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CHAPTER 13
During this time that Jurgis was looking for work occurred the death of little
Kristoforas, one of the children of Teta Elzbieta.
Both Kristoforas and his brother, Juozapas, were cripples, the latter having lost one
leg by having it run over, and Kristoforas having congenital dislocation of the hip,
which made it impossible for him ever to walk.
He was the last of Teta Elzbieta's children, and perhaps he had been intended
by nature to let her know that she had had enough.
At any rate he was wretchedly sick and undersized; he had the rickets, and though
he was over three years old, he was no bigger than an ordinary child of one.
All day long he would crawl around the floor in a filthy little dress, whining and
fretting; because the floor was full of drafts he was always catching cold, and
snuffling because his nose ran.
This made him a nuisance, and a source of endless trouble in the family.
For his mother, with unnatural perversity, loved him best of all her children, and
made a perpetual fuss over him--would let him do anything undisturbed, and would
burst into tears when his fretting drove Jurgis wild.
And now he died.
Perhaps it was the smoked sausage he had eaten that morning--which may have been
made out of some of the tubercular pork that was condemned as unfit for export.
At any rate, an hour after eating it, the child had begun to cry with pain, and in
another hour he was rolling about on the floor in convulsions.
Little Kotrina, who was all alone with him, ran out screaming for help, and after a
while a doctor came, but not until Kristoforas had howled his last howl.
No one was really sorry about this except poor Elzbieta, who was inconsolable.
Jurgis announced that so far as he was concerned the child would have to be buried
by the city, since they had no money for a funeral; and at this the poor woman almost
went out of her senses, wringing her hands and screaming with grief and despair.
Her child to be buried in a pauper's grave! And her stepdaughter to stand by and hear
it said without protesting!
It was enough to make Ona's father rise up out of his grave to rebuke her!
If it had come to this, they might as well give up at once, and be buried all of them
together!...In the end Marija said that she would help with ten dollars; and Jurgis
being still obdurate, Elzbieta went in
tears and begged the money from the neighbors, and so little Kristoforas had a
mass and a hearse with white plumes on it, and a tiny plot in a graveyard with a
wooden cross to mark the place.
The poor mother was not the same for months after that; the mere sight of the floor
where little Kristoforas had crawled about would make her weep.
He had never had a fair chance, poor little fellow, she would say.
He had been handicapped from his birth.
If only she had heard about it in time, so that she might have had that great doctor
to cure him of his lameness!...Some time ago, Elzbieta was told, a Chicago
billionaire had paid a fortune to bring a
great European surgeon over to cure his little daughter of the same disease from
which Kristoforas had suffered.
And because this surgeon had to have bodies to demonstrate upon, he announced that he
would treat the children of the poor, a piece of magnanimity over which the papers
became quite eloquent.
Elzbieta, alas, did not read the papers, and no one had told her; but perhaps it was
as well, for just then they would not have had the carfare to spare to go every day to
wait upon the surgeon, nor for that matter
anybody with the time to take the child.
All this while that he was seeking for work, there was a dark shadow hanging over
Jurgis; as if a savage beast were lurking somewhere in the pathway of his life, and
he knew it, and yet could not help approaching the place.
There are all stages of being out of work in Packingtown, and he faced in dread the
prospect of reaching the lowest.
There is a place that waits for the lowest man--the fertilizer plant!
The men would talk about it in awe-stricken whispers.
Not more than one in ten had ever really tried it; the other nine had contented
themselves with hearsay evidence and a peep through the door.
There were some things worse than even starving to death.
They would ask Jurgis if he had worked there yet, and if he meant to; and Jurgis
would debate the matter with himself.
As poor as they were, and making all the sacrifices that they were, would he dare to
refuse any sort of work that was offered to him, be it as horrible as ever it could?
Would he dare to go home and eat bread that had been earned by Ona, weak and
complaining as she was, knowing that he had been given a chance, and had not had the
nerve to take it?--And yet he might argue
that way with himself all day, and one glimpse into the fertilizer works would
send him away again shuddering.
He was a man, and he would do his duty; he went and made application--but surely he
was not also required to hope for success! The fertilizer works of Durham's lay away
from the rest of the plant.
Few visitors ever saw them, and the few who did would come out looking like Dante, of
whom the peasants declared that he had been into hell.
To this part of the yards came all the "tankage" and the waste products of all
sorts; here they dried out the bones,--and in suffocating cellars where the daylight
never came you might see men and women and
children bending over whirling machines and sawing bits of bone into all sorts of
shapes, breathing their lungs full of the fine dust, and doomed to die, every one of
them, within a certain definite time.
Here they made the blood into albumen, and made other foul-smelling things into things
still more foul-smelling.
In the corridors and caverns where it was done you might lose yourself as in the
great caves of Kentucky.
In the dust and the steam the electric lights would shine like far-off twinkling
stars--red and blue-green and purple stars, according to the color of the mist and the
brew from which it came.
For the odors of these ghastly charnel houses there may be words in Lithuanian,
but there are none in English. The person entering would have to summon
his courage as for a cold-water plunge.
He would go in like a man swimming under water; he would put his handkerchief over
his face, and begin to cough and choke; and then, if he were still obstinate, he would
find his head beginning to ring, and the
veins in his forehead to throb, until finally he would be assailed by an
overpowering blast of ammonia fumes, and would turn and run for his life, and come
out half-dazed.
On top of this were the rooms where they dried the "tankage," the mass of brown
stringy stuff that was left after the waste portions of the carcasses had had the lard
and tallow dried out of them.
This dried material they would then grind to a fine powder, and after they had mixed
it up well with a mysterious but inoffensive brown rock which they brought
in and ground up by the hundreds of
carloads for that purpose, the substance was ready to be put into bags and sent out
to the world as any one of a hundred different brands of standard bone
phosphate.
And then the farmer in Maine or California or Texas would buy this, at say twenty-five
dollars a ton, and plant it with his corn; and for several days after the operation
the fields would have a strong odor, and
the farmer and his wagon and the very horses that had hauled it would all have it
too.
In Packingtown the fertilizer is pure, instead of being a flavoring, and instead
of a ton or so spread out on several acres under the open sky, there are hundreds and
thousands of tons of it in one building,
heaped here and there in haystack piles, covering the floor several inches deep, and
filling the air with a choking dust that becomes a blinding sandstorm when the wind
stirs.
It was to this building that Jurgis came daily, as if dragged by an unseen hand.
The month of May was an exceptionally cool one, and his secret prayers were granted;
but early in June there came a record- breaking hot spell, and after that there
were men wanted in the fertilizer mill.
The boss of the grinding room had come to know Jurgis by this time, and had marked
him for a likely man; and so when he came to the door about two o'clock this
breathless hot day, he felt a sudden spasm
of pain shoot through him--the boss beckoned to him!
In ten minutes more Jurgis had pulled off his coat and overshirt, and set his teeth
together and gone to work. Here was one more difficulty for him to
meet and conquer!
His labor took him about one minute to learn.
Before him was one of the vents of the mill in which the fertilizer was being ground--
rushing forth in a great brown river, with a spray of the finest dust flung forth in
clouds.
Jurgis was given a shovel, and along with half a dozen others it was his task to
shovel this fertilizer into carts.
That others were at work he knew by the sound, and by the fact that he sometimes
collided with them; otherwise they might as well not have been there, for in the
blinding dust storm a man could not see six feet in front of his face.
When he had filled one cart he had to grope around him until another came, and if there
was none on hand he continued to grope till one arrived.
In five minutes he was, of course, a mass of fertilizer from head to feet; they gave
him a sponge to tie over his mouth, so that he could breathe, but the sponge did not
prevent his lips and eyelids from caking up with it and his ears from filling solid.
He looked like a brown ghost at twilight-- from hair to shoes he became the color of
the building and of everything in it, and for that matter a hundred yards outside it.
The building had to be left open, and when the wind blew Durham and Company lost a
great deal of fertilizer.
Working in his shirt sleeves, and with the thermometer at over a hundred, the
phosphates soaked in through every pore of Jurgis' skin, and in five minutes he had a
headache, and in fifteen was almost dazed.
The blood was pounding in his brain like an engine's throbbing; there was a frightful
pain in the top of his skull, and he could hardly control his hands.
Still, with the memory of his four months' siege behind him, he fought on, in a frenzy
of determination; and half an hour later he began to vomit--he vomited until it seemed
as if his inwards must be torn into shreds.
A man could get used to the fertilizer mill, the boss had said, if he would make
up his mind to it; but Jurgis now began to see that it was a question of making up his
stomach.
At the end of that day of horror, he could scarcely stand.
He had to catch himself now and then, and lean against a building and get his
bearings.
Most of the men, when they came out, made straight for a saloon--they seemed to place
fertilizer and rattlesnake poison in one class.
But Jurgis was too ill to think of drinking--he could only make his way to the
street and stagger on to a car.
He had a sense of humor, and later on, when he became an old hand, he used to think it
fun to board a streetcar and see what happened.
Now, however, he was too ill to notice it-- how the people in the car began to gasp and
sputter, to put their handkerchiefs to their noses, and transfix him with furious
glances.
Jurgis only knew that a man in front of him immediately got up and gave him a seat; and
that half a minute later the two people on each side of him got up; and that in a full
minute the crowded car was nearly empty--
those passengers who could not get room on the platform having gotten out to walk.
Of course Jurgis had made his home a miniature fertilizer mill a minute after
entering.
The stuff was half an inch deep in his skin--his whole system was full of it, and
it would have taken a week not merely of scrubbing, but of vigorous exercise, to get
it out of him.
As it was, he could be compared with nothing known to men, save that newest
discovery of the savants, a substance which emits energy for an unlimited time, without
being itself in the least diminished in power.
He smelled so that he made all the food at the table taste, and set the whole family
to vomiting; for himself it was three days before he could keep anything upon his
stomach--he might wash his hands, and use a
knife and fork, but were not his mouth and throat filled with the poison?
And still Jurgis stuck it out!
In spite of splitting headaches he would stagger down to the plant and take up his
stand once more, and begin to shovel in the blinding clouds of dust.
And so at the end of the week he was a fertilizer man for life--he was able to eat
again, and though his head never stopped aching, it ceased to be so bad that he
could not work.
So there passed another summer.
It was a summer of prosperity, all over the country, and the country ate generously of
packing house products, and there was plenty of work for all the family, in spite
of the packers' efforts to keep a superfluity of labor.
They were again able to pay their debts and to begin to save a little sum; but there
were one or two sacrifices they considered too heavy to be made for long--it was too
bad that the boys should have to sell papers at their age.
It was utterly useless to caution them and plead with them; quite without knowing it,
they were taking on the tone of their new environment.
They were learning to swear in voluble English; they were learning to pick up
cigar stumps and smoke them, to pass hours of their time gambling with pennies and
dice and cigarette cards; they were
learning the location of all the houses of prostitution on the "Levee," and the names
of the "madames" who kept them, and the days when they gave their state banquets,
which the police captains and the big politicians all attended.
If a visiting "country customer" were to ask them, they could show him which was
"Hinkydink's" famous saloon, and could even point out to him by name the different
gamblers and thugs and "hold-up men" who made the place their headquarters.
And worse yet, the boys were getting out of the habit of coming home at night.
What was the use, they would ask, of wasting time and energy and a possible
carfare riding out to the stockyards every night when the weather was pleasant and
they could crawl under a truck or into an empty doorway and sleep exactly as well?
So long as they brought home a half dollar for each day, what mattered it when they
brought it?
But Jurgis declared that from this to ceasing to come at all would not be a very
long step, and so it was decided that Vilimas and Nikalojus should return to
school in the fall, and that instead
Elzbieta should go out and get some work, her place at home being taken by her
younger daughter.
Little Kotrina was like most children of the poor, prematurely made old; she had to
take care of her little brother, who was a cripple, and also of the baby; she had to
cook the meals and wash the dishes and
clean house, and have supper ready when the workers came home in the evening.
She was only thirteen, and small for her age, but she did all this without a murmur;
and her mother went out, and after trudging a couple of days about the yards, settled
down as a servant of a "sausage machine."
Elzbieta was used to working, but she found this change a hard one, for the reason that
she had to stand motionless upon her feet from seven o'clock in the morning till
half-past twelve, and again from one till half-past five.
For the first few days it seemed to her that she could not stand it--she suffered
almost as much as Jurgis had from the fertilizer, and would come out at sundown
with her head fairly reeling.
Besides this, she was working in one of the dark holes, by electric light, and the
dampness, too, was deadly--there were always puddles of water on the floor, and a
sickening odor of moist flesh in the room.
The people who worked here followed the ancient custom of nature, whereby the
ptarmigan is the color of dead leaves in the fall and of snow in the winter, and the
chameleon, who is black when he lies upon a
stump and turns green when he moves to a leaf.
The men and women who worked in this department were precisely the color of the
"fresh country sausage" they made.
The sausage-room was an interesting place to visit, for two or three minutes, and
provided that you did not look at the people; the machines were perhaps the most
wonderful things in the entire plant.
Presumably sausages were once chopped and stuffed by hand, and if so it would be
interesting to know how many workers had been displaced by these inventions.
On one side of the room were the hoppers, into which men shoveled loads of meat and
wheelbarrows full of spices; in these great bowls were whirling knives that made two
thousand revolutions a minute, and when the
meat was ground fine and adulterated with potato flour, and well mixed with water, it
was forced to the stuffing machines on the other side of the room.
The latter were tended by women; there was a sort of spout, like the nozzle of a hose,
and one of the women would take a long string of "casing" and put the end over the
nozzle and then work the whole thing on, as
one works on the finger of a tight glove.
This string would be twenty or thirty feet long, but the woman would have it all on in
a jiffy; and when she had several on, she would press a lever, and a stream of
sausage meat would be shot out, taking the casing with it as it came.
Thus one might stand and see appear, miraculously born from the machine, a
wriggling snake of sausage of incredible length.
In front was a big pan which caught these creatures, and two more women who seized
them as fast as they appeared and twisted them into links.
This was for the uninitiated the most perplexing work of all; for all that the
woman had to give was a single turn of the wrist; and in some way she contrived to
give it so that instead of an endless chain
of sausages, one after another, there grew under her hands a bunch of strings, all
dangling from a single center.
It was quite like the feat of a prestidigitator--for the woman worked so
fast that the eye could literally not follow her, and there was only a mist of
motion, and tangle after tangle of sausages appearing.
In the midst of the mist, however, the visitor would suddenly notice the tense set
face, with the two wrinkles graven in the forehead, and the ghastly pallor of the
cheeks; and then he would suddenly recollect that it was time he was going on.
The woman did not go on; she stayed right there--hour after hour, day after day, year
after year, twisting sausage links and racing with death.
It was piecework, and she was apt to have a family to keep alive; and stern and
ruthless economic laws had arranged it that she could only do this by working just as
she did, with all her soul upon her work,
and with never an instant for a glance at the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen who
came to stare at her, as at some wild beast in a menagerie.
>
CHAPTER 14
With one member trimming beef in a cannery, and another working in a sausage factory,
the family had a first-hand knowledge of the great majority of Packingtown swindles.
For it was the custom, as they found, whenever meat was so spoiled that it could
not be used for anything else, either to can it or else to chop it up into sausage.
With what had been told them by Jonas, who had worked in the pickle rooms, they could
now study the whole of the spoiled-meat industry on the inside, and read a new and
grim meaning into that old Packingtown
jest--that they use everything of the pig except the squeal.
Jonas had told them how the meat that was taken out of pickle would often be found
sour, and how they would rub it up with soda to take away the smell, and sell it to
be eaten on free-lunch counters; also of
all the miracles of chemistry which they performed, giving to any sort of meat,
fresh or salted, whole or chopped, any color and any flavor and any odor they
chose.
In the pickling of hams they had an ingenious apparatus, by which they saved
time and increased the capacity of the plant--a machine consisting of a hollow
needle attached to a pump; by plunging this
needle into the meat and working with his foot, a man could fill a ham with pickle in
a few seconds.
And yet, in spite of this, there would be hams found spoiled, some of them with an
odor so bad that a man could hardly bear to be in the room with them.
To pump into these the packers had a second and much stronger pickle which destroyed
the odor--a process known to the workers as "giving them thirty per cent."
Also, after the hams had been smoked, there would be found some that had gone to the
bad.
Formerly these had been sold as "Number Three Grade," but later on some ingenious
person had hit upon a new device, and now they would extract the bone, about which
the bad part generally lay, and insert in the hole a white-hot iron.
After this invention there was no longer Number One, Two, and Three Grade--there was
only Number One Grade.
The packers were always originating such schemes--they had what they called
"boneless hams," which were all the odds and ends of pork stuffed into casings; and
"California hams," which were the
shoulders, with big knuckle joints, and nearly all the meat cut out; and fancy
"skinned hams," which were made of the oldest hogs, whose skins were so heavy and
coarse that no one would buy them--that is,
until they had been cooked and chopped fine and labeled "head cheese!"
It was only when the whole ham was spoiled that it came into the department of
Elzbieta.
Cut up by the two-thousand-revolutions-a- minute flyers, and mixed with half a ton of
other meat, no odor that ever was in a ham could make any difference.
There was never the least attention paid to what was cut up for sausage; there would
come all the way back from Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that
was moldy and white--it would be dosed with
borax and glycerine, and dumped into the hoppers, and made over again for home
There would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor, in the dirt and sawdust, where
the workers had tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs.
There would be meat stored in great piles in rooms; and the water from leaky roofs
would drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about on it.
It was too dark in these storage places to see well, but a man could run his hand over
these piles of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung of rats.
These rats were nuisances, and the packers would put poisoned bread out for them; they
would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go into the hoppers together.
This is no fairy story and no joke; the meat would be shoveled into carts, and the
man who did the shoveling would not trouble to lift out a rat even when he saw one--
there were things that went into the
sausage in comparison with which a poisoned rat was a tidbit.
There was no place for the men to wash their hands before they ate their dinner,
and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the
There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and the scraps of corned beef, and all the
odds and ends of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped into old barrels in
the cellar and left there.
Under the system of rigid economy which the packers enforced, there were some jobs that
it only paid to do once in a long time, and among these was the cleaning out of the
waste barrels.
Every spring they did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust and old
nails and stale water--and cartload after cartload of it would be taken up and dumped
into the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the public's breakfast.
Some of it they would make into "smoked" sausage--but as the smoking took time, and
was therefore expensive, they would call upon their chemistry department, and
preserve it with borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown.
All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but when they came to wrap it they
would stamp some of it "special," and for this they would charge two cents more a
pound.
Such were the new surroundings in which Elzbieta was placed, and such was the work
she was compelled to do.
It was stupefying, brutalizing work; it left her no time to think, no strength for
anything.
She was part of the machine she tended, and every faculty that was not needed for the
machine was doomed to be crushed out of existence.
There was only one mercy about the cruel grind--that it gave her the gift of
insensibility. Little by little she sank into a torpor--
she fell silent.
She would meet Jurgis and Ona in the evening, and the three would walk home
together, often without saying a word.
Ona, too, was falling into a habit of silence--Ona, who had once gone about
singing like a bird.
She was sick and miserable, and often she would barely have strength enough to drag
herself home.
And there they would eat what they had to eat, and afterward, because there was only
their misery to talk of, they would crawl into bed and fall into a stupor and never
stir until it was time to get up again, and
dress by candlelight, and go back to the machines.
They were so numbed that they did not even suffer much from hunger, now; only the
children continued to fret when the food ran short.
Yet the soul of Ona was not dead--the souls of none of them were dead, but only
sleeping; and now and then they would waken, and these were cruel times.
The gates of memory would roll open--old joys would stretch out their arms to them,
old hopes and dreams would call to them, and they would stir beneath the burden that
lay upon them, and feel its forever immeasurable weight.
They could not even cry out beneath it; but anguish would seize them, more dreadful
than the agony of death.
It was a thing scarcely to be spoken--a thing never spoken by all the world, that
will not know its own defeat. They were beaten; they had lost the game,
they were swept aside.
It was not less tragic because it was so sordid, because it had to do with wages and
grocery bills and rents.
They had dreamed of freedom; of a chance to look about them and learn something; to be
decent and clean, to see their child grow up to be strong.
And now it was all gone--it would never be!
They had played the game and they had lost.
Six years more of toil they had to face before they could expect the least respite,
the cessation of the payments upon the house; and how cruelly certain it was that
they could never stand six years of such a life as they were living!
They were lost, they were going down--and there was no deliverance for them, no hope;
for all the help it gave them the vast city in which they lived might have been an
ocean waste, a wilderness, a desert, a tomb.
So often this mood would come to Ona, in the nighttime, when something wakened her;
she would lie, afraid of the beating of her own heart, fronting the blood-red eyes of
the old primeval terror of life.
Once she cried aloud, and woke Jurgis, who was tired and cross.
After that she learned to weep silently-- their moods so seldom came together now!
It was as if their hopes were buried in separate graves.
Jurgis, being a man, had troubles of his own.
There was another specter following him.
He had never spoken of it, nor would he allow any one else to speak of it--he had
never acknowledged its existence to himself.
Yet the battle with it took all the manhood that he had--and once or twice, alas, a
little more. Jurgis had discovered drink.
He was working in the steaming pit of hell; day after day, week after week--until now,
there was not an organ of his body that did its work without pain, until the sound of
ocean breakers echoed in his head day and
night, and the buildings swayed and danced before him as he went down the street.
And from all the unending horror of this there was a respite, a deliverance--he
could drink!
He could forget the pain, he could slip off the burden; he would see clearly again, he
would be master of his brain, of his thoughts, of his will.
His dead self would stir in him, and he would find himself laughing and cracking
jokes with his companions--he would be a man again, and master of his life.
It was not an easy thing for Jurgis to take more than two or three drinks.
With the first drink he could eat a meal, and he could persuade himself that that was
economy; with the second he could eat another meal--but there would come a time
when he could eat no more, and then to pay
for a drink was an unthinkable extravagance, a defiance of the age-long
instincts of his hunger-haunted class.
One day, however, he took the plunge, and drank up all that he had in his pockets,
and went home half "piped," as the men phrase it.
He was happier than he had been in a year; and yet, because he knew that the happiness
would not last, he was savage, too with those who would wreck it, and with the
world, and with his life; and then again,
beneath this, he was sick with the shame of himself.
Afterward, when he saw the despair of his family, and reckoned up the money he had
spent, the tears came into his eyes, and he began the long battle with the specter.
It was a battle that had no end, that never could have one.
But Jurgis did not realize that very clearly; he was not given much time for
reflection.
He simply knew that he was always fighting. Steeped in misery and despair as he was,
merely to walk down the street was to be put upon the rack.
There was surely a saloon on the corner-- perhaps on all four corners, and some in
the middle of the block as well; and each one stretched out a hand to him each one
had a personality of its own, allurements unlike any other.
Going and coming--before sunrise and after dark--there was warmth and a glow of light,
and the steam of hot food, and perhaps music, or a friendly face, and a word of
good cheer.
Jurgis developed a fondness for having Ona on his arm whenever he went out on the
street, and he would hold her tightly, and walk fast.
It was pitiful to have Ona know of this--it drove him wild to think of it; the thing
was not fair, for Ona had never tasted drink, and so could not understand.
Sometimes, in desperate hours, he would find himself wishing that she might learn
what it was, so that he need not be ashamed in her presence.
They might drink together, and escape from the horror--escape for a while, come what
would.
So there came a time when nearly all the conscious life of Jurgis consisted of a
struggle with the craving for liquor.
He would have ugly moods, when he hated Ona and the whole family, because they stood in
his way. He was a fool to have married; he had tied
himself down, had made himself a slave.
It was all because he was a married man that he was compelled to stay in the yards;
if it had not been for that he might have gone off like Jonas, and to hell with the
packers.
There were few single men in the fertilizer mill--and those few were working only for a
chance to escape.
Meantime, too, they had something to think about while they worked,--they had the
memory of the last time they had been drunk, and the hope of the time when they
would be drunk again.
As for Jurgis, he was expected to bring home every penny; he could not even go with
the men at noontime--he was supposed to sit down and eat his dinner on a pile of
fertilizer dust.
This was not always his mood, of course; he still loved his family.
But just now was a time of trial.
Poor little Antanas, for instance--who had never failed to win him with a smile--
little Antanas was not smiling just now, being a mass of fiery red pimples.
He had had all the diseases that babies are heir to, in quick succession, scarlet
fever, mumps, and whooping cough in the first year, and now he was down with the
measles.
There was no one to attend him but Kotrina; there was no doctor to help him, because
they were too poor, and children did not die of the measles--at least not often.
Now and then Kotrina would find time to sob over his woes, but for the greater part of
the time he had to be left alone, barricaded upon the bed.
The floor was full of drafts, and if he caught cold he would die.
At night he was tied down, lest he should kick the covers off him, while the family
lay in their stupor of exhaustion.
He would lie and scream for hours, almost in convulsions; and then, when he was worn
out, he would lie whimpering and wailing in his torment.
He was burning up with fever, and his eyes were running sores; in the daytime he was a
thing uncanny and impish to behold, a plaster of pimples and sweat, a great
purple lump of misery.
Yet all this was not really as cruel as it sounds, for, sick as he was, little Antanas
was the least unfortunate member of that family.
He was quite able to bear his sufferings-- it was as if he had all these complaints to
show what a prodigy of health he was.
He was the child of his parents' youth and joy; he grew up like the conjurer's
rosebush, and all the world was his oyster.
In general, he toddled around the kitchen all day with a lean and hungry look--the
portion of the family's allowance that fell to him was not enough, and he was
unrestrainable in his demand for more.
Antanas was but little over a year old, and already no one but his father could manage
him.
It seemed as if he had taken all of his mother's strength--had left nothing for
those that might come after him.
Ona was with child again now, and it was a dreadful thing to contemplate; even Jurgis,
dumb and despairing as he was, could not but understand that yet other agonies were
on the way, and shudder at the thought of them.
For Ona was visibly going to pieces.
In the first place she was developing a cough, like the one that had killed old
Dede Antanas.
She had had a trace of it ever since that fatal morning when the greedy streetcar
corporation had turned her out into the rain; but now it was beginning to grow
serious, and to wake her up at night.
Even worse than that was the fearful nervousness from which she suffered; she
would have frightful headaches and fits of aimless weeping; and sometimes she would
come home at night shuddering and moaning,
and would fling herself down upon the bed and burst into tears.
Several times she was quite beside herself and hysterical; and then Jurgis would go
half-mad with fright.
Elzbieta would explain to him that it could not be helped, that a woman was subject to
such things when she was pregnant; but he was hardly to be persuaded, and would beg
and plead to know what had happened.
She had never been like this before, he would argue--it was monstrous and
unthinkable.
It was the life she had to live, the accursed work she had to do, that was
killing her by inches.
She was not fitted for it--no woman was fitted for it, no woman ought to be allowed
to do such work; if the world could not keep them alive any other way it ought to
kill them at once and be done with it.
They ought not to marry, to have children; no workingman ought to marry--if he,
Jurgis, had known what a woman was like, he would have had his eyes torn out first.
So he would carry on, becoming half hysterical himself, which was an unbearable
thing to see in a big man; Ona would pull herself together and fling herself into his
arms, begging him to stop, to be still,
that she would be better, it would be all right.
So she would lie and sob out her grief upon his shoulder, while he gazed at her, as
helpless as a wounded animal, the target of unseen enemies.
>
CHAPTER 15
The beginning of these perplexing things was in the summer; and each time Ona would
promise him with terror in her voice that it would not happen again--but in vain.
Each crisis would leave Jurgis more and more frightened, more disposed to distrust
Elzbieta's consolations, and to believe that there was some terrible thing about
all this that he was not allowed to know.
Once or twice in these outbreaks he caught Ona's eye, and it seemed to him like the
eye of a hunted animal; there were broken phrases of anguish and despair now and
then, amid her frantic weeping.
It was only because he was so numb and beaten himself that Jurgis did not worry
more about this.
But he never thought of it, except when he was dragged to it--he lived like a dumb
beast of burden, knowing only the moment in which he was.
The winter was coming on again, more menacing and cruel than ever.
It was October, and the holiday rush had begun.
It was necessary for the packing machines to grind till late at night to provide food
that would be eaten at Christmas breakfasts; and Marija and Elzbieta and
Ona, as part of the machine, began working fifteen or sixteen hours a day.
There was no choice about this--whatever work there was to be done they had to do,
if they wished to keep their places; besides that, it added another pittance to
their incomes.
So they staggered on with the awful load. They would start work every morning at
seven, and eat their dinners at noon, and then work until ten or eleven at night
without another mouthful of food.
Jurgis wanted to wait for them, to help them home at night, but they would not
think of this; the fertilizer mill was not running overtime, and there was no place
for him to wait save in a saloon.
Each would stagger out into the darkness, and make her way to the corner, where they
met; or if the others had already gone, would get into a car, and begin a painful
struggle to keep awake.
When they got home they were always too tired either to eat or to undress; they
would crawl into bed with their shoes on, and lie like logs.
If they should fail, they would certainly be lost; if they held out, they might have
enough coal for the winter. A day or two before Thanksgiving Day there
came a snowstorm.
It began in the afternoon, and by evening two inches had fallen.
Jurgis tried to wait for the women, but went into a saloon to get warm, and took
two drinks, and came out and ran home to escape from the demon; there he lay down to
wait for them, and instantly fell asleep.
When he opened his eyes again he was in the midst of a nightmare, and found Elzbieta
shaking him and crying out. At first he could not realize what she was
saying--Ona had not come home.
What time was it, he asked. It was morning--time to be up.
Ona had not been home that night! And it was bitter cold, and a foot of snow
on the ground.
Jurgis sat up with a start. Marija was crying with fright and the
children were wailing in sympathy--little Stanislovas in addition, because the terror
of the snow was upon him.
Jurgis had nothing to put on but his shoes and his coat, and in half a minute he was
out of the door.
Then, however, he realized that there was no need of haste, that he had no idea where
to go.
It was still dark as midnight, and the thick snowflakes were sifting down--
everything was so silent that he could hear the rustle of them as they fell.
In the few seconds that he stood there hesitating he was covered white.
He set off at a run for the yards, stopping by the way to inquire in the saloons that
were open.
Ona might have been overcome on the way; or else she might have met with an accident in
the machines.
When he got to the place where she worked he inquired of one of the watchmen--there
had not been any accident, so far as the man had heard.
At the time office, which he found already open, the clerk told him that Ona's check
had been turned in the night before, showing that she had left her work.
After that there was nothing for him to do but wait, pacing back and forth in the
snow, meantime, to keep from freezing.
Already the yards were full of activity; cattle were being unloaded from the cars in
the distance, and across the way the "beef- luggers" were toiling in the darkness,
carrying two-hundred-pound quarters of bullocks into the refrigerator cars.
Before the first streaks of daylight there came the crowding throngs of workingmen,
shivering, and swinging their dinner pails as they hurried by.
Jurgis took up his stand by the time-office window, where alone there was light enough
for him to see; the snow fell so quick that it was only by peering closely that he
could make sure that Ona did not pass him.
Seven o'clock came, the hour when the great packing machine began to move.
Jurgis ought to have been at his place in the fertilizer mill; but instead he was
waiting, in an agony of fear, for Ona.
It was fifteen minutes after the hour when he saw a form emerge from the snow mist,
and sprang toward it with a cry.
It was she, running swiftly; as she saw him, she staggered forward, and half fell
into his outstretched arms. "What has been the matter?" he cried,
anxiously.
"Where have you been?" It was several seconds before she could get
breath to answer him. "I couldn't get home," she exclaimed.
"The snow--the cars had stopped."
"But where were you then?" he demanded. "I had to go home with a friend," she
panted--"with Jadvyga."
Jurgis drew a deep breath; but then he noticed that she was sobbing and trembling-
-as if in one of those nervous crises that he dreaded so.
"But what's the matter?" he cried.
"What has happened?" "Oh, Jurgis, I was so frightened!" she
said, clinging to him wildly. "I have been so worried!"
They were near the time station window, and people were staring at them.
Jurgis led her away. "How do you mean?" he asked, in perplexity.
"I was afraid--I was just afraid!" sobbed Ona.
"I knew you wouldn't know where I was, and I didn't know what you might do.
I tried to get home, but I was so tired.
Oh, Jurgis, Jurgis!" He was so glad to get her back that he
could not think clearly about anything else.
It did not seem strange to him that she should be so very much upset; all her
fright and incoherent protestations did not matter since he had her back.
He let her cry away her tears; and then, because it was nearly eight o'clock, and
they would lose another hour if they delayed, he left her at the packing house
door, with her ghastly white face and her haunted eyes of terror.
There was another brief interval.
Christmas was almost come; and because the snow still held, and the searching cold,
morning after morning Jurgis half carried his wife to her post, staggering with her
through the darkness; until at last, one night, came the end.
It lacked but three days of the holidays.
About midnight Marija and Elzbieta came home, exclaiming in alarm when they found
that Ona had not come.
The two had agreed to meet her; and, after waiting, had gone to the room where she
worked; only to find that the ham-wrapping girls had quit work an hour before, and
left.
There was no snow that night, nor was it especially cold; and still Ona had not
come! Something more serious must be wrong this
time.
They aroused Jurgis, and he sat up and listened crossly to the story.
She must have gone home again with Jadvyga, he said; Jadvyga lived only two blocks from
the yards, and perhaps she had been tired.
Nothing could have happened to her--and even if there had, there was nothing could
be done about it until morning.
Jurgis turned over in his bed, and was snoring again before the two had closed the
door. In the morning, however, he was up and out
nearly an hour before the usual time.
Jadvyga Marcinkus lived on the other side of the yards, beyond Halsted Street, with
her mother and sisters, in a single basement room--for Mikolas had recently
lost one hand from blood poisoning, and their marriage had been put off forever.
The door of the room was in the rear, reached by a narrow court, and Jurgis saw a
light in the window and heard something frying as he passed; he knocked, half
expecting that Ona would answer.
Instead there was one of Jadvyga's little sisters, who gazed at him through a crack
in the door. "Where's Ona?" he demanded; and the child
looked at him in perplexity.
"Ona?" she said. "Yes," said Jurgis, "isn't she here?"
"No," said the child, and Jurgis gave a start.
A moment later came Jadvyga, peering over the child's head.
When she saw who it was, she slid around out of sight, for she was not quite
dressed.
Jurgis must excuse her, she began, her mother was very ill--
"Ona isn't here?" Jurgis demanded, too alarmed to wait for
her to finish.
"Why, no," said Jadvyga. "What made you think she would be here?
Had she said she was coming?" "No," he answered.
"But she hasn't come home--and I thought she would be here the same as before."
"As before?" echoed Jadvyga, in perplexity. "The time she spent the night here," said
Jurgis.
"There must be some mistake," she answered, quickly.
"Ona has never spent the night here." He was only half able to realize the words.
"Why--why--" he exclaimed.
"Two weeks ago. Jadvyga!
She told me so the night it snowed, and she could not get home."
"There must be some mistake," declared the girl, again; "she didn't come here."
He steadied himself by the door-sill; and Jadvyga in her anxiety--for she was fond of
Ona--opened the door wide, holding her jacket across her throat.
"Are you sure you didn't misunderstand her?" she cried.
"She must have meant somewhere else. She--"
"She said here," insisted Jurgis.
"She told me all about you, and how you were, and what you said.
Are you sure? You haven't forgotten?
You weren't away?"
"No, no!" she exclaimed--and then came a peevish voice--"Jadvyga, you are giving the
baby a cold. Shut the door!"
Jurgis stood for half a minute more, stammering his perplexity through an eighth
of an inch of crack; and then, as there was really nothing more to be said, he excused
himself and went away.
He walked on half dazed, without knowing where he went.
Ona had deceived him! She had lied to him!
And what could it mean--where had she been?
Where was she now? He could hardly grasp the thing--much less
try to solve it; but a hundred wild surmises came to him, a sense of impending
calamity overwhelmed him.
Because there was nothing else to do, he went back to the time office to watch
again.
He waited until nearly an hour after seven, and then went to the room where Ona worked
to make inquiries of Ona's "forelady."
The "forelady," he found, had not yet come; all the lines of cars that came from
downtown were stalled--there had been an accident in the powerhouse, and no cars had
been running since last night.
Meantime, however, the ham-wrappers were working away, with some one else in charge
of them.
The girl who answered Jurgis was busy, and as she talked she looked to see if she were
being watched.
Then a man came up, wheeling a truck; he knew Jurgis for Ona's husband, and was
curious about the mystery.
"Maybe the cars had something to do with it," he suggested--"maybe she had gone
down-town." "No," said Jurgis, "she never went down-
town."
"Perhaps not," said the man. Jurgis thought he saw him exchange a swift
glance with the girl as he spoke, and he demanded quickly.
"What do you know about it?"
But the man had seen that the boss was watching him; he started on again, pushing
his truck. "I don't know anything about it," he said,
over his shoulder.
"How should I know where your wife goes?" Then Jurgis went out again and paced up and
down before the building. All the morning he stayed there, with no
thought of his work.
About noon he went to the police station to make inquiries, and then came back again
for another anxious vigil. Finally, toward the middle of the
afternoon, he set out for home once more.
He was walking out Ashland Avenue. The streetcars had begun running again, and
several passed him, packed to the steps with people.
The sight of them set Jurgis to thinking again of the man's sarcastic remark; and
half involuntarily he found himself watching the cars--with the result that he
gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stopped short in his tracks.
Then he broke into a run. For a whole block he tore after the car,
only a little ways behind.
That rusty black hat with the drooping red flower, it might not be Ona's, but there
was very little likelihood of it. He would know for certain very soon, for
she would get out two blocks ahead.
He slowed down, and let the car go on. She got out: and as soon as she was out of
sight on the side street Jurgis broke into a run.
Suspicion was rife in him now, and he was not ashamed to shadow her: he saw her turn
the corner near their home, and then he ran again, and saw her as she went up the porch
steps of the house.
After that he turned back, and for five minutes paced up and down, his hands
clenched tightly and his lips set, his mind in a turmoil.
Then he went home and entered.
As he opened the door, he saw Elzbieta, who had also been looking for Ona, and had come
home again. She was now on tiptoe, and had a finger on
her lips.
Jurgis waited until she was close to him. "Don't make any noise," she whispered,
hurriedly. "What's the matter'?" he asked.
"Ona is asleep," she panted.
"She's been very ill. I'm afraid her mind's been wandering,
Jurgis.
She was lost on the street all night, and I've only just succeeded in getting her
quiet." "When did she come in?" he asked.
"Soon after you left this morning," said Elzbieta.
"And has she been out since?" "No, of course not.
She's so weak, Jurgis, she--"
And he set his teeth hard together. "You are lying to me," he said.
Elzbieta started, and turned pale. "Why!" she gasped.
"What do you mean?"
But Jurgis did not answer. He pushed her aside, and strode to the
bedroom door and opened it. Ona was sitting on the bed.
She turned a startled look upon him as he entered.
He closed the door in Elzbieta's face, and went toward his wife.
"Where have you been?" he demanded.
She had her hands clasped tightly in her lap, and he saw that her face was as white
as paper, and drawn with pain.
She gasped once or twice as she tried to answer him, and then began, speaking low,
and swiftly. "Jurgis, I--I think I have been out of my
mind.
I started to come last night, and I could not find the way.
I walked--I walked all night, I think, and- -and I only got home--this morning."
"You needed a rest," he said, in a hard tone.
"Why did you go out again?"
He was looking her fairly in the face, and he could read the sudden fear and wild
uncertainty that leaped into her eyes.
"I--I had to go to--to the store," she gasped, almost in a whisper, "I had to go--
" "You are lying to me," said Jurgis.
Then he clenched his hands and took a step toward her.
"Why do you lie to me?" he cried, fiercely. "What are you doing that you have to lie to
me?"
"Jurgis!" she exclaimed, starting up in fright.
"Oh, Jurgis, how can you?" "You have lied to me, I say!" he cried.
"You told me you had been to Jadvyga's house that other night, and you hadn't.
You had been where you were last night-- somewheres downtown, for I saw you get off
the car.
Where were you?" It was as if he had struck a knife into
her. She seemed to go all to pieces.
For half a second she stood, reeling and swaying, staring at him with horror in her
eyes; then, with a cry of anguish, she tottered forward, stretching out her arms
to him.
But he stepped aside, deliberately, and let her fall.
She caught herself at the side of the bed, and then sank down, burying her face in her
hands and bursting into frantic weeping.
There came one of those hysterical crises that had so often dismayed him.
Ona sobbed and wept, her fear and anguish building themselves up into long climaxes.
Furious gusts of emotion would come sweeping over her, shaking her as the
tempest shakes the trees upon the hills; all her frame would quiver and throb with
them--it was as if some dreadful thing rose
up within her and took possession of her, torturing her, tearing her.
This thing had been wont to set Jurgis quite beside himself; but now he stood with
his lips set tightly and his hands clenched--she might weep till she killed
herself, but she should not move him this time--not an inch, not an inch.
Because the sounds she made set his blood to running cold and his lips to quivering
in spite of himself, he was glad of the diversion when Teta Elzbieta, pale with
fright, opened the door and rushed in; yet he turned upon her with an oath.
"Go out!" he cried, "go out!"
And then, as she stood hesitating, about to speak, he seized her by the arm, and half
flung her from the room, slamming the door and barring it with a table.
Then he turned again and faced Ona, crying- -"Now, answer me!"
Yet she did not hear him--she was still in the grip of the fiend.
Jurgis could see her outstretched hands, shaking and twitching, roaming here and
there over the bed at will, like living things; he could see convulsive shudderings
start in her body and run through her limbs.
She was sobbing and choking--it was as if there were too many sounds for one throat,
they came chasing each other, like waves upon the sea.
Then her voice would begin to rise into screams, louder and louder until it broke
in wild, horrible peals of laughter.
Jurgis bore it until he could bear it no longer, and then he sprang at her, seizing
her by the shoulders and shaking her, shouting into her ear: "Stop it, I say!
Stop it!"
She looked up at him, out of her agony; then she fell forward at his feet.
She caught them in her hands, in spite of his efforts to step aside, and with her
face upon the floor lay writhing.
It made a choking in Jurgis' throat to hear her, and he cried again, more savagely than
before: "Stop it, I say!"
This time she heeded him, and caught her breath and lay silent, save for the gasping
sobs that wrenched all her frame.
For a long minute she lay there, perfectly motionless, until a cold fear seized her
husband, thinking that she was dying. Suddenly, however, he heard her voice,
faintly: "Jurgis!
Jurgis!" "What is it?" he said.
He had to bend down to her, she was so weak.
She was pleading with him, in broken phrases, painfully uttered: "Have faith in
me! Believe me!"
"Believe what?" he cried.
"Believe that I--that I know best--that I love you!
And do not ask me--what you did. Oh, Jurgis, please, please!
It is for the best--it is--"
He started to speak again, but she rushed on frantically, heading him off.
"If you will only do it! If you will only--only believe me!
It wasn't my fault--I couldn't help it--it will be all right--it is nothing--it is no
harm. Oh, Jurgis--please, please!"
She had hold of him, and was trying to raise herself to look at him; he could feel
the palsied shaking of her hands and the heaving of the *** she pressed against
him.
She managed to catch one of his hands and gripped it convulsively, drawing it to her
face, and bathing it in her tears.
"Oh, believe me, believe me!" she wailed again; and he shouted in fury, "I will
not!"
But still she clung to him, wailing aloud in her despair: "Oh, Jurgis, think what you
are doing! It will ruin us--it will ruin us!
Oh, no, you must not do it!
No, don't, don't do it. You must not do it!
It will drive me mad--it will kill me--no, no, Jurgis, I am crazy--it is nothing.
You do not really need to know.
We can be happy--we can love each other just the same.
Oh, please, please, believe me!" Her words fairly drove him wild.
He tore his hands loose, and flung her off.
"Answer me," he cried. "God damn it, I say--answer me!"
She sank down upon the floor, beginning to cry again.
It was like listening to the moan of a damned soul, and Jurgis could not stand it.
He smote his fist upon the table by his side, and shouted again at her, "Answer
me!"
She began to scream aloud, her voice like the voice of some wild beast: "Ah! Ah! I
can't! I can't do it!"
"Why can't you do it?" he shouted.
"I don't know how!" He sprang and caught her by the arm,
lifting her up, and glaring into her face. "Tell me where you were last night!" he
panted.
"Quick, out with it!" Then she began to whisper, one word at a
time: "I--was in--a house--downtown--" "What house?
What do you mean?"
She tried to hide her eyes away, but he held her.
"Miss Henderson's house," she gasped. He did not understand at first.
"Miss Henderson's house," he echoed.
And then suddenly, as in an explosion, the horrible truth burst over him, and he
reeled and staggered back with a scream.
He caught himself against the wall, and put his hand to his forehead, staring about
him, and whispering, "Jesus! Jesus!"
An instant later he leaped at her, as she lay groveling at his feet.
He seized her by the throat. "Tell me!" he gasped, hoarsely.
"Quick!
Who took you to that place?" She tried to get away, making him furious;
he thought it was fear, of the pain of his clutch--he did not understand that it was
the agony of her shame.
Still she answered him, "Connor." "Connor," he gasped.
"Who is Connor?" "The boss," she answered.
"The man--"
He tightened his grip, in his frenzy, and only when he saw her eyes closing did he
realize that he was choking her. Then he relaxed his fingers, and crouched,
waiting, until she opened her lids again.
His breath beat hot into her face. "Tell me," he whispered, at last, "tell me
about it." She lay perfectly motionless, and he had to
hold his breath to catch her words.
"I did not want--to do it," she said; "I tried--I tried not to do it.
I only did it--to save us. It was our only chance."
Again, for a space, there was no sound but his panting.
Ona's eyes closed and when she spoke again she did not open them.
"He told me--he would have me turned off.
He told me he would--we would all of us lose our places.
We could never get anything to do--here-- again.
He--he meant it--he would have ruined us."
Jurgis' arms were shaking so that he could scarcely hold himself up, and lurched
forward now and then as he listened. "When--when did this begin?" he gasped.
"At the very first," she said.
She spoke as if in a trance. "It was all--it was their plot--Miss
Henderson's plot. She hated me.
And he--he wanted me.
He used to speak to me--out on the platform.
Then he began to--to make love to me. He offered me money.
He begged me--he said he loved me.
Then he threatened me. He knew all about us, he knew we would
starve. He knew your boss--he knew Marija's.
He would hound us to death, he said--then he said if I would--if I--we would all of
us be sure of work--always. Then one day he caught hold of me--he would
not let go--he--he--"
"Where was this?" "In the hallway--at night--after every one
had gone. I could not help it.
I thought of you--of the baby--of mother and the children.
I was afraid of him--afraid to cry out." A moment ago her face had been ashen gray,
now it was scarlet.
She was beginning to breathe hard again. Jurgis made not a sound.
"That was two months ago. Then he wanted me to come--to that house.
He wanted me to stay there.
He said all of us--that we would not have to work.
He made me come there--in the evenings. I told you--you thought I was at the
factory.
Then--one night it snowed, and I couldn't get back.
And last night--the cars were stopped. It was such a little thing--to ruin us all.
I tried to walk, but I couldn't.
I didn't want you to know. It would have--it would have been all
right. We could have gone on--just the same--you
need never have known about it.
He was getting tired of me--he would have let me alone soon.
I am going to have a baby--I am getting ugly.
He told me that--twice, he told me, last night.
He kicked me--last night--too. And now you will kill him--you--you will
kill him--and we shall die."
All this she had said without a quiver; she lay still as death, not an eyelid moving.
And Jurgis, too, said not a word. He lifted himself by the bed, and stood up.
He did not stop for another glance at her, but went to the door and opened it.
He did not see Elzbieta, crouching terrified in the corner.
He went out, hatless, leaving the street door open behind him.
The instant his feet were on the sidewalk he broke into a run.
He ran like one possessed, blindly, furiously, looking neither to the right nor
left.
He was on Ashland Avenue before exhaustion compelled him to slow down, and then,
noticing a car, he made a dart for it and drew himself aboard.
His eyes were wild and his hair flying, and he was breathing hoarsely, like a wounded
bull; but the people on the car did not notice this particularly--perhaps it seemed
natural to them that a man who smelled as
Jurgis smelled should exhibit an aspect to correspond.
They began to give way before him as usual.
The conductor took his nickel gingerly, with the tips of his fingers, and then left
him with the platform to himself. Jurgis did not even notice it--his thoughts
were far away.
Within his soul it was like a roaring furnace; he stood waiting, waiting,
crouching as if for a spring.
He had some of his breath back when the car came to the entrance of the yards, and so
he leaped off and started again, racing at full speed.
People turned and stared at him, but he saw no one--there was the factory, and he
bounded through the doorway and down the corridor.
He knew the room where Ona worked, and he knew Connor, the boss of the loading-gang
outside. He looked for the man as he sprang into the
room.
The truckmen were hard at work, loading the freshly packed boxes and barrels upon the
cars. Jurgis shot one swift glance up and down
the platform--the man was not on it.
But then suddenly he heard a voice in the corridor, and started for it with a bound.
In an instant more he fronted the boss. He was a big, red-faced Irishman, coarse-
featured, and smelling of liquor.
He saw Jurgis as he crossed the threshold, and turned white.
He hesitated one second, as if meaning to run; and in the next his assailant was upon
him.
He put up his hands to protect his face, but Jurgis, lunging with all the power of
his arm and body, struck him fairly between the eyes and knocked him backward.
The next moment he was on top of him, burying his fingers in his throat.
To Jurgis this man's whole presence reeked of the crime he had committed; the touch of
his body was madness to him--it set every nerve of him a-tremble, it aroused all the
demon in his soul.
It had worked its will upon Ona, this great beast--and now he had it, he had it!
It was his turn now!
Things swam blood before him, and he screamed aloud in his fury, lifting his
victim and smashing his head upon the floor.
The place, of course, was in an uproar; women fainting and shrieking, and men
rushing in.
Jurgis was so bent upon his task that he knew nothing of this, and scarcely realized
that people were trying to interfere with him; it was only when half a dozen men had
seized him by the legs and shoulders and
were pulling at him, that he understood that he was losing his prey.
In a flash he had bent down and sunk his teeth into the man's cheek; and when they
tore him away he was dripping with blood, and little ribbons of skin were hanging in
his mouth.
They got him down upon the floor, clinging to him by his arms and legs, and still they
could hardly hold him.
He fought like a tiger, writhing and twisting, half flinging them off, and
starting toward his unconscious enemy.
But yet others rushed in, until there was a little mountain of twisted limbs and
bodies, heaving and tossing, and working its way about the room.
In the end, by their sheer weight, they choked the breath out of him, and then they
carried him to the company police station, where he lay still until they had summoned
a patrol wagon to take him away.
>
CHAPTER 16
When Jurgis got up again he went quietly enough.
He was exhausted and half-dazed, and besides he saw the blue uniforms of the
policemen.
He drove in a patrol wagon with half a dozen of them watching him; keeping as far
away as possible, however, on account of the fertilizer.
Then he stood before the sergeant's desk and gave his name and address, and saw a
charge of assault and battery entered against him.
On his way to his cell a burly policeman cursed him because he started down the
wrong corridor, and then added a kick when he was not quick enough; nevertheless,
Jurgis did not even lift his eyes--he had
lived two years and a half in Packingtown, and he knew what the police were.
It was as much as a man's very life was worth to anger them, here in their inmost
lair; like as not a dozen would pile on to him at once, and pound his face into a
pulp.
It would be nothing unusual if he got his skull cracked in the melee--in which case
they would report that he had been drunk and had fallen down, and there would be no
one to know the difference or to care.
So a barred door clanged upon Jurgis and he sat down upon a bench and buried his face
in his hands. He was alone; he had the afternoon and all
of the night to himself.
At first he was like a wild beast that has glutted itself; he was in a dull stupor of
satisfaction.
He had done up the scoundrel pretty well-- not as well as he would have if they had
given him a minute more, but pretty well, all the same; the ends of his fingers were
still tingling from their contact with the fellow's throat.
But then, little by little, as his strength came back and his senses cleared, he began
to see beyond his momentary gratification; that he had nearly killed the boss would
not help Ona--not the horrors that she had
borne, nor the memory that would haunt her all her days.
It would not help to feed her and her child; she would certainly lose her place,
while he--what was to happen to him God only knew.
Half the night he paced the floor, wrestling with this nightmare; and when he
was exhausted he lay down, trying to sleep, but finding instead, for the first time in
his life, that his brain was too much for him.
In the cell next to him was a drunken wife- *** and in the one beyond a yelling
maniac.
At midnight they opened the station house to the homeless wanderers who were crowded
about the door, shivering in the winter blast, and they thronged into the corridor
outside of the cells.
Some of them stretched themselves out on the bare stone floor and fell to snoring,
others sat up, laughing and talking, cursing and quarreling.
The air was fetid with their breath, yet in spite of this some of them smelled Jurgis
and called down the torments of hell upon him, while he lay in a far corner of his
cell, counting the throbbings of the blood in his forehead.
They had brought him his supper, which was "duffers and dope"--being hunks of dry
bread on a tin plate, and coffee, called "dope" because it was drugged to keep the
prisoners quiet.
Jurgis had not known this, or he would have swallowed the stuff in desperation; as it
was, every nerve of him was a-quiver with shame and rage.
Toward morning the place fell silent, and he got up and began to pace his cell; and
then within the soul of him there rose up a fiend, red-eyed and cruel, and tore out the
strings of his heart.
It was not for himself that he suffered-- what did a man who worked in Durham's
fertilizer mill care about anything that the world might do to him!
What was any tyranny of prison compared with the tyranny of the past, of the thing
that had happened and could not be recalled, of the memory that could never be
effaced!
The horror of it drove him mad; he stretched out his arms to heaven, crying
out for deliverance from it--and there was no deliverance, there was no power even in
heaven that could undo the past.
It was a ghost that would not drown; it followed him, it seized upon him and beat
him to the ground.
Ah, if only he could have foreseen it--but then, he would have foreseen it, if he had
not been a fool!
He smote his hands upon his forehead, cursing himself because he had ever allowed
Ona to work where she had, because he had not stood between her and a fate which
every one knew to be so common.
He should have taken her away, even if it were to lie down and die of starvation in
the gutters of Chicago's streets! And now--oh, it could not be true; it was
too monstrous, too horrible.
It was a thing that could not be faced; a new shuddering seized him every time he
tried to think of it. No, there was no bearing the load of it,
there was no living under it.
There would be none for her--he knew that he might pardon her, might plead with her
on his knees, but she would never look him in the face again, she would never be his
wife again.
The shame of it would kill her--there could be no other deliverance, and it was best
that she should die.
This was simple and clear, and yet, with cruel inconsistency, whenever he escaped
from this nightmare it was to suffer and cry out at the vision of Ona starving.
They had put him in jail, and they would keep him here a long time, years maybe.
And Ona would surely not go to work again, broken and crushed as she was.
And Elzbieta and Marija, too, might lose their places--if that hell fiend Connor
chose to set to work to ruin them, they would all be turned out.
And even if he did not, they could not live--even if the boys left school again,
they could surely not pay all the bills without him and Ona.
They had only a few dollars now--they had just paid the rent of the house a week ago,
and that after it was two weeks overdue. So it would be due again in a week!
They would have no money to pay it then-- and they would lose the house, after all
their long, heartbreaking struggle. Three times now the agent had warned him
that he would not tolerate another delay.
Perhaps it was very base of Jurgis to be thinking about the house when he had the
other unspeakable thing to fill his mind; yet, how much he had suffered for this
house, how much they had all of them suffered!
It was their one hope of respite, as long as they lived; they had put all their money
into it--and they were working people, poor people, whose money was their strength, the
very substance of them, body and soul, the
thing by which they lived and for lack of which they died.
And they would lose it all; they would be turned out into the streets, and have to
hide in some icy garret, and live or die as best they could!
Jurgis had all the night--and all of many more nights--to think about this, and he
saw the thing in its details; he lived it all, as if he were there.
They would sell their furniture, and then run into debt at the stores, and then be
refused credit; they would borrow a little from the Szedvilases, whose delicatessen
store was tottering on the brink of ruin;
the neighbors would come and help them a little--poor, sick Jadvyga would bring a
few spare pennies, as she always did when people were starving, and Tamoszius
Kuszleika would bring them the proceeds of a night's fiddling.
So they would struggle to hang on until he got out of jail--or would they know that he
was in jail, would they be able to find out anything about him?
Would they be allowed to see him--or was it to be part of his punishment to be kept in
ignorance about their fate?
His mind would hang upon the worst possibilities; he saw Ona ill and tortured,
Marija out of her place, little Stanislovas unable to get to work for the snow, the
whole family turned out on the street.
God Almighty! would they actually let them lie down in the street and die?
Would there be no help even then--would they wander about in the snow till they
froze?
Jurgis had never seen any dead bodies in the streets, but he had seen people evicted
and disappear, no one knew where; and though the city had a relief bureau, though
there was a charity organization society in
the stockyards district, in all his life there he had never heard of either of them.
They did not advertise their activities, having more calls than they could attend to
without that.
--So on until morning.
Then he had another ride in the patrol wagon, along with the drunken wife-***
and the maniac, several "plain drunks" and "saloon fighters," a burglar, and two men
who had been arrested for stealing meat from the packing houses.
Along with them he was driven into a large, white-walled room, stale-smelling and
crowded.
In front, upon a raised platform behind a rail, sat a stout, florid-faced personage,
with a nose broken out in purple blotches. Our friend realized vaguely that he was
about to be tried.
He wondered what for--whether or not his victim might be dead, and if so, what they
would do with him.
Hang him, perhaps, or beat him to death-- nothing would have surprised Jurgis, who
knew little of the laws.
Yet he had picked up gossip enough to have it occur to him that the loud-voiced man
upon the bench might be the notorious Justice Callahan, about whom the people of
Packingtown spoke with bated breath.
"Pat" Callahan--"Growler" Pat, as he had been known before he ascended the bench--
had begun life as a butcher boy and a bruiser of local reputation; he had gone
into politics almost as soon as he had
learned to talk, and had held two offices at once before he was old enough to vote.
If Scully was the thumb, Pat Callahan was the first finger of the unseen hand whereby
the packers held down the people of the district.
No politician in Chicago ranked higher in their confidence; he had been at it a long
time--had been the business agent in the city council of old Durham, the self-made
merchant, way back in the early days, when
the whole city of Chicago had been up at auction.
"Growler" Pat had given up holding city offices very early in his career--caring
only for party power, and giving the rest of his time to superintending his dives and
brothels.
Of late years, however, since his children were growing up, he had begun to value
respectability, and had had himself made a magistrate; a position for which he was
admirably fitted, because of his strong
conservatism and his contempt for "foreigners."
Jurgis sat gazing about the room for an hour or two; he was in hopes that some one
of the family would come, but in this he was disappointed.
Finally, he was led before the bar, and a lawyer for the company appeared against
him.
Connor was under the doctor's care, the lawyer explained briefly, and if his Honor
would hold the prisoner for a week--"Three hundred dollars," said his Honor, promptly.
Jurgis was staring from the judge to the lawyer in perplexity.
"Have you any one to go on your bond?" demanded the judge, and then a clerk who
stood at Jurgis' elbow explained to him what this meant.
The latter shook his head, and before he realized what had happened the policemen
were leading him away again.
They took him to a room where other prisoners were waiting and here he stayed
until court adjourned, when he had another long and bitterly cold ride in a patrol
wagon to the county jail, which is on the
north side of the city, and nine or ten miles from the stockyards.
Here they searched Jurgis, leaving him only his money, which consisted of fifteen
cents.
Then they led him to a room and told him to strip for a bath; after which he had to
walk down a long gallery, past the grated cell doors of the inmates of the jail.
This was a great event to the latter--the daily review of the new arrivals, all stark
naked, and many and diverting were the comments.
Jurgis was required to stay in the bath longer than any one, in the vain hope of
getting out of him a few of his phosphates and acids.
The prisoners roomed two in a cell, but that day there was one left over, and he
was the one. The cells were in tiers, opening upon
galleries.
His cell was about five feet by seven in size, with a stone floor and a heavy wooden
bench built into it.
There was no window--the only light came from windows near the roof at one end of
the court outside.
There were two bunks, one above the other, each with a straw mattress and a pair of
gray blankets--the latter stiff as boards with filth, and alive with fleas, bedbugs,
and lice.
When Jurgis lifted up the mattress he discovered beneath it a layer of scurrying
roaches, almost as badly frightened as himself.
Here they brought him more "duffers and dope," with the addition of a bowl of soup.
Many of the prisoners had their meals brought in from a restaurant, but Jurgis
had no money for that.
Some had books to read and cards to play, with candles to burn by night, but Jurgis
was all alone in darkness and silence.
He could not sleep again; there was the same maddening procession of thoughts that
lashed him like whips upon his naked back.
When night fell he was pacing up and down his cell like a wild beast that breaks its
teeth upon the bars of its cage.
Now and then in his frenzy he would fling himself against the walls of the place,
beating his hands upon them.
They cut him and bruised him--they were cold and merciless as the men who had built
them. In the distance there was a church-tower
bell that tolled the hours one by one.
When it came to midnight Jurgis was lying upon the floor with his head in his arms,
listening. Instead of falling silent at the end, the
bell broke into a sudden clangor.
Jurgis raised his head; what could that mean--a fire?
God! Suppose there were to be a fire in this
jail!
But then he made out a melody in the ringing; there were chimes.
And they seemed to waken the city--all around, far and near, there were bells,
ringing wild music; for fully a minute Jurgis lay lost in wonder, before, all at
once, the meaning of it broke over him-- that this was Christmas Eve!
Christmas Eve--he had forgotten it entirely!
There was a breaking of floodgates, a whirl of new memories and new griefs rushing into
his mind.
In far Lithuania they had celebrated Christmas; and it came to him as if it had
been yesterday--himself a little child, with his lost brother and his dead father
in the cabin--in the deep black forest,
where the snow fell all day and all night and buried them from the world.
It was too far off for Santa Claus in Lithuania, but it was not too far for peace
and good will to men, for the wonder- bearing vision of the Christ Child.
And even in Packingtown they had not forgotten it--some gleam of it had never
failed to break their darkness.
Last Christmas Eve and all Christmas Day Jurgis had toiled on the killing beds, and
Ona at wrapping hams, and still they had found strength enough to take the children
for a walk upon the avenue, to see the
store windows all decorated with Christmas trees and ablaze with electric lights.
In one window there would be live geese, in another marvels in sugar--pink and white
canes big enough for ogres, and cakes with cherubs upon them; in a third there would
be rows of fat yellow turkeys, decorated
with rosettes, and rabbits and squirrels hanging; in a fourth would be a fairyland
of toys--lovely dolls with pink dresses, and woolly sheep and drums and soldier
hats.
Nor did they have to go without their share of all this, either.
The last time they had had a big basket with them and all their Christmas marketing
to do--a roast of pork and a cabbage and some rye bread, and a pair of mittens for
Ona, and a rubber doll that squeaked, and a
little green cornucopia full of candy to be hung from the gas jet and gazed at by half
a dozen pairs of longing eyes.
Even half a year of the sausage machines and the fertilizer mill had not been able
to kill the thought of Christmas in them; there was a choking in Jurgis' throat as he
recalled that the very night Ona had not
come home Teta Elzbieta had taken him aside and shown him an old valentine that she had
picked up in a paper store for three cents- -dingy and shopworn, but with bright
colors, and figures of angels and doves.
She had wiped all the specks off this, and was going to set it on the mantel, where
the children could see it.
Great sobs shook Jurgis at this memory-- they would spend their Christmas in misery
and despair, with him in prison and Ona ill and their home in desolation.
Ah, it was too cruel!
Why at least had they not left him alone-- why, after they had shut him in jail, must
they be ringing Christmas chimes in his ears!
But no, their bells were not ringing for him--their Christmas was not meant for him,
they were simply not counting him at all.
He was of no consequence--he was flung aside, like a bit of trash, the carcass of
some animal. It was horrible, horrible!
His wife might be dying, his baby might be starving, his whole family might be
perishing in the cold--and all the while they were ringing their Christmas chimes!
And the bitter mockery of it--all this was punishment for him!
They put him in a place where the snow could not beat in, where the cold could not
eat through his bones; they brought him food and drink--why, in the name of heaven,
if they must punish him, did they not put
his family in jail and leave him outside-- why could they find no better way to punish
him than to leave three weak women and six helpless children to starve and freeze?
That was their law, that was their justice!
Jurgis stood upright; trembling with passion, his hands clenched and his arms
upraised, his whole soul ablaze with hatred and defiance.
Ten thousand curses upon them and their law!
Their justice--it was a lie, it was a lie, a hideous, brutal lie, a thing too black
and hateful for any world but a world of nightmares.
It was a sham and a loathsome mockery.
There was no justice, there was no right, anywhere in it--it was only force, it was
tyranny, the will and the power, reckless and unrestrained!
They had ground him beneath their heel, they had devoured all his substance; they
had murdered his old father, they had broken and wrecked his wife, they had
crushed and cowed his whole family; and now
they were through with him, they had no further use for him--and because he had
interfered with them, had gotten in their way, this was what they had done to him!
They had put him behind bars, as if he had been a wild beast, a thing without sense or
reason, without rights, without affections, without feelings.
Nay, they would not even have treated a beast as they had treated him!
Would any man in his senses have trapped a wild thing in its lair, and left its young
behind to die?
These midnight hours were fateful ones to Jurgis; in them was the beginning of his
rebellion, of his outlawry and his unbelief.
He had no wit to trace back the social crime to its far sources--he could not say
that it was the thing men have called "the system" that was crushing him to the earth;
that it was the packers, his masters, who
had bought up the law of the land, and had dealt out their brutal will to him from the
seat of justice.
He only knew that he was wronged, and that the world had wronged him; that the law,
that society, with all its powers, had declared itself his foe.
And every hour his soul grew blacker, every hour he dreamed new dreams of vengeance, of
defiance, of raging, frenzied hate.
The vilest deeds, like poison weeds, Bloom well in prison air;
It is only what is good in Man That wastes and withers there;
Pale Anguish keeps the heavy gate, And the Warder is Despair.
So wrote a poet, to whom the world had dealt its justice--
I know not whether Laws be right, Or whether Laws be wrong;
All that we know who lie in gaol Is that the wall is strong.
And they do well to hide their hell, For in it things are done
That Son of God nor son of Man Ever should look upon!
>
CHAPTER 17
At seven o'clock the next morning Jurgis was let out to get water to wash his cell--
a duty which he performed faithfully, but which most of the prisoners were accustomed
to shirk, until their cells became so
filthy that the guards interposed.
Then he had more "duffers and dope," and afterward was allowed three hours for
exercise, in a long, cement-walked court roofed with glass.
Here were all the inmates of the jail crowded together.
At one side of the court was a place for visitors, cut off by two heavy wire
screens, a foot apart, so that nothing could be passed in to the prisoners; here
Jurgis watched anxiously, but there came no one to see him.
Soon after he went back to his cell, a keeper opened the door to let in another
prisoner.
He was a dapper young fellow, with a light brown mustache and blue eyes, and a
graceful figure.
He nodded to Jurgis, and then, as the keeper closed the door upon him, began
gazing critically about him. "Well, pal," he said, as his glance
encountered Jurgis again, "good morning."
"Good morning," said Jurgis. "A rum go for Christmas, eh?" added the
other. Jurgis nodded.
The newcomer went to the bunks and inspected the blankets; he lifted up the
mattress, and then dropped it with an exclamation.
"My God!" he said, "that's the worst yet."
He glanced at Jurgis again. "Looks as if it hadn't been slept in last
night. Couldn't stand it, eh?"
"I didn't want to sleep last night," said Jurgis.
"When did you come in?" "Yesterday."
The other had another look around, and then wrinkled up his nose.
"There's the devil of a stink in here," he said, suddenly.
"What is it?"
"It's me," said Jurgis. "You?"
"Yes, me." "Didn't they make you wash?"
"Yes, but this don't wash."
"What is it?" "Fertilizer."
"Fertilizer! The deuce!
What are you?"
"I work in the stockyards--at least I did until the other day.
It's in my clothes." "That's a new one on me," said the
newcomer.
"I thought I'd been up against 'em all. What are you in for?"
"I hit my boss." "Oh--that's it.
What did he do?"
"He--he treated me mean." "I see.
You're what's called an honest workingman!" "What are you?"
Jurgis asked.
"I?" The other laughed.
"They say I'm a cracksman," he said. "What's that?" asked Jurgis.
"Safes, and such things," answered the other.
"Oh," said Jurgis, wonderingly, and stated at the speaker in awe.
"You mean you break into them--you--you--"
"Yes," laughed the other, "that's what they say."
He did not look to be over twenty-two or three, though, as Jurgis found afterward,
he was thirty.
He spoke like a man of education, like what the world calls a "gentleman."
"Is that what you're here for?" Jurgis inquired.
"No," was the answer.
"I'm here for disorderly conduct. They were mad because they couldn't get any
evidence. "What's your name?" the young fellow
continued after a pause.
"My name's Duane--Jack Duane. I've more than a dozen, but that's my
company one."
He seated himself on the floor with his back to the wall and his legs crossed, and
went on talking easily; he soon put Jurgis on a friendly footing--he was evidently a
man of the world, used to getting on, and
not too proud to hold conversation with a mere laboring man.
He drew Jurgis out, and heard all about his life all but the one unmentionable thing;
and then he told stories about his own life.
He was a great one for stories, not always of the choicest.
Being sent to jail had apparently not disturbed his cheerfulness; he had "done
time" twice before, it seemed, and he took it all with a frolic welcome.
What with women and wine and the excitement of his vocation, a man could afford to rest
now and then.
Naturally, the aspect of prison life was changed for Jurgis by the arrival of a cell
mate.
He could not turn his face to the wall and sulk, he had to speak when he was spoken
to; nor could he help being interested in the conversation of Duane--the first
educated man with whom he had ever talked.
How could he help listening with wonder while the other told of midnight ventures
and perilous escapes, of feastings and ***, of fortunes squandered in a night?
The young fellow had an amused contempt for Jurgis, as a sort of working mule; he, too,
had felt the world's injustice, but instead of bearing it patiently, he had struck
back, and struck hard.
He was striking all the time--there was war between him and society.
He was a genial freebooter, living off the enemy, without fear or shame.
He was not always victorious, but then defeat did not mean annihilation, and need
not break his spirit. Withal he was a goodhearted fellow--too
much so, it appeared.
His story came out, not in the first day, nor the second, but in the long hours that
dragged by, in which they had nothing to do but talk and nothing to talk of but
themselves.
Jack Duane was from the East; he was a college-bred man--had been studying
electrical engineering.
Then his father had met with misfortune in business and killed himself; and there had
been his mother and a younger brother and sister.
Also, there was an invention of Duane's; Jurgis could not understand it clearly, but
it had to do with telegraphing, and it was a very important thing--there were fortunes
in it, millions upon millions of dollars.
And Duane had been robbed of it by a great company, and got tangled up in lawsuits and
lost all his money.
Then somebody had given him a tip on a horse race, and he had tried to retrieve
his fortune with another person's money, and had to run away, and all the rest had
come from that.
The other asked him what had led him to safe-breaking--to Jurgis a wild and
appalling occupation to think about. A man he had met, his cell mate had
replied--one thing leads to another.
Didn't he ever wonder about his family, Jurgis asked.
Sometimes, the other answered, but not often--he didn't allow it.
Thinking about it would make it no better.
This wasn't a world in which a man had any business with a family; sooner or later
Jurgis would find that out also, and give up the fight and shift for himself.
Jurgis was so transparently what he pretended to be that his cell mate was as
open with him as a child; it was pleasant to tell him adventures, he was so full of
wonder and admiration, he was so new to the ways of the country.
Duane did not even bother to keep back names and places--he told all his triumphs
and his failures, his loves and his griefs.
Also he introduced Jurgis to many of the other prisoners, nearly half of whom he
knew by name. The crowd had already given Jurgis a name--
they called him "he stinker."
This was cruel, but they meant no harm by it, and he took it with a good-natured
grin.
Our friend had caught now and then a whiff from the sewers over which he lived, but
this was the first time that he had ever been splashed by their filth.
This jail was a Noah's ark of the city's crime--there were murderers, "hold-up men"
and burglars, embezzlers, counterfeiters and forgers, bigamists, "shoplifters,"
"confidence men," petty thieves and
pickpockets, gamblers and procurers, brawlers, beggars, tramps and drunkards;
they were black and white, old and young, Americans and natives of every nation under
the sun.
There were hardened criminals and innocent men too poor to give bail; old men, and
boys literally not yet in their teens.
They were the drainage of the great festering ulcer of society; they were
hideous to look upon, sickening to talk to.
All life had turned to rottenness and stench in them--love was a beastliness, joy
was a snare, and God was an imprecation. They strolled here and there about the
courtyard, and Jurgis listened to them.
He was ignorant and they were wise; they had been everywhere and tried everything.
They could tell the whole hateful story of it, set forth the inner soul of a city in
which justice and honor, women's bodies and men's souls, were for sale in the
marketplace, and human beings writhed and
fought and fell upon each other like wolves in a pit; in which lusts were raging fires,
and men were fuel, and humanity was festering and stewing and wallowing in its
own corruption.
Into this wild-beast tangle these men had been born without their consent, they had
taken part in it because they could not help it; that they were in jail was no
disgrace to them, for the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded.
They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and
put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars.
To most of this Jurgis tried not to listen.
They frightened him with their savage mockery; and all the while his heart was
far away, where his loved ones were calling.
Now and then in the midst of it his thoughts would take flight; and then the
tears would come into his eyes--and he would be called back by the jeering
laughter of his companions.
He spent a week in this company, and during all that time he had no word from his home.
He paid one of his fifteen cents for a postal card, and his companion wrote a note
to the family, telling them where he was and when he would be tried.
There came no answer to it, however, and at last, the day before New Year's, Jurgis
bade good-by to Jack Duane.
The latter gave him his address, or rather the address of his mistress, and made
Jurgis promise to look him up.
"Maybe I could help you out of a hole some day," he said, and added that he was sorry
to have him go. Jurgis rode in the patrol wagon back to
Justice Callahan's court for trial.
One of the first things he made out as he entered the room was Teta Elzbieta and
little Kotrina, looking pale and frightened, seated far in the rear.
His heart began to pound, but he did not dare to try to signal to them, and neither
did Elzbieta. He took his seat in the prisoners' pen and
sat gazing at them in helpless agony.
He saw that Ona was not with them, and was full of foreboding as to what that might
mean.
He spent half an hour brooding over this-- and then suddenly he straightened up and
the blood rushed into his face.
A man had come in--Jurgis could not see his features for the bandages that swathed him,
but he knew the burly figure. It was Connor!
A trembling seized him, and his limbs bent as if for a spring.
Then suddenly he felt a hand on his collar, and heard a voice behind him: "Sit down,
you son of a--!"
He subsided, but he never took his eyes off his enemy.
The fellow was still alive, which was a disappointment, in one way; and yet it was
pleasant to see him, all in penitential plasters.
He and the company lawyer, who was with him, came and took seats within the judge's
railing; and a minute later the clerk called Jurgis' name, and the policeman
*** him to his feet and led him before
the bar, gripping him tightly by the arm, lest he should spring upon the boss.
Jurgis listened while the man entered the witness chair, took the oath, and told his
story.
The wife of the prisoner had been employed in a department near him, and had been
discharged for impudence to him.
Half an hour later he had been violently attacked, knocked down, and almost choked
to death. He had brought witnesses--
"They will probably not be necessary," observed the judge and he turned to Jurgis.
"You admit attacking the plaintiff?" he asked.
"Him?" inquired Jurgis, pointing at the boss.
"Yes," said the judge. "I hit him, sir," said Jurgis.
"Say 'your Honor,'" said the officer, pinching his arm hard.
"Your Honor," said Jurgis, obediently. "You tried to choke him?"
"Yes, sir, your Honor."
"Ever been arrested before?" "No, sir, your Honor."
"What have you to say for yourself?" Jurgis hesitated.
What had he to say?
In two years and a half he had learned to speak English for practical purposes, but
these had never included the statement that some one had intimidated and seduced his
wife.
He tried once or twice, stammering and balking, to the annoyance of the judge, who
was gasping from the odor of fertilizer.
Finally, the prisoner made it understood that his vocabulary was inadequate, and
there stepped up a dapper young man with waxed mustaches, bidding him speak in any
language he knew.
Jurgis began; supposing that he would be given time, he explained how the boss had
taken advantage of his wife's position to make advances to her and had threatened her
with the loss of her place.
When the interpreter had translated this, the judge, whose calendar was crowded, and
whose automobile was ordered for a certain hour, interrupted with the remark: "Oh, I
see.
Well, if he made love to your wife, why didn't she complain to the superintendent
or leave the place?"
Jurgis hesitated, somewhat taken aback; he began to explain that they were very poor--
that work was hard to get-- "I see," said Justice Callahan; "so instead
you thought you would knock him down."
He turned to the plaintiff, inquiring, "Is there any truth in this story, Mr. Connor?"
"Not a particle, your Honor," said the boss.
"It is very unpleasant--they tell some such tale every time you have to discharge a
woman--" "Yes, I know," said the judge.
"I hear it often enough.
The fellow seems to have handled you pretty roughly.
Thirty days and costs. Next case."
Jurgis had been listening in perplexity.
It was only when the policeman who had him by the arm turned and started to lead him
away that he realized that sentence had been passed.
He gazed round him wildly.
"Thirty days!" he panted and then he whirled upon the judge.
"What will my family do?" he cried frantically.
"I have a wife and baby, sir, and they have no money--my God, they will starve to
death!"
"You would have done well to think about them before you committed the assault,"
said the judge dryly, as he turned to look at the next prisoner.
Jurgis would have spoken again, but the policeman had seized him by the collar and
was twisting it, and a second policeman was making for him with evidently hostile
intentions.
So he let them lead him away.
Far down the room he saw Elzbieta and Kotrina, risen from their seats, staring in
fright; he made one effort to go to them, and then, brought back by another twist at
his throat, he bowed his head and gave up the struggle.
They thrust him into a cell room, where other prisoners were waiting; and as soon
as court had adjourned they led him down with them into the "Black Maria," and drove
him away.
This time Jurgis was bound for the "Bridewell," a petty jail where Cook County
prisoners serve their time.
It was even filthier and more crowded than the county jail; all the smaller fry out of
the latter had been sifted into it--the petty thieves and swindlers, the brawlers
and vagrants.
For his cell mate Jurgis had an Italian fruit seller who had refused to pay his
graft to the policeman, and been arrested for carrying a large pocketknife; as he did
not understand a word of English our friend was glad when he left.
He gave place to a Norwegian sailor, who had lost half an ear in a drunken brawl,
and who proved to be quarrelsome, cursing Jurgis because he moved in his bunk and
caused the roaches to drop upon the lower one.
It would have been quite intolerable, staying in a cell with this wild beast, but
for the fact that all day long the prisoners were put at work breaking stone.
Ten days of his thirty Jurgis spent thus, without hearing a word from his family;
then one day a keeper came and informed him that there was a visitor to see him.
Jurgis turned white, and so weak at the knees that he could hardly leave his cell.
The man led him down the corridor and a flight of steps to the visitors' room,
which was barred like a cell.
Through the grating Jurgis could see some one sitting in a chair; and as he came into
the room the person started up, and he saw that it was little Stanislovas.
At the sight of some one from home the big fellow nearly went to pieces--he had to
steady himself by a chair, and he put his other hand to his forehead, as if to clear
away a mist.
"Well?" he said, weakly. Little Stanislovas was also trembling, and
all but too frightened to speak. "They--they sent me to tell you--" he said,
with a gulp.
"Well?" Jurgis repeated.
He followed the boy's glance to where the keeper was standing watching them.
"Never mind that," Jurgis cried, wildly.
"How are they?" "Ona is very sick," Stanislovas said; "and
we are almost starving. We can't get along; we thought you might be
able to help us."
Jurgis gripped the chair tighter; there were beads of perspiration on his forehead,
and his hand shook. "I--can't help you," he said.
"Ona lies in her room all day," the boy went on, breathlessly.
"She won't eat anything, and she cries all the time.
She won't tell what is the matter and she won't go to work at all.
Then a long time ago the man came for the rent.
He was very cross.
He came again last week. He said he would turn us out of the house.
And then Marija--" A sob choked Stanislovas, and he stopped.
"What's the matter with Marija?" cried Jurgis.
"She's cut her hand!" said the boy. "She's cut it bad, this time, worse than
before.
She can't work and it's all turning green, and the company doctor says she may--she
may have to have it cut off.
And Marija cries all the time--her money is nearly all gone, too, and we can't pay the
rent and the interest on the house; and we have no coal and nothing more to eat, and
the man at the store, he says--"
The little fellow stopped again, beginning to whimper.
"Go on!" the other panted in frenzy--"Go on!"
"I--I will," sobbed Stanislovas.
"It's so--so cold all the time. And last Sunday it snowed again--a deep,
deep snow--and I couldn't--couldn't get to work."
"God!"
Jurgis half shouted, and he took a step toward the child.
There was an old hatred between them because of the snow--ever since that
dreadful morning when the boy had had his fingers frozen and Jurgis had had to beat
him to send him to work.
Now he clenched his hands, looking as if he would try to break through the grating.
"You little villain," he cried, "you didn't try!"
"I did--I did!" wailed Stanislovas, shrinking from him in terror.
"I tried all day--two days. Elzbieta was with me, and she couldn't
either.
We couldn't walk at all, it was so deep. And we had nothing to eat, and oh, it was
so cold! I tried, and then the third day Ona went
with me--"
"Ona!" "Yes.
She tried to get to work, too. She had to.
We were all starving.
But she had lost her place--" Jurgis reeled, and gave a gasp.
"She went back to that place?" he screamed. "She tried to," said Stanislovas, gazing at
him in perplexity.
"Why not, Jurgis?" The man breathed hard, three or four times.
"Go--on," he panted, finally. "I went with her," said Stanislovas, "but
Miss Henderson wouldn't take her back.
And Connor saw her and cursed her. He was still bandaged up--why did you hit
him, Jurgis?"
(There was some fascinating mystery about this, the little fellow knew; but he could
get no satisfaction.) Jurgis could not speak; he could only
stare, his eyes starting out.
"She has been trying to get other work," the boy went on; "but she's so weak she
can't keep up.
And my boss would not take me back, either- -Ona says he knows Connor, and that's the
reason; they've all got a grudge against us now.
So I've got to go downtown and sell papers with the rest of the boys and Kotrina--"
"Kotrina!" "Yes, she's been selling papers, too.
She does best, because she's a girl.
Only the cold is so bad--it's terrible coming home at night, Jurgis.
Sometimes they can't come home at all--I'm going to try to find them tonight and sleep
where they do, it's so late and it's such a long ways home.
I've had to walk, and I didn't know where it was--I don't know how to get back,
either.
Only mother said I must come, because you would want to know, and maybe somebody
would help your family when they had put you in jail so you couldn't work.
And I walked all day to get here--and I only had a piece of bread for breakfast,
Jurgis.
Mother hasn't any work either, because the sausage department is shut down; and she
goes and begs at houses with a basket, and people give her food.
Only she didn't get much yesterday; it was too cold for her fingers, and today she was
crying--"
So little Stanislovas went on, sobbing as he talked; and Jurgis stood, gripping the
table tightly, saying not a word, but feeling that his head would burst; it was
like having weights piled upon him, one
after another, crushing the life out of him.
He struggled and fought within himself--as if in some terrible nightmare, in which a
man suffers an agony, and cannot lift his hand, nor cry out, but feels that he is
going mad, that his brain is on fire--
Just when it seemed to him that another turn of the screw would kill him, little
Stanislovas stopped. "You cannot help us?" he said weakly.
Jurgis shook his head.
"They won't give you anything here?" He shook it again.
"When are you coming out?" "Three weeks yet," Jurgis answered.
And the boy gazed around him uncertainly.
"Then I might as well go," he said. Jurgis nodded.
Then, suddenly recollecting, he put his hand into his pocket and drew it out,
shaking.
"Here," he said, holding out the fourteen cents.
"Take this to them." And Stanislovas took it, and after a little
more hesitation, started for the door.
"Good-by, Jurgis," he said, and the other noticed that he walked unsteadily as he
passed out of sight.
For a minute or so Jurgis stood clinging to his chair, reeling and swaying; then the
keeper touched him on the arm, and he turned and went back to breaking stone.
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