I
"You Juggernaut!"
That's exactly what I said, and said aloud too.
I was leaning from the window in my attic room in the old district of
New York known as "Chelsea"; both hands were stemmed on the ledge.
"You Juggernaut of a city!" I said again, and found considerable
satisfaction in repeating that word. I leaned out still farther into
the sickening September heat and defiantly shook my fist, as it were
into the face of the monster commercial metropolis of the New World.
I felt the blood rush into my cheeks--thin and white enough, so my
glass told me. Then I straightened myself, drew back and into the
room. The quick sharp clang of the ambulance gong, the clatter of
running hoofs sounded below me in the street.
"And they keep going under--so," I said beneath my breath; and added,
but between my teeth:
"But _I_ won't--I _won't_!"
Turning from the window, I took my seat at the table on which was a
pile of newspapers I kept for reference, and searched through them
until I found an advertisement I remembered to have seen a week before.
I had marked it with a blue pencil. I cut it out. Then I put on my
hat and went down into the city that lay swooning in the intense,
sultry heat of mid-September.
The sun, dimmed and blood red in vapor, was setting behind the Jersey
shore. The heated air quivered above the housetops. Wherever there
was a stretch of asphalt pavement, innumerable hoof-dents witnessed to
the power of the sun's rays. The shrivelled foliage in the parks was
gray with dust.
I knew well enough that on the upper avenues for blocks and blocks the
houses were tightly boarded as if hermetically sealed to light and air;
but I was going southward, and below and seaward every door and window
yawned wide. To the rivers, to the Battery, to the Bridge, the piers,
and the parks, the sluggish, vitiated life of the city's tenement
districts was crawling listless. The tide was out; and I knew that
beneath the piers--who should know better than I who for six years had
taken half of my recreation on them?--the fetid air lay heavy on the
scum gathered about the slime-covered piles.
The advertisement was a Canadian "want", and in reading it an
overpowering longing came upon me to see something of the spaciousness
of that other country, to breathe its air that blows over the northern
snow-fields. I had acted on an impulse in deciding to answer it, but
that impulse was only the precipitation of long-unuttered and unfilled
desires. I was realizing this as I made my way eastward into one of
the former Trinity tenement districts.
I found the flag-paved court upon which the shadows were already
falling. It was not an easily discoverable spot, and I was a little in
doubt as to entering and inquiring further; I didn't like its look. I
took out the advertisement; yes, this was the place: "No. 8 V----
Court."
"Don't back down now," I said to myself by way of encouragement and,
entering, rang the bell of an old-fashioned house with low stoop and
faded green blinds close shut in sharp contrast to the gaping ones
adjoining. The openly neglected aspect of its neighbors was wanting,
as was, in fact, any indication of its character. Ordinarily I would
have shunned such a locality.
The door was opened by a woman apparently fifty. Her strong
deeply-lined face I trusted at once.
"What do you want?" The voice was business-like, neither repellent nor
inviting.
"I 've come in answer to this," I said, holding out the clipping. The
woman took it.
"You come in a minute, till I get my glasses."
She led the way through a long, unlighted hall into a back room where
the windows were open.
"You set right down there," she said, pushing me gently into a
rocking-chair and pressing a palm-leaf fan into my hand, "for you look
'bout ready to drop."
She spoke the truth; I was. The sickening breathlessness of the air,
nine hours of indoor work, and little eaten all day for lack of
appetite, suddenly took what strength I had when I started out.
As the woman stood by the window reading the slip in the fading light,
my eyes never left her face. It seemed to me--and strangely, too, for
I have always felt my independence of others' personal help--that my
life itself was about to depend on her answer.
"Yes, this is the place to apply; but now the first thing I want to
know is how you come to think you 'd fit this place? You don't look
strong."
"Oh, yes, I am;" I spoke hurriedly, as if a heavy pressure that was
gradually making itself felt on my chest were forcing out the words;
"but I haven't been out of the hospital very long--"
"What hospital?"
"St. Luke's."
"What was the matter with you?"
"Typhoid pneumonia with pleurisy."
"How long was you there?"
"Ten weeks, to the first of July; I've been at work since--but I want
to get away from here where I can breathe; if I don't I shall die."
There was a queer flutter in my voice. I could hear it. The woman
noticed it.
"Ain't you well?"
"Oh, yes, I am, and want work--but away from here."
There must have been some passionate energy left in my voice at least,
for the woman lifted her thick eyebrows over the rim of her spectacles.
"H'm--let's talk things over." She drew up a chair in front of me. "I
won't light up yet, it's so hot. I guess we 'll get a tempest 'fore
long."
She sat down, placing her hands on her knees and leaning forward to
look more closely at my face. I seemed to see her through a fog, and
passed my hand across my eyes to wipe it away.
"There 's no use beating 'round the bush when it comes to business,"
she said bluntly but kindly; "I 've got to ask you some pretty plain
questions; the parties in this case are awful particular."
"Yes." I answered with effort. The fog was still before my eyes.
"You see what it says." She began to read the advertisement slowly:
"'Wanted: A young girl of good parentage, strong, and country raised,
for companion and assistant to an elderly Scotchwoman on a farm in
Canada, Province of Quebec. Must have had a common school education.
Apply at No. 8 V---- Court, New York City.' You say you 've been in
St. Luke's?"
"Yes."
"Did you know the one they call Doctor Rugvie there? He 's the great
surgeon."
"No, I don't know him; but I 've heard so much of him. He was pointed
out to me once when I was getting better."
"Well, by good rights you ought to be applying for this place to him."
"To him?" I asked in surprise. I could n't make this fact rhyme in
connection with this woman and Canada.
"Yes, to him; I'm only a go-between he trusts. He 's in Europe now and
is n't coming home till late this year, so he left this with me," she
indicated the advertisement, "and told me not to put it in till a week
ago. I ain't had many applications. Folks in this city don't take to
going off to a farm in Canada, and those I 've had would n't have
suited. But, anyway, Doctor Rugvie is reference for this place that's
advertised, and I guess he 's good enough for anybody. I thought I 'd
tell you this to relieve your mind. 'T ain't every girl would come
down here to this hole looking for a place.-- Where was you born?"
"Here in New York, but I have lived most of my life in the country,
northern New England, just this side of the Canada line. I 've been
here seven years, five in the Public Library; that's my reference."
"How old are you?"
"Twenty-six next December--the third."
"I would n't have thought it. Mother living?"
"No; she died when I was born."
"Any father?"
"I--I don't know whether my father is living or not."
I began to wish I had n't come here to be questioned like this; yet I
knew the woman was asking only what was necessary in the circumstances.
I feared my answers would seal my fate as an applicant.
"What was your father's name?"
"I don't know." Again I caught the sound of that strange flutter in my
voice. "I never knew my father."
"Humph! Then your mother wasn't married, I take it."
The statement would have sounded heartless to me except that the
woman's voice was wholly businesslike, just as if she had asked that
question a hundred times already of other girls.
"Oh, yes--yes, she was."
"Before you was born?"
"Yes."
"What was her husband's name then?"
"Jackson."
"Christian name?"
"George."
"Jackson--Jackson--George Jackson." The woman repeated the name,
dwelling upon it as if some memory were stirred in the repetition.
"And you say you don't know who your father was?"
"No--". I could n't help it--that word broke in a half hysterical sob.
I kept saying to myself: "Oh, why did I come--why did I come?"
"Now, look here, my dear," and it seemed as if a flood of tenderness
drowned all those business tones in her voice, "you stop right where
you are. There ain't no use my putting you into torment this way,
place or no place--Doctor Rugvie wouldn't like it; 't ain't human. If
you can tell me all you know, and want to, just you take your own
time,"--she laid a hand on my shoulder,--"and if you don't, just set
here a while till the tempest that's coming up is over, and I 'll see
you safe home afterwards. You ain't fit to be out alone if you are
twenty-six. You don't look a day over twenty. There 's nothing to
you."
She leaned nearer, her elbows on her knees, her chin resting in her
palms. I tried to see her face, but the fog before my eyes was growing
thicker, the room closer; her voice sounded far away.
"See here--will it make it any easier if I tell you I 've got a girl
consider'ble older than you as has never known her father's name
either? And that there ain't no girl in New York as has a lovinger
mother, nor a woman as has a lovinger daughter for all that?"