Chapter XV
A forlorn woman went along a lighted avenue. The street was
filled with people desperately bound on missions. An endless crowd
darted at the elevated station stairs and the horse cars were
thronged with owners of bundles.
The pace of the forlorn woman was slow. She was apparently
searching for some one. She loitered near the doors of saloons and
watched men emerge from them. She scanned furtively the faces in
the rushing stream of pedestrians. Hurrying men, bent on catching
some 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 a sardonic grin, as if some one had sketched with cruel
forefinger indelible lines about her mouth.
Jimmie came strolling up the avenue. The woman encountered
him with an aggrieved air.
"Oh, Jimmie, I've been lookin' all over fer yehs--," she began.
Jimmie made an impatient gesture and quickened his pace.
"Ah, don't bodder me! Good Gawd!" he said, with the
savageness of a man whose life is pestered.
The woman followed him along the sidewalk in somewhat the
manner of a suppliant.
"But, Jimmie," she said, "yehs told me ye'd--"
Jimmie turned upon her fiercely as if resolved to make a last
stand for comfort and peace.
"Say, fer Gawd's sake, Hattie, don' foller me from one end of
deh 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' yehs got no sense. Do yehs want people teh get onto me?
Go chase yerself, 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 a
moment later came out into the shadows that surrounded the side
door. On the brilliantly lighted avenue he perceived the forlorn
woman dodging about like a scout. Jimmie laughed with an air of
relief and went away.
When he arrived home he found his mother clamoring.
Maggie had returned. She stood shivering beneath the torrent
of her mother's wrath.
"Well, I'm damned," said Jimmie in greeting.
His mother, tottering about the room, pointed a quivering
forefinger.
"Lookut her, Jimmie, lookut her. Dere's yer sister, boy.
Dere's yer sister. Lookut her! Lookut her!"
She screamed in scoffing laughter.
The girl stood in the middle of the room. She edged about as
if unable to find a place on the floor to put her feet.
"Ha, ha, ha," bellowed the mother. "Dere she stands! Ain'
she purty? Lookut her! Ain' she sweet, deh beast? Lookut her!
Ha, ha, lookut her!"
She lurched forward and put her red and seamed hands upon her
daughter's face. She bent down and peered keenly up into the eyes
of the girl.
"Oh, she's jes' dessame as she ever was, ain' she? She's her
mudder's purty darlin' yit, ain' she? Lookut her, Jimmie! Come
here, fer Gawd's sake, and lookut her."
The loud, tremendous sneering of the mother brought the
denizens of the Rum Alley tenement to their doors. Women came in
the hallways. 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.
Children ventured into the room and ogled her, as if they formed
the front row at a theatre. Women, without, bended toward each
other and whispered, nodding their heads with airs of profound
philosophy. A baby, overcome with curiosity concerning this object
at which all were looking, sidled forward and touched her dress,
cautiously, as if investigating a red-hot stove. Its mother's
voice rang out like a 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 of
eyes, expounding like a glib showman at a museum. Her voice rang
through the building.
"Dere she stands," she cried, wheeling suddenly and pointing
with dramatic finger. "Dere she stands! Lookut her! Ain' she a
dindy? 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
lips curling in scorn. Radiant virtue sat upon his brow and his
repelling hands expressed horror of contamination.
Maggie turned and went.
The crowd at the door fell back precipitately. A baby falling
down in front of the door, wrenched a scream like a wounded animal
from its mother. Another woman sprang forward and picked it up,
with a chivalrous air, as if rescuing a human being from an
oncoming express train.
As the girl passed down through the hall, she went before open
doors framing more eyes strangely microscopic, and sending broad
beams of inquisitive light into the darkness of her path. On the
second floor she met the gnarled old woman who possessed the music box.
"So," she cried, "'ere yehs are back again, are yehs? An'
dey've kicked 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 of
which rang the mother's derisive laughter.