Chapter II
Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a
careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of
babies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raised
yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against an hundred windows.
Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In all
unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In
the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat
stupidly in the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed
hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or
screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious
postures of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure
corners. A thousand odors of cooking food came forth to the
street. The building quivered and creaked from the weight of
humanity stamping about in its bowels.
A small ragged girl dragged a red, bawling infant along the
crowded ways. He was hanging back, baby-like, bracing his
wrinkled, bare legs.
The little girl cried out: "Ah, Tommie, come ahn.
Dere's Jimmie and 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 they
went on. With the obstinacy of his order, he protested against
being dragged in a chosen direction. He made heroic endeavors to
keep on his legs, denounce his sister and consume a bit of orange
peeling which he chewed between the times of his infantile
orations.
As the sullen-eyed man, followed by the blood-covered boy,
drew near, 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 at
his prospects.
"Ah, what deh hell!" cried Jimmie. Shut up er I'll smack yer mout'. See?"
As his sister continued her lamentations, he suddenly swore
and struck her. The little girl reeled and, recovering herself,
burst into tears and quaveringly cursed him. As she slowly
retreated her brother advanced dealing her cuffs. The father heard
and turned about.
"Stop that, Jim, d'yeh hear? Leave yer sister alone on the
street. It's like I can never beat any sense into yer damned
wooden head."
The urchin raised his voice in defiance to his parent and
continued his attacks. The babe bawled tremendously, protesting
with great violence. During his sister's hasty manoeuvres, he was
dragged by the arm.
Finally the procession plunged into one of the gruesome doorways.
They crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy halls.
At last the father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room
in which a large woman was rampant.
She stopped in a career from a seething stove to a pan-covered table.
As the father and children filed in she peered at them.
"Eh, what? Been fightin' agin, by Gawd!" She threw herself
upon Jimmie. The urchin tried to dart behind the others and in the
scuffle the babe, Tommie, was knocked down. He protested with his
usual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins against
a table leg.
The mother's massive shoulders heaved with anger. Grasping the
urchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled.
She dragged him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in water,
began to scrub his lacerated face with it. Jimmie screamed in pain
and tried to twist his shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms.
The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions
like that of a woman at a tragedy. The father, with a newly-ladened
pipe in his mouth, crouched on a backless chair near the stove.
Jimmie's cries annoyed him. He turned about and bellowed at his wife:
"Let the damned kid alone for a minute, will yeh, Mary? Yer allus
poundin' 'im. When I come nights I can't git no rest 'cause
yer allus poundin' a kid. Let up, d'yeh hear? Don't be allus
poundin' a kid."
The woman's operations on the urchin instantly increased in violence.
At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay cursing and weeping.
The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a
chieftain-like stride approached her husband.
"Ho," she said, with a great grunt of contempt. "An' what in
the devil are you stickin' your nose for?"
The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out
cautiously. The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the corner
drew his legs carefully beneath him.
The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great mudded boots
on the back part of the stove.
"Go teh hell," he murmured, tranquilly.
The woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband's
eyes. The rough yellow of her face and neck flared suddenly
crimson. She began to howl.
He puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but finally
arose and began to look out at the window into the darkening chaos
of back yards.
"You've been drinkin', Mary," he said. "You'd better let up
on the 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's souls with frequence.
The babe was staring out from under the table, his small face
working in his excitement.
The ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner where the
urchin 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
his time.
In the quarrel between husband and wife, the woman was victor.
The man grabbed his hat and rushed from the room, apparently
determined upon a vengeful drunk. She followed to the door and
thundered at him as he made his way down stairs.
She returned and stirred up the room until her children were
bobbing about like bubbles.
"Git outa deh way," she persistently bawled, waving feet
with their dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children.
She shrouded herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam
at the stove, and eventually extracted a frying-pan full of potatoes
that hissed.
She flourished it. "Come teh yer suppers, now," she cried
with sudden exasperation. "Hurry up, now, er I'll help yeh!"
The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clatter they
arranged themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet dangling
high from a precarious infant chair and gorged his small stomach.
Jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity, the grease-enveloped pieces
between his wounded lips. Maggie, with side glances of fear of
interruption, 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 a time her mood changed and she wept as she carried
little Tommie into another room and laid him to sleep
with his fists doubled in an old quilt of faded red
and green grandeur. Then she came and moaned by the stove.
She rocked to and fro upon a chair, shedding tears
and crooning miserably to the two children about their
"poor mother" and "yer fader, damn 'is soul."
The little girl plodded between the table and the chair with
a dish-pan on it. She tottered on her small legs beneath burdens
of dishes.
Jimmie sat nursing his various wounds. He cast furtive glances
at his mother. His practised eye perceived her gradually emerge
from a muddled mist of sentiment until her brain burned in
drunken heat. 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 with
sudden hatred. The fervent red of her face turned almost to
purple. The little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in
an earthquake.
He floundered about in darkness until he found the stairs. He stumbled,
panic-stricken, to the next floor. An old woman opened a door.
A light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's quivering face.
"Eh, Gawd, child, what is it dis time? Is yer fader beatin'
yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader?"