What her given name was in the old country has never reached me; but
when her family had learned a little English, and had begun to affect
the manners and characteristics of their more Americanized
acquaintances, they called her Daisy. She was the only daughter; her age
was less than that of two brothers, and she was older than three. The
family consisted of these six, Mr. and Mrs. Obloski, the parents,
Grandfather Pinnievitch, and Great-grandmother Brenda--a woman so old,
so shrunken, so bearded, and so eager to live that her like was not to
be found in the city.
Upon settling in America two chief problems seemed to confront the
family: to make a living and to educate the five boys. The first problem
was solved for a time by The Organization. Obloski was told by an
interpreter that he would be taken care of if he and his father-in-law
voted as directed and as often as is decent under a wise and paternal
system of government. To Obloski, who had about as much idea what the
franchise stands for as The Organization had, this seemed an agreeable
arrangement. Work was found for him, at a wage. He worked with immense
vigor, for the wage seemed good. Soon, however, he perceived that older
Americans (of his own nationality) were laughing at him. Then he did not
work so hard; but the wage, froth of the city treasury, came to him just
the same. He ceased working, and pottered. Still he received pay. He
ceased pottering. He joined a saloon. And he became the right-hand man
of a right-hand man of a right-hand man who was a right-hand man of a
very important man who was--left-handed.
The two older boys were at school in a school; the three others were at
school in the street. Mrs. Obloski was occupied with a seventh child,
whose sex was not yet determined. Grandfather Pinnievitch was learning
to smoke three cigars for five cents; and Great-grandmother Brenda sat
in the sun, stroking her beard and clinging to life. Nose and chin
almost obstructed the direct passage to Mrs. Brenda's mouth. She looked
as if she had gone far in an attempt to smell her own chin, and would
soon succeed.
But for Daisy there was neither school, nor play in the street, nor
sitting in the sun. She cooked, and she washed the dishes, and she did
the mending, and she made the beds, and she slept in one of the beds
with her three younger brothers. In spite of the great wage so easily
won the Obloskis were very poor, for New York. All would be well when
the two older boys had finished school and begun to vote. They were
thirteen and fourteen, but the school records had them as fifteen and
sixteen, for the interpreter had explained to their father that a man
cannot vote until he is twenty-one.
Daisy was twelve, but she had room in her heart for all her family, and
for a doll besides. This was of rags; and on the way from Castle Garden
to the tenement she had found it, neglected, forsaken--starving,
perhaps--in a gutter. In its single garment, in its woollen hair, and
upon its maculate body the doll carried, perhaps, the germs of typhoid,
of pneumonia, of tetanus, and of consumption; but all night it lay in
the arms of its little mother, and was not permitted to harm her or
hers.
The Obloskis, with the exception of Mrs. Brenda, were a handsome
family--the grandfather, indeed, was an old beauty in his way, with
streaming white hair and beard, and eyes that reminded you of locomotive
headlights seen far off down a dark tunnel; but their good features were
marred by an expression of hardness, of greed, of unsatisfied desire.
And Mr. Obloski's face was beginning to bloat with drink. It was only
natural that Daisy, upon whom all the work was put, should have been too
busy to look hard or greedy. She had no time to brood upon life or to
think upon unattainable things. She had only time to cook, time to wash
the dishes, to mend the clothes, to make the beds, and to play the
mother to her little brothers and to her doll. And so, and naturally, as
the skin upon her little hands thickened and grew rough and red, the
expression in her great eyes became more and more luminous, translucent,
and joyous.
Even to a class of people whose standards of beauty differ, perhaps,
from ours, she promised to be very beautiful. She was a
brown-and-crimson beauty, with ocean-blue eyes and teeth dazzling white,
like the snow on mountains when the sun shines. And though she was only
twelve, her name, underlined, was in the note-book of many an ambitious
young man. I knew a young man who was a missionary in that quarter of
the city (indeed, it was through him that this story reached me), an
earnest, Christian, upstanding, and, I am afraid, futile young man, who,
for a while, thought he had fallen in love with her, and talked of
having his aunt adopt her, sending her to school, ladyizing her. He had
a very pretty little romance mapped out. She would develop into an
ornament to any society, he said. Her beauty--he snapped his
fingers--had nothing to do with his infatuation. She had a soul, a great
soul. This it was that had so moved him. "You should see her," he said,
"with her kid brother, and the whole family shooting-match. I know;
lots of little girls have the instinct of mothering things--but it's
more in her case, it amounts to genius--and she's so clever, and so
quick, and in spite of all the wicked hard work they put upon her she
sings a little, and laughs a little, and mothers them all the time--the
selfish beasts!"
My friend's pipe-dreams came to nothing. He drifted out of missionizing,
through a sudden hobby for chemistry, into orchids; sickened of having
them turn black just when they ought to have bloomed; ran for Congress
and was defeated; decided that the country was going to the dogs, went
to live in England, and is now spending his time in a vigorous and, I am
afraid, vain attempt to get himself elected to a first-class London
club. He is quite a charming man--and quite unnecessary. I mention all
this, being myself enough of a pipe-dreamer to think that, if he had not
been frightened out of his ideas about Daisy, life might have dealt more
handsomely with them both.
As Obloski became more useful to the great organization that owned him
he received proportionately larger pay; but as he drank proportionately
more, his family remained in much its usual straits. Presently Obloski
fell off in utility, allowing choice newly landed men of his nationality
to miss the polls. Then strange things happened. The great man (who was
left-handed) spoke an order mingled with the awful names of gods. Then
certain shares, underwritten by his right-hand man, clamored for
promised cash. A blue pallor appeared in the cheeks of the right-hand
man, and he spoke an order, so that a contract for leaving the pavement
of a certain city street exactly as it was went elsewhere. The defrauded
contractor swore very bitterly, and reduced the salary of his right-hand
man. This one caused a raid of police to ascend into the disorderly
house of his. This one in turn punished his right-hand man; until
finally the lowest of all in the scale, save only Mr. Obloski, remarked
to the latter, pressing for his wage, that money was "heap scarce." And
Mr. Obloski, upon opening his envelope, discovered that it contained but
the half of that to which he had accustomed his appetite. Than Obloski
there was none lower. Therefore, to pass on the shiver of pain that had
descended to him from the throne, he worked upon his feelings with raw
whiskey, then went home to his family and broke its workings to bits.
Daisy should go sit in an employment agency until she was employed and
earning money. The youngest boy and the next youngest should sell
newspapers upon the street. Mrs. Obloski should stop mourning for the
baby which she had rolled into a better world three years before, and do
the housework. The better to fit her for this, for she was lazy and not
strong, he kicked her in the ribs until she fainted, and removed
thereby any possibility of her making good the loss for which her
proneness to luxurious rolling had been directly responsible.
So Daisy, who was now nearly sixteen, went to sit with other young women
in a row: some were older than she, one or two younger; but no one of
the others was lovely to look at or had a joyous face.