I showed Mr. Carney which way. We went past the girls, and round the
corner, and straight down the narrow street where we always walked
eating our lunch. I motioned where to stop. I jumped out. Sergeant Ebbit
was alone just inside the door of the police station.
"Hello, Beauty," he says; "what can I do for you?"
I says, "I want you to come out here and arrest a fresh young guy with a
car, that's been bothering me."
He jumped up and followed. He was new there, as Rose had said, and then
he kind of liked me, too. I'd known that several days, and I was
depending on it now. He come hurrying, like I thought he would, and he
says, "I know them fool kids, and I'll learn 'em, if you say so." And
before he see Mr. Carney he blew his whistle.
"That's him," I says, pointing to the little shiny car.
It makes me laugh now to remember the sergeant's face. But another
policeman was coming, running. And folks stopped and stared. And I
slipped out the station door quick, and turned the corner and dodged
straight across the factory yard and took to my heels.
It was after six o'clock, so the streets were alive. I walked along,
never noticing where I was going. I looked down the street. As far as I
could see there went the heads, men and women, bobbing along home. Half
of them, I thought, had just the same kind of box to live in that Mis'
Bingy and I had. Yet there they was, going to work every day by
clockwork, always thinking something good was going to come of it. I
tramped along with them. There was something good in the way our feet
all come down on the walk together. In spite of everything, I felt fine.
But I guess that was because I was young and well. Some of them that
passed me, their heads didn't stay up and their feet dragged. And they
didn't seem to know each other was there. If only they could have felt
the good feeling of marching together, it seemed to me they'd be less
tired.
"They've got to find out different," I thought. "How can they?"
The most of them crossed east on Broadway and under a covered place with
bells clanging. I saw the sign "Brooklyn Bridge," so I went up the steps
and out on the bridge, and I walked clear across it and back again. I'll
never forget that walk. I was looking at the others and looking at
them--the folks that was workers, like me. I seemed to know something
about them they didn't know. It seemed as if I had to do something.
A bunch of little young girls passed me, all laughing. They seemed years
younger than I was. I thought of them--of the day they'd had in the
factory--bad air, noise, work that was dead before it was born, and
maybe a home where there was rows, or maybe just nobody at all; and
somebody like Arthur Carney coming to help them be a little less
lonesome. And then I faced it honest: Suppose he hadn't had flat hair
and light eyes. Suppose he had looked different, so that I would have
_wanted_ to go to dinner with him?
I begun to walk fast, back to town. Across the bridge I went in a little
down-stairs place to get something to eat. I was thinking so hard I
never knew I'd ordered a quarter's worth till I got the bill. But I
didn't care much. Everything else seemed all of a sudden to matter so
much more.
That night, when I walked into the meeting, they all stared. I s'pose
the word had got round that I'd gone with him. I whispered to Rose that
I wanted to say something, and she give me a chance right away. When I
got up on the platform and faced 'em, I wasn't afraid. I was glad.
I told them that just because I had got to leave, I didn't want them to
think I was going to forget. And that they mustn't forget, either. "It
ain't caught me yet," I told 'em. "I'm new and from the country, and I
can see what it is that you're getting, like you can't see. And what I
say is this: Quit your hoping. Just know that until we get together
ourselves, nothing will come out of the factory except what we're
getting now. Quit your hoping, and help. That's my last word."
And yet I guess you can't blame anybody for being afraid of being
hungry. I'd never been hungry yet, so I was brave.
I didn't tell Mis' Bingy that night that I'd lost my job. I didn't tell
her till next morning when she woke up, scared that I was late. We went
out in the park with the baby.
"We'll be all right, Mis' Bingy," I says, "don't you worry."
I was sitting on the grass. And when I spoke so, I happened to see my
foot sticking from under my skirt. The whole half of my shoe sole had
come off, and was gone, and the nails was all showing. Ten days' rent it
would take to buy me another pair.
Just now I tore out thirty pages of this book. And just now I read them
over. They made me sick to read them, not because of what was there, but
because of what wasn't there. It was the same thing over and over again
all that time. Hat factory, ribbon factory, braid factory, silk factory,
and ten weeks rolling stogies. Some places the girls cared, and was
trying to make others care to get things better. In others it was get
what you could, look your best, and marry the first man that asked you.
Every place I went, I begun asking about the things that Rose had taught
me about--fines, and dockings, and fire safety, and the rest. Then I
talked to the girls. That was why I didn't "last."
"You'll get used to things one of these days," says a forelady to me.
"That's what I'm afraid of," I told her.
But the worst was, there wasn't any fun. There wasn't anything to go to,
and, anyhow, I couldn't afford the car-fare back in the evening.
Mis' Bingy had found a place where she could leave the baby a little
while every day, and she done some cleaning. We moved out of our first
room to one farther up that didn't cost so high. I got so I begun to
think ahead, nights.
Then one night when I come in, the lady we rented of says a lady had
been there to see me; "A lady," she says, "that come in a automobile and
says her words as careful as if she was a-singin' in the church. She's
a-comin' back again."
And when she come, she stood by the table and says:
"Miss Wakely, I am Mis' Arthur Carney."
"My land!" I says. It had never entered my head that he might have a
wife on top of everything else.
"I have been hearing," she says, "of what you did some time ago. I mean
about--Mr. Carney. I have come to find you, because it seemed to me that
you must be a remarkable girl."
"Oh, Mis' Carney," I says, "nobody needs to be remarkable to think of
getting _him_ arrested."
And then I remembered something: "Yes, sir!" I says, "it was you! It
was you that was in the pinkish dress in Mr. Ember's house that day!"
And I told her what she had been saying when she passed the door. But
all I was thinking was--she knew; him. She knew Mr. Ember, too!
She talked to me a long time. She didn't ask me many questions--and I
didn't tell her much about me, but still in a little while we felt real
acquainted. And pretty soon she says:
"I came really, you know, to see whether you had found another
position--after you left that one. I've had a good deal of a time
finding you out. What have you done since? What are you doing now?"
I told her some of it.
"And what do you want to do?" she says then.
I don't know what give me the courage. It was just like something in me
said: "Tell her. Tell her. Tell her." And I said it.
"Oh," I says, "I'd work my head off if I could go somewheres to school.
But I don't want to know just school things. I want to know more than
them...."
"What do you want to know?" she says.
It was funny how easy it was to talk to her. Father or Mother or Luke or
Mis' Bingy, that I'd known all my life, I couldn't have explained things
to like I could to her. But I think that was part because she didn't
need everything all said out in sentences, and then it was part because
I knew she wouldn't make a fuss at me when I got through.
When she went away: "I'm going to look around a little," she says, "I'll
come back in a few days."
"But, oh," I says, "you know, there's Mis' Bingy and the baby. I
couldn't do anything that'd take me away from her. I don't know why you
bother with me anyway," I says.
She had the loveliest dignified way. "We owe you something, my husband
and I," she says.
But of course I knew that that was just her manner of speaking, and that
her husband didn't know a thing about what she was doing, and that
probably it was one of those speeches that everybody keeps making, like
when Mis' Bingy talked, in the depot, of taking her baby away from "a
father's care."
She went off in her automobile, and I stood on the step looking after
her. The very thought that there could be anybody in the world like her,
that would do what she'd done, made me feel like I understood the earth.
I told Mis' Bingy, and she sat a long time looking out the window with
her mouth open.
"If Keddie had done that," she says, "I bet a quarter of a pound of tea,
I'd blame the girl."
I'd have thought everybody would. We talked it over.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, "maybe they's ways to be decent we don't even
_know_ about."
She kep' her mouth open. "Then who's to blame if we don't act up to 'em,
I donno," she says, after a while.
"I donno, too," I says. "It must be somebody, though."
And we both thought it must be.
The next day was Sunday, and Mis' Bingy and I done what we'd been going
to do for a long time. We walked up to the park, and inside the big
building where the pictures are. Mis' Bingy set on a bench and fed the
baby, while I wandered round.
I guess you're supposed to feel nice and real awed when you first go to
that big place. I guess you're supposed to be glad you live in a city
where they're free to you. I thought I was going to have a good time.
But instead of that I kept getting madder and madder. Once I begun to
talk out loud, and I was afraid they'd put me out. It was when I come to
a big room full of statues, with one big white one that said under it
"Apollo." I'd never heard the name. I says to the man in the hall:
"Can you tell me who that Apollo was--and why he's stuck up here?"
"Catalogues twenty-five cents each, at the door," says the man.
"Well," I says, "I ain't got the quarter to spare. But I thought mebbe
you knew."
"He was the Greek god of beauty and song," he says, stiff. And the next
thing I knew I was standing there in front of the Greek god talking out
loud. And I says:
"I'd like to twist the nose off your face, just because I've never heard
of you before--nor you--nor you--nor you--nor you. _Why_ ain't I never
heard of you?"
I run for Mis' Bingy.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, "are you ready to go?"
She followed me without a word. Out on the steps she says, shaking:
"Which was it--Keddie or Carney?"
"It was neither," I says, "it was that smart white god in there, and all
the rest of 'em. Mis' Bingy! Folks _know_ about 'em. They know when they
go there, and they know about pictures. I heard 'em talking. What's the
reason we don't know?"
"Go on!" says Mis' Bingy. "We ain't the kind of folks them things are
calculated for."
"It's a lie!" I says. "It's a lie! I could almost like 'em now--only I
got so mad."
I set down on a bench in the park, and cried. And I didn't care who
heard me.
Mis' Bingy stood up, waiting for me, hushing the baby back and forth on
her hip.
"I use' to feel like that when I was a girl," she says. "You'll get over
it." She kept saying that, several times. "You'll get over it, Cossy,"
as if she thought it was some comfort.
"That's what I'm afraid of," I says, after a while.
We transferred at Eighth Street on the way down, because there was
something else I'd heard about and I hadn't ever seen yet. We walked
east through the square, under the arch, and I asked a policeman for
what I was looking for, and he showed me: The top story where the fire
had been in a factory. The girls had told me about it, and I told Mis'
Bingy, and we stood and looked. That was where they had jumped from.
That was where they had hit the sidewalk, a hundred and eighteen of
them, smashed or burned to death.
"It might have been you, Cossy," Mis' Bingy says, staring up and
swinging the baby.
"It _was_ me," I says. "I felt like it was me when I heard it--and I
feel like it was me now."
But I didn't want to cry for that. While I looked I got still inside,
still and sick, and sure. I guess I felt like I was every factory girl
in in New York. The hundred and eighteen wasn't the worst off--I knew
that now. I wondered how many of them some Carney had chased, to "help
them be a little less lonesome." I wondered how many of them could talk
English. I wondered how many of them ever had it in their heads for a
minute that there was anything else for them only just what they had.
Then I thought about that Greek god of beauty and song. And them hundred
and eighteen and most of the other girls and Mis' Bingy and me never
even knew there was such a guy.
Two days later Mis' Carney come back. The landlady had a book agent,
entertaining him in the parlor, so I had to take her right up to our
room. It was nice and clean, and Mis' Bingy always combed her hair and
changed her dress after dinner, just like she had at home afternoons,
when she'd got the dishes washed up. She was making lace by the window,
and the baby was on the floor. It was late, and we'd got a whole pie tin
of wieners sizzling over the gas-jet.
"Mis' Carney, you meet Mis' Bingy," I says. But Mis' Carney hardly
looked at her. She bent right over the pillow that Mis' Bingy's work was
on.
"Do you mean," Mis' Carney said, "that you are actually making the lace?
Here in New York?"
"Yes, ma'am," Mis' Bingy says. "Ma taught me--in the old country."
"Have you any of it made?" Mis' Carney says.
Mis' Bingy opened the washstand drawer and took out what she had, tied
up in a pillow case. Mis' Carney set on the bed and took it in her
hands. After a long time she looked up at me, and her face was lovely.
"Miss Wakely," she says, "I came to tell you what I have for you to
do--and I was a good deal bothered--about your friend, Mis' Bingy. But
it seems to me that she can earn considerably more than you can--with
her lace. I paid six dollars a yard for lace like this not a fortnight
ago."
Then she turned to me. "You're going to a school right here in town,"
she said; "I have arranged everything. And now Mis' Bingy is going to
find a larger room and make her lace."
The wieners had burned black before any of us noticed. If ever you seen
the sky open back, I guess you know.
Mis' Carney asked me to spend Friday to Monday with her, and then she
would take me over to the school.
"Have I got to see your husband?" I says to her, direct.
Her husband was in Europe, so that was how she could ask me. And Friday
afternoon she come for me.
"We can take your trunk in the car, if it's a small one," she says.
"I ain't even got a satchel," I told her. "My other dress and things are
in this here."
Mis' Bingy was hanging over the bannister post, and the landlady with
her.
"Don't you go and forget me, Cossy," says Mis' Bingy, crying.
The landlady used her face all the time like a strong light was in her
eyes.
"She'll forget you, all right," she says. "I got two daughters
somewheres that I never hear a word out of. Best say good-by and leave
it go at that."
I always wanted everybody to tell the truth, but that woman sort of
undressed it, and then told it. And it made a little hush, there in the
hall.
Mis' Carney's house was big and still. She took me to a bedroom at the
back, looking out on a square garden. The furniture was white, with
rose-buds on, and there were gray and pink rugs on the floor. The light
colored rugs seemed so wonderful--just as if it didn't matter if they
did get soiled, no more than towels. Nor not so much so. On the wall was
a little picture of a boat with a bright-colored sail, on a real blue
sky. The minute I see it, the whole thing kind of come over me. And I
begun to cry.
"Oh, Mis' Carney," I says, "we got a picture in the parlor, home. But it
don't look like that."
"Is that what you are crying for?" she asked.
"No," I says, "I don't think so. I was thinking about the bed. Mother
and I looked at one in a show-window, once."
I remembered how Mother had stood and looked at it, all made up clean
and pretty, even after I was tired and wanted to go on.
Saturday morning we went shopping. I'd never been down-town before when
I wasn't walking fast to get somewheres. This was the first time I had
ever _looked_. Everywhere there were people, hurrying and thinking.
"Look in this window, Cosma," Mis' Carney said as we went in a store.
"How would you like that shade?"
But the man that was fixing the things looked like a man that sold
mackintoshes at the county fair, and I watched him.
"You ought to have a longish coat," she says, "you're so tall."
Just then I saw a woman with gray hair, and I stood staring at her,
wondering if there was anybody's mother that looked as grand as her.
"Cosma," Mis' Carney said, "look at the things, please. Never mind the
people."
"Never mind the people." I knew then that they were all I cared about.
It wasn't so much the folks shopping that I saw--it was the girls, the
whole army of girls that was waiting on them. When you get to look at
the shops that way, then you know more about them than you did before.
But the folks on the sidewalks kind of got me too. Out in the car I says
to Mis' Carney:
"I know! It ain't just school or clothes or you that makes me feel good.
It's something else. It's because I ain't worrying over the rent!"
I saw the folks on the sidewalks, all hurrying and thinking. I knew them
all now. Half of them were worrying just the way I had been, just the
way Rose was, just the way all the girls did. I felt bad for them. I
wanted to take them all off with me, to school or somewheres.
Then come the evening I'll never forget. Mis' Carney and I had dinner by
ourselves in a little glass room just off the big dining-room; and
afterward we went into the library. She was showing me some books, when
a bell rung, somewheres off in the house, and a maid come with a card.
"Show him to the drawing-room," Mis' Carney said, and gave me a lot more
books and left me. And then I heard his voice in the next room where
she'd gone. I knew--the minute I heard him speak I knew. I dropped my
books and run to the curtains and stood where I could see.
And Mr. Ember was standing by the table, with his face turned toward me,
looking just like I'd seen him last, there in Twiney's pasture. One hand
was resting on the table and the other was pushing his hair back from
his forehead, two, three times, kind of as if he was tired. And when I
see him, from my head to my feet I begun to tremble. I'd felt like that
once or twice before--once when the team got scared and begun to back
off the bridge.
"I'm in town for the rest of the winter," he was saying. "I've a few
lectures to pull off--and a lot of proof to keep me busy. What have you
been doing with yourself?"
Then my heart beat harder. What if she told him about me? And one minute
I was sick with being afraid she would, and next minute I was wild for
fear she wouldn't. I didn't want to see him. I'd said I wasn't going to
see him till I could meet him sometime when I was the way I was going to
be. But I'd have come pretty near to giving up my whole chance of ever
being anything, just to have his hands shut over mine and to hear him
say my name again.
She didn't tell him, Mrs. Carney wasn't the telling kind. In a few
minutes they begun to talk of other things--Europe and Washington and
theaters. And while I stood there, looking at him and looking, it came
over me that to be listening there wouldn't be the way Mrs. Carney would
act, nor the way he'd meant me to act. So I looked at him once, hard
enough to last, the best a look can last, and then I run away up to my
room and locked the door. I stood in the middle of the floor and kind of
flung myself on to something or somebody in the air, that it seemed to
me _must_ have been listening to me.
"Make me like I ain't," I says. "Make me different! Make me
different--YOU!"
When I heard the door shut, I went back down-stairs. I wanted to be the
next one to talk to her after he had. She was in the library, putting
the books back. And her face was shining like I'd never seen it.
"Oh, Cosma," she said, "some people make you feel as if it's a good
world!"
"It is," I says, "while they're around."
"Yes," she says, "it is--while they're around."
That was all she said. Pretty soon she went back in the drawing-room,
and I followed her so's to be where he had been. I'd been going to sit
down in the chair where he had sat, but she sat down there. So I stood
by the table. And I was glad it happened that neither of us said
anything for quite a while.