"I am a married woman."
"But you"ve got no ring."
"I"ve never worn a ring."
"Well--well! I believe that is one of the new wrinkles, but I don"t approve. I"m an old-fashioned family man. Let me see again. Now, don"t mind a poor old man like me, my dear. I"ve got a wife--the best woman in the world, and I"ve never been untrue to her. A look over the fence occasionally--but not an inch out of the pasture. Don"t stiffen yourself like that. I can"t judge, when you do. Not too much hips--neither sides nor back. Fine! Fine! And the thigh slender--yes--quite lovely, my dear. Thick thighs spoil the hang of garments. Yes--yes--a splendid figure. I"ll bet the bosom is a corker--fine skin and nice ladylike size. You can have the place."
"What does it pay?" she asked.
"Ten dollars, to start with. Splendid wages. _I_ started on two fifty. But I forgot--you don"t know the business?"
"No--nothing about it," was her innocent, honest answer.
"Ah--well, then--nine dollars--eh?"
Susan hesitated.
"You can make quite a neat little bunch on the outside--_you_ can. We cater only to the best trade, and the buyers who come to us are big easy spenders. But I"m supposed to know nothing about that. You"ll find out from the other girls." He chuckled. "Oh, it"s a nice soft life except for a few weeks along at this part of the year--and again in winter. Well--ten dollars, then."
Susan accepted. It was more than she had expected to get; it was less than she could hope to live on in New York in anything approaching the manner a person of any refinement or tastes or customs of comfort regards as merely decent. She must descend again to the tenements, must resume the fight against that physical degradation which sooner or later imposes--upon those _descending_ to it--a degradation of mind and heart deeper, more saturating, more putrefying than any that ever originated from within. Not so long as her figure lasted was she the worse off for not knowing a trade. Jeffries was telling the truth; she would be getting splendid wages, not merely for a beginner but for any woman of the working cla.s.s. Except in rare occasional instances wages and salaries for women were kept down below the standard of decency by woman"s peculiar position--by such conditions as that most women took up work as a temporary makeshift or to piece out a family"s earnings, and that almost any woman could supplement--and so many did supplement--their earnings at labor with as large or larger earnings in the stealthy shameful way. Where was there a trade that would bring a girl ten dollars a week at the start? Even if she were a semi-professional, a stenographer and typewriter, it would take expertness and long service to lift her up to such wages.
Thanks to her figure--to its chancing to please old Jeffries"
taste--she was better off than all but a few working women, than all but a few workingmen. She was of the labor aristocracy; and if she had been one of a family of workers she would have been counted an enviable favorite of fortune. Unfortunately, she was alone unfortunately for herself, not at all from the standpoint of the tenement cla.s.s she was now joining. Among them she would be a person who could afford the luxuries of life as life reveals itself to the tenements.
"Tomorrow morning at seven o"clock," said Jeffries. "You have lost your husband?"
"Yes."
"I saw you"d had great grief. No insurance, I judge? Well--you will find another--maybe a rich one. No--you"ll not have to sleep alone long, my dear." And he patted her on the shoulder, gave her a parting fumble of shoulders and arms.
She was able to muster a grateful smile; for she felt a rare kindness of heart under the familiar animalism to which good-looking, well-formed women who go about much unescorted soon grow accustomed. Also, experience had taught her that, as things go with girls of the working cla.s.s, his treatment was courteous, considerate, chivalrous almost. With men in absolute control of all kinds of work, with women stimulating the s.e.x appet.i.te by openly or covertly using their charms as female to a.s.sist them in the cruel struggle for existence--what was to be expected?
Her way to the elevator took her along aisles lined with tables, hidden under ma.s.ses of cloaks, jackets, dresses and materials for making them. They exuded the odors of the factory--faint yet pungent odors that brought up before her visions of huge, badly ventilated rooms, where women aged or ageing swiftly were toiling hour after hour monotonously--spending half of each day in buying the right to eat and sleep unhealthily. The odors--or, rather, the visions they evoked--made her sick at heart. For the moment she came from under the spell of her peculiar trait--her power to do without whimper or vain gesture of revolt the inevitable thing, whatever it was. She paused to steady herself, half leaning against a lofty up-piling of winter cloaks. A girl, young at first glance, not nearly so young thereafter, suddenly appeared before her--a girl whose hair had the sheen of burnished bra.s.s and whose soft smooth skin was of that frog-belly whiteness which suggests an inheritance of some bleaching and blistering disease. She had small regular features, eyes that at once suggested looseness, good-natured yet mercenary too. She was dressed in the sleek tight-fitting trying-on robe of the professional model, and her figure was superb in its firm luxuriousness.
"Sick?" asked the girl with real kindliness.
"No--only dizzy for the moment."
"I suppose you"ve had a hard day."
"It might have been easier," Susan replied, attempting a smile.
"It"s no fun, looking for a job. But you"ve caught on?"
"Yes. He took me."
"I made a bet with myself that he would when I saw you go in."
The girl laughed agreeably. "He picked you for Gideon."
"What department is that?"
The girl laughed again, with a cynical squinting of the eyes.
"Oh, Gideon"s our biggest customer. He buys for the largest house in Chicago."
"I"m looking for a place to live," said Susan. "Some place in this part of town."
"How much do you want to spend?"
"I"m to have ten a week. So I can"t afford more than twelve or fourteen a month for rent, can I?"
"If you happen to have to live on the ten," was the reply with a sly, merry smile.
"It"s all I"ve got."
Again the girl laughed, the good-humored mercenary eyes twinkling rakishly. "Well--you can"t get much for fourteen a month."
"I don"t care, so long as it"s clean."
"Gee, you"re reasonable, ain"t you?" cried the girl. "Clean!
I pay fourteen a week, and all kinds of things come through the cracks from the other apartments. You must be a stranger to little old New York--bugtown, a lady friend of mine calls it. Alone?"
"Yes."
"Um--" The girl shook her head dubiously. "Rents are mighty steep in New York, and going up all the time. You see, the rich people that own the lands and houses here need a lot of money in their business. You"ve got either to take a room or part of one in with some tenement family, respectable but noisy and dirty and not at all refined, or else you"ve got to live in a house where everything goes. You want to live respectable, I judge?"
"Yes."
"That"s the way with me. Do what you please, _I_ say, but for _G.o.d"s sake_, don"t make yourself _common!_ You"ll want to be free to have your gentlemen friends come--and at the same time a room you"ll not be ashamed for "em to see on account of dirt and smells and common people around."
"I shan"t want to see anyone in my room."
The young woman winced, then went on with hasty enthusiasm.
"I knew you were refined the minute I looked at you. I think you might get a room in the house of a lady friend of mine--Mrs.
Tucker, up in Clinton Place near University Place--an elegant neighborhood--that is, the north side of the street.
The south side"s kind o" low, on account of dagoes having moved in there. They live like vermin--but then all tenement people do."
"They"ve got to," said Susan.
"Yes, that"s a fact. Ain"t it awful? I"ll write down the name and address of my lady friend. I"m Miss Mary Hinkle."
"My name is Lorna Sackville," said Susan, in response to the expectant look of Miss Hinkle.
"My, what a swell name! You"ve been sick, haven"t you?"
"No, I"m never sick."
"Me too. My mother taught me to stop eating as soon as I felt bad, and not to eat again till I was all right."