The Shadow Part 29

The little Jewish girl had grabbed her new recruit by the arm and with glowing face was leading her along the road to organization and industrial battle. There would be days and months ahead dedicated to the struggle to secure a better wage. The time was momentous, the opening of a great conflict. But to Hertha the time was auspicious for slipping away from these noisy working girls. She had given up her job at their call but she had no thought of following them in their struggle to get their jobs back again. Yet here she was on the avenue in a crowd that was attracting attention from the many pa.s.sers-by. Supposing Richard Brown should see her or one of the nice people who bowed to her at church! She tried to make her escape, but it was as impossible to get from Sophie's grasp as from the clutch of a small and very friendly bear who had tucked your arm in his. So down the avenue and across into a side street she was swept with the eager, excited band of strike-breakers to Union Hall.

It was a small hall and crowded before they entered it. Confusion was piled upon confusion. Hertha, dropped for a moment by Sophie, who turned to speak to her organizer about whom the girls had joked, started at once to leave the building, but, half lifted off her feet, was forcibly pushed into a seat between two workers. Here she was compelled to remain while a man with a long, dirty beard addressed the meeting in an unknown tongue. So many people were moving about and talking in the rear of the hall that, it seemed to her, even if she had understood Yiddish, she would not have known what was being said. But occasionally the woman at her left would interpret. "He tell you to get a card. Give name. See?"

There was nothing to attract her in the crowd, now that she saw it a.s.sembled in this ill-smelling place. She thought the men rude and she wished heartily to get away. But she was wedged in her seat and must remain until time brought release. For a few minutes, however, when Sophie Switsky was on the platform, Hertha listened with attention. Not that she understood the words--Sophie used Yiddish--but emotion may transcend and illumine any speech. Here stood a working girl, young, almost childlike in appearance, whose face and tragic tones told of a willingness to die if need be for a cause. Watching her, for the first time since she had joined the crowd of strikers, Hertha forgot herself.

For a little she felt her heart beat in sympathy. But with a sudden shock self-consciousness returned. Sophie had beckoned her, asking her to come to the platform. "Tell what you did!" she called out, smiling.

"Some understand the English." The southern girl shook her head and when the woman at her side tried to help her to the aisle, gripped her seat with both hands. The horror of being made conspicuous swept over her again, and she sat with burning cheeks until Sophie mercifully went back to her Yiddish and left her alone.

The speeches were at length over and by dodging and doubling, running from one "Imperial" girl only to have to run from another, Hertha escaped from Union Hall leaving no trace behind. Home at last, she looked with dismay at herself in the gla.s.s. The red quill was gone from her hat, her curly hair was tumbling about her face, her coat was a ma.s.s of wrinkles and she had caught her sleeve upon a nail and made a bad rent. In a minute, however, she laughed. Freedom had come to her. She would no longer spend her days in a noisy room bending over a machine.

She could mend the rent and press the coat and there were other quills to be had in the shops. Life was before her again to do with as she pleased. She recalled Sophie's dramatic cry. "Those who will not be scabs, cross the line!"

"That's the second time I've done it," she said to herself.

CHAPTER XXII

Hertha and Kathleen were estranged. From enthusiastic, joyful praise at her courage and pluck in leaving the shop, Kathleen had changed to tiresome nagging because her friend would not picket. Seated opposite her at table in the evening by the lamp in the front room, the Irishwoman, once a successful, aggressive labor leader, would explain, sometimes impetuously, sometimes with slow emphasis as if to a child, the ethics of the strike. To go out, she declared, was but the beginning; the end was the winning of better conditions in the trade.

What good was it that all these young strikers, many of them supporting mother or sister or brother, should lose their jobs, unless they might obtain them again under better conditions than before? Was it likely that the manufacturer of "Imperial" waists would go about asking his girls to return to him? Could not Hertha see that these workers were engaged in a desperate battle for better working-cla.s.s conditions that, with good generalship, might result in victory; but that without sacrifice and heroism, and forgetfulness of self, would end in disastrous defeat? Then she pictured the defeat; the homes without food, the drawn, girlish faces, the bitter disappointment as the shop took on more and more scabs and continued to manufacture its goods. If the talk were in the morning at the late breakfast in which Hertha was reveling, it was, "There they are, dearie, out in the street in front of the building you left, waiting for you to come and help them in their weary work." Or if the hour were evening, "And to-morrow, mavourneen, I'll be getting a fine breakfast for you with a cup of coffee and the bacon with the egg the way you like it, and you'll go to your sisters who are doing their duty as pickets, trying to keep the scabs from taking their jobs."

But Hertha would not picket. She said little in response to Kathleen's explanations, her pleading or her upbraidings. It had never been her way to talk. Probably what Kathleen said was true but she was not going to picket. She loathed it from every point of view held up to her. She could not go to a girl whom she had never seen before and ask her not to take her job. It would be impertinent and rude and lastly ridiculous, for she was very glad that she had left the "Imperial" shop. Nor could she walk hour after hour up and down the street always keeping in motion lest the policeman call out at her that she was blocking the way. She shrank at the thought of the hundreds of eyes that she believed would be cast upon her. No, she would not picket.

Moreover she was beginning to think for herself. As Sophie Switsky had explained the ways of trade the whole thing was silly. She could not accept the ethics, or lack of ethics, in the relation of the worker to his task. That against which she rebelled the girls accepted as inevitable. She was glad to be out of the "Imperial," not primarily because of its hours or its wage but because she hated to be worked like a machine. The months of tortured speeding had made her detest the sight of a cotton shirtwaist. But the girls were picketing, not for a sane and attractive task but only for more money. When they got more they would work faster than ever with tired backs and straining eyes. She was sick at the thought of it. In her room at home doing her neglected mending, drawing the needle in a leisurely way through the cloth, she wondered whether all the girls in the city worked as they had worked at the 'Imperial' and if so whether any of them lived to become old? Well, the subject was beyond her fathoming. She had touched the labor world and now was well out of it. Had she gone on longer her back would have become tired, her eyes have smarted, her body have weakened under the unnatural strain of production demanded by the changing fashions. Life was before her again, and of one thing she was sure, she had closed the factory door.

Despite all her reasoning, however, there was a faint possibility that Kathleen might have put her on the picket-line, at least for a day, had Hertha as in the beginning of their acquaintance been quite alone, but Richard Brown was calling a.s.siduously and his influence was not one that encouraged martyrdom. Thus on the Sat.u.r.day morning after nine days of happy idleness when Kathleen was awakening in her an uneasy sense of her obligation to her little sisters (that name always brought up a picture of Ellen battling for her through heat and cold), a note from d.i.c.k, inviting her to go to the opera with him that evening, blotted out the little sisters and the cold. She told Kathleen of the invitation only to receive a lecture on the inequalities of this world. Hertha felt aggrieved. Certainly she had waited many years for this, her first opera, and she believed she had a right to it when it came.

It was not far to the great department store where she had wandered for many noon hours, and, with a sense of delightful importance, she entered the shop and purchased a shirtwaist--not of cotton like those she had helped manufacture, but of filmy silk. This, with a pair of white gloves, cost a week's earnings, but life to-day was not measured by wages. At home again, she got her own luncheon, for Kathleen was away for the day, and spent the afternoon in bed, dozing and day-dreaming and dozing again. She felt that she understood why rich people were lazy, but wondered whether an afternoon in bed would bring happiness unless many other afternoons and mornings had been spent in difficult toil.

"Gee," cried Richard Brown as, seated by him in the balcony of the opera house, she took off her hat and coat, "I ought to take a back seat to-night and get one of those swallow-tailed fellows downstairs to come up here by you."

Hertha smiled a negative to his suggestion, wishing nevertheless that his taste in neckties was a little less flamboyant and that he did not talk so loud. She determined however not to notice these things, and they discussed,--she, gently, he, with jovial outbursts,--the building, the audience and the opera that they were about to witness. d.i.c.k had bought the libretto, "Il Trovatore," but neither of them knew what was before them. He had seen a musical comedy or two but she was ignorant of every form of operatic music. Reading the plot to her companion she found him chagrined that he had come to a tragedy. "Shucks!" he exclaimed when she had finished, "I thought I was bringing you to something funny." Her a.s.surance that this would be interesting and that she liked a sad story brought back his spirits. He chaffed her about her dress and her new gloves, until she was glad when the overture began and they were silent. And her heart gave a great bound of excitement when the curtain rose and she saw the courtyard of the palace with Ferrando calling to his men.

A first opera or a first play is a memorable event and those are fortunate whose introduction to the stage is neither trivial nor coa.r.s.e.

"Trovatore" might have grown a little threadbare to some in the audience, but to one it was a revelation of splendid scene, of exquisite melody, of the actor's art. That all this panorama of beautiful color and costume, of count and troubadour and lovely lady, should be gathered together under this roof was wonderful; but that it should be set to such harmony, that human beings clad in kingly robes should sing such heavenly music, was a miracle. Hertha's eyes grew big and her whole being responded to the story that was taking place before her on the s.p.a.cious stage.

"Deserto sulla terra."

Her love was calling to her, across the continent, across the whole world, telling of his longing to see her face, his pa.s.sionate desire to hold her in his arms again. She heard him in every note of the wonderful song, and when the voice ceased and the audience began to applaud, she woke from her dream of his presence with a start of shame that turned to anger as she heard the frantic clapping and saw the actor drop his part and bow to the audience. To her it had been reality, but to these people it was only beautiful singing. But the applause stopped, the play went on; and Hertha, watching through Leonora's eyes, saw the fate of lovers whose station in life is not the same; saw the count, glowering, hateful; heard Leonora plead for the gipsy's son; and in a pa.s.sion of excitement, watched the curtain drop upon the two men with swords drawn, upon the woman lying senseless on the ground.

"Some girl," said d.i.c.k when the lights came up and the people, ceasing their close attention, settled themselves more comfortably in their seats. "But the guy playing the banjo, I could give him points. If he doesn't want to die of apoplexy he'd better drop whisky and take to riding horseback."

"I say, won't you talk to a fellow?" he asked at the intermission between the third and last acts. "You just sit with your head buried in that book and all you'll say is how it's going to end. It sounds pretty crazy to me, burning the wrong baby! But of course, they must do something to make a story. Don't you want to go out into the hall and walk?"

It was the second time he had asked her, and she could not well refuse him, so, together they joined the throng of richly garbed men and women who promenaded up and down the corridor. She felt poorly clad as she noted the wonderful evening dresses of the women. Here were gowns such as she had seen on the figures in the department store, rainbow colors and with them thin lacy black and soft cream and ivory white. The people indeed seemed very like a show, a line of models moving up and down that they might be viewed each by the other; it was only when d.i.c.k, to hide his shyness at the strange scene, talked loudly and familiarly, that their amused glances made her appreciate they were fully alive.

"I'd like a gown like that," she said to d.i.c.k in a confidential tone as a pretty girl went by in a soft filmy blue silk.

"Shall I ask her for it?" He turned as though to stop the gown's owner.

"Don't be silly," was Hertha's sufficient answer.

"That's a grand fellow walking with her," d.i.c.k announced. "He might be a colonel out of uniform, but the girl isn't in it with you."

"Well, you needn't tell every one your opinion, please."

She blushed as she spoke for they had attracted the attention of the people about them. A middle-aged gentleman, whose seat she knew was behind d.i.c.k's, was smiling and she quite erroneously believed was enjoying her discomfiture. "Let's go back," she suggested, touching d.i.c.k lightly on the arm; and the youth, happy at even so slight a sign of favor, and anxious to do her least bidding, returned with her to their seats.

"You aren't going back to your old work again, now are you?" he asked.

"No."

"I was thinking, if you want to take up stenography, I know the best school in town. It's across the river, a mighty nice place, where you'll meet a good cla.s.s of girls. It don't cost such a lot, and you can enter any time you want."

"Yes?"

"And there's something I want to talk with you about. It's really important. Won't you take a walk with me to-morrow?"

"I don't know, I haven't much time. You see, I want to go to church in the morning and I'm going out to dinner at night."

"Who are you going with?"

The question was asked with some imperiousness.

"With a friend."

"A gentleman friend?"

Defiantly. "I don't think that is anything you need to know."

"Oh, of course it's none of my business, you needn't tell me that. But say, won't you go out first with me? I'll be around at two o'clock and bring you back by five or six. That'll be in time for your little dinner, won't it now?"

"Perhaps so."

She buried herself again in her libretto. "Mr. Brown," she said after a minute. "Listen to what the last scene will be. It's a horrid dungeon, for Manrico and his mother are in prison. As she lies there on her bed she thinks of the mountains where she was born, and that she and her son will go back there together and live in peace. When she sings it, just think about the hills in your own home."

He looked at her in some surprise. "I will," he said, "just the way you say, and about my mother, too. It all seems real to you, don't it?"

"Very real!"

"Somehow it hasn't to me. I can't seem to think of people standing up and singing this way if they've anything to tell. It takes so everlastingly long. Just suppose that when I went to business to-morrow I should throw my hand out like this," with a broad, forward gesture that barely missed the head of the lady in front of him, "and sing:

Oh, Mr. Weinstein, it's nine o'clock, sir, Oh, don't you want me to walk down the block, sir?

And then he'd answer with his arms folded like this:

Oh, Mr. Brown, get on to your job----