"There"s the funniest n.i.g.g.e.r minstrel show at the Hippodrome," he went on, "you ought to see it. Greatest thing out. There ain"t anything much funnier, anyway, than to see a black buck dressed in a high hat and a pair of fancy shoes, opening his frog mouth and singing a c.o.o.n song.
Mighty funny songs they"ve got there, too. Wish you could hear one of them."
He wanted to ask her to go to the show with him the next week, but she looked further removed from him than ever. Had he said anything to warrant it he would have thought that she was angry; but that could hardly be the case. She just wasn"t his kind and he had better accept the fact and go home. But as he sat crossing and recrossing his knees, wishing inexpressibly for the relief of a smoke, her face in the lamplight was so lovely that he shut his teeth and resolved to hang on.
Then a sneeze came to his relief, a big-throated sneeze, followed by a second and a third.
"Oh," Hertha cried, rousing herself, "aren"t you warm enough? Perhaps it"s warmer in the kitchen."
"Don"t bother."
"It isn"t any bother. I often sit there."
He followed her into the bright little kitchen, hoping that in a new environment he might be able to break through her reticence; but Hertha herself helped him.
"I"m going to make you a cup of cocoa," she said. "You"re cold and you need something to warm you up."
Beyond allowing him to light the gas stove, she refused all a.s.sistance, and as he stood watching her go through her deft movements, measuring, stirring, and at last pouring a foaming liquid into their two cups--for to his delight she was to share the meal--he was more attracted and yet more puzzled than ever.
"You cook mighty well," he said as she poured the hot cocoa.
"I"m used to doing little things about the house," she answered. "Before I came here I was a companion in a family."
The statement was made on the spur of the moment, but as Hertha thought it over she was delighted that she had been able to say something that opened up a way to live in the past without embarra.s.sment, almost without falsehood. To conjure up the world of white people in her grandfather"s home had been beyond her power; even in her thoughts she had stumbled in her endeavor to climb the ladder that led to their eminence. But as a companion in the Merryvale household she was in familiar surroundings.
Richard Brown on his part was a little disappointed. He had been dreaming of a princess in disguise and he found only a poor relation. In the large families of the South there were sometimes girls like this, though when they were so pretty they usually soon married, girls who had to do the odd tasks, give up the good times, go to live with some distant cousin or aunt as the case might be. That sort of thing made a girl shy and quiet. For the first time that evening he felt at ease.
"I bet there ain"t anybody in New York can make cocoa to beat yours,", he declared emphatically. "I never liked the stuff before."
"I should have made you coffee," Hertha said regretfully. "I forgot, because coffee keeps me awake."
"Does me, too." He was ready to agree with anything. "Now, down home, tramping through the woods, I could drink a dozen cups a day. But it"s different in the city."
"Were your woods pines?" she asked, "and were there streams with cypresses by the banks?"
Here at last they had found a meeting place, a common ground. If she would not play or laugh with him, they could wander through the woods together, tasting the tang of the evergreen or watching the buds burst on the wild plum. Drawing his chair a little forward, he hugged his knee and sang the song of the country of his birth.
Outside the rain splashed upon the street, making great puddles at the crossings, the wind blew fiercely down the narrow roadways and shook the windows in their frames; but within the little tenement the southern boy moved without a cloud to shadow him through the playtime of his years.
Sometimes it was winter and he was among the hills trapping birds and shooting rabbits. Again it was early spring and with rod in hand he trailed the brown stream until the trout rose and brought him all attention to the game they played that through his skill ended in death and victory. Or it was summer and too hot to walk, but glorious to gallop in the early morning over the rough road and down the hollow to where the brook broadened into a swimming-pool that called him to bathe in its reviving water. Again he moved among the woods in autumn, hunting, but not too intent upon his game to fail to find the nuts scattered upon his path or to stop and, putting his hand in a hole of a decaying tree, bring out a blinking, monkey-faced owl.
"Why, it"s half past ten," he cried, looking at the clock on the shelf above the stove. "I must go, for we both have to work to-morrow."
He ventured this at a hazard, but she did not contradict him.
"Your coat is quite dry," she answered, feeling it as she came to take it from the hook where it hung.
They stood in the narrow hallway and as he swung the coat upon his high shoulders he was a little awkward and brushed against her arm. She laughed away his apology, but he felt this slight contact as something tender, exquisite. As he opened the door he could only mutter an embarra.s.sed good-evening.
"Thank you for coming out in the rain," she said, "and you mustn"t take cold or I shall think you ought not to have risked it."
"I"m tough." He moved out onto the stair. Wasn"t she going to ask him to come again? "By the way," he called out, "I"ve read _Sherlock Holmes_.
It"s great!"
"I"m glad you liked it," she replied, "and I"ll try to find another good story for you next Sat.u.r.day evening."
He went away rapturously happy in having won the chance to know so beautiful a southern girl. Whether she lived as a worker in a tenement or as a companion in an old family mansion, she was the most refined person he had ever met and he planned great days when they should be together. The rain fell unheeded. Despite the bright light from the electric lamp, he walked into a deep puddle, drenching his feet and ankles and splashing his best clothes with dirty water. Oblivious of such trivial happenings, dreaming of the future, counting the evenings to Sat.u.r.day night, he reached his home, where, lying down to sleep, the lady of his heart followed him in his dreams.
Hertha, as she washed the cups and tidied up the kitchen, was happy, too, for a time, recollecting with pleasurable excitement the look of admiration in her visitor"s eyes. But shortly her cheeks grew hot with anger at him and at herself. He had insulted the colored people, "her people," as she had so recently called them, and she had said no word of protest. If she could not talk, she argued to herself, she could refuse to see this young man again. It was men like this who stole the Negro"s crops, who kept their children in ignorance, who even broke down jail doors and lynched black prisoners. Why had she ever allowed herself to be kind to such a man? Then as she looked about her, as she seemed to see d.i.c.k in the chair by the table, she smiled a little. Probably it was foolish to get so excited on the matter. Mammy"s last instructions were not to try to stand in two worlds, and if the white world showed more indifference, more antagonism to the black than even she had expected, she was in it and it was as well to know it as it was. In her loneliness she taught herself to believe that she had a right to become acquainted with this southern youth, but she resolved firmly not to let him have the conversation all to himself if he should again broach the Negro question. However bashful she might be, it should be possible for her to utter some forceful word.
CHAPTER XXI
With the coming of February, speeding did not stop at the "Imperial,"
while overtime crept in. Owing to rush orders the girls found themselves working half an hour or even an hour over the usual time to close. The 5:51 train became a thing of the past with Annie Black and she bemoaned it bitterly; but Hertha noticed that while there was complaint among the American girls and much grumbling over unfairness and meanness, it seemed to end there, while with the Jewish girls some plan was afoot.
Seated, together at the luncheon hour, their eyes shining, a slight touch of color in their cheeks, a number of the more serious, with Sophie Switsky at their head, talked of something beside their feeling of fatigue, the forlornness of a cold dinner, or the loss of an evening with a gentleman friend. One day, coming in earlier than usual from luncheon, Hertha found herself drawn into the circle while Sophie explained the meaning of the conference.
The shop must be unionized. Only by this means was there any hope for justice. Without the union to back them, the employers could treat them as they pleased, could confer or withdraw favors at their pleasure. But with the union behind their demands this overtime work would cease and they would secure a better wage. Did Hertha not think the conditions abominable?
Hertha felt embarra.s.sed. To these girls the trade which they worked was their one means of livelihood; they were intense in their att.i.tude toward it, while to her it was only a step to something more, she did not yet know what. She regretted the long hours, but they would not last for many weeks, and as long as she could endure them and make good pay she had not thought of change. Richard Brown, whom she was seeing a good deal of now, urged her to drop the whole thing; but since he knew nothing of her affairs she took his advice lightly. Her little legacy kept her for the time in safety, but Sophie Switsky in her old dress with her wet shoes, sending money to her brother and striving to save for the summer, was not safe. Any day she might face starvation.
"I don"t know about these things," Hertha stammered in answer to the question put to her.
"What"s doing?" Annie Black asked good naturedly, coming over to them; but before she could receive a reply the signal came to turn to work again.
"I see there"s a strike in the "Parisian,"" Kathleen said the next morning as she scanned the paper. "Perhaps you"ll be going out before long; you aren"t organized."
"Kathleen," Hertha questioned, "do you believe in the union?"
"Do I believe in the union? Do I believe in G.o.d? There, don"t be shocked, but there"s something tangible about what the union done for me; while, when my sister Maggie broke her arm, just as Johnnie came down with the measles and her husband lost his job, I had to live by faith--and that"s a poor thing to fill an empty stomach."
"Please talk sensibly," Hertha said.
"Am I not? I"m only saying that the ways of the Almighty are mysterious while the ways of the union, if you believe in the man who keeps the cash box, are clear and plain. The union is the only thing that stands between the working girl and starvation and sickness and sin. Don"t forget that."
There was no laughter now in Kathleen"s voice and her eyes glowed with emotion as she looked across the table at her questioner.
"We aren"t unionized, Kathleen, but the "Imperial" is one of the best shops in the city; all the girls say so."
"Then you"re living on the work others have done and not doing your part. In sweat and suffering some union made the standard for your shop."
At work much the same talk was in the air. When luncheon came Annie received the answer to her question and learned of what was on foot. For some weeks Sophie and her colleagues had been working upon the other Jewish girls striving to win them to unionism. Now they were ready to turn to the Americans.
"We must join the union," Sophie called out in her clear if broken English. "See how we work long hours, and when the rush is over, no work. And if we say anything we lose our job."
"Shut up, then," said Annie crossly.
She looked about nervously, but as the foreman was absent, proceeded to enter the debate.