The Long Day Part 6

Smith, with remorseless cruelty--"none of Charlotte M. Braeme's, eye-ther?"

"No."

"Nor none by Effie Adelaide Rowlands, e--y--e-ther?" still persisted Mrs. Smith.

"No; none by her."

"E--y--e--ther!" Both my tormentors now raised their singing-voices into a high, clear, full-blown note of derisive music, held it for a brief moment at a dizzy alt.i.tude, and then in soft, long-drawn-out cadences returned to earth and speaking-voices again.

"What kind of story-books do you read, then?" they demanded. To which I replied with the names of a dozen or more of the simple, every-day cla.s.sics that the school-boy and-girl are supposed to have read. They had never heard of "David Copperfield" or of d.i.c.kens. Nor had they ever heard of "Gulliver's Travels," nor of "The Vicar of Wakefield." They had heard the name "Robinson Crusoe," but they did not know it was the name of an entrancing romance. "Little Women," "John Halifax, Gentleman,"

"The Cloister and the Hearth," "Les Miserables," were also unknown, unheard-of literary treasures. They were equally ignorant of the existence of the conventional Sunday-school romance. They stared at me in amazement when I rattled off a heterogeneous a.s.sortment from the fecund pens of Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney, "Pansy," Amanda M. Douglas, and similar good-goody writers for good-goody girls; their only remarks being that their t.i.tles didn't sound interesting. I spoke enthusiastically of "Little Women," telling them how I had read it four times, and that I meant to read it again some day. Their curiosity was aroused over the unheard-of thing of anybody ever wanting to read any book more than once, and they pressed me to reciprocate by repeating the story for them, which I did with great accuracy of statement, and with genuine pleasure to myself at being given an opportunity to introduce anybody to Meg and Jo and all the rest of that delightful March family.

When I had finished, Phoebe stopped her cornering and Mrs. Smith looked up from her label-pasting.

"Why, that's no story at all," the latter declared.

"Why, no," echoed Phoebe; "that's no story--that's just everyday happenings. I don't see what's the use putting things like that in books. I'll bet any money that lady what wrote it knew all them boys and girls. They just sound like real, live people; and when you was telling about them I could just see them as plain as plain could be--couldn't you, Gwendolyn?"

"Yep," yawned our vis-a-vis, undisguisedly bored.

"But I suppose farmer folks likes them kind of stories," Phoebe generously suggested. "They ain't used to the same styles of anything that us city folks are."

While we had been trying to forget our tired limbs in a discussion of literary tastes and standards, our workmates had been relieving the treadmill tedium of the long afternoon by various expedients. The quartet at the table immediately in front of us had been making inane doggerel rhymes upon the names of their workmates, telling riddles, and exchanging nasty stories with great gusto and frequent fits of wild laughter. At another table the forthcoming ball of the "Moonlight Maids" was under hot discussion, and at a very long table in front of the elevator they were talking in subdued voices about dreams and omens, making frequent reference to a greasy volume styled "The Lucky Dream Book."

Far over, under the windows, the stripper girls were tuning up their voices preparatory to the late-afternoon concert, soon to begin. They hummed a few bars of one melody, then of another; and at last, Angela's voice leading, there burst upon the room in full chorus, to the rhythmic whir of the wheels, the melodious music and maudlin stanzas of "The Fatal Wedding."

Phoebe lent her flute-like soprano to the next song, the rather pretty melody of which was not sufficient to redeem the ba.n.a.lity of the words:

"The scene is a banquet where beauty and wealth Have gathered in splendid array; But silent and sad is a fair woman there, Whose young heart is pining away.

"A card is brought to her--she reads there a name Of one that she loved long ago; Then sadly she whispers, 'Just say I'm not here, For my story he never must know.'

"That night in the banquet at Misery Hall She reigned like a queen on a throne; But often the tears filled her beautiful eyes As she dreamed of the love she had known.

"Her thoughts flowed along through the laughter and song To the days she could never recall, And she longed to find rest on her dear mother's breast At the banquet in Misery Hall.

"The time pa.s.ses quickly, and few in the throng Have noticed the one vacant chair-- Till out of the beautiful garden beyond A pistol-shot rings on the air.

"Now see, in the moonlight a handsome youth lays-- Too quickly his life doth depart; While kneeling beside him, the woman he'd loved Finds her picture is close to his heart."

"What is the name of that song?" I asked when the last cadence of Phoebe's voice, which was sustained long after every other in the room was hushed, had died away.

"That! Why, it's 'The Banquet in Misery Hall,'" answered Mrs. Smith, somewhat impatient of my unfolding ignorance. But I speedily forgot the rebuke in a lively interest in the songs that followed one another without interlude. Phoebe was counting her pile of boxes and ranging them into piles of twelve high; so she couldn't sing, and I, consequently, could not catch all the words of each song. The theme in every case was a more or less ungrammatical, crude, and utterly ba.n.a.l rendition of the claptrap morality exploited in the cheap story-books.

Reduced to the last a.n.a.lysis, they had to do with but one subject--the frailty of woman. On the one side was presented Virtue tempted, betrayed, repentant; on the other side, Virtue fighting at bay, persecuted, scourged, but emerging in the end unspotted and victorious, with all good things added unto it.

It was to me an entirely new way of looking at life; and though I couldn't in the least explain it to myself, it seemed, to my unsophisticated way of looking at such matters, that the propensity to break the seventh commandment was much exaggerated, and that songs about other subjects would have been much more interesting and not nearly so trying to the feelings. For the sweet voices of the singers could not but make the tears come to my eyes, in spite of the fact that the burden of the song seemed so unworthy.

"You all sing so beautifully!" I cried, in honest admiration, at the close of one particularly melodious and extremely silly ditty. "Where did you learn?"

Phoebe was pleased at the compliment implied by the tears in my eyes, and even Mrs. Smith forgot to throw out her taunting "eye-ther" as she stood still and regarded my very frank and unconcealed emotion.

"I guess we sort of learn from the Ginney girls," explained Phoebe.

"Them Ginneys is all nice singers, and everybody in the shop kind of gets into the way of singing good, too, from being with them. You ought to hear them sing Dago songs, oughtn't she, Gwendolyn?"

"Yep," answered Gwendolyn; "I could just die hearing Angela and Celie Polatta singing that--what-d'ye-call-it, that always makes a body bu'st out crying?"

"You mean 'Punchinello.' Yep, that's a corker; but, Lord! the one what makes me have all kinds of funny cold feelings run up my back is that 'Ave Maria.' Therese Nicora taught them--what she says she learned in the old country. I wouldn't want anything to eat if I could hear songs like that all the time."

The clock-hands over Annie Kinzer's desk had now crept close to the hour of six, and Angela had only begun the first stanza of--

"Papa, tell me where is mama," cried a little girl one day; "I'm so lonesome here without her, tell me why she went away.

You don't know how much I'm longing for her loving good-night kiss!"

Papa placed his arms around her as he softly whispered this:

"Down in the City of Sighs and Tears, under the white light's glare, Down in the City of Wasted Years, you'll find your mama there, Wandering along where each smiling face hides its story of lost careers; And perhaps she is dreaming of you to-night, in the City of Sighs and Tears."

The machinery gave a ponderous throb, the great black belts sagged and fell inert, the wheels whirred listlessly, clocks all over the great city began to toll for one more long day ended and gone, while the voices of the girl toilers rose superbly and filled the gathering stillness with the soft crescendo refrain:

"Wandering along where each smiling face hides its story of lost careers; And perhaps she is dreaming of you to-night, in the City of Sighs and Tears-- In the City of Sighs and Tears."

VII

IN WHICH I ACQUIRE A STORY-BOOK NAME AND MAKE THE ACQUAINTANCE OF MISS HENRIETTA MANNERS

Before entering upon my second day's work at the box-factory, and before detailing any of the strange things which that day brought forth, I feel it inc.u.mbent upon me to give some word of explanation as to my whereabouts during the intervening night. It will be remembered that when I left the factory at the end of the first day, I had neither a lodging nor a trunk. I will not dwell upon the state of my feelings when I walked out of Thompson Street in the consciousness that if I had been friendless and homeless before, I was infinitely more so now. I will say nothing of the ache in my heart when my thoughts traveled toward the pile of ruins in Fourteenth Street, with the realization of my helplessness, my sheer inability even to attempt to do a one last humble little act of love and grat.i.tude for the dead woman who had been truly my friend.

Briefly stated, the facts are these: I had, all told, one dollar, and I walked from Thompson Street straight to the Jefferson Market police-station, which was not a great distance away. I stated my case to the matron, a kindly Irishwoman. I was afraid to start out so late in the evening to look for a lodging for the night. I would have thought nothing of such a thing a few weeks previous, but the knowledge of life which I had gained in my brief residence in Fourteenth Street and from the advice of Mrs. Pringle had showed me the danger that lurked in such a course. The police matron said my fears were well founded, and she gave me the address of a working-girls' home over on the East Side, which she said was not the pleasantest place in the world for a well-brought-up girl of refinement and intelligence, such as she took me to be, but was cheap, and in which I would be sure of the protection which any young, inexperienced woman without money needs so badly in this wicked city. She wrote down the address for me, and I had started to the door of her little office when her motherly eye noticed how f.a.gged out and lame I was--and indeed I could scarcely stand--and with a wave of her plump arm she brought me back to her desk.

"Why don't you stay here with me to-night?" she asked. "You needn't mind; and if I was you I would do it and save my pennies and my tired legs. You can have a bite of supper with me, and then bundle right off to bed. You look clean tuckered out."

So to my fast-growing list of startling experiences I added a night in the station-house; but a very quiet, uneventful night it was, because the matron tucked me away in her own little room. That is, it was quiet and uneventful so far as my surroundings were concerned, though I slept little on account of my aching bones. All night I tossed, pain-racked and discouraged; for, after all the long, hard day's work of the day before, Phoebe's card had only checked one dollar and five cents, which represented two persons' work. Such being the case, how could I expect to grow sufficiently skilful and expeditious to earn enough to keep body and soul together in the brief apprenticeship I had looked forward to?

Unable to sleep, I was up an hour earlier than usual, and after I had breakfasted--again by the courtesy of the matron--I was off to work long before the working-day began.

I had thought to be the first arrival, but I was not. A girl was already bending over her paste-pot, and the revelers of the "Ladies' Moonlight Pleasure Club" came straggling in by twos and threes. Some of the weary dancers had dropped to sleep, still wearing their ball-gowns and slippers and bangles and picture-hats, their faces showing ghastly white and drawn in the mote-ridden sunbeams that fell through the dirty windows. Others were busy doffing Cinderella garments, which rites were performed with astounding frankness in the open s.p.a.ces of the big loft.

"Oh, Henrietta, you had ought to been there," Georgiana gushed, dropping her lace-trimmed petticoats about her feet and struggling to unhook her corsets. "It was grand, but I'm tired to death; and oh, dear! I've another blow-out to-night, and the 'Clover Leaf' to-morrow night!" With a weary yawn, the society queen departed with her finery.

"You didn't go to the ball?" I suggested to the girl addressed as Henrietta, and whom I now recalled as one who had worked frantically all the day before.

"Me? No. I don't believe in dancing," she replied, without looking up.

"Our church's down on it. I came early to get ahead with my order. You can do more work when there's not so many round."