When that injudicious grasping of the third-rail had snuffed out the
low, but stubborn, flame that a foreman had known as "Number 12," and
a few score of human beings had called Michael Flanagan, his wife,
Bridget, had looked up from her washtub long enough to refuse the
offer of a hundred dollars, made by the company's claim-adjuster as
full payment for whatever inconvenience she might have been
occasioned by her husband's demise. One of those very modern young
lawyers, whose livelihood depends upon their study of the newspapers,
and the speed of their feet, had arrived at the Flanagan tenement
ahead of the adjuster. He had accepted a contingent fee of ten
dollars, and thereafter, being defeated by the company's expert
attorneys in a lower court, refused, as usual, to appeal unless the
widow handed him a further amount of money that was wholly beyond her
reach. So Irish-eyed Katie was put to work, as she should in any
case have been put, and Mrs. Flanagan went on with her washing.
The girl's first position was in a second-hand clothing shop on Sixth
Avenue, where she went to work at eight in the morning and quit at
half-past ten at night. The stock-in-trade of this place was largely
revived ball-gowns and opera cloaks, bought, for the most part, from
women of so much means as to pretend, at least, that they never wore
the same gown twice, and yet of too much thrift to give their
discarded clothes to charity. Its patrons were persons that the
original wearers of the gowns would have blushed to meet. And its
proprietress was a little lynx-eyed, hook-nosed person whose sole
object in life was to induce the former class to sell for less than
they had intended and to persuade the latter class to buy for more
than they could afford.
The virtue of this method she impressed, by precept and example, upon
her six girl-clerks, and she raised their profits as they raised
their prices of sale. She told, with a fine pride, how she had once
so conducted a negotiation that a Riverside Drive husband had paid
her nearly as much for a dress that he was buying for a Forty-seventh
Street acquaintance as he had first paid for the same dress when it
was made for his wife.
But, commissions to the contrary notwithstanding, neither Katie nor
her companions could earn anything beyond a bare living wage. The
lure of clothes was always before them; their work was the handling
and the praising of beautiful fabrics beautifully arranged. They
were told that they might themselves buy of these at what the
proprietress called a mere nothing above the cost price, but what was
really a considerable increase over it; they wanted to look their
best among their friends, and their employer insisted that they look
their best to her patrons; there was not one of the half-dozen clerks
that was not continually from fifteen to a hundred dollars in her
mistress's debt.
That Katie, like many another making the same fight, escaped further
contamination, that the contrast between the oppression of the
hook-nosed owner on the one hand and the apparent ease and luxury of
her customers on the other, did not tempt her,--for opportunities
were plenty,--from the station of clerk to purchaser, was due in part
to her own sturdy character and to the accident of her own Celtic
temper. Other girls there were who were not so destined, but Mrs.
Flanagan's weary feet one day refused to support their possessor, and
Katie, knowing well the need of ready money for the doctor and the
druggist, neglected to purchase, even on credit, an expensive black
walking-suit that was repeatedly called to her attention.
"Say, you'd look just grand in this," said the psittacidic
proprietress, Mrs. Binks.
She held the dress extended, putting its best points to the light.
And all the other clerks echoed:
"You'd look just grand in it, Miss Flanagan!"
"I would that," replied Katie, who was as taciturn to her employer as
she was loquacious to everybody else.
"Why don't you take it?" asked Mrs. Binks.
"I don't just like it," lied Katie.
Mrs. Binks blinked her bead-like eyes. That the girl's reply could
be true was inconceivable.
"Try it on," she suggested.
"Where's the use? I don't want it."
"Oh, try it on anyway."
"I'll be too busy, Mrs. Binks. The customers 're startin' to pour in
this very minute."
"Then try it on at your lunch time. I'll leave it handy here, over
this chair."
She did leave it there all day long. Katie, whose one dress was now,
in spite of endless feminine make-shifts, beginning to show wear, had
to go through her task with the baited hook constantly dangling
before her. Nevertheless, when the long-delayed closing hour
arrived, the suit was just where Mrs. Binks had left it. Katie
carefully abstained from touching it; she would not even put it away.
"What's this?" asked the mildly surprised owner, as she stumbled over
the garment. "I declare it's that handsome walking-suit I wanted you
to have, Miss Flanagan."
Katie turned and regarded the neglected garment precisely as Mrs.
Binks was regarding it.
"Well, well," she said, "and is it, now?"
Her mistress looked at her, again blinking suspiciously.
"Did you try it on?" she demanded.
"No."
"Why not?"
"I don't think I want it."
"It's a fine suit."
"It's grand."
"But you don't want it?"
"I don't think I do."
"I told you that you could have it for a third off."
"I know you did that, Mrs. Binks, and it's thank you I do for your
kindness."
"Hum--hum. I'll take off a dollar more--for you."
"Thank you, no, Mrs. Binks. Good-night, Mrs. Binks."
This sort of thing went on, with variations, for three days, at the
end of which time Mrs. Binks, as she would have phrased the
occurrence, "came right out with it"; and for this ceremony she chose
that morning hour when the other girls in the shop had the greatest
amount of leisure to observe what happened.
"Miss Flanagan," said she, marching up to the thoroughly prepared
Katie, and peering hard into the serene Irish eyes of her selected
victim, "I like my clerks to look well."
"So I've been noticin'," said Katie.
"An' I don't like to speak about it when they don't," continued Mrs.
Binks.
"You're just that tender-hearted!"
"But if you girls don't wear good clothes, my customers'll think I
don't treat you right."
"How could they now, Mrs. Binks?"
"And," concluded Mrs. Binks, overlooking these interruptions in view
of the crushing climax she was approaching, "as you've made up your
mind not to take the hints I've been givin' you, or the fine offers
I've made you, I've got to say it plainly that you're looking too
shabby to work any more for me."
Katie smiled her warmest smile.
"Mrs. Binks," she replied, resorting again to prevarication, and
presenting the greedily seized money that she still owed her
employer, "I'd begun to be afraid that maybe them was your feelin's,
an' so yesterd'y at lunch time I bought me the exact duplicate of
that walking-suit you've been tryin' to thrust upon me--only I got it
next door an' for half your price."
Saying this she had walked to the shallow closet in the fitting-room,
taken down her hat and coat, put them on, sung "Good-by" to her
consternated fellow-workers, and strolled away forever from that
place of employment. She went smiling, but, instead of the curt word
that she generally employed, she administered a hand-slap with her
open palm to a stranger that accosted her on her journey homeward.
She got work, after some searching, in a candy shop on Eighth Street,
but this she had to relinquish when her mother's speedy illness
developed into a brief and fatal disease. It was not until the last
nursing, relieved by Hermann's assistance, and the funeral were over,
that she could again think of labor, and then it was only to get, in
a Fourth Street necktie factory, a small position that she lost
because she had the effrontery to resent the rather frank overtures
of the foreman.
Now, although she had told her cheerful lover nothing about it, she
had come to the last ditch. She had been deceived by advertisements,
cheated by employment agencies, denied work by the superintendents of
scores of shops and manufactories. She was not a skilled laborer,
and she had, at first, nothing in the matter of recommendation; she
belonged to no trade union; the rent for her little room was
dangerously overdue; so, also, were the bills of the baker and the
milk dealer upon whom alone she was depending for food; all that she
could pledge was in pawn, and, with the soles of her shoes worn
through almost to her feet, the elaborate mourning costume that she
had been unable to resist was her only badge of material prosperity.
Two avenues of escape were open, were even persistently presented,
yet she would regard neither. To take what Hermann pleaded with her
to accept, though her hungry heart and her underfed body cried out
for it, would have been, she felt well assured, unfairly to handicap
her best friend, and, as for turning into that other way--a way into
which the streets on every hand seemed so easily to open, she was too
wise to consider.
"No thanks," she answered in her soul, as she walked by the leering
satyrs, with her black head erect and her lips compressed--"not yet,
if you please: not yet, nor never, I think, for starvin' seems some
easier and a deal quicker, too."
She had to repeat the words pretty often, for they had come to be a
sort of incantation, almost a pious ejaculation, against the enemy,
and, as her poverty grew and her chances decreased in inverse ratio,
the enemy, like vultures flocking to the fatally wounded, seemed
startlingly to increase in force. At first it was a well-dressed
corps strayed from Broadway or the Avenue; then it was the bank-clerk
hurrying to work and the master mechanic hurrying from it; but
finally, so plain are the signs of distress shown upon our faces by
the selves that are besieged, it had become the professionally
employing, professedly unemployed.
Yet at every dawn she renewed her quest, with a glass of blue milk
and a bite of bread for breakfast. Every day and all day she tramped
the long, aching streets. And every night, despairing but resolute,
she came home for her supper of bread and milk and for the sleep of
the hungry and distressed.
It was now a Thursday morning. The milkman had pounded at her door
and, receiving no answer, had left no milk. Still gnawing her crust,
Katie slunk out of the tenement, and, at the step, was waylaid by the
rent-collector, a little man with a sharp, white face that told
plainly of his own struggle. He blocked the exit.
"Good-day to you, Miss Flanagan," he said, touching his dirty cap.
"Good-mornin', Mr. Woods," she answered, aware that the hour for the
last engagement was approaching.
The man was one whose business forced him to mince nothing.
"I was comin' up to git yer rent," he continued. "It's three weeks
overdue."
"I'm afraid I'll have to be askin' you to let it run a bit longer,"
said Katie, and her voice, in spite of all resolution, trembled.
"But I've been an' done that twice fer you, Miss Flanagan. The boss
is after me as hard as I'm after you--an' harder."
"I know it. I--you can't stand him off another week, Mr. Woods?"
"Nix on the stand-off, miss."
"You see, I'm--I'm out of a job."
"I know that, but then you've been out o' one fer a good while now."
"Yes, only I rather expect--indeed, I've been promised one beginnin'
to-morrow."
The little man coughed behind a dirty hand.
"That's Friday?" he asked.
"It is that."
"Well, ain't you got your dates mixed? You told me last week you had
a job promised for that Friday."
Katie surprised even herself: she laughed.
"So I did!" she said. "An' of course I was lyin' an' of course you
knowed it. Oh, well, Woods, man, hold 'em off for forty-eight hours,
an' if I don't get work then, I'll--well, I won't bother you no more."
In the shadowy hallway, she felt his eyes studying her less with evil
than with wonder.
"There ain't many girls with your looks, Miss Flanagan, as'd be out
of a job as long as you've been."
Katie shrugged her shoulders: she was beyond resentment.
"The more pity to 'em," she said.
"Not many," repeated Mr. Woods.
There was an awkward silence. The collector paused because he wanted
her fully to weigh an implication that he honestly considered to
contain sound advice, and Katie refrained from further comment for
the excellent reason that she had nothing to say. It was Woods that
at last took up the broken thread.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Miss Flanagan," he not unkindly
concluded; "I'll hold 'em off till to-morrow evenin', an' if by then
you can pay me a chunk on account, it'll be all right; if you
can't----"
He stood aside, and Katie clapped him warmly on the shoulder.
"You're doin' your best, Woods," she said, "an' I thank you for it.
I'll get the job someways, but not the way you think, an'--an' I
thank you."
Only half-way to the corner she met the girl that lived across the
hall from her, Carrie Berkowicz, a homely, round-cheeked,
brown-haired Lithuanian Jewess, who worked in a shirtwaist factory on
Tenth Street.
"Say, Katie"--Carrie prided herself on her colloquial English, as she
learned it in the night-classes in the Rand School--"were you still
looking for a job?"
Katie nodded.
"Well, say, I just this minute passed Emma Schrem, an' she says Cora
Costigan is quitting her job at the Lennox store to-day to be married
to-morrow. Why don't you pull up there and try for it?"
Try for it? Katie could scarcely stop to thank her rescuer before
she had turned northward. There was no longer left her even the five
cents necessary for carfare, and, though she was faint with hunger
and shaking with fear lest her tardiness should lose her this slim
opportunity, she was forced to walk. Facing a fine rain blown in
from the Sound, she walked up Second Avenue, and finally, turning
westward to the shopping quarter now crowded with salesgirls on their
hurried way to work, she entered, by the dark employés' door, the
large department-store of Joshua N. Lennox, merchant and
philanthropist.
A dozen quick inquiries rushed her, wet and weary, but flushed by her
walk and radiant with the excitement of the race, into the presence
of the frock-coated, pale-faced, suave-mouthed Mr. Porter, the tall,
thin man, with the precision of a surgeon and the gravity of a
Sunday-school superintendent, to whose attention, it appeared, such
pleas as hers must be brought. Mr. Porter, who had gray
side-whiskers, which he stroked with white hands, listened in
judicial calm to what she had to say.
"Just fill out this application-blank," he remarked as, breathless,
Katie ended her little speech.
They were in a dim, bare office under the street, the man at a
roll-top desk lighted by a green-shaded incandescent lamp, the girl
standing beside him. Mr. Porter indicated a writing-shelf along the
opposite wall, where Katie found a pile of the blanks, and pen and
ink. While she struggled with the task assigned her, Mr. Porter
verified, by brief, sharp inquiries through a telephone, her
statement of the approaching marriage of Miss Cora Costigan.
Katie, meanwhile, was giving her age, her parentage, her birthplace,
the name of the firm that had last employed her--she mentioned the
candy-shop for that,--was cheerfully agreeing to join the "Employés'
Mutual Benefit Association," and was putting a "Yes," which she
intended promptly to forget, to the question that asked her to become
a spy on her co-workers: "If you saw a fellow-employé doing anything
detrimental to the interests of the firm, would you consider it your
duty to report the same?" It was only at one of the last questions
that she hesitated.
"Please what does that mean?" she asked.
Mr. Porter deigned to walk across the room and, close to her
shoulder, examined the question. It was the simple one: "Do you live
with your parents?"
"That," said Mr. Porter, "is inserted because the firm wishes to have
only nice girls here, and those with good home influences are
considered--most trustworthy."
Mr. Porter had the type of emotionless eyes that can say one sort of
thing far better than the eyes of more temperamental people, and he
now met Katie's steady gaze with a stare of considerable significance.
Katie was rather sure that she understood.
"So that," she said, "if I didn't live with my people, I couldn't
have the job?"
"So that," Mr. Porter corrected, "if a girl does get a position and
lives with her family, she will be better cared for, and we will know
that she is safe at home evenings."
Katie hesitated no longer. She took the pen and, opposite the query,
wrote a quick "Yes." To be sure she was, on that account, obliged to
invent the kind of work done by her father and the amount of the
family wage; but she so needed the position that her active wit at
once supplied the answers. More or less truthfully, she put a word
in reply to the remaining questions, signed her name, and wrote her
address.
Mr. Porter took the paper in his white fingers, read it slowly,
folded it, indorsed it with several hieroglyphics, and placed it in a
pigeon-hole.
"I am filing this with our other applications," he said. "As soon as
your name is reached, I will see that you are notified."
Katie's jaw dropped.
"But I thought," she began, "I thought I was to get the job now.
I--isn't Cora leavin', thin, after all?"
"Miss Costigan is leaving us, I understand," said Mr. Porter,
stroking his whiskers; "but there are others--nearly a hundred--on
the list ahead of you."
Katie was hungry, and hunger finds it hard to think of justice. She
had borne all that she could bear. The waiting, the walking, the
hope and the hopelessness had gnawed the string of her courage.
Something snapped inside of her, and she began to sob with Irish
unrestraint.
Mr. Porter was embarrassed. He frequently had to deal harshly with
other employés of his philanthropic employer--it was, in fact, upon
the performance of such duties that his living almost depended--but
he did not like to have tears shed in his office: it did not look
well for the reputation of the establishment.
"My dear Miss--Miss Flanagan," said he, first consulting the
application-blank for the forgotten name, and putting one of his
white hands toward the face now hidden in a crumpled handkerchief.
"You mustn't--really, you must not!"
"But everything depends on me gettin' this job!" sobbed Katie in an
Irish wail. "The rent's due; me family's all sick; the milkman won't
leave no more milk, an' I've eaten nothin' for Heaven knows how long!"
In a rush of words her story, including that of her resurrected
father, leaped from her. What effect it would have had upon Mr.
Porter had it been calmly told is beyond guessing; but it was told by
no means calmly, and Katie's voice rose to a pitch that forced him to
surrender out of mere fear of a prolonged scene. Grudgingly, but
unconditionally, he laid down his arms. He took the telephone and
called again Miss Isaacs, the buyer of the women's hosiery
department, which Miss Costigan was to leave on the following day,
told as much of Katie's story as he thought necessary, and obtained
consent to a trial of the girl. He informed Katie that she might
take, on the next morning, the place to be vacated by Miss Costigan,
but he took care to impress upon her mind the fact that he was doing
her an exceptional favor, which she was not to mention to her
friends, who might try to profit by her unusual experience.
Katie was on the point of calling all the saints to bless him when
she bethought her of a practical inquiry theretofore, in her
eagerness to secure any sort of work, neglected.
"An' what's the pay?" she inquired.
"You will receive," replied Mr. Porter in the tones in which his
employer announced the gift of a small fortune to a large college,
"four dollars and fifty cents a week."
Katie forgot the saints.
"Four--" she began. "But, Mr. Porter," she concluded, "will you be
tellin' me how I'm to be livin' on all that?"
Mr. Porter's calm eyes came again into significant play.
"You have said in your application, you may recall," he dryly
remarked, as he reached for that document, "you have said that you
lived with your father."
For a moment her glance probed his.
"But for all that," she said, "I have to support meself entirely."
Mr. Porter was still looking at her with his emotionless, appraising
gaze. He saw a girl with pretty, piquant features, with glossy black
hair, with cheeks that bloomed even in privation and blue eyes that
were beautiful even in tears.
"Miss Flanagan," said he, "most of the girls that start at these
wages in department-stores are partly supported by their family or
have some friend to help them out."
Katie flushed, but she kept her outward calm.
"An' what if they haven't got a friend?" she inquired.
Porter's cold eye never wavered.
"They find one," he said; "and I may add, Miss Flanagan, that you
should experience no difficulty in that direction."
Poverty will do much for most of us. For Katie it succeeded in
curbing a temper that, in better times, was never docile. Beggars,
she reflected, cannot afford to look too closely into the source or
significance of the alms they have asked. She swallowed her wrath.
"Will you advance one week's salary now?" she asked.
Mr. Porter was distinctly surprised.
"I--why, certainly I won't!" he stammered.
"Why not?"
"But, my dear Miss Flanagan, I have nothing to do with the payment of
the salaries. Besides, this firm doesn't know you; it does not even
know that you will come to-morrow; it does not know that, if you do
come, you will remain."
Katie smiled insidiously, and Katie smiling through her tear-curled
lashes was insidious indeed.
"Och, now, Mr. Porter," she protested. "That's all well enough for
the green girls; but you an' I know that you're the boss in matters
of this sort. Lend me two an' a quarter."
Mr. Porter, pleased in spite of himself by her flattery, protested,
but Katie remained unconvinced. She declared that she knew he was
the real authority and that she could not bear to hear him
underestimate himself. And the upshot of the discussion was that,
though Mr. Porter could, in his official capacity, do nothing so
unbusinesslike as to make her an advance, he would, personally, be
glad to oblige her with a dollar and a half, and oblige her, adding a
fatherly pat to her pink cheek, he ultimately did.
"Thanks," Katie responded as she took the money, and turned to go.
"I'll report to-morrow, then, at a quarter of eight, Mr. Porter."
"At quarter to eight," repeated Mr. Porter, slowly closing the door
behind her.
But, out in the wet street, Katie was saying what she had refrained
from saying in the darkened office.
"An' as for the pay," she concluded, "I can't buy no automobiles with
me loose change; but I think you'll find, you limb of Satan, that I
can keep body an' soul together without a friend in the wor'rld!"
X