MULTIPLICATION.
“There’s just this about it,” said Sally Price, “Mr. Metzerott ain’t
goin’ to be no loser by _us_, and that settles it.”
“He’ll get paid for his kindness in heaven, anyhow,” returned Susan
tearfully.
“Heaven!” the scorn in Miss Price’s voice was for Susan, not the country
she had named. “He’s goin’ to get paid right here on earth, and you can
just take hold and help me, Susan Price, instead of settin’ there
a-snivellin’. Some folks thinks a deal too much of heaven, anyway.”
“Why, Aunt Sally!”
“It’s as true as the Gospel, child. I don’t say but it’s a nice place,
heaven, after you get there; and when you’re real tired and hungry and
sick, and not a minute to take a long breath, it’s a solid satisfaction
to think as there’s a time comin’ when you won’t need to eat nor breathe
nor work no more; but I don’t believe in settin’ on your haunches, when
a man’s feedin’ you out of his own pocket, and talk about his havin’ his
reward in heaven. If folks that talk so much about heaven hereafter
would quit right off, and set to work to make things a little more like
heaven _here_, ’twould be lots better. We, includin’ Polly, wouldn’t ‘a’
been so near the other place, Susan Price, if things was run on that
plan here below.”
“That’s so,” answered Susan meekly.
“I went once to see a preacher, and ask him to get us somethin’ to do,”
said Sally. “It wasn’t long after we come to town, and before we’d begun
sewin’ on Sunday, so I went Sunday afternoon. He was a real nice man,
always shook hands with both hands, and had an awful affectionate
manner, and I thought he’d be the very one to help us. Well, he said he
was sorry we were so bad off, though he guessed there was others worse
off than us; for that was before our good clo’es wore out, and I looked
pretty nice. Then he told me how many people in his congregation were in
want of somethin’ to do; and said we ought to be thankful for any kind
of a job, no matter how little it paid.”
“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Susan.
“I _do_,” cried Polly impetuously. “A job that takes all your time to
earn enough to keep from starving is just robbery and slavery, that’s
all.”
Aunt Sally assented gravely. “If you leave your work to look for another
job, you are sure to starve before you find one,” she said, “and you
might as well be chained to a oar, like those people in the ancient
history. Fact is, we was worse off than galley-slaves, Sue; for ’twas
the captain’s interest to keep _them_ alive.”
“But it’s nobody’s interest to keep sewing women alive,” said Polly
bitterly; “there’s plenty to take our places, if we drop. The labor
market is overstocked, they say.”
“That’s what my preacher said,” replied Sally; “and all the comfort he
had for me was that, if I did my duty, and came to church reg’lar, I’d
git to heaven finally. I thanked him for his good advice, but I ain’t
been to his church since.”
“Mr. Metzerott don’t believe in heaven,” said Polly, “maybe that’s why
he’s so kind to us here on earth.”
“I believe in heaven,” said Susan slowly.
“You ain’t quite a born fool, Susan Price, that’s why. Of course the
good Lord is goin’ to fix things so the poor will have a fair show
somewhere. But we ain’t the good Lord, so far’s I know; and it’s our
place to keep things fair and right on this earth, so far’s we can.”
“And that ain’t far,” said Susan.
“It’s as far as Mr. Metzerott, anyhow,” returned Sally rather sharply,
“and we ain’t got no call to go no further, yit. And what I’m thinking
about is his baker’s bill.”
The Prices were alive and awake again, no doubt about it; as for Polly,
she had never been asleep. Her strong, vivid, ardent nature, craving
happiness with every fibre, could never, I think, have sunk into that
tired and hopeless acquiescence in things as they ought not to be, that
inanition of mind, heart, and soul, which had long ago devoured the
youth and vitality of the sisters. And yet the vitality, after all, had
not utterly departed, and the feeble currents in their veins stirred in
sympathy with the young life beating its wings against the bars of
poverty, and tugging so vainly at the chain of starvation wages. Then
came rescue and hope, and the awakening was complete.
Sally Price possessed, without being at all conscious of it, a rare
organizing faculty. Perhaps no other sewing-woman in Micklegard could
have accomplished as much with four hands and only one machine as she
had done; but the very impossibility of doing much with such slight
materials, the consciousness of wasted power, and sense of the injustice
which for such grinding work gave such ground-down wages, had helped to
crush out from her heart everything but hopeless patience. That she had
not grown hard and bitter was a strange and beautiful thing; perhaps,
even before the advent of Polly, there were _three_ at work in that poor
upper room, even as _four_ walked in the Holy Children’s burning, fiery
furnace.
But now, Sally had something to organize, and a purpose in the
organization; she was quite resolved, as she said, that Mr. Metzerott
“shouldn’t lose nothin’” by his kindness to her and hers. Whether his
expenses were exactly the same as when he himself had constituted his
whole domestic staff, with the exception of an old woman who came three
times a week to do “chores” and washing, is doubtful; but they were
certainly not materially increased; and, taking into account the
shoemaker’s additional time for work, the arrangement might be
considered one of great economy. First of all, there was the baker, who
had swallowed all the Prices’ earnings in the past, in return for a very
moderate portion of the staff of life, strongly flavored with alum. Miss
Price made up her mind at once that the baker must go. At her
suggestion, Karl bought a bag of flour, and Polly, who was said to be a
“master hand” at the process, was appointed bread-maker in chief; while
Sally and Susan took their turn of exercise at the wash-tub and
ironing-board.
Sally managed it all. They did fully as much work for Grind and Crushem;
for, after all, only a certain amount can be done with one machine, and
there was always one of them with her foot on the treadle; while the
little house was nearly scrubbed into holes, and everything about it
cleaned until it shone again. The old woman vanished; chores became a
thing of the past; and Polly’s delicate cooking gave Karl, as he
declared, a new pleasure in eating.
Then began the old story of the loaves and fishes, inevitable
multiplication. One day Louis brought home the tidings that Frau Anna
had a bad headache, so bad that she could not lift her head from her
pillow, and the children had no dinner but bread.
“I guess I’ll go in and see to ‘em,” said Sally thoughtfully. “Now I’ve
got to eatin’ reg’lar meals again, it seems pretty bad to have nothin’
but bread for dinner.”
She went accordingly. There was in the cupboard a piece of cold, cooked
beef about four inches square, an onion, and three raw Irish potatoes;
for, as Frau Anna explained, she had not been able to go out to buy
anything that day.
“Buy!” said Sally, “why should you? There’s dinner enough here for these
children, with bread, and that you’ve got plenty of. But I know you
don’t want no smell of cookin’ under your nose, so the children can come
and play with Louis; and by and by I’ll send you over some tea and
toast.”
The beef, potatoes, and onion, chopped up into an iron skillet, covered
with water, and re-enforced by a spoonful of turnips and the remains of
a can of tomatoes, which Sally had been keeping for some occasion when
they would “come in handy,” produced, at the end of twenty minutes, a
very savory stew, to which the children did ample justice. But the tea
and toast which after a while Sally carried in to her neighbor became
the occasion of such sighs over the days when Frau Anna had made her own
bread, and her children had had wholesome food to eat, that it resulted,
a day or two later, in an offer from Polly to bake for Frau Anna along
with themselves.
“And I don’t see why I shouldn’t do your cooking, all of it,” said
Polly. “Sally keeps such a strict account of all we spend that she could
tell in a minute what you ought to pay.”
“The cost of the things in market, and maybe a little extra to Mr.
Metzerott for the fire,” said Sally. “I used to be quick at figures,
Mis’ Rolf; and if I ain’t forgot how, I’ll cipher it out, and let you
know. You needn’t be afraid we’ll cheat you, or make anything out of
you; we’ve been made too much out of ourselves.”
But when it was also arranged that they should do Frau Anna’s washing,
Sally concluded that they might give up their work at Grind and
Crushem’s.
“And how it feels to be free again, you won’t never know, Mr.
Metzerott,” she said, when the deed had been done.
“Now I want to know,” said Karl, looking up from his work with a
quizzical smile, “what’s the difference between the way you’re living
now and domestic service. Wouldn’t it have been better to live out with
some rich person, who would have paid good wages, than to work for Grind
and Crushem?”
“Maybe it would,” said Sally thoughtfully. “Hired girls do get good
wages, that’s so.”
“It’s your American independence,” said Metzerott. “You don’t find
German girls willing to starve rather than live out.”
“There wasn’t much independence at _our_ shop,” answered Sally dryly. “I
don’t know why it is, Mr. Metzerott, but American girls won’t live out
ef they can do anything else; or ef they do, they feel kinder degraded,
and it makes ‘em so uppish and contrary there’s no livin’ in the house
with ‘em. I’ve seen ‘em real sassy, just because they felt lowered in
their own eyes.”
“They were fools!” said Metzerott briefly. “What is there in honest work
to degrade any one?”
“’Tain’t the work,” said Sally; “they’d do that at home, and not feel a
mite degraded; and ’tain’t the wages, for ’twouldn’t degrade ‘em to earn
that behind a counter. Nor ’tain’t _sass_, though there’s many a lady as
talks to her help like I wouldn’t to a dog. Only way I can explain it,
Mr. Metzerott, it must be the Constitution of the United States. You see
_that_ makes every man as good as anybody else; but it ain’t lived up
to, and the girls feel it, and that’s what riles ‘em. Worse than that,
they feel they _ain’t_ as good as the young ladies they wait on, not so
pretty, nor so educated, nor so refined; but they might have been if
they’d had the same advantages; they might have had just such little
white hands and soft voices and pretty ways, that keep the young men
a-bendin’ over their chairs all the evenin’. Don’t you s’pose many a
girl sees the difference between her farmer beau and the young city
doctor or lawyer that comes to the country for his holiday?” (Poor
Sally! perhaps she spoke from some past bitter experience of her own!)
“And so I think it’s _that_, Mr. Metzerott, that keeps girls from hirin’
out. They won’t take a menial position where they feel, if they had
their rights, they’d be equals,—real equals, I mean, not constitutional
or sassy ones. Now, your German girls ain’t taught about equality; they
are used to counts and barons and dukes, and all of them people, from
their cradles; they ain’t got freedom in the blood, like us Americans.”
“But we breathe it in,” said Metzerott, with gleaming eyes; “and then
the remembrance of past wrongs, and the sight of present ones, makes us
desperate. We shall teach you Americans, some day, to live up to your
own principles.”
“But you won’t get us to fire a gun,” said Sally tersely. “till we can
see the whites of their eyes.”