The house to which, next morning, Violet, still weak and still afraid
of her enemies, made, with many timid inquiries, her slow way was in
West Ninth Street, near Sixth Avenue. It was a four-story, grimy,
brick house, with rows of prying windows through which no passer's
eye could pierce, a dilapidated little yard in front of it, and a
bell-handle that, when pulled, threatened to come off in Violet's
fist.
The woman that answered this uncertain summons much resembled the
building she inhabited. She was tall, and she had a sharp face just
the color of the house-walls. The spectacles high on her beaked nose
gleamed like the windows and, like the windows, conveyed the
impression that they saw a great deal without permitting any outsider
to look behind them. Her once formidably austere black dress was
rusty, and her hands were so lean that Violet felt sure they must
stretch when one shook them.
"What do you want?" asked this woman in a voice that cut like a
meat-ax.
"Are you Mrs. Turner?"
"Yes. What do you want?"
"I heard you needed a girl."
"Where'd you hear it?"
"At the college-settlement in Rivington Street."
The woman's mouth tightened.
"Don't see how anyone there come to know aught o' me," she said.
"Got a reference?"
Violet, beginning to tremble lest this chance should slip away from
her, fumbled after the note that had been written for her, and
finally found it and handed it over.
Mrs. Turner's gleaming glasses read it twice, plainly suspecting
forgery. Then she calmly placed it in her skirt pocket.
"Where's your home?" she next demanded.
"In Pittsburgh."
"Hum. How much do you expect?"
"Sixteen dollars," quavered Violet, who had received instructions
from Katie.
Mrs. Turner shook her head vigorously.
"Won't do," she said. "Can't pay it. Twelve's my best, and when I
have a cook--I'm out of one just now--all you have to do for it is to
scrub and sweep and clean the house, wash dishes, and wait on table.
How long did you stay in your last place?"
Mrs. Turner gave another skeptical "Hum" as Violet answered:
"Two years."
"Will you take it at twelve dollars, or will you not?" asked the
woman, sharply.
Violet had been told to descend gradually and not to accept a cent
under fourteen dollars a month; but she was no haggler.
"I'll take it," she said.
"And good pay, too, considerin'," commented Mrs. Turner. "I dunno.
It someways don't look reg'lar. Got your trunk over to the
settlement?"
Violet explained that she had no trunk; that she had just come from
the hospital and had as yet had no opportunity to replenish what had
been a sadly depleted wardrobe.
"Hum!" said Mrs. Turner.
In the penetrating glare of the impenetrable spectacles she studied
the white face before her.
"You wait a minute," she concluded. "Not inside. Out here on the
stoop."
She came outside herself and closed and locked the door.
"I'll be back soon," she said, and Violet dumbly watched her lank,
hatless form stride to Sixth Avenue and turn the corner.
True to her word, Mrs. Turner was not long gone.
"I guess it's all right," she announced, as she reopened the door to
the house. "I 'phoned that woman to the settlement. She was out,
but a friend answered and said the reference is _genuwine_. She
described you so's I'd be sure. Looks queer of me, p'r'aps, but a
person can't be too careful in this town."
The gleaming glasses seeming to search her soul for a reply, Violet
said that she supposed a great deal of care was necessary.
"Try to get along without it," responded Mrs. Turner, "and you'll
mighty soon find out."
That ended preliminaries, and Violet, agreeing to send for her few
belongings, began work without further formality.
She discovered that Mrs. Turner was a New Englander, who conducted a
boarding-house in a manner that sensibly stirred the servants'
sympathies in favor of the patrons. Just now the season had greatly
decreased these, but the absence of the cook--it was a chronic
absence--left plenty to be done.
Violet had to rise with the sun and attend to the kitchen fire. She
had to help the mistress in the preparation of every meal, and of the
serving of every meal and the washing of all dishes she was left in
solitary authority. She made all the beds, she emptied all the
slops, she swept the floors, beat the rugs, cleaned the windows,
polished the stove, and scrubbed the steps. Even in the scant hours
free of actual work, she must still be within call of the door-bell
and Mrs. Turner's voice: the service was continuous from dawn until
ten o'clock at night.
It would have been, upon a frailer nature, a terrible tax, but, fresh
though she was from the hospital, Violet, her sturdy stock standing
her in excellent stead, managed so to stagger through it that her
wracked nerves seemed actually to benefit by her physical exhaustion.
Her lot had all the horrors of the average disregarded under-servant
and yet, when she crept to her stifling attic room at night--a room
ventilated by only a dwarfed skylight--she slept soundly and well.
The situation was one that could not, however, long continue. Mrs.
Turner was a pious woman and as such knew that there must be what she
described as "somethin' sneakin'" about any maid that could bear her
ill-temper. Long experience of one servant after another leaving the
house in anger, had not only innured the good lady to such losses,
but had ended by really creating a sort of appetite for the kind of
condolence that she secured from her neighbors when without servile
aid. It was therefore with almost a desire for the worst that she
endeavored to delve into Violet's past.
This course of innuendo, suggestion, and cross-questioning, pursued
by day and night, through work and rest, in strength and weariness,
ended one afternoon when another boarder had departed, taking three
towels with him, as is the custom of departing boarders, and when, as
a matter of fact, Mrs. Turner secretly felt that she could no longer
afford a maid.
"Where," she asked, meeting Violet on the stairs, "is them towels as
was in Mr. Urner's room?"
"I don't know," said Violet.
"Well, they was there this morning, before lunch--I seen 'em
myself--and now they hain't."
Violet recalled that Mr. Urner had been to his room in the meantime
and had then left forever.
"Hum," said Mrs. Turner; "but you see the soap's gone too."
For some reason ungiven, the landlady plainly thought that the theft
of the soap--perhaps because of Mr. Urner's personal habits--was
proof positive that Mr. Urner could not be the thief, and that Violet
must be. The girl was not in love with her work, but she was
immensely comforted by the shelter it gave her, and she now throbbed
with terror at the thought of its loss.
"I didn't take it, Mrs. Turner," she pleaded, "honest, I didn't."
"I didn't just _say_ you did," replied the landlady; "but you can't
blame me if I think things, the way you come here.--Where'd you say
your home was?"
The question was hurled so suddenly, and was accompanied by such an
uncommonly strong glare from the penetrating spectacles, that
Violet's slow brain tottered. For the life of her, she could not
think of the city that she had formerly mentioned.
"Well"--Mrs. Turner's foot beat sharply on the floor--"that ain't a
hard question, is it? Where'd you say you come from?"
In desperation, the girl named the first city that her lips recalled.
"Philadelphia," she murmured, and realized at once that this was
wrong and that her tormentor knew it.
"You said Pittsburgh last week, miss," clicked Mrs. Turner. She
raised a knotty finger. "Now I ain't sayin' you took that soap nor
yet them towels--mind you that--but I am sayin' you lied. Me and
liars ain't good company: you'd better go."
The tears came to Violet's eyes. They overflowed and she broke down.
In three short sentences she had confessed enough for Mrs. Turner to
guess the entire truth, and had cast herself upon the woman's mercy.
But Mrs. Alberta Turner's straight bosom was no pillow for the
unfortunate. Rugged as it was, it was no rock of safety. She drew
her black figure to its greatest height; she called upon all her
religious experience for backing, and upon all her study of the Bible
for phraseology, and she launched at the girl a sermon the burden of
which was that, as she would have been glad to receive into her care
a woman that had erred and had repented, so she was in Christian duty
bound to cast forth and utterly repudiate one that had shown herself
far from repentance by seeking employment without first baring her
inmost soul.
Violet, in a word, was put upon the street. She was told that she
could have her few possessions when she called for them, but she was
given neither the Rivington Street recommendation nor a new one.
She had received no leisure to see her friends of the tenement or the
settlement during the days of her service, and she could not bring
herself to seek them now that the black bird had again perched upon
her forlorn banner. For half an hour she wandered aimlessly through
the quieter streets; for another half-hour she endeavored to gather
her courage. It was three o'clock in the afternoon before,
desperate, she had inquired of a policeman for the whereabouts of an
employment-agency, had found the grimy place, passed through the
gloomy room with lines of toil-worn slatterns seated along its walls,
and stated, in hesitant accents, her mission to the fat and frowzy
woman in charge at a littered desk in the room beyond.
That woman--she had a steady, calculating eye--looked at her victim
with a curious appraisement.
"What experience?" she asked.
"Very little," admitted Violet.
"Well are you----" The woman's voice dropped to the tone of
discretion.--"Are you particular?"
"Why no," said Violet sadly, "I ain't particular, so as it's quiet."
The mistress smiled sagely.
"We can fix that all right," said she.
But she said it so knowingly that Violet found herself hurriedly
adding:
"An' so long as it's decent."
That it was well she had supplemented her preceding speech, she at
once perceived by the change that came over the woman's face.
"Oh!" said the woman in a tone at once uninterested. "Well, have you
any reference?"
"No. You see----"
"Never mind why. If we get you a job, some of the girls have plenty,
an' we can lend you one of theirs. Go out an' sit down an' we'll see
what happens."
Violet returned to the dark front room and took a shrinking seat in a
corner among the other applicants: two lines of pasty-faced,
ungainly, and not over-cleanly women.
She picked up a tattered paper, dated the preceding day, and tried to
read it. She saw that the primary election had been held and that
Wesley Dyker had secured one of the nominations for magistrate; but
she was tired and disgusted and pursued the print no farther,
listening, instead, to the babble of gossip that was going on about
her.
Had she ever heard that New York was remarkable for having a model
employment-agency law, she would there have learned how lightly that
law is enforced and how much the employment-agencies of Manhattan
resemble those of every other large city. The foul beds in which
these women slept three at a time, and for the use of which the
agencies frequently charged a dollar and a half a night; the
exorbitant two and three dollars exacted as a fee for every position
secured; the encouragement given servants to make frequent changes
and increase their fees; and the hard plight of maids dismissed from
service, whose only friends, being servants themselves, had no
shelter to offer--all these things were the ordinary part and parcel
of their talk.
The women chattered of their old employers and bandied household
secrets from loose lip to lip. Family skeletons were hauled forth
for merrymaking, and testimony enough to crowd a divorce-court was
given against not a few respectable citizens.
All complained of ill-housing and loneliness. Bad enough at any
time, the advance of the race of flat-dwellers and the decrease of
householders had intensified all the evils that domestic servants
have to endure. The best servants' rooms in the ordinary houses
were, it appeared, unheated; the worst were windowless closets in a
kitchen or alcoves in a cellar. None of these workers had been given
a room in which they could fittingly receive their friends, and, as
many of them were forbidden to have callers in the kitchen, they
lived what social life was possible on afternoons or evenings "off,"
on the streets, in the parks, or aboard those floating bar-rooms that
are called excursion-boats. Violet remembered Fritzie; she
remembered the heavy percentage of servants that, according to
Hermann, ended in slavery--and she began to understand.
At five o'clock there entered the room a pleasant-faced, stout woman,
uncommonly homely, who was obviously a prospective employer. She
looked about her in embarrassment, and seemed uncertain where to go.
Violet, beside whom the stranger was standing, rose.
"Are you lookin' for the office?" she asked. "I'll show you the way."
The woman seemed to like her thoughtfulness and seemed, after a quick
glance, to like her appearance even more.
"I am not particular about the office," said the newcomer; "what I
want is a servant. Come outside a minute and talk to me."
Violet followed her into the street, wondering.
As they reached the pavement, the woman smiled: her smile was so
pleasant that she almost ceased to be homely.
"I am a practical person," she said, "and as I also loathe and detest
these agencies, I always, if possible, engage a girl so that she
won't have to pay them their commissions.--Can you do general
housework?"
"Yes."
"You don't look very strong."
The girl's heart throbbed. Mrs. Turner had said that dismissal was
the result not of what had been done but of the thing's concealment.
"That's only because I was ill awhile ago," began Violet. "I had
been in trouble----"
"But you're quite well now?" the woman interrupted.
"Quite," answered Violet.
She did not know how now to proceed; but the stranger, still smiling,
soon gave her a chance.
"Any reference?"
"No, ma'am, I haven't no reference."
"How does that come?"
"I was fired from my last place." She took a breath, then a greater
one, and concluded: "I was fired because the woman I worked for found
out that I had been in trouble."
The stranger promptly ceased to smile.
"What sort of trouble?" she inquired.
Violet saw that she had made a fatal error, but she did not know how
to end it except by proceeding.
"You know," she stammered, "there was a man----"
The stranger raised a plump, gloved hand.
"Don't tell me that," she said. "I have no right to the details. I
think I understand your motive, and it's creditable, I must say.
But, my dear, I am by no means a beautiful woman and I have a very
susceptible husband--very. I'm afraid I must be going along."
And along she went, leaving Violet in a tossing sea of emotion. Mrs.
Turner had lied, which meant the girl must lie; this later employer
had said that the woman who had been enticed was generally supposed
anxious to entice others, a theory that also meant that Violet must
lie. She returned to the agency, convinced that her error had lain
only in a lack of skill at deception.
No other customers appeared during the rest of the afternoon, and
when the agency closed its doors for the night Violet, too alarmed by
the stories she had heard to trust herself to one of its beds, sought
the nearest policeman--she was losing her fear of policemen at
last--and had him direct her to a cheap but respectable hotel. She
had a little money and she paid gladly for a room that was nearly
comfortable; but she could not sleep, and she returned to the
employment-office early in the morning with red eyes and swollen
cheeks.
Until long after noon she sat there, waiting. She watched everyone
that entered; she looked at first eagerly and at last appealingly at
every possible employer; but somehow the woman in the inner room
never sent for her.
At last Violet herself walked through the rear door.
The frowzy person with the calculating eyes looked at her sharply.
"You back?" she asked.
"I haven't left," said Violet.
"Why, I heard you tried to steal a customer yesterday afternoon."
"That wasn't no customer; it was a friend of mine."
"Oh! Well, what do you want now?"
"A job."
"I know that. What else?"
"I want to give you this: I have six dollars, an' I'll give you five
down if you can get me a decent job in a decent house this afternoon,
an' then I'll give you two dollars a week out of my first three
weeks' pay."
The frowzy person screwed her lips in a downward curve that was
probably intended for a smile.
"I've had that percentage game handed out to me about a thousand
times before," she remarked, "an' I believe in such money when I get
it. Still, I don't mind seein' that five."
Violet produced it, and saw it swiftly vanish down a black cotton
stocking.
"All right. Tell you what I'll do. Here's a woman down on
Washington Square wants a maid to wait on table. Can you do it?"
"I can try; but of course I've never done it before."
"I'll rent you a couple of references in the name of Bella
Nimick--that'll cost you two dollars more, an' I guess I'll have to
trust you for it--an' the cook down there--she deals with us--she'll
give you some pointers on the job. You'll find it a good place.
They're old swells, an' the name's Chamberlin."
Violet lost no time in seeking this new address. She found it to be
a large brick house, with white marble steps, facing the leafy square
from the north, and looking across the broad green lawn toward a
church that towered into the blue skies by day and by night reached
up toward Heaven with a fiery cross. The cook, to whom, through the
areaway, she made her application, proved to be an ample Swedish
woman, with a heart fashioned in true proportion to her body, and a
round, placid face that spoke well for her mistress.
That mistress, Violet was without delay informed, was an invalid,
whose ills, if mostly fanciful, were at least fancied with a force
sufficient to keep her in town and in the house all summer long. Her
husband--she had remarried after a divorce--passed the warm months
visiting more wealthy friends along the rocky Maine coast, and her
son ran in to see her between such invitations to Newport and
Narragansett as he could secure. A daughter by the second union, a
girl of sixteen, remained to care for her mother, and this child and
a professional nurse, whose long service made her almost a member of
the family, completed the household.
Violet was presented to Mrs. Chamberlin, a frail woman with a white,
delicate face, lying on a couch in a darkened library, and, her
references being casually read, was promptly engaged. She was to
receive eighteen dollars a month for far lighter work than had been
her portion under the sway of Mrs. Turner, and, as Bella Nimick,
began at once to see that a better time was before her.
Objections there of course were, but these were not of a sort that
either Violet's previous experience or present necessity permitted
her to observe. Brought up in wealth, Mrs. Chamberlin's ideals had
not been improved by that decline of fortune consequent upon her
marriage. Neither in a practical nor in an executive sense had she
received any training, and, though she would have told you that
household management was woman's true sphere, she actually knew as
little of it as she did of the wholesale drug trade. It had never
occurred to her that cooking was even distantly related to chemistry
and dietetics; scrubbing, dusting, and sweeping to hygiene, or
domestic administration to bookkeeping. By the same token, the two
servants had to share a dark, narrow room in the basement, had no
sitting-room save the kitchen and, so far as social life went, would
have been, had they depended upon the Chamberlin house, twin Selkirks
on a Juan Fernandez.
But Violet was happy. Her health, if it did not improve, at least
did not noticeably decline. The work, if it was hard, was at least
possible of accomplishment. And within a week she had made herself
so valuable to both her mistress and her mistress's nurse that these
potentates found continuous need of her.
Then the first blow fell.
She had just put away the last of the dishes from an early dinner and
was passing the barred front window of the basement when, from the
sunset across the square, a shadow descended to the floor within.
She looked up, startled. In the areaway a dapper, dark, flashily
dressed young man was standing, and the young man was Angel.
Violet darted away from the window, but Angel, reaching through the
bars, calmly raised the sash, which, even in the warmest weather, was
drawn against the noise and dust of the street. His dark face was
flushed, and though his wet, red lips were smiling, they smiled
evilly.
"No treecks," he commanded. "You come to me. I wanta talk."
Violet did not answer. She huddled into the farthest corner.
"Stan' out!" continued Angel, his lips still curved. "You theenka me
so dumb? I am sharpa 'nough for see you. You come here, or I go ope
stairs an' reenga da bell."
Slowly, like the bird advancing to the swaying serpent, she obeyed
him.
"Now," he said, when they were face to face, "you alone?"
She thanked Heaven that they were. The cook was in the kitchen.
"Poot on you' hat an' come alonga with me."
"I won't!" said Violet.
"You do eet!"
"I can't. The missus won't let me. It ain't my night off."
"Eef you don't, I go ope stairs an' tell all abouta you."
"I don't care. I won't go!"
"Queeck!"
"No."
"Then da woman she fire you, an' I get you when you come out alone."
Violet knew that he meant it.
"Where do you want to take me?" she asked. "I won't let you never
take me back to Rose's."
"No fear," laughed Angel, shaking his oily curls. "Meess Rosie she
would not stan' to have you near."
"Then what do you want?"
"I want you come to District Attorney's, da place you go witha that
fine gentleman Dyker. You won'ta be hurt. You can peeck out any cop
on da way to go along, an' you weell knowa da place."
"Does he want me--that lawyer I talked to there before?"
"I been to see him an' tell him we come."
"Then what am I to do when I get there?"
"Taka back all you say for thata Dyke'. Da's all: no more--only so
mooch. I won't bother you no more; thata lawyer won't bother you no
more; Dyker won't bother you no more. You do that, or losa da job.
Wheech?"
Violet put her hand before her eyes. She knew as well as a wiser
woman what had happened. Angel had traced her to Katie's, to the
hospital, to the settlement, to the employment-agency--he was
doubtless familiar with such places--to this house. Rose's latest
captive had been turned out on the streets before the raid and lost
to sight. The entire white-slavery charge now rested on Violet's
testimony, and Angel's purpose was to have her withdraw the affidavit
she had made. In her present condition, she could not, she thought,
be of any further use to him; that purpose served, he would be only
too glad to let her again hide herself, and, hidden here, with Dyker
elected and engaged by newer cares, she might escape both friends and
foes. Terror drove out all desire for revenge upon Rose Légère; it
drove out even the power to keep her promise to Dyker. All that she
wanted was her job.
"All right," she said. "Wait till I go upstairs and get permission."
"No treecks," cautioned Angel. "Eef you try treecks, I go upstair'
myself."
She promised, and left him, presenting to Mrs. Chamberlin in the
library, a moment later, a face that bore out her story of the
illness of a friend.
"Well," said the invalid, "if you go out I shall be certain to need
you; but I suppose there is no help for it. Don't be gone more than
an hour."
Violet joined Angel in the area, and went with him, but, though she
was disposed toward silence, she was surprised to find the Italian in
a pleasant, even a genial, mood.
In his moment of success, he was well-nigh magnanimous. He bore not
a trace of malice, seeming to regard the whole matter as a game in
which all the moves on both sides had been in accord with the rules.
He chattered a variety of gossip about everything and every person
save those who were most intimately concerned in his present action,
and only as they neared the office, where a light showed that the
young assistant had remained in accordance with the word that Angel
had previously brought him, did he touch upon the matter in hand.
"No treecks, now," he cautioned. "All you gotta do ees tella heem
you were Rosie's frien' an' she hit you, so you gotta drunk an'
wanted to maka trouble."
"Won't he be cross?" asked Violet, her agitation returning anew.
"Naw," Angel reassured her. "He's used to sucha t'ings. Don'
forgot, an' I give you five doll'."
They entered the office that Violet just recalled as having visited
with Dyker in her fever-dream. At a desk, covered with neatly
arranged piles of papers sat the young assistant, who, having then
seen her red with illness, and now seeing her still white from its
recovery, might well suppose that their first meeting was the result
of drunken malice.
"Here she ees," smiled Angel, "like I promise. She ees a gooda girl
now, an' sorry she tell you da deeferent story an' maka trouble."
Angelelli had told Violet the truth: the young man was indeed used to
such things--so used to them that he knew protest was fruitless and
that his inquiry must be formal.
"You want to withdraw your deposition?" he asked. He was a kindly
young man with a thin face.
"Do I what?" asked Violet.
"He means----" began Angel.
"I mean," interrupted the lawyer, "do you want to take back the story
you told me about Rose Légère? This case is on the calendar for
to-morrow, so if you mean to take back what you said, you had better
do it now."
"It won't get me into no trouble?"
The young man raised his eyebrows.
"What would be the use?" he inquired. "No, it won't get you into any
trouble."
"Then I'll take it back," said Violet.
"You'll have to be sworn, you know."
"She don' minda that," said Angel. "Do you, Violet?"
The girl shook her head, and a clerk was called and administered an
oath so rapidly that Violet could understand no word of it.
"You're doing this of your own free will--just because you want to?"
resumed the lawyer, donning his professional air, and seeming to
become infected with the clerk's rapidity of utterance. "You are not
swayed by any promise of pecuniary reward--that is because you're
paid for it? And there has been no force or threat used to compel
you to do it--I mean you haven't been told you'd be hurt if you
backed down?"
Violet bowed in token of a desire to answer these questions in
whatever way was necessary to her bargain, and the new deposition
proceeded in the same manner and along the lines that Angel had laid
down. The clerk hurried because he wanted to get home; the lawyer
hurried because he thoroughly disbelieved every word that was
written; and, severe as Violet had feared that the ordeal would be,
it was over far sooner than she had expected.
Angel, still loyal to his word, saw her safely home.
"Now," he said, as he left her at the areaway, "nobody weell ever any
more bother you. Good-night."
He raised his hat and went away, but, as he turned, he pressed into
her cold hand a crisp, new bill.
Violet's fingers closed about it silently. She had earned it.