were open. Suydam knew most of the inhabitants, and they seemed glad to
see him. Evidently they looked on him as a friend.
On the top floor, under the steps which led to the roof, was a den
scarce six feet by eight. Small as it was, this room had better
furniture than most of those De Ruyter had seen; it contained evidences
of a desire to make a home. There were violent chromos pinned to the
wall. The bed had a parti-colored coverlet. The sole inhabitant was a
tall, dark Italian with fiery eyes. He was cooking macaroni with ropy
cheese over an oil-lamp. His door was ajar only.
"Good-morning, Pietro," said Suydam, cheerfully.
Pietro obeyed his first impulse, and shut the door swiftly. Then he
changed his mind, for he opened the door and peered out suspiciously.
Recognizing Suydam, he was about to throw it wide, when he caught sight
of De Ruyter. There was a moment of hesitancy, and then he took his hand
from the knob of the door and went on with his cooking.
"I am showing my friend over the building," explained Suydam.
The Italian said nothing. Apparently his cooking absorbed all his
attention. But he gave De Ruyter a searching glance.
Suydam turned to the novelist. "This is Pietro Barretti," he said; "he
is one of the most expert layers of mosaic in America. He is from
Naples; that's the reason he cooks macaroni so well, I suppose."
"Certainly I haven't seen macaroni cooked that way since I was in Naples
last," the novelist remarked, for the sake of talk, not knowing just
what to make of the Italian's manner.
"Your wife not here?" asked Suydam.
"No," the Italian answered, abruptly.
"Where is she?" persisted the young man.
"She mort," responded Barretti.
"Dead?" Suydam cried. "That is very sad. When did she die?"
"Ten days," the Italian replied.
When Suydam and De Ruyter had made an end of their visit, and were going
down the stairs cautiously, the young man from the University Settlement
asked the novelist if he had seen anything interesting.
"Oh yes," was the answer. "I've got lots of color; just what I wanted.
And that Italian whose wife was mort--he's copy, I'm sure."
"Copy?" queried Suydam.
"I mean I can use him in one of my sketches for the _Metropolis_," the
novelist explained. "I wish I knew what his wife was like."
"She was a pretty girl--dark-haired, dark-eyed, with a lively smile,"
Suydam said. "He was very jealous of her. I've been told they used to
quarrel bitterly."
"I shouldn't like to have that fellow for an enemy," De Ruyter declared,
as they passed through the alleyway and came out in the open air. "He
has an eye like a glass stiletto."
The novelist and the young man from the University Settlement walked up
the street together. As they drew near to a police-station, jealously
guarded by its green lamps, three officers came out and turned down the
street.
When the policemen were abreast of the two friends, one of them stepped
aside and accosted the young man from the Settlement.
"Mr. Suydam," he said, "you gentlemen from the Settlement sometimes know
what's going on better than we do. Have you seen Pietro Barretti
lately--the one they call Italian Pete?"
"I saw him not ten minutes ago--in his own room," Suydam answered.
"He's all right, boys," cried the policeman. "He's there."
"Do you want him?" asked Suydam.
"Don't we?" the policeman replied, promptly. "We've got to bring him
in."
"What has he done?" De Ruyter inquired.
"Oh, he's done enough!" responded the officer. "He murdered his wife
last week, that's what he's done."
Suydam looked at De Ruyter.
"Yes," said De Ruyter, "that completes the picture. I can get a good
_mot de la fin_ now."
(1893.)
BEFORE THE BREAK OF DAY
She lived in a little wooden house on the corner of the street huddled
in the shadow of two towering tenements. There are a few frail buildings
of this sort still left in that part of the city, half a mile east of
the Bowery and half a mile south of Tompkins Square, where the
architecture is as irregular, as crowded, and as little cared for as the
population. Amid the old private houses erected for a single family, and
now violently altered to accommodate eight or ten--amid the tall new
tenements, stark and ugly--here and there one can still find wooden
houses built before the city expanded, half a century old now, worn and
shabby and needlessly ashamed in the presence of every new edifice no
better than they. With the peak of their shingled roofs they are
pathetic survivals of a time when New York still remembered that it had
been New Amsterdam, and when it did not build its dwellings in imitation
of the polyglot loftiness of the Tower of Babel. It was in one of these
little houses with white clapboarded walls, ashen gray in the paling
moonlight, that Maggie O'Donnell lay fast asleep, when the bell in a
far-off steeple tolled three in the morning of the day that was to be
the Fourth of July.
She was asleep in the larger of the two little rooms over the saloon. In
that part of the city there are saloons on every corner almost, and
sometimes two and three in a block. The signs over the doors of most of
these saloons and over the doors of the groceries and of the bakeries
and of the other shops bear strangely foreign names. The German quarter
of the city is not far off, nor is the Italian, nor the Chinese; but
hereabouts the houses are packed with Poles chiefly, and chiefly
Jews--industrious, docile, and saving. Not until midnight had the whir
of the sewing-machines ceased in the tenements which occupied the three
other corners. The sign over the door of the saloon above which Maggie
lay fast asleep bore an Irish name, the name of her husband, Terence
O'Donnell. But the modest boards which displayed his name were overawed
by the huge signs that flanked them, filling a goodly share of the wall
on either street and proclaiming the "McGown's Pass Brewery, Kelly &
Company."
These brewer's signs were so large that they made the little house seem
even smaller than it was--and it was not more than twenty feet square.
The doors of the saloon were right at the corner, of course, to catch
trade. On one street there were two windows, and on the other one window
and a door over which was the sign "Family Entrance." This door opened
into a little passage, from which access could be had to the saloon, and
from which also arose the narrow stairs leading to the home of Terence
O'Donnell and Maggie, his wife, on the floor above. The saloon filled
the whole ground-floor except the space taken up by this entry and the
stairs. A single jet of gas had burned dimly over the bar ever since
Terry had locked up a little after midnight. The bar curved across the
saloon, and behind it the sideboard with its bevelled-edge mirrors lined
the two inner walls. The sideboard glittered with glasses built up in
tiers, and a lemon lay yellow at the top of every pyramid. The
beer-pumps were in the centre under the bar; at one end was the small
iron safe where Terence kept his money; and at the other end, against
the wall, just behind the door which opened into the Family Entrance,
was a telephone.
Up-stairs there were two little rooms and a closet or two. The smaller
of the rooms Maggie had turned into a kitchen and dining-room. The
larger--the one on the corner--was their bedroom, and here Maggie lay
asleep. The night was close and warm, and though the windows were open,
the little white curtains hung limp and motionless. The day before had
been hot and cloudless, so the brick buildings on the three other
corners had stored up heat for fifteen hours, and had been giving it out
ever since the sun had set. Stifling as it was, Maggie O'Donnell slept
heavily. It was after midnight when Terry had kissed her at the door,
and she had been asleep for three hours. Already there were faint hints
of the coming day, for here in New York the sun rises early on the
Fourth of July--at half-past four. A breeze began to blow lazily up from
the East River and fluttered the curtains feebly. Maggie tossed
uneasily, reached out her hand, and said "Terry."
Suddenly she was wide awake. For a moment she looked stupidly at the
empty place beside her, and then she remembered that Terry would be gone
all night, working hard on the boat and the barges making ready for the
picnic. She turned again, but sleep had left her. She lay quietly in bed
listening; she could catch nothing but the heavy rumble of a brewery
wagon in the next street and the hesitating toot of a Sound steamer.
Then she heard afar off three or four shots of a revolver, and she knew
that some young fellow was up early, and had already begun to celebrate
the Fourth on the roof of the tenement where he lived.
She tried to go to sleep, but the effort was hopeless. She was awakened
fully, and she knew that there was small chance of her dropping off into
slumber again. More than once she had wakened like this in the middle of
the night, an hour or so before daybreak, and then she had to lie there
in bed quietly listening to Terry's regular breathing. She lay there now
alone, thinking of Terry, grateful for his goodness to her, and happy in
his love. She lay there alone, wondering where she would be now if Terry
had not taken pity on her.
Then all at once she raised herself in bed, and held her breath and
listened. For a second she thought she heard a noise in the saloon below
her. She was not nervous in the least, but she wished Terry had not left
so much money in the safe; and this was the first night he had been away
from her since they had been married--nearly two years ago. She strained
her ears, but the sound was not repeated. She sank back on the pillow
again, making sure that it was a rat dropping down from the bar, where
he had been picking up the crumbs of cheese. There were many rats in the
cellar, and sometimes they ventured up even to the bedroom and the
kitchen next door.
Time was when it would have taken a loud noise to wake the girl who was
now Terence O'Donnell's wife out of a sound sleep. After her mother
died, when Maggie was not five years old, her father had moved into one
of the worst tenements in the city, a ram-shackle old barrack just at
the edge of Hell's Kitchen; and there was never any quiet there, day or
night, in the house or in the street. There was always a row of some
sort going on, whatever the hour of the day; if profanity and riot could
keep a girl awake she would never have had any sleep there. But Maggie
did not recall that she had been a wakeful child; indeed, she remembered
that she could sleep at any time and anywhere. On the hot summer nights,
when her father came home intoxicated, she would steal away and climb
up to the roof and lie down there, slumbering as healthily as though she
were in their only room.
Even then her father used to get drunk often, on Saturday night always,
and frequently once or twice in the middle of the week. And when he had
taken too much he was mad always. If he found her at home he beat her.
She could recall distinctly the first time her father had knocked her
down, but the oaths that had accompanied the blow she had forgotten. He
had not knocked her down often, but he had sworn at her every day of her
life. The vocabulary of profanity was the first that her infant ears had
learned to distinguish.
Her father quit drinking for a month after he married again. They moved
away from Hell's Kitchen to a better house near the East River. All went
well for a little while, and her step-mother was good to her. But her
father went back to his old ways again, and soon his new wife turned out
to be no better. When the fit was on they quarrelled with each other,
and they took turns in beating Maggie, if she were not quick to make her
escape. It was when aiming a blow at Maggie one Saturday night that her
father pitched forward and fell down a flight of the tenement-house
stairs, and was picked up dead. The neighbors carried him up to the room
where his wife lay in a liquorish stupor.
Maggie was nearly fourteen then. She went on living with her
step-mother, who got her a place in a box-factory. The first days of
work were the happiest of Maggie's girlhood. She remembered the joy
which she felt at her ability to earn money; it gave her a sense of
being her own mistress, of being able to hold her own in the world. And
she made friends among the other girls. One of them, Sadie McDermott,
had a brother Jim, who used to come around on Saturday night and tease
his sister for money. Jim belonged to a gang, and he never worked if he
could help it. He had no trade. Maggie remembered the Saturday night
when she and Sadie had walked home together, and when Jim got mad
because his sister would not divide her wages with him. He snatched her
pocket-book and started to run. When Maggie reproved him with an oath
and caught him by one arm, he threw her off so roughly that she fell and
struck her head on a lamp-post so hard that she fainted.
As Maggie lay in her bed that Fourth of July morning, while her past
life unrolled itself before her like a panorama, she knew that the scar
on the side of her head was not the worst wound Jim McDermott had dealt
her. As she looked back, she wondered how she had ever been friendly
with him; how she had let him follow her about; how she had allowed him
to make love to her. It was on Jim McDermott's account that she had had
the quarrel with her step-mother. Having robbed a drunken man of five
dollars, Jim had invited Maggie to a picnic; and the step-mother, a
little drunker than usual that evening, had said that if Maggie went
with him she would not be received again. Maggie was not one to take a
dare, and she told Jim she would go with him in the morning. The
step-mother cursed her for an ungrateful girl; and when Maggie returned
with him from the picnic late the next night, and came to the door of
the room where she and her step-mother lived, they found it locked
against her, and all Maggie's possessions tied in a bundle, and
scornfully left outside on the landing.
It had not taken Jim long that night to persuade Maggie to go away with
him; and she had not seen her step-mother since. A week later, but not
before he and Maggie had quarrelled, Jim was arrested for robbing the
drunken man; he was sent up to the Island. Since the picnic Maggie had
not been back to the factory. Jim had taken her with him one night to a
dance-hall, and there she went without him when she was left alone in
the world. There she had met Terry a month later. When she first saw
Terry the thing plainest before her was the Morgue; she was on the way
there, and she was going fast, and she knew it. Although winter had not
yet come, she had already a cough that racked her day and night.
And as she lay there in her comfortable bed, and thought of the chill of
the Morgue from which Terry had saved her, she closed her eyes to keep
out the dreadful picture, and she clinched her fists across her
forehead. Then she smiled as she remembered the way Terry had thrashed
Jim, who had got off the Island somehow before his time was up. Jim said
he had a pull with the police, and he came to her for money, and he
threatened to have her taken up. It was then Terry had the scrap with
him, and did him up. Terry had had a day off, for his boss kept closed
on Sundays; at that time Terry was keeping bar at a high-toned cafe near
Gramercy Park.
When he thrashed Jim that was not the first time Terry had been good to
her. Nor was it the last. A fortnight later he took her away from the
dance-hall, and as soon as he could get a day off he married her. They
went down to the Tombs, and the judge married them. The judge knew
Terry, and when he had kissed the bride he congratulated Terry, and said
that the new-made husband was a lucky man, and that he had got a good
wife.
A good wife Maggie knew she had been, and she was sure she brought Terry
luck. When the man who had been running the house which now bore the
name of Terence O'Donnell over its door got into trouble and had to skip
the country, the boss had put Terry in charge, and had let Maggie go to
house-keeping in the little rooms over the saloon; and when the boss
died suddenly, his widow knew Terry was honest, and sold out the place
to him, cheap, on the instalment plan. That was a year and a half ago,
and all the instalments had been paid except the last, which was not
due for a week yet, though the money for it lay all ready in the safe
down-stairs. And Terry was doing well; he was popular; his friends would
come two blocks out of the way to get a drink at his place; and he had
just had a chance to go into a picnic speculation. He was sure to make
money; and perhaps in two or three years they might be able to pay off
the mortgage on the fixtures. Then they would be rich; and perhaps Terry
would get into politics.
Suddenly the current of Maggie's thoughts was arrested. From the floor
below there came sounds, confused and muffled, and yet unmistakable.
Maggie listened, motionless, and then she got out of bed quickly. She
knew that there was some one in the saloon down-stairs; and at that hour
no one could be there for a good purpose. Whoever was there was a thief.
Perhaps it was some one of the toughs of the neighborhood, who knew that
Terry was away.
She had no weapon of any kind, but she was not in the least afraid. She
stepped cautiously to the head of the stairs, and crept stealthily down,
not delaying to put on her stockings. The sounds in the saloon
continued; they were few and slight, but Maggie could interpret them
plainly enough; they told her that a man having got into the house
somehow, had now gone behind the bar. Probably he was trying to steal
the change in the cash-drawer; she was glad that Terry had locked all
his money in the safe just before he went off.
When Maggie had slipped down the stairs gently, and stood in the little
passageway with the door into the saloon ajar before her, she felt a
slight draught, and she knew that the thief had entered through a
window, and had left it open. Yet there was no use in her calling for
assistance. The only people within reach of her voice were the poor
Poles, who were too poor-spirited to protest even if they saw her robbed
in broad daylight; they were cowardly creatures all of them; and she
could not hope for help from them as she would if they were only white
men. The policeman might be within reach of her cry; but he had a long
beat, and there was only a slim chance that he was near.
Her head was clear, and she thought swiftly. The thing to do, the only
thing, was to make use of the telephone to summon assistance. The
instrument was within two feet of her as she stood in the passage, but
it was on the other side of the door at the end of the bar, and
therefore in full view of any one who might be in the saloon. And it
would not be possible to ring up the central office and call for help
without being heard by the robber.
Having made up her mind what it was best for her to do, Maggie did not
hesitate a moment; she pushed the door gently before her and stepped
silently into the saloon. As the faint light from the single dim jet of
gas burning over the bar fell upon her, she looked almost pretty, with
the aureole of her reddish hair, and with her firm young figure draped
in the coarse white gown. She glanced around her, and for a second she
saw no one. The window before her was open, but the man who had broken
in was not in sight.
As she peered about she heard a scratching, grating noise, and then she
saw the top of a man's head just appearing above the edge of the bar
behind which his body was concealed. She knew then that the thief was
trying to get into the safe where Terry's money was locked up.
Leaving the door wide open behind her, Maggie took the two steps that
brought her to the telephone, and rapidly turned the handle. Then she
faced about swiftly to see what the man would do.
The first thing he did was to bob his head suddenly under the bar,
disappearing wholly. Then he slowly raised his face above the edge of
the bar, and Maggie found herself staring into the shifty eyes of Jim
McDermott.
"Hello, Maggie!" he said, as he stood up. "Is that you?"
She saw that he had a revolver in his right hand. But she put up her
hand again and repeated the telephone call.
"Drop that!" he cried, as he raised the revolver. "You try to squeal and
I'll shoot--see?"
"Where did you steal that pistol, Jim McDermott?" was all she answered.
"None o' your business where I got it," he retorted. "I got it good and
ready for you now. I kin use it too, and don't you forget it! You quit
that telephone or you'll see how quick I can shoot. You hear me?"
She did not reply. She was waiting for the central office to acknowledge
her call. She looked Jim McDermott square in the eyes, and it was he who
was uncomfortable and not she.
Then the bell of the telephone rang, and she turned and spoke into the
instrument clearly and rapidly and yet without flurry. "This is 31
Chatham. There's a burglar here. It's Jim McDermott. Send the police
quick."
This was her message; and then she faced about sharply and cried to him,
"Now shoot, and be damned!"
He took her at her word, and fired. The bullet bored a hole in the
wooden box of the telephone.
Maggie laughed tauntingly, and slipped swiftly out of the door, but not
swiftly enough to avoid the second bullet.
Five minutes later when the police arrived, just as the day was
beginning to break, they found Jim McDermott fled, the window open, the
safe uninjured, and Maggie O'Donnell lying in the passageway at the foot
of the stairs, her night-gown stained with blood from a flesh wound in
her arm.
(1893.)
A MIDSUMMER MIDNIGHT
After three years' service at sea on the flag-ship of the White
Squadron, Lieutenant John Stone had a long leave of absence. It was late
in the afternoon of one of the hottest days of August when he left the
navy-yard and took the ferry to New York. The street-car in which he
rode across town crawled along, the horses seeming to be exhausted by
the wearing weather of the preceding fortnight, and the driver had no
energy to keep them up to their work.
It mattered little to John Stone how slowly they went; he was in no
hurry; he had nothing to do; he had nobody waiting for him. At forty he
was alone in the world, without a blood-relation anywhere or any nearer
than a second cousin, without a home, without an address, except "Care
of the Navy Department, Washington, D.C." He was almost without ambition
even in the service now, for he had not yet had a command, and he would
not get his step for three or four years more. He was fond of his
profession, and of late he had been working lovingly at its early
history. He had come to New York now to look up in the libraries a few
missing links in an account of the rise and fall of Carthage as a sea
power. To be near the books he had to consult, he was going to stay at a
hotel within two or three blocks of Washington Square.
When he had registered at the hotel, the clerk, reading his name
upsidedown, said, courteously: "I'm sorry we can't do better for you,
Mr. Stone, but I shall have to put you on the sixth floor. You see, we
are overrun with our Southern and Western trade now; they have found out
that New York is the finest summer resort in the country. The best I can
do for you is to give you a room on the Avenue, with a bath-room
attached."
"That will do very well," Stone answered.
"Front!" called the clerk. "Show Mr. Stone up to 313."
When the naval officer reached room 313 it was nearly six o'clock. He
threw open the window and looked down at the street below. Even at that
height the heat welled up from the stone sidewalks and from the brick
walls opposite. To his ear it seemed almost as though the mighty roar of
the metropolis rose to him muffled and made more remote by the heat. He
lighted a cigar and leaned out of the window, and wondered how many
people there were in all the city whom he knew by sight, and how very
few there were who could call him by name.
A sweltering wind from the west swayed the thick and dusty branches of
the trees which lined the curb far down below him. He threw his cigar
away half smoked. Then he took a cold bath, and went down to the
dining-room somewhat refreshed.