Part 7

At the sight of Willie Harrison, the foremen grew more officious in manner and shouted their orders with redoubled vigor, as if the strength of their lungs contributed something toward the speed with which the great tower grew. But the workmen moved no more rapidly. On returning to the mounds of sand and fire brick, they even stopped altogether at times to stare calmly like curious animals at the visitors. One or two nodded in recognition of Irene’s “Good-day, Joe,” or “How are you, Boris?”--words which appeared to cloud somewhat Willie’s proud enjoyment of the spectacle. And every man who passed stared long and hard at Lily, standing wrapped in her furs, a little aloof, her eyes bright nevertheless with the wonder of the sight. Neither Lily nor Irene nor Willie spoke more than was necessary, for in order to be heard above the din they were forced to scream.

From the growing tower the little party turned west toward the sunset, walking slowly over a rough roadway made of cinders and slag. Once a cinder penetrated Lily’s frail shoe and she was forced to lean against Willie while she took it off and removed the offending particle. He supported her politely and turned away his face so that he should not offend her by seeing her shapely stockinged foot.

A hundred yards further on they came upon a dozen great vats covered by a single roof of sheet iron. From the vats rose a faint mist, veiling the black bodies of negroes who, shouting as they worked, dipped great plates of steel in and out. An acrid smell filled the air and penetrated the throats of the visitors as they passed rapidly by, causing Lily to take from her hand bag a handkerchief of the thinnest linen which she held against her nose until they were once more beyond the zone of the fumes.

“Those are the tempering vats,” said Willie. “Only negroes work here.”

“But why?” asked Irene.

“Because the other workers won’t,” he said. “The acid eats into their lungs. The negroes come from South Carolina and Georgia to do it. They are willing!”

As they walked the sound of pounding, which appeared to come from the great iron shed lying before them black against the sunset, grew louder and louder, steadily more distinct. In the fading twilight that now surrounded them the Mill yard became a fantastic world inhabited by monsters of iron and steel. Great cranes swung to and fro against the glow of the sky, lifting and tossing into piles huge plates of steel that fell with an unearthly slithering din when an invisible hand, concealed somewhere high among the black vertebræ of the monsters, released a lever. High in the air lights, red and green, or cold piercing blue-white, like eyes appeared one by one peering down at them wickedly. Beyond the cranes in the adjoining yard the black furnaces raised gigantic towers crowned by halos of red flame that rose and fell, palpitating as the molten iron deep in the bowels of the towers churned and boiled with a white infernal heat. Dancing malignant shadows assailed them on every side.

The three visitors, dwarfed by the monsters of steel, made their way across the slag and cinders, deafened by the unearthly noise.

“Yesterday,” shouted William Harrison in his thin voice, “there was a terrible accident yonder in the other yard. A workman fell into a vat of molten iron.”

Irene turned to her companion with horror stricken eyes. “I know,” she said. “It was an Italian named Rizzo. I heard of it this morning. I have been to see his wife and family. There are nine of them.”

William shouted again. “They found nothing of him. He became a part of the iron. He is part of a steel girder by now.”

Out of the evil, dancing shadows a man blackened by smoke leapt suddenly at them. “Look out!” he cried, and thrust them against the wall of a neighboring shed so roughly that Irene fell forward upon her knees. A great bundle of steel plates--tons of them--swung viciously out of the darkness, so close to the little party that the warmth of the metal touched their faces. It vanished instantly, drawn high into the air by some invisible hand. It was as if the monster had rebelled suddenly against its master, as if it sought to destroy Willie Harrison as it had destroyed the Italian named Rizzo.

Willie lost all power of speech, all thought of action. Irene, her face deathly white, leaned against the wall calling upon Lily to support her. It was Lily, strangely enough, who alone managed to control herself. She displayed no fear. On the contrary she was quiet, fiercely quiet as if a deadly anger had taken complete possession of her soul.

“Great God!” she exclaimed passionately. “This is a nightmare!” Willie fumbled helplessly by her side, rubbing the wrists of the younger sister until she raised her head and reassured them.

“I’m all right,” said Irene. “We can go on now.”

But Lily was for taking her home. “You’ve seen enough. I’m not going to have you faint on my hands.”

“I’m all right ... really,” repeated Irene, weakly. “I want to see the rest. I must see it. It’s necessary. It is part of my duty.”

“Don’t be a fool! Don’t try to make a martyr of yourself!”

But Irene insisted and Lily, who was neither frightened nor exhausted, yielded at last, weakened by her own curiosity. At the same moment her anger vanished; she became completely amiable once more.

Willie led them across another open space shut in on the far side by the great shed which had loomed before them throughout the tour. They passed through a low, narrow door and stood all at once in an enormous cavern glowing with red flames that poured from the mouths of a score of enormous ovens. From overhead, among the tangle of cranes and steelwork, showers of brilliant cold light descended from hooded globes. The cavern echoed and reechoed with the sound of a vast hammering, irregular and confused--the very hammering which heard in the House at Cypress Hill took on a throbbing, strongly-marked rhythm. On the floor of the cavern, dwarfed by its very immensity, men stripped to the waist, smooth, hard, glistening and streaked with sweat and smoke, toiled in the red glow from the ovens.

XXIV

Before one of these the little party halted while Lily, and Irene, who seemed recovered though still deathly pale, listened while Willie described the operation. Into a great box of steel and fire clay were placed block after block of black iron until the box, filled at length, was pushed forward, rolling easily on balls of iron, into the fiery mouth of the oven. After a little time, the box was drawn out again and the blocks of whitehot iron were carried aloft and deposited far off, beside the great machines which rolled and hammered them into smooth steel plates.

While they stood there, workmen of every size and build, of a dozen nationalities, toiled on ignoring them. Lily, it appeared, was not deeply interested in the explanation, for she stood a little apart, her gaze wandering over the interior of the cavern. The adventure--even the breathless escape of a moment before--left her calm and indifferent. In her gaze there was a characteristic indolence, an air of absent-mindedness, which frequently seized her in moments of this sort. Nothing of her apparel was disarranged. Her hat, her furs, her pearls, her suit, were in perfect order. The flying dust and soot had gathered in her long eyelashes, but this only gave her a slightly theatrical appearance; it darkened the lashes and made her violet eyes sparkle the more. Her gaze appraised the bodies of the workmen who stood idle for the moment waiting to withdraw the hot iron from the ovens. They leaned upon the tools of their toil, some on shovels, some on long bars of iron, great chests heaving with the effort of their exertions.

Among them there was one who stood taller than the others, a giant with yellow hair and a massive face with features which were like the features of a heroic bust not yet completed by the sculptor. There was in them something of the unformed quality of youth. The man was young; he could not have been much over twenty, and the muscles of his arm and back stood out beneath his fair skin like the muscles on one of Rodin’s bronze men in the Paris salons. Once he raised a great hand to wipe the sweat from his face and, discovering that she was interested in him, he looked at her sharply for an instant and then sullenly turned away leaning on a bar of iron with his powerful back turned to her.

She was still watching the man when Willie approached her and touched her arm gently. It seemed that she was unable to look away from the workman.

“Come over here and sit down,” said Willie, leading her to a bench that stood a little distance away in the shadow of the foreman’s shack. “Irene wants to speak to one of the men.”

Lily followed him and sat down. Her sister, looking pale and tired, began a conversation with a swarthy little Pole who stood near the oven. The man greeted her with a sullen frown and his remarks, inaudible to Lily above the din, appeared to be ill-tempered and sulky as if he were ashamed before his fellows to be seen talking with this lady who came to the cavern accompanied by the master.

“Do you find it a wonderful sight?” began Willie.

Lily smiled. “I’ve seen nothing like it in all my life. I never knew what lay just beyond the garden hedge.”

“It will be bigger than this next year and even bigger the year after.” His eyes brightened and for a moment the droop of his shoulders vanished. “We want some day to see the Mills covering all the Flats. The new furnaces are the beginning of the expansion. We hope to grow bigger and bigger.” He raised his arms in a sudden gesture. “There’s no limit, you know.”

But Lily’s gaze was wandering again back and forth, up and down, round and round the vast cavern as if she were not the least interested in Willie’s excitement over bigness. Irene had left the swarthy little man and was talking now to the tow-headed young giant who leaned upon the iron bar. His face was sulky, though it was plain that he was curiously polite to Irene, who seemed by his side less a woman of flesh and blood than one of paper, so frail and wan was her face. He smiled sometimes in a shy, withdrawn fashion.

Politely Lily turned to her companion. “But you are growing richer and richer, Willie. Before long you will own the Town.”

He regarded her shyly, his thin lips twisted into a hopeful smile. Once more he began to fumble with the ruby clasp of his watch chain.

“I could give you everything in the world,” he said suddenly, as though the words caused him a great effort. “I could give you everything if you would marry me.” He paused and bent over Lily who sat silently turning the rings on her fingers round and round. “Would you, Lily?”

“No.” The answer came gently as if she were loath to hurt him by her refusal, yet it was firm and certain.

Willie bent lower. “I would see that Mother had nothing to do with us.” Lily, staring before her, continued to turn the rings round and round. The young workman with Irene had folded his muscular arms and placed his iron bar against the wall of the oven. He stood rocking back and forth with the easy, balanced grace of great strength. When he smiled, he showed a fine expanse of firm white teeth. Irene laughed in her vague half-hearted way. Lily kept watching ... watching....

“You could even spend half the time in Europe if you liked,” continued Willie. “You could do as you pleased. I would not interfere.” He placed one hand gently on her shoulder to claim her attention, so plainly wandering toward the blond and powerful workman. She seemed not even to be conscious of his hand.

The workmen had begun to move toward the oven now, the young fellow with the others. He carried his iron bar as if it were a straw. He moved with a sort of angry defiance, his head thrown back upon his powerful shoulders. He it was who shouted the orders when the great coffin full of hot iron was drawn forth. He it was who thrust his bar beneath the mass of steel and lifting upward shoved it slowly and easily forward on the balls of iron. His great back bent and the muscles rippled beneath the skin as if they too were made of some marvelous flexible steel.

Willie Harrison took Lily’s hand and put an end to the turning of the rings. “Tell me, Lily,” he said softly, “is it no use? Maybe next year or the year after?”

All at once as though she had heard him for the first time, she turned and placed the other hand gently on top of his, looking up at the same time from beneath the wide brim of her hat. “It’s no use, Willie. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” She laughed softly. “But you were wrong in your method. You shouldn’t have given me the promise about Europe. When I marry, it will be a man who will not let me leave his side.”

That was all she said to him. The rest, whatever it was, remained hidden, deep within her, behind the dark eyes which found so little interest in Willie Harrison, which saw nothing but the blond giant who moved with such uncanny strength, with such incredibly easy grace about his heroic task. Perhaps if Willie had guessed, even for a moment, what was passing in her mind, he would have blushed, for Willie was, so people said, a nice young man who had led a respectable life. Such things were no doubt incomprehensible to him. Perhaps if she had spoken the truth, if she had bothered herself to explain, she would have said, “I could not marry you. I could give myself to no man but one who caught my fancy, in whom there was strength and the grace of a fine animal. Beauty, Willie, counts for much ... far more than you guess, living always as you do in the midst of all this savage uproar. I am rich. Your money means nothing. And your power! It is not worth the snap of a finger to me.... Ah, if you had a face like that workman ... a face ... a real face, and a body ... a real body like his, then you might ask with hope. It is hopeless, Willie. You do not interest me, though I am not eager to hurt you just the same.”

But she said none of these things, for people seldom say them. On the contrary, she was content to put him off with a bare denial. It is doubtful whether such thoughts even occurred to her, however deep they may have been rooted in her soul; for she was certainly not a woman given to reflection. To any one, it was apparent that she did not examine her motives. She was content, no doubt, to be beautiful, to live where there was beauty, to surround herself with beautiful, luxurious things.

She was prevented from saying anything further by the arrival of Irene who had abandoned her workmen to rejoin Willie and her sister. Willie, crimson and still trembling a little with the effort of his proposal, suggested that they leave. It was already a quarter to six. The workmen vanished suddenly into a little shed. Their shift was finished. They were free now to return to their squalid homes, to visit the corner saloon or the dismal, shuttered brothels of Franklin street, free to go where they would in the desolate area of the Flats for twelve brief hours of life.

XXV

The three visitors made their way back to the office of the superintendent across a mill yard now bright with the cold glare of a hundred arc lights. On the way, Lily turned suddenly to her sister and asked, “Who was the man you were talking to ... the tall one with the yellow hair?”

Irene, moving beside her, cast a sudden glance at her sister and the old terrified look entered her pale eyes. “His name is Krylenko,” she replied in a voice grown subdued and cold. “He is the one who brought me home from Welcome House the other night. He is a bright boy. I’ve taught him English.”

Willie, who had been walking behind them, quickened his pace and came abreast. “Krylenko?” he said. “Krylenko? Why, that’s the fellow who’s been making trouble. They’ve been trying to introduce the union.” He addressed Irene. “Your Welcome House is making trouble I’m afraid, Irene. There’s no good comes of educating these men. They don’t want it.”

Lily laughed. “Come now,” she said, “that’s what your mother says, isn’t it? I can hear her saying it.”

Willie failed to answer her, but a sheepish, embarrassed look took possession of his sallow face, as if the powerful figure of his mother had joined them unawares. And Irene, walking close to Lily, whispered to her sister, “You shouldn’t have said that. It was cruel of you.”

At the office of the superintendent they found Willie’s victoria waiting, the horses covered with blankets against the swift, piercing chill of the winter night. The coachman shivered on the box. The three of them climbed in and Willie bade the man drive to Halsted street where he would get down, leaving the carriage to the ladies. When Lily protested, he answered, “But I want to walk up the hill to the Town. I need the exercise.”

They drove along between two streams of mill workers, one entering, one leaving the Mill yards with the change of shifts. The laborers moved in two columns, automatons without identity save that one column was clean and the men held their heads high and the other was black with oil and soot and the heads were bent with a terrible exhaustion. It was a dark narrow street bordered on one side by the tall blank walls of warehouses and on the other by the Mill yard. The smells of the Black Fork, coated with oil and refuse, corrupted the damp air. On the Mill side a high fence made of barbed wire strung from steel posts was in the process of construction. To this Willie called their attention with pride. “You see,” he said, “we are making the Mills impregnable. If the unions come in there will be trouble. It was my idea ... the fence. A stitch in time saves nine.” And he chuckled softly in the darkness.

At Halsted street Willie got down and, removing his hat, bade the sisters a dry and polite good-night. But before the carriage drove on, Lily called out to him, “You’re coming to the ball to-night, aren’t you? Remember, there’s a quadrille and you can’t leave us flat at the last minute.”

“I’m coming,” said William. “Certainly I’m coming.” And he turned away, setting off in the opposite direction toward the Hill and Mrs. Julis Harrison who sat in the ugly house of red sandstone awaiting news of the proposal. He walked neatly, placing his small feet firmly, his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed thoughtfully. The umbrella, held in the crook of his arm, swung mournfully as he walked. His shoulders drooped wearily. He had shown Lily all his wealth, all his power; and she treated it as if it were nothing at all. In the brownstone house, Mrs. Harrison sat waiting.

The carriage drove up Halsted street past the corner saloon now thronged with mill workers, toward the house at Cypress Hill. In a tenement opposite the wrought iron gates a nostalgic Russian sat on the front stoop squeezing mournfully at a concertina which filled the winter evening with the somber music of the steppes.

Irene, leaning back pale and exhausted on the mulberry cushions, said, “Why did you ask Willie whether he was coming? You know he never misses anything if he can help it.”

“I only wanted to make him feel welcome,” her sister replied absently. “Since this affair over the taxes, Mama and Mrs. Harrison haven’t been very thick.... I feel sorry for Willie. He doesn’t know what it’s all about.”

XXVI

Inside the old house, Irene went to her room, and Lily, instead of seeking out her mother for their usual chat, went quietly upstairs. She ignored even the preparations for the ball. After she had taken off her clothes, she lay for a long time in a hot bath scented with verbena salts, drowsing languidly until the hot water had eliminated every soiling trace of the Mills. Returning to her room, she sat clad in a thin satin wrapper for a long time before the mirror of her dressing table, polishing her pink nails, examining the tiny lines at the corners of her lips,--lines which came from smiling too much. Then she powdered herself all over with scented powder and did up her red hair, fastening it with the pin set in brilliants. And presently, the depression having passed away, she began to sing in her low warm voice, _Je sais que vous êtes gentil_. It was a full-throated joyous song. At times her voice rose in a crescendo that penetrated the walls of the room where Irene lay in the darkness on her narrow white bed.

As she dressed for dinner, she continued to sing one song after another, most of them piquant and racy, songs of the French cuirassiers. She sang _Sur la route á Montauban_, _Toute la longe de la Tamise_ and _Auprés de ma Blonde_. The dressing was the languid performance which required an hour or more, for she took the most minute care with every detail. The chemise must not have a wrinkle; the peacock blue stockings must fit as if they were the skin itself; the corsets were drawn until the result, examined for many minutes before the glass, was absolutely perfect. At the last she put on a gown of peacock blue satin with a long train that swept about her ankles, and rang for one of the black servants to hook it. Before the slavey arrived, Lily had discovered a wrinkle beneath the satin and began all over again the process of dressing, until at the end of the second attempt she stood before the mirror _soignée_ and perfect in the soft glow from the open fire by her bed. The tight-fitting gown of peacock blue followed the curves of her figure flawlessly. Then she hung about her fine throat a chain of diamonds set in a necklace of laurel leaves wrought delicately in silver, lighted a cigarette and stood regarding her tall figure by the light of the lamps. Among the old furniture of the dark room she stood superbly dressed, elegant, _mondaine_. A touch to the hair that covered her small head like a burnished helmet, and she smiled with satisfaction, the face in the mirror smiling back with a curious look of elation, of abundant health, of joy; yet there was in it something too of secrecy and triumph.

XXVII

Irene’s room was less vast and shadowy. In place of brocade the windows were curtained with white stuff. In one corner stood a _prie dieu_ before a little paint and plaster image of the Virgin and child--all blue and pink and gilt,--which Lily had sent her sister from Florence. The bed was small and narrow and the white table standing near by was covered with books and papers neatly arranged--the paraphernalia of Irene’s work among the people of the Flats. Here Lily discovered her when she came in, flushed and radiant, to sit on the edge of the white bed and talk with her sister until the guests arrived.

She found Irene at the white table, the neat piles of books and papers pushed aside to make room for a white tray laden with food, for Irene was having dinner alone in her room. There had been no question of her coming to the ball. “I couldn’t bear it,” she told her mother. “I would be miserable. I don’t want to come. Why do you want to torture me?” She had fallen, of late, into using the most exaggerating words, out of all proportion with truth or dignity. But Julia Shane, accustomed more and more to yielding to the whims of her younger daughter, permitted her to remain away.

“Have you anything to read?” began Lily. “Because if you haven’t, my small trunk is full of books.”

“I’ve plenty, and besides, I’m going out.”

“Where?” asked Lily, suddenly curious.

“To Welcome House. It’s my night to teach. I should think you would have remembered that.” Her voice sounded weary and strained. She turned to her sister with a look of disapproval, so intense that it seemed to accuse Lily of some unspeakable sin.

“I didn’t remember,” Lily replied. “How should I?” And then rising she went to her sister’s side and put one arm about her shoulders, a gesture of affection which appeared to inspire a sudden abhorrence in the woman, for she shivered suddenly at the touch of the warm bare arm. “You shouldn’t go out to-night. You are too tired!”