LOOKING FOR THOMASINE
When Hagar had been ten days in New York, she went early one afternoon
to find Thomasine. She had the address, and upon showing it to Rachel
the latter had pronounced it "poor but respectable," adding, "Are you
sure you ought to go alone?"
"'Ought to go alone?--ought to go alone?'--I am so tired of that phrase
'ought to go alone'!" said Hagar. "At Gilead Balm they said, 'Don't go
beyond the Mile-and-a-Half Cedar!' You say yourself that I couldn't get
lost, and I was brought up with Thomasine, and Jim and his wife are
perfectly good people."
Downstairs, as she was passing the parlour doors, Mrs. Maine called
to her from within. "Where are you going, dear?" Hagar entered and
explained. "That is very nice of you to look her up, but do you think
you ought to go alone?" Hagar explained that, too; whereupon Mrs. Maine
patted her hand and told her to trot along, but always to be careful!
As the front door closed after her, her hostess resumed her box of
chocolates and the baby sacque she was knitting. "It isn't as though
I had promised to give her, or to make Rachel give her, continual
chaperonage! To look after her in a general way is all that could
possibly be expected. Besides, it's foolish always to be nervous about
people!" She took a chocolate cream and began the sleeve. "Medway
Ashendyne, with all those millions, isn't doing very much for her. She
couldn't dress more plainly if she tried. I wonder what he means to
do with her eventually. Perhaps he doesn't mean anything--just to let
things drift...."
Hagar knew how to orientate herself very well. She took the surface
car going in the right direction, and when she had travelled some
distance she left it and took a cross-town car. This brought her to
the block she wished. Out of the jingling car, across a street of
push-carts and drays and hurrying, dodging people, she stood upon
the broken and littered pavement a moment to look about her. The
houses were tall and dreary; once good, a house to a family, but
now not so good, and several families to a house. The corners were
occupied by larger buildings, unadorned and jerry-built and ugly,
each with a high-sounding name, each containing "flats";--flats
and flats and flats, each with its ground floor occupied by small
stores--unprosperous greengrocer, unprosperous butcher, poor chemist,
prosperous saloon, and what not. It was a grimy, chilly grey afternoon
with more than a hint of the approaching winter. All voices seemed raw
and all colours cold. Among the children playing on the pavement and in
areaways or on high, broken, entrance steps, there sounded more crying
than laughing. Dirty papers were blown up and down; there floated an
odour of stale beer; an old-clothes man went by, ringing a bell and
crying harshly, "Old clothes! Old clothes! Got any rags?" Hagar stood
with contracted brows. She shivered a little. "Why, Thomasine should
not live in a place like this!" She looked about her. "Who should?" She
had a vision of Thomasine playing ring-around-a-rosy, Thomasine looking
for four-leaved clovers.
But when she climbed to the third floor of one of the corner buildings,
and, standing in the perpetual twilight of the landing-way, rang the
bell of a door from which much of the paint had been scarred, she found
that Thomasine did not live there.
The door was opened by a gaunt, raw-boned woman. "Thomasine Dale? Did
she live with Marietta Green and Jim?"
"Yes. She is Jim's niece."
"Well, she don't live here now."
"May I see Jim or his wife?"
"They don't live here neither."
The door across the landing opened, and a stout woman in a checked
apron looked out. "Was you looking for the Greens?"
"Yes, please."
"If you'll come in and set a minute, I'll tell you about them. I've got
asthmy, and there's an awful draught comes up those steps."
Hagar sat down in an orange plush rocking-chair and the stout woman,
having removed her apron, took the green and purple sofa.
"There now! I meant to mend that carpet!"--and she covered the hole
with the sole of her shoe. "I am as fond as I can be of the Greens!
Jim's a good man, and if Marietta wa'n't so delicate she'd manage
better. The children are nice youngsters, too.... Well, I'm sorry
they've gone, but Jim hurt his arm down in the Works and Marietta
couldn't seem to get strong again after the last baby, and everybody's
cutting wages when they ain't turning men off short, and Jim's turn
come, for all he's always been good and sober and a good workman. First
the Works hurt his arm, and then it said that he wasn't so useful now;
and then it said that it had seen for a long time that it would have
to economize, and the men could choose between cut wages or no wages
at all, and Jim was one of them it said it to. So he had to take the
cut." She began to cough and wheeze and then to pant for breath. "Did
you--ever have--the asthmy? I'm--going off--with it--some day. Glass
of water? Yes--next room--cup by the sink.... Thank you--child! You're
real helpful.--What was I saying? Oh, yes--'t was Jim and Marietta and
the children and Thomasine who had to economize."
"Where are they gone?" asked Hagar sorrowfully.
"It isn't so awful far from here. I'll give you the address. The car at
the corner'll take you there pretty quick. But it ain't nowhere near
so nice a neighbourhood or a house as this." She regarded her plush
furniture and Nottingham curtains with pride. "Thomasine's an awful
nice girl."
"Yes," said Hagar. The tears came into her eyes. "I love Thomasine. I
oughtn't to have waited so long before coming to find her, but I never
thought of all this. It never entered my head."
"She's got an awful good place, for a woman--nine dollars a week. She
could have kept a room here, but she's awful fond of Jim and Marietta
and the children, and she went with them. I reckon she'll help right
sharp this winter--'less'n the stores take to cutting too."
On the street-car, the new address in her hand, Hagar considered
Poverty. It was there in person to illustrate, in an opposite row of
anæmic, anxious faces and forms none too warmly clad; it was there on
the street, going up and down; it was there in the houses that were so
gaunt, defaced, and ugly. The very November air, cold and querulous,
seemed poor. Her mind was sorting and comparing impressions. She had
known, when she came to think of it, a good deal of poverty, and a
number of poor people. In the first place, she had been brought up
on the tradition of the poverty after the war--but that had been
heroic, exalted poverty, in which all shared, and where they kept the
amenities. Then, when that had passed, there were the steadygoing poor
people in the country--those who had always been poor and apparently
always would be so. But it did not seem to hurt so in the country,
and certainly it was not so ugly. Often it was not ugly at all. Of
course, everybody at home, in a cheerful tone of voice, called the
Greens poor people. The Greens were poor,--Car'line and Isham were
poor;--she remembered, with a curious vividness, the poor woman on the
canal boat, the summer her mother died. She had even heard the Colonel
say that he--the Colonel--was poor. Of course, she had seen hosts of
poor people. And yet until to-day, or rather, to be more precise, until
the morning of the ferry and the Elevated, she had never generalized
Poverty, never conceived it abstractly. Poverty! What was Poverty? Why
was Poverty? Was it a constant; was it going to last? If so, why? If
it wasn't going to last, what was going to make things better? It was
desirable that things should be better--oh, desirable, desirable! The
slave of Beauty and the slave of Righteousness in Hagar's soul rose
together and looked upon the dump-heap and the shards that were thrown
upon it. "It shouldn't be. There is no need and no sense--"
Four or five summers past, visiting with Miss Serena some Coltsworth
or Ashendyne house in the country, and exploring, as she always did
almost at once, the bookcases, she had come upon--tucked away in
the extreme shadow of a shadowy shelf--a copy of William Morris's
"News From Nowhere." Hagar had long since come to the conviction
that her taste was radically different from that of most Coltsworths
and Ashendynes. Where they tucked away, she drew forth. She had read
"News From Nowhere" upon that visit. But she had read it hurriedly,
amid distractions, and she was much younger then than now. It had
left with her chiefly an impression of a certain kind of haunting,
other-world beauty. She remembered the boy and the girl in the
tobacco-shop, playing merchant, and the cherry trees in the streets,
and the cottage of Ellen, and Ellen herself, and the Harvest Home. Why
it was written or what it was trying to show, she had not felt then
with any clearness. Now, somehow, the book came back to her. "That was
what 'News from Nowhere' was trying to show. That people might work,
work well and enough, and yet there be for all beauty and comfort and
leisure and friendliness.... I'll see if I can find that book and I'll
read it again."
The car stopped at the street-corner indicated. When she was out upon
the pavement, and again stood a moment to look about her, she was
frightened. This was the region of the fire-escapes, zig-zagging down
the faces of the buildings, the ramshackle buildings. It was the region
of the black windows, and the women leaning out, and the wan children.
This street was narrower than the other, grimier and more untidy, more
crowded, colder, and the voice of it never died. It rose to a clamour,
it sank to a murmur, but it never vanished. Usually it kept a strident
midway, idle and fretful as the interminable blown litter of the
street. Hagar drew a pained breath. "Thomasine's got no business living
here--nor Jim and Marietta and the children either!"
But it seemed, when she mounted a dirty, narrow stair and made
enquiries of a person she met atop,--it seemed that they didn't live
there. "They moved out a week ago. The man was in some damned Works
or other, and it threw him on the scrap-heap with about a thousand
more. Then the place where the girl worked thought scrap-heaps were so
pretty that it started one, too. Then he heard a report of work to be
had over in New Jersey--as if, if this is the frying-pan, that ain't
the fire!--and so they left this state. No; they didn't leave any
address. Working people's address this year is 'Tramping It. Care of
the Unemployed.' Sometimes, it's just plain 'Gone Under.'"
The man looked at Hagar, and Hagar looked at the man. She thought that
he had the angriest, gloomiest eyes she had ever seen, and yet they
were not wicked eyes. They blazed out of the dark entryway at her,
but for all their coal-like glowing they were what she denominated
far-away-seeing eyes. They seemed to look through her at something big
and black beyond. "Have you seen the evening paper?" he asked abruptly.
"No, I have not. Why?"
"I wanted to see.... This morning's had an account of three Anarchist
bits-of-business. A bomb in Barcelona, a bomb in Milan, and a bomb in
Paris.--No, I can't tell you anything more about your friends. Yes, I'm
sorry. It's a hard world. But there's a better time coming."
Grieving and bewildered, she came out upon the pavement. Why hadn't
Thomasine--why hadn't Jim let them know? If there wasn't anything
at home for Jim to do,--and she agreed that there wasn't--nor for
Thomasine, still they could all have stayed there and waited for a
while until Jim's arm and hard times got better. She tried to put them
all--there were six--in the overseer's house with Mrs. Green. It would
be crowded, but.... The overseer's house was her grandfather's; Mrs.
Green had had it, rent free, since William Green's death, and most of
her cornmeal and flour came from the Colonel's hand. Hagar tried to say
to herself that her grandfather would be glad to see Jim and Marietta
and Thomasine and the three children there staying with Mrs. Green as
long as was necessary; that if it were crowded in the overseer's house
her grandmother would be glad to have Thomasine and perhaps one of the
children stay in the big house. It would not work. It came to her too,
that perhaps Jim and Marietta and Thomasine might not be so fond of
coming and sitting down on Mrs. Green and saying, "We've failed." But
couldn't they work in the country? Jim was a mechanic; he didn't know
anything about farming--and the farmers were having a hard time, too.
Hagar's head began to ache. Then the travelling expenses--she tried to
count those up. If they couldn't pay the rent, how could they pay for
six to go down to Virginia--and the children's clothes, and the food
and everything?... Was there no one who could send them money? Mrs.
Green couldn't, she knew--and Thomasine's mother and father were very
poor, and Corker wasn't doing well, and Maggie was at home nursing
their mother whose spine was bad.... Gilead Balm had a kindly feeling
for the Greens, she knew that. William Green had been a good overseer,
and he had fought in the regiment the Colonel led. Her grandfather--if
he knew how bad it was, if he could see these places where they had
been living, if he could have heard the woman in the check apron and
the man with the eyes--he might send Jim twenty-five dollars, he might
even send him fifty dollars, though she doubted if he could do that
much. She herself had twenty dollars left of that August two hundred.
She had been saving it for Christmas presents for Gilead Balm, but
now she was going to send it to Thomasine--just as soon as she knew
where to send it. She walked on for a little way in a hopeful glow,
and then the bottom dropped out of that, too. It wouldn't go far or do
much. It was too small a cloth to wrap a giant in. Jim and Thomasine's
unemployment--Jim's injured arm, hurt in the Works, Marietta weak and
worn, trying to care for a little baby.... Other Mariettas, Jims,
Thomasines, thousands and thousands of them.... They were willing and
wanting to work. They were not lazy. Jim hadn't injured his own arm.
Apparently there had to be babies.... Unemployment, and no one to help
when help was needed.... It needed a giant. "All of us together could
do it--all of us together."
She was cold, even under her warm jacket and with her thick gloves. The
street looked horribly cold, but she did not notice many jackets, and
no gloves. With all her beauty-loving nature she hated the squalid;
nothing so depressed her. She had not seen it before so verily itself;
in the country it was apt to have a draping and setting of beauty;
even a pigpen might be environed by blossoming fruit trees. Here
squalor environed squalor, ugliness ugliness. On a step before her sat
a forlorn little girl of eight or nine, taking care of a large baby
wrapped in a shawl. Hagar stopped and spoke.
"Are you cold?" The child shook her head. "Are you hungry?" She shook
it still; then suddenly broke forth volubly in a strange tongue. She
was telling her something, but what could not be made out. The door
behind opened, and Elizabeth Eden came forth. She spoke to the child
kindly, in her own language, with a caressing touch upon the shoulder.
The little girl nodded, gathered up the baby, and went into the house.
"Miss Eden--"
Elizabeth turned. "What--Why, Miss Ashendyne! Did you drop out of the
sky? What on earth are you doing in Omega Street?"
"I came down here to find some people whom I know. I am visiting in New
York. Oh, I _am_ glad to see you!"
"We can't stand here. The Settlement is just two blocks away. Can't you
come with me and have a cup of tea? Where are you staying?"
Hagar told her, adding, "I must be back before dark or they won't let
me come out again by myself."
"It isn't quite four. I'll put you on the Elevated in plenty of
time.--What people were you looking for?"
Hagar told her as they walked. Elizabeth listened, knew nothing of
them, but said gravely that it was a common lot nowadays. "I have
seen many hard winters, but this promises to be one of the worst."
She advised writing guardedly to Mrs. Green, until she found out how
Thomasine and Jim wrote themselves. "They may not be telling her how
bad it is, and if she cannot help, it is right that they shouldn't. I
believe, too, in being hopeful. If they're sturdy, intelligent people,
they'll weather the gale somehow, barring accidents. It's the miserable
accidents--the strained arm, your Marietta's illness after the
baby--things like that that tip the scales against them. Well, cheer
up, child! You may hear that they've got work and are happy.--This is
the Settlement."
Three old residences, stranded long years ago when "fashionable
society" moved away, first street by street and at last mile by mile,
formed the Settlement. Made one building by archways cut through,
grave and plain, with a dignity of good woodwork and polished brass
and fit furniture sparely placed, the house had the poise and force
of a galleon caught and held intact in the arms of some sargasso sea.
All around it were wrecks of many natures, strangled, pinned down, and
disintegrating, but it had not disintegrated. One use and custom had
left it, but another had passed in with a nobler plan.
Hagar Ashendyne went through the place, wondering, saw the workrooms,
the classrooms, the assembly-room, the dwelling-rooms, austere, with a
quiet goodness and fairness, of the people who dwelled there and made
the heart of the place. "It is not like a convent," she said in a low
voice; "at least, I imagine it is not--and yet--"
"Oh, the two ideas have a point of contact!" answered Elizabeth
cheerfully. "Only, here, the emphasis is laid on action."
She met several people whom she thought she would like to meet again,
and at the last minute came in Marie Caton. It was Marie, who, at five
o'clock, put her on the Elevated that would take her home in twenty
minutes. Marie had met the Maines--"I'm Southern, too, you know,"--and
she promised to come to see Hagar, and she said that Hagar and Rachel
Bolt must come, some Sunday afternoon, to the Settlement. "That is
chiefly when we see our personal friends."
That night Hagar wrote to her grandmother and to Mrs. Green. In four
days time she heard from the latter. Yes, Jim and all of them and
Thomasine had moved to New Jersey. Times were hard, Jim said, and
work was slack, and they thought they could better themselves. Sure
enough he had got a right good job. They were living where it wasn't
so crowded as it was in New York, almost in the country, right by a
big mill. There was a row of houses, just alike, Thomasine said, and
they were living in one of them. There wasn't any yard, but you could
walk into the country and see the woods, and Thomasine said the sky was
wonderful at night, all red from a furnace. Thomasine hadn't got work
yet, but she thought that she would. There was a place where they made
silk into ribbons, and she thought there'd be a place for her there.
Marietta was better, and the children were fine. Mrs. Green sent the
address--and Gilead Balm certainly missed Hagar.
Old Miss wrote an explanatory letter. Hagar knew or ought to know
that they had little or nothing but the place. The Colonel had been
in debt, but Medway had cleared that off, as it was right that he
should, now that he was able to do it; right and kind. But as for
ready money--country people never had any ready money, she knew that
perfectly well. Medway was now, Old Miss supposed, a rich man, but
no one knew exactly how rich, and at any rate it was his money, and
living abroad as he did was, of course, expensive. He couldn't justly
be expected to do much more than he was doing. "As for your having
money to give the Greens, you haven't any, child! Medway has told
your grandfather that he wants you from now on to have every proper
advantage, but that he does not believe in the way young people to-day
squander money, nor does he want you to depart from what you have been
taught at Gilead Balm. He wants you to remain modest in your wants,
as every woman should be. The money he has put in your grandfather's
hands for you this year is to pay for this winter in New York and
for wherever you go next summer. He never meant it to be diverted to
helping people without any claim upon him that are out of employment.
Your grandfather won't hear to any such thing as you propose. He says
your idea of coming home and using the money you are costing in New
York is preposterous. The money isn't your money; it's your father's
money, to be used as he, and not as you, direct.... Of course, it's
a hard year, and of course, there are people suffering. There always
are. But Jim's a man and can get work, and Thomasine oughtn't to have
gone away from home anyhow. They aren't starving, child."--So Old Miss,
and more to the same effect, and then, at the end, a postscript. "I
had a ten-dollar gold-piece that's been lying by me a long time, and
I've taken it to Mary Green and told her to send it to Jim. She seemed
surprised, and from what she says and what his letter says, I don't
think they are any worse off than most people. You're young, and your
feelings run away with you."
Hagar wrote a long, loving letter to Thomasine, and sent her the twenty
dollars. Thomasine returned her effusive, pretty thanks, showed that
she was glad, and glad enough to have the help, but insisted that
she should regard it as a loan. She acknowledged that Jim and she,
and therefore Marietta and the babies, had been pretty hard up. But
things were better, she hopefully said. She had a place and Jim had a
place. His arm was about well, and on the whole, they liked New Jersey,
"though it isn't as interesting, of course, as New York."