Noise! Thundering, reverberating noise. Noise that never ceases, noise
that deadens the brain and makes the hand jerk in response to the jarred
nerves; always, day and night, throughout the length of the city
streets, the clamor of inanimate things.
In the morning when Hertha slipped to her seat, the last but one in the
fourth line, she started her own thundering whir. The forty machines,
all going at once, sounded like nothing so much as the great beetles
that flew about her southern home in the summer evenings. But the
beetles came but rarely and went with the withdrawal of the lamp, while
here in the workroom the drumming was incessant. Always it was hurrying
her, calling upon her to make better speed, to push the white fabric
more quickly that the needle might make a greater number of punctures to
the minute; to hasten, though her hands trembled, and though the tension
drew her mouth into a narrow line and brought her brows together in a
frown.
When noon came and the whirring stopped, Hertha would look down the long
line of beetle-beasts, for so she called them to herself. At length they
were quiet. Surely they had had enough. For hours they had been
devouring, eating up the muslin fed to them. No, rather they had
disgorged; for the muslin was left, and with it thousands of yards of
cotton thread that they had doled out through their small needle jaws.
But their rest would be short and they would soon thunder tirelessly on
again.
Usually she went out to her luncheon. The nearby restaurant furnished
appetizing and inexpensive things to eat, but they were accompanied by a
new and disturbing clamor. As she took her seat at one of the many long
tables, she was enveloped in a sound of falling plates. Heavy china cup
struck heavy china saucer and both struck the marble table. Knives,
forks and spoons fell on platters, and platters fell on trays and
slipped and rattled one against another. Little plates dropped on big
plates and all went with a terrific smash into the dumb waiter; while
from some inexhaustible source new knives and forks and plates came
clattering up to take the places of the old.
"Butter cakes, please."
Hertha's voice was scarcely audible. As she ate, she listened
attentively, hoping that for a moment the noise would cease; but it only
varied in intensity, rising now to such a height that it seemed as if an
avalanche of white pottery was falling into space; again dropping to a
steady, clanging sound of utensils taking their appointed places. But no
one but herself seemed to notice, and the men and women about her ate on
diligently, silent for the most part, concerned only with securing
needed nourishment in a short period of time.
The noises on the avenue down which she walked to and from her home were
not wearying like those in the shop and the restaurant, for they came
and went. The silent moving motors had their horns that gave warning
with a silly, childish squeak or with a deep note as hoarse as a frog's.
At the corner where she turned east to go home a policeman was
stationed, and she enjoyed waiting for the sound of his shrill whistle.
But the avenue left behind, the way was less pleasant. Three busy
thoroughfares must be crossed without the policeman's aid, the last a
dirty boulevard where heavy trains crashed overhead and surface cars
clanged swiftly by. She would stand waiting on the sidewalk until a
friendly cart from a side street opened up a path of safety that brought
her a little breathless to the opposite walk.
Now she was almost home--the second door, three flights up, and then
restful quiet. Kathleen, her new friend, with whom she had come to live,
was away, and with windows closed she would sit in the front room, quite
by herself, her hands in her lap, enjoying the silence. Later, dinner
over, she would take up a novel, one of the books she had always wanted
to read, but could not afford to buy, that here in New York any one
might have at the library for the asking. Immersed in _Lorna Doone_, she
forgot the pounding machines and the clattering dishes and was very
happy; but when the book was put away and she lay down to sleep, through
the open window the world of tumult came back again.
"Why do men invent so many things that make a noise?" she would ask
herself. She had heard city people when they came to the Merryvales'
complain bitterly to her of being wakened in the morning by the cock's
crowing; but she had not made the cocks, and, moreover, they did not
crow all night. Here in her room, however, near the ugly boulevard of
the East Side, the man-made cocks never ceased to crow. The trolley cars
were the most aggressive; their wheels ground on their axles and jarred
upon the rails; they stopped with a loud jolt, and with another jar and
jolt were off again. They were always jerking, Hertha felt. Overhead the
elevated road vibrated to the heavy cars that moved over its rails day
and night. You heard the coming train a long way off. First, a gentle,
rumbling noise that you might imagine to be the sea; then a louder and
louder roar, and, finally, a crash as the long line of cars rushed past.
Sometimes she was sure they would sway too far and fall thundering into
the street. And hardly had their sound died away when a second rumbling
would be heard and another train come tearing after its fellow, or a
third dash by from the opposite side.
After a time the clamor ceased to be incessant. Trains followed at
longer intervals, and would-be street car passengers waited for some
minutes at the corner. But in these intervals there was always upon the
street the sound of footsteps. And long after midnight, if Hertha awoke
from her troubled sleep, she heard the tread of feet. Sometimes they
were slow and hesitating, sometimes swift and hurried, oftenest a
steady, quiet step. Where do all these footsteps lead, she thought. What
were the people doing who thronged the elevated railroad, crowding one
upon another so that it was difficult to breathe if one pushed one's way
among them? And the surface cars were filled with a hurrying crowd,
while underneath the city the subways carried their millions of women
and men. Was there any need of moving about so much? It might be
necessary to travel to and from your work, but why go on and on?
Supposing all these cars should stop suddenly, should cease their jar
and clang? There would still be the footsteps in the street, for man was
always moving, some way, somewhere. Had not Tom moved? And now she, too,
was moving, to the whir of the machine, to the crash of the advancing
train, moving through the new, clamorous world.
"And you didn't sleep well last night, darling," Kathleen said to her as
she came in to breakfast. "Your eyes are looking tired this lovely
morning. I'm thinking the trains kept you awake. Don't notice them.
They'll go on and never once jump the tracks, but make big profits for
their owners and a fine place to hang on the strap for you and me.
You'll soon be used to the clatter. Once I heard it, but now I don't
mind it any more than I do the sparrows. Take a help of the oatmeal, and
tell me what you'll like for dinner, for I'm staying home to-night."