CHAPTER X.
FURTHER EXPLORATION.
WHEN Emily came into the sitting-room the next morning at ten she found that Theresa had ordered breakfast for both sent there, and was waiting. She was in a dressing-gown, her hair twisted in a careless knot, her eyes tired and clouded. The air was tainted with the sweet, stale, heavy perfume which was an inseparable part of her personality. “I wish Theresa wouldn’t use that scent,” thought Emily—her first thought always when she came near Theresa or into any place where Theresa had recently been.
“How well you have slept,” began Theresa, looking with good-natured envy at Emily’s fresh face and fresh French shirt-waist.
“Not very,” replied Emily. “I was awake until nearly daylight.”
“Did you hear me come in?”
“I heard you moving about your room just as I was going to sleep.” Emily knew Theresa’s mode of life. But she avoided seeming to know, and ignored Theresa’s frequent attempts to open the subject of herself and Frank. She thought she had gone far enough when she made it clear that she was not sitting in judgment upon her.
“I’m blue—desperately blue,” continued Theresa. “I don’t know which way to turn.” There was a long pause, then with a flush she looked at Emily and dropped her uneasy eyes. “How——”
“I think it most unwise,” interrupted Emily, “to confide one’s private affairs to any other, and I know it’s most impertinent for any other to peer into them.”
“You’re right—but I’ve got to talk it over with some one.”
“I hope you won’t tell me more than is absolutely necessary, Theresa.”
“Well—I’m ‘up against it’—to use the kind of language that fits such a vulgar muddle. And I’ve neglected my business until there’s nothing left of it.” A long pause, then in a strained voice: “I’ve been planning all along to marry Frank Demorest and—I find not only that he wouldn’t marry me if he could, but couldn’t if he would. He’s going to marry money. He’s got to. He told me frankly last night. He’s down to less than ten thousand a year, about a third of what it costs him to live. And he’s living up his principal.”
“This is the saddest tale of privation and poverty I ever heard,” said Emily. Then more seriously: “You’re not in love with him?”
“Well—he’s good-looking; he knows the world; he has the right sort of manners, and goes with the right sort of people, and he comes of a splendid old family.”
“His father kept a drygoods shop, didn’t he?”
“Yes—but that was when Frank was a young man. And it was a big shop—wholesale, you know—not retail. He never worked in it or anywhere else. You could tell that he’d never worked, but had always been a gentleman, and only looked after the property.”
“I understand,” Emily nodded with great solemnity. “We’ll concede that he’s a gentleman. What next?”
“Well, I wanted to marry him. It would have been satisfactory in every way. I’d have got back my position in society that we had to give up when father lost everything and—and died—and mother wanted to drag me off to live in Blue Mountain. Just think of it—Blue Mountain, Vermont!”
“I am thinking of it—or, rather, of Stoughton,” said Emily, with a shiver.
“And I simply wouldn’t go. I went to work instead.—But—well—I’m too lazy to work. I couldn’t—and I can’t. I can talk about it and pretend about it—but I can’t do it. And now I’ve got to choose between work and Blue Mountain once more.”
“But you had that choice before, and you didn’t go to Blue Mountain. Why are you so cut up now?”
“I’ve been skating on thin ice these last four years. And I’ve begun to think about the future.”
“How could I advise you? I can only say that you do well to think seriously about what you’re to do—if you won’t work.”
“I can’t, I simply can’t, work. It’s so common, so—Oh, I don’t see it as you do, as I was trying to make believe I saw it when I first talked to you. I feel degraded because I am not as we used to be. I want a big house and lots of servants and social position. You don’t know how low I feel in a street car. You don’t know how wretched I am when I am in the Waldorf or Sherry’s or driving in the Park in a hired hansom, or when I see the carriages in the evening with the women on their way to swell dinners or balls. You don’t know how I despise myself, how I have despised myself for the last four years. No wonder Frank wouldn’t marry me. He’d have been a fool to.” The tears were rolling down Theresa’s face.
It was impossible for Emily not to sympathize with a grief so genuine. “Poor girl,” she thought, “she can no more help being a snob than she can help being a brunette.” And she said aloud in a gentle voice: “What have you thought of doing?”
“I’ve got to marry,” answered Theresa. “And marry quick. And marry money.”
A queer look came into Emily’s face at this restatement of her own attempted solution of the Stoughton problem. Theresa misunderstood the look. “You are so unsympathetic,” she said, lighting a cigarette.
Emily was putting on her hat. “No—not unsympathetic,” she replied. “Anything but that. Only—you are healthy and strong and capable, Theresa. Why should you sell yourself?”
“Oh, I know—you imagine you think it fine and dignified to work for one’s living. But in the bottom of your heart you know better. You know it is not refined and womanly—that it means that a woman has been beaten, has been unable to get a man to support her as a lady should be supported.”
Emily faced her and, as she put on her gloves, said in a simple, good-tempered way: “I admit that I’m conventional enough at times and discouraged enough at times to feel that it would be a temptation if some man—not too disagreeable—were to offer to take care of me for life. But I’m trying to outgrow it, trying to come up to a new ideal of self-respect. And I believe, Theresa, that the new ideal is better for us. Anyhow in the circumstances, it’s certainly wiser and—and safer.”
“What are you going to do about Marlowe?” Theresa thrust at her with deliberate suddenness and some malice.
Emily kept the colour out of her face, but her eyes betrayed to Theresa that the thrust had reached. “Well, what about Marlowe?” She decided to drop evasion and was at once free from embarrassment.
“He’ll not marry you. He isn’t a marrying man.”
“And why should he marry me? And why should I marry him? I have no wish to be tied. It was necessity that forced me to be free; but I know more certainly every day that it isn’t necessity that will keep me free. You see, Theresa. I don’t hate work, as you do. I feel that every one has to work anyhow, and I prefer to work for myself and be paid for it, rather than to be some man’s housekeeper and get my wages as if they were charity.”
“If I married, you may be sure I’d be no man’s housekeeper,” said Theresa, with a toss of the head.
“I was making the position as dignified as possible. Suppose you found after marriage that you didn’t care for your husband; or suppose you deliberately married for money. I should say that mere housekeeper would be enviable in comparison.”
“There’s a good deal of pretence about that, isn’t there, honestly?” Theresa was laughing disagreeably. “It’s a thoroughly womanish remark. But it’s a remark to make to a man, not when two women who understand woman-nature are talking quietly, with no man to overhear.”
“Certainly I’ve known a great many women, nice women, who seemed to be living quite comfortably and contentedly with husbands they did not in the least like. And I am no better, no more sensitive than other women. Still—I feel as I say. Let’s call it a masculine quality in me. I doubt if there are many husbands who live with wives they don’t like—like a little for the time, at any rate.”
“I’ve often thought of that. It’s the most satisfactory thing about being a woman and having a man in love with one. One knows, as a man never can know about a woman, that he means at least part of it. But you ought to be at your beloved office. You don’t think I’m so horribly horrid, do you?”
Emily stood behind Theresa and put her arms around her shoulders. “You’ve a right to feel about yourself and do with yourself as you please,” she said. “And in the ways that are important to me, you are the most generous, helpful girl in the world.”
“Well, I don’t believe I’m mean. But what is a woman to do in such a hard world?”
“Go to the office,” said Emily. She patted Theresa’s cheek encouragingly. “Put off being blue, dear, until the last minute. Then perhaps you won’t need to be blue or won’t have time. Good-bye!”
What was she going to do about Marlowe? She began to think of it as she left the house, and she was still debating it as she entered the Democrat building and saw him waiting for the elevator.
“Just whom I wish to see,” he began. “No, not for that reason—altogether,” he went on audaciously answering her thought, as if she had spoken it or looked it, when she had done neither. “This is business. I’m going to Pittsburg to get specials on the strike. Canfield’s sending you along.”
“Why?” Resentment was rising in her. How could he, how dare he, advertise her to the Managing Editor thus falsely?—“Why should he send me?”
“Because I asked him. He opposed it, but I finally persuaded him. I wanted you for my own sake. Incidentally I saw that it was a chance for you. I laid it on rather strong about your talents, and so you’ve simply got to give a good account of yourself.”
“I cannot go,” she said coldly. “It’s impossible.”
They went into the elevator. “Come up to the Managing Editor’s office with me,” he said. He motioned her into a seat in Canfield’s anteroom and sat beside her. “What is the matter?” he asked. “Let us never be afraid to tell each other the exact truth.”
“How could I go out there alone with you? The whole office, everybody we meet there, would be talking about us.”
“I see,” he said with raillery. “You thought I had sacrificed your reputation in my eagerness to get you within easy reach of my wiles? Well, perhaps I might have done it in some circumstances. But in this case that happens not to have been my idea. I remembered what you have for the moment forgotten—that you are on the staff of the Democrat. I got you the assignment to do part of this strike. My private reasons for doing so are not in the matter at all. You may rest assured that, if I had not thought you’d send good despatches and make yourself stronger on the paper and justify my insistence, I should not have interfered.”
She sat silent, ashamed of the exhibition of vanity and suspicion into which she had been hurried. “I beg your pardon,” she said at last.
“I love you,” he answered in a low voice. “And those three little words mean more to me—than I thought they could mean. Let us go in to see Canfield.”
“I don’t in the least trust Marlowe’s judgment about you, now that I’ve seen you,” said Mr. Canfield—polite, pale, thin of face, with a sharp nose; his dark circled eyes betrayed how restlessly and sleeplessly his mind prowled through the world in the daily search for the newest news. “But my own judgment is gone too. So if you please, go to Furnaceville for us.” He dropped his drawing-room tone and poured out a flood of instructions—“Send us what you see—what you really see. If you see misery, send it. If not, for heaven’s sake, don’t ‘fake’ it. Put humour in your stuff—all the humour you possibly can—‘fake’ that, if necessary. But it won’t be necessary, if you have real eyes. Go to the workmen’s houses. Look all through them—parlours, bedrooms, kitchen. Look at the grocer’s bills and butcher’s. Tell what their clothes cost. Describe their children. Talk to their children. Make us see just what kind of people these are that are making such a stir. You’ve a great opportunity. Don’t miss it. And don’t, don’t, don’t, do ‘fine writing.’ No ‘literature’—just life—men, women, children. Here’s an order for a hundred dollars. If you run short, Marlowe will telegraph you more.”
“Then we don’t go together after all?” she said to Marlowe, as they left Canfield’s office.
“I’m sorry you’re to be disappointed,” he replied, mockingly. “I stay in Pittsburg for the present. You go out to the mills—out to Furnaceville first.”
“Where the militia are?”
“Yes—they’re expecting trouble there next week. I’ll probably be on in a day or so. But I must see several people in Pittsburg first. You’ll have the artist with you, though. Try to keep him sober. But if he will get drunk, turn him adrift. He’ll only hamper you.”
Emily was in a fever as she cashed the order and went uptown to pack a small trunk and catch the six o’clock train. Going on an important mission thus early in her career as a working-woman would have been exciting enough, however quiet the occasion. But going among militia and rioters, going unchaperoned with two men, going the wildest part of the excursion with one man and he an artist of unsteady habits who would need watching—she could not grasp it. However, an hour after they were settled in the Pullman, she had forgotten everything except the work she was to do—or fail to do. Indeed, it had already begun. Marlowe brought with him a big bundle of newspapers, and a boy from the Democrat’s Philadelphia office came to the station there, and gave him another and bigger bundle.
“I’m reading up,” said Marlowe, “and it won’t do you any harm to do the same. Then, when we arrive, we’ll know all that’s been going on, and we’ll be able to step right into it without delay.”
The artist went to the smoking compartment. She and Marlowe attacked the papers. Both read until dinner, and again after dinner until the berths were made. When they talked it was of the strike. Marlowe neither by word nor by look indicated that he was conscious of any but a purely professional bond between them. And she soon felt as he acted—occasionally hoping that he did not altogether feel as he acted, but was restraining himself through fine instinct.
When they separated at Pittsburg, and she and the artist were on the way in the chill morning to the train for Furnaceville, she remembered that he had not shown the slightest anxiety about the peril into which she was going—and going by his arrangement. But she was soon deep in the Pittsburg morning papers, her mind absorbed in the battle between brain-workers and brawn-workers of which she was to be a witness. She was impatient to arrive, impatient to carry out the suggestions which her imagination had evolved from what she had been reading. To her the strike, with its anxieties and perils for thousands, meant only her own opportunity, as she noted with some self-reproach.
“I hope they’ll get licked,” said the artist.
“Who?” asked Emily, looking at him more carefully than she had thus far, and remembering that he had not been introduced to her and that she did not know his name.
“The workingmen, of course,” he replied. “I know them. My father was one of ’em. I came from this neighbourhood.”
“I should think your sympathies would be with them.” Emily was coldly polite. She did not like the young man’s look of coarse dissipation—dull eyes, clouded skin, and unhealthy lips and teeth.
“That shows you don’t know them. They are the most unreasonable lot, and if they had the chance they’d be brutal tyrants. They have no respect for brains.”
“But they might be right in this case. I don’t say that they are. It’s so difficult to judge what is right and what wrong.”
“You may be sure they’re wrong. My father was always wrong. Why, if he and his friends had been able to carry out all they used to talk, the whole world would be a dead level of savages. They used to call everybody who didn’t do manual labour a ‘parasite on the toiling masses.’ As if the toiling masses would have any toiling to do to enable them to earn bread and comfortable homes for themselves if it were not for the brain-workers.”
“Oh, it seems to me that we’re all toilers together, each in his own way. Perhaps it’s because I’m too stupid to understand it, but I don’t think much of theories about these things.”
The train stopped, the brakeman shouted, “Furnaceville!” Emily and the artist descended to the station platform, there to be eyed searchingly by a crowd of roughly dressed men with scowling faces. When the train had moved on without discharging the load of non-union workers they were expecting, their faces relaxed and they became a cheerful crowd of Americans. They watched the “lady from the city,” with respectful, fascinated side-glances. Those nearest her looked aimlessly but earnestly about, as if hoping to see or to imagine some way of being of service to her. Through the crowd pushed a young man, whom Emily at once knew was of the newspaper profession.
“Is this Miss Bromfield?” he asked.
“Yes,” replied Emily, “from the New York Democrat.”
“My name is Holyoke. I’m the Pittsburg correspondent of the Democrat. Mr. Marlowe telegraphed me to meet you and see that you did not get into any danger, and also to engage rooms for you.”
Emily beamed upon Mr. Holyoke. Marlowe had thought of her—had been anxious about her. And instead of saying so, he had acted. “Thank you so much,” she said. “This gentleman is from the Democrat also.”
“My name is Camp,” said the artist, making a gesture toward the unwieldy bundle of drawing sheets wrapped flat which he carried under his arm.
“I have arranged for you at the Palace Hotel,” continued Holyoke. “Don’t build your hopes too high on that name. I took back-rooms on the second floor because the hotel is just across an open space from the entrance to the mills.”
Emily thought a moment on this location and its reason, then grew slightly paler. Holyoke looked at her with the deep sympathy which a young man must always feel for the emotions of a young and good-looking woman. “If there is any trouble, it’ll be over quickly once it begins,” he said, “and you can easily keep out of the way.”
They climbed a dreary, rough street, lined with monotonous if comfortable cottages. It was a depressing town, as harsh as the iron by which all of its inhabitants lived. “People ought to be well paid to live in such a place as this,” said Emily.
“I don’t see how they stand it,” Holyoke replied. “But the local paper has an editorial against the militia this morning, and it speaks of the town as ‘our lovely little city, embowered among the mountains, the home of beauty and refinement.’”
The Palace was a three-story country-town hotel, with the usual group of smoking and chewing loungers impeding the entrance. Emily asked Holyoke to meet her in the small parlour next to the office in half an hour.