One day toward spring I went down to see Mrs. Bingy. She had three women
in her room every day, making the lace. She had regular customers from
the shops. When I went in she was in a good black dress and was sitting
holding the baby, that was beginning now to talk.
"Oh, Cossy," she says, "look what I got," and pointed to some papers.
"Katytown papers," I said. "I don't suppose there's a soul there outside
the family that I care whether I ever see again or not."
"Why, Cossy," she said, "there's Lena--"
"Lena Curtsy!" I said. "Good heavens! Mrs. Bingy, I wish you wouldn't
call me 'Cossy.'"
"I always do forget the Cosma," she said humbly; "I'll try to remember
better. But Lena Curtsy--Cossy, she's married to Luke."
"Good for them," I said; "and I suppose they had a charivari that woke
the cemetery. That's Katytown."
"They've gone to housekeeping to Luke's father's," said Mrs. Bingy.
"Don't you want to read about it, Cossy--Cosma?"
I took the paper. "Mrs. Bingy," I said, "I came down to show you my new
dress."
"It's a beauty," she said. "I noticed it first thing when I see you. It
must be all-silk." She examined it with careful fingers. "I made this of
mine myself," she added, proud.
"Do you know anything about Keddie?" I asked her.
She begun to cry. "That's all that's the matter," she says. "The first
money I earned I sent him enough to go and take the cure. The letter
come back to me, marked that they couldn't find him. So I took the baby
and run down to Katytown, and, sure enough, the house was rented to
strangers and not a stick of furniture left in it. He'd sold it all off
and went West. And me with the money to give him the cure, when it's too
late. I ought," she says, "never to have left him."
"Mrs. Bingy," I says, "do you honestly believe that?"
"No," says she, "I don't. But it's a terrible thing to own up to. I saw
your Ma in Katytown."
"Oh!" I says. "How is she? She don't write. She just wrote once and put
in a dollar chicken money."
"They think you'll be back yet," Mrs. Bingy says. "Your Pa says, 'Her
place is here to home with her Ma. Her Ma's getting along in years now,
and she needs her to home, and she'd ought to come back.'"
"Why don't the boys come back?" I says.
"Oh, they're working," Mrs. Bingy says, surprised.
"So am I," I says. "Mrs. Bingy! Do you think I ought to go back?"
She leaned forward and spoke it behind her hand.
"No," she says, "I don't. But it's a terrible thing to own up to."
I went back to the school that Monday morning, wondering why it seems
hard to own up to so many things that's true. If they're true, the
least you can do is to own up to them, ain't it?
It was some time before this that I'd made up my mind to try for the
Savage Prize. The Savage Prize was open to the whole school, and it was
for the best oration given at a contest the week before commencement. I
was pretty good at what I called speaking pieces, and what they called
"vocational expression." And I had some things in my head that I wanted
to write about. I'd decided to write on "Growing," and I meant by that
just getting different from what you were, that my head was so full of.
I had a good deal to say, beginning with that white god that I knew all
about now. But Rose Everly didn't know. And I wondered why.
One day the principal called me in her office.
"Miss Spot has showed me the rough draft of your oration," she said. "It
is admirable, Cosma. But I should not emphasize unduly the painful fact
that there are many to whom growth is denied. Dwell on the inspiring
features of the subject. Let it bring out chiefly sweetness and light."
"But--" I says.
"That will do, Cosma. Thank you," said the principal.
While I was working on the Savage Prize oration, trying to make it "all
sweetness and light," Antoinette sent me a note, in history class.
"Jolly larks!" she said, "Friday. Dinner at the Dudleys' studio.
Opera in the Dudleys' box. Our house for Sunday. Look your best.
Baddy Dudley is back--You remember about him?"
Mr. Gerald had been promising to take us to the Dudleys' studio. Mr.
Dudley's brother, "Baddy," spending that winter in Italy, had had a
kodak picture of Antoinette and me and had sent me messages through
Gerald.
On the night of the party I was dressing in my room at the school when a
maid came up with a message. A girl was down-stairs to see me. My lace
gown and a white cloak that Antoinette had loaned me were spread on the
bed. I was just finishing my hair and tying in it a gold rose of
Antoinette's when my visitor came in. It was Rose Everly.
I'll never forget how Rose looked. She had on a little tight brown
jacket and a woolen cap. Her skirt was wet and her boots were muddy. She
stood winking in the light, and panting a little.
"My!" she said, "you live high up, don't you?" Then she stood staring at
me. "Cosma," she said, "how beautiful!"
She dropped into a chair. In that first thing she said she had been the
old Rose. Then she got still and shy, and sat openly looking at my
clothes. She was not more than twenty-one, and the factory life had not
told on her too much. Yet some of the life seemed to have gone out of
her. She talked as if not all of her was there. She sat quietly and she
looked as if she were resting all over. But her eyes were bright and
interested as she looked at my dress.
I said, "People have been good to me, Rose. They gave me these."
"You're different, too," she said, looking hard at me. "You talk
different, too. Oh, dear. I bet you won't do it!"
"Tell me what it is," I said, and put the lace dress over my head.
"It's the first meeting since the fire," Rose said. "I wanted you
there."
I asked her what fire, and her eyes got big.
"Didn't you know," she said, "about the fire in our factory? Didn't you
know the doors were locked again, and five of us burned alive?"
[Illustration: "Didn't you know about the fire in our factory?"]
I hadn't known. That seemed to me so awful. There I was, fed and clothed
and not worrying about rent, and here this thing had happened, and I nor
none of us hadn't even heard of it. Miss Manners and Miss Spot didn't
like us to read the newspapers too much.
"It broke out in the pressroom," Rose said. "That girl that was feeding
your old press--they never even found her."
"Oh, Rose," I said. "Rose, Rose!" And when I could I asked her what it
was that she had come wanting me to do.
She made a little tired motion. "It ain't only the fire," she said.
"Things have got worse with us. We've got three times the fines. Since
they've stopped locking the doors, they make us be searched every night,
and the new forewoman--she's fierce. And we can't get the girls
interested. They say it ain't no use to try. We want to try to have one
more meeting to show 'em there is some use. And we thought, mebbe--we
knew you could make 'em see, Cosma. If you'd come and talk to 'em."
"When would it be?" I asked her.
"They've called the meeting for to-morrow night," she told me.
"To-morrow!" I said. "Oh, Rose--no, then I can't. I'm going out of town
to-night, for two days, up the Hudson...."
I stopped. She got up and came to fasten my sash for me.
"I thought mebbe you couldn't," she said; "but it was worth trying."
"Have it next week," I said. "Have the meeting then."
But they had postponed once--some one, Rose said, had "peached" to the
forewoman. For to-morrow night the men had loaned them a hall. She bent
to my sash. I could see her in my glass. I was ashamed.
She told me what had come to the girls--marriage, promotion, disgrace.
Two of them had disappeared.
"I'm so sorry," I kept on saying. Then the maid came to tell me the
motor was there. I put on my cloak with the fur and the bright lining.
It had made me feel magnificent and happy. With Rose there, I felt all
different.
She slipped away and went out in the dark. The light was on in the
limousine. Mr. Gerald came running up the steps for me. Antoinette was
there already. I went down and got in. There was nothing else to do.
The drive curved back around the dormitory, and so to the street again.
As we came out on the roadway, we passed Rose, walking.
I thought: "She's walking till the street-car comes." But I knew it was
far more likely that she was walking all the way to her room.
At the Dudleys' studio I forgot Rose for a little while. It was a great
dark room with bright colors and dim lamps. Mrs. Dudley had on a dress
of leopard skins, with a pointed crown on her head. There were twenty or
more there, and among them "Baddy" Dudley. From the minute I came in the
room he came and sat beside me. He was big and ugly, but there was
something about him that made you forget all the other men in the room.
It was a wonderful dinner. When coffee came, the lights flashed up, a
curtain was lifted, and Mrs. Dudley danced. The lights rose and fell as
she danced, and with them the music. Every one broke into a low humming
with the music. Then she sank down, and the lights went out, and we sat
in the dark until she came back to dance again. "I shall never be
happy," said Mr. Dudley as we sat so, "until I see you dance, in a
costume which I shall design for you."
"Will you dance with me?" I asked him. That was the most fun--that I
could think of things to say, just the way Lena Curtsy used to--only
now they were never the kind that made anybody look shocked.
"Make the appointment in the Fiji Islands or in Fez," he said; "and
there I will be."
Mr. Gerald came and sat down beside me.
"Oh, very well, Massy--to the knife," says Mr. Dudley.
It was half after nine when we left for the opera. The second act had
begun, which seemed to me a wicked waste of tickets. But even then Mr.
Gerald had no intention of listening. He sat beside me and talked.
"Cosma," he said, "I'm about ten times as miserable as usual to-night.
Can't you say something."
I said, "Tell me: Is that what they call a minor? Because I want those
for my heaven."
"I want you for my heaven," Mr. Gerald observed. "Dear, I'm terribly in
earnest. Don't make me run a race with that bally ass."
"Don't race," I said. "Listen."
"I am listening," said Gerald, "to hear what you will say."
All at once it flashed over me: Cosma Wakely, from a farm near
Katytown! Here I was, loving my new life and longing to keep it up.
"You're right where you belong," he went on, "looking just as you look
now. But you do need me, you know, to complete the picture."
It was true. I did belong where I was. By a miracle I had got there. Why
was I hesitating to stay? If it had been Lena Curtsy, or Rose, I
couldn't imagine them feeling as if all this belonged to them. It was
true. There must be these distinctions. Why should I not accept what had
come? And then help the girls--help Father and Mother. Think of the good
I could do as Gerald's wife....
The music died, just like something alive. The curtain went down. And in
the midst of all the applause, and the silly bowing on the stage, and
the chatter in the box, I looked in the box next to ours. And there sat
John Ember.