The Long Day Part 16

"That's no lie, either," muttered another.

"You bet it ain't!" declared the expert Rachel. "My mother was working on shirts for a straight ten months before I was born."

In half an hour we had resumed work, and at half-past twelve we stopped for another half-hour and ate luncheon--Bessie, Eunice, and I in a corner by ourselves.

We held a conference, and compared notes of the morning's progress, which had been even more discouraging to poor Eunice than to us; for to her it had brought the added misfortune of a row of st.i.tches in her right forefinger. We counted up our profits for the morning, and the aggregate earnings of the three of us did not amount to ten cents. Of course we would learn to do better, but it would take a long, long time, Bessie was firmly convinced, before we could even make enough to buy our lunches. It was decided that one of us should resign the job that night, and the other two keep at it until the delegate found something better for us all and had tested the new job to her satisfaction. Bessie was of course appointed, and the next morning Eunice and I went alone, with plausible excuses for the absent Bessie, for we had a certain delicacy about telling the real facts to so kind a foreman as "Abe."

The second day we had no better luck, and the pain between the shoulder-blades was unceasing. All night long I had tossed on my narrow cot, with aching back and nerves wrought up to such a tension that the moment I began to doze off I was wakened by a spasmodic jerk of the right arm as it reached forward to grasp a visionary strip of lace. That evening, as we filed out at six o'clock, Bessie was waiting for us, her gentle face full of radiance and good news. Even the miserable Eunice was affected by her hopefulness.

"Oh, girls, I've got something that's really good--three dollars a week while you're learning, and an awful nice shop; and just think, girls!--the hours--I never had anything like it before, and I've knocked around at eighteen different jobs--half-past eight to five, and--" she paused for breath to announce the glorious fact--"Girls, just think of it!--_Sat.u.r.day afternoons off_, all the year round."

XIV

IN WHICH A TRAGIC FATE OVERTAKES MY "LADY-FRIENDS"

The next morning we met on the corner, as usual, and Bessie led us to our new job--led us through a world that was strange and new to both Eunice and me, though poor Eunice had little heart for the newness and the strangeness of it all. In and out, and criss-cross, we threaded our way through little narrow streets bordered with stately "sky-sc.r.a.pers,"

and at last turned into Maiden Lane. We walked arm in arm till we came to an alley which Bessie said was Gold Street. It is more of a zigzag even than Maiden Lane, and is flanked by dark iron-shuttered warehouses and factories. Wolff's, our destination, was at the head of the street, and in a few minutes we were sitting side by side at the work-table, while our new forewoman, a cross-eyed Irish girl, was showing us what to do and how to do it.

Making jewel-and silverware-cases was now our work. In the long, whitewashed workroom there were thirty other girls performing the same task, and on each of the five floors beneath there were as many more girls, pasting and pressing and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g cases that were to hold rings, watches and bracelets, and spoons, knives, and forks--enough to supply all Christendom, it seemed to me. As beginners we were given each a dozen spoon-boxes to cover with white leather and line with satin. It is light, pleasant work, and was such an improvement on the sweat-shop drudgery that even Eunice smiled a little after a while.

"Is youse lady-friends?" the forewoman asked when, in the course of ten minutes, she came to inspect our progress; on receiving an affirmative reply, she scowled.

"Fiddlesticks! If I'd knowed youse was lady-friends, I'd jist told Izzy he could get some other girls," and she walked off, still scowling. The girls about us giggled.

"Why doesn't Miss Gibbs like us to be lady-friends?" asked Bessie.

A young Italian answered, "Because they always git to sc.r.a.ppin'."

We all laughed--even Eunice--at such an ending to our friendship.

"We had a fearful row here yisterday," spoke up another; "and they wuz lady-friends--thicker than sardines, they wuz--till they got on the outs about a feller down on Pearl Street; a diamond-cutter he wuz, and they wuz both mashed on him--a Dutchman, too, he wuz, that wore ear-rings. I couldn't get mashed on a Dutchman, ear-rings or no ear-rings, could you?"

"What did they do?" asked Bessie.

"Do! They snapped at each other all morning over the work-table, and then one of them called the other a name that wuz something awful, and she up and spit in her face for it."

"Well, I don't blame that girl for spitting in her face," interrupted a voice. "I don't blame her; lady-like or not lady-like, I'd have done the same thing. I'd spit in the President's face if I was in the White House and he was to call me such a name!"

"And then what happened?" asked Bessie.

"Oh, they just up and at each other like two cats, tumbling over a stack of them there white velvet necklace-cases, and b.l.o.o.d.ying up each other's faces something fierce; and then Miss Gibbs she called Izzy; and Izzy he fired them on the spot."

Despite these tales of strenuous conflicts, we were happy in our work at Wolff's. Our shop-mates were quiet, decent-looking girls, and their conversation was conspicuously clean--not always a characteristic of their cla.s.s. Miss Gibbs, despite her justifiable prejudice against lady-friends, proved not unkind, and we congratulated ourselves as we bent over our work and listened to the cheerful hum of voices.

After each case was finished,--after the satin linings and interlinings and the tuftings had been fitted and glued into their proper places, and the bit of leather drawn across the padded cover,--we could raise our eyes for a moment and look out upon a strange, fascinating world. The open windows on one side of the shop looked into the polishing-room of a neighboring goldsmith, and on the other side into a sunshiny workroom filled with swirling black wheels and flying belts among which the workmen kept up a dialogue in a foreign tongue. The latter place was near enough for a good-looking young man to attempt a flirtation with Bessie, in such moments as he was not carefully watching what seemed to be a clumsy ma.s.s of wax on the end of a wooden handle. All the long forenoon he kept up his manoeuvers, watching his ugly bludgeon as if it were the very apple of his eye; carrying it to the window one moment and examining it under the microscope; then carrying it back to his wheel and beginning all over again. Late in the afternoon he came to the window for the hundredth time, and brandishing the bludgeon so that the sunshine fell directly upon it, held it aloft for us to admire the great glittering gem that now sparkled deep-bedded in the ugly wax.

"I gif you dat if you marry me!" cried the diamond-cutter, striking a dramatic att.i.tude for Bessie's benefit.

Thus one, two days pa.s.sed swiftly, and we had learned to make jewel-cases with tolerable rapidity. We had a half-hour for luncheon, during which Bessie, Eunice, and I went off by ourselves to the rear of the shop, where we ate our sandwiches in silence and gazed out upon the forest of masts that filled the East River lying below.

On the fourth day Eunice and I ate luncheon alone. Bessie did not come that morning, nor send any excuse. Her absence gave me an opportunity, in this half-hour's respite from work, to get better acquainted with my silent and mysterious fellow-boarder; anything more than a most meager acquaintance was impossible at the place where we lived. Like the majority of semi-charitable inst.i.tutions, the "home" was conducted on the theory that the only safety to morals, as well as to pocket-books, was espionage and isolation.

"It's awful up there, isn't it?" she remarked suddenly after we had discussed every possible cause for Bessie's absence.

"Yes, isn't it?" I replied, somewhat surprised, for this was the first time the girl had ever expressed any opinion about anything, so fearful did she seem of betraying herself.

"I suppose you often wonder what brought me there that night?" she went on. "You've told me your story, and you don't know anything at all about mine. You must often wonder, though you are too considerate to ask. But I'm going to tell you now without asking. It was to keep me from going there," pointing through the window down to the river.

"I'd had a lot of trouble,--oh, a terrible lot of trouble,--and it seemed as if there wasn't any place for me; and I walked down to the edge of the river up there at the end of East Fourteenth Street, and something stopped me just when I was ready to jump in. Why I didn't, I don't know," and the girl turned a stony face to the window.

"Why, it was hope and renewed courage, of course!" I replied quickly.

"Everybody gets blue spells--when one is down on one's luck."

Eunice shook her head. "No, it wasn't hope. It was because I was afraid--it was because I'm a coward. I'm too much of a coward to live, and I'm too much of a coward to die. You never felt as I do. You couldn't. I've lost my grip on everything. Everything's gone against me, and it's too late now for things to change. You don't know--_you don't know_, you and Bessie. If you did, you'd see how useless all your kindness is, in trying to get me to brace up. I've tried--my G.o.d! I have tried to feel that there's a life before me, but I can't--I can't.

Sometimes, maybe for a minute, I'll forget what's gone by, and then the next minute the memory of it all comes back with a fearful stab. There is something that won't let me forget."

"Hush! Eunice; don't talk so loud," I whispered as her pa.s.sionate voice rose above the hum of the other girls in a far portion of the room.

"I tell you it's no use--it's no use. I've lost my grip on things, and I can never catch hold again. I thought, maybe, when I started out with you and Bessie, and got to working again, there'd be a change. But there isn't any difference now from--from the night I went into that dormitory first. Now with you it would be different. What's happened to me might, maybe, happen to you; but you could fight it down. There's something inside of you that's stronger than anything that can hurt you from the outside. Most girls are that way. They get hurt--and hurt bad, and they cry a lot at the time and are miserable and unhappy; but after a while they succeed in picking themselves up, and are in the end as good, sometimes better, than ever. They forget in a little while all about it, and wind up by marrying some man who is really in love with them, and they are as happy as if nothing had ever happened."

I looked at the occupant of cot No. 11 with mingled feelings of pity and amazement--pity for the hopelessness of her case, now more apparent than ever; amazement at her keen and morbid generalizations.

"How old are you, Eunice?"

"Twenty-four," she replied--"oh, I know what you're going to say: that I have my whole life before me, and all that. But I haven't. My life is all behind me."

"'I am the Captain of my Soul, I am the Master of my Fate,'"

I quoted.

"Yes, you are; but I am not," she replied simply, and turned and looked at me with her hopeless eyes.

Poor, unfortunate Eunice! That night, as we walked home together, she revealed a little more about herself by telling me that she had recently been discharged from the hospital on "the Island." I did not need to inquire the nature of the illness that had left her face so white and drawn. Brief as my experience had been among the humble inmates of the "home," I had learned the expediency of not being too solicitous regarding the precise facts of such cases.

The next day was Sat.u.r.day, and still no Bessie. As we worked we speculated as to her absence, and decided to spend the afternoon looking her up. Meanwhile, although I had been managing to do my work a little better each day, Eunice had not been succeeding so well. Her apathy had been increasing daily, until she had lost any interest she might ever have had in trying to do her work well. On this morning the forewoman was obliged to give her repeated and sharp reproofs for soiling her materials and for dawdling over her work.

"You seem to like to work," Eunice said once, breaking a long silence.

"Not any better than you do, only I've got to, and I try to make the best of it."

"Yes, you do. You like to work, and I don't, and that's the difference between us. And it's all the difference in the world, too. If I liked work for its own sake, like you do, there'd be some hope for me living things down."

"I wonder," she whispered, again breaking a long silence--"I wonder if Bessie had any man after her."