OF THE USE OF FEET
The suburb of Cottonville bordered a creek, a starveling, wet-weather
stream which offered the sole suggestion of sewerage. The village was
cut in two by this natural division. It clung to the shelving sides of
the shallow ravine; it was scattered like bits of refuse on the numerous
railroad embankments, where building was unhandy and streets almost
impossible, to be convenient to the mills. Six big factories in all,
some on one side of the state line and some on the other, daily breathed
in their live current of operatives and exhaled them again to fill the
litter of flimsy shanties.
The road which wound down from the heights ran through the middle of the
village and formed its main street. Across the ravine from it, reached
by a wooden bridge, stood a pretentious frame edifice, a boarding-house
built by the Gloriana mill for the use of its office force and
mechanics. Men were lounging on the wide porches of this structure in
Sabbath-afternoon leisure, smoking and singing. The young Southern male
of any class is usually melodious. Across the hollow came the sounds of
a guitar and a harmonica.
"Listen a minute, Shade. Ain't that pretty? I know that tune," said
Johnnie, and she began to hum softly under her breath, her girlish heart
responding to the call.
"Hush," admonished Buckheath harshly. "You don't want to be runnin'
after them fellers. It's some of the loom-fixers."
In silence he led the way past the great mill buildings of red brick,
square and unlovely but many-windowed and glowing, alight, throbbing
with the hum of pent industry. Johnnie gazed steadily up at those
windows; the glow within was other than that which gilded turret and
pinnacle and fairy isle in the Western sky, yet perchance this light
might be a lamp to the feet of one who wished to climb that way. Her
adventurous spirit rose to the challenge, and she said softly, more to
herself than to the man:
"I'm a-goin' to be a boss hand in there. I'm goin' to get the highest
wages of any girl in the mill, time I learn my trade, because I'm goin'
to try harder 'n anybody."
Shade looked around at her, curiously. Her beauty, her air of
superiority, still repelled him--such fancy articles were not apt to be
of much use--but this sounded like a woman who might be valuable to
her master.
Johnnie returned his gaze with the frank good will of a child, and
suddenly he forgot everything but the adorable lift of her pink lip over
the shining white teeth.
The young fellow now halted at the step of a big frame house. The
outside was of an extent to seem fairly pretentious; yet so mean was the
construction, so sparing of window and finish, that the building showed
itself instantly for what it was--the cheap boarding-house of a mill
town. A group of tired-looking girls sitting on the step in blessed
Sunday idleness and cheap Sunday finery stared as he and Johnnie
ascended and crossed the porch. One of these, a tall lank woman of
perhaps thirty years, got up and followed a few hesitating paces,
apparently more as a matter of curiosity than with any hospitable
intent.
A man with a round red face and a bald pate whose curly fringe of
grizzled, reddish hair made him look like a clown in a pantomime,
motioned them with a surly thumb toward the back of the house, where
clattering preparations for supper were audible and odoriferous. The old
fellow sat in a splint-bottomed chair of extra size and with arms. This
he had kicked back against the wall of the house, so that his short legs
did not reach the floor, the big carpet-slippered feet finding rest on
the rung of the chair. His attitude was one of relaxation. The face,
broad, flat, small of eye and wide of mouth, did indeed suggest the
clown countenance; yet there was in it, and in the whole personality,
something of the Eastern idol, the journeyman attempt of crude humanity
to represent power. And the potential cruelty of the type slept in his
placid countenance as surely as ever in the dreaming face of Shiva, the
destroyer.
"Mrs. Bence--Aunt Mavity," called Shade, advancing into the narrow hall.
In answer a tired-faced woman came from the kitchen, wiping her hands on
her checked apron.
"Good Lord, if it ain't Johnnie! I was 'feared she Wouldn't git here
to-night," she ejaculated when she saw the girl. "Take her out on the
porch, Shade; I ain't got a minute now. Pap's poorly again, and I'm
obliged to put the late supper on the table for them thar gals--the
night shift's done eat and gone. I'll show her whar she's to sleep at,
after while. I don't just rightly know whar Pap aimed to have her stay,"
she concluded hastily, as something boiled over on the stove. Johnnie
set her bundle down in the corner of the kitchen.
"I'll help," she said simply, as she drew the excited coffee-pot to a
corner of the range and dosed it judiciously with cold water.
"Well, now, that's mighty good of you," panted worried Mavity Bence.
"How queer things comes 'round," she ruminated as they dished up the
biscuits and fried pork. "I helped you into the very world, Johnnie. I
lived neighbour to your maw, and they wasn't nobody else to be with her
when you was born, and I went over. I never suspicioned that you would
be helpin' me git supper down here in the settlement inside o'
twenty year."
Johnnie ran and fetched and carried, as though she had never done
anything else in her life, intent on the one task. She was alive in
every fibre of her young body; she saw, she heard, as these words cannot
always be truthfully applied to people.
"Did Shade tell you anything about Louvania?" inquired the woman at
length.
"No," replied Johnnie softly, "but I seen it in the paper."
Louvania Bence, the only remaining child of the widow, had, two weeks
before, left her work at the mill, taken the trolley in to Watauga,
walked out upon the county bridge across the Tennessee and jumped off.
Johnnie had read the published account, passed from hand to hand in the
mountains where Pap Himes and Mavity Bence had troops of kin and where
Louvania was born. The statement ran that there was no love affair, and
that the girl's distaste for her work at the cotton mill must have been
the reason for the suicide.
"That there talk in the newspaper wasn't right," Louvania's mother
choked. "They wasn't a word of truth in it. You know in reason that if
Louvany hated to work in the mill as bad as all that she'd have named it
to me--her own mother--and she never did. She never spoke a word like
it, only to say now and ag'in, as we all do, that it was hard, and that
she'd--well, she did 'low she'd ruther be dead, as gals will; but she
couldn't have meant it. Do you think she could have meant it, Johnnie?"
The faded eyes, clouded now by tears, stared up into Johnnie's clear
young orbs.
"Of course she couldn't have meant it," Johnnie comforted her. "Why, I'm
sure it's fine to work in the mill. If she didn't feel so, she'd have
told you the thing. She must have been out of her mind. People always
are when they--do that."
"That's what I keep a-thinkin'," the poor mother said, clinging
pathetically to that which gave her consolation and cheer. "I say to
myself that it must have been some brain disease took her all of a
sudden and made her crazy that-a-way; because God knows she had nothing
to fret her nor drive her to such."
By this time the meal was on the table, and the girls trooped in from
the porch. The old man with the bald pate was seating himself at the
head of the board, and Johnnie asked the privilege of helping wait
on table.
"No, you ain't a-goin' to," Mrs. Bence said hospitably, pushing her into
a seat. "If you start in to work in the morning, like I reckon you will,
you ain't got no other time to get acquainted with the gals but right
now. You set down. We don't take much waitin' on. We all pass things,
and reach for what we want."
In the smoky illumination of the two ill-cleaned lamps which stood one
at each end of the table, Johnnie's fair face shone out like a star. The
tall woman who had shown a faint interest in them on the porch was
seated just opposite. Her bulging light-blue eyes scarcely left the
newcomer's countenance as she absent-mindedly filled her mouth. She was
a scant, stringy-looking creature, despite her height; the narrow back
was hooped like that of an old woman and the shoulders indrawn, so that
the chest was cramped, and sent forth a wheezy, flatted voice that
sorted ill with her inches; her round eyes had no speculation in them;
her short chin was obstinate without power; the thin, half-gray hair
that wanted to curl feebly about her lined forehead was stripped away
and twisted in a knot no bigger than a walnut, at the back of a
bent head.
For some time the old man at the end of the table stowed himself
methodically with victuals; his air was that of a man packing a box;
then he brought his implements to half-rest, as it were, and gave a
divided attention to the new boarder.
"What did I hear them call yo' name?" he inquired gruffly.
Johnnie repeated her title and gave him one of those smiles that went
with most of her speeches. It seemed to suggest things to the
old sinner.
"Huh," he grunted; "I riccollect ye now. Yo' pap was a Consadine, but
you're old Virgil Passmore's grandchild. One of the borryin' Passmores,"
he added, staring coolly at Johnnie. "Virge was a fine, upstandin' old
man. You've got the favour of him--if you wasn't a gal."
He evidently shared Schopenhauer's distaste for "the low-statured,
wide-hipped, narrow-shouldered sex."
The girls about the table were all listening eagerly. Johnnie had the
sensation of a freshman who has walked out on the campus too
well dressed.
"Virge was a great beau in his day," continued Pap, reminiscently. "He
liked to wear good clothes, too. I mind how he borried Abner Wimberly's
weddin' coat and wore it something like ten year--showed it off fine--it
fitted him enough sight better than it ever fitted little old Ab. Then
he comes back to Wimberly at the end of so long a time with the buttons.
He says, says he, 'Looks like that thar cloth yo' coat was made of
wasn't much 'count, Ab,' says he. 'I think Jeeters cheated ye on it. But
the buttons was good. The buttons wore well. And them I'm bringin' back,
'caze you may have use for 'em, and I have none, now the coat's gone.
Also, what I borry I return, as everybody knows.' That was your
granddaddy."
There was a tremendous giggling about the board as the old man made an
end. Johnnie herself smiled, though her face was scarlet. She had no
words to tell her tormentor that the borrowing trait in her tribe which
had earned them the name of the borrowing Passmores proceeded not from
avarice, which ate into Pap Himes's very marrow, but from its reverse
trait of generosity. She knew vaguely that they would have shared with a
neighbour their last bite or dollar, and had thus never any doubt of
being shared with nor any shame in the asking.
"Yes," pursued Himes, surveying Johnnie chucklingly, "I mind when you
was born. Has your Uncle Pros found his silver mine yet?"
"My mother has often told me how good you and Mrs. Bence was to us when
I was little," answered Johnnie mildly. "No, sir, Uncle Pros hasn't
found his silver mine yet--but he's still a-hunting for it."
The reply appeared to delight Himes. He laughed immoderately, even as
Buckheath had done.
"I'll bet he is," he agreed. "Pros Passmore's goin' to hunt that there
silver mine till he finds another hole in the ground about six feet long
and six feet deep--that's what he's a-goin' to do."
The hasty supper was well under way now. Mrs. Bence brought the last of
the hot bread, and shuffled into a seat. The old man at the head of the
board returned to his feeding, but with somewhat moderated voracity. At
length, pretty fully gorged, he raised his head from over his plate and
looked about him for diversion. Again his attention was directed to
the new girl.
"Air ye wedded?" he challenged suddenly.
She shook her head and laughed.
"Got your paigs sot for to git any one?" he followed up his
investigations.
Johnnie laughed more than ever, and blushed again.
"How old air ye?" demanded her inquisitor. "Eighteen? 'Most nineteen?
Good Lord! You're a old maid right now. Well, don't you let twenty go by
without gittin' your hooks on a man. My experience is that when a gal
gits to be twenty an' ain't wedded--or got her paigs sot for to
wed--she's left. Left," he concluded impressively.
That quick smile of Johnnie's responded.
"I reckon I'll do my best," she agreed reasonably; "but some folks can
do that and miss it."
Himes nodded till he set the little red curls all bobbing around the
bare spot.
"Uh-huh," he approved, "I reckon that's so. Women is plenty, and men
hard to git. Here's Mandy Meacham, been puttin' in her best licks for
thirty year or more, an' won't never make it."
Johnnie did not need to be told which one was Mandy. The sallow cheek of
the tall woman across from her reddened; the short chin wabbled a bit
more than the mastication of the biscuit in hand demanded; a moisture
appeared in the inexpressive blue eyes; but she managed a shaky laugh to
assist the chorus which always followed Pap Himes's little jokes.
The old man held a sort of state among these poor girls, and took
tribute of admiration, as he had taken tribute of life and happiness
from daughter and granddaughter. Gideon Himes was not actively a bad
man; he was as without personal malice as malaria. When it makes
miserable those about it, or robs a girl of her pink cheeks, her bright
eyes, her joy of life, wearing the elasticity out of her step and making
an old woman of her before her time, we do not fly into a rage at it--we
avoid it. The Pap Himeses of this world are to be avoided if possible.
Mandy stared at her plate in mortified silence. Johnnie wished she could
think of something pleasant to say to the poor thing, when her attention
was diverted by the old man once more addressing herself.
"You look stout and hearty; if you learn to weave as fast as you ort,
and git so you can tend five or six looms, I'll bet you git a husband,"
he remarked in a burst of generosity. "I'll bet you do; and what's more,
I'll speak a good word for ye. A gal that's a peart weaver's mighty apt
to find a man. You learn your looms if you want to git wedded--and I
know in reason you do--it's about all gals of your age thinks of."
When supper was over Johnnie was a little surprised to see the tall
woman approach Pap Himes like a small child begging a favour of a harsh
taskmaster.
"Can't that there new girl bunk with me?" she inquired earnestly.
"I had the intention to give her Louvany's bed," Pap returned promptly.
"As long as nobody's with you, I reckon I don't care; but if one comes
in, you take 'em, and she goes with Mavity, mind. I cain't waste room,
poor as I am."
Piloted by the tall girl, Johnnie climbed the narrow stair to a long
bare room where a row of double beds accommodated eight girls. The couch
she was to occupy had been slept in during the day by a mill hand who
was on night turn, and it had not been remade. Deftly Johnnie
straightened and spread it, while her partner grumbled.
"What's the use o' doin' that?" Mandy inquired, stretching herself and
yawning portentously. "We'll jist muss it all up in about two minutes.
When you've worked in a mill as long as I have you'll git over the
notion of makin' your bed, for hit's _but_ a notion."
Johnnie laughed across her shoulder.
"I'd just as soon do it," she reassured her companion. "I do love smooth
bedclothes; looks like I dream better on 'em and under 'em."
Mandy sat down on the edge of the bed, interfering considerably with the
final touches Johnnie was putting to it.
"You're a right good gal," she opined patronizingly, "but foolish. The
new ones always is foolish. I can put you up to a-many a thing that'll
help you along, though, and I'm willin' to do it."
Again Johnnie smiled at her, that smile of enveloping sweetness and
tenderness. It made something down in the left side of poor Mandy's
slovenly dress-bodice vibrate and tingle.
"I'll thank you mightily," said Johnnie Consadine, "mightily." And knew
not how true a word she spoke.
"You see," counselled Mandy from the bed into which she had rolled with
most of her clothes on, "you want to get in with Miss Lydia Sessions and
the Uplift ladies, and them thar swell folks."
Johnnie nodded, busily at work making a more elaborated night toilet
than the others, who were going to bed all about them, paying little
attention to their conversation.
"Miss Lyddy she ain't as young as she once was, and the boys has quit
hangin' 'round her as much as they used to; so now she has took up with
good works," the girl on the bed explained with a directness which Miss
Sessions would not perhaps have appreciated. "Her and some other of the
nobby folks has started what they call a Uplift club amongst the mill
girls. Thar's a big room whar you dance--if you can--and whar they give
little suppers for us with not much to eat; and thar's a place where
they sorter preach to ye--lecture she calls it. I don't know what-all
Miss Lyddy hain't got for her club. But you jist go, and listen, and say
how much obliged you are, an she'll do a lot for you, besides payin'
your wages to get you out of the mill any day she wants you for the
Upliftin' business."
Mandy had a gasp, which occurred between sentences and at the end of
certain words, with grotesque effect. Johnnie was to find that this gasp
was always very much to the fore when Mandy was being uplifted. It then
served variously as the gasp of humility, gratitude, admiration; the
gasp of chaste emotion, the gasp of reprobation toward others who did
not come forward to be uplifted.
"Did you say there was books at that club?" inquired Johnnie out of the
darkness--she had now extinguished the light. "Can a body learn things
from the lectures?"
"Uh-huh," agreed Mandy sleepily; "but you don't have to read 'em--the
books. They lend 'em to you, and you take 'em home, and after so long a
time you take 'em back sayin' how much good they done you. That's the
way. If Mr. Stoddard's 'round, he'll ask you questions about 'em; but
Miss Lyddy won't--she hates to find out that any of her plans
ain't workin'."
For a long time there was silence. Mandy was just dropping off into her
first heavy sleep, when a whispering voice asked,
"Is Mr. Stoddard--has he got right brown eyes and right brown hair, and
does he ride in one of these--one of these--"
"Good land!" grumbled the addressed, "I thought it was mornin' and I had
to git up! You ort to been asleep long ago. Yes, Mr. Stoddard's got
sorter brown eyes and hair, and he rides in a otty-mobile. How did
you know?"
But Mandy was too tired to stay awake to marvel over that. Her rhythmic
snores soon proved that she slept, while Johnnie lay thinking of the
various proffers she had that evening received of a lamp to her feet, a
light on her path. And she would climb--yes, she would climb. Not by the
road Pap Himes pointed out; not by the devious path Mandy Meacham
suggested; but by the rugged road of good, honest toil, to heights where
was the power and the glory, she would certainly strive.
She conned over the new things which this day had brought. Again she saw
the auto swing around the curve and halt; she got the outline of the
man's bent head against the evening sky. They were singing again over at
the mechanics' boarding-house; the sound came across to her window; the
vibrant wires, the chorus of deep male voices, even the words she knew
they were using but could not distinguish, linked themselves in some
fashion with memory of a man's eyes, his smile, his air of tender
deference as he cherished her broken flower. Something caught in her
throat and choked. Her mind veered to the figures on the porch of that
Palace of Pleasure; the girl with the ball tossing it to the young
fellow below on the lawn. In memory she descended the hill, coming down
into the shadows with each step, looking back to the heights and the
light. Well, she had said that if one had feet one might climb, and
to-night the old man had tried to train her to his pace for attaining
heart's desire. In the midst of a jumble of autos and shining mill
windows, she watched the room grow ghostly with the light of a
late-risen moon. Suddenly afar off she heard the "honk! honk! honk!"
which had preceded the advent of the car on the ridge road.
Getting up, she stole, to the one window which the long room afforded.
It gave upon the main street of the village. "Honk! honk! honk!" She
gazed toward the steep from which the sounds seemed to come. There,
flashing in and out of the greenery, appeared half a dozen pairs of
fiery eyes. A party of motorists were going in to Watauga, starting from
the Country Club on the Ridge crest. Johnnie watched them, fascinated.
As the foremost car swept down the road and directly beneath her window,
its driver, whom she recognized with a little shiver, by the
characteristic carriage of his head, swerved the machine out and stopped
it at the curb below. The others passed, calling gay inquiries to him.
"We're all right," she heard a well-remembered voice reply. "You go
ahead--we'll be there before you."
The slim, gray-clad figure in the seat beside him laughed softly and
fluttered a white handkerchief as the last car went on.
"Now!" exulted the voice. "I'll put on my goggles and cap and we'll show
them what running is.
'It's they'll take the high road and we'll take the low,
And we'll be in Watauga befo-o-ore them!'"
Even as he spoke he adjusted his costume, and Johnnie saw the car shoot
forward like a living creature eager on the trail. She sighed as she
looked after them.
Feet--of what use were feet to follow such a flight as that?