In other parts of the garden the bright parasols of the gossiping women
raised themselves in little clumps like mushrooms appearing unexpectedly
through the green of a wide lawn. The Governor was nowhere to be seen,
nor Lily nor Irene, Julia Shane’s two daughters.
The guests began to depart. A victoria with a driver on the box came
round the corner of the old house. A fat dowager, dressed in purple and
wearing a gold chain, bowed, and the diminutive young man beside her, in
a very tight coat and a derby hat, smiled politely--very politely--Mrs.
Julis Harrison and her son Willie, of the great family which owned the
Mills.
Julia Shane bowed slightly and leaned more heavily upon her ebony stick.
A second vehicle appeared, this time a high buggy which bore the county
auditor and his wife ... common people who never before had entered the
wrought iron gates of Cypress Hill. The fat and blowsy wife bowed in an
exaggerated fashion, never stopping the while to fan her red face
vigorously until she discovered that her elaborate bows were expended
upon the back of Julia Shane, who had become suddenly absorbed in the
rings that glittered on her bony fingers. The smile froze on the fat
lady’s face and her heavy lips pursed themselves to utter with a savage
intensity of feeling the word “Snob!” Indeed, her indignation so mounted
under the protests of her tipsy husband, that a moment later she altered
the epithet to another more vulgar and more powerful phrase. “Old Slut!”
she said aloud. The two carriages made their way down the long avenue
between the rows of dying Norway spruce to the gate where Hennery, the
black servant, stood on guard.
Outside, with faces pressed against the bars, stood a score of aliens
from the hovels of the mill workers in the neighboring Flats. The little
group included a dozen women wearing shawls and a multitude of
petticoats, three or four children and as many half-grown boys still a
year or two too young to be of any use to the Harrison Mills. They
pushed and pressed against the handsome gates, striving for a glimpse at
the spectacle of the bright garden animated by the figures of the men
and women who ruled the Town, the Flats, the very lives and destinies of
the little throng of aliens. A baby squalled in the heat and one of the
boys, a tall powerful fellow with a shock of yellow hair, spat through
the bars.
At the approach of the carriage the black Hennery sprang up and with the
gesture of one opening the gates of Buckingham Palace, shouted to the
crowd outside, “Look out, you all! There’s carriages a-coming!”
Then with a great clanging and shooting of bolts he swung open the gates
and Mrs. Julis Harrison and her son William swept through. The hoofs of
the dancing horses beat a tattoo on the cobblestones. The mother saw
nothing, but the narrow eyes of her son appraised the group of boys and
even the babies as potential workers in the Mills. These Dago children
grew rapidly, but not fast enough to keep pace with the needs of the
growing furnaces; and so many of them died before they reached manhood.
As the carriage swung into narrow Halsted Street, Mrs. Harrison, leaning
forward so that the gold chain swayed like a pendulum from her
mountainous bosom, surveyed the wretched houses, the yards bereft of all
green, and the shabby railway station that stood a hundred yards from
the very gates of Shane’s Castle.
“You’d think Julia Shane would move out of this filthy district,” she
said. “Sentiment is all right, but there’s such a thing as running it
into the ground. The smoke and soot is even killing the flowers. They’re
not half so fine as last year.”
Her son William shrugged his narrow, sloping shoulders.
“The ground is worth its weight in gold,” he said. “Three railroads--the
only site left. She could get her own price.”
In the corner saloon a mechanical piano set up a tinny uproar and
shattered fragments of The Blue Danube drifted out upon the hot air
through the swinging doors into the street, throttling for the moment
any further conversation.
The county auditor and his wife drove uncertainly through the gates, for
the county auditor had drunk too much and failed to understand that
horses driven with crossed reins do not respond according to any
preconceived plan. His wife, her face red as a ripe tomato, took them
from him and swore.
“She needn’t think she’s so damned swell,” she said. “What’s she got to
make her so proud? I should think she’d blush at what has happened in
that rotten old house. Why, she’s got nothing but Hunkies and Dagos for
neighbors!”
She cut the horses across the back, dashed forward, and passed the
victoria of Mrs. Harrison and her son William at a triumphant gallop.
With a loud, officious bang, Hennery closed the wrought iron gates and
the wise, old faces of the alien women pressed once more against the
bars. One of the throng--the big boy with the shock of yellow hair, a
Ukrainian named Stepan Krylenko--shouted something in Russian as the
gates banged together. It was a tongue foreign to Hennery but from the
look in the fierce blue eye of the young fellow, the negro understood
that what he said was not friendly. The women admonished the boy and
fell to whispering in awe among themselves, but the offender in no way
modified his manner. When Judge Weissman, fat and perspiring and covered
with jewelry, whirled past him in a phaeton a moment later, the boy
shouted in Russian, “Jew! Dirty Jew!” Judge Weissman regarded the boy
with his pop eyes, wiped his mahogany face and muttered to his
companion, Lawyer Briggs, “These foreigners are getting too free in
their manners.... The Harrisons will have trouble at the Mills one of
these days.... There ought to be a law against letting them into the
country.”
The Judge was angry, although his anger was stirred not by the shout of
Stepan Krylenko but by the fact that Julia Shane had become suddenly
blind as his phaeton swept round the corner of the old house. The shout
was something upon which to fasten his anger.