Calvary Alley
Copyright© 2024 by Alice Caldwell Hegan Rice
Chapter 12: Clarke’s
Nance Molloy came out of Forest Home, an independent, efficient girl, with clear skin, luminous blue eyes, and shining braids of fair hair. She came full of ideals and new standards and all the terrible wisdom of sixteen, and she dumped them in a mass on the family in Calvary Alley and boldly announced that “what she was going to do was a-plenty!”
But like most reformers, she reckoned too confidently on cooperation. The rest of the Snawdor family had not been to reform school, and it had strong objections to Nance’s drastic measures. Her innovations met with bitter opposition from William J., who indignantly declined to have the hitherto respected privacy of his ears and nose invaded, to Mrs. Snawdor, who refused absolutely to sleep with the windows open.
“What’s the sense in working your fingers off to buy coal to heat the house if you go an’ let out all the hot air over night?” she demanded. “They’ve filled up yer head with fool notions, but I tell you right now, you ain’t goin’ to work ‘em off on us. You kin just tell that old maid Stanley that when she’s had three husbands and five children an’ a step, an’ managed to live on less’n ten dollars a week, it’ll be time enough fer her to be learnin’ me tricks!”
“But don’t all this mess ever get on your nerves? Don’t you ever want to clear out and go to the country?” asked Nance.
“Not me!” said Mrs. Snawdor. “I been fightin’ the country all my life. It’s bad enough bein’ dirt pore, without goin’ an’ settin’ down among the stumps where there ain’t nothin’ to take yer mind off it.”
So whatever reforms Nance contemplated had to be carried out slowly and with great tact. Mrs. Snawdor, having put forth one supreme effort to make the flat sufficiently decent to warrant Nance’s return, proposed for the remainder of her life to rest on her laurels. As for the children, they had grown old enough to have decided opinions of their own, and when Nance threw the weight of her influence on the side of order and cleanliness, she was regarded as a traitor in the camp. It was only Mr. Snawdor who sought to uphold her, and Mr. Snawdor was but a broken reed.
Meanwhile the all-important question of getting work was under discussion. Miss Stanley had made several tentative suggestions, but none of them met with Mrs. Snawdor’s approval.
“No, I ain’t goin’ to let you work out in private families!” she declared indignantly. “She’s got her cheek to ast it! Did you tell her yer pa was a Molloy? An’ Mr. Burks says yer maw was even better born than what Bud was. I’m goin’ to git you a job myself. I’m goin’ to take you up to Clarke’s this very evenin’.”
“I don’t want to work in a factory!” Nance said discontentedly, looking out of the window into the dirty court below.
“I suppose you want to run a beauty parlor,” said Mrs. Snawdor, with scornful reference to Nance’s improved appearance. “You might just as well come off them high stilts an’ stop puttin’ on airs, Dan Lewis has been up to Clarke’s goin’ on four years now. I hear they’re pushin’ him right along.”
Nance stopped drumming on the window-pane and became suddenly interested. The one thing that had reconciled her to leaving Miss Stanley and the girls at the home was the possibility of seeing Dan again. She wondered what he looked like after these four years, whether he would recognize her, whether he had a sweetheart? She had been home three days now and had caught no glimpse of him.
“We never see nothin’ of him,” her stepmother told her. “He’s took up with the Methodists, an’ runs around to meetin’s an’ things with that there Mis’ Purdy.”
“Don’t he live over Slap Jack’s?” asked Nance.
“Yes; he’s got his room there still. I hear his ma died las’ spring.
Flirtin’ with the angels by now, I reckon.”
The prospect of seeing Dan cheered Nance amazingly. She spent the morning washing and ironing her best shirt-waist and turning the ribbon on her tam-o’-shanter. Every detail of her toilet received scrupulous attention.
It was raining dismally when she and Mrs. Snawdor picked their way across the factory yard that afternoon. The conglomerate mass of buildings known as “Clarke’s” loomed somberly against the dull sky. Beside the low central building a huge gas-pipe towered, and the water, trickling down it, made a puddle through which they had to wade to reach the door of the furnace room.
Within they could see the huge, round furnace with its belt of small fiery doors, from which glass-blowers, with long blow-pipes were deftly taking small lumps of moulten glass and blowing them into balls.
“There’s Dan!” cried Mrs. Snawdor, and Nance looked eagerly in the direction indicated.
In the red glare of the furnace, a big, awkward, bare-armed young fellow was just turning to roll his red-hot ball on a board. There was a steady look in the gray eyes that scowled slightly under the intense glare, a sure movement of the hands that dropped the elongated roll into the mold. When he saw Mrs. Snawdor’s beckoning finger, he came to the door.
“This here is Nance Molloy,” said Mrs. Snawdor by way of introduction. “She’s about growed up sence you seen her. We come to see about gittin’ her a job.”
Nance, looking at the strange, stern face above her, withdrew the hand she had held out. Dan did not seem to see her hand any more than he saw her fresh shirt-waist and the hat she had taken so much pains to retrim. After a casual nod he stood looking at the floor and rubbing the toe of his heavy boot against his blow-pipe.
“Sure,” he said slowly, “but this is no fit place for a girl, Mrs.
Snawdor.”
Mrs. Snawdor bristled immediately.
“I ain’t astin’ yer advice, Dan Lewis. I’m astin’ yer help.”
Dan looked Nance over in troubled silence.
“Is she sixteen yet?” he asked as impersonally as if she had not been present.
“Yes, an’ past. I knowed they’d be scarin’ up that dangerous trade business on me next. How long before the foreman’ll be here?”
“Any time now,” said Dan. “I’ll take you into his office.”
With a sinking heart, Nance followed them into the crowded room. The heat was stifling, and the air was full of stinging glass dust. All about them boys were running with red hot bottles on big asbestos shovels. She hated the place, and she hated Dan for not being glad to see her.
“They are the carrying-in boys,” Dan explained, continuing to address all of his remarks to Mrs. Snawdor. “That’s where I began. You wouldn’t believe that those kids often run as much as twenty-two miles a day. Watch out there, boy! Be careful!”
But his warning came too late. One of the smaller youngsters had stumbled and dropped his shovel, and a hot bottle had grazed his leg, burning away a bit of the stocking.
“It’s all right, Partner,” cried Dan, springing forward, “You’re not much hurt. I’ll fix you up.”
But the boy was frightened and refused to let him remove the stocking.
“Let me do it,” begged Nance. “I can get it off without hurting him.”
And while Dan held the child’s leg steady, she bathed and bound it in a way that did credit to Doc’s training. Only once daring the process did she look up, and then she was relieved to see instead of the stern face of a strange young man, the compassionate, familiar face of the old Dan she used to know.
The interview with the foreman was of brief duration. He was a thick-set, pimply-faced person whom Dan called Mr. Bean. He swept an appraising eye over the applicant, submitted a few blunt questions to Dan in an undertone, ignored Mrs. Snawdor’s voluble comments, and ended by telling Nance to report for work the following week.
As Mrs. Snawdor and Nance took their departure, the former, whose thoughts seldom traveled on a single track, said tentatively:
“Dan Lewis has got to be real nice lookin’ sence you seen him, ain’t he?”
“Nothin’ to brag on,” said Nance, still smarting at his indifference. But as she turned the corner of the building, she stole a last look through the window to where Dan was standing at his fiery post, his strong, serious face and broad, bare chest lighted up by the radiance from the glory-hole.
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