There was nothing to attract her in the crowd, now that she saw it assembled in this ill-smelling place. She thought the men rude and she wished heartily to get away. But she was wedged in her seat and must remain until time brought release. For a few minutes, however, when Sophie Switsky was on the platform, Hertha listened with attention. Not that she understood the words—Sophie used Yiddish—but emotion may transcend and illumine any speech. Here stood a working girl, young, almost childlike in appearance, whose face and tragic tones told of a willingness to die if need be for a cause. Watching her, for the first time since she had joined the crowd of strikers, Hertha forgot herself. For a little she felt her heart beat in sympathy. But with a sudden shock self-consciousness returned. Sophie had beckoned her, asking her to come to the platform. "Tell what you did!" she called out, smiling. "Some understand the English." The southern girl shook her head and when the woman at her side tried to help her to the aisle, gripped her seat with both hands. The horror of being made conspicuous swept over her again, and she sat with burning cheeks until Sophie mercifully went back to her Yiddish and left her alone.
The speeches were at length over and by dodging and doubling, running from one "Imperial" girl only to have to run from another, Hertha escaped from Union Hall leaving no trace behind. Home at last, she looked with dismay at herself in the glass. The red quill was gone from her hat, her curly hair was tumbling about her face, her coat was a mass of wrinkles and she had caught her sleeve upon a nail and made a bad rent. In a minute, however, she laughed. Freedom had come to her. She would no longer spend her days in a noisy room bending over a machine. She could mend the rent and press the coat and there were other quills to be had in the shops. Life was before her again to do with as she pleased. She recalled Sophie's dramatic cry. "Those who will not be scabs, cross the line!"
"That's the second time I've done it," she said to herself.
CHAPTER XXII
Hertha and Kathleen were estranged. From enthusiastic, joyful praise at her courage and pluck in leaving the shop, Kathleen had changed to tiresome nagging because her friend would not picket. Seated opposite her at table in the evening by the lamp in the front room, the Irishwoman, once a successful, aggressive labor leader, would explain, sometimes impetuously, sometimes with slow emphasis as if to a child, the ethics of the strike. To go out, she declared, was but the beginning; the end was the winning of better conditions in the trade. What good was it that all these young strikers, many of them supporting mother or sister or brother, should lose their jobs, unless they might obtain them again under better conditions than before? Was it likely that the manufacturer of "Imperial" waists would go about asking his girls to return to him? Could not Hertha see that these workers were engaged in a desperate battle for better working-class conditions that, with good generalship, might result in victory; but that without sacrifice and heroism, and forgetfulness of self, would end in disastrous defeat? Then she pictured the defeat; the homes without food, the drawn, girlish faces, the bitter disappointment as the shop took on more and more scabs and continued to manufacture its goods. If the talk were in the morning at the late breakfast in which Hertha was reveling, it was, "There they are, dearie, out in the street in front of the building you left, waiting for you to come and help them in their weary work." Or if the hour were evening, "And to-morrow, mavourneen, I'll be getting a fine breakfast for you with a cup of coffee and the bacon with the egg the way you like it, and you'll go to your sisters who are doing their duty as pickets, trying to keep the scabs from taking their jobs."
But Hertha would not picket. She said little in response to Kathleen's explanations, her pleading or her upbraidings. It had never been her way to talk. Probably what Kathleen said was true but she was not going to picket. She loathed it from every point of view held up to her. She could not go to a girl whom she had never seen before and ask her not to take her job. It would be impertinent and rude and lastly ridiculous, for she was very glad that she had left the "Imperial" shop. Nor could she walk hour after hour up and down the street always keeping in motion lest the policeman call out at her that she was blocking the way. She shrank at the thought of the hundreds of eyes that she believed would be cast upon her. No, she would not picket.
Moreover she was beginning to think for herself. As Sophie Switsky had explained the ways of trade the whole thing was silly. She could not accept the ethics, or lack of ethics, in the relation of the worker to his task. That against which she rebelled the girls accepted as inevitable. She was glad to be out of the "Imperial," not primarily because of its hours or its wage but because she hated to be worked like a machine. The months of tortured speeding had made her detest the sight of a cotton shirtwaist. But the girls were picketing, not for a sane and attractive task but only for more money. When they got more they would work faster than ever with tired backs and straining eyes. She was sick at the thought of it. In her room at home doing her neglected mending, drawing the needle in a leisurely way through the cloth, she wondered whether all the girls in the city worked as they had worked at the 'Imperial' and if so whether any of them lived to become old? Well, the subject was beyond her fathoming. She had touched the labor world and now was well out of it. Had she gone on longer her back would have become tired, her eyes have smarted, her body have weakened under the unnatural strain of production demanded by the changing fashions. Life was before her again, and of one thing she was sure, she had closed the factory door.
Despite all her reasoning, however, there was a faint possibility that Kathleen might have put her on the picket-line, at least for a day, had Hertha as in the beginning of their acquaintance been quite alone, but Richard Brown was calling assiduously and his influence was not one that encouraged martyrdom. Thus on the Saturday morning after nine days of happy idleness when Kathleen was awakening in her an uneasy sense of her obligation to her little sisters (that name always brought up a picture of Ellen battling for her through heat and cold), a note from Dick, inviting her to go to the opera with him that evening, blotted out the little sisters and the cold. She told Kathleen of the invitation only to receive a lecture on the inequalities of this world. Hertha felt aggrieved. Certainly she had waited many years for this, her first opera, and she believed she had a right to it when it came.
It was not far to the great department store where she had wandered for many noon hours, and, with a sense of delightful importance, she entered the shop and purchased a shirtwaist—not of cotton like those she had helped manufacture, but of filmy silk. This, with a pair of white gloves, cost a week's earnings, but life to-day was not measured by wages. At home again, she got her own luncheon, for Kathleen was away for the day, and spent the afternoon in bed, dozing and day-dreaming and dozing again. She felt that she understood why rich people were lazy, but wondered whether an afternoon in bed would bring happiness unless many other afternoons and mornings had been spent in difficult toil.