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<h2> CHAPTER XXIX </h2>
<p>Herman Klein, watch between forefinger and thumb, climbed heavily to
Anna's room. She heard him pause outside the door, and her heart almost
stopped beating. She had been asleep, and rousing at his step, she had
felt under the pillow for her watch to see the time. It was not there.</p>
<p>She remembered then; she had left it below, on the table. And he was
standing outside her door. She heard him scratching a match, striking it
against the panel of her door. For so long as it would take the match to
burn out, she heard him there, breathing heavily. Then the knob turned.</p>
<p>She leaped out of the bed in a panic of fear. The hall, like the room, was
dark, and she felt his ponderous body in the doorway, rather than saw it.</p>
<p>"You will put on something and come down-stairs," he said harshly.</p>
<p>"I will not." She tried to keep her voice steady. "I've got to work, if
you haven't. I've got to have my sleep." Her tone rose, hysterically. "If
you think you can stay out half the night, and guzzle beer, and then come
here to get me up, you can think again."</p>
<p>"You are already up," he said, in a voice slowed and thickened by rage.
"You will come down-stairs."</p>
<p>He turned away and descended the creaking stairs again. She listened for
the next move, but he made none. She knew then that he was waiting at the
foot of the stairs.</p>
<p>She was half-maddened with terror by that time, and she ran to the window.
But it was high. Even if she could have dropped out, and before she could
put on enough clothing to escape in, he would be back again, his rage the
greater for the delay. She slipped into a kimono, and her knees giving way
under her she went down the stairs. Herman was waiting. He moved under the
lamp, and she saw that he held the watch, dangling.</p>
<p>"Now!" he said. "Where you got this? Tell me."</p>
<p>"I've told you how I got it."</p>
<p>"That was a lie."</p>
<p>So—Rudolph had told him!</p>
<p>"I like that!" she blustered, trying to gain time. "I guess it's time they
gave me something—I've worked hard enough. They gave them to all the
girls."</p>
<p>"That is a lie also."</p>
<p>"I like that. Telling me I'm lying. You ask Mr. Graham Spencer. He'll tell
you."</p>
<p>"If that is true, why do you shake so?"</p>
<p>"You scare me, father." She burst into frightened tears. "I don't know
what's got into you. I do my best. I give you all I make. I've kept this
house going, and"—-she gained a little courage—"I've had
darned little thanks for it."</p>
<p>"You think I believe the mill gave five thousand dollars in watches last
Christmas? To-morrow I go, with this to Mr. Clayton Spencer, not to that
degenerate son of his, and I ask him. Then I shall know."</p>
<p>He turned, as if about to leave her, but the alternative he offered her
was too terrible.</p>
<p>"Father!" she said. "I'll tell you the truth. I bought it myself."</p>
<p>"With what money?"</p>
<p>"I had a raise. I didn't tell you. I had a raise of five dollars a week.
I'm paying for it myself. Honest to heaven, that's right, father."</p>
<p>"So—you have had a raise, and you have not told me?"</p>
<p>"I give all the rest to you. What do I get out of all my hard work? Just a
place to live. No clothes. No fun. No anything. All the other girls have a
good time now and then, but I'm just like a prisoner. You take all I earn,
and I get—the devil."</p>
<p>Her voice rose to a terrified squeal. Behind her she heard the slovenly
servant creaking down the stairs. As Herman moved toward her she screamed.</p>
<p>"Katie!" she called. "Quick. Help!"</p>
<p>But Herman had caught her by the shoulder and was dragging her toward a
corner, where there hung a leather strap.</p>
<p>Katie, peering round the door of the enclosed staircase, saw him raise the
strap, and Anna's white face upraised piteously.</p>
<p>"For God's sake, father."</p>
<p>The strap descended. Even after Katie had rushed up the stairs and locked
herself in the room, she could hear, above Anna's cries, the thud of the
strap, relentless, terrible, lusty with cruelty.</p>
<p>Herman went to church the next morning. Lying in her bed, too sore and
bruised to move, Anna heard him carefully polishing his boots on the side
porch, heard him throw away the water after he had shaved, heard at last
the slam of the gate as he started, upright in his Sunday clothes, for
church.</p>
<p>Only when he had reached the end of the street, and Katie could see him
picking his way down the blackened hill, did she venture up with a cup of
coffee. Anna had to unlock her door to admit her, to remove a further
barricade of chairs. When Katie saw her she almost dropped the cup.</p>
<p>"You poor little rat," she said compassionately. "Gee! He was crazy. I
never saw such a face. Gee!"</p>
<p>Anna said nothing. She dropped on the side of the bed and took the coffee,
drinking gingerly through a lip swollen and cut.</p>
<p>"I'm going to leave," Katie went on. "It'll be my time next. If he tries
any tricks on me I'll have the law on him. He's a beast; that's what he
is."</p>
<p>"Katie," Anna said, "if I leave can you get my clothes to me? I'll carry
all I can."</p>
<p>"He'd take the strap to me."</p>
<p>"Well, if you're leaving anyhow, you can put some of my things in your
trunk."</p>
<p>"Good and right you are to get out," Katie agreed. "Sure I'll do it. Where
do you think you'll go?"</p>
<p>"I thought last night I'd jump in the river. I've changed my mind, though.
I'll pay him back, and not the way he expects."</p>
<p>"Give it to him good," assented Katie. "I'd have liked to slip some of
that Paris green of his in his coffee this morning. And now he's off for
church, the old hypocrite!"</p>
<p>To Katie's curious inquiries as to the cause of the beating Anna was now
too committal.</p>
<p>"I held out some money on him," was all she said.</p>
<p>Katie regarded her with a mixture of awe and admiration.</p>
<p>"You've got your nerve," she said. "I wonder he didn't kill you. What's
yours is his and what's his is his own!"</p>
<p>But Anna could not leave that morning. She lay in her bed, cold compresses
on her swollen face and shoulders, a bruised and broken thing, planning
hideous reprisals. Herman made no inquiry for her. He went stolidly about
the day's work, carried in firewood and coal from the shed, inspected the
garden with a view to early planting, and ate hugely of the mid-day
dinner.</p>
<p>In the afternoon Rudolph came.</p>
<p>"Where's Anna?" he asked briskly.</p>
<p>"She is in her room. She is not well."</p>
<p>If Rudolph suspected anything, it was only that Anna was sulking. But
later on he had reason to believe that there trouble. Out of a clear sky
Herman said:</p>
<p>"She has had a raise." Anna was "she" to him.</p>
<p>"Since when?" Rudolph asked with interest.</p>
<p>"I know nothing. She has not given it to me. She has been buying herself a
watch."</p>
<p>"So!" Rudolph's tone was wary.</p>
<p>"She will buy herself no more watches," said Herman, with an air of
finality.</p>
<p>Rudolph hesitated. The organization wanted Herman; he had had great
influence with the millworkers. Through him many things would be possible.
The Spencers trusted him, too. At any time Rudolph knew they would be glad
to reinstate him, and once inside the plant, there was no limit to the
mischief he could do. But Herman was too valuable to risk. Suppose he was
told now about Graham Spencer and Anna, and beat the girl and was jailed
for it? Besides, ugly as Rudolph's suspicions were, they were as yet only
suspicions. He decided to wait until he could bring Herman proof of Graham
Spencer's relations with Anna. When that time came he knew Herman. He
would be clay for the potter. He, Rudolph, intended to be the potter.</p>
<p>Katie had an afternoon off that Sunday. When she came back that night,
Herman, weary from the late hours of Saturday, was already snoring in his
bed. Anna met Katie at her door and drew her in.</p>
<p>"I've found a nice room," Katie whispered. "Here's the address written
down. The street cars go past it. Three dollars a week. Are you ready?"</p>
<p>Anna was ready, even to her hat. Over it she placed a dark veil, for she
was badly disfigured. Then, with Katie crying quietly, she left the house.
In the flare from the Spencer furnaces Katie watched until the girl
reappeared on the twisting street below which still followed the old path—that
path where Herman, years ago, had climbed through the first spring wild
flowers to the cottage on the hill.</p>
<p>Graham was uncomfortable the next morning on his way to the mill. Anna's
face had haunted him. But out of all his confusion one thing stood out
with distinctness. If he was to be allowed to marry Marion, he must have
no other entanglement. He would go to her clean and clear.</p>
<p>So he went to the office, armed toward Anna with a hardness he was far
from feeling.</p>
<p>"Poor little kid!" he reflected on the way down. "Rotten luck, all round."</p>
<p>He did not for a moment believe that it would be a lasting grief. He knew
that sort of girl, he reflected, out of his vast experience of twenty-two.
They were sentimental, but they loved and forgot easily. He hoped she
would forget him; but even with that, there was a vague resentment that
she should do so.</p>
<p>"She'll marry some mill-hand," he reflected, "and wear a boudoir cap, and
have a lot of children who need their noses wiped."</p>
<p>But he was uncomfortable.</p>
<p>Anna was not in her office. Her coat and hat were not there. He was
surprised, somewhat relieved. It was out of his hands, then; she had gone
somewhere else to work. Well, she was a good stenographer. Somebody was
having a piece of luck.</p>
<p>Clayton, finding him short-handed, sent Joey over to help him pack up his
office belongings, the fittings of his desk, his personal papers, the
Japanese prints and rugs Natalie had sent after her single visit to the
boy's new working quarters. And, when Graham came back from luncheon, Joey
had a message for him.</p>
<p>"Telephone call for you, Mr. Spencer."</p>
<p>"What was it?"</p>
<p>"Lady called up, from a pay phone. She left her number and said she'd
wait." Joey lowered his voice confidentially. "Sounded like Miss Klein,"
he volunteered.</p>
<p>He was extremely resentful when Graham sent him away on an errand. And
Graham himself frowned as he called the number on the pad. It was like a
girl, this breaking off clean and then telephoning, instead of letting the
thing go, once and for all. But his face changed as he heard Anna's brief
story over the wire.</p>
<p>"Of course I'll come," he said. "I'm pretty busy, but I can steal a
half-hour. Don't you worry. We'll fix it up some way."</p>
<p>He was more concerned than deeply anxious when he rang off. It was
unfortunate, that was all. And the father was a German swine, and ought to
be beaten himself. To think that his Christmas gift had brought her to
such a pass! A leather strap! God!</p>
<p>He was vaguely uneasy, however. He had a sense of a situation being forced
on him. He knew, too, that Clayton was waiting for him at the new plant.
But Anna's trouble, absurd as its cause seemed to him, was his
responsibility.</p>
<p>It ceased to be absurd, however, when he saw her discolored features. It
would be some time before she could even look for another situation. Her
face was a swollen mask, and since such attraction as she had had for him
had been due to a sort of evanescent prettiness of youth, he felt a
repulsion that he tried his best to conceal.</p>
<p>"You poor little thing!" he said. "He's a brute. I'd like—" He
clenched his fists. "Well, I got you into it. I'm certainly going to see
you through."</p>
<p>She had lowered her veil quickly, and he felt easier. The telephone booth
was in the corner of a quiet hotel, and they were alone. He patted her
shoulder.</p>
<p>"I'll see you through," he repeated. "Don't you worry about anything. Just
lie low."</p>
<p>"See me through? How?"</p>
<p>"I can give you money; that's the least I can do. Until you are able to
work again." And as she drew away, "We'll call it a loan, if that makes
you feel better. You haven't anything, have you?"</p>
<p>"He has everything I've earned.. I've never had a penny except carfare."</p>
<p>"Poor little girl!" he said again.</p>
<p>She was still weak, he saw, and he led her into the deserted cafe. He took
a highball himself, not because he wanted it, but because she refused to
drink, at first. He had never before had a drink in the morning, and he
felt a warm and reckless glow to his very finger-tips. Bending toward her,
while the waiter's back was turned, he kissed her marred and swollen
cheek.</p>
<p>"To think I have brought you all this trouble!"</p>
<p>"You mustn't blame yourself."</p>
<p>"I do. But I'll make it up to you, Anna. You don't hate me for it, do
you?"</p>
<p>"Hate you! You know better than that."</p>
<p>"I'll come round to take you out now and then, in the evenings. I don't
want you to sit alone in that forsaken boarding-house and mope." He drew
out a bill-fold, and extracted some notes. "Don't be silly," he protested,
as she drew back. "It's the only way I can get back my self-respect. You
owe it to me to let me do it."</p>
<p>She was not hard to persuade. Anything was better than going back to the
cottage on the hill, and to that heavy brooding figure, and the strap on
the wall. But the taking of the money marked a new epoch in the girl's
infatuation. It bought her. She did not know it, nor did he. But hitherto
she had been her own, earning her own livelihood. What she gave of love,
of small caresses and intimacies, had been free gifts.</p>
<p>From that time she was his creature. In her creed, which was the creed of
the girls on the hill, one did not receive without giving. She would pay
him back, but all that she had to give was herself.</p>
<p>"You'll come to see me, too. Won't you?"</p>
<p>The tingling was very noticeable now. He felt warm, and young, and very,
very strong.</p>
<p>"Of course I'll come to see you," he said, recklessly. "You take a little
time off—you've worked hard—and we'll play round together."</p>
<p>She bent down, unexpectedly, and put her bruised cheek against his hand,
as it lay on the table.</p>
<p>"I love you dreadfully," she whispered.</p>
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