The Shadow Part 21

When she took the flat on East Eighth Street, he made shelves for her at the two south windows and brought to her kitchen a wealth of potted plants. The delicate flowers died, for the Irish woman was very forgetful of them; and then, with sorrow at his heart for his cherished slips, but with no word of blame, he filled up the ranks with hardy geraniums that neglect could not kill. Attracted at the outset by the gay window shelves, Hertha soon a.s.sumed all care of the flowers, much to their profit; and on the Sunday after her night's outing with Kathleen, when she had secured an invitation for him to come to dinner, looked with some pride at the objects of her care.

"I'm glad I remembered to move this new fern last night when it was so cold," she said to Kathleen as she worked among the window plants. "Mr.

Applebaum will see that I didn't forget what he told me. And, oh, Kathleen, let me set the table, I like to."

"And you know how," Kathleen added, and left her task. "There's many an uptown mistress, Hertha, would say that it was wrong for you to be manufacturing s.h.i.+rtwaists, when she needs you to wait on her table. I can just hear her telling you, 'Leave the factory, my child, and come to me where you will have easy work, (only fourteen hours a day) and a good home. (Her son will likely make love to you and you'll be sent from the house in disgrace.) Leave your coa.r.s.e companions and learn the ways of a lady, (only you have them already)."

"Oh, stop, Kathleen. Let me finish with the dinner, and you put on that fresh waist I ironed for you. It's on your bed."

Kathleen went into her room to her perspiring work,--it made her hot to get into even the simplest dress,--and while struggling to hook her skirt over on the left side, she heard her lover's knock and Hertha's cordial greeting.

"More flowers, Mr. Applebaum? A begonia? We used to have those at home."

Then the voices fell away into the distance as the speakers went into the front room.

"If this dinner is good, Billy," Kathleen said, when they were all three seated together about the kitchen table, spread with their best linen and china, "it's all Hertha's doings."

Hertha smiled but shook her head.

"Miss Hertha did her part, Kitty, I know," the guest made answer, "but the mashed potatoes are yours."

"And lumps in them at that! I've not much patience with potatoes or the world; but if you're liking them, take some more."

They all took part in clearing off the course of meat and vegetables, and then Hertha served a dessert of her own making, a fluffy-looking pudding of orange and custard and meringue.

"And did you think I cooked this?" said Kathleen. "Come now and own up that in cooking the South beats the Irish."

"The Germans are good cooks," said Hertha. "Perhaps Mr. Applebaum will cook the dinner for us some day."

"A man cook the dinner?" the Irishwoman said in astonishment; and with a touch of resentment, "That's a woman's work."

"Don't men cook here?" Hertha asked. Then, turning to the man present, "Don't men cook in Germany?"

"Miss Hertha," Mr. Applebaum made answer, "I don't know any more about that than you do. I've never been to Germany and my mother was an American who asked me only to make the fire and bring in the wood."

"You can take it from me," said Kathleen, "that the women do the cooking and the housework. Did you ever have a man cook for you?"

"Yes," Hertha answered, "my brother."

"Just like a n.i.g.g.e.r," commented Kathleen.

There was an awkward silence broken by the Irishwoman's muttered, "I beg your pardon."

Hertha looked straight at the begonia in the center of the table. How could she have said anything so stupid! Hertha Ogilvie had no brother.

Now she would have to begin making up a story, lying about things. She ought to appear very angry. Imagine a white girl hearing her brother called a n.i.g.g.e.r and not resenting it; but again, imagine Hertha Williams sitting by the fire and warming herself and denying her brother Tom.

"I don't know why American men should not cook," William Applebaum at length broke in with his deep, pleasant voice. "The greatest chefs in the world are men. I wish, Miss Hertha, you would let me turn cook like your brother and show me how to make this pudding."

The meal finished, they left the dishes to be washed later and went into the front room where William Applebaum admired the picture which Hertha had framed.

"Yes," Kathleen said, "Hertha is spoiling me with her pretty rooms and her good things to eat. I've not been to my Socialist local for a month now. It's so comfortable here the nights I can be home."

"We went out last Thursday, Kathleen."

"You're right, we did. And you should have been with us, Billy. Such a talk as we heard of the poverty in the South."

"Perhaps Mr. Applebaum would have preferred the movie," Hertha said mischievously.

She was quite herself again, and curled up on the cot, her back against the wall, was prepared to watch the two in their talk, for she knew well enough that she would soon be forgotten. Kathleen had given the armchair to her guest and sat erect in her straight seat. Her soft white s.h.i.+rtwaist set off her fresh cheeks, her gray eyes, her large but sensitive mouth. But she had no thought of her appearance, she was prepared to be serious.

Her guest stretched in comfort in the big chair, his handsome head thrown back, his lighted pipe in his hand as he blew the smoke from between his lips. He would have been greatly pleased if Kathleen had chosen to tell of the moving pictures, but he saw at once that this was not her mood.

"I wish I had been with you at both places," he said courteously, with a little touch of formality that the Irish girl ridiculed and the southern girl liked. "It must have been like going to the theater and seeing both a comedy and a tragedy, only in that case they usually put the comedy last."

"That may be what they do at the theater but it isn't what they do in life."

Kathleen was ready to talk. She sat in her chair and told the story of southern peonage and wrong.

Hertha, who had failed to listen at Cooper Union, was moved in spite of herself at the tragic tale as it came from Kathleen's lips. It was the same in all essentials, but vivified by a rare imagination and a compelling sympathy. The Irishwoman became herself the thin, yellow, starved mother dragging her steps from her unlovely home into the hot, relentless fields.

"Have you ever seen anything like that?" William Applebaum asked of Hertha when the story came to an end.

Hertha hesitated as she answered. "No, I don't think I have. I lived much of the time in the city. I haven't known about such things." She thought of Ellen as she spoke, and was sure, had she been there, she could have talked intelligently about peonage and poverty among white and black. She remembered that Ellen used to say the Negro never fell as low as the lowest white. "Those are the folks," she added, "that we call poor white trash."

Her friend flared up at her. "Yes, and why are they trash? Because you treat them worse than slaves! You hold them in debt, steal from them with every piece of bacon or cup of meal they buy from your store, work their children when they should be at school or playing out under the blue skies; and then you live in idleness and sneer at the trash that done the work of the world for you."

"Miss Hertha doesn't sneer, and neither do I, Kitty, but I think you're talking of an exceptional case. At any rate, as I have seen things in the North and West, I've found that it was the fault of the man if he didn't live decently in the world, and keep his woman that way, too. Why didn't this woman's husband pay off his debt and go to another farm?"

"For the same reason likely that his children won't. Because he was starved and worked until all the life was squeezed out of him."

"Well, it's not that way in the North."

"Isn't it? Haven't I seen the tenement child sewing on the b.u.t.tons to pants, and coughing fit to send her in a few years to heaven--for if those babies that have no chance in this world don't have one in the next, there's no G.o.d."

"And I've seen things, too, Kitty. I've known a good many families that were down and out, and it's always been one person of the lot who's been to blame. If every one did his share, kept sober, worked hard and saved money, he would get out of the tenement. When the family doesn't do better, when it keeps staying in the dirt, it's because there's a father perhaps who only works three days in the week and gets drunk the other three, or there's a son who can't find the right job, a round peg in a square hole. There's somebody who doesn't do right and keeps the family back."

"And do you mean to say that rich folk aren't like that?" Kathleen was growing very angry. "And yet I'm noticing they're not starved for it."

"If they're rich it's because they're industrious. My grandfather used to tell me that America was the land of opportunity, and that it rested with the individual whether or not he made a success."

"Oh!" Kathleen rose. She looked as though she could personally a.s.sault the little man. He in the meantime had resumed his pipe and was talking in a pleasant, matter-of-fact tone.

"Of course, I'm not denying, Kitty, that there are wrong things that ought to be remedied. That case in the South, now. It's very hard. Of course, the children should have schooling, and if the Blair Bill for federal aid to education hadn't been killed, they would be having it to-day. My grandfather used to say that this put back the South fifty years. But given an education, it's a fair field and no favor for the growing boy in the United States."

"I don't know how far back your Mr. Blair and his education may be, but he can't be as far back as you are, Billy, with your fair field. Fair indeed, with two per cent of the people controlling the wealth of the country!"

"Those figures are exaggerated."

"Indeed, they are! It should be one per cent and it will be that soon."