Part 18

She had received no leisure to see her friends of the tenement or the settlement during the days of her service, and she could not bring herself to seek them now that the black bird had again perched upon her forlorn banner. For half an hour she wandered aimlessly through the quieter streets; for another half-hour she endeavored to gather her courage. It was three o'clock in the afternoon before, desperate, she had inquired of a policeman for the whereabouts of an employment-agency, had found the grimy place, passed through the gloomy room with lines of toil-worn slatterns seated along its walls, and stated, in hesitant accents, her mission to the fat and frowzy woman in charge at a littered desk in the room beyond.

That woman--she had a steady, calculating eye--looked at her victim with a curious appraisement.

"What experience?" she asked.

"Very little," admitted Violet.

"Well are you----" The woman's voice dropped to the tone of discretion.--"Are you particular?"

"Why no," said Violet sadly, "I ain't particular, so as it's quiet."

The mistress smiled sagely.

"We can fix that all right," said she.

But she said it so knowingly that Violet found herself hurriedly adding:

"An' so long as it's decent."

That it was well she had supplemented her preceding speech, she at once perceived by the change that came over the woman's face.

"Oh!" said the woman in a tone at once uninterested. "Well, have you any reference?"

"No. You see----"

"Never mind why. If we get you a job, some of the girls have plenty, an' we can lend you one of theirs. Go out an' sit down an' we'll see what happens."

Violet returned to the dark front room and took a shrinking seat in a corner among the other applicants: two lines of pasty-faced, ungainly, and not over-cleanly women.

She picked up a tattered paper, dated the preceding day, and tried to read it. She saw that the primary election had been held and that Wesley Dyker had secured one of the nominations for magistrate; but she was tired and disgusted and pursued the print no farther, listening, instead, to the babble of gossip that was going on about her.

Had she ever heard that New York was remarkable for having a model employment-agency law, she would there have learned how lightly that law is enforced and how much the employment-agencies of Manhattan resemble those of every other large city. The foul beds in which these women slept three at a time, and for the use of which the agencies frequently charged a dollar and a half a night; the exorbitant two and three dollars exacted as a fee for every position secured; the encouragement given servants to make frequent changes and increase their fees; and the hard plight of maids dismissed from service, whose only friends, being servants themselves, had no shelter to offer--all these things were the ordinary part and parcel of their talk.

The women chattered of their old employers and bandied household secrets from loose lip to lip. Family skeletons were hauled forth for merrymaking, and testimony enough to crowd a divorce-court was given against not a few respectable citizens.

All complained of ill-housing and loneliness. Bad enough at any time, the advance of the race of flat-dwellers and the decrease of householders had intensified all the evils that domestic servants have to endure. The best servants' rooms in the ordinary houses were, it appeared, unheated; the worst were windowless closets in a kitchen or alcoves in a cellar. None of these workers had been given a room in which they could fittingly receive their friends, and, as many of them were forbidden to have callers in the kitchen, they lived what social life was possible on afternoons or evenings "off," on the streets, in the parks, or aboard those floating bar-rooms that are called excursion-boats. Violet remembered Fritzie; she remembered the heavy percentage of servants that, according to Hermann, ended in slavery--and she began to understand.

At five o'clock there entered the room a pleasant-faced, stout woman, uncommonly homely, who was obviously a prospective employer. She looked about her in embarrassment, and seemed uncertain where to go.

Violet, beside whom the stranger was standing, rose.

"Are you lookin' for the office?" she asked. "I'll show you the way."

The woman seemed to like her thoughtfulness and seemed, after a quick glance, to like her appearance even more.

"I am not particular about the office," said the newcomer; "what I want is a servant. Come outside a minute and talk to me."

Violet followed her into the street, wondering.

As they reached the pavement, the woman smiled: her smile was so pleasant that she almost ceased to be homely.

"I am a practical person," she said, "and as I also loathe and detest these agencies, I always, if possible, engage a girl so that she won't have to pay them their commissions.--Can you do general housework?"

"Yes."

"You don't look very strong."

The girl's heart throbbed. Mrs. Turner had said that dismissal was the result not of what had been done but of the thing's concealment.

"That's only because I was ill awhile ago," began Violet. "I had been in trouble----"

"But you're quite well now?" the woman interrupted.

"Quite," answered Violet.

She did not know how now to proceed; but the stranger, still smiling, soon gave her a chance.

"Any reference?"

"No, ma'am, I haven't no reference."

"How does that come?"

"I was fired from my last place." She took a breath, then a greater one, and concluded: "I was fired because the woman I worked for found out that I had been in trouble."

The stranger promptly ceased to smile.

"What sort of trouble?" she inquired.

Violet saw that she had made a fatal error, but she did not know how to end it except by proceeding.

"You know," she stammered, "there was a man----"

The stranger raised a plump, gloved hand.

"Don't tell me that," she said. "I have no right to the details. I think I understand your motive, and it's creditable, I must say. But, my dear, I am by no means a beautiful woman and I have a very susceptible husband--very. I'm afraid I must be going along."

And along she went, leaving Violet in a tossing sea of emotion. Mrs. Turner had lied, which meant the girl must lie; this later employer had said that the woman who had been enticed was generally supposed anxious to entice others, a theory that also meant that Violet must lie. She returned to the agency, convinced that her error had lain only in a lack of skill at deception.

No other customers appeared during the rest of the afternoon, and when the agency closed its doors for the night Violet, too alarmed by the stories she had heard to trust herself to one of its beds, sought the nearest policeman--she was losing her fear of policemen at last--and had him direct her to a cheap but respectable hotel. She had a little money and she paid gladly for a room that was nearly comfortable; but she could not sleep, and she returned to the employment-office early in the morning with red eyes and swollen cheeks.

Until long after noon she sat there, waiting. She watched everyone that entered; she looked at first eagerly and at last appealingly at every possible employer; but somehow the woman in the inner room never sent for her.

At last Violet herself walked through the rear door.

The frowzy person with the calculating eyes looked at her sharply.

"You back?" she asked.

"I haven't left," said Violet.

"Why, I heard you tried to steal a customer yesterday afternoon."

"That wasn't no customer; it was a friend of mine."

"Oh! Well, what do you want now?"

"A job."

"I know that. What else?"

"I want to give you this: I have six dollars, an' I'll give you five down if you can get me a decent job in a decent house this afternoon, an' then I'll give you two dollars a week out of my first three weeks' pay."

The frowzy person screwed her lips in a downward curve that was probably intended for a smile.

"I've had that percentage game handed out to me about a thousand times before," she remarked, "an' I believe in such money when I get it. Still, I don't mind seein' that five."

Violet produced it, and saw it swiftly vanish down a black cotton stocking.

"All right. Tell you what I'll do. Here's a woman down on Washington Square wants a maid to wait on table. Can you do it?"

"I can try; but of course I've never done it before."

"I'll rent you a couple of references in the name of Bella Nimick--that'll cost you two dollars more, an' I guess I'll have to trust you for it--an' the cook down there--she deals with us--she'll give you some pointers on the job. You'll find it a good place. They're old swells, an' the name's Chamberlin."

Violet lost no time in seeking this new address. She found it to be a large brick house, with white marble steps, facing the leafy square from the north, and looking across the broad green lawn toward a church that towered into the blue skies by day and by night reached up toward Heaven with a fiery cross. The cook, to whom, through the areaway, she made her application, proved to be an ample Swedish woman, with a heart fashioned in true proportion to her body, and a round, placid face that spoke well for her mistress.

That mistress, Violet was without delay informed, was an invalid, whose ills, if mostly fanciful, were at least fancied with a force sufficient to keep her in town and in the house all summer long. Her husband--she had remarried after a divorce--passed the warm months visiting more wealthy friends along the rocky Maine coast, and her son ran in to see her between such invitations to Newport and Narragansett as he could secure. A daughter by the second union, a girl of sixteen, remained to care for her mother, and this child and a professional nurse, whose long service made her almost a member of the family, completed the household.

Violet was presented to Mrs. Chamberlin, a frail woman with a white, delicate face, lying on a couch in a darkened library, and, her references being casually read, was promptly engaged. She was to receive eighteen dollars a month for far lighter work than had been her portion under the sway of Mrs. Turner, and, as Bella Nimick, began at once to see that a better time was before her.

Objections there of course were, but these were not of a sort that either Violet's previous experience or present necessity permitted her to observe. Brought up in wealth, Mrs. Chamberlin's ideals had not been improved by that decline of fortune consequent upon her marriage. Neither in a practical nor in an executive sense had she received any training, and, though she would have told you that household management was woman's true sphere, she actually knew as little of it as she did of the wholesale drug trade. It had never occurred to her that cooking was even distantly related to chemistry and dietetics; scrubbing, dusting, and sweeping to hygiene, or domestic administration to bookkeeping. By the same token, the two servants had to share a dark, narrow room in the basement, had no sitting-room save the kitchen and, so far as social life went, would have been, had they depended upon the Chamberlin house, twin Selkirks on a Juan Fernandez.

But Violet was happy. Her health, if it did not improve, at least did not noticeably decline. The work, if it was hard, was at least possible of accomplishment. And within a week she had made herself so valuable to both her mistress and her mistress's nurse that these potentates found continuous need of her.

Then the first blow fell.

She had just put away the last of the dishes from an early dinner and was passing the barred front window of the basement when, from the sunset across the square, a shadow descended to the floor within. She looked up, startled. In the areaway a dapper, dark, flashily dressed young man was standing, and the young man was Angel.

Violet darted away from the window, but Angel, reaching through the bars, calmly raised the sash, which, even in the warmest weather, was drawn against the noise and dust of the street. His dark face was flushed, and though his wet, red lips were smiling, they smiled evilly.

"No treecks," he commanded. "You come to me. I wanta talk."

Violet did not answer. She huddled into the farthest corner.

"Stan' out!" continued Angel, his lips still curved. "You theenka me so dumb? I am sharpa 'nough for see you. You come here, or I go ope stairs an' reenga da bell."

Slowly, like the bird advancing to the swaying serpent, she obeyed him.

"Now," he said, when they were face to face, "you alone?"

She thanked Heaven that they were. The cook was in the kitchen.

"Poot on you' hat an' come alonga with me."

"I won't!" said Violet.

"You do eet!"

"I can't. The missus won't let me. It ain't my night off."

"Eef you don't, I go ope stairs an' tell all abouta you."

"I don't care. I won't go!"

"Queeck!"

"No."

"Then da woman she fire you, an' I get you when you come out alone."

Violet knew that he meant it.

"Where do you want to take me?" she asked. "I won't let you never take me back to Rose's."

"No fear," laughed Angel, shaking his oily curls. "Meess Rosie she would not stan' to have you near."

"Then what do you want?"

"I want you come to District Attorney's, da place you go witha that fine gentleman Dyker. You won'ta be hurt. You can peeck out any cop on da way to go along, an' you weell knowa da place."

"Does he want me--that lawyer I talked to there before?"

"I been to see him an' tell him we come."

"Then what am I to do when I get there?"

"Taka back all you say for thata Dyke'. Da's all: no more--only so mooch. I won't bother you no more; thata lawyer won't bother you no more; Dyker won't bother you no more. You do that, or losa da job. Wheech?"

Violet put her hand before her eyes. She knew as well as a wiser woman what had happened. Angel had traced her to Katie's, to the hospital, to the settlement, to the employment-agency--he was doubtless familiar with such places--to this house. Rose's latest captive had been turned out on the streets before the raid and lost to sight. The entire white-slavery charge now rested on Violet's testimony, and Angel's purpose was to have her withdraw the affidavit she had made. In her present condition, she could not, she thought, be of any further use to him; that purpose served, he would be only too glad to let her again hide herself, and, hidden here, with Dyker elected and engaged by newer cares, she might escape both friends and foes. Terror drove out all desire for revenge upon Rose Légère; it drove out even the power to keep her promise to Dyker. All that she wanted was her job.

"All right," she said. "Wait till I go upstairs and get permission."

"No treecks," cautioned Angel. "Eef you try treecks, I go upstair' myself."

She promised, and left him, presenting to Mrs. Chamberlin in the library, a moment later, a face that bore out her story of the illness of a friend.

"Well," said the invalid, "if you go out I shall be certain to need you; but I suppose there is no help for it. Don't be gone more than an hour."

Violet joined Angel in the area, and went with him, but, though she was disposed toward silence, she was surprised to find the Italian in a pleasant, even a genial, mood.

In his moment of success, he was well-nigh magnanimous. He bore not a trace of malice, seeming to regard the whole matter as a game in which all the moves on both sides had been in accord with the rules. He chattered a variety of gossip about everything and every person save those who were most intimately concerned in his present action, and only as they neared the office, where a light showed that the young assistant had remained in accordance with the word that Angel had previously brought him, did he touch upon the matter in hand.

"No treecks, now," he cautioned. "All you gotta do ees tella heem you were Rosie's frien' an' she hit you, so you gotta drunk an' wanted to maka trouble."

"Won't he be cross?" asked Violet, her agitation returning anew.

"Naw," Angel reassured her. "He's used to sucha t'ings. Don' forgot, an' I give you five doll'."

They entered the office that Violet just recalled as having visited with Dyker in her fever-dream. At a desk, covered with neatly arranged piles of papers sat the young assistant, who, having then seen her red with illness, and now seeing her still white from its recovery, might well suppose that their first meeting was the result of drunken malice.

"Here she ees," smiled Angel, "like I promise. She ees a gooda girl now, an' sorry she tell you da deeferent story an' maka trouble."

Angelelli had told Violet the truth: the young man was indeed used to such things--so used to them that he knew protest was fruitless and that his inquiry must be formal.

"You want to withdraw your deposition?" he asked. He was a kindly young man with a thin face.

"Do I what?" asked Violet.

"He means----" began Angel.

"I mean," interrupted the lawyer, "do you want to take back the story you told me about Rose Légère? This case is on the calendar for to-morrow, so if you mean to take back what you said, you had better do it now."

"It won't get me into no trouble?"

The young man raised his eyebrows.

"What would be the use?" he inquired. "No, it won't get you into any trouble."

"Then I'll take it back," said Violet.

"You'll have to be sworn, you know."

"She don' minda that," said Angel. "Do you, Violet?"

The girl shook her head, and a clerk was called and administered an oath so rapidly that Violet could understand no word of it.

"You're doing this of your own free will--just because you want to?" resumed the lawyer, donning his professional air, and seeming to become infected with the clerk's rapidity of utterance. "You are not swayed by any promise of pecuniary reward--that is because you're paid for it? And there has been no force or threat used to compel you to do it--I mean you haven't been told you'd be hurt if you backed down?"

Violet bowed in token of a desire to answer these questions in whatever way was necessary to her bargain, and the new deposition proceeded in the same manner and along the lines that Angel had laid down. The clerk hurried because he wanted to get home; the lawyer hurried because he thoroughly disbelieved every word that was written; and, severe as Violet had feared that the ordeal would be, it was over far sooner than she had expected.

Angel, still loyal to his word, saw her safely home.

"Now," he said, as he left her at the areaway, "nobody weell ever any more bother you. Good-night."

He raised his hat and went away, but, as he turned, he pressed into her cold hand a crisp, new bill.

Violet's fingers closed about it silently. She had earned it.

XIX

"FIAT JUSTITIA RUAT CAELUM"

The trial of Rose Légère was precisely the farce that Violet had expected and that Angel had planned. In ninety of such cases out of every hundred, the chief witnesses for the state are suppressed by fear or force, and the prosecution collapses. Thus, in the present instance, had not the newspapers made first-page announcements of the Légère woman's arrest and so attracted to the case the momentary attention of an effervescing moral public, the District Attorney's office would, in fact, have contented itself with submitting the indictment and asking for a verdict of not guilty.

With Violet in the hospital during the session of the Grand Jury, Wesley, now a man of power, had been able to refresh Larry Riley's memory to such a point that, in the hands of the prosecutor, the policeman's evidence was sufficient to insure the finding of a true bill; but when the case was called for trial the situation was vastly changed. The girl that had followed Violet into the net had been cast back into the sea of the city and utterly swallowed up. Violet herself had recanted. The elder inmates of the Légère establishment regarded the law as their natural enemy and, had they been disposed to assist it, could in no wise have been regarded as credible witnesses. The action had, therefore, to rest entirely upon Riley's testimony, and for Riley's testimony there was virtually no corroboration procurable.

"You're a good thing--I don't think," remarked the weary-faced young Assistant District Attorney as, on the morning of the trial, he met Dyker in the corridor of the court. "We shoved this case about five years ahead on the calendar to please you, and the night before it's called your witness comes to my office and eats her deposition."

Wesley had already heard that piece of news. When, in order to keep an eye upon Violet, he had, some time previously, sought her at Katie's tenement, and had received a series of uncredited vows to the effect that the Irish girl had no idea of the whereabouts of her late charge, he had begun to look for a recantation. It was the sort of game that he had himself frequently played, and he blamed his own lack of foresight in not better providing against it. Then other interests had arisen. The campaign came on apace; there were newer enemies than Rose to be dealt with, and, when the wires leading from the District Attorney's office had informed him that the expected had occurred, he received the word with calm philosophy.

"Well," he carelessly laughed in reply to the young assistant's sally, "that's always the way: we elect you people into your jobs and then you think that we ought to get up your cases for you and hold your witnesses."

He went on his way, unconcerned. Scarcely less concerned, the young assistant, knowing that his cause was lost, proceeded into court with a solemn air calculated to convince an outraged public morality of his high intent; challenged juror after juror with a frowning brow; outlined his case with biting logic; examined Riley, as the officer on the beat, together with the other policemen that had made the arrest, in an heroic style eminently pleasing to the reporters; finally worked himself into a profuse perspiration of Ciceronian invective against the prisoner and, mopping his weary face, sat down.