jerked her head significantly in the vague direction of the street. "She
left soon after that, though I never said another word to her, but just
kept on bidding her the time of day, as if nothing had ever passed
between us. I felt turrible about her leaving, too; and I tried to
persuade her she was making a mistake by leaving a house that she knowed
was decent and where she could manage to live within her means. Oh, you
don't know how I felt for days and weeks after she went. I knew how good
she was when she come to this house, and I kept thinking how my Annie
might have been just as foolish and heedless if she'd been throwed
amongst strangers and had the same temptations. I don't know where she
went exactly. She didn't give me much satisfaction about it, and I never
seen her again, till one morning this winter, when I went out to bring
in my ash-cans, I run right into her. It was real early in the morning,
just getting daylight. I always get up at five o'clock winter and
summer, because I'm used to it; and then I've got to, so's to get the
work done, for I can't work fast with my rheumatics. It was hardly light
enough yet for me to recognize her right away, and she did look so
forlorn and pitiful-like walking there so early in the morning in the
snow. It had snowed in the night, and it was the first we'd had this
season. She didn't see me at first. She was walking slow,--real slow and
lingering-like,--like them poor things do. I was standing at the top of
the stairs in the areaway, and her face was turned across the street, as
if she was expecting somebody. I tried to speak to her, but sometimes
something catches me when I'm strong moved and I can't sound a word for
several moments. And that's the way I was struck that morning. I started
to run after her; then I thought better of it, and sort of guessed she'd
turn around at the corner and come back. So I went to the cans and made
believe to be turrible interested in them, and when I looked up, sure
enough she had started back again, and I had caught her eye.
"Thinking of Annie, I bade her the time of day real friendly-like, just
as though everything was all right, and I asked her to come in and have
a bite of breakfast. I'd left the coffee on the stove, and had fried
myself a nice mess of onions. She looked sort of half shamed and half
grateful, and had started to come with me, when all of a sudden she
stopped and said she guessed she couldn't that morning. Then she
strolled off again. I picked up my ash-cans and started down-stairs, but
I wasn't half-way down when I saw her hurrying along the other side of
the street with a man I'd seen come round the corner by Skelly's saloon
while we was talking together. And I never saw her again."
An expression of pathos, infinitely sweet and tender, had crept into the
woman's thin, worn face--an expression in strange, almost ludicrous,
contrast to the high, cracked voice in which the talc had been
delivered. I gazed at the bent old creature with something like
reverence for the nobility which I now could read so plainly in every
line of her face--the nobility which can attach itself only to decency
of life and thought and action. In my brief interview with her in the
twilight of the evening before I had heard only the ridiculous jargon of
a woman without a palate, and I had seen only an old crone with a
soot-smeared face. But now the maimed voice echoed in my ears like the
sound of the little old melodeon with the broken strings--which had been
my mother's.
"I must be going now," she said, rising with an effort. "You'll come
down and see me sometimes, won't you, honey? I like young people. They
sort of cheer me up when I feel down. Come down this afternoon, if you
haven't got any place to go. Come down and I'll lend you some books."
I thanked her, and promised I would.
IV
WHEREIN FATE BRINGS ME GOOD FORTUNE IN ONE HAND AND DISASTER IN THE
OTHER
Monday morning--a cheerless, bleak Monday morning, with the rain falling
upon the slush-filled streets. I ate a hurried breakfast of bread and
butter and black coffee, locked my door, and started out with renewed
vigor to look for a job. I had learned by this time to use a little
discrimination in answering advertisements; and from now on I paid
attention to such prospective employers only as stated the nature of
their business and gave a street number.
I had also learned another important thing, and that was that I could
not afford to be too particular about the nature of my job, as I watched
my small capital diminish day by day, despite my frugality. I would have
been glad, now, to get work at anything that promised the chance of a
meager livelihood. Anything to get a foothold. The chief obstacle seemed
to be my inexperience. I could obtain plenty of work which in time
promised to pay me five dollars a week, but in the two or three months'
time necessary to acquire dexterity I should have starved to death, for
I had not money to carry me over this critical period.
Work was plenty enough. It nearly always is so. The question was not how
to get a job, but how to live by such jobs as I could get. The low wages
offered to green hands--two and a half to three dollars a week--might do
for the girl who lived at home; but I had to pay room-rent and car-fare
and to buy food. So, as long as my small capital could be made to hold
out I continued my search for something that would pay at least five
dollars a week to begin with.
On Monday night I was no nearer to being a bread-winner than when I had
started out for the first time from Miss Jamison's boarding-house. I
climbed the bare stairs at nightfall, and as I fumbled at the keyhole I
could hear the click of a typewriter in the room next to mine. My room
was quite dark, but there was a patch of dim white on the floor that
sent a thrill of gladness all over me. I lighted the lamp and tore open
the precious envelop before taking off my gloves or hat. It was a note
from Minnie Plympton, saying she had got employment as demonstrator for
a cereal-food company, and was making a tour of the small New England
cities. The letter was dated at Bangor, Maine, and she asked me to write
her at Portland, where she expected to be all week; and which I did, at
considerable length, after I had cooked and eaten my supper.
Bread and butter and black coffee for breakfast, and potato-soup and
bread and butter for supper, with plain bread and butter done up in a
piece of paper and carried with me for luncheon--this was my daily menu
for the weeks that followed, varied on two occasions by the purchase of
a half-pint of New Orleans molasses.
The advertisements for cigar and cigarette workers were very numerous;
and as that sounded like humble work, I thought I might stand a better
chance in that line than any other. Accordingly I applied to the foreman
of a factory in Avenue A, who wanted "bunch-makers." He heard my
petition in a drafty hallway through which a small army of boys and
girls were pouring, each one stopping to insert a key in a
time-register. They were just coming to work, for I was very early. The
foreman, a young German, cut me off unceremoniously by asking to see my
working-card; and when I looked at him blankly, for I hadn't a ghost of
an idea what he meant, he strode away in disgust, leaving me to
conjecture as to his meaning.
Nothing daunted, however, for I meant to be very energetic and brave
that morning, I went to the next factory. Here they wanted "labelers,"
and as this sounded easy, I approached the foreman with something like
confidence. He asked what experience I'd had, and I gave him a truthful
reply.
"Sorry, but we're not running any kindergarten here," he replied curtly
and turned away.
I was still determined that I'd join the rank of cigar-makers. Somehow,
they impressed me as a very prosperous lot of people, and there was
something pungent and wholesome in the smell of the big, bright
workrooms.
The third foreman I besought was an elderly German with a paternal
manner. He listened to me kindly, said I looked quick, and offered to
put me on as an apprentice, explaining with much pomposity that
cigar-making was a very difficult trade, at which I must serve a three
years' apprenticeship before I could become a member of the union and
entitled to draw union wages. I left him feeling very humble, and
likewise disillusioned of my cigar-making ambitions.
"Girls wanted to learn binding and folding--paid while learning." The
address took me to Brooklyn Bridge and down a strange, dark thoroughfare
running toward the East River. Above was the great bridge, unreal,
fairy-like in the morning mist. I was looking for Rose Street, which
proved to be a zigzag alley that wriggled through one of the great
bridge arches into a world of book-binderies. Rose Street was choked
with moving carts loaded with yellow-back literature done up in bales.
The superintendent proved to be a civil young man. He did not need me
before Monday, but he told me to come back that day at half-past seven
and to bring a bone paper-cutter with me. He paid only three dollars a
week, and I accepted, but with the hope that as this was only Thursday,
and not yet nine o'clock, I might find something better in the meantime.
A Brooklyn merchant was in need of two "salesladies--experience not
necessary." A trolley-car swirled me across the river, now glistering in
the spring sunshine. We were hurtled down interminable vistas of small
shops, always under the grim iron trestle of the elevated railroad. At
the end of an hour I entered the "Majestic," a small store stocked with
trash. After much dickering, Mr. Lindbloom and his wife decided I'd do
at three and a half dollars per week, working from seven in the morning
till nine in the evening, Saturdays till midnight. I departed with the
vow that if I must work and starve, I should not do both in Lindbloom's.
Five cents got me back to Cortlandt Street in Manhattan, where I called
upon a candy-manufacturer who wanted bonbon-makers. The French foreman,
in snowy cap and apron, received me in a great room dazzling with
white-tile walls and floor, and filled with bright-eyed girls, also in
caps and aprons, and working before marble tables. The Frenchman was
polite and apologetic, but they never hired any but experienced workers.
It was half-past three, and I had two more names on my list. Rose-making
sounded attractive, and I walked all the way up to Bond Street. Shabby
and prosaic, this street, strangely enough, has been selected as the
forcing-ground or nursery of artificial flowers. Its signs on both
sides, even unto the top floor, proclaim some specialization of
fashionable millinery--flowers, feathers, aigrets, wire hat-frames. On
the third floor, rear, of a once fashionable mansion, now fallen into
decay, I stumbled into a room, radiantly scarlet with roses. The
jangling bell attached to the door aroused no curiosity whatever in the
white-faced girls bending over these gay garlands. It was a signal,
though, for a thick-set beetle-browed young fellow to bounce in from the
next room and curtly demand my business.
"We only pay a dollar and a half to learners," he said, smiling
unpleasantly over large yellow teeth. I fled in dismay. Down Broadway,
along Bleecker, and up squalid Thompson Street I hurried to a paper-box
factory.
The office of E. Springer & Company was in pleasant contrast to the
flower sweat-shop, for all its bright colors. So, too, was there a
grateful comparison between the Jew of the ugly smile and the portly
young man who sat behind a glass partition and acknowledged my entrance
by glancing up from his ledger. The remark he made was evidently witty
and not intended for my ears, for it made the assistant bookkeeper--a
woman--and the two women typewriters laugh and crane their necks in my
direction. The bookkeeper climbed down from his high stool and opened
the glass door. He was as kind now as he was formerly merry. Possibly he
had seen my chin quiver the least bit, and knew I was almost ready to
cry. He did not ask many questions; but presently he sent one typewriter
flying up-stairs for the superintendent, and the other was sent to ask
of the forewoman if all the jobs were filled. The superintendent proved
to be a woman, shrewd, keen-faced, and bespectacled. The forewoman sent
down word that No. 105 had not rung up that morning, and that I could
have her key. The pay was three dollars a week to learners, but Miss
Price, the superintendent, thought I could learn in a week's time, which
opinion the portly gentleman heartily indorsed, and so I allowed him to
enroll my name. He gave me a key, showed me how to "ring up" in the
register at the foot of the stairs, and told me that henceforth I should
be known as "105."
I thanked him in as steady a voice as I could command, and reached the
street door on the stroke of six, just in time to hear my shopmates of
the morrow laughing and scrambling down-stairs in their mad effort to
get away from that which I had been trying to obtain for so many weeks.
The street I stepped into had been transformed. Behind my blurred
vision, as I hurried along, I saw no squalor, no wretchedness now.
Through tears of thankfulness the houses, the streets, and the hurrying
people were all glorified, all transfigured. Everything was right--the
whole world and everybody in it.
Thus I sped homeward on that eventful evening, eager to tell my good
news to Mrs. Pringle, who, I knew, would be glad to hear it. As I drew
near the block where I lived, I became half conscious of something
strange and unusual in the atmosphere; I felt the strange sensation of
being lost, of being in the wrong place. Men and women stood about in
silent knots, and through the deep twilight I felt rather than heard the
deep throbbing of fire-engines. Pressing through the little knots of men
and women, I stood before the red mass of embers and watched the firemen
pour their quenching streams upon the ashes of my lodging-house.
Dazed, stupefied, I asked questions of the bystanders. But nobody knew
anything definite. One man said he guessed a good many lives had been
lost; the woman next to him said she'd heard the number was five.
The houses on both sides were still standing, the windows smashed in,
and the tenants fled. There seemed to be not even a neighbor who might
know of the fate of my lodging-house acquaintance or of my good friend
Mrs. Pringle. I spoke to a policeman. He listened gently, and then
conducted me to a house in Fifteenth Street, where they had offered
shelter for the night to any refugees who might desire it.
The basement of this house had been turned into a dormitory, one
section for the men and the other for the women, who were in greater
number and came straggling in one by one. A man-servant in livery passed
hot coffee and sandwiches, which we swallowed mechanically, regarding
one another and our surroundings with stupid bewilderment. I had never
met any of these people before, though they had all been my
fellow-lodgers.
The girl sitting on the cot next to mine passed her cup up for more
coffee, and as she did so turned a quizzical gaze upon me. She was
stupid and ugly. Her quizzical look deepened into curiosity, and by and
by she asked:
"Youse didn't live there too, did youse?"
Our common misfortune inspired me to a cordial reply, and we fell into a
discussion of the catastrophe. Her English was so sadly perverted and
her voice so guttural that I could make out her meaning only with the
greatest exercise of the imagination. But it was to the effect that the
fire had started in a room on the top floor, whither poor old Mrs.
Pringle had gone about three o'clock in the afternoon with a bucket of
coal for the fire. Just what happened nobody knew. Every one on the top
floor at the time had perished, including Mrs. Pringle.
"Didn't youse get nothin' out, neither?" asked my companion. And then
it dawned upon me for the first time that I had nothing in all the world
now but the clothes on my back and the promise of work on the morrow.
"Yes, I have lost everything," I answered.
"Youse got anything in the bank?" she pursued.
The question seemed to me ironical and not worthy of notice.
"I have. I've got 'most five hundred dollars saved up," she went on.
"Five hundred dollars!"
The girl nodded. "Huh, that's what! I could live tony if I wanted, but I
like to save my money. I makes good money, too,--twelve dollars a
week,--and I don't spend it, neither."
"What do you do?" I asked, regarding the large, rough hands with
something like admiration for their earning abilities.
"I'm a lady-buffer," she answered, with a touch of pride.
"A lady-buffer! What's that?" I cried, looking at the slovenly,
dirt-streaked wrapper and the shabby golf-cape that had slipped from her
shoulders to the cot. She regarded me with pity for my ignorance, and
then delivered herself of an axiom.
"A lady-buffer is a lady what buffs." And, to render the definition
still more explicit, she rolled up the sleeve of her wrapper, showed me
mighty biceps, and then with her arm performed several rapid revolutions
in midair.
"What do you buff?" I next ventured.
"Brass!"
This laconic reply squelched me completely, and I subsided without
further conversation.
Despite my weariness, there was little sleep for me that night. Affairs
had come to a crisis; my condition was about as bad as it could possibly
be. Whatever was going to become of me? Why, in the name of all common
sense, had I ever come to New York? Why was I not content to remain a
country school-ma'am, in a place where a country school-ma'am was looked
up to as something of a personage? That night, if I had had enough money
to buy a ticket back to the town I had come from, my fate would have
been settled definitely then and there.
Not the least distressing part of my condition was the fact that there
was really no help for me save what I should be able to give myself. To
be sure, I had certain distant relatives and friends who had warned me
against my flight to the city, and to whom I might have written begging
for money sufficient to carry me back to my native place, and the money,
with many "I-told-you-so's," would have been forthcoming. To return
discredited was more than my pride could bear. I had to earn my
livelihood anyway, and so, on this night of grim adversity, owing my
very bed and supper to charity, I set my teeth, and closed my tired lids
over the tears I could not hide, and swore I'd fight it out alone, so
long as I had strength to stand and heart to hope; and then there was
the prospect of a job at Springer's on the morrow, though the wage would
hardly keep body and soul together.
The next morning, while her servants were giving us our breakfast, a
stately middle-aged woman came down to the basement and passed among us,
making inquiries regarding our various conditions, and offering words of
well-meant, if patronizing, advice and suggestion wherever she thought
them needed, but which somehow did not seem to be relished as her more
material kindness had been. When it came my turn to be interviewed I
answered her many questions frankly and promptly, and, encouraged by the
evident interest which she displayed in my case, I was prompted to ask
her if she might know of any place where I could get work. She looked
at me a moment out of fine, clear eyes.
"You would not go into service, I suppose?" she asked slowly.
I had never thought of such an alternative before, but I met it without
a moment's hesitation. "No, I would not care to go into service," I
replied, and as I did so the lady's face showed mingled disappointment
and disgust.
"That is too bad," she answered, "for in that case I'm afraid I can do
nothing for you." And with that she went out of the room, leaving me, I
must confess, not sorry for having thus bluntly declared against wearing
the definite badge of servitude.
V
IN WHICH I AM "LEARNED" BY PHOEBE IN THE ART OF BOX-MAKING
The "lady-buffer" and I were the last to leave the house. We went out
together and parted company at Third Avenue, she going south to her
work, and I continuing along the street westward. The catastrophe of the
preceding day seemed to have entirely evaporated from her memory; she
seemed also to have forgotten the incident of our meeting and
conversation of the night before, for she made no comment, nor even gave
me a parting greeting.
I was inclined to reproach such heartlessness as I hurried along, when
suddenly it was borne in upon my consciousness that it was I, not she,
who was open to that charge. Here I was, speeding along to my work with
hope in my heart, sometimes almost forgetting that the woman who had
been so kind to me was probably lying in the morgue, awaiting burial in
the Potter's Field, unless saved from that ignoble end by some friend.
And yet I was powerless. I could not even spare time to go to the morgue
or to make inquiries. I knew not a soul who could have helped me, and I
had only one dollar and a half in all the world, no place to sleep that
night, no change of garments, nothing except the promise of work that
morning at Springer's. I stopped at the corner, strongly tempted by my
innate sense of decency to the memory of the dead. But only for a
moment: the law of life--self-preservation--again asserted itself, and
for the time being I put the past behind me and hurried on toward
Thompson Street.
It lacked but a few minutes of eight o'clock when, at last, I turned
into the squalid street at the end of which stands Springer's. In the
sunshine of the mild March morning the facade of the tall buff building
looked for all the world like a gaunt, ugly, unkempt hag, frowning
between bleared old eyes that seemed to coax--nay, rather to coerce me
into entering her awful house.
The instant impression was one of repulsion, and the impulse was to run
away. But there was fascination, too, in the hag-like visage of those
grim brick walls, checkered with innumerable dirty windows and trussed
up, like a paralytic old crone, with rusty fire-escapes. It was the
fascination of the mysterious and of the evil; and, repulsive and
forbidding as was its general aspect, nothing could now have induced me
to turn back. Instinct told me that I was about to enter into no
commonplace experience. And so, unresisting, I was borne along in the
swift current of humanity that was swept down the street, like the water
in a mill-race, to turn the wheels of workshop and factory. Before
Springer's a great arm of this human mill-stream eddied inward, to be
lost in another moment in the vortex of the wide black doors, whence
issued muffled sounds of the pandemonium within. At the last moment I
hesitated, obsessed once more with the indefinable horror of it all.
Again there was the strong impulse to run away--far, far away from
Springer's and from Thompson Street, when suddenly the old monody began
to ring in my ears, "WORK OR STARVE, WORK OR STARVE!" Another moment,
and I too had passed within the wide black doors.
The entrance passage was lighted by a sickly gas-jet, and in its flicker
a horde of loud-mouthed girls were making frantic efforts to insert
their keys in the time-register. I was jostled and tumbled over
unceremoniously. I was pushed and punched unmercifully by the crowding
elbows, until I found myself squeezed tight against the wall. From the
scrambling and confusion it was evident everybody was late, and tones
and language attested to racked nerves and querulous tempers. Suddenly
there was a scuffle and the sharp scraping of feet on the floor.
"Get out, yez dirty Irish!" rang out in the stifling air.
"I wuz here fust!" snarled another voice.
"Call me dirty Irish ag'in and I'll dirty Irish you."
The black-haired girl had accepted the challenge, and the maligned
daughter of Erin, cheeks aflame and eyes blazing, rushed at her
detractor with clenched fist.
"Go for her, Rosie! She's nothin' but a dirty black Ginney, nohow!"
"Pitch into her, Celie! Punch her!" yelled a chorus from the stairs who
came swooping down from above, attracted by the scrimmage, and just in
time to see the combatants rush at each other in a hand-to-hand
struggle, punctuated with loud oaths.
The noise suddenly subsided at the screeching of a raucous nasal voice.
"Well, young ladies! What does this mean?" demanded the superintendent,
and Rosie and Celie both began to talk at once.
"Never mind about the rest of it," snapped Miss Price, cutting the tale
short. "I'll dock you both half a day's pay: and the next time it
happens you'll both be fired on the spot."
Then Miss Price turned to me, while the now silent wranglers meekly
turned their keys in the register and marched up-stairs, whither their
respective factions had since disappeared.