“‘And for bonnie Annie Laurie’ I certainly would make a quick get-away!”
After which reflection, Mr. Brotherton walked down the long store room to his dark stained desk, turned on the electric under the square copper shade, and began to figure up his accounts. But a little social problem kept revolving in his head. It was suggested by Mrs. Van Dorn and by something she had said. Beside Mrs. Van Dorn in her tailored gown and seal-skin, with her spanking new midwinter hat to match her coat, dragging the useless dog after her, he saw the picture of another woman who had come in the day before–a woman no older than Margaret Van Dorn–yet a broken woman, with rounded shoulders who rarely smiled, wishing to hide her broken teeth, who wheeled one baby and led another, and shooed a third and slipped into the corner near the magazine counter and thumbed over the children’s fashions in the Delineator eagerly and looked wistfully at the beautiful things in the store. Her red hands and brown skin showed that she had lived a rough, hard life, and that it had spent her and wasted her and taken everything she prized–and 356 given her nothing–nothing but three overdressed children and a husband whose industrial status had put its heavy mark on her.
Mr. Brotherton’s memory went back ten years, and recalled the two girls together–Violet and Margaret. Both were light-headed and vain; so far as their relations with Van Dorn were concerned, one was as blamable as the other. Yet one had prospered and the other had not–and the one who had apparently suffered most had upon the whole lived the cleaner, more normal life–and Mr. Brotherton drummed his penholder upon the black desk before him and questioned the justice of life.
But, indeed, if we must judge life’s awards and benefits from the material side there is no justice in life. If there was any difference between the two women whom Tom Van Dorn had wronged–difference in rewards or punishments, it must have been in their hearts. It is possible that in her life of motherhood and wifehood, in the sacrifices that broke her body and scarred her face, Violet Mauling may have been compensated by the love she bore the children upon whom she lavished her life. For she had that love, and she did squander–in blind vain folly–the strength of her body, afterwards the price of her soul–upon her children. As for Margaret Van Dorn–Mr. Brotherton was no philosopher. He could not pity her. Yet she too had given all. She had given her mind–and it was gone. She had given her heart and it was gone also, and she had given that elusive blending of the heart and mind we call her soul–and that was gone, too. Mr. Brotherton could see that they were gone–all gone. But he could not see that her loss was greater than Violet’s.
That night when Dennis Hogan came in for his weekly Fireside Companion as he said, “for the good woman,” Mr. Brotherton, for old sake’s sake, put in something in paper backs by Marie Corelli, and a novel by Ouida; and then, that he might give until it hurt, he tied up a brand new Ladies’ Home Journal, and said, as he locked up the store and stepped into the chill night air with Mr. Hogan: “Dennis–tell Violet–I sent ’em in return for the good turns she used to do me 357 when I was mayor and she was in Van Dorn’s office and drew up the city ordinances–she’ll remember.”
“Indeed she will, George Brotherton–that she will. Many’s the night she’s talked me to sleep of them golden days of her splendor–indeed she will.”
They walked on together and Hogan said: “Well–I turn at the next crossin’. I’m goin’ home and I’m glad of it. Up in the mornin’ at five; off on the six-ten train, climbin’ the slag dump at seven, workin’ till six, home on the six-fifteen train, into the house at seven; to bed at ten, up at five, eat and work and sleep–sleep and eat and work, fightin’ the dump by day and fightin’ the fumes in me chist by night–all for a dollar and sixty a day; and if we jine a union, we get canned, and if we would seek dissipation, we’re invited to go down to the Company hall and listen to Tommy Van Dorn norate upon what he calls the ‘de-hig-nity of luh-ay-bor.’ Damn sight of dignity labor has, lopin’ three laps ahead of the garnishee from one year’s end to the other.”
He laughed a good-natured, creaking laugh, and said as he waved his hand to part with Mr. Brotherton–“Well, annyhow, the good woman will thank you for the extra readin’; not that she has time to read it, God knows, but it gives the place a tone when Laura Nesbit drops in for a bit of a word of help about the makin’ of the little white things she’s doin’ for the Polish family on ‘D’ Street these days.” In another minute Brotherton heard the car moaning at the curve, and saw Hogan get in. It was nearly midnight when Hogan got to sleep; for the papers that Brotherton sent brought back “the grandeur that was Greece,” and he had to hear how Mr. Van Dorn had made Mr. Brotherton mayor and how they had both made Dr. Nesbit Senator, and how ungrateful the Doctor was to turn against the hand that fed him, and many other incidents and tales that pointed to the renown of the unimpeachable Judge, who for seven years had reigned in the humble house of Hogan as a first-rate god.
That night Hogan tossed as the fumes in his lungs burned the tissues and at five he got up, made the fire, helped to dress the oldest child while his wife prepared the breakfast. He missed the six-ten car, and being late at work stopped in to 358take a drink at the Hot Dog, near the dump on the company ground, thinking it would put some ginger into him for the day’s work. For two hours or so the whiskey livened him up, but as the forenoon grew old, he began to yawn and was tired.
“Hogan,” called the dump-boss, “go down to the powder house and bring up a box of persuaders.”