William Applebaum, or Billy, as Kathleen called him, was a short man,
stockily built, whose little length of limb and small hands were
overtopped by a large head that commanded attention. It was well shaped,
with an abundance of blond hair, a straight forehead, clear blue eyes
and a fair, healthy skin. His mouth and chin were too small for the rest
of his face, but he wisely concealed them with a beard which, as time
went on, he kept closely clipped.
His grandfather, of whom he was justly proud, had been a revolutionist
in Germany, in 1848, one of the band that strove bravely, but
unsuccessfully, to bring political democracy to the Fatherland. Young
Wilhelm was imprisoned for his activities, but he made his escape, and
in a series of perilous adventures, in which his daring was only equaled
by his good luck, at length found himself in America. There he settled
in a small town in the Middle West, married, and brought up a family;
and in his old age found himself with a son William and a grandson of
the same name, living in the town of his adoption.
Those who love to dwell upon the past are grateful for any audience, and
the grandfather, harking back at the end of his life to its one dramatic
happening, was happy in the garden, working among his bright shrubs and
clambering vines, or of a winter night seated by the ugly but
heat-giving stove, to tell his always attentive small grandson of his
great adventures. It would be, "Billy, I never hear a knock like that at
the door that I don't remember the time I was drinking a glass of beer
at the back of the house and the police knocked at the front and spoke
my name." Or, "That's a strong grape-vine, Billy, growing against the
arbor, and I like to see you climb up and get the fruit for us; but
would you have been able to climb down the vine that saved my life the
night I left prison?"
The story that Billy liked the best was the one where his
grandfather--he must think of him not as gray-haired and rheumatic, but
as a swift-running, strong youth--hid in a cart filled with hay. He lay
close to the bottom, scarcely able to breathe for the seed about his
face, jolting to the town on the seacoast. Suddenly there appeared the
always pursuing soldiers. They came up, and the captain, staring
suspiciously at the cart, called upon the driver to stop, and ordered
the men to probe the hay with their bayonets. The soldiers reached over
and jabbed again and again, going down deep until they touched the floor
of the cart. But they found nothing and at length, turning about, put
spurs to their steeds and galloped away. "When we reached the coast, and
my good friend and comrade unloaded his hay, I lay there safe and
sound," the old man would end impressively. "For it was not always the
floor of the cart that they touched, but sometimes the board that I had
put above my body as I lay huddled against the planks."
But while the first William had showed an adventurous spirit, the third
of the name was content with a quiet and orderly existence. His
grandfather became an intensely patriotic American, who fought through
the Civil War, and to his death never voted any but the Republican
ticket. To do otherwise would have seemed to him to doubt his adopted
but intensely beloved land. He was impatient of any criticism of
America. "It is only those who have fled from a despotism," he would
say, "who can appreciate the United States." And so his grandson had
taken things much as they came, and had done nothing more startling in
his life than at twenty to come to New York where he found better
opportunity for advancement than in the town of his birth. He obtained a
position as bookkeeper, and for fifteen years, with absolute regularity,
appeared at eight o'clock in the little stationer's shop, tucked among
the great office buildings on the downtown street, to remain until
half-past five when, with equal regularity, he returned to his well-kept
boarding house, his only home in New York.
His annual vacation of two weeks for some years was spent in his western
town, but marriage and death broke up the home there, the house was
sold, and those remaining to him moved to the Pacific coast. After this,
he rarely left the city, staying to care for the flowers that in the
summer his landlady allowed him to plant in her back yard--though they
were a trouble Monday with the wash--and to play long hours on the piano
that stood against the wall by the further window in his south room.
Sometimes he went for a day to a beach, but night found him in his bed
at home. Vacation over, he was quite ready to take up work. His German
singing society was the greatest excitement in his methodical life, and
if the chorus master assigned him a solo part, never an ambitious one,
he practised at home night after night, his pleasant bass sounding
through the old house.
He was just the sort of man who should have married; but whether he was
held by a romance of the days before he left his western town, or
whether his elderly landlady, knowing that she could not have him
herself was yet successful in guarding him against all comers, it was
certain that he had made love to no woman since he had come to the great
city, until, at thirty-five years of age, he met Kathleen. Then the
pleasant clerk of precise ways, whose sentiment had been satisfied in
singing "lieder" and watering tender plants, was consumed by a great,
unselfish passion. His life no longer moved about his books in the
comfortable cage in the stationer's shop, nor about the boarding-house
room in the quiet street, but day and night it found its happiness, its
sorrow, too, and unrest, in the life of a woman.
It was at the bedside of an acquaintance, a clerk whom he had met in his
work, that he first saw Kathleen. The sick man lived in a dingy,
furnished-room house; and as William Applebaum mounted the stairs,
noticed the dust in rolls against the wall, smelt to-day's dinner and
yesterday's, he found himself extremely sorry for his sick friend. What
must the end be if the beginning was like this? Then, fumbling in the
dark to find his way, the knob on which he had hesitatingly put his hand
was pulled from his fingers, the door opened, and a large, comely woman,
in a nurse's blue dress and white apron, stood before him.
"Is Mr. Saunders here?" he managed to ask.
"Indeed he is," was the answer, "and likely to remain here for some
time. Will you come in and speak to him?"
"If I may."
Mr. Saunders proved to have typhoid fever, not a severe case but a long
one, and Kathleen nursed him with Billy as her faithful assistant. "Mr.
Applebaum is too long a name for so short a man," she explained to him.
"But it's Billy all right with that beard." It was after this that he
kept his beard closely clipped. He shared many a night's work with her;
and long before Mr. Saunders was well, William Applebaum was at the feet
of the lady of his choice.
If she knew it, she gave no sign. But as the sick man grew better and
was able to sit in a chair, propped up with pillows, she stayed on in
the evenings after her assistant came to relieve her, and the three
visited together. Then Kathleen would regale them with stories of her
work and of her plans for the future. She was always going to do
something different, but always something held her to her present task.
Just now it was a brother who needed her to keep house for him. When she
was free, however, she meant to buy a horse and cart, to stock it with
goods, and drive across the continent as a peddler. They were two
evenings filling that cart, and Mr. Saunders was each time so exhausted
with merriment that he slept all night without waking. "I may never buy
the cart," she once said confidentially to Billy, "but for many a year
it's been a good stock in trade." Again, she meant to save enough to go
to Paris where they were always wanting American nurses and paid
fabulously for them, and where she could work for a year; and then, on
the proceeds, travel for the rest of her days. And where to go? That
brought up endless suggestions and much useful information. After Mr.
Saunders, who had gone once to South America as a salesman, had
explained to her the ways of the insect life of the tropics, and his
experience with snakes, she struck out everything south of thirty
degrees of the equator. She could be as merry as a child in runabouts;
but when the occasion came for discipline and serious work the men dared
not jest with her, fearing the set look that came into her face.
Mr. Saunders got well and went back to his work, but before that time
Mr. William Applebaum had asked Kathleen to be his wife.
"Marry an Appletree," she said, "you must think me Eve herself."
She always refused to give him a serious answer. "She had no idea of
marrying any one. She had enough to do taking care of folk who took such
ties upon themselves. And, if she did marry, did he suppose she'd choose
a little man with a head on him like a comic supplement? Did he think
he'd like to be a good husband sitting up nights for her, waiting
patiently till he heard her footfall on the stair? As for wanting a
home, she'd had more than enough home in her life. Caring for her own
had worn her to the shadow she was, and it was a blessed comfort to be a
free woman."
The last of Kathleen's rejoinders contained something more than mockery.
She had had her share in the rearing and supporting of her kin, and this
winter with Hertha was proving a beautiful respite. Had her lover been
of a jealous disposition he would have disliked the southern girl who
occupied so strong a place in Kathleen's affection, but he was devoid of
pettiness. For a year he had unavailingly striven to win his goddess,
but there were more years in the calendar; and though he received
nothing in return for his unstinted affection and admiration, his love
did not take from him the right to give.
He came regularly to see Kathleen of a Sunday, to dinner if she were
gracious enough to invite him; if not, then in the afternoon, when once
in awhile she would go out with him to dinner, and to a meeting
afterwards. Sometimes it would be at the forum at Cooper Union,
sometimes in a liberal church, but always the great problem of the
world, the relation of labor to capital, would come under discussion.
Then Kathleen would sit tense in her seat or lean forward to make sure
that she caught each of the speaker's words. She would grunt with
disgust at the rank conservatism of an argument; or again, applaud with
all her might the denunciation of oppression and greed. The man at her
side would watch her, filled with admiration at her splendid spirit, but
himself moved not at all by what he heard. Only, occasionally, he would
be almost angry at the invective hurled at the capitalist class, and had
once said as he went out, "If the dirty Jew didn't like America he might
go back to Russia on the first boat, and the country be all the better."
Kathleen was furious at this heresy, and they walked the streets for an
hour afterward discussing the sins and virtues of America. It was then
that he told her of his grandfather, and she listened with enthusiastic
interest to the recital of the revolutionist's political activities and
his escape. "But what did he do after he got here?" was her question,
and when she learned that he had then sat down and worshiped the land of
his adoption, she lost interest. "His light burned out in his youth,"
was her comment. William Applebaum, third, for the first time resented
her speech, and told hotly of the Civil War and of his grandfather's
part in it. He won Kathleen's favor by his defense of his hero, and she
never again spoke in any way but appreciatively of his revolutionary
forbear, but she showed no greater favor to him.
When she took the flat on East Eighth Street, he made shelves for her at
the two south windows and brought to her kitchen a wealth of potted
plants. The delicate flowers died, for the Irish woman was very
forgetful of them; and then, with sorrow at his heart for his cherished
slips, but with no word of blame, he filled up the ranks with hardy
geraniums that neglect could not kill. Attracted at the outset by the
gay window shelves, Hertha soon assumed all care of the flowers, much to
their profit; and on the Sunday after her night's outing with Kathleen,
when she had secured an invitation for him to come to dinner, looked
with some pride at the objects of her care.
"I'm glad I remembered to move this new fern last night when it was so
cold," she said to Kathleen as she worked among the window plants. "Mr.
Applebaum will see that I didn't forget what he told me. And, oh,
Kathleen, let me set the table, I like to."
"And you know how," Kathleen added, and left her task. "There's many an
uptown mistress, Hertha, would say that it was wrong for you to be
manufacturing shirtwaists, when she needs you to wait on her table. I
can just hear her telling you, 'Leave the factory, my child, and come to
me where you will have easy work, (only fourteen hours a day) and a good
home. (Her son will likely make love to you and you'll be sent from the
house in disgrace.) Leave your coarse companions and learn the ways of a
lady, (only you have them already)."
"Oh, stop, Kathleen. Let me finish with the dinner, and you put on that
fresh waist I ironed for you. It's on your bed."
Kathleen went into her room to her perspiring work,--it made her hot to
get into even the simplest dress,--and while struggling to hook her
skirt over on the left side, she heard her lover's knock and Hertha's
cordial greeting.
"More flowers, Mr. Applebaum? A begonia? We used to have those at home."
Then the voices fell away into the distance as the speakers went into
the front room.
"If this dinner is good, Billy," Kathleen said, when they were all three
seated together about the kitchen table, spread with their best linen
and china, "it's all Hertha's doings."
Hertha smiled but shook her head.
"Miss Hertha did her part, Kitty, I know," the guest made answer, "but
the mashed potatoes are yours."
"And lumps in them at that! I've not much patience with potatoes or the
world; but if you're liking them, take some more."
They all took part in clearing off the course of meat and vegetables,
and then Hertha served a dessert of her own making, a fluffy-looking
pudding of orange and custard and meringue.
"And did you think I cooked this?" said Kathleen. "Come now and own up
that in cooking the South beats the Irish."
"The Germans are good cooks," said Hertha. "Perhaps Mr. Applebaum will
cook the dinner for us some day."
"A man cook the dinner?" the Irishwoman said in astonishment; and with a
touch of resentment, "That's a woman's work."
"Don't men cook here?" Hertha asked. Then, turning to the man present,
"Don't men cook in Germany?"
"Miss Hertha," Mr. Applebaum made answer, "I don't know any more about
that than you do. I've never been to Germany and my mother was an
American who asked me only to make the fire and bring in the wood."
"You can take it from me," said Kathleen, "that the women do the cooking
and the housework. Did you ever have a man cook for you?"
"Yes," Hertha answered, "my brother."
"Just like a nigger," commented Kathleen.
There was an awkward silence broken by the Irishwoman's muttered, "I beg
your pardon."
Hertha looked straight at the begonia in the center of the table. How
could she have said anything so stupid! Hertha Ogilvie had no brother.
Now she would have to begin making up a story, lying about things. She
ought to appear very angry. Imagine a white girl hearing her brother
called a nigger and not resenting it; but again, imagine Hertha Williams
sitting by the fire and warming herself and denying her brother Tom.
"I don't know why American men should not cook," William Applebaum at
length broke in with his deep, pleasant voice. "The greatest chefs in
the world are men. I wish, Miss Hertha, you would let me turn cook like
your brother and show me how to make this pudding."
The meal finished, they left the dishes to be washed later and went into
the front room where William Applebaum admired the picture which Hertha
had framed.
"Yes," Kathleen said, "Hertha is spoiling me with her pretty rooms and
her good things to eat. I've not been to my Socialist local for a month
now. It's so comfortable here the nights I can be home."
"We went out last Thursday, Kathleen."
"You're right, we did. And you should have been with us, Billy. Such a
talk as we heard of the poverty in the South."
"Perhaps Mr. Applebaum would have preferred the movie," Hertha said
mischievously.
She was quite herself again, and curled up on the cot, her back against
the wall, was prepared to watch the two in their talk, for she knew well
enough that she would soon be forgotten. Kathleen had given the armchair
to her guest and sat erect in her straight seat. Her soft white
shirtwaist set off her fresh cheeks, her gray eyes, her large but
sensitive mouth. But she had no thought of her appearance, she was
prepared to be serious.
Her guest stretched in comfort in the big chair, his handsome head
thrown back, his lighted pipe in his hand as he blew the smoke from
between his lips. He would have been greatly pleased if Kathleen had
chosen to tell of the moving pictures, but he saw at once that this was
not her mood.
"I wish I had been with you at both places," he said courteously, with a
little touch of formality that the Irish girl ridiculed and the southern
girl liked. "It must have been like going to the theater and seeing both
a comedy and a tragedy, only in that case they usually put the comedy
last."
"That may be what they do at the theater but it isn't what they do in
life."
Kathleen was ready to talk. She sat in her chair and told the story of
southern peonage and wrong.
Hertha, who had failed to listen at Cooper Union, was moved in spite of
herself at the tragic tale as it came from Kathleen's lips. It was the
same in all essentials, but vivified by a rare imagination and a
compelling sympathy. The Irishwoman became herself the thin, yellow,
starved mother dragging her steps from her unlovely home into the hot,
relentless fields.
"Have you ever seen anything like that?" William Applebaum asked of
Hertha when the story came to an end.
Hertha hesitated as she answered. "No, I don't think I have. I lived
much of the time in the city. I haven't known about such things." She
thought of Ellen as she spoke, and was sure, had she been there, she
could have talked intelligently about peonage and poverty among white
and black. She remembered that Ellen used to say the Negro never fell as
low as the lowest white. "Those are the folks," she added, "that we call
poor white trash."
Her friend flared up at her. "Yes, and why are they trash? Because you
treat them worse than slaves! You hold them in debt, steal from them
with every piece of bacon or cup of meal they buy from your store, work
their children when they should be at school or playing out under the
blue skies; and then you live in idleness and sneer at the trash that
done the work of the world for you."
"Miss Hertha doesn't sneer, and neither do I, Kitty, but I think you're
talking of an exceptional case. At any rate, as I have seen things in
the North and West, I've found that it was the fault of the man if he
didn't live decently in the world, and keep his woman that way, too. Why
didn't this woman's husband pay off his debt and go to another farm?"
"For the same reason likely that his children won't. Because he was
starved and worked until all the life was squeezed out of him."
"Well, it's not that way in the North."
"Isn't it? Haven't I seen the tenement child sewing on the buttons to
pants, and coughing fit to send her in a few years to heaven--for if
those babies that have no chance in this world don't have one in the
next, there's no God."
"And I've seen things, too, Kitty. I've known a good many families that
were down and out, and it's always been one person of the lot who's been
to blame. If every one did his share, kept sober, worked hard and saved
money, he would get out of the tenement. When the family doesn't do
better, when it keeps staying in the dirt, it's because there's a father
perhaps who only works three days in the week and gets drunk the other
three, or there's a son who can't find the right job, a round peg in a
square hole. There's somebody who doesn't do right and keeps the family
back."
"And do you mean to say that rich folk aren't like that?" Kathleen was
growing very angry. "And yet I'm noticing they're not starved for it."
"If they're rich it's because they're industrious. My grandfather used
to tell me that America was the land of opportunity, and that it rested
with the individual whether or not he made a success."
"Oh!" Kathleen rose. She looked as though she could personally assault
the little man. He in the meantime had resumed his pipe and was talking
in a pleasant, matter-of-fact tone.
"Of course, I'm not denying, Kitty, that there are wrong things that
ought to be remedied. That case in the South, now. It's very hard. Of
course, the children should have schooling, and if the Blair Bill for
federal aid to education hadn't been killed, they would be having it
to-day. My grandfather used to say that this put back the South fifty
years. But given an education, it's a fair field and no favor for the
growing boy in the United States."
"I don't know how far back your Mr. Blair and his education may be, but
he can't be as far back as you are, Billy, with your fair field. Fair
indeed, with two per cent of the people controlling the wealth of the
country!"
"Those figures are exaggerated."
"Indeed, they are! It should be one per cent and it will be that soon."
"But suppose for argument that it is. Don't they control it for good?"
"For good! And every night you see the bread line for a block down the
Bowery?"
Applebaum laid down his pipe and spoke with emphasis.
"Oh, I've no sympathy with that. Those are just bums, nothing else. They
wouldn't do a day's job if you gave it to them. They don't mean to work.
All they want is a bite and a drink and a dirty hole to sleep in until
they can get the drink again. They ought to be forced to work. The
trouble is the men don't have to work long enough. With their eight-hour
day you see them in the saloon before they go to work getting a drink.
And they're after it again when the day's work is over or some other
foolishness."
"You fool!" Kathleen said, her eyes blazing, and she lifted her hand as
if to strike him.
He seized it in his own and carried it to his lips.
"I'm wise enough to love you, Kathleen."
Hertha found this an excellent time to slip from her seat and into the
kitchen. When she came back the two were seated as before, but talking
of indifferent things, and the light had gone out of Kathleen's face.