I
She stood on the southeast corner of Broadway at Twenty-second Street,
waiting for a northbound car with a vacant seat. She had been on her
feet all day and was very tired, so tired that the prospect of being
obliged to stand all the way uptown seemed quite intolerable. And so,
though quick with impatience to get home and "have it over with," she
chose to wait.
Up out of the south, from lower Broadway and the sweatshop purlieus of
Union Square, defiled an unending procession of surface cars, without
exception dark with massed humanity. Pausing momentarily before the
corner where the girl was waiting (as if mockingly submitting themselves
to the appraisal of her alert eyes) one after another received the
signal of the switchman beyond the northern crossing and ground
sluggishly on. Not one but was crowded to the guards, affording the girl
no excuse for leaving her position.
She waited on, her growing impatience as imperceptible as her fatigue:
neither of them discernible to those many transient stares which she
received with a semblance of blank indifference that was, in reality,
not devoid of consciousness. Youth will not be overlooked; reinforced by
an abounding vitality, such as hers, it becomes imperious. This girl was
as pretty as she was poor, and as young.
Judged by her appearance, she might have been anywhere between sixteen
and twenty years of age. She was, in fact, something over eighteen, and
at heart more nearly a child than this age might be taken to imply--more
a child than any who knew her suspected. She herself suspected it least
of all.
She looked what she liked to believe herself, a young woman of
considerable experience with life. Simple, and even cheap, her garments
still owned a certain distinction which she would without hesitation
have termed "stylish": a quality of smartness which somehow contrived
not incongruously to associate with inferior materials. Her shirtwaist
was of opaque linen, pleated, and while not laundry-fresh was still
presentable; her skirt fitted her hips snugly, and fell in graceful
lines to a point something short of her low tan shoes, showing stockings
of a texture at once coarse and sheer; to her hat, an ordinary straw
simply trimmed with a band and _chou_ of ribbon, she had lent some
little factitious character by deftly twisting it a trifle out of the
prevailing shape. Over one arm she carried a coat of the same material
as her skirt, and in her hand a well-worn handbag of imitation leather,
rather too large, and decorated with a monogram of two initials in
German silver. The initials were J-T: her name was Joan Thursby.
Uniform with a thousand sisters of the shop-counters, she was yet
mysteriously different. Men looked twice in passing; after passing some
turned to look again.
Her face, tinted by the glow of the western sky, was by no means poor in
native colour: a shade thin, its regular features held a promise, vague,
fugitive, and provoking. Her hair was a brown which hardly escaped being
ruddy, and her skin matched it, lacking alike the dusky warmth of the
brune and the purity of the blonde. She was neither tall nor short, but
seemed misleadingly smaller than she was in fact, thanks to the
slightness of a body more stupidly nourished than under-nourished or
immature. Her eyes were brown and large, and they were very beautiful
indeed when divorced from the vacancy of weary thinking.
It was only in this look of the unthinking toiler that unconsciously
she confessed her immense fatigue. Her features were relaxed into lines
and contours of apathy. She seemed neither to think nor even to be
capable of much sustained thought. Yet she was thinking, and that very
intensely if unconsciously. Her mind was not only active but was one of
considerable latent capacity: something which she did not in the least
suspect; indeed, it had never occurred to Joan to debate her mental
limitations. Her thoughts were as a rule more emotional than psychical:
as now, when she was intensely preoccupied with pondering how she was to
explain at home the loss of her position, and what would be said to her,
and how she would feel when all had been said ... and what she would
then do....
Daylight was slowly fading. Though it was only half-after six of an
evening in June, the sun was already invisible, smudged out by a
portentous bank of purplish cloud whose profile was edged with
fire-of-gold against a sky of tarnished blue--a sky that seemed dimmed
with the sweat of day-long heat and toil. The city air was close and
moveless, and the cloud-bank was lifting very slowly from behind the
Jersey hills; it might be several hours before the promised storm would
break and bring relief to a parched and weary people.
At length despairing of her desire, the girl moved out to the middle of
the street and boarded the next open car of the Lexington Avenue line.
She was able to find standing-room only between two seats toward the
rear, where smoking was permitted. She stood just inside the
running-board, grasping the back of the forward seat. Her hand rested
between the shoulders of two men. She was the only woman in that
section. Behind her were ten masculine knees in a row, before her five
masculine heads: ten men crowding the two transverse benches, some
smoking, all stolidly absorbed in newspapers and indifferent to the
intrusion of a woman. None dreamed of offering the girl a seat; nor did
she find this anything remarkable, in whom use had bred the habit of
accepting without question such everyday phenomena. If she was weary, so
were the men; if she desired the consideration due her sex, then must
she enfranchise herself from the sexless struggle for a living wage....
The car, swerving into Twenty-third Street, plunged on to and turned
north on Lexington Avenue. Thereafter its progress consisted of a series
of frantic leaps from street-corner to street-corner. When it was in
motion, there was a grateful rush of air; when at pause, the heat was
stifling and the fumes of cigarettes, pipes, and cheap cigars blended to
manufacture a mephitic reek. A slight sweat dewed the face of the girl,
and her colour faded to pallor. Her feet and legs were aching, her back
ached with much lifting of boxes to and from shelves, her head
ached--chiefly because of the inevitable malnutrition of a shop-girl's
lunch.
From time to time more passengers were taken on; a lesser number
alighted: Joan found herself obliged to edge farther in between the rank
of knees and the rigid back of the forward seat. By the time the car
crossed Forty-second Street, she was at the inside guard-rail: ten
persons, half of them standing, were occupying a space meant for five.
It was then, or only a trifle later, that she became conscious of the
knee which the man behind her was purposely pressing against her. Then
for a minute or two she was let alone. But she was sick with
apprehension....
She stood it as long as she could. Then abruptly she twisted round and
faced her persecutor.
Before her eyes, half blinded by rage and disgust, his face swam like
the mask of an incubus--a blur of red flesh fixed in an insolent smirk.
She was dimly aware of curious glances lifting to the sound of her
tremulous voice:
"Must I leave this car? Or will you let me alone?"
There was the pause of an instant; then she had her answer in a tone of
truculent contempt:
"Ah, wha's the matter with you, anyhow?"
She choked, stammering, and looked round in despair. But the man at her
elbow was grinning with open amusement, and another, seated beside her
tormentor, was pretending to notice nothing, his nose buried in a
newspaper.
"If y'u don't like the goin', sister, why doncha get off 'n' walk?"
This from him who had compelled that frantic protest.
With a lurch, the car stopped; and as it did so the girl turned
impulsively, grasped the guard-rail, swung her lithe body between it and
the floor of the car, and dropped to the cobbles between the tracks. She
staggered a foot or two away, followed by an indistinguishable taunt
amid derisive laughter. Fortunately there was no car bearing down on the
southbound track to endanger her; while that which she had left flung
away as, recovering, she ran to the sidewalk.
She began to trudge northward. The first street lamp she encountered
told her she had alighted at Forty-seventh Street, and had another mile
and a half to walk. But with all her weariness, she no longer thought of
riding; it was impossible ... she could never escape annoyance ... men
just wouldn't let her alone....
_Men!..._
Shuddering imperceptibly, her eyes hot with tears of shame and
indignation, she walked rapidly, anxious to gain the refuge of her home,
to be secure, for a time at least, from Man....
They called themselves _Men_! She despised them all--_all_! Beasts!...
What had she ever done?... It wasn't as if this was the first time: they
were always plaguing her: hardly a day passed.... Well, anyway, never a
week.... It wasn't her fault if she was pretty: she never even so much
as looked at them: but they kept on staring ... nudging.... She didn't
believe there was a decent fellow living ... except, of course, That
One....
He was different; at least, he had been, somehow: like a perfect
gentleman. He had come between her and a gang of tormentors, had knocked
one down and thrown the rest into confusion with a lively play of fists,
and then, whisking Joan into a convenient taxicab, had taken her to the
corner nearest her home--never so much as asking her name, or if he
might call.... She had expected him to--like in a book; but he didn't,
nor had he (likewise contrary to her expectations) at any time
thereafter been known to haunt her neighbourhood. To her the affair was
like a dream of chivalry: she remembered him as very handsome (probably
far more handsome than he really was) and _different_, with grand
clothes and manners (the man had helped her out of the cab and lifted
his hat in parting): all in all, vastly unlike any of the fellows whose
rude attentions she somewhat loftily permitted in the streets after
supper or at the home of some other girl.
That One remained her dream-lord of romance. And in her heart of hearts
she was sure that some day their paths would cross again. But it had all
happened so long ago that she had grown a little faint with waiting.
So, smothering her indignation with roseate fancies, she plodded her
weary way to Seventy-sixth Street; where, turning eastward, she
presently ascended a squat brown-stone stoop, entered the dingy
vestibule of a dingier tenement, pressed the button below a mail-box
labelled "Thursby," waited till the latch clicked its spasmodic welcome,
and then began her weary climb to the topmost floor.