第19章 THE VICTIM OF THE LAW(5)

"I!" he cried, incredulously."I change my business policy because you ask me to!"There was something imperturbable in the quality of the voice as the girl went resolutely forward with her explanation.It was as if she were discharging a duty not to be gainsaid, not to be thwarted by any difficulty, not even the realization that all the effort must be ultimately in vain.

"Do you know how we girls live?--but, of course, you don't.

Three of us in one room, doing our own cooking over the two-burner gas-stove, and our own washing and ironing evenings, after being on our feet for nine hours."The enumeration of the sordid details left the employer absolutely unmoved, since he lacked the imagination necessary to sympathize actually with the straining evil of a life such as the girl had known.Indeed, he spoke with an air of just remonstrance, as if the girl's charges were mischievously faulty.

"I have provided chairs behind the counters," he stated.

There was no especial change in the girl's voice as she answered his defense.It continued musically low, but there was in it the insistent note of sincerity.

"But have you ever seen a girl sitting in one of them?" she questioned, coldly."Please answer me.Have you? Of course not," she said, after a little pause during which the owner had remained silent.She shook her head in emphatic negation."And do you understand why? It's simply because every girl knows that the manager of her department would think he could get along without her, if he were to see her sitting down ----loafing, you know! So, she would be discharged.All it amounts to is that, after being on her feet for nine hours, the girl usually walks home, in order to save carfare.Yes, she walks, whether sick or well.Anyhow, you are generally so tired, it don't make much difference which you are."Gilder was fuming under these strictures, which seemed to him altogether baseless attacks on himself.His exasperation steadily waxed against the girl, a convicted felon, who thus had the audacity to beard him.

"What has all this to do with the question of theft in the store?" he rumbled, huffily."That was the excuse for your coming here.And, instead of telling me something, you rant about gas-stoves and carfare."The inexorable voice went on in its monotone, as if he had not spoken.

"And, when you are really sick, and have to stop work, what are you going to do then? Do you know, Mr.Gilder, that the first time a straight girl steals, it's often because she had to have a doctor--or some luxury like that? And some of them do worse than steal.Yes, they do--girls that started straight, and wanted to stay that way.But, of course, some of them get so tired of the whole grind that--that----"The man who was the employer of hundreds concerning whom these grim truths were uttered, stirred uneasily in his chair, and there came a touch of color into the healthy brown of his cheeks as he spoke his protest.

"I'm not their guardian.I can't watch over them after they leave the store.They are paid the current rate of wages--as much as any other store pays." As he spoke, the anger provoked by this unexpected assault on him out of the mouth of a convict flamed high in virtuous repudiation."Why," he went on vehemently, "no man living does more for his employees than I do.

Who gave the girls their fine rest-rooms upstairs? I did! Who gave them the cheap lunch-rooms? I did!""But you won't pay them enough to live on!" The very fact that the words were spoken without any trace of rancor merely made this statement of indisputable truth obnoxious to the man, who was stung to more savage resentment in asserting his impugned self-righteousness.

"I pay them the same as the other stores do," he repeated, sullenly.

Yet once again, the gently cadenced voice gave answer, an answer informed with that repulsive insistence to the man who sought to resist her indictment of him.

"But you won't pay them enough to live on." The simple lucidity of the charge forbade direct reply.

Gilder betook himself to evasion by harking back to the established ground of complaint.