The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily
are called “spiritual,” though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning
of the term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire
organism. It left her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness,
brought her nearer to high discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice
out of the past called upon her to forego, a voice somehow identified
with her father! It was faint, ineffectual. In obeying it, would she
not lose all life had to give? When she came in to supper her father was
concerned about her because, instead of walking home with him she had
left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers. Her
evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his
comprehension. And how could she explain the motives that led to it? She
was sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions
the something within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and
more rebellious, more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a
nature timorous and less vitalized.
After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the
spirit of adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already
thronging with people. It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered,
and she wandered from window to window until she found herself staring
at a suit of blue cloth hung on a form, beneath which was a card that
read, “Marked down to $20.” And suddenly the suggestion flashed into her
mind, why shouldn't she buy it? She had the money, she needed a new suit
for the winter, the one she possessed was getting shabby...but behind
the excuse of necessity was the real reason triumphantly proclaiming
itself--she would look pretty in it, she would be transformed, she would
be buying a new character to which she would have to live up. The
old Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit would
announce to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released
all those longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become
insupportable! This was what the purchase meant, a change of existence
as complete as that between the moth and the butterfly; and the
realization of this fact, of the audacity she was resolved to commit
made her hot as she gazed at the suit. It was modest enough, yet it had
a certain distinction of cut, it looked expensive: twenty dollars was
not cheap, to be sure, but as the placard announced, it had the air
of being much more costly--even more costly than thirty dollars, which
seemed fabulous. Though she strove to remain outwardly calm, her heart
beat rapidly as she entered the store and asked for the costume, and
was somewhat reassured by the comportment of the saleswoman, who did not
appear to think the request preposterous, to regard her as a spendthrift
and a profligate. She took down the suit from the form and led Janet to
a cabinet in the back of the shop, where it was tried on.
“It's worth every bit of thirty dollars,” she heard the woman say, “but
we've had it here for some time, and it's no use for our trade. You
can't sell anything like that in Hampton, there's no taste here, it's
too good, it ain't showy enough. My, it fits you like it was made for
you, and it's just your style--and you can see it wants a lady to wear
it. Your old suit is too tight--I guess you've filled out some since you
bought it.”
She turned Janet around and around, patting the skirt here and there,
and then stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression
almost rapturous. Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror
and buttoned up the coat. Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned?
this image she beheld an illusion? or did she really look different,
distinguished? and if not beautiful--alluring? She had had a momentary
apprehension, almost sickening, that she would be too conspicuous, but
the saleswoman had anticipated that objection with the magical word
“lady.”
“I'll take it,” she announced.
“Well, you couldn't have done better if you'd gone to Boston,” declared
the woman. “It's one chance in a thousand. Will you wear it?”
“Yes,” said Janet faintly.... “Just put my old suit in a box, and I'll
call for it in an hour.”
The woman's sympathetic smile followed her as she left the shop. She
had an instant of hesitation, of an almost panicky desire to go back and
repair her folly, ere it was too late. Why had she taken her money with
her that evening, if not with some deliberate though undefined purpose?
But she was ashamed to face the saleswoman again, and her elation was
not to be repressed--an elation optically presented by a huge electric
sign on the farther side of the street that flashed through all the
colours of the spectrum, surrounded by running fire like the running
fire in her soul. Deliciously self-conscious, her gaze fixed ahead, she
pressed through the Wednesday night crowds, young mill men and women in
their best clothes, housewives and fathers of families with children
and bundles. In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement
staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read. “Five
Millionaire Directors Indicted in New York,” “State Treasurer Accused
of Graft,” “Murdock Fortune Contested by Heirs.” The phrases seemed
meaningless, and she hurried on again.... She was being noticed! A man
looked at her, twice, the first glance accidental, the second arresting,
appealing, subtly flattering, agitating--she was sure he had turned and
was following her. She hastened her steps. It was wicked, what she
was doing, but she gloried in it; and even the sight, in burning
red letters, of Gruber's Cafe failed to bring on a revulsion by its
association with her sister Lise. The fact that Lise had got drunk
there meant nothing to her now. She gazed curiously at the illuminated,
orange-coloured panes separated by curving leads, at the design of a
harp in green, at the sign “Ladies' Entrance”; listened eagerly to
the sounds of voices and laughter that came from within. She looked
cautiously over her shoulder, a shadow appeared, she heard a voice, low,
insinuating....
Four blocks farther down she stopped. The man was no longer following
her. She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to
Eda's--not quite. Of late her conscience had reproached her about
Eda, Janet had neglected her. She told herself she was afraid of Eda's
uncanny and somewhat nauseating flair for romance; and to show Eda the
new suit, though she would relish her friend's praise, would be the
equivalent of announcing an affair of the heart which she, Janet, would
have indignantly to deny. She was not going to Eda's. She knew now where
she was going. A prepared but hitherto undisclosed decree of fate had
bade her put money in her bag that evening, directed her to the shop to
buy the dress, and would presently impel her to go to West Street--nay,
was even now so impelling her. Ahead of her were the lights of the
Chippering Mill, in her ears was the rhythmic sound of the looms working
of nights on the Bradlaugh order. She reached the canal. The white arc
above the end of the bridge cast sharp, black shadows of the branches of
the trees on the granite, the thousand windows of the mill shone yellow,
reflected in the black water. Twice she started to go, twice she paused,
held by the presage of a coming event, a presage that robbed her of
complete surprise when she heard footsteps on the bridge, saw the figure
of a man halting at the crown of the arch to look back at the building
he had left, his shoulders squared, his hand firmly clasping the rail.
Her heart was throbbing with the looms, and yet she stood motionless,
until he turned and came rapidly down the slope of the arch and stopped
in front of her. Under the arc lamp it was almost as bright as day.
“Miss Bumpus!” he exclaimed.
“Mr. Ditmar” she said.
“Were you--were you coming to the office?”
“I was just out walking,” she told him. “I thought you were in Boston.”
“I came home,” he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never
leaving her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back
again to her face. “I got here on the seven o'clock train, I wanted to
see about those new Blubbers.”
“They finished setting them up this afternoon,” she said.
“How did you know?”
“I asked Mr. Orcutt about it--I thought you might telephone.”
“You're a wonder,” was his comment. “Well, we've got a running start
on that order,” and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill.
“Everything going full speed ahead. When we put it through I guess I'll
have to give you some of the credit.”
“Oh, I haven't done anything,” she protested.
“More than you think. You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't
get along without you.” His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices
of those who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone. It
sounded absurd, yet it did not repel her: something within her responded
to it. “Which way were you going?” he inquired.
“Home,” she said.
“Where do you live?”
“In Fillmore Street.” And she added with a touch of defiance: “It's a
little street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street.”
“Oh yes,” he said vaguely, as though he had not understood. “I'll come
with you as far as the bridge--along the canal. I've got so much to say
to you.”
“Can't you say it to-morrow?”
“No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many
interruptions, I mean. And then, you never give me a chance.”
She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her. He had proposed
the route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize
them, and her pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the
sweet allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come
out to seek and by a strange fatality found--since he had appeared
on the bridge almost as soon as she reached it. The sense of fate was
strong upon her. Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had
read of him that day, to the added impression of his power conveyed
by the trip through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than ever in her
consciousness.
“What do you want to say?” she asked.
“Oh, lots of things.”
She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently
but firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a
power stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm
seemed to burn where he touched her.
“Have I done something to offend you?” she heard him say. “Or is it
because you don't like me?”
“I'm not sure whether I like you or not,” she told him. “I don't like
seeing you--this way. And why should you want to know me and see me
outside of the office? I'm only your stenographer.”
“Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met.
You don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself.”
“I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any
longer,” she informed him.
“For God's sake, why?” he exclaimed. “I've been afraid of that. Don't
go--I don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful--I won't get you talked
about.”
“Talked about!” She tore herself away from him. “Why should you get me
talked about?” she cried.
He was frightened. “No, no,” he stammered, “I didn't mean--”
“What did you mean?”
“Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we
shouldn't be friends. I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our
friendship the subject of gossip.”
Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and
penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over
him.
“Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any
advantages--and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper
about you today--Mr. Caldwell gave it to me--”
“Did you like it?” he interrupted, naively.
“Well, in some places it was rather funny.”
“Funny? How?”
“Oh, I don't know.” She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic
lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell. “I liked it, but I thought it
praised you too much, it didn't criticize you enough.”
He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing.
From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got
anything but flattery.
“I want you to criticize me,” he said.
But she went on relentlessly:--“When I read in that article how
successful you were, and how you'd got everything you'd started out
to get, and how some day you might be treasurer and president of the
Chippering Mill, well--” Despairing of giving adequate expression to her
meaning, she added, “I didn't see how we could be friends.”
“You wanted me for a friend?” he interrupted eagerly.
“I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly. But
I didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived--in a little
flat that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a
tenement. It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of
cooking. You couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is?
And you wouldn't care to be talked about yourself, either,” she added
vehemently.
This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words.
“Listen!” he urged. “I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and
honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on
you. And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I
thought of you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to
put it over.'”
She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to
herself, to take her arm again.
“How could I help you?”
“Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of
thinking for me, and you can help me by just being there. I can't
explain it, but I feel somehow that things will go right. I've come to
depend on you.”
He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had
not intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in
dealing with the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had
apparently abandoned him. He was appalled at the possibility of losing
her.
“I've never met a woman like you,” he went on, as she remained silent.
“You're different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are.” His
voice was low, caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder
pressed against her shoulder. “I've never had a woman friend before,
I've never wanted one until now.”
She wondered about his wife.
“You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains.”
“Oh, is that why?” she exclaimed.
“You're beautiful,” he whispered. “It's queer, but I didn't know it at
first. You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you.”
They had come almost to Warren Street. Suddenly realizing that they were
standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end
of the bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently.
“Let's walk back a little way,” he proposed.
“I must go home--it's late.”
“It's only nine o'clock.”
“I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me. Good night.”
“Just one more turn!” he pleaded.
But she shook her head, backing away from him.
“You'll see me to-morrow,” she told him. She didn't know why she said
that. She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her
shoulder; her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of
music was in her ears, the lights sparkled. She had had an adventure,
at last, an adventure that magically had transformed her life! She was
beautiful! No one had ever told her that before. And he had said that he
needed her. She smiled as, with an access of tenderness, in spite of
his experience and power she suddenly felt years older than Ditmar. She
could help him!...
She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street.
“I hope I haven't kept you waiting,” she said.
“Oh no, we don't close until ten,” answered the saleswoman. She was
seated quietly sewing under the lamp.
“I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried
this?” Janet asked.
The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as
she rose, brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face. She felt that
her secret had been guessed. The change effected, Janet went homeward
swiftly, to encounter, on the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise,
whose attention was immediately attracted by the bundle.
“What have you got there, angel face?” she demanded.
“A new suit,” said Janet.
“You don't tell me--where'd you get it? at the Paris?”
“No, at Dowling's.”
“Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!”
“Well, what if it was?”
Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of
whistling through her teeth.
“Twenty bucks! Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next. Well,
as sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when they
first knocked it down I said to Sadie, 'those are the rags Janet would
buy if she had the ready.' Have you got another raise out of Ditmar?”
“If I have, it isn't any business of yours,” Janet retorted. “I've got a
right to do as I please with my own money.”
“Oh sure,” said Lise, and added darkly: “I guess Ditmar likes to see you
look well.”
After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when
they reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that
Janet had bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it. And finally, when
they had got to bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against
this new expression of the sordidness and lack of privacy in which
she was forced to live, made the more intolerable by the close, sultry
darkness of the room and the snoring of Lise.
In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness
during the ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness
and alertness. It had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note
had somehow become exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life;
and Lise's sarcastic comments as to the probable reasons why she did
not put on the new suit had host their power of exasperation. Janet
compromised, wearing a blouse of china silk hitherto reserved for
“best.” The day was bright, and she went rapidly toward the mill,
glorying in the sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air; and her
thoughts were not so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of which
he was the medium. She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that.
When she reached the office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she
took off her hat and jacket and began to sort out the mail. And she had
to calm herself with the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar
had undergone no change. She had merely met him by the canal, and he
had talked to her. That was all. He had, of course, taken her arm: it
tingled when she remembered it. But when he suddenly entered the room
her heart gave a bound. He closed the door, he took off his hat, and
stood gazing at her--while she continued arranging letters. Presently
she was forced to glance at him. His bearing, his look, his confident
smile all proclaimed that he, at least, believed things to be changed.
He glowed with health and vigour, with an aggressiveness from which she
shrank, yet found delicious.
“How are you this morning?” he said at last--this morning as
distinguished from all other mornings.
“I'm well, as usual,” she answered. She herself was sometimes surprised
by her ability to remain outwardly calm.
“Why did you run away from me last night?”
“I didn't run away, I had to go home,” she said, still arranging the
letters.
“We could have had a little walk. I don't believe you had to go home at
all. You just wanted an excuse to get away from me.”
“I didn't need an excuse,” she told him. He moved toward her, but she
took a paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room.
“I thought we were going to be friends,” he said.
“Being friends doesn't mean being foolish,” she retorted. “And Mr.
Orcutt's waiting to see you.”
“Let him wait.”
He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the
typewritten words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as
grasping the meaning of them. From time to time he glanced up at Janet
as she flitted about the room. By George, she was more desirable than he
had ever dared to imagine! He felt temporarily balked, but hopeful. On
his way to the mill he had dwelt with Epicurean indulgence on this sight
of her, and he had not been disappointed. He had also thought that he
might venture upon more than the mere feasting of his eyes, yet found
an inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means absolutely
repulsed him. Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle
transformation. There could be no doubt of that. She was almost
coquettish. His eyes lingered. The china silk blouse was slightly open
at the neck, suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the
outline of her shoulders. Overcome by an impulse he could not control,
he got up and went toward her, but she avoided him.
“I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come,” she said, rather breathlessly, as
she reached the door and opened it. Ditmar halted in his steps at
the sight of the tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the
threshold.
Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other.
“I've been waiting for you,” he said, after a moment, “the rest of that
lot didn't come in this morning. I've telephoned to the freight agent.”
Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly. Orcutt repeated the information.
“Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them.”
“I'm doing that,” replied the conscientious Orcutt.
“How's everything else going?” Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for
geniality. “You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear
yourself out.”
Mr. Orcutt was relieved. He had expected an outburst of the exasperation
that lately had characterized his superior. They began to chat. Janet
had escaped.
“Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you
up,” Ditmar informed him.
“She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things,”
Orcutt observed. “And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her
going through the mill with young Caldwell.”
Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held.
“Oh, she went through, did she?”
After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular
musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk.
That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning
to confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve. She sat
by her window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she
was swept by surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were
strangely commingled. A voice within her said, “This can't go on, this
can't go on! It's too terrible! Everyone in the office will notice
it--there will be a scandal. I ought to go away while there is yet
time--to-day.” Though the instinct of flight was strong within her, she
was filled with rebellion at the thought of leaving when Adventure was
flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill across the waters
was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun. She had
made at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was
inconceivable without him.
Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one
hand and what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when,
toward the middle of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning
her to take his letters; and went palpitating, leaving the door open
behind her, seating herself on the far side of the desk, her head bent
over her book. Her neck, where her hair grew in wisps behind her ear,
seemed to burn: Ditmar's glance was focussed there. Her hands were cold
as she wrote.... Then, like a deliverer, she saw young Caldwell coming
in from the outer office, holding a card in his hand which he gave to
Ditmar, who sat staring at it.
“Siddons?” he said. “Who's Siddons?”
Janet, who had risen, spoke up.
“Why, he's been making the Hampton 'survey.' You wrote him you'd see
him--don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?”
“Don't go!” exclaimed Ditmar. “You can't tell what those confounded
reformers will accuse you of if you don't have a witness.”
Janet sat down again. The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating
reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more
or less to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal
of his manner on such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his
dependence, of her own usefulness. Besides, she had been curious about
the 'survey' at the time it was first mentioned, she wished to hear
Ditmar's views concerning it. Mr. Siddons proved to be a small and
sallow young man with a pointed nose and bright, bulbous brown eyes
like a chipmunk's. Indeed, he reminded one of a chipmunk. As he whisked
himself in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused impression of
polite self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion; he had
the air of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring
it, is prepared to deal with it. Janet smiled. She had a sudden impulse
to drop the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he
would jump.
“How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?” he said. “I've been hoping to have this
pleasure.”
“My secretary, Miss Bumpus,” said Ditmar.
Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed. Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his
chair, seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he
opened a drawer of his desk and offered the visitor a cigar.
“Thanks, I don't smoke,” said Mr. Siddons.
Ditmar lit one for himself.
“Now, what can I do for you?” he asked.
“Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough
an examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of
the operatives in the city of Hampton. I'm sure you'd be interested in
hearing something of the situation we found.”
“I suppose you've been through our mills,” said Ditmar.
“No, the fact is--”
“You ought to go through. I think it might interest you,” Ditmar put
a slight emphasis on the pronoun. “We rather pride ourselves on making
things comfortable and healthy for our people.”
“I've no doubt of it--in fact, I've been so informed. It's because
of your concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I
ventured to come and talk to you of how most of them live when they're
at home,” replied Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly. “Perhaps,
though living in Hampton, you don't quite realize what the conditions
are. I know a man who has lived in Boston ten years and who hasn't ever
seen the Bunker Hill monument.”
“The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair,” retorted Ditmar, “anybody
can go there who has enough curiosity and interest. But I don't see how
you can expect me to follow these people home and make them clean
up their garbage and wash their babies. I shouldn't want anybody to
interfere with my private affairs.”
“But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public
menace?” Siddons objected. “Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of
tenements ready to crumble. There are no provisions for foundations,
thickness of walls, size of timbers and columns, and if these houses had
been deliberately erected to make a bonfire they couldn't have answered
the purpose better. If it were not for the danger to life and the pity
of making thousands of families homeless, a conflagration would be a
blessing, although I believe the entire north or south side of the city
would go under certain conditions. The best thing you could do would be
to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding grounds
for disease. In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of
rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases
with only four-foot courts littered with refuse,--houses without light,
without ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are
cooking and eating and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to
put dogs in. You've got some blocks with a density of over five hundred
to the acre, and your average density is considerably over a hundred.”
“Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?” asked
Ditmar.
“That isn't the point,” said Siddons. “The point is that they're bad,
they're dangerous, they're inhuman. If you could go into these tenements
as I have done and see the way some of these people live, it would make
you sick the Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially. You wouldn't
treat cattle that way. In some households of five rooms, including the
kitchen, I found as many as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people
living. You've got an alarming infant death-rate.”
“Isn't it because these people want to live that way?” Ditmar inquired.
“They actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a
pig-sty--they had 'em in Europe. And what do you expect us to do? Buy
land and build flats for them? Inside of a month they'd have all
the woodwork stripped off for kindling, the drainage stopped up, the
bathtubs filled with ashes. I know, because it's been tried.”
Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling,
and his eyes sought Janet's. She avoided them, resenting a little the
assumption of approval she read in them. Her mind, sensitive to new
ideas, had been keenly stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began
patiently to dwell once more on the ill effect of the conditions he had
discovered on the welfare of the entire community. She had never thought
of this. She was surprised that Ditmar should seem to belittle it.
Siddons was a new type in her experience. She could understand and to a
certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him;
he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent most of
his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off Ditmar's
objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as,
“Before we come to that, let me say a word just here.” Ditmar hated
words. His outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not
unlike the futile charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a
smaller and more agile one. With nimble politeness, with an exasperating
air of deference to Ditmar's opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only
to return to the charge; yet, despite a manner and method which, when
contrasted to Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous, Mr. Siddons had a force
and fire of his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he dwelt on the
misery he had seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of his
feeling, Janet began to be moved. It was odd, considering the struggle
for existence of her own family, that these foreigners had remained
outside the range of her sympathy.
“I guess you'll find,” Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, “I guess
you'll find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people
have got millions tucked away. And they send a lot of it to the other
side, they go back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they
manage to buy land. Ask the real estate men. Why, I could show you
a dozen who worked in the mills a few years ago and are capitalists
to-day.”
“I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar,” Siddons gracefully conceded. “But
what does it prove? Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on
ruthless competition. The great majority who are unable to survive the
test pay the price. And the community also pays the price, the state and
nation pay it. And we have this misery on our consciences. I've no doubt
you could show me some who have grown rich, but if you would let me I
could take you to families in desperate want, living in rooms too dark
to read in at midday in clear weather, where the husband doesn't get
more than seven dollars a week when the mills are running full time,
where the woman has to look out for the children and work for the
lodgers, and even with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to
go into the mills to earn money for winter clothing. I've seen enough
instances of this kind to offset the savings bank argument. And even
then, when you have a family where the wife and older children work,
where the babies are put out to board, where there are three and four
lodgers in a room, why do you suppose they live that way? Isn't it in
the hope of freeing themselves ultimately from these very conditions?
And aren't these conditions a disgrace to Hampton and America?”
“Well, what am I to do about it?” Ditmar demanded.
“I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings
in the mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances. That's
more than a good many mills I could mention attempt.”
“You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than
any man in Hampton. You can bring pressure to bear on the city council
to enforce and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a
campaign of public opinion against certain property owners.”
“Yes,” retorted Ditmar, “and what then? You raise the rents, and you
won't get anybody to live in the houses. They'll move out to settlements
like Glendale full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're
accustomed to. What you reformers are actually driving at is that we
should raise wages--isn't it? If we raised wages they'd live like rats
anyway. I give you credit for sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want
you to think I'm not as much interested in the welfare of these people
as you and the men behind you. The trouble is, you only see one side of
this question. When you're in my position, you're up against hard facts.
We can't pay a dubber or a drawing tender any more than he's worth,
whether he has a wife or children in the mills or whether he hasn't.
We're in competition with other mills, we're in competition with the
South. We can't regulate the cost of living. We do our best to make
things right in the mills, and that's all we can do. We can't afford to
be sentimental about life. Competition's got to be the rule, the world's
made that way. Some are efficient and some aren't. Good God, any man
who's had anything to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that
drummed into him hard. You talk about ordinances, laws--there are enough
laws and ordinances in this city and in this state right now. If we
have any more the mills will have to shut down, and these people will
starve--all of 'em.” Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and
he flung his cigar away. “Send me a copy of your survey when it's
published. I'll look it over.”
“Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?” Ditmar
exploded, when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out. “Comes in here to
advise me that it's my business to look out for the whole city of
Hampton. I'd like to see him up against this low-class European labour
trying to run a mill with them. They're here one day and there the next,
they don't know what loyalty is. You've got to drive 'em--if you give
'em an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite your property. Why,
there's nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend on them, I'd
build 'em houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home. As it is, I do
my best, though they don't deserve it,--in slack seasons I run half time
when I oughtn't to be running at all.”
His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation
had been increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the
sympathy on which he had counted. She sat silent, gazing searchingly at
his face.
“What's the matter?” he demanded. “You don't mean to say you agree with
that kind of talk?”
“I was wondering--” she began.
“What?”
“If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to
work in order to keep alive?”
“Understand them! Why not?” he asked.
“Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're
pretty much your own master--and that makes it different. I'm not
blaming you--in your place I'd be the same, I'm sure. But this man,
Siddons, made me think. I've lived like that, you see, I know what it
is, in a way.”
“Not like these foreigners!” he protested.
“Oh, almost as bad,” she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped
suddenly in his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the
startled air of the male who has inadvertently touched off one of the
many hidden springs in the feminine emotional mechanism. “How do you
know what it is to live in a squalid, ugly street, in dark little
rooms that smell of cooking, and not be able to have any of the finer,
beautiful things in life? Unless you'd wanted these things as I've
wanted them, you couldn't know. Oh, I can understand what it would feel
like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!”
“You can!” he exclaimed in amazement. “You!”
“Yes, me. You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry
for them any more than you could feel sorry for me. You want them to
run your mills for you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they
live, and you just want me--for your pleasure.”
He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in
his experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was
not the type of man to be shocked by it. On the contrary, it swept away
his irritation, and as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him
to a fever heat as he approached and stood over her.
“You little--panther!” he whispered. “You want beautiful things, do you?
Well, I'll give 'em to you. I'll take care of you.”
“Do you think I want them from you?” she retorted, almost in tears. “Do
you think I want anybody to take care of me? That shows how little you
know me. I want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I
get.”
Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings.
Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would
indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of
the red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook
her with a wild appeal. “What do I care about any others--I want you!”
such was its message. And against this paradoxical wish to be
conquered, intensified by the magnetic field of his passion, battled her
self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire to be free, to escape now
from a domination the thought of which filled her with terror. She felt
his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers straying along her arm;
for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously powerless. Then the
emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and she sprang
away, dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she stood
swaying.
“Janet, you're killing me,” she heard him say. “For God's sake, why
can't you trust me?”
She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to
twinkle fantastically in the distant mills. Presently she turned. Ditmar
was in his chair. She crossed the room to the electric switch, turning
on the flood of light, picked up her tote-book and sat down again.
“Don't you intend to answer your letters?” she asked.
He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized
the topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely. She experienced a
certain exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took
down his words.