Читать книгу The Workers: An Experiment in Reality. The West онлайн

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My quarter had come, as on the day before, by way of a porter’s service—only this time from a woman. I caught sight of her as she was crossing the Lake Front from the station of the Illinois Central Railroad at the head of Randolph Street. Under her left arm were parcels of various shapes and sizes, and with some apparent effort she carried a bag in her right hand. The parcels were troublesome, for now and again she was obliged to rest the bag upon the pavement until she had adjusted her arm to a surer hold upon them. She was a woman nearing middle life, well dressed in warm, comfortable, winter garments which bore the general marks of the prevailing mode.

So completely had the present way of living possessed me that I fear that my first impulse at sight of her was born of the hope of a porter’s fee and not of the thought of helpfulness. But I grew more interested as I neared her, and increasingly embarrassed. There was a touch of beautiful coloring in her round, full face, and about the mouth was an expression of rare sweetness, while her dark-blue eyes looked out through gold-rimmed spectacles with preternatural seriousness. But my eye was drawn most by the hair that appeared beneath her bonnet; a heavy mass it was, and tawny red like that of Titian’s “Magdalene” in the Pitti. She might have been a shopkeeper’s wife come to the city from the suburbs or from some provincial village, and she was nervous in the noisy atmosphere of the unfamiliar. I had not yet offered my services to a woman in this new capacity of street porter, and I found myself puzzled as to how I should approach her. But the actual situation solved the difficulty, for when we were but a few steps apart, her bundles fell again into a state of irritating insecurity under her arm and she was again obliged to adjust them.