Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) (29 page)

Finally a long lance point of gray light shot through the dusty panes of the window. Without, the young man could see roofs drearily white in the dawning. The point of light yellowed and grew brighter, until the golden rays of the morning sun came in bravely and strong. They touched with radiant color the form of a small, fat man, who snored in stuttering fashion. His round and shiny bald head glowed suddenly with the valor of a decoration. He sat up, blinked at the sun, swore fretfully and pulled his blanket over the ornamental splendors of his head.

The youth contentedly watched this rout of the mystic shadows before the bright spears of the sun and presently he slumbered. When he awoke he heard the voice of the assassin raised in valiant curses. Putting up his head he perceived his comrade seated on the side of the cot engaged in scratching his neck with long finger nails that rasped like files.

“Hully
^aw
Jee dis is a new breed. They’ve got can openers on their feet,” he continued in a violent tirade.

The young man hastily unlocked his closet and took out his clothes. As he sat on the side of the cot, lacing his shoes, he glanced about and saw that daylight had made the room comparatively commonplace and uninteresting. The men, whose faces seemed stolid, serene or absent, were engaged in dressing, while a great crackle of bantering conversation arose.

A few were parading in unconcerned nakedness. Here and there were men of brawn, whose skins shone clear and ruddy. They took splendid poses, standing massively, like chiefs. When they had dressed in their ungainly garments there was an extraordinary change. They then showed bumps and deficiencies of all kinds.

There were others who exhibited many deformities. Shoulders were slanting, bumped, pulled this way and pulled that way. And notable among these latter men was the little fat man who had refused to allow his head to be glorified. His pudgy form, builded like a pear, bustled to and fro, while he swore in fishwife fashion. It appeared that some article of his apparel had vanished.

The young man, attired speedily, went to his friend, the assassin. At first the latter looked dazed at the sight of the youth. This face seemed to be appealing to him through the cloud wastes of his memory. He scratched his neck and reflected. At last he grinned, a broad smile gradually spreading until his countenance was a round illumination. “Hello, Willie,” he cried, cheerily.

“Hello,” said the young man. “Are yeh ready t’ fly?”

“Sure.” The assassin tied his shoe carefully with some twine and came ambling.

When he reached the street the young man experienced no sudden relief from unholy atmospheres. He had forgotten all about them, and had been breathing naturally and with no sensation of discomfort or distress.

He was thinking of these things as he walked along the street, when he was suddenly startled by feeling the assassin’s hand, trembling with excitement, clutching his arm, and when the assassin spoke, his voice went into quavers from a supreme agitation.

“I’ll be hully, bloomin’ blowed, if there wasn’t a feller with a nightshirt on up there in that joint!”

The youth was bewildered for a moment, but presently he turned to smile indulgently at the assassin’s humor.

“Oh, you’re a d—liar,” he merely said.

Whereupon the assassin began to gesture extravagantly and take oath by strange gods. He frantically placed himself at the mercy of remarkable fates if his tale were not true. “Yes, he did! I cross m’heart thousan’ times!” he protested, and at the time his eyes were large with amazement, his mouth wrinkled in unnatural glee. “Yessir! A nightshirt! A hully white nightshirt!”

“You lie!”

“Nosir! I hope ter die b’fore I kin git anudder ball if there wasn’t a jay wid a hully, bloomin’ white nightshirt!”

His face was filled with the infinite wonder of it. “A hully white nightshirt,” he continually repeated.

The young man saw the dark entrance to a basement restaurant. There was a sign which read, “No mystery about our hash,” and there were other age stained and world battered legends which told him that the place was within his means. He stopped before it and spoke to the assassin. “I guess I’ll git somethin’ t’ eat.”

At this the assassin, for some reason, appeared to be quite embarrassed. He gazed at the seductive front of the eating place for a moment. Then he started slowly up the street. “Well, goodby, Willie,” he said, bravely.

For an instant the youth studied the departing figure. Then he called out, “Hol’ on a minnet.” As they came together he spoke in a certain fierce way, as if he feared that the other could think him to be weak. “Look-a-here, if yeh wanta git some breakfas’ I’ll lend yeh three cents t’ do it with. But say, look-a-here, you’ve gota git out an’ hustle. I ain’t goin’ t’ support yeh, or I’ll go broke b’fore night. I ain’t no millionaire.”

“I take me oath, Willie,” said the assassin, earnestly, “th’ on‘y thing I really needs is a ball. Me t’roat feels like a fryin’ pan. But as I can’t git a ball, why, th’ next bes’ thing is breakfast, an’ if yeh do that fer me, b’ gawd, I’d say yeh was th’ whitest lad I ever see.”

They spent a few moments in dexterous exchanges of phrases, in which they each protested that the other was, as the assassin had originally said, a “respecter’ble gentlem’n.” And they concluded with mutual assurances that they were the souls of intelligence and virtue. Then they went into the restaurant.

There was a long counter, dimly lighted from hidden sources. Two or three men in soiled white aprons rushed here and there.

The youth bought a bowl of coffee for two cents and a roll for one cent. The assassin purchased the same. The bowls were webbed with brown seams, and the tin spoons wore an air of having emerged from the first pyramid. Upon them were black, moss like encrustations of age, and they were bent and scarred from the attacks of long forgotten teeth. But over their repast the wanderers waxed warm and mellow. The assassin grew affable as the hot mixture went soothingly down his parched throat, and the young man felt courage flow in his veins.

Memories began to throng in on the assassin, and he brought forth long tales, intricate, incoherent, delivered with a chattering swiftness as from an old woman. “—great job out’n Orange. Boss keep yeh hustlin‘, though, all time. I was there three days, and then I went an’ ask’im t’ lend me a dollar. ‘G-g-go ter the devil,’ he ses, an’ I lose me job.”

—“South no good. Damn niggers work for twenty-five an’ thirty cents a day. Run white man out. Good grub, though. Easy livin’”

—“Yas; useter work little in Toledo, raftin’ logs. Make two or three dollars er day in the spring. Lived high. Cold as ice, though, in the winter”—

“I was raised in northern N‘York. O-o-o-oh, yeh jest oughto live there. No beer ner whisky, though, way off in the woods. But all th’ good hot grub yeh can eat., B’gawd, I hung around there long as I could till th’ ol’ man fired me. ‘Git t’hell outa here, yeh wuthless skunk, git t‘hell outa here an’ go die,’ he ses. ‘You’re a fine father,’ I ses, ‘you are,’ an’ I quit ’im.”

As they were passing from the dim eating place they encountered an old man who was trying to steal forth with a tiny package of food, but a tall man with an indomitable mustache stood dragon fashion, barring the way of escape. They heard the old man raise a plaintive protest. “Ah, you always want to know what I take out, and you never see that I usually bring a package in here from my place of business.”

As the wanderers trudged slowly along Park row, the assassin began to expand and grow blithe. “B’gawd, we’ve been livin’ like kings,” he said, smacking appreciative lips.

“Look out or we’ll have t’ pay fer it t’ night,” said the youth, with gloomy warning.

But the assassin refused to turn his gaze toward the future. He went with a limping step, into which he injected a suggestion of lamblike gambols. His mouth was wreathed in a red grin.

In the City Hall Park the two wanderers sat down in the little circle of benches sanctified by traditions of their class. They huddled in their old garments, slumbrously conscious of the march of the hours which for them had no meaning.

The people of the street hurrying hither and thither made a blend of black figures, changing, yet frieze like. They walked in their good clothes as upon important missions, giving no gaze to the two wanderers seated upon the benches. They expressed to the young man his infinite distance from all that he valued. Social position, comfort, the pleasures of living, were unconquerable kingdoms. He felt a sudden awe.

And in the background a multitude of buildings, of pitiless hues and sternly high, were to him emblematic of a nation forcing its regal head into the clouds, throwing no downward glances; in the sublimity of its aspirations ignoring the wretches who may flounder at its feet. The roar of the city in his ear was to him the confusion of strange tongues, babbling heedlessly; it was the clink of coin, the voice of the city’s hopes which were to him no hopes.

He confessed himself an outcast, and his eyes from under the lowered rim of his hat began to glance guiltily, wearing the criminal expression that comes with certain convictions.

“Well,” said the friend, “did you discover his point of view?”

“I don’t know that I did,” replied the young man; “but at any rate I think mine own has undergone a considerable alteration.”

THE EXPERIENCES OF A YOUTH WHO SOUGHT OUT CROESUS. IN THE GLITTER OF WEALTH. A FUZZY ACROBATIC KITTEN WHICH HELD GREAT RICHNESS AT BAY. LIFE OF THE WOMAN OF GOLD. ARE THERE, AFTER ALL, BURRS UNDER EACH FINE CLOAK AND BENEFITS IN ALL BEGGARS’ GARB?

 

“IF YOU ACCEPT THIS inivitation you will have an opportunity to make another social study,” said the old friend.

The youth laughed. “If they caught me making a study of them they’d attempt a murder. I would be pursued down Fifth avenue by the entire family.”

“Well,” persisted the old friend who could only see one thing at a time, “it would be very interesting. I have been told all my life that millionaires have no fun, and I know that the poor are always assured that the millionaire is a very unhappy person. They are informed that miseries swarm around all wealth, that all crowned heads are heavy with care, and—”

“But still—” began the youth.

“And, in the irritating, brutalizing, enslaving environment of their poverty, they are expected to solace themselves with these assurances,” continued the old friend. He extended his gloved palm and began to tap it impressively with a finger of his other hand. His legs were spread apart in a fashion peculiar to his oratory. “I believe that it is mostly false. It is true that wealth does not release a man from many things from which he would gladly purchase release. Consequences cannot be bribed. I suppose that every man believes steadfastly that he has a private tragedy which makes him yearn for other existences. But it is impossible for me to believe that these things equalize themselves; that there are burrs under all rich cloaks and benefits in all ragged jackets, and the preaching of it seems wicked to me. There are those who have opportunities; there are those who are robbed of—”

“But look here,” said the young man; “what has this got to do with my paying Jack a visit?”

“It has got a lot to do with it,” said the old friend sharply. “As I said, there are those who have opportunities; there are those who are robbed—”

“Well, I won’t have you say Jack ever robbed anybody of anything, because he’s as honest a fellow as ever lived,” interrupted the youth, with warmth. “I have known him for years, and he is a perfectly square fellow. He doesn’t know about these infernal things. He isn’t criminal because you say he is benefited by a condition which other men created.”

“I didn’t say he was,” retorted the old friend. “Nobody is responsible for anything. I wish to Heaven somebody was, and then we could all jump on him. Look here, my boy, our modern civilization is—”

“Oh, the deuce!” said the young man.

The old friend then stood very erect and stern. “I can see by your frequent interruptions that you have not yet achieved sufficient pain in life. I hope one day to see you materially changed. You are yet—”

“There he is now,” said the youth, suddenly. He indicated a young man who was passing. He went hurriedly toward him, pausing once to gesture adieu to his old friend.

The house was broad and brown and stolid like the face of a peasant. It had an inanity of expression, an absolute lack of artistic strength that was in itself powerful because it symbolized something. It stood, a homely pile of stone, rugged, grimly self reliant, asserting its quality as a fine thing when in reality the beholder usually wondered why so much money had been spent to obtain a complete negation. Then from another point of view it was important and mighty because it stood as a fetish, formidable because of traditions of worship.