CHAPTER II

EMILY SHORT--TOY-MAKER

When the bells of St. Joseph trembled into motion, Emily Short opened her eyes; when those inverted cups of bronze began to move faster, flinging their summons over the roofs, tossing it in at open windows, emptying it into narrow courts, she arose. When the parish father, still half asleep, donned his robes and straightened his stole, she put the last pin in her collar and tied on her apron. When he began to say mass, she began to hum a tune; and as the high-sounding Latin escaped through the trefoiled windows, her artless warble escaped through the attic casement, and together the two strains, the one from the heart of the Church and the other from the heart of a woman, ascended straight to the throne of the good God and who shall say they were not equally acceptable?

Outwardly Emily was no friend of the church. Its frequent services, she declared, were disturbing, and a room on the other side of the house with a view of the ships and the wharfage would have been a deal more to her mind. However, it was noticeable that whenever one of these rooms fell vacant she held her peace and abode in her attic as tightly as a limpet in its shell when danger is toward. It must be confessed that she clung to the church very much as a limpet clings to its chosen rock. For forty years she had lived close to the church, for forty years been keenly alive to its spirit of consolation. Though unencumbered with a creed, Emily was a staunch reformer and the church represented a strong ally.

On a summer morning, by merely craning her neck, she could peer down through an open window and learn who were present of her special following. If she spied the old charwoman, whose honesty was not above suspicion, or Dan, who stole grain on the wharves, she nodded her head with satisfaction. It was more than possible, she considered, even if the priest's exhortations were lost on their befuddled minds, that the pure strong notes of the organ might reach their consciences, the beautiful colours of the windows cause some expansion of their dwarfed souls. So she completed her survey like an inquiring angel, then settled to her work of the day.

Emily trimmed hats, furnishing them for a Division Street milliner, and earned a very comfortable livelihood; for she trimmed with an abandon, a daring, a freedom that no other trimmer could equal. That she might have full scope for the expression of her individuality, she was granted the privilege of working at home instead of under the eye of her employer. She was regarded as an artist, and more than once her creations had changed the prevailing styles in that section. If Emily, canny soul, had her own ideas about the beauty of her hats, she kept them to herself and it is not for me to reveal them. It was sufficient that the hats suited the heads they were intended to adorn. Humming under her breath, she curled and looped and tied and twisted with such swiftness that the room was filled with the shimmer of satin, the flutter of laces, the darting of wings, the bursting of flowers; and so unremitting was her industry that by night the wire frames, delivered to her in the morning, had been converted into veritable traps for the captivation of men's hearts.

Working away through the long hours, all the vanity that had never found expression in her own life, flew into her needle; she placed feathers at an irresistible angle, sewed buckles and bows in telling positions. When she fared along the streets, quiet and demure, carrying her great pile of boxes, who would have guessed that she was a great matchmaker? Yet such was the case. And when she met one of her creations, brave and flaunting as youth itself, accompanied by a male hat, she knew that her work was succeeding. When the hats proclaimed a maid and a lad, her spirits rose; but when they proclaimed an errant wife and her admirer, her spirits clouded.

For once they had left her hands with all their potency for good or evil, Emily had no more control over her hats than a parent over the children that have quitted the hearth. Sometimes her pangs were so sharp at what she witnessed that for days she trimmed with a sobriety, a propriety that was the despair of her employers. Indeed, she fairly sewed a sermon into the hats until a protest of loud-voiced dismay stayed her hand. Thereupon the full tide of her remorse was diverted into another channel.

All who came to her she helped, as was her custom, with money, with food, with influence; but her lectures, always forcible, now became inspired. She rated them eloquently, and such an admiration did she exhibit for virtue, and such detestation for evil, that the indigent, the drunken, the lazy, went away not only consoled but strengthened in the "inner man."

Emily's philosophy was comprehended in one word. Work for brain and hand, body and soul,--work was the world's salvation, she declared; and right staunchly, in her own life, did she demonstrate the truth of this theory. Nor did her labours cease with the hours of daylight.

The setting of the sun witnessed a change in her occupation. With the lighting of the gas all the hats that had not been delivered, went to roost, like an array of tropical birds, behind a curtain; and from a corner where it had stood neglected all day, came forth her little work-bench. Forthwith Emily began the practice of the cunning craft that was to her the highest of the arts. Between the fine ardour of the youthful Cellini, as he approached his delicate metals after an irksome day in his father's shop, and Emily's grave exaltation as she seated herself at the bench, there was not the difference of a jot. The thing that we create matters nothing, the divine desire to create is all; and whether we design a medal for a pontiff's honour or a toy for a child's delight, the object is but a little door through which the soul wings to freedom.

Emily had a dream, an ambition. Her ambition was to make toys and one day to see a whole army of them performing on the walks of the popular uptown districts where shoppers throng. To this end she twisted wires with her claw-like fingers, and, as she lacked the proper tools, her fingers were often bruised; to this end she soldered together and hammered into shape. And right fairly did her toys represent her, for, disgusted with the laziness of humanity, Emily endowed her race of tiny men and women with a perfect passion for industry. They seemed obsessed with the notion, and though the work that engaged them would still be unfinished when the spring of their life ran down, was not this the crowning fact in the history of all brave effort? So Emily continued to announce her theory even through her toys.

On a certain sultry morning she had barely settled herself near the window and carefully threaded her first needle, when she dropped the work in her lap.

"There, I haven't made the acquaintance of that child yet," she murmured. "Judging from the smell of cooking they have enough to eat. But something's amiss and I must get her to tell me what it is."

Chance favoured Emily, for that evening as she was starting forth with a load of bright-coloured bandboxes, she encountered her youthful neighbour. The girl was mounting the stairs languidly. The warm weather had sapped her vitality, already undermined by the air of the city. Emily nodded cheerily, and purposely let fall one of the boxes. Rachel turned.

"Here, I'll pick it up for you," she cried; then, after a moment, "Won't you let me help you with them? I can do it as well as not."

Together they emerged into the lighted street.

Though she looked about her with a kind of wistful wonderment, the sordidness of the scenes through which they passed, did not seem really to touch Rachel. Emily kept glancing at her and marked how her childish passionateness was mingled with a suggestive reticence. It was clear that some saddening experience had already come to her. "Poor lamb!" muttered Emily. When a man with a lurching gait passed too close to Rachel, Emily nudged him savagely with the boxes; and when they turned into Division Street, not one of the crew of strident women who solicit trade for the shops, dared to accost her young charge. Not a few of these poor creatures, recognizing Emily, ceased long enough in their chant of "Nice hats! pretty hats!" to give the popular trimmer "good-evening."

Joseph Stedenthal's "Emporium" boasted a millinery department, of which his wife had charge, and a general merchandise and furniture department over which he himself presided. Everything the push-carts furnished, he furnished a little cheaper--at least a penny cheaper; and this stock, as proclaimed by his advertisement, was "displayed to invite the refined mind."

Joseph Stedenthal, staunchly backed by his wife and daughter, expressed a profound scorn for the push-carts and for all who bought and sold therefrom, and never in the bosom of his family was it hinted that he himself, in a not too remote past, had prospered finely as the owner of a cart. Now he had a dignified air of superiority, and only women who did not go bare-headed, came to his shop, women who made some pretence to style. His was the "exclusive" shop of the street.

Mrs. Stedenthal was in her husband's part of the shop when Emily and Rachel entered the "millinery section." Emily seated herself on a high stool and motioned Rachel to do the same. Joseph Stedenthal's voice came to them from a distance. He was thundering with wrath.

"Shame upon you, talking mit the salesmen! Go you up-stairs, I tell you!"

A young girl with flaming cheeks flashed by the door and ascended the stairs.

"I ain't talking to him. I just asked him how much he sold it for," she screamed back.

"You were talking mit the salesmen! All times you talk mit them. And that I will not--I shall not have!"

His tirade was interrupted by the teasing voice of a woman.

"There, there, Joseph, give me one little kiss! You know how much you lofe me."

There was an explosion of wrath and a woman, rolling in flesh, shaking with laughter, entered the millinery shop. She nodded to Emily, still smiling; but in spite of the merriment that convulsed her, she examined the hats attentively and counted the money very carefully into the other's hand. One of the hats she declined to pay for until the trimming was changed.

"All times you make 'em too dark, Miss Short,--too dark, like a hearse," she remonstrated affably; "put a little more red on it."

When Rachel, following Emily, once more gained the street, her tender face was clouded.

Men, women, children; hats, socks, coats; candles, worn-out books; dirt, dirt, dirt! Men, men, men, bearded, unkempt, bedraggled, saddened, stupid, hungry! Under each coat, each gown was a living heart, struggling to keep its life. In every eye was a demand; in too few hands were the coppers to buy--not the pears, the grapes, the oranges that grow in Hester Street as in an orchard--but the great black loaves of bread, round, twisted, covered with a strange kind of seed. Coppers were lacking to buy milk for the starving, anemic baby, dirty-faced, struggling over the floor of the tenement; lacking for the shoes,--thirty pennies enough--for the shoes of little Johnnie that he might go to school: pennies lacking for the whiskey and the beer,--pennies that must be cheated for, thieved for, murdered for,--the all-necessary pennies for the drink.

Separated from the life about her, Rachel was yet united to it, she was a part of it, and she drew her breath sharply. But should she be less brave than these others? Emily, who divined what was passing within her, came to a decision.

"You've been a great help with the boxes, Miss Beckett," she said cheerfully when they reached the house and mounted the stairs; "now you come along in for a cup of tea."

To the lonely girl the little toy-maker's room wore a grateful air of comfort. Emily placed her in a rocking-chair where she could see the windows of the church; then she bustled about preparing the tea. She had just handed a cup to Rachel when there came a rap on the door; before Emily could open it a pretty light-haired girl stood on the threshold. She was dressed in a starched waist and a plaid skirt and the eyes under her smart hat showed red rims.

"It's all over," she cried, ignoring Rachel's presence. "I've got to leave my position, Miss Short. It's all along of Tom. The president called me into his office to-day and said right out, either I could stop letting his son come to see me, or I could leave. He gave me my choice. And you better believe I wasn't long choosing. I told him I'd see whom I pleased, and if Mr. Colby liked to come and call on me perfectly proper, like any other gentleman, I shouldn't stop him. So I got notice."

The girl blazed with defiance, but, in spite of her bravado, she was once more on the brink of tears. Her bosom rose and sank tumultuously, her full red lips gathered into a pout, her little hands, dimpled like an infant's, rested on her hips. She was a child too soon imprisoned in the rich envelope of womanhood. On every lineament of her pretty, pathetic, excited face potential weakness was stamped.

Emily scrutinized her for a moment in silence. Still without expressing an opinion, she replaced the kettle on the gas stove; then she looked at the new-comer gravely:

"Miss Beckett, this is Miss Holden. Have you anything else to turn to, Betty?" she asked.

The other shook her head. "I haven't, but I'm going to an agency to-morrow. I thought I'd just stop in and tell you. No, thanks, I won't wait for tea. Tom's coming this very evening," she added with an audacious smile.

When she had gone, Emily poured Rachel another cup of tea; then taking a chair directly in front of her, she looked at her shrewdly:

"Have you got any work?"

Rachel raised an anxious face. She had been seeking work for many months.

"Can you do anything special?" Emily demanded.

Rachel was dubious. "Unless it was to trim hats," she ventured.

But Emily shook her head. "There's no chance in that line," she said decidedly. "Did you ever paint any?"

"No, but I could do it. I've seen it done--that is, little things, like roses and lighthouses."

Emily gave the other's hand two or three approving taps. "To-morrow I'll bring you the materials from a place I know."

The next day she appeared with a supply of silk and paints and patterns. Rachel's work was to paint garlands of roses on candle-shades, but as she lacked even a rudimentary knowledge of colour and drawing, for a time the work went ill. Even Emily, when she compared Rachel's copy with the pattern, was less optimistic.

"It's a knack, though, they say," she encouraged her; "and one can learn to do most anything if one goes about it firmly enough."

A week later, Emily, in a state of repressed excitement, summoned Rachel to her room to see a mechanical toy she had devised. Rowing his tiny boat over the waters of a tub was a wee figure dressed in sailor costume.

In Emily's cheeks was a spot of crimson and in her eyes, which ordinarily resembled little dark berries, was a peculiar brightness.

As she looked at Emily the colour even left Rachel's face with the strength of her longing. When she returned to the garlands, the roses blossomed under her fingers. "So much for work!" she thought, and there arose in her a new and virile sensation of pride and joy.