_ BOOK VII. AT THE SHIPYARD
CHAPTER II
Davidge thought it only fair to take the Department of Justice operative, Larrey, into his confidence. Larrey was perfectly willing to defer reporting to his office chief until the more dramatic conclusion; for he had an easily understandable ambition to share in the glory of it. It was agreed that a closer watch than ever should be kept on the shipyard and its approaches. Easton had promised to notify Mamise of his arrival, but he might grow suspicious of her and strike without warning.
The period of waiting was as maddening as the suspense of the poor insomniac who implored the man next door to "drop the other shoe." Mamise suffered doubly from her dual interest in Abbie and in Davidge. She dared not tell Abbie what was in the wind, though she tried to undermine gradually the curious devotion Abbie bore to her worthless husband. But Mamise's criticisms of Jake only spurred Abbie to new defenses of him and a more loyal affection.
Day followed day, and Mamise found the routine of the office intolerably monotonous. Time gnawed at her resolution, and she began to hope to be away when Easton made his attempt. It occurred to her that it would be pleasant to have an ocean between her and the crisis. She said to Davidge:
"I wish Nicky would come soon, for I have applied for a passport to France. Major Widdicombe got me the forms to fill out, and he promised to expedite them. I ought to go the minute they come."
This information threw Davidge into a complex dismay. Here was another of Mamise's long-kept secrets. The success of her plan meant the loss of her, or her indefinite postponement. It meant more yet. He groaned.
"Good Lord! everybody in the United States is going to France except me. Even the women are all emigrating. I think I'll just turn the shipyard over to the other officers of the corporation and go with you. Let Easton blow it up then, if he wants to, so long as I get into the uniform and into the fighting."
This new commotion was ended by a shocking and unforeseen occurrence. The State Department refused to grant Mamise a passport, and dazed Widdicombe by letting him know confidentially that Mamise was on the red list of suspects because of her Germanized past. This was news to Widdicombe, and he went to Polly in a state of bewilderment.
Polly had never told him what Mamise had told her, but she had to let out a few of the skeletons in Mamise's closet now. Widdicombe felt compromised in his own loyalty, but Polly browbeat him into submission. She wrote to Mamise and broke the news to her as gently as she could, but the rebuff was cruel. Mamise took her sorrow to Davidge.
He was furious and proposed to "go to the mat" with the State Department. Mamise, however, shook her head; she saw that her only hope of rehabilitation lay in a positive proof of her fidelity.
"I got my name stained in England because I didn't have the pluck to do something positive. I was irresolution personified, and I'm paying for it. But for once in my life I learned a lesson, and when I learned what Nicky planned I ran right to you with it. Now if we catch Nicky red-handed, and I turn over my own brother-in-law to justice, that ought to redeem me, oughtn't it?"
Davidge had a better idea for her protection. "Marry me, and then they can't say anything."
"Then they'll suspect you," she said. "Too many good Americans have been dragged into hot water by pro-German wives, and I'm not going to marry you till I can bring you some other dower than a spotted reputation."
"I'd take you and be glad to get you if you were as polka-dotted as a leopardess," said Davidge.
"Just as much obliged; but no, thank you," said Mamise. "Furthermore, if we were married, the news would reach Nicky Easton through Jake Nuddle, and then Nicky would lose all trust in me, and come down on us without warning."
"This makes about the fifteenth rejection I've had," said Davidge. "And I'd sworn never to ask you again."
"I promised to ask you when the time was ripe," said Mamise.
"Don't forget. Barkis is always willin' and waitin'."
"While we're both waiting," Mamise went on, "there's one thing you've got to do for me, or I'll never propose to you."
"Granted, to the half my shipyard."
"It's only a job in your shipyard. I can't stand this typewriter-tapping any longer. I'm going mad. I want to swing a hammer or something. You told me that women could build a whole ship if they wanted to, and I want to build my part of one."
"But--"
"If you speak of my hands, I'll prove to you how strong they are. Besides, if I were out in the yard at work, I could keep a better watch for Nicky, and I could keep you better informed as to the troubles always brewing among the workmen."
"But--"
"I'm strong enough for it, too. I've been taking a lot of exercise recently to get in trim. If you don't believe me, feel that muscle."
She flexed her biceps, and he took hold of it timidly in its silken sleeve. It amazed him, for it was like marble. Still, he hated to lose her from the neighborliness of the office; he hated to send her out among the workmen with their rough language and their undoubted readiness to haze her and teach her her place. But she was stubborn and he saw that her threat was in earnest when she said:
"If you don't give me a job, I'll go to some other company."
Then he yielded and wrote her a note to the superintendent of the yard, and said:
"You can begin to-morrow."
She smiled in her triumph and made the very womanly comment: "But I haven't a thing to wear. Do you know a good ladies' tailor who can fit me out with overalls, some one who has been 'Breeches-maker to the Queen' and can drape a baby-blue denim pant modishly?"
The upshot of it was that she decided to make her own trousseau, and she went shopping for materials and patterns. She ended by visiting an emporium for "gents' furnishings." The storekeeper asked her what size her husband wore, and she said:
"Just about my own."
He gave her the smallest suit in stock, and she held it up against her. It was much too brief, and she was heartened to know that there were workmen littler than she.
She bought the garment that came nearest to her own dimensions, and hurried home with it joyously. It proved to be a perfect misfit, and she worked over it as if it were a coming-out gown; and indeed it was her costume for her debut into the world of manual labor.
Abbie dropped in and surprised her in her attitudes and was handsomely scandalized:
"When's the masquerade?" she asked.
Mamise told her of her new career.
Abbie was appalled. "It's against the Bible for a woman to wear a man's things!" she protested. Abbie could quote the Scripture for every discouraging purpose.
"I'd rather wear them than wash them," said Mamise; "and if you'll take my advice you'll get a suit of overalls yourself and earn an honest living and five times as much money as Jake would give you--if he ever gave you any."
But Abbie wailed that Mamise had gone indecent as well as crazy, and trembled at the thought of what the gossips along the row would do with the family reputation. The worst of it was that Mamise had money in the bank and did not have to work.
That was the incomprehensible thing to Jake Nuddle. He accepted the familiar theory that all capital is stolen goods, and he reproached Mamise with the double theft of poor folks' money and now of poor folks' work. Mamise's contention that there were not enough workmen for the country's needs fell on deaf ears, for Jake believed that work was a crime against the sacred cause of the laboring-man. His ideal of a laboring-man was one who seized the capital from the capitalists and then ceased to labor.
But Jake's too familiar eyes showed that he regarded Mamise as a very interesting spectacle. The rest of the workmen seemed to have the same opinion when she went to the yard in her overalls next morning. She was the first woman to take up man's work in the neighborhood, and she had to endure the most searching stares, grins, frowns, and comments that were meant to be overheard.
She struck all the men as immodest; some were offended and some were delighted. As usual, modesty was but another name for conformity. Mamise had to face the glares of the conventional wives and daughters in their bodices that followed every contour, their light skirts that blew above the knees, and their provocative hats and ribbons. They made it plain to her that they were outraged by this shapeless passer-by in the bifurcated potato-sack, with her hair tucked up under a vizored cap and her hands in coarse mittens.
Mamise had studied the styles affected by the workmen as if they were fashion-plates from Paris, and she had equipped herself with a slouchy cap, heavy brogans, a thick sweater, a woolen shirt, and thick flannels underneath.
She was as well concealed as she could manage, and yet her femininity seemed to be emphasized by her very disguise. The roundness of bosom and hip and the fineness of shoulder differed too much from the masculine outline to be hidden. And somehow there was more coquetry in her careful carelessness than in all the exaggerated womanishness of the shanty belles. She had been a source of constant wonder to the community from the first. But now she was regarded as a downright menace to the peace and the morals of society.
Mamise reported to the superintendent and gave him Davidge's card. The old man respected Davidge's written orders and remembered the private instructions Davidge had given him to protect Mamise from annoyance at all costs. The superintendent treated her as if she were a child playing at salesmanship in a store. And this was the attitude of all the men except a few incorrigible gallants, who tried to start flirtations and make movie dates with her.
Sutton, the master riveter, alone received her with just the right hospitality. He had no fear that she would steal his job or his glory or that any man would. He had talked with her often and let her practise at his riveting-gun. He had explained that her ambition to be a riveter was hopeless, since it would take at least three month's apprenticeship before she could hope to begin on such a career. But her sincere longings to be a builder and not a loafer won his respect.
When she expressed a shy wish to belong to his riveting-gang he said:
"Right you are, miss--or should I say mister?"
"I'd be proud if you'd call me bo," said Mamise.
"Right you are, bo. We'll start you in as a passer-boy. I'll be glad to get rid of that sleep-walker. Hay, Snotty!" he called to a grimy lad with an old bucket. The youth rubbed the back of his greasy glove across the snub of nose that had won him his name, and, shifting his precocious quid, growled:
"Ah, what!"
"Ah, go git your time--or change to another gang. Tell the supe. I'm not fast enough for you. Go on--beat it!"
Mamise saw that she already had an enemy. She protested against displacing another toiler, but Sutton told her that there were jobs enough for the cub.
He explained the nature of Mamise's duties, talking out of one side of his mouth and using the other for ejaculations of an apparently inexhaustible supply of tobacco-juice. Seeing that Mamise's startled eyes kept following these missiles, he laughed:
"Do you use chewin'?"
"I don't think so," said Mamise, not quite sure of his meaning.
"Well, you'll have to keep a wad of gum goin', then, for you cert'n'y need a lot of spit in this business."
Mamise found this true enough, and the next time Davidge saw her she kept her grinders milling and used the back of her glove with a professional air. For the present, however, she had no brain-cells to spare for mastication. Sutton introduced her to his crew.
"This gink here with the whiskers is Zupnik; he's the holder-on; he handles the dolly and hangs on to the rivets while I swat 'em. The pill over by the furnace is the heater; his name is Pafflow, and his job is warming up the rivets. Just before they begin to sizzle he yanks 'em out with the tongs and throws 'em to you. You ketch 'em in the bucket--I hope, and take 'em out with your tongs and put 'em in the rivet-hole, and then Zupnik and me we do the rest. And what do we call you? Miss Webling is no name for a workin'-man."
"My name is Marie Louise."
"Moll is enough."
And Moll she was thenceforth.
The understanding of Mamise's task was easier than its performance. Pafflow sent the rivets to her fast and fleet, and they were red-hot. The first one passed her and struck Sutton. His language blistered. The second sizzled against her hip. The third landed in the pail with a pleasant clink, but she was so slow in getting her tongs about it, and fitting it into its place, that it was too cold for use. This threw her into a state of hopelessness. She was ready to resign.
"I think I'd better go back to crocheting," she sighed.
Sutton gave her a playful shove that almost sent her off the platform:
"Nah, you don't, Moll. You made me chase Snotty off the job, and you're goin' t'rough wit' it. You ain't doin' no worse 'n I done meself when I started rivetin'. Cheese! but I spoiled so much work I got me tail kicked offen me a dozen times!"
This was politer language than some that he used. His conversation was interspersed with words that no one prints. They scorched Mamise's ears like red-hot rivets at first, but she learned to accept them as mere emphasis. And, after all, blunt Anglo-Saxon never did any harm that Latin paraphrase could prevent.
The main thing was Sutton's rough kindliness, his splendid efficiency, and his infinite capacity for taking pains with each rivet-head, hammering it home, then taking up his pneumatic chipping-tool to trim it neat. That is the genius and the glory of the artisan, to perfect each detail
ad unguem, like a poet truing up a sonnet.
Sutton was putting in thousands on thousands of rivets a month, and every one of them was as important to him as every other. He feared the thin knife-blade of the rivet-tester as the scrupulous writer dreads the learned critic's scalpel.
Mamise was dazed to learn that the ship named after her would need nearly half a million rivets, each one of them necessary to the craft's success. The thought of the toil, the noise, the sweat, the money involved made the work a sort of temple-building, and the thought of Nicky Easton's ability to annul all that devout accomplishment in an instant nauseated her like a blasphemy. She felt herself a priestess in a holy office and renewed her flagging spirits with prayers for strength and consecration.
But few of the laborers had Sutton's pride or Mamise's piety in the work. Just as she began to get the knack of catching and placing the rivets Pafflow began to register his protest against her sex. He took a low joy in pitching rivets wild, and grinned at her dancing lunges after them.
Mamise would not tattle, but she began again to lose heart. Sutton's restless appetite for rivets noted the new delay, and he grasped the cause of it at once. His first comment was to walk over to the furnace and smash Pafflow in the nose.
"You try any of that I. W. W. sabotodge here, you----, and I'll stuff you in a rivet-hole and turn the gun loose on you."
Pafflow yielded first to force and later to the irresistible power of Mamise's humility. Indeed, her ardor for service warmed his indifferent soul at last, and he joined with her to make a brilliant team, hurtling the rivets in red arcs from the coke to the pail with the precision of a professional baseball battery.
Mamise eventually acquired a womanly deftness in plucking up the rivet and setting it in place, and Davidge might have seen grounds for uneasiness in her eager submissiveness to Sutton as she knelt before him, watched his eye timidly, and glowed like coke under the least breath of his approval. _