"Home," she said.
"Where do you live?"
"In Fillmore Street." And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a little street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street."
"Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood. "I'll come with you as far as the bridge—along the canal. I've got so much to say to you."
"Can't you say it to-morrow?"
"No, I can't; there are so many people in the office—so many interruptions, I mean. And then, you never give me a chance."
She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her. He had proposed the route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize them, and her pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the sweet allurement of the adventure she craved, which indeed she had come out to seek and by a strange fatality found—since he had appeared on the bridge almost as soon as she reached it. The sense of fate was strong upon her. Curiosity urged her, and, thanks to the eulogy she had read of him that day, to the added impression of his power conveyed by the trip through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than ever in her consciousness.
"What do you want to say?" she asked.
"Oh, lots of things."
She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power stronger than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm seemed to burn where he touched her.
"Have I done something to offend you?" she heard him say. "Or is it because you don't like me?"
"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him. "I don't like seeing you—this way. And why should you want to know me and see me outside of the office? I'm only your stenographer."
"Because you're you—because you're different from any woman I ever met.You don't understand what you are—you don't see yourself."
"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer," she informed him.
"For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed. "I've been afraid of that. Don't go—I don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful—I won't get you talked about."
"Talked about!" She tore herself away from him. "Why should you get me talked about?" she cried.
He was frightened. "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean—"
"What did you mean?"
"Well—as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we shouldn't be friends. I only meant—I wouldn't do anything to make our friendship the subject of gossip."
Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and penitence, she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over him.
"Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any advantages—and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper about you today—Mr. Caldwell gave it to me—"
"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively.
"Well, in some places it was rather funny."
"Funny? How?"
"Oh, I don't know." She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic lack of restraint hinted at by Caldwell. "I liked it, but I thought it praised you too much, it didn't criticize you enough."
He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing. From the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got anything but flattery.
"I want you to criticize me," he said.
But she went on relentlessly:—"When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you'd got everything you'd started out to get, and how some day you might be treasurer and president of the Chippering Mill, well—" Despairing of giving adequate expression to her meaning, she added, "I didn't see how we could be friends."
"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly.
"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me—you've shown it so plainly. But I didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived—in a little flat that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a tenement. It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking. You couldn't come there—don't you see how impossible it is? And you wouldn't care to be talked about yourself, either," she added vehemently.
This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words.
"Listen!" he urged. "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on you. And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I thought of you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to put it over.'"
She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to herself, to take her arm again.
"How could I help you?"
"Oh, in a thousand ways—you ought to know, you do a good deal of thinking for me, and you can help me by just being there. I can't explain it, but I feel somehow that things will go right. I've come to depend on you."
He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing with the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently abandoned him. He was appalled at the possibility of losing her.
"I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent. "You're different—I don't know what it is about you, but you are." His voice was low, caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder pressed against her shoulder. "I've never had a woman friend before, I've never wanted one until now."
She wondered about his wife.
"You've got brains—I've never met a woman with brains."
"Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed.
"You're beautiful," he whispered. "It's queer, but I didn't know it at first. You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you."
They had come almost to Warren Street. Suddenly realizing that they were standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end of the bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently.
"Let's walk back a little way," he proposed.
"I must go home—it's late."
"It's only nine o'clock."
"I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me. Good night."
"Just one more turn!" he pleaded.
But she shook her head, backing away from him.
"You'll see me to-morrow," she told him. She didn't know why she said that. She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her shoulder; her feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of music was in her ears, the lights sparkled. She had had an adventure, at last, an adventure that magically had transformed her life! She was beautiful! No one had ever told her that before. And he had said that he needed her. She smiled as, with an access of tenderness, in spite of his experience and power she suddenly felt years older than Ditmar. She could help him!…
She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street.
"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said.
"Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman. She was seated quietly sewing under the lamp.
"I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried this?" Janet asked.
The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as she rose, brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face. She felt that her secret had been guessed. The change effected, Janet went homeward swiftly, to encounter, on the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise, whose attention was immediately attracted by the bundle.
"What have you got there, angel face?" she demanded.
"A new suit," said Janet.
"You don't tell me—where'd you get it? at the Paris?"
"No, at Dowling's."
"Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!"
"Well, what if it was?"
Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of whistling through her teeth.
"Twenty bucks! Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next. Well, as sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when they first knocked it down I said to Sadie, `those are the rags Janet would buy if she had the ready.' Have you got another raise out of Ditmar?"
"If I have, it isn't any business of yours," Janet retorted. "I've got a right to do as I please with my own money."
"Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you look well."
After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when they reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that Janet had bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it. And finally, when they had got to bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against this new expression of the sordidness and lack of privacy in which she was forced to live, made the more intolerable by the close, sultry darkness of the room and the snoring of Lise.
In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness during the ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness and alertness. It had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note had somehow become exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life; and Lise's sarcastic comments as to the probable reasons why she did not put on the new suit had host their power of exasperation. Janet compromised, wearing a blouse of china silk hitherto reserved for "best." The day was bright, and she went rapidly toward the mill, glorying in the sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air; and her thoughts were not so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of which he was the medium. She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that. When she reached the office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she took off her hat and jacket and began to sort out the mail. And she had to calm herself with the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar had undergone no change. She had merely met him by the canal, and he had talked to her. That was all. He had, of course, taken her arm: it tingled when she remembered it. But when he suddenly entered the room her heart gave a bound. He closed the door, he took off his hat, and stood gazing at her—while she continued arranging letters. Presently she was forced to glance at him. His bearing, his look, his confident smile all proclaimed that he, at least, believed things to be changed. He glowed with health and vigour, with an aggressiveness from which she shrank, yet found delicious.
"How are you this morning?" he said at last—this morning as distinguished from all other mornings.
"I'm well, as usual," she answered. She herself was sometimes surprised by her ability to remain outwardly calm.
"Why did you run away from me last night?"
"I didn't run away, I had to go home," she said, still arranging the letters.
"We could have had a little walk. I don't believe you had to go home at all. You just wanted an excuse to get away from me."
"I didn't need an excuse," she told him. He moved toward her, but she took a paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room.
"I thought we were going to be friends," he said.
"Being friends doesn't mean being foolish," she retorted. "And Mr.Orcutt's waiting to see you."
"Let him wait."
He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the typewritten words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as grasping the meaning of them. From time to time he glanced up at Janet as she flitted about the room. By George, she was more desirable than he had ever dared to imagine! He felt temporarily balked, but hopeful. On his way to the mill he had dwelt with Epicurean indulgence on this sight of her, and he had not been disappointed. He had also thought that he might venture upon more than the mere feasting of his eyes, yet found an inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means absolutely repulsed him. Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle transformation. There could be no doubt of that. She was almost coquettish. His eyes lingered. The china silk blouse was slightly open at the neck, suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the outline of her shoulders. Overcome by an impulse he could not control, he got up and went toward her, but she avoided him.
"I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come," she said, rather breathlessly, as she reached the door and opened it. Ditmar halted in his steps at the sight of the tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the threshold.
Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other.
"I've been waiting for you," he said, after a moment, "the rest of that lot didn't come in this morning. I've telephoned to the freight agent."
Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly. Orcutt repeated the information.
"Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them."
"I'm doing that," replied the conscientious Orcutt.
"How's everything else going?" Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for geniality. "You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear yourself out."
Mr. Orcutt was relieved. He had expected an outburst of the exasperation that lately had characterized his superior. They began to chat. Janet had escaped.
"Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you up," Ditmar informed him.
"She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," Orcutt observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her going through the mill with young Caldwell."
Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held.
"Oh, she went through, did she?"
After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk.
That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning to confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve. She sat by her window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she was swept by surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were strangely commingled. A voice within her said, "This can't go on, this can't go on! It's too terrible! Everyone in the office will notice it—there will be a scandal. I ought to go away while there is yet time—to-day." Though the instinct of flight was strong within her, she was filled with rebellion at the thought of leaving when Adventure was flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill across the waters was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun. She had made at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was inconceivable without him.
Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one hand and what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when, toward the middle of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning her to take his letters; and went palpitating, leaving the door open behind her, seating herself on the far side of the desk, her head bent over her book. Her neck, where her hair grew in wisps behind her ear, seemed to burn: Ditmar's glance was focussed there. Her hands were cold as she wrote…. Then, like a deliverer, she saw young Caldwell coming in from the outer office, holding a card in his hand which he gave to Ditmar, who sat staring at it.
"Siddons?" he said. "Who's Siddons?"
Janet, who had risen, spoke up.
"Why, he's been making the Hampton `survey.' You wrote him you'd see him—don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?"
"Don't go!" exclaimed Ditmar. "You can't tell what those confounded reformers will accuse you of if you don't have a witness."
Janet sat down again. The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or less to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his manner on such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his dependence, of her own usefulness. Besides, she had been curious about the `survey' at the time it was first mentioned, she wished to hear Ditmar's views concerning it. Mr. Siddons proved to be a small and sallow young man with a pointed nose and bright, bulbous brown eyes like a chipmunk's. Indeed, he reminded one of a chipmunk. As he whisked himself in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused impression of polite self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion; he had the air of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring it, is prepared to deal with it. Janet smiled. She had a sudden impulse to drop the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he would jump.
"How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?" he said. "I've been hoping to have this pleasure."
"My secretary, Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar.
Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed. Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his chair, seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened a drawer of his desk and offered the visitor a cigar.
"Thanks, I don't smoke," said Mr. Siddons.
Ditmar lit one for himself.
"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked.
"Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the operatives in the city of Hampton. I'm sure you'd be interested in hearing something of the situation we found."
"I suppose you've been through our mills," said Ditmar.
"No, the fact is—"
"You ought to go through. I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a slight emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making things comfortable and healthy for our people."
"I've no doubt of it—in fact, I've been so informed. It's because of your concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured to come and talk to you of how most of them live when they're at home," replied Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly. "Perhaps, though living in Hampton, you don't quite realize what the conditions are. I know a man who has lived in Boston ten years and who hasn't ever seen the Bunker Hill monument."
"The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair," retorted Ditmar, "anybody can go there who has enough curiosity and interest. But I don't see how you can expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up their garbage and wash their babies. I shouldn't want anybody to interfere with my private affairs."
"But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace?" Siddons objected. "Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of tenements ready to crumble. There are no provisions for foundations, thickness of walls, size of timbers and columns, and if these houses had been deliberately erected to make a bonfire they couldn't have answered the purpose better. If it were not for the danger to life and the pity of making thousands of families homeless, a conflagration would be a blessing, although I believe the entire north or south side of the city would go under certain conditions. The best thing you could do would be to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding grounds for disease. In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases with only four-foot courts littered with refuse,—houses without light, without ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking and eating and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to put dogs in. You've got some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the acre, and your average density is considerably over a hundred."
"Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?" askedDitmar.
"That isn't the point," said Siddons. "The point is that they're bad, they're dangerous, they're inhuman. If you could go into these tenements as I have done and see the way some of these people live, it would make you sick the Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially. You wouldn't treat cattle that way. In some households of five rooms, including the kitchen, I found as many as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people living. You've got an alarming infant death-rate."
"Isn't it because these people want to live that way?" Ditmar inquired. "They actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a pig-sty—they had 'em in Europe. And what do you expect us to do? Buy land and build flats for them? Inside of a month they'd have all the woodwork stripped off for kindling, the drainage stopped up, the bathtubs filled with ashes. I know, because it's been tried."
Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and his eyes sought Janet's. She avoided them, resenting a little the assumption of approval she read in them. Her mind, sensitive to new ideas, had been keenly stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began patiently to dwell once more on the ill effect of the conditions he had discovered on the welfare of the entire community. She had never thought of this. She was surprised that Ditmar should seem to belittle it. Siddons was a new type in her experience. She could understand and to a certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing exasperation with him; he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he spent most of his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off Ditmar's objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as, "Before we come to that, let me say a word just here." Ditmar hated words. His outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not unlike the futile charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a smaller and more agile one. With nimble politeness, with an exasperating air of deference to Ditmar's opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only to return to the charge; yet, despite a manner and method which, when contrasted to Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous, Mr. Siddons had a force and fire of his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he dwelt on the misery he had seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of his feeling, Janet began to be moved. It was odd, considering the struggle for existence of her own family, that these foreigners had remained outside the range of her sympathy.
"I guess you'll find," Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, "I guess you'll find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people have got millions tucked away. And they send a lot of it to the other side, they go back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they manage to buy land. Ask the real estate men. Why, I could show you a dozen who worked in the mills a few years ago and are capitalists to-day."
"I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar," Siddons gracefully conceded. "But what does it prove? Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on ruthless competition. The great majority who are unable to survive the test pay the price. And the community also pays the price, the state and nation pay it. And we have this misery on our consciences. I've no doubt you could show me some who have grown rich, but if you would let me I could take you to families in desperate want, living in rooms too dark to read in at midday in clear weather, where the husband doesn't get more than seven dollars a week when the mills are running full time, where the woman has to look out for the children and work for the lodgers, and even with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to go into the mills to earn money for winter clothing. I've seen enough instances of this kind to offset the savings bank argument. And even then, when you have a family where the wife and older children work, where the babies are put out to board, where there are three and four lodgers in a room, why do you suppose they live that way? Isn't it in the hope of freeing themselves ultimately from these very conditions? And aren't these conditions a disgrace to Hampton and America?"
"Well, what am I to do about it?" Ditmar demanded.
"I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings in the mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances. That's more than a good many mills I could mention attempt."
"You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than any man in Hampton. You can bring pressure to bear on the city council to enforce and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a campaign of public opinion against certain property owners."
"Yes," retorted Ditmar, "and what then? You raise the rents, and you won't get anybody to live in the houses. They'll move out to settlements like Glendale full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're accustomed to. What you reformers are actually driving at is that we should raise wages—isn't it? If we raised wages they'd live like rats anyway. I give you credit for sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want you to think I'm not as much interested in the welfare of these people as you and the men behind you. The trouble is, you only see one side of this question. When you're in my position, you're up against hard facts. We can't pay a dubber or a drawing tender any more than he's worth, whether he has a wife or children in the mills or whether he hasn't. We're in competition with other mills, we're in competition with the South. We can't regulate the cost of living. We do our best to make things right in the mills, and that's all we can do. We can't afford to be sentimental about life. Competition's got to be the rule, the world's made that way. Some are efficient and some aren't. Good God, any man who's had anything to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that drummed into him hard. You talk about ordinances, laws—there are enough laws and ordinances in this city and in this state right now. If we have any more the mills will have to shut down, and these people will starve—all of 'em." Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and he flung his cigar away. "Send me a copy of your survey when it's published. I'll look it over."
"Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?" Ditmar exploded, when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out. "Comes in here to advise me that it's my business to look out for the whole city of Hampton. I'd like to see him up against this low-class European labour trying to run a mill with them. They're here one day and there the next, they don't know what loyalty is. You've got to drive 'em—if you give 'em an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite your property. Why, there's nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend on them, I'd build 'em houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home. As it is, I do my best, though they don't deserve it,—in slack seasons I run half time when I oughtn't to be running at all."
His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had been increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the sympathy on which he had counted. She sat silent, gazing searchingly at his face.
"What's the matter?" he demanded. "You don't mean to say you agree with that kind of talk?"
"I was wondering—" she began.
"What?"
"If you were—if you could really understand those who are driven to work in order to keep alive?"
"Understand them! Why not?" he asked.
"Because—because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're pretty much your own master—and that makes it different. I'm not blaming you—in your place I'd be the same, I'm sure. But this man, Siddons, made me think. I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is, in a way."
"Not like these foreigners!" he protested.
"Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped suddenly in his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the startled air of the male who has inadvertently touched off one of the many hidden springs in the feminine emotional mechanism. "How do you know what it is to live in a squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms that smell of cooking, and not be able to have any of the finer, beautiful things in life? Unless you'd wanted these things as I've wanted them, you couldn't know. Oh, I can understand what it would feel like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!"
"You can!" he exclaimed in amazement. "You!"
"Yes, me. You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for them any more than you could feel sorry for me. You want them to run your mills for you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they live, and you just want me—for your pleasure."
He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in his experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not the type of man to be shocked by it. On the contrary, it swept away his irritation, and as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a fever heat as he approached and stood over her.
"You little—panther!" he whispered. "You want beautiful things, do you?Well, I'll give 'em to you. I'll take care of you."
"Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears. "Do you think I want anybody to take care of me? That shows how little you know me. I want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I get."
Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings. Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh—the laugh of the red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook her with a wild appeal. "What do I care about any others—I want you!" such was its message. And against this paradoxical wish to be conquered, intensified by the magnetic field of his passion, battled her self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire to be free, to escape now from a domination the thought of which filled her with terror. She felt his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers straying along her arm; for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously powerless. Then the emotion of terror conquered—terror of the unknown—and she sprang away, dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she stood swaying.
"Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say. "For God's sake, why can't you trust me?"
She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to twinkle fantastically in the distant mills. Presently she turned. Ditmar was in his chair. She crossed the room to the electric switch, turning on the flood of light, picked up her tote-book and sat down again.
"Don't you intend to answer your letters?" she asked.
He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized the topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely. She experienced a certain exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took down his words.
By WINSTON CHURCHILLVOLUME 2
At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a young woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement that the leash might break—and then what? Here was a situation, she knew instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to think about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of anomalies and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond her knowledge and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which is rapidly discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet to achieve the morality of scientific knowledge, of the individual instance. Tradition, convention, the awful examples portrayed for gain in the movies, even her mother's pessimistic attitude in regard to the freedom with which the sexes mingle to-day were powerless to influence her. The thought, however, that she might fundamentally resemble her sister Lise, despite a fancied superiority, did occasionally shake her and bring about a revulsion against Ditmar. Janet's problem was in truth, though she failed so to specialize it, the supreme problem of our time: what is the path to self-realization? how achieve emancipation from the commonplace?
Was she in love with Ditmar? The question was distasteful, she avoided it, for enough of the tatters of orthodox Christianity clung to her to cause her to feel shame when she contemplated the feelings he aroused in her. It was when she asked herself what his intentions were that her resentment burned, pride and a sense of her own value convinced her that he had deeply insulted her in not offering marriage. Plainly, he did not intend to offer marriage; on the other hand, if he had done so, a profound, self-respecting and moral instinct in her would, in her present mood, have led her to refuse. She felt a fine scorn for the woman who, under the circumstances, would insist upon a bond and all a man's worldly goods in return for that which it was her privilege to give freely; while the notion of servility, of economic dependence—though she did not so phrase it—repelled her far more than the possibility of social ruin.
This she did not contemplate at all; her impulse to leave Hampton andDitmar had nothing to do with that….
Away from Ditmar, this war of inclinations possessed her waking mind, invaded her dreams. When she likened herself to the other exploited beings he drove to run his mills and fill his orders,—of whom Mr. Siddons had spoken—her resolution to leave Hampton gained such definite ascendancy that her departure seemed only a matter of hours.
In this perspective Ditmar appeared so ruthless, his purpose to use her and fling her away so palpable, that she despised herself for having hesitated. A longing for retaliation consumed her; she wished to hurt him before she left. At such times, however, unforeseen events invariably intruded to complicate her feelings and alter her plans. One evening at supper, for instance, when she seemed at last to have achieved the comparative peace of mind that follows a decision after struggle, she gradually became aware of an outburst from Hannah concerning the stove, the condition of which for many months had been a menace to the welfare of the family. Edward, it appeared, had remarked mildly on the absence of beans.
"Beans!" Hannah cried. "You're lucky to have any supper at all. I just wish I could get you to take a look at that oven—there's a hole you can put your hand through, if you've a mind to. I've done my best, I've made out to patch it from time to time, and to-day I had Mr. Tiernan in. He says it's a miracle I've been able to bake anything. A new one'll cost thirty dollars, and I don't know where the money's coming from to buy it. And the fire-box is most worn through."
"Well, mother, we'll see what we can do," said Edward.
"You're always seeing what you can do, but I notice you never do anything," retorted Hannah; and Edward had the wisdom not to reply. Beside his place lay a lengthy, close-written letter, and from time to time, as he ate his canned pears, his hand turned over one of its many sheets.
"It's from Eben Wheeler, says he's been considerably troubled with asthma," he observed presently. "His mother was a Bumpus, a daughter of Caleb-descended from Robert, who went from Dolton to Tewksbury in 1816, and fought in the war of 1812. I've told you about him. This Caleb was born in '53, and he's living now with his daughter's family in Detroit…. Son-in-law's named Nott, doing well with a construction company. Now I never could find out before what became of Robert's descendants. He married Sarah Styles" (reading painfully) "`and they had issue, John, Robert, Anne, Susan, Eliphalet. John went to Middlebury, Vermont, and married '"
Hannah, gathering up the plates, clattered them together noisily.
"A lot of good it does us to have all that information about EbenWheeler's asthma!" she complained. "It'll buy us a new stove, I guess.Him and his old Bumpus papers! If the house burned down over our headsthat's all he'd think of."
As she passed to and fro from the dining-room to the kitchen Hannah's lamentations continued, grew more and more querulous. Accustomed as Janet was to these frequent arraignments of her father's inefficiency, it was gradually borne in upon her now—despite a preoccupation with her own fate—that the affair thus plaintively voiced by her mother was in effect a family crisis of the first magnitude. She was stirred anew to anger and revolt against a life so precarious and sordid as to be threatened in its continuity by the absurd failure of a stove, when, glancing at her sister, she felt a sharp pang of self-conviction, of self-disgust. Was she, also, like that, indifferent and self-absorbed? Lise, in her evening finery, looking occasionally at the clock, was awaiting the hour set for a rendezvous, whiling away the time with the Boston evening sheet whose glaring red headlines stretched across the page. When the newspaper fell to her lap a dreamy expression clouded Lise's eyes. She was thinking of some man! Quickly Janet looked away, at her father, only to be repelled anew by the expression, almost of fatuity, she discovered on his face as he bent over the letter once more. Suddenly she experienced an overwhelming realization of the desperation of Hannah's plight,—the destiny of spending one's days, without sympathy, toiling in the confinement of these rooms to supply their bodily needs. Never had a destiny seemed so appalling. And yet Janet resented that pity. The effect of it was to fetter and inhibit; from the moment of its intrusion she was no longer a free agent, to leave Hampton and Ditmar when she chose. Without her, this family was helpless. She rose, and picked up some of the dishes. Hannah snatched them from her hands.
"Leave 'em alone, Janet!" she said with unaccustomed sharpness. "I guessI ain't too feeble to handle 'em yet."
And a flash of new understanding came to Janet. The dishes were vicarious, a substitute for that greater destiny out of which Hannah had been cheated by fate. A substitute, yes, and perhaps become something of a mania, like her father's Bumpus papers…. Janet left the room swiftly, entered the bedroom, put on her coat and hat, and went out. Across the street the light in Mr. Tiernan's shop was still burning, and through the window she perceived Mr. Tiernan himself tilted back in his chair, his feet on the table, the tip of his nose pointed straight at the ceiling. When the bell betrayed the opening of the door he let down his chair on the floor with a bang.
"Why, it's Miss Janet!" he exclaimed. "How are you this evening, now? I was just hoping some one would pay me a call."
Twinkling at her, he managed, somewhat magically, to dispel her temper of pessimism, and she was moved to reply:—"You know you were having a beautiful time, all by yourself."
"A beautiful time, is it? Maybe it's because I was dreaming of some young lady a-coming to pay me a visit."
"Well, dreams never come up to expectations, do they?"
"Then it's dreaming I am, still," retorted Mr. Tiernan, quickly.
Janet laughed. His tone, though bantering, was respectful. One of the secrets of Mr. Tiernan's very human success was due to his ability to estimate his fellow creatures. His manner of treating Janet, for instance, was quite different from that he employed in dealing with Lise. In the course of one interview he had conveyed to Lise, without arousing her antagonism, the conviction that it was wiser to trust him than to attempt to pull wool over his eyes. Janet had the intelligence to trust him; and to-night, as she faced him, the fact was brought home to her with peculiar force that this wiry-haired little man was the person above all others of her immediate acquaintance to seek in time of trouble. It was his great quality. Moreover, Mr. Tiernan, even in his morning greetings as she passed, always contrived to convey to her, in some unaccountable fashion, the admiration and regard in which he held her, and the effect of her contact with him was invariably to give her a certain objective image of herself, an increased self-confidence and self-respect. For instance, by the light dancing in Mr. Tiernan's eyes as he regarded her, she saw herself now as the mainstay of the helpless family in the clay-yellow flat across the street. And there was nothing, she was convinced, Mr. Tiernan did not know about that family. So she said:—"I've come to see about the stove."
"Sure," he replied, as much as to say that the visit was not unexpected. "Well, I've been thinking about it, Miss Janet. I've got a stove here I know'll suit your mother. It's a Reading, it's almost new. Ye'd better be having a look at it yourself."
He led her into a chaos of stoves, grates, and pipes at the back of the store.
"It's in need of a little polish," he added, as he turned on a light, "but it's sound, and a good baker, and economical with coal." He opened the oven and took off the lids.
"I'm afraid I don't know much about stoves," she told him. "But I'll trust your judgment. How much is it?" she inquired hesitatingly.
He ran his hand through his corkscrewed hair, his familiar gesture.
"Well, I'm willing to let ye have it for twenty-five dollars. If that's too much—mebbe we can find another."
"Can you put it in to-morrow morning?" she asked.
"I can that," he said. She drew out her purse. "Ye needn't be paying for it all at once," he protested, laying a hand on her arm. "You won't be running away."
"Oh, I'd rather—I have the money," she declared hurriedly; and she turned her back that he might not perceive, when she had extracted the bills, how little was left in her purse.
"I'll wager ye won't be wanting another soon," he said, as he escorted her to the door. And he held it open, politely, looking after her, until she had crossed the street, calling out a cheerful "Goodnight" that had in it something of a benediction. She avoided the dining-room and went straight to bed, in a strange medley of feelings. The self-sacrifice had brought a certain self-satisfaction not wholly unpleasant. She had been equal to the situation, and a part of her being approved of this,—a part which had been suppressed in another mood wherein she had become convinced that self-realization lay elsewhere. Life was indeed a bewildering thing….
The next morning, at breakfast, though her mother's complaints continued, Janet was silent as to her purchase, and she lingered on her return home in the evening because she now felt a reluctance to appear in the role of protector and preserver of the family. She would have preferred, if possible, to give the stove anonymously. Not that the expression of Hannah's gratitude was maudlin; she glared at Janet when she entered the dining-room and exclaimed: "You hadn't ought to have gone and done it!"
And Janet retorted, with almost equal vehemence:—"Somebody had to do it—didn't they? Who else was there?"
"It's a shame for you to spend your money on such things. You'd ought to save it you'll need it," Hannah continued illogically.
"It's lucky I had the money," said Janet.
Both Janet and Hannah knew that these recriminations, from the other, were the explosive expressions of deep feeling. Janet knew that her mother was profoundly moved by her sacrifice. She herself was moved by Hannah's plight, but tenderness and pity were complicated by a renewed sense of rebellion against an existence that exacted such a situation.
"I hope the stove's all right, mother," she said. "Mr. Tiernan seemed to think it was a good one."
"It's a different thing," declared Hannah. "I was just wondering this evening, before you came in, how I ever made out to cook anything on the other. Come and see how nice it looks."
Janet followed her into the kitchen. As they stood close together gazing at the new purchase Janet was uncomfortably aware of drops that ran a little way in the furrows of Hannah's cheeks, stopped, and ran on again. She seized her apron and clapped it to her face.
"You hadn't ought to be made to do it!" she sobbed.
And Janet was suddenly impelled to commit an act rare in their intercourse. She kissed her, swiftly, on the cheek, and fled from the room….
Supper was an ordeal. Janet did not relish her enthronement as a heroine, she deplored and even resented her mother's attitude toward her father, which puzzled her; for the studied cruelty of it seemed to belie her affection for him. Every act and gesture and speech of Hannah's took on the complexion of an invidious reference to her reliability as compared with Edward's worthlessness as a provider; and she contrived in some sort to make the meal a sacrament in commemoration of her elder daughter's act.
"I guess you notice the difference in that pork," she would exclaim, and when he praised it and attributed its excellence to Janet's gift Hannah observed: "As long as you ain't got a son, you're lucky to have a daughter like her!"
Janet squirmed. Her father's acceptance of his comparative worthlessness was so abject that her pity was transferred to him, though she scorned him, as on former occasions, for the self-depreciation that made him powerless before her mother's reproaches. After the meal was over he sat listlessly on the sofa, like a visitor whose presence is endured, pathetically refraining from that occupation in which his soul found refreshment and peace, the compilation of the Bumpus genealogy. That evening the papers remained under the lid of the desk in the corner, untouched.
What troubled Janet above all, however, was the attitude of Lise, who also came in for her share of implied reproach. Of late Lise had become an increased source of anxiety to Hannah, who was unwisely resolved to make this occasion an object lesson. And though parental tenderness had often moved her to excuse and defend Lise for an increasing remissness in failing to contribute to the household expenses, she was now quite relentless in her efforts to wring from Lise an acknowledgment of the nobility of her sister's act, of qualities in Janet that she, Lise, might do well to cultivate. Lise was equally determined to withhold any such acknowledgment; in her face grew that familiar mutinous look that Hannah invariably failed to recognize as a danger signal; and with it another —the sophisticated expression of one who knows life and ridicules the lack of such knowledge in others. Its implication was made certain when the two girls were alone in their bedroom after supper. Lise, feverishly occupied with her toilet, on her departure broke the silence there by inquiring:—"Say, if I had your easy money, I might buy a stove, too. How much does Ditmar give you, sweetheart?"
Janet, infuriated, flew at her sister. Lise struggled to escape.
"Leave me go" she whimpered in genuine alarm, and when at length she was released she went to the mirror and began straightening her hat, which had flopped to one side of her head. "I didn't mean nothin', I was only kiddie' you—what's the use of gettin' nutty over a jest?"
"I'm not like-you," said Janet.
"I was only kiddin', I tell you," insisted Lise, with a hat pin in her mouth. "Forget it."
When Lise had gone out Janet sat down in the rocking-chair and began to rock agitatedly. What had really made her angry, she began to perceive, was the realization of a certain amount of truth in her sister's intimation concerning Ditmar. Why should she have, in Lise, continually before her eyes a degraded caricature of her own aspirations and ideals? or was Lise a mirror—somewhat tarnished, indeed—in which she read the truth about herself? For some time Janet had more than suspected that her sister possessed a new lover—a lover whom she refrained from discussing; an ominous sign, since it had been her habit to dangle her conquests before Janet's eyes, to discuss their merits and demerits with an engaging though cynical freedom. Although the existence of this gentleman was based on evidence purely circumstantial, Janet was inclined to believe him of a type wholly different from his predecessors; and the fact that his attentions were curiously intermittent and irregular inclined her to the theory that he was not a resident of Hampton. What was he like? It revolted her to reflect that he might in some ways possibly resemble Ditmar. Thus he became the object of a morbid speculation, especially at such times as this, when Lise attired herself in her new winter finery and went forth to meet him. Janet, also, had recently been self-convicted of sharing with Lise the same questionable tendency toward self-adornment to please the eye of man. The very next Saturday night after she had indulged in that mad extravagance of the blue suit, Lise had brought home from the window of The Paris in Faber Street a hat that had excited the cupidity and admiration of Miss Schuler and herself, and in front of which they had stood languishing on three successive evenings. In its acquisition Lise had expended almost the whole of a week's salary. Its colour was purple, on three sides were massed drooping lilac feathers, but over the left ear the wide brim was caught up and held by a crescent of brilliant paste stones. Shortly after this purchase—the next week, in fact,—The Paris had alluringly and craftily displayed, for the tempting sum of $6.29, the very cloak ordained by providence to "go" with the hat. Miss Schuler declared it would be a crime to fail to take advantage of such an opportunity but the trouble was that Lise had had to wait for two more pay-days and endure the suspense arising from the possibility that some young lady of taste and means might meanwhile become its happy proprietor. Had not the saleslady been obdurate, Lise would have had it on credit; but she did succeed, by an initial payment the ensuing Saturday, in having it withdrawn from public gaze. The second Saturday Lise triumphantly brought the cloak home; a velvet cloak,—if the eyes could be believed,—velvet bordering on plush, with a dark purple ground delicately and artistically spotted with a lilac to match the hat feathers, and edged with a material which—if not too impudently examined and no questions asked—might be mistaken, by the uninitiated male, for the fur of a white fox. Both investments had been made, needless to say, on the strength of Janet's increased salary; and Lise, when Janet had surprised her before the bureau rapturously surveying the combination, justified herself with a defiant apology.
"I just had to have something—what with winter coming on," she declared, seizing the hand mirror in order to view the back. "You might as well get your clothes chick, while you're about it—and I didn't have to dig up twenty bones, neither—nor anything like it—" a reflection on Janet's most blue suit and her abnormal extravagance. For it was Lise's habit to carry the war into the enemy's country. "Sadie's dippy about it—says it puts her in mind of one of the swells snapshotted in last Sunday's supplement. Well, dearie, how does the effect get you?" and she wheeled around for her sister's inspection.
"If you take my advice, you'll be careful not to be caught out in the rain."
"What's chewin' you now?" demanded Lise. She was not lacking in imagination of a certain sort, and Janet's remark did not fail in its purpose of summoning up a somewhat abject image of herself in wet velvet and bedraggled feathers—an image suggestive of a certain hunted type of woman Lise and her kind held in peculiar horror. And she was the more resentful because she felt, instinctively, that the memory of this suggestion would never be completely eradicated: it would persist, like a canker, to mar the completeness of her enjoyment of these clothes. She swung on Janet furiously.
"I get you, all right!" she cried. "I guess I know what's eatin' you!You've got money to burn and you're sore because I spend mine to buy whatI need. You don't know how to dress yourself any more than one of themPolak girls in the mills, and you don't want anybody else to look nice."
And Janet was impelled to make a retort of almost equal crudity:—"If I were a man and saw you in those clothes I wouldn't wait for an introduction. You asked me what I thought. I don't care about the money!" she exclaimed passionately. "I've often told you you were pretty enough without having to wear that kind of thing—to make men stare at you."
"I want to know if I don't always look like a lady! And there's no man living would try to pick me up more than once." The nasal note in Lise's voice had grown higher and shriller, she was almost weeping with anger. "You want me to go 'round lookin' like a floorwasher."
"I'd rather look like a floorwasher than—than another kind of woman,"Janet declared.
"Well, you've got your wish, sweetheart," said Lise. "You needn't be scared anybody will pick you up."
"I'm not," said Janet….
This quarrel had taken place a week or so before Janet's purchase of the stove. Hannah, too, was outraged by Lise's costume, and had also been moved to protest; futile protest. Its only effect on Lise was to convince her of the existence of a prearranged plan of persecution, to make her more secretive and sullen than ever before.
"Sometimes I just can't believe she's my daughter," Hannah said dejectedly to Janet when they were alone together in the kitchen after Lise had gone out. "I'm fond of her because she's my own flesh and blood—I'm ashamed of it, but I can't help it. I guess it's what the minister in Dolton used to call a visitation. I suppose I deserve it, but sometimes I think maybe if your father had been different he might have been able to put a stop to the way she's going on. She ain't like any of the Wenches, nor any of the Bumpuses, so far's I'm able to find out. She just don't seem to have any notion about right and wrong. Well, the world has got all jumbled up—it beats me."
Hannah wrung out the mop viciously and hung it over the sink.
"I used to hope some respectable man would come along, but I've quit hopin'. I don't know as any respectable man would want Lise, or that I could honestly wish him to have her."
"Mother!" protested Janet. Sometimes, in those conversations, she was somewhat paradoxically impelled to defend her sister.
"Well, I don't," insisted Hannah, "that's a fact. I'll tell you what she looks like in that hat and cloak—a bad woman. I don't say she is—I don't know what I'd do if I thought she was, but I never expected my daughter to look like one."
"Oh, Lise can take care of herself," Janet said, in spite of certain recent misgivings.
"This town's Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one," declared Hannah who, from early habit, was occasionally prone to use scriptural parallels. And after a moment's silence she inquired: "Who's this man that's payin' her attention now?"
"I don't know," replied Janet, "I don't know that there's anybody."
"I guess there is," said Hannah. "I used to think that that Wiley was low enough, but I could see him. It was some satisfaction. I could know the worst, anyhow…. I guess it's about time for another flood."
This talk had left Janet in one of these introspective states so frequent in her recent experience. Her mother had used the words "right" and "wrong." But what was "right," or "wrong?" There was no use asking Hannah, who—she perceived—was as confused and bewildered as herself. Did she refuse to encourage Mr. Ditmar because it was wrong? because, if she acceded to his desires, and what were often her own, she would be punished in an after life? She was not at all sure whether she believed in an after life,—a lack of faith that had, of late, sorely troubled her friend Eda Rawle, who had "got religion" from an itinerant evangelist and was now working off, in a "live" church, some of the emotional idealism which is the result of a balked sex instinct in young unmarried women of a certain mentality and unendowed with good looks. This was not, of course, Janet's explanation of the change in her friend, of whom she now saw less and less. They had had arguments, in which neither gained any ground. For the first time in their intercourse, ideas had come between them, Eda having developed a surprising self-assertion when her new convictions were attacked, a dogged loyalty to a scheme of salvation that Janet found neither inspiring nor convincing. She resented being prayed for, and an Eda fervent in good works bored her more than ever. Eda was deeply pained by Janet's increasing avoidance of her company, yet her heroine-worship persisted. Her continued regard for her friend might possibly be compared to the attitude of an orthodox Baptist who has developed a hobby, let us say, for Napoleon Bonaparte.
Janet was not wholly without remorse. She valued Eda's devotion, she sincerely regretted the fact, on Eda's account as well as her own, that it was a devotion of no use to her in the present crisis nor indeed in any crisis likely to confront her in life: she had felt instinctively from the first that the friendship was not founded on, mental harmony, and now it was brought home to her that Eda's solution could never be hers. Eda would have been thrilled on learning of Ditmar's attentions, would have advocated the adoption of a campaign leading up to matrimony. In matrimony, for Eda, the soul was safe. Eda would have been horrified that Janet should have dallied with any other relationship; God would punish her. Janet, in her conflict between alternate longing and repugnance, was not concerned with the laws and retributions of God. She felt, indeed, the need of counsel, and knew not where to turn for it, —the modern need for other than supernatural sanctions. She did not resist her desire for Ditmar because she believed, in the orthodox sense, that it was wrong, but because it involved a loss of self-respect, a surrender of the personality from the very contemplation of which she shrank. She was a true daughter of her time.
On Friday afternoon, shortly after Ditmar had begun to dictate his correspondence, Mr. Holster, the agent of the Clarendon Mill, arrived and interrupted him. Janet had taken advantage of the opportunity to file away some answered letters when her attention was distracted from her work by the conversation, which had gradually grown louder. The two men were standing by the window, facing one another, in an attitude that struck her as dramatic. Both were vital figures, dominant types which had survived and prevailed in that upper world of unrelenting struggle for supremacy into which, through her relation to Ditmar, she had been projected, and the significance of which she had now begun to realize. She surveyed Holster critically. He was short, heavily built, with an almost grotesque width of shoulder, a muddy complexion, thick lips, and kinky, greasy black hair that glistened in the sun. His nasal voice was complaining, yet distinctly aggressive, and he emphasized his words by gestures. The veins stood out on his forehead. She wondered what his history had been. She compared him to Ditmar, on whose dust-grey face she was quick to detect a look she had seen before—a contraction of the eyes, a tightening of the muscles of the jaw. That look, and the peculiarly set attitude of the body accompanying it, aroused in her a responsive sense of championship.
"All right, Ditmar," she heard the other exclaim. "I tell you again you'll never be able to pull it off."
Ditmar's laugh was short, defiant.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Why not! Because the fifty-four hour law goes into effect in January."
"What's that got to do with it?" Ditmar demanded.
"You'll see—you'll remember what I told you fellows at the conference after that bill went through and that damned demagogue of a governor insisted on signing it. I said, if we tried to cut wages down to a fifty-four hour basis we'd have a strike on our hands in every mill in Hampton,—didn't I? I said it would cost us millions of dollars, and make all the other strikes we've had here look like fifty cents. Didn't I say that? Hammond, our president, backed me up, and Rogers of the wool people. You remember? You were the man who stood out against it, and they listened to you, they voted to cut down the pay and say nothing about it. Wait until those first pay envelopes are opened after that law goes into effect. You'll see what'll happen! You'll never be able to fill that Bradlaugh order in God's world."
"Oh hell," retorted Ditmar, contemptuously. "You're always for lying down, Holster. Why don't you hand over your mill to the unions and go to work on a farm? You might as well, if you're going to let the unions run the state. Why not have socialism right now, and cut out the agony? When they got the politicians to make the last cut from fifty-six to fifty-four and we kept on payin' 'em for fifty-six, against my advice, what happened? Did they thank us? I guess not. Were they contented? Not on your life. They went right on agitating, throwing scares into the party conventions and into the House and Senate Committees,—and now it's fifty-four hours. It'll be fifty in a couple of years, and then we'll have to scrap our machinery and turn over the trade to the South and donate our mills to the state for insane asylums."
"No, if we handle this thing right, we'll have the public on our side.They're getting sick of the unions now."
Ditmar went to the desk for a cigar, bit it off, and lighted it.
"The public!" he exclaimed contemptuously. "A whole lot of good they'll do us."
Holster approached him, menacingly, until the two men stood almost touching, and for a moment it seemed to Janet as if the agent of the Clarendon were ready to strike Ditmar. She held her breath, her blood ran faster,—the conflict between these two made an elemental appeal.
"All right—remember what I say—wait and see where you come out with that order." Holster's voice trembled with anger. He hesitated, and left the office abruptly. Ditmar stood gazing after him for a moment and then, taking his cigar from his mouth, turned and smiled at Janet and seated himself in his chair. His eyes, still narrowed, had in them a gleam of triumph that thrilled her. Combat seemed to stimulate and energize him.
"He thought he could bluff me into splitting that Bradlaugh order with the Clarendon," Ditmar exclaimed. "Well, he'll have to guess again. I've got his number." He began to turn over his letters. "Let's see, where were we? Tell Caldwell not to let in any more idiots, and shut the door."
Janet obeyed, and when she returned Ditmar was making notes with a pencil on a pad. The conversation with Holter had given her a new idea of Ditmar's daring in attempting to fill the Bradlaugh order with the Chippering Mills alone, had aroused in her more strongly than ever that hot loyalty to the mills with which he had inspired her; and that strange surge of sympathy, of fellow-feeling for the operatives she had experienced after the interview with Mr. Siddons, of rebellion against him, the conviction that she also was one of the slaves he exploited, had wholly disappeared. Ditmar was the Chippering Mills, and she, somehow, enlisted once again on his side.
"By the way," he said abruptly, "you won't mention this—I know."
"Won't mention what?" she asked.
"This matter about the pay envelopes—that we don't intend to continue giving the operatives fifty-six hours' pay for fifty-four when this law goes into effect. They're like animals, most of 'em, they don't reason, and it might make trouble if it got out now. You understand. They'd have time to brood over it, to get the agitators started. When the time comes they may kick a little, but they'll quiet down. And it'll teach 'em a lesson."
"I never mention anything I hear in this office," she told him.
"I know you don't," he assured her, apologetically. "I oughtn't to have said that—it was only to put you on your guard, in case you heard it spoken of. You see how important it is, how much trouble an agitator might make by getting them stirred up? You can see what it means to me, with this order on my hands. I've staked everything on it."
"But—when the law goes into effect? when the operatives find out that they are not receiving their full wages—as Mr. Holster said?" Janet inquired.
"Why, they may grumble a little—but I'll be on the lookout for any move. I'll see to that. I'll teach 'em a lesson as to how far they can push this business of shorter hours and equal pay. It's the unskilled workers who are mostly affected, you understand, and they're not organized. If we can keep out the agitators, we're all right. Even then, I'll show 'em they can't come in here and exploit my operatives."
In the mood in which she found herself his self-confidence, his aggressiveness continued to inspire and even to agitate her, to compel her to accept his point of view.
"Why," he continued, "I trust you as I never trusted anybody else. I've told you that before. Ever since you've been here you've made life a different thing for me—just by your being here. I don't know what I'd do without you. You've got so much sense about things—about people,—and I sometimes think you've got almost the same feeling about these mills that I have. You didn't tell me you went through the mills with Caldwell the other day," he added, accusingly.
"I—I forgot," said Janet. "Why should I tell—you?" She knew that all thought of Holster had already slipped from his mind. She did not look up. "If you're not going to finish your letters," she said, a little faintly, "I've got some copying to do."
"You're a deep one," he said. And as he turned to the pile of correspondence she heard him sigh. He began to dictate. She took down his sentences automatically, scarcely knowing what she was writing; he was making love to her as intensely as though his words had been the absolute expression of his desire instead of the commonplace mediums of commercial intercourse. Presently he stopped and began fumbling in one of the drawers of his desk.
"Where is the memorandum I made last week for Percy and Company?"
"Isn't it there?" she asked.
But he continued to fumble, running through the papers and disarranging them until she could stand it no longer.
"You never know where to find anything," she declared, rising and darting around the desk and bending over the drawer, her deft fingers rapidly separating the papers. She drew forth the memorandum triumphantly.
"There!" she exclaimed. "It was right before your eyes."
As she thrust it at him his hand closed over hers. She felt him drawing her, irresistibly.
"Janet!" he said. "For God's sake—you're killing me—don't you know it?I can't stand it any longer!"
"Don't!" she whispered, terror-stricken, straining away from him. "Mr.Ditmar—let me go!"
A silent struggle ensued, she resisting him with all the aroused strength and fierceness of her nature. He kissed her hair, her neck,—she had never imagined such a force as this, she felt herself weakening, welcoming the annihilation of his embrace.
"Mr. Ditmar!" she cried. "Somebody will come in."
Her fingers sank into his neck, she tried to hurt him and by a final effort flung herself free and fled to the other side of the room.
"You little—wildcat!" she heard him exclaim, saw him put his handkerchief to his neck where her fingers had been, saw a red stain on it. "I'll have you yet!"
But even then, as she stood leaning against the wall, motionless save for the surging of her breast, there was about her the same strange, feral inscrutableness. He was baffled, he could not tell what she was thinking. She seemed, unconquered, to triumph over her disarray and the agitation of her body. Then, with an involuntary gesture she raised her hands to her hair, smoothing it, and without seeming haste left the room, not so much as glancing at him, closing the door behind her.