Carmen Ariza Part 168

"Dis-a lady, she come to visit," announced Carmen's guide abruptly, pointing a dirty finger at her.

The woman's face darkened, and she spoke harshly in a foreign tongue to the little fellow.

"She say," the boy interpreted, as a crestfallen look spread over his face, "she say she don't spik _Inglese_."

"But I speak your language," said the girl, going quickly to her and extending a hand. Then, in that soft tongue which is music celestial to these Neapolitan strangers upon our inhospitable sh.o.r.es, she added, "I want to know you; I want to talk to you."

She glanced quickly about the room. A littered, greasy cook stove stood in one corner. Close to it at either end were wooden couches, upon which were strewn a few tattered spreads and blankets, stained and grimy. A broken table, a decrepit chest of drawers, and a few rickety chairs completed the complement of furniture. The walls were unadorned, except for a stained chromo of the Virgin, and the plaster had fallen away in many places. There was only one window in the room.

Several of its panes were broken and stuffed with rags and papers.

At the sound of her own language the woman's expression changed. A light came into her dull eyes, and she awkwardly took the proffered hand.

"You are--from Italy?" she said in her native tongue. Then, sweeping the girl's warm attire with a quick glance, "You are rich! Why do you come here?"

"Your little boy brought me. And I am glad he did. No, I am not from Italy. I am rich, yes, but not in money."

The woman turned to her children and sent the little brood scattering.

At another sharp command little Tony set out a soiled, broken chair for Carmen. But before the girl could take it the woman's voice again rose sharply.

"Wait!" she commanded, turning fiercely upon Carmen. "You are--what do you say? slumming. You come with your gay party to look us over and go away laughing! No! You can not stay!"

Carmen did not smile. But reaching out, she gently lifted the heavy baby from the woman's arms and sat down with it. For a moment she patted its cheeks and bent tenderly over it. Then she looked up at the bewildered mother.

"I have come here," she said softly, "because I love you."

The woman's lips parted in astonishment. She turned dully and sat down on one of the begrimed beds. Her little ones gathered about her, their soiled fingers in their mouths, or clutching their tattered gowns, as they gazed at the beautiful creature who had suddenly come into their midst.

Then the woman found her voice again. "Eh! You are from the mission?

You come to talk of heaven? But I am busy."

"I am not from the mission," replied the girl gently. "I have come to talk, not of heaven, but of earth, and of you, and of Tony," smiling down into the eager face of the little boy as he stood before her.

"You can't have Tony!" cried the mother, starting up. "You can't take any of my children! The judge took Pietro Corrello's boy last week--but you can't have mine! Go away from here!"

"I don't want your children," said Carmen, smiling up at the frightened, suspicious mother. "I want you. I want you to help me to help all of these people here who need us. The mills are running only half time, aren't they? The people do not have enough to eat. But we, you and I, are going to make things better for them, for everybody here, aren't we?

"But first," she went on hastily, to further allay the poor woman's fears and to check additional protest, "suppose we plan our dinner.

Let's see, Tony, what would you like?"

The boy's lips instantly parted. His eyes began to glisten. He glanced inquiringly at his mother; but no sign came from her. Then he could no longer contain himself:

"Spaghetti!" he blurted. "Soup! Buns!"

Carmen drew out her purse and turned to the woman. "Come with me," she said. "While we are gone, Tony and the children will wash the dishes and set the table. Come."

For a moment the woman looked uncomprehendingly at the girl, then at her children, and then about the miserable room in which they were huddled. Amazement and confusion sat upon her heavy features. Then these gave way to another dark look of suspicion. She opened her mouth--

But before she could voice her resentment, Carmen rose and threw an arm about her. Then the girl quickly drew the startled woman to her and kissed her on the cheek. "Come," she whispered, "get your shawl.

We'll be back soon."

G.o.d's universal language is the language of love. All nations, all tribes understand it. The flood-gates, long barred, swiftly opened, and the tired, miserable woman sank sobbing upon the bed. She could not comprehend what it was that had come so unannounced into her dreary existence that cold winter morning. People were not wont to treat her so. Her life had been an endless, meaningless struggle against misery, want, grinding oppression. People did not put their arms around her and kiss her thus. They scoffed at her, they abused her, they fought with her! She hated them, and the world in which she lived!

"I know, I know," whispered Carmen, as she drew the sobbing woman's head upon her shoulder. "But things will be better now. Love has found you."

The woman suddenly raised up. "You--you are--from heaven? An angel?"

She drew back, and a frightened, superst.i.tious look came into her face.

"Yes," said Carmen softly, taking the cue, "I am an angel, right from heaven. Now you are no longer afraid of me, are you? Come."

The woman rose mechanically and took up her thin shawl. Carmen gave a few directions to the gaping children. And as she went out into the bleak hall with the woman she heard one of them whisper in tones of awe:

"Tony, she said she--she was--an angel! Quick! Get down on your knees and cross yourself!"

Upward to the blue vault of heaven, like the streaming mists that rise through the tropic moonlight from the hot _llanos_, goes the ceaseless cry of humanity. Oh, if the G.o.d of the preachers were real, his heart must have long since broken! Upward it streams, this soul-piercing cry; up from the sodden, dull-brained toiler at the cras.h.i.+ng loom; up from the wretched outcast woman, selling herself to low pa.s.sions to escape the slavery of human exploitation; up from the muttering, ill-fed wreck, whose life has been cashed into dividends, whose dry, worthless hulk now totters to the sc.r.a.p heap; up from the white-haired, flat-chested mother, whose stunted babes lie under little mounds with rude, wooden crosses in the dreary textile burial grounds; up from the weak, the wicked, the ignorant, the hopeless martyrs of the satanic social system that makes possible the activities of such human vultures as the colossus whose great mills now hurled their defiant roar at this girl, this girl whose life-motif was love.

Close about her, at the wretched little table, sat the wondering group of children, greedily gorging themselves on the only full meal that they could remember. And with them sat the still bewildered mother, straining her dark eyes at the girl, and striving to see in her a human being, a woman like herself. At her right sat the widow Marcus, who lived just across the hall. Her husband had been crushed to death in one of the pickers two years before. The company had paid her a hundred dollars, but had kept back five for alleged legal fees. She herself had lost an arm in one of these same pickers, long ago, because the great owner of the mills would not equip his plant with safety devices.

"Come, Tony!" said the mother at length, as a sense of the reality of life suddenly returned to her. "The lunch for your father!"

Tony hurriedly swept the contents of his plate into his mouth, and went for the battered dinner pail.

"My man goes to work at six-thirty in the morning," she explained to Carmen, when the little fellow had started to the mills with the pail unwontedly full. "And he does not leave until five-thirty. He was a weaver, and he earned sometimes ten dollars a week. But he didn't last. He wore out. And so he had to take a job as carder. He earns about eight dollars a week now. But sometimes only six or seven."

"But you can't live on that, with your children!" exclaimed Carmen.

"Yes, we could," replied the woman, "if the work was steady. But it isn't. You see, if I could work steady, and the children too, we could live. I am a good spinner. And I am not nearly so worn out as he is. I have several years left in me yet."

The widow Marcus, who spoke the language from an a.s.sociation with Italian immigrants since childhood, added her comments from time to time. She was a gray-haired, kindly soul, bearing no enmity toward the man to whom she had yielded her husband's life and her own.

"A man's no good in the mills after he's fifty," she said. "You see, Miss, it's all piece-work, and a man has to be most terribly spry and active. The strain is something awful, day after day, in the noise and bad air, and having to keep your eyes fixed on your work for ten hours at a stretch; and he wears out fast. Then he has to take a job where he can't make so much. And when he's about fifty he's no good for the mills any more."

"And then what?" asked Carmen.

"Well, if he hasn't any children, he goes to the poor-house. But, if he has, then they take care of him."

"Then mill workers must have large families?"

"Yes, they've got to, Miss. The little ones must work in the mills, too. These mills here take them on when they are only twelve, or even younger. Tony has worked there, and he is only ten. It's against the law; but Mr. Ames gets around the law some way."

"Tell me, Mrs. Marcus, how do you live?" the girl asked.

"I? Oh, I manage. The company paid me some money two years ago, and I haven't spent all of it yet. Besides, I work round a bit. I'm pretty spry with one arm."

"But--you do not pay rent for your home?"

"Oh, yes. I have only one room. It's small. There's no window in it.