第116章 CHAPTER XVII(1)

The next day at the noon hour Janet entered Dey Street. Cheek by jowl there with the tall tenements whose spindled-pillared porches overhung the darkened pavements were smaller houses of all ages and descriptions, their lower floors altered to accommodate shops; while in the very midst of the block stood a queer wooden building with two rows of dormer windows let into its high-pitched roof. It bore a curious resemblance to a town hall in the low countries. In front of it the street was filled with children gazing up at the doorway where a man stood surveying them--the stranger from Silliston. There was a rush toward him, a rush that drove Janet against the wall almost at his side, and he held up his hands in mock despair, gently impeding the little bodies that strove to enter.

He bent over them to examine the numerals, printed on pasteboard, they wore on their breasts. His voice was cheerful, yet compassionate.

"It's hard to wait, I know. I'm hungry myself," he said. "But we can't all go up at once. The building would fall down! One to one hundred now, and the second hundred will be first for supper. That's fair, isn't it?"

Dozens of hands were raised.

"I'm twenty-nine!"

"I'm three, mister!"

"I'm forty-one!"

He let them in, one by one, and they clattered up the stairs, as he seized a tiny girl bundled in a dark red muffler and set her on the steps above him. He smiled at Janet.

"This is my restaurant," he said.

But she could not answer. She watched him as he continued to bend over the children, and when the smaller ones wept because they had to wait, he whispered in their ears, astonishing one or two into laughter. Some ceased crying and clung to him with dumb faith. And after the chosen hundred had been admitted he turned to her again.

"You allow visitors?"

"Oh dear, yes. They'd come anyway. There's one up there now, a very swell lady from New York--so swell I don't know what to say to her. Talk to her for me."

"But I shouldn't know what to say, either," replied Janet. She smiled, but she had an odd desire to cry. "What is she doing here?"

"Oh, thrashing 'round, trying to connect with life--she's one of the unfortunate unemployed."

"Unemployed?"

"The idle rich," he explained. "Perhaps you can give her a job--enlist her in the I.W.W."

"We don't want that kind," Janet declared.

"Have pity on her," he begged. "Nobody wants them--that's why they're so pathetic."

She accompanied him up the narrow stairway to a great loft, the bareness of which had been tempered by draped American flags. From the trusses of the roof hung improvised electric lights, and the children were already seated at the four long tables, where half a dozen ladies were supplying them with enamelled bowls filled with steaming soup. They attacked it ravenously, and the absence of the talk and laughter that ordinarily accompany children's feasts touched her, impressed upon her, as nothing else had done, the destitution of the homes from which these little ones had come. The supplies that came to Hampton, the money that poured into Headquarters were not enough to allay the suffering even now. And what if the strike should last for months! Would they be able to hold out, to win? In this mood of pity, of anxiety mingled with appreciation and gratitude for what this man was doing, she turned to speak to him, to perceive on the platform at the end of the room a lady seated. So complete was the curve of her back that her pose resembled a letter u set sidewise, the gap from her crossed knee to her face being closed by a slender forearm and hand that held a lorgnette, through which she was gazing at the children with an apparently absorbed interest. This impression of willowy flexibility was somehow heightened by large, pear-shaped pendants hanging from her ears, by a certain filminess in her black costume and hat. Flung across the table beside her was a long coat of grey fur. She struck an odd note here, presented a strange contrast to Janet's friend from Silliston, with his rough suit and fine but rugged features.

"I'm sorry I haven't a table for you just at present," he was saying.

"But perhaps you'll let me take your order,"--and he imitated the obsequious attitude of a waiter. "A little fresh caviar and a clear soup, and then a fish--?"

The lady took down her lorgnette and raised an appealing face.

"You're always joking, Brooks," she chided him, "even when you're doing things like this! I can't get you to talk seriously even when I come all the way from New York to find out what's going on here."

"How hungry children eat, for instance?" he queried.

"Dear little things, it's heartrending!" she exclaimed. "Especially when I think of my own children, who have to be made to eat. Tell me the nationality of that adorable tot at the end."

"Perhaps Miss Bumpus can tell you," he ventured. And Janet, though distinctly uncomfortable and hostile to the lady, was surprised and pleased that he should have remembered her name. "Brooks," she had called him. That was his first name. This strange and sumptuous person seemed intimate with him. Could it be possible that he belonged to her class? "Mrs. Brocklehurst, Miss Bumpus."

Mrs. Brocklehurst focussed her attention on Janet, through the lorgnette, but let it fall immediately, smiling on her brightly, persuasively.

"How d'ye do?" she said, stretching forth a slender arm and taking the girl's somewhat reluctant hand. "Do come and sit down beside me and tell me about everything here. I'm sure you know--you look so intelligent."