her hard honesty. She turned her eyes away from the window and looked
wearily at her visitors.
“It’s supper time. There ain’t any use of your stayin’ with me.”
The three women arose, angry at their dismissal.
“I ‘lowed you’d want some one to stay with you the first night,” said
one of them with a lugubrious sniff.
“I ‘ve got all the nights of my life to stay alone in. I ‘bout as well
begin now.”
She watched them as they went away through the deepening gloom, their
heads together nodding wisely. They were talking about her, of course.
She knew well enough what they said. She knew how hard and strange and
unfeeling they were calling her. And as she sat alone by the window she
wondered whether she was all these. The bed in its dark corner brought
to her mind the picture of the man who had first quit it for his narrow
bed upon the hillside. She fancied that she saw his hard, thin, yellow
face upon the pillow now; that she heard his querulous voice demanding
her attention, upbraiding her for some fancied forgetfulness, fiercely
denouncing her for her lack of “religion.” How hard he had been! As the
woman’s thoughts travelled back along the years she could not recall one
kind word, one touch of thankfulness for her unremitting care, for her
absolute immolation of life, hope, love upon the altar of “duty.” Twenty
years! what a long time it seemed!
She passed into the back room and pressed close to the little square
looking-glass which hung against its wall. The daylight was well-nigh
gone, but she could yet discern the reflection of her face against the
background of gray twilight. How old she looked! How sallow she had
grown! There were great lines about her mouth and deep furrows between
her eyes. And her hair,--how dingy it was with its streaks of yellowish
gray! Twenty years ago she had been proud of her hair. It had been
bright and soft. She was twenty years old then, and there were roses in
her cheeks, and her eyes, so pale and tired now, had been blue and fresh
then. She wondered if she had wept their color and their brightness
away. Perhaps that was the reason no tears were left for her father. She
had shed them all long ago for the man whom she had loved and given up.
She did not return to the front room where the great bed loomed so
weirdly in the gloom, but sat by the one window in the little back
room, half kitchen, half dining-room, looking out upon the river growing
blacker and colder in the falling night as it flowed from out of the
west where a rapidly diminishing, dull red streak marked the track of
the vanished sun.
Twenty years since her mother died and her sister, selfish in her new
life as a wife, had said that ‘Lizbeth’s duty lay in their father’s
house. He might marry again or die in a few years. Surely it was not so
hard for a young girl to wait. So she had waited, her lover fretting
as lovers will, until one day she had awakened to the fact that a man’s
patience is not like a woman’s. There had been one awful night which she
remembered after all these years with a shudder. A night when, for the
first and only time in her hard life, she had turned hotly upon the
stern old man and told him of her love and of her wrecked girlhood,
praying wildly for some help, for some sympathy. She caught her breath
sharply now as she recalled her father’s bitter words. That same night
her lover left. Fifteen years had come and gone since then. The great
world had taken him, and whether he lived or had been claimed again by
mother earth the woman who sat and dreamed of the past alone in the dusk
knew naught of him. She had practised a woman’s faithfulness; she had
reaped a woman’s hard reward. Afterwards her sister died and left to
her care a blue-eyed babe. How she had poured out upon that baby boy the
pent up mother-love within her. But the gods in their wisdom had taken
him too. In this still night as she lived over again the years which
were gone, she seemed to feel the clasp of those baby arms about her
neck and to hear the crooning of that soft baby voice.
And then came the long years of her father’s illness when she knew no
moment of rest or peace. It had been a long struggle between a loveless
woman on one side and gaunt starvation upon the other without one word
of gratitude to strengthen her. And they called her hard because she
could not weep! She looked at her hands, holding them up close to her
face. How misshapen and ugly from toil they were!
It was quite dark now and the river murmured strangely under the wind
which was creeping down from the north. Her hands fell back into her lap
and two great tears coursed slowly down her worn face--not for the man
who lay under the stars in the little cemetery on the hill, but for her
own vanished youth and love and hope.
“WHEN THE KING COMES IN”
By Anthony Leland
SHE slunk along in the shadows listlessly, staring with unheeding eyes
at the shuffling crowds upon the sidewalks, at the fly-blown, tawdry
splendors of the shop windows, and at the yellow gloom of the pawn-shop.
The autumn wind swept sharply up from the river, and she drew her old
plaid shawl about her tightly with one hand, while with the other she
covered her swollen and discolored cheek. The sidewalks and roadway
were covered with a thin, slippery coating of mingled filth and mud.
An autumn mist, heavy with smoke, pressed itself tightly down upon the
street, deadening the light of the electric lamps at the corners into
mere splotches of a dully-luminous gray. Frowsy, palefaced girls hung
about dark doorways where they bandied mirthless jests with lounging men
and boys. In front of a bar-room, whence came the fangling notes of a
piano and the scream of a high-pitched soprano voice, a man stood and
urged the passers-by to go in and witness “the dizziest ‘vawdyville’ in
the city.” The woman in the old plaid shawl passed him without heeding
his blatant voice. She had heard his sing-song shout many times; the
“dizzy vawdyville” was nothing new. There never was anything new in
Myrtle Street; it was ever the same ugly, sordid, joyless place day and
night, week in and week out. It was always crowded with people, but it
was always strangely sullen and mirthless. You never heard any one laugh
there. At times when some one slipped and fell upon the slime of the
pavement, or when one of the white-faced girls hurled shrill defiance at
a man or at her companions, a hoarse human bark rent the air, but it was
not a laugh. Even the children, who scrambled in the gutters and crept
in and out of the dark alleys, forgot to laugh.
The woman with swollen and discolored cheek, who was crawling along
in the shadows, halted in front of a dram-shop on a corner, and gazed
doubtfully, longingly, at its swinging door. She was wondering if
perchance Red Mike would trust her for a drink. She felt keenly the
chill air from the river. She was strangely weary and down-hearted, too.
Earlier in the evening she and her man had quarrelled. He was drunk, as
usual, and had struck her, but for some unaccountable reason she had
not screeched and struck back and tried to claw his face. She had
simply grabbed her old shawl and escaped into the street, where she had
wandered about for an hour. It was very odd that she had acted thus, and
now she was shamefaced about asking Red Mike for a drink of whiskey! He
got all their meagre earnings, anyway, did Red Mike, and he was usually
easy enough about donating a dram or two when they were down in their
luck, and heretofore she had n’t minded asking him. And if he chanced to
refuse, she eased her mind by a good mouthful of curses, which she spat
at him like a cat. But tonight she was foolishly squeamish about asking
him; she feared the loafers about the bar would jeer at her if he
refused; her face pained her where Con’s blow had fallen, and she was
cold and shivering, and--well, she was losing her nerve. So she turned
away from the hot glow of the bar-room door and passed on into the mists
of the street.
As she crawled along there came to her ears a quick thud of a drum-beat
and the sound of men and women’s voices singing. Marching through the
gloom they came, a flapping banner above their heads, the red shirts of
the men and the blue, scarlet-banded bonnets of the women lending for
a moment a patch of color to the dim dinginess of the street. Suddenly
they paused and fell upon their knees in the road, while a man’s
voice wailed out a prayer. Time was when Myrtle Street gibed at the
Salvationists and threw rocks at them and hustled them about. But that
was when the red shirts and the flapping banner were something new. The
newness was gone now, and Myrtle Street merely shuffled indifferently
past, and the beat of the big drum, the strident voices of the exhorters
were quite as much a part of the night sounds of the place as the
bawling of the showman or the chatter of the frowsy girls. The woman,
shivering under her shawl and fondling her bruised cheek, glanced
apathetically at the kneeling men and women, when quickly her eyes
became fixed upon the face of one of them whom she knew. It was Maggie,
the girl who once occupied a dark little hole of a room next her own in
the big tenement house where she yet lived. Maggie! a forlorn, starving
thing of whom she had lost track entirely--in truth, she had not thought
of her since the day when the poor, sniveling, pale-faced creature had
been turned into the street for not paying her rent. Myrtle Street
does not waste much time in tracing the whereabouts of unfortunate
acquaintances, nor in thinking of them after they drift out of sight
under the ever-mounting wave of disaster which laps hungrily thereabout.
But Maggie in a big bonnet, with her eyes closed and kneeling in the
mud, was enough to arouse Myrtle Street’s benumbed curiosity. So the
bedraggled woman on the sidewalk pressed quite close to the curb and
stared at her, wondering vaguely at the transformation. The man ended
his prayer, and his companions, rising to their feet, began to sing
again. The woman on the curb took no heed of the words which they sang.
She was not for some moments vividly conscious of the song at all; she
was conscious only of being tired and cold. Her curiosity regarding
Maggie was dying, and she loitered with the little group which huddled
upon the curb, simply because she had nowhere else to go. But as she
stood there in the mist with her sunken eyes staring vacantly into the
night, the music which touched her ears began to affect her oddly. It
was a curious, wailing melody, with a barbaric accompaniment of jingling
tambourines, and as its monotonous, insistent swing beat the air a
strange feeling of awakening began to stir her dull veins. She weaved to
and fro a little in unison with the measure of the song. She closed her
eyes and felt a tightening in her throat. She clutched her shawl. She
felt a wild desire to cry out or sob. Suddenly they ceased to sing,
and she opened her eyes with a start. Maggie stepped into the little
semi-circle of men and women, and in high, hard tones began to speak.
“Oh! Those is great, great words, my friends, which we have just sung,”
she said; “awful words! Terrifyin’ words! Did you hear ‘em? Did you
understand ‘em? Did they come home to you?
“‘When the King comes in,
Like lightning’s flash will that instant show
Things hidden long from friend and foe.
Just what he is will each one know,
When the King comes in.’
“Think of it! Think of it! Like a flash will it be, and you will know
and I will know--everybody will know just what we are. Oh! It is awful!
Like lightning’s flash will that coming be--remember that! Don’t try to
believe it is far off. It isn’t. It may be to-night. It may be within
an hour--a minute--a second, for you and me. But be it near or far, it’s
coming, coming, coming!” Her voice shrilled piercingly, and the woman,
listening so intently upon the curb, felt a thrill of excitement at the
sound. It was not clear to her what it all meant, but she had a queer
feeling of awe as she looked at Maggie’s drawn face and listened to her
strained, sharp voice. “My God!” the girl continued, “think of it! Think
if He comes to-night and finds you in all your sin and wickedness and
filth. Think, think and be afraid. Think, and before it’s too late, get
saved! I am saved, and I thank God to-night for it!”
A low chorus of “Glory to God!”
“I believe!”
“I believe!” came from her companions.
“I am glad to-night to stand here to tell you that I am saved and
happy--oh! so happy! Why do you wait? Some of you know me--I was sinful
and tired and afraid once, but not now, thank God! not now. I’m saved,
saved, saved!”
Louder and wilder grew the girl’s cry. She waved her arms violently, and
paced rapidly to and fro. The listening woman shifted her position from
the sidewalk to the gutter. Her hands loosened their clutch upon her
shawl; she wrung them constantly as she looked with wondering eyes at
Maggie--Maggie who was n’t tired nor afraid any more, and was happy, and
all because she was “saved”! What did it all mean? How had it happened?
The girl stopped abruptly in her walk, and, as though answering her
thought, cried, “It is so easy to get saved, too. All you have to do is
to throw yourself on your knees and call on Jesus, and give yourself up
to Him, and all your sins and fears and troubles and burdens are gone,
and you’ll be happy and glad and free and saved forever!”
Without a pause her voice shot into the song which they had sung before;
but now its measure was changed to a clear, quick chant, with which she
kept time by a soft patting with her hands. Clearer and higher grew
her tones, and her companions, sinking to their knees, moaned in hushed
voices a weird accompaniment, while the gently shaken tambourines lent
again their strange barbaric rhythm, marked from time to time by the
great drum’s muffled beat.
Nearer and nearer to the semi-circle of kneeling figures stole the
listening woman. Tears were streaming from her eyes, her blue lips
quivered, a great sob tore itself from her tight throat. At length she
stood quite within the lines of the singers, and then, with a strange,
wild cry, she, too, fell upon her knees in the slime of the street. Her
old shawl fell from her head, her arms rested upon the drum, her swollen
face was buried in them. A great shout of “Glory to God!” went up about
her, and some one on the curb cried amazedly, “Why, it’s old Kit!” But
she heard only that monotonous wailing voice chanting stridently “When
the King Comes In.” Afterwards there came a knowledge of some one’s arm
across her shoulders, of whispered words and urgent voices, a sensation
of being lifted to her feet and helped along the street, and then a
confusing blur of yellow light from oil lamps in a dingy hall. And at
length full consciousness, dull fatigue, and an overwhelming desire for
sleep.
Maggie and one of the brothers in red jersey and jaunty cap walked home
with her, pouring into her ears encouraging advice in strange, cant
words, which she but half understood. At the doorway of the human hive
where she and Con slept and fought and starved the man looked sharply at
Maggie.
“You are sure!” he whispered.
“Yes--they’re married,” replied the girl.
“You will come to the barracks early to-morrow morning?” he asked,
turning to Kit.
She promised to do so, and, passing into the dark hall, climbed upward
to where Con lay in drunken stupor.
The following morning Kit stepped into a new world--a world of friendly
words and close companionship. The squalidly poor know nothing of that
luxury called friendship. They are huddled together in vast crowds,
squeezed and packed by scores within narrow limits, jostled and elbowed
by their kind at every turn. They are suffocated by close association.
But of fellowship, of interest in one another’s aims, of sympathy with
one another’s hardships, they know nothing. Like starving dogs over a
bone, they growl and snarl and fly straight at throats. So, when Kit
crept half sullenly into the barracks and was greeted by a loud chorus
of interested questions and by unstinted praise, the unfamiliar warmth
of friendly words thawed into life her sluggish sensibilities. And, too,
an entirely new view of herself and the world was suddenly opened to
her bewildered gaze,--for the first time in her hard life she was looked
upon as a human being of some importance. They told her that she was
suddenly become different from her kind, she was better than they, she
was “saved.” Not only that, but she must “save” others. She must quit
the old life, and work for the common good. Her new friends were as
uncouth and as poor and as hard pressed as herself. In their
attitude there was none of that maddening condescension, none of that
supercilious casting of surplus comforts at her feet, as one would toss
a half-eaten orange toward a hungry-eyed beggar brat, which was the
only sort of charity Kit had known of hitherto. The friendship of the
Salvationists was the frank comradeship of plain men and women; their
charity was the outcome of a crude, but living, religious idea. And
their wild enthusiasm caught her dull soul in its sweep and lifted it a
little above the fetid mists of her world. Some latent spark of womanly
ambition was stirred into life, and with halting, dogged feet she tried
to climb out of the dank valley of her past.
It was a wearisome task, but the exhilarating sense of friendly interest
in her success sustained her. The old appetite for strong drink stung
her, but the excitement of the new life helped to dull the craving.
She tramped the streets with her companions, her cracked voice shouting
quaveringly with them as they sang. She stepped sometimes into the
little semicircle at the street corners to tell excitedly “how glad she
was that she was saved.” She knelt with the others and prayed aloud for
those who were not as she. She was one of a great, enthusiastic army,
held up and aided by the superficial strength which comes of close
fellowship and common aims. But with that growth of strength in one
quarter there came a strange weakness in another. She was growing
childishly afraid of Con, and with the growth of that fear there started
into life and waxed strong a new loathing and hatred for his rum-soaked
person. She would have fled from him, only that her new masters told
her she must stick to him. It was her duty to cling to him and to “save”
him. Their first injunction she obeyed meekly; but to their second
command she turned a deaf ear. She knew what Con was; they did not.
Every human creature in the wide world might be saved--except her
husband. He was beyond the pale of humanity. So long as she did not
bother him, he paid little attention to her goings and comings. Only
once she ventured to protest when he had spent a week’s earnings for
drink (Con had a “pull” with the ward “boss,” and when there were no
other means of getting money for drink he found employment with the
street-cleaners), and he had knocked her down for her temerity, and
after that she held her peace and wished dumbly that he might die.
At length there came a proud day when Kit, after unwonted labor over
her wash-tub, was the possessor of a decent black gown and of the
long-coveted poke bonnet. It was the eve of a great rally at the
barracks, when some officer of high degree from “headquarters” was to
review the ranks of his army. At the close of day, when the long shadows
were beginning to steal across the bare little room, with its musty bed,
its one chair, and its rickety table pushed into a corner, Kit crouched
upon the floor close up under the gray light of her window, intent upon
her work. There were but a few stitches needed to complete her gown,
and her stiff fingers fumbled eagerly with the unfamiliar needle. Her
thoughts were busy with the glories of the morrow, and she crooned
one of the Salvationist hymns as she sewed. And to her singing in the
twilight there came the sound of shuffling footsteps outside her door.
She looked up apprehensively as the door flew open to admit her husband.
He was drunk, sullenly, brutally drunk.
“Where’s my supper?” he demanded, falling heavily into the chair.
“Where’s my supper, I say?” he repeated, fixing an evil eye upon her.
“I’ll get it now, Con. I was busy workin’ on my dress, an’ I clean
forgot your supper,” she explained, humbly.
“Yer dress?” he asked. “What right’s a measly fool like you with
dresses? Le’s see it.” He stretched forth his hand. She caught the black
garment sharply away from him.
“No, you’ll spoil it!” she cried, tossing the dress into a corner behind
the bed. “You just set still there, an’ I’ll get you somethin’ to eat.”
“Eatin’ be damned!” he replied, surlily. “I want somethin’ to drink.
Here! you take the can an’ get somethin’ from Mike’s. ‘F you can buy
clothes, you can buy drinks.”
“No, no, Con, not now. Wait till I get supper.”
“I don’t want no supper! You rush de can, I tell you!”
“I won’t!”
“The hell you won’t!”
He started from his chair and went towards her, but something in her
eyes made even his sodden senses recoil. He looked at her dubiously a
moment, and then stumbled out of the room, muttering thickly.
As the door closed behind him, the woman sprang for her gown, and,
dragging it from the corner, slipped it on. A few more stitches were
needed in it, but she dared not wait to take them. A great terror filled
her soul. She felt that her husband would return quickly, uglier and
wilder by a few drams. With shaking fingers she pinned her gown together
as best she might. She smoothed her scanty, dry, dead hair with her
hands, and then she lifted her bonnet from the bed. She held it a moment
admiringly, drawing her fingers softly over its trimmings of dark-blue
silk, and along its narrow band of scarlet ribbon, where the bright
gilt letters shone. She put it on her head and tied the soft strings
carefully under her chin. She glanced hesitatingly at the old plaid
shawl, wishing that she had a better one, but the night was cold, and
she drew it about her shoulders. With a little sigh of relief she turned
to leave the room. As her hand touched the door-latch she heard Con’s
heavy tread upon the stairs. She noted that he staggered a little, and
with a quick indrawing of her breath she drew herself flat against the
wall in the shadows. The man threw the door open fiercely, steadying
himself against the jamb as he peered into the dim room.
“Where are you, you she-devil?” he called.
The woman made no sound, and he stepped inside the room, with his broad
back towards her. Inch by inch she crept along against the wall towards
the door, as he stood turning from side to side in his maudlin search
for her, and as her feet touched the threshold he turned and saw her. He
rushed forward and grabbed her arms.
“Givin’ me the dirty sneak, are you?” he growled, shoving her inside the
room and closing the door. “What d’ yer mean? Eh?”
Kit made no answer. She backed off, her face gleaming white inside her
big bonnet.
“Yer a nice one, ain’t you?” he continued. “Won’t get me nothin’ to eat
or drink, an’ spendin’ yer money fur clothes, an’ then tryin’ to make
a sneak! Oh! I was onto you all the time! You white-faced fool! What d’
yer mean? Eh? Damn you, what d’ yer mean?”
“Stop, Con! Don’t hit me!”
He stumbled forward deliberately and struck her upturned face. She
staggered into the corner by the table, and faced him again. A tiny
stream of something red trickled down her cheek. Her eyes were suddenly
ablaze.
“Let me go!” she shrieked. “Let me go!”
“Yer’ll go an’ get de can filled, that’s where yer’ll go!”
“I won’t--_never!_”
A spasm of hate and rage and terror writhed in her face. With the
quickness of desperation she caught a knife from the table and waited
for him.
He lunged towards her with uplifted arm. Before his blow fell she gave
one swift thrust, and his arm came down simply upon her shoulder. For
a moment he stood strangely still. He clenched his fist; his teeth were
tight; he breathed hard through his nose.
“Damn you----” Then he reeled and fell.
And as the woman stood there in the gathering gloom, with his blood
crawling towards her on the floor, she heard the beat of a drum, and
the sound of voices singing shrilly, far down the street. On they came,
nearer and louder, until her listening ears heard the thrum of the
tambourines. Under her window they passed, and away into the night,
until at last their sound was lost in the ceaseless, sullen tumult of
Myrtle Street.
MANDANY’S FOOL
By Maria Louise Pool
YE ain’t got hungry for termarters, be ye?”