Autumn was at hand. All day it had rained, but now, as night fell
and Janet went homeward, the white mist from the river was creeping
stealthily over the city, disguising the familiar and sordid landmarks.
These had become beautiful, mysterious, somehow appealing. The electric
arcs, splotches in the veil, revealed on the Common phantom trees;
and in the distance, against the blurred lights from the Warren Street
stores skirting the park could be seen phantom vehicles, phantom people
moving to and fro. Thus, it seemed to Janet, invaded by a pearly mist
was her own soul, in which she walked in wonder,--a mist shot through
and through with soft, exhilarating lights half disclosing yet
transforming and etherealizing certain landmark's there on which,
formerly, she had not cared to gaze. She was thinking of Ditmar as she
had left him gripping his chair, as he had dismissed her for the day,
curtly, almost savagely. She had wounded and repelled him, and lingering
in her was that exquisite touch of fear--a fear now not so much inspired
by Ditmar as by the semi-acknowledged recognition of certain tendencies
and capacities within herself. Yet she rejoiced in them, she was glad
she had hurt Ditmar, she would hurt him again. Still palpitating, she
reached the house in Fillmore Street, halting a moment with her hand on
the door, knowing her face was flushed, anxious lest her mother or Lise
might notice something unusual in her manner. But, when she had slowly
mounted the stairs and lighted the gas in the bedroom the sight of her
sister's clothes cast over the chairs was proof that Lise had already
donned her evening finery and departed. The room was filled with
the stale smell of clothes, which Janet detested. She flung open the
windows. She took off her hat and swiftly tidied herself, yet the relief
she felt at Lise's absence was modified by a sudden, vehement protest
against sordidness. Why should she not live by herself amidst clean and
tidy surroundings? She had begun to earn enough, and somehow a vista
had been opened up--a vista whose end she could not see, alluring,
enticing.... In the dining-room, by the cleared table, her father was
reading the Banner; her mother appeared in the kitchen door.
“What in the world happened to you, Janet?” she exclaimed.
“Nothing,” said Janet. “Mr. Ditmar asked me to stay--that was all. He'd
been away.”
“I was worried, I was going to make your father go down to the mill.
I've saved you some supper.”
“I don't want much,” Janet told her, “I'm not hungry.”
“I guess you have to work too hard in that new place,” said Hannah, as
she brought in the filled plate from the oven.
“Well, it seems to agree with her, mother,” declared Edward, who could
always be counted on to say the wrong thing with the best of intentions.
“I never saw her looking as well--why, I swan, she's getting real
pretty!”
Hannah darted at him a glance, but restrained herself, and Janet
reddened as she tried to eat the beans placed before her. The pork had
browned and hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered
the potatoes. When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and
her mother went back into the kitchen she began to speculate rather
resentfully and yet excitedly why it was that this adventure with a man,
with Ditmar, made her look better, feel better,--more alive. She was too
honest to disguise from herself that it was an adventure, a high one,
fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and delights. Her
promotion had been merely incidental. Both her mother and father, did
they know the true circumstances,--that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was
perhaps in love with her--would be disturbed. Undoubtedly they would
have believed that she could “take care” of herself. She knew that
matters could not go on as they were, that she would either have to
leave Mr. Ditmar or--and here she baulked at being logical. She had no
intention of leaving him: to remain, according to the notions of her
parents, would be wrong. Why was it that doing wrong agreed with her,
energized her, made her more alert, cleverer, keying up her faculties?
turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one? To abandon Ditmar
would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from which she
had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she sat;
by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs
with the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing
protruded, the tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had
bought at a bargain at the Bagatelle.... The wooden clock with the
round face and quaint landscape below--the family's most cherished
heirloom--though long familiar, was not so bad; but the two yellowed
engravings on the wall offended her. They had been wedding presents to
Edward's father. One represented a stupid German peasant woman holding
a baby, and standing in front of a thatched cottage; its companion was
a sylvan scene in which certain wooden rustics were supposed to be
enjoying themselves. Between the two, and dotted with flyspecks, hung
an insurance calendar on which was a huge head of a lady, florid,
fluffy-haired, flirtatious. Lise thought her beautiful.
The room was ugly. She had long known that, but tonight the realization
came to her that what she chiefly resented in it was the note it
proclaimed--the note of a mute acquiescence, without protest or
struggle, in what life might send. It reflected accurately the attitude
of her parents, particularly of her father. With an odd sense of
detachment, of critical remoteness and contempt she glanced at him as
he sat stupidly absorbed in his newspaper, his face puckered, his
lips pursed, and Ditmar rose before her--Ditmar, the embodiment of an
indomitableness that refused to be beaten and crushed. She thought of
the story he had told her, how by self-assertion and persistence he had
become agent of the Chippering Mill, how he had convinced Mr. Stephen
Chippering of his ability. She could not think of the mill as belonging
to the Chipperings and the other stockholders, but to Ditmar, who had
shaped it into an expression of himself, since it was his ideal. And now
it seemed that he had made it hers also. She regretted having repulsed
him, pushed her plate away from her, and rose.
“You haven't eaten anything,” said Hannah, who had come into the room.
“Where are you going?”
“Out--to Eda's,” Janet answered....
“It's late,” Hannah objected. But Janet departed. Instead of going to
Eda's she walked alone, seeking the quieter streets that her thoughts
might flow undisturbed. At ten o'clock, when she returned, the light was
out in the diningroom, her sister had not come in, and she began slowly
to undress, pausing every now and then to sit on the bed and dream; once
she surprised herself gazing into the glass with a rapt expression that
was almost a smile. What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar?
No other man had ever noticed it. She had never thought herself good
looking, and now--it was astonishing!--she seemed to have changed, and
she saw with pride that her arms and neck were shapely, that her dark
hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to her waist. She
caressed it; it was fine. When she looked again, a radiancy seemed to
envelop her. She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, looking
shyly in the mirror and always seeing that radiancy....
Suddenly it occurred to her with a shock that she was doing exactly what
she had despised Lise for doing, and leaving the mirror she hurried her
toilet, put out the light, and got into bed. For a long time, however,
she remained wakeful, turning first on one side and then on the other,
trying to banish from her mind the episode that had excited her. But
always it came back again. She saw Ditmar before her, virile, vital,
electric with desire. At last she fell asleep.
Gradually she was awakened by something penetrating her consciousness,
something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she
could not define. The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving
peculiarly about the room. Janet watched her. She stood in front of the
bureau, just as Janet herself had done, her hands at her throat. At last
she let them fall, her head turning slowly, as though drawn, by some
irresistible, hypnotic power, and their eyes met. Lise's were filmed,
like those of a dog whose head is being stroked, expressing a luxuriant
dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate.
“Say, did I wake you?” she asked. “I did my best not to make any
noise--honest to God.”
“It wasn't the noise that woke me up,” said Janet.
“It couldn't have been.”
“You've been drinking!” said Janet, slowly.
Lise giggled.
“What's it to you, angel face!” she inquired. “Quiet down, now, and go
bye-bye.”
Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her.
She was limp. She began to whimper.
“Cut it out--leave me go. It ain't nothing to you what I do--I just had
a highball.”
Janet released her and drew back.
“I just had a highball--honest to God!”
“Don't say that again!” whispered Janet, fiercely.
“Oh, very well. For God's sake, go to bed and leave me alone--I can take
care of myself, I guess--I ain't nutty enough to hit the booze. But I
ain't like you--I've got to have a little fun to keep alive.”
“A little fun!” Janet exclaimed. The phrase struck her sharply. A little
fun to keep alive!
With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise
approached a chair, and sank into it,--jerking her head in the direction
of the room where Hannah and Edward slept.
“D'you want to wake 'em up? Is that your game?” she asked, and began
to fumble at her belt. Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to
nausea, Janet approached her sister again, little by little undressing
her, and finally getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into
a profound slumber. Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible:
the odour lurked like a foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the
stagnant, damp air that came in at the open window, fairly saturating
her with horror: it seemed the very essence of degradation. But as she
lay on the edge of the bed, shrinking from contamination, in the throes
of excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she grew hot, she could feel
and almost hear the pounding of her heart. She rose, felt around in the
clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the door, crept
through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit the
lamp; darkness had become a terror. A cockroach scurried across the
linoleum. The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale
food, but at least she found relief from that other odour. She sank down
on the sofa.
Her sister was drunk. That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was
not the drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion
of something else. Where had Lise been? In whose company had she become
drunk? Of late, in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been
singularly secretive as to her companions, and the manner in which her
evenings were spent; and she, Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be
curious. Lise, with her shopgirl's cynical knowledge of life and its
pitfalls and the high valuation at which she held her charms, had seemed
secure from danger; but Janet recalled her discouragement, her threat to
leave the Bagatelle. Since then there had been something furtive about
her. Now, because that odour of alcohol Lise exhaled had destroyed in
Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she had begun
to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for
her sister no strain of pity. A proof, had she recognized it, that
immorality is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual
emotions. A few hours before she had seen nothing wrong in her
relationship with Ditmar: now she beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing
her for one end, his own gratification. As a man, he had become an
enemy. Ditmar was like all other men who exploited her sex without
compunction, but the thought that she was like Lise, asleep in a drunken
stupor, that their cases differed only in degree, was insupportable.
At last she fell asleep from sheer weariness, to dream she was with
Ditmar at some place in the country under spreading trees, Silliston,
perhaps--Silliston Common, cleverly disguised: nor was she quite sure,
always, that the man was Ditmar; he had a way of changing, of resembling
the man she had met in Silliston whom she had mistaken for a carpenter.
He was pleading with her, in his voice was the peculiar vibrancy that
thrilled her, that summoned some answering thing out of the depths of
her, and she felt herself yielding with a strange ecstasy in which were
mingled joy and terror. The terror was conquering the joy, and suddenly
he stood transformed before her eyes, caricatured, become a shrieking
monster from whom she sought in agony to escape.... In this paralysis
of fear she awoke, staring with wide eyes at the flickering flame of
the lamp, to a world filled with excruciating sound--the siren of the
Chippering Mill! She lay trembling with the horror of the dream-spell
upon her, still more than half convinced that the siren was Ditmar's
voice, his true expression. He was waiting to devour her. Would the
sound never end?...
Then, remembering where she was, alarmed lest her mother might come in
and find her there, she left the sofa, turned out the sputtering lamp,
and ran into the bedroom. Rain was splashing on the bricks of the
passage-way outside, the shadows of the night still lurked in the
corners; by the grey light she gazed at Lise, who breathed loudly and
stirred uneasily, her mouth open, her lips parched. Janet touched her.
“Lise--get up!” she said. “It's time to get up.” She shook her.
“Leave me alone--can't you?”
“It's time to get up. The whistle has sounded.”
Lise heavily opened her eyes. They were bloodshot.
“I don't want to get up. I won't get up.”
“But you must,” insisted Janet, tightening her hold. “You've got
to--you've got to eat breakfast and go to work.”
“I don't want any breakfast, I ain't going to work any more.”
A gust of wind blew inward the cheap lace curtains, and the physical
effect of it emphasized the chill that struck Janet's heart. She got up
and closed the window, lit the gas, and returning to the bed, shook Lise
again.
“Listen,” she said, “if you don't get up I'll tell mother what happened
last night.”
“Say, you wouldn't--!” exclaimed Lise, angrily.
“Get up!” Janet commanded, and watched her rather anxiously, uncertain
as to the after effects of drunkenness. But Lise got up. She sat on the
edge of the bed and yawned, putting her hand to her forehead.
“I've sure got a head on me,” she remarked.
Janet was silent, angrier than ever, shocked that tragedy, degradation,
could be accepted thus circumstantially. Lise proceeded to put up
her hair. She seemed to be mistress of herself; only tired, gaping
frequently. Once she remarked:--“I don't see the good of getting nutty
over a highball.”
Seeing that Janet was not to be led into controversy, she grew morose.
Breakfast in Fillmore Street, never a lively meal, was more dismal than
usual that morning, eaten to the accompaniment of slopping water from
the roofs on the pavement of the passage. The indisposition of Lise
passed unobserved by both Hannah and Edward; and at twenty minutes
to eight the two girls, with rubbers and umbrellas, left the house
together, though it was Janet's custom to depart earlier, since she
had farther to go. Lise, suspicious, maintained an obstinate silence,
keeping close to the curb. They reached the corner by the provision shop
with the pink and orange chromos of jellies in the window.
“Lise, has anything happened to you?” demanded Janet suddenly. “I want
you to tell me.”
“Anything happened--what do you mean? Anything happened?”
“You know very well what I mean.”
“Well, suppose something has happened?” Lise's reply was pert, defiant.
“What's it to you? If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't
it?”
Janet approached her.
“What are you trying to do?” said Lise. “Push me into the gutter?”
“I guess you're there already,” said Janet.
Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury. She turned on Janet and
thrust her back.
“Well, if I am who's going to blame me?” she cried. “If you had to work
all day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six
a week, I guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either. It's easy for you to
shoot off your mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar.”
Janet was outraged. She could not restrain her anger.
“How dare you say that?” she demanded.
Lise was cowed.
“Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything.
Just because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of
gentlemen--they were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as
Ditmar--you come at me and tell me I'm all to the bad.” She began to
sob. “I'm as straight as you are. How was I to know the highball was
stiff? Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on the queer, and everything
in the joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came home with me.”
Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and
resentment: relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the
truth, anxiety because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because
Ditmar had been mentioned. Still, what she had feared most had not come
to pass. Lise left her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a
back entrance of the Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way. Where, she
wondered, would it all end? Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was
an ominous sign. And “gentlemen”? What kind of gentlemen had taken
her sister to Gruber's? Would Ditmar do that sort of thing if he had a
chance?
The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was
plastered with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving
rain in the night. The sky above the mills was sepia. White lights were
burning in the loom rooms. When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the
watchman, informed her that Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left
for Boston.
Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointment on
learning that Ditmar had gone to Boston. She knew he had had no such
intention the night before; an accumulated mail and many matters
demanding decisions were awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed
an act directed personally against her, in the nature of a retaliation,
since she had offended and repulsed him. Through Lise's degrading act
she had arrived at the conclusion that all adventure and consequent
suffering had to do with Man--a conviction peculiarly maddening to such
temperaments as Janet's. Therefore she interpreted her suffering in
terms of Ditmar, she had looked forward to tormenting him again, and
by departing he had deliberately balked and cheated her. The rain fell
ceaselessly out of black skies, night seemed ever ready to descend on
the river, a darkness--according to young Mr. Caldwell--due not to
the clouds alone, but to forest fires many hundreds of miles away, in
Canada. As the day wore on, however, her anger gradually gave place to
an extreme weariness and depression, and yet she dreaded going home,
inventing things for herself to do; arranging and rearranging Ditmar's
papers that he might have less trouble in sorting them, putting those
uppermost which she thought he would deem the most important. Perhaps
he would come in, late! In a world of impending chaos the brilliantly
lighted office was a tiny refuge to which she clung. At last she put on
her coat and rubbers, faring forth reluctantly into the wet.
At first when she entered the bedroom she thought it empty, though the
gas was burning, and them she saw Lise lying face downward on the bed.
For a moment she stood still, then closed the door softly.
“Lise,” she said.
“What?”
Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand. Unconsciously she began
to stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own.
“Lise,” she said, “I understand why you--” she could not bring herself
to pronounce the words “got drunk,”--“I understand why you did it. I
oughtn't to have talked to you that way. But it was terrible to wake up
and see you.”
For awhile Lise did not reply. Then she raised herself, feeling her
hair with an involuntary gesture, regarding her sister with a bewildered
look, her face puckered. Her eyes burned, and under them were black
shadows.
“How do you mean--you understand?” she asked slowly. “You never hit the
booze.”
Even Lise's language, which ordinarily offended her, failed to change
her sudden impassioned and repentant mood. She was astonished at herself
for this sudden softening, since she did not really love Lise, and all
day she had hated her, wished never to see her again.
“No, but I can understand how it would be to want to,” Janet said.
“Lise, I guess we're searching--both of us for something we'll never
find.”
Lise stared at her with a contracted, puzzled expression, as of a person
awaking from sleep, all of whose faculties are being strained toward
comprehension.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “You and me? You're all right--you've
got no kick coming.”
“Life is hard, it's hard on girls like us--we want things we can't
have.” Janet was at a loss to express herself.
“Well, it ain't any pipe dream,” Lise agreed. Her glance turned
involuntarily toward the picture of the Olympian dinner party pinned on
the wall. “Swells have a good time,” she added.
“Maybe they pay for it, too,” said Janet.
“I wouldn't holler about paying--it's paying and not getting the goods,”
declared Lise.
“You'll pay, and you won't get it. That kind of life is--hell,” Janet
cried.
Self-centered as Lise was, absorbed in her own trouble and present
physical discomfort, this unaccustomed word from her sister and the
vehemence with which it was spoken surprised and frightened her, brought
home to her some hint of the terror in Janet's soul.
“Me for the water wagon,” she said.
Janet was not convinced. She had hoped to discover the identity of the
man who had taken Lise to Gruber's, but she did not attempt to continue
the conversation. She rose and took off her hat.
“Why don't you go to bed?” she asked. “I'll tell mother you have a
headache and bring in your supper.”
“Well, I don't care if I do,” replied Lise, gratefully.
Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair,
the human organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so
called, is as sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected
by lack of sleep, by smells and sounds, by food, by the weather--whether
a day be sapphire or obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one
mood are thwarted by the actions of the next. Janet had observed this
phenomenon, and sometimes, when it troubled her, she thought herself the
most inconsistent and vacillating of creatures. She had resolved, far
instance, before she fell asleep, to leave the Chippering Mill, to
banish Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, whence she
could send some of her wages home: and in the morning, as she made
her way to the office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and
unity. But the northwest wind was blowing. It had chased away the
mist and the clouds, the smoke from Canada. The sun shone with a high
brilliancy, the elms of the Common cast sharp, black shadow-patterns
on the pavements, and when she reached the office and looked out of his
window she saw the blue river covered with quicksilver waves chasing
one another across the current. Ditmar had not yet returned to Hampton.
About ten o'clock, as she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price,
young Mr. Caldwell approached her. He had a Boston newspaper in his
hand.
“Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?” he asked.
“About Mr. Ditmar? No.”
“It's quite a send-off for the Colonel,” said Caldwell, who was wont at
times to use the title facetiously. “Listen; 'One of the most notable
figures in the Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar,
Agent of the Chippering Mill.'” Caldwell spread out the page and pointed
to a picture. “There he is, as large as life.”
A little larger than life, Janet thought. Ditmar was one of those
men who, as the expression goes, “take” well, a valuable asset in
semi-public careers; and as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of
the building where they had “snap-shotted” him he appeared even more
massive, forceful, and preponderant than she had known him. Beholding
him thus set forth and praised in a public print, he seemed suddenly to
have been distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at a bound
the dizzy importance he had possessed for her before she became his
stenographer. She found it impossible to realize that this was
the Ditmar who had pursued and desired her; at times supplicating,
apologetic, abject; and again revealed by the light in his eyes and the
trembling of his hand as the sinister and ruthless predatory male from
whom--since the revelation in her sister Lise she had determined to
flee, and whom she had persuaded herself she despised. He was a bigger
man than she had thought, and as she read rapidly down the column the
fascination that crept over her was mingled with disquieting doubt of
her own powers: it was now difficult to believe she had dominated or
could ever dominate this self-sufficient, successful person, the list
of whose achievements and qualities was so alluringly set forth by an
interviewer who himself had fallen a victim.
The article carried the implication that the modern, practical, American
business man was the highest type as yet evolved by civilization:
and Ditmar, referred to as “a wizard of the textile industry,”
was emphatically one who had earned the gratitude of the grand old
Commonwealth. By the efforts of such sons she continued to maintain
her commanding position among her sister states. Prominent among
the qualities contributing to his success was open-mindedness, “a
willingness to be shown,” to scrap machinery when his competitors still
clung to older methods. The Chippering Mill had never had a serious
strike,--indication of an ability to deal with labour; and Mr. Ditmar's
views on labour followed: if his people had a grievance, let them come
to him, and settle it between them. No unions. He had consistently
refused to recognize them. There was mention of the Bradlaugh order as
being the largest commission ever given to a single mill, a reference to
the excitement and speculation it had aroused in trade circles. Claude
Ditmar's ability to put it through was unquestioned; one had only to
look at him,--tenacity, forcefulness, executiveness were written all
over him.... In addition, the article contained much material of an
autobiographical nature that must--Janet thought--have been supplied
by Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder
self-eulogy of an interview. But she recognized several characteristic
phrases.
Caldwell, watching her as she read, was suddenly fascinated. During a
trip abroad, while still an undergraduate, he had once seen the face of
an actress, a really good Parisian actress, light up in that way; and
it had revealed to him, in a flash, the meaning of enthusiasm. Now Janet
became vivid for him. There must be something unusual in a person whose
feelings could be so intense, whose emotions rang so true. He was not
unsophisticated. He had sometimes wondered why Ditmar had promoted
her, though acknowledging her ability. He admired Ditmar, but had
no illusions about him. Harvard, and birth in a social stratum where
emphasis is superfluous, enabled him to smile at the reporter's
exuberance; and he was the more drawn toward her to see on Janet's
flushed face the hint of a smile as she looked up at him when she had
finished.
“The Colonel hypnotized that reporter,” he said, as he took the
paper; and her laugh, despite its little tremor, betrayed in her an
unsuspected, humorous sense of proportion. “Well, I'll take off my hat
to him,” Caldwell went on. “He is a wonder, he's got the mill right
up to capacity in a week. He's agreed to deliver those goods to
the Bradlaughs by the first of April, you know, and Holster, of the
Clarendon, swears it can't be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. Well, I
stand to lose twenty-five dollars on him.”
This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving
loyalty in her. She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence.
He was a self-contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly
hair, cordial and friendly yet never intimate with the other employer;
liked by them--but it was tacitly understood his footing differed from
theirs. He was a cousin of the Chipperings, and destined for rapid
promotion. He went away every Saturday, it was known that he spent
Sundays and holidays in delightful places, to return reddened and
tanned; and though he never spoke about these excursions, and put on no
airs of superiority, there was that in his manner and even in the cut of
his well-worn suits proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs,
to a category of fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are
sustained from above. Even Ditmar was not of these.
“I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill,” he told
Janet. “They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics.”
And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:--“Will you take me through
sometime, Mr. Caldwell?”
“You've never been through?” he exclaimed. “Why, we'll go now, if you
can spare the time.”
Her face had become scarlet.
“Don't tell Mr. Ditmar,” she begged. “You see--he wanted to take me
himself.”
“Not a word,” Caldwell promised as they left the office together
and went downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton
Department. The showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather
tiresome; but now his curiosity and interest were aroused, he was
conscious of a keen stimulation when he glanced at Janet's face. Its
illumination perplexed him. The effect was that of a picture obscurely
hung and hitherto scarcely noticed on which the light had suddenly been
turned. It glowed with a strange and disturbing radiance....
As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a
miracle in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before
suspected; the miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature.
In the brief space of an hour she beheld the dirty bales flung off the
freight cars on the sidings transformed into delicate fabrics wound
from the looms; cotton that only last summer, perhaps, while she sat
typewriting at her window, had been growing in the fields of the South.
She had seen it torn by the bale-breakers, blown into the openers,
loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed into
batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp
of white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can. Once more
it was flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres,
removing with superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short,
thrusting it forth again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing
frames. Six of these gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six. Then
came the Blubbers and the roving frames, twisting and winding, the while
maintaining the most delicate of tensions lest the rope break, running
the strands together into a thread constantly growing stronger and
finer, until it was ready for spinning.
Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while
she strained to follow them. But she was bewildered and entranced by the
marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex
machines, fed by human hands, performed its function. These human
hands were swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the
ring-spinning frames to be twisted into yarn. She saw a woman, in the
space of an instant, mend a broken thread. Women and boys were here,
doffer boys to lift off the full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set
on the empty bobbins with the other: while skilled workmen, alert for
the first sign of trouble, followed up and down in its travels the long
frame of the mule-spinner. After the spinning, the heavy spools of yarn
were carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a huge spider's web,
where hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and wound evenly,
side by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric to
be woven on the loom. First, however, this warp must be stiffened or
“slashed” in starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally
wound around one great beam from which the multitude of threads are
taken up, one by one, and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses
by women who sit all day under the north windows overlooking the
canal--the “drawers-in” of whom Ditmar had spoken. Then the harnesses
are put on the loom, the threads attached to the cylinder on which the
cloth is to be wound. The looms absorbed and fascinated Janet above all
else. It seemed as if she would never tire of watching the rhythmic rise
and fall of the harnesses,--each rapid movement making a V in the warp,
within the angle of which the tiny shuttles darted to and fro, to and
fro, carrying the thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness so great
the eye could scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when
the angle closed, and flung back, and back again! And in the elaborate
patterns not one, but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its
turn for the impulse bidding it rise and fall!... Abruptly, as she
gazed, one of the machines halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the
warp for the broken thread, tied it, and started the loom again.
“That's intelligent of it,” said Caldwell, in her ear. But she could
only nod in reply.
The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive. She
began to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain
all day long. She had never thought much about them before save to
compare vaguely their drudgery with that from which now she had been
emancipated; but she began to feel a new respect, a new concern, a new
curiosity and interest as she watched them passing from place to place
with indifference between the whirling belts, up and down the narrow
aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering, clattering machinery
whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back the light of
the electric bulbs on the ceiling. How was it possible to live for hours
at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and thrusting
hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf? She had never before
realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents.
But these people--even the children--seemed oblivious to the din and the
danger, intent on their tasks, unconscious of the presence of a visitor,
save occasionally when she caught a swift glance from a woman or girl a
glance, perhaps, of envy or even of hostility. The dark, foreign faces
glowed, and instantly grew dull again, and then she was aware of lurking
terrors, despite her exaltation, her sense now of belonging to another
world, a world somehow associated with Ditmar. Was it not he who
had lifted her farther above all this? Was it not by grace of her
association with him she was there, a spectator of the toil beneath? Yet
the terror persisted. She, presently, would step out of the noise, the
oppressive moist heat of the drawing and spinning rooms, the constant,
remorseless menace of whirling wheels and cogs and belts. But they?...
She drew closer to Caldwell's side.
“I never knew--” she said. “It must be hard to work here.”
He smiled at her, reassuringly.
“Oh, they don't mind it,” he replied. “It's like a health resort
compared to the conditions most of them live in at home. Why, there's
plenty of ventilation here, and you've got to have a certain amount of
heat and moisture, because when cotton is cold and dry it can't be drawn
or spin, and when it's hot and dry the electricity is troublesome. If
you think this moisture is bad you ought to see a mill with the old
vapour-pot system with the steam shooting out into the room. Look here!”
He led Janet to the apparatus in which the pure air is forced through
wet cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the ventilation and
humidity were regulated automatically, how the temperature of the room
was controlled by a thermostat.
“There isn't an agent in the country who's more concerned about the
welfare of his operatives than Mr. Ditmar. He's made a study of it,
he's spent thousands of dollars, and as soon as these machines became
practical he put 'em in. The other day when I was going through the room
one of these shuttles flew off, as they sometimes do when the looms are
running at high speed. A woman was pretty badly hurt. Ditmar came right
down.”
“He really cares about them,” said Janet. She liked Caldwell's praise of
Ditmar, yet she spoke a little doubtfully.
“Of course he cares. But it's common sense to make 'em as comfortable
and happy as possible--isn't it? He won't stand for being held up, and
he'd be stiff enough if it came to a strike. I don't blame him for that.
Do you?”
Janet was wondering how ruthless Ditmar could be if his will were
crossed.... They had left the room with its noise and heat behind them
and were descending the worn, oaken treads of the spiral stairway of a
neighbouring tower. Janet shivered a little, and her face seemed almost
feverish as she turned to Caldwell and thanked him.
“Oh, it was a pleasure, Miss Bumpus,” he declared. “And sometime,
when you want to see the Print Works or the Worsted Department, let me
know--I'm your man. And--I won't mention it.”
She did not answer. As they made their way back to the office he glanced
at her covertly, astonished at the emotional effect in her their tour
had produced. Though not of an inflammable temperament, he himself was
stirred, and it was she who, unaccountably, had stirred him: suggested,
in these processes he saw every day, and in which he was indeed
interested, something deeper, more significant and human than he had
guessed, and which he was unable to define....
Janet herself did not know why this intimate view of the mills, of the
people who worked in them had so greatly moved her. All day she thought
of them. And the distant throb of the machinery she felt when her
typewriter was silent meant something to her now--she could not say
what. When she found herself listening for it, her heart beat faster.
She had lived and worked beside it, and it had not existed for her, it
had had no meaning, the mills might have been empty. She had, indeed,
many, many times seen these men and women, boys and girls trooping away
from work, she had strolled through the quarters in which they lived,
speculated on the lands from which they had come; but she had never
really thought of them as human beings, individuals, with problems and
joys and sorrows and hopes and fears like her own. Some such discovery
was borne in upon her. And always an essential function of this
revelation, looming larger than ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar.
It was for Ditmar they toiled, in Ditmar's hands were their very
existences, his was the stupendous responsibility and power.
As the afternoon wore, desire to see these toilers once more took
possession of her. From the white cupola perched above the huge mass of
the Clarendon Mill across the water sounded the single stroke of a bell,
and suddenly the air was pulsing with sounds flung back and forth by
the walls lining the river. Seizing her hat and coat, she ran down the
stairs and through the vestibule and along the track by the canal to the
great gates, which her father was in the act of unbarring. She took a
stand beside him, by the gatehouse. Edward showed a mild surprise.
“There ain't anything troubling you--is there, Janet?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“I wanted to see the hands come out,” she said.
Sometimes, as at present, he found Janet's whims unaccountable.
“Well, I should have presumed you'd know what they look like by this
time. You'd better stay right close to me, they're a rough lot, with
no respect or consideration for decent folks--these foreigners. I never
could see why the government lets 'em all come over here.” He put on
the word “foreigners” an emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic
because of its peculiar note of futility. Janet paid no attention to
him. Her ears were strained to catch the rumble of feet descending
the tower stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it came from the
doorway--the first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled the yard
and swept onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge
of the gates. Impossible to realize this as the force which, when
distributed over the great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and
useful task! for it was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of
its swollen powers, menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold. It seemed
to Janet indeed a torrent as she clung to the side of the gatehouse
as one might cling to the steep bank of a mountain brook after a
cloud-burst. And suddenly she had plunged into it. The desire was
absurd, perhaps, but not to be denied,--the desire to mix with it, feel
it, be submerged and swept away by it, losing all sense of identity. She
heard her father call after her, faintly--the thought crossed her mind
that his appeals were always faint,--and then she was being carried
along the canal, eastward, the pressure relaxing somewhat when the
draining of the side streets began.
She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams
met and mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington
and the Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations,
hurried thither, reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until
she had gained the middle, where she stood grasping the rail. The great
structure was a-tremble from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway
overrun with workers, dodging between trolleys and trucks,--some darting
nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along the steel girders. Doffer boys
romped and whistled, young girls in jaunty, Faber Street clothes and
flowered hats, linked to one another for protection, chewed gum and
joked, but for the most part these workers were silent, the apathy of
their faces making a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their
feet and set intentness of their bodies as they sped homeward to the
tenements. And the clothes of these were drab, save when the occasional
colour of a hooded peasant's shawl, like the slightly faded tints of an
old master, lit up a group of women. Here, going home to their children,
were Italian mothers bred through centuries to endurance and patience;
sallow Jewesses, gaunt, bearded Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and
wrinkled brows, broad-faced Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy
Italian men and pale, blond Germans mingled with muddy Syrians and
nondescript Canadians. And suddenly the bridge was empty, the army
vanished as swiftly as it came!
Janet turned. Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball
of fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent. The delicate lines
of the upper bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an
instant the cupola of the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above
floated in the azure a cloud of pink jeweller's cotton. Even as she
strove to fix these colours in her mind they vanished, the western sky
faded to magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor of the river darkened,
on either side pale lights sparkled from the windows of the mills, while
down the deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent suds from
the washing of the wools. It was given to her to know that which
an artist of living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of
things....