Pete took note of Maggie.
"Say, Mag, I'm stuck on yer shape. It's outa sight," he said,
parenthetically, with an affable grin.
As he became aware that she was listening closely, he grew still more
eloquent in his descriptions of various happenings in his career. It
appeared that he was invincible in fights.
"Why," he said, referring to a man with whom he had had a
misunderstanding, "dat mug scrapped like a damn dago. Dat's right. He
was dead easy. See? He tau't he was a scrapper. But he foun' out
diff'ent! Hully gee."
He walked to and fro in the small room, which seemed then to grow even
smaller and unfit to hold his dignity, the attribute of a supreme
warrior. That swing of the shoulders that had frozen the timid when he
was but a lad had increased with his growth and education at the ratio
of ten to one. It, combined with the sneer upon his mouth, told
mankind that there was nothing in space which could appall him. Maggie
marvelled at him and surrounded him with greatness. She vaguely tried
to calculate the altitude of the pinnacle from which he must have
looked down upon her.
"I met a chump deh odder day way up in deh city," he said. "I was
goin' teh see a frien' of mine. When I was a-crossin' deh street deh
chump runned plump inteh me, an' den he turns aroun' an' says, 'Yer
insolen' ruffin,' he says, like dat. 'Oh, gee,' I says, 'oh, gee, go
teh hell and git off deh eart',' I says, like dat. See? 'Go teh hell
an' git off deh eart',' like dat. Den deh blokie he got wild. He says
I was a contempt'ble scoun'el, er somet'ing like dat, an' he says I was
doom' teh everlastin' pe'dition an' all like dat. 'Gee,' I says, 'gee!
Deh hell I am,' I says. 'Deh hell I am,' like dat. An' den I slugged
'im. See?"
With Jimmie in his company, Pete departed in a sort of a blaze of glory
from the Johnson home. Maggie, leaning from the window, watched him as
he walked down the street.
Here was a formidable man who disdained the strength of a world full of
fists. Here was one who had contempt for brass-clothed power; one
whose knuckles could defiantly ring against the granite of law. He was
a knight.
The two men went from under the glimmering street-lamp and passed into
shadows.
Turning, Maggie contemplated the dark, dust-stained walls, and the
scant and crude furniture of her home. A clock, in a splintered and
battered oblong box of varnished wood, she suddenly regarded as an
abomination. She noted that it ticked raspingly. The almost vanished
flowers in the carpet-pattern, she conceived to be newly hideous. Some
faint attempts she had made with blue ribbon, to freshen the appearance
of a dingy curtain, she now saw to be piteous.
She wondered what Pete dined on.
She reflected upon the collar and cuff factory. It began to appear to
her mind as a dreary place of endless grinding. Pete's elegant
occupation brought him, no doubt, into contact with people who had
money and manners. It was probable that he had a large acquaintance of
pretty girls. He must have great sums of money to spend.
To her the earth was composed of hardships and insults. She felt
instant admiration for a man who openly defied it. She thought that if
the grim angel of death should clutch his heart, Pete would shrug his
shoulders and say: "Oh, ev'ryt'ing goes."
She anticipated that he would come again shortly. She spent some of
her week's pay in the purchase of flowered cretonne for a lambrequin.
She made it with infinite care and hung it to the slightly-careening
mantel, over the stove, in the kitchen. She studied it with painful
anxiety from different points in the room. She wanted it to look well
on Sunday night when, perhaps, Jimmie's friend would come. On Sunday
night, however, Pete did not appear.
Afterward the girl looked at it with a sense of humiliation. She was
now convinced that Pete was superior to admiration for lambrequins.
A few evenings later Pete entered with fascinating innovations in his
apparel. As she had seen him twice and he had different suits on each
time, Maggie had a dim impression that his wardrobe was prodigiously
extensive.
"Say, Mag," he said, "put on yer bes' duds Friday night an' I'll take
yehs teh deh show. See?"
He spent a few moments in flourishing his clothes and then vanished,
without having glanced at the lambrequin.
Over the eternal collars and cuffs in the factory Maggie spent the most
of three days in making imaginary sketches of Pete and his daily
environment. She imagined some half dozen women in love with him and
thought he must lean dangerously toward an indefinite one, whom she
pictured with great charms of person, but with an altogether
contemptible disposition.
She thought he must live in a blare of pleasure. He had friends, and
people who were afraid of him.
She saw the golden glitter of the place where Pete was to take her. An
entertainment of many hues and many melodies where she was afraid she
might appear small and mouse-colored.
Her mother drank whiskey all Friday morning. With lurid face and
tossing hair she cursed and destroyed furniture all Friday afternoon.
When Maggie came home at half-past six her mother lay asleep amidst the
wreck of chairs and a table. Fragments of various household utensils
were scattered about the floor. She had vented some phase of drunken
fury upon the lambrequin. It lay in a bedraggled heap in the corner.
"Hah," she snorted, sitting up suddenly, "where deh hell yeh been? Why
deh hell don' yeh come home earlier? Been loafin' 'round deh streets.
Yer gettin' teh be a reg'lar devil."
When Pete arrived Maggie, in a worn black dress, was waiting for him in
the midst of a floor strewn with wreckage. The curtain at the window
had been pulled by a heavy hand and hung by one tack, dangling to and
fro in the draft through the cracks at the sash. The knots of blue
ribbons appeared like violated flowers. The fire in the stove had gone
out. The displaced lids and open doors showed heaps of sullen grey
ashes. The remnants of a meal, ghastly, like dead flesh, lay in a
corner. Maggie's red mother, stretched on the floor, blasphemed and
gave her daughter a bad name.