“Death doesn’t wait for a man to have his laugh out.”--_Salt-miners
saying._
IT is hard for people who have never seen places like Soot City to
believe in natures like Emma Butte’s and August Jarlsen’s. In river
cities the labouring population may be augmented daily with a load of
tramps and paupers who can travel on the river about as cheaply as
their own feet can take them. No travel is as cheap as river boating.
River fares cost much less than shoes, and no other cities have the
shifting masses that the river cities get.
This is not the nature of an inland town whose mine or iron vein is
booming. No one leaves it. What is usual with one man may become the
common talk of his district, if he be an influence in it. The vice of
a member of the town corporation is the sorrow of the county. The men
have gained their livelihood at the hands of the town; they nurse their
birthplace when its resource is threatened; they work for it. Even as
they live by it they die for it.
In feeling Jarlsen was an American; his ideals were American. He went
to church soberly, had a bust of Lincoln on his mantel, eschewed
labour unions, and gave away a third of the not too princely stipend
awarded him by the Bentleys for his position of payman.
For all that, when the native Swedes got very drunk of an evening and,
congregating By the Bridge, swore in their high, unearthly voices, he
would be much ashamed and wish and even urge them farther. For he too
was born in Sweden, and said “y” for “j” even yet, if the men hurried
him.
His room was By the Bridge. His wont was to ask the better set, the
more American labourers, to his room of an evening. He then, like King
David, charmed them with a harp. He would sit in front of the stove
on a packing-box covered with pinkish jute, and there play and sing
strange, sweet songs about birds and lonely mountains, and kings’
daughters and sad forests, and immortality; for these are of the kinds
of songs that come from the North.
Jarlsen’s generosity was remarkable; for his countrymen are
money-getters beyond any non-Semitic people. The knowledge of the
value of money is born in them. There is a saying at the ore beds
that testifies to this: “A Swede will go farther for a dollar than an
Irishman will for a drink.”
But when Jarlsen took Emma Butte, in the face of the whole town, the
men of his acquaintance marvelled greatly. If he were the man whom
Soot City loved, Emma was the woman who ruled it. She “had not the
class” that her lover had.
Coming into the city as a child, she had learned the less rough speech
of the town labour and taken on herself the somewhat milder manners
of the people she now saw. But she had never tried to make a place
among them; she lived with her father, plying her odd trade--she was
a barber--and making her oddest pennies in another way, as shall be
presently set forth.
In the lighter social semblance of their town the Bentleys were
paramount. Their doings came to the town ear somehow, and the people
followed their lead, if it were a possible thing for them. For
example, one of the clerical workers By the Bridge had invented an
intrenching tool, a spade, which had been adopted by the army. As a
consequence, he was invited to eat at the Bentleys’ Place. On his
return from the feast he reported to his eager circle that not only had
the ground-floor rooms been filled with people, but that Miss Bentley’s
bedroom looked like an intelligence office, so full was it of the maids
of the ladies below.
This detail of magnificence so possessed the minds of the female
portion of the inventor’s acquaintance that By the Tracks was drawn
on for Abigails. Male escort was frowned down completely. One might
return from a Soot City revel with a man, but to go with one--if
he were not “steady company”--was proof positive that there was no
quarter-dollar wherewith to hire attendance. Emma was often retained as
lady-in-waiting, and through this curiously pretentious institution met
and obtained Jarlsen, as well as her fees.
Quarry boarded in the Butte household. No one knew why. He imposed
on them always, and made them uncomfortable with his odd ways and
bad tongue. His board was paid intermittently and with recurrent ill
will. He was always a stranger and equally an inmate. He had a fashion
of rapping at Emma’s window (her room was on the ground floor)
and complaining to her of slights imposed on him by members of her
acquaintance.
She felt him to be the only man life had shown her whose faults were
not condoned by a liking for herself.
Every Sunday found her in a leather apron giving Quarry his Sunday
morning’s dram of sweetened rum in his tea, to keep him quiet through
shaving hours. He came from Ryde, Isle of Wight, and drank tea to the
memory of his old home, which had long since forgotten him.
Then Emma would get to work. Her apron was of red leather hemmed up
with brass-topped nails. It had a pocket lined with tin, where her
lather brush was put when she took the razor from under the straps on
her left sleeve to stroke a labourer’s jowl. Her lips would be pressed
together tightly then, her curling hair caught back with a round comb,
like a child’s. When she lathered she talked and laughed, but when she
shaved she was silent.
Jarlsen shaved himself latterly, and no one understood it but Emma.
All the men thought she “had a fluke and struck ile, when she was just
digging for potatoes.” That she, in the exercise of her odd function,
should have secured Jarlsen seemed to them a wonderful thing. But it
was not.
Emma was a very good woman, and that is just the same as a lady to men
of Jarlsen’s make.
He had begun to shave himself the day he felt he loved his barber.
The town discovered his feelings the very day he did, and promptly
prophesied trouble. “Jest es soon es he felt like marryin’ her he
should hev broke her into shavin’ weekdays, an’ kep’ a clean chin on
him all the time,” was what every one said.
Of course, in the eyes of her townspeople Emma put on airs also, for
she took to going to church. She never went so far as to stand during
the singing, for that would have cost her all her trade. No one stands
up in the extremely unorthodox Methodist chapel Soot City operatives
affect, except those who are converted or those desiring the prayers of
converts.
Now, Jarlsen stood always and was never criticised. His friends said he
could sing better if he stood. No one ever asked him if this were true,
because they were sure he would say it was not. Thus it may appear that
Soot City was not religious, except at blast rites and funerals.
Emma’s heart grew mellow with his singing as she sat beside him. She
loved him dearly, as young women do love the men who enrich their
lives; there was a large element of gratitude in what she felt. She
never talked as the others talked about their men, for, as was said,
she was a very good woman. And so she got the name of being a lady. The
others hated her, and most of the men asked her advice and acted on it.
On the eve of her wedding she sat in her white pique wedding dress,
listening to the snarl of the country fiddles as they were played for
the dancers. They snarled for two reasons: they were not good fiddles
and they were not well played.
The bride-elect was not to go into the dancing room--erst kitchen
and tonsorial arena--until Jarlsen came and led her thither. He was
a little behind his time, she thought, but her serenity remained
complete. There had been yet no clamour of voices and no clatter of
feet, going the faster because so near the last dance. She could hear
her name and Jarlsen’s. One man told how he had gone to pay off the
extra men who were to be discharged after the blast by the new vein.
She remembered that Quarry was on that detail as machinist. That made
her think it must have been a long job, for Quarry’s voice carried
wonderfully, and she did not distinguish it among the others in the
kitchen. Her mind wandered to the consideration of the capabilities
of her shaving apron as a cover for the packing-box her lover sat on
when he played. That suggested to her the probability she should never
shave again, and that no woman would dare after her marriage to stand
in her doorway and say in venomous admiration, “How elegant you shave!”
They had done it often heretofore, God knew.
Her window was raised slightly, and some one tapped on the jamb. She
turned her head at this usual intrusion. “Come off, Quarry!” she said
hotly.
He came in through the window and stood by the door. “It’s a real pity
Jarlsen’s late,” he answered. His voice was hard and nasal, the most
effective voice for taunts.
“Is he late?” she asked more crossly.
Quarry laughed. “I guess,” he said, “you knew he was late before it
would have been quite time for him to come. You know the listening
heart worries terrible they say, and you ain’t got no call to be so
high with me. You can hear them girls in the kitchen laughin’ at you,
same’s I do. I guess Jarlsen’s getting tired, maybe. He’s kinder in
demand, seein’ he’s the only fellow that’s kep’ his complexion in the
whole plant.”
Emma grew rather white. “Stop your nasty tongue!” she cried
imperatively. “You’re always lying! Your face is lying and your eyes
can’t see straight. You let what people do to me alone, or you’ll have
business of your own to settle. If I was a man, and couldn’t get a
respectable girl to marry me because I was a liar and she hated me, I’d
let her alone for shame’s sake, when she took up with a man who can
tell the truth.”
Her voice sounded very loud in her ears as she stopped; for the two
fiddles were still, and there was no talking among the dancers.
Quarry opened the door as if some one had knocked, and looked out. His
features acquired a sudden prominence as the colour flew from his face.
Fear crept into Emma’s eyes while she looked at him, shaking with his
shadow on the half-open door.
She forgot him in the great cry that burst from the other room. It was
a horrified, helpless cry, that gave place to a shocked silence.
She wrenched the door back and stood on the threshold in her white,
scant gown of mechanic’s bride’s finery. Her attitude showed faintness,
and her head hung down for lack of courage.
The two fiddlers were kneeling, with their tears streaming like rain;
they were Polacks, and knelt in gratitude for any excitement. The other
men were hushed and stern.
On the big table where the arrack punch had been in company with the
less heady beer there was a long, writhing hummock, covered with burlap.
No form was discernible, but Emma knew at the first strong heart-beat
that it was Jarlsen, singed and crippled with a careless blast, as many
another had been.
The women wailed at her, and the men tried to stay her with their rusty
hands. Yet she went forward, pity for him drawing her, and did not
pause until she looked him in the face.
It was black. The hair was gone; his teeth were fixed in the cracked
lower lip, and the eyes, once so wide and bold, were pinkish seams
beneath the puffed-out temples.
The women had crowded to her back. Their breathing was heavy and in
unison.
Emma leaned over him and said softly, in a mother’s voice, “Do you
hear me speak?” She raised his head on her arm, but it settled back on
the table with a sharp crack. He had not heard.
She scanned him closely. She had not yet the full sense of this man
covered with burlap and disabled; she only knew that it was not death.
But now her lower lip jerked down at the corners, though her eyes were
dry. The Polack fiddlers drew each a long breath; they saw the crisis
of the scene approaching, and were preparing to bellow loudly.
Emma raised her head. “God’s name,” she said, “he’s blasted!”
The women’s faces were curious, inquisitive; and Quarry stood at her
side sobbing like a Polack.
The men who had lifted the Swede in after the blast raised him again,
and laid him on the bed in Emma’s room.