Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (27 page)

A little boy, wild of eye and puffing, came down the slope as from an explosion. He burst out in a rapid treble, “Is dat Kelcey feller here? Say, yeh ol’ woman’s sick again. Dey want yeh! Yehs better run! She’s awful sick!”

The gang turned with loud growls. “Ah, git outa here!” Fidsey threw a stone at the little boy and chased him a short distance, but he continued to clamor, “Youse better come, Kelcey feller! She’s awful sick! She was hollerin’! Dey been lookin’ fer yeh over’n hour!” In his eagerness he returned part way, regardless of Fidsey!

Kelcey had moved away from Blue Billie. He said: “I guess I’d better go!” They howled at him. “Well,” he continued, “I can’t—I don’t wanta—I don’t wanta leave me mother be—she—”

His words were drowned in the chorus of their derision. “Well, lookahere”—he would begin and at each time their cries and screams ascended. They dragged at Blue Billie. “Go fer ‘im, Blue! Slug ’im! Go ahn!”

Kelcey went slowly away while they were urging Blue Billie to do a decisive thing. Billie stood fuming and blustering and explaining himself. When Kelcey had achieved a considerable distance from him, he stepped forward a few paces and hurled a terrible oath. Kelcey looked back darkly.

XVII

WHEN HE ENTERED THE chamber of death, he was brooding over the recent encounter and devising extravagant revenges upon Blue Billie and the others.

The little old woman was stretched upon her bed. Her face and hands were of the hue of the blankets. Her hair, seemingly of a new and wondrous grayness, hung over her temples in whips and tangles. She was sickeningly motionless, save for her eyes, which rolled and swayed in maniacal glances.

A young doctor had just been administering medicine. “There,” he said, with a great satisfaction, “I guess that’ll do her good!” As he went briskly toward the door he met Kelcey. “Oh,” he said. “Son?”

Kelcey had that in his throat which was like fur. When he forced his voice, the words came first low and then high as if they had broken through something. “Will she—will she—”

The doctor glanced back at the bed. She was watching them as she would have watched ghouls, and muttering. “Can’t tell,” he said. “She’s wonderful woman! Got more vitality than you and I together! Can’t tell! May—may not! Good-day! Back in two hours.”

In the kitchen Mrs. Callahan was feverishly dusting the furniture, polishing this and that. She arranged everything in decorous rows. She was preparing for the coming of death. She looked at the floor as if she longed to scrub it.

The doctor paused to speak in an undertone to her, glancing at the bed. When he departed she labored with a renewed speed.

Kelcey approached his mother. From a little distance he called to her. “Mother—mother—” He proceeded with caution lest this mystic being upon the bed should clutch at him.

“Mother—mother—don’t yeh know me?” He put forth apprehensive, shaking fingers and touched her hand.

There were two brilliant steel-colored points upon her eyeballs. She was staring off at something sinister.

Suddenly she turned to her son in a wild babbling appeal. “Help me! Help me! Oh, help me! I see them coming.”

Kelcey called to her as to a distant place. “Mother! Mother!” She looked at him, and then there began within her a struggle to reach him with her mind. She fought with some implacable power whose fingers were in her brain. She called to Kelcey in stammering, incoherent cries for help.

Then she again looked away. “Ah, there they come! There they come! Ah, look—look—loo—” She arose to a sitting posture without the use of her arms.

Kelcey felt himself being choked. When her voice pealed forth in a scream he saw crimson curtains moving before his eyes. “Mother—oh, mother—there’s nothin’—there’s nothin’—”

She was at a kitchen-door with a dish-cloth in her hand. Within there had just been a clatter of crockery. Down through the trees of the orchard she could see a man in a field ploughing. “Bill—o-o-oh, Bill—have yeh seen Georgie? Is he out there with you? Georgie! Georgie! Come right here this minnet! Right—this—minnet!”

She began to talk to some people in the room. “I want t’ know what yeh want here! I want yeh t’ git out! I don’t want yeh here! I don’t feel good t‘-day, an’ I don’t want yeh here! I don’t feel good t’day! I want yeh t’ git out!” Her voice became peevish. “Go away! Go away! Go away!”

Kelcey lay in a chair. His nerveless arms allowed his fingers to sweep the floor. He became so that he could not hear the chatter from the bed, but he was always conscious of the ticking of the little clock out on the kitchen shelf.

When he aroused, the pale-faced but plump young clergyman was before him.

“My poor lad—” began this latter.

The little old woman lay still with her eyes closed. On the table at the head of the bed was a glass containing a water-like medicine. The reflected lights made a silver star on its side. The two men sat side by side, waiting. Out in the kitchen Mrs. Callahan had taken a chair by the stove and was waiting.

Kelcey began to stare at the wall-paper. The pattern was clusters of brown roses. He felt them like hideous crabs crawling upon his brain.

Through the door-way he saw the oil-cloth covering of the table catching a glimmer from the warm afternoon sun. The window disclosed a fair, soft sky, like blue enamel, and a fringe of chimneys and roofs, resplendent here and there. An endless roar, the eternal trample of the marching city, came mingled with vague cries. At intervals the woman out by the stove moved restlessly and coughed.

Over the transom from the hall-way came two voices.

“Johnnie!”

“Wot!”

“You come right here t’ me! I want yehs t’ go t’ d’ store fer me!”

“Ah, ma, send Sally!”

“No, I will not! You come right here!”

“All right, in a minnet!”

“Johnnie!”

“In a minnet, I tell yeh! ”

“Johnnie—” There was the sound of a heavy tread, and later a boy squealed. Suddenly the clergyman started to his feet. He rushed forward and peered. The little old woman was dead.

A DOZEN OF THE members were enjoying themselves in the library. Their eyes were for the most part fixed in concrete stares at the ceiling where the decorations cost seventy-four dollars per square inch. An ecstatic murmur came from the remote corners of the apartment where each chair occupied two thousand dollars worth of floor. William C. Whitney was neatly arranged in a prominent seat to impart a suggestion of brains to the general effect. A clock had been chiming at intervals of ten minutes during the evening, and at each time of striking, Mr. Depew had made a joke, per agreement.

The last one, however, had smashed a seven-thousand dollar vase over by the window and Mr. Depew was hesitating. He had some doubt whether, after all, his jokes were worth that much commercially. His fellow members continued to ecstatically admire their isolation from the grimy vandals of the world. The soft breathing of the happy company made a sound like the murmur of pines in a summer wind. In the distance, a steward could be seen charging up seven thousand dollars to Mr. Depew’s account; all, otherwise, was joy and perfect peace.

At this juncture, a seventeen-cent lackey upholstered in a three hundred dollar suit of clothes, made his appearance. He skated gracefully over the polished floor on snowshoes. Halting in the centre of the room, he made seven low bows and sang a little ode to Plutus.
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Then he made a swift gesture, a ceremonial declaration that he was lower than the mud on the gaiters of the least wealthy of those before him, and spoke: “Sirs, there is a deputation of visitors in the hall who give their names as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton. They beg the favor of an audience.”

A slumbering member in a large arm chair aroused and said: “Who?” And this pertinent interrogation was followed by others in various tones of astonishment and annoyance. “What’s their names?” “Who did you say?” “What the devil do they want here?”

The lackey made seven more bows and sang another little ode. Then he spoke very distinctly: “Sirs, persons giving their names as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Washington and Alexander Hamilton desire the favor of an audience. They—”

But he was interrupted. “Don’t know’ em!” “Who the deuce are these people anyhow!” “By Jove, here’s a go! Want to see us, deuce take me!” “Well, I’m—”

It was at this point that Erroll Van Dyck Strathmore suddenly displayed those qualities which made his friends ever afterward look upon him as a man who would rise supreme at a crisis. He asked one question, but it was terse, sharp, and skillful, a master-piece of a man with presence of mind:

“Where are they from?”

“Sir,” said the lackey, “they said they were from America!”

Strathmore paused but a moment to formulate his second searching question. His friends looked at him with admiration and awe. “Do they look like respectable people?”

The lackey arched his eyebrows. “Well—I don’t know, sir.” He was very discreet.

This reply created great consternation among the members. There was a wild scramble for places of safety. There were hurried commands given to the lackey. “Don’t bring ‘em in here!” “Throw ’ em out!” “Kill ’em!” But over all the uproar could be heard the voice of the imperturbably Strathmore. He was calmly giving orders to the servant.

“You will tell them that as we know no one in America, it is not possible that we have had the honor of their acquaintance, but that nevertheless it is our pleasure to indulge them a little, as it is possible that they are respectable people. However, they must not construe this into permission to come again. You will say to them that if they will repair quietly to any convenient place, wash their hands and procure rubber bibs, they may return and look at the remains of a cigarette which I carelessly threw upon the door-step. Tell the steward to provide each man with a recipe for Mr. Jones-Jones Smith-Jones’ terrapin stew and a gallery ticket for the Kilanyi living pictures, then bid them go in safety. Afterward, you will sponge off the front steps and give the door-mat to one of those down-town clubs. You may go.”