Part 5

To cut the long story short, the lady was ordered out of the White House, and when she kept her seat she was seized upon by three white men and one negro and forcibly dragged out. Her silk dress was torn, her ornaments scattered, her flesh bruised. The white men pulled her by the arms and shoulders, the negro held her by the legs; she was dragged through the mud to a cab, thrown into it like a common criminal and driven off to a criminal’s resort, the House of Detention.

A more shocking outrage has never been committed at the White House. It was indecent, it was brutal, it was despotic, it was violative of all democratic usage and of every human consideration. The poor lady was so terribly frightened, so rudely handled, subjected to such a public and unprovoked humiliation that she was thrown into a fever and confined to her bed for many days.

No—I have already stated that it was not _your_ sister, or _your_ mother or _your_ wife whose legs were held by Roosevelt’s nigger while his three white ruffians dragged her, screaming, through the mud, and flung her, bruised and frantic, into a cab to be driven off as criminals are driven.

_But it might have been._

And when you consider the incident from that point of view you will admire the courage with which Senator Ben Tillman denounced the outrage, while you regard with utter scorn the cowardly attitude of the great majority in both branches of Congress who were afraid to say what they thought.

Mr. Roosevelt was not originally responsible for the outrage, but he chose to become so by his refusal to express any regrets at the occurrence, and by his failure to rebuke the brutes who were guilty of such needless violence to a respectable visitor at a public office which belonged as much to her as to anybody else on this earth.

“No, we ain’t a’needin’ any more hands right now,” said Polly Ann in a brisk, business-like voice that discouraged prolixity on the part of the loitering applicant whom Polly knew to be unreliable from a working point of view, for he bore all the outward marks of shiftlessness which her eyes had been trained to discern at one comprehensive glance.

“I reckon I’d as well wait an’ see the boss,” was the hopeful answer.

“It won’t do no good to wait, ’cause he ain’t got no work for you,” Polly reiterated with dry patience. “’Sides, the boss is too busy to waste any time outside o’ business.”

“Oh, well, then I’ll call again,” the applicant observed amiably. He shuffled out, hands in pockets, and Polly Ann eased back in her chair behind the railed-in desk that overlooked the long rows of pallid, expressionless faces bowed over the spindles that whirred monotonously through the dull roar of machinery. Polly was used to the noise; its absence, during the brief Sunday rests, made her nerves ache dimly as if their rightful functions had been forcibly suspended, for she had grown up within the mills. Her mother had been first to succumb to the insidious fever which sooner or later fastens upon the unsound, poorly nourished slaves of the great White Despot known to the world as the Southern Cotton Mill industry. Polly’s young sister had followed their mother to her quiet rest within a year, after which the overburdened, inadequate father “aimed” to return to the upland, clayey farm which he had so hopefully abandoned two years before; but before he could save enough money to cover his debts he added to his burdens by marrying a factory widow with four pallid, old-young children. Polly lived with them until they moved to Atlanta in hopes of financial betterment, then she assumed the brunt of home-making for her two undisciplined brothers. Meanwhile, her industry had increased as her thin, deft fingers became more and more proficient. Her interest in her fellow-slaves broadened into a mute, protective supervision which the keen-witted boss recognized and rewarded by placing her in a position of trust which, humble though it was, relieved her of the bitter grind of mill labor.

Spring was in the air. It looked in at the dim windows and drifted through the open doors where the sunlight drenched the worn, splintered floor with fine gold. Polly recognized something familiar—the sweet, far-reaching scent of wild azaleas that grew thick and tall along the distant Chattahoochee hill; she closed her eyes and let her fancy drift back to the green pastures and still waters of the old haunts of her heart’s desire, until her revery was shattered by a human appeal.

It was a sunny young voice that recalled Polly to tangible things, and it belonged to a very young girl of the “cracker” type, with a face of spring-like innocence, who introduced herself as “Mis’ Lomux, from Lumpkin,” with a smile of such irresistible sweetness that Polly’s thin, sallow face lighted with answering pleasure.

“You-all’s got a job fer me this time, ain’t you?” the stranger asked anxiously. “I was here last Chuesday, an’ the boss said he ’lowed he’d have a place fer me by today. I aimed to git here right soon this mornin’ so’s to start work on time, but the chillun give out in spite of all I could do, an’ I was jest obleeged to stop along with ’em at a house where the folks promised to keep ’em till they got rested.”

“The boss is right busy now,” said Polly in very kind voice. “I don’t much believe he needs any more hands, ’cause he tuk in a new batch Saturday, but you can wait an’ see what he says. Set down an’ rest yourself till he comes along.”

“He surely will give me _somethin’_ to do,” Mis’ Lomux said hopefully, “’cause he done promised he would.”

“Well, mebbe he will, then. Did you ever work in a mill afore?”

“No’m, but I can learn real fast. They say ’tain’t hard.”

“No, ’tain’t to say hard, but it’s turrible wearin’,” Polly answered. “You don’t look real stout, nuther.”

“That’s one reason why I come,” Mis’ Lomux admitted frankly, “though I’m stout a’ plenty to putter all day without restin’ any bit. Last fall I was tuk with a spell o’ fever an’ sence then I jest ain’t been able to do like I uster. Plowin’ an’ sech-like beats me plum out in no time. I tried my best to take Tobe’s place after he left, but I jest couldn’t make out no way.”

“Who’s Tobe?” Polly interrupted with deepening interest. “Your brother?”

“No’m, he’s my husband.”

“Your husband!” Polly echoed surprisedly. “You look dreadful young to be married. How long _have_ you been married?”

“Be ten weeks on Sunday,” the bride replied unenthusiastically.

“An’ he’s left you a’ready!”

“Yes’m.” Mis’ Lomux nodded her blond head solemnly. “He done broke his promise an’—an’ I don’t aim to live with him no more, ever.”

Polly Ann searched the flower-like face with something akin to pity. “You ain’t a’ carin,’ are you?” she asked in a whisper.

Mis’ Lomux’s denial was emphatic, but unconvincing. “I ’lowed all husbands was like pa,” she admitted sadly, “an’ that’s why I married Tobe so quick after he axed me. You see when pa died that throwed me an’ the chillun onto the county, with me not able to do fer ’em like I would a’ been if I hadn’t had the fever. What to do I didn’t know ’cause the chillun couldn’t work by their selves to do any good. When Tobe Lomux sent me word that he’d tak the hull lot of us if I’d have him, I was glad enough to marry him on that account, no matter what come. Not that I got ary thing agin Tobe—no one ain’t fer that matter,” she interrupted herself to say extenuatingly, “for he’s a real steady, honest person. Tobe’s high-tempered, though. Fust thing I knowed his folks come meddlin’ round talkin’ about him havin’ to do fer a’ passel o’ lazy chilluns an’ sech-like an’ it warn’t no time fore Tobe had put the chilluns to work like a gang o’ niggers. Me! Why, I jest couldn’t stand that not fer a minit! I up an’ told Tobe to hire his own niggers or quit us, ’cause them pore chillun warn’t goin’ to be nobody’s slaves. An’ he went”; she finished, growing very white and cold.

“He warn’t much or he wouldn’t a’ acted that way,” was Polly’s stern verdict.

The bride winced. “I aim to show ’im we can git on without him an’ his uppidy folks,” she retorted, with a flame of delicate color. “That’s why I come here, jest to make a livin’ fer us all till I can stouten up agin crap-making time next spring. By that time the two little boys’ll be big enough to help with the plowin’. Boys grows a heap in a year.”

“Did you say you brung the chillun along with you?” Polly wanted to know.

“Yes’m, we all set out together yesterday mornin’. Tain’t to say so dreadful fur—jest eighteen miles—but they ain’t used to travelin’ steady, an’ they give plum out early this mornin’, so I left ’em along with some folks while I come on ahead to git work.”

Polly Ann’s interest was of a keenly personal order, which admitted of vast concessions in favor of the second applicant for the already crowded ranks of mill laborers. She had turned the first comer away almost at sight, but Mis’ Lomux was different—her plaintive needs appealed to Polly Ann’s warm, starved little heart in a fashion quite unknown to her since her mother and sister had passed beyond her faithful care.

“Where’s your things?” Polly asked after a museful pause.

“We’re totin’ all we’ve got,” Mis’ Lomux answered frankly. “Pa didn’t have much of anythin’ when he died an’ I sold what little there was to git the chillun fit close to come down here in.”

Polly rose and stepped from the little platform with an air of decision. “You set there while I go hunt the boss,” said she.

So Mis’ Lomux waited hopefully until Polly returned from the fore part of the great building to say that there would be a vacancy in the spindle department the very next day. “You’d better fetch the chillun right along,” Polly advised, “’cause you’ll have to be ready to go to work at seven o’clock tomorrow mornin’. There’s a’ empty shack at the end of Factory Row that you can rent real cheap. I’ll see about rentin’ it while you’re gone.”

Polly saw them pass the mills late that afternoon, a dusty, tired band of wayfarers, each carrying small, queer-shaped bundles which contained the sum of their meager possessions, and felt herself glow with satisfaction as she thought of what she had contrived to put into the rough little shack, in the way of household furnishings. She went over after work hours to assist with the setting to rights.

By the end of the first week Mis’ Lomux and the two little boys, who were to help with the next year’s crop, had obtained steady employment in the mills. Their bright faces gleamed out among the listless, pallid, faded faces of the “old hands,” with primrose freshness that attracted Polly Ann’s eyes many, many times during the long noisy day; but soon their morning glow waned and the difference grew less and less marked except for Mis’ Lomux’s illuminating smile which never dimmed or wavered, early or late, while the little loved faces turned towards hers. The delicately rounded girlish figure grew thin, and Mis’ Lomux drooped more and more just as Polly’s mother and sister had drooped before doom overtook them, yet never a word escaped her patient lips. There was, indeed, no time for self-pity, for all her thoughts were centered upon the children whom she sheltered from every harsh word and look with a maternal zeal that never failed of its loving purpose, in spite of the children’s wilfulness apparent to every one but Mary Lomux. Polly realized shrewdly how it had been with Tobe, whose judgment had lacked the softening influence of love, for although the children were of naturally lovable disposition, Mary had undeniably spoiled them from a man’s view-point.

Every Sunday morning Mis’ Lomux piloted her little flock away to the hills which seemed to beckon her far beyond the noise and smoke and grime of Factory Row to the place of her heart’s desire. Polly Ann often accompanied her friend because the occasion afforded opportunity to add to the meager lunches in a manner that lapped over several succeeding meals. On such occasions the girls talked continually of the tranquil, humble joys of home, while the children lay in the grass, too tired to play or chatter. Mary comforted their weariness with a promise of a speedy reprieve.

“We’re goin’ home in the spring, sure,” she would say with illuminating smiles, “an’ when you’ve been there a day or two you’ll plum fergit about ever feelin’ puny or tired. Jest keep lookin’ t’wards home.”

But the event seemed to recede. Summer’s golden glory paled before autumn’s riper loveliness, and the air grew pungent with harvest fragrance that made Mis’ Lomux’s heart sick with longing. Polly noticed that her friend was losing ground daily, but there was no help for her at the mills, and Mary would not hear of returning to the fallow farm before the growing season began.

“I jest couldn’t bear to let the chilluns go to the poor farm,” she said yearningly. “Folks’d always have that to throw up to ’em when they growed up. An’ there’s them Lomuxes! They’d talk wuss’n anybody.”

During the late autumn one of the boys met with an accident which kept Mary from work for several days and drained her slender savings to the last nickle. Then winter came with its chill continuous rains, when the mills, always dull and somber, grew doubly gloomy. Doors and windows were kept closed and the prisoned air grew more and more poisonous as the workers exhaled it over and over. Mary protected her boys as well as possible. She had made herself so well-liked by her fellow-workers that no one interfered with her many little devices for the children’s comfort and no one manifested the ill-will which is so generally exhibited towards favorites; for it was impossible to be harsh toward the brave little woman who fought so desperately against losing odds. Toward spring Mis’ Lomux was obliged occasionally to take a day off on account of blinding headaches.

“’Tain’t nothin’ at all,” she invariably protested, in answer to Polly’s anxious questions. “Folks that’s had the fever ginerally feel this way every year about the same time. When the weather gits warmer I’ll be stout as ever.”

But Polly knew better. She had seen that look of deadly weariness too often to be deceived.

“Ain’t you never heard from Tobe?” Polly asked one evening when she sat on the steps of Mary’s shack watching her friend’s strenuous attempts to hold herself erect while she patched a pair of faded little trousers.

Mary bowed her head very low as she answered, “No.”

“Where’s he at?”

“In Atlanta, workin’ in the engine shops, an’ doin’ well; his maw told Billy Sanders a while back.”

“An’ he knows you’re down here slavin’ like a nigger for all them chillun?”

“I reckon he does, ’cause his maw writes to him.”

“Then all I’ve got to say is that he must be a turrible no-count feller to let his wife—”

“’Tain’t his fault,” Mary flung back, lifting her deathly pale face for a moment. “It’s them Lomuxes that made all the trouble to start with. If his maw hadn’t found fault with the chillun he never would a’ done what he did.”

“If you knowed that, what made you send him off?” Polly wanted to know.

“I jest couldn’t stand the thought of Tom bein’ teched by nobody. None of them chillun ever had a hand laid onto ’em afore, an’ I couldn’t bear that they should—ever!”

“Well, ’tain’t none of my business, of course,” said Polly drily, “but I _will_ say that if Tobe was half a man even, he’d do his part now that you need him so bad.”

“He couldn’t—not after what I said,” Mary protested mournfully. “I told him never to come back no more till Kingdom-come, an’ he said he wouldn’t—not if I begged him on my dyin’ bed!”

“My land, what a mean sperited feller he must be!” Polly exclaimed contemptuously. “I wonder the Lord didn’t punish him for sech talk. In my opinion, Mary, you’re a heap better off without him than you’d be with him.”

Mary’s head drooped very low over her work, but in spite of that Polly saw the tears that fell on the little patched garments. There was a long silence during which Polly hated Tobe Lomux as heartily as she pitied Mary. Then she delivered herself of a bit of advice that had burned within her heart for weeks. “If I was you, Mary, I’d give up an’ let the county take care of me—jest for a little spell. You ain’t able to work another day, an’ to tell you the truth I don’t believe you’ll be let work much longer, ’cause the boss has noticed how bad you look. I’ll git the circuit-rider to speak a good word for you at the poor farm so’s they’ll give you a little shack off to yourself.”

“Oh Polly, I couldn’t go—I couldn’t!” Mary cried chokingly. “For myself it wouldn’t matter _what_ come, but the chillun—they would always be looked down on fer livin’ at a poor farm.”

“What’s to become of ’em if anything bad was to happen to you, I’d like to know?” asked practical Polly. “You’ve done for ’em an’ humored ’em till they’re sorter spoiled. They couldn’t git along with strangers. The poor farm’s the only thing, Mary. I don’t doubt but that you’ll be stout enough by next spring to go back to the farm an’ make a crop, but you won’t if you stay here.”

“I’ll rest up a bit,” said Mary dejectedly. “We can git along on what the boys makes for a few days an’ by that time I’ll be stout enough to go back to work.”

But in that surmise Mary was mistaken. On the fourth day when she resumed her place at the reels, outraged nature succumbed completely to the long strain, and she dropped in a dead faint among her whirling spools. That happened the day before Polly was to go on a long advertised excursion to Atlanta, and, although Mary was quite ill on the eventful morning, Polly did not offer to stay with her friend but hurried through her gala preparations in great excitement. She looked thinner and paler and smaller than ever in her unaccustomed finery.

“I’ll fetch you a little somethin’ from Atlanta, if I git time to go to the stores,” Polly promised, while she waited on Mary’s porch for the hack to gather up its fluttering load along Factory Row.

Polly left the crowded train at Atlanta and hurried off in search of the engine shops. She had little difficulty in locating Tobe Lomux, whose industry had made him quite a favorite there. He was a sturdy, well-built young fellow with a good, honest face and a firm undimpled chin that bespoke a will of iron. He looked at little frail, anxious Polly as if she were something too insignificant for serious notice.

“I’m a friend of Mary Lomux’s,” Polly began with a furiously beating heart, for her hopes had dwindled discouragingly during her long, worried ride, “an’ I’ve come to find out if you aim to leave her die without doin’ a thing to prevent it.”

“Mary—die!” Tobe’s head went back with a wrench that sent the blood bounding to his face. “What’s that about Mary?” he asked gruffly.

“Don’t you know that she’s killin’ herself at the cotton mills down at Gainesville, workin’ for them chillun? Ain’t nobody wrote an’ told you that, Tobe Lomux?”

Tobe ignored the question. “Did Mary send you to me?” he asked in a voice that Polly misinterpreted.

“No, she didn’t. She’s got too much grit for that even if she is too sick to hold up her head. I didn’t have much hopes of gittin’ any satisfaction from you, judgin’ by the way you’ve acted, but I thought I’d try jest onct. What I want to know, Tobe Lomux, is if you’re goin’ to let her die—or not?”

“Me! Why, good Lord, what can I do? If Mary wanted me I’d—I’d—Well, she don’t, that’s all.”

“Mary didn’t send for you,” Polly broke in eagerly, “but if you’re any sort of a man you’ll drop that spike an’ take the fust train to Gainesville. That’s what you’d do, if——”

The tool dropped from Tobe’s grimy hand, and his head and shoulders went back defiantly. “I’m goin’ right back along with you,” he said, jerking off his leather apron and shaking down his sleeves. “Wait till I draw my pay. We can talk on the train.”

Polly remembered that homeward ride to her dying day, for it was the first time in her defrauded life that she had been brought face to face with a great passion whose very crudeness added to its strength. Tobe had held himself with grim, fearful ardor to his labor, while his stubborn aching heart yearned for one word of reconciliation from Mary. His mother had written strange, slighting things relating to the blighting factory life that Tobe abhorred, and he had waited and Mary had suffered in silence. Before the train reached Gainesville Tobe’s busy brain had evolved a plan which he confided to Polly while they stood on the station platform waiting for the country stage which was to take Tobe up to Lumpkin that very afternoon.

“I’ll be down by noon tomorrer, sure,” was his parting promise.

Polly paid a brief visit to Mary’s shack when she reached Factory Row, fearing to stay long lest her secret should escape her eager lips. She was tired, she explained so tersely that the sick girl felt hurt and neglected. The following day Polly appeared at sunrise.

“I don’t aim to work today,” she announced, “so I may as well set with you, Mary. You jest lemme fix you up on the porch where you can git the air while I red up the house a bit.”

Mary was too listless to object, so she dragged herself out to the narrow porch where the warm spring sunshine drenched the rough boards with a golden flood, upon which the blossomed torches of the cypress vine made small, dancing shadows.

“Ain’t it a turrible pretty day!” Polly exclaimed glowingly. “Makes me think of way up in Lumpkin, don’t it you?”

“I jest can’t bear to think of it at all!” Mary wailed, with a yearning glance toward the far, golden hills.

“I’ll bet the honeysuckles is jest thick all over them river hills by now. Don’t you rec’lect how blue the bottoms looked along about this time when the dog vi’lets is out full?”

“It’s time to lay off the cotton fields,” Mary murmured. “Polly, if anything should happen to me, you’ll see that the chillun keeps together at the poor farm, won’t you?”

“Shucks, you’re goin’ to get well—that’s what’s goin’ to happen to you, Mary Lomux. Now lie still and rest while I straighten up the house.”

Mary lay quite still for a long, long while, looking toward home with a great wistfulness in her weary eyes and a dark fear in her heart. By and by a wagon turned across the bare, sun-baked flat that separated Mary’s shack from the factory grounds and stopped at the head of Factory Row. It was spotlessly new, even to the snowy bow-sheet, and the household furnishings visible through the shirred opening were new, also. Mary saw the driver spring down lightly and throw the reins over a broken gatepost. Then Tobe stumbled up the steps, dully ashamed of his unconquerable emotion, for he came of a race who count it unmanly to betray any outward sign of feeling. But it was impossible for him to speak calmly.

“I didn’t have no idee you was sick, Mary,” said he shakingly. “I’m real glad Polly come an’ told me about it. I thought I’d drop in an’ see how you’s comin’ on, jest to be neighborly,” he added in a voice that seemed to come from a great distance.

Mary struggled up with a smothered cry, but fell back weakly among the pillows and cried instead of answering, while Polly stared helpless from the doorway and Tobe wrestled with his heart’s desire to take the poor little woman in his arms and comfort her in love’s own way. And while they waited a thin little voice came from the pillows.