I counted up, and found if we were to have enough for room rent and food, I couldn't spend any sixty cents a week for car-fare. So I left home at seven every morning and walked to work. At night I was so tired I took the car. Then we'd have supper on the gas-jet, and I'd try to write; but almost always I was so sleepy I went right to bed.
Mis' Bingy had got so she didn't cry so much. She didn't take much comfort going out to walk, she was so afraid of Keddie finding her.
"It's comfort enough not to feel I'm goin' to be murdered every night," she says. "I'd just as lieve set here."
After we'd been there three days, I wrote to Mother and to Luke. To Mother I said:
"Dear Mother:"We are well, and hope this finds you the same. I have got a job. We are all right,and hope you are. I hope the boys are all right, and Father. Mis' Bingy says for you to be sure to tell her the news when you write. Mis' Bingy and the baby are well, and I am the same. So good-by now."Cosma."
"Dear Mother:
"We are well, and hope this finds you the same. I have got a job. We are all right,and hope you are. I hope the boys are all right, and Father. Mis' Bingy says for you to be sure to tell her the news when you write. Mis' Bingy and the baby are well, and I am the same. So good-by now.
"Cosma."
I read it over, and wondered about it. I had never been away from home before long enough to write a letter to them. And I couldn't think of anything to say. It seemed to me I was a little girl in my letter. I wondered if that was because they thought that was what I was.
Then I wrote to Luke. You'd think that would have been harder, but it was easier. I says:
"Dear Luke:"They told you, I guess, how I come off with Mis' Bingy. But, Luke, I would of come anyway, if I could. I thought it was all right to be your wife, but I want to see if there is anything else I would rather do. So I'm not engaged to you any more. If I come back, and if you are not married to somebody else, all right, if you still want me by that time. But I don't think I'll come back for a long time.I told you I didn't think I loved you, and you said I had to marry somebody. But now I don't, Luke, because I got a job. Please don't think hard of me. This was meant right, Luke."Cosma."
"Dear Luke:
"They told you, I guess, how I come off with Mis' Bingy. But, Luke, I would of come anyway, if I could. I thought it was all right to be your wife, but I want to see if there is anything else I would rather do. So I'm not engaged to you any more. If I come back, and if you are not married to somebody else, all right, if you still want me by that time. But I don't think I'll come back for a long time.I told you I didn't think I loved you, and you said I had to marry somebody. But now I don't, Luke, because I got a job. Please don't think hard of me. This was meant right, Luke.
"Cosma."
I wrote another letter, too—just because it felt good to be writing it. It said:
"Dear Mr. Ember:"I want you to know I done as you said. I left home, and I left Luke, and I'm going to see if there is anything in the world for me to be that I can get to be. I've got a job, and I've got you to thank for that. Mr. Carney's nephew got it for me."There's something I want to say to you that's hard to say. I want you to know that the walk that morning was the nicest thing that ever happened to me. It made me see that the cheap me—the vulgar me, like you said—wasn't the only me there is to me. Clear inside is something that can be another me. I knew that before, in the grove, and early in the morning, like I said. But I didn't think I could ever let it out enough to be me. I didn't trust it, not till you came."And that's what makes me think I can be different, the way you said to. I'd hate for you to think I was just the sassy girl I acted that morning. There's something else I can'tbear to have you think—that's that I didn't know how different I acted at the table from what you did. I did know."I've got a job, and Mis' Bingy and the baby are here—I knocked her husband down before I come because he was drunk and was going to kill her, so we thought we better leave there. That was how we come. But I guess I would have come anyway after I talked with you."Your friend,"Cosma Wakely.""P. S.—I sayCosmaall the time now."
"Dear Mr. Ember:
"I want you to know I done as you said. I left home, and I left Luke, and I'm going to see if there is anything in the world for me to be that I can get to be. I've got a job, and I've got you to thank for that. Mr. Carney's nephew got it for me.
"There's something I want to say to you that's hard to say. I want you to know that the walk that morning was the nicest thing that ever happened to me. It made me see that the cheap me—the vulgar me, like you said—wasn't the only me there is to me. Clear inside is something that can be another me. I knew that before, in the grove, and early in the morning, like I said. But I didn't think I could ever let it out enough to be me. I didn't trust it, not till you came.
"And that's what makes me think I can be different, the way you said to. I'd hate for you to think I was just the sassy girl I acted that morning. There's something else I can'tbear to have you think—that's that I didn't know how different I acted at the table from what you did. I did know.
"I've got a job, and Mis' Bingy and the baby are here—I knocked her husband down before I come because he was drunk and was going to kill her, so we thought we better leave there. That was how we come. But I guess I would have come anyway after I talked with you.
"Your friend,"Cosma Wakely."
"P. S.—I sayCosmaall the time now."
I sealed it up and directed it, and slipped it in my book. I wouldn't send it; but it was nice to write it.
The second day I was in the factory, a girl come to me in the hall and asked me if I'd go out with her to lunch. I said I had my roll and a banana; but I'd walk along with her and eat 'em. She said that was what she meant—she had some crackers and an apple. So we walked down the block. Her name was Rose Everly.
There was a place half-way along there where some policemen were always sitting out, and when we went past there one of themspoke to her. She stopped, and she gave me an introduction.
"Miss Wakely," she says, "you meet Sergeant Ebbit."
"Pleased to make your acquaintance," says he. "How's the strike coming on?"
"I don't know as I know anything about any strike," she says, throwing up her head.
"How about you?" he says to me. "You whinin' too?"
I didn't know what he meant, and I guess he see I didn't. He laughed, and brought us out a couple of oranges.
"I'll be the first to run in the both of you, though," he says, "if you start any nonsense."
"What's he mean?" I says, when we went on.
"He's new over here, or he wouldn't be so sassy, not to me," says Rose. "Well, I brought you out here to put you wise."
Then she told me, while we walked up and down and et our oranges.
It seems there was things in the factory that I didn't have any notion about. My own job was in the printing office, connected withthe factory. I was running a Gordon press, at slow speed, learning to feed it right. At the first of the next week, I was going to be put on full speed. We was to print from twelve thousand to fifteen thousand envelopes a day, then; and I knew what that meant, from watching the other machines. There was a time keeper over the full-speed machines, and it was hurry, hurry, hurry, all day long. It was all right while I was learning it, but I hated to think about making the same motion twelve or fifteen thousand times every day. In our room there was sixty or so. I used to notice the air, it smelled of some kind of gas and it was full of paper dust. When they swept up they never wet the broom; and when I asked the man if he didn't know enough to do that he swore at me. It wasn't a nice place to work.
But it seems there was other things that I didn't know about yet. There was fines for everything, and dockings for most that many. We had to go through the other factory to get out, and it seems they locked the doors on us as soon as we got in, and of course that wasbad if there'd be a fire. Then there was things about the foreman; and there wasn't any Saturday half-holiday. And it seems the girls had joined together and asked for better things. And Rose wanted to know if I'd be one of them.
"Sure," I says, "is there anybody that won't?"
"Them that's afraid of their jobs," she says. "If we don't get what we think we ought to have, we'll—quit. We're going to have a meeting to-morrow night. Can you come, and will you talk?"
"Sure I'll come," I says. "But I can't talk. I don't know enough."
The sergeant says something else to us when we come back.
"He'll likely be running us both in for getting a row made at us, picketing, next week at this time," Rose said. At the door she took hold of my arm. "Good for you!" she says. "We was all afraid of you when we heard about Carney."
"What do you mean?" I asked her.
"'Bout Arthur Carney gettin' you your job," she says.
"Yes," I says. "What's that got to do with it?"
She laughed. "You baby!" she says. "Don't you know he owns the whole outfit?"
"Thefactory?" I says.
He owned most of it, she told me. I kept going over that all the while I fed my machine. And I kept going over what he'd said to me in his car. I felt as if I didn't want to see him again, no matter how much he talked about school; but I tried not to think that, because he was Mr. Carney's nephew, and Mr. Carney was Mr. Ember's friend.
I went to the meeting, as I said I would; but it was hard for me to make much out of it. There was all these things ought to be changed in the factory, and we knew it, and we thought we'd ought to have a little more wages; I wanted more when I began on full speed, but I didn't think I was going to get it. It seemed to me the thing to do was to ask to have things changed, and, if they didn't do it,quit till they did change them. But at the meeting I found that there was those that was afraid to ask—just for fire-escapes and decent cleanliness and a few cents more a week and extra pay for overtime. And then I found out something else, that if they wouldn't give us these things and we did quit, there was some of us that wouldn't agree to quit, and maybe others that would come in and take our jobs, and put up with what we had been trying to make better. When I got that through my head, I stood right up at the meeting to ask a question.
"They couldn't take our jobs if we stood out in front and tried to get it into their heads what we was trying to do, could they?" I says. "Ain't it just because they don't see what we're trying to do?"
They all laughed, and the woman that was speaking—somebody from outside the factory—says yes, she thought that was it, they didn't see what we were trying to do.
The next day was Sunday, and I could hardly wait. I was up early and out whileMis' Bingy was still asleep. I hated to leave her all day, but it seemed as if ever since I come to the city something out there was calling me. I dunno where I went. I tramped for miles, and I spent fifteen cents car-fare, besides transfers, but I didn't care. I had some rolls in a bag, and I et them when I didn't show. And I looked and looked.
I found hundreds of folks, going off for all day, washed and dressed up and with lunches and children, headed out in the country, I judged. Some of them looked like Father and Mother and Mis' Bingy, and as if they couldn't be any other way. I set on the car with them, and kind of seethroughthem, and knew how they must snap each other up, home, when they wasn't dressed up. I wondered what God wanted so many for, that couldn't be different because it was too late. But some, and most of all the children, looked as if they might have been most anybody, if they were given a chance. I wondered how they could get the chance, and if none of them tried. I wondered how I could try. I knew I'd neverget it in the factory. No matter if we got all the things we were asking for, it was a dog's life—I knew that already. It wasn't much better than Bert and Henny had, to the blast furnace. They got dirty, and had to work straight twenty-four hours once every two weeks; but they made their dollar-twenty a day, and not any of us done that. I kept trying to think how to get started.
At the end of one car line I got off and walked over to the river. There was beautiful houses there—more beautiful than I had ever seen, even in the pictures. I thought they must have awful big families, they had so many up-stairs rooms. The grass looked combed and fluffed, much better than the babies' hair around the factory. Somebody give an awful lot of time to the flowers, and the river showed through the bushes. I liked the nice curtains, and when automobiles went by I liked to look at the ladies, they seemed so clean and tended. But I wondered why.
I stood looking through the iron fence of a great big house when a policeman come along.
I says to him, before he could get passed, "I was wishing I knew the names of the folks that live in there."
He stopped like a wall that knew how to walk. "Well, missy," says he, "and was ye thinkin' of buyin' it in?"
"No," I says, "not with nothin' but you to watch it." And then I walked on fast, and felt sick, sick at myself. Not one of them tended ladies in the automobiles would have spoke like that. And Mr. Ember would have hated me if he'd heard me say it. How did folks ever get over being smart and quick, and be just regular?
After a while, I come past a big church, and I went in. I never liked church, because the minister had always kept at me to join and I didn't think I was good enough. But I knew nobody would ever ask me to join here. There was one reason, though, why I liked it, even home—everybody acted nice, and like there was company. Once I said that, home, to the table, when everybody was jawing, "Let's act like we was in church," I said. But it madeFather mad, and he couldn't understand that I hadn't meant the being good part at all. I only meant the acting nice part.
In the church it was like that, just as if everybody had company and was on their good behavior. They set me in the gallery, and I could see the whole crowd. The hats was grand. But the nicest was the colors in the dresses and the windows and the flowers. It was funny, but something in them made me hurt. And when the music burst out sudden, it hurt me so that I dropped my bag of rolls so's to get down and pick them up, and get my mind off my throat. I was thinking about it afterward, and it was the first music I'd ever heard except our reed organ in church, and Lena Curtsy's piano, and the movies, and the circus band. And even the circus band had hurt my throat, too.
I never knew a word the man said, I mean the minister. He didn't talk anyhow—he just kept on about something, as if he was trying to make somebody mean something they didn't mean. But I liked being there. Everybodyseemed like they ought to seem. I wondered if they was. I couldn't seem to seethrough, like I could with the folks in the street-car. It didn't seem possible that those folks down there ever yipped out about anything to each other, and, anyway, what could they have to yip out about? They were all clean and tended, too. Afterward I stood in the door and watched them pour out, talking fast, and drive off. I liked to see them close to, and hear the way they said their words. It made a real nice morning, but I never heard a word about God.
I et my rolls in the park, and I stayed there a good while. The sun or the green or something made me feel good. I tried to look at the animals, but I hated it in the smelly places, with the poor live things in cages. When they tore around and couldn't sit still in any one place, I thought it was just like Mother and Father and the boys and Mis' Bingy, they all had to stay in a little place they didn't like, doing what they didn't want to do. I didn't blame any of them for being ugly. The moreI looked at the animals, the better I understood. Then I thought about Keddie Bingy—and he didn't have only that little place to stay, with the bed in the kitchen, and he hated being a stone mason, I'd heard him tell Father that. I didn't know but I could understand why he got drunk. Then there was Joe, that had the Dew Drop Inn, and he had to stay there in that place, and he couldn't get out; and, anyway, the United States let him; and I begun to see how it was that Joe got Keddie drunk all the time. So I was glad I went to see the animals, even if I couldn't stay on account of it making me sick.
Outside the park was the big hotels. I wondered if I could walk inside and look at them, but when I got to the steps, I was afraid. Then I see a big red house behind more iron fence, with an American flag overhead, and I asked a little boy with some papers if that was where the mayor lived.
"Naw," says he. "Private party. I t'ought youse was their chum, the way youse was rubberin'."
I give him a penny for a paper and didn't say anything. And then I felt better about the way I'd answered the policeman. It ain't so hard to act nice if you can only think in time.
I walked all the way home. I went in every church I come to, because it was some place to go in. If I'd been shot out of a gun I couldn't have told 'em apart, and I wondered how they could tell themselves. And everywhere I went, there wasn't a soul to speak to. I tried to imagine what if Mis' Bingy and the baby wasn't back there in the room, and there was nobody to speak to when I got back. It felt funny, like once when I got too far from shore in the pond, home. I couldn't help thinking about Mr. Carney saying: "You must let me help you to keep from being too lonesome." And if he'd come along just then with his shiny car, I don't know but I'd have got in.
It was the day after that that he come to the factory and asked for me. I didn't think he'd do that, but I guess he didn't care what he done. The foreman called me out, and when I gotinto his office there was Mr. Arthur, and he left me there with him. Mr. Arthur's hat was on the back of his head, and his light hair was flat down on his forehead, and his light-colored eyes and eyebrows made me want to get away from him, even if he was Mr. Ember's friend.
"Child," he says to me, "why are you trying to avoid me? I've found a place for you where you can go and learn as much as you want. I've been waiting to tell you about it. Don't you trust me?" he says.
I says, "I'd trust any friend of Mr. Ember's."
"Well," he says, "anyhow, trust me. I'll call here for you to-night, and you let me tell you what I've got planned for you."
"I'm going to meet with some of the girls to-night, Mr. Carney," I says.
"Cut that out," he says. "Come with me."
I laughed at that. "You act like your way was the way things are," I says.
"I wish it were," he says, "I wish it were."
"Listen, Mr. Carney," I says. "I've got a good job, and I like the girls. It's a dirty,disagreeable place to work, and we'd ought to have a good many things we haven't got," I says to him, "but I guess I'll stick it out for a while. I couldn't come to-night, anyway."
"I'll wait for you to-morrow night, then," he says. "We'll have a little dinner somewhere, and a run in the car—"
It was getting awful hard to remember to act nice, and I spilled over.
"You got the ways of a hitching-post," I says; "but you ain't got the tie-strap." And I walked out and left him there.
Two nights he run his car down to the door where he'd found I come out. Once I pretended not to see him, and run and caught a street-car. Once he jumped out and walked along beside me, and the girls fell back. I told him Mis' Bingy and I were going to have a banquet of wieners, fried on the gas-jet, and I couldn't come. He put a note in my hand, he never seemed to care what anybody thought, I noticed that about him.
Mis' Bingy and I read the note, while the wieners were frying.
"Don't keep me waiting," it said. "I want to see you the glorious creature you could be if you had the training you say you want. Music, riding, whatever you ask for, you shall have it all, on my honor. Don't I deserve a little more confidence from you?A. C."
"Don't keep me waiting," it said. "I want to see you the glorious creature you could be if you had the training you say you want. Music, riding, whatever you ask for, you shall have it all, on my honor. Don't I deserve a little more confidence from you?
A. C."
Mis' Bingy rocked back and forth on the bed.
"Cossy Wakely," she said, "it's my fault, it's my fault. I brung you. Let's us go back, Cossy, right off. Let's us go back."
"Oh, pshaw, Mis' Bingy!" I says, "I guess he means it right. We're just—vulgar."
"Oh, what a world," says Mis' Bingy. "Ain't there no place women can get shed of men, with their drunkenness and their devilment?"
I couldn't feel that way a bit. "I don't want to," I says. "I want to find the other kind of men. There is them!"
We had a nice supper, and then I wrote in this book. It was beginning to be so I could hardly wait to get at it. I wondered if that was the way Mr. Ember felt about his work. Then I thought about the factory, andremembered that that was work, too. It didn't seem as if they ought to have the same name.
Next morning Rose went up the stairs with me.
"You know you'll either have to quit your job or else give in, don't you?" she says.
I looked at her.
"Are you sure?" I says, "I thought maybe my being afraid of him was just being—vulgar."
"You baby," she says. "It ain't your fault. Everybody understands. We always tell the new pretty ones. But he brought you here—"
I tried to think what to do, all that day, while I fed the press. I could think well enough—the work was just one motion, one motion, one motion, and I didn't have to think about that. But I knew in a little while the rest of my head wouldn't think while I worked, and that I should just stand there with the smell of the oil and the ink and the gas and the paper dust, and the noise. I wondered what we was all doing it for, just to earn money to keep breathing, and to supply Mr. Arthur Carney withmoney for "little dinners somewhere," and the shiny car. It didn't seem worth while, not for any of us.
At noon Rose and I walked again, she wanted to tell me about a meeting for that night. They'd heard that morning from Mr. Carney. He wouldn't give in on one of the things, except to promise to unlock the doors while we worked. "But he's promised that before," Rose says. "It don't last. We're going to take the vote to-night on walking out."
"What!" says Sergeant Ebbit, when we come by. "Ain't you two struck yet?"
"Don't you want to be?" says Rose, pretending to hit at him. I don't know how any of us can act nice, with everybody joshing us so free.
I promised to go to the meeting, and that meant that I couldn't go home to supper, because it was so far to walk back. And when I come out the door, there was Mr. Carney's car, and him walking toward me. I never stopped a minute. I walked straight through the girls and got into his car. He jumped in after me and banged the door. I heard thegirls titter. "You glorious thing," I heard him say; and I says, low:
"I've got one errand, though. Will you take me there?"
"Anywhere under heaven," he says.
I showed Mr. Carney which way. We went past the girls, and round the corner, and straight down the narrow street where we always walked eating our lunch. I motioned where to stop. I jumped out. Sergeant Ebbit was alone just inside the door of the police station.
"Hello, Beauty," he says; "what can I do for you?"
I says, "I want you to come out here and arrest a fresh young guy with a car, that's been bothering me."
He jumped up and followed. He was new there, as Rose had said, and then he kind of liked me, too. I'd known that several days, and I was depending on it now. He come hurrying, like I thought he would, and he says, "I know them fool kids, and I'll learn 'em, ifyou say so." And before he see Mr. Carney he blew his whistle.
"That's him," I says, pointing to the little shiny car.
It makes me laugh now to remember the sergeant's face. But another policeman was coming, running. And folks stopped and stared. And I slipped out the station door quick, and turned the corner and dodged straight across the factory yard and took to my heels.
It was after six o'clock, so the streets were alive. I walked along, never noticing where I was going. I looked down the street. As far as I could see there went the heads, men and women, bobbing along home. Half of them, I thought, had just the same kind of box to live in that Mis' Bingy and I had. Yet there they was, going to work every day by clockwork, always thinking something good was going to come of it. I tramped along with them. There was something good in the way our feet all come down on the walk together. In spite of everything, I felt fine. But I guessthat was because I was young and well. Some of them that passed me, their heads didn't stay up and their feet dragged. And they didn't seem to know each other was there. If only they could have felt the good feeling of marching together, it seemed to me they'd be less tired.
"They've got to find out different," I thought. "How can they?"
The most of them crossed east on Broadway and under a covered place with bells clanging. I saw the sign "Brooklyn Bridge," so I went up the steps and out on the bridge, and I walked clear across it and back again. I'll never forget that walk. I was looking at the others and looking at them—the folks that was workers, like me. I seemed to know something about them they didn't know. It seemed as if I had to do something.
A bunch of little young girls passed me, all laughing. They seemed years younger than I was. I thought of them—of the day they'd had in the factory—bad air, noise, work that was dead before it was born, and maybe ahome where there was rows, or maybe just nobody at all; and somebody like Arthur Carney coming to help them be a little less lonesome. And then I faced it honest: Suppose he hadn't had flat hair and light eyes. Suppose he had looked different, so that I would havewantedto go to dinner with him?
I begun to walk fast, back to town. Across the bridge I went in a little down-stairs place to get something to eat. I was thinking so hard I never knew I'd ordered a quarter's worth till I got the bill. But I didn't care much. Everything else seemed all of a sudden to matter so much more.
That night, when I walked into the meeting, they all stared. I s'pose the word had got round that I'd gone with him. I whispered to Rose that I wanted to say something, and she give me a chance right away. When I got up on the platform and faced 'em, I wasn't afraid. I was glad.
I told them that just because I had got to leave, I didn't want them to think I was going to forget. And that they mustn't forget,either. "It ain't caught me yet," I told 'em. "I'm new and from the country, and I can see what it is that you're getting, like you can't see. And what I say is this: Quit your hoping. Just know that until we get together ourselves, nothing will come out of the factory except what we're getting now. Quit your hoping, and help. That's my last word."
And yet I guess you can't blame anybody for being afraid of being hungry. I'd never been hungry yet, so I was brave.
I didn't tell Mis' Bingy that night that I'd lost my job. I didn't tell her till next morning when she woke up, scared that I was late. We went out in the park with the baby.
"We'll be all right, Mis' Bingy," I says, "don't you worry."
I was sitting on the grass. And when I spoke so, I happened to see my foot sticking from under my skirt. The whole half of my shoe sole had come off, and was gone, and the nails was all showing. Ten days' rent it would take to buy me another pair.
Just now I tore out thirty pages of thisbook. And just now I read them over. They made me sick to read them, not because of what was there, but because of what wasn't there. It was the same thing over and over again all that time. Hat factory, ribbon factory, braid factory, silk factory, and ten weeks rolling stogies. Some places the girls cared, and was trying to make others care to get things better. In others it was get what you could, look your best, and marry the first man that asked you.
Every place I went, I begun asking about the things that Rose had taught me about—fines, and dockings, and fire safety, and the rest. Then I talked to the girls. That was why I didn't "last."
"You'll get used to things one of these days," says a forelady to me.
"That's what I'm afraid of," I told her.
But the worst was, there wasn't any fun. There wasn't anything to go to, and, anyhow, I couldn't afford the car-fare back in the evening.
Mis' Bingy had found a place where she could leave the baby a little while every day,and she done some cleaning. We moved out of our first room to one farther up that didn't cost so high. I got so I begun to think ahead, nights.
Then one night when I come in, the lady we rented of says a lady had been there to see me; "A lady," she says, "that come in a automobile and says her words as careful as if she was a-singin' in the church. She's a-comin' back again."
And when she come, she stood by the table and says:
"Miss Wakely, I am Mis' Arthur Carney."
"My land!" I says. It had never entered my head that he might have a wife on top of everything else.
"I have been hearing," she says, "of what you did some time ago. I mean about—Mr. Carney. I have come to find you, because it seemed to me that you must be a remarkable girl."
"Oh, Mis' Carney," I says, "nobody needs to be remarkable to think of gettinghimarrested."
And then I remembered something: "Yes, sir!" I says, "it was you! It was you that was in the pinkish dress in Mr. Ember's house that day!"
And I told her what she had been saying when she passed the door. But all I was thinking was—she knew; him. She knew Mr. Ember, too!
She talked to me a long time. She didn't ask me many questions—and I didn't tell her much about me, but still in a little while we felt real acquainted. And pretty soon she says:
"I came really, you know, to see whether you had found another position—after you left that one. I've had a good deal of a time finding you out. What have you done since? What are you doing now?"
I told her some of it.
"And what do you want to do?" she says then.
I don't know what give me the courage. It was just like something in me said: "Tell her. Tell her. Tell her." And I said it.
"Oh," I says, "I'd work my head off if Icould go somewheres to school. But I don't want to know just school things. I want to know more than them...."
"What do you want to know?" she says.
It was funny how easy it was to talk to her. Father or Mother or Luke or Mis' Bingy, that I'd known all my life, I couldn't have explained things to like I could to her. But I think that was part because she didn't need everything all said out in sentences, and then it was part because I knew she wouldn't make a fuss at me when I got through.
When she went away: "I'm going to look around a little," she says, "I'll come back in a few days."
"But, oh," I says, "you know, there's Mis' Bingy and the baby. I couldn't do anything that'd take me away from her. I don't know why you bother with me anyway," I says.
She had the loveliest dignified way. "We owe you something, my husband and I," she says.
But of course I knew that that was just her manner of speaking, and that her husbanddidn't know a thing about what she was doing, and that probably it was one of those speeches that everybody keeps making, like when Mis' Bingy talked, in the depot, of taking her baby away from "a father's care."
She went off in her automobile, and I stood on the step looking after her. The very thought that there could be anybody in the world like her, that would do what she'd done, made me feel like I understood the earth. I told Mis' Bingy, and she sat a long time looking out the window with her mouth open.
"If Keddie had done that," she says, "I bet a quarter of a pound of tea, I'd blame the girl."
I'd have thought everybody would. We talked it over.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, "maybe they's ways to be decent we don't evenknowabout."
She kep' her mouth open. "Then who's to blame if we don't act up to 'em, I donno," she says, after a while.
"I donno, too," I says. "It must be somebody, though."
And we both thought it must be.
The next day was Sunday, and Mis' Bingy and I done what we'd been going to do for a long time. We walked up to the park, and inside the big building where the pictures are. Mis' Bingy set on a bench and fed the baby, while I wandered round.
I guess you're supposed to feel nice and real awed when you first go to that big place. I guess you're supposed to be glad you live in a city where they're free to you. I thought I was going to have a good time. But instead of that I kept getting madder and madder. Once I begun to talk out loud, and I was afraid they'd put me out. It was when I come to a big room full of statues, with one big white one that said under it "Apollo." I'd never heard the name. I says to the man in the hall:
"Can you tell me who that Apollo was—and why he's stuck up here?"
"Catalogues twenty-five cents each, at the door," says the man.
"Well," I says, "I ain't got the quarter to spare. But I thought mebbe you knew."
"He was the Greek god of beauty and song,"he says, stiff. And the next thing I knew I was standing there in front of the Greek god talking out loud. And I says:
"I'd like to twist the nose off your face, just because I've never heard of you before—nor you—nor you—nor you—nor you.Whyain't I never heard of you?"
I run for Mis' Bingy.
"Mis' Bingy," I says, "are you ready to go?"
She followed me without a word. Out on the steps she says, shaking:
"Which was it—Keddie or Carney?"
"It was neither," I says, "it was that smart white god in there, and all the rest of 'em. Mis' Bingy! Folksknowabout 'em. They know when they go there, and they know about pictures. I heard 'em talking. What's the reason we don't know?"
"Go on!" says Mis' Bingy. "We ain't the kind of folks them things are calculated for."
"It's a lie!" I says. "It's a lie! I could almost like 'em now—only I got so mad."
I set down on a bench in the park, and cried. And I didn't care who heard me.
Mis' Bingy stood up, waiting for me, hushing the baby back and forth on her hip.
"I use' to feel like that when I was a girl," she says. "You'll get over it." She kept saying that, several times. "You'll get over it, Cossy," as if she thought it was some comfort.
"That's what I'm afraid of," I says, after a while.
We transferred at Eighth Street on the way down, because there was something else I'd heard about and I hadn't ever seen yet. We walked east through the square, under the arch, and I asked a policeman for what I was looking for, and he showed me: The top story where the fire had been in a factory. The girls had told me about it, and I told Mis' Bingy, and we stood and looked. That was where they had jumped from. That was where they had hit the sidewalk, a hundred and eighteen of them, smashed or burned to death.
"It might have been you, Cossy," Mis' Bingy says, staring up and swinging the baby.
"Itwasme," I says. "I felt like it was mewhen I heard it—and I feel like it was me now."
But I didn't want to cry for that. While I looked I got still inside, still and sick, and sure. I guess I felt like I was every factory girl in in New York. The hundred and eighteen wasn't the worst off—I knew that now. I wondered how many of them some Carney had chased, to "help them be a little less lonesome." I wondered how many of them could talk English. I wondered how many of them ever had it in their heads for a minute that there was anything else for them only just what they had. Then I thought about that Greek god of beauty and song. And them hundred and eighteen and most of the other girls and Mis' Bingy and me never even knew there was such a guy.
Two days later Mis' Carney come back. The landlady had a book agent, entertaining him in the parlor, so I had to take her right up to our room. It was nice and clean, and Mis' Bingy always combed her hair and changed her dress after dinner, just like she had athome afternoons, when she'd got the dishes washed up. She was making lace by the window, and the baby was on the floor. It was late, and we'd got a whole pie tin of wieners sizzling over the gas-jet.
"Mis' Carney, you meet Mis' Bingy," I says. But Mis' Carney hardly looked at her. She bent right over the pillow that Mis' Bingy's work was on.
"Do you mean," Mis' Carney said, "that you are actually making the lace? Here in New York?"
"Yes, ma'am," Mis' Bingy says. "Ma taught me—in the old country."
"Have you any of it made?" Mis' Carney says.
Mis' Bingy opened the washstand drawer and took out what she had, tied up in a pillow case. Mis' Carney set on the bed and took it in her hands. After a long time she looked up at me, and her face was lovely.
"Miss Wakely," she says, "I came to tell you what I have for you to do—and I was a good deal bothered—about your friend, Mis' Bingy.But it seems to me that she can earn considerably more than you can—with her lace. I paid six dollars a yard for lace like this not a fortnight ago."
Then she turned to me. "You're going to a school right here in town," she said; "I have arranged everything. And now Mis' Bingy is going to find a larger room and make her lace."
The wieners had burned black before any of us noticed. If ever you seen the sky open back, I guess you know.
Mis' Carney asked me to spend Friday to Monday with her, and then she would take me over to the school.
"Have I got to see your husband?" I says to her, direct.
Her husband was in Europe, so that was how she could ask me. And Friday afternoon she come for me.
"We can take your trunk in the car, if it's a small one," she says.
"I ain't even got a satchel," I told her. "My other dress and things are in this here."
Mis' Bingy was hanging over the bannister post, and the landlady with her.
"Don't you go and forget me, Cossy," says Mis' Bingy, crying.
The landlady used her face all the time like a strong light was in her eyes.
"She'll forget you, all right," she says. "I got two daughters somewheres that I never hear a word out of. Best say good-by and leave it go at that."
I always wanted everybody to tell the truth, but that woman sort of undressed it, and then told it. And it made a little hush, there in the hall.
Mis' Carney's house was big and still. She took me to a bedroom at the back, looking out on a square garden. The furniture was white, with rose-buds on, and there were gray and pink rugs on the floor. The light colored rugs seemed so wonderful—just as if it didn't matter if they did get soiled, no more than towels. Nor not so much so. On the wall was a little picture of a boat with a bright-colored sail, on a real blue sky. The minute I see it,the whole thing kind of come over me. And I begun to cry.
"Oh, Mis' Carney," I says, "we got a picture in the parlor, home. But it don't look like that."
"Is that what you are crying for?" she asked.
"No," I says, "I don't think so. I was thinking about the bed. Mother and I looked at one in a show-window, once."
I remembered how Mother had stood and looked at it, all made up clean and pretty, even after I was tired and wanted to go on.
Saturday morning we went shopping. I'd never been down-town before when I wasn't walking fast to get somewheres. This was the first time I had everlooked. Everywhere there were people, hurrying and thinking.
"Look in this window, Cosma," Mis' Carney said as we went in a store. "How would you like that shade?"
But the man that was fixing the things looked like a man that sold mackintoshes at the county fair, and I watched him.
"You ought to have a longish coat," she says, "you're so tall."
Just then I saw a woman with gray hair, and I stood staring at her, wondering if there was anybody's mother that looked as grand as her.
"Cosma," Mis' Carney said, "look at the things, please. Never mind the people."
"Never mind the people." I knew then that they were all I cared about. It wasn't so much the folks shopping that I saw—it was the girls, the whole army of girls that was waiting on them. When you get to look at the shops that way, then you know more about them than you did before. But the folks on the sidewalks kind of got me too. Out in the car I says to Mis' Carney:
"I know! It ain't just school or clothes or you that makes me feel good. It's something else. It's because I ain't worrying over the rent!"
I saw the folks on the sidewalks, all hurrying and thinking. I knew them all now. Half of them were worrying just the way I had been,just the way Rose was, just the way all the girls did. I felt bad for them. I wanted to take them all off with me, to school or somewheres.
Then come the evening I'll never forget. Mis' Carney and I had dinner by ourselves in a little glass room just off the big dining-room; and afterward we went into the library. She was showing me some books, when a bell rung, somewheres off in the house, and a maid come with a card.
"Show him to the drawing-room," Mis' Carney said, and gave me a lot more books and left me. And then I heard his voice in the next room where she'd gone. I knew—the minute I heard him speak I knew. I dropped my books and run to the curtains and stood where I could see.
And Mr. Ember was standing by the table, with his face turned toward me, looking just like I'd seen him last, there in Twiney's pasture. One hand was resting on the table and the other was pushing his hair back from his forehead, two, three times, kind of as if hewas tired. And when I see him, from my head to my feet I begun to tremble. I'd felt like that once or twice before—once when the team got scared and begun to back off the bridge.
"I'm in town for the rest of the winter," he was saying. "I've a few lectures to pull off—and a lot of proof to keep me busy. What have you been doing with yourself?"
Then my heart beat harder. What if she told him about me? And one minute I was sick with being afraid she would, and next minute I was wild for fear she wouldn't. I didn't want to see him. I'd said I wasn't going to see him till I could meet him sometime when I was the way I was going to be. But I'd have come pretty near to giving up my whole chance of ever being anything, just to have his hands shut over mine and to hear him say my name again.
She didn't tell him, Mrs. Carney wasn't the telling kind. In a few minutes they begun to talk of other things—Europe and Washington and theaters. And while I stood there,looking at him and looking, it came over me that to be listening there wouldn't be the way Mrs. Carney would act, nor the way he'd meant me to act. So I looked at him once, hard enough to last, the best a look can last, and then I run away up to my room and locked the door. I stood in the middle of the floor and kind of flung myself on to something or somebody in the air, that it seemed to memusthave been listening to me.
"Make me like I ain't," I says. "Make me different! Make me different—YOU!"
When I heard the door shut, I went back down-stairs. I wanted to be the next one to talk to her after he had. She was in the library, putting the books back. And her face was shining like I'd never seen it.
"Oh, Cosma," she said, "some people make you feel as if it's a good world!"
"It is," I says, "while they're around."
"Yes," she says, "it is—while they're around."
That was all she said. Pretty soon she went back in the drawing-room, and I followed herso's to be where he had been. I'd been going to sit down in the chair where he had sat, but she sat down there. So I stood by the table. And I was glad it happened that neither of us said anything for quite a while.
The school was three great buildings a little way from Mrs. Carney's house. I had never dreamed of anything so grand as those rooms seemed to me. What I couldn't get over was the padded carpets that you didn't make a sound when you walked on. The furniture was big pieces, all carved and hard to dust; and lights that didn't show was burning in the inside rooms. There was great vases, as tall as I, and pictures as big as the ceiling of Mrs. Bingy's and my whole room.
The first days at that school are the kind of nightmare that it hurts to remember even in the daytime. I begun by feeling so grand. By the second meal I was wretched. By the time the first evening was half over and the dancing in the gymnasium, I was sick. School wasn't the way I thought it was.
If only they'd taken me out and ducked me, or buried me, or left me on the roof all night every night. But the ways they had were like pouring vinegar in a skinned place in my heart. I ain't going to talk about it!
And yet I never minded their laughing, if only they looked at me when they laughed. But when they looked at each other and laughed, that killed me.
I'd been at the school about six months when one afternoon I was coming across the field that everybody called the "campus." I'd never called it that yet—it sounded like putting on. I met a lot of them coming down from their classes. I used to begin looking at them when they were way ahead, hoping there was somebody I knew and could speak to. I liked to speak to them. I'd had an introduction to most of them; but they didn't always remember me. When they did remember, they didn't always speak. Some of them done it on purpose. But always I knew which was such. That afternoon so many of them didn't speak to me that all of a sudden I felt crazy to getaway from them all, off somewhere by myself. I run down the hill back of the main building. A stone wall went along by the road. The wall was pretty high, but I put my hands on it the way I used to at home, and I jumped up on it with my head in some branches. And I says out loud:
"I know how Keddie Bingy used to feel when he got drunk."
"My word!" said somebody. "And how did he feel?"
I looked down, and there was an automobile drawn up by the wall and a man in it, rolling a cigarette.
"Don't you know?" I says.
"I don't know but I do," says he. "For example, I've been sitting here one-half hour waiting for my sister. Do I feel the way you mean?"
"Nothing like," I says, and turned to jump down again.
"Don't let me drive you away," he says; "I don't mean to bother you. I beg your pardon like anything."
"It's all right," I said; "I was going. I didn't want to sit up here. I don't know what I got up here for, anyway."
I picked up my books, and he spoke again.
"If you're really going," he said, "I wonder if I could send a message by you?"
"Sure thing," I says.
"Do you know Antoinette Massy?" he asked.
"I know her when I see her," I said; "I never spoke to her."
"She's in the tennis court over there—or she said she'd be," he went on. "Would you mind telling her that her brother has been sitting here like an image for thirty-six minutes—up to now? And that in five minutes he won't be here any more?"
"Oh," I says, "Miss Massy! She went up to Mann Hall to rehearse, half an hour ago. They never get through till dinner time."
"Gad!" he said; "it takes a man's sister to put him in his true light." He done something to the car, and then looked at me. "Would—would you care to come for a little spin?" he asked.