_A COLD_ wet drizzling rain was beginning to fall when Pinky Swett
emerged from the house. Twilight was gathering drearily. She drew her
thin shawl closely, and shivered as the east wind struck her with a
chill.
At hurried walk of five or ten minutes brought her to a part of the town
as little known to its citizens generally as if it were in the centre
of Africa--a part of the town where vice, crime, drunkenness and beggary
herd together in the closest and most shameless contact; where men and
women, living in all foulness, and more like wild beasts than human
beings, prey greedily upon each other, hurting, depraving and marring
God's image in all over whom they can get power or influenced--_a very
hell upon the earth!_--at part of the town where theft and robbery and
murder are plotted, and from which prisons and almshouses draw their
chief population.
That such a herding together, almost in the centre of a great Christian
city, of the utterly vicious and degraded, should be permitted, when
every day's police and criminal records give warning of its cost
and danger, is a marvel and a reproach. Almost every other house, in
portions of this locality, is a dram-shop, where the vilest liquors are
sold. Policy-offices, doing business in direct violation of law, are in
every street and block, their work of plunder and demoralization going
on with open doors and under the very eyes of the police. Every one of
them is known to these officers. But arrest is useless. A hidden and
malign influence, more potent than justice, has power to protect the
traffic and hold the guilty offenders harmless. Conviction is rarely, if
ever, reached.
The poor wretches, depraved and plundered through drink and
policy-gambling, are driven into crime. They rob and steal and debase
themselves for money with which to buy rum and policies, and sooner or
later the prison or death removes the greater number of them from their
vile companions. But drifting toward this fatal locality under the
attraction of affinity, or lured thither by harpies in search of new
supplies of human victims to repair the frightful waste perpetually
made, the region keeps up its dense population, and the work of
destroying human souls goes on. It is an awful thing to contemplate.
Thousands of men and women, boys and girls, once innocent as the
babes upon whom Christ laid his hand in blessing, are drawn into this
whirlpool of evil every year, and few come out except by the way of
prison or death.
It was toward this locality that Pinky Swett directed her feet, after
parting with Mrs. Bray. Darkness was beginning to settle down as she
turned off from one of the most populous streets, crowded at the time by
citizens on their way to quiet and comfortable homes, few if any of whom
had ever turned aside to look upon and get knowledge of the world or
crime and wretchedness so near at hand, but girdled in and concealed
from common observation.
Down a narrow street she turned from the great thoroughfare, walking
with quick steps, and shivering a little as the penetrating east wind
sent a chill of dampness through the thin shawl she drew closer and
closer about her shoulders. Nothing could be in stronger contrast than
the rows of handsome dwellings and stores that lined the streets through
which she had just passed, and the forlorn, rickety, unsightly and
tumble-down houses amid which she now found herself.
Pinky had gone only a little way when the sharp cries of a child cut the
air suddenly, the shrill, angry voice of a woman and the rapid fall of
lashes mingled with the cries. The child begged for mercy in tones of
agony, but the loud voice, uttering curses and imprecations, and the
cruel blows, ceased not. Pinky stopped and shivered. She felt the pain
of these blows, in her quickly-aroused sympathy, almost as much as
if they had been falling on her own person. Opposite to where she had
paused was a one-story frame house, or enclosed shed, as unsightly
without as a pig-pen, and almost as filthy within. It contained two
small rooms with very low ceilings. The only things in these rooms that
could be called furniture were an old bench, two chairs from which the
backs had been broken, a tin cup black with smoke and dirt, two or
three tin pans in the same condition, some broken crockery and an iron
skillet. Pinky stood still for a moment, shivering, as we have said. She
knew what the blows and the curses and the cries of pain meant; she had
heard them before. A depraved and drunken woman and a child ten years
old, who might or might not be her daughter, lived there. The child was
sent out every day to beg or steal, and if she failed to bring home a
certain sum of money, was cruelly beaten by the woman. Almost every
day the poor child was cut with lashes, often on the bare flesh; almost
every day her shrieks rang out from the miserable hovel. But there was
no one to interfere, no one to save her from the smarting blows, no one
to care what she suffered.
Pinky Swett could stand it no longer. She had often noticed the ragged
child, with her pale, starved face and large, wistful eyes, passing
in and out of this miserable woman's den, sometimes going to the
liquor-shops and sometimes to the nearest policy-office to spend for
her mother, if such the woman really was, the money she had gained by
begging.
With a sudden impulse, as a deep wail and a more piteous cry for mercy
smote upon her ears, Pinky sprang across the street and into the hovel.
The sight that met her eyes left no hesitation in her mind. Holding up
with one strong arm the naked body of the poor child--she had drawn the
clothes over her head--the infuriated woman was raining down blows from
a short piece of rattan upon the quivering flesh, already covered with
welts and bruises.
“Devil!” cried Pinky as she rushed upon this fiend in human shape and
snatched the little girl from her arm. “Do you want to kill the child?”
She might almost as well have assaulted a tigress.
The woman was larger, stronger, more desperate and more thoroughly given
over to evil passions than she. To thwart her in anything was to rouse
her into a fury. A moment she stood in surprise and bewilderment; in
the next, and ere Pinky had time to put herself on guard, she had sprung
upon her with a passionate cry that sounded more like that of a wild
beast than anything human. Clutching her by the throat with one hand,
and with the other tearing the child from her grasp, she threw the
frightened little thing across the room.
“Devil, ha!” screamed the woman; “devil!” and she tightened her grasp
on Pinky's throat, at the same time striking her in the face with her
clenched fist.
Like a war-horse that snuffs the battle afar off and rushes to the
conflict, so rushed the inhabitants of that foul neighborhood to the
spot from whence had come to their ears the familiar and not unwelcome
sound of strife. Even before Pinky had time to shake off her assailant,
the door of the hovel was darkened by a screen of eager faces. And
such faces! How little of God's image remained in them to tell of
their divine origination!--bloated and scarred, ashen pale and wasted,
hollow-eyed and red-eyed, disease looking out from all, yet all lighted
up with the keenest interest and expectancy.
Outside, the crowd swelled with a marvelous rapidity. Every cellar and
room and garret, every little alley and hidden rookery, “hawk's nest”
and “wren's nest,” poured out its unseemly denizens, white and black,
old and young, male and female, the child of three years old, keen,
alert and self-protective, running to see the “row” side by side with
the toothless crone of seventy; or most likely passing her on the way.
Thieves, beggars, pick-pockets, vile women, rag-pickers and the like,
with the harpies who prey upon them, all were there to enjoy the show.
Within, a desperate fight was going on between Pinky Swett and the woman
from whose hands she had attempted to rescue the child--a fight in which
Pinky was getting the worst of it. One garment after another was torn
from her person, until little more than a single one remained.
“Here's the police! look out!” was cried at this juncture.
“Who cares for the police? Let 'em come,” boldly retorted the woman. “I
haven't done nothing; it's her that's come in drunk and got up a row.”
Pushing the crowd aside, a policeman entered the hovel.
“Here she is!” cried the woman, pointing toward Pinky, from whom she
had sprung back the moment she heard the word police. “She came in here
drunk and got up a row. I'm a decent woman, as don't meddle with nobody.
But she's awful when she gets drunk. Just look at her--been tearing her
clothes off!”
At this there was a shout of merriment from the crowd who had witnessed
the fight.
“Good for old Sal! she's one of 'em! Can't get ahead of old Sal, drunk
or sober!” and like expressions were shouted by one and another.
Poor Pinky, nearly stripped of her clothing, and with a great bruise
swelling under one of her eyes, bewildered and frightened at the aspect
of things around her, could make no acceptable defence.
“She ran over and pitched into Sal, so she did! I saw her! She made
the fight, she did!” testified one of the crowd; and acting on this
testimony and his own judgment of the case, the policeman said roughly,
as he laid his hand on Pinky.
“Pick up your duds and come along.”
Pinky lifted her torn garments from the dirty floor and gathered them
about her person as best she could, the crowd jeering all the time. A
pin here and there, furnished by some of the women, enabled her to get
them into a sort of shape and adjustment. Then she tried to explain the
affair to the policeman, but he would not listen.
“Come!” he said, sternly.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, not moving from where she
stood.
“Lock you up,” replied the policeman. “So come along.”
“What's the matter here?” demanded a tall, strongly-built woman,
pressing forward. She spoke with a foreign accent, and in a tone of
command. The motley crowd, above whom she towered, gave way for her as
she approached. Everything about the woman showed her to be superior in
mind and moral force to the unsightly wretches about her. She had the
fair skin, blue eyes and light hair of her nation. Her features were
strong, but not masculine. You saw in them no trace of coarse sensuality
or vicious indulgence.
“Here's Norah! here's the queen!” shouted a voice from the crowd.
“What's the matter here?” asked the woman as she gained an entrance to
the hovel.
“Going to lock up Pinky Swett,” said a ragged little girl who had forced
her way in.
“What for?” demanded the woman, speaking with the air of one in
authority.
“'Cause she wouldn't let old Sal beat Kit half to death,” answered the
child.
“Ho! Sal's a devil and Pinky's a fool to meddle with her.” Then turning
to the policeman, who still had his hand on the girl, she said,
“What're you goin' to do, John?”
“Goin' to lock her up. She's drunk an' bin a-fightin'.”
“You're not goin' to do any such thing.”
“I'm not drunk, and it's a lie if anybody says so,” broke in Pinky. “I
tried to keep this devil from beating the life out of poor little Kit,
and she pitched into me and tore my clothes off. That's what's the
matter.”
The policeman quietly removed his hand from Pinky's shoulder, and
glanced toward the woman named Sal, and stood as if waiting orders.
“Better lock _her_ up,” said the “queen,” as she had been called. Sal
snarled like a fretted wild beast.
“It's awful, the way she beats poor Kit,” chimed in the little girl who
had before spoken against her. “If I was Kit, I'd run away, so I would.”
“I'll wring your neck off,” growled Sal, in a fierce undertone, making a
dash toward the girl, and swearing frightfully. But the child shrank to
the side of the policeman.
“If you lay a finger on Kit to-night,” said the queen, “I'll have her
taken away, and you locked up into the the bargain.”
Sal responded with another snarl.
“Come.” The queen moved toward the door. Pinky followed, the policeman
offering no resistance. A few minutes later, and the miserable crowd of
depraved human beings had been absorbed again into cellar and garret,
hovel and rookery, to take up the thread of their evil and sensual
lives, and to plot wickedness, and to prey upon and deprave each
other--to dwell as to their inner and real lives among infernals, to be
in hell as to their spirits, while their bodies yet remained upon the
earth.
Pinky and her rescuer passed down the street for a short distance until
they came to another that was still narrower. On each side dim lights
shone from the houses, and made some revelation of what was going on
within. Here liquor was sold, and there policies. Here was a junk-shop,
and there an eating-saloon where for six cents you could make a meal out
of the cullings from beggars' baskets. Not very tempting to an ordinary
appetite was the display inside, nor agreeable to the nostrils the odors
that filled the atmosphere. But hunger like the swines', that was not
over-nice, satisfied itself amid these disgusting conglomerations, and
kept off starvation.
Along this wretched street, with scarcely an apology for a sidewalk,
moved Pinky and the queen, until they reached a small two-story frame
house that presented a different aspect from the wretched tenements amid
which it stood. It was clean upon the outside, and had, as contrasted
with its neighbors, an air of superiority. This was the queen's
residence. Inside, all was plain and homely, but clean and in order.
The excitement into which Pinky had been thrown was nearly over by this
time.
“You've done me a good turn, Norah,” she said as the door closed upon
them, “and I'll not soon forget you.”
“Ugh!” ejaculated Norah as she looked into Pinky's bruised face; “Sal's
hit you square in the eye; it'll be black as y'r boot by morning. I'll
get some cold water.”
A basin of cold water was brought, and Pinky held a wet cloth to the
swollen spot for a long time, hoping thereby not only to reduce the
swelling, but to prevent discoloration.
“Y'r a fool to meddle with Sal,” said Norah as she set the basin of
water before Pinky.
“Why don't you meddle with her? Why do you let her beat poor little Kit
the way she does?” demanded Pinky.
Norah shrugged her shoulders, and answered with no more feeling in her
voice than if she had been speaking of inanimate things:
“She's got to keep Kit up to her work.”
“Up to her work!”
“Yes; that's just it. Kit's lazy and cheats--buys cakes and candies; and
Sal has to come down on her; it's the way, you know. If Sal didn't come
down sharp on her all the while, Kit wouldn't bring her ten cents a day.
They all have to do it--so much a day or a lickin'; and a little lickin'
isn't any use--got to 'most kill some of 'em. We're used to it in here.
Hark!”
The screams of a child in pain rang out wildly, the sounds coming from
across the narrow street. Quick, hard strokes of a lash were heard at
the same time. Pinky turned a little pale.
“Only Mother Quig,” said Norah, with an indifferent air; “she has to do
it 'most every night--no getting along any other way with Tom. It beats
all how much he can stand.”
“Oh, Norah, won't she never stop?” cried Pinky, starting up. “I can't
bear it a minute longer.”
“Shut y'r ears. You've got to,” answered the woman, with some impatience
in her voice. “Tom has to be kept to his work as well as the rest of
'em. Half the fuss he's making is put on, anyhow; he doesn't mind a
beating any more than a horse. I know his hollers. There's Flanagan's
Nell getting it now,” added Norah as the cries and entreaties of another
child were heard. She drew herself up and listened, a slight shade of
concern drifting across her face.
A long, agonizing wail shivered through the air.
“Nell's Sick, and can't do her work.” The woman rose as she spoke. “I
saw her goin' off to-day, and told Flanagan she'd better keep her at
home.”
Saying this, Norah went out quickly, Pinky following. With head erect
and mouth set firmly, the queen strode across the street and a little
way down the pavement, to the entrance of a cellar, from which the cries
and sounds of whipping came. Down the five or six rotten and broken
steps she plunged, Pinky close after her.
“Stop!” shouted Norah, in a tone of command.
Instantly the blows ceased, and the cries were hushed.
“You'll be hanged for murder if you don't take care,” said Norah.
“What's Nell been doin'?”
“Doin', the slut!” ejaculated the woman, a short, bloated, revolting
creature, with scarcely anything human in her face. “Doin', did ye say?
It's nothin' she's been doin', the lazy, trapsing huzzy! Who's that
intrudin' herself in here?” she added fiercely, as she saw Pinky, making
at the same time a movement toward the girl. “Get out o' here, or I'll
spile y'r pictur'!”
“Keep quiet, will you?” said Norah, putting her hand on the woman and
pushing her back as easily as if she had been a child. “Now come here,
Nell, and let me look at you.”
Out of the far corner of the cellar into which Flanagan had thrown her
when she heard Norah's voice, and into the small circle of light made
by a single tallow candle, there crept slowly the figure of a child
literally clothed in rags. Norah reached out her hand to her as she came
up--there was a scared look on her pinched face--and drew her close to
the light.
“Gracious! your hand's like an ice-ball!” exclaimed Norah.
Pinky looked at the child, and grew faint at heart. She had large hazel
eyes, that gleamed with a singular lustre out of the suffering, grimed
and wasted little face, so pale and sad and pitiful that the sight of it
was enough to draw tears from any but the brutal and hardened.
“Are you sick?” asked Norah.
“No, she's not sick; she's only shamming,” growled Flanagan.
“You shut up!” retorted Norah. “I wasn't speaking to you.” Then she
repeated her question:
“Are you sick, Nell?”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
“I don't know.”
Norah laid her hand on the child's head:
“Does it hurt here?”
“Oh yes! It hurts so I can't see good,” answered Nell.
“It's all a lie! I know her; she's shamming.”
“Oh no, Norah!” cried the child, a sudden hope blending with the fear in
her voice. “I ain't shamming at all. I fell down ever so many times in
the street, and 'most got run over. Oh dear! oh dear!” and she clung to
the woman with a gesture of despair piteous to see.
“I don't believe you are, Nell,” said Norah, kindly. Then, to the woman,
“Now mind, Flanagan, Nell's sick; d'ye hear?”
The woman only uttered a defiant growl.
“She's not to be licked again to-night.” Norah spoke as one having
authority.
“I wish ye'd be mindin' y'r own business, and not come interfarin' wid
me. She's my gal, and I've a right to lick her if I plaze.”
“Maybe she is and maybe she isn't,” retorted Norah.
“Who says she isn't my gal?” screamed the woman, firing up at this and
reaching out for Nell, who shrunk closer to Norah.
“Maybe she is and maybe she isn't,” said the queen, quietly repeating
her last sentence; “and I think maybe she isn't. So take care and mind
what I say. Nell isn't to be licked any more to-night.”
“Oh, Norah,” sobbed the child, in a husky, choking voice, “take me,
won't you? She'll pinch me, and she'll hit my head on the wall, and
she'll choke me and knock me. Oh, Norah, Norah!”
Pinky could stand this no longer. Catching up the bundle of rags in
her arms, she sprang out of the cellar and ran across the street to the
queen's house, Norah and Flanagan coming quickly after her. At the
door, through which Pinky had passed, Norah paused, and turning to the
infuriated Irish woman, said, sternly,
“Go back! I won't have you in here; and if you make a row, I'll tell
John to lock you up.”
“I want my Nell,” said the woman, her manner changing. There was a shade
of alarm in her voice.
“You can't have her to-night; so that's settled. And if there's any row,
you'll be locked up.” Saying which, Norah went in and shut the door,
leaving Flanagan on the outside.
The bundle of dirty rags with the wasted body of a child inside, the
body scarcely heavier than the rags, was laid by Pinky in the corner
of a settee, and the unsightly mass shrunk together like something
inanimate.
“I thought you'd had enough with old Sal,” said Norah, in a tone of
reproof, as she came in.
“Couldn't help it,” replied Pinky. “I'm bad enough, but I can't stand to
see a child abused like that--no, not if I die for it.”
Norah crossed to the settee and spoke to Nell. But there was no answer,
nor did the bundle of rags stir.
“Nell! Nell!” She called to deaf ears. Then she put her hand on the
child and raised one of the arms. It dropped away limp as a withered
stalk, showing the ashen white face across which it had lain.
The two women manifested no excitement. The child had fainted or was
dead--which, they did not know. Norah straightened out the wasted little
form and turned up the face. The eyes were shut, the mouth closed, the
pinched features rigid, as if still giving expression to pain, but there
was no mistaking the sign that life had gone out of them. It might be
for a brief season, it might be for ever.
A little water was thrown into the child's face. Its only effect was to
streak the grimy skin.
“Poor little thing!” said Pinky. “I hope she's dead.”
“They're tough. They don't die easy,” returned Norah.
“She isn't one of the tough kind.”
“Maybe not. They say Flanagan stole her when she was a little thing,
just toddling.”
“Don't let's do anything to try to bring her to,” said Pinky.
Norah stood for some moment's with an irresolute air, then bent over the
child and examined her more carefully. She could feel no pulse beat, nor
any motion of the heart,
“I don't want the coroner here,” she said, in a tone of annoyance. “Take
her back to Flanagan; it's her work, and she must stand by it.”
“Is she really dead?” asked Pinky.
“Looks like it, and serves Flanagan right. I've told her over and over
that Nell wouldn't stand it long if she didn't ease up a little. Flesh
isn't iron.”
Again she examined the child carefully, but without the slightest sign
of feeling.
“It's all the same now who has her,” she said, turning off from the
settee. “Take her back to Flanagan.”
But Pinky would not touch the child, nor could threat or persuasion
lead her to do so. While they were contending, Flanagan, who had fired
herself up with half a pint of whisky, came storming through the door in
a blind rage and screaming out,
“Where's my Nell? I want my Nell!”
Catching sight of the child's inanimate form lying on the settee, she
pounced down upon it like some foul bird and bore it off, cursing and
striking the senseless clay in her insane fury.
Pinky, horrified at the dreadful sight, and not sure that the child was
really dead, and so insensible to pain, made a movement to follow, but
Norah caught her arm with a tight grip and held her back.
“Are you a fool?” said the queen, sternly. “Let Flanagan alone. Nell's
out of her reach, and I'm glad of it.”
“If I was only sure!” exclaimed Pinky.
“You may be. I know death--I've seen it often enough. They'll have the
coroner over there in the morning. It's Flanagan's concern, not yours or
mine, so keep out of it if you know when you're well off.”
“I'll appear against her at the inquest,” said Pinky.
“You'll do no such thing. Keep your tongue behind your teeth. It's time
enough to show it when it's pulled out. Take my advice, and mind your
own business. You'll have enough to do caring for your own head, without
looking after other people's.”
“I'm not one of that kind,” answered Pinky, a little tartly; “and if
there's any way to keep Flanagan from murdering another child, I'm going
to find it out.”
“You'll find out something else first,” said Norah, with a slight curl
of her lip.
“What?”
“The way to prison.”
“Pshaw! I'm not afraid.”
“You'd better be. If you appear against Flanagan, she'll have you caged
before to-morrow night.”
“How can she do it?”
“Swear against you before an alderman, and he'll send you down if it's
only to get his fee. She knows her man.”
“Suppose murder is proved against her?”
“Suppose!” Norah gave a little derisive laugh.
“They don't look after things in here as they do outside. Everybody's
got the screws on, and things must break sometimes, but it isn't called
murder. The coroner understands it all. He's used to seeing things
break.”