Part 37 (2/2)

Then she called Laura into the kitchen and said, as she pressed out her black satin and tried to hide the threadbare seams that had been showing for years: ”Mrs. Van Dorn, I'm going to do something you won't like.” To Laura's questioning eyes Violet answered: ”I know your ma, or some one else has told you all about me--but,” she shut her mouth tightly and said slowly:

”But no matter what they say--I'm going to the Judge; he's got to make the railroad company pay and pay well. It's all I've got on earth--for the children. We have three dollars in my pocketbook and will have to wait until the fifteenth before I get his last month's wages, and I know they'll dock him up to the very minute of the day--that day! I wouldn't do it for anything else on earth, Mrs. Van Dorn--wild horses couldn't drag me there--but I'm going to the Judge--for the children. He can help.”

So, putting on her bedraggled black picture hat with the red ripped off, Violet Hogan mounted the courthouse steps and went to the office of the Judge. A sorry, broken, haggard figure she cut there in the Judge's office. She would have told him her story--but he interrupted: ”Yes, Violet--I read it in the _Times_. But what can I do--you know I'm not allowed to take a case and, besides, he was working for the railroad, and you know, Violet, he a.s.sumed the risk. What do they offer you?”

”Judge--for G.o.d's sake don't talk that way to me. That's the way you used to talk to those miners' wives--ugh!” she cried. ”I remember it all--that a.s.sumed risk. Only this--he was working ten hours a day on a job that wouldn't let him sleep, and he oughtn't to be working but eight hours, if they hadn't sneaked under the law. They've offered me five hundred, Judge--five hundred--for a man, five hundred for our three children--and me. You can make them do better--oh, I know you can. Oh, please for the sake--oh!”

She looked at him with her battered face, and as her mouth quivered, she tried to hide her broken teeth. He saw she was about to give way to tears. He dreaded a scene. He looked at her impatiently and finally gripping himself after a decision, he said:

”Now, Violet, take a brace. Five hundred is what they always give in these cases.” He smiled suavely at her and she noticed for the first time that his lip was bare and started at the cruel mouth that leered at her.

”But,” he added expansively, ”for old sake's sake--I'm going to do something for you.” He rose and stood over her. ”Now, Violet,” he said, strutting the diagonal of his room, and smiling blandly at her, ”we both know why I shouldn't give you my personal check--nor why you shouldn't have any cash that you cannot account for. But the superintendent of the smelter, who is also the general manager of the railroad, is under some obligations to me, and I'll give you this note to him.” He sat down and wrote:

”For good reasons I desire one hundred dollars added to your check to the widow of Dennis Hogan who presents this, and to have the same charged to my personal account on your books.”

He signed his name with a flourish, and after reading the note handed it to the woman.

She looked at him and her mouth opened, showing her broken, ragged teeth. Then she rose.

”My G.o.d, Tom Van Dorn--haven't you any heart at all! Six hundred dollars with three little children--and my man butchered by a law you made--oh,”

she cried as she shook her head and stood dry-eyed and agonized before him--”I thought you were a man--that you were my friend way down deep in your heart--I thought you were a man.”

She picked up the paper, and at the door turned and said: ”And you could get me thousands from the company for my hundreds by the scratch of your pen--and I thought you were a man.” She opened the door, looked at him beseechingly, and repeating her complaint, turned away and left him.

She heard the click of the door-latch behind her and she knew that the man behind the door in whom she had put her faith was laughing at her.

Had she not seen him laugh a score of times in other years at the misery of other women? Had they not sat behind this door, he and she, and made sport of foolish women who came asking the disagreeable, which he ridiculed as the impossible? Had she not sat with him and laughed at his first wife, when she had gone away after some protest? The thought of his mocking face put hate into her heart and she went home hardened toward all the world. Laura Van Dorn was with the Hogan children, and when Violet entered the house, she gathered them to her heart with a mad pa.s.sion and wept--a woman without hope--a woman spurned and mocked in the only holy place she had in her heart.

Laura saw the widowed mother hysterically fondling the children, madly caressing them, foolishly chattering over them, and when Violet made it clear that she wished to be alone, Laura left. But if she could have heard Violet babbling on during the evening, of the clothes she would buy for the youngsters, about the good times they would have with the money, about the ways they were going to spend the little fortune that was theirs, Laura Van Dorn--thrifty, frugal, shrewd Laura, might have helped the thoughtless woman before it was too late. But even if Laura had interfered, it would have been but for a few months or a few years at most.

The end was inevitable--whether it had been five hundred or six hundred or five thousand or six thousand. For Violet was a prodigal bred and born. At first she tried to get some work. But when she found she had to leave the children alone in the house or in care of a neighbor or on the streets, she gave up her job. For when she came home, she found the foolish frills and starched tucks in which she kept them, dirty and torn, and some way she felt that they were losing social caste by the low estate of their clothes, so she bought them silks and fine linens while her money lasted, and when it was gone in the spring--then they were hungry, and needy; and she could not leave them by day.

If the poor were always wise, and the rich were always foolish, if hards.h.i.+p taught us sense, and indulgence made us giddy, what a fine world it would be. How virtue would be rewarded. How vice would be rebuked. But wisdom does not run with social rank, nor with commercial rating. Some of us who are poor are exceedingly foolish, and some of those who are rich have a world of judgment. And Violet Hogan,--poor and mad with a mother love that was as insane as an animal's when she saw her children hungry and needy, knew before she knew anything else that she must live with them by day. So she went out at night--went out into the streets--not of South Harvey--but over into the streets of Foley, down to Magnus and Plain Valley--out into the dark places. There Violet by night took up the oldest trade in the world, and came home by day a mad, half crazed mothering animal who covers her young in dread and fear.

When Laura knew the truth--knew it surely in spite of Violet's studied deceptions, and her outright falsehoods, the silver in the woman's laugh was m.u.f.fled for a long time. She tried to help the mad mother; but the mother would not admit the truth, would not confess that she needed help. Violet maintained the fiction that she was working in the night s.h.i.+ft at the gla.s.s factory in Magnus, and by day she starched and ironed and pressed and washed for the overdressed children and as she said, ”tried to keep them somebody.” Moreover, she would not let them play with the dirty children of the neighborhood, but such is the fear of social taint among women, that soon the other mothers called their children home when the Hogan children appeared.

When Violet discovered that her trade was branding her children--she moved to Magnus and became part of the drab tide of life that flows by us daily with its heartbreak unheeded, its sorrows unknown, its anguish pent up and uncomforted.

Now much meditation on the fate of Violet Hogan and upon the luck of Margaret Van Dorn had made George Brotherton question the moral government of the universe and, being disturbed in his mind, he naturally was moved to language. So one raw spring day when no one was in the Amen Corner but Mr. Fenn, in a moment of inadvertent sobriety, Mr. Brotherton opened up his heart and spoke thus:

”Say, Henry--what's a yogi?” Mr. Fenn refused to commit himself. Mr.

Brotherton continued: ”The Ex was in here the other day and she says that she thinks she's going to become a yogi. I asked her to spell it, and I told her I'd be for her against all comers. Then she explained that a yogi was some kind of an adept who could transcend s.p.a.ce and time, and--well say, I said 'sure,' and she went on to ask me if I was certain we were not thinking matter instead of realizing it, and I says:

”'I bite; what's the sell?'

”And the Ex says--'Now, seriously, Mr. Brotherton, something tells me that you have in your mind, if you would only search it out, vague intimations, left-over impressions of the day you were an ox afield.'

”And, well say, Henry, I says, 'No, madam, it is an a.s.s that rises in me betimes.'

”And the Ex says, 'George Brotherton, you just never can talk sense.'

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