A PASSAGE-AT-ARMS
It was about eight o’clock; and, save for a few lights gleaming faintly
here and there in the yards and the little houses, the lane was in
darkness. It was quiet, too; only three or four persons were to be seen
moving about, and the innumerable dogs would not begin to bark until
nearly everybody had gone to bed. A stranger standing at one of the
numerous crossings that intersected the lane, and looking up or down the
narrow way, might imagine he was peering into some gloomy tunnel were it
not for the brilliancy of the stars overhead. The cross-streets were
very much brighter and livelier, and that one towards which Susan and
her sister directed their steps was particularly bright.
A Chinaman’s shop at the lane corner opened upon this street. To the
right of this, and also opening on the street, was another shop presided
over by an elderly woman. It was small, but contained a comparatively
large quantity of things which found ready sale in the neighbourhood;
such as pints of porter, little heaps of ripe bananas, loaves of bread,
coarse straw hats, charcoal, pieces of sugar-cane, tin whistles, reels
of thread and peppermint cakes. On the opposite side of the crossing
were other shops, and on either hand, east and west, as far as the eye
could reach, were still more shops standing between fairly large
two-storeyed dwelling-houses of brick and wood. On the piazzas women
squatted selling native sweetmeats and fruit. To the west, in the middle
distance, two or three taverns blazed with light; away to the east was a
great crowd of people singing, and in the midst of this crowd jets of
flame streamed upwards from the unprotected wicks of huge oil-lamps.
These lamps gave off thick columns of black smoke which slowly drifted
over the heads of the sable, white-clothed revivalists who passionately
preached on the always approaching end of the world, and called upon
their hearers to repent them of their sins.
People were continually passing up and down. They passed singly or in
groups, the latter discussing loudly their private affairs, careless as
to who might hear: even love-making couples ignored the proximity of
other human beings, and laughed and chatted as though there was no one
within a mile of them. Many of these pedestrians were barefooted, but
most of them wore shoes or slippers of some sort. A few were in rags,
but the majority were fairly well dressed, for this was a populous
thoroughfare, and the people took some pride in their appearance. A
number of children hung about, playing with one another or gazing idly
at the passing show; a fine grey dust lay thick upon the ground;
gas-lamps placed at wide distances apart burned dimly, so that large
spaces of the street were in shadow. Cabs conveying passengers home or
on visits drove by frequently, and every now and then the electric cars
flew by, stirring up a cloud of dust which almost blinded one, and which
for a moment shrouded the street with a moving, impalpable veil. There
was life here, there was movement, and while the revivalists prayed and
preached in the distance, the candy sellers near by plaintively invited
the young to come and purchase their wares, the proprietors of little
ice-cream carts declaimed vociferously that they sold the best cream
ever manufactured, and the vendors of pea-nuts screamed out that baked
pea-nuts were strengthening, enlivening, and comforting. This was the
life of the street.
At the right-hand corner of the lane, where the Chinaman’s shop stood,
was a gas-lamp, and the gossiping groups about the spot indicated that
it was a favourite rendezvous of the people of the vicinity. Susan never
condescended to linger for a moment there; that would have been beneath
her dignity. But Maria, her rival, sometimes paused at the corner when
going for a walk, to talk for a while with a possible admirer or with a
friend if she should happen to meet one. To-night Maria was standing
under the gas-lamp conversing gaily with two girls. Evidently she was in
a happy frame of mind.
“Yes,” she was saying, in answer to a question put to her by one of the
girls, “I am goin’ to tell her so. She is proud an’ she is forward; but
she will soon sing a different tune. I wonder what she would say now if
she did know dat her lover write me two letters last week, an’ say that
him love me! I don’t answer him yet, but him say him coming to see me
to-morrow night. You watch! If I want to teck Tom from her, I have only
to lift me little finger. An’ I am not too sure I won’t do it.”
She laughed as she spoke of her prospective victory over Susan; but her
friends, though they hated Susan, were not particularly delighted with
the news they heard. They were agreed that Susan ought to be humbled,
but that was no reason why Maria should be exalted. It was, therefore,
not altogether in a cheerful tone of voice that the elder one asked
Maria:
“Y’u think Tom going to come to you?”
“Him almost come to me already,” replied Maria, with pride. “Look what
him send for me last night!”
She thrust her hand into her pocket as she spoke. As she was taking out
Tom’s present, Susan and her sister emerged into the light.
Both Susan and Maria caught sight of each other at the same moment. And
each realized in a flash that the other knew the true position of
affairs. The glare of hate from Susan’s eyes was answered by a
contemptuous stare and a peal of derisive laughter from Maria. Susan’s
sister and Maria’s friends at once understood that a desperate struggle
had begun between the two.
Maria’s ringing jeer was more than any ordinary woman could tolerate.
Susan tried to answer it with a laugh as contemptuous, but failed, her
wrath choking her. Then she put all pretence aside, and swiftly moving
up to Maria she thrust her face into the face of the other girl. “See
here, ma’am,” she hissed, “I want to ask you one thing: is it me you
laughing at?”
“But stop!” exclaimed Maria, backing away a little, and defiantly
placing her arms akimbo. “Stop! You ever see my trial! Then I can’t
laugh without your permission, eh?” Saying which she laughed again as
contemptuously as before, and swung round with a flounce so as to bring
one of her elbows into unpleasant proximity to Susan’s waist.
“I don’t say you can’t laugh, an’ I don’t care if y’u choose to laugh
till you drop,” cried Susan bitterly; “but I want to tell you that y’u
can’t laugh at _me_!”
“So you’re better than everybody else?” sneered Maria. “Y’u think you
are so pretty, eh? Well! there is a miss for you! She can’t even behave
herself in de public street, though she always walk an’ shake her head
as if she was a princess, an’ though she call herself ‘young lady.’ But
perhaps she think she lose something good, an’ can’t recover from the
loss as yet!” And again that maddening peal of laughter rang out.
Susan did not answer Maria directly. She eyed that young woman swiftly,
and noticed that her dress was old and her shoes poor and dusty. This
gave her the advantage she needed in dealing with a girl who was all
contempt while she herself was all temper. She turned to her sister and
to Maria’s friends, and pointed to Maria with scorn.
“Look at her!” she cried. “Look how she stand! Her face is like a
cocoa-nut trash, and she don’t even have a decent frock to put on!”
Maria might have passed over the reference to her face; she knew it was
only spiteful abuse. But the allusion to the scantiness of her wardrobe
was absolutely unforgivable. If not exactly true, it yet approached
perilously near the truth, and so it cut her to the quick. No sooner
were the words uttered than Maria’s forefinger was wagging in Susan’s
face, and:
“Say that again, an’ I box you!” she screamed.
“Box me?” hissed Susan. “Box me? My good woman, this would be the last
day of you’ life. Take you’ hand out of me face at once—take it out, I
say—take it out!”—and without waiting to see whether Maria would
remove the offending member, she seized it and pushed Maria violently
away.
In a moment the two were locked in one another’s arms. There was a sound
of heavy blows, two simultaneous shrieks of “Murder!” and a hasty
movement of about forty persons towards the scene of the combat.
Catherine now thought it time to interfere. She threw herself upon the
combatants, making a desperate but vain attempt to separate them.
Maria’s friends protested loudly that Susan was ill-treating Maria,
though, as the latter was at least as strong as Susan, it was difficult
to see where the ill-treatment came in. A dignified-looking man standing
on the piazza loudly remonstrated with the crowd for allowing “those two
females to fight,” but made not the slightest effort himself to put a
stop to the struggle. The little boys and girls in the vicinity cheered
loudly. The one thing lacking was a policeman. Noticing this, the
dignified-looking man audibly expressed his opinion on the inefficiency
of the force.
“Let me go, I say, let me go!” gasped Susan, her head being somewhere
under Maria’s right arm.
“You wants to kill me!” stammered Maria, whose sides Susan was squeezing
with all the strength she possessed—“murder, murder!”
But neither one would let the other go. Neither one was much hurt as
yet. The struggle continued about a minute longer, when some one in the
crowd shouted, “Policeman coming!”
Then indeed both Susan and Maria came to their senses. They separated,
and vainly tried to put on an appearance of composure. It was time, for
yonder, moving leisurely through the crowd, now composed of over a
hundred persons, was the policeman who had been spied by one of the
spectators. The girls made no effort to run, for that would surely have
provoked the policeman to an unusual display of energy, and, justly
angered at having been compelled to exert himself, he might have
arrested them both on the charge of obstructing him in the execution of
his duty. They waited where they stood, their eyes still flashing, their
bosoms heaving, and their bodies trembling with rage.
But angry as she was, Susan had already begun to feel ashamed of
fighting in the street. She had always had a horror of street scenes;
people of her class did not participate in them; before this event she
would not have thought it possible that she could ever be mixed up in
such an affair as this. Oh, the humiliation of being handled by a
constable! She heartily wished she were a thousand miles from the spot.
In the meantime the policeman, having arrived at the outskirts of the
crowd, began busily to work his way through to the centre. True to its
traditions, the crowd was hostile to him and friendly to the culprits;
so some of the women managed to put themselves in his way, then angrily
asked him what he was pushing them for.
“What is all dis?” was his first question as he came up to the spot
where Susan and Maria stood. “What is de meaning of this?” He looked
fixedly at the gas-lamp as if believing that that object could give him
the most lucid explanation of the circumstances.
Nobody answered.
“What is all dis, I say?” he again demanded in a more peremptory tone of
voice.
“These two gals was fighting, sah,” explained a small boy, in the hope
of seeing somebody arrested.
“Mind your own business, buoy!” was all the reward the policeman gave
him for his pains, and then the arm of the law, feeling that something
was expected of him, proceeded to deliver a speech.
“The truth of de matter is dis,” he observed, looking round with an air
of grave authority: “You common folkses are too ignorant. You are
ignorant to extreme. You ever see white ladies fight in de street?
Answer me that!”
No one venturing to answer, he continued:
“White people don’t fight in de street, because them is ladies and
gentleman. But I can’t understand the people of my own colour; they have
no respect for themself!”
He spoke more in sorrow than in anger; almost as though he were bitterly
lamenting the deficiencies of the working classes. But Susan, though in
trouble, would not even then allow herself to be classed with the
policeman and others in the category of “common folkses.” “I am not
common,” she answered defiantly; “I am not your set!”
“Silence, miss!” thundered the policeman, scandalized. “I am the law! Do
you know dat?”
“I never see a black law yet,” cheekily replied Susan, who thought that,
if she had to be arrested, there would be at least some satisfaction in
humiliating the policeman.
“If y’u say another impertinence word I will arrest you!” was the
policeman’s threat. “Now de whole of you walk right off! Right off, I
say, or I teck you all to jail!” He included the crowd with one
comprehensive sweep of his arm, perceiving that his edifying attempt to
awaken in his audience a sense of respectability had not been favourably
received.
There was no disputing his authority, especially as he had begun to get
angry. Susan knew, too, that she had mortally offended him by claiming
to belong to a better class than his: which remark had also lost her the
sympathy of the greater part of the crowd. So she was the first to take
advantage of his command, and Maria followed her example by disappearing
as quickly as she could. In another minute or two the normal activity of
the street had been resumed, and the policeman had again started upon
his beat, hoping that he would no more be disturbed that night. But both
Susan and Maria knew that the fight would have a sequel. For war had now
openly been declared between them.