Eventually they entered into a dark region where, from a careening
building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads of babies to the
street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn raised yellow dust from
cobbles and swirled it against an hundred windows. Long streamers of
garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In all unhandy places there were
buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In the street infants played or
fought with other infants or sat stupidly in the way of vehicles.
Formidable women, with uncombed hair and disordered dress, gossiped
while leaning on railings, or screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered
persons, in curious postures of submission to something, sat smoking
pipes in obscure corners. A thousand odors of cooking food came forth
to the street. The building quivered and creaked from the weight of
humanity stamping about in its bowels.
A small ragged girl dragged a red, bawling infant along the crowded
ways. He was hanging back, baby-like, bracing his wrinkled, bare legs.
The little girl cried out: "Ah, Tommie, come ahn. Dere's Jimmie and
fader. Don't be a-pullin' me back."
She jerked the baby's arm impatiently. He fell on his face, roaring.
With a second jerk she pulled him to his feet, and they went on. With
the obstinacy of his order, he protested against being dragged in a
chosen direction. He made heroic endeavors to keep on his legs,
denounce his sister and consume a bit of orange peeling which he chewed
between the times of his infantile orations.
As the sullen-eyed man, followed by the blood-covered boy, drew near,
the little girl burst into reproachful cries. "Ah, Jimmie, youse bin
fightin' agin."
The urchin swelled disdainfully.
"Ah, what deh hell, Mag. See?"
The little girl upbraided him, "Youse allus fightin', Jimmie, an' yeh
knows it puts mudder out when yehs come home half dead, an' it's like
we'll all get a poundin'."
She began to weep. The babe threw back his head and roared at his
prospects.
"Ah, what deh hell!" cried Jimmie. "Shut up er I'll smack yer mout'.
See?"
As his sister continued her lamentations, he suddenly swore and struck
her. The little girl reeled and, recovering herself, burst into tears
and quaveringly cursed him. As she slowly retreated her brother
advanced dealing her cuffs. The father heard and turned about.
"Stop that, Jim, d'yeh hear? Leave yer sister alone on the street.
It's like I can never beat any sense into yer damned wooden head."
The urchin raised his voice in defiance to his parent and continued his
attacks. The babe bawled tremendously, protesting with great violence.
During his sister's hasty manoeuvres, he was dragged by the arm.
Finally the procession plunged into one of the gruesome doorways. They
crawled up dark stairways and along cold, gloomy halls. At last the
father pushed open a door and they entered a lighted room in which a
large woman was rampant.
She stopped in a career from a seething stove to a pan-covered table.
As the father and children filed in she peered at them.
"Eh, what? Been fightin' agin, by Gawd!" She threw herself upon
Jimmie. The urchin tried to dart behind the others and in the scuffle
the babe, Tommie, was knocked down. He protested with his usual
vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins against a table
leg.
The mother's massive shoulders heaved with anger. Grasping the urchin
by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled. She dragged
him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in water, began to scrub his
lacerated face with it. Jimmie screamed in pain and tried to twist his
shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms.
The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions
like that of a woman at a tragedy. The father, with a newly-ladened
pipe in his mouth, crouched on a backless chair near the stove.
Jimmie's cries annoyed him. He turned about and bellowed at his wife:
"Let the damned kid alone for a minute, will yeh, Mary? Yer allus
poundin' 'im. When I come nights I can't git no rest 'cause yer allus
poundin' a kid. Let up, d'yeh hear? Don't be allus poundin' a kid."
The woman's operations on the urchin instantly increased in violence.
At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay cursing and
weeping.
The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a chieftain-like
stride approached her husband.
"Ho," she said, with a great grunt of contempt. "An' what in the devil
are you stickin' your nose for?"
The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously.
The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the corner drew his legs
carefully beneath him.
The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great mudded boots on the
back part of the stove.
"Go teh hell," he murmured, tranquilly.
The woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband's eyes. The
rough yellow of her face and neck flared suddenly crimson. She began
to howl.
He puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but finally arose and
began to look out at the window into the darkening chaos of back yards.
"You've been drinkin', Mary," he said. "You'd better let up on the
bot', ol' woman, or you'll git done."
"You're a liar. I ain't had a drop," she roared in reply.
They had a lurid altercation, in which they damned each other's souls
with frequence.
The babe was staring out from under the table, his small face working
in his excitement.
The ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner where the urchin lay.
"Are yehs hurted much, Jimmie?" she whispered timidly.
"Not a damn bit! See?" growled the little boy.
"Will I wash deh blood?"
"Naw!"
"Will I--"
"When I catch dat Riley kid I'll break 'is face! Dat's right! See?"
He turned his face to the wall as if resolved to grimly bide his time.
In the quarrel between husband and wife, the woman was victor. The man
grabbed his hat and rushed from the room, apparently determined upon a
vengeful drunk. She followed to the door and thundered at him as he
made his way down stairs.
She returned and stirred up the room until her children were bobbing
about like bubbles.
"Git outa deh way," she persistently bawled, waving feet with their
dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children. She shrouded
herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam at the stove, and
eventually extracted a frying-pan full of potatoes that hissed.
She flourished it. "Come teh yer suppers, now," she cried with sudden
exasperation. "Hurry up, now, er I'll help yeh!"
The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clatter they arranged
themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet dangling high from a
precarious infant chair and gorged his small stomach. Jimmie forced,
with feverish rapidity, the grease-enveloped pieces between his wounded
lips. Maggie, with side glances of fear of interruption, ate like a
small pursued tigress.
The mother sat blinking at them. She delivered reproaches, swallowed
potatoes and drank from a yellow-brown bottle. After a time her mood
changed and she wept as she carried little Tommie into another room and
laid him to sleep with his fists doubled in an old quilt of faded red
and green grandeur. Then she came and moaned by the stove. She rocked
to and fro upon a chair, shedding tears and crooning miserably to the
two children about their "poor mother" and "yer fader, damn 'is soul."
The little girl plodded between the table and the chair with a dish-pan
on it. She tottered on her small legs beneath burdens of dishes.
Jimmie sat nursing his various wounds. He cast furtive glances at his
mother. His practised eye perceived her gradually emerge from a
muddled mist of sentiment until her brain burned in drunken heat. He
sat breathless.
Maggie broke a plate.
The mother started to her feet as if propelled.
"Good Gawd," she howled. Her eyes glittered on her child with sudden
hatred. The fervent red of her face turned almost to purple. The
little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk in an earthquake.
He floundered about in darkness until he found the stairs. He
stumbled, panic-stricken, to the next floor. An old woman opened a
door. A light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's quivering face.
"Eh, Gawd, child, what is it dis time? Is yer fader beatin' yer
mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader?"