A forlorn woman went along a lighted avenue. The street was filled
with people desperately bound on missions. An endless crowd darted at
the elevated station stairs and the horse cars were thronged with
owners of bundles.
The pace of the forlorn woman was slow. She was apparently searching
for some one. She loitered near the doors of saloons and watched men
emerge from them. She scanned furtively the faces in the rushing
stream of pedestrians. Hurrying men, bent on catching some boat or
train, jostled her elbows, failing to notice her, their thoughts fixed
on distant dinners.
The forlorn woman had a peculiar face. Her smile was no smile. But
when in repose her features had a shadowy look that was like a sardonic
grin, as if some one had sketched with cruel forefinger indelible lines
about her mouth.
Jimmie came strolling up the avenue. The woman encountered him with an
aggrieved air.
"Oh, Jimmie, I've been lookin' all over fer yehs--," she began.
Jimmie made an impatient gesture and quickened his pace.
"Ah, don't bodder me! Good Gawd!" he said, with the savageness of a
man whose life is pestered.
The woman followed him along the sidewalk in somewhat the manner of a
suppliant.
"But, Jimmie," she said, "yehs told me ye'd--"
Jimmie turned upon her fiercely as if resolved to make a last stand for
comfort and peace.
"Say, fer Gawd's sake, Hattie, don' foller me from one end of deh city
teh deh odder. Let up, will yehs! Give me a minute's res', can't
yehs? Yehs makes me tired, allus taggin' me. See? Ain' yehs got no
sense. Do yehs want people teh get onto me? Go chase yerself, fer
Gawd's sake."
The woman stepped closer and laid her fingers on his arm. "But,
look-a-here--"
Jimmie snarled. "Oh, go teh hell."
He darted into the front door of a convenient saloon and a moment later
came out into the shadows that surrounded the side door. On the
brilliantly lighted avenue he perceived the forlorn woman dodging about
like a scout. Jimmie laughed with an air of relief and went away.
When he arrived home he found his mother clamoring. Maggie had
returned. She stood shivering beneath the torrent of her mother's
wrath.
"Well, I'm damned," said Jimmie in greeting.
His mother, tottering about the room, pointed a quivering forefinger.
"Lookut her, Jimmie, lookut her. Dere's yer sister, boy. Dere's yer
sister. Lookut her! Lookut her!"
She screamed in scoffing laughter.
The girl stood in the middle of the room. She edged about as if unable
to find a place on the floor to put her feet.
"Ha, ha, ha," bellowed the mother. "Dere she stands! Ain' she purty?
Lookut her! Ain' she sweet, deh beast? Lookut her! Ha, ha, lookut
her!"
She lurched forward and put her red and seamed hands upon her
daughter's face. She bent down and peered keenly up into the eyes of
the girl.
"Oh, she's jes' dessame as she ever was, ain' she? She's her mudder's
purty darlin' yit, ain' she? Lookut her, Jimmie! Come here, fer
Gawd's sake, and lookut her."
The loud, tremendous sneering of the mother brought the denizens of the
Rum Alley tenement to their doors. Women came in the hallways.
Children scurried to and fro.
"What's up? Dat Johnson party on anudder tear?"
"Naw! Young Mag's come home!"
"Deh hell yeh say?"
Through the open door curious eyes stared in at Maggie. Children
ventured into the room and ogled her, as if they formed the front row
at a theatre. Women, without, bended toward each other and whispered,
nodding their heads with airs of profound philosophy. A baby, overcome
with curiosity concerning this object at which all were looking, sidled
forward and touched her dress, cautiously, as if investigating a
red-hot stove. Its mother's voice rang out like a warning trumpet.
She rushed forward and grabbed her child, casting a terrible look of
indignation at the girl.
Maggie's mother paced to and fro, addressing the doorful of eyes,
expounding like a glib showman at a museum. Her voice rang through the
building.
"Dere she stands," she cried, wheeling suddenly and pointing with
dramatic finger. "Dere she stands! Lookut her! Ain' she a dindy?
An' she was so good as to come home teh her mudder, she was! Ain' she
a beaut'? Ain' she a dindy? Fer Gawd's sake!"
The jeering cries ended in another burst of shrill laughter.
The girl seemed to awaken. "Jimmie--"
He drew hastily back from her.
"Well, now, yer a hell of a t'ing, ain' yeh?" he said, his lips curling
in scorn. Radiant virtue sat upon his brow and his repelling hands
expressed horror of contamination.
Maggie turned and went.
The crowd at the door fell back precipitately. A baby falling down in
front of the door, wrenched a scream like a wounded animal from its
mother. Another woman sprang forward and picked it up, with a
chivalrous air, as if rescuing a human being from an oncoming express
train.
As the girl passed down through the hall, she went before open doors
framing more eyes strangely microscopic, and sending broad beams of
inquisitive light into the darkness of her path. On the second floor
she met the gnarled old woman who possessed the music box.
"So," she cried, "'ere yehs are back again, are yehs? An' dey've
kicked yehs out? Well, come in an' stay wid me teh-night. I ain' got
no moral standin'."
From above came an unceasing babble of tongues, over all of which rang
the mother's derisive laughter.