"We never, never could! Oh, we couldn't! You know as well as I do that we couldn't!"
"They must have felt that way once," she mused, her thoughts still upon the indifferent ones, "but I suppose if people were awfully careful to guard against it, they wouldn't get that way—"
She felt Wally's arm along the back of the bench.
"Don't be afraid of love, Mary," he whispered. "Don't you know by now that it's the one great thing in life?"
"I wonder…." breathed Mary.
"Oh, but it is. You shouldn't wonder. It's the sweetest story ever told—the greatest adventure ever lived—"
But still old dreams echoed in her memory, though growing fainter with every breath she drew.
"It's all right for the man," she murmured. "If he gets tired of hearing the story, he's got other thoughts to occupy his mind. He's got his work—his career. But what's the woman going to do?"
Instinct told him how to answer her.
"I love you," he whispered.
She looked at him. Somewhere over them a robin began to sing as though its breast would burst. The scent of the honeysuckle grew intoxicating.
"Your heart is beating faster," he whispered again. "'Tck-tck-tck' it's saying. 'There's going to be a wedding next month'—'Tck-tck-tck' it's saying. 'Lieutenant Cabot is now about to kiss his future bride—"
Mary's head bent low and just as Wally was lifting it, his hand gently cupped beneath her chin, he caught sight of Helen running toward them.
"Oh, Mary!" she called.
With an involuntary movement, Mary freed herself from Wally's hand.
"Four women to see you—from the factory, I think," Helen breathlessly announced, and pretending not to notice Wally's scowl she added, "I wouldn't have bothered you … only one of them's crying…."
The four women were standing in the driveway by the side of the house, and if you had been there as Mary approached, they might have reminded you of four lost sheep catching sight of their shepherd.
"Come and sit down," said Mary, "and tell me what's the matter."
"We've been discharged," said one with a red face. "Of course I know that we shouldn't have come to bother you about it, Miss Spencer, but it was you who hired us, and I told him, said I, 'Miss Spencer's going to hear about this. She won't stand for any dirty work.'"
Mary had seated herself on the veranda steps and, obeying her gesture, the four women sat on the step below her, two on one side and two on the other.
"Who discharged you?" she asked.
"Mr. Woodward."
"Which Mr. Woodward?"
"The young one—Burdon."
"What did he discharge you for?"
"That's it. That's the very thing I asked him."
"Perhaps they need your places for some of the men who are coming back."
"No, ma'm. We wouldn't mind if that was it, but there's nobody expected back this week."
"Then why is it?"
There was a moment's hesitation, and then the one who had been crying said, "It's because we're women."
A shadow of unconscious indignation swept over Mary's face and, seeing it, the four began speaking at once.
"Things have never been the same, Miss Spencer, since you were sick—"
"First they shut down the nursery—"
"Then the rest room—said it was a bad example for the men—"
"A bad example for the men, mind you—us!"
"And then the canteen was closed—"
"And behind our backs, they called us 'Molls.'"
"Not that I care, but 'Molls,' mind you—"
"Then they began hanging signs in our locker room—"
"'A woman's place is in the home' and things like that—"
"And then they began putting us next to strange men—"
"And, oh, their language, Miss Spencer—"
"Don't tell her—"
As the chorus continued, Mary began to feel hot and uncomfortable. "I had no right to leave them in the lurch like that," she thought, and her cheeks stung as she recalled her old plans, her old visions.
"And now they've got to go back to their kitchens for the rest of their lives—and told they are not wanted anywhere else—because they are women—"
The more she thought about it, the warmer she grew; and the higher her indignation arose, the more remote were her thoughts of Wally—Wally with his greatest adventure that was ever lived—Wally with his sweetest story ever told. She looked at the hands of the two women below her and saw three wedding rings.
"The roses and lilies didn't last long with them," thought Mary grimly. "Oh, I'm sure it's all wrong, somehow…. I'm sure there's some way that things could be made happier for women…."
She interrupted the quartette, in her voice a note which Wally had never heard before and which made him exchange a glance with Helen.
"Now first of all," she said, "just how badly do you four women need your pay envelopes every week?"
They told her, especially the one who had been crying, and who now started crying again.
"Wait here a minute, please," said Mary, that note in her voice more marked than before. She arose and went in the house, and Wally guessed that she had gone to telephone the factory. For a while they couldn't hear her, except when she said "I want to speak to Mr. Burdon Woodward—yes—Mr. Burdon Woodward—"
They could faintly hear her talking then, but toward the end her voice came full and clear.
"I want you to set them to work again! They are coming right back! Yes, the four of them! I shall be at the office in the morning. That's all. Good-bye."
She came out, then, like a young Aurora riding the storm.
"You're to go right back to your work," she said, and in a gentler voice,"Wally, can I speak to you, please?"
He followed her into the house and when he came out alone ten minutes later, he drew a deep sigh and sat down again by Helen, a picture of utter dejection.
"Never mind, Wally," she said, and patted his arm.
"I can't make her out at times," he sighed.
"No, and nobody else," she whispered.
"What do you think, Helen?" he asked. "Don't you think that love is the greatest thing in life?"
"Why, of course it is," she whispered, and patted his arm again.
In spite of her brave words the day before, when Mary left the house for the office in the morning, a feeling of uncertainty and regret weighed upon her, and made her pensive. More than once she cast a backward look at the things she was leaving behind—love, the joys of youth, the pleasure places of the world to see, romance, heart's ease, and "skies for ever blue."
At the memory of Wally's phrase she grew more thoughtful than before.
"But would they be for ever blue?" she asked herself. "I guess every woman in the world expects them to be, when she marries. Yes, and they ought to be, too, an awful lot more than they are. Oh, I'm sure there's something wrong somewhere…. I'm, sure here's something wrong…."
She thought of the four women standing in the driveway by the side of the house, looking lost and bewildered, and the old sigh of pity arose in her heart.
"The poor women," she thought. "They didn't look as though the sweetest story ever told had lasted long with them—"
She had reached the crest of the hill and the factory came to her view. A breeze was rising from the river and as she looked down at the scene below, as her forbears had looked so many times before her, she felt as a sailor from the north might feel when after drifting around in drowsy tropic seas, he comes at last to his own home port and feels the clean wind whip his face and blow away his languor.
The old familiar office seemed to be waiting for her, the pictures regarding her as though they were saying "Where have you been, young lady? We began to think you had gone." Through the window sounded the old symphony, the roar of the falls above the hum of the shops, the choruses and variations of well-nigh countless tools, each having its own particular note or song.
Mary's eyes shone bright.
Gone, she found, were her feeling of uncertainty, her sighs of regret. Here at last was something real, something definite, something noble and great in the work of the world.
"And all mine," she thought with an almost passionate feeling of possession. "All mine—mine—mine—"
Archey was the first to come in, and it only needed a glance to see thatArchey was unhappy.
"I'm afraid the men in the automatic room are shaping for trouble," he said, as soon as their greetings were over.
"What's the matter with them?"
"It's about those four women—the four who came back."
Mary's eyes opened wide.
"There has been quite a lot of feeling," he continued, "and when the four women turned up this morning again and started work, the men went out and held a meeting in the locker room. In fact I wouldn't be surprised if the automatic hands went on strike."
"You mean to say they will go on strike before they will work with their own wives and sisters?"
"That's the funny part of it. As far as I can find out, the trouble wasn't started by our own men—but by strangers—men from New York and Boston—professional agitators, they look like to me—plenty of money and plenty of talk and clever workmen, too. I don't know just how far they've gone, but—"
The office boy appeared in the doorway and he, too, looked worried.
"There's a committee to see you, Miss Spencer," he said, "a bunch from the lathe shops."
"Have they seen Mr. Woodward?"
"No'm. He referred them to you."
"All right, Joe. Send them in, please."
The committee filed in and Archey noted that they were still wearing their street clothes. "Looks bad," he told himself.
There were three men, two of them strangers to Mary, but the third she recognized as one of the teachers in her old "school"—a thoughtful looking man well past middle age, with a long grey moustache and reflective eyes. "Mr. Edsol, isn't it?" she asked.
"Yes'm," he solemnly replied. "That's me."
She looked at the other two. The first had the alert glance and actions which generally mark the orator, the second was a dark, heavy man who never once stopped frowning.
"Miss Spencer," immediately began the spokesman—he who looked like the orator—"we have been appointed a committee by the automatic shop to tell you that we do not believe in the dilution of labour by women. Unless the four women who are working in our department are laid off at once, the men in our shop will quit."
"Just a moment, please," said Mary, ringing. "Joe, will you please tellMr. Woodward, Sr., that I would like to see him?"
"He's just gone out," said Joe.
"Mr. Burdon, then."
"Mr. Burdon sent word he wouldn't be down today. He's gone to New York."
Mary thought that over.
"Joe," she said. "There are four women working in the automatic shop. I wish you'd go and bring them here." And turning to the committee she said, "I think there must be some way of settling this to everybody's satisfaction, if we all get together and try."
It wasn't long before the four women came in, and again it struck Mary how nervous and bewildered three of them looked. The fourth, however, held her back straight and seemed to walk more than upright.
"Now," smiled Mary to the spokesman of the committee, "won't you tell me, please, what fault you find with these four women?"
"As I understand it," he replied, "we are not here to argue the point.Same time, I don't see the harm of telling you what we think about it.First place, it isn't natural for a woman to be working in a factory."
"Why not?"
"Well, for one thing, if you don't mind me speaking out, because she has babies."
"But the war has proved a baby is lucky to have its mother working in a modern factory," replied Mary. "The work is easier than housework, the surroundings are better, the matter is given more attention. As a result, the death rate of factory babies has been lower than the death rate of home babies. Don't you think that's a good thing? Wouldn't you like to see it go on?"
"Who says factory work is easier than housework?"
"The women who have tried both. These four, for instance."
"Well, another thing," he said, "a woman can't be looking after her children when she's working in a factory."
"That's true. But she can't be looking after them, either, when she's washing, or cooking, or doing things like that. They lie and cry—or crawl around and fall downstairs—or sit on the doorstep—or play in the street.
"Now, here, during the war," she continued, "we had a day nursery. You never saw such happy children in your life. Why, almost the only time they cried was when they had to go home at night!" Mary's eyes brightened at the memory of it. "Didn't your son's wife have a baby in the nursery, Mr. Edsol?"
"Two," he solemnly nodded.
"For another thing," said the chairman, "a woman is naturally weaker than a man. You couldn't imagine a woman standing up under overtime, for instance."
"Oh, you shouldn't say that," said Mary earnestly, "because everybody knows that in the human family, woman is the only one who has always worked overtime."
Here the third member of the committee muttered a gruff aside. "No use talking to a woman," said he.
"You be quiet, I'm doing this," said the chairman. "Another thing that everybody knows," he continued to Mary, "a woman hasn't the natural knack for mechanics that a man has."
"During the war," Mary told him, "she mastered nearly two thousand different kinds of skilled work—work involving the utmost precision. And the women who did this weren't specially selected, either. They came from every walk of life—domestic servants, cooks, laundresses, girls who had never left home before, wives of small business men, daughters of dock labourers, titled ladies—all kinds, all conditions."
She told him, then, some of the things women had made—read him reports—showed him pictures.
"In fact," she concluded, "we don't have to go outside this factory to prove that a woman has the same knack for mechanics that a man has. During the war we had as many women working here as men, and every one will tell you that they did as well as the men."
"Well, let's look at it another way," said the chairman, and he nodded to his colleagues as though he knew there could be no answer to this one. "There are only so many jobs to go around. What are the men going to do if the women take their jobs?"
"That's it!" nodded the other two. All three looked at Mary.
"I used to wonder that myself," she said, "but one day I saw that I was asking the wrong question. There is just so much work that has to be done in the world every day, so we can all be fed and clothed, and have those things which we need to make us happy. Now everybody in this room knows that 'many hands make light work.' So, don't you see? The more who work, the easier it will be for everybody."
But the spokesman only smiled at this—that smile which always meant to Mary, "No use talking to a woman"—and aloud he said, "Well, as I told you before, we weren't sent to argue. We only came to tell you what the automatic hands were going to do if these four women weren't laid off."
"I understand," said Mary; and turning to the four she asked, "How do you feel about it?"
"I suppose we'll have to go," said Mrs. Ridge, her face red but her back straighter then ever. "I guess it was our misfortune, Miss Spencer, that we were born women. It seems to me we always get the worst end of it, though I'm sure I don't know why. I did think once, when the war was on, that things were going to be different for us women after this. But it seems not…. You've been good to us, and we don't want to get you mixed up in any strike, Miss Spencer…. I guess we'd better go…."
Judge Cutler's expression returned to Mary's mind: "Another year like this and, barring strikes and accidents, Spencer & Son will be on its feet again—" Barring strikes! Mary was under no misapprehension as to what a strike might mean….
"I want to get this exactly right," she said, turning to the chairman again. "The only reason you wish these women discharged is because they are women, is that it?"
"Yes; I guess that's it, when you come right down to it."
"Do you think it's fair?"
"I'm sorry, Miss Spencer, but it's not a bit of use arguing any longer.If these four women stay, the men in our department quit: that's all."
Mary looked up at the pictures of her forbears who seemed to be listening attentively for her answer.
"Please tell the men that I shall be sorry—very sorry—to see them go," she said at last, "but these four women are certainly going to stay."
From one of the windows of Mary's office, she could see the factory gate.
"If they do go on strike," she thought, "I shall see them walk out."
She didn't have to watch long.
First in groups of twos and threes, and then thick and fast, the men appeared, their lunch boxes under their arms, all making for the gate. Some were arguing, some were joking, others looked serious. It struck Mary that perhaps these latter were wondering what they would tell their wives.
"I don't envy them the explanation," she half smiled to herself.
But her smile was short-lived. In the hallway she heard a step and, turning, she saw Uncle Stanley looking at her.
"What's the matter with those men who are going out?" he asked.
"As if he didn't know!" she thought, but aloud she answered, "They're going on strike."
"What are they striking for?"
"Because I wouldn't discharge those four women."
He gave her a look that seemed to say, "You see what you've done—think you could run things. A nice hornet's nest you've stirred up!" At first he turned away as though to go back to his office, but he seemed to think better of it.
"You might as well shut down the whole plant," he said. "We can't do anything without the automatics. You know that as well as I do."
He waited for a time, but she made no answer.
"Shall I tell the rest of the men?" he asked.
"Tell them what, Uncle Stanley?"
"That we're going to shut down till further notice?"
Mary shook her head.
"It would be a pity to do that," she said, "because—don't you see?—there wouldn't be anything then for the four women to do."
At this new evidence of woman's utter inability to deal with large affairs, Uncle Stanley snorted. "We've got to do something," said he.
"All right, Uncle," said Mary, pressing the button on the side of her desk, "I'll do the best I can."
For in the last few minutes a plan had entered her mind—a plan which has probably already presented itself to you.
"When the war was on," she thought, "nearly all the work in that room was done by women. I wonder if I couldn't get them back there now—just to show the men what we can do—"
In answer to her ring, Joe knocked and entered, respectful admiration in his eye. You may remember Joe, "the brightest boy in the office." In the three years that Mary had known him, he had grown and was now in the transient stage between office boy and clerk—wore garters around his shirt sleeves to keep his cuffs up, feathered his hair in the front, and wore a large black enamel ring with the initial "J" worked out in "diamonds."
"Joe," she said, "I want you to bring me the employment cards of all the women who worked here during the war. And send Miss Haskins in, please; I want to write a circular letter."
She hurried him away with a nod and a quick smile.
"Gee, I wish there was a lion or something out here," he thought as he hurried through the hall to the outer office, and after he had taken Mary the cards and sent Miss Haskins in, he proudly remarked to the other clerks, "Maybe they thought she'd faint away and call for the doctor when they went on strike, but, say, she hasn't turned a hair. I'll bet she's up to something, too."
It wasn't a long letter that Mary sent to the list of names which she gave Miss Haskins, but it had that quiet pull and power which messages have when they come from the heart.
"Oh, I know a lot will come," said Mrs. Ridge when Mary showed her a copy of it. "They would come anyhow, Miss Spencer. Most of them never made money like they made it here. They've been away long enough now to miss it and—Ha-ha-a!—Excuse me." She suddenly checked herself and looked very red and solemn.
"What are you laughing at?" asked Mary.
"I was thinking of my next door neighbour, Mrs. Strauss. She's never through saying that the year she was here was the happiest year of her life; and how she'd like to come back again. She'll be one of the first to come—I know she will. And her husband is one of the strikers—that's the funny part of it!"
Mary smiled herself at that, and she smiled again the next morning when she saw the women coming through the gate.
"Report in your old locker room," her letter had read, "and bring your working clothes."
By nine o'clock more than half the automatic machines were busy, and women were still arriving.
"The canteen's going again," ran the report up and down the aisles.
At half past ten the old gong sounded in the lathe room, and the old tea wagon began its old-time trundling. In addition to refreshments each woman received a rose-bud—"From Miss Spencer. With thanks and best wishes."
"Do you know if the piano's here yet?" asked a brisk looking matron in sky blue overalls.
"Yep," nodded the tea girl. "When I came through, they were taking the cover off it, and fixing up the rest room."
"Isn't it good to be back again!" said the brisk young matron to her neighbour. "Believe me or not, I haven't seen a dancing floor since I quit work here."
Mrs. Ridge had been appointed forewoman. Just before noon she reported toMary.
"There'll be a lot more tomorrow," she said. "When these get home, they'll do nothing but talk about it; and I keep hearing of women who are fixing things up at home so they can come in the morning. So don't you worry, Miss Spencer, this strike isn't going to hurt you none, but—Ha-ha-ha!—Excuse me," she said, suddenly checking her mirth again and looking very red and solemn.
"I like to hear you laugh," said Mary, "but what's it about this time!"
"Mrs. Strauss is here. I told you she would be. She left her husband home to do the housework and today is washday—that's the funny part of it!"
Whatever Mrs. Ridge's ability as a critic of humour might be, at least she was a good prophet. Nearly all the machines were busy the next morning, and new arrivals kept dropping in throughout the day.
Mary began to breathe easy, but not for long.
"I don't want to be a gloom," reported Archey, "but the lathe hands are trying to get the grinders to walk out. They say the men must stick together, or they'll all lose their jobs."
She looked thoughtful at that.
"I think we had better get the nursery ready," she said. "Let's go and find the painters."
It was a pleasant place—that nursery—with its windows overlooking the river and the lawn. In less than half an hour the painters had spread their sheets and the teamster had gone for a load of white sand. The cots and mattresses were put in the sun to air. The toys had been stored in the nurse's room. These were now brought out and inspected.
"I think I'll have the other end of the room finished off as a kindergarten," said Mary. "Then we'll be able to take care of any children up to school age, and their mothers won't have to worry a bit."
She showed him where she wished the partition built, and as he ran his rule across the distance, she noticed a scar across the knuckles of his right hand.
"That's where I dressed it, that time," she thought. "Isn't life queer! He was in France for more than a year, but the only scar that I can see is the one he got—that morning—"
Something of this may have shown in her eyes for when Archey straightened and looked at her, he blushed ("He'll never get over that!" thought Mary)—and hurried off to find the carpenters.
These preparations were completed only just in time.
On Thursday she went to New York to select her kindergarten equipment. On Friday a truck arrived at the factory, filled with diminutive chairs, tables, blackboards, charts, modelling clay, building blocks, and more miscellaneous items than I can tell you. And on Saturday morning the grinders sent a committee to the office that they could no longer labour on bearings which had passed through the hands of women workers.
Mary tried to argue with them.
"When women start to take men's jobs away—" began one of the committee.
"But they didn't," she said. "The men quit."
"When women start to take men's jobs away from them," he repeated, "it's time for the men to assert themselves."
"We know that you mean well, Miss Spencer," said another, "but you are starting something here that's bad. You're starting something that will take men's work away from them—something that will make more workers than there are jobs."
"It was the war that started it," she pleaded, "not I. Now let me ask you something. There is so much work that has to be done in the world every day; isn't there?"
"Yes, I guess that's right."
"Well, don't you see? The more people there are to do that work, the easier it will be for everybody."
But no, they couldn't see that. So Mary had to ring for Joe to bring in the old employment cards again, and that night and all day Sunday, Mrs. Ridge's company spread the news that four hundred more women were wanted at Spencer & Son's—"and you ought to see the place they've got for looking after children," was invariably added to the mothers of tots, "free milk, free nurses, free doctoring, free toys, rompers, little chairs and tables, animals, sand piles, swings, little pails and shovels—you never saw anything like it in your life—!"
If the tots in question heard this, and were old enough to understand, their eyes stood out like little painted saucers, and mutely then or loudly they pleaded Mary's cause.
It sometimes seems to me that the old saying, "History repeats itself," is one of the truest ever written. At least history repeated itself in the case of the grinders.
Before the week was over, the places left vacant by the men had been filled by women, and the nursery and kindergarten had proved to be unqualified successes.
Many of the details I will reserve till later, including the growth of the canteen, the vanishing mirror, an improvement in overalls, to say nothing of daffodils and daisies and Mrs. Kelly's drum. And though some of these things may sound peculiar at first, you will soon see that they were all repetitions of history. They followed closely after things that had already been done by other women in other places, and were only adopted by Mary first because they added human touches to a rather serious business, and second because they had proved their worth elsewhere.
Before going into these affairs, however, I must tell you about the reporters.
The day the grinders went on strike, a local correspondent sent a story to his New York paper. It wasn't a long story, but the editor saw possibilities in it. He gave it a heading, "Good-bye, Man, Says She. Woman Owner of Big Machine Shop Replaces Men With Women." He also sent a special writer and an artist to New Bethel to get a story for the Sunday edition.
Other editors saw the value of that "Good-bye, Man" idea and they also sent reporters to the scene. They came; they saw; they interviewed; and almost before Mary knew what was happening, New Bethel and Spencer & Son were on their way to fame.
Some of the stories were written from a serious point of view, others in a lighter vein, but all of them seemed to reflect the opinion that a rather tremendous question was threatening—a question that was bound to come up for settlement sooner or later, but which hadn't been expected so soon.
"Is Woman Really Man's Equal?" That was the gist of the problem. Was her equality theoretical—or real? Now that she had the ballot and could no longer be legislated against, could she hold her own industrially on equal terms with man? Or, putting it as briefly as possible, "Could she make good?"
Some of these articles worried Mary at first, and some made her smile, and after reading others she wanted to run away and hide. Judge Cutler made a collection of them, and whenever he came to a good one, he showed it to Mary.
"I wish they would leave us alone," she said one day.
"I don't," said the judge seriously. "I'm glad they have turned the spotlight on."
"Why?"
"Because with so much publicity, there's very little chance of rough work. Of course the men here at home wouldn't do anything against their own women folks, but quite a few outsiders are coming in, and if they could work in the dark, they might start a whisper, 'Anything to win!'"
Mary thought that over, and somehow the sun didn't shine so brightly for the next few minutes. Ma'm Maynard's old saying arose to her mind:
"I tell you, Miss Mary, it has halways been so and it halways will: Everything that lives has its own natural enemy—and a woman's natural enemy: eet is man!"
"No, sir, I don't believe it!" Mary told herself. "And I never shall believe it, either!"
The next afternoon Judge Cutler brought her an editorial entitled, "WeShall See."
"The women of New Bethel (it read) are trying an experiment which, carried to its logical conclusion, may change industrial history.
"Perhaps industrial history needs a change. It has many dark pages where none but man has written.
"If woman is the equal of man, industrially speaking, she is bound to find her natural level. If she is not the equal of man, the New Bethel experiment will help to mark her limitations.
"Whatever the outcome, the question needs an answer and those who claim that she is unfitted for this new field should be the most willing to let her prove it.
"By granting them the suffrage, we have given our women equal rights. Unless for demonstrated incapacity, upon what grounds shall we now deny them equal opportunities?
"The New Bethel experiment should be worked out without hard feeling or rancour on either side.
"Can a woman do a man's work?
"Let us watch and we shall see."
Mary read it twice.
"I like that," she said. "I wish everybody in town could see that."
"Just what I thought," said the judge. "What do you say if we have it printed in big type, and pasted on the bill-boards?"
They had it done.
The day after the bills were posted, Archey went around to see how they were being received.
"It was a good idea," he told Mary the next morning, but she noticed that he looked troubled and absent-minded, as though his thoughts weren't in his words.
"What's the matter, Archey?" she quietly asked.
"Oh, I don't know," he said, and with the least possible touch of irritation he added, "Sometimes I think it's because I don't like him. Everything that counts against him sticks—and I may have been mistaken anyway—"
"It's something about Burdon," thought Mary, and in the same quiet voice as before she said,
"What is it, Archey?"
"Well," he said, hesitating, "I went out after dinner last night—to see if they were reading the bill-boards. I thought I'd walk down Jay Street—that's where the strikers have their headquarters. I was walking along when all at once I thought I saw Burdon's old car turning a corner ahead of me.
"It stopped in front of Repetti's pool-room. Two men came out and got in.
"A little while later I was speaking to one of our men and he said some rough actors were drifting in town and he didn't like the way they were talking. I asked him where these men were making their headquarters and he said, 'Repetti's Pool Room.'"
Mary thought that over.
"Mind you, I wouldn't swear it was Burdon's old car," said Archey, more troubled than before. "I can only tell you I'm sure of it—and I might be mistaken at that. And even if it was Burdon, he'd only say that he had gone there to try to keep the strike from spreading—yes, and he might be right at that," he added, desperately trying to be fair, "but—well, he worries me—that's all."
He was worrying Mary, too, although for a different reason.
With increasing frequency, Helen was coming home from the Country Club unconsciously scented with that combination of cigarette smoke and raspberry jam. Burdon had a new car, a swift, piratical craft which had been built to his order, and sometimes when he called at the house on the hill for Helen, Mary amused herself by thinking that he only needed a little flag-pole and a Jolly Roger—a skirted coat and a feathered hat—and he would be the typical younger son of romance, scouring the main in search of Spanish gold.
Occasionally when he rolled to the door, Wally's car was already there, for Wally—after an absence—was again coming around, pale and in need of sympathy, singing his tenor songs to Helen's accompaniment and with greater power of pathos than ever, especially when he sang the sad ones at Mary's head—
"There in the churchyard, crying, a grave I se-ee-eeNina, that sweet dove flying was thee-ee-ee, was thee—"
"Ah, I have sighed for rest—"
"—And if she willeth to destroy meI can die…. I can die…."
After Wally had moved them all to a feeling of imminent tears, he would hover around Helen with a vague ambition of making her cousin jealous—a proceeding which didn't bother Mary at all.
But she did worry about the growing intimacy between Helen and Burdon and, one evening when Helen was driving her up to the house from the factory, Mary tried to talk to her.
"If I were you, Helen," she said, "I don't think I'd go around with Burdon Woodward quite so much—or come to the office to see him quite so often."
Helen blew the horn, once, twice and again.
"No, really, dear, I wouldn't," continued Mary. "Of course you know he's a terrible flirt. Why he can't even leave the girls at the office alone."
Quite unconsciously Helen adopted the immemorial formula.
"Burdon Woodward has always acted to me like a perfect gentleman," said she.
"Of course he has, dear. If he hadn't, I know you wouldn't have gone out with him last night, for instance. But he has such a reckless, headstrong way with him. Suppose last night, instead of coming home, he had turned the car toward Boston or New York, what would you have done then?"
"Don't worry. I could have stopped him."
"Stopped him? How could you, if he were driving very fast?"
"Oh, it's easy enough to stop a car," said Helen. "One of the girls at school showed me." Leaning over, she ran her free hand under the instrument board.
"Feel these wires back of the switch," she said. "All you have to do is to reach under quick and pull one loose—just a little tug like this—and you can stop the wildest man, and the wildest car on earth…. See?"
In the excitement of her demonstration she tugged the wire too hard. It came loose in her hand and the engine stopped as though by magic.
"It's a good thing we are up to the house," she laughed. "You needn't look worried. Robert can fix it in a minute."
It wasn't that, though, which troubled Mary.
"Think of her knowing such a thing!" she was saying to herself. "How her mind must run at times!"
But of course she couldn't voice a thought like that.
"All the same, Helen," she said aloud, "I wouldn't go out with him so much, if I were you. People will begin to notice it, and you know the way they talk."
Helen tossed her head, but in her heart she knew that her cousin was right—a knowledge which only made her the more defiant. Yes …people were beginning to notice it….
The Saturday afternoon before, when Burdon was taking her to the club in his gallant new car, they had stopped at the station to let a train pass. A girl on the sidewalk had smiled at Burdon and stared at Helen with equal intensity and equal significance.
"Who was that?" asked Helen, when the train had passed.
"Oh, one of the girls at the office. She's in my department—sort of a bookkeeper." Noticing Helen's silence he added more carelessly than before, "You know how some girls act if you are any way pleasant to them."
It was one of those trifling incidents which occasionally seem to have the deepest effect upon life. That very afternoon, when Mary had tried to warn her cousin, Helen had gone to the factory apparently to bring Mary home, but in reality to see Burdon. She had been in his private office, perched on the edge of his desk and swinging her foot, when the same girl came in—the girl who had smiled and stared near the station.
"All right, Fanny," said Burdon without looking around. "Leave the checks. I'll attend to them."
It seemed to Helen that the girl went out slowly, a sudden spot of colour on each of her cheeks.
"You call her Fanny!" Helen asked, when, the door shut again.
"Yes," he said, busy with the checks. "They do more for you, when you are decent with them."
"You think so?"
He caught the meaning in her voice and sighed a little as he sprawled his signature on the next check. "I often wish I was a sour, old crab," he said, half to Helen and half to himself. "I'd get through life a whole lot better than I do."
Mary had come to the door then, ready to start for home. When Helen passed through the outer office she saw the girl again, her cheek on her palm, her head bent over her desk, dipping her pen in the red ink and then pushing the point through her blotter pad. None of this was lost on Helen, nor the girl's frown, nor the row of crimson blotches that stretched across the blotter.
"She'll go in now to get those checks," thought Helen, as the car started up the hill, and it was just then that Mary started to warn her about going out so much with Burdon.
Once in the night Helen awoke and lay for a long time looking at the silhouette of the windows. "…I wonder what they said to each other…." she thought.
The next morning Mary was going through her mail at the office when she came to an envelope with a newspaper clipping in it. This had been cut from the society notes of the New BethelHerald.
"Burdon Woodward has a specially designed new car which is attracting much attention."
The clipping had been pasted upon a sheet of paper, and underneath it, the following two questions were typewritten:
"How can a man buy $8,000 cars on a $10,000 salary?
"Why don't you audit his books and see who paid for that car?"
Mary's cheeks stung with the brutality of it.
"What a horrible thing to do!" she thought. "If any one paid attention to things like this—why, no one would be safe!"
She was on the point of tearing it to shreds when another thought struck her.
"Perhaps I ought to show it to him," she uneasily thought. "If a thing like this is being whispered around, I think he ought to get to the bottom of it, and stop it…. I know I don't like him for some things," she continued, more undecided than ever, "but that's all the more reason why I should be fair to him—in things like this, for instance."
She compromised by tucking the letter in her pocket, and when Judge Cutler dropped in that afternoon, she first made him promise secrecy, and then she showed it to him.
"I feel like you," he said at last. "An anonymous attack like this is usually beneath contempt. And I feel all the more like ignoring it because it raises a question which I have been asking myself lately: Howcana man on a ten thousand dollar salary afford to buy an eight thousand dollar car?"
Mary couldn't follow that line of reasoning at all.
"Why do you feel like ignoring it, if it's such a natural question?" she asked.
"Because it's a question that might have occurred to anybody."
That puzzled Mary, too.
"Perhaps Burdon has money beside his salary," she suggested.
"He hasn't. I know he hasn't. He's in debt right now."
They thought it over in silence.
"I think if I were you, I'd tear it up," he said at last.
She promptly tore it into shreds.
"Now we'll forget that," he said. "I must confess, however, that it has raised another question to my mind. How long is it since your bookkeeping system was overhauled here?"
She couldn't remember.
"Just what I thought. It must need expert attention. Modern conditions call for modern methods, even in bookkeeping. I think I'll get a good firm of accountants to go over our present system, and make such changes as will keep you in closer touch with everything that is going on."
Mary hardly knew what to think.
"You're sure it has nothing to do with this?" she asked, indicating the fragments in the waste-basket.
"Not the least connection! Besides," he argued, "you and I know very well—don't we?—that with all his faults, Burdon would never do anything like that—"
"Of course he wouldn't!"
"Very well. I think we ought to forget that part of it, and never refer to it again—or it might be said that we were fearing for him."
This masculine logic took Mary's breath away, but though she thought it over many a time that day, she couldn't find the flaw in it.
"Men are queer," she finally concluded. "But then I suppose they think women are queer, too. To me," she thought, "it almost seems insulting to Burdon to call accountants in now; but according to the judge it would be insulting to Burdon not to call them in—"
She was still puzzling over it when Archey, that stormy petrel of bad news, came in and very soon took her mind from anonymous letters.
"The finishers are getting ready to quit," he announced. "They had a vote this noon. It was close, but the strikers won."
They both knew what a blow this would be. With each successive wave of the strike movement, it grew harder to fill the men's places with women.
"If this keeps on, I don't know what we shall do," she thought. "By the time we have filled these empty places, we shall have as many women working here as we had during the war."
Outwardly, however, she gave no signs of misgivings, but calmly set in motion the machinery which had filled the gaps before.
"If you're going to put that advertisement in again," said Archey, "I think I'd add 'Nursery, Restaurant, Rest-room, Music'"
She included the words in her copy, and after a moment's reflection she added "Laundry."
"But we have no laundry," objected Archey, half laughing. "Are you forgetting a little detail like that?"
"No, I'm not," said Mary, her eyes dancing. "You must do the same with the laundry as I did with the kindergarten. Go to Boston this afternoon…. Take a laundryman with you if you like…. And bring the things back in the morning by motor truck. We have steam and hot water and plenty of buildings, and I'm sure it won't take long to get the machines set up when you once get them here—"
At such moments there was something great in Mary. To conceive a plan and put it through to an irresistible conclusion: there was nothing in which she took a deeper delight.
That night, at home, she told them of her new plan.
"Just think," she said, "if a woman lives seventy years, and the washing is done once a week, you might say she spent one-seventh of her life—or ten whole years—at the meanest hardest work that was ever invented—"
"They don't do the washing when they're children," said Helen.
"No, but they hate it just as much. I used to see them on wash days whenAunt Patty took me around, and I always felt sorry for the children."
Wally came in later and listened sadly to the news of the day.
"You're only using yourself up," he said, "for a lot of people who don't care a snap of the finger for you. It seems to me," he added, "that you'd be doing better to make one man happy who loves you, than try to please a thousand women who never, never will."
She thought that over, for this was an angle which hadn't occurred to her before.
"No," she said, "I'm not doing it to gain anything for myself, but to lift the poor women up—to give them something to hope for, something to live for, something to make them happier than they are now. Yes, and from everybody's point of view, I think I'm doing something good. Because when the woman is miserable, she can generally make her man miserable. But when the woman is happy, she can nearly always make the man happy, too."
"I wish you'd make me happy," sighed poor Wally.
"Here comes Helen," said Mary with just the least trace of wickedness in her voice. "She'll do her best, I'm sure."
Helen was dressed for the evening, her arms and shoulders gleaming, her coiffure like a golden turban.
"Mary hardly ever dresses any more," she said as she came down the stairs, "so I feel I have to do double duty."
On the bottom landing she stopped and with extravagant motions of her body sang the opening lines of the Bedouin's Love Song, Wally joining in at last with his plaintive, passionate tenor.
"If you ever lose your money, Wally," she said, coming down the remaining stairs, "we'll take up comic opera." Curtseying low she simpered, "My lord!" and gave him her hand to kiss.
"She knows how to handle men," thought Mary watching, "just as the women at the factory know how to handle metal. I wonder if it comes natural to her, or if she studies it by herself, or if she learned any of it at Miss Parsons'."
She was interrupted by a message from Hutchins, the butler. The spread of the strike had been flashed out by the news association early in the afternoon, and the eight-ten train had brought a company of reporters.
"There are half a dozen of them," said Hutchins, noble in voice and deportment. "Knowing your kindness to them before, I took the liberty of showing them into the library. Do you care to see them, or shall I tell them you are out?"
Mary saw them and they greeted her like old friends. It didn't take long to confirm the news of the strike's extension.
"How many men are out now?" one of them asked.
"About fifteen hundred."
"What are you going to do when you have used up all your local women?" asked another.
"What would you do?" she asked.
"I don't know," he replied. "I guess I'd advertise for women in other cities-cities where they did this sort of thing during the war."
"Bridgeport, for instance," suggested another.
"Pittsburgh—there were a lot of women doing machine work there—"
"St. Louis," said a fourth. "Some of the shops in St. Louis were half full of women—" With the help they gave her, Mary made up a list.
"Even if you could fill the places locally," said the first, "I think I'd get a few women from as many places as possible. It spreads the idea—makes a bigger story—rounds out the whole scheme."
After they had gone Mary sat thoughtful for a few minutes and then returned to the drawing room. When she entered, Helen and Wally were seated on the music bench, and it seemed to Mary that they suddenly drew apart—or if I may express a distinction, that Wally suddenly drew apart while Helen played a chord upon the piano.
"Poor Wally," thought Mary a little later. "I wish he wouldn't look like that when he sings…. Perhaps he feels like I felt this spring…. I wonder if Ma'm was right…. I wonder if people do fall in love with love…."
Her reflections took a strange turn, half serious, half humorous.
"It's like a trap, almost, when you think of it that way," she thought. "When a man falls in love, he can climb out again and go on with his work, and live his life, and do wonderful things if he has a chance. But when a woman falls in the trap, she can never climb out and live her own life again. I wonder if the world wouldn't be better off if the women had been allowed to go right on and develop themselves, and do big things like the men do….
"I'm sure they couldn't do worse….
"Look at the war—the awfullest thing that ever happened: that's a sample of what men do, when they try to do everything themselves…. But they'll have to let the women out of their traps, if they want them to help….
"I wonder if they ever will let them out….
"I wonder if they ought to come out….
"I wonder…."
To look at Mary as she sat there, tranquil of brow and dreamy-eyed, you would never have guessed that thoughts like these were passing through her mind, and later when Helen took Wally into the next room to show him something, and returned with a smile that was close to ownership, you would never have guessed that Mary's heart went heavy for a moment.
"Helen," she said, when their visitor had gone, "do you really loveWally—or are you just amusing yourself?"
"I only wish that Burdon had half his money."
"Helen!"
"Oh, it's easy for you to say 'Helen'! You don't know what it is to be poor…. Well, good-night, beloved—
"Good-night, good-nightMy love, my own—"
she sang. "I've a busy day ahead of me tomorrow."
Mary had a busy day, too.
Nearly two hundred women responded to her new advertisement in the morning, and as many more at noon. Fortunately some of these were familiar with the work, and the most skilful were added to the corps of teachers. In addition to this, new nurses were telephoned for to take care of the rapidly growing nursery, temporary tables were improvised in the canteen, another battery of ranges was ordered from the gas company, and preparations were made for Archey's arrival with the laundry equipment.
Yes, it was a busy day and a busy week for Mary; but somehow she felt a glory in every minute of it—even, I think, as Molly Pitcher gloried in her self-appointed task so many years ago. And when at the close of each day, she locked her desk, she grew into the habit of glancing up and nodding at the portraits on the walls—a glance and a nod that seemed to say, "That's us!"
For myself, I like to think of that long line of Josiah Spencers, holding ghostly consultations at night; and if the spirits of the dead can ever return to the scenes of life which they loved the best, they must have spent many an hour together over the things they saw and heard.
Steadily and surely the places left vacant by the men were filled with women, naturally deft of hand and quick of eye; but the more apparent it became that the third phase of the strike was being lost by the men, the more worried Archey looked—the oftener he peeped into the future and frowned at what he saw there.
"The next thing we know," he said to Mary one day, "every man on the place will walk out, and what are we going to do then?"
She told him of the reporter's suggestion.
"A good idea, too," he said. "If I were you, I'd start advertising in those other cities right away, and get as many applications on file as you can. Don't just ask for women workers. Mention the kind you want: machine tool hands, fixers, tool makers, temperers, finishers, inspectors, packers—I'll make you up a list. And if you don't mind I'll enlarge the canteen, and change the loft above it into a big dining room, and have everything ready this time—"
A few days later Spencer & Son's advertisement appeared for the first time outside of New Bethel, and soon a steady stream of applications began to come in.
Although Mary didn't know it, her appeal had a stirring note like the peal of a silver trumpet. It gripped attention and warmed imagination all the way from its first line "A CALL TO WOMEN" to its signature, "Josiah Spencer & Son, Inc. Mary Spencer, President."
"That's the best yet," said Archey, looking at the pile of applications on the third day. "I sha'n't worry about the future half as much now."
"I don't worry at all any more," said Mary, serene in her faith. "Or at least I don't worry about this," she added to herself.
She was thinking of Helen again.
The night before Helen had come in late, and Mary soon knew that she had been with Burdon. Helen was quiet—for her—and rather pale as well.
"Did you have a quarrel?" Mary had hopefully asked.
"Quarrel with Burdon Woodward?" asked Helen, and in a low voice she answered herself, "I couldn't if I tried."
"… Do you love him, Helen?"
To which after a pause, Helen had answered, much as she had spoken before, "I only wish he had half of Wally's money…." And would say no more.
"I have warned her so often," said Mary. "What more can I say?" She uneasily wondered whether she ought to speak to her aunts, but soon shook her head at that. "It would only bother them," she told herself, "and what good could it do?"
Next day at the factory she seemed to feel a shadow around her and a weight upon her mind.
"What is it?" she thought more than once, pulling herself up short. The answer was never far away. "Oh, yes—Helen and Burdon Woodward. Well, I'm glad she's going out with Wally today. She's safe enough with him."
It had been arranged that Wally should drive Helen to Hartford to do some shopping, and they were expected back about nine o'clock in the evening. But nine o'clock, ten o'clock, eleven o'clock and midnight came—and still no sign of Wally's car.
"They must have had an accident," thought Mary, and at first she pictured this as a slight affair which simply called for a few hours' delay at a local garage—perhaps the engine had overheated, or the battery had failed.
But when one o'clock struck, and still no word from the absent pair,Mary's fancies grew more tragic.
By two o'clock she imagined the car overturned at the bottom of some embankment, and both of them badly hurt. At three o'clock she began to have such dire forebodings that she went and woke up Aunt Cordelia, and was on the point of telephoning Wally's mother when the welcome rumbling of a car was heard under the porte cochère. It was Wally and Helen, and though Helen looked pale she had that air of ownership over her apologetic escort which every woman understands.
Mary already divined the end of the story.
"We were coming along all right," said Wally, "and would have been home before ten. But when we were about nine miles from nowhere and going over a bad road, I had a puncture.
"Of course that delayed me a little—to change the wheels—but when I tried to start the car again, she wouldn't go.
"I fussed and fixed for a couple of hours, it seems to me, and then I thought I'd better go to the nearest telephone and have a garage send a car out for us. But Helen, poor girl, was tired and of course I couldn't leave her there alone. So I tackled the engine again and just when I was giving up hope, a car came along.
"They couldn't take us in—they were filled—but they promised to wake up a garage man in the next town and send him to the rescue. It was half past two when he turned up, but it didn't take him long to find the trouble, and here we are at last."
He drew a full breath and turned to Helen.
"Of course I wouldn't have cared a snap," he said, "if it hadn't been for poor Helen here."
"Oh, I don't mind—now," she said.
"I knew it!" thought Mary. "They're engaged…" And though she tried to smile at them both, for some reason which I can never hope to explain, it took an effort. Wally and Helen were still looking at each other.
"Tired, dear?" he asked.
Helen nodded and glanced at Mary with a look that said, "Did you hear him call me 'Dear'?"
"I think if I were you, I'd go to bed," continued Wally, all gentle solicitude. She took an impulsive step toward him. He kissed her.
"We're engaged," he said to Mary.
What Mary said in answer, she couldn't remember herself when she tried to recall it later, for a strange thought had leaped into her mind, driving out everything else.
"I almost hate to ask," she thought. "It would be too dreadful to know."
But curiosity has always been one of mankind's fateful gifts, and at the breakfast table next morning, Mary had Wally to herself.
"Oh, Wally," she said. "What did the garage man find was the trouble with your car?"
"The simplest thing imaginable," he said. "One of the wires leading to the switch on the instrument board had worked loose—that awful road, you know."
"I knew it," Mary quietly told herself, and in her mind she again saw Helen demonstrating how to quell the wildest car on earth. Mary ought to have stopped there, but a wicked imp seemed to have taken possession of her.
"Did Helen cry, when she saw how late it was getting?"
"She did at first," he said, looking very solemn, "but when I told her—"
His confessions were interrupted by Hutchins, who whispered to Mary that she was wanted on the telephone.
"It's Mr. Forbes," he said.
Archey's voice was ringing with excitement when he greeted Mary over the wire.
"Can you come down to the office early this morning?" he asked.
"What's the matter?"
"I just found out that the rest of the men had a meeting last night—and they voted to strike. There won't be a man on the place this morning … and I think there may be trouble…."