for the moment declare. The room was cold, she was clad only in a +nightdress, but surges of heat ran through her body. What should she do? +She must think. But thought was impossible. She got up and closed the +window and began to dress with feverish rapidity, pausing now and again +to stand motionless. In one such moment there entered her mind an +incident that oddly had made little impression at the time of its +occurrence because she, Janet, had been blinded by the prospect of her +own happiness--that happiness which, a few minutes ago, had seemed so +real and vital a thing! And it was the memory of this incident that +suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all of Lise's conduct during the +past months--her accidental dropping of the vanity case and the gold +coin! Now she knew'for a certainty what had happened to her sister. + +Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm, filled +with the smell of frying meat. Streaks of grease smoke floated +fantastically beneath the low ceiling, and Hannah, with the fryingpan in +one hand and a fork in the other, was bending over the stove. Wisps of +her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn knot +at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet she +looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her dumb-- +pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that lent a +staggering insight into life itself. Hannah had once been young, +desirable, perhaps, swayed by those forces which had swayed her. Janet +wondered why she had never guessed this before, and why she had guessed +it now. But it was Hannah who, looking up and catching sight of Janet's +face, was quick to divine the presage in it and gave voice to the +foreboding that had weighed on her for many weeks. + +"Where's Lise?" + +And Janet could not answer. She shook her head. Hannah dropped the +fork, the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing +Janet by the shoulders. + +"Is she gone? I knew it, I felt it all along. I thought she'd done +something she was afraid to tell about--I tried to ask her, but I +couldn't--I couldn't! And now she's gone. Oh, my God, I'll never +forgive myself!" + +The unaccustomed sight of her mother's grief was terrible. For an +instant only she clung to Janet, then becoming mute, she sat down in the +kitchen chair and stared with dry, unseeing eyes at the wall. Her face +twitched. Janet could not bear to look at it, to see the torture in her +mother's eyes. She, Janet, seemed suddenly to have grown old herself, to +have lived through ages of misery and tragedy.... She was aware of a +pungent odour, went to the stove, picked up the fork, and turned the +steak. Now and then she glanced at Hannah. Grief seemed to have frozen +her. Then, from the dining-room she heard footsteps, and Edward stood in +the doorway. + +"Well, what's the matter with breakfast?" he asked. From where he stood +he could not see Hannah's face, but gradually his eyes were drawn to her +figure. His intuition was not quick, and some moments passed before the +rigidity of the pose impressed itself upon him. + +"Is mother sick?" he asked falteringly. + +Janet went to him. But it was Hannah who spoke. + +"Lise has gone," she said. + +"Lise--gone," Edward repeated. "Gone where?" + +"She's run away--she's disgraced us," Hannah replied, in a monotonous, +dulled voice. + +Edward did not seem to understand, and presently Janet felt impelled to +break the silence. + +"She didn't come home last night, father." + +"Didn't come home? Mebbe she spent the night with a friend," he said. + +It seemed incredible, at such a moment, that he could still be hopeful. + +"No, she's gone, I tell you, she's lost, we'll never lay eyes on her +again. My God, I never thought she'd come to this, but I might have +guessed it. Lise! Lise! To think it's my Lise!" + +Hannah's voice echoed pitifully through the silence of the flat. So +appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise, +wherever she was, would have heard it. Edward was dazed by the shock, +his lower lip quivered and fell. He walked over to Hannah's chair and +put his hand on her shoulder. + +"There, there, mother," he pleaded. "If she's gone, we'll find her, +we'll bring her back to you." + +Hannah shook her head. She pushed back her chair abruptly and going over +to the stove took the fork from Janet's hand and put the steak on the +dish. + +"Go in there and set down, Edward," she said. "I guess we've got to have +breakfast just the same, whether she's gone or not." + +It was terrible to see Hannah, with that look on her face, going about +her tasks automatically. And Edward, too, seemed suddenly to have become +aged and broken; his trust in the world, so amazingly preserved through +many vicissitudes, shattered at last. He spilled his coffee when he +tried to drink, and presently he got up and wandered about the room, +searching for his overcoat. It was Janet who found it and helped him on +with it. He tried to say something, but failing, departed heavily for +the mill. Janet began to remove the dishes from the table. + +"You've got to eat something, too, before you go to work," said Hannah. + +"I've had all I want," Janet replied. + +Hannah followed her into the kitchen. The scarcely touched food was laid +aside, the coffee-pot emptied, Hannah put the cups in the basin in the +sink and let the water run. She turned to Janet and seized her hands +convulsively. + +"Let me do this, mother," said Janet. She knew her mother was thinking +of the newly-found joy that Lise's disgrace had marred, but she released +her hands, gently, and took the mop from the nail on which it hung. + +"You sit down, mother," she said. + +Hannah would not. They finished the dishes together in silence while the +light of the new day stole in through the windows. Janet went into her +room, set it in order, made up the bed, put on her coat and hat and +rubbers. Then she returned to Hannah, who seized her. + +"It ain't going to spoil your happiness?" + +But Janet could not answer. She kissed her mother, and went out, down +the stairs into the street. The day was sharp and cold and bracing, and +out of an azure sky the sun shone with dazzling brightness on the snow, +which the west wind was whirling into little eddies of white smoke, +leaving on the drifts delicate scalloped designs like those printed by +waves on the sands of the sea. They seemed to Janet that morning +hatefully beautiful. In front of his tin shop, whistling cheerfully and +labouring energetically with a shovel to clean his sidewalk, was Johnny +Tiernan, the tip of his pointed nose made very red by the wind. + +"Good morning, Miss Bumpus," he said. "Now, if you'd only waited awhile, +I'd have had it as clean as a parlour. It's fine weather for coal +bills." + +She halted. + +"Can I see you a moment, Mr. Tiernan?" + +Johnny looked at her. + +"Why sure," he said. Leaning his shovel against the wall, he gallantly +opened the door that she might pass in before him and then led the way to +the back of the shop where the stove was glowing hospitably. He placed a +chair for her. "Now what can I be doing to serve you?" he asked. + +"It's about my sister," said Janet. + +"Miss Lise?" + +"I thought you might know what man she's been going with lately," said +Janet. + +Mr. Tiernan had often wondered how much Janet knew about her sister. In +spite of a momentary embarrassment most unusual in him, the courage of +her question made a strong appeal, and his quick sympathies suspected the +tragedy behind her apparent calmness. He met her magnificently. + +"Why," he said, "I have seen Miss Lise with a fellow named Duval--Howard +Duval--when he's been in town. He travels for a Boston shoe house, +Humphrey and Gillmount." + +"I'm afraid Lise has gone away with him," said Janet. "I thought you +might be able to find out something about him, and--whether any one had +seen them. She left home yesterday morning." + +For an instant Mr. Tiernan stood silent before her, his legs apart, his +fingers running through his bristly hair. + +"Well, ye did right to come straight to me, Miss Janet. It's me that can +find out, if anybody can, and it's glad I am to help you. Just you stay +here--make yourself at home while I run down and see some of the boys. +I'll not be long--and don't be afraid I'll let on about it." + +He seized his overcoat and departed. Presently the sun, glinting on the +sheets of tin, started Janet's glance straying around the shop, noting +its disorderly details, the heaped-up stovepipes, the littered work-bench +with the shears lying across the vise. Once she thought of Ditmar +arriving at the office and wondering what had happened to her.... The +sound of a bell made her jump. Mr. Tiernan had returned. + +"She's gone with him," said Janet, not as a question, but as one stating +a fact. + +Mr. Tiernan nodded. + +"They took the nine-thirty-six for Boston yesterday morning. Eddy +Colahan was at the depot." + +Janet rose. "Thank you," she said simply. + +"What are you going to do?" he asked. + +"I'm going to Boston," she answered. "I'm going to find out where she +is." + +"Then it's me that's going with you," he announced. + +"Oh no, Mr. Tiernan!" she protested. "I couldn't let you do that." + +"And why not?" he demanded. "I've got a little business there myself. +I'm proud to go with you. It's your sister you want, isn't it?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, what would you be doing by yourself--a young lady? How will you +find your sister?" + +"Do you think you can find her?" + +"Sure I can find her," he proclaimed, confidently. He had evidently made +up his mind that casual treatment was what the affair demanded. "Haven't +I good friends in Boston?" By friendship he swayed his world: nor was he +completely unknown--though he did not say so--to certain influential +members of his race of the Boston police department. Pulling out a large +nickel watch and observing that they had just time to catch the train, he +locked up his shop, and they set out together for the station. Mr. +Tiernan led the way, for the path was narrow. The dry snow squeaked +under his feet. + +After escorting her to a seat on the train, he tactfully retired to the +smoking car, not to rejoin her until they were on the trestle spanning +the Charles River by the North Station. All the way to Boston she had +sat gazing out of the window at the blinding whiteness of the fields, +incapable of rousing herself to the necessity of thought, to a degree of +feeling commensurate with the situation. She did not know what she would +say to Lise if she should find her; and in spite of Mr. Tiernan's +expressed confidence, the chances of success seemed remote. When the +train began to thread the crowded suburbs, the city, spreading out over +its hills, instead of thrilling her, as yesterday, with a sense of +dignity and power, of opportunity and emancipation, seemed a labyrinth +with many warrens where vice and crime and sorrow could hide. In front +of the station the traffic was already crushing the snow into filth. +They passed the spot where, the night before, the carriage had stopped, +where Ditmar had bidden her good-bye. Something stirred within her, +became a shooting pain.... She asked Mr. Tiernan what he intended to do. + +"I'm going right after the man, if he's here in the city," he told her. +And they boarded a street car, which almost immediately shot into the +darkness of the subway. Emerging at Scollay Square, and walking a few +blocks, they came to a window where guns, revolvers, and fishing tackle +were displayed, and on which was painted the name, "Timothy Mulally." +Mr. Tiernan entered. + +"Is Tim in?" he inquired of one of the clerks, who nodded his head +towards the rear of the store, where a middle-aged, grey-haired Irishman +was seated at a desk under a drop light. + +"Is it you, Johnny?" he exclaimed, looking up. + +"It's meself," said Mr. Tiernan. "And this is Miss Bumpus, a young lady +friend of mine from Hampton." + +Mr. Mulally rose and bowed. + +"How do ye do, ma'am," he said. + +"I've got a little business to do for her," Mr. Tiernan continued. "I +thought you might offer her a chair and let her stay here, quiet, while I +was gone." + +"With pleasure, ma'am," Mr. Mulally replied, pulling forward a chair with +alacrity. "Just sit there comfortable--no one will disturb ye." + +When, in the course of half an hour, Mr. Tiernan returned, there was a +grim yet triumphant look in his little blue eyes, but it was not until +Janet had thanked Mr. Mulally for his hospitality and they had reached +the sidewalk that he announced the result of his quest. + +"Well, I caught him. It's lucky we came when we did--he was just going +out on the road again, up to Maine. I know where Miss Lise is." + +"He told you!" exclaimed Janet. + +"He told me indeed, but it wasn't any joy to him. He was all for +bluffing at first. It's easy to scare the likes of him. He was as white +as his collar before I was done with him. He knows who I am, all right +he's heard of me in Hampton," Mr. Tiernan added, with a pardonable touch +of pride. + +"What did you say?" inquired Janet, curiously. + +"Say?" repeated Mr. Tiernan. "It's not much I had to say, Miss Janet. I +was all ready to go to Mr. Gillmount, his boss. I'm guessing he won't +take much pleasure on this trip." + +She asked for no more details. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Once more Janet and Mr. Tiernan descended into the subway, taking a car +going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a +broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows +of boarding--and rooming-houses. They alighted at a certain corner, +walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan +scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a +basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps. Climbing these, he +pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed +vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was +cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in +a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face +like a fungus grown in darkness. + +"I want to see Miss Lise Bumpus," Mr. Tiernan demanded. + +"You've got the wrong place. There ain't no one of that name here," said +the woman. + +"There ain't! All right," he insisted aggressively, pushing open the +door in spite of her. "If you don't let this young lady see her quick, +there's trouble coming to you." + +"Who are you?" asked the woman, impudently, yet showing signs of fear. + +"Never mind who I am," Mr. Tiernan declared. "I know all about you, and +I know all about Duval. If you don't want any trouble you won't make +any, and you'll take this young lady to her sister. I'll wait here for +you, Miss Janet," he added. + +"I don't know nothing about her--she rented my room that's all I know," +the woman replied sullenly. "If you mean that couple that came here +yesterday--" + +She turned and led the way upstairs, mounting slowly, and Janet followed, +nauseated and almost overcome by the foul odours of dead cigarette smoke +which, mingling with the smell of cooking cabbage rising from below, +seemed the very essence and reek of hitherto unimagined evil. A terror +seized her such as she had never known before, an almost overwhelming +impulse to turn and regain the air and sunlight of the day. In the dark +hallway of the second story the woman knocked at the door of a front +room. + +"She's in there, unless she's gone out." And indeed a voice was heard +petulantly demanding what was wanted--Lise's voice! Janet hesitated, her +hand on the knob, her body fallen against the panels. Then, as she +pushed open the door, the smell of cigarette smoke grew stronger, and she +found herself in a large bedroom, the details of which were instantly +photographed on her mind--the dingy claret-red walls, the crayon over the +mantel of a buxom lady in a decollete costume of the '90's, the outspread +fan concealing the fireplace, the soiled lace curtains. The bed was +unmade, and on the table beside two empty beer bottles and glasses and +the remains of a box of candy--suggestive of a Sunday purchase at a drug +store--she recognized Lise's vanity case. The effect of all this, +integrated at a glance, was a paralyzing horror. Janet could not speak. +She remained gazing at Lise, who paid no attention to her entrance, but +stood with her back turned before an old-fashioned bureau with a marble +top and raised sides. She was dressed, and engaged in adjusting her hat. +It was not until Janet pronounced her name that she turned swiftly. + +"You!" she exclaimed. "What the--what brought you here?" + +"Oh, Lise!" Janet repeated. + +"How did you get here?" Lise demanded, coming toward her. "Who told you +where I was? What business have you got sleuthing 'round after me like +this?" + +For a moment Janet was speechless once more, astounded that Lise could +preserve her effrontery in such an atmosphere, could be insensible to the +evils lurking in this house--evils so real to Janet that she seemed +actually to feel them brushing against her. + +"Lise, come away from here," she pleaded, "come home with me!" + +"Home!" said Lise, defiantly, and laughed. "What do you take me for? +Why would I be going home when I've been trying to break away for two +years? I ain't so dippy as that--not me! Go home like a good little +girl and march back to the Bagatelle and ask 'em to give me another show +standing behind a counter all day. Nix! No home sweet home for me! I'm +all for easy street when it comes to a home like that." + +Heartless, terrific as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting, +almost sympathetic note in Janet. She herself had revolted against the +monotony and sordidness of that existence She herself ! She dared not +complete the thought, now. + +"But this!" she exclaimed. + +"What's the matter with it?" Lise demanded. "It ain't Commonwealth +Avenue, but it's got Fillmore Street beat a mile. There ain't no +whistles hereto get you out of bed at six a.m., for one thing. There +ain't no geezers, like Walters, to nag you 'round all day long. What's +the matter with it?" + +Something in Lise's voice roused Janet's spirit to battle. + +"What's the matter with it?" she cried. "It's hell--that's the matter +with it. Can't you see it? Can't you feel it? You don't know what it +means, or you'd come home with me." + +"I guess I know what it means as well as you do," said Lise, sullenly. +"We've all got to croak sometime, and I'd rather croak this way than be +smothered up in Hampton. I'll get a run for my money, anyway." + +"No, you don't know what it means," Janet repeated, "or you wouldn't talk +like that. Do you think this man will support you, stick to you? He +won't, he'll desert you, and you'll have to go on the streets." + +A dangerous light grew in Lise's eyes. + +"He's as good as any other man, he's as good as Ditmar," she said. +"They're all the same, to girls like us." + +Janet's heart caught, it seemed to stop beating. Was this a hazard on +Lise's part, or did she speak from knowledge? And yet what did it matter +whether Lise knew or only suspected, if her words were true, if men were +all alike? Had she been a dupe as well as Lise? and was the only +difference between them now the fact that Lise was able, without +illusion, to see things as they were, to accept the consequences, while +she, Janet, had beheld visions and dreamed dreams? was there any real +choice between the luxurious hotel to which Ditmar had taken her and this +detestable house? Suddenly, seemingly by chance, her eyes fell on the +box of drug-store candy from which the cheap red ribbon had been torn, +and by some odd association of ideas it suggested and epitomized Lise's +Sunday excursion with a mama hideous travesty on the journey of wonders +she herself had taken. Had that been heaven, and this of Lise's, +hell?... And was. Lise's ambition to be supported in idleness and +luxury to be condemned because she had believed her own to be higher? +Did not both lead to destruction? The weight that had lain on her breast +since the siren had awakened her that morning and she had reached out and +touched the chilled, empty sheets now grew almost unsupportable. + +"It's true," said Janet, "all men are the same." + +Lise was staring at her. + +"My God!" she exclaimed. "You?" + +"Yes-me," cried Janet.--"And what are you going to do about it? Stay +here with him in this filthy place until he gets tired of you and throws +you out on the street? Before I'd let any man do that to me I'd kill +him." + +Lise began to whimper, and suddenly buried her face in the pillow. But a +new emotion had begun to take possession of Janet--an emotion so strong +as to give her an unlookedfor sense of detachment. And the words Lise +had spoken between her sobs at first conveyed no meaning. + +"I'm going to have a baby...." + +Lise was going to have a child! Why hadn't she guessed it? A child! +Perhaps she, Janet, would have a child! This enlightenment as to Lise's +condition and the possibility it suggested in regard to herself brought +with it an overwhelming sympathy which at first she fiercely resented +then yielded to. The bond between them, instead of snapping, had +inexplicably strengthened. And Lise, despite her degradation, was more +than ever her sister! Forgetting her repugnance to the bed, Janet sat +down beside Lise and put an arm around her. + +"He said he'd marry me, he swore he was rich--and he was a spender all +right. And then some guy came up to me one night at Gruber's and told me +he was married already." + +"What?" Janet exclaimed. + +"Sure! He's got a wife and two kids here in Boston. That was a twenty- +one round knockout! Maybe I didn't have something to tell him when he +blew into Hampton last Friday! But he said he couldn't help it--he loved +me." Lise sat up, seemingly finding relief in the relation of her +wrongs, dabbing her eyes with a cheap lace handkerchief. "Well, while +he'd been away--this thing came. I didn't know what was the matter at +first, and when I found out I was scared to death, I was ready to kill +myself. When I told him he was scared too, and then he said he'd fix it. +Say, I was a goat to think he'd marry me!" Lise laughed hysterically. + +"And then--" Janet spoke with difficulty, "and then you came down here?" + +"I told him he'd have to see me through, I'd start something if he +didn't. Say, he almost got down on his knees, right there in Gruber's! +But he came back inside of ten seconds--he's a jollier, for sure, he was +right there with the goods, it was because he loved me, he couldn't help +himself, I was his cutie, and all that kind of baby talk." + +Lise's objective manner of speaking about her seducer amazed Janet. + +"Do you love him?" she asked. + +"Say, what is love?" Lise demanded. "Do you ever run into it outside of +the movies? Do I love him? Well, he's a good looker and a fancy +dresser, he ain't a tight wad, and he can start a laugh every minute. If +he hadn't put it over on me I wouldn't have been so sore. I don't know +he ain't so bad. He's weak, that's the trouble with him." + +This was the climax! Lise's mental processes, her tendency to pass from +wild despair to impersonal comment, her inability, her courtesan's +temperament that prevented her from realizing tragedy for more than a +moment at a time--even though the tragedy were her own--were +incomprehensible to Janet. + +"Get on to this," Lise adjured her. "When I first was acquainted with +him he handed me a fairy tale that he was taking five thousand a year +from Humphrey and Gillmount, he was going into the firm. He had me +razzle-dazzled. He's some hypnotizes as a salesman, too, they say. +Nothing was too good for me; I saw myself with a house on the avenue +shopping in a limousine. Well, he blew up, but I can't help liking him." + +"Liking him!" cried Janet passionately. "I'd kill him that's what I'd +do." + +Lise regarded her with unwilling admiration. + +"That's where you and me is different," she declared. "I wish I was like +that, but I ain't. And where would I come in? Now you're wise why I +can't go back to Hampton. Even if I was stuck on the burg and cryin' my +eyes out for the Bagatelle I couldn't go back." + +"What are you going to do?" Janet demanded. + +"Well," said Lise, "he's come across--I'll say that for him. Maybe it's +because he's scared, but he's stuck on me, too. When you dropped in I +was just going down town to get a pair of patent leathers, these are all +wore out," she explained, twisting her foot, "they ain't fit for Boston. +And I thought of lookin' at blouses--there's a sale on I was reading +about in the paper. Say, it's great to be on easy street, to be able to +stay in bed until you're good and ready to get up and go shopping, to +gaze at the girls behind the counter and ask the price of things. I'm +going to Walling's and give the salesladies the ha-ha--that's what I'm +going to do." + +"But--?" Janet found words inadequate. + +Lise understood her. + +"Oh, I'm due at the doctor's this afternoon." + +"Where?" + +"The doctor's. Don't you get me?--it's a private hospital." Lise gave a +slight shudder at the word, but instantly recovered her sang-froid. +"Howard fixed it up yesterday--and they say it ain't very bad if you take +it early." + +For a space Janet was too profoundly shocked to reply. + +"Lise! That's a crime!" she cried. + +"Crime, nothing!" retorted Lise, and immediately became indignant. +"Say, I sometimes wonder how you could have lived all these years without +catching on to a few things! What do you take me for! What'd I do with +a baby?" + +What indeed! The thought came like an avalanche, stripping away the +veneer of beauty from the face of the world, revealing the scarred rock +and crushed soil beneath. This was reality! What right had society to +compel a child to be born to degradation and prostitution? to beget, +perhaps, other children of suffering? Were not she and Lise of the +exploited, of those duped and tempted by the fair things the more +fortunate enjoyed unscathed? And now, for their natural cravings, their +family must be disgraced, they must pay the penalty of outcasts! Neither +Lise nor she had had a chance. She saw that, now. The scorching +revelation of life's injustice lighted within her the fires of anarchy +and revenge. Lise, other women might submit tamely to be crushed, might +be lulled and drugged by bribes: she would not. A wild desire seized her +to get back to Hampton. + +"Give me the address of the hospital," she said. + +"Come off!" cried Lise, in angry bravado. "Do you think I'm going to let +you butt into this? I guess you've got enough to do to look out for your +own business." + +Janet produced a pencil from her bag, and going to the table tore off a +piece of the paper in which had been wrapped the candy box. + +"Give me the address," she insisted. + +"Say, what are you going to do?" + +"I want to know where you are, in case anything happens to you." + +"Anything happens! What do you mean?" Janet's words had frightened +Lise, the withdrawal of Janet's opposition bewildered her. But above +all, she was cowed by the sudden change in Janet herself, by the attitude +of steely determination eloquent of an animus persons of Lise's type are +incapable of feeling, and which to them is therefore incomprehensible. +"Nothing's going to happen to me," she whined. "The place is all right-- +he'd be scared to send me there if it wasn't. It costs something, too. +Say, you ain't going to tell 'em at home?" she cried with a fresh access +of alarm. + +"If you do as I say, I won't tell anybody," Janet replied, in that odd, +impersonal tone her voice had acquired. "You must write me as soon--as +soon as it is over. Do you understand?" + +"Honest to God I will," Lise assured her. + +"And you mustn't come back to a house like this." + +"Where'll I go?" Lise asked. + +"I don't know. We'll find out when the time comes," said Janet, +significantly. + +"You've seen him!" Lise exclaimed. + +"No," said Janet, "and I don't want to see him unless I have to. Mr. +Tiernan has seen him. Mr. Tiernan is downstairs now, waiting for me." + +"Johnny Tiernan! Is Johnny Tiernan downstairs?" + +Janet wrote the address, and thrust the slip of paper in her bag. + +"Good-bye, Lise," she said. "I'll come down again I'll come down +whenever you want me." Lise suddenly seized her and clung to her, +sobbing. For a while Janet submitted, and then, kissing her, gently +detached herself. She felt, indeed, pity for Lise, but something within +her seemed to have hardened--something that pity could not melt, +possessing her and thrusting heron to action. She knew not what action. +So strong was this thing that it overcame and drove off the evil spirits +of that darkened house as she descended the stairs to join Mr. Tiernan, +who opened the door for her to pass out. Once in the street, she +breathed deeply of the sunlit air. Nor did she observe Mr. Tiernan's +glance of comprehension.... When they arrived at the North Station he +said:-- + +"You'll be wanting a bite of dinner, Miss Janet," and as she shook her +head he did not press her to eat. He told her that a train for Hampton +left in ten minutes. "I think I'll stay in Boston the rest of the day, +as long as I'm here," he added. + +She remembered that she had not thanked him, she took his hand, but he +cut her short. + +"It's glad I was to help you," he assured her. "And if there's anything +more I can do, Miss Janet, you'll be letting me know--you'll call on +Johnny Tiernan, won't you?" + +He left her at the gate. He had intruded with no advice, he had offered +no comment that she had come downstairs alone, without Lise. His +confidence in her seemed never to have wavered. He had respected, +perhaps partly imagined her feelings, and in spite of these now a sense +of gratitude to him stole over her, mitigating the intensity of their +bitterness. Mr. Tiernan alone seemed stable in a chaotic world. He was +a man. + +No sooner was she in the train, however, than she forgot Mr. Tiernan +utterly. Up to the present the mental process of dwelling upon her own +experience of the last three months had been unbearable, but now she was +able to take a fearful satisfaction in the evolving of parallels between +her case and Lise's. Despite the fact that the memories she had +cherished were now become hideous things, she sought to drag them forth +and compare them, ruthlessly, with what must have been the treasures of +Lise. Were her own any less tawdry? Only she, Janet, had been the +greater fool of the two, the greater dupe because she had allowed herself +to dream, to believe that what she had done had been for love, for light! +because she had not listened to the warning voice within her! It had +always been on the little, unpremeditated acts of Ditmar that she had +loved to linger, and now, in the light of Lise's testimony, of Lise's +experience, she saw them all as false. It seemed incredible, now, that +she had ever deceived herself into thinking that Ditmar meant to marry +her, that he loved her enough to make her his wife. Nor was it necessary +to summon and marshal incidents to support this view, they came of +themselves, crowding one another, a cumulative and appalling array of +evidence, before which she stood bitterly amazed at her former stupidity. +And in the events of yesterday, which she pitilessly reviewed, she beheld +a deliberate and prearranged plan for her betrayal. Had he not +telephoned to Boston for the rooms, rehearsed in his own mind every +detail of what had subsequently happened? Was there any essential +difference between the methods of Ditmar and Duval? Both were skilled in +the same art, and Ditmar was the cleverer of the two. It had only needed +her meeting with Lise, in that house, to reveal how he had betrayed her +faith and her love, sullied and besmirched them. And then came the odd +reflection,--how strange that that same Sunday had been so fateful for +herself and Lise! + +The agony of these thoughts was mitigated by the scorehing hatred that +had replaced her love, the desire for retaliation, revenge. +Occasionally, however, that stream of consciousness was broken by the +recollection of what she had permitted and even advised her sister to do; +and though the idea of the place to which Lise was going sickened her, +though she achieved a certain objective amazement at the transformation +in herself enabling her to endorse such a course, she was glad of having +endorsed it, she rejoiced that Lise's child would not be born into a +world that had seemed--so falsely--fair and sweet, and in reality was +black and detestable. Her acceptance of the act--for Lise--was a +function of the hatred consuming her, a hatred which, growing in bigness, +had made Ditmar merely the personification of that world. From time to +time her hands clenched, her brow furrowed, powerful waves of heat ran +through her, the craving for action became so intense she could scarcely +refrain from rising in her seat. + +By some odd whim of the weather the wind had backed around into the east, +gathering the clouds once more. The brilliancy of the morning had given +place to greyness, the high slits of windows seemed dirtier than ever as +the train pulled into the station at Hampton, shrouded in Gothic gloom. +As she left the car Janet was aware of the presence on the platform of an +unusual number of people; she wondered vaguely, as she pushed her way +through them, why they were there, what they were talking about? One +determination possessed her, to go to the Chippering Mill, to Ditmar. +Emerging from the street, she began to walk rapidly, the change from +inaction to exercise bringing a certain relief, starting the working of +her mind, arousing in her a realization of the necessity of being +prepared for the meeting. Therefore, instead of turning at Faber Street, +she crossed it. But at the corner of the Common she halted, her glance +drawn by a dark mass of people filling the end of Hawthorne Street, where +it was blocked by the brick-coloured facade of the Clarendon Mill. In +the middle distance men and boys were running to join this crowd. A +girl, evidently an Irish-American mill hand of the higher paid sort, +hurried toward her from the direction of the mill itself. Janet accosted +her. + +"It's the strike," she explained excitedly, evidently surprised at the +question. "The Polaks and the Dagoes and a lot of other foreigners quit +when they got their envelopes--stopped their looms and started through +the mill, and when they came into our room I left. I didn't want no +trouble with 'em. It's the fifty-four hour law--their pay's cut two +hours. You've heard about it, I guess." + +Janet nodded. + +"They had a big mass meeting last night in Maxwell Hall," the girl +continued, "the foreigners--not the skilled workers. And they voted to +strike. They tell me they're walking out over at the Patuxent, too." + +"And the Chippering?" asked Janet, eagerly. + +"I don't know--I guess it'll spread to all of 'em, the way these +foreigners are going on--they're crazy. But say," the girl added, "it +ain't right to cut our pay, either, is it? They never done it two years +ago when the law came down to fifty-six." + +Janet did not wait to reply. While listening to this explanation, +excitement had been growing in her again, and some fearful, overpowering +force of attraction emanating from that swarm in the distance drew her +until she yielded, fairly running past the rows of Italian tenements in +their strange setting of snow, not to pause until she reached the fruit +shop where she and Eda had eaten the olives. Now she was on the +outskirts of the crowd that packed itself against the gates of the +Clarendon. It spread over the width of East Street, growing larger every +minute, until presently she was hemmed in. Here and there hoarse shouts +of approval and cheers arose in response to invisible orators haranging +their audiences in weird, foreign tongues; tiny American flags were +waved; and suddenly, in one of those unforeseen and incomprehensible +movements to which mobs are subject, a trolley car standing at the end of +the Hawthorne Street track was surrounded, the desperate clanging of its +bell keeping pace with the beating of Janet's heart. A dark Sicilian, +holding aloft the green, red, and white flag of Italy, leaped on the rear +platform and began to speak, the Slav conductor regarding him stupidly, +pulling the bellcord the while. Three or four policemen fought their way +to the spot, striving to clear the tracks, bewildered and impotent in the +face of the alien horde momentarily growing more and more conscious of +power. + +Janet pushed her way deeper and deeper into the crowd. She wanted to +savour to the full its wrath and danger, to surrender herself to be +played upon by these sallow, stubbybearded exhorters, whose menacing +tones and passionate gestures made a grateful appeal, whose wild, musical +words, just because they were uncomprehended, aroused in her dim +suggestions of a race-experience not her own, but in which she was now +somehow summoned to share. That these were the intruders whom she, as a +native American, had once resented and despised did not occur to her. +The racial sense so strong in her was drowned in a sense of fellowship. +Their anger seemed to embody and express, as nothing else could have +done, the revolt that had been rising, rising within her soul; and the +babel to which she listened was not a confusion of tongues, but one voice +lifted up to proclaim the wrongs of all the duped, of all the exploited +and oppressed. She was fused with them, their cause was her cause, their +betrayers her betrayers. + +Suddenly was heard the cry for which she had been tensely but +unconsciously awaiting. Another cry like that had rung out in another +mob across the seas more than a century before. "Ala Bastille!" became +"To the Chippering!" Some man shouted it out in shrill English, hundreds +repeated it; the Sicilian leaped from the trolley car, and his path could +be followed by the agitated progress of the alien banner he bore. "To +the Chippering!" It rang in Janet's ears like a call to battle. Was she +shouting it, too? A galvanic thrill ran through the crowd, an impulse +that turned their faces and started their steps down East Street toward +the canal, and Janet was irresistibly carried along. Nay, it seemed as +if the force that second by second gained momentum was in her, that she +herself had released and was guiding it! Her feet were wet as she +ploughed through the trampled snow, but she gave no thought to that. The +odour of humanity was in her nostrils. On the left a gaunt Jew pressed +against her, on the right a solid Ruthenian woman, one hand clasping her +shawl, the other holding aloft a miniature emblem of New World liberty. +Her eyes were fixed on the grey skies, and from time to time her lips +were parted in some strange, ancestral chant that could be heard above +the shouting. All about Janet were dark, awakening faces.... + +It chanced that an American, a college graduate, stood gazing down from a +point of vantage upon this scene. He was ignorant of anthropology, +psychology, and the phenomena of environment; but bits of "knowledge"-- +which he embodied in a newspaper article composed that evening stuck wax- +like in his brain. Not thus, he deplored, was the Anglo-Saxon wont to +conduct his rebellions. These Czechs and Slavs, Hebrews and Latins and +Huns might have appropriately been clad in the skins worn by the hordes +of Attila. Had they not been drawn hither by the renown of the +Republic's wealth? And how essentially did they differ from those other +barbarians before whose bewildered, lustful gaze had risen the glittering +palaces on the hills of the Tiber? The spoils of Rome! The spoils of +America! They appeared to him ferocious, atavistic beasts as they broke +into the lumberyard beneath his window to tear the cord-wood from the +piles and rush out again, armed with billets.... + +Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the +street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside +the canal--presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in +front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill. Across +the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the +whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury. The +halt was for a moment only. The bridge rocked beneath the weight of +their charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow- +filled tracks by the wall of the mill. Some, in a frenzy of passion, +hurled their logs against the windows; others paused, seemingly to +measure the distance and force of the stroke, thus lending to their act a +more terrible and deliberate significance. A shout of triumph announced +that the gates, like a broken dam, had given way, and the torrent poured +in between the posts, flooding the yard, pressing up the towered +stairways and spreading through the compartments of the mill. More +ominous than the tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this +absorption of the angry spirits of the mob. Little by little, as the +power was shut off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled. +Pinioned against the parapet above the canal--almost on that very spot +where, the first evening, she had met Ditmar--Janet awaited her chance to +cross. Every crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave +her a fierce throb of joy. She had not expected the gates to yield--her +father must have insecurely fastened them. Gaining the farther side of +the canal, she perceived him flattened against the wall of the gatehouse +shaking his fist in the faces of the intruders, who rushed past him +unheeding. His look arrested her. His face was livid, his eyes were red +with anger, he stood transformed by a passion she had not believed him to +possess. She had indeed heard him give vent to a mitigated indignation +against foreigners in general, but now the old-school Americanism in +which he had been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect +for the convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame. He was +ready to fight for it, to die for it. The curses he hurled at these +people sounded blasphemous in Janet's ears. + +"Father!" she cried. "Father!" + +He looked at her uncomprehendingly, seemingly failing to recognize her. + +"What are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing her and attempting to +draw her to the wall beside him. But she resisted. There sprang from +her lips an unpremeditated question: "Where is Mr. Ditmar?" She was, +indeed, amazed at having spoken it. + +"I don't know," Edward replied distractedly. "We've been looking for him +everywhere. My God, to think that this should happen with me at the +gates!" he lamented. "Go home, Janet. You can't tell what'll happen, +what these fiends will do, you may get hurt. You've got no business +here." Catching sight of a belated and breathless policeman, he turned +from her in desperation. "Get 'em out! Far God's sake, can't you get +'em out before they ruin the machines?" + +But Janet waited no longer. Pushing her way frantically through the +people filling the yard she climbed the tower stairs and made her way +into one of the spinning rooms. The frames were stilled, the overseer +and second hands, thrust aside, looked on helplessly while the intruders +harangued, cajoled or threatened the operatives, some of whom were cowed +and already departing; others, sullen and resentful, remained standing in +the aisles; and still others seemed to have caught the contagion of the +strike. Suddenly, with reverberating strokes, the mill bells rang out, +the electric gongs chattered, the siren screeched, drowning the voices. +Janet did not pause, but hurried from room to room until, in passing +through an open doorway in the weaving department she ran into Mr. +Caldwell. He halted a moment, in surprise at finding her there, calling +her by name. She clung to his sleeve, and again she asked the question:-- + +"Where's Mr. Ditmar?" + +Caldwell shook his head. His answer was the same as Edward's. "I don't +know," he shouted excitedly above the noise. "We've got to get this mob +out before they do any damage." + +He tore himself away, she saw him expostulating with the overseer, and +then she went on. These tower stairs, she remembered, led to a yard +communicating by a little gate with the office entrance. The door of the +vestibule was closed, but the watchman, Simmons, recognizing her, +permitted her to enter. The offices were deserted, silent, for the bells +and the siren had ceased their clamour; the stenographers and clerks had +gone. The short day was drawing to a close, shadows were gathering in +the corners of Ditmar's room as she reached the threshold and gazed about +her at the objects there so poignantly familiar. She took off her coat. +His desk was littered with books and papers, and she started, +mechanically, to set it in order, replacing the schedule books on the +shelves, sorting out the letters and putting them in the basket. She +could not herself have told why she should take up again these trivial +tasks as though no cataclysmic events had intervened to divide forever +the world of yesterday from that of to-morrow. With a movement +suggestive of tenderness she was picking up Ditmar's pen to set it in the +glass rack when her ear caught the sound of voices, and she stood +transfixed, listening intently. There were footsteps in the corridor, +the voices came nearer; one, loud and angered, she detected above the +others. It was Ditmar's! Nothing had happened to him! Dropping the +pen, she went over to the window, staring out over the grey waters, +trembling so violently that she could scarcely stand. + +She did not look around when they entered the room Ditmar, Caldwell, +Orcutt, and evidently a few watchmen and overseers. Some one turned on +the electric switch, darkening the scene without. Ditmar continued to +speak in vehement tones of uncontrolled rage. + +"Why in hell weren't those gates bolted tight?" he demanded. "That's +what I want to know! There was plenty of time after they turned the +corner of East Street. You might have guessed what they would do. But +instead of that you let 'em into the mill to shut off the power and +intimidate our own people." He called the strikers an unprintable name, +and though Janet stood, with her back turned, directly before him, he +gave no sign of being aware of her presence. + +"It wasn't the gatekeeper's fault," she heard Orcutt reply in a tone +quivering with excitement and apprehension. "They really didn't give us +a chance--that's the truth. They were down Canal Street and over the +bridge before we knew it." + +"It's just as I've said a hundred times," Ditmar retorted. "I can't +afford to leave this mill a minute, I can't trust anybody --" and he +broke out in another tirade against the intruders. "By God, I'll fix 'em +for this--I'll crush 'em. And if any operatives try to walkout here I'll +see that they starve before they get back--after all I've done for 'em, +kept the mill going in slack times just to give 'em work. If they desert +me now, when I've got this Bradlaugh order on my hands--" Speech became +an inadequate expression of his feelings, and suddenly his eye fell on +Janet. She had turned, but her look made no impression on him. "Call up +the Chief of Police," he said. + +Automatically she obeyed, getting the connection and handing him the +receiver, standing by while he denounced the incompetence of the +department for permitting the mob to gather in East Street and demanded +deputies. The veins of his forehead were swollen as he cut short the +explanations of the official and asked for the City Hall. In making an +appointment with the Mayor he reflected on the management of the city +government. And when Janet by his command obtained the Boston office, he +gave the mill treasurer a heated account of the afternoon's occurrences, +explaining circumstantially how, in his absence at a conference in the +Patuxent Mill, the mob had gathered in East Street and attacked the +Chippering; and he urged the treasurer to waste no time in obtaining a +force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the +operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike. +Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping +out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been +the day before. It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard +it, could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was +determined to starve and crush if they dared to upset his plans and +oppose his will were human beings with wills and passions and grievances +of their own. Until to-day her eyes had been sealed. In agony they had +been opened to the panorama of sorrow and suffering, of passion and evil; +and what she beheld now as life was a vast and terrible cruelty. She had +needed only this final proof to be convinced that in his eyes she also +was but one of those brought into the world to minister to his pleasure +and profit. He had taken from her, as his weed, the most precious thing +a woman has to give, and now that she was here again at his side, by some +impulse incomprehensible to herself--in spite of the wrong he had done +her!--had sought him out in danger, he had no thought of her, no word for +her, no use save a menial one: he cared nothing for any help she might be +able to give, he had no perception of the new light which had broken +within her soul.... The telephoning seemed interminable, yet she waited +with a strange patience while he talked with Mr. George Chippering and +two of the most influential directors. These conversations had covered +the space of an hour or more. And perhaps as a result of self- +suggestion, of his repeated assurances to Mr. Semple, to Mr. Chippering, +and the directors of his ability to control the situation, Ditmar's +habitual self-confidence was gradually restored. And when at last he +hung up the instrument and turned to her, though still furious against +the strikers, his voice betrayed the joy of battle, the assurance of +victory. + +"They can't bluff me, they'll have to guess again. It's that damned +Holster--he hasn't any guts--he'd give in to 'em right now if I'd let +him. It's the limit the way he turned the Clarendon over to them. I'll +show him how to put a crimp in 'em if they don't turn up here to-morrow +morning." + +He was so magnificently sure of her sympathy! She did, not reply, but +picked up her coat from the chair where she had laid it. + +"Where are you going?" he demanded. And she replied laconically, +"Home." + +"Wait a minute," he said, rising and taking a step toward her. + +"You have an appointment with the Mayor," she reminded him. + +"I know," he said, glancing at the clock over the door. " Where have you +been? --where were you this morning? I was worried about you, I--I was +afraid you might be sick." + +"Were you?" she said. "I'm all right. I had business in Boston." + +"Why didn't you telephone me? In Boston?" he repeated. + +She nodded. He started forward again, but she avoided him. + +"What's the matter?" he cried. "I've been worried about you all day-- +until this damned strike broke loose. I was afraid something had +happened." + +"You might have asked my father," she said. + +"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" + +His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that +something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had +congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last +been established. He was conscious, however, of irritation because this +whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at +the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere +with his cherished plans--for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of +humanity by the yardstick of his desires. Her question as to why he had +not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude. +As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that +there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn +on him. His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck +him. + +"I hate you!" she said. She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate, +concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic +quality of a bullet. And save for the impact of it--before which he +physically recoiled--its import was momentarily without meaning. + +"What?" he exclaimed, stupidly. + +"I might have known you never meant to marry me," she went on. Her hands +were busy with the buttons of her coat. + +"All you want is to use me, to enjoy me and turn me out when you get +tired of me--the way you've done with other women. It's just the same +with these mill hands, they're not human beings to you, they're--they're +cattle. If they don't do as you like, you turn them out; you say they +can starve for all you care." + +"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded. "What have I done to +you, Janet? I love you, I need you!" + +"Love me!" she repeated. "I know how men of your sort love--I've seen +it--I know. As long as I give you what you want and don't bother you, +you love me. And I know how these workers feel," she cried, with sudden, +passionate vehemence. "I never knew before, but I know now. I've been +with them, I marched up here with them from the Clarendon when they +battered in the gates and smashed your windows--and I wanted to smash +your windows, too, to blow up your mill." + +"What are you saying? You came here with the strikers? you were with +that mob?" asked Ditmar, astoundedly. + +"Yes, I was in that mob. I belong there, with them, I tell you--I don't +belong here, with you. But I was a fool even then, I was afraid they'd +hurt you, I came into the mill to find you, and you--and you you acted as +if you'd never seen me before. I was a fool, but I'm glad I came--I'm +glad I had a chance to tell you this." + +"My God--won't you trust me?" he begged, with a tremendous effort to +collect himself. "You trusted me yesterday. What's happened to change +you? Won't you tell me? It's nothing I've done--I swear. And what do +you mean when you say you were in that mob? I was almost crazy when I +came back and found they'd been here in this mill--can't you understand? +It wasn't that I didn't think of you. I'd been worrying about you all +day. Look at this thing sensibly. I love you, I can't get along without +you--I'll marry you. I said I would, I meant it I'll marry you just as +soon as I can clean up this mess of a strike. It won't take long." + +"Don't touch me!" she commanded, and he recoiled again. "I'll tell you +where I've been, if you want to know,--I've been to see my sister in--in +a house, in Boston. I guess you know what kind of a house I mean, you've +been in them, you've brought women to them,--just like the man that +brought her there. Would you marry me now--with my sister there? And am +I any different from her? You you've made me just like her." Her voice +had broken, now, into furious, uncontrolled weeping--to which she paid no +heed. + +Ditmar was stunned; he could only stare at her. + +"If I have a child," she said, "I'll--I'll kill you--I'll kill myself." + +And before he could reply--if indeed he had been able to reply--she had +left the office and was running down the stairs.... + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +What was happening to Hampton? Some hundreds of ignorant foreigners, +dissatisfied with the money in their pay envelopes, had marched out of +the Clarendon Mill and attacked the Chippering and behold, the revered +structure of American Government had quivered and tumbled down like a +pack of cards! Despite the feverish assurances in the Banner "extra" +that the disturbance was merely local and temporary, solid citizens +became panicky, vaguely apprehending the release of elemental forces +hitherto unrecognized and unknown. Who was to tell these solid, educated +business men that the crazy industrial Babel they had helped to rear, and +in which they unconsciously dwelt, was no longer the simple edifice they +thought it? that Authority, spelled with a capital, was a thing of the +past? that human instincts suppressed become explosives to displace the +strata of civilization and change the face of the world? that conventions +and institutions, laws and decrees crumble before the whirlwind of human +passions? that their city was not of special, but of universal +significance? And how were these, who still believed themselves to be +dwelling under the old dispensation, to comprehend that environments +change, and changing demand new and terrible Philosophies? When night +fell on that fateful Tuesday the voice of Syndicalism had been raised in +a temple dedicated to ordered, Anglo-Saxon liberty--the Hampton City +Hall. + +Only for a night and a day did the rebellion lack both a leader and a +philosophy. Meanwhile, in obedience to the unerring instinct for drama +peculiar to great metropolitan dailies, newspaper correspondents were +alighting from every train, interviewing officials and members of labour +unions and mill agents: interviewing Claude Ditmar, the strongest man in +Hampton that day. He at least knew what ought to be done, and even +before his siren broke the silence of the morning hours in vigorous and +emphatic terms he had informed the Mayor and Council of their obvious +duty. These strikers were helots, unorganized scum; the regular unions-- +by comparison respectable--held aloof from them. Here, in effect, was +his argument: a strong show of force was imperative; if the police and +deputies were inadequate, request the Governor to call out the local +militia; but above all, waste no time, arrest the ringleaders, the +plotters, break up all gatherings, keep the streets clear. He demanded +from the law protection of his property, protection for those whose right +to continue at work was inalienable. He was listened to with sympathy +and respect--but nothing was done! The world had turned upside down +indeed if the City Government of Hampton refused to take the advice of +the agent of the Chippering Mill! American institutions were a failure! +But such was the fact. Some unnamed fear, outweighing their dread of the +retributions of Capital, possessed these men, made them supine, derelict +in the face of their obvious duty. + +By the faint grey light of that bitter January morning Ditmar made his +way to the mill. In Faber Street dark figures flitted silently across +the ghostly whiteness of the snow, and gathered in groups on the corners; +seeking to avoid these, other figures hurried along the sidewalks close +to the buildings, to be halted, accosted, pleaded with--threatened, +perhaps. Picketing had already begun! The effect of this pantomime of +the eternal struggle for survivals which he at first beheld from a +distance, was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of the wide street, +to emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and a bluish darkness +lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were frosted in quaint +designs. Where were the police? It was not fear that Ditmar felt, he +was galvanized and dominated by anger, by an overwhelming desire for +action; physical combat would have brought him relief, and as he +quickened his steps he itched to seize with his own hands these +foreigners who had dared to interfere with his cherished plans, who had +had the audacity to challenge the principles of his government which +welcomed them to its shores. He would have liked to wring their necks. +His philosophy, too, was environmental. And beneath this wrath, +stimulating and energizing it the more, was the ache in his soul from the +loss for which he held these enemies responsible. Two days ago happiness +and achievement had both been within his grasp. The only woman--so now +it seemed--he had ever really wanted! What had become of her? What +obscure and passionate impulse had led her suddenly to defy and desert +him, to cast in her lot with these insensate aliens? A hundred times +during the restless, inactive hours of a sleepless night this question +had intruded itself in the midst of his scheming to break the strike, as +he reviewed, word by word, act by act, that almost incomprehensible +revolt of hers which had followed so swiftly--a final, vindictive blow of +fate--on that other revolt of the workers. At moments he became +confused, unable to separate the two. He saw her fire in that other.... +Her sister, she had said, had been disgraced; she had defied him to marry +her in the face of that degradation--and this suddenly had sickened him. +He had let her go. What a fool he had been to let her go! Had she +herself been--! He did not finish this thought. Throughout the long +night he had known, for a certainty, that this woman was a vital part of +him, flame of his flame. Had he never seen her he would have fought +these strikers to their knees, but now the force of this incentive was +doubled. He would never yield until he had crushed them, until he had +reconquered her. + +He was approaching one of the groups of strikers, and unconsciously he +slowed his steps. The whites of his eyes reddened. The great coat of +golden fur he wore gave to his aspect an added quality of formidableness. +There were some who scattered as he drew near, and of the less timorous +spirits that remained only a few raised dark, sullen glances to encounter +his, which was unflinching, passionately contemptuous. Throughout the +countless generations that lay behind them the instinct of submission had +played its dominant, phylogenetic role. He was the Master. The journey +across the seas had not changed that. A few shivered--not alone because +they were thinly clad. He walked on, slowly, past other groups, turned +the corner of West Street, where the groups were more numerous, while the +number of those running the gantlet had increased. And he heard, twice +or thrice, the word "Scab!" cried out menacingly. His eyes grew redder +still as he spied a policeman standing idly in a doorway. + +"Why in hell don't you do your duty?" he demanded. "What do you mean by +letting them interfere with these workers?" + +The man flinched. He was apologetic. "So long as they're peaceable, Mr. +Ditmar--those are my orders. I do try to keep 'em movin'." + +"Your orders? You're a lot of damned cowards," Ditmar replied, and went +on. There were mutterings here; herded together, these slaves were +bolder; and hunger and cold, discouragement at not being able to stop the +flow toward the mills were having their effect. By the frozen canal, the +scene of the onslaught of yesterday, the crowd had grown comparatively +thick, and at the corner of the lodginghouse row Ditmar halted a moment, +unnoticed save by a few who nudged one another and murmured. He gave +them no attention, he was trying to form an estimate of the effect of the +picketing on his own operatives. Some came with timid steps; others, +mostly women, fairly ran; still others were self-possessed, almost +defiant--and such he marked. There were those who, when the picketers +held them by the sleeve, broke precipitately from their annoyers, and +those who hesitated, listening with troubled faces, with feelings torn +between dread of hunger for themselves and their children and sympathy +with the revolt. A small number joined the ranks of the picketers. +Ditmar towered above these foreigners, who were mostly undersized: a +student of human nature and civilization, free from industrial complexes, +would from that point of vantage have had much to gather from the +expressions coming within his view, but to Ditmar humanity was a means to +an end. Suddenly, from the cupolas above the battlement of the mill, the +bells shattered the early morning air, the remnant of the workers +hastened across the canal and through the guarded gates, which were +instantly closed. Ditmar was left alone among the strikers. As he moved +toward the bridge they made a lane for him to pass; one or two he thrust +out of his way. But there were mutterings, and from the sidewalk he +heard a man curse him. + +Perhaps we shall understand some day that the social body, also, is +subject to the operation of cause and effect. It was not what an +ingenuous orthodoxy, keeping alive the fate of the ancient city from +which Lot fled, would call the wrath of heaven that visited Hampton, +although a sermon on these lines was delivered from more than one of her +pulpits on the following Sunday. Let us surmise, rather, that a decrepit +social system in a moment of lowered vitality becomes an easy prey to +certain diseases which respectable communities are not supposed to have. +The germ of a philosophy evolved in decadent Europe flies across the sea +to prey upon a youthful and vigorous America, lodging as host wherever +industrial strife has made congenial soil. In four and twenty hours +Hampton had "caught" Syndicalism. All day Tuesday, before the true +nature of the affection was developed, prominent citizens were outraged +and appalled by the supineness of their municipal phagocytes. Property, +that sacred fabric of government, had been attacked and destroyed, law +had been defied, and yet the City Hall, the sanctuary of American +tradition, was turned over to the alien mob for a continuous series of +mass meetings. All day long that edifice, hitherto chastely familiar +with American doctrine alone, with patriotic oratory, with perorations +that dwelt upon the wrongs and woes of Ireland--part of our national +propaganda--all day long that edifice rang with strange, exotic speech, +sometimes guttural, often musical, but always impassioned, weirdly +cadenced and intoned. From the raised platform, in place of the shrewd, +matter-of-fact New England politician alive to the vote--getting powers +of Fourth of July patriotism, in place of the vehement but fun-loving son +of Erin, men with wild, dark faces, with burning black eyes and unkempt +hair, unshaven, flannel skirted--made more alien, paradoxically, by their +conventional, ready-made American clothes--gave tongue to the +inarticulate aspirations of the peasant drudge of Europe. From lands +long steeped in blood they came, from low countries by misty northern +seas, from fair and ancient plains of Lombardy, from Guelph and +Ghibelline hamlets in the Apennines, from vine-covered slopes in Sicily +and Greece; from the Balkans, from Caucasus and Carpathia, from the +mountains of Lebanon, whose cedars lined the palaces of kings; and from +villages beside swollen rivers that cross the dreary steppes. Each +peasant listened to a recital in his own tongue--the tongue in which the +folklore, the cradle sayings of his race had been preserved--of the +common wrongs of all, of misery still present, of happiness still +unachieved in this land of liberty and opportunity they had found a +mockery; to appeals to endure and suffer for a common cause. But who was +to weld together this medley of races and traditions, to give them the +creed for which their passions were prepared, to lead into battle these +ignorant and unskilled from whom organized labour held aloof? Even as +dusk was falling, even as the Mayor, the Hon. Michael McGrath, was making +from the platform an eloquent plea for order and peace, promising a +Committee of Arbitration and thinking about soldiers, the leader and the +philosophy were landing in Hampton. + +The "five o'clock" edition of the Banner announced him, Antonio +Antonelli, of the Industrial Workers of the World! An ominous name, an +ominous title,--compared by a wellknown publicist to the sound of a fire- +bell in the night. The Industrial Workers, not of America, but of the +World! No wonder it sent shivers down the spine of Hampton! The writer +of the article in the Banner was unfamiliar with the words "syndicalism" +and "sabotage," or the phrase "direct action," he was too young to know +the history of the Knights, he had never heard of a philosophy of labour, +or of Sorel or Pouget, but the West he had heard of,--the home of +lawlessness, of bloodshed, rape, and murder. For obvious reasons he did +not betray this opinion, but for him the I.W.W. was born in the West, +where it had ravaged and wrecked communities. His article was guardedly +respectful, but he ventured to remind his readers that Mr. Antonelli had +been a leader in some of these titanic struggles between crude labour and +capital--catastrophes that hitherto had seemed to the citizens of Hampton +as remote as Kansas cyclones.... + +Some of the less timorous of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what +doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening +into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, "to +suffocation." Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than +he looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe +work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout. In +the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared one +of the, strange and terrifying creatures which, in times of upheaval, are +thrust from the depths of democracies to the surface, with gifts to voice +the longings and passions of those below. He did not blink in the light; +he was sure of himself, he had a creed and believed in it; he gazed +around him with the leonine stare of the conqueror, and a hush came over +the hall as he arose. His speech was taken down verbatim, to be +submitted to the sharpest of legal eyes, when was discovered the +possession of a power--rare among agitators--to pour forth in torrents +apparently unpremeditated appeals, to skirt the border of sedition and +never transgress it, to weigh his phrases before he gave them birth, and +to remember them. If he said an incendiary thing one moment he qualified +it the next; he justified violence only to deprecate it; and months +later, when on trial for his life and certain remarks were quoted against +him, he confounded his prosecutors by demanding the contexts. Skilfully, +always within the limits of their intelligence, he outlined to his +hearers his philosophy and proclaimed it as that of the world's +oppressed. Their cause was his--the cause of human progress; he +universalized, it. The world belonged to the "producer," if only he had +the courage to take possession of his own.... + +Suddenly the inspirer was transformed into the man of affairs who calmly +proposed the organization of a strike committee, three members of which +were to be chosen by each nationality. And the resolution, translated +into many tongues, was adopted amidst an uproar of enthusiasm. Until +that moment the revolt had been personal, local, founded on a particular +grievance which had to do with wages and the material struggle for +existence. Now all was changed; now they were convinced that the +deprivation and suffering to which they had pledged themselves were not +for selfish ends alone, but also vicarious, dedicated to the liberation +of all the downtrodden of the earth. Antonelli became a saviour; they +reached out to touch him as he passed; they trooped into the snowy +street, young men and old, and girls, and women holding children in their +arms, their faces alight with something never known or felt before. + +Such was Antonelli to the strikers. But to those staid residents of +Hampton who had thought themselves still to be living in the old New +England tradition, he was the genius of an evil dream. Hard on his heels +came a nightmare troop, whose coming brought to the remembrance of the +imaginative the old nursery rhyme:-- + +"Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark, The beggars are come to town." + +It has, indeed, a knell-like ring. Do philosophies tend also to cast +those who adopt them into a mould? These were of the self-same breed, +indubitably the followers of Antonelli. The men wore their hair long, +affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that +fell over the lapels of their coats. Loose morals and loose ties! The +projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of +everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob +rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin +revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity--not of the +clandestine sort to be found in decent communities--but of free love that +flaunts itself in the face of an outraged public. For there were women +in the band. All this, and more, the invaders suggested--atheism, +unfamiliarity with soap and water, and, more vaguely, an exotic poetry +and art that to the virile of American descent is saturated with +something indefinable yet abhorrent. Such things are felt. Few of the +older citizens of Hampton were able to explain why something rose in +their gorges, why they experienced a new and clammy quality of fear and +repulsion when, on the day following Antonelli's advent, these strangers +arrived from nowhere to install themselves--with no baggage to speak of-- +in Hampton's more modest but hitherto respectable hostelries. And no +sooner had the city been rudely awakened to the perilous presence, in +overwhelming numbers, of ignorant and inflammable foreigners than these +turned up and presumed to lead the revolt, to make capital out of it, to +interpret it in terms of an exotic and degenerate creed. Hampton would +take care of itself--or else the sovereign state within whose borders it +was would take care of it. And his Honour the Mayor, who had proclamed +his faith in the reasonableness of the strikers, who had scorned the +suggestions of indignant inhabitants that the Governor be asked for +soldiers, twenty-four hours too late arranged for the assembly of three +companies of local militia in the armory, and swore in a hundred extra +police. + +The hideous stillness of Fillmore Street was driving Janet mad. What she +burned to do was to go to Boston and take a train for somewhere in the +West, to lose herself, never to see Hampton again. But--there was her +mother. She could not leave Hannah in these empty rooms, alone; and +Edward was to remain at the mill, to eat and sleep there, until the +danger of the strike had passed. A messenger had come to fetch his +clothes. After leaving Ditmar in the office of the mill, Janet crept up +the dark stairs to the flat and halted in the hallway. Through the open +doorway of the dining-room she saw Hannah seated on the horsehair sofa-- +for the first time within memory idle at this hour of the day. Nothing +else could have brought home to her like this the sheer tragedy of their +plight. Until then Janet had been sustained by anger and excitement, by +physical action. She thought Hannah was staring at her; after a moment +it seemed that the widened pupils were fixed in fascination on something +beyond, on the Thing that had come to dwell here with them forever. + +Janet entered the room. She sat down on the sofa and took her mother's +hand in hers. And Hannah submitted passively. Janet could not speak. A +minute might have passed, and the silence, which neither had broken, +acquired an intensity that to Janet became unbearable. Never had the +room been so still! Her glance, raised instinctively to the face of the +picture-clock, saw the hands pointing to ten. Every Monday morning, as +far back as she could recall, her father had wound it before going to +work--and to-day he had forgotten. Getting up, she opened the glass +door, and stood trying to estimate the hour: it must be, she thought, +about six. She set the hands, took the key from the nail above the +shelf, wound up the weight, and started the pendulum. And the sound of +familiar ticking was a relief, releasing at last her inhibited powers of +speech. + +"Mother," she said, "I'll get some supper for you." + +On Hannah, these simple words had a seemingly magical effect. Habit +reasserted itself. She started, and rose almost briskly. + +"No you won't," she said, "I'll get it. I'd ought to have thought of it +before. You must be tired and hungry." + +Her voice was odd and thin. Janet hesitated a moment, and ceded. + +"Well, I'll set the dishes on the table, anyway." + +Janet had sought refuge, wistfully, in the commonplace. And when the +meal was ready she strove to eat, though food had become repulsive. + +"You must take something, mother," she said. + +"I don't feel as if I ever wanted to eat anything again," she replied. + +"I know," said Janet, "but you've got to." And she put some of the cold +meat, left over from Sunday's dinner, on Hannah's plate. Hannah took up +a fork, and laid it down again. Suddenly she said:-- + +"You saw Lise?" + +"Yes," said Janet. + +"Where is she?" + +"In a house--in Boston." + +"One of--those houses?" + +"I--I don't know," said Janet. "I think so." + +"You went there?" + +"Mr. Tiernan went with me." + +"She wouldn't come home?" + +"Not--not just now, mother." + +"You left her there, in that place? You didn't make her come home?" + +The sudden vehemence of this question, the shrill note of reproach in +Hannah's voice that revealed, even more than the terrible inertia from +which she had emerged, the extent of her suffering, for the instant left +Janet utterly dismayed. "Oh mother!" she exclaimed. "I tried--I--I +couldn't." + +Hannah pushed back her chair. + +"I'll go to her, I'll make her come. She's disgraced us, but I'll make +her. Where is she? Where is the house?" + +Janet, terrified, seized her mother's arm. Then she said:-- + +"Lise isn't there any more--she's gone away." + +"Away and you let her go away? You let your sister go away and be a--a +woman of the town? You never loved her--you never had any pity for her." + +Tears sprang into Janet's eyes--tears of pity mingled with anger. The +situation had grown intolerable! Yet how could she tell Hannah where +Lise was! + +"You haven't any right to say that, mother!" she cried. "I did my best. +She wouldn't come. I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she +promised to write, to send me her address." + +"Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken +child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to +Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love, +and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she +must be to Hannah. No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could +efface it. The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman, +her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one. This, +then, was what it meant to be a mother! All the years of deadening hope +had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered body it was +still alive and quick. The agony of that revelation was scarcely to be +borne. And it seemed that Lise, even in the place where she was, must +have heard that cry and heeded it. And yet--the revelation of Lise's +whereabouts, of Lise's contemplated act Janet had nearly been goaded into +making, died on her lips. She could not tell Hannah! And Lise's child +must not come into a world like this. Even now the conviction remained, +fierce, exultant, final. But if Janet had spoken now Hannah would not +have heard her. Under the storm she had begun to rock, weeping +convulsively.... But gradually her weeping ceased. And to Janet, +helplessly watching, this process of congealment was more terrible even +than the release that only an unmitigated violence of grief had been able +to produce. In silence Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when +these were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying +listless in her lap. She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have +exhausted the gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst, +had been the fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that knows no +touch of fire.... + +The next morning Janet was awakened by the siren. Never, even in the +days when life had been routine and commonplace, had that sound failed to +arouse in her a certain tremor of fear; with its first penetrating +shriek, terror invaded her: then, by degrees, overcoming her numbness, +came an agonizing realization of tragedy to be faced. The siren blew and +blew insistently, as though it never meant to stop; and now for the first +time she seemed to detect in it a note of futility. There were those who +would dare to defy it. She, for one, would defy it. In that reflection +she found a certain fierce joy. And she might lie in bed if she wished-- +how often had she longed to! But she could not. The room was cold, +appallingly empty and silent as she hurried into her clothes. The +dining-room lamp was lighted, the table set, her mother was bending over +the stove when she reached the kitchen. After the pretence of breakfast +was gone through Janet sought relief in housework, making her bed, +tidying her room. It was odd, this morning, how her notice of little, +familiar things had the power to add to her pain, brought to mind +memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the +kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when +Lise had upset it. She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant +remark. And there was the streak in the wall-paper caused one night by +the rain leaking through the roof. After the bed was made and the room +swept she stood a moment, motionless, and then, opening the drawer in the +wardrobe took from it the rose which she had wrapped in tissue paper and +hidden there, and with a perverse desire as it were to increase the +bitterness consuming her, to steep herself in pain, she undid the parcel +and held the withered flower to her face. Even now a fragrance, faint +yet poignant, clung to it.... She wrapped it up again, walked to the +window, hesitated, and then with a sudden determination to destroy this +sole relic of her happiness went to the kitchen and flung it into the +stove. Hannah, lingering over her morning task of cleaning, did not seem +to notice the act. Janet turned to her. + +"I think I'll go out for a while, mother," she said. + +"You'd ought to," Hannah replied. "There's no use settin' around here." + +The silence of the flat was no longer to be endured. And Janet, putting +on her coat and hat, descended the stairs. Not once that morning had her +mother mentioned Lise; nor had she asked about her own plans--about +Ditmar. This at least was a relief; it was the question she had feared +most. In the street she met the postman. + +"I have a letter for you, Miss Janet," he said. And on the pink envelope +he handed her, in purple ink, she recognized the unformed, childish +handwriting of Lise. "There's great doings down at the City Hall," the +postman added "the foreigners are holding mass meetings there." +Janet scarcely heard him as she tore open the envelope. "Dear Janet," +the letter ran. "The doctor told me I had a false alarm, there was +nothing to it. Wouldn't that jar you? Boston's a slow burg, and there's +no use of my staying here now. I'm going to New York, and maybe I'll +come back when I've had a look at the great white way. I've got the +coin, and I gave him the mit to-night. If you haven't anything better to +do, drop in at the Bagatelle and give Walters my love, and tell them not +to worry at home. There's no use trying to trail me. Your affectionate +sister Lise." + +Janet thrust the letter in her pocket. Then she walked rapidly westward +until she came to the liver-coloured faeade of the City Hall, opposite +the Common. Pushing through the crowd of operatives lingering on the +pavement in front of it, she entered the building.... + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V2 +by Winston Churchill + + + + + + +THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT + +BY WINSTON CHURCHILL + + +VOLUME 3. + + +CHAPTER XV + +Occasionally the art of narrative may be improved by borrowing the method +of the movies. Another night has passed, and we are called upon to +imagine the watery sunlight of a mild winter afternoon filtering through +bare trees on the heads of a multitude. A large portion of Hampton +Common is black with the people of sixteen nationalities who have +gathered there, trampling down the snow, to listen wistfully and eagerly +to a new doctrine of salvation. In the centre of this throng on the +bandstand--reminiscent of concerts on sultry, summer nights--are the +itinerant apostles of the cult called Syndicalism, exhorting by turns in +divers tongues. Antonelli had spoken, and many others, when Janet, +impelled by a craving not to be denied, had managed to push her way +little by little from the outskirts of the crowd until now she stood +almost beneath the orator who poured forth passionate words in a language +she recognized as Italian. Her curiosity was aroused, she was unable to +classify this tall man whose long and narrow face was accentuated by a +pointed brown beard, whose lips gleamed red as he spoke, whose slim hands +were eloquent. The artist as propagandist--the unsuccessful artist with +more facility than will. The nose was classic, and wanted strength; the +restless eyes that at times seemed fixed on her were smouldering windows +of a burning house: the fire that stirred her was also consuming him. +Though he could have been little more than five and thirty, his hair was +thinned and greying at the temples. And somehow emblematic of this +physiognomy and physique, summing it up and expressing it in terms of +apparel, were the soft collar and black scarf tied in a flowing bow. +Janet longed to know what he was saying. His phrases, like music, played +on her emotions, and at last, when his voice rose in crescendo at the +climax of his speech, she felt like weeping. + +"Un poeta!" a woman beside her exclaimed. + +"Who is he?" Janet asked. + +"Rolfe," said the woman. + +"But he's an Italian?" + +The woman shrugged her shoulders. "It is his name that is all I know." +He had begun to speak again, and now in English, with an enunciation, a +distinctive manner of turning his phrases new to such gatherings in +America, where labour intellectuals are little known; surprising to +Janet, diverting her attention, at first, from the meaning of his words. +"Labour," she heard, "labour is the creator of all wealth, and wealth +belongs to the creator. The wage system must be abolished. You, the +creators, must do battle against these self-imposed masters until you +shall come into your own. You who toil miserably for nine hours and +produce, let us say, nine dollars of wealth--do you receive it? No, what +is given you is barely enough to keep the slave and the slave's family +alive! The master, the capitalist, seizes the rightful reward of your +labour and spends it on luxuries, on automobiles and fine houses and +women, on food he can't eat, while you are hungry. Yes, you are slaves," +he cried, "because you submit like slaves." + +He waited, motionless and scornful, for the noise to die down. "Since I +have come here to Hampton, I have heard some speak of the state, others +of the unions. Yet the state is your enemy, it will not help you to gain +your freedom. The legislature has shortened your hours,--but why? +Because the politicians are afraid of you, and because they think you +will be content with a little. And now that the masters have cut your +wages, the state sends its soldiers to crush you. Only fifty cents, they +say--only fifty cents most of you miss from your envelopes. What is +fifty cents to them? But I who speak to you have been hungry, I know +that fifty cents will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the +neck of pork, or six quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will +help pay the rent of the rat-holes where you live." Once more he was +interrupted by angry shouts of approval. "And the labour unions, have +they aided you? Why not? I will tell you why--because they are the +servile instruments of the masters. The unions say that capital has +rights, bargain with it, but for us there can be only one bargain, +complete surrender of the tools to the workers. For the capitalists are +parasites who suck your blood and your children's blood. From now on +there can be no compromise, no truce, no peace until they are +exterminated. It is war." War! In Janet's soul the word resounded like +a tocsin. And again, as when swept along East Street with the mob, that +sense of identity with these people and their wrongs, of submergence with +them in their cause possessed her. Despite her ancestry, her lot was +cast with them. She, too, had been precariously close to poverty, had +known the sordidness of life; she, too, and Lise and Hannah had been +duped and cheated of the fairer things. Eagerly she had drunk in the +vocabulary of that new and terrible philosophy. The master class must be +exterminated! Was it not true, if she had been of that class, that +Ditmar would not have dared to use and deceive her? Why had she never +thought of these things before?... The light was beginning to fade, the +great meeting was breaking up, and yet she lingered. At the foot of the +bandstand steps, conversing with a small group of operatives that +surrounded him, she perceived the man who had just spoken. And as she +stood hesitating, gazing at him, a desire to hear more, to hear all of +this creed he preached, that fed the fires in her soul, urged her +forward. Her need, had she known it, was even greater than that of these +toilers whom she now called comrades. Despite some qualifying reserve +she felt, and which had had to do with the redness of his lips, he +attracted her. He had a mind, an intellect, he must possess stores of +the knowledge for which she thirsted; he appeared to her as one who had +studied and travelled, who had ascended heights and gained the wider view +denied her. A cynical cosmopolitanism would have left her cold, but +here, apparently, was a cultivated man burning with a sense of the +world's wrongs. Ditmar, who was to have led her out of captivity, had +only thrust her the deeper into bondage.... She joined the group, +halting on the edge of it, listening. Rolfe was arguing with a man about +the labour unions, but almost at once she knew she had fixed his +attention. From time to time, as he talked, his eyes sought hers boldly, +and in their dark pupils were tiny points of light that stirred and +confused her, made her wonder what was behind them, in his soul. When he +had finished his argument, he singled her out. + +"You do not work in the mills?" he asked. + +"No, I'm a stenographer--or I was one." + +"And now?" + +"I've given up my place." + +"You want to join us?" + +"I was interested in what you said. I never heard anything like it +before." + +He looked at her intently. + +"Come, let us walk a little way," he said. And she went along by his +side, through the Common, feeling a neophyte's excitement in the +freemasonry, the contempt for petty conventions of this newly achieved +doctrine of brotherhood. "I will give you things to read, you shall be +one of us." + +"I'm afraid I shouldn't understand them," Janet replied. "I've read so +little." + +"Oh, you will understand," he assured her, easily. "There is too much +learning, too much reason and intelligence in the world, too little +impulse and feeling, intuition. Where do reason and intelligence lead +us? To selfishness, to thirst for power-straight into the master class. +They separate us from the mass of humanity. No, our fight is against +those who claim more enlightenment than their fellowmen, who control the +public schools and impose reason on our children, because reason leads to +submission, makes us content with our station in life. The true +syndicalist is an artist, a revolutionist!" he cried. + +Janet found this bewildering and yet through it seemed to shine for her a +gleam of light. Her excitement grew. Never before had she been in the +presence of one who talked like this, with such assurance and ease. And +the fact that he despised knowledge, yet possessed it, lent him glamour. + +"But you have studied!" she exclaimed. + +"Oh yes, I have studied," he replied, with a touch of weariness, "only to +learn that life is simple, after all, and that what is needed for the +social order is simple. We have only to take what belongs to us, we who +work, to follow our feelings, our inclinations." + +"You would take possession of the mills?" she asked. + +"Yes," he said quickly, "of all wealth, and of the government. There +would be no government--we should not need it. A little courage is all +that is necessary, and we come into our own. You are a stenographer, you +say. But you--you are not content, I can see it in your face, in your +eyes. You have cause to hate them, too, these masters, or you would not +have been herein this place, to-day. Is it not so?" + +She shivered, but was silent. + +"Is it not so?" he repeated. "They have wronged you, too, perhaps,--they +have wronged us all, but some are too stupid, too cowardly to fight and +crush them. Christians and slaves submit. The old religion teaches that +the world is cruel for most of us, but if we are obedient and humble we +shall be rewarded in heaven." Rolfe laughed. "The masters approve of +that teaching. They would not have it changed. But for us it is war. +We'll strike and keep on striking, we'll break their machinery, spoil +their mills and factories, and drive them out. And even if we do not win +at once, it is better to suffer and die fighting than to have the life +ground out of us--is it not?" + +"Yes, it is better!" she agreed. The passion in her voice did not escape +him. + +"Some day, perhaps sooner than we think, we shall have the true +Armageddon, the general strike, when the last sleeping toiler shall have +aroused himself from his lethargy to rise up and come into his +inheritance." He seemed to detach himself from her, his eyes became more +luminous. + +"`Like unseen music in the night,'--so Sorel writes about it. They may +scoff at it, the wise ones, but it will come. `Like music in the night!' +You respond to that!" + +Again she was silent. They had walked on, through familiar streets that +now seemed strange. + +"You respond--I can tell," he said. "And yet, you are not like these +others, like me, even. You are an American. And yet you are not like +most of your countrywomen." + +"Why do you say that?" + +"I will tell you. Because they are cold, most of them, and trivial, they +do not feel. But you--you can feel, you can love and hate. You look +calm and cold, but you are not--I knew it when I looked at you, when you +came up to me." + +She did not know whether to resent or welcome his clairvoyance, his +assumption of intimacy, his air of appropriation. But her curiosity was +tingling. + +"And you?" she asked. "Your name is Rolfe, isn't it?" + +He assented. "And yours?" + +She told him. + +"You have been in America long--your family?" + +"Very long," she said. "But you speak Italian, and Rolfe isn't an +Italian name." + +"My father was an Englishman, an artist, who lived in Italy--my mother a +peasant woman from Lombardy, such as these who come to work in the mills. +When she was young she was beautiful--like a Madonna by an old master." + +"An old master?" + +"The old masters are the great painters who lived in Italy four hundred +years ago. I was named after one of them--the greatest. I am called +Leonard. He was Leonardo da Vinci." + +The name, as Rolfe pronounced it, stirred her. And art, painting! It +was a realm unknown to her, and yet the very suggestion of it evoked +yearnings. And she recalled a picture in the window of Hartmann's book- +store, a coloured print before which she used to stop on her way to and +from the office, the copy of a landscape by a California artist. The +steep hillside in the foreground was spread with the misty green of olive +trees, and beyond--far beyond--a snow-covered peak, like some high altar, +flamed red in the sunset. She had not been able to express her feeling +for this picture, it had filled her with joy and sadness. Once she had +ventured to enter and ask its price--ten dollars. And then came a +morning when she had looked for it, and it was gone. + +"And your father--did he paint beautiful pictures, too?" + +"Ah, he was too much of a socialist. He was always away whey I was a +child, and after my mother's death he used to take me with him. When I +was seventeen we went to Milan to take part in the great strike, and +there I saw the soldiers shooting down the workers by the hundreds, +putting them in prison by the thousands. Then I went to live in England, +among the socialists there, and I learned the printer's trade. When I +first came to this country I was on a labour paper in New York, I set up +type, I wrote articles, and once in a while I addressed meetings on the +East Side. But even before I left London I had read a book on +Syndicalism by one of the great Frenchmen, and after a while I began to +realize that the proletariat would never get anywhere through socialism." + +"The proletariat?" The word was new to Janet's ear. + +"The great mass of the workers, the oppressed, the people you saw here +to-day. Socialism is not for them. Socialism--political socialism-- +betrays them into the hands of the master class. Direct action is the +thing, the general strike, war,--the new creed, the new religion that +will bring salvation. I joined the Industrial Workers of the World that +is the American organization of Syndicalism. I went west, to Colorado +and California and Oregon, I preached to the workers wherever there was +an uprising, I met the leaders, Ritter and Borkum and Antonelli and +Jastro and Nellie Bond, I was useful to them, I understand Syndicalism as +they do not. And now we are here, to sow the seed in the East. Come," +he said, slipping his arm through hers, "I will take you to Headquarters, +I will enlist you, you shall be my recruit. I will give you the cause, +the religion you need." + +She longed to go, and yet she drew back, puzzled. The man fired and +fascinated her, but there were reservations, apprehensions concerning +him, felt rather than reasoned. Because of her state of rebellion, of +her intense desire to satisfy in action the emotion aroused by a sense of +wrong, his creed had made a violent appeal, but in his voice, in his +eyes, in his manner she had been quick to detect a personal, sexual note +that disturbed and alarmed her, that implied in him a lack of unity. + +"I can't, to-night," she said. "I must go home--my mother is all alone. +But I want to help, I want to do something." + +They were standing on a corner, under a street lamp. And she averted her +eyes from his glance. + +"Then come to-morrow," he said eagerly. "You know where Headquarters is, +in the Franco-Belgian Hall?" + +"What could I do?" she asked. + +"You? You could help in many ways--among the women. Do you know what +picketing is?" + +"You mean keeping the operatives out of the mills?" + +"Yes, in the morning, when they go to work. And out of the Chippering +Mill, especially. Ditmar, the agent of that mill, is the ablest of the +lot, I'm told. He's the man we want to cripple." + +"Cripple!" exclaimed Janet. + +"Oh, I don't mean to harm him personally." Rolfe did not seem to notice +her tone. "But he intends to crush the strike, and I understand he's +importing scabs here to finish out an order--a big order. If it weren't +for him, we'd have an easier fight; he stiffens up the others. There's +always one man like that, in every place. And what we want to do is to +make him shut down, especially." + +"I see," said Janet. + +"You'll come to Headquarters?" Rolfe repeated. + +"Yes, I'll come, to-morrow," she promised. + +After she had left him she walked rapidly through several streets, not +heeding her direction--such was the driving power of the new ideas he had +given her. Certain words and phrases he had spoken rang in her head, and +like martial music kept pace with her steps. She strove to remember all +that he had said, to grasp its purport; and because it seemed recondite, +cosmic, it appealed to her and excited her the more. And he, the man +himself, had exerted a kind of hypnotic force that partially had +paralyzed her faculties and aroused her fears while still in his +presence: her first feeling in escaping had been one of relief--and then +she began to regret not having gone to Headquarters. Hadn't she been +foolish? In the retrospect, the elements in him that had disturbed her +were less disquieting, his intellectual fascination was enhanced: and in +that very emancipation from cant and convention, characteristic of the +Order to which he belonged, had lain much of his charm. She had +attracted him as a woman, there was no denying that. He, who had studied +and travelled and known life in many lands, had discerned in her, Janet +Bumpus, some quality to make him desire her, acknowledge her as a +comrade! Tremblingly she exulted in the possession of that quality-- +whatever it might be. Ditmar, too, had perceived it! He had not known +how to value it. With this thought came a flaming suggestion--Ditmar +should see her with this man Rolfe, she would make him scorch with the +fires of jealousy. Ditmar should know that she had joined his enemies, +the Industrial Workers of the World. Of the world! Her shackles had +been cast off at last!... And then, suddenly, she felt tired. The +prospect of returning to Fillmore Street, to the silent flat--made the +more silent by her mother's tragic presence--overwhelmed her. The ache +in her heart began to throb again. How could she wait until the dawn of +another day?... + +In the black hours of the morning, with the siren dinning in her ears a +hoarse call to war, Janet leaped from her bed and began to dress. There +is a degree of cold so sharp that it seems actually to smell, and as she +stole down the stairs and out of the door she shivered, assailed by a +sense of loneliness and fear. Yet an insistent voice urged her on, +whispering that to remain at home, inactive, was to go mad; salvation and +relief lay in plunging into the struggle, in contributing her share +toward retribution and victory. Victory! In Faber Street the light of +the electric arcs tinged the snow with blue, and the flamboyant +advertisements of breakfast foods, cigarettes and ales seemed but the +mockery of an activity now unrealizable. The groups and figures +scattered here and there farther down the street served only to +exaggerate its wide emptiness. What could these do, what could she +accomplish against the mighty power of the mills? Gradually, as she +stood gazing, she became aware of a beating of feet upon the snow; over +her shoulder she caught the gleam of steel. A squad of soldiers muffled +in heavy capes and woolen caps was marching along the car-tracks. She +followed them. At the corner of West Street, in obedience to a sharp +command she saw them halt, turn, and advance toward a small crowd +gathered there. It scattered, only to collect again when the soldiers +had passed on. Janet joined them. She heard men cursing the soldiers. +The women stood a little aside; some were stamping to keep warm, and one, +with a bundle in her arms which Janet presently perceived to be a child, +sank down on a stone step and remained there, crouching, resigned. + +"We gotta right to stay here, in the street. We gotta right to live, I +guess." The girl's teeth were chattering, but she spoke with such +vehemence and spirit as to attract Janet's attention. "You worked in the +Chippering, like me--yes?" she asked. + +Janet nodded. The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about +her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face. She smiled, and +her white teeth were fairly dazzling. Impulsively she thrust her arm +through Janet's. + +"You American--you comrade, you come to help?" she asked. + +"I've never done any picketing." + +"I showa you." + +The dawn had begun to break, revealing little by little the outlines of +cruel, ugly buildings, the great mill looming darkly at the end of the +street, and Janet found it scarcely believable that only a little while +ago she had hurried thither in the mornings with anticipation and joy in +her heart, eager to see Ditmar, to be near him! The sight of two +policemen hurrying toward them from the direction of the canal aroused +her. With sullen murmurs the group started to disperse, but the woman +with the baby, numb with cold, was slow in rising, and one of the +policemen thrust out his club threateningly. + +"Move on, you can't sit here," he said. + +With a lithe movement like the spring of a cat the Italian girl flung +herself between them--a remarkable exhibition of spontaneous +inflammability; her eyes glittered like the points of daggers, and, as +though they had been dagger points, the policeman recoiled a little. The +act, which was absolutely natural, superb, electrified Janet, restored in +an instant her own fierceness of spirit. The girl said something +swiftly, in Italian, and helped the woman to rise, paying no more +attention to the policeman. Janet walked on, but she had not covered +half the block before she was overtaken by the girl; her anger had come +and gone in a flash, her vivacity had returned, her vitality again found +expression in an abundant good nature and good will. She asked Janet's +name, volunteering the information that her own was Gemma, that she was a +"fine speeder" in the Chippering Mill, where she had received nearly +seven dollars a week. She had been among the first to walk out. + +"Why did you walk out?" asked Janet curiously. + +"Why? I get mad when I know that my wages is cut. I want the money--I +get married." + +"Is that why you are striking?" asked Janet curiously. + +"That is why--of course." + +"Then you haven't heard any of the speakers? They say it is for a cause- +-the workers are striking for freedom, some day they will own the mills. +I heard a man named Rolfe yesterday--" + +The girl gave her a radiant smile. + +"Rolfe! It is beautiful, what Rolfe said. You think so? I think so. I +am for the cause, I hate the capitalist. We will win, and get more +money, until we have all the money. We will be rich. And you, why do +you strike?" + +"I was mad, too," Janet replied simply. + +"Revenge!" exclaimed the girl, glittering again. "I understan'. Here +come the scabs! Now I show you." + +The light had grown, but the stores were still closed and barred. Along +Faber Street, singly or in little groups, anxiously glancing around them, +behind them, came the workers who still clung desperately to their jobs. +Gemma fairly darted at two girls who sought the edge of the sidewalk, +seizing them by the sleeves, and with piteous expressions they listened +while she poured forth on them a stream of Italian. After a moment one +tore herself away, but the other remained and began to ask questions. +Presently she turned and walked slowly away in the direction from which +she had come. + +"I get her," exclaimed Gemma, triumphantly. + +"What did you say?" asked Janet. + +"Listen--that she take the bread from our mouths, she is traditore--scab. +We strike for them, too, is it not so? + +It is no use for them to work for wages that starve. We win the strike, +we get good wages for all. Here comes another--she is a Jewess--you try, +you spik." + +Janet failed with the Jewess, who obstinately refused to listen or reply +as the two walked along with her, one on either side. Near West Street +they spied a policeman, and desisted. Up and down Faber Street, +everywhere, the game went on: but the police were watchful, and once a +detachment of militia passed. The picketing had to be done quickly, in +the few minutes that were to elapse before the gates should close. +Janet's blood ran faster, she grew excited, absorbed, bolder as she +perceived the apologetic attitude of the "scabs" and she began to despise +them with Gemma's heartiness; and soon she had lost all sense of surprise +at finding herself arguing, pleading, appealing to several women in turn, +fluently, in the language of the industrial revolution. Some--because +she was an American--examined her with furtive curiosity; others +pretended not to understand, accelerating their pace. She gained no +converts that morning, but one girl, pale, anemic with high cheek bones +evidently a Slav--listened to her intently. + +"I gotta right to work," she said. + +"Not if others will starve because you work," objected Janet. + +"If I don't work I starve," said the girl. + +"No, the Committee will take care of you--there will be food for all. +How much do you get now?" + +"Four dollar and a half." + +"You starve now," Janet declared contemptuously. "The quicker you join +us, the sooner you'll get a living wage." + +The girl was not quite convinced. She stood for a while undecided, and +then ran abruptly off in the direction of West Street. Janet sought for +others, but they had ceased coming; only the scattered, prowling +picketers remained. + +Over the black rim of the Clarendon Mill to the eastward the sky had +caught fire. The sun had risen, the bells were ringing riotously, +resonantly in the clear, cold air. Another working day had begun. + +Janet, benumbed with cold, yet agitated and trembling because of her +unwonted experience of the morning, made her way back to Fillmore Street. +She was prepared to answer any questions her mother might ask; as they +ate their dismal breakfast, and Hannah asked no questions, she longed to +blurt out where she had been, to announce that she had cast her lot with +the strikers, the foreigners, to defend them and declare that these were +not to blame for the misfortunes of the family, but men like Ditmar and +the owners of the mills, the capitalists. Her mother, she reflected +bitterly, had never once betrayed any concern as to her shattered +happiness. But gradually, as from time to time she glanced covertly at +Hannah's face, her resentment gave way to apprehension. Hannah did not +seem now even to be aware of her presence; this persistent apathy filled +her with a dread she did not dare to acknowledge. + +"Mother!" she cried at last. + +Hannah started. "Have you finished?" she asked. + +"Yes." + +"You've b'en out in the cold, and you haven't eaten much." Janet fought +back her tears. "Oh yes, I have," she managed to reply, convinced of the +futility of speech, of all attempts to arouse her mother to a realization +of the situation. Perhaps--though her heart contracted at the thought +perhaps it was a merciful thing! But to live, day after day, in the +presence of that comfortless apathy!... Later in the morning she went +out, to walk the streets, and again in the afternoon; and twice she +turned her face eastward, in the direction of the Franco-Belgian Hall. +Her courage failed her. How would these foreigners and the strange +leaders who had come to organize them receive her, Ditmar's stenographer? +She would have to tell them she was Ditmar's stenographer; they would +find it out. And now she was filled with doubts about Rolfe. Had he +really thought she could be of use to them! Around the Common, in front +of the City Hall men went about their affairs alertly, or stopped one +another to talk about the strike. In Faber Street, indeed, an air of +suppressed excitement prevailed, newsboys were shouting out extras; but +business went on as though nothing had happened to disturb it. There +was, however, the spectacle, unusual at this time of day, of operatives +mingling with the crowd, while policemen stood watchfully at the corners; +a company of soldiers marched by, drawing the people in silence to the +curb. Janet scanned the faces of these idle operatives; they seemed for +the most part either calm or sullen, wanting the fire and passion of the +enthusiasts who had come out to picket in the early hours of the day; she +sought vainly for the Italian girl with whom she had made friends. +Despondency grew in her, a sense of isolation, of lacking any one, now, +to whom she might turn, and these feelings were intensified by the air of +confidence prevailing here. The strike was crushed, injustice and wrong +had triumphed--would always triumph. In front of the Banner office she +heard a man say to an acquaintance who had evidently just arrived in +town:-- + +"The Chippering? Sure, that's running. By to-morrow Ditmar'll have a +full force there. Now that the militia has come, I guess we've got this +thing scotched..." + +Just how and when that order and confidence of Faber Street began to be +permeated by disquietude and alarm, Janet could not have said. Something +was happening, somewhere--or about to happen. An obscure, apparently +telepathic process was at work. People began to hurry westward, a few +had abandoned the sidewalk and were running; while other pedestrians, +more timid, were equally concerned to turn and hasten in the opposite +direction. At the corner of West Street was gathering a crowd that each +moment grew larger and larger, despite the efforts of the police to +disperse it. These were strikers, angry strikers. They blocked the +traffic, halted the clanging trolleys, surged into the mouth of West +Street, booing and cursing at the soldiers whose threatening line of +bayonets stretched across that thoroughfare half-way down toward the +canal, guarding the detested Chippering Mill. Bordering West Street, +behind the company's lodging-houses on the canal, were certain low +buildings, warehouses, and on their roofs tense figures could be seen +standing out against the sky. The vanguard of the mob, thrust on by +increasing pressure from behind, tumbled backward the thin cordon of +police, drew nearer and nearer the bayonets, while the soldiers grimly +held their ground. A voice was heard on the roof, a woman in the front +rank of the mob gave a warning shriek, and two swift streams of icy water +burst forth from the warehouse parapet, tearing the snow from the +cobbles, flying in heavy, stinging spray as it advanced and mowed the +strikers down and drove them like flies toward Faber Street. Screams of +fright, curses of defiance and hate mingled with the hissing of the water +and the noise of its impact with the ground--like the tearing of heavy +sail-cloth. Then, from somewhere near the edge of the mob, came a +single, sharp detonation, quickly followed by another--below the watchmen +on the roof a window crashed. The nozzles on the roof were raised, their +streams, sweeping around in a great semi-circle, bowled down the rioters +below the tell-tale wisps of smoke, and no sooner had the avalanche of +water passed than the policemen who, forewarned, had sought refuge along +the walls, rushed forward and seized a man who lay gasping on the snow. +Dazed, half drowned, he had dropped his pistol. They handeuffed him and +dragged him away through the ranks of the soldiers, which opened for him +to pass. The mob, including those who had been flung down, bruised and +drenched, and who had painfully got to their feet again, had backed +beyond the reach of the water, and for a while held that ground, until +above its hoarse, defiant curses was heard, from behind, the throbbing of +drums. + +"Cossacks! More Cossacks!" + +The cry was taken up by Canadians, Italians, Belgians, Poles, Slovaks, +Jews, and Syrians. The drums grew louder, the pressure from the rear was +relaxed, the throng in Faber Street began a retreat in the direction of +the power plant. Down that street, now in double time, came three +companies of Boston militia, newly arrived in Hampton, blue-taped, +gaitered, slouch-hatted. From columns of fours they wheeled into line, +and with bayonets at charge slowly advanced. Then the boldest of the +mob, who still lingered, sullenly gave way, West Street was cleared, and +on the wider thoroughfare the long line of traffic, the imprisoned +trolleys began to move again.... + +Janet had wedged herself into the press far enough to gain a view down +West Street of the warehouse roofs, to see the water turned on, to hear +the screams and the curses and then the shots. Once more she caught the +contagious rage of the mob; the spectacle had aroused her to fury; it +seemed ignominious, revolting that human beings, already sufficiently +miserable, should be used thus. As she retreated reluctantly across the +car tracks her attention was drawn to a man at her side, a Slovak. His +face was white and pinched, his clothes were wet. Suddenly he stopped, +turned and shook his fist at the line of soldiers. + +"The Cossack, the politzman belong to the boss, the capitalist!" he +cried. "We ain't got no right to live. I say, kill the capitalist--kill +Ditmar!" + +A man with a deputy's shield ran toward them. + +"Move on!" he said brutally. "Move on, or I'll roil you in." And Janet, +once clear of the people, fled westward, the words the foreigner had +spoken ringing in her ears. She found herself repeating them aloud, +"Kill Ditmar!" as she hurried through the gathering dusk past the power +house with its bottle-shaped chimneys, and crossed the little bridge over +the stream beside the chocolate factory. She gained the avenue she had +trod with Eda on that summer day of the circus. Here was the ragpicker's +shop, the fence covered with bedraggled posters, the deserted grand-stand +of the base-ball park spread with a milky-blue mantle of snow; and +beyond, the monotonous frame cottages all built from one model. Now she +descried looming above her the outline of Torrey's Hill blurred and +melting into a darkening sky, and turned into the bleak lane where stood +the Franco-Belgian Hall--Hampton Headquarters of the Industrial Workers +of the World. She halted a moment at sight of the crowd of strikers +loitering in front of it, then went on again, mingling with them +excitedly beside the little building. Its lines were simple and +unpretentious, and yet it had an exotic character all its own, differing +strongly from the surrounding houses: it might have been transported from +a foreign country and set down here. As the home of that odd, +cooperative society of thrifty and gregarious Belgians it had stimulated +her imagination, and once before she had gazed, as now, through the +yellowed, lantern-like windows of the little store at the women and +children waiting to fill their baskets with the day's provisions. In the +middle of the building was an entrance leading up to the second floor. +Presently she gathered the courage to enter. Her heart was pounding as +she climbed the dark stairs and thrust open the door, and she stood a +moment on the threshold almost choked by the fumes of tobacco, bewildered +by the scene within, confused by the noise. Through a haze of smoke she +beheld groups of swarthy foreigners fiercely disputing among themselves-- +apparently on the verge of actual combat, while a sprinkling of silent +spectators of both sexes stood at the back of the hall. At the far end +was a stage, still set with painted, sylvan scenery, and seated there, +alone, above the confusion and the strife, with a calmness, a detachment +almost disconcerting, was a stout man with long hair and a loose black +tie. He was smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper which he presently +flung down, taking up another from a pile on the table beside him. +Suddenly one of the groups, shouting and gesticulating, surged toward him +and made an appeal through their interpreter. He did not appear to be +listening; without so much as lowering his newspaper he spoke a few words +in reply, and the group retired, satisfied. By some incomprehensible +power he dominated. Panting, fascinated, loath to leave yet fearful, +Janet watched him, breathing now deeply this atmosphere of smoke, of +strife, and turmoil. She found it grateful, for the strike, the battle +was in her own soul as well. Momentarily she had forgotten Rolfe, who +had been in her mind as she had come hither, and then she caught sight of +him in a group in the centre of the hall. He saw her, he was making his +way toward her, he was holding her hands, looking down into her face with +that air of appropriation, of possession she remembered. But she felt no +resentment now, only a fierce exultation at having dared. + +"You've come to join us!" he exclaimed. "I thought I'd lost you." + +He bent closer to her that she might hear. + +"We are having a meeting of the Committee," he said, and she smiled. +Despite her agitation, this struck her as humorous. And Rolfe smiled +back at her. "You wouldn't think so, but Antonelli knows how to manage +them. He is a general. Come, I will enlist you, you shall be my +recruit." + +"But what can I do?" she asked. + +"I have been thinking. You said you were a stenographer--we need +stenographers, clerks. You will not be wasted. Come in here." + +Behind her two box-like rooms occupying the width of the building had +been turned into offices, and into one of these Rolfe led her. Men and +women were passing in and out, while in a corner a man behind a desk sat +opening envelopes, deftly extracting bills and post-office orders and +laying them in a drawer. On the wall of this same room was a bookcase +half filled with nondescript volumes. + +"The Bibliotheque--that's French for the library of the Franco-Belgian +Cooperative Association," explained Rolfe. "And this is Comrade Sanders. +Sanders is easier to say than Czernowitz. Here is the young lady I told +you about, who wishes to help us--Miss Bumpus." + +Mr. Sanders stopped counting his money long enough to grin at her. + +"You will be welcome," he said, in good English. "Stenographers are +scarce here. When can you come?" + +"To-morrow morning," answered Janet. + +"Good," he said. "I'll have a machine for you. What kind do you use?" + +She told him. Instinctively she took a fancy to this little man, whose +flannel shirt and faded purple necktie, whose blue, unshaven face and +tousled black hair seemed incongruous with an alert, business-like, and +efficient manner. His nose, though not markedly Jewish, betrayed in him +the blood of that vital race which has triumphantly survived so many +centuries of bondage and oppression. + +"He was a find, Czernowitz--he calls himself Sanders," Rolfe explained, +as they entered the hall once more. "An Operative in the Patuxent, +educated himself, went to night school--might have been a capitalist like +so many of his tribe if he hadn't loved humanity. You'll get along with +him." + +"I'm sure I shall," she replied. + +Rolfe took from his pocket a little red button with the letters I.W.W. +printed across it. He pinned it, caressingly, on her coat. + +"Now you are one of us!" he exclaimed. "You'll come to-morrow?" + +"I'll come to-morrow," she repeated, drawing away from him a little. + +"And--we shall be friends?" + +She nodded. "I must go now, I think." + +"Addio!" he said. "I shall look for you. For the present I must remain +here, with the Committee." + +When Janet reached Faber Street she halted on the corner of Stanley to +stare into the window of the glorified drugstore. But she gave no heed +to the stationery, the cameras and candy displayed there, being in the +emotional state that reduces to unreality objects of the commonplace, +everyday world. Presently, however, she became aware of a man standing +beside her. + +"Haven't we met before?" he asked. "Or--can I be mistaken?" + +Some oddly familiar quizzical note in his voice stirred, as she turned to +him, a lapsed memory. The hawklike yet benevolent and illuminating look +he gave her recalled the man at Silliston whom she had thought a +carpenter though he was dressed now in a warm suit of gray wool, and wore +a white, low collar. + +"In Silliston!" she exclaimed. "Why--what are you doing here?" + +"Well--this instant I was just looking at those notepapers, wondering +which I should choose if I really had good taste. But it's very +puzzling--isn't it?--when one comes from the country. Now that saffron +with the rough edges is very--artistic. Don't you think so?" + +She looked at him and smiled, though his face was serious. + +"You don't really like it, yourself," she informed him. + +"Now you're reflecting on my taste," he declared. + +"Oh no--it's because I saw the fence you were making. Is it finished +yet?" + +"I put the last pineapple in place the day before Christmas. Do you +remember the pineapples?" + +She nodded. "And the house? and the garden?" + +"Oh, those will never be finished. I shouldn't have anything more to +do." + +"Is that--all you do?" she asked. + +"It's more important than anything else. But you have you been back to +Silliston since I saw you? I've been waiting for another call." + +"You haven't even thought of me since," she was moved to reply in the +same spirit. + +"Haven't I?" he exclaimed. "I wondered, when I came up here to Hampton, +whether I mightn't meet you--and here you are! Doesn't that prove it?" + +She laughed, somewhat surprised at the ease with which he had diverted +her, drawn her out of the tense, emotional mood in which he had +discovered her. As before, he puzzled her, but the absence of any +flirtatious suggestion in his talk gave her confidence. He was just +friendly. + +"Sometimes I hoped I might see you in Hampton," she ventured. + +"Well, here I am. I heard the explosion, and came." + +"The explosion! The strike!" she exclaimed; suddenly enlightened. "Now +I remember! You said something about Hampton being nitro-glycerine-- +human nitro-glycerine. You predicted this strike." + +"Did I? perhaps I did," he assented. "Maybe you suggested the idea." + +"I suggested it! Oh no, I didn't--it was new to me, it frightened me at +the time, but it started me thinking about a lot of things that had never +occurred to me." + +"You might have suggested the idea without intending to, you know. There +are certain people who inspire prophecies--perhaps you are one." + +His tone was playful, but she was quick to grasp at an inference--since +his glance was fixed on the red button she wore. + +"You meant that I would explode, too!" + +"Oh no--nothing so terrible as that," he disclaimed. "And yet most of us +have explosives stored away inside of us--instincts, impulses and all +that sort of thing that won't stand too much bottling-up." + +"Yes, I've joined the strike." She spoke somewhat challengingly, though +she had an uneasy feeling that defiance was somewhat out of place with +him. "I suppose you think it strange, since I'm not a foreigner and +haven't worked in the mills. But I don't see why that should make any +difference if you believe that the workers haven't had a chance." + +"No difference," he agreed, pleasantly, "no difference at all." + +"Don't you sympathize with the strikers?" she insisted. "Or--are you on +the other side, the side of the capitalists?" + +"I? I'm a spectator--an innocent bystander." + +"You don't sympathize with the workers?" she cried. + +"Indeed I do. I sympathize with everybody." + +"With the capitalists?" + +"Why not?" + +"Why not? Because they've had everything their own way, they've +exploited the workers, deceived and oppressed them, taken all the +profits." She was using glibly her newly acquired labour terminology. + +"Isn't that a pretty good reason for sympathizing with them?" he +inquired. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Well, I should think it might be difficult to be happy and have done all +that. At any rate, it isn't my notion of happiness. Is it yours?" + +For a moment she considered this. + +"No--not exactly," she admitted. "But they seem happy," she insisted +vehemently, "they have everything they want and they do exactly as they +please without considering anybody except themselves. What do they care +how many they starve and make miserable? You--you don't know, you can't +know what it is to be driven and used and flung away!" + +Almost in tears, she did not notice his puzzled yet sympathetic glance. + +"The operatives, the workers create all the wealth, and the capitalists +take it from them, from their wives and children." + +"Now I know what you've been doing," he said accusingly. "You've been +studying economics." + +Her brow puckered. + +"Studying what?" + +"Economics--the distribution of wealth. It's enough to upset anybody." + +"But I'm not upset," she insisted, smiling in spite of herself at his +comical concern. + +"It's very exciting. I remember reading a book once on economics and +such things, and I couldn't sleep for a week. It was called `The +Organization of Happiness,' I believe, and it described just how the +world ought to be arranged--and isn't. I thought seriously of going to +Washington and telling the President and Congress about it." + +"It wouldn't have done any good," said Janet. + +"No, I realized that." + +"The only thing that will do any good is to strike and keep on striking +until the workers own the mills--take everything away from the +capitalists." + +"It's very simple," he agreed, "much simpler than the book I read. +That's what they call syndicalism, isn't it?" + +"Yes." She was conscious of his friendliness, of the fact that his +skepticism was not cynical, yet she felt a strong desire to convince him, +to vindicate her new creed. "There's a man named Rolfe, an educated man +who's lived in Italy and England, who explains it wonderfully. He's one +of the I.W.W. leaders--you ought to hear him." + +"Rolfe converted you? I'll go to hear him." + +"Yes--but you have to feel it, you have to know what it is to be kept +down and crushed. If you'd only stay here awhile " + +"Oh, I intend to," he replied. + +She could not have said why, but she felt a certain relief on hearing +this. + +"Then you'll see for yourself!" she cried. "I guess that's what you've +come for, isn't it?" + +"Well, partly. To tell the truth, I've come to open a restaurant." + +"To open a restaurant!" Somehow she was unable to imagine him as the +proprietor of a restaurant. "But isn't it rather a bad time?" she +gasped. + +"I don't look as if I had an eye for business--do I? But I have. No, +it's a good time--so many people will be hungry, especially children. +I'm going to open a restaurant for children. Oh, it will be very modest, +of course--I suppose I ought to call it a soup kitchen." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, staring at him. "Then you really--" the sentence +remained unfinished. "I'm sorry," she said simply. "You made me +think--" + +"Oh, you mustn't pay any attention to what I say. Come 'round and see my +establishment, Number 77 Dey Street, one flight up, no elevator. Will +you?" + +She laughed tremulously as he took her hand. + +"Yes indeed, I will," she promised. And she stood awhile staring after +him. She was glad he had come to Hampton, and yet she did not even know +his name. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +She had got another place--such was the explanation of her new activities +Janet gave to Hannah, who received it passively. And the question +dreaded about Ditmar was never asked. Hannah had become as a child, +performing her tasks by the momentum of habituation, occasionally talking +simply of trivial, every-day affairs, as though the old life were going +on continuously. At times, indeed, she betrayed concern about Edward, +wondering whether he were comfortable at the mill, and she washed and +darned the clothes he sent home by messenger. She hoped he would not +catch cold. Her suffering seemed to have relaxed. It was as though the +tortured portion of her brain had at length been seared. To Janet, her +mother's condition when she had time to think of it--was at once a relief +and a new and terrible source of anxiety. + +Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect on that tragedy, +else her own sanity might have been endangered. As soon as breakfast was +over she hurried across the city to the Franco-Belgian Hall, and often +did not return until nine o'clock at night, usually so tired that she +sank into bed and fell asleep. For she threw herself into her new +labours with the desperate energy that seeks forgetfulness, not daring to +pause to think about herself, to reflect upon what the future might hold +for her when the strike should be over. Nor did she confine herself to +typewriting, but, as with Ditmar, constantly assumed a greater burden of +duty, helping Czernowitz--who had the work of five men--with his +accounts, with the distribution of the funds to the ever-increasing +number of the needy who were facing starvation. The money was paid out +to them in proportion to the size of their families; as the strike became +more and more effective their number increased until many mills had +closed; other mills, including the Chippering, were still making a +desperate attempt to operate their looms, and sixteen thousand operatives +were idle. She grew to know these operatives who poured all day long in +a steady stream through Headquarters; she heard their stories, she +entered into their lives, she made decisions. Some, even in those early +days of the strike, were frauds; were hiding their savings; but for the +most part investigation revealed an appalling destitution, a resolution +to suffer for the worker's cause. A few complained, the majority were +resigned; some indeed showed exaltation and fire, were undaunted by the +task of picketing in the cold mornings, by the presence of the soldiery. +In this work of dealing with the operatives Janet had the advice and help +of Anna Mower, a young woman who herself had been a skilled operative in +the Clarendon Mill, and who was giving evidence of unusual qualities of +organization and leadership. Anna, with no previous practise in oratory, +had suddenly developed the gift of making speeches, the more effective +with her fellow workers because unstudied, because they flowed directly +out of an experience she was learning to interpret and universalize. +Janet, who heard her once or twice, admired and envied her. They became +friends. + +The atmosphere of excitement in which Janet now found herself was +cumulative. Day by day one strange event followed another, and at times +it seemed as if this extraordinary existence into which she had been +plunged were all a feverish dream. Hither, to the absurd little solle de +reunion of the Franco-Belgian Hall came notables from the great world, +emissaries from an uneasy Governor, delegations from the Legislature, +Members of the Congress of the United States and even Senators; students, +investigators, men and women of prominence in the universities, magazine +writers to consult with uncouth leaders of a rebellion that defied and +upset the powers which hitherto had so serenely ruled, unchallenged. +Rolfe identified these visitors, and one morning called her attention to +one who he said was the nation's foremost authority on social science. +Janet possessed all unconsciously the New England reverence for learning, +she was stirred by the sight of this distinguishedlooking person who sat +on the painted stage, fingering his glasses and talking to Antonelli. +The two men made a curious contrast. But her days were full of contrasts +of which her mood exultingly approved. The politicians were received +cavalierly. Toward these, who sought to act as go-betweens in the +conflict, Antonelli was contemptuous; he behaved like the general of a +conquering army, and his audacity was reflected in the other leaders, in +Rolfe, in the Committee itself. + +That Committee, a never-ending source of wonder to Janet, with its nine +or ten nationalities and interpreters, was indeed a triumph over the +obstacles of race and language, a Babel made successful; in a community +of AngloSaxon traditions, an amazing anomaly. The habiliments of the +west, the sack coats and sweaters, the slouch hats and caps, the so- +called Derbies pulled down over dark brows and flashing eyes lent to +these peasant types an incongruity that had the air of ferocity. The +faces of most of them were covered with a blue-black stubble of beard. +Some slouched in their chairs, others stood and talked in groups, +gesticulating with cigars and pipes; yet a keen spectator, after watching +them awhile through the smoke, might have been able to pick out striking +personalities among them. He would surely have noticed Froment, the +stout, limping man under whose white eyebrows flashed a pair of livid +blue and peculiarly Gallic eyes; he held the Belgians in his hand: +Lindtzki, the Pole, with his zealot's face; Radeau, the big Canadian in +the checked Mackinaw; and Findley, the young American-less by any +arresting quality of feature than by an expression suggestive of +practical wisdom. + +Imagine then, on an afternoon in the middle phase of the strike, some +half dozen of the law-makers of a sovereign state, top-hatted and +conventionally garbed in black, accustomed to authority, to conferring +favours instead of requesting them, climbing the steep stairs and pausing +on the threshold of that hall, fingering their watch chains, awaiting +recognition by the representatives of the new and bewildering force that +had arisen in an historic commonwealth. A "debate" was in progress. +Some of the debaters, indeed, looked over their shoulders, but the +leader, who sat above them framed in the sylvan setting of the stage, +never so much as deigned to glance up from his newspaper. A half-burned +cigar rolled between his mobile lips, he sat on the back of his neck, and +yet he had an air Napoleonic; Nietzschean, it might better be said-- +although it is safe to assert that these moulders of American +institutions knew little about that terrible philosopher who had raised +his voice against the "slave morals of Christianity." It was their first +experience with the superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, +when a lull arrived in the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen be +given chairs. + +"Sure, give them chairs," assented Antonelli in a voice hoarse from +speech-making. Breath-taking audacity to certain spectators who had +followed the delegation hither, some of whom could not refrain from +speculating whether it heralded the final scrapping of the machinery of +the state; amusing to cynical metropolitan reporters, who grinned at one +another as they prepared to take down the proceedings; evoking a fierce +approval in the breasts of all rebels among whom was Janet. The +Legislative Chairman, a stout and suave gentleman of Irish birth, +proceeded to explain how greatly concerned was the Legislature that the +deplorable warfare within the state should cease; they had come, he +declared, to aid in bringing about justice between labour and capital. + +"We'll get justice without the help of the state," remarked Antonelli +curtly, while a murmur of approval ran through the back of the hall. + +That was scarcely the attitude, said the Chairman, he had expected. He +knew that such a strike as this had engendered bitterness, there had been +much suffering, sacrifice undoubtedly on both sides, but he was sure, if +Mr. Antonelli and the Committee would accept their services here he was +interrupted. + +Had the mill owners accepted their services? + +The Chairman cleared his throat. + +The fact was that the mill owners were more difficult to get together in +a body. A meeting would be arranged-- + +"When you arrange a meeting, let me know," said Antonelli. + +A laugh went around the room. It was undoubtedly very difficult to keep +one's temper under such treatment. The Chairman looked it. + +"A meeting would be arranged," he declared, with a longsuffering +expression. He even smiled a little. "In the meantime--" + +"What can your committee do?" demanded one of the strike leaders, +passionately--it was Findley. "If you find one party wrong, can your +state force it to do right? Can you legislators be impartial when you +have not lived the bitter life of the workers? Would you arbitrate a +question of life and death? And are the worst wages paid in these mills +anything short of death? Do you investigate because conditions are bad? +or because the workers broke loose and struck? Why did you not come +before the strike?" + +This drew more approval from the rear. Why, indeed? The Chairman was +adroit, he had pulled himself out of many tight places in the Assembly +Chamber, but now he began to perspire, to fumble in his coat tails for a +handkerchief. The Legislature, he maintained, could not undertake to +investigate such matters until called to its attention.... + +Later on a tall gentleman, whom heaven had not blessed with tact, saw fit +to deplore the violence that had occurred; he had no doubt the leaders of +the strike regretted it as much as he, he was confident it would be +stopped, when public opinion would be wholly and unreservedly on the side +of the strikers. + +"Public opinion!" savagely cried Lindtzki, who spoke English with only a +slight accent. "If your little boy, if your little girl come to you and +ask for shoes, for bread, and you say, `I have no shoes, I have no bread, +but public opinion is with us,' would that satisfy you?" + +This drew so much applause that the tall law-maker sat down again with a +look of disgust on his face.... The Committee withdrew, and for many +weeks thereafter the state they represented continued to pay some four +thousand dollars daily to keep its soldiers on the streets of Hampton.... + +In the meanwhile Janet saw much of Rolfe. Owing to his facile command of +language he was peculiarly fitted to draft those proclamations, +bombastically worded in the French style, issued and circulated by the +Strike Committee--appeals to the polyglot army to withstand the pangs of +hunger, to hold out for the terms laid down, assurances that victory was +at hand. Walking up and down the bibliottheque, his hands behind his +back, his red lips gleaming as he spoke, he dictated these documents to +Janet. In the ecstasy of this composition he had a way of shaking his +head slowly from side to side, and when she looked up she saw his eyes +burning, down at her. A dozen times a day, while she was at her other +work, he would come in and talk to her. He excited her, she was divided +between attraction and fear of him, and often she resented his easy +assumption that a tie existed between them--the more so because this +seemed to be taken for granted among certain of his associates. In their +eyes, apparently, she was Rolfe's recruit in more senses than one. It +was indeed a strange society in which she found herself, and Rolfe +typified it. He lived on the plane of the impulses and intellect, +discarded as inhibiting factors what are called moral standards, decried +individual discipline and restraint. And while she had never considered +these things, the spectacle of a philosophy--embodied in him--that +frankly and cynically threw them overboard was disconcerting. He +regarded her as his proselyte, he called her a Puritan, and he seemed +more concerned that she should shed these relics of an ancestral code +than acquire the doctrines of Sorel and Pouget. And yet association with +him presented the allurement of a dangerous adventure. Intellectually he +fascinated her; and still another motive--which she partially disguised +from herself--prevented her from repelling him. That motive had to do +with Ditmar. She tried to put Ditmar from her mind; she sought in +desperation, not only to keep busy, but to steep and lose herself in this +fierce creed as an antidote to the insistent, throbbing pain that lay +ambushed against her moments of idleness. The second evening of her +installation at Headquarters she had worked beyond the supper hour, +helping Sanders with his accounts. She was loath to go home. And when +at last she put on her hat and coat and entered the hall Rolfe, who had +been talking to Jastro, immediately approached her. His liquid eyes +regarded her solicitously. + +"You must be hungry," he said. "Come out with me and have some supper." + +But she was not hungry; what she needed was air. Then he would walk a +little way with her--he wanted to talk to her. She hesitated, and then +consented. A fierce hope had again taken possession of her, and when +they came to Warren Street she turned into it. + +"Where are you going?" Rolfe demanded. + +"For a walk," she said. "Aren't you coming?" + +"Will you have supper afterwards?" + +"Perhaps." + +He followed her, puzzled, yet piqued and excited by her manner, as with +rapid steps she hurried along the pavement. He tried to tell her what +her friendship meant to him; they were, he declared, kindred spirits-- +from the first time he had seen her, on the Common, he had known this. +She scarcely heard him, she was thinking of Ditmar; and this was why she +had led Rolfe into Warren Street they might meet Ditmar! It was possible +that he would be going to the mill at this time, after his dinner! She +scrutinized every distant figure, and when they reached the block in +which he lived she walked more slowly. From within the house came to +her, faintly, the notes of a piano--his daughter Amy was practising. It +was the music, a hackneyed theme of Schubert's played heavily, that +seemed to arouse the composite emotion of anger and hatred, yet of +sustained attraction and wild regret she had felt before, but never so +poignantly as now. And she lingered, perversely resolved to steep +herself in the agony. + +"Who lives here" Rolfe asked. + +"Mr. Ditmar," she answered. + +"The agent of the Chippering Mill?" + +She nodded. + +"He's the worst of the lot," Rolfe said angrily. "If it weren't for him, +we'd have this strike won to-day. He owns this town, he's run it to suit +himself, He stiffens up the owners and holds the other mills in line. +He's a type, a driver, the kind of man we must get rid of. Look at him-- +he lives in luxury while his people are starving." + +"Get rid of!" repeated Janet, in an odd voice. + +"Oh, I don't mean to shoot him," Rolfe declared. "But he may get shot, +for all I know, by some of these slaves he's made desperate." + +"They wouldn't dare shoot him," Janet said. "And whatever he is, he +isn't a coward. He's stronger than the others, he's more of a man." + +Rolfe looked at her curiously. + +"What do you know about him?" he asked. + +"I--I know all about him. I was his stenographer." + +"You! His stenographer! Then why are you herewith us?" + +"Because I hate him!" she cried vehemently. "Because I've learned that +it's true--what you say about the masters--they only think of themselves +and their kind, and not of us. They use us." + +"He tried to use you! You loved him!" + +"How dare you say that!" + +He fell back before her anger. + +"I didn't mean to offend you," he exclaimed. "I was jealous--I'm jealous +of every man you've known. I want you. I've never met a woman like +you." + +They were the very words Ditmar had used! She did not answer, and for a +while they walked along in silence, leaving Warren Street and cutting +across the city until they canoe in sight of the Common. Rolfe drew +nearer to her. + +"Forgive me!" he pleaded. "You know I would not offend you. Come, we'll +have supper together, and I will teach you more of what you have to +know." + +"Where?" she asked. + +"At the Hampton--it is a little cafe where we all go. Perhaps you've +been there." + +"No," said Janet. + +"It doesn't compare with the cafes of Europe--or of New York. Perhaps we +shall go to them sometime, together. But it is cosy, and warm, and all +the leaders will be there. You'll come--yes?" + +"Yes, I'll come," she said.... + +The Hampton was one of the city's second-class hotels, but sufficiently +pretentious to have, in its basement, a "cafe" furnished in the "mission" +style of brass tacks and dull red leather. In the warm, food-scented air +fantastic wisps of smoke hung over the groups; among them Janet made out +several of the itinerant leaders of Syndicalism, loose-tied, debonnair, +giving a tremendous impression of freedom as they laughed and chatted +with the women. For there were women, ranging from the redoubtable +Nellie Bond herself down to those who may be designated as campfollowers. +Rolfe, as he led Janet to a table in a corner of the room, greeted his +associates with easy camaraderie. From Miss Bond he received an +illuminating smile. Janet wondered at her striking good looks, at the +boldness and abandon with which she talked to Jastro or exchanged sallies +across the room. The atmosphere of this tawdry resort, formerly +frequented by shop girls and travelling salesmen, was magically +transformed by the presence of this company, made bohemian, cosmopolitan, +exhilarating. And Janet, her face flushed, sat gazing at the scene, +while Rolfe consulted the bill of fare and chose a beefsteak and French +fried potatoes. The apathetic waiter in the soiled linen jacket he +addressed as "comrade." Janet protested when he ordered cocktails. + +"You must learn to live, to relax, to enjoy yourself," he declared. + +But a horror of liquor held her firm in her refusal. Rolfe drank his, +and while they awaited the beefsteak she was silent, the prey of certain +misgivings that suddenly assailed her. Lise, she remembered, had +sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was +struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the +strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict in +the streets, the suffering in the tenements. She glanced at Rolfe, +noting the manner in which he smoked cigarettes, sensually, as though +seeking to wring out of each all there was to be got before flinging it +down and lighting another. Again she was struck by the anomaly of a +religion that had indeed enthusiasms, sacrifices perhaps, but no +disciplines. He threw it out in snatches, this religion, while relating +the histories of certain persons in the room: of Jastro, for instance, +letting fall a hint to the effect that this evangelist and bliss Bond +were dwelling together in more than amity. + +"Then you don't believe in marriage?" she demanded, suddenly. + +Rolfe laughed. + +"What is it," he exclaimed, "but the survival of the system of property? +It's slavery, taboo, a device upheld by the master class to keep women in +bondage, in superstition, by inducing them to accept it as a decree of +God. + +Did the masters themselves ever respect it, or any other decrees of God +they preached to the slaves? Read history, and you will see. They had +their loves, their mistresses. Read the newspapers, and you will find +out whether they respect it to-day. But they are very anxious to have +you and me respect it and all the other Christian commandments, because +they will prevent us from being discontented. They say that we must be +satisfied with the situation in this world in which God has placed us, +and we shall have our reward in the next." + +She shivered slightly, not only at the ideas thus abruptly enunciated, +but because it occurred to her that those others must be taking for +granted a certain relationship between herself and Rolfe.... But +presently, when the supper arrived, these feelings changed. She was very +hungry, and the effect of the food, of the hot coffee was to dispel her +doubt and repugnance, to throw a glamour over the adventure, to restore +to Rolfe's arguments an exciting and alluring appeal. And with renewed +physical energy she began to experience once more a sense of fellowship +with these free and daring spirits who sought to avenge her wrongs and +theirs. + +"For us who create there are no rules of conduct, no conventions," Rolfe +was saying, "we do not care for the opinions of the middle class, of the +bourgeois. With us men and women are on an equality. It is fear that +has kept the workers down, and now we have cast that off--we know our +strength. As they say in Italy, il mondo e a chi se lo piglia, the world +belongs to him who is bold." + +"Italian is a beautiful language," she exclaimed. + +"I will teach you Italian," he said. + +"I want to learn--so much!" she sighed. + +"Your soul is parched," he said, in a commiserating tone. "I will water +it, I will teach you everything." His words aroused a faint, derisive +echo: Ditmar had wish to teach her, too! But now she was strongly under +the spell of the new ideas hovering like shining, gossamer spirits just +beyond her reach, that she sought to grasp and correlate. Unlike the +code which Rolfe condemned, they seemed not to be separate from life, +opposed to it, but entered even into that most important of its elements, +sex. In deference to that other code Ditmar had made her his mistress, +and because he was concerned for his position and the security of the +ruling class had sought to hide the fact.... Rolfe, with a cigarette +between his red lips, sat back in his chair, regarding with sensuous +enjoyment the evident effect of his arguments. + +"But love?" she interrupted, when presently he had begun to talk again. +She strove inarticulately to express an innate feminine objection to +relationships that were made and broken at pleasure. + +"Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes, the life-force working +in us. And when that attraction ceases, what is left? Bondage. The +hideous bondage of Christian marriage, in which women promise to love and +obey forever." + +"But women--women are not like men. When once they give themselves they +do not so easily cease to love. They--they suffer." + +He did not seem to observe the bitterness in her voice. + +"Ah, that is sentiment," he declared, "something that will not trouble +women when they have work to do, inspiring work. It takes time to change +our ideas, to learn to see things as they are." He leaned forward +eagerly. "But you will learn, you are like some of those rare women in +history who have had the courage to cast off traditions. You were not +made to be a drudge...." + +But now her own words, not his, were ringing in her head--women do not so +easily cease to love, they suffer. In spite of the new creed she had so +eagerly and fiercely embraced, in which she had sought deliverance and +retribution, did she still love Ditmar, and suffer because of him? She +repudiated the suggestion, yet it persisted as she glanced at Rolfe's red +lips and compared him with Ditmar. Love! Rolfe might call it what he +would--the life-force, attraction between the sexes, but it was proving +stronger than causes and beliefs. He too was making love to her; like +Ditmar, he wanted her to use and fling away when he should grow weary. +Was he not pleading for himself rather than for the human cause he +professed? taking advantage of her ignorance and desperation, of her +craving for new experience and knowledge? The suspicion sickened her. +Were all men like that? Suddenly, without apparent premeditation or +connection, the thought of the stranger from Silliston entered her mind. +Was he like that?... Rolfe was bending toward her across the table, +solicitously. "What's the matter?" he asked. + +Her reply was listless. + +"Nothing--except that I'm tired. I want to go home." + +"Not now," he begged. "It's early yet." + +But she insisted.... + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +The next day at the noon hour Janet entered Dey Street. Cheek by jowl +there with the tall tenements whose spindled-pillared porches overhung +the darkened pavements were smaller houses of all ages and descriptions, +their lower floors altered to accommodate shops; while in the very midst +of the block stood a queer wooden building with two rows of dormer +windows let into its high-pitched roof. It bore a curious resemblance to +a town hall in the low countries. In front of it the street was filled +with children gazing up at the doorway where a man stood surveying them-- +the stranger from Silliston. There was a rush toward him, a rush that +drove Janet against the wall almost at his side, and he held up his hands +in mock despair, gently impeding the little bodies that strove to enter. +He bent over them to examine the numerals, printed on pasteboard, they +wore on their breasts. His voice was cheerful, yet compassionate. + +"It's hard to wait, I know. I'm hungry myself," he said. "But we can't +all go up at once. The building would fall down! One to one hundred +now, and the second hundred will be first for supper. That's fair, isn't +it?" + +Dozens of hands were raised. + +"I'm twenty-nine!" + +"I'm three, mister!" + +"I'm forty-one!" + +He let them in, one by one, and they clattered up the stairs, as he +seized a tiny girl bundled in a dark red muffler and set her on the steps +above him. He smiled at Janet. + +"This is my restaurant," he said. + +But she could not answer. She watched him as he continued to bend over +the children, and when the smaller ones wept because they had to wait, he +whispered in their ears, astonishing one or two into laughter. Some +ceased crying and clung to him with dumb faith. And after the chosen +hundred had been admitted he turned to her again. + +"You allow visitors?" + +"Oh dear, yes. They'd come anyway. There's one up there now, a very +swell lady from New York--so swell I don't know what to say to her. Talk +to her for me." + +"But I shouldn't know what to say, either," replied Janet. She smiled, +but she had an odd desire to cry. "What is she doing here?" + +"Oh, thrashing 'round, trying to connect with life--she's one of the +unfortunate unemployed." + +"Unemployed?" + +"The idle rich," he explained. "Perhaps you can give her a job--enlist +her in the I.W.W." + +"We don't want that kind," Janet declared. + +"Have pity on her," he begged. "Nobody wants them--that's why they're so +pathetic." + +She accompanied him up the narrow stairway to a great loft, the bareness +of which had been tempered by draped American flags. From the trusses of +the roof hung improvised electric lights, and the children were already +seated at the four long tables, where half a dozen ladies were supplying +them with enamelled bowls filled with steaming soup. They attacked it +ravenously, and the absence of the talk and laughter that ordinarily +accompany children's feasts touched her, impressed upon her, as nothing +else had done, the destitution of the homes from which these little ones +had come. The supplies that came to Hampton, the money that poured into +Headquarters were not enough to allay the suffering even now. And what +if the strike should last for months! Would they be able to hold out, to +win? In this mood of pity, of anxiety mingled with appreciation and +gratitude for what this man was doing, she turned to speak to him, to +perceive on the platform at the end of the room a lady seated. So +complete was the curve of her back that her pose resembled a letter u set +sidewise, the gap from her crossed knee to her face being closed by a +slender forearm and hand that held a lorgnette, through which she was +gazing at the children with an apparently absorbed interest. This +impression of willowy flexibility was somehow heightened by large, pear- +shaped pendants hanging from her ears, by a certain filminess in her +black costume and hat. Flung across the table beside her was a long coat +of grey fur. She struck an odd note here, presented a strange contrast +to Janet's friend from Silliston, with his rough suit and fine but rugged +features. + +"I'm sorry I haven't a table for you just at present," he was saying. +"But perhaps you'll let me take your order,"--and he imitated the +obsequious attitude of a waiter. "A little fresh caviar and a clear +soup, and then a fish--?" + +The lady took down her lorgnette and raised an appealing face. + +"You're always joking, Brooks," she chided him, "even when you're doing +things like this! I can't get you to talk seriously even when I come all +the way from New York to find out what's going on here." + +"How hungry children eat, for instance?" he queried. + +"Dear little things, it's heartrending!" she exclaimed. "Especially when +I think of my own children, who have to be made to eat. Tell me the +nationality of that adorable tot at the end." + +"Perhaps Miss Bumpus can tell you," he ventured. And Janet, though +distinctly uncomfortable and hostile to the lady, was surprised and +pleased that he should have remembered her name. "Brooks," she had +called him. That was his first name. This strange and sumptuous person +seemed intimate with him. Could it be possible that he belonged to her +class? "Mrs. Brocklehurst, Miss Bumpus." + +Mrs. Brocklehurst focussed her attention on Janet, through the lorgnette, +but let it fall immediately, smiling on her brightly, persuasively. + +"How d'ye do?" she said, stretching forth a slender arm and taking the +girl's somewhat reluctant hand. "Do come and sit down beside me and tell +me about everything here. I'm sure you know--you look so intelligent." + +Her friend from Silliston shot at Janet an amused but fortifying glance +and left them, going down to the tables. Somehow that look of his helped +to restore in her a sense of humour and proportion, and her feeling +became one of curiosity concerning this exquisitely soigneed being of an +order she had read about, but never encountered--an order which her newly +acquired views declared to be usurpers and parasites. But despite her +palpable effort to be gracious perhaps because of it--Mrs. Brocklehurst +had an air about her that was disconcerting! Janet, however, seemed +composed as she sat down. + +"I'm afraid I don't know very much. Maybe you will tell me something, +first." + +"Why, certainly," said Mrs. Brocklehurst, sweetly when she had got her +breath. + +"Who is that man?" Janet asked. + +"Whom do you mean--Mr. Insall?" + +"Is that his name? I didn't know. I've seen him twice, but he never +told me." + +"Why, my dear, do you mean to say you haven't heard of Brooks Insall?" + +"Brooks Insall." Janet repeated the name, as her eyes sought his figure +between the tables. "No." + +"I'm sure I don't know why I should have expected you to hear of him," +declared the lady, repentantly. "He's a writer--an author." And at this +Janet gave a slight exclamation of pleasure and surprise. "You admire +writers? He's done some delightful things." + +"What does he write about?" Janet asked. + +"Oh, wild flowers and trees and mountains and streams, and birds and +humans--he has a wonderful insight into people." + +Janet was silent. She was experiencing a swift twinge of jealousy, of +that familiar rebellion against her limitations. + +"You must read them, my dear," Mrs. Brocklehurst continued softly, in +musical tones. "They are wonderful, they have such distinction. He's +walked, I'm told, over every foot of New England, talking to the farmers +and their wives and--all sorts of people." She, too, paused to let her +gaze linger upon Insall laughing and chatting with the children as they +ate. "He has such a splendid, `out-door' look don't you think? And he's +clever with his hands he bought an old abandoned farmhouse in Silliston +and made it all over himself until it looks as if one of our great-great- +grandfathers had just stepped out of it to shoot an Indian only much +prettier. And his garden is a dream. It's the most unique place I've +ever known." + +Janet blushed deeply as she recalled how she had mistaken him for a +carpenter: she was confused, overwhelmed, she had a sudden longing to +leave the place, to be alone, to think about this discovery. Yet she +wished to know more. + +"But how did he happen to come here to Hampton--to be doing this?" she +asked. + +"Well, that's just what makes him interesting, one never can tell what +he'll do. He took it into his head to collect the money to feed these +children; I suppose he gave much of it himself. He has an income of his +own, though he likes to live so simply." + +"This place--it's not connected with any organization?" Janet ejaculated. + +"That's the trouble, he doesn't like organizations, and he doesn't seem +to take any interest in the questions or movements of the day," Mrs. +Brocklehurst complained. "Or at least he refuses to talk about them, +though I've known him for many years, and his people and mine were +friends. Now there are lots of things I want to learn, that I came up +from New York to find out. I thought of course he'd introduce me to the +strike leaders, and he tells me he doesn't know one of them. Perhaps you +know them," she added, with sudden inspiration. + +"I'm only an employee at Strike Headquarters," Janet replied, stiffening +a little despite the lady's importuning look--which evidently was usually +effective. + +"You mean the I.W.W.?" + +"Yes." + +Meanwhile Insall had come up and seated himself below them on the edge of +the platform. + +"Oh, Brooks, your friend Miss Bumpus is employed in the Strike +Headquarters!" Mrs. Brocklehurst cried, and turning to Janet she went on. +"I didn't realize you were a factory girl, I must say you don't look it." + +Once more a gleam of amusement from Insall saved Janet, had the effect of +compelling her to meet the affair somewhat after his own manner. He +seemed to be putting the words into her mouth, and she even smiled a +little, as she spoke. + +"You never can tell what factory girls do look like in these days," she +observed mischievously. + +"That's so," Mrs. Brocklehurst agreed, "we are living in such +extraordinary times, everything topsy turvy. I ought to have realized-- +it was stupid of me--I know several factory girls in New York, I've been +to their meetings, I've had them at my house--shirtwaist strikers." + +She assumed again the willowy, a position, her fingers clasped across her +knee, her eyes supplicatingly raised to Janet. Then she reached out her +hand and touched the I.W.W. button. "Do tell me all about the +Industrial Workers, and what they believe," she pleaded. + +"Well," said Janet, after a slight pause, "I'm afraid you won't like it +much. Why do you want to know?" + +"Because I'm so interested--especially in the women of the movement. I +feel for them so, I want to help--to do something, too. Of course you're +a suffragist." + +"You mean, do I believe in votes for women? Yes, I suppose I do." + +"But you must," declared Mrs. Brocklehurst, still sweetly, but with +emphasis. "You wouldn't be working, you wouldn't be striking unless you +did." + +"I've never thought about it," said Janet. + +"But how are you working girls ever going to raise wages unless you get +the vote? It's the only way men ever get anywhere--the politicians +listen to them." She produced from her bag a gold pencil and a tablet. +"Mrs. Ned Carfax is here from Boston--I saw her for a moment at the hotel +she's been here investigating for nearly three days, she tells me. I'll +have her send you suffrage literature at once, if you'll give me your +address." + +"You want a vote?" asked Janet, curiously, gazing at the pearl earrings. + +"Certainly I want one." + +"Why?" + +"Why?" repeated Mrs. Brocklehurst. + +"Yes. You must have everything you want." + +Even then the lady's sweet reasonableness did not desert her. She smiled +winningly, displaying two small and even rows of teeth. + +"On principle, my dear. For one reason, because I have such sympathy +with women who toil, and for another, I believe the time has come when +women must no longer be slaves, they must assert themselves, become +individuals, independent." + +"But you?" exclaimed Janet. + +Mrs. Brocklehurst continued to smile encouragingly, and murmured "Yes?" + +"You are not a slave." + +A delicate pink, like the inside of a conch shell, spread over Mrs. +Brocklehurst's cheeks. + +"We're all slaves," she declared with a touch of passion. "It's hard for +you to realize, I know, about those of us who seem more fortunate than +our sisters. But it's true. The men give us jewels and automobiles and +clothes, but they refuse to give us what every real woman craves-- +liberty." + +Janet had become genuinely interested. + +"But what kind of liberty?" + +"Liberty to have a voice, to take part in the government of our country, +to help make the laws, especially those concerning working-women and +children, what they ought to be." + +Here was altruism, truly! Here were words that should have inspired +Janet, yet she was silent. Mrs. Brocklehurst gazed at her solicitously. + +"What are you thinking?" she urged--and it was Janet's turn to flush. + +"I was just thinking that you seemed to have everything life has to give, +and yet--and yet you're not happy." + +"Oh, I'm not unhappy," protested the lady. "Why do you say that?" + +"I don't know. You, too, seem to be wanting something." + +"I want to be of use, to count," said Mrs. Brocklehurst,--and Janet was +startled to hear from this woman's lips the very echo of her own desires. + +Mrs. Brocklehurst's feelings had become slightly complicated. It is +perhaps too much to say that her complacency was shaken. She was, +withal, a person of resolution--of resolution taking the form of +unswerving faith in herself, a faith persisting even when she was being +carried beyond her depth. She had the kind of pertinacity that sever +admits being out of depth, the happy buoyancy that does not require to +feel the bottom under one's feet. She floated in swift currents. When +life became uncomfortable, she evaded it easily; and she evaded it now, +as she gazed at the calm but intent face of the girl in front of her, by +a characteristic inner refusal to admit that she had accidentally come in +contact with something baking. Therefore she broke the silence. + +"Isn't that what you want--you who are striking?" she asked. + +"I think we want the things that you've got," said Janet. A phrase one +of the orators had used came into her mind, "Enough money to live up to +American standards"--but she did not repeat it. "Enough money to be +free, to enjoy life, to have some leisure and amusement and luxury." The +last three she took from the orator's mouth. + +"But surely," exclaimed Mrs. Brocklehurst, "surely you want more than +that!" + +Janet shook her head. + +"You asked me what we believed, the I.W.W., the syndicalists, and I told +you you wouldn't like it. Well, we believe in doing away with you, the +rich, and taking all you have for ourselves, the workers, the producers. +We believe you haven't any right to what you've got, that you've fooled +and cheated us out of it. That's why we women don't care much about the +vote, I suppose, though I never thought of it. We mean to go on striking +until we've got all that you've got." + +"But what will become of us?" said Mrs. Brocklehurst. "You wouldn't do +away with all of us.! I admit there are many who don't--but some do +sympathize with you, will help you get what you want, help you, perhaps, +to see things more clearly, to go about it less--ruthlessly." + +"I've told you what we believe," repeated Janet. + +"I'm so glad I came," cried Mrs. Brocklehurst. "It's most interesting! +I never knew what the syndicalists believed. Why, it's like the French +Revolution--only worse. How are you going to get rid of us? cut our +heads off?" + +Janet could not refrain from smiling. + +"Let you starve, I suppose." + +"Really!" said Mrs. Brocklehurst, and appeared to be trying to visualize +the process. She was a true Athenian, she had discovered some new thing, +she valued discoveries more than all else in life, she collected them, +though she never used them save to discuss them with intellectuals at her +dinner parties. "Now you must let me come to Headquarters and get a +glimpse of some of the leaders--of Antonelli, and I'm told there's a +fascinating man named Rowe." + +"Rolfe," Janet corrected. + +"Rolfe--that's it." She glanced down at the diminutive watch, set with +diamonds, on her wrist, rose and addressed Insall. "Oh dear, I must be +going, I'm to lunch with Nina Carfax at one, and she's promised to tell +me a lot of things. She's writing an article for Craven's Weekly all +about the strike and the suffering and injustice--she says it's been +horribly misrepresented to the public, the mill owners have had it all +their own way. I think what you're doing is splendid, Brooks, only--" +here she gave him an appealing, rather commiserating look--"only I do +wish you would take more interest in--in underlying principles." + +Insall smiled. + +"It's a question of brains. You have to have brains to be a +sociologist," he answered, as he held up for her the fur coat. With a +gesture of gentle reproof she slipped into it, and turned to Janet. + +"You must let me see more of you, my dear," she said. "I'm at the best +hotel, I can't remember the name, they're all so horrible--but I'll be +here until to-morrow afternoon. I want to find out everything. Come and +call on me. You're quite the most interesting person I've met for a long +time--I don't think you realize how interesting you are. Au revoir!" +She did not seem to expect any reply, taking acquiescence for granted. +Glancing once more at the rows of children, who had devoured their meal +in an almost uncanny silence, she exclaimed, "The dears! I'm going to +send you a cheque, Brooks, even if you have been horrid to me--you always +are." + +"Horrid!" repeated Insall, "put it down to ignorance." + +He accompanied her down the stairs. From her willowy walk a +sophisticated observer would have hazarded the guess that her search for +an occupation had included a course of lessons in fancy dancing. + +Somewhat dazed by this interview which had been so suddenly forced upon +her, Janet remained seated on the platform. She had the perception to +recognize that in Mrs. Brocklehurst and Insall she had come in contact +with a social stratum hitherto beyond the bounds of her experience; those +who belonged to that stratum were not characterized by the possession of +independent incomes alone, but by an attitude toward life, a manner of +not appearing to take its issues desperately. Ditmar was not like that. +She felt convicted of enthusiasms, she was puzzled, rather annoyed and +ashamed. Insall and Mrs. Brocklehurst, different though they were, had +this attitude in common.... Insall, when he returned, regarded her +amusedly. + +"So you'd like to exterminate Mrs. Brocklehurst?" he asked. + +And Janet flushed. "Well, she forced me to say it." + +"Oh, it didn't hurt her," he said. + +"And it didn't help her," Janet responded quickly. + +"No, it didn't help her," Insall agreed, and laughed. + +"But I'm not sure it isn't true," she went on, "that we want what she's +got." The remark, on her own lips, surprised Janet a little. She had +not really meant to make it. Insall seemed to have the quality of +forcing one to think out loud. + +"And what she wants, you've got," he told her. + +"What have I got?" + +"Perhaps you'll find out, some day." + +"It may be too late," she exclaimed. "If you'd only tell me, it might +help." + +"I think it's something you'll have to discover for yourself," he +replied, more gravely than was his wont. + +She was silent a moment, and then she demanded: "Why didn't you tell me +who you were? You let me think, when I met you in Silliston that day, +that you were a carpenter. I didn't know you'd written books." + +"You can't expect writers to wear uniforms, like policemen--though +perhaps we ought to, it might be a little fairer to the public," he said. +"Besides, I am a carpenter, a better carpenter than a writer.." + +"I'd give anything to be an author!" she cried. + +"It's a hard life," he assured her. "We have to go about seeking +inspiration from others." + +"Is that why you came to Hampton?" + +"Well, not exactly. It's a queer thing about inspiration, you only find +it when you're not looking for it." + +She missed the point of this remark, though his eyes were on her. They +were not like Rolfe's eyes, insinuating, possessive; they had the +anomalistic quality, of being at once personel and impersonal, friendly, +alight, evoking curiosity yet compelling trust. + +"And you didn't tell me," he reproached her, "that you were at I.W.W. +Headquarters." + +A desire for self-justification impelled her to exclaim: "You don't +believe in Syndicalism--and yet you've come here to feed these children!" + +"Oh, I think I understand the strike," he said. + +"How? Have you seen it? Have you heard the arguments?" + +"No. I've seen you. You've explained it." + +"To Mrs. Brocklehurst?" + +"It wasn't necessary," he replied--and immediately added, in semi-serious +apology: "I thought it was admirable, what you said. If she'd talked to +a dozen syndicalist leaders, she couldn't have had it put more clearly. +Only I'm afraid she doesn't know the truth when she hears it." + +"Now you're making fun of me!" + +"Indeed I'm not," he protested. + +"But I didn't give any of the arguments, any of the--philosophy," she +pronounced the word hesitatingly. "I don't understand it yet as well as +I should." + +"You are it," he said. "It's not always easy to understand what we are-- +it's generally after we've become something else that we comprehend what +we have been." + +And while she was pondering over this one of the ladies who had been +waiting on the table came toward Insall. + +"The children have finished, Brooks," she informed him. "It's time to +let in the others." + +Insall turned to Janet. "This is Miss Bumpus--and this is Mrs. Maturin," +he said. "Mrs. Maturin lives in Silliston." + +The greeting of this lady differed from that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. She, +too, took Janet's hand. + +"Have you come to help us?" she asked. + +And Janet said: "Oh, I'd like to, but I have other work." + +"Come in and see us again," said Insall, and Janet, promising, took her +leave.... + +"Who is she, Brooks?" Mrs. Maturin asked, when Janet had gone. + +"Well," he answered, "I don't know. What does it matter?" + +Mrs. Maturin smiled. + +"I should say that it did matter," she replied. "But there's something +unusual about her--where did you find her?" + +"She found me." And Insall explained. "She was a stenographer, it +seems, but now she's enlisted heart and soul with the syndicalists," he +added. + +"A history?" Mrs. Maturin queried. "Well, I needn't ask--it's written on +her face." + +"That's all I know," said Insall. + +"I'd like to know," said Mrs. Maturin. "You say she's in the strike?" + +"I should rather put it that the strike is in her." + +"What do you mean, Brooks?" + +But Insall did not reply. + +Janet came away from Dey Street in a state of mental and emotional +confusion. The encounter with Mrs. Brocklehurst had been upsetting; she +had an uneasy feeling of having made a fool of herself in Insall's eyes; +she desired his approval;, even on that occasion when she had first met +him and mistaken him for a workman she had been conscious of a compelling +faculty in him, of a pressure he exerted demanding justification of +herself; and to-day, because she was now pledged to Syndicalism, because +she had made the startling discovery that he was a writer of some renown, +she had been more than ever anxious to vindicate her cause. She found +herself, indeed, wondering uneasily whether there were a higher truth of +which he was in possession. And the fact that his attitude toward her +had been one of sympathy and friendliness rather than of disapproval, +that his insight seemed to have fathomed her case, apprehended it in all +but the details, was even more disturbing--yet vaguely consoling. The +consolatory element in the situation was somehow connected with the lady, +his friend from Silliston, to whom he had introduced her and whose image +now came before her the more vividly, perhaps, in contrast with that of +Mrs. Brocklehurst. Mrs. Maturin--could Janet have so expressed her +thought! had appeared as an extension of Insall's own personality. She +was a strong, tall, vital woman with a sweet irregularity of feature, +with a heavy crown of chestnut hair turning slightly grey, quaintly +braided, becomingly framing her face. Her colour was high. The +impression she conveyed of having suffered was emphasized by the simple +mourning gown she wore, but the dominant note she had struck was one of +dependability. It was, after all, Insall's dominant, too. Insall had +asked her to call again; and the reflection that she might do so was +curiously comforting. The soup kitchen in the loft, with these two +presiding over it, took on something of the aspect of a sanctuary.... + +Insall, in some odd manner, and through the medium of that frivolous +lady, had managed to reenforce certain doubts that had been stirring in +Janet--doubts of Rolfe, of the verity of the doctrine which with such +abandon she had embraced. It was Insall who, though remaining silent, +just by being there seemed to have suggested her manner of dealing with +Mrs. Brocklehurst. It had, indeed, been his manner of dealing with Mrs. +Brocklehurst. Janet had somehow been using his words, his method, and +thus for the first time had been compelled to look objectively on what +she had deemed a part of herself. We never know what we are, he had +said, until we become something else! He had forced her to use an +argument that failed to harmonize, somehow, with Rolfe's poetical +apologetics. Stripped of the glamour of these, was not Rolfe's doctrine +just one of taking, taking? And when the workers were in possession of +all, would not they be as badly off as Mrs. Brocklehurst or Ditmar? +Rolfe, despite the inspiring intellectual creed he professed, lacked the +poise and unity that go with happiness. He wanted things, for himself: +whereas she beheld in Insall one who seemed emancipated from possessions, +whose life was so organized as to make them secondary affairs. And she +began to wonder what Insall would think of Ditmar. + +These sudden flashes of tenderness for Ditmar startled and angered her. +She had experienced them before, and always had failed to account for +their intrusion into a hatred she cherished. Often, at her desk in the +bibliotheque, she had surprised herself speculating upon what Ditmar +might be doing at that moment; and it seemed curious, living in the same +city with him, that she had not caught a glimpse of him during the +strike. More than once, moved by a perverse impulse, she had ventured of +an evening down West Street toward the guard of soldiers in the hope of +catching sight of him. He had possessed her, and the memory of the wild +joy of that possession, of that surrender to great strength, refused to +perish. Why, at such moments, should she glory in a strength that had +destroyed her and why, when she heard him cursed as the man who stood, +more than any other, in the way of the strikers victory, should she +paradoxically and fiercely rejoice? why should she feel pride when she +was told of the fearlessness with which he went about the streets, and +her heart stop beating when she thought of the possibility of his being +shot? For these unwelcome phenomena within herself Janet could not +account. When they disturbed and frightened her, she plunged into her +work with the greater zeal.... + +As the weeks went by, the strain of the strike began to tell on the weak, +the unprepared, on those who had many mouths to feed. Shivering with the +cold of that hardest of winters, these unfortunates flocked to the +Franco-Belgian Hall, where a little food or money in proportion to the +size of their families was doled out to them. In spite of the +contributions received by mail, of the soup kitchens and relief stations +set up by various organizations in various parts of the city, the supply +little more than sufficed to keep alive the more needy portion of the +five and twenty thousand who now lacked all other means of support. +Janet's heart was wrung as she gazed at the gaunt, bewildered faces +growing daily more tragic, more bewildered and gaunt; she marvelled at +the animal-like patience of these Europeans, at the dumb submission of +most of them to privations that struck her as appalling. Some indeed +complained, but the majority recited in monotonous, unimpassioned tones +their stories of suffering, or of ill treatment by the "Cossacks" or the +police. The stipends were doled out by Czernowitz, but all through the +week there were special appeals. Once it was a Polish woman, wan and +white, who carried her baby wrapped in a frayed shawl. + +"Wahna littel money for milk," she said, when at length their attention +was drawn to her. + +"But you get your money, every Saturday," the secretary informed her +kindly. + +She shook her head. + +"Baby die, 'less I have littel milk--I show you." + +Janet drew back before the sight of the child with its sunken cheeks and +ghastly blue lips .... And she herself went out with the woman to buy +the milk, and afterwards to the dive in Kendall Street which she called +home--in one of those "rear" tenements separated from the front buildings +by a narrow court reeking with refuse. The place was dank and cold, +malodorous. The man of the family, the lodgers who lived in the other +room of the kennel, were out on the streets. But when her eyes grew used +to the darkness she perceived three silent children huddled in the bed in +the corner.... + +On another occasion a man came running up the stairs of the Hall and +thrust his way into a meeting of the Committee--one of those normally +happy, irresponsible Syrians who, because of a love for holidays, are the +despair of mill overseers. Now he was dazed, breathless, his great eyes +grief-stricken like a wounded animal's. + +"She is killidd, my wife--de polees, dey killidd her!" + +It was Anna Mower who investigated the case. "The girl wasn't doing +nothing but walk along Hudson Street when one of those hirelings set on +her and beat her. She put out her hand because she thought he'd hit her- +-and he gave her three or four with his billy and left her in the gutter. +If you'd see her you'd know she wouldn't hurt a fly, she's that gentle +looking, like all the Syrian women. She had a `Don't be a scab' ribbon +on--that's all she done! Somebody'll shoot that guy, and I wouldn't +blame 'em." Anna stood beside Janet's typewriter, her face red with +anger as she told the story. + +"And how is the woman now?" asked Janet. + +"In bed, with two ribs broken and a bruise on her back and a cut on her +head. I got a doctor. He could hardly see her in that black place they +live."... + +Such were the incidents that fanned the hatred into hotter and hotter +flame. Daily reports were brought in of arrests, of fines and +imprisonments for picketing, or sometimes merely for booing at the +remnant of those who still clung to their employment. One magistrate in +particular, a Judge Hennessy, was hated above all others for giving the +extreme penalty of the law, and even stretching it. "Minions, slaves of +the capitalists, of the masters," the courts were called, and Janet +subscribed to these epithets, beheld the judges as willing agents of a +tyranny from which she, too, had suffered. There arrived at Headquarters +frenzied bearers of rumours such as that of the reported intention of +landlords to remove the windows from the tenements if the rents were not +paid. Antonelli himself calmed these. "Let the landlords try it!" he +said phlegmatically.... + +After a while, as the deadlock showed no signs of breaking, the siege of +privation began to tell, ominous signs of discontent became apparent. +Chief among the waverers were those who had come to America with visions +of a fortune, who had practised a repulsive thrift in order to acquire +real estate, who carried in their pockets dog-eared bank books recording +payments already made. These had consented to the strike reluctantly, +through fear, or had been carried away by the eloquence and enthusiasm of +the leaders, by the expectation that the mill owners would yield at once. +Some went back to work, only to be "seen" by the militant, watchful +pickets--generally in their rooms, at night. One evening, as Janet was +walking home, she chanced to overhear a conversation taking place in the +dark vestibule of a tenement. + +"Working to-day?" + +"Yah." + +"Work to-morrow?" + +Hesitation. "I d'no." + +"You work, I cut your throat." A significant noise. "Naw, I no work." + +"Shake!" + +She hurried on trembling, not with fear, but exultingly. Nor did she +reflect that only a month ago such an occurrence would have shocked and +terrified her. This was war.... On her way to Fillmore Street she +passed, at every street corner in this district, a pacing sentry, muffled +in greatcoat and woollen cap, alert and watchful, the ugly knife on the +end of his gun gleaming in the blue light of the arc. It did not occur +to her, despite the uniform, that the souls of many of these men were +divided also, that their voices and actions, when she saw them +threatening with their bayonets, were often inspired by that inner +desperation characteristic of men who find themselves unexpectedly in +false situations. Once she heard a woman shriek as the sharp knife +grazed her skirt: at another time a man whose steps had been considerably +hurried turned, at a safe distance, and shouted defiantly: + +"Say, who are you working for? Me or the Wool Trust?" + +"Aw, get along," retorted the soldier, "or I'll give you yours." + +The man caught sight of Janet's button as she overtook him. He was +walking backward. + +"That feller has a job in a machine shop over in Barrington, I seen him +there when I was in the mills. And here he is tryin' to put us out-- +ain't that the limit?" + +The thud of horses' feet in the snow prevented her reply. The +silhouettes of the approaching squad of cavalry were seen down the +street, and the man fled precipitately into an alleyway.... + +There were ludicrous incidents, too, though never lacking in a certain +pathos. The wife of a Russian striker had her husband arrested because +he had burned her clothes in order to prevent her returning to the mill. +From the police station he sent a compatriot with a message to +Headquarters. "Oye, he fix her! She no get her jawb now--she gotta stay +in bed!" this one cried triumphantly. + +"She was like to tear me in pieces when I brought her the clothes," said +Anna Mower, who related her experience with mingled feelings. "I +couldn't blame her. You see, it was the kids crying with cold and +starvation, and she got so she just couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand +it, neither." + +Day by day the element who wished to compromise and end the strike grew +stronger, brought more and more pressure on the leaders. These people +were subsidized, Antonelli declared, by the capitalists.... + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +A more serious atmosphere pervaded Headquarters, where it was realized +that the issue hung in the balance. And more proclamations, a la +Napoleon, were issued to sustain and hearten those who were finding bread +and onions meagre fare, to shame the hesitating, the wavering. As has +been said, it was Rolfe who, because of his popular literary gift, +composed these appeals for the consideration of the Committee, dictating +them to Janet as he paced up and down the bibliotheque, inhaling +innumerable cigarettes and flinging down the ends on the floor. A famous +one was headed "Shall Wool and Cotton Kings Rule the Nation?" "We are +winning" it declared. "The World is with us! Forced by the unshaken +solidarity of tens of thousands, the manufacturers offer bribes to end +the reign of terror they have inaugurated.... Inhuman treatment and +oppressive toil have brought all nationalities together into one great +army to fight against a brutal system of exploitation. In years and +years of excessive labour we have produced millions for a class of idle +parasites, who enjoy all the luxuries of life while our wives have to +leave their firesides and our children their schools to eke out a +miserable existence." And this for the militia: "The lowest aim of life +is to be a soldier! The `good' soldier never tries to distinguish right +from wrong, he never thinks, he never reasons, he only obeys--" + +"But," Janet was tempted to say, "your syndicalism declares that none of +us should think or reason. We should only feel." She was beginning to +detect Rolfe's inconsistencies, yet she refrained from interrupting the +inspirational flow. + +"The soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine." Rolfe +was fond of adjectives. "All that is human in him, all that is divine +has been sworn away when he took the enlistment oath. No man can fall +lower than a soldier. It is a depth beyond which we cannot go." + +"All that is human, all that is divine," wrote Janet, and thrilled a +little at the words. Why was it that mere words, and their arrangement +in certain sequences, gave one a delicious, creepy feeling up and down +the spine? Her attitude toward him had become more and more critical, +she had avoided him when she could, but when he was in this ecstatic mood +she responded, forgot his red lips, his contradictions, lost herself in a +medium she did not comprehend. Perhaps it was because, in his absorption +in the task, he forgot her, forgot himself. She, too, despised the +soldiers, fervently believed they had sold themselves to the oppressors +of mankind. And Rolfe, when in the throes of creation, had the manner of +speaking to the soldiers themselves, as though these were present in the +lane just below the window; as though he were on the tribune. At such +times he spoke with such rapidity that, quick though she was, she could +scarcely keep up with him. "Most of you, Soldiers, are workingmen!" he +cried. "Yesterday you were slaving in the mills yourselves. You will +profit by our victory. Why should you wish to crush us? Be human!" + +Pale, excited, he sank down into the chair by her side and lit another +cigarette. + +"They ought to listen to that!" he exclaimed. "It's the best one I've +done yet." + +Night had come. Czernowitz sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a +buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the +door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the lane +into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of Franco- +Belgian Hall. But now the wind had fallen.... Presently, as his self- +made music ceased to vibrate within him, Rolfe began to watch the girl as +she sat motionless, with parted lips and eyes alight, staring at the +reflection of the lamp in the blue-black window. + +"Is that the end?" she asked, at length. + +"Yes," he replied sensitively. "Can't you see it's a climax? Don't you +think it's a good one?" + +She looked at him, puzzled. + +"Why, yes," she said, "I think it's fine. You see, I have to take it +down so fast I can't always follow it as I'd like to." + +"When you feel, you can do anything," he exclaimed. "It is necessary to +feel." + +"It is necessary to know," she told him. + +"I do not understand you," he cried, leaning toward her. "Sometimes you +are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other way. +Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I were a +del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as your New +England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a Puritan." + +She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscence at the word. Ditmar +had called her so, too. + +"I can't help what I am," she said. + +"It is that which inhibits you," he declared. "That Puritanism. It must +be eradicated before you can develop, and then--and then you will be +completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I +will teach you many things--develop you. We will read Sorel together he +is beautiful, like poetry--and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and +Tasso--yes, and d'Annunzio. We shall live." + +"We are living, now," she answered. The look with which she surveyed him +he found enigmatic. And then, abruptly, she rose and went to her +typewriter. + +"You don't believe what I say!" he reproached her. + +But she was cool. "I'm not sure that I believe all of it. I want to +think it out for myself--to talk to others, too." + +"What others?" + +"Nobody in particular--everybody," she replied, as she set her notebook +on the rack. + +"There is some one else!" he exclaimed, rising. + +"There is every one else," she said. + +As was his habit when agitated, he began to smoke feverishly, glancing at +her from time to time as she fingered the keys. Experience had led him +to believe that he who finds a woman in revolt and gives her a religion +inevitably becomes her possessor. But more than a month had passed, he +had not become her possessor--and now for the first time there entered +his mind a doubt as to having given her a religion! The obvious +inference was that of another man, of another influence in opposition to +his own; characteristically, however, he shrank from accepting this, +since he was of those who believe what they wish to believe. The sudden +fear of losing her--intruding itself immediately upon an ecstatic, +creative mood--unnerved him, yet he strove to appear confident as he +stood over her. + +"When you've finished typewriting that, we'll go out to supper," he told +her. + +But she shook her head. + +"Why not?" + +"I don't want to," she replied--and then, to soften her refusal, she +added, "I can't, to-night." + +"But you never will come with me anymore. Why is it?" + +"I'm very tired at night. I don't feel like going out." She sought to +temporize. + +"You've changed!" he accused her. "You're not the same as you were at +first--you avoid me." + +The swift gesture with which she flung over the carriage of her machine +might have warned him. + +"I don't like that Hampton Hotel," she flashed back. "I'm--I'm not a +vagabond--yet." + +"A vagabond!" he repeated. + +She went on savagely with her work.. + +"You have two natures," he exclaimed. "You are still a bourgeoise, a +Puritan. You will not be yourself, you will not be free until you get +over that." + +"I'm not sure I want to get over it." + +He leaned nearer to her. + +"But now that I have found you, Janet, I will not let you go." + +"You've no rights over me," she cried, in sudden alarm and anger. "I'm +not doing this work, I'm not wearing myself out here for you." + +"Then--why are you doing it?" His suspicions rose again, and made him +reckless. + +"To help the strikers," she said.... He could get no more out of her, +and presently, when Anna Mower entered the room, he left it.... + +More than once since her first visit to the soup kitchen in Dey Street +Janet had returned to it. The universe rocked, but here was equilibrium. +The streets were filled with soldiers, with marching strikers, terrible +things were constantly happening; the tension at Headquarters never +seemed to relax. Out in the world and within her own soul were strife +and suffering, and sometimes fear; the work in which she sought to lose +herself no longer sufficed to keep her from thinking, and the spectacle-- +when she returned home--of her mother's increasing apathy grew more and +more appalling. But in Dey Street she gained calmness, was able to renew +something of that sense of proportion the lack of which, in the chaos in +which she was engulfed, often brought her to the verge of madness. At +first she had had a certain hesitation about going back, and on the +occasion of her second visit had walked twice around the block before +venturing to enter. She had no claim on this man. He was merely a +chance acquaintance, a stranger--and yet he seemed nearer to her, to +understand her better than any one else she knew in the world. This was +queer, because she had not explained herself; nor had he asked her for +any confidences. She would have liked to confide in him--some things: he +gave her the impression of comprehending life; of having, as his +specialty, humanity itself; he should, she reflected, have been a +minister, and smiled at the thought: ministers, at any rate, ought to be +like him, and then one might embrace Christianity--the religion of her +forefathers that Rolfe ridiculed. But there was about Insall nothing of +religion as she had grown up to apprehend the term. + +Now that she had taken her courage in her hands and renewed her visits, +they seemed to be the most natural proceedings in the world. On that +second occasion, when she had opened the door and palpitatingly climbed +to the loft, the second batch of children were finishing their midday +meal,--rather more joyously, she thought, than before,--and Insall +himself was stooping over a small boy whom he had taken away from the +table. He did not notice her at once, and Janet watched them. The child +had a cough, his extreme thinness was emphasized by the coat he wore, +several sizes too large for him. + +"Yon come along with me, Marcus, I guess I can fit you out," Insall was +saying, when he looked up and saw Janet. + +"Why, if it isn't Miss Bumpus! I thought you'd forgotten us." + +"Oh no," she protested. "I wanted to come." + +"Then why didn't you?" + +"Well, I have come," she said, with a little sigh, and he did not press +her further. And she refrained from offering any conventional excuse, +such as that of being interested in the children. She had come to see +him, and such was the faith with which he inspired her--now that she was +once more in his presence--that she made no attempt to hide the fact. + +"You've never seen my clothing store, have you?" he asked. And with the +child's hand in his he led the way into a room at the rear of the loft. +A kit of carpenter's tools was on the floor, and one wall was lined with +box-like compartments made of new wood, each with its label in neat +lettering indicating the articles contained therein. "Shoes?" he +repeated, as he ran his eye down the labels and suddenly opened a drawer. +"Here we are, Marcus. Sit down there on the bench, and take off the +shoes you have on." + +The boy had one of those long faces of the higher Jewish type, +intelligent, wistful. He seemed dazed by Insall's kindness. The shoes +he wore were those of an adult, but cracked and split, revealing the +cotton stocking and here and there the skin. His little blue hands +fumbled with the knotted strings that served for facings until Insall, +producing a pocket knife, deftly cut the strings. + +"Those are summer shoes, Marcus--well ventilated." + +"They're by me since August," said the boy. + +"And now the stockings," prompted Insall. The old ones, wet, +discoloured, and torn, were stripped off, and thick, woollen ones +substituted. Insall, casting his eye over the open drawer, chose a pair +of shoes that had been worn, but which were stout and serviceable, and +taking one in his hand knelt down before the child. "Let's see how good +a guesser I am," he said, loosening the strings and turning back the +tongue, imitating good-humouredly the deferential manner of a salesman of +footwear as he slipped on the shoe. "Why, it fits as if it were made for +you! Now for the other one. Yes, your feet are mates--I know a man who +wears a whole size larger on his left foot." The dazed expression +remained on the boy's face. The experience was beyond him. "That's +better," said Insall, as he finished the lacing. "Keep out of the snow, +Marcus, all you can. Wet feet aren't good for a cough, you know. And +when you come in to supper a nice doctor will be here, and we'll see if +we can't get rid of the cough." + +The boy nodded. He got to his feet, stared down at the shoes, and walked +slowly toward the door, where he turned. + +"Thank you, Mister Insall," he said. + +And Insall, still sitting on his heels, waved his hand. + +"It is not to mention it," he replied. "Perhaps you may have a clothing +store of your own some day--who knows!" He looked up at Janet amusedly +and then, with a spring, stood upright, his easy, unconscious pose +betokening command of soul and body. "I ought to have kept a store," he +observed. "I missed my vocation." + +"It seems to me that you missed a great many vocations," she replied. +Commonplaces alone seemed possible, adequate. "I suppose you made all +those drawers yourself." + +He bowed in acknowledgment of her implied tribute. With his fine nose +and keen eyes--set at a slightly downward angle, creased at the corners-- +with his thick, greying hair, despite his comparative youth he had the +look one associates with portraits of earlier, patriarchal Americans.... +These calls of Janet's were never of long duration. She had fallen into +the habit of taking her lunch between one and two, and usually arrived +when the last installment of youngsters were finishing their meal; +sometimes they were filing out, stopping to form a group around Insall, +who always managed to say something amusing--something pertinent and +good-naturedly personal. For he knew most of them by name, and had +acquired a knowledge of certain individual propensities and +idiosyncrasies that delighted their companions. + +"What's the trouble, Stepan--swallowed your spoon?" Stepan was known to +be greedy. Or he would suddenly seize an unusually solemn boy from +behind and tickle him until the child screamed with laughter. It was, +indeed, something of an achievement to get on terms of confidence with +these alien children of the tenements and the streets who from their +earliest years had been forced to shift for themselves, and many of whom +had acquired a precocious suspicion of Greeks bearing gifts. Insall +himself had used the phrase, and explained it to Janet. That sense of +caveat donor was perhaps their most pathetic characteristic. But he +broke it down; broke down, too, the shyness accompanying it, the shyness +and solemnity emphasized in them by contact with hardship and poverty, +with the stark side of life they faced at home. He had made them--Mrs. +Maturin once illuminatingly remarked--more like children. Sometimes he +went to see their parents,--as in the case of Marcus--to suggest certain +hygienic precautions in his humorous way; and his accounts of these +visits, too, were always humorous. Yet through that humour ran a strain +of pathos that clutched--despite her smile--at Janet's heartstrings. +This gift of emphasizing and heightening tragedy while apparently dealing +in comedy she never ceased to wonder at. She, too, knew that tragedy of +the tenements, of the poor, its sordidness and cruelty. All her days she +had lived precariously near it, and lately she had visited these people, +had been torn by the sight of what they endured. But Insall's jokes, +while they stripped it of sentimentality of which she had an instinctive +dislike--made it for her even more poignant. One would have thought, to +have such an insight into it, that he too must have lived it, must have +been brought up in some dirty alley of a street. That gift, of course, +must be a writer's gift. + +When she saw the waifs trooping after him down the stairs, Mrs. Maturin +called him the Pied Piper of Hampton. + +As time went on, Janet sometimes wondered over the quiet manner in which +these two people, Insall and Mrs. Maturin, took her visits as though they +were matters of course, and gave her their friendship. There was, +really, no obvious excuse for her coming, not even that of the waifs for +food--and yet she came to be fed. The sustenance they gave her would +have been hard to define; it flowed not so much from what they said, as +from what they were; it was in the atmosphere surrounding them. +Sometimes she looked at Mrs. Maturin to ask herself what this lady would +say if she knew her history, her relationship with Ditmar--which had been +her real reason for entering the ranks of the strikers. And was it fair +for her, Janet, to permit Mrs. Maturin to bestow her friendship without +revealing this? She could not make up her mind as to what this lady +would say. Janet had had no difficulty in placing Ditmar; not much +trouble, after her first surprise was over, in classifying Rolfe and the +itinerant band of syndiealists who had descended upon her restricted +world. But Insall and Mrs. Maturin were not to be ticketed. What +chiefly surprised her, in addition to their kindliness, to their taking +her on faith without the formality of any recommendation or introduction, +was their lack of intellectual narrowness. She did not, of course, so +express it. But she sensed, in their presence, from references casually +let fall in their conversation, a wider culture of which they were in +possession, a culture at once puzzling and exciting, one that she +despaired of acquiring for herself. Though it came from reading, it did +not seem "literary," according to the notion she had conceived of the +term. Her speculations concerning it must be focussed and interpreted. +It was a culture, in the first place, not harnessed to an obvious Cause: +something like that struck her. It was a culture that contained +tolerance and charity, that did not label a portion of mankind as its +enemy, but seemed, by understanding all, to forgive all. It had no +prejudices; nor did it boast, as the Syndicalists boasted, of its absence +of convention. And little by little Janet connected it with Silliston. + +"It must be wonderful to live in such a place as that," she exclaimed, +when the Academy was mentioned. On this occasion Insall had left for a +moment, and she was in the little room he called his "store," alone with +Mrs. Maturin, helping to sort out a batch of garments just received. + +"It was there you first met Brooks, wasn't it?" She always spoke of him +as Brooks. "He told me about it, how you walked out there and asked him +about a place to lunch." Mrs. Maturin laughed. "You didn't know what to +make of him, did you?" + +"I thought he was a carpenter!" said Janet. "I--I never should have +taken him for an author. But of course I don't know any other authors." + +"Well, he's not like any of them, he's just like himself. You can't put +a tag on people who are really big." + +Janet considered this. "I never thought of that. I suppose not," she +agreed. + +Mrs. Maturin glanced at her. "So you liked Sflliston," she said. + +"I liked it better than any place I ever saw. I haven't seen many +places, but I'm sure that few can be nicer." + +"What did you like about it, Janet?" Mrs. Maturin was interested. + +"It's hard to say," Janet replied, after a moment. "It gave me such a +feeling of peace--of having come home, although I lived in Hampton. I +can't express it." + +"I think you're expressing it rather well," said Mrs. Maturin. + +"It was so beautiful in the spring," Janet continued, dropping the coat +she held into the drawer. "And it wasn't just the trees and the grass +with the yellow dandelions, it was the houses, too--I've often wondered +why those houses pleased me so much. I wanted to live in every one of +them. Do you know that feeling?" Mrs. Maturin nodded. "They didn't +hurt your eyes when you looked at them, and they seemed to be so much at +home there, even the new ones. The new ones were like the children of +the old." + +"I'll tell the architect. He'll be pleased," said Mrs. Maturin. + +Janet flushed. + +"Am I being silly?" she asked. + +"No; my dear," Mrs. Maturin replied. "You've expressed what I feel about +Silliston. What do you intend to do when the strike is over?" + +"I hadn't thought." Janet started at the question, but Mrs. Maturin did +not seem to notice the dismay in her tone. "You don't intend to--to +travel around with the I. W. W. people, do you?" + +"I--I hadn't thought," Janet faltered. It was the first time Mrs. +Maturin had spoken of her connection with Syndicalism. And she surprised +herself by adding: "I don't see how I could. They can get stenographers +anywhere, and that's all I'm good for." And the question occurred to +her--did she really wish to? + +"What I was going to suggest," continued Mrs. Maturin, quietly, "was that +you might try Silliston. There's a chance for a good stenographer there, +and I'm sure you are a good one. So many of the professors send to +Boston." + +Janet stood stock still. Then she said: "But you don't know anything +about me, Mrs. Maturin." + +Kindliness burned in the lady's eyes as she replied: "I know more now-- +since you've told me I know nothing. Of course there's much I don't +know, how you, a stenographer, became involved in this strike and joined +the I. W. W. But you shall tell me or not, as you wish, when we become +better friends." + +Janet felt the blood beating in her throat, and an impulse to confess +everything almost mastered her. From the first she had felt drawn toward +Mrs. Maturin, who seemed to hold out to her the promise of a woman's +friendship--for which she had felt a life-long need: a woman friend who +would understand the insatiate yearning in her that gave her no rest in +her search for a glittering essence never found, that had led her only to +new depths of bitterness and despair. It would destroy her, if indeed it +had not already done so. Mrs. Maturin, Insall, seemed to possess the +secret that would bring her peace--and yet, in spite of something urging +her to speak, she feared the risk of losing them. Perhaps, after all, +they would not understand! perhaps it was too late! + +"You do not believe in the Industrial Workers of the World," was what she +said. + +Mrs. Maturin herself, who had been moved and excited as she gazed at +Janet, was taken by surprise. A few moments elapsed before she could +gather herself to reply, and then she managed to smile. + +"I do not believe that wisdom will die with them, my dear. Their--their +doctrine is too simple, it does not seem as if life, the social order is +to be so easily solved." + +"But you must sympathize with them, with the strikers." Janet's gesture +implied that the soup kitchen was proof of this. + +"Ah," replied Mrs. Maturin, gently, "that is different to understand +them. There is one philosophy for the lamb, and another for the wolf." + +"You mean," said Janet, trembling, "that what happens to us makes us +inclined to believe certain things?" + +"Precisely," agreed Mrs. Maturin, in admiration. "But I must be honest +with you, it was Brooks who made me see it." + +"But--he never said that to me. And I asked him once, almost the same +question." + +"He never said it to me, either," Mrs. Maturin confessed. "He doesn't +tell you what he believes; I simply gathered that this is his idea. And +apparently the workers can only improve their condition by strikes, by +suffering--it seems to be the only manner in which they can convince the +employers that the conditions are bad. It isn't the employers' fault." + +"Not their fault!" Janet repeated. + +"Not in a large sense," said Mrs. Maturin. "When people grow up to look +at life in a certain way, from a certain viewpoint, it is difficult, +almost impossible to change them. It's--it's their religion. They are +convinced that if the world doesn't go on in their way, according to +their principles, everything will be destroyed. They aren't inhuman. +Within limits everybody is more than willing to help the world along, if +only they can be convinced that what they are asked to do will help." + +Janet breathed deeply. She was thinking of Ditmar. + +And Mrs. Maturin, regarding her, tactfully changed the subject. + +"I didn't intend to give you a lecture on sociology or psychology, my +dear," she said. "I know nothing about them, although we have a +professor who does. Think over what I've said about coming to Silliston. +It will do you good--you are working too hard here. I know you would +enjoy Silliston. And Brooks takes such an interest in you," she added +impulsively. "It is quite a compliment." + +"But why?" Janet demanded, bewildered. + +"Perhaps it's because you have--possibilities. You may be typewriting +his manuscripts. And then, I am a widow, and often rather lonely--you +could come in and read to me occasionally." + +"But--I've never read anything." + +"How fortunate!" said Insall, who had entered the doorway in time to hear +Janet's exclamation. "More than half of modern culture depends on what +one shouldn't read." + +Mrs. Maturin laughed. But Insall waved his hand deprecatingly. + +"That isn't my own," he confessed. "I cribbed it from a clever +Englishman. But I believe it's true." + +"I think I'll adopt her," said Mrs. Maturin to Insall, when she had +repeated to him the conversation. "I know you are always convicting me +of enthusiasms, Brooks, and I suppose I do get enthusiastic." + +"Well, you adopt her--and I'll marry her," replied Insall, with a smile, +as he cut the string from the last bundle of clothing. + +"You might do worse. It would be a joke if you did--!" + +His friend paused to consider this preposterous possibility. "One never +can tell whom a man like you, an artist, will marry." + +"We've no business to marry at all," said Insall, laughing. "I often +wonder where that romantic streak will land you, Augusta. But you do +have a delightful time!" + +"Don't begrudge it me, it makes life so much more interesting," Mrs. +Maturin begged, returning his smile. "I haven't the faintest idea that +you will marry her or any one else. But I insist on saying she's your +type--she's the kind of a person artists do dig up and marry--only better +than most of them, far better." + +"Dig up?" said Insall. + +"Well, you know I'm not a snob--I only mean that she seems to be one of +the surprising anomalies that sometimes occur in--what shall I say?--in +the working-classes. I do feel like a snob when I say that. But what is +it? Where does that spark come from? Is it in our modern air, that +discontent, that desire, that thrusting forth toward a new light-- +something as yet unformulated, but which we all feel, even at small +institutions of learning like Silliston?" + +"Now you're getting beyond me." + +"Oh no, I'm not," Mrs. Maturin retorted confidently. "If you won't talk +about it, I will, I have no shame. And this girl has it--this thing I'm +trying to express. She's modern to her finger tips, and yet she's +extraordinarily American--in spite of her modernity, she embodies in some +queer way our tradition. She loves our old houses at Silliston--they +make her feel at home--that's her own expression." + +"Did she say that?" + +"Exactly. And I know she's of New England ancestry, she told me so. +What I can't make out is, why she joined the I.W.W. That seems so +contradictory." + +"Perhaps she was searching for light there," Insall hazarded. "Why don't +you ask her?" + +"I don't know," replied Mrs. Maturin, thoughtfully. "I want to, my +curiosity almost burns me alive, and yet I don't. She isn't the kind you +can ask personal questions of--that's part of her charm, part of her +individuality. One is a little afraid to intrude. And yet she keeps +coming here--of course you are a sufficient attraction, Brooks. But I +must give her the credit of not flirting with you." + +"I've noticed that, too," said Insall, comically. + +"She's searching for light," Mrs. Maturin went on, struck by the phrase. +"She has an instinct we can give it to her, because we come from an +institution of learning. I felt something of the kind when I suggested +her establishing herself in Silliston. Well, she's more than worth while +experimenting on, she must have lived and breathed what you call the +`movie atmosphere' all her life, and yet she never seems to have read and +absorbed any sentimental literature or cheap religion. She doesn't +suggest the tawdry. That part of her, the intellectual part, is a clear +page to be written upon." + +"There's my chance," said Insall. + +"No, it's my chance--since you're so cynical." + +"I'm not cynical," he protested. + +"I don't believe you really are. And if you are, there may be a judgment +upon you," she added playfully. "I tell you she's the kind of woman +artists go mad about. She has what sentimentalists call temperament, and +after all we haven't any better word to express dynamic desires. She'd +keep you stirred up, stimulated, and you could educate her." + +"No, thanks, I'll leave that to you. He who educates a woman is lost. +But how about Syndicalism and all the mysticism that goes with it? +There's an intellectual over at Headquarters who's been talking to her +about Bergson, the life-force, and the World-We-Ourselves-Create." + +Mrs. Maturin laughed. + +"Well, we go wrong when we don't go right. That's just it, we must go +some way. And I'm sure, from what I gather, that she isn't wholly +satisfied with Syndicalism." + +"What is right?" demanded Insall. + +"Oh, I don't intend to turn her over to Mr. Worrall and make a +sociologist and a militant suffragette out of her. She isn't that kind, +anyhow. But I could give her good literature to read--yours, for +instance," she added maliciously. + +"You're preposterous, Augusta," Insall exclaimed. + +"I may be, but you've got to indulge me. I've taken this fancy to her-- +of course I mean to see more of her. But--you know how hard it is for +me, sometimes, since I've been left alone." + +Insall laid his hand affectionately on her shoulder. + +"I remember what you said the first day I saw her, that the strike was in +her," Mrs. Maturin continued. "Well, I see now that she does express and +typify it--and I don't mean the `labour movement' alone, or this strike +in Rampton, which is symptomatic, but crude. I mean something bigger-- +and I suppose you do--the protest, the revolt, the struggle for self- +realization that is beginning to be felt all over the nation, all over +the world today, that is not yet focussed and self-conscious, but groping +its way, clothing itself in any philosophy that seems to fit it. I can +imagine myself how such a strike as this might appeal to a girl with a +sense of rebellion against sordidness and lack of opportunity--especially +if she has had a tragic experience. And sometimes I suspect she has had +one." + +"Well, it's an interesting theory," Insall admitted indulgently. + +"I'm merely amplifying your suggestions, only. you won't admit that they +are yours. And she was your protegee." "And you are going to take her +off my hands." "I'm not so sure," said Mrs. Maturin. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +The Hampton strike had reached the state of grim deadlock characteristic +of all stubborn wars. There were aggressions, retaliations on both +sides, the antagonism grew more intense. The older labour unions were +accused by the strikers of playing the employers' game, and thus grew to +be hated even more than the "capitalists." These organizations of the +skilled had entered but half-heartedly into a struggle that now began to +threaten, indeed, their very existence, and when it was charged that the +Textile Workers had been attempting to secure recruits from the ranks of +the strikers, and had secretly offered the millowners a scale of demands +in the hope that a sufficient number of operatives would return to work, +and so break the strike; a serious riot was barely averted. "Scab-huntmg +agencies," the unions were called. One morning when it was learned that +the loom-fixers, almost to a man, had gone back to the mills, a streetcar +was stopped near the power house at the end of Faber Street, and in a +twinkling, before the militia or police could interfere, motorman, +conductor, and passengers were dragged from it and the trolley pole +removed. This and a number of similar aggressive acts aroused the mill- +owners and their agents to appeal with renewed vigour to the public +through the newspapers, which it was claimed they owned or subsidized. +Then followed a series of arraignments of the strike leaders calculated +to stir the wildest prejudices and fears of the citizens of Hampton. +Antonelli and Jastro--so rumour had it--in various nightly speeches had +advised their followers to "sleep in the daytime and prowl like wild +animals at night"; urged the power house employees to desert and leave +the city in darkness; made the declaration, "We will win if we raise +scaffolds on every street!" insisted that the strikers, too, should have +"gun permits," since the police hirelings carried arms. And the fact +that the mill-owners replied with pamphlets whose object was proclaimed +to be one of discrediting their leaders in the eyes of the public still +further infuriated the strikers. Such charges, of course, had to be +vehemently refuted, the motives behind them made clear, and counter- +accusations laid at the door of the mill-owners. + +The atmosphere at Headquarters daily grew more tense. At any moment the +spark might be supplied to precipitate an explosion that would shake the +earth. The hungry, made more desperate by their own sufferings or the +spectacle of starving families, were increasingly difficult to control: +many wished to return to work, others clamoured for violence, nor were +these wholly discouraged by a portion of the leaders. A riot seemed +imminent--a riot Antonelli feared and firmly opposed, since it would +alienate the sympathy of that wider public in the country on which the +success of the strike depended. Watchful, yet apparently unconcerned, +unmoved by the quarrels, the fierce demands for "action," he sat on the +little stage, smoking his cigars and reading his newspapers. + +Janet's nerves were taut. There had been times during the past weeks +when she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents. +Inexperience had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of +her work, the excitement due to the strange life of conflict, of new +ideas, into which she had so unreservedly flung herself, the resentment +that galvanized her--all these had diverted her from worry. At night, +hers had been the oblivious slumber of the weary.... And then, as a +desperate wayfarer, pressing on, feels a heavy drop of rain and glances +up to perceive the clouds that have long been gathering, she awoke in the +black morning hours, and fear descended upon her. Suddenly her brain +became hideously active as she lay, dry-upped, staring into the darkness, +striving to convince herself that it could not be. But the thing had its +advocate, also, to summon ingeniously, in cumulative array, those omens +she had ignored: to cause her to piece together, in this moment of +torture, portions of the knowledge of sexual facts that prudery banishes +from education, a smattering of which reaches the ears of such young +women as Janet in devious, roundabout ways. Several times, in the month +just past, she had had unwonted attacks of dizziness, of faintness, and +on one occasion Anna Mower, alarmed, had opened the window of the +bibliotheque and thrust her into the cold air. Now, with a pang of fear +she recalled what Anna had said:-- + +"You're working too hard--you hadn't ought to stay here nights. If it +was some girls I've met, I'd know what to think." + +Strange that the significance of this sentence had failed to penetrate +her consciousness until now! "If it was some girls I've met, I'd know +what to think!" It had come into her mind abruptly; and always, when she +sought to reassure herself, to declare her terror absurd, it returned to +confront her. Heat waves pulsed through her, she grew intolerably warm, +perspiration started from her pores, and she flung off the blankets. The +rain from the roofs was splashing on the bricks of the passage.... What +would Mr. Insall say, if he knew? and Mrs. Maturin? She could never see +them again. Now there was no one to whom to turn, she was cut off, +utterly, from humanity, an outcast. Like Lise! And only a little while +ago she and Lise had lain in that bed together! Was there not somebody - +-God? Other people believed in God, prayed to him. She tried to say, +"Oh God, deliver me from this thing!." but the words seemed a mockery. +After all, it was mechanical, it had either happened or it hadn't +happened. A life-long experience in an environment where only unpleasant +things occurred, where miracles were unknown, had effaced a fleeting, +childhood belief in miracles. Cause and effect were the rule. And if +there were a God who did interfere, why hadn't he interfered before this +thing happened? Then would have been the logical time. Why hadn't he +informed her that in attempting to escape from the treadmill in which he +had placed her, in seeking happiness, she had been courting destruction? +Why had he destroyed Lise? And if there were a God, would he comfort her +now, convey to her some message of his sympathy and love? No such +message, alas, seemed to come to her through the darkness. + +After a while--a seemingly interminable while--the siren shrieked, the +bells jangled loudly in the wet air, another day had come. Could she +face it--even the murky grey light of this that revealed the ashes and +litter of the back yard under the downpour? The act of dressing brought +a slight relief; and then, at breakfast, a numbness stole over her-- +suggested and conveyed, perchance, by the apathy of her mother. +Something had killed suffering in Hannah; perhaps she herself would +mercifully lose the power to suffer! But the thought made her shudder. +She could not, like her mother, find a silly refuge in shining dishes, in +cleaning pots and pans, or sit idle, vacant-minded, for long hours in a +spotless kitchen. What would happen to her?... Howbeit, the ache that +had tortured her became a dull, leaden pain, like that she had known at +another time -how long ago--when the suffering caused by Ditmar's +deception had dulled, when she had sat in the train on her way back to +Hampton from Boston, after seeing Lise. The pain would throb again, +unsupportably, and she would wake, and this time it would drive her--she +knew not where. + +She was certain, now, that the presage of the night was true.... + +She reached Franco-Belgian Hall to find it in an uproar. Anna Mower ran +up to her with the news that dynamite had been discovered by the police +in certain tenements of the Syrian quarter, that the tenants had been +arrested and taken to the police station where, bewildered and terrified, +they had denied any knowledge of the explosive. Dynamite had also been +found under the power house, and in the mills--the sources of Hampton's +prosperity. And Hampton believed, of course, that this was the +inevitable result of the anarchistic preaching of such enemies of society +as Jastro and Antonelli if these, indeed, had not incited the Syrians to +the deed. But it was a plot of the mill-owners, Anna insisted--they +themselves had planted the explosive, adroitly started the rumours, told +the police where the dynamite was to be found. Such was the view that +prevailed at Headquarters, pervaded the angrily buzzing crowd that stood +outside--heedless of the rain--and animated the stormy conferences in the +Salle de Reunion. + +The day wore on. In the middle of the afternoon, as she was staring out +of the window, Anna Mower returned with more news. Dynamite had been +discovered in Hawthorne Street, and it was rumoured that Antonelli and +Jastro were to be arrested. + +"You ought to go home and rest, Janet," she said kindly. + +Janet shook her head. + +"Rolfe's back," Anna informed her, after a moment. "He's talking to +Antonelli about another proclamation to let people know who's to blame +for this dynamite business. I guess he'll be in here in a minute to +dictate the draft. Say, hadn't you better let Minnie take it, and go +home?" + +"I'm not sick," Janet repeated, and Anna reluctantly left her. + +Rolfe had been absent for a week, in New York, consulting with some of +the I.W.W. leaders; with Lockhart, the chief protagonist of Syndicalism +in America, just returned from Colorado, to whom he had given a detailed +account of the Hampton strike. And Lockhart, next week, was coming to +Hampton to make a great speech and look over the ground for himself. All +this Rolfe told Janet eagerly when he entered the bibliotheque. He was +glad to get back; he had missed her. + +"But you are pale!" he exclaimed, as he seized her hand, "and how your +eyes burn! You do not take care of yourself when I am not here to watch +you." His air of solicitude, his assumption of a peculiar right to ask, +might formerly have troubled and offended her. Now she was scarcely +aware of his presence. "You feel too much--that is it you are like a +torch that consumes itself in burning. But this will soon be over, we +shall have them on their knees, the capitalists, before very long, when +it is known what they have done to-day. It is too much--they have +overreached themselves with this plot of the dynamite. + +You have missed me, a little?" + +"I have been busy," she said, releasing her hand and sitting down at her +desk and taking up her notebook. + +"You are not well," he insisted. + +"I'm all right," she replied. + +He lit a cigarette and began to pace the room--his customary manner of +preparing himself for the creative mood. After a while he began to +dictate--but haltingly. He had come here from Antonelli all primed with +fervour and indignation, but it was evident that this feeling had ebbed, +that his mind refused to concentrate on what he was saying. Despite the +magnificent opportunity to flay the capitalists which their most recent +tactics afforded him, he paused, repeated himself, and began again, +glancing from time to time reproachfully, almost resentfully at Janet. +Usually, on these occasions, he was transported, almost inebriated by his +own eloquence; but now he chafed at her listlessness, he was at a loss to +account for the withdrawal of the enthusiasm he had formerly been able to +arouse. Lacking the feminine stimulus, his genius limped. For Rolfe +there had been a woman in every strike--sometimes two. What had +happened, during his absence, to alienate the most promising of all +neophytes he had ever encountered? + +"The eyes of the world are fixed on the workers of Hampton! They must be +true to the trust their fellows have placed in them! To-day the mill- +owners, the masters, are at the end of their tether. Always +unscrupulous, they have descended to the most despicable of tactics in +order to deceive the public. But truth will prevail!..." Rolfe lit +another cigarette, began a new sentence and broke it off. Suddenly he +stood over her. "It's you!" he said. "You don't feel it, you don't help +me, you're not in sympathy." + +He bent over her, his red lips gleaming through his beard, a terrible +hunger in his lustrous eyes--the eyes of a soul to which self-denial was +unknown. His voice was thick with uncontrolled passion, his hand was +cold. + +"Janet, what has happened? I love you, you must love me--I cannot +believe that you do not. Come with me. We shall work together for the +workers--it is all nothing without you." + +For a moment she sat still, and then a pain shot through her, a pain as +sharp as a dagger thrust. She drew her hand away. + +"I can't love--I can only hate," she said. + +"But you do not hate me!" Rolfe repudiated so gross a fact. His voice +caught as in a sob. "I, who love you, who have taught you!" + +She dismissed this--what he had taught her--with a gesture which, though +slight, was all-expressive. He drew back from her. + +"Shall I tell you who has planned and carried out this plot?" he cried. +"It is Ditmar. He is the one, and he used Janes, the livery stable +keeper, the politician who brought the dynamite to Hampton, as his tool. +Half an hour before Janes got to the station in Boston he was seen by a +friend of ours talking to Ditmar in front of the Chippering offices, and +Janes had the satchel with him then. Ditmar walked to the corner with +him." + +Janet, too, had risen. + +"I don't believe it," she said. + +"Ah, I thought you wouldn't! But we have the proof that dynamite was in +the satchel, we've found the contractor from whom it was bought. I was a +fool--I might have known that you loved Ditmar." + +"I hate him!" said Janet. + +"It is the same thing," said Rolfe. + +She did not answer.... He watched her in silence as she put on her hat +and coat and left the room. + +The early dusk was gathering when she left the hall and made her way +toward the city. The huge bottle-shaped chimneys of the power plant +injected heavy black smoke into the wet air. In Faber Street the once +brilliant signs above the "ten-foot" buildings seemed dulled, the +telegraph poles starker, nakeder than ever, their wires scarcely +discernible against the smeared sky. The pedestrians were sombrely +garbed, and went about in "rubbers"--the most depressing of all articles +worn by man. Sodden piles of snow still hid the curb and gutters, but +the pavements were trailed with mud that gleamed in the light from the +shop windows. And Janet, lingering unconsciously in front of that very +emporium where Lisehad been incarcerated, the Bagatelle, stared at the +finery displayed there, at the blue tulle dress that might be purchased, +she read, for $22.99. She found herself repeating, in meaningless, +subdued tones, the words, "twenty-two ninety-nine." She even tried--just +to see if it were possible--to concentrate her mind on that dress, on the +fur muffs and tippets in the next window; to act as if this were just an +ordinary, sad February afternoon, and she herself once more just an +ordinary stenographer leading a monotonous, uneventful existence. But +she knew that this was not true, because, later on, she was going to do +something--to commit some act. She didn't know what this act would be. +Her head was hot, her temples throbbed.... + +Night had fallen, the electric arcs burned blue overhead, she was in +another street--was it Stanley? Sounds of music reached her, the rumble +of marching feet; dark, massed figures were in the distance swimming +toward her along the glistening line of the car tracks, and she heard the +shrill whistling of the doffer boys, who acted as a sort of fife corps in +these parades--which by this time had become familiar to the citizens of +Hampton. And Janet remembered when the little red book that contained +the songs had arrived at Headquarters from the west and had been +distributed by thousands among the strikers. She recalled the words of +this song, though the procession was as yet too far away for her to +distinguish them:-- + + "The People's flag is deepest red, + It shrouded oft our martyred dead, + And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, + Their life-blood dyed its every fold." + +The song ceased, and she stood still, waiting for the procession to reach +her. A group of heavy Belgian women were marching together. Suddenly, +as by a simultaneous impulse, their voices rang out in the +Internationale--the terrible Marseillaise of the workers:-- + + "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! + Arise, ye wretched of the earth " + +And the refrain was taken up by hundreds of throats:-- + + "'Tis the final conflict, + Let each stand in his place + +The walls of the street flung it back. On the sidewalk, pressed against +the houses, men and women heard it with white faces. But Janet was +carried on.... The scene changed, now she was gazing at a mass of human +beings hemmed in by a line of soldiers. Behind the crowd was a row of +old-fashioned brick houses, on the walls of which were patterned, by the +cold electric light, the branches of the bare elms ranged along the +sidewalk. People leaned out of the windows, like theatregoers at a play. +The light illuminated the red and white bars of the ensign, upheld by the +standard bearer of the regiment, the smaller flags flaunted by the +strikers--each side clinging hardily to the emblem of human liberty. The +light fell, too, harshly and brilliantly, on the workers in the front +rank confronting the bayonets, and these seemed strangely indifferent, as +though waiting for the flash of a photograph. A little farther on a +group of boys, hands in pockets, stared at the soldiers with bravado. +From the rear came that indescribable "booing" which those who have heard +never forget, mingled with curses and cries:-- + +"Vive la greve!" + +"To hell with the Cossacks!" + +"Kahm on--shoot!" + +The backs of the soldiers, determined, unyielding, were covered with +heavy brown capes that fell below the waist. As Janet's glance wandered +down the line it was arrested by the face of a man in a visored woollen +cap--a face that was almost sepia, in which large white eyeballs struck a +note of hatred. And what she seemed to see in it, confronting her, were +the hatred and despair of her own soul! The man might have been a +Hungarian or a Pole; the breadth of his chin was accentuated by a wide, +black moustache, his attitude was tense,--that of a maddened beast ready +to spring at the soldier in front of him. He was plainly one of those +who had reached the mental limit of endurance. + +In contrast with this foreigner, confronting him, a young lieutenant +stood motionless, his head cocked on one side, his hand grasping the club +held a little behind him, his glance meeting the other's squarely, but +with a different quality of defiance. All his faculties were on the +alert. He wore no overcoat, and the uniform fitting close to his figure, +the broad-brimmed campaign hat of felt served to bring into relief the +physical characteristics of the American Anglo-Saxon, of the +individualist who became the fighting pioneer. But Janet, save to +register the presence of the intense antagonism between the two, scarcely +noticed her fellow countryman.... Every moment she expected to see the +black man spring,--and yet movement would have marred the drama of that +consuming hatred.... + +Then, by one of those bewildering, kaleidoscopic shifts to which crowds +are subject, the scene changed, more troops arrived, little by little the +people were dispersed to drift together again by chance--in smaller +numbers--several blocks away. Perhaps a hundred and fifty were scattered +over the space formed by the intersection of two streets, where three or +four special policemen with night sticks urged them on. Not a riot, or +anything approaching it. The police were jeered, but the groups, +apparently, had already begun to scatter, when from the triangular +vestibule of a saloon on the corner darted a flame followed by an echoing +report, a woman bundled up in a shawl screamed and sank on the snow. For +an instant the little French-Canadian policeman whom the shot had missed +gazed stupidly down at her.... + +As Janet ran along the dark pavements the sound of the shot and of the +woman's shriek continued to ring in her ears. At last she stopped in +front of the warehouse beyond Mr. Tiernan's shop, staring at the darkened +windows of the flat--of the front room in which her mother now slept +alone. For a minute she stood looking at these windows, as though +hypnotized by some message they conveyed--the answer to a question +suggested by the incident that had aroused and terrified her. They drew +her, as in a trance, across the street, she opened the glass-panelled +door, remembering mechanically the trick it had of not quite closing, +turned and pushed it to and climbed the stairs. In the diningroom the +metal lamp, brightly polished, was burning as usual, its light falling on +the chequered red table-cloth, on her father's empty chair, on that +somewhat battered heirloom, the horsehair sofa. All was so familiar, and +yet so amazingly unfamiliar, so silent! At this time Edward should be +reading the Banner, her mother bustling in and out, setting the table for +supper. But not a dish was set. The ticking of the ancient clock only +served to intensify the silence. Janet entered, almost on tiptoe, made +her way to the kitchen door, and looked in. The stove was polished, the +pans bright upon the wall, and Hannah was seated in a corner, her hands +folded across a spotless apron. Her scant hair was now pure white, her +dress seemed to have fallen away from her wasted neck, which was like a +trefoil column. + +"Is that you, Janet? You hain't seen anything of your father?" + +The night before Janet had heard this question, and she had been puzzled +as to its meaning--whether in the course of the day she had seen her +father, or whether Hannah thought he was coming home. + +"He's at the mill, mother. You know he has to stay there." + +"I know," replied Hannah, in a tone faintly reminiscent of the old +aspersion. "But I've got everything ready for him in case he should +come--any time--if the strikers hain't killed him." + +"But he's safe where he is." + +"I presume they will try to kill him, before they get through," Hannah +continued evenly. "But in case he should come at any time, and I'm not +here, you tell him all those Bumpus papers are put away in the drawer of +that old chest, in the corner. I can't think what he'd do without those +papers. That is," she added, "if you're here yourself." + +"Why shouldn't you be here?" asked Janet, rather sharply. + +"I dunno, I seem to have got through." She glanced helplessly around the +kitchen. "There don't seem to be much left to keep me alive.... I guess +you'll be wanting your supper, won't you? You hain't often home these +days--whatever it is you're doing. I didn't expect you." + +Janet did not answer at once. + +"I--I have to go out again, mother," she said. + +Hannah accepted the answer as she had accepted every other negative in +life, great and small. + +"Well, I guessed you would." + +Janet made a step toward her. + +"Mother!" she said, but Hannah gazed at her uncomprehendingly. Janet +stooped convulsively, and kissed her. Straightening up, she stood +looking down at her mother for a few moments, and went out of the room, +pausing in the dining-room, to listen, but Hannah apparently had not +stirred. She took the box of matches from its accustomed place on the +shelf beside the clock, entered the dark bedroom in the front of the +flat, closing the door softly behind her. The ghostly blue light from a +distant arc came slanting in at the window, glinting on the brass knobs +of the chest of drawers-another Bumpus heirloom. She remembered that +chest from early childhood; it was one of the few pieces that, following +them in all their changes of residence, had been faithful to the end: she +knew everything in it, and the place for everything. Drawing a match +from the box, she was about to turn on the gas--but the light from the +arc would suffice. As she made her way around the walnut bed she had a +premonition of poignant anguish as yet unrealized, of anguish being held +at bay by a stronger, fiercer, more imperative emotion now demanding +expression, refusing at last to be denied. She opened the top drawer of +the chest, the drawer in which Hannah, breaking tradition, had put the +Bumpus genealogy. Edward had never kept it there. Would the other +things be in place? Groping with her hands in the left-hand corner, her +fingers clasped exultantly something heavy, something wrapped carefully +in layers of flannel. She had feared her father might have taken it to +the mill! She drew it out, unwound the flannel, and held to the light an +old-fashioned revolver, the grease glistening along its barrel. She +remembered, too, that the cartridges had lain beside it, and thrusting +her hand once more into the drawer found the box, extracting several, and +replacing the rest, closed the drawer, and crept through the dining-room +to her bedroom, where she lit the gas in order to examine the weapon-- +finally contriving, more by accident than skill, to break it. The +cartridges, of course, fitted into the empty cylinder. But before +inserting them she closed the pistol once more, cocked it, and held it +out. Her arm trembled violently as she pulled the trigger. Could she do +it? As though to refute this doubt of her ability to carry out an act +determined upon, she broke the weapon once more, loaded and closed it, +and thrust it in the pocket of her coat. Then, washing the grease from +her hands, she put on her gloves, and was about to turn out the light +when she saw reflected in the glass the red button of the I.W.W. still +pinned on her coat. This she tore off, and flung on the bureau. + +When she had kissed her mother, when she had stood hesitatingly in the +darkness of the familiar front bedroom in the presence of unsummoned +memories of a home she had believed herself to resent and despise, she +had nearly faltered. But once in the street, this weakness suddenly +vanished, was replaced by a sense of wrong that now took complete and +furious possession of her, driving her like a gale at her back. She +scarcely felt on her face the fine rain that had begun to fall once more. +Her feet were accustomed to the way. When she had turned down West +Street and almost gained the canal, it was with a shock of surprise that +she found herself confronted by a man in a long cape who held a rifle and +barred her path. She stared at him as at an apparition. + +"You can't get by here," he said. "Don't you know that?" + +She did not reply. He continued to look at her, and presently asked, in +a gentler tone:-- + +"Where did you wish to go, lady?" + +"Into the mill," she replied, "to the offices." + +"But there can't anybody go through here unless they have a pass. I'm +sorry, but that's the order." + +Her answer came so readily as to surprise her. + +"I was Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer. I have to see him." + +The sentry hesitated, and then addressed another soldier, who was near +the bridge. + +"Hi, sergeant!" he called. The sergeant came up--a conscientious Boston +clerk who had joined the militia from a sense of duty and a need for +exercise. While the sentry explained the matter he gazed at Janet. Then +be said politely:-- + +"I'm sorry, Miss, but I can't disobey orders." + +"But can't you send word to Mr. Ditmar, and tell him I want to see him?" +she asked. + +"Why, I guess so," he answered, after a moment. "What name shall I say?" + +"Miss Bumpus." + +"Bumpus," he repeated. "That's the gatekeeper's name." + +"I'm his daughter--but I want to see Mr. Ditmar." + +"Well," said the sergeant, "I'm sure it's all right, but I'll have to +send in anyway. Orders are orders. You understand?" + +She nodded as he departed. She saw him cross the bridge like a ghost +through the white mist rising from the canal. And through the mist she +could make out the fortresslike mass of the mill itself, and the blurred, +distorted lights in the paymaster's offices smeared on the white curtain +of the vapour. + +"Nasty weather," the sentry remarked, in friendly fashion. He appeared +now, despite his uniform, as a good-natured, ungainly youth. + +Janet nodded. + +"You'd ought to have brought an umbrella," he said. "I guess it'll rain +harder, before it gets through. But it's better than ten below zero, +anyhow." + +She nodded again, but he did not seem to resent her silence. He talked +about the hardship of patrolling in winter, until the sergeant came back. + +"It's all right, Miss Bumpus," he said, and touched his hat as he +escorted her to the bridge. She crossed the canal and went through the +vestibule without replying to the greeting of the night-watchman, or +noticing his curious glance; she climbed the steel-clad stairway, passed +the paymaster's offices and Mr. Orcutt's, and gained the outer office +where she had worked as a stenographer. It was dark, but sufficient +light came through Ditmar's open door to guide her beside the rail. He +had heard her step, and as she entered his room he had put his hands +heavily on his desk, in the act of rising from his chair. + +"Janet!" he said, and started toward her, but got no farther than the +corner of the desk. The sight of her heaving breast, of the peculiar +light that flashed from beneath her lashes stopped him suddenly. Her +hands were in her pockets. "What is it?" he demanded stupidly. + +But she continued to stand there, breathing so heavily that she could not +speak. It was then that he became aware of an acute danger. He did not +flinch. + +"What is it?" he repeated. + +Still she was silent. One hand was thrust deeper into its pocket, he saw +a shudder run through her, and suddenly she burst into hysterical +weeping, sinking into a chair. He stood for some moments helplessly +regarding her before he gained the presence of mind to go to the door and +lock it, returning to bend over her. + +"Don't touch me!" she said, shrinking from him. + +"For God's sake tell me what's the matter," he begged. + +She looked up at him and tried to speak, struggling against the sobs that +shook her. + +"I--I came here to--to kill you--only I can't do it." + +"To kill me!" he said, after a pause. In spite of the fact that he had +half divined her intention, the words shocked him. Whatever else may be +said of him, he did not lack courage, his alarm was not of a physical +nature. Mingled with it were emotions he himself did not understand, +caused by the unwonted sight of her loss of self-control, of her anger, +and despair. "Why did you want to kill me?" + +And again he had to wait for an answer. + +"Because you've spoiled my life--because I'm going to have a child!" + +"What do you mean? Are you?... it can't be possible." + +"It is possible, it's true--it's true. I've waited and waited, I've +suffered, I've almost gone crazy--and now I know. And I said I'd kill +you if it were so, I'd kill myself--only I can't. I'm a coward." Her +voice was drowned again by weeping. + +A child! He had never imagined such a contingency! And as he leaned +back against the desk, his emotions became chaotic. The sight of her, +even as she appeared crazed by anger, had set his passion aflame--for the +intensity and fierceness of her nature had always made a strong appeal to +dominant qualities in Ditmar's nature. And then--this announcement! +Momentarily it turned his heart to water. Now that he was confronted by +an exigency that had once vicariously yet deeply disturbed him in a +similar affair of a friend of his, the code and habit of a lifetime +gained an immediate ascendency--since then he had insisted that this +particular situation was to be avoided above all others. And his mind +leaped to possibilities. She had wished to kill him--would she remain +desperate enough to ruin him? Even though he were not at a crisis in his +affairs, a scandal of this kind would be fatal. + +"I didn't know," he said desperately, "I couldn't guess. Do you think I +would have had this thing happen to you? I was carried away--we were +both carried away --" + +"You planned it!" she replied vehemently, without looking up. "You +didn't care for me, you only--wanted me." + +"That isn't so--I swear that isn't so. I loved you I love you." + +"Oh, do you think I believe that?" she exclaimed. + +"I swear it--I'll prove it!" he protested. Still under the influence of +an acute anxiety, he was finding it difficult to gather his wits, to +present his case. "When you left me that day the strike began--when you +left me without giving me a chance--you'll never know how that hurt me." + +"You'll never know how it hurt me!" she interrupted. + +"Then why, in God's name, did you do it? I wasn't myself, then, you +ought to have seen that. And when I heard from Caldwell here that you'd +joined those anarchists--" + +"They're no worse than you are--they only want what you've got," she +said. + +He waved this aside. "I couldn't believe it--I wouldn't believe it until +somebody saw you walking with one of them to their Headquarters. Why did +you do it?" + +"Because I know how they feel, I sympathize with the strikers, I want +them to win--against you!" She lifted her head and looked at him, and in +spite of the state of his feelings he felt a twinge of admiration at her +defiance. + +"Because you love me!" he said. + +"Because I hate you," she answered. + +And yet a spark of exultation leaped within him at the thought that love +had caused this apostasy. He had had that suspicion before, though it +was a poor consolation when he could not reach her. Now she had made it +vivid. A woman's logic, or lack of logic--her logic. + +"Listen!" he pleaded. "I tried to forget you--I tried to keep myself +going all the time that I mightn't think of you, but I couldn't help +thinking of you, wanting you, longing for you. I never knew why you left +me, except that you seemed to believe I was unkind to you, and that +something had happened. It wasn't my fault--" he pulled himself up +abruptly. + +"I found out what men were like," she said. "A man made my sister a +woman of the streets--that's what you've done to me." + +He winced. And the calmness she had regained, which was so +characteristic of her, struck him with a new fear. + +"I'm not that kind of a man," he said. + +But she did not answer. His predicament became more trying. + +"I'll take care of you," he assured her, after a moment. "If you'll only +trust me, if you'll only come to me I'll see that no harm comes to you." + +She regarded him with a sort of wonder--a look that put a fine edge of +dignity and scorn to her words when they came. + +"I told you I didn't want to be taken care of--I wanted to kill you, and +kill myself. I don't know why I can't what prevents me." She rose. +"But I'm not going to trouble you any more--you'll never hear of me +again." + +She would not trouble him, she was going away, he would never hear of her +again! Suddenly, with the surge of relief he experienced, came a pang. +He could not let her go--it was impossible. It seemed that he had never +understood his need of her, his love for her, until now that he had +brought her to this supreme test of self-revelation. She had wanted to +kill him, yes, to kill herself--but how could he ever have believed that +she would stoop to another method of retaliation? As she stood before +him the light in her eyes still wet with tears--transfigured her. + +"I love you, Janet," he said. "I want you to marry me." + +"You don't understand," she answered. "You never did. If I had married +you, I'd feel just the same--but it isn't really as bad as if we had been +married." + +"Not as bad!" he exclaimed. + +"If we were married, you'd think you had rights over me," she explained, +slowly. "Now you haven't any, I can go away. I couldn't live with you. +I know what happened to me, I've thought it all out, I wanted to get away +from the life I was leading--I hated it so, I was crazy to have a chance, +to see the world, to get nearer some of the beautiful things I knew were +there, but couldn't reach.... And you came along. I did love you, I +would have done anything for you--it was only when I saw that you didn't +really love me that I began to hate you, that I wanted to get away from +you, when I saw that you only wanted me until you should get tired of me. +That's your nature, you can't help it. And it would have been the same +if we were married, only worse, I couldn't have stood it any more than I +can now--I'd have left you. You say you'll marry me now, but that's +because you're sorry for me--since I've said I'm not going to trouble you +any more. You'll be glad I've gone. You may--want me now, but that +isn't love. When you say you love me, I can't believe you." + +"You must believe me! And the child, Janet,--our child--" + +"If the world was right," she said, "I could have this child and nobody +would say anything. I could support it--I guess I can anyway. And when +I'm not half crazy I want it. Maybe that's the reason I couldn't do what +I tried to do just now. It's natural for a woman to want a child-- +especially a woman like me, who hasn't anybody or anything." + +Ditmar's state of mind was too complicated to be wholly described. As +the fact had been gradually brought home to him that she had not come as +a supplicant, that even in her misery she was free, and he helpless, +there revived in him wild memories of her body, of the kisses he had +wrung from her--and yet this physical desire was accompanied by a +realization of her personality never before achieved. And because he had +hitherto failed to achieve it, she had escaped him. This belated, +surpassing glimpse of what she essentially was, and the thought of the +child their child--permeating his passion, transformed it into a feeling +hitherto unexperienced and unimagined. He hovered over her, pitifully, +his hands feeling for her, yet not daring to touch her. + +"Can't you see that I love you?" he cried, "that I'm ready to marry you +now, to-night. You must love me, I won't believe that you don't after-- +after all we have been to each other." + +But even then she could not believe. Something in her, made hard by the +intensity of her suffering, refused to melt. And her head was throbbing, +and she scarcely heard him. + +"I can't stay any longer," she said, getting to her feet. "I can't bear +it." + +"Janet, I swear I'll care for you as no woman was ever cared for. For +God's sake listen to me, give me a chance, forgive me!" He seized her +arm; she struggled, gently but persistently, to free herself from his +hold. + +"Let me go, please." All the passionate anger had gone out of her, and +she spoke in a monotone, as one under hypnosis, dominated by a resolution +which, for the present at least, he was powerless to shake. + +"But to-morrow?" he pleaded. "You'll let me see you to-morrow, when +you've had time to think it over, when you realize that I love you and +want you, that I haven't meant to be cruel--that you've misjudged me-- +thought I was a different kind of a man. I don't blame you for that, I +guess something happened to make you believe it. I've got enemies. For +the sake of the child, Janet, if for nothing else, you'll come back to +me! You're--you're tired tonight, you're not yourself. I don't wonder, +after all you've been through. If you'd only come to me before! God +knows what I've suffered, too!" + +"Let me go, please," she repeated, and this time, despairingly, he obeyed +her, a conviction of her incommuy nica,bility overwhelming him. He +turned and, fumbling with the key, unlocked the door and opened it. +"I'll see you to-morrow," he faltered once more, and watched her as she +went through the darkened outer room until she gained the lighted hallway +beyond and disappeared. Her footsteps died away into silence. He was +trembling. For several minutes he stood where she had left him, tortured +by a sense of his inability to act, to cope with this, the great crisis +of his life, when suddenly the real significance of that strange last +look in her eyes was borne home to him. And he had allowed her to go out +into the streets alone! Seizing his hat and coat, he fairly ran out of +the office and down the stairs and across the bridge. + +"Which way did that young lady go?" he demanders of the sergeant. + +"Why--ug West Street, Mr. Ditmar." + +He remembered where Filhnore Street was; he had, indeed, sought it out +one evening in the hope of meeting her. He hurried toward it now, his +glance strained ahead to catch sight of her figure under a lamp. But he +reached Fillmore Street without overtaking her, and in the rain he stood +gazing at the mean houses there, wondering in which of them she lived, +and whether she had as yet come home.... + +After leaving Ditmar Janet, probably from force of habit, had indeed gone +through West Street, and after that she walked on aimlessly. It was +better to walk than to sit alone in torment, to be gnawed by that Thing +from which she had so desperately attempted to escape, and failed. She +tried to think why she had failed.... Though the rain fell on her +cheeks, her mouth was parched; and this dryness of her palate, this +physical sense of lightness, almost of dizziness, were intimately yet +incomprehensibly part and parcel of the fantastic moods into which she +floated. It was as though, in trying to solve a problem, she caught +herself from time to time falling off to sleep. In her waking moments +she was terror-stricken. Scarce an hour had passed since, in a terrible +exaltation at having found a solution, she had gone to Ditmar's office in +the mill. What had happened to stay her? It was when she tried to find +the cause of the weakness that so abruptly had overtaken her, or to cast +about for a plan to fit the new predicament to which her failure had +sentenced her, that the fantasies intruded. She heard Ditmar speaking, +the arguments were curiously familiar--but they were not Ditmar's! They +were her father's, and now it was Edward's voice to which she listened, +he was telling her how eminently proper it was that she should marry +Ditmar, because of her Bumpus blood. And this made her laugh.... Again, +Ditmar was kissing her hair. He had often praised it. She had taken it +down and combed it out for him; it was like a cloud, he said--so fine; +its odour made him faint--and then the odour changed, became that of the +detested perfume of Miss Lottie Myers! Even that made Janet smile! But +Ditmar was strong, he was powerful, he was a Fact, why not go back to him +and let him absorb and destroy her? That annihilation would be joy.... + +It could not have been much later than seven o'clock when she found +herself opposite the familiar, mulberry-shingled Protestant church. The +light from its vestibule made a gleaming square on the wet sidewalk, and +into this area, from the surrounding darkness, came silhouetted figures +of men and women holding up umbrellas; some paused for a moment's chat, +their voices subdued by an awareness of the tabernacle. At the sight of +this tiny congregation something stirred within her. She experienced a +twinge of surprise at the discovery that other people in the world, in +Hampton, were still leading tranquil, untormented existences. They were +contented, prosperous, stupid, beyond any need of help from God, and yet +they were going to prayer-meeting to ask something! He refused to find +her in the dark streets. Would she find Him if she went in there? and +would He help her? + +The bell in the tower began to clang, with heavy, relentless strokes-- +like physical blows from which she flinched--each stirring her reluctant, +drowsy soul to a quicker agony. From the outer blackness through which +she fled she gazed into bright rooms of homes whose blinds were left +undrawn, as though to taunt and mock the wanderer. She was an outcast! +Who henceforth would receive her save those, unconformed and +unconformable, sentenced to sin in this realm of blackness? Henceforth +from all warmth and love she was banished.... In the middle of the +Stanley Street bridge she stopped to lean against the wet rail; the mill +lights were scattered, dancing points of fire over the invisible swift +waters, and she raised her eyes presently to the lights themselves, +seeking one unconsciously--Ditmar's! Yes, it was his she sought; though +it was so distant, sometimes it seemed to burn like a red star, and then +to flicker and disappear. She could not be sure.... Something chill and +steely was in the pocket of her coat--it made a heavy splash in the water +when she dropped it. The river could not be so very cold! She wished +she could go down like that into forgetfulness. But she couldn't.... +Where was Lise now?... It would be so easy just to drop over that +parapet and be whirled away, and down and down. Why couldn't she? Well, +it was because--because--she was going to have a child. Well, if she had +a child to take care of, she would not be so lonely--she would have +something to love. She loved it now, as though she felt it quickening +within her, she wanted it, to lavish on it all of a starved affection. +She seemed actually to feel in her arms its soft little body pressed +against her. Claude Ditmar's child! And she suddenly recalled, as an +incident of the remote past, that she had told him she wanted it! + +This tense craving for it she felt now was somehow the answer to an +expressed wish which had astonished her. Perhaps that was the reason why +she had failed to do what she had tried to do, to shoot Ditmar and +herself! It was Ditmar's child, Ditmar's and hers! He had loved her, +long ago, and just now--was it just now?--he had said he loved her still, +he had wanted to marry her. Then why had she run away from him? Why had +she taken the child into outer darkness, to be born without a father,-- +when she loved Ditmar? Wasn't that one reason why she wanted the child? +why, even in her moments of passionate hatred she recalled having been +surprised by some such yearning as now came over her? And for an +interval, a brief interval, she viewed him with startling clarity. Not +because he embodied any ideal did she love him, but because he was what +he was, because he had overcome her will, dominated and possessed her, +left his mark upon her indelibly. He had been cruel to her, willing to +sacrifice her to his way of life, to his own desires, but he loved her, +for she had seen, if not heeded in his eyes the look that a woman never +mistakes! She remembered it now, and the light in his window glowed +again, like a star to guide her back to him. It was drawing her, +irresistibly.... + +The sentry recognized her as she came along the canal. + +"Mr. Ditmar's gone," he told her. + +"Gone!" she repeated. "Gone!" + +"Why, yes, about five minutes after you left he was looking for you--he +asked the sergeant about you." + +"And--he won't be back?" + +"I guess not," answered the man, sympathetically. "He said good-night." + +She turned away dully. The strength and hope with which she had been so +unexpectedly infused while gazing from the bridge at his window had +suddenly ebbed; her legs ached, her feet were wet, and she shivered, +though her forehead burned. The world became distorted, people flitted +past her like weird figures of a dream, the myriad lights of Faber Street +were blurred and whirled in company with the electric signs. Seeking to +escape from their confusion she entered a side street leading north, only +to be forcibly seized by some one who darted after her from the sidewalk. + +"Excuse me, but you didn't see that automobile," he said, as he released +her. + +Shaken, she went on through several streets to find herself at length +confronted by a pair of shabby doors that looked familiar, and pushing +one of them open, baited at the bottom of a stairway to listen. The +sound of cheerful voices camp to her from above; she started to climb-- +even with the help of the rail it seemed as if she would never reach the +top of that stairway. But at last she stood in a loft where long tables +were set, and at the end of one of these, sorting out spoons and dishes, +three women and a man were chatting and laughing together. Janet was +troubled because she could not remember who the man was, although she +recognized his bold profile, his voice and gestures.... At length one of +the women said something in a low tone, and he looked around quickly and +crossed the room. + +"Why, it's you!" he said, and suddenly she recalled his name. + +"Mr. Insall!" + +But his swift glance had noticed the expression in her eyes, the sagged +condition of her clothes, the attitude that proclaimed exhaustion. He +took her by the arm and led her to the little storeroom, turning on the +light and placing her in a chair. Darkness descended on her.... + +Mrs. Maturin, returning from an errand, paused for an instant in the +doorway, and ran forward and bent over Janet. + +"Oh, Brooks, what is it--what's happened to her?" + +"I don't know," he replied, "I didn't have a chance to ask her. I'm +going for a doctor." + +"Leave her to me, and call Miss Hay." Mrs. Maturin was instantly +competen .... And when Insall came back from the drug store where he had +telephoned she met him at the head of the stairs. "We've done everything +we can, Edith Hay has given her brandy, and gone off for dry clothes, and +we've taken all the children's things out of the drawers and laid her on +the floor, but she hasn't come to. Poor child,--what can have happened +to her? Is the doctor coming?" + +"Right away," said Insall, and Mrs. Maturin went back into the storeroom. +Miss Hay brought the dry clothes before the physician arrived. + +"It's probably pneumonia," he explained to Insall a little later. "She +must go to the hospital--but the trouble is all our hospitals are pretty +full, owing to the sickness caused by the strike." He hesitated. "Of +course, if she has friends, she could have better care in a private +institution just now." + +"Oh, she has friends," said Mrs. Maturin. "Couldn't we take her to our +little hospital at Silliston, doctor? It's only four miles--that isn't +much in an automobile, and the roads are good now." + +"Well, the risk isn't much greater, if you have a closed car, and she +would, of course, be better looked after," the physician consented. + +"I'll see to it at once," said Insall.... + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +The Martha Wootton Memorial Hospital was the hobby of an angel alumnus of +Silliston. It was situated in Hovey's Lane, but from the window of the +white-enameled room in which she lay Janet could see the bare branches of +the Common elms quivering to the spring gusts, could watch, day by day, +the grass changing from yellow-brown to vivid green in the white +sunlight. In the morning, when the nurse opened the blinds, that +sunlight swept radiantly into the room, lavish with its caresses; always +spending, always giving, the symbol of a loving care that had been poured +out on her, unasked and unsought. It was sweet to rest, to sleep. And +instead of the stringent monster-cry of the siren, of the discordant +clamour of the mill bells, it was sweet yet strange to be awakened by +silvertoned chimes proclaiming peaceful hours. At first she surrendered +to the spell, and had no thought of the future. For a little while every +day, Mrs. Maturin read aloud, usually from books of poetry. And knowing +many of the verses by heart, she would watch Janet's face, framed in the +soft dark hair that fell in two long plaits over her shoulders. For +Janet little guessed the thought that went into the choosing of these +books, nor could she know of the hours spent by this lady pondering over +library shelves or consulting eagerly with Brooks Insall. Sometimes +Augusta Maturin thought of Janet as a wildflower--one of the rare, shy +ones, hiding under its leaves; sprung up in Hampton, of all places, +crushed by a heedless foot, yet miraculously not destroyed, and already +pushing forth new and eager tendrils. And she had transplanted it. To +find the proper nourishment, to give it a chance to grow in a native, +congenial soil, such was her breathless task. And so she had selected +"The Child's Garden of Verses." + + "I should like to rise and go + Where the golden apples grow"... + +When she laid down her book it was to talk, perhaps, of Silliston. +Established here before the birth of the Republic, its roots were bedded +in the soil of a racial empire, to a larger vision of which Augusta +Maturin clung: an empire of Anglo-Saxon tradition which, despite +disagreements and conflicts--nay, through them--developed imperceptibly +toward a sublimer union, founded not on dominion, but on justice and +right. She spoke of the England she had visited on her wedding journey, +of the landmarks and literature that also through generations have been +American birthrights; and of that righteous self-assertion and +independence which, by protest and even by war, America had contributed +to the democracy of the future. Silliston, indifferent to cults and +cataclysms, undisturbed by the dark tides flung westward to gather in +deposits in other parts of the land, had held fast to the old tradition, +stood ready to do her share to transform it into something even nobler +when the time should come. Simplicity and worth and beauty--these +elements at least of the older Republic should not perish, but in the end +prevail. + +She spoke simply of these things, connecting them with a Silliston whose +spirit appealed to all that was inherent and abiding in the girl. All +was not chaos: here at least, a beacon burned with a bright and steady +flame. And she spoke of Andrew Silliston, the sturdy colonial prototype +of the American culture, who had fought against his King, who had spent +his modest fortune to found this seat of learning, believing as he did +that education is the cornerstone of republics; divining that lasting +unity is possible alone by the transformation of the individual into the +citizen through voluntary bestowal of service and the fruits of labour. +Samuel Wootton, the Boston merchant who had given the hospital, was +Andrew's true descendant, imbued with the same half-conscious intuition +that builds even better that it reeks. And Andrew, could he have returns +to earth in his laced coat and long silk waistcoat, would still recognize +his own soul in Silliston Academy, the soul of his creed and race. + + "Away down the river, + A hundred miles or more, + Other little children + Shall bring my boats ashore."... + +Janet drew in a great breath, involuntarily. These were moments when it +seemed that she could scarcely contain what she felt of beauty and +significance, when the ecstasy and pain were not to be borne. And +sometimes, as she listened to Mrs. Maturin's voice, she wept in silence. +Again a strange peace descended on her, the peace of an exile come home; +if not to remain, at least to know her own land and people before faring +forth. She would not think of that faring yet awhile, but strive to live +and taste the present--and yet as life flowed back into her veins that +past arose to haunt her, she yearned to pour it out to her new friend, to +confess all that had happened to her. Why couldn't she? But she was +grateful because Mrs. Maturin betrayed no curiosity. Janet often lay +watching her, puzzled, under the spell of a frankness, an ingenuousness, +a simplicity she had least expected to find in one who belonged to such a +learned place as that of Silliston. But even learning, she was +discovering, could be amazingly simple. Freely and naturally Mrs. +Maturin dwelt on her own past, on the little girl of six taken from her +the year after her husband died, on her husband himself, once a professor +here, and who, just before his last illness, had published a brilliant +book on Russian literature which resulted in his being called to Harvard. +They had gone to Switzerland instead, and Augusta Maturin had come back +to Silliston. She told Janet of the loon-haunted lake, hemmed in by the +Laurentian hills, besieged by forests, where she had spent her girlhood +summers with her father, Professor Wishart, of the University of Toronto. +There, in search of health, Gifford Maturin had come at her father's +suggestion to camp. + +Janet, of course, could not know all of that romance, though she tried to +picture it from what her friend told her. Augusta Wishart, at six and +twenty, had been one of those magnificent Canadian women who are most at +home in the open; she could have carried Gifford Maturinout of the +wilderness on her back. She was five feet seven, modelled in proportion, +endowed by some Celtic ancestor with that dark chestnut hair which, +because of its abundance, she wore braided and caught up in a heavy knot +behind her head. Tanned by the northern sun, kneeling upright in a +canoe, she might at a little distance have been mistaken for one of the +race to which the forests and waters had once belonged. The instinct of +mothering was strong in her, and from the beginning she had taken the shy +and delicate student under her wing, recognizing in him one of the +physically helpless dedicated to a supreme function. He was forever +catching colds, his food disagreed with him, and on her own initiative +she discharged his habitant cook and supplied him with one of her own +choosing. When overtaken by one of his indispositions she paddled him +about the lake with lusty strokes, first placing a blanket over his +knees, and he submitted: he had no pride of that sort, he was utterly +indifferent to the figure he cut beside his Amazon. His gentleness of +disposition, his brilliant conversations with those whom, like her +father, he knew and trusted, captivated Augusta. At this period of her +life she was awakening to the glories of literature and taking a special +course in that branch. He talked to her of Gogol, Turgenief, and +Dostoievsky, and seated on the log piazza read in excellent French "Dead +Souls," "Peres et Enfants," and "The Brothers Karamazoff." At the end of +August he went homeward almost gaily, quite ignorant of the arrow in his +heart, until he began to miss Augusta Wishart's ministrations--and +Augusta Wishart herself.... Then had followed that too brief period of +intensive happiness.... + +The idea of remarriage had never occurred to her. At eight and thirty, +though tragedy had left its mark, it had been powerless to destroy the +sweetness of a nature of such vitality as hers. The innate necessity of +loving remained, and as time went on had grown more wistful and +insistent. Insall and her Silliston neighbours were wont, indeed, gently +to rally her on her enthusiams, while understanding and sympathizing with +this need in her. A creature of intuition, Janet had appealed to her +from the beginning, arousing first her curiosity, and then the maternal +instinct that craved a mind to mould, a soul to respond to her touch.... + +Mrs. Maturin often talked to Janet of Insall, who had, in a way, long +been connected with Silliston. In his early wandering days, when +tramping over New England, he used unexpectedly to turn up at Dr. +Ledyard's, the principal's, remain for several weeks and disappear again. +Even then he, had been a sort of institution, a professor emeritus in +botany, bird lore, and woodcraft, taking the boys on long walks through +the neighbouring hills; and suddenly he had surprised everybody by +fancying the tumble-down farmhouse in Judith's Lane, which he had +restored with his own hands into the quaintest of old world dwellings. +Behind it he had made a dam in the brook, and put in a water wheel that +ran his workshop. In play hours the place was usually overrun by +boys.... But sometimes the old craving for tramping would overtake him, +one day his friends would find the house shut up, and he would be absent +for a fortnight, perhaps for a month--one never knew when he was going, +or when he would return. He went, like his hero, Silas Simpkins, through +the byways of New England, stopping at night at the farm-houses, or often +sleeping out under the stars. And then, perhaps, he would write another +book. He wrote only when he felt like writing. + +It was this book of Insall's, "The Travels of Silas Simpkins,"rather than +his "Epworth Green" or "The Hermit of Blue Mountain," that Mrs. Maturin +chose to read to Janet. Unlike the sage of Walden, than whom he was more +gregarious, instead of a log house for his castle Silas Simpkins chose a +cart, which he drove in a most leisurely manner from the sea to the +mountains, penetrating even to hamlets beside the silent lakes on the +Canadian border, and then went back to the sea again. Two chunky grey +horses with wide foreheads and sagacious eyes propelled him at the rate +of three miles an hour; for these, as their master, had learned the +lesson that if life is to be fully savoured it is not to be bolted. +Silas cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples beside the +stone walls: usually he slept in the cart in the midst of the assortment +of goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert in applied +psychology. At first you might have thought Silos merely a peddler, but +if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to perceive that +peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty. Silos was in a way a +sage--but such a human sage! He never intruded with theories, he never +even hinted at the folly of the mortals who bought or despised his goods, +or with whom he chatted by the wayside, though he may have had his ideas +on the subject: it is certain that presently one began to have one's own: +nor did he exclaim with George Sand, " Il n'y a rien de plus betement +mechant que l'habitant des petites villes!" Somehow the meannesses and +jealousies were accounted for, if not excused. To understand is to +pardon. + +It was so like Insall, this book, in its whimsicality, in its feeling of +space and freedom, in its hidden wisdom that gradually revealed itself as +one thought it over before falling off to sleep! New England in the +early summer! Here, beside the tender greens of the Ipswich downs was +the sparkling cobalt of the sea, and she could almost smell its cool salt +breath mingling with the warm odours of hay and the pungent scents of +roadside flowers. Weathered grey cottages were scattered over the +landscape, and dark copses of cedars, while oceanward the eye was caught +by the gleam of a lighthouse or a lonely sail. + +Even in that sandy plain, covered with sickly, stunted pines and burned +patches, stretching westward from the Merrimac, Silas saw beauty and +colour, life in the once prosperous houses not yet abandoned.... +Presently, the hills, all hyacinth blue, rise up against the sunset, and +the horses' feet are on the "Boston Road"--or rud, according to the +authorized pronunciation of that land. Hardly, indeed, in many places, a +"rud" to-day, reverting picturesquely into the forest trail over which +the early inland settlers rode their horses or drove their oxen with +upcountry produce to the sea. They were not a people who sought the +easiest way, and the Boston Road reflects their characters: few valleys +are deep enough to turn it aside; few mountains can appal it: railroads +have given it a wide berth. Here and there the forest opens out to +reveal, on a knoll or "flat," a forgotten village or tavern-stand. Over +the high shelf of Washington Town it runs where the air is keen and the +lakes are blue, where long-stemmed wild flowers nod on its sunny banks, +to reach at length the rounded, classic hills and sentinel mountain that +mark the sheep country of the Connecticut.... + +It was before Janet's convalescence began that Mrs. Maturin had consulted +Insall concerning her proposed experiment in literature. Afterwards he +had left Silliston for a lumber camp on a remote river in northern Maine, +abruptly to reappear, on a mild afternoon late in April, in Augusta +Maturin's garden. The crocuses and tulips were in bloom, and his friend, +in a gardening apron, was on her knees, trowel in hand, assisting a hired +man to set out marigolds and snapdragons. + +"Well, it's time you were home again," she exclaimed, as she rose to +greet him and led him to a chair on the little flagged terrace beside the +windows of her library. "I've got so much to tell you about our +invalid." + +"Our invalid!" Insall retorted. + +"Of course. I look to you to divide the responsibility with me, and +you've shirked by running off to Maine. You found her, you know--and +she's really remarkable." + +"Now see here, Augusta, you can't expect me to share the guardianship of +an attractive and--well, a dynamic young woman. If she affects you this +way, what will she do to me? I'm much too susceptible." + +"Susceptible" she scoffed. "But you can't get out of it. I need you. +I've never been so interested and so perplexed in my life." + +"How is she?" Insall asked. + +"Frankly, I'm worried," said Mrs. Maturin. "At first she seemed to be +getting along beautifully. I read to her, a little every day, and it was +wonderful how she responded to it. I'll tell you about that I've got so +much to tell you! Young Dr. Trent is puzzled, too, it seems there are +symptoms in the case for which he cannot account. Some three weeks ago +he asked me what I made out of her, and I can't make anything--that's the +trouble, except that she seems pathetically grateful, and that I've grown +absurdly fond of her. But she isn't improving as fast as she should, and +Dr. Trent doesn't know whether or not to suspect functional +complications. Her constitution seems excellent, her vitality unusual. +Trent's impressed by her, he inclines to the theory that she has +something on her mind, and if this is so she should get rid of it, tell +it to somebody--in short, tell it to me. I know she's fond of me, but +she's so maddeningly self-contained, and at moments when I look at her +she baffles me, she makes me feel like an atom. Twenty times at least +I've almost screwed up my courage to ask her, but when it comes to the +point, I simply can't do it." + +"You ought to be able to get at it, if any one can," said Insall. + +"I've a notion it may be connected with the strike," Augusta Maturin +continued. "I never could account for her being mixed up in that, +plunging into Syndicalism. It seemed so foreign to her nature. I wish +I'd waited a little longer before telling her about the strike, but one +day she asked me how it had come out--and she seemed to be getting along +so nicely I didn't see any reason for not telling her. I said that the +strike was over, that the millowners had accepted the I.W.W. terms, but +that Antonelli and Jastro had been sent to jail and were awaiting trial +because they had been accused of instigating the murder of a woman who +was shot by a striker aiming at a policeman. It seems that she had seen +that! She told me so quite casually. But she was interested, and I went +on to mention how greatly the strikers were stirred by the arrests, how +they paraded in front of the jail, singing, and how the feeling was +mostly directed against Mr. Ditmar, because he was accused of instigating +the placing of dynamite in the tenements." + +"And you spoke of Mr. Ditmar's death?" Insall inquired. + +"Why yes, I told her how he had been shot in Dover Street by a demented +Italian, and if it hadn't been proved that the Italian was insane and not +a mill worker, the result of the strike might have been different." + +"How did she take it?" + +"Well, she was shocked, of course. She sat up in bed, staring at me, and +then leaned back on the pillows again. I pretended not to notice it--but +I was sorry I'd said anything about it." + +"She didn't say anything?" + +"Not a word." + +"Didn't you know that, before the strike, she was Ditmar's private +stenographer?" + +"No!" Augusta Maturin exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me?" + +"It never occurred to me to tell you," Insall replied. + +"That must have something to do with it!" said Mrs. Maturin. + +Insall got up and walked to the end of the terrace, gazing at a bluebird +on the edge of the lawn. + +"Well, not necessarily," he said, after a while. "Did you ever find out +anything about her family?" + +"Oh, yes, I met the father once, he's been out two or three times, on +Sunday, and came over here to thank me for what I'd done. The mother +doesn't come--she has some trouble, I don't know exactly what. Brooks, I +wish you could see the father, he's so typically unique--if one may use +the expression. A gatekeeper at the Chipperiug Mills!" + +"A gatekeeper?" + +"Yes, and I'm quite sure he doesn't understand to this day how he became +one, or why. He's delightfully naive on the subject of genealogy, and I +had the Bumpus family by heart before he left. That's the form his +remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was +born in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the +Plymouth Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed +with gritty, yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the Historical +Society. He speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the old New +Englander, never slurring his syllables, and he has a really fine face, +the kind of face one doesn't often see nowadays. I kept looking at it, +wondering what was the matter with it, and at last I realized what it +lacked--will, desire, ambition,--it was what a second-rate sculptor might +have made of Bradford, for instance. But there is a remnant of fire in +him. Once, when he spoke of the strike, of the foreigners, he grew quite +indignant." + +"He didn't tell you why his daughter had joined the strikers?" Insall +asked. + +"He was just as much at sea about that as you and I are. Of course I +didn't ask him--he asked me if I knew. It's only another proof of her +amazing reticence. And I can imagine an utter absence of sympathy +between them. He accounts for her, of course; he's probably the +unconscious transmitter of qualities the Puritans possessed and tried to +smother. Certainly the fires are alight in her, and yet it's almost +incredible that he should have conveyed them. Of course I haven't seen +the mother." + +"It's curious he didn't mention her having been Ditmar's stenographer," +Insall put in. "Was that reticence?" + +"I hardly think so," Augusta Maturin replied. "It may have been, but the +impression I got was of an incapacity to feel the present. All his +emotions are in the past, most of his conversation was about Bumpuses who +are dead and buried, and his pride in Janet--for he has a pride--seems to +exist because she is their representative. It's extraordinary, but he +sees her present situation, her future, with extraordinary optimism; he +apparently regards her coming to Silliston, even in the condition in +which we found her, as a piece of deserved fortune for which she has to +thank some virtue inherited from her ancestors! Well, perhaps he's +right. If she were not unique, I shouldn't want to keep her here. It's +pure selfishness. I told Mr. Bumpus I expected to find work for her." + +Mrs. Maturin returned Insall's smile. "I suppose you're too polite to +say that I'm carried away by my enthusiasms. But you will at least do me +the justice to admit that they are rare and--discriminating, as a +connoisseur's should be. I think even you will approve of her." + +"Oh, I have approved of her--that's the trouble." + +Mrs. Maturin regarded him for a moment in silence. + +"I wish you could have seen her when I began to read those verses of +Stevenson's. It was an inspirations your thinking of them." + +"Did I think of them?" + +"You know you did. You can't escape your responsibility. Well, I felt +like--like a gambler, as though I were staking everything on a throw. +And, after I began, as if I were playing on some rare instrument. She +lay there, listening, without uttering a word, but somehow she seemed to +be interpreting them for me, giving them a meaning and a beauty I hadn't +imagined. Another time I told her about Silliston, and how this little +community for over a century and a half had tried to keep its standard +flying, to carry on the work begun by old Andrew, and I thought of those +lines, + + "Other little children + Shall bring my boats ashore.' + +That particular application just suddenly, occurred to me, but she +inspired it." + +"You're a born schoolma'am," Insall laughed. + +"I'm much too radical for a schoohna'am," she declared. "No board of +trustees would put up with me--not even Silliston's! We've kept the +faith, but we do move slowly, Brooks. Even tradition grows, and +sometimes our blindness here to changes, to modern, scientific facts, +fairly maddens me. I read her that poem of Moody's--you know it:-- + + `Here, where the moors stretch free + In the high blue afternoon, + Are the marching sun and the talking sea.' + +and those last lines:-- + + `But thou, vast outbound ship of souls, + What harbour town for thee? + What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, + Shall crowd the banks to see? + Shall all the happy shipmates then + Stand singing brotherly? + Or shall a haggard, ruthless few + Warp her over and bring her to, + While the many broken souls of me + Fester down in the slaver's pen, + And nothing to say or do?' + +I was sorry afterwards, I could see that she was tremendously excited. +And she made me feel as if I, too, had been battened down in that hold +and bruised and almost strangled. I often wonder whether she has got out +of it into the light--whether we can rescue her." Mrs. Maturin paused. + +"What do you mean?" Insall asked. + +"Well, it's difficult to describe, what I feel--she's such a perplexing +mixture of old New England and modernity, of a fatalism, and an aliveness +that fairly vibrates. At first, when she began to recover, I was +conscious only of the vitality--but lately I feel the other quality. It +isn't exactly the old Puritan fatalism, or even the Greek, it's oddly +modern, too, almost agnostic, I should say,--a calm acceptance of the +hazards of life, of nature, of sun and rain and storm alike--very +different from the cheap optimism one finds everywhere now. She isn't +exactly resigned--I don't say that--I know she can be rebellious. And +she's grateful for the sun, yet she seems to have a conviction that the +clouds will gather again.... The doctor says she may leave the hospital +on Monday, and I'm going to bring her over here for awhile. Then," she +added insinuatingly, "we can collaborate." + +"I think I'll go back to Maine," Insall exclaimed. + +"If you desert me, I shall never speak to you again," said Mrs. Maturin. + +"Janet," said Mrs. Maturin the next day, as she laid down the book from +which she was reading, "do you remember that I spoke to you once in +Hampton of coming here to Silliston? Well, now we've got you here, we +don't want to lose you. I've been making inquiries; quite a number of +the professors have typewriting to be done, and they will be glad to give +their manuscripts to you instead of sending them to Boston. And there's +Brooks Insall too--if he ever takes it into his head to write another +book. You wouldn't have any trouble reading his manuscript, it's like +script. Of course it has to be copied. You can board with Mrs. Case-- +I've arranged that, too. But on Monday I'm going to take you to my +house, and keep you until you're strong enough to walk." + +Janet's eyes were suddenly bright with tears. + +"You'll stay?" + +"I can't," answered Janet. "I couldn't." + +"But why not? Have you any other plans?" + +"No, I haven't any plans, but--I haven't the right to stay here." +Presently she raised her face to her friend. "Oh Mrs. Maturin, I'm so +sorry! I didn't want to bring any sadness here--it's all so bright and +beautiful! And now I've made you sad!" + +It was a moment before Augusta Maturin could answer her. + +"What are friends for, Janet," she asked, "if not to share sorrow with? +And do you suppose there's any place, however bright, where sorrow has +not come? Do you think I've not known it, too? And Janet, I haven't sat +here all these days with you without guessing that something worries you. +I've been waiting, all this time, for you to tell me, in order that I +might help you." + +"I wanted to," said Janet, "every day I wanted to, but I couldn't. I +couldn't bear to trouble you with it, I didn't mean ever to tell you. +And then--it's so terrible, I don't know what you'll think." + +"I think I know you, Janet," answered Mrs. Maturin. "Nothing human, +nothing natural is terrible, in the sense you mean. At least I'm one of +those who believe so." + +Presently Janet said, "I'm going to have a child." + +Mrs. Maturin sat very still. Something closed in her throat, preventing +her immediate reply. + +"I, too, had a child, my dear," she answered. "I lost her." She felt +the girl's clasp tighten on her fingers. + +"But you--you had a right to it--you were married." Children are sacred +things," said Augusta Maturin. + +"Sacred! Could it be that a woman like Mrs. Maturity thought that this +child which was coming to her was sacred, too? + +"However they come?" asked Janet. "Oh, I tried to believe that, too! At +first--at first I didn't want it, and when I knew it was coming I was +driven almost crazy. And then, all at once, when I was walking in the +rain, I knew I wanted it to have--to keep all to myself. You +understand?" + +Augusta Maturity inclined her head. + +"But the father?" she managed to ask, after a moment. "I don't wish to +pry, my dear, but does he--does he realize? Can't he help you?" + +"It was Mr. Ditmar." + +"Perhaps it will help you to tell me about it, Janet." + +"I'd--I'd like to. I've been so unhappy since you told me he was dead-- +and I felt like a cheat. You see, he promised to marry me, and I know +now that he loved me, that he really wanted to marry me, but something +happened to make me believe he wasn't going to, I saw--another girl who'd +got into trouble, and then I thought he'd only been playing with me, and +I couldn't stand it. I joined the strikers--I just had to do something." + +Augusta Maturity nodded, and waited. + +"I was only a stenographer, and we were very poor, and he was rich and +lived in a big house, the most important man in Hampton. It seemed too +good to be true--I suppose I never really thought it could happen. +Please don't think I'm putting all the blame on him, Mrs. Maturity--it +was my fault just as much as his. I ought to have gone away from +Hampton, but I didn't have the strength. And I shouldn't have--" Janet +stopped. + +"But--you loved him?" + +"Yes, I did. For a long time, after I left him, I thought I didn't, I +thought I hated him, and when I found out what had happened to me--that +night I came to you--I got my father's pistol and went to the mill to +shoot him. I was going to shoot myself, too." + +"Oh!" Mrs. Maturity gasped. She gave a quick glance of sheer amazement +at Janet, who did not seem to notice it; who was speaking objectively, +apparently with no sense of the drama in her announcement. + +"But I couldn't," she went on. "At the time I didn't know why I +couldn't, but when I went out I understood it was because I wanted the +child, because it was his child. And though he was almost out of his +head, he seemed so glad because I'd come back to him, and said he'd marry +me right away." + +"And you refused!" exclaimed Mrs. Maturity. + +"Well, you see, I was out of my head, too, I still thought I hated him-- +but I'd loved him all the time. It was funny! He had lots of faults, +and he didn't seem to understand or care much about how poor people feel, +though he was kind to them in the mills. He might have come to +understand--I don't know--it wasn't because he didn't want to, but +because he was so separated from them, I guess, and he was so interested +in what he was doing. He had ambition, he thought everything of that +mill, he'd made it. I don't know why I loved him, it wasn't because he +was fine, like Mr. Insall, but he was strong and brave, and he needed me +and just took me." + +"One never knows!" Augusta Maturity murmured. + +"I went back that night to tell him I'd marry him--and he'd gone. Then I +came to you, to the soup kitchen. I didn't mean to bother you, I've +never quite understood how I got there. I don't care so much what +happens to me, now that I've told you," Janet added. "It was mean, not +to tell you, but I'd never had anything like this--what you were giving +me--and I wanted all I could get." + +"I'm thankful you did come to us!" Augusta Maturin managed to reply. + +"You mean--?" Janet exclaimed. + +"I mean, that we who have been more--fortunate don't look at these things +quite as we used to, that the world is less censorious, is growing to +understand situations it formerly condemned. And--I don't know what kind +of a monster you supposed me to be, Janet." + +"Oh, Mrs. Maturin!" + +"I mean that I'm a woman, too, my dear, although my life has been +sheltered. Otherwise, what has happened to you might have happened to +me. And besides, I am what is called unconventional, I have little +theories of my own about life, and now that you have told me everything I +understand you and love you even more than I did before." + +Save that her breath came fast, Janet lay still against the cushions of +the armchair. She was striving to grasp the momentous and unlooked-for +fact of her friend's unchanged attitude. Then she asked:-- + +"Mrs. Maturin, do you believe in God?" + +Augusta Maturin was startled by the question. "I like to think of Him as +light, Janet, and that we are plants seeking to grow toward Him--no +matter from what dark crevice we may spring. Even in our mistakes and +sins we are seeking Him, for these are ignorances, and as the world +learns more, we shall know Him better and better. It is natural to long +for happiness, and happiness is self-realization, and self-realization is +knowledge and light." + +"That is beautiful," said Janet at length. + +"It is all we can know about God," said Mrs. Maturin, "but it is enough." +She had been thinking rapidly. "And now," she went on, "we shall have to +consider what is to be done. I don't pretend that the future will be +easy, but it will not be nearly as hard for you as it might have been, +since I am your friend, and I do not intend to desert you. I'm sure you +will not let it crush you. In the first place, you will have something +to go on with--mental resources, I mean, for which you have a natural +craving, books and art and nature, the best thoughts and the best +interpretations. We can give you these. And you will have your child, +and work to do, for I'm sure you're industrious. And of course I'll keep +your secret, my dear." + +"But--how?" Janet exclaimed. + +"I've arranged it all. You'll stay here this spring, you'll come to my +house on Monday, just as we planned, and later on you may go to Mrs. +Case's, if it will make you feel more independent, and do typewriting +until the spring term is over. I've told you about my little camp away +up in Canada, in the heart of the wilderness, where I go in summer. +We'll stay there until the autumn, until your baby comes, and, after +that, I know it won't be difficult to get you a position in the west, +where you can gain your living and have your child. I have a good friend +in California who I'm sure will help you. And even if your secret should +eventually be discovered--which is not probable--you will have earned +respect, and society is not as stern as it used to be. And you will +always have me for a friend. There, that's the bright side of it. Of +course it isn't a bed of roses, but I've lived long enough to observe +that the people who lie on roses don't always have the happiest lives. +Whenever you want help and advice, I shall always be here, and from time +to time I'll be seeing you. Isn't that sensible?" + +"Oh, Mrs. Maturin--if you really want me--still?" + +"I do want you, Janet, even more than I did--before, because you need me +more," Mrs. Maturin replied, with a sincerity that could not fail to +bring conviction.... + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +As the spring progressed, Janet grew stronger, became well again, and +through the kindness of Dr. Ledyard, the principal, was presently +installed with a typewriter in a little room in an old building belonging +to the Academy in what was called Bramble Street, and not far from the +Common. Here, during the day, she industriously copied manuscripts' or, +from her notebook, letters dictated by various members of the faculty. +And she was pleased when they exclaimed delightedly at the flawless +copies and failed to suspect her of frequent pilgrimages to the +dictionary in the library in order to familiarize herself with the +meaning and manner of spelling various academic words. At first it was +almost bewildering to find herself in some degree thus sharing the +Silliston community life; and an unpremeditated attitude toward these +learned ones, high priests of the muses she had so long ignorantly +worshipped, accounted perhaps for a great deal in their attitude toward +her. Her fervour, repressed yet palpable, was like a flame burning +before their altars--a flattery to which the learned, being human, are +quick to respond. Besides, something of her history was known, and she +was of a type to incite a certain amount of interest amongst these +discerning ones. Often, after she had taken their dictation, or brought +their manuscripts home, they detained her in conversation. In short, +Silliston gave its approval to this particular experiment of Augusta +Maturin. As for Mrs. Maturin herself, her feeling was one of controlled +pride not unmixed with concern, always conscious as she was of the hidden +element of tragedy in the play she had so lovingly staged. Not that she +had any compunction in keeping Janet's secret, even from Insall; but +sometimes as she contemplated it the strings of her heart grew tight. +Silliston was so obviously where Janet belonged, she could not bear the +thought of the girl going out again from this sheltered spot into a +chaotic world of smoke and struggle. + +Janet's own feelings were a medley. It was not, of course, contentment +she knew continually, nor even peace, although there were moments when +these stole over her. There were moments, despite her incredible good +fortune, of apprehension when she shrank from the future, when fear +assailed her; moments of intense sadness at the thought of leaving her +friends, of leaving this enchanted place now that miraculously she had +found it; moments of stimulation, of exaltation, when she forgot. Her +prevailing sense, as she found herself again, was of thankfulness and +gratitude, of determination to take advantage of, to drink in all of this +wonderful experience, lest any precious memory be lost. + +Like a jewel gleaming with many facets, each sunny day was stored and +treasured. As she went from Mrs. Case's boarding-house forth to her +work, the sweet, sharp air of these spring mornings was filled with +delicious smells of new things, of new flowers and new grass and tender, +new leaves of myriad shades, bronze and crimson, fuzzy white, primrose, +and emerald green. And sometimes it seemed as though the pink and white +clouds of the little orchards were wafted into swooning scents. She +loved best the moment when the Common came in view, when through the rows +of elms the lineaments of those old houses rose before her, lineaments +seemingly long familiar, as of old and trusted friends, and yet ever +stirring new harmonies and new visions. Here, in their midst, she +belonged, and here, had the world been otherwise ordained, she might have +lived on in one continuous, shining spring. At the corner of the Common, +foursquare, ample, painted a straw colour trimmed with white, with its +high chimneys and fan-shaped stairway window, its balustraded terrace +porch open to the sky, was the eighteenth century mansion occupied by Dr. +Ledyard. What was the secret of its flavour? And how account for the +sense of harmony inspired by another dwelling, built during the term of +the second Adams, set in a frame of maples and shining white in the +morning sun? Its curved portico was capped by a wrought-iron railing, +its long windows were touched with purple, and its low garret--set like a +deckhouse on the wide roof--suggested hidden secrets of the past. Here a +Motley or a Longfellow might have dwelt, a Bryant penned his +"Thanatopsis." Farther on, chequered by shade, stood the quaint brick +row of professors' houses, with sloping eaves and recessed entrances of +granite--a subject for an old English print.... Along the border of the +Common were interspersed among the ancient dormitories and halls the new +and dignified buildings of plum-coloured brick that still preserved the +soul of Silliston. And to it the soul of Janet responded. + +In the late afternoon, when her tasks were finished, Janet would cross +the Common to Mrs. Maturin's--a dwelling typical of the New England of +the past, with the dimensions of a cottage and something of the dignity +of a mansion. Fluted white pilasters adorned the corners, the windows +were protected by tiny eaves, the roof was guarded by a rail; the +classically porched entrance was approached by a path between high +clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you +reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival +colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is +one glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, +and another of the Michaelmas daisy and the aster. + +Insall was often there, and on Saturdays and Sundays he took Mrs. Maturin +and Janet on long walks into the country. There were afternoons when the +world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the +sun; and afternoons stained with blue,--the landscape like a tapestry +woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow +and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, +but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of +the ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were clouds of bluets, wild +violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering beside the star moss all +ashimmer with new green. The Canada Mayflower spread a carpet under the +pines; and in the hollows where the mists settled, where the brooks +flowed, where the air was heavy with the damp, ineffable odour of growing +things, they gathered drooping adder's-tongues, white-starred bloodroots +and foam-flowers. From Insall's quick eye nothing seemed to escape. He +would point out to them the humming-bird that hovered, a bright blur, +above the columbine, the woodpecker glued to the trunk of a maple high +above their heads, the red gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit +foliage, the oriole and vireo where they hid. And his was the ear that +first caught the exquisite, distant note of the hermit. Once he stopped +them, startled, to listen to the cock partridge drumming to its mate.... + +Sometimes, of an evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her +planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of +his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths. Mrs. +Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always follow +it. + +"Now, Brooks," she would say, "you've just got to suggest something to +put in that border to replace the hyacinths. + +I had larkspur last year--you remember--and it looked like a chromo in a +railroad folder." + +"Let me see--did I advise larkspur?" he would ask. + +"Oh, I'm sure you must have--I always do what you tell me. It seems to +me I've thought of every possible flower in the catalogue. You know, +too, only you're so afraid of committing yourself." + +Insall's comic spirit, betrayed by his expressions, by the quizzical +intonations of his voice, never failed to fill Janet with joy, while it +was somehow suggestive, too, of the vast fund of his resource. Mrs. +Maturin was right, he could have solved many of her questions offhand if +he had so wished, but he had his own method of dealing with appeals. His +head tilted on one side, apparently in deep thought over the problem, he +never answered outright, but by some process of suggestion unfathomable +to Janet, and by eliminating, not too deprecatingly, Mrs. Maturin's +impatient proposals, brought her to a point where she blurted out the +solution herself. + +"Oriental poppies! How stupid of me not to think of them!" + +"How stupid of me!" Insall echoed--and Janet, bending over her weeding, +made sure they had been in his mind all the while. + +Augusta Maturin's chief extravagance was books; she could not bear to +await her turn at the library, and if she liked a book she wished to own +it. Subscribing to several reviews, three English and one American, she +scanned them eagerly every week and sent in orders to her Boston +bookseller. As a consequence the carved walnut racks on her library +table were constantly being strained. A good book, she declared, ought +to be read aloud, and discussed even during its perusal. And thus Janet, +after an elementary and decidedly unique introduction to worth-while +literature in the hospital, was suddenly plunged into the vortex of +modern thought. The dictum Insall quoted, that modern culture depended +largely upon what one had not read, was applied to her; a child of the +new environment fallen into skilful hands, she was spared the boredom of +wading through the so-called classics which, though useful as milestones, +as landmarks for future reference, are largely mere reminders of an +absolute universe now vanished. The arrival of a novel, play, or +treatise by one of that small but growing nucleus of twentieth century +seers was an event, and often a volume begun in the afternoon was taken +up again after supper. While Mrs. Maturin sat sewing on the other side +of the lamp, Janet had her turn at reading. From the first she had been +quick to note Mrs. Maturin's inflections, and the relics of a high-school +manner were rapidly eliminated. The essence of latter-day realism and +pragmatism, its courageous determination to tear away a veil of which she +had always been dimly aware, to look the facts of human nature in the +face, refreshed her: an increasing portion of it she understood; and she +was constantly under the spell of the excitement that partially grasps, +that hovers on the verge of inspiring discoveries. This excitement, +whenever Insall chanced to be present, was intensified, as she sat a +silent but often quivering listener to his amusing and pungent comments +on these new ideas. His method of discussion never failed to illuminate +and delight her, and often, when she sat at her typewriter the next day, +she would recall one of his quaint remarks that suddenly threw a bright +light on some matter hitherto obscure.... Occasionally a novel or a play +was the subject of their talk, and then they took a delight in drawing +her out, in appealing to a spontaneous judgment unhampered by +pedagogically implanted preconceptions. Janet would grow hot from +shyness. + +"Say what you think, my dear," Mrs. Maturin would urge her. "And +remember that your own opinion is worth more than Shakespeare's or +Napoleon's!" + +Insall would escort her home to Mrs. Case's boarding house.... + +One afternoon early in June Janet sat in her little room working at her +letters when Brooks Insall came in. "I don't mean to intrude in business +hours, but I wanted to ask if you would do a little copying for me," he +said, and he laid on her desk a parcel bound with characteristic +neatness. + +"Something you've written?" she exclaimed, blushing with pleasure and +surprise. He was actually confiding to her one of his manuscripts! + +"Well--yes," he replied comically, eyeing her. + +"I'll be very careful with it. I'll do it right away." + +"There's no particular hurry," he assured her. "The editor's waited six +months for it--another month or so won't matter." + +"Another month or so!" she ejaculated,--but he was gone. Of course she +couldn't have expected him to remain and talk about it; but this +unexpected exhibition of shyness concerning his work--so admired by the +world's choicer spirits--thrilled yet amused her, and made her glow with +a new understanding. With eager fingers she undid the string and sat +staring at the regular script without taking in, at first, the meaning of +a single sentence. It was a comparatively short sketch entitled "The +Exile," in which shining, winged truths and elusive beauties flitted +continually against a darkbackground of Puritan oppression; the story of +one Basil Grelott, a dreamer of Milton's day, Oxford nurtured, who, +casting off the shackles of dogma and manmade decrees, sailed with his +books to the New England wilderness across the sea. There he lived, +among the savages, in peace and freedom until the arrival of Winthrop and +his devotees, to encounter persecution from those who themselves had fled +from it. The Lord's Brethren, he averred, were worse than the Lord's +Bishops--Blackstone's phrase. Janet, of course, had never heard of +Blackstone, some of whose experiences Insall had evidently used. And the +Puritans dealt with Grelott even as they would have served the author of +"Paradise Lost" himself, especially if he had voiced among them the +opinions set forth in his pamphlet on divorce. A portrait of a stern +divine with his infallible Book gave Janet a vivid conception of the +character of her ancestors; and early Boston, with yellow candlelight +gleaming from the lantern-like windows of the wooden, Elizabethan houses, +was unforgettably etched. There was an inquisition in a freezing barn of +a church, and Basil Grelott banished to perish amid the forest. in his +renewed quest for freedom.... After reading the manuscript, Janet sat +typewriting into the night, taking it home with her and placing it +besides her bed, lest it be lost to posterity. By five the next evening +she had finished the copy. + +A gentle rain had fallen during the day, but had ceased as she made her +way toward Insall's house. The place was familiar now: she had been +there to supper with Mrs. Maturin, a supper cooked and served by Martha +Vesey, an elderly, efficient and appallingly neat widow, whom Insall had +discovered somewhere in his travels and installed as his housekeeper. +Janet paused with her hand on the gate latch to gaze around her, at the +picket fence on which he had been working when she had walked hither the +year before. It was primly painted now, its posts crowned with the +carved pineapples; behind the fence old-fashioned flowers were in bloom, +lupins and false indigo; and the retaining wall of blue-grey slaty stone, +which he had laid that spring, was finished. A wind stirred the maple, +releasing a shower of heavy drops, and she opened the gate and went up +the path and knocked at the door. There was no response--even Martha +must be absent, in the village! Janet was disappointed, she had looked +forward to seeing him, to telling him how great had been her pleasure in +the story he had written, at the same time doubting her courage to do so. +She had never been able to speak to him about his work and what did her +opinion matter to him? As she turned away the stillness was broken by a +humming sound gradually rising to a crescendo, so she ventured slowly +around the house and into the orchard of gnarled apple trees on the slope +until she came insight of a little white building beside the brook. The +weathervane perched on the gable, and veering in the wet breeze, seemed +like a live fish swimming in its own element; and through the open window +she saw Insall bending over a lathe, from which the chips were flying. +She hesitated. Then he looked up, and seeing her, reached above his head +to pull the lever that shut off the power. + +"Come in," he called out, and met her at the doorway. He was dressed in +a white duck shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of faded corduroy +trousers. "I wasn't looking for this honour," he told her, with a +gesture of self-deprecation, "or I'd have put on a dinner coat." + +And, despite her eagerness and excitement, she laughed. + +"I didn't dare to leave this in the house," she explained. Mrs. Vesey +wasn't home. And I thought you might be here." + +"You haven't made the copy already!" + +"Oh, I loved doing it!" she replied, and paused, flushing. She might +have known that it would be simply impossible to talk to him about it! +So she laid it down on the workbench, and, overcome by a sudden shyness, +retreated toward the door. + +"You're not going!" he exclaimed. + +"I must--and you're busy." + +"Not at all," he declared, "not at all, I was just killing time until +supper. Sit down!" And he waved her to a magisterial-looking chair of +Jacobean design, with turned legs, sandpapered and immaculate, that stood +in the middle of the shop. + +"Oh, not in that!" Janet protested. "And besides, I'd spoil it--I'm sure +my skirt is wet." + +But he insisted, thrusting it under her. "You've come along just in +time, I wanted a woman to test it--men are no judges of chairs. There's +a vacuum behind the small of your back, isn't there? Augusta will have +to put a cushion in it." + +"Did you make it for Mrs. Maturin? She will be Pleased!" exclaimed +Janet, as she sat down. "I don't think it's uncomfortable." + +"I copied it from an old one in the Boston Art Museum. Augusta saw it +there, and said she wouldn't be happy until she had one like it. But +don't tell her." + +"Not for anything!" Janet got to her feet again. "I really must be +going." + +"Going where?" + +"I told Mrs. Maturin I'd read that new book to her. I couldn't go +yesterday--I didn't want to go," she added, fearing he might think his +work had kept her. + +"Well, I'll walk over with you. She asked me to make a little design for +a fountain, you know, and I'll have to get some measurements." + +As they emerged from the shop and climbed the slope Janet tried to fight +off the sadness that began to invade her. Soon she would have to be +leaving all this! Her glance lingered wistfully on the old farmhouse +with its great centre chimney from which the smoke was curling, with its +diamond-paned casements Insall had put into the tiny frames. + +"What queer windows!" she said. "But they seem to go with the house, +beautifully." + +"You think so?" His tone surprised her; it had a touch more of +earnestness than she had ever before detected. "They belong to that type +of house the old settlers brought the leaded glass with them. Some +people think they're cold, but I've arranged to make them fairly tight. +You see, I've tried to restore it as it must have been when it was +built." + +"And these?" she asked, pointing to the millstones of different diameters +that made the steps leading down to the garden. + +"Oh, that's an old custom, but they are nice," he agreed. "I'll just put +this precious manuscript inside and get my foot rule," he added, opening +the door, and she stood awaiting him on the threshold, confronted by the +steep little staircase that disappeared into the wall half way up. At +her left was the room where he worked, and which once had been the +farmhouse kitchen. She took a few steps into it, and while he was +searching in the table drawer she halted before the great chimney over +which, against the panel, an old bell-mouthed musket hung. Insall came +over beside her. + +"Those were trees!" he said. "That panel's over four feet across, I +measured it once. I dare say the pine it was cut from grew right where +we are standing, before the land was cleared to build the house." + +"But the gun?" she questioned. "You didn't have it the night we came to +supper." + +"No, I ran across it at a sale in Boston. The old settler must have +owned one like that. I like to think of him, away off here in the +wilderness in those early days." + +She thought of how Insall had made those early days live for her, in his +story of Basil Grelott. But to save her soul, wen with such an opening, +she could not speak of it. + +"He had to work pretty hard, of course," Insall continued, "but I dare +say he had a fairly happy life, no movies, no Sunday supplements, no +automobiles or gypsy moths. His only excitement was to trudge ten miles +to Dorset and listen to a three hour sermon on everlasting fire and +brimstone by a man who was supposed to know. No wonder he slept soundly +and lived to be over ninety!" + +Insall was standing with his head thrown back, his eyes stilt seemingly +fixed on the musket that had suggested his remark--a pose eloquent, she +thought, of the mental and physical balance of the man. She wondered +what belief gave him the free mastery of soul and body he possessed. +Some firm conviction, she was sure, must energise him yet she respected +him the more for concealing it. + +"It's hard to understand such a terrible religion!" she cried. "I don't +see how those old settlers could believe in it, when there are such +beautiful things in the world, if we only open our eyes and look for +them. Oh Mr. Insall, I wish I could tell you how I felt when I read your +story, and when Mrs. Maturin read me those other books of yours " + +She stopped breathlessly, aghast at her boldness--and then, suddenly, a +barrier between them seemed to break down, and for the first time since +she had known him she felt near to him. He could not doubt the sincerity +of her tribute. + +"You like them as much as that, Janet?" he said, looking at her. + +"I can't tell you how much, I can't express myself. And I want to tell +you something else, Mr. Insall, while I have the chance--how just being +with you and Mrs. Maturin has changed me. I can face life now, you have +shown me so much in it I never saw before." + +"While you have the chance?" he repeated. + +"Yes." She strove to go on cheerfully, "Now I've said it, I feel better, +I promise not to mention it again. I knew--you didn't think me +ungrateful. It's funny," she added, "the more people have done for you- +when they've given you everything, life and hope,--the harder it is to +thank them." She turned her face away, lest he might see that her eyes +were wet. "Mrs. Maturin will be expecting us." + +"Not yet," she heard him say, and felt his hand on her arm. "You haven't +thought of what you're doing for me." + +"What I'm doing for you!" she echoed. "What hurts me most, when I think +about it, is that I'll never be able to do anything." + +"Why do you say that?" he asked. + +"If I only could believe that some day I might be able to help you--just +a little--I should be happier. All I have, all I am I owe to you and +Mrs. Maturin." + +"No, Janet," he answered. "What you are is you, and it's more real than +anything we could have put into you. What you have to give is-- +yourself." His fingers trembled on her arm, but she saw him smile a +little before he spoke again. "Augusta Maturin was right when she said +that you were the woman I needed. I didn't realize it then perhaps she +didn't--but now I'm sure of it. Will you come to me?" + +She stood staring at him, as in terror, suddenly penetrated by a dismay +that sapped her strength, and she leaned heavily against the fireplace, +clutching the mantel-shelf. + +"Don't!" she pleaded. "Please don't--I can't." + +"You can't!... Perhaps, after a while, you may come to feel differently +--I didn't mean to startle you," she heard him reply gently. This +humility, in him, was unbearable. + +"Oh, it isn't that--it isn't that! If I could, I'd be willing to serve +you all my life--I wouldn't ask for anything more. I never thought that +this would happen. I oughtn't to have stayed in Silliston." + +"You didn't suspect that I loved you?" + +"How could I? Oh, I might have loved you, if I'd been fortunate--if I'd +deserved it. But I never thought, I always looked up to you--you are so +far above me!" She lifted her face to him in agony. "I'm sorry--I'm +sorry for you--I'll never forgive myself!" + +"It's--some one else?" he asked. + +"I was--going to be married to--to Mr. Ditmar," she said slowly, +despairingly. + +"But even then--" Insall began. + +"You don't understand!" she cried. "What will you think of me?--Mrs. +Maturin was to have told you, after I'd gone. It's--it's the same as if +I were married to him--only worse." + +"Worse!" Insall repeated uncomprehendingly.... And then she was aware +that he had left her side. He was standing by the window. + +A thrush began to sing in the maple. She stole silently toward the door, +and paused to look back at him, once to meet his glance. He had turned. + +"I can't--I can't let you go like this!" she heard him say, but she fled +from him, out of the gate and toward the Common.... + +When Janet appeared, Augusta Maturin was in her garden. With an instant +perception that something was wrong, she went to the girl and led her to +the sofa in the library. There the confession was made. + +"I never guessed it," Janet sobbed. "Oh, Mrs. Maturin, you'll believe +me--won't you?" + +"Of course I believe you, Janet," Augusta Maturity replied, trying to +hide her pity, her own profound concern and perplexity. "I didn't +suspect it either. If I had--" + +"You wouldn't have brought me here, you wouldn't have asked me to stay +with you. But I was to blame, I oughtn't to have stayed, I knew all +along that something would happen--something terrible that I hadn't any +right to stay." + +"Who could have foreseen it!" her friend exclaimed helplessly. "Brooks +isn't like any other man I've ever known--one can never tell what he has +in mind. Not that I'm surprised as I look back upon it all!" + +"I've hurt him!" + +Augusta Maturity was silent awhile. "Remember, my dear," she begged, +"you haven't only yourself to think about, from now on." + +But comfort was out of the question, the task of calming the girl +impossible. Finally the doctor was sent for, and she was put to bed.... + +Augusta Maturity spent an agonized, sleepless night, a prey of many +emotions; of self-reproach, seeing now that she had been wrong in not +telling Brooks Insall of the girl's secret; of sorrow and sympathy for +him; of tenderness toward the girl, despite the suffering she had +brought; of unwonted rebellion against a world that cheated her of this +cherished human tie for which she had longed the first that had come into +her life since her husband and child had gone. And there was her own +responsibility for Insall's unhappiness--when she recalled with a pang +her innocent sayings that Janet was the kind of woman he, an artist, +should marry! And it was true--if he must marry. He himself had seen +it. Did Janet love him? or did she still remember Ditmar? Again and +again, during the summer that followed, this query was on her lips, but +remained unspoken.... + +The next day Insall disappeared. No one knew where he had gone, but his +friends in Silliston believed he had been seized by one of his sudden, +capricious fancies for wandering. For many months his name was not +mentioned between Augusta Maturity and Janet. By the middle of June they +had gone to Canada.... + +In order to reach the camp on Lac du Sablier from the tiny railroad +station at Saint Hubert, a trip of some eight miles up the decharge was +necessary. The day had been when Augusta Maturity had done her share of +paddling and poling, with an habitant guide in the bow. She had foreseen +all the needs of this occasion, warm clothes for Janet, who was wrapped +in blankets and placed on cushions in the middle of a canoe, while she +herself followed in a second, from time to time exclaiming, in a +reassuring voice, that one had nothing to fear in the hands of Delphin +and Herve, whom she had known intimately for more than twenty years. It +was indeed a wonderful, exciting, and at moments seemingly perilous +journey up the forested aisle of the river: at sight of the first roaring +reach of rapids Janet held her breathso incredible did it appear that any +human power could impel and guide a boat up the white stairway between +the boulders! Was it not courting destruction? Yet she felt a strange, +wild delight in the sense of danger, of amazement at the woodsman's eye +that found and followed the crystal paths through the waste of foam.... +There were long, quiet stretches, hemmed in by alders, where the canoes, +dodging the fallen trees, glided through the still water... No such +silent, exhilarating motion Janet had ever known. Even the dipping +paddles made no noise, though sometimes there was a gurgle, as though a +fish had broken the water behind them; sometimes, in the shining pools +ahead, she saw the trout leap out. At every startling flop Delphin would +exclaim: "Un gros!" From an upper branch of a spruce a kingfisher darted +like an arrow into the water, making a splash like a falling stone. +Once, after they had passed through the breach of a beaver dam, Herve +nodded his head toward a mound of twigs by the bank and muttered +something. Augusta Maturin laughed. + +"Cabane de castor, he says--a beaver cabin. And the beavers made the dam +we just passed. Did you notice, Janet, how beautifully clean those logs +had been cut by their sharp teeth?" + +At moments she conversed rapidly with Delphin in the same patois Janet +had heard on the streets of Hampton. How long ago that seemed! + +On two occasions, when the falls were sheer, they had to disembark and +walk along little portages through the green raspberry bushes. The +prints of great hooves in the black silt betrayed where wild animals had +paused to drink. They stopped for lunch on a warm rock beside a singing +waterfall, and at last they turned an elbow in the stream and with +suddenly widened vision beheld the lake's sapphire expanse and the +distant circle of hills. "Les montagnes," Herve called them as he flung +out his pipe, and this Janet could translate for herself. Eastward they +lay lucent in the afternoon light; westward, behind the generous log camp +standing on a natural terrace above the landing, they were in shadow. +Here indeed seemed peace, if remoteness, if nature herself might bestow +it. + +Janet little suspected that special preparations had been made for her +comfort. Early in April, while the wilderness was still in the grip of +winter, Delphin had been summoned from a far-away lumber camp to Saint +Hubert, where several packing-cases and two rolls of lead pipe from +Montreal lay in a shed beside the railroad siding. He had superintended +the transportation of these, on dog sledges, up the frozen decharge, +accompanied on his last trip by a plumber of sorts from Beaupre, thirty +miles down the line; and between them they had improvised a bathroom, and +attached a boiler to the range! Only a week before the arrival of Madame +the spring on the hillside above the camp had been tapped, and the pipe +laid securely underground. Besides this unheard-of luxury for the Lac du +Sablier there were iron beds and mattresses and little wood stoves to go +in the four bedrooms, which were more securely chinked with moss. The +traditions of that camp had been hospitable. In Professor Wishart's day +many guests had come and gone, or pitched their tents nearby; and Augusta +Maturin, until this summer, had rarely been here alone, although she had +no fears of the wilderness, and Delphin brought his daughter Delphine to +do the housework and cooking. The land for miles round about was owned +by a Toronto capitalist who had been a friend of her father, and who +could afford as a hobby the sparing of the forest. By his permission a +few sportsmen came to fish or shoot, and occasionally their campfires +could be seen across the water, starlike glows in the darkness of the +night, at morning and evening little blue threads of smoke that rose +against the forest; "bocane," Delphin called it, and Janet found a sweet, +strange magic in these words of the pioneer. + +The lake was a large one, shaped like an hourglass, as its name implied, +and Augusta Maturin sometimes paddled Janet through the wide, shallow +channel to the northern end, even as she had once paddled Gifford. Her +genius was for the helpless. One day, when the waters were high, and the +portages could be dispensed with, they made an excursion through the +Riviere des Peres to the lake of that name, the next in the chain above. +For luncheon they ate the trout Augusta caught; and in the afternoon, +when they returned to the mouth of the outlet, Herve, softly checking the +canoe with his paddle, whispered the word "Arignal!" Thigh deep in the +lush grasses of the swamp was an animal with a huge grey head, like a +donkey's, staring foolishly in their direction--a cow moose. With a +tremendous commotion that awoke echoes in the forest she tore herself +from the mud and disappeared, followed by her panic-stricken offspring, a +caricature of herself.... + +By September the purple fireweed that springs up beside old camps, and in +the bois brute, had bloomed and scattered its myriad, impalpable +thistledowns over crystal floors. Autumn came to the Laurentians. In +the morning the lake lay like a quicksilver pool under the rising mists, +through which the sun struck blinding flashes of light. A little later, +when the veil had lifted, it became a mirror for the hills and crags, the +blue reaches of the sky. The stinging air was spiced with balsam. +Revealed was the incredible brilliance of another day,--the arsenic-green +of the spruce, the red and gold of the maples, the yellow of the alders +bathing in the shallows, of the birches, whose white limbs could be seen +gleaming in the twilight of the thickets. Early, too early, the sun fell +down behind the serrated forest-edge of the western hill, a ball of +orange fire.... One evening Delphin and Herve, followed by two other +canoes, paddled up to the landing. New visitors had arrived, Dr. McLeod, +who had long been an intimate of the Wishart family, and with him a +buxom, fresh-complexioned Canadian woman, a trained nurse whom he had +brought from Toronto. + +There, in nature's wilderness, Janet knew the supreme experience of +women, the agony, the renewal and joy symbolic of nature herself. When +the child was bathed and dressed in the clothes Augusta Maturin herself +had made for it, she brought it into the room to the mother. + +"It's a daughter," she announced. + +Janet regarded the child wistfully. "I hoped it would be a boy," she +said. "He would have had--a better chance." But she raised her arms, +and the child was laid in the bed beside her. + +"We'll see that she has a chance, my dear," Augusta Maturin replied, as +she kissed her. + +Ten days went by, Dr. McLeod lingered at Lac du Sablier, and Janet was +still in bed. Even in this life-giving air she did not seem to grow +stronger. Sometimes, when the child was sleeping in its basket on the +sunny porch, Mrs. Maturin read to her; but often when she was supposed to +rest, she lay gazing out of the open window into silver space listening +to the mocking laughter of the loons, watching the ducks flying across +the sky; or, as evening drew on, marking in the waters a steely angle +that grew and grew--the wake of a beaver swimming homeward in the +twilight. In the cold nights the timbers cracked to the frost, she heard +the owls calling to one another from the fastnesses of the forest, and +thought of life's inscrutable mystery. Then the child would be brought +to her. It was a strange, unimagined happiness she knew when she felt it +clutching at her breasts, at her heart, a happiness not unmixed with +yearning, with sadness as she pressed it to her. Why could it not remain +there always, to comfort her, to be nearer her than any living thing? +Reluctantly she gave it back to the nurse, wistfully her eyes followed +it.... + +Twice a week, now, Delphin and Herve made the journey to Saint Hubert, +and one evening, after Janet had watched them paddling across the little +bay that separated the camp from the outlet's mouth, Mrs. Maturin +appeared, with an envelope in her hand. + +"I've got a letter from Brooks Insall, Janet," she said, with a well- +disguised effort to speak naturally. "It's not the first one he's sent +me, but I haven't mentioned the others. He's in Silliston--and I wrote +him about the daughter." + +"Yes," said Janet. + +"Well--he wants to come up here, to see you, before we go away. He asks +me to telegraph your permission." + +"Oh no, he mustn't, Mrs. Maturin!" + +"You don't care to see him?" + +"It isn't that. I'd like to see him if things had been different. But +now that I've disappointed him--hurt him, I couldn't stand it. I know +it's only his kindness." + +After a moment Augusta Maturin handed Janet a sealed envelope she held in +her hand. + +"He asked me to give you this," she said, and left the room. Janet read +it, and let it fall on the bedspread, where it was still lying when her +friend returned and began tidying the room. From the direction of the +guide's cabin, on the point, came the sounds of talk and laughter, broken +by snatches of habitant songs. Augusta Maturin smiled. She pretended +not to notice the tears in Janet's eyes, and strove to keep back her own. + +"Delphin and Herve saw a moose in the decharge," she explained. "Of +course it was a big one, it always is! They're telling the doctor about +it." + +"Mrs. Maturin," said Janet, "I'd like to talk to you. I think I ought to +tell you what Mr. Insall says." + +"Yes, my dear," her friend replied, a little faintly, sitting down on the +bed. + +"He asks me to believe what--I've done makes no difference to him. Of +course he doesn't put it in so many words, but he says he doesn't care +anything about conventions," Janet continued slowly. "What I told him +when he asked me to marry him in Silliston was a shock to him, it was so- +-so unexpected. He went away, to Maine, but as soon as he began to think +it all over he wanted to come and tell me that he loved me in spite of +it, but he felt he couldn't, under the circumstances, that he had to wait +until--now. Although I didn't give him any explanation, he wants me to +know that he trusts me, he understands--it's because, he says, I am what +I am. He still wishes to marry me, to take care of me and the child. We +could live in California, at first--he's always been anxious to go there, +he says." + +"Well, my dear?" Augusta Maturin forced herself to say at last. + +"It's so generous--so like him!" Janet exclaimed. "But of course I +couldn't accept such a sacrifice, even if--" She paused. "Oh, it's made +me so sad all summer to think that he's unhappy because of me!" + +"I know, Janet, but you should realize, as I told you in Silliston, that +it isn't by any deliberate act of your own, it's just one of those things +that occur in this world and that can't be foreseen or avoided." Augusta +Maturin spoke with an effort. In spite of Janet's apparent calm, she had +never been more acutely aware of the girl's inner suffering. + +"I know," said Janet. "But it's terrible to think that those things we +unintentionally do, perhaps because of faults we have previously +committed, should have the same effect as acts that are intentional." + +"The world is very stupid. All suffering, I think, is brought about by +stupidity. If we only could learn to look at ourselves as we are! It's +a stupid, unenlightened society that metes out most of our punishments +and usually demands a senseless expiation." Augusta Maturin waited, and +presently Janet spoke again. + +"I've been thinking all summer, Mrs. Maturin. There was so much I wanted +to talk about with you, but I wanted to be sure of myself first. And +now, since the baby came, and I know I'm not going to get well, I seem to +see things much more clearly." + +"Why do you say you're not going to get well, Janet? In this air, and +with the child to live for!" + +"I know it. Dr. McLeod knows it, or he wouldn't be staying here, and +you've both been too kind to tell me. You've been so kind, Mrs. Maturin-- +I can't talk about it. But I'm sure I'm going to die, I've really known +it ever since we left Silliston. Something's gone out of me, the thing +that drove me, that made me want to live--I can't express what I mean any +other way. Perhaps it's this child, the new life--perhaps I've just been +broken, I don't know. You did your best to mend me, and that's one thing +that makes me sad. And the thought of Mr. Insall's another. In some +ways it would have been worse to live--I couldn't have ruined his life. +And even if things had been different, I hadn't come to love him, in that +way--it's queer, because he's such a wonderful person. I'd like to live +for the child, if only I had the strength, the will left in me--but +that's gone. And maybe I could save her from--what I've been through." + +Augusta Maturin took Janet's hand in hers. + +"Janet," she said, "I've been a lonely woman, as you know, with nothing +to look forward to. I've always wanted a child since my little Edith +went. I wanted you, my dear, I want your child, your daughter--as I want +nothing else in the world. I will take her, I will try to bring her up +in the light, and Brooks Insall will help me...." + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light--complete +by Winston Churchill + diff --git a/old/wc05v10.zip b/old/wc05v10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..32e4c18 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wc05v10.zip diff --git a/old/wc05v11.txt b/old/wc05v11.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b0876e --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wc05v11.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15618 @@ +The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, complete +#5 in our series by this Winston Churchill + +This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + +*END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.10/04/01*END* + + + + + +This etext was produced by David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +[NOTE: There is a short list of bookmarks, or pointers, at the end of the +file for those who may wish to sample the author's ideas before making an +entire meal of them. D.W.] + + +[NOTE: This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister +of England during World War II.] + + + + + +THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT + +By WINSTON CHURCHILL + +1917 + + + +VOLUME 1. + +CHAPTER I + +In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to +boast, a certain glacier-like process may be observed. The bewildered, +the helpless-- and there are many--are torn from the parent rock, +crushed, rolled smooth, and left stranded in strange places. Thus was +Edward Bumpus severed and rolled from the ancestral ledge, from the firm +granite of seemingly stable and lasting things, into shifting shale; +surrounded by fragments of cliffs from distant lands he had never seen. +Thus, at five and fifty, he found himself gate-keeper of the leviathan +Chippering Mill in the city of Hampton. + +That the polyglot, smoky settlement sprawling on both sides of an +historic river should be a part of his native New England seemed at times +to be a hideous dream; nor could he comprehend what had happened to him, +and to the world of order and standards and religious sanctions into +which he had been born. His had been a life of relinquishments. For a +long time he had clung to the institution he had been taught to believe +was the rock of ages, the Congregational Church, finally to abandon it; +even that assuming a form fantastic and unreal, as embodied in the +edifice three blocks distant from Fillmore Street which he had attended +for a brief time, some ten years before, after his arrival in Hampton. +The building, indeed, was symbolic of a decadent and bewildered +Puritanism in its pathetic attempt to keep abreast with the age, to +compromise with anarchy, merely achieving a nondescript medley of +rounded, knob-like towers covered with mulberry-stained shingles. And +the minister was sensational and dramatic. He looked like an actor, he +aroused in Edward Bumpus an inherent prejudice that condemned the stage. +Half a block from this tabernacle stood a Roman Catholic Church, +prosperous, brazen, serene, flaunting an eternal permanence amidst the +chaos which had succeeded permanence! + +There were, to be sure, other Protestant churches where Edward Bumpus and +his wife might have gone. One in particular, which he passed on his way +to the mill, with its terraced steeple and classic facade, preserved all +the outward semblance of the old Order that once had seemed so enduring +and secure. He hesitated to join the decorous and dwindling +congregation,--the remains of a social stratum from which he had been +pried loose; and--more irony--this street, called Warren, of arching elms +and white-gabled houses, was now the abiding place of those prosperous +Irish who had moved thither from the tenements and ruled the city. + +On just such a street in the once thriving New England village of Dolton +had Edward been born. In Dolton Bumpus was once a name of names, rooted +there since the seventeenth century, and if you had cared to listen he +would have told you, in a dialect precise but colloquial, the history of +a family that by right of priority and service should have been destined +to inherit the land, but whose descendants were preserved to see it +delivered to the alien. The God of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards +had been tried in the balance and found wanting. Edward could never +understand this; or why the Universe, so long static and immutable, had +suddenly begun to move. He had always been prudent, but in spite of +youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a sectarian +college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may +prosper in a static world, it is a futile virtue in a dynamic one. +Experience even had been powerless to impress this upon him. For more +than twenty years after leaving college he had clung to a clerkship in a +Dolton mercantile establishment before he felt justified in marrying +Hannah, the daughter of Elmer Wench, when the mercantile establishment +amalgamated with a rival--and Edward's services were no longer required. +During the succession of precarious places with decreasing salaries he +had subsequently held a terrified sense of economic pressure had +gradually crept over him, presently growing strong enough, after two +girls had arrived, to compel the abridgment of the family ....It would be +painful to record in detail the cracking-off process, the slipping into +shale, the rolling, the ending up in Hampton, where Edward had now for +some dozen years been keeper of one of the gates in the frowning brick +wall bordering the canal,--a position obtained for him by a compassionate +but not too prudent childhood friend who had risen in life and knew the +agent of the Chippering Mill, Mr. Claude Ditmar. Thus had virtue failed +to hold its own. + +One might have thought in all these years he had sat within the gates +staring at the brick row of the company's boarding houses on the opposite +bank of the canal that reflection might have brought a certain degree of +enlightenment. It was not so. The fog of Edward's bewilderment never +cleared, and the unformed question was ever clamouring for an answer--how +had it happened? Job's cry. How had it happened to an honest and +virtuous man, the days of whose forebears had been long in the land which +the Lord their God had given them? Inherently American, though lacking +the saving quality of push that had been the making of men like Ditmar, +he never ceased to regard with resentment and distrust the hordes of +foreigners trooping between the pillars, though he refrained from +expressing these sentiments in public; a bent, broad shouldered, silent +man of that unmistakable physiognomy which, in the seventeenth century, +almost wholly deserted the old England for the new. The ancestral +features were there, the lips--covered by a grizzled moustache moulded +for the precise formation that emphasizes such syllables as el, the +hooked nose and sallow cheeks, the grizzled brows and grey eyes drawn +down at the corners. But for all its ancestral strength of feature, it +was a face from which will had been extracted, and lacked the fire and +fanaticism, the indomitable hardness it should have proclaimed, and which +have been so characteristically embodied in Mr. St. Gaudens's statue of +the Puritan. His clothes were slightly shabby, but always neat. + +Little as one might have guessed it, however, what may be called a +certain transmuted enthusiasm was alive in him. He had a hobby almost +amounting to an obsession, not uncommon amongst Americans who have +slipped downward in the social scale. It was the Bumpus Family in +America. He collected documents about his ancestors and relations, he +wrote letters with a fine, painful penmanship on a ruled block he bought +at Hartshorne's drug store to distant Bumpuses in Kansas and Illinois and +Michigan, common descendants of Ebenezer, the original immigrant, of +Dolton. Many of these western kinsmen answered: not so the magisterial +Bumpus who lived in Boston on the water side of Beacon, whom likewise he +had ventured to address,--to the indignation and disgust of his elder +daughter, Janet. + +"Why are you so proud of Ebenezer?" she demanded once, scornfully. + +"Why? Aren't we descended from him?" + +"How many generations?" + +"Seven," said Edward, promptly, emphasizing the last syllable. + +Janet was quick at figures. She made a mental calculation. + +"Well, you've got one hundred and twenty-seven other ancestors of +Ebenezer's time, haven't you?" + +Edward was a little surprised. He had never thought of this, but his +ardour for Ebenezer remained undampened. Genealogy--his own--had become +his religion, and instead of going to church he spent his Sunday mornings +poring over papers of various degrees of discolouration, making careful +notes on the ruled block. + +This consciousness of his descent from good American stock that had +somehow been deprived of its heritage, while a grievance to him, was also +a comfort. It had a compensating side, in spite of the lack of sympathy +of his daughters and his wife. Hannah Bumpus took the situation more +grimly: she was a logical projection in a new environment of the +religious fatalism of ancestors whose God was a God of vengeance. She +did not concern herself as to what all this vengeance was about; life was +a trap into which all mortals walked sooner or later, and her particular +trap had a treadmill,--a round of household duties she kept whirling with +an energy that might have made their fortunes if she had been the head of +the family. It is bad to be a fatalist unless one has an +incontrovertible belief in one's destiny,--which Hannah had not. But she +kept the little flat with its worn furniture,--which had known so many +journeys--as clean as a merchant ship of old Salem, and when it was +scoured and dusted to her satisfaction she would sally forth to +Bonnaccossi's grocery and provision store on the corner to do her +bargaining in competition with the Italian housewives of the +neighborhood. She was wont, indeed, to pause outside for a moment, her +quick eye encompassing the coloured prints of red and yellow jellies cast +in rounded moulds, decked with slices of orange, the gaudy boxes of +cereals and buckwheat flour, the "Brookfield" eggs in packages. +Significant, this modern package system, of an era of flats with little +storage space. She took in at a glance the blue lettered placard +announcing the current price of butterine, and walked around to the other +side of the store, on Holmes Street, where the beef and bacon hung, where +the sidewalk stands were filled, in the autumn, with cranberries, apples, +cabbages, and spinach. + +With little outer complaint she had adapted herself to the constantly +lowering levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped that +in Fillmore Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so. Her +unbetrayed regret was for the loss of what she would have called +"respectability"; and the giving up, long ago, in the little city which +had been their home, of the servant girl had been the first wrench. +Until they came to Hampton they had always lived in houses, and her +adaptation to a flat had been hard--a flat without a parlour. Hannah +Bumpus regarded a parlour as necessary to a respectable family as a +wedding ring to a virtuous woman. Janet and Lise would be growing up, +there would be young men, and no place to see them save the sidewalks. +The fear that haunted her came true, and she never was reconciled. The +two girls went to the public schools, and afterwards, inevitably, to +work, and it seemed to be a part of her punishment for the sins of her +forefathers that she had no more control over them than if they had been +boarders; while she looked on helplessly, they did what they pleased; +Janet, whom she never understood, was almost as much a source of +apprehension as Lise, who became part and parcel of all Hannah deemed +reprehensible in this new America which she refused to recognize and +acknowledge as her own country. + +To send them through the public schools had been a struggle. Hannah used +to lie awake nights wondering what would happen if Edward became sick. +It worried her that they never saved any money: try as she would to cut +the expenses down, there was a limit of decency; New England thrift, +hitherto justly celebrated, was put to shame by that which the foreigners +displayed, and which would have delighted the souls of gentlemen of the +Manchester school. Every once in a while there rose up before her +fabulous instances of this thrift, of Italians and Jews who, ignorant +emigrants, had entered the mills only a few years before they, the +Bumpuses, had come to Hampton, and were now independent property owners. +Still rankling in Hannah's memory was a day when Lise had returned from +school, dark and mutinous, with a tale of such a family. One of the +younger children was a classmate. + +"They live on Jordan Street in a house, and Laura has roller skates. I +don't see why I can't." + +This was one of the occasions on which Hannah had given vent to her +indignation. Lise was fourteen. Her open rebellion was less annoying +than Janet's silent reproach, but at least she had something to take hold +of. + +"Well, Lise," she said, shifting the saucepan to another part of the +stove, "I guess if your father and I had put both you girls in the mills +and crowded into one room and cooked in a corner, and lived on onions and +macaroni, and put four boarders each in the other rooms, I guess we could +have had a house, too. We can start in right now, if you're willing." + +But Lise had only looked darker. + +"I don't see why father can't make money--other men do." + +"Isn't he working as hard as he can to send you to school, and give you a +chance?" + +"I don't want that kind of a chance. There's Sadie Howard at school--she +don't have to work. She liked me before she found out where I lived..." + +There was an element of selfishness in Hannah's mania for keeping busy, +for doing all their housework and cooking herself. She could not bear to +have her daughters interfere; perhaps she did not want to give herself +time to think. Her affection for Edward, such as it was, her loyalty to +him, was the logical result of a conviction ingrained in early youth that +marriage was an indissoluble bond; a point of views once having a +religious sanction, no less powerful now that--all unconsciously--it had +deteriorated into a superstition. Hannah, being a fatalist, was not +religious. The beliefs of other days, when she had donned her best dress +and gone to church on Sundays, had simply lapsed and left--habits. No +new beliefs had taken their place.... + +Even after Janet and Lise had gone to work the household never seemed to +gain that margin of safety for which Hannah yearned. Always, when they +were on the verge of putting something by, some untoward need or accident +seemed to arise on purpose to swallow it up: Edward, for instance, had +been forced to buy a new overcoat, the linoleum on the dining-room floor +must be renewed, and Lise had had a spell of sickness, losing her +position in a flower shop. Afterwards, when she became a saleslady in +the Bagatelle, that flamboyant department store in Faber Street, she +earned four dollars and a half a week. Two of these were supposed to go +into the common fund, but there were clothes to buy; Lise loved finery, +and Hannah had not every week the heart to insist. Even when, on an +occasional Saturday night the girl somewhat consciously and defiantly +flung down the money on the dining-room table she pretended not to notice +it. But Janet, who was earning six dollars as a stenographer in the +office of the Chippering Mill, regularly gave half of hers. + +The girls could have made more money as operatives, but strangely enough +in the Bumpus family social hopes were not yet extinct. + +Sharply, rudely, the cold stillness of the winter mornings was broken by +agitating waves of sound, penetrating the souls of sleepers. Janet would +stir, her mind still lingering on some dream, soon to fade into the +inexpressible, in which she had been near to the fulfilment of a heart's +desire. Each morning, as the clamour grew louder, there was an interval +of bewilderment, of revulsion, until the realization came of mill bells +swinging in high cupolas above the river,--one rousing another. She +could even distinguish the bells: the deep-toned, penetrating one +belonged to the Patuxent Mill, over on the west side, while the Arundel +had a high, ominous reverberation like a fire bell. When at last the +clangings had ceased she would lie listening to the overtones throbbing +in the air, high and low, high and low; lie shrinking, awaiting the +second summons that never failed to terrify, the siren of the Chippering +Mill,--to her the cry of an insistent, hungry monster demanding its +daily food, the symbol of a stern, ugly, and unrelenting necessity. + +Beside her in the bed she could feel the soft body of her younger sister +cuddling up to her in fright. In such rare moments as this her heart +melted towards Lise, and she would fling a protecting arm about her. A +sense of Lise's need of protection invaded her, a sharp conviction, like +a pang, that Lise was destined to wander: Janet was never so conscious of +the feeling as in this dark hour, though it came to her at other times, +when they were not quarreling. Quarreling seemed to be the normal +reaction between them. + +It was Janet, presently, who would get up, shivering, close the window, +and light the gas, revealing the room which the two girls shared +together. Against the middle of one wall was the bed, opposite this a +travel-dented walnut bureau with a marble top, with an oval mirror into +which were stuck numerous magazine portraits of the masculine and +feminine talent adorning the American stage, a preponderance of the music +hall variety. There were pictures of other artists whom the recondite +would have recognized as "movie" stars, amazing yet veridic stories of +whose wealth Lise read in the daily press: all possessed limousines--an +infallible proof, to Lise, of the measure of artistic greatness. Between +one of these movie millionaires and an ex-legitimate lady who now found +vaudeville profitable was wedged the likeness of a popular idol whose +connection with the footlights would doubtless be contingent upon a +triumphant acquittal at the hands of a jury of her countrymen, and whose +trial for murder, in Chicago, was chronicled daily in thousands of +newspapers and followed by Lise with breathless interest and sympathy. +She was wont to stare at this lady while dressing and exclaim:-- + +"Say, I hope they put it all over that district attorney!" + +To such sentiments, though deeply felt by her sister, Janet remained +cold, though she was, as will be seen, capable of enthusiasms. Lise was +a truer daughter of her time and country in that she had the national +contempt for law, was imbued with the American hero-worship of criminals +that caused the bombardment of Cora Wellman's jail with candy, fruit and +flowers and impassioned letters. Janet recalled there had been others +before Mrs. Wellman, caught within the meshes of the law, who had incited +in her sister a similar partisanship. + +It was Lise who had given the note of ornamentation to the bedroom. +Against the cheap faded lilac and gold wall-paper were tacked +photo-engravings that had taken the younger sister's fancy: a young man +and woman, clad in scanty bathing suits, seated side by side in a +careening sail boat,--the work of a popular illustrator whose manly and +womanly "types" had become national ideals. + +There were other drawings, if not all by the same hand, at least by the +same school; one, sketched in bold strokes, of a dinner party in a +stately neo-classic dining-room, the table laden with flowers and silver, +the bare-throated women with jewels. A more critical eye than Lise's, +gazing upon this portrayal of the Valhalla of success, might have +detected in the young men, immaculate in evening dress, a certain effort +to feel at home, to converse naturally, which their square jaws and +square shoulders belied. This was no doubt the fault of the artist's +models, who had failed to live up to the part. At any rate, the sight of +these young gods of leisure, the contemplation of the stolid butler and +plush footmen in the background never failed to make Lise's heart beat +faster. + +On the marble of the bureau amidst a litter of toilet articles, and +bought by Lise for a quarter at the Bagatelle bargain counter, was an +oval photograph frame from which the silver wash had begun to rub off, +and the band of purple velvet inside the metal had whitened. The frame +always contained the current object of Lise's affections, though the +exhibits--as Janet said--were subject to change without notice. The +Adonis who now reigned had black hair cut in the prevailing Hampton +fashion, very long in front and hanging down over his eyes like a +Scottish terrier's; very long behind, too, but ending suddenly, shaved in +a careful curve at the neck and around the ears. It had almost the +appearance of a Japanese wig. The manly beauty of Mr. Max Wylie was of +the lantern-jawed order, and in his photograph he conveyed the astonished +and pained air of one who has been suddenly seized by an invisible +officer of the law from behind. This effect, one presently perceived, +was due to the high, stiff collar, the "Torture Brand," Janet called it, +when she and her sister were engaged in one of their frequent +controversies about life in general: the obvious retort to this remark, +which Lise never failed to make, was that Janet could boast of no beaux +at all. + +It is only fair to add that the photograph scarcely did Mr. Wylie +justice. In real life he did not wear the collar, he was free and easy +in his manners, sure of his powers of conquest. As Lise observed, he had +made a home-run with her at Slattery's Riverside Park. "Sadie Hartmann +was sure sore when I tangoed off with him," she would observe +reminiscently.... + +It was Lise's habit to slight her morning toilet, to linger until the +last minute in bed, which she left in reluctant haste to stand before the +bureau frantically combing out kinks of the brown hair falling over her +shoulders before jamming it down across her forehead in the latest mode. +Thus occupied, she revealed a certain petulant beauty. Like the majority +of shop-girls, she was small, but her figure was good, her skin white; +her discontented mouth gave her the touch of piquancy apt to play havoc +with the work of the world. In winter breakfast was eaten by the light +of a rococo metal lamp set in the centre of the table. This was to save +gas. There was usually a rump steak and potatoes, bread and "creamery" +butterine, and the inevitable New England doughnuts. At six thirty the +whistles screeched again,--a warning note, the signal for Edward's +departure; and presently, after a brief respite, the heavy bells once +more began their clamour, not to die down until ten minutes of seven, +when the last of the stragglers had hurried through the mill gates. + +The Bumpus flat included the second floor of a small wooden house whose +owner had once been evilly inspired to paint it a livid clay-yellow--as +though insisting that ugliness were an essential attribute of +domesticity. A bay ran up the two stories, and at the left were two +narrow doorways, one for each flat. On the right the house was separated +from its neighbour by a narrow interval, giving but a precarious light to +the two middle rooms, the diningroom and kitchen. The very +unattractiveness of such a home, however, had certain compensations for +Janet, after the effort of early rising had been surmounted, felt a real +relief in leaving it; a relief, too, in leaving Fillmore Street, every +feature of which was indelibly fixed in her mind, opposite was the blind +brick face of a warehouse, and next to that the converted dwelling house +that held the shop of A. Bauer, with the familiar replica of a green +ten-cent trading stamp painted above it and the somewhat ironical +announcement--when boar frost whitened the pavement--that ice-cold soda +was to be had within, as well as cigars and tobacco, fruit and candy. +Then came a tenement, under which two enterprising Greeks by the name of +Pappas--spelled Papas lower down-- conducted a business called "The +Gentleman," a tailoring, pressing, and dyeing establishment. Janet could +see the brilliantined black heads of the two proprietors bending over +their boards, and sometimes they would be lifted to smile at her as she +passed. The Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in this drab +environment as they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of Hellas, +and Janet sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her +education in the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful. + +She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to +dwell in exile, unacquainted with what they love. Desire was +incandescent within her breast. Desire for what? It would have been +some relief to know. She could not, like Lise, find joy and +forgetfulness at dance halls, at the "movies," at Slattery's Riverside +Park in summer, in "joy rides" with the Max Wylies of Hampton. And +beside, the Max Wylies were afraid of her. If at times she wished for +wealth, it was because wealth held the magic of emancipation from +surroundings against which her soul revolted. Vividly idealized but +unconfided was the memory of a seaside village, the scene of one of the +brief sojourns of her childhood, where the air was fragrant with the +breath of salt marshes, where she recalled, through the vines of a porch, +a shining glimpse of the sea at the end of a little street.... + +Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners' +Hall, that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the +store of Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes, +sheet iron and cooking utensils. Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was +happy, too: unlike the Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he +throve. He was very proud of the business in which he had invested his +savings, but he seemed to have other affairs lying blithely on his mind, +affairs of moment to the community, as the frequent presence of the huge +policemen, aldermen, and other important looking persons bore witness. +He hailed by name Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Syrians, and "French"; he +hailed Janet, too, with respectful cheerfulness, taking off his hat. He +possessed the rare, warm vitality that is irresistible. A native of +Hampton, still in his thirties, his sharp little nose and twinkling blue +eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is born and not made; his stiff hair had +a twist like the bristles in the cleaning rod of a gun. + +He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her. And she did not +understand herself! + +By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red from +exertion, had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists. She +disliked winter, the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but one day +she was moved by a quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the delicate tracery +against the sky made by the slender branches of the great elms and +maples. She halted on the pavement, her eyes raised, heedless of +passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the longing that could be so +oddly and unexpectedly aroused. + +Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip +of asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous +edifices indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity. +There were long stretches of "ten foot" buildings, so called on account +of the single story, their height deceptively enhanced by the +superimposition of huge and gaudy signs, one on top of another, +announcing the merits of "Stewart's Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's Oats, the +Digestible Breakfast Food," of graphophones and "spring heeled" shoes, +tobacco, and naphtha soaps. "No, We don't give Trading Stamps, Our +Products are Worth all You Pay." These "ten foot" stores were the +repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and millinery, and +interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The +Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and an +occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner. Here, +during those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a scaffolding +spanning the window of the store, might be seen a perspiring young man in +his shirt sleeves chalking up baseball scores for the benefit of a crowd +below. Then came the funereal, liver-coloured, long-windowed Hinckley +Block (1872), and on the corner a modern, glorified drugstore thrusting +forth plate glass bays--two on Faber Street and three on Stanley--filled +with cameras and candy, hot water bags, throat sprays, catarrh and kidney +cures, calendars, fountain pens, stationery, and handy alcohol lamps. +Flanking the sidewalks, symbolizing and completing the heterogeneous and +bewildering effect of the street were long rows of heavy hemlock trunks, +unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees bearing webs of wires. +Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs, trucks rumbled across +the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches behind startled +pedestrians. Janet was always galvanized into alertness here, Faber +Street being no place to dream. By night an endless procession moved up +one sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically at the flash-in and +flash-out electric, signs that kept the breakfast foods and ales, the +safety razors, soaps, and soups incessantly in the minds of a fickle +public. + +Two blocks from Faber Street was the North Canal, with a granite-paved +roadway between it and the monotonous row of company boarding houses. +Even in bright weather Janet felt a sense of oppression here; on dark, +misty mornings the stern, huge battlements of the mills lining the +farther bank were menacing indeed, bristling with projections, towers, +and chimneys, flanked by heavy walls. Had her experience included +Europe, her imagination might have seized the medieval parallel,--the +arched bridges flung at intervals across the water, lacking only chains +to raise them in case of siege. The place was always ominously +suggestive of impending strife. Janet's soul was a sensitive instrument, +but she suffered from an inability to find parallels, and thus to +translate her impressions intellectually. Her feeling about the mills +was that they were at once fortress and prison, and she a slave driven +thither day after day by an all-compelling power; as much a slave as +those who trooped in through the gates in the winter dawn, and wore down, +four times a day, the oak treads of the circular tower stairs. + +The sound of the looms was like heavy rain hissing on the waters of the +canal. + +The administrative offices of a giant mill such as the Chippering in +Hampton are labyrinthine. Janet did not enter by the great gates her +father kept, but walked through an open courtyard into a vestibule where, +day and night, a watchman stood; she climbed iron-shod stairs, passed the +doorway leading to the paymaster's suite, to catch a glimpse, behind the +grill, of numerous young men settling down at those mysterious and +complicated machines that kept so unerring a record, in dollars and +cents, of the human labour of the operatives. There were other suites for +the superintendents, for the purchasing agent; and at the end of the +corridor, on the south side of the mill, she entered the outer of the two +rooms reserved for Mr. Claude Ditmar, the Agent and general- in-chief +himself of this vast establishment. In this outer office, behind the +rail that ran the length of it, Janet worked; from the window where her +typewriter stood was a sheer drop of eighty feet or so to the river, +which ran here swiftly through a wide canon whose sides were formed by +miles and miles of mills, built on buttressed stone walls to retain the +banks. The prison-like buildings on the farther shore were also of +colossal size, casting their shadows far out into the waters; while in +the distance, up and down the stream, could be seen the delicate web of +the Stanley and Warren Street bridges, with trolley cars like toys +gliding over them, with insect pedestrians creeping along the footpaths. + +Mr. Ditmar's immediate staff consisted of Mr. Price, an elderly bachelor +of tried efficiency whose peculiar genius lay in computation, of a young +Mr. Caldwell who, during the four years since he had left Harvard, had +been learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet. Miss +Ottway was the agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable +woman with immense reserves seemingly inexhaustible. She had a deep, +masculine voice, not unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a +masculine manner of taking to any job that came to hand. Nerves were +things unknown to her: she was granite, Janet tempered steel. Janet was +the second stenographer, and performed, besides, any odd tasks that might +be assigned. + +There were, in the various offices of the superintendents, the paymaster +and purchasing agent, other young women stenographers whose companionship +Janet, had she been differently organized, might have found congenial, +but something in her refused to dissolve to their proffered friendship. +She had but one friend,--if Eda Rawle, who worked in a bank, and whom she +had met at a lunch counter by accident, may be called so. As has been +admirably said in another language, one kisses, the other offers a cheek: +Janet offered the cheek. All unconsciously she sought a relationship +rarely to be found in banks and business offices; would yield herself to +none other. The young women stenographers in the Chippering Mill, +respectable, industrious girls, were attracted by a certain indefinable +quality, but finding they made no progress in their advances, presently +desisted they were somewhat afraid of her; as one of them remarked, "You +always knew she was there." Miss Lottie Meyers, who worked in the office +of Mr. Orcutt, the superintendent across the hall, experienced a brief +infatuation that turned to hate. She chewed gum incessantly, Janet found +her cheap perfume insupportable; Miss Meyers, for her part, declared that +Janet was "queer" and "stuck up," thought herself better than the rest of +them. Lottie Meyers was the leader of a group of four or five which +gathered in the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly +into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange +persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to +relate, sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical +laughter. Janet detested these conversations. And the sex question, +subtly suggested if not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over +which she did not dare to ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be +degraded. Her feelings, concealed under an exterior of self-possession, +deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes became molten, and she was +frightened by a passion that made her tremble--a passion by no means +always consciously identified with men, embodying all the fierce +unexpressed and unsatisfied desires of her life. + +These emotions, often suggested by some hint of beauty, as of the sun +glinting on the river on a bright blue day, had a sudden way of +possessing her, and the longing they induced was pain. Longing for what? +For some unimagined existence where beauty dwelt, and light, where the +ecstasy induced by these was neither moiled nor degraded; where shame, as +now, might not assail her. Why should she feel her body hot with shame, +her cheeks afire? At such moments she would turn to the typewriter, her +fingers striking the keys with amazing rapidity, with extraordinary +accuracy and force,--force vaguely disturbing to Mr. Claude Ditmar as he +entered the office one morning and involuntarily paused to watch her. +She was unaware of his gaze, but her colour was like a crimson signal +that flashed to him and was gone. Why had he never noticed her before? +All these months, for more than a year, perhaps,--she had been in his +office, and he had not so much as looked at her twice. The unguessed +answer was that he had never surprised her in a vivid moment. He had a +flair for women, though he had never encountered any possessing the +higher values, and it was characteristic of the plane of his mental +processes that this one should remind him now of a dark, lithe panther, +tensely strung, capable of fierceness. The pain of having her scratch +him would be delectable. + +When he measured her it was to discover that she was not so little, and +the shoulder-curve of her uplifted arms, as her fingers played over the +keys, seemed to belie that apparent slimness. And had he not been +unacquainted with the subtleties of the French mind and language, he +might have classed her as a fausse maigre. Her head was small, her hair +like a dark, blurred shadow clinging round it. He wanted to examine her +hair, to see whether it would not betray, at closer range, an +imperceptible wave,--but not daring to linger he went into his office, +closed the door, and sat down with a sensation akin to weakness, somewhat +appalled by his discovery, considerably amazed at his previous stupidity. +He had thought of Janet--when she had entered his mind at all--as +unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this demureness as repression. +Her qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude Ditmar, had seen them +struck with fire. He wondered whether any other man had been as +fortunate. + +Later in the morning, quite casually, he made inquiries of Miss Ottway, +who liked Janet and was willing to do her a good turn. + +"Why, she's a clever girl, Mr. Ditmar, a good stenographer, and +conscientious in her work. She's very quick, too. + +"Yes, I've noticed that," Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have +it thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet's aptitude for +business. + +"She keeps to herself and minds her own affairs. You can see she comes +of good stock." Miss Ottway herself was proud of her New England blood. +"Her father, you know, is the gatekeeper down there. He's been +unfortunate." + +"You don't say--I didn't connect her with him. Fine looking old man. A +friend of mine who recommended him told me he'd seen better days ...." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +In spite of the surprising discovery in his office of a young woman of +such a disquieting, galvanic quality, it must not be supposed that Mr. +Claude Ditmar intended to infringe upon a fixed principle. He had +principles. For him, as for the patriarchs and householders of Israel, +the seventh commandment was only relative, yet hitherto he had held +rigidly to that relativity, laying down the sound doctrine that women and +business would not mix: or, as he put it to his intimates, no sensible +man would fool with a girl in his office. Hence it may be implied that +Mr. Ditmar's experiences with the opposite sex had been on a property +basis. He was one of those busy and successful persons who had never +appreciated or acquired the art of quasi-platonic amenities, whose idea +of a good time was limited to discreet excursions with cronies, likewise +busy and successful persons who, by reason of having married early and +unwisely, are strangers to the delights of that higher social intercourse +chronicled in novels and the public prints. If one may conveniently +overlook the joys of a companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible +to have a taste in women as in champagne or cigars. Mr. Ditmar preferred +blondes, and he liked them rather stout, a predilection that had led him +into matrimony with a lady of this description: a somewhat sticky, +candy-eating lady with a mania for card parties, who undoubtedly would +have dyed her hair if she had lived. He was not inconsolable, but he had +had enough of marriage to learn that it demands a somewhat exorbitant +price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained. + +He was left a widower with two children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of +twelve, both somewhat large for their ages. Amy attended the only +private institution for the instruction of her sex of which Hampton could +boast; George continued at a public school. The late Mrs. Ditmar for +some years before her demise had begun to give evidence of certain +restless aspirations to which American ladies of her type and situation +seem peculiarly liable, and with a view to their ultimate realization she +had inaugurated a Jericho-like campaign. Death had released Ditmar from +its increasing pressure. For his wife had possessed that admirable +substitute for character, persistence, had been expert in the use of +importunity, often an efficient weapon in the hands of the female +economically dependent. The daughter of a defunct cashier of the Hampton +National Bank, when she had married Ditmar, then one of the +superintendents of the Chippering and already a marked man, she had +deemed herself fortunate among women, looking forward to a life of ease +and idleness and candy in great abundance,--a dream temporarily shattered +by the unforeseen discomfort of bringing two children into the world, +with an interval of scarcely a year between them. Her parents from an +excess of native modesty having failed to enlighten her on this subject, +her feelings were those of outraged astonishment, and she was quite +determined not to repeat the experience a third time. Knowledge thus +belatedly acquired, for a while she abandoned herself to the satisfaction +afforded by the ability to take a commanding position in Hampton society, +gradually to become aware of the need of a more commodious residence. In +a certain kind of intuition she was rich. Her husband had meanwhile +become Agent of the Chippering Mill, and she strongly suspected that his +prudent reticence on the state of his finances was the best indication of +an increasing prosperity. He had indeed made money, been given many +opportunities for profitable investments; but the argument for social +pre- eminence did not appeal to him: tears and reproaches, +recriminations, when frequently applied, succeeded better; like many +married men, what he most desired was to be let alone; but in some +unaccountable way she had come to suspect that his preference for blondes +was of a more liberal nature than at first, in her innocence, she had +realized. She was jealous, too, of his cronies, in spite of the fact +that these gentlemen, when they met her, treated her with an elaborate +politeness; and she accused him with entire justice of being more +intimate with them than with her, with whom he was united in holy bonds. +The inevitable result of these tactics was the modern mansion in the +upper part of Warren Street, known as the "residential" district. Built +on a wide lot, with a garage on one side to the rear, with a cement +driveway divided into squares, and a wall of democratic height separating +its lawn from the sidewalk, the house may for the present be better +imagined than described. + +A pious chronicler of a more orthodox age would doubtless have deemed it +a judgment that Cora Ditmar survived but two years to enjoy the glories +of the Warren Street house. For a while her husband indulged in a +foolish optimism, only to learn that the habit of matrimonial blackmail, +once acquired, is not easily shed. Scarcely had he settled down to the +belief that by the gratification of her supreme desire he had achieved +comparative peace, than he began to suspect her native self-confidence of +cherishing visions of a career contemplating nothing less than the +eventual abandonment of Hampton itself as a field too limited for her +social talents and his business ability and bank account--at which she +was pleased to hint. Hampton suited Ditmar, his passion was the +Chippering Mill; and he was in process of steeling himself to resist, +whatever the costs, this preposterous plan when he was mercifully +released by death. Her intention of sending the children away to acquire +a culture and finish Hampton did not afford,--George to Silliston +Academy, Amy to a fashionable boarding school,--he had not opposed, yet +he did not take the idea with sufficient seriousness to carry it out. +The children remained at home, more or less--increasingly less--in the +charge of an elderly woman who acted as housekeeper. + +Ditmar had miraculously regained his freedom. And now, when he made +trips to New York and Boston, combining business with pleasure, there +were no questions asked, no troublesome fictions to be composed. More +frequently he was in Boston, where he belonged to a large and comfortable +club, not too exacting in regard to membership, and here he met his +cronies and sometimes planned excursions with them, automobile trips in +summer to the White Mountains or choice little resorts to spend Sundays +and holidays, generally taking with them a case of champagne and several +bags of golf sticks. He was fond of shooting, and belonged to a duck +club on the Cape, where poker and bridge were not tabooed. To his +intimates he was known as "Dit." Nor is it surprising that his attitude +toward women had become in general one of resentment; matrimony he now +regarded as unmitigated folly. At five and forty he was a vital, +dominating, dust-coloured man six feet and half an inch in height, +weighing a hundred and ninety pounds, and thus a trifle fleshy. When +relaxed, and in congenial company, he looked rather boyish, an aspect +characteristic of many American business men of to-day. + +His head was large, he wore his hair short, his features also proclaimed +him as belonging to a modern American type in that they were not +clear-cut, but rather indefinable; a bristling, short-cropped moustache +gave him a certain efficient, military look which, when introduced to +strangers as "Colonel," was apt to deceive them into thinking him an army +officer. The title he had once received as a member of the staff of the +governor of the state, and was a tribute to a gregariousness and +political influence rather than to a genius for the art of war. Ex +officio, as the agent of the Chippering Mill and a man of substance to +boot, he was "in" politics, hail fellow well met with and an individual +to be taken into account by politicians from the governor and member of +congress down. He was efficient, of course; he had efficient hands and +shrewd, efficient eyes, and the military impression was deepened by his +manner of dealing with people, his conversation being yea, yea and nay, +nay,--save with his cronies and those of the other sex from whom he had +something to gain. His clothes always looked new, of pronounced patterns +and light colours set aside for him by an obsequious tailor in Boston. + +If a human being in such an enviable position as that of agent of the +Chippering Mill can be regarded as property, it might be said that Mr. +Claude Ditmar belonged to the Chipperings of Boston, a family still +owning a controlling interest in the company. His loyalty to them and to +the mill he so ably conducted was the great loyalty of his life. For +Ditmar, a Chippering could do no wrong. It had been the keen eye of Mr. +Stephen Chippering that first had marked him, questioned him, recognized +his ability, and from the moment of that encounter his advance had been +rapid. When old Stephen had been called to his fathers, Ditmar's +allegiance was automatically, as it were, transferred to the two sons, +George and Worthington, already members of the board of directors. +Sometimes Ditmar called on them at their homes, which stood overlooking +the waters of the Charles River Basin. The attitude toward him of the +Chipperings and their wives was one of an interesting adjustment of +feudalism to democracy. They were fond of him, grateful to him, treating +him with a frank camaraderie that had in it not the slightest touch of +condescension, but Ditmar would have been the first to recognize that +there were limits to the intimacy. They did not, for instance--no doubt +out of consideration--invite him to their dinner parties or take him to +their club, which was not the same as that to which he himself belonged. +He felt no animus. Nor would he, surprising though it may seem, have +changed places with the Chipperings. At an early age, and quite +unconsciously, he had accepted property as the ruling power of the +universe, and when family was added thereto the combination was nothing +less than divine. + +There were times, especially during the long winters, when life became +almost unbearable for Janet, and she was seized by a desire to run away +from Fillmore Street, from the mills, from Hampton itself. Only she did +not know where to go, or how to get away. She was convinced of the +existence in the world of delightful spots where might be found congenial +people with whom it would be a joy to talk. Fillmore Street, certainly, +did not contain any such. The office was not so bad. It is true that in +the mornings, as she entered West Street, the sight of the dark facade of +the fortress-like structure, emblematic of the captivity in which she +passed her days, rarely failed to arouse in her sensations of oppression +and revolt; but here, at least, she discovered an outlet for her +energies; she was often too busy to reflect, and at odd moments she could +find a certain solace and companionship in the river, so intent, so +purposeful, so beautiful, so undisturbed by the inconcinnity, the clatter +and confusion of Hampton as it flowed serenely under the bridges and +between the mills toward the sea. Toward the sea! + +It was when, at night, she went back to Fillmore Street--when she thought +of the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in +at the door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew +leaden. In spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and +prided herself on cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with the smell of +cooking, and Janet, from the upper hall, had a glimpse of a thin, angular +woman with a scrawny neck, with scant grey hair tightly drawn into a +knot, in a gingham apron covering an old dress bending over the kitchen +stove. And occasionally, despite a resentment that fate should have +dealt thus inconsiderately with the family, Janet felt pity welling +within her. After supper, when Lise had departed with her best young +man, Hannah would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet to help +her with the dishes. + +"You work all day, you have a right to rest." + +"But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the +harder. With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized. +Mother and daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet +had a secret contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism. She loved her +mother, in a way, especially at certain times,--though she often wondered +why she was unable to realize more fully the filial affection of +tradition; but in moments of softening, such as these, she was filled +with rage at the thought of any woman endowed with energy permitting +herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such a fate as Hannah's: +divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been +better--anything but to be cheated out of life. Feeling the fires of +rebellion burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and +driving necessity she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether +it were possible that Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung +by inexpressible desires,-- desires in which the undiscovered spiritual +was so alarmingly compounded with the undiscovered physical. She would +have died rather than speak to Hannah of these unfulfilled experiences, +and the mere thought of confiding them to any person appalled her. Even +if there existed some wonderful, understanding being to whom she might be +able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of that kenosis +was too troubling to be dwelt upon. + +She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no +Virgil had as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that +realm. Her schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating +taste for literature; and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public +Library opposite the Common it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of +books whose authors and titles offered no clue to their contents. Her +few choices had not been happy, they had failed to interest and thrill... + +Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement +in the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose +heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims. Lise went out +into it, became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,--a +tendency Hannah found unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism +was not wholly proof. Scarce an evening went by without an expression of +uneasiness from Hannah. + +"She didn't happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?" +Hannah would query, when she had finished her work and put on her +spectacles to read the Banner. + +"To the movies, I suppose," Janet would reply. Although well aware that +her sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add +to Hannah's disquietude. And if she had little patience with Lise, she +had less with the helpless attitude of her parents. + +"Well," Hannah would add, "I never can get used to her going out nights +the way she does, and with young men and women I don't know anything +about. I wasn't brought up that way. But as long as she's got to work +for a living I guess there's no help for it." + +And she would glance at Edward. It was obviously due to his inability +adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced +to toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him. If +he heard, he acquiesced humbly, and in silence: more often than not he +was oblivious, buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his +papers spread out on the red cloth of the dining-room table, under the +lamp. Sometimes in his simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands +listeners he would read aloud to them a letter, recently received from a +distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus, let us say, who had migrated to +California in search of wealth and fame, and who had found neither. In +spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude of these western +members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to Edward. + +"He tells me they're going to give women the ballot,--doesn't appear to +be much concerned about his own womenfolks going to the polls." + +"Why shouldn't they, if they want to?" Janet would exclaim, though she +had given little thought to the question. + +Edward would mildly ignore this challenge. + +"He has a house on what they call Russian Hill, and he can watch the +vessels as they come in from Japan," he would continue in his precise +voice, emphasizing admirably the last syllables of the words "Russian," +"vessels," and "Japan." "Wouldn't you like to see the letter?" + +To do Hannah justice, although she was quite incapable of sharing his +passion, she frequently feigned an interest, took the letter, presently +handing it on to Janet who, in deciphering Alpheus's trembling +calligraphy, pondered over his manifold woes. Alpheus's son, who had had +a good position in a sporting goods establishment on Market Street, was +sick and in danger of losing it, the son's wife expecting an addition to +the family, the house on Russian Hill mortgaged. Alpheus, a veteran of +the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his reminiscences, but +the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters of solid +worth, and so far had refused to publish them.... Janet, as she read, +reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures, +of disappointed hopes; she wondered at her father's perennial interest in +failures,--provided they were those of his family; and the next evening, +as he wrote painfully on his ruled paper, she knew that he in turn was +pouring out his soul to Alpheus, recounting, with an emotion by no means +unpleasurable, to this sympathetic but remote relative the story of his +own failure! + +If the city of Hampton was emblematic of our modern world in which +haphazardness has replaced order, Fillmore Street may be likened to a +back eddy of the muddy and troubled waters, in which all sorts of flotsam +and jetsam had collected. Or, to find perhaps an even more striking +illustration of the process that made Hampton in general and Fillmore +Street in particular, one had only to take the trolley to Glendale, the +Italian settlement on the road leading to the old New England village of +Shrewsbury. Janet sometimes walked there, alone or with her friend Eda +Rawle. Disintegration itself--in a paradoxically pathetic attempt at +reconstruction--had built Glendale. Human hands, Italian hands. Nor, +surprising though it may seem, were these descendants of the people of +the Renaissance in the least offended by their handiwork. When the +southern European migration had begun and real estate became valuable, +one by one the more decorous edifices of the old American order had been +torn down and carried piecemeal by sons of Italy to the bare hills of +Glendale, there to enter into new combinations representing, to an eye +craving harmony, the last word of a chaos, of a mental indigestion, of a +colour scheme crying aloud to heaven for retribution. Standing alone and +bare amidst its truck gardens, hideous, extreme, though typical of the +entire settlement, composed of fragments ripped from once-appropriate +settings, is a house with a tiny body painted strawberry-red, with +scroll-work shutters a tender green; surmounting the structure and almost +equalling it in size is a sky-blue cupola, once the white crown of the +Sutter mansion, the pride of old Hampton. The walls of this dwelling +were wrested from the sides of Mackey's Tavern, while the shutters for +many years adorned the parsonage of the old First Church. Similarly, in +Hampton and in Fillmore Street, lived in enforced neighbourliness human +fragments once having their places in crystallized communities where +existence had been regarded as solved. Here there was but one order,--if +such it may be called,--one relationship, direct, or indirect, one +necessity claiming them all--the mills. + +Like the boards forming the walls of the shacks at Glendale, these human +planks torn from an earlier social structure were likewise warped, which +is to say they were dominated by obsessions. Edward's was the Bumpus +family; and Chris Auermann, who lived in the flat below, was convinced +that the history of mankind is a deplorable record of havoc caused by +women. Perhaps he was right, but the conviction was none the less an +obsession. He came from a little village near Wittenburg that has +scarcely changed since Luther's time. Like most residents of Hampton who +did not work in the mills, he ministered to those who did, or to those +who sold merchandise to the workers, cutting their hair in his barber +shop on Faber Street. + +The Bumpuses, save Lise, clinging to a native individualism and pride, +preferred isolation to companionship with the other pieces of driftwood +by which they were surrounded, and with which the summer season compelled +a certain enforced contact. When the heat in the little dining-room grew +unbearable, they were driven to take refuge on the front steps shared in +common with the household of the barber. It is true that the barber's +wife was a mild hausfrau who had little to say, and that their lodgers, +two young Germans who worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings +at a bowling club; but Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay +rum, would arrive promptly at quarter past eight, take off his coat, and +thus, as it were stripped for action, would turn upon the defenceless +Edward. + +"Vill you mention one great man--yoost one--who is not greater if the +vimmen leave him alone?" he would demand. "Is it Anthony, the conqueror +of Egypt and the East? I vill show you Cleopatra. Und Burns, and +Napoleon, the greatest man what ever lived--vimmen again. I tell you +there is no Elba, no St. Helena if it is not for the vimmen. Und vat +vill you say of Goethe?" + +Poor Edward could think of nothing to say of Goethe. + +"He is great, I grant you," Chris would admit, "but vat is he if the +vimmen leave him alone? Divine yoost that." And he would proceed to +cite endless examples of generals and statesmen whose wives or mistresses +had been their bane. Futile Edward's attempts to shift the conversation +to the subject of his own obsession; the German was by far the more +aggressive, he would have none of it. Perhaps if Edward had been willing +to concede that the Bumpuses had been brought to their present lowly +estate by the sinister agency of the fair sex Chris might conditionally +have accepted the theme. Hannah, contemptuously waving a tattered palm +leaf fan, was silent; but on one occasion Janet took away the barber's +breath by suddenly observing:-- + +"You never seem to think of the women whose lives are ruined by men, Mr. +Auermann." + +It was unheard-of, this invasion of a man's argument by a woman, and by a +young woman at that. He glared at her through his spectacles, took them +off, wiped them, replaced them, and glared at her again. He did not like +Janet; she was capable of what may be called a speaking silence, and he +had never been wholly unaware of her disapproval and ridicule. Perhaps +he recognized in her, instinctively, the potential qualities of that +emerging modern woman who to him was anathema. + +"It is somethings I don't think about," he said. + +He was a wizened little man with faience-blue eyes, and sat habitually +hunched up with his hands folded across his shins. + +"Nam fuit ante Helenam"--as Darwin quotes. Toward all the masculine +residents of Fillmore Street, save one, the barber's attitude was one of +unconcealed scorn for an inability to recognize female perfidy. With +Johnny Tiernan alone he refused to enter the lists. When the popular +proprietor of the tin shop came sauntering along the sidewalk with nose +uptilted, waving genial greetings to the various groups on the steps, +Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly change to one of fatuous +playfulness. + +"What's this I hear about giving the girls the vote, Chris?" Johnny +would innocently inquire, winking at Janet, invariably running his hand +through the wiry red hair that resumed its corkscrew twist as soon as he +released it. And Chris would as invariably reply:-- + +"You have the dandruffs--yes? You come to my shop, I give you +somethings...." + +Sometimes the barber, in search of a more aggressive adversary than +Edward, would pay visits, when as likely as not another neighbour with +profound convictions and a craving for proselytes would swoop down on the +defenceless Bumpuses: Joe Shivers, for instance, who lived in one of the +tenements above the cleaning and dyeing establishment kept by the Pappas +Bros., and known as "The Gentleman." In the daytime Mr. Shivers was a +model of acquiescence in a system he would have designated as one of +industrial feudalism, his duty being to examine the rolls of cloth as +they came from the looms of the Arundel Mill, in case of imperfections +handing them over to the women menders: at night, to borrow a vivid +expression from Lise, he was "batty in the belfry" on the subject of +socialism. Unlike the barber, whom he could not abide, for him the +cleavage of the world was between labour and capital instead of man and +woman; his philosophy was stern and naturalistic; the universe--the +origin of which he did not discuss--just an accidental assemblage of +capricious forces over which human intelligence was one day to triumph. +Squatting on the lowest step, his face upturned, by the light of the arc +sputtering above the street he looked like a yellow frog, his eager eyes +directed toward Janet, whom he suspected of intelligence. + +"If there was a God, a nice, kind, all-powerful God, would he permit what +happened in one of the loom-rooms last week? A Polak girl gets her hair +caught in the belt pfff!" He had a marvellously realistic gift when it +came to horrors: Janet felt her hair coming out by the roots. Although +she never went to church, she did not like to think that no God existed. +Of this Mr. Shivers was very positive. Edward, too, listened uneasily, +hemmed and hawed, making ineffectual attempts to combat Mr. Shivers's +socialism with a deeply-rooted native individualism that Shivers declared +as defunct as Christianity. + +"If it is possible for the workingman to rise under a capitalistic +system, why do you not rise, then? Why do I not rise? I'm as good as +Ditmar, I'm better educated, but we're all slaves. What right has a man +to make you and me work for him just because he has capital?" + +"Why, the right of capital," Edward would reply. + +Mr. Shivers, with the manner of one dealing with an incurable romanticism +and sentimentality, would lift his hands in despair. And in spite of the +fact that Janet detested him, he sometimes exercised over her a +paradoxical fascination, suggesting as he did unexplored intellectual +realms. She despised her father for not being able to crush the little +man. Edward would make pathetic attempts to capture the role Shivers had +appropriated, to be the practical party himself, to convict Shivers of +idealism. Socialism scandalized him, outraged, even more than atheism, +something within him he held sacred, and he was greatly annoyed because +he was unable adequately to express this feeling. + +"You can't change human nature, Mr. Shivers," Edward would insist in his +precise but ineffectual manner. "We all want property, you would accept +a fortune if it was offered to you, and so should I. Americans will +never become socialists." + +"But look at me, wasn't I born in Meriden, Connecticut? Ain't that +Yankee enough for you?" Thus Mr. Shivers sought blandly to confound him. + +A Yankee Shades of the Pilgrim fathers, of seven, generations of +Bumpuses! A Yankee who used his hands in that way, a Yankee with a nose +like that, a Yankee with a bald swathe down the middle of his crown and +bunches of black, moth- eaten hair on either side! But Edward, too +polite to descend to personalities, was silent.... + +In brief, this very politeness of Edward's, which his ancestors would +have scorned, this consideration and lack of self-assertion made him the +favourite prey of the many "characters" in Fillmore Street whose sanity +had been disturbed by pressure from above, in whose systems had lodged +the germs of those exotic social doctrines floating so freely in the air +of our modern industrial communities .... Chester Glenn remains for a +passing mention. A Yankee of Yankees, this, born on a New Hampshire +farm, and to the ordinary traveller on the Wigmore branch of the railroad +just a good-natured, round- faced, tobacco-chewing brakeman who would +take a seat beside ladies of his acquaintance aid make himself agreeable +until it was time to rise and bawl out, in the approved manner of his +profession, the name of the next station. Fillmore Street knew that the +flat visored cap which his corporation compelled him to wear covered a +brain into which had penetrated the maggot of the Single Tax. When he +encountered Mr. Shivers or Auermann the talk became coruscating.. + +Eda Rawle, Janet's solitary friend of these days, must also be mentioned, +though the friendship was merely an episode in Janet's life. Their first +meeting was at Grady's quick-lunch counter in Faber Street, which they +both frequented at one time, and the fact that each had ordered a ham +sandwich, a cup of coffee, and a confection--new to Grady's--known as a +Napoleon had led to conversation. + +Eda, of course, was the aggressor; she was irresistibly drawn, she would +not be repulsed. A stenographer in the Wessex National Bank, she boarded +with a Welsh family in Spruce Street; matter-of-fact, plodding, +commonplace, resembling--as Janet thought--a horse, possessing, indeed +many of the noble qualities of that animal, she might have been thought +the last person in the world to discern and appreciate in Janet the +hidden elements of a mysterious fire. In appearance Miss Rawle was of a +type not infrequent in Anglo-Saxon lands, strikingly blonde, with high +malar bones, white eyelashes, and eyes of a metallic blue, cheeks of an +amazing elasticity that worked rather painfully as she talked or smiled, +drawing back inadequate lips, revealing long, white teeth and vivid gums. +It was the craving in her for romance Janet assuaged; Eda's was the love +content to pour out, that demands little. She was capable of immolation. +Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though +in moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was +able to give such a meagre return for the wealth of its offering. + +In other moments, when the world seemed all disorder and chaos,--as Mr. +Shivers described it,--or when she felt within her, like demons, those +inexpressible longings and desires, leaping and straining, pulling her, +almost irresistibly, she knew not whither, Eda shone forth like a light +in the darkness, like the beacon of a refuge and a shelter. Eda had +faith in her, even when Janet had lost faith in herself: she went to Eda +in the same spirit that Marguerite went to church; though she, Janet, +more resembled Faust, being--save in these hours of lowered vitality--of +the forth-faring kind .... Unable to confess the need that drove her, +she arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's arms. Janet +was immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the masculine +trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one of +those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues +come as naturally as sun or air. Passion, when sanctified by matrimony, +was her ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it, +having read about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never +having experienced deeply its discomforts. Sanctified or unsanctified, +Janet regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently broached the +subject she recoiled. Once Eda exclaimed:-- + +"When you do fall in love, Janet, you must tell me all about it, every +word!" + +Janet blushed hotly, and was silent. In Eda's mind such an affair was a +kind of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a +volcanic eruption to turn the world red. Such was the difference between +them. + +Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or +sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra. Stereotyped on +Eda's face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was an +expression of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that vertical +line in her cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of white +teeth and red gums. It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom it +appeared as the logical reflection of what was passing on the screen; she +averted her glance from both, staring into her lap, filled with shame +that the relation between the sexes should be thus exposed to public +gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded.... There were, however, +marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and ships,--once a +fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic tongues of orange +flame leaping from tree to tree. The movies brought the world to +Hampton, the great world into which she longed to fare, brought the world +to her! Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets and muezzins from +the Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow resembling gilded +beets turned upside down; grey houses of parliament by the Thames, the +Tower of London, the Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal. Strange lands +indeed, and stranger peoples! booted Russians in blouses, naked +Equatorial savages tattooed and amazingly adorned, soldiers and sailors, +presidents, princes and emperors brought into such startling proximity +one could easily imagine one's self exchanging the time of day! +Incredible to Janet how the audiences, how even Eda accepted with +American complacency what were to her never-ending miracles; the yearning +to see more, to know more, became acute, like a pain, but even as she +sought to devour these scenes, to drink in every detail, with tantalizing +swiftness they were whisked away. They were peepholes in the walls of +her prison; and at night she often charmed herself to sleep with +remembered visions of wide, empty, treeshaded terraces reserved for +kings. + +But Eda, however complacent her interest in the scenes themselves, was +thrilled to the marrow by their effect on Janet, who was her medium. +Emerging from the vestibule of the theatre, Janet seemed not to see the +slushy street, her eyes shone with a silver light like that of a mountain +lake in a stormy sunset. And they walked in silence until Janet would +exclaim: + +"Oh Eda, wouldn't you love to travel!" + +Thus Eda Rawle was brought in contact with values she herself was +powerless to detect, and which did not become values until they had +passed through Janet. One "educative" reel they had seen had begun with +scenes in a lumber camp high in the mountains of Galicia, where grow +forests of the priceless pine that becomes, after years of drying and +seasoning, the sounding board of the Stradivarius and the harp. Even +then it must respond to a Player. Eda, though failing to apply this +poetic parallel, when alone in her little room in the Welsh +boarding-house often indulged in an ecstasy of speculation as to that +man, hidden in the mists of the future, whose destiny it would be to +awaken her friend. Hampton did not contain him,--of this she was sure; +and in her efforts to visualize him she had recourse to the movies, +seeking him amongst that brilliant company of personages who stood so +haughtily or walked so indifferently across the ephemeral brightness of +the screen. + +By virtue of these marvels of the movies: Hampton ugly and sordid Hampton! +--actually began for Janet to take on a romantic tinge. Were not the +strange peoples of the earth flocking to Hampton? She saw them arriving +at the station, straight from Ellis Island, bewildered, ticketed like +dumb animals, the women draped in the soft, exotic colours many of them +were presently to exchange for the cheap and gaudy apparel of Faber +Street. She sought to summon up in her mind the glimpses she had had of +the wonderful lands from which they had come, to imagine their lives in +that earlier environment. Sometimes she wandered, alone or with Eda, +through the various quarters of the city. Each quarter had a flavour of +its own, a synthetic flavour belonging neither to the old nor to the new, +yet partaking of both: a difference in atmosphere to which Janet was +keenly sensitive. In the German quarter, to the north, one felt a sort +of ornamental bleakness--if the expression may be permitted: the +tenements here were clean and not too crowded, the scroll-work on their +superimposed porches, like that decorating the Turnverein and the stem +Lutheran Church, was eloquent of a Teutonic inheritance: The Belgians +were to the west, beyond the base-ball park and the car barns, their grey +houses scattered among new streets beside the scarred and frowning face +of Torrey's hill. Almost under the hill itself, which threatened to roll +down on it, and facing a bottomless, muddy street, was the quaint little +building giving the note of foreign thrift, of socialism and shrewdness, +of joie de vivre to the settlement, the Franco-Belgian co-operative store, +with its salle de reunion above and a stage for amateur theatricals. +Standing in the mud outside, Janet would gaze through the tiny windows in +the stucco wall at the baskets prepared for each household laid in neat +rows beside the counter; at the old man with the watery blue eyes and +lacing of red in his withered cheeks who spoke no English, whose duty it +was to distribute the baskets to the women and children as they called. + +Turning eastward again, one came to Dey Street, in the heart of Hampton, +where Hibernian Hall stood alone and grim, sole testimony of the departed +Hibernian glories of a district where the present Irish rulers of the +city had once lived and gossiped and fought in the days when the mill +bells had roused the boarding-house keepers at half past four of a winter +morning. Beside the hall was a corner lot, heaped high with hills of +ashes and rubbish like the vomitings of some filthy volcano; the +unsightliness of which was half concealed by huge signs announcing the +merits of chewing gums, tobaccos, and cereals. But why had the departure +of the Irish, the coming of the Syrians made Dey Street dark, narrow, +mysterious, oriental? changed the very aspect of its architecture? Was +it the coffee-houses? One of these, in front of which Janet liked to +linger, was set weirdly into an old New England cottage, and had, +apparently, fathomless depths. In summer the whole front of it lay open +to the street, and here all day long, beside the table where the charcoal +squares were set to dry, could be seen saffron-coloured Armenians +absorbed in a Turkish game played on a backgammon board, their gentleness +and that of the loiterers looking on in strange contrast with their +hawk-like profiles and burning eyes. Behind this group, in the half light +of the middle interior, could be discerned an American soda-water +fountain of a bygone fashion, on its marble counter oddly shaped bottles +containing rose and violet syrups; there was a bottle- shaped stove, and +on the walls, in gilt frames, pictures evidently dating from the period +in American art that flourished when Franklin Pierce was President; and +there was an array of marble topped tables extending far back into the +shadows. Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard--suggestive of the +Arabian Nights, which Janet had never read--from which, occasionally, the +fat proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes. + +When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby. The street swarmed +with babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps. And in this +teeming, prolific street one could scarcely move without stepping on a +fat, almond eyed child, though some, indeed, were wheeled; wheeled in all +sorts of queer contrivances by one another, by fathers with ragged black +moustaches and eagle noses who, to the despair of mill superintendents, +had decided in the morning that three days' wages would since to support +their families for the week .... In the midst of the throng might be seen +occasionally the stout and comfortable and not too immaculate figure of a +shovel bearded Syrian priest, in a frock coat and square-topped "Derby" +hat, sailing along serenely, heedless of the children who scattered out +of his path. + +Nearby was the quarter of the Canadian French, scarcely now to be called +foreigners, though still somewhat reminiscent of the cramped little towns +in the northern wilderness of water and forest. On one corner stood +almost invariably a "Pharmacie Francaise"; the signs were in French, and +the elders spoke the patois. These, despite the mill pallor, retained in +their faces, in their eyes, a suggestion of the outdoor look of their +ancestors, the coureurs des bois, but the children spoke English, and the +young men, as they played baseball in the street or in the corner lots +might be heard shouting out derisively the cry of the section hands so +familiar in mill cities, "Doff, you beggars you, doff!" + +Occasionally the two girls strayed into that wide thoroughfare not far +from the canal, known by the classic name of Hawthorne, which the +Italians had appropriated to themselves. This street, too, in spite of +the telegraph poles flaunting crude arms in front of its windows, in +spite of the trolley running down its middle, had acquired a character, a +unity all its own, a warmth and picturesqueness that in the lingering +light of summer evenings assumed an indefinable significance. It was not +Italy, but it was something--something proclaimed in the ornate, leaning +lines of the pillared balconies of the yellow tenement on the second +block, in the stone-vaulted entrance of the low house next door, in +fantastically coloured walls, in curtained windows out of which leaned +swarthy, earringed women. Blocking the end of the street, in stern +contrast, was the huge Clarendon Mill with its sinister brick pillars +running up the six stories between the glass. Here likewise the +sidewalks overflowed with children, large-headed, with great, lustrous +eyes, mute, appealing, the eyes of cattle. Unlike American children, +they never seemed to be playing. Among the groups of elders gathered for +gossip were piratical Calabrians in sombre clothes, descended from Greek +ancestors, once the terrors of the Adriatic Sea. The women, lingering in +the doorways, hemmed in by more children, were for the most part squat +and plump, but once in a while Janet's glance was caught and held by a +strange, sharp beauty worthy of a cameo. + +Opposite the Clarendon Mill on the corner of East Street was a provision +store with stands of fruit and vegetables encroaching on the pavement. +Janet's eye was attracted by a box of olives. + +"Oh Eda," she cried, "do you remember, we saw them being picked--in the +movies? All those old trees on the side of a hill?" + +"Why, that's so," said Eda. "You never would have thought anything'd +grow on those trees." + +The young Italian who kept the store gave them a friendly grin. + +"You lika the olives?" he asked, putting some of the shining black fruit +into their hands. Eda bit one dubiously with her long, white teeth, and +giggled. + +"Don't they taste funny!" she exclaimed. + +"Good--very good," he asserted gravely, and it was to Janet he turned, as +though recognizing a discrimination not to be found in her companion. +She nodded affirmatively. The strange taste of the fruit enhanced her +sense of adventure, she tried to imagine herself among the gatherers in +the grove; she glanced at the young man to perceive that he was tall and +well formed, with remarkably expressive eyes almost the colour of the +olives themselves. It surprised her that she liked him, though he was an +Italian and a foreigner: a certain debonnair dignity in him appealed to +her--a quality lacking in many of her own countrymen. + +And she wanted to talk to him about Italy,--only she did not know how to +begin,--when a customer appeared, an Italian woman who conversed with him +in soft, liquid tones that moved her .... + +Sometimes on these walks--especially if the day were grey and +sombre--Janet's sense of romance and adventure deepened, became more +poignant, charged with presage. These feelings, vague and unaccountable, +she was utterly unable to confide to Eda, yet the very fear they inspired +was fascinating; a fear and a hope that some day, in all this Babel of +peoples, something would happen! It was as though the conflicting soul +of the city and her own soul were one.... + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Lise was the only member of the Bumpus family who did not find +uncongenial such distractions and companionships as were offered by the +civilization that surrounded them. The Bagatelle she despised; that was +slavery--but slavery out of which she might any day be snatched, like +Leila Hawtrey, by a prince charming who had made a success in life. +Success to Lise meant money. Although what some sentimental sociologists +might call a victim of our civilization, Lise would not have changed it, +since it produced not only Lise herself, but also those fabulous +financiers with yachts and motors and town and country houses she read +about in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers. It contained her +purgatory, which she regarded in good conventional fashion as a mere +temporary place of detention, and likewise the heaven toward which she +strained, the dwelling-place of light. In short, her philosophy was that +of the modern, orthodox American, tinged by a somewhat commercialized +Sunday school tradition of an earlier day, and highly approved by the +censors of the movies. The peculiar kind of abstinence once +euphemistically known as "virtue," particularly if it were combined with +beauty, never failed of its reward. Lise, in this sense, was indeed +virtuous, and her mirror told her she was beautiful. Almost anything +could happen to such a lady: any day she might be carried up into heaven +by that modern chariot of fire, the motor car, driven by a celestial +chauffeur. + +One man's meat being another's poison, Lise absorbed from the movies an +element by which her sister Janet was repelled. A popular production +known as "Leila of Hawtrey's" contained her creed,--Hawtrey's being a +glittering metropolitan restaurant where men of the world are wont to +gather and discuss the stock market, and Leila a beautiful, blonde and +orphaned waitress upon whom several of the fashionable frequenters had +exercised seductive powers in vain. They lay in wait for her at the side +entrance, followed her, while one dissipated and desperate person, +married, and said to move in the most exclusive circles, sent her an +offer of a yearly income in five figures, the note being reproduced on +the screen, and Leila pictured reading it in her frigid hall-bedroom. +There are complications; she is in debt, and the proprietor of Hawtrey's +has threatened to discharge her and in order that the magnitude of the +temptation may be most effectively realized the vision appears of Leila +herself, wrapped in furs, stepping out of a limousine and into an +elevator lifting her to an apartment containing silk curtains, a Canet +bed, a French maid, and a Pomeranian. Virtue totters, but triumphs, +being reinforced by two more visions the first of these portrays Leila, +prematurely old, dragging herself along pavements under the metallic +Broadway lights accosting gentlemen in evening dress; and the second +reveals her in the country, kneeling beside a dying mother's bed, giving +her promise to remain true to the Christian teachings of her childhood. + +And virtue is rewarded, lavishly, as virtue should be, in dollars and +cents, in stocks and bonds, in pearls and diamonds. Popular fancy takes +kindly to rough but honest westerners who have begun life in flannel +shirts, who have struck gold and come to New York with a fortune but +despising effeteness; such a one, tanned by the mountain sun, embarrassed +in raiment supplied by a Fifth Avenue tailor, takes a table one evening +at Hawtrey's and of course falls desperately in love. He means marriage +from the first, and his faith in Leila is great enough to survive what +appears to be an almost total eclipse of her virtue. Through the +machinations of the influential villain, and lured by the false pretence +that one of her girl friends is ill, she is enticed into a mysterious +house of a sinister elegance, and apparently irretrievably compromised. +The westerner follows, forces his way through the portals, engages the +villain, and vanquishes him. Leila becomes a Bride. We behold her, at +the end, mistress of one of those magnificent stone mansions with grilled +vestibules and negro butlers into whose sacred precincts we are +occasionally, in the movies, somewhat breathlessly ushered--a long way +from Hawtrey's restaurant and a hall- bedroom. A long way, too, from the +Bagatelle and Fillmore Street--but to Lise a way not impossible, nor even +improbable. + +This work of art, conveying the moral that virtue is an economic asset, +made a great impression on Lise. Good Old Testament doctrine, set forth +in the Book of Job itself. And Leila, pictured as holding out for a +higher price and getting it, encouraged Lise to hold out also. Mr. +Wiley, in whose company she had seen this play, and whose likeness filled +the plush and silver-plated frame on her bureau, remained ironically +ignorant of the fact that he had paid out his money to make definite an +ambition, an ideal hitherto nebulous in the mind of the lady whom he +adored. Nor did Lise enlighten him, being gifted with a certain +inserutableness. As a matter of fact it had never been her intention to +accept him, but now that she was able concretely to visualize her +Lochinvar of the future, Mr. Whey's lack of qualifications became the +more apparent. In the first place, he had been born in Lowell and had +never been west of Worcester; in the second, his salary was sixteen +dollars a week: it is true she had once fancied the Scottish terrier +style of hair-cut abruptly ending in the rounded line of the shaven neck, +but Lochinvar had been close-cropped. Mr. Wiley, close-cropped, would +have resembled a convict. + +Mr. Wiley was in love, there could be no doubt about that, and if he had +not always meant marriage, he meant it now, having reached a state where +no folly seems preposterous. The manner of their meeting had had just +the adventurous and romantic touch that Lise liked, one of her favourite +amusements in the intervals between "steadies" being to walk up and down +Faber Street of an evening after supper, arm in arm with two or three +other young ladies, all chewing gum, wheeling into store windows and +wheeling out again, pretending the utmost indifference to melting glances +cast in their direction. An exciting sport, though incomprehensible to +masculine intelligence. It was a principle with Lise to pay no attention +to any young man who was not "presented," those venturing to approach her +with the ready formula "Haven't we met before?" being instantly +congealed. She was strict as to etiquette. But Mr. Wiley, it seemed, +could claim acquaintance with Miss Schuler, one of the ladies to whose +arm Lise's was linked, and he had the further advantage of appearing in a +large and seductive touring car, painted green, with an eagle poised +above the hood and its name, Wizard, in a handwriting rounded and bold, +written in nickel across the radiator. He greeted Miss Schuler +effusively, but his eye was on Lise from the first, and it was she he +took with, him in the front seat, indifferent to the giggling behind. +Ever since then Lise had had a motor at her disposal, and on Sundays they +took long "joy rides" beyond the borders of the state. But it must not +be imagined that Mr. Whey was the proprietor of the vehicle; nor was he a +chauffeur,--her American pride would not have permitted her to keep +company with a chauffeur: he was the demonstrator for the Wizard, +something of a wizard himself, as Lise had to admit when they whizzed +over the tarvia of the Riverside Boulevard at fifty or sixty miles an +hour with the miner cut out--a favourite diversion of Mr. Whey's, who did +not feel he was going unless he was accompanied by a noise like that of a +mitrailleuse in action. Lise, experiencing a ravishing terror, hung on +to her hat with one hand and to Mr. Wiley with the other, her code +permitting this; permitting him also, occasionally, when they found +themselves in tenebrous portions of Slattery's Riverside Park, to put his +arm around her waist and kiss her. So much did Lise's virtue allow, and +no more, the result being that he existed in a tantalizing state of hope +and excitement most detrimental to the nerves. + +He never lost, however,--in public at least, or before Lise's +family,--the fine careless, jaunty air of the demonstrator, of the +free-lance for whom seventy miles an hour has no terrors; the automobile, +apparently, like the ship, sets a stamp upon its votaries. No +Elizabethan buccaneer swooping down on defenceless coasts ever exceeded +in audacity Mr. Wiley's invasion of quiet Fillmore Street. He would draw +up with an ear-splitting screaming of brakes in front of the clay-yellow +house, and sometimes the muffler, as though unable to repress its +approval of the performance, would let out a belated pop that never +failed to jar the innermost being of Auermann, who had been shot at, or +rather shot past, by an Italian, and knew what it was. He hated +automobiles, he hated Mr. Wiley. + +"Vat you do?" he would demand, glaring. + +And Mr. Wiley would laugh insolently. + +"You think I done it, do you, Dutchie--huh!" + +He would saunter past, up the stairs, and into the Bumpus dining-room, +often before the family had finished their evening meal. Lise alone made +him welcome, albeit demurely; but Mr. Wiley, not having sensibilities, +was proof against Hannah's coldness and Janet's hostility. With unerring +instinct he singled out Edward as his victim. + +"How's Mr. Bumpus this evening?" he would genially inquire. + +Edward invariably assured Mr. Wiley that he was well, invariably took a +drink of coffee to emphasize the fact, as though the act of lifting his +cup had in it some magic to ward off the contempt of his wife and elder +daughter. + +"Well, I've got it pretty straight that the Arundel's going to run +nights, starting next week," Lise's suitor would continue. + +And to save his soul Edward could not refrain from answering, "You don't +say so!" He feigned interest in the information that the Hampton Ball +Team, owing to an unsatisfactory season, was to change managers next +year. Mr. Wiley possessed the gift of gathering recondite bits of news, +he had confidence in his topics and in his manner of dealing with them; +and Edward, pretending to be entertained, went so far in his politeness +as to ask Mr. Wiley if he had had supper. + +"I don't care if I sample one of Mis' Bumpus's doughnuts," Mr. Wiley +would reply politely, reaching out a large hand that gave evidence, in +spite of Sapolio, of an intimacy with grease cups and splash pans. "I +guess there's nobody in this burg can make doughnuts to beat yours, Miss +Bumpus." + +If she had only known which doughnut he would take; Hannah sometimes +thought she might have been capable of putting arsenic in it. Her icy +silence did not detract from the delights of his gestation. + +Occasionally, somewhat to Edward's alarm, Hannah demanded: "Where are you +taking Lise this evening?" + +Mr. Wiley's wisdom led him to be vague. + +"Oh, just for a little spin up the boulevard. Maybe we'll pick up Ella +Schuler and one or two other young ladies." + +Hannah and Janet knew very well he had no intention of doing this, and +Hannah did not attempt to conceal her incredulity. As a matter of fact, +Lise sometimes did insist on a "party." + +"I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock. That's late enough for +a girl who works to be out. It's late enough for any girl." + +"Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily. + +Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley +and Lise understood she had no power. Lise went to put on her hat; if +she skimped her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening +when she came home from the store, and was often late for supper. In the +meantime, while Lise was in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward +would contemptibly continue the conversation, fingering the Evening +Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. Wiley helped himself boldly to +another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed-- elaborate precautions to +spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to be the last +creation in male attire. Behind a plate glass window in Faber Street, +belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded every +important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college" men, +only the week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically +folded, combined with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and +"torture" collar--lures for the discriminating. Owing to certain +expenses connected with Lise, he had been unable to acquire the shirt and +the tie, but he had bought the suit in the hope and belief that she would +find him irresistible therein. It pleased him, too, to be taken for a +"college" man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened shoulders and +diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been spent in +vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite his infatuation for the +younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent--would mistake him for +an undergraduate of Harvard,--an imposition concerning which he had no +scruples. But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated..... + +When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure, +triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval of +silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah +snatched up. + +"I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her +shoulder once to Edward. + +"Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously. + +"Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as you +can." + +Edward would grow warm with a sense of injustice, the inference being +that he was to blame for Mr. Wiley; if he had been a different kind of +father another sort of suitor would be courting Lise. + +"I have to be civil," he protested. He pronounced that, word "civil" +exquisitely, giving equal value to both syllables. + +"Civil!" Hannah scoffed, as she left the room; and to Janet, who had +followed her into the kitchen, she added: "That's the trouble with your +father, he's always be'n a little too civil. Edward Bumpus is just as +simple as a child, he's afraid of offending folks' feelings .... Think +of being polite to that Whey!" In those two words Hannah announced +eloquently her utter condemnation of the demonstrator of the Wizard. It +was characteristic of her, however, when she went back for another load +of dishes and perceived that Edward was only pretending to read his +Banner, to attempt to ease her husband's feelings. She thought it queer +because she was still fond of Edward Bumpus, after all he had "brought on +her." + +"It's Lise," she said, as though speaking to Janet, "she attracts 'em. +Sometimes I just can't get used to it that she's my daughter. I don't +know who she takes after. She's not like any of my kin, nor any of the +Bumpuses." + +"What can you do?" asked Edward. "You can't order him out of the house. +It's better for him to come here. And you can't stop Lise from going +with him-- she's earning her own money...." + +They had talked over the predicament before, and always came to the same +impasse. In the privacy of the kitchen Hannah paused suddenly in her +energetic rubbing of a plate and with supreme courage uttered a question. + +"Janet, do you calculate he means anything wrong?" + +"I don't know what he means," Janet replied, unwilling to give Mr. Wiley +credit for anything, "but I know this, that Lise is too smart to let him +take advantage of her." + +Hannah ruminated. Cleverness as the modern substitute for feminine +virtue did not appeal to her, but she let it pass. She was in no mood to +quarrel with any quality that would ward off disgrace. + +"I don't know what to make of Lise--she don't appear to have any +principles...." + +If the Wiley affair lasted longer than those preceding it, this was +because former suitors had not commanded automobiles. When Mr. Wiley +lost his automobile he lost his luck--if it may be called such. One +April evening, after a stroll with Eda, Janet reached home about nine +o'clock to find Lise already in their room, to remark upon the absence of +Mr. Wiley's picture from the frame. + +"I'm through with him," Lise declared briefly, tugging at her hair. + +"Through with him?" Janet repeated. + +Lise paused in her labours and looked at her sister steadily. "I handed +him the mit--do you get me?" + +"But why?" + +"Why? I was sick of him--ain't that enough? And then he got mixed up +with a Glendale trolley and smashed his radiator, and the Wizard people +sacked him. I always told him he was too fly. It's lucky for him I +wasn't in the car." + +"It's lucky for you," said Janet. Presently she inquired curiously: +"Aren't you sorry?" + +"Nix." Lise shook her head, which was now bowed, her face hidden by +hair. "Didn't I tell you I was sick of him? But he sure was some +spender," she added, as though in justice bound to give him his due. + +Janet was shocked by the ruthlessness of it, for Lise appeared relieved, +almost gay. She handed Janet a box containing five peppermint +creams--all that remained of Mr. Wiley's last gift. + +One morning in the late spring Janet crossed the Warren Street bridge, +the upper of the two spider-like structures to be seen from her office +window, spanning the river beside the great Hampton dam. The day, +dedicated to the memory of heroes fallen in the Civil War, the thirtieth +of May, was a legal holiday. Gradually Janet had acquired a dread of +holidays as opportunities never realized, as intervals that should have +been filled with unmitigated joys, and yet were invariably wasted, +usually in walks with Eda Rawle. To-day, feeling an irresistible longing +for freedom, for beauty, for adventure, for quest and discovery of she +knew not what, she avoided Eda, and after gazing awhile at the sunlight +dancing in the white mist below the falls, she walked on, southward, +until she had left behind her the last straggling houses of the city and +found herself on a wide, tarvia road that led, ultimately, to Boston. So +read the sign. + +Great maples, heavy with leaves, stood out against the soft blue of the +sky, and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls, +the thatches of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted +pine a pungent, reviving perfume. Sometimes she stopped to rest on the +pine needles, and walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because +it was the easiest way. There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards, +masses of lilacs whose purple she drank in eagerly; the air, which had +just a tang of New England sharpness, was filled with tender sounds, the +clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of birds, the rustling of maple +leaves in the fitful breeze. A chipmunk ran down an elm and stood +staring at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save for his +quivering tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as +though he held the secret of life she craved. But he darted away. + +She looked around her unceasingly, at the sky, at the trees, at the +flowers and ferns and fields, at the vireos and thrushes, the robins and +tanagers gashing in and out amidst the foliage, and she was filled with a +strange yearning to expand and expand until she should become a part of +all nature, be absorbed into it, cease to be herself. Never before had +she known just that feeling, that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine +discontent .... Occasionally, intruding faintly upon the countryside +peace, she was aware of a distant humming sound that grew louder and +louder until there shot roaring past her an automobile filled with noisy +folk, leaving behind it a suffocating cloud of dust. Even these +intrusions, reminders of the city she had left, were powerless to destroy +her mood, and she began to skip, like a schoolgirl, pausing once in a +while to look around her fearfully, lest she was observed; and it pleased +her to think that she had escaped forever, that she would never go back: +she cried aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back," +keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost +intoxicated, delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly, +on a bank of ferns, burying her face in them. She had really stopped +because a pebble had got into her shoe, and as she took it out she looked +at her bare heel and remarked ruefully:-- + +"Those twenty-five cent stockings aren't worth buying!" + +Economic problems, however, were powerless to worry her to-day, when the +sun shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running +through the culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour +reminding her of the flower store where her sister Lise had once been +employed. But at length she arose, and after an hour or more of +sauntering the farming landscape was left behind, the crumbling stone +fences were replaced by a well-kept retaining wall capped by a privet +hedge, through which, between stone pillars, a driveway entered and +mounted the shaded slope, turning and twisting until lost to view. But +afar, standing on the distant crest, through the tree trunks and foliage +Janet saw one end of the mansion to which it led, and ventured timidly +but eagerly in among the trees in the hope of satisfying her new-born +curiosity. Try as she would, she never could get any but disappointing +and partial glimpses of a house which, because of the mystery of its +setting, fired her imagination, started her to wondering why it was that +some were permitted to live in the midst of such beauty while she was +condemned to spend her days in Fillmore Street and the prison of the +mill. She was not even allowed to look at it! The thought was like a +cloud across the sun. + +However, when she had regained the tarvia road and walked a little way +the shadow suddenly passed, and she stood surprised. The sight of a long +common with its ancient trees in the fullness of glory, dense maples, +sturdy oaks, strong, graceful elms that cast flickering, lacy shadows +across the road filled her with satisfaction, with a sense of peace +deepened by the awareness, in the background, ranged along the common on +either side, of stately, dignified buildings, each in an appropriate +frame of foliage. With the essence rather than the detail of all this +her consciousness became steeped; she was naturally ignorant of the great +good fortune of Silliston Academy of having been spared with one or two +exceptions--donations during those artistically lean years of the +nineteenth century when American architecture affected the Gothic, the +Mansard, and the subsequent hybrid. She knew this must be Silliston, the +seat of that famous academy of which she had heard. + +The older school buildings and instructors' houses, most of them white or +creamy yellow, were native Colonial, with tall, graceful chimneys and +classic pillars and delicate balustrades, eloquent at once of the racial +inheritance of the Republic and of a bygone individuality, dignity, and +pride. And the modern architect, of whose work there was an abundance, +had graciously and intuitively held this earlier note and developed it. +He was an American, but an American who had been trained. The result was +harmony, life as it should proceed, the new growing out of the old. And +no greater tribute can be paid to Janet Bumpus than that it pleased her, +struck and set exquisitely vibrating within her responsive chords. For +the first time in her adult life she stood in the presence of tradition, +of a tradition inherently if unconsciously the innermost reality of her +being a tradition that miraculously was not dead, since after all the +years it had begun to put forth these vigorous shoots.... + +What Janet chiefly realized was the delicious, contented sense of having +come, visually at least, to the home for which she had longed. But her +humour was that of a child who has strayed, to find its true dwelling +place in a region of beauty hitherto unexplored and unexperienced, +tinged, therefore, with unreality, with mystery,--an effect enhanced by +the chance stillness and emptiness of the place. She wandered up and +down the Common, whose vivid green was starred with golden dandelions; +and then, spying the arched and shady vista of a lane, entered it, bent +on new discoveries. It led past one of the newer buildings, the +library--as she read in a carved inscription over the door--plunged into +shade again presently to emerge at a square farmhouse, ancient and +weathered, with a great square chimney thrust out of the very middle of +the ridge-pole,--a landmark left by one of the earliest of Silliston's +settlers. Presiding over it, embracing and protecting it, was a splendid +tree. The place was evidently in process of reconstruction and repair, +the roof had been newly shingled, new frames, with old-fashioned, tiny +panes had been put in the windows; a little garden was being laid out +under the sheltering branches of the tree, and between the lane and the +garden, half finished, was a fence of an original and pleasing design, +consisting of pillars placed at intervals with upright pickets between, +the pickets sawed in curves, making a line that drooped in the middle. +Janet did not perceive the workman engaged in building this fence until +the sound of his hammer attracted her attention. His back was bent, he +was absorbed in his task. + +"Are there any stores near here?" she inquired. + +He straightened up. "Why yes," he replied, "come to think of it, I have +seen stores, I'm sure I have." + +Janet laughed; his expression, his manner of speech were so delightfully +whimsical, so in keeping with the spirit of her day, and he seemed to +accept her sudden appearance in the precise make-believe humour she could +have wished. And yet she stood a little struck with timidity, puzzled by +the contradictions he presented of youth and age, of shrewdness, +experience and candour, of gentility and manual toil. He must have been +about thirty-five; he was hatless, and his hair, uncombed but not +unkempt, was greying at the temples; his eyes--which she noticed +particularly--were keen yet kindly, the irises delicately stencilled in a +remarkable blue; his speech was colloquial yet cultivated, his workman's +clothes belied his bearing. + +"Yes, there are stores, in the village," he went on, "but isn't it a +holiday, or Sunday--perhaps--or something of the kind?" + +"It's Decoration Day," she reminded him, with deepening surprise. + +"So it is! And all the storekeepers have gone on picnics in their +automobiles, or else they're playing golf. Nobody's working today." + +"But you--aren't you working?" she inquired. + +"Working?" he repeated. "I suppose some people would call it work. I--I +hadn't thought of it in that way." + +"You mean--you like it," Janet was inspired to say. + +"Well, yes," he confessed. "I suppose I do." + +Her cheeks dimpled. If her wonder had increased, her embarrassment had +flown, and he seemed suddenly an old acquaintance. She had, however, +profound doubts now of his being a carpenter. + +"Were you thinking of going shopping?" he asked, and at the very +ludicrousness of the notion she laughed again. She discovered a keen +relish for this kind of humour, but it was new to her experience, and she +could not cope with it. + +"Only to buy some crackers, or a sandwich," she replied, and blushed. + +"Oh," he said. "Down in the village, on the corner where the cars stop, +is a restaurant. It's not as good as the Parker House in Boston, I +believe, but they do have sandwiches, yes, and coffee. At least they +call it coffee." + +"Oh, thank you," she said. + +"You'd better wait till you try it," he warned her. + +"Oh, I don't mind, I don't want much." And she was impelled to add: +"It's such a beautiful day." + +"It's absurd to get hungry on such a day--absurd," he agreed. + +"Yes, it is," she laughed. "I'm not really hungry, but I haven't time to +get back to Hampton for dinner." Suddenly she grew hot at the thought +that he might suspect her of hinting. "You see, I live in Hampton," she +went on hurriedly, "I'm a stenographer there, in the Chippering Mill, and +I was just out for a walk, and--I came farther than I intended." She had +made it worse. + +But he said, "Oh, you came from Hampton!" with an intonation of surprise, +of incredulity even, that soothed and even amused while it did not +deceive her. Not that the superior intelligence of which she had begun to +suspect him had been put to any real test by the discovery of her home, +and she was quite sure her modest suit of blue serge and her $2.99 pongee +blouse proclaimed her as a working girl of the mill city. "I've been to +Hampton," he declared, just as though it were four thousand miles away +instead of four. + +"But I've never been here before, to Silliston," she responded in the +same spirit: and she added wistfully, "it must be nice to live in such a +beautiful place as this!" + +"Yes, it is nice," he agreed. "We have our troubles, too,--but it's +nice." + +She ventured a second, appraising glance. His head, which he carried a +little flung back, his voice, his easy and confident bearing--all these +contradicted the saw and the hammer, the flannel shirt, open at the neck, +the khaki trousers still bearing the price tag. And curiosity beginning +to get the better of her, she was emboldened to pay a compliment to the +fence. If one had to work, it must be a pleasure to work on things +pleasing to the eye--such was her inference. + +"Why, I'm glad you like it," he said heartily. "I was just hoping some +one would come along here and admire it. Now--what colour would you +paint it?" + +"Are you a painter, too?" + +"After a fashion. I'm a sort of man of all work--I thought of painting +it white, with the pillars green." + +"I think that would be pretty," she answered, judicially, after a +moment's thought. "What else can you do?" + +He appeared to be pondering his accomplishments. + +"Well, I can doctor trees," he said, pointing an efficient finger at the +magnificent maple sheltering, like a guardian deity, the old farmhouse. +"I put in those patches." + +"They're cement," she exclaimed. "I never heard of putting cement in +trees." + +"They don't seem to mind." + +"Are the holes very deep?" + +"Pretty deep." + +"But I should think the tree would be dead." + +"Well, you see the life of a tree is right under the bark. If you can +keep the outer covering intact, the tree will live." + +"Why did you let the holes get so deep?" + +"I've just come here. The house was like the tree the shingles all +rotten, but the beams were sound. Those beams were hewn out of the +forest two hundred and fifty years ago." + +"Gracious!" said Janet. "And how old is the tree?" + +"I should say about a hundred. I suppose it wouldn't care to admit it." + +"How do you know?" she inquired. + +"Oh, I'm very intimate with trees. I find out their secrets." + +"It's your house!" she exclaimed, somewhat appalled by the discovery. + +"Yes--yes it is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an +indescribably comical manner down at his clothes. His gesture, his +expression implied that her mistake was a most natural one. + +"Excuse me, I thought--" she began, blushing hotly, yet wanting to laugh +again. + +"I don't blame you--why shouldn't you?" he interrupted her. "I haven't +got used to it yet, and there is something amusing about--my owning a +house. When the parlour's finished I'll have to wear a stiff collar, I +suppose, in order to live up to it." + +Her laughter broke forth, and she tried to imagine him in a stiff +collar.... But she was more perplexed than ever. She stood balancing on +one foot, poised for departure. + +"I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a +formal visit. + +"Don't hurry," he protested cordially. "Why hurry back to Hampton?" + +"I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to +contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, passionate quality +which had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar. She stood transformed. "I hate it!" +she declared. "It's so ugly, I never want to see it again." + +"Yes, it is ugly," he confessed. "Since you admit it, I don't mind +saying so. But it's interesting, in a way." Though his humorous moods +had delighted her, she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more +serious. + +"It is interesting," she agreed. She was almost impelled to tell him +why, in her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton +interesting, but a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she +divined in him restrained her. She was curious to know what this man saw +in Hampton. His opinion would be worth something. Unlike her neighbours +in Fillmore Street, he was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty"; +he had an air of fine sanity, of freedom, of detachment,--though the word +did not occur to her; he betrayed no bitter sense of injustice, and his +beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession of a single panacea. "Why do +you think it's interesting?" she demanded. + +"Well, I'm always expecting to hear that it's blown up. It reminds me of +nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling. + +She repeated the word. + +"An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite. They say a man once +made it by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never +went back." + +"I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement. "All +those foreigners! I've felt it that something would happen, some day, it +frightened me, and yet I wished that something would happen. Only, I +never would have thought of--nitro-glycerine." + +She was unaware of the added interest in his regard. But he answered +lightly enough:-- + +"Oh, not only the foreigners. Human chemicals--you can't play with human +chemicals any more than you can play with real ones--you've got to know +something about chemistry." + +This remark was beyond her depth. + +"Who is playing with them?" she asked. + +"Everybody--no one in particular. Nobody seems to know much about them, +yet," he replied, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject. A robin +with a worm in its bill was hopping across the grass; he whistled softly, +the bird stopped, cocking its head and regarding them. Suddenly, in +conflict with her desire to remain indefinitely talking with this strange +man, Janet felt an intense impulse to leave. She could bear the +conversation no longer, she might burst into tears--such was the +extraordinary effect he had produced on her. + +"I must go,--I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said. + +"Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand .... When she +had walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him +leaning idly against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in +friendly fashion. + +For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously, +keeping time with her racing thoughts. She walked about the Common, +seeing nothing, paying no attention to the passers-by, who glanced at her +curiously. But at length as she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and +vigorous body became imperative, and realizing suddenly that she was +tired and hungry, sought and found the little restaurant in the village +below. She journeyed back to Hampton pondering what this man had said to +her; speculating, rather breathlessly, whether he had been impelled to +conversation by a natural kindness and courtesy, or whether he really had +discovered something in her worthy of addressing, as he implied. +Resentment burned in her breast, she became suddenly blinded by tears: +she might never see him again, and if only she were "educated" she might +know him, become his friend. Even in this desire she was not +conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed +rather than transformed what she meant by "education." She thought of it +not as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of +the freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of +understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world +open up to one like a flower filled with colour and life. She thought of +the robin, of the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range +including even that medley of human beings amongst whom she lived. And +the fact that something of his meaning had eluded her grasp made her +rebel all the more bitterly against the lack of a greater knowledge .... + +Often during the weeks that followed he dwelt in her mind as she sat at +her desk and stared out across the river, and several times that summer +she started to walk to Silliston. But always she turned back. Perhaps +she feared to break the charm of that memory.... + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Our American climate is notoriously capricious. Even as Janet trudged +homeward on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like +adventure in Silliston the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming +moist and tepid, white clouds with dark edges were piled up in the +western sky. The automobiles of the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly +over the tarvia. Valiantly as she strove to cling to her dream, +remorseless reality was at work dragging her back, reclaiming her; +excitement and physical exercise drained her vitality, her feet were +sore, sadness invaded her as she came in view of the ragged outline of +the city she had left so joyfully in the morning. Summer, that most +depressing of seasons in an environment of drab houses and grey +pavements, was at hand, listless householders and their families were +already, seeking refuge on front steps she passed on her way to Fillmore +Street. + +It was about half past five when she arrived. Lise, her waist removed, +was seated in a rocking chair at the window overlooking the littered +yards and the backs of the tenements on Rutger Street. And Lise, despite +the heaviness of the air, was dreaming. Of such delicate texture was the +fabric of Janet's dreams that not only sordid reality, but contact with +other dreams of a different nature, such as her sister's, often sufficed +to dissolve them. She resented, for instance, the presence in the plush +oval of Mr. Eustace Arlington; the movie star whose likeness had replaced +Mr. Wiley's, and who had played the part of the western hero in "Leila of +Hawtrey's." With his burning eyes and sensual face betraying the +puffiness that comes from over-indulgence, he was not Janet's ideal of a +hero, western or otherwise. And now Lise was holding a newspaper: not +the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a popular Boston sheet +to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and labelled "Three +O'clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the top of the +page:-- + + "JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY'S FAVOR." + +As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:-- + +"Say, that Nealy girl's won out!" + +"Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly. + +"You are from the country, all right," was her sister's rejoinder. "I +would have bet there wasn't a Reub in the state that wasn't wise to the +Ferris breach of promise case, and here you blow in after the show's over +and want to know who Nelly Nealy is. If that doesn't beat the band!" + +"This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?" + +"A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by +her sister's ignorance. "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the +biggest copper man in Boston. He could buy Hampton, and never feel it, +and they say his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars. Nelly +Nealy put her damages at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him for +seventy five. I wish I'd been in court when that jury came back! +There's her picture." + +To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself +that evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and +approval of Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent. However, she +took the sheet, gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure +stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner," the +envied of thousands of working girls all over New England. Miss Nealy, +in spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up admirably +under the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three meals a +day and give some thought to her costumes. Her smile under the picture +hat was coquettish, if not bold. The special article, signed by a lady +reporter whose sympathies were by no means concealed and whose talents +were given free rein, related how the white-haired mother had wept tears +of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been awhile too overcome to speak, and +then had recovered sufficiently to express her gratitude to the twelve +gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American womanhood. Mr. +Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she lived would she +be able to forget how she had loved and believed in him, and how, when at +length she unwillingly became convinces of his perfidy, she had been +"prostrated," unable to support her old mother. She had not, naturally, +yet decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage, +that had been suggested, but she had made no plans. "Scores of women +sympathizers" had escorted her to a waiting automobile.... + +Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and +flinging the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper. +But presently, when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no +longer. + +"I don't see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed. +"It's--it's horrible." + +"Horrible?" Lise repeated. + +Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping. + +"Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred +and feathered. She's nothing but a blackmailer." + +Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain't he a +millionaire?" + +"What difference does that make?" Janet retorted. "And you can't tell me +she didn't know what she was up to all along--with that face." + +"I'd have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly. + +"Then you'd be a blackmailer, too. I'd sooner scrub floors, I'd sooner +starve than do such a thing--take money for my affections. In the first +place, I'd have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a +man, seventy five thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn't help +me any. Where do you get such ideas? Decent people don't have them." + +Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face +vigorously--ceasing for an instance to make sure of the identity of a +sound reaching her ears despite the splashing of water. Lise was +sobbing. Janet dried her face and hands, arranged her hair, and sat down +on the windowsill; the scorn and anger, which had been so intense as +completely to possess her, melting into a pity and contempt not unmixed +with bewilderment. Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious to such +reproaches, holding her own in the passionate quarrels that occasionally +took place between them yet there were times, such as this, when her +resistance broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control. She +rocked to and fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in +her hands. Janet reached out and touched her. + +"Don't be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was +a disgrace to have such ideas. Well, it is." + +"I'm not silly," said Lise. "I'm sick of that job at the Bagatelle" +--sob--"there's nothing in it--I'm going to quit--I wish to God I was +dead! Standing on your feet all day till you're wore out for six dollars +a week--what's there in it?"--sob--"With that guy Walters who walks the +floor never lettin' up on you. He come up to me yesterday and says, `I +didn't know you was near sighted, Miss Bumpus' just because there was a +customer Annie Hatch was too lazy to wait on"--sob--"That's his line of +dope--thinks he's sarcastic--and he's sweet on Annie. Tomorrow I'm going +to tell him to go to hell. I'm through I'm sick of it, I tell +you"--sob--"I'd rather be dead than slave like that for six dollars." + +"Where are you going?" asked Janet. + +"I don't know--I don't care. What's the difference? any place'd be +better than this." For awhile she continued to cry on a ridiculously +high, though subdued, whining note, her breath catching at intervals. A +feeling of helplessness, of utter desolation crept over Janet; powerless +to comfort herself, how could she comfort her sister? She glanced around +the familiar, sordid room, at the magazine pages against the faded +wall-paper, at the littered bureau and the littered bed, over which +Lise's clothes were flung. It was hot and close even now, in summer it +would be stifling. Suddenly a flash of sympathy revealed to her a +glimpse of the truth that Lise, too, after her own nature, sought beauty +and freedom! Never did she come as near comprehending Lise as in such +moments as this, and when, on dark winter mornings, her sister clung to +her, terrified by the siren. Lise was a child, and the thought that she, +Janet, was powerless to change her was a part of the tragic tenderness. +What would become of Lise? And what would become of her, Janet?... So +she clung, desperately, to her sister's hand until at last Lise roused +herself, her hair awry, her face puckered and wet with tears and +perspiration. + +"I can't stand it any more--I've just got to go away anywhere," she said, +and the cry found an echo in Janet's heart.... + +But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the +mill.... + +The fact that Lise's love affairs had not been prospering undoubtedly had +something to do with the fit of depression into which she had fallen that +evening. A month or so before she had acquired another beau. It was +understood by Lise's friends and Lise's family, though not by the +gentleman himself, that his position was only temporary or at most +probationary; he had not even succeeded to the rights, title, and +privileges of the late Mr. Wiley, though occupying a higher position in +the social scale--being the agent of a patent lawn sprinkler with an +office in Faber Street. + +"Stick to him and you'll wear diamonds--that's what he tries to put +across," was Lise's comment on Mr. Frear's method, and thus Janet gained +the impression that her sister's feelings were not deeply involved. "If +I thought he'd make good with the sprinkler I might talk business. But +say, he's one of those ginks that's always tryin' to beat the bank. He's +never done a day's work in his life. Last year he was passing around +Foley's magazine, and before that he was with the race track that went +out of business because the ministers got nutty over it. Well, he may +win out," she added reflectively, "those guys sometimes do put the game +on the blink. He sure is a good spender when the orders come in, with a +line of talk to make you holler for mercy." + +Mr. Frear's "line of talk" came wholly, astonishingly, from one side of +his mouth--the left side. As a muscular feat it was a triumph. A deaf +person on his right side would not have known he was speaking. The +effect was secretive, extraordinarily confidential; enabling him to sell +sprinklers, it ought to have helped him to make love, so distinctly +personal was it, implying as it did that the individual addressed was +alone of all the world worthy of consideration. Among his friends it was +regarded as an accomplishment, but Lise was critical, especially since he +did not look into one's eyes, but gazed off into space, as though he +weren't talking at all. + +She had once inquired if the right side of his face was paralyzed. + +She permitted him to take her, however, to Gruber's Cafe, to the movies, +and one or two select dance halls, and to Slattery's Riverside Park, +where one evening she had encountered the rejected Mr. Wiley. + +"Say, he was sore!" she told Janet the next morning, relating the +incident with relish, "for two cents he would have knocked Charlie over +the ropes. I guess he could do it, too, all right." + +Janet found it curious that Lise should display such vindictiveness +toward Mr. Wiley, who was more sinned against than sinning. She was +moved to inquire after his welfare. + +"He's got one of them red motorcycles," said Lise. "He was gay with it +too-- when we was waiting for the boulevard trolley he opened her up and +went right between Charlie and me. I had to laugh. He's got a job over +in Haverhill you can't hold that guy under water long." + +Apparently Lise had no regrets. But her premonitions concerning Mr. +Frear proved to be justified. He did not "make good." One morning the +little office on Faber Street where the sprinklers were displayed was +closed, Hampton knew him no more, and the police alone were sincerely +regretful. It seemed that of late he had been keeping all the money for +the sprinklers, and spending a good deal of it on Lise. At the time she +accepted the affair with stoical pessimism, as one who has learned what +to expect of the world, though her moral sense was not profoundly +disturbed by the reflection that she had indulged in the delights of +Slattery's and Gruber's and a Sunday at "the Beach" at the expense of the +Cascade Sprinkler Company of Boston. Mr. Frear inconsiderately neglected +to prepare her for his departure, the news of which was conveyed to her +in a singular manner, and by none other than Mr. Johnny Tiernan of the +tin shop,--their conversation throwing some light, not only on Lise's +sophistication, but on the admirable and intricate operation of Hampton's +city government. About five o'clock Lise was coming home along Fillmore +Street after an uneventful, tedious and manless holiday spent in the +company of Miss Schuler and other friends when she perceived Mr. Tiernan +seated on his steps, grinning and waving a tattered palm-leaf fan. + +"The mercury is sure on the jump," he observed. "You'd think it was +July." + +And Lise agreed. + +"I suppose you'll be going to Tim Slattery's place tonight," he went on. +"It's the coolest spot this side of the Atlantic Ocean." + +There was, apparently, nothing cryptic in this remark, yet it is worth +noting that Lise instantly became suspicious. + +"Why would I be going out there?" she inquired innocently, darting at him +a dark, coquettish glance. + +Mr. Tiernan regarded her guilelessly, but there was admiration in his +soul; not because of her unquestioned feminine attractions,--he being +somewhat amazingly proof against such things,--but because it was +conveyed to him in some unaccountable way that her suspicions were +aroused. The brain beneath that corkscrew hair was worthy of a +Richelieu. Mr. Tiernan's estimate of Miss Lise Bumpus, if he could have +been induced to reveal it, would have been worth listening to. + +"And why wouldn't you?" he replied heartily. "Don't I see all the pretty +young ladies out there, including yourself, and you dancing with the +Cascade man. Why is it you'll never give me a dance?" + +"Why is it you never ask me?" demanded Lise. + +"What chance have I got, against him?" + +"He don't own me," said Lise. + +Mr. Tiernan threw back his head, and laughed. + +"Well, if you're there to-night, tangoin' with him and I come up and +says, `Miss Bumpus, the pleasure is mine,' I'm wondering what would +happen." + +"I'm not going to Slattery's to-night," she declared having that instant +arrived at this conclusion. + +"And where then? I'll come along, if there's a chance for me." + +"Quit your kidding," Lise reproved him. + +Mr. Tiernan suddenly looked very solemn: + +"Kidding, is it? Me kiddin' you? Give me a chance, that's all I'm +asking. Where will you be, now?" + +"Is Frear wanted?" she demanded. + +Mr. Tiernan's expression changed. His nose seemed to become more +pointed, his eyes to twinkle more merrily than ever. He didn't take the +trouble, now, to conceal his admiration. + +"Sure, Miss Bumpus," he said, "if you was a man, we'd have you on the +force to- morrow." + +"What's he wanted for?" + +"Well," said Johnny, "a little matter of sprinklin'. He's been +sprinklin' his company's water without a license." + +She was silent a moment before she exclaimed:-- + +"I ought to have been wise that he was a crook!" + +"Well," said Johnny consolingly, "there's others that ought to have been +wise, too. The Cascade people had no business takin' on a man that +couldn't use but half of his mouth." + +This seemed to Lise a reflection on her judgment. She proceeded to clear +herself. + +"He was nothing to me. He never gave me no rest. He used to come 'round +and pester me to go out with him--" + +"Sure!" interrupted Mr. Tiernan. "Don't I know how it is with the likes +of him! A good time's a good time, and no harm in it. But the point is" +and here he cocked his nose--"the point is, where is he? Where will he +be tonight?" + +All at once Lise grew vehement, almost tearful. + +"I don't know--honest to God, I don't. If I did I'd tell you. Last +night he said he might be out of town. He didn't say where he was +going." She fumbled in her bag, drawing out an imitation lace +handkerchief and pressing it to her eyes. + +"There now!" exclaimed Mr. Tiernan, soothingly. "How would you know? +And he deceivin' you like he did the company--" + +"He didn't deceive me," cried Lise. + +"Listen," said Mr. Tiernan, who had risen and laid his hand on her arm. +"It's not young ladies like you that works and are self-respecting that +any one would be troublin', and you the daughter of such a fine man as +your father. Run along, now, I won't be detaining you, Miss Bumpus, and +you'll accept my apology. I guess we'll never see him in Hampton +again...." + +Some twenty minutes later he sauntered down the street, saluting +acquaintances, and threading his way across the Common entered a grimy +brick building where a huge policeman with an insignia on his arm was +seated behind a desk. Mr. Tiernan leaned on the desk, and reflectively +lighted a Thomas-Jefferson-Five- Cent Cigar, Union Label, the +excellencies of which were set forth on large signs above the "ten foot" +buildings on Faber Street. + +"She don't know nothing, Mike," he remarked. "I guess he got wise this +morning." + +The sergeant nodded.... + + + + +CHAPTER V + +To feel potential within one's self the capacity to live and yet to have +no means of realizing this capacity is doubtless one of the least +comfortable and agreeable of human experiences. Such, as summer came on, +was Janet's case. The memory of that visit to Silliston lingered in her +mind, sometimes to flare up so vividly as to make her existence seem +unbearable. How wonderful, she thought, to be able to dwell in such a +beautiful place, to have as friends and companions such amusing and +intelligent people as the stranger with whom she had talked! Were all +the inhabitants of Silliston like him? They must be, since it was a seat +of learning. Lise's cry, "I've just got to go away, anywhere," found an +echo in Janet's soul. Why shouldn't she go away? She was capable of +taking care of herself, she was a good stenographer, her salary had been +raised twice in two years,--why should she allow consideration for her +family to stand in the way of what she felt would be self realization? +Unconsciously she was a true modern in that the virtues known as duty and +self sacrifice did not appeal to her,--she got from them neither benefit +nor satisfaction, she understood instinctively that they were impeding to +growth. Unlike Lise, she was able to see life as it is, she did not +expect of it miracles, economic or matrimonial. Nothing would happen +unless she made it happen. She was twenty-one, earning nine dollars a +week, of which she now contributed five to the household,--her father, +with characteristic incompetence, having taken out a larger insurance +policy than he could reasonably carry. Of the remaining four dollars she +spent more than one on lunches, there were dresses and underclothing, +shoes and stockings to buy, in spite of darning and mending; little +treats with Eda that mounted up; and occasionally the dentist--for Janet +would not neglect her teeth as Lise neglected hers. She managed to save +something, but it was very little. And she was desperately unhappy when +she contemplated the grey and monotonous vista of the years ahead, saw +herself growing older and older, driven always by the stern necessity of +accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by little drying +up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of enjoyment with +which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and frightened her. +Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution; marriage meant +dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in her existence, +drab and necessitous though it were, was still a remnant of freedom that +marriage would compel her to surrender.... + +One warm evening, oppressed by such reflections, she had started home +when she remembered having left her bag in the office, and retraced her +steps. As she turned the corner of West Street, she saw, beside the +canal and directly in front of the bridge, a new and smart-looking +automobile, painted crimson and black, of the type known as a runabout, +which she recognized as belonging to Mr. Ditmar. Indeed, at that moment +Mr. Ditmar himself was stepping off the end of the bridge and about to +start the engine when, dropping the crank, he walked to the dashboard and +apparently became absorbed in some mechanisms there. Was it the glance +cast in her direction that had caused him to delay his departure? Janet +was seized by a sudden and rather absurd desire to retreat, but Canal +Street being empty, such an action would appear eccentric, and she came +slowly forward, pretending not to see her employer, ridiculing to herself +the idea that he had noticed her. Much to her annoyance, however, her +embarrassment persisted, and she knew it was due to the memory of certain +incidents, each in itself almost negligible, but cumulatively amounting +to a suspicion that for some months he had been aware of her: many times +when he had passed through the outer office she had felt his eyes upon +her, had been impelled to look up from her work to surprise in them a +certain glow to make her bow her head again in warm confusion. Now, as +she approached him, she was pleasantly but rather guiltily conscious of +the more rapid beating of the blood that precedes an adventure, yet +sufficiently self-possessed to note the becoming nature of the light +flannel suit axed rather rakish Panama he had pushed back from his +forehead. It was not until she had almost passed him that he +straightened up, lifted the Panama, tentatively, and not too far, +startling her. + +"Good afternoon, Miss Bumpus," he said. "I thought you had gone." + +"I left my bag in the office," she replied, with the outward calmness +that rarely deserted her--the calmness, indeed, that had piqued him and +was leading him on to rashness. + +"Oh," he said. "Simmons will get it for you." Simmons was the watchman +who stood in the vestibule of the office entrance. + +"Thanks. I can get it myself," she told him, and would have gone on had +he not addressed her again. "I was just starting out for a spin. What +do you think of the car? It's good looking, isn't it?" He stood off and +surveyed it, laughing a little, and in his laugh she detected a note +apologetic, at variance with the conception she had formed of his +character, though not alien, indeed, to the dust-coloured vigour of the +man. She scarcely recognized Ditmar as he stood there, yet he excited +her, she felt from him an undercurrent of something that caused her +inwardly to tremble. "See how the lines are carried through." He +indicated this by a wave of his hand, but his eyes were now on her. + +"It is pretty," she agreed. + +In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his +acquaintance had adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish +nature, this self-collected manner was new and spicy, challenging to +powers never as yet fully exerted while beneath her manner he felt +throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in women, a temperament, for +which men have given their souls. This conviction of her possession of a +temperament,--he could not have defined the word, emotional rather than +intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to sense. +He had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the other +sex, and he found the experience delicious. + +"You like pretty things, I'm sure of that," he hazarded. But she did not +ask him how he knew, she simply assented. He raised the hood, revealing +the engine. "Isn't that pretty? See how nicely everything is adjusted +in that little space to do the particular work for which it is designed." + +Thus appealed to, she came forward and stopped, still standing off a +little way, but near enough to see, gazing at the shining copper caps on +the cylinders, at the bright rods and gears. + +"It looks intricate," said Mr. Ditmar, "but really it's very simple. The +gasoline comes in here from the tank behind--this is called the +carburetor, it has a jet to vaporize the gasoline, and the vapour is +sucked into each of these cylinders in turn when the piston moves--like +this." He sought to explain the action of the piston. "That compresses +it, and then a tiny electric spark comes just at the right moment to +explode it, and the explosion sends the piston down again, and turns the +shaft. Well, all four cylinders have an explosion one right after +another, and that keeps the shaft going." Whereupon the most important +personage in Hampton, the head of the great Chippering Mill proceeded, +for the benefit of a humble assistant stenographer, to remove the floor +boards behind the dash. "There's the shaft, come here and look at it." +She obeyed, standing beside him, almost touching him, his arm, indeed, +brushing her sleeve, and into his voice crept a tremor. "The shaft turns +the rear wheels by means of a gear at right angles on the axle, and the +rear wheels drive the car. Do you see?" + +"Yes," she answered faintly, honesty compelling her to add: "a little." + +He was looking, now, not at the machinery, but intently at her, and she +could feel the blood flooding into her cheeks and temples. She was even +compelled for an instant to return his glance, and from his eyes into +hers leaped a flame that ran scorching through her body. Then she knew +with conviction that the explanation of the automobile had been an +excuse; she had comprehended almost nothing of it, but she had been +impressed by the facility with which he described it, by his evident +mastery over it. She had noticed his hands, how thick his fingers were +and close together; yet how deftly he had used them, without smearing the +cuffs of his silk shirt or the sleeves of his coat with the oil that +glistened everywhere. + +"I like machinery," he told her as he replaced the boards. "I like to +take care of it myself." + +"It must be interesting," she assented, aware of the inadequacy of the +remark, and resenting in herself an inarticulateness seemingly imposed by +inhibition connected with his nearness. Fascination and antagonism were +struggling within her. Her desire to get away grew desperate. + +"Thank you for showing it to me." With an effort of will she moved +toward the bridge, but was impelled by a consciousness of the abruptness +of her departure to look back at him once--and smile, to experience again +the thrill of the current he sped after her. By lifting his hat, a +little higher, a little more confidently than in the first instance, he +made her leaving seem more gracious, the act somehow conveying an +acknowledgment on his part that their relationship had changed. + +Once across the bridge and in the mill, she fairly ran up the stairs and +into the empty office, to perceive her bag lying on the desk where she +had left it, and sat down for a few minutes beside the window, her heart +pounding in her breast as though she had barely escaped an accident +threatening her with physical annihilation. Something had happened to +her at last! But what did it mean? Where would it lead? Her fear, her +antagonism, of which she was still conscious, her resentment that Ditmar +had thus surreptitiously chosen to approach her in a moment when they +were unobserved were mingled with a throbbing exultation in that he had +noticed her, that there was something in her to attract him in that way, +to make his voice thicker and his smile apologetic when he spoke to her. +Of that "something-in-her" she had been aware before, but never had it +been so unmistakably recognized and beckoned to from without. She was at +once terrified, excited--and flattered. + +At length, growing calmer, she made her way out of the building. When +she reached the vestibule she had a moment of sharp apprehension, of +paradoxical hope, that Ditmar might still be there, awaiting her. But he +had gone.... + +In spite of her efforts to dismiss the matter from her mind, to persuade +herself there had been no significance in the encounter, when she was +seated at her typewriter the next morning she experienced a renewal of +the palpitation of the evening before, and at the sound of every step in +the corridor she started. Of this tendency she was profoundly ashamed. +And when at last Ditmar arrived, though the blood rose to her temples, +she kept her eyes fixed on the keys. He went quickly into his room: she +was convinced he had not so much as glanced at her.... As the days went +by, however, she was annoyed by the discovery that his continued ignoring +of her presence brought more resentment than relief, she detected in it a +deliberation implying between them a guilty secret: she hated secrecy, +though secrecy contained a thrill. Then, one morning when she was alone +in the office with young Caldwell, who was absorbed in some reports, +Ditmar entered unexpectedly and looked her full in the eyes, surprising +her into answering his glance before she could turn away, hating herself +and hating him. Hate, she determined, was her prevailing sentiment in +regard to Mr. Ditmar. + +The following Monday Miss Ottway overtook her, at noon, on the stairs. + +"Janet, I wanted to speak to you, to tell you I'm leaving," she said. + +"Leaving!" repeated Janet, who had regarded Miss Ottway as a fixture. + +"I'm going to Boston," Miss Ottway explained, in her deep, musical voice. +"I've always wanted to go, I have an unmarried sister there of whom I'm +very fond, and Mr. Ditmar knows that. He's got me a place with the +Treasurer, Mr. Semple." + +"Oh, I'm sorry you're going, though of course I'm glad for you," Janet +said sincerely, for she liked and respected Miss Ottway, and was +conscious in the older woman of a certain kindly interest. + +"Janet, I've recommended you to Mr. Ditmar for my place." + +"Oh!" cried Janet, faintly. + +"It was he who asked about you, he thinks you are reliable and quick and +clever, and I was very glad to say a good word for you, my dear, since I +could honestly do so." Miss Ottway drew Janet's arm through hers and +patted it affectionately. "Of course you'll have to expect some +jealousy, there are older women in the other offices who will think they +ought to have the place, but if you attend to your own affairs, as you +always have done, there won't be any trouble." + +"Oh, I won't take the place, I can't!" Janet cried, so passionately that +Miss Ottway looked at her in surprise. "I'm awfully grateful to you," +she added, flushing crimson, "I--I'm afraid I'm not equal to it." + +"Nonsense," said the other with decision. "You'd be very foolish not to +try it. You won't get as much as I do, at first, at any rate, but a +little more money won't be unwelcome, I guess. Mr. Ditmar will speak to +you this afternoon. I leave on Saturday. I'm real glad to do you a good +turn, Janet, and I know you'll get along," Miss Ottway added impulsively +as they parted at the corner of Faber Street. "I've always thought a +good deal of you." + +For awhile Janet stood still, staring after the sturdy figure of her +friend, heedless of the noonday crowd that bumped her. Then she went to +Grady's Quick Lunch Counter and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk, +which she consumed slowly, profoundly sunk in thought. Presently Eda +Rawle arrived, and noticing her preoccupation, inquired what was the +matter. + +"Nothing," said Janet.... + +At two o'clock, when Ditmar returned to the office, he called Miss +Ottway, who presently came out to summon Janet to his presence. Fresh, +immaculate, yet virile in his light suit and silk shirt with red stripes, +he was seated at his desk engaged in turning over some papers in a +drawer. He kept her waiting a moment, and then said, with apparent +casualness:-- + +"Is that you, Miss Bumpus? Would you mind closing the door?" + +Janet obeyed, and again stood before him. He looked up. A suggestion of +tenseness in her pose betraying an inner attitude of alertness, of +defiance, conveyed to him sharply and deliciously once more the +panther-like impression he had received when first, as a woman, she had +come to his notice. The renewed and heightened perception of this feral +quality in her aroused a sense of danger by no means unpleasurable, +though warning him that he was about to take an unprecedented step, being +drawn beyond the limits of caution he had previously set for himself in +divorcing business and sex. Though he was by no means self-convinced of +an intention to push the adventure, preferring to leave its possibilities +open, he strove in voice and manner to be business-like; and instinct, +perhaps, whispered that she might take alarm. + +"Sit down, Miss Bumpus," he said pleasantly, as he closed the drawer. + +She seated herself on an office chair. + +"Do you like your work here?" he inquired. + +"No," said Janet. + +"Why not?" he demanded, staring at her. + +"Why should I?" she retorted. + +"Well--what's the trouble with it? It isn't as hard as it would be in +some other places, is it?" + +"I'm not saying anything against the place." + +"What, then?" + +"You asked me if I liked my work. I don't." + +"Then why do you do it?" he demanded. + +"To live," she replied. + +He smiled, but his gesture as he stroked his moustache implied a slight +annoyance at her composure. He found it difficult with this dark, self- +contained young woman to sustain the role of benefactor. + +"What kind of work would you like to do?" he demanded. + +"I don't know. I haven't got the choice, anyway," she said. + +He observed that she did her work well, to which she made no answer. She +refused to help him, although Miss Ottway must have warned her. She +acted as though she were conferring the favour. And yet, clearing his +throat, he was impelled to say:-- + +"Miss Ottway's leaving me, she's going into the Boston office with Mr. +Semple, the treasurer of the corporation. I shall miss her, she's an +able and reliable woman, and she knows my ways." He paused, fingering +his paper knife. "The fact is, Miss Bumpus, she's spoken highly of you, +she tells me you're quick and accurate and painstaking--I've noticed that +for myself. She seems to think you could do her work, and recommends +that I give you a trial. You understand, of course, that the position is +in a way confidential, and that you could not expect at first, at any +rate, the salary Miss Ottway has had, but I'm willing to offer you +fourteen dollars a week to begin with, and afterwards, if we get along +together, to give you more. What do you say?" + +"I'd like to try it, Mr. Ditmar," Janet said, and added nothing, no word +of gratitude or of appreciation to that consent. + +"Very well then," he replied, "that's settled. Miss Ottway will explain +things to you, and tell you about my peculiarities. And when she goes +you can take her desk, by the window nearest my door." + +Ditmar sat idle for some minutes after she had gone, staring through the +open doorway into the outer office.... + +To Ditmar she had given no evidence of the storm his offer had created in +her breast, and it was characteristic also that she waited until supper +was nearly over to inform her family, making the announcement in a +matter-of-fact tone, just as though it were not the unique piece of good +fortune that had come to the Bumpuses since Edward had been eliminated +from the mercantile establishment at Dolton. The news was received with +something like consternation. For the moment Hannah was incapable of +speech, and her hand trembled as she resumed the cutting of the pie: but +hope surged within her despite her effort to keep it down, her +determination to remain true to the fatalism from which she had +paradoxically derived so much comfort. The effect on Edward, while +somewhat less violent, was temporarily to take away his appetite. Hope, +to flower in him, needed but little watering. Great was his faith in the +Bumpus blood, and secretly he had always regarded his eldest daughter as +the chosen vessel for their redemption. + +"Well, I swan!" he exclaimed, staring at her in admiration and neglecting +his pie, "I've always thought you had it in you to get on, Janet. I +guess I've told you you've always put me in mind of Eliza Bumpus--the one +that held out against the Indians till her husband came back with the +neighbours. I was just reading about her again the other night." + +"Yes, you've told us, Edward," said Hannah. + +"She had gumption," he went on, undismayed. "And from what I can gather +of her looks I calculate you favour her--she was dark and not so very +tall--not so tall as you, I guess. So you're goin'" (he pronounced it +very slowly) "you're goin' to be Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer! He's +a smart man, Mr. Ditmar, he's a good man, too. All you've got to do is +to behave right by him. He always speaks to me when he passes by the +gate. I was sorry for him when his wife died--a young woman, too. And +he's never married again! Well, I swan!" + +"You'd better quit swanning," exclaimed Hannah. "And what's Mr. Ditmar's +goodness got to do with it? He's found-out Janet has sense, she's +willing and hard working, he won't" (pronounced want) "he won't be the +loser by it, and he's not giving her what he gave Miss Ottway. It's just +like you, thinking he's doing her a good turn." + +"I'm not saying Janet isn't smart," he protested, "but I know it's hard +to get work with so many folks after every job." + +"Maybe it ain't so hard when you've got some get-up and go," Hannah +retorted rather cruelly. It was thus characteristically and with +unintentional sharpness she expressed her maternal pride by a reflection +not only upon Edward, but Lise also. Janet had grown warm at the mention +of Ditmar's name. + +"It was Miss Ottway who recommended me," she said, glancing at her +sister, who during this conversation had sat in silence. Lise's +expression, normally suggestive of a discontent not unbecoming to her +type, had grown almost sullen. Hannah's brisk gathering up of the dishes +was suddenly arrested. + +"Lise, why don't you say something to your sister? Ain't you glad she's +got the place?" + +"Sure, I'm glad," said Lise, and began to unscrew the top of the salt +shaker. "I don't see why I couldn't get a raise, too. I work just as +hard as she does." + +Edward, who had never got a "raise" in his life, was smitten with +compunction and sympathy. + +"Give 'em time, Lise," he said consolingly. "You ain't so old as Janet." + +"Time!" she cried, flaring up and suddenly losing her control. "I've got +a picture of Waiters giving me a raise I know the girls that get raises +from him." + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Hannah declared. "There--you've +spilled the salt!" + +But Lise, suddenly bursting into tears, got up and left the room. Edward +picked up the Banner and pretended to read it, while Janet collected the +salt and put it back into the shaker. Hannah, gathering up the rest of +the dishes, disappeared into the kitchen, but presently returned, as +though she had forgotten something. + +"Hadn't you better go after her?" she said to Janet. + +"I'm afraid it won't be any use. She's got sort of queer, lately--she +thinks they're down on her." + +"I'm sorry I spoke so sharp. But then--" Hannah shook her head, and her +sentence remained unfinished. + +Janet sought her sister, but returned after a brief interval, with the +news that Lise had gone out. + +One of the delights of friendship, as is well known, is the exchange of +confidences of joy or sorrow, but there was, in Janet's promotion, +something intensely personal to increase her natural reserve. Her +feelings toward Ditmar were so mingled as to defy analysis, and several +days went by before she could bring herself to inform Eda Rawle of the +new business relationship in which she stood to the agent of the +Chippering Mill. The sky was still bright as they walked out Warren +Street after supper, Eda bewailing the trials of the day just ended: Mr. +Frye, the cashier of the bank, had had one of his cantankerous fits, had +found fault with her punctuation, nothing she had done had pleased him. +But presently, when they had come to what the Banner called the +"residential district," she was cheered by the sight of the green lawns, +the flowerbeds and shrubbery, the mansions of those inhabitants of +Hampton unfamiliar with boardinghouses and tenements. Before one of +these she paused, retaining Janet by the arm, exclaiming wistfully: + +"Wouldn't you like to live there? That belongs to your boss." + +Janet, who had been dreaming as she gazed at the fagade of rough stucco +that once had sufficed to fill the ambitions of the late Mrs. Ditmar, +recognized it as soon as Eda spoke, and dragged her friend hastily, +almost roughly along the sidewalk until they had reached the end of the +block. Janet was red. + +"What's the matter?" demanded Eda, as soon as she had recovered from her +surprise. + +"Nothing," said Janet. "Only--I'm in his office." + +"But what of it? You've got a right to look at his house, haven't you?" + +"Why yes,--a right," Janet assented. Knowing Eda's ambitions for her +were not those of a business career, she was in terror lest her friend +should scent a romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the +symptoms Ditmar had betrayed. She attempted to convey to Eda the +doubtful taste of staring point- blank at the house of one's employer, +especially when he might be concealed behind a curtain. + +"You see," she added, "Miss Ottway's recommended me for her place--she's +going away." + +"Janet!" cried Eda. "Why didn't you tell me?" + +"Well," said Janet guiltily, "it's only a trial. I don't know whether +he'll keep me or not." + +"Of course he'll keep you," said Eda, warmly. "If that isn't just like +you, not saying a word about it. Gee, if I'd had a raise like that I +just couldn't wait to tell you. But then, I'm not smart like you." + +"Don't be silly," said Janet, out of humour with herself, and annoyed +because she could not then appreciate Eda's generosity. + +"We've just got to celebrate!" declared Eda, who had the gift, which +Janet lacked, of taking her joys vicariously; and her romantic and +somewhat medieval proclivities would permit no such momentous occasion to +pass without an appropriate festal symbol. "We'll have a spree on +Saturday--the circus is coming then." + +"It'll be my spree," insisted Janet, her heart warming. "I've got the +raise...." + +On Saturday, accordingly, they met at Grady's for lunch, Eda attired in +her best blouse of pale blue, and when they emerged from the restaurant, +despite the torrid heat, she beheld Faber Street as in holiday garb as +they made their way to the cool recesses of Winterhalter's to complete +the feast. That glorified drug-store with the five bays included in its +manifold functions a department rivalling Delmonico's, with electric fans +and marble-topped tables and white-clad waiters who took one's order and +filled it at the soda fountain. It mattered little to Eda that the young +man awaiting their commands had pimples and long hair and grinned +affectionately as he greeted them. + +"Hello, girls!" he said. "What strikes you to-day?" + +"Me for a raspberry nut sundae," announced Eda, and Janet, being unable +to imagine any more delectable confection, assented. The penetrating +odour peculiar to drugstores, dominated by menthol and some unnamable but +ancient remedy for catarrh, was powerless to interfere with their +enjoyment. + +The circus began at two. Rather than cling to the straps of a crowded +car they chose to walk, following the familiar route of the trolley past +the car barns and the base-ball park to the bare field under the seared +face of Torrey's Hill, where circuses were wont to settle. A +sirocco-like breeze from the southwest whirled into eddies the clouds of +germladen dust stirred up by the automobiles, blowing their skirts +against their legs, and sometimes they were forced to turn, clinging to +their hats, confused and giggling, conscious of male glances. The crowd, +increasing as they proceeded, was in holiday mood; young men with a +newly-washed aspect, in Faber Street suits, chaffed boisterously groups +of girls, who retorted with shrill cries and shrieks of laughter; amorous +couples strolled, arm in arm, oblivious, as though the place were as +empty as Eden; lady-killers with exaggerated square shoulders, wearing +bright neckties, their predatory instincts alert, hovered about in eager +search of adventure. There were men-killers, too, usually to be found in +pairs, in startling costumes they had been persuaded were the latest +Paris models,-- imitations of French cocottes in Hampton, proof of the +smallness of our modern world. Eda regarded them superciliously. + +"They'd like you to think they'd never been near a loom or a bobbin!" +she exclaimed. + +In addition to these more conspicuous elements, the crowd contained sober +operatives of the skilled sort possessed of sufficient means to bring +hither their families, including the baby; there were section-hands and +foremen, slashers, mule spinners, beamers, French-Canadians, Irish, +Scotch, Welsh and English, Germans, with only an occasional Italian, +Lithuanian, or Jew. Peanut and popcorn men, venders of tamales and +Chile-con-carne hoarsely shouted their wares, while from afar could be +heard the muffled booming of a band. Janet's heart beat faster. She +regarded with a tinge of awe the vast expanse of tent that rose before +her eyes, the wind sending ripples along the heavy canvas from +circumference to tent pole. She bought the tickets; they entered the +circular enclosure where the animals were kept; where the strong beams of +the sun, in trying to force their way through the canvas roof, created an +unnatural, jaundiced twilight, the weirdness of which was somehow +enhanced by the hoarse, amazingly penetrating growls of beasts. Suddenly +a lion near them raised a shaggy head, emitting a series of undulating, +soul-shaking roars. + +"Ah, what's eatin' you?" demanded a thick-necked youth, pretending not to +be awestricken by this demonstration. + +"Suppose he'd get out!" cried Eda, drawing Janet away. + +"I wouldn't let him hurt you, dearie," the young man assured her. + +"You!" she retorted contemptuously, but grinned in spite of herself, +showing her gums. + +The vague feeling of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its +fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by +the juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying +or staring in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes +never left these morsels beyond the bars. The two girls wandered about, +their arms closely locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the +beasts, the ineffable, pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled +with the effluvia of animals, had aroused an excitement that was slow in +subsiding. Some time elapsed before they were capable of taking a normal +interest in the various exhibits. + +"`Adjutant Bird,'" Janet read presently from a legend on one of the +compartments of a cage devoted to birds, and surveying the somewhat +dissolute occupant. "Why, he's just like one of those tall mashers who +stay at the Wilmot and stand on the sidewalk,--travelling men, you know." + +"Say-isn't he?" Eda agreed. "Isn't he pleased with himself, and his feet +crossed!" + +"And see this one, Eda--he's a 'Harpy Eagle.' There's somebody we know +looks just like that. Wait a minute--I'll tell you--it's the woman who +sits in the cashier's cage at Grady's." + +"If it sure isn't!" said Eda. + +"She has the same fluffy, light hair--hairpins can't keep it down, and +she looks at you in that same sort of surprised way with her head on one +side when you hand in your check." + +"Why, it's true to the life!" cried Eda enthusiastically. "She thinks +she's got all the men cinched,--she does and she's forty if she's a day." + +These comparisons brought them to a pitch of risible enjoyment amply +sustained by the spectacle in the monkey cage, to which presently they +turned. A chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly +searching a friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering +and screeching and chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on +by their companions. + +"Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your +relations--have ye?" + +Eda giggled hysterically. An elderly man was standing beside them. He +was shabbily dressed, his own features were wizened, almost simian, and +by his friendly and fatuous smile Janet recognized one of the harmless +obsessed in which Hampton abounded. + +"Relations!" Eda exclaimed. + +"You and me, yes, and her," he answered, looking at Janet, though at +first he had apparently entertained some doubt as to this inclusion, +"we're all descended from them." His gesture triumphantly indicated the +denizens of the cage. + +"What are you giving us?" said Eda. + +"Ain't you never read Darwin?" he demanded. "If you had, you'd know +they're our ancestors, you'd know we came from them instead of Adam and +Eve. That there's a fable." + +"I'll never believe I came from them," cried Eda, vehement in her +disgust. + +But Janet laughed. "What's the difference? Some of us aren't any better +than monkeys, anyway." + +"That's so," said the man approvingly. "That's so." He wanted to +continue the conversation, but they left him rather ruthlessly. And +when, from the entrance to the performance tent, they glanced back over +their shoulders, he was still gazing at his cousins behind the bars, +seemingly deriving an acute pleasure from his consciousness of the +connection.... + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Modern business, by reason of the mingling of the sexes it involves, for +the playwright and the novelist and the sociologist is full of +interesting and dramatic situations, and in it may be studied, +undoubtedly, one phase of the evolution tending to transform if not +disintegrate certain institutions hitherto the corner-stones of society. +Our stage is set. A young woman, conscious of ability, owes her +promotion primarily to certain dynamic feminine qualities with which she +is endowed. And though she may make an elaborate pretense of ignoring +the fact, in her heart she knows and resents it, while at the same time, +paradoxically, she gets a thrill from it,--a sustaining and inspiring +thrill of power! On its face it is a business arrangement; +secretly,--attempt to repudiate this as one may,--it is tinged with the +colours of high adventure. When Janet entered into the intimate +relationship with Mr. Claude Ditmar necessitated by her new duties as his +private stenographer her attitude, slightly defiant, was the +irreproachable one of a strict attention to duty. All unconsciously she +was a true daughter of the twentieth century, and probably a feminist at +heart, which is to say that her conduct was determined by no preconceived +or handed-down notions of what was proper and lady-like. For feminism, in +a sense, is a return to atavism, and sex antagonism and sex attraction +are functions of the same thing. There were moments when she believed +herself to hate Mr. Ditmar, when she treated him with an aloofness, an +impersonality unsurpassed; moments when he paused in his dictation to +stare at her in astonishment. He, who flattered himself that he +understood women! + +She would show him!--such was her dominating determination. Her +promotion assumed the guise of a challenge, of a gauntlet flung down at +the feet of her sex. In a certain way, an insult, though incredibly +stimulating. If he flattered himself that he had done her a favour, if +he entertained the notion that he could presently take advantage of the +contact with her now achieved to make unbusinesslike advances--well, he +would find out. He had proclaimed his desire for an able assistant in +Miss Ottway's place--he would get one, and nothing more. She watched +narrowly, a l'affut, as the French say, for any signs of sentiment, and +indeed this awareness of her being on guard may have had some influence +on Mr. Ditmar's own attitude, likewise irreproachable.... A rather +anaemic young woman, a Miss Annie James, was hired for Janet's old place. + +In spite of this aloofness and alertness, for the first time in her life +Janet felt the exuberance of being in touch with affairs of import. +Hitherto the mill had been merely a greedy monster claiming her freedom +and draining her energies in tasks routine, such as the copying of +meaningless documents and rows of figures; now, supplied with stimulus +and a motive, the Corporation began to take on significance, and she +flung herself into the work with an ardour hitherto unknown, determined +to make herself so valuable to Ditmar that the time would come when he +could not do without her. She strove to memorize certain names and +addresses, lest time be lost in looking them up, to familiarize herself +with the ordinary run of his correspondence, to recall what letters were +to be marked "personal," to anticipate matters of routine, in order that +he might not have the tedium of repeating instructions; she acquired the +faculty of keeping his engagements in her head; she came early to the +office, remaining after hours, going through the files, becoming familiar +with his system; and she learned to sort out his correspondence, sifting +the important from the unimportant, to protect him, more and more, from +numerous visitors who called only to waste his time. Her instinct for +the detection of book-agents, no matter how brisk and businesslike they +might appear, was unerring--she remembered faces and the names belonging +to them: an individual once observed to be persona non grata never +succeeded in passing her twice. On one occasion Ditmar came out of his +office to see the back of one of these visitors disappearing into the +corridor. + +"Who was that?" he asked. + +"His name is McCalla," she said. "I thought you didn't want to be +bothered." + +"But how in thunder did you get rid of him?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I just wouldn't let him in," she replied demurely. + +And Ditmar went away, wondering.... Thus she gtudied him, without +permitting him to suspect it, learning his idiosyncrasies, his attitude +toward all those with whom daily he came in contact, only to find herself +approving. She was forced to admit that he was a judge of men, compelled +to admire his adroitness in dealing with them. He could be democratic or +autocratic as occasion demanded; he knew when to yield, and when to +remain inflexible. One morning, for instance, there arrived from New +York a dapper salesman whose jauntily tied bow, whose thin +hair--carefully parted to conceal an incipient baldness--whose wary and +slightly weary eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan +atmosphere of high pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged. +He had a machine to sell; an amazing machine, endowed with human +intelligence and more than human infallibility; for when it made a +mistake it stopped. It was designed for the express purpose of +eliminating from the payroll the skilled and sharp-eyed women who are +known as "drawers-in," who sit all day long under a north light patiently +threading the ends of the warp through the heddles of the loom harness. +Janet's imagination was gradually fired as she listened to the visitor's +eloquence; and the textile industry, which hitherto had seemed to her +uninteresting and sordid, took on the colours of romance. + +"Now I've made up my mind we'll place one with you, Mr. Ditmar," the +salesman concluded. "I don't object to telling you we'd rather have one +in the Chippering than in any mill in New England." + +Janet was surprised, almost shocked to see Ditmar shake his head, yet she +felt a certain reluctant admiration because he had not been swayed by +blandishments. At such moments, when he was bent on refusing a request, +he seemed physically to acquire massiveness,--and he had a dogged way of +chewing his cigar. + +"I don't want it, yet," he replied, "not until you improve it." And she +was impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the +machine as the salesman himself. In spite of protests, denials, appeals, +he remained firm. "When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come +back, Mr. Hicks--but don't come back until then." + +And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited.... + +Ditmar knew what he wanted. Of the mill he was the absolute master, +familiar with every process, carrying constantly in his mind how many +spindles, how many looms were at work; and if anything untoward happened, +becoming aware of it by what seemed to Janet a subconscious process, +sending for the superintendent of the department: for Mr. Orcutt, +perhaps, whose office was across the hall--a tall, lean, spectacled man +of fifty who looked like a schoolmaster. + +"Orcutt, what's the matter with the opener in Cooney's room?" + +"Why, the blower's out of order." + +"Well, whose fault is it?".... + +He knew every watchman and foreman in the mill, and many of the second +hands. The old workers, men and women who had been in the Chippering +employ through good and bad times for years, had a place in his +affections, but toward the labour force in general his attitude was +impersonal. The mill had to be run, and people to be got to run it. +With him, first and last and always it was the mill, and little by little +what had been for Janet a heterogeneous mass of machinery and human +beings became unified and personified in Claude Ditmar. It was odd how +the essence and quality of that great building had changed for her; how +the very roaring of the looms, as she drew near the canal in the +mornings, had ceased to be sinister and depressing, but bore now a burden +like a great battle song to excite and inspire, to remind her that she +had been snatched as by a miracle from the commonplace. And all this was +a function of Ditmar. + +Life had become portentous. And she was troubled by no qualms of logic, +but gloried, womanlike, in her lack of it. She did not ask herself why +she had deliberately enlarged upon Miss Ottway's duties, invaded +debatable ground in part inevitably personal, flung herself with such +abandon into the enterprise of his life's passion, at the same time +maintaining a deceptive attitude of detachment, half deceiving herself +that it was zeal for the work by which she was actuated. In her soul she +knew better. She was really pouring fuel on the flames. She read him, +up to a certain point--as far as was necessary; and beneath his attempts +at self-control she was conscious of a dynamic desire that betrayed +itself in many acts and signs,--as when he brushed against her; and +occasionally when he gave evidence with his subordinates of a certain +shortness of temper unusual with him she experienced a vaguely alarming +but delicious thrill of power. And this, of all men, was the great Mr. +Ditmar! Was she in love with him? That question did not trouble her +either. She continued to experience in his presence waves of antagonism +and attraction, revealing to her depths and possibilities of her nature +that frightened while they fascinated. It never occurred to her to +desist. That craving in her for high adventure was not to be denied. + +On summer evenings it had been Ditmar's habit when in Hampton to stroll +about his lawn, from time to time changing the position of the sprinkler, +smoking a cigar, and reflecting pleasantly upon his existence. His +house, as he gazed at it against the whitening sky, was an eminently +satisfactory abode, his wife was dead, his children gave him no trouble; +he felt a glow of paternal pride in his son as the boy raced up and down +the sidewalk on a bicycle; George was manly, large and strong for his +age, and had a domineering way with other boys that gave Ditmar secret +pleasure. Of Amy, who was showing a tendency to stoutness, and who had +inherited her mother's liking for candy and romances, Ditmar thought +scarcely at all: he would glance at her as she lounged, reading, in a +chair on the porch, but she did not come within his range of problems. +He had, in short, everything to make a reasonable man content, a life +nicely compounded of sustenance, pleasure, and business,--business +naturally being the greatest of these. He was--though he did not know +it--ethically and philosophically right in squaring his morals with his +occupation, and his had been the good fortune to live in a world whose +codes and conventions had been carefully adjusted to the pursuit of that +particular brand of happiness he had made his own. Why, then, in the +name of that happiness, of the peace and sanity and pleasurable effort it +had brought him, had he allowed and even encouraged the advent of a new +element that threatened to destroy the equilibrium achieved? an element +refusing to be classified under the head of property, since it involved +something he desired and could not buy? A woman who was not property, +who resisted the attempt to be turned into property, was an anomaly in +Ditmar's universe. He had not, of course, existed for more than forty +years without having heard and read of and even encountered in an +acquaintance or two the species of sex attraction sentimentally called +love that sometimes made fools of men and played havoc with more +important affairs, but in his experience it had never interfered with his +sanity or his appetite or the Chippering Mill: it had never made his +cigars taste bitter; it had never caused a deterioration in the +appreciation of what he had achieved and held. But now he was +experiencing strange symptoms of an intensity out of all proportion to +that of former relations with the other sex. What was most unusual for +him, he was alarmed and depressed, at moments irritable. He regretted +the capricious and apparently accidental impulse that had made him +pretend to tinker with his automobile that day by the canal, that had led +him to the incomparable idiocy of getting rid of Miss Ottway and +installing the disturber of his peace as his private stenographer. + +What the devil was it in her that made him so uncomfortable? When in his +office he had difficulty in keeping his mind on matters of import; he +would watch her furtively as she went about the room with the lithe and +noiseless movements that excited him the more because he suspected +beneath her outward and restrained demeanour a fierceness he craved yet +feared. He thought of her continually as a panther, a panther he had +caught and could not tame; he hadn't even caught her, since she might +escape at any time. He took precautions not to alarm her. When she +brushed against him he trembled. Continually she baffled and puzzled +him, and he never could tell of what she was thinking. She represented a +whole set of new and undetermined values for which he had no precedents, +and unlike every woman he had known--including his wife--she had an +integrity of her own, seemingly beyond the reach of all influences +economic and social. All the more exasperating, therefore, was a +propinquity creating an intimacy without substance, or without the +substance he craved for she had magically become for him a sort of +enveloping, protecting atmosphere. In an astonishingly brief time he had +fallen into the habit of talking things over with her; naturally not +affairs of the first importance, but matters such as the economy of his +time: when, for instance, it was most convenient for him to go to Boston; +and he would find that she had telephoned, without being told, to the +office there when to expect him, to his chauffeur to be on hand. He +never had to tell her a thing twice, nor did she interrupt--as Miss +Ottway sometimes had done--the processes of his thought. Without +realizing it he fell into the habit of listening for the inflections of +her voice, and though he had never lacked the power of making decisions, +she somehow made these easier for him especially if, a human equation +were involved. + +He had, at least, the consolation--if it were one--of reflecting that his +reputation was safe, that there would be no scandal, since two are +necessary to make the kind of scandal he had always feared, and Miss +Bumpus, apparently, had no intention of being the second party. Yet she +was not virtuous, as he had hitherto defined the word. Of this he was +sure. No woman who moved about as she did, who had such an effect on +him, who had on occasions, though inadvertently, returned the lightning +of his glances, whose rare laughter resembled grace notes, and in whose +hair was that almost imperceptible kink, could be virtuous. This +instinctive conviction inflamed him. For the first time in his life he +began to doubt the universal conquering quality of his own charms,--and +when such a thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of +hell-fire. He indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and +excursions that hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if +his cronies inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed +to answer with his usual geniality. + +"Everything going all right up at the mills, Colonel?" he was asked one +day by Mr. Madden, the treasurer of a large shoe company, when they met +on the marble tiles of the hall in their Boston club. + +"All right. Why?" + +"Well," replied Madden, conciliatingly, "you seem kind of preoccupied, +that's all. I didn't know but what the fifty-four hour bill the +legislature's just put through might be worrying you." + +"We'll handle that situation when the time comes," said Ditmar. He +accepted a gin rickey, but declined rather curtly the suggestion of a +little spree over Sunday to a resort on the Cape which formerly he would +have found enticing. On another occasion he encountered in the lobby of +the Parker House a more intimate friend, Chester Sprole, sallow, +self-made, somewhat corpulent, one of those lawyers hail fellows well met +in business circles and looked upon askance by the Brahmins of their +profession; more than half politician, he had been in Congress, and from +time to time was retained by large business interests because of his +persuasive gifts with committees of the legislature--though these had +been powerless to avert the recent calamity of the women and children's +fifty-four hour bill. Mr. Sprole's hair was prematurely white, and the +crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes were not the result of legal +worries. + +"Hullo, Dit," he said jovially. + +"Hullo, Ches," said Ditmar. + +"Now you're the very chap I wanted to see. Where have you been keeping +yourself lately? Come out to the farm to-night,--same of the boys'll be +there." Mr. Sprole, like many a self-made man, was proud of his farm, +though he did not lead a wholly bucolic existence. + +"I can't, Ches," answered Ditmar. "I've got to go back to Hampton." + +This statement Mr. Sprole unwisely accepted as a fiction. He took hold +of Ditmar's arm. + +"A lady--eh--what?" + +"I've got to go back to Hampton," repeated Ditmar, with a suggestion of +truculence that took his friend aback. Not for worlds would Mr. Sprole +have offended the agent of the Chippering Mill. + +"I was only joking, Claude," he hastened to explain. Ditmar, somewhat +mollified but still dejected, sought the dining-room when the lawyer had +gone. + +"All alone to-night, Colonel?" asked the coloured head waiter, +obsequiously. + +Ditmar demanded a table in the corner, and consumed a solitary meal. + +Very naturally Janet was aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the +cause of it. Her feelings were complicated. He, the most important man +in Hampton, the self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and +unattainable head of the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill, +of which she was an insignificant unit, at times became for her just a +man--a man for whom she had achieved a delicious contempt. And the +knowledge that she, if she chose, could sway and dominate him by the mere +exercise of that strange feminine force within her was intoxicating and +terrifying. She read this in a thousand signs; in his glances; in his +movements revealing a desire to touch her; in little things he said, +apparently insignificant, yet fraught with meaning; in a constant +recurrence of the apologetic attitude--so alien to the Ditmar formerly +conceived--of which he had given evidence that day by the canal: and from +this attitude emanated, paradoxically, a virile and galvanic current +profoundly disturbing. Sometimes when he bent over her she experienced a +commingled ecstasy and fear that he would seize her in his arms. Yet the +tension was not constant, rising and falling with his moods and +struggles, all of which she read--unguessed by him--as easily as a +printed page by the gift that dispenses with laborious processes of the +intellect. On the other hand, a resentment boiled within her his +masculine mind failed to fathom. Stevenson said of John Knox that many +women had come to learn from him, but he had never condescended to become +a learner in return--a remark more or less applicable to Ditmar. She +was, perforce, thrilled that he was virile and wanted her, but because he +wanted her clandestinely her pride revolted, divining his fear of scandal +and hating him for it like a thoroughbred. To do her justice, marriage +never occurred to her. She was not so commonplace. + +There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax, +when some incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise +that had absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill. One day in +September, for instance, after an absence in New York, he returned to the +office late in the afternoon, and she was quick to sense his elation, to +recognize in him the restored presence of the quality of elan, of +command, of singleness of purpose that had characterized him before she +had become his stenographer. At first, as he read his mail, he seemed +scarcely conscious of her presence. She stood by the window, awaiting +his pleasure, watching the white mist as it rolled over the floor of the +river, catching glimpses in vivid, saffron blurs of the lights of the +Arundel Mill on the farther shore. Autumn was at hand. Suddenly she +heard Ditmar speaking. + +"Would you mind staying a little while longer this evening, Miss Bumpus?" + +"Not at all," she replied, turning. + +On his face was a smile, almost boyish. + +"The fact is, I think I've got hold of the biggest single order that ever +came into any mill in New England," he declared. + +"Oh, I'm glad," she said quickly. + +"The cotton cards--?" he demanded. + +She knew he referred to the schedules, based on the current prices of +cotton, made out in the agent's office and sent in duplicate to the +selling house, in Boston. She got them from the shelf; and as he went +over them she heard him repeating the names of various goods now become +familiar, pongees, poplins, percales and voiles, garbardines and +galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and Madras shirtings, while he wrote +down figures on a sheet of paper. So complete was his absorption in this +task that Janet, although she had resented the insinuating pressure of +his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical sensation of jealousy. +Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up the Boston office +and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton buyer; and she learned from the talk +over the telephone though it was mostly about "futures"--that Ditmar had +lingered for a conference in Boston on his way back from New York. +Afterwards, having dictated two telegrams which she wrote out on her +machine, he leaned back in his chair; and though the business for the day +was ended, showed a desire to detain her. His mood became communicative. + +"I've been on the trail of that order for a month," he declared. "Of +course it isn't my business to get orders, but to manage this mill, and +that's enough for one man, God knows. But I heard the Bradlaughs were in +the market for these goods, and I told the selling house to lie low, that +I'd go after it. I knew I could get away with it, if anybody could. I +went to the Bradlaughs and sat down on 'em, I lived with 'em, ate with +'em, brought 'em home at night. I didn't let 'em alone a minute until +they handed it over. I wasn't going to give any other mill in New +England or any of those southern concerns a chance to walk off with +it--not on your life! Why, we have the facilities. There isn't another +mill in the country can turn it out in the time they ask, and even we +will have to go some to do it. But we'll do it, by George, unless I'm +struck by lightning." + +He leaned forward, hitting the desk with his fist, and Janet, standing +beside him, smiled. She had the tempting gift of silence. Forgetting +her twinge of jealousy, she was drawn toward him now, and in this mood of +boyish exuberance, of self-confidence and pride in his powers and success +she liked him better than ever before. She had, for the first time, the +curious feeling of being years older than he, yet this did not detract +from a new-born admiration. + +"I made this mill, and I'm proud of it," he went on. "When old Stephen +Chippering put me in charge he was losing money, he'd had three agents in +four years. The old man knew I had it in me, and I knew it, if I do say +it myself. All this union labour talk about shorter hours makes me +sick--why, there was a time when I worked ten and twelve hours a day, and +I'm man enough to do it yet, if I have to. When the last agent--that was +Cort--was sacked I went to Boston on my own hook and tackled the old +gentleman--that's the only way to get anywhere. I couldn't bear to see +the mill going to scrap, and I told him a thing or two,--I had the facts +and the figures. Stephen Chippering was a big man, but he had a streak +of obstinacy in him, he was conservative, you bet. I had to get it +across to him there was a lot of dead wood in this plant, I had to wake +him up to the fact that the twentieth century was here. He had to be +shown--he was from Boston, you know--" Ditmar laughed--"but he was all +wool and a yard wide, and he liked me and trusted me. + +"That was in nineteen hundred. I can remember the interview as well as +if it had happened last night--we sat up until two o'clock in the morning +in that library of his with the marble busts and the leather-bound books +and the double windows looking out over the Charles, where the wind was +blowing a gale. And at last he said, `All right, Claude, go ahead. I'll +put you in as agent, and stand behind you.' And by thunder, he did stand +behind me. He was quiet, the finest looking old man I ever saw in my +life, straight as a ramrod, with a little white goatee and a red, +weathered face full of creases, and a skin that looked as if it had been +pricked all over with needles--the old Boston sort. They don't seem to +turn 'em out any more. Why, I have a picture of him here." + +He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a photograph. Janet gazed at +it sympathetically. + +"It doesn't give you any notion of those eyes of his," Ditmar said, +reminiscently. "They looked right through a man's skull, no matter how +thick it was. If anything went wrong, I never wasted any time in telling +him about it, and I guess it was one reason he liked me. Some of the +people up here didn't understand him, kow-towed to him, they were scared +of him, and if he thought they had something up their sleeves he looked +as if he were going to eat 'em alive. Regular fighting eyes, the kind +that get inside of a man and turn the light on. And he sat so +still--made you ashamed of yourself. Well, he was a born fighter, went +from Harvard into the Rebellion and was left for dead at Seven Oaks, +where one of the company found him and saved him. He set that may up for +life, and never talked about it, either. See what he wrote on the +bottom--'To my friend, Claude Ditmar, Stephen Chippering.' And believe +me, when he once called a man a friend he never took it back. I know one +thing, I'll never get another friend like him." + +With a gesture that gave her a new insight into Ditmar, reverently he +took the picture from her hand and placed it back in the drawer. She was +stirred, almost to tears, and moved away from him a little, as though to +lessen by distance the sudden attraction he had begun to exert: yet she +lingered, half leaning, half sitting on the corner of the big desk, her +head bent toward him, her eyes filled with light. She was wondering +whether he could ever love a woman as he loved this man of whom he had +spoken, whether he could be as true to a woman. His own attitude seemed +never to have been more impersonal, but she had ceased to resent it; +something within her whispered that she was the conductor, the inspirer.. + +"I wish Stephen Chippering could have lived to see this order," he +exclaimed, "to see the Chippering Mill to-day! I guess he'd be proud of +it, I guess he wouldn't regret having put me in as agent." + +Janet did not reply. She could not. She sat regarding him intently, and +when he raised his eyes and caught her luminous glance, his expression +changed, she knew Stephen Chippering had passed from his mind. + +"I hope you like it here," he said. His voice had become vibrant, +ingratiating, he had changed from the master to the suppliant--and yet +she was not displeased. Power had suddenly flowed back into her, and +with it an exhilarating self-command. + +"I do like it," she answered. + +"But you said, when I asked you to be my stenographer, that you didn't +care for your work." + +"Oh, this is different." + +"How?" + +"I'm interested, the mill means something to me now you see, I'm not just +copying things I don't know anything about." + +"I'm glad you're interested," he said, in the same odd, awkward tone. +"I've never had any one in the office who did my work as well. Now Miss +Ottway was a good stenographer, she was capable, and a fine woman, but +she never got the idea, the spirit of the mill in her as you've got it, +and she wasn't able to save me trouble, as you do. It's remarkable how +you've come to understand, and in such a short time." + +Janet coloured. She did not look at him, but had risen and begun to +straighten out the papers beside her. + +"There are lots of other things I'd like to understand," she said. + +"What?" he demanded. + +"Well--about the mill. I never thought much about it before, I always +hated it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him. "It +was just drudgery. But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd +like to see the machinery." + +"I'll take you through myself--to-morrow," he declared. + +His evident agitation made her pause. They were alone, the outer office +deserted, and the Ditmar she saw now, whom she had summoned up with +ridiculous ease by virtue of that mysterious power within her, was no +longer the agent of the Chippering Mill, a boy filled with enthusiasm by +a business achievement, but a man, the incarnation and expression of +masculine desire desire for her. She knew she could compel him, if she +chose, to throw caution to the winds. + +"Oh no!" she exclaimed. She was afraid of him, she shrank from such a +conspicuous sign of his favour. + +"Why not?" he asked. + +"Because I don't want you to," she said, and realized, as soon as she had +spoken, that her words might imply the existence of a something between +them never before hinted at by her. "I'll get Mr. Caldwell to take me +through." She moved toward the door, and turned; though still on fire +within, her manner had become demure, repressed. "Did you wish anything +more this evening?" she inquired. + +"That's all," he said, and she saw that he was gripping the arms of his +chair.... + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Autumn was at hand. All day it had rained, but now, as night fell and +Janet went homeward, the white mist from the river was creeping +stealthily over the city, disguising the familiar and sordid landmarks. +These had become beautiful, mysterious, somehow appealing. The electric +arcs, splotches in the veil, revealed on the Common phantom trees; and in +the distance, against the blurred lights from the Warren Street stores +skirting the park could be seen phantom vehicles, phantom people moving +to and fro. Thus, it seemed to Janet, invaded by a pearly mist was her +own soul, in which she walked in wonder,--a mist shot through and through +with soft, exhilarating lights half disclosing yet transforming and +etherealizing certain landmark's there on which, formerly, she had not +cared to gaze. She was thinking of Ditmar as she had left him gripping +his chair, as he had dismissed her for the day, curtly, almost savagely. +She had wounded and repelled him, and lingering in her was that exquisite +touch of fear--a fear now not so much inspired by Ditmar as by the +semi-acknowledged recognition of certain tendencies and capacities within +herself. Yet she rejoiced in them, she was glad she had hurt Ditmar, she +would hurt him again. Still palpitating, she reached the house in +Fillmore Street, halting a moment with her hand on the door, knowing her +face was flushed, anxious lest her mother or Lise might notice something +unusual in her manner. But, when she had slowly mounted the stairs and +lighted the gas in the bedroom the sight of her sister's clothes cast +over the chairs was proof that Lise had already donned her evening finery +and departed. The room was filled with the stale smell of clothes, which +Janet detested. She flung open the windows. She took off her hat and +swiftly tidied herself, yet the relief she felt at Lise's absence was +modified by a sudden, vehement protest against sordidness. Why should +she not live by herself amidst clean and tidy surroundings? She had +begun to earn enough, and somehow a vista had been opened up--a vista +whose end she could not see, alluring, enticing.... In the dining-room, +by the cleared table, her father was reading the Banner; her mother +appeared in the kitchen door. + +"What in the world happened to you, Janet?" she exclaimed. + +"Nothing," said Janet. "Mr. Ditmar asked me to stay--that was all. +He'd been away." + +"I was worried, I was going to make your father go down to the mill. +I've saved you some supper." + +"I don't want much," Janet told her, "I'm not hungry." + +"I guess you have to work too hard in that new place," said Hannah, as +she brought in the filled plate from the oven. + +"Well, it seems to agree with her, mother," declared Edward, who could +always be counted on to say the wrong thing with the best of intentions. +"I never saw her looking as well--why, I swan, she's getting real +pretty!" + +Hannah darted at him a glance, but restrained herself, and Janet reddened +as she tried to eat the beans placed before her. The pork had browned +and hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered the +potatoes. When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and her +mother went back into the kitchen she began to speculate rather +resentfully and yet excitedly why it was that this adventure with a man, +with Ditmar, made her look better, feel better,--more alive. She was too +honest to disguise from herself that it was an adventure, a high one, +fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and delights. Her +promotion had been merely incidental. Both her mother and father, did +they know the true circumstances,--that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was +perhaps in love with her--would be disturbed. Undoubtedly they would +have believed that she could "take care" of herself. She knew that +matters could not go on as they were, that she would either have to leave +Mr. Ditmar or--and here she baulked at being logical. She had no +intention of leaving him: to remain, according to the notions of her +parents, would be wrong. Why was it that doing wrong agreed with her, +energized her, made her more alert, cleverer, keying up her faculties? +turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one? To abandon Ditmar +would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from which she +had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat; +by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs +with the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing +protruded, the tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had +bought at a bargain at the Bagatelle.... The wooden clock with the round +face and quaint landscape below--the family's most cherished +heirloom--though long familiar, was not so bad; but the two yellowed +engravings on the wall offended her. They had been wedding presents to +Edward's father. One represented a stupid German peasant woman holding a +baby, and standing in front of a thatched cottage; its companion was a +sylvan scene in which certain wooden rustics were supposed to be enjoying +themselves. Between the two, and dotted with flyspecks, hung an +insurance calendar on which was a huge head of a lady, florid, +fluffy-haired, flirtatious. Lise thought her beautiful. + +The room was ugly. She had long known that, but tonight the realization +came to her that what she chiefly resented in it was the note it +proclaimed--the note of a mute acquiescence, without protest or struggle, +in what life might send. It reflected accurately the attitude of her +parents, particularly of her father. With an odd sense of detachment, of +critical remoteness and contempt she glanced at him as he sat stupidly +absorbed in his newspaper, his face puckered, his lips pursed, and Ditmar +rose before her--Ditmar, the embodiment of an indomitableness that +refused to be beaten and crushed. She thought of the story he had told +her, how by self-assertion and persistence he had become agent of the +Chippering Mill, how he had convinced Mr. Stephen Chippering of his +ability. She could not think of the mill as belonging to the Chipperings +and the other stockholders, but to Ditmar, who had shaped it into an +expression of himself, since it was his ideal. And now it seemed that he +had made it hers also. She regretted having repulsed him, pushed her +plate away from her, and rose. + +"You haven't eaten anything," said Hannah, who had come into the room. +"Where are you going?" + +"Out--to Eda's," Janet answered.... + +"It's late," Hannah objected. But Janet departed. Instead of going to +Eda's she walked alone, seeking the quieter streets that her thoughts +might flow undisturbed. At ten o'clock, when she returned, the light was +out in the diningroom, her sister had not come in, and she began slowly +to undress, pausing every now and then to sit on the bed and dream; once +she surprised herself gazing into the glass with a rapt expression that +was almost a smile. What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar? +No other man had ever noticed it. She had never thought herself good +looking, and now--it was astonishing!-- she seemed to have changed, and +she saw with pride that her arms and neck were shapely, that her dark +hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to her waist. She +caressed it; it was fine. When she looked again, a radiancy seemed to +envelop her. She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, looking +shyly in the mirror and always seeing that radiancy.... + +Suddenly it occurred to her with a shock that she was doing exactly what +she had despised Lise for doing, and leaving the mirror she hurried her +toilet, put out the light, and got into bed. For a long time, however, +she remained wakeful, turning first on one side and then on the other, +trying to banish from her mind the episode that had excited her. But +always it came back again. She saw Ditmar before her, virile, vital, +electric with desire. At last she fell asleep. + +Gradually she was awakened by something penetrating her consciousness, +something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she +could not define. The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving +peculiarly about the room. Janet watched her. She stood in front of the +bureau, just as Janet herself had done, her hands at her throat. At last +she let them fall, her head turning slowly, as though drawn, by some +irresistible, hypnotic power, and their eyes met. Lise's were filmed, +like those of a dog whose head is being stroked, expressing a luxuriant +dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate. + +"Say, did I wake you?" she asked. "I did my best not to make any +noise--honest to God." + +"It wasn't the noise that woke me up," said Janet. + +"It couldn't have been." + +"You've been drinking!" said Janet, slowly. + +Lise giggled. + +"What's it to you, angel face!" she inquired. "Quiet down, now, and go +bye- bye." + +Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her. +She was limp. She began to whimper. + +"Cut it out--leave me go. It ain't nothing to you what I do--I just had +a highball." + +Janet released her and drew back. + +"I just had a highball--honest to God!" + +"Don't say that again!" whispered Janet, fiercely. + +"Oh, very well. For God's sake, go to bed and leave me alone--I can take +care of myself, I guess--I ain't nutty enough to hit the booze. But I +ain't like you--I've got to have a little fun to keep alive." + +"A little fun!" Janet exclaimed. The phrase struck her sharply. A +little fun to keep alive! + +With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise +approached a chair, and sank into it,--jerking her head in the direction +of the room where Hannah and Edward slept. + +"D'you want to wake 'em up? Is that your game?" she asked, and began to +fumble at her belt. Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to +nausea, Janet approached her sister again, little by little undressing +her, and finally getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into a +profound slumber. Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible: the +odour lurked like a foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the +stagnant, damp air that came in at the open window, fairly saturating her +with horror: it seemed the very essence of degradation. But as she lay +on the edge of the bed, shrinking from contamination, in the throes of +excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she grew hot, she could feel and +almost hear the pounding of her heart. She rose, felt around in the +clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the door, crept +through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit the +lamp; darkness had become a terror. A cockroach scurried across the +linoleum. The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale +food, but at least she found relief from that other odour. She sank down +on the sofa. + +Her sister was drunk. That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was not +the drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion of +something else. Where had Lise been? In whose company had she become +drunk? Of late, in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been +singuarly secretive as to her companions, and the manner in which her +evenings were spent; and she, Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be +curious. Lise, with her shopgirl's cynical knowledge of life and its +pitfalls and the high valuation at which she held her charms, had seemed +secure from danger; but Janet recalled her discouragement, her threat to +leave the Bagatelle. Since then there had been something furtive about +her. Now, because that odour of alcohol Lise exhaled had destroyed in +Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she had begun +to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for her +sister no strain of pity. A proof, had she recognized it, that +immorality is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual +emotions. A few hours before she had seen nothing wrong in her +relationship with Ditmar: now she beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing +her for one end, his own gratification. As a man, he had become an enemy. +Ditmar was like all other men who exploited her sex without compunction, +but the thought that she was like Lise, asleep in a drunken stupor, that +their cases differed only in degree, was insupportable. + +At last she fell asleep from sheer weariness, to dream she was with +Ditmar at some place in the country under spreading trees, Silliston, +perhaps--Silliston Common, cleverly disguised: nor was she quite sure, +always, that the man was Ditmar; he had a way of changing, of resembling +the man she had met in Silliston whom she had mistaken for a carpenter. +He was pleading with her, in his voice was the peculiar vibrancy that +thrilled her, that summoned some answering thing out of the depths of +her, and she felt herself yielding with a strange ecstasy in which were +mingled joy and terror. The terror was conquering the joy, and suddenly +he stood transformed before her eyes, caricatured, become a shrieking +monster from whom she sought in agony to escape.... In this paralysis of +fear she awoke, staring with wide eyes at the flickering flame of the +lamp, to a world filled with excruciating sound--the siren of the +Chippering Mill! She lay trembling with the horror of the dreamspell +upon her, still more than half convinced that the siren was Ditmar's +voice, his true expression. He was waiting to devour her. Would the +sound never end?... + +Then, remembering where she was, alarmed lest her mother might come in +and find her there, she left the sofa, turned out the sputtering lamp, +and ran into the bedroom. Rain was splashing on the bricks of the +passage-way outside, the shadows of the night still lurked in the +corners; by the grey light she gazed at Lise, who breathed loudly and +stirred uneasily, her mouth open, her lips parched. Janet touched her. + +"Lise--get up!" she said. "It's time to get up." She shook her. + +"Leave me alone--can't you?" + +"It's time to get up. The whistle has sounded." + +Lise heavily opened her eyes. They were bloodshot. + +"I don't want to get up. I won't get up." + +"But you must," insisted Janet, tightening her hold. "You've got +to--you've got to eat breakfast and go to work." + +"I don't want any breakfast, I ain't going to work any more." + +A gust of wind blew inward the cheap lace curtains, and the physical +effect of it emphasized the chill that struck Janet's heart. She got up +and closed the window, lit the gas, and returning to the bed, shook Lise +again. + +"Listen," she said, "if you don't get up I'll tell mother what happened +last night." + +"Say, you wouldn't--!" exclaimed Lise, angrily. + +"Get up!" Janet commanded, and watched her rather anxiously, uncertain as +to the after effects of drunkenness. But Lise got up. She sat on the +edge of the bed and yawned, putting her hand to her forehead. + +"I've sure got a head on me," she remarked. + +Janet was silent, angrier than ever, shocked that tragedy, degradation, +could be accepted thus circumstantially. Lise proceeded to put up her +hair. She seemed to be mistress of herself; only tired, gaping +frequently. Once she remarked:-- + +"I don't see the good of getting nutty over a highball." + +Seeing that Janet was not to be led into controversy, she grew morose. + +Breakfast in Fillmore Street, never a lively meal, was more dismal than +usual that morning, eaten to the accompaniment of slopping water from the +roofs on the pavement of the passage. The indisposition of Lise passed +unobserved by both Hannah and Edward; and at twenty minutes to eight the +two girls, with rubbers and umbrellas, left the house together, though it +was Janet's custom to depart earlier, since she had farther to go. Lise, +suspicious, maintained an obstinate silence, keeping close to the curb. +They reached the corner by the provision shop with the pink and orange +chromos of jellies in the window. + +"Lise, has anything happened to you?" demanded Janet suddenly. "I want +you to tell me." + +"Anything happened--what do you mean? Anything happened?" + +"You know very well what I mean." + +"Well, suppose something has happened?" Lise's reply was pert, defiant. +"What's it to you? If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't +it?" + +Janet approached her. + +"What are you trying to do?" said Lise. "Push me into the gutter?" + +"I guess you're there already," said Janet. + +Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury. She turned on Janet and +thrust her back. + +"Well, if I am who's going to blame me?" she cried. "If you had to work +all day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six a +week, I guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either. It's easy for you to +shoot off your mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar." + +Janet was outraged. She could not restrain her anger. + +"How dare you say that?" she demanded. + +Lise was cowed. + +"Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything. Just +because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of +gentlemen--they were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as +Ditmar--you come at me and tell me I'm all to the bad." She began to +sob. "I'm as straight as you are. How was I to know the highball was +stiff? Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on the queer, and everything +in the joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came home with me." + +Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and +resentment: relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the +truth, anxiety because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because +Ditmar had been mentioned. Still, what she had feared most had not come +to pass. Lise left her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a +back entrance of the Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way. Where, she +wondered, would it all end? Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was +an ominous sign. And "gentlemen"? What kind of gentlemen had taken her +sister to Gruber's? Would Ditmar do that sort of thing if he had a +chance? + +The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was +plastered with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving rain +in the night. The sky above the mills was sepia. White lights were +burning in the loom rooms. When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the +watchman, informed her that Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left +for Boston. + +Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointment on +learning that Ditmar had gone to Boston. She knew he had had no such +intention the night before; an accumulated mail and many matters +demanding decisions were awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an +act directed personally against her, in the nature of a retaliation, +since she had offended and repulsed him. Through Lise's degrading act +she had arrived at the conclusion that all adventure and consequent +suffering had to do with Man--a conviction peculiarly maddening to such +temperaments as Janet's. Therefore she interpreted her suffering in +terms of Ditmar, she had looked forward to tormenting him again, and by +departing he had deliberately balked and cheated her. The rain fell +ceaselessly out of black skies, night seemed ever ready to descend on the +river, a darkness--according to young Mr. Caldwell--due not to the clouds +alone, but to forest fires many hundreds of miles away, in Canada. As the +day wore on, however, her anger gradually gave place to an extreme +weariness and depression, and yet she dreaded going home, inventing +things for herself to do; arranging and rearranging Ditmar's papers that +he might have less trouble in sorting them, putting those uppermost which +she thought he would deem the most important. Perhaps he would come in, +late! In a world of impending chaos the brilliantly lighted office was a +tiny refuge to which she clung. At last she put on her coat and rubbers, +faring forth reluctantly into the wet. + +At first when she entered the bedroom she thought it empty, though the +gas was burning, and them she saw Lise lying face downward on the bed. +For a moment she stood still, then closed the door softly. + +"Lise," she said. + +"What?" + +Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand. Unconsciously she began +to stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own. + +"Lise," she said, "I understand why you--" she could not bring herself to +pronounce the words "got drunk,"--"I understand why you did it. I +oughtn't to have talked to you that way. But it was terrible to wake up +and see you." + +For awhile Lise did not reply. Then she raised herself, feeling her hair +with an involuntary gesture, regarding her sister with a bewildered look, +her face puckered. Her eyes burned, and under them were black shadows. + +"How do you mean--you understand?" she asked slowly. "You never hit the +booze." + +Even Lise's language, which ordinarily offended her, failed to change her +sudden impassioned and repentant mood. She was astonished at herself for +this sudden softening, since she did not really love Lise, and all day +she had hated her, wished never to see her again. + +"No, but I can understand how it would be to want to," Janet said. +"Lise, I guess we're searching--both of us for something we'll never +find." + +Lise stared at her with a contracted, puzzled expression, as of a person +awaking from sleep, all of whose faculties are being strained toward +comprehension. + +"What do you mean?" she demanded. "You and me? You're all right--you've +got no kick coming." + +"Life is hard, it's hard on girls like us--we want things we can't have." +Janet was at a loss to express herself. + + "Well, it ain't any pipe dream," Lise agreed. Her glance turned +involuntarily toward the picture of the Olympian dinner party pinned on +the wall. "Swells have a good time," she added. + +"Maybe they pay for it, too," said Janet. + +"I wouldn't holler about paying--it's paying and not getting the goods," +declared Lise. + +"You'll pay, and you won't get it. That kind of life is--hell," Janet +cried. + +Self-centered as Lise was, absorbed in her own trouble and present +physical discomfort, this unaccustomed word from her sister and the +vehemence with which it was spoken surprised and frightened her, brought +home to her some hint of the terror in Janet's soul. + +"Me for the water wagon," she said. + +Janet was not convinced. She had hoped to discover the identity of the +man who had taken Lise to Gruber's, but she did not attempt to continue +the conversation. She rose and took off her hat. + +"Why don't you go to bed?" she asked. "I'll tell mother you have a +headache and bring in your supper." + +"Well, I don't care if I do," replied Lise, gratefully. + +Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the +human organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so +called, is as sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected +by lack of sleep, by smells and sounds, by food, by the weather--whether +a day be sapphire or obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood +are thwarted by the actions of the next. Janet had observed this +phenomenon, and sometimes, when it troubled her, she thought herself the +most inconsistent and vacillating of creatures. She had resolved, far +instance, before she fell asleep, to leave the Chippering Mill, to banish +Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, whence she could send +some of her wages home: and in the morning, as she made her way to the +office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and unity. But the +northwest wind was blowing. It had chased away the mist and the clouds, +the smoke from Canada. The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of +the Common cast sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when +she reached the office and looked out of his window she saw the blue +river covered with quicksilver waves chasing one another across the +current. Ditmar had not yet returned to Hampton. About ten o'clock, as +she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price, young Mr. Caldwell +approached her. He had a Boston newspaper in his hand. + +"Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?" he asked. + +"About Mr. Ditmar? No." + +"It's quite a send-off for the Colonel," said Caldwell, who was wont at +times to use the title facetiously. "Listen; `One of the most notable +figures in the Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar, +Agent of the Chippering Mill.'" Caldwell spread out the page and pointed +to a picture. "There he is, as large as life." + +A little larger than life, Janet thought. Ditmar was one of those men +who, as the expression goes, "take" well, a valuable asset in semi-public +careers; and as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of the building +where they had "snap- shotted" him he appeared even more massive, +forceful, and preponderant than she had known him. Beholding him thus +set forth and praised in a public print, he seemed suddenly to have been +distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at a bound the dizzy +importance he had possessed for her before she became his stenographer. +She found it impossible to realize that this was the Ditmar who had +pursued and desired her; at times supplicating, apologetic, abject; and +again revealed by the light in his eyes and the trembling of his hand as +the sinister and ruthless predatory male from whom--since the revelation +in her sister Lise she had determined to flee, and whom she had persuaded +herself she despised. He was a bigger man than she had thought, and as +she read rapidly down the column the fascination that crept over her was +mingled with disquieting doubt of her own powers: it was now difficult to +believe she had dominated or could ever dominate this self-sufficient, +successful person, the list of whose achievements and qualities was so +alluringly set forth by an interviewer who himself had fallen a victim. + +The article carried the implication that the modern, practical, American +business man was the highest type as yet evolved by civilization: and +Ditmar, referred to as "a wizard of the textile industry," was +emphatically one who had earned the gratitude of the grand old +Commonwealth. By the efforts of such sons she continued to maintain her +commanding position among her sister states. Prominent among the +qualities contributing to his success was openmindedness, "a willingness +to be shown," to scrap machinery when his competitors still clung to +older methods. The Chippering Mill had never had a serious strike,-- +indication of an ability to deal with labour; and Mr. Ditmar's views on +labour followed: if his people had a grievance, let them come to him, and +settle it between them. No unions. He had consistently refused to +recognize them. There was mention of the Bradlaugh order as being the +largest commission ever given to a single mill, a reference to the +excitement and speculation it had aroused in trade circles. Claude +Ditmar's ability to put it through was unquestioned; one had only to look +at him,--tenacity, forcefulness, executiveness were written all over +him.... In addition, the article contained much material of an +autobiographical nature that must--Janet thought--have been supplied by +Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder +self-eulogy of an interview. But she recognized several characteristic +phrases. + +Caldwell, watching her as she read, was suddenly fascinated. During a +trip abroad, while still an undergraduate, he had once seen the face of +an actress, a really good Parisian actress, light up in that way; and it +had revealed to him, in a flash, the meaning of enthusiasm. Now Janet +became vivid for him. There must be something unusual in a person whose +feelings could be so intense, whose emotions rang so true. He was not +unsophisticated. He had sometimes wondered why Ditmar had promoted her, +though acknowledging her ability. He admired Ditmar, but had no +illusions about him. Harvard, and birth in a social stratum where +emphasis is superfluous, enabled him to smile at the reporter's +exuberance; and he was the more drawn toward her to see on Janet's +flushed face the hint of a smile as she looked up at him when she had +finished. + +"The Colonel hypnotized that reporter," he said, as he took the paper; +and her laugh, despite its little tremor, betrayed in her an unsuspected, +humorous sense of proportion. "Well, I'll take off my hat to him," +Caldwell went on. "He is a wonder, he's got the mill right up to capacity +in a week. He's agreed to deliver those goods to the Bradlaughs by the +first of April, you know, and Holster, of the Clarendon, swears it can't +be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. Well, I stand to lose twenty-five +dollars on him." + +This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving loyalty +in her. She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence. He was a +self- contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly hair, cordial +and friendly yet never intimate with the other employer; liked by +them--but it was tacitly understood his footing differed from theirs. He +was a cousin of the Chipperings, and destined for rapid promotion. He +went away every Saturday, it was known that he spent Sundays and holidays +in delightful places, to return reddened and tanned; and though he never +spoke about these excursions, and put on no airs of superiority, there +was that in his manner and even in the cut of his well-worn suits +proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs, to a category of +fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are sustained from +above. Even Ditmar was not of these. + +"I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told +Janet. "They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics." + +And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:-- + +"Will you take me through sometime, Mr. Caldwell?" + +"You've never been through?" he exclaimed. "Why, we'll go now, if you +can spare the time." + +Her face had become scarlet. + +"Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged. "You see--he wanted to take me +himself." + +"Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went +downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department. +The showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but +now his curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen +stimulation when he glanced at Janet's face. Its illumination perplexed +him. The effect was that of a picture obscurely hung and hitherto +scarcely noticed on which the light had suddenly been turned. It glowed +with a strange and disturbing radiance.... + +As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a +miracle in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before +suspected; the miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature. +In the brief space of an hour she beheld the dirty bales flung off the +freight cars on the sidings transformed into delicate fabrics wound from +the looms; cotton that only last summer, perhaps, while she sat +typewriting at her window, had been growing in the fields of the South. +She had seen it torn by the balebreakers, blown into the openers, +loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed into +batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp of +white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can. Once more it +was flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres, +removing with superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short, +thrusting it forth again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing +frames. Six of these gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six. Then +came the Blubbers and the roving frames, twisting and winding, the while +maintaining the most delicate of tensions lest the rope break, running +the strands together into a thread constantly growing stronger and finer, +until it was ready for spinning. + +Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while +she strained to follow them. But she was bewildered and entranced by the +marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex +machines, fed by human hands, performed its function. These human hands +were swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the +ringspinning frames to be twisted into yarn. She saw a woman, in the +space of an instant, mend a broken thread. Women and boys were here, +doffer boys to lift off the full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on +the empty bobbins with the other: while skilled workmen, alert for the +first sign of trouble, followed up and down in its travels the long frame +of the mule-spinner. After the spinning, the heavy spools of yarn were +carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a huge spider's web, where +hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and wound evenly, side +by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric to be woven +on the loom. First, however, this warp must be stiffened or "slashed" in +starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally wound around one +great beam from which the multitude of threads are taken up, one by one, +and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses by women who sit all +day under the north windows overlooking the canal--the "drawers-in" of +whom Ditmar had spoken. Then the harnesses are put on the loom, the +threads attached to the cylinder on which the cloth is to be wound. The +looms absorbed and fascinated Janet above all else. It seemed as if she +would never tire of watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the +harnesses,--each rapid movement making a V in the warp, within the angle +of which the tiny shuttles darted to and fro, to and fro, carrying the +thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness so great the eye could +scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when the angle closed, +and flung back, and back again! And in the elaborate patterns not one, +but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its turn for the impulse +bidding it rise and fall!... Abruptly, as she gazed, one of the machines +halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the warp for the broken thread, +tied it, and started the loom again. + +"That's intelligent of it," said Caldwell, in her ear. But she could +only nod in reply. + +The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive. She +began to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain +all day long. She had never thought much about them before save to +compare vaguely their drudgery with that from which now she had been +emancipated; but she began to feel a new respect, a new concern, a new +curiosity and interest as she watched them passing from place to place +with indifference between the whirling belts, up and down the narrow +aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering, clattering machinery +whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back the light of +the electric bulbs on the ceiling. How was it possible to live for hours +at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and thrusting +hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf? She had never before +realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents. But +these people--even the children--seemed oblivious to the din and the +danger, intent on their tasks, unconscious of the presence of a visitor, +save occasionally when she caught a swift glance from a woman or girl a +glance, perhaps, of envy or even of hostility. The dark, foreign faces +glowed, and instantly grew dull again, and then she was aware of lurking +terrors, despite her exaltation, her sense now of belonging to another +world, a world somehow associated with Ditmar. Was it not he who had +lifted her farther above all this? Was it not by grace of her +association with him she was there, a spectator of the toil beneath? Yet +the terror persisted. She, presently, would step out of the noise, the +oppressive moist heat of the drawing and spinning rooms, the constant, +remorseless menace of whirling wheels and cogs and belts. But they?... +She drew closer to Caldwell's side. + +"I never knew--" she said. "It must be hard to work here." + +He smiled at her, reassuringly. + +"Oh, they don't mind it," he replied. "It's like a health resort +compared to the conditions most of them live in at home. Why, there's +plenty of ventilation here, and you've got to have a certain amount of +heat and moisture, because when cotton is cold and dry it can't be drawn +or spin, and when it's hot and dry the electricity is troublesome. If +you think this moisture is bad you ought to see a mill with the old +vapour-pot system with the steam shooting out into the room. Look here!" +He led Janet to the apparatus in which the pure air is forced through wet +cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the ventilation and humidity +were regulated automatically, how the temperature of the room was +controlled by a thermostat. + +"There isn't an agent in the country who's more concerned about the +welfare of his operatives than Mr. Ditmar. He's made a study of it, he's +spent thousands of dollars, and as soon as these machines became +practical he put 'em in. The other day when I was going through the room +one of these shuttles flew off, as they sometimes do when the looms are +running at high speed. A woman was pretty badly hurt. Ditmar came right +down." + +"He really cares about them," said Janet. She liked Caldwell's praise of +Ditmar, yet she spoke a little doubtfully. + +"Of course he cares. But it's common sense to make 'em as comfortable +and happy as possible--isn't it? He won't stand for being held up, and +he'd be stiff enough if it came to a strike. I don't blame him for that. +Do you?" + +Janet was wondering how ruthless Ditmar could be if his will were +crossed.... They had left the room with its noise and heat behind them +and were descending the worn, oaken treads of the spiral stairway of a +neighbouring tower. Janet shivered a little, and her face seemed almost +feverish as she turned to Caldwell and thanked him. + +"Oh, it was a pleasure, Miss Bumpus," he declared. "And sometime, when +you want to see the Print Works or the Worsted Department, let me +know--I'm your man. And--I won't mention it." + +She did not answer. As they made their way back to the office he glanced +at her covertly, astonished at the emotional effect in her their tour had +produced. Though not of an inflammable temperament, he himself was +stirred, and it was she who, unaccountably, had stirred him: suggested, +in these processes he saw every day, and in which he was indeed +interested, something deeper, more significant and human than he had +guessed, and which he was unable to define.... + +Janet herself did not know why this intimate view of the mills, of the +people who worked in them had so greatly moved her. All day she thought +of them. And the distant throb of the machinery she felt when her +typewriter was silent meant something to her now--she could not say what. +When she found herself listening for it, her heart beat faster. She had +lived and worked beside it, and it had not existed for her, it had had no +meaning, the mills might have been empty. She had, indeed, many, many +times seen these men and women, boys and girls trooping away from work, +she had strolled through the quarters in which they lived, speculated on +the lands from which they had come; but she had never really thought of +them as human beings, individuals, with problems and joys and sorrows and +hopes and fears like her own. Some such discovery was borne in upon her. +And always an essential function of this revelation, looming larger than +ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar. It was for Ditmar they toiled, in +Ditmar's hands were their very existences, his was the stupendous +responsibility and power. + +As the afternoon wore, desire to see these toilers once more took +possession of her. From the white cupola perched above the huge mass of +the Clarendon Mill across the water sounded the single stroke of a bell, +and suddenly the air was pulsing with sounds flung back and forth by the +walls lining the river. Seizing her hat and coat, she ran down the stairs +and through the vestibule and along the track by the canal to the great +gates, which her father was in the act of unbarring. She took a stand +beside him, by the gatehouse. Edward showed a mild surprise. + +"There ain't anything troubling you--is there, Janet?" he asked. + +She shook her head. + +"I wanted to see the hands come out," she said. + +Sometimes, as at present, he found Janet's whims unaccountable. + +"Well, I should have presumed you'd know what they look like by this +time. You'd better stay right close to me, they're a rough lot, with no +respect or consideration for decent folks--these foreigners. I never +could see why the government lets 'em all come over here." He put on the +word "foreigners" an emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic +because of its peculiar note of futility. Janet paid no attention to +him. Her ears were strained to catch the rumble of feet descending the +tower stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it came from the +doorway--the first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled the yard +and swept onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge of +the gates. Impossible to realize this as the force which, when +distributed over the great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and +useful task! for it was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of +its swollen powers, menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold. It seemed +to Janet indeed a torrent as she clung to the side of the gatehouse as +one might cling to the steep bank of a mountain brook after a +cloud-burst. And suddenly she had plunged into it. The desire was +absurd, perhaps, but not to be denied,--the desire to mix with it, feel +it, be submerged and swept away by it, losing all sense of identity. She +heard her father call after her, faintly--the thought crossed her mind +that his appeals were always faint,--and then she was being carried along +the canal, eastward, the pressure relaxing somewhat when the draining of +the side streets began. + +She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams +met and mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington +and the Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations, +hurried thither, reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until +she had gained the middle, where she stood grasping the rail. The great +structure was a-tremble from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway +overrun with workers, dodging between trolleys and trucks,--some darting +nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along the steel girders. Doffer boys +romped and whistled, young girls in jaunty, Faber Street clothes and +flowered hats, linked to one another for protection, chewed gum and +joked, but for the most part these workers were silent, the apathy of +their faces making a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their feet +and set intentness of their bodies as they sped homeward to the +tenements. And the clothes of these were drab, save when the occasional +colour of a hooded peasant's shawl, like the slightly faded tints of an +old master, lit up a group of women. Here, going home to their children, +were Italian mothers bred through centuries to endurance and patience; +sallow Jewesses, gaunt, bearded Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and +wrinkled brows, broad-faced Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy +Italian men and pale, blond Germans mingled with muddy Syrians and +nondescript Canadians. And suddenly the bridge was empty, the army +vanished as swiftly as it came! + +Janet turned. Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball +of fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent. The delicate lines of +the upper bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant +the cupola of the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in +the azure a cloud of pink jeweller's cotton. Even as she strove to fix +these colours in her mind they vanished, the western sky faded to +magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor of the river darkened, on either +side pale lights sparkled from the windows of the mills, while down the +deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent suds from the +washing of the wools. It was given to her to know that which an artist +of living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things.... + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily +are called "spiritual," though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning +of the term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire +organism. It left her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness, +brought her nearer to high discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice +out of the past called upon her to forego, a voice somehow identified +with her father! It was faint, ineffectual. In obeying it, would she not +lose all life had to give? When she came in to supper her father was +concerned about her because, instead of walking home with him she had +left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers. Her +evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his +comprehension. And how could she explain the motives that led to it? +She was sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions +the something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and +more rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a +nature timorous and less vitalized. + +After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the +spirit of adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already +thronging with people. It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered, +and she wandered from window to window until she found herself staring at +a suit of blue cloth hung on a form, beneath which was a card that read, +"Marked down to $20." And suddenly the suggestion flashed into her mind, +why shouldn't she buy it? She had the money, she needed a new suit for +the winter, the one she possessed was getting shabby...but behind the +excuse of necessity was the real reason triumphantly proclaiming +itself--she would look pretty in it, she would be transformed, she would +be buying a new character to which she would have to live up. The old +Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit would announce +to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released all those +longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become insupportable! +This was what the purchase meant, a change of existence as complete as +that between the moth and the butterfly; and the realization of this +fact, of the audacity she was resolved to commit made her hot as she +gazed at the suit. It was modest enough, yet it had a certain +distinction of cut, it looked expensive: twenty dollars was not cheap, to +be sure, but as the placard announced, it had the air of being much more +costly--even more costly than thirty dollars, which seemed fabulous. +Though she strove to remain outwardly calm, her heart beat rapidly as she +entered the store and asked for the costume, and was somewhat reassured +by the comportment of the saleswoman, who did not appear to think the +request preposterous, to regard her as a spendthrift and a profligate. +She took down the suit from the form and led Janet to a cabinet in the +back of the shop, where it was tried on. + +"It's worth every bit of thirty dollars," she heard the woman say, "but +we've had it here for some time, and it's no use for our trade. You +can't sell anything like that in Hampton, there's no taste here, it's too +good, it ain't showy enough. My, it fits you like it was made for you, +and it's just your style--and you can see it wants a lady to wear it. +Your old suit is too tight- -I guess you've filled out some since you +bought it." + +She turned Janet around and around, patting the skirt here and there, and +then stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression almost +rapturous. Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror and +buttoned up the coat. Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned? this +image she beheld an illusion? or did she really look different, +distinguished? and if not beautiful-- alluring? She had had a momentary +apprehension, almost sickening, that she would be too conspicuous, but +the saleswoman had anticipated that objection with the magical word +"lady." + +"I'll take it," she announced. + +"Well, you couldn't have done better if you'd gone to Boston," declared +the woman. "It's one chance in a thousand. Will you wear it?" + +"Yes," said Janet faintly.... "Just put my old suit in a box, and I'll +call for it in an hour." + +The woman's sympathetic smile followed her as she left the shop. She had +an instant of hesitation, of an almost panicky desire to go back and +repair her folly, ere it was too late. Why had she taken her money with +her that evening, if not with some deliberate though undefined purpose? +But she was ashamed to face the saleswoman again, and her elation was not +to be repressed--an elation optically presented by a huge electric sign +on the farther side of the street that flashed through all the colours of +the spectrum, surrounded by running fire like the running fire in her +soul. Deliciously self-conscious, her gaze fixed ahead, she pressed +through the Wednesday night crowds, young mill men and women in their +best clothes, housewives and fathers of families with children and +bundles. In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement +staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read. "Five +Millionaire Directors Indicted in New York," "State Treasurer Accused of +Graft," "Murdock Fortune Contested by Heirs." The phrases seemed +meaningless, and she hurried on again.... She was being noticed! A man +looked at her, twice, the first glance accidental, the second arresting, +appealing, subtly flattering, agitating--she was sure he had turned and +was following her. She hastened her steps. It was wicked, what she was +doing, but she gloried in it; and even the sight, in burning red letters, +of Gruber's Cafe failed to bring on a revulsion by its association with +her sister Lise. The fact that Lise had got drunk there meant nothing to +her now. She gazed curiously at the illuminated, orange-coloured panes +separated by curving leads, at the design of a harp in green, at the sign +"Ladies' Entrance"; listened eagerly to the sounds of voices and laughter +that came from within. She looked cautiously over her shoulder, a shadow +appeared, she heard a voice, low, insinuating.... + +Four blocks farther down she stopped. The man was no longer following +her. She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to +Eda's--not quite. Of late her conscience had reproached her about Eda, +Janet had neglected her. She told herself she was afraid of Eda's uncanny +and somewhat nauseating flair for romance; and to show Eda the new suit, +though she would relish her friend's praise, would be the equivalent of +announcing an affair of the heart which she, Janet, would have +indignantly to deny. She was not going to Eda's. She knew now where she +was going. A prepared but hitherto undisclosed decree of fate had bade +her put money in her bag that evening, directed her to the shop to buy +the dress, and would presently impel her to go to West Street--nay, was +even now so impelling her. Ahead of her were the lights of the +Chippering Mill, in her ears was the rhythmic sound of the looms working +of nights on the Bradlaugh order. She reached the canal. The white arc +above the end of the bridge cast sharp, black shadows of the branches of +the trees on the granite, the thousand windows of the mill shone yellow, +reflected in the black water. Twice she started to go, twice she paused, +held by the presage of a coming event, a presage that robbed her of +complete surprise when she heard footsteps on the bridge, saw the figure +of a man halting at the crown of the arch to look back at the building he +had left, his shoulders squared, his hand firmly clasping the rail. Her +heart was throbbing with the looms, and yet she stood motionless, until +he turned and came rapidly down the slope of the arch and stopped in +front of her. Under the arc lamp it was almost as bright as day. + +"Miss Bumpus!" he exclaimed. + +"Mr. Ditmar" she said. + +"Were you--were you coming to the office?" + +"I was just out walking," she told him. "I thought you were in Boston." + +"I came home," he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never +leaving her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back +again to her face. "I got here on the seven o'clock train, I wanted to +see about those new Blubbers." + +"They finished setting them up this afternoon," she said. + +"How did you know?" + +"I asked Mr. Orcutt about it--I thought you might telephone." + +"You're a wonder," was his comment. "Well, we've got a running start on +that order," and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill. +"Everything going full speed ahead. When we put it through I guess I'll +have to give you some of the credit." + +"Oh, I haven't done anything," she protested. + +"More than you think. You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't +get along without you." His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices +of those who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone. It +sounded absurd, yet it did not repel her: something within her responded +to it. "Which way were you going?" he inquired. + +"Home," she said. + +"Where do you live?" + +"In Fillmore Street." And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a +little street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street." + +"Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood. "I'll come +with you as far as the bridge--along the canal. I've got so much to say +to you." + +"Can't you say it to-morrow?" + +"No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many +interruptions, I mean. And then, you never give me a chance." + +She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her. He had proposed +the route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize +them, and her pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the +sweet allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come +out to seek and by a strange fatality found--since he had appeared on the +bridge almost as soon as she reached it. The sense of fate was strong +upon her. Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had read of +him that day, to the added impression of his power conveyed by the trip +through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than ever in her consciousness. + +"What do you want to say?" she asked. + +"Oh, lots of things." + +She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but +firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power +stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm seemed +to burn where he touched her. + +"Have I done something to offend you?" she heard him say. "Or is it +because you don't like me?" + +"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him. "I don't like +seeing you--this way. And why should you want to know me and see me +outside of the office? I'm only your stenographer." + +"Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met. +You don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself." + +"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer," +she informed him. + +"For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed. "I've been afraid of that. Don't +go--I don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful--I won't get you talked +about." + +"Talked about!" She tore herself away from him. "Why should you get me +talked about?" she cried. + +He was frightened. "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--" + +"What did you mean?" + +"Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we +shouldn't be friends. I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our +friendship the subject of gossip." + +Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and +penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over +him. + +"Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any +advantages- -and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper +about you today--Mr. Caldwell gave it to me--" + +"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively. + +"Well, in some places it was rather funny." + +"Funny? How?" + +"Oh, I don't know." She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic +lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell. "I liked it, but I thought it +praised you too much, it didn't criticize you enough." + +He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing. +From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got +anything but flattery. + +"I want you to criticize me," he said. + +But she went on relentlessly:-- + +"When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you'd got +everything you'd started out to get, and how some day you might be +treasurer and president of the Chippering Mill, well--" Despairing of +giving adequate expression to her meaning, she added, "I didn't see how +we could be friends." + +"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly. + +"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly. But +I didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived--in a little +flat that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a +tenement. It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of +cooking. You couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is? +And you wouldn't care to be talked about yourself, either," she added +vehemently. + +This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words. + +"Listen!" he urged. "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and +honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on +you. And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I +thought of you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to +put it over.'" + +She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to +herself, to take her arm again. + +"How could I help you?" + +"Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of +thinking for me, and you can help me by just being there. I can't +explain it, but I feel somehow that things will go right. I've come to +depend on you." + +He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not +intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing +with the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently +abandoned him. He was appalled at the possibility of losing her. + +"I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent. +"You're different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are." His +voice was low, caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder +pressed against her shoulder. "I've never had a woman friend before, +I've never wanted one until now." + +She wondered about his wife. + +"You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains." + +"Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed. + +"You're beautiful," he whispered. "It's queer, but I didn't know it at +first. You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you." + +They had come almost to Warren Street. Suddenly realizing that they were +standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end +of the bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently. + +"Let's walk back a little way," he proposed. + +"I must go home--it's late." + +"It's only nine o'clock." + +"I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me. Good night." + +"Just one more turn!" he pleaded. + +But she shook her head, backing away from him. + +"You'll see me to-morrow," she told him. She didn't know why she said +that. She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her +shoulder; her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of +music was in her ears, the lights sparkled. She had had an adventure, at +last, an adventure that magically had transformed her life! She was +beautiful! No one had ever told her that before. And he had said that +he needed her. She smiled as, with an access of tenderness, in spite of +his experience and power she suddenly felt years older than Ditmar. She +could help him!... + +She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street. + +"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said. + +"Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman. She was +seated quietly sewing under the lamp. + +"I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried +this?" Janet asked. + +The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as she +rose, brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face. She felt that her +secret had been guessed. The change effected, Janet went homeward +swiftly, to encounter, on the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise, +whose attention was immediately attracted by the bundle. + +"What have you got there, angel face?" she demanded. + +"A new suit," said Janet. + +"You don't tell me--where'd you get it? at the Paris?" + +"No, at Dowling's." + +"Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!" + +"Well, what if it was?" + +Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of +whistling through her teeth. + +"Twenty bucks! Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next. +Well, as sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when +they first knocked it down I said to Sadie, `those are the rags Janet +would buy if she had the ready.' Have you got another raise out of +Ditmar?" + +"If I have, it isn't any business of yours," Janet retorted. "I've got a +right to do as I please with my own money." + +"Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you +look well." + +After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when +they reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that +Janet had bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it. And finally, when +they had got to bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against +this new expression of the sordidness and lack of privacy in which she +was forced to live, made the more intolerable by the close, sultry +darkness of the room and the snoring of Lise. + +In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness +during the ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness +and alertness. It had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note +had somehow become exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life; +and Lise's sarcastic comments as to the probable reasons why she did not +put on the new suit had host their power of exasperation. Janet +compromised, wearing a blouse of china silk hitherto reserved for "best." +The day was bright, and she went rapidly toward the mill, glorying in the +sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air; and her thoughts were not +so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of which he was the medium. +She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that. When she reached the +office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she took off her hat and +jacket and began to sort out the mail. And she had to calm herself with +the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar had undergone no change. +She had merely met him by the canal, and he had talked to her. That was +all. He had, of course, taken her arm: it tingled when she remembered it. +But when he suddenly entered the room her heart gave a bound. He closed +the door, he took off his hat, and stood gazing at her--while she +continued arranging letters. Presently she was forced to glance at him. +His bearing, his look, his confident smile all proclaimed that he, at +least, believed things to be changed. He glowed with health and vigour, +with an aggressiveness from which she shrank, yet found delicious. + +"How are you this morning?" he said at last--this morning as +distinguished from all other mornings. + +"I'm well, as usual," she answered. She herself was sometimes surprised +by her ability to remain outwardly calm. + +"Why did you run away from me last night?" + +"I didn't run away, I had to go home," she said, still arranging the +letters. + +"We could have had a little walk. I don't believe you had to go home at +all. You just wanted an excuse to get away from me." + +"I didn't need an excuse," she told him. He moved toward her, but she +took a paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room. + +"I thought we were going to be friends," he said. + +"Being friends doesn't mean being foolish," she retorted. "And Mr. +Orcutt's waiting to see you." + +"Let him wait." + +He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the +typewritten words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as +grasping the meaning of them. From time to time he glanced up at Janet +as she flitted about the room. By George, she was more desirable than he +had ever dared to imagine! He felt temporarily balked, but hopeful. On +his way to the mill he had dwelt with Epicurean indulgence on this sight +of her, and he had not been disappointed. He had also thought that he +might venture upon more than the mere feasting of his eyes, yet found an +inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means absolutely +repulsed him. Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle +transformation. There could be no doubt of that. She was almost +coquettish. His eyes lingered. The china silk blouse was slightly open +at the neck, suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the +outline of her shoulders. Overcome by an impulse he could not control, +he got up and went toward her, but she avoided him. + +"I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come," she said, rather breathlessly, as she +reached the door and opened it. Ditmar halted in his steps at the sight +of the tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the threshold. + +Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other. + +"I've been waiting for you," he said, after a moment, "the rest of that +lot didn't come in this morning. I've telephoned to the freight agent." + +Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly. Orcutt repeated the information. + +"Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them." + +"I'm doing that," replied the conscientious Orcutt. + +"How's everything else going?" Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for +geniality. "You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear yourself +out." + +Mr. Orcutt was relieved. He had expected an outburst of the exasperation +that lately had characterized his superior. They began to chat. Janet +had escaped. + +"Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you +up," Ditmar informed him. + +"She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," +Orcutt observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her +going through the mill with young Caldwell." + +Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held. + +"Oh, she went through, did she?" + +After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular +musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk. + +That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning +to confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve. She sat +by her window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she was +swept by surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were +strangely commingled. A voice within her said, "This can't go on, this +can't go on! It's too terrible! Everyone in the office will notice +it--there will be a scandal. I ought to go away while there is yet +time--to-day." Though the instinct of flight was strong within her, she +was filled with rebellion at the thought of leaving when Adventure was +flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill across the waters +was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun. She had made +at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was +inconceivable without him. + +Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one hand +and what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when, toward +the middle of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning her to +take his letters; and went palpitating, leaving the door open behind her, +seating herself on the far side of the desk, her head bent over her book. +Her neck, where her hair grew in wisps behind her ear, seemed to burn: +Ditmar's glance was focussed there. Her hands were cold as she wrote.... +Then, like a deliverer, she saw young Caldwell coming in from the outer +office, holding a card in his hand which he gave to Ditmar, who sat +staring at it. + +"Siddons?" he said. "Who's Siddons?" + +Janet, who had risen, spoke up. + +"Why, he's been making the Hampton `survey.' You wrote him you'd see +him-- don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?" + +"Don't go!" exclaimed Ditmar. "You can't tell what those confounded +reformers will accuse you of if you don't have a witness." + +Janet sat down again. The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating +reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or +less to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his +manner on such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his +dependence, of her own usefulness. Besides, she had been curious about +the `survey' at the time it was first mentioned, she wished to hear +Ditmar's views concerning it. Mr. Siddons proved to be a small and +sallow young man with a pointed nose and bright, bulbous brown eyes like +a chipmunk's. Indeed, he reminded one of a chipmunk. As he whisked +himself in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused impression of +polite self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion; he had +the air of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring +it, is prepared to deal with it. Janet smiled. She had a sudden impulse +to drop the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he +would jump. + +"How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?" he said. "I've been hoping to have this +pleasure." + +"My secretary, Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. + +Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed. Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his +chair, seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened +a drawer of his desk and offered the visitor a cigar. + +"Thanks, I don't smoke," said Mr. Siddons. + +Ditmar lit one for himself. + +"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked. + +"Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an +examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the +operatives in the city of Hampton. I'm sure you'd be interested in +hearing something of the situation we found." + +"I suppose you've been through our mills," said Ditmar. + +"No, the fact is--" + +"You ought to go through. I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a +slight emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making +things comfortable and healthy for our people." + +"I've no doubt of it--in fact, I've been so informed. It's because of +your concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured +to come and talk to you of how most of them live when they're at home," +replied Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly. "Perhaps, though +living in Hampton, you don't quite realize what the conditions are. I +know a man who has lived in Boston ten years and who hasn't ever seen the +Bunker Hill monument." + +"The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair," retorted Ditmar, "anybody +can go there who has enough curiosity and interest. But I don't see how +you can expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up +their garbage and wash their babies. I shouldn't want anybody to +interfere with my private affairs." + +"But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public +menace?" Siddons objected. "Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of +tenements ready to crumble. There are no provisions for foundations, +thickness of walls, size of timbers and columns, and if these houses had +been deliberately erected to make a bonfire they couldn't have answered +the purpose better. If it were not for the danger to life and the pity +of making thousands of families homeless, a conflagration would be a +blessing, although I believe the entire north or south side of the city +would go under certain conditions. The best thing you could do would be +to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding grounds +for disease. In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of +rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases +with only four-foot courts littered with refuse,--houses without light, +without ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking +and eating and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to put dogs +in. You've got some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the +acre, and your average density is considerably over a hundred." + +"Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?" asked +Ditmar. + +"That isn't the point," said Siddons. "The point is that they're bad, +they're dangerous, they're inhuman. If you could go into these tenements +as I have done and see the way some of these people live, it would make +you sick the Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially. You wouldn't +treat cattle that way. In some households of five rooms, including the +kitchen, I found as many as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people +living. You've got an alarming infant death-rate." + +"Isn't it because these people want to live that way?" Ditmar inquired. +"They actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a +pig-sty--they had 'em in Europe. And what do you expect us to do? Buy +land and build flats for them? Inside of a month they'd have all the +woodwork stripped off for kindling, the drainage stopped up, the bathtubs +filled with ashes. I know, because it's been tried." + +Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, +and his eyes sought Janet's. She avoided them, resenting a little the +assumption of approval she read in them. Her mind, sensitive to new +ideas, had been keenly stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began +patiently to dwell once more on the ill effect of the conditions he had +discovered on the welfare of the entire community. She had never thought +of this. She was surprised that Ditmar should seem to belittle it. +Siddons was a new type in her experience. She could understand and to a +certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him; +he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent most of +his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off Ditmar's +objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as, "Before +we come to that, let me say a word just here." Ditmar hated words. His +outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not unlike the +futile charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a smaller and +more agile one. With nimble politeness, with an exasperating air of +deference to Ditmar's opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only to return +to the charge; yet, despite a manner and method which, when contrasted to +Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous, Mr. Siddons had a force and fire of +his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he dwelt on the misery he had +seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of his feeling, Janet +began to be moved. It was odd, considering the struggle for existence of +her own family, that these foreigners had remained outside the range of +her sympathy. + +"I guess you'll find," Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, "I guess +you'll find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people +have got millions tucked away. And they send a lot of it to the other +side, they go back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they +manage to buy land. Ask the real estate men. Why, I could show you a +dozen who worked in the mills a few years ago and are capitalists +to-day." + +"I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar," Siddons gracefully conceded. "But what +does it prove? Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on +ruthless competition. The great majority who are unable to survive the +test pay the price. And the community also pays the price, the state and +nation pay it. And we have this misery on our consciences. I've no +doubt you could show me some who have grown rich, but if you would let me +I could take you to families in desperate want, living in rooms too dark +to read in at midday in clear weather, where the husband doesn't get more +than seven dollars a week when the mills are running full time, where the +woman has to look out for the children and work for the lodgers, and even +with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to go into the mills +to earn money for winter clothing. I've seen enough instances of this +kind to offset the savings bank argument. And even then, when you have a +family where the wife and older children work, where the babies are put +out to board, where there are three and four lodgers in a room, why do +you suppose they live that way? Isn't it in the hope of freeing +themselves ultimately from these very conditions? And aren't these +conditions a disgrace to Hampton and America?" + +"Well, what am I to do about it?" Ditmar demanded. + +"I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings +in the mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances. That's +more than a good many mills I could mention attempt." + +"You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than +any man in Hampton. You can bring pressure to bear on the city council +to enforce and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a +campaign of public opinion against certain property owners." + +"Yes," retorted Ditmar, "and what then? You raise the rents, and you +won't get anybody to live in the houses. They'll move out to settlements +like Glendale full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're +accustomed to. What you reformers are actually driving at is that we +should raise wages--isn't it? If we raised wages they'd live like rats +anyway. I give you credit for sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want +you to think I'm not as much interested in the welfare of these people as +you and the men behind you. The trouble is, you only see one side of +this question. When you're in my position, you're up against hard facts. +We can't pay a dubber or a drawing tender any more than he's worth, +whether he has a wife or children in the mills or whether he hasn't. +We're in competition with other mills, we're in competition with the +South. We can't regulate the cost of living. We do our best to make +things right in the mills, and that's all we can do. We can't afford to +be sentimental about life. Competition's got to be the rule, the world's +made that way. Some are efficient and some aren't. Good God, any man +who's had anything to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that +drummed into him hard. You talk about ordinances, laws--there are enough +laws and ordinances in this city and in this state right now. If we have +any more the mills will have to shut down, and these people will +starve--all of 'em." Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and he +flung his cigar away. "Send me a copy of your survey when it's +published. I'll look it over." + +"Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?" Ditmar +exploded, when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out. "Comes in here to +advise me that it's my business to look out for the whole city of +Hampton. I'd like to see him up against this low-class European labour +trying to run a mill with them. They're here one day and there the next, +they don't know what loyalty is. You've got to drive 'em--if you give +'em an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite your property. Why, +there's nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend on them, I'd +build 'em houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home. As it is, I do +my best, though they don't deserve it,--in slack seasons I run half time +when I oughtn't to be running at all." + +His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had +been increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the +sympathy on which he had counted. She sat silent, gazing searchingly at +his face. + +"What's the matter?" he demanded. "You don't mean to say you agree with +that kind of talk?" + +"I was wondering--" she began. + +"What?" + +"If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to work +in order to keep alive?" + +"Understand them! Why not?" he asked. + +"Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're +pretty much your own master--and that makes it different. I'm not +blaming you--in your place I'd be the same, I'm sure. But this man, +Siddons, made me think. I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is, +in a way." + +"Not like these foreigners!" he protested. + +"Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped +suddenly in his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the +startled air of the male who has inadvertently touched off one of the +many hidden springs in the feminine emotional mechanism. "How do you +know what it is to live in a squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms +that smell of cooking, and not be able to have any of the finer, +beautiful things in life? Unless you'd wanted these things as I've +wanted them, you couldn't know. Oh, I can understand what it would feel +like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!" + +"You can!" he exclaimed in amazement. "You!" + +"Yes, me. You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for +them any more than you could feel sorry for me. You want them to run +your mills for you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they +live, and you just want me--for your pleasure." + +He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in +his experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not +the type of man to be shocked by it. On the contrary, it swept away his +irritation, and as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a +fever heat as he approached and stood over her. + +"You little--panther!" he whispered. "You want beautiful things, do you? +Well, I'll give 'em to you. I'll take care of you." + +"Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears. "Do +you think I want anybody to take care of me? That shows how little you +know me. I want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I +get." + +Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings. +Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would +indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of +the red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook +her with a wild appeal. "What do I care about any others--I want you!" +such was its message. And against this paradoxical wish to be conquered, +intensified by the magnetic field of his passion, battled her +self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire to be free, to escape now +from a domination the thought of which filled her with terror. She felt +his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers straying along her arm; +for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously powerless. Then the +emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and she sprang away, +dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she stood +swaying. + +"Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say. "For God's sake, why +can't you trust me?" + +She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to +twinkle fantastically in the distant mills. Presently she turned. +Ditmar was in his chair. She crossed the room to the electric switch, +turning on the flood of light, picked up her tote-book and sat down +again. + +"Don't you intend to answer your letters?" she asked. + +He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized +the topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely. She experienced a +certain exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took +down his words. + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS + +But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace +Exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained +Foreigners. I never could see why the government lets 'em all come +Hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity +Perhaps she feared to break the charm of that memory +The seventh commandment was only relative + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V1 by +Winston Churchill + + + + + + +THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT + +By WINSTON CHURCHILL + + + +VOLUME 2 + + +CHAPTER IX + +At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension +her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's +ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being +able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young +woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement that +the leash might break--and then what? Here was a situation, she knew +instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of +possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that +very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to +think about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of +anomalies and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her +knowledge and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which is +rapidly discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to +achieve the morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance. +Tradition, convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the +movies, even her mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom +with which the sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her. The +thought, however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise, +despite a fancied superiority, did occasionally shake her and bring about +a revulsion against Ditmar. Janet's problem was in truth, though she +failed so to specialize it, the supreme problem of our time: what is the +path to self-realization? how achieve emancipation from the commonplace? + +Was she in love with Ditmar? The question was distasteful, she avoided +it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to +cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused in +her. It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her +resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that +he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage. Plainly, he did not +intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so, a +profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her present +mood, have led her to refuse. She felt a fine scorn for the woman who, +under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all a man's worldly +goods in return for that which it was her privilege to give freely; while +the notion of servility, of economic dependence--though she did not so +phrase it--repelled her far more than the possibility of social ruin. + +This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton and +Ditmar had nothing to do with that.... + +Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind, +invaded her dreams. When she likened herself to the other exploited +beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,--of whom Mr. +Siddons had spoken--her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite +ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours. + +In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her +and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having +hesitated. A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to hurt +him before she left. At such times, however, unforeseen events +invariably intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans. One +evening at supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have achieved +the comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after struggle, she +gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah concerning the stove, +the condition of which for many months had been a menace to the welfare +of the family. Edward, it appeared, had remarked mildly on the absence +of beans. + +"Beans!" Hannah cried. "You're lucky to have any supper at all. I just +wish I could get you to take a look at that oven--there's a hole you can +put your hand through, if you've a mind to. I've done my best, I've made +out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in. He +says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything. A new one'll cost +thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy it. +And the fire-box is most worn through." + + +"Well, mother, we'll see what we can do," said Edward. + +"You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do +anything," retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply. +Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to +time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many +sheets. + +"It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with +asthma," he observed presently. "His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of +Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816, +and fought in the war of 1812. I've told you about him. This Caleb was +born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in +Detroit.... Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction +company. Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's +descendants. He married Sarah Styles" (reading painfully) "`and they had +issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet. John went to Middlebury, +Vermont, and married '" + +Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily. + +"A lot of good it does us to have all that information about Eben +Wheeler's asthma!" she complained. "It'll buy us a new stove, I guess. +Him and his old Bumpus papers! If the house burned down over our heads +that's all he'd think of." + +As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's +lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous. Accustomed as +Janet was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it +was gradually borne in upon her now--despite a preoccupation with her own +fate--that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect +a family crisis of the first magnitude. She was stirred anew to anger +and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be threatened in +its continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when, glancing at her +sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of self-disgust. Was +she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed? Lise, in her +evening finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was awaiting the hour +set for a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the Boston evening sheet +whose glaring red headlines stretched across the page. When the +newspaper fell to her lap a dreamy expression clouded Lise's eyes. She +was thinking of some man! Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only +to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered +on his face as he bent over the letter once more. Suddenly she +experienced an overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's +plight,--the destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in +the confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs. Never had a +destiny seemed so appalling. And yet Janet resented that pity. The +effect of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion +she was no longer a free agent, to leave Hampton and Ditmar when she +chose. Without her, this family was helpless. She rose, and picked up +some of the dishes. Hannah snatched them from her hands. + +"Leave 'em alone, Janet!" she said with unaccustomed sharpness. "I guess +I ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet." + +And a flash of new understanding came to Janet. The dishes were +vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had +been cheated by fate. A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something of +a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers.... Janet left the room +swiftly, entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out. +Across the street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and +through the window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his +chair, his feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at the +ceiling. When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down his +chair on the floor with a bang. + +"Why, it's Miss Janet!" he exclaimed. "How are you this evening, now? I +was just hoping some one would pay me a call." + +Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper of +pessimism, and she was moved to reply:-- + +"You know you were having a beautiful time, all by yourself." + +"A beautiful time, is it? Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some +young lady a-coming to pay me a visit." + +"Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?" + +"Then it's dreaming I am, still," retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly. + +Janet laughed. His tone, though bantering, was respectful. One of the +secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability to +estimate his fellow creatures. His manner of treating Janet, for +instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise. +In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing +her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to +attempt to pull wool over his eyes. Janet had the intelligence to trust +him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her +with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above +all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble. It +was his great quality. Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning +greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some +unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her, +and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a +certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and +self-respect. For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes +as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless +family in the clay-yellow flat across the street. And there was nothing, +she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family. So she +said:-- + +"I've come to see about the stove." + +"Sure," he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected. +"Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet. I've got a stove here I +know'll suit your mother. It's a Reading, it's almost new. Ye'd better +be having a look at it yourself." + +He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the +store. + +"It's in need of a little polish," he added, as he turned on a light, +"but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal." He opened +the oven and took off the lids. + +"I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves," she told him. "But I'll +trust your judgment. How much is it?" she inquired hesitatingly. + +He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture. + +"Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars. If that's +too much--mebbe we can find another." + +"Can you put it in to-morrow morning?" she asked. + +"I can that," he said. She drew out her purse. "Ye needn't be paying +for it all at once," he protested, laying a hand on her arm. "You won't +be running away." + +"Oh, I'd rather--I have the money," she declared hurriedly; and she +turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the +bills, how little was left in her purse. + +"I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon," he said, as he escorted +her to the door. And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until +she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had +in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went +straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had +brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been +equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,--a part +which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become +convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was indeed a +bewildering thing.... + +The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints continued, +Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her return home +in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of +protector and preserver of the family. She would have preferred, if +possible, to give the stove anonymously. Not that the expression of +Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the +dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and done it!" + +And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:-- + +"Somebody had to do it--didn't they? Who else was there?" + +"It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things. You'd ought to +save it you'll need it," Hannah continued illogically. + +"It's lucky I had the money," said Janet. + +Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other, +were the explosive expressions of deep feeling. Janet knew that her +mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice. She herself was moved by +Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed +sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation. + +"I hope the stove's all right, mother," she said. "Mr. Tiernan seemed to +think it was a good one." + +"It's a different thing," declared Hannah. "I was just wondering this +evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the +other. Come and see how nice it looks." + +Janet followed her into the kitchen. As they stood close together gazing +at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a +little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again. +She seized her apron and clapped it to her face. + +"You hadn't ought to be made to do it!" she sobbed. + +And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their +intercourse. She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the +room.... + +Supper was an ordeal. Janet did not relish her enthronement as a +heroine, she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her +father, which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie +her affection for him. Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took +on the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as +compared with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in +some sort to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder +daughter's act. + +"I guess you notice the difference in that pork," she would exclaim, and +when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah +observed: "As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a +daughter like her!" + +Janet squirmed. Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness +was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned +him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him +powerless before her mother's reproaches. After the meal was over he sat +listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured, +pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found +refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy. That +evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner, +untouched. + +What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who +also came in for her share of implied reproach. Of late Lise had become +an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to +make this occasion an object lesson. And though parental tenderness had +often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness in +failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite +relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the +nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise, might +do well to cultivate. Lise was equally determined to withhold any such +acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that Hannah +invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with it another-- +the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and ridicules the lack +of such knowledge in others. Its implication was made certain when the +two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper. Lise, feverishly +occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the silence there by +inquiring:-- + +"Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy a stove, too. How much does +Ditmar give you, sweetheart?" + +Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister. Lise struggled to escape. + +"Leave me go" she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was +released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which +had flopped to one side of her head. "I didn't mean nothin', I was only +kiddie' you--what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?" + +"I'm not like-you," said Janet. + +"I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her +mouth. "Forget it." + +When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to +rock agitatedly. What had really made her angry, she began to perceive, +was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's +intimation concerning Ditmar. Why should she have, in Lise, continually +before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals? +or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the +truth about herself? For some time Janet had more than suspected that +her sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from +discussing; an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her +conquests before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with +an engaging though cynical freedom. Although the existence of this +gentleman was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined +to believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the +fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular +inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton. What +was he like? It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways +possibly resemble Ditmar. Thus he became the object of a morbid +speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself +in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him. Janet, also, had +recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable +tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man. The very next +Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the +blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber +Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler +and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three +successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the +whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple, on three sides were +massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was +caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones. Shortly +after this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The Paris had alluringly +and craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak +ordained by providence to "go" with the hat. Miss Schuler declared it +would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity but the +trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two more pay-days and endure +the suspense arising from the possibility that some young lady of taste +and means might meanwhile become its happy proprietor. Had not the +saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had it on credit; but she did +succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing Saturday, in having it +withdrawn from public gaze. The second Saturday Lise triumphantly +brought the cloak home; a velvet cloak,--if the eyes could be believed,-- +velvet bordering on plush, with a dark purple ground delicately and +artistically spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged +with a material which--if not too impudently examined and no questions +asked--might be mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white +fox. Both investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of +Janet's increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before +the bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself with +a defiant apology. + +"I just had to have something--what with winter coming on," she declared, +seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back. "You might as well +get your clothes chick, while you're about it--and I didn't have to dig +up twenty bones, neither--nor anything like it--" a reflection on Janet's +moest blue suit and her abnormal extravagance. For it was Lise's habit +to carry the war into the enemy's country. "Sadie's dippy about it--says +it puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last Sunday's +supplement. Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?" and she wheeled +around for her sister's inspection. + +"If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the +rain." + +"What's chewin' you now?" demanded Lise. She was not lacking in +imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its +purpose of summoning up a somwhat abject image of herself in wet velvet +and bedraggled feathers--an image suggestive of a certain hunted type of +woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror. And she was the more +resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this +suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like a +canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes. She +swung on Janet furiously. + +"I get you, all right!" she cried. "I guess I know what's eatin' you! +You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy what +I need. You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of them +Polak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look nice." + +And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:-- + +"If I were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an +introduction. You asked me what I thought. I don't care about the +money!" she exclaimed passionately. "I've often told you you were pretty +enough without having to wear that kind of thing--to make men stare at +you." + +"I want to know if I don't always look like a lady! And there's no man +living would try to pick me up more than once." The nasal note in Lise's +voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger. +"You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher." + +"I'd rather look like a floorwasher than--than another kind of woman," +Janet declared. + +"Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart," said Lise. "You needn't be +scared anybody will pick you up." + +"I'm not," said Janet.... + +This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the +stove. Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also been +moved to protest; futile protest. Its only effect on Lise was to +convince her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to +make her more secretive and sullen than ever before. + +"Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter," Hannah said +dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after +Lise had gone out. "I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and +blood--I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it. I guess it's what the +minister in Dolton used to call a visitation. I suppose I deserve it, +but sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might +have been able to put a stop to the way she's going on. She ain't like +any of the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find +out. She just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong. +Well, the world has got all jumbled up--it beats me." + +Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink. + +"I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit +hopin'. I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I +could honestly wish him to have her." + +"Mother!" protested Janet. Sometimes, in those conversations, she was +somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister. + +"Well, I don't," insisted Hannah, "that's a fact. I'll tell you what she +looks like in that hat and cloak--a bad woman. I don't say she is--I +don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my +daughter to look like one." + +"Oh, Lise can take care of herself," Janet said, in spite of certain +recent misgivings. + +"This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one," declared Hannah who, +from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels. +And after a moment's silence she inquired: "Who's this man that's payin' +her attention now?" + +"I don't know," replied Janet, "I don't know that there's anybody." + +"I guess there is," said Hannah. "I used to think that that Wiley was +low enough, but I could see him. It was some satisfaction. I could know +the worst, anyhow.... I guess it's about time for another flood." + +This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so frequent +in her recent experience. Her mother had used the words "right" and +"wrong." But what was "right," or "wrong?" There was no use asking +Hannah, who--she perceived--was as confused and bewildered as herself. +Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong? because, if +she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be +punished in an after life? She was not at all sure whether she believed +in an after life,--a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled her +friend Eda Rawle, who had "got religion" from an itinerant evangelist and +was now working off, in a "live" church, some of the emotional idealism +which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young unmarried women of +a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks. This was not, of +course, Janet's explanation of the change in her friend, of whom she now +saw less and less. They had had arguments, in which neither gained any +ground. For the first time in their intercourse, ideas had come between +them, Eda having developed a surprising self-assertion when her new +convictions were attacked, a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that +Janet found neither inspiring nor convincing. She resented being prayed +for, and an Eda fervent in good works bored her more than ever. Eda was +deeply pained by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her +heroine-worship persisted. Her continued regard for her friend might +possibly be compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has +developed a hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte. + +Janet was not wholly without remorse. She valued Eda's devotion, she +sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that +it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in +any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had felt instinctively +from the first that the friendship was not founded on, mental harmony, +and now it was brought home to her that Eda's solution could never be +hers. Eda would have been thrilled on learning of Ditmar's attentions, +would have advocated the adoption of a campaign leading up to matrimony. +In matrimony, for Eda, the soul was safe. Eda would have been horrified +that Janet should have dallied with any other relationship; God would +punish her. Janet, in her conflict between alternate longing and +repugnance, was not concerned with the laws and retributions of God. She +felt, indeed, the need of counsel, and knew not where to turn for it,-- +the modern need for other than supernatural sanctions. She did not +resist her desire for Ditmar because she believed, in the orthodox sense, +that it was wrong, but because it involved a loss of self-respect, a +surrender of the personality from the very contemplation of which she +shrank. She was a true daughter of her time. + +On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his +correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived and +interrupted him. Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to file +away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from her +work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder. The two men +were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that +struck her as dramatic. Both were vital figures, dominant types which +had survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle +for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been +projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize. +She surveyed Holster critically. He was short, heavily built, with an +almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and +kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun. His nasal voice was +complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by +gestures. The veins stood out on his forehead. She wondered what his +history had been. She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face +she was quick to detect a look she had seen before--a contraction of the +eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw. That look, and the +peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a +responsive sense of championship. + +"All right, Ditmar," she heard the other exclaim. "I tell you again +you'll never be able to pull it off." + +Ditmar's laugh was short, defiant. + +"Why not?" he asked. + +"Why not! Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January." + +"What's that got to do with it?" Ditmar demanded. + +"You'll see--you'll remember what I told you fellows at the conference +after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor +insisted on signing it. I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a +fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in +Hampton,--didn't I? I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and +make all the other strikes we've had here look like fifty cents. Didn't +I say that? Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool +people. You remember? You were the man who stood out against it, and +they listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing +about it. Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that law +goes into effect. You'll see what'll happen! You'll never be able to +fill that Bradlaugh order in God's world." + +"Oh hell," retorted Ditmar, contemptuously. "You're always for lying +down, Holster. Why don't you hand over your mill to the unions and go to +work on a farm? You might as well, if you're going to let the unions run +the state. Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony? +When they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to +fifty-four and we kept on payin' 'em for fifty-six, against my advice, +what happened? Did they thank us? I guess not. Were they contented? +Not on your life. They went right on agitating, throwing scares into the +party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,--and now it's +fifty-four hours. It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then we'll +have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South and +donate our mills to the state for insane asylums." + +"No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side. +They're getting sick of the unions now." + +Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it. + +"The public!" he exclaimed contemptuously. "A whole lot of good they'll +do us." + +Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost +touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the +Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar. She held her breath, her blood +ran faster,--the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal. + +"All right--remember what I say--wait and see where you come out with +that order." Holster's voice trembled with anger. He hesitated, and +left the office abruptly. Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and +then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and +seated himself in his chair. His eyes, still narrowed, had in them a +gleam of triumph that thrilled her. Combat seemed to stimulate and +energize him. + +"He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with +the Clarendon," Ditmar exclaimed. "Well, he'll have to guess again. +I've got his number." He began to turn over his letters. "Let's see, +where were we? Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the +door." + +Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a pencil +on a pad. The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea of +Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the +Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever that +hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that strange +surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had +experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against +him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited, had +wholly disappeared. Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she, somehow, +enlisted once again on his side. + +"By the way," he said abruptly, "you won't mention this--I know." + +"Won't mention what?" she asked. + +"This matter about the pay envelopes--that we don't intend to continue +giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-four when this law +goes into effect. They're like animals, most of 'em, they don't reason, +and it might make trouble if it got out now. You understand. They'd +have time to brood over it, to get the agitators started. When the time +comes they may kick a little, but they'll quiet down. And it'll teach +'em a lesson." + +"I never mention anything I hear in this office," she told him. + +"I know you don't," he assured her, apologetically. "I oughtn't to have +said that--it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it +spoken of. You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator +might make by getting them stirred up? You can see what it means to me, +with this order on my hands. I've staked everything on it." + +"But--when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that +they are not receiving their full wages--as Mr. Holster said?" Janet +inquired. + +"Why, they may grumble a little--but I'll be on the lookout for any move. +I'll see to that. I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push +this business of shorter hours and equal pay. It's the unskilled workers +who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized. If +we can keep out the agitators, we're all right. Even then, I'll show 'em +they can't come in here and exploit my operatives." + +In the mood in which she found herself his self-confidence, his +aggressiveness continued to inspire and even to agitate her, to compel +her to accept his point of view. + +"Why," he continued, "I trust you as I never trusted anybody else. I've +told you that before. Ever since you've been here you've made life a +different thing for me--just by your being here. I don't know what I'd +do without you. You've got so much sense about things--about people,-- +and I sometimes think you've got almost the same feeling about these +mills that I have. You didn't tell me you went through the mills with +Caldwell the other day," he added, accusingly. + +"I--I forgot," said Janet. "Why should I tell--you?" She knew that all +thought of Holster had already slipped from his mind. She did not look +up. "If you're not going to finish your letters," she said, a little +faintly, "I've got some copying to do." + +"You're a deep one," he said. And as he turned to the pile of +correspondence she heard him sigh. He began to dictate. She took down +his sentences automatically, scarcely knowing what she was writing; he +was making love to her as intensely as though his words had been the +absolute expression of his desire instead of the commonplace mediums of +commercial intercourse. Presently he stopped and began fumbling in one +of the drawers of his desk. + +"Where is the memorandum I made last week for Percy and Company?" + +"Isn't it there?" she asked. + +But he continued to fumble, running through the papers and disarranging +them until she could stand it no longer. + +"You never know where to find anything," she declared, rising and darting +around the desk and bending over the drawer, her deft fingers rapidly +separating the papers. She drew forth the memorandum triumphantly. + +"There!" she exclaimed. "It was right before your eyes." + +As she thrust it at him his hand closed over hers. She felt him drawing +her, irresistibly. + +"Janet!" he said. "For God's sake--you're killing me--don't you know it? +I can't stand it any longer!" + +"Don't!" she whispered, terror-stricken, straining away from him. "Mr. +Ditmar--let me go!" + +A silent struggle ensued, she resisting him with all the aroused strength +and fierceness of her nature. He kissed her hair, her neck,--she had +never imagined such a force as this, she felt herself weakening, +welcoming the annihilation of his embrace. + +"Mr. Ditmar!" she cried. "Somebody will come in." + +Her fingers sank into his neck, she tried to hurt him and by a final +effort flung herself free and fled to the other side of the room. + +"You little--wildcat!" she heard him exclaim, saw him put his +handkerchief to his neck where her fingers had been, saw a red stain on +it. "I'll have you yet!" + +But even then, as she stood leaning against the wall, motionless save for +the surging of her breast, there was about her the same strange, feral +inscrutableness. He was baffled, he could not tell what she was +thinking. She seemed, unconquered, to triumph over her disarray and the +agitation of her body. Then, with an involuntary gesture she raised her +hands to her hair, smoothing it, and without seeming haste left the room, +not so much as glancing at him, closing the door behind her. + +She reached her table in the outer office and sat down, gazing out of the +window. The face of the world--the river, the mills, and the bridge--was +changed, tinged with a new and unreal quality. She, too, must be +changed. She wasn't, couldn't be the same person who had entered that +room of Ditmar's earlier in the afternoon! Mr. Caldwell made a +commonplace remark, she heard herself answer him. Her mind was numb, +only her body seemed swept by fire, by emotions--emotions of fear, of +anger, of desire so intense as to make her helpless. And when at length +she reached out for a sheet of carbon paper her hand trembled so she +could scarcely hold it. Only by degrees was she able to get sufficient +control of herself to begin her copying, when she found a certain relief +in action--her hands flying over the keys, tearing off the finished +sheets, and replacing them with others. She did not want to think, to +decide, and yet she knew--something was trying to tell her that the +moment for decision had come. She must leave, now. If she stayed on, +this tremendous adventure she longed for and dreaded was inevitable. +Fear and fascination battled within her. To run away was to deny life; +to remain, to taste and savour it. She had tasted it--was it sweet?-- +that sense of being swept away, engulfed by an elemental power beyond +them both, yet in them both? She felt him drawing her to him, and she +struggling yet inwardly longing to yield. And the scarlet stain on his +handkerchief--when she thought of that her blood throbbed, her face +burned. + +At last the door of the inner office opened, and Ditmar came out and +stood by the rail. His voice was queer, scarcely recognizable. + +"Miss Bumpus--would you mind coming into my room a moment, before you +leave?" he said. + +She rose instantly and followed him, closing the door behind her, but +standing at bay against it, her hand on the knob. + +"I'm not going to touch you--you needn't be afraid," he said. Reassured +by the unsteadiness of his voice she raised her eyes to perceive that his +face was ashy, his manner nervous, apprehensive, conciliatory,--a Ditmar +she had difficulty in recognizing. "I didn't mean to frighten, to offend +you," he went on. "Something got hold of me. I was crazy, I couldn't +help it--I won't do it again, if you'll stay. I give you my word." + +She did not reply. After a pause he began again, repeating himself. + +"I didn't mean to do it. I was carried away--it all happened before I +knew. I--I wouldn't frighten you that way for anything in the world." + +Still she was silent. + +"For God's sake, speak to me!" he cried. "Say you forgive me--give me +another chance!" + +But she continued to gaze at him with widened, enigmatic eyes--whether of +reproach or contempt or anger he could not say. The situation +transcended his experience. He took an uncertain step toward her, as +though half expecting her to flee, and stopped. + +"Listen!" he pleaded. "I can't talk to you here. Won't you give me a +chance to explain--to put myself right? You know what I think of you, +how I respect and--admire you. If you'll only let me see you somewhere-- +anywhere, outside of the office, for a little while, I can't tell you how +much I'd appreciate it. I'm sure you don't understand how I feel--I +couldn't bear to lose you. I'll be down by the canal--near the bridge-- +at eight o'clock to-night. I'll wait for you. You'll come? Say you'll +come, and give me another chance!" + +"Aren't you going to finish your letters?" she asked. + +He stared at her in sheer perplexity. "Letters!" he exclaimed. "Damn +the letters! Do you think I could write any letters now?" + +As a faint ray in dark waters, a gleam seemed to dance in the shadows of +her eyes, yet was gone so swiftly that he could not be sure of having +seen it. Had she smiled? + +"I'll be there," he cried. "I'll wait for you." + +She turned from him, opened the door, and went out. + +That evening, as Janet was wiping the dishes handed her by her mother, +she was repeating to herself "Shall I go--or shan't I?"--just as if the +matter were in doubt. But in her heart she was convinced of its +predetermination by some power other than her own volition. With this +feeling, that she really had no choice, that she was being guided and +impelled, she went to her bedroom after finishing her task. The hands of +the old dining-room clock pointed to quarter of eight, and Lise had +already made her toilet and departed. Janet opened the wardrobe, looked +at the new blue suit hanging so neatly on its wire holder, hesitated, and +closed the door again. Here, at any rate, seemed a choice. She would +not wear that, to-night. She tidied her hair, put on her hat and coat, +and went out; but once in the street she did not hurry, though she knew +the calmness she apparently experienced to be false: the calmness of +fatality, because she was obeying a complicated impulse stronger than +herself--an impulse that at times seemed mere curiosity. Somewhere, +removed from her immediate consciousness, a storm was raging; she was +aware of a disturbance that reached her faintly, like the distant +throbbing of the looms she heard when she turned from Faber into West +Street She had not been able to eat any supper. That throbbing of the +looms in the night! As it grew louder and louder the tension within her +increased, broke its bounds, set her heart to throbbing too--throbbing +wildly. She halted, and went on again, precipitately, but once more +slowed her steps as she came to West Street and the glare of light at the +end of the bridge; at a little distance, under the chequered shadows of +the bare branches, she saw something move--a man, Ditmar. She stood +motionless as he hurried toward her. + +"You've come! You've forgiven me?" he asked. + +"Why were you--down there?" she asked. + +"Why? Because I thought--I thought you wouldn't want anybody to know--" + +It was quite natural that he should not wish to be seen; although she had +no feeling of guilt, she herself did not wish their meeting known. She +resented the subterfuge in him, but she made no comment because his +perplexity, his embarrassment were gratifying to her resentment, were +restoring her self-possession, giving her a sense of power. + +"We can't stay here," he went on, after a moment. "Let's take a little +walk--I've got a lot to say to you. I want to put myself right." He +tried to take her arm, but she avoided him. They started along the canal +in the direction of the Stanley Street bridge. "Don't you care for me a +little?" he demanded. + +"Why should I?" she parried. + +"Then--why did you come?" + +"To hear what you had to say." + +"You mean--about this afternoon?" + +"Partly," said Janet. + +"Well--we'll talk it all over. I wanted to explain about this afternoon, +especially. I'm sorry--" + +"Sorry!" she exclaimed. + +The vehemence of her rebuke--for he recognized it as such--took him +completely aback. Thus she was wont, at the most unexpected moments, to +betray the passion within her, the passion that made him sick with +desire. How was he to conquer a woman of this type, who never took +refuge in the conventional tactics of her sex, as he had known them? + +"I didn't mean that," he explained desperately. "My God--to feel you, to +have you in my arms--! I was sorry because I frightened you. But when +you came near me that way I just couldn't help it. You drove me to it." + +"Drove you to it!" + +"You don't understand, you don't know how--how wonderful you are. You +make me crazy. I love you, I want you as I've never wanted any woman +before--in a different way. I can't explain it. I've got so that I +can't live without you." He flung his arm toward the lights of the +mills. "That--that used to be everything to me, I lived for it. I don't +say I've been a saint--but I never really cared anything about any woman +until I knew you, until that day I went through the office and saw you +what you were. You don't understand, I tell you. I'm sorry for what I +did to-day because it offended you--but you drove me to it. Most of the +time you seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate +me, and then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other night, +as you seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a chance, and +then, when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why, I didn't know +what I was doing. I just had to have you. A man like me can't stand +it." + +"Then I'd better go away," she said. "I ought to have gone long ago." + +"Why?" he cried. "Why? What's your reason? Why do you want to ruin my +life? You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it. I +never knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you. There's +that mill," he repeated, naively. "I've made it the best mill in the +country, I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you +went away I wouldn't care a continental about it. If you went away I +wouldn't have any ambition left. Because you're a part of it, don't you +see? You--you sort of stand for it now, in my mind. I'm not literary, I +can't express what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of that +mill as a woman--and now you've come along--" Ditmar stopped, for lack of +adequate eloquence. + +She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of +the successful Ditmar, the Ditmar of great affairs, that appealed to her +most strongly. She was softened, touched; she felt, too, a responsive +thrill to such a desire as his. Yet she did not reply. She could not. +She was learning that emotion is never simple. And some inhibition, the +identity of which was temporarily obscured still persisted, pervading her +consciousness.... + +They were crossing the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by +common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail. The +hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,--only +the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river. Against +the flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the +power plant. Ditmar's shoulder touched hers. He was still pleading, but +she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters +falling over the dam. His words were like that, suggestive of a torrent +into which she longed to fling herself, yet refrained, without knowing +why. Her hands tightened on the rail; suddenly she let it go, and led +the way toward the unfrequented district of the south side. It was the +road to Silliston, but she had forgotten that. Ditmar, regaining her +side, continued his pleading. He spoke of his loneliness, which he had +never realized. He needed her. And she experienced an answering pang. +It still seemed incredible that he, too, who had so much, should feel +that gnawing need for human sympathy and understanding that had so often +made her unhappy. And because of the response his need aroused in her +she did not reflect whether he could fulfil her own need, whether he +could ever understand her; whether, at any time, she could unreservedly +pour herself out to him. + +"I don't see why you want me," she interrupted him at last. "I've never +had any advantages, I don't know anything. I've never had a chance to +learn. I've told you that before." + +"What difference does that make? You've got more sense than any woman I +ever saw," he declared. + +"It makes a great deal of difference to me," she insisted--and the sound +of these words on her own lips was like a summons arousing her from a +dream. The sordidness of her life, its cruel lack of opportunity in +contrast with the gifts she felt to be hers, and on which he had dwelt, +was swept back into her mind. Self-pity, dignity, and inherent self- +respect struggled against her woman's desire to give; an inherited racial +pride whispered that she was worthy of the best, but because she had +lacked the chance, he refrained from offering her what he would have laid +at the feet of another woman. + +"I'll give you advantages--there's nothing I wouldn't give you. Why +won't you come to me? I'll take care of you." + +"Do you think I want to be taken care of?" She wheeled on him so swiftly +that he started back. "Is that what you think I want?" + +"No, no," he protested, when he recovered his speech. + +"Do you think I'm after--what you can give me?" she shot at him. "What +you can buy for me?" + +To tell the truth, he had not thought anything about it, that was the +trouble. And her question, instead of enlightening him, only added to +his confusion and bewilderment. + +"I'm always getting in wrong with you," he told her, pathetically. +"There isn't anything I'd stop at to make you happy, Janet, that's what +I'm trying to say. I'd go the limit." + +"Your limit!" she exclaimed. + +"What do you mean?" he demanded. But she had become inarticulate-- +cryptic, to him. He could get nothing more out of her. + +"You don't understand me--you never will!" she cried, and burst into +tears--tears of rage she tried in vain to control. The world was black +with his ignorance. She hated herself, she hated him. Her sobs shook +her convulsively, and she scarcely heard him as he walked beside her +along the empty road, pleading and clumsily seeking to comfort her. Once +or twice she felt his hand on her shoulders.... And then, unlooked for +and unbidden, pity began to invade her. Absurd to pity him! She fought +against it, but the thought of Ditmar reduced to abjectness gained +ground. After all, he had tried to be generous, he had done his best, he +loved her, he needed her--the words rang in her heart. After all, he did +not realize how could she expect him to realize? and her imagination +conjured up the situation in a new perspective. Her sobs gradually +ceased, and presently she stopped in the middle of the road and regarded +him. He seemed utterly miserable, like a hurt child whom she longed to +comfort. But what she said was:-- + +"I ought to be going home." + +"Not yet!" he begged. "It's early. You say I don't understand you, +Janet--my God, I wish I did! It breaks me all up to see you cry like +that." + +"I'm sorry," she said, after a moment. "I--I can'tmmake you understand. +I guess I'm not like anybody else I'm queer--I can't help it. You must +let me go, I only make you unhappy." + +"Let you go!" he cried--and then in utter self-forgetfulness she yielded +her lips to his. A sound penetrated the night, she drew back from his +arms and stood silhouetted against the glare of the approaching headlight +of a trolley car, and as it came roaring down on them she hailed it. +Ditmar seized her arm. + +"You're not going--now?" he said hoarsely. + +"I must," she whispered. "I want to be alone--I want to think. You must +let me." + +"I'll see you to-morrow?" + +"I don't know--I want to think. I'm--I'm tired." + +The brakes screamed as the car came joltingly to a stop. She flew up the +steps, glancing around to see whether Ditmar had followed her, and saw +him still standing in the road. The car was empty of passengers, but the +conductor must have seen her leaving a man in this lonely spot. She +glanced at his face, white and pinched and apathetic--he must have seen +hundreds of similar episodes in the course of his nightly duties. He was +unmoved as he took her fare. Nevertheless, at the thought that these +other episodes might resemble hers, her face flamed--she grew hot all +over. What should she do now? She could not think. Confused with her +shame was the memory of a delirious joy, yet no sooner would she give +herself up, trembling, to this memory when in turn it was penetrated by +qualms of resentment, defiling its purity. Was Ditmar ashamed of her?... +When she reached home and had got into bed she wept a little, but her +tears were neither of joy nor sorrow. Her capacity for both was +exhausted. In this strange mood she fell asleep nor did she waken when, +at midnight, Lise stealthily crept in beside her. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Ditmar stood staring after the trolley car that bore Janet away until it +became a tiny speck of light in the distance. Then he started to walk +toward Hampton; in the unwonted exercise was an outlet for the pent-up +energy her departure had thwarted; and presently his body was warm with a +physical heat that found its counterpart in a delicious, emotional glow +of anticipation, of exultant satisfaction. After all, he could not +expect to travel too fast with her. Had he not at least gained a signal +victory? When he remembered her lips--which she had indubitably given +him!--he increased his stride, and in what seemed an incredibly brief +time he had recrossed the bridge, covered the long residential blocks of +Warren Street, and gained his own door. + +The house was quiet, the children having gone to bed, and he groped his +way through the dark parlour to his den, turning on the electric switch, +sinking into an armchair, and lighting a cigar. He liked this room of +his, which still retained something of that flavour of a refuge and +sanctuary it had so eminently possessed in the now forgotten days of +matrimonial conflict. One of the few elements of agreement he had held +in common with the late Mrs. Ditmar was a similarity of taste in +household decoration, and they had gone together to a great emporium in +Boston to choose the furniture and fittings. The lamp in the centre of +the table was a bronze column supporting a hemisphere of heavy red and +emerald glass, the colours woven into an intricate and bizarre design, +after the manner of the art nouveau--so the zealous salesman had informed +them. Cora Ditmar, when exhibiting this lamp to admiring visitors, had +remembered the phrase, though her pronunciation of it, according to the +standard of the Sorbonne, left something to be desired. The table and +chairs, of heavy, shiny oak marvellously and precisely carved by +machines, matched the big panels of the wainscot. The windows were high +in the wall, thus preventing any intrusion from the clothes-yard on which +they looked. The bookcases, protected by leaded panes, held countless +volumes of the fiction from which Cora Ditmar had derived her knowledge +of the great world outside of Hampton, together with certain sets she had +bought, not only as ornaments, but with a praiseworthy view to future +culture,--such as Whitmarsh's Library of the Best Literature. These +volumes, alas, were still uncut; but some of the pages of the novels--if +one cared to open them--were stained with chocolate. The steam radiator +was a decoration in itself, the fireplace set in the red and yellow tiles +that made the hearth. Above the oak mantel, in a gold frame, was a large +coloured print of a Magdalen, doubled up in grief, with a glory of loose, +Titian hair, chosen by Ditmar himself as expressing the nearest possible +artistic representation of his ideal of the female form. Cora Ditmar's +objections on the score of voluptuousness and of insufficient clothing +had been vain. She had recognized no immorality of sentimentality in the +art itself; what she felt, and with some justice, was that this +particular Magdalen was unrepentant, and that Ditmar knew it. And the +picture remained an offence to her as long as she lived. Formerly he had +enjoyed the contemplation of this figure, reminding him, as it did, of +mellowed moments in conquests of the past; suggesting also possibilities +of the future. For he had been quick to discount the attitude of bowed +despair, the sop flung by a sensuous artist to Christian orthodoxy. He +had been sceptical about despair--feminine despair, which could always be +cured by gifts and baubles. But to-night, as he raised his eyes, he felt +a queer sensation marring the ecstatic perfection of his mood. That +quality in the picture which so long had satisfied and entranced him had +now become repellent, an ugly significant reflection of something-- +something in himself he was suddenly eager to repudiate and deny. +It was with a certain amazement that he found himself on his feet with +the picture in his hand, gazing at the empty space where it had hung. +For he had had no apparent intention of obeying that impulse. What +should he do with it? Light the fire and burn it--frame and all? The +frame was an integral part of it. What would his housekeeper say? But +now that he had actually removed it from the wall he could not replace +it, so he opened the closet door and thrust it into a corner among relics +which had found refuge there. He had put his past in the closet; yet the +relief he felt was mingled with the peculiar qualm that follows the +discovery of symptoms never before remarked. Why should this woman have +this extraordinary effect of making him dissatisfied with himself? He +sat down again and tried to review the affair from that first day when he +had surprised in her eyes the flame dwelling in her. She had completely +upset his life, increasingly distracted his mind until now he could +imagine no peace unless he possessed her. Hitherto he had recognized in +his feeling for her nothing but that same desire he had had for other +women, intensified to a degree never before experienced. But this sudden +access of morality--he did not actually define it as such--was +disquieting. And in the feverish, semi-objective survey he was now +making of his emotional tract he was discovering the presence of other +disturbing symptoms such as an unwonted tenderness, a consideration +almost amounting to pity which at times he had vaguely sensed yet never +sought imaginatively to grasp. It bewildered him by hampering a +ruthlessness hitherto absolute. The fierceness of her inflamed his +passion, yet he recognized dimly behind this fierceness an instinct of +selfprotection--and he thought of her in this moment as a struggling bird +that fluttered out of his hands when they were ready to close over her. +So it had been to-night. He might have kept her, prevented her from +taking the car. Yet he had let her go! There came again, utterly to +blot this out, the memory of her lips. + +Even then, there had been something sorrowful in that kiss, a quality he +resented as troubling, a flavour that came to him after the wildness was +spent. What was she struggling against? What was behind her resistance? +She loved him! It had never before occurred to him to enter into the +nature of her feelings, having been so preoccupied with and tortured by +his own. This realization, that she loved him, as it persisted, began to +make him uneasy, though it should, according to all experience, have been +a reason for sheer exultation. He began to see that with her it involved +complications, responsibilities, disclosures, perhaps all of those things +he had formerly avoided and resented in woman. He thought of certain +friends of his who had become tangled up--of one in particular whose bank +account had been powerless to extricate him.... And he was ashamed of +himself. + +In view of the nature of his sex experience, of his habit of applying his +imagination solely to matters of business rather than to affairs of the +heart,--if his previous episodes may be so designated,--his failure to +surmise that a wish for marriage might be at the back of her resistance +is not so surprising as it may seem; he laid down, half smoked, his third +cigar. The suspicion followed swiftly on his recalling to mind her +vehement repudiation of his proffered gifts did he think she wanted what +he could buy for her! She was not purchasable--that way. He ought to +have known it, he hadn't realized what he was saying. But marriage! +Literally it had never occurred to him to image her in a relation he +himself associated with shackles. One of the unconscious causes of his +fascination was just her emancipation from and innocence of that herd- +convention to which most women--even those who lack wedding rings--are +slaves. The force of such an appeal to a man of Ditmar's type must not +be underestimated. And the idea that she, too, might prefer the sanction +of the law, the gilded cage as a popular song which once had taken his +fancy illuminatingly expressed it--seemed utterly incongruous with the +freedom and daring of her spirit, was a sobering shock. Was he prepared +to marry her, if he could obtain her in no other way? The question +demanded a survey of his actual position of which he was at the moment +incapable. There were his children! He had never sought to arrive at +even an approximate estimate of the boy and girl as factors in his life, +to consider his feelings toward them; but now, though he believed himself +a man who gave no weight to social considerations--he had scorned this +tendency in his wife--he was to realize the presence of ambitions for +them. He was young, he was astonishingly successful; he had reason to +think, with his opportunities and the investments he already had made, +that he might some day be moderately rich; and he had at times even +imagined himself in later life as the possessor of one of those elaborate +country places to be glimpsed from the high roads in certain localities, +which the sophisticated are able to recognize as the seats of the +socially ineligible, but which to Ditmar were outward and visible emblems +of success. He liked to think of George as the inheritor of such a +place, as the son of a millionaire, as a "college graduate," as an +influential man of affairs; he liked to imagine Amy as the wife of such +another. In short, Ditmar's wife had left him, as an unconscious legacy, +her aspirations for their children's social prestige.... + +The polished oak grandfather's clock in the hall had struck one before he +went to bed, mentally wearied by an unwonted problem involving, in +addition to self-interest, an element of ethics, of affection not wholly +compounded of desire. + +He slept soundly, however. He was one of those fortunate beings who come +into the world with digestive organs and thyroid glands in that condition +which--so physiologists tell us--makes for a sanguine temperament. And +his course of action, though not decided upon, no longer appeared as a +problem; it differed from a business matter in that it could wait. As +sufficient proof of his liver having rescued him from doubts and qualms +he was able to whistle, as he dressed, and without a tremor of agitation, +the forgotten tune suggested to his consciousness during the unpleasant +reverie of the night before,--"Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage!" It was +Saturday. He ate a hearty breakfast, joked with George and Amy, and +refreshed, glowing with an expectation mingled with just the right amount +of delightful uncertainty that made the great affairs of life a gamble, +yet with the confidence of the conqueror, he walked in sunlight to the +mill. In view of this firm and hopeful tone of his being he found it all +the more surprising, as he reached the canal, to be seized by a +trepidation strong enough to bring perspiration to his forehead. What if +she had gone! He had never thought of that, and he had to admit it would +be just like her. You never could tell what she would do. + +Nodding at Simmons, the watchman, he hurried up the iron-shod stairs, +gained the outer once, and instantly perceived that her chair beside the +window was empty! Caldwell and Mr. Price stood with their heads together +bending over a sheet on which Mr. Price was making calculations. + +"Hasn't Miss Bumpus come yet?" Ditmar demanded. He tried to speak +naturally, casually, but his own voice sounded strange, seemed to strike +the exact note of sickening apprehension that suddenly possessed him. +Both men turned and looked at him in some surprise. + +"Good-morning, Mr. Ditmar," Caldwell said. "Why, yes, she's in your +room." + +"Oh!" said Ditmar. + +"The Boston office has just been calling you--they want to know if you +can't take the nine twenty-two," Caldwell went on. "It's about that +lawsuit. It comes into court Monday morning, and Mr. Sprole is there, +and they say they have to see you. Miss Bumpus has the memorandum." + +Ditmar looked at his watch. + +"Damn it, why didn't they let me know yesterday?" he exclaimed. "I won't +see anybody, Caldwell--not even Orcutt--just now. You understand. I've +got to have a little time to do some letters. I won't be disturbed--by +any one--for half an hour." + +Caldwell nodded. + +"All right, Mr. Ditmar." + +Ditmar went into his office, closing the door behind him. She was +occupied as usual, cutting open the letters and laying them in a pile +with the deftness and rapidity that characterized all she did. + +"Janet!" he exclaimed. + +"There's a message for you from Boston. I've made a note of it," she +replied. + +"I know--Caldwell told me. But I wanted to see you before I went--I had +to see you. I sat up half the night thinking of you, I woke up thinking +of you. Aren't you glad to see me?" + +She dropped the letter opener and stood silent, motionless, awaiting his +approach--a pose so eloquent of the sense of fatality strong in her as to +strike him with apprehension, unused though he was to the appraisal of +inner values. He read, darkly, something of this mystery in her eyes as +they were slowly raised to his, he felt afraid; he was swept again by +those unwonted emotions of pity and tenderness--but when she turned away +her head and he saw the bright spot of colour growing in her cheek, +spreading to her temple, suffusing her throat, when he touched the soft +contour of her arm, his passion conquered.... Still he was acutely +conscious of a resistance within her--not as before, physically directed +against him, but repudiating her own desire. She became limp in his +arms, though making no attempt to escape, and he knew that the essential +self of her he craved still evaded and defied him. And he clung to her +the more desperately--as though by crushing her peradventure he might +capture it. + +"You're hurting me," she said at last, and he let her go, standing by +helplessly while she went through the movements of readjustment +instinctive to women. Even in these he read the existence of the +reservation he was loth to acknowledge. + +"Don't you love me?" he said. + +"I don't know." + +"You do!" he said. "You--you proved it--I know it." + +She went a little away from him, picking up the paper cutter, but it lay +idle in her hand. + +"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" he exclaimed. "I can't +stand this. Janet, aren't you happy?" + +She shook her head. + +"Why not? I love you. I--I've never been so happy in my life as I was +this morning. Why aren't you happy--when we love each other?" + +"Because I'm not." + +"Why not? There's nothing I wouldn't do to make you happy--you know +that. Tell me!" + +"You wouldn't understand. I couldn't make you understand." + +"Is it something I've done?" + +"You don't love me," she said. "You only want me. I'm not made that +way, I'm not generous enough, I guess. I've got to have work to do." + +"Work to do! But you'll share my work--it's nothing without you." + +She shook her head. "I knew you couldn't understand. You don't realize +how impossible it is. I don't blame you--I suppose a man can't." + +She was not upbraiding him, she spoke quietly, in a tone almost lifeless, +yet the emotional effect of it was tremendous. + +"But," he began, and stopped, and was swept on again by an impulse that +drowned all caution, all reason. "But you can help me--when we are +married." + +"Married!" she repeated. "You want to marry me?" + +"Yes, yes--I need you." He took her hands, he felt them tremble in his, +her breath came quickly, but her gaze was so intent as seemingly to +penetrate to the depths of him. And despite his man's amazement at her +hesitation now that he had offered her his all, he was moved, disturbed, +ashamed as he had never been in his life. At length, when he could stand +no longer the suspense of this inquisition, he stammered out: "I want you +to be my wife." + +"You've wanted to marry me all along?" she asked. + +"I didn't think, Janet. I was mad about you. I didn't know you." + +"Do you know me now?" + +"That's just it," he cried, with a flash of clairvoyance, "I never will +know you--it's what makes you different from any woman I've ever seen. +You'll marry me?" + +"I'm afraid," she said. "Oh, I've thought over it, and you haven't. A +woman has to think, a man doesn't, so much. And now you're willing to +marry me, if you can't get me any other way." Her hand touched his coat, +checking his protest. "It isn't that I want marriage--what you can give +me--I'm not like that, I've told you so before. But I couldn't live as +your--mistress." + +The word on her lips shocked him a little--but her courage and candour +thrilled him. + +"If I stayed here, it would be found out. I wouldn't let you keep me. +I'd have to have work, you see, or I'd lose my self-respect--it's all +I've got--I'd kill myself." She spoke as calmly as though she were +reviewing the situation objectively. "And then, I've thought that you +might come to believe you really wanted to marry me--you wouldn't realize +what you were doing, or what might happen if we were married. I've tried +to tell you that, too, only you didn't seem to understand what I was +saying. My father's only a gatekeeper, we're poor--poorer than some of +the operatives in the mill, and the people you know here in Hampton +wouldn't understand. Perhaps you think you wouldn't care, but--" she +spoke with more effort, "there are your children. When I've thought of +them, it all seems impossible. I'd make you unhappy--I couldn't bear it, +I wouldn't stay with you. You see, I ought to have gone away long ago." + +Believing, as he did, that marriage was the goal of all women, even of +the best, the immediate capitulation he had expected would have made +matters far less difficult. But these scruples of hers, so startlingly +his own, her disquieting insight into his entire mental process had a +momentary checking effect, summoned up the vague presage of a future that +might become extremely troublesome and complicated. His very reluctance +to discuss with her the problem she had raised warned him that he had +been swept into deep waters. On the other hand, her splendid resistance +appealed to him, enhanced her value. And accustomed as he had been to a +lifelong self-gratification, the thought of being balked in this supreme +desire was not to be borne. Such were the shades of his feeling as he +listened to her. + +"That's nonsense!" he exclaimed, when she had finished. "You're a lady-- +I know all about your family, I remember hearing about it when your +father came here--it's as good as any in New England. What do you +suppose I care, Janet? We love each other--I've got to have you. We'll +be married in the spring, when the rush is over." + +He drew her to him once more, and suddenly, in the ardour of that +embrace, he felt her tenseness suddenly relax--as though, against her +will--and her passion, as she gave her lips, vied with his own. Her +lithe body trembled convulsively, her cheeks were wet as she clung to him +and hid her face in his shoulder. His sensations in the presence of this +thing he had summoned up in her were incomprehensible, surpassing any he +had ever known. It was no longer a woman he held in his arms, the woman +he craved, but something greater, more fearful, the mystery of sorrow and +suffering, of creation and life--of the universe itself. + +"Janet--aren't you happy?" he said again. + +She released herself and smiled at him wistfully through her tears. + +"I don't know. What I feel doesn't seem like happiness. I can't believe +in it, somehow." + +"You must believe in it," he said. + +"I can't,--perhaps I may, later. You'd better go now," she begged. +"You'll miss your train." + +He glanced at the office clock. "Confound it, I have to. Listen! I'll +be back this evening, and I'll get that little car of mine--" + +"No, not to-night--I don't want to go--to-night." + +"Why not?" + +"Not to-night," she repeated. + +"Well then, to-morrow. To-morrow's Sunday. Do you know where the Boat +Club is on the River Boulevard? I'll be there, to-morrow morning at ten. +I'd come for you, to your house," he added quickly, "but we don't want +any one to know, yet--do we?" + +She shook her head. + +"We must keep it secret for a while," he said. "Wear your new dress--the +blue one. Good-bye--sweetheart." + +He kissed her again and hurried out of the office.... Boarding the train +just as it was about to start, he settled himself in the back seat of the +smoker, lit a cigar, inhaling deep breaths of the smoke and scarcely +noticing an acquaintance who greeted him from the aisle. Well, he had +done it! He was amazed. He had not intended to propose marriage, and +when he tried to review the circumstances that had led to this he became +confused. But when he asked himself whether indeed he were willing to +pay such a price, to face the revolution marriage--and this marriage in +particular--would mean in his life, the tumult in his blood beat down his +incipient anxieties. Besides, he possessed the kind of mind able to +throw off the consideration of possible consequences, and by the time the +train had slowed down in the darkness of the North Station in Boston all +traces of worry had disappeared. The future would take care of itself. + +For the Bumpus family, supper that evening was an unusually harmonious +meal. Hannah's satisfaction over the new stove had by no means subsided, +and Edward ventured, without reproof, to praise the restored quality of +the pie crust. And in contrast to her usual moroseness and self- +absorption, even Lise was gay--largely because her pet aversion, the +dignified and allegedly amorous Mr. Waiters, floor-walker at the +Bagatelle, had fallen down the length of the narrow stairway leading from +the cashier's cage. She became almost hysterical with glee as she +pictured him lying prone beneath the counter dedicated to lingerie, +draped with various garments from the pile that toppled over on him. +"Ruby Nash picked a brassiere off his whiskers!" Lise shrieked. "She +gave the pile a shove when he landed. He's got her number all right. +But say, it was worth the price of admission to see that old mutt when he +got up, he looked like Santa Claus. All the girls in the floor were +there we nearly split trying to keep from giving him the ha-ha. And Ruby +says, sympathetic, as she brushed him off, `I hope you ain't hurt, Mr. +Waiters.' He was sore! He went around all afternoon with a bunch on his +coco as big as a potato." So vivid was Lise's account of this affair +which apparently she regarded as compensation for many days of drudgery- +that even Hannah laughed, though deploring a choice of language symbolic +of a world she feared and detested. + +"If I talked like you," said Lise, "they wouldn't understand me." + +Janet, too, was momentarily amused, drawn out of that reverie in which +she had dwelt all day, ever since Ditmar had left for Boston. Now she +began to wonder what would happen if she were suddenly to announce "I'm +going to marry Mr. Ditmar." After the first shock of amazement, she +could imagine her father's complete and complacent acceptance of the news +as a vindication of an inherent quality in the Bumpus blood. He would +begin to talk about the family. For, despite what might have been deemed +a somewhat disillusionizing experience, in the depths of his being he +still believed in the Providence who had presided over the perilous +voyage of the Mayflower and the birth of Peregrine White, whose +omniscient mind was peculiarly concerned with the family trees of +Puritans. And what could be a more striking proof of the existence of +this Providence, or a more fitting acknowledgment on his part of the +Bumpus virtues, than that Janet should become the wife of the agent of +the Chippering Mills? Janet smiled. She was amused, too, by the thought +that Lise's envy would be modified by the prospect of a heightened social +status; since Lise, it will be remembered, had her Providence likewise. +Hannah's god was not a Providence, but one deeply skilled in persecution, +in ingenious methods of torture; one who would not hesitate to dangle +baubles before the eyes of his children--only to snatch them away again. +Hannah's pessimism would persist as far as the altar, and beyond! + +On the whole, such was Janet's notion of the Deity, though deep within +her there may have existed a hope that he might be outwitted; that, by +dint of energy and brains, the fair things of life might be obtained +despite a malicious opposition. And she loved Ditmar. This must be love +she felt, this impatience to see him again, this desire to be with him, +this agitation possessing her so utterly that all day long she had dwelt +in an unwonted state like a somnambulism: it must be love, though not +resembling in the least the generally accepted, virginal ideal. She saw +him as he was, crude, powerful, relentless in his desire; his very faults +appealed. His passion had overcome his prudence, he had not intended to +propose, but any shame she felt on this score was put to flight by a +fierce exultation over the fact that she had brought him to her feet, +that he wanted her enough to marry her. It was wonderful to be wanted +like that! But she could not achieve the mental picture of herself as +Ditmar's wife--especially when, later in the evening, she walked up +Warren Street and stood gazing at his house from the opposite pavement. +She simply could not imagine herself living in that house as its +mistress. Notwithstanding the testimony of the movies, such a +Cinderella-like transition was not within the realm of probable facts; +things just didn't happen that way. + +She recalled the awed exclamation of Eda when they had walked together +along Warren Street on that evening in summer: "How would you like to +live there!"--and hot with sudden embarrassment and resentment she had +dragged her friend onward, to the corner. In spite of its size, of the +spaciousness of existence it suggested, the house had not appealed to her +then. Janet did not herself realize or estimate the innate if +undeveloped sense of form she possessed, the artist-instinct that made +her breathless on first beholding Silliston Common. And then the vision +of Silliston had still been bright; but now the light of a slender moon +was as a gossamer silver veil through which she beheld the house, as in a +stage setting, softening and obscuring its lines, lending it qualities of +dignity and glamour that made it seem remote, unreal, unattainable. And +she felt a sudden, overwhelming longing, as though her breast would +burst.... + +Through the drawn blinds the lights in the second storey gleamed yellow. +A dim lamp burned in the deep vestibule, as in a sanctuary. And then, as +though some supernaturally penetrating ray had pierced a square hole in +the lower walls, a glimpse of the interior was revealed to her, of the +living room at the north end of the house. Two figures chased one +another around the centre table--Ditmar's children! Was Ditmar there? +Impelled irresistibly by a curiosity overcoming repugnance and fear, she +went forward slowly across the street, gained the farther pavement, +stepped over the concrete coping, and stood, shivering violently, on the +lawn, feeling like an interloper and a thief, yet held by morbid +fascination. The children continued to romp. The boy was strong and +swift, the girl stout and ungainly in her movements, not mistress of her +body; he caught her and twisted her arm, roughly--Janet could hear her +cries through the window-=when an elderly woman entered, seized him, +struggling with him. He put out his tongue at her, but presently +released his sister, who stood rubbing her arm, her lips moving in +evident recrimination and complaint. The faces of the two were plain +now; the boy resembled Ditmar, but the features of the girl, heavy and +stamped with self-indulgence, were evidently reminiscent of the woman who +had been his wife. Then the shade was pulled down, abruptly; and Janet, +overcome by a sense of horror at her position, took to flight.... + +When, after covering the space of a block she slowed down and tried to +imagine herself as established in that house, the stepmother of those +children, she found it impossible. Despite the fact that her attention +had been focussed so strongly on them, the fringe of her vision had +included their surroundings, the costly furniture, the piano against the +farther wall, the music rack. Evidently the girl was learning to play. +She felt a renewed, intenser bitterness against her own lot: she was +aware of something within her better and finer than the girl, than the +woman who had been her mother had possessed--that in her, Janet, had +lacked the advantages of development. Could it--could it ever be +developed now? Had this love which had come to her brought her any +nearer to the unknown realm of light she craved?... + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Though December had come, Sunday was like an April day before whose +sunlight the night-mists of scruples and morbid fears were scattered and +dispersed. And Janet, as she fared forth from the Fillmore Street flat, +felt resurging in her the divine recklessness that is the very sap of +life. The future, save of the immediate hours to come, lost its power +over her. The blue and white beauty of the sky proclaimed all things +possible for the strong; and the air was vibrant with the sweet music of +bells, calling her to happiness. She was going to meet happiness, to +meet love--to meet Ditmar! The trolley which she took in Faber Street, +though lagging in its mission, seemed an agent of that happiness as it +left the city behind it and wound along the heights beside the tarvia +roadway above the river, bright glimpses of which she caught through the +openings in the woods. And when she looked out of the window on her +right she beheld on a little forested rise a succession of tiny "camps" +built by residents of Hampton whose modest incomes could not afford more +elaborate summer places; camps of all descriptions and colours, with +queer names that made her smile: "The Cranny," "The Nook," "Snug +Harbour," "Buena Vista,"--of course,--which she thought pretty, though +she did not know its meaning; and another, in German, equally perplexing, +"Klein aber Mein." Though the windows of these places were now boarded +up, though the mosquito netting still clung rather dismally to the +porches, they were mutely suggestive of contentment and domestic joy. + +Scarcely had she alighted from the car at the rendezvous he had +mentioned, beside the now deserted boathouse where in the warm weather +the members of the Hampton Rowing Club disported themselves, when she saw +an automobile approaching--and recognized it as the gay "roadster" Ditmar +had exhibited to her that summer afternoon by the canal; and immediately +Ditmar himself, bringing it to a stop and leaping from it, stood before +her in the sunlight, radiating, as it seemed, more sunlight still. With +his clipped, blond moustache and his straw-coloured hair--as yet but +slightly grey at the temples--he looked a veritable conquering berserker +in his huge coat of golden fur. Never had he appeared to better +advantage. + +"I was waiting for you," he said, "I saw you in the car." Turning to the +automobile, he stripped the tissue paper from a cluster of dark red roses +with the priceless long stems of which Lise used to rave when she worked +in the flower store. And he held the flowers against her suit her new +suit she had worn for this meeting. + +"Oh," she cried, taking a deep, intoxicating breath of their fragrance. +"You brought these--for me?" + +"From Boston--my beauty!" + +"But I can't wear all of them!" + +"Why not?" he demanded. "Haven't you a pin?" + +She produced one, attaching them with a gesture that seemed habitual, +though the thought of their valuerevealing in some degree her own worth +in his eyes-unnerved her. She was warmly conscious of his gaze. Then he +turned, and opening a compartment at the back of the car drew from it a +bright tweed motor coat warmly lined. + +"Oh, no!" she protested, drawing back. "I'll--I'll be warm enough." But +laughingly, triumphantly, he seized her and thrust her arms in the +sleeves, his fingers pressing against her. Overcome by shyness, she drew +away from him. + +"I made a pretty good guess at the size--didn't I, Janet?" he cried, +delightedly surveying her. "I couldn't forget it!" His glance grew more +concentrated, warmer, penetrating. + +"You mustn't look at me like that!" she pleaded with lowered eyes. + +"Why not--you're mine--aren't you? You're mine, now." + +"I don't know. There are lots of things I want to talk about," she +replied, but her protest sounded feeble, unconvincing, even to herself. +He fairly lifted her into the automobile--it was a caress, only tempered +by the semipublicity of the place. He was giving her no time to think-- +but she did not want to, think. Starting the engine, he got in and +leaned toward her. + +"Not here!" she exclaimed. + +"All right--I'll wait," he agreed, tucking the robe about her deftly, +solicitously, and she sank back against the seat, surrendering herself to +the luxury, the wonder of being cherished, the caressing and sheltering +warmth she felt of security and love, the sense of emancipation from +discontent and sordidness and struggle. For a moment she closed her +eyes, but opened them again to behold the transformed image of herself +reflected in the windshield to confirm the illusion--if indeed it were +one! The tweed coat seemed startlingly white in the sunlight, and the +woman she saw, yet recognized as herself, was one of the fortunately +placed of the earth with power and beauty at her command! And she could +no longer imagine herself as the same person who the night before had +stood in front of the house in Warren Street. The car was speeding over +the smooth surface of the boulevard; the swift motion, which seemed to +her like that of flying, the sparkling air, the brightness of the day, +the pressure of Ditmar's shoulder against hers, thrilled her. She +marvelled at his sure command over the machine, that responded like a +live thing to his touch. On the wide, straight stretches it went at a +mad pace that took her breath, and again, in turning a corner or passing +another car, it slowed down, purring in meek obedience. Once she gasped: +"Not so fast! I can't stand it." + +He laughed and obeyed her. They glided between river and sky across the +delicate fabric of a bridge which but a moment before she had seen in the +distance. Running through the little village on the farther bank, they +left the river. + +"Where are you going?" she asked. + +"Oh, for a little spin," he answered indulgently, turning into a side +road that wound through the woods and suddenly stopping. "Janet, we've +got this day--this whole day to ourselves." He seized and drew her to +him, and she yielded dizzily, repaying the passion of his kiss, forgetful +of past and future while he held her, whispering brokenly endearing +phrases. + +"You'll ruin my roses," she protested breathlessly, at last, when it +seemed that she could no longer bear this embrace, nor the pressure of +his lips. "There! you see you're crushing them!" She undid them, and +buttoning the coat, held them to her face. Their odour made her faint: +her eyes were clouded. + +"Listen, Claude!" she said at last,--it was the first time she had called +him so--getting free. "You must be sensible! some one might come along." + +"I'll never get enough of you!" he said. "I can't believe it yet." And +added irrelevantly: "Pin the roses outside." + +She shook her head. Something in her protested against this too public +advertisement of their love. + +"I'd rather hold them," she answered. "Let's go on." He started the car +again. "Listen, I want to talk to you, seriously. I've been thinking." + +"Don't I know you've been thinking!" he told her exuberantly. "If I +could only find out what's always going on in that little head of yours! +If you keep on thinking you'll dry up, like a New England school-marm. +And now do you know what you are? One of those dusky red roses just +ready to bloom. Some day I'll buy enough to smother you in 'em." + +"Listen!" she repeated, making a great effort to calm herself, to regain +something of that frame of mind in which their love had assumed the +proportions of folly and madness, to summon up the scruples which, before +she had left home that morning, she had resolved to lay before him, which +she knew would return when she could be alone again. "I have to think-- +you won't," she exclaimed, with a fleeting smile. + +"Well, what is it?" he assented. "You might as well get it off now." + +And it took all her strength to say: "I don't see how I can marry you. +I've told you the reasons. You're rich, and you have friends who +wouldn't understand--and your children--they wouldn't understand. I--I'm +nothing, I know it isn't right, I know you wouldn't be happy. I've never +lived--in the kind of house you live in and known the kind of people you +know, I shouldn't know what to do." + +He took his eyes off the road and glanced down at her curiously. His +smile was self-confident, exultant. + +"Now do you feel better--you little Puritan?" he said. + +And perforce she smiled in return, a pucker appearing between her +eyebrows. + +"I mean it," she said. "I came out to tell you so. I know--it just +isn't possible." + +"I'd marry you to-day if I could get a license," he declared. "Why, +you're worth any woman in America, I don't care who she is, or how much +money she has." + +In spite of herself she was absurdly pleased. + +"Now that is over, we won't discuss it again, do you understand? I've +got you," he said, "and I mean to hold on to you." + +She sighed. He was driving slowly now along the sandy road, and with his +hand on hers she simply could not think. The spell of his nearness, of +his touch, which all nature that morning conspired to deepen, was too +powerful to be broken, and something was calling to her, "Take this day, +take this day," drowning out the other voice demanding an accounting. +She was living--what did it all matter? She yielded herself to the +witchery of the hour, the sheer delight of forthfaring into the unknown. + +They turned away from the river, crossing the hills of a rolling country +now open, now wooded, passing white farmhouses and red barns, and +ancient, weather-beaten dwellings with hipped roofs and "lean-tos" which +had been there in colonial days when the road was a bridle-path. Cows +and horses stood gazing at them from warm paddocks, where the rich, black +mud glistened, melted by the sun; chickens scratched and clucked in the +barnyards or flew frantically across the road, sometimes within an ace of +destruction. Janet flinched, but Ditmar would laugh, gleefully, +boyishly. + +"We nearly got that one!" he would exclaim. And then he had to assure +her that he wouldn't run over them. + +"I haven't run over one yet,--have I?" he would demand. + +"No, but you will, it's only luck." + +"Luck!" he cried derisively. "Skill! I wish I had a dollar for every +one I got when I was learning to drive. There was a farmer over here in +Chester--" and he proceeded to relate how he had had to pay for two +turkeys. "He got my number, the old hayseed, he was laying for me, and +the next time I went back that way he held me up for five dollars. I can +remember the time when a man in a motor was an easy mark for every reuben +in the county. They got rich on us." + +She responded to his mood, which was wholly irresponsible, exuberant, and +they laughed together like children, every little incident assuming an +aspect irresistibly humorous. Once he stopped to ask an old man standing +in his dooryard how far it was to Kingsbury. + +"Wal, mebbe it's two mile, they mostly call it two," said the patriarch, +after due reflection, gathering his beard in his band. "Mebbe it's +more." His upper lip was blue, shaven, prehensile. + +"What did you ask him for, when you know?" said Janet, mirthfully, when +they had gone on, and Ditmar was imitating him. Ditmar's reply was to +wink at her. Presently they saw another figure on the road. + +"Let's see what he'll say," Ditmar proposed. This man was young, the +colour of mahogany, with glistening black hair and glistening black eyes +that regarded the too palpable joyousness of their holiday humour in mute +surprise. + +"I no know--stranger," he said. + +"No speaka Portugueso?" inquired Ditmar, gravely. + +"The country is getting filthy with foreigners," he observed, when he had +started the car. "I went down to Plymouth last summer to see the old +rock, and by George, it seemed as if there wasn't anybody could speak +American on the whole cape. All the Portuguese islands are dumped there- +-cranberry pickers, you know." + +"I didn't know that," said Janet. + +"Sure thing!" he exclaimed. "And when I got there, what do you think? +there was hardly enough of the old stone left to stand on, and that had a +fence around it like an exhibit in an exposition. It had all been +chipped away by souvenir hunters." + +She gazed at him incredulously. + +"You don't believe me! I'll take you down there sometime. And another +thing, the rock's high and dry--up on the land. I said to Charlie Crane, +who was with me, that it must have been a peach of a jump for old Miles +Standish and Priscilla what's her name." + +"How I'd love to see the ocean again!" Janet exclaimed. + +"Why, I'll take you--as often as you like," he promised. "We'll go out +on it in summer, up to Maine, or down to the Cape." + +Her enchantment was now so great that nothing seemed impossible. + +"And we'll go down to Plymouth, too, some Sunday soon, if this weather +keeps up. If we start early enough we can get there for lunch, easy. +We'll see the rock. I guess some of your ancestors must have come over +with that Mayflower outfit--first cabin, eh? You look like it." + +Janet laughed. "It's a joke on them, if they did. I wonder what they'd +think of Hampton, if they could see it now. I counted up once, just to +tease father--he's the seventh generation from Ebenezer Bumpus, who came +to Dolton. Well, I proved to him he might have one hundred and twenty- +six other ancestors besides Ebenezer and his wife." + +"That must have jarred him some," was Ditmar's comment. "Great old man, +your father. I've talked to him--he's a regular historical society all +by himself. Well, there must be something in it, this family business. +Now, you can tell he comes from fine old American stock-he looks it." + +Janet flushed. "A lot of good it does!" she exclaimed. + +"I don't know," said Ditmar. "It's something to fall back on--a good +deal. And he hasn't got any of that nonsense in his head about labour +unions--he's a straight American. And you look the part," he added. +"You remind me--I never thought of it until now--you remind me of a +picture of Priscilla I saw once in a book of poems Longfellow's, you +know. I'm not much on literature, but I remember that, and I remember +thinking she could have me. Funny isn't it, that you should have come +along? But you've got more ginger than the woman in that picture. I'm +the only man that ever guessed it isn't that so?" he asked jealously. + +"You're wonderful!" retorted Janet, daringly. + +"You just bet I am, or I couldn't have landed you," he asserted. "You're +chock full of ginger, but it's been all corked up. You're so prim-so +Priscilla." He was immensely pleased with the adjective he had coined, +repeating it. "It's a great combination. When I think of it, I want to +shake you, to squeeze you until you scream." + +"Then please don't think of it," she said. + +"That's easy!" he exclaimed, mockingly. + +At a quarter to one they entered a sleepy village reminiscent of a New +England of other days. The long street, deeply shaded in summer, was +bordered by decorous homes, some of which had stood there for a century +and a half; others were of the Mansard period. The high school, of +strawberry-coloured brick, had been the pride and glory of the Kingsbury +of the '70s: there were many churches, some graceful and some hideous. +At the end of the street they came upon a common, surrounded by stone +posts and a railing, with a monument in the middle of it, and facing the +common on the north side was a rambling edifice with many white gables, +in front of which, from an iron arm on a post, swung a quaint sign, +"Kingsbury Tavern." In revolutionary and coaching days the place bad +been a famous inn; and now, thanks to the enterprise of a man who had +foreseen the possibilities of an era of automobiles, it had become even +more famous. A score of these modern vehicles were drawn up before it +under the bare, ancient elms; there was a scene of animation on the long +porch, where guests strolled up and down or sat in groups in the rocking- +chairs which the mild weather had brought forth again. Ditmar drew up in +line with the other motors, and stopped. + +"Well, here we are!" he exclaimed, as he pulled off his gauntlets. "I +guess I could get along with something to eat. How about you? They +treat you as well here as any place I know of in New England." + +He assumed their lunching together at a public place as a matter of +course to which there could not possibly be an objection, springing out +of the car, removing the laprobe from her knees, and helping her to +alight. She laid the roses on the seat. + +"Aren't you going to bring them along?" he demanded. + +"I'd rather not," she said. "Don't you think they'll be safe here?" + +"Oh, I guess so," he replied. She was always surprising him; but her +solicitation concerning them was a balm, and he found all such +instinctive acts refreshing. + +"Afraid of putting up too much of a front, are you?" he asked smilingly. + +"I'd rather leave them here," she replied. As she walked beside Ditmar +to the door she was excited, unwontedly self-conscious, painfully aware +of inspection by the groups on the porch. She had seen such people as +these hurrying in automobiles through the ugliness of Faber Street in +Hampton toward just such delectable spots as this village of Kingsbury-- +people of that world of freedom and privilege from which she was +excluded; Ditmar's world. He was at home here. But she? The delusion +that she somehow had been miraculously snatched up into it was marred by +their glances. What were they thinking of her? Her face was hot as she +passed them and entered the hall, where more people were gathered. But +Ditmar's complacency, his ease and self-confidence, his manner of owning +the place, as it were, somewhat reassured her. He went up to the desk, +behind which, stood a burly, red-complexioned man who greeted him +effusively, yet with the air of respect accorded the powerful. + +"Hullo, Eddie," said Ditmar. "You've got a good crowd here to-day. Any +room for me?" + +"Sure, Mr. Ditmar, we can always make room for you. Well, I haven't laid +eyes on you for a dog's age. Only last Sunday Mr. Crane was here, and I +was asking him where you'd been keeping yourself." + +"Why, I've been busy, Eddie. I've landed the biggest order ever heard of +in Hampton. Some of us have to work, you know; all you've got to do is +to loaf around this place and smoke cigars and rake in the money." + +The proprietor of the Kingsbury Tavern smiled indulgently at this +persiflage. + +"Let me present you to Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. "This is my friend, +Eddie Hale," he added, for Janet's benefit. "And when you've eaten his +dinner you'll believe me when I say he's got all the other hotel men +beaten a mile." + +Janet smiled and flushed. She had been aware of Mr. Hale's discreet +glance. + +"Pleased to meet you, Miss Bumpus," he said, with a somewhat elaborate +bow. + +"Eddie," said Ditmar, "have you got a nice little table for us?" + +"It's a pity I didn't know you was coming, but I'll do my best," declared +Mr. Hale, opening the door in the counter. + +"Oh, I guess you can fix us all right, if you want to, Eddie." + +"Mr. Ditmar's a great josher," Mr. Hale told Janet confidentially as he +escorted them into the dining-room. And Ditmar, gazing around over the +heads of the diners, spied in an alcove by a window a little table with +tilted chairs. + +"That one'll do," he said. + +"I'm sorry, but it's engaged," apologized Mr. Hale. + +"Forget it, Eddie--tell 'em they're late," said Ditmar, making his way +toward it. + +The proprietor pulled out Janet's chair. + +"Say," he remarked, "it's no wonder you get along in business." + +"Well, this is cosy, isn't it?" said Ditmar to Janet when they were +alone. He handed her the menu, and snapped his fingers for a waitress. + +"Why didn't you tell me you were coming to this place?" she asked. + +"I wanted to surprise you. Don't you like it?" + +"Yes," she replied. "Only--" + +"Only, what?" + +"I wish you wouldn't look at me like that--here." + +"All right. I'll try to be good until we get into the car again. You +watch me! I'll behave as if we'd been married ten years." + +He snapped his fingers again, and the waitress hurried up to take their +orders. + +"Kingsbury's still dry, I guess," he said to the girl, who smiled +sympathetically, somewhat ruefully. When she had gone he began to talk +to Janet about the folly, in general, of prohibition, the fusel oil +distributed on the sly. "I'll bet I could go out and find half a dozen +rum shops within a mile of here!" he declared. + +Janet did not doubt it. Ditmar's aplomb, his faculty of getting what he +wanted, had amused and distracted her. She was growing calmer, able to +scrutinize, at first covertly and then more boldly the people at the +other tables, only to discover that she and Ditmar were not the objects +of the universal curiosity she had feared. Once in a while, indeed, she +encountered and then avoided the glance of some man, felt the admiration +in it, was thrilled a little, and her sense of exhilaration returned as +she regained her poise. She must be nice looking--more than that--in her +new suit. On entering the tavern she had taken off the tweed coat, which +Ditmar had carried and laid on a chair. This new and amazing adventure +began to go to her head like wine.... + +When luncheon was over they sat in a sunny corner of the porch while +Ditmar smoked his cigar. His digestion was good, his spirits high, his +love-making--on account of the public nature of the place--surreptitious +yet fervent. The glamour to which Janet had yielded herself was on +occasions slightly troubled by some new and enigmatic element to be +detected in his voice and glances suggestive of intentions vaguely +disquieting. At last she said: + +"Oughtn't we to be going home?" + +"Home!" he ridiculed the notion. "I'm going to take you to the prettiest +road you ever saw--around by French's Lower Falls. I only wish it was +summer." + +"I must be home before dark," she told him. "You see, the family don't +know where I am. I haven't said anything to them about--about this." + +"That's right," he said, after a moment's hesitation: + +"I didn't think you would. There's plenty of time for that--after things +get settled a little--isn't there?" + +She thought his look a little odd, but the impression passed as they +walked to the motor. He insisted now on her pinning the roses on the +tweed coat, and she humoured him. The winter sun had already begun to +drop, and with the levelling rays the bare hillsides, yellow and brown in +the higher light, were suffused with pink; little by little, as the sun +fell lower, imperceptible clouds whitened the blue cambric of the sky, +distant copses were stained lilac. And Janet, as she gazed, wondered at +a world that held at once so much beauty, so much joy and sorrow,--such +strange sorrow as began to invade her now, not personal, but cosmic. At +times it seemed almost to suffocate her; she drew in deep breaths of air: +it was the essence of all things--of the man by her side, of herself, of +the beauty so poignantly revealed to her. + +Gradually Ditmar became conscious of this detachment, this new evidence +of an extraordinary faculty of escaping him that seemed unimpaired. +Constantly he tried by leaning closer to her, by reaching out his hand, +to reassure himself that she was at least physically present. And though +she did not resent these tokens, submitting passively, he grew perplexed +and troubled; his optimistic atheism concerning things unseen was +actually shaken by the impression she conveyed of beholding realities +hidden from him. Shadows had begun to gather in the forest, filmy mists +to creep over the waters. He asked if she were cold, and she shook her +head and sighed as one coming out of a trance, smiling at him. + +"It's been a wonderful day!" she said. + +"The greatest ever!" he agreed. And his ardour, mounting again, swept +away the unwonted mood of tenderness and awe she had inspired in him, +made him bold to suggest the plan which had been the subject of an +ecstatic contemplation. + +"I'll tell you what we'll do," he said, "we'll take a little run down to +Boston and have dinner together. We'll be there in an hour, and back by +ten o'clock." + +"To Boston!" she repeated. "Now?" + +"Why not?" he said, stopping the car. "Here's the road--it's a boulevard +all the way." + +It was not so much the proposal as the passion in his voice, in his +touch, the passion to which she felt herself responding that filled her +with apprehension and dismay, and yet aroused her pride and anger. + +"I told you I had to be home," she said. + +"I'll have you home by ten o'clock; I promise. We're going to be +married, Janet," he whispered. + +"Oh, if you meant to marry me you wouldn't ask me to do this!" she cried. +"I want to go back to Hampton. If you won't take me, I'll walk." + +She had drawn away from him, and her hand was on the door. He seized her +arm. + +"For God's sake, don't take it that way!" he cried, in genuine alarm. +"All I meant was--that we'd have a nice little dinner. I couldn't bear +to leave you, it'll be a whole week before we get another day. Do you +suppose I'd--I'd do anything to insult you, Janet?" + +With her fingers still tightened over the door-catch she turned and +looked at him. + +"I don't know," she said slowly. "Sometimes I think you would. Why +shouldn't you? Why should you marry me? Why shouldn't you try to do +with me what you've done with other women? I don't know anything about +the world, about life. I'm nobody. Why shouldn't you?" + +"Because you're not like the other women--that's why. I love you--won't +you believe it?" He was beside himself with anxiety. "Listen--I'll take +you home if you want to go. You don't know how it hurts me to have you +think such things!" + +"Well, then, take me home," she said. It was but gradually that she +became pacified. A struggle was going on within her between these doubts +of him he had stirred up again and other feelings aroused by his +pleadings. Night fell, and when they reached the Silliston road the +lights of Hampton shone below them in the darkness. + +"You'd better let me out here," she said. "You can't drive me home." + +He brought the car to a halt beside one of the small wooden shelters +built for the convenience of passengers. + +"You forgive me--you understand, Janet?" he asked. + +"Sometimes I don't know what to think," she said, and suddenly clung to +him. "I--I forgive you. I oughtn't to suspect such things, but I'm like +that. I'm horrid and I can't help it." She began to unbutton the coat +he had bought for her. + +"Aren't you going to take it?" he said. "It's yours." + +"And what do you suppose my family would say if I told them Mr. Ditmar +had given it to me?" + +"Come on, I'll drive you home, I'll tell them I gave it to you, that +we're going to be married," he announced recklessly. + +"Oh, no!" she exclaimed in consternation. "You couldn't. You said so +yourself--that you didn't want, any one to know, now. I'll get on the +trolley." + +"And the roses?" he asked. + +She pressed them to her face, and chose one. "I'll take this," she said, +laying the rest on the seat.... + +He waited until he saw her safely on the trolley car, and then drove +slowly homeward in a state of amazement. He had been on the verge of +announcing himself to the family in Fillmore Street as her prospective +husband! He tried to imagine what that household was like; and again he +found himself wondering why she had not consented to his proposal. And +the ever-recurring question presented itselfwas he prepared to go that +length? He didn't know. She was beyond him, he had no clew to her, she +was to him as mysterious as a symphony. Certain strains of her moved him +intensely--the rest was beyond his grasp.... At supper, while his +children talked and laughed boisterously, he sat silent, restless, and in +spite of their presence the house seemed appallingly empty. + +When Janet returned home she ran to her bedroom, and taking from the +wardrobe the tissue paper that had come with her new dress, and which she +had carefully folded, she wrapped the rose in it, and put it away in the +back of a drawer. Thus smothered, its fragrance stifled, it seemed +emblematic, somehow, of the clandestine nature of her love.... + +The weeks that immediately followed were strange ones. All the elements +of life that previously had been realities, trivial yet fundamental, her +work, her home, her intercourse with the family, became fantastic. There +was the mill to which she went every day: she recognized it, yet it was +not the same mill, nor was Fillmore Street the Fillmore Street of old. +Nor did the new and feverish existence over whose borderland she had been +transported seem real, save in certain hours she spent in Ditmar's +company, when he made her forget--hers being a temperament to feel the +weight of an unnatural secrecy. She was aware, for instance, that her +mother and even her father thought her conduct odd, were anxious as to +her absences on certain nights and on Sundays. She offered no +explanation. It was impossible. She understood that the reason why they +refrained from questioning her was due to a faith in her integrity as +well as to a respect for her as a breadwinner who lead earned a right to +independence. And while her suspicion of Hannah's anxiety troubled her, +on the occasions when she thought of it, Lise's attitude disturbed her +even more. From Lise she had been prepared for suspicion, arraignment, +ridicule. What a vindication if it were disclosed that she, Janet, had a +lover--and that lover Ditmar! But Lise said nothing. She was remote, +self-absorbed. Hannah spoke about it on the evenings Janet stayed at +home. + +She would not consent to meet Ditmar every evening. Yet, as the days +succeeded one another, Janet was often astonished by the fact that their +love remained apparently unsuspected by Mr. Price and Caldwell and others +in the office. They must have noticed, on some occasions, the manner in +which Ditmar looked at her; and in business hours she had continually to +caution him, to keep him in check. Again, on the evening excursions to +which she consented, though they were careful to meet in unfrequented +spots, someone might easily have recognized him; and she did not like to +ponder over the number of young women in the other offices who knew her +by sight. These reflections weighed upon her, particularly when she +seemed conscious of curious glances. But what caused her the most +concern was the constantly recurring pressure to which Ditmar himself +subjected her, and which, as time went on, she found increasingly +difficult to resist. He tried to take her by storm, and when this method +failed, resorted to pleadings and supplications even harder to deny +because of the innate feminine pity she felt for him. To recount these +affairs would be a mere repetition of identical occurrences. On their +second Sunday excursion he had actually driven her, despite her +opposition, several miles on the Boston road; and her resistance only +served to inflame him the more. It seemed, afterwards, as she sat +unnerved, a miracle that she had stopped him. Then came reproaches: she +would not trust him; they could not be married at once; she must +understand that!--an argument so repugnant as to cause her to shake with +sobs of inarticulate anger. After this he would grow bewildered, then +repentant, then contrite. In contrition--had he known it--he was nearest +to victory. + +As has been said, she did not intellectualize her reasons, but the core +of her resistance was the very essence of an individuality having its +roots in a self-respecting and self-controlling inheritance--an element +wanting in her sister Lise. It must have been largely the thought of +Lise, the spectacle of Lise--often perhaps unconsciously present that +dominated her conduct; yet reinforcing such an ancestral sentiment was +another, environmental and more complicated, the result in our modern +atmosphere of an undefined feminism apt to reveal itself in many +undesirable ways, but which in reality is a logical projection of the +American tradition of liberty. To submit was not only to lose her +liberty, to become a dependent, but also and inevitably, she thought, to +lose Ditmar's love.... + +No experience, however, is emotionally continuous, nor was their intimacy +by any means wholly on this plane of conflict. There were hours when, +Ditmar's passion leaving spent itself, they achieved comradeship, in the +office and out of it; revelations for Janet when he talked of himself, +relating the little incidents she found most illuminating. And thus by +degrees she was able to build up a new and truer estimate of him. For +example, she began to perceive that his life outside of his interest in +the mills, instead of being the romance of privileged joys she had once +imagined, had been almost as empty as her own, without either unity or +direction. Her perception was none the less keen because definite terms +were wanting for its expression. The idea of him that first had +captivated her was that of an energized and focussed character +controlling with a sure hand the fortunes of a great organization; of a +power in the city and state, of a being who, in his leisure moments, +dwelt in a delectable realm from which she was excluded. She was still +acutely conscious of his force, but what she now felt was its lack of +direction--save for the portion that drove the Chippering Mills. The +rest of it, like the river, flowed away on the line of least resistance +to the sea. + +As was quite natural, this gradual discovery of what he was--or of what +he wasn't--this truer estimate, this partial disillusionment, merely +served to deepen and intensify the feeling he had aroused in her; to +heighten, likewise, the sense of her own value by confirming a belief in +her possession of certain qualities, of a kind of fibre he needed in a +helpmate. She dwelt with a woman's fascination upon the prospect of +exercising a creative influence--even while she acknowledged the fearful +possibility of his power in unguarded moments to overwhelm and destroy +her. Here was another incentive to resist the gusts of his passion. She +could guide and develop him by helping and improving herself. Hope and +ambition throbbed within her, she felt a contempt for his wife, for the +women who had been her predecessors. He had not spoken of these, save +once or twice by implication, but with what may seem a surprising +leniency she regarded them as consequences of a life lacking in content. +If only she could keep her head, she might supply that content, and bring +him happiness! The thought of his children troubled her most, but she +was quick to perceive that he got nothing from them; and even though it +were partly his own fault, she was inclined to lay the heavier blame on +the woman who had been their mother. The triviality, the emptiness of +his existence outside of the walls of the mill made her heart beat with +pure pity. For she could understand it. + +One of the many, and often humorous, incidents that served to bring about +this realization of a former aimlessness happened on their second Sunday +excursion. This time he had not chosen the Kingsbury Tavern, but another +automobilists' haunt, an enlightening indication of established habits +involving a wide choice of resorts. While he was paying for luncheon and +chatting with the proprietor, Ditmar snatched from the change he had +flung down on the counter a five dollar gold coin. + +"Now how in thunder did that get into my right-hand pocket? I always +keep it in my vest," he exclaimed; and the matter continued to disturb +him after they were in the automobile. "It's my lucky piece. I guess I +was so excited at the prospect of seeing you when I dressed this morning +I put it into my change. Just see what you do to me!" + +"Does it bring you luck?" she inquired smilingly. + +"How about you! I call you the biggest piece of luck I ever had." + +"You'd better not be too sure," she warned him. + +"Oh, I'm not worrying. I has that piece in my pocket the day I went down +to see old Stephen Chippering, when he made me agent, and I've kept it +ever since. And I'll tell you a funny thing--it's enough to make any man +believe in luck. Do you remember that day last summer I was tinkering +with the car by the canal and you came along?" + +"The day you pretended to be tinkering," she corrected him. + +He laughed. "So you were on to me?" he said. "You're a foxy one!" + +"Anyone could see you were only pretending. It made me angry, when I +thought of it afterwards." + +"I just had to do it--I wanted to talk to you. But listen to what I'm +going to tell you! It's a miracle, all right,--happening just at that +time--that very morning. I was coming back to Boston from New York on +the midnight, and when the train ran into Back Bay and I was putting on +my trousers the piece rolled out among the bed clothes. I didn't know +I'd lost it until I sat down in the Parker House to eat my breakfast, and +I suddenly felt in my pocket. It made me sick to think it was gone. +Well, I started to telephone the Pullman office, and then I made up my +mind I'd take a taxi and go down to the South Station myself, and just as +I got out of the cab there was the nigger porter, all dressed up in his +glad rags, coming out of the station! I knew him, I'd been on his car +lots of times. `Say, George,' I said, `I didn't forget you this morning, +did I?' + +"`No, suh,' said George, 'you done give me a quarter.' + +"`I guess you're mistaken, George,' says I, and I fished out a ten dollar +bill. You ought to have seen that nigger's eyes." + +"`What's this for, Mister Ditmar?' says he. + +"`For that lucky gold piece you found in lower seven,' I told him. +`We'll trade.' + +"'Was you in lower seven?--so you was!' says George. Well, he had it +all right--you bet he had it. Now wasn't that queer? The very day you +and I began to know each other!" + +"Wonderful!" Janet agreed. "Why don't you put it on your watch chain?" + +"Well, I've thought of that," he replied, with the air of having +considered all sides of the matter. "But I've got that charm of the +secret order I belong to--that's on my chain. I guess I'll keep it in my +vest pocket." + +"I didn't know you were so superstitious," she mocked. + +"Pretty nearly everybody's superstitious," he declared. And she thought +of Lise. + +"I'm not. I believe if things are going to happen well, they're going to +happen. Nothing can prevent it." + +"By thunder" he exclaimed, struck by her remark. "You are like that +You're different from any person I ever knew...." + +From such anecdotes she pieced together her new Ditmar. He spoke of a +large world she had never seen, of New York and Washington and Chicago, +where he intended to take her. In the future he would never travel +alone. And he told her of his having been a delegate to the last +National Republican Convention, explaining what a delegate was. He +gloried in her innocence, and it was pleasant to dazzle her with +impressions of his cosmopolitanism. In this, perhaps, he was not quite +so successful as he imagined, but her eyes shone. She had never even +been in a sleeping car! For her delectation he launched into an +enthusiastic description of these vehicles, of palatial compartment cars, +of limited, transcontinental trains, where one had a stenographer and a +barber at one's disposal. + +"Neither of them would do me any good," she complained. + +"You could go to the manicure," he said. + +There had been in Ditmar's life certain events which, in his anecdotal +moods, were magnified into matters of climacteric importance; high, +festal occasions on which it was sweet to reminisce, such as his visit as +Delegate at Large to that Chicago Convention. He had travelled on a +special train stocked with cigars and White Seal champagne, in the +company of senators and congressmen and ex-governors, state treasurers, +collectors of the port, mill owners, and bankers to whom he referred, as +the French say, in terms of their "little" names. He dwelt on the +magnificence of the huge hotel set on the borders of a lake like an +inland sea, and related such portions of the festivities incidental to +"the seeing of Chicago" as would bear repetition. No women belonged to +this realm; no women, at least, who were to be regarded as persons. +Ditmar did not mention them, but no doubt they existed, along with the +cigars and the White Seal champagne, contributing to the amenities. And +the excursion, to Janet, took on the complexion of a sort of glorified +picnic in the course of which, incidentally, a President of the United +States had been chosen. In her innocence she had believed the voters to +perform this function. Ditmar laughed. + +"Do you suppose we're going to let the mob run this country?" he +inquired. "Once in a while we can't get away with it as we'd like, we +have to take the best we can." + +Thus was brought home to her more and more clearly that what men strove +and fought for were the joys of prominence, privilege, and power. +Everywhere, in the great world, they demanded and received consideration. +It was Ditmar's boast that if nobody else could get a room in a crowded +New York hotel, he could always obtain one. And she was fain to concede +--she who had never known privilege--a certain intoxicating quality to +this eminence. If you could get the power, and refused to take it, the +more fool you! A topsy-turvy world, in which the stupid toiled day by +day, week by week, exhausting their energies and craving joy, while +others adroitly carried off the prize; and virtue had apparently as +little to do with the matter as fair hair or a club foot. If Janet had +ever read Darwin, she would have recognized in her lover a creature +rather wonderfully adapted to his environment; and what puzzled her, +perhaps, was the riddle that presents itself to many better informed than +herself--the utter absence in this environment of the sign of any being +who might be called God. Her perplexities--for she did have them--took +the form of an instinctive sense of inadequacy, of persistently recurring +though inarticulate convictions of the existence of elements not included +in Ditmar's categories--of things that money could not buy; of things, +too, alas! that poverty was as powerless to grasp. Stored within her, +sometimes rising to the level of consciousness, was that experience at +Silliston in the May weather when she had had a glimpse--just a glimpse! +of a garden where strange and precious flowers were in bloom. On the +other hand, this mysterious perception by her of things unseen and +hitherto unguessed, of rays of delight in the spectrum of values to which +his senses were unattuned, was for Ditmar the supreme essence of her +fascination. At moments he was at once bewildered and inebriated by the +rare delicacy of fabric of the woman whom he had somehow stumbled upon +and possessed. + +Then there were the hours when they worked together in the office. Here +she beheld Ditmar at his best. It cannot be said that his infatuation +for her was ever absent from his consciousness: he knew she was there +beside him, he betrayed it continually. But here she was in the presence +of what had been and what remained his ideal, the Chippering Mill; here +he acquired unity. All his energies were bent toward the successful +execution of the Bradlaugh order, which had to be completed on the first +of February. And as day after day went by her realization of the +magnitude of the task he had undertaken became keener. Excitement was in +the air. Ditmar seemed somehow to have managed to infuse not only +Orcutt, the superintendent, but the foremen and second hands and even the +workers with a common spirit of pride and loyalty, of interest, of +determination to carry off this matter triumphantly. The mill seemed +fairly to hum with effort. Janet's increasing knowledge of its +organization and processes only served to heighten her admiration for the +confidence Ditmar had shown from the beginning. It was superb. And now, +as the probability of the successful execution of the task tended more +and more toward certainty, he sometimes gave vent to his boyish, +exuberant spirits. + +"I told Holster, I told all those croakers I'd do it, and by thunder I +will do it, with three days' margin, too! I'll get the last shipment off +on the twenty-eighth of January. Why, even George Chippering was afraid +I couldn't handle it. If the old man was alive he wouldn't have had cold +feet." Then Ditmar added, half jocularly, half seriously, looking down +on her as she sat with her note-book, waiting for him to go on with his +dictation: "I guess you've had your share in it, too. You've been a +wonder, the way you've caught on and taken things off my shoulders. If +Orcutt died I believe you could step right into his shoes." + +"I'm sure I could step into his shoes," she replied. "Only I hope he +won't die." + +"I hope he won't, either," said Ditmar. "And as for you--" + +"Never mind me, now," she said. + +He bent over her. + +"Janet, you're the greatest girl in the world." + +Yes, she was happiest when she felt she was helping him, it gave her +confidence that she could do more, lead him into paths beyond which they +might explore together. She was useful. Sometimes, however, he seemed +to her oversanguine; though he had worked hard, his success had come too +easily, had been too uniform. His temper was quick, the prospect of +opposition often made him overbearing, yet on occasions he listened with +surprising patience to his subordinates when they ventured to differ from +his opinions. At other times Janet had seen him overrule them +ruthlessly; humiliate them. There were days when things went wrong, when +there were delays, complications, more matters to attend to than usual. +On one such day, after the dinner hour, Mr. Orcutt entered the office. +His long, lean face wore a certain expression Janet had come to know, an +expression that always irritated Ditmar--the conscientious superintendent +having the unfortunate faculty of exaggerating annoyances by his very +bearing. Ditmar stopped in the midst of dictating a peculiarly difficult +letter, and looked up sharply. + +"Well," he asked, "what's the trouble now?" + +Orcutt seemed incapable of reading storm signals. When anything +happened, he had the air of declaring, "I told you so." + +"You may remember I spoke to you once or twice, Mr. Ditmar, of the talk +over the fifty-four hour law that goes into effect in January." + +"Yes, what of it?" Ditmar cut in. "The notices have been posted, as the +law requires." + +"The hands have been grumbling, there are trouble makers among them. A +delegation came to me this noon and wanted to know whether we intended to +cut the pay to correspond to the shorter working hours." + +"Of course it's going to be cut," said Ditmar. "What do they suppose? +That we're going to pay 'em for work they don't do? The hands not paid +by the piece are paid practically by the hour, not by the day. And +there's got to be some limit to this thing. If these damned demagogues +in the legislature keep on cutting down the hours of women and children +every three years or so--and we can't run the mill without the women and +children--we might as well shut down right now. Three years ago, when +they made it fifty-six hours, we were fools to keep up the pay. I said +so then, at the conference, but they wouldn't listen to me. They +listened this time. Holster and one or two others croaked, but we shut +'em up. No, they won't get any more pay, not a damned cent." + +Orcutt had listened patiently, lugubriously. + +"I told them that." + +"What did they say?" + +"They said they thought there'd be a strike." + +"Pooh! Strike!" exclaimed Ditmar with contemptuous violence. "Do you +believe that? You're always borrowing trouble, you are. They may have a +strike at one mill, the Clarendon. I hope they do, I hope Holster gets +it in the neck--he don't know how to run a mill anyway. We won't have +any strike, our people understand when they're well off, they've got all +the work they can do, they're sending fortunes back to the old country or +piling them up in the banks. It's all bluff." + +"There was a meeting of the English branch of the I. W. W. last night. +A committee was appointed," said Orcutt, who as usual took a gloomy +satisfaction in the prospect of disaster. + +"The I. W. W.! My God, Orcutt, don't you know enough not to come in here +wasting my time talking about the I. W. W.? Those anarchists haven't got +any organization. Can't you get that through your head?" + +"All right," replied Orcutt, and marched off. Janet felt rather sorry +for him, though she had to admit that his manner was exasperating. But +Ditmar's anger, instead of cooling, increased: it all seemed directed +against the unfortunate superintendent. + +"Would you believe that a man who's been in this mill twenty-five years +could be such a fool?" he demanded. "The I. W. W.! Why not the Ku Klux? +He must think I haven't anything to do but chin. I don't know why I keep +him here, sometimes I think he'll drive me crazy." + +His eyes seemed to have grown small and red, as was always the case when +his temper got the better of him. Janet did not reply, but sat with her +pencil poised over her book. + +"Let's see, where was I?" he asked. "I can't finish that letter now. Go +out and do the others." + +Mundane experience, like a badly mixed cake, has a tendency to run in +streaks, and on the day following the incident related above Janet's +heart was heavy. Ditmar betrayed an increased shortness of temper and +preoccupation; and the consciousness that her love had lent her a +clairvoyant power to trace the source of his humours though these were +often hidden from or unacknowledged by himself--was in this instance +small consolation. She saw clearly enough that the apprehensions +expressed by Mr. Orcutt, whom he had since denounced as an idiotic old +woman, had made an impression, aroused in him the ever-abiding concern +for the mill which was his life's passion and which had been but +temporarily displaced by his infatuation with her. That other passion +was paramount. What was she beside it? Would he hesitate for a moment +to sacrifice her if it came to a choice between them? The +tempestuousness of these thoughts, when they took possession of her, +hinting as they did of possibilities in her nature hitherto unguessed and +unrevealed, astonished and frightened her; she sought to thrust them +away, to reassure herself that his concern for the successful delivery of +the Bradlaugh order was natural. During the morning, in the intervals +between interviews with the superintendents, he was self-absorbed, and +she found herself inconsistently resenting the absence of those +expressions of endearment--the glances and stolen caresses--for +indulgence in which she had hitherto rebuked him: and though pride came +to her rescue, fuel was added to her feeling by the fact that he did not +seem to notice her coolness. Since he failed to appear after lunch, she +knew he must be investigating the suspicions Orcutt had voiced; but at +six o'clock, when he had not returned, she closed up her desk and left +the office. An odour of cheap perfume pervading the corridor made her +aware of the presence of Miss Lottie Myers. + +"Oh, it's you!" said that young woman, looking up from the landing of the +stairs. "I might have known it you never make a get-away until after +six, do you?" + +"Oh, sometimes," said Janet. + +"I stayed as a special favour to-night," Miss Myers declared. "But I'm +not so stuck on my job that I can't tear myself away from it." + +"I don't suppose you are," said Janet. + +For a moment Miss Myers looked as if she was about to be still more +impudent, but her eye met Janet's, and wavered. They crossed the bridge +in silence. "Well, ta-ta," she said. "If you like it, it's up to you. +Five o'clock for mine,"--and walked away, up the canal, swinging her hips +defiantly. And Janet, gazing after her, grew hot with indignation and +apprehension. Her relations with Ditmar were suspected, after all, made +the subject of the kind of comment indulged in, sotto voce, by Lottie +Myers and her friends at the luncheon hour. She felt a mad, primitive +desire to run after the girl, to spring upon and strangle her and compel +her to speak what was in her mind and then retract it; and the motor +impulse, inhibited, caused a sensation of sickness, of unhappiness and +degradation as she turned her steps slowly homeward. Was it a +misinterpretation, after all--what Lottie Myers had implied and feared to +say?... + +In Fillnore Street supper was over, and Lise, her face contorted, her +body strained, was standing in front of the bureau "doing" her hair, her +glance now seeking the mirror, now falling again to consult a model in +one of those periodicals of froth and fashion that cause such numberless +heart burnings in every quarter of our democracy, and which are filled +with photographs of "prominent" persons at race meetings, horse shows, +and resorts, and with actresses, dancers,--and mannequins. Janet's eyes +fell on the open page to perceive that the coiffure her sister so +painfully imitated was worn by a young woman with an insolent, vapid face +and hard eyes, whose knees were crossed, revealing considerably more than +an ankle. The picture was labelled, "A dance at Palm Beach--A flashlight +of Mrs. 'Trudy' Gascoigne-Schell,"--one of those mysterious, hybrid names +which, in connection with the thoughts of New York and the visible rakish +image of the lady herself, cause involuntary shudders down the spine of +the reflecting American provincial. Some such responsive quiver, akin to +disgust, Janet herself experienced. + +"It's the very last scream," Lise was saying. "And say, if I owned a +ball dress like that I'd be somebody's Lulu all right! Can I have the +pleasure of the next maxixe, Miss Bumpus?" With deft and rapid fingers +she lead parted her hair far on the right side and pulled it down over +the left eyebrow, twisted it over her ear and tightly around her head, +inserting here and there a hairpin, seizing the hand mirror with the +cracked back, and holding it up behind her. Finally, when the operation +was finished to her satisfaction she exclaimed, evidently to the paragon +in the picture, "I get you!" Whereupon, from the wardrobe, she produced +a hat. "You sure had my number when you guessed the feathers on that +other would get draggled," she observed in high good humour, generously +ignoring their former unpleasantness on the subject. When she had pinned +it on she bent mockingly over her sister, who sat on the bed. "How d'you +like my new toque? Peekaboo! That's the way the guys rubberneck to see +if you're good lookin'." + +Lise was exalted, feverish, apparently possessed by some high secret; her +eyes shone, and when she crossed the room she whistled bars of ragtime +and executed mincing steps of the maxixe. Fumbling in the upper drawer +for a pair of white gloves (also new), she knocked off the corner of the +bureau her velvet bag; it opened as it struck the floor, and out of it +rolled a lilac vanity case and a yellow coin. Casting a suspicious, +lightning glance at Janet, she snatched up the vanity case and covered +the coin with her foot. + +"Lock the doors!" she cried, with an hysteric giggle. Then removing her +foot she picked up the coin surreptitiously. To her amazement her sister +made no comment, did not seem to have taken in the significance of the +episode. Lise had expected a tempest of indignant, searching questions, +a "third degree," as she would have put it. She snapped the bag +together, drew on her gloves, and, when she was ready to leave, with +characteristic audacity crossed the room, taking her sister's face +between her hands and kissing her. + +"Tell me your troubles, sweetheart!" she said--and did not wait to hear +them. + +Janet was incapable of speech--nor could she have brought herself to ask +Lise whether or not the money had been earned at the Bagatelle, and +remained miraculously unspent. It was possible, but highly incredible. +And then, the vanity case and the new hat were to be accounted for! The +sight of the gold piece, indeed, had suddenly revived in Janet the queer +feeling of faintness, almost of nausea she had experienced after parting +with Lottie Myers. And by some untoward association she was reminded of +a conversation she had had with Ditmar on the Saturday afternoon +following their first Sunday excursion, when, on opening her pay +envelope, she had found twenty dollars. + +"Are you sure I'm worth it?" she had demanded--and he had been quite +sure. He had added that she was worth more, much more, but that he could +not give her as yet, without the risk of comment, a sum commensurate with +the value of her services.... But now she asked herself again, was she +worth it? or was it merely--part of her price? Going to the wardrobe and +opening a drawer at the bottom she searched among her clothes until she +discovered the piece of tissue paper in which she had wrapped the rose +rescued from the cluster he had given her. The petals were dry, yet they +gave forth, still, a faint, reminiscent fragrance as she pressed them to +her face. Janet wept.... + +The following morning as she was kneeling in a corner of the room by the +letter files, one of which she had placed on the floor, she recognized +his step in the outer office, heard him pause to joke with young +Caldwell, and needed not the visual proof--when after a moment he halted +on the threshold--of the fact that his usual, buoyant spirits were +restored. He held a cigar in his hand, and in his eyes was the eager +look with which she had become familiar, which indeed she had learned to +anticipate as they swept the room in search of her. And when they fell +on her he closed the door and came forward impetuously. But her +exclamation caused him to halt in bewilderment. + +"Don't touch me!" she said. + +And he stammered out, as he stood over her:-- + +"What's the matter?" + +"Everything. You don't love me--I was a fool to believe you did." + +"Don't love you!" he repeated. "My God, what's the trouble now? What +have I done?" + +"Oh, it's nothing you've done, it's what you haven't done, it's what you +can't do. You don't really care for me--all you care for is this mill-- +when anything happens here you don't know I'm alive." + +He stared at her, and then an expression of comprehension, of intense +desire grew in his eyes; and his laugh, as he flung his cigar out of the +open window and bent down to seize her, was almost brutal. She fought +him, she tried to hurt him, and suddenly, convulsively pressed herself to +him. + +"You little tigress!" he said, as he held her. "You were jealous--were +you--jealous of the mill?" And he laughed again. "I'd like to see you +with something really to be jealous about. So you love me like that, do +you?" + +She could feel his heart beating against her. + +"I won't be neglected," she told him tensely. "I want all of you--if I +can't have all of you, I don't want any. Do you understand?" + +"Do I understand? Well, I guess I do." + +"You didn't yesterday," she reproached him, somewhat dazed by the +swiftness of her submission, and feeling still the traces of a lingering +resentment. She had not intended to surrender. "You forgot all about +me, you didn't know I was here, much less that I was hurt. Oh, I was +hurt! And you--I can tell at once when anything's wrong with you--I know +without your saying it." + +He was amazed, he might indeed have been troubled and even alarmed by +this passion he had aroused had his own passion not been at the flood. +And as he wiped away her tears with his handkerchief he could scarcely +believe his senses that this was the woman whose resistance had demanded +all his force to overcome. Indeed, although he recognized the symptoms +she betrayed as feminine, as having been registered--though feebly +compared to this! by incidents in his past, precisely his difficulty +seemed to be in identifying this complex and galvanic being as a woman, +not as something almost fearful in her significance, outside the bounds +of experience.... + +Presently she ceased to tremble, and he drew her to the window. The day +was as mild as autumn, the winter sun like honey in its mellowness; a +soft haze blurred the outline of the upper bridge. + +"Only two more days until Sunday," he whispered, caressingly, +exultantly.... + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +It had been a strange year in Hampton, unfortunate for coal merchants, +welcome to the poor. But Sunday lacked the transforming touch of +sunshine. The weather was damp and cold as Janet set out from Fillmore +Street. Ditmar, she knew, would be waiting for her, he counted on her, +and she could not bear to disappoint him, to disappoint herself. And all +the doubts and fears that from time to time had assailed her were +banished by this impulse to go to him, to be with him. He loved her! +The words, as she sat in the trolley car, ran in her head like the lilt +of a song. What did the weather matter? + +When she alighted at the lonely cross-roads snow had already begun to +fall. But she spied the automobile, with its top raised, some distance +down the lane, and in a moment she was in it, beside him, wrapped in the +coat she had now come to regard as her own. He buttoned down the +curtains and took her in his arms. + +"What shall we do to-day," she asked, "if it snows?" + +"Don't let that worry you, sweetheart," he said. "I have the chains on, +I can get through anything in this car." + +He was in high, almost turbulent spirits as he turned the car and drove +it out of the rutty lane into the state road. The snow grew thicker and +thicker still, the world was blotted out by swiftly whirling, feathery +flakes that melted on the windshield, and through the wet glass Janet +caught distorted glimpses of black pines and cedars beside the highway. + +The ground was spread with fleece. Occasionally, and with startling +suddenness, other automobiles shot like dark phantoms out of the +whiteness, and like phantoms disappeared. Presently, through the veil, +she recognized Silliston--a very different Silliston from that she had +visited on the fragrant day in springtime, when the green on the common +had been embroidered with dandelions, and the great elms whose bare +branches were now fantastically traced against the flowing veil of white- +-heavy with leaf. Vignettes emerged--only to fade!--of the old-world +houses whose quaint beauty had fascinated and moved her. And she found +herself wondering what had become of the strange man she had mistaken for +a carpenter. All that seemed to have taken place in a past life. She +asked Ditmar where he was going. + +"Boston," he told her. "There's no other place to go." + +"But you'll never get back if it goes on snowing like this." + +"Well, the trains are still running," he assured her, with a quizzical +smile. "How about it, little girl?" It was a term of endearment +derived, undoubtedly, from a theatrical source, in which he sometimes +indulged. + +She did not answer. Surprisingly, to-day, she did not care. All she +could think of, all she wanted was to go on and on beside him with the +world shut out--on and on forever. She was his--what did it matter? +They were on their way to Boston! She began, dreamily, to think about +Boston, to try to restore it in her imagination to the exalted place it +had held before she met Ditmar; to reconstruct it from vague memories of +childhood when, in two of the family peregrinations, she had crossed it. +Traces remained of emotionally-toned impressions acquired when she had +walked about the city holding Edward's hand--of a long row of stately +houses with forbidding fronts, set on a hillside, of a wide, tree-covered +space where children were playing. And her childish verdict, persisting +to-day, was one of inaccessibility, impenetrability, of jealously guarded +wealth and beauty. Those houses, and the treasures she was convinced +they must contain, were not for her! Some of the panes of glass in their +windows were purple--she remembered a little thing like that, and asking +her father the reason! He hadn't known. This purple quality had somehow +steeped itself into her memory of Boston, and even now the colour stood +for the word, impenetrable. That was extraordinary. Even now! Well, +they were going to Boston; if Ditmar had said they were going to Bagdad +it would have been quite as credible--and incredible. Wherever they were +going, it was into the larger, larger life, and walls were to crumble +before them, walls through which they would pass, even as they rent the +white veil of the storm, into regions of beauty.... + +And now the world seemed abandoned to them alone, so empty, so still were +the white villages flitting by; so empty, so still the great parkway of +the Fells stretching away and away like an enchanted forest under the +snow, like the domain of some sleeping king. And the flakes melted +silently into the black waters. And the wide avenue to which they came +led to a sleeping palace! No, it was a city, Somerville, Ditmar told +her, as they twisted in and out of streets, past stores, churches and +fire-engine houses, breasted the heights, descended steeply on the far +side into Cambridge, and crossed the long bridge over the Charles. And +here at last was Boston--Beacon Street, the heart or funnel of it, as one +chose. Ditmar, removing one of the side curtains that she might see, +with just a hint in his voice of a reverence she was too excited to +notice, pointed out the stern and respectable facades of the twin +Chippering mansions standing side by side. Save for these shrines--for +such in some sort they were to him--the Back Bay in his eyes was nothing +more than a collection of houses inhabited by people whom money and +social position made unassailable. But to-day he, too, was excited. +Never had he been more keenly aware of her sensitiveness to experience; +and he to whom it had not occurred to wonder at Boston wondered at her, +who seemed able to summon forth a presiding, brooding spirit of the place +from out of the snow. Deep in her eyes, though they sparkled, was the +reflection of some mystic vision; her cheeks were flushed. And in her +delight, vicariously his own, he rejoiced; in his trembling hope of more +delight to come, which this mentorship would enhance,--despite the fast +deepening snow he drove her up one side of Commonwealth Avenue and down +the other, encircling the Common and the Public Garden; stopping at the +top of Park Street that she might gaze up at the State House, whose +golden dome, seen through the veil, was tinged with blue. Boston! Why +not Russia? Janet was speechless for sheer lack of words to describe +what she felt.... + +At length he brought the car to a halt opposite an imposing doorway in +front of which a glass roof extended over the pavement, and Janet +demanded where they were. + +"Well, we've got to eat, haven't we?" Ditmar replied. She noticed that +he was shivering. + +"Are you cold?" she inquired with concern. + +"I guess I am, a little," he replied. "I don't know why I should be, in +a fur coat. But I'll be warm soon enough, now." + +A man in blue livery hurried toward them across the sidewalk, helping +them to alight. And Ditmar, after driving the car a few paces beyond the +entrance, led her through the revolving doors into a long corridor, paved +with marble and lighted by bulbs glowing from the ceiling, where benches +were set against the wall, overspread by the leaves of potted plants set +in the intervals between them. + +"Sit down a moment," he said to her. "I must telephone to have somebody +take that car, or it'll stay there the rest of the winter." + +She sat down on one of the benches. The soft light, the warmth, the +exotic odour of the plants, the well-dressed people who trod softly the +strip of carpet set on the marble with the air of being at home--all +contributed to an excitement, intense yet benumbing. She could not +think. She didn't want to think--only to feel, to enjoy, to wring the +utmost flavour of enchantment from these new surroundings; and her face +wore the expression of one in a dream. Presently she saw Ditmar +returning followed by a boy in a blue uniform. + +"All right," he said. At the end of the corridor was an elevator in +which they were shot to one of the upper floors; and the boy, inserting a +key in a heavy mahogany door, revealed a sitting-room. Between its +windows was a table covered with a long, white cloth reaching to the +floor, on which, amidst the silverware and glass, was set a tall vase +filled with dusky roses. Janet, drawing in a deep breath of their +fragrance, glanced around the room. The hangings, the wall-paper, the +carpet, the velvet upholstery of the mahogany chairs, of the wide lounge +in the corner were of a deep and restful green; the marble mantelpiece, +with its English coal grate, was copied--had she known it--from a mansion +of the Georgian period. The hands of a delicate Georgian clock pointed +to one. And in the large mirror behind the clock she beheld an image she +supposed, dreamily, to be herself. The bell boy was taking off her coat, +which he hung, with Ditmar's, on a rack in a corner. + +"Shall I light the fire, sir?" he asked. + +"Sure," said Ditmar. "And tell them to hurry up with lunch." + +The boy withdrew, closing the door silently behind him. + +"We're going to have lunch here!" Janet exclaimed. + +"Why not? I thought it would be nicer than a public dining-room, and +when I got up this morning and saw what the weather was I telephoned." +He placed two chairs before the fire, which had begun to blaze. "Isn't +it cosy?" he said, taking her hands and pulling her toward him. His own +hands trembled, the tips of his fingers were cold. + +"You are cold!" she said. + +"Not now--not now," he replied. The queer vibrations were in his voice +that she had heard before. "Sweetheart! This is the best yet, isn't it? +And after that trip in the storm!" + +"It's beautiful!" she murmured, gently drawing away from him and looking +around her once more. "I never was in a room like this." + +"Well, you'll be in plenty more of them," he exulted. "Sit down beside +the fire, and get warm yourself." + +She obeyed, and he took the chair at her side, his eyes on her face. As +usual, she was beyond him; and despite her exclamations of surprise, of +appreciation and pleasure she maintained the outward poise, the +inscrutability that summed up for him her uniqueness in the world of +woman. She sat as easily upright in the delicate Chippendale chair as +though she had been born to it. He made wild surmises as to what she +might be thinking. Was she, as she seemed, taking all this as a matter +of course? She imposed on him an impelling necessity to speak, to say +anything--it did not matter what--and he began to dwell on the +excellences of the hotel. She did not appear to hear him, her eyes +lingering on the room, until presently she asked:-- + +"What's the name of this hotel?" + +He told her. + +"I thought they only allowed married people to come, like this, in a +private room." + +"Oh!" he began--and the sudden perception that she had made this +statement impartially added to his perplexity. "Well," he was able to +answer, "we're as good as married, aren't we, Janet?" He leaned toward +her, he put his hand on hers. "The manager here is an old friend of +mine. He knows we're as good as married." + +"Another old friend!" she queried. And the touch of humour, in spite of +his taut nerves, delighted him. + +"Yes, yes," he laughed, rather uproariously. "I've got 'em everywhere, +as thick as landmarks." + +"You seem to," she said. + +"I hope you're hungry," he said. + +"Not very," she replied. "It's all so strange--this day, Claude. It's +like a fairy story, coming here to Boston in the snow, and this place, +and--and being with you." + +"You still love me?" he cried, getting up. + +"You must know that I do," she answered simply, raising her face to his. +And he stood gazing down into it, with an odd expression she had never +seen before...."What's the matter?" she asked. + +"Nothing--nothing," he assured her, but continued to look at her. +"You're so--so wonderful," he whispered, "I just can't believe it." + +"And if it's hard for you," she answered, "think what it must be for me!" +And she smiled up at him. + +Ditmar had known a moment of awe.... Suddenly he took her face between +his hands and pressed his rough cheek against it, blindly. His hands +trembled, his body was shaken, as by a spasm. + +"Why, you're still cold, Claude!" she cried anxiously. + +And he stammered out: "I'm not--it's you--it's having you!" + +Before she could reply to this strange exclamation, to which, +nevertheless, some fire in her leaped in response, there came a knock at +the door, and he drew away from her as he answered it. Two waiters +entered obsequiously, one bearing a serving table, the other holding +above his head a large tray containing covered dishes and glasses. + +"I could do with a cocktail!" Ditmar exclaimed, and the waiter smiled as +he served them. "Here's how!" he said, giving her a glass containing a +yellow liquid. + +She tasted it, made a grimace, and set it down hastily. + +"What's the trouble?" he asked, laughing, as she hurried to the table and +took a drink of water. + +"It's horrid!" she cried. + +"Oh, you'll get over that idea," he told her. "You'll be crazy about +'em." + +"I never want to taste another," she declared. + +He laughed again. He had taken his at a swallow, but almost nullifying +its effect was this confirmation--if indeed he had needed it--of the +extent of her inexperience. She was, in truth, untouched by the world-- +the world in which he had lived. He pulled out her chair for her and she +sat down, confronted by a series of knives, forks, and spoons on either +side of a plate of oysters. Oysters served in this fashion, needless to +say, had never formed part of the menu in Fillmore Street, or in any +Hampton restaurant where she had lunched. But she saw that Ditmar had +chosen a little fork with three prongs, and she followed his example. + +"You mustn't tell me you don't like Cotuits!" he exclaimed. + +She touched one, delicately, with her fork. + +"They're alive!" she exclaimed, though the custom of consuming them thus +was by no means unknown to her. Lise had often boasted of a taste for +oysters on the shell, though really preferring them smothered with red +catsup in a "cocktail." + +"They're alive, but they don't know it. They won't eat you," Ditmar +replied gleefully. "Squeeze a little lemon on one." Another sort of +woman, he reflected, would have feigned a familiarity with the dish. + +She obeyed him, put one in her mouth, gave a little shiver, and swallowed +it quickly. + +"Well?" he said. "It isn't bad, is it?" + +"It seems so queer to eat anything alive, and enjoy it," she said, as she +ate the rest of them. + +"If you think they're good here you ought to taste them on the Cape, +right out of the water," he declared, and went on to relate how he had +once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won a +bet. He was fond of talking about wagers he had won. Betting had lent a +zest to his life. "We'll roll down there together some day next summer, +little girl. It's a great place. You can go in swimming three times a +day and never feel it. And talk about eating oysters, you can't swallow +'em as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open 'em. It's +some trick to open 'em." + +He described the process, but she--scarcely listened. She was striving +to adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience; +to the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot +plates before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a creamy +soup, a fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully +disguised, a breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of +coffee. Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were +aroused in her. What would it be like always to be daintily served, to +eat one's meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner? As her physical +hunger was satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank +in the caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the +heavy scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to +the storm without,--so the storm flinging itself against the windows, +powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold, +black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and +limitations. Had her existence been like that? or was it a dream, a +nightmare from which she had awakened at last? From time to time, deep +within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this +illusion, but she fought it down. She wanted--oh, how she wanted to +believe in the illusion! + +Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from +that existence, who had at his command these delights to bestow. She +loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband--yet there were +moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an +objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from +the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place. And once it +crossed her mind--what would she think of another woman who did this? +What would she think if it were Lise? She could not then achieve a sense +of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling +her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity. And little +by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known, +that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an +expression of the man himself. He was the source of it. More and more, +as he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand, +as he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her. When the +waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she +rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains, +the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light; +and she paused before the grand piano in the corner. + +"I'd like to be able to play!" she said. + +"You can learn," he told her. + +"I'm too old!" + +He laughed. And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly. + +Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded +tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal +Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand. +At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding +them. The picture fascinated Janet. + +"It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?" she asked. + +"What? That? I guess so." He got up and came over to her. "Sure," he +said. "I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel, +which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown to +the lions just as we like to see football games. I'll get the book +again--we'll read it together." + +Janet shivered.... "Here's another picture," he said, turning to the +other side of the room. It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern +portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and a +small, aristocratic head. Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of +pearls. + +"Isn't she beautiful!" Janet sighed. + +"Beautiful!" He led her to the mirror. "Look!" he said. "I'll buy you +pearls, Janet, I want to see them gleaming against your skin. She can't +compare to you. I'll--I'll drape you with pearls." + +"No, no," she cried. "I don't want them, Claude. I don't want them. +Please!" She scarcely knew what she was saying. And as she drew away +from him her hands went out, were pressed together with an imploring, +supplicating gesture. He seized them. His nearness was suffocating her, +she flung herself into his arms, and their lips met in a long, swooning +kiss. She began instinctively but vainly to struggle, not against him-- +but against a primal thing stronger than herself, stronger than he, +stronger than codes and conventions and institutions, which yet she +craved fiercely as her being's fulfilment. It was sweeping them dizzily +--whither? The sheer sweetness and terror of it! + +"Don't, don't!" she murmured desperately. "You mustn't!" + +"Janet--we're going to be married, sweetheart,--just as soon as we can. +Won't you trust me? For God's sake, don't be cruel. You're my wife, +now--" + +His voice seemed to come from a great distance. And from a great +distance, too, her own in reply, drowned as by falling waters. + +"Do you love me?--will you love me always--always?" + +And he answered hoarsely, "Yes--always--I swear it, Janet." He had found +her lips again, he was pulling her toward a door on the far side of the +room, and suddenly, as he opened it, her resistance ceased.... + +The snow made automobiling impossible, and at half past nine that evening +Ditmar had escorted Janet to the station in a cab, and she had taken the +train for Hampton. For a while she sat as in a trance. She knew that +something had happened, something portentous, cataclysmic, which had +irrevocably changed her from the Janet Bumpus who had left Hampton that +same morning--an age ago. But she was unable to realize the +metamorphosis. In the course of a single day she had lived a lifetime, +exhausted the range of human experience, until now she was powerless to +feel any more. The car was filled with all sorts and conditions of +people returning to homes scattered through the suburbs and smaller +cities north of Boston--a mixed, Sunday-night crowd; and presently she +began, in a detached way, to observe them. Their aspects, their speech +and manners had the queer effect of penetrating her consciousness without +arousing the emotional judgments of approval or disapproval which +normally should have followed. Ordinarily she might have felt a certain +sympathy for the fragile young man on the seat beside her who sat moodily +staring through his glasses at the floor: and the group across the aisle +would surely have moved her to disgust. Two couples were seated vis-a- +vis, the men apparently making fun of a "pony" coat one of the girls was +wearing. In spite of her shrieks, which drew general attention, they +pulled it from her back--an operation regarded by the conductor himself +with tolerant amusement. Whereupon her companion, a big, blond Teuton +with an inane guffaw, boldly thrust an arm about her waist and held her +while he presented the tickets. Janet beheld all this as one sees +dancers through a glass, without hearing the music. + +Behind her two men fell into conversation. + +"I guess there's well over a foot of snow. I thought we'd have an open +winter, too." + +"Look out for them when they start in mild!" + +"I was afraid this darned road would be tied up if I waited until +morning. I'm in real estate, and there's a deal on in my town I've got +to watch every minute...." + +Even the talk between two slouch-hatted millhands, foreigners, failed at +the time to strike Janet as having any significance. They were +discussing with some heat the prospect of having their pay reduced by the +fifty-four hour law which was to come into effect on Monday. They +denounced the mill owners. + +"They speed up the machine and make work harder," said one. "I think we +goin' to have a strike sure." + +"Bad sisson too to have strike," replied the second pessimistically. "It +will be cold winter, now." + +Across the black square of the window drifted the stray lights of the +countryside, and from time to time, when the train stopped, she gazed +out, unheeding, at the figures moving along the dim station platforms. +Suddenly, without premeditation or effort, she began to live over again +the day, beginning with the wonders, half revealed, half hidden, of that +journey through the whiteness to Boston.... Awakened, listening, she +heard beating louder and louder on the shores of consciousness the waves +of the storm which had swept her away--waves like crashing chords of +music. She breathed deeply, she turned her face to the window, seeming +to behold reflected there, as in a crystal, all her experiences, little +and great, great and little. She was seated once more leaning back in +the corner of the carriage on her way to the station, she felt Ditmar's +hand working in her own, and she heard his voice pleading forgiveness-- +for her silence alarmed him. And she heard herself saying:-- + +"It was my fault as much as yours." + +And his vehement reply:-- + +"It wasn't anybody's fault--it was natural, it was wonderful, Janet. I +can't bear to see you sad." + +To see her sad! Twice, during the afternoon and evening, he had spoken +those words--or was it three times? Was there a time she had forgotten? +And each time she had answered: "I'm not sad." What she had felt indeed +was not sadness,--but how could she describe it to him when she herself +was amazed and dwarfed by it? Could he not feel it, too? Were men so +different?... In the cab his solicitation, his tenderness were only to +be compared with his bewilderment, his apparent awe of the feeling he +himself had raised up in her, and which awed her, likewise. She had +actually felt that bewilderment of his when, just before they had reached +the station, she had responded passionately to his last embrace. Even as +he returned her caresses, it had been conveyed to her amazingly by the +quality of his touch. Was it a lack all women felt in men? and were +these, even in supreme moments, merely the perplexed transmitters of +life?--not life itself? Her thoughts did not gain this clarity, though +she divined the secret. And yet she loved him--loved him with a +fierceness that frightened her, with a tenderness that unnerved her.... + +At the Hampton station she took the trolley, alighting at the Common, +following the narrow path made by pedestrians in the heavy snow to +Fillmore Street. She climbed the dark stairs, opened the dining-room +door, and paused on the threshold. Hannah and Edward sat there under the +lamp, Hannah scanning through her spectacles the pages of a Sunday +newspaper. On perceiving Janet she dropped it hastily in her lap. + +"Well, I was concerned about you, in all this storm!" she exclaimed. +"Thank goodness you're home, anyway. You haven't seen Lise, have you?" + +"Lise?" Janet repeated. "Hasn't she been home?" + +"Your father and I have been alone all day long. Not that it is so +uncommon for Lise to be gone. I wish it wasn't! But you! When you +didn't come home for supper I was considerably worried." + +Janet sat down between her mother and father and began to draw off her +gloves. + +"I'm going to marry Mr. Ditmar," she announced. + +For a few moments the silence was broken only by the ticking of the old- +fashioned clock. + +"Mr. Ditmar!" said Hannah, at length. "You're going to marry Mr. +Ditmar!" + +Edward was still inarticulate. His face twitched, his eyes watered as he +stared at her. + +"Not right away," said Janet. + +"Well, I must say you take it rather cool," declared Hannah, almost +resentfully. "You come in and tell us you're going to marry Mr. Ditmar +just like you were talking about the weather." + +Hannah's eyes filled with tears. There had been indeed an unconscious +lack of consideration in Janet's abrupt announcement, which had fallen +like a spark on the dry tinder of Hannah's hope. The result was a +suffocating flame. Janet, whom love had quickened, had a swift +perception of this. She rose quickly and took Hannah in her arms and +kissed her. It was as though the relation between them were reversed, +and the daughter had now become the mother and the comforter. + +"I always knew something like this would happen!" said Edward. His words +incited Hannah to protest. + +"You didn't anything of the kind, Edward Bumpus," she exclaimed. + +"Just to think of Janet livin' in that big house up in Warren Street!" +he went on, unheeding, jubilant. "You'll drop in and see the old people +once in a while, Janet, you won't forget us?" + +"I wish you wouldn't talk like that, father," said Janet. + +"Well, he's a fine man, Claude Ditmar, I always said that. The way he +stops and talks to me when he passes the gate--" + +"That doesn't make him a good man," Hannah declared, and added: "If he +wasn't a good man, Janet wouldn't be marrying him." + +"I don't know whether he's good or not," said Janet. + +"That's so, too," observed Hannah, approvingly. "We can't any of us tell +till we've tried 'em, and then it's too late to change. I'd like to see +him, but I guess he wouldn't care to come down here to Fillmore Street." +The difference between Ditmar's social and economic standing and their +own suggested appalling complications to her mind. "I suppose I won't +get a sight of him till after you're married, and not much then." + +"There's plenty of time to think about that, mother," answered Janet. + +"I'd want to have everything decent and regular," Hannah insisted. "We +may be poor, but we come of good stock, as your father says." + +"It'll be all right--Mr. Ditmar will behave like a gentleman," Edward +assured her. + +"I thought I ought to tell you about it," Janet said, "but you mustn't +mention it, yet, not even to Lise. Lise will talk. Mr. Ditmar's very +busy now,--he hasn't made any plans." + +"I wish Lise could get married!" exclaimed Hannah, irrelevantly. "She's +been acting so queer lately, she's not been herself at all." + +"Now there you go, borrowing trouble, mother," Edward exclaimed. He +could not take his eyes from Janet, but continued to regard her with +benevolence. "Lise'll get married some day. I don't suppose we can +expect another Mr. Ditmar...." + +"Well," said Hannah, presently, "there's no use sitting up all night." +She rose and kissed Janet again. "I just can't believe it," she +declared, "but I guess it's so if you say it is." + +"Of course it's so," said Edward. + +"I so want you should be happy, Janet," said Hannah.... + +Was it so? Her mother and father, the dwarfed and ugly surroundings of +Fillmore Street made it seem incredible once more. And--what would they +say if they knew what had happened to her this day? When she had reached +her room, Janet began to wonder why she had told her parents. Had it not +been in order to relieve their anxiety--especially her mother's--on the +score of her recent absences from home? Yes, that was it, and because +the news would make them happy. And then the mere assertion to them that +she was to marry Ditmar helped to make it more real to herself. But, now +that reality was fading again, she was unable to bring it within the +scope of her imagination, her mind refused to hold one remembered +circumstance long enough to coordinate it with another: she realized that +she was tired--too tired to think any more. But despite her exhaustion +there remained within her, possessing her, as it were overshadowing her, +unrelated to future or past, the presence of the man who had awakened her +to an intensity of life hitherto unconceived. When her head touched the +pillow she fell asleep.... + +When the bells and the undulating scream of the siren awoke her, she lay +awhile groping in the darkness. Where was she? Who was she? The +discovery of the fact that the nail of the middle finger on her right +hand was broken, gave her a clew. She had broken that nail in reaching +out to save something--a vase of roses--that was it!--a vase of roses on +a table with a white cloth. Ditmar had tipped it over. The sudden +flaring up of this trivial incident served to re-establish her identity, +to light a fuse along which her mind began to run like fire, illuminating +redly all the events of the day before. It was sweet to lie thus, to +possess, as her very own, these precious, passionate memories of life +lived at last to fulness, to feel that she had irrevocably given herself +and taken--all. A longing to see Ditmar again invaded her: he would take +an early train, he would be at the office by nine. How could she wait +until then? + +With a movement that had become habitual, subconscious, she reached out +her hand to arouse her sister. The coldness of the sheets on the right +side of the bed sent a shiver through her--a shiver of fear. + +"Lise!" she called. But there was no answer from the darkness. And +Janet, trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed, searched +for the matches, and lit the gas. There was no sign of Lise; her +clothes, which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were +nowhere to be seen. Janet's eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence +of several knick-knacks, including a comb and brush, and with a sudden +sickness of apprehension she darted to the wardrobe and flung open the +doors. In the bottom were a few odd garments, above was the hat with the +purple feather, now shabby and discarded, on the hooks a skirt and jacket +Lise wore to work at the Bagatelle in bad weather. That was all.... +Janet sank down in the rocking-chair, her hands clasped together, +overwhelmed by the sudden apprehension of the tragedy that had lurked, +all unsuspected, in the darkness: a tragedy, not of Lise alone, but in +which she herself was somehow involved. Just why this was so, she could +not for the moment declare. The room was cold, she was clad only in a +nightdress, but surges of heat ran through her body. What should she do? +She must think. But thought was impossible. She got up and closed the +window and began to dress with feverish rapidity, pausing now and again +to stand motionless. In one such moment there entered her mind an +incident that oddly had made little impression at the time of its +occurrence because she, Janet, had been blinded by the prospect of her +own happiness--that happiness which, a few minutes ago, had seemed so +real and vital a thing! And it was the memory of this incident that +suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all of Lise's conduct during the +past months--her accidental dropping of the vanity case and the gold +coin! Now she knew'for a certainty what had happened to her sister. + +Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm, filled +with the smell of frying meat. Streaks of grease smoke floated +fantastically beneath the low ceiling, and Hannah, with the fryingpan in +one hand and a fork in the other, was bending over the stove. Wisps of +her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn knot +at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet she +looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her dumb-- +pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that lent a +staggering insight into life itself. Hannah had once been young, +desirable, perhaps, swayed by those forces which had swayed her. Janet +wondered why she had never guessed this before, and why she had guessed +it now. But it was Hannah who, looking up and catching sight of Janet's +face, was quick to divine the presage in it and gave voice to the +foreboding that had weighed on her for many weeks. + +"Where's Lise?" + +And Janet could not answer. She shook her head. Hannah dropped the +fork, the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing +Janet by the shoulders. + +"Is she gone? I knew it, I felt it all along. I thought she'd done +something she was afraid to tell about--I tried to ask her, but I +couldn't--I couldn't! And now she's gone. Oh, my God, I'll never +forgive myself!" + +The unaccustomed sight of her mother's grief was terrible. For an +instant only she clung to Janet, then becoming mute, she sat down in the +kitchen chair and stared with dry, unseeing eyes at the wall. Her face +twitched. Janet could not bear to look at it, to see the torture in her +mother's eyes. She, Janet, seemed suddenly to have grown old herself, to +have lived through ages of misery and tragedy.... She was aware of a +pungent odour, went to the stove, picked up the fork, and turned the +steak. Now and then she glanced at Hannah. Grief seemed to have frozen +her. Then, from the dining-room she heard footsteps, and Edward stood in +the doorway. + +"Well, what's the matter with breakfast?" he asked. From where he stood +he could not see Hannah's face, but gradually his eyes were drawn to her +figure. His intuition was not quick, and some moments passed before the +rigidity of the pose impressed itself upon him. + +"Is mother sick?" he asked falteringly. + +Janet went to him. But it was Hannah who spoke. + +"Lise has gone," she said. + +"Lise--gone," Edward repeated. "Gone where?" + +"She's run away--she's disgraced us," Hannah replied, in a monotonous, +dulled voice. + +Edward did not seem to understand, and presently Janet felt impelled to +break the silence. + +"She didn't come home last night, father." + +"Didn't come home? Mebbe she spent the night with a friend," he said. + +It seemed incredible, at such a moment, that he could still be hopeful. + +"No, she's gone, I tell you, she's lost, we'll never lay eyes on her +again. My God, I never thought she'd come to this, but I might have +guessed it. Lise! Lise! To think it's my Lise!" + +Hannah's voice echoed pitifully through the silence of the flat. So +appealing, so heartbroken was the cry one might have thought that Lise, +wherever she was, would have heard it. Edward was dazed by the shock, +his lower lip quivered and fell. He walked over to Hannah's chair and +put his hand on her shoulder. + +"There, there, mother," he pleaded. "If she's gone, we'll find her, +we'll bring her back to you." + +Hannah shook her head. She pushed back her chair abruptly and going over +to the stove took the fork from Janet's hand and put the steak on the +dish. + +"Go in there and set down, Edward," she said. "I guess we've got to have +breakfast just the same, whether she's gone or not." + +It was terrible to see Hannah, with that look on her face, going about +her tasks automatically. And Edward, too, seemed suddenly to have become +aged and broken; his trust in the world, so amazingly preserved through +many vicissitudes, shattered at last. He spilled his coffee when he +tried to drink, and presently he got up and wandered about the room, +searching for his overcoat. It was Janet who found it and helped him on +with it. He tried to say something, but failing, departed heavily for +the mill. Janet began to remove the dishes from the table. + +"You've got to eat something, too, before you go to work," said Hannah. + +"I've had all I want," Janet replied. + +Hannah followed her into the kitchen. The scarcely touched food was laid +aside, the coffee-pot emptied, Hannah put the cups in the basin in the +sink and let the water run. She turned to Janet and seized her hands +convulsively. + +"Let me do this, mother," said Janet. She knew her mother was thinking +of the newly-found joy that Lise's disgrace had marred, but she released +her hands, gently, and took the mop from the nail on which it hung. + +"You sit down, mother," she said. + +Hannah would not. They finished the dishes together in silence while the +light of the new day stole in through the windows. Janet went into her +room, set it in order, made up the bed, put on her coat and hat and +rubbers. Then she returned to Hannah, who seized her. + +"It ain't going to spoil your happiness?" + +But Janet could not answer. She kissed her mother, and went out, down +the stairs into the street. The day was sharp and cold and bracing, and +out of an azure sky the sun shone with dazzling brightness on the snow, +which the west wind was whirling into little eddies of white smoke, +leaving on the drifts delicate scalloped designs like those printed by +waves on the sands of the sea. They seemed to Janet that morning +hatefully beautiful. In front of his tin shop, whistling cheerfully and +labouring energetically with a shovel to clean his sidewalk, was Johnny +Tiernan, the tip of his pointed nose made very red by the wind. + +"Good morning, Miss Bumpus," he said. "Now, if you'd only waited awhile, +I'd have had it as clean as a parlour. It's fine weather for coal +bills." + +She halted. + +"Can I see you a moment, Mr. Tiernan?" + +Johnny looked at her. + +"Why sure," he said. Leaning his shovel against the wall, he gallantly +opened the door that she might pass in before him and then led the way to +the back of the shop where the stove was glowing hospitably. He placed a +chair for her. "Now what can I be doing to serve you?" he asked. + +"It's about my sister," said Janet. + +"Miss Lise?" + +"I thought you might know what man she's been going with lately," said +Janet. + +Mr. Tiernan had often wondered how much Janet knew about her sister. In +spite of a momentary embarrassment most unusual in him, the courage of +her question made a strong appeal, and his quick sympathies suspected the +tragedy behind her apparent calmness. He met her magnificently. + +"Why," he said, "I have seen Miss Lise with a fellow named Duval--Howard +Duval--when he's been in town. He travels for a Boston shoe house, +Humphrey and Gillmount." + +"I'm afraid Lise has gone away with him," said Janet. "I thought you +might be able to find out something about him, and--whether any one had +seen them. She left home yesterday morning." + +For an instant Mr. Tiernan stood silent before her, his legs apart, his +fingers running through his bristly hair. + +"Well, ye did right to come straight to me, Miss Janet. It's me that can +find out, if anybody can, and it's glad I am to help you. Just you stay +here--make yourself at home while I run down and see some of the boys. +I'll not be long--and don't be afraid I'll let on about it." + +He seized his overcoat and departed. Presently the sun, glinting on the +sheets of tin, started Janet's glance straying around the shop, noting +its disorderly details, the heaped-up stovepipes, the littered work-bench +with the shears lying across the vise. Once she thought of Ditmar +arriving at the office and wondering what had happened to her.... The +sound of a bell made her jump. Mr. Tiernan had returned. + +"She's gone with him," said Janet, not as a question, but as one stating +a fact. + +Mr. Tiernan nodded. + +"They took the nine-thirty-six for Boston yesterday morning. Eddy +Colahan was at the depot." + +Janet rose. "Thank you," she said simply. + +"What are you going to do?" he asked. + +"I'm going to Boston," she answered. "I'm going to find out where she +is." + +"Then it's me that's going with you," he announced. + +"Oh no, Mr. Tiernan!" she protested. "I couldn't let you do that." + +"And why not?" he demanded. "I've got a little business there myself. +I'm proud to go with you. It's your sister you want, isn't it?" + +"Yes." + +"Well, what would you be doing by yourself--a young lady? How will you +find your sister?" + +"Do you think you can find her?" + +"Sure I can find her," he proclaimed, confidently. He had evidently made +up his mind that casual treatment was what the affair demanded. "Haven't +I good friends in Boston?" By friendship he swayed his world: nor was he +completely unknown--though he did not say so--to certain influential +members of his race of the Boston police department. Pulling out a large +nickel watch and observing that they had just time to catch the train, he +locked up his shop, and they set out together for the station. Mr. +Tiernan led the way, for the path was narrow. The dry snow squeaked +under his feet. + +After escorting her to a seat on the train, he tactfully retired to the +smoking car, not to rejoin her until they were on the trestle spanning +the Charles River by the North Station. All the way to Boston she had +sat gazing out of the window at the blinding whiteness of the fields, +incapable of rousing herself to the necessity of thought, to a degree of +feeling commensurate with the situation. She did not know what she would +say to Lise if she should find her; and in spite of Mr. Tiernan's +expressed confidence, the chances of success seemed remote. When the +train began to thread the crowded suburbs, the city, spreading out over +its hills, instead of thrilling her, as yesterday, with a sense of +dignity and power, of opportunity and emancipation, seemed a labyrinth +with many warrens where vice and crime and sorrow could hide. In front +of the station the traffic was already crushing the snow into filth. +They passed the spot where, the night before, the carriage had stopped, +where Ditmar had bidden her good-bye. Something stirred within her, +became a shooting pain.... She asked Mr. Tiernan what he intended to do. + +"I'm going right after the man, if he's here in the city," he told her. +And they boarded a street car, which almost immediately shot into the +darkness of the subway. Emerging at Scollay Square, and walking a few +blocks, they came to a window where guns, revolvers, and fishing tackle +were displayed, and on which was painted the name, "Timothy Mulally." +Mr. Tiernan entered. + +"Is Tim in?" he inquired of one of the clerks, who nodded his head +towards the rear of the store, where a middle-aged, grey-haired Irishman +was seated at a desk under a drop light. + +"Is it you, Johnny?" he exclaimed, looking up. + +"It's meself," said Mr. Tiernan. "And this is Miss Bumpus, a young lady +friend of mine from Hampton." + +Mr. Mulally rose and bowed. + +"How do ye do, ma'am," he said. + +"I've got a little business to do for her," Mr. Tiernan continued. "I +thought you might offer her a chair and let her stay here, quiet, while I +was gone." + +"With pleasure, ma'am," Mr. Mulally replied, pulling forward a chair with +alacrity. "Just sit there comfortable--no one will disturb ye." + +When, in the course of half an hour, Mr. Tiernan returned, there was a +grim yet triumphant look in his little blue eyes, but it was not until +Janet had thanked Mr. Mulally for his hospitality and they had reached +the sidewalk that he announced the result of his quest. + +"Well, I caught him. It's lucky we came when we did--he was just going +out on the road again, up to Maine. I know where Miss Lise is." + +"He told you!" exclaimed Janet. + +"He told me indeed, but it wasn't any joy to him. He was all for +bluffing at first. It's easy to scare the likes of him. He was as white +as his collar before I was done with him. He knows who I am, all right +he's heard of me in Hampton," Mr. Tiernan added, with a pardonable touch +of pride. + +"What did you say?" inquired Janet, curiously. + +"Say?" repeated Mr. Tiernan. "It's not much I had to say, Miss Janet. I +was all ready to go to Mr. Gillmount, his boss. I'm guessing he won't +take much pleasure on this trip." + +She asked for no more details. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +Once more Janet and Mr. Tiernan descended into the subway, taking a car +going to the south and west, which finally came out of the tunnel into a +broad avenue lined with shabby shops, hotels and saloons, and long rows +of boarding--and rooming-houses. They alighted at a certain corner, +walked a little way along a street unkempt and dreary, Mr. Tiernan +scrutinizing the numbers until he paused in front of a house with a +basement kitchen and snow-covered, sandstone steps. Climbing these, he +pulled the bell, and they stood waiting in the twilight of a half-closed +vestibule until presently shuffling steps were heard within; the door was +cautiously opened, not more than a foot, but enough to reveal a woman in +a loose wrapper, with an untidy mass of bleached hair and a puffy face +like a fungus grown in darkness. + +"I want to see Miss Lise Bumpus," Mr. Tiernan demanded. + +"You've got the wrong place. There ain't no one of that name here," said +the woman. + +"There ain't! All right," he insisted aggressively, pushing open the +door in spite of her. "If you don't let this young lady see her quick, +there's trouble coming to you." + +"Who are you?" asked the woman, impudently, yet showing signs of fear. + +"Never mind who I am," Mr. Tiernan declared. "I know all about you, and +I know all about Duval. If you don't want any trouble you won't make +any, and you'll take this young lady to her sister. I'll wait here for +you, Miss Janet," he added. + +"I don't know nothing about her--she rented my room that's all I know," +the woman replied sullenly. "If you mean that couple that came here +yesterday--" + +She turned and led the way upstairs, mounting slowly, and Janet followed, +nauseated and almost overcome by the foul odours of dead cigarette smoke +which, mingling with the smell of cooking cabbage rising from below, +seemed the very essence and reek of hitherto unimagined evil. A terror +seized her such as she had never known before, an almost overwhelming +impulse to turn and regain the air and sunlight of the day. In the dark +hallway of the second story the woman knocked at the door of a front +room. + +"She's in there, unless she's gone out." And indeed a voice was heard +petulantly demanding what was wanted--Lise's voice! Janet hesitated, her +hand on the knob, her body fallen against the panels. Then, as she +pushed open the door, the smell of cigarette smoke grew stronger, and she +found herself in a large bedroom, the details of which were instantly +photographed on her mind--the dingy claret-red walls, the crayon over the +mantel of a buxom lady in a decollete costume of the '90's, the outspread +fan concealing the fireplace, the soiled lace curtains. The bed was +unmade, and on the table beside two empty beer bottles and glasses and +the remains of a box of candy--suggestive of a Sunday purchase at a drug +store--she recognized Lise's vanity case. The effect of all this, +integrated at a glance, was a paralyzing horror. Janet could not speak. +She remained gazing at Lise, who paid no attention to her entrance, but +stood with her back turned before an old-fashioned bureau with a marble +top and raised sides. She was dressed, and engaged in adjusting her hat. +It was not until Janet pronounced her name that she turned swiftly. + +"You!" she exclaimed. "What the--what brought you here?" + +"Oh, Lise!" Janet repeated. + +"How did you get here?" Lise demanded, coming toward her. "Who told you +where I was? What business have you got sleuthing 'round after me like +this?" + +For a moment Janet was speechless once more, astounded that Lise could +preserve her effrontery in such an atmosphere, could be insensible to the +evils lurking in this house--evils so real to Janet that she seemed +actually to feel them brushing against her. + +"Lise, come away from here," she pleaded, "come home with me!" + +"Home!" said Lise, defiantly, and laughed. "What do you take me for? +Why would I be going home when I've been trying to break away for two +years? I ain't so dippy as that--not me! Go home like a good little +girl and march back to the Bagatelle and ask 'em to give me another show +standing behind a counter all day. Nix! No home sweet home for me! I'm +all for easy street when it comes to a home like that." + +Heartless, terrific as the repudiation was, it struck a self-convicting, +almost sympathetic note in Janet. She herself had revolted against the +monotony and sordidness of that existence She herself! She dared not +complete the thought, now. + +"But this!" she exclaimed. + +"What's the matter with it?" Lise demanded. "It ain't Commonwealth +Avenue, but it's got Fillmore Street beat a mile. There ain't no +whistles hereto get you out of bed at six a.m., for one thing. There +ain't no geezers, like Walters, to nag you 'round all day long. What's +the matter with it?" + +Something in Lise's voice roused Janet's spirit to battle. + +"What's the matter with it?" she cried. "It's hell--that's the matter +with it. Can't you see it? Can't you feel it? You don't know what it +means, or you'd come home with me." + +"I guess I know what it means as well as you do," said Lise, sullenly. +"We've all got to croak sometime, and I'd rather croak this way than be +smothered up in Hampton. I'll get a run for my money, anyway." + +"No, you don't know what it means," Janet repeated, "or you wouldn't talk +like that. Do you think this man will support you, stick to you? He +won't, he'll desert you, and you'll have to go on the streets." + +A dangerous light grew in Lise's eyes. + +"He's as good as any other man, he's as good as Ditmar," she said. +"They're all the same, to girls like us." + +Janet's heart caught, it seemed to stop beating. Was this a hazard on +Lise's part, or did she speak from knowledge? And yet what did it matter +whether Lise knew or only suspected, if her words were true, if men were +all alike? Had she been a dupe as well as Lise? and was the only +difference between them now the fact that Lise was able, without +illusion, to see things as they were, to accept the consequences, while +she, Janet, had beheld visions and dreamed dreams? was there any real +choice between the luxurious hotel to which Ditmar had taken her and this +detestable house? Suddenly, seemingly by chance, her eyes fell on the +box of drug-store candy from which the cheap red ribbon had been torn, +and by some odd association of ideas it suggested and epitomized Lise's +Sunday excursion with a mama hideous travesty on the journey of wonders +she herself had taken. Had that been heaven, and this of Lise's, +hell?... And was. Lise's ambition to be supported in idleness and +luxury to be condemned because she had believed her own to be higher? +Did not both lead to destruction? The weight that had lain on her breast +since the siren had awakened her that morning and she had reached out and +touched the chilled, empty sheets now grew almost unsupportable. + +"It's true," said Janet, "all men are the same." + +Lise was staring at her. + +"My God!" she exclaimed. "You?" + +"Yes-me," cried Janet.--"And what are you going to do about it? Stay +here with him in this filthy place until he gets tired of you and throws +you out on the street? Before I'd let any man do that to me I'd kill +him." + +Lise began to whimper, and suddenly buried her face in the pillow. But a +new emotion had begun to take possession of Janet--an emotion so strong +as to give her an unlookedfor sense of detachment. And the words Lise +had spoken between her sobs at first conveyed no meaning. + +"I'm going to have a baby...." + +Lise was going to have a child! Why hadn't she guessed it? A child! +Perhaps she, Janet, would have a child! This enlightenment as to Lise's +condition and the possibility it suggested in regard to herself brought +with it an overwhelming sympathy which at first she fiercely resented +then yielded to. The bond between them, instead of snapping, had +inexplicably strengthened. And Lise, despite her degradation, was more +than ever her sister! Forgetting her repugnance to the bed, Janet sat +down beside Lise and put an arm around her. + +"He said he'd marry me, he swore he was rich--and he was a spender all +right. And then some guy came up to me one night at Gruber's and told me +he was married already." + +"What?" Janet exclaimed. + +"Sure! He's got a wife and two kids here in Boston. That was a twenty- +one round knockout! Maybe I didn't have something to tell him when he +blew into Hampton last Friday! But he said he couldn't help it--he loved +me." Lise sat up, seemingly finding relief in the relation of her +wrongs, dabbing her eyes with a cheap lace handkerchief. "Well, while +he'd been away--this thing came. I didn't know what was the matter at +first, and when I found out I was scared to death, I was ready to kill +myself. When I told him he was scared too, and then he said he'd fix it. +Say, I was a goat to think he'd marry me!" Lise laughed hysterically. + +"And then--" Janet spoke with difficulty, "and then you came down here?" + +"I told him he'd have to see me through, I'd start something if he +didn't. Say, he almost got down on his knees, right there in Gruber's! +But he came back inside of ten seconds--he's a jollier, for sure, he was +right there with the goods, it was because he loved me, he couldn't help +himself, I was his cutie, and all that kind of baby talk." + +Lise's objective manner of speaking about her seducer amazed Janet. + +"Do you love him?" she asked. + +"Say, what is love?" Lise demanded. "Do you ever run into it outside of +the movies? Do I love him? Well, he's a good looker and a fancy +dresser, he ain't a tight wad, and he can start a laugh every minute. If +he hadn't put it over on me I wouldn't have been so sore. I don't know +he ain't so bad. He's weak, that's the trouble with him." + +This was the climax! Lise's mental processes, her tendency to pass from +wild despair to impersonal comment, her inability, her courtesan's +temperament that prevented her from realizing tragedy for more than a +moment at a time--even though the tragedy were her own--were +incomprehensible to Janet. + +"Get on to this," Lise adjured her. "When I first was acquainted with +him he handed me a fairy tale that he was taking five thousand a year +from Humphrey and Gillmount, he was going into the firm. He had me +razzle-dazzled. He's some hypnotizes as a salesman, too, they say. +Nothing was too good for me; I saw myself with a house on the avenue +shopping in a limousine. Well, he blew up, but I can't help liking him." + +"Liking him!" cried Janet passionately. "I'd kill him that's what I'd +do." + +Lise regarded her with unwilling admiration. + +"That's where you and me is different," she declared. "I wish I was like +that, but I ain't. And where would I come in? Now you're wise why I +can't go back to Hampton. Even if I was stuck on the burg and cryin' my +eyes out for the Bagatelle I couldn't go back." + +"What are you going to do?" Janet demanded. + +"Well," said Lise, "he's come across--I'll say that for him. Maybe it's +because he's scared, but he's stuck on me, too. When you dropped in I +was just going down town to get a pair of patent leathers, these are all +wore out," she explained, twisting her foot, "they ain't fit for Boston. +And I thought of lookin' at blouses--there's a sale on I was reading +about in the paper. Say, it's great to be on easy street, to be able to +stay in bed until you're good and ready to get up and go shopping, to +gaze at the girls behind the counter and ask the price of things. I'm +going to Walling's and give the salesladies the ha-ha--that's what I'm +going to do." + +"But--?" Janet found words inadequate. + +Lise understood her. + +"Oh, I'm due at the doctor's this afternoon." + +"Where?" + +"The doctor's. Don't you get me?--it's a private hospital." Lise gave a +slight shudder at the word, but instantly recovered her sang-froid. +"Howard fixed it up yesterday--and they say it ain't very bad if you take +it early." + +For a space Janet was too profoundly shocked to reply. + +"Lise! That's a crime!" she cried. + +"Crime, nothing!" retorted Lise, and immediately became indignant. +"Say, I sometimes wonder how you could have lived all these years without +catching on to a few things! What do you take me for! What'd I do with +a baby?" + +What indeed! The thought came like an avalanche, stripping away the +veneer of beauty from the face of the world, revealing the scarred rock +and crushed soil beneath. This was reality! What right had society to +compel a child to be born to degradation and prostitution? to beget, +perhaps, other children of suffering? Were not she and Lise of the +exploited, of those duped and tempted by the fair things the more +fortunate enjoyed unscathed? And now, for their natural cravings, their +family must be disgraced, they must pay the penalty of outcasts! Neither +Lise nor she had had a chance. She saw that, now. The scorching +revelation of life's injustice lighted within her the fires of anarchy +and revenge. Lise, other women might submit tamely to be crushed, might +be lulled and drugged by bribes: she would not. A wild desire seized her +to get back to Hampton. + +"Give me the address of the hospital," she said. + +"Come off!" cried Lise, in angry bravado. "Do you think I'm going to let +you butt into this? I guess you've got enough to do to look out for your +own business." + +Janet produced a pencil from her bag, and going to the table tore off a +piece of the paper in which had been wrapped the candy box. + +"Give me the address," she insisted. + +"Say, what are you going to do?" + +"I want to know where you are, in case anything happens to you." + +"Anything happens! What do you mean?" Janet's words had frightened +Lise, the withdrawal of Janet's opposition bewildered her. But above +all, she was cowed by the sudden change in Janet herself, by the attitude +of steely determination eloquent of an animus persons of Lise's type are +incapable of feeling, and which to them is therefore incomprehensible. +"Nothing's going to happen to me," she whined. "The place is all right-- +he'd be scared to send me there if it wasn't. It costs something, too. +Say, you ain't going to tell 'em at home?" she cried with a fresh access +of alarm. + +"If you do as I say, I won't tell anybody," Janet replied, in that odd, +impersonal tone her voice had acquired. "You must write me as soon--as +soon as it is over. Do you understand?" + +"Honest to God I will," Lise assured her. + +"And you mustn't come back to a house like this." + +"Where'll I go?" Lise asked. + +"I don't know. We'll find out when the time comes," said Janet, +significantly. + +"You've seen him!" Lise exclaimed. + +"No," said Janet, "and I don't want to see him unless I have to. Mr. +Tiernan has seen him. Mr. Tiernan is downstairs now, waiting for me." + +"Johnny Tiernan! Is Johnny Tiernan downstairs?" + +Janet wrote the address, and thrust the slip of paper in her bag. + +"Good-bye, Lise," she said. "I'll come down again I'll come down +whenever you want me." Lise suddenly seized her and clung to her, +sobbing. For a while Janet submitted, and then, kissing her, gently +detached herself. She felt, indeed, pity for Lise, but something within +her seemed to have hardened--something that pity could not melt, +possessing her and thrusting heron to action. She knew not what action. +So strong was this thing that it overcame and drove off the evil spirits +of that darkened house as she descended the stairs to join Mr. Tiernan, +who opened the door for her to pass out. Once in the street, she +breathed deeply of the sunlit air. Nor did she observe Mr. Tiernan's +glance of comprehension.... When they arrived at the North Station he +said:-- + +"You'll be wanting a bite of dinner, Miss Janet," and as she shook her +head he did not press her to eat. He told her that a train for Hampton +left in ten minutes. "I think I'll stay in Boston the rest of the day, +as long as I'm here," he added. + +She remembered that she had not thanked him, she took his hand, but he +cut her short. + +"It's glad I was to help you," he assured her. "And if there's anything +more I can do, Miss Janet, you'll be letting me know--you'll call on +Johnny Tiernan, won't you?" + +He left her at the gate. He had intruded with no advice, he had offered +no comment that she had come downstairs alone, without Lise. His +confidence in her seemed never to have wavered. He had respected, +perhaps partly imagined her feelings, and in spite of these now a sense +of gratitude to him stole over her, mitigating the intensity of their +bitterness. Mr. Tiernan alone seemed stable in a chaotic world. He was +a man. + +No sooner was she in the train, however, than she forgot Mr. Tiernan +utterly. Up to the present the mental process of dwelling upon her own +experience of the last three months had been unbearable, but now she was +able to take a fearful satisfaction in the evolving of parallels between +her case and Lise's. Despite the fact that the memories she had +cherished were now become hideous things, she sought to drag them forth +and compare them, ruthlessly, with what must have been the treasures of +Lise. Were her own any less tawdry? Only she, Janet, had been the +greater fool of the two, the greater dupe because she had allowed herself +to dream, to believe that what she had done had been for love, for light! +because she had not listened to the warning voice within her! It had +always been on the little, unpremeditated acts of Ditmar that she had +loved to linger, and now, in the light of Lise's testimony, of Lise's +experience, she saw them all as false. It seemed incredible, now, that +she had ever deceived herself into thinking that Ditmar meant to marry +her, that he loved her enough to make her his wife. Nor was it necessary +to summon and marshal incidents to support this view, they came of +themselves, crowding one another, a cumulative and appalling array of +evidence, before which she stood bitterly amazed at her former stupidity. +And in the events of yesterday, which she pitilessly reviewed, she beheld +a deliberate and prearranged plan for her betrayal. Had he not +telephoned to Boston for the rooms, rehearsed in his own mind every +detail of what had subsequently happened? Was there any essential +difference between the methods of Ditmar and Duval? Both were skilled in +the same art, and Ditmar was the cleverer of the two. It had only needed +her meeting with Lise, in that house, to reveal how he had betrayed her +faith and her love, sullied and besmirched them. And then came the odd +reflection,--how strange that that same Sunday had been so fateful for +herself and Lise! + +The agony of these thoughts was mitigated by the scorehing hatred that +had replaced her love, the desire for retaliation, revenge. +Occasionally, however, that stream of consciousness was broken by the +recollection of what she had permitted and even advised her sister to do; +and though the idea of the place to which Lise was going sickened her, +though she achieved a certain objective amazement at the transformation +in herself enabling her to endorse such a course, she was glad of having +endorsed it, she rejoiced that Lise's child would not be born into a +world that had seemed--so falsely--fair and sweet, and in reality was +black and detestable. Her acceptance of the act--for Lise--was a +function of the hatred consuming her, a hatred which, growing in bigness, +had made Ditmar merely the personification of that world. From time to +time her hands clenched, her brow furrowed, powerful waves of heat ran +through her, the craving for action became so intense she could scarcely +refrain from rising in her seat. + +By some odd whim of the weather the wind had backed around into the east, +gathering the clouds once more. The brilliancy of the morning had given +place to greyness, the high slits of windows seemed dirtier than ever as +the train pulled into the station at Hampton, shrouded in Gothic gloom. +As she left the car Janet was aware of the presence on the platform of an +unusual number of people; she wondered vaguely, as she pushed her way +through them, why they were there, what they were talking about? One +determination possessed her, to go to the Chippering Mill, to Ditmar. +Emerging from the street, she began to walk rapidly, the change from +inaction to exercise bringing a certain relief, starting the working of +her mind, arousing in her a realization of the necessity of being +prepared for the meeting. Therefore, instead of turning at Faber Street, +she crossed it. But at the corner of the Common she halted, her glance +drawn by a dark mass of people filling the end of Hawthorne Street, where +it was blocked by the brick-coloured facade of the Clarendon Mill. In +the middle distance men and boys were running to join this crowd. A +girl, evidently an Irish-American mill hand of the higher paid sort, +hurried toward her from the direction of the mill itself. Janet accosted +her. + +"It's the strike," she explained excitedly, evidently surprised at the +question. "The Polaks and the Dagoes and a lot of other foreigners quit +when they got their envelopes--stopped their looms and started through +the mill, and when they came into our room I left. I didn't want no +trouble with 'em. It's the fifty-four hour law--their pay's cut two +hours. You've heard about it, I guess." + +Janet nodded. + +"They had a big mass meeting last night in Maxwell Hall," the girl +continued, "the foreigners--not the skilled workers. And they voted to +strike. They tell me they're walking out over at the Patuxent, too." + +"And the Chippering?" asked Janet, eagerly. + +"I don't know--I guess it'll spread to all of 'em, the way these +foreigners are going on--they're crazy. But say," the girl added, "it +ain't right to cut our pay, either, is it? They never done it two years +ago when the law came down to fifty-six." + +Janet did not wait to reply. While listening to this explanation, +excitement had been growing in her again, and some fearful, overpowering +force of attraction emanating from that swarm in the distance drew her +until she yielded, fairly running past the rows of Italian tenements in +their strange setting of snow, not to pause until she reached the fruit +shop where she and Eda had eaten the olives. Now she was on the +outskirts of the crowd that packed itself against the gates of the +Clarendon. It spread over the width of East Street, growing larger every +minute, until presently she was hemmed in. Here and there hoarse shouts +of approval and cheers arose in response to invisible orators haranging +their audiences in weird, foreign tongues; tiny American flags were +waved; and suddenly, in one of those unforeseen and incomprehensible +movements to which mobs are subject, a trolley car standing at the end of +the Hawthorne Street track was surrounded, the desperate clanging of its +bell keeping pace with the beating of Janet's heart. A dark Sicilian, +holding aloft the green, red, and white flag of Italy, leaped on the rear +platform and began to speak, the Slav conductor regarding him stupidly, +pulling the bellcord the while. Three or four policemen fought their way +to the spot, striving to clear the tracks, bewildered and impotent in the +face of the alien horde momentarily growing more and more conscious of +power. + +Janet pushed her way deeper and deeper into the crowd. She wanted to +savour to the full its wrath and danger, to surrender herself to be +played upon by these sallow, stubbybearded exhorters, whose menacing +tones and passionate gestures made a grateful appeal, whose wild, musical +words, just because they were uncomprehended, aroused in her dim +suggestions of a race-experience not her own, but in which she was now +somehow summoned to share. That these were the intruders whom she, as a +native American, had once resented and despised did not occur to her. +The racial sense so strong in her was drowned in a sense of fellowship. +Their anger seemed to embody and express, as nothing else could have +done, the revolt that had been rising, rising within her soul; and the +babel to which she listened was not a confusion of tongues, but one voice +lifted up to proclaim the wrongs of all the duped, of all the exploited +and oppressed. She was fused with them, their cause was her cause, their +betrayers her betrayers. + +Suddenly was heard the cry for which she had been tensely but +unconsciously awaiting. Another cry like that had rung out in another +mob across the seas more than a century before. "Ala Bastille!" became +"To the Chippering!" Some man shouted it out in shrill English, hundreds +repeated it; the Sicilian leaped from the trolley car, and his path could +be followed by the agitated progress of the alien banner he bore. "To +the Chippering!" It rang in Janet's ears like a call to battle. Was she +shouting it, too? A galvanic thrill ran through the crowd, an impulse +that turned their faces and started their steps down East Street toward +the canal, and Janet was irresistibly carried along. Nay, it seemed as +if the force that second by second gained momentum was in her, that she +herself had released and was guiding it! Her feet were wet as she +ploughed through the trampled snow, but she gave no thought to that. The +odour of humanity was in her nostrils. On the left a gaunt Jew pressed +against her, on the right a solid Ruthenian woman, one hand clasping her +shawl, the other holding aloft a miniature emblem of New World liberty. +Her eyes were fixed on the grey skies, and from time to time her lips +were parted in some strange, ancestral chant that could be heard above +the shouting. All about Janet were dark, awakening faces.... + +It chanced that an American, a college graduate, stood gazing down from a +point of vantage upon this scene. He was ignorant of anthropology, +psychology, and the phenomena of environment; but bits of "knowledge"-- +which he embodied in a newspaper article composed that evening stuck wax- +like in his brain. Not thus, he deplored, was the Anglo-Saxon wont to +conduct his rebellions. These Czechs and Slavs, Hebrews and Latins and +Huns might have appropriately been clad in the skins worn by the hordes +of Attila. Had they not been drawn hither by the renown of the +Republic's wealth? And how essentially did they differ from those other +barbarians before whose bewildered, lustful gaze had risen the glittering +palaces on the hills of the Tiber? The spoils of Rome! The spoils of +America! They appeared to him ferocious, atavistic beasts as they broke +into the lumberyard beneath his window to tear the cord-wood from the +piles and rush out again, armed with billets.... + +Janet, in the main stream sweeping irresistibly down the middle of the +street, was carried beyond the lumberyard into the narrow roadway beside +the canal--presently to find herself packed in the congested mass in +front of the bridge that led to the gates of the Chippering Mill. Across +the water, above the angry hum of human voices could be heard the +whirring of the looms, rousing the mob to a higher pitch of fury. The +halt was for a moment only. The bridge rocked beneath the weight of +their charge, they battered at the great gates, they ran along the snow- +filled tracks by the wall of the mill. Some, in a frenzy of passion, +hurled their logs against the windows; others paused, seemingly to +measure the distance and force of the stroke, thus lending to their act a +more terrible and deliberate significance. A shout of triumph announced +that the gates, like a broken dam, had given way, and the torrent poured +in between the posts, flooding the yard, pressing up the towered +stairways and spreading through the compartments of the mill. More +ominous than the tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this +absorption of the angry spirits of the mob. Little by little, as the +power was shut off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled. +Pinioned against the parapet above the canal--almost on that very spot +where, the first evening, she had met Ditmar--Janet awaited her chance to +cross. Every crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave +her a fierce throb of joy. She had not expected the gates to yield--her +father must have insecurely fastened them. Gaining the farther side of +the canal, she perceived him flattened against the wall of the gatehouse +shaking his fist in the faces of the intruders, who rushed past him +unheeding. His look arrested her. His face was livid, his eyes were red +with anger, he stood transformed by a passion she had not believed him to +possess. She had indeed heard him give vent to a mitigated indignation +against foreigners in general, but now the old-school Americanism in +which he had been bred, the Americanism of individual rights, of respect +for the convention of property, had suddenly sprung into flame. He was +ready to fight for it, to die for it. The curses he hurled at these +people sounded blasphemous in Janet's ears. + +"Father!" she cried. "Father!" + +He looked at her uncomprehendingly, seemingly failing to recognize her. + +"What are you doing here?" he demanded, seizing her and attempting to +draw her to the wall beside him. But she resisted. There sprang from +her lips an unpremeditated question: "Where is Mr. Ditmar?" She was, +indeed, amazed at having spoken it. + +"I don't know," Edward replied distractedly. "We've been looking for him +everywhere. My God, to think that this should happen with me at the +gates!" he lamented. "Go home, Janet. You can't tell what'll happen, +what these fiends will do, you may get hurt. You've got no business +here." Catching sight of a belated and breathless policeman, he turned +from her in desperation. "Get 'em out! Far God's sake, can't you get +'em out before they ruin the machines?" + +But Janet waited no longer. Pushing her way frantically through the +people filling the yard she climbed the tower stairs and made her way +into one of the spinning rooms. The frames were stilled, the overseer +and second hands, thrust aside, looked on helplessly while the intruders +harangued, cajoled or threatened the operatives, some of whom were cowed +and already departing; others, sullen and resentful, remained standing in +the aisles; and still others seemed to have caught the contagion of the +strike. Suddenly, with reverberating strokes, the mill bells rang out, +the electric gongs chattered, the siren screeched, drowning the voices. +Janet did not pause, but hurried from room to room until, in passing +through an open doorway in the weaving department she ran into Mr. +Caldwell. He halted a moment, in surprise at finding her there, calling +her by name. She clung to his sleeve, and again she asked the question:-- + +"Where's Mr. Ditmar?" + +Caldwell shook his head. His answer was the same as Edward's. "I don't +know," he shouted excitedly above the noise. "We've got to get this mob +out before they do any damage." + +He tore himself away, she saw him expostulating with the overseer, and +then she went on. These tower stairs, she remembered, led to a yard +communicating by a little gate with the office entrance. The door of the +vestibule was closed, but the watchman, Simmons, recognizing her, +permitted her to enter. The offices were deserted, silent, for the bells +and the siren had ceased their clamour; the stenographers and clerks had +gone. The short day was drawing to a close, shadows were gathering in +the corners of Ditmar's room as she reached the threshold and gazed about +her at the objects there so poignantly familiar. She took off her coat. +His desk was littered with books and papers, and she started, +mechanically, to set it in order, replacing the schedule books on the +shelves, sorting out the letters and putting them in the basket. She +could not herself have told why she should take up again these trivial +tasks as though no cataclysmic events had intervened to divide forever +the world of yesterday from that of to-morrow. With a movement +suggestive of tenderness she was picking up Ditmar's pen to set it in the +glass rack when her ear caught the sound of voices, and she stood +transfixed, listening intently. There were footsteps in the corridor, +the voices came nearer; one, loud and angered, she detected above the +others. It was Ditmar's! Nothing had happened to him! Dropping the +pen, she went over to the window, staring out over the grey waters, +trembling so violently that she could scarcely stand. + +She did not look around when they entered the room Ditmar, Caldwell, +Orcutt, and evidently a few watchmen and overseers. Some one turned on +the electric switch, darkening the scene without. Ditmar continued to +speak in vehement tones of uncontrolled rage. + +"Why in hell weren't those gates bolted tight?" he demanded. "That's +what I want to know! There was plenty of time after they turned the +corner of East Street. You might have guessed what they would do. But +instead of that you let 'em into the mill to shut off the power and +intimidate our own people." He called the strikers an unprintable name, +and though Janet stood, with her back turned, directly before him, he +gave no sign of being aware of her presence. + +"It wasn't the gatekeeper's fault," she heard Orcutt reply in a tone +quivering with excitement and apprehension. "They really didn't give us +a chance--that's the truth. They were down Canal Street and over the +bridge before we knew it." + +"It's just as I've said a hundred times," Ditmar retorted. "I can't +afford to leave this mill a minute, I can't trust anybody--" and he +broke out in another tirade against the intruders. "By God, I'll fix 'em +for this--I'll crush 'em. And if any operatives try to walkout here I'll +see that they starve before they get back--after all I've done for 'em, +kept the mill going in slack times just to give 'em work. If they desert +me now, when I've got this Bradlaugh order on my hands--" Speech became +an inadequate expression of his feelings, and suddenly his eye fell on +Janet. She had turned, but her look made no impression on him. "Call up +the Chief of Police," he said. + +Automatically she obeyed, getting the connection and handing him the +receiver, standing by while he denounced the incompetence of the +department for permitting the mob to gather in East Street and demanded +deputies. The veins of his forehead were swollen as he cut short the +explanations of the official and asked for the City Hall. In making an +appointment with the Mayor he reflected on the management of the city +government. And when Janet by his command obtained the Boston office, he +gave the mill treasurer a heated account of the afternoon's occurrences, +explaining circumstantially how, in his absence at a conference in the +Patuxent Mill, the mob had gathered in East Street and attacked the +Chippering; and he urged the treasurer to waste no time in obtaining a +force of detectives, in securing in Boston and New York all the +operatives that could be hired, in order to break the impending strike. +Save for this untimely and unreasonable revolt he was bent on stamping +out, for Ditmar the world to-day was precisely the same world it had been +the day before. It seemed incredible to Janet that he could so regard +it, could still be blind to the fact that these workers whom he was +determined to starve and crush if they dared to upset his plans and +oppose his will were human beings with wills and passions and grievances +of their own. Until to-day her eyes had been sealed. In agony they had +been opened to the panorama of sorrow and suffering, of passion and evil; +and what she beheld now as life was a vast and terrible cruelty. She had +needed only this final proof to be convinced that in his eyes she also +was but one of those brought into the world to minister to his pleasure +and profit. He had taken from her, as his weed, the most precious thing +a woman has to give, and now that she was here again at his side, by some +impulse incomprehensible to herself--in spite of the wrong he had done +her!--had sought him out in danger, he had no thought of her, no word for +her, no use save a menial one: he cared nothing for any help she might be +able to give, he had no perception of the new light which had broken +within her soul.... The telephoning seemed interminable, yet she waited +with a strange patience while he talked with Mr. George Chippering and +two of the most influential directors. These conversations had covered +the space of an hour or more. And perhaps as a result of self- +suggestion, of his repeated assurances to Mr. Semple, to Mr. Chippering, +and the directors of his ability to control the situation, Ditmar's +habitual self-confidence was gradually restored. And when at last he +hung up the instrument and turned to her, though still furious against +the strikers, his voice betrayed the joy of battle, the assurance of +victory. + +"They can't bluff me, they'll have to guess again. It's that damned +Holster--he hasn't any guts--he'd give in to 'em right now if I'd let +him. It's the limit the way he turned the Clarendon over to them. I'll +show him how to put a crimp in 'em if they don't turn up here to-morrow +morning." + +He was so magnificently sure of her sympathy! She did, not reply, but +picked up her coat from the chair where she had laid it. + +"Where are you going?" he demanded. And she replied laconically, +"Home." + +"Wait a minute," he said, rising and taking a step toward her. + +"You have an appointment with the Mayor," she reminded him. + +"I know," he said, glancing at the clock over the door. "Where have you +been?--where were you this morning? I was worried about you, I--I was +afraid you might be sick." + +"Were you?" she said. "I'm all right. I had business in Boston." + +"Why didn't you telephone me? In Boston?" he repeated. + +She nodded. He started forward again, but she avoided him. + +"What's the matter?" he cried. "I've been worried about you all day-- +until this damned strike broke loose. I was afraid something had +happened." + +"You might have asked my father," she said. + +"For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!" + +His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that +something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had +congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last +been established. He was conscious, however, of irritation because this +whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at +the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere +with his cherished plans--for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of +humanity by the yardstick of his desires. Her question as to why he had +not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude. +As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that +there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn +on him. His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck +him. + +"I hate you!" she said. She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate, +concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic +quality of a bullet. And save for the impact of it--before which he +physically recoiled--its import was momentarily without meaning. + +"What?" he exclaimed, stupidly. + +"I might have known you never meant to marry me," she went on. Her hands +were busy with the buttons of her coat. + +"All you want is to use me, to enjoy me and turn me out when you get +tired of me--the way you've done with other women. It's just the same +with these mill hands, they're not human beings to you, they're--they're +cattle. If they don't do as you like, you turn them out; you say they +can starve for all you care." + +"For God's sake, what do you mean?" he demanded. "What have I done to +you, Janet? I love you, I need you!" + +"Love me!" she repeated. "I know how men of your sort love--I've seen +it--I know. As long as I give you what you want and don't bother you, +you love me. And I know how these workers feel," she cried, with sudden, +passionate vehemence. "I never knew before, but I know now. I've been +with them, I marched up here with them from the Clarendon when they +battered in the gates and smashed your windows--and I wanted to smash +your windows, too, to blow up your mill." + +"What are you saying? You came here with the strikers? you were with +that mob?" asked Ditmar, astoundedly. + +"Yes, I was in that mob. I belong there, with them, I tell you--I don't +belong here, with you. But I was a fool even then, I was afraid they'd +hurt you, I came into the mill to find you, and you--and you you acted as +if you'd never seen me before. I was a fool, but I'm glad I came--I'm +glad I had a chance to tell you this." + +"My God--won't you trust me?" he begged, with a tremendous effort to +collect himself. "You trusted me yesterday. What's happened to change +you? Won't you tell me? It's nothing I've done--I swear. And what do +you mean when you say you were in that mob? I was almost crazy when I +came back and found they'd been here in this mill--can't you understand? +It wasn't that I didn't think of you. I'd been worrying about you all +day. Look at this thing sensibly. I love you, I can't get along without +you--I'll marry you. I said I would, I meant it I'll marry you just as +soon as I can clean up this mess of a strike. It won't take long." + +"Don't touch me!" she commanded, and he recoiled again. "I'll tell you +where I've been, if you want to know,--I've been to see my sister in--in +a house, in Boston. I guess you know what kind of a house I mean, you've +been in them, you've brought women to them,--just like the man that +brought her there. Would you marry me now--with my sister there? And am +I any different from her? You you've made me just like her." Her voice +had broken, now, into furious, uncontrolled weeping--to which she paid no +heed. + +Ditmar was stunned; he could only stare at her. + +"If I have a child," she said, "I'll--I'll kill you--I'll kill myself." + +And before he could reply--if indeed he had been able to reply--she had +left the office and was running down the stairs.... + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +What was happening to Hampton? Some hundreds of ignorant foreigners, +dissatisfied with the money in their pay envelopes, had marched out of +the Clarendon Mill and attacked the Chippering and behold, the revered +structure of American Government had quivered and tumbled down like a +pack of cards! Despite the feverish assurances in the Banner "extra" +that the disturbance was merely local and temporary, solid citizens +became panicky, vaguely apprehending the release of elemental forces +hitherto unrecognized and unknown. Who was to tell these solid, educated +business men that the crazy industrial Babel they had helped to rear, and +in which they unconsciously dwelt, was no longer the simple edifice they +thought it? that Authority, spelled with a capital, was a thing of the +past? that human instincts suppressed become explosives to displace the +strata of civilization and change the face of the world? that conventions +and institutions, laws and decrees crumble before the whirlwind of human +passions? that their city was not of special, but of universal +significance? And how were these, who still believed themselves to be +dwelling under the old dispensation, to comprehend that environments +change, and changing demand new and terrible Philosophies? When night +fell on that fateful Tuesday the voice of Syndicalism had been raised in +a temple dedicated to ordered, Anglo-Saxon liberty--the Hampton City +Hall. + +Only for a night and a day did the rebellion lack both a leader and a +philosophy. Meanwhile, in obedience to the unerring instinct for drama +peculiar to great metropolitan dailies, newspaper correspondents were +alighting from every train, interviewing officials and members of labour +unions and mill agents: interviewing Claude Ditmar, the strongest man in +Hampton that day. He at least knew what ought to be done, and even +before his siren broke the silence of the morning hours in vigorous and +emphatic terms he had informed the Mayor and Council of their obvious +duty. These strikers were helots, unorganized scum; the regular unions-- +by comparison respectable--held aloof from them. Here, in effect, was +his argument: a strong show of force was imperative; if the police and +deputies were inadequate, request the Governor to call out the local +militia; but above all, waste no time, arrest the ringleaders, the +plotters, break up all gatherings, keep the streets clear. He demanded +from the law protection of his property, protection for those whose right +to continue at work was inalienable. He was listened to with sympathy +and respect--but nothing was done! The world had turned upside down +indeed if the City Government of Hampton refused to take the advice of +the agent of the Chippering Mill! American institutions were a failure! +But such was the fact. Some unnamed fear, outweighing their dread of the +retributions of Capital, possessed these men, made them supine, derelict +in the face of their obvious duty. + +By the faint grey light of that bitter January morning Ditmar made his +way to the mill. In Faber Street dark figures flitted silently across +the ghostly whiteness of the snow, and gathered in groups on the corners; +seeking to avoid these, other figures hurried along the sidewalks close +to the buildings, to be halted, accosted, pleaded with--threatened, +perhaps. Picketing had already begun! The effect of this pantomime of +the eternal struggle for survivals which he at first beheld from a +distance, was to exaggerate appallingly the emptiness of the wide street, +to emphasize the absence of shoppers and vehicles; and a bluish darkness +lurked in the stores, whose plate glass windows were frosted in quaint +designs. Where were the police? It was not fear that Ditmar felt, he +was galvanized and dominated by anger, by an overwhelming desire for +action; physical combat would have brought him relief, and as he +quickened his steps he itched to seize with his own hands these +foreigners who had dared to interfere with his cherished plans, who had +had the audacity to challenge the principles of his government which +welcomed them to its shores. He would have liked to wring their necks. +His philosophy, too, was environmental. And beneath this wrath, +stimulating and energizing it the more, was the ache in his soul from the +loss for which he held these enemies responsible. Two days ago happiness +and achievement had both been within his grasp. The only woman--so now +it seemed--he had ever really wanted! What had become of her? What +obscure and passionate impulse had led her suddenly to defy and desert +him, to cast in her lot with these insensate aliens? A hundred times +during the restless, inactive hours of a sleepless night this question +had intruded itself in the midst of his scheming to break the strike, as +he reviewed, word by word, act by act, that almost incomprehensible +revolt of hers which had followed so swiftly--a final, vindictive blow of +fate--on that other revolt of the workers. At moments he became +confused, unable to separate the two. He saw her fire in that other.... +Her sister, she had said, had been disgraced; she had defied him to marry +her in the face of that degradation--and this suddenly had sickened him. +He had let her go. What a fool he had been to let her go! Had she +herself been--! He did not finish this thought. Throughout the long +night he had known, for a certainty, that this woman was a vital part of +him, flame of his flame. Had he never seen her he would have fought +these strikers to their knees, but now the force of this incentive was +doubled. He would never yield until he had crushed them, until he had +reconquered her. + +He was approaching one of the groups of strikers, and unconsciously he +slowed his steps. The whites of his eyes reddened. The great coat of +golden fur he wore gave to his aspect an added quality of formidableness. +There were some who scattered as he drew near, and of the less timorous +spirits that remained only a few raised dark, sullen glances to encounter +his, which was unflinching, passionately contemptuous. Throughout the +countless generations that lay behind them the instinct of submission had +played its dominant, phylogenetic role. He was the Master. The journey +across the seas had not changed that. A few shivered--not alone because +they were thinly clad. He walked on, slowly, past other groups, turned +the corner of West Street, where the groups were more numerous, while the +number of those running the gantlet had increased. And he heard, twice +or thrice, the word "Scab!" cried out menacingly. His eyes grew redder +still as he spied a policeman standing idly in a doorway. + +"Why in hell don't you do your duty?" he demanded. "What do you mean by +letting them interfere with these workers?" + +The man flinched. He was apologetic. "So long as they're peaceable, Mr. +Ditmar--those are my orders. I do try to keep 'em movin'." + +"Your orders? You're a lot of damned cowards," Ditmar replied, and went +on. There were mutterings here; herded together, these slaves were +bolder; and hunger and cold, discouragement at not being able to stop the +flow toward the mills were having their effect. By the frozen canal, the +scene of the onslaught of yesterday, the crowd had grown comparatively +thick, and at the corner of the lodginghouse row Ditmar halted a moment, +unnoticed save by a few who nudged one another and murmured. He gave +them no attention, he was trying to form an estimate of the effect of the +picketing on his own operatives. Some came with timid steps; others, +mostly women, fairly ran; still others were self-possessed, almost +defiant--and such he marked. There were those who, when the picketers +held them by the sleeve, broke precipitately from their annoyers, and +those who hesitated, listening with troubled faces, with feelings torn +between dread of hunger for themselves and their children and sympathy +with the revolt. A small number joined the ranks of the picketers. +Ditmar towered above these foreigners, who were mostly undersized: a +student of human nature and civilization, free from industrial complexes, +would from that point of vantage have had much to gather from the +expressions coming within his view, but to Ditmar humanity was a means to +an end. Suddenly, from the cupolas above the battlement of the mill, the +bells shattered the early morning air, the remnant of the workers +hastened across the canal and through the guarded gates, which were +instantly closed. Ditmar was left alone among the strikers. As he moved +toward the bridge they made a lane for him to pass; one or two he thrust +out of his way. But there were mutterings, and from the sidewalk he +heard a man curse him. + +Perhaps we shall understand some day that the social body, also, is +subject to the operation of cause and effect. It was not what an +ingenuous orthodoxy, keeping alive the fate of the ancient city from +which Lot fled, would call the wrath of heaven that visited Hampton, +although a sermon on these lines was delivered from more than one of her +pulpits on the following Sunday. Let us surmise, rather, that a decrepit +social system in a moment of lowered vitality becomes an easy prey to +certain diseases which respectable communities are not supposed to have. +The germ of a philosophy evolved in decadent Europe flies across the sea +to prey upon a youthful and vigorous America, lodging as host wherever +industrial strife has made congenial soil. In four and twenty hours +Hampton had "caught" Syndicalism. All day Tuesday, before the true +nature of the affection was developed, prominent citizens were outraged +and appalled by the supineness of their municipal phagocytes. Property, +that sacred fabric of government, had been attacked and destroyed, law +had been defied, and yet the City Hall, the sanctuary of American +tradition, was turned over to the alien mob for a continuous series of +mass meetings. All day long that edifice, hitherto chastely familiar +with American doctrine alone, with patriotic oratory, with perorations +that dwelt upon the wrongs and woes of Ireland--part of our national +propaganda--all day long that edifice rang with strange, exotic speech, +sometimes guttural, often musical, but always impassioned, weirdly +cadenced and intoned. From the raised platform, in place of the shrewd, +matter-of-fact New England politician alive to the vote--getting powers +of Fourth of July patriotism, in place of the vehement but fun-loving son +of Erin, men with wild, dark faces, with burning black eyes and unkempt +hair, unshaven, flannel skirted--made more alien, paradoxically, by their +conventional, ready-made American clothes--gave tongue to the +inarticulate aspirations of the peasant drudge of Europe. From lands +long steeped in blood they came, from low countries by misty northern +seas, from fair and ancient plains of Lombardy, from Guelph and +Ghibelline hamlets in the Apennines, from vine-covered slopes in Sicily +and Greece; from the Balkans, from Caucasus and Carpathia, from the +mountains of Lebanon, whose cedars lined the palaces of kings; and from +villages beside swollen rivers that cross the dreary steppes. Each +peasant listened to a recital in his own tongue--the tongue in which the +folklore, the cradle sayings of his race had been preserved--of the +common wrongs of all, of misery still present, of happiness still +unachieved in this land of liberty and opportunity they had found a +mockery; to appeals to endure and suffer for a common cause. But who was +to weld together this medley of races and traditions, to give them the +creed for which their passions were prepared, to lead into battle these +ignorant and unskilled from whom organized labour held aloof? Even as +dusk was falling, even as the Mayor, the Hon. Michael McGrath, was making +from the platform an eloquent plea for order and peace, promising a +Committee of Arbitration and thinking about soldiers, the leader and the +philosophy were landing in Hampton. + +The "five o'clock" edition of the Banner announced him, Antonio +Antonelli, of the Industrial Workers of the World! An ominous name, an +ominous title,--compared by a wellknown publicist to the sound of a fire- +bell in the night. The Industrial Workers, not of America, but of the +World! No wonder it sent shivers down the spine of Hampton! The writer +of the article in the Banner was unfamiliar with the words "syndicalism" +and "sabotage," or the phrase "direct action," he was too young to know +the history of the Knights, he had never heard of a philosophy of labour, +or of Sorel or Pouget, but the West he had heard of,--the home of +lawlessness, of bloodshed, rape, and murder. For obvious reasons he did +not betray this opinion, but for him the I.W.W. was born in the West, +where it had ravaged and wrecked communities. His article was guardedly +respectful, but he ventured to remind his readers that Mr. Antonelli had +been a leader in some of these titanic struggles between crude labour and +capital--catastrophes that hitherto had seemed to the citizens of Hampton +as remote as Kansas cyclones.... + +Some of the less timorous of the older inhabitants, curious to learn what +doctrine this interloper had to proclaim, thrust their way that evening +into the City Hall, which was crowded, as the papers said, "to +suffocation." Not prepossessing, this modern Robespierre; younger than +he looked, for life had put its mark on him; once, in the days of severe +work in the mines, his body had been hard, and now had grown stout. In +the eyes of a complacent, arm-chair historian he must have appeared one +of the, strange and terrifying creatures which, in times of upheaval, are +thrust from the depths of democracies to the surface, with gifts to voice +the longings and passions of those below. He did not blink in the light; +he was sure of himself, he had a creed and believed in it; he gazed +around him with the leonine stare of the conqueror, and a hush came over +the hall as he arose. His speech was taken down verbatim, to be +submitted to the sharpest of legal eyes, when was discovered the +possession of a power--rare among agitators--to pour forth in torrents +apparently unpremeditated appeals, to skirt the border of sedition and +never transgress it, to weigh his phrases before he gave them birth, and +to remember them. If he said an incendiary thing one moment he qualified +it the next; he justified violence only to deprecate it; and months +later, when on trial for his life and certain remarks were quoted against +him, he confounded his prosecutors by demanding the contexts. Skilfully, +always within the limits of their intelligence, he outlined to his +hearers his philosophy and proclaimed it as that of the world's +oppressed. Their cause was his--the cause of human progress; he +universalized, it. The world belonged to the "producer," if only he had +the courage to take possession of his own.... + +Suddenly the inspirer was transformed into the man of affairs who calmly +proposed the organization of a strike committee, three members of which +were to be chosen by each nationality. And the resolution, translated +into many tongues, was adopted amidst an uproar of enthusiasm. Until +that moment the revolt had been personal, local, founded on a particular +grievance which had to do with wages and the material struggle for +existence. Now all was changed; now they were convinced that the +deprivation and suffering to which they had pledged themselves were not +for selfish ends alone, but also vicarious, dedicated to the liberation +of all the downtrodden of the earth. Antonelli became a saviour; they +reached out to touch him as he passed; they trooped into the snowy +street, young men and old, and girls, and women holding children in their +arms, their faces alight with something never known or felt before. + +Such was Antonelli to the strikers. But to those staid residents of +Hampton who had thought themselves still to be living in the old New +England tradition, he was the genius of an evil dream. Hard on his heels +came a nightmare troop, whose coming brought to the remembrance of the +imaginative the old nursery rhyme:-- + +"Hark! Hark! The dogs do bark, The beggars are come to town." + +It has, indeed, a knell-like ring. Do philosophies tend also to cast +those who adopt them into a mould? These were of the self-same breed, +indubitably the followers of Antonelli. The men wore their hair long, +affected, like their leader, soft felt hats and loose black ties that +fell over the lapels of their coats. Loose morals and loose ties! The +projection of these against a Puritan background ties symbolical of +everything the Anglo-Saxon shudders at and abhors; of anarchy and mob +rule, of bohemia and vagabondia, of sedition and murder, of Latin +revolutions and reigns of terror; of sex irregularity--not of the +clandestine sort to be found in decent communities--but of free love that +flaunts itself in the face of an outraged public. For there were women +in the band. All this, and more, the invaders suggested--atheism, +unfamiliarity with soap and water, and, more vaguely, an exotic poetry +and art that to the virile of American descent is saturated with +something indefinable yet abhorrent. Such things are felt. Few of the +older citizens of Hampton were able to explain why something rose in +their gorges, why they experienced a new and clammy quality of fear and +repulsion when, on the day following Antonelli's advent, these strangers +arrived from nowhere to install themselves--with no baggage to speak of-- +in Hampton's more modest but hitherto respectable hostelries. And no +sooner had the city been rudely awakened to the perilous presence, in +overwhelming numbers, of ignorant and inflammable foreigners than these +turned up and presumed to lead the revolt, to make capital out of it, to +interpret it in terms of an exotic and degenerate creed. Hampton would +take care of itself--or else the sovereign state within whose borders it +was would take care of it. And his Honour the Mayor, who had proclamed +his faith in the reasonableness of the strikers, who had scorned the +suggestions of indignant inhabitants that the Governor be asked for +soldiers, twenty-four hours too late arranged for the assembly of three +companies of local militia in the armory, and swore in a hundred extra +police. + +The hideous stillness of Fillmore Street was driving Janet mad. What she +burned to do was to go to Boston and take a train for somewhere in the +West, to lose herself, never to see Hampton again. But--there was her +mother. She could not leave Hannah in these empty rooms, alone; and +Edward was to remain at the mill, to eat and sleep there, until the +danger of the strike had passed. A messenger had come to fetch his +clothes. After leaving Ditmar in the office of the mill, Janet crept up +the dark stairs to the flat and halted in the hallway. Through the open +doorway of the dining-room she saw Hannah seated on the horsehair sofa-- +for the first time within memory idle at this hour of the day. Nothing +else could have brought home to her like this the sheer tragedy of their +plight. Until then Janet had been sustained by anger and excitement, by +physical action. She thought Hannah was staring at her; after a moment +it seemed that the widened pupils were fixed in fascination on something +beyond, on the Thing that had come to dwell here with them forever. + +Janet entered the room. She sat down on the sofa and took her mother's +hand in hers. And Hannah submitted passively. Janet could not speak. A +minute might have passed, and the silence, which neither had broken, +acquired an intensity that to Janet became unbearable. Never had the +room been so still! Her glance, raised instinctively to the face of the +picture-clock, saw the hands pointing to ten. Every Monday morning, as +far back as she could recall, her father had wound it before going to +work--and to-day he had forgotten. Getting up, she opened the glass +door, and stood trying to estimate the hour: it must be, she thought, +about six. She set the hands, took the key from the nail above the +shelf, wound up the weight, and started the pendulum. And the sound of +familiar ticking was a relief, releasing at last her inhibited powers of +speech. + +"Mother," she said, "I'll get some supper for you." + +On Hannah, these simple words had a seemingly magical effect. Habit +reasserted itself. She started, and rose almost briskly. + +"No you won't," she said, "I'll get it. I'd ought to have thought of it +before. You must be tired and hungry." + +Her voice was odd and thin. Janet hesitated a moment, and ceded. + +"Well, I'll set the dishes on the table, anyway." + +Janet had sought refuge, wistfully, in the commonplace. And when the +meal was ready she strove to eat, though food had become repulsive. + +"You must take something, mother," she said. + +"I don't feel as if I ever wanted to eat anything again," she replied. + +"I know," said Janet, "but you've got to." And she put some of the cold +meat, left over from Sunday's dinner, on Hannah's plate. Hannah took up +a fork, and laid it down again. Suddenly she said:-- + +"You saw Lise?" + +"Yes," said Janet. + +"Where is she?" + +"In a house--in Boston." + +"One of--those houses?" + +"I--I don't know," said Janet. "I think so." + +"You went there?" + +"Mr. Tiernan went with me." + +"She wouldn't come home?" + +"Not--not just now, mother." + +"You left her there, in that place? You didn't make her come home?" + +The sudden vehemence of this question, the shrill note of reproach in +Hannah's voice that revealed, even more than the terrible inertia from +which she had emerged, the extent of her suffering, for the instant left +Janet utterly dismayed. "Oh mother!" she exclaimed. "I tried--I--I +couldn't." + +Hannah pushed back her chair. + +"I'll go to her, I'll make her come. She's disgraced us, but I'll make +her. Where is she? Where is the house?" + +Janet, terrified, seized her mother's arm. Then she said:-- + +"Lise isn't there any more--she's gone away." + +"Away and you let her go away? You let your sister go away and be a--a +woman of the town? You never loved her--you never had any pity for her." + +Tears sprang into Janet's eyes--tears of pity mingled with anger. The +situation had grown intolerable! Yet how could she tell Hannah where +Lise was! + +"You haven't any right to say that, mother!" she cried. "I did my best. +She wouldn't come. I--I can't tell you where she's gone, but she +promised to write, to send me her address." + +"Lise" Hannah's cry seemed like the uncomprehending whimper of a stricken +child, and then a hidden cadence made itself felt, a cadence revealing to +Janet with an eloquence never before achieved the mystery of mother love, +and by some magic of tone was evoked a new image of Lise--of Lise as she +must be to Hannah. No waywardness, no degradation or disgrace could +efface it. The infant whom Hannah had clutched to her breast, the woman, +her sister, whom Janet had seen that day were one--immutably one. This, +then, was what it meant to be a mother! All the years of deadening hope +had not availed to kill the craving--even in this withered body it was +still alive and quick. The agony of that revelation was scarcely to be +borne. And it seemed that Lise, even in the place where she was, must +have heard that cry and heeded it. And yet--the revelation of Lise's +whereabouts, of Lise's contemplated act Janet had nearly been goaded into +making, died on her lips. She could not tell Hannah! And Lise's child +must not come into a world like this. Even now the conviction remained, +fierce, exultant, final. But if Janet had spoken now Hannah would not +have heard her. Under the storm she had begun to rock, weeping +convulsively.... But gradually her weeping ceased. And to Janet, +helplessly watching, this process of congealment was more terrible even +than the release that only an unmitigated violence of grief had been able +to produce. In silence Hannah resumed her shrunken duties, and when +these were finished sat awhile, before going to bed, her hands lying +listless in her lap. She seemed to have lived for centuries, to have +exhausted the gamut of suffering which, save for that one wild outburst, +had been the fruit of commonplace, passive, sordid tragedy that knows no +touch of fire.... + +The next morning Janet was awakened by the siren. Never, even in the +days when life had been routine and commonplace, had that sound failed to +arouse in her a certain tremor of fear; with its first penetrating +shriek, terror invaded her: then, by degrees, overcoming her numbness, +came an agonizing realization of tragedy to be faced. The siren blew and +blew insistently, as though it never meant to stop; and now for the first +time she seemed to detect in it a note of futility. There were those who +would dare to defy it. She, for one, would defy it. In that reflection +she found a certain fierce joy. And she might lie in bed if she wished-- +how often had she longed to! But she could not. The room was cold, +appallingly empty and silent as she hurried into her clothes. The +dining-room lamp was lighted, the table set, her mother was bending over +the stove when she reached the kitchen. After the pretence of breakfast +was gone through Janet sought relief in housework, making her bed, +tidying her room. It was odd, this morning, how her notice of little, +familiar things had the power to add to her pain, brought to mind +memories become excruciating as she filled the water pitcher from the +kitchen tap she found herself staring at the nick broken out of it when +Lise had upset it. She recalled Lise's characteristically flippant +remark. And there was the streak in the wall-paper caused one night by +the rain leaking through the roof. After the bed was made and the room +swept she stood a moment, motionless, and then, opening the drawer in the +wardrobe took from it the rose which she had wrapped in tissue paper and +hidden there, and with a perverse desire as it were to increase the +bitterness consuming her, to steep herself in pain, she undid the parcel +and held the withered flower to her face. Even now a fragrance, faint +yet poignant, clung to it.... She wrapped it up again, walked to the +window, hesitated, and then with a sudden determination to destroy this +sole relic of her happiness went to the kitchen and flung it into the +stove. Hannah, lingering over her morning task of cleaning, did not seem +to notice the act. Janet turned to her. + +"I think I'll go out for a while, mother," she said. + +"You'd ought to," Hannah replied. "There's no use settin' around here." + +The silence of the flat was no longer to be endured. And Janet, putting +on her coat and hat, descended the stairs. Not once that morning had her +mother mentioned Lise; nor had she asked about her own plans--about +Ditmar. This at least was a relief; it was the question she had feared +most. In the street she met the postman. + +"I have a letter for you, Miss Janet," he said. And on the pink envelope +he handed her, in purple ink, she recognized the unformed, childish +handwriting of Lise. "There's great doings down at the City Hall," the +postman added "the foreigners are holding mass meetings there." +Janet scarcely heard him as she tore open the envelope. "Dear Janet," +the letter ran. "The doctor told me I had a false alarm, there was +nothing to it. Wouldn't that jar you? Boston's a slow burg, and there's +no use of my staying here now. I'm going to New York, and maybe I'll +come back when I've had a look at the great white way. I've got the +coin, and I gave him the mit to-night. If you haven't anything better to +do, drop in at the Bagatelle and give Walters my love, and tell them not +to worry at home. There's no use trying to trail me. Your affectionate +sister Lise." + +Janet thrust the letter in her pocket. Then she walked rapidly westward +until she came to the liver-coloured faeade of the City Hall, opposite +the Common. Pushing through the crowd of operatives lingering on the +pavement in front of it, she entered the building.... + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Anger and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid +Janet resented that pity +She resented being prayed for +Struggled against her woman's desire to give +Tested the limits of Janet's ingenuity and powers of resistance +There had been something sorrowful in that kiss + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V2 +by Winston Churchill + + + + + + +THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT + +By WINSTON CHURCHILL + + +VOLUME 3. + + +CHAPTER XV + +Occasionally the art of narrative may be improved by borrowing the method +of the movies. Another night has passed, and we are called upon to +imagine the watery sunlight of a mild winter afternoon filtering through +bare trees on the heads of a multitude. A large portion of Hampton +Common is black with the people of sixteen nationalities who have +gathered there, trampling down the snow, to listen wistfully and eagerly +to a new doctrine of salvation. In the centre of this throng on the +bandstand--reminiscent of concerts on sultry, summer nights--are the +itinerant apostles of the cult called Syndicalism, exhorting by turns in +divers tongues. Antonelli had spoken, and many others, when Janet, +impelled by a craving not to be denied, had managed to push her way +little by little from the outskirts of the crowd until now she stood +almost beneath the orator who poured forth passionate words in a language +she recognized as Italian. Her curiosity was aroused, she was unable to +classify this tall man whose long and narrow face was accentuated by a +pointed brown beard, whose lips gleamed red as he spoke, whose slim hands +were eloquent. The artist as propagandist--the unsuccessful artist with +more facility than will. The nose was classic, and wanted strength; the +restless eyes that at times seemed fixed on her were smouldering windows +of a burning house: the fire that stirred her was also consuming him. +Though he could have been little more than five and thirty, his hair was +thinned and greying at the temples. And somehow emblematic of this +physiognomy and physique, summing it up and expressing it in terms of +apparel, were the soft collar and black scarf tied in a flowing bow. +Janet longed to know what he was saying. His phrases, like music, played +on her emotions, and at last, when his voice rose in crescendo at the +climax of his speech, she felt like weeping. + +"Un poeta!" a woman beside her exclaimed. + +"Who is he?" Janet asked. + +"Rolfe," said the woman. + +"But he's an Italian?" + +The woman shrugged her shoulders. "It is his name that is all I know." +He had begun to speak again, and now in English, with an enunciation, a +distinctive manner of turning his phrases new to such gatherings in +America, where labour intellectuals are little known; surprising to +Janet, diverting her attention, at first, from the meaning of his words. +"Labour," she heard, "labour is the creator of all wealth, and wealth +belongs to the creator. The wage system must be abolished. You, the +creators, must do battle against these self-imposed masters until you +shall come into your own. You who toil miserably for nine hours and +produce, let us say, nine dollars of wealth--do you receive it? No, what +is given you is barely enough to keep the slave and the slave's family +alive! The master, the capitalist, seizes the rightful reward of your +labour and spends it on luxuries, on automobiles and fine houses and +women, on food he can't eat, while you are hungry. Yes, you are slaves," +he cried, "because you submit like slaves." + +He waited, motionless and scornful, for the noise to die down. "Since I +have come here to Hampton, I have heard some speak of the state, others +of the unions. Yet the state is your enemy, it will not help you to gain +your freedom. The legislature has shortened your hours,--but why? +Because the politicians are afraid of you, and because they think you +will be content with a little. And now that the masters have cut your +wages, the state sends its soldiers to crush you. Only fifty cents, they +say--only fifty cents most of you miss from your envelopes. What is +fifty cents to them? But I who speak to you have been hungry, I know +that fifty cents will buy ten loaves of bread, or three pounds of the +neck of pork, or six quarts of milk for the babies. Fifty cents will +help pay the rent of the rat-holes where you live." Once more he was +interrupted by angry shouts of approval. "And the labour unions, have +they aided you? Why not? I will tell you why--because they are the +servile instruments of the masters. The unions say that capital has +rights, bargain with it, but for us there can be only one bargain, +complete surrender of the tools to the workers. For the capitalists are +parasites who suck your blood and your children's blood. From now on +there can be no compromise, no truce, no peace until they are +exterminated. It is war." War! In Janet's soul the word resounded like +a tocsin. And again, as when swept along East Street with the mob, that +sense of identity with these people and their wrongs, of submergence with +them in their cause possessed her. Despite her ancestry, her lot was +cast with them. She, too, had been precariously close to poverty, had +known the sordidness of life; she, too, and Lise and Hannah had been +duped and cheated of the fairer things. Eagerly she had drunk in the +vocabulary of that new and terrible philosophy. The master class must be +exterminated! Was it not true, if she had been of that class, that +Ditmar would not have dared to use and deceive her? Why had she never +thought of these things before?... The light was beginning to fade, the +great meeting was breaking up, and yet she lingered. At the foot of the +bandstand steps, conversing with a small group of operatives that +surrounded him, she perceived the man who had just spoken. And as she +stood hesitating, gazing at him, a desire to hear more, to hear all of +this creed he preached, that fed the fires in her soul, urged her +forward. Her need, had she known it, was even greater than that of these +toilers whom she now called comrades. Despite some qualifying reserve +she felt, and which had had to do with the redness of his lips, he +attracted her. He had a mind, an intellect, he must possess stores of +the knowledge for which she thirsted; he appeared to her as one who had +studied and travelled, who had ascended heights and gained the wider view +denied her. A cynical cosmopolitanism would have left her cold, but +here, apparently, was a cultivated man burning with a sense of the +world's wrongs. Ditmar, who was to have led her out of captivity, had +only thrust her the deeper into bondage.... She joined the group, +halting on the edge of it, listening. Rolfe was arguing with a man about +the labour unions, but almost at once she knew she had fixed his +attention. From time to time, as he talked, his eyes sought hers boldly, +and in their dark pupils were tiny points of light that stirred and +confused her, made her wonder what was behind them, in his soul. When he +had finished his argument, he singled her out. + +"You do not work in the mills?" he asked. + +"No, I'm a stenographer--or I was one." + +"And now?" + +"I've given up my place." + +"You want to join us?" + +"I was interested in what you said. I never heard anything like it +before." + +He looked at her intently. + +"Come, let us walk a little way," he said. And she went along by his +side, through the Common, feeling a neophyte's excitement in the +freemasonry, the contempt for petty conventions of this newly achieved +doctrine of brotherhood. "I will give you things to read, you shall be +one of us." + +"I'm afraid I shouldn't understand them," Janet replied. "I've read so +little." + +"Oh, you will understand," he assured her, easily. "There is too much +learning, too much reason and intelligence in the world, too little +impulse and feeling, intuition. Where do reason and intelligence lead +us? To selfishness, to thirst for power-straight into the master class. +They separate us from the mass of humanity. No, our fight is against +those who claim more enlightenment than their fellowmen, who control the +public schools and impose reason on our children, because reason leads to +submission, makes us content with our station in life. The true +syndicalist is an artist, a revolutionist!" he cried. + +Janet found this bewildering and yet through it seemed to shine for her a +gleam of light. Her excitement grew. Never before had she been in the +presence of one who talked like this, with such assurance and ease. And +the fact that he despised knowledge, yet possessed it, lent him glamour. + +"But you have studied!" she exclaimed. + +"Oh yes, I have studied," he replied, with a touch of weariness, "only to +learn that life is simple, after all, and that what is needed for the +social order is simple. We have only to take what belongs to us, we who +work, to follow our feelings, our inclinations." + +"You would take possession of the mills?" she asked. + +"Yes," he said quickly, "of all wealth, and of the government. There +would be no government--we should not need it. A little courage is all +that is necessary, and we come into our own. You are a stenographer, you +say. But you--you are not content, I can see it in your face, in your +eyes. You have cause to hate them, too, these masters, or you would not +have been herein this place, to-day. Is it not so?" + +She shivered, but was silent. + +"Is it not so?" he repeated. "They have wronged you, too, perhaps,--they +have wronged us all, but some are too stupid, too cowardly to fight and +crush them. Christians and slaves submit. The old religion teaches that +the world is cruel for most of us, but if we are obedient and humble we +shall be rewarded in heaven." Rolfe laughed. "The masters approve of +that teaching. They would not have it changed. But for us it is war. +We'll strike and keep on striking, we'll break their machinery, spoil +their mills and factories, and drive them out. And even if we do not win +at once, it is better to suffer and die fighting than to have the life +ground out of us--is it not?" + +"Yes, it is better!" she agreed. The passion in her voice did not escape +him. + +"Some day, perhaps sooner than we think, we shall have the true +Armageddon, the general strike, when the last sleeping toiler shall have +aroused himself from his lethargy to rise up and come into his +inheritance." He seemed to detach himself from her, his eyes became more +luminous. + +"`Like unseen music in the night,'--so Sorel writes about it. They may +scoff at it, the wise ones, but it will come. `Like music in the night!' +You respond to that!" + +Again she was silent. They had walked on, through familiar streets that +now seemed strange. + +"You respond--I can tell," he said. "And yet, you are not like these +others, like me, even. You are an American. And yet you are not like +most of your countrywomen." + +"Why do you say that?" + +"I will tell you. Because they are cold, most of them, and trivial, they +do not feel. But you--you can feel, you can love and hate. You look +calm and cold, but you are not--I knew it when I looked at you, when you +came up to me." + +She did not know whether to resent or welcome his clairvoyance, his +assumption of intimacy, his air of appropriation. But her curiosity was +tingling. + +"And you?" she asked. "Your name is Rolfe, isn't it?" + +He assented. "And yours?" + +She told him. + +"You have been in America long--your family?" + +"Very long," she said. "But you speak Italian, and Rolfe isn't an +Italian name." + +"My father was an Englishman, an artist, who lived in Italy--my mother a +peasant woman from Lombardy, such as these who come to work in the mills. +When she was young she was beautiful--like a Madonna by an old master." + +"An old master?" + +"The old masters are the great painters who lived in Italy four hundred +years ago. I was named after one of them--the greatest. I am called +Leonard. He was Leonardo da Vinci." + +The name, as Rolfe pronounced it, stirred her. And art, painting! It +was a realm unknown to her, and yet the very suggestion of it evoked +yearnings. And she recalled a picture in the window of Hartmann's book- +store, a coloured print before which she used to stop on her way to and +from the office, the copy of a landscape by a California artist. The +steep hillside in the foreground was spread with the misty green of olive +trees, and beyond--far beyond--a snow-covered peak, like some high altar, +flamed red in the sunset. She had not been able to express her feeling +for this picture, it had filled her with joy and sadness. Once she had +ventured to enter and ask its price--ten dollars. And then came a +morning when she had looked for it, and it was gone. + +"And your father--did he paint beautiful pictures, too?" + +"Ah, he was too much of a socialist. He was always away whey I was a +child, and after my mother's death he used to take me with him. When I +was seventeen we went to Milan to take part in the great strike, and +there I saw the soldiers shooting down the workers by the hundreds, +putting them in prison by the thousands. Then I went to live in England, +among the socialists there, and I learned the printer's trade. When I +first came to this country I was on a labour paper in New York, I set up +type, I wrote articles, and once in a while I addressed meetings on the +East Side. But even before I left London I had read a book on +Syndicalism by one of the great Frenchmen, and after a while I began to +realize that the proletariat would never get anywhere through socialism." + +"The proletariat?" The word was new to Janet's ear. + +"The great mass of the workers, the oppressed, the people you saw here +to-day. Socialism is not for them. Socialism--political socialism-- +betrays them into the hands of the master class. Direct action is the +thing, the general strike, war,--the new creed, the new religion that +will bring salvation. I joined the Industrial Workers of the World that +is the American organization of Syndicalism. I went west, to Colorado +and California and Oregon, I preached to the workers wherever there was +an uprising, I met the leaders, Ritter and Borkum and Antonelli and +Jastro and Nellie Bond, I was useful to them, I understand Syndicalism as +they do not. And now we are here, to sow the seed in the East. Come," +he said, slipping his arm through hers, "I will take you to Headquarters, +I will enlist you, you shall be my recruit. I will give you the cause, +the religion you need." + +She longed to go, and yet she drew back, puzzled. The man fired and +fascinated her, but there were reservations, apprehensions concerning +him, felt rather than reasoned. Because of her state of rebellion, of +her intense desire to satisfy in action the emotion aroused by a sense of +wrong, his creed had made a violent appeal, but in his voice, in his +eyes, in his manner she had been quick to detect a personal, sexual note +that disturbed and alarmed her, that implied in him a lack of unity. + +"I can't, to-night," she said. "I must go home--my mother is all alone. +But I want to help, I want to do something." + +They were standing on a corner, under a street lamp. And she averted her +eyes from his glance. + +"Then come to-morrow," he said eagerly. "You know where Headquarters is, +in the Franco-Belgian Hall?" + +"What could I do?" she asked. + +"You? You could help in many ways--among the women. Do you know what +picketing is?" + +"You mean keeping the operatives out of the mills?" + +"Yes, in the morning, when they go to work. And out of the Chippering +Mill, especially. Ditmar, the agent of that mill, is the ablest of the +lot, I'm told. He's the man we want to cripple." + +"Cripple!" exclaimed Janet. + +"Oh, I don't mean to harm him personally." Rolfe did not seem to notice +her tone. "But he intends to crush the strike, and I understand he's +importing scabs here to finish out an order--a big order. If it weren't +for him, we'd have an easier fight; he stiffens up the others. There's +always one man like that, in every place. And what we want to do is to +make him shut down, especially." + +"I see," said Janet. + +"You'll come to Headquarters?" Rolfe repeated. + +"Yes, I'll come, to-morrow," she promised. + +After she had left him she walked rapidly through several streets, not +heeding her direction--such was the driving power of the new ideas he had +given her. Certain words and phrases he had spoken rang in her head, and +like martial music kept pace with her steps. She strove to remember all +that he had said, to grasp its purport; and because it seemed recondite, +cosmic, it appealed to her and excited her the more. And he, the man +himself, had exerted a kind of hypnotic force that partially had +paralyzed her faculties and aroused her fears while still in his +presence: her first feeling in escaping had been one of relief--and then +she began to regret not having gone to Headquarters. Hadn't she been +foolish? In the retrospect, the elements in him that had disturbed her +were less disquieting, his intellectual fascination was enhanced: and in +that very emancipation from cant and convention, characteristic of the +Order to which he belonged, had lain much of his charm. She had +attracted him as a woman, there was no denying that. He, who had studied +and travelled and known life in many lands, had discerned in her, Janet +Bumpus, some quality to make him desire her, acknowledge her as a +comrade! Tremblingly she exulted in the possession of that quality-- +whatever it might be. Ditmar, too, had perceived it! He had not known +how to value it. With this thought came a flaming suggestion--Ditmar +should see her with this man Rolfe, she would make him scorch with the +fires of jealousy. Ditmar should know that she had joined his enemies, +the Industrial Workers of the World. Of the world! Her shackles had +been cast off at last!... And then, suddenly, she felt tired. The +prospect of returning to Fillmore Street, to the silent flat--made the +more silent by her mother's tragic presence--overwhelmed her. The ache +in her heart began to throb again. How could she wait until the dawn of +another day?... + +In the black hours of the morning, with the siren dinning in her ears a +hoarse call to war, Janet leaped from her bed and began to dress. There +is a degree of cold so sharp that it seems actually to smell, and as she +stole down the stairs and out of the door she shivered, assailed by a +sense of loneliness and fear. Yet an insistent voice urged her on, +whispering that to remain at home, inactive, was to go mad; salvation and +relief lay in plunging into the struggle, in contributing her share +toward retribution and victory. Victory! In Faber Street the light of +the electric arcs tinged the snow with blue, and the flamboyant +advertisements of breakfast foods, cigarettes and ales seemed but the +mockery of an activity now unrealizable. The groups and figures +scattered here and there farther down the street served only to +exaggerate its wide emptiness. What could these do, what could she +accomplish against the mighty power of the mills? Gradually, as she +stood gazing, she became aware of a beating of feet upon the snow; over +her shoulder she caught the gleam of steel. A squad of soldiers muffled +in heavy capes and woolen caps was marching along the car-tracks. She +followed them. At the corner of West Street, in obedience to a sharp +command she saw them halt, turn, and advance toward a small crowd +gathered there. It scattered, only to collect again when the soldiers +had passed on. Janet joined them. She heard men cursing the soldiers. +The women stood a little aside; some were stamping to keep warm, and one, +with a bundle in her arms which Janet presently perceived to be a child, +sank down on a stone step and remained there, crouching, resigned. + +"We gotta right to stay here, in the street. We gotta right to live, I +guess." The girl's teeth were chattering, but she spoke with such +vehemence and spirit as to attract Janet's attention. "You worked in the +Chippering, like me--yes?" she asked. + +Janet nodded. The faded, lemon-coloured shawl the girl had wrapped about +her head emphasized the dark beauty of her oval face. She smiled, and +her white teeth were fairly dazzling. Impulsively she thrust her arm +through Janet's. + +"You American--you comrade, you come to help?" she asked. + +"I've never done any picketing." + +"I showa you." + +The dawn had begun to break, revealing little by little the outlines of +cruel, ugly buildings, the great mill looming darkly at the end of the +street, and Janet found it scarcely believable that only a little while +ago she had hurried thither in the mornings with anticipation and joy in +her heart, eager to see Ditmar, to be near him! The sight of two +policemen hurrying toward them from the direction of the canal aroused +her. With sullen murmurs the group started to disperse, but the woman +with the baby, numb with cold, was slow in rising, and one of the +policemen thrust out his club threateningly. + +"Move on, you can't sit here," he said. + +With a lithe movement like the spring of a cat the Italian girl flung +herself between them--a remarkable exhibition of spontaneous +inflammability; her eyes glittered like the points of daggers, and, as +though they had been dagger points, the policeman recoiled a little. The +act, which was absolutely natural, superb, electrified Janet, restored in +an instant her own fierceness of spirit. The girl said something +swiftly, in Italian, and helped the woman to rise, paying no more +attention to the policeman. Janet walked on, but she had not covered +half the block before she was overtaken by the girl; her anger had come +and gone in a flash, her vivacity had returned, her vitality again found +expression in an abundant good nature and good will. She asked Janet's +name, volunteering the information that her own was Gemma, that she was a +"fine speeder" in the Chippering Mill, where she had received nearly +seven dollars a week. She had been among the first to walk out. + +"Why did you walk out?" asked Janet curiously. + +"Why? I get mad when I know that my wages is cut. I want the money--I +get married." + +"Is that why you are striking?" asked Janet curiously. + +"That is why--of course." + +"Then you haven't heard any of the speakers? They say it is for a cause- +-the workers are striking for freedom, some day they will own the mills. +I heard a man named Rolfe yesterday--" + +The girl gave her a radiant smile. + +"Rolfe! It is beautiful, what Rolfe said. You think so? I think so. I +am for the cause, I hate the capitalist. We will win, and get more +money, until we have all the money. We will be rich. And you, why do +you strike?" + +"I was mad, too," Janet replied simply. + +"Revenge!" exclaimed the girl, glittering again. "I understan'. Here +come the scabs! Now I show you." + +The light had grown, but the stores were still closed and barred. Along +Faber Street, singly or in little groups, anxiously glancing around them, +behind them, came the workers who still clung desperately to their jobs. +Gemma fairly darted at two girls who sought the edge of the sidewalk, +seizing them by the sleeves, and with piteous expressions they listened +while she poured forth on them a stream of Italian. After a moment one +tore herself away, but the other remained and began to ask questions. +Presently she turned and walked slowly away in the direction from which +she had come. + +"I get her," exclaimed Gemma, triumphantly. + +"What did you say?" asked Janet. + +"Listen--that she take the bread from our mouths, she is traditore--scab. +We strike for them, too, is it not so?" + +"It is no use for them to work for wages that starve. We win the strike, +we get good wages for all. Here comes another--she is a Jewess--you try, +you spik." + +Janet failed with the Jewess, who obstinately refused to listen or reply +as the two walked along with her, one on either side. Near West Street +they spied a policeman, and desisted. Up and down Faber Street, +everywhere, the game went on: but the police were watchful, and once a +detachment of militia passed. The picketing had to be done quickly, in +the few minutes that were to elapse before the gates should close. +Janet's blood ran faster, she grew excited, absorbed, bolder as she +perceived the apologetic attitude of the "scabs" and she began to despise +them with Gemma's heartiness; and soon she had lost all sense of surprise +at finding herself arguing, pleading, appealing to several women in turn, +fluently, in the language of the industrial revolution. Some--because +she was an American--examined her with furtive curiosity; others +pretended not to understand, accelerating their pace. She gained no +converts that morning, but one girl, pale, anemic with high cheek bones +evidently a Slav--listened to her intently. + +"I gotta right to work," she said. + +"Not if others will starve because you work," objected Janet. + +"If I don't work I starve," said the girl. + +"No, the Committee will take care of you--there will be food for all. +How much do you get now?" + +"Four dollar and a half." + +"You starve now," Janet declared contemptuously. "The quicker you join +us, the sooner you'll get a living wage." + +The girl was not quite convinced. She stood for a while undecided, and +then ran abruptly off in the direction of West Street. Janet sought for +others, but they had ceased coming; only the scattered, prowling +picketers remained. + +Over the black rim of the Clarendon Mill to the eastward the sky had +caught fire. The sun had risen, the bells were ringing riotously, +resonantly in the clear, cold air. Another working day had begun. + +Janet, benumbed with cold, yet agitated and trembling because of her +unwonted experience of the morning, made her way back to Fillmore Street. +She was prepared to answer any questions her mother might ask; as they +ate their dismal breakfast, and Hannah asked no questions, she longed to +blurt out where she had been, to announce that she had cast her lot with +the strikers, the foreigners, to defend them and declare that these were +not to blame for the misfortunes of the family, but men like Ditmar and +the owners of the mills, the capitalists. Her mother, she reflected +bitterly, had never once betrayed any concern as to her shattered +happiness. But gradually, as from time to time she glanced covertly at +Hannah's face, her resentment gave way to apprehension. Hannah did not +seem now even to be aware of her presence; this persistent apathy filled +her with a dread she did not dare to acknowledge. + +"Mother!" she cried at last. + +Hannah started. "Have you finished?" she asked. + +"Yes." + +"You've b'en out in the cold, and you haven't eaten much." Janet fought +back her tears. "Oh yes, I have," she managed to reply, convinced of the +futility of speech, of all attempts to arouse her mother to a realization +of the situation. Perhaps--though her heart contracted at the thought +perhaps it was a merciful thing! But to live, day after day, in the +presence of that comfortless apathy!... Later in the morning she went +out, to walk the streets, and again in the afternoon; and twice she +turned her face eastward, in the direction of the Franco-Belgian Hall. +Her courage failed her. How would these foreigners and the strange +leaders who had come to organize them receive her, Ditmar's stenographer? +She would have to tell them she was Ditmar's stenographer; they would +find it out. And now she was filled with doubts about Rolfe. Had he +really thought she could be of use to them! Around the Common, in front +of the City Hall men went about their affairs alertly, or stopped one +another to talk about the strike. In Faber Street, indeed, an air of +suppressed excitement prevailed, newsboys were shouting out extras; but +business went on as though nothing had happened to disturb it. There +was, however, the spectacle, unusual at this time of day, of operatives +mingling with the crowd, while policemen stood watchfully at the corners; +a company of soldiers marched by, drawing the people in silence to the +curb. Janet scanned the faces of these idle operatives; they seemed for +the most part either calm or sullen, wanting the fire and passion of the +enthusiasts who had come out to picket in the early hours of the day; she +sought vainly for the Italian girl with whom she had made friends. +Despondency grew in her, a sense of isolation, of lacking any one, now, +to whom she might turn, and these feelings were intensified by the air of +confidence prevailing here. The strike was crushed, injustice and wrong +had triumphed--would always triumph. In front of the Banner office she +heard a man say to an acquaintance who had evidently just arrived in +town:-- + +"The Chippering? Sure, that's running. By to-morrow Ditmar'll have a +full force there. Now that the militia has come, I guess we've got this +thing scotched..." + +Just how and when that order and confidence of Faber Street began to be +permeated by disquietude and alarm, Janet could not have said. Something +was happening, somewhere--or about to happen. An obscure, apparently +telepathic process was at work. People began to hurry westward, a few +had abandoned the sidewalk and were running; while other pedestrians, +more timid, were equally concerned to turn and hasten in the opposite +direction. At the corner of West Street was gathering a crowd that each +moment grew larger and larger, despite the efforts of the police to +disperse it. These were strikers, angry strikers. They blocked the +traffic, halted the clanging trolleys, surged into the mouth of West +Street, booing and cursing at the soldiers whose threatening line of +bayonets stretched across that thoroughfare half-way down toward the +canal, guarding the detested Chippering Mill. Bordering West Street, +behind the company's lodging-houses on the canal, were certain low +buildings, warehouses, and on their roofs tense figures could be seen +standing out against the sky. The vanguard of the mob, thrust on by +increasing pressure from behind, tumbled backward the thin cordon of +police, drew nearer and nearer the bayonets, while the soldiers grimly +held their ground. A voice was heard on the roof, a woman in the front +rank of the mob gave a warning shriek, and two swift streams of icy water +burst forth from the warehouse parapet, tearing the snow from the +cobbles, flying in heavy, stinging spray as it advanced and mowed the +strikers down and drove them like flies toward Faber Street. Screams of +fright, curses of defiance and hate mingled with the hissing of the water +and the noise of its impact with the ground--like the tearing of heavy +sail-cloth. Then, from somewhere near the edge of the mob, came a +single, sharp detonation, quickly followed by another--below the watchmen +on the roof a window crashed. The nozzles on the roof were raised, their +streams, sweeping around in a great semi-circle, bowled down the rioters +below the tell-tale wisps of smoke, and no sooner had the avalanche of +water passed than the policemen who, forewarned, had sought refuge along +the walls, rushed forward and seized a man who lay gasping on the snow. +Dazed, half drowned, he had dropped his pistol. They handeuffed him and +dragged him away through the ranks of the soldiers, which opened for him +to pass. The mob, including those who had been flung down, bruised and +drenched, and who had painfully got to their feet again, had backed +beyond the reach of the water, and for a while held that ground, until +above its hoarse, defiant curses was heard, from behind, the throbbing of +drums. + +"Cossacks! More Cossacks!" + +The cry was taken up by Canadians, Italians, Belgians, Poles, Slovaks, +Jews, and Syrians. The drums grew louder, the pressure from the rear was +relaxed, the throng in Faber Street began a retreat in the direction of +the power plant. Down that street, now in double time, came three +companies of Boston militia, newly arrived in Hampton, blue-taped, +gaitered, slouch-hatted. From columns of fours they wheeled into line, +and with bayonets at charge slowly advanced. Then the boldest of the +mob, who still lingered, sullenly gave way, West Street was cleared, and +on the wider thoroughfare the long line of traffic, the imprisoned +trolleys began to move again.... + +Janet had wedged herself into the press far enough to gain a view down +West Street of the warehouse roofs, to see the water turned on, to hear +the screams and the curses and then the shots. Once more she caught the +contagious rage of the mob; the spectacle had aroused her to fury; it +seemed ignominious, revolting that human beings, already sufficiently +miserable, should be used thus. As she retreated reluctantly across the +car tracks her attention was drawn to a man at her side, a Slovak. His +face was white and pinched, his clothes were wet. Suddenly he stopped, +turned and shook his fist at the line of soldiers. + +"The Cossack, the politzman belong to the boss, the capitalist!" he +cried. "We ain't got no right to live. I say, kill the capitalist--kill +Ditmar!" + +A man with a deputy's shield ran toward them. + +"Move on!" he said brutally. "Move on, or I'll roil you in." And Janet, +once clear of the people, fled westward, the words the foreigner had +spoken ringing in her ears. She found herself repeating them aloud, +"Kill Ditmar!" as she hurried through the gathering dusk past the power +house with its bottle-shaped chimneys, and crossed the little bridge over +the stream beside the chocolate factory. She gained the avenue she had +trod with Eda on that summer day of the circus. Here was the ragpicker's +shop, the fence covered with bedraggled posters, the deserted grand-stand +of the base-ball park spread with a milky-blue mantle of snow; and +beyond, the monotonous frame cottages all built from one model. Now she +descried looming above her the outline of Torrey's Hill blurred and +melting into a darkening sky, and turned into the bleak lane where stood +the Franco-Belgian Hall--Hampton Headquarters of the Industrial Workers +of the World. She halted a moment at sight of the crowd of strikers +loitering in front of it, then went on again, mingling with them +excitedly beside the little building. Its lines were simple and +unpretentious, and yet it had an exotic character all its own, differing +strongly from the surrounding houses: it might have been transported from +a foreign country and set down here. As the home of that odd, +cooperative society of thrifty and gregarious Belgians it had stimulated +her imagination, and once before she had gazed, as now, through the +yellowed, lantern-like windows of the little store at the women and +children waiting to fill their baskets with the day's provisions. In the +middle of the building was an entrance leading up to the second floor. +Presently she gathered the courage to enter. Her heart was pounding as +she climbed the dark stairs and thrust open the door, and she stood a +moment on the threshold almost choked by the fumes of tobacco, bewildered +by the scene within, confused by the noise. Through a haze of smoke she +beheld groups of swarthy foreigners fiercely disputing among themselves-- +apparently on the verge of actual combat, while a sprinkling of silent +spectators of both sexes stood at the back of the hall. At the far end +was a stage, still set with painted, sylvan scenery, and seated there, +alone, above the confusion and the strife, with a calmness, a detachment +almost disconcerting, was a stout man with long hair and a loose black +tie. He was smoking a cigar and reading a newspaper which he presently +flung down, taking up another from a pile on the table beside him. +Suddenly one of the groups, shouting and gesticulating, surged toward him +and made an appeal through their interpreter. He did not appear to be +listening; without so much as lowering his newspaper he spoke a few words +in reply, and the group retired, satisfied. By some incomprehensible +power he dominated. Panting, fascinated, loath to leave yet fearful, +Janet watched him, breathing now deeply this atmosphere of smoke, of +strife, and turmoil. She found it grateful, for the strike, the battle +was in her own soul as well. Momentarily she had forgotten Rolfe, who +had been in her mind as she had come hither, and then she caught sight of +him in a group in the centre of the hall. He saw her, he was making his +way toward her, he was holding her hands, looking down into her face with +that air of appropriation, of possession she remembered. But she felt no +resentment now, only a fierce exultation at having dared. + +"You've come to join us!" he exclaimed. "I thought I'd lost you." + +He bent closer to her that she might hear. + +"We are having a meeting of the Committee," he said, and she smiled. +Despite her agitation, this struck her as humorous. And Rolfe smiled +back at her. "You wouldn't think so, but Antonelli knows how to manage +them. He is a general. Come, I will enlist you, you shall be my +recruit." + +"But what can I do?" she asked. + +"I have been thinking. You said you were a stenographer--we need +stenographers, clerks. You will not be wasted. Come in here." + +Behind her two box-like rooms occupying the width of the building had +been turned into offices, and into one of these Rolfe led her. Men and +women were passing in and out, while in a corner a man behind a desk sat +opening envelopes, deftly extracting bills and post-office orders and +laying them in a drawer. On the wall of this same room was a bookcase +half filled with nondescript volumes. + +"The Bibliotheque--that's French for the library of the Franco-Belgian +Cooperative Association," explained Rolfe. "And this is Comrade Sanders. +Sanders is easier to say than Czernowitz. Here is the young lady I told +you about, who wishes to help us--Miss Bumpus." + +Mr. Sanders stopped counting his money long enough to grin at her. + +"You will be welcome," he said, in good English. "Stenographers are +scarce here. When can you come?" + +"To-morrow morning," answered Janet. + +"Good," he said. "I'll have a machine for you. What kind do you use?" + +She told him. Instinctively she took a fancy to this little man, whose +flannel shirt and faded purple necktie, whose blue, unshaven face and +tousled black hair seemed incongruous with an alert, business-like, and +efficient manner. His nose, though not markedly Jewish, betrayed in him +the blood of that vital race which has triumphantly survived so many +centuries of bondage and oppression. + +"He was a find, Czernowitz--he calls himself Sanders," Rolfe explained, +as they entered the hall once more. "An Operative in the Patuxent, +educated himself, went to night school--might have been a capitalist like +so many of his tribe if he hadn't loved humanity. You'll get along with +him." + +"I'm sure I shall," she replied. + +Rolfe took from his pocket a little red button with the letters I.W.W. +printed across it. He pinned it, caressingly, on her coat. + +"Now you are one of us!" he exclaimed. "You'll come to-morrow?" + +"I'll come to-morrow," she repeated, drawing away from him a little. + +"And--we shall be friends?" + +She nodded. "I must go now, I think." + +"Addio!" he said. "I shall look for you. For the present I must remain +here, with the Committee." + +When Janet reached Faber Street she halted on the corner of Stanley to +stare into the window of the glorified drugstore. But she gave no heed +to the stationery, the cameras and candy displayed there, being in the +emotional state that reduces to unreality objects of the commonplace, +everyday world. Presently, however, she became aware of a man standing +beside her. + +"Haven't we met before?" he asked. "Or--can I be mistaken?" + +Some oddly familiar quizzical note in his voice stirred, as she turned to +him, a lapsed memory. The hawklike yet benevolent and illuminating look +he gave her recalled the man at Silliston whom she had thought a +carpenter though he was dressed now in a warm suit of gray wool, and wore +a white, low collar. + +"In Silliston!" she exclaimed. "Why--what are you doing here?" + +"Well--this instant I was just looking at those notepapers, wondering +which I should choose if I really had good taste. But it's very +puzzling--isn't it?--when one comes from the country. Now that saffron +with the rough edges is very--artistic. Don't you think so?" + +She looked at him and smiled, though his face was serious. + +"You don't really like it, yourself," she informed him. + +"Now you're reflecting on my taste," he declared. + +"Oh no--it's because I saw the fence you were making. Is it finished +yet?" + +"I put the last pineapple in place the day before Christmas. Do you +remember the pineapples?" + +She nodded. "And the house? and the garden?" + +"Oh, those will never be finished. I shouldn't have anything more to +do." + +"Is that--all you do?" she asked. + +"It's more important than anything else. But you have you been back to +Silliston since I saw you? I've been waiting for another call." + +"You haven't even thought of me since," she was moved to reply in the +same spirit. + +"Haven't I?" he exclaimed. "I wondered, when I came up here to Hampton, +whether I mightn't meet you--and here you are! Doesn't that prove it?" + +She laughed, somewhat surprised at the ease with which he had diverted +her, drawn her out of the tense, emotional mood in which he had +discovered her. As before, he puzzled her, but the absence of any +flirtatious suggestion in his talk gave her confidence. He was just +friendly. + +"Sometimes I hoped I might see you in Hampton," she ventured. + +"Well, here I am. I heard the explosion, and came." + +"The explosion! The strike!" she exclaimed; suddenly enlightened. "Now +I remember! You said something about Hampton being nitro-glycerine-- +human nitro-glycerine. You predicted this strike." + +"Did I? perhaps I did," he assented. "Maybe you suggested the idea." + +"I suggested it! Oh no, I didn't--it was new to me, it frightened me at +the time, but it started me thinking about a lot of things that had never +occurred to me." + +"You might have suggested the idea without intending to, you know. There +are certain people who inspire prophecies--perhaps you are one." + +His tone was playful, but she was quick to grasp at an inference--since +his glance was fixed on the red button she wore. + +"You meant that I would explode, too!" + +"Oh no--nothing so terrible as that," he disclaimed. "And yet most of us +have explosives stored away inside of us--instincts, impulses and all +that sort of thing that won't stand too much bottling-up." + +"Yes, I've joined the strike." She spoke somewhat challengingly, though +she had an uneasy feeling that defiance was somewhat out of place with +him. "I suppose you think it strange, since I'm not a foreigner and +haven't worked in the mills. But I don't see why that should make any +difference if you believe that the workers haven't had a chance." + +"No difference," he agreed, pleasantly, "no difference at all." + +"Don't you sympathize with the strikers?" she insisted. "Or--are you on +the other side, the side of the capitalists?" + +"I? I'm a spectator--an innocent bystander." + +"You don't sympathize with the workers?" she cried. + +"Indeed I do. I sympathize with everybody." + +"With the capitalists?" + +"Why not?" + +"Why not? Because they've had everything their own way, they've +exploited the workers, deceived and oppressed them, taken all the +profits." She was using glibly her newly acquired labour terminology. + +"Isn't that a pretty good reason for sympathizing with them?" he +inquired. + +"What do you mean?" + +"Well, I should think it might be difficult to be happy and have done all +that. At any rate, it isn't my notion of happiness. Is it yours?" + +For a moment she considered this. + +"No--not exactly," she admitted. "But they seem happy," she insisted +vehemently, "they have everything they want and they do exactly as they +please without considering anybody except themselves. What do they care +how many they starve and make miserable? You--you don't know, you can't +know what it is to be driven and used and flung away!" + +Almost in tears, she did not notice his puzzled yet sympathetic glance. + +"The operatives, the workers create all the wealth, and the capitalists +take it from them, from their wives and children." + +"Now I know what you've been doing," he said accusingly. "You've been +studying economics." + +Her brow puckered. + +"Studying what?" + +"Economics--the distribution of wealth. It's enough to upset anybody." + +"But I'm not upset," she insisted, smiling in spite of herself at his +comical concern. + +"It's very exciting. I remember reading a book once on economics and +such things, and I couldn't sleep for a week. It was called `The +Organization of Happiness,' I believe, and it described just how the +world ought to be arranged--and isn't. I thought seriously of going to +Washington and telling the President and Congress about it." + +"It wouldn't have done any good," said Janet. + +"No, I realized that." + +"The only thing that will do any good is to strike and keep on striking +until the workers own the mills--take everything away from the +capitalists." + +"It's very simple," he agreed, "much simpler than the book I read. +That's what they call syndicalism, isn't it?" + +"Yes." She was conscious of his friendliness, of the fact that his +skepticism was not cynical, yet she felt a strong desire to convince him, +to vindicate her new creed. "There's a man named Rolfe, an educated man +who's lived in Italy and England, who explains it wonderfully. He's one +of the I.W.W. leaders--you ought to hear him." + +"Rolfe converted you? I'll go to hear him." + +"Yes--but you have to feel it, you have to know what it is to be kept +down and crushed. If you'd only stay here awhile." + +"Oh, I intend to," he replied. + +She could not have said why, but she felt a certain relief on hearing +this. + +"Then you'll see for yourself!" she cried. "I guess that's what you've +come for, isn't it?" + +"Well, partly. To tell the truth, I've come to open a restaurant." + +"To open a restaurant!" Somehow she was unable to imagine him as the +proprietor of a restaurant. "But isn't it rather a bad time?" she +gasped. + +"I don't look as if I had an eye for business--do I? But I have. No, +it's a good time--so many people will be hungry, especially children. +I'm going to open a restaurant for children. Oh, it will be very modest, +of course--I suppose I ought to call it a soup kitchen." + +"Oh!" she exclaimed, staring at him. "Then you really--" the sentence +remained unfinished. "I'm sorry," she said simply. "You made me +think--" + +"Oh, you mustn't pay any attention to what I say. Come 'round and see my +establishment, Number 77 Dey Street, one flight up, no elevator. Will +you?" + +She laughed tremulously as he took her hand. + +"Yes indeed, I will," she promised. And she stood awhile staring after +him. She was glad he had come to Hampton, and yet she did not even know +his name. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +She had got another place--such was the explanation of her new activities +Janet gave to Hannah, who received it passively. And the question +dreaded about Ditmar was never asked. Hannah had become as a child, +performing her tasks by the momentum of habituation, occasionally talking +simply of trivial, every-day affairs, as though the old life were going +on continuously. At times, indeed, she betrayed concern about Edward, +wondering whether he were comfortable at the mill, and she washed and +darned the clothes he sent home by messenger. She hoped he would not +catch cold. Her suffering seemed to have relaxed. It was as though the +tortured portion of her brain had at length been seared. To Janet, her +mother's condition when she had time to think of it--was at once a relief +and a new and terrible source of anxiety. + +Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect on that tragedy, +else her own sanity might have been endangered. As soon as breakfast was +over she hurried across the city to the Franco-Belgian Hall, and often +did not return until nine o'clock at night, usually so tired that she +sank into bed and fell asleep. For she threw herself into her new +labours with the desperate energy that seeks forgetfulness, not daring to +pause to think about herself, to reflect upon what the future might hold +for her when the strike should be over. Nor did she confine herself to +typewriting, but, as with Ditmar, constantly assumed a greater burden of +duty, helping Czernowitz--who had the work of five men--with his +accounts, with the distribution of the funds to the ever-increasing +number of the needy who were facing starvation. The money was paid out +to them in proportion to the size of their families; as the strike became +more and more effective their number increased until many mills had +closed; other mills, including the Chippering, were still making a +desperate attempt to operate their looms, and sixteen thousand operatives +were idle. She grew to know these operatives who poured all day long in +a steady stream through Headquarters; she heard their stories, she +entered into their lives, she made decisions. Some, even in those early +days of the strike, were frauds; were hiding their savings; but for the +most part investigation revealed an appalling destitution, a resolution +to suffer for the worker's cause. A few complained, the majority were +resigned; some indeed showed exaltation and fire, were undaunted by the +task of picketing in the cold mornings, by the presence of the soldiery. +In this work of dealing with the operatives Janet had the advice and help +of Anna Mower, a young woman who herself had been a skilled operative in +the Clarendon Mill, and who was giving evidence of unusual qualities of +organization and leadership. Anna, with no previous practise in oratory, +had suddenly developed the gift of making speeches, the more effective +with her fellow workers because unstudied, because they flowed directly +out of an experience she was learning to interpret and universalize. +Janet, who heard her once or twice, admired and envied her. They became +friends. + +The atmosphere of excitement in which Janet now found herself was +cumulative. Day by day one strange event followed another, and at times +it seemed as if this extraordinary existence into which she had been +plunged were all a feverish dream. Hither, to the absurd little solle de +reunion of the Franco-Belgian Hall came notables from the great world, +emissaries from an uneasy Governor, delegations from the Legislature, +Members of the Congress of the United States and even Senators; students, +investigators, men and women of prominence in the universities, magazine +writers to consult with uncouth leaders of a rebellion that defied and +upset the powers which hitherto had so serenely ruled, unchallenged. +Rolfe identified these visitors, and one morning called her attention to +one who he said was the nation's foremost authority on social science. +Janet possessed all unconsciously the New England reverence for learning, +she was stirred by the sight of this distinguishedlooking person who sat +on the painted stage, fingering his glasses and talking to Antonelli. +The two men made a curious contrast. But her days were full of contrasts +of which her mood exultingly approved. The politicians were received +cavalierly. Toward these, who sought to act as go-betweens in the +conflict, Antonelli was contemptuous; he behaved like the general of a +conquering army, and his audacity was reflected in the other leaders, in +Rolfe, in the Committee itself. + +That Committee, a never-ending source of wonder to Janet, with its nine +or ten nationalities and interpreters, was indeed a triumph over the +obstacles of race and language, a Babel made successful; in a community +of Anglo-Saxon traditions, an amazing anomaly. The habiliments of the +west, the sack coats and sweaters, the slouch hats and caps, the so- +called Derbies pulled down over dark brows and flashing eyes lent to +these peasant types an incongruity that had the air of ferocity. The +faces of most of them were covered with a blue-black stubble of beard. +Some slouched in their chairs, others stood and talked in groups, +gesticulating with cigars and pipes; yet a keen spectator, after watching +them awhile through the smoke, might have been able to pick out striking +personalities among them. He would surely have noticed Froment, the +stout, limping man under whose white eyebrows flashed a pair of livid +blue and peculiarly Gallic eyes; he held the Belgians in his hand: +Lindtzki, the Pole, with his zealot's face; Radeau, the big Canadian in +the checked Mackinaw; and Findley, the young American-less by any +arresting quality of feature than by an expression suggestive of +practical wisdom. + +Imagine then, on an afternoon in the middle phase of the strike, some +half dozen of the law-makers of a sovereign state, top-hatted and +conventionally garbed in black, accustomed to authority, to conferring +favours instead of requesting them, climbing the steep stairs and pausing +on the threshold of that hall, fingering their watch chains, awaiting +recognition by the representatives of the new and bewildering force that +had arisen in an historic commonwealth. A "debate" was in progress. +Some of the debaters, indeed, looked over their shoulders, but the +leader, who sat above them framed in the sylvan setting of the stage, +never so much as deigned to glance up from his newspaper. A half-burned +cigar rolled between his mobile lips, he sat on the back of his neck, and +yet he had an air Napoleonic; Nietzschean, it might better be said-- +although it is safe to assert that these moulders of American +institutions knew little about that terrible philosopher who had raised +his voice against the "slave morals of Christianity." It was their first +experience with the superman.... It remained for the Canadian, Radeau, +when a lull arrived in the turmoil, to suggest that the gentlemen be +given chairs. + +"Sure, give them chairs," assented Antonelli in a voice hoarse from +speech-making. Breath-taking audacity to certain spectators who had +followed the delegation hither, some of whom could not refrain from +speculating whether it heralded the final scrapping of the machinery of +the state; amusing to cynical metropolitan reporters, who grinned at one +another as they prepared to take down the proceedings; evoking a fierce +approval in the breasts of all rebels among whom was Janet. The +Legislative Chairman, a stout and suave gentleman of Irish birth, +proceeded to explain how greatly concerned was the Legislature that the +deplorable warfare within the state should cease; they had come, he +declared, to aid in bringing about justice between labour and capital. + +"We'll get justice without the help of the state," remarked Antonelli +curtly, while a murmur of approval ran through the back of the hall. + +That was scarcely the attitude, said the Chairman, he had expected. He +knew that such a strike as this had engendered bitterness, there had been +much suffering, sacrifice undoubtedly on both sides, but he was sure, if +Mr. Antonelli and the Committee would accept their services here he was +interrupted. + +Had the mill owners accepted their services? + +The Chairman cleared his throat. + +The fact was that the mill owners were more difficult to get together in +a body. A meeting would be arranged-- + +"When you arrange a meeting, let me know," said Antonelli. + +A laugh went around the room. It was undoubtedly very difficult to keep +one's temper under such treatment. The Chairman looked it. + +"A meeting would be arranged," he declared, with a longsuffering +expression. He even smiled a little. "In the meantime--" + +"What can your committee do?" demanded one of the strike leaders, +passionately--it was Findley. "If you find one party wrong, can your +state force it to do right? Can you legislators be impartial when you +have not lived the bitter life of the workers? Would you arbitrate a +question of life and death? And are the worst wages paid in these mills +anything short of death? Do you investigate because conditions are bad? +or because the workers broke loose and struck? Why did you not come +before the strike?" + +This drew more approval from the rear. Why, indeed? The Chairman was +adroit, he had pulled himself out of many tight places in the Assembly +Chamber, but now he began to perspire, to fumble in his coat tails for a +handkerchief. The Legislature, he maintained, could not undertake to +investigate such matters until called to its attention.... + +Later on a tall gentleman, whom heaven had not blessed with tact, saw fit +to deplore the violence that had occurred; he had no doubt the leaders of +the strike regretted it as much as he, he was confident it would be +stopped, when public opinion would be wholly and unreservedly on the side +of the strikers. + +"Public opinion!" savagely cried Lindtzki, who spoke English with only a +slight accent. "If your little boy, if your little girl come to you and +ask for shoes, for bread, and you say, `I have no shoes, I have no bread, +but public opinion is with us,' would that satisfy you?" + +This drew so much applause that the tall law-maker sat down again with a +look of disgust on his face.... The Committee withdrew, and for many +weeks thereafter the state they represented continued to pay some four +thousand dollars daily to keep its soldiers on the streets of Hampton.... + +In the meanwhile Janet saw much of Rolfe. Owing to his facile command of +language he was peculiarly fitted to draft those proclamations, +bombastically worded in the French style, issued and circulated by the +Strike Committee--appeals to the polyglot army to withstand the pangs of +hunger, to hold out for the terms laid down, assurances that victory was +at hand. Walking up and down the bibliottheque, his hands behind his +back, his red lips gleaming as he spoke, he dictated these documents to +Janet. In the ecstasy of this composition he had a way of shaking his +head slowly from side to side, and when she looked up she saw his eyes +burning, down at her. A dozen times a day, while she was at her other +work, he would come in and talk to her. He excited her, she was divided +between attraction and fear of him, and often she resented his easy +assumption that a tie existed between them--the more so because this +seemed to be taken for granted among certain of his associates. In their +eyes, apparently, she was Rolfe's recruit in more senses than one. It +was indeed a strange society in which she found herself, and Rolfe +typified it. He lived on the plane of the impulses and intellect, +discarded as inhibiting factors what are called moral standards, decried +individual discipline and restraint. And while she had never considered +these things, the spectacle of a philosophy--embodied in him--that +frankly and cynically threw them overboard was disconcerting. He +regarded her as his proselyte, he called her a Puritan, and he seemed +more concerned that she should shed these relics of an ancestral code +than acquire the doctrines of Sorel and Pouget. And yet association with +him presented the allurement of a dangerous adventure. Intellectually he +fascinated her; and still another motive--which she partially disguised +from herself--prevented her from repelling him. That motive had to do +with Ditmar. She tried to put Ditmar from her mind; she sought in +desperation, not only to keep busy, but to steep and lose herself in this +fierce creed as an antidote to the insistent, throbbing pain that lay +ambushed against her moments of idleness. The second evening of her +installation at Headquarters she had worked beyond the supper hour, +helping Sanders with his accounts. She was loath to go home. And when +at last she put on her hat and coat and entered the hall Rolfe, who had +been talking to Jastro, immediately approached her. His liquid eyes +regarded her solicitously. + +"You must be hungry," he said. "Come out with me and have some supper." + +But she was not hungry; what she needed was air. Then he would walk a +little way with her--he wanted to talk to her. She hesitated, and then +consented. A fierce hope had again taken possession of her, and when +they came to Warren Street she turned into it. + +"Where are you going?" Rolfe demanded. + +"For a walk," she said. "Aren't you coming?" + +"Will you have supper afterwards?" + +"Perhaps." + +He followed her, puzzled, yet piqued and excited by her manner, as with +rapid steps she hurried along the pavement. He tried to tell her what +her friendship meant to him; they were, he declared, kindred spirits-- +from the first time he had seen her, on the Common, he had known this. +She scarcely heard him, she was thinking of Ditmar; and this was why she +had led Rolfe into Warren Street they might meet Ditmar! It was possible +that he would be going to the mill at this time, after his dinner! She +scrutinized every distant figure, and when they reached the block in +which he lived she walked more slowly. From within the house came to +her, faintly, the notes of a piano--his daughter Amy was practising. It +was the music, a hackneyed theme of Schubert's played heavily, that +seemed to arouse the composite emotion of anger and hatred, yet of +sustained attraction and wild regret she had felt before, but never so +poignantly as now. And she lingered, perversely resolved to steep +herself in the agony. + +"Who lives here" Rolfe asked. + +"Mr. Ditmar," she answered. + +"The agent of the Chippering Mill?" + +She nodded. + +"He's the worst of the lot," Rolfe said angrily. "If it weren't for him, +we'd have this strike won to-day. He owns this town, he's run it to suit +himself, He stiffens up the owners and holds the other mills in line. +He's a type, a driver, the kind of man we must get rid of. Look at him-- +he lives in luxury while his people are starving." + +"Get rid of!" repeated Janet, in an odd voice. + +"Oh, I don't mean to shoot him," Rolfe declared. "But he may get shot, +for all I know, by some of these slaves he's made desperate." + +"They wouldn't dare shoot him," Janet said. "And whatever he is, he +isn't a coward. He's stronger than the others, he's more of a man." + +Rolfe looked at her curiously. + +"What do you know about him?" he asked. + +"I--I know all about him. I was his stenographer." + +"You! His stenographer! Then why are you herewith us?" + +"Because I hate him!" she cried vehemently. "Because I've learned that +it's true--what you say about the masters--they only think of themselves +and their kind, and not of us. They use us." + +"He tried to use you! You loved him!" + +"How dare you say that!" + +He fell back before her anger. + +"I didn't mean to offend you," he exclaimed. "I was jealous--I'm jealous +of every man you've known. I want you. I've never met a woman like +you." + +They were the very words Ditmar had used! She did not answer, and for a +while they walked along in silence, leaving Warren Street and cutting +across the city until they canoe in sight of the Common. Rolfe drew +nearer to her. + +"Forgive me!" he pleaded. "You know I would not offend you. Come, we'll +have supper together, and I will teach you more of what you have to +know." + +"Where?" she asked. + +"At the Hampton--it is a little cafe where we all go. Perhaps you've +been there." + +"No," said Janet. + +"It doesn't compare with the cafes of Europe--or of New York. Perhaps we +shall go to them sometime, together. But it is cosy, and warm, and all +the leaders will be there. You'll come--yes?" + +"Yes, I'll come," she said.... + +The Hampton was one of the city's second-class hotels, but sufficiently +pretentious to have, in its basement, a "cafe" furnished in the "mission" +style of brass tacks and dull red leather. In the warm, food-scented air +fantastic wisps of smoke hung over the groups; among them Janet made out +several of the itinerant leaders of Syndicalism, loose-tied, debonnair, +giving a tremendous impression of freedom as they laughed and chatted +with the women. For there were women, ranging from the redoubtable +Nellie Bond herself down to those who may be designated as campfollowers. +Rolfe, as he led Janet to a table in a corner of the room, greeted his +associates with easy camaraderie. From Miss Bond he received an +illuminating smile. Janet wondered at her striking good looks, at the +boldness and abandon with which she talked to Jastro or exchanged sallies +across the room. The atmosphere of this tawdry resort, formerly +frequented by shop girls and travelling salesmen, was magically +transformed by the presence of this company, made bohemian, cosmopolitan, +exhilarating. And Janet, her face flushed, sat gazing at the scene, +while Rolfe consulted the bill of fare and chose a beefsteak and French +fried potatoes. The apathetic waiter in the soiled linen jacket he +addressed as "comrade." Janet protested when he ordered cocktails. + +"You must learn to live, to relax, to enjoy yourself," he declared. + +But a horror of liquor held her firm in her refusal. Rolfe drank his, +and while they awaited the beefsteak she was silent, the prey of certain +misgivings that suddenly assailed her. Lise, she remembered, had +sometimes mentioned this place, though preferring Gruber's: and she was +struck by the contrast between this spectacle and the grimness of the +strike these people had come to encourage and sustain, the conflict in +the streets, the suffering in the tenements. She glanced at Rolfe, +noting the manner in which he smoked cigarettes, sensually, as though +seeking to wring out of each all there was to be got before flinging it +down and lighting another. Again she was struck by the anomaly of a +religion that had indeed enthusiasms, sacrifices perhaps, but no +disciplines. He threw it out in snatches, this religion, while relating +the histories of certain persons in the room: of Jastro, for instance, +letting fall a hint to the effect that this evangelist and bliss Bond +were dwelling together in more than amity. + +"Then you don't believe in marriage?" she demanded, suddenly. + +Rolfe laughed. + +"What is it," he exclaimed, "but the survival of the system of property? +It's slavery, taboo, a device upheld by the master class to keep women in +bondage, in superstition, by inducing them to accept it as a decree of +God." + +"Did the masters themselves ever respect it, or any other decrees of God +they preached to the slaves? Read history, and you will see. They had +their loves, their mistresses. Read the newspapers, and you will find +out whether they respect it to-day. But they are very anxious to have +you and me respect it and all the other Christian commandments, because +they will prevent us from being discontented. They say that we must be +satisfied with the situation in this world in which God has placed us, +and we shall have our reward in the next." + +She shivered slightly, not only at the ideas thus abruptly enunciated, +but because it occurred to her that those others must be taking for +granted a certain relationship between herself and Rolfe.... But +presently, when the supper arrived, these feelings changed. She was very +hungry, and the effect of the food, of the hot coffee was to dispel her +doubt and repugnance, to throw a glamour over the adventure, to restore +to Rolfe's arguments an exciting and alluring appeal. And with renewed +physical energy she began to experience once more a sense of fellowship +with these free and daring spirits who sought to avenge her wrongs and +theirs. + +"For us who create there are no rules of conduct, no conventions," Rolfe +was saying, "we do not care for the opinions of the middle class, of the +bourgeois. With us men and women are on an equality. It is fear that +has kept the workers down, and now we have cast that off--we know our +strength. As they say in Italy, il mondo e a chi se lo piglia, the world +belongs to him who is bold." + +"Italian is a beautiful language," she exclaimed. + +"I will teach you Italian," he said. + +"I want to learn--so much!" she sighed. + +"Your soul is parched," he said, in a commiserating tone. "I will water +it, I will teach you everything." His words aroused a faint, derisive +echo: Ditmar had wish to teach her, too! But now she was strongly under +the spell of the new ideas hovering like shining, gossamer spirits just +beyond her reach, that she sought to grasp and correlate. Unlike the +code which Rolfe condemned, they seemed not to be separate from life, +opposed to it, but entered even into that most important of its elements, +sex. In deference to that other code Ditmar had made her his mistress, +and because he was concerned for his position and the security of the +ruling class had sought to hide the fact.... Rolfe, with a cigarette +between his red lips, sat back in his chair, regarding with sensuous +enjoyment the evident effect of his arguments. + +"But love?" she interrupted, when presently he had begun to talk again. +She strove inarticulately to express an innate feminine objection to +relationships that were made and broken at pleasure. + +"Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes, the life-force working +in us. And when that attraction ceases, what is left? Bondage. The +hideous bondage of Christian marriage, in which women promise to love and +obey forever." + +"But women--women are not like men. When once they give themselves they +do not so easily cease to love. They--they suffer." + +He did not seem to observe the bitterness in her voice. + +"Ah, that is sentiment," he declared, "something that will not trouble +women when they have work to do, inspiring work. It takes time to change +our ideas, to learn to see things as they are." He leaned forward +eagerly. "But you will learn, you are like some of those rare women in +history who have had the courage to cast off traditions. You were not +made to be a drudge...." + +But now her own words, not his, were ringing in her head--women do not so +easily cease to love, they suffer. In spite of the new creed she had so +eagerly and fiercely embraced, in which she had sought deliverance and +retribution, did she still love Ditmar, and suffer because of him? She +repudiated the suggestion, yet it persisted as she glanced at Rolfe's red +lips and compared him with Ditmar. Love! Rolfe might call it what he +would--the life-force, attraction between the sexes, but it was proving +stronger than causes and beliefs. He too was making love to her; like +Ditmar, he wanted her to use and fling away when he should grow weary. +Was he not pleading for himself rather than for the human cause he +professed? taking advantage of her ignorance and desperation, of her +craving for new experience and knowledge? The suspicion sickened her. +Were all men like that? Suddenly, without apparent premeditation or +connection, the thought of the stranger from Silliston entered her mind. +Was he like that?... Rolfe was bending toward her across the table, +solicitously. "What's the matter?" he asked. + +Her reply was listless. + +"Nothing--except that I'm tired. I want to go home." + +"Not now," he begged. "It's early yet." + +But she insisted.... + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +The next day at the noon hour Janet entered Dey Street. Cheek by jowl +there with the tall tenements whose spindled-pillared porches overhung +the darkened pavements were smaller houses of all ages and descriptions, +their lower floors altered to accommodate shops; while in the very midst +of the block stood a queer wooden building with two rows of dormer +windows let into its high-pitched roof. It bore a curious resemblance to +a town hall in the low countries. In front of it the street was filled +with children gazing up at the doorway where a man stood surveying them-- +the stranger from Silliston. There was a rush toward him, a rush that +drove Janet against the wall almost at his side, and he held up his hands +in mock despair, gently impeding the little bodies that strove to enter. +He bent over them to examine the numerals, printed on pasteboard, they +wore on their breasts. His voice was cheerful, yet compassionate. + +"It's hard to wait, I know. I'm hungry myself," he said. "But we can't +all go up at once. The building would fall down! One to one hundred +now, and the second hundred will be first for supper. That's fair, isn't +it?" + +Dozens of hands were raised. + +"I'm twenty-nine!" + +"I'm three, mister!" + +"I'm forty-one!" + +He let them in, one by one, and they clattered up the stairs, as he +seized a tiny girl bundled in a dark red muffler and set her on the steps +above him. He smiled at Janet. + +"This is my restaurant," he said. + +But she could not answer. She watched him as he continued to bend over +the children, and when the smaller ones wept because they had to wait, he +whispered in their ears, astonishing one or two into laughter. Some +ceased crying and clung to him with dumb faith. And after the chosen +hundred had been admitted he turned to her again. + +"You allow visitors?" + +"Oh dear, yes. They'd come anyway. There's one up there now, a very +swell lady from New York--so swell I don't know what to say to her. Talk +to her for me." + +"But I shouldn't know what to say, either," replied Janet. She smiled, +but she had an odd desire to cry. "What is she doing here?" + +"Oh, thrashing 'round, trying to connect with life--she's one of the +unfortunate unemployed." + +"Unemployed?" + +"The idle rich," he explained. "Perhaps you can give her a job--enlist +her in the I.W.W." + +"We don't want that kind," Janet declared. + +"Have pity on her," he begged. "Nobody wants them--that's why they're so +pathetic." + +She accompanied him up the narrow stairway to a great loft, the bareness +of which had been tempered by draped American flags. From the trusses of +the roof hung improvised electric lights, and the children were already +seated at the four long tables, where half a dozen ladies were supplying +them with enamelled bowls filled with steaming soup. They attacked it +ravenously, and the absence of the talk and laughter that ordinarily +accompany children's feasts touched her, impressed upon her, as nothing +else had done, the destitution of the homes from which these little ones +had come. The supplies that came to Hampton, the money that poured into +Headquarters were not enough to allay the suffering even now. And what +if the strike should last for months! Would they be able to hold out, to +win? In this mood of pity, of anxiety mingled with appreciation and +gratitude for what this man was doing, she turned to speak to him, to +perceive on the platform at the end of the room a lady seated. So +complete was the curve of her back that her pose resembled a letter u set +sidewise, the gap from her crossed knee to her face being closed by a +slender forearm and hand that held a lorgnette, through which she was +gazing at the children with an apparently absorbed interest. This +impression of willowy flexibility was somehow heightened by large, pear- +shaped pendants hanging from her ears, by a certain filminess in her +black costume and hat. Flung across the table beside her was a long coat +of grey fur. She struck an odd note here, presented a strange contrast +to Janet's friend from Silliston, with his rough suit and fine but rugged +features. + +"I'm sorry I haven't a table for you just at present," he was saying. +"But perhaps you'll let me take your order,"--and he imitated the +obsequious attitude of a waiter. "A little fresh caviar and a clear +soup, and then a fish--?" + +The lady took down her lorgnette and raised an appealing face. + +"You're always joking, Brooks," she chided him, "even when you're doing +things like this! I can't get you to talk seriously even when I come all +the way from New York to find out what's going on here." + +"How hungry children eat, for instance?" he queried. + +"Dear little things, it's heartrending!" she exclaimed. "Especially when +I think of my own children, who have to be made to eat. Tell me the +nationality of that adorable tot at the end." + +"Perhaps Miss Bumpus can tell you," he ventured. And Janet, though +distinctly uncomfortable and hostile to the lady, was surprised and +pleased that he should have remembered her name. "Brooks," she had +called him. That was his first name. This strange and sumptuous person +seemed intimate with him. Could it be possible that he belonged to her +class? "Mrs. Brocklehurst, Miss Bumpus." + +Mrs. Brocklehurst focussed her attention on Janet, through the lorgnette, +but let it fall immediately, smiling on her brightly, persuasively. + +"How d'ye do?" she said, stretching forth a slender arm and taking the +girl's somewhat reluctant hand. "Do come and sit down beside me and tell +me about everything here. I'm sure you know--you look so intelligent." + +Her friend from Silliston shot at Janet an amused but fortifying glance +and left them, going down to the tables. Somehow that look of his helped +to restore in her a sense of humour and proportion, and her feeling +became one of curiosity concerning this exquisitely soigneed being of an +order she had read about, but never encountered--an order which her newly +acquired views declared to be usurpers and parasites. But despite her +palpable effort to be gracious perhaps because of it--Mrs. Brocklehurst +had an air about her that was disconcerting! Janet, however, seemed +composed as she sat down. + +"I'm afraid I don't know very much. Maybe you will tell me something, +first." + +"Why, certainly," said Mrs. Brocklehurst, sweetly when she had got her +breath. + +"Who is that man?" Janet asked. + +"Whom do you mean--Mr. Insall?" + +"Is that his name? I didn't know. I've seen him twice, but he never +told me." + +"Why, my dear, do you mean to say you haven't heard of Brooks Insall?" + +"Brooks Insall." Janet repeated the name, as her eyes sought his figure +between the tables. "No." + +"I'm sure I don't know why I should have expected you to hear of him," +declared the lady, repentantly. "He's a writer--an author." And at this +Janet gave a slight exclamation of pleasure and surprise. "You admire +writers? He's done some delightful things." + +"What does he write about?" Janet asked. + +"Oh, wild flowers and trees and mountains and streams, and birds and +humans--he has a wonderful insight into people." + +Janet was silent. She was experiencing a swift twinge of jealousy, of +that familiar rebellion against her limitations. + +"You must read them, my dear," Mrs. Brocklehurst continued softly, in +musical tones. "They are wonderful, they have such distinction. He's +walked, I'm told, over every foot of New England, talking to the farmers +and their wives and--all sorts of people." She, too, paused to let her +gaze linger upon Insall laughing and chatting with the children as they +ate. "He has such a splendid, `out-door' look don't you think? And he's +clever with his hands he bought an old abandoned farmhouse in Silliston +and made it all over himself until it looks as if one of our great-great- +grandfathers had just stepped out of it to shoot an Indian only much +prettier. And his garden is a dream. It's the most unique place I've +ever known." + +Janet blushed deeply as she recalled how she had mistaken him for a +carpenter: she was confused, overwhelmed, she had a sudden longing to +leave the place, to be alone, to think about this discovery. Yet she +wished to know more. + +"But how did he happen to come here to Hampton--to be doing this?" she +asked. + +"Well, that's just what makes him interesting, one never can tell what +he'll do. He took it into his head to collect the money to feed these +children; I suppose he gave much of it himself. He has an income of his +own, though he likes to live so simply." + +"This place--it's not connected with any organization?" Janet ejaculated. + +"That's the trouble, he doesn't like organizations, and he doesn't seem +to take any interest in the questions or movements of the day," Mrs. +Brocklehurst complained. "Or at least he refuses to talk about them, +though I've known him for many years, and his people and mine were +friends. Now there are lots of things I want to learn, that I came up +from New York to find out. I thought of course he'd introduce me to the +strike leaders, and he tells me he doesn't know one of them. Perhaps you +know them," she added, with sudden inspiration. + +"I'm only an employee at Strike Headquarters," Janet replied, stiffening +a little despite the lady's importuning look--which evidently was usually +effective. + +"You mean the I.W.W.?" + +"Yes." + +Meanwhile Insall had come up and seated himself below them on the edge of +the platform. + +"Oh, Brooks, your friend Miss Bumpus is employed in the Strike +Headquarters!" Mrs. Brocklehurst cried, and turning to Janet she went on. +"I didn't realize you were a factory girl, I must say you don't look it." + +Once more a gleam of amusement from Insall saved Janet, had the effect of +compelling her to meet the affair somewhat after his own manner. He +seemed to be putting the words into her mouth, and she even smiled a +little, as she spoke. + +"You never can tell what factory girls do look like in these days," she +observed mischievously. + +"That's so," Mrs. Brocklehurst agreed, "we are living in such +extraordinary times, everything topsy turvy. I ought to have realized-- +it was stupid of me--I know several factory girls in New York, I've been +to their meetings, I've had them at my house--shirtwaist strikers." + +She assumed again the willowy, a position, her fingers clasped across her +knee, her eyes supplicatingly raised to Janet. Then she reached out her +hand and touched the I.W.W. button. "Do tell me all about the +Industrial Workers, and what they believe," she pleaded. + +"Well," said Janet, after a slight pause, "I'm afraid you won't like it +much. Why do you want to know?" + +"Because I'm so interested--especially in the women of the movement. I +feel for them so, I want to help--to do something, too. Of course you're +a suffragist." + +"You mean, do I believe in votes for women? Yes, I suppose I do." + +"But you must," declared Mrs. Brocklehurst, still sweetly, but with +emphasis. "You wouldn't be working, you wouldn't be striking unless you +did." + +"I've never thought about it," said Janet. + +"But how are you working girls ever going to raise wages unless you get +the vote? It's the only way men ever get anywhere--the politicians +listen to them." She produced from her bag a gold pencil and a tablet. +"Mrs. Ned Carfax is here from Boston--I saw her for a moment at the hotel +she's been here investigating for nearly three days, she tells me. I'll +have her send you suffrage literature at once, if you'll give me your +address." + +"You want a vote?" asked Janet, curiously, gazing at the pearl earrings. + +"Certainly I want one." + +"Why?" + +"Why?" repeated Mrs. Brocklehurst. + +"Yes. You must have everything you want." + +Even then the lady's sweet reasonableness did not desert her. She smiled +winningly, displaying two small and even rows of teeth. + +"On principle, my dear. For one reason, because I have such sympathy +with women who toil, and for another, I believe the time has come when +women must no longer be slaves, they must assert themselves, become +individuals, independent." + +"But you?" exclaimed Janet. + +Mrs. Brocklehurst continued to smile encouragingly, and murmured "Yes?" + +"You are not a slave." + +A delicate pink, like the inside of a conch shell, spread over Mrs. +Brocklehurst's cheeks. + +"We're all slaves," she declared with a touch of passion. "It's hard for +you to realize, I know, about those of us who seem more fortunate than +our sisters. But it's true. The men give us jewels and automobiles and +clothes, but they refuse to give us what every real woman craves-- +liberty." + +Janet had become genuinely interested. + +"But what kind of liberty?" + +"Liberty to have a voice, to take part in the government of our country, +to help make the laws, especially those concerning working-women and +children, what they ought to be." + +Here was altruism, truly! Here were words that should have inspired +Janet, yet she was silent. Mrs. Brocklehurst gazed at her solicitously. + +"What are you thinking?" she urged--and it was Janet's turn to flush. + +"I was just thinking that you seemed to have everything life has to give, +and yet--and yet you're not happy." + +"Oh, I'm not unhappy," protested the lady. "Why do you say that?" + +"I don't know. You, too, seem to be wanting something." + +"I want to be of use, to count," said Mrs. Brocklehurst,--and Janet was +startled to hear from this woman's lips the very echo of her own desires. + +Mrs. Brocklehurst's feelings had become slightly complicated. It is +perhaps too much to say that her complacency was shaken. She was, +withal, a person of resolution--of resolution taking the form of +unswerving faith in herself, a faith persisting even when she was being +carried beyond her depth. She had the kind of pertinacity that sever +admits being out of depth, the happy buoyancy that does not require to +feel the bottom under one's feet. She floated in swift currents. When +life became uncomfortable, she evaded it easily; and she evaded it now, +as she gazed at the calm but intent face of the girl in front of her, by +a characteristic inner refusal to admit that she had accidentally come in +contact with something baking. Therefore she broke the silence. + +"Isn't that what you want--you who are striking?" she asked. + +"I think we want the things that you've got," said Janet. A phrase one +of the orators had used came into her mind, "Enough money to live up to +American standards"--but she did not repeat it. "Enough money to be +free, to enjoy life, to have some leisure and amusement and luxury." The +last three she took from the orator's mouth. + +"But surely," exclaimed Mrs. Brocklehurst, "surely you want more than +that!" + +Janet shook her head. + +"You asked me what we believed, the I.W.W., the syndicalists, and I told +you you wouldn't like it. Well, we believe in doing away with you, the +rich, and taking all you have for ourselves, the workers, the producers. +We believe you haven't any right to what you've got, that you've fooled +and cheated us out of it. That's why we women don't care much about the +vote, I suppose, though I never thought of it. We mean to go on striking +until we've got all that you've got." + +"But what will become of us?" said Mrs. Brocklehurst. "You wouldn't do +away with all of us! I admit there are many who don't--but some do +sympathize with you, will help you get what you want, help you, perhaps, +to see things more clearly, to go about it less--ruthlessly." + +"I've told you what we believe," repeated Janet. + +"I'm so glad I came," cried Mrs. Brocklehurst. "It's most interesting! +I never knew what the syndicalists believed. Why, it's like the French +Revolution--only worse. How are you going to get rid of us? cut our +heads off?" + +Janet could not refrain from smiling. + +"Let you starve, I suppose." + +"Really!" said Mrs. Brocklehurst, and appeared to be trying to visualize +the process. She was a true Athenian, she had discovered some new thing, +she valued discoveries more than all else in life, she collected them, +though she never used them save to discuss them with intellectuals at her +dinner parties. "Now you must let me come to Headquarters and get a +glimpse of some of the leaders--of Antonelli, and I'm told there's a +fascinating man named Rowe." + +"Rolfe," Janet corrected. + +"Rolfe--that's it." She glanced down at the diminutive watch, set with +diamonds, on her wrist, rose and addressed Insall. "Oh dear, I must be +going, I'm to lunch with Nina Carfax at one, and she's promised to tell +me a lot of things. She's writing an article for Craven's Weekly all +about the strike and the suffering and injustice--she says it's been +horribly misrepresented to the public, the mill owners have had it all +their own way. I think what you're doing is splendid, Brooks, only--" +here she gave him an appealing, rather commiserating look--"only I do +wish you would take more interest in--in underlying principles." + +Insall smiled. + +"It's a question of brains. You have to have brains to be a +sociologist," he answered, as he held up for her the fur coat. With a +gesture of gentle reproof she slipped into it, and turned to Janet. + +"You must let me see more of you, my dear," she said. "I'm at the best +hotel, I can't remember the name, they're all so horrible--but I'll be +here until to-morrow afternoon. I want to find out everything. Come and +call on me. You're quite the most interesting person I've met for a long +time--I don't think you realize how interesting you are. Au revoir!" +She did not seem to expect any reply, taking acquiescence for granted. +Glancing once more at the rows of children, who had devoured their meal +in an almost uncanny silence, she exclaimed, "The dears! I'm going to +send you a cheque, Brooks, even if you have been horrid to me--you always +are." + +"Horrid!" repeated Insall, "put it down to ignorance." + +He accompanied her down the stairs. From her willowy walk a +sophisticated observer would have hazarded the guess that her search for +an occupation had included a course of lessons in fancy dancing. + +Somewhat dazed by this interview which had been so suddenly forced upon +her, Janet remained seated on the platform. She had the perception to +recognize that in Mrs. Brocklehurst and Insall she had come in contact +with a social stratum hitherto beyond the bounds of her experience; those +who belonged to that stratum were not characterized by the possession of +independent incomes alone, but by an attitude toward life, a manner of +not appearing to take its issues desperately. Ditmar was not like that. +She felt convicted of enthusiasms, she was puzzled, rather annoyed and +ashamed. Insall and Mrs. Brocklehurst, different though they were, had +this attitude in common.... Insall, when he returned, regarded her +amusedly. + +"So you'd like to exterminate Mrs. Brocklehurst?" he asked. + +And Janet flushed. "Well, she forced me to say it." + +"Oh, it didn't hurt her," he said. + +"And it didn't help her," Janet responded quickly. + +"No, it didn't help her," Insall agreed, and laughed. + +"But I'm not sure it isn't true," she went on, "that we want what she's +got." The remark, on her own lips, surprised Janet a little. She had +not really meant to make it. Insall seemed to have the quality of +forcing one to think out loud. + +"And what she wants, you've got," he told her. + +"What have I got?" + +"Perhaps you'll find out, some day." + +"It may be too late," she exclaimed. "If you'd only tell me, it might +help." + +"I think it's something you'll have to discover for yourself," he +replied, more gravely than was his wont. + +She was silent a moment, and then she demanded: "Why didn't you tell me +who you were? You let me think, when I met you in Silliston that day, +that you were a carpenter. I didn't know you'd written books." + +"You can't expect writers to wear uniforms, like policemen--though +perhaps we ought to, it might be a little fairer to the public," he said. +"Besides, I am a carpenter, a better carpenter than a writer.." + +"I'd give anything to be an author!" she cried. + +"It's a hard life," he assured her. "We have to go about seeking +inspiration from others." + +"Is that why you came to Hampton?" + +"Well, not exactly. It's a queer thing about inspiration, you only find +it when you're not looking for it." + +She missed the point of this remark, though his eyes were on her. They +were not like Rolfe's eyes, insinuating, possessive; they had the +anomalistic quality, of being at once personel and impersonal, friendly, +alight, evoking curiosity yet compelling trust. + +"And you didn't tell me," he reproached her, "that you were at I.W.W. +Headquarters." + +A desire for self-justification impelled her to exclaim: "You don't +believe in Syndicalism--and yet you've come here to feed these children!" + +"Oh, I think I understand the strike," he said. + +"How? Have you seen it? Have you heard the arguments?" + +"No. I've seen you. You've explained it." + +"To Mrs. Brocklehurst?" + +"It wasn't necessary," he replied--and immediately added, in semi-serious +apology: "I thought it was admirable, what you said. If she'd talked to +a dozen syndicalist leaders, she couldn't have had it put more clearly. +Only I'm afraid she doesn't know the truth when she hears it." + +"Now you're making fun of me!" + +"Indeed I'm not," he protested. + +"But I didn't give any of the arguments, any of the--philosophy," she +pronounced the word hesitatingly. "I don't understand it yet as well as +I should." + +"You are it," he said. "It's not always easy to understand what we are-- +it's generally after we've become something else that we comprehend what +we have been." + +And while she was pondering over this one of the ladies who had been +waiting on the table came toward Insall. + +"The children have finished, Brooks," she informed him. "It's time to +let in the others." + +Insall turned to Janet. "This is Miss Bumpus--and this is Mrs. Maturin," +he said. "Mrs. Maturin lives in Silliston." + +The greeting of this lady differed from that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. She, +too, took Janet's hand. + +"Have you come to help us?" she asked. + +And Janet said: "Oh, I'd like to, but I have other work." + +"Come in and see us again," said Insall, and Janet, promising, took her +leave.... + +"Who is she, Brooks?" Mrs. Maturin asked, when Janet had gone. + +"Well," he answered, "I don't know. What does it matter?" + +Mrs. Maturin smiled. + +"I should say that it did matter," she replied. "But there's something +unusual about her--where did you find her?" + +"She found me." And Insall explained. "She was a stenographer, it +seems, but now she's enlisted heart and soul with the syndicalists," he +added. + +"A history?" Mrs. Maturin queried. "Well, I needn't ask--it's written on +her face." + +"That's all I know," said Insall. + +"I'd like to know," said Mrs. Maturin. "You say she's in the strike?" + +"I should rather put it that the strike is in her." + +"What do you mean, Brooks?" + +But Insall did not reply. + +Janet came away from Dey Street in a state of mental and emotional +confusion. The encounter with Mrs. Brocklehurst had been upsetting; she +had an uneasy feeling of having made a fool of herself in Insall's eyes; +she desired his approval, even on that occasion when she had first met +him and mistaken him for a workman she had been conscious of a compelling +faculty in him, of a pressure he exerted demanding justification of +herself; and to-day, because she was now pledged to Syndicalism, because +she had made the startling discovery that he was a writer of some renown, +she had been more than ever anxious to vindicate her cause. She found +herself, indeed, wondering uneasily whether there were a higher truth of +which he was in possession. And the fact that his attitude toward her +had been one of sympathy and friendliness rather than of disapproval, +that his insight seemed to have fathomed her case, apprehended it in all +but the details, was even more disturbing--yet vaguely consoling. The +consolatory element in the situation was somehow connected with the lady, +his friend from Silliston, to whom he had introduced her and whose image +now came before her the more vividly, perhaps, in contrast with that of +Mrs. Brocklehurst. Mrs. Maturin--could Janet have so expressed her +thought! had appeared as an extension of Insall's own personality. She +was a strong, tall, vital woman with a sweet irregularity of feature, +with a heavy crown of chestnut hair turning slightly grey, quaintly +braided, becomingly framing her face. Her colour was high. The +impression she conveyed of having suffered was emphasized by the simple +mourning gown she wore, but the dominant note she had struck was one of +dependability. It was, after all, Insall's dominant, too. Insall had +asked her to call again; and the reflection that she might do so was +curiously comforting. The soup kitchen in the loft, with these two +presiding over it, took on something of the aspect of a sanctuary.... + +Insall, in some odd manner, and through the medium of that frivolous +lady, had managed to reenforce certain doubts that had been stirring in +Janet--doubts of Rolfe, of the verity of the doctrine which with such +abandon she had embraced. It was Insall who, though remaining silent, +just by being there seemed to have suggested her manner of dealing with +Mrs. Brocklehurst. It had, indeed, been his manner of dealing with Mrs. +Brocklehurst. Janet had somehow been using his words, his method, and +thus for the first time had been compelled to look objectively on what +she had deemed a part of herself. We never know what we are, he had +said, until we become something else! He had forced her to use an +argument that failed to harmonize, somehow, with Rolfe's poetical +apologetics. Stripped of the glamour of these, was not Rolfe's doctrine +just one of taking, taking? And when the workers were in possession of +all, would not they be as badly off as Mrs. Brocklehurst or Ditmar? +Rolfe, despite the inspiring intellectual creed he professed, lacked the +poise and unity that go with happiness. He wanted things, for himself: +whereas she beheld in Insall one who seemed emancipated from possessions, +whose life was so organized as to make them secondary affairs. And she +began to wonder what Insall would think of Ditmar. + +These sudden flashes of tenderness for Ditmar startled and angered her. +She had experienced them before, and always had failed to account for +their intrusion into a hatred she cherished. Often, at her desk in the +bibliotheque, she had surprised herself speculating upon what Ditmar +might be doing at that moment; and it seemed curious, living in the same +city with him, that she had not caught a glimpse of him during the +strike. More than once, moved by a perverse impulse, she had ventured of +an evening down West Street toward the guard of soldiers in the hope of +catching sight of him. He had possessed her, and the memory of the wild +joy of that possession, of that surrender to great strength, refused to +perish. Why, at such moments, should she glory in a strength that had +destroyed her and why, when she heard him cursed as the man who stood, +more than any other, in the way of the strikers victory, should she +paradoxically and fiercely rejoice? why should she feel pride when she +was told of the fearlessness with which he went about the streets, and +her heart stop beating when she thought of the possibility of his being +shot? For these unwelcome phenomena within herself Janet could not +account. When they disturbed and frightened her, she plunged into her +work with the greater zeal.... + +As the weeks went by, the strain of the strike began to tell on the weak, +the unprepared, on those who had many mouths to feed. Shivering with the +cold of that hardest of winters, these unfortunates flocked to the +Franco-Belgian Hall, where a little food or money in proportion to the +size of their families was doled out to them. In spite of the +contributions received by mail, of the soup kitchens and relief stations +set up by various organizations in various parts of the city, the supply +little more than sufficed to keep alive the more needy portion of the +five and twenty thousand who now lacked all other means of support. +Janet's heart was wrung as she gazed at the gaunt, bewildered faces +growing daily more tragic, more bewildered and gaunt; she marvelled at +the animal-like patience of these Europeans, at the dumb submission of +most of them to privations that struck her as appalling. Some indeed +complained, but the majority recited in monotonous, unimpassioned tones +their stories of suffering, or of ill treatment by the "Cossacks" or the +police. The stipends were doled out by Czernowitz, but all through the +week there were special appeals. Once it was a Polish woman, wan and +white, who carried her baby wrapped in a frayed shawl. + +"Wahna littel money for milk," she said, when at length their attention +was drawn to her. + +"But you get your money, every Saturday," the secretary informed her +kindly. + +She shook her head. + +"Baby die, 'less I have littel milk--I show you." + +Janet drew back before the sight of the child with its sunken cheeks and +ghastly blue lips .... And she herself went out with the woman to buy +the milk, and afterwards to the dive in Kendall Street which she called +home--in one of those "rear" tenements separated from the front buildings +by a narrow court reeking with refuse. The place was dank and cold, +malodorous. The man of the family, the lodgers who lived in the other +room of the kennel, were out on the streets. But when her eyes grew used +to the darkness she perceived three silent children huddled in the bed in +the corner.... + +On another occasion a man came running up the stairs of the Hall and +thrust his way into a meeting of the Committee--one of those normally +happy, irresponsible Syrians who, because of a love for holidays, are the +despair of mill overseers. Now he was dazed, breathless, his great eyes +grief-stricken like a wounded animal's. + +"She is killidd, my wife--de polees, dey killidd her!" + +It was Anna Mower who investigated the case. "The girl wasn't doing +nothing but walk along Hudson Street when one of those hirelings set on +her and beat her. She put out her hand because she thought he'd hit her- +-and he gave her three or four with his billy and left her in the gutter. +If you'd see her you'd know she wouldn't hurt a fly, she's that gentle +looking, like all the Syrian women. She had a `Don't be a scab' ribbon +on--that's all she done! Somebody'll shoot that guy, and I wouldn't +blame 'em." Anna stood beside Janet's typewriter, her face red with +anger as she told the story. + +"And how is the woman now?" asked Janet. + +"In bed, with two ribs broken and a bruise on her back and a cut on her +head. I got a doctor. He could hardly see her in that black place they +live."... + +Such were the incidents that fanned the hatred into hotter and hotter +flame. Daily reports were brought in of arrests, of fines and +imprisonments for picketing, or sometimes merely for booing at the +remnant of those who still clung to their employment. One magistrate in +particular, a Judge Hennessy, was hated above all others for giving the +extreme penalty of the law, and even stretching it. "Minions, slaves of +the capitalists, of the masters," the courts were called, and Janet +subscribed to these epithets, beheld the judges as willing agents of a +tyranny from which she, too, had suffered. There arrived at Headquarters +frenzied bearers of rumours such as that of the reported intention of +landlords to remove the windows from the tenements if the rents were not +paid. Antonelli himself calmed these. "Let the landlords try it!" he +said phlegmatically.... + +After a while, as the deadlock showed no signs of breaking, the siege of +privation began to tell, ominous signs of discontent became apparent. +Chief among the waverers were those who had come to America with visions +of a fortune, who had practised a repulsive thrift in order to acquire +real estate, who carried in their pockets dog-eared bank books recording +payments already made. These had consented to the strike reluctantly, +through fear, or had been carried away by the eloquence and enthusiasm of +the leaders, by the expectation that the mill owners would yield at once. +Some went back to work, only to be "seen" by the militant, watchful +pickets--generally in their rooms, at night. One evening, as Janet was +walking home, she chanced to overhear a conversation taking place in the +dark vestibule of a tenement. + +"Working to-day?" + +"Yah." + +"Work to-morrow?" + +Hesitation. "I d'no." + +"You work, I cut your throat." A significant noise. "Naw, I no work." + +"Shake!" + +She hurried on trembling, not with fear, but exultingly. Nor did she +reflect that only a month ago such an occurrence would have shocked and +terrified her. This was war.... On her way to Fillmore Street she +passed, at every street corner in this district, a pacing sentry, muffled +in greatcoat and woollen cap, alert and watchful, the ugly knife on the +end of his gun gleaming in the blue light of the arc. It did not occur +to her, despite the uniform, that the souls of many of these men were +divided also, that their voices and actions, when she saw them +threatening with their bayonets, were often inspired by that inner +desperation characteristic of men who find themselves unexpectedly in +false situations. Once she heard a woman shriek as the sharp knife +grazed her skirt: at another time a man whose steps had been considerably +hurried turned, at a safe distance, and shouted defiantly: + +"Say, who are you working for? Me or the Wool Trust?" + +"Aw, get along," retorted the soldier, "or I'll give you yours." + +The man caught sight of Janet's button as she overtook him. He was +walking backward. + +"That feller has a job in a machine shop over in Barrington, I seen him +there when I was in the mills. And here he is tryin' to put us out-- +ain't that the limit?" + +The thud of horses' feet in the snow prevented her reply. The +silhouettes of the approaching squad of cavalry were seen down the +street, and the man fled precipitately into an alleyway.... + +There were ludicrous incidents, too, though never lacking in a certain +pathos. The wife of a Russian striker had her husband arrested because +he had burned her clothes in order to prevent her returning to the mill. +From the police station he sent a compatriot with a message to +Headquarters. "Oye, he fix her! She no get her jawb now--she gotta stay +in bed!" this one cried triumphantly. + +"She was like to tear me in pieces when I brought her the clothes," said +Anna Mower, who related her experience with mingled feelings. "I +couldn't blame her. You see, it was the kids crying with cold and +starvation, and she got so she just couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand +it, neither." + +Day by day the element who wished to compromise and end the strike grew +stronger, brought more and more pressure on the leaders. These people +were subsidized, Antonelli declared, by the capitalists.... + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +A more serious atmosphere pervaded Headquarters, where it was realized +that the issue hung in the balance. And more proclamations, a la +Napoleon, were issued to sustain and hearten those who were finding bread +and onions meagre fare, to shame the hesitating, the wavering. As has +been said, it was Rolfe who, because of his popular literary gift, +composed these appeals for the consideration of the Committee, dictating +them to Janet as he paced up and down the bibliotheque, inhaling +innumerable cigarettes and flinging down the ends on the floor. A famous +one was headed "Shall Wool and Cotton Kings Rule the Nation?" "We are +winning" it declared. "The World is with us! Forced by the unshaken +solidarity of tens of thousands, the manufacturers offer bribes to end +the reign of terror they have inaugurated.... Inhuman treatment and +oppressive toil have brought all nationalities together into one great +army to fight against a brutal system of exploitation. In years and +years of excessive labour we have produced millions for a class of idle +parasites, who enjoy all the luxuries of life while our wives have to +leave their firesides and our children their schools to eke out a +miserable existence." And this for the militia: "The lowest aim of life +is to be a soldier! The `good' soldier never tries to distinguish right +from wrong, he never thinks, he never reasons, he only obeys--" + +"But," Janet was tempted to say, "your syndicalism declares that none of +us should think or reason. We should only feel." She was beginning to +detect Rolfe's inconsistencies, yet she refrained from interrupting the +inspirational flow. + +"The soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine." Rolfe +was fond of adjectives. "All that is human in him, all that is divine +has been sworn away when he took the enlistment oath. No man can fall +lower than a soldier. It is a depth beyond which we cannot go." + +"All that is human, all that is divine," wrote Janet, and thrilled a +little at the words. Why was it that mere words, and their arrangement +in certain sequences, gave one a delicious, creepy feeling up and down +the spine? Her attitude toward him had become more and more critical, +she had avoided him when she could, but when he was in this ecstatic mood +she responded, forgot his red lips, his contradictions, lost herself in a +medium she did not comprehend. Perhaps it was because, in his absorption +in the task, he forgot her, forgot himself. She, too, despised the +soldiers, fervently believed they had sold themselves to the oppressors +of mankind. And Rolfe, when in the throes of creation, had the manner of +speaking to the soldiers themselves, as though these were present in the +lane just below the window; as though he were on the tribune. At such +times he spoke with such rapidity that, quick though she was, she could +scarcely keep up with him. "Most of you, Soldiers, are workingmen!" he +cried. "Yesterday you were slaving in the mills yourselves. You will +profit by our victory. Why should you wish to crush us? Be human!" + +Pale, excited, he sank down into the chair by her side and lit another +cigarette. + +"They ought to listen to that!" he exclaimed. "It's the best one I've +done yet." + +Night had come. Czernowitz sat in the other room, talking to Jastro, a +buzz of voices came from the hall through the thin pine panels of the +door. All day long a sixty-mile gale had twisted the snow of the lane +into whirling, fantastic columns and rattled the windows of Franco- +Belgian Hall. But now the wind had fallen.... Presently, as his self- +made music ceased to vibrate within him, Rolfe began to watch the girl as +she sat motionless, with parted lips and eyes alight, staring at the +reflection of the lamp in the blue-black window. + +"Is that the end?" she asked, at length. + +"Yes," he replied sensitively. "Can't you see it's a climax? Don't you +think it's a good one?" + +She looked at him, puzzled. + +"Why, yes," she said, "I think it's fine. You see, I have to take it +down so fast I can't always follow it as I'd like to." + +"When you feel, you can do anything," he exclaimed. "It is necessary to +feel." + +"It is necessary to know," she told him. + +"I do not understand you," he cried, leaning toward her. "Sometimes you +are a flame--a wonderful, scarlet flame I can express it in no other way. +Or again, you are like the Madonna of our new faith, and I wish I were a +del Sarto to paint you. And then again you seem as cold as your New +England snow, you have no feeling, you are an Anglo-Saxon--a Puritan." + +She smiled, though she felt a pang of reminiscence at the word. Ditmar +had called her so, too. + +"I can't help what I am," she said. + +"It is that which inhibits you," he declared. "That Puritanism. It must +be eradicated before you can develop, and then--and then you will be +completely wonderful. When this strike is over, when we have time, I +will teach you many things--develop you. We will read Sorel together he +is beautiful, like poetry--and the great poets, Dante and Petrarch and +Tasso--yes, and d'Annunzio. We shall live." + +"We are living, now," she answered. The look with which she surveyed him +he found enigmatic. And then, abruptly, she rose and went to her +typewriter. + +"You don't believe what I say!" he reproached her. + +But she was cool. "I'm not sure that I believe all of it. I want to +think it out for myself--to talk to others, too." + +"What others?" + +"Nobody in particular--everybody," she replied, as she set her notebook +on the rack. + +"There is some one else!" he exclaimed, rising. + +"There is every one else," she said. + +As was his habit when agitated, he began to smoke feverishly, glancing at +her from time to time as she fingered the keys. Experience had led him +to believe that he who finds a woman in revolt and gives her a religion +inevitably becomes her possessor. But more than a month had passed, he +had not become her possessor--and now for the first time there entered +his mind a doubt as to having given her a religion! The obvious +inference was that of another man, of another influence in opposition to +his own; characteristically, however, he shrank from accepting this, +since he was of those who believe what they wish to believe. The sudden +fear of losing her--intruding itself immediately upon an ecstatic, +creative mood--unnerved him, yet he strove to appear confident as he +stood over her. + +"When you've finished typewriting that, we'll go out to supper," he told +her. + +But she shook her head. + +"Why not?" + +"I don't want to," she replied--and then, to soften her refusal, she +added, "I can't, to-night." + +"But you never will come with me anymore. Why is it?" + +"I'm very tired at night. I don't feel like going out." She sought to +temporize. + +"You've changed!" he accused her. "You're not the same as you were at +first--you avoid me." + +The swift gesture with which she flung over the carriage of her machine +might have warned him. + +"I don't like that Hampton Hotel," she flashed back. "I'm--I'm not a +vagabond--yet." + +"A vagabond!" he repeated. + +She went on savagely with her work.. + +"You have two natures," he exclaimed. "You are still a bourgeoise, a +Puritan. You will not be yourself, you will not be free until you get +over that." + +"I'm not sure I want to get over it." + +He leaned nearer to her. + +"But now that I have found you, Janet, I will not let you go." + +"You've no rights over me," she cried, in sudden alarm and anger. "I'm +not doing this work, I'm not wearing myself out here for you." + +"Then--why are you doing it?" His suspicions rose again, and made him +reckless. + +"To help the strikers," she said.... He could get no more out of her, +and presently, when Anna Mower entered the room, he left it.... + +More than once since her first visit to the soup kitchen in Dey Street +Janet had returned to it. The universe rocked, but here was equilibrium. +The streets were filled with soldiers, with marching strikers, terrible +things were constantly happening; the tension at Headquarters never +seemed to relax. Out in the world and within her own soul were strife +and suffering, and sometimes fear; the work in which she sought to lose +herself no longer sufficed to keep her from thinking, and the spectacle-- +when she returned home--of her mother's increasing apathy grew more and +more appalling. But in Dey Street she gained calmness, was able to renew +something of that sense of proportion the lack of which, in the chaos in +which she was engulfed, often brought her to the verge of madness. At +first she had had a certain hesitation about going back, and on the +occasion of her second visit had walked twice around the block before +venturing to enter. She had no claim on this man. He was merely a +chance acquaintance, a stranger--and yet he seemed nearer to her, to +understand her better than any one else she knew in the world. This was +queer, because she had not explained herself; nor had he asked her for +any confidences. She would have liked to confide in him--some things: he +gave her the impression of comprehending life; of having, as his +specialty, humanity itself; he should, she reflected, have been a +minister, and smiled at the thought: ministers, at any rate, ought to be +like him, and then one might embrace Christianity--the religion of her +forefathers that Rolfe ridiculed. But there was about Insall nothing of +religion as she had grown up to apprehend the term. + +Now that she had taken her courage in her hands and renewed her visits, +they seemed to be the most natural proceedings in the world. On that +second occasion, when she had opened the door and palpitatingly climbed +to the loft, the second batch of children were finishing their midday +meal,--rather more joyously, she thought, than before,--and Insall +himself was stooping over a small boy whom he had taken away from the +table. He did not notice her at once, and Janet watched them. The child +had a cough, his extreme thinness was emphasized by the coat he wore, +several sizes too large for him. + +"Yon come along with me, Marcus, I guess I can fit you out," Insall was +saying, when he looked up and saw Janet. + +"Why, if it isn't Miss Bumpus! I thought you'd forgotten us." + +"Oh no," she protested. "I wanted to come." + +"Then why didn't you?" + +"Well, I have come," she said, with a little sigh, and he did not press +her further. And she refrained from offering any conventional excuse, +such as that of being interested in the children. She had come to see +him, and such was the faith with which he inspired her--now that she was +once more in his presence--that she made no attempt to hide the fact. + +"You've never seen my clothing store, have you?" he asked. And with the +child's hand in his he led the way into a room at the rear of the loft. +A kit of carpenter's tools was on the floor, and one wall was lined with +box-like compartments made of new wood, each with its label in neat +lettering indicating the articles contained therein. "Shoes?" he +repeated, as he ran his eye down the labels and suddenly opened a drawer. +"Here we are, Marcus. Sit down there on the bench, and take off the +shoes you have on." + +The boy had one of those long faces of the higher Jewish type, +intelligent, wistful. He seemed dazed by Insall's kindness. The shoes +he wore were those of an adult, but cracked and split, revealing the +cotton stocking and here and there the skin. His little blue hands +fumbled with the knotted strings that served for facings until Insall, +producing a pocket knife, deftly cut the strings. + +"Those are summer shoes, Marcus--well ventilated." + +"They're by me since August," said the boy. + +"And now the stockings," prompted Insall. The old ones, wet, +discoloured, and torn, were stripped off, and thick, woollen ones +substituted. Insall, casting his eye over the open drawer, chose a pair +of shoes that had been worn, but which were stout and serviceable, and +taking one in his hand knelt down before the child. "Let's see how good +a guesser I am," he said, loosening the strings and turning back the +tongue, imitating good-humouredly the deferential manner of a salesman of +footwear as he slipped on the shoe. "Why, it fits as if it were made for +you! Now for the other one. Yes, your feet are mates--I know a man who +wears a whole size larger on his left foot." The dazed expression +remained on the boy's face. The experience was beyond him. "That's +better," said Insall, as he finished the lacing. "Keep out of the snow, +Marcus, all you can. Wet feet aren't good for a cough, you know. And +when you come in to supper a nice doctor will be here, and we'll see if +we can't get rid of the cough." + +The boy nodded. He got to his feet, stared down at the shoes, and walked +slowly toward the door, where he turned. + +"Thank you, Mister Insall," he said. + +And Insall, still sitting on his heels, waved his hand. + +"It is not to mention it," he replied. "Perhaps you may have a clothing +store of your own some day--who knows!" He looked up at Janet amusedly +and then, with a spring, stood upright, his easy, unconscious pose +betokening command of soul and body. "I ought to have kept a store," he +observed. "I missed my vocation." + +"It seems to me that you missed a great many vocations," she replied. +Commonplaces alone seemed possible, adequate. "I suppose you made all +those drawers yourself." + +He bowed in acknowledgment of her implied tribute. With his fine nose +and keen eyes--set at a slightly downward angle, creased at the corners-- +with his thick, greying hair, despite his comparative youth he had the +look one associates with portraits of earlier, patriarchal Americans.... +These calls of Janet's were never of long duration. She had fallen into +the habit of taking her lunch between one and two, and usually arrived +when the last installment of youngsters were finishing their meal; +sometimes they were filing out, stopping to form a group around Insall, +who always managed to say something amusing--something pertinent and +good-naturedly personal. For he knew most of them by name, and had +acquired a knowledge of certain individual propensities and +idiosyncrasies that delighted their companions. + +"What's the trouble, Stepan--swallowed your spoon?" Stepan was known to +be greedy. Or he would suddenly seize an unusually solemn boy from +behind and tickle him until the child screamed with laughter. It was, +indeed, something of an achievement to get on terms of confidence with +these alien children of the tenements and the streets who from their +earliest years had been forced to shift for themselves, and many of whom +had acquired a precocious suspicion of Greeks bearing gifts. Insall +himself had used the phrase, and explained it to Janet. That sense of +caveat donor was perhaps their most pathetic characteristic. But he +broke it down; broke down, too, the shyness accompanying it, the shyness +and solemnity emphasized in them by contact with hardship and poverty, +with the stark side of life they faced at home. He had made them--Mrs. +Maturin once illuminatingly remarked--more like children. Sometimes he +went to see their parents,--as in the case of Marcus--to suggest certain +hygienic precautions in his humorous way; and his accounts of these +visits, too, were always humorous. Yet through that humour ran a strain +of pathos that clutched--despite her smile--at Janet's heartstrings. +This gift of emphasizing and heightening tragedy while apparently dealing +in comedy she never ceased to wonder at. She, too, knew that tragedy of +the tenements, of the poor, its sordidness and cruelty. All her days she +had lived precariously near it, and lately she had visited these people, +had been torn by the sight of what they endured. But Insall's jokes, +while they stripped it of sentimentality of which she had an instinctive +dislike--made it for her even more poignant. One would have thought, to +have such an insight into it, that he too must have lived it, must have +been brought up in some dirty alley of a street. That gift, of course, +must be a writer's gift. + +When she saw the waifs trooping after him down the stairs, Mrs. Maturin +called him the Pied Piper of Hampton. + +As time went on, Janet sometimes wondered over the quiet manner in which +these two people, Insall and Mrs. Maturin, took her visits as though they +were matters of course, and gave her their friendship. There was, +really, no obvious excuse for her coming, not even that of the waifs for +food--and yet she came to be fed. The sustenance they gave her would +have been hard to define; it flowed not so much from what they said, as +from what they were; it was in the atmosphere surrounding them. +Sometimes she looked at Mrs. Maturin to ask herself what this lady would +say if she knew her history, her relationship with Ditmar--which had been +her real reason for entering the ranks of the strikers. And was it fair +for her, Janet, to permit Mrs. Maturin to bestow her friendship without +revealing this? She could not make up her mind as to what this lady +would say. Janet had had no difficulty in placing Ditmar; not much +trouble, after her first surprise was over, in classifying Rolfe and the +itinerant band of syndiealists who had descended upon her restricted +world. But Insall and Mrs. Maturin were not to be ticketed. What +chiefly surprised her, in addition to their kindliness, to their taking +her on faith without the formality of any recommendation or introduction, +was their lack of intellectual narrowness. She did not, of course, so +express it. But she sensed, in their presence, from references casually +let fall in their conversation, a wider culture of which they were in +possession, a culture at once puzzling and exciting, one that she +despaired of acquiring for herself. Though it came from reading, it did +not seem "literary," according to the notion she had conceived of the +term. Her speculations concerning it must be focussed and interpreted. +It was a culture, in the first place, not harnessed to an obvious Cause: +something like that struck her. It was a culture that contained +tolerance and charity, that did not label a portion of mankind as its +enemy, but seemed, by understanding all, to forgive all. It had no +prejudices; nor did it boast, as the Syndicalists boasted, of its absence +of convention. And little by little Janet connected it with Silliston. + +"It must be wonderful to live in such a place as that," she exclaimed, +when the Academy was mentioned. On this occasion Insall had left for a +moment, and she was in the little room he called his "store," alone with +Mrs. Maturin, helping to sort out a batch of garments just received. + +"It was there you first met Brooks, wasn't it?" She always spoke of him +as Brooks. "He told me about it, how you walked out there and asked him +about a place to lunch." Mrs. Maturin laughed. "You didn't know what to +make of him, did you?" + +"I thought he was a carpenter!" said Janet. "I--I never should have +taken him for an author. But of course I don't know any other authors." + +"Well, he's not like any of them, he's just like himself. You can't put +a tag on people who are really big." + +Janet considered this. "I never thought of that. I suppose not," she +agreed. + +Mrs. Maturin glanced at her. "So you liked Sflliston," she said. + +"I liked it better than any place I ever saw. I haven't seen many +places, but I'm sure that few can be nicer." + +"What did you like about it, Janet?" Mrs. Maturin was interested. + +"It's hard to say," Janet replied, after a moment. "It gave me such a +feeling of peace--of having come home, although I lived in Hampton. I +can't express it." + +"I think you're expressing it rather well," said Mrs. Maturin. + +"It was so beautiful in the spring," Janet continued, dropping the coat +she held into the drawer. "And it wasn't just the trees and the grass +with the yellow dandelions, it was the houses, too--I've often wondered +why those houses pleased me so much. I wanted to live in every one of +them. Do you know that feeling?" Mrs. Maturin nodded. "They didn't +hurt your eyes when you looked at them, and they seemed to be so much at +home there, even the new ones. The new ones were like the children of +the old." + +"I'll tell the architect. He'll be pleased," said Mrs. Maturin. + +Janet flushed. + +"Am I being silly?" she asked. + +"No; my dear," Mrs. Maturin replied. "You've expressed what I feel about +Silliston. What do you intend to do when the strike is over?" + +"I hadn't thought." Janet started at the question, but Mrs. Maturin did +not seem to notice the dismay in her tone. "You don't intend to--to +travel around with the I. W. W. people, do you?" + +"I--I hadn't thought," Janet faltered. It was the first time Mrs. +Maturin had spoken of her connection with Syndicalism. And she surprised +herself by adding: "I don't see how I could. They can get stenographers +anywhere, and that's all I'm good for." And the question occurred to +her--did she really wish to? + +"What I was going to suggest," continued Mrs. Maturin, quietly, "was that +you might try Silliston. There's a chance for a good stenographer there, +and I'm sure you are a good one. So many of the professors send to +Boston." + +Janet stood stock still. Then she said: "But you don't know anything +about me, Mrs. Maturin." + +Kindliness burned in the lady's eyes as she replied: "I know more now-- +since you've told me I know nothing. Of course there's much I don't +know, how you, a stenographer, became involved in this strike and joined +the I. W. W. But you shall tell me or not, as you wish, when we become +better friends." + +Janet felt the blood beating in her throat, and an impulse to confess +everything almost mastered her. From the first she had felt drawn toward +Mrs. Maturin, who seemed to hold out to her the promise of a woman's +friendship--for which she had felt a life-long need: a woman friend who +would understand the insatiate yearning in her that gave her no rest in +her search for a glittering essence never found, that had led her only to +new depths of bitterness and despair. It would destroy her, if indeed it +had not already done so. Mrs. Maturin, Insall, seemed to possess the +secret that would bring her peace--and yet, in spite of something urging +her to speak, she feared the risk of losing them. Perhaps, after all, +they would not understand! perhaps it was too late! + +"You do not believe in the Industrial Workers of the World," was what she +said. + +Mrs. Maturin herself, who had been moved and excited as she gazed at +Janet, was taken by surprise. A few moments elapsed before she could +gather herself to reply, and then she managed to smile. + +"I do not believe that wisdom will die with them, my dear. Their--their +doctrine is too simple, it does not seem as if life, the social order is +to be so easily solved." + +"But you must sympathize with them, with the strikers." Janet's gesture +implied that the soup kitchen was proof of this. + +"Ah," replied Mrs. Maturin, gently, "that is different to understand +them. There is one philosophy for the lamb, and another for the wolf." + +"You mean," said Janet, trembling, "that what happens to us makes us +inclined to believe certain things?" + +"Precisely," agreed Mrs. Maturin, in admiration. "But I must be honest +with you, it was Brooks who made me see it." + +"But--he never said that to me. And I asked him once, almost the same +question." + +"He never said it to me, either," Mrs. Maturin confessed. "He doesn't +tell you what he believes; I simply gathered that this is his idea. And +apparently the workers can only improve their condition by strikes, by +suffering--it seems to be the only manner in which they can convince the +employers that the conditions are bad. It isn't the employers' fault." + +"Not their fault!" Janet repeated. + +"Not in a large sense," said Mrs. Maturin. "When people grow up to look +at life in a certain way, from a certain viewpoint, it is difficult, +almost impossible to change them. It's--it's their religion. They are +convinced that if the world doesn't go on in their way, according to +their principles, everything will be destroyed. They aren't inhuman. +Within limits everybody is more than willing to help the world along, if +only they can be convinced that what they are asked to do will help." + +Janet breathed deeply. She was thinking of Ditmar. + +And Mrs. Maturin, regarding her, tactfully changed the subject. + +"I didn't intend to give you a lecture on sociology or psychology, my +dear," she said. "I know nothing about them, although we have a +professor who does. Think over what I've said about coming to Silliston. +It will do you good--you are working too hard here. I know you would +enjoy Silliston. And Brooks takes such an interest in you," she added +impulsively. "It is quite a compliment." + +"But why?" Janet demanded, bewildered. + +"Perhaps it's because you have--possibilities. You may be typewriting +his manuscripts. And then, I am a widow, and often rather lonely--you +could come in and read to me occasionally." + +"But--I've never read anything." + +"How fortunate!" said Insall, who had entered the doorway in time to hear +Janet's exclamation. "More than half of modern culture depends on what +one shouldn't read." + +Mrs. Maturin laughed. But Insall waved his hand deprecatingly. + +"That isn't my own," he confessed. "I cribbed it from a clever +Englishman. But I believe it's true." + +"I think I'll adopt her," said Mrs. Maturin to Insall, when she had +repeated to him the conversation. "I know you are always convicting me +of enthusiasms, Brooks, and I suppose I do get enthusiastic." + +"Well, you adopt her--and I'll marry her," replied Insall, with a smile, +as he cut the string from the last bundle of clothing. + +"You might do worse. It would be a joke if you did--!" + +His friend paused to consider this preposterous possibility. "One never +can tell whom a man like you, an artist, will marry." + +"We've no business to marry at all," said Insall, laughing. "I often +wonder where that romantic streak will land you, Augusta. But you do +have a delightful time!" + +"Don't begrudge it me, it makes life so much more interesting," Mrs. +Maturin begged, returning his smile. "I haven't the faintest idea that +you will marry her or any one else. But I insist on saying she's your +type--she's the kind of a person artists do dig up and marry--only better +than most of them, far better." + +"Dig up?" said Insall. + +"Well, you know I'm not a snob--I only mean that she seems to be one of +the surprising anomalies that sometimes occur in--what shall I say?--in +the working-classes. I do feel like a snob when I say that. But what is +it? Where does that spark come from? Is it in our modern air, that +discontent, that desire, that thrusting forth toward a new light-- +something as yet unformulated, but which we all feel, even at small +institutions of learning like Silliston?" + +"Now you're getting beyond me." + +"Oh no, I'm not," Mrs. Maturin retorted confidently. "If you won't talk +about it, I will, I have no shame. And this girl has it--this thing I'm +trying to express. She's modern to her finger tips, and yet she's +extraordinarily American--in spite of her modernity, she embodies in some +queer way our tradition. She loves our old houses at Silliston--they +make her feel at home--that's her own expression." + +"Did she say that?" + +"Exactly. And I know she's of New England ancestry, she told me so. +What I can't make out is, why she joined the I.W.W. That seems so +contradictory." + +"Perhaps she was searching for light there," Insall hazarded. "Why don't +you ask her?" + +"I don't know," replied Mrs. Maturin, thoughtfully. "I want to, my +curiosity almost burns me alive, and yet I don't. She isn't the kind you +can ask personal questions of--that's part of her charm, part of her +individuality. One is a little afraid to intrude. And yet she keeps +coming here--of course you are a sufficient attraction, Brooks. But I +must give her the credit of not flirting with you." + +"I've noticed that, too," said Insall, comically. + +"She's searching for light," Mrs. Maturin went on, struck by the phrase. +"She has an instinct we can give it to her, because we come from an +institution of learning. I felt something of the kind when I suggested +her establishing herself in Silliston. Well, she's more than worth while +experimenting on, she must have lived and breathed what you call the +`movie atmosphere' all her life, and yet she never seems to have read and +absorbed any sentimental literature or cheap religion. She doesn't +suggest the tawdry. That part of her, the intellectual part, is a clear +page to be written upon." + +"There's my chance," said Insall. + +"No, it's my chance--since you're so cynical." + +"I'm not cynical," he protested. + +"I don't believe you really are. And if you are, there may be a judgment +upon you," she added playfully. "I tell you she's the kind of woman +artists go mad about. She has what sentimentalists call temperament, and +after all we haven't any better word to express dynamic desires. She'd +keep you stirred up, stimulated, and you could educate her." + +"No, thanks, I'll leave that to you. He who educates a woman is lost. +But how about Syndicalism and all the mysticism that goes with it? +There's an intellectual over at Headquarters who's been talking to her +about Bergson, the life-force, and the World-We-Ourselves-Create." + +Mrs. Maturin laughed. + +"Well, we go wrong when we don't go right. That's just it, we must go +some way. And I'm sure, from what I gather, that she isn't wholly +satisfied with Syndicalism." + +"What is right?" demanded Insall. + +"Oh, I don't intend to turn her over to Mr. Worrall and make a +sociologist and a militant suffragette out of her. She isn't that kind, +anyhow. But I could give her good literature to read--yours, for +instance," she added maliciously. + +"You're preposterous, Augusta," Insall exclaimed. + +"I may be, but you've got to indulge me. I've taken this fancy to her-- +of course I mean to see more of her. But--you know how hard it is for +me, sometimes, since I've been left alone." + +Insall laid his hand affectionately on her shoulder. + +"I remember what you said the first day I saw her, that the strike was in +her," Mrs. Maturin continued. "Well, I see now that she does express and +typify it--and I don't mean the `labour movement' alone, or this strike +in Rampton, which is symptomatic, but crude. I mean something bigger-- +and I suppose you do--the protest, the revolt, the struggle for self- +realization that is beginning to be felt all over the nation, all over +the world today, that is not yet focussed and self-conscious, but groping +its way, clothing itself in any philosophy that seems to fit it. I can +imagine myself how such a strike as this might appeal to a girl with a +sense of rebellion against sordidness and lack of opportunity--especially +if she has had a tragic experience. And sometimes I suspect she has had +one." + +"Well, it's an interesting theory," Insall admitted indulgently. + +"I'm merely amplifying your suggestions, only. you won't admit that they +are yours. And she was your protegee." "And you are going to take her +off my hands." "I'm not so sure," said Mrs. Maturin. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +The Hampton strike had reached the state of grim deadlock characteristic +of all stubborn wars. There were aggressions, retaliations on both +sides, the antagonism grew more intense. The older labour unions were +accused by the strikers of playing the employers' game, and thus grew to +be hated even more than the "capitalists." These organizations of the +skilled had entered but half-heartedly into a struggle that now began to +threaten, indeed, their very existence, and when it was charged that the +Textile Workers had been attempting to secure recruits from the ranks of +the strikers, and had secretly offered the millowners a scale of demands +in the hope that a sufficient number of operatives would return to work, +and so break the strike; a serious riot was barely averted. "Scab-huntmg +agencies," the unions were called. One morning when it was learned that +the loom-fixers, almost to a man, had gone back to the mills, a streetcar +was stopped near the power house at the end of Faber Street, and in a +twinkling, before the militia or police could interfere, motorman, +conductor, and passengers were dragged from it and the trolley pole +removed. This and a number of similar aggressive acts aroused the mill- +owners and their agents to appeal with renewed vigour to the public +through the newspapers, which it was claimed they owned or subsidized. +Then followed a series of arraignments of the strike leaders calculated +to stir the wildest prejudices and fears of the citizens of Hampton. +Antonelli and Jastro--so rumour had it--in various nightly speeches had +advised their followers to "sleep in the daytime and prowl like wild +animals at night"; urged the power house employees to desert and leave +the city in darkness; made the declaration, "We will win if we raise +scaffolds on every street!" insisted that the strikers, too, should have +"gun permits," since the police hirelings carried arms. And the fact +that the mill-owners replied with pamphlets whose object was proclaimed +to be one of discrediting their leaders in the eyes of the public still +further infuriated the strikers. Such charges, of course, had to be +vehemently refuted, the motives behind them made clear, and counter- +accusations laid at the door of the mill-owners. + +The atmosphere at Headquarters daily grew more tense. At any moment the +spark might be supplied to precipitate an explosion that would shake the +earth. The hungry, made more desperate by their own sufferings or the +spectacle of starving families, were increasingly difficult to control: +many wished to return to work, others clamoured for violence, nor were +these wholly discouraged by a portion of the leaders. A riot seemed +imminent--a riot Antonelli feared and firmly opposed, since it would +alienate the sympathy of that wider public in the country on which the +success of the strike depended. Watchful, yet apparently unconcerned, +unmoved by the quarrels, the fierce demands for "action," he sat on the +little stage, smoking his cigars and reading his newspapers. + +Janet's nerves were taut. There had been times during the past weeks +when she had been aware of new and vaguely disquieting portents. +Inexperience had led her to belittle them, and the absorbing nature of +her work, the excitement due to the strange life of conflict, of new +ideas, into which she had so unreservedly flung herself, the resentment +that galvanized her--all these had diverted her from worry. At night, +hers had been the oblivious slumber of the weary.... And then, as a +desperate wayfarer, pressing on, feels a heavy drop of rain and glances +up to perceive the clouds that have long been gathering, she awoke in the +black morning hours, and fear descended upon her. Suddenly her brain +became hideously active as she lay, dry-upped, staring into the darkness, +striving to convince herself that it could not be. But the thing had its +advocate, also, to summon ingeniously, in cumulative array, those omens +she had ignored: to cause her to piece together, in this moment of +torture, portions of the knowledge of sexual facts that prudery banishes +from education, a smattering of which reaches the ears of such young +women as Janet in devious, roundabout ways. Several times, in the month +just past, she had had unwonted attacks of dizziness, of faintness, and +on one occasion Anna Mower, alarmed, had opened the window of the +bibliotheque and thrust her into the cold air. Now, with a pang of fear +she recalled what Anna had said:-- + +"You're working too hard--you hadn't ought to stay here nights. If it +was some girls I've met, I'd know what to think." + +Strange that the significance of this sentence had failed to penetrate +her consciousness until now! "If it was some girls I've met, I'd know +what to think!" It had come into her mind abruptly; and always, when she +sought to reassure herself, to declare her terror absurd, it returned to +confront her. Heat waves pulsed through her, she grew intolerably warm, +perspiration started from her pores, and she flung off the blankets. The +rain from the roofs was splashing on the bricks of the passage.... What +would Mr. Insall say, if he knew? and Mrs. Maturin? She could never see +them again. Now there was no one to whom to turn, she was cut off, +utterly, from humanity, an outcast. Like Lise! And only a little while +ago she and Lise had lain in that bed together! Was there not somebody +--God? Other people believed in God, prayed to him. She tried to say, +"Oh God, deliver me from this thing!" but the words seemed a mockery. +After all, it was mechanical, it had either happened or it hadn't +happened. A life-long experience in an environment where only unpleasant +things occurred, where miracles were unknown, had effaced a fleeting, +childhood belief in miracles. Cause and effect were the rule. And if +there were a God who did interfere, why hadn't he interfered before this +thing happened? Then would have been the logical time. Why hadn't he +informed her that in attempting to escape from the treadmill in which he +had placed her, in seeking happiness, she had been courting destruction? +Why had he destroyed Lise? And if there were a God, would he comfort her +now, convey to her some message of his sympathy and love? No such +message, alas, seemed to come to her through the darkness. + +After a while--a seemingly interminable while--the siren shrieked, the +bells jangled loudly in the wet air, another day had come. Could she +face it--even the murky grey light of this that revealed the ashes and +litter of the back yard under the downpour? The act of dressing brought +a slight relief; and then, at breakfast, a numbness stole over her-- +suggested and conveyed, perchance, by the apathy of her mother. +Something had killed suffering in Hannah; perhaps she herself would +mercifully lose the power to suffer! But the thought made her shudder. +She could not, like her mother, find a silly refuge in shining dishes, in +cleaning pots and pans, or sit idle, vacant-minded, for long hours in a +spotless kitchen. What would happen to her?... Howbeit, the ache that +had tortured her became a dull, leaden pain, like that she had known at +another time--how long ago--when the suffering caused by Ditmar's +deception had dulled, when she had sat in the train on her way back to +Hampton from Boston, after seeing Lise. The pain would throb again, +unsupportably, and she would wake, and this time it would drive her--she +knew not where. + +She was certain, now, that the presage of the night was true.... + +She reached Franco-Belgian Hall to find it in an uproar. Anna Mower ran +up to her with the news that dynamite had been discovered by the police +in certain tenements of the Syrian quarter, that the tenants had been +arrested and taken to the police station where, bewildered and terrified, +they had denied any knowledge of the explosive. Dynamite had also been +found under the power house, and in the mills--the sources of Hampton's +prosperity. And Hampton believed, of course, that this was the +inevitable result of the anarchistic preaching of such enemies of society +as Jastro and Antonelli if these, indeed, had not incited the Syrians to +the deed. But it was a plot of the mill-owners, Anna insisted--they +themselves had planted the explosive, adroitly started the rumours, told +the police where the dynamite was to be found. Such was the view that +prevailed at Headquarters, pervaded the angrily buzzing crowd that stood +outside--heedless of the rain--and animated the stormy conferences in the +Salle de Reunion. + +The day wore on. In the middle of the afternoon, as she was staring out +of the window, Anna Mower returned with more news. Dynamite had been +discovered in Hawthorne Street, and it was rumoured that Antonelli and +Jastro were to be arrested. + +"You ought to go home and rest, Janet," she said kindly. + +Janet shook her head. + +"Rolfe's back," Anna informed her, after a moment. "He's talking to +Antonelli about another proclamation to let people know who's to blame +for this dynamite business. I guess he'll be in here in a minute to +dictate the draft. Say, hadn't you better let Minnie take it, and go +home?" + +"I'm not sick," Janet repeated, and Anna reluctantly left her. + +Rolfe had been absent for a week, in New York, consulting with some of +the I.W.W. leaders; with Lockhart, the chief protagonist of Syndicalism +in America, just returned from Colorado, to whom he had given a detailed +account of the Hampton strike. And Lockhart, next week, was coming to +Hampton to make a great speech and look over the ground for himself. All +this Rolfe told Janet eagerly when he entered the bibliotheque. He was +glad to get back; he had missed her. + +"But you are pale!" he exclaimed, as he seized her hand, "and how your +eyes burn! You do not take care of yourself when I am not here to watch +you." His air of solicitude, his assumption of a peculiar right to ask, +might formerly have troubled and offended her. Now she was scarcely +aware of his presence. "You feel too much--that is it you are like a +torch that consumes itself in burning. But this will soon be over, we +shall have them on their knees, the capitalists, before very long, when +it is known what they have done to-day. It is too much--they have +overreached themselves with this plot of the dynamite." + +"You have missed me, a little?" + +"I have been busy," she said, releasing her hand and sitting down at her +desk and taking up her notebook. + +"You are not well," he insisted. + +"I'm all right," she replied. + +He lit a cigarette and began to pace the room--his customary manner of +preparing himself for the creative mood. After a while he began to +dictate--but haltingly. He had come here from Antonelli all primed with +fervour and indignation, but it was evident that this feeling had ebbed, +that his mind refused to concentrate on what he was saying. Despite the +magnificent opportunity to flay the capitalists which their most recent +tactics afforded him, he paused, repeated himself, and began again, +glancing from time to time reproachfully, almost resentfully at Janet. +Usually, on these occasions, he was transported, almost inebriated by his +own eloquence; but now he chafed at her listlessness, he was at a loss to +account for the withdrawal of the enthusiasm he had formerly been able to +arouse. Lacking the feminine stimulus, his genius limped. For Rolfe +there had been a woman in every strike--sometimes two. What had +happened, during his absence, to alienate the most promising of all +neophytes he had ever encountered? + +"The eyes of the world are fixed on the workers of Hampton! They must be +true to the trust their fellows have placed in them! To-day the mill- +owners, the masters, are at the end of their tether. Always +unscrupulous, they have descended to the most despicable of tactics in +order to deceive the public. But truth will prevail!..." Rolfe lit +another cigarette, began a new sentence and broke it off. Suddenly he +stood over her. "It's you!" he said. "You don't feel it, you don't help +me, you're not in sympathy." + +He bent over her, his red lips gleaming through his beard, a terrible +hunger in his lustrous eyes--the eyes of a soul to which self-denial was +unknown. His voice was thick with uncontrolled passion, his hand was +cold. + +"Janet, what has happened? I love you, you must love me--I cannot +believe that you do not. Come with me. We shall work together for the +workers--it is all nothing without you." + +For a moment she sat still, and then a pain shot through her, a pain as +sharp as a dagger thrust. She drew her hand away. + +"I can't love--I can only hate," she said. + +"But you do not hate me!" Rolfe repudiated so gross a fact. His voice +caught as in a sob. "I, who love you, who have taught you!" + +She dismissed this--what he had taught her--with a gesture which, though +slight, was all-expressive. He drew back from her. + +"Shall I tell you who has planned and carried out this plot?" he cried. +"It is Ditmar. He is the one, and he used Janes, the livery stable +keeper, the politician who brought the dynamite to Hampton, as his tool. +Half an hour before Janes got to the station in Boston he was seen by a +friend of ours talking to Ditmar in front of the Chippering offices, and +Janes had the satchel with him then. Ditmar walked to the corner with +him." + +Janet, too, had risen. + +"I don't believe it," she said. + +"Ah, I thought you wouldn't! But we have the proof that dynamite was in +the satchel, we've found the contractor from whom it was bought. I was a +fool--I might have known that you loved Ditmar." + +"I hate him!" said Janet. + +"It is the same thing," said Rolfe. + +She did not answer.... He watched her in silence as she put on her hat +and coat and left the room. + +The early dusk was gathering when she left the hall and made her way +toward the city. The huge bottle-shaped chimneys of the power plant +injected heavy black smoke into the wet air. In Faber Street the once +brilliant signs above the "ten-foot" buildings seemed dulled, the +telegraph poles starker, nakeder than ever, their wires scarcely +discernible against the smeared sky. The pedestrians were sombrely +garbed, and went about in "rubbers"--the most depressing of all articles +worn by man. Sodden piles of snow still hid the curb and gutters, but +the pavements were trailed with mud that gleamed in the light from the +shop windows. And Janet, lingering unconsciously in front of that very +emporium where Lisehad been incarcerated, the Bagatelle, stared at the +finery displayed there, at the blue tulle dress that might be purchased, +she read, for $22.99. She found herself repeating, in meaningless, +subdued tones, the words, "twenty-two ninety-nine." She even tried--just +to see if it were possible--to concentrate her mind on that dress, on the +fur muffs and tippets in the next window; to act as if this were just an +ordinary, sad February afternoon, and she herself once more just an +ordinary stenographer leading a monotonous, uneventful existence. But +she knew that this was not true, because, later on, she was going to do +something--to commit some act. She didn't know what this act would be. +Her head was hot, her temples throbbed.... + +Night had fallen, the electric arcs burned blue overhead, she was in +another street--was it Stanley? Sounds of music reached her, the rumble +of marching feet; dark, massed figures were in the distance swimming +toward her along the glistening line of the car tracks, and she heard the +shrill whistling of the doffer boys, who acted as a sort of fife corps in +these parades--which by this time had become familiar to the citizens of +Hampton. And Janet remembered when the little red book that contained +the songs had arrived at Headquarters from the west and had been +distributed by thousands among the strikers. She recalled the words of +this song, though the procession was as yet too far away for her to +distinguish them:-- + + "The People's flag is deepest red, + It shrouded oft our martyred dead, + And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold, + Their life-blood dyed its every fold." + +The song ceased, and she stood still, waiting for the procession to reach +her. A group of heavy Belgian women were marching together. Suddenly, +as by a simultaneous impulse, their voices rang out in the +Internationale--the terrible Marseillaise of the workers:-- + + "Arise, ye prisoners of starvation! + Arise, ye wretched of the earth!" + +And the refrain was taken up by hundreds of throats:-- + + "'Tis the final conflict, + Let each stand in his place!" + +The walls of the street flung it back. On the sidewalk, pressed against +the houses, men and women heard it with white faces. But Janet was +carried on.... The scene changed, now she was gazing at a mass of human +beings hemmed in by a line of soldiers. Behind the crowd was a row of +old-fashioned brick houses, on the walls of which were patterned, by the +cold electric light, the branches of the bare elms ranged along the +sidewalk. People leaned out of the windows, like theatregoers at a play. +The light illuminated the red and white bars of the ensign, upheld by the +standard bearer of the regiment, the smaller flags flaunted by the +strikers--each side clinging hardily to the emblem of human liberty. The +light fell, too, harshly and brilliantly, on the workers in the front +rank confronting the bayonets, and these seemed strangely indifferent, as +though waiting for the flash of a photograph. A little farther on a +group of boys, hands in pockets, stared at the soldiers with bravado. +From the rear came that indescribable "booing" which those who have heard +never forget, mingled with curses and cries:-- + +"Vive la greve!" + +"To hell with the Cossacks!" + +"Kahm on--shoot!" + +The backs of the soldiers, determined, unyielding, were covered with +heavy brown capes that fell below the waist. As Janet's glance wandered +down the line it was arrested by the face of a man in a visored woollen +cap--a face that was almost sepia, in which large white eyeballs struck a +note of hatred. And what she seemed to see in it, confronting her, were +the hatred and despair of her own soul! The man might have been a +Hungarian or a Pole; the breadth of his chin was accentuated by a wide, +black moustache, his attitude was tense,--that of a maddened beast ready +to spring at the soldier in front of him. He was plainly one of those +who had reached the mental limit of endurance. + +In contrast with this foreigner, confronting him, a young lieutenant +stood motionless, his head cocked on one side, his hand grasping the club +held a little behind him, his glance meeting the other's squarely, but +with a different quality of defiance. All his faculties were on the +alert. He wore no overcoat, and the uniform fitting close to his figure, +the broad-brimmed campaign hat of felt served to bring into relief the +physical characteristics of the American Anglo-Saxon, of the +individualist who became the fighting pioneer. But Janet, save to +register the presence of the intense antagonism between the two, scarcely +noticed her fellow countryman.... Every moment she expected to see the +black man spring,--and yet movement would have marred the drama of that +consuming hatred.... + +Then, by one of those bewildering, kaleidoscopic shifts to which crowds +are subject, the scene changed, more troops arrived, little by little the +people were dispersed to drift together again by chance--in smaller +numbers--several blocks away. Perhaps a hundred and fifty were scattered +over the space formed by the intersection of two streets, where three or +four special policemen with night sticks urged them on. Not a riot, or +anything approaching it. The police were jeered, but the groups, +apparently, had already begun to scatter, when from the triangular +vestibule of a saloon on the corner darted a flame followed by an echoing +report, a woman bundled up in a shawl screamed and sank on the snow. For +an instant the little French-Canadian policeman whom the shot had missed +gazed stupidly down at her.... + +As Janet ran along the dark pavements the sound of the shot and of the +woman's shriek continued to ring in her ears. At last she stopped in +front of the warehouse beyond Mr. Tiernan's shop, staring at the darkened +windows of the flat--of the front room in which her mother now slept +alone. For a minute she stood looking at these windows, as though +hypnotized by some message they conveyed--the answer to a question +suggested by the incident that had aroused and terrified her. They drew +her, as in a trance, across the street, she opened the glass-panelled +door, remembering mechanically the trick it had of not quite closing, +turned and pushed it to and climbed the stairs. In the diningroom the +metal lamp, brightly polished, was burning as usual, its light falling on +the chequered red table-cloth, on her father's empty chair, on that +somewhat battered heirloom, the horsehair sofa. All was so familiar, and +yet so amazingly unfamiliar, so silent! At this time Edward should be +reading the Banner, her mother bustling in and out, setting the table for +supper. But not a dish was set. The ticking of the ancient clock only +served to intensify the silence. Janet entered, almost on tiptoe, made +her way to the kitchen door, and looked in. The stove was polished, the +pans bright upon the wall, and Hannah was seated in a corner, her hands +folded across a spotless apron. Her scant hair was now pure white, her +dress seemed to have fallen away from her wasted neck, which was like a +trefoil column. + +"Is that you, Janet? You hain't seen anything of your father?" + +The night before Janet had heard this question, and she had been puzzled +as to its meaning--whether in the course of the day she had seen her +father, or whether Hannah thought he was coming home. + +"He's at the mill, mother. You know he has to stay there." + +"I know," replied Hannah, in a tone faintly reminiscent of the old +aspersion. "But I've got everything ready for him in case he should +come--any time--if the strikers hain't killed him." + +"But he's safe where he is." + +"I presume they will try to kill him, before they get through," Hannah +continued evenly. "But in case he should come at any time, and I'm not +here, you tell him all those Bumpus papers are put away in the drawer of +that old chest, in the corner. I can't think what he'd do without those +papers. That is," she added, "if you're here yourself." + +"Why shouldn't you be here?" asked Janet, rather sharply. + +"I dunno, I seem to have got through." She glanced helplessly around the +kitchen. "There don't seem to be much left to keep me alive.... I guess +you'll be wanting your supper, won't you? You hain't often home these +days--whatever it is you're doing. I didn't expect you." + +Janet did not answer at once. + +"I--I have to go out again, mother," she said. + +Hannah accepted the answer as she had accepted every other negative in +life, great and small. + +"Well, I guessed you would." + +Janet made a step toward her. + +"Mother!" she said, but Hannah gazed at her uncomprehendingly. Janet +stooped convulsively, and kissed her. Straightening up, she stood +looking down at her mother for a few moments, and went out of the room, +pausing in the dining-room, to listen, but Hannah apparently had not +stirred. She took the box of matches from its accustomed place on the +shelf beside the clock, entered the dark bedroom in the front of the +flat, closing the door softly behind her. The ghostly blue light from a +distant arc came slanting in at the window, glinting on the brass knobs +of the chest of drawers-another Bumpus heirloom. She remembered that +chest from early childhood; it was one of the few pieces that, following +them in all their changes of residence, had been faithful to the end: she +knew everything in it, and the place for everything. Drawing a match +from the box, she was about to turn on the gas--but the light from the +arc would suffice. As she made her way around the walnut bed she had a +premonition of poignant anguish as yet unrealized, of anguish being held +at bay by a stronger, fiercer, more imperative emotion now demanding +expression, refusing at last to be denied. She opened the top drawer of +the chest, the drawer in which Hannah, breaking tradition, had put the +Bumpus genealogy. Edward had never kept it there. Would the other +things be in place? Groping with her hands in the left-hand corner, her +fingers clasped exultantly something heavy, something wrapped carefully +in layers of flannel. She had feared her father might have taken it to +the mill! She drew it out, unwound the flannel, and held to the light an +old-fashioned revolver, the grease glistening along its barrel. She +remembered, too, that the cartridges had lain beside it, and thrusting +her hand once more into the drawer found the box, extracting several, and +replacing the rest, closed the drawer, and crept through the dining-room +to her bedroom, where she lit the gas in order to examine the weapon-- +finally contriving, more by accident than skill, to break it. The +cartridges, of course, fitted into the empty cylinder. But before +inserting them she closed the pistol once more, cocked it, and held it +out. Her arm trembled violently as she pulled the trigger. Could she do +it? As though to refute this doubt of her ability to carry out an act +determined upon, she broke the weapon once more, loaded and closed it, +and thrust it in the pocket of her coat. Then, washing the grease from +her hands, she put on her gloves, and was about to turn out the light +when she saw reflected in the glass the red button of the I.W.W. still +pinned on her coat. This she tore off, and flung on the bureau. + +When she had kissed her mother, when she had stood hesitatingly in the +darkness of the familiar front bedroom in the presence of unsummoned +memories of a home she had believed herself to resent and despise, she +had nearly faltered. But once in the street, this weakness suddenly +vanished, was replaced by a sense of wrong that now took complete and +furious possession of her, driving her like a gale at her back. She +scarcely felt on her face the fine rain that had begun to fall once more. +Her feet were accustomed to the way. When she had turned down West +Street and almost gained the canal, it was with a shock of surprise that +she found herself confronted by a man in a long cape who held a rifle and +barred her path. She stared at him as at an apparition. + +"You can't get by here," he said. "Don't you know that?" + +She did not reply. He continued to look at her, and presently asked, in +a gentler tone:-- + +"Where did you wish to go, lady?" + +"Into the mill," she replied, "to the offices." + +"But there can't anybody go through here unless they have a pass. I'm +sorry, but that's the order." + +Her answer came so readily as to surprise her. + +"I was Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer. I have to see him." + +The sentry hesitated, and then addressed another soldier, who was near +the bridge. + +"Hi, sergeant!" he called. The sergeant came up--a conscientious Boston +clerk who had joined the militia from a sense of duty and a need for +exercise. While the sentry explained the matter he gazed at Janet. Then +be said politely:-- + +"I'm sorry, Miss, but I can't disobey orders." + +"But can't you send word to Mr. Ditmar, and tell him I want to see him?" +she asked. + +"Why, I guess so," he answered, after a moment. "What name shall I say?" + +"Miss Bumpus." + +"Bumpus," he repeated. "That's the gatekeeper's name." + +"I'm his daughter--but I want to see Mr. Ditmar." + +"Well," said the sergeant, "I'm sure it's all right, but I'll have to +send in anyway. Orders are orders. You understand?" + +She nodded as he departed. She saw him cross the bridge like a ghost +through the white mist rising from the canal. And through the mist she +could make out the fortresslike mass of the mill itself, and the blurred, +distorted lights in the paymaster's offices smeared on the white curtain +of the vapour. + +"Nasty weather," the sentry remarked, in friendly fashion. He appeared +now, despite his uniform, as a good-natured, ungainly youth. + +Janet nodded. + +"You'd ought to have brought an umbrella," he said. "I guess it'll rain +harder, before it gets through. But it's better than ten below zero, +anyhow." + +She nodded again, but he did not seem to resent her silence. He talked +about the hardship of patrolling in winter, until the sergeant came back. + +"It's all right, Miss Bumpus," he said, and touched his hat as he +escorted her to the bridge. She crossed the canal and went through the +vestibule without replying to the greeting of the night-watchman, or +noticing his curious glance; she climbed the steel-clad stairway, passed +the paymaster's offices and Mr. Orcutt's, and gained the outer office +where she had worked as a stenographer. It was dark, but sufficient +light came through Ditmar's open door to guide her beside the rail. He +had heard her step, and as she entered his room he had put his hands +heavily on his desk, in the act of rising from his chair. + +"Janet!" he said, and started toward her, but got no farther than the +corner of the desk. The sight of her heaving breast, of the peculiar +light that flashed from beneath her lashes stopped him suddenly. Her +hands were in her pockets. "What is it?" he demanded stupidly. + +But she continued to stand there, breathing so heavily that she could not +speak. It was then that he became aware of an acute danger. He did not +flinch. + +"What is it?" he repeated. + +Still she was silent. One hand was thrust deeper into its pocket, he saw +a shudder run through her, and suddenly she burst into hysterical +weeping, sinking into a chair. He stood for some moments helplessly +regarding her before he gained the presence of mind to go to the door and +lock it, returning to bend over her. + +"Don't touch me!" she said, shrinking from him. + +"For God's sake tell me what's the matter," he begged. + +She looked up at him and tried to speak, struggling against the sobs that +shook her. + +"I--I came here to--to kill you--only I can't do it." + +"To kill me!" he said, after a pause. In spite of the fact that he had +half divined her intention, the words shocked him. Whatever else may be +said of him, he did not lack courage, his alarm was not of a physical +nature. Mingled with it were emotions he himself did not understand, +caused by the unwonted sight of her loss of self-control, of her anger, +and despair. "Why did you want to kill me?" + +And again he had to wait for an answer. + +"Because you've spoiled my life--because I'm going to have a child!" + +"What do you mean? Are you?... it can't be possible." + +"It is possible, it's true--it's true. I've waited and waited, I've +suffered, I've almost gone crazy--and now I know. And I said I'd kill +you if it were so, I'd kill myself--only I can't. I'm a coward." Her +voice was drowned again by weeping. + +A child! He had never imagined such a contingency! And as he leaned +back against the desk, his emotions became chaotic. The sight of her, +even as she appeared crazed by anger, had set his passion aflame--for the +intensity and fierceness of her nature had always made a strong appeal to +dominant qualities in Ditmar's nature. And then--this announcement! +Momentarily it turned his heart to water. Now that he was confronted by +an exigency that had once vicariously yet deeply disturbed him in a +similar affair of a friend of his, the code and habit of a lifetime +gained an immediate ascendency--since then he had insisted that this +particular situation was to be avoided above all others. And his mind +leaped to possibilities. She had wished to kill him--would she remain +desperate enough to ruin him? Even though he were not at a crisis in his +affairs, a scandal of this kind would be fatal. + +"I didn't know," he said desperately, "I couldn't guess. Do you think I +would have had this thing happen to you? I was carried away--we were +both carried away--" + +"You planned it!" she replied vehemently, without looking up. "You +didn't care for me, you only--wanted me." + +"That isn't so--I swear that isn't so. I loved you I love you." + +"Oh, do you think I believe that?" she exclaimed. + +"I swear it--I'll prove it!" he protested. Still under the influence of +an acute anxiety, he was finding it difficult to gather his wits, to +present his case. "When you left me that day the strike began--when you +left me without giving me a chance--you'll never know how that hurt me." + +"You'll never know how it hurt me!" she interrupted. + +"Then why, in God's name, did you do it? I wasn't myself, then, you +ought to have seen that. And when I heard from Caldwell here that you'd +joined those anarchists--" + +"They're no worse than you are--they only want what you've got," she +said. + +He waved this aside. "I couldn't believe it--I wouldn't believe it until +somebody saw you walking with one of them to their Headquarters. Why did +you do it?" + +"Because I know how they feel, I sympathize with the strikers, I want +them to win--against you!" She lifted her head and looked at him, and in +spite of the state of his feelings he felt a twinge of admiration at her +defiance. + +"Because you love me!" he said. + +"Because I hate you," she answered. + +And yet a spark of exultation leaped within him at the thought that love +had caused this apostasy. He had had that suspicion before, though it +was a poor consolation when he could not reach her. Now she had made it +vivid. A woman's logic, or lack of logic--her logic. + +"Listen!" he pleaded. "I tried to forget you--I tried to keep myself +going all the time that I mightn't think of you, but I couldn't help +thinking of you, wanting you, longing for you. I never knew why you left +me, except that you seemed to believe I was unkind to you, and that +something had happened. It wasn't my fault--" he pulled himself up +abruptly. + +"I found out what men were like," she said. "A man made my sister a +woman of the streets--that's what you've done to me." + +He winced. And the calmness she had regained, which was so +characteristic of her, struck him with a new fear. + +"I'm not that kind of a man," he said. + +But she did not answer. His predicament became more trying. + +"I'll take care of you," he assured her, after a moment. "If you'll only +trust me, if you'll only come to me I'll see that no harm comes to you." + +She regarded him with a sort of wonder--a look that put a fine edge of +dignity and scorn to her words when they came. + +"I told you I didn't want to be taken care of--I wanted to kill you, and +kill myself. I don't know why I can't what prevents me." She rose. +"But I'm not going to trouble you any more--you'll never hear of me +again." + +She would not trouble him, she was going away, he would never hear of her +again! Suddenly, with the surge of relief he experienced, came a pang. +He could not let her go--it was impossible. It seemed that he had never +understood his need of her, his love for her, until now that he had +brought her to this supreme test of self-revelation. She had wanted to +kill him, yes, to kill herself--but how could he ever have believed that +she would stoop to another method of retaliation? As she stood before +him the light in her eyes still wet with tears--transfigured her. + +"I love you, Janet," he said. "I want you to marry me." + +"You don't understand," she answered. "You never did. If I had married +you, I'd feel just the same--but it isn't really as bad as if we had been +married." + +"Not as bad!" he exclaimed. + +"If we were married, you'd think you had rights over me," she explained, +slowly. "Now you haven't any, I can go away. I couldn't live with you. +I know what happened to me, I've thought it all out, I wanted to get away +from the life I was leading--I hated it so, I was crazy to have a chance, +to see the world, to get nearer some of the beautiful things I knew were +there, but couldn't reach.... And you came along. I did love you, I +would have done anything for you--it was only when I saw that you didn't +really love me that I began to hate you, that I wanted to get away from +you, when I saw that you only wanted me until you should get tired of me. +That's your nature, you can't help it. And it would have been the same +if we were married, only worse, I couldn't have stood it any more than I +can now--I'd have left you. You say you'll marry me now, but that's +because you're sorry for me--since I've said I'm not going to trouble you +any more. You'll be glad I've gone. You may--want me now, but that +isn't love. When you say you love me, I can't believe you." + +"You must believe me! And the child, Janet,--our child--" + +"If the world was right," she said, "I could have this child and nobody +would say anything. I could support it--I guess I can anyway. And when +I'm not half crazy I want it. Maybe that's the reason I couldn't do what +I tried to do just now. It's natural for a woman to want a child-- +especially a woman like me, who hasn't anybody or anything." + +Ditmar's state of mind was too complicated to be wholly described. As +the fact had been gradually brought home to him that she had not come as +a supplicant, that even in her misery she was free, and he helpless, +there revived in him wild memories of her body, of the kisses he had +wrung from her--and yet this physical desire was accompanied by a +realization of her personality never before achieved. And because he had +hitherto failed to achieve it, she had escaped him. This belated, +surpassing glimpse of what she essentially was, and the thought of the +child their child--permeating his passion, transformed it into a feeling +hitherto unexperienced and unimagined. He hovered over her, pitifully, +his hands feeling for her, yet not daring to touch her. + +"Can't you see that I love you?" he cried, "that I'm ready to marry you +now, to-night. You must love me, I won't believe that you don't after-- +after all we have been to each other." + +But even then she could not believe. Something in her, made hard by the +intensity of her suffering, refused to melt. And her head was throbbing, +and she scarcely heard him. + +"I can't stay any longer," she said, getting to her feet. "I can't bear +it." + +"Janet, I swear I'll care for you as no woman was ever cared for. For +God's sake listen to me, give me a chance, forgive me!" He seized her +arm; she struggled, gently but persistently, to free herself from his +hold. + +"Let me go, please." All the passionate anger had gone out of her, and +she spoke in a monotone, as one under hypnosis, dominated by a resolution +which, for the present at least, he was powerless to shake. + +"But to-morrow?" he pleaded. "You'll let me see you to-morrow, when +you've had time to think it over, when you realize that I love you and +want you, that I haven't meant to be cruel--that you've misjudged me-- +thought I was a different kind of a man. I don't blame you for that, I +guess something happened to make you believe it. I've got enemies. For +the sake of the child, Janet, if for nothing else, you'll come back to +me! You're--you're tired tonight, you're not yourself. I don't wonder, +after all you've been through. If you'd only come to me before! God +knows what I've suffered, too!" + +"Let me go, please," she repeated, and this time, despairingly, he obeyed +her, a conviction of her incommunicability overwhelming him. He +turned and, fumbling with the key, unlocked the door and opened it. +"I'll see you to-morrow," he faltered once more, and watched her as she +went through the darkened outer room until she gained the lighted hallway +beyond and disappeared. Her footsteps died away into silence. He was +trembling. For several minutes he stood where she had left him, tortured +by a sense of his inability to act, to cope with this, the great crisis +of his life, when suddenly the real significance of that strange last +look in her eyes was borne home to him. And he had allowed her to go out +into the streets alone! Seizing his hat and coat, he fairly ran out of +the office and down the stairs and across the bridge. + +"Which way did that young lady go?" he demanders of the sergeant. + +"Why--ug West Street, Mr. Ditmar." + +He remembered where Filhnore Street was; he had, indeed, sought it out +one evening in the hope of meeting her. He hurried toward it now, his +glance strained ahead to catch sight of her figure under a lamp. But he +reached Fillmore Street without overtaking her, and in the rain he stood +gazing at the mean houses there, wondering in which of them she lived, +and whether she had as yet come home.... + +After leaving Ditmar Janet, probably from force of habit, had indeed gone +through West Street, and after that she walked on aimlessly. It was +better to walk than to sit alone in torment, to be gnawed by that Thing +from which she had so desperately attempted to escape, and failed. She +tried to think why she had failed.... Though the rain fell on her +cheeks, her mouth was parched; and this dryness of her palate, this +physical sense of lightness, almost of dizziness, were intimately yet +incomprehensibly part and parcel of the fantastic moods into which she +floated. It was as though, in trying to solve a problem, she caught +herself from time to time falling off to sleep. In her waking moments +she was terror-stricken. Scarce an hour had passed since, in a terrible +exaltation at having found a solution, she had gone to Ditmar's office in +the mill. What had happened to stay her? It was when she tried to find +the cause of the weakness that so abruptly had overtaken her, or to cast +about for a plan to fit the new predicament to which her failure had +sentenced her, that the fantasies intruded. She heard Ditmar speaking, +the arguments were curiously familiar--but they were not Ditmar's! They +were her father's, and now it was Edward's voice to which she listened, +he was telling her how eminently proper it was that she should marry +Ditmar, because of her Bumpus blood. And this made her laugh.... Again, +Ditmar was kissing her hair. He had often praised it. She had taken it +down and combed it out for him; it was like a cloud, he said--so fine; +its odour made him faint--and then the odour changed, became that of the +detested perfume of Miss Lottie Myers! Even that made Janet smile! But +Ditmar was strong, he was powerful, he was a Fact, why not go back to him +and let him absorb and destroy her? That annihilation would be joy.... + +It could not have been much later than seven o'clock when she found +herself opposite the familiar, mulberry-shingled Protestant church. The +light from its vestibule made a gleaming square on the wet sidewalk, and +into this area, from the surrounding darkness, came silhouetted figures +of men and women holding up umbrellas; some paused for a moment's chat, +their voices subdued by an awareness of the tabernacle. At the sight of +this tiny congregation something stirred within her. She experienced a +twinge of surprise at the discovery that other people in the world, in +Hampton, were still leading tranquil, untormented existences. They were +contented, prosperous, stupid, beyond any need of help from God, and yet +they were going to prayer-meeting to ask something! He refused to find +her in the dark streets. Would she find Him if she went in there? and +would He help her? + +The bell in the tower began to clang, with heavy, relentless strokes-- +like physical blows from which she flinched--each stirring her reluctant, +drowsy soul to a quicker agony. From the outer blackness through which +she fled she gazed into bright rooms of homes whose blinds were left +undrawn, as though to taunt and mock the wanderer. She was an outcast! +Who henceforth would receive her save those, unconformed and +unconformable, sentenced to sin in this realm of blackness? Henceforth +from all warmth and love she was banished.... In the middle of the +Stanley Street bridge she stopped to lean against the wet rail; the mill +lights were scattered, dancing points of fire over the invisible swift +waters, and she raised her eyes presently to the lights themselves, +seeking one unconsciously--Ditmar's! Yes, it was his she sought; though +it was so distant, sometimes it seemed to burn like a red star, and then +to flicker and disappear. She could not be sure.... Something chill and +steely was in the pocket of her coat--it made a heavy splash in the water +when she dropped it. The river could not be so very cold! She wished +she could go down like that into forgetfulness. But she couldn't.... +Where was Lise now?... It would be so easy just to drop over that +parapet and be whirled away, and down and down. Why couldn't she? Well, +it was because--because--she was going to have a child. Well, if she had +a child to take care of, she would not be so lonely--she would have +something to love. She loved it now, as though she felt it quickening +within her, she wanted it, to lavish on it all of a starved affection. +She seemed actually to feel in her arms its soft little body pressed +against her. Claude Ditmar's child! And she suddenly recalled, as an +incident of the remote past, that she had told him she wanted it! + +This tense craving for it she felt now was somehow the answer to an +expressed wish which had astonished her. Perhaps that was the reason why +she had failed to do what she had tried to do, to shoot Ditmar and +herself! It was Ditmar's child, Ditmar's and hers! He had loved her, +long ago, and just now--was it just now?--he had said he loved her still, +he had wanted to marry her. Then why had she run away from him? Why had +she taken the child into outer darkness, to be born without a father,-- +when she loved Ditmar? Wasn't that one reason why she wanted the child? +why, even in her moments of passionate hatred she recalled having been +surprised by some such yearning as now came over her? And for an +interval, a brief interval, she viewed him with startling clarity. Not +because he embodied any ideal did she love him, but because he was what +he was, because he had overcome her will, dominated and possessed her, +left his mark upon her indelibly. He had been cruel to her, willing to +sacrifice her to his way of life, to his own desires, but he loved her, +for she had seen, if not heeded in his eyes the look that a woman never +mistakes! She remembered it now, and the light in his window glowed +again, like a star to guide her back to him. It was drawing her, +irresistibly.... + +The sentry recognized her as she came along the canal. + +"Mr. Ditmar's gone," he told her. + +"Gone!" she repeated. "Gone!" + +"Why, yes, about five minutes after you left he was looking for you--he +asked the sergeant about you." + +"And--he won't be back?" + +"I guess not," answered the man, sympathetically. "He said good-night." + +She turned away dully. The strength and hope with which she had been so +unexpectedly infused while gazing from the bridge at his window had +suddenly ebbed; her legs ached, her feet were wet, and she shivered, +though her forehead burned. The world became distorted, people flitted +past her like weird figures of a dream, the myriad lights of Faber Street +were blurred and whirled in company with the electric signs. Seeking to +escape from their confusion she entered a side street leading north, only +to be forcibly seized by some one who darted after her from the sidewalk. + +"Excuse me, but you didn't see that automobile," he said, as he released +her. + +Shaken, she went on through several streets to find herself at length +confronted by a pair of shabby doors that looked familiar, and pushing +one of them open, baited at the bottom of a stairway to listen. The +sound of cheerful voices camp to her from above; she started to climb-- +even with the help of the rail it seemed as if she would never reach the +top of that stairway. But at last she stood in a loft where long tables +were set, and at the end of one of these, sorting out spoons and dishes, +three women and a man were chatting and laughing together. Janet was +troubled because she could not remember who the man was, although she +recognized his bold profile, his voice and gestures.... At length one of +the women said something in a low tone, and he looked around quickly and +crossed the room. + +"Why, it's you!" he said, and suddenly she recalled his name. + +"Mr. Insall!" + +But his swift glance had noticed the expression in her eyes, the sagged +condition of her clothes, the attitude that proclaimed exhaustion. He +took her by the arm and led her to the little storeroom, turning on the +light and placing her in a chair. Darkness descended on her.... + +Mrs. Maturin, returning from an errand, paused for an instant in the +doorway, and ran forward and bent over Janet. + +"Oh, Brooks, what is it--what's happened to her?" + +"I don't know," he replied, "I didn't have a chance to ask her. I'm +going for a doctor." + +"Leave her to me, and call Miss Hay." Mrs. Maturin was instantly +competen .... And when Insall came back from the drug store where he had +telephoned she met him at the head of the stairs. "We've done everything +we can, Edith Hay has given her brandy, and gone off for dry clothes, and +we've taken all the children's things out of the drawers and laid her on +the floor, but she hasn't come to. Poor child,--what can have happened +to her? Is the doctor coming?" + +"Right away," said Insall, and Mrs. Maturin went back into the storeroom. +Miss Hay brought the dry clothes before the physician arrived. + +"It's probably pneumonia," he explained to Insall a little later. "She +must go to the hospital--but the trouble is all our hospitals are pretty +full, owing to the sickness caused by the strike." He hesitated. "Of +course, if she has friends, she could have better care in a private +institution just now." + +"Oh, she has friends," said Mrs. Maturin. "Couldn't we take her to our +little hospital at Silliston, doctor? It's only four miles--that isn't +much in an automobile, and the roads are good now." + +"Well, the risk isn't much greater, if you have a closed car, and she +would, of course, be better looked after," the physician consented. + +"I'll see to it at once," said Insall.... + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +The Martha Wootton Memorial Hospital was the hobby of an angel alumnus of +Silliston. It was situated in Hovey's Lane, but from the window of the +white-enameled room in which she lay Janet could see the bare branches of +the Common elms quivering to the spring gusts, could watch, day by day, +the grass changing from yellow-brown to vivid green in the white +sunlight. In the morning, when the nurse opened the blinds, that +sunlight swept radiantly into the room, lavish with its caresses; always +spending, always giving, the symbol of a loving care that had been poured +out on her, unasked and unsought. It was sweet to rest, to sleep. And +instead of the stringent monster-cry of the siren, of the discordant +clamour of the mill bells, it was sweet yet strange to be awakened by +silvertoned chimes proclaiming peaceful hours. At first she surrendered +to the spell, and had no thought of the future. For a little while every +day, Mrs. Maturin read aloud, usually from books of poetry. And knowing +many of the verses by heart, she would watch Janet's face, framed in the +soft dark hair that fell in two long plaits over her shoulders. For +Janet little guessed the thought that went into the choosing of these +books, nor could she know of the hours spent by this lady pondering over +library shelves or consulting eagerly with Brooks Insall. Sometimes +Augusta Maturin thought of Janet as a wildflower--one of the rare, shy +ones, hiding under its leaves; sprung up in Hampton, of all places, +crushed by a heedless foot, yet miraculously not destroyed, and already +pushing forth new and eager tendrils. And she had transplanted it. To +find the proper nourishment, to give it a chance to grow in a native, +congenial soil, such was her breathless task. And so she had selected +"The Child's Garden of Verses." + + "I should like to rise and go + Where the golden apples grow"... + +When she laid down her book it was to talk, perhaps, of Silliston. +Established here before the birth of the Republic, its roots were bedded +in the soil of a racial empire, to a larger vision of which Augusta +Maturin clung: an empire of Anglo-Saxon tradition which, despite +disagreements and conflicts--nay, through them--developed imperceptibly +toward a sublimer union, founded not on dominion, but on justice and +right. She spoke of the England she had visited on her wedding journey, +of the landmarks and literature that also through generations have been +American birthrights; and of that righteous self-assertion and +independence which, by protest and even by war, America had contributed +to the democracy of the future. Silliston, indifferent to cults and +cataclysms, undisturbed by the dark tides flung westward to gather in +deposits in other parts of the land, had held fast to the old tradition, +stood ready to do her share to transform it into something even nobler +when the time should come. Simplicity and worth and beauty--these +elements at least of the older Republic should not perish, but in the end +prevail. + +She spoke simply of these things, connecting them with a Silliston whose +spirit appealed to all that was inherent and abiding in the girl. All +was not chaos: here at least, a beacon burned with a bright and steady +flame. And she spoke of Andrew Silliston, the sturdy colonial prototype +of the American culture, who had fought against his King, who had spent +his modest fortune to found this seat of learning, believing as he did +that education is the cornerstone of republics; divining that lasting +unity is possible alone by the transformation of the individual into the +citizen through voluntary bestowal of service and the fruits of labour. +Samuel Wootton, the Boston merchant who had given the hospital, was +Andrew's true descendant, imbued with the same half-conscious intuition +that builds even better that it reeks. And Andrew, could he have returns +to earth in his laced coat and long silk waistcoat, would still recognize +his own soul in Silliston Academy, the soul of his creed and race. + + "Away down the river, + A hundred miles or more, + Other little children + Shall bring my boats ashore."... + +Janet drew in a great breath, involuntarily. These were moments when it +seemed that she could scarcely contain what she felt of beauty and +significance, when the ecstasy and pain were not to be borne. And +sometimes, as she listened to Mrs. Maturin's voice, she wept in silence. +Again a strange peace descended on her, the peace of an exile come home; +if not to remain, at least to know her own land and people before faring +forth. She would not think of that faring yet awhile, but strive to live +and taste the present--and yet as life flowed back into her veins that +past arose to haunt her, she yearned to pour it out to her new friend, to +confess all that had happened to her. Why couldn't she? But she was +grateful because Mrs. Maturin betrayed no curiosity. Janet often lay +watching her, puzzled, under the spell of a frankness, an ingenuousness, +a simplicity she had least expected to find in one who belonged to such a +learned place as that of Silliston. But even learning, she was +discovering, could be amazingly simple. Freely and naturally Mrs. +Maturin dwelt on her own past, on the little girl of six taken from her +the year after her husband died, on her husband himself, once a professor +here, and who, just before his last illness, had published a brilliant +book on Russian literature which resulted in his being called to Harvard. +They had gone to Switzerland instead, and Augusta Maturin had come back +to Silliston. She told Janet of the loon-haunted lake, hemmed in by the +Laurentian hills, besieged by forests, where she had spent her girlhood +summers with her father, Professor Wishart, of the University of Toronto. +There, in search of health, Gifford Maturin had come at her father's +suggestion to camp. + +Janet, of course, could not know all of that romance, though she tried to +picture it from what her friend told her. Augusta Wishart, at six and +twenty, had been one of those magnificent Canadian women who are most at +home in the open; she could have carried Gifford Maturinout of the +wilderness on her back. She was five feet seven, modelled in proportion, +endowed by some Celtic ancestor with that dark chestnut hair which, +because of its abundance, she wore braided and caught up in a heavy knot +behind her head. Tanned by the northern sun, kneeling upright in a +canoe, she might at a little distance have been mistaken for one of the +race to which the forests and waters had once belonged. The instinct of +mothering was strong in her, and from the beginning she had taken the shy +and delicate student under her wing, recognizing in him one of the +physically helpless dedicated to a supreme function. He was forever +catching colds, his food disagreed with him, and on her own initiative +she discharged his habitant cook and supplied him with one of her own +choosing. When overtaken by one of his indispositions she paddled him +about the lake with lusty strokes, first placing a blanket over his +knees, and he submitted: he had no pride of that sort, he was utterly +indifferent to the figure he cut beside his Amazon. His gentleness of +disposition, his brilliant conversations with those whom, like her +father, he knew and trusted, captivated Augusta. At this period of her +life she was awakening to the glories of literature and taking a special +course in that branch. He talked to her of Gogol, Turgenief, and +Dostoievsky, and seated on the log piazza read in excellent French "Dead +Souls," "Peres et Enfants," and "The Brothers Karamazoff." At the end of +August he went homeward almost gaily, quite ignorant of the arrow in his +heart, until he began to miss Augusta Wishart's ministrations--and +Augusta Wishart herself.... Then had followed that too brief period of +intensive happiness.... + +The idea of remarriage had never occurred to her. At eight and thirty, +though tragedy had left its mark, it had been powerless to destroy the +sweetness of a nature of such vitality as hers. The innate necessity of +loving remained, and as time went on had grown more wistful and +insistent. Insall and her Silliston neighbours were wont, indeed, gently +to rally her on her enthusiams, while understanding and sympathizing with +this need in her. A creature of intuition, Janet had appealed to her +from the beginning, arousing first her curiosity, and then the maternal +instinct that craved a mind to mould, a soul to respond to her touch.... + +Mrs. Maturin often talked to Janet of Insall, who had, in a way, long +been connected with Silliston. In his early wandering days, when +tramping over New England, he used unexpectedly to turn up at Dr. +Ledyard's, the principal's, remain for several weeks and disappear again. +Even then he, had been a sort of institution, a professor emeritus in +botany, bird lore, and woodcraft, taking the boys on long walks through +the neighbouring hills; and suddenly he had surprised everybody by +fancying the tumble-down farmhouse in Judith's Lane, which he had +restored with his own hands into the quaintest of old world dwellings. +Behind it he had made a dam in the brook, and put in a water wheel that +ran his workshop. In play hours the place was usually overrun by +boys.... But sometimes the old craving for tramping would overtake him, +one day his friends would find the house shut up, and he would be absent +for a fortnight, perhaps for a month--one never knew when he was going, +or when he would return. He went, like his hero, Silas Simpkins, through +the byways of New England, stopping at night at the farm-houses, or often +sleeping out under the stars. And then, perhaps, he would write another +book. He wrote only when he felt like writing. + +It was this book of Insall's, "The Travels of Silas Simpkins", rather than +his "Epworth Green" or "The Hermit of Blue Mountain," that Mrs. Maturin +chose to read to Janet. Unlike the sage of Walden, than whom he was more +gregarious, instead of a log house for his castle Silas Simpkins chose a +cart, which he drove in a most leisurely manner from the sea to the +mountains, penetrating even to hamlets beside the silent lakes on the +Canadian border, and then went back to the sea again. Two chunky grey +horses with wide foreheads and sagacious eyes propelled him at the rate +of three miles an hour; for these, as their master, had learned the +lesson that if life is to be fully savoured it is not to be bolted. +Silas cooked and ate, and sometimes read under the maples beside the +stone walls: usually he slept in the cart in the midst of the assortment +of goods that proclaimed him, to the astute, an expert in applied +psychology. At first you might have thought Silos merely a peddler, but +if you knew your Thoreau you would presently begin to perceive that +peddling was the paltry price he paid for liberty. Silos was in a way a +sage--but such a human sage! He never intruded with theories, he never +even hinted at the folly of the mortals who bought or despised his goods, +or with whom he chatted by the wayside, though he may have had his ideas +on the subject: it is certain that presently one began to have one's own: +nor did he exclaim with George Sand, "Il n'y a rien de plus betement +mechant que l'habitant des petites villes!" Somehow the meannesses and +jealousies were accounted for, if not excused. To understand is to +pardon. + +It was so like Insall, this book, in its whimsicality, in its feeling of +space and freedom, in its hidden wisdom that gradually revealed itself as +one thought it over before falling off to sleep! New England in the +early summer! Here, beside the tender greens of the Ipswich downs was +the sparkling cobalt of the sea, and she could almost smell its cool salt +breath mingling with the warm odours of hay and the pungent scents of +roadside flowers. Weathered grey cottages were scattered over the +landscape, and dark copses of cedars, while oceanward the eye was caught +by the gleam of a lighthouse or a lonely sail. + +Even in that sandy plain, covered with sickly, stunted pines and burned +patches, stretching westward from the Merrimac, Silas saw beauty and +colour, life in the once prosperous houses not yet abandoned.... +Presently, the hills, all hyacinth blue, rise up against the sunset, and +the horses' feet are on the "Boston Road"--or rud, according to the +authorized pronunciation of that land. Hardly, indeed, in many places, a +"rud" to-day, reverting picturesquely into the forest trail over which +the early inland settlers rode their horses or drove their oxen with +upcountry produce to the sea. They were not a people who sought the +easiest way, and the Boston Road reflects their characters: few valleys +are deep enough to turn it aside; few mountains can appal it: railroads +have given it a wide berth. Here and there the forest opens out to +reveal, on a knoll or "flat," a forgotten village or tavern-stand. Over +the high shelf of Washington Town it runs where the air is keen and the +lakes are blue, where long-stemmed wild flowers nod on its sunny banks, +to reach at length the rounded, classic hills and sentinel mountain that +mark the sheep country of the Connecticut.... + +It was before Janet's convalescence began that Mrs. Maturin had consulted +Insall concerning her proposed experiment in literature. Afterwards he +had left Silliston for a lumber camp on a remote river in northern Maine, +abruptly to reappear, on a mild afternoon late in April, in Augusta +Maturin's garden. The crocuses and tulips were in bloom, and his friend, +in a gardening apron, was on her knees, trowel in hand, assisting a hired +man to set out marigolds and snapdragons. + +"Well, it's time you were home again," she exclaimed, as she rose to +greet him and led him to a chair on the little flagged terrace beside the +windows of her library. "I've got so much to tell you about our +invalid." + +"Our invalid!" Insall retorted. + +"Of course. I look to you to divide the responsibility with me, and +you've shirked by running off to Maine. You found her, you know--and +she's really remarkable." + +"Now see here, Augusta, you can't expect me to share the guardianship of +an attractive and--well, a dynamic young woman. If she affects you this +way, what will she do to me? I'm much too susceptible." + +"Susceptible" she scoffed. "But you can't get out of it. I need you. +I've never been so interested and so perplexed in my life." + +"How is she?" Insall asked. + +"Frankly, I'm worried," said Mrs. Maturin. "At first she seemed to be +getting along beautifully. I read to her, a little every day, and it was +wonderful how she responded to it. I'll tell you about that I've got so +much to tell you! Young Dr. Trent is puzzled, too, it seems there are +symptoms in the case for which he cannot account. Some three weeks ago +he asked me what I made out of her, and I can't make anything--that's the +trouble, except that she seems pathetically grateful, and that I've grown +absurdly fond of her. But she isn't improving as fast as she should, and +Dr. Trent doesn't know whether or not to suspect functional +complications. Her constitution seems excellent, her vitality unusual. +Trent's impressed by her, he inclines to the theory that she has +something on her mind, and if this is so she should get rid of it, tell +it to somebody--in short, tell it to me. I know she's fond of me, but +she's so maddeningly self-contained, and at moments when I look at her +she baffles me, she makes me feel like an atom. Twenty times at least +I've almost screwed up my courage to ask her, but when it comes to the +point, I simply can't do it." + +"You ought to be able to get at it, if any one can," said Insall. + +"I've a notion it may be connected with the strike," Augusta Maturin +continued. "I never could account for her being mixed up in that, +plunging into Syndicalism. It seemed so foreign to her nature. I wish +I'd waited a little longer before telling her about the strike, but one +day she asked me how it had come out--and she seemed to be getting along +so nicely I didn't see any reason for not telling her. I said that the +strike was over, that the millowners had accepted the I.W.W. terms, but +that Antonelli and Jastro had been sent to jail and were awaiting trial +because they had been accused of instigating the murder of a woman who +was shot by a striker aiming at a policeman. It seems that she had seen +that! She told me so quite casually. But she was interested, and I went +on to mention how greatly the strikers were stirred by the arrests, how +they paraded in front of the jail, singing, and how the feeling was +mostly directed against Mr. Ditmar, because he was accused of instigating +the placing of dynamite in the tenements." + +"And you spoke of Mr. Ditmar's death?" Insall inquired. + +"Why yes, I told her how he had been shot in Dover Street by a demented +Italian, and if it hadn't been proved that the Italian was insane and not +a mill worker, the result of the strike might have been different." + +"How did she take it?" + +"Well, she was shocked, of course. She sat up in bed, staring at me, and +then leaned back on the pillows again. I pretended not to notice it--but +I was sorry I'd said anything about it." + +"She didn't say anything?" + +"Not a word." + +"Didn't you know that, before the strike, she was Ditmar's private +stenographer?" + +"No!" Augusta Maturin exclaimed. "Why didn't you tell me?" + +"It never occurred to me to tell you," Insall replied. + +"That must have something to do with it!" said Mrs. Maturin. + +Insall got up and walked to the end of the terrace, gazing at a bluebird +on the edge of the lawn. + +"Well, not necessarily," he said, after a while. "Did you ever find out +anything about her family?" + +"Oh, yes, I met the father once, he's been out two or three times, on +Sunday, and came over here to thank me for what I'd done. The mother +doesn't come--she has some trouble, I don't know exactly what. Brooks, I +wish you could see the father, he's so typically unique--if one may use +the expression. A gatekeeper at the Chipperiug Mills!" + +"A gatekeeper?" + +"Yes, and I'm quite sure he doesn't understand to this day how he became +one, or why. He's delightfully naive on the subject of genealogy, and I +had the Bumpus family by heart before he left. That's the form his +remnant of the intellectual curiosity of his ancestors takes. He was +born in Dolton, which was settled by the original Bumpus, back in the +Plymouth Colony days, and if he were rich he'd have a library stuffed +with gritty, yellow-backed books and be a leading light in the Historical +Society. He speaks with that nicety of pronunciation of the old New +Englander, never slurring his syllables, and he has a really fine face, +the kind of face one doesn't often see nowadays. I kept looking at it, +wondering what was the matter with it, and at last I realized what it +lacked--will, desire, ambition,--it was what a second-rate sculptor might +have made of Bradford, for instance. But there is a remnant of fire in +him. Once, when he spoke of the strike, of the foreigners, he grew quite +indignant." + +"He didn't tell you why his daughter had joined the strikers?" Insall +asked. + +"He was just as much at sea about that as you and I are. Of course I +didn't ask him--he asked me if I knew. It's only another proof of her +amazing reticence. And I can imagine an utter absence of sympathy +between them. He accounts for her, of course; he's probably the +unconscious transmitter of qualities the Puritans possessed and tried to +smother. Certainly the fires are alight in her, and yet it's almost +incredible that he should have conveyed them. Of course I haven't seen +the mother." + +"It's curious he didn't mention her having been Ditmar's stenographer," +Insall put in. "Was that reticence?" + +"I hardly think so," Augusta Maturin replied. "It may have been, but the +impression I got was of an incapacity to feel the present. All his +emotions are in the past, most of his conversation was about Bumpuses who +are dead and buried, and his pride in Janet--for he has a pride--seems to +exist because she is their representative. It's extraordinary, but he +sees her present situation, her future, with extraordinary optimism; he +apparently regards her coming to Silliston, even in the condition in +which we found her, as a piece of deserved fortune for which she has to +thank some virtue inherited from her ancestors! Well, perhaps he's +right. If she were not unique, I shouldn't want to keep her here. It's +pure selfishness. I told Mr. Bumpus I expected to find work for her." + +Mrs. Maturin returned Insall's smile. "I suppose you're too polite to +say that I'm carried away by my enthusiasms. But you will at least do me +the justice to admit that they are rare and--discriminating, as a +connoisseur's should be. I think even you will approve of her." + +"Oh, I have approved of her--that's the trouble." + +Mrs. Maturin regarded him for a moment in silence. + +"I wish you could have seen her when I began to read those verses of +Stevenson's. It was an inspirations your thinking of them." + +"Did I think of them?" + +"You know you did. You can't escape your responsibility. Well, I felt +like--like a gambler, as though I were staking everything on a throw. +And, after I began, as if I were playing on some rare instrument. She +lay there, listening, without uttering a word, but somehow she seemed to +be interpreting them for me, giving them a meaning and a beauty I hadn't +imagined. Another time I told her about Silliston, and how this little +community for over a century and a half had tried to keep its standard +flying, to carry on the work begun by old Andrew, and I thought of those +lines, + + "Other little children + Shall bring my boats ashore." + +That particular application just suddenly, occurred to me, but she +inspired it." + +"You're a born schoolma'am," Insall laughed. + +"I'm much too radical for a schoohna'am," she declared. "No board of +trustees would put up with me--not even Silliston's! We've kept the +faith, but we do move slowly, Brooks. Even tradition grows, and +sometimes our blindness here to changes, to modern, scientific facts, +fairly maddens me. I read her that poem of Moody's--you know it:-- + + 'Here, where the moors stretch free + In the high blue afternoon, + Are the marching sun and the talking sea.' + +and those last lines:-- + + 'But thou, vast outbound ship of souls, + What harbour town for thee? + What shapes, when thy arriving tolls, + Shall crowd the banks to see? + Shall all the happy shipmates then + Stand singing brotherly? + Or shall a haggard, ruthless few + Warp her over and bring her to, + While the many broken souls of me + Fester down in the slaver's pen, + And nothing to say or do?'" + +I was sorry afterwards, I could see that she was tremendously excited. +And she made me feel as if I, too, had been battened down in that hold +and bruised and almost strangled. I often wonder whether she has got out +of it into the light--whether we can rescue her." Mrs. Maturin paused. + +"What do you mean?" Insall asked. + +"Well, it's difficult to describe, what I feel--she's such a perplexing +mixture of old New England and modernity, of a fatalism, and an aliveness +that fairly vibrates. At first, when she began to recover, I was +conscious only of the vitality--but lately I feel the other quality. It +isn't exactly the old Puritan fatalism, or even the Greek, it's oddly +modern, too, almost agnostic, I should say,--a calm acceptance of the +hazards of life, of nature, of sun and rain and storm alike--very +different from the cheap optimism one finds everywhere now. She isn't +exactly resigned--I don't say that--I know she can be rebellious. And +she's grateful for the sun, yet she seems to have a conviction that the +clouds will gather again.... The doctor says she may leave the hospital +on Monday, and I'm going to bring her over here for awhile. Then," she +added insinuatingly, "we can collaborate." + +"I think I'll go back to Maine," Insall exclaimed. + +"If you desert me, I shall never speak to you again," said Mrs. Maturin. + +"Janet," said Mrs. Maturin the next day, as she laid down the book from +which she was reading, "do you remember that I spoke to you once in +Hampton of coming here to Silliston? Well, now we've got you here, we +don't want to lose you. I've been making inquiries; quite a number of +the professors have typewriting to be done, and they will be glad to give +their manuscripts to you instead of sending them to Boston. And there's +Brooks Insall too--if he ever takes it into his head to write another +book. You wouldn't have any trouble reading his manuscript, it's like +script. Of course it has to be copied. You can board with Mrs. Case-- +I've arranged that, too. But on Monday I'm going to take you to my +house, and keep you until you're strong enough to walk." + +Janet's eyes were suddenly bright with tears. + +"You'll stay?" + +"I can't," answered Janet. "I couldn't." + +"But why not? Have you any other plans?" + +"No, I haven't any plans, but--I haven't the right to stay here." +Presently she raised her face to her friend. "Oh Mrs. Maturin, I'm so +sorry! I didn't want to bring any sadness here--it's all so bright and +beautiful! And now I've made you sad!" + +It was a moment before Augusta Maturin could answer her. + +"What are friends for, Janet," she asked, "if not to share sorrow with? +And do you suppose there's any place, however bright, where sorrow has +not come? Do you think I've not known it, too? And Janet, I haven't sat +here all these days with you without guessing that something worries you. +I've been waiting, all this time, for you to tell me, in order that I +might help you." + +"I wanted to," said Janet, "every day I wanted to, but I couldn't. I +couldn't bear to trouble you with it, I didn't mean ever to tell you. +And then--it's so terrible, I don't know what you'll think." + +"I think I know you, Janet," answered Mrs. Maturin. "Nothing human, +nothing natural is terrible, in the sense you mean. At least I'm one of +those who believe so." + +Presently Janet said, "I'm going to have a child." + +Mrs. Maturin sat very still. Something closed in her throat, preventing +her immediate reply. + +"I, too, had a child, my dear," she answered. "I lost her." She felt +the girl's clasp tighten on her fingers. + +"But you--you had a right to it--you were married." Children are sacred +things," said Augusta Maturin. + +"Sacred! Could it be that a woman like Mrs. Maturity thought that this +child which was coming to her was sacred, too? + +"However they come?" asked Janet. "Oh, I tried to believe that, too! At +first--at first I didn't want it, and when I knew it was coming I was +driven almost crazy. And then, all at once, when I was walking in the +rain, I knew I wanted it to have--to keep all to myself. You +understand?" + +Augusta Maturity inclined her head. + +"But the father?" she managed to ask, after a moment. "I don't wish to +pry, my dear, but does he--does he realize? Can't he help you?" + +"It was Mr. Ditmar." + +"Perhaps it will help you to tell me about it, Janet." + +"I'd--I'd like to. I've been so unhappy since you told me he was dead-- +and I felt like a cheat. You see, he promised to marry me, and I know +now that he loved me, that he really wanted to marry me, but something +happened to make me believe he wasn't going to, I saw--another girl who'd +got into trouble, and then I thought he'd only been playing with me, and +I couldn't stand it. I joined the strikers--I just had to do something." + +Augusta Maturity nodded, and waited. + +"I was only a stenographer, and we were very poor, and he was rich and +lived in a big house, the most important man in Hampton. It seemed too +good to be true--I suppose I never really thought it could happen. +Please don't think I'm putting all the blame on him, Mrs. Maturity--it +was my fault just as much as his. I ought to have gone away from +Hampton, but I didn't have the strength. And I shouldn't have--" Janet +stopped. + +"But--you loved him?" + +"Yes, I did. For a long time, after I left him, I thought I didn't, I +thought I hated him, and when I found out what had happened to me--that +night I came to you--I got my father's pistol and went to the mill to +shoot him. I was going to shoot myself, too." + +"Oh!" Mrs. Maturity gasped. She gave a quick glance of sheer amazement +at Janet, who did not seem to notice it; who was speaking objectively, +apparently with no sense of the drama in her announcement. + +"But I couldn't," she went on. "At the time I didn't know why I +couldn't, but when I went out I understood it was because I wanted the +child, because it was his child. And though he was almost out of his +head, he seemed so glad because I'd come back to him, and said he'd marry +me right away." + +"And you refused!" exclaimed Mrs. Maturity. + +"Well, you see, I was out of my head, too, I still thought I hated him-- +but I'd loved him all the time. It was funny! He had lots of faults, +and he didn't seem to understand or care much about how poor people feel, +though he was kind to them in the mills. He might have come to +understand--I don't know--it wasn't because he didn't want to, but +because he was so separated from them, I guess, and he was so interested +in what he was doing. He had ambition, he thought everything of that +mill, he'd made it. I don't know why I loved him, it wasn't because he +was fine, like Mr. Insall, but he was strong and brave, and he needed me +and just took me." + +"One never knows!" Augusta Maturity murmured. + +"I went back that night to tell him I'd marry him--and he'd gone. Then I +came to you, to the soup kitchen. I didn't mean to bother you, I've +never quite understood how I got there. I don't care so much what +happens to me, now that I've told you," Janet added. "It was mean, not +to tell you, but I'd never had anything like this--what you were giving +me--and I wanted all I could get." + +"I'm thankful you did come to us!" Augusta Maturin managed to reply. + +"You mean--?" Janet exclaimed. + +"I mean, that we who have been more--fortunate don't look at these things +quite as we used to, that the world is less censorious, is growing to +understand situations it formerly condemned. And--I don't know what kind +of a monster you supposed me to be, Janet." + +"Oh, Mrs. Maturin!" + +"I mean that I'm a woman, too, my dear, although my life has been +sheltered. Otherwise, what has happened to you might have happened to +me. And besides, I am what is called unconventional, I have little +theories of my own about life, and now that you have told me everything I +understand you and love you even more than I did before." + +Save that her breath came fast, Janet lay still against the cushions of +the armchair. She was striving to grasp the momentous and unlooked-for +fact of her friend's unchanged attitude. Then she asked:-- + +"Mrs. Maturin, do you believe in God?" + +Augusta Maturin was startled by the question. "I like to think of Him as +light, Janet, and that we are plants seeking to grow toward Him--no +matter from what dark crevice we may spring. Even in our mistakes and +sins we are seeking Him, for these are ignorances, and as the world +learns more, we shall know Him better and better. It is natural to long +for happiness, and happiness is self-realization, and self-realization is +knowledge and light." + +"That is beautiful," said Janet at length. + +"It is all we can know about God," said Mrs. Maturin, "but it is enough." +She had been thinking rapidly. "And now," she went on, "we shall have to +consider what is to be done. I don't pretend that the future will be +easy, but it will not be nearly as hard for you as it might have been, +since I am your friend, and I do not intend to desert you. I'm sure you +will not let it crush you. In the first place, you will have something +to go on with--mental resources, I mean, for which you have a natural +craving, books and art and nature, the best thoughts and the best +interpretations. We can give you these. And you will have your child, +and work to do, for I'm sure you're industrious. And of course I'll keep +your secret, my dear." + +"But--how?" Janet exclaimed. + +"I've arranged it all. You'll stay here this spring, you'll come to my +house on Monday, just as we planned, and later on you may go to Mrs. +Case's, if it will make you feel more independent, and do typewriting +until the spring term is over. I've told you about my little camp away +up in Canada, in the heart of the wilderness, where I go in summer. +We'll stay there until the autumn, until your baby comes, and, after +that, I know it won't be difficult to get you a position in the west, +where you can gain your living and have your child. I have a good friend +in California who I'm sure will help you. And even if your secret should +eventually be discovered--which is not probable--you will have earned +respect, and society is not as stern as it used to be. And you will +always have me for a friend. There, that's the bright side of it. Of +course it isn't a bed of roses, but I've lived long enough to observe +that the people who lie on roses don't always have the happiest lives. +Whenever you want help and advice, I shall always be here, and from time +to time I'll be seeing you. Isn't that sensible?" + +"Oh, Mrs. Maturin--if you really want me--still?" + +"I do want you, Janet, even more than I did--before, because you need me +more," Mrs. Maturin replied, with a sincerity that could not fail to +bring conviction.... + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +As the spring progressed, Janet grew stronger, became well again, and +through the kindness of Dr. Ledyard, the principal, was presently +installed with a typewriter in a little room in an old building belonging +to the Academy in what was called Bramble Street, and not far from the +Common. Here, during the day, she industriously copied manuscripts' or, +from her notebook, letters dictated by various members of the faculty. +And she was pleased when they exclaimed delightedly at the flawless +copies and failed to suspect her of frequent pilgrimages to the +dictionary in the library in order to familiarize herself with the +meaning and manner of spelling various academic words. At first it was +almost bewildering to find herself in some degree thus sharing the +Silliston community life; and an unpremeditated attitude toward these +learned ones, high priests of the muses she had so long ignorantly +worshipped, accounted perhaps for a great deal in their attitude toward +her. Her fervour, repressed yet palpable, was like a flame burning +before their altars--a flattery to which the learned, being human, are +quick to respond. Besides, something of her history was known, and she +was of a type to incite a certain amount of interest amongst these +discerning ones. Often, after she had taken their dictation, or brought +their manuscripts home, they detained her in conversation. In short, +Silliston gave its approval to this particular experiment of Augusta +Maturin. As for Mrs. Maturin herself, her feeling was one of controlled +pride not unmixed with concern, always conscious as she was of the hidden +element of tragedy in the play she had so lovingly staged. Not that she +had any compunction in keeping Janet's secret, even from Insall; but +sometimes as she contemplated it the strings of her heart grew tight. +Silliston was so obviously where Janet belonged, she could not bear the +thought of the girl going out again from this sheltered spot into a +chaotic world of smoke and struggle. + +Janet's own feelings were a medley. It was not, of course, contentment +she knew continually, nor even peace, although there were moments when +these stole over her. There were moments, despite her incredible good +fortune, of apprehension when she shrank from the future, when fear +assailed her; moments of intense sadness at the thought of leaving her +friends, of leaving this enchanted place now that miraculously she had +found it; moments of stimulation, of exaltation, when she forgot. Her +prevailing sense, as she found herself again, was of thankfulness and +gratitude, of determination to take advantage of, to drink in all of this +wonderful experience, lest any precious memory be lost. + +Like a jewel gleaming with many facets, each sunny day was stored and +treasured. As she went from Mrs. Case's boarding-house forth to her +work, the sweet, sharp air of these spring mornings was filled with +delicious smells of new things, of new flowers and new grass and tender, +new leaves of myriad shades, bronze and crimson, fuzzy white, primrose, +and emerald green. And sometimes it seemed as though the pink and white +clouds of the little orchards were wafted into swooning scents. She +loved best the moment when the Common came in view, when through the rows +of elms the lineaments of those old houses rose before her, lineaments +seemingly long familiar, as of old and trusted friends, and yet ever +stirring new harmonies and new visions. Here, in their midst, she +belonged, and here, had the world been otherwise ordained, she might have +lived on in one continuous, shining spring. At the corner of the Common, +foursquare, ample, painted a straw colour trimmed with white, with its +high chimneys and fan-shaped stairway window, its balustraded terrace +porch open to the sky, was the eighteenth century mansion occupied by Dr. +Ledyard. What was the secret of its flavour? And how account for the +sense of harmony inspired by another dwelling, built during the term of +the second Adams, set in a frame of maples and shining white in the +morning sun? Its curved portico was capped by a wrought-iron railing, +its long windows were touched with purple, and its low garret--set like a +deckhouse on the wide roof--suggested hidden secrets of the past. Here a +Motley or a Longfellow might have dwelt, a Bryant penned his +"Thanatopsis." Farther on, chequered by shade, stood the quaint brick +row of professors' houses, with sloping eaves and recessed entrances of +granite--a subject for an old English print.... Along the border of the +Common were interspersed among the ancient dormitories and halls the new +and dignified buildings of plum-coloured brick that still preserved the +soul of Silliston. And to it the soul of Janet responded. + +In the late afternoon, when her tasks were finished, Janet would cross +the Common to Mrs. Maturin's--a dwelling typical of the New England of +the past, with the dimensions of a cottage and something of the dignity +of a mansion. Fluted white pilasters adorned the corners, the windows +were protected by tiny eaves, the roof was guarded by a rail; the +classically porched entrance was approached by a path between high +clipped hedges of hemlock; and through the library, on the right, you +reached the flagged terrace beside a garden, rioting in the carnival +colours of spring. By September it would have changed. For there is +one glory of the hyacinth, of the tulip and narcissus and the jonquil, +and another of the Michaelmas daisy and the aster. + +Insall was often there, and on Saturdays and Sundays he took Mrs. Maturin +and Janet on long walks into the country. There were afternoons when the +world was flooded with silver light, when the fields were lucent in the +sun; and afternoons stained with blue,--the landscape like a tapestry +woven in delicate grins on a ground of indigo. The arbutus, all aglow +and fragrant beneath its leaves, the purple fringed polygala were past, +but they found the pale gold lily of the bellwort, the rust-red bloom of +the ginger. In the open spaces under the sky were clouds of bluets, wild +violets, and white strawberry flowers clustering beside the star moss all +ashimmer with new green. The Canada Mayflower spread a carpet under the +pines; and in the hollows where the mists settled, where the brooks +flowed, where the air was heavy with the damp, ineffable odour of growing +things, they gathered drooping adder's-tongues, white-starred bloodroots +and foam-flowers. From Insall's quick eye nothing seemed to escape. He +would point out to them the humming-bird that hovered, a bright blur, +above the columbine, the woodpecker glued to the trunk of a maple high +above their heads, the red gleam of a tanager flashing through sunlit +foliage, the oriole and vireo where they hid. And his was the ear that +first caught the exquisite, distant note of the hermit. Once he stopped +them, startled, to listen to the cock partridge drumming to its mate.... + +Sometimes, of an evening, when Janet was helping Mrs. Maturin in her +planting or weeding, Insall would join them, rolling up the sleeves of +his flannel shirt and kneeling beside them in the garden paths. Mrs. +Maturin was forever asking his advice, though she did not always follow +it. + +"Now, Brooks," she would say, "you've just got to suggest something to +put in that border to replace the hyacinths." + +"I had larkspur last year--you remember--and it looked like a chromo in a +railroad folder." + +"Let me see--did I advise larkspur?" he would ask. + +"Oh, I'm sure you must have--I always do what you tell me. It seems to +me I've thought of every possible flower in the catalogue. You know, +too, only you're so afraid of committing yourself." + +Insall's comic spirit, betrayed by his expressions, by the quizzical +intonations of his voice, never failed to fill Janet with joy, while it +was somehow suggestive, too, of the vast fund of his resource. Mrs. +Maturin was right, he could have solved many of her questions offhand if +he had so wished, but he had his own method of dealing with appeals. His +head tilted on one side, apparently in deep thought over the problem, he +never answered outright, but by some process of suggestion unfathomable +to Janet, and by eliminating, not too deprecatingly, Mrs. Maturin's +impatient proposals, brought her to a point where she blurted out the +solution herself. + +"Oriental poppies! How stupid of me not to think of them!" + +"How stupid of me!" Insall echoed--and Janet, bending over her weeding, +made sure they had been in his mind all the while. + +Augusta Maturin's chief extravagance was books; she could not bear to +await her turn at the library, and if she liked a book she wished to own +it. Subscribing to several reviews, three English and one American, she +scanned them eagerly every week and sent in orders to her Boston +bookseller. As a consequence the carved walnut racks on her library +table were constantly being strained. A good book, she declared, ought +to be read aloud, and discussed even during its perusal. And thus Janet, +after an elementary and decidedly unique introduction to worth-while +literature in the hospital, was suddenly plunged into the vortex of +modern thought. The dictum Insall quoted, that modern culture depended +largely upon what one had not read, was applied to her; a child of the +new environment fallen into skilful hands, she was spared the boredom of +wading through the so-called classics which, though useful as milestones, +as landmarks for future reference, are largely mere reminders of an +absolute universe now vanished. The arrival of a novel, play, or +treatise by one of that small but growing nucleus of twentieth century +seers was an event, and often a volume begun in the afternoon was taken +up again after supper. While Mrs. Maturin sat sewing on the other side +of the lamp, Janet had her turn at reading. From the first she had been +quick to note Mrs. Maturin's inflections, and the relics of a high-school +manner were rapidly eliminated. The essence of latter-day realism and +pragmatism, its courageous determination to tear away a veil of which she +had always been dimly aware, to look the facts of human nature in the +face, refreshed her: an increasing portion of it she understood; and she +was constantly under the spell of the excitement that partially grasps, +that hovers on the verge of inspiring discoveries. This excitement, +whenever Insall chanced to be present, was intensified, as she sat a +silent but often quivering listener to his amusing and pungent comments +on these new ideas. His method of discussion never failed to illuminate +and delight her, and often, when she sat at her typewriter the next day, +she would recall one of his quaint remarks that suddenly threw a bright +light on some matter hitherto obscure.... Occasionally a novel or a play +was the subject of their talk, and then they took a delight in drawing +her out, in appealing to a spontaneous judgment unhampered by +pedagogically implanted preconceptions. Janet would grow hot from +shyness. + +"Say what you think, my dear," Mrs. Maturin would urge her. "And +remember that your own opinion is worth more than Shakespeare's or +Napoleon's!" + +Insall would escort her home to Mrs. Case's boarding house.... + +One afternoon early in June Janet sat in her little room working at her +letters when Brooks Insall came in. "I don't mean to intrude in business +hours, but I wanted to ask if you would do a little copying for me," he +said, and he laid on her desk a parcel bound with characteristic +neatness. + +"Something you've written?" she exclaimed, blushing with pleasure and +surprise. He was actually confiding to her one of his manuscripts! + +"Well--yes," he replied comically, eyeing her. + +"I'll be very careful with it. I'll do it right away." + +"There's no particular hurry," he assured her. "The editor's waited six +months for it--another month or so won't matter." + +"Another month or so!" she ejaculated,--but he was gone. Of course she +couldn't have expected him to remain and talk about it; but this +unexpected exhibition of shyness concerning his work--so admired by the +world's choicer spirits--thrilled yet amused her, and made her glow with +a new understanding. With eager fingers she undid the string and sat +staring at the regular script without taking in, at first, the meaning of +a single sentence. It was a comparatively short sketch entitled "The +Exile," in which shining, winged truths and elusive beauties flitted +continually against a darkbackground of Puritan oppression; the story of +one Basil Grelott, a dreamer of Milton's day, Oxford nurtured, who, +casting off the shackles of dogma and manmade decrees, sailed with his +books to the New England wilderness across the sea. There he lived, +among the savages, in peace and freedom until the arrival of Winthrop and +his devotees, to encounter persecution from those who themselves had fled +from it. The Lord's Brethren, he averred, were worse than the Lord's +Bishops--Blackstone's phrase. Janet, of course, had never heard of +Blackstone, some of whose experiences Insall had evidently used. And the +Puritans dealt with Grelott even as they would have served the author of +"Paradise Lost" himself, especially if he had voiced among them the +opinions set forth in his pamphlet on divorce. A portrait of a stern +divine with his infallible Book gave Janet a vivid conception of the +character of her ancestors; and early Boston, with yellow candlelight +gleaming from the lantern-like windows of the wooden, Elizabethan houses, +was unforgettably etched. There was an inquisition in a freezing barn of +a church, and Basil Grelott banished to perish amid the forest. in his +renewed quest for freedom.... After reading the manuscript, Janet sat +typewriting into the night, taking it home with her and placing it +besides her bed, lest it be lost to posterity. By five the next evening +she had finished the copy. + +A gentle rain had fallen during the day, but had ceased as she made her +way toward Insall's house. The place was familiar now: she had been +there to supper with Mrs. Maturin, a supper cooked and served by Martha +Vesey, an elderly, efficient and appallingly neat widow, whom Insall had +discovered somewhere in his travels and installed as his housekeeper. +Janet paused with her hand on the gate latch to gaze around her, at the +picket fence on which he had been working when she had walked hither the +year before. It was primly painted now, its posts crowned with the +carved pineapples; behind the fence old-fashioned flowers were in bloom, +lupins and false indigo; and the retaining wall of blue-grey slaty stone, +which he had laid that spring, was finished. A wind stirred the maple, +releasing a shower of heavy drops, and she opened the gate and went up +the path and knocked at the door. There was no response--even Martha +must be absent, in the village! Janet was disappointed, she had looked +forward to seeing him, to telling him how great had been her pleasure in +the story he had written, at the same time doubting her courage to do so. +She had never been able to speak to him about his work and what did her +opinion matter to him? As she turned away the stillness was broken by a +humming sound gradually rising to a crescendo, so she ventured slowly +around the house and into the orchard of gnarled apple trees on the slope +until she came insight of a little white building beside the brook. The +weathervane perched on the gable, and veering in the wet breeze, seemed +like a live fish swimming in its own element; and through the open window +she saw Insall bending over a lathe, from which the chips were flying. +She hesitated. Then he looked up, and seeing her, reached above his head +to pull the lever that shut off the power. + +"Come in," he called out, and met her at the doorway. He was dressed in +a white duck shirt, open at the neck, and a pair of faded corduroy +trousers. "I wasn't looking for this honour," he told her, with a +gesture of self-deprecation, "or I'd have put on a dinner coat." + +And, despite her eagerness and excitement, she laughed. + +"I didn't dare to leave this in the house," she explained. Mrs. Vesey +wasn't home. And I thought you might be here." + +"You haven't made the copy already!" + +"Oh, I loved doing it!" she replied, and paused, flushing. She might +have known that it would be simply impossible to talk to him about it! +So she laid it down on the workbench, and, overcome by a sudden shyness, +retreated toward the door. + +"You're not going!" he exclaimed. + +"I must--and you're busy." + +"Not at all," he declared, "not at all, I was just killing time until +supper. Sit down!" And he waved her to a magisterial-looking chair of +Jacobean design, with turned legs, sandpapered and immaculate, that stood +in the middle of the shop. + +"Oh, not in that!" Janet protested. "And besides, I'd spoil it--I'm sure +my skirt is wet." + +But he insisted, thrusting it under her. "You've come along just in +time, I wanted a woman to test it--men are no judges of chairs. There's +a vacuum behind the small of your back, isn't there? Augusta will have +to put a cushion in it." + +"Did you make it for Mrs. Maturin? She will be Pleased!" exclaimed +Janet, as she sat down. "I don't think it's uncomfortable." + +"I copied it from an old one in the Boston Art Museum. Augusta saw it +there, and said she wouldn't be happy until she had one like it. But +don't tell her." + +"Not for anything!" Janet got to her feet again. "I really must be +going." + +"Going where?" + +"I told Mrs. Maturin I'd read that new book to her. I couldn't go +yesterday--I didn't want to go," she added, fearing he might think his +work had kept her. + +"Well, I'll walk over with you. She asked me to make a little design for +a fountain, you know, and I'll have to get some measurements." + +As they emerged from the shop and climbed the slope Janet tried to fight +off the sadness that began to invade her. Soon she would have to be +leaving all this! Her glance lingered wistfully on the old farmhouse +with its great centre chimney from which the smoke was curling, with its +diamond-paned casements Insall had put into the tiny frames. + +"What queer windows!" she said. "But they seem to go with the house, +beautifully." + +"You think so?" His tone surprised her; it had a touch more of +earnestness than she had ever before detected. "They belong to that type +of house the old settlers brought the leaded glass with them. Some +people think they're cold, but I've arranged to make them fairly tight. +You see, I've tried to restore it as it must have been when it was +built." + +"And these?" she asked, pointing to the millstones of different diameters +that made the steps leading down to the garden. + +"Oh, that's an old custom, but they are nice," he agreed. "I'll just put +this precious manuscript inside and get my foot rule," he added, opening +the door, and she stood awaiting him on the threshold, confronted by the +steep little staircase that disappeared into the wall half way up. At +her left was the room where he worked, and which once had been the +farmhouse kitchen. She took a few steps into it, and while he was +searching in the table drawer she halted before the great chimney over +which, against the panel, an old bell-mouthed musket hung. Insall came +over beside her. + +"Those were trees!" he said. "That panel's over four feet across, I +measured it once. I dare say the pine it was cut from grew right where +we are standing, before the land was cleared to build the house." + +"But the gun?" she questioned. "You didn't have it the night we came to +supper." + +"No, I ran across it at a sale in Boston. The old settler must have +owned one like that. I like to think of him, away off here in the +wilderness in those early days." + +She thought of how Insall had made those early days live for her, in his +story of Basil Grelott. But to save her soul, wen with such an opening, +she could not speak of it. + +"He had to work pretty hard, of course," Insall continued, "but I dare +say he had a fairly happy life, no movies, no Sunday supplements, no +automobiles or gypsy moths. His only excitement was to trudge ten miles +to Dorset and listen to a three hour sermon on everlasting fire and +brimstone by a man who was supposed to know. No wonder he slept soundly +and lived to be over ninety!" + +Insall was standing with his head thrown back, his eyes stilt seemingly +fixed on the musket that had suggested his remark--a pose eloquent, she +thought, of the mental and physical balance of the man. She wondered +what belief gave him the free mastery of soul and body he possessed. +Some firm conviction, she was sure, must energise him yet she respected +him the more for concealing it. + +"It's hard to understand such a terrible religion!" she cried. "I don't +see how those old settlers could believe in it, when there are such +beautiful things in the world, if we only open our eyes and look for +them. Oh Mr. Insall, I wish I could tell you how I felt when I read your +story, and when Mrs. Maturin read me those other books of yours." + +She stopped breathlessly, aghast at her boldness--and then, suddenly, a +barrier between them seemed to break down, and for the first time since +she had known him she felt near to him. He could not doubt the sincerity +of her tribute. + +"You like them as much as that, Janet?" he said, looking at her. + +"I can't tell you how much, I can't express myself. And I want to tell +you something else, Mr. Insall, while I have the chance--how just being +with you and Mrs. Maturin has changed me. I can face life now, you have +shown me so much in it I never saw before." + +"While you have the chance?" he repeated. + +"Yes." She strove to go on cheerfully, "Now I've said it, I feel better, +I promise not to mention it again. I knew--you didn't think me +ungrateful. It's funny," she added, "the more people have done for you- +when they've given you everything, life and hope,--the harder it is to +thank them." She turned her face away, lest he might see that her eyes +were wet. "Mrs. Maturin will be expecting us." + +"Not yet," she heard him say, and felt his hand on her arm. "You haven't +thought of what you're doing for me." + +"What I'm doing for you!" she echoed. "What hurts me most, when I think +about it, is that I'll never be able to do anything." + +"Why do you say that?" he asked. + +"If I only could believe that some day I might be able to help you--just +a little--I should be happier. All I have, all I am I owe to you and +Mrs. Maturin." + +"No, Janet," he answered. "What you are is you, and it's more real than +anything we could have put into you. What you have to give is-- +yourself." His fingers trembled on her arm, but she saw him smile a +little before he spoke again. "Augusta Maturin was right when she said +that you were the woman I needed. I didn't realize it then perhaps she +didn't--but now I'm sure of it. Will you come to me?" + +She stood staring at him, as in terror, suddenly penetrated by a dismay +that sapped her strength, and she leaned heavily against the fireplace, +clutching the mantel-shelf. + +"Don't!" she pleaded. "Please don't--I can't." + +"You can't!... Perhaps, after a while, you may come to feel differently +--I didn't mean to startle you," she heard him reply gently. This +humility, in him, was unbearable. + +"Oh, it isn't that--it isn't that! If I could, I'd be willing to serve +you all my life--I wouldn't ask for anything more. I never thought that +this would happen. I oughtn't to have stayed in Silliston." + +"You didn't suspect that I loved you?" + +"How could I? Oh, I might have loved you, if I'd been fortunate--if I'd +deserved it. But I never thought, I always looked up to you--you are so +far above me!" She lifted her face to him in agony. "I'm sorry--I'm +sorry for you--I'll never forgive myself!" + +"It's--some one else?" he asked. + +"I was--going to be married to--to Mr. Ditmar," she said slowly, +despairingly. + +"But even then--" Insall began. + +"You don't understand!" she cried. "What will you think of me?--Mrs. +Maturin was to have told you, after I'd gone. It's--it's the same as if +I were married to him--only worse." + +"Worse!" Insall repeated uncomprehendingly.... And then she was aware +that he had left her side. He was standing by the window. + +A thrush began to sing in the maple. She stole silently toward the door, +and paused to look back at him, once to meet his glance. He had turned. + +"I can't--I can't let you go like this!" she heard him say, but she fled +from him, out of the gate and toward the Common.... + +When Janet appeared, Augusta Maturin was in her garden. With an instant +perception that something was wrong, she went to the girl and led her to +the sofa in the library. There the confession was made. + +"I never guessed it," Janet sobbed. "Oh, Mrs. Maturin, you'll believe +me--won't you?" + +"Of course I believe you, Janet," Augusta Maturity replied, trying to +hide her pity, her own profound concern and perplexity. "I didn't +suspect it either. If I had--" + +"You wouldn't have brought me here, you wouldn't have asked me to stay +with you. But I was to blame, I oughtn't to have stayed, I knew all +along that something would happen--something terrible that I hadn't any +right to stay." + +"Who could have foreseen it!" her friend exclaimed helplessly. "Brooks +isn't like any other man I've ever known--one can never tell what he has +in mind. Not that I'm surprised as I look back upon it all!" + +"I've hurt him!" + +Augusta Maturity was silent awhile. "Remember, my dear," she begged, +"you haven't only yourself to think about, from now on." + +But comfort was out of the question, the task of calming the girl +impossible. Finally the doctor was sent for, and she was put to bed.... + +Augusta Maturity spent an agonized, sleepless night, a prey of many +emotions; of self-reproach, seeing now that she had been wrong in not +telling Brooks Insall of the girl's secret; of sorrow and sympathy for +him; of tenderness toward the girl, despite the suffering she had +brought; of unwonted rebellion against a world that cheated her of this +cherished human tie for which she had longed the first that had come into +her life since her husband and child had gone. And there was her own +responsibility for Insall's unhappiness--when she recalled with a pang +her innocent sayings that Janet was the kind of woman he, an artist, +should marry! And it was true--if he must marry. He himself had seen +it. Did Janet love him? or did she still remember Ditmar? Again and +again, during the summer that followed, this query was on her lips, but +remained unspoken.... + +The next day Insall disappeared. No one knew where he had gone, but his +friends in Silliston believed he had been seized by one of his sudden, +capricious fancies for wandering. For many months his name was not +mentioned between Augusta Maturity and Janet. By the middle of June they +had gone to Canada.... + +In order to reach the camp on Lac du Sablier from the tiny railroad +station at Saint Hubert, a trip of some eight miles up the decharge was +necessary. The day had been when Augusta Maturity had done her share of +paddling and poling, with an habitant guide in the bow. She had foreseen +all the needs of this occasion, warm clothes for Janet, who was wrapped +in blankets and placed on cushions in the middle of a canoe, while she +herself followed in a second, from time to time exclaiming, in a +reassuring voice, that one had nothing to fear in the hands of Delphin +and Herve, whom she had known intimately for more than twenty years. It +was indeed a wonderful, exciting, and at moments seemingly perilous +journey up the forested aisle of the river: at sight of the first roaring +reach of rapids Janet held her breathso incredible did it appear that any +human power could impel and guide a boat up the white stairway between +the boulders! Was it not courting destruction? Yet she felt a strange, +wild delight in the sense of danger, of amazement at the woodsman's eye +that found and followed the crystal paths through the waste of foam.... +There were long, quiet stretches, hemmed in by alders, where the canoes, +dodging the fallen trees, glided through the still water... No such +silent, exhilarating motion Janet had ever known. Even the dipping +paddles made no noise, though sometimes there was a gurgle, as though a +fish had broken the water behind them; sometimes, in the shining pools +ahead, she saw the trout leap out. At every startling flop Delphin would +exclaim: "Un gros!" From an upper branch of a spruce a kingfisher darted +like an arrow into the water, making a splash like a falling stone. +Once, after they had passed through the breach of a beaver dam, Herve +nodded his head toward a mound of twigs by the bank and muttered +something. Augusta Maturin laughed. + +"Cabane de castor, he says--a beaver cabin. And the beavers made the dam +we just passed. Did you notice, Janet, how beautifully clean those logs +had been cut by their sharp teeth?" + +At moments she conversed rapidly with Delphin in the same patois Janet +had heard on the streets of Hampton. How long ago that seemed! + +On two occasions, when the falls were sheer, they had to disembark and +walk along little portages through the green raspberry bushes. The +prints of great hooves in the black silt betrayed where wild animals had +paused to drink. They stopped for lunch on a warm rock beside a singing +waterfall, and at last they turned an elbow in the stream and with +suddenly widened vision beheld the lake's sapphire expanse and the +distant circle of hills. "Les montagnes," Herve called them as he flung +out his pipe, and this Janet could translate for herself. Eastward they +lay lucent in the afternoon light; westward, behind the generous log camp +standing on a natural terrace above the landing, they were in shadow. +Here indeed seemed peace, if remoteness, if nature herself might bestow +it. + +Janet little suspected that special preparations had been made for her +comfort. Early in April, while the wilderness was still in the grip of +winter, Delphin had been summoned from a far-away lumber camp to Saint +Hubert, where several packing-cases and two rolls of lead pipe from +Montreal lay in a shed beside the railroad siding. He had superintended +the transportation of these, on dog sledges, up the frozen decharge, +accompanied on his last trip by a plumber of sorts from Beaupre, thirty +miles down the line; and between them they had improvised a bathroom, and +attached a boiler to the range! Only a week before the arrival of Madame +the spring on the hillside above the camp had been tapped, and the pipe +laid securely underground. Besides this unheard-of luxury for the Lac du +Sablier there were iron beds and mattresses and little wood stoves to go +in the four bedrooms, which were more securely chinked with moss. The +traditions of that camp had been hospitable. In Professor Wishart's day +many guests had come and gone, or pitched their tents nearby; and Augusta +Maturin, until this summer, had rarely been here alone, although she had +no fears of the wilderness, and Delphin brought his daughter Delphine to +do the housework and cooking. The land for miles round about was owned +by a Toronto capitalist who had been a friend of her father, and who +could afford as a hobby the sparing of the forest. By his permission a +few sportsmen came to fish or shoot, and occasionally their campfires +could be seen across the water, starlike glows in the darkness of the +night, at morning and evening little blue threads of smoke that rose +against the forest; "bocane," Delphin called it, and Janet found a sweet, +strange magic in these words of the pioneer. + +The lake was a large one, shaped like an hourglass, as its name implied, +and Augusta Maturin sometimes paddled Janet through the wide, shallow +channel to the northern end, even as she had once paddled Gifford. Her +genius was for the helpless. One day, when the waters were high, and the +portages could be dispensed with, they made an excursion through the +Riviere des Peres to the lake of that name, the next in the chain above. +For luncheon they ate the trout Augusta caught; and in the afternoon, +when they returned to the mouth of the outlet, Herve, softly checking the +canoe with his paddle, whispered the word "Arignal!" Thigh deep in the +lush grasses of the swamp was an animal with a huge grey head, like a +donkey's, staring foolishly in their direction--a cow moose. With a +tremendous commotion that awoke echoes in the forest she tore herself +from the mud and disappeared, followed by her panic-stricken offspring, a +caricature of herself.... + +By September the purple fireweed that springs up beside old camps, and in +the bois brute, had bloomed and scattered its myriad, impalpable +thistledowns over crystal floors. Autumn came to the Laurentians. In +the morning the lake lay like a quicksilver pool under the rising mists, +through which the sun struck blinding flashes of light. A little later, +when the veil had lifted, it became a mirror for the hills and crags, the +blue reaches of the sky. The stinging air was spiced with balsam. +Revealed was the incredible brilliance of another day,--the arsenic-green +of the spruce, the red and gold of the maples, the yellow of the alders +bathing in the shallows, of the birches, whose white limbs could be seen +gleaming in the twilight of the thickets. Early, too early, the sun fell +down behind the serrated forest-edge of the western hill, a ball of +orange fire.... One evening Delphin and Herve, followed by two other +canoes, paddled up to the landing. New visitors had arrived, Dr. McLeod, +who had long been an intimate of the Wishart family, and with him a +buxom, fresh-complexioned Canadian woman, a trained nurse whom he had +brought from Toronto. + +There, in nature's wilderness, Janet knew the supreme experience of +women, the agony, the renewal and joy symbolic of nature herself. When +the child was bathed and dressed in the clothes Augusta Maturin herself +had made for it, she brought it into the room to the mother. + +"It's a daughter," she announced. + +Janet regarded the child wistfully. "I hoped it would be a boy," she +said. "He would have had--a better chance." But she raised her arms, +and the child was laid in the bed beside her. + +"We'll see that she has a chance, my dear," Augusta Maturin replied, as +she kissed her. + +Ten days went by, Dr. McLeod lingered at Lac du Sablier, and Janet was +still in bed. Even in this life-giving air she did not seem to grow +stronger. Sometimes, when the child was sleeping in its basket on the +sunny porch, Mrs. Maturin read to her; but often when she was supposed to +rest, she lay gazing out of the open window into silver space listening +to the mocking laughter of the loons, watching the ducks flying across +the sky; or, as evening drew on, marking in the waters a steely angle +that grew and grew--the wake of a beaver swimming homeward in the +twilight. In the cold nights the timbers cracked to the frost, she heard +the owls calling to one another from the fastnesses of the forest, and +thought of life's inscrutable mystery. Then the child would be brought +to her. It was a strange, unimagined happiness she knew when she felt it +clutching at her breasts, at her heart, a happiness not unmixed with +yearning, with sadness as she pressed it to her. Why could it not remain +there always, to comfort her, to be nearer her than any living thing? +Reluctantly she gave it back to the nurse, wistfully her eyes followed +it.... + +Twice a week, now, Delphin and Herve made the journey to Saint Hubert, +and one evening, after Janet had watched them paddling across the little +bay that separated the camp from the outlet's mouth, Mrs. Maturin +appeared, with an envelope in her hand. + +"I've got a letter from Brooks Insall, Janet," she said, with a well- +disguised effort to speak naturally. "It's not the first one he's sent +me, but I haven't mentioned the others. He's in Silliston--and I wrote +him about the daughter." + +"Yes," said Janet. + +"Well--he wants to come up here, to see you, before we go away. He asks +me to telegraph your permission." + +"Oh no, he mustn't, Mrs. Maturin!" + +"You don't care to see him?" + +"It isn't that. I'd like to see him if things had been different. But +now that I've disappointed him--hurt him, I couldn't stand it. I know +it's only his kindness." + +After a moment Augusta Maturin handed Janet a sealed envelope she held in +her hand. + +"He asked me to give you this," she said, and left the room. Janet read +it, and let it fall on the bedspread, where it was still lying when her +friend returned and began tidying the room. From the direction of the +guide's cabin, on the point, came the sounds of talk and laughter, broken +by snatches of habitant songs. Augusta Maturin smiled. She pretended +not to notice the tears in Janet's eyes, and strove to keep back her own. + +"Delphin and Herve saw a moose in the decharge," she explained. "Of +course it was a big one, it always is! They're telling the doctor about +it." + +"Mrs. Maturin," said Janet, "I'd like to talk to you. I think I ought to +tell you what Mr. Insall says." + +"Yes, my dear," her friend replied, a little faintly, sitting down on the +bed. + +"He asks me to believe what--I've done makes no difference to him. Of +course he doesn't put it in so many words, but he says he doesn't care +anything about conventions," Janet continued slowly. "What I told him +when he asked me to marry him in Silliston was a shock to him, it was so- +-so unexpected. He went away, to Maine, but as soon as he began to think +it all over he wanted to come and tell me that he loved me in spite of +it, but he felt he couldn't, under the circumstances, that he had to wait +until--now. Although I didn't give him any explanation, he wants me to +know that he trusts me, he understands--it's because, he says, I am what +I am. He still wishes to marry me, to take care of me and the child. We +could live in California, at first--he's always been anxious to go there, +he says." + +"Well, my dear?" Augusta Maturin forced herself to say at last. + +"It's so generous--so like him!" Janet exclaimed. "But of course I +couldn't accept such a sacrifice, even if--" She paused. "Oh, it's made +me so sad all summer to think that he's unhappy because of me!" + +"I know, Janet, but you should realize, as I told you in Silliston, that +it isn't by any deliberate act of your own, it's just one of those things +that occur in this world and that can't be foreseen or avoided." Augusta +Maturin spoke with an effort. In spite of Janet's apparent calm, she had +never been more acutely aware of the girl's inner suffering. + +"I know," said Janet. "But it's terrible to think that those things we +unintentionally do, perhaps because of faults we have previously +committed, should have the same effect as acts that are intentional." + +"The world is very stupid. All suffering, I think, is brought about by +stupidity. If we only could learn to look at ourselves as we are! It's +a stupid, unenlightened society that metes out most of our punishments +and usually demands a senseless expiation." Augusta Maturin waited, and +presently Janet spoke again. + +"I've been thinking all summer, Mrs. Maturin. There was so much I wanted +to talk about with you, but I wanted to be sure of myself first. And +now, since the baby came, and I know I'm not going to get well, I seem to +see things much more clearly." + +"Why do you say you're not going to get well, Janet? In this air, and +with the child to live for!" + +"I know it. Dr. McLeod knows it, or he wouldn't be staying here, and +you've both been too kind to tell me. You've been so kind, Mrs. Maturin-- +I can't talk about it. But I'm sure I'm going to die, I've really known +it ever since we left Silliston. Something's gone out of me, the thing +that drove me, that made me want to live--I can't express what I mean any +other way. Perhaps it's this child, the new life--perhaps I've just been +broken, I don't know. You did your best to mend me, and that's one thing +that makes me sad. And the thought of Mr. Insall's another. In some +ways it would have been worse to live--I couldn't have ruined his life. +And even if things had been different, I hadn't come to love him, in that +way--it's queer, because he's such a wonderful person. I'd like to live +for the child, if only I had the strength, the will left in me--but +that's gone. And maybe I could save her from--what I've been through." + +Augusta Maturin took Janet's hand in hers. + +"Janet," she said, "I've been a lonely woman, as you know, with nothing +to look forward to. I've always wanted a child since my little Edith +went. I wanted you, my dear, I want your child, your daughter--as I want +nothing else in the world. I will take her, I will try to bring her up +in the light, and Brooks Insall will help me...." + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS: + +Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes +Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect +Too much reason in the world, too little impulse and feeling + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V3 +by Winston Churchill + + + + + + +ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS FOR THE ENTIRE SET + +Anger and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid +But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace +Exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained +Foreigners. I never could see why the government lets 'em all come +Hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity +Janet resented that pity +Love is nothing but attraction between the sexes +Mercifully, however, she had little leisure to reflect +Perhaps she feared to break the charm of that memory +She resented being prayed for +Struggled against her woman's desire to give +Tested the limits of Janet's ingenuity and powers of resistance +The seventh commandment was only relative +There had been something sorrowful in that kiss +Too much reason in the world, too little impulse and feeling + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, complete +by Winston Churchill + diff --git a/old/wc05v11.zip b/old/wc05v11.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..96aa411 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/wc05v11.zip |