People Like That Part 5

The indignation I had felt on hearing of Jimmy's bondage to a bench from seven in the morning to six in the evening, with an interval of an hour for lunch, was unaccountably disappearing. With helplessness and incapacity I was not ordinarily patient, and Mrs. Gibbons was an excellent example of both. Still--"He isn't twelve yet, is he?" I repeated.

Mrs. Gibbons pushed the little girl, who was trying to get out of the bed, back in it, and s.h.i.+fted the whimpering baby from one arm to the other. For a moment she hesitated, looked at me uncertainly.

"No 'm, he ain't but eleven, but I had to tell the mayor that signed the papers permitting of him to work, that he was twelve. The law don't let children work lessen they're twelve, and only then if their mother is a widow and 'ain't got nothing and n.o.body to do for her. I don't like to tell a story if I can help it, and them what don't know nothing 'bout how things is can't understand, and say we oughtn't to do it. They'd do it, too, ifen they had to. After his father died I had to take Jimmy out of school and put him to work. There wasn't nothing else to do."

"Has his father been dead long?" I moved still further from the stove. My question was unthinking. He couldn't have been dead long.

"In days and months it 'ain't been so long, but it's been awful long to me. 'Taint been more'n a year since they brought him home to me dead, and I been plum' no 'count ever since. This baby," she put the child in her arms on her lap and shook her knees in mechanical effort to still its cries, "this baby was born while its father was being buried, and when I took in my man was gone and wouldn't never come home no more, never give me his wages on Sat.u.r.day nights, and wouldn't be here to do nothing for me and the children, seems like something inside me just give out. I reckon you 'ain't never had nothing to happen to you like that, have you?"

"No, I've never had anything like that to happen to me." The last remnant of indignation was vanis.h.i.+ng. That is, against the helpless, incapable, worn-out woman who was Jimmy's mother. Against something else, something I could not place or define or call by name, it was rising stormily. "I know you need Jimmy's help," I said, after a moment, "but he is too young to work, too small."

"Came near not getting a job 'count of not being no bigger."

His mouth filled with half a biscuit, the boy nodded at me gleefully, then putting down his spoon, he dusted his hands and wiped them on the side of his trousers. "The first place mother and me went to, they wouldn't take me 'cause the table where I'd had to work struck me right here." His hands swiped his throat just under his chin.

"But the next place was all right. They had a boys' table and the bench was made high on purpose."

"What is it you do?" I asked, and again my voice sounded strange.

"Is it a box-factory you're in?"

"Soap and pills." Head thrown back, Jimmy drained the last drop of coffee from his cup, then sc.r.a.ped the latter with a tin spoon for its last bit of sugar. "We are pasters, our gang is. We paste the paper on the boxes. There's a boy sits next to me what's the fastest paster in town, but I'm going to beat him some day. I can paste almost as fast as he can now."

"He could beat him now if he didn't play so much." In his mother's voice was neither scolding nor complaint. "Jimmy always would play some from the time he was born. His boss says he's the best worker he's got 'cepting the boy who sits next to him, and if he'd just stay still all day--"

"Oh, can he play?" I made no apology for the interruption. The child was undersized and illy-nourished, and to let him work ten hours a day seemed a crime for which I, and all others who cared for children, were somehow responsible. But if he had a chance to play--

"When old Miss High-Spy goes out the room we play." Jimmy gave his trousers a jerk and made effort to force connection between a b.u.t.ton and a b.u.t.tonhole belonging respectively to his upper and his lower garments. "She's a regular old tale-teller, but soon as she's out the room we get down from our bench and rush around and tag each other. Our benches 'ain't got no backs to 'em, and if we didn't get off sometimes we couldn't sit up all day. The other fellows, the big ones, don't tell on us. They make us put the windows down from the top when she's out."

"Do you mean you don't have any air in the room?" My voice was unbelieving, and at something in my face Jimmy laughed.

"Not when we're working. The wind might blow the little pieces of paper off the table and we'd lose time getting 'em, she says. Some the boys get so sick from the heat and the glue smell they heave up their breakfast and can't eat nothing all day. I 'ain't fainted but twice since I been there, but Alex Hobbs keels over once a week, anyhow. Used to frighten me at first when I saw him getting green-y, but I don't mind it now."

With a quick turn of his head Jimmy looked at a small clock on the shelf above the wash-tubs, and got up with even quicker movement. "I forgot about the wood, and the papers will be ready 'fore I can get there if I don't hurry. Good-by to you all," and, slamming the door behind him, he ran down the kitchen steps into the yard, where in a moment we heard him whistling as he chopped the wood that must be brought up for the morning.

It was not often Mrs. Gibbons had a listener who had never before heard of her hards.h.i.+ps, and after explaining to me why Jimmy was at home at that time of the day, his presence being due not to trifling on his part, but to the half-time the factory was running, she gave herself up to the luxury of telling me in detail of her many misfortunes and of her inability to get through the winter unless additional help were given her.

"Can't you work?" I asked. "If the children are put in a day nursery they would be well looked after, and you would probably be more comfortable in a good factory than here."

"A good factory!" The inflection in her voice was one of listless tolerance for my ignorance. "I don't reckon you ever worked in one.

There ain't none of 'em good. Some's better than others, but when you get up at five o'clock on winter mornings and make the fire and melt the water, if it's frozen, to wash your face with, and--"

"Does it freeze in here?" Bettina, who had by effort restrained herself from taking part in the conversation, leaned forward and dug her hands deep in her lap. "Does it really freeze in this hot room?"

"It ain't hot in here at night. Last winter it froze 'most every night for a month. Mis' Cotter was boarding with me last winter, her and her little girl both. She's the lady what rents the room between the kitchen and the front room from me. She sews on carpets and the place she works at is right far from here. She warn't well last winter--some kind of misery is always on her--and she asked me to board her so she wouldn't have to do no cooking before she goes away in the morning and when she comes back at night."

"With a swift movement of her hand Mrs. Gibbons caught the little girl, who, behind her back, was making ready to slip off the bed and on the floor, but as she swung her again in place she kept up her talking, and by neither rise nor fall was the monotone of her voice broken.

"I had to get up at five so as to have breakfast in time, for I can't get the room warm and the things cooked in less'n an hour, and she has to leave here a little after six so as to take her little girl to the nursery before she goes to her place, and they ain't noways close together. The stars are s.h.i.+ning when she goes out and they're s.h.i.+ning when she comes in; that is, if the weather's good. She's been so wore out lately she's been taking her meals again with me, but I don't see much of her. She goes to bed the minute she's through supper."

Bettina twisted in her chair. "Do you eat and sleep in here, too?"

she asked. Her eyes were on Mrs. Gibbons. Carefully she kept them from mine. "Do you always eat in here?"

"We eat in here all the time and sleep in here in winter, because there ain't but one fire. That goes out early, which is why the water freezes. Jimmy has to bring it up from the yard in buckets, and as the nurse-lady who comes down here says we must have fresh air in the room, being 'tis all four of us sleep in it, I keep the window open at night. I don't take no stock in all this fresh-air talk.

'Taint only the water what gets froze--"

"Why don't you cover a bucketful of it with one of those tubs?"

Again Bettina's forefinger pointed. "That would keep the wind off and the water wouldn't freeze if it was covered up."

"I never thought of that. Get back, Rosie!" Mrs. Gibbons made effort to catch her little daughter, but this time the child wriggled down from the foot of the bed and came toward me, hands behind her back, and stared up into my face.

"Whatcha name?"

I told her and asked hers, and without further preliminaries she came close to me and hunched her shoulders to be taken in my lap.

"We've got to go--we're bound to go, Miss Dandridge!" With a leap Bettina was out of her chair, and, catching the little girl by the hand, she drew her from me and dangled in front of her a once-silvered mesh-bag, took from it a penny, and gave it to her; then she turned to Mrs. Gibbons.

"We're awful glad we've seen you." Bettina nodded gravely to the woman on the bed. "And of course we won't tell anybody about Jimmy not being twelve yet; but Miss Heath wants him to go back to school, and she's coming to see you soon about it. We've got to go now."

In a manner I could not understand, Bettina, who had gotten up and was now standing behind Mrs. Gibbons, beckoned to me mysteriously, and, fearing the latter might become aware of her violent movements, I, too, got up and shook hands with my hostess.

"I will see you in a few days," I said. "There's no chance for Jimmy if he doesn't have some education. He ought to go back to school."

"Yes 'm, I know he ought, but he can't go." Jimmy's mother shook hands, limply. "The pickle-factory where I used to work is turning off hands every week, and I can't get nothing to do there. I don't know how to do nothing but pickles. Sometimes I gets a little sewing at home, but I ain't a sewer. The Charities sends me a basket of keep-life-in-you groceries every now and then, and the city gives me some coal and wood when there's enough to go round more than once, but I need Jimmy's money for the rent."

"If the rent were paid would you let him go back to school?"

"Yes 'm." The dull voice quickened not at all. "I'd be glad to let him go. I don't want him to work, but them that don't know how it is can't understand. You-all must come again. Good-by. Come back here, Rosie. You'll catch your death out there. Good-by."

In the open air, which felt good after the steaming heat of the bedroom-kitchen, Bettina and I walked for a few moments in silence, and then, slipping her arm in mine, she looked up at me with wise little eyes.

"Please excuse me for telling you, Miss Dandridge, but you're new yet in the places you've been going to since you came to Scarborough Square, and you'll have to be careful about taking the children on your lap and in your arms, if they're babies. You love children, and you just naturally hold out your hands to them, but if you don't know them very well, you'd better not. All of them ain't healthy, and hardly any--"

Bettina stopped and, standing still, looked straight ahead of her at a man and a young woman crossing the street some little distance from us. Then she looked up at me. The man was Selwyn. The girl with him was the odd and elfish little creature who had been hurt in Scarborough Square and whom he had helped bring in to Mrs. Mundy.

CHAPTER IX

Bettina, who had opened the door for Selwyn on his last visit, and who had informed me the next day that she had "s.h.i.+vered with trembles" because of his great difference to the men in Scarborough Square, for the second time looked up at me.

"What is he doing down here?" Her finger pointed in the direction of the man and woman just ahead of us. "What's he talking to that girl for?"

I did not answer her at once. Amazement and unbelief were making my heart hot, and a flood of color burned my face. Of all men on earth, Selwyn was the last to find in this part of the town at this time of the evening, and as he bent his head to speak to the girl I noticed he was talking earnestly and using his hands in expressive gestures as he talked. Starting forward, I took a few steps and then stopped, sharply.

"I don't know what he is doing down here. Certainly he is at liberty to come here just as we come."

Bettina's eyes strained in the darkness. "I can't see her face. If we cross over we can catch up with them by the time they reach the corner where we could see her in the light." The grip of my hand on her arm made her stop. "I mean--"