After that, he took what he must and kept what he could. He had no trade on which to fall back; his domestic and political expenses grew annually, and, as an evasion of the former meant financial ruin, so the shirking of the latter meant a charge lodged at headquarters, a speedy hearing, and an automatic dismissal. Even when a non-partisan man was put at the head of the department, that official's practical power was nullified by the fact that the mayor, a party-man, was behind him and could remove him at a moment's notice, and that behind the mayor was the organization that had made and could break the mayor. No individual, so far as Officer Riley could see, was personally to blame, was himself a free agent; but the whole collection of individuals were the irresponsible parts of a gigantic machine—from the inner council of Tammany to their spies in every municipal department—which, if ever broken by the recognized party of opposition, must be so thoroughly rebuilt and so precisely operated in accordance with mechanical lines that the change would signify only the casting out of the irresponsible parts and their replacement by parts equally irresponsible. Riley could look no farther, and, even could he have seen that the remedy must be a remedy of conditions, he could have done nothing to free himself.
At the station-house he delivered the commands that O'Malley had given him. There his words produced consternation, but no thought of disaffection. The patrol-wagon was ordered to be in its stable, ready to leave at the given hour, and Riley, as the officer regularly assigned to night-work on the beat in which stood Rose's house, was forced to remain to accompany it.
"An' see here, you men,"—these were the words with which the brief instructions were concluded—"you see to it nobody gets ahead of you. This is O'Malley's job, an' it's got to be done right."
In the underworld of every city, news, however, travels even while it is in the making, and in no direction does it travel more swiftly, just as in no other does it travel more indirectly, than, when the slave-trade is concerned, it travels to the traders. Riley was careful to remain in full view of the sergeant's desk from the moment the arrangements were made until the time of execution—he would not have dared to communicate with the friends that had thus swiftly become the enemy—none of the wagon-crew were seen to leave the stable, to use the telephone, or to speak to a passerby, and yet, shortly before the appointed time, through a certain club-room over a not far distant saloon—a club-room much affected by young men in Max Grossman's profession—there soon spread the definite tidings that Rosie Légère had just been "piped off."
The swarthy and brilliant Rafael Angelelli heard the word, and straightway, beyond all doubting, confirmed it. With the unheeded easy evening breeze tumbling his uncovered oily locks, he ran to the nearest booth-telephone, and hurriedly called Rose upon the wire.
"Eet ees comin'!" he whispered excitedly into the transmitter.
Rose's voice replied with stolid assurance.
"What's comin'?" she asked.
"Poliziotti—cops," replied the Italian, finding more and more difficulty with his English as his panic increased. "Eet ees Angel talkin'.—I jus' getta danuova.—They maka da pinch!"
"Quit your kiddin'."
"Naw.Veraménte. Crêdi tu!Queeck!"
His fright hit the mark.
"How'd it happen?" demanded Rose. "Who's back of it?"
"Dees Meest' Dyker."
"You fool Dago"—her voice grew shrill with fear and anger—"can't you do nothin'?"
"Naw. 'E's been to O'Malley."
"You're a hell of a help! How about Riley an' the rest?"
"Naw. O'Malley maka them do thees."
"It's that slut Violet, that's who it is! That's gratitude for you. I've been half expectin' trouble since she got loose last night.—How long have I?"
"I don' know. Maybe five min'; maybe one."
"My Gawd!"
"Don' hang up! Leesten: firs' t'eeng you do getta da new girl out. Eef they getta dees new girl you go——"
But there came a quick click from the other end of the wire. Rose had ended the conversation.
Angel, still hatless, hurried through the few intervening streets and darted into that street to which he had just been speaking.
Already the early New York twilight had descended, and the block seemed, at first glance, to have turned to slumber. One distant, spluttering arc-light succeeded only in accentuating the gloom. From the patch of darkening sky into which the roofs blended, a bare handful of pale stars twinkled weakly, and on both sides, from corner to corner, the uniform, narrow houses rose in somber repetition, each with its brief, abrupt flight of steps, each with its shuttered windows, each silent behind its mask.
All this the Italian saw with accustomed eyes, and then he darted into the shadow of an areaway, because he saw also that, brief as had been his journey, Riley had arrived before him.
In a little knot of wise children, a patrol wagon, its sophisticated horses unconcernedly dozing, stood before Rose's house. An officer was in the doorway; hurried lights shifted from behind one bowed shutter to another, and gradually Angel became conscious that, all along the street, frightened faces were peeping from stealthily lifted blinds.
For quite some time the watcher waited. At last the big figure of Riley and a companion appeared in the open doorway and spoke to someone in the wagon. Through the evening quiet their voices came distinctly.
"Ready?" asked Riley.
"All ready," came the answer.
"We've got the madam an' the nigger, an' the four of thim, but I belave they must have turned the new girl loose before we got here."
This time the reply came from within the house, and it came in the tones of Rose, raised high in anger and in blasphemy:
"You're a dirty liar, Larry Riley! There never was another one, an' you know that as well as I do! Just you wait till I tell the judge what you do know, you damned, low, double-crossin' sneak! You bastard, you!"
Riley and his companions turned and ran into the vestibule.
"Just you wait," the cry continued. "Just you wait, you thief, you——"
The voice stopped as suddenly as it had started.
There was another pause, a longer one, and then Angel, bending as far as he dared from his hidden corner, saw the two officers come quickly out with their hands upon the arms of two cloaked women, whom they helped into the dark recesses of the patrol-wagon. They went back and returned with one more. A fourth followed; then a fifth, and a sixth. Two policemen appeared, evidently from positions that they had been guarding in the rear of the house. The man on the steps closed the door and locked it. All the policemen climbed to the wagon. The driver gathered up the reins. The tittering children scattered wildly. The horses woke up and started away at a brisk trot.
Impartial Justice was beginning her task.
To leave the protection of Dyker and the kindly secrecy of the cab, and then to leap into a tide of alien human beings and swim against them in a strange and terrifying sea, had required the last grain of courage and strength that was left in Violet's sapped body and cowed soul. It was only by the momentum that Wesley's calm directions had given her, and quite without consciousness upon her own part that, with her cloak gripped tightly about her, she tottered forward, buffeted and shrinking, to the first corner, wheeled to the right into a street comfortingly darker, turned again into a still narrower and quieter way, and then came to an uncertain stop before what seemed to be no street at all, but only a small black rift among the beetling walls of brick.
Empty as was the way compared with Rivington Street, it was what, had she not seen the former thoroughfare, she would have considered oppressively full. Urchins walked hand in hand along the gutters, push-cart men cried their wares over the cobbles and, in the hot night, frowzy women crowded the house-steps. A clatter of voices, of foreign tongues and unfamiliar forms of English, rattled out the gossip of the neighborhood, and a few steps away, a belated hurdy-gurdy shook forth a popular tune.
Violet cowered against the nearest wall. She was uncertain as to how to proceed, and she was afraid to stand still. There seized her an unreasoned terror lest all this seeming escape might be some new trick leading into some new trap. A policeman passed with heavy tread, but, unmindful of Dyker's assurance, the girl drew, trembling, as far away from him as she could. Then, when her straining eyes saw him turn at the next corner to retrace his steps, she made sure that he was coming back to recapture her, and, now desperate, she faced a pair of solemn children slowly approaching from the opposite direction.
The six-year-old boy to whom she especially addressed herself shook an uncomprehending head, but his wiser companion, a very dirty little girl of seven, made proud answer.
"He don't to speak no English," she said. "He only can tell things out of Jewish. But I tells you. That there's your street right behind you. Yiss, ma'am. An' your house is by the two on that there side."
Violet's lips tried to form a word of thanks. She turned, as the girl had ordered, into the rift among the brick walls, found that, once it had traveled beyond the depth of the house before which she had been standing, it opened to a width of a few additional feet, and so, almost creeping through the Stygian passage in which shone only one far-away lamp, she felt her way to the second door.
It was partially open, and a jet of blue gas in the hallway burned overhead. She could see several doors in the shadows, but all were closed. She heard a dragging step coming down the stairs. She drew against the wall and waited.
The step was slow and uncertain. It seemed to consider well before each movement forward, but it had a character that reassured her. It was the same sort of step with which her father was wont to return home after his occasional carouses, and she knew that whoso walked in that fashion was, so long as one kept out of reach, not greatly to be feared. She remained hidden until the step drew nearer, until the dark bulk of the drunkard slowly massed itself out of the surrounding darkness, until it had brushed by her. Then she spoke.
"Can you tell me," she asked, "if there's a Miss Flanagan lives here?"
The passerby was not in a condition where voices from nowhere seemed remarkable. He stopped and, evidently not clear as to just whence this particular voice proceeded, addressed the air immediately before him.
"I can so," he said.
"Then will you, please?"
"Will I what?" responded the passerby, determined that the air should be more specific.
"Will you pleasetellme?"
"Tell you what?"
"Is there a Miss Flanagan lives here?"
"There is that. There's three of her, an' wan of thim's a Missus. Good-night."
Awkwardly he touched his hat to the air and stumbled out into the alley.
Violet breathed hard. She had never in her life before been in a tenement-house; but she knew that now she must seek a door through which some ray of light gave hint of waking persons within and, knocking, of them inquire anew. Around her, all the doors were forbidding, so, timidly and with a hand tight upon the shaking rail, she softly climbed the decrepit stairs.
At the second floor a shaft of yellow light stopped her.
Here was a door that was open, and beyond it, by an uncovered deal table on which stood a rude kerosene lamp, sat two figures: the figure of an old woman, her gnarled hands clasped loosely in her aproned lap, her dim eyes gazing at the sightless window, and the figure of a young woman, her hands beneath her round chin, her wide eyes on a naked baby quietly sleeping in a clothes-basket at her knee. The floor was uncarpeted, the walls unadorned, the room almost bare of furniture; but on the face of her that looked into the past and in the face of her that looked into the future there was peace.
A quick stroke of pain stabbed the onlooker's heart, but she dragged herself ahead and, not to disturb the baby, spoke without knocking.
The old woman turned, and Violet noticed that the eyes which could see so far behind were blind and could see no step forward. The mother, however, spoke kindly and gave the directions that the girl needed; but Violet, wanting to say something about the baby in return, and, able only to murmur formal thanks, pursued her climb upward.
She found at last the door that she was certain must be Katie Flanagan's, but, when she had found it, all power of further motion suddenly ceased. Weakness, shame, and fear swept over her like a cloud of evil gases from an endangered mine, and she swayed against the panel before her.
Inside, Katie and the shirtwaist-maker, just ready for bed, heard the faint sound without and, opening the door, caught the almost fainting figure in their arms. The dark cloak dropped open, disclosing the crimson kimona beneath, and this, awakening Violet's one dominating passion—the terror of detection and consequent recapture—roused the fugitive a little. She staggered away from the assisting hands, wrapped the cloak tightly around her, and leaned, panting, against the wall.
"Miss—Miss Flanagan?" she gasped.
Katie nodded her black head.
"That's me," she said.
"I'm—I'm the—I'm Violet."
The Irish girl comprehended quickly. With Irish tact she refused, just then, to hear more; with Irish volubility she burst into exclamations of pity, and with ready Irish sympathy she took Violet in her strong arms.
"Put her on my cot," said Carrie, and they led her there.
They took away her cloak, for she was now too weak to protest, and, though they did pause in awe before the crimson kimona, they hurried to make their guest comfortable. The Lithuanian Jewess moved silently and swiftly about with that calm competence which characterizes her people, and Katie, fanning the white face and chafing the thin hands, continued to croon condolences.
"There now!" she at last smiled, as Violet's blue eyes opened. "Sure you're yourself again entirely. Don't say a word, not one word, an' just tell us whatever 'tis you might be wantin'."
"Whiskey," gasped Violet.
The girls looked at each other.
"That's all right," said the Jewess, quietly; "I can spare it"—and she handed Katie some small change.
The Irish girl flung a shawl over her head, and ran down the stairs. She went into the side door of the nearest saloon, entered a narrow compartment, passed the money through a hole in a partition, and was given a small flask partly filled. Within five minutes she had returned, and Violet, drinking the contents of the bottle at a single draught, began to revive.
"Are you hungry, darlin'?" asked Katie.
Violet shook her russet head.
"No," she answered, "I couldn't eat, thanks. I'm only just played out."
"Poor dear, you look it. But you're all right now, an' you can rest as long as you like. Don't you bother. Don't you worry. Don't you be afraid. You got away without any trouble, did you?"
"Yes," said Violet, and because she was still unable to frame her lips to adequate thanks, she gave them as much of the story of her escape as she could give without mention of the name of her rescuer, who had warned her that he must not be publicly known to figure in the case.
"A man?" echoed the cynical Katie. "An' he didn't ask nothin' in return?"
"No."
"He must be worth knowin', that man."
"He only wants me to go somewhere an' swear to all Rose done to me."
"Oh!"—Katie's tone showed that she could now account for the gentleman's generosity.—"Well, don't you do it."
But Violet could not follow her.
"Why not?" she asked.
"I don't know just why; but don't you do it."
"I promised," said Violet.
"Och, listen to the poor dear!" Katie appealed to her fellow-lodger. "I wonder is it long she thinks he'd be keepin' his word to her."
Her own word freshened the ever-abiding terror in the runaway's heart, but Violet said no more about it.
"Would you have much to swear to?" asked Carrie, seated on the foot of the cot.
"What do you mean?" Violet parried.
"She means, Violet——" began Katie.
The fugitive, in her new surroundings, shrank from the name.
"Don't! Don't call me that!" she said.
"Sure an' ain't it the name you gave me yourself?"
"I know, but I don't want to hear it ever again. Call me Mary; call me Mary——"
And there, face to face with a new danger, Violet came to a stop. Her captivity had taught her much of bestiality, but it had taught her besides only that some unknown, tremendous power hated her; that she was debased and must never, at whatever cost of further suffering to herself, permit her degradation to attach to her family; that she must escape, but that she must also wholly divorce herself from all that life had meant her to be. She had no thought of the future; she had only a realization of what had been and what was.
"Mary what?" asked Carrie.
"Mary Morton," lied Violet. Perhaps she had heard the name before; perhaps the easy alliteration brought it first to her mind. At all events, she reflected, one name was as good as another, so long as it was not her own.
"Would you have much to swear to?" Carrie was continuing. "Is it as bad as they say—there?"
Violet looked at the round, serious face before her.
"I don't know what they say," she replied; "but it's worse than anybody can say. There's a lot of it you can't say, because there's a lot of it there ain't no words ever been made up for. Just you pray God you won't ever have to find out how bad it is."
They looked at her and saw on her the marks of which she was not yet aware.
Katie bent over and swiftly kissed the fevered forehead under its tumbled russet hair.
"You poor woman," she said with unintended implication, "an' how many years did you have to stand it?"
"It wasn't years; it was—it was only weeks."
"What? An' they could get a grown woman like you?"
Violet tried to smile.
"How old do you think I am?" she asked.
Katie made what she considered a charitable reply.
"Twenty-five?"
"I'm not seventeen."
Katie began to busy herself about the room, and Carrie turned her head.
"Ah, well," said Katie, "you're tired out, an' it's 'most mornin'. We must all go to sleep now."
"I only put on long dresses in April," said Violet.
But Katie seemed not to hear her. She hurried the arrangements for the night.
"Sleep as long as you like in the morning," said Carrie; "and if you can wear any of our things, wear 'em. We have to get up early, but don't mind us."
The latter injunction was unnecessary. Though Violet had for some time been excited by her escape, that excitement had already given place to utter exhaustion. The lamp had scarcely been extinguished before, with throbbing head, she passed into a sleep that was almost coma, and the lamp that was burning when she opened her aching eyes was the lamp of midmorning.
She was alone and afraid to be alone. Her head seemed splitting. She saw the milk and rolls that Katie had set out for her on the oilcloth-covered table, but her stomach revolted at the thought of food, and her poisoned nerves cried out for alcohol. She got up and managed to pull on some of the clothes belonging to her two hostesses.
From her first glance at the mirror, she drew back in bewilderment. During all her imprisonment she had been used, through her gradual change, to compare her morning appearance with that of her fellow slaves; but now there was fresh in her mind the standard, not of those pale and worn, though often fat and hardened, convicts, but of the pair of healthy girls that had, the night before, sheltered her; and from that standard her very image in the glass seemed to withdraw in horror. Lacking rouge, her cheeks, once so pink and firm, were pasty and pendant; her lips hung loose, her blue eyes were dull and blurred; even her hair appeared colorless and brittle. Little lines had formed at the corners of her eyes; her skin seemed rough and cracked, and other lines were already faintly showing from her nostrils to the corners of her mouth.
She sat down on the cot, sick and shivering. When she noticed a small pile of bedding in the corner behind the gas-stove, she shook at the memory of another such pile on another terrible morning, and by the time she had realized that one of her friends must have slept there in order to provide an extra couch, she was too wracked by suffering, physical and mental, to feel, at once, any great gratitude. The fever throbbed in her wrists, beat in her heart, hammered in her brain. She did not dare go to the street for whiskey or medicine. At every sound on the stairs she started up in the assurance that her keepers had come to recover her, and when, in the early afternoon, a loud knocking sounded on the door, she fell, in unresponding silence, before Katie's flaring lithograph of Our Lady of the Rosary.
"Hello in there!" called a not overcautious voice. "I want to talk to Miss Violet!"
Violet raised her clasped hands to the printed face before her.
"Don't let them take me!" she whispered in a prayer to that visible sign of a power she had never before addressed. "Don't let them take me!"
"Open up, can't you?" the voice insisted. "I know there's somebody inside, an', honest, I'm not going to hurt you!"
Violet's hands fell. The voice, she realized, was at least unfamiliar.
"Come on," it wheedled. "I'm all right; I'm from Mr. Dyker."
"What do you want?" she inquired.
"He said Miss Violet would know," came the answer. "He said I would be expected—that it'd be all right if I just told you I came from him."
Violet had not forgotten Katie's warning, but she was unable wholly to doubt the one man that had befriended her. She opened the door.
The pink-and-white young clerk that entered was much embarrassed, and his hostess, in her fever, did not ease him. Nevertheless, after many hesitations on his own part, and more repetitions and explanations made necessary by Violet, he at last convinced her that he did indeed come from Wesley Dyker, and that there was waiting around the corner the cab that would convey her to an office where she could begin the redemption of her pledge.
Almost in a dream, and too ill now much to care what happened to her, she followed the messenger. Dazedly she greeted Dyker in the cab; confusedly she left that conveyance for an office where she answered interminable questions put to her by another young man who, she was told, was an Assistant District Attorney; vaguely she heard Dyker assure this official, as she affixed a signature to an offered paper, that Wesley would himself guarantee her appearance whenever it was required, and when she was at last wheeled back and had climbed the stairs and, alone, fallen again upon Carrie's cot, the only one of recent facts concerning which she was at all certain was that she had said she was a native of Pittsburgh and that her name was Mary Morton.
Katie and Carrie, returning together, found her flushed and babbling nonsense. When they approached her, she did not recognize them, and then, for an hour, they could get from her only the monotonous repetition:
"Don't let them get me! Don't tell them my name!"
It was eight o'clock before the patient, quieted by sympathy and stimulated by whiskey, could be taken to the nearest drugstore, and there, as soon as the experienced druggist set eyes on her, he refused to prescribe.
He beckoned Katie to a corner.
"That girl's got to go to a hospital," he said; "and if I was you, I wouldn't lose much time in getting her there."
Katie the competent lost none. After another drink to stifle possible protest, Violet was taken upon a car to Sixteenth Street, and was then walked quickly westward. During all the way she did not speak, and, when she reached the hospital's fortunately empty receiving-ward, she was nearly unconscious.
A white-capped nurse received the little party, the young doctor, in shirt-sleeves and duck trousers, hovering in the background among the glass shelves agleam with instruments of polished steel.
"What's the trouble?" asked the nurse.
"It's that that we've come to find out of you," answered Katie.
The nurse nodded to the doctor.
He came forward and made a quick examination.
"Bring this woman inside and put her on the table," he ordered. "And you girls, stop where you are."
Her head thrown back, her dry mouth wide, and her russet hair falling, the unresisting Violet was carried behind a door that shut smartly after her.
Too scared to speak, Katie and her companion stood outside. Five minutes passed. Then ten. After a quarter of an hour, the door reopened.
"What's this patient's name?" he asked.
"Mary Morton," said Carrie.
"Where does she live?"
Katie gave her own address, and the doctor, a pad of printed forms in hand, noted both the answers.
That done, he paused and bit his pencil.
"Married?" he asked quickly.
"Who?" parried Katie. "Me?"
"No; the patient."
"Well, now," began Katie, "I can't see as that's——"
But the calm voice of Carrie interrupted.
"She is married," she said.
The doctor pursed incredulous lips.
"Where's her husband?" he demanded.
Katie, who had caught the need of the moment, jumped into the breach.
"Where a lot of them are," she responded, "an' where as many more might as well be, for all the use they are to their poor wives."
"Where's that?"
"Faith, it's you, sir, ought to know: you're the man."
"Dead?"
"Run away."
"Not much later than yesterday, did he? Well, I must find her nearest relative or friend. Are you either?"
Katie's face lengthened.
"Och, doctor," she said, "you don't mean to—but it can't be that there's goin' to be a baby!"
The young interne grinned. Then, serious again, he answered:
"No, there is not. I only wish it was so simple. Where are her folks?"
"She's none in the world, an' no money. The hard truth is, doctor, that it's a charity-patient she'll have to be."
"That's all right; but are you her nearest friends?"
"Yes, doctor."
"That'll do, I guess. She's a nervous wreck—among other things. We've first of all got to get her round from that condition, and then I'll have to secure either her own or your permission, as her nearest friends, to do something more."
"More?" repeated Katie. "Ain't it bad enough as it is? What more do you mean to do to the poor—girl?"
"I don't mean to do anything myself, but this is a common enough kind of case around here to make me certain what the resident surgeon will do: he'll operate."
Hermann Hoffmann, passing one evening to the little clothes-press behind the bar in Ludwig Schleger's saloon, and putting on the canvas coat that was his badge of office, heard the voice of the proprietor calling his name, and turned to see that stout German-American beckoning him to enter the back-room where, a month before, O'Malley had held with Wesley Dyker that conference which had proved so disastrous to Rose Légère.
He walked through the open door, whistling his Teutonic melody. He had not that fear of his employer which most employees have of the man for whom they work. Schleger had proved himself lenient and good-natured, and Hermann, whose cheerful round face and easy smile did not interfere with the use of a knotted arm and a mighty fist, was quite aware that there was no complaint justly to be made against the manner in which he performed his alloted tasks.
"Hoffmann," said Schleger, smiling, "you're all right."
"Sure," grinned Hermann.
"Yes," pursued the proprietor, "I been thinkin' about you that you sure have made good."
"I'm glad you vas sadisfied, Schleger."
"I am satisfied; but I think you need a little more time off now an' then. I haven't got nothin' to do this evenin'. I'll take your place."
Hermann's eyes brightened with unaffected pleasure. It had not always been pleasant to work in the nights when Katie was all day busy in the shop.
"Thanks," he said.
"Yes," nodded Schleger, benignantly; "it will be like old times for me. You take a night off."
"Shall I start out righd avay?"
"Certainly.—Of course you understand I'll want you around here the day of the primaries."
Hermann nodded.
"And Hermann, there's somethin' else I've been meanin' to talk to you about, and kep' forgettin' till O'Malley reminded me of it again this afternoon."
Hoffmann, pulling off his white jacket, stopped with arms extended.
"O'Malley?" he said in a strained voice. "Vat's dot man got to do vith me?"
"Well, you know he don't miss no tricks nowheres, an' some time back I was tellin' him what a good man you was, an' he said we ought to get you a little more active for him. A fellow behind a bar can do a whole lot that way, you know,—an' make a good thing of it."
"I know," replied Hermann, ripping off the coat, "but I ain't no politician."
"Nobody said you was, but all the fellows help a little."
"Sure; only I don't."
"Why not? We want to do well for the slate this time. Wesley Dyker's on it; you know him; he's all right."
"I ain't no politician, Schleger."
This stolid attitude plainly began to puzzle the proprietor.
"Don't be a fool, Hoffmann," he said. "The boys all have their eye on you, an' O'Malley don't forget any of his friends."
"Schleger, I got my own friends, und I make my own friends. I don't vant nussing I don't earn from nobody."
"But that sort of thing won't look right," argued Schleger. "You see, you're registered from here—
"No I ain't, Schleger; I'm registered from my own blace."
"Well, I didn't know that; you didn't tell me, an' so I registered you from here."
Hoffmann's pink cheeks became red. He folded his coat neatly over his arm.
"Vatch here, Schleger," he began. "I ain't no politician. I don't care——"
But he bit his lip and mastered himself to silence.
The proprietor saw this and appreciated the self-control that it manifested. There had been a time when he had felt as Hermann felt now, and so he was not disposed to use harsh argument. He came close to Hoffmann and, still smiling, dropped his voice to a whisper.
"That's all right," he said, soothingly. "I guess I know how you look at it. Don't say that I said so, but we'll let the matter drop if you only lay low a little and keep quiet. You know the brewery's backin' me in this saloon, an' you know, with the brewery pushin' me all the time for its money, I couldn't run the place a month if I didn't keep the side-door open Sundays. Well, then, how could I keep the place workin' Sundays if it wasn't for O'Malley? Just try not to be openly again' him, that's all."
Hermann did not commit himself, but his tone had softened when, in reply, he asked:
"Und should I take to-night off?"
"Certainly you should. Go along now, an' ferget it."
He went, but as he walked down the avenue, "Die Wacht Am Rhein" issued from his lips to the time of a funeral-march.
His sole consolation lay in the fact that, in the recent glimpses he had secured of Katie, that young lady had begun to evince signs of relenting from her former attitude of celibacy. He knew that she had gradually ceased to descant upon the impossibility of his supporting a wife, and he thought that she was entertaining hopes of a promotion in the shop to a position where her own earnings, added to his, would make a comfortable living-wage for two.
What he did not know—and this for the excellent reason that Katie would not tell it to him—was that, whatever their prospects for the future, both Katie and her roommate were still engaged in that battle with poverty and temptation which had lessened scarcely one whit since its beginning. For the former the fortunes of war were less than ever favorable, and for the latter the most that was expected was the maintenance of her stand in the face of every armed reason to surrender or retreat.
The strike dragged along its wearied length. Popular sympathy, which had aided the shirtwaist-makers in their former rebellion, had lost its interest in the cause, and, as the newspapers said less, the employers became more demonstrative. Hired thugs guarded the factories and beat whatever young women dared, by the simplest words, to plead, in public, with the scab laborers. When these battles occurred the police, knowing well the interests of their masters, arrested the mere girls for assault and battery upon the thugs, forcing them to remain, if detained, on benches with women old in immorality and crime; and the magistrates before whom these dangerous female criminals were hailed, not forgetting which party to the suit could vote at the coming election, would often send the offenders to the Reformatory or the Island, where they could no longer interfere, or would impose fines calculated still more to deplete a strike-fund already pitiably shrunken. Some of the unionists had already laid down their arms and returned to the factories; more had gone over to another enemy and disappeared beneath the dark current of the underworld. The rest—and Carrie was among the number—must soon come face to face with starvation.
Katie's difficulties, though as yet less physical, were scarcely less poignant. She found that she was rarely left long in one portion of the Lennox shop. From the chief woman's-hosiery department, she was shifted, without warning, to the handkerchief counter, and thence, again with no explanation, she was sent to help in the main aisle at a table where there was a special sale of stockings at reduced prices.
At first these frequent shiftings appeared to result from no apparent cause. She was fined as much as the other clerks, but no more than they, and she could in no wise account for the changes. But at last she noticed that after a shift for the worse the sacrosanct Mr. Porter would usually happen by and open a conversation, and then she remembered that, before such a shift, this same side-whiskered gentleman had generally made overtures, and that those overtures had not been well received. The theory arising from these observations she resolved to confirm. After the next move she made deliberate eyes at the man she detested, and she was next day promoted, with a twenty-five cent increase of pay per week, to the silk-stocking counter. From that day she saw her warfare developing into a dangerous game of hide-and-seek in which Mr. Porter was "It," and from that day dated her increasing tendency to reconsider the determination not to marry Hermann Hoffmann.
For Violet, meanwhile, the young interne's prophesy had been fulfilled. Four days after her admission to the hospital there had been performed upon her that operation which had been made necessary by her servitude, but to which, had she been consulted, her fears would never have allowed her to consent. For three weeks she lay in her narrow bed among other sufferers, and, when at last the fiction of discharging her as "cured" had been accomplished, and the five-cent carfare donated by the hospital to charity-patients had been given, she had been met by Katie and Carrie, and had tottered between them to their room.
During another week she had now rested there. Her eyes were still sunken, dull, dark-rimmed; her cheeks white and transparently thin. The knuckles of her fingers seemed to have grown larger, and her hands were nearly transparent. But her lips, though bloodless, had gained a new firmness. Clearly or deeply she could never think, without help from a stronger and better mind; yet she had made what use she might of her long leisure and had resolved, more or less definitely, upon what she would do with her life.
"I went out an' walked a block by myself yesterday," she confessed to her two friends early on the evening of Hermann's political discussion with his employer; "an' I didn't get any tired an' wasn't hardly any scared. Now I want you to take me for a longer walk to-night an' then by to-morrow I'll be all right."
They protested that she must not spur her convalescence, but she was determined. It was, she knew, impossible for them much longer to support her, and the last of her one ten-dollar bill had long ago been spent.
"I'll tell you what we might do," Carrie at last suggested. "There's some sort of a concert over at the settlement to-night. We might go to that. I used to know some of the ladies there, and there's always a chance that they can get you a job."
While she was speaking Hermann's whistle, more cheerful now than when he had left the saloon, sounded on the stairs, and Katie, surprised and glad, opened the door to his knock.
"Late to your work again," she said, with a smile that belied her. "How'll you ever be holdin' that job, anyhow?"
The newcomer's only answer was a courageous and unrebuked kiss. He turned to Carrie.
"Vat you sink of such a vay of meetin' me?" he appealed. "My boss gives me a nighd off, und I haf seen my girl not fur ten days und den——"
He paused as his unrecognizing eye fell upon Violet.
"Egscuse me," he began. "I didn't see——"
"Of course you didn't see it was your old friend Violet that was an' Miss Morton that is," interrupted Katie, with a quick desire to shield her charge. "You're gettin' that near-sighted I wonder how you can tell a whiskey-glass from a beer-stein."
Hermann hurried forward in rosy embarrassment and saved Violet from rising. He took her frail hand in his big paw and poured out a tumbling stream of polite lies upon the matter of her health.
"I guess it ain't quite as good as you say," replied Violet; "but it soon will be. Have you—I didn't get no news while I was sick. Have you heard anything about—things?"
"You knew Rose's place was pinched?"
"Yes, Katie told me that."
"Well, dey had some trouble gettin' pail fur her. Everybody vas afraid fur to do it vith O'Malley after her. Still, dey vorked it somevays und nobody thought but she'd jump it und run avay; but she didn't. She tried, but O'Malley had central office men keepin' eyes on her, und she can't leaf town."
Katie and Carrie were busying themselves in the preparation of the supper, and the German seated himself beside the invalid.
"Mr. Hoffmann," she said, "I've been tryin' to think of lots of things while I've been sick, an' I'd like to know how it is that women like Miss Rose are allowed?"
He looked at her, hesitating, but her eyes were frankly curious.
"Dot's von long story," he answered in his slow tones, "un' dem as can tell it best is most all in deir houses or in deir graves, or else, in de streets."
"Then I guess I was lucky to get away."
"If you don't mind me sayin' it—yes, miss."
"But don't the girls get free when the houses are pinched?"
"No," said Hermann, as gently as he could; "dey don't get free. Ofer to de Night Court a voman has taken five s'ousand to a blace she has, und how many sink you didn't go back to de vork again? Less'n von hundret und fifty."
"I don't see how they could," said Violet.
Hermann could not see how they could do anything else, but he only shrugged his broad shoulders.
"They don't last long anyvays," he remarked.
"You mean they die soon?"
"Effery five year all de girls is new: it's as sure as life insurance."
The girl shuddered, but mastered herself.
"Don't mind that," she reassured him. "I want to know—honest. Katie and Carrie won't be bothered——"
"We can't hear a word you're sayin', darlin'," laughed Katie.
"An', honest," Violet concluded. "There's some things I think I've got to learn so's I can see it—see itall."
She appealed, it happened, to an authority. Hermann supplemented his Marx with facts and statistics of a later date, especially upon the point at issue, and he was only too glad to find in Violet the listener that he could never discover in Katie.
"You're righd," he said; "und the only pity is dot more people don't try to more about it learn. If dey did, maybe ve'd all open our eyes some."
And he proceeded to open Violet's eyes not a little. He told her of the hundreds of thousands of girls that are annually caught in the great net; of how five thousand new ones are every year needed to maintain Chicago's standing supply of twenty-five thousand; of how Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, San Francisco—all the cities and the towns—are served proportionately, and of how, above all, from the crowded East Side of New York, there are dragged each week hundreds of children and young women no one of whom, if sold outright, brings as much as a capable horse.
"Some ve bring in," he said, "und some ve send out. Ve take from Italy, und ve send to Sous America. From all ofer the vorld ve take, und to all ofer the vorld ve send."
"You don't always blame the girls?"
"Plame dem? A girl as lived by us, she did tucking in a undervear factory. She has coffee und a roll fur preakfast, tea und a roll fur lunch, von biece of bacon und von egg fur supper effery nighd. Ten hours a day in a bad smelling room, crowded vis ozzer girls, she runs dot machine. Part de year she has no vork, because always de factory does not run, but vhen de years ends, dot machine, makin' four dousand stitches a minute, she has tucked dree miles of undervear und got paid dree hundred dollars. Do I plame such a girl if she easy comes to belief a paid veasel as makes lofe to her und says he marries her und gets her avay from a factory?"
"All of the girls don't come from such hard jobs though."
"So? Look now!"
He took from an inside pocket a fistful of soiled envelopes and shuffled them until he found one on which he had transcribed some figures.
"Yesderday afternoon to dis Astor Library I found a report vat vas made by people sent out by de State of Massachusetts. It got a kind of census from four dousand vomen in sixty different cities, all ofer. Before dey vent bad, five hundret vas garment-vorkers, und eight hundret vas rope-makers, milliners, laundry people, paper-box, cigar und cigarette makers, candy-box packers, or vorked in textile mills or shoe factories. All dem, see, vorked in de poor paid trades, und a hundret und sixteen come from department-stores, und dot's as bad as Katie'll tell you. Vorse yet de job of house-servant—sixty per cent. vas dot. Und all de rest—all de ozzer sixty-two per cent.—vere girls who hadn't had not jobs, und dey had to live und couldn't no ozzer vay earn a livin'!"
"Then you think," asked Violet, "they wouldn't go wrong if they could get decent work at decent wages?"
Hermann looked at her quickly.
"Vould you?" he asked.
She shivered and shook her head and Hermann, seeing that the heat of his zeal had led him into a personal appeal that all his normally slow instincts prompted him to avoid, hurried back to the safe ground of generalities.
"Nobody vat knows," he said, "could belief it. Nobody vat knows could belief girls'd go into such a life, or once dey got into it stay dere, because dey vanted to. Vell, vat den? Ve must find out vhy is it dey gets in und vhy dey stay. It is because all de whole luckier vorld lets dem be kep' fast, und, first und foremost, because all de whole luckier vorld lets dose factories dey come from be bad blaces, und couldn't gif dose ozzer sixty-two-per-cent girls no ozzer vay to earn a livin' yet."
Violet thought again, as she still so often thought, of Max.
"An' what about the men that start them?" she inquired.
Hermann brought his heavy fist down upon his knee.
"Dem too!" he said. "Dem is de vorst mens in de vorld. If I can hate any man, dey is him. It makes my red blood to steam und my skin to get all brickly to see dem or sink of dem. But I know dot dey, too, are results of conditions, und dey sink dot dey are doing kindness to de girls by not letting dem go to chail or starve. De vorst mens in de vorld—next to politicians as lets dem live und takes most dot dey earn! Und de politicians demselves are only vat dot big system as makes us all vork for less as ve earn, und makes us all pay more as ve can—only vat de big system makes dem!"
Violet understood but partially; yet she had seen enough to know that the slavery must have its political side, and it was concerning this that she now asked.
That Hermann made wholly clear. He told her the story of the growth of political parties, the development of political machines, the necessary preying of these machines, in every city, first upon gambling and then, as that passed, upon prostitution, and of how this meant both money and votes.
As he talked, she learned how this brought into being the "cadets"—the followers of the low heelers—who scoured their own and other towns, hanging about the doors of factories, tenements, shops—wherever the life was so hard as to drive those who lived it to despair—themselves impelled by economic conditions, by the choice between hard work and small pay on the one hand and base work and better pay on the other, and themselves forced into the "gangs" of childish marauders while at the primary schools, and so trained upward, step by step, to the "gang" of the politician. She learned how, after the last outcry, a popular leader had struck a cadet, in the presence of the press-agents, and then, when this one blow was taken as the end of the infamous relation, had quietly joined with his fellows in strengthening that relation as it never could have been strengthened with the attention of the public upon it. And she learned how the result had been a whole criminal confederacy, with its capital in the poorer quarters, bound together politically and financially, with its officers, its agents, and its regularly retained lawyers, at once to defend and to attack.
Out of his own observation, Hermann told her of the saloons that were in reality the clubs of these procurers. He sketched the methods of procuring false bail-bonds, of influencing magistrates, juries, and even judges, and of turning upon the few conscientious policemen with suits charging oppression and false arrest.
"O'Malley und dese ozzer mens like him ofer here make sometimes all of sixty dousand a year," he declared, "und de people lofe dem because dese O'Malleys take deir daughters durin' twelve mont's und gif dem coal fur four."
"An' no one person is to blame?" asked Violet in amazement.
"I vish dere vas, but dere ain't."
"So there ain't no way out of it?"
"Von vay—und only von. For de single time badness makes poverty, ninety-nine times poverty it makes badness. Do avay vith poverty. Reorganize de whole of de industrial system; gif effery man und voman a chance to vork; gif effery man und voman effery penny dey earns. So only you do avay vith poverty, so only you do avay vith unhappy und discontented homes und unhappy und discontented people, und so only you do avay vith badness."
He was in the midst of his subject when Katie served the scanty supper, and he would have had neither time nor inclination for the mere eating had not his sweetheart sternly ordered him to be silent. But, as soon as the meal was over and the few dishes washed, he continued his talk to Violet as, with the two girls ahead of her, she leaned heavily on his arm all the way to Rivington Street.
The concert was, it must be confessed, interesting chiefly to the women that had promoted it, the young people that took part in it, and the relatives of the performers, who succeeded or failed vicariously. Stiffly seated in the cleared gymnasium, a little ashamed and wholly ill at ease, the audience, drawn from the neighborhood and from among the friends of the settlement-workers, bore it, however, with commendable fortitude. They heard an amateur orchestra play "La Paloma" out of time; they heard Eva Aaronsohn read an essay on "A Day in Central Park"; they heard a promising soprano solo spoiled by fright, and a promising baritone not yet escaped from the loosening leash of boyhood. Morris Binderwitz delivered a hesitating oration upon Abraham Lincoln, as culled from his former debate regarding the great emancipator, and Luigi Malatesta, having consulted the same original sources, repeated by rote a ten-minute tribute to the military genius of George Washington. There was a duet, a piano solo—a simplified version of "O Du Mein Holder Abendstern." Everything was conscientiously applauded, nearly everything was encored and then, amid a scraping of chairs and more strains from the amateur orchestra, the ordeal came to an end.
As the crowd slowly dispersed, Carrie made her way to the side of one of the women-workers with whom she had some slight acquaintance and, after the formal catechism upon "how she was doing," made her plea for Violet. She told, of course, nothing of the girl's story, nor was anything asked. It was enough that she should say that her friend was fresh from the hospital, was in need of a position, and, though still weak, was able to do light housework.
The woman to whom this appeal was made called Marian Lennox to her side and, with a brief explanation of what the girl had just said, introduced Carrie.
"Didn't you tell me," she asked, "that you'd heard to-day of somebody that needed an extra servant?"
Marian had heard of such an opportunity. The word had not come at first hand, and the housewife was personally unknown to her. She was sure, however, that the place was entirely estimable, and she at once gladly gave the address, to which her co-laborer added, upon strength of Carrie's assurances, a recommendation.
Violet was brought over and presented, and when Marian saw the girl's wan cheeks and dull eyes, and read there the plain tokens of suffering, her own fine face shone with sympathy.
She drew Violet aside.
"Have you ever done housework before?" she asked.
"Only at home, ma'am," said Violet.
"Well, you'll like it, I'm sure. I can't see why all you girls are so foolish as to go into factories. Housework is so much more healthy and safe, and it's just what women are made for. It pays so well, too. Even if you can't cook, you can scrub and clean and help and get three dollars or more a week for it, and board, too."
"I think I'll like it," Violet assented, knowing in her heart that she would like any work that gave her a living and protection.
"Then be sure to come to see me after you're settled," said Marian.
She was now wholly immersed in the work of the settlement; but, though she had undertaken no distracting outside investigation, her indoor duties had thus far brought her into touch chiefly with children of the neighborhood, and from them, wise beyond their years as they were, she had learned only enough to feel that she had not yet come into touch with the great problems that her young heart was so eager to answer. In this first chance to give what she conceived to be practical help, it seemed to her that she was at last getting near to the heart of what she sought.
How near she had come to the heart of another problem, and how that problem was involved in the problem of her own life, she little guessed as she smiled into Violet's grateful face and, exacting another promise that the girl should report to her in any difficulty, bade her good-night.
The house to which, next morning, Violet, still weak and still afraid of her enemies, made, with many timid inquiries, her slow way was in West Ninth Street, near Sixth Avenue. It was a four-story, grimy, brick house, with rows of prying windows through which no passer's eye could pierce, a dilapidated little yard in front of it, and a bell-handle that, when pulled, threatened to come off in Violet's fist.
The woman that answered this uncertain summons much resembled the building she inhabited. She was tall, and she had a sharp face just the color of the house-walls. The spectacles high on her beaked nose gleamed like the windows and, like the windows, conveyed the impression that they saw a great deal without permitting any outsider to look behind them. Her once formidably austere black dress was rusty, and her hands were so lean that Violet felt sure they must stretch when one shook them.
"What do you want?" asked this woman in a voice that cut like a meat-ax.
"Are you Mrs. Turner?"
"Yes. What do you want?"
"I heard you needed a girl."
"Where'd you hear it?"
"At the college-settlement in Rivington Street."
The woman's mouth tightened.
"Don't see how anyone there come to know aught o' me," she said. "Got a reference?"
Violet, beginning to tremble lest this chance should slip away from her, fumbled after the note that had been written for her, and finally found it and handed it over.
Mrs. Turner's gleaming glasses read it twice, plainly suspecting forgery. Then she calmly placed it in her skirt pocket.
"Where's your home?" she next demanded.
"In Pittsburgh."
"Hum. How much do you expect?"
"Sixteen dollars," quavered Violet, who had received instructions from Katie.
Mrs. Turner shook her head vigorously.
"Won't do," she said. "Can't pay it. Twelve's my best, and when I have a cook—I'm out of one just now—all you have to do for it is to scrub and sweep and clean the house, wash dishes, and wait on table. How long did you stay in your last place?"
Mrs. Turner gave another skeptical "Hum" as Violet answered:
"Two years."
"Will you take it at twelve dollars, or will you not?" asked the woman, sharply.
Violet had been told to descend gradually and not to accept a cent under fourteen dollars a month; but she was no haggler.
"I'll take it," she said.
"And good pay, too, considerin'," commented Mrs. Turner. "I dunno. It someways don't look reg'lar. Got your trunk over to the settlement?"
Violet explained that she had no trunk; that she had just come from the hospital and had as yet had no opportunity to replenish what had been a sadly depleted wardrobe.
"Hum!" said Mrs. Turner.
In the penetrating glare of the impenetrable spectacles she studied the white face before her.
"You wait a minute," she concluded. "Not inside. Out here on the stoop."
She came outside herself and closed and locked the door.
"I'll be back soon," she said, and Violet dumbly watched her lank, hatless form stride to Sixth Avenue and turn the corner.
True to her word, Mrs. Turner was not long gone.
"I guess it's all right," she announced, as she reopened the door to the house. "I 'phoned that woman to the settlement. She was out, but a friend answered and said the reference isgenuwine. She described you so's I'd be sure. Looks queer of me, p'r'aps, but a person can't be too careful in this town."
The gleaming glasses seeming to search her soul for a reply, Violet said that she supposed a great deal of care was necessary.
"Try to get along without it," responded Mrs. Turner, "and you'll mighty soon find out."
That ended preliminaries, and Violet, agreeing to send for her few belongings, began work without further formality.
She discovered that Mrs. Turner was a New Englander, who conducted a boarding-house in a manner that sensibly stirred the servants' sympathies in favor of the patrons. Just now the season had greatly decreased these, but the absence of the cook—it was a chronic absence—left plenty to be done.
Violet had to rise with the sun and attend to the kitchen fire. She had to help the mistress in the preparation of every meal, and of the serving of every meal and the washing of all dishes she was left in solitary authority. She made all the beds, she emptied all the slops, she swept the floors, beat the rugs, cleaned the windows, polished the stove, and scrubbed the steps. Even in the scant hours free of actual work, she must still be within call of the door-bell and Mrs. Turner's voice: the service was continuous from dawn until ten o'clock at night.
It would have been, upon a frailer nature, a terrible tax, but, fresh though she was from the hospital, Violet, her sturdy stock standing her in excellent stead, managed so to stagger through it that her wracked nerves seemed actually to benefit by her physical exhaustion. Her lot had all the horrors of the average disregarded under-servant and yet, when she crept to her stifling attic room at night—a room ventilated by only a dwarfed skylight—she slept soundly and well.
The situation was one that could not, however, long continue. Mrs. Turner was a pious woman and as such knew that there must be what she described as "somethin' sneakin'" about any maid that could bear her ill-temper. Long experience of one servant after another leaving the house in anger, had not only innured the good lady to such losses, but had ended by really creating a sort of appetite for the kind of condolence that she secured from her neighbors when without servile aid. It was therefore with almost a desire for the worst that she endeavored to delve into Violet's past.
This course of innuendo, suggestion, and cross-questioning, pursued by day and night, through work and rest, in strength and weariness, ended one afternoon when another boarder had departed, taking three towels with him, as is the custom of departing boarders, and when, as a matter of fact, Mrs. Turner secretly felt that she could no longer afford a maid.
"Where," she asked, meeting Violet on the stairs, "is them towels as was in Mr. Urner's room?"
"I don't know," said Violet.
"Well, they was there this morning, before lunch—I seen 'em myself—and now they hain't."
Violet recalled that Mr. Urner had been to his room in the meantime and had then left forever.
"Hum," said Mrs. Turner; "but you see the soap's gone too."
For some reason ungiven, the landlady plainly thought that the theft of the soap—perhaps because of Mr. Urner's personal habits—was proof positive that Mr. Urner could not be the thief, and that Violet must be. The girl was not in love with her work, but she was immensely comforted by the shelter it gave her, and she now throbbed with terror at the thought of its loss.
"I didn't take it, Mrs. Turner," she pleaded, "honest, I didn't."
"I didn't justsayyou did," replied the landlady; "but you can't blame me if I think things, the way you come here.—Where'd you say your home was?"
The question was hurled so suddenly, and was accompanied by such an uncommonly strong glare from the penetrating spectacles, that Violet's slow brain tottered. For the life of her, she could not think of the city that she had formerly mentioned.
"Well"—Mrs. Turner's foot beat sharply on the floor—"that ain't a hard question, is it? Where'd you say you come from?"
In desperation, the girl named the first city that her lips recalled.
"Philadelphia," she murmured, and realized at once that this was wrong and that her tormentor knew it.
"You said Pittsburgh last week, miss," clicked Mrs. Turner. She raised a knotty finger. "Now I ain't sayin' you took that soap nor yet them towels—mind you that—but I am sayin' you lied. Me and liars ain't good company: you'd better go."
The tears came to Violet's eyes. They overflowed and she broke down. In three short sentences she had confessed enough for Mrs. Turner to guess the entire truth, and had cast herself upon the woman's mercy.
But Mrs. Alberta Turner's straight bosom was no pillow for the unfortunate. Rugged as it was, it was no rock of safety. She drew her black figure to its greatest height; she called upon all her religious experience for backing, and upon all her study of the Bible for phraseology, and she launched at the girl a sermon the burden of which was that, as she would have been glad to receive into her care a woman that had erred and had repented, so she was in Christian duty bound to cast forth and utterly repudiate one that had shown herself far from repentance by seeking employment without first baring her inmost soul.
Violet, in a word, was put upon the street. She was told that she could have her few possessions when she called for them, but she was given neither the Rivington Street recommendation nor a new one.
She had received no leisure to see her friends of the tenement or the settlement during the days of her service, and she could not bring herself to seek them now that the black bird had again perched upon her forlorn banner. For half an hour she wandered aimlessly through the quieter streets; for another half-hour she endeavored to gather her courage. It was three o'clock in the afternoon before, desperate, she had inquired of a policeman for the whereabouts of an employment-agency, had found the grimy place, passed through the gloomy room with lines of toil-worn slatterns seated along its walls, and stated, in hesitant accents, her mission to the fat and frowzy woman in charge at a littered desk in the room beyond.
That woman—she had a steady, calculating eye—looked at her victim with a curious appraisement.
"What experience?" she asked.
"Very little," admitted Violet.
"Well are you——" The woman's voice dropped to the tone of discretion.—"Are you particular?"
"Why no," said Violet sadly, "I ain't particular, so as it's quiet."
The mistress smiled sagely.
"We can fix that all right," said she.
But she said it so knowingly that Violet found herself hurriedly adding:
"An' so long as it's decent."
That it was well she had supplemented her preceding speech, she at once perceived by the change that came over the woman's face.
"Oh!" said the woman in a tone at once uninterested. "Well, have you any reference?"
"No. You see——"
"Never mind why. If we get you a job, some of the girls have plenty, an' we can lend you one of theirs. Go out an' sit down an' we'll see what happens."
Violet returned to the dark front room and took a shrinking seat in a corner among the other applicants: two lines of pasty-faced, ungainly, and not over-cleanly women.
She picked up a tattered paper, dated the preceding day, and tried to read it. She saw that the primary election had been held and that Wesley Dyker had secured one of the nominations for magistrate; but she was tired and disgusted and pursued the print no farther, listening, instead, to the babble of gossip that was going on about her.
Had she ever heard that New York was remarkable for having a model employment-agency law, she would there have learned how lightly that law is enforced and how much the employment-agencies of Manhattan resemble those of every other large city. The foul beds in which these women slept three at a time, and for the use of which the agencies frequently charged a dollar and a half a night; the exorbitant two and three dollars exacted as a fee for every position secured; the encouragement given servants to make frequent changes and increase their fees; and the hard plight of maids dismissed from service, whose only friends, being servants themselves, had no shelter to offer—all these things were the ordinary part and parcel of their talk.
The women chattered of their old employers and bandied household secrets from loose lip to lip. Family skeletons were hauled forth for merrymaking, and testimony enough to crowd a divorce-court was given against not a few respectable citizens.
All complained of ill-housing and loneliness. Bad enough at any time, the advance of the race of flat-dwellers and the decrease of householders had intensified all the evils that domestic servants have to endure. The best servants' rooms in the ordinary houses were, it appeared, unheated; the worst were windowless closets in a kitchen or alcoves in a cellar. None of these workers had been given a room in which they could fittingly receive their friends, and, as many of them were forbidden to have callers in the kitchen, they lived what social life was possible on afternoons or evenings "off," on the streets, in the parks, or aboard those floating bar-rooms that are called excursion-boats. Violet remembered Fritzie; she remembered the heavy percentage of servants that, according to Hermann, ended in slavery—and she began to understand.