Life in the Iron-Mills Part 2

"I see."

He had stepped aside where the light fell boldest on the figure, looking at it in silence. There was not one line of beauty or grace in it: a nude woman's form, muscular, grown coa.r.s.e with labor, the powerful limbs instinct with some one poignant longing. One idea: there it was in the tense, rigid muscles, the clutching hands, the wild, eager face, like that of a starving wolf's. Kirby and Doctor May walked around it, critical, curious. Mitch.e.l.l stood aloof, silent. The figure touched him strangely.

"Not badly done," said Doctor May, "Where did the fellow learn that sweep of the muscles in the arm and hand? Look at them! They are groping, do you see?--clutching: the peculiar action of a man dying of thirst."

"They have ample facilities for studying anatomy," sneered Kirby, glancing at the half-naked figures.

"Look," continued the Doctor, "at this bony wrist, and the strained sinews of the instep! A working-woman,--the very type of her cla.s.s."

"G.o.d forbid!" muttered Mitch.e.l.l.

"Why?" demanded May, "What does the fellow intend by the figure? I cannot catch the meaning."

"Ask him," said the other, dryly, "There he stands,"--pointing to Wolfe, who stood with a group of men, leaning on his ash-rake.

The Doctor beckoned him with the affable smile which kind-hearted men put on, when talking to these people.

"Mr. Mitch.e.l.l has picked you out as the man who did this,--I'm sure I don't know why. But what did you mean by it?"

"She be hungry."

Wolfe's eyes answered Mitch.e.l.l, not the Doctor.

"Oh-h! But what a mistake you have made, my fine fellow! You have given no sign of starvation to the body. It is strong,--terribly strong. It has the mad, half-despairing gesture of drowning."

Wolfe stammered, glanced appealingly at Mitch.e.l.l, who saw the soul of the thing, he knew. But the cool, probing eyes were turned on himself now,--mocking, cruel, relentless.

"Not hungry for meat," the furnace-tender said at last.

"What then? Whiskey?" jeered Kirby, with a coa.r.s.e laugh.

Wolfe was silent a moment, thinking.

"I dunno," he said, with a bewildered look. "It mebbe. Summat to make her live, I think,--like you. Whiskey ull do it, in a way."

The young man laughed again. Mitch.e.l.l flashed a look of disgust somewhere,--not at Wolfe.

"May," he broke out impatiently, "are you blind? Look at that woman's face! It asks questions of G.o.d, and says, 'I have a right to know,' Good G.o.d, how hungry it is!"

They looked a moment; then May turned to the mill-owner:--

"Have you many such hands as this? What are you going to do with them?

Keep them at puddling iron?"

Kirby shrugged his shoulders. Mitch.e.l.l's look had irritated him.

"Ce n'est pas mon affaire. I have no fancy for nursing infant geniuses.

I suppose there are some stray gleams of mind and soul among these wretches. The Lord will take care of his own; or else they can work out their own salvation. I have heard you call our American system a ladder which any man can scale. Do you doubt it? Or perhaps you want to banish all social ladders, and put us all on a flat table-land,--eh, May?"

The Doctor looked vexed, puzzled. Some terrible problem lay hid in this woman's face, and troubled these men. Kirby waited for an answer, and, receiving none, went on, warming with his subject.

"I tell you, there's something wrong that no talk of 'Liberte' or 'Egalite' will do away. If I had the making of men, these men who do the lowest part of the world's work should be machines,--nothing more,--hands. It would be kindness. G.o.d help them! What are taste, reason, to creatures who must live such lives as that?" He pointed to Deborah, sleeping on the ash-heap. "So many nerves to sting them to pain. What if G.o.d had put your brain, with all its agony of touch, into your fingers, and bid you work and strike with that?"

"You think you could govern the world better?" laughed the Doctor.

"I do not think at all."

"That is true philosophy. Drift with the stream, because you cannot dive deep enough to find bottom, eh?"

"Exactly," rejoined Kirby. "I do not think. I wash my hands of all social problems,--slavery, caste, white or black. My duty to my operatives has a narrow limit,--the pay-hour on Sat.u.r.day night. Outside of that, if they cut korl, or cut each other's throats, (the more popular amus.e.m.e.nt of the two,) I am not responsible."

The Doctor sighed,--a good honest sigh, from the depths of his stomach.

"G.o.d help us! Who is responsible?"

"Not I, I tell you," said Kirby, testily. "What has the man who pays them money to do with their souls' concerns, more than the grocer or butcher who takes it?"

"And yet," said Mitch.e.l.l's cynical voice, "look at her! How hungry she is!"

Kirby tapped his boot with his cane. No one spoke. Only the dumb face of the rough image looking into their faces with the awful question, "What shall we do to be saved?" Only Wolfe's face, with its heavy weight of brain, its weak, uncertain mouth, its desperate eyes, out of which looked the soul of his cla.s.s,--only Wolfe's face turned towards Kirby's.

Mitch.e.l.l laughed,--a cool, musical laugh.

"Money has spoken!" he said, seating himself lightly on a stone with the air of an amused spectator at a play. "Are you answered?"--turning to Wolfe his clear, magnetic face.

Bright and deep and cold as Arctic air, the soul of the man lay tranquil beneath. He looked at the furnace-tender as he had looked at a rare mosaic in the morning; only the man was the more amusing study of the two.

"Are you answered? Why, May, look at him! 'De profundis clamavi.' Or, to quote in English, 'Hungry and thirsty, his soul faints in him.' And so Money sends back its answer into the depths through you, Kirby! Very clear the answer, too!--I think I remember reading the same words somewhere: was.h.i.+ng your hands in Eau de Cologne, and saying, 'I am innocent of the blood of this man. See ye to it!'"

Kirby flushed angrily.

"You quote Scripture freely."

"Do I not quote correctly? I think I remember another line, which may amend my meaning? 'Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these, ye did it unto me.' Deist? Bless you, man, I was raised on the milk of the Word. Now, Doctor, the pocket of the world having uttered its voice, what has the heart to say? You are a philanthropist, in a small Way,--n'est ce pas? Here, boy, this gentleman can show you how to cut korl better,--or your destiny. Go on, May!"

"I think a mocking devil possesses you to-night," rejoined the Doctor, seriously.

He went to Wolfe and put his hand kindly on his arm. Something of a vague idea possessed the Doctor's brain that much good was to be done here by a friendly word or two: a latent genius to be warmed into life by a waited-for sunbeam. Here it was: he had brought it. So he went on complacently:

"Do you know, boy, you have it in you to be a great sculptor, a great man? do you understand?" (talking down to the capacity of his hearer: it is a way people have with children, and men like Wolfe,)--"to live a better, stronger life than I, or Mr. Kirby here? A man may make himself anything he chooses. G.o.d has given you stronger powers than many men,--me, for instance."

May stopped, heated, glowing with his own magnanimity. And it was magnanimous. The puddler had drunk in every word, looking through the Doctor's flurry, and generous heat, and self-approval, into his will, with those slow, absorbing eyes of his.

"Make yourself what you will. It is your right.

"I know," quietly. "Will you help me?"

Mitch.e.l.l laughed again. The Doctor turned now, in a pa.s.sion,--