CHAPTER XV
LOOKING FOR THOMASINE
When Hagar had been ten days in New York, she went early one afternoonto find Thomasine. She had the address, and upon showing it to Rachelthe latter had pronounced it "poor but respectable," adding, "Are yousure you ought to go alone?"
"'Ought to go alone?--ought to go alone?'--I am so tired of that phrase'ought to go alone'!" said Hagar. "At Gilead Balm they said, 'Don't gobeyond the Mile-and-a-Half Cedar!' You say yourself that I couldn't getlost, and I was brought up with Thomasine, and Jim and his wife areperfectly good people."
Downstairs, as she was passing the parlour doors, Mrs. Maine calledto her from within. "Where are you going, dear?" Hagar entered andexplained. "That is very nice of you to look her up, but do you thinkyou ought to go alone?" Hagar explained that, too; whereupon Mrs. Mainepatted her hand and told her to trot along, but always to be careful!As the front door closed after her, her hostess resumed her box ofchocolates and the baby sacque she was knitting. "It isn't as thoughI had promised to give her, or to make Rachel give her, continualchaperonage! To look after her in a general way is all that couldpossibly be expected. Besides, it's foolish always to be nervous aboutpeople!" She took a chocolate cream and began the sleeve. "MedwayAshendyne, with all those millions, isn't doing very much for her. Shecouldn't dress more plainly if she tried. I wonder what he means todo with her eventually. Perhaps he doesn't mean anything--just to letthings drift...."
Hagar knew how to orientate herself very well. She took the surfacecar going in the right direction, and when she had travelled somedistance she left it and took a cross-town car. This brought her tothe block she wished. Out of the jingling car, across a street ofpush-carts and drays and hurrying, dodging people, she stood uponthe broken and littered pavement a moment to look about her. Thehouses were tall and dreary; once good, a house to a family, butnow not so good, and several families to a house. The corners wereoccupied by larger buildings, unadorned and jerry-built and ugly,each with a high-sounding name, each containing "flats";--flatsand flats and flats, each with its ground floor occupied by smallstores--unprosperous greengrocer, unprosperous butcher, poor chemist,prosperous saloon, and what not. It was a grimy, chilly grey afternoonwith more than a hint of the approaching winter. All voices seemed rawand all colours cold. Among the children playing on the pavement and inareaways or on high, broken, entrance steps, there sounded more cryingthan laughing. Dirty papers were blown up and down; there floated anodour of stale beer; an old-clothes man went by, ringing a bell andcrying harshly, "Old clothes! Old clothes! Got any rags?" Hagar stoodwith contracted brows. She shivered a little. "Why, Thomasine shouldnot live in a place like this!" She looked about her. "Who should?" Shehad a vision of Thomasine playing ring-around-a-rosy, Thomasine lookingfor four-leaved clovers.
But when she climbed to the third floor of one of the corner buildings,and, standing in the perpetual twilight of the landing-way, rang thebell of a door from which much of the paint had been scarred, she foundthat Thomasine did not live there.
The door was opened by a gaunt, raw-boned woman. "Thomasine Dale? Didshe live with Marietta Green and Jim?"
"Yes. She is Jim's niece."
"Well, she don't live here now."
"May I see Jim or his wife?"
"They don't live here neither."
The door across the landing opened, and a stout woman in a checkedapron looked out. "Was you looking for the Greens?"
"Yes, please."
"If you'll come in and set a minute, I'll tell you about them. I've gotasthmy, and there's an awful draught comes up those steps."
Hagar sat down in an orange plush rocking-chair and the stout woman,having removed her apron, took the green and purple sofa.
"There now! I meant to mend that carpet!"--and she covered the holewith the sole of her shoe. "I am as fond as I can be of the Greens!Jim's a good man, and if Marietta wa'n't so delicate she'd managebetter. The children are nice youngsters, too.... Well, I'm sorrythey've gone, but Jim hurt his arm down in the Works and Mariettacouldn't seem to get strong again after the last baby, and everybody'scutting wages when they ain't turning men off short, and Jim's turncome, for all he's always been good and sober and a good workman. Firstthe Works hurt his arm, and then it said that he wasn't so useful now;and then it said that it had seen for a long time that it would haveto economize, and the men could choose between cut wages or no wagesat all, and Jim was one of them it said it to. So he had to take thecut." She began to cough and wheeze and then to pant for breath. "Didyou--ever have--the asthmy? I'm--going off--with it--some day. Glassof water? Yes--next room--cup by the sink.... Thank you--child! You'rereal helpful.--What was I saying? Oh, yes--'t was Jim and Marietta andthe children and Thomasine who had to economize."
"Where are they gone?" asked Hagar sorrowfully.
"It isn't so awful far from here. I'll give you the address. The car atthe corner'll take you there pretty quick. But it ain't nowhere nearso nice a neighbourhood or a house as this." She regarded her plushfurniture and Nottingham curtains with pride. "Thomasine's an awfulnice girl."
"Yes," said Hagar. The tears came into her eyes. "I love Thomasine. Ioughtn't to have waited so long before coming to find her, but I neverthought of all this. It never entered my head."
"She's got an awful good place, for a woman--nine dollars a week. Shecould have kept a room here, but she's awful fond of Jim and Mariettaand the children, and she went with them. I reckon she'll help rightsharp this winter--'less'n the stores take to cutting too."
On the street-car, the new address in her hand, Hagar consideredPoverty. It was there in person to illustrate, in an opposite row ofan?mic, anxious faces and forms none too warmly clad; it was there onthe street, going up and down; it was there in the houses that were sogaunt, defaced, and ugly. The very November air, cold and querulous,seemed poor. Her mind was sorting and comparing impressions. She hadknown, when she came to think of it, a good deal of poverty, and anumber of poor people. In the first place, she had been brought upon the tradition of the poverty after the war--but that had beenheroic, exalted poverty, in which all shared, and where they kept theamenities. Then, when that had passed, there were the steadygoing poorpeople in the country--those who had always been poor and apparentlyalways would be so. But it did not seem to hurt so in the country,and certainly it was not so ugly. Often it was not ugly at all. Ofcourse, everybody at home, in a cheerful tone of voice, called theGreens poor people. The Greens were poor,--Car'line and Isham werepoor;--she remembered, with a curious vividness, the poor woman on thecanal boat, the summer her mother died. She had even heard the Colonelsay that he--the Colonel--was poor. Of course, she had seen hosts ofpoor people. And yet until to-day, or rather, to be more precise, untilthe morning of the ferry and the Elevated, she had never generalizedPoverty, never conceived it abstractly. Poverty! What was Poverty? Whywas Poverty? Was it a constant; was it going to last? If so, why? Ifit wasn't going to last, what was going to make things better? It wasdesirable that things should be better--oh, desirable, desirable! Theslave of Beauty and the slave of Righteousness in Hagar's soul rosetogether and looked upon the dump-heap and the shards that were thrownupon it. "It shouldn't be. There is no need and no sense--"
Four or five summers past, visiting with Miss Serena some Coltsworthor Ashendyne house in the country, and exploring, as she always didalmost at once, the bookcases, she had come upon--tucked away inthe extreme shadow of a shadowy shelf--a copy of William Morris's"News From Nowhere." Hagar had long since come to the convictionthat her taste was radically different from that of most Coltsworthsand Ashendynes. Where they tucked away, she drew forth. She had read"News From Nowhere" upon that visit. But she had read it hurriedly,amid distractions, and she was much younger then than now. It hadleft with her chiefly an impression of a certain kind of haunting,other-world beauty. She remembered the boy and the girl in thetobacco-shop, playing merchant, and the cherry trees in the streets,and the cottage of Ellen, and Ellen herself,
and the Harvest Home. Whyit was written or what it was trying to show, she had not felt thenwith any clearness. Now, somehow, the book came back to her. "That waswhat 'News from Nowhere' was trying to show. That people might work,work well and enough, and yet there be for all beauty and comfort andleisure and friendliness.... I'll see if I can find that book and I'llread it again."
The car stopped at the street-corner indicated. When she was out uponthe pavement, and again stood a moment to look about her, she wasfrightened. This was the region of the fire-escapes, zig-zagging downthe faces of the buildings, the ramshackle buildings. It was the regionof the black windows, and the women leaning out, and the wan children.This street was narrower than the other, grimier and more untidy, morecrowded, colder, and the voice of it never died. It rose to a clamour,it sank to a murmur, but it never vanished. Usually it kept a stridentmidway, idle and fretful as the interminable blown litter of thestreet. Hagar drew a pained breath. "Thomasine's got no business livinghere--nor Jim and Marietta and the children either!"
But it seemed, when she mounted a dirty, narrow stair and madeenquiries of a person she met atop,--it seemed that they didn't livethere. "They moved out a week ago. The man was in some damned Worksor other, and it threw him on the scrap-heap with about a thousandmore. Then the place where the girl worked thought scrap-heaps were sopretty that it started one, too. Then he heard a report of work to behad over in New Jersey--as if, if this is the frying-pan, that ain'tthe fire!--and so they left this state. No; they didn't leave anyaddress. Working people's address this year is 'Tramping It. Care ofthe Unemployed.' Sometimes, it's just plain 'Gone Under.'"
The man looked at Hagar, and Hagar looked at the man. She thought thathe had the angriest, gloomiest eyes she had ever seen, and yet theywere not wicked eyes. They blazed out of the dark entryway at her,but for all their coal-like glowing they were what she denominatedfar-away-seeing eyes. They seemed to look through her at something bigand black beyond. "Have you seen the evening paper?" he asked abruptly.
"No, I have not. Why?"
"I wanted to see.... This morning's had an account of three Anarchistbits-of-business. A bomb in Barcelona, a bomb in Milan, and a bomb inParis.--No, I can't tell you anything more about your friends. Yes, I'msorry. It's a hard world. But there's a better time coming."
Grieving and bewildered, she came out upon the pavement. Why hadn'tThomasine--why hadn't Jim let them know? If there wasn't anythingat home for Jim to do,--and she agreed that there wasn't--nor forThomasine, still they could all have stayed there and waited for awhile until Jim's arm and hard times got better. She tried to put themall--there were six--in the overseer's house with Mrs. Green. It wouldbe crowded, but.... The overseer's house was her grandfather's; Mrs.Green had had it, rent free, since William Green's death, and most ofher cornmeal and flour came from the Colonel's hand. Hagar tried to sayto herself that her grandfather would be glad to see Jim and Mariettaand Thomasine and the three children there staying with Mrs. Green aslong as was necessary; that if it were crowded in the overseer's househer grandmother would be glad to have Thomasine and perhaps one of thechildren stay in the big house. It would not work. It came to her too,that perhaps Jim and Marietta and Thomasine might not be so fond ofcoming and sitting down on Mrs. Green and saying, "We've failed." Butcouldn't they work in the country? Jim was a mechanic; he didn't knowanything about farming--and the farmers were having a hard time, too.Hagar's head began to ache. Then the travelling expenses--she tried tocount those up. If they couldn't pay the rent, how could they pay forsix to go down to Virginia--and the children's clothes, and the foodand everything?... Was there no one who could send them money? Mrs.Green couldn't, she knew--and Thomasine's mother and father were verypoor, and Corker wasn't doing well, and Maggie was at home nursingtheir mother whose spine was bad.... Gilead Balm had a kindly feelingfor the Greens, she knew that. William Green had been a good overseer,and he had fought in the regiment the Colonel led. Her grandfather--ifhe knew how bad it was, if he could see these places where they hadbeen living, if he could have heard the woman in the check apron andthe man with the eyes--he might send Jim twenty-five dollars, he mighteven send him fifty dollars, though she doubted if he could do thatmuch. She herself had twenty dollars left of that August two hundred.She had been saving it for Christmas presents for Gilead Balm, butnow she was going to send it to Thomasine--just as soon as she knewwhere to send it. She walked on for a little way in a hopeful glow,and then the bottom dropped out of that, too. It wouldn't go far or domuch. It was too small a cloth to wrap a giant in. Jim and Thomasine'sunemployment--Jim's injured arm, hurt in the Works, Marietta weak andworn, trying to care for a little baby.... Other Mariettas, Jims,Thomasines, thousands and thousands of them.... They were willing andwanting to work. They were not lazy. Jim hadn't injured his own arm.Apparently there had to be babies.... Unemployment, and no one to helpwhen help was needed.... It needed a giant. "All of us together coulddo it--all of us together."
She was cold, even under her warm jacket and with her thick gloves. Thestreet looked horribly cold, but she did not notice many jackets, andno gloves. With all her beauty-loving nature she hated the squalid;nothing so depressed her. She had not seen it before so verily itself;in the country it was apt to have a draping and setting of beauty;even a pigpen might be environed by blossoming fruit trees. Heresqualor environed squalor, ugliness ugliness. On a step before her sata forlorn little girl of eight or nine, taking care of a large babywrapped in a shawl. Hagar stopped and spoke.
"Are you cold?" The child shook her head. "Are you hungry?" She shookit still; then suddenly broke forth volubly in a strange tongue. Shewas telling her something, but what could not be made out. The doorbehind opened, and Elizabeth Eden came forth. She spoke to the childkindly, in her own language, with a caressing touch upon the shoulder.The little girl nodded, gathered up the baby, and went into the house.
"Miss Eden--"
Elizabeth turned. "What--Why, Miss Ashendyne! Did you drop out of thesky? What on earth are you doing in Omega Street?"
"I came down here to find some people whom I know. I am visiting in NewYork. Oh, I _am_ glad to see you!"
"We can't stand here. The Settlement is just two blocks away. Can't youcome with me and have a cup of tea? Where are you staying?"
Hagar told her, adding, "I must be back before dark or they won't letme come out again by myself."
"It isn't quite four. I'll put you on the Elevated in plenty oftime.--What people were you looking for?"
Hagar told her as they walked. Elizabeth listened, knew nothing ofthem, but said gravely that it was a common lot nowadays. "I haveseen many hard winters, but this promises to be one of the worst."She advised writing guardedly to Mrs. Green, until she found out howThomasine and Jim wrote themselves. "They may not be telling her howbad it is, and if she cannot help, it is right that they shouldn't. Ibelieve, too, in being hopeful. If they're sturdy, intelligent people,they'll weather the gale somehow, barring accidents. It's the miserableaccidents--the strained arm, your Marietta's illness after thebaby--things like that that tip the scales against them. Well, cheerup, child! You may hear that they've got work and are happy.--This isthe Settlement."
Three old residences, stranded long years ago when "fashionablesociety" moved away, first street by street and at last mile by mile,formed the Settlement. Made one building by archways cut through,grave and plain, with a dignity of good woodwork and polished brassand fit furniture sparely placed, the house had the poise and forceof a galleon caught and held intact in the arms of some sargasso sea.All around it were wrecks of many natures, strangled, pinned down, anddisintegrating, but it had not disintegrated. One use and custom hadleft it, but another had passed in with a nobler plan.
Hagar Ashendyne went through the place, wondering, saw the workrooms,the classrooms, the assembly-room, the dwelling-rooms, austere, with aquiet goodness and fairness, of the people who dwelled there and madethe heart of the place. "It is not like a convent," she said in a lowvoice; "
at least, I imagine it is not--and yet--"
"Oh, the two ideas have a point of contact!" answered Elizabethcheerfully. "Only, here, the emphasis is laid on action."
She met several people whom she thought she would like to meet again,and at the last minute came in Marie Caton. It was Marie, who, at fiveo'clock, put her on the Elevated that would take her home in twentyminutes. Marie had met the Maines--"I'm Southern, too, you know,"--andshe promised to come to see Hagar, and she said that Hagar and RachelBolt must come, some Sunday afternoon, to the Settlement. "That ischiefly when we see our personal friends."
That night Hagar wrote to her grandmother and to Mrs. Green. In fourdays time she heard from the latter. Yes, Jim and all of them andThomasine had moved to New Jersey. Times were hard, Jim said, andwork was slack, and they thought they could better themselves. Sureenough he had got a right good job. They were living where it wasn'tso crowded as it was in New York, almost in the country, right by abig mill. There was a row of houses, just alike, Thomasine said, andthey were living in one of them. There wasn't any yard, but you couldwalk into the country and see the woods, and Thomasine said the sky waswonderful at night, all red from a furnace. Thomasine hadn't got workyet, but she thought that she would. There was a place where they madesilk into ribbons, and she thought there'd be a place for her there.Marietta was better, and the children were fine. Mrs. Green sent theaddress--and Gilead Balm certainly missed Hagar.
Old Miss wrote an explanatory letter. Hagar knew or ought to knowthat they had little or nothing but the place. The Colonel had beenin debt, but Medway had cleared that off, as it was right that heshould, now that he was able to do it; right and kind. But as forready money--country people never had any ready money, she knew thatperfectly well. Medway was now, Old Miss supposed, a rich man, butno one knew exactly how rich, and at any rate it was his money, andliving abroad as he did was, of course, expensive. He couldn't justlybe expected to do much more than he was doing. "As for your havingmoney to give the Greens, you haven't any, child! Medway has toldyour grandfather that he wants you from now on to have every properadvantage, but that he does not believe in the way young people to-daysquander money, nor does he want you to depart from what you have beentaught at Gilead Balm. He wants you to remain modest in your wants,as every woman should be. The money he has put in your grandfather'shands for you this year is to pay for this winter in New York andfor wherever you go next summer. He never meant it to be diverted tohelping people without any claim upon him that are out of employment.Your grandfather won't hear to any such thing as you propose. He saysyour idea of coming home and using the money you are costing in NewYork is preposterous. The money isn't your money; it's your father'smoney, to be used as he, and not as you, direct.... Of course, it'sa hard year, and of course, there are people suffering. There alwaysare. But Jim's a man and can get work, and Thomasine oughtn't to havegone away from home anyhow. They aren't starving, child."--So Old Miss,and more to the same effect, and then, at the end, a postscript. "Ihad a ten-dollar gold-piece that's been lying by me a long time, andI've taken it to Mary Green and told her to send it to Jim. She seemedsurprised, and from what she says and what his letter says, I don'tthink they are any worse off than most people. You're young, and yourfeelings run away with you."
Hagar wrote a long, loving letter to Thomasine, and sent her the twentydollars. Thomasine returned her effusive, pretty thanks, showed thatshe was glad, and glad enough to have the help, but insisted thatshe should regard it as a loan. She acknowledged that Jim and she,and therefore Marietta and the babies, had been pretty hard up. Butthings were better, she hopefully said. She had a place and Jim had aplace. His arm was about well, and on the whole, they liked New Jersey,"though it isn't as interesting, of course, as New York."