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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dwelling Place of Light, Complete
+by Winston Churchill
+[Author is the American Winston Churchill not the British]
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Dwelling Place of Light, Complete
+
+Author: Winston Churchill
+
+Last Updated: March 5, 2009
+Release Date: October 5, 2006 [EBook #3649]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DWELLING PLACE OF LIGHT, ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Pat Castevans and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT
+
+
+By Winston Churchill
+
+
+1917
+
+
+
+
+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
+inscrutableness. 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 facade 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 germ-laden 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 studied 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
+singularly 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 dream-spell
+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 open-mindedness, "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 bale-breakers, 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
+ring-spinning 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.
+
+
+
+
+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 most 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 somewhat 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't make 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 self-protection--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 value-revealing 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 semi-publicity 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 fuse 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 itself--was 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 Fillmore 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 frying-pan
+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 scorching 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, stubby-bearded 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 lodging-house 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 well-known 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 proclaimed
+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 facade 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....
+
+
+
+
+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 handcuffed 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 distinguished-looking 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 long-suffering
+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 bibliotheque, 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 camp-followers. 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 personal 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.
+
+"You 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 syndicalists 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-hunting 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
+he 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 fortress-like 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--uh, West Street, Mr. Ditmar."
+
+He remembered where Fillmore 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
+competent .... 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 enthusiasms, 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 Chippering 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 schoolmam," 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 a-shimmer 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 dark-background 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 man-made 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, when 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 breath--so 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...."
+
+
+PG EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
+
+   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 the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Dwelling Place of Light, Complete
+by Winston Churchill
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