“Katie lives a block down the street,” said the widow, pointing in the direction. “She was burned out last winter. These tenements don’t have fire-escapes, and the one she lived in burned to the ground in an hour. She lived on the second floor, and got out. But––six were burned to death.”
It seemed to Carmen as she listened to the woman that the carnal mind’s chamber of horrors was externalized there in the little town of Avon, existing with the dull consent of a people too ignorant, too imbruted, too mesmerized by the false values of life to rise and destroy it.
All that cold winter afternoon the girl went from door to door. There was no thought of fear when she met dull welcomes, scowls, and menacing glances. In humble homes and wretched hovels; to Magyar, Pole, Italian alike; to French Canadian, Irish and Portuguese; and to the angry, the defiant, the sodden, the crushed, she unfolded her simple banner of love, the boundless love that discriminates not, the love that sees not things, but the thoughts and intents of the heart that lie behind them. And dark looks faded, and tears came; withered hearts opened, and lifeless souls stirred anew. She knew their languages; and that knowledge unlocked their mental portals to her. She knew their thoughts, and the blight under which they molded; and that knowledge fell like the sun’s bright rays upon them. She knew God, their God and hers; and that knowledge began, even on that dull, gray afternoon, to cut into the chains of human rapacity which enslaved them.
At six that evening she stood at the tall iron gate of the mill yard. Little Tony was at her side, clutching her hand. A single electric lamp across the street threw a flickering, yellow light upon the snow. The great, roaring mills were ablaze with thousands of glittering eyes. Suddenly their monster sirens shrieked, a blood-curdling yell. Then their huge mouths opened, and a human flood belched forth.
Carmen gazed with riveted sight. They were not the image and likeness of God, these creatures, despite the doctrinal platitudes of the Reverend Darius Borwell and the placid Doctor Jurges. They were not alive, these stooping, shuffling things, despite the fact that the religiously contented Patterson Moore would argue that God had breathed the spirit of life into the thing of dust which He created. And these children, drifting past in a great, surging throng! Fathers and mothers of a 156 generation to come! Carmen knew that many of them, despite their worn looks, were scarcely more than ten years old. These were the flesh and blood upon which Ames, the jungle-beast, waxed gross! Upon their thin life-currents floated the magnificent Cossack!
She turned away in silence. Yes, she was right, evil can not be really known. There is no principle by which to explain the hideous things of the human mind. And then she wondered what the Reverend Darius Borwell did to earn that comfortable salary of ten thousand a year in his rich New York church.
“It’s quite a sight, ain’t it, Miss?” said a voice close by.
Carmen turned and confronted a priest. He was a man of medium height, young, and of Irish descent.
“It’s a great sight,” he continued, with a touch of brogue in his tones. “Hey, Fagin!” he cried, catching a passing workman’s arm. “Where’s Ross?”
“He ain’t worked to-day, Father,” replied the man, stopping and touching his cap.