Meanwhile the cold weather held and the poor besieged the Charities. No matter how early Elizabeth might arrive, no matter how late she might leave, they were always there, a stolid, patient row along the wall, or crowding up to the railing, or huddling in the hall outside. For a while Elizabeth, regarding them in the mass, thought that the same persons came each day, but she discovered that this was not the case. As she looked she noted a curious circumstance: the faces gradually took on individuality, slight at first, but soon decided, until each stood out among the others and developed the sharpest, most salient characteristics. She saw in each face the story of a single life, and always a life of neglect and failure, as if the misery of the world had been distributed in a kind of ironical variation. These people all were victims of a common doom, presenting itself each time in a different aspect; they were all alike--and yet they were all different, like leaves of a tree.
One afternoon Elizabeth suddenly noted a face that stood out in such relief that it became the only face there for her. It was the face of a young man, and it wore a strange pallor, and as Elizabeth hurried by she was somehow conscious that the young man's eyes were following her with a peculiar searching glance. When she sat down to await the women of the committee with which she was to meet, the young man still gazed at her steadily; she grew uncomfortable, almost resentful. She felt this continued stare to be a rudeness, and then suddenly she wondered why any rudeness of these people should be capable of affecting her; surely they were not of her class, to be judged by her standards. But she turned away, and determined not to look that way again, for fear that the young man might accost her.
And yet, though she persistently looked away, the face had so impressed her that she still could see it. In her first glimpse it had been photographed on her mind; its pallor was remarkable, the skin had a damp, dead whiteness, as if it had bleached in a cave, curls of thin brown hair clung to the brows; on the boy's neck was a streak of black where the collar of his coat had rubbed its color. In his thin hands he held a plush cap. And out of his pale face his wan eyes looked and followed her; she could not escape them, and for relief she finally fled to the inner room.
"We have made arrangements," said one of the women, "to hold our committee meetings hereafter at Mrs. Spayd's. She has kindly put her library at our disposal. This place is unbearable!"
She flung up a window and let the fresh air pour in.
"Yes," sighed another woman, "the air is sickening. It gives me a headache. If the poor could only be taught that cleanliness is akin to godliness!"
Elizabeth's head ached, too; it would be a relief to be delivered out of this atmosphere. But still the face of the young man pursued her. She could not follow the deliberations of the committee; she could think of nothing but that face. Where, she continually asked herself, had she seen it before? She sat by a window, and looked down into the street, preoccupied by the effort to identify it. She gave herself up to the pain of the process, as one does when trying to remember a name. Now and then she caught phrases of the sentences the women began, but seemed never able to finish:--"Oh, I hardly think that--" "As a class, of course--" "Oriental hangings would be best--" "Cheese-cloth looks cheap--" "Of course, flags--" "We could solicit the merchants--" "My husband was saying last night--"
But where had she seen that face before? Why should it pursue and worry her? What had she ever done? Finally, after two hours of the mighty effort and patience that are necessary to bring a number of minds to grasp a subject and agree even on the most insignificant detail, two hours in which thoughts hovered and flitted here and there, and could not find expression, when minds held back, and continually balked at the specific, the certain, the definite, and sought refuge from decision in the general and the abstract, the committee exhausted itself, and decided to adjourn. Then, although it had reached no conclusions whatever, the matron who presided smiled and said:
"Well, I feel that we're making progress."
"I don't feel as if we'd done much," some one else said. "And I can not come on Friday."