Part 8

She did leave it there all day long. Katie, whose one dress was now, in spite of endless feminine make-shifts, beginning to show wear, had to go through her task with the baited hook constantly dangling before her. Nevertheless, when the long-delayed closing hour arrived, the suit was just where Mrs. Binks had left it. Katie carefully abstained from touching it; she would not even put it away.

"What's this?" asked the mildly surprised owner, as she stumbled over the garment. "I declare it's that handsome walking-suit I wanted you to have, Miss Flanagan."

Katie turned and regarded the neglected garment precisely as Mrs. Binks was regarding it.

"Well, well," she said, "and is it, now?"

Her mistress looked at her, again blinking suspiciously.

"Did you try it on?" she demanded.

"No."

"Why not?"

"I don't think I want it."

"It's a fine suit."

"It's grand."

"But you don't want it?"

"I don't think I do."

"I told you that you could have it for a third off."

"I know you did that, Mrs. Binks, and it's thank you I do for your kindness."

"Hum--hum. I'll take off a dollar more--for you."

"Thank you, no, Mrs. Binks. Good-night, Mrs. Binks."

This sort of thing went on, with variations, for three days, at the end of which time Mrs. Binks, as she would have phrased the occurrence, "came right out with it"; and for this ceremony she chose that morning hour when the other girls in the shop had the greatest amount of leisure to observe what happened.

"Miss Flanagan," said she, marching up to the thoroughly prepared Katie, and peering hard into the serene Irish eyes of her selected victim, "I like my clerks to look well."

"So I've been noticin'," said Katie.

"An' I don't like to speak about it when they don't," continued Mrs. Binks.

"You're just that tender-hearted!"

"But if you girls don't wear good clothes, my customers'll think I don't treat you right."

"How could they now, Mrs. Binks?"

"And," concluded Mrs. Binks, overlooking these interruptions in view of the crushing climax she was approaching, "as you've made up your mind not to take the hints I've been givin' you, or the fine offers I've made you, I've got to say it plainly that you're looking too shabby to work any more for me."

Katie smiled her warmest smile.

"Mrs. Binks," she replied, resorting again to prevarication, and presenting the greedily seized money that she still owed her employer, "I'd begun to be afraid that maybe them was your feelin's, an' so yesterd'y at lunch time I bought me the exact duplicate of that walking-suit you've been tryin' to thrust upon me--only I got it next door an' for half your price."

Saying this she had walked to the shallow closet in the fitting-room, taken down her hat and coat, put them on, sung "Good-by" to her consternated fellow-workers, and strolled away forever from that place of employment. She went smiling, but, instead of the curt word that she generally employed, she administered a hand-slap with her open palm to a stranger that accosted her on her journey homeward.

She got work, after some searching, in a candy shop on Eighth Street, but this she had to relinquish when her mother's speedy illness developed into a brief and fatal disease. It was not until the last nursing, relieved by Hermann's assistance, and the funeral were over, that she could again think of labor, and then it was only to get, in a Fourth Street necktie factory, a small position that she lost because she had the effrontery to resent the rather frank overtures of the foreman.

Now, although she had told her cheerful lover nothing about it, she had come to the last ditch. She had been deceived by advertisements, cheated by employment agencies, denied work by the superintendents of scores of shops and manufactories. She was not a skilled laborer, and she had, at first, nothing in the matter of recommendation; she belonged to no trade union; the rent for her little room was dangerously overdue; so, also, were the bills of the baker and the milk dealer upon whom alone she was depending for food; all that she could pledge was in pawn, and, with the soles of her shoes worn through almost to her feet, the elaborate mourning costume that she had been unable to resist was her only badge of material prosperity.

Two avenues of escape were open, were even persistently presented, yet she would regard neither. To take what Hermann pleaded with her to accept, though her hungry heart and her underfed body cried out for it, would have been, she felt well assured, unfairly to handicap her best friend, and, as for turning into that other way--a way into which the streets on every hand seemed so easily to open, she was too wise to consider.

"No thanks," she answered in her soul, as she walked by the leering satyrs, with her black head erect and her lips compressed--"not yet, if you please: not yet, nor never, I think, for starvin' seems some easier and a deal quicker, too."

She had to repeat the words pretty often, for they had come to be a sort of incantation, almost a pious ejaculation, against the enemy, and, as her poverty grew and her chances decreased in inverse ratio, the enemy, like vultures flocking to the fatally wounded, seemed startlingly to increase in force. At first it was a well-dressed corps strayed from Broadway or the Avenue; then it was the bank-clerk hurrying to work and the master mechanic hurrying from it; but finally, so plain are the signs of distress shown upon our faces by the selves that are besieged, it had become the professionally employing, professedly unemployed.

Yet at every dawn she renewed her quest, with a glass of blue milk and a bite of bread for breakfast. Every day and all day she tramped the long, aching streets. And every night, despairing but resolute, she came home for her supper of bread and milk and for the sleep of the hungry and distressed.

It was now a Thursday morning. The milkman had pounded at her door and, receiving no answer, had left no milk. Still gnawing her crust, Katie slunk out of the tenement, and, at the step, was waylaid by the rent-collector, a little man with a sharp, white face that told plainly of his own struggle. He blocked the exit.

"Good-day to you, Miss Flanagan," he said, touching his dirty cap.

"Good-mornin', Mr. Woods," she answered, aware that the hour for the last engagement was approaching.

The man was one whose business forced him to mince nothing.

"I was comin' up to git yer rent," he continued. "It's three weeks overdue."

"I'm afraid I'll have to be askin' you to let it run a bit longer," said Katie, and her voice, in spite of all resolution, trembled.

"But I've been an' done that twice fer you, Miss Flanagan. The boss is after me as hard as I'm after you--an' harder."

"I know it. I--you can't stand him off another week, Mr. Woods?"

"Nix on the stand-off, miss."

"You see, I'm--I'm out of a job."

"I know that, but then you've been out o' one fer a good while now."

"Yes, only I rather expect--indeed, I've been promised one beginnin' to-morrow."

The little man coughed behind a dirty hand.

"That's Friday?" he asked.

"It is that."

"Well, ain't you got your dates mixed? You told me last week you had a job promised for that Friday."

Katie surprised even herself: she laughed.

"So I did!" she said. "An' of course I was lyin' an' of course you knowed it. Oh, well, Woods, man, hold 'em off for forty-eight hours, an' if I don't get work then, I'll--well, I won't bother you no more."

In the shadowy hallway, she felt his eyes studying her less with evil than with wonder.

"There ain't many girls with your looks, Miss Flanagan, as'd be out of a job as long as you've been."

Katie shrugged her shoulders: she was beyond resentment.

"The more pity to 'em," she said.

"Not many," repeated Mr. Woods.

There was an awkward silence. The collector paused because he wanted her fully to weigh an implication that he honestly considered to contain sound advice, and Katie refrained from further comment for the excellent reason that she had nothing to say. It was Woods that at last took up the broken thread.

"I'll tell you what I'll do, Miss Flanagan," he not unkindly concluded; "I'll hold 'em off till to-morrow evenin', an' if by then you can pay me a chunk on account, it'll be all right; if you can't----"

He stood aside, and Katie clapped him warmly on the shoulder.

"You're doin' your best, Woods," she said, "an' I thank you for it. I'll get the job someways, but not the way you think, an'--an' I thank you."

Only half-way to the corner she met the girl that lived across the hall from her, Carrie Berkowicz, a homely, round-cheeked, brown-haired Lithuanian Jewess, who worked in a shirtwaist factory on Tenth Street.

"Say, Katie"--Carrie prided herself on her colloquial English, as she learned it in the night-classes in the Rand School--"were you still looking for a job?"

Katie nodded.

"Well, say, I just this minute passed Emma Schrem, an' she says Cora Costigan is quitting her job at the Lennox store to-day to be married to-morrow. Why don't you pull up there and try for it?"

Try for it? Katie could scarcely stop to thank her rescuer before she had turned northward. There was no longer left her even the five cents necessary for carfare, and, though she was faint with hunger and shaking with fear lest her tardiness should lose her this slim opportunity, she was forced to walk. Facing a fine rain blown in from the Sound, she walked up Second Avenue, and finally, turning westward to the shopping quarter now crowded with salesgirls on their hurried way to work, she entered, by the dark employés' door, the large department-store of Joshua N. Lennox, merchant and philanthropist.

A dozen quick inquiries rushed her, wet and weary, but flushed by her walk and radiant with the excitement of the race, into the presence of the frock-coated, pale-faced, suave-mouthed Mr. Porter, the tall, thin man, with the precision of a surgeon and the gravity of a Sunday-school superintendent, to whose attention, it appeared, such pleas as hers must be brought. Mr. Porter, who had gray side-whiskers, which he stroked with white hands, listened in judicial calm to what she had to say.

"Just fill out this application-blank," he remarked as, breathless, Katie ended her little speech.

They were in a dim, bare office under the street, the man at a roll-top desk lighted by a green-shaded incandescent lamp, the girl standing beside him. Mr. Porter indicated a writing-shelf along the opposite wall, where Katie found a pile of the blanks, and pen and ink. While she struggled with the task assigned her, Mr. Porter verified, by brief, sharp inquiries through a telephone, her statement of the approaching marriage of Miss Cora Costigan.

Katie, meanwhile, was giving her age, her parentage, her birthplace, the name of the firm that had last employed her--she mentioned the candy-shop for that,--was cheerfully agreeing to join the "Employés' Mutual Benefit Association," and was putting a "Yes," which she intended promptly to forget, to the question that asked her to become a spy on her co-workers: "If you saw a fellow-employé doing anything detrimental to the interests of the firm, would you consider it your duty to report the same?" It was only at one of the last questions that she hesitated.

"Please what does that mean?" she asked.

Mr. Porter deigned to walk across the room and, close to her shoulder, examined the question. It was the simple one: "Do you live with your parents?"

"That," said Mr. Porter, "is inserted because the firm wishes to have only nice girls here, and those with good home influences are considered--most trustworthy."

Mr. Porter had the type of emotionless eyes that can say one sort of thing far better than the eyes of more temperamental people, and he now met Katie's steady gaze with a stare of considerable significance.

Katie was rather sure that she understood.

"So that," she said, "if I didn't live with my people, I couldn't have the job?"

"So that," Mr. Porter corrected, "if a girl does get a position and lives with her family, she will be better cared for, and we will know that she is safe at home evenings."

Katie hesitated no longer. She took the pen and, opposite the query, wrote a quick "Yes." To be sure she was, on that account, obliged to invent the kind of work done by her father and the amount of the family wage; but she so needed the position that her active wit at once supplied the answers. More or less truthfully, she put a word in reply to the remaining questions, signed her name, and wrote her address.

Mr. Porter took the paper in his white fingers, read it slowly, folded it, indorsed it with several hieroglyphics, and placed it in a pigeon-hole.

"I am filing this with our other applications," he said. "As soon as your name is reached, I will see that you are notified."

Katie's jaw dropped.

"But I thought," she began, "I thought I was to get the job now. I--isn't Cora leavin', thin, after all?"

"Miss Costigan is leaving us, I understand," said Mr. Porter, stroking his whiskers; "but there are others--nearly a hundred--on the list ahead of you."

Katie was hungry, and hunger finds it hard to think of justice. She had borne all that she could bear. The waiting, the walking, the hope and the hopelessness had gnawed the string of her courage. Something snapped inside of her, and she began to sob with Irish unrestraint.

Mr. Porter was embarrassed. He frequently had to deal harshly with other employés of his philanthropic employer--it was, in fact, upon the performance of such duties that his living almost depended--but he did not like to have tears shed in his office: it did not look well for the reputation of the establishment.

"My dear Miss--Miss Flanagan," said he, first consulting the application-blank for the forgotten name, and putting one of his white hands toward the face now hidden in a crumpled handkerchief.

"You mustn't--really, you must not!"

"But everything depends on me gettin' this job!" sobbed Katie in an Irish wail. "The rent's due; me family's all sick; the milkman won't leave no more milk, an' I've eaten nothin' for Heaven knows how long!"

In a rush of words her story, including that of her resurrected father, leaped from her. What effect it would have had upon Mr. Porter had it been calmly told is beyond guessing; but it was told by no means calmly, and Katie's voice rose to a pitch that forced him to surrender out of mere fear of a prolonged scene. Grudgingly, but unconditionally, he laid down his arms. He took the telephone and called again Miss Isaacs, the buyer of the women's hosiery department, which Miss Costigan was to leave on the following day, told as much of Katie's story as he thought necessary, and obtained consent to a trial of the girl. He informed Katie that she might take, on the next morning, the place to be vacated by Miss Costigan, but he took care to impress upon her mind the fact that he was doing her an exceptional favor, which she was not to mention to her friends, who might try to profit by her unusual experience.

Katie was on the point of calling all the saints to bless him when she bethought her of a practical inquiry theretofore, in her eagerness to secure any sort of work, neglected.

"An' what's the pay?" she inquired.

"You will receive," replied Mr. Porter in the tones in which his employer announced the gift of a small fortune to a large college, "four dollars and fifty cents a week."

Katie forgot the saints.

"Four--" she began. "But, Mr. Porter," she concluded, "will you be tellin' me how I'm to be livin' on all that?"

Mr. Porter's calm eyes came again into significant play.

"You have said in your application, you may recall," he dryly remarked, as he reached for that document, "you have said that you lived with your father."

For a moment her glance probed his.

"But for all that," she said, "I have to support meself entirely."

Mr. Porter was still looking at her with his emotionless, appraising gaze. He saw a girl with pretty, piquant features, with glossy black hair, with cheeks that bloomed even in privation and blue eyes that were beautiful even in tears.

"Miss Flanagan," said he, "most of the girls that start at these wages in department-stores are partly supported by their family or have some friend to help them out."

Katie flushed, but she kept her outward calm.

"An' what if they haven't got a friend?" she inquired.

Porter's cold eye never wavered.

"They find one," he said; "and I may add, Miss Flanagan, that you should experience no difficulty in that direction."

Poverty will do much for most of us. For Katie it succeeded in curbing a temper that, in better times, was never docile. Beggars, she reflected, cannot afford to look too closely into the source or significance of the alms they have asked. She swallowed her wrath.

"Will you advance one week's salary now?" she asked.

Mr. Porter was distinctly surprised.

"I--why, certainly I won't!" he stammered.

"Why not?"

"But, my dear Miss Flanagan, I have nothing to do with the payment of the salaries. Besides, this firm doesn't know you; it does not even know that you will come to-morrow; it does not know that, if you do come, you will remain."

Katie smiled insidiously, and Katie smiling through her tear-curled lashes was insidious indeed.

"Och, now, Mr. Porter," she protested. "That's all well enough for the green girls; but you an' I know that you're the boss in matters of this sort. Lend me two an' a quarter."

Mr. Porter, pleased in spite of himself by her flattery, protested, but Katie remained unconvinced. She declared that she knew he was the real authority and that she could not bear to hear him underestimate himself. And the upshot of the discussion was that, though Mr. Porter could, in his official capacity, do nothing so unbusinesslike as to make her an advance, he would, personally, be glad to oblige her with a dollar and a half, and oblige her, adding a fatherly pat to her pink cheek, he ultimately did.

"Thanks," Katie responded as she took the money, and turned to go. "I'll report to-morrow, then, at a quarter of eight, Mr. Porter."

"At quarter to eight," repeated Mr. Porter, slowly closing the door behind her.

But, out in the wet street, Katie was saying what she had refrained from saying in the darkened office.

"An' as for the pay," she concluded, "I can't buy no automobiles with me loose change; but I think you'll find, you limb of Satan, that I can keep body an' soul together without a friend in the wor'rld!"

X

ANOTHER SPHERE

That same evening, his crisp brown mustache hiding the meaning of his mouth, and his drooping lids concealing the purpose of his steel-gray eyes, Wesley Dyker, from the rooms he had rented in an East Side Assembly district, took a cab northwestward through the rain to Riverside Drive. He was dressed precisely as he dressed to go to the house of Rose Légère, but he was bound for the house of Joshua Lennox.

There he had plainly been expected. The liveried, tight-lipped servant, who opened the iron grill-work door for him, showed him deferentially down a long tiled hall and into, not the formal white and gilt reception-room, but a comfortable, dimly-lighted apartment, a smoking-room, hung with fading mediæval tapestries, the floor covered with deep rugs of the Orient, and the chairs wide, broad-armed, and upholstered in soft leather.

"Miss Lennox will be down in a moment, sir," said the servant. "May I bring you anything, Mr. Dyker?"

Wesley shook his well-shaped head.

"No, thank you, Charles," he answered, and then, nodding to a decanter that, under a wide, soft-shaded lamp, stood upon a corner table: "Irish?" he asked.

Charles bowed, brought a tray, and, when Dyker had poured the whiskey, added some seltzer, and lighted the cigarette that the guest had taken from a wrought silver box on a nearby tabouret.

"That is all, Charles," said Dyker, and the servant silently left him alone.

Wesley sank back in his chair with a sigh of comfort. He liked the house of the philanthropic merchant so well that he could have wished its master liked him better, and when, within a few minutes, the master himself chanced into the room, Dyker was prepared to be diplomatic.

Joshua N. Lennox was the explanation of that Mr. Porter who held so much power under him. The latter was tall and thin, the former short and compact, but there all physical differences ended: Mr. Porter had found his model in his employer. Here was the source of the seneschal's gray hair and side-whiskers, his trap mouth tortured to the line of benevolence, his calm gaze and his manner that combined the precision of the surgeon with the gravity of the head of a Sunday-school. Mr. Lennox, in fact, conducted the second largest Bible Class in New York. He knew its textbook from the first chapter of Genesis to the twenty-second chapter of the Revelation, and he believed in the literal inspiration of every verse of the original and of every syllable of the English translation.

It was in the voice in which he habitually addressed his Bible Class, the voice of one uttering a benediction, that he said:

"Good-evening, Mr. Dyker."

Wesley put down his glass and rose to his feet.

The man before him was the perfection of that noble work of Heaven, a Prominent Citizen. Joshua Lennox endowed Bowery chapels with organs and meat-supplies; he contributed heavily to missions among the benighted Japanese; he assisted in arbitrating strikes wherein his fellow-employers were concerned; he always served on memorial committees; and he regularly subscribed to the campaign funds of all movements toward municipal political reform.

If his climbing wife insisted upon having liquor in the house, Mr. Lennox never touched it. If she served tobacco, he did not smoke. If she took in a Sunday paper, written and printed on Saturday, he would read no news until the appearance of the Monday journal merely written and printed on Sunday. And if his mercantile establishment sold poker-chips under the pseudonym of "counters," he was aware only that it did not sell playing-cards. The business he considered as his creation had grown beyond the limits of his power, and though, a good man and sincere, he might have done something by keeping a closer eye upon his work, he was in reality as much the creature of conditions as his worst-paid cash-boy. The great Frederick complained that a monarch could not know all the evil done in his kingdom: Joshua Lennox was so busy benefiting mankind that he had no leisure to observe in his own shop the state of affairs that made his philanthropy financially possible.

"I hope you are going with us to the opera, Mr. Lennox," said Dyker.

The old man shook his silvered head.

"No," said he in the slow, deliberate utterance that he had acquired with his first million of dollars; "I am on my way farther down town than that."