I counted up, and found if we were to have enough for room rent and
food, I couldn't spend any sixty cents a week for car-fare. So I left
home at seven every morning and walked to work. At night I was so tired
I took the car. Then we'd have supper on the gas-jet, and I'd try to
write; but almost always I was so sleepy I went right to bed.
Mis' Bingy had got so she didn't cry so much. She didn't take much
comfort going out to walk, she was so afraid of Keddie finding her.
"It's comfort enough not to feel I'm goin' to be murdered every night,"
she says. "I'd just as lieve set here."
After we'd been there three days, I wrote to Mother and to Luke. To
Mother I said:
"DEAR MOTHER:
"We are well, and hope this finds you the same. I have got a job.
We are all right, and hope you are. I hope the boys are all right,
and Father. Mis' Bingy says for you to be sure to tell her the news
when you write. Mis' Bingy and the baby are well, and I am the
same. So good-by now.
"COSMA."
I read it over, and wondered about it. I had never been away from home
before long enough to write a letter to them. And I couldn't think of
anything to say. It seemed to me I was a little girl in my letter. I
wondered if that was because they thought that was what I was.
Then I wrote to Luke. You'd think that would have been harder, but it
was easier. I says:
"DEAR LUKE:
"They told you, I guess, how I come off with Mis' Bingy. But, Luke,
I would of come anyway, if I could. I thought it was all right to
be your wife, but I want to see if there is anything else I would
rather do. So I'm not engaged to you any more. If I come back, and
if you are not married to somebody else, all right, if you still
want me by that time. But I don't think I'll come back for a long
time. I told you I didn't think I loved you, and you said I had to
marry somebody. But now I don't, Luke, because I got a job. Please
don't think hard of me. This was meant right, Luke.
"COSMA."
I wrote another letter, too--just because it felt good to be writing it.
It said:
"DEAR MR. EMBER:
"I want you to know I done as you said. I left home, and I left
Luke, and I'm going to see if there is anything in the world for me
to be that I can get to be. I've got a job, and I've got you to
thank for that. Mr. Carney's nephew got it for me.
"There's something I want to say to you that's hard to say. I want
you to know that the walk that morning was the nicest thing that
ever happened to me. It made me see that the cheap me--the vulgar
me, like you said--wasn't the only me there is to me. Clear inside
is something that can be another me. I knew that before, in the
grove, and early in the morning, like I said. But I didn't think I
could ever let it out enough to be me. I didn't trust it, not till
you came.
"And that's what makes me think I can be different, the way you
said to. I'd hate for you to think I was just the sassy girl I
acted that morning. There's something else I can't bear to have
you think--that's that I didn't know how different I acted at the
table from what you did. I did know.
"I've got a job, and Mis' Bingy and the baby are here--I knocked
her husband down before I come because he was drunk and was going
to kill her, so we thought we better leave there. That was how we
come. But I guess I would have come anyway after I talked with you.
"Your friend,
"COSMA WAKELY."
"P. S.--I say _Cosma_ all the time now."
I sealed it up and directed it, and slipped it in my book. I wouldn't
send it; but it was nice to write it.
The second day I was in the factory, a girl come to me in the hall and
asked me if I'd go out with her to lunch. I said I had my roll and a
banana; but I'd walk along with her and eat 'em. She said that was what
she meant--she had some crackers and an apple. So we walked down the
block. Her name was Rose Everly.
There was a place half-way along there where some policemen were always
sitting out, and when we went past there one of them spoke to her. She
stopped, and she gave me an introduction.
"Miss Wakely," she says, "you meet Sergeant Ebbit."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance," says he. "How's the strike coming
on?"
"I don't know as I know anything about any strike," she says, throwing
up her head.
"How about you?" he says to me. "You whinin' too?"
I didn't know what he meant, and I guess he see I didn't. He laughed,
and brought us out a couple of oranges.
"I'll be the first to run in the both of you, though," he says, "if you
start any nonsense."
"What's he mean?" I says, when we went on.
"He's new over here, or he wouldn't be so sassy, not to me," says Rose.
"Well, I brought you out here to put you wise."
Then she told me, while we walked up and down and et our oranges.
It seems there was things in the factory that I didn't have any notion
about. My own job was in the printing office, connected with the
factory. I was running a Gordon press, at slow speed, learning to feed
it right. At the first of the next week, I was going to be put on full
speed. We was to print from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand
envelopes a day, then; and I knew what that meant, from watching the
other machines. There was a time keeper over the full-speed machines,
and it was hurry, hurry, hurry, all day long. It was all right while I
was learning it, but I hated to think about making the same motion
twelve or fifteen thousand times every day. In our room there was sixty
or so. I used to notice the air, it smelled of some kind of gas and it
was full of paper dust. When they swept up they never wet the broom; and
when I asked the man if he didn't know enough to do that he swore at me.
It wasn't a nice place to work.
But it seems there was other things that I didn't know about yet. There
was fines for everything, and dockings for most that many. We had to go
through the other factory to get out, and it seems they locked the doors
on us as soon as we got in, and of course that was bad if there'd be a
fire. Then there was things about the foreman; and there wasn't any
Saturday half-holiday. And it seems the girls had joined together and
asked for better things. And Rose wanted to know if I'd be one of them.
"Sure," I says, "is there anybody that won't?"
"Them that's afraid of their jobs," she says. "If we don't get what we
think we ought to have, we'll--quit. We're going to have a meeting
to-morrow night. Can you come, and will you talk?"
"Sure I'll come," I says. "But I can't talk. I don't know enough."
The sergeant says something else to us when we come back.
"He'll likely be running us both in for getting a row made at us,
picketing, next week at this time," Rose said. At the door she took hold
of my arm. "Good for you!" she says. "We was all afraid of you when we
heard about Carney."
"What do you mean?" I asked her.
"'Bout Arthur Carney gettin' you your job," she says.
"Yes," I says. "What's that got to do with it?"
She laughed. "You baby!" she says. "Don't you know he owns the whole
outfit?"
"The _factory_?" I says.
He owned most of it, she told me. I kept going over that all the while I
fed my machine. And I kept going over what he'd said to me in his car. I
felt as if I didn't want to see him again, no matter how much he talked
about school; but I tried not to think that, because he was Mr. Carney's
nephew, and Mr. Carney was Mr. Ember's friend.
I went to the meeting, as I said I would; but it was hard for me to make
much out of it. There was all these things ought to be changed in the
factory, and we knew it, and we thought we'd ought to have a little more
wages; I wanted more when I began on full speed, but I didn't think I
was going to get it. It seemed to me the thing to do was to ask to have
things changed, and, if they didn't do it, quit till they did change
them. But at the meeting I found that there was those that was afraid to
ask--just for fire-escapes and decent cleanliness and a few cents more a
week and extra pay for overtime. And then I found out something else,
that if they wouldn't give us these things and we did quit, there was
some of us that wouldn't agree to quit, and maybe others that would come
in and take our jobs, and put up with what we had been trying to make
better. When I got that through my head, I stood right up at the meeting
to ask a question.
"They couldn't take our jobs if we stood out in front and tried to get
it into their heads what we was trying to do, could they?" I says.
"Ain't it just because they don't see what we're trying to do?"
They all laughed, and the woman that was speaking--somebody from outside
the factory--says yes, she thought that was it, they didn't see what we
were trying to do.
The next day was Sunday, and I could hardly wait. I was up early and out
while Mis' Bingy was still asleep. I hated to leave her all day, but it
seemed as if ever since I come to the city something out there was
calling me. I dunno where I went. I tramped for miles, and I spent
fifteen cents car-fare, besides transfers, but I didn't care. I had some
rolls in a bag, and I et them when I didn't show. And I looked and
looked.
I found hundreds of folks, going off for all day, washed and dressed up
and with lunches and children, headed out in the country, I judged. Some
of them looked like Father and Mother and Mis' Bingy, and as if they
couldn't be any other way. I set on the car with them, and kind of see
_through_ them, and knew how they must snap each other up, home, when
they wasn't dressed up. I wondered what God wanted so many for, that
couldn't be different because it was too late. But some, and most of all
the children, looked as if they might have been most anybody, if they
were given a chance. I wondered how they could get the chance, and if
none of them tried. I wondered how I could try. I knew I'd never get it
in the factory. No matter if we got all the things we were asking for,
it was a dog's life--I knew that already. It wasn't much better than
Bert and Henny had, to the blast furnace. They got dirty, and had to
work straight twenty-four hours once every two weeks; but they made
their dollar-twenty a day, and not any of us done that. I kept trying to
think how to get started.
At the end of one car line I got off and walked over to the river. There
was beautiful houses there--more beautiful than I had ever seen, even in
the pictures. I thought they must have awful big families, they had so
many up-stairs rooms. The grass looked combed and fluffed, much better
than the babies' hair around the factory. Somebody give an awful lot of
time to the flowers, and the river showed through the bushes. I liked
the nice curtains, and when automobiles went by I liked to look at the
ladies, they seemed so clean and tended. But I wondered why.
I stood looking through the iron fence of a great big house when a
policeman come along.
I says to him, before he could get passed, "I was wishing I knew the
names of the folks that live in there."
He stopped like a wall that knew how to walk. "Well, missy," says he,
"and was ye thinkin' of buyin' it in?"
"No," I says, "not with nothin' but you to watch it." And then I walked
on fast, and felt sick, sick at myself. Not one of them tended ladies in
the automobiles would have spoke like that. And Mr. Ember would have
hated me if he'd heard me say it. How did folks ever get over being
smart and quick, and be just regular?
After a while, I come past a big church, and I went in. I never liked
church, because the minister had always kept at me to join and I didn't
think I was good enough. But I knew nobody would ever ask me to join
here. There was one reason, though, why I liked it, even home--everybody
acted nice, and like there was company. Once I said that, home, to the
table, when everybody was jawing, "Let's act like we was in church," I
said. But it made Father mad, and he couldn't understand that I hadn't
meant the being good part at all. I only meant the acting nice part.
In the church it was like that, just as if everybody had company and was
on their good behavior. They set me in the gallery, and I could see the
whole crowd. The hats was grand. But the nicest was the colors in the
dresses and the windows and the flowers. It was funny, but something in
them made me hurt. And when the music burst out sudden, it hurt me so
that I dropped my bag of rolls so's to get down and pick them up, and
get my mind off my throat. I was thinking about it afterward, and it was
the first music I'd ever heard except our reed organ in church, and Lena
Curtsy's piano, and the movies, and the circus band. And even the circus
band had hurt my throat, too.
I never knew a word the man said, I mean the minister. He didn't talk
anyhow--he just kept on about something, as if he was trying to make
somebody mean something they didn't mean. But I liked being there.
Everybody seemed like they ought to seem. I wondered if they was. I
couldn't seem to see _through_, like I could with the folks in the
street-car. It didn't seem possible that those folks down there ever
yipped out about anything to each other, and, anyway, what could they
have to yip out about? They were all clean and tended, too. Afterward I
stood in the door and watched them pour out, talking fast, and drive
off. I liked to see them close to, and hear the way they said their
words. It made a real nice morning, but I never heard a word about God.
I et my rolls in the park, and I stayed there a good while. The sun or
the green or something made me feel good. I tried to look at the
animals, but I hated it in the smelly places, with the poor live things
in cages. When they tore around and couldn't sit still in any one place,
I thought it was just like Mother and Father and the boys and Mis'
Bingy, they all had to stay in a little place they didn't like, doing
what they didn't want to do. I didn't blame any of them for being ugly.
The more I looked at the animals, the better I understood. Then I
thought about Keddie Bingy--and he didn't have only that little place to
stay, with the bed in the kitchen, and he hated being a stone mason, I'd
heard him tell Father that. I didn't know but I could understand why he
got drunk. Then there was Joe, that had the Dew Drop Inn, and he had to
stay there in that place, and he couldn't get out; and, anyway, the
United States let him; and I begun to see how it was that Joe got Keddie
drunk all the time. So I was glad I went to see the animals, even if I
couldn't stay on account of it making me sick.
Outside the park was the big hotels. I wondered if I could walk inside
and look at them, but when I got to the steps, I was afraid. Then I see
a big red house behind more iron fence, with an American flag overhead,
and I asked a little boy with some papers if that was where the mayor
lived.
"Naw," says he. "Private party. I t'ought youse was their chum, the way
youse was rubberin'."
I give him a penny for a paper and didn't say anything. And then I felt
better about the way I'd answered the policeman. It ain't so hard to act
nice if you can only think in time.
I walked all the way home. I went in every church I come to, because it
was some place to go in. If I'd been shot out of a gun I couldn't have
told 'em apart, and I wondered how they could tell themselves. And
everywhere I went, there wasn't a soul to speak to. I tried to imagine
what if Mis' Bingy and the baby wasn't back there in the room, and there
was nobody to speak to when I got back. It felt funny, like once when I
got too far from shore in the pond, home. I couldn't help thinking about
Mr. Carney saying: "You must let me help you to keep from being too
lonesome." And if he'd come along just then with his shiny car, I don't
know but I'd have got in.
It was the day after that that he come to the factory and asked for me.
I didn't think he'd do that, but I guess he didn't care what he done.
The foreman called me out, and when I got into his office there was Mr.
Arthur, and he left me there with him. Mr. Arthur's hat was on the back
of his head, and his light hair was flat down on his forehead, and his
light-colored eyes and eyebrows made me want to get away from him, even
if he was Mr. Ember's friend.
"Child," he says to me, "why are you trying to avoid me? I've found a
place for you where you can go and learn as much as you want. I've been
waiting to tell you about it. Don't you trust me?" he says.
I says, "I'd trust any friend of Mr. Ember's."
"Well," he says, "anyhow, trust me. I'll call here for you to-night, and
you let me tell you what I've got planned for you."
"I'm going to meet with some of the girls to-night, Mr. Carney," I says.
"Cut that out," he says. "Come with me."
I laughed at that. "You act like your way was the way things are," I
says.
"I wish it were," he says, "I wish it were."
"Listen, Mr. Carney," I says. "I've got a good job, and I like the
girls. It's a dirty, disagreeable place to work, and we'd ought to have
a good many things we haven't got," I says to him, "but I guess I'll
stick it out for a while. I couldn't come to-night, anyway."
"I'll wait for you to-morrow night, then," he says. "We'll have a little
dinner somewhere, and a run in the car--"
It was getting awful hard to remember to act nice, and I spilled over.
"You got the ways of a hitching-post," I says; "but you ain't got the
tie-strap." And I walked out and left him there.
Two nights he run his car down to the door where he'd found I come out.
Once I pretended not to see him, and run and caught a street-car. Once
he jumped out and walked along beside me, and the girls fell back. I
told him Mis' Bingy and I were going to have a banquet of wieners, fried
on the gas-jet, and I couldn't come. He put a note in my hand, he never
seemed to care what anybody thought, I noticed that about him.
Mis' Bingy and I read the note, while the wieners were frying.
"Don't keep me waiting," it said. "I want to see you the glorious
creature you could be if you had the training you say you want.
Music, riding, whatever you ask for, you shall have it all, on my
honor. Don't I deserve a little more confidence from you?
A. C."
Mis' Bingy rocked back and forth on the bed.
"Cossy Wakely," she said, "it's my fault, it's my fault. I brung you.
Let's us go back, Cossy, right off. Let's us go back."
"Oh, pshaw, Mis' Bingy!" I says, "I guess he means it right. We're
just--vulgar."
"Oh, what a world," says Mis' Bingy. "Ain't there no place women can get
shed of men, with their drunkenness and their devilment?"
I couldn't feel that way a bit. "I don't want to," I says. "I want to
find the other kind of men. There is them!"
We had a nice supper, and then I wrote in this book. It was beginning to
be so I could hardly wait to get at it. I wondered if that was the way
Mr. Ember felt about his work. Then I thought about the factory, and
remembered that that was work, too. It didn't seem as if they ought to
have the same name.
Next morning Rose went up the stairs with me.
"You know you'll either have to quit your job or else give in, don't
you?" she says.
I looked at her.
"Are you sure?" I says, "I thought maybe my being afraid of him was just
being--vulgar."
"You baby," she says. "It ain't your fault. Everybody understands. We
always tell the new pretty ones. But he brought you here--"
I tried to think what to do, all that day, while I fed the press. I
could think well enough--the work was just one motion, one motion, one
motion, and I didn't have to think about that. But I knew in a little
while the rest of my head wouldn't think while I worked, and that I
should just stand there with the smell of the oil and the ink and the
gas and the paper dust, and the noise. I wondered what we was all doing
it for, just to earn money to keep breathing, and to supply Mr. Arthur
Carney with money for "little dinners somewhere," and the shiny car. It
didn't seem worth while, not for any of us.
At noon Rose and I walked again, she wanted to tell me about a meeting
for that night. They'd heard that morning from Mr. Carney. He wouldn't
give in on one of the things, except to promise to unlock the doors
while we worked. "But he's promised that before," Rose says. "It don't
last. We're going to take the vote to-night on walking out."
"What!" says Sergeant Ebbit, when we come by. "Ain't you two struck
yet?"
"Don't you want to be?" says Rose, pretending to hit at him. I don't
know how any of us can act nice, with everybody joshing us so free.
I promised to go to the meeting, and that meant that I couldn't go home
to supper, because it was so far to walk back. And when I come out the
door, there was Mr. Carney's car, and him walking toward me. I never
stopped a minute. I walked straight through the girls and got into his
car. He jumped in after me and banged the door. I heard the girls
titter. "You glorious thing," I heard him say; and I says, low:
"I've got one errand, though. Will you take me there?"
"Anywhere under heaven," he says.