The Turn of the Balance

XIII

Elizabeth kept to her purpose of doing something to justify her continuing in existence, as she put it to her mother, and there was a period of two or three weeks following a lecture by a humanitarian from Chicago, when she tortured the family by considering a residence in a social settlement. But Mrs. Ward was relieved when this purpose realized itself in a way so respectable as joining the Organized Charities. The Organized Charities was more than respectable, it was eminently respectable, and when Mrs. Russell consented to become its president, it took on a social rank of the highest authority. The work of this organization was but dimly understood; it was incorporated, and so might quite legally be said to lack a soul, which gave it the advantage of having the personal equation excluded from its dealings with the poor. Business men, by subscribing a small sum might turn all beggars over to the Organized Charities, and by giving to the hungry, who asked for bread, the stone of a blue ticket, secure immediate relief from the disturbing sense of personal responsibility. The poor who were thus referred might go to the bureau, file their applications, be enrolled and indexed by the secretary, and have their characters and careers investigated by an agent. All this was referred to as organized relief work, and it had been so far successful as to afford relief to those who were from time to time annoyed by the spectacles of poverty and disease that haunted their homes and places of business.

When the Organized Charities resumed in the fall the monthly meetings that had been discontinued during the heated term, Elizabeth was on hand. Mrs. Russell was in the president's chair, and promptly at three o'clock, consulting the tiny jeweled watch that hung in the laces at her bosom, she called the meeting to order. After the recording secretary had read the minutes of the last meeting, held in the spring, and these had been approved, the corresponding secretary read a report, and a list of the new members. Then a young clergyman, with a pale, ascetic face, and a high, clerical waistcoat against which a large cross of gold was suspended by a cord, read his report as treasurer, giving the names of the new members already reported by the corresponding secretary, but adding the amount subscribed by each, the amount of money in the treasury, the amount expended in paying the salaries of the clerks, the rent of the telephone, printing, postage, and so on. Then the agents of the organization reported the number of cases they had investigated, arranging them alphabetically, and in the form of statistics. Then the clerk reported the number of meal tickets that had been distributed and the smaller number that had been gastronomically redeemed. After that there were reports from standing committees, then from special committees, and when all these had been read, received and approved, they were ordered to be placed on file. These preliminaries occupied an hour, and Elizabeth felt the effect to be somewhat deadening. During the reading of the reports, the members, of whom there were about forty, mostly women, had sat in respectful silence, decorously coughing now and then. When all the reports had been read a woman rose, and addressing Mrs. Russell as "Madame President," said that she wished again to move that the meetings of the society be opened with prayer. At this the faces of the other members clouded with an expression of weariness. The woman who made the motion spoke to it at length, and with the only zeal that Elizabeth had thus far observed in the proceedings. Elizabeth was not long in discerning that this same woman had made this proposal at former meetings; she knew this by the bored and sometimes angry expressions of the other members. The young curate seemed to feel a kind of vicarious shame for the woman. When the woman had finished, the matter was put to a vote, and all voted no, save the woman who had made the proposal, and she voted "aye" loudly, going down to defeat in the defiance of the unconvinced.

Then another woman rose and said that she had a matter to bring before the meeting; this matter related to a blind woman who had called on her and complained that the Organized Charities had refused to give her assistance. Now that the winter was coming on, the blind woman was filled with fear of want. Elizabeth had a dim vision of the blind woman, even from the crude and inadequate description; she felt a pity and a desire to help her, and, at the same time, with that condemnation which needs no more than accusation, a kind of indignation with the Organized Charities. For the first time she was interested in the proceedings, and leaned forward to hear what was to be done with the blind woman. But while the description had been inadequate to Elizabeth, so that her own imagination had filled out the portrait, it was, nevertheless, sufficient for the other members; a smile went round, glances were exchanged, and the secretary, with a calm, assured and superior expression, began to turn over the cards in her elaborate system of indexed names. There was instantly a general desire to speak, several persons were on their feet at once, saying "Madame President!" and Mrs. Russell recognized one of them with a smile that propitiated and promised the others in their turn. From the experiences that were then related, it was apparent that this blind woman was known to nearly all of the charity workers in the city; all of them spoke of her in terms of disparagement, which soon became terms of impatience. One of the ladies raised a laugh by declaring the blind woman to be a "chronic case," and then one of the men present, a gray-haired man, with a white mustache stained yellow by tobacco, rose and said that he had investigated the "case" and that it was not worthy. This man was the representative of a society which cared for animals, such as stray dogs, and mistreated horses, and employed this agent to investigate such cases, but it seemed that occasionally he concerned himself with human beings. He spoke now in a professional and authoritative manner, and when he declared that the case was not worthy, the blind woman, or the blind case, as it was considered, was disposed of. Some one said that she should be sent to the poorhouse.

When the blind woman had been consigned, so far as the bureau was concerned, to the poorhouse, Mrs. Russell said in her soft voice:

"Is there any unfinished business?"

Elizabeth, who was tired and bored, felt a sudden hope that this was the end, and she started up hopefully; but she found in Mrs. Russell's beautiful face a quick smile of sympathy and patience. And Elizabeth was ashamed; she was sorry she had let Mrs. Russell see that she was weary of all this, and she felt a new dissatisfaction with herself. She told herself that she was utterly fickle and hopeless; she had entered upon this charity work with such enthusiasm, and here she was already tiring of it at the first meeting! Elizabeth looked at Mrs. Russell, and for a moment envied her her dignity and her tact and her patience, all of which must have come from her innate gentleness and kindness. The face of this woman, who presided so gracefully over this long, wearying session, was marked with lines of character, her brow was serene and calm under the perfectly white hair massed above it. The eyes were large, and they were sad, just as the mouth was sad, but there dwelt in the eyes always that same kindness and gentleness, that patience and consideration that gave Mrs. Russell her real distinction, her real indisputable claim to superiority. Elizabeth forgot her impatience and her weariness in a sudden speculation as to the cause of the sadness that lay somewhere in Mrs. Russell's life. She had known ease and luxury always; she had been spared all contact with that world which Elizabeth was just beginning to discover beyond the confines of her own narrow and selfish world. Mrs. Russell surely never had known the physical hunger which now and then was at least officially recognized in this room where the bureau met; could there be a hunger of the soul which gave this look to the human face? Elizabeth Ward had not yet realized this hunger, she had not yet come into the full consciousness of life, and so it was that just at a moment, when she seemed very near to its recognition, she lost herself in the luxury of romanticizing some sorrow in Mrs. Russell's life, some sorrow kept hidden from the world. Elizabeth thought she saw this sorrow in the faint smile that touched Mrs. Russell's lips just then, as she gave a parliamentary recognition to another woman–a heavy, obtrusive woman who was rising to say:

"Madame President."

Elizabeth had hoped that there would be no unfinished business for the society to transact, but she had not learned that there was one piece of business which was always unfinished, and that was the question of raising funds. And this subject had no interest for Elizabeth; the question of money was one she could not grasp. It affected her as statistics did; it had absolutely no meaning for her; and now, when she was forced to pay attention to the heavy, obtrusive woman, because her voice was so strong and her tone so commanding, she was conscious only of the fact that she did not like this woman; somehow the woman over-powered Elizabeth by mere physical proportions. But gradually it dawned on Elizabeth that the discussion was turning on a charity ball, and she grew interested at once, for she felt herself on the brink of solving the old mystery of where charity balls originate. She had attended many of them, but it had never occurred to her that some one must have organized and promoted them; she had found them in her world as an institution, like calls, like receptions, like the church. But now a debate was on; the little woman, who had urged the society to open its sessions with prayer, was opposing the ball, and Elizabeth forgot Mrs. Russell's secret romance in her interest in the warmth with which the project of a charity ball was being discussed.

XIV

The debate over the charity ball raged until twilight, and it served for unfinished business at two special sessions. The spare little woman who had proposed that the meetings be opened with prayer led the opposition to the charity ball, and, summoning all her militant religion to her aid, succeeded in arraying most of the evangelical churches against it. In two weeks the controversy was in the newspapers, and when it had waged for a month, and both parties were exhausted, they compromised on a charity bazaar.

The dispute had been distressing to Mrs. Russell, whose nature was too sensitive to take the relish most of the others seemed to find in the controversy, and it was through her tact that peace was finally established. Even after the bazaar was decided on, the peace was threatened by dissension as to where the bazaar should be held. The more sophisticated and worldly-minded favored the Majestic Theater, and this brought the spare little woman to her feet again, trembling with moral indignation. To her the idea of a bazaar in a theater was even more sacrilegious than a ball. But Mrs. Russell saved the day by a final sacrifice–she offered her residence for the bazaar.

"It was beautiful in you!" Elizabeth exclaimed as they drove homeward together in the graying afternoon of the November day. "To think of throwing your house open for a week–and having the whole town tramp over the rugs!"

"Oh, I'll lay the floors in canvas," said Mrs. Russell, with a little laugh she could not keep from ending in a sigh.

"You'll find it no light matter," said Elizabeth; "this turning your house inside out. Of course, the fact that it is your house will draw all the curious and vulgar in town."

This was not exactly reassuring and Elizabeth felt as much the moment she had said it.

"You must help me, dear!" Mrs. Russell said, squeezing Elizabeth's hand in a kind of desperation. Elizabeth had never known her to be in any wise demonstrative, and her own sympathetic nature responded immediately.

"Indeed I shall!" she said.

The bazaar was to be held the week before Christmas, and the ladies forgot their differences to unite in one of those tremendous and exhausting labors they seem ever ready to undertake, though the end is always so disproportionate to the sacrifice and toil that somehow bring it to pass. Elizabeth was almost constantly with Mrs. Russell; they were working early and late. Mrs. Russell appointed her on the committee on arrangements, and the committee held almost daily meetings at the Charities. And here Elizabeth at last found an opportunity of seeing some of the poor for whom she was working.

The fall had prolonged itself into November; the weather was so perfect that Dick could daily speed his automobile, and the men who, like Marriott, still clung to golf, could play on Saturdays and Sundays at the Country Club. But December came, and with it a heavy rain that in three days became a sleet; then the snow and a cold wave. The wretched winter weather, which seems to have a spite almost personal for the lake regions, produced its results in the lives of men–there were suicides and crimes for the police, and for the Organized Charities, the poor, now forced to emerge from the retreats where in milder weather they could hide their wretchedness. They came forth, and when Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell entered the Charities one morning, there they were, ranged along the wall. They sat bundled in their rags, waiting in dumb patience for the last humiliation of an official investigation, making no sound save as their ailments compelled them to sneeze or to cough now and then; and as Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell passed into the room, they were followed by eyes that held no reproach or envy, but merely a mild curiosity. The poor sat there, perhaps glad of the warmth and the rest; willing to spend the day, if necessary; with hopes no higher than some mere temporary relief that would help them to eke out their lives a few hours longer and until another day, which should be like this day, repeating all its wants and hardships. The atmosphere of the room was stifling, with an odor that sickened Elizabeth, the fetor of all the dirt and disease that poverty had accumulated and heaped upon them.

At the desk Mrs. Rider, the clerk, and the two agents of the society were interrogating a woman. The woman was tall and slender, and her pale face had some trace of prettiness left; her clothing was better than that of the others, though it had remained over from some easier circumstance of the summer.

The woman was hungry, and she was sick. She had reported her condition to the agent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty, but as this man could think of nothing better than to arrest somebody and have somebody punished, he had had the woman's husband sent to the workhouse for six months, thus removing the only hope she had.

To Elizabeth it seemed that the three inquisitors were trying, not so much to discover some means of helping this woman, as to discover some excuse for not helping her; they took turns in putting to her, with a professional frankness, the most personal questions,–questions that made Elizabeth blush and burn with shame, even as they made the woman blush. But just then a middle-aged woman appeared, and Elizabeth instantly identified her when Mrs. Rider pleasantly addressed her by a name that appeared frequently in the newspapers in connection with deeds that took on the aspect of nobility and sacrifice.

"I'm so glad you dropped in, Mrs. Norton," said Mrs. Rider. "We have a most perplexing case."

The clerk lifted her eyebrows expressively, and somehow indicated to Mrs. Norton the woman she had just had under investigation. Mrs. Norton glanced at the hunted face and smiled.

"You mean the Ordway woman? Exactly. I know her case thoroughly. Mr. Gleason 'phoned me from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and I looked her up. You should have seen her room–the filthiest place I ever saw–and those children!" She raised her hands, covered with gloves, and her official-looking reticule slid up her forearm as if to express an impossibility. "The woman was tired of farm life–determined to come to town–fascinated by city life–she complained of her husband, and yet–what do you think?–she wanted me to get him out of the work-house!"

Mrs. Norton stopped as if she had made an unanswerable argument and proved that the woman should not be helped; and Mrs. Rider and the two agents seemed to be relieved. Presently Mrs. Rider called the woman, and told her that her case was not one that came within the purview of the society's objects, and when the hope was dying out of the woman's face Mrs. Norton began to lecture her on the care of children, and to assure her the city was filled with pitfalls for such as she. The woman, beaten into humility, listened a while, and then she turned and dragged herself toward the door. The eyes of the waiting paupers followed her with the same impersonal curiosity they had shown in the entrance of Mrs. Russell and Elizabeth and Mrs. Norton.

The limp retreating figure of the woman filled Elizabeth with distress. When, at the door, she saw the woman press to her eyes the sodden handkerchief she had been rolling in her palm during the interview, she ran after her; in the hall outside, away from others, she called; the woman turned and gazed at her suspiciously.

"Here!" said Elizabeth fearfully.

She opened her purse and emptied from it into the woman's hand all the silver it held.

"Where do you live?" she asked, and as the woman gave her the number of the house where she rented a room, Elizabeth realized how inappropriate the word "live" was. Elizabeth returned to the office with a glow in her breast, though she dreaded Mrs. Norton, whom she feared she had affronted by her deed. But Mrs. Norton received her with a smile.

"It seemed hard to you, no doubt," Mrs. Norton said, and Mrs. Rider and the two agents looked up with smiles of their own, as if they were about to shine in Mrs. Norton's justification, "but you'll learn after a while. We must discriminate, you know; we must not pauperize them. When you've been in the work as long as I have,"–she paused with a superior lift of her eyebrows at the use of this word "work,"–"you'll understand better."

Elizabeth felt a sudden indignation which she concealed, because she had her own doubts, after all. The ladies were gathering for the committee meeting and just then Mrs. Russell beckoned her into an inner room.

"The air is better in here," she said.

XV

Every day Elizabeth went to the Organized Charities. The committee on arrangements divided itself into subcommittees, and these, with other committees that were raised, must have meetings, make reports, receive instructions, and consider ways and means. The labor entailed was enormous. The women were exhausted before the first week had ended; the rustling of their skirts as they ran to and fro, their incessant chatter–they all spoke at once–their squealing at each other as their nerves snapped under the strain, filled the rooms with clamor. But all this endless confusion and complication were considered necessary in order to effect an organization. If any one doubted or complained, it was only necessary to speak the word "organization," and criticism was immediately silenced.

It had been discovered very early in the work of this organization that Mrs. Russell's great house would be too small for the bazaar, and it had been a relief to her when a certain Mrs. Spayd offered to place at the disposal of the committee the new mansion her husband had just built on Claybourne Avenue and named with the foreign-sounding name of "Bellemere." Mrs. Spayd privately conveyed the information that the young people might have the ball-room at the top of the house, where the most exclusive, if they desired, could dance, and she commissioned a firm of decorators to transform Bellemere into a bazaar. Mrs. Spayd was to bear the entire expense, and her charity was lauded everywhere, especially in the society columns of the newspapers. The booths were to represent different nations, and it was suddenly found to be desirable to dress as peasants. The women who were to serve in these booths flew to costumers to have typical clothing made. And this occasioned still greater conflict and confusion, for each woman wished to represent that country whose inhabitants were supposed to wear the most picturesque costumes.

Meanwhile the cold weather held and the poor besieged the Charities. No matter how early Elizabeth might arrive, no matter how late she might leave, they were always there, a stolid, patient row along the wall, or crowding up to the railing, or huddling in the hall outside. For a while Elizabeth, regarding them in the mass, thought that the same persons came each day, but she discovered that this was not the case. As she looked she noted a curious circumstance: the faces gradually took on individuality, slight at first, but soon decided, until each stood out among the others and developed the sharpest, most salient characteristics. She saw in each face the story of a single life, and always a life of neglect and failure, as if the misery of the world had been distributed in a kind of ironical variation. These people all were victims of a common doom, presenting itself each time in a different aspect; they were all alike–and yet they were all different, like leaves of a tree.

One afternoon Elizabeth suddenly noted a face that stood out in such relief that it became the only face there for her. It was the face of a young man, and it wore a strange pallor, and as Elizabeth hurried by she was somehow conscious that the young man's eyes were following her with a peculiar searching glance. When she sat down to await the women of the committee with which she was to meet, the young man still gazed at her steadily; she grew uncomfortable, almost resentful. She felt this continued stare to be a rudeness, and then suddenly she wondered why any rudeness of these people should be capable of affecting her; surely they were not of her class, to be judged by her standards. But she turned away, and determined not to look that way again, for fear that the young man might accost her.

And yet, though she persistently looked away, the face had so impressed her that she still could see it. In her first glimpse it had been photographed on her mind; its pallor was remarkable, the skin had a damp, dead whiteness, as if it had bleached in a cave, curls of thin brown hair clung to the brows; on the boy's neck was a streak of black where the collar of his coat had rubbed its color. In his thin hands he held a plush cap. And out of his pale face his wan eyes looked and followed her; she could not escape them, and for relief she finally fled to the inner room.

"We have made arrangements," said one of the women, "to hold our committee meetings hereafter at Mrs. Spayd's. She has kindly put her library at our disposal. This place is unbearable!"

She flung up a window and let the fresh air pour in.

"Yes," sighed another woman, "the air is sickening. It gives me a headache. If the poor could only be taught that cleanliness is akin to godliness!"

Elizabeth's head ached, too; it would be a relief to be delivered out of this atmosphere. But still the face of the young man pursued her. She could not follow the deliberations of the committee; she could think of nothing but that face. Where, she continually asked herself, had she seen it before? She sat by a window, and looked down into the street, preoccupied by the effort to identify it. She gave herself up to the pain of the process, as one does when trying to remember a name. Now and then she caught phrases of the sentences the women began, but seemed never able to finish:–"Oh, I hardly think that–" "As a class, of course–" "Oriental hangings would be best–" "Cheese-cloth looks cheap–" "Of course, flags–" "We could solicit the merchants–" "My husband was saying last night–"

But where had she seen that face before? Why should it pursue and worry her? What had she ever done? Finally, after two hours of the mighty effort and patience that are necessary to bring a number of minds to grasp a subject and agree even on the most insignificant detail, two hours in which thoughts hovered and flitted here and there, and could not find expression, when minds held back, and continually balked at the specific, the certain, the definite, and sought refuge from decision in the general and the abstract, the committee exhausted itself, and decided to adjourn. Then, although it had reached no conclusions whatever, the matron who presided smiled and said: