CHAPTER FOUR

Thus began some weeks of existence, almost without substance or foundation, like the existence of a haunting wraith. In the morning it was necessary to leave the studio bearing no traces of her presence. It was not safe to return before evening. Then Anita, like a ghost, would look wistfully at the marks impressed on it by less immaterial lives, teacups on the desk, the curtains drawn, the wicker chairs grouped cosily about the heater, a box of candy, a few flowers. She felt that she had sunk far beyond the reach of this other region, where people bought flowers and chatted over teacups, and when, now and then, a ray of kindliness struck from this world into her nether sphere, she was disproportionately touched. Sometimes Grace left word for her to see such and such a person who might "know of something." Once she found a note from Diana Reece urging her to eat breakfast at the Reece table as often as she cared.

It was generous of Diana Reece, but it never could have occurred to Anita to accept. She had discovered a cafeteria where, for exactly twenty-two cents, she ate baked beans, cornbread, and coffee every day at eleven o'clock. This served both as breakfast and lunch. Dinner at the same cafeteria cost no more than fifty cents if she chose sparingly. She got to know very well the park, the museums, the reading rooms and stone benches of the Public Library, and all the streets within walking distance.

Although she followed Grace's suggestions, nothing ever came of them and Anita, in spite of her predicament, was secretly glad. Grace counseled her to do as she, Grace, would have done--to take, if one had to, any job, no matter how unsatisfactory temperamentally, and unflinchingly mold either herself or the job into some sort of suitability, meanwhile keeping an eye on other mouseholes, or, as Grace put it, "waiting for something--to turn up." To Grace everyone was playing cat; you had to in order to get along and of course one wished to get along. There was no choice. Anita, however, knew that for her there were distinct limits to the amount of endurance she would invest in any undertaking; inevitably there would confront her the question as to whether the undertaking was worth so much irritation and so much effort to her; if the answer were negative, off she would go, not even stopping to choose a sensible exit.

In the end, Grace did not succeed in understanding; she succeeded only in being patient with what she considered a stubborn whim. Anita sometimes wished that she had not accepted Grace's aid in the first place, and often she wished with all her heart that Grace had not permitted her a glimpse of Grace's world. In spite of her suspicions, it seemed to be the only world in which she could and should strive for a foothold, a successful world. Moreover, it was enticingly open to her; it was Grace's helpful determination to keep it open for her, not to permit Anita to sink into the obscurity of, say, a factory hand or a waitress, as Anita might otherwise have chosen to do. Anita felt grateful; she felt the conscientious person's obligation to do her best to live up to what was expected of her, and yet somehow she was not so grateful after all. Emulation of Grace, a sort of competitiveness, the restlessness with which her first meeting with Grace had left her, the feeling which she had had in Diana Reece's studio when she thought that here she was even a little older than Grace and yet in so much more uncertain a position--such comparisons made a rope about her neck, strangling her initiative.

It was Grace who finally remembered that Harold Moses had once sympathized with Anita's interest in factories.

"He might know of a job you'd like," she said. "He used to do all the hiring for his firm. He knows a lot of employment people. And he's a cousin of Ella Alvyn, the one who's so mixed up in charities and child labor and that sort of thing. Be sure and get a letter to her."

So Anita went to see him. She found that, as Grace had indicated, his training as a husband had awakened Harold to his first close observation of women as people. A year ago he had thought her a little peculiar. Now, though he knew too much about factories not to laugh at her tentative remark that she would like to work in one, yet there was sympathy in his laughter for, underneath the suggestion, impossible enough as he saw it, there lay a feeling which they had in common, a feeling indefinable to him which had often come to him unreasonably in the midst of swarming, clacking, zooming power machines, the whirling black belts overhead, the Italian and Jewish operators singing--wailing rather--long and monotonous chants as the soft lengths of silk grazed their fingers. A feeling which he only realized through its resultant satisfaction. A sense perhaps of brushing through layers of cobwebs that clung to eyes, ears, and mind and at last seeing under his feet the worn yet still unwearied earth of toil--the least common denominator of toil--and he himself in it, sunk in that earth and drawing power from it, like everyone else. Ugly it was and smelly in a workroom, yet, as often happens with real ugliness, there was a weird harmony in its distortion--the features of beauty, placed, as it were, upside down--which equaled the charm of beauty for the fascinated and reconstructing imagination.

Now, one day in the week, he would borrow his partner's car and drive out to the cottages of the lace makers in New Jersey, ostensibly to collect their product but really to rid himself of the boredom of that work which, difficult though it was, yet seemed unreal--approaching buyers, showing samples, taking orders, outwitting competitors--and to stand again in the midst of a toil felt, smelt, heard and seen. Anita could understand this. Half-amused, he asked her if she would like to ride out with him that day.

It was the first afternoon since her return to New York on which she had felt alive. With work, the common, veritable substance of it all around her, she forgot that she was hunting for work herself. She forgot that she existed only by sufferance and through other people's occasional benevolence.

In New York the snow had melted into sodden remnants and was being shoveled away. Here, on the Jersey side, it covered gray streets with a robust splendor, reflecting the ice-blue sky; safe even in the sunlight which was accompanied by a beating wind. Anita waited in the car during the first calls, outside of low, long outbuildings like garages, that vibrated with the hum of the Schiffli machines. As they rode farther into town Harold pointed out cottage after cottage with its wooden structure beside it, sealed tightly without, warm and active within.

She was permitted to enter one at last and met the lace maker, a stooped German, all one color like the warped walls of his shed. With a sort of tender pride he exhibited the sweep of his Schiffli, he showed her the pattern, like a scroll of dots and dashes for a player piano, attached to a part of the machine, which thereafter repeated it time after time, mingled it in magical fashion with the threads of the net base. She did not care to ask many questions, just to see the wheels go round, the fine threads stretched on the framework of the machine that went the length of the building, the threads being picked up with a precise, an unceasing subtlety, and intertwined. The lace maker's young son walked back and forth on the ledge, watching the web. At a table in a corner his daughter threaded bobbins, while his wife sat in the sunshine under a closed window, skillfully patching places where the machine had not functioned. They all worked quietly, evenly, while the Schiffli droned in the background seeming to weld them also together. Each time the wife caught Anita's eye she smiled and Anita smiled; step by step the lace maker explained the processes of his machine, how it did not really make lace at all but embroidery on a net base, which base was later removed by a chemical bath. As they reached the end his boy looked up with a bashful grin.

Harold had his last order wrapped up in heavy brown paper and gave them a fresh design and a new order. When they got outside Anita asked what a family like that could earn.

"After they pay for the thread and the instalment on the machine they do well to clear say fifty or sixty a week in good times," said Harold.

He started his car. The little cottage, disappearing down the length of the street, looked tiny between two banks of snow. Against the brilliance of the snow its lines were etched clearly, if lightly, and its sides were smoothed with a patina of its own, all of one color, like the lace maker's face, the humble color of use.

They hardly spoke on the way home. Anita was immersed in re-tasting the afternoon, bit by bit, and wished to be left alone. She set out to walk from Harold's office under the now dark sky, through the peopled streets with their round lamps that gleamed at intervals, and reached the studio ruddy, bounding with cheer and vigor. She found Grace and Blake there. "Hello," said Grace. "Look," she said, rising and slowly revolving. "How do you like my new outfit? Letty and I changed clothes for to-night."

Against a rough tweed suit of the blue that madonnas wear in ancient paintings, her skin shone warmly, and the same lucid blue glowed in beads about her throat. Excitement had tinged her cheeks the faintest, pearliest pink and the pupils of her eyes hid like great, dusky shadows beneath a thin glaze of brilliance. Never, Anita thought, had she seen her so lovely.

"Hul-lo," she said wonderingly.

Blake, sitting over the heater, pale, with a wry twist to his lips, remarked, "I have had the merits of that shade of blue analyzed for me in detail within the past half hour. We have considered the question from every angle, together with sidelights upon the virtues of black, brown, orange, amber----"

Grace began her special laugh.

"As a matter of fact, we've been talking mostly about Blake's play. Do you know Blake has met a man who writes music--and they're all set to do a musical comedy together? Blake is going to do the book and lyrics. Really it sounds awfully good."

He would not be diverted. "----and the detestable properties of cerise," he continued. "Cerise is a loathsome color. It is a vulgar color. It is a color that fat women choose by instinct. Tell us exactly what should be done with cerise, Grace."

Grace paid him a due tribute of amusement before she turned to Anita.

"Well," she said, "did you get that letter?"

"What letter?"

"To Ella Alvyn. Or did he call her up for you? What did you do this afternoon?"

With a sinking heart, Anita stood looking down at the futile débris of her afternoon, feeling helpless. What had she done? She had not advanced her purpose; one thing had not led to something better. She had seen a machine and defined the color of a cottage.

"I--there wasn't a chance to ask him," she said slowly. "He never mentioned her so----"

"For goodness' sake!" exclaimed Grace. She shook her head and sighed. "Why would he mention her, unless you asked? Then--then nothing happened?" Seeing Anita's face, she went over and took her arm. "Never mind," she said, "I'll call him first thing in the morning. I could speak to Ella Alvyn myself, even. She's the president of our alumni association and she knows me. But Harold would be better. He's a first cousin, you know.... I'll--I'll speak to him. Let's have dinner together, shall we? There's a nice place across the street--not expensive," she added to Anita's frown.

Blake put in suddenly, "I'll go with you."

"Aren't you due home?"

He did not answer.

"I don't want to--interfere--with your arrangements," said Grace with a dignity more measured than usual. "Besides--I have an engagement after dinner, you know."

In silence they walked across the street. Blake went to a wall telephone. He spoke too low for their ears, but when he returned his pale face had grown more pallid, his lips were dry and tight. He took up the menu as a shield, swallowing behind it, so that the eyes of the two girls should not pick him out, should not strip him more raw than he already felt.

"I suppose she was very much upset," remarked Grace. She spoke to Anita. "I don't blame her," she said with feeling. "I can imagine how--it must be--to wait for someone with dinner on the table, and all at once--to have him call up and announce--he won't be home."

She chatted on, seeming ever lovelier, gayer, less concerned, subordinating them, rising far above them on the wings of her beauty and serenity. When it came time to pay the check Grace ostentatiously placed a dollar on the table; Anita did the same. It was understood that Blake never had any money. He flushed, drew out his dollar, and, without looking, thrust the bills at the waitress. Grace glanced toward him expectantly, repeating that she had a date. He rose and left them.

Anita had to accompany Grace to Grand Central to meet, as Grace confided with a complacent smile, the plate-glass salesman who read poetry. People turned to survey Grace, poised by the train gate, drawn by the power of her glowing face, of her dominant mood, of her feet moving so buoyantly that they seemed fluent over the stone, and Anita watched her, feeling heavy by her side, very poor, very dull. When the train arrived she said a hasty good-bye. This time she would not wait for dismissal.