At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension
her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's
ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being
able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a
young woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement
that the leash might break--and then what? Here was a situation, she
knew instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of
possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that
very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to
think about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of
anomalies and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond
her knowledge and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which
is rapidly discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet
to achieve the morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual
instance. Tradition, convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain
in the movies, even her mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the
freedom with which the sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence
her. The thought, however, that she might fundamentally resemble her
sister Lise, despite a fancied superiority, did occasionally shake
her and bring about a revulsion against Ditmar. Janet's problem was in
truth, though she failed so to specialize it, the supreme problem of
our time: what is the path to self-realization? how achieve emancipation
from the commonplace?
Was she in love with Ditmar? The question was distasteful, she avoided
it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to
cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused
in her. It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her
resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that
he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage. Plainly, he did
not intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so,
a profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her
present mood, have led her to refuse. She felt a fine scorn for the
woman who, under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all
a man's worldly goods in return for that which it was her privilege
to give freely; while the notion of servility, of economic
dependence--though she did not so phrase it--repelled her far more than
the possibility of social ruin.
This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton and
Ditmar had nothing to do with that....
Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind,
invaded her dreams. When she likened herself to the other exploited
beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,--of whom Mr.
Siddons had spoken--her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite
ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours.
In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her
and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having
hesitated. A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to
hurt him before she left. At such times, however, unforeseen events
invariably intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans.
One evening at supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have
achieved the comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after
struggle, she gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah
concerning the stove, the condition of which for many months had been a
menace to the welfare of the family. Edward, it appeared, had remarked
mildly on the absence of beans.
“Beans!” Hannah cried. “You're lucky to have any supper at all. I just
wish I could get you to take a look at that oven--there's a hole you can
put your hand through, if you've a mind to. I've done my best, I've made
out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in. He
says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything. A new one'll cost
thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy
it. And the fire-box is most worn through.”
“Well, mother, we'll see what we can do,” said Edward.
“You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do
anything,” retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply.
Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to
time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many
sheets.
“It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with
asthma,” he observed presently. “His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of
Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816,
and fought in the war of 1812. I've told you about him. This Caleb
was born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in
Detroit.... Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction
company. Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's
descendants. He married Sarah Styles” (reading painfully) “'and they had
issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet. John went to Middlebury,
Vermont, and married.'”
Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily.
“A lot of good it does us to have all that information about Eben
Wheeler's asthma!” she complained. “It'll buy us a new stove, I guess.
Him and his old Bumpus papers! If the house burned down over our heads
that's all he'd think of.”
As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's
lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous. Accustomed as
Janet was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency,
it was gradually borne in upon her now--despite a preoccupation with her
own fate--that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in
effect a family crisis of the first magnitude. She was stirred anew
to anger and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be
threatened in its continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when,
glancing at her sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of
self-disgust. Was she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed?
Lise, in her evening finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was
awaiting the hour set for a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the
Boston evening sheet whose glaring red headlines stretched across the
page. When the newspaper fell to her lap a dreamy expression clouded
Lise's eyes. She was thinking of some man! Quickly Janet looked away,
at her father, only to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of
fatuity, she discovered on his face as he bent over the letter once
more. Suddenly she experienced an overwhelming realization of the
desperation of Hannah's plight,--the destiny of spending one's days,
without sympathy, toiling in the confinement of these rooms to supply
their bodily needs. Never had a destiny seemed so appalling. And yet
Janet resented that pity. The effect of it was to fetter and inhibit;
from the moment of its intrusion she was no longer a free agent, to
leave Hampton and Ditmar when she chose. Without her, this family was
helpless. She rose, and picked up some of the dishes. Hannah snatched
them from her hands.
“Leave 'em alone, Janet!” she said with unaccustomed sharpness. “I guess
I ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet.”
And a flash of new understanding came to Janet. The dishes were
vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had
been cheated by fate. A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something
of a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers.... Janet left the room
swiftly, entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out.
Across the street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and
through the window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his
chair, his feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at
the ceiling. When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down
his chair on the floor with a bang.
“Why, it's Miss Janet!” he exclaimed. “How are you this evening, now? I
was just hoping some one would pay me a call.”
Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper
of pessimism, and she was moved to reply:--“You know you were having a
beautiful time, all by yourself.”
“A beautiful time, is it? Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some
young lady a-coming to pay me a visit.”
“Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?”
“Then it's dreaming I am, still,” retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly.
Janet laughed. His tone, though bantering, was respectful. One of the
secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability
to estimate his fellow creatures. His manner of treating Janet, for
instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with
Lise. In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without
arousing her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him
than to attempt to pull wool over his eyes. Janet had the intelligence
to trust him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home
to her with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the
person above all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time
of trouble. It was his great quality. Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his
morning greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in
some unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held
her, and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her
a certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and
self-respect. For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes
as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless
family in the clay-yellow flat across the street. And there was nothing,
she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family. So she
said:--“I've come to see about the stove.”
“Sure,” he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected.
“Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet. I've got a stove here I
know'll suit your mother. It's a Reading, it's almost new. Ye'd better
be having a look at it yourself.”
He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the
store.
“It's in need of a little polish,” he added, as he turned on a light,
“but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal.” He opened
the oven and took off the lids.
“I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves,” she told him. “But I'll
trust your judgment. How much is it?” she inquired hesitatingly.
He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture.
“Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars. If that's
too much--mebbe we can find another.”
“Can you put it in to-morrow morning?” she asked.
“I can that,” he said. She drew out her purse. “Ye needn't be paying for
it all at once,” he protested, laying a hand on her arm. “You won't be
running away.”
“Oh, I'd rather--I have the money,” she declared hurriedly; and she
turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the
bills, how little was left in her purse.
“I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon,” he said, as he escorted
her to the door. And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until
she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful “Goodnight” that had
in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went
straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had
brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been
equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,--a
part which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become
convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was indeed a
bewildering thing....
The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints
continued, Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her
return home in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear
in the role of protector and preserver of the family. She would have
preferred, if possible, to give the stove anonymously. Not that the
expression of Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when
she entered the dining-room and exclaimed: “You hadn't ought to have
gone and done it!”
And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:--“Somebody had to do
it--didn't they? Who else was there?”
“It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things. You'd ought to
save it you'll need it,” Hannah continued illogically.
“It's lucky I had the money,” said Janet.
Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other,
were the explosive expressions of deep feeling. Janet knew that her
mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice. She herself was moved by
Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed
sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation.
“I hope the stove's all right, mother,” she said. “Mr. Tiernan seemed to
think it was a good one.”
“It's a different thing,” declared Hannah. “I was just wondering this
evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the
other. Come and see how nice it looks.”
Janet followed her into the kitchen. As they stood close together gazing
at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a
little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again.
She seized her apron and clapped it to her face.
“You hadn't ought to be made to do it!” she sobbed.
And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their
intercourse. She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the
room....
Supper was an ordeal. Janet did not relish her enthronement as a
heroine, she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her
father, which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie
her affection for him. Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's
took on the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as
compared with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived
in some sort to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder
daughter's act.
“I guess you notice the difference in that pork,” she would exclaim, and
when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah
observed: “As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a
daughter like her!”
Janet squirmed. Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness
was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned
him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him
powerless before her mother's reproaches. After the meal was over he
sat listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured,
pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found
refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy. That
evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner,
untouched.
What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who
also came in for her share of implied reproach. Of late Lise had become
an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to
make this occasion an object lesson. And though parental tenderness had
often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness
in failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite
relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the
nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise,
might do well to cultivate. Lise was equally determined to withhold any
such acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that
Hannah invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with
it another--the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and
ridicules the lack of such knowledge in others. Its implication was made
certain when the two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper.
Lise, feverishly occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the
silence there by inquiring:--“Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy
a stove, too. How much does Ditmar give you, sweetheart?”
Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister. Lise struggled to escape.
“Leave me go” she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was
released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which
had flopped to one side of her head. “I didn't mean nothin', I was only
kiddie' you--what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?”
“I'm not like-you,” said Janet.
“I was only kiddin', I tell you,” insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her
mouth. “Forget it.”
When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to
rock agitatedly. What had really made her angry, she began to perceive,
was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's
intimation concerning Ditmar. Why should she have, in Lise, continually
before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals?
or was Lise a mirror--somewhat tarnished, indeed--in which she read the
truth about herself? For some time Janet had more than suspected that
her sister possessed a new lover--a lover whom she refrained from
discussing; an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her
conquests before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits
with an engaging though cynical freedom. Although the existence of
this gentleman was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet
was inclined to believe him of a type wholly different from his
predecessors; and the fact that his attentions were curiously
intermittent and irregular inclined her to the theory that he was not a
resident of Hampton. What was he like? It revolted her to reflect that
he might in some ways possibly resemble Ditmar. Thus he became the
object of a morbid speculation, especially at such times as this, when
Lise attired herself in her new winter finery and went forth to meet
him. Janet, also, had recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise
the same questionable tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye
of man. The very next Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad
extravagance of the blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window
of The Paris in Faber Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and
admiration of Miss Schuler and herself, and in front of which they had
stood languishing on three successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise
had expended almost the whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple,
on three sides were massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left
ear the wide brim was caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant
paste stones. Shortly after this purchase--the next week, in fact,--The
Paris had alluringly and craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of
$6.29, the very cloak ordained by providence to “go” with the hat. Miss
Schuler declared it would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such
an opportunity but the trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two
more pay-days and endure the suspense arising from the possibility that
some young lady of taste and means might meanwhile become its happy
proprietor. Had not the saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had
it on credit; but she did succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing
Saturday, in having it withdrawn from public gaze. The second Saturday
Lise triumphantly brought the cloak home; a velvet cloak,--if the eyes
could be believed,--velvet bordering on plush, with a dark purple
ground delicately and artistically spotted with a lilac to match the
hat feathers, and edged with a material which--if not too impudently
examined and no questions asked--might be mistaken, by the uninitiated
male, for the fur of a white fox. Both investments had been made,
needless to say, on the strength of Janet's increased salary; and Lise,
when Janet had surprised her before the bureau rapturously surveying the
combination, justified herself with a defiant apology.
“I just had to have something--what with winter coming on,” she
declared, seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back. “You might
as well get your clothes chick, while you're about it--and I didn't have
to dig up twenty bones, neither--nor anything like it--” a reflection on
Janet's most blue suit and her abnormal extravagance. For it was Lise's
habit to carry the war into the enemy's country. “Sadie's dippy about
it--says it puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last
Sunday's supplement. Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?” and she
wheeled around for her sister's inspection.
“If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the
rain.”
“What's chewin' you now?” demanded Lise. She was not lacking in
imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its
purpose of summoning up a somewhat abject image of herself in wet velvet
and bedraggled feathers--an image suggestive of a certain hunted type
of woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror. And she was the
more resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this
suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like
a canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes. She
swung on Janet furiously.
“I get you, all right!” she cried. “I guess I know what's eatin' you!
You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy
what I need. You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of
them Polak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look
nice.”
And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:--“If
I were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an
introduction. You asked me what I thought. I don't care about the
money!” she exclaimed passionately. “I've often told you you were pretty
enough without having to wear that kind of thing--to make men stare at
you.”
“I want to know if I don't always look like a lady! And there's no man
living would try to pick me up more than once.” The nasal note in Lise's
voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger.
“You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher.”
“I'd rather look like a floorwasher than--than another kind of woman,”
Janet declared.
“Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart,” said Lise. “You needn't be
scared anybody will pick you up.”
“I'm not,” said Janet....
This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the
stove. Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also
been moved to protest; futile protest. Its only effect on Lise was to
convince her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to
make her more secretive and sullen than ever before.
“Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter,” Hannah said
dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after
Lise had gone out. “I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and
blood--I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it. I guess it's what the
minister in Dolton used to call a visitation. I suppose I deserve it,
but sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might
have been able to put a stop to the way she's going on. She ain't like
any of the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find
out. She just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong. Well,
the world has got all jumbled up--it beats me.”
Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink.
“I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit
hopin'. I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I
could honestly wish him to have her.”
“Mother!” protested Janet. Sometimes, in those conversations, she was
somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister.
“Well, I don't,” insisted Hannah, “that's a fact. I'll tell you what
she looks like in that hat and cloak--a bad woman. I don't say she is--I
don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my
daughter to look like one.”
“Oh, Lise can take care of herself,” Janet said, in spite of certain
recent misgivings.
“This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one,” declared Hannah who,
from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels.
And after a moment's silence she inquired: “Who's this man that's payin'
her attention now?”
“I don't know,” replied Janet, “I don't know that there's anybody.”
“I guess there is,” said Hannah. “I used to think that that Wiley was
low enough, but I could see him. It was some satisfaction. I could know
the worst, anyhow.... I guess it's about time for another flood.”
This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so
frequent in her recent experience. Her mother had used the words “right”
and “wrong.” But what was “right,” or “wrong?” There was no use asking
Hannah, who--she perceived--was as confused and bewildered as herself.
Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong? because,
if she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be
punished in an after life? She was not at all sure whether she believed
in an after life,--a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled
her friend Eda Rawle, who had “got religion” from an itinerant
evangelist and was now working off, in a “live” church, some of the
emotional idealism which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young
unmarried women of a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks.
This was not, of course, Janet's explanation of the change in her
friend, of whom she now saw less and less. They had had arguments,
in which neither gained any ground. For the first time in their
intercourse, ideas had come between them, Eda having developed a
surprising self-assertion when her new convictions were attacked,
a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that Janet found neither
inspiring nor convincing. She resented being prayed for, and an Eda
fervent in good works bored her more than ever. Eda was deeply pained
by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her heroine-worship
persisted. Her continued regard for her friend might possibly be
compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has developed a
hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte.
Janet was not wholly without remorse. She valued Eda's devotion, she
sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that
it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in
any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had felt instinctively
from the first that the friendship was not founded on, mental harmony,
and now it was brought home to her that Eda's solution could never be
hers. Eda would have been thrilled on learning of Ditmar's attentions,
would have advocated the adoption of a campaign leading up to matrimony.
In matrimony, for Eda, the soul was safe. Eda would have been horrified
that Janet should have dallied with any other relationship; God would
punish her. Janet, in her conflict between alternate longing and
repugnance, was not concerned with the laws and retributions of God.
She felt, indeed, the need of counsel, and knew not where to turn for
it,--the modern need for other than supernatural sanctions. She did
not resist her desire for Ditmar because she believed, in the
orthodox sense, that it was wrong, but because it involved a loss of
self-respect, a surrender of the personality from the very contemplation
of which she shrank. She was a true daughter of her time.
On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his
correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived
and interrupted him. Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to
file away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from
her work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder. The two
men were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that
struck her as dramatic. Both were vital figures, dominant types which
had survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle
for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been
projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize.
She surveyed Holster critically. He was short, heavily built, with an
almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and
kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun. His nasal voice was
complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by
gestures. The veins stood out on his forehead. She wondered what his
history had been. She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face
she was quick to detect a look she had seen before--a contraction of
the eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw. That look, and the
peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a
responsive sense of championship.
“All right, Ditmar,” she heard the other exclaim. “I tell you again
you'll never be able to pull it off.”
Ditmar's laugh was short, defiant.
“Why not?” he asked.
“Why not! Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January.”
“What's that got to do with it?” Ditmar demanded.
“You'll see--you'll remember what I told you fellows at the conference
after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor
insisted on signing it. I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a
fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in
Hampton,--didn't I? I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and
make all the other strikes we've had here look like fifty cents. Didn't
I say that? Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool
people. You remember? You were the man who stood out against it, and
they listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing
about it. Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that
law goes into effect. You'll see what'll happen! You'll never be able to
fill that Bradlaugh order in God's world.”
“Oh hell,” retorted Ditmar, contemptuously. “You're always for lying
down, Holster. Why don't you hand over your mill to the unions and go to
work on a farm? You might as well, if you're going to let the unions run
the state. Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony?
When they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to
fifty-four and we kept on payin' 'em for fifty-six, against my advice,
what happened? Did they thank us? I guess not. Were they contented? Not
on your life. They went right on agitating, throwing scares into the
party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,--and now
it's fifty-four hours. It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then
we'll have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South
and donate our mills to the state for insane asylums.”
“No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side.
They're getting sick of the unions now.”
Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it.
“The public!” he exclaimed contemptuously. “A whole lot of good they'll
do us.”
Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost
touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the
Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar. She held her breath, her blood
ran faster,--the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal.
“All right--remember what I say--wait and see where you come out with
that order.” Holster's voice trembled with anger. He hesitated, and
left the office abruptly. Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and
then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and
seated himself in his chair. His eyes, still narrowed, had in them
a gleam of triumph that thrilled her. Combat seemed to stimulate and
energize him.
“He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with
the Clarendon,” Ditmar exclaimed. “Well, he'll have to guess again. I've
got his number.” He began to turn over his letters. “Let's see, where
were we? Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the
door.”
Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a
pencil on a pad. The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea
of Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the
Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever
that hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that
strange surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had
experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against
him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited,
had wholly disappeared. Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she,
somehow, enlisted once again on his side.
“By the way,” he said abruptly, “you won't mention this--I know.”
“Won't mention what?” she asked.
“This matter about the pay envelopes--that we don't intend to continue
giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-four when this law
goes into effect. They're like animals, most of 'em, they don't reason,
and it might make trouble if it got out now. You understand. They'd have
time to brood over it, to get the agitators started. When the time comes
they may kick a little, but they'll quiet down. And it'll teach 'em a
lesson.”
“I never mention anything I hear in this office,” she told him.
“I know you don't,” he assured her, apologetically. “I oughtn't to have
said that--it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it
spoken of. You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator
might make by getting them stirred up? You can see what it means to me,
with this order on my hands. I've staked everything on it.”
“But--when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that
they are not receiving their full wages--as Mr. Holster said?” Janet
inquired.
“Why, they may grumble a little--but I'll be on the lookout for any
move. I'll see to that. I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can
push this business of shorter hours and equal pay. It's the unskilled
workers who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not
organized. If we can keep out the agitators, we're all right. Even then,
I'll show 'em they can't come in here and exploit my operatives.”
In the mood in which she found herself his self-confidence, his
aggressiveness continued to inspire and even to agitate her, to compel
her to accept his point of view.
“Why,” he continued, “I trust you as I never trusted anybody else. I've
told you that before. Ever since you've been here you've made life a
different thing for me--just by your being here. I don't know what
I'd do without you. You've got so much sense about things--about
people,--and I sometimes think you've got almost the same feeling about
these mills that I have. You didn't tell me you went through the mills
with Caldwell the other day,” he added, accusingly.
“I--I forgot,” said Janet. “Why should I tell--you?” She knew that all
thought of Holster had already slipped from his mind. She did not look
up. “If you're not going to finish your letters,” she said, a little
faintly, “I've got some copying to do.”
“You're a deep one,” he said. And as he turned to the pile of
correspondence she heard him sigh. He began to dictate. She took down
his sentences automatically, scarcely knowing what she was writing; he
was making love to her as intensely as though his words had been the
absolute expression of his desire instead of the commonplace mediums of
commercial intercourse. Presently he stopped and began fumbling in one
of the drawers of his desk.
“Where is the memorandum I made last week for Percy and Company?”
“Isn't it there?” she asked.
But he continued to fumble, running through the papers and disarranging
them until she could stand it no longer.
“You never know where to find anything,” she declared, rising and
darting around the desk and bending over the drawer, her deft
fingers rapidly separating the papers. She drew forth the memorandum
triumphantly.
“There!” she exclaimed. “It was right before your eyes.”
As she thrust it at him his hand closed over hers. She felt him drawing
her, irresistibly.
“Janet!” he said. “For God's sake--you're killing me--don't you know it?
I can't stand it any longer!”
“Don't!” she whispered, terror-stricken, straining away from him. “Mr.
Ditmar--let me go!”
A silent struggle ensued, she resisting him with all the aroused
strength and fierceness of her nature. He kissed her hair, her
neck,--she had never imagined such a force as this, she felt herself
weakening, welcoming the annihilation of his embrace.
“Mr. Ditmar!” she cried. “Somebody will come in.”
Her fingers sank into his neck, she tried to hurt him and by a final
effort flung herself free and fled to the other side of the room.
“You little--wildcat!” she heard him exclaim, saw him put his
handkerchief to his neck where her fingers had been, saw a red stain on
it. “I'll have you yet!”
But even then, as she stood leaning against the wall, motionless save
for the surging of her breast, there was about her the same strange,
feral inscrutableness. He was baffled, he could not tell what she was
thinking. She seemed, unconquered, to triumph over her disarray and the
agitation of her body. Then, with an involuntary gesture she raised
her hands to her hair, smoothing it, and without seeming haste left the
room, not so much as glancing at him, closing the door behind her.
She reached her table in the outer office and sat down, gazing out
of the window. The face of the world--the river, the mills, and the
bridge--was changed, tinged with a new and unreal quality. She, too,
must be changed. She wasn't, couldn't be the same person who had entered
that room of Ditmar's earlier in the afternoon! Mr. Caldwell made a
commonplace remark, she heard herself answer him. Her mind was numb,
only her body seemed swept by fire, by emotions--emotions of fear, of
anger, of desire so intense as to make her helpless. And when at length
she reached out for a sheet of carbon paper her hand trembled so she
could scarcely hold it. Only by degrees was she able to get sufficient
control of herself to begin her copying, when she found a certain relief
in action--her hands flying over the keys, tearing off the finished
sheets, and replacing them with others. She did not want to think, to
decide, and yet she knew--something was trying to tell her that the
moment for decision had come. She must leave, now. If she stayed on,
this tremendous adventure she longed for and dreaded was inevitable.
Fear and fascination battled within her. To run away was to deny
life; to remain, to taste and savour it. She had tasted it--was it
sweet?--that sense of being swept away, engulfed by an elemental power
beyond them both, yet in them both? She felt him drawing her to him, and
she struggling yet inwardly longing to yield. And the scarlet stain on
his handkerchief--when she thought of that her blood throbbed, her face
burned.
At last the door of the inner office opened, and Ditmar came out and
stood by the rail. His voice was queer, scarcely recognizable.
“Miss Bumpus--would you mind coming into my room a moment, before you
leave?” he said.
She rose instantly and followed him, closing the door behind her, but
standing at bay against it, her hand on the knob.
“I'm not going to touch you--you needn't be afraid,” he said. Reassured
by the unsteadiness of his voice she raised her eyes to perceive that
his face was ashy, his manner nervous, apprehensive, conciliatory,--a
Ditmar she had difficulty in recognizing. “I didn't mean to frighten,
to offend you,” he went on. “Something got hold of me. I was crazy, I
couldn't help it--I won't do it again, if you'll stay. I give you my
word.”
She did not reply. After a pause he began again, repeating himself.
“I didn't mean to do it. I was carried away--it all happened before I
knew. I--I wouldn't frighten you that way for anything in the world.”
Still she was silent.
“For God's sake, speak to me!” he cried. “Say you forgive me--give me
another chance!”
But she continued to gaze at him with widened, enigmatic eyes--whether
of reproach or contempt or anger he could not say. The situation
transcended his experience. He took an uncertain step toward her, as
though half expecting her to flee, and stopped.
“Listen!” he pleaded. “I can't talk to you here. Won't you give me a
chance to explain--to put myself right? You know what I think of
you, how I respect and--admire you. If you'll only let me see you
somewhere--anywhere, outside of the office, for a little while, I can't
tell you how much I'd appreciate it. I'm sure you don't understand how
I feel--I couldn't bear to lose you. I'll be down by the canal--near the
bridge--at eight o'clock to-night. I'll wait for you. You'll come? Say
you'll come, and give me another chance!”
“Aren't you going to finish your letters?” she asked.
He stared at her in sheer perplexity. “Letters!” he exclaimed. “Damn the
letters! Do you think I could write any letters now?”
As a faint ray in dark waters, a gleam seemed to dance in the shadows
of her eyes, yet was gone so swiftly that he could not be sure of having
seen it. Had she smiled?
“I'll be there,” he cried. “I'll wait for you.”
She turned from him, opened the door, and went out.
That evening, as Janet was wiping the dishes handed her by her mother,
she was repeating to herself “Shall I go--or shan't I?”--just as if
the matter were in doubt. But in her heart she was convinced of its
predetermination by some power other than her own volition. With this
feeling, that she really had no choice, that she was being guided and
impelled, she went to her bedroom after finishing her task. The hands
of the old dining-room clock pointed to quarter of eight, and Lise had
already made her toilet and departed. Janet opened the wardrobe, looked
at the new blue suit hanging so neatly on its wire holder, hesitated,
and closed the door again. Here, at any rate, seemed a choice. She would
not wear that, to-night. She tidied her hair, put on her hat and coat,
and went out; but once in the street she did not hurry, though she knew
the calmness she apparently experienced to be false: the calmness of
fatality, because she was obeying a complicated impulse stronger than
herself--an impulse that at times seemed mere curiosity. Somewhere,
removed from her immediate consciousness, a storm was raging; she
was aware of a disturbance that reached her faintly, like the distant
throbbing of the looms she heard when she turned from Faber into West
Street She had not been able to eat any supper. That throbbing of the
looms in the night! As it grew louder and louder the tension within her
increased, broke its bounds, set her heart to throbbing too--throbbing
wildly. She halted, and went on again, precipitately, but once more
slowed her steps as she came to West Street and the glare of light at
the end of the bridge; at a little distance, under the chequered shadows
of the bare branches, she saw something move--a man, Ditmar. She stood
motionless as he hurried toward her.
“You've come! You've forgiven me?” he asked.
“Why were you--down there?” she asked.
“Why? Because I thought--I thought you wouldn't want anybody to know--”
It was quite natural that he should not wish to be seen; although she
had no feeling of guilt, she herself did not wish their meeting known.
She resented the subterfuge in him, but she made no comment because his
perplexity, his embarrassment were gratifying to her resentment, were
restoring her self-possession, giving her a sense of power.
“We can't stay here,” he went on, after a moment. “Let's take a little
walk--I've got a lot to say to you. I want to put myself right.” He
tried to take her arm, but she avoided him. They started along the canal
in the direction of the Stanley Street bridge. “Don't you care for me a
little?” he demanded.
“Why should I?” she parried.
“Then--why did you come?”
“To hear what you had to say.”
“You mean--about this afternoon?”
“Partly,” said Janet.
“Well--we'll talk it all over. I wanted to explain about this afternoon,
especially. I'm sorry--”
“Sorry!” she exclaimed.
The vehemence of her rebuke--for he recognized it as such--took him
completely aback. Thus she was wont, at the most unexpected moments,
to betray the passion within her, the passion that made him sick with
desire. How was he to conquer a woman of this type, who never took
refuge in the conventional tactics of her sex, as he had known them?
“I didn't mean that,” he explained desperately. “My God--to feel you,
to have you in my arms--! I was sorry because I frightened you. But when
you came near me that way I just couldn't help it. You drove me to it.”
“Drove you to it!”
“You don't understand, you don't know how--how wonderful you are. You
make me crazy. I love you, I want you as I've never wanted any woman
before--in a different way. I can't explain it. I've got so that I can't
live without you.” He flung his arm toward the lights of the mills.
“That--that used to be everything to me, I lived for it. I don't say
I've been a saint--but I never really cared anything about any woman
until I knew you, until that day I went through the office and saw you
what you were. You don't understand, I tell you. I'm sorry for what I
did to-day because it offended you--but you drove me to it. Most of the
time you seem cold, you're like an iceberg, you make me think you hate
me, and then all of a sudden you'll be kind, as you were the other
night, as you seemed this afternoon--you make me think I've got a
chance, and then, when you came near me, when you touched my hand--why,
I didn't know what I was doing. I just had to have you. A man like me
can't stand it.”
“Then I'd better go away,” she said. “I ought to have gone long ago.”
“Why?” he cried. “Why? What's your reason? Why do you want to ruin my
life? You've--you've woven yourself into it--you're a part of it. I
never knew what it was to care for a woman before, I tell you. There's
that mill,” he repeated, naively. “I've made it the best mill in the
country, I've got the biggest order that ever came to any mill--if you
went away I wouldn't care a continental about it. If you went away I
wouldn't have any ambition left. Because you're a part of it, don't you
see? You--you sort of stand for it now, in my mind. I'm not literary,
I can't express what I'd like to say, but sometimes I used to think of
that mill as a woman--and now you've come along--” Ditmar stopped, for
lack of adequate eloquence.
She smiled in the darkness at his boyish fervour,--one of the aspects of
the successful Ditmar, the Ditmar of great affairs, that appealed to her
most strongly. She was softened, touched; she felt, too, a responsive
thrill to such a desire as his. Yet she did not reply. She could not.
She was learning that emotion is never simple. And some inhibition, the
identity of which was temporarily obscured still persisted, pervading
her consciousness....
They were crossing the bridge at Stanley Street, now deserted, and by
common consent they paused in the middle of it, leaning on the rail. The
hideous chocolate factory on the point was concealed by the night,--only
the lights were there, trembling on the surface of the river. Against
the flushed sky above the city were silhouetted the high chimneys of the
power plant. Ditmar's shoulder touched hers. He was still pleading, but
she seemed rather to be listening to the symphony of the unseen waters
falling over the dam. His words were like that, suggestive of a torrent
into which she longed to fling herself, yet refrained, without knowing
why. Her hands tightened on the rail; suddenly she let it go, and led
the way toward the unfrequented district of the south side. It was the
road to Silliston, but she had forgotten that. Ditmar, regaining her
side, continued his pleading. He spoke of his loneliness, which he had
never realized. He needed her. And she experienced an answering pang. It
still seemed incredible that he, too, who had so much, should feel that
gnawing need for human sympathy and understanding that had so often made
her unhappy. And because of the response his need aroused in her she did
not reflect whether he could fulfil her own need, whether he could
ever understand her; whether, at any time, she could unreservedly pour
herself out to him.
“I don't see why you want me,” she interrupted him at last. “I've never
had any advantages, I don't know anything. I've never had a chance to
learn. I've told you that before.”
“What difference does that make? You've got more sense than any woman I
ever saw,” he declared.
“It makes a great deal of difference to me,” she insisted--and the sound
of these words on her own lips was like a summons arousing her from
a dream. The sordidness of her life, its cruel lack of opportunity in
contrast with the gifts she felt to be hers, and on which he had
dwelt, was swept back into her mind. Self-pity, dignity, and inherent
self-respect struggled against her woman's desire to give; an inherited
racial pride whispered that she was worthy of the best, but because she
had lacked the chance, he refrained from offering her what he would have
laid at the feet of another woman.
“I'll give you advantages--there's nothing I wouldn't give you. Why
won't you come to me? I'll take care of you.”
“Do you think I want to be taken care of?” She wheeled on him so swiftly
that he started back. “Is that what you think I want?”
“No, no,” he protested, when he recovered his speech.
“Do you think I'm after--what you can give me?” she shot at him. “What
you can buy for me?”
To tell the truth, he had not thought anything about it, that was the
trouble. And her question, instead of enlightening him, only added to
his confusion and bewilderment.
“I'm always getting in wrong with you,” he told her, pathetically.
“There isn't anything I'd stop at to make you happy, Janet, that's what
I'm trying to say. I'd go the limit.”
“Your limit!” she exclaimed.
“What do you mean?” he demanded. But she had become
inarticulate--cryptic, to him. He could get nothing more out of her.
“You don't understand me--you never will!” she cried, and burst into
tears--tears of rage she tried in vain to control. The world was black
with his ignorance. She hated herself, she hated him. Her sobs shook her
convulsively, and she scarcely heard him as he walked beside her along
the empty road, pleading and clumsily seeking to comfort her. Once or
twice she felt his hand on her shoulders.... And then, unlooked for
and unbidden, pity began to invade her. Absurd to pity him! She fought
against it, but the thought of Ditmar reduced to abjectness gained
ground. After all, he had tried to be generous, he had done his best, he
loved her, he needed her--the words rang in her heart. After all, he
did not realize how could she expect him to realize? and her imagination
conjured up the situation in a new perspective. Her sobs gradually
ceased, and presently she stopped in the middle of the road and regarded
him. He seemed utterly miserable, like a hurt child whom she longed to
comfort. But what she said was:--“I ought to be going home.”
“Not yet!” he begged. “It's early. You say I don't understand you,
Janet--my God, I wish I did! It breaks me all up to see you cry like
that.”
“I'm sorry,” she said, after a moment. “I--I can't make you understand.
I guess I'm not like anybody else I'm queer--I can't help it. You must
let me go, I only make you unhappy.”
“Let you go!” he cried--and then in utter self-forgetfulness she yielded
her lips to his. A sound penetrated the night, she drew back from
his arms and stood silhouetted against the glare of the approaching
headlight of a trolley car, and as it came roaring down on them she
hailed it. Ditmar seized her arm.
“You're not going--now?” he said hoarsely.
“I must,” she whispered. “I want to be alone--I want to think. You must
let me.”
“I'll see you to-morrow?”
“I don't know--I want to think. I'm--I'm tired.”
The brakes screamed as the car came joltingly to a stop. She flew up the
steps, glancing around to see whether Ditmar had followed her, and saw
him still standing in the road. The car was empty of passengers, but
the conductor must have seen her leaving a man in this lonely spot. She
glanced at his face, white and pinched and apathetic--he must have seen
hundreds of similar episodes in the course of his nightly duties. He
was unmoved as he took her fare. Nevertheless, at the thought that these
other episodes might resemble hers, her face flamed--she grew hot all
over. What should she do now? She could not think. Confused with her
shame was the memory of a delirious joy, yet no sooner would she give
herself up, trembling, to this memory when in turn it was penetrated by
qualms of resentment, defiling its purity. Was Ditmar ashamed of her?...
When she reached home and had got into bed she wept a little, but
her tears were neither of joy nor sorrow. Her capacity for both was
exhausted. In this strange mood she fell asleep nor did she waken when,
at midnight, Lise stealthily crept in beside her.