“Oh, she'll be out 'torectly, Mrs. Zion! Jes' keep yo' robes on an' hol' yo' throne down a little while. She'll be out 'torectly.”
There was a motive in this lie, as there was in all others Jud Carpenter told.
It was soon apparent. For scarcely had the old woman seated herself with a significant toss of her head when the mill began to cease to hum and roar.
She sat watching the door keenly as they came out. What creatures they were, lint-and-dust-covered to their very eyes. The yellow, hard, emotionless faces of the men, the haggard, weary ones of the girls and women and little children! Never had she seen such white people before, such hollow eyes, with dark, bloodless rings beneath them, sunken cheeks, tanned to the color of oiled hickory, much used. Dazed, listless, they stumbled out past her with relaxed under-jaws and faces gloomy, expressionless—so long bent over looms, they had taken on the very looks of them—the shapes of them, moving, walking, working, mechanically. Women, smileless, and so tired and numbed that they had forgotten the strongest instinct of humanity—the romance of sex; for many of them wore the dirty, chopped-off jackets of men, their slouched black hats, their coarse shoes, and talked even in the vulgar, hard irony of the male in despair.
They all passed out—one by one—for in them was not even the instinct of the companionship of misery.
Every moment the old nurse expected Helen to walk out, to walk out in her queenly way, with her beautiful face and manners, so different from those around her.
Jud Carpenter sat at his desk quietly cutting plug tobacco to fill his pipe-bowl, and watching the old woman slyly.
“Oh, she'll be 'long 'torectly—you see the drawer-in bein' in the far room comes out last.”
The last one passed out. The mill became silent, and yet Helen did not appear.
The old nurse arose impatiently: “I reck'n I'll go find her,” she said to Carpenter.