"Mother may hear us," said Betsey, fearfully.
"I hope she will!" Susan said. But, if she did, no sound came from the mother's room. After awhile Susan noticed that her door, which had been ajar, was shut tight.
She lay awake late that night, Betts' tear-stained but serene little face close to her shoulder, Betts' hand still tight in hers. The wind shook the casements, and the unwearied storm screamed about the house. Susan thought of the woman in the next room, wondered if she was lying awake, too, alone with sick and sorrowful memories?
She herself fell asleep full of healthy planning for to-morrow's meals and house-cleaning, too tired and content for dreams.
Anna came quietly home on the next Saturday evening, to find the little group just ready to gather about the dinner-table. A fire glowed in the grate, the kitchen beyond was warm and clean and delightfully odorous. She said very little then, took her share, with obvious effort at first, in their talk, sat behind Betsey's chair when the four presently were coaxed by Jim into a game of "Hearts," and advised her little sister how to avoid the black queen.
But later, just before they went upstairs, when they were all grouped about the last of the fire, she laid her hands on Susan's shoulders, and stood Susan off, to look at her fairly.
"No words for it, Sue," said Anna steadily.
"Ah, don't, Nance--" Susan began. But in another instant they were in each other's arms, and crying, and much later that evening, after a long talk, Betsey confided to Susan that it was the first time Anna had cried.
"She told me that when she got home, and saw the way that you have changed things," confided Betsey, "she began to think for the first time that we might--might get through this, you know!"
Wonderful days for Susan followed, with every hour brimming full of working and planning. She was the first one up in the morning, the last one in bed at night, hers was the voice that made the last decision, and hers the hands for which the most critical of the household tasks were reserved. Always conscious of the vacant place in their circle, and always aware of the presence of that brooding and silent figure upstairs, she was nevertheless so happy sometimes as to think herself a hypocrite and heartless. But long afterward Susan knew that the sense of dramatic fitness and abiding satisfaction is always the reward of untiring and loving service.
She and Betsey read together, walked through the rain to market, and came back glowing and tired, to dry their shoes and coats at the kitchen fire. They cooked and swept and dusted, tried the furniture in new positions, sent Jimmy to the White House for a special new pattern, and experimented with house-dresses. Susan heard the first real laughter in months ring out at the dinner-table, when she and Betsey described their experiences with a crab, who had revived while being carried home in their market-basket. Jimmy, silent, rough-headed and sweet, followed Susan about like an affectionate terrier, and there was another laugh when Jimmy, finishing a bowl in which cake had been mixed, remarked fervently, "Gosh, why do you waste time cooking it?"
In the evening they played euchre, or hearts, or parchesi; Susan and Philip struggled with chess; there were talks about the fire, and they all straggled upstairs at ten o'clock. Anna, appreciative and affectionate and brave, came home for almost every Saturday night, and these were special occasions. Susan and Betsey wasted their best efforts upon the dinner, and filled the vases with flowers and ferns, and Philip brought home candy and the new magazines. It was Anna who could talk longest with the isolated mother, and Susan and she went over every word, afterwards, eager to find a ray of hope.
"I told her about to-day," Anna said one Saturday night, brushing her long hair, "and about Billy's walking with us to the ridge. Now, when you go in tomorrow, Betsey, I wish you'd begin about Christmas. Just say, 'Mother, do you realize that Christmas is a week from to-morrow?' and then, if you can, just go right on boldly and say, 'Mother, you won't spoil it for us all by not coming downstairs?'"
Betsey looked extremely nervous at this suggestion, and Susan slowly shook her head. She knew how hopeless the plan was. She and Betsey realized even better than the absent Anna how rooted was Mrs. Carroll's unhappy state. Now and then, on a clear day, the mother would be heard going softly downstairs for a few moments in the garden; now and then at the sound of luncheon preparations downstairs she would come out to call down, "No lunch for me, thank you, girls!" Otherwise they never saw her except sitting idle, black-clad, in her rocking-chair.
But Christmas was very close now, and must somehow be endured.
"When are you boys going to Mill Valley for greens?" asked Susan, on the Saturday before the holiday.
"Would you?" Philip asked slowly. But immediately he added, "How about to-morrow, Jimsky?"
"Gee, yes!" said Jim eagerly. "We'll trim up the house like always, won't we, Betts?"
"Just like always," Betts answered.
Susan and Betsey fussed with mince-meat and frosted cookies; Susan accomplished remarkably good, if rather fragile, pumpkin pies. The four decorated the down-stairs rooms with ropes of fragrant green. The expressman came and came and came again; Jimmy returned twice a day laden from the Post Office; everyone remembered the Carrolls this year.
Anna and Philip and Billy came home together, at midday, on Christmas Eve. Betsey took immediate charge of the packages they brought; she would not let so much as a postal card be read too soon. Billy had spent many a Christmas Eve with the Carrolls; he at once began to run errands and carry up logs as a matter of course.
A conference was held over the turkey, lying limp in the center of the kitchen table. The six eyed him respectfully.
"Oughtn't this be firm?" asked Anna, fingering a flexible breast-bone.
"No-o--" But Susan was not very sure. "Do you know how to stuff them, Anna?"
"Look in the books," suggested Philip.
"We did," Betsey said, "but they give chestnut and mushroom and sweet potato--I don't know how Mother does it!"
"You put crumbs in a chopping bowl," began Susan, uncertainly, "at least, that's the way Mary Lou did--"
"Why crumbs in a chopping bowl, crumbs are chopped already?" William observed sensibly.
"Well--" Susan turned suddenly to Betsey, "Why don't you trot up and ask, Betts?" she suggested.
"Oh, Sue!" Betsey's healthy color faded. "I can't!" She turned appealing eyes to Anna. Anna was looking at her thoughtfully.
"I think that would be a good thing to do," said Anna slowly. "Just put your head in the door and say, 'Mother, how do you stuff a turkey?'"
"But--but--" Betsey began. She got down from the table and went slowly on her errand. The others did not speak while they waited for her return.
"Hot water, and butter, and herbs, and half an onion chopped fine!" announced Betts returning.
"Did she--did she seem to think it was odd, Betts?"
"No, she just answered--like she would have before. She was lying down, and she said 'I'm glad you're going to have a turkey---'"
"What!" said Anna, turning white.
"Yes, she did! She said 'You're all good, brave children!'"
"Oh, Betts, she didn't!"
"Honest she did, Phil--" Betsey said aggrievedly, and Anna kissed her between laughter and tears.
"But this is quite the best yet!" Susan said, contentedly, as she ransacked the breadbox for crumbs.
Just at dinner-time came a great crate of violets. "Jo's favorites, from Stewart!" said Anna softly, filling bowls with them. And, as if the thought of Josephine had suggested it, she added to Philip in a low tone:
"Listen, Phil, are we going to sing to-night?"
For from babyhood, on the eve of the feast, the Carrolls had gathered at the piano for the Christmas songs, before they looked at their gifts.
"What do you think?" Philip returned, troubled.
"Oh, I couldn't---" Betts began, choking.
Jimmy gave them all a disgusted and astonished look.
"Gee, why not?" he demanded. "Jo used to love it!"
"How about it, Sue?" Philip asked. Susan stopped short in her work, her hands full of violets, and pondered.
"I think we ought to," she said at last.
"I do, too!" Billy supported her unexpectedly. "Jo'd be the first to say so. And if we don't this Christmas, we never will again!"
"Your mother taught you to," Susan said, earnestly, "and she didn't stop it when your father died. We'll have other breaks in the circle some day, but we'll want to go right on doing it, and teaching our own children to do it!"
"Yes, you're right," said Anna, "that settles it."
Nothing more was said on the subject; the girls busied themselves with the dinner dishes. Phil and Billy drew the nails from the waiting Christmas boxes. Jim cracked nuts for the Christmas dinner. It was after nine o'clock when the kitchen was in order, the breakfast table set, and the sitting-room made ready for the evening's excitement. Then Susan went to the old square piano and opened it, and Phil, in absolute silence, found her the music she wanted among the long-unused sheets of music on the piano.
"If we are going to DO this," said Philip then, "we mustn't break down!"
"Nope," said Betts, at whom the remark seemed to be directed, with a gulp. Susan, whose hands were very cold, struck the opening chords, and a moment later the young voices rose together, through the silent house.
"Adeste, fideles,Laeti triumphantes,Venite, venite in Bethlehem...."
Josephine had always sung the little solo. Susan felt it coming, and she and Betts took it together, joined on the second phrase by Anna's rich, deep contralto. They were all too conscious of their mother's overhearing to think of themselves at all. Presently the voices became more natural. It was just the Carroll children singing their Christmas hymns, as they had sung them all their lives. One of their number was gone now; sorrow had stamped all the young faces with new lines, but the little circle was drawn all the closer for that. Phil's arm was tight about the little brother's shoulder, Betts and Anna were clinging to each other.
And as Susan reached the triumphant "Gloria--gloria!" a thrill shook her from head to foot. She had not heard a footstep, above the singing, but she knew whose fingers were gripping her shoulder, she knew whose sweet unsteady voice was added to the younger voices.
She went on to the next song without daring to turn around;--this was the little old nursery favorite,
"Oh, happy night, that brings the mornTo shine above the child new-born!Oh, happy star! whose radiance sweetGuided the wise men's eager feet...."
and after that came "Noel,"--surely never sung before, Susan thought, as they sang it then! The piano stood away from the wall, and Susan could look across it to the big, homelike, comfortable room, sweet with violets now, lighted by lamp and firelight, the table cleared of its usual books and games, and heaped high with packages. Josephine's picture watched them from the mantel; "wherever she is," thought Susan, "she knows that we are here together singing!"
"Fall on your knees, O hear the angel voices!Oh, night divine, oh night, when Christ was born!"
The glorious triumphant melody rose like a great rising tide of faith and of communion; Susan forgot where she was, forgot that there are pain and loss in the world, and, finishing, turned about on the piano bench with glowing cheeks and shining eyes.
"Gee, Moth', I never heard you coming down!" said Jim delightedly, as the last notes died away and the gap, his seniors had all been dreading, was bridged.
"I heard you," Betts said, radiant and clinging to her mother.
Mrs. Carroll was very white, and they could see her tremble.
"Surely, you're going to open your presents to-night, Nance?"
"Not if you'd rather we shouldn't, Mother!"
"Oh, but I want you to!" Her voice had the dull, heavy quality of a voice used in sleep, and her eyes clung to Anna's almost with terror. No one dared speak of the miracle; Susan spoke with nervousness, but Anna bustled about cheerfully, getting her established in her big chair by the fire. Billy and Phil returned from the cellar, gasping and bent under armfuls of logs. The fire flamed up, and Jimmy, with a bashful and deprecatory "Gosh!" attacked the string of the uppermost bundle.
So many packages, so beautifully tied! Such varied and wonderful gifts? Susan's big box from Virginia City was not for her alone, and from the other packages at least a dozen came to her. Betts, a wonderful embroidered kimono slipped on over her house dress, looked like a lovely, fantastic picture; and Susan must button her big, woolly field-coat up to her chin and down to her knees. "For ONCE you thought of a DANDY present, Billy!" said she. This must be shown to Mother; that must be shown to Mother; Mother must try on her black silk, fringed, embroidered Chinese shawl.
"Jimmy, DEAR, no more candy to-night!" said Mother, in just the old voice, and Susan's heart had barely time for a leap of joy when she added:
"Oh, Anna, dear, that is LOVELY. You must tell Dr. and Mrs. Jordan that is exactly what you've been wanting!"
"And what are your plans for to-morrow, girls?" she asked, just before they all went up-stairs, late in the evening.
"Sue and I to early ..." Anna said, "then we get back to get breakfast by nine, and all the others to ten o'clock."
"Well, will you girls call me? I'll go with you, and then before the others get home we can have everything done and the turkey in."
"Yes, Mother," was all that Anna said, but later she and Susan were almost ready to agree with Betts' last remark that night, delivered from bed:
"I bet to-morrow's going to be the happiest Christmas we ever had!"
This was the beginning of happier days, for Mrs. Carroll visibly struggled to overcome her sorrow now, and Susan and Betsey tried their best to help her. The three took long walks, in the wet wintry weather, their hats twisting about on their heads, their skirts ballooning in the gale. By the middle of March Spring was tucking little patches of grass and buttercups in all the sheltered corners, the sunshine gained in warmth, the twilights lengthened. Fruit blossoms scented the air, and great rain-pools, in the roadways, gave back a clear blue sky.
The girls dragged Mrs. Carroll with them to the woods, to find the first creamy blossoms of the trillium, and scented branches of wild lilac. One Sunday they packed a lunch basket, and walked, boys and girls and mother, up to the old cemetery, high in the hills. Three miles of railroad track, twinkling in the sun, and a mile of country road, brought them to the old sunken gate. Then among the grassy paths, under the oaks, it was easy to find the little stone that bore Josephine's name.
It was an April day, but far more like June. There was a wonderful silence in the air that set in crystal the liquid notes of the lark, and carried for miles the softened click of cowbells, far up on the ridges. Sunshine flooded buttercups and poppies on the grassy slopes, and where there was shade, under the oaks, "Mission bells" and scarlet columbine and cream and lavender iris were massed together. Everywhere were dazzling reaches of light, the bay far below shone blue as a turquoise, the marshes were threaded with silver ribbons, the sky was high and cloudless. Trains went by, with glorious rushes and puffs of rising, snowy smoke; even here they could hear the faint clang of the bell. A little flock of sheep had come up from the valley, and the soft little noises of cropping seemed only to underscore the silence.
Mrs. Carroll walked home between Anna and Phil; Susan and Billy and the younger two engaged in spirited conversation on ahead.
"Mother said 'Happiness comes back to us, doesn't it, Nance!'" Anna reported that night. "She said, 'We have never been happier than we have to-day!'"
"Never been so happy," Susan said sturdily. "When has Philip ever been such an unmitigated comfort, or Betts so thoughtful and good?"
"Well, we might have had that, and Jo too," Anna said wistfully.
"Yes, but one DOESN'T, Anna. That's just it!"
Susan had long before this again become a woman of business. When she first spoke of leaving the Carrolls, a violent protest had broken out from the younger members of the family. This might have been ignored, but there was no refusing the sick entreaty of their mother's eyes; Susan knew that she was still needed, and was content to delay her going indefinitely.
"It seems unfair to you, Sue," Anna protested. But Susan, standing at the window, and looking down at the early spring flood of blossoms and leaves in the garden, dissented a little sadly.
"No, it's not, Nance," she said. "I only wish I could stay here forever. I never want to go out into the world, and meet people again--"
Susan finished with a retrospective shudder.
"I think coming to you when I did saved my reason," she said presently, "and I'm in no hurry to go again. No, it would be different, Nance, if I had a regular trade or profession. But I haven't and, even if I go to New York, I don't want to go until after hot weather. Twenty-six," Susan went on, gravely, "and just beginning! Suppose somebody had cared enough to teach me something ten years ago!"
"Your aunt thought you would marry, and you WILL marry, Sue!" Anna said, coming to put her arm about her, and lay her cheek against Susan's.
"Ah, well!" Susan said presently with a sigh, "I suppose that if I had a sixteen-year-old daughter this minute I'd tell her that Mother wanted her to be a happy girl at home; she'd be married one of these days, and find enough to do!"
But it was only a few days after this talk that one Orville Billings, the dyspeptic and middle-aged owner and editor of the "Sausalito Weekly Democrat" offered her a position upon his editorial staff, at a salary of eight dollars a week. Susan promptly accepted, calmly confident that she could do the work, and quite justified in her confidence. For six mornings a week she sat in the dingy little office on the water-front, reading proof and answering telephone calls, re-writing contributions and clipping exchanges. In the afternoons she was free to attend weddings, club-meetings or funerals, or she might balance books or send out bills, word advertisements, compose notices of birth and death, or even brew Mr. Billings a comforting cup of soup or cocoa over the gas-jet. Susan usually began the day by sweeping out the office. Sometimes Betsey brought down her lunch and they picnicked together. There was always a free afternoon or two in the week.
On the whole, it was a good position, and Susan enjoyed her work, enjoyed her leisure, enormously enjoyed the taste of life.
"For years I had a good home, and a good position, and good friends and was unhappy," she said to Billy. "Now I've got exactly the same things and I'm so happy I can scarcely sleep at night. Happiness is merely a habit."
"No, no," he protested, "the Carrolls are the most extraordinary people in the world, Sue. And then, anyway, you're different--you've learned."
"Well, I've learned this," she said, "There's a great deal more happiness, everywhere, than one imagines. Every baby brings whole tons of it, and roast chickens and apple-pies and new lamps and husbands coming home at night are making people happy all the time! People are celebrating birthdays and moving into bigger houses, and having their married daughters home for visits, right straight along. But when you pass a dark lower flat on a dirty street, somehow it doesn't occur to you that the people who live in it are saving up for a home in the Western Addition!"
"Well, Sue, unhappiness is bad enough, when there's a reason for it," William said, "but when you've taken your philanthropy course, I wish you'd come out and demonstrate to the women at the Works that the only thing that keeps them from being happy and prosperous is not having the sense to know that they are!"
"I? What could I ever teach anyone!" laughed Susan Brown.
Yet she was changing and learning, as she presently had reason to see. It was on a hot Saturday in July that Susan, leaving the office at two o'clock, met the lovely Mrs. John Furlong on the shore road. Even more gracious and charming than she had been as Isabel Wallace, the young matron quite took possession of Susan. Where had Susan been hiding--and how wonderfully well she was looking--and why hadn't she come to see Isabel's new house?
"Be a darling!" said Mrs. Furlong, "and come along home with me now! Jack is going to bring Sherwin Perry home to dinner with him, and I truly, truly need a girl! Run up and change your dress if you want to, while I'm making my call, and meet me on the four o'clock train!"
Susan hesitated, filled with unreasoning dread of a plunge back into the old atmosphere, but in the end she did go up to change her dress,--rejoicing that the new blue linen was finished, and did join Isabel at the train, filled with an absurd regret at having to miss a week-end at home, and Anna.
Isabel, very lovely in a remarkable gown and hat, chatted cheerfully all the way home, and led the guest to quite the smartest of the motor-cars that were waiting at the San Rafael station. Susan was amazed--a little saddened--to find that the beautiful gowns and beautiful women and lovely homes had lost their appeal; to find herself analyzing even Isabel's happy chatter with a dispassionate, quiet unbelief.
The new home proved to be very lovely; a harmonious mixture of all the sorts of doors and windows, porches and roofs that the young owners fancied. Isabel, trailing her frothy laces across the cool deep hallway, had some pretty, matronly questions to ask of her butler, before she could feel free for her guest. Had Mrs. Wallace telephoned--had the man fixed the mirror in Mr. Furlong's bathroom--had the wine come?
"I have no housekeeper," said Isabel, as they went upstairs, "and I sha'n't have one. I think I owe it to myself, and to the maids, Sue, to take that responsibility entirely!" Susan recognized the unchanged sweetness and dutifulness that had marked the old Isabel, who could with perfect simplicity and reason seem to make a virtue of whatever she did.
They went into the sitting-room adjoining the young mistress' bedroom, an airy exquisite apartment all colonial white and gay flowered hangings, with French windows, near which the girls settled themselves for tea.
"Nothing's new with me," Susan said, in answer to Isabel's smiling inquiry. What could she say to hold the interest of this radiant young princess? Isabel accordingly gave her own news, some glimpses of her European wedding journey, some happy descriptions of wedding gifts. The Saunders were abroad, she told Susan, Ella and Emily and their mother with Kenneth, at a German cure. "And Mary Peacock--did you know her? is with them," said Isabel. "I think that's an engagement!"
"Doesn't that seem horrible? You know he's incurable--" Susan said, slowly stirring her cup. But she instantly perceived that the comment was not acceptable to young Mrs. Furlong. After all, thought Susan, Society is a very jealous institution, and Isabel was of its inner circle.
"Oh, I think that was all very much exaggerated!" Isabel said lightly, pleasantly. "At least, Sue," she added kindly, "you and I are not fair judges of it!" And after a moment's silence, for Susan kept a passing sensation of irritation admirably concealed, she added, "--But I didn't show you my pearls!"
A maid presently brought them, a perfect string, which Susan slipped through her fingers with real delight.
"Woman, they're the size of robins' eggs!" she said. Isabel was all sweet gaiety again. She touched the lovely chain tenderly, while she told of Jack's promise to give her her choice of pearls or a motor-car for her birthday, and of his giving her both! She presently called the maid again.
"Pauline, put these back, will you, please?" asked Isabel, smilingly. When the maid was gone she added, "I always trust the maids that way! They love to handle my pretty things,--and who can blame them?--and I let them whenever I can!"
They were still lingering over tea when Isabel heard her husband in the adjoining room, and went in, closing the door after her, to welcome him.
"He's all dirty from tennis," said the young wife, coming back and resuming her deep chair, with a smile, "and cross because I didn't go and pick him up at the courts!"
"Oh, that was my fault!" Susan exclaimed, remembering that Isabel could not always be right, unless innocent persons would sometimes agree to be wrong. Mrs. Furlong smiled composedly, a lovely vision in her loose lacy robe.
"Never mind, he'll get over it!" she said and, accompanying Susan to one of the handsome guest-rooms, she added confidentially, "My dear, when a man's first married, ANYTHING that keeps him from his wife makes him cross! It's no more your fault than mine!"
Sherwin Perry, the fourth at dinner, was a rosy, clean-shaven, stupid youth, who seemed absorbed in his food, and whose occasional violent laughter, provoked by his host's criticism of different tennis-players, turned his big ears red. John Furlong told Susan a great deal of his new yacht, rattling off technical terms with simple pride, and quoting at length one of the men at the ship-builders' yard.
"Gosh, he certainly is a marvelous fellow,--Haley is," said John, admiringly. "I wish you could hear him talk! He knows everything!"
Isabel was deeply absorbed in her new delightful responsibilities as mistress of the house.
"Excuse me just a moment, Susan----Jack, the stuff for the library curtains came, and I don't think it's the same," said Isabel or, "Jack, dear, I accepted for the Gregorys'," or "The Wilsons didn't get their card after all, Jack. Helen told Mama so!" All these matters were discussed at length between husband and wife, Susan occasionally agreeing or sympathizing. Lake Tahoe, where the Furlongs expected to go in a day or two, was also a good deal considered.
"We ought to sit out-of-doors this lovely night," said Isabel, after dinner. But conversation languished, and they began a game of bridge. This continued for perhaps an hour, then the men began bidding madly, and doubling and redoubling, and Isabel good-naturedly terminated the game, and carried her guest upstairs with her.
Here, in Susan's room, they had a talk, Isabel advisory and interested, Susan instinctively warding off sympathy and concern.
"Sue,--you won't be angry?" said Isabel, affectionately "but I do so hate to see you drifting, and want to have you as happy as I am! Is there somebody?"
"Not unless you count the proprietor of the 'Democrat,'" Susan laughed.
"It's no laughing matter, Sue---" Isabel began, seriously. But Susan, laying a quick hand upon her arm, said smilingly:
"Isabel! Isabel! What do you, of all women, know about the problems and the drawbacks of a life like mine?"
"Well, I do feel this, Sue," Isabel said, just a little ruffled, but smiling, too, "I've had money since I was born, I admit. But money has never made any real difference with me. I would have dressed more plainly, perhaps, as a working woman, but I would always have had everything dainty and fresh, and Father says that I really have a man's mind; that I would have climbed right to the top in any position! So don't talk as if I didn't know ANYTHING!"
Presently she heard Jack's step, and ran off to her own room. But she was back again in a few moments. Jack had just come up to find some cigars, it appeared. Jack was such a goose!
"He's a dear," said Susan. Isabel agreed. "Jack was wonderful," she said. Had Susan noticed him with older people? And with babies----
"That's all we need, now," said the happy Isabel.
"Babies are darling," agreed Susan, feeling elderly and unmarried.
"Yes, and when you're married," Isabel said dreamily, "they seem so--so sacred--but you'll see yourself, some day, I hope. Hark!"
And she was gone again, only to come back. It was as if Isabel gained fresh pleasure in her new estate by seeing it afresh through Susan's eyes. She had the longing of the bride to give her less-experienced friend just a glimpse of the new, delicious relationship.
Left alone at last, Susan settled herself luxuriously in bed, a heap of new books beside her, soft pillows under her head, a great light burning over her shoulder, and the fragrance of the summer night stealing in through the wide-opened windows. She gave a great sigh of relief, wondered, between desultory reading, at how early an hour she could decently excuse herself in the morning.
"I SUPPOSE that, if I fell heir to a million, I might build a house like this, and think that a string of pearls was worth buying," said Susan to herself, "but I don't believe I would!"
Isabel would not let her hurry away in the morning; it was too pleasant to have so gracious and interested a guest, so sympathetic a witness to her own happiness. She and Susan lounged through the long morning, Susan admired the breakfast service, admired the rugs, admired her host's character. Nothing really interested Isabel, despite her polite questions and assents, but Isabel's possessions, Isabel's husband, Isabel's genius for housekeeping and entertaining. The gentlemen appeared at noon, and the four went to the near-by hotel for luncheon, and here Susan saw Peter Coleman again, very handsome and gay, in white flannels, and very much inclined toward the old relationship with her. Peter begged them to spend the afternoon with him, trying the new motor-car, and Isabel was charmed to agree. Susan agreed too, after a hesitation she did not really understand in herself. What pleasanter prospect could anyone have?
While they were loitering over their luncheon, in the shaded, delightful coolness of the lunch-room, suddenly Dolly Ripley, over-dressed, gay and talkative as always, came up to their table.
She greeted the others negligently, but showed a certain enthusiasm for Susan.
"Hello, Isabel," said Dolly, "I saw you all come in--'he seen that a mother and child was there!'"
This last was the special phrase of the moment. Susan had heard it forty times within the past twenty-four hours, and was at no pains to reconcile it to this particular conversation.
"But you, you villain--where've you been?" pursued Dolly, to Susan, "why don't you come down and spend a week with me? Do you see anything of our dear friend Emily in these days?"
"Emily's abroad," said Susan, and Peter added:
"With Ella and Mary Peacock--'he seen that a mother and child was there!'"
"Oh, you devil!" said Dolly, laughing. "But honestly," she added gaily to Susan, "'how you could put up with Em Saunders as long as you did was a mystery to ME! It's a lucky thing you're not like me, Susan van Dusen, people all tell me I'm more like a boy than a girl,--when I think a thing I'm going to SAY it or bust! Now, listen, you're coming down to me for a week---"
Susan left the invitation open, to Isabel's concern.
"Of course, as you say, you have a position, Sue," said Isabel, when they were spinning over the country roads, in Peter's car, "but, my dear, Dolly Ripley and Con Fox don't speak now,--Connie's going on the stage, they say!---"
"'A mother and child will be there', all right!" said John Furlong, leaning back from the front seat. Isabel laughed, but went on seriously,
"---and Dolly really wants someone to stay with her, Sue, and think what a splendid thing that would be!"
Susan answered absently. They had taken the Sausalito road, to get the cool air from the bay, and it flashed across her that if she COULD persuade them to drop her at the foot of the hill, she could be at home in five minutes,--back in the dear familiar garden, with Anna and Phil lazily debating the attractions of a walk and a row, and Betsey compounding weak, cold, too-sweet lemonade. Suddenly the only important thing in the world seemed to be her escape.
There they were, just as she had pictured them; Mrs. Carroll, gray-haired, dignified in her lacy light black, was in a deep chair on the lawn, reading aloud from the paper; Betsey, sitting at her feet, twisted and folded the silky ears of the setter; Anna was lying in a hammock, lazily watching her mother, and Billy Oliver had joined the boys, sprawling comfortably on the grass.
A chorus of welcome greeted Susan.
"Oh, Sue, you old duck!" said Betsey, "we've just been waiting for you to decide what we'd do!"
These were serene and sweet days for them all, and if sometimes the old sorrow returned for awhile, and there were still bitter longing and grieving for Josephine, there were days, too, when even the mother admitted to herself that some new tender element had crept into their love for each other since the little sister's going, the invisible presence was the closest and strongest of the ties that bound them all. Happiness came back, planning and dreaming began again. Susan teased Anna and Betsey into wearing white again, when the hot weather came, Billy urged the first of the walks to the beach without Jo, and Anna herself it was who began to extend the old informal invitations to the nearest friends and neighbors for the tea-hour on Saturday. Susan was to have her vacation in August; Billy was to have at least a week; Anna had been promised the fortnight of Susan's freedom, and Jimmy and Betsey could hardly wait for the camping trip they planned to take all together to the little shooting box in the mountains.
One August afternoon Susan, arriving home from the office at one o'clock, found Mrs. Carroll waiting to ask her a favor.
"Sue, dear, I'm right in the middle of my baking," Mrs. Carroll said, when Susan was eating a late lunch from the end of the kitchen table, "and here's a special delivery letter for Billy, and Billy's not coming over here to-night! Phil's taking Jimmy and Betts to the circus--they hadn't been gone five minutes when this thing came!"
"Why a special delivery--and why here--and what is it?" asked Susan, wiping buttery fingers carefully before she took the big envelope in her hands. "It's from Edward Dean," she said, examining it with unaffected interest. "Oh, I know what this is--it's about that blue-print business!" Susan finished, enlightened. "Probably Mr. Dean didn't have Billy's new address, but wanted him to have these to work on, on Sunday."
"It feels as if something bulky was in there," Mrs. Carroll said. "I wish we could get him by telephone! As bad luck would have it, he's a good deal worried about the situation at the works, and told me he couldn't possibly leave the men this week. What ARE the blue-prints?"
"Why, it's some little patent of Billy's,--a deep-petticoat, double-groove porcelain insulator, if that means anyone to anyone!" laughed Susan. "He's been raving about it for weeks! And he and Mr. Dean have to rush the patent, because they've been using these things for some time, and they have to patent them before they've been used a year, it seems!"
"I was just thinking, Sue, that, if you didn't mind crossing to the city with them, you could put on a special-delivery stamp and then Billy would have them to-night. Otherwise, they won't leave here until tomorrow morning."
"Why, of course, that'll do!" Susan said willingly. "I can catch the two-ten. Or better yet, Aunt Jo, I'll take them right out there and deliver them myself."
"Oh, dearie, no! Not if there's any ugliness among the men, not if they are talking of a strike!" the older woman protested.
"Oh, they're always striking," Susan said easily. "And if I can't get him to bring me back," she added, "don't worry, for I may go stay with Georgie overnight, and come back with Bill in the morning!"
She was not sorry to have an errand on this exquisite afternoon. The water of the bay was as smooth as blue glass, gulls were flashing and dipping in the steamer's wake. Sailboats, waiting for the breeze, drifted idly toward the Golden Gate; there was not a cloud in the blue arch of the sky. The little McDowell whistled for her dock at Alcatraz. On the prison island men were breaking stone with a metallic clink--clink--clink.
Susan found the ferry-place in San Francisco hot and deserted; the tar pavements were softened under-foot; gongs and bells of cars made a raucous clamor. She was glad to establish herself on the front seat of a Mission Street car and leave the crowded water-front behind her.
They moved along through congested traffic, past the big docks, and turned in between the great ware-houses that line Mission Street. The hot streets were odorous of leather and machine-oils, ropes and coffee. Over the door of what had been Hunter, Baxter & Hunter's hung a new bright sign, "Hunter, Hunter & Brauer." Susan caught a glimpse, through the plaster ornamentation of the facade, of old Front Office, which seemed to be full of brightly nickeled samples now, and gave back a blinking flash of light to the afternoon sun.
"Bathroom fixtures," thought Susan. "He always wanted to carry them!" What a long two years since she had known or cared what pleased or displeased Mr. Brauer!
The car clanged out of the warehouse district, past cheap flats and cheap shops, and saloons, and second-hand stores, boiling over, at their dark doorways, with stoves and rocking-chairs, lamps and china ware. This neighborhood was sordid enough, but crowded, happy and full of life. Now the road ran through less populous streets; houses stood at curious angles, and were unpainted, or painted in unusual colors. Great ware-houses and factories shadowed little clusters of workingmen's homes; here and there were country-like strips of brown palings with dusty mallow bushes spraying about them, or a lean cow grazing near a bare little wooden farmhouse. Dumps, diffusing a dry and dreadful odor, blighted the prospect with their pyramids of cans and broken umbrellas; little grocery stores, each with its wide unrailed porch, country fashion, and its bar accessible through the shop, or by a side entrance, often marked the corners on otherwise vacant blocks.
Susan got off the car in the very shadow of the "works," and stood for a moment looking at the great foundries, the dark and dirty yards, with their interlacing tracks and loaded cars, the enormous brick buildings set with rows and rows of blank and dusty windows, the brick chimneys and the black pipes of the blast-furnaces, the heaps of twisted old iron and of ashes, the blowing dust and glare of the hot summer day. She had been here with Billy before, had peeped into the furnace rooms, all a glare of white heat and silhouetted forms, had breathed the ashy and choking air.
Now she turned and walked toward the rows of workingmen's cottages that had been built, solidly massed, nearby. Presenting an unbroken, two-story facade, the long buildings were divided into tiny houses that had each two flat-faced windows upstairs, and a door and one window downstairs. The seven or eight long buildings might have been as many gigantic German toys, dotted with apertures by some accurate brush, and finished with several hundred flights of wooden steps and several hundred brick chimneys. Ugly when they first were built, they were even uglier now, for the exterior was of some shallow plaster that chipped and cracked and stained and in nearly every dooryard dirt and disorder added a last touch to the unlovely whole.
Children swarmed everywhere this afternoon; heavy, dirty-faced babies sat in the doorways, women talked and laughed over the low dividing fences. Gates hung awry, and baby carriages and garbage tins obstructed the bare, trampled spaces that might have been little gardens.
Up and down the straight narrow streets, and loitering everywhere, were idle, restless men. A few were amusing babies, or joining in the idle chatter of the women, but for the most part they were silent, or talking in low tones among themselves.
"Strikers!" Susan said to herself, with a thrill.
Over the whole curious, exotic scene the late summer sunshine streamed generously; the street was hot, the talking women fanned themselves with their aprons.
Susan, walking slowly alone, found herself attracting a good deal of attention, and was amazed to find that it frightened her a little. She was conspicuously a newcomer, and could not but overhear the comments that some of the watching young men made as she went by.
"Say, what's that song about 'I'd leave my happy home for you,' Bert?" she heard them say. "Don't ask me! I'm expecting my gurl any minute!" and "Pretty good year for peaches, I hear!"
Susan had to pretend that she did not hear, but she heartily wished herself back on the car. However, there was nothing to do but walk senselessly on, or stop and ask her way. She began to look furtively about for a friendly face, and finally stopped beside a dooryard where a slim pretty young woman was sitting with a young baby in her arms.
"Excuse me," said Susan, "but do you know where Mr. William Oliver lives, now?"
The girl studied her quietly for a minute, with a closed, composed mouth. Then she said evenly:
"Joe!"
"Huh?" said a tall young man, lathered for shaving, who came at once to the door.
"I'm trying to find Mr. Oliver--William Oliver," Susan said smiling. "I'm a sort of cousin of his, and I have a special delivery letter for him."
Joe, who had been rapidly removing the lather from his face with a towel, took the letter and, looking at it, gravely conceded:
"Well, maybe that's right, too! Sure you can see him. We're haying a conference up at the office tonight," he explained, "and I have to clean up or I'd take you to him myself! Maybe you'd do it, Lizzie?" he suggested to his wife, who was all friendliness to Susan now, and showed even a hint of respect in her friendliness.
"Well, I could nurse him later, Joe," she agreed willingly, in reference to the baby, "or maybe Mama--Mama!" she interrupted herself to call.
An immense, gray-haired old woman, who had been an interested auditor of this little conversation, got up from the steps of the next house, and came to the fence. Susan liked Ellan Cudahy at first sight, and smiled at her as she explained her quest.
"And you're Mr. Oliver's sister, I c'n see that," said Mrs. Cudahy shrewdly.
"No, I'm not!" Susan smiled. "My name is Brown. But Mr. Oliver was a sort of ward of my aunt's, and so we call ourselves cousins."
"Well, of course ye wud," agreed Mrs. Cudahy. "Wait till I pin on me hat wanst, and I'll take you up to the Hall. He's at the Hall, Joe, I dunno?" she asked.
Joseph assenting, they set out for the Hall, under a fire of curious eyes.
"Joe's cleaning up for the conference," said Mrs. Cudahy. "There's a committee going to meet tonight. The old man-that's Carpenter, the boss of the works, will be there, and some of the others."
Susan nodded intelligently, but Saturday evening seemed to her a curious time to select for a conference. They walked along in silence, Mrs. Cudahy giving a brief yet kindly greeting to almost every man they met.
"Hello, Dan, hello, Gene; how are ye, Jim?" said she, and one young giant, shouldering his scowling way home, she stopped with a fat imperative hand. "How's it going, Jarge?"
"It's going rotten," said George, sullenly evading her eyes.
"Well,--don't run by me that way--stand still!" said the old woman. "What d'ye mean by rotten?"
"Aw, I mean rotten!" said George ungraciously. "D'ye know what the old man is going to do now? He says that he'll give Billy just two or three days more to settle this damn thing, and then he'll wire east and get a carload of men right straight through from Philadelphia. He said so to young Newman, and Frank Harris was in the room, and heard him. He says they're picked out, and all ready to come!"
"And what does Mr. Oliver say?" asked Mrs. Cudahy, whose face had grown dark.
"I don't know! I went up to the Hall, but at the first word he says, 'For God's sake, George--None of that here! They'll mob the old man if they hear it!' They was all crowding about him, so I quit."
"Well," said Mrs. Cudahy, considering, "there's to be a conference at six-thirty, but befoor that, Mr. Oliver and Clem and Rassette and Weidermeyer are going to meet t'gether in Mr. Oliver's room at Rassette's house. Ye c'n see them there."
"Well, maybe I will," said George, softening, as he left them.
"What's the conference about?" asked Susan pleasantly.
"What's the--don't tell me ye don't know THAT!" Mrs. Cudahy said, eying her shrewdly.
"I knew there was a strike---" Susan began ashamedly.
"Sure, there's a strike," Mrs. Cudahy agreed, with quiet grimness, and under her breath she added heavily, "Sure there is!"
"And are Mr. Oliver's--are the men out?" Susan asked.
"There's nine hundred men out," Mrs. Cudahy told her, coldly.
"Nine hundred!" Susan stopped short. "But Billy's not responsible for all that!" she added, presently.
"I don't know who is, then," Mrs. Cudahy admitted grimly.
"But--but he never had more than thirty or forty men under him in his life!" Susan said eagerly.
"Oh? Well, maybe he doesn't know anything about it, thin!" Mrs. Cudahy agreed with magnificent contempt.
But her scorn was wasted upon another Irishwoman. Susan stared at her for a moment, then the dimples came into view, and she burst into her infectious laughter.
"Aren't you ashamed to be so mean!" laughed Susan. "Won't you tell me about it?"
Mrs. Cudahy laughed too, a little out of countenance.
"I misdoubt me you're a very bad lot!" said she, in high good humor, "but 'tis no joke for the boys," she went on, sobering quickly. "They wint on strike a week ago. Mr. Oliver presided at a meeting two weeks come Friday night, and the next day the boys went out!"
"What for?" asked Susan.
"For pay, and for hours," the older woman said. "They want regular pay for overtime, wanst-and-a-half regular rates. And they want the Chinymen to go,--sure, they come in on every steamer," said Mrs. Cudahy indignantly, "and they'll work twelve hours for two bits! Bether hours," she went on, checking off the requirements on fat, square fingers, "overtime pay, no Chinymen, and--and--oh, yes, a risin' scale of wages, if you know what that is? And last, they want the union recognized!"
"Well, that's not much!" Susan said generously. "Will they get it?"
"The old man is taking his time," Mrs. Cudahy's lips shut in a worried line. "There's no reason they shouldn't," she resumed presently, "We're the only open shop in this part of the world, now. The big works has acknowledged the union, and there's no reason why this wan shouldn't!"
"And Billy, is he the one they talk to, the Carpenters I mean--the authorities?" asked Susan.
"They wouldn't touch Mr. William Oliver wid a ten-foot pole," said Mrs. Cudahy proudly. "Not they! Half this fuss is because they want to get rid of him--they want him out of the way, d'ye see? No, he talks to the committee, and thin they meet with the committee. My husband's on it, and Lizzie's Joe goes along to report what they do."
"But Billy has a little preliminary conference in his room first?" Susan asked.
"He does," the other assented, with a chuckle. "He'll tell thim what to say! He's as smart as old Carpenter himself!" said Mrs. Cudahy, "he's prisidint of the local; Clem says he'd ought to be King!" And Susan was amazed to notice that the strong old mouth was trembling with emotion, and the fine old eyes dimmed with tears. "The crowd av thim wud lay down their lives for him, so they would!" said Mrs. Cudahy.
"And--and is there much suffering yet?" Susan asked a little timidly. This cheery, sun-bathed scene was not quite her idea of a labor strike.
"Well, some's always in debt and trouble annyway," Mrs. Cudahy said, temperately, "and of course 'tis the worse for thim now!"
She led Susan across an unpaved, deeply rutted street, and opened a stairway door, next to a saloon entrance.
Susan was glad to have company on the bare and gloomy stairs they mounted. Mrs. Cudahy opened a double-door at the top, and they looked into the large smoke-filled room that was the "Hall."
It was a desolate and uninviting room, with spirals of dirty, colored tissue-paper wound about the gas-fixtures, sunshine streaming through the dirty, specked windows, chairs piled on chairs against the long walls, and cuspidors set at regular intervals along the floor. There was a shabby table set at a platform at one end.
About this table was a group of men, talking eagerly and noisily to Billy Oliver, who stood at the table looking abstractedly at various letters and papers.
At the entrance of the women, the talk died away. Mrs. Cudahy was greeted with somewhat sheepish warmth; the vision of an extremely pretty girl in Mrs. Cudahy's care seemed to affect these vociferous laborers profoundly. They began confused farewells, and melted away.
"All right, old man, so long!" "I'll see you later, Oliver," "That was about all, Billy, I must be getting along," "Good-night, Billy, you know where I am if you want me!" "I'll see you later,--good-night, sir!"
"Hello, Mrs. Cudahy--hello, Susan!" said Billy, discovering them with the obvious pleasure a man feels when unexpectedly confronted by his womenkind. "I think you were a peach to do that, Sue!" he said gratefully, when the special delivery letter had been read. "Now I can get right at it, to-morrow!--Say, wait a minute, Clem---"
He caught by the arm an old man,--larger, more grizzled, even more blue of eye than was Susan's new friend, his wife,--and presented her to Mr. Cudahy.
"---My adopted sister, Clem! Sue, he's about as good as they come!"
"Sister, is it?" asked Mrs. Cudahy, "Whin I last heard it was cousin! What do you know about that, Clem?"
"Well, that gives you a choice!" said Susan, laughing.
"Then I'll take the Irishman's choice, and have something different entirely!" the old woman said, in great good spirits, as they all went down the stairs.
"I'll take me own gir'rl home, and give you two a chanst," said Clem, in the street. "That'll suit you, Wil'lum, I dunno?"
"You didn't ask if it would suit ME," sparkled Susan Brown.
"Well, that's so!" he said delightedly, stopping short to scratch his head, and giving her a rueful smile. "Sure, I'm that popular that there never was a divvle like me at all!"
"You get out, and leave my girl alone!" said William, with a shove. And his tired face brightened wonderfully, as he slipped his hand under Susan's arm.
"Now, Sue," he said contentedly, "we'll go straight to Rassette's--but wait a minute--I've got to telephone!"
Susan stood alone on the corner, quite as a matter of course, while he dashed into a saloon. In a moment he was back, introducing her to a weak-looking, handsome young man, who, after a few wistful glances back toward the swinging door, walked away with them, and was presently left in the care of a busily cooking little wife and a fat baby. Billy was stopped and addressed on all sides. Susan found it pleasantly exciting to be in his company, and his pleasure in showing her this familiar environment was unmistakable.
"Everything's rotten and upset now," said Billy, delighted with her friendly interest and sympathy. "You ought to see these people when they aren't on strike! Now, let's see, it's five thirty. I'll tell you, Sue, if you'll miss the seven-five boat, I'll just wait here until we get the news from the conference, then I'll blow you to Zink's best dinner, and take you home on the ten-seventeen."
"Oh, Bill, forget me!" she said, concerned for his obvious fatigue, for his face was grimed with perspiration and very pale. "I feel like a fool to have come in on you when you're so busy and so distressed! Anything will be all right---"
"Sue, I wouldn't have had you miss this for a million, if you can only get along, somehow!" he said eagerly. "Some other time---"
"Oh, Billy, DON'T bother about me!" Susan dismissed herself with an impatient little jerk of her head. "Does this new thing worry you?" she asked.
"What new thing?" he asked sharply.
"Why, this--this plan of Mr. Carpenter's to bring a train-load of men on from Philadelphia," said Susan, half-proud and half-frightened.
"Who said so?" he demanded abruptly.
"Why, I don't know his name, Billy--yes I do, too! Mrs. Cudahy called him Jarge---"
"George Weston, that was!" Billy's eyes gleamed. "What else did he say?"
"He said a man named Edward Harris---" "Sure it wasn't Frank Harris?" "Frank Harris--that was it! He said Harris overheard him--or heard him say so!"
"Harris didn't hear anything that the old man didn't mean to have him hear," said Billy grimly. "But that only makes it the more probably true! Lord, Lord, I wonder where I can get hold of Weston!"
"He's going to be at that conference, at half-past five," Susan assured him. He gave her an amused look.
"Aren't you the little Foxy-Quiller!" he said. "Gosh, I do love to have you out here, Sue!" he added, grinning like a happy small boy. "This is Rassette's, where I'm staying," he said, stopping before the very prettiest and gayest of little gardens. "Come in and meet Mrs. Rassette."
Susan went in to meet the blonde, pretty, neatly aproned little lady of the house.
"The boys already are upstairs, Mr. Oliver," said Mrs. Rassette, and as Billy went up the little stairway with flying leaps, she led Susan into her clean little parlor. Susan noticed a rug whose design was an immense brown dog, a lamp with a green, rose-wreathed shade, a carved wooden clock, a little mahogany table beautifully inlaid with white holly, an enormous pair of mounted antlers, and a large concertina, ornamented with a mosaic design in mother-of-pearl. The wooden floor here, and in the hall, was unpainted, but immaculately clean and the effect of the whole was clean and gay and attractive.
"You speak very wonderful English for a foreigner, Mrs. Rassette."
"I?" The little matron showed her white teeth. "But I was born in New Jersey," she explained, "only when I am seven my Mama sends me home to my Grandma, so that I shall know our country. It is a better country for the working people," she added, with a smile, and added apologetically, "I must look into my kitchen; I am afraid my boy shall fall out of his chair."
"Oh, let's go out!" Susan followed her into a kitchen as spotless as the rest of the house, and far more attractive. The floor was cream-white, the woodwork and the tables white, and immaculate blue saucepans hung above an immaculate sink.
Three babies, the oldest five years old, were eating their supper in the evening sunshine, and now fixed their solemn blue eyes upon the guest. Susan thought they were the cleanest babies she had ever seen; through their flaxen mops she could see their clean little heads, their play-dresses were protected by checked gingham aprons worked in cross-stitch designs. Marie and Mina and Ernie were kissed in turn, after their mother had wiped their rosy little faces with a damp cloth.
"I am baby-mad!" said Susan, sitting down with the baby in her lap. "A strike is pretty hard, when you have these to think of, isn't it?" she asked sympathetically.
"Yes, we don't wish that we should move," Mrs. Rassette agreed placidly, "We have been here now four years, and next year it is our hope that we go to our ranch."
"Oh, have you a ranch?" asked Susan.
"We are buying a little ranch, in the Santa Clara valley," the other woman said, drawing three bubbling Saucepans forward on her shining little range. "We have an orchard there, and there is a town nearby where Joe shall have a shop of his own. And there is a good school! But until my Marie is seven, we think we shall stay here. So I hope the strike will stop. My husband can always get work in Los Angeles, but it is so far to move, if we must come back next year!"
Susan watched her, serenely beginning to prepare the smallest girl for bed; the helpful Marie trotting to and fro with nightgowns and slippers. All the while the sound of men's voices had been rising and falling steadily in an upstairs room. Presently they heard the scraping of chairs on a bare floor, and a door slammed.
Billy Oliver put his head into the kitchen. He looked tired, but smiled when he saw Susan with the sleepy baby in her lap.
"Hello, Sue, that your oldest? Come on, woman, the Cudahys expect us to dinner, and we've not got much time!"
Susan kissed the baby, and walked with him to the end of the block, and straight through the open door of the Cudahy cottage, and into the kitchen. Here they found Mrs. Cudahy, dashing through preparations for a meal whose lavishness startled Susan. Bottles of milk and bottles of cream stood on the table, Susan fell to stripping ears of corn; there were pop-overs in the oven; Mrs. Cudahy was frying chickens at the stove. Enough to feed the Carroll family, under their mother's exquisite management, for a week!
There was no management here. A small, freckled and grinning boy known as "Maggie's Tim" came breathless from the grocery with a great bottle of fancy pickles; Billy brought up beer from the cellar; Clem Cudahy cut a thick slice of butter from a two-pound square, and helped it into the serving-dish with a pudgy thumb. A large fruit pie and soda crackers were put on the table with the main course, when they sat down, hungry and talkative.
"Well, what do you think of the Ironworks Row?" asked Billy, at about seven o'clock, when the other men had gone off to the conference, and Susan was helping Mrs. Cudahy in the kitchen.
"Oh, I like it!" Susan assured him, enthusiastically. "Only," she added in a lowered tone, with a glance toward Mrs. Cudahy, who was out in the yard talking to Lizzie, "only I prefer the Rassette establishment to any I've seen!"
"The Rassettes," he told her, significantly, "are trained for their work; she just as much as he is! Do you wonder I think it's worth while to educate people like that?"
"But Billy--everyone seems so comfortable. The Cudahys, now,--why, this dinner was fit for a king--if it had been served a little differently!"
"Oh, Clem's a rich man, as these men go," Billy said. "He's got two flats he rents, and he's got stock! And they've three married sons, all prosperous."
"Well, then, why do they live here?"
"Why wouldn't they? You think that it's far from clubs and shops and theaters and libraries, but they don't care for these things. They've never had time for them, they've never had time to garden, or go to clubs, and consequently they don't miss them. But some day, Sue," said Billy, with a darkening face, "some day, when these people have the assurance that their old age is to be protected and when they have easier hours, and can get home in daylight, then you'll see a change in laborers' houses!"
"And just what has a strike like this to do with that, Billy?" said Susan, resting her cheek on her broom handle.
"Oh, it's organization; it's recognition of rights; it's the beginning!" he said. "We have to stand before we can walk!"
"Here, don't do that!" said Mrs. Cudahy, coming in to take away the broom. "Take her for a walk, Billy," said she, "and show her the neighborhood." She laid a heavy hand on his shoulder. "Now, don't ye worry about the men coming back," said she kindly, "they'll be back fast enough, and wid good news, too!"
"I'm going to stay overnight with Mrs. Cudahy," said Susan, as they walked away.
"You are!" he stopped short, in amazement.
"Yes, I am!" Susan returned his smile with another. "I could no more go home now than after the first act of a play!" she confessed.
"Isn't it damned interesting?" he said, walking on.
"Why, yes," she said. "It's real at last--it's the realest thing I ever saw in my life! Everything's right on the surface, and all kept within certain boundaries. In other places, people come and go in your lives. Here, everybody's your neighbor. I like it! It could be perfect; just fancy if the Carrolls had one house, and you another, and I a third, and Phil and his wife a fourth--wouldn't it be like children playing house! And there's another thing about it, Billy," Susan went on enthusiastically, "it's honest! These people are really worried about shoes and rent and jobs--there's no money here to keep them from feeling everything! Think what a farce a strike would be if every man in it had lots of money! People with money CAN'T get the taste of really living!"
"Ah, well, there's a lot of sin and wretchedness here now!" he said sadly. "Women drinking--men acting like brutes! But some day, when the liquor traffic is regulated, and we have pension laws, and perhaps the single tax---"
"And the Right-Reverend William Lord Oliver, R. I., in the Presidential Chair, hooray and Glory be to God---!" Susan began.
"Oh, you dry up, Susan," Billy said laughing. "I don't care," he added contentedly. "I like to be at the bottom of things, shoving up. And my Lord, if we only pull this thing off---!"
"It's not my preconceived idea of a strike," Susan said, after a moment's silence. "I thought one had to throw coal, and run around the streets with a shawl over one's head---"
"In the east, where the labor is foreign, that's about it," he said, "but here we have American-born laborers, asking for their rights. And I believe it's all coming!"
"But with ignorance and inefficiency on one hand, and graft and cruelty on the other, and drink and human nature and poverty adding their complications, it seems rather a big job!" Susan said. "Now, look at these small kids out of bed at this hour of night, Bill! And what are they eating?--Boiled crabs! And notice the white stockings--I never had a pair in my life, yet every kidlet on the block is wearing them. And look upstairs there, with a bed still airing!"
"The wonder is that it's airing at all," Billy said absently. "Is that the boys coming back?" he asked sharply.
"Now, Bill, why do you worry---?" But Susan knew it was useless to scold him. They went quietly back, and sat on Mrs. Cudahy's steps, and waited for news. All Ironworks Row waited. Down the street Susan could see silent groups on nearly every door-step. It grew very dark; there was no moon, but the sky was thickly strewn with stars.
It was after ten o'clock when the committee came back. Susan knew, the moment that she saw the three, moving all close together, silently and slowly, that they brought no good news.
As a matter of fact, they brought almost no news at all. They went into Clem Cudahy's dining-room, and as many men and women as could crowded in after them. Billy sat at the head of the table.
Carpenter, the "old man" himself, had stuck to his guns, Clem Cudahy said. He was the obstinate one; the younger men would have conceded something, if not everything, long ago. But the old man had said that he would not be dictated to by any man alive, and if the men wanted to listen to an ignorant young enthusiast---
"Three cheers for Mr. Oliver!" said a strong young voice, at this point, and the cheers were given and echoed in the street, although Billy frowned, and said gruffly, "Oh, cut it out!"
It was a long evening. Susan began to think that they would talk forever. But, at about eleven o'clock, the men who had been streaming in and out of the house began to disperse, and she and Mrs. Cudahy went into the kitchen, and made a pot of coffee.
Susan, sitting at the foot of the table, poured it, and seasoned it carefully.
"You are going to be well cared for, Mr. Oliver," said Ernest Rassette, in his careful English.
"No such luck!" Billy said, smiling at Susan, as he emptied his cup at a draught. "Well! I don't know that we do any good sitting here. Things seem to be at a deadlock."
"What do they concede, Bill?" Susan asked.
"Oh, practically everything but the recognition of the union. At least, Carpenter keeps saying that if this local agitation was once wiped out,--which is me!--then he'd talk. He doesn't love me, Sue."
"Damn him!" said one of his listeners, a young man who sat with his head in his hands.
"It's after twelve," Billy said, yawning. "Me to the hay! Goodnight, everyone; goodnight, Sue!"
"And annywan that cud get a man like that, and doesn't," said Mrs. Cudahy when he was gone, "must be lookin' for a saint right out av the lit'ny!"
"I never heard of any girl refusing Mr. Oliver," Susan said demurely.
She awoke puzzled, vaguely elated. Sunshine was streaming in at the window, an odor of coffee, of bacon, of toast, drifted up from below. Susan had slept well. She performed the limited toilet necessitated by a basin and pitcher, a comb somewhat beyond its prime, and a mirror too full of sunlight to be flattering.
But it was evidently satisfactory, for Clem Cudahy told her, as she went smiling into the kitchen, that she looked like a streak of sunlight herself. Sunlight was needed; it was a worried and anxious day for them all.
Susan went with Lizzie to see the new Conover baby, and stopped on the way back to be introduced to Mrs. Jerry Nelson, who had been stretched on her bed for eight long years. Mrs. Nelson's bright little room was easily accessible from the street; the alert little suffering woman was never long alone.
"I have to throw good soup out, the way it spoils on me," said Mrs. Nelson's daughter to Susan, "and there's nobody round makes cake or custard but what Mama gets some!"
"I'm a great one for making friends," the invalid assured her happily. "I don't miss nothing!"
"And after all I don't see why such a woman isn't better off than Mary Lord," said Susan later to Billy, "so much nearer the center of things! Of course," she told him that afternoon, "I ought to go home today. But I'm too interested. I simply can't! What happens next?"
"Oh, waiting," he said wearily. "We have a mass meeting this afternoon. But there's nothing to do but wait!"
Waiting was indeed the order of the day. The whole colony waited. It grew hotter and hotter; flies buzzed in and out of the open doorways, children fretted and shouted in the shade. Susan had seen no drinking the night before; but now she saw more than one tragedy. The meeting at three o'clock ended in a more grim determination than ever; the men began to seem ugly. Sunset brought a hundred odors of food, and unbearable heat.
"I've got to walk some of this off," said Billy, restlessly, just before dark. "Come on up and see the cabbage gardens!"
Susan pinned on her wide hat, joined him in silence, and still in silence they threaded the path that led through various dooryards and across vacant lots, and took a rising road toward the hills.
The stillness and soft dusk were very pleasant to Susan; she could find a beauty in carrot-tops and beet greens, and grew quite rapturous over a cow.
"Doesn't the darling look comfortable and countryish, Bill?"
Billy interrupted his musing to give her an absent smile. They sat down on a pile of lumber, and watched the summer moon rise gloriously over the hills.
"Doesn't it seem FUNNY to you that we're right in the middle of a strike, Bill?" Susan asked childishly.