The next day at the noon hour Janet entered Dey Street. Cheek by jowl
there with the tall tenements whose spindled-pillared porches overhung
the darkened pavements were smaller houses of all ages and descriptions,
their lower floors altered to accommodate shops; while in the very
midst of the block stood a queer wooden building with two rows of dormer
windows let into its high-pitched roof. It bore a curious resemblance to
a town hall in the low countries. In front of it the street was filled
with children gazing up at the doorway where a man stood surveying
them--the stranger from Silliston. There was a rush toward him, a rush
that drove Janet against the wall almost at his side, and he held up his
hands in mock despair, gently impeding the little bodies that strove to
enter. He bent over them to examine the numerals, printed on pasteboard,
they wore on their breasts. His voice was cheerful, yet compassionate.
“It's hard to wait, I know. I'm hungry myself,” he said. “But we can't
all go up at once. The building would fall down! One to one hundred now,
and the second hundred will be first for supper. That's fair, isn't it?”
Dozens of hands were raised.
“I'm twenty-nine!”
“I'm three, mister!”
“I'm forty-one!”
He let them in, one by one, and they clattered up the stairs, as he
seized a tiny girl bundled in a dark red muffler and set her on the
steps above him. He smiled at Janet.
“This is my restaurant,” he said.
But she could not answer. She watched him as he continued to bend over
the children, and when the smaller ones wept because they had to wait,
he whispered in their ears, astonishing one or two into laughter. Some
ceased crying and clung to him with dumb faith. And after the chosen
hundred had been admitted he turned to her again.
“You allow visitors?”
“Oh dear, yes. They'd come anyway. There's one up there now, a very
swell lady from New York--so swell I don't know what to say to her. Talk
to her for me.”
“But I shouldn't know what to say, either,” replied Janet. She smiled,
but she had an odd desire to cry. “What is she doing here?”
“Oh, thrashing 'round, trying to connect with life--she's one of the
unfortunate unemployed.”
“Unemployed?”
“The idle rich,” he explained. “Perhaps you can give her a job--enlist
her in the I.W.W.”
“We don't want that kind,” Janet declared.
“Have pity on her,” he begged. “Nobody wants them--that's why they're so
pathetic.”
She accompanied him up the narrow stairway to a great loft, the bareness
of which had been tempered by draped American flags. From the trusses of
the roof hung improvised electric lights, and the children were already
seated at the four long tables, where half a dozen ladies were supplying
them with enamelled bowls filled with steaming soup. They attacked it
ravenously, and the absence of the talk and laughter that ordinarily
accompany children's feasts touched her, impressed upon her, as nothing
else had done, the destitution of the homes from which these little ones
had come. The supplies that came to Hampton, the money that poured into
Headquarters were not enough to allay the suffering even now. And what
if the strike should last for months! Would they be able to hold out,
to win? In this mood of pity, of anxiety mingled with appreciation and
gratitude for what this man was doing, she turned to speak to him,
to perceive on the platform at the end of the room a lady seated. So
complete was the curve of her back that her pose resembled a letter u
set sidewise, the gap from her crossed knee to her face being closed by
a slender forearm and hand that held a lorgnette, through which she
was gazing at the children with an apparently absorbed interest. This
impression of willowy flexibility was somehow heightened by large,
pear-shaped pendants hanging from her ears, by a certain filminess in
her black costume and hat. Flung across the table beside her was a
long coat of grey fur. She struck an odd note here, presented a strange
contrast to Janet's friend from Silliston, with his rough suit and fine
but rugged features.
“I'm sorry I haven't a table for you just at present,” he was saying.
“But perhaps you'll let me take your order,”--and he imitated the
obsequious attitude of a waiter. “A little fresh caviar and a clear
soup, and then a fish--?”
The lady took down her lorgnette and raised an appealing face.
“You're always joking, Brooks,” she chided him, “even when you're doing
things like this! I can't get you to talk seriously even when I come all
the way from New York to find out what's going on here.”
“How hungry children eat, for instance?” he queried.
“Dear little things, it's heartrending!” she exclaimed. “Especially
when I think of my own children, who have to be made to eat. Tell me the
nationality of that adorable tot at the end.”
“Perhaps Miss Bumpus can tell you,” he ventured. And Janet, though
distinctly uncomfortable and hostile to the lady, was surprised and
pleased that he should have remembered her name. “Brooks,” she had
called him. That was his first name. This strange and sumptuous person
seemed intimate with him. Could it be possible that he belonged to her
class? “Mrs. Brocklehurst, Miss Bumpus.”
Mrs. Brocklehurst focussed her attention on Janet, through the
lorgnette, but let it fall immediately, smiling on her brightly,
persuasively.
“How d'ye do?” she said, stretching forth a slender arm and taking the
girl's somewhat reluctant hand. “Do come and sit down beside me and tell
me about everything here. I'm sure you know--you look so intelligent.”
Her friend from Silliston shot at Janet an amused but fortifying glance
and left them, going down to the tables. Somehow that look of his helped
to restore in her a sense of humour and proportion, and her feeling
became one of curiosity concerning this exquisitely soigneed being of
an order she had read about, but never encountered--an order which her
newly acquired views declared to be usurpers and parasites. But
despite her palpable effort to be gracious perhaps because of it--Mrs.
Brocklehurst had an air about her that was disconcerting! Janet,
however, seemed composed as she sat down.
“I'm afraid I don't know very much. Maybe you will tell me something,
first.”
“Why, certainly,” said Mrs. Brocklehurst, sweetly when she had got her
breath.
“Who is that man?” Janet asked.
“Whom do you mean--Mr. Insall?”
“Is that his name? I didn't know. I've seen him twice, but he never told
me.”
“Why, my dear, do you mean to say you haven't heard of Brooks Insall?”
“Brooks Insall.” Janet repeated the name, as her eyes sought his figure
between the tables. “No.”
“I'm sure I don't know why I should have expected you to hear of him,”
declared the lady, repentantly. “He's a writer--an author.” And at this
Janet gave a slight exclamation of pleasure and surprise. “You admire
writers? He's done some delightful things.”
“What does he write about?” Janet asked.
“Oh, wild flowers and trees and mountains and streams, and birds and
humans--he has a wonderful insight into people.”
Janet was silent. She was experiencing a swift twinge of jealousy, of
that familiar rebellion against her limitations.
“You must read them, my dear,” Mrs. Brocklehurst continued softly, in
musical tones. “They are wonderful, they have such distinction. He's
walked, I'm told, over every foot of New England, talking to the farmers
and their wives and--all sorts of people.” She, too, paused to let her
gaze linger upon Insall laughing and chatting with the children as they
ate. “He has such a splendid, 'out-door' look don't you think? And he's
clever with his hands he bought an old abandoned farmhouse in
Silliston and made it all over himself until it looks as if one of our
great-great-grandfathers had just stepped out of it to shoot an Indian
only much prettier. And his garden is a dream. It's the most unique
place I've ever known.”
Janet blushed deeply as she recalled how she had mistaken him for a
carpenter: she was confused, overwhelmed, she had a sudden longing to
leave the place, to be alone, to think about this discovery. Yet she
wished to know more.
“But how did he happen to come here to Hampton--to be doing this?” she
asked.
“Well, that's just what makes him interesting, one never can tell what
he'll do. He took it into his head to collect the money to feed these
children; I suppose he gave much of it himself. He has an income of his
own, though he likes to live so simply.”
“This place--it's not connected with any organization?” Janet
ejaculated.
“That's the trouble, he doesn't like organizations, and he doesn't seem
to take any interest in the questions or movements of the day,” Mrs.
Brocklehurst complained. “Or at least he refuses to talk about them,
though I've known him for many years, and his people and mine were
friends. Now there are lots of things I want to learn, that I came up
from New York to find out. I thought of course he'd introduce me to the
strike leaders, and he tells me he doesn't know one of them. Perhaps you
know them,” she added, with sudden inspiration.
“I'm only an employee at Strike Headquarters,” Janet replied, stiffening
a little despite the lady's importuning look--which evidently was
usually effective.
“You mean the I.W.W.?”
“Yes.”
Meanwhile Insall had come up and seated himself below them on the edge
of the platform.
“Oh, Brooks, your friend Miss Bumpus is employed in the Strike
Headquarters!” Mrs. Brocklehurst cried, and turning to Janet she went
on. “I didn't realize you were a factory girl, I must say you don't look
it.”
Once more a gleam of amusement from Insall saved Janet, had the effect
of compelling her to meet the affair somewhat after his own manner. He
seemed to be putting the words into her mouth, and she even smiled a
little, as she spoke.
“You never can tell what factory girls do look like in these days,” she
observed mischievously.
“That's so,” Mrs. Brocklehurst agreed, “we are living in such
extraordinary times, everything topsy turvy. I ought to have
realized--it was stupid of me--I know several factory girls in New
York, I've been to their meetings, I've had them at my house--shirtwaist
strikers.”
She assumed again the willowy, a position, her fingers clasped across
her knee, her eyes supplicatingly raised to Janet. Then she reached
out her hand and touched the I.W.W. button. “Do tell me all about the
Industrial Workers, and what they believe,” she pleaded.
“Well,” said Janet, after a slight pause, “I'm afraid you won't like it
much. Why do you want to know?”
“Because I'm so interested--especially in the women of the movement. I
feel for them so, I want to help--to do something, too. Of course you're
a suffragist.”
“You mean, do I believe in votes for women? Yes, I suppose I do.”
“But you must,” declared Mrs. Brocklehurst, still sweetly, but with
emphasis. “You wouldn't be working, you wouldn't be striking unless you
did.”
“I've never thought about it,” said Janet.
“But how are you working girls ever going to raise wages unless you
get the vote? It's the only way men ever get anywhere--the politicians
listen to them.” She produced from her bag a gold pencil and a tablet.
“Mrs. Ned Carfax is here from Boston--I saw her for a moment at the
hotel she's been here investigating for nearly three days, she tells me.
I'll have her send you suffrage literature at once, if you'll give me
your address.”
“You want a vote?” asked Janet, curiously, gazing at the pearl earrings.
“Certainly I want one.”
“Why?”
“Why?” repeated Mrs. Brocklehurst.
“Yes. You must have everything you want.”
Even then the lady's sweet reasonableness did not desert her. She smiled
winningly, displaying two small and even rows of teeth.
“On principle, my dear. For one reason, because I have such sympathy
with women who toil, and for another, I believe the time has come when
women must no longer be slaves, they must assert themselves, become
individuals, independent.”
“But you?” exclaimed Janet.
Mrs. Brocklehurst continued to smile encouragingly, and murmured “Yes?”
“You are not a slave.”
A delicate pink, like the inside of a conch shell, spread over Mrs.
Brocklehurst's cheeks.
“We're all slaves,” she declared with a touch of passion. “It's hard for
you to realize, I know, about those of us who seem more fortunate than
our sisters. But it's true. The men give us jewels and automobiles
and clothes, but they refuse to give us what every real woman
craves--liberty.”
Janet had become genuinely interested.
“But what kind of liberty?”
“Liberty to have a voice, to take part in the government of our country,
to help make the laws, especially those concerning working-women and
children, what they ought to be.”
Here was altruism, truly! Here were words that should have inspired
Janet, yet she was silent. Mrs. Brocklehurst gazed at her solicitously.
“What are you thinking?” she urged--and it was Janet's turn to flush.
“I was just thinking that you seemed to have everything life has to
give, and yet--and yet you're not happy.”
“Oh, I'm not unhappy,” protested the lady. “Why do you say that?”
“I don't know. You, too, seem to be wanting something.”
“I want to be of use, to count,” said Mrs. Brocklehurst,--and Janet
was startled to hear from this woman's lips the very echo of her own
desires.
Mrs. Brocklehurst's feelings had become slightly complicated. It is
perhaps too much to say that her complacency was shaken. She was,
withal, a person of resolution--of resolution taking the form of
unswerving faith in herself, a faith persisting even when she was being
carried beyond her depth. She had the kind of pertinacity that sever
admits being out of depth, the happy buoyancy that does not require to
feel the bottom under one's feet. She floated in swift currents. When
life became uncomfortable, she evaded it easily; and she evaded it now,
as she gazed at the calm but intent face of the girl in front of her, by
a characteristic inner refusal to admit that she had accidentally come
in contact with something baking. Therefore she broke the silence.
“Isn't that what you want--you who are striking?” she asked.
“I think we want the things that you've got,” said Janet. A phrase one
of the orators had used came into her mind, “Enough money to live up
to American standards”--but she did not repeat it. “Enough money to be
free, to enjoy life, to have some leisure and amusement and luxury.” The
last three she took from the orator's mouth.
“But surely,” exclaimed Mrs. Brocklehurst, “surely you want more than
that!”
Janet shook her head.
“You asked me what we believed, the I.W.W., the syndicalists, and I told
you you wouldn't like it. Well, we believe in doing away with you, the
rich, and taking all you have for ourselves, the workers, the producers.
We believe you haven't any right to what you've got, that you've fooled
and cheated us out of it. That's why we women don't care much about the
vote, I suppose, though I never thought of it. We mean to go on striking
until we've got all that you've got.”
“But what will become of us?” said Mrs. Brocklehurst. “You wouldn't
do away with all of us! I admit there are many who don't--but some do
sympathize with you, will help you get what you want, help you, perhaps,
to see things more clearly, to go about it less--ruthlessly.”
“I've told you what we believe,” repeated Janet.
“I'm so glad I came,” cried Mrs. Brocklehurst. “It's most interesting!
I never knew what the syndicalists believed. Why, it's like the French
Revolution--only worse. How are you going to get rid of us? cut our
heads off?”
Janet could not refrain from smiling.
“Let you starve, I suppose.”
“Really!” said Mrs. Brocklehurst, and appeared to be trying to visualize
the process. She was a true Athenian, she had discovered some new thing,
she valued discoveries more than all else in life, she collected them,
though she never used them save to discuss them with intellectuals at
her dinner parties. “Now you must let me come to Headquarters and get
a glimpse of some of the leaders--of Antonelli, and I'm told there's a
fascinating man named Rowe.”
“Rolfe,” Janet corrected.
“Rolfe--that's it.” She glanced down at the diminutive watch, set with
diamonds, on her wrist, rose and addressed Insall. “Oh dear, I must be
going, I'm to lunch with Nina Carfax at one, and she's promised to tell
me a lot of things. She's writing an article for Craven's Weekly all
about the strike and the suffering and injustice--she says it's been
horribly misrepresented to the public, the mill owners have had it all
their own way. I think what you're doing is splendid, Brooks, only--”
here she gave him an appealing, rather commiserating look--“only I do
wish you would take more interest in--in underlying principles.”
Insall smiled.
“It's a question of brains. You have to have brains to be a
sociologist,” he answered, as he held up for her the fur coat. With a
gesture of gentle reproof she slipped into it, and turned to Janet.
“You must let me see more of you, my dear,” she said. “I'm at the best
hotel, I can't remember the name, they're all so horrible--but I'll be
here until to-morrow afternoon. I want to find out everything. Come and
call on me. You're quite the most interesting person I've met for a long
time--I don't think you realize how interesting you are. Au revoir!”
She did not seem to expect any reply, taking acquiescence for granted.
Glancing once more at the rows of children, who had devoured their meal
in an almost uncanny silence, she exclaimed, “The dears! I'm going
to send you a cheque, Brooks, even if you have been horrid to me--you
always are.”
“Horrid!” repeated Insall, “put it down to ignorance.”
He accompanied her down the stairs. From her willowy walk a
sophisticated observer would have hazarded the guess that her search for
an occupation had included a course of lessons in fancy dancing.
Somewhat dazed by this interview which had been so suddenly forced upon
her, Janet remained seated on the platform. She had the perception to
recognize that in Mrs. Brocklehurst and Insall she had come in contact
with a social stratum hitherto beyond the bounds of her experience;
those who belonged to that stratum were not characterized by the
possession of independent incomes alone, but by an attitude toward life,
a manner of not appearing to take its issues desperately. Ditmar was not
like that. She felt convicted of enthusiasms, she was puzzled, rather
annoyed and ashamed. Insall and Mrs. Brocklehurst, different though they
were, had this attitude in common.... Insall, when he returned, regarded
her amusedly.
“So you'd like to exterminate Mrs. Brocklehurst?” he asked.
And Janet flushed. “Well, she forced me to say it.”
“Oh, it didn't hurt her,” he said.
“And it didn't help her,” Janet responded quickly.
“No, it didn't help her,” Insall agreed, and laughed.
“But I'm not sure it isn't true,” she went on, “that we want what she's
got.” The remark, on her own lips, surprised Janet a little. She had not
really meant to make it. Insall seemed to have the quality of forcing
one to think out loud.
“And what she wants, you've got,” he told her.
“What have I got?”
“Perhaps you'll find out, some day.”
“It may be too late,” she exclaimed. “If you'd only tell me, it might
help.”
“I think it's something you'll have to discover for yourself,” he
replied, more gravely than was his wont.
She was silent a moment, and then she demanded: “Why didn't you tell me
who you were? You let me think, when I met you in Silliston that day,
that you were a carpenter. I didn't know you'd written books.”
“You can't expect writers to wear uniforms, like policemen--though
perhaps we ought to, it might be a little fairer to the public,” he
said. “Besides, I am a carpenter, a better carpenter than a writer..”
“I'd give anything to be an author!” she cried.
“It's a hard life,” he assured her. “We have to go about seeking
inspiration from others.”
“Is that why you came to Hampton?”
“Well, not exactly. It's a queer thing about inspiration, you only find
it when you're not looking for it.”
She missed the point of this remark, though his eyes were on her.
They were not like Rolfe's eyes, insinuating, possessive; they had the
anomalistic quality, of being at once personal and impersonal, friendly,
alight, evoking curiosity yet compelling trust.
“And you didn't tell me,” he reproached her, “that you were at I.W.W.
Headquarters.”
A desire for self-justification impelled her to exclaim: “You don't
believe in Syndicalism--and yet you've come here to feed these
children!”
“Oh, I think I understand the strike,” he said.
“How? Have you seen it? Have you heard the arguments?”
“No. I've seen you. You've explained it.”
“To Mrs. Brocklehurst?”
“It wasn't necessary,” he replied--and immediately added, in
semi-serious apology: “I thought it was admirable, what you said. If
she'd talked to a dozen syndicalist leaders, she couldn't have had it
put more clearly. Only I'm afraid she doesn't know the truth when she
hears it.”
“Now you're making fun of me!”
“Indeed I'm not,” he protested.
“But I didn't give any of the arguments, any of the--philosophy,” she
pronounced the word hesitatingly. “I don't understand it yet as well as
I should.”
“You are it,” he said. “It's not always easy to understand what we
are--it's generally after we've become something else that we comprehend
what we have been.”
And while she was pondering over this one of the ladies who had been
waiting on the table came toward Insall.
“The children have finished, Brooks,” she informed him. “It's time to
let in the others.”
Insall turned to Janet. “This is Miss Bumpus--and this is Mrs. Maturin,”
he said. “Mrs. Maturin lives in Silliston.”
The greeting of this lady differed from that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. She,
too, took Janet's hand.
“Have you come to help us?” she asked.
And Janet said: “Oh, I'd like to, but I have other work.”
“Come in and see us again,” said Insall, and Janet, promising, took her
leave....
“Who is she, Brooks?” Mrs. Maturin asked, when Janet had gone.
“Well,” he answered, “I don't know. What does it matter?”
Mrs. Maturin smiled.
“I should say that it did matter,” she replied. “But there's something
unusual about her--where did you find her?”
“She found me.” And Insall explained. “She was a stenographer, it seems,
but now she's enlisted heart and soul with the syndicalists,” he added.
“A history?” Mrs. Maturin queried. “Well, I needn't ask--it's written on
her face.”
“That's all I know,” said Insall.
“I'd like to know,” said Mrs. Maturin. “You say she's in the strike?”
“I should rather put it that the strike is in her.”
“What do you mean, Brooks?”
But Insall did not reply.
Janet came away from Dey Street in a state of mental and emotional
confusion. The encounter with Mrs. Brocklehurst had been upsetting; she
had an uneasy feeling of having made a fool of herself in Insall's eyes;
she desired his approval, even on that occasion when she had first
met him and mistaken him for a workman she had been conscious of
a compelling faculty in him, of a pressure he exerted demanding
justification of herself; and to-day, because she was now pledged to
Syndicalism, because she had made the startling discovery that he was a
writer of some renown, she had been more than ever anxious to vindicate
her cause. She found herself, indeed, wondering uneasily whether there
were a higher truth of which he was in possession. And the fact that
his attitude toward her had been one of sympathy and friendliness rather
than of disapproval, that his insight seemed to have fathomed her case,
apprehended it in all but the details, was even more disturbing--yet
vaguely consoling. The consolatory element in the situation was somehow
connected with the lady, his friend from Silliston, to whom he had
introduced her and whose image now came before her the more vividly,
perhaps, in contrast with that of Mrs. Brocklehurst. Mrs. Maturin--could
Janet have so expressed her thought! had appeared as an extension of
Insall's own personality. She was a strong, tall, vital woman with
a sweet irregularity of feature, with a heavy crown of chestnut hair
turning slightly grey, quaintly braided, becomingly framing her face.
Her colour was high. The impression she conveyed of having suffered was
emphasized by the simple mourning gown she wore, but the dominant note
she had struck was one of dependability. It was, after all, Insall's
dominant, too. Insall had asked her to call again; and the reflection
that she might do so was curiously comforting. The soup kitchen in the
loft, with these two presiding over it, took on something of the aspect
of a sanctuary....
Insall, in some odd manner, and through the medium of that frivolous
lady, had managed to reenforce certain doubts that had been stirring in
Janet--doubts of Rolfe, of the verity of the doctrine which with such
abandon she had embraced. It was Insall who, though remaining silent,
just by being there seemed to have suggested her manner of dealing with
Mrs. Brocklehurst. It had, indeed, been his manner of dealing with Mrs.
Brocklehurst. Janet had somehow been using his words, his method, and
thus for the first time had been compelled to look objectively on what
she had deemed a part of herself. We never know what we are, he had
said, until we become something else! He had forced her to use an
argument that failed to harmonize, somehow, with Rolfe's poetical
apologetics. Stripped of the glamour of these, was not Rolfe's doctrine
just one of taking, taking? And when the workers were in possession
of all, would not they be as badly off as Mrs. Brocklehurst or Ditmar?
Rolfe, despite the inspiring intellectual creed he professed, lacked the
poise and unity that go with happiness. He wanted things, for
himself: whereas she beheld in Insall one who seemed emancipated from
possessions, whose life was so organized as to make them secondary
affairs. And she began to wonder what Insall would think of Ditmar.
These sudden flashes of tenderness for Ditmar startled and angered her.
She had experienced them before, and always had failed to account for
their intrusion into a hatred she cherished. Often, at her desk in the
bibliotheque, she had surprised herself speculating upon what Ditmar
might be doing at that moment; and it seemed curious, living in the
same city with him, that she had not caught a glimpse of him during the
strike. More than once, moved by a perverse impulse, she had ventured of
an evening down West Street toward the guard of soldiers in the hope of
catching sight of him. He had possessed her, and the memory of the wild
joy of that possession, of that surrender to great strength, refused to
perish. Why, at such moments, should she glory in a strength that had
destroyed her and why, when she heard him cursed as the man who stood,
more than any other, in the way of the strikers victory, should she
paradoxically and fiercely rejoice? why should she feel pride when she
was told of the fearlessness with which he went about the streets, and
her heart stop beating when she thought of the possibility of his being
shot? For these unwelcome phenomena within herself Janet could not
account. When they disturbed and frightened her, she plunged into her
work with the greater zeal....
As the weeks went by, the strain of the strike began to tell on the
weak, the unprepared, on those who had many mouths to feed. Shivering
with the cold of that hardest of winters, these unfortunates flocked to
the Franco-Belgian Hall, where a little food or money in proportion
to the size of their families was doled out to them. In spite of the
contributions received by mail, of the soup kitchens and relief stations
set up by various organizations in various parts of the city, the supply
little more than sufficed to keep alive the more needy portion of the
five and twenty thousand who now lacked all other means of support.
Janet's heart was wrung as she gazed at the gaunt, bewildered faces
growing daily more tragic, more bewildered and gaunt; she marvelled at
the animal-like patience of these Europeans, at the dumb submission of
most of them to privations that struck her as appalling. Some indeed
complained, but the majority recited in monotonous, unimpassioned tones
their stories of suffering, or of ill treatment by the “Cossacks” or the
police. The stipends were doled out by Czernowitz, but all through the
week there were special appeals. Once it was a Polish woman, wan and
white, who carried her baby wrapped in a frayed shawl.
“Wahna littel money for milk,” she said, when at length their attention
was drawn to her.
“But you get your money, every Saturday,” the secretary informed her
kindly.
She shook her head.
“Baby die, 'less I have littel milk--I show you.”
Janet drew back before the sight of the child with its sunken cheeks and
ghastly blue lips.... And she herself went out with the woman to buy
the milk, and afterwards to the dive in Kendall Street which she
called home--in one of those “rear” tenements separated from the front
buildings by a narrow court reeking with refuse. The place was dank and
cold, malodorous. The man of the family, the lodgers who lived in the
other room of the kennel, were out on the streets. But when her eyes
grew used to the darkness she perceived three silent children huddled in
the bed in the corner....
On another occasion a man came running up the stairs of the Hall and
thrust his way into a meeting of the Committee--one of those normally
happy, irresponsible Syrians who, because of a love for holidays, are
the despair of mill overseers. Now he was dazed, breathless, his great
eyes grief-stricken like a wounded animal's.
“She is killidd, my wife--de polees, dey killidd her!”
It was Anna Mower who investigated the case. “The girl wasn't doing
nothing but walk along Hudson Street when one of those hirelings set
on her and beat her. She put out her hand because she thought he'd hit
her--and he gave her three or four with his billy and left her in the
gutter. If you'd see her you'd know she wouldn't hurt a fly, she's that
gentle looking, like all the Syrian women. She had a 'Don't be a scab'
ribbon on--that's all she done! Somebody'll shoot that guy, and I
wouldn't blame 'em.” Anna stood beside Janet's typewriter, her face red
with anger as she told the story.
“And how is the woman now?” asked Janet.
“In bed, with two ribs broken and a bruise on her back and a cut on her
head. I got a doctor. He could hardly see her in that black place they
live.”...
Such were the incidents that fanned the hatred into hotter and
hotter flame. Daily reports were brought in of arrests, of fines and
imprisonments for picketing, or sometimes merely for booing at the
remnant of those who still clung to their employment. One magistrate in
particular, a Judge Hennessy, was hated above all others for giving the
extreme penalty of the law, and even stretching it. “Minions, slaves
of the capitalists, of the masters,” the courts were called, and Janet
subscribed to these epithets, beheld the judges as willing agents of a
tyranny from which she, too, had suffered. There arrived at Headquarters
frenzied bearers of rumours such as that of the reported intention of
landlords to remove the windows from the tenements if the rents were
not paid. Antonelli himself calmed these. “Let the landlords try it!” he
said phlegmatically....
After a while, as the deadlock showed no signs of breaking, the siege
of privation began to tell, ominous signs of discontent became apparent.
Chief among the waverers were those who had come to America with visions
of a fortune, who had practised a repulsive thrift in order to acquire
real estate, who carried in their pockets dog-eared bank books recording
payments already made. These had consented to the strike reluctantly,
through fear, or had been carried away by the eloquence and enthusiasm
of the leaders, by the expectation that the mill owners would yield
at once. Some went back to work, only to be “seen” by the militant,
watchful pickets--generally in their rooms, at night. One evening, as
Janet was walking home, she chanced to overhear a conversation taking
place in the dark vestibule of a tenement.
“Working to-day?”
“Yah.”
“Work to-morrow?”
Hesitation. “I d'no.”
“You work, I cut your throat.” A significant noise. “Naw, I no work.”
“Shake!”
She hurried on trembling, not with fear, but exultingly. Nor did she
reflect that only a month ago such an occurrence would have shocked
and terrified her. This was war.... On her way to Fillmore Street
she passed, at every street corner in this district, a pacing sentry,
muffled in greatcoat and woollen cap, alert and watchful, the ugly knife
on the end of his gun gleaming in the blue light of the arc. It did not
occur to her, despite the uniform, that the souls of many of these men
were divided also, that their voices and actions, when she saw them
threatening with their bayonets, were often inspired by that inner
desperation characteristic of men who find themselves unexpectedly
in false situations. Once she heard a woman shriek as the sharp
knife grazed her skirt: at another time a man whose steps had been
considerably hurried turned, at a safe distance, and shouted defiantly:
“Say, who are you working for? Me or the Wool Trust?”
“Aw, get along,” retorted the soldier, “or I'll give you yours.”
The man caught sight of Janet's button as she overtook him. He was
walking backward.
“That feller has a job in a machine shop over in Barrington, I seen
him there when I was in the mills. And here he is tryin' to put us
out--ain't that the limit?”
The thud of horses' feet in the snow prevented her reply. The
silhouettes of the approaching squad of cavalry were seen down the
street, and the man fled precipitately into an alleyway....
There were ludicrous incidents, too, though never lacking in a certain
pathos. The wife of a Russian striker had her husband arrested because
he had burned her clothes in order to prevent her returning to the
mill. From the police station he sent a compatriot with a message to
Headquarters. “Oye, he fix her! She no get her jawb now--she gotta stay
in bed!” this one cried triumphantly.
“She was like to tear me in pieces when I brought her the clothes,”
said Anna Mower, who related her experience with mingled feelings.
“I couldn't blame her. You see, it was the kids crying with cold and
starvation, and she got so she just couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand
it, neither.”
Day by day the element who wished to compromise and end the strike grew
stronger, brought more and more pressure on the leaders. These people
were subsidized, Antonelli declared, by the capitalists....