(and our other authors) or get HELP Reading, Downloading and Converting files)
or
SEARCHthe entire site withGoogle Site Search
| BROWSEthe site for other works by this author (and our other authors) or get HELP Reading, Downloading and Converting files) or SEARCHthe entire site withGoogle Site Search |
Title: Maggie: A Girl of the StreetsAuthor: Stephen Crane* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *eBook No.: fr100212.htmlLanguage: EnglishDate first posted: December 2014Most recent update: December 2014Project Gutenberg of Australia eBooks are created from printed editionswhich are in the public domain in Australia, unless a copyright noticeis included. We do NOT keep any eBooks in compliance with a particularpaper edition.Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check thecopyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing thisfile.This eBook is made available at no cost and with almost no restrictionswhatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the termsof the Project Gutenberg AustraliaLicence which may be viewed online.
GO TOProject GutenbergAustralia HOME PAGE
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
A very little boy stood upon a heap of gravel for the honor ofRum Alley. He was throwing stones at howling urchins from Devil'sRow who were circling madly about the heap and pelting at him.
His infantile countenance was livid with fury. His small bodywas writhing in the delivery of great, crimson oaths.
"Run, Jimmie, run! Dey'll get yehs," screamed a retreating RumAlley child.
"Naw," responded Jimmie with a valiant roar, "dese micks can'tmake me run."
Howls of renewed wrath went up from Devil's Row throats.Tattered gamins on the right made a furious assault on the gravelheap. On their small, convulsed faces there shone the grins of trueassassins. As they charged, they threw stones and cursed in shrillchorus.
The little champion of Rum Alley stumbled precipitately down theother side. His coat had been torn to shreds in a scuffle, and hishat was gone. He had bruises on twenty parts of his body, and bloodwas dripping from a cut in his head. His wan features wore a lookof a tiny, insane demon.
On the ground, children from Devil's Row closed in on theirantagonist. He crooked his left arm defensively about his head andfought with cursing fury. The little boys ran to and fro, dodging,hurling stones and swearing in barbaric trebles.
From a window of an apartment house that upreared its form fromamid squat, ignorant stables, there leaned a curious woman. Somelaborers, unloading a scow at a dock at the river, paused for amoment and regarded the fight. The engineer of a passive tugboathung lazily to a railing and watched. Over on the Island, a worm ofyellow convicts came from the shadow of a building and crawledslowly along the river's bank.
A stone had smashed into Jimmie's mouth. Blood was bubbling overhis chin and down upon his ragged shirt. Tears made furrows on hisdirt-stained cheeks. His thin legs had begun to tremble and turnweak, causing his small body to reel. His roaring curses of thefirst part of the fight had changed to a blasphemous chatter.
In the yells of the whirling mob of Devil's Row children therewere notes of joy like songs of triumphant savagery. The littleboys seemed to leer gloatingly at the blood upon the other child'sface.
Down the avenue came boastfully sauntering a lad of sixteenyears, although the chronic sneer of an ideal manhood already satupon his lips. His hat was tipped with an air of challenge over hiseye. Between his teeth, a cigar stump was tilted at the angle ofdefiance. He walked with a certain swing of the shoulders whichappalled the timid. He glanced over into the vacant lot in whichthe little raving boys from Devil's Row seethed about the shriekingand tearful child from Rum Alley.
"Gee!" he murmured with interest. "A scrap. Gee!"
He strode over to the cursing circle, swinging his shoulders ina manner which denoted that he held victory in his fists. Heapproached at the back of one of the most deeply engaged of theDevil's Row children.
"Ah, what deh hell," he said, and smote the deeply-engaged oneon the back of the head. The little boy fell to the ground and gavea hoarse, tremendous howl. He scrambled to his feet, andperceiving, evidently, the size of his assailant, ran quickly off,shouting alarms. The entire Devil's Row party followed him. Theycame to a stand a short distance away and yelled taunting oaths atthe boy with the chronic sneer. The latter, momentarily, paid noattention to them.
"What deh hell, Jimmie?" he asked of the small champion.
Jimmie wiped his blood-wet features with his sleeve.
"Well, it was dis way, Pete, see! I was goin' teh lick dat Rileykid and dey all pitched on me."
Some Rum Alley children now came forward. The party stood for amoment exchanging vainglorious remarks with Devil's Row. A fewstones were thrown at long distances, and words of challenge passedbetween small warriors. Then the Rum Alley contingent turned slowlyin the direction of their home street. They began to give, each toeach, distorted versions of the fight. Causes of retreat inparticular cases were magnified. Blows dealt in the fight wereenlarged to catapultian power, and stones thrown were alleged tohave hurtled with infinite accuracy. Valor grew strong again, andthe little boys began to swear with great spirit.
"Ah, we blokies kin lick deh hull damn Row," said a child,swaggering.
Little Jimmie was striving to stanch the flow of blood from hiscut lips. Scowling, he turned upon the speaker.
"Ah, where deh hell was yeh when I was doin' all deh fightin?"he demanded. "Youse kids makes me tired."
"Ah, go ahn," replied the other argumentatively.
Jimmie replied with heavy contempt. "Ah, youse can't fight, BlueBillie! I kin lick yeh wid one han'."
"Ah, go ahn," replied Billie again.
"Ah," said Jimmie threateningly.
"Ah," said the other in the same tone.
They struck at each other, clinched, and rolled over on thecobble stones.
"Smash 'im, Jimmie, kick deh damn guts out of 'im," yelled Pete,the lad with the chronic sneer, in tones of delight.
The small combatants pounded and kicked, scratched and tore.They began to weep and their curses struggled in their throats withsobs. The other little boys clasped their hands and wriggled theirlegs in excitement. They formed a bobbing circle about thepair.
A tiny spectator was suddenly agitated.
"Cheese it, Jimmie, cheese it! Here comes yer fader," heyelled.
The circle of little boys instantly parted. They drew away andwaited in ecstatic awe for that which was about to happen. The twolittle boys fighting in the modes of four thousand years ago, didnot hear the warning.
Up the avenue there plodded slowly a man with sullen eyes. Hewas carrying a dinner pail and smoking an apple-wood pipe.
As he neared the spot where the little boys strove, he regardedthem listlessly. But suddenly he roared an oath and advanced uponthe rolling fighters.
"Here, you Jim, git up, now, while I belt yer life out, youdamned disorderly brat."
He began to kick into the chaotic mass on the ground. The boyBillie felt a heavy boot strike his head. He made a furious effortand disentangled himself from Jimmie. He tottered away,damning.
Jimmie arose painfully from the ground and confronting hisfather, began to curse him. His parent kicked him. "Come home,now," he cried, "an' stop yer jawin', er I'll lam the everlastinghead off yehs."
They departed. The man paced placidly along with the apple-woodemblem of serenity between his teeth. The boy followed a dozen feetin the rear. He swore luridly, for he felt that it was degradationfor one who aimed to be some vague soldier, or a man of blood witha sort of sublime license, to be taken home by a father.
Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from acareening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads ofbabies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raisedyellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against an hundred windows.Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In allunhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In thestreet infants played or fought with other infants or sat stupidlyin the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed hair anddisordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or screamedin frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious postures ofsubmission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. Athousand odors of cooking food came forth to the street. Thebuilding quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stampingabout in its bowels.
A small ragged girl dragged a red, bawling infant along thecrowded ways. He was hanging back, baby-like, bracing his wrinkled,bare legs.
The little girl cried out: "Ah, Tommie, come ahn. Dere's Jimmieand fader. Don't be a-pullin' me back."
She jerked the baby's arm impatiently. He fell on his face,roaring. With a second jerk she pulled him to his feet, and theywent on. With the obstinacy of his order, he protested againstbeing dragged in a chosen direction. He made heroic endeavors tokeep on his legs, denounce his sister and consume a bit of orangepeeling which he chewed between the times of his infantileorations.
As the sullen-eyed man, followed by the blood-covered boy, drewnear, the little girl burst into reproachful cries. "Ah, Jimmie,youse bin fightin' agin."
The urchin swelled disdainfully.
"Ah, what deh hell, Mag. See?"
The little girl upbraided him, "Youse allus fightin', Jimmie,an' yeh knows it puts mudder out when yehs come home half dead, an'it's like we'll all get a poundin'."
She began to weep. The babe threw back his head and roared athis prospects.
"Ah, what deh hell!" cried Jimmie. "Shut up er I'll smack yermout'. See?"
As his sister continued her lamentations, he suddenly swore andstruck her. The little girl reeled and, recovering herself, burstinto tears and quaveringly cursed him. As she slowly retreated herbrother advanced dealing her cuffs. The father heard and turnedabout.
"Stop that, Jim, d'yeh hear? Leave yer sister alone on thestreet. It's like I can never beat any sense into yer damned woodenhead."
The urchin raised his voice in defiance to his parent andcontinued his attacks. The babe bawled tremendously, protestingwith great violence. During his sister's hasty manoeuvres, he wasdragged by the arm.
Finally the procession plunged into one of the gruesomedoorways. They crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomyhalls. At last the father pushed open a door and they entered alighted room in which a large woman was rampant.
She stopped in a career from a seething stove to a pan-coveredtable. As the father and children filed in she peered at them.
"Eh, what? Been fightin' agin, by Gawd!" She threw herself uponJimmie. The urchin tried to dart behind the others and in thescuffle the babe, Tommie, was knocked down. He protested with hisusual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins againsta table leg.
The mother's massive shoulders heaved with anger. Grasping theurchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled. Shedragged him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in water, beganto scrub his lacerated face with it. Jimmie screamed in pain andtried to twist his shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms.
The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face incontortions like that of a woman at a tragedy. The father, with anewly-ladened pipe in his mouth, crouched on a backless chair nearthe stove. Jimmie's cries annoyed him. He turned about and bellowedat his wife:
"Let the damned kid alone for a minute, will yeh, Mary? Yerallus poundin' 'im. When I come nights I can't git no rest 'causeyer allus poundin' a kid. Let up, d'yeh hear? Don't be alluspoundin' a kid."
The woman's operations on the urchin instantly increased inviolence. At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply laycursing and weeping.
The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with achieftain-like stride approached her husband.
"Ho," she said, with a great grunt of contempt. "An' what in thedevil are you stickin' your nose for?"
The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered outcautiously. The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the cornerdrew his legs carefully beneath him.
The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great mudded boots onthe back part of the stove.
"Go teh hell," he murmured, tranquilly.
The woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband'seyes. The rough yellow of her face and neck flared suddenlycrimson. She began to howl.
He puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but finallyarose and began to look out at the window into the darkening chaosof back yards.
"You've been drinkin', Mary," he said. "You'd better let up onthe bot', ol' woman, or you'll git done."
"You're a liar. I ain't had a drop," she roared in reply.
They had a lurid altercation, in which they damned each other'ssouls with frequence.
The babe was staring out from under the table, his small faceworking in his excitement.
The ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner where theurchin lay.
"Are yehs hurted much, Jimmie?" she whispered timidly.
"Not a damn bit! See?" growled the little boy.
"Will I wash deh blood?"
"Naw!"
"Will I—"
"When I catch dat Riley kid I'll break 'is face! Dat's right!See?"
He turned his face to the wall as if resolved to grimly bide histime.
In the quarrel between husband and wife, the woman was victor.The man grabbed his hat and rushed from the room, apparentlydetermined upon a vengeful drunk. She followed to the door andthundered at him as he made his way down stairs.
She returned and stirred up the room until her children werebobbing about like bubbles.
"Git outa deh way," she persistently bawled, waving feet withtheir dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children. Sheshrouded herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam at thestove, and eventually extracted a frying-pan full of potatoes thathissed.
She flourished it. "Come teh yer suppers, now," she cried withsudden exasperation. "Hurry up, now, er I'll help yeh!"
The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clatter theyarranged themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet danglinghigh from a precarious infant chair and gorged his small stomach.Jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity, the grease-enveloped piecesbetween his wounded lips. Maggie, with side glances of fear ofinterruption, ate like a small pursued tigress.
The mother sat blinking at them. She delivered reproaches,swallowed potatoes and drank from a yellow-brown bottle. After atime her mood changed and she wept as she carried little Tommieinto another room and laid him to sleep with his fists doubled inan old quilt of faded red and green grandeur. Then she came andmoaned by the stove. She rocked to and fro upon a chair, sheddingtears and crooning miserably to the two children about their "poormother" and "yer fader, damn 'is soul."
The little girl plodded between the table and the chair with adish-pan on it. She tottered on her small legs beneath burdens ofdishes.
Jimmie sat nursing his various wounds. He cast furtive glancesat his mother. His practised eye perceived her gradually emergefrom a muddled mist of sentiment until her brain burned in drunkenheat. He sat breathless.
Maggie broke a plate.
The mother started to her feet as if propelled.
"Good Gawd," she howled. Her eyes glittered on her child withsudden hatred. The fervent red of her face turned almost to purple.The little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in anearthquake.
He floundered about in darkness until he found the stairs. Hestumbled, panic-stricken, to the next floor. An old woman opened adoor. A light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's quiveringface.
"Eh, Gawd, child, what is it dis time? Is yer fader beatin' yermudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader?"
Jimmie and the old woman listened long in the hall. Above themuffled roar of conversation, the dismal wailings of babies atnight, the thumping of feet in unseen corridors and rooms, mingledwith the sound of varied hoarse shoutings in the street and therattling of wheels over cobbles, they heard the screams of thechild and the roars of the mother die away to a feeble moaning anda subdued bass muttering.
The old woman was a gnarled and leathery personage who coulddon, at will, an expression of great virtue. She possessed a smallmusic-box capable of one tune, and a collection of "God bless yehs"pitched in assorted keys of fervency. Each day she took a positionupon the stones of Fifth Avenue, where she crooked her legs underher and crouched immovable and hideous, like an idol. She receiveddaily a small sum in pennies. It was contributed, for the mostpart, by persons who did not make their homes in that vicinity.
Once, when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, thegnarled woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexteritybeneath her cloak. When she was arrested she had cursed the ladyinto a partial swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted fromrheumatism, had almost kicked the stomach out of a huge policemanwhose conduct upon that occasion she referred to when she said:"The police, damn 'em."
"Eh, Jimmie, it's cursed shame," she said. "Go, now, like a dearan' buy me a can, an' if yer mudder raises 'ell all night yehs cansleep here."
Jimmie took a tendered tin-pail and seven pennies and departed.He passed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar.Straining up on his toes he raised the pail and pennies as high ashis arms would let him. He saw two hands thrust down and take them.Directly the same hands let down the filled pail and he left.
In front of the gruesome doorway he met a lurching figure. Itwas his father, swaying about on uncertain legs.
"Give me deh can. See?" said the man, threateningly.
"Ah, come off! I got dis can fer dat ol' woman an' it 'ud bedirt teh swipe it. See?" cried Jimmie.
The father wrenched the pail from the urchin. He grasped it inboth hands and lifted it to his mouth. He glued his lips to theunder edge and tilted his head. His hairy throat swelled until itseemed to grow near his chin. There was a tremendous gulpingmovement and the beer was gone.
The man caught his breath and laughed. He hit his son on thehead with the empty pail. As it rolled clanging into the street,Jimmie began to scream and kicked repeatedly at his father'sshins.
"Look at deh dirt what yeh done me," he yelled. "Deh ol' woman'ill be raisin' hell."
He retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did notpursue. He staggered toward the door.
"I'll club hell outa yeh when I ketch yeh," he shouted, anddisappeared.
During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinkingwhiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially: "My homereg'lar livin' hell! Damndes' place! Reg'lar hell! Why do I comean' drin' whisk' here thish way? 'Cause home reg'lar livin'hell!"
Jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warily upthrough the building. He passed with great caution the door of thegnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home andlistened.
He could hear his mother moving heavily about among thefurniture of the room. She was chanting in a mournful voice,occasionally interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father,who, Jimmie judged, had sunk down on the floor or in a corner.
"Why deh blazes don' chere try teh keep Jim from fightin'? I'llbreak her jaw," she suddenly bellowed.
The man mumbled with drunken indifference. "Ah, wha' deh hell.W'a's odds? Wha' makes kick?"
"Because he tears 'is clothes, yeh damn fool," cried the womanin supreme wrath.
The husband seemed to become aroused. "Go teh hell," hethundered fiercely in reply. There was a crash against the door andsomething broke into clattering fragments. Jimmie partiallysuppressed a howl and darted down the stairway. Below he paused andlistened. He heard howls and curses, groans and shrieks,confusingly in chorus as if a battle were raging. With all was thecrash of splintering furniture. The eyes of the urchin glared infear that one of them would discover him.
Curious faces appeared in doorways, and whispered commentspassed to and fro. "Ol' Johnson's raisin' hell agin."
Jimmie stood until the noises ceased and the other inhabitantsof the tenement had all yawned and shut their doors. Then hecrawled upstairs with the caution of an invader of a panther den.Sounds of labored breathing came through the broken door-panels. Hepushed the door open and entered, quaking.
A glow from the fire threw red hues over the bare floor, thecracked and soiled plastering, and the overturned and brokenfurniture.
In the middle of the floor lay his mother asleep. In one cornerof the room his father's limp body hung across the seat of achair.
The urchin stole forward. He began to shiver in dread ofawakening his parents. His mother's great chest was heavingpainfully. Jimmie paused and looked down at her. Her face wasinflamed and swollen from drinking. Her yellow brows shaded eyelidsthat had brown blue. Her tangled hair tossed in waves over herforehead. Her mouth was set in the same lines of vindictive hatredthat it had, perhaps, borne during the fight. Her bare, red armswere thrown out above her head in positions of exhaustion,something, mayhap, like those of a sated villain.
The urchin bended over his mother. He was fearful lest sheshould open her eyes, and the dread within him was so strong, thathe could not forbear to stare, but hung as if fascinated over thewoman's grim face.
Suddenly her eyes opened. The urchin found himself lookingstraight into that expression, which, it would seem, had the powerto change his blood to salt. He howled piercingly and fellbackward.
The woman floundered for a moment, tossed her arms about herhead as if in combat, and again began to snore.
Jimmie crawled back in the shadows and waited. A noise in thenext room had followed his cry at the discovery that his mother wasawake. He grovelled in the gloom, the eyes from out his drawn faceriveted upon the intervening door.
He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came tohim. "Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchinstarted. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from thedoor-way of the other room. She crept to him across the floor.
The father had not moved, but lay in the same death-like sleep.The mother writhed in uneasy slumber, her chest wheezing as if shewere in the agonies of strangulation. Out at the window a floridmoon was peering over dark roofs, and in the distance the waters ofa river glimmered pallidly.
The small frame of the ragged girl was quivering. Her featureswere haggard from weeping, and her eyes gleamed from fear. Shegrasped the urchin's arm in her little trembling hands and theyhuddled in a corner. The eyes of both were drawn, by some force, tostare at the woman's face, for they thought she need only to awakeand all fiends would come from below.
They crouched until the ghost-mists of dawn appeared at thewindow, drawing close to the panes, and looking in at theprostrate, heaving body of the mother.
The babe, Tommie, died. He went away in a white, insignificantcoffin, his small waxen hand clutching a flower that the girl,Maggie, had stolen from an Italian.
She and Jimmie lived.
The inexperienced fibres of the boy's eyes were hardened at anearly age. He became a young man of leather. He lived some redyears without laboring. During that time his sneer became chronic.He studied human nature in the gutter, and found it no worse thanhe thought he had reason to believe it. He never conceived arespect for the world, because he had begun with no idols that ithad smashed.
He clad his soul in armor by means of happening hilariously inat a mission church where a man composed his sermons of "yous."While they got warm at the stove, he told his hearers just where hecalculated they stood with the Lord. Many of the sinners wereimpatient over the pictured depths of their degradation. They werewaiting for soup-tickets.
A reader of words of wind-demons might have been able to see theportions of a dialogue pass to and fro between the exhorter and hishearers.
"You are damned," said the preacher. And the reader of soundsmight have seen the reply go forth from the ragged people: "Where'sour soup?"
Jimmie and a companion sat in a rear seat and commented upon thethings that didn't concern them, with all the freedom of Englishgentlemen. When they grew thirsty and went out their minds confusedthe speaker with Christ.
Momentarily, Jimmie was sullen with thoughts of a hopelessaltitude where grew fruit. His companion said that if he shouldever meet God he would ask for a million dollars and a bottle ofbeer.
Jimmie's occupation for a long time was to stand onstreetcorners and watch the world go by, dreaming blood-red dreamsat the passing of pretty women. He menaced mankind at theintersections of streets.
On the corners he was in life and of life. The world was goingon and he was there to perceive it.
He maintained a belligerent attitude toward all well-dressedmen. To him fine raiment was allied to weakness, and all good coatscovered faint hearts. He and his order were kings, to a certainextent, over the men of untarnished clothes, because these latterdreaded, perhaps, to be either killed or laughed at.
Above all things he despised obvious Christians and ciphers withthe chrysanthemums of aristocracy in their button-holes. Heconsidered himself above both of these classes. He was afraid ofneither the devil nor the leader of society.
When he had a dollar in his pocket his satisfaction withexistence was the greatest thing in the world. So, eventually, hefelt obliged to work. His father died and his mother's years weredivided up into periods of thirty days.
He became a truck driver. He was given the charge of apainstaking pair of horses and a large rattling truck. He invadedthe turmoil and tumble of the down-town streets and learned tobreathe maledictory defiance at the police who occasionally used toclimb up, drag him from his perch and beat him.
In the lower part of the city he daily involved himself inhideous tangles. If he and his team chanced to be in the rear hepreserved a demeanor of serenity, crossing his legs and burstingforth into yells when foot passengers took dangerous dives beneaththe noses of his champing horses. He smoked his pipe calmly for heknew that his pay was marching on.
If in the front and the key-truck of chaos, he enteredterrifically into the quarrel that was raging to and fro among thedrivers on their high seats, and sometimes roared oaths andviolently got himself arrested.
After a time his sneer grew so that it turned its glare upon allthings. He became so sharp that he believed in nothing. To him thepolice were always actuated by malignant impulses and the rest ofthe world was composed, for the most part, of despicable creatureswho were all trying to take advantage of him and with whom, indefense, he was obliged to quarrel on all possible occasions. Hehimself occupied a down-trodden position that had a private butdistinct element of grandeur in its isolation.
The most complete cases of aggravated idiocy were, to his mind,rampant upon the front platforms of all the street cars. At firsthis tongue strove with these beings, but he eventually wassuperior. He became immured like an African cow. In him grew amajestic contempt for those strings of street cars that followedhim like intent bugs.
He fell into the habit, when starting on a long journey, offixing his eye on a high and distant object, commanding his horsesto begin, and then going into a sort of a trance of observation.Multitudes of drivers might howl in his rear, and passengers mightload him with opprobrium, he would not awaken until some bluepoliceman turned red and began to frenziedly tear bridles and beatthe soft noses of the responsible horses.
When he paused to contemplate the attitude of the police towardhimself and his fellows, he believed that they were the only men inthe city who had no rights. When driving about, he felt that he washeld liable by the police for anything that might occur in thestreets, and was the common prey of all energetic officials. Inrevenge, he resolved never to move out of the way of anything,until formidable circumstances, or a much larger man than himselfforced him to it.
Foot-passengers were mere pestering flies with an insanedisregard for their legs and his convenience. He could not conceivetheir maniacal desires to cross the streets. Their madness smotehim with eternal amazement. He was continually storming at themfrom his throne. He sat aloft and denounced their frantic leaps,plunges, dives and straddles.
When they would thrust at, or parry, the noses of his champinghorses, making them swing their heads and move their feet,disturbing a solid dreamy repose, he swore at the men as fools, forhe himself could perceive that Providence had caused it clearly tobe written, that he and his team had the unalienable right to standin the proper path of the sun chariot, and if they so minded,obstruct its mission or take a wheel off.
And, perhaps, if the god-driver had an ungovernable desire tostep down, put up his flame-colored fists and manfully dispute theright of way, he would have probably been immediately opposed by ascowling mortal with two sets of very hard knuckles.
It is possible, perhaps, that this young man would have derided,in an axle-wide alley, the approach of a flying ferry boat. Yet heachieved a respect for a fire engine. As one charged toward histruck, he would drive fearfully upon a sidewalk, threatening untoldpeople with annihilation. When an engine would strike a mass ofblocked trucks, splitting it into fragments, as a blow annihilatesa cake of ice, Jimmie's team could usually be observed high andsafe, with whole wheels, on the sidewalk. The fearful coming of theengine could break up the most intricate muddle of heavy vehiclesat which the police had been swearing for the half of an hour.
A fire engine was enshrined in his heart as an appalling thingthat he loved with a distant dog-like devotion. They had been knownto overturn street-cars. Those leaping horses, striking sparks fromthe cobbles in their forward lunge, were creatures to be ineffablyadmired. The clang of the gong pierced his breast like a noise ofremembered war.
When Jimmie was a little boy, he began to be arrested. Before hereached a great age, he had a fair record.
He developed too great a tendency to climb down from his truckand fight with other drivers. He had been in quite a number ofmiscellaneous fights, and in some general barroom rows that hadbecome known to the police. Once he had been arrested forassaulting a Chinaman. Two women in different parts of the city,and entirely unknown to each other, caused him considerableannoyance by breaking forth, simultaneously, at fateful intervals,into wailings about marriage and support and infants.
Nevertheless, he had, on a certain star-lit evening, saidwonderingly and quite reverently: "Deh moon looks like hell, don'tit?"
The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be amost rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a prettygirl.
None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. Thephilosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzledover it.
When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street,dirt disguised her. Attired in tatters and grime, she wentunseen.
There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinitysaid: "Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker." About this periodher brother remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See? Yeh'veedder got teh go teh hell or go teh work!" Whereupon she went towork, having the feminine aversion of going to hell.
By a chance, she got a position in an establishment where theymade collars and cuffs. She received a stool and a machine in aroom where sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent.She perched on the stool and treadled at her machine all day,turning out collars, the name of whose brand could be noted for itsirrelevancy to anything in connection with collars. At night shereturned home to her mother.
Jimmie grew large enough to take the vague position of head ofthe family. As incumbent of that office, he stumbled up-stairs lateat night, as his father had done before him. He reeled about theroom, swearing at his relations, or went to sleep on the floor.
The mother had gradually arisen to that degree of fame that shecould bandy words with her acquaintances among the police-justices.Court-officials called her by her first name. When she appearedthey pursued a course which had been theirs for months. Theyinvariably grinned and cried out: "Hello, Mary, you here again?"Her grey head wagged in many a court. She always besieged the benchwith voluble excuses, explanations, apologies and prayers. Herflaming face and rolling eyes were a sort of familiar sight on theisland. She measured time by means of sprees, and was eternallyswollen and dishevelled.
One day the young man, Pete, who as a lad had smitten theDevil's Row urchin in the back of the head and put to flight theantagonists of his friend, Jimmie, strutted upon the scene. He metJimmie one day on the street, promised to take him to a boxingmatch in Williamsburg, and called for him in the evening.
Maggie observed Pete.
He sat on a table in the Johnson home and dangled his checkedlegs with an enticing nonchalance. His hair was curled down overhis forehead in an oiled bang. His rather pugged nose seemed torevolt from contact with a bristling moustache of short, wire-likehairs. His blue double-breasted coat, edged with black braid,buttoned close to a red puff tie, and his patent-leather shoeslooked like murder-fitted weapons.
His mannerisms stamped him as a man who had a correct sense ofhis personal superiority. There was valor and contempt forcircumstances in the glance of his eye. He waved his hands like aman of the world, who dismisses religion and philosophy, and says"Fudge." He had certainly seen everything and with each curl of hislip, he declared that it amounted to nothing. Maggie thought hemust be a very elegant and graceful bartender.
He was telling tales to Jimmie.
Maggie watched him furtively, with half-closed eyes, lit with avague interest.
"Hully gee! Dey makes me tired," he said. "Mos' e'ry day somefarmer comes in an' tries teh run deh shop. See? But dey gitst'rowed right out! I jolt dem right out in deh street before deyknows where dey is! See?"
"Sure," said Jimmie.
"Dere was a mug come in deh place deh odder day wid an idear hewus goin' teh own deh place! Hully gee, he wus goin' teh own dehplace! I see he had a still on an' I didn' wanna giv 'im no stuff,so I says: 'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble,' Isays like dat! See? 'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make notrouble'; like dat. 'Git deh hell outa here,' I says. See?"
Jimmie nodded understandingly. Over his features played an eagerdesire to state the amount of his valor in a similar crisis, butthe narrator proceeded.
"Well, deh blokie he says: 'T'hell wid it! I ain' lookin' for noscrap,' he says (See?), 'but' he says, 'I'm 'spectable cit'zen an'I wanna drink an' purtydamnsoon, too.' See? 'Deh hell,' I says.Like dat! 'Deh hell,' I says. See? 'Don' make no trouble,' I says.Like dat. 'Don' make no trouble.' See? Den deh mug he squared offan' said he was fine as silk wid his dukes (See?) an' he wanned adrink damnquick. Dat's what he said. See?"
"Sure," repeated Jimmie.
Pete continued. "Say, I jes' jumped deh bar an' deh way Iplunked dat blokie was great. See? Dat's right! In deh jaw! See?Hully gee, he t'rowed a spittoon true deh front windee. Say, I tautI'd drop dead. But deh boss, he comes in after an' he says, 'Pete,yehs done jes' right! Yeh've gota keep order an' it's all right.'See? 'It's all right,' he says. Dat's what he said."
The two held a technical discussion.
"Dat bloke was a dandy," said Pete, in conclusion, "but he hadn'oughta made no trouble. Dat's what I says teh dem: 'Don' come inhere an' make no trouble,' I says, like dat. 'Don' make notrouble.' See?"
As Jimmie and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of theirprowess, Maggie leaned back in the shadow. Her eyes dweltwonderingly and rather wistfully upon Pete's face. The brokenfurniture, grimey walls, and general disorder and dirt of her homeof a sudden appeared before her and began to take a potentialaspect. Pete's aristocratic person looked as if it might soil. Shelooked keenly at him, occasionally, wondering if he was feelingcontempt. But Pete seemed to be enveloped in reminiscence.
"Hully gee," said he, "dose mugs can't phase me. Dey knows I kinwipe up deh street wid any t'ree of dem."
When he said, "Ah, what deh hell," his voice was burdened withdisdain for the inevitable and contempt for anything that fatemight compel him to endure.
Maggie perceived that here was the beau ideal of a man. Her dimthoughts were often searching for far away lands where, as Godsays, the little hills sing together in the morning. Under thetrees of her dream-gardens there had always walked a lover.
Pete took note of Maggie.
"Say, Mag, I'm stuck on yer shape. It's outa sight," he said,parenthetically, with an affable grin.
As he became aware that she was listening closely, he grew stillmore eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in hiscareer. It appeared that he was invincible in fights.
"Why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had amisunderstanding, "dat mug scrapped like a damn dago. Dat's right.He was dead easy. See? He tau't he was a scrapper. But he foun' outdiff'ent! Hully gee."
He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then togrow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of asupreme warrior. That swing of the shoulders that had frozen thetimid when he was but a lad had increased with his growth andeducation at the ratio of ten to one. It, combined with the sneerupon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space whichcould appall him. Maggie marvelled at him and surrounded him withgreatness. She vaguely tried to calculate the altitude of thepinnacle from which he must have looked down upon her.
"I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said. "Iwas goin' teh see a frien' of mine. When I was a-crossin' dehstreet deh chump runned plump inteh me, an' den he turns aroun' an'says, 'Yer insolen' ruffin,' he says, like dat. 'Oh, gee,' I says,'oh, gee, go teh hell and git off deh eart',' I says, like dat.See? 'Go teh hell an' git off deh eart',' like dat. Den deh blokiehe got wild. He says I was a contempt'ble scoun'el, er somet'inglike dat, an' he says I was doom' teh everlastin' pe'dition an' alllike dat. 'Gee,' I says, 'gee! Deh hell I am,' I says. 'Deh hell Iam,' like dat. An' den I slugged 'im. See?"
With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort of a blazeof glory from the Johnson home. Maggie, leaning from the window,watched him as he walked down the street.
Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a worldfull of fists. Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothedpower; one whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the graniteof law. He was a knight.
The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp andpassed into shadows.
Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, andthe scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock, in a splinteredand battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded asan abomination. She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almostvanished flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to be newlyhideous. Some faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, tofreshen the appearance of a dingy curtain, she now saw to bepiteous.
She wondered what Pete dined on.
She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. It began toappear to her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. Pete'selegant occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with peoplewho had money and manners. It was probable that he had a largeacquaintance of pretty girls. He must have great sums of money tospend.
To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She feltinstant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought thatif the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete wouldshrug his shoulders and say: "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."
She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent someof her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for alambrequin. She made it with infinite care and hung it to theslightly-careening mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen. Shestudied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room.She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie'sfriend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did notappear.
Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. Shewas now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration forlambrequins.
A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovationsin his apparel. As she had seen him twice and he had differentsuits on each time, Maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobewas prodigiously extensive.
"Say, Mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds Friday night an' I'lltake yehs teh deh show. See?"
He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and thenvanished, without having glanced at the lambrequin.
Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory Maggie spentthe most of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and hisdaily environment. She imagined some half dozen women in love withhim and thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one,whom she pictured with great charms of person, but with analtogether contemptible disposition.
She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure. He had friends,and people who were afraid of him.
She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to takeher. An entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she wasafraid she might appear small and mouse-colored.
Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning. With lurid face andtossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Fridayafternoon. When Maggie came home at half-past six her mother layasleep amidst the wreck of chairs and a table. Fragments of varioushousehold utensils were scattered about the floor. She had ventedsome phase of drunken fury upon the lambrequin. It lay in abedraggled heap in the corner.
"Hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yehbeen? Why deh hell don' yeh come home earlier? Been loafin' 'rounddeh streets. Yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil."
When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting forhim in the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtain atthe window had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack,dangling to and fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash.The knots of blue ribbons appeared like violated flowers. The firein the stove had gone out. The displaced lids and open doors showedheaps of sullen grey ashes. The remnants of a meal, ghastly, likedead flesh, lay in a corner. Maggie's red mother, stretched on thefloor, blasphemed and gave her daughter a bad name.
An orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men on anelevated stage near the centre of a great green-hued hall, played apopular waltz. The place was crowded with people grouped aboutlittle tables. A battalion of waiters slid among the throng,carrying trays of beer glasses and making change from theinexhaustible vaults of their trousers pockets. Little boys, in thecostumes of French chefs, paraded up and down the irregular aislesvending fancy cakes. There was a low rumble of conversation and asubdued clinking of glasses. Clouds of tobacco smoke rolled andwavered high in air about the dull gilt of the chandeliers.
The vast crowd had an air throughout of having just quittedlabor. Men with calloused hands and attired in garments that showedthe wear of an endless trudge for a living, smoked their pipescontentedly and spent five, ten, or perhaps fifteen cents for beer.There was a mere sprinkling of kid-gloved men who smoked cigarspurchased elsewhere. The great body of the crowd was composed ofpeople who showed that all day they strove with their hands. QuietGermans, with maybe their wives and two or three children, satlistening to the music, with the expressions of happy cows. Anoccasional party of sailors from a war-ship, their faces picturesof sturdy health, spent the earlier hours of the evening at thesmall round tables. Very infrequent tipsy men, swollen with thevalue of their opinions, engaged their companions in earnest andconfidential conversation. In the balcony, and here and therebelow, shone the impassive faces of women. The nationalities of theBowery beamed upon the stage from all directions.
Pete aggressively walked up a side aisle and took seats withMaggie at a table beneath the balcony.
"Two beehs!"
Leaning back he regarded with eyes of superiority the scenebefore them. This attitude affected Maggie strongly. A man whocould regard such a sight with indifference must be accustomed tovery great things.
It was obvious that Pete had been to this place many timesbefore, and was very familiar with it. A knowledge of this factmade Maggie feel little and new.
He was extremely gracious and attentive. He displayed theconsideration of a cultured gentleman who knew what was due.
"Say, what deh hell? Bring deh lady a big glass! What deh helluse is dat pony?"
"Don't be fresh, now," said the waiter, with some warmth, as hedeparted.
"Ah, git off deh eart'," said Pete, after the other's retreatingform.
Maggie perceived that Pete brought forth all his elegance andall his knowledge of high-class customs for her benefit. Her heartwarmed as she reflected upon his condescension.
The orchestra of yellow silk women and bald-headed men gave ventto a few bars of anticipatory music and a girl, in a pink dresswith short skirts, galloped upon the stage. She smiled upon thethrong as if in acknowledgment of a warm welcome, and began to walkto and fro, making profuse gesticulations and singing, in brazensoprano tones, a song, the words of which were inaudible. When shebroke into the swift rattling measures of a chorus some half-tipsymen near the stage joined in the rollicking refrain and glasseswere pounded rhythmically upon the tables. People leaned forward towatch her and to try to catch the words of the song. When shevanished there were long rollings of applause.
Obedient to more anticipatory bars, she reappeared amidst thehalf-suppressed cheering of the tipsy men. The orchestra plungedinto dance music and the laces of the dancer fluttered and flew inthe glare of gas jets. She divulged the fact that she was attiredin some half dozen skirts. It was patent that any one of them wouldhave proved adequate for the purpose for which skirts are intended.An occasional man bent forward, intent upon the pink stockings.Maggie wondered at the splendor of the costume and lost herself incalculations of the cost of the silks and laces.
The dancer's smile of stereotyped enthusiasm was turned for tenminutes upon the faces of her audience. In the finale she fell intosome of those grotesque attitudes which were at the time popularamong the dancers in the theatres up-town, giving to the Bowerypublic the phantasies of the aristocratic theatre-going public, atreduced rates.
"Say, Pete," said Maggie, leaning forward, "dis is great."
"Sure," said Pete, with proper complacence.
A ventriloquist followed the dancer. He held two fantastic dollson his knees. He made them sing mournful ditties and say funnythings about geography and Ireland.
"Do dose little men talk?" asked Maggie.
"Naw," said Pete, "it's some damn fake. See?"
Two girls, on the bills as sisters, came forth and sang a duetthat is heard occasionally at concerts given under church auspices.They supplemented it with a dance which of course can never be seenat concerts given under church auspices.
After the duettists had retired, a woman of debatable age sang anegro melody. The chorus necessitated some grotesque waddlingssupposed to be an imitation of a plantation darkey, under theinfluence, probably, of music and the moon. The audience was justenthusiastic enough over it to have her return and sing a sorrowfullay, whose lines told of a mother's love and a sweetheart whowaited and a young man who was lost at sea under the most harrowingcircumstances. From the faces of a score or so in the crowd, theself-contained look faded. Many heads were bent forward witheagerness and sympathy. As the last distressing sentiment of thepiece was brought forth, it was greeted by that kind of applausewhich rings as sincere.
As a final effort, the singer rendered some verses whichdescribed a vision of Britain being annihilated by America, andIreland bursting her bonds. A carefully prepared crisis was reachedin the last line of the last verse, where the singer threw out herarms and cried, "The star-spangled banner." Instantly a great cheerswelled from the throats of the assemblage of the masses. There wasa heavy rumble of booted feet thumping the floor. Eyes gleamed withsudden fire, and calloused hands waved frantically in the air.
After a few moments' rest, the orchestra played crashingly, anda small fat man burst out upon the stage. He began to roar a songand stamp back and forth before the foot-lights, wildly waving aglossy silk hat and throwing leers, or smiles, broadcast. He madehis face into fantastic grimaces until he looked like a pictureddevil on a Japanese kite. The crowd laughed gleefully. His short,fat legs were never still a moment. He shouted and roared andbobbed his shock of red wig until the audience broke out in excitedapplause.
Pete did not pay much attention to the progress of events uponthe stage. He was drinking beer and watching Maggie.
Her cheeks were blushing with excitement and her eyes wereglistening. She drew deep breaths of pleasure. No thoughts of theatmosphere of the collar and cuff factory came to her.
When the orchestra crashed finally, they jostled their way tothe sidewalk with the crowd. Pete took Maggie's arm and pushed away for her, offering to fight with a man or two.
They reached Maggie's home at a late hour and stood for a momentin front of the gruesome doorway.
"Say, Mag," said Pete, "give us a kiss for takin' yeh teh dehshow, will yer?"
Maggie laughed, as if startled, and drew away from him.
"Naw, Pete," she said, "dat wasn't in it."
"Ah, what deh hell?" urged Pete.
The girl retreated nervously.
"Ah, what deh hell?" repeated he.
Maggie darted into the hall, and up the stairs. She turned andsmiled at him, then disappeared.
Pete walked slowly down the street. He had something of anastonished expression upon his features. He paused under alamp-post and breathed a low breath of surprise.
"Gawd," he said, "I wonner if I've been played fer aduffer."
As thoughts of Pete came to Maggie's mind, she began to have anintense dislike for all of her dresses.
"What deh hell ails yeh? What makes yeh be allus fixin' andfussin'? Good Gawd," her mother would frequently roar at her.
She began to note, with more interest, the well-dressed womenshe met on the avenues. She envied elegance and soft palms. Shecraved those adornments of person which she saw every day on thestreet, conceiving them to be allies of vast importance towomen.
Studying faces, she thought many of the women and girls shechanced to meet, smiled with serenity as though forever cherishedand watched over by those they loved.
The air in the collar and cuff establishment strangled her. Sheknew she was gradually and surely shrivelling in the hot, stuffyroom. The begrimed windows rattled incessantly from the passing ofelevated trains. The place was filled with a whirl of noises andodors.
She wondered as she regarded some of the grizzled women in theroom, mere mechanical contrivances sewing seams and grinding out,with heads bended over their work, tales of imagined or realgirlhood happiness, past drunks, the baby at home, and unpaidwages. She speculated how long her youth would endure. She began tosee the bloom upon her cheeks as valuable.
She imagined herself, in an exasperating future, as a scrawnywoman with an eternal grievance. Too, she thought Pete to be a veryfastidious person concerning the appearance of women.
She felt she would love to see somebody entangle their fingersin the oily beard of the fat foreigner who owned the establishment.He was a detestable creature. He wore white socks with low shoes.When he tired of this amusement he would go to the mummies andmoralize over them.
Usually he submitted with silent dignity to all which he had togo through, but, at times, he was goaded into comment.
"What deh hell," he demanded once. "Look at all dese littlejugs! Hundred jugs in a row! Ten rows in a case an' 'bout at'ousand cases! What deh blazes use is dem?"
Evenings during the week he took her to see plays in which thebrain-clutching heroine was rescued from the palatial home of herguardian, who is cruelly after her bonds, by the hero with thebeautiful sentiments. The latter spent most of his time out at soakin pale-green snow storms, busy with a nickel-plated revolver,rescuing aged strangers from villains.
Maggie lost herself in sympathy with the wanderers swooning insnow storms beneath happy-hued church windows. And a choir withinsinging "Joy to the World." To Maggie and the rest of the audiencethis was transcendental realism. Joy always within, and they, likethe actor, inevitably without. Viewing it, they hugged themselvesin ecstatic pity of their imagined or real condition.
The girl thought the arrogance and granite-heartedness of themagnate of the play was very accurately drawn. She echoed themaledictions that the occupants of the gallery showered on thisindividual when his lines compelled him to expose his extremeselfishness.
Shady persons in the audience revolted from the picturedvillainy of the drama. With untiring zeal they hissed vice andapplauded virtue. Unmistakably bad men evinced an apparentlysincere admiration for virtue.
The loud gallery was overwhelmingly with the unfortunate and theoppressed. They encouraged the struggling hero with cries, andjeered the villain, hooting and calling attention to his whiskers.When anybody died in the pale-green snow storms, the gallerymourned. They sought out the painted misery and hugged it asakin.
In the hero's erratic march from poverty in the first act, towealth and triumph in the final one, in which he forgives all theenemies that he has left, he was assisted by the gallery, whichapplauded his generous and noble sentiments and confounded thespeeches of his opponents by making irrelevant but very sharpremarks. Those actors who were cursed with villainy parts wereconfronted at every turn by the gallery. If one of them renderedlines containing the most subtile distinctions between right andwrong, the gallery was immediately aware if the actor meantwickedness, and denounced him accordingly.
The last act was a triumph for the hero, poor and of the masses,the representative of the audience, over the villain and the richman, his pockets stuffed with bonds, his heart packed withtyrannical purposes, imperturbable amid suffering.
Maggie always departed with raised spirits from the showingplaces of the melodrama. She rejoiced at the way in which the poorand virtuous eventually surmounted the wealthy and wicked. Thetheatre made her think. She wondered if the culture and refinementshe had seen imitated, perhaps grotesquely, by the heroine on thestage, could be acquired by a girl who lived in a tenement houseand worked in a shirt factory.
A group of urchins were intent upon the side door of a saloon.Expectancy gleamed from their eyes. They were twisting theirfingers in excitement.
"Here she comes," yelled one of them suddenly.
The group of urchins burst instantly asunder and its individualfragments were spread in a wide, respectable half circle about thepoint of interest. The saloon door opened with a crash, and thefigure of a woman appeared upon the threshold. Her grey hair fellin knotted masses about her shoulders. Her face was crimsoned andwet with perspiration. Her eyes had a rolling glare.
"Not a damn cent more of me money will yehs ever get, not a damncent. I spent me money here fer t'ree years an' now yehs tells meyeh'll sell me no more stuff! T'hell wid yeh, Johnnie Murckre!'Disturbance'? Disturbance be damned! T'hell wid yeh,Johnnie—"
The door received a kick of exasperation from within and thewoman lurched heavily out on the sidewalk.
The gamins in the half-circle became violently agitated. Theybegan to dance about and hoot and yell and jeer. Wide dirty grinsspread over each face.
The woman made a furious dash at a particularly outrageouscluster of little boys. They laughed delightedly and scampered offa short distance, calling out over their shoulders to her. Shestood tottering on the curb-stone and thundered at them.
"Yeh devil's kids," she howled, shaking red fists. The littleboys whooped in glee. As she started up the street they fell inbehind and marched uproariously. Occasionally she wheeled about andmade charges on them. They ran nimbly out of reach and tauntedher.
In the frame of a gruesome doorway she stood for a momentcursing them. Her hair straggled, giving her crimson features alook of insanity. Her great fists quivered as she shook them madlyin the air.
The urchins made terrific noises until she turned anddisappeared. Then they filed quietly in the way they had come.
The woman floundered about in the lower hall of the tenementhouse and finally stumbled up the stairs. On an upper hall a doorwas opened and a collection of heads peered curiously out, watchingher. With a wrathful snort the woman confronted the door, but itwas slammed hastily in her face and the key was turned.
She stood for a few minutes, delivering a frenzied challenge atthe panels.
"Come out in deh hall, Mary Murphy, damn yeh, if yehs want arow. Come ahn, yeh overgrown terrier, come ahn."
She began to kick the door with her great feet. She shrillydefied the universe to appear and do battle. Her cursing treblesbrought heads from all doors save the one she threatened. Her eyesglared in every direction. The air was full of her tossingfists.
"Come ahn, deh hull damn gang of yehs, come ahn," she roared atthe spectators. An oath or two, cat-calls, jeers and bits offacetious advice were given in reply. Missiles clattered about herfeet.
"What deh hell's deh matter wid yeh?" said a voice in thegathered gloom, and Jimmie came forward. He carried a tindinner-pail in his hand and under his arm a brown truckman's aprondone in a bundle. "What deh hell's wrong?" he demanded.
"Come out, all of yehs, come out," his mother was howling. "Comeahn an' I'll stamp her damn brains under me feet."
"Shet yer face, an' come home, yeh damned old fool," roaredJimmie at her. She strided up to him and twirled her fingers in hisface. Her eyes were darting flames of unreasoning rage and herframe trembled with eagerness for a fight.
"T'hell wid yehs! An' who deh hell are yehs? I ain't givin' asnap of me fingers fer yehs," she bawled at him. She turned herhuge back in tremendous disdain and climbed the stairs to the nextfloor.
Jimmie followed, cursing blackly. At the top of the flight heseized his mother's arm and started to drag her toward the door oftheir room.
"Come home, damn yeh," he gritted between his teeth.
"Take yer hands off me! Take yer hands off me," shrieked hismother.
She raised her arm and whirled her great fist at her son's face.Jimmie dodged his head and the blow struck him in the back of theneck. "Damn yeh," gritted he again. He threw out his left hand andwrithed his fingers about her middle arm. The mother and the sonbegan to sway and struggle like gladiators.
"Whoop!" said the Rum Alley tenement house. The hall filled withinterested spectators.
"Hi, ol' lady, dat was a dandy!"
"T'ree to one on deh red!"
"Ah, stop yer damn scrappin'!"
The door of the Johnson home opened and Maggie looked out.Jimmie made a supreme cursing effort and hurled his mother into theroom. He quickly followed and closed the door. The Rum Alleytenement swore disappointedly and retired.
The mother slowly gathered herself up from the floor. Her eyesglittered menacingly upon her children.
"Here, now," said Jimmie, "we've had enough of dis. Sit down,an' don' make no trouble."
He grasped her arm, and twisting it, forced her into a creakingchair.
"Keep yer hands off me," roared his mother again.
"Damn yer ol' hide," yelled Jimmie, madly. Maggie shrieked andran into the other room. To her there came the sound of a storm ofcrashes and curses. There was a great final thump and Jimmie'svoice cried: "Dere, damn yeh, stay still." Maggie opened the doornow, and went warily out. "Oh, Jimmie."
He was leaning against the wall and swearing. Blood stood uponbruises on his knotty fore-arms where they had scraped against thefloor or the walls in the scuffle. The mother lay screeching on thefloor, the tears running down her furrowed face.
Maggie, standing in the middle of the room, gazed about her. Theusual upheaval of the tables and chairs had taken place. Crockerywas strewn broadcast in fragments. The stove had been disturbed onits legs, and now leaned idiotically to one side. A pail had beenupset and water spread in all directions.
The door opened and Pete appeared. He shrugged his shoulders."Oh, Gawd," he observed.
He walked over to Maggie and whispered in her ear. "Ah, what dehhell, Mag? Come ahn and we'll have a hell of a time."
The mother in the corner upreared her head and shook her tangledlocks.
"Teh hell wid him and you," she said, glowering at her daughterin the gloom. Her eyes seemed to burn balefully. "Yeh've gone tehdeh devil, Mag Johnson, yehs knows yehs have gone teh deh devil.Yer a disgrace teh yer people, damn yeh. An' now, git out an' goahn wid dat doe-faced jude of yours. Go teh hell wid him, damn yeh,an' a good riddance. Go teh hell an' see how yeh likes it."
Maggie gazed long at her mother.
"Go teh hell now, an' see how yeh likes it. Git out. I won'thave sech as yehs in me house! Get out, d'yeh hear! Damn yeh, gitout!"
The girl began to tremble.
At this instant Pete came forward. "Oh, what deh hell, Mag,see," whispered he softly in her ear. "Dis all blows over. See? Dehol' woman 'ill be all right in deh mornin'. Come ahn out wid me!We'll have a hell of a time."
The woman on the floor cursed. Jimmie was intent upon hisbruised fore-arms. The girl cast a glance about the room filledwith a chaotic mass of debris, and at the red, writhing body of hermother.
"Go teh hell an' good riddance."
She went.
Jimmie had an idea it wasn't common courtesy for a friend tocome to one's home and ruin one's sister. But he was not sure howmuch Pete knew about the rules of politeness.
The following night he returned home from work at rather a latehour in the evening. In passing through the halls he came upon thegnarled and leathery old woman who possessed the music box. She wasgrinning in the dim light that drifted through dust-stained panes.She beckoned to him with a smudged forefinger.
"Ah, Jimmie, what do yehs t'ink I got onto las' night. It wasdeh funnies' t'ing I ever saw," she cried, coming close to him andleering. She was trembling with eagerness to tell her tale. "I wasby me door las' night when yer sister and her jude feller came inlate, oh, very late. An' she, the dear, she was a-cryin' as if herheart would break, she was. It was deh funnies' t'ing I ever saw.An' right out here by me door she asked him did he love her, didhe. An' she was a-cryin' as if her heart would break, poor t'ing.An' him, I could see by deh way what he said it dat she had beenaskin' orften, he says: 'Oh, hell, yes,' he says, says he, 'Oh,hell, yes.'"
Storm-clouds swept over Jimmie's face, but he turned from theleathery old woman and plodded on up-stairs.
"Oh, hell, yes," called she after him. She laughed a laugh thatwas like a prophetic croak. "'Oh, hell, yes,' he says, says he,'Oh, hell, yes.'"
There was no one in at home. The rooms showed that attempts hadbeen made at tidying them. Parts of the wreckage of the day beforehad been repaired by an unskilful hand. A chair or two and thetable, stood uncertainly upon legs. The floor had been newly swept.Too, the blue ribbons had been restored to the curtains, and thelambrequin, with its immense sheaves of yellow wheat and red rosesof equal size, had been returned, in a worn and sorry state, to itsposition at the mantel. Maggie's jacket and hat were gone from thenail behind the door.
Jimmie walked to the window and began to look through theblurred glass. It occurred to him to vaguely wonder, for aninstant, if some of the women of his acquaintance had brothers.
Suddenly, however, he began to swear.
"But he was me frien'! I brought 'im here! Dat's deh hell ofit!"
He fumed about the room, his anger gradually rising to thefurious pitch.
"I'll kill deh jay! Dat's what I'll do! I'll kill deh jay!"
He clutched his hat and sprang toward the door. But it openedand his mother's great form blocked the passage.
"What deh hell's deh matter wid yeh?" exclaimed she, coming intothe rooms.
Jimmie gave vent to a sardonic curse and then laughedheavily.
"Well, Maggie's gone teh deh devil! Dat's what! See?"
"Eh?" said his mother.
"Maggie's gone teh deh devil! Are yehs deaf?" roared Jimmie,impatiently.
"Deh hell she has," murmured the mother, astounded.
Jimmie grunted, and then began to stare out at the window. Hismother sat down in a chair, but a moment later sprang erect anddelivered a maddened whirl of oaths. Her son turned to look at heras she reeled and swayed in the middle of the room, her fierce faceconvulsed with passion, her blotched arms raised high inimprecation.
"May Gawd curse her forever," she shrieked. "May she eat nothin'but stones and deh dirt in deh street. May she sleep in deh gutteran' never see deh sun shine agin. Deh damn—"
"Here, now," said her son. "Take a drop on yourself."
The mother raised lamenting eyes to the ceiling.
"She's deh devil's own chil', Jimmie," she whispered. "Ah, whowould t'ink such a bad girl could grow up in our fambly, Jimmie, meson. Many deh hour I've spent in talk wid dat girl an' tol' her ifshe ever went on deh streets I'd see her damned. An' after all herbringin' up an' what I tol' her and talked wid her, she goes tehdeh bad, like a duck teh water."
The tears rolled down her furrowed face. Her hands trembled.
"An' den when dat Sadie MacMallister next door to us was sentteh deh devil by dat feller what worked in deh soap-factory, didn'tI tell our Mag dat if she—"
"Ah, dat's annuder story," interrupted the brother. "Of course,dat Sadie was nice an' all dat—but—see—it ain'tdessame as if—well, Maggie was diff'ent—see—shewas diff'ent."
He was trying to formulate a theory that he had alwaysunconsciously held, that all sisters, excepting his own, couldadvisedly be ruined.
He suddenly broke out again. "I'll go t'ump hell outa deh mugwhat did her deh harm. I'll kill 'im! He t'inks he kin scrap, butwhen he gits me a-chasin' 'im he'll fin' out where he's wrong, dehdamned duffer. I'll wipe up deh street wid 'im."
In a fury he plunged out of the doorway. As he vanished themother raised her head and lifted both hands, entreating.
"May Gawd curse her forever," she cried.
In the darkness of the hallway Jimmie discerned a knot of womentalking volubly. When he strode by they paid no attention tohim.
"She allus was a bold thing," he heard one of them cry in aneager voice. "Dere wasn't a feller come teh deh house but she'd tryteh mash 'im. My Annie says deh shameless t'ing tried teh ketch herfeller, her own feller, what we useter know his fader."
"I could a' tol' yehs dis two years ago," said a woman, in a keyof triumph. "Yessir, it was over two years ago dat I says teh myol' man, I says, 'Dat Johnson girl ain't straight,' I says. 'Oh,hell,' he says. 'Oh, hell.' 'Dat's all right,' I says, 'but I knowwhat I knows,' I says, 'an' it 'ill come out later. You wait an'see,' I says, 'you see.'"
"Anybody what had eyes could see dat dere was somethin' wrongwid dat girl. I didn't like her actions."
On the street Jimmie met a friend. "What deh hell?" asked thelatter.
Jimmie explained. "An' I'll t'ump 'im till he can't stand."
"Oh, what deh hell," said the friend. "What's deh use! Yeh'llgit pulled in! Everybody 'ill be onto it! An' ten plunks! Gee!"
Jimmie was determined. "He t'inks he kin scrap, but he'll fin'out diff'ent."
"Gee," remonstrated the friend. "What deh hell?"
On a corner a glass-fronted building shed a yellow glare uponthe pavements. The open mouth of a saloon called seductively topassengers to enter and annihilate sorrow or create rage.
The interior of the place was papered in olive and bronze tintsof imitation leather. A shining bar of counterfeit massivenessextended down the side of the room. Behind it a greatmahogany-appearing sideboard reached the ceiling. Upon its shelvesrested pyramids of shimmering glasses that were never disturbed.Mirrors set in the face of the sideboard multiplied them. Lemons,oranges and paper napkins, arranged with mathematical precision,sat among the glasses. Many-hued decanters of liquor perched atregular intervals on the lower shelves. A nickel-plated cashregister occupied a position in the exact centre of the generaleffect. The elementary senses of it all seemed to be opulence andgeometrical accuracy.
Across from the bar a smaller counter held a collection ofplates upon which swarmed frayed fragments of crackers, slices ofboiled ham, dishevelled bits of cheese, and pickles swimming invinegar. An odor of grasping, begrimed hands and munching mouthspervaded.
Pete, in a white jacket, was behind the bar bending expectantlytoward a quiet stranger. "A beeh," said the man. Pete drew afoam-topped glassful and set it dripping upon the bar.
At this moment the light bamboo doors at the entrance swung openand crashed against the siding. Jimmie and a companion entered.They swaggered unsteadily but belligerently toward the bar andlooked at Pete with bleared and blinking eyes.
"Gin," said Jimmie.
"Gin," said the companion.
Pete slid a bottle and two glasses along the bar. He bended hishead sideways as he assiduously polished away with a napkin at thegleaming wood. He had a look of watchfulness upon his features.
Jimmie and his companion kept their eyes upon the bartender andconversed loudly in tones of contempt.
"He's a dindy masher, ain't he, by Gawd?" laughed Jimmie.
"Oh, hell, yes," said the companion, sneering widely. "He'sgreat, he is. Git onto deh mug on deh blokie. Dat's enough to makea feller turn hand-springs in 'is sleep."
The quiet stranger moved himself and his glass a trifle furtheraway and maintained an attitude of oblivion.
"Gee! ain't he hot stuff!"
"Git onto his shape! Great Gawd!"
"Hey," cried Jimmie, in tones of command. Pete came alongslowly, with a sullen dropping of the under lip.
"Well," he growled, "what's eatin' yehs?"
"Gin," said Jimmie.
"Gin," said the companion.
As Pete confronted them with the bottle and the glasses, theylaughed in his face. Jimmie's companion, evidently overcome withmerriment, pointed a grimy forefinger in Pete's direction.
"Say, Jimmie," demanded he, "what deh hell is dat behind dehbar?"
"Damned if I knows," replied Jimmie. They laughed loudly. Peteput down a bottle with a bang and turned a formidable face towardthem. He disclosed his teeth and his shoulders heavedrestlessly.
"You fellers can't guy me," he said. "Drink yer stuff an' gitout an' don' make no trouble."
Instantly the laughter faded from the faces of the two men andexpressions of offended dignity immediately came.
"Who deh hell has said anyt'ing teh you," cried they in the samebreath.
The quiet stranger looked at the door calculatingly.
"Ah, come off," said Pete to the two men. "Don't pick me up forno jay. Drink yer rum an' git out an' don' make no trouble."
"Oh, deh hell," airily cried Jimmie.
"Oh, deh hell," airily repeated his companion.
"We goes when we git ready! See!" continued Jimmie.
"Well," said Pete in a threatening voice, "don' make notrouble."
Jimmie suddenly leaned forward with his head on one side. Hesnarled like a wild animal.
"Well, what if we does? See?" said he.
Dark blood flushed into Pete's face, and he shot a lurid glanceat Jimmie.
"Well, den we'll see whose deh bes' man, you or me," hesaid.
The quiet stranger moved modestly toward the door.
Jimmie began to swell with valor.
"Don' pick me up fer no tenderfoot. When yeh tackles me yehtackles one of deh bes' men in deh city. See? I'm a scrapper, I am.Ain't dat right, Billie?"
"Sure, Mike," responded his companion in tones ofconviction.
"Oh, hell," said Pete, easily. "Go fall on yerself."
The two men again began to laugh.
"What deh hell is dat talkin'?" cried the companion.
"Damned if I knows," replied Jimmie with exaggeratedcontempt.
Pete made a furious gesture. "Git outa here now, an' don' makeno trouble. See? Youse fellers er lookin' fer a scrap an' it's damnlikely yeh'll fin' one if yeh keeps on shootin' off yer mout's. Iknow yehs! See? I kin lick better men dan yehs ever saw in yerlifes. Dat's right! See? Don' pick me up fer no stuff er yeh mightbe jolted out in deh street before yeh knows where yeh is. When Icomes from behind dis bar, I t'rows yehs bote inteh deh street.See?"
"Oh, hell," cried the two men in chorus.
The glare of a panther came into Pete's eyes. "Dat's what Isaid! Unnerstan'?"
He came through a passage at the end of the bar and swelled downupon the two men. They stepped promptly forward and crowded closeto him.
They bristled like three roosters. They moved their headspugnaciously and kept their shoulders braced. The nervous musclesabout each mouth twitched with a forced smile of mockery.
"Well, what deh hell yer goin' teh do?" gritted Jimmie.
Pete stepped warily back, waving his hands before him to keepthe men from coming too near.
"Well, what deh hell yer goin' teh do?" repeated Jimmie's ally.They kept close to him, taunting and leering. They strove to makehim attempt the initial blow.
"Keep back, now! Don' crowd me," ominously said Pete.
Again they chorused in contempt. "Oh, hell!"
In a small, tossing group, the three men edged for positionslike frigates contemplating battle.
"Well, why deh hell don' yeh try teh t'row us out?" cried Jimmieand his ally with copious sneers.
The bravery of bull-dogs sat upon the faces of the men. Theirclenched fists moved like eager weapons.
The allied two jostled the bartender's elbows, glaring at himwith feverish eyes and forcing him toward the wall.
Suddenly Pete swore redly. The flash of action gleamed from hiseyes. He threw back his arm and aimed a tremendous, lightning-likeblow at Jimmie's face. His foot swung a step forward and the weightof his body was behind his fist. Jimmie ducked his head,Bowery-like, with the quickness of a cat. The fierce, answeringblows of him and his ally crushed on Pete's bowed head.
The quiet stranger vanished.
The arms of the combatants whirled in the air like flails. Thefaces of the men, at first flushed to flame-colored anger, nowbegan to fade to the pallor of warriors in the blood and heat of abattle. Their lips curled back and stretched tightly over the gumsin ghoul-like grins. Through their white, gripped teeth struggledhoarse whisperings of oaths. Their eyes glittered with murderousfire.
Each head was huddled between its owner's shoulders, and armswere swinging with marvelous rapidity. Feet scraped to and fro witha loud scratching sound upon the sanded floor. Blows left crimsonblotches upon pale skin. The curses of the first quarter minute ofthe fight died away. The breaths of the fighters came wheezinglyfrom their lips and the three chests were straining and heaving.Pete at intervals gave vent to low, labored hisses, that soundedlike a desire to kill. Jimmie's ally gibbered at times like awounded maniac. Jimmie was silent, fighting with the face of asacrificial priest. The rage of fear shone in all their eyes andtheir blood-colored fists swirled.
At a tottering moment a blow from Pete's hand struck the allyand he crashed to the floor. He wriggled instantly to his feet andgrasping the quiet stranger's beer glass from the bar, hurled it atPete's head.
High on the wall it burst like a bomb, shivering fragmentsflying in all directions. Then missiles came to every man's hand.The place had heretofore appeared free of things to throw, butsuddenly glass and bottles went singing through the air. They werethrown point blank at bobbing heads. The pyramid of shimmeringglasses, that had never been disturbed, changed to cascades asheavy bottles were flung into them. Mirrors splintered tonothing.
The three frothing creatures on the floor buried themselves in afrenzy for blood. There followed in the wake of missiles and fistssome unknown prayers, perhaps for death.
The quiet stranger had sprawled very pyrotechnically out on thesidewalk. A laugh ran up and down the avenue for the half of ablock.
"Dey've trowed a bloke inteh deh street."
People heard the sound of breaking glass and shuffling feetwithin the saloon and came running. A small group, bending down tolook under the bamboo doors, watching the fall of glass, and threepairs of violent legs, changed in a moment to a crowd.
A policeman came charging down the sidewalk and bounced throughthe doors into the saloon. The crowd bended and surged in absorbinganxiety to see.
Jimmie caught first sight of the on-coming interruption. On hisfeet he had the same regard for a policeman that, when on histruck, he had for a fire engine. He howled and ran for the sidedoor.
The officer made a terrific advance, club in hand. Onecomprehensive sweep of the long night stick threw the ally to thefloor and forced Pete to a corner. With his disengaged hand he madea furious effort at Jimmie's coat-tails. Then he regained hisbalance and paused.
"Well, well, you are a pair of pictures. What in hell yeh beenup to?"
Jimmie, with his face drenched in blood, escaped up a sidestreet, pursued a short distance by some of the more law-loving, orexcited individuals of the crowd.
Later, from a corner safely dark, he saw the policeman, the allyand the bartender emerge from the saloon. Pete locked the doors andthen followed up the avenue in the rear of the crowd-encompassedpoliceman and his charge.
On first thoughts Jimmie, with his heart throbbing at battleheat, started to go desperately to the rescue of his friend, but hehalted.
"Ah, what deh hell?" he demanded of himself.
In a hall of irregular shape sat Pete and Maggie drinking beer.A submissive orchestra dictated to by a spectacled man with frowsyhair and a dress suit, industriously followed the bobs of his headand the waves of his baton. A ballad singer, in a dress of flamingscarlet, sang in the inevitable voice of brass. When she vanished,men seated at the tables near the front applauded loudly, poundingthe polished wood with their beer glasses. She returned attired inless gown, and sang again. She received another enthusiasticencore. She reappeared in still less gown and danced. The deafeningrumble of glasses and clapping of hands that followed her exitindicated an overwhelming desire to have her come on for the fourthtime, but the curiosity of the audience was not gratified.
Maggie was pale. From her eyes had been plucked all look ofself-reliance. She leaned with a dependent air toward hercompanion. She was timid, as if fearing his anger or displeasure.She seemed to beseech tenderness of him.
Pete's air of distinguished valor had grown upon him until itthreatened stupendous dimensions. He was infinitely gracious to thegirl. It was apparent to her that his condescension was amarvel.
He could appear to strut even while sitting still and he showedthat he was a lion of lordly characteristics by the air with whichhe spat.
With Maggie gazing at him wonderingly, he took pride incommanding the waiters who were, however, indifferent or deaf.
"Hi, you, git a russle on yehs! What deh hell yehs lookin' at?Two more beehs, d'yeh hear?"
He leaned back and critically regarded the person of a girl witha straw-colored wig who upon the stage was flinging her heels insomewhat awkward imitation of a well-known danseuse.
At times Maggie told Pete long confidential tales of her formerhome life, dwelling upon the escapades of the other members of thefamily and the difficulties she had to combat in order to obtain adegree of comfort. He responded in tones of philanthropy. Hepressed her arm with an air of reassuring proprietorship.
"Dey was damn jays," he said, denouncing the mother andbrother.
The sound of the music which, by the efforts of thefrowsy-headed leader, drifted to her ears through the smoke-filledatmosphere, made the girl dream. She thought of her former RumAlley environment and turned to regard Pete's strong protectingfists. She thought of the collar and cuff manufactory and theeternal moan of the proprietor: "What een hell do you sink I piefife dolla a week for? Play? No, py damn." She contemplated Pete'sman-subduing eyes and noted that wealth and prosperity wasindicated by his clothes. She imagined a future, rose-tinted,because of its distance from all that she previously hadexperienced.
As to the present she perceived only vague reasons to bemiserable. Her life was Pete's and she considered him worthy of thecharge. She would be disturbed by no particular apprehensions, solong as Pete adored her as he now said he did. She did not feellike a bad woman. To her knowledge she had never seen anybetter.
At times men at other tables regarded the girl furtively. Pete,aware of it, nodded at her and grinned. He felt proud.
"Mag, yer a bloomin' good-looker," he remarked, studying herface through the haze. The men made Maggie fear, but she blushed atPete's words as it became apparent to her that she was the apple ofhis eye.
Grey-headed men, wonderfully pathetic in their dissipation,stared at her through clouds. Smooth-cheeked boys, some of themwith faces of stone and mouths of sin, not nearly so pathetic asthe grey heads, tried to find the girl's eyes in the smoke wreaths.Maggie considered she was not what they thought her. She confinedher glances to Pete and the stage.
The orchestra played negro melodies and a versatile drummerpounded, whacked, clattered and scratched on a dozen machines tomake noise.
Those glances of the men, shot at Maggie from under half-closedlids, made her tremble. She thought them all to be worse men thanPete.
"Come, let's go," she said.
As they went out Maggie perceived two women seated at a tablewith some men. They were painted and their cheeks had lost theirroundness. As she passed them the girl, with a shrinking movement,drew back her skirts.
Jimmie did not return home for a number of days after the fightwith Pete in the saloon. When he did, he approached with extremecaution.
He found his mother raving. Maggie had not returned home. Theparent continually wondered how her daughter could come to such apass. She had never considered Maggie as a pearl dropped unstainedinto Rum Alley from Heaven, but she could not conceive how it waspossible for her daughter to fall so low as to bring disgrace uponher family. She was terrific in denunciation of the girl'swickedness.
The fact that the neighbors talked of it, maddened her. Whenwomen came in, and in the course of their conversation casuallyasked, "Where's Maggie dese days?" the mother shook her fuzzy headat them and appalled them with curses. Cunning hints invitingconfidence she rebuffed with violence.
"An' wid all deh bringin' up she had, how could she?" moaninglyshe asked of her son. "Wid all deh talkin' wid her I did an' deht'ings I tol' her to remember? When a girl is bringed up deh way Ibringed up Maggie, how kin she go teh deh devil?"
Jimmie was transfixed by these questions. He could not conceivehow under the circumstances his mother's daughter and his sistercould have been so wicked.
His mother took a drink from a squdgy bottle that sat on thetable. She continued her lament.
"She had a bad heart, dat girl did, Jimmie. She was wicked tehdeh heart an' we never knowed it."
Jimmie nodded, admitting the fact.
"We lived in deh same house wid her an' I brought her up an' wenever knowed how bad she was."
Jimmie nodded again.
"Wid a home like dis an' a mudder like me, she went teh dehbad," cried the mother, raising her eyes.
One day, Jimmie came home, sat down in a chair and began towriggle about with a new and strange nervousness. At last he spokeshamefacedly.
"Well, look-a-here, dis t'ing queers us! See? We're queered! An'maybe it 'ud be better if I—well, I t'ink I kin look 'er upan'—maybe it 'ud be better if I fetched her homean'—"
The mother started from her chair and broke forth into a stormof passionate anger.
"What! Let 'er come an' sleep under deh same roof wid her mudderagin! Oh, yes, I will, won't I? Sure? Shame on yehs, JimmieJohnson, for sayin' such a t'ing teh yer own mudder—teh yerown mudder! Little did I t'ink when yehs was a babby playin' aboutme feet dat ye'd grow up teh say sech a t'ing teh yermudder—yer own mudder. I never taut—"
Sobs choked her and interrupted her reproaches.
"Dere ain't nottin' teh raise sech hell about," said Jimmie. "Ion'y says it 'ud be better if we keep dis t'ing dark, see? Itqueers us! See?"
His mother laughed a laugh that seemed to ring through the cityand be echoed and re-echoed by countless other laughs. "Oh, yes, Iwill, won't I! Sure!"
"Well, yeh must take me fer a damn fool," said Jimmie, indignantat his mother for mocking him. "I didn't say we'd make 'er inteh alittle tin angel, ner nottin', but deh way it is now she can queerus! Don' che see?"
"Aye, she'll git tired of deh life atter a while an' den she'llwanna be a-comin' home, won' she, deh beast! I'll let 'er in den,won' I?"
"Well, I didn' mean none of dis prod'gal bus'ness anyway,"explained Jimmie.
"It wasn't no prod'gal dauter, yeh damn fool," said the mother."It was prod'gal son, anyhow."
"I know dat," said Jimmie.
For a time they sat in silence. The mother's eyes gloated on ascene her imagination could call before her. Her lips were set in avindictive smile.
"Aye, she'll cry, won' she, an' carry on, an' tell how Pete, orsome odder feller, beats 'er an' she'll say she's sorry an' all datan' she ain't happy, she ain't, an' she wants to come home agin,she does."
With grim humor, the mother imitated the possible wailing notesof the daughter's voice.
"Den I'll take 'er in, won't I, deh beast. She kin cry 'er twoeyes out on deh stones of deh street before I'll dirty deh placewid her. She abused an' ill-treated her own mudder—her ownmudder what loved her an' she'll never git anodder chance dis sideof hell."
Jimmie thought he had a great idea of women's frailty, but hecould not understand why any of his kin should be victims.
"Damn her," he fervidly said.
Again he wondered vaguely if some of the women of hisacquaintance had brothers. Nevertheless, his mind did not for aninstant confuse himself with those brothers nor his sister withtheirs. After the mother had, with great difficulty, suppressed theneighbors, she went among them and proclaimed her grief. "May Gawdforgive dat girl," was her continual cry. To attentive ears sherecited the whole length and breadth of her woes.
"I bringed 'er up deh way a dauter oughta be bringed up an' disis how she served me! She went teh deh devil deh first chance shegot! May Gawd forgive her."
When arrested for drunkenness she used the story of herdaughter's downfall with telling effect upon the police justices.Finally one of them said to her, peering down over his spectacles:"Mary, the records of this and other courts show that you are themother of forty-two daughters who have been ruined. The case isunparalleled in the annals of this court, and this courtthinks—"
The mother went through life shedding large tears of sorrow. Herred face was a picture of agony.
Of course Jimmie publicly damned his sister that he might appearon a higher social plane. But, arguing with himself, stumblingabout in ways that he knew not, he, once, almost came to aconclusion that his sister would have been more firmly good had shebetter known why. However, he felt that he could not hold such aview. He threw it hastily aside.
In a hilarious hall there were twenty-eight tables andtwenty-eight women and a crowd of smoking men. Valiant noise wasmade on a stage at the end of the hall by an orchestra composed ofmen who looked as if they had just happened in. Soiled waiters ranto and fro, swooping down like hawks on the unwary in the throng;clattering along the aisles with trays covered with glasses;stumbling over women's skirts and charging two prices foreverything but beer, all with a swiftness that blurred the view ofthe cocoanut palms and dusty monstrosities painted upon the wallsof the room. A bouncer, with an immense load of business upon hishands, plunged about in the crowd, dragging bashful strangers toprominent chairs, ordering waiters here and there and quarrelingfuriously with men who wanted to sing with the orchestra.
The usual smoke cloud was present, but so dense that heads andarms seemed entangled in it. The rumble of conversation wasreplaced by a roar. Plenteous oaths heaved through the air. Theroom rang with the shrill voices of women bubbling o'er withdrink-laughter. The chief element in the music of the orchestra wasspeed. The musicians played in intent fury. A woman was singing andsmiling upon the stage, but no one took notice of her. The rate atwhich the piano, cornet and violins were going, seemed to impartwildness to the half-drunken crowd. Beer glasses were emptied at agulp and conversation became a rapid chatter. The smoke eddied andswirled like a shadowy river hurrying toward some unseen falls.Pete and Maggie entered the hall and took chairs at a table nearthe door. The woman who was seated there made an attempt to occupyPete's attention and, failing, went away.
Three weeks had passed since the girl had left home. The air ofspaniel-like dependence had been magnified and showed its directeffect in the peculiar off-handedness and ease of Pete's waystoward her.
She followed Pete's eyes with hers, anticipating with smilesgracious looks from him.
A woman of brilliance and audacity, accompanied by a mere boy,came into the place and took seats near them.
At once Pete sprang to his feet, his face beaming with gladsurprise.
"By Gawd, there's Nellie," he cried.
He went over to the table and held out an eager hand to thewoman.
"Why, hello, Pete, me boy, how are you," said she, giving himher fingers.
Maggie took instant note of the woman. She perceived that herblack dress fitted her to perfection. Her linen collar and cuffswere spotless. Tan gloves were stretched over her well-shapedhands. A hat of a prevailing fashion perched jauntily upon her darkhair. She wore no jewelry and was painted with no apparent paint.She looked clear-eyed through the stares of the men.
"Sit down, and call your lady-friend over," she said cordiallyto Pete. At his beckoning Maggie came and sat between Pete and themere boy.
"I thought yeh were gone away fer good," began Pete, at once."When did yeh git back? How did dat Buff'lo bus'ness turn out?"
The woman shrugged her shoulders. "Well, he didn't have as manystamps as he tried to make out, so I shook him, that's all."
"Well, I'm glad teh see yehs back in deh city," said Pete, withawkward gallantry.
He and the woman entered into a long conversation, exchangingreminiscences of days together. Maggie sat still, unable toformulate an intelligent sentence upon the conversation andpainfully aware of it.
She saw Pete's eyes sparkle as he gazed upon the handsomestranger. He listened smilingly to all she said. The woman wasfamiliar with all his affairs, asked him about mutual friends, andknew the amount of his salary.
She paid no attention to Maggie, looking toward her once ortwice and apparently seeing the wall beyond.
The mere boy was sulky. In the beginning he had welcomed withacclamations the additions.
"Let's all have a drink! What'll you take, Nell? And you, Misswhat's-your-name. Have a drink, Mr. ——-, you, Imean."
He had shown a sprightly desire to do the talking for thecompany and tell all about his family. In a loud voice he declaimedon various topics. He assumed a patronizing air toward Pete. AsMaggie was silent, he paid no attention to her. He made a greatshow of lavishing wealth upon the woman of brilliance andaudacity.
"Do keep still, Freddie! You gibber like an ape, dear," said thewoman to him. She turned away and devoted her attention toPete.
"We'll have many a good time together again, eh?"
"Sure, Mike," said Pete, enthusiastic at once.
"Say," whispered she, leaning forward, "let's go over toBillie's and have a heluva time."
"Well, it's dis way! See?" said Pete. "I got dis lady frien'here."
"Oh, t'hell with her," argued the woman.
Pete appeared disturbed.
"All right," said she, nodding her head at him. "All right foryou! We'll see the next time you ask me to go anywheres withyou."
Pete squirmed.
"Say," he said, beseechingly, "come wid me a minit an' I'll tellyer why."
The woman waved her hand.
"Oh, that's all right, you needn't explain, you know. Youwouldn't come merely because you wouldn't come, that's all there isof it."
To Pete's visible distress she turned to the mere boy, bringinghim speedily from a terrific rage. He had been debating whether itwould be the part of a man to pick a quarrel with Pete, or would hebe justified in striking him savagely with his beer glass withoutwarning. But he recovered himself when the woman turned to renewher smilings. He beamed upon her with an expression that wassomewhat tipsy and inexpressibly tender.
"Say, shake that Bowery jay," requested he, in a loudwhisper.
"Freddie, you are so droll," she replied.
Pete reached forward and touched the woman on the arm.
"Come out a minit while I tells yeh why I can't go wid yer. Yerdoin' me dirt, Nell! I never taut ye'd do me dirt, Nell. Come on,will yer?" He spoke in tones of injury.
"Why, I don't see why I should be interested in yourexplanations," said the woman, with a coldness that seemed toreduce Pete to a pulp.
His eyes pleaded with her. "Come out a minit while I tellsyeh."
The woman nodded slightly at Maggie and the mere boy, "'Scuseme."
The mere boy interrupted his loving smile and turned ashrivelling glare upon Pete. His boyish countenance flushed and hespoke, in a whine, to the woman:
"Oh, I say, Nellie, this ain't a square deal, you know. Youaren't goin' to leave me and go off with that duffer, are you? Ishould think—"
"Why, you dear boy, of course I'm not," cried the woman,affectionately. She bended over and whispered in his ear. He smiledagain and settled in his chair as if resolved to waitpatiently.
As the woman walked down between the rows of tables, Pete was ather shoulder talking earnestly, apparently in explanation. Thewoman waved her hands with studied airs of indifference. The doorsswung behind them, leaving Maggie and the mere boy seated at thetable.
Maggie was dazed. She could dimly perceive that somethingstupendous had happened. She wondered why Pete saw fit toremonstrate with the woman, pleading for forgiveness with his eyes.She thought she noted an air of submission about her leonine Pete.She was astounded.
The mere boy occupied himself with cock-tails and a cigar. Hewas tranquilly silent for half an hour. Then he bestirred himselfand spoke.
"Well," he said, sighing, "I knew this was the way it would be."There was another stillness. The mere boy seemed to be musing.
"She was pulling m'leg. That's the whole amount of it," he said,suddenly. "It's a bloomin' shame the way that girl does. Why, I'vespent over two dollars in drinks to-night. And she goes off withthat plug-ugly who looks as if he had been hit in the face with acoin-die. I call it rocky treatment for a fellah like me. Here,waiter, bring me a cock-tail and make it damned strong."
Maggie made no reply. She was watching the doors. "It's a meanpiece of business," complained the mere boy. He explained to herhow amazing it was that anybody should treat him in such a manner."But I'll get square with her, you bet. She won't get far ahead ofyours truly, you know," he added, winking. "I'll tell her plainlythat it was bloomin' mean business. And she won't come it over mewith any of her 'now-Freddie-dears.' She thinks my name is Freddie,you know, but of course it ain't. I always tell these people somename like that, because if they got onto your right name they mightuse it sometime. Understand? Oh, they don't fool me much."
Maggie was paying no attention, being intent upon the doors. Themere boy relapsed into a period of gloom, during which heexterminated a number of cock-tails with a determined air, as ifreplying defiantly to fate. He occasionally broke forth intosentences composed of invectives joined together in a longstring.
The girl was still staring at the doors. After a time the mereboy began to see cobwebs just in front of his nose. He spurredhimself into being agreeable and insisted upon her having acharlotte-russe and a glass of beer.
"They's gone," he remarked, "they's gone." He looked at herthrough the smoke wreaths. "Shay, lil' girl, we mightish well makebes' of it. You ain't such bad-lookin' girl, y'know. Not half bad.Can't come up to Nell, though. No, can't do it! Well, I should shaynot! Nell fine-lookin' girl! F—i—n—ine. You lookdamn bad longsider her, but by y'self ain't so bad. Have to doanyhow. Nell gone. On'y you left. Not half bad, though."
Maggie stood up.
"I'm going home," she said.
The mere boy started.
"Eh? What? Home," he cried, struck with amazement. "I begpardon, did hear say home?"
"I'm going home," she repeated.
"Great Gawd, what hava struck," demanded the mere boy ofhimself, stupefied.
In a semi-comatose state he conducted her on board an up-towncar, ostentatiously paid her fare, leered kindly at her through therear window and fell off the steps.
A forlorn woman went along a lighted avenue. The street wasfilled with people desperately bound on missions. An endless crowddarted at the elevated station stairs and the horse cars werethronged with owners of bundles.
The pace of the forlorn woman was slow. She was apparentlysearching for some one. She loitered near the doors of saloons andwatched men emerge from them. She scanned furtively the faces inthe rushing stream of pedestrians. Hurrying men, bent on catchingsome boat or train, jostled her elbows, failing to notice her,their thoughts fixed on distant dinners.
The forlorn woman had a peculiar face. Her smile was no smile.But when in repose her features had a shadowy look that was like asardonic grin, as if some one had sketched with cruel forefingerindelible lines about her mouth.
Jimmie came strolling up the avenue. The woman encountered himwith an aggrieved air.
"Oh, Jimmie, I've been lookin' all over fer yehs—," shebegan.
Jimmie made an impatient gesture and quickened his pace.
"Ah, don't bodder me! Good Gawd!" he said, with the savagenessof a man whose life is pestered.
The woman followed him along the sidewalk in somewhat the mannerof a suppliant.
"But, Jimmie," she said, "yehs told me ye'd—"
Jimmie turned upon her fiercely as if resolved to make a laststand for comfort and peace.
"Say, fer Gawd's sake, Hattie, don' foller me from one end ofdeh city teh deh odder. Let up, will yehs! Give me a minute's res',can't yehs? Yehs makes me tired, allus taggin' me. See? Ain' yehsgot no sense. Do yehs want people teh get onto me? Go chaseyerself, fer Gawd's sake."
The woman stepped closer and laid her fingers on his arm. "But,look-a-here—"
Jimmie snarled. "Oh, go teh hell."
He darted into the front door of a convenient saloon and amoment later came out into the shadows that surrounded the sidedoor. On the brilliantly lighted avenue he perceived the forlornwoman dodging about like a scout. Jimmie laughed with an air ofrelief and went away.
When he arrived home he found his mother clamoring. Maggie hadreturned. She stood shivering beneath the torrent of her mother'swrath.
"Well, I'm damned," said Jimmie in greeting.
His mother, tottering about the room, pointed a quiveringforefinger.
"Lookut her, Jimmie, lookut her. Dere's yer sister, boy. Dere'syer sister. Lookut her! Lookut her!"
She screamed in scoffing laughter.
The girl stood in the middle of the room. She edged about as ifunable to find a place on the floor to put her feet.
"Ha, ha, ha," bellowed the mother. "Dere she stands! Ain' shepurty? Lookut her! Ain' she sweet, deh beast? Lookut her! Ha, ha,lookut her!"
She lurched forward and put her red and seamed hands upon herdaughter's face. She bent down and peered keenly up into the eyesof the girl.
"Oh, she's jes' dessame as she ever was, ain' she? She's hermudder's purty darlin' yit, ain' she? Lookut her, Jimmie! Comehere, fer Gawd's sake, and lookut her."
The loud, tremendous sneering of the mother brought the denizensof the Rum Alley tenement to their doors. Women came in thehallways. Children scurried to and fro.
"What's up? Dat Johnson party on anudder tear?"
"Naw! Young Mag's come home!"
"Deh hell yeh say?"
Through the open door curious eyes stared in at Maggie. Childrenventured into the room and ogled her, as if they formed the frontrow at a theatre. Women, without, bended toward each other andwhispered, nodding their heads with airs of profound philosophy. Ababy, overcome with curiosity concerning this object at which allwere looking, sidled forward and touched her dress, cautiously, asif investigating a red-hot stove. Its mother's voice rang out likea warning trumpet. She rushed forward and grabbed her child,casting a terrible look of indignation at the girl.
Maggie's mother paced to and fro, addressing the doorful ofeyes, expounding like a glib showman at a museum. Her voice rangthrough the building.
"Dere she stands," she cried, wheeling suddenly and pointingwith dramatic finger. "Dere she stands! Lookut her! Ain' she adindy? An' she was so good as to come home teh her mudder, she was!Ain' she a beaut'? Ain' she a dindy? Fer Gawd's sake!"
The jeering cries ended in another burst of shrill laughter.
The girl seemed to awaken. "Jimmie—"
He drew hastily back from her.
"Well, now, yer a hell of a t'ing, ain' yeh?" he said, his lipscurling in scorn. Radiant virtue sat upon his brow and hisrepelling hands expressed horror of contamination.
Maggie turned and went.
The crowd at the door fell back precipitately. A baby fallingdown in front of the door, wrenched a scream like a wounded animalfrom its mother. Another woman sprang forward and picked it up,with a chivalrous air, as if rescuing a human being from anoncoming express train.
As the girl passed down through the hall, she went before opendoors framing more eyes strangely microscopic, and sending broadbeams of inquisitive light into the darkness of her path. On thesecond floor she met the gnarled old woman who possessed the musicbox.
"So," she cried, "'ere yehs are back again, are yehs? An' dey'vekicked yehs out? Well, come in an' stay wid me teh-night. I ain'got no moral standin'."
From above came an unceasing babble of tongues, over all ofwhich rang the mother's derisive laughter.
Pete did not consider that he had ruined Maggie. If he hadthought that her soul could never smile again, he would havebelieved the mother and brother, who were pyrotechnic over theaffair, to be responsible for it.
Besides, in his world, souls did not insist upon being able tosmile. "What deh hell?"
He felt a trifle entangled. It distressed him. Revelations andscenes might bring upon him the wrath of the owner of the saloon,who insisted upon respectability of an advanced type.
"What deh hell do dey wanna raise such a smoke about it fer?"demanded he of himself, disgusted with the attitude of the family.He saw no necessity for anyone's losing their equilibrium merelybecause their sister or their daughter had stayed away fromhome.
Searching about in his mind for possible reasons for theirconduct, he came upon the conclusion that Maggie's motives werecorrect, but that the two others wished to snare him. He feltpursued.
The woman of brilliance and audacity whom he had met in thehilarious hall showed a disposition to ridicule him.
"A little pale thing with no spirit," she said. "Did you notethe expression of her eyes? There was something in them aboutpumpkin pie and virtue. That is a peculiar way the left corner ofher mouth has of twitching, isn't it? Dear, dear, mycloud-compelling Pete, what are you coming to?"
Pete asserted at once that he never was very much interested inthe girl. The woman interrupted him, laughing.
"Oh, it's not of the slightest consequence to me, my dear youngman. You needn't draw maps for my benefit. Why should I beconcerned about it?"
But Pete continued with his explanations. If he was laughed atfor his tastes in women, he felt obliged to say that they were onlytemporary or indifferent ones.
The morning after Maggie had departed from home, Pete stoodbehind the bar. He was immaculate in white jacket and apron and hishair was plastered over his brow with infinite correctness. Nocustomers were in the place. Pete was twisting his napkined fistslowly in a beer glass, softly whistling to himself andoccasionally holding the object of his attention between his eyesand a few weak beams of sunlight that had found their way over thethick screens and into the shaded room.
With lingering thoughts of the woman of brilliance and audacity,the bartender raised his head and stared through the varying cracksbetween the swaying bamboo doors. Suddenly the whistling puckerfaded from his lips. He saw Maggie walking slowly past. He gave agreat start, fearing for the previously-mentioned eminentrespectability of the place.
He threw a swift, nervous glance about him, all at once feelingguilty. No one was in the room.
He went hastily over to the side door. Opening it and lookingout, he perceived Maggie standing, as if undecided, on the corner.She was searching the place with her eyes.
As she turned her face toward him Pete beckoned to herhurriedly, intent upon returning with speed to a position behindthe bar and to the atmosphere of respectability upon which theproprietor insisted.
Maggie came to him, the anxious look disappearing from her faceand a smile wreathing her lips.
"Oh, Pete—," she began brightly.
The bartender made a violent gesture of impatience.
"Oh, my Gawd," cried he, vehemently. "What deh hell do yeh wannahang aroun' here fer? Do yeh wanna git me inteh trouble?" hedemanded with an air of injury.
Astonishment swept over the girl's features. "Why, Pete! yehstol' me—"
Pete glanced profound irritation. His countenance reddened withthe anger of a man whose respectability is being threatened.
"Say, yehs makes me tired. See? What deh hell deh yeh wanna tagaroun' atter me fer? Yeh'll git me inteh trouble wid deh ol' manan' dey'll be hell teh pay! If he sees a woman roun' here he'll gocrazy an' I'll lose me job! See? Yer brudder come in here an'raised hell an' deh ol' man hada put up fer it! An' now I'm done!See? I'm done."
The girl's eyes stared into his face. "Pete, don't yehremem—"
"Oh, hell," interrupted Pete, anticipating.
The girl seemed to have a struggle with herself. She wasapparently bewildered and could not find speech. Finally she askedin a low voice: "But where kin I go?"
The question exasperated Pete beyond the powers of endurance. Itwas a direct attempt to give him some responsibility in a matterthat did not concern him. In his indignation he volunteeredinformation.
"Oh, go teh hell," cried he. He slammed the door furiously andreturned, with an air of relief, to his respectability.
Maggie went away.
She wandered aimlessly for several blocks. She stopped once andasked aloud a question of herself: "Who?"
A man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously took thequestioning word as intended for him.
"Eh? What? Who? Nobody! I didn't say anything," he laughinglysaid, and continued his way.
Soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such apparentaimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes. Shequickened her step, frightened. As a protection, she adopted ademeanor of intentness as if going somewhere.
After a time she left rattling avenues and passed between rowsof houses with sternness and stolidity stamped upon their features.She hung her head for she felt their eyes grimly upon her.
Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and achaste black coat, whose decorous row of buttons reached from hischin to his knees. The girl had heard of the Grace of God and shedecided to approach this man.
His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence andkind-heartedness. His eyes shone good-will.
But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsivemovement and saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step. Hedid not risk it to save a soul. For how was he to know that therewas a soul before him that needed saving?
Upon a wet evening, several months after the last chapter, twointerminable rows of cars, pulled by slipping horses, jangled alonga prominent side-street. A dozen cabs, with coat-enshroudeddrivers, clattered to and fro. Electric lights, whirring softly,shed a blurred radiance. A flower dealer, his feet tappingimpatiently, his nose and his wares glistening with rain-drops,stood behind an array of roses and chrysanthemums. Two or threetheatres emptied a crowd upon the storm-swept pavements. Men pulledtheir hats over their eyebrows and raised their collars to theirears. Women shrugged impatient shoulders in their warm cloaks andstopped to arrange their skirts for a walk through the storm.People having been comparatively silent for two hours burst into aroar of conversation, their hearts still kindling from the glowingsof the stage.
The pavements became tossing seas of umbrellas. Men steppedforth to hail cabs or cars, raising their fingers in varied formsof polite request or imperative demand. An endless processionwended toward elevated stations. An atmosphere of pleasure andprosperity seemed to hang over the throng, born, perhaps, of goodclothes and of having just emerged from a place offorgetfulness.
In the mingled light and gloom of an adjacent park, a handful ofwet wanderers, in attitudes of chronic dejection, was scatteredamong the benches.
A girl of the painted cohorts of the city went along the street.She threw changing glances at men who passed her, giving smilinginvitations to men of rural or untaught pattern and usually seemingsedately unconscious of the men with a metropolitan seal upon theirfaces.
Crossing glittering avenues, she went into the throng emergingfrom the places of forgetfulness. She hurried forward through thecrowd as if intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward inher handsome cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for herwell-shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements.
The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosedanimated rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.
A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift,machine-like music, as if a group of phantom musicians werehastening.
A tall young man, smoking a cigarette with a sublime air,strolled near the girl. He had on evening dress, a moustache, achrysanthemum, and a look of ennui, all of which he kept carefullyunder his eye. Seeing the girl walk on as if such a young man as hewas not in existence, he looked back transfixed with interest. Hestared glassily for a moment, but gave a slight convulsive startwhen he discerned that she was neither new, Parisian, northeatrical. He wheeled about hastily and turned his stare into theair, like a sailor with a search-light.
A stout gentleman, with pompous and philanthropic whiskers, wentstolidly by, the broad of his back sneering at the girl.
A belated man in business clothes, and in haste to catch a car,bounced against her shoulder. "Hi, there, Mary, I beg your pardon!Brace up, old girl." He grasped her arm to steady her, and then wasaway running down the middle of the street.
The girl walked on out of the realm of restaurants and saloons.She passed more glittering avenues and went into darker blocks thanthose where the crowd travelled.
A young man in light overcoat and derby hat received a glanceshot keenly from the eyes of the girl. He stopped and looked ather, thrusting his hands in his pockets and making a mocking smilecurl his lips. "Come, now, old lady," he said, "you don't mean totel me that you sized me up for a farmer?"
A labouring man marched along; with bundles under his arms. Toher remarks, he replied, "It's a fine evenin', ain't it?"
She smiled squarely into the face of a boy who was hurrying bywith his hands buried in his overcoat pockets, his blonde locksbobbing on his youthful temples, and a cheery smile of unconcernupon his lips. He turned his head and smiled back at her, wavinghis hands.
"Not this eve—some other eve!"
A drunken man, reeling in her pathway, began to roar at her. "Iain' ga no money!" he shouted, in a dismal voice. He lurched on upthe street, wailing to himself: "I ain' ga no money. Ba' luck. Ain'ga no more money."
The girl went into gloomy districts near the river, where thetall black factories shut in the street and only occasional broadbeams of light fell across the pavements from saloons. In front ofone of these places, whence came the sound of a violin vigorouslyscraped, the patter of feet on boards and the ring of loudlaughter, there stood a man with blotched features.
Further on in the darkness she met a ragged being with shifting,bloodshot eyes and grimy hands.
She went into the blackness of the final block. The shutters ofthe tall buildings were closed like grim lips. The structuresseemed to have eyes that looked over them, beyond them, at otherthings. Afar off the lights of the avenues glittered as if from animpossible distance. Street-car bells jingled with a sound ofmerriment.
At the feet of the tall buildings appeared the deathly black hueof the river. Some hidden factory sent up a yellow glare, that litfor a moment the waters lapping oilily against timbers. The variedsounds of life, made joyous by distance and seemingunapproachableness, came faintly and died away to a silence.
In a partitioned-off section of a saloon sat a man with a halfdozen women, gleefully laughing, hovering about him. The man hadarrived at that stage of drunkenness where affection is felt forthe universe.
"I'm good f'ler, girls," he said, convincingly. "I'm damn goodf'ler. An'body treats me right, I allus trea's zem right! See?"
The women nodded their heads approvingly. "To be sure," theycried out in hearty chorus. "You're the kind of a man we like,Pete. You're outa sight! What yeh goin' to buy this time,dear?"
"An't'ing yehs wants, damn it," said the man in an abandonmentof good will. His countenance shone with the true spirit ofbenevolence. He was in the proper mode of missionaries. He wouldhave fraternized with obscure Hottentots. And above all, he wasoverwhelmed in tenderness for his friends, who were allillustrious.
"An't'ing yehs wants, damn it," repeated he, waving his handswith beneficent recklessness. "I'm good f'ler, girls, an' ifan'body treats me right I—here," called he through an opendoor to a waiter, "bring girls drinks, damn it. What 'ill yehshave, girls? An't'ing yehs wants, damn it!"
The waiter glanced in with the disgusted look of the man whoserves intoxicants for the man who takes too much of them. Henodded his head shortly at the order from each individual, andwent.
"Damn it," said the man, "we're havin' heluva time. I like yougirls! Damn'd if I don't! Yer right sort! See?"
He spoke at length and with feeling, concerning the excellenciesof his assembled friends.
"Don' try pull man's leg, but have a heluva time! Das right! Dasway teh do! Now, if I sawght yehs tryin' work me fer drinks,wouldn' buy damn t'ing! But yer right sort, damn it! Yehs know howter treat a f'ler, an' I stays by yehs 'til spen' las' cent! Dasright! I'm good f'ler an' I knows when an'body treats meright!"
Between the times of the arrival and departure of the waiter,the man discoursed to the women on the tender regard he felt forall living things. He laid stress upon the purity of his motives inall dealings with men in the world and spoke of the fervor of hisfriendship for those who were amiable. Tears welled slowly from hiseyes. His voice quavered when he spoke to them.
Once when the waiter was about to depart with an empty tray, theman drew a coin from his pocket and held it forth.
"Here," said he, quite magnificently, "here's quar'."
The waiter kept his hands on his tray.
"I don' want yer money," he said.
The other put forth the coin with tearful insistence.
"Here, damn it," cried he, "tak't! Yer damn goo' f'ler an' Iwan' yehs tak't!"
"Come, come, now," said the waiter, with the sullen air of a manwho is forced into giving advice. "Put yer mon in yer pocket! Yerloaded an' yehs on'y makes a damn fool of yerself."
As the latter passed out of the door the man turned patheticallyto the women.
"He don' know I'm damn goo' f'ler," cried he, dismally.
"Never you mind, Pete, dear," said a woman of brilliance andaudacity, laying her hand with great affection upon his arm. "Neveryou mind, old boy! We'll stay by you, dear!"
"Das ri'," cried the man, his face lighting up at the soothingtones of the woman's voice. "Das ri', I'm damn goo' f'ler an' w'enanyone trea's me ri', I treats zem ri'! Shee!"
"Sure!" cried the women. "And we're not goin' back on you, oldman."
The man turned appealing eyes to the woman of brilliance andaudacity. He felt that if he could be convicted of a contemptibleaction he would die.
"Shay, Nell, damn it, I allus trea's yehs shquare, didn' I? Iallus been goo' f'ler wi' yehs, ain't I, Nell?"
"Sure you have, Pete," assented the woman. She delivered anoration to her companions. "Yessir, that's a fact. Pete's a squarefellah, he is. He never goes back on a friend. He's the right kindan' we stay by him, don't we, girls?"
"Sure," they exclaimed. Looking lovingly at him they raisedtheir glasses and drank his health.
"Girlsh," said the man, beseechingly, "I allus trea's yehs ri',didn' I? I'm goo' f'ler, ain' I, girlsh?"
"Sure," again they chorused.
"Well," said he finally, "le's have nozzer drink, zen."
"That's right," hailed a woman, "that's right. Yer no bloomin'jay! Yer spends yer money like a man. Dat's right."
The man pounded the table with his quivering fists.
"Yessir," he cried, with deep earnestness, as if someonedisputed him. "I'm damn goo' f'ler, an' w'en anyone trea's me ri',I allus trea's—le's have nozzer drink."
He began to beat the wood with his glass.
"Shay," howled he, growing suddenly impatient. As the waiter didnot then come, the man swelled with wrath.
"Shay," howled he again.
The waiter appeared at the door.
"Bringsh drinksh," said the man.
The waiter disappeared with the orders.
"Zat f'ler damn fool," cried the man. "He insul' me! I'm ge'man!Can' stan' be insul'! I'm goin' lickim when comes!"
"No, no," cried the women, crowding about and trying to subduehim. "He's all right! He didn't mean anything! Let it go! He's agood fellah!"
"Din' he insul' me?" asked the man earnestly.
"No," said they. "Of course he didn't! He's all right!"
"Sure he didn' insul' me?" demanded the man, with deep anxietyin his voice.
"No, no! We know him! He's a good fellah. He didn't meananything."
"Well, zen," said the man, resolutely, "I'm go' 'pol'gize!"
When the waiter came, the man struggled to the middle of thefloor.
"Girlsh shed you insul' me! I shay damn lie! I 'pol'gize!"
"All right," said the waiter.
The man sat down. He felt a sleepy but strong desire tostraighten things out and have a perfect understanding witheverybody.
"Nell, I allus trea's yeh shquare, din' I? Yeh likes me, don'yehs, Nell? I'm goo' f'ler?"
"Sure," said the woman of brilliance and audacity.
"Yeh knows I'm stuck on yehs, don' yehs, Nell?"
"Sure," she repeated, carelessly.
Overwhelmed by a spasm of drunken adoration, he drew two orthree bills from his pocket, and, with the trembling fingers of anoffering priest, laid them on the table before the woman.
"Yehs knows, damn it, yehs kin have all got, 'cause I'm stuck onyehs, Nell, damn't, I—I'm stuck on yehs, Nell—buydrinksh—damn't—we're havin' heluva time—w'enanyone trea's me ri'—I—damn't, Nell—we're havin'heluva—time."
Shortly he went to sleep with his swollen face fallen forward onhis chest.
The women drank and laughed, not heeding the slumbering man inthe corner. Finally he lurched forward and fell groaning to thefloor.
The women screamed in disgust and drew back their skirts.
"Come ahn," cried one, starting up angrily, "let's get out ofhere."
The woman of brilliance and audacity stayed behind, taking upthe bills and stuffing them into a deep, irregularly-shaped pocket.A guttural snore from the recumbent man caused her to turn and lookdown at him.
She laughed. "What a damn fool," she said, and went.
The smoke from the lamps settled heavily down in the littlecompartment, obscuring the way out. The smell of oil, stifling inits intensity, pervaded the air. The wine from an overturned glassdripped softly down upon the blotches on the man's neck.
In a room a woman sat at a table eating like a fat monk in apicture.
A soiled, unshaven man pushed open the door and entered.
"Well," said he, "Mag's dead."
"What?" said the woman, her mouth filled with bread.
"Mag's dead," repeated the man.
"Deh hell she is," said the woman. She continued her meal. Whenshe finished her coffee she began to weep.
"I kin remember when her two feet was no bigger dan yer t'umb,and she weared worsted boots," moaned she.
"Well, whata dat?" said the man.
"I kin remember when she weared worsted boots," she cried.
The neighbors began to gather in the hall, staring in at theweeping woman as if watching the contortions of a dying dog. Adozen women entered and lamented with her. Under their busy handsthe rooms took on that appalling appearance of neatness and orderwith which death is greeted.
Suddenly the door opened and a woman in a black gown rushed inwith outstretched arms. "Ah, poor Mary," she cried, and tenderlyembraced the moaning one.
"Ah, what ter'ble affliction is dis," continued she. Hervocabulary was derived from mission churches. "Me poor Mary, how Ifeel fer yehs! Ah, what a ter'ble affliction is a disobed'entchil'."
Her good, motherly face was wet with tears. She trembled ineagerness to express her sympathy. The mourner sat with bowed head,rocking her body heavily to and fro, and crying out in a high,strained voice that sounded like a dirge on some forlorn pipe.
"I kin remember when she weared worsted boots an' her two feetswas no bigger dan yer t'umb an' she weared worsted boots, MissSmith," she cried, raising her streaming eyes.
"Ah, me poor Mary," sobbed the woman in black. With low,coddling cries, she sank on her knees by the mourner's chair, andput her arms about her. The other women began to groan in differentkeys.
"Yer poor misguided chil' is gone now, Mary, an' let us hopeit's fer deh bes'. Yeh'll fergive her now, Mary, won't yehs, dear,all her disobed'ence? All her t'ankless behavior to her mudder an'all her badness? She's gone where her ter'ble sins will bejudged."
The woman in black raised her face and paused. The inevitablesunlight came streaming in at the windows and shed a ghastlycheerfulness upon the faded hues of the room. Two or three of thespectators were sniffling, and one was loudly weeping. The mournerarose and staggered into the other room. In a moment she emergedwith a pair of faded baby shoes held in the hollow of her hand.
"I kin remember when she used to wear dem," cried she. The womenburst anew into cries as if they had all been stabbed. The mournerturned to the soiled and unshaven man.
"Jimmie, boy, go git yer sister! Go git yer sister an' we'll putdeh boots on her feets!"
"Dey won't fit her now, yeh damn fool," said the man.
"Go git yer sister, Jimmie," shrieked the woman, confronting himfiercely.
The man swore sullenly. He went over to a corner and slowlybegan to put on his coat. He took his hat and went out, with adragging, reluctant step.
The woman in black came forward and again besought themourner.
"Yeh'll fergive her, Mary! Yeh'll fergive yer bad, bad, chil'!Her life was a curse an' her days were black an' yeh'll fergive yerbad girl? She's gone where her sins will be judged."
"She's gone where her sins will be judged," cried the otherwomen, like a choir at a funeral.
"Deh Lord gives and deh Lord takes away," said the woman inblack, raising her eyes to the sunbeams.
"Deh Lord gives and deh Lord takes away," responded theothers.
"Yeh'll fergive her, Mary!" pleaded the woman in black. Themourner essayed to speak but her voice gave way. She shook hergreat shoulders frantically, in an agony of grief. Hot tears seemedto scald her quivering face. Finally her voice came and arose likea scream of pain.
"Oh, yes, I'll fergive her! I'll fergive her!"
This site is full of FREE ebooks -Project Gutenberg Australia