“We are weak!” said the Sticks, and men broke them;
“We are weak!” said the Threads, and were torn;
Till new thoughts came and they spoke them;
Till the Fagot and the Rope were born.
For the Fagot men find is resistant,
And they anchor on the Rope's taut length;
Even grasshoppers combined,
Are a force, the farmers find--
In union there is strength.
Ross Warden endured his grocery business; strove with it, toiled at it,
concentrated his scientific mind on alien tasks of financial calculation
and practical psychology, but he liked it no better. He had no interest
in business, no desire to make money, no skill in salesmanship.
But there were five mouths at home; sweet affectionate feminine mouths
no doubt, but requiring food. Also two in the kitchen, wider, and
requiring more food. And there were five backs at home to be covered,
to use the absurd metaphor--as if all one needed for clothing was a
four foot patch. The amount and quality of the covering was an unceasing
surprise to Ross, and he did not do justice to the fact that his
womenfolk really saved a good deal by doing their own sewing.
In his heart he longed always to be free of the whole hated load of
tradesmanship. Continually his thoughts went back to the hope of selling
out the business and buying a ranch.
“I could make it keep us, anyhow,” he would plan to himself; “and I
could get at that guinea pig idea. Or maybe hens would do.” He had
a theory of his own, or a personal test of his own, rather, which he
wished to apply to a well known theory. It would take some years to
work it out, and a great many fine pigs, and be of no possible value
financially. “I'll do it sometime,” he always concluded; which was cold
comfort.
His real grief at losing the companionship of the girl he loved, was
made more bitter by a total lack of sympathy with her aims, even if she
achieved them--in which he had no confidence. He had no power to change
his course, and tried not to be unpleasant about it, but he had to
express his feelings now and then.
“Are you coming back to me?” he wrote. “How con you bear to give so much
pain to everyone who loves you? Is your wonderful salary worth more to
you than being here with your mother--with me? How can you say you
love me--and ruin both our lives like this? I cannot come to see you--I
_would_ not come to see you--calling at the back door! Finding the girl
I love in a cap and apron! Can you not see it is wrong, utterly wrong,
all this mad escapade of yours? Suppose you do make a thousand dollars a
year--I shall never touch your money--you know that. I cannot even offer
you a home, except with my family, and I know how you feel about that; I
do not blame you.
“But I am as stubborn as you are, dear girl; I will not live on my
wife's money--you will not live in my mother's house--and we are
drifting apart. It is not that I care less for you dear, or at all for
anyone else, but this is slow death--that's all.”
Mrs. Warden wrote now and then and expatiated on the sufferings of her
son, and his failing strength under the unnatural strain, till Diantha
grew to dread her letters more than any pain she knew. Fortunately they
came seldom.
Her own family was much impressed by the thousand dollars, and found
the occupation of housekeeper a long way more tolerable than that of
house-maid, a distinction which made Diantha smile rather bitterly. Even
her father wrote to her once, suggesting that if she chose to invest
her salary according to his advice he could double it for her in a year,
maybe treble it, in Belgian hares.
_“They'd_ double and treble fast enough!” she admitted to herself; but
she wrote as pleasant a letter as she could, declining his proposition.
Her mother seemed stronger, and became more sympathetic as the months
passed. Large affairs always appealed to her more than small ones, and
she offered valuable suggestions as to the account keeping of the big
house. They all assumed that she was permanently settled in this well
paid position, and she made no confidences. But all summer long
she planned and read and studied out her progressive schemes, and
strengthened her hold among the working women.
Laundress after laundress she studied personally and tested
professionally, finding a general level of mediocrity, till finally
she hit upon a melancholy Dane--a big rawboned red-faced woman--whose
husband had been a miller, but was hurt about the head so that he was no
longer able to earn his living. The huge fellow was docile, quiet, and
endlessly strong, but needed constant supervision.
“He'll do anything you tell him, Miss, and do it well; but then he'll
sit and dream about it--I can't leave him at all. But he'll take the
clothes if I give him a paper with directions, and come right back.”
Poor Mrs. Thorald wiped her eyes, and went on with her swift ironing.
Diantha offered her the position of laundress at Union House, with two
rooms for their own, over the laundry. “There'll be work for him, too,”
she said. “We need a man there. He can do a deal of the heavier work--be
porter you know. I can't offer him very much, but it will help some.”
Mrs. Thorald accepted for both, and considered Diantha as a special
providence.
There was to be cook, and two capable second maids. The work of the
house must be done thoroughly well, Diantha determined; “and the food's
got to be good--or the girls wont stay.” After much consideration she
selected one Julianna, a “person of color,” for her kitchen: not the
jovial and sloppy personage usually figuring in this character, but a
tall, angular, and somewhat cynical woman, a misanthrope in fact, with a
small son. For men she had no respect whatever, but conceded a grudging
admiration to Mr. Thorald as “the usefullest biddablest male person”
she had ever seen. She also extended special sympathy to Mrs. Thorald on
account of her peculiar burden, and the Swedish woman had no antipathy
to her color, and seemed to take a melancholy pleasure in Julianna's
caustic speeches.
Diantha offered her the place, boy and all. “He can be 'bell boy' and
help you in the kitchen, too. Can't you, Hector?” Hector rolled
large adoring eyes at her, but said nothing. His mother accepted the
proposition, but without enthusiasm. “I can't keep no eye on him, Miss,
if I'm cookin' an less'n you keep your eye on him they's no work to be
got out'n any kind o' boy.”
“What is your last name, Julianna?” Diantha asked her.
“I suppose, as a matter o' fac' its de name of de last nigger I
married,” she replied. “Dere was several of 'em, all havin' different
names, and to tell you de truf Mis' Bell, I got clean mixed amongst 'em.
But Julianna's my name--world without end amen.”
So Diantha had to waive her theories about the surnames of servants in
this case.
“Did they all die?” she asked with polite sympathy.
“No'm, dey didn't none of 'em die--worse luck.”
“I'm afraid you have seen much trouble, Julianna,” she continued
sympathetically; “They deserted you, I suppose?”
Julianna laid her long spoon upon the table and stood up with great
gravity. “No'm,” she said again, “dey didn't none of 'em desert me on no
occasion. I divorced 'em.”
Marital difficulties in bulk were beyond Diantha's comprehension, and
she dropped the subject.
Union House opened in the autumn. The vanished pepper trees were dim
with dust in Orchardina streets as the long rainless summer drew to
a close; but the social atmosphere fairly sparkled with new interest.
Those who had not been away chattered eagerly with those who had, and
both with the incoming tide of winter visitors.
“That girl of Mrs. Porne's has started her housekeeping shop!”
“That 'Miss Bell' has got Mrs. Weatherstone fairly infatuated with her
crazy schemes.”
“Do you know that Bell girl has actually taken Union House? Going to
make a Girl's Club of it!”
“Did you ever _hear_ of such a thing! Diantha Bell's really going to try
to run her absurd undertaking right here in Orchardina!”
They did not know that the young captain of industry had deliberately
chosen Orchardina as her starting point on account of the special
conditions. The even climate was favorable to “going out by the day,” or
the delivery of meals, the number of wealthy residents gave opportunity
for catering on a large scale; the crowding tourists and health seekers
made a market for all manner of transient service and cooked food, and
the constant lack of sufficient or capable servants forced the people
into an unwilling consideration of any plan of domestic assistance.
In a year's deliberate effort Diantha had acquainted herself with the
rank and file of the town's housemaids and day workers, and picked her
assistants carefully. She had studied the local conditions thoroughly,
and knew her ground. A big faded building that used to be “the Hotel”
in Orchardina's infant days, standing, awkward and dingy on a site too
valuable for a house lot and not yet saleable as a business block, was
the working base.
A half year with Mrs. Weatherstone gave her $500 in cash, besides the
$100 she had saved at Mrs. Porne's; and Mrs. Weatherstone's cheerfully
offered backing gave her credit.
“I hate to let you,” said Diantha, “I want to do it all myself.”
“You are a painfully perfect person, Miss Bell,” said her last employer,
pleasantly, “but you have ceased to be my housekeeper and I hope you
will continue to be my friend. As a friend I claim the privilege
of being disagreeable. If you have a fault it is conceit. Immovable
Colossal Conceit! And Obstinacy!”
“Is that all?” asked Diantha.
“It's all I've found--so far,” gaily retorted Mrs. Weatherstone. “Don't
you see, child, that you can't afford to wait? You have reasons for
hastening, you know. I don't doubt you could, in a series of years,
work up this business all stark alone. I have every confidence in those
qualities I have mentioned! But what's the use? You'll need credit for
groceries and furniture. I am profoundly interested in this business.
I am more than willing to advance a little capital, or to ensure your
credit. A man would have sense enough to take me up at once.”
“I believe you are right,” Diantha reluctantly agreed. “And you shan't
lose by it!”
Her friends were acutely interested in her progress, and showed it in
practical ways. The New Woman's Club furnished five families of
patrons for the regular service of cooked food, which soon grew, with
satisfaction, to a dozen or so, varying from time to time. The many
families with invalids, and lonely invalids without families, were glad
to avail themselves of the special delicacies furnished at Union House.
Picnickers found it easier to buy Diantha's marvelous sandwiches than to
spend golden morning hours in putting up inferior ones at home; and many
who cooked for themselves, or kept servants, were glad to profit by this
outside source on Sunday evenings and “days out.”
There was opposition too; both the natural resistance of inertia and
prejudice, and the active malignity of Mrs. Thaddler.
The Pornes were sympathetic and anxious.
“That place'll cost her all of $10,000 a year, with those twenty-five to
feed, and they only pay $4.50 a week--I know that!” said Mr. Porne.
“It does look impossible,” his wife agreed, “but such is my faith in
Diantha Bell I'd back her against Rockefeller!”
Mrs. Weatherstone was not alarmed at all. “If she _should_ fail--which
I don't for a moment expect--it wont ruin me,” she told Isabel. “And if
she succeeds, as I firmly believe she will, why, I'd be willing to risk
almost anything to prove Mrs. Thaddler in the wrong.”
Mrs. Thaddler was making herself rather disagreeable. She used
what power she had to cry down the undertaking, and was so actively
malevolent that her husband was moved to covert opposition. He never
argued with his wife--she was easily ahead of him in that art, and, if
it came to recriminations, had certain controvertible charges to make
against him, which mode him angrily silent. He was convinced in a dim
way that her ruthless domineering spirit, and the sheer malice she often
showed, were more evil things than his own bad habits; and that even
in their domestic relation her behavior really caused him more pain
and discomfort than he caused her; but he could not convince her of it,
naturally.
“That Diantha Bell is a fine girl,” he said to himself. “A damn fine
girl, and as straight as a string!”
There had crept out, through the quenchless leak of servants talk, a
varicolored version of the incident of Mathew and the transom; and the
town had grown so warm for that young gentleman that he had gone to
Alaska suddenly, to cool off, as it were. His Grandmother, finding
Mrs. Thaddler invincible with this new weapon, and what she had so long
regarded as her home now visibly Mrs. Weatherstone's, had retired in
regal dignity to her old Philadelphia establishment, where she upheld
the standard of decorum against the weakening habits of a deteriorated
world, for many years.
As Mr. Thaddler thought of this sweeping victory, he chuckled for the
hundredth time. “She ought to make good, and she will. Something's got
to be done about it,” said he.
Diantha had never liked Mr. Thaddler; she did not like that kind of man
in general, nor his manner toward her in particular. Moreover he was the
husband of Mrs. Thaddler. She did not know that he was still the largest
owner in the town's best grocery store, and when that store offered
her special terms for her exclusive trade, she accepted the proposition
thankfully.
She told Ross about it, as a matter well within his knowledge, if not
his liking, and he was mildly interested. “I am much alarmed at this new
venture,” he wrote, “but you must get your experience. I wish I could
save you. As to the groceries, those are wholesale rates, nearly;
they'll make enough on it. Yours is a large order you see, and steady.”
When she opened her “Business Men's Lunch” Mr. Thaddler had a still
better opportunity. He had a reputation as a high flyer, and had really
intended to sacrifice himself on the altar of friendship by patronizing
and praising this “undertaking” at any cost to his palate; but no
sacrifice was needed.
Diantha's group of day workers had their early breakfast and
departed, taking each her neat lunch-pail,--they ate nothing of their
employers;--and both kitchen and dining room would have stood idle till
supper time. But the young manager knew she must work her plant for all
it was worth, and speedily opened the dining room with the side entrance
as a “Caffeteria,” with the larger one as a sort of meeting place;
papers and magazines on the tables.
From the counter you took what you liked, and seated yourself, and your
friends, at one of the many small tables or in the flat-armed chairs
in the big room, or on the broad piazza; and as this gave good food,
cheapness, a chance for a comfortable seat and talk and a smoke, if one
had time, it was largely patronized.
Mr. Thaddler, as an experienced _bon vivant,_ despised sandwiches.
“Picnicky makeshifts” he called them,--“railroad rations”--“bread and
leavings,” and when he saw these piles on piles of sandwiches, listed
only as “No. 1,” “No. 2” “No. 3,” and so on, his benevolent intention
wavered. But he pulled himself together and took a plateful, assorted.
“Come on, Porne,” he said, “we'll play it's a Sunday school picnic,”
and he drew himself a cup of coffee, finding hot milk, cream and sugar
crystals at hand. “I never saw a cheap joint where you could fix it
yourself, before,” he said,--and suspiciously tasted the mixture.
“By jing! That's coffee!” he cried in surprise. “There's no scum on the
milk, and the cream's cream! Five cents! She won't get rich on this.”
Then he applied himself to his “No. 1” sandwich, and his determined
expression gave way to one of pleasure. “Why that's bread--real bread! I
believe she made it herself!”
She did in truth,--she and Julianna with Hector as general assistant.
The big oven was filled several times every morning: the fresh rolls
disappeared at breakfast and supper, the fresh bread was packed in the
lunch pails, and the stale bread was even now melting away in large
bites behind the smiling mouths and mustaches of many men. Perfect
bread, excellent butter, and “What's the filling I'd like to know?”
More than one inquiring-minded patron split his sandwich to add sight
to taste, but few could be sure of the flavorsome contents, fatless,
gritless, smooth and even, covering the entire surface, the last
mouthful as perfect as the first. Some were familiar, some new, all were
delicious.
The six sandwiches were five cents, the cup of coffee five, and the
little “drop cakes,” sweet and spicy, were two for five. Every man spent
fifteen cents, some of them more; and many took away small cakes in
paper bags, if there were any left.
“I don't see how you can do it, and make a profit,” urged Mr. Eltwood,
making a pastorial call. “They are so good you know!”
Diantha smiled cheerfully. “That's because all your ideas are based on
what we call 'domestic economy,' which is domestic waste. I buy in large
quantities at wholesale rates, and my cook with her little helper, the
two maids, and my own share of the work, of course, provides for the
lot. Of course one has to know how.”
“Whenever did you find--or did you create?--those heavenly sandwiches?”
he asked.
“I have to thank my laundress for part of that success,” she said.
“She's a Dane, and it appears that the Danes are so fond of sandwiches
that, in large establishments, they have a 'sandwich kitchen' to prepare
them. It is quite a bit of work, but they are good and inexpensive.
There is no limit to the variety.”
As a matter of fact this lunch business paid well, and led to larger
things.
The girl's methods were simple and so organized as to make one hand wash
the other. Her house had some twenty-odd bedrooms, full accommodations
for kitchen and laundry work on a large scale, big dining, dancing, and
reception rooms, and broad shady piazzas on the sides. Its position on a
corner near the business part of the little city, and at the foot of the
hill crowned with so many millionaires and near millionaires as could
get land there, offered many advantages, and every one was taken.
The main part of the undertaking was a House Worker's Union; a group
of thirty girls, picked and trained. These, previously working out as
servants, had received six dollars a week “and found.” They now worked
an agreed number of hours, were paid on a basis by the hour or day, and
“found” themselves. Each had her own room, and the broad porches and
ball room were theirs, except when engaged for dances and meetings of
one sort and another.
It was a stirring year's work, hard but exciting, and the only
difficulty which really worried Diantha was the same that worried the
average housewife--the accounts.