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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.06/12/01*END* +[Portions of this header are copyright (C) 2001 by Michael S. Hart +and may be reprinted only when these Etexts are free of all fees.] +[Project Gutenberg is a TradeMark and may not be used in any sales +of Project Gutenberg Etexts or other materials be they hardware or +software or any other related product without express permission.] + + + + + +This etext was produced by Pat Castevans <Patcat@ctnet.net> +and David Widger <widger@cecomet.net> + + + + + +NOTE: This author is a cousin of Sir Winston Churchill the Prime Minister +of England during World War II. + + + + + +THE DWELLING-PLACE OF LIGHT + +BY WINSTON CHURCHILL + +1917 + + + + +VOLUME 1. + +CHAPTER I + +In this modern industrial civilization of which we are sometimes wont to boast, +a certain glacier-like process may be observed. The bewildered, the helpless-- +and there are many--are torn from the parent rock, crushed, rolled smooth, and +left stranded in strange places. Thus was Edward Bumpus severed and rolled +from the ancestral ledge, from the firm granite of seemingly stable and lasting +things, into shifting shale; surrounded by fragments of cliffs from distant +lands he had never seen. Thus, at five and fifty, he found himself gate-keeper +of the leviathan Chippering Mill in the city of Hampton. + +That the polyglot, smoky settlement sprawling on both sides of an historic +river should be a part of his native New England seemed at times to be a +hideous dream; nor could he comprehend what had happened to him, and to the +world of order and standards and religious sanctions into which he had been +born. His had been a life of relinquishments. For a long time he had clung to +the institution he had been taught to believe was the rock of ages, the +Congregational Church, finally to abandon it; even that assuming a form +fantastic and unreal, as embodied in the edifice three blocks distant from +Fillmore Street which he had attended for a brief time, some ten years before, +after his arrival in Hampton. The building, indeed, was symbolic of a decadent +and bewildered Puritanism in its pathetic attempt to keep abreast with the age, +to compromise with anarchy, merely achieving a nondescript medley of rounded, +knob-like towers covered with mulberry-stained shingles. And the minister was +sensational and dramatic. He looked like an actor, he aroused in Edward Bumpus +an inherent prejudice that condemned the stage. Half a block from this +tabernacle stood a Roman Catholic Church, prosperous, brazen, serene, flaunting +an eternal permanence amidst the chaos which had succeeded permanence! + +There were, to be sure, other Protestant churches where Edward Bumpus and his +wife might have gone. One in particular, which he passed on his way to the +mill, with its terraced steeple and classic facade, preserved all the outward +semblance of the old Order that once had seemed so enduring and secure. He +hesitated to join the decorous and dwindling congregation,--the remains of a +social stratum from which he had been pried loose; and--more irony--this +street, called Warren, of arching elms and white-gabled houses, was now the +abiding place of those prosperous Irish who had moved thither from the +tenements and ruled the city. + +On just such a street in the once thriving New England village of Dolton had +Edward been born. In Dolton Bumpus was once a name of names, rooted there +since the seventeenth century, and if you had cared to listen he would have +told you, in a dialect precise but colloquial, the history of a family that by +right of priority and service should have been destined to inherit the land, +but whose descendants were preserved to see it delivered to the alien. The God +of Cotton Mather and Jonathan Edwards had been tried in the balance and found +wanting. Edward could never understand this; or why the Universe, so long +static and immutable, had suddenly begun to move. He had always been prudent, +but in spite of youthful "advantages," of an education, so called, from a +sectarian college on a hill, he had never been taught that, while prudence may +prosper in a static world, it is a futile virtue in a dynamic one. Experience +even had been powerless to impress this upon him. For more than twenty years +after leaving college he had clung to a clerkship in a Dolton mercantile +establishment before he felt justified in marrying Hannah, the daughter of +Elmer Wench, when the mercantile establishment amalgamated with a rival--and +Edward's services were no longer required. During the succession of precarious +places with decreasing salaries he had subsequently held a terrified sense of +economic pressure had gradually crept over him, presently growing strong +enough, after two girls had arrived, to compel the abridgment of the family +....It would be painful to record in detail the cracking-off process, the +slipping into shale, the rolling, the ending up in Hampton, where Edward had +now for some dozen years been keeper of one of the gates in the frowning brick +wall bordering the canal,--a position obtained for him by a compassionate but +not too prudent childhood friend who had risen in life and knew the agent of +the Chippering Mill, Mr. Claude Ditmar. Thus had virtue failed to hold its +own. + +One might have thought in all these years he had sat within the gates staring +at the brick row of the company's boarding houses on the opposite bank of the +canal that reflection might have brought a certain degree of enlightenment. It +was not so. The fog of Edward's bewilderment never cleared, and the unformed +question was ever clamouring for an answer--how had it happened? Job's cry. +How had it happened to an honest and virtuous man, the days of whose forebears +had been long in the land which the Lord their God had given them? Inherently +American, though lacking the saving quality of push that had been the making of +men like Ditmar, he never ceased to regard with resentment and distrust the +hordes of foreigners trooping between the pillars, though he refrained from +expressing these sentiments in public; a bent, broad shouldered, silent man of +that unmistakable physiognomy which, in the seventeenth century, almost wholly +deserted the old England for the new. The ancestral features were there, the +lips--covered by a grizzled moustache moulded for the precise formation that +emphasizes such syllables as el, the hooked nose and sallow cheeks, the +grizzled brows and grey eyes drawn down at the corners. But for all its +ancestral strength of feature, it was a face from which will had been +extracted, and lacked the fire and fanaticism, the indomitable hardness it +should have proclaimed, and which have been so characteristically embodied in +Mr. St. Gaudens's statue of the Puritan. His clothes were slightly shabby, but +always neat. + +Little as one might have guessed it, however, what may be called a certain +transmuted enthusiasm was alive in him. He had a hobby almost amounting to an +obsession, not uncommon amongst Americans who have slipped downward in the +social scale. It was the Bumpus Family in America. He collected documents +about his ancestors and relations, he wrote letters with a fine, painful +penmanship on a ruled block he bought at Hartshorne's drug store to distant +Bumpuses in Kansas and Illinois and Michigan, common descendants of Ebenezer, +the original immigrant, of Dolton. Many of these western kinsmen answered: not +so the magisterial Bumpus who lived in Boston on the water side of Beacon, whom +likewise he had ventured to address,--to the indignation and disgust of his +elder daughter, Janet. + +"Why are you so proud of Ebenezer?" she demanded once, scornfully. + +"Why? Aren't we descended from him?" + +"How many generations?" + +"Seven," said Edward, promptly, emphasizing the last syllable. + +Janet was quick at figures. She made a mental calculation. + +"Well, you've got one hundred and twenty-seven other ancestors of Ebenezer's +time, haven't you?" + +Edward was a little surprised. He had never thought of this, but his ardour +for Ebenezer remained undampened. Genealogy--his own--had become his religion, +and instead of going to church he spent his Sunday mornings poring over papers +of various degrees of discolouration, making careful notes on the ruled block. + +This consciousness of his descent from good American stock that had somehow +been deprived of its heritage, while a grievance to him, was also a comfort. +It had a compensating side, in spite of the lack of sympathy of his daughters +and his wife. Hannah Bumpus took the situation more grimly: she was a logical +projection in a new environment of the religious fatalism of ancestors whose +God was a God of vengeance. She did not concern herself as to what all this +vengeance was about; life was a trap into which all mortals walked sooner or +later, and her particular trap had a treadmill,--a round of household duties +she kept whirling with an energy that might have made their fortunes if she had +been the head of the family. It is bad to be a fatalist unless one has an +incontrovertible belief in one's destiny,--which Hannah had not. But she kept +the little flat with its worn furniture,--which had known so many journeys--as +clean as a merchant ship of old Salem, and when it was scoured and dusted to +her satisfaction she would sally forth to Bonnaccossi's grocery and provision +store on the corner to do her bargaining in competition with the Italian +housewives of the neighborhood. She was wont, indeed, to pause outside for a +moment, her quick eye encompassing the coloured prints of red and yellow +jellies cast in rounded moulds, decked with slices of orange, the gaudy boxes +of cereals and buckwheat flour, the "Brookfield" eggs in packages. +Significant, this modern package system, of an era of flats with little storage +space. She took in at a glance the blue lettered placard announcing the +current price of butterine, and walked around to the other side of the store, +on Holmes Street, where the beef and bacon hung, where the sidewalk stands were +filled, in the autumn, with cranberries, apples, cabbages, and spinach. + +With little outer complaint she had adapted herself to the constantly lowering +levels to which her husband had dropped, and if she hoped that in Fillmore +Street they had reached bottom, she did not say so. Her unbetrayed regret was +for the loss of what she would have called "respectability"; and the giving up, +long ago, in the little city which had been their home, of the servant girl had +been the first wrench. Until they came to Hampton they had always lived in +houses, and her adaptation to a flat had been hard--a flat without a parlour. +Hannah Bumpus regarded a parlour as necessary to a respectable family as a +wedding ring to a virtuous woman. Janet and Lise would be growing up, there +would be young men, and no place to see them save the sidewalks. The fear that +haunted her came true, and she never was reconciled. The two girls went to the +public schools, and afterwards, inevitably, to work, and it seemed to be a part +of her punishment for the sins of her forefathers that she had no more control +over them than if they had been boarders; while she looked on helplessly, they +did what they pleased; Janet, whom she never understood, was almost as much a +source of apprehension as Lise, who became part and parcel of all Hannah deemed +reprehensible in this new America which she refused to recognize and +acknowledge as her own country. + +To send them through the public schools had been a struggle. Hannah used to +lie awake nights wondering what would happen if Edward became sick. It worried +her that they never saved any money: try as she would to cut the expenses down, +there was a limit of decency; New England thrift, hitherto justly celebrated, +was put to shame by that which the foreigners displayed, and which would have +delighted the souls of gentlemen of the Manchester school. Every once in a +while there rose up before her fabulous instances of this thrift, of Italians +and Jews who, ignorant emigrants, had entered the mills only a few years before +they, the Bumpuses, had come to Hampton, and were now independent property +owners. Still rankling in Hannah's memory was a day when Lise had returned +from school, dark and mutinous, with a tale of such a family. One of the +younger children was a classmate. + +"They live on Jordan Street in a house, and Laura has roller skates. I don't +see why I can't." + +This was one of the occasions on which Hannah had given vent to her +indignation. Lise was fourteen. Her open rebellion was less annoying than +Janet's silent reproach, but at least she had something to take hold of. + +"Well, Lise," she said, shifting the saucepan to another part of the stove, "I +guess if your father and I had put both you girls in the mills and crowded into +one room and cooked in a corner, and lived on onions and macaroni, and put four +boarders each in the other rooms, I guess we could have had a house, too. We +can start in right now, if you're willing." + +But Lise had only looked darker. + +"I don't see why father can't make money--other men do." + +"Isn't he working as hard as he can to send you to school, and give you a +chance?" + +"I don't want that kind of a chance. There's Sadie Howard at school--she don't +have to work. She liked me before she found out where I lived..." + +There was an element of selfishness in Hannah's mania for keeping busy, for +doing all their housework and cooking herself. She could not bear to have her +daughters interfere; perhaps she did not want to give herself time to think. +Her affection for Edward, such as it was, her loyalty to him, was the logical +result of a conviction ingrained in early youth that marriage was an +indissoluble bond; a point of views once having a religious sanction, no less +powerful now that--all unconsciously--it had deteriorated into a superstition. +Hannah, being a fatalist, was not religious. The beliefs of other days, when +she had donned her best dress and gone to church on Sundays, had simply lapsed +and left--habits. No new beliefs had taken their place.... + +Even after Janet and Lise had gone to work the household never seemed to gain +that margin of safety for which Hannah yearned. Always, when they were on the +verge of putting something by, some untoward need or accident seemed to arise +on purpose to swallow it up: Edward, for instance, had been forced to buy a new +overcoat, the linoleum on the dining-room floor must be renewed, and Lise had +had a spell of sickness, losing her position in a flower shop. Afterwards, +when she became a saleslady in the Bagatelle, that flamboyant department store +in Faber Street, she earned four dollars and a half a week. Two of these were +supposed to go into the common fund, but there were clothes to buy; Lise loved +finery, and Hannah had not every week the heart to insist. Even when, on an +occasional Saturday night the girl somewhat consciously and defiantly flung +down the money on the dining-room table she pretended not to notice it. But +Janet, who was earning six dollars as a stenographer in the office of the +Chippering Mill, regularly gave half of hers. + +The girls could have made more money as operatives, but strangely enough in the +Bumpus family social hopes were not yet extinct. + +Sharply, rudely, the cold stillness of the winter mornings was broken by +agitating waves of sound, penetrating the souls of sleepers. Janet would stir, +her mind still lingering on some dream, soon to fade into the inexpressible, in +which she had been near to the fulfilment of a heart's desire. Each morning, +as the clamour grew louder, there was an interval of bewilderment, of +revulsion, until the realization came of mill bells swinging in high cupolas +above the river,--one rousing another. She could even distinguish the bells: +the deep-toned, penetrating one belonged to the Patuxent Mill, over on the west +side, while the Arundel had a high, ominous reverberation like a fire bell. +When at last the clangings had ceased she would lie listening to the overtones +throbbing in the air, high and low, high and low; lie shrinking, awaiting the +second summons that never failed to terrify, the siren of the Chippering Mill,- +-to her the cry of an insistent, hungry monster demanding its daily food, the +symbol of a stern, ugly, and unrelenting necessity. + +Beside her in the bed she could feel the soft body of her younger sister +cuddling up to her in fright. In such rare moments as this her heart melted +towards Lise, and she would fling a protecting arm about her. A sense of +Lise's need of protection invaded her, a sharp conviction, like a pang, that +Lise was destined to wander: Janet was never so conscious of the feeling as in +this dark hour, though it came to her at other times, when they were not +quarreling. Quarreling seemed to be the normal reaction between them. + +It was Janet, presently, who would get up, shivering, close the window, and +light the gas, revealing the room which the two girls shared together. Against +the middle of one wall was the bed, opposite this a travel-dented walnut bureau +with a marble top, with an oval mirror into which were stuck numerous magazine +portraits of the masculine and feminine talent adorning the American stage, a +preponderance of the music hall variety. There were pictures of other artists +whom the recondite would have recognized as "movie" stars, amazing yet veridic +stories of whose wealth Lise read in the daily press: all possessed limousines- +-an infallible proof, to Lise, of the measure of artistic greatness. Between +one of these movie millionaires and an ex-legitimate lady who now found +vaudeville profitable was wedged the likeness of a popular idol whose +connection with the footlights would doubtless be contingent upon a triumphant +acquittal at the hands of a jury of her countrymen, and whose trial for murder, +in Chicago, was chronicled daily in thousands of newspapers and followed by +Lise with breathless interest and sympathy. She was wont to stare at this lady +while dressing and exclaim:-- + +"Say, I hope they put it all over that district attorney!" + +To such sentiments, though deeply felt by her sister, Janet remained cold, +though she was, as will be seen, capable of enthusiasms. Lise was a truer +daughter of her time and country in that she had the national contempt for law, +was imbued with the American hero-worship of criminals that caused the +bombardment of Cora Wellman's jail with candy, fruit and flowers and +impassioned letters. Janet recalled there had been others before Mrs. Wellman, +caught within the meshes of the law, who had incited in her sister a similar +partisanship. + +It was Lise who had given the note of ornamentation to the bedroom. Against +the cheap faded lilac and gold wall-paper were tacked photo-engravings that had +taken the younger sister's fancy: a young man and woman, clad in scanty bathing +suits, seated side by side in a careening sail boat,--the work of a popular +illustrator whose manly and womanly "types" had become national ideals. + +There were other drawings, if not all by the same hand, at least by the same +school; one, sketched in bold strokes, of a dinner party in a stately +neo-classic dining-room, the table laden with flowers and silver, +the bare-throated women with jewels. A more critical eye than Lise's, +gazing upon this portrayal of the Valhalla of success, might have detected in +the young men, immaculate in evening dress, a certain effort to feel at home, +to converse naturally, which their square jaws and square shoulders belied. +This was no doubt the fault of the artist's models, who had failed to live up +to the part. At any rate, the sight of these young gods of leisure, the +contemplation of the stolid butler and plush footmen in the background never +failed to make Lise's heart beat faster. + +On the marble of the bureau amidst a litter of toilet articles, and bought by +Lise for a quarter at the Bagatelle bargain counter, was an oval photograph +frame from which the silver wash had begun to rub off, and the band of purple +velvet inside the metal had whitened. The frame always contained the current +object of Lise's affections, though the exhibits--as Janet said--were subject +to change without notice. The Adonis who now reigned had black hair cut in the +prevailing Hampton fashion, very long in front and hanging down over his eyes +like a Scottish terrier's; very long behind, too, but ending suddenly, shaved +in a careful curve at the neck and around the ears. It had almost the +appearance of a Japanese wig. The manly beauty of Mr. Max Wylie was of the +lantern-jawed order, and in his photograph he conveyed the astonished and +pained air of one who has been suddenly seized by an invisible officer of the +law from behind. This effect, one presently perceived, was due to the high, +stiff collar, the "Torture Brand," Janet called it, when she and her sister +were engaged in one of their frequent controversies about life in general: the +obvious retort to this remark, which Lise never failed to make, was that Janet +could boast of no beaux at all. + +It is only fair to add that the photograph scarcely did Mr. Wylie justice. In +real life he did not wear the collar, he was free and easy in his manners, sure +of his powers of conquest. As Lise observed, he had made a home-run with her +at Slattery's Riverside Park. "Sadie Hartmann was sure sore when I tangoed off +with him," she would observe reminiscently .... + +It was Lise's habit to slight her morning toilet, to linger until the last +minute in bed, which she left in reluctant haste to stand before the bureau +frantically combing out kinks of the brown hair falling over her shoulders +before jamming it down across her forehead in the latest mode. Thus occupied, +she revealed a certain petulant beauty. Like the majority of shop-girls, she +was small, but her figure was good, her skin white; her discontented mouth gave +her the touch of piquancy apt to play havoc with the work of the world. In +winter breakfast was eaten by the light of a rococo metal lamp set in the +centre of the table. This was to save gas. There was usually a rump steak and +potatoes, bread and "creamery" butterine, and the inevitable New England +doughnuts. At six thirty the whistles screeched again,--a warning note, the +signal for Edward's departure; and presently, after a brief respite, the heavy +bells once more began their clamour, not to die down until ten minutes of +seven, when the last of the stragglers had hurried through the mill gates. + +The Bumpus flat included the second floor of a small wooden house whose owner +had once been evilly inspired to paint it a livid clay-yellow--as though +insisting that ugliness were an essential attribute of domesticity. A bay ran +up the two stories, and at the left were two narrow doorways, one for each +flat. On the right the house was separated from its neighbour by a narrow +interval, giving but a precarious light to the two middle rooms, the diningroom +and kitchen. The very unattractiveness of such a home, however, had certain +compensations for Janet, after the effort of early rising had been surmounted, +felt a real relief in leaving it; a relief, too, in leaving Fillmore Street, +every feature of which was indelibly fixed in her mind, opposite was the blind +brick face of a warehouse, and next to that the converted dwelling house that +held the shop of A. Bauer, with the familiar replica of a green ten-cent +trading stamp painted above it and the somewhat ironical announcement--when +boar frost whitened the pavement--that ice-cold soda was to be had within, as +well as cigars and tobacco, fruit and candy. Then came a tenement, under which +two enterprising Greeks by the name of Pappas--spelled Papas lower down-- +conducted a business called "The Gentleman," a tailoring, pressing, and dyeing +establishment. Janet could see the brilliantined black heads of the two +proprietors bending over their boards, and sometimes they would be lifted to +smile at her as she passed. The Pappas Brothers were evidently as happy in +this drab environment as they had ever been on the sunny mountain slopes of +Hellas, and Janet sometimes wondered at this, for she had gathered from her +education in the Charming public school that Greece was beautiful. + +She was one of the unfortunate who love beauty, who are condemned to dwell in +exile, unacquainted with what they love. Desire was incandescent within her +breast. Desire for what? It would have been some relief to know. She could +not, like Lise, find joy and forgetfulness at dance ,halls, at the "movies," at +Slattery's Riverside Park in summer, in "joy rides" with the Max Wylies of +Hampton. And beside, the Max Wylies were afraid of her. If at times she +wished for wealth, it was because wealth held the magic of emancipation from +surroundings against which her soul revolted. Vividly idealized but unconfided +was the memory of a seaside village, the scene of one of the brief sojourns of +her childhood, where the air was fragrant with the breath of salt marshes, +where she recalled, through the vines of a porch, a shining glimpse of the sea +at the end of a little street.... + +Next to Pappas Brothers was the grey wooden building of Mule Spinners' Hall, +that elite organization of skilled labour, and underneath it the store of +Johnny Tiernan, its windows piled up with stoves and stovepipes, sheet iron and +cooking utensils. Mr. Tiernan, like the Greeks, was happy, too: unlike the +Greeks, he never appeared to be busy, and yet he throve. He was very proud of +the business in which he had invested his savings, but he seemed to have other +affairs lying blithely on his mind, affairs of moment to the community, as the +frequent presence of the huge policemen, aldermen, and other important looking +persons bore witness. He hailed by name Italians, Greeks, Belgians, Syrians, +and "French"; he hailed Janet, too, with respectful cheerfulness, taking off +his hat. He possessed the rare, warm vitality that is irresistible. A native +of Hampton, still in his thirties, his sharp little nose and twinkling blue +eyes proclaimed the wisdom that is born and not made; his stiff hair had a +twist like the bristles in the cleaning rod of a gun. + +He gave Janet the odd impression that he understood her. And she did not +understand herself! + +By the time she reached the Common the winter sun, as though red from exertion, +had begun to dispel the smoke and heavy morning mists. She disliked winter, +the lumpy brown turf mildewed by the frost, but one day she was moved by a +quality, hitherto unsuspected, in the delicate tracery against the sky made by +the slender branches of the great elms and maples. She halted on the pavement, +her eyes raised, heedless of passers-by, feeling within her a throb of the +longing that could be so oddly and unexpectedly aroused. + +Her way lay along Faber Street, the main artery of Hampton, a wide strip of +asphalt threaded with car tracks, lined on both sides with incongruous edifices +indicative of a rapid, undiscriminating, and artless prosperity. There were +long stretches of "ten foot" buildings, so called on account of the single +story, their height deceptively enhanced by the superimposition of huge and +gaudy signs, one on top of another, announcing the merits of "Stewart's +Amberine Ale," of "Cooley's Oats, the Digestible Breakfast Food," of +graphophones and "spring heeled" shoes, tobacco, and naphtha soaps. "No, We +don't give Trading Stamps, Our Products are Worth all You Pay." These "ten +foot" stores were the repositories of pianos, automobiles, hardware, and +millinery, and interspersed amongst them were buildings of various heights; The +Bagatelle, where Lise worked, the Wilmot Hotel, office buildings, and an +occasional relic of old Hampton, like that housing the Banner. Here, during +those months when the sun made the asphalt soft, on a scaffolding spanning the +window of the store, might be seen a perspiring young man in his shirt sleeves +chalking up baseball scores for the benefit of a crowd below. Then came the +funereal, liver-coloured, long-windowed Hinckley Block (1872), and on the +corner a modern, glorified drugstore thrusting forth plate glass bays--two on +Faber Street and three on Stanley--filled with cameras and candy, hot water +bags, throat sprays, catarrh and kidney cures, calendars, fountain pens, +stationery, and handy alcohol lamps. Flanking the sidewalks, symbolizing and +completing the heterogeneous and bewildering effect of the street were long +rows of heavy hemlock trunks, unpainted and stripped of bark, with crosstrees +bearing webs of wires. Trolley cars rattled along, banging their gongs, trucks +rumbled across the tracks, automobiles uttered frenzied screeches behind +startled pedestrians. Janet was always galvanized into alertness here, Faber +Street being no place to dream. By night an endless procession moved up one +sidewalk and down another, staring hypnotically at the flash-in and flash-out +electric, signs that kept the breakfast foods and ales, the safety razors, +soaps, and soups incessantly in the minds of a fickle public. + +Two blocks from Faber Street was the North Canal, with a granite-paved roadway +between it and the monotonous row of company boarding houses. Even in bright +weather Janet felt a sense of oppression here; on dark, misty mornings the +stern, huge battlements of the mills lining the farther bank were menacing +indeed, bristling with projections, towers, and chimneys, flanked by heavy +walls. Had her experience included Europe, her imagination might have seized +the medieval parallel,--the arched bridges flung at intervals across the water, +lacking only chains to raise them in case of siege. The place was always +ominously suggestive of impending strife. Janet's soul was a sensitive +instrument, but she suffered from an inability to find parallels, and thus to +translate her impressions intellectually. Her feeling about the mills was that +they were at once fortress and prison, and she a slave driven thither day after +day by an all-compelling power; as much a slave as those who trooped in through +the gates in the winter dawn, and wore down, four times a day, the oak treads +of the circular tower stairs. + +The sound of the looms was like heavy rain hissing on the waters of the canal. + +The administrative offices of a giant mill such as the Chippering in Hampton +are labyrinthine. Janet did not enter by the great gates her father kept, but +walked through an open courtyard into a vestibule where, day and night, a +watchman stood; she climbed iron-shod stairs, passed the doorway leading to the +paymaster's suite, to catch a glimpse, behind the grill, of numerous young men +settling down at those mysterious and complicated machines that kept so +unerring a record, in dollars and cents, of the human labour of the operatives. +There were other suites for the superintendents, for the purchasing agent; and +at the end of the corridor, on the south side of the mill, she entered the +outer of the two rooms reserved for Mr. Claude Ditmar, the Agent and general- +in-chief himself of this vast establishment. In this outer office, behind the +rail that ran the length of it, Janet worked; from the window where her +typewriter stood was a sheer drop of eighty feet or so to the river, which ran +here swiftly through a wide canon whose sides were formed by miles and miles of +mills, built on buttressed stone walls to retain the banks. The prison-like +buildings on the farther shore were also of colossal size, casting their +shadows far out into the waters; while in the distance, up and down the stream, +could be seen the delicate web of the Stanley and Warren Street bridges, with +trolley cars like toys gliding over them, with insect pedestrians creeping +along the footpaths. + +Mr. Ditmar's immediate staff consisted of Mr. Price, an elderly bachelor of +tried efficiency whose peculiar genius lay in computation, of a young Mr. +Caldwell who, during the four years since he had left Harvard, had been +learning the textile industry, of Miss Ottway, and Janet. Miss Ottway was the +agent's private stenographer, a strongly built, capable woman with immense +reserves seemingly inexhaustible. She had a deep, masculine voice, not +unmusical, the hint of a masculine moustache, a masculine manner of taking to +any job that came to hand. Nerves were things unknown to her: she was granite, +Janet tempered steel. Janet was the second stenographer, and performed, +besides, any odd tasks that might be assigned. + +There were, in the various offices of the superintendents, the paymaster and +purchasing agent, other young women stenographers whose companionship Janet, +had she been differently organized, might have found congenial, but something +in her refused to dissolve to their proffered friendship. She had but one +friend,--if Eda Rawle, who worked in a bank, and whom she had met at a lunch +counter by accident, may be called so. As has been admirably said in another +language, one kisses, the other offers a cheek: Janet offered the cheek. All +unconsciously she sought a relationship rarely to be found in banks and +business offices; would yield herself to none other. The young women +stenographers in the Chippering Mill, respectable, industrious girls, were +attracted by a certain indefinable quality, but finding they made no progress +in their advances, presently desisted they were somewhat afraid of her; as one +of them remarked, "You always knew she was there." Miss Lottie Meyers, who +worked in the office of Mr. Orcutt, the superintendent across the hall, +experienced a brief infatuation that turned to hate. She chewed gum +incessantly, Janet found her cheap perfume insupportable; Miss Meyers, for her +part, declared that Janet was "queer" and "stuck up," thought herself better +than the rest of them. Lottie Meyers was the leader of a group of four or five +which gathered in the hallway at the end of the noon hour to enter animatedly +into a discussion of waists, hats, and lingerie, to ogle and exchange +persiflages with the young men of the paymaster's corps, to giggle, to relate, +sotto voce, certain stories that ended invariably in hysterical laughter. +Janet detested these conversations. And the sex question, subtly suggested if +not openly dealt with, to her was a mystery over which she did not dare to +ponder, terrible, yet too sacred to be degraded. Her feelings, concealed under +an exterior of self-possession, deceptive to the casual observer, sometimes +became molten, and she was frightened by a passion that made her tremble--a +passion by no means always consciously identified with men, embodying all the +fierce unexpressed and unsatisfied desires of her life. + +These emotions, often suggested by some hint of beauty, as of the sun glinting +on the river on a bright blue day, had a sudden way of possessing her, and the +longing they induced was pain. Longing for what? For some unimagined +existence where beauty dwelt, and light, where the ecstasy induced by these was +neither moiled nor degraded; where shame, as now, might not assail her. Why +should she feel her body hot with shame, her cheeks afire? At such moments she +would turn to the typewriter, her fingers striking the keys with amazing +rapidity, with extraordinary accuracy and force,--force vaguely disturbing to +Mr. Claude Ditmar as he entered the office one morning and involuntarily paused +to watch her. She was unaware of his gaze, but her colour was like a crimson +signal that flashed to him and was gone. Why had he never noticed her before? +All these months, for more than a year, perhaps,--she had been in his office, +and he had not so much as looked at her twice. The unguessed answer was that +he had never surprised her in a vivid moment. He had a flair for women, though +he had never encountered any possessing the higher values, and it was +characteristic of the plane of his mental processes that this one should remind +him now of a dark, lithe panther, tensely strung, capable of fierceness. The +pain of having her scratch him would be delectable. + +When he measured her it was to discover that she was not so little, and the +shoulder-curve of her uplifted arms, as her fingers played over the keys, +seemed to belie that apparent slimness. And had he not been unacquainted with +the subtleties of the French mind and language, he +might have classed her as a fausse maigre. Her head was small, her hair like a +dark, blurred shadow clinging round it. He wanted to examine her hair, to see +whether it would not betray, at closer range, an imperceptible wave,--but not +daring to linger he went into his office, closed the door, and sat down with a +sensation akin to weakness, somewhat appalled by his discovery, considerably +amazed at his previous stupidity. He had thought of Janet--when she had +entered his mind at all--as unobtrusive, demure; now he recognized this +demureness as repression. Her qualities needed illumination, and he, Claude +Ditmar, had seen them struck with fire. He wondered whether any other man +had been as fortunate. + +Later in the morning, quite casually, he made inquiries of Miss Ottway, who +liked Janet and was willing to do her a good turn. + +"Why, she's a clever girl, Mr. Ditmar, a good stenographer, and conscientious +in her work. She's very quick, too. + +"Yes, I've noticed that," Ditmar replied, who was quite willing to have it +thought that his inquiry was concerned with Janet's aptitude for business. + +"She keeps to herself and minds her own affairs. You can see she comes of good +stock." Miss Ottway herself was proud of her New England blood. "Her father, +you know, is the gatekeeper down there. He's been unfortunate." + +"You don't say--I didn't connect her with him. Fine looking old man. A friend +of mine who recommended him told me he'd seen better days ...." + + + + +CHAPTER II + +In spite of the surprising discovery in his office of a young woman of such a +disquieting, galvanic quality, it must not be supposed that Mr. Claude Ditmar +intended to infringe upon a fixed principle. He had principles. For him, as +for the patriarchs and householders of Israel, the seventh commandment was only +relative, yet hitherto he had held rigidly to that relativity, laying down the +sound doctrine that women and business would not mix: or, as he put it to his +intimates, no sensible man would fool with a girl in his office. Hence it may +be implied that Mr. Ditmar's experiences with the opposite sex had been on a +property basis. He was one of those busy and successful persons who had never +appreciated or acquired the art of quasi-platonic amenities, whose idea of a +good time was limited to discreet excursions with cronies, likewise busy and +successful persons who, by reason of having married early and unwisely, are +strangers to the delights of that higher social intercourse chronicled in +novels and the public prints. If one may conveniently overlook the joys of a +companionship of the soul, it is quite as possible to have a taste in women as +in champagne or cigars. Mr. Ditmar preferred blondes, and he liked them rather +stout, a predilection that had led him into matrimony with a lady of this +description: a somewhat sticky, candy-eating lady with a mania for card +parties, who undoubtedly would have dyed her hair if she had lived. He was not +inconsolable, but he had had enough of marriage to learn that it demands a +somewhat exorbitant price for joys otherwise more reasonably to be obtained. + +He was left a widower with two children, a girl of thirteen and a boy of +twelve, both somewhat large for their ages. Amy attended the only private +institution for the instruction of her sex of which Hampton could boast; George +continued at a public school. The late Mrs. Ditmar for some years before her +demise had begun to give evidence of certain restless aspirations to which +American ladies of her type and situation seem peculiarly liable, and with a +view to their ultimate realization she had inaugurated a Jericho-like campaign. +Death had released Ditmar from its increasing pressure. For his wife had +possessed that admirable substitute for character, persistence, had been expert +in the use of importunity, often an efficient weapon in the hands of the female +economically dependent. The daughter of a defunct cashier of the Hampton +National Bank, when she had married Ditmar, then one of the superintendents of +the Chippering and already a marked man, she had deemed herself fortunate among +women, looking forward to a life of ease and idleness and candy in great +abundance,--a dream temporarily shattered by the unforeseen discomfort of +bringing two children into the world, with an interval of scarcely a year +between them. Her parents from an excess of native modesty having failed to +enlighten her on this subject, her feelings were those of outraged +astonishment, and she was quite determined not to repeat the experience a third +time. Knowledge thus belatedly acquired, for a while she abandoned herself to +the satisfaction afforded by the ability to take a commanding position in +Hampton society, gradually to become aware of the need of a more commodious +residence. In a certain kind of intuition she was rich. Her husband had +meanwhile become Agent of the Chippering Mill, and she strongly suspected that +his prudent reticence on the state of his finances was the best indication of +an increasing prosperity. He had indeed made money, been given many +opportunities for profitable investments; but the argument for social pre- +eminence did not appeal to him: tears and reproaches, recriminations, when +frequently applied, succeeded better; like many married men, what he most +desired was to be let alone; but in some unaccountable way she had come to +suspect that his preference for blondes was of a more liberal nature than at +first, in her innocence, she had realized. She was jealous, too, of his +cronies, in spite of the fact that these gentlemen, when they met her, treated +her with an elaborate politeness; and she accused him with entire justice of +being more intimate with them than with her, with whom he was united in holy +bonds. The inevitable result of these tactics was the modern mansion in the +upper part of Warren Street, known as the "residential" district. Built on a +wide lot, with a garage on one side to the rear, with a cement driveway divided +into squares, and a wall of democratic height separating its lawn from the +sidewalk, the house may for the present be better imagined than described. + +A pious chronicler of a more orthodox age would doubtless have deemed it a +judgment that Cora Ditmar survived but two years to enjoy the glories of the +Warren Street house. For a while her husband indulged in a foolish optimism, +only to learn that the habit of matrimonial blackmail, once acquired, is not +easily shed. Scarcely had he settled down to the belief that by the +gratification of her supreme desire he had achieved comparative peace, than he +began to suspect her native self-confidence of cherishing visions of a career +contemplating nothing less than the eventual abandonment of Hampton itself as a +field too limited for her social talents and his business ability and bank +account--at which she was pleased to hint. Hampton suited Ditmar, his passion +was the Chippering Mill; and he was in process of steeling himself to resist, +whatever the costs, this preposterous plan when he was mercifully released by +death. Her intention of sending the children away to acquire a culture and +finish Hampton did not afford,--George to Silliston Academy, Amy to a +fashionable boarding school,--he had not opposed, yet he did not take the idea +with sufficient seriousness to carry it out. The children remained at home, +more or less--increasingly less--in the charge of an elderly woman who acted as +housekeeper. + +Ditmar had miraculously regained his freedom. And now, when he made trips to +New York and Boston, combining business with pleasure, there were no questions +asked, no troublesome fictions to be composed. More frequently he was in +Boston, where he belonged to a large and comfortable club, not too exacting in +regard to membership, and here he met his cronies and sometimes planned +excursions with them, automobile trips in summer to the White Mountains or +choice little resorts to spend Sundays and holidays, generally taking with them +a case of champagne and several bags of golf sticks. He was fond of shooting, +and belonged to a duck club on the Cape, where poker and bridge were not +tabooed. To his intimates he was known as "Dit." Nor is it surprising that +his attitude toward women had become in general one of resentment; matrimony he +now regarded as unmitigated folly. At five and forty he was a vital, +dominating, dust-coloured man six feet and half an inch in height, weighing a +hundred and ninety pounds, and thus a trifle fleshy. When relaxed, and in +congenial company, he looked rather boyish, an aspect characteristic of many +American business men of to-day. + +His head was large, he wore his hair short, his features also proclaimed him as +belonging to a modern American type in that they were not clear-cut, but rather +indefinable; a bristling, short-cropped moustache gave him a certain efficient, +military look which, when introduced to strangers as "Colonel," was apt to +deceive them into thinking him an army officer. The title he had once received +as a member of the staff of the governor of the state, and was a tribute to a +gregariousness and political influence rather than to a genius for the art of +war. Ex officio, as the agent of the Chippering Mill and a man of substance to +boot, he was "in" politics, hail fellow well met with and an individual to be +taken into account by politicians from the governor and member of congress +down. He was efficient, of course; he had efficient hands and shrewd, +efficient eyes, and the military impression was deepened by his manner of +dealing with people, his conversation being yea, yea and nay, nay,--save with +his cronies and those of the other sex from whom he had something to gain. His +clothes always looked new, of pronounced patterns and light colours set aside +for him by an obsequious tailor in Boston. + +If a human being in such an enviable position as that of agent of the +Chippering Mill can be regarded as property, it might be said that Mr. Claude +Ditmar belonged to the Chipperings of Boston, a family still owning a +controlling interest in the company. His loyalty to them and to the mill he so +ably conducted was the great loyalty of his life. For Ditmar, a Chippering +could do no wrong. It had been the keen eye of Mr. Stephen Chippering that +first had marked him, questioned him, recognized his ability, and from the +moment of that encounter his advance had been rapid. When old Stephen had been +called to his fathers, Ditmar's allegiance was automatically, as it were, +transferred to the two sons, George and Worthington, already members of the +board of directors. Sometimes Ditmar called on them at their homes, which +stood overlooking the waters of the Charles River Basin. The attitude toward +him of the Chipperings and their wives was one of an interesting adjustment of +feudalism to democracy. They were fond of him, grateful to him, treating him +with a frank camaraderie that had in it not the slightest touch of +condescension, but Ditmar would have been the first to recognize that there +were limits to the intimacy. They did not, for instance--no doubt out of +consideration--invite him to their dinner parties or take him to their club, +which was not the same as that to which he himself belonged. He felt no +animus. Nor would he, surprising though it may seem, have changed places with +the Chipperings. At an early age, and quite unconsciously, he had accepted +property as the ruling power of the universe, and when family was added thereto +the combination was nothing less than divine. + +There were times, especially during the long winters, when life became almost +unbearable for Janet, and she was seized by a desire to run away from Fillmore +Street, from the mills, from Hampton itself. Only she did not know where to +go, or how to get away. She was convinced of the existence in the world of +delightful spots where might be found congenial people with whom it would be a +joy to talk. Fillmore Street, certainly, did not contain any such. The office +was not so bad. It is true that in the mornings, as she entered West Street, +the sight of the dark facade of the fortress-like structure, emblematic of the +captivity in which she passed her days, rarely failed to arouse in her +sensations of oppression and revolt; but here, at least, she discovered an +outlet for her energies; she was often too busy to reflect, and at odd moments +she could find a certain solace and companionship in the river, so intent, so +purposeful, so beautiful, so undisturbed by the inconcinnity, the clatter and +confusion of Hampton as it flowed serenely under the bridges and between the +mills toward the sea. Toward the sea! + +It was when, at night, she went back to Fillmore Street--when she thought of +the monotony, yes, and the sordidness of home, when she let herself in at the +door and climbed the dark and narrow stairway, that her feet grew leaden. In +spite of the fact that Hannah was a good housekeeper and prided herself on +cleanliness, the tiny flat reeked with the smell of cooking, and Janet, from +the upper hall, had a glimpse of a thin, angular woman with a scrawny neck, +with scant grey hair tightly drawn into a knot, in a gingham apron covering an +old dress bending over the kitchen stove. And occasionally, despite a +resentment that fate should have dealt thus inconsiderately with the family, +Janet felt pity welling within her. After supper, when Lise had departed with +her best young man, Hannah would occasionally, though grudgingly, permit Janet +to help her with the dishes. + +"You work all day, you have a right to rest." + +"But I don't want to rest," Janet would declare, and rub the dishes the harder. +With the spirit underlying this protest, Hannah sympathized. Mother and +daughter were alike in that both were inarticulate, but Janet had a secret +contempt for Hannah's uncomplaining stoicism. She loved her mother, in a way, +especially at certain times,--though she often wondered why she was unable to +realize more fully the filial affection of tradition; but in moments of +softening, such as these, she was filled with rage at the thought of any woman +endowed with energy permitting herself to be overtaken and overwhelmed by such +a fate as Hannah's: divorce, desertion, anything, she thought, would have been +better--anything but to be cheated out of life. Feeling the fires of rebellion +burning hotly within her,--rebellion against environment and driving necessity +she would glance at her mother and ask herself whether it were possible that +Hannah had ever known longings, had ever been wrung by inexpressible desires,-- +desires in which the undiscovered spiritual was so alarmingly compounded with +the undiscovered physical. She would have died rather than speak to Hannah of +these unfulfilled experiences, and the mere thought of confiding them to any +person appalled her. Even if there existed some wonderful, understanding being +to whom she might be able thus to empty her soul, the thought of the ecstasy of +that kenosis was too troubling to be dwelt upon. + +She had tried reading, with unfortunate results,--perhaps because no Virgil had +as yet appeared to guide her through the mysteries of that realm. Her +schooling had failed to instil into her a discriminating taste for literature; +and when, on occasions, she had entered the Public Library opposite the Common +it had been to stare hopelessly at rows of books whose authors and titles +offered no clue to their contents. Her few choices had not been happy, they +had failed to interest and thrill... + +Of the Bumpus family Lise alone found refuge, distraction, and excitement in +the vulgar modern world by which they were surrounded, and of whose +heedlessness and remorselessness they were the victims. Lise went out into it, +became a part of it, returning only to sleep and eat,--a tendency Hannah found +unaccountable, and against which even her stoicism was not wholly proof. +Scarce an evening went by without an expression of uneasiness from Hannah. + +"She didn't happen to mention where she was going, did she, Janet?" Hannah +would query, when she had finished her work and put on her spectacles to read +the Banner. + +"To the movies, I suppose," Janet would reply. Although well aware that her +sister indulged in other distractions, she thought it useless to add to +Hannah's disquietude. And if she had little patience with Lise, she had less +with the helpless attitude of her parents. + +"Well," Hannah would add, "I never can get used to her going out nights the way +she does, and with young men and women I don't know anything about. I wasn't +brought up that way. But as long as she's got to work for a living I guess +there's no help for it." + +And she would glance at Edward. It was obviously due to his inability +adequately to cope with modern conditions that his daughters were forced to +toil, but this was the nearest she ever came to reproaching him. If he heard, +he acquiesced humbly, and in silence: more often than not he was oblivious, +buried in the mazes of the Bumpus family history, his papers spread out on the +red cloth of the dining-room table, under the lamp. Sometimes in his +simplicity and with the enthusiasm that demands listeners he would read aloud +to them a letter, recently received from a distant kinsman, an Alpheus Bumpus, +let us say, who had migrated to California in search of wealth and fame, and +who had found neither. In spite of age and misfortunes, the liberal attitude +of these western members of the family was always a matter of perplexity to +Edward. + +"He tells me they're going to give women the ballot,--doesn't appear to be much +concerned about his own womenfolks going to the polls." + +"Why shouldn't they, if they want to?" Janet would exclaim, though she had +given little thought to the question. + +Edward would mildly ignore this challenge. + +"He has a house on what they call Russian Hill, and he can watch the vessels as +they come in from Japan," he would continue in his precise voice, emphasizing +admirably the last syllables of the words "Russian," "vessels," and "Japan." +"Wouldn't you like to see the letter?" + +To do Hannah justice, although she was quite incapable of sharing his passion, +she frequently feigned an interest, took the letter, presently handing it on to +Janet who, in deciphering Alpheus's trembling calligraphy, pondered over his +manifold woes. Alpheus's son, who had had a good position in a sporting goods +establishment on Market Street, was sick and in danger of losing it, the son's +wife expecting an addition to the family, the house on Russian Hill mortgaged. +Alpheus, a veteran of the Civil War, had been for many years preparing his +reminiscences, but the newspapers nowadays seemed to care nothing for matters +of solid worth, and so far had refused to publish them.... Janet, as she read, +reflected that these letters invariably had to relate tales of failures, of +disappointed hopes; she wondered at her father's perennial interest in +failures,--provided they were those of his family; and the next evening, as he +wrote painfully on his ruled paper, she knew that he in turn was pouring out +his soul to Alpheus, recounting, with an emotion by no means unpleasurable, to +this sympathetic but remote relative the story of his own failure! + +If the city of Hampton was emblematic of our modern world in which +haphazardness has replaced order, Fillmore Street may be likened to a back eddy +of the muddy and troubled waters, in which all sorts of flotsam and jetsam had +collected. Or, to find perhaps an even more striking illustration of the +process that made Hampton in general and Fillmore Street in particular, one had +only to take the trolley to Glendale, the Italian settlement on the road +leading to the old New England village of Shrewsbury. Janet sometimes walked +there, alone or with her friend Eda Rawle. Disintegration itself--in a +paradoxically pathetic attempt at reconstruction--had built Glendale. Human +hands, Italian hands. Nor, surprising though it may seem, were these +descendants of the people of the Renaissance in the least offended by their +handiwork. When the southern European migration had begun and real estate +became valuable, one by one the more decorous edifices of the old American +order had been torn down and carried piecemeal by sons of Italy to the bare +hills of Glendale, there to enter into new combinations representing, to an eye +craving harmony, the last word of a chaos, of a mental indigestion, of a colour +scheme crying aloud to heaven for retribution. Standing alone and bare amidst +its truck gardens, hideous, extreme, though typical of the entire settlement, +composed of fragments ripped from once-appropriate settings, is a house with a +tiny body painted strawberry-red, with scroll-work shutters a tender green; +surmounting the structure and almost equalling it in size is a sky-blue cupola, +once the white crown of the Sutter mansion, the pride of old Hampton. The +walls of this dwelling were wrested from the sides of Mackey's Tavern, while +the shutters for many years adorned the parsonage of the old First Church. +Similarly, in Hampton and in Fillmore Street, lived in enforced neighbourliness +human fragments once having their places in crystallized communities where +existence had been regarded as solved. Here there was but one order,--if such +it may be called,--one relationship, direct, or indirect, one necessity +claiming them all--the mills. + +Like the boards forming the walls of the shacks at Glendale, these human planks +torn from an earlier social structure were likewise warped, which is to say +they were dominated by obsessions. Edward's was the Bumpus family; and Chris +Auermann, who lived in the flat below, was convinced that the history of +mankind is a deplorable record of havoc caused by women. Perhaps he was right, +but the conviction was none the less an obsession. He came from a little +village near Wittenburg that has scarcely changed since Luther's time. Like +most residents of Hampton who did not work in the mills, he ministered to those +who did, or to those who sold merchandise to the workers, cutting their hair in +his barber shop on Faber Street. + +The Bumpuses, save Lise, clinging to a native individualism and pride, +preferred isolation to companionship with the other pieces of driftwood by +which they were surrounded, and with which the summer season compelled a +certain enforced contact. When the heat in the little dining-room grew +unbearable, they were driven to take refuge on the front steps shared in common +with the household of the barber. It is true that the barber's wife was a mild +hausfrau who had little to say, and that their lodgers, two young Germans who +worked in the mills, spent most of their evenings at a bowling club; but +Auermann himself, exhaling a strong odour of bay rum, would arrive promptly at +quarter past eight, take off his coat, and thus, as it were stripped for +action, would turn upon the defenceless Edward. + +"Vill you mention one great man--yoost one--who is not greater if the vimmen +leave him alone?" he would demand. "Is it Anthony, the conqueror of Egypt and +the East? I vill show you Cleopatra. Und Burns, and Napoleon, the greatest +man what ever lived--vimmen again. I tell you there is no Elba, no St. Helena +if it is not for the vimmen. Und vat vill you say of Goethe?" + +Poor Edward could think of nothing to say of Goethe. + +"He is great, I grant you," Chris would admit, "but vat is he if the vimmen +leave him alone? Divine yoost that." And he would proceed to cite endless +examples of generals and statesmen whose wives or mistresses had been their +bane. Futile Edward's attempts to shift the conversation to the subject of his +own obsession; the German was by far the more aggressive, he would have none of +it. Perhaps if Edward had been willing to concede that the Bumpuses had been +brought to their present lowly estate by the sinister agency of the fair sex +Chris might conditionally have accepted the theme. Hannah, contemptuously +waving a tattered palm leaf fan, was silent; but on one occasion Janet took +away the barber's breath by suddenly observing:-- + +"You never seem to think of the women whose lives are ruined by men, Mr. +Auermann." + +It was unheard-of, this invasion of a man's argument by a woman, and by a young +woman at that. He glared at her through his spectacles, took them off, wiped +them, replaced them, and glared at her again. He did not like Janet; she was +capable of what may be called a speaking silence, and he had never been wholly +unaware of her disapproval and ridicule. Perhaps he recognized in her, +instinctively, the potential qualities of that emerging modern woman who to him +was anathema. + +"It is somethings I don't think about," he said. + +He was a wizened little man with faience-blue eyes, and sat habitually hunched +up with his hands folded across his shins. + +"Nam fuit ante Helenam"--as Darwin quotes. Toward all the masculine residents +of Fillmore Street, save one, the barber's attitude was one of unconcealed +scorn for an inability to recognize female perfidy. With Johnny Tiernan alone +he refused to enter the lists. When the popular proprietor of the tin shop +came sauntering along the sidewalk with nose uptilted, waving genial greetings +to the various groups on the steps, Chris Auermann's expression would suddenly +change to one of fatuous playfulness. + +"What's this I hear about giving the girls the vote, Chris?" Johnny would +innocently inquire, winking at Janet, invariably running his hand through the +wiry red hair that resumed its corkscrew twist as soon as he released it. And +Chris would as invariably reply:-- + +"You have the dandruffs--yes? You come to my shop, I give you somethings...." + +Sometimes the barber, in search of a more aggressive adversary than Edward, +would pay visits, when as likely as not another neighbour with profound +convictions and a craving for proselytes would swoop down on the defenceless +Bumpuses: Joe Shivers, for instance, who lived in one of the tenements above +the cleaning and dyeing establishment kept by the Pappas Bros., and known as +"The Gentleman." In the daytime Mr. Shivers was a model of acquiescence in a +system he would have designated as one of industrial feudalism, his duty being +to examine the rolls of cloth as they came from the looms of the Arundel Mill, +in case of imperfections handing them over to the women menders: at night, to +borrow a vivid expression from Lise, he was "batty in the belfry" on the +subject of socialism. Unlike the barber, whom he could not abide, for him the +cleavage of the world was between labour and capital instead of man and woman; +his philosophy was stern and naturalistic; the universe--the origin of which he +did not discuss--just an accidental assemblage of capricious forces over which +human intelligence was one day to triumph. Squatting on the lowest step, his +face upturned, by the light of the arc sputtering above the street he looked +like a yellow frog, his eager eyes directed toward Janet, whom he suspected of +intelligence. + +"If there was a God, a nice, kind, all-powerful God, would he permit what +happened in one of the loom-rooms last week? A Polak girl gets her hair caught +in the belt pfff!" He had a marvellously realistic gift when it came to +horrors: Janet felt her hair coming out by the roots. Although she never went +to church, she did not like to think that no God existed. Of this Mr. Shivers +was very positive. Edward, too, listened uneasily, hemmed and hawed, making +ineffectual attempts to combat Mr. Shivers's socialism with a deeply-rooted +native individualism that Shivers declared as defunct as Christianity. + +"If it is possible for the workingman to rise under a capitalistic system, why +do you not rise, then? Why do I not rise? I'm as good as Ditmar, I'm better +educated, but we're all slaves. What right has a man to make you and me work +for him just because he has capital?" + +"Why, the right of capital," Edward would reply. + +Mr. Shivers, with the manner of one dealing with an incurable romanticism and +sentimentality, would lift his hands in despair. And in spite of the fact that +Janet detested him, he sometimes exercised over her a paradoxical fascination, +suggesting as he did unexplored intellectual realms. She despised her father +for not being able to crush the little man. Edward would make pathetic +attempts to capture the role Shivers had appropriated, to be the practical +party himself, to convict Shivers of idealism. Socialism scandalized him, +outraged, even more than atheism, something within him he held sacred, and he +was greatly annoyed because he was unable adequately to express this feeling. + +"You can't change human nature, Mr. Shivers," Edward would insist in his +precise but ineffectual manner. "We all want property, you would accept a +fortune if it was offered to you, and so should I. Americans will never become +socialists." + +"But look at me, wasn't I born in Meriden, Connecticut? Ain't that Yankee +enough for you?" Thus Mr. Shivers sought blandly to confound him. + +A Yankee Shades of the Pilgrim fathers, of seven, generations of Bumpuses! A +Yankee who used his hands in that way, a Yankee with a nose like that, a Yankee +with a bald swathe down the middle of his crown and bunches of black, moth- +eaten hair on either side! But Edward, too polite to descend to personalities, +was silent.... + +In brief, this very politeness of Edward's, which his ancestors would have +scorned, this consideration and lack of self-assertion made him the favourite +prey of the many "characters" in Fillmore Street whose sanity had been +disturbed by pressure from above, in whose systems had lodged the germs of +those exotic social doctrines floating so freely in the air of our modern +industrial communities .... Chester Glenn remains for a passing mention. A +Yankee of Yankees, this, born on a New Hampshire farm, and to the ordinary +traveller on the Wigmore branch of the railroad just a good-natured, round- +faced, tobacco-chewing brakeman who would take a seat beside ladies of his +acquaintance aid make himself agreeable until it was time to rise and bawl out, +in the approved manner of his profession, the name of the next station. +Fillmore Street knew that the flat visored cap which his corporation compelled +him to wear covered a brain into which had penetrated the maggot of the Single +Tax. When he encountered Mr. Shivers or Auermann the talk became coruscating.. + +Eda Rawle, Janet's solitary friend of these days, must also be mentioned, +though the friendship was merely an episode in Janet's life. Their first +meeting was at Grady's quick-lunch counter in Faber Street, which they both +frequented at one time, and the fact that each had ordered a ham sandwich, a +cup of coffee, and a confection--new to Grady's--known as a Napoleon had led to +conversation. + +Eda, of course, was the aggressor; she was irresistibly drawn, she would not be +repulsed. A stenographer in the Wessex National Bank, she boarded with a Welsh +family in Spruce Street; matter-of-fact, plodding, commonplace, resembling--as +Janet thought--a horse, possessing, indeed many of the noble qualities of that +animal, she might have been thought the last person in the world to discern and +appreciate in Janet the hidden elements of a mysterious fire. In appearance +Miss Rawle was of a type not infrequent in Anglo-Saxon lands, strikingly +blonde, with high malar bones, white eyelashes, and eyes of a metallic blue, +cheeks of an amazing elasticity that worked rather painfully as she talked or +smiled, drawing back inadequate lips, revealing long, white teeth and vivid +gums. It was the craving in her for romance Janet assuaged; Eda's was the love +content to pour out, that demands little. She was capable of immolation. +Janet was by no means ungrateful for the warmth of such affection, though in +moments conscious of a certain perplexity and sadness because she was able to +give such a meagre return for the wealth of its offering. + +In other moments, when the world seemed all disorder and chaos,--as Mr. Shivers +described it,--or when she felt within her, like demons, those inexpressible +longings and desires, leaping and straining, pulling her, almost irresistibly, +she knew not whither, Eda shone forth like a light in the darkness, like the +beacon of a refuge and a shelter. Eda had faith in her, even when Janet had +lost faith in herself: she went to Eda in the same spirit that Marguerite went +to church; though she, Janet, more resembled Faust, being--save in these hours +of lowered vitality--of the forth-faring kind .... Unable to confess the need +that drove her, she arrived in Eda's little bedroom to be taken into Eda's +arms. Janet was immeasurably the stronger of the two, but Eda possessed the +masculine trait of protectiveness, the universe never bothered her, she was one +of those persons--called fortunate--to whom the orthodox Christian virtues come +as naturally as sun or air. Passion, when sanctified by matrimony, was her +ideal, and now it was always in terms of Janet she dreamed of it, having read +about it in volumes her friend would not touch, and never +having experienced deeply its discomforts. Sanctified or unsanctified, Janet +regarded it with terror, and whenever Eda innocently broached the subject she +recoiled. Once Eda exclaimed:-- + +"When you do fall in love, Janet, you must tell me all about it, every word!" + +Janet blushed hotly, and was silent. In Eda's mind such an affair was a kind +of glorified fireworks ending in a cluster of stars, in Janet's a volcanic +eruption to turn the world red. Such was the difference between them. + +Their dissipations together consisted of "sundaes" at a drug-store, or +sometimes of movie shows at the Star or the Alhambra. Stereotyped on Eda's +face during the legitimately tender passages of these dramas was an expression +of rapture, a smile made peculiarly infatuate by that vertical line in her +cheeks, that inadequacy of lip and preponderance of white teeth and red gums. +It irritated, almost infuriated Janet, to whom it appeared as the logical +reflection of what was passing on the screen; she averted her glance from both, +staring into her lap, filled with shame that the relation between the sexes +should be thus exposed to public gaze, parodied, sentimentalized, degraded.... +There were, however, marvels to stir her, strange landscapes, cities, seas, and +ships,--once a fire in the forest of a western reserve with gigantic tongues of +orange flame leaping from tree to tree. The movies brought the world to +Hampton, the great world into which she longed to fare, brought the world to +her! Remote mountain hamlets from Japan, minarets and muezzins from the +Orient, pyramids from Egypt, domes from Moscow resembling gilded beets turned +upside down; grey houses of parliament by the Thames, the Tower of London, the +Palaces of Potsdam, the Tai Mahal. Strange lands indeed, and stranger peoples! +booted Russians in blouses, naked Equatorial savages tattooed and amazingly +adorned, soldiers and sailors, presidents, princes and emperors brought into +such startling proximity one could easily imagine one's self exchanging the +time of day! Incredible to Janet how the audiences, how even Eda accepted with +American complacency what were to her never-ending miracles; the yearning to +see more, to know more, became acute, like a pain, but even as she sought to +devour these scenes, to drink in every detail, with tantalizing swiftness they +were whisked away. They were peepholes in the walls of her prison; and at +night she often charmed herself to sleep with remembered visions of wide, +empty, treeshaded terraces reserved for kings. + +But Eda, however complacent her interest in the scenes themselves, was thrilled +to the marrow by their effect on Janet, who was her medium. Emerging from the +vestibule of the theatre, Janet seemed not to see the slushy street, her eyes +shone with a silver light like that of a mountain lake in a stormy sunset. And +they walked in silence until Janet would exclaim: + +"Oh Eda, wouldn't you love to travel!" + +Thus Eda Rawle was brought in contact with values she herself was powerless to +detect, and which did not become values until they had passed through Janet. +One "educative" reel they had seen had begun with scenes in a lumber camp high +in the mountains of Galicia, where grow forests of the priceless pine that +becomes, after years of drying and seasoning, the sounding board of the +Stradivarius and the harp. Even then it must respond to a Player. Eda, though +failing to apply this poetic parallel, when alone in her little room in the +Welsh boarding-house often indulged in an ecstasy of speculation as to that +man, hidden in the mists of the future, whose destiny it would be to awaken her +friend. Hampton did not contain him,--of this she was sure; and in her efforts +to visualize him she had recourse to the movies, seeking him amongst that +brilliant company of personages who stood so haughtily or walked so +indifferently across the ephemeral brightness of the screen. + +By virtue of these marvels of the movies Hampton ugly and sordid Hampton! -- +actually began for Janet to take on a romantic tinge. Were not the strange +peoples of the earth flocking to Hampton? She saw them arriving +at the station, straight from Ellis Island, bewildered, ticketed like dumb +animals, the women draped in the soft, exotic colours many of them were +presently to exchange for the cheap and gaudy apparel of Faber Street. She +sought to summon up in her mind the glimpses she had had of the wonderful lands +from which they had come, to imagine their lives in that earlier environment. +Sometimes she wandered, alone or with Eda, through the various quarters of the +city. Each quarter had a flavour of its own, a synthetic flavour belonging +neither to the old nor to the new, yet partaking of both: a difference in +atmosphere to which Janet was keenly sensitive. In the German quarter, to the +north, one felt a sort of ornamental bleakness--if the expression may be +permitted: the tenements here were clean and not too crowded, the scroll-work +on their superimposed porches, like that decorating the Turnverein and the stem +Lutheran Church, was eloquent of a Teutonic inheritance: The Belgians were to +the west, beyond the base-ball park and the car barns, their grey houses +scattered among new streets beside the scarred and frowning face of Torrey's +hill. Almost under the hill itself, which threatened to roll down on it, and +facing a bottomless, muddy street, was the quaint little building giving the +note of foreign thrift, of socialism and shrewdness, of joie de vivre to the +settlement, the FrancoBelgian co-operative store, with its salle de reunion +above and a stage for amateur theatricals. Standing in the mud outside, Janet +would gaze through the tiny windows in the stucco wall at the baskets prepared +for each household laid in neat rows beside the counter; at the old man with +the watery blue eyes and lacing of red in his withered cheeks who spoke no +English, whose duty it was to distribute the baskets to the women and children +as they called. + +Turning eastward again, one came to Dey Street, in the heart of Hampton, where +Hibernian Hall stood alone and grim, sole testimony of the departed Hibernian +glories of a district where the present Irish rulers of the city had once lived +and gossiped and fought in the days when the mill bells had roused the +boarding-house keepers at half past four of a winter morning. Beside the hall +was a corner lot, heaped high with hills of ashes and rubbish like the +vomitings of some filthy volcano; the unsightliness of which was half concealed +by huge signs announcing the merits of chewing gums, tobaccos, and cereals. +But why had the departure of the Irish, the coming of the Syrians made Dey +Street dark, narrow, mysterious, oriental? changed the very aspect of its +architecture? Was it the coffee-houses? One of these, in front of which Janet +liked to linger, was set weirdly into an old New England cottage, and had, +apparently, fathomless depths. In summer the whole front of it lay open to the +street, and here all day long, beside the table where the charcoal squares were +set to dry, could be seen saffron-coloured Armenians absorbed in a Turkish game +played on a backgammon board, their gentleness and that of the loiterers +looking on in strange contrast with their hawk-like profiles and burning eyes. +Behind this group, in the half light of the middle interior, could be discerned +an American soda-water fountain of a bygone fashion, on its marble counter +oddly shaped bottles containing rose and violet syrups; there was a bottle- +shaped stove, and on the walls, in gilt frames, pictures evidently dating from +the period in American art that flourished when Franklin Pierce was President; +and there was an array of marble topped tables extending far back into the +shadows. Behind the fountain was a sort of cupboard--suggestive of the Arabian +Nights, which Janet had never read--from which, occasionally, the fat +proprietor emerged bearing Turkish coffee or long Turkish pipes. + +When not thus occupied the proprietor carried a baby. The street swarmed with +babies, and mothers nursed them on the door-steps. And in this teeming, +prolific street one could scarcely move without stepping on a fat, almond eyed +child, though some, indeed, were wheeled; wheeled in all sorts of queer +contrivances by one another, by fathers with ragged black moustaches and eagle +noses who, to the despair of mill superintendents, had decided in the morning +that three days' wages would since to support their families for the week .... +In the midst of the throng might be seen occasionally the stout and comfortable +and not too immaculate figure of a shovel bearded Syrian priest, in a frock +coat and square-topped "Derby" hat, sailing along serenely, heedless of the +children who scattered out of his path. + +Nearby was the quarter of the Canadian French, scarcely now to be called +foreigners, though still somewhat reminiscent of the cramped little towns in +the northern wilderness of water and forest. On one corner stood almost +invariably a "Pharmacie Francaise"; the signs were in French, and the elders +spoke the patois. These, despite the mill pallor, retained in their faces, in +their eyes, a suggestion of the outdoor look of their ancestors, the coureurs +des bois, but the children spoke English, and the young men, as they played +baseball in the street or in the corner lots might be heard shouting out +derisively the cry of the section hands so familiar in mill cities, "Doff, you +beggars you, doff!" + +Occasionally the two girls strayed into that wide thoroughfare not far from the +canal, known by the classic name of Hawthorne, which the Italians had +appropriated to themselves. This street, too, in spite of the telegraph poles +flaunting crude arms in front of its windows, in spite of the trolley running +down its middle, had acquired a character, a unity all its own, a warmth and +picturesqueness that in the lingering light of summer evenings assumed an +indefinable significance. It was not Italy, but it was something--something +proclaimed in the ornate, leaning lines of the pillared balconies of the yellow +tenement on the second block, in the stone-vaulted entrance of the low house +next door, in fantastically coloured walls, in curtained windows out of which +leaned swarthy, earringed women. Blocking the end of the street, in stern +contrast, was the huge Clarendon Mill with its sinister brick pillars running +up the six stories between the glass. Here likewise the sidewalks overflowed +with children, large-headed, with great, lustrous eyes, mute, appealing, the +eyes of cattle. Unlike American children, they never seemed to be playing. +Among the groups of elders gathered for gossip were piratical Calabrians in +sombre clothes, descended from Greek ancestors, once the terrors of the +Adriatic Sea. The women, lingering in the doorways, hemmed in by more +children, were for the most part squat and plump, but once in a while Janet's +glance was caught and held by a strange, sharp beauty worthy of a cameo. + +Opposite the Clarendon Mill on the corner of East Street was a provision store +with stands of fruit and vegetables encroaching on the pavement. Janet's eye +was attracted by a box of olives. + +"Oh Eda," she cried, "do you remember, we saw them being picked--in the movies? +All those old trees on the side of a hill?" + +"Why, that's so," said Eda. "You never would have thought anything'd grow on +those trees." + +The young Italian who kept the store gave them a friendly grin. + +"You lika the olives?" he asked, putting some of the shining black fruit into +their hands. Eda bit one dubiously with her long, white teeth, and giggled. + +"Don't they taste funny!" she exclaimed. + +"Good--very good," he asserted gravely, and it was to Janet he turned, as +though recognizing a discrimination not to be found in her companion. She +nodded affirmatively. The strange taste of the fruit enhanced her sense of +adventure, she tried to imagine herself among the gatherers in the grove; she +glanced at the young man to perceive that he was tall and well formed, with +remarkably expressive eyes almost the colour of the olives themselves. It +surprised her that she liked him, though he was an Italian and a foreigner: a +certain debonnair dignity in him appealed to her--a quality lacking in many of +her own countrymen. + +And she wanted to talk to him about Italy,--only she did not know how to +begin,--when a customer appeared, an Italian woman who conversed with him in +soft, liquid tones that moved her .... + +Sometimes on these walks--especially if the day were grey and sombre--Janet's +sense of romance and adventure deepened, became more poignant, charged with +presage. These feelings, vague and unaccountable, she was utterly unable to +confide to Eda, yet the very fear they inspired was fascinating; a fear and a +hope that some day, in all this Babel of peoples, something would happen! It +was as though the conflicting soul of the city and her own soul were one.... + + + + +CHAPTER III + +Lise was the only member of the Bumpus family who did not find uncongenial such +distractions and companionships as were offered by the civilization that +surrounded them. The Bagatelle she despised; that was slavery--but slavery out +of which she might any day be snatched, like Leila Hawtrey, by a prince +charming who had made a success in life. Success to Lise meant money. +Although what some sentimental sociologists might call a victim of our +civilization, Lise would not have changed it, since it produced not only Lise +herself, but also those fabulous financiers with yachts and motors and town and +country houses she read about in the supplements of the Sunday newspapers. It +contained her purgatory, which she regarded in good conventional fashion as a +mere temporary place of detention, and likewise the heaven toward which she +strained, the dwelling-place of light. In short, her philosophy was that of +the modern, orthodox American, tinged by a somewhat commercialized Sunday +school tradition of an earlier day, and highly approved by the censors of the +movies. The peculiar kind of abstinence once euphemistically known as +"virtue," particularly if it were combined with beauty, never failed of its +reward. Lise, in this sense, was indeed virtuous, and her mirror told her she +was beautiful. Almost anything could happen to such a lady: any day she might +be carried up into heaven by that modern chariot of fire, the motor car, driven +by a celestial chauffeur. + +One man's meat being another's poison, Lise absorbed from the movies an element +by which her sister Janet was repelled. A popular production known as "Leila +of Hawtrey's" contained her creed,--Hawtrey's being a glittering metropolitan +restaurant where men of the world are wont to gather and discuss the stock +market, and Leila a beautiful, blonde and orphaned waitress upon whom several +of the fashionable frequenters had exercised seductive powers in vain. They +lay in wait for her at the side entrance, followed her, while one dissipated +and desperate person, married, and said to move in the most exclusive circles, +sent her an offer of a yearly income in five figures, the note being reproduced +on the screen, and Leila pictured reading it in her frigid hall-bedroom. There +are complications; she is in debt, and the proprietor of Hawtrey's has +threatened to discharge her and in order that the magnitude of the temptation +may be most effectively realized the vision appears of Leila herself, wrapped +in furs, stepping out of a limousine and into an elevator lifting her to an +apartment containing silk curtains, a Canet bed, a French maid, and a +Pomeranian. Virtue totters, but triumphs, being reinforced by two more visions +the first of these portrays Leila, prematurely old, dragging herself along +pavements under the metallic Broadway lights accosting gentlemen in evening +dress; and the second reveals her in the country, kneeling beside a dying +mother's bed, giving her promise to remain true to the Christian teachings of +her childhood. + +And virtue is rewarded, lavishly, as virtue should be, in dollars and cents, in +stocks and bonds, in pearls and diamonds. Popular fancy takes kindly to rough +but honest westerners who have begun life in flannel shirts, who have struck +gold and come to New York with a fortune but despising effeteness; such a one, +tanned by the mountain sun, embarrassed in raiment supplied by a Fifth Avenue +tailor, takes a table one evening at Hawtrey's and of course falls desperately +in love. He means marriage from the first, and his faith in Leila is great +enough to survive what appears to be an almost total eclipse of her virtue. +Through the machinations of the influential villain, and lured by the false +pretence that one of her girl friends is ill, she is enticed into a mysterious +house of a sinister elegance, and apparently irretrievably compromised. The +westerner follows, forces his way through the portals, engages the villain, and +vanquishes him. Leila becomes a Bride. We behold her, at the end, mistress of +one of those magnificent stone mansions with grilled vestibules and negro +butlers into whose sacred precincts we are occasionally, in the movies, +somewhat breathlessly ushered--a long way from Hawtrey's restaurant and a hall- +bedroom. A long way, too, from the Bagatelle and Fillmore Street--but to Lise +a way not impossible, nor even improbable. + +This work of art, conveying the moral that virtue is an economic asset, made a +great impression on Lise. Good Old Testament doctrine, set forth in the Book +of Job itself. And Leila, pictured as holding out for a higher price and +getting it, encouraged Lise to hold out also. Mr. Wiley, in whose company she +had seen this play, and whose likeness filled the plush and silver-plated frame +on her bureau, remained ironically ignorant of the fact that he had paid out +his money to make definite an ambition, an ideal hitherto nebulous in the mind +of the lady whom he adored. Nor did Lise enlighten him, being gifted with a +certain inserutableness. As a matter of fact it had never been her intention +to accept him, but now that she was able concretely to visualize her Lochinvar +of the future, Mr. Whey's lack of qualifications became the more apparent. In +the first place, he had been born in Lowell and had never been west of +Worcester; in the second, his salary was sixteen dollars a week: it is true she +had once fancied the Scottish terrier style of hair-cut abruptly ending in the +rounded line of the shaven neck, but Lochinvar had been close-cropped. Mr. +Wiley, close-cropped, would have resembled a convict. + +Mr. Wiley was in love, there could be no doubt about that, and if he had not +always meant marriage, he meant it now, having reached a state where no folly +seems preposterous. The manner of their meeting had had just the adventurous +and romantic touch that Lise liked, one of her favourite amusements in the +intervals between "steadies" being to walk up and down Faber Street of an +evening after supper, arm in arm with two or three other young ladies, all +chewing gum, wheeling into store windows and wheeling out again, pretending the +utmost indifference to melting glances cast in their direction. An exciting +sport, though incomprehensible to masculine intelligence. It was a principle +with Lise to pay no attention to any young man who was not "presented," those +venturing to approach her with the ready formula "Haven't we met before?" being +instantly congealed. She was strict as to etiquette. But Mr. Wiley, it +seemed, could claim acquaintance with Miss Schuler, one of the ladies to whose +arm Lise's was linked, and he had the further advantage of appearing in a large +and seductive touring car, painted green, with an eagle poised above the hood +and its name, Wizard, in a handwriting rounded and bold, written in nickel +across the radiator. He greeted Miss Schuler effusively, but his eye was on +Lise from the first, and it was she he took with, him in the front seat, +indifferent to the giggling behind. Ever since then Lise had had a motor at +her disposal, and on Sundays they took long "joy rides" beyond the borders of +the state. But it must not be imagined that Mr. Whey was the proprietor of the +vehicle; nor was he a chauffeur,--her American pride would not have permitted +her to keep company with a chauffeur: he was the demonstrator for the Wizard, +something of a wizard himself, as Lise had to admit when they whizzed over the +tarvia of the Riverside Boulevard at fifty or sixty miles an hour with the +miner cut out--a favourite diversion of Mr. Whey's, who did not feel he was +going unless he was accompanied by a noise like that of a mitrailleuse in +action. Lise, experiencing a ravishing terror, hung on to her hat with one +hand and to Mr. Wiley with the other, her code permitting this; permitting him +also, occasionally, when they found themselves in tenebrous portions of +Slattery's Riverside Park, to put his arm around her waist and kiss her. So +much did Lise's virtue allow, and no more, the result being that he existed in +a tantalizing state of hope and excitement most detrimental to the nerves. + +He never lost, however,--in public at least, or before Lise's family,--the fine +careless, jaunty air of the demonstrator, of the free-lance for whom seventy +miles an hour has no terrors; the automobile, apparently, like the ship, sets a +stamp upon its votaries. No Elizabethan buccaneer swooping down on defenceless +coasts ever exceeded in audacity Mr. Wiley's invasion of quiet Fillmore Street. +He would draw up with an ear-splitting screaming of brakes in front of the +clay-yellow house, and sometimes the muffler, as though unable to repress its +approval of the performance, would let out a belated pop that never failed to +jar the innermost being of Auermann, who had been shot at, or rather shot past, +by an Italian, and knew what it was. He hated automobiles, he hated Mr. Wiley. + +"Vat you do?" he would demand, glaring. + +And Mr. Wiley would laugh insolently. + +"You think I done it, do you, Dutchie--huh!" + +He would saunter past, up the stairs, and into the Bumpus dining-room, often +before the family had finished their evening meal. Lise alone made him +welcome, albeit demurely; but Mr. Wiley, not having sensibilities, was proof +against Hannah's coldness and Janet's hostility. With unerring instinct he +singled out Edward as his victim. + +"How's Mr. Bumpus this evening?" he would genially inquire. + +Edward invariably assured Mr. Wiley that he was well, invariably took a drink +of coffee to emphasize the fact, as though the act of lifting his cup had in it +some magic to ward off the contempt of his wife and elder daughter. + +"Well, I've got it pretty straight that the Arundel's going to run nights, +starting next week," Lise's suitor would continue. + +And to save his soul Edward could not refrain from answering, "You don't say +so!" He feigned interest in the information that the Hampton Ball Team, owing +to an unsatisfactory season, was to change managers next year. Mr. Wiley +possessed the gift of gathering recondite bits of news, he had confidence in +his topics and in his manner of dealing with them; and Edward, pretending to be +entertained, went so far in his politeness as to ask Mr. Wiley if he had had +supper. + +"I don't care if I sample one of Mis' Bumpus's doughnuts," Mr. Wiley would +reply politely, reaching out a large hand that gave evidence, in spite of +Sapolio, of an intimacy with grease cups and splash pans. "I guess there's +nobody in this burg can make doughnuts to beat yours, Miss Bumpus." + +If she had only known which doughnut he would take; Hannah sometimes thought +she might have been capable of putting arsenic in it. Her icy silence did not +detract from the delights of his gestation. + +Occasionally, somewhat to Edward's alarm, Hannah demanded: "Where are you +taking Lise this evening?" + +Mr. Wiley's wisdom led him to be vague. + +Oh, just for a little spin up the boulevard. Maybe we'll pick up Ella Schuler +and one or two other young ladies." + +Hannah and Janet knew very well he had no intention of doing this, and Hannah +did not attempt to conceal her incredulity. As a matter of fact, Lise +sometimes did insist on a "party." + +"I want you should bring her back by ten o'clock. That's late enough for a +girl who works to be out. It's late enough for any girl." + +"Sure, Mis' Bumpus," Wiley would respond easily. + +Hannah chafed because she had no power to enforce this, because Mr. Wiley and +Lise understood she had no power. Lise went to put on her hat; if she skimped +her toilet in the morning, she made up for it in the evening when she came home +from the store, and was often late for supper. In the meantime, while Lise was +in the bedroom adding these last touches, Edward would contemptibly continue +the conversation, fingering the Evening Banner as it lay in his lap, while Mr. +Wiley helped himself boldly to another doughnut, taking--as Janet observed-- +elaborate precautions to spill none of the crumbs on a brown suit, supposed to +be the last creation in male attire. Behind a plate glass window in Faber +Street, belonging to a firm of "custom" tailors whose stores had invaded every +important city in the country, and who made clothes for "college" men, only the +week before Mr. Wiley had seen this same suit artistically folded, combined +with a coloured shirt, brown socks, and tie and "torture" collar--lures for the +discriminating. Owing to certain expenses connected with Lise, he had been +unable to acquire the shirt and the tie, but he had bought the suit in the hope +and belief that she would find him irresistible therein. It pleased him, too, +to be taken for a "college" man, and on beholding in the mirror his broadened +shoulders and diminished waist he was quite convinced his money had not been +spent in vain; that strange young ladies--to whom, despite his infatuation for +the younger Miss Bumpus, he was not wholly indifferent--would mistake him for +an undergraduate of Harvard,--an imposition concerning which he had no +scruples. But Lise, though shaken, had not capitulated..... + +When she returned to the dining-room, arrayed in her own finery, demure, +triumphant, and had carried off Mr. Whey there would ensue an interval of +silence broken only by the clattering together of the dishes Hannah snatched +up. + +"I guess he's the kind of son-in-law would suit you," she threw over her +shoulder once to Edward. + +"Why?" he inquired, letting down his newspaper nervously. + +"Well, you seem to favour him, to make things as pleasant for him as you can." + +Edward would grow warm with a sense of injustice, the inference being that he +was to blame for Mr. Wiley; if he had been a different kind of father another +sort of suitor would be courting Lise. + +"I have to be civil," he protested. He pronounced that, word "civil" +exquisitely, giving equal value to both syllables. + +"Civil!" Hannah scoffed, as she left the room; and to Janet, who had followed +her into the kitchen, she added: "That's the trouble with your father, he's +always be'n a little too civil. Edward Bumpus is just as simple as a child, +he's afraid of offending folks' feelings .... Think of being polite to that +Whey!" In those two words Hannah announced eloquently her utter condemnation +of the demonstrator of the Wizard. It was characteristic of her, however, when +she went back for another load of dishes and perceived that Edward was only +pretending to read his Banner, to attempt to ease her husband's feelings. She +thought it queer because she was still fond of Edward Bumpus, after all he had +"brought on her." + +"It's Lise," she said, as though speaking to Janet, "she attracts 'em. +Sometimes I just can't get used to it that she's my daughter. I don't know who +she takes after. She's not like any of my kin, nor any of the Bumpuses." + +"What can you do?" asked Edward. "You can't order him out of the house. It's +better for him to come here. And you can't stop Lise from going with him-- +she's earning her own money...." + +They had talked over the predicament before, and always came to the same +impasse. In the privacy of the kitchen Hannah paused suddenly in her energetic +rubbing of a plate and with supreme courage uttered a question. + +"Janet, do you calculate he means anything wrong?" + +"I don't know what he means," Janet replied, unwilling to give Mr. Wiley credit +for anything, "but I know this, that Lise is too smart to let him take +advantage of her." + +Hannah ruminated. Cleverness as the modern substitute for feminine virtue did +not appeal to her, but she let it pass. She was in no mood to quarrel with any +quality that would ward off disgrace. + +"I don't know what to make of Lise--she don't appear to have any +principles...." + +If the Wiley affair lasted longer than those preceding it, this was because +former suitors had not commanded automobiles. When Mr. Wiley lost his +automobile he lost his luck--if it may be called such. One April evening, +after a stroll with Eda, Janet reached home about nine o'clock to find Lise +already in their room, to remark upon the absence of Mr. Wiley's picture from +the frame. + +"I'm through with him," Lise declared briefly, tugging at her hair. + +"Through with him?" Janet repeated. + +Lise paused in her labours and looked at her sister steadily. "I handed him +the mit--do you get me?" + +"But why?" + +"Why? I was sick of him--ain't that enough? And then he got mixed up with a +Glendale trolley and smashed his radiator, and the Wizard people sacked him. I +always told him he was too fly. It's lucky for him I wasn't in the car." + +"It's lucky for you," said Janet. Presently she inquired curiously: "Aren't +you sorry?" + +"Nix." Lise shook her head, which was now bowed, her face hidden by hair. +"Didn't I tell you I was sick of him? But he sure was some spender," she +added, as though in justice bound to give him his due. + +Janet was shocked by the ruthlessness of it, for Lise appeared relieved, almost +gay. She handed Janet a box containing five peppermint creams--all that +remained of Mr. Wiley's last gift. + +One morning in the late spring Janet crossed the Warren Street bridge, the +upper of the two spider-like structures to be seen from her office window, +spanning the river beside the great Hampton dam. The day, dedicated to the +memory of heroes fallen in the Civil War, the thirtieth of May, was a legal +holiday. Gradually Janet had acquired a dread of holidays as opportunities +never realized, as intervals that should have been filled with unmitigated +joys, and yet were invariably wasted, usually in walks with Eda Rawle. To-day, +feeling an irresistible longing for freedom, for beauty, for adventure, for +quest and discovery of she knew not what, she avoided Eda, and after gazing +awhile at the sunlight dancing in the white mist below the falls, she walked +on, southward, until she had left behind her the last straggling houses of the +city and found herself on a wide, tarvia road that led, ultimately, to Boston. +So read the sign. + +Great maples, heavy with leaves, stood out against the soft blue of the sky, +and the sunlight poured over everything, bathing the stone walls, the thatches +of the farmhouses, extracting from the copses of stunted pine a pungent, +reviving perfume. Sometimes she stopped to rest on the pine needles, and +walked on again, aimlessly, following the road because it was the easiest way. +There were spring flowers in the farmhouse yards, masses of lilacs whose purple +she drank in eagerly; the air, which had just a tang of New England sharpness, +was filled with tender sounds, the clucking of hens, snatches of the songs of +birds, the rustling of maple leaves in the fitful breeze. A chipmunk ran down +an elm and stood staring at her with beady, inquisitive eyes, motionless save +for bas quivering tail, and she put forth her hand, shyly, beseechingly, as +though he held the secret of life she craved. But he darted away. + +She looked around her unceasingly, at the sky, at the trees, at the flowers and +ferns and fields, at the vireos and thrushes, the robins and tanagers gashing +in and out amidst the foliage, and she was filled with a strange yearning to +expand and expand until she should become a part of all nature, be absorbed +into it, cease to be herself. Never before had she known just that feeling, +that degree of ecstasy mingled with divine discontent .... Occasionally, +intruding faintly upon the countryside peace, she was aware of a distant +humming sound that grew louder and louder until there shot roaring past her an +automobile filled with noisy folk, leaving behind it a suffocating cloud of +dust. Even these intrusions, reminders of the city she had left, were +powerless to destroy her mood, and she began to skip, like a schoolgirl, +pausing once in a while to look around her fearfully, lest she was observed; +and it pleased her to think that she had escaped forever, that she would never +go back: she cried aloud, as she skipped, "I won't go back, I won't go back," +keeping time with her feet until she was out of breath and almost intoxicated, +delirious, casting herself down, her heart beating wildly, on a bank of ferns, +burying her face in them. She had really stopped because a pebble had got into +her shoe, and as she took it out she looked at her bare heel and remarked +ruefully:-- + +"Those twenty-five cent stockings aren't worth buying!" + +Economic problems, however, were powerless to worry her to-day, when the sun +shone and the wind blew and the ferns, washed by the rill running through the +culvert under the road, gave forth a delicious moist odour reminding her of the +flower store where her sister Lise had once been employed. But at length she +arose, and after an hour or more of sauntering the farming landscape was left +behind, the crumbling stone fences were replaced by a well-kept retaining wall +capped by a privet hedge, through which, between stone pillars, a driveway +entered and mounted the shaded slope, turning and twisting until lost to view. +But afar, standing on the distant crest, through the tree trunks and foliage +Janet saw one end of the mansion to which it led, and ventured timidly but +eagerly in among the trees in the hope of satisfying her new-born curiosity. +Try as she would, she never could get any but disappointing and partial +glimpses of a house which, because of the mystery of its setting, fired her +imagination, started her to wondering why it was that some were permitted to +live in the midst of such beauty while she was condemned to spend her days in +Fillmore Street and the prison of the mill. She was not even allowed to look +at it! The thought was like a cloud across the sun. + +However, when she had regained the tarvia road and walked a little way the +shadow suddenly passed, and she stood surprised. The sight of a long common +with its ancient trees in the fullness of glory, dense maples, sturdy oaks, +strong, graceful elms that cast flickering, lacy shadows across the road filled +her with satisfaction, with a sense of peace deepened by the awareness, in the +background, ranged along the common on either side, of stately, dignified +buildings, each in an appropriate frame of foliage. With the essence rather +than the detail of all this her consciousness became steeped; she was naturally +ignorant of the great good fortune of Silliston Academy of having been spared +with one or two exceptions--donations during those artistically lean years of +the nineteenth century when American architecture affected the Gothic, the +Mansard, and the subsequent hybrid. She knew this must be Silliston, the seat +of that famous academy of which she had heard. + +The older school buildings and instructors' houses, most of them white or +creamy yellow, were native Colonial, with tall, graceful chimneys and classic +pillars and delicate balustrades, eloquent at once of the racial inheritance of +the Republic and of a bygone individuality, dignity, and pride. And the modern +architect, of whose work there was an abundance, had graciously and intuitively +held this earlier note and developed it. He was an American, but an American +who had been trained. The result was harmony, life as it should proceed, the +new growing out of the old. And no greater tribute can be paid to Janet Bumpus +than that it pleased her, struck and set exquisitely vibrating within her +responsive chords. For the first time in her adult life she stood in the +presence of tradition, of a tradition inherently if unconsciously the innermost +reality of her being a tradition that miraculously was not dead, since after +all the years it had begun to put forth these vigorous shoots.... + +What Janet chiefly realized was the delicious, contented sense of having come, +visually at least, to the home for which she had longed. But her humour was +that of a child who has strayed, to find its true dwelling place in a region of +beauty hitherto unexplored and unexperienced, tinged, therefore, with +unreality, with mystery,--an effect enhanced by the chance stillness and +emptiness of the place. She wandered up and down the Common, whose vivid green +was starred with golden dandelions; and then, spying the arched and shady +vista of a lane, entered it, bent on new discoveries. It led past one of the +newer buildings, the library--as she read in a carved inscription over the +door--plunged into shade again presently to emerge at a square farmhouse, +ancient and weathered, with a great square chimney thrust out of the very +middle of the ridge-pole,--a landmark left by one of the earliest of +Silliston's settlers. Presiding over it, embracing and protecting it, was a +splendid tree. The place was evidently in process of reconstruction and +repair, the roof had been newly shingled, new frames, with old-fashioned, tiny +panes had been put in the windows; a little garden was being laid out under the +sheltering branches of the tree, and between the lane and the garden, half +finished, was a fence of an original and pleasing design, consisting of pillars +placed at intervals with upright pickets between, the pickets sawed in curves, +making a line that drooped in the middle. Janet did not perceive the workman +engaged in building this fence until the sound of his hammer attracted her +attention. His back was bent, he was absorbed in his task. + +"Are there any stores near here?" she inquired. + +He straightened up. "Why yes," he replied, "come to think of it, I have seen +stores, I'm sure I have." + +Janet laughed; his expression, his manner of speech were so delightfully +whimsical, so in keeping with the spirit of her day, and he seemed to accept +her sudden appearance in the precise make-believe humour she could have wished. +And yet she stood a little struck with timidity, puzzled by the contradictions +he presented of youth and age, of shrewdness, experience and candour, of +gentility and manual toil. He must have been about thirty-five; he was +hatless, and his hair, uncombed but not unkempt, was greying at the temples; +his eyes--which she noticed particularly--were keen yet kindly, the irises +delicately stencilled in a remarkable blue; his speech was colloquial yet +cultivated, his workman's clothes belied his bearing. + +"Yes, there are stores, in the village," he went on, "but isn't it a holiday, +or Sunday--perhaps--or something of the kind?" + +"It's Decoration Day," she reminded him, with deepening surprise. + +"So it is! And all the storekeepers have gone on picnics in their automobiles, +or else they're playing golf. Nobody's working today." + +"But you--aren't you working?" she inquired. + +"Working?" he repeated. "I suppose some people would call it work. I--I +hadn't thought of it in that way." + +"You mean--you like it," Janet was inspired to say. + +"Well, yes," he confessed. "I suppose I do." + +Her cheeks dimpled. If her wonder had increased, her embarrassment had flown, +and he seemed suddenly an old acquaintance. She had, however, profound doubts +now of his being a carpenter. + +"Were you thinking of going shopping?" he asked, and at the very ludicrousness +of the notion she laughed again. She discovered a keen relish for this kind of +humour, but it was new to her experience, and she could not cope with it. + +"Only to buy some crackers, or a sandwich," she replied, and blushed. + +"Oh," he said. "Down in the village, on the corner where the cars stop, is a +restaurant. It's not as good as the Parker House in Boston, I believe, but +they do have sandwiches, yes, and coffee. At least they call it coffee." + +"Oh, thank you," she said. + +"You'd better wait till you try it," he warned her. + +"Oh, I don't mind, I don't want much." And she was impelled to add: "It's such +a beautiful day." + +"It's absurd to get hungry on such a day--absurd," he agreed. + +"Yes, it is," she laughed. "I'm not really hungry, but I haven't time to get +back to Hampton for dinner." Suddenly she grew hot at the thought that he +might suspect her of hinting. "You see, I live in Hampton," she went on +hurriedly, "I'm a stenographer there, in the Chippering Mill, and I was just +out for a walk, and--I came farther than I intended." She had made it worse. + +But he said, "Oh, you came from Hampton!" with an intonation of surprise, of +incredulity even, that soothed and even amused while it did not deceive her. +Not that the superior intelligence of which she had begun to suspect him had +been put to any real test by the discovery of her home, and she was quite sure +her modest suit of blue serge and her $2.99 pongee blouse proclaimed her as a +working girl of the mill city. "I've been to Hampton," he declared, just as +though it were four thousand miles away instead of four. + +"But I've never been here before, to Silliston," she responded in the same +spirit: and she added wistfully, "it must be nice to live in such a beautiful +place as this!" + +"Yes, it is nice," he agreed. "We have our troubles, too,--but it's nice." + +She ventured a second, appraising glance. His head, which he carried a little +flung back, his voice, his easy and confident bearing--all these contradicted +the saw and the hammer, the flannel shirt, open at the neck, the khaki trousers +still bearing the price tag. And curiosity beginning to get the better of her, +she was emboldened to pay a compliment to the fence. If one had to work, it +must be a pleasure to work on things pleasing to the eye--such was her +inference. + +"Why, I'm glad you like it," he said heartily. "I was just hoping some one +would come along here and admire it. Now--what colour would you paint it?" + +"Are you a painter, too?" + +"After a fashion. I'm a sort of man of all work--I thought of painting it +white, with the pillars green." + +"I think that would be pretty," she answered, judicially, after a moment's +thought. "What else can you do?" + +He appeared to be pondering his accomplishments. + +"Well, I can doctor trees," he said, pointing an efficient finger at the +magnificent maple sheltering, like a guardian deity, the old farmhouse. "I put +in those patches." + +"They're cement," she exclaimed. "I never heard of putting cement in trees." + +"They don't seem to mind." + +"Are the holes very deep?" + +"Pretty deep." + +"But I should think the tree would be dead." + +"Well, you see the life of a tree is right under the bark. If you can keep the +outer covering intact, the tree will live." + +"Why did you let the holes get so deep?" + +"I've just come here. The house was like the tree the shingles all rotten, but +the beams were sound. Those beams were hewn out of the forest two hundred and +fifty years ago." + +"Gracious!" said Janet. "And how old is the tree?" + +"I should say about a hundred. I suppose it wouldn't care to admit it." + +"How do you know?" she inquired. + +"Oh, I'm very intimate with trees. I find out their secrets." + +"It's your house!" she exclaimed, somewhat appalled by the discovery. + +"Yes--yes it is," he answered, looking around at it and then in an +indescribably comical manner down at his clothes. His gesture, his expression +implied that her mistake was a most natural one. + +"Excuse me, I thought--" she began, blushing hotly, yet wanting to laugh again. + +"I don't blame you--why shouldn't you?" he interrupted her. "I haven't got +used to it yet, and there is something amusing about--my owning a house. When +the parlour's finished I'll have to wear a stiff collar, I suppose, in order to +live up to it." + +Her laughter broke forth, and she tried to imagine him in a stiff collar.... +But she was more perplexed than ever. She stood balancing on one foot, poised +for departure. + +"I ought to be going," she said, as though she had been paying him a formal +visit. + +"Don't hurry," he protested cordially. "Why hurry back to Hampton?" + +"I never want to go back!" she cried with a vehemence that caused him to +contemplate her anew, suddenly revealing the intense, passionate quality which +had so disturbed Mr. Ditmar. She stood transformed. "I hate it!" she +declared. "It's so ugly, I never want to see it again." + +"Yes, it is ugly," he confessed. "Since you admit it, I don't mind saying so. +But it's interesting, in a way." Though his humorous moods had delighted her, +she felt subtly flattered because he had grown more serious. + +"It is interesting," she agreed. She was almost impelled to tell him why, in +her excursions to the various quarters, she had found Hampton interesting, but +a shyness born of respect for the store of knowledge she divined in him +restrained her. She was curious to know what this man saw in Hampton. His +opinion would be worth something. Unlike her neighbours in Fillmore Street, he +was not what her sister Lise would call "nutty"; he had an air of fine sanity, +of freedom, of detachment,--though the word did not occur to her; he betrayed +no bitter sense of injustice, and his beliefs were uncoloured by the obsession +of a single panacea. "Why do you think it's interesting?" she demanded. + +"Well, I'm always expecting to hear that it's blown up. It reminds me of +nitro-glycerine," he added, smiling. + +She repeated the word. + +"An explosive, you know--they put it in dynamite. They say a man once made it +by accident, and locked up his laboratory and ran home--and never went back." + +"I know what you mean!" she cried, her eyes alight with excitement. "All those +foreigners! I've felt it that something would happen, some day, it frightened +me, and yet I wished that something would happen. Only, I never would have +thought of--nitro-glycerine." + +She was unaware of the added interest in his regard. But he answered lightly +enough:-- + +"Oh, not only the foreigners. Human chemicals--you can't play with human +chemicals any more than you can play with real ones--you've got to know +something about chemistry." + +This remark was beyond her depth. + +"Who is playing with them?" she asked. + +"Everybody--no one in particular. Nobody seems to know much about them, yet," +he replied, and seemed disinclined to pursue the subject. A robin with a worm +in its bill was hopping across the grass; he whistled softly, the bird stopped, +cocking its head and regarding them. Suddenly, in conflict with her desire to +remain indefinitely talking with this strange man, Janet felt an intense +impulse to leave. She could bear the conversation no longer, she might burst +into tears--such was the extraordinary effect he had produced on her. + +"I must go,--I'm ever so much obliged to you," she said. + +"Drop in again," he said, as he took her trembling hand .... When she had +walked a little way she looked back over her shoulder to see him leaning idly +against the post, gazing after her, and waving his hammer in friendly fashion. + +For a while her feet fairly flew, and her heart beat tumultuously, keeping time +with her racing thoughts. She walked about the Common, seeing nothing, paying +no attention to the passers-by, who glanced at her curiously. But at length as +she grew calmer the needs of a youthful and vigorous body became imperative, +and realizing suddenly that she was tired and hungry, sought and found the +little restaurant in the village below. She journeyed back to Hampton +pondering what this man had said to her; speculating, rather breathlessly, +whether he had been impelled to conversation by a natural kindness and +courtesy, or whether he really had discovered something in her worthy of +addressing, as he implied. Resentment burned in her breast, she became +suddenly blinded by tears: she might never see him again, and if only she were +"educated" she might know him, become his friend. Even in this desire she was +not conventional, and in the few moments of their contact he had developed +rather than transformed what she meant by "education." She thought of it not +as knowledge reeking of books and schools, but as the acquirement of the +freemasonry which he so evidently possessed, existence on terms of +understanding, confidence, and freedom with nature; as having the world open up +to one like a flower filled with colour and life. She thought of the robin, of +the tree whose secrets he had learned, of a mental range including even that +medley of human beings amongst whom she lived. And the fact that something of +his meaning had eluded her grasp made her rebel all the more bitterly against +the lack of a greater knowledge .... + +Often during the weeks that followed he dwelt in her mind as she sat at her +desk and stared out across the river, and several times that summer she started +to walk to Silliston. But always she turned back. Perhaps she feared to break +the charm of that memory .... + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Our American climate is notoriously capricious. Even as Janet trudged homeward +on that Memorial Day afternoon from her Cinderella-like adventure in Silliston +the sun grew hot, the air lost its tonic, becoming moist and tepid, white +clouds with dark edges were piled up in the western sky. The automobiles of +the holiday makers swarmed ceaselessly over the tarvia. Valiantly as she +strove to cling to her dream, remorseless reality was at work dragging her +back, reclaiming her; excitement and physical exercise drained her vitality, +her feet were sore, sadness invaded her as she came in view of the ragged +outline of the city she had left so joyfully in the morning. Summer, that most +depressing of seasons in an environment of drab houses and grey pavements, was +at hand, listless householders and their families were already, seeking refuge +on front steps she passed on her way to Fillmore Street. + +It was about half past five when she arrived. Lise, her waist removed, was +seated in a rocking chair at the window overlooking the littered yards and the +backs of the tenements on Rutger Street. And Lise, despite the heaviness of +the air, was dreaming. Of such delicate texture was the fabric of Janet's +dreams that not only sordid reality, but contact with other dreams of a +different nature, such as her sister's, often sufficed to dissolve them. She +resented, for instance, the presence in the plush oval of Mr. Eustace +Arlington; the movie star whose likeness had replaced Mr. Wiley's, and who had +played the part of the western hero in "Leila of Hawtrey's." With his burning +eyes and sensual face betraying the puffiness that comes from over-indulgence, +he was not Janet's ideal of a hero, western or otherwise. And now Lise was +holding a newspaper: not the Banner, whose provinciality she scorned, but a +popular Boston sheet to be had for a cent, printed at ten in the morning and +labelled "Three O'clock Edition," with huge red headlines stretched across the +top of the page:-- + + "JURY FINDS IN MISS NEALY'S FAVOR." + +As Janet entered Lise looked up and exclaimed:-- + +"Say, that Nealy girl's won out!" + +"Who is she?" Janet inquired listlessly. + +"You are from the country, all right," was her sister's rejoinder. "I would +have bet there wasn't a Reub in the state that wasn't wise to the Ferris breach +of promise case, and here you blow in after the show's over and want to know +who Nelly Nealy is. If that doesn't beat the band!" + +"This woman sued a man named Ferris--is that it?" + +"A man named Ferris!" Lise repeated, with the air of being appalled by her +sister's ignorance. "I guess you never heard of Ferris, either--the biggest +copper man in Boston. He could buy Hampton, and never feel it, and they say +his house in Brighton cost half a million dollars. Nelly Nealy put her damages +at one hundred and fifty thousand and stung him for seventy five. I wish I'd +been in court when that jury came back! There's her picture." + +To Janet, especially in the mood of reaction in which she found herself that +evening, Lise's intense excitement, passionate partisanship and approval of +Miss Nealy were incomprehensible, repellent. However, she took the sheet, +gazing at the image of the lady who, recently an obscure +stenographer, had suddenly leaped into fame and become a "headliner," the +envied of thousands of working girls all over New England. Miss Nealy, in +spite of the "glare of publicity" she deplored, had borne up admirably under +the strain, and evidently had been able to consume three meals a day and give +some thought to her costumes. Her smile under the picture hat was coquettish, +if not bold. The special article, signed by a lady reporter whose sympathies +were by no means concealed and whose talents were given free rein, related how +the white-haired mother had wept tears of joy; how Miss Nealy herself had been +awhile too overcome to speak, and then had recovered sufficiently to express +her gratitude to the twelve gentlemen who had vindicated the honour of American +womanhood. Mr. Ferris, she reiterated, was a brute; never as long as she lived +would she be able to forget how she had loved and believed in him, and how, +when at length she unwillingly became convinces of his perfidy, she had been +"prostrated," unable to support her old mother. She had not, naturally, yet +decided how she would invest her fortune; as for going on the stage, that had +been suggested, but she had made no plans. "Scores of women sympathizers" had +escorted her to a waiting automobile.... + +Janet, impelled by the fascination akin to disgust, read thus far, and flinging +the newspaper on the floor, began to tidy herself for supper. But presently, +when she heard Lise sigh, she could contain herself no longer. + +"I don't see how you can read such stuff as that," she exclaimed. "It's--it's +horrible." + +"Horrible?" Lise repeated. + +Janet swung round from the washbasin, her hands dripping. + +"Instead of getting seventy five thousand dollars she ought to be tarred and +feathered. She's nothing but a blackmailer." + + +Lise, aroused from her visions, demanded vehemently "Ain't he a millionaire?" + +"What difference does that make?" Janet retorted. "And you can't tell me she +didn't know what she was up to all along--with that face." + +"I'd have sued him, all right," declared Lise, defiantly. + +"Then you'd be a blackmailer, too. I'd sooner scrub floors, I'd sooner starve +than do such a thing--take money for my affections. In the first place, I'd +have more pride, and in the second place, if I really loved a man, seventy five +thousand or seventy five million dollars wouldn't help me any. Where do you +get such ideas? Decent people don't have them." + +Janet turned to the basin again and began rubbing her face vigorously--ceasing +for an instance to make sure of the identity of a sound reaching her ears +despite the splashing of water. Lise was sobbing. Janet dried her face and +hands, arranged her hair, and sat down on the windowsill; the scorn and anger, +which had been so intense as completely to possess her, melting into a pity and +contempt not unmixed with bewilderment. Ordinarily Lise was hard, impervious +to such reproaches, holding her own in the passionate quarrels that +occasionally took place between them yet there were times, such as this, when +her resistance broke down unexpectedly, and she lost all self control. She +rocked to and fro in the chair, her shoulders bowed, her face hidden in her +hands. Janet reached out and touched her. + +"Don't be silly," she began, rather sharply, "just because I said it was a +disgrace to have such ideas. Well, it is." + +"I'm not silly," said Lise. "I'm sick of that job at the Bagatelle " sob-- +"there's nothing in it--I'm going to quit--I wish to God I was dead! Standing +on your feet all day till you're wore out for six dollars a week--what's there +in it?"--sob--"With that guy Walters who walks the floor never lettin' up on +you. He come up to me yesterday and says, `I didn't know you was near sighted, +Miss Bumpus' just because there was a customer Annie Hatch was too lazy to wait +on"--sob--"That's his line of dope--thinks he's sarcastic--and he's sweet on +Annie. Tomorrow I'm going to tell him to go to hell. I'm through I'm sick of +it, I tell you"--sob--"I'd rather be dead than slave like that for six +dollars." + +"Where are you going?" asked Janet. + +"I don't know--I don't care. What's the difference? any place'd be better than +this." For awhile she continued to cry on a ridiculously high, though subdued, +whining note, her breath catching at intervals. A feeling of helplessness, of +utter desolation crept over Janet; powerless to comfort herself, how could she +comfort her sister? She glanced around the familiar, sordid room, at the +magazine pages against the faded wall-paper, at the littered bureau and the +littered bed, over which Lise's clothes were flung. It was hot and close even +now, in summer it would be stifling. Suddenly a flash of sympathy revealed to +her a glimpse of the truth that Lise, too, after her own nature, sought beauty +and freedom! Never did she come as near comprehending Lise as in such moments +as this, and when, on dark winter mornings, her sister clung to her, terrified +by the siren. Lise was a child, and the thought that she, Janet, was powerless +to change her was a part of the tragic tenderness. What would become of Lise? +And what would become of her, Janet?... So she clung, desperately, to her +sister's hand until at last Lise roused herself, her hair awry, her face +puckered and wet with tears and perspiration. + +"I can't stand it any more--I've just got to go away anywhere," she said, and +the cry found an echo in Janet's heart.... + +But the next morning Lise went back to the Bagatelle, and Janet to the mill.... + +The fact that Lise's love affairs had not been prospering undoubtedly had +something to do with the fit of depression into which she had fallen that +evening. A month or so before she had acquired another beau. It was +understood by Lise's friends and Lise's family, though not by the gentleman +himself, that his position was only temporary or at most probationary; he had +not even succeeded to the rights, title, and privileges of the late Mr. Wiley, +though occupying a higher position in the social scale--being the agent of a +patent lawn sprinkler with an office in Faber Street. + +"Stick to him and you'll wear diamonds--that's what he tries to put across," +was Lise's comment on Mr. Frear's method, and thus Janet gained the impression +that her sister's feelings were not deeply involved. "If I thought he'd make +good with the sprinkler I might talk business. But say, he's one of those +ginks that's always tryin' to beat the bank. He's never done a day's work in +his life. Last year he was passing around Foley's magazine, and before that he +was with the race track that went out of business because the ministers got +nutty over it. Well, he may win out," she added reflectively, "those guys +sometimes do put the game on the blink. He sure is a good spender when the +orders come in, with a line of talk to make you holler for mercy." + +Mr. Frear's "line of talk" came wholly, astonishingly, from one side of his +mouth--the left side. As a muscular feat it was a triumph. A deaf person on +his right side would not have known he was speaking. The effect was secretive, +extraordinarily confidential; enabling him to sell sprinklers, it ought to have +helped him to make love, so distinctly personal was it, implying as it did that +the individual addressed was alone of all the world worthy of consideration. +Among his friends it was regarded as an accomplishment, but Lise was critical, +especially since he did not look into one's eyes, but gazed off into space, as +though he weren't talking at all. + +She had once inquired if the right side of his face was paralyzed. + +She permitted him to take her, however, to Gruber's Cafe, to the movies, and +one or two select dance halls, and to Slattery's Riverside Park, where one +evening she had encountered the rejected Mr. Wiley. + +"Say, he was sore!" she told Janet the next morning, relating the incident with +relish, "for two cents he would have knocked Charlie over the ropes. I guess +he could do it, too, all right." + +Janet found it curious that Lise should display such vindictiveness toward Mr. +Wiley, who was more sinned against than sinning. She was moved to inquire +after his welfare. + +"He's got one of them red motorcycles," said Lise. "He was gay with it too-- +when we was waiting for the boulevard trolley he opened her up and went right +between Charlie and me. I had to laugh. He's got a job over in Haverhill you +can't hold that guy under water long." + +Apparently Lise had no regrets. But her premonitions concerning Mr. Frear +proved to be justified. He did not "make good." One morning the little office +on Faber Street where the sprinklers were displayed was closed, Hampton knew +him no more, and the police alone were sincerely regretful. It seemed that of +late he had been keeping all the money for the sprinklers, and spending a good +deal of it on Lise. At the time she accepted the affair with stoical +pessimism, as one who has learned what to expect of the world, though her moral +sense was not profoundly disturbed by the reflection that she had indulged in +the delights of Slattery's and Gruber's and a Sunday at "the Beach" at the +expense of the Cascade Sprinkler Company of Boston. Mr. Frear inconsiderately +neglected to prepare her for his departure, the news of which was conveyed to +her in a singular manner, and by none other than Mr. Johnny Tiernan of the tin +shop,--their conversation throwing some light, not only on Lise's +sophistication, but on the admirable and intricate operation of Hampton's city +government. About five o'clock Lise was coming home along Fillmore Street +after an uneventful, tedious and manless holiday spent in the company of Miss +Schuler and other friends when she perceived Mr. Tiernan seated on his steps, +grinning and waving a tattered palm-leaf fan. + +"The mercury is sure on the jump," he observed. "You'd think it was July." + +And Lise agreed. + +"I suppose you'll be going to Tim Slattery's place tonight," he went on. "It's +the coolest spot this side of the Atlantic Ocean." + +There was, apparently, nothing cryptic in this remark, yet it is worth noting +that Lise instantly became suspicious. + +"Why would I be going out there?" she inquired innocently, darting at him a +dark, coquettish glance. + +Mr. Tiernan regarded her guilelessly, but there was admiration in his soul; not +because of her unquestioned feminine attractions,--he being somewhat amazingly +proof against such things,--but because it was conveyed to him in some +unaccountable way that her suspicions were aroused. The brain beneath that +corkscrew hair was worthy of a Richelieu. Mr. Tiernan's estimate of Miss Lise +Bumpus, if he could have been induced to reveal it, would have been worth +listening to. + +"And why wouldn't you?" he replied heartily. "Don't I see all the pretty young +ladies out there, including yourself, and you dancing with the Cascade man. +Why is it you'll never give me a dance?" + +"Why is it you never ask me?" demanded Lise. + +"What chance have I got, against him?" + +"He don't own me," said Lise. + +Mr. Tiernan threw back his head, and laughed. + +"Well, if you're there to-night, tangoin' with him and I come up and says, +`Miss Bumpus, the pleasure is mine,' I'm wondering what would happen." + +"I'm not going to Slattery's to-night," she declared having that instant +arrived at this conclusion. + +"And where then? I'll come along, if there's a chance for me." + +"Quit your kidding," Lise reproved him. + +Mr. Tiernan suddenly looked very solemn: + +"Kidding, is it? Me kiddin' you? Give me a chance, that's all I'm asking. +Where will you be, now?" + +"Is Frear wanted?" she demanded. + +Mr. Tiernan's expression changed. His nose seemed to become more pointed, his +eyes to twinkle more merrily than ever. He didn't take the trouble, now, to +conceal his admiration. + +"Sure, Miss Bumpus," he said, "if you was a man, we'd have you on the force to- +morrow." + +"What's he wanted for?" + +"Well," said Johnny, "a little matter of sprinklin'. He's been sprinklin' his +company's water without a license." + +She was silent a moment before she exclaimed:-- + +"I ought to have been wise that he was a crook!" + +"Well," said Johnny consolingly, "there's others that ought to have been wise, +too. The Cascade people had no business takin' on a man that couldn't use but +half of his mouth." + +This seemed to Lise a reflection on her judgment. She proceeded to clear +herself. + +"He was nothing to me. He never gave me no rest. He used to come 'round and +pester me to go out with him--" + +"Sure!" interrupted Mr. Tiernan. "Don't I know how it is with the likes of +him! A good time's a good time, and no harm in it. But the point is " and +here he cocked his nose--"the point is, where is he? Where will he be +tonight?" + +All at once Lise grew vehement, almost tearful. + +"I don't know--honest to God, I don't. If I did I'd tell you. Last night he +said he might be out of town. He didn't say where he was going." She fumbled +in her bag, drawing out an imitation lace handkerchief and pressing it to her +eyes. + +"There now!" exclaimed Mr. Tiernan, soothingly. "How would you know? And he +deceivin' you like he did the company--" + +"He didn't deceive me," cried Lise. + +"Listen," said Mr. Tiernan, who had risen and laid his hand on her arm. "It's +not young ladies like you that works and are self-respecting that any one would +be troublin', and you the daughter of such a fine man as your father. Run +along, now, I won't be detaining you, Miss Bumpus, and you'll accept my +apology. I guess we'll never see him in Hampton again...." + +Some twenty minutes later he sauntered down the street, saluting acquaintances, +and threading his way across the Common entered a grimy brick building where a +huge policeman with an insignia on his arm was seated behind a desk. Mr. +Tiernan leaned on the desk, and reflectively lighted a Thomas-Jefferson-Five- +Cent Cigar, Union Label, the excellencies of which were set forth on large +signs above the "ten foot" buildings on Faber Street. + +"She don't know nothing, Mike," he remarked. "I guess he got wise this +morning." + +The sergeant nodded.... + + + + +CHAPTER V + +To feel potential within one's self the capacity to live and yet to have no +means of realizing this capacity is doubtless one of the least comfortable and +agreeable of human experiences. Such, as summer came on, was Janet's case. +The memory of that visit to Silliston lingered in her mind, sometimes to flare +up so vividly as to make her existence seem unbearable. How wonderful, she +thought, to be able to dwell in such a beautiful place, to have as friends and +companions such amusing and intelligent people as the stranger with whom she +had talked! Were all the inhabitants of Silliston like him? They must be, +since it was a seat of learning. Lise's cry, "I've just got to go away, +anywhere," found an echo in Janet's soul. Why shouldn't she go away? She was +capable of taking care of herself, she was a good stenographer, her salary had +been raised twice in two years,--why should she allow consideration for her +family to stand in the way of what she felt would be self realization? +Unconsciously she was a true modern in that the virtues known as duty and self +sacrifice did not appeal to her,--she got from them neither benefit nor +satisfaction, she understood instinctively that they were impeding to +growth. Unlike Lise, she was able to see life as it is, she did not expect of +it miracles, economic or matrimonial. Nothing would happen unless she made it +happen. She was twenty-one, earning nine dollars a week, of which she now +contributed five to the household,--her father, with characteristic +incompetence, having taken out a larger insurance policy than he could +reasonably carry. Of the remaining four dollars she spent more than one on +lunches, there were dresses and underclothing, shoes and stockings to buy, in +spite of darning and mending; little treats with Eda that mounted up; and +occasionally the dentist--for Janet would not neglect her teeth as Lise +neglected hers. She managed to save something, but it was very little. And +she was desperately unhappy when she contemplated the grey and monotonous vista +of the years ahead, saw herself growing older and older, driven always by the +stern necessity of accumulating a margin against possible disasters; little by +little drying up, losing, by withering disuse, those rich faculties of +enjoyment with which she was endowed, and which at once fascinated and +frightened her. Marriage, in such an environment, offered no solution; +marriage meant dependence, from which her very nature revolted: and in her +existence, drab and necessitous though it were, was still a remnant of freedom +that marriage would compel her to surrender.... + +One warm evening, oppressed by such reflections, she had started home when she +remembered having left her bag in the office, and retraced her steps. As she +turned the corner of West Street, she saw, beside the canal and directly in +front of the bridge, a new and smart-looking automobile, painted crimson and +black, of the type known as a runabout, which she recognized as belonging to +Mr. Ditmar. Indeed, at that moment Mr. Ditmar himself was stepping off the end +of the bridge and about to start the engine when, dropping the crank, he walked +to the dashboard and apparently became absorbed in some mechanisms there. Was +it the glance cast in her direction that had caused him to delay his departure? +Janet was seized by a sudden and rather absurd desire to retreat, but Canal +Street being empty, such an action would appear eccentric, and she came slowly +forward, pretending not to see her employer, ridiculing to herself the idea +that he had noticed her. Much to her annoyance, however, her embarrassment +persisted, and she knew it was due to the memory of certain incidents, each in +itself almost negligible, but cumulatively amounting to a suspicion that for +some months he had been aware of her: many times when he had passed through the +outer office she had felt his eyes upon her, had been impelled to look up from +her work to surprise in them a certain glow to make her bow her head again in +warm confusion. Now, as she approached him, she was pleasantly but rather +guiltily conscious of the more rapid beating of the blood that precedes an +adventure, yet sufficiently self-possessed to note the becoming nature of the +light flannel suit axed rather rakish Panama he had pushed back from his +forehead. It was not until she had almost passed him that he straightened up, +lifted the Panama, tentatively, and not too far, startling her. + +"Good afternoon, Miss Bumpus," he said. "I thought you had gone." + +"I left my bag in the office," she replied, with the outward calmness that +rarely deserted her--the calmness, indeed, that had piqued him and was leading +him on to rashness. + +"Oh," he said. "Simmons will get it for you." Simmons was the watchman who +stood in the vestibule of the office entrance. + +"Thanks. I can get it myself," she told him, and would have gone on had he not +addressed her again. "I was just starting out for a spin. What do you think +of the car? It's good looking, isn't it?" He stood off and surveyed it, +laughing a little, and in his laugh she detected a note apologetic, at variance +with the conception she had formed of his character, though not alien, indeed, +to the dust-coloured vigour of the man. She scarcely recognized Ditmar as he +stood there, yet he excited her, she felt from him an undercurrent of something +that caused her inwardly to tremble. "See how the lines are carried through." +He indicated this by a wave of his hand, but his eyes were now on her. + +"It is pretty," she agreed. + +In contrast to the defensive tactics which other ladies of his acquaintance had +adopted, tactics of a patently coy and coquettish nature, this self-collected +manner was new and spicy, challenging to powers never as yet fully exerted +while beneath her manner he felt throbbing that rare and dangerous thing in +women, a temperament, for which men have given their souls. This conviction of +her possession of a temperament,--he could not have defined the word, emotional +rather than intellectual, produced the apologetic attitude she was quick to +sense. He had never been, at least during his maturity, at a loss with the +other sex, and he found the experience delicious. + +"You like pretty things, I'm sure of that," he hazarded. But she did not ask +him how he knew, she simply assented. He raised the hood, revealing the +engine. "Isn't that pretty? See how nicely everything is adjusted in that +little space to do the particular work for which it is designed." + +Thus appealed to, she came forward and stopped, still standing off a little +way, but near enough to see, gazing at the shining copper caps on the +cylinders, at the bright rods and gears. + +"It looks intricate," said Mr. Ditmar, "but really it's very simple. The +gasoline comes in here from the tank behind--this is called the carburetor, it +has a jet to vaporize the gasoline, and the vapour is sucked into each of these +cylinders in turn when the piston moves--like this." He sought to explain the +action of the piston. "That compresses it, and then a tiny electric spark +comes just at the right moment to explode it, and the explosion sends the +piston down again, and turns the shaft. Well, all four cylinders have an +explosion one right after another, and that keeps the shaft going." Whereupon +the most important personage in Hampton, the head of the great Chippering Mill +proceeded, for the benefit of a humble assistant stenographer, to remove the +floor boards behind the dash. "There's the shaft, come here and look at it." +She obeyed, standing beside him, almost touching him, his arm, indeed, brushing +her sleeve, and into his voice crept a tremor. "The shaft turns the rear +wheels by means of a gear at right angles on the axle, and the rear wheels +drive the car. Do you see?" + +"Yes," she answered faintly, honesty compelling her to add: "a little." + +He was looking, now, not at the machinery, but intently at her, and she could +feel the blood flooding into her cheeks and temples. She was even compelled +for an instant to return his glance, and from his eyes into hers leaped a flame +that ran scorching through her body. Then she knew with conviction that the +explanation of the automobile had been an excuse; she had comprehended almost +nothing of it, but she had been impressed by the facility with which he +described it, by his evident mastery over it. She had noticed his hands, how +thick his fingers were and close together; yet how deftly he had used them, +without smearing the cuffs of his silk shirt or the sleeves of his coat with +the oil that glistened everywhere. + +"I like machinery," he told her as he replaced the boards. "I like to take +care of it myself." + +"It must be interesting," she assented, aware of the inadequacy of the remark, +and resenting in herself an inarticulateness seemingly imposed by inhibition +connected with his nearness. Fascination and antagonism were struggling within +her. Her desire to get away grew desperate. + +"Thank you for showing it to me." With an effort of will she moved toward the +bridge, but was impelled by a consciousness of the abruptness of her departure +to look back at him once--and smile, to experience again the thrill of the +current he sped after her. By lifting his hat, a little higher, a little more +confidently than in the first instance, he made her leaving seem more gracious, +the act somehow conveying an acknowledgment on his part that their relationship +had changed. + +Once across the bridge and in the mill, she fairly ran up the stairs and into +the empty office, to perceive her bag lying on the desk where she had left it, +and sat down for a few minutes beside the window, her heart pounding in her +breast as though she had barely escaped an accident threatening her with +physical annihilation. Something had happened to her at last! But what did it +mean? Where would it lead? Her fear, her antagonism, of which she was still +conscious, her resentment that Ditmar had thus surreptitiously chosen to +approach her in a moment when they were unobserved were mingled with a +throbbing exultation in that he had noticed her, that there was something in +her to attract him in that way, to make his voice thicker and his smile +apologetic when he spoke to her. Of that "something-in-her" she had been aware +before, but never had it been so unmistakably recognized and beckoned to from +without. She was at once terrified, excited--and flattered. + +At length, growing calmer, she made her way out of the building. When she +reached the vestibule she had a moment of sharp apprehension, of paradoxical +hope, that Ditmar might still be there, awaiting her. But he had gone.... + +In spite of her efforts to dismiss the matter from her mind, to persuade +herself there had been no significance in the encounter, when she was seated at +her typewriter the next morning she experienced a renewal of the palpitation of +the evening before, and at the sound of every step in the corridor she started. +Of this tendency she was profoundly ashamed. And when at last Ditmar arrived, +though the blood rose to her temples, she kept her eyes fixed on the keys. He +went quickly into his room: she was convinced he had not so much as glanced at +her.... As the days went by, however, she was annoyed by the discovery that +his continued ignoring of her presence brought more resentment than relief, she +detected in it a deliberation implying between them a guilty secret: she hated +secrecy, though secrecy contained a thrill. Then, one morning when she was +alone in the office with young Caldwell, who was absorbed in some reports, +Ditmar entered unexpectedly and looked her full in the eyes, surprising her +into answering his glance before she could turn away, hating herself and hating +him. Hate, she determined, was her prevailing sentiment in regard to Mr. +Ditmar. + +The following Monday Miss Ottway overtook her, at noon, on the stairs. + +"Janet, I wanted to speak to you, to tell you I'm leaving," she said. + +"Leaving!" repeated Janet, who had regarded Miss Ottway as a fixture. + +"I'm going to Boston," Miss Ottway explained, in her deep, musical voice. +"I've always wanted to go, I have an unmarried sister there of whom I'm very +fond, and Mr. Ditmar knows that. He's got me a place with the Treasurer, Mr. +Semple." + +"Oh, I'm sorry you're going, though of course I'm glad for you," Janet said +sincerely, for she liked and respected Miss Ottway, and was conscious in the +older woman of a certain kindly interest. + +"Janet, I've recommended you to Mr. Ditmar for my place." + +"Oh!" cried Janet, faintly. + +"It was he who asked about you, he thinks you are reliable and quick and +clever, and I was very glad to say a good word for you, my dear, since I could +honestly do so." Miss Ottway drew Janet's arm through hers and patted it +affectionately. "Of course you'll have to expect some jealousy, there are +older women in the other offices who will think they ought to have the place, +but if you attend to your own affairs, as you always have done, there won't be +any trouble." + +"Oh, I won't take the place, I can't!"Janet cried, so passionately that Miss +Ottway looked at her in surprise. "I'm awfully grateful to you," she added, +flushing crimson, "I--I'm afraid I'm not equal to it." + +"Nonsense," said the other with decision. "You'd be very foolish not to try +it. You won't get as much as I do, at first, at any rate, but a little more +money won't be unwelcome, I guess. Mr. Ditmar will speak to you this +afternoon. I leave on Saturday. I'm real glad to do you a good turn, Janet, +and I know you'll get along," Miss Ottway added impulsively as they parted at +the corner of Faber Street. "I've always thought a good deal of you." + +For awhile Janet stood still, staring after the sturdy figure of her friend, +heedless of the noonday crowd that bumped her. Then she went to Grady's Quick +Lunch Counter and ordered a sandwich and a glass of milk, which she consumed +slowly, profoundly sunk in thought. Presently Eda Rawle arrived, and noticing +her preoccupation, inquired what was the matter. + +"Nothing," said Janet.... + +At two o'clock, when Ditmar returned to the office, he called Miss Ottway, who +presently came out to summon Janet to his presence. Fresh, immaculate, yet +virile in his light suit and silk shirt with red stripes, he was seated at his +desk engaged in turning over some papers in a drawer. He kept her waiting a +moment, and then said, with apparent casualness:-- + +"Is that you, Miss Bumpus? Would you mind closing the door?" + +Janet obeyed, and again stood before him. He looked up. A suggestion of +tenseness in her pose betraying an inner attitude of alertness, of defiance, +conveyed to him sharply and deliciously once more the panther-like impression +he had received when first, as a woman, she had come to his notice. The +renewed and heightened perception of this feral quality in her aroused a sense +of danger by no means unpleasurable, though warning him that he was about to +take an unprecedented step, being drawn beyond the limits of caution he had +previously set for himself in divorcing business and sex. Though he was by no +means self-convinced of an intention to push the adventure, preferring to leave +its possibilities open, he strove in voice and manner to be business-like; and +instinct, perhaps, whispered that she might take alarm. + +"Sit down, Miss Bumpus," he said pleasantly, as he closed the drawer. + +She seated herself on an office chair. + +"Do you like your work here?" he inquired. + +"No," said Janet. + +"Why not?" he demanded, staring at her. + +"Why should I?" she retorted. + +"Well--what's the trouble with it? It isn't as hard as it would be in some +other places, is it?" + +"I'm not saying anything against the place." + +"What, then?" + +"You asked me if I liked my work. I don't." + +"Then why do you do it?" he demanded. + +"To live," she replied. + +He smiled, but his gesture as he stroked his moustache implied a slight +annoyance at her composure. He found it difficult with this dark, self- +contained young woman to sustain the role of benefactor. + +"What kind of work would you like to do?" he demanded. + +"I don't know. I haven't got the choice, anyway," she said. + +He observed that she did her work well, to which she made no answer. She +refused to help him, although Miss Ottway must have warned her. She acted as +though she were conferring the favour. And yet, clearing his throat, he was +impelled to say:-- + +"Miss Ottway's leaving me, she's going into the Boston office with Mr. Semple, +the treasurer of the corporation. I shall miss her, she's an able and reliable +woman, and she knows my ways." He paused, fingering his paper knife. "The +fact is, Miss Bumpus, she's spoken highly of you, she tells me you're quick and +accurate and painstaking--I've noticed that for myself. She seems to think you +could do her work, and recommends that I give you a trial. You understand, of +course, that the position is in a way confidential, and that you could not +expect at first, at any rate, the salary Miss Ottway has had, but I'm willing +to offer you fourteen dollars a week to begin with, and afterwards, if we get +along together, to give you more. What do you say?" + +"I'd like to try it, Mr. Ditmar," Janet said, and added nothing, no word of +gratitude or of appreciation to that consent. + +"Very well then," he replied, "that's settled. Miss Ottway will explain things +to you, and tell you about my peculiarities. And when she goes you can take +her desk, by the window nearest my door." + +Ditmar sat idle for some minutes after she had gone, staring through the open +doorway into the outer office.... + +To Ditmar she had given no evidence of the storm his offer had created in her +breast, and it was characteristic also that she waited until supper was nearly +over to inform her family, making the announcement in a matter-of-fact tone, +just as though it were not the unique piece of good fortune that had come to +the Bumpuses since Edward had been eliminated from the mercantile establishment +at Dolton. The news was received with something like consternation. For the +moment Hannah was incapable of speech, and her hand trembled as she resumed the +cutting of the pie: but hope surged within her despite her effort to keep it +down, her determination to remain true to the fatalism from which she had +paradoxically derived so much comfort. The effect on Edward, while somewhat +less violent, was temporarily to take away his appetite. Hope, to flower in +him, needed but little watering. Great was his faith in the Bumpus blood, and +secretly he had always regarded his eldest daughter as the chosen vessel for +their redemption. + +"Well, I swan!" he exclaimed, staring at her in admiration and neglecting his +pie, "I've always thought you had it in you to get on, Janet. I guess I've +told you you've always put me in mind of Eliza Bumpus--the one that held out +against the Indians till her husband came back with the neighbours. I was just +reading about her again the other night." + +"Yes, you've told us, Edward," said Hannah. + +"She had gumption," he went on, undismayed. "And from what I can gather of her +looks I calculate you favour her--she was dark and not so very tall--not so +tall as you, I guess. So you're goin'" (he pronounced it very slowly) "you're +goin' to be Mr. Ditmar's private stenographer! He's a smart man, Mr. Ditmar, +he's a good man, too. All you've got to do is to behave right by him. He +always speaks to me when he passes by the gate. I was sorry for him when his +wife died--a young woman, too. And he's never married again! Well, I swan!" + +"You'd better quit swanning," exclaimed Hannah. "And what's Mr. Ditmar's +goodness got to do with it? He's found-out Janet has sense, she's willing and +hard working, he won't" (pronounced want) "he won't be the loser by it, and +he's not giving her what he gave Miss Ottway. It's just like you, thinking +he's doing her a good turn." + +"I'm not saying Janet isn't smart," he protested, "but I know it's hard to get +work with so many folks after every job." + +"Maybe it ain't so hard when you've got some get-up and go," Hannah retorted +rather cruelly. It was thus characteristically and with unintentional +sharpness she expressed her maternal pride by a reflection not only upon +Edward, but Lise also. Janet had grown warm at the mention of Ditmar's name. + +"It was Miss Ottway who recommended me," she said, glancing at her sister, who +during this conversation had sat in silence. Lise's expression, normally +suggestive of a discontent not unbecoming to her type, had grown almost sullen. +Hannah's brisk gathering up of the dishes was suddenly arrested. + +"Lise, why don't you say something to your sister? Ain't you glad she's got +the place?" + +"Sure, I'm glad," said Lise, and began to unscrew the top of the salt shaker. +"I don't see why I couldn't get a raise, too. I work just as hard as she +does." + +Edward, who had never got a "raise" in his life, was smitten with compunction +and sympathy. + +"Give 'em time, Lise," he said consolingly. "You ain't so old as Janet." + +"Time!" she cried, flaring up and suddenly losing her control. "I've got a +picture of Waiters giving me a raise I know the girls that get raises from +him." + +"You ought to be ashamed of yourself," Hannah declared. "There--you've spilled +the salt!" + +But Lise, suddenly bursting into tears, got up and left the room. Edward +picked up the Banner and pretended to read it, while Janet collected the salt +and put it back into the shaker. Hannah, gathering up the rest of the dishes, +disappeared into the kitchen, but presently returned, as though she had +forgotten something. + +"Hadn't you better go after her?" she said to Janet. + +"I'm afraid it won't be any use. She's got sort of queer, lately--she thinks +they're down on her." + +"I'm sorry I spoke so sharp. But then--" Hannah shook her head, and her +sentence remained unfinished. + +Janet sought her sister, but returned after a brief interval, with the news +that Lise had gone out. + +One of the delights of friendship, as is well known, is the exchange of +confidences of joy or sorrow, but there was, in Janet's promotion, something +intensely personal to increase her natural reserve. Her feelings toward Ditmar +were so mingled as to defy analysis, and several days went by before she could +bring herself to inform Eda Rawle of the new business relationship in which she +stood to the agent of the Chippering Mill. The sky was still bright as they +walked out Warren Street after supper, Eda bewailing the trials of the day just +ended: Mr. Frye, the cashier of the bank, had had one of his cantankerous fits, +had found fault with her punctuation, nothing she had done had pleased him. +But presently, when they had come to what the Banner called the "residential +district," she was cheered by the sight of the green lawns, the flowerbeds and +shrubbery, the mansions of those inhabitants of Hampton unfamiliar with +boardinghouses and tenements. Before one of these she paused, retaining Janet +by the arm, exclaiming wistfully: + +"Wouldn't you like to live there? That belongs to your boss." + +Janet, who had been dreaming as she gazed at the fagade of rough stucco that +once had sufficed to fill the ambitions of the late Mrs. Ditmar, recognized it +as soon as Eda spoke, and dragged her friend hastily, almost roughly along the +sidewalk until they had reached the end of the block. Janet was red. + +"What's the matter?" demanded Eda, as soon as she had recovered from her +surprise. + +"Nothing," said Janet. "Only--I'm in his office." + +"But what of it? You've got a right to look at his house, haven't you?" + +"Why yes,--a right," Janet assented. Knowing Eda's ambitions for her were not +those of a business career, she was in terror lest her friend should scent a +romance, and for this reason she had never spoken of the symptoms Ditmar had +betrayed. She attempted to convey to Eda the doubtful taste of staring point- +blank at the house of one's employer, especially when he might be concealed +behind a curtain. + +"You see," she added, "Miss Ottway's recommended me for her place--she's going +away." + +"Janet!" cried Eda. "Why didn't you tell me?" + +"Well," said Janet guiltily, "it's only a trial. I don't know whether he'll +keep me or not." + +"Of course he'll keep you," said Eda, warmly. "If that isn't just like you, +not saying a word about it. Gee, if I'd had a raise like that I just couldn't +wait to tell you. But then, I'm not smart like you." + +"Don't be silly," said Janet, out of humour with herself, and annoyed because +she could not then appreciate Eda's generosity. + +"We've just got to celebrate!" declared Eda, who had the gift, which Janet +lacked, of taking her joys vicariously; and her romantic and somewhat medieval +proclivities would permit no such momentous occasion to pass without an +appropriate festal symbol. "We'll have a spree on Saturday--the circus is +coming then." + +"It'll be my spree," insisted Janet, her heart warming. "I've got the +raise...." + +On Saturday, accordingly, they met at Grady's for lunch, Eda attired in her +best blouse of pale blue, and when they emerged from the restaurant, despite +the torrid heat, she beheld Faber Street as in holiday garb as they made their +way to the cool recesses of Winterhalter's to complete the feast. That +glorified drug-store with the five bays included in its manifold functions a +department rivalling Delmonico's, with electric fans and marble-topped tables +and white-clad waiters who took one's order and filled it at the soda fountain. +It mattered little to Eda that the young man awaiting their commands had +pimples and long hair and grinned affectionately as he greeted them. + +"Hello, girls!" he said. "What strikes you to-day?" + +"Me for a raspberry nut sundae," announced Eda, and Janet, being unable to +imagine any more delectable confection, assented. The penetrating odour +peculiar to drugstores, dominated by menthol and some unnamable but ancient +remedy for catarrh, was powerless to interfere with their enjoyment. + +The circus began at two. Rather than cling to the straps of a crowded car they +chose to walk, following the familiar route of the trolley past the car barns +and the base-ball park to the bare field under the seared face of Torrey's +Hill, where circuses were wont to settle. A sirocco-like breeze from the +southwest whirled into eddies the clouds of germladen dust stirred up by the +automobiles, blowing their skirts against their legs, and sometimes they were +forced to turn, clinging to their hats, confused and giggling, conscious of +male glances. The crowd, increasing as they proceeded, was in holiday mood; +young men with a newly-washed aspect, in Faber Street suits, chaffed +boisterously groups of girls, who retorted with shrill cries and shrieks of +laughter; amorous couples strolled, arm in arm, oblivious, as though the place +were as empty as Eden; lady-killers with exaggerated square shoulders, wearing +bright neckties, their predatory instincts alert, hovered about in eager search +of adventure. There were men-killers, too, usually to be found in pairs, in +startling costumes they had been persuaded were the latest Paris models,-- +imitations of French cocottes in Hampton, proof of the smallness of our modern +world. Eda regarded them superciliously. + +"They'd like you to think they'd never been near a loom or a bobbin!" she +exclaimed. + +In addition to these more conspicuous elements, the crowd contained sober +operatives of the skilled sort possessed of sufficient means to bring hither +their families, including the baby; there were section-hands and foremen, +slashers, mule spinners, beamers, French-Canadians, Irish, Scotch, Welsh and +English, Germans, with only an occasional Italian, Lithuanian, or Jew. Peanut +and popcorn men, venders of tamales and Chile-con-carne hoarsely shouted their +wares, while from afar could be heard the muffled booming of a band. Janet's +heart beat faster. She regarded with a tinge of awe the vast expanse of tent +that rose before her eyes, the wind sending ripples along the heavy canvas from +circumference to tent pole. She bought the tickets; they entered the circular +enclosure where the animals were kept; where the strong beams of the sun, in +trying to force their way through the canvas roof, created an unnatural, +jaundiced twilight, the weirdness of which was somehow enhanced by the hoarse, +amazingly penetrating growls of beasts. Suddenly a lion near them raised a +shaggy head, emitting a series of undulating, soul-shaking roars. + +"Ah, what's eatin' you?" demanded a thick-necked youth, pretending not to be +awestricken by this demonstration. + +"Suppose he'd get out!" cried Eda, drawing Janet away. + +"I wouldn't let him hurt you, dearie," the young man assured her. + +"You!" she retorted contemptuously, but grinned in spite of herself, showing +her gums. + +The vague feeling of terror inspired by this tent was a part of its +fascination, for it seemed pregnant with potential tragedies suggested by the +juxtaposition of helpless babies and wild beasts, the babies crying or staring +in blank amazement at padding tigers whose phosphorescent eyes never left these +morsels beyond the bars. The two girls wandered about, their arms closely +locked, but the strange atmosphere, the roars of the beasts, the ineffable, +pungent odour of the circus, of sawdust mingled with the effluvia of animals, +had aroused an excitement that was slow in subsiding. Some time elapsed before +they were capable of taking a normal interest in the various exhibits. + +"`Adjutant Bird,'" Janet read presently from a legend on one of the +compartments of a cage devoted to birds, and surveying the somewhat dissolute +occupant. "Why, he's just like one of those tall mashers who stay at the +Wilmot and stand on the sidewalk,--travelling men, you know." + +"Say-isn't he?" Eda agreed. "Isn't he pleased with himself, and his feet +crossed!" + +"And see this one, Eda--he's a 'Harpy Eagle.' There's somebody we know looks +just like that. Wait a minute--I'll tell you--it's the woman who sits in the +cashier's cage at Grady's." + +"If it sure isn't!" said Eda. + +"She has the same fluffy, light hair--hairpins can't keep it down, and she +looks at you in that same sort of surprised way with her head on one side when +you hand in your check." + +"Why, it's true to the life!" cried Eda enthusiastically. "She thinks she's +got all the men cinched,--she does and she's forty if she's a day." + +These comparisons brought them to a pitch of risible enjoyment amply sustained +by the spectacle in the monkey cage, to which presently they turned. A +chimpanzee, with a solicitation more than human, was solemnly searching a +friend for fleas in the midst of a pandemonium of chattering and screeching and +chasing, of rattling of bars and trapezes carried on by their companions. + +"Well, young ladies," said a voice, "come to pay a call on your relations--have +ye?" + +Eda giggled hysterically. An elderly man was standing beside them. He was +shabbily dressed, his own features were wizened, almost simian, and by his +friendly and fatuous smile Janet recognized one of the harmless obsessed in +which Hampton abounded. + +"Relations!" Eda exclaimed. + +"You and me, yes, and her," he answered, looking at Janet, though at first he +had apparently entertained some doubt as to this inclusion, "we're all +descended from them." His gesture triumphantly indicated the denizens of the +cage. + +"What are you giving us?" said Eda. + +"Ain't you never read Darwin?" he demanded. "If you had, you'd know they're +our ancestors, you'd know we came from them instead of Adam and Eve. That +there's a fable." + +"I'll never believe I came from them," cried Eda, vehement in her disgust. + +But Janet laughed. "What's the difference? Some of us aren't any better than +monkeys, anyway." + +"That's so," said the man approvingly. "That's so." He wanted to continue the +conversation, but they left him rather ruthlessly. And when, from the entrance +to the performance tent, they glanced back over their shoulders, he was still +gazing at his cousins behind the bars, seemingly deriving an acute pleasure +from his consciousness of the connection.... + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +Modern business, by reason of the mingling of the sexes it involves, for the +playwright and the novelist and the sociologist is full of interesting and +dramatic situations, and in it may be studied, undoubtedly, one phase of the +evolution tending to transform if not disintegrate certain institutions +hitherto the corner-stones of society. Our stage is set. A young woman, +conscious of ability, owes her promotion primarily to certain dynamic feminine +qualities with which she is endowed. And though she may make an elaborate +pretense of ignoring the fact, in her heart she knows and resents it, while at +the same time, paradoxically, she gets a thrill from it,--a sustaining and +inspiring thrill of power! On its face it is a business arrangement; +secretly,--attempt to repudiate this as one may,--it is tinged with the colours +of high adventure. When Janet entered into the intimate relationship with Mr. +Claude Ditmar necessitated by her new duties as his private stenographer her +attitude, slightly defiant, was the irreproachable one of a strict attention to +duty. All unconsciously she was a true daughter of the twentieth century, and +probably a feminist at heart, which is to say that her conduct was determined +by no preconceived or handed-down notions of what was proper and lady-like. +For feminism, in a sense, is a return to atavism, and sex antagonism and sex +attraction are functions of the same thing. There were moments when she +believed herself to hate Mr. Ditmar, when she treated him with an aloofness, an +impersonality unsurpassed; moments when he paused in his dictation to stare at +her in astonishment. He, who flattered himself that he understood women! + +She would show him!--such was her dominating determination. Her promotion +assumed the guise of a challenge, of a gauntlet flung down at the feet of her +sex. In a certain way, an insult, though incredibly stimulating. If he +flattered himself that he had done her a favour, if he entertained the notion +that he could presently take advantage of the contact with her now achieved to +make unbusinesslike advances--well, he would find out. He had proclaimed his +desire for an able assistant in Miss Ottway's place--he would get one, and +nothing more. She watched narrowly, a l'affut, as the French say, for any +signs of sentiment, and indeed this awareness of her being on guard may have +had some influence on Mr. Ditmar's own attitude, likewise irreproachable.... A +rather anaemic young woman, a Miss Annie James, was hired for Janet's old +place. + +In spite of this aloofness and alertness, for the first time in her life Janet +felt the exuberance of being in touch with affairs of import. Hitherto the +mill had been merely a greedy monster claiming her freedom and draining her +energies in tasks routine, such as the copying of meaningless documents and +rows of figures; now, supplied with stimulus and a motive, the Corporation +began to take on significance, and she flung herself into the work with an +ardour hitherto unknown, determined to make herself so valuable to Ditmar that +the time would come when he could not do without her. She strove to memorize +certain names and addresses, lest time be lost in looking them up, to +familiarize herself with the ordinary run of his correspondence, to recall what +letters were to be marked "personal," to anticipate matters of routine, in +order that he might not have the tedium of repeating instructions; she acquired +the faculty of keeping his engagements in her head; she came early to the +office, remaining after hours, going through the files, becoming familiar with +his system; and she learned to sort out his correspondence, sifting the +important from the unimportant, to protect him, more and more, from numerous +visitors who called only to waste his time. Her instinct for the detection of +book-agents, no matter how brisk and businesslike they might appear, was +unerring--she remembered faces and the names belonging to them: an individual +once observed to be persona non grata never succeeded in passing her twice. On +one occasion Ditmar came out of his office to see the back of one of these +visitors disappearing into the corridor. + +"Who was that?" he asked. + +"His name is McCalla," she said. "I thought you didn't want to be bothered." + +"But how in thunder did you get rid of him?" he demanded. + +"Oh, I just wouldn't let him in," she replied demurely. + +And Ditmar went away, wondering.... Thus she gtudied him, without permitting +him to suspect it, learning his idiosyncrasies, his attitude toward all those +with whom daily he came in contact, only to find herself approving. She was +forced to admit that he was a judge of men, compelled to admire his adroitness +in dealing with them. He could be democratic or autocratic as occasion +demanded; he knew when to yield, and when to remain inflexible. One morning, +for instance, there arrived from New York a dapper salesman whose jauntily tied +bow, whose thin hair--carefully parted to conceal an incipient baldness--whose +wary and slightly weary eyes all impressively suggested the metropolitan +atmosphere of high pressure and sophistication from which he had emerged. He +had a machine to sell; an amazing machine, endowed with human intelligence and +more than human infallibility; for when it made a mistake it stopped. It was +designed for the express purpose of eliminating from the payroll the skilled +and sharp-eyed women who are known as "drawers-in," who sit all day long under +a north light patiently threading the ends of the warp through the heddles of +the loom harness. Janet's imagination was gradually fired as she listened to +the visitor's eloquence; and the textile industry, which hitherto had seemed to +her uninteresting and sordid, took on the colours of romance. + +"Now I've made up my mind we'll place one with you, Mr. Ditmar," the salesman +concluded. "I don't object to telling you we'd rather have one in the +Chippering than in any mill in New England." + +Janet was surprised, almost shocked to see Ditmar shake his head, yet she felt +a certain reluctant admiration because he had not been swayed by blandishments. +At such moments, when he was bent on refusing a request, he seemed physically +to acquire massiveness,--and he had a dogged way of chewing his cigar. + +"I don't want it, yet," he replied, "not until you improve it." And she was +impressed by the fact that he seemed to know as much about the machine as the +salesman himself. In spite of protests, denials, appeals, he remained firm. +"When you get rid of the defects I've mentioned come back, Mr. Hicks--but don't +come back until then." + +And Mr. Hicks departed, discomfited.... + +Ditmar knew what he wanted. Of the mill he was the absolute master, familiar +with every process, carrying constantly in his mind how many spindles, how many +looms were at work; and if anything untoward happened, becoming aware of it by +what seemed to Janet a subconscious process, sending for the superintendent of +the department: for Mr. Orcutt, perhaps, whose office was across the hall--a +tall, lean, spectacled man of fifty who looked like a schoolmaster. + +"Orcutt, what's the matter with the opener in Cooney's room?" + +"Why, the blower's out of order." + +"Well, whose fault is it?".... + +He knew every watchman and foreman in the mill, and many of the second hands. +The old workers, men and women who had been in the Chippering employ through +good and bad times for years, had a place in his affections, but toward the +labour force in general his attitude was impersonal. The mill had to be run, +and people to be got to run it. With him, first and last and always it was the +mill, and little by little what had been for Janet a heterogeneous mass of +machinery and human beings became unified and personified in Claude Ditmar. It +was odd how the essence and quality of that great building had changed for her; +how the very roaring of the looms, as she drew near the canal in the mornings, +had ceased to be sinister and depressing, but bore now a burden like a great +battle song to excite and inspire, to remind her that she had been snatched as +by a miracle from the commonplace. And all this was a function of Ditmar. + +Life had become portentous. And she was troubled by no qualms of logic, but +gloried, womanlike, in her lack of it. She did not ask herself why she had +deliberately enlarged upon Miss Ottway's duties, invaded debatable ground in +part inevitably personal, flung herself with such abandon into the enterprise +of his life's passion, at the same time maintaining a deceptive attitude of +detachment, half deceiving herself that it was zeal for the work by which she +was actuated. In her soul she knew better. She was really pouring fuel on the +flames. She read him, up to a certain point--as far as was necessary; and +beneath his attempts at self-control she was conscious of a dynamic desire that +betrayed itself in many acts and signs,--as when he brushed against her; and +occasionally when he gave evidence with his subordinates of a certain shortness +of temper unusual with him she experienced a vaguely alarming but delicious +thrill of power. And this, of all men, was the great Mr. Ditmar! Was she in +love with him? That question did not trouble her either. She continued to +experience in his presence waves of antagonism and attraction, revealing to her +depths and possibilities of her nature that frightened while they fascinated. +It never occurred to her to desist. That craving in her for high adventure was +not to be denied. + +On summer evenings it had been Ditmar's habit when in Hampton to stroll about +his lawn, from time to time changing the position of the sprinkler, smoking a +cigar, and reflecting pleasantly upon his existence. His house, as he gazed at +it against the whitening sky, was an eminently satisfactory abode, his wife was +dead, his children gave him no trouble; he felt a glow of paternal pride in his +son as the boy raced up and down the sidewalk on a bicycle; George was manly, +large and strong for his age, and had a domineering way with other boys that +gave Ditmar secret pleasure. Of Amy, who was showing a tendency to stoutness, +and who had inherited her mother's liking for candy and romances, Ditmar +thought scarcely at all: he would glance at her as she lounged, reading, in a +chair on the porch, but she did not come within his range of problems. He had, +in short, everything to make a reasonable man content, a life nicely compounded +of sustenance, pleasure, and business,--business naturally being the greatest +of these. He was--though he did not know it--ethically and philosophically +right in squaring his morals with his occupation, and his had been the good +fortune to live in a world whose codes and conventions had been carefully +adjusted to the pursuit of that particular brand of happiness he had made his +own. Why, then, in the name of that happiness, of the peace and sanity and +pleasurable effort it had brought him, had he allowed and even encouraged the +advent of a new element that threatened to destroy the equilibrium achieved? an +element refusing to be classified under the head of property, since it involved +something he desired and could not buy? A woman who was not property, who +resisted the attempt to be turned into property, was an anomaly in Ditmar's +universe. He had not, of course, existed for more than forty years without +having heard and read of and even encountered in an acquaintance or two the +species of sex attraction sentimentally called love that sometimes made fools +of men and played havoc with more important affairs, but in his experience it +had never interfered with his sanity or his appetite or the Chippering Mill: it +had never made his cigars taste bitter; it had never caused a deterioration in +the appreciation of what he had achieved and held. But now he was experiencing +strange symptoms of an intensity out of all proportion to that of former +relations with the other sex. What was most unusual for him, he was alarmed +and depressed, at moments irritable. He regretted the capricious and +apparently accidental impulse that had made him pretend to tinker with his +automobile that day by the canal, that had led him to the incomparable idiocy +of getting rid of Miss Ottway and installing the disturber of his peace as his +private stenographer. + +What the devil was it in her that made him so uncomfortable? When in his +office he had difficulty in keeping his mind on matters of import; he would +watch her furtively as she went about the room with the lithe and noiseless +movements that excited him the more because he suspected beneath her outward +and restrained demeanour a fierceness he craved yet feared. He thought of her +continually as a panther, a panther he had caught and could not tame; he hadn't +even caught her, since she might escape at any time. He took precautions not +to alarm her. When she brushed against him he trembled. Continually she +baffled and puzzled him, and he never could tell of what she was thinking. She +represented a whole set of new and undetermined values for which he had no +precedents, and unlike every woman he had known--including his wife--she had an +integrity of her own, seemingly beyond the reach of all influences economic and +social. All the more exasperating, therefore, was a propinquity creating an +intimacy without substance, or without the substance he craved for she had +magically become for him a sort of enveloping, protecting atmosphere. In an +astonishingly brief time he had fallen into the habit of talking things over +with her; naturally not affairs of the first importance, but matters such as +the economy of his time: when, for instance, it was most convenient for him to +go to Boston; and he would find that she had telephoned, without being told, to +the office there when to expect him, to his chauffeur to be on hand. He never +had to tell her a thing twice, nor did she interrupt--as Miss Ottway sometimes +had done--the processes of his thought. Without realizing it he fell into the +habit of listening for the inflections of her voice, and though he had never +lacked the power of making decisions, she somehow made these easier for him +especially if, a human equation were involved. + +He had, at least, the consolation--if it were one--of reflecting that his +reputation was safe, that there would be no scandal, since two are necessary to +make the kind of scandal he had always feared, and Miss Bumpus, apparently, had +no intention of being the second party. Yet she was not virtuous, as he had +hitherto defined the word. Of this he was sure. No woman who moved about as +she did, who had such an effect on him, who had on occasions, though +inadvertently, returned the lightning of his glances, whose rare laughter +resembled grace notes, and in whose hair was that almost imperceptible kink, +could be virtuous. This instinctive conviction inflamed him. For the first +time in his life he began to doubt the universal conquering quality of his own +charms,--and when such a thing happens to a man like Ditmar he is in danger of +hell-fire. He indulged less and less in the convivial meetings and excursions +that hitherto had given him relaxation and enjoyment, and if his cronies +inquired as to the reasons for his neglect of them he failed to answer with his +usual geniality. + +"Everything going all right up at the mills, Colonel?" he was asked one day by +Mr. Madden, the treasurer of a large shoe company, when they met on the marble +tiles of the hall in their Boston club. + +"All right. Why?" + +"Well," replied Madden, conciliatingly, "you seem kind of preoccupied, that's +all. I didn't know but what the fifty-four hour bill the legislature's just +put through might be worrying you." + +"We'll handle that situation when the time comes," said Ditmar. He accepted a +gin rickey, but declined rather curtly the suggestion of a little spree over +Sunday to a resort on the Cape which formerly he would have found enticing. On +another occasion he encountered in the lobby of the Parker House a more +intimate friend, Chester Sprole, sallow, self-made, somewhat corpulent, one of +those lawyers hail fellows well met in business circles and looked upon askance +by the Brahmins of their profession; more than half politician, he had been in +Congress, and from time to time was retained by large business interests +because of his persuasive gifts with committees of the legislature--though +these had been powerless to avert the recent calamity of the women and +children's fifty-four hour bill. Mr. Sprole's hair was prematurely white, and +the crow's-feet at the corners of his eyes were not the result of legal +worries. + +"Hullo, Dit," he said jovially. + +"Hullo, Ches," said Ditmar. + +"Now you're the very chap I wanted to see. Where have you been keeping +yourself lately? Come out to the farm to-night,--same of the boys'll be +there." Mr. Sprole, like many a self-made man, was proud of his farm, though +he did not lead a wholly bucolic existence. + +"I can't, Ches," answered Ditmar. "I've got to go back to Hampton." + +This statement Mr. Sprole unwisely accepted as a fiction. He took hold of +Ditmar's arm. + +"A lady--eh--what?" + +"I've got to go back to Hampton," repeated Ditmar, with a suggestion of +truculence that took his friend aback. Not for worlds would Mr. Sprole have +offended the agent of the Chippering Mill. + +"I was only joking, Claude," he hastened to explain. Ditmar, somewhat +mollified but still dejected, sought the dining-room when the lawyer had gone. + +"All alone to-night, Colonel?" asked the coloured head waiter, obsequiously. + +Ditmar demanded a table in the corner, and consumed a solitary meal. + +Very naturally Janet was aware of the change in Ditmar, and knew the cause of +it. Her feelings were complicated. He, the most important man in Hampton, the +self-sufficient, the powerful, the hitherto distant and unattainable head of +the vast organization known as the Chippering Mill, of which she was an +insignificant unit, at times became for her just a man--a man for whom she had +achieved a delicious contempt. And the knowledge that she, if she chose, could +sway and dominate him by the mere exercise of that strange feminine force +within her was intoxicating and terrifying. She read this in a thousand signs; +in his glances; in his movements revealing a desire to touch her; in little +things he said, apparently insignificant, yet fraught with meaning; in a +constant recurrence of the apologetic attitude--so alien to the Ditmar formerly +conceived--of which he had given evidence that day by the canal: and from this +attitude emanated, paradoxically, a virile and galvanic current profoundly +disturbing. Sometimes when he bent over her she experienced a commingled +ecstasy and fear that he would seize her in his arms. Yet the tension was not +constant, rising and falling with his moods and struggles, all of which she +read--unguessed by him--as easily as a printed page by the gift that dispenses +with laborious processes of the intellect. On the other hand, a resentment +boiled within her his masculine mind failed to fathom. Stevenson said of John +Knox that many women had come to learn from him, but he had never condescended +to become a learner in return--a remark more or less applicable to Ditmar. She +was, perforce, thrilled that he was virile and wanted her, but because he +wanted her clandestinely her pride revolted,divining his fear of scandal and +hating him for it like a thoroughbred. To do her justice, marriage never +occurred to her. She was not so commonplace. + +There were times, however, when the tension between them would relax, when some +incident occurred to focus Ditmar's interest on the enterprise that had +absorbed and unified his life, the Chippering Mill. One day in September, for +instance, after an absence in New York, he returned to the office late in the +afternoon, and she was quick to sense his elation, to recognize in him the +restored presence of the quality of elan, of command, of singleness of purpose +that had characterized him before she had become his stenographer. At first, +as he read his mail, he seemed scarcely conscious of her presence. She stood +by the window, awaiting his pleasure, watching the white mist as it rolled over +the floor of the river, catching glimpses in vivid, saffron blurs of the lights +of the Arundel Mill on the farther shore. Autumn was at hand. Suddenly she +heard Ditmar speaking. + +"Would you mind staying a little while longer this evening, Miss Bumpus?" + +"Not at all," she replied, turning. + +On his face was a smile, almost boyish. + +"The fact is, I think I've got hold of the biggest single order that ever came +into any mill in New England," he declared. + +"Oh, I'm glad," she said quickly. + +"The cotton cards--?" he demanded. + +She knew he referred to the schedules, based on the current prices of cotton, +made out in the agent's office and sent in duplicate to the selling house, in +Boston. She got them from the shelf; and as he went over them she heard him +repeating the names of various goods now become familiar, pongees, poplins, +percales and voiles, garbardines and galateas, lawns, organdies, crepes, and +Madras shirtings, while he wrote down figures on a sheet of paper. So complete +was his absorption in this task that Janet, although she had resented the +insinuating pressure of his former attitude toward her, felt a paradoxical +sensation of jealousy. Presently, without looking up, he told her to call up +the Boston office and ask for Mr. Fraile, the cotton buyer; and she learned +from the talk over the telephone though it was mostly about "futures"--that +Ditmar had lingered for a conference in Boston on his way back from New York. +Afterwards, having dictated two telegrams which she wrote out on her machine, +he leaned back in his chair; and though the business for the day was ended, +showed a desire to detain her. His mood became communicative. + + +"I've been on the trail of that order for a month," he declared. "Of course it +isn't my business to get orders, but to manage this mill, and that's enough for +one man, God knows. But I heard the Bradlaughs were in the market for these +goods, and I told the selling house to lie low, that I'd go after it. I knew I +could get away with it, if anybody could. I went to the Bradlaughs and sat +down on 'em, I lived with 'em, ate with 'em, brought 'em home at night. I +didn't let 'em alone a minute until they handed it over. I wasn't going to +give any other mill in New England or any of those southern concerns a chance +to walk off with it--not on your life! Why, we have the facilities. There +isn't another mill in the country can turn it out in the time they ask, and +even we will have to go some to do it. But we'll do it, by George, unless I'm +struck by lightning." + +He leaned forward, hitting the desk with his fist, and Janet, standing beside +him, smiled. She had the tempting gift of silence. Forgetting her twinge of +jealousy, she was drawn toward him now, and in this mood of boyish exuberance, +of self-confidence and pride in his powers and success she liked him better +than ever before. She had, for the first time, the curious feeling of being +years older than he, yet this did not detract from a new-born admiration. + +"I made this mill, and I'm proud of it," he went on. "When old Stephen +Chippering put me in charge he was losing money, he'd had three agents in four +years. The old man knew I had it in me, and I knew it, if I do say it myself. +All this union labour talk about shorter hours makes me sick--why, there was a +time when I worked ten and twelve hours a day, and I'm man enough to do it yet, +if I have to. When the last agent--that was Cort--was sacked I went to Boston +on my own hook and tackled the old gentleman--that's the only way to get +anywhere. I couldn't bear to see the mill going to scrap, and I told him a +thing or two,--I had the facts and the figures. Stephen Chippering was a big +man, but he had a streak of obstinacy in him, he was conservative, you bet. I +had to get it across to him there was a lot of dead wood in this plant, I had +to wake him up to the fact that the twentieth century was here. He had to be +shown--he was from Boston, you know--" Ditmar laughed--"but he was all wool and +a yard wide, and he liked me and trusted me. + +"That was in nineteen hundred. I can remember the interview as well as if it +had happened last night--we sat up until two o'clock in the morning in that +library of his with the marble busts and the leather-bound books and the double +windows looking out over the Charles, where the wind was blowing a gale. And +at last he said, `All right, Claude, go ahead. I'll put you in as agent, and +stand behind you.' And by thunder, he did stand behind me. He was quiet, the +finest looking old man I ever saw in my life, straight as a ramrod, with a +little white goatee and a red, weathered face full of creases, and a skin that +looked as if it had been pricked all over with needles--the old Boston sort. +They don't seem to turn 'em out any more. Why, I have a picture of him here." + +He opened a drawer in his desk and drew out a photograph. Janet gazed at it +sympathetically. + +"It doesn't give you any notion of those eyes of his," Ditmar said, +reminiscently. "They looked right through a man's skull, no matter how thick +it was. If anything went wrong, I never wasted any time in telling him about +it, and I guess it was one reason he liked me. Some of the people up here +didn't understand him, kow-towed to him, they were scared of him, and if he +thought they had something up their sleeves he looked as if he were going to +eat 'em alive. Regular fighting eyes, the kind that get inside of a man and +turn the light on. And he sat so still--made you ashamed of yourself. Well, +he was a born fighter, went from Harvard into the Rebellion and was left for +dead at Seven Oaks, where one of the company found him and saved him. He set +that may up for life, and never talked about it, either. See what he wrote on +the bottom--'To my friend, Claude Ditmar, Stephen Chippering.' And believe me, +when he once called a man a friend he never took it back. I know one thing, +I'll never get another friend like him." + +With a gesture that gave her a new insight into Ditmar, reverently he took the +picture from her hand and placed it back in the drawer. She was stirred, +almost to tears, and moved away from him a little, as though to lessen by +distance the sudden attraction he had begun to exert: yet she lingered, half +leaning, half sitting on the corner of the big desk, her head bent toward him, +her eyes filled with light. She was wondering whether he could ever love a +woman as he loved this man of whom he had spoken, whether he could be as true +to a woman. His own attitude seemed never to have been more impersonal, but +she had ceased to resent it; something within her whispered that she was the +conductor, the inspirer.. .. + +"I wish Stephen Chippering could have lived to see this order," he exclaimed, +"to see the Chippering Mill to-day! I guess he'd be proud of it, I guess he +wouldn't regret having put me in as agent." + +Janet did not reply. She could not. She sat regarding him intently, and when +he raised his eyes and caught her luminous glance, his expression changed, she +knew Stephen Chippering had passed from his mind. + +"I hope you like it here," he said. His voice had become vibrant, +ingratiating, he had changed from the master to the suppliant--and yet she was +not displeased. Power had suddenly flowed back into her, and with it an +exhilarating self-command. + +"I do like it," she answered. + +"But you said, when I asked you to be my stenographer, that you didn't care for +your work." + +"Oh, this is different." + +"How?" + +"I'm interested, the mill means something to me now you see, I'm not just +copying things I don't know anything about." + +"I'm glad you're interested," he said, in the same odd, awkward tone. "I've +never had any one in the office who did my work as well. Now Miss Ottway was a +good stenographer, she was capable, and a fine woman, but she never got the +idea, the spirit of the mill in her as you've got it, and she wasn't able to +save me trouble, as you do. It's remarkable how you've come to understand, and +in such a short time." + +Janet coloured. She did not look at him, but had risen and begun to straighten +out the papers beside her. + +"There are lots of other things I'd like to understand," she said. + +"What?" he demanded. + +"Well--about the mill. I never thought much about it before, I always hated +it," she cried, dropping the papers and suddenly facing him. "It was just +drudgery. But now I want to learn everything, all I can, I'd like to see the +machinery." + +"I'll take you through myself--to-morrow," he declared. + +His evident agitation made her pause. They were alone, the outer office +deserted, and the Ditmar she saw now, whom she had summoned up with ridiculous +ease by virtue of that mysterious power within her, was no longer the agent of +the Chippering Mill, a boy filled with enthusiasm by a business achievement, +but a man, the incarnation and expression of masculine desire desire for her. +She knew she could compel him, if she chose, to throw caution to the winds. + +"Oh no!" she exclaimed. She was afraid of him, she shrank from such a +conspicuous sign of his favour. + +"Why not?" he asked. + +"Because I don't want you to," she said, and realized, as soon as she had +spoken, that her words might imply the existence of a something between them +never before hinted at by her. "I'll get Mr. Caldwell to take me through." +She moved toward the door, and turned; though still on fire within, her manner +had become demure, repressed. "Did you wish anything more this evening?" she +inquired. + +"That's all," he said, and she saw that he was gripping the arms of his +chair.... + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Autumn was at hand. All day it had rained, but now, as night fell and Janet +went homeward, the white mist from the river was creeping stealthily over the +city, disguising the familiar and sordid landmarks. These had become +beautiful, mysterious, somehow appealing. The electric arcs, splotches in the +veil, revealed on the Common phantom trees; and in the distance, against the +blurred lights from the Warren Street stores skirting the park could be seen +phantom vehicles, phantom people moving to and fro. Thus, it seemed to Janet, +invaded by a pearly mist was her own soul, in which she walked in wonder,--a +mist shot through and through with soft, exhilarating lights half disclosing +yet transforming and etherealizing certain landmark's there on which, formerly, +she had not cared to gaze. She was thinking of Ditmar as she had left him +gripping his chair, as he had dismissed her for the day, curtly, almost +savagely. She had wounded and repelled him, and lingering in her was that +exquisite touch of fear--a fear now not so much inspired by Ditmar as by the +semi-acknowledged recognition of certain tendencies and capacities within +herself. Yet she rejoiced in them, she was glad she had hurt Ditmar, she would +hurt him again. Still palpitating, she reached the house in Fillmore Street, +halting a moment with her hand on the door, knowing her face was flushed, +anxious lest her mother or Lise might notice something unusual in her manner. +But, when she had slowly mounted the stairs and lighted the gas in the bedroom +the sight of her sister's clothes cast over the chairs was proof that Lise had +already donned her evening finery and departed. The room was filled with the +stale smell of clothes, which Janet detested. She flung open the windows. She +took off her hat and swiftly tidied herself, yet the relief she felt at Lise's +absence was modified by a sudden, vehement protest against sordidness. Why +should she not live by herself amidst clean and tidy surroundings? She had +begun to earn enough, and somehow a vista had been opened up--a vista whose end +she could not see, alluring, enticing.... In the dining-room, by the cleared +table, her father was reading the Banner; her mother appeared in the kitchen +door. + +"What in the world happened to you, Janet?" she exclaimed. + + +"Nothing," said Janet. "Mr. Ditmar asked me to stay--that was all. He'd been +away." + +"I was worried, I was going to make your father go down to the mill. I've +saved you some supper." + +"I don't want much," Janet told her, "I'm not hungry." + +"I guess you have to work too hard in that new place," said Hannah, as she +brought in the filled plate from the oven. + +"Well, it seems to agree with her, mother," declared Edward, who could always +be counted on to say the wrong thing with the best of intentions. "I never saw +her looking as well--why, I swan, she's getting real pretty!" + +Hannah darted at him a glance, but restrained herself, and Janet reddened as +she tried to eat the beans placed before her. The pork had browned and +hardened at the edges, the gravy had spread, a crust covered the potatoes. +When her father resumed his reading of the Banner and her mother went back into +the kitchen she began to speculate rather resentfully and yet excitedly why it +was that this adventure with a man, with Ditmar, made her look better, feel +better,--more alive. She was too honest to disguise from herself that it was +an adventure, a high one, fraught with all sorts of possibilities, dangers, and +delights. Her promotion had been merely incidental. Both her mother and +father, did they know the true circumstances,--that Mr. Ditmar desired her, was +perhaps in love with her--would be disturbed. Undoubtedly they would have +believed that she could "take care" of herself. She knew that matters could +not go on as they were, that she would either have to leave Mr. Ditmar or--and +here she baulked at being logical. She had no intention of leaving him: to +remain, according to the notions of her parents, would be wrong. Why was it +that doing wrong agreed with her, energized her, made her more alert, cleverer, +keying up her faculties? turned life from a dull affair into a momentous one? +To abandon Ditmar would be to slump back into the humdrum, into something from +which she had magically been emancipated, symbolized by the home in which she +sat; by the red-checked tablecloth, the ugly metal lamp, the cherry chairs with +the frayed seats, the horsehair sofa from which the stuffing protruded, the +tawdry pillow with its colours, once gay, that Lise had bought at a bargain at +the Bagatelle.... The wooden clock with the round face and quaint landscape +below--the family's most cherished heirloom--though long familiar, was not so +bad; but the two yellowed engravings on the wall offended her. They had been +wedding presents to Edward's father. One represented a stupid German peasant +woman holding a baby, and standing in front of a thatched cottage; its +companion was a sylvan scene in which certain wooden rustics were supposed to +be enjoying themselves. Between the two, and dotted with flyspecks, hung an +insurance calendar on which was a huge head of a lady, florid, fluffy-haired, +flirtatious. Lise thought her beautiful. + +The room was ugly. She had long known that, but tonight the realization came +to her that what she chiefly resented in it was the note it proclaimed--the +note of a mute acquiescence, without protest or struggle, in what life might +send. It reflected accurately the attitude of her parents, particularly of her +father. With an odd sense of detachment, of critical remoteness and contempt +she glanced at him as he sat stupidly absorbed in his newspaper, his face +puckered, his lips pursed, and Ditmar rose before her--Ditmar, the embodiment +of an indomitableness that refused to be beaten and crushed. She thought of +the story he had told her, how by self-assertion and persistence he had become +agent of the Chippering Mill, how he had convinced Mr. Stephen Chippering of +his ability. She could not think of the mill as belonging to the Chipperings +and the other stockholders, but to Ditmar, who had shaped it into an expression +of himself, since it was his ideal. And now it seemed that he had made it hers +also. She regretted having repulsed him, pushed her plate away from her, and +rose. + +"You haven't eaten anything," said Hannah, who had come into the room. "Where +are you going?" + +"Out--to Eda's," Janet answered.... + +"It's late," Hannah objected. But Janet departed. Instead of going to Eda's +she walked alone, seeking the quieter streets that her thoughts might flow +undisturbed. At ten o'clock, when she returned, the light was out in the +diningroom, her sister had not come in, and she began slowly to undress, +pausing every now and then to sit on the bed and dream; once she surprised +herself gazing into the glass with a rapt expression that was almost a smile. +What was it about her that had attracted Ditmar? No other man had ever noticed +it. She had never thought herself good looking, and now--it was astonishing!-- +she seemed to have changed,and she saw with pride that her arms and neck were +shapely, that her dark hair fell down in a cascade over her white shoulders to +her waist. She caressed it; it was fine. When she looked again, a radiancy +seemed to envelop her. She braided her hair slowly, in two long plaits, +looking shyly in the mirror and always seeing that radiancy.... + +Suddenly it occurred to her with a shock that she was doing exactly what she +had despised Lise for doing, and leaving the mirror she hurried her toilet, put +out the light, and got into bed. For a long time, however, she remained +wakeful, turning first on one side and then on the other, trying to banish from +her mind the episode that had excited her. But always it came back again. She +saw Ditmar before her, virile, vital, electric with desire. At last she fell +asleep. + +Gradually she was awakened by something penetrating her consciousness, +something insistent, pervasive, unescapable, which in drowsiness she could not +define. The gas was burning, Lise had come in, and was moving peculiarly about +the room. Janet watched her. She stood in front of the bureau, just as Janet +herself had done, her hands at her throat. At last she let them fall, her head +turning slowly, as though drawn, by some irresistible, hypnotic power, and +their eyes met. Lise's were filmed, like those of a dog whose head is being +stroked, expressing a luxuriant dreaminess uncomprehending, passionate. + +"Say, did I wake you?" she asked. "I did my best not to make any noise--honest +to God." + +"It wasn't the noise that woke me up," said Janet. + +"It couldn't have been." + +"You've been drinking!" said Janet, slowly. + +Lise giggled. + +"What's it to you, angel face!" she inquired. "Quiet down, now, and go bye- +bye." + +Janet sprang from the bed, seized her by the shoulders, and shook her. She was +limp. She began to whimper. + +"Cut it out--leave me go. It ain't nothing to you what I do--I just had a +highball." + +Janet released her and drew back. + +"I just had a highball--honest to God!" + +"Don't say that again!" whispered Janet, fiercely. + +"Oh, very well. For God's sake, go to bed and leave me alone--I can take care +of myself, I guess--I ain't nutty enough to hit the booze. But I ain't like +you--I've got to have a little fun to keep alive." + +"A little fun!" Janet exclaimed. The phrase struck her sharply. A little fun +to keep alive! + +With that same peculiar, cautious movement she had observed, Lise approached a +chair, and sank into it,--jerking her head in the direction of the room where +Hannah and Edward slept. + +"D'you want to wake 'em up? Is that your game?" she asked, and began to fumble +at her belt. Overcoming with an effort a disgust amounting to nausea, Janet +approached her sister again, little by little undressing her, and finally +getting her into bed, when she immediately fell into a profound slumber. +Janet, too, got into bed, but sleep was impossible: the odour lurked like a +foul spirit in the darkness, mingling with the stagnant, damp air that came in +at the open window, fairly saturating her with horror: it seemed the very +essence of degradation. But as she lay on the edge of the bed, shrinking from +contamination, in the throes of excitement inspired by an unnamed fear, she +grew hot, she could feel and almost hear the pounding of her heart. She rose, +felt around in the clammy darkness for her wrapper and slippers, gained the +door, crept through the dark hall to the dining-room, where she stealthily lit +the lamp; darkness had become a terror. A cockroach scurried across the +linoleum. The room was warm and close, it reeked with the smell of stale food, +but at least she found relief from that other odour. She sank down on the +sofa. + +Her sister was drunk. That in itself was terrible enough, yet it was not the +drunkenness alone that had sickened Janet, but the suggestion of something +else. Where had Lise been? In whose company had she become drunk? Of late, +in contrast to a former communicativeness, Lise had been singuarly secretive as +to her companions, and the manner in which her evenings were spent; and she, +Janet, had grown too self-absorbed to be curious. Lise, with her shopgirl's +cynical knowledge of life and its pitfalls and the high valuation at which she +held her charms, had seemed secure from danger; but Janet recalled her +discouragement, her threat to leave the Bagatelle. Since then there had been +something furtive about her. Now, because that odour of alcohol Lise exhaled +had destroyed in Janet the sense of exhilaration, of life on a higher plane she +had begun to feel, and filled her with degradation, she hated Lise, felt for +her sister no strain of pity. A proof, had she recognized it, that immorality +is not a matter of laws and decrees, but of individual emotions. A few hours +before she had seen nothing wrong in her relationship with Ditmar: now she +beheld him selfish, ruthless, pursuing her for one end, his own gratification. +As a man, he had become an enemy. Ditmar was like all other men who exploited +her sex without compunction, but the thought that she was like Lise, asleep in +a drunken stupor, that their cases differed only in degree, was insupportable. + +At last she fell asleep from sheer weariness, to dream she was with Ditmar at +some place in the country under spreading trees, Silliston, perhaps--Silliston +Common, cleverly disguised: nor was she quite sure, always, that the man was +Ditmar; he had a way of changing, of resembling the man she had met in +Silliston whom she had mistaken for a carpenter. He was pleading with her, in +his voice was the peculiar vibrancy that thrilled her, that summoned some +answering thing out of the depths of her, and she felt herself yielding with a +strange ecstasy in which were mingled joy and terror. The terror was +conquering the joy, and suddenly he stood transformed before her eyes, +caricatured, become a shrieking monster from whom she sought in agony to +escape.... In this paralysis of fear she awoke, staring with wide eyes at the +flickering flame of the lamp, to a world filled with excruciating sound--the +siren of the Chippering Mill! She lay trembling with the horror of the +dreamspell upon her, still more than half convinced that the siren was Ditmar's +voice, his true expression. He was waiting to devour her. Would the sound +never end?... + +Then, remembering where she was, alarmed lest her mother might come in and find +her there, she left the sofa, turned out the sputtering lamp, and ran into the +bedroom. Rain was splashing on the bricks of the passage-way outside, the +shadows of the night still lurked in the corners; by the grey light she gazed +at Lise, who breathed loudly and stirred uneasily, her mouth open, her lips +parched. Janet touched her. + +"Lise--get up!" she said. "It's time to get up." She shook her. + +"Leave me alone--can't you?" + +"It's time to get up. The whistle has sounded." + +Lise heavily opened her eyes. They were bloodshot. + +"I don't want to get up. I won't get up." + +"But you must," insisted Janet, tightening her hold. "You've got to--you've +got to eat breakfast and go to work." + +"I don't want any breakfast, I ain't going to work any more." + +A gust of wind blew inward the cheap lace curtains, and the physical effect of +it emphasized the chill that struck Janet's heart. She got up and closed the +window, lit the gas, and returning to the bed, shook Lise again. + +"Listen," she said, "if you don't get up I'll tell mother what happened last +night." + +"Say, you wouldn't--!" exclaimed Lise, angrily. + +"Get up!" Janet commanded, and watched her rather anxiously, uncertain as to +the after effects of drunkenness. But Lise got up. She sat on the edge of the +bed and yawned, putting her hand to her forehead. + +"I've sure got a head on me," she remarked. + +Janet was silent, angrier than ever, shocked that tragedy, degradation, could +be accepted thus circumstantially. Lise proceeded to put up her hair. She +seemed to be mistress of herself; only tired, gaping frequently. Once she +remarked:-- + +"I don't see the good of getting nutty over a highball." + +Seeing that Janet was not to be led into controversy, she grew morose. + +Breakfast in Fillmore Street, never a lively meal, was more dismal than usual +that morning, eaten to the accompaniment of slopping water from the roofs on +the pavement of the passage. The indisposition of Lise passed unobserved by +both Hannah and Edward; and at twenty minutes to eight the two girls, with +rubbers and umbrellas, left the house together, though it was Janet's custom to +depart earlier, since she had farther to go. Lise, suspicious, maintained an +obstinate silence, keeping close to the curb. They reached the corner by the +provision shop with the pink and orange chromos of jellies in the window. + +"Lise, has anything happened to you?" demanded Janet suddenly. "I want you to +tell me." + +"Anything happened--what do you mean? Anything happened?" + +"You know very well what I mean." + +"Well, suppose something has happened?" Lise's reply was pert, defiant. +"What's it to you? If anything's happened, it's happened to me--hasn't it?" + +Janet approached her. + +"What are you trying to do?" said Lise. "Push me into the gutter?" + +"I guess you're there already," said Janet. + +Lise was roused to a sudden pitch of fury. She turned on Janet and thrust her +back. + +"Well, if I am who's going to blame me?" she cried. "If you had to work all +day in that hole, standing on your feet, picked on by yaps for six a week, I +guess you wouldn't talk virtuous, either. It's easy for you to shoot off your +mouth, you've got a soft snap with Ditmar." + +Janet was outraged. She could not restrain her anger. + +"How dare you say that?" she demanded. + +Lise was cowed. + +"Well, you drove me to it--you make me mad enough to say anything. Just +because I went to Gruber's with Neva Lorrie and a couple of gentlemen--they +were gentlemen all right, as much gentlemen as Ditmar--you come at me and tell +me I'm all to the bad." She began to sob. "I'm as straight as you are. How +was I to know the highball was stiff? Maybe I was tired--anyhow, it put me on +the queer, and everything in the joint began to tango 'round me--and Neva came +home with me." + +Janet felt a surge of relief, in which were mingled anxiety and resentment: +relief because she was convinced that Lise was telling the truth, anxiety +because she feared for Lise's future, resentment because Ditmar had been +mentioned. Still, what she had feared most had not come to pass. Lise left +her abruptly, darting down a street that led to a back entrance of the +Bagatelle, and Janet pursued her way. Where, she wondered, would it all end? +Lise had escaped so far, but drunkenness was an ominous sign. And "gentlemen"? +What kind of gentlemen had taken her sister to Gruber's? Would Ditmar do that +sort of thing if he had a chance? + +The pavement in front of the company boarding-houses by the canal was plastered +with sodden leaves whipped from the maples by the driving rain in the night. +The sky above the mills was sepia. White lights were burning in the loom +rooms. When she reached the vestibule Simmons, the watchman, informed her that +Mr. Ditmar had already been there, and left for Boston. + +Janet did not like to acknowledge to herself her disappointment on learning +that Ditmar had gone to Boston. She knew he had had no such intention the +night before; an accumulated mail and many matters demanding decisions were +awaiting him; and his sudden departure seemed an act directed personally +against her, in the nature of a retaliation, since she had offended and +repulsed him. Through Lise's degrading act she had arrived at the conclusion +that all adventure and consequent suffering had to do with Man--a conviction +peculiarly maddening to such temperaments as Janet's. Therefore she +interpreted her suffering in terms of Ditmar, she had looked forward to +tormenting him again, and by departing he had deliberately balked and cheated +her. The rain fell ceaselessly out of black skies, night seemed ever ready to +descend on the river, a darkness--according to young Mr. Caldwell--due not to +the clouds alone, but to forest fires many hundreds of miles away, in Canada. +As the day wore on, however, her anger gradually gave place to an extreme +weariness and depression, and yet she dreaded going home, inventing things for +herself to do; arranging and rearranging Ditmar's papers that he might have +less trouble in sorting them, putting those uppermost which she thought he +would deem the most important. Perhaps he would come in, late! In a world of +impending chaos the brilliantly lighted office was a tiny refuge to which she +clung. At last she put on her coat and rubbers, faring forth reluctantly into +the wet. + +At first when she entered the bedroom she thought it empty, though the gas was +burning, and them she saw Lise lying face downward on the bed. For a moment +she stood still, then closed the door softly. + +"Lise," she said. + +"What?" + +Janet sat down on the bed, putting out her hand. Unconsciously she began to +stroke Lise's hand, and presently it turned and tightened on her own. + +"Lise," she said, "I understand why you--" she could not bring herself to +pronounce the words "got drunk,"--"I understand why you did it. I oughtn't to +have talked to you that way. But it was terrible to wake up and see you." + +For awhile Lise did not reply. Then she raised herself, feeling her hair with +an involuntary gesture, regarding her sister with a bewildered look, her face +puckered. Her eyes burned, and under them were black shadows. + +"How do you mean--you understand?" she asked slowly. "You never hit the +booze." + +Even Lise's language, which ordinarily offended her, failed to change her +sudden impassioned and repentant mood. She was astonished at herself for this +sudden softening, since she did not really love Lise, and all day she had hated +her, wished never to see her again. + +"No, but I can understand how it would be to want to," Janet said. "Lise, I +guess we're searching--both of us for something we'll never find." + +Lise stared at her with a contracted, puzzled expression, as of a person +awaking from sleep, all of whose faculties are being strained toward +comprehension. + +"What do you mean?" she demanded. "You and me? You're all right--you've got +no kick coming." + +"Life is hard, it's hard on girls like us--we want things we can't have." +Janet was at a loss to express herself. + + +"Well, it ain't any pipe dream," Lise agreed. Her glance turned involuntarily +toward the picture of the Olympian dinner party pinned on the wall. "Swells +have a good time," she added. + +"Maybe they pay for it, too," said Janet. + +"I wouldn't holler about paying--it's paying and not getting the goods," +declared Lise. + +"You'll pay, and you won't get it. That kind of life is--hell," Janet cried. + +Self-centered as Lise was, absorbed in her own trouble and present physical +discomfort, this unaccustomed word from her sister and the vehemence with which +it was spoken surprised and frightened her, brought home to her some hint of +the terror in Janet's soul. + +"Me for the water wagon," she said. + +Janet was not convinced. She had hoped to discover the identity of the man who +had taken Lise to Gruber's, but she did not attempt to continue the +conversation. She rose and took off her hat. + +"Why don't you go to bed?" she asked. "I'll tell mother you have a headache +and bring in your supper." + +"Well, I don't care if I do," replied Lise, gratefully. + +Perhaps the most disconcerting characteristic of that complex affair, the human +organism, is the lack of continuity of its moods. The soul, so called, is as +sensitive to physical conditions as a barometer: affected by lack of sleep, by +smells and sounds, by food, by the weather--whether a day be sapphire or +obsidian. And the resolutions arising from one mood are thwarted by the +actions of the next. Janet had observed this phenomenon, and sometimes, when +it troubled her, she thought herself the most inconsistent and vacillating of +creatures. She had resolved, far instance, before she fell asleep, to leave +the Chippering Mill, to banish Ditmar from her life, to get a position in Boston, +whence she could send some of her wages home: and in the morning, as she made her +way to the office, the determination gave her a sense of peace and unity. But the +northwest wind was blowing. It had chased away the mist and the clouds, the smoke +from Canada. The sun shone with a high brilliancy, the elms of the Common cast +sharp, black shadow-patterns on the pavements, and when she reached the office +and looked out of his window she saw the blue river covered with quicksilver +waves chasing one another across the current. Ditmar had not yet returned to +Hampton. About ten o'clock, as she was copying out some figures for Mr. Price, +young Mr. Caldwell approached her. He had a Boston newspaper in his hand. + +"Have you seen this article about Mr. Ditmar?" he asked. + +"About Mr. Ditmar? No." + +"It's quite a send-off for the Colonel," said Caldwell, who was wont at times +to use the title facetiously. "Listen; `One of the most notable figures in the +Textile industry of the United States, Claude Ditmar, Agent of the Chippering +Mill.'" Caldwell spread out the page and pointed to a picture. "There he is, +as large as life." + +A little larger than life, Janet thought. Ditmar was one of those men who, as +the expression goes, "take" well, a valuable asset in semi-public careers; and +as he stood in the sunlight on the steps of the building where they had "snap- +shotted" him he appeared even more massive, forceful, and preponderant than she +had known him. Beholding him thus set forth and praised in a public print, he +seemed suddenly to have been distantly removed from her, to have reacquired at +a bound the dizzy importance he had possessed for her before she became his +stenographer. She found it impossible to realize that this was the Ditmar who +had pursued and desired her; at times supplicating, apologetic, abject; and +again revealed by the light in his eyes and the trembling of his hand as the +sinister and ruthless predatory male from whom--since the revelation in her +sister Lise she had determined to flee, and whom she had persuaded herself she +despised. He was a bigger man than she had thought, and as she read rapidly +down the column the fascination that crept over her was mingled with +disquieting doubt of her own powers: it was now difficult to believe she had +dominated or could ever dominate this self-sufficient, successful person, the +list of whose achievements and qualities was so alluringly set forth by an +interviewer who himself had fallen a victim. + +The article carried the implication that the modern, practical, American +business man was the highest type as yet evolved by civilization: and Ditmar, +referred to as "a wizard of the textile industry," was emphatically one who had +earned the gratitude of the grand old Commonwealth. By the efforts of such +sons she continued to maintain her commanding position among her sister states. +Prominent among the qualities contributing to his success was openmindedness, +"a willingness to be shown," to scrap machinery when his competitors still +clung to older methods. The Chippering Mill had never had a serious strike,-- +indication of an ability to deal with labour; and Mr. Ditmar's views on labour +followed: if his people had a grievance, let them come to him, and settle it +between them. No unions. He had consistently refused to recognize them. +There was mention of the Bradlaugh order as being the largest commission ever +given to a single mill, a reference to the excitement and speculation it had +aroused in trade circles. Claude Ditmar's ability to put it through was +unquestioned; one had only to look at him,--tenacity, forcefulness, +executiveness were written all over him.... In addition, the article contained +much material of an autobiographical nature that must--Janet thought--have been +supplied by Ditmar himself, whose modesty had evidently shrunk from the cruder +self-eulogy of an interview. But she recognized several characteristic +phrases. + +Caldwell, watching her as she read, was suddenly fascinated. During a trip +abroad, while still an undergraduate, he had once seen the face of an actress, +a really good Parisian actress, light up in that way; and it had revealed to +him, in a flash, the meaning of enthusiasm. Now Janet became vivid for him. +There must be something unusual in a person whose feelings could be so intense, +whose emotions rang so true. He was not unsophisticated. He had sometimes +wondered why Ditmar had promoted her, though acknowledging her ability. He +admired Ditmar, but had no illusions about him. Harvard, and birth in a social +stratum where emphasis is superfluous, enabled him to smile at the reporter's +exuberance; and he was the more drawn toward her to see on Janet's flushed face +the hint of a smile as she looked up at him when she had finished. + +"The Colonel hypnotized that reporter," he said, as he took the paper; and her +laugh, despite its little tremor, betrayed in her an unsuspected, humorous +sense of proportion. "Well, I'll take off my hat to him," Caldwell went on. +"He is a wonder, he's got the mill right up to capacity in a week. He's agreed +to deliver those goods to the Bradlaughs by the first of April, you know, and +Holster, of the Clarendon, swears it can't be done, he says Ditmar's crazy. +Well, I stand to lose twenty-five dollars on him." + +This loyalty pleased Janet, it had the strange effect of reviving loyalty in +her. She liked this evidence of Dick Caldwell's confidence. He was a self- +contained and industrious young man, with crisp curly hair, cordial and +friendly yet never intimate with the other employer; liked by them--but it was +tacitly understood his footing differed from theirs. He was a cousin of the +Chipperings, and destined for rapid promotion. He went away every Saturday, it +was known that he spent Sundays and holidays in delightful places, to return +reddened and tanned; and though he never spoke about these excursions, and put +on no airs of superiority, there was that in his manner and even in the cut of +his well-worn suits proclaiming him as belonging to a sphere not theirs, to a +category of fortunate beings whose stumbles are not fatal, who are sustained +from above. Even Ditmar was not of these. + +"I've just been showing a lot of highbrows through the mill," he told Janet. +"They asked questions enough to swamp a professor of economics." + +And Janet was suddenly impelled to ask:-- + +"Will you take me through sometime, Mr. Caldwell?" + +"You've never been through?" he exclaimed. "Why, we'll go now, if you can +spare the time." + +Her face had become scarlet. + +"Don't tell Mr. Ditmar," she begged. "You see--he wanted to take me himself." + +"Not a word," Caldwell promised as they left the office together and went +downstairs to the strong iron doors that led to the Cotton Department. The +showing through of occasional visitors had grown rather tiresome; but now his +curiosity and interest were aroused, he was conscious of a keen stimulation +when he glanced at Janet's face. Its illumination perplexed him. The effect +was that of a picture obscurely hung and hitherto scarcely noticed on which the +light had suddenly been turned. It glowed with a strange and disturbing +radiance.... + +As for Janet, she was as one brought suddenly to the realization of a miracle +in whose presence she had lived for many years and never before suspected; the +miracle of machinery, of the triumph of man over nature. In the brief space of +an hour she beheld the dirty bales flung off the freight cars on the sidings +transformed into delicate fabrics wound from the looms; cotton that only last +summer, perhaps, while she sat typewriting at her window, had been growing in +the fields of the South. She had seen it torn by the balebreakers, blown into +the openers, loosened, cleansed, and dried; taken up by the lappers, pressed +into batting, and passed on to the carding machines, to emerge like a wisp of +white smoke in a sliver and coil automatically in a can. Once more it was +flattened into a lap, given to a comber that felt out its fibres, removing with +superhuman precision those for the finer fabric too short, thrusting it forth +again in another filmy sliver ready for the drawing frames. Six of these +gossamer ropes were taken up, and again six. Then came the Blubbers and the +roving frames, twisting and winding, the while maintaining the most delicate of +tensions lest the rope break, running the strands together into a thread +constantly growing stronger and finer, until it was ready for spinning. + +Caldwell stood close to her, shouting his explanations in her ear, while she +strained to follow them. But she was bewildered and entranced by the +marvellous swiftness, accuracy and ease with which each of the complex +machines, fed by human hands, performed its function. These human hands were +swift, too, as when they thrust the bobbins of roving on the ringspinning +frames to be twisted into yarn. She saw a woman, in the space of an instant, +mend a broken thread. Women and boys were here, doffer boys to lift off the +full bobbins of yarn with one hand and set on the empty bobbins with the other: +while skilled workmen, alert for the first sign of trouble, followed up and +down in its travels the long frame of the mule-spinner. After the spinning, +the heavy spools of yarn were carried to a beam-warper, standing alone like a +huge spider's web, where hundreds of threads were stretched symmetrically and +wound evenly, side by side, on a large cylinder, forming the warp of the fabric +to be woven on the loom. First, however, this warp must be stiffened or +"slashed" in starch and tallow, dried over heated drums, and finally wound +around one great beam from which the multitude of threads are taken up, one by +one, and slipped through the eyes of the loom harnesses by women who sit all +day under the north windows overlooking the canal--the "drawers-in" of whom +Ditmar had spoken. Then the harnesses are put on the loom, the threads +attached to the cylinder on which the cloth is to be wound. The looms absorbed +and fascinated Janet above all else. It seemed as if she would never tire of +watching the rhythmic rise and fall of the harnesses,--each rapid movement +making a V in the warp, within the angle of which the tiny shuttles darted to +and fro, to and fro, carrying the thread that filled the cloth with a swiftness +so great the eye could scarcely follow it; to be caught on the other side when +the angle closed, and flung back, and back again! And in the elaborate +patterns not one, but several harnesses were used, each awaiting its turn for +the impulse bidding it rise and fall!... Abruptly, as she gazed, one of the +machines halted, a weaver hurried up, searched the warp for the broken thread, +tied it, and started the loom again. + +"That's intelligent of it," said Caldwell, in her ear. But she could only nod +in reply. + +The noise in the weaving rooms was deafening, the heat oppressive. She began +to wonder how these men and women, boys and girls bore the strain all day long. +She had never thought much about them before save to compare vaguely their +drudgery with that from which now she had been emancipated; but she began to +feel a new respect, a new concern, a new curiosity and interest as she watched +them passing from place to place with indifference between the whirling belts, +up and down the narrow aisles, flanked on either side by that bewildering, +clattering machinery whose polished surfaces continually caught and flung back +the light of the electric bulbs on the ceiling. How was it possible to live +for hours at a time in this bedlam without losing presence of mind and +thrusting hand or body in the wrong place, or becoming deaf? She had never +before realized what mill work meant, though she had read of the accidents. +But these people--even the children--seemed oblivious to the din and the +danger, intent on their tasks, unconscious of the presence of a visitor, save +occasionally when she caught a swift glance from a woman or girl a glance, +perhaps, of envy or even of hostility. The dark, foreign faces glowed, and +instantly grew dull again, and then she was aware of lurking terrors, despite +her exaltation, her sense now of belonging to another world, a world somehow +associated with Ditmar. Was it not he who had lifted her farther above all +this? Was it not by grace of her association with him she was there, a +spectator of the toil beneath? Yet the terror persisted. She, presently, +would step out of the noise, the oppressive moist heat of the drawing and +spinning rooms, the constant, remorseless menace of whirling wheels and cogs +and belts. But they?... She drew closer to Caldwell's side. + +"I never knew--" she said. "It must be hard to work here." + +He smiled at her, reassuringly. + +"Oh, they don't mind it," he replied. "It's like a health resort compared to +the conditions most of them live in at home. Why, there's plenty of +ventilation here, and you've got to have a certain amount of heat and moisture, +because when cotton is cold and dry it can't be drawn or spin, and when it's +hot and dry the electricity is troublesome. If you think this moisture is bad +you ought to see a mill with the old vapour-pot system with the steam shooting +out into the room. Look here!" He led Janet to the apparatus in which the +pure air is forced through wet cloths, removing the dust, explaining how the +ventilation and humidity were regulated automatically, how the temperature of +the room was controlled by a thermostat. + +"There isn't an agent in the country who's more concerned about the welfare of +his operatives than Mr. Ditmar. He's made a study of it, he's spent thousands +of dollars, and as soon as these machines became practical he put 'em in. The +other day when I was going through the room one of these shuttles flew off, as +they sometimes do when the looms are running at high speed. A woman was pretty +badly hurt. Ditmar came right down." + +"He really cares about them," said Janet. She liked Caldwell's praise of +Ditmar, yet she spoke a little doubtfully. + +"Of course he cares. But it's common sense to make 'em as comfortable and +happy as possible--isn't it? He won't stand for being held up, and he'd be +stiff enough if it came to a strike. I don't blame him for that. Do you?" + +Janet was wondering how ruthless Ditmar could be if his will were crossed.... +They had left the room with its noise and heat behind them and were descending +the worn, oaken treads of the spiral stairway of a neighbouring tower. Janet +shivered a little, and her face seemed almost feverish as she turned to +Caldwell and thanked him. + +"Oh, it was a pleasure, Miss Bumpus," he declared. "And sometime, when you +want to see the Print Works or the Worsted Department, let me know--I'm your +man. And--I won't mention it." + +She did not answer. As they made their way back to the office he glanced at +her covertly, astonished at the emotional effect in her their tour had +produced. Though not of an inflammable temperament, he himself was stirred, +and it was she who, unaccountably, had stirred him: suggested, in these +processes he saw every day, and in which he was indeed interested, something +deeper, more significant and human than he had guessed, and which he was unable +to define.... + +Janet herself did not know why this intimate view of the mills, of the people +who worked in them had so greatly moved her. All day she thought of them. And +the distant throb of the machinery she felt when her typewriter was silent +meant something to her now--she could not say what. When she found herself +listening for it, her heart beat faster. She had lived and worked beside it, +and it had not existed for her, it had had no meaning, the mills might have +been empty. She had, indeed, many, many times seen these men and women, boys +and girls trooping away from work, she had strolled through the quarters in +which they lived, speculated on the lands from which they had come; but she had +never really thought of them as human beings, individuals, with problems and +joys and sorrows and hopes and fears like her own. Some such discovery was +borne in upon her. And always an essential function of this revelation, +looming larger than ever in her consciousness, was Ditmar. It was for Ditmar +they toiled, in Ditmar's hands were their very existences, his was the +stupendous responsibility and power. + +As the afternoon wore, desire to see these toilers once more took possession of +her. From the white cupola perched above the huge mass of the Clarendon Mill +across the water sounded the single stroke of a bell, and suddenly the air was +pulsing with sounds flung back and forth by the walls lining the river. +Seizing her hat and coat, she ran down the stairs and through the vestibule and +along the track by the canal to the great gates, which her father was in the +act of unbarring. She took a stand beside him, by the gatehouse. Edward +showed a mild surprise. + +"There ain't anything troubling you--is there, Janet?" he asked. + +She shook her head. + +"I wanted to see the hands come out," she said. + +Sometimes, as at present, he found Janet's whims unaccountable. + +"Well, I should have presumed you'd know what they look like by this time. +You'd better stay right close to me, they're a rough lot, with no respect or +consideration for decent folks--these foreigners. I never could see why the +government lets 'em all come over here." He put on the word "foreigners" an +emphasis of contempt and indignation, pathetic because of its peculiar note of +futility. Janet paid no attention to him. Her ears were strained to catch the +rumble of feet descending the tower stairs, her eyes to see the vanguard as it +came from the doorway--the first tricklings of a flood that instantly filled +the yard and swept onward and outward, irresistibly, through the narrow gorge +of the gates. Impossible to realize this as the force which, when distributed +over the great spaces of the mills, performed an orderly and useful task! for +it was now a turbid and lawless torrent unconscious of its swollen powers, +menacing, breathlessly exciting to behold. It seemed to Janet indeed a torrent +as she clung to the side of the gatehouse as one might cling to the steep bank +of a mountain brook after a cloud-burst. And suddenly she had plunged into it. +The desire was absurd, perhaps, but not to be denied,--the desire to mix with +it, feel it, be submerged and swept away by it, losing all sense of identity. +She heard her father call after her, faintly--the thought crossed her mind that +his appeals were always faint,--and then she was being carried along the canal, +eastward, the pressure relaxing somewhat when the draining of the side streets +began. + +She remembered, oddly, the Stanley Street bridge where the many streams met and +mingled, streams from the Arundel, the Patuxent, the Arlington and the +Clarendon; and, eager to prolong and intensify her sensations, hurried thither, +reaching it at last and thrusting her way outward until she had gained the +middle, where she stood grasping the rail. The great structure was a-tremble +from the assault, its footpaths and its roadway overrun with workers, dodging +between trolleys and trucks,--some darting nimbly, dinner pails in hand, along +the steel girders. Doffer boys romped and whistled, young girls in jaunty, +Faber Street clothes and flowered hats, linked to one another for protection, +chewed gum and joked, but for the most part these workers were silent, the +apathy of their faces making a strange contrast with the hurry, hurry of their +feet and set intentness of their bodies as they sped homeward to the tenements. +And the clothes of these were drab, save when the occasional colour of a hooded +peasant's shawl, like the slightly faded tints of an old master, lit up a group +of women. Here, going home to their children, were Italian mothers bred +through centuries to endurance and patience; sallow Jewesses, gaunt, bearded +Jews with shadowy, half-closed eyes and wrinkled brows, broad-faced +Lithuanians, flat-headed Russians; swarthy Italian men and pale, blond Germans +mingled with muddy Syrians and nondescript Canadians. And suddenly the bridge +was empty, the army vanished as swiftly as it came! + +Janet turned. Through the haze of smoke she saw the sun drop like a ball of +fire cooled to redness, whose course is spent. The delicate lines of the upper +bridge were drawn in sepia against crimson-gilt; for an instant the cupola of +the Clarendon became jasper, and far, far above floated in the azure a cloud of +pink jeweller's cotton. Even as she strove to fix these colours in her mind +they vanished, the western sky faded to magenta, to purple-mauve; the corridor +of the river darkened, on either side pale lights sparkled from the windows of +the mills, while down the deepened blue of the waters came floating iridescent +suds from the washing of the wools. It was given to her to know that which an +artist of living memory has called the incommunicable thrill of things.... + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +The after-effects of this experience of Janet's were not what ordinarily are +called "spiritual," though we may some day arrive at a saner meaning of the +term, include within it the impulses and needs of the entire organism. It left +her with a renewed sense of energy and restlessness, brought her nearer to high +discoveries of mysterious joys which a voice out of the past called upon her to +forego, a voice somehow identified with her father! It was faint, ineffectual. +In obeying it, would she not lose all life had to give? When she came in to +supper her father was concerned about her because, instead of walking home with +him she had left him without explanation to plunge into the crowd of workers. +Her evident state of excitement had worried him, her caprice was beyond his +comprehension. And how could she explain the motives that led to it? She was +sure he had never felt like that; and as she evaded his questions the something +within her demanding life and expression grew stronger and more rebellious, +more contemptuous of the fear-precepts congenial to a nature timorous and less +vitalized. + +After supper, unable to sit still, she went out, and, filled with the spirit of +adventure, hurried toward Faber Street, which was already thronging with +people. It was bright here and gay, the shops glittered, and she wandered from +window to window until she found herself staring at a suit of blue cloth hung +on a form, beneath which was a card that read, "Marked down to $20." And +suddenly the suggestion flashed into her mind, why shouldn't she buy it? She +had the money, she needed a new suit for the winter, the one she possessed was +getting shabby...but behind the excuse of necessity was the real reason +triumphantly proclaiming itself--she would look pretty in it, she would be +transformed, she would be buying a new character to which she would have to +live up. The old Janet would be cast off with the old raiment; the new suit +would announce to herself and to the world a Janet in whom were released all +those longings hitherto disguised and suppressed, and now become insupportable! +This was what the purchase meant, a change of existence as complete as that +between the moth and the butterfly; and the realization of this fact, of the +audacity she was resolved to commit made her hot as she gazed at the suit. It +was modest enough, yet it had a certain distinction of cut, it looked +expensive: twenty dollars was not cheap, to be sure, but as the placard +announced, it had the air of being much more costly--even more costly than +thirty dollars, which seemed fabulous. Though she strove to remain outwardly +calm, her heart beat rapidly as she entered the store and asked for the +costume, and was somewhat reassured by the comportment of the saleswoman, who +did not appear to think the request preposterous, to regard her as a +spendthrift and a profligate. She took down the suit from the form and led +Janet to a cabinet in the back of the shop, where it was tried on. + +"It's worth every bit of thirty dollars," she heard the woman say, "but we've +had it here for some time, and it's no use for our trade. You can't sell +anything like that in Hampton, there's no taste here, it's too good, it ain't +showy enough. My, it fits you like it was made for you, and it's just your +style--and you can see it wants a lady to wear it. Your old suit is too tight- +-I guess you've filled out some since you bought it." + +She turned Janet around and around, patting the skirt here and there, and then +stood off a little way, with clasped hands, her expression almost rapturous. +Janet's breath came fast as she gazed into the mirror and buttoned up the coat. +Was the woman's admiration cleverly feigned? this image she beheld an illusion? +or did she really look different, distinguished? and if not beautiful-- +alluring? She had had a momentary apprehension, almost sickening, that she +would be too conspicuous, but the saleswoman had anticipated that objection +with the magical word "lady." + +"I'll take it," she announced. + +"Well, you couldn't have done better if you'd gone to Boston," declared the +woman. "It's one chance in a thousand. Will you wear it?" + +"Yes," said Janet faintly.... "Just put my old suit in a box, and I'll call +for it in an hour." + +The woman's sympathetic smile followed her as she left the shop. She had an +instant of hesitation, of an almost panicky desire to go back and repair her +folly, ere it was too late. Why had she taken her money with her that evening, +if not with some deliberate though undefined purpose? But she was ashamed to +face the saleswoman again, and her elation was not to be repressed--an elation +optically presented by a huge electric sign on the farther side of the street +that flashed through all the colours of the spectrum, surrounded by running +fire like the running fire in her soul. Deliciously self-conscious, her gaze +fixed ahead, she pressed through the Wednesday night crowds, young mill men and +women in their best clothes, housewives and fathers of families with children +and bundles. In front of the Banner office a group blocked the pavement +staring up at the news bulletin, which she paused to read. "Five Millionaire +Directors Indicted in New York," "State Treasurer Accused of Graft," "Murdock +Fortune Contested by Heirs." The phrases seemed meaningless, and she hurried +on again.... She was being noticed! A man looked at her, twice, the first +glance accidental, the second arresting, appealing, subtly flattering, +agitating--she was sure he had turned and was following her. She hastened her +steps. It was wicked, what she was doing, but she gloried in it; and even the +sight, in burning red letters, of Gruber's Cafe failed to bring on a revulsion +by its association with her sister Lise. The fact that Lise had got drunk +there meant nothing to her now. She gazed curiously at the illuminated, +orange-coloured panes separated by curving leads, at the design of a harp in +green, at the sign "Ladies' Entrance"; listened eagerly to the sounds of voices +and laughter that came from within. She looked cautiously over her shoulder, a +shadow appeared, she heard a voice, low, insinuating.... + +Four blocks farther down she stopped. The man was no longer following her. +She had been almost self-convinced of an intention to go to Eda's--not quite. +Of late her conscience had reproached her about Eda, Janet had neglected her. +She told herself she was afraid of Eda's uncanny and somewhat nauseating flair +for romance; and to show Eda the new suit, though she would relish her friend's +praise, would be the equivalent of announcing an affair of the heart which she, +Janet, would have indignantly to deny. She was not going to Eda's. She knew +now where she was going. A prepared but hitherto undisclosed decree of fate +had bade her put money in her bag that evening, directed her to the shop to buy +the dress, and would presently impel her to go to West Street--nay, was even +now so impelling her. Ahead of her were the lights of the Chippering Mill, in +her ears was the rhythmic sound of the looms working of nights on the Bradlaugh +order. She reached the canal. The white arc above the end of the bridge cast +sharp, black shadows of the branches of the trees on the granite, the thousand +windows of the mill shone yellow, reflected in the black water. Twice she +started to go, twice she paused, held by the presage of a coming event, a +presage that robbed her of complete surprise when she heard footsteps on the +bridge, saw the figure of a man halting at the crown of the arch to look back +at the building he had left, his shoulders squared, his hand firmly clasping +the rail. Her heart was throbbing with the looms, and yet she stood +motionless, until he turned and came rapidly down the slope of the arch and +stopped in front of her. Under the arc lamp it was almost as bright as day. + +"Miss Bumpus!" he exclaimed. + +"Mr. Ditmar" she said. + +"Were you--were you coming to the office?" + +"I was just out walking," she told him. "I thought you were in Boston." + +"I came home," he informed her, somewhat superfluously, his eyes never leaving +her, wandering hungrily from her face to her new suit, and back again to her +face. "I got here on the seven o'clock train, I wanted to see about those new +Blubbers." + +"They finished setting them up this afternoon," she said. + +"How did you know?" + +"I asked Mr. Orcutt about it--I thought you might telephone." + +"You're a wonder," was his comment. "Well, we've got a running start on that +order," and he threw a glance over his shoulder at the mill. "Everything going +full speed ahead. When we put it through I guess I'll have to give you some of +the credit." + +"Oh, I haven't done anything," she protested. + +"More than you think. You've taken so much off my shoulders I couldn't get +along without you." His voice vibrated, reminding her of the voices of those +who made sentimental recitations for the graphophone. It sounded absurd, yet +it did not repel her: something within her responded to it. "Which way were +you going?" he inquired. + +"Home," she said. + +"Where do you live?" + +"In Fillmore Street." And she added with a touch of defiance: "It's a little +street, three blocks above Hawthorne, off East Street." + +"Oh yes," he said vaguely, as though he had not understood. "I'll come with +you as far as the bridge--along the canal. I've got so much to say to you." + +"Can't you say it to-morrow?" + +"No, I can't; there are so many people in the office--so many interruptions, I +mean. And then, you never give me a chance." + +She stood hesitating, a struggle going on within her. He had proposed the +route along the canal because nobody would be likely to recognize them, and her +pride resented this. On the other hand, there was the sweet allurement of the +adventure she craved, which indeed she had come out to seek and by a strange +fatality found--since he had appeared on the bridge almost as soon as she +reached it. The sense of fate was strong upon her. Curiosity urged her, and, +thanks to the eulogy she had read of him that day, to the added impression of +his power conveyed by the trip through the mills, Ditmar loomed larger than +ever in her consciousness. + +"What do you want to say?" she asked. + +"Oh, lots of things." + +She felt his hand slipping under her arm, his fingers pressing gently but +firmly into her flesh, and the experience of being impelled by a power stronger +than herself, a masculine power, was delicious. Her arm seemed to burn where +he touched her. + +"Have I done something to offend you?" she heard him say. "Or is it because +you don't like me?" + +"I'm not sure whether I like you or not," she told him. "I don't like seeing +you--this way. And why should you want to know me and see me outside of the +office? I'm only your stenographer." + +"Because you're you--because you're different from any woman I ever met. You +don't understand what you are--you don't see yourself." + +"I made up my mind last night I wouldn't stay in your office any longer," she +informed him. + +"For God's sake, why?" he exclaimed. "I've been afraid of that. Don't go--I +don't know what I'd do. I'll be careful--I won't get you talked about." + +"Talked about!" She tore herself away from him. "Why should you get me talked +about?" she cried. + +He was frightened. "No, no," he stammered, "I didn't mean--" + +"What did you mean?" + +"Well--as you say, you're my stenographer, but that's no reason why we +shouldn't be friends. I only meant--I wouldn't do anything to make our +friendship the subject of gossip." + +Suddenly she began to find a certain amusement in his confusion and penitence, +she achieved a pleasurable sense of advantage, of power over him. + +"Why should you want me? I don't know anything, I've never had any advantages- +-and you have so much. I read an article in the newspaper about you today--Mr. +Caldwell gave it to me--" + +"Did you like it?" he interrupted, naively. + +"Well, in some places it was rather funny." + +"Funny? How?" + +"Oh, I don't know." She had been quick to grasp in it the journalistic lack of +restraint hinted at by Caldwell. "I liked it, but I thought it praised you too +much, it didn't criticize you enough." + +He laughed. In spite of his discomfort, he found her candour refreshing. From +the women to whom he had hitherto made love he had never got anything but +flattery. + +"I want you to criticize me," he said. + +But she went on relentlessly:-- + +"When I read in that article how successful you were, and how you'd got +everything you'd started out to get, and how some day you might be treasurer +and president of the Chippering Mill, well--" Despairing of giving adequate +expression to her meaning, she added, "I didn't see how we could be friends." + +"You wanted me for a friend?" he interrupted eagerly. + + +"I couldn't help knowing you wanted me--you've shown it so plainly. But I +didn't see how it could be. You asked me where I lived--in a little flat +that's no better than a tenement. I suppose you would call it a tenement. +It's dark and ugly, it only has four rooms, and it smells of cooking. You +couldn't come there--don't you see how impossible it is? And you wouldn't care +to be talked about yourself, either," she added vehemently. + +This defiant sincerity took him aback. He groped for words. + +"Listen!" he urged. "I don't want to do anything you wouldn't like, and +honestly I don't know what I'd do if you left me. I've come to depend on you. +And you may not believe it, but when I got that Bradlaugh order I thought of +you, I said to myself 'She'll be pleased, she'll help me to put it over.'" + +She thrilled at this, she even suffered him, for some reason unknown to +herself, to take her arm again. + +"How could I help you?" + +"Oh, in a thousand ways--you ought to know, you do a good deal of thinking for +me, and you can help me by just being there. I can't explain it, but I feel +somehow that things will go right. I've come to depend on you." + +He was a little surprised to find himself saying these things he had not +intended to say, and the lighter touch he had always possessed in dealing with +the other sex, making him the envied of his friends, had apparently abandoned +him. He was appalled at the possibility of losing her. + +"I've never met a woman like you," he went on, as she remained silent. "You're +different--I don't know what it is about you, but you are." His voice was low, +caressing, his head was bent down to her, his shoulder pressed against her +shoulder. "I've never had a woman friend before, I've never wanted one until +now." + +She wondered about his wife. + +"You've got brains--I've never met a woman with brains." + +"Oh, is that why?" she exclaimed. + +"You're beautiful," he whispered. "It's queer, but I didn't know it at first. +You're more beautiful to-night than I've ever seen you." + +They had come almost to Warren Street. Suddenly realizing that they were +standing in the light, that people were passing to and fro over the end of the +bridge, she drew away from him once more, this time more gently. + +"Let's walk back a little way," he proposed. + +"I must go home--it's late." + +"It's only nine o'clock." + +"I have an errand to do, and they'll expect me. Good night." + +"Just one more turn!" he pleaded. + +But she shook her head, backing away from him. + +"You'll see me to-morrow," she told him. She didn't know why she said that. +She hurried along Warren Street without once looking over her shoulder; her +feet seemed scarcely to touch the ground, the sound of music was in her ears, +the lights sparkled. She had had an adventure, at last, an adventure that +magically had transformed her life! She was beautiful! No one had ever told +her that before. And he had said that he needed her. She smiled as, with an +access of tenderness, in spite of his experience and power she suddenly felt +years older than Ditmar. She could help him!... + +She was breathless when she reached the shop in Faber Street. + +"I hope I haven't kept you waiting," she said. + + +"Oh no, we don't close until ten," answered the saleswoman. She was seated +quietly sewing under the lamp. + +"I wonder whether you'd mind if I put on my old suit again, and carried this?" +Janet asked. + +The expression of sympathy and understanding in the woman's eyes, as she rose, +brought the blood swiftly to Janet's face. She felt that her secret had been +guessed. The change effected, Janet went homeward swiftly, to encounter, on +the corner of Faber Street, her sister Lise, whose attention was immediately +attracted by the bundle. + +"What have you got there, angel face?" she demanded. + +"A new suit," said Janet. + +"You don't tell me--where'd you get it? at the Paris?" + +"No, at Dowling's." + +"Say, I'll bet it was that plain blue thing marked down to twenty!" + +"Well, what if it was?" + +Lise, when surprised or scornful, had a peculiarly irritating way of whistling +through her teeth. + +"Twenty bucks! Gee, you'll be getting your clothes in Boston next. Well, as +sure as I live when I went by that window the other day when they first knocked +it down I said to Sadie, `those are the rags Janet would buy if she had the +ready.' Have you got another raise out of Ditmar?" + +"If I have, it isn't any business of yours," Janet retorted. "I've got a right +to do as I please with my own money." + +"Oh sure," said Lise, and added darkly: "I guess Ditmar likes to see you look +well." + +After this Janet refused obstinately to speak to Lise, to answer, when they +reached home, her pleadings and complaints to their mother that Janet had +bought a new suit and refused to exhibit it. And finally, when they had got to +bed, Janet lay long awake in passionate revolt against this new expression of +the sordidness and lack of privacy in which she was forced to live, made the +more intolerable by the close, sultry darkness of the room and the snoring of +Lise. + +In the morning, however, after a groping period of semiconsciousness during the +ringing of the bells, the siren startled her into awareness and alertness. It +had not wholly lost its note of terror, but the note had somehow become +exhilarating, an invitation to adventure and to life; and Lise's sarcastic +comments as to the probable reasons why she did not put on the new suit had +host their power of exasperation. Janet compromised, wearing a blouse of china +silk hitherto reserved for "best." The day was bright, and she went rapidly +toward the mill, glorying in the sunshine and the autumn sharpness of the air; +and her thoughts were not so much of Ditmar as of something beyond him, of +which he was the medium. She was going, not to meet him, but to meet that. +When she reached the office she felt weak, her fingers trembled as she took off +her hat and jacket and began to sort out the mail. And she had to calm herself +with the assurance that her relationship with Ditmar had undergone no change. +She had merely met him by the canal, and he had talked to her. That was all. +He had, of course, taken her arm: it tingled when she remembered it. But when +he suddenly entered the room her heart gave a bound. He closed the door, he +took off his hat, and stood gazing at her--while she continued arranging +letters. Presently she was forced to glance at him. His bearing, his look, +his confident smile all proclaimed that he, at least, believed things to be +changed. He glowed with health and vigour, with an aggressiveness from which +she shrank, yet found delicious. + +"How are you this morning?" he said at last--this morning as distinguished +from all other mornings. + +"I'm well, as usual," she answered. She herself was sometimes surprised by her +ability to remain outwardly calm. + +"Why did you run away from me last night?" + +"I didn't run away, I had to go home," she said, still arranging the letters. + +"We could have had a little walk. I don't believe you had to go home at all. +You just wanted an excuse to get away from me." + +"I didn't need an excuse," she told him. He moved toward her, but she took a +paper from the desk and carried it to a file across the room. + +"I thought we were going to be friends," he said. + +"Being friends doesn't mean being foolish," she retorted. "And Mr. Orcutt's +waiting to see you." + +"Let him wait." + +He sat down at his desk, but his blood was warm, and he read the typewritten +words of the topmost letter of the pile without so much as grasping the meaning +of them. From time to time he glanced up at Janet as she flitted about the +room. By George, she was more desirable than he had ever dared to imagine! He +felt temporarily balked, but hopeful. On his way to the mill he had dwelt with +Epicurean indulgence on this sight of her, and he had not been disappointed. +He had also thought that he might venture upon more than the mere feasting of +his eyes, yet found an inspiring alleviation in the fact that she by no means +absolutely repulsed him. Her attitude toward him had undergone a subtle +transformation. There could be no doubt of that. She was almost coquettish. +His eyes lingered. The china silk blouse was slightly open at the neck, +suggesting the fullness of her throat; it clung to the outline of her +shoulders. Overcome by an impulse he could not control, he got up and went +toward her, but she avoided him. + +"I'll tell Mr. Orcutt you've come," she said, rather breathlessly, as she +reached the door and opened it. Ditmar halted in his steps at the sight of the +tall, spectacled figure of the superintendent on the threshold. + +Orcutt hesitated, looking from one to the other. + +"I've been waiting for you," he said, after a moment, "the rest of that lot +didn't come in this morning. I've telephoned to the freight agent." + +Ditmar stared at him uncomprehendingly. Orcutt repeated the information. + +"Oh well, keep after him, get him to trace them." + +"I'm doing that," replied the conscientious Orcutt. + +"How's everything else going?" Ditmar demanded, with unlooked-for geniality. +"You mustn't take things too hard, Orcutt, don't wear yourself out." + +Mr. Orcutt was relieved. He had expected an outburst of the exasperation that +lately had characterized his superior. They began to chat. Janet had escaped. + +"Miss Bumpus told me you wanted to see me. I was just going to ring you up," +Ditmar informed him. + +"She's a clever young woman, seems to take such an interest in things," Orcutt +observed. "And she's always on the job. Only yesterday I saw her going +through the mill with young Caldwell." + +Ditmar dropped the paper-weight he held. + +"Oh, she went through, did she?" + +After Orcutt departed he sat for awhile whistling a tune, from a popular +musical play, keeping time by drumming with his fingers on the desk. + +That Mr. Semple, the mill treasurer, came down from Boston that morning to +confer with Ditmar was for Janet in the nature of a reprieve. She sat by her +window, and as her fingers flew over the typewriter keys she was swept by +surges of heat in which ecstasy and shame and terror were strangely commingled. +A voice within her said, "This can't go on, this can't go on! It's too +terrible! Everyone in the office will notice it--there will be a scandal. I +ought to go away while there is yet time--to-day." Though the instinct of +flight was strong within her, she was filled with rebellion at the thought of +leaving when Adventure was flooding her drab world with light, even as the mill +across the waters was transfigured by the heavy golden wash of the autumn sun. +She had made at length the discovery that Adventure had to do with Man, was +inconceivable without him. + +Racked by these conflicting impulses of self-preservation on the one hand and +what seemed self-realization on the other, she started when, toward the middle +of the afternoon, she heard Ditmar's voice summoning her to take his letters; +and went palpitating, leaving the door open behind her, seating herself on the +far side of the desk, her head bent over her book. Her neck, where her hair +grew in wisps behind her ear, seemed to burn: Ditmar's glance was focussed +there. Her hands were cold as she wrote.... Then, like a deliverer, she saw +young Caldwell coming in from the outer office, holding a card in his hand +which he gave to Ditmar, who sat staring at it. + +"Siddons?" he said. "Who's Siddons?" + +Janet, who had risen, spoke up. + +"Why, he's been making the Hampton `survey.' You wrote him you'd see him-- +don't you remember, Mr. Ditmar?" + +"Don't go!" exclaimed Ditmar. "You can't tell what those confounded reformers +will accuse you of if you don't have a witness." + +Janet sat down again. The sharpness of Ditmar's tone was an exhilarating +reminder of the fact that, in dealing with strangers, he had come more or less +to rely on her instinctive judgment; while the implied appeal of his manner on +such occasions emphasized the pleasurable sense of his dependence, of her own +usefulness. Besides, she had been curious about the `survey' at the time it +was first mentioned, she wished to hear Ditmar's views concerning it. Mr. +Siddons proved to be a small and sallow young man with a pointed nose and +bright, bulbous brown eyes like a chipmunk's. Indeed, he reminded one of a +chipmunk. As he whisked himself in and seized Ditmar's hand he gave a confused +impression of polite self-effacement as well as of dignity and self-assertion; +he had the air of one who expects opposition, and though by no means desiring +it, is prepared to deal with it. Janet smiled. She had a sudden impulse to +drop the heavy book that lay on the corner of the desk to see if he would jump. + +"How do you do, Mr. Ditmar?" he said. "I've been hoping to have this +pleasure." + +"My secretary, Miss Bumpus," said Ditmar. + +Mr. Siddons quivered and bowed. Ditmar, sinking ponderously into his chair, +seemed suddenly, ironically amused, grinning at Janet as he opened a drawer of +his desk and offered the visitor a cigar. + +"Thanks, I don't smoke," said Mr. Siddons. + +Ditmar lit one for himself. + +"Now, what can I do for you?" he asked. + +"Well, as I wrote you in my letter, I was engaged to make as thorough an +examination as possible of the living conditions and housing of the operatives +in the city of Hampton. I'm sure you'd be interested in hearing something of +the situation we found." + +"I suppose you've been through our mills," said Ditmar. + +"No, the fact is--" + +"You ought to go through. I think it might interest you," Ditmar put a slight +emphasis on the pronoun. "We rather pride ourselves on making things +comfortable and healthy for our people." + +"I've no doubt of it--in fact, I've been so informed. It's because of your +concern for the welfare of your workers in the mills that I ventured to come +and talk to you of how most of them live when they're at home," replied +Siddons, as Janet thought, rather neatly. "Perhaps, though living in Hampton, +you don't quite realize what the conditions are. I know a man who has lived in +Boston ten years and who hasn't ever seen the Bunker Hill monument." + +"The Bunker Hill monument's a public affair," retorted Ditmar, "anybody can go +there who has enough curiosity and interest. But I don't see how you can +expect me to follow these people home and make them clean up their garbage and +wash their babies. I shouldn't want anybody to interfere with my private +affairs." + +"But when you get to a point where private affairs become a public menace?" +Siddons objected. "Mr. Ditmar, I've seen block after block of tenements ready +to crumble. There are no provisions for foundations, thickness of walls, size +of timbers and columns, and if these houses had been deliberately erected to +make a bonfire they couldn't have answered the purpose better. If it were not +for the danger to life and the pity of making thousands of families homeless, a +conflagration would be a blessing, although I believe the entire north or south +side of the city would go under certain conditions. The best thing you could +do would be to burn whole rows of these tenements, they are ideal breeding +grounds for disease. In the older sections of the city you've got hundreds of +rear houses here, houses moved back on the lots, in some extreme cases with +only four-foot courts littered with refuse,--houses without light, without +ventilation, and many of the rooms where these people are cooking and eating +and sleeping are so damp and foul they're not fit to put dogs in. You've got +some blocks with a density of over five hundred to the acre, and your average +density is considerably over a hundred." + +"Are things any worse than in any other manufacturing city?" asked Ditmar. + +"That isn't the point," said Siddons. "The point is that they're bad, they're +dangerous, they're inhuman. If you could go into these tenements as I have +done and see the way some of these people live, it would make you sick the +Poles and Lithuanians and Italians especially. You wouldn't treat cattle that +way. In some households of five rooms, including the kitchen, I found as many +as fourteen, fifteen, and once seventeen people living. You've got an alarming +infant death-rate." + +"Isn't it because these people want to live that way?" Ditmar inquired. "They +actually like it, they wouldn't be happy in anything but a pig-sty--they had +'em in Europe. And what do you expect us to do? Buy land and build flats for +them? Inside of a month they'd have all the woodwork stripped off for +kindling, the drainage stopped up, the bathtubs filled with ashes. I know, +because it's been tried." + +Tilted back in his chair, he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and his +eyes sought Janet's. She avoided them, resenting a little the assumption of +approval she read in them. Her mind, sensitive to new ideas, had been keenly +stimulated as she listened to Siddons, who began patiently to dwell once more +on the ill effect of the conditions he had discovered on the welfare of the +entire community. She had never thought of this. She was surprised that +Ditmar should seem to belittle it. Siddons was a new type in her experience. +She could understand and to a certain extent maliciously enjoy Ditmar's growing +exasperation with him; he had a formal, precise manner of talking, as though he +spent most of his time presenting cases in committees: and in warding off +Ditmar's objections he was forever indulging in such maddening phrases as, +"Before we come to that, let me say a word just here." Ditmar hated words. +His outbursts, his efforts to stop the flow of them were not unlike the futile +charges of a large and powerful animal harassed by a smaller and more agile +one. With nimble politeness, with an exasperating air of deference to Ditmar's +opinions, Mr. Siddons gave ground, only to return to the charge; yet, despite a +manner and method which, when contrasted to Ditmar's, verged on the ludicrous, +Mr. Siddons had a force and fire of his own, nervous, almost fanatical: when he +dwelt on the misery he had seen, and his voice trembled from the intensity of +his feeling, Janet began to be moved. It was odd, considering the struggle for +existence of her own family, that these foreigners had remained outside the +range of her sympathy. + +"I guess you'll find," Ditmar had interrupted peremptorily, "I guess you'll +find, if you look up the savings banks statistics, these people have got +millions tucked away. And they send a lot of it to the other side, they go +back themselves, and though they live like cattle, they manage to buy land. +Ask the real estate men. Why, I could show you a dozen who worked in the mills +a few years ago and are capitalists to-day." + +"I don't doubt it, Mr. Ditmar," Siddons gracefully conceded. "But what does it +prove? Merely the cruelty of an economic system based on ruthless competition. +The great majority who are unable to survive the test pay the price. And the +community also pays the price, the state and nation pay it. And we have this +misery on our consciences. I've no doubt you could show me some who have grown +rich, but if you would let me I could take you to families in desperate want, +living in rooms too dark to read in at midday in clear weather, where the +husband doesn't get more than seven dollars a week when the mills are running +full time, where the woman has to look out for the children and work for the +lodgers, and even with lodgers they get into debt, and the woman has to go into +the mills to earn money for winter clothing. I've seen enough instances of +this kind to offset the savings bank argument. And even then, when you have a +family where the wife and older children work, where the babies are put out to +board, where there are three and four lodgers in a room, why do you suppose +they live that way? Isn't it in the hope of freeing themselves ultimately from +these very conditions? And aren't these conditions a disgrace to Hampton and +America?" + +"Well, what am I to do about it?" Ditmar demanded. + +"I see that these operatives have comfortable and healthful surroundings in the +mill, I've spent money to put in the latest appliances. That's more than a +good many mills I could mention attempt." + +"You are a person of influence, Mr. Ditmar, you have more influence than any +man in Hampton. You can bring pressure to bear on the city council to enforce +and improve the building ordinances, you can organize a campaign of public +opinion against certain property owners." + +"Yes," retorted Ditmar, "and what then? You raise the rents, and you won't get +anybody to live in the houses. They'll move out to settlements like Glendale +full of dirt and vermin and disease and live as they're accustomed to. What +you reformers are actually driving at is that we should raise wages--isn't it? +If we raised wages they'd live like rats anyway. I give you credit for +sincerity, Mr. Siddons, but I don't want you to think I'm not as much +interested in the welfare of these people as you and the men behind you. The +trouble is, you only see one side of this question. When you're in my +position, you're up against hard facts. We can't pay a dubber or a drawing +tender any more than he's worth, whether he has a wife or children in the mills +or whether he hasn't. We're in competition with other mills, we're in +competition with the South. We can't regulate the cost of living. We do our +best to make things right in the mills, and that's all we can do. We can't +afford to be sentimental about life. Competition's got to be the rule, the +world's made that way. Some are efficient and some aren't. Good God, any man +who's had anything to do with hiring labour and running a plant has that +drummed into him hard. You talk about ordinances, laws--there are enough laws +and ordinances in this city and in this state right now. If we have any more +the mills will have to shut down, and these people will starve--all of 'em." +Ditmar's chair came down on its four legs, and he flung his cigar away. "Send +me a copy of your survey when it's published. I'll look it over." + +"Well, what do you think of the nerve of a man like that?" Ditmar exploded, +when Mr. Siddons had bowed himself out. "Comes in here to advise me that it's +my business to look out for the whole city of Hampton. I'd like to see him up +against this low-class European labour trying to run a mill with them. They're +here one day and there the next, they don't know what loyalty is. You've got +to drive 'em--if you give 'em an inch they'll jump at your throat, dynamite +your property. Why, there's nothing I wouldn't do for them if I could depend +on them, I'd build 'em houses, I'd have automobiles to take 'em home. As it +is, I do my best, though they don't deserve it,--in slack seasons I run half +time when I oughtn't to be running at all." + +His tone betrayed an effort of self-justification, and his irritation had been +increased by the suspicion in Janet of a certain lack of the sympathy on which +he had counted. She sat silent, gazing searchingly at his face. + +"What's the matter?" he demanded. "You don't mean to say you agree with that +kind of talk?" + +"I was wondering--" she began. + +"What?" + +"If you were--if you could really understand those who are driven to work in +order to keep alive?" + +"Understand them! Why not?" he asked. + +"Because--because you're on top, you've always been successful, you're pretty +much your own master--and that makes it different. I'm not blaming you--in +your place I'd be the same, I'm sure. But this man, Siddons, made me think. +I've lived like that, you see, I know what it is, in a way." + +"Not like these foreigners!" he protested. + +"Oh, almost as bad," she cried with vehemence, and Ditmar, stopped suddenly in +his pacing as by a physical force, looked at her with the startled air of the +male who has inadvertently touched off one of the many hidden springs in the +feminine emotional mechanism. "How do you know what it is to live in a +squalid, ugly street, in dark little rooms that smell of cooking, and not be +able to have any of the finer, beautiful things in life? Unless you'd wanted +these things as I've wanted them, you couldn't know. Oh, I can understand what +it would feel like to strike, to wish to dynamite men like you!" + +"You can!" he exclaimed in amazement. "You!" + +"Yes, me. You don't understand these people, you couldn't feel sorry for them +any more than you could feel sorry for me. You want them to run your mills for +you, you don't want to know how they feel or how they live, and you just want +me--for your pleasure." + +He was indeed momentarily taken aback by this taunt, which no woman in his +experience had had the wit and spirit to fling at him, but he was not the type +of man to be shocked by it. On the contrary, it swept away his irritation, and +as a revelation of her inner moltenness stirred him to a fever heat as he +approached and stood over her. + +"You little--panther!" he whispered. "You want beautiful things, do you? +Well, I'll give 'em to you. I'll take care of you." + +"Do you think I want them from you?" she retorted, almost in tears. "Do you +think I want anybody to take care of me? That shows how little you know me. I +want to be independent, to do my work and pay for what I get." + +Janet herself was far from comprehending the complexity of her feelings. +Ditmar had not apologized or feigned an altruism for which she would indeed +have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of the red-blooded +man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook her with a wild appeal. +"What do I care about any others--I want you!" such was its message. And +against this paradoxical wish to be conquered, intensified by the magnetic +field of his passion, battled her self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire +to be free, to escape now from a domination the thought of which filled her +with terror. She felt his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers +straying along her arm; for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously +powerless. Then the emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and +she sprang away, dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she +stood swaying. + +"Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say. "For God's sake, why can't you +trust me?" + +She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to twinkle +fantastically in the distant mills. Presently she turned. Ditmar was in his +chair. She crossed the room to the electric switch, turning on the flood of +light, picked up her tote-book and sat down again. + +"Don't you intend to answer your letters?" she asked. + +He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized the +topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely. She experienced a certain +exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took down his +words. + + + + + +End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of The Dwelling Place of Light, V1 +by Winston Churchill + |