The Nine-Tenths Part 48

Myra flushed with joy.

"I'm glad. I'm very glad."

Joe's mother watched her a little.

"How have you been feeling, Myra?"

"I?--" Myra was surprised. "Oh, I'm all right! I haven't time to be unwell."

"You really think you're all right, then?"

"Oh, I know it! This busy life is doing me good."

"It does most of us good." She changed the subject.

Myra felt, with great happiness, that she was coming into harmony with Joe's mother. She would have been quite amazed, however, to know that Joe's mother was secretly struggling to adjust herself. For Joe's mother could not help thinking that the time might come when Joe and Myra would marry, and she was schooling herself for this momentous change. She kept telling herself: "There is no one in the world I ought to love more than the woman that Joe loves and weds." And yet it was hard to release her son, to take that life which had for years been closest to her, and had been partly in her hands, relinquish it and give it over into the keeping of another. There were times, however, when she pitied Myra, pitied her because Joe was engrossed in his work and had no emotions or thoughts to spare. And she wondered at such times whether Joe would ever marry, whether he would ever be willing to make his life still more complex. She watched Myra closely, with growing admiration; saw the changes in her, the faithful struggle, the on-surging power, and she thought:

"If it's to be any one, I know no one I should love more."

There were times, however, when she mentally set Myra side by side with Sally, to the former's overshadowing. Sally was so clean-cut, direct, such a positive character. She was hardy and self-contained, and would never be dependent. Her relations.h.i.+ps with Joe always implied interdependence, a perfect give and take, a close yet easy comrades.h.i.+p which enabled her at any time to go her own way and work her own will.

Sometimes Joe's mother felt that Sally was a woman of the future, and that, with such, marriage would become a finer and freer union. However, her imaginative match-making made her smile, and she thought: "Joe won't pick a mate with his head. The thing will just happen to him--or not." And as she came to know Myra better, she began to feel that possibly a woman who would take Joe away from his work, instead of involving him deeper, would, in the end, be best for him. Such a woman would mean peace, relaxation, diversion. She was greatly concerned over Joe's absorption in the strike, and once, when it appeared that the struggle might go on endlessly, she said to Myra:

"Sometimes I think Joe puts life off too much, pus.h.i.+ng his joys into the future, not always remembering that he will never be more alive than now, and that the days are being lopped off."

Myra had a little table of her own, near the door, and this table, when she was there, was always a busy center. The girls liked her, liked to talk with her, were fond of her musical voice and her quiet manners.

Some even got in the habit of visiting her room with her and having quiet talks about their lives. Sally, however, did not share this fondness for Myra. She felt that Myra was an intruder--that Myra was interposing a wall between her and Joe--and she resented the intrusion.

She could not help noticing that Joe was becoming more and more impersonal with her, but then, she thought, "people are not persons to him any more; he's swallowed up in the cause." Luckily she was too busy during the day, too tired at night, to brood much on the matter.

However, one evening at committee meeting, her moment of realization came. The committee, including Myra and Joe and herself and some five others, were sitting about the hot stove, discussing the call of a Local on the East Side for a capable organizer.

"It's hard to spare any one," mused Joe, "and yet--" He looked about the circle. "There's Miss Craig and--Miss Heffer."

Both Myra and Sally turned pale and trembled a little. Each felt as if the moment had come when he would shut one or the other out of his life.

Sally spoke in a low voice:

"I'm pretty busy right here, Mr. Joe."

"I know," he reflected. "And I guess Miss Craig could do it."

He opened the stove door, took the tiny shovel, stuck it into the coal-box, and threw some fresh coal on the lividly red embers. Then he stood up and gazed round the circle again.

"Sally," he said, "it's _your_ work--you'll have to go."

She bowed her head.

"You're sure," she murmured, "I'm not needed here?"

"Needed?" he mused. "Yes. But needed more over there!"

She looked up at him and met his eyes. Her own were pleading with him.

"Surely?"

"Surely, Sally. We're not in this game for fun, are we?"

"I'll do as you say," she breathed.

Her head began to swim; she felt as if she would break down and cry. She arose.

"I'll be right back."

She groped her way through the inner rooms to the kitchen. Joe's mother was reading.

"Mrs. Blaine...."

"Sally! What's the matter?"

Joe's mother arose.

"I'm going ... going to another Local.... I'm leaving here to-night ...

for good and always."

Joe's mother drew her close, and Sally sobbed openly.

"It's been my home here--the first I've had in years--but I'll never come back."

"Oh, you must come back."

"No...." she looked up bravely. "Mrs. Blaine."

"Yes, Sally."

"He doesn't need me any more; he's outgrown me; he doesn't need any one now."

What could Joe's mother say?

"Sally!" she cried, and then she murmured: "It's you who don't need any one, Sally. You're strong and independent. You can live your own live.

And you've helped make Joe strong. Wait, and see."

And she went on to speak of Sally's work, of her influence in the place, of the joy she brought to others, and finally Sally said:

"Forgive me for coming to you like a baby."

"Oh, it's fine of you to come to me!"

"So," cried Sally, "good-by."

She found her hat and coat and slipped away, not daring to say good-by to Joe. But as she went through the dark winter night she realized how one person's happiness is often built on another's tragedy. And so Sally went, dropping for the time being out of Joe's life.