The reasons why a girl of Roberta's type should be seeking employment
with Griffiths and Company at this time and in this capacity are of
some point. For, somewhat after the fashion of Clyde in relation
to his family and his life, she too considered her life a great
disappointment. She was the daughter of Titus Alden, a farmer--of near
Biltz, a small town in Mimico County, some fifty miles north. And from
her youth up she had seen little but poverty. Her father--the youngest
of three sons of Ephraim Alden, a farmer in this region before him--was
so unsuccessful that at forty-eight he was still living in a house
which, though old and much in need of repair at the time his father
willed it to him, was now bordering upon a state of dilapidation. The
house itself, while primarily a charming example of that excellent
taste which produced those delightful gabled homes which embellish
the average New England town and street, had been by now so reduced
for want of paint, shingles, and certain flags which had once made a
winding walk from a road gate to the front door, that it presented
a decidedly melancholy aspect to the world, as though it might be
coughing and saying: "Well, things are none too satisfactory with me."
The interior of the house corresponded with the exterior. The floor
boards and stair boards were loose and creaked most eerily at times.
Some of the windows had shades--some did not. Furniture of both an
earlier and a later date, but all in a somewhat decayed condition,
intermingled and furnished it in some nondescript manner which need
hardly be described.
As for the parents of Roberta, they were excellent examples of that
native type of Americanism which resists facts and reveres illusion.
Titus Alden was one of that vast company of individuals who are born,
pass through and die out of the world without ever quite getting any
one thing straight. They appear, blunder, and end in a fog. Like his
two brothers, both older and almost as nebulous, Titus was a farmer
solely because his father had been a farmer. And he was here on this
farm because it had been willed to him and because it was easier to
stay here and try to work this than it was to go elsewhere. He was a
Republican because his father before him was a Republican and because
this county was Republican. It never occurred to him to be otherwise.
And, as in the case of his politics and his religion, he had borrowed
all his notions of what was right and wrong from those about him. A
single, serious, intelligent or rightly informing book had never been
read by any member of this family--not one. But they were nevertheless
excellent, as conventions, morals and religions go--honest, upright,
God-fearing and respectable.
In so far as the daughter of these parents was concerned, and in
the face of natural gifts which fitted her for something better
than this world from which she derived, she was still, in part, at
least, a reflection of the religious and moral notions there and
then prevailing,--the views of the local ministers and the laity in
general. At the same time, because of a warm, imaginative, sensuous
temperament, she was filled--once she reached fifteen and sixteen--with
the world-old dream of all of Eve's daughters from the homeliest to the
fairest--that her beauty or charm might some day and ere long smite
bewitchingly and so irresistibly the soul of a given man or men.
So it was that although throughout her infancy and girlhood she was
compelled to hear of and share a depriving and toilsome poverty, still,
because of her innate imagination, she was always thinking of something
better. Maybe, some day, who knew, a larger city like Albany or Utica!
A newer and greater life.
And then what dreams! And in the orchard of a spring day later, between
her fourteenth and eighteenth years when the early May sun was making
pink lamps of every aged tree and the ground was pinkly carpeted
with the falling and odorous petals, she would stand and breathe and
sometimes laugh, or even sigh, her arms upreached or thrown wide to
life. To be alive! To have youth and the world before one. To think of
the eyes and the smile of some youth of the region who by the merest
chance had passed her and looked, and who might never look again, but
who, nevertheless, in so doing, had stirred her young soul to dreams.
None the less she was shy, and hence recessive--afraid of men,
especially the more ordinary types common to this region. And these
in turn, repulsed by her shyness and refinement, tended to recede
from her, for all of her physical charm, which was too delicate for
this region. Nevertheless, at the age of sixteen, having repaired to
Biltz in order to work in Appleman's Dry Goods Store for five dollars
a week, she saw many young men who attracted her. But here because of
her mood in regard to her family's position, as well as the fact that
to her inexperienced eyes they appeared so much better placed than
herself, she was convinced that they would not be interested in her.
And here again it was her own mood that succeeded in alienating them
almost completely. Nevertheless she remained working for Mr. Appleman
until she was between eighteen and nineteen, all the while sensing that
she was really doing nothing for herself because she was too closely
identified with her home and her family, who appeared to need her.
And then about this time, an almost revolutionary thing for this
part of the world occurred. For because of the cheapness of labor in
such an extremely rural section, a small hosiery plant was built at
Trippetts Mills. And though Roberta, because of the views and standards
that prevailed hereabout, had somehow conceived of this type of work
as beneath her, still she was fascinated by the reports of the high
wages to be paid. Accordingly she repaired to Trippetts Mills, where,
boarding at the house of a neighbor who had previously lived in Biltz,
and returning home every Saturday afternoon, she planned to bring
together the means for some further form of practical education--a
course at a business college at Homer or Lycurgus or somewhere which
might fit her for something better--bookkeeping or stenography.
And in connection with this dream and this attempted saving two
years went by. And in the meanwhile, although she earned more money
(eventually twelve dollars a week), still, because various members of
her family required so many little things and she desired to alleviate
to a degree the privations of these others from which she suffered,
nearly all that she earned went to them.
And again here, as at Biltz, most of the youths of the town who were
better suited to her intellectually and temperamentally--still looked
upon the mere factory type as beneath them in many ways. And although
Roberta was far from being that type, still having associated herself
with them she was inclined to absorb some of their psychology in regard
to themselves. Indeed by then she was fairly well satisfied that no one
of these here in whom she was interested would be interested in her--at
least not with any legitimate intentions.
And then two things occurred which caused her to think, not only
seriously of marriage, but of her own future, whether she married or
not. For her sister, Agnes, now twenty, and three years her junior,
having recently reëncountered a young school-master who some time
before had conducted the district school near the Alden farm, and
finding him more to her taste now than when she had been in school,
had decided to marry him. And this meant, as Roberta saw it, that she
was about to take on the appearance of a spinster unless she married
soon. Yet she did not quite see what was to be done until the hosiery
factory at Trippetts Mills suddenly closed, never to reopen. And then,
in order to assist her mother, as well as help with her sister's
wedding, she returned to Biltz.
But then there came a third thing which decidedly affected her dreams
and plans. Grace Marr, a girl whom she had met at Trippetts Mills,
had gone to Lycurgus and after a few weeks there had managed to
connect herself with the Finchley Vacuum Cleaner Company at a salary
of fifteen dollars a week and at once wrote to Roberta telling her of
the opportunities that were then present in Lycurgus. For in passing
the Griffiths Company, which she did daily, she had seen a large
sign posted over the east employment door reading "Girls Wanted."
And inquiry revealed the fact that girls at this company were always
started at nine or ten dollars, quickly taught some one of the various
phases of piece work and then, once they were proficient, were
frequently able to earn as much as from fourteen to sixteen dollars,
according to their skill. And since board and room were only consuming
seven of what she earned, she was delighted to communicate to Roberta,
whom she liked very much, that she might come and room with her if she
wished.
Roberta, having reached the place where she felt that she could no
longer endure farm life but must act for herself once more, finally
arranged with her mother to leave in order that she might help her more
directly with her wages.
But once in Lycurgus and employed by Clyde, her life, after the first
flush of self-interest which a change so great implied for her, was not
so much more enlarged socially or materially either, for that matter,
over what it had been in Biltz and Trippetts Mills. For, despite the
genial intimacy of Grace Marr--a girl not nearly as attractive as
Roberta, and who, because of Roberta's charm and for the most part
affected gayety, counted on her to provide a cheer and companionship
which otherwise she would have lacked--still the world into which she
was inducted here was scarcely any more liberal or diversified than
that from which she sprang.
For, to begin with, the Newtons, sister and brother-in-law of Grace
Marr, with whom she lived, and who, despite the fact that they were not
unkindly, proved to be, almost more so than were the types with whom,
either in Biltz or Trippetts Mills, she had been in constant contact,
the most ordinary small town mill workers--religious and narrow to a
degree. George Newton, as every one could see and feel, was a pleasant
if not very emotional or romantic person who took his various small
plans in regard to himself and his future as of the utmost importance.
Primarily he was saving what little cash he could out of the wages he
earned as threadman in the Cranston Wickwire factory to enable him to
embark upon some business for which he thought himself fitted. And to
this end, and to further enhance his meager savings, he had joined
with his wife in the scheme of taking over an old house in Taylor
Street which permitted the renting of enough rooms to carry the rent
and in addition to supply the food for the family and five boarders,
counting their labor and worries in the process as nothing. And on the
other hand, Grace Marr, as well as Newton's wife, Mary, were of that
type that here as elsewhere find the bulk of their social satisfaction
in such small matters as relate to the organization of a small home,
the establishing of its import and integrity in a petty and highly
conventional neighborhood and the contemplation of life and conduct
through the lens furnished by a purely sectarian creed.
And so, once part and parcel of this particular household, Roberta
found after a time, that it, if not Lycurgus, was narrow and
restricted--not wholly unlike the various narrow and restricted homes
at Biltz. And these lines, according to the Newtons and their like,
to be strictly observed. No good could come of breaking them. If you
were a factory employee you should accommodate yourself to the world
and customs of the better sort of Christian factory employees. Every
day therefore--and that not so very long after she had arrived--she
found herself up and making the best of a not very satisfactory
breakfast in the Newton dining room, which was usually shared by Grace
and two other girls of nearly their own age--Opal Feliss and Olive
Pope--who were connected with the Cranston Wickwire Company. Also by
a young electrician by the name of Fred Shurlock, who worked for the
City Lighting Plant. And immediately after breakfast joining a long
procession that day after day at this hour made for the mills across
the river. For just outside her own door she invariably met with a
company of factory girls and women, boys and men, of the same relative
ages, to say nothing of many old and weary-looking women who looked
more like wraiths than human beings, who had issued from the various
streets and houses of this vicinity. And as the crowd, because of the
general inpour into it from various streets, thickened at Central
Avenue, there was much ogling of the prettier girls by a certain type
of factory man, who, not knowing any of them, still sought, as Roberta
saw it, unlicensed contacts and even worse. Yet there was much giggling
and simpering on the part of girls of a certain type who were by no
means as severe as most of those she had known elsewhere. Shocking!
And at night the same throng, re-forming at the mills, crossing the
bridge at the depot and returning as it had come. And Roberta, because
of her social and moral training and mood, and in spite of her decided
looks and charm and strong desires, feeling alone and neglected. Oh,
how sad to see the world so gay and she so lonely. And it was always
after six when she reached home. And after dinner there was really
nothing much of anything to do unless she and Grace attended one or
another of the moving picture theaters or she could bring herself to
consent to join the Newtons and Grace at a meeting of the Methodist
Church.
None the less once part and parcel of this household and working for
Clyde she was delighted with the change. This big city. This fine
Central Avenue with its stores and moving picture theaters. These great
mills. And again this Mr. Griffiths, so young, attractive, smiling and
interested in her.