The Shadow Part 25

"Hertha, here, is the Christian," she said later, when they were all comfortably seated in the front room, "she goes to church more times than I can count."

"It's a good habit for a woman," Billy retorted. "What did they preach about this morning?"

"I hardly know," Hertha answered. "The sermon was very short, but the service and the singing by the choir boys was most beautiful."

"And the priests in their robes and the altar with its candles and the incense," Kathleen added.

"Oh, we are not High Church like that."

"Why not do the whole thing if you're about it? I wouldn't stop at one gown, I'd have two, a dozen for the great events, and as many candles as the rich could pay for. But what is there in it all for a hungry heart?

"I remember once," Kathleen continued, a look of sorrow coming into her gray eyes, "going to church of a Palm Sunday. I had broken from the faith since the priest went against me and the girls in my big strike, but I thought of how my father and mother, if they'd been living, would have asked me to go, and I went to please them. I'd hardly entered the door, though, when the smell of the incense and the sight of the priests' rich robes sickened me. I thought of the lowly Nazarene who had not where to lay His head, and it seemed to me that I must scream; so I left and walked down the street, and across the way I saw another building, with a plain entrance, and over the doorway the words 'Liberty, Equality, Fraternity.' 'I don't know what it may mean,' I thought to myself, 'but that must be the place for me.' So I went inside and sat at the back against the wall where no one saw me.

"There was a pleasant looking man on the platform, dressed as he would be dressed to go into the street, and he was telling the meaning of Palm Sunday. It was when our Saviour was coming into Jerusalem riding on an a.s.s, the people following Him. But His followers all being poor, like Himself, had nothing to give, so they tore the leaves from the palm trees as He rode by and threw them in His path, their only offering. And as I sat there and listened, and heard of the hard road that the poor must tread, something broke in my heart and I leaned against the wall and sobbed."

Hertha was deeply moved. "Where did that man preach, Kathleen?" she asked.

"It was a long way from here, darling, and likely as not they've thrown him out of his church by this time. He was too good to be let long to do as he liked."

"Oh, Kathleen, Kathleen!"

"Well, well, I mustn't be making remarks like that on Christmas. Has Billy told you the story yet, Hertha, of how his grandfather fought in the German Revolution and made his escape from prison?"

Their visitor left early, and for a time they worked together in the kitchen clearing away the things. This task done, Kathleen brought out her Christmas cards and gifts and looked them over, commenting on this or that friend or patient, while Hertha sat quietly by, her hands in her lap. The day had brought her no remembrance save a gift from Kathleen.

"There's one thing I do love about you, Hertha," her friend said, "you're not always fidgeting; you know how to rest."

"Yes. It's been a real vacation for me, these two days."

"Still it must be hard not to be home at playtime."

Hertha remained silent.

"I'm not asking questions, dearie," her friend went on. "It's for you to talk or not, as you wish. But sometimes when we're by ourselves we want to speak and yet we don't know how. If there's anything you'd feel like saying, I'd keep it to myself. I know," looking closely at the young girl, "you've heard nothing at all from home."

It was very quiet. As Hertha sat looking at her hands in her lap, she heard the clock tick and smelled the fragrance of the geranium blossoms.

She was struggling with a desire to get up and, throwing her arms about her friend's neck, tell her her whole story. Hating deception, fearing that she could play her part but poorly, she wanted above everything else to do as her friend asked and reveal what was close to her heart.

But reticence and, too, a feeling that she must keep to the plan that she had formulated, held her back. So she only said in a half whisper, "I am very much alone, Kathleen."

"I'm knowing that, darling."

"I never knew my father or my mother. I saw more of my grandfather than of any one else. But he died last summer and left me with a little money, only a little, and I came to New York."

"You've no sister to turn to?"

"No," very slowly.

"You said you had a brother once?"

"Yes, but he's a long way off. I don't see him any more."

"That's a lonely way to be. And is your grandmother alive now?"

"No." Then, with a touch of petulance, "I didn't like her much."

"But you're grieving, dear, I can tell that; and it's not for the dead, but the living."

"Perhaps."

"Is it some man now that you're needing?"

"No," Hertha said with a little laugh that ended in a sob, "it's not a man, Kathleen, it's my black mammy."

She put her arms around her friend's neck and kissed her good-night; and then went to her room, her head erect, her carriage that of the granddaughter of Judge Ogilvie. She had taken the first step and the next would not be so difficult. But Kathleen, out in the kitchen, shook her head and looked mystified.

CHAPTER XIX

The "Imperial," to which Hertha went every morning, was a high-grade shop. The large room in which she spent forty-nine hours a week was as clean as a conscientious scrubwoman could make it; the ventilation was not bad, and few of the workers were obliged to use artificial light. At rare moments of interruption, when stopping to catch a bit of thread or to adjust a piece of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, Hertha would look about at her companions bent over their machines, one running a tuck here, another attaching the lace to the muslin there, and would marvel at their dexterity and at the speed with which the finished product came out ready to go to another room to be pressed. Later she might see it at a department store, thrown over a show figure, and priced at $5.65 or $3.95, according to the day of the week. They were pretty shirtwaists and she took a pride in her part in their production.

By January the trade became brisk. Orders for "Imperial" waists were shipped to-day to give place to new orders to be shipped to-morrow. The girls were paid by the piece, and were, for their own interest, likely to work as fast as they could; but foreman and manufacturer were continually calling for greater speed. The exigencies of the trade--capricious changes of style, a keen compet.i.tion among the manufacturers--created a period of swift production to be followed by a period of unemployment. Now, in midwinter, work was speeded up; and, bending over each whirring machine, was a taut, tired girl whose one thought, if she thought at all, was of the signal that should come at last to tell her that this day's work was done.

Hertha never became accustomed to the daily speeding. Not only did her body rebel against it, but her spirit refused to accept its sacrilege.

She had always enjoyed making clothes, seeing a garment grow under her fingers. No matter how simple the article might be at which she was at work, she had felt the satisfaction of the creator when the final st.i.tch was taken and the parts had become a useful whole. But now nothing grew; everything was made artificially by a series of explosions as they made puffed rice. At her machine she ran row after row of small tucks, fashioning the shoulders to give fullness to the bust. It was a graceful pattern, but if she stopped a moment to think of it she lost money for her employer and for herself. Her mind must be concentrated on her machine and on the goods that she fed it with the constant suggestion of hurrying, and again hurrying, and under the accusing eye of the foreman hurrying yet again.

Among the few American girls who worked at the shop was one Annie Black, who lived in a suburb. Annie seemed always to be running to and from trains. Her life on the road bore a striking similarity to her life at her machine. She rushed in the morning to get the 6:59, which, if it were on time, got her in and at work by eight. By shortening her noon hour she could just catch the 5:51 train for home. But if the 6:59 was late, then it was futile to attempt to make up lost time and she must work until nearly six and take the 6:41 back to a late dinner. And as her trains moved so moved her machine with its girl engine driver impatient for each run to be over and done.

We all love to make things, and the tragedy of the modern factory is that it denies this joy to the worker. Within the great buildings that we see from the street car window or that we flash by on the railroad train, men and women are not fashioning shirtwaists or shoes or automobiles; they are not seeing one out of the million things of man's creation grow beneath their touch; they are performing a series of motions for which they receive remuneration. The swifter and more accurate the performance of these motions the better the pay; but of the finished product they have neither knowledge nor thought. At ten years of age, with needle or wheel, they are better, more intelligent creators than at thirty, when, with f.a.gged brain, they mechanically add their part to the mult.i.tude of parts that make up the factory product. At ten they take joy in the thing they have made and may sell it for a nickel or a kiss; at thirty they have but one desire, to dispose of their part of the product as dearly as they can. For, as they have no part in the creation of the whole, so they have no share in the intricate ways of business that make possible the factory's life. They are only tools like the machines they operate, to be used by the few, the creators, who, like the G.o.ds themselves, conceive and command.

At the Imperial shop most of the girls were Jewish. Annie Black and half a dozen other young Americans sat by themselves at a north window and when luncheon time came rehea.r.s.ed the very lively happenings of the night before over their indigestible food; but the other girls were Russian Jews and spoke in Yiddish. Hertha was glad to have been seated with the latter group, for from the first she liked them better than her compatriots. Her shyness, coupled with her dislike of the vulgar, kept her from making any acquaintances among the American girls, but she sometimes regretted that the barrier of language separated her from the Jewish. Some of them were, to be sure, foolish and vain, but the majority were serious, and a few appealed to her sense both of decorum and beauty. These girls had broad foreheads and wore their dark hair parted and drawn down over the upper part of their ears. Their deep brown eyes had long curling lashes. They carried serious looking books to and from their work. She often wondered what they were talking about when they got together at luncheon, and she always smiled when she pa.s.sed them to go out at noon.

One night, early in January, she got into conversation with one of them as they left the factory. It was Sophie Switsky, a small, thin young woman of eighteen whose dark hair and eyes made almost too striking a contrast to her white face. "I go with you?" she had asked, looking up at Hertha as they went out into the rain, "I go under your umbrella?"

Hertha had said "yes" eagerly, ashamed not to have offered shelter herself. Then, looking down at her companion's feet that were rapidly becoming soaked, she asked, smiling, "You didn't think it would rain when you left home this morning?"

"No," Sophie answered, without the smile that is as much a part of the American greeting as a handshake. "I did not to forget. All the money I have I save for my brother in Lithuania to bring him here to me."

"Yes?"

"Then I must keep money for the summer when we shall have no work."

"No work?" Hertha questioned.

"Did you not know? This trade is very bad, very bad. In the winter we work like the slaves and in the summer no work. And before the work will stop we sit in the room and wait and wait to see if we will be needed for the day. Sometimes we sit for one week, two weeks, and only work a day; we cannot tell."

"Why don't we work all the year through, but have shorter hours, and not speed?" Hertha asked.