第112章

EACH girl now had with her at all times everything she possessed in the world--a toothbrush, a cake of castile soap, the little money left out of the week's wages, these three items in the pocket of her one skirt, a cheap dark blue cloth much wrinkled and patched; a twenty-five cent felt hat, Susan's adorned with a blue ribbon, Etta's with a bunch of faded roses; a blue cotton blouse patched under the arms with stuff of a different shade;an old misshapen corset that cost forty-nine cents in a bargain sale; a suit of gray shoddy-and-wool underwear; a pair of fifteen-cent stockings, Susan's brown, Etta's black; a pair of worn and torn ties, scuffed and down at the heel, bought for a dollar and nine cents; a dirt-stained dark blue jacket, Susan's lacking one button, Etta's lacking three and having a patch under the right arm.

Yet they often laughed and joked with each other, with their fellow-workers.You might have said their hearts were light; for so eager are we to believe our fellow-beings comfortable, a smile of poverty's face convinces us straightway that it is as happy as we, if not happier.There would have been to their mirth a little more than mere surface and youthful ability to find some jest in the most crushing tragedy if only they could have kept themselves clean.The lack of sufficient food was a severe trial, for both had voracious appetites; Etta was tormented by visions of quantity, Susan by visions of quality as well as of quantity.But only at meal times, or when they had to omit a meal entirely, were they keenly distressed by the food question.The cold was a still severer trial; but it was warm in the factory and it was warm in Mrs.Cassatt's flat, whose windows were never opened from closing in of winter until spring came round.The inability to keep clean was the trial of trials.

From her beginning at the box factory the physical uncleanness of the other girls had made Susan suffer keenly.And her suffering can be understood only by a clean person who has been through the same ordeal.She knew that her fellow-workers were not to blame.She even envied them the ignorance and the insensibility that enabled them to bear what, she was convinced, could never be changed.She wondered sometimes at the strength and grip of the religious belief among the girls--even, or, rather, especially, among those who had strayed from virtue into the path their priests and preachers and rabbis told them was the most sinful of all strayings.But she also saw many signs that religion was fast losing its hold.One day a Lutheran girl, Emma Schmeltz, said during a Monday morning lunch talk:

"Well, anyhow, I believe it's all a probation, and everything'll be made right hereafter.__I__ believe my religion, I do.Yes, we'll be rewarded in the hereafter."Becky--Rebecca Lichtenspiel--laughed, as did most of the girls.

Said Becky:

"And there ain't no hereafter.Did you ever see a corpse? Ain't they the dead ones! Don't talk to me about no hereafter."Everybody laughed.But this was a Monday morning conversation, high above the average of the girls' talk in intelligence and liveliness.Their minds had been stimulated by the Sunday rest from the dreary and degenerating drudgery of "honest toil."It was the physical contacts that most preyed upon Susan.She was too gentle, too considerate to show her feelings; in her determined and successful effort to conceal them she at times went to the opposite extreme and not only endured but even courted contacts that were little short of loathsome.Tongue could not tell what she suffered through the persistent affectionateness of Letty Southard, a sweet and pretty young girl of wretchedly poor family who developed an enormous liking for her.Letty, dirty and clad in noisome undergarments beneath soiled rags and patches, was always hugging and kissing her--and not to have submitted would have been to stab poor Letty to the heart and humiliate all the other girls.So no one, not even Etta, suspected what she was going through.

From her coming to the factory in the morning, to hang her hat and jacket in the only possible place, along with the soiled and smelling and often vermin-infected wraps of the others--from early morning until she left at night she was forced into contacts to which custom never in the least blunted her.

However, so long as she had a home with the Brashears there was the nightly respite.But now--There was little water, and only a cracked and filthy basin to wash in.There was no chance to do laundry work; for their underclothes must be used as night clothes also.To wash their hair was impossible.

"Does my hair smell as bad as yours?" said Etta."You needn't think yours is clean because it doesn't show the dirt like mine.""Does my hair smell as bad as the rest of the girls'?" said Susan.

"Not quite," was Etta's consoling reply.

By making desperate efforts they contrived partially to wash their bodies once a week, not without interruptions of privacy--to which, however, they soon grew accustomed.In spite of efforts which were literally heroic, they could not always keep free from parasites; for the whole tenement and all persons and things in it were infected--and how could it be otherwise where no one had time or money or any effective means whatsoever to combat nature's inflexible determination to breed wherever there is a breeding spot? The last traces of civilization were slipping from the two girls; they were sinking to a state of nature.

Even personal pride, powerful in Susan and strong in Etta through Susan's example, was deserting them.They no longer minded Dan's sleeping in their room.They saw him, his father, the other members of the family in all stages of nudity and at the most private acts; and they were seen by the Cassatts in the same way.To avoid this was impossible, as impossible as to avoid the parasites swarming in the bed, in the woodwork, in cracks of ceiling, walls, floor.