"Who are you hustling for?"
For a moment she seemed to consider the advisability of answering. But
what was the use of trying to hide things from a "cop"? What I did not
know, I could easily find out. Her cadet's _nom-de-guerre_ was
"Blackie." She spoke of him without enthusiasm, without marked
revulsion--much as we speak of the unavoidable discomforts of life, such
as the bad air in the subway, or the tipping system. With a few
questions, I got her story--quite a different one from what she had told
Norman.
Ever since they had come to America, her mother had been scraping out a
bare living for herself and her daughter by means of a small fruit
business, and by letting rooms behind the store to boarders. One of
these men had seduced Nina under promise of taking her to the marionette
show. This had happened--"Oh, a very long time ago"--at too remote a
date to be definitely remembered. She spoke of this man with
foul-worded bitterness. It was not on account of the evil he had done
her, but because he had not taken her to the show. "Men always cheat
us," she said. "It don't matter how foxy you are, they beat you to it."
She had not burdened her memory with any precise record of her childish
amours. They had been without pleasure--for an ice-cream cone, a few
pennies, a chance to go to a show. She was a devotee of Bowery drama.
"From Rags to Riches" was her favorite. "That," she said, "was
something grand!"
The first person who had come anywhere near making love to her was this
cadet "Blackie." She had left her mother, without any regret, to live
with him. That also had been "something grand"--at first. As near as
she could remember, it was about a month before he drove her out on the
street to "hustle" for him. Was he good to her, I asked. She shrugged
her shoulders. Was he not a man? Then she showed her first enthusiasm.
He had a great "pull," he was a friend of the "Old Man on Fourteenth
Street." She gave "Blackie" this sincere tribute, the cops never
troubled her. But he did have a temper. "It sure is hell, when he's
mad." She rolled up the sleeve of her pajamas and showed me the bruise
on her arm. It had been a kick. What for? She had forgotten.
Then Benson came in, his arms full of bundles. I don't suppose he had
spent more than fifteen dollars--things are cheap in that neighborhood.
But it was an imposing assortment. I could not have bought so complete
a trousseau without minute written instructions.
Nina forgot her troubles in an instant, they never troubled her long.
She pulled the bundles to pieces and scattered the garments everywhere.
Guiseppe came in on some errand, but one glimpse of those feminine
frivolities, strewn about our formerly sedate bachelor chairs finished
him. With a wild Garibaldian oath, he rushed back to his kitchen.
It was not in Nina's nature to allow anything to intervene between her
and her immediate desire. The things once seen, had to be tried on.
"Come, come," Norman protested. "You'd better do your dressing in the
other room."
Nina seemed surprised at his scruples, but, gathering up the garments,
followed him docilely down the hall. Shrieks of glee came through the
open door, beat against my ears--distressingly. I seemed to hear the
bones of some ghastly _danse maccabre_, rattling behind her mirth. But
as if to drive away my gloom, she soon dashed into the room, fully
booted and spurred. She was very pretty. And how she laughed! She
seemed a sort of care-free and very young bacchante--the daughter of
some goddess of gayety. She jumped on the table and, imitating a music
hall artiste, danced a mild mixture of fandango and cancan. And as she
danced, she sang--a ribald, barroom song. But the words meant nothing
to her, she was just seeking an outlet for her high feelings, expressing
her childish joy in her new possessions.
Our neighboring church bell began to strike the hour. Nina brought down
the foot which was in the air and, in a strained attitude, listened.
"Gee!" she said, jumping down to the floor. "It's ten o'clock."
For a moment she stood irresolute, and then her face hardening, she
walked up to Norman.
"Gim'me two dollars."
The sudden demand hit him like a blow.
"Won't you stay to lunch with us?" he asked lamely.
"No. I've got to go--now! I want two dollars."
Such bargaining is unbearable to me, I fled to my room. In a few
minutes, Norman came to my door.
"What can I do about this, Arnold?"
"Oh pay her her wages, and let her go," I said, "what else is there to
do?"
"My God," he swore and stamped into my room. His face was white, his lip
was bleeding a little where he had bitten it. "Somehow I can't! What
rotten creatures we all are! Of course I've known all about this--but
we have to touch it--to realize it.... Why did I ever let her come into
my life? I can't send her back to it. She's such a kid. And--Good
God!--those damned, drunken Bowery sailors!"
"Look here, Norman, you're only making matters worse for her. She'll
get a beating if she don't have the money to give her cadet. He's...."
"Cadet?" Norman interrupted me, as though he had never heard the word
before. He threw himself down on my bed. I had never seen him so
moved.
"Isn't there any way out of it?" he groaned.
I hate to plead absolute despair, but I could see no way out. So I
tried to talk reasonably.
"Don't take it so hard. She's bred to it. It isn't half as bad to her
as you think. It's all she knows. She doesn't despise this cur of a
cadet, she hustles for--the way we do. He's her man--the pivot of her
existence." And I told him what she had said about Blackie. "He
doesn't beat her as often as he might. She feels rather fortunate,
because he's not worse. There isn't any way out. They call it the most
ancient profession. Her hard times haven't begun yet,--she's young.
She's living on the fat of the only land she ever knew. It isn't
exactly a bed of roses--but she's never known a softer one."
"You're a sophist!" he cried, jumping up. "Lies. Damn lies! She has
known something better. My God--you should see her smile when she's
asleep! I can't stop prostitution, but I can keep her out of the worst
of it. She's too young for these Bowery dens. I won't let her go back
to that damn pimp."
"Go slow," I said. "What have you got to offer in exchange--for this
cadet? I tell you, he's the big factor of her life. Are you willing to
take the time and trouble to fill his place? Money won't do it. She
can't count above fifty. How are you going to amuse her? She's used to
excitement, to street life, the buzz of the Bowery. You're going to
offer her a gilded cage, an upholstered cell. It won't work. And
suppose you do succeed in giving her a taste for a finer life--what
then? After you get through, she'll only find the old life harder.
What's to become of her when you're tired?"
"You're the devil's advocate," he said vehemently.
"Perhaps. But are you a God? It would take all of a pretty lively
God's time to help--to really help--the lady."
"We'll see what a man can do," he said and stamped out, back to the
library. In a few minutes he called me.
"It's beyond me," he said. "It looks like fright. She seems to like me
and the place. I think she'd stay, if she wasn't afraid of her old
gang. See if you can reassure her."
"Nina," I asked, "are you in love with Blackie?"
She did not seem to be sure what the term meant.
"He ain't so bad."
"Well, if he were dead," I tried again, "would you stay here with Mr.
Benson?"
"Sure," she said. "Sure!"
"You're afraid of Blackie?"
She nodded.
"Well. Cheer up. He can't hurt you here."
"He'd have me pinched," she insisted, doggedly. "He's got a pull with
the cops. He'd sure have me sent to the Island, if I tried to shake
him."
"Look here,"--again I flashed my badge--"It's gold. That means I'm the
same as a captain. I've got ten times more pull than Blackie. If he
gets gay, I'll lock him up. I'll plant a gun in his pocket and send him
up the river for concealed weapons. You don't need to be afraid of
him."
"Gee," she said, "I'd like to stay. But he'd sure get me. He's a bad
one."
"He'll be a dead one," I said. "If he starts anything with a friend of
mine."
I talked a few minutes more, but not till I showed her a pair of
hand-cuffs, which I kept in my room by way of a curiosity, did she
really believe she was safe and begin to smile again.
Having established the family, I made an excuse to go out. I came back
late at night and found Benson sitting alone in front of the fire.
"She's asleep," he said.
"Must have had a lot of excitement," I replied, "to be sleepy at this
hour."
Having spent all the day outdoors, tramping in the open air, my brain
had cleared a little. The thing had lost its distorted proportions, had
fallen into focus. I could not understand how the affair had seemed so
momentous to me. Such things, I knew very well, were happening on all
sides, all the time. I was sorry for Norman. He would take it
seriously and that, I felt, meant days of stress and sadness. My work
in the Tombs had made me realize more certainly than he could the
immense chances against his helping the girl. How many futile efforts I
had made at first to lend a hand to some of these unfortunate women! I
had given it up in defeat. For her, even if the powers of darkness
pulled her back at last, it would mean at least a little oasis of
comfort and consideration in the barren desert life the gods had mapped
out for her.
"There's one thing, I must say for my soul's good," Norman said. "It's
a hard business, this analyzing of our motives. I'm sure I do want to
save her, if I can, from being a public prostitute. But it's equally
true I want her for myself. I certainly despise this cadet,
Blackie--but it's also true that I'm suddenly become just ordinarily,
humanly jealous of him. I don't want to pretend that I'm wholly
occupied in trying to be God-like."
"Well--I suppose I'm a cynic," I said. "But I don't expect any
wonderful reformation--in either of you. Only don't be unfair to
her--don't expect too much of her."
And so Nina became an accepted member of our household.
*V*
Norman certainly set earnestly about the work of filling the place in
Nina's life previously held by Blackie.
A few nights later I joined them in the middle of the performance at
Koster and Bials. Nina looked away from the stage only long enough to
say "Hello." She was vibrant with excitement. Norman and I sat back in
the box much more interested in her than in the commonplaces of the
stage. We were both rather ill at ease in so senseless and light-minded
a place.
"This experience," he said and I thought I caught a tone of apology in
his voice, "is bringing me a closer understanding of the life of the
poor. Of course they'd resent my saying that Nina helped me to
understand them. The poor are the worst of all snobs. We 'reformers'
believe in the working-class a lot more than they do in themselves.
It's hard to get at them--we only meet the kind who know how to talk and
most of them are mute. The chaps in my Studenten Verein long for
education. They envy us who had it forced on us--and, of course, pose
before us. You can't really get to people who envy you.
"But Nina never studied--barely reads--don't want to. This sort of
thing is her _summum bonum_. I haven't found anything that makes her
happier than for me to put on evening clothes and take her to a flashy
up-town restaurant. And she can't help talking. She has no
self-consciousness--no pose. What she says is reality. It's the wisdom
of the tenements she babbles out--the venerable philosophy of the poor.
I'm learning a lot from her."
"You needn't apologize to me," I said.
"I wasn't apologizing," he retorted. "Why should I?"
"I said you needn't."
"But you meant that I ought to--not to you, but to somebody. To whom?
To God? To Mrs. Grundy? No--why should I apologize?"--He threw his arm
back so that his hand lay on my shoulder, it was the nearest our great
love for each other ever came to the expression of a caress--"I know you
don't approve, Arnold. But after all whom am I harming? You and I have
been leading a pretty glum sort of a life...."
"You have," I interrupted. "I'm in no position to chuck any
self-righteous stones."
"Oh," he said. "That's what you meant when you said I need not
apologize to you."
"I suppose so."
"Well, to whom then? Tell me," he went on when I did not reply at once.
"I'm really glad to have the opinion of a disinterested onlooker. It
always helps. Tell me."
"Good God," I replied to his challenge, "I'm no oracle--no omniscient
voice of conscience. But it looks to me as though apologies were coming
to Nina."
"Nina?" he said in surprise.
"Yes. Don't you see what's happening? She's falling in love with you.
The real thing. She never saw anybody like you before. You're like the
shining white hero of the Bowery melodrama, who rescues the distressed
heroine at the last minute--and _marries her_. Of course you and I know
that the young millionaires with tenor voices don't marry the distressed
damsels. But remember the kind of dope her mind is filled with. The
wedding march always starts up, just before the curtain goes down."
The slap-stick comedians had finished their turn, the lights flared up
and for the first time I noticed Nina's resplendent gown. It was really
a beautiful dress. If her hair had been done up with a little more
skill and if Norman had not set all his authority against an excess of
powder and paint she would have looked quite like an uptown lady, of the
Holland Houses or Rector's, like those who go up Fifth Avenue to a ball
or like those who turn over to Broadway and strut about in the theater
lobbies to attract the attention of some gentleman from out of town.
I complimented her on her appearance and, she, pleased as a child, told
me how they had bought the dress that afternoon at a second-hand place
on Sixth Avenue. The most glorious experience of her life, before she
had met Norman, was a short acquaintance with the woman who played the
"lady villain" at "Miner's." They had had rooms in the same house for a
while. And this tragedienne had confided to Nina where she bought her
second-hand clothes. Norman in a dinner jacket and Nina in a shirtwaist
had attracted a good deal of attention, so he had decided that she must
have a more suitable outfit for evening wear. She had led the way. And
she told me with great animation--and frequent profanity--of the long
and complicated dickering which had preceded the final purchase. The
shop woman had asked $27.50 and Nina had stuck out for $17.50. At one
stage of the wrangle the woman had led Nina aside and called her a
little fool.
"'He's rich,' she says to me. 'He'll pay. Don't you know enough to
stick him. I'll knock off fifty cents, you say all right. He'll pay
it. And tomorrow you come round and I'll give you three dollars.' Now
wot do you think of that? Say. Do you know wot I did?"