Part 8 (1/2)
The other members of the household were a fox terrier, a canary and ”Wood”--Wood was a man over sixty. He and Mrs. Wood had the same devoted understanding that I have observed so often among the poor couples of the older generation. This good little woman occupied herself with the things that no longer satisfy. She took tender care of her husband, following him to the door with one hand on his shoulder and calling after him as he went on his way: ”Good-by; take care of yourself.” She had a few pets, her children were married and gone, she had a miniature patch of garden, a trust in the church guild--which took some time and attention for charitable works, and she did her own cooking and housework. ”And,” she explained to me in the course of our conversation at supper, ”I never felt the need of joining these University Settlement Clubs to get into society.” Wood and his wife were a good sort. Miss Ida was kind in her inquiries about my plans.
”Have you ever operated a power machine?” she asked.
”Yes,” I responded--with what pride she little dreamed. ”I've run an electric Singer.”
”I guess I can get you a job, then, all right, at my place. It's piece-work; you get off at five, but you can make good money.”
I thanked her, not adding that my Chicago career was to be a checkered one, and that I was determined to see how many things I could do that I had never done before.
But social life was beginning to wear on Miss Ida's intended. He took up his hat and swung along toward the door. I was struggling to extract with my fork the bones of a hard, fried fish. Mrs. Wood encouraged me in a motherly tone:
”Oh, my, don't be so formal; take your knife.”
”Say,” called a voice from the door, ”say, come on, Ida, I'm waiting for you.” And the blonde fiancee hurried away with an embarra.s.sed laugh to join her lover. She was refined and delicate, her ears were small, her hands white and slender, she spoke correctly with a nasal voice, and her teeth (as is not often the case among this cla.s.s, whose lownesses seem suddenly revealed when they open their mouths) were sound and clean.
The man's smooth face was all commonness and vulgarity.
”He's had appendicitis,” Mrs. Wood explained when we were alone. ”He's been out of work a long time. As soon as he goes to his job his side bursts out again where they operated on him. He ain't a bit strong.”
”When are they going to be married?” I asked.
”Oh, dear me, they don't think of that yet; they're in no hurry.”
”Will Miss Ida work after she's married?”
”No, indeed.”
Did they not have their share of ideal then, these two young labourers who could wait indefinitely, fed by hope, in their sordid, miserable surroundings?
I returned to my tenement room; its one window opened over a narrow alley flanked on its opposite side by a second tenement, through whose shutters I could look and see repeated layers of squalid lodgings. The thermometer had climbed up into the eighties. The wail of a newly born baby came from the room under mine. The heat was stifling. Outdoors in the false, flickering day of the arc lights the crowd swarmed, on the curb, on the sidewalk, on the house steps. The breath of the black, sweet night reached them, fetid, heavy with the odour of death as it blew across the stockyards. Shouts, calls, cries, moans, the sounds of old age and of infancy, of despair and of joy, mingled and became the anonymous murmur of a hot, human mult.i.tude.
The following morning I put ten cents in my pocket and started out to get a job before this sum should be used up. How huge the city seemed when I thought of the small s.p.a.ce I could cover on foot, looking for work! I walked toward the river, as the commercial activity expressed itself in that direction by fifteen-and twenty-story buildings and streams of velvet smoke. Blocks and blocks of tenements, with the same dirty people wallowing around them, answered my searching eyes in blank response. There was an occasional dingy sign offering board and lodging.
After I had made several futile inquiries at imposing offices on the river front I felt that it was a hopeless quest. I should never get work unknown, unskilled, already tired and discouraged. My collar was wilted in the fierce heat; my shabby felt sailor hat was no protection against the sun's rays; my hands were gloveless; and as I pa.s.sed the plate gla.s.s windows I could see the despondent droop of my skirt, the stray locks of hair that blew about free of comb or veil. A sign out: ”Manglers wanted!” attracted my attention in the window of a large steam laundry.
I was not a ”mangler,” but I went in and asked to see the boss. ”Ever done any mangling?” was his first question.
”No,” I answered, ”but I am sure I could learn.” I put so much ardour into my response that the boss at once took an interest.
”We might give you a place as shaker; you could start in and work up.”
”What do you pay?”
”Four dollars a week until you learn. Then you would work up to five, five and a half.”
Better than nothing, was all I could think, but I can't live on four a week.
”How often do you pay?”
”Every Tuesday night.”
This meant no money for ten days.