Mary Ware's Promised Land

by Annie F. Johnston

"You might tell them you are looking for an old woman from the country who knits some sort of lace for sale. There used to be one there. At least, I've seen an old woman who used to be always knitting, sitting at a corner window. I don't know whether she sold it or not, or whether she was from the country. But it will do for an opening wedge, and with her to start on you can easily get into conversation with any of them." Then, as Mary still hesitated, he added, "If you really want to investigate and feel anyways backward about it, I'll walk down that far with you and show you where it is. It happens to be on my beat."

Mary really had no wish to go. She shrank from contact with something which the experienced Mr. Berry pronounced "the worst ever." But he was waiting so confidently for her to put on her hat and accompany him, that there seemed nothing else for her to do.

"Get an eye on those basement rooms," he advised her as he left her at the corner of Myrtle and Tenth Streets, and pointed out the steps leading to the underground rooms in Diamond Row. With the helpless feeling of one who cannot swim, yet is left to plunge alone into icy water, Mary stood at the top of the steps until she was afraid her hesitation would attract attention. Then plucking up her courage, she forced herself to walk down and knock at the open door.

What she saw in her first quick glance was a girl no older than herself, lying on a dirty bare mattress, a woman bending over a wash-tub, and a baby crawling around the floor. What she saw in her second horrified glance was that a green mould stood out on the walls, that both plaster and lath were broken away in places, so that one could peer through into an adjoining cellar. Evidently the cellar had water standing in it, from the foul, dank odor which came in through the holes. And the water must have seeped through into this room at times, for some of the planks in the floor nearest the wall were rotting.

The woman looked up listlessly without taking her arms from the tub, as Mary made her faltering inquiry for the old lady who made lace, and answered in some foreign tongue. Then she bent again to her rubbing, in stolid indifference to the stranger who had made a sudden descent on her home. Mary was too inexperienced to know that one cause of her indifference was that she was too underfed and overworked and mentally stunted by her hideous surroundings to care who came and went around her.

Mary turned to the girl on the musty mattress. It wasn't actual starvation which drew the skin so tightly over her cheek-bones and gave the pinched look to her face, for there was food still left on the cluttered table, where flies buzzed over the unwashed dishes in sickening swarms. It was the disease which had claimed a victim, sometimes several, from every family in turn who occupied the room, because it had never been properly disinfected. Not even the sunlight could get in to do its share towards making it fit for a human dwelling, for the only windows of this half-underground room were narrow transoms near the ceiling, and the only air reached it through the door at the bottom of the steps.

The girl was evidently asleep, and, after one more glance, Mary turned with a shudder and hurried back up the steps. She hesitated to make a second attempt but nerved herself to it by the thought of the questions Sandford Berry was sure to ask of her. On the first floor she knocked at several doors, and although she found no clue to the old lace knitter, she soon found a welcome from a voluble old Irish woman, who hospitably invited her in. Her eyes were that bad, she explained, that she couldn't see to do much. Her family worked in the factory all day, and she was glad of some one to talk to.

The door into the hall stood open, and presently another woman strayed in, scenting entertainment of some kind, and then a much younger woman followed, a slatternly creature with a sickly looking baby in her arms. Old Mrs. Donegan talked freely of her neighbors after Mary had tactfully won her confidence. She told her that most of them worked in the factory. The Polish woman in the basement washed for some of the factory hands, and although she worked all day and often far into the night, it took nearly all she could make to pay the rent. There wasn't enough to buy medicine for the girl, who was dying of consumption.

"Why don't they leave here and go out to the country?" asked Mary. "People out there need help, and they could at least have clean water, and clean grass to lie on. They'd be better off out under the trees than in that basement."

Mrs. Donegan's dim eyes narrowed shrewdly. "Did you ever see a rat caught in a trap?" she asked. "It can't help itself. It can't get out. No more can they. They can't even speak English."