They came to Mary’s home; and next door was the home of the Slav woman,
Mrs. Zamboni, about whom in the past she had told him so many funny
stories. Mrs. Zamboni had had a new baby every year for sixteen years,
and eleven of these babies were still alive. Now her husband was trapped
in Number One, and she was distracted, wandering about the streets with
the greater part of her brood at her heels. At intervals she would emit
a howl like a tortured animal, and her brood would take it up in various
timbres. Hal stopped to listen to the sounds, but Mary put her fingers
into her ears and fled into the house. Hal followed her, and saw her
fling herself into a chair and burst into hysterical weeping. And
suddenly Hal realised what a strain this terrible affair had been upon
Mary. It had been bad enough to him--but he was a man, and more able to
contemplate sights of horror. Men went to their deaths in industry and
war, and other men saw them go and inured themselves to the spectacle.
But women were the mothers of these men; it was women who bore them in
pain, nursed them and reared them with endless patience--women could
never become inured to the spectacle! Then too, the women’s fate was
worse. If the men were dead, that was the end of them; but the women
must face the future, with its bitter memories, its lonely and desolate
struggle for existence. The women must see the children suffering, dying
by slow stages of deprivation.
Hal’s pity for all suffering women became concentrated upon the girl
beside him. He knew how tenderhearted she was. She had no man in the
mine, but some day she would have, and she was suffering the pangs of
that inexorable future. He looked at her, huddled in her chair, wiping
away her tears with the hem of her old blue calico. She seemed
unspeakably pathetic--like a child that has been hurt. She was sobbing
out sentences now and then, as if to herself: “Oh, the poor women, the
poor women! Did ye see the face of Mrs. Jonotch? She’d jumped into the
smoking pit-mouth if they’d let her!”
“Don’t suffer so, Mary!” pleaded Hal--as if he thought she could stop.
“Let me alone!” she cried. “Let me have it out!” And Hal, who had had no
experience with hysteria, stood helplessly by.
“There’s more misery than I ever knew there was!” she went on. “’Tis
everywhere ye turn, a woman with her eyes burnin’ with suffering
wondering if she’ll ever see her man again! Or some mother whose lad may
be dying and she can do nothin’ for him!”
“And neither can you do anything, Mary,” Hal pleaded again. “You’re only
sorrowing yourself to death.”
“Ye say that to me?” she cried. “And when ye were ready to let Jeff
Cotton shoot ye, because you were so sorry for Mrs. David! No, the
sights here nobody can stand.”
He could think of nothing to answer. He drew up a chair and sat by her
in silence, and after a while she began to grow calmer, and wiped away
her tears, and sat gazing dully through the doorway into the dirty
little street.
Hal’s eyes followed hers. There were the ash-heaps and tomato-cans,
there were two of Mrs. Zamboni’s bedraggled brood, poking with sticks
into a dump-heap--looking for something to eat, perhaps, or for
something to play with. There was the dry, waste grass of the road-side,
grimy with coal-dust, as was everything else in the village. What a
scene!--And this girl’s eyes had never a sight of anything more
inspiring than this. Day in and day out, all her life long, she looked
at this scene! Had he ever for a moment reproached her for her “black
moods”? With such an environment could men or women be cheerful--could
they dream of beauty, aspire to heights of nobility and courage, to
happy service of their fellows? There was a miasma of despair over this
place; it was not a real place--it was a dream-place--a horrible,
distorted nightmare! It was like the black hole in the ground which
haunted Hal’s imagination, with men and boys at the bottom of it, dying
of asphyxiation!
Suddenly it came to Hal--he wanted to get away from North Valley! To get
away at all costs! The place had worn down his courage; slowly, day
after day, the sight of misery and want, of dirt and disease, of hunger,
oppression, despair, had eaten the soul out of him, had undermined his
fine structure of altruistic theories. Yes, he wanted to escape--to a
place where the sun shone, where the grass grew green, where human
beings stood erect and laughed and were free. He wanted to shut from his
eyes the dust and smoke of this nasty little village; to stop his ears
to that tormenting sound of women wailing: “O, mein Mann! O, mein Mann!”
He looked at the girl, who sat staring before her, bent forward, her
arms hanging limply over her knees.
“Mary,” he said, “you must go away from here! It’s no place for a
tenderhearted girl to be. It’s no place for any one!”
She gazed at him dully for a moment. “It was me that was tellin’ _you_
to go away,” she said, at last. “Ever since ye came here I been sayin’
it! Now I guess ye know what I mean.”
“Yes,” he said, “I do, and I want to go. But I want you to go too.”
“D’ye think ’twould do me any good, Joe?” she asked. “D’ye think ’twould
do me any good to get away? Could I ever forget the sights I’ve seen
this day? Could I ever have any real, honest happiness anywhere after
this?”
He tried to reassure her, but he was far from reassured himself. How
would it be with him? Would he ever feel that he had a right to
happiness after this? Could he take any satisfaction in a pleasant and
comfortable world, knowing that it was based upon such hideous misery?
His thoughts went to that world, where careless, pleasure-loving people
sought gratification of their desires. It came to him suddenly that what
he wanted more than to get away was to bring those people here, if only
for a day, for an hour, that they might hear this chorus of wailing
women!