# The Young Woman

From Harper's Magazine, Mar 1913. A sequel, "Mr. Fitch" appeared in the April issue.
The Young Woman
BY JAMES OPPENHEIM
ELSA was being dictated to: a process alien to her nature. She sat, cramping herself over the extended shelf of the roll-top desk, painfully jotting down shorthand in the narrow note-book; and Mr. Fitch loomed over her oppressively near. In fact, she felt as if she were resisting the dark strength of his personality, a huge wave that threatened to overwhelm her. His voice was intimate, low, determined, and now and then she felt his breath on her hand.
"—and it is the business of this Conference," he was saying, slowly, "to deal with these little waifs, not as little criminals, but as the victims of their heredity and environment."
Elsa did not follow the sense of this: over her shorthand notes, on which her eyes were focused, she saw in a blur his dark, large figure sharply splashed by the low electric drop-light drawing, it seemed, perilously closer. She was aware that she had a heart; she was aware that her mind could not concentrate, her thoughts scattering while she became tense with a delicious fear. Then she looked up startled, for Mr. Fitch was bitterly chuckling, as he sat back in his revolving chair and stuck his hands in his trousers pockets.
"'Victims of their heredity and environment!'" he muttered, glancing into her eyes, as Elsa thought, maliciously; "I'm sick of victims of heredity and environment. Are you a 'victim,' Miss Brack? Look at me; I'm a 'victim.'"
He laughed, but she could not laugh with him. Bidden to look at him, she obeyed, and her worst fears were reinforced. He was fairly tall; he was square-shouldered; he was dressed smoothly. The head was large, the hair light brown, the eyes brown, the nose slightly aquiline, and there was a cynical twist at the corner of his smiling mouth. But what was back of this exterior came shining through: the fighter, overflowingly masculine, absorbingly interesting to all that was feminine in her. She felt madly alone with a fascinating enemy.
Yet they were not utterly alone, there on the seventh floor of the Keystone Building at ten o'clock of a misty autumn night. Five wood-and-glass partitioned offices stretched in a row, and three of them had their shadows gilded by thin electric lights. In the other two were clerks, the plaintive scratching of whose pens could be dimly heard among the night noises of Pittsburg; the hoarse whistling of the trolleys making the loop, and the wailing sirens and the melancholy bells on the Monongahela River. The insisting, unceasing smell of soft-coal smoke, blowing from a thousand red furnaces in the night, came with strands of sooty fog through the open window.
Elsa had to speak; she felt she was blushing; she felt as if she were a bad child being scolded.
"What do you mean?" she asked, in a strained voice.
He clasped his large, powerful hands at the back of his head.
"Mean? I mean that I'm sick of piffle; sick of 'social work'; sick of looking after a lot of kids that ought to be spanked. And I'd spank 'em myself if I had the chance." He raised his clenched fists in the air before him. "Glory, I'm simply loony for a man-size job!"
She was shocked; she had not dreamed that any one could be in "Child Welfare" work who had not dedicated himself. And she was not sure that she desired Mr. Fitch to furnish her with personal revelations; at the same time, inexplicably, these words gave her a fierce pleasure, and she found herself saying:
"So this work is new to you?"
"New to me?" he echoed. He rose to his full height. "Just take a look, Miss Brack."
She followed him to the window, and was thrilled when he lightly pushed her before him to look out. She felt him leaning closely beside her, stooping to be on her level. At first all that she saw was lower buildings looming through the mist and the vague lights in the deep street corners, then she beheld green and red lamps almost lost on the river.
Mr. Fitch pointed. "See that flare up there?"
She saw a welling reddish flame far in the night, with a gust of lightnings lurid against the heavens.
"Yes," she whispered.
He spoke low in her ear: "That's the big Bessemer converter in the Penn Steel Works—that's where I was brought up." He laughed softly. "Went in as a boy, a common laborer; then I worked on the blooms, and many a summer night, after a twelve-hour day, I staggered out of the heat and lay awake all night, dizzy and spinning. Yes, I know what work is like. Later I got to be superintendent. No soft soap over there: I've hit a man with a big rod of iron and nearly killed him when the gang came after me. I've speeded up the blooms to make a record until they've carried the fellows out fainting." He laughed cynically. "And now here I sit telling the good people to provide playgrounds for the 'victims of environment and heredity.' Playgrounds? Think of the railroad yards around here: those are the playgrounds for boys."
A spell came over Elsa's spirits: a mystery, an enchantment, a terror. She saw beneath those lurid lightnings his strange past, his rooted life in this grimy giant industrial city. And she felt his correspondence with the city: the brutality, the labor, the manhood, the practicality, the dominance, all shot through and enveloped with the mystery of fire and smoke and steel. It was something so foreign to her own past; hence it was enchanting, it was life.
And here he was, so close beside her, speaking intimately with an almost mystic masculine quality; something that belittled her and held her in a snare, while she thrilled from head to foot. She did not dare move; she did not dare speak.
"Well," he said, weariedly, "we'd better finish np that work. Two more weeks of this rush job; two more weeks of night work. And we've been at it four nights already."
He started back for the desk, and his moving off was a tremendous relief. Elsa felt freer; she did not want to sit down at the desk-flap again.
At this moment there were light steps in the hall, and through the half-open doorway appeared a small, timid, eye-glassed man, very pale, very earnest; a man, thought Elsa, typical among social workers.
"Mr. Fitch," came a thin whisper. "Busy? Am I disturbing you?"
"No, Brown, come in. What is it?" asked Mr. Fitch.
Brown came in, with papers in his hand, and leaned over the big fellow, whispering eagerly, pointing, looking up into Mr. Fitch's eyes with quick interrogations. And Elsa exulted: Brown was so pitiably little, so feminine, so good and kindly; and Mr. Fitch was such a big brute, so masculine, careless, and cruel. Suddenly Mr. Fitch looked up, wrinkling his forehead.
"This 'll take all night, Miss Brack. You'd better run along. And seven-thirty sharp to-morrow night."
She took her hat from a stand in the corner and pinned it on, then she folded her note-book and pushed it in a pigeon-hole of the desk. Five minutes later she was hurrying through a deserted, misty street, the great arc lights fluttering overhead. She walked desperately to the corner, hailed a trolley-car, and got on. And as she sank in a seat she confronted herself and was aghast.
"Elsa Brack," she whispered to herself—"Elsa Brack, what has been happening to you?"
At a little before noon the next day five medical students, all, in long, white coats, were working in the dissecting-room. One of these, a woman—Elsa herself—was absorbed in a vital moment: she was dissecting a hand. She leaned over the slightly sloping table, a small but strong figure, with lean hands beautifully busy. Her face, quiveringly alive, was now a mere transmitter between the Facts beneath and the Mind above. The eyes were wide apart, the forehead high and broad, the mouth sensitive; and a pallor of complexion was offset by very red lips, very blue eyes, and very brown hair. Her self-forgetfulness was complete: she lived and had her being—her whole body rhythmically thrilling—in that which lay on the table: the Miracle.
The noon bell rang, shocking her out of her trance, and she looked up. Far over the concrete floor she saw a young man come through the doorway, under the light, unusually white, that came only through the wide skylight overhead.
The young man, who was short and exceedingly dark and handsome, came up close to her. He smiled a greeting.
"What are you on to-day, Miss Brack?" he asked.
"A hand," she replied, completely forgetting the hand, for the young man insisted by his glance and smile that she think of him.
"Well, you're a wonder," he laughed. "You look as if you'd been buried alive."
"I guess I have been," she murmured.
"Better quit, then," he advised in an intimate way. "Well, so long; I must dig."
Then as she watched his back recede she knew that she could work no longer. The very fact that he had failed in his attempt to cast the power of his personality over hers by singling her out among women made her feel, like the rush of a wave through her body, the power of Mr. Fitch. How small and futile were these other men! She felt a trifle dizzy. She washed, laid aside the white coat, and left the room. And she found herself exulting in her peril.
"My whole career," she thought, "my whole future, all that I have worked for all these years—what has become of it all? Nothing matters except this thing, And what is this thing?"
The streets, though sunny, seemed dark to her. "Noon to seven-thirty sharp," she thought. "That's seven and a half hours! How shall I live through such a long time?"
At dusk she stood at the window of her room, still brooding.
"I wonder how it feels," she thought, "to work so close to fire: to work half-naked, in the glare and the flames, until one lies awake all night, dizzy and spinning." She smiled. "Heredity and environment! What a bold boy he must have been, stealing rides on freight-trains, running across the tracks in front of engines!"
She drew the curtain aside and waved her hand. Before the little house, on the tree-shaded pavement, a very young woman, scarcely more than a girl, was approaching, eyes lifted. It was half-past five, home-coming time for lucky office people. Although the house stood on a pleasant street in the East End, already the skies were darkening with the heavier twilight of the smokes; a wind snipped dried leaves from the trees, and in the murk the sooty, pungent air was cool. A light here and there appeared behind a window, and as Elsa turned away she saw that the little room was already dark. A deep and lovely sadness came to her; she gave herself to the enfolding darkness; she was years younger, a little girl waiting for her father to come home.
A light, eager tread; the door opened and, silhouetted by the hall light, swayed the garments of the girl, her jaunty hat feather-pierced, her loose, light coat catching gold along its fringes.
"Oh, El, where are you?" she cried.
"Here I am, En," said Elsa, softly. The girl's name was Enid Wardell.
"El!" she cried. They embraced; and against Elsa's hot cheek was laid a cool one. Suddenly, drawing the eager girl close, she felt how immeasurably older than Enid she was; she felt vastly maternal; she felt that Enid was living through joys and pleasures which long ago she had dropped by the way. Her love for the girl was wistful yet indulgent.
"Well," she asked, "what is it this time? Mr. Lindsey again?"
"El," whispered Enid, softly, "what do you think? He's to call for me, and I'm going out to supper with him. Quick, light the gas! I think there's a button off my blue dress."
Elsa's face seemed quite stern when the gas over the mirror of the bureau flared screeching up. Mr. Lindsey was chief clerk in the office where Enid was a stenographer; and there was no doubt that the two would eventually marry. All of Enid's bearing and expression proclaimed her love: she was soft, yellow-haired, pretty; she was eager and young; and as she stood in her under-waist, with bare arms aloft and dainty fingers working over the abundant hair, she made an appealing figure. Her babble was endless.
"He has a new suit—gray—awfully becoming; it has three buttons instead of four down the front. If he only wouldn't wear that ghastly green necktie! It doesn't go with his dark complexion. I saw him a minute when I came in from lunch; and you know how shy he is! Well, he put a note on my desk under the typewriter. I didn't find it for an hour. Here it is."
She pulled it forth from her bosom, and Elsa read:
"Dear Miss Wardell,—To-day is my birthday, so sha'n't we go out to supper? I'll call for you. If you mean yes, stick this note in your hair.
"Yours sincerely,
"John Lindsey."
Enid had to sit down in hearty reminiscent laughter. "I stuck it in," she said, "but I didn't dare look. And we haven't seen each other since. Do you think he'll come?"
For answer they heard the door-bell, two flights down, ring twice. Enid got into her blue dress, and Elsa buttoned it down the back.
"Am I all right?" asked Enid. "Do I look lovely, Elsa?"
"Yes," said Elsa, kissing her. "Perfectly lovely. Have a wonderful time!"
"Ouch!" cried Enid, frightened. "El! Why, you nearly killed me! What's the matter?"
She stared wide-eyed. Elsa looked curiously pale, and her eyes shone.
"Oh, it's nothing." Elsa forced a laugh. "Now run along."
Enid glanced at her again. "I'm almost afraid of you," she whispered.
"Oh, run along, child!" cried Elsa. "He's waiting."' She took Enid gently by the arm, pushed her out into the hall, and shut the door on her.
Then she put out the light and sat down beside the slowly growing illumination of the curtained window. She was face to face now with the peril; she knew now clearly how matters stood. And she thought first of a supper-table in the corner of a brilliant restaurant and of herself at one side and Mr. Fitch at the other. And her life stood before her from the earliest days.
From her earliest days, indeed! From the strangeness of that night when, a little girl of six, she first confronted death. Her mother had understood her; that she remembered well. Where her father misjudged, her mother had divined. The small garden-inclosed cottage stood a little out from the western Maryland village, out along an unfrequented road in a narrow valley. One of the terrible mysteries of her childhood was the fact that the earth beneath was said to be a network of the tunnels of a coal-mine; she feared that, digging in the garden, she might fall through; and often at night her thoughts went down to those lamp-flaring toilers beneath her: she up on her white, clean bed, they burrowing below in the icy damp darkness.
But on that particular night she had not gone to bed at all; no one took any notice of her, and she crept around the house, keen with curiosity and feeling delightfully wicked. Whenever she came near the door of her mother's room a stout nurse told her to get along, until at last her father came hurrying out, and she followed him down the stairs. He flung open the front door, and she stood at his feet, peering out into the blowing darkness. A strange lamp glowed out there, and then suddenly the glazed appearance of the big doctor. He tramped up on the porch, clutched her father's arm, and the two men spoke together over her head. She felt frightfully neglected and forlorn when suddenly the doctor stopped, lifted her to the level of his clear gray eyes, and regarded her keenly.
"A little woman!" he murmured. "Sweetheart, how are you?"
And for some strange reason she began to cry. She was set down and left in the blindness of tears, until she felt herself lifted again, a long time afterward: possibly she had slept in between. It was her father this time, and she was startled to hear his sobbing and to get his kisses. They bobbed up the steps together, and she blinked in the light. Now she knew it was her mother's room, and her father was holding her over the bed.
"Say good-by to mother," be whispered.
"Good-by, mother," she said, dutifully. And then she saw her mother, and all of life was revolutionized. She had the sudden feeling that what had seemed familiar was strange and unknown, that space was full of new mysteries. And somehow she knew that she would never see her mother again: all at once her heart seemed broken, and she sobbed against her father with her whole body. There was no comfort then until she found herself on the knees of the doctor, who was feeding her some, scrambled eggs. She was quite hungry, and the eggs tasted delicious.
"Well, sweetheart," said the doctor, "you must grow up to be a fine woman now. And what are you going to be when you grow up?"
Her heart went out to the big man. "I'm going to be a doctor," she said.
That, curiously enough, was the way it all began. From then on she was doctor, rather than mother, to her dolls; and the desire to study medicine came as an imperceptible conclusion to that chance remark.
Her next great longing was the incessant wish to leave home. While she was still a public-school girl she would go down to the railroad station and watch the swift trains from Pittsburg on their way to Washington. Some of these would stop, and bright faces looked down upon her, then the wheels turned, and these strangers passed on to the great world. Then her heart rebelled, suffocating her; she, too, wanted to rush out to the great cities and the adventures of life.
A hitch came in the high-school days in the shape of a clumsy big boy who first taught her that she was a girl, and that girls are little women. He put her through the usual process: the carrying of her books, the offer of a rose over the garden gate at twilight, the doing of her sums for her; then finally the walk alone, the strange kiss, the secret. Her sense of importance at being in love was tremendous: she was sure she was not young any more; and the praise and the eyes of Harry Hinton sent her to her mirror to discover for the first time what an interesting face she had and how exceedingly pretty was the very brown hair.
Then she told Harry that she intended to be a doctor, and trouble began. Outraged, he conveyed word to her father; she was questioned; and her love for Harry was killed by one lusty blow. Her love for her father suffered a similar fate. But it was two years before she got away.
Then she was eighteen; now she was twenty-three: more than five years of breathless discoveries mixed with bitter "grinding." There had been a little money left by her mother which tided her over this period; but against the day of utter poverty she had put in the summer studying stenography and typewriting. Enid had helped her; and thus she was able to take the night work with Mr. Fitch. These five years had in many ways been pleasant: Enid had friends. And yet Elsa had often felt a secret, harsh loneliness, a sense of not being understood, a hunger for she knew not what.
Was it possible—she asked herself—that all of the bitter years had been a life of lies? Her heart sorrowed within her. It seemed to her that she had cleverly fooled herself, that she had been on a quest that must be vain for a woman; for the years, like a weak flame, were utterly blown out by the first breath of passion. She had thought that she had known love and passed it over, a negligible thing. But she had merely been an unmated woman who knew nothing of life: life, with its warm loveliness and its ardent terrors, masking itself, shutting itself up in the huge shape of a man.
Yet had not her mind known? Working over the wonders of the body, the miracle of nerve networks, the marvels of tissue and bone, surely she had seen what it meant to be a woman; surely she had known that if she were ever to fulfil herself she must be thinker and dreamer, user of the intricate brain, toiler with the miraculous hands; but more, more than that. She had the body of a wife and a mother; she was made also to be a bearer for the tides of the race. Yes, her mind had known; but now—now her whole body knew; and she was like the pollen and the seeds, borne by the resistless powers that sow the harvests.
She stared at a lamp across the street that came and went through leafy boughs, and then she grew ecstatic with her peril. Her whole career at stake! All the years, girlhood, womanhood, the beckoning future! All to be flung into the night and scattered by the chanting wind.
She put on her little coat and her hat, opened the door, and stole down the stairs. Mrs. Mayhew came out of the sitting-room to meet her.
"Oh!" she exclaimed, standing back on the third step, the hall light flickering in her amazing face.
"You're not going out?" asked Mrs. Mayhew.
"I'm sorry," said Elsa. "There's some work I've got to do. No, I can't stay for supper. Dreadfully sorry, but really . . ."
She had hold of the door then, vehemently nodded her head, and shut herself out into the night. Then as she descended the steps the rain smote her face.
"My umbrella!" she thought; but Mrs. Mayhew could not be faced again. Then she chanted half aloud: "But I want it to rain on me; I want it to rain on me!"
When Elsa reached the door of the Children's Society, she found it locked, and had to knock and wait tremblingly. The frosted glass gave a diffused glow of one of the office lights, and soon this was blotted out by the looming shadow of Mr. Fitch. A wave of faintness swept Elsa; her forehead was moist. Then the door opened with a jerk.
"Curse those kids!" growled Mr. Fitch, setting the latch. "Never do what they're told! Come along."
He impolitely preceded her down past three offices (she saw little Brown working in one of them), and she hurried after his big strides into the narrow room, hung her dripping hat and coat on the stand, pulled her book from the pigeon-hole, and sat down at the desk-flap. Mr. Fitch was swaying back and forth in his springy chair, his hands clasped behind his head.
"Read over the last I dictated," he ordered.
She feared that her voice would betray her; and indeed when it passed between her lips it was strange and feeble.
"—and it is the business of this Conference to deal with these little waifs, not as little criminals, but as the victims of their heredity and environment."
In the silence she heard the rain, and only the rain. It was splashing against the window in one steady gust after another; and she knew it was drenching the mills, and soaking, until it shone in the lantern-light, the coal in the barges, and sweeping the streets. The huge city was driven indoors by it; the population clung to its warm rooms and its cheerful lights; and she, too, was sheltered, sheltered after the fierce hurry in the blindness of the storm. She could not control herself longer then: she began to shiver.
Then the huge wave of dark strength came overwhelmingly close to her; she was faint with exquisite apprehension; and glancing up, she caught that mystic masculine power of his eyes. His voice was low, intimate, drawing her closer.
"Say, you—you're simply soaking wet! Didn't you have an umbrella?"
She smiled painfully, and could barely utter a sound.
"Forgot it."
He rose and slammed down the rolling top of the desk. "Well, then, home with you! Heredity and environment can wait. My umbrella is big enough for two."
"Oh no," she found herself saying; "I'm not going home."
"But you must," he growled. "I'm not going to have you down with pneumonia. I'm an 'uplifter,' you know," he laughed, hoarsely; "I'm a 'social worker.' I"—he leaned over her, and his smile was delightful—"I'm going to save you, Miss Brack."
Yes, she concluded in a flash of sanity, he merely regarded her as the latest plaything that had come to him. Her lips were dry.
"I can take care of myself, Mr. Fitch," she said, and wished she hadn't said it. A harsh note spoiled the glory of the night.
He paused, his eyebrows working up and down in a curious, ridiculous way.
"Oh, come now—" he began.
"I'd much rather go on with the work," she interrupted.
He looked angry for a moment, and she remembered that he had once hit a laborer with an iron rod. But she sat still looking straight in front of her, and all at once he turned and walked to the window.
Then, without turning, he spoke cynically:
"You're studying medicine, eh?"
The question stabbed her. "Yes," she murmured.
"What 'd you do that for?" he growled. She did not answer.
"Modern woman, eh?" he went on.
She was silent, a slow rage beginning to kindle in her. He turned, surveyed her with lowered head, and smiled.
"I suppose," he said, "you're never going to marry." Then he stuck his hands in his coat pockets and began walking up and down the room. "These modern women! They're loony, utterly loony. Now what's a woman made for? Lord! did you ever meet a woman doctor? Ugh! I take to the tall timber whenever a specimen comes my way. Say, Miss Brack . . ."
He paused. She was in an explosive mood now; she thought: "At the college they think I'm a powerful person; but he thinks I'm a kitten, a child, a toy—tramples all over me—I hate him."
"Say, Miss Brack," he repeated, "I've got my own ideas of woman, you know." He sat down, and there was something absorbingly real and beautiful in his candor.
"I want a woman to be feminine and old-fashioned; to be gentle and sweet; to serve the man she loves; to be his true mate; to be a mother that lives in her children. That's the sort of thing I worship. A woman of that kind could twist me around her little finger."
The words dominated her: she saw then that nothing in the world was truer than this. Surely her whole nature cried out that such was her destiny; that in this natural functioning lay marvel on marvel, wonder on wonder, beyond all splendor of anatomy and therapeutics. She leaned her cheek on her hand, half shut her eyes, and smiled.
He rocked back in his chair. "I've got to think of marrying," he said, abruptly. "I've been coasting about too long, and I'm not getting a bit younger as time passes. I'm going to get down to brass tacks. I'm going out and get one of the big steel companies to give me a man-size job. Then I'm going to go wife hunting."
In the pause she heard the rain again, gust on gust slashing the window, and somewhere, in glimmering rubber, men were waving lanterns in the dismal railroad yards, and the leaping headlights were blotted with the storm. The rage in her was accumulating through all the ecstasy of the moment. It was too shameful, too shameful!
Mr. Fitch leaned close to her; his voice was startlingly tender: "Really, I don't want you to sit around all soaked like that! Won't you let me take you home?"
The explosion came: she did not know what she was doing, what she was saying. She arose slowly.
"I'm afraid, Mr. Fitch," she said, in clear and final tones, "I must resign this work. And I'm very sorry."
He stared at her, stunned. "Resign? Why in the world—"
"I'm too tired at night," she lied. "And I'm sorry I couldn't give notice. I shall have to go now."
He arose, still staring at her. "Well, you're the queerest ever! Do you mean it?"
She went to the stand and carefully put on hat and coat; then she faced him.
"Mr. Fitch," she said, in a low voice, "I've got my own life to live. Good night."
He understood, and he was obviously overpowered. But he had the look of an angry ball.
"Oh," he growled, "all right. But I owe you some money."
"Please send it," she said at the door, and passed out.
She was curiously calm when she emerged on the street and walked straight into the rain. And down it came, pasting her hair to her cheeks and forehead, blinding her eyes, dripping from her nose. She was herself again: Elsa Brack: one with all the years of her life. By one brave, decisive act she had freed herself. She laughed softly: almost wept. She had pushed him out of her life; she had resisted and overcome; she had torn the embedded arrow from her heart. Yes, she was a modern woman, and modern women could handle their lives in a new way.
"And I'm out of a job," she laughed to herself, "and I haven't any money!"
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1932, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 91 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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