The girl, Maggie, blossomed in a mud puddle. She grew to be a most
rare and wonderful production of a tenement district, a pretty girl.
None of the dirt of Rum Alley seemed to be in her veins. The
philosophers up-stairs, down-stairs and on the same floor, puzzled over
it.
When a child, playing and fighting with gamins in the street, dirt
disguised her. Attired in tatters and grime, she went unseen.
There came a time, however, when the young men of the vicinity said:
"Dat Johnson goil is a puty good looker." About this period her
brother remarked to her: "Mag, I'll tell yeh dis! See? Yeh've edder
got teh go teh hell or go teh work!" Whereupon she went to work,
having the feminine aversion of going to hell.
By a chance, she got a position in an establishment where they made
collars and cuffs. She received a stool and a machine in a room where
sat twenty girls of various shades of yellow discontent. She perched
on the stool and treadled at her machine all day, turning out collars,
the name of whose brand could be noted for its irrelevancy to anything
in connection with collars. At night she returned home to her mother.
Jimmie grew large enough to take the vague position of head of the
family. As incumbent of that office, he stumbled up-stairs late at
night, as his father had done before him. He reeled about the room,
swearing at his relations, or went to sleep on the floor.
The mother had gradually arisen to that degree of fame that she could
bandy words with her acquaintances among the police-justices.
Court-officials called her by her first name. When she appeared they
pursued a course which had been theirs for months. They invariably
grinned and cried out: "Hello, Mary, you here again?" Her grey head
wagged in many a court. She always besieged the bench with voluble
excuses, explanations, apologies and prayers. Her flaming face and
rolling eyes were a sort of familiar sight on the island. She measured
time by means of sprees, and was eternally swollen and dishevelled.
One day the young man, Pete, who as a lad had smitten the Devil's Row
urchin in the back of the head and put to flight the antagonists of his
friend, Jimmie, strutted upon the scene. He met Jimmie one day on the
street, promised to take him to a boxing match in Williamsburg, and
called for him in the evening.
Maggie observed Pete.
He sat on a table in the Johnson home and dangled his checked legs with
an enticing nonchalance. His hair was curled down over his forehead in
an oiled bang. His rather pugged nose seemed to revolt from contact
with a bristling moustache of short, wire-like hairs. His blue
double-breasted coat, edged with black braid, buttoned close to a red
puff tie, and his patent-leather shoes looked like murder-fitted
weapons.
His mannerisms stamped him as a man who had a correct sense of his
personal superiority. There was valor and contempt for circumstances
in the glance of his eye. He waved his hands like a man of the world,
who dismisses religion and philosophy, and says "Fudge." He had
certainly seen everything and with each curl of his lip, he declared
that it amounted to nothing. Maggie thought he must be a very elegant
and graceful bartender.
He was telling tales to Jimmie.
Maggie watched him furtively, with half-closed eyes, lit with a vague
interest.
"Hully gee! Dey makes me tired," he said. "Mos' e'ry day some farmer
comes in an' tries teh run deh shop. See? But dey gits t'rowed right
out! I jolt dem right out in deh street before dey knows where dey is!
See?"
"Sure," said Jimmie.
"Dere was a mug come in deh place deh odder day wid an idear he wus
goin' teh own deh place! Hully gee, he wus goin' teh own deh place! I
see he had a still on an' I didn' wanna giv 'im no stuff, so I says:
'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble,' I says like dat!
See? 'Git deh hell outa here an' don' make no trouble'; like dat.
'Git deh hell outa here,' I says. See?"
Jimmie nodded understandingly. Over his features played an eager
desire to state the amount of his valor in a similar crisis, but the
narrator proceeded.
"Well, deh blokie he says: 'T'hell wid it! I ain' lookin' for no
scrap,' he says (See?), 'but' he says, 'I'm 'spectable cit'zen an' I
wanna drink an' purtydamnsoon, too.' See? 'Deh hell,' I says. Like
dat! 'Deh hell,' I says. See? 'Don' make no trouble,' I says. Like
dat. 'Don' make no trouble.' See? Den deh mug he squared off an'
said he was fine as silk wid his dukes (See?) an' he wanned a drink
damnquick. Dat's what he said. See?"
"Sure," repeated Jimmie.
Pete continued. "Say, I jes' jumped deh bar an' deh way I plunked dat
blokie was great. See? Dat's right! In deh jaw! See? Hully gee, he
t'rowed a spittoon true deh front windee. Say, I taut I'd drop dead.
But deh boss, he comes in after an' he says, 'Pete, yehs done jes'
right! Yeh've gota keep order an' it's all right.' See? 'It's all
right,' he says. Dat's what he said."
The two held a technical discussion.
"Dat bloke was a dandy," said Pete, in conclusion, "but he hadn' oughta
made no trouble. Dat's what I says teh dem: 'Don' come in here an'
make no trouble,' I says, like dat. 'Don' make no trouble.' See?"
As Jimmie and his friend exchanged tales descriptive of their prowess,
Maggie leaned back in the shadow. Her eyes dwelt wonderingly and
rather wistfully upon Pete's face. The broken furniture, grimey walls,
and general disorder and dirt of her home of a sudden appeared before
her and began to take a potential aspect. Pete's aristocratic person
looked as if it might soil. She looked keenly at him, occasionally,
wondering if he was feeling contempt. But Pete seemed to be enveloped
in reminiscence.
"Hully gee," said he, "dose mugs can't phase me. Dey knows I kin wipe
up deh street wid any t'ree of dem."
When he said, "Ah, what deh hell," his voice was burdened with disdain
for the inevitable and contempt for anything that fate might compel him
to endure.
Maggie perceived that here was the beau ideal of a man. Her dim
thoughts were often searching for far away lands where, as God says,
the little hills sing together in the morning. Under the trees of her
dream-gardens there had always walked a lover.