Carmen Ariza Part 169

It's an inside room."

"And you pay rent--to Mr. Ames--the man whose machines killed your husband and took off your arm--you still pay rent to him, for one little room?"

"Yes, Miss. He owns these tenements. Why, his company gave me almost a hundred dollars, you know! I was lucky, for when Lizzie Sidel's man lost his hand in the cog wheels he went to law to sue the company, and three years afterward the case was thrown out of court and he had to pay the costs himself. But he was a picker-boss, and got nine dollars a week."

A little hand stole up along Carmen's arm. She looked down into the wondering face of the child. "I--I just wanted to see, _Signorina_, if you were real."

"I have been wondering that myself, dear," replied the girl, as her thought dwelt upon what she had been hearing.

"I must go now, Miss," said the widow Marcus, rising. "I promised to drop in and look after Katie Hoolan's children this afternoon. She's up at the mills."

"Then I will go with you," Carmen announced. "But I will come back here," she added, as some little hands seized hers. "If not to-day, then soon--perhaps to-morrow."

She crossed the cold hall with Mrs. Marcus, and entered the doorway which led to the little inner room where dwelt the widow. There were a dozen such rooms in the building, the latter informed her. This one in particular had been shunned for many years, for it had a bad reputation as a breeder of tuberculosis. But the rent was low, and so the widow had taken it after her man was killed. It contained a broken stove, a dirty bed, and a couple of unsteady chairs. The odor was fetid. The walls were damp, and the paper which had once covered them was molding and rotting off.

"It won't stay on," the widow explained, as she saw the girl looking at it. "The walls are wet all the time. Comes up from the cellar. The creek overflows and runs into the bas.e.m.e.nt. They call this the 'death-room.'"

Death! Carmen shuddered when she looked about this fearful human habitation. Yet, "The only death to be feared," said Paracelsus, "is unconsciousness of G.o.d." Was this impoverished woman, then, any less truly alive than the rich owner of the mills which had robbed her of the means of existence? And can a civilization be alive to the Christ when it breeds these antipodal types?

"And yet, who permits them?" Haynerd had once exclaimed. "Ames's methods are the epitome of h.e.l.l! But he is ours, and the worthy offspring of our ghastly, inhuman social system. We alone are to blame that he debauches courts, that he blinds executives, and that he buys legislatures! We let him make the laws, and fatten upon the prey he takes within their limits. Aye, he is the crafty, vicious, gold-imbruted manifestation of a whole nation's greed!" Nay, more, he is the externalization of a people's ignorance of G.o.d.

Carmen's throat filled as she watched the old woman bustling about the wretched room and making a feeble attempt at order.

"You see," the widow went on, happy in the possession of an auditor, "there is no use making apologies for the looks of my room; I couldn't make it look much better if I tried. There's no running water. We have to get water from the hydrant down back of the house. It is pumped there from the creek, and it's a long climb up these stairs when you've got only one arm to hold the bucket. And I have to bring my coal up, too. The coal dealer charges extra for bringing it up so far."

Carmen sat down on an empty box and watched her. The woman's lot seemed to have touched the depths of human wretchedness, and yet there burned within her soul a something that the oppression of human avarice could not extinguish.

"It's the children, Miss, that I think about," she continued. "It's not so bad as when I was a little one and worked in the cloth mills in England. I was only six when I went into the mills there. I worked from seven in the morning until after six at night. And the air was so bad and we got so tired that we children used to fall asleep, and the boss used to carry a stick to whip us to keep us awake. My parents died when I was only eight. They worked in the Hollow-ware works, and died of lead poisoning. People only last four or five years at that work."

Carmen rose. "How many children are employed in these mills here?" she asked.

"I can't say, Miss. But hundreds of them."

"I want to see them," said the girl, and there was a hitch in her voice as she spoke.

"You can go down and watch them come out about six this evening. It's a sight to a stranger. But now I must hurry to look after the Hoolan babes."

When she again reached the street Carmen turned and looked up at the hideous structure from which she had emerged; then she drew a long breath. The foul air of the "death-room" seemed to fill her lungs as with leaden weights. The dim light that lay over the wretched hovel hung like a veil before her eyes.

"Katie lives a block down the street," said the widow, pointing in the direction. "She was burned out last winter. These tenements don't have fire-escapes, and the one she lived in burned to the ground in an hour. She lived on the second floor, and got out. But--six were burned to death."

It seemed to Carmen as she listened to the woman that the carnal mind's chamber of horrors was externalized there in the little town of Avon, existing with the dull consent of a people too ignorant, too imbruted, too mesmerized by the false values of life to rise and destroy it.

All that cold winter afternoon the girl went from door to door. There was no thought of fear when she met dull welcomes, scowls, and menacing glances. In humble homes and wretched hovels; to Magyar, Pole, Italian alike; to French Canadian, Irish and Portuguese; and to the angry, the defiant, the sodden, the crushed, she unfolded her simple banner of love, the boundless love that discriminates not, the love that sees not things, but the thoughts and intents of the heart that lie behind them. And dark looks faded, and tears came; withered hearts opened, and lifeless souls stirred anew. She knew their languages; and that knowledge unlocked their mental portals to her.

She knew their thoughts, and the blight under which they molded; and that knowledge fell like the sun's bright rays upon them. She knew G.o.d, their G.o.d and hers; and that knowledge began, even on that dull, gray afternoon, to cut into the chains of human rapacity which enslaved them.

At six that evening she stood at the tall iron gate of the mill yard.

Little Tony was at her side, clutching her hand. A single electric lamp across the street threw a flickering, yellow light upon the snow.

The great, roaring mills were ablaze with thousands of glittering eyes. Suddenly their monster sirens shrieked, a blood-curdling yell.

Then their huge mouths opened, and a human flood belched forth.

Carmen gazed with riveted sight. They were not the image and likeness of G.o.d, these creatures, despite the doctrinal plat.i.tudes of the Reverend Darius Borwell and the placid Doctor Jurges. They were not alive, these stooping, shuffling things, despite the fact that the religiously contented Patterson Moore would argue that G.o.d had breathed the spirit of life into the thing of dust which He created.

And these children, drifting past in a great, surging throng! Fathers and mothers of a generation to come! Carmen knew that many of them, despite their worn looks, were scarcely more than ten years old. These were the flesh and blood upon which Ames, the jungle-beast, waxed gross! Upon their thin life-currents floated the magnificent _Cossack_!

She turned away in silence. Yes, she was right, evil can _not_ be really known. There is no principle by which to explain the hideous things of the human mind. And then she wondered what the Reverend Darius Borwell did to earn that comfortable salary of ten thousand a year in his rich New York church.

"It's quite a sight, ain't it, Miss?" said a voice close by.

Carmen turned and confronted a priest. He was a man of medium height, young, and of Irish descent.

"It's a great sight," he continued, with a touch of brogue in his tones. "Hey, f.a.gin!" he cried, catching a pa.s.sing workman's arm.

"Where's Ross?"

"He ain't worked to-day, Father," replied the man, stopping and touching his cap.

The young priest uttered an exclamation of displeasure. Then, as the workman started away:

"You'll be at the Hall to-night, f.a.gin? And bring everybody you can."

The man addressed nodded and gave an affirmative grunt, then pa.s.sed on into the darkness.

"It's trying to reach a few of 'em I am," remarked the priest. "But it's slow work. When a man's stomach's empty he hasn't much respect for morality. And I can't feed the lot of 'em!"

Carmen gazed into the kindly blue eyes of the priest and wondered.

"How are you reaching them?" she asked. "I am very much interested."

The priest returned the girl's searching look. "In settlement work?"

he queried.

"No--but I am interested in my fellow-beings."

"Ah, then you'll understand. I've some rooms, some on Main street, which I call the Hall, and some down in the--well, the bad district, which I call the Mission. They're reading rooms, places for men to meet, and get acquainted, and rest, and talk. The Hall's for the fellows who work, like this f.a.gin. The Mission's for the down-and-outs."

"But--are your rooms only for--for men of your faith?"

"Nary a bit!" exclaimed the priest with a little laugh. "Race or religion don't figure. It's to give help to every man that needs it."

"And you are giving your life to help these people?" the girl went on.

"I want to see your Hall and Mission. Take me to them," she abruptly demanded.

The priest gave a start of surprise. He looked down at little Tony, and then up at Carmen again.

"Come," she said. "We will leave the boy at his door, and then go to your Mission and Hall. Now tell me, you are a Roman Catholic priest?"

"Yes," he said mechanically, following her as she started away.

"How did you happen to get into this sort of work?" she pursued.

"Oh, I've been at it these ten years!" he returned, now recovered from his surprise, and pleased to talk about his work. "I'd had some experience in New York in the Bowery district. I came to the conclusion that there were mighty few down-and-outs who couldn't be set upon their pins again, given half a chance by any one sufficiently interested. There's the point. You see, Miss, I believe in my fellow-men. The results have justified my labors. Oh, it's only temporary, I know. It ain't going to change the whole social system.