Calvary Alley

Chapter XII. Clarke's

Nance Molloy came out of Forest Home, an independent, efficient girl, with clear skin, luminous blue eyes, and shining braids of fair hair. She came full of ideals and new standards and all the terrible wisdom of sixteen, and she dumped them in a mass on the family in Calvary Alley and boldly announced that "what she was going to do was a-plenty!"

But like most reformers, she reckoned too confidently on cooperation. The rest of the Snawdor family had not been to reform school, and it had strong objections to Nance's drastic measures. Her innovations met with bitter opposition from William J., who indignantly declined to have the hitherto respected privacy of his ears and nose invaded, to Mrs. Snawdor, who refused absolutely to sleep with the windows open.

"What's the sense in working your fingers off to buy coal to heat the house if you go an' let out all the hot air over night?" she demanded. "They've filled up yer head with fool notions, but I tell you right now, you ain't goin' to work 'em off on us. You kin just tell that old maid Stanley that when she's had three husbands and five children an' a step, an' managed to live on less'n ten dollars a week, it'll be time enough fer her to be learnin' me tricks!"

"But don't all this mess ever get on your nerves? Don't you ever want to clear out and go to the country?" asked Nance.

"Not me!" said Mrs. Snawdor. "I been fightin' the country all my life. It's bad enough bein' dirt pore, without goin' an' settin' down among the stumps where there ain't nothin' to take yer mind off it."

So whatever reforms Nance contemplated had to be carried out slowly and with great tact. Mrs. Snawdor, having put forth one supreme effort to make the flat sufficiently decent to warrant Nance's return, proposed for the remainder of her life to rest on her laurels. As for the children, they had grown old enough to have decided opinions of their own, and when Nance threw the weight of her influence on the side of order and cleanliness, she was regarded as a traitor in the camp. It was only Mr. Snawdor who sought to uphold her, and Mr. Snawdor was but a broken reed.

Meanwhile the all-important question of getting work was under discussion. Miss Stanley had made several tentative suggestions, but none of them met with Mrs. Snawdor's approval.

"No, I ain't goin' to let you work out in private families!" she declared indignantly. "She's got her cheek to ast it! Did you tell her yer pa was a Molloy? An' Mr. Burks says yer maw was even better born than what Bud was. I'm goin' to git you a job myself. I'm goin' to take you up to Clarke's this very evenin'."

"I don't want to work in a factory!" Nance said discontentedly, looking out of the window into the dirty court below.

"I suppose you want to run a beauty parlor," said Mrs. Snawdor, with scornful reference to Nance's improved appearance. "You might just as well come off them high stilts an' stop puttin' on airs, Dan Lewis has been up to Clarke's goin' on four years now. I hear they're pushin' him right along."

Nance stopped drumming on the window-pane and became suddenly interested. The one thing that had reconciled her to leaving Miss Stanley and the girls at the home was the possibility of seeing Dan again. She wondered what he looked like after these four years, whether he would recognize her, whether he had a sweetheart? She had been home three days now and had caught no glimpse of him.

"We never see nothin' of him," her stepmother told her. "He's took up with the Methodists, an' runs around to meetin's an' things with that there Mis' Purdy."

"Don't he live over Slap Jack's?" asked Nance.

"Yes; he's got his room there still. I hear his ma died las' spring. Flirtin' with the angels by now, I reckon."

The prospect of seeing Dan cheered Nance amazingly. She spent the morning washing and ironing her best shirt-waist and turning the ribbon on her tam-o'-shanter. Every detail of her toilet received scrupulous attention.

It was raining dismally when she and Mrs. Snawdor picked their way across the factory yard that afternoon. The conglomerate mass of buildings known as "Clarke's" loomed somberly against the dull sky. Beside the low central building a huge gas-pipe towered, and the water, trickling down it, made a puddle through which they had to wade to reach the door of the furnace room.

Within they could see the huge, round furnace with its belt of small fiery doors, from which glass-blowers, with long blow-pipes were deftly taking small lumps of moulten glass and blowing them into balls.

"There's Dan!" cried Mrs. Snawdor, and Nance looked eagerly in the direction indicated.

In the red glare of the furnace, a big, awkward, bare-armed young fellow was just turning to roll his red-hot ball on a board. There was a steady look in the gray eyes that scowled slightly under the intense glare, a sure movement of the hands that dropped the elongated roll into the mold. When he saw Mrs. Snawdor's beckoning finger, he came to the door.

"This here is Nance Molloy," said Mrs. Snawdor by way of introduction. "She's about growed up sence you seen her. We come to see about gittin' her a job."

Nance, looking at the strange, stern face above her, withdrew the hand she had held out. Dan did not seem to see her hand any more than he saw her fresh shirt-waist and the hat she had taken so much pains to retrim. After a casual nod he stood looking at the floor and rubbing the toe of his heavy boot against his blow-pipe.

"Sure," he said slowly, "but this is no fit place for a girl, Mrs. Snawdor."

Mrs. Snawdor bristled immediately.

"I ain't astin' yer advice, Dan Lewis. I'm astin' yer help."

Dan looked Nance over in troubled silence.

"Is she sixteen yet?" he asked as impersonally as if she had not been present.

"Yes, an' past. I knowed they'd be scarin' up that dangerous trade business on me next. How long before the foreman'll be here?"

"Any time now," said Dan. "I'll take you into his office."

With a sinking heart, Nance followed them into the crowded room. The heat was stifling, and the air was full of stinging glass dust. All about them boys were running with red hot bottles on big asbestos shovels. She hated the place, and she hated Dan for not being glad to see her.

"They are the carrying-in boys," Dan explained, continuing to address all of his remarks to Mrs. Snawdor. "That's where I began. You wouldn't believe that those kids often run as much as twenty-two miles a day. Watch out there, boy! Be careful!"

But his warning came too late. One of the smaller youngsters had stumbled and dropped his shovel, and a hot bottle had grazed his leg, burning away a bit of the stocking.

"It's all right, Partner," cried Dan, springing forward, "You're not much hurt. I'll fix you up."

But the boy was frightened and refused to let him remove the stocking.

"Let me do it," begged Nance. "I can get it off without hurting him."

And while Dan held the child's leg steady, she bathed and bound it in a way that did credit to Doc's training. Only once daring the process did she look up, and then she was relieved to see instead of the stern face of a strange young man, the compassionate, familiar face of the old Dan she used to know.

The interview with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor's voluble comments, and ended by telling Nance to report for work the following week.

As Mrs. Snawdor and Nance took their departure, the former, whose thoughts seldom traveled on a single track, said tentatively:

"Dan Lewis has got to be real nice lookin' sence you seen him, ain't he?"

"Nothin' to brag on," said Nance, still smarting at his indifference. But as she turned the corner of the building, she stole a last look through the window to where Dan was standing at his fiery post, his strong, serious face and broad, bare chest lighted up by the radiance from the glory-hole.

It was with little enthusiasm that Nance presented herself at the factory on Monday morning, ready to enlist in what Bishop Bland called "the noble service of industry." Her work was in the finishing room where a number of girls were crowded at machines and tables, filing, clipping, and packing bottles. Her task was to take the screw-neck bottles that came from the leer, and chip and file their jagged necks and shoulders until all the roughness was removed. It was dirty work, and dangerous for unskilled hands, and she found it difficult to learn.

"Say, kid," said the ugly, hollow-chested girl beside her, "if I'm goin' to be your learner, I want you to be more particular. Between you an' this here other girl, you're fixin' to put my good eye out."

Nance glanced up at the gaunt face with its empty eye socket and then looked quickly away.

"Say," said the other new girl, complainingly, "is it always hot like this in here? I'm most choking."

"We'll git the boss to put in a 'lectric fan fer you," suggested the hollow-chested one, whose name was Mag Gist.

Notwithstanding her distaste for the work, Nance threw herself into it with characteristic vehemence. Speed seemed to be the quality above all others that one must strive for, and speed she was determined to have, regardless of consequences.

"When you learn how to do this, what do you learn next?" she asked presently.

Mag laughed gruffly.

"There ain't no next. If you'd started as a wrapper, you might 'a' worked up a bit, but you never would 'a' got to be a chuck-grinder. I been at this bench four years an' if I don't lose my job, I'll be here four more."

"But if you get to be awful quick, you can make money, can't you?"

"You kin make enough to pay fer two meals a day if yer appetite ain't too good."

Nance's heart sank. It was a blow to find that Mag, who was the cleverest girl in the finishing room, had been filing bottle necks for four years. She stole a glance at her stooped shoulders and sallow skin and the hideous, empty socket of her left eye. What was the good of becoming expert if it only put one where Mag was?

By eleven o'clock there was a sharp pain between her shoulder-blades, and her feet ached so that she angrily kicked off first one shoe, then the other. This was the signal for a general laugh.

"They're kiddin' you fer sheddin' yer shoes," explained Mag, who had laughed louder than anybody. "Greenhorns always do it first thing. By the time you've stepped on a piece of glass onct or twict, you'll be glad enough to climb back into 'em."

After a while one of the girls started a song, and one by one the others joined in. There were numerous verses, and a plaintive refrain that referred to "the joy that ne'er would come again to you and I."

When no more verses could be thought of, there were stories and doubtful jokes which sent the girls into fits of wild laughter.

"Oh, cheese it," said Mag after one of these sallies, "You all orter to behave more before these kids."

"They don't know what we are talkin' about," said a red-haired girl.

"You bet I do," said Nance, with disgust, "but you all give me a sick headache."

When the foreman made his rounds, figures that had begun to droop were galvanized into fresh effort. At Mag's bench he paused.

"How are the fillies making it?" he asked, with a familiar hand on the shoulder of each new girl. Nance's companion dropped her eyes with a simpering smile, but Nance jerked away indignantly.

The foreman looked at the back of the shining head and frowned.

"You'll have to push up the stroke," he said. "Can't you see you lose time by changing your position so often? What makes you fidget so?"

Nance set her teeth resolutely and held her tongue. But her Irish instinct always suffered from restraint and by the time the noon whistle blew, she was in a state of sullen resentment. The thought of her beloved Miss Stanley and what she would think of these surroundings brought a lump into her throat.

"Come on over here," called Mag from a group of girls at the open window. "Don't you mind what Bean says. He's sore on any girl that won't eat outen his dirty hand. You 're as smart again as that other kid. I can tell right off if a girl's got gumption, an' if she's on the straight.

"Chuck that Sunday-school dope," laughed a pretty, red-haired girl named Gert. "You git her in wrong with Bean, an' I wouldn't give a nickel fer her chance."

"You ought to know," said Mag, drily.

The talk ran largely to food and clothes, and Nance listened with growing dismay. It seemed that most of the girls lived in rooming houses and took their meals out.

"Wisht I had a Hamberger," said Mag. "I ain't had a bite of meat fer a month. I always buy my shoes with meat money."

"I git my hats with breakfasts," said another girl. "Fourteen breakfasts makes a dollar-forty. I kin buy a hat fer a dollar-forty-nine that's swell enough fer anybody."

"I gotta have my breakfast," said Mag. "Four cups of coffee ain't nothin' to me."

Gert got up and stretched herself impatiently.

"I'm sick an' tired of hearin' you all talk about eatin'. Mag's idea of Heaven is a place where you spend ten hours makin' money an' two eatin' it up. Some of us ain't built like that. We got to have some fun as we go along, an' we're goin' to git it, you bet your sweet life, one way or the other."

Soon after work was resumed, word was passed around that a big order had come in, and nobody was to quit work until it was made up. A ripple of sullen comment followed this announcement, but the girls bent to their tasks with feverish energy.

At two o'clock the other new girl standing next to Nance grew faint, and had to be stretched on the floor in the midst of the broken glass.

"She's a softie!" whispered Mag to Nance. "This ain't nothin' to what it is in hot weather."

The pain between Nance's shoulders was growing intolerable, and her cut fingers and aching feet made her long to cast herself on the floor beside the other girl and give up the fight. But pride held her to her task. After what seemed to her an eternity she again looked at the big clock over the door. It was only three. How was she ever to endure three more hours when every minute now was an agony?

Mag heard her sigh and turned her head long enough to say:

"Hang yer arms down a spell; that kind of rests 'em. You ain't goin' to flop, too, are you?"

"Not if I can hold out."

"I knowed you was game all right," said Mag, with grim approval.

By six o'clock the last bottle was packed, and Nance washed the blood and dirt off her hands and forced her swollen, aching feet into her shoes. She jerked her jacket and tam-o'-shanter from the long row of hooks, and half blind with weariness, joined the throng of women and girls that jostled one another down the stairs. Every muscle of her body ached, and her whole soul was hot with rebellion. She told herself passionately that nothing in the world could induce her to come back; she was through with factory work forever.

As she limped out into the yard, a totally vanquished little soldier on the battle-field of industry, she spied Dan Lewis standing beside the tall gas-pipe, evidently waiting for somebody. He probably had a sweetheart among all these trooping girls; perhaps it was the pretty, red-haired one named Gert. The thought, dropping suddenly into a surcharged heart, brimmed it over, and Nance had to sweep her fingers across her eyes to brush away the tears.

And then:

"I thought I'd missed you," said Dan, quite as a matter of course, as he caught step with her and raised her umbrella.

Nance could have flung her tired arms about him and wept on his broad shoulder for sheer gratitude. To be singled out, like that, before all the girls on her first day, to have a beau, a big beau, pilot her through the crowded streets and into Calvary Alley where all might see, was sufficient to change the dullest sky to rose and lighten the heart of the most discouraged.

On the way home they found little to say, but Nance's aching feet fairly tripped beside those of her tall companion, and when they turned Slap Jack's corner and Dan asked in his slow, deliberate way, "How do you think you are going to like the factory?" Nance answered enthusiastically, "Oh, I like it splendid!"