Mary Ware's Promised Land Part 14

"June 22.

"I didn't intend to write so soon again, but your letter has just come with all those kodak pictures of your bachelor quarters, and the big dam, and the different views of your mountain background. I am so glad to have them, especially the ones that have _you_ in them, and most especially that one of you in the camp chair with the hat on the back of your head.

You look exactly as if you were about to speak, and I have stood that one on my table, and am looking at it now as I write. I am glad you sent it, for really I am becoming so engrossed with my new work, that I need some reminder of my past life to keep me from forgetting what manner of person I used to be. I have had such an absorbing week.

"To begin with, I found that Mrs. Blythe, who is comparatively a young woman, although she has two sons away at school, is one of the old Warwick Hall girls. She wears the alumni pin, with Edryn's crest on it and the motto 'I keep tryste.' And she adores Madam Chartley and everything connected with the school. After I discovered that I knew everything would be all right no matter what she set me to doing.

"She had a dressmaker there fitting a gown for her, when I was ushered into her room, and there wasn't a thing in it to suggest her need of a secretary except a frivolous looking little desk in one corner. She talked to me about Warwick Hall all the time she was being fitted until a neighbor dropped in to ask her to pour tea for her at an informal reception next day. I 'sized her up,' as the boys say, as a pretty little woman fond of dainty clothes and good times, one who would always s.h.i.+ne at a social function and be popular because she is such a winsome, sweet little thing, but not much more than that.

"When the dressmaker left, Mrs. Blythe crossed over to the desk and opened it, and it was so chuck full of papers and letters and business-like looking legal doc.u.ments, that they began to pour out all over the floor.

"She said in a laughing way that that was the reason she needed another pair of hands, and then turned and gave me a searching look with those dark eyes of her, as if she were taking _my_ measure, and said:

"'I hope that Madam Chartley was not mistaken and that you will prove equal to the task, for it is a big undertaking I've called you to help me with--_The awakening of a State!_'

"I was as astonished as if a fluffy little kitten had opened its mouth, and instead of gently mewing, had roared out, 'Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!' Luckily she was so busy sorting the papers and stuffing them back into pigeon-holes that she didn't see my face, or she couldn't have gone on in such a matter of course way to explain what she wanted me to do. She said I must become so thoroughly familiar with the situation that I could answer most of the letters that come to her, without her dictation, and in order to do that she'd have to take me over the ground that she had been over, and let me see for myself just what had aroused her to undertake the work she was engaged in. That just as soon as she could give the cook her daily orders we'd start right out.

"While she put on her hat and little face veil, she explained that she had become interested in the first place while taking flowers to a crippled child in the tenement district. Seeing how absorbed she seemed in getting her hat and veil on 'just so,' I couldn't help thinking that she must have taken up her charities as so many society women do, who are impulsive and kind-hearted, just as a fad to help occupy their leisure hours. But it wasn't long before I found how mistaken I was in my judgment of her.

"We took a street-car, and on the way she explained that she was going to show me what might be seen in almost any town of its size in the United States, and in many of its villages. We stopped on a shady street corner and pa.s.sed a row of houses on a respectable looking street. She told me that she had grown up in Riverville and had walked up and down that street nearly every day of her life, and that she never knew till last year that those respectable fronts of houses opened on to interiors and into back yards that were a disgrace to any civilization. The other property owners on that block were perfectly horrified when she published a description of it, with photographs of the worst spots. It stirred up a great deal of talk and indignation, but n.o.body did anything to make it better, and soon the interest died out and people forgot.

"I wish you could have seen her face when she told me that and when she said, '_But I made up my mind that I would change conditions if I had to fight a lifetime and fight single-handed, and I'll fight to the death!_'

"When I saw the determination in her face, not only did I wonder how I could have been so mistaken in my first estimate of her, but I felt a queer responsive thrill at her enthusiasm, that made me sure she can succeed in anything she attempts.

"Well, I've read of slums and have always taken it as a matter of course that it was one of the evils to be expected in a large city, but I never thought to see with my own eyes what I saw that day, in an ordinary town like Riverville. Maybe living so long as I have done on the clean, fresh desert and in the pure air of the hills, made it seem worse to me, but anybody would have been horrified at what she showed me. When I exclaimed over the filth and foul odors, as we picked our way over the ash-piles and garbage and slimy pools in one back yard, and said that people might at least keep themselves clean, even if they were poor, she turned on me, her eyes fairly blazing.

"'That's what everybody says!' she exclaimed.

'That's why I brought you here, to prove to you that these tenants are not to blame. Look! This house was originally built for two families, but _ten_ families are crowded into it now, with only one cistern to provide water for the whole lot. And every drop of it has to be carried to the different stories in buckets. No wonder they have to be "sparin' of water," as little Elsie Whayne complained, when I found her crying over her line full of yellow-gray, half-clean clothes. She had come from the country, where she had had an unlimited supply, and couldn't get used to h.o.a.rding every drop.

The landlord won't provide city water, and there is no law to make him do it.'

"As she spoke the nasty, greasy contents of a dishpan came splas.h.i.+ng over the railing of the porch above us, into the court where we were standing, and we barely escaped being drenched with it. A few drops did reach me, and when I expressed my disgust most forcibly, Mrs. Blythe said apologetically, 'Don't blame the poor woman. She has no other place to throw it. The landlord won't provide drains and there is no law to make him do it. And up-stairs, I am going to show you three rooms _without windows_, where people live and eat and sleep by lamplight, without a ray of suns.h.i.+ne or a breath of fresh air. All that they get of either air or light must filter through other stale, overcrowded rooms. And if you wonder, as I did, why the landlords do not cut windows in these dark rooms, and mend the leaky roofs and the dangerous stairways, you'll find the answer is the same. There is no law to make them do it. The houses bring good rents as they stand, and the public is not awake to the fact that these places in their midst are responsible for the greater part of infection and disease that menace the whole town. That is the cause I am giving myself to, and the cause that I want to make yours also. We must wake up the State. We must make them pa.s.s a law that will wipe out these plague spots already existing and prevent the growth of any more. A law that will allow no renter to make money off a house that is not decent to shelter human beings.'

"That is a sample of the places she showed me, places where the plaster was off the walls in great patches, and the paper hung in greasy tatters, and where we encountered so many nauseating sights and smells that by the time we were back at her house I didn't have any appet.i.te for lunch. She told me that it affected her that way too, at first, and it got so that a procession of white-faced, wailing babies began to appear to her in the dead of night and cry for her to help them; to give them a chance to breathe in the stifling midnight, a chance to claim their birthright of clean water and air and sun. And she added, 'When you get to seeing things at night you're ready for work.'

"Already she has written hundreds of letters on the subject, to individuals and to clubs who have influence, and I am to help her with hundreds more. We are to send one to each member of the Legislature. I think it is great fun to be mixed up with 'affairs of State,' and I shall feel so grand having a hand in writing to senators and representatives. I'm going with her to some of the near-by towns to take photographs of the worst places. We're to have a collection representing every town and city in the State, and mount them on large posters for the public to see. That part of the work will be intensely interesting. I don't mind pounding away at the typewriter from daylight till dark, but I must confess to you what I'll not tell any one at home. The other part of the work, the contact with the suffering and misery and dirt that we see daily simply makes me sick.

"I asked _Orphant Annie_ how he supposed a dainty little woman like Mrs. Blythe stands it, and he said she had answered that question herself in a poem that she had written by request for the Riverville _Herald_. I was so surprised to know that she is a poet too, that he said he'd look up the verses for me. He did, and brought me a copy of them when he came that night at dinner. He doesn't seem as pop-eyed now that I know him better, and he says some very bright things occasionally. This is the poem. I am sending it so that you'll see how mistaken I was at first in a.s.suming that Mrs.

Blythe was just a kind-hearted little social b.u.t.terfly, who had taken up housing betterment as a fad. Some of the divine fire that inspired the great reformers of all the ages must burn in her soul, or she couldn't have written this poem that she calls _The Torch_.

"'Make me to be a torch for feet that grope Down Truth's dim trail; to bear for wistful eyes Comfort of light; to bid great beacons blaze, And kindle altar fires of sacrifice!

"'Let me set souls aflame with quenchless zeal For great endeavors, causes true and high.

So would I live to quicken and inspire, So would I, thus consumed, burn out and die.'

"Mr. Berry says that is just what Mrs. Blythe is, a torch to set others aflame. He has heard her talk to clubs and societies about her work, and he says that she is so convincing that before the summer is over she'll have me blazing like a house afire, the biggest beacon in the bunch. But I don't think much of _Orphant Annie_ as a prophet. It is just one of his ways of always saying the gobelins'll git you. I know they'll never get me to the extent of making me 'speak in meetin'.' Now you know just what it is I have gone into, and can picture the daily life quite accurately of Yours as ever, Mary Ware, late of Lone-Rock, now Reformer of Riverville."

CHAPTER III

THE SUPREME CALL

That was the last letter which Phil received from Mary for many weeks, although he wrote regularly to the address she gave of the boarding-house on the sycamore-shaded street. Several times she sent a postal with a scribbled line of acknowledgment, but the days were too full for personal affairs, and at night she was too tired to attend to her own correspondence, after pounding on the typewriter so many hours.

She had attacked her new duties with all the zeal and force that had characterized her "snake-killings" on the desert. Habit alone made her do that, and pride added another motive. She was determined to justify Madam Chartley's opinion of her. Not being able to write shorthand she worked overtime to gain extra speed on the typewriter, so that she might take dictation directly on the machine. Now, all the neatness and system which had made her housekeeping so perfect in its way, made her a painstaking and methodical little business woman. Her neatly typed pages were a joy to Mrs. Blythe. Her system of filing and indexing brought order out of confusion in the topsy-turvy desk, and she soon had the various reports which they referred to daily, labelled and arranged in the different pigeon-holes as conveniently as the spice boxes and cereal jars had been in the kitchen cabinet at home.

It was not long before Mrs. Blythe began handing letters over to her as Jack had done, saying briefly, tell them this or thus, and leaving her to frame the answer in the best style she could. This spurred her on to still greater effort, and she made up her mind to become so familiar with every branch of the subject that she could give an intelligent answer to any question that might be asked. Once she wrote home to Jack:

"I am beginning to see now some of the things that my Desert of Waiting in Lone-Rock taught me. I couldn't fill this position half so satisfactorily if I hadn't had the training that you gave me in your office in all sorts of business forms and details. I am especially thankful for the letters you made me answer in my own words. Mrs. Blythe turns over two-thirds of her mail to me now to be answered in that way.

She has had many invitations lately from clubs in neighboring towns, asking her to go and explain what it is she wants them to do, and she feels that she can't afford to miss a single opportunity of the kind.

Every time she gives a talk she gets more people interested in the cause, and they in turn interest other people, and that sends the ball rolling still farther. Really, it is getting to be as exciting as a game of 'Prisoners' Base,' seeing how many we can get on 'our side,' and when she is out of town and I am left to 'guard base,' I surely feel as if I am 'It,' and had the whole responsibility on my shoulders."

It must be confessed that it was Mary's pride in doing her work well which made her a competent helper, more than any personal interest which she took in Mrs. Blythe's plans. After the first round of visits to the tenements she kept away from them as much as possible. The first month's salary was accorded a silent jubilee in her room. Most of it had to go for board and some few things she needed, but she started a savings account and locked away her bank-book with the feeling that she was laying the corner-stone of her home in the Happy Valley. True, there wasn't the same joy in planning for it that there had been when she looked forward to her mother sharing it with her, but it was with a sense of deep satisfaction that she opened her account and carried home the little book with its first entry.

On one of the occasions when Mrs. Blythe was away from home for several days, an indignant letter came from some one in a town where she had spoken the previous week, demanding to know why she was making such a fight to have a law pa.s.sed which would work hards.h.i.+p to worthy landlords who were good citizens and prominent in all public charities. It named a man in Riverville as a sample of the kind of citizen she was trying to injure, and demanded so threateningly her reasons for doing so, that Mary was troubled by its covert threats. Mrs. Blythe would not be back till the end of the week, Mr. Blythe was in New York, and there was no one in Riverville whom she knew well enough to discuss the situation with. After worrying over it all one day and night, quite unexpectedly she found out what she wanted to know from Sandford Berry.

He came out on the side porch where she was sitting after an early lunch, and paused to light a cigar. Something prompted her to refer casually to the man who had been spoken of in the letter as a model citizen, and to ask if the reporter knew him.

"Oh, yes, he's a charitable old cuss," was Mr. Berry's elegant answer.

"His name leads all the subscription lists a-going; but I'll give you a tip on the side, if you're after him to get a bit of local color for any of your doc.u.ments. Just make some excuse to visit some lodging houses he owns on the corner of Myrtle and Tenth Streets. Diamond Row they call it, because they say he gets the worth of his wife's gorgeous diamonds out of it in rents every year, and she has the most notable ones in town. It's the worst ever! I don't think Mrs. Blythe has discovered it yet. I didn't get into it myself until the other day, when I had to go to report an accident, but we newspaper men unearth all the sights that are to be seen, eventually."

"Would it be all right for me to go--I mean safe?" asked Mary hesitatingly.

"Sure!" was the cheerful answer. "It's safe as far as the people you'll meet are concerned. I can't say as much for the germs."

"But I haven't a shadow of excuse for going," faltered Mary. "I couldn't walk into a hovel out of sheer curiosity without some reason for intruding, any more than I could into a rich person's home. I haven't any more right to do the one than the other."

"That's what they all say," answered Sandford Berry. "But there is a difference. You'll find that those tenants are glad of a chance to tell their troubles to some one. Oh, of course, they'd spot you if you went poking in for no reason _but_ curiosity, but anybody with tact and a desire to get at the real inwardness of things for the purpose of bettering them would find a welcome. _Those_ people know the difference."

He puffed away in silence a moment, considering a way to help her as he had often helped Mrs. Blythe, and taking it for granted that Mary was just as eager for his suggestions as the other one had been.

"You might tell them you are looking for an old woman from the country who knits some sort of lace for sale. There used to be one there. At least, I've seen an old woman who used to be always knitting, sitting at a corner window. I don't know whether she sold it or not, or whether she was from the country. But it will do for an opening wedge, and with her to start on you can easily get into conversation with any of them."

Then, as Mary still hesitated, he added, "If you really want to investigate and feel anyways backward about it, I'll walk down that far with you and show you where it is. It happens to be on my beat."

Mary really had no wish to go. She shrank from contact with something which the experienced Mr. Berry p.r.o.nounced "the worst ever." But he was waiting so confidently for her to put on her hat and accompany him, that there seemed nothing else for her to do.

"Get an eye on those bas.e.m.e.nt rooms," he advised her as he left her at the corner of Myrtle and Tenth Streets, and pointed out the steps leading to the underground rooms in Diamond Row. With the helpless feeling of one who cannot swim, yet is left to plunge alone into icy water, Mary stood at the top of the steps until she was afraid her hesitation would attract attention. Then plucking up her courage, she forced herself to walk down and knock at the open door.

What she saw in her first quick glance was a girl no older than herself, lying on a dirty bare mattress, a woman bending over a wash-tub, and a baby crawling around the floor. What she saw in her second horrified glance was that a green mould stood out on the walls, that both plaster and lath were broken away in places, so that one could peer through into an adjoining cellar. Evidently the cellar had water standing in it, from the foul, dank odor which came in through the holes. And the water must have seeped through into this room at times, for some of the planks in the floor nearest the wall were rotting.

The woman looked up listlessly without taking her arms from the tub, as Mary made her faltering inquiry for the old lady who made lace, and answered in some foreign tongue. Then she bent again to her rubbing, in stolid indifference to the stranger who had made a sudden descent on her home. Mary was too inexperienced to know that one cause of her indifference was that she was too underfed and overworked and mentally stunted by her hideous surroundings to care who came and went around her.

Mary turned to the girl on the musty mattress. It wasn't actual starvation which drew the skin so tightly over her cheek-bones and gave the pinched look to her face, for there was food still left on the cluttered table, where flies buzzed over the unwashed dishes in sickening swarms. It was the disease which had claimed a victim, sometimes several, from every family in turn who occupied the room, because it had never been properly disinfected. Not even the sunlight could get in to do its share towards making it fit for a human dwelling, for the only windows of this half-underground room were narrow transoms near the ceiling, and the only air reached it through the door at the bottom of the steps.

The girl was evidently asleep, and, after one more glance, Mary turned with a shudder and hurried back up the steps. She hesitated to make a second attempt but nerved herself to it by the thought of the questions Sandford Berry was sure to ask of her. On the first floor she knocked at several doors, and although she found no clue to the old lace knitter, she soon found a welcome from a voluble old Irish woman, who hospitably invited her in. Her eyes were that bad, she explained, that she couldn't see to do much. Her family worked in the factory all day, and she was glad of some one to talk to.

The door into the hall stood open, and presently another woman strayed in, scenting entertainment of some kind, and then a much younger woman followed, a slatternly creature with a sickly looking baby in her arms.