They walked briskly down lower Broadway to where Grace Church lifted its
delicate spire into the night, the electric light from the street
casting long shadows upward on its white stone. Once or twice Hertha
from pure pleasure gave a little skip as they went along.
"I don't know how it is," she said confidentially, "but I never felt so
well before in all my life. You'd suppose I'd be tired from my work."
"That will come later," said Kathleen dryly. "Now you're living on the
strength you've put away in your long country life."
"I think it's the air," Hertha went on. "It's such wonderful air to
breathe, it's like--well, it's like food when you're hungry. It's fresh
and cold so that you can taste it."
"It's too cold for that thin suit of yours, I wouldn't wonder."
"I'm not cold in the least. Perhaps I have a lot of warmth stored up in
me; but I promise if it gives out to buy a new coat."
"Like that, now." A young girl passed them clad in brilliant scarlet.
Her face was painted to match her coat; her hat was the latest
extravagance in fashion, immensely brimmed, with a feather that,
extending beyond the broad wake of black velvet, swept against
Kathleen's cheek as she passed. "The dirty style!" Kathleen said
indignantly. "Who knows what germs she hands out every day. The city
government ought to forbid the wearing of them feather dusters; at any
rate, on public highways."
Hertha smiled and presently slipped back into her thoughts, recalling
the story she had just seen and going on with it, which was a way she
had; but Kathleen watched the people. The men strolled along, all alike
in derby hats and readymade clothes; while the women took little steps
in high-heeled shoes, and talked shrilly, striving to be heard above the
city's tumult. They used the slovenly street vernacular which scores of
nationalities have helped to produce, contributing nothing from their
own wealth of speech but changing consonants, slurring vowels, making at
length of the beautiful English tongue an ugly, degraded thing. "Aw, I
say, gimme dat!"
Kathleen prided herself upon her speech. She was born in Ireland, though
she had little recollection of the fact, having arrived at the port of
New York while taking nourishment at the maternal fount. "And it was you
was screaming and beating me with your little fists, mavourneen," her
mother used to say, "when I was making shift to button up my dress
decently and carry you down the gangplank." She kept something of the
richness of the Irish speech that had surrounded her in her childhood,
despising the slang that with many an emigrant takes the place of a
language. She might make a slip in grammar, but she never wittingly
misused a word. Hertha's ladylike talk with its soft accent was a
delight, and a little warm wave of pride swept over her as she looked at
the girl walking by her side and remembered that she had chosen to come
to her home.
"Just here to the left a step, dear," she said, "and we'll be out of the
cold."
The air within the large, ill-ventilated hall could also be tasted, but
no one could truthfully describe it as cold and fresh. It took the
vitality out of Hertha, leaving her both tired and sleepy; but to
Kathleen it was the breath of a new life. Moving amongst her fellows,
nodding here, whispering a friendly "Good evening, comrade," there, she
found the seats that she wanted, and, leaning well forward in her chair,
gave herself to the discussion.
The address of the evening was over, but the speaker, a small man, ill
shaven, with a sallow skin and sharp features, was answering questions.
To Hertha he was a familiar and an unpleasant type of rural southern
white, and she paid him little attention, slipping back into her dream
story which had already reached the point where the beautiful and still
young looking couple were being presented with sturdy grandchildren. To
the audience, however, the meeting was growing in interest. Some one
from the floor was casting doubt upon the picture the southerner had
presented, suggesting that poverty in the country, in a warm climate,
could not equal the severity of poverty in a northern slum.
As the speaker rose to reply his eyes shone with excitement. "Have I
exaggerated the suffering of the country?" he asked. "Let me tell you of
just one tenant farmer, and, remember, there are hundreds of thousands
like him. He's a decent man, uneducated, but kindly, who, when I saw
him, had a wife and ten children; the oldest was fifteen. There wasn't
one of them that was clothed, not really clothed. One had a coat,
another a shirt, two out of the ten had shoes. The girls went in rags,
folks' left-over clothes that had been worn out years ago. But it was
the woman who was the pitifullest. She looked like she had never had an
hour's rest since she was grown, and I reckon she hadn't. It was the
business of the landlord to keep her busy. She had to have children to
help work the place, and she had to work herself to keep from being
turned out of house and home. There was a baby dragging at her skirt,
and it was put the one down on the bed and set the other to watch it,
while she went into the fields. Her face was so thin her eyes stood out
like a bird's, and her cheek was the color of an old shuck of corn. I
haven't seen an old man or an old woman in this city walk with the
weariness that she walked out from her broken down cabin to make her
crops.
"At noon there was nothing to eat in the place, but in the evening the
man went down to the store and came back with a bit of cornmeal and a
few slices of bacon. The children fell upon it like starving dogs.
Perhaps the woman got some, but I didn't see her.
"I talked with her when night came on. She wasn't but thirty-three. In
the last five years she told me she hadn't had a new thing to wear. She
hadn't been anywhere, not to ride in a buggy or on a train. She hadn't
felt well, she told me, not really well, since her first child was born.
"And there was that family held there, as I've been trying to explain to
you," he pounded his fist on the table, "held in the peonage that's
slavery. There aren't any debtors' prisons to-day with walls about them;
but there're millions of debtors' prisons, little sordid cabins on
little plots of land, that are locking tired slaves within their bounds
to-day."
The man sat down and Kathleen was on her feet. "Break the walls down!"
she cried. "Take them our message as workers to break down the walls and
join in the social revolution."
There was loud applause and Kathleen dropped back, her face flushed, her
gray eyes gleaming.
The meeting over, the Irishwoman was the center of a group of excited
talkers. Hertha slipped into the background and watched the people
gesticulating and arguing. There were a few burly Irish among them, men
in the building trades, who found a chance to laugh in the midst of
their debate; but the majority were spare, hollow-cheeked Jews; tailors,
small tradesmen, lawyers, eager, often aggressive personalities. The
women were in the minority, and offered a contrast to the girls Hertha
had seen at the theater or parading the street. They were all simply
dressed, usually in white, somewhat mussy shirtwaists, with cheap,
ill-hanging skirts. Men and women, however, despite their shabby
clothes, were all intensely virile spirits to whom the story of the
evening had been a living fact; not a tale to weep over and forget, but
a truth to grip and to remedy.
"Come up to the platform with me, Kathleen," one of the women said, "and
meet the comrade from the South." Kathleen started to go, and then,
glancing back at Hertha, who had dropped into a seat, shook her head.
"No, I'll be off with my friend," she answered, and the two made their
way out. A few minutes' walk in the reviving air brought them to their
home.
"Goodness," Kathleen exclaimed, as she took off her coat, "we forgot the
ice cream!"
"Never mind," Hertha answered, "it's cold for ice cream. Sit down and
I'll make some cocoa," and she started to walk into the kitchen.
Kathleen followed her. "I'll make the cocoa myself."
"No you won't," Hertha declared. "You got the dinner and it's my turn
now."
She put a big apron over her dress and went quietly about her work.
Kathleen, as she sat watching, felt a little tightening at her throat,
so rarely did any one do her a service. She was a strong, capable woman,
the eldest in the family, and it had naturally fallen to her to wait
upon others. At eight her father had been killed in an accident, and the
mill, not satisfied with his life, had dragged the loved school books
from her hands and, opening its cruel door, held her from sunrise to
sunset amid dirt and turmoil performing stupid, monotonous tasks. She
had nursed her mother during her last illness, two weary years of
suffering. Brother and sister had accepted her sacrifices, enjoying the
education that she had been denied, receiving her ministrations
thoughtlessly and as thoughtlessly giving nothing in return. She could
never remember when either of them had waited upon her, had made her a
cup of tea, had so much as hung up her hat and coat. Feeling herself the
stronger, she had always waited upon others, and now for the first time,
in this gentle, ladylike girl whom she had known less than a month, she
had found a helpmate, one who showed her sympathy and consideration.
The cocoa was hot and foamy and delicious. They drank it sitting each at
an end of the table with its white cloth that stood between the two
windows.
"You're a smart young lady," Kathleen announced. "Who taught you to cook
so well?"
"Oh, I just picked it up."
That was all the answer. Kathleen had already noticed that she received
short replies when she questioned Hertha about her past.
"I can't keep that poor woman out of my head," Kathleen went on after a
pause. "Here am I supping this elegant drink, and she without a crumb in
the house."
"What woman?" Hertha asked. "Oh, yes, I know," guiltily. "You mean the
woman the man told us about? But you don't know what may have happened.
Perhaps she has all she wants now."
"Perhaps she has, in heaven."
"Oh, you can't tell. Lucky things happen sometimes."
"Do they? I've mostly seen unlucky ones. But luck is a poor thing for
any of us to be counting on."
"I don't know, I've been lucky, very lucky."
"Have you? When?"
"Well, once, down South, not so long ago. And I was lucky when I met
you."
"Indeed it was I had the luck then."
"Indeed, I had. If you could have seen the awful room, Kathleen, that
Miss Jones sent me to look at! In a cheap boarding house, and with a
landlady who looked as though she would cheat you half the time and
scold you the other half."
"That would have been a happy home to return to when you'd been out at
night to see two lovers parted only to meet again! Now, sit where you
are. The cook doesn't wash the dishes."
"No, but she dries them," Hertha said decisively; and together they
cleared away the things.
"I'd give a penny to know your thoughts," Kathleen remarked as she wrung
out the dishcloth and hung it up to dry.
Hertha did not answer. She was pulling a leaf from the geraniums,
crushing it in her fingers. She had left the lovers of the play and was
back in an orange grove, her own lover close to her side. "You are
Snowdrop of the fairy tale," he was saying. It had come true, she was
Snowdrop, and yet of her own will she had destroyed the fairy tale. Whom
might he not be making love to now? All at once she felt homesick and
very tired.
Perhaps Kathleen a little guessed her thoughts. "It must be slow enough
for you here with nobody but an old maid around like me. I wish I knew a
fine young fellow to ask to dinner on Sunday."
"Ask Billy," Hertha said, looking up. "I'm sure it's time for him to
come and look after the flowers."