Chapter VI
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
still more eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in
his career. It appeared that he was invincible in fights.
"Why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had a
misunderstanding, "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'
out diff'ent! Hully gee."
He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then to
grow even smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of
a supreme warrior. That swing of the shoulders that had frozen the
timid when he was but a lad had increased with his growth and
education at the ratio of ten to one. It, combined with the sneer
upon his mouth, told mankind that there was nothing in space which
could appall him. Maggie marvelled at him and surrounded him with
greatness. She vaguely tried to calculate the altitude of the
pinnacle from which he must have looked down upon her.
"I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said. "I
was goin' teh see a frien' of mine. When I was a-crossin' deh
street 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
blokie he got wild. He says I was a contempt'ble scoun'el,
er somet'ing like dat, an' he says I was doom' teh everlastin'
pe'dition an' all like dat. 'Gee,' I says, 'gee! Deh hell I am,'
I says. 'Deh hell I am,' like dat. An' den I slugged 'im. See?"
With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort of a blaze
of 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
world full of fists. Here was one who had contempt for brass-
clothed power; one whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the
granite of law. He was a knight.
The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp and
passed into shadows.
Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, and
the scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock, in a
splintered and battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly
regarded as an abomination. She noted that it ticked raspingly.
The almost vanished flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to
be newly hideous. Some faint attempts she had made with blue
ribbon, to freshen the appearance of a dingy curtain, she now saw
to be piteous.
She wondered what Pete dined on.
She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. It began to
appear to her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. Pete's
elegant occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people
who had money and manners. it was probable that he had a large
acquaintance of pretty girls. He must have great sums of money to
spend.
To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She
felt instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She
thought that if the grim angel of death should clutch his heart,
Pete would shrug his shoulders and say: "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."
She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent
some of her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a
lambrequin. She made it with infinite care and hung it to the
slightly-careening mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen. She
studied it with painful anxiety from different points in the room.
She wanted it to look well on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's
friend would come. On Sunday night, however, Pete did not appear.
Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation.
She was now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for
lambrequins.
A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovations
in his apparel. As she had seen him twice and he had different
suits on each time, Maggie had a dim impression that his
wardrobe was prodigiously extensive.
"Say, Mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds Friday night an'
I'll take yehs teh deh show. See?"
He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and then
vanished, without having glanced at the lambrequin.
Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory Maggie spent
the most of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and his
daily environment. She imagined some half dozen women in love with
him and thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one,
whom she pictured with great charms of person, but with an
altogether 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 take
her. An entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she was
afraid she might appear small and mouse-colored.
Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning. With lurid face
and tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Friday
afternoon. When Maggie came home at half-past six her mother lay
asleep amidst the wreck of chairs and a table. Fragments of
various household utensils were scattered about the floor.
She had vented some phase of drunken fury upon the lambrequin.
It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner.
"Hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yeh
been? Why deh hell don' yeh come home earlier? Been loafin'
'round deh streets. Yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil."
When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting
for him in the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtain
at the 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 fire
in the stove had gone out. The displaced lids and open doors
showed heaps of sullen grey ashes. The remnants of a meal,
ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a corner. Maggie's red mother,
stretched on the floor, blasphemed and gave her daughter a bad name.