It was Hertha"s porter, holding out a note.
Miss Witherspoon opened it and read the few words written in the girl"s careful hand.
"Thank you so much for your kindness, but I have decided to stay in New York. I think I shall prefer to be where no one knows anything about me.
I"m sorry I put you to so much trouble." And below, written more hurriedly: "Don"t worry over me, and thank you again."
"Where did she go?" Miss Witherspoon asked the boy, who was watching her with interest.
"I don"t know," he answered, "I put her on a street car."
"Here"s your taxi again," called out the starter.
Miss Witherspoon was startled and indignant. She looked about as though hoping by some miracle Hertha would appear at her side. Then, appreciating the futility of attempting any search, she got into the taxi with her bags and, chagrined and disappointed, was driven through the crowded streets.
"What shall I say to them in Boston?" she asked herself.
II
KATHLEEN
CHAPTER XIII
Noise! Thundering, reverberating noise. Noise that never ceases, noise that deadens the brain and makes the hand jerk in response to the jarred nerves; always, day and night, throughout the length of the city streets, the clamor of inanimate things.
In the morning when Hertha slipped to her seat, the last but one in the fourth line, she started her own thundering whir. The forty machines, all going at once, sounded like nothing so much as the great beetles that flew about her southern home in the summer evenings. But the beetles came but rarely and went with the withdrawal of the lamp, while here in the workroom the drumming was incessant. Always it was hurrying her, calling upon her to make better speed, to push the white fabric more quickly that the needle might make a greater number of punctures to the minute; to hasten, though her hands trembled, and though the tension drew her mouth into a narrow line and brought her brows together in a frown.
When noon came and the whirring stopped, Hertha would look down the long line of beetle-beasts, for so she called them to herself. At length they were quiet. Surely they had had enough. For hours they had been devouring, eating up the muslin fed to them. No, rather they had disgorged; for the muslin was left, and with it thousands of yards of cotton thread that they had doled out through their small needle jaws.
But their rest would be short and they would soon thunder tirelessly on again.
Usually she went out to her luncheon. The nearby restaurant furnished appetizing and inexpensive things to eat, but they were accompanied by a new and disturbing clamor. As she took her seat at one of the many long tables, she was enveloped in a sound of falling plates. Heavy china cup struck heavy china saucer and both struck the marble table. Knives, forks and spoons fell on platters, and platters fell on trays and slipped and rattled one against another. Little plates dropped on big plates and all went with a terrific smash into the dumb waiter; while from some inexhaustible source new knives and forks and plates came clattering up to take the places of the old.
"b.u.t.ter cakes, please."
Hertha"s voice was scarcely audible. As she ate, she listened attentively, hoping that for a moment the noise would cease; but it only varied in intensity, rising now to such a height that it seemed as if an avalanche of white pottery was falling into s.p.a.ce; again dropping to a steady, clanging sound of utensils taking their appointed places. But no one but herself seemed to notice, and the men and women about her ate on diligently, silent for the most part, concerned only with securing needed nourishment in a short period of time.
The noises on the avenue down which she walked to and from her home were not wearying like those in the shop and the restaurant, for they came and went. The silent moving motors had their horns that gave warning with a silly, childish squeak or with a deep note as hoa.r.s.e as a frog"s.
At the corner where she turned east to go home a policeman was stationed, and she enjoyed waiting for the sound of his shrill whistle.
But the avenue left behind, the way was less pleasant. Three busy thoroughfares must be crossed without the policeman"s aid, the last a dirty boulevard where heavy trains crashed overhead and surface cars clanged swiftly by. She would stand waiting on the sidewalk until a friendly cart from a side street opened up a path of safety that brought her a little breathless to the opposite walk.
Now she was almost home--the second door, three flights up, and then restful quiet. Kathleen, her new friend, with whom she had come to live, was away, and with windows closed she would sit in the front room, quite by herself, her hands in her lap, enjoying the silence. Later, dinner over, she would take up a novel, one of the books she had always wanted to read, but could not afford to buy, that here in New York any one might have at the library for the asking. Immersed in _Lorna Doone_, she forgot the pounding machines and the clattering dishes and was very happy; but when the book was put away and she lay down to sleep, through the open window the world of tumult came back again.
"Why do men invent so many things that make a noise?" she would ask herself. She had heard city people when they came to the Merryvales"
complain bitterly to her of being wakened in the morning by the c.o.c.k"s crowing; but she had not made the c.o.c.ks, and, moreover, they did not crow all night. Here in her room, however, near the ugly boulevard of the East Side, the man-made c.o.c.ks never ceased to crow. The trolley cars were the most aggressive; their wheels ground on their axles and jarred upon the rails; they stopped with a loud jolt, and with another jar and jolt were off again. They were always jerking, Hertha felt. Overhead the elevated road vibrated to the heavy cars that moved over its rails day and night. You heard the coming train a long way off. First, a gentle, rumbling noise that you might imagine to be the sea; then a louder and louder roar, and, finally, a crash as the long line of cars rushed past.
Sometimes she was sure they would sway too far and fall thundering into the street. And hardly had their sound died away when a second rumbling would be heard and another train come tearing after its fellow, or a third dash by from the opposite side.
After a time the clamor ceased to be incessant. Trains followed at longer intervals, and would-be street car pa.s.sengers waited for some minutes at the corner. But in these intervals there was always upon the street the sound of footsteps. And long after midnight, if Hertha awoke from her troubled sleep, she heard the tread of feet. Sometimes they were slow and hesitating, sometimes swift and hurried, oftenest a steady, quiet step. Where do all these footsteps lead, she thought. What were the people doing who thronged the elevated railroad, crowding one upon another so that it was difficult to breathe if one pushed one"s way among them? And the surface cars were filled with a hurrying crowd, while underneath the city the subways carried their millions of women and men. Was there any need of moving about so much? It might be necessary to travel to and from your work, but why go on and on?
Supposing all these cars should stop suddenly, should cease their jar and clang? There would still be the footsteps in the street, for man was always moving, some way, somewhere. Had not Tom moved? And now she, too, was moving, to the whir of the machine, to the crash of the advancing train, moving through the new, clamorous world.
"And you didn"t sleep well last night, darling," Kathleen said to her as she came in to breakfast. "Your eyes are looking tired this lovely morning. I"m thinking the trains kept you awake. Don"t notice them.
They"ll go on and never once jump the tracks, but make big profits for their owners and a fine place to hang on the strap for you and me.
You"ll soon be used to the clatter. Once I heard it, but now I don"t mind it any more than I do the sparrows. Take a help of the oatmeal, and tell me what you"ll like for dinner, for I"m staying home to-night."
CHAPTER XIV
Hertha, when she slipped from Miss Witherspoon"s charge, experienced no difficulty in finding a suitable dwelling place in New York. She had not studied for years in a school conducted by northern teachers without learning of the philanthropies that were showered upon people in the North. The Young Women"s Christian a.s.sociation was for just such girls as she, and therefore, under the direction of a friendly policeman, she soon reached headquarters and was given temporary shelter. As she walked about in the comfortable rooms, luxurious in her eyes, she felt that she had indeed entered the white world, her lawful heritage; and if it was hard to lose all family ties--mother, sister, brother, swept away as though in some swift disaster of nature--on the other hand, life of a sudden had become strangely simplified. How easy it was to move through the world if you were white! She had always been conspicuous, a mark for astonished comment when with her black brother and sister, for whispered commiseration when working out in service. Now no one could comment at all. She was like every one else. She need not shrink if she were rudely treated, she might answer back; no longer must she "keep her place,"
hers was the place of the dominant race. When she remembered her lover, her cheeks flamed. No need to fear that she, a white girl, would ever again think to give herself without exacting a full return.
But what should she do? She was young and white and had something less than two thousand dollars to her credit at the bank; moreover, she had stored in her mind a multiplicity of suggestions to be turned over and reviewed as she made her way through the streets or lay in her bed at night. Had she gone to Boston with Miss Witherspoon, she would at once have used a fair share of her fortune on her education; but, perhaps because she had cut loose from old plans, she rejected the taking up of dressmaking. She inclined to stenography and typewriting; but Ellen, who knew her better than any one else, had looked surprised on learning that she considered this means of earning a livelihood. She knew she was no scholar, and a chosen career that involved the swift jotting down of the ideas of others, later to be transcribed in black type on a white sheet from which a misspelled word shone with hideous clearness, might end in disgrace. So stenography was set aside.
Equally she was sure she would not take the advice of Miss Patty. To be a companion was the highest position that could have been reached by Hertha, colored; but it was menial service to Hertha, white. She had renounced a sheltered home; now that she was in the North she meant to live a new life of freedom.
After three days of happy wandering about the city and of careful consideration of her personal problem, she made a practical decision.
Her legacy was small, and for the present she knew too little of the life about her or of her own ability to risk spending it upon an education. The operating work of which Miss Witherspoon had once spoken lay along the line of her natural apt.i.tude. Why, then, not try it? If you were a good workwoman, it paid well. She was in a mood for the unusual, and therefore, under the guidance of the efficient and business-like a.s.sociation secretary, she found herself, a week after her arrival in New York, doing her part in manufacturing muslin shirtwaists.
Kathleen she had discovered herself. She could not remain long at the a.s.sociation, since the rooms for permanent guests were occupied; and with a list provided her by the secretary, she went out one afternoon to secure a suitable boarding place. The first and only house she entered was in charge of a thin, meager woman, the type of Miss Witherspoon, but with a more domineering manner and a flatter bust. The room for rent had a red carpet which smelt moldy, and brilliantly painted blue walls.
Hertha hated it at once, but with difficulty succeeded in leaving without renting it, so persistent was the person in charge. Indeed, she only escaped with the proviso that she might look in again.
Once in the street, her confidence returned and she resolved to have nothing to do with this or any other cheap boarding place. In so immense a city it must be possible to find an attractive home.
She looked no further that day, and in the evening, standing in the office, she saw a large, fine looking Irish woman come up to the desk.
Laughing and talking to a friend, her cheeks pink with her exertions from the gymnasium, her gray eyes glowing, Kathleen seemed the exact opposite of the disturbing landlady of the afternoon. "I know I"m bothering you, Miss Jones," she began, addressing the secretary, who was insignificant beside her, "but it"s what you like. You couldn"t be happy if you didn"t have a dozen girls wanting you at once. What I"m after is some one to share my flat with me this winter. The boss has sent my brother to Chicago, where they need his work more than they do here.
Hard luck for me, for he was bringing in a good wage! And now I"ve a little flat and only myself in it. Is there any girl here, do you think, would like a bedroom and the use of a kitchen and parlor? I"d let her have it for fifteen dollars a month."
Hertha was standing at the end of the desk, quite by Miss Jones"s elbow.
She expected that the secretary would introduce them, but instead Miss Jones looked down, moved some papers, and handed an elaborately ruled card for Kathleen to fill.
The Irishwoman took it up clumsily. "You fill it in," she said. "It"s Kathleen O"Connor, 204 East 8th Street, fourth floor. I"ll be home to-morrow night to any one who comes."
When she had gone Hertha asked for the address, explaining that she would like to see the room.
"Would you?" Miss Jones questioned, looking her over as though to place her again. "I thought of you, but did not know whether it was what you desired. It"s rather a poor neighborhood, and yet it costs as much as a better one. Kathleen is Irish, you know. She only comes to the gymnasium, and she"s irregular at that. She"s a sort of nurse; not trained, of course, but good of her kind. Take the address; it"s near your, work, and if you like----" and her voice trailed off as she turned to the next girl who came to her for guidance.
Hertha did "like." She went to Kathleen"s the following evening and settled the bargain with a week"s rent in advance. She liked the rear alcove room with its iron bed and fresh cover; and, though it was dark, it opened with wide doors into the parlor. "For the both of us,"
Kathleen explained, "unless you"re wanting to go straight to bed and then it"s yours." The parlor had little furniture--a plain table, two straight chairs, a comfortable rocker and a couch with a Bagdad cover.
Kathleen had a small bedroom opening into a court; but the attractive spot was the kitchen. It faced the south and its two windows were filled with red geraniums in full bloom. The walls were light buff, the kitchen table was covered with a white oilcloth, and the wooden chairs were painted like the wall. For convenience, it was beyond anything Hertha had ever known with its gas stove, its hot and cold water for sink and tubs. She remembered the thousands of pails of water that her mother and Ellen had carried during the years she had been with them, and the millions of pieces of wood that Tom had piled up and brought into the kitchen. Getting meals and washing your clothes here would be fun, not work.
"I can make corn bread for breakfast," she said to Kathleen confidentially, as they looked into the closet with its wealth of pots and pans, spoons and egg beaters, skillets and toasters--more kitchen utensils than Hertha had imagined any one could own.