farther down we saw poor Eunice struggling at the same hopeless lesson.
The foreman, whose name proved to be Isaacs,--"Abe" Isaacs,--brought us
our first "lot" of work. Mine consisted of six dozen coarse muslin
corset-covers, which were already seamed together, and which I was
shown how to "finish" with an embroidery yoke and ruffled edging about
the arm's-eye. There is no basting, no pinning together of pieces; all
the work is free-hand, and must be done with infinite exactness. I must
hold the embroidery and the finishing strips of beading on the edge of
the muslin with an exact nicety that will insure the edges of all three
being caught in one seam; a process difficult enough on any
sewing-machine, under any circumstances, but doubly so when the lightest
touch sends the three-ply fabric under the needle with an incalculable
velocity. Result of my first hour's work: I had spoiled a dozen
garments. Try as I would, I invariably lost all control of my materials,
and the needle plunged right and left--everywhere, in fact, except along
the straight and narrow way laid out for it. And, to make matters still
worse, I was painfully conscious that my old woman vis-a-vis was
laughing at my distress with her irritating "Yi, yi!"
As I spoiled each garment I thrust it into the bottom of a green
pasteboard box under the table, which held my allotment of work, and
from the top of the box grabbed up a fresh piece. I glanced over my
shoulder and saw that Bessie was doing the same thing, although what we
were going to do with them, or how account for such wholesale
devastation of goods, we were too perturbed to consider. At last,
however, after repeated trials, and by guiding the seam with laborious
care, I succeeded in completing one garment without disaster; and I had
just started another, when--crash!--flying shuttles and spinning bobbins
and swirling wheels came to a standstill. My sewing-machine was silent,
as were all the others in the great workroom. Something had happened to
the dynamo.
There was a howl of disappointment.
"Yi, yi!" screamed the old woman, throwing up her hands in a gesture of
unutterable disgust; and then, catching my eye, her wrinkled old lips
parted in a smile of friendly interest.
"How many did ye bungle?" she chuckled, leaning over and looking
furtively up and down the room, as if afraid of being caught talking to
me. I blushed in confusion that was half fright, and she raised a
forefinger menacingly:
"Yi! yi! ye thought I didn't see ye sneaking the spoiled truck into the
green box; but old Miriam's got sharp eyes, she has, and she likes to
watch you young uns when you comes in first. You're not the only one.
They all spoil lots before they learn to make a living out of it.
There's lots like ye!" and stooping over, she drew a handful of my
botched work out of the box and began to rip the stitching.
"That's all right; I'm glad to help ye!" she protested. "And sure, if we
don't help each other, who's a-going to help us poor devils, I'd like to
know?"
I, too, busied myself with the task of ripping, which I saw Bessie and
Eunice were also doing; in fact, all the new-comers of the morning could
be thus singled out. The practised hands availed themselves of the
enforced rest by yawning and stretching their arms, and by comparing the
earnings of the morning; for we all worked on piece-work. Rachel
Goldberg had finished four dozen of extra-fine garments, which meant
seventy-five cents, and it was not yet eleven o'clock. She would make at
least one dollar and sixty cents before the day was over, provided we
did not have any serious breakdowns. She watched the clock
impatiently,--every minute she was idle meant a certain fraction of a
penny lost,--and crouched sullenly over her machine for the signal.
"What are you thinking about, Miriam?" a frowsy-headed girl asked,
giving the wink to the crowd.
The generous-hearted old lady looked up from the task she was helping
me to do, and raising her hand to shield her eyes from the glare of the
gaslight, peered down the long line of girls until she placed the
speaker.
"Yi, yi! Ye want to know what I'm thinking about? Well, mebbe, Beckie
Frankenstein, I'm thinking what a beautiful world this is, and what a
fine time you and me has," and the strange creature broke into a laugh
that was more terrible than a sob.
"Ah, there you go again, Miriam! What's eatin' you to-day?" cried the
foreman, as he came along to inspect the work; and seeing Miriam undoing
my blunders, asked, "Who did that?"
Before I could put in a half-frightened acknowledgment, my intercessor
had spoken up:
"And whose 'u'd them be but mine, Abe Isaacs?"--scowling at me to keep
silence when I opened my mouth to contradict her.
The foreman looked incredulous. "You, Miriam! Do you mean to tell me it
was you spoiled all that work? What's the matter with you to-day,
anyway? If you don't do better, I'll have to fire you."
There was a good-natured tone, a kindly compassion, in Abe Isaacs's
voice which was not in accord with the words; and when he turned and
asked me what I had done, there was no fear in my heart. I answered by
looking significantly at old Miriam.
"I thought as much," he muttered under his breath, and passed on to
Bessie.
"Poor old Miriam, she's teched up here," one of the girls explained,
tapping her forehead. "They say it was the old sweat-shops put her out
of her mind, and I guess it's so, all right. My mother knows two ladies
that was made crazy sewing pants up to Sternberg's. But that was long
ago, when they used to treat the girls so bad. Things is ever so much
better now, only Miriam can't get used to the improvements. She's a
hundred years behind the times."
I was still lost in admiring wonder of Rachel Goldberg's skill. I asked
her how long it would take me to learn to do it as well. She did not
have a chance to answer before a harsh laugh was heard and a new voice
asserted itself.
"Oh-ho! you'll never learn to work like her, and you'd better find it
out now. I seen you running your machine, and I says to myself, 'That
girl 'll never make her salt making underclothes.' Pants 'd be more in
your line. To make money on muslin you've got to be born to 't."
"That's no lie, either," muttered another.
"You bet it ain't!" declared the expert Rachel. "My mother was working
on shirts for a straight ten months before I was born."
In half an hour we had resumed work, and at half-past twelve we stopped
for another half-hour and ate luncheon--Bessie, Eunice, and I in a
corner by ourselves.
We held a conference, and compared notes of the morning's progress,
which had been even more discouraging to poor Eunice than to us; for to
her it had brought the added misfortune of a row of stitches in her
right forefinger. We counted up our profits for the morning, and the
aggregate earnings of the three of us did not amount to ten cents. Of
course we would learn to do better, but it would take a long, long time,
Bessie was firmly convinced, before we could even make enough to buy our
lunches. It was decided that one of us should resign the job that night,
and the other two keep at it until the delegate found something better
for us all and had tested the new job to her satisfaction. Bessie was of
course appointed, and the next morning Eunice and I went alone, with
plausible excuses for the absent Bessie, for we had a certain delicacy
about telling the real facts to so kind a foreman as "Abe."
The second day we had no better luck, and the pain between the
shoulder-blades was unceasing. All night long I had tossed on my narrow
cot, with aching back and nerves wrought up to such a tension that the
moment I began to doze off I was wakened by a spasmodic jerk of the
right arm as it reached forward to grasp a visionary strip of lace. That
evening, as we filed out at six o'clock, Bessie was waiting for us, her
gentle face full of radiance and good news. Even the miserable Eunice
was affected by her hopefulness.
"Oh, girls, I've got something that's really good--three dollars a week
while you're learning, and an awful nice shop; and just think,
girls!--the hours--I never had anything like it before, and I've knocked
around at eighteen different jobs--half-past eight to five, and--" she
paused for breath to announce the glorious fact--"Girls, just think of
it!--_Saturday afternoons off_, all the year round."
XIV
IN WHICH A TRAGIC FATE OVERTAKES MY "LADY-FRIENDS"
The next morning we met on the corner, as usual, and Bessie led us to
our new job--led us through a world that was strange and new to both
Eunice and me, though poor Eunice had little heart for the newness and
the strangeness of it all. In and out, and criss-cross, we threaded our
way through little narrow streets bordered with stately "sky-scrapers,"
and at last turned into Maiden Lane. We walked arm in arm till we came
to an alley which Bessie said was Gold Street. It is more of a zigzag
even than Maiden Lane, and is flanked by dark iron-shuttered warehouses
and factories. Wolff's, our destination, was at the head of the street,
and in a few minutes we were sitting side by side at the work-table,
while our new forewoman, a cross-eyed Irish girl, was showing us what to
do and how to do it.
Making jewel-and silverware-cases was now our work. In the long,
whitewashed workroom there were thirty other girls performing the same
task, and on each of the five floors beneath there were as many more
girls, pasting and pressing and trimming cases that were to hold rings,
watches and bracelets, and spoons, knives, and forks--enough to supply
all Christendom, it seemed to me. As beginners we were given each a
dozen spoon-boxes to cover with white leather and line with satin. It is
light, pleasant work, and was such an improvement on the sweat-shop
drudgery that even Eunice smiled a little after a while.
"Is youse lady-friends?" the forewoman asked when, in the course of ten
minutes, she came to inspect our progress; on receiving an affirmative
reply, she scowled.
"Fiddlesticks! If I'd knowed youse was lady-friends, I'd jist told Izzy
he could get some other girls," and she walked off, still scowling. The
girls about us giggled.
"Why doesn't Miss Gibbs like us to be lady-friends?" asked Bessie.
A young Italian answered, "Because they always git to scrappin'."
We all laughed--even Eunice--at such an ending to our friendship.
"We had a fearful row here yisterday," spoke up another; "and they wuz
lady-friends--thicker than sardines, they wuz--till they got on the outs
about a feller down on Pearl Street; a diamond-cutter he wuz, and they
wuz both mashed on him--a Dutchman, too, he wuz, that wore ear-rings. I
couldn't get mashed on a Dutchman, ear-rings or no ear-rings, could
you?"
"What did they do?" asked Bessie.
"Do! They snapped at each other all morning over the work-table, and
then one of them called the other a name that wuz something awful, and
she up and spit in her face for it."
"Well, I don't blame that girl for spitting in her face," interrupted a
voice. "I don't blame her; lady-like or not lady-like, I'd have done the
same thing. I'd spit in the President's face if I was in the White House
and he was to call me such a name!"
"And then what happened?" asked Bessie.
"Oh, they just up and at each other like two cats, tumbling over a stack
of them there white velvet necklace-cases, and bloodying up each other's
faces something fierce; and then Miss Gibbs she called Izzy; and Izzy he
fired them on the spot."
Despite these tales of strenuous conflicts, we were happy in our work at
Wolff's. Our shop-mates were quiet, decent-looking girls, and their
conversation was conspicuously clean--not always a characteristic of
their class. Miss Gibbs, despite her justifiable prejudice against
lady-friends, proved not unkind, and we congratulated ourselves as we
bent over our work and listened to the cheerful hum of voices.
After each case was finished,--after the satin linings and interlinings
and the tuftings had been fitted and glued into their proper places, and
the bit of leather drawn across the padded cover,--we could raise our
eyes for a moment and look out upon a strange, fascinating world. The
open windows on one side of the shop looked into the polishing-room of a
neighboring goldsmith, and on the other side into a sunshiny workroom
filled with swirling black wheels and flying belts among which the
workmen kept up a dialogue in a foreign tongue. The latter place was
near enough for a good-looking young man to attempt a flirtation with
Bessie, in such moments as he was not carefully watching what seemed to
be a clumsy mass of wax on the end of a wooden handle. All the long
forenoon he kept up his manoeuvers, watching his ugly bludgeon as if it
were the very apple of his eye; carrying it to the window one moment and
examining it under the microscope; then carrying it back to his wheel
and beginning all over again. Late in the afternoon he came to the
window for the hundredth time, and brandishing the bludgeon so that the
sunshine fell directly upon it, held it aloft for us to admire the great
glittering gem that now sparkled deep-bedded in the ugly wax.
"I gif you dat if you marry me!" cried the diamond-cutter, striking a
dramatic attitude for Bessie's benefit.
Thus one, two days passed swiftly, and we had learned to make
jewel-cases with tolerable rapidity. We had a half-hour for luncheon,
during which Bessie, Eunice, and I went off by ourselves to the rear of
the shop, where we ate our sandwiches in silence and gazed out upon the
forest of masts that filled the East River lying below.
On the fourth day Eunice and I ate luncheon alone. Bessie did not come
that morning, nor send any excuse. Her absence gave me an opportunity,
in this half-hour's respite from work, to get better acquainted with my
silent and mysterious fellow-boarder; anything more than a most meager
acquaintance was impossible at the place where we lived. Like the
majority of semi-charitable institutions, the "home" was conducted on
the theory that the only safety to morals, as well as to pocket-books,
was espionage and isolation.
"It's awful up there, isn't it?" she remarked suddenly after we had
discussed every possible cause for Bessie's absence.
"Yes, isn't it?" I replied, somewhat surprised, for this was the first
time the girl had ever expressed any opinion about anything, so fearful
did she seem of betraying herself.
"I suppose you often wonder what brought me there that night?" she went
on. "You've told me your story, and you don't know anything at all about
mine. You must often wonder, though you are too considerate to ask. But
I'm going to tell you now without asking. It was to keep me from going
there," pointing through the window down to the river.
"I'd had a lot of trouble,--oh, a terrible lot of trouble,--and it
seemed as if there wasn't any place for me; and I walked down to the
edge of the river up there at the end of East Fourteenth Street, and
something stopped me just when I was ready to jump in. Why I didn't, I
don't know," and the girl turned a stony face to the window.
"Why, it was hope and renewed courage, of course!" I replied quickly.
"Everybody gets blue spells--when one is down on one's luck."
Eunice shook her head. "No, it wasn't hope. It was because I was
afraid--it was because I'm a coward. I'm too much of a coward to live,
and I'm too much of a coward to die. You never felt as I do. You
couldn't. I've lost my grip on everything. Everything's gone against me,
and it's too late now for things to change. You don't know--_you don't
know_, you and Bessie. If you did, you'd see how useless all your
kindness is, in trying to get me to brace up. I've tried--my God! I have
tried to feel that there's a life before me, but I can't--I can't.
Sometimes, maybe for a minute, I'll forget what's gone by, and then the
next minute the memory of it all comes back with a fearful stab. There
is something that won't let me forget."
"Hush! Eunice; don't talk so loud," I whispered as her passionate voice
rose above the hum of the other girls in a far portion of the room.
"I tell you it's no use--it's no use. I've lost my grip on things, and I
can never catch hold again. I thought, maybe, when I started out with
you and Bessie, and got to working again, there'd be a change. But there
isn't any difference now from--from the night I went into that dormitory
first. Now with you it would be different. What's happened to me might,
maybe, happen to you; but you could fight it down. There's something
inside of you that's stronger than anything that can hurt you from the
outside. Most girls are that way. They get hurt--and hurt bad, and they
cry a lot at the time and are miserable and unhappy; but after a while
they succeed in picking themselves up, and are in the end as good,
sometimes better, than ever. They forget in a little while all about it,
and wind up by marrying some man who is really in love with them, and
they are as happy as if nothing had ever happened."
I looked at the occupant of cot No. 11 with mingled feelings of pity and
amazement--pity for the hopelessness of her case, now more apparent than
ever; amazement at her keen and morbid generalizations.
"How old are you, Eunice?"
"Twenty-four," she replied--"oh, I know what you're going to say: that I
have my whole life before me, and all that. But I haven't. My life is
all behind me."
"'I am the Captain of my Soul,
I am the Master of my Fate,'"
I quoted.
"Yes, you are; but I am not," she replied simply, and turned and looked
at me with her hopeless eyes.
Poor, unfortunate Eunice! That night, as we walked home together, she
revealed a little more about herself by telling me that she had recently
been discharged from the hospital on "the Island." I did not need to
inquire the nature of the illness that had left her face so white and
drawn. Brief as my experience had been among the humble inmates of the
"home," I had learned the expediency of not being too solicitous
regarding the precise facts of such cases.
The next day was Saturday, and still no Bessie. As we worked we
speculated as to her absence, and decided to spend the afternoon looking
her up. Meanwhile, although I had been managing to do my work a little
better each day, Eunice had not been succeeding so well. Her apathy had
been increasing daily, until she had lost any interest she might ever
have had in trying to do her work well. On this morning the forewoman
was obliged to give her repeated and sharp reproofs for soiling her
materials and for dawdling over her work.
"You seem to like to work," Eunice said once, breaking a long silence.
"Not any better than you do, only I've got to, and I try to make the
best of it."
"Yes, you do. You like to work, and I don't, and that's the difference
between us. And it's all the difference in the world, too. If I liked
work for its own sake, like you do, there'd be some hope for me living
things down."
"I wonder," she whispered, again breaking a long silence--"I wonder if
Bessie had any man after her."
I looked up suddenly, perhaps indignantly, and my reply was not
encouraging to any conjectures along this line, as Eunice saw quickly.
"I'm sorry I offended you," she added hastily; "but I didn't think
anything wrong of Bessie--you know I didn't. Only I've watched the boss
following her around with his eyes ever since we came here to work. You
didn't see, for you don't know as much about their devilment as I do;
but I tell you, if anything was ever to happen that poor little girl
through any man, I'd choke him to death with my own hands!"
The satin-tufted box she was working on dropped from her fingers and
clattered on the floor, bringing the forewoman down upon her with many
caustic remarks. When the flurry was over I assured her that I thought
Bessie fully capable of taking care of herself, although I had seen more
of the manager's advances than Eunice gave me credit for observing.
At last noon came, and with it our first half-holiday. With the first
shriek of the whistle we jumped up and began folding our aprons,
preparatory to rushing out to find Bessie.
"Where does she live?" asked Eunice.
I looked at her in blank amazement, for I didn't know. I had never even
heard the name of the street. I knew it was somewhere on the East Side;
that was all. In all our weeks of acquaintanceship no occasion had
arisen whereby Bessie should mention where she lived. I thought of
Rosenfeld's. Perhaps some one there might know, and we took a Broadway
car up-town. But Miss Higgins was away on her vacation, and none of the
girls who still remained in the flower-shop knew any more about Bessie's
whereabouts than I did. Thus it is in the busy, workaday world. Nobody
knows where you come from, and nobody knows where you go. Eunice
suggested looking in the directory; but as we found forty of the same
name, it seemed hopeless. I did happen to know, however, that her father
had once been a cutter or tailor; and so out of the forty we selected
all the likeliest names and began a general canvass. After five hours of
weary search, and after climbing the stairs of more than a score of
tenement-houses, without success, we turned at last into East Broadway,
footsore and dusty. In this street, on the fifth floor of a baking
tenement, we tapped at the door of Bessie's home. A little blonde woman
answered the knock, and when we asked for Bessie she burst into sobs and
pointed to a red placard on the door--the quarantine notice of the Board
of Health, which we had not seen. And then Bessie's mother told us that
four of her brood had been laid low with malignant diphtheria. The three
younger ones were home, sick unto death, but they had yielded to the
entreaties of the doctor and allowed him to take Bessie to Bellevue.
Thither we hurried as fast as the trolley would take us, only to find
the gates closed for the day. We were not relatives, we had no permits;
and whether Bessie were dead or alive, we must wait until visiting-hours
the next day to discover.
What we found out the next day, when we filed into the superintendent's
office with the ill-dressed horde of anxious Sunday-afternoon visitors,
was hardly a surprise. We expected nothing but what Eunice had predicted
from the first. Bessie had died the night before--died murmuring about
poppies, the young doctor told us.
"She's better off where she is than she'd be down at Wolff's," said
Eunice, as we passed through the gates on to the street again. I made
no comment, and we walked silently away from the big, ugly brick pile
that holds such horrors for the poor. When we reached Third Avenue,
Eunice stopped before a florist's window, and we looked in at a cluster
of great white lilies. Neither spoke, however, and in a moment we passed
on down Third Avenue, now brightly lighted and teeming with its usual
gay Sunday night crowd. At last we turned into our own street, and were
in front of the dark building we both called "home." Here Eunice caught
my hand in hers, with a convulsive little motion, as might a child who
was afraid of the dark. We climbed the stone steps together, and I
pulled the bell, Eunice's grasp on my hand growing tighter and tighter.
"Good-by; it's no use," she whispered suddenly, dropping my hand and
moving away as we heard the matron fumbling at the lock; and before I
could utter a word of protest, before I could reach forward and snatch
her from some dread thing, I knew not what, she had disappeared among
the shadows of the lamplit street.
"Where's the other girl?" asked the matron.
"I don't know," I replied,--nor have I since been able to find the
faintest clue to her whereabouts, if living, or her fate, if dead. From
that moment at the door-step when she said good-by, Eunice stepped out
of my life as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed her
up. Is she dead or alive? Did the unhappy girl seek self-destruction
that June night, or was she swept into that great, black whirlpool, the
name of which even a girl of the workaday world mentions always with
bated breath? I do not know. I never expect to know the fate of Eunice.
It is only in stories that such things are made clear, usually, and this
was only an incident in real life.
XV
I BECOME A "SHAKER" IN A STEAM-LAUNDRY
The next day, Monday, they buried Bessie in a big, shabby Jewish
cemetery out on Long Island. I did not follow my comrade to the grave.
Nor did I go to work. All that long, beautiful June day was spent in
fruitless search for poor Eunice.