The figurative underworld of a great city has no ventilation, housing or
lighting problems. Rooks and crooks who live in the putrid air of crime
are not denied the light of day, even though they loathe it. Cadets,
social skunks, whose carnivorous eyes love darkness, walk in God's
sunshine and breathe God's air. Scarlet women turn over in wide beds and
draw closer velvet curtains to shut out the morning. Gamblers curse the
dawn.
But what of the literal underworld of the great city? What of the babes
who cry in fetid cellars for the light and are denied it? What of the
Subway track-walker, purblind from gloom; the coal-stoker, whose fiery
tomb is the boiler-room of a skyscraper; sweatshop workers, a flight
below the sidewalk level, whose faces are the color of dead Chinese;
six-dollar-a-week salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars of
six-million-dollar corporations?
This is the literal underworld of the great city, and its sunless
streets run literal blood--the blood of the babes who cried in vain; the
blood from the lungs of the sweatshop workers whose faces are the color
of dead Chinese; the blood from the cheeks of the six-dollar-a-week
salesgirls in the arc-lighted subcellars. But these are your problems
and my problems and the problems of the men who have found the strength
or the fear not to die rich. The babe's mother, who had never known
else, could not know that her cellar was fetid; she only cried out in
her anguish and hated vaguely in her heart.
Sara Juke, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Department Store, did
not know that lint from white goods clogs the lungs, and that the air
she breathed was putrefied as from a noxious swamp. Sometimes a pain,
sharp as a hat-pin, entered between her shoulder-blades. But what of
that? When the heart is young the heart is bold, and Sara could laugh
upward with the musical glee of a bird.
There were no seasons, except the spring and fall openings and
semiannual clearing-sales, in the bargain basement of the Titanic Store.
On a morning when the white-goods counter was placing long-sleeve,
high-necked nightgowns in its bargain bins, and knit underwear was
supplanting the reduced muslins, Sara Juke drew her little pink-knitted
jacket closer about her narrow shoulders and shivered--shivered, but
smiled. "Br-r-r! October never used to get under my skin like this."
Hattie Krakow, room-mate and co-worker, shrugged her bony shoulders and
laughed; but not with the upward glee of a bird--downward, rather, until
it died in a croak in her throat. But then Hattie Krakow was ten years
older than Sara Juke; and ten years in the arc-lighted subcellar of the
Titanic Department Store can do much to muffle the ring in a laugh.
"Gee! you're as funny as your own funeral, you are! You keep up the
express pace you're going and there won't be another October left on
your calendar."
"That's right; cheer me up a bit, dearie. What's the latest style in
undertaking?"
"You'll know sooner 'n me if--"
"Aw, Hat, cut it! Wasn't I home in bed last night by eleven?"
"I ain't much on higher mathematics."
"Sure I was. I had to shove you over on your side of the bed; that's how
hard you was sleeping."
"A girl can't gad round dancing and rough-housing every night and work
eight hours on her feet, and put her lunch money on her back, and not
pay up for it. I've seen too many blue-eyed dolls like you get broken.
I--"
"Amen!"
Sara Juke rolled her blue eyes upward, and they were full of points
of light, as though stars were shining in them; and always her lips
trembled to laugh.
"There ain't nothing funny, Sara."
"Oh, Hat, with you like a owl!"
"If I was a girl and had a cough like I've seen enough in this basement
get; if I was a girl and my skirtband was getting two inches too big,
and I had to lie on my left side to breathe right, and my nightie was
all soaked round the neck when I got up in the morning--I wouldn't just
laugh and laugh. I'd cry a little--I would."
"That's right, Hat; step on the joy bug like it was a spider. Squash
it!"
"I wouldn't just laugh and laugh, and put my lunch money on my back
instead of eggs and milk inside of me, and run round all hours to
dance-halls with every sporty Charley-boy that comes along."
"You leave him alone! You just cut that! Don't you begin on him!"
"I wouldn't get overheated, and not sleep enough; and--"
"For Pete's sake, Hat! Hire a hall!"
"I should worry! It ain't my grave you're digging."
"Aw, Hat!"
"I 'ain't got your dolly face and your dolly ways with the boys; but I
got enough sense to live along decent."
"You're right pretty, I think, Hat."
"Oh, I could daub up, too, and gad with some of that fast gang if I
didn't know it don't lead nowheres. It ain't no cinch for a girl to keep
her health down here, even when she does live along decent like me,
eating regular and sleeping regular, and spending quiet evenings in the
room, washing out and mending and pressing and all. It ain't no cinch
even then, lemme tell you. Do you think I'd have ever asked a gay bird
like you to come over and room with me if I hadn't seen you begin to
fade like a piece of calico, just like my sister Lizzie did?"
"I'm taking that iron-tonic stuff like you want and spoiling my teeth,
ain't I, Hat? I know you been swell to me and all."
"You ain't going to let up until somebody whispers T.B. in your
shell-pink ear; and maybe them two letters will bring you to your
senses."
"T.B.?"
"Yes, T.B."
"Who's he?"
"Gee! you're as smart as a fish on a hook! You oughtta bought a velvet
dunce-cap with your lunch money instead of that brown poke-bonnet. T.B.
was what I said--T.B."
"Honest, Hat, I dun'no'--"
"For Heaven's sake! _Too Berculosis_ is the way the exhibits and the
newspapers say it. L-u-n-g-s is another way to spell it. T.B."
"Too Berculosis!" Sara Juke's hand flew to her little breast. "Too
Berculosis! Hat, you--you don't--"
"Sure I don't. I ain't saying it's that--only I wanna scare you up a
little. I ain't saying it's that; but a girl that lets a cold hang on
like you do and runs round half the night, and don't eat right, can make
friends with almost anything, from measles to T.B."
Stars came out once more in Sara Juke's eyes, and her lips warmed and
curved to their smile. She moistened with her forefinger a yellow
spit--curl that lay like a caress on her cheek. "Gee! you oughtta be
writing scare heads for the _Evening Gazette!"_
Hattie Krakow ran her hand over her smooth salt-and-pepper hair and sold
a marked-down flannelette petticoat.
"I can't throw no scare into you so long as you got him on your mind.
Oh, lud! There he starts now--that quickstep dance again!"
A quick red ran up into Miss Juke's hair, and she inclined forward in
the attitude of listening.
"The silly! Honest, ain't he the silly? He said he was going to play
that for me the first thing this morning. We dance it so swell together
and all. Aw, I thought he'd forget. Ain't he the silly--remembering me?"
The red flowed persistently higher.
"Silly ain't no name for him, with his square, Charley-boy face and
polished hair; and--"
"You let him alone, Hattie Krakow! What's it to you if--"
"Nothing--except I always say October is my unlucky month, because it
was just a year ago that they moved him and the sheet music down to the
basement. Honest, I'm going to buy me a pair of earmuffs! I'd hate to
tell you how unpopular popular music is with me."
"Huh! You couldn't play on a side-comb, much less play on the piano like
Charley does. If I didn't have no more brains than some people--honest,
I'd go out and kill a calf for some!"
"You oughtta talk! A girl that 'ain't got no more brains than to gad
round every night and every Sunday in foul-smelling, low-ceilinged
dance-halls, and wear paper-soled slippers when she oughtta be wearing
galoshes, and cheese-cloth waists that ain't even decent, instead of
wool undershirts! You oughtta talk about brains--you and Charley Chubb!"
"Yes, I oughtta talk! If you don't like my doings, Hattie Krakow, there
ain't no law says we gotta room together. I been shifting for myself
ever since I was cash-girl down at Tracy's, and I ain't going to begin
being bossed now. If you don't like my keeping steady with Charley
Chubb--if you don't like his sheet-music playing--you gotta lump it! I'm
a good girl, I am; and if you got anything to in-sinuate; if--"
"Sara Juke, ain't you ashamed!"
"I'm a good girl, I am; and there ain't nobody can cast a reflection
on--on--"
Tears trembled in her voice, and she coughed from the deep recesses of
her chest, and turned her head away, so that her profile was quivering
and her throat swelling with sobs.
"I--I'm a good girl, I am."
"Aw, Sara, don't I know it? Ain't that just where the rub comes? Don't I
know it? If you wasn't a good girl would I be caring?"
"I'm a good girl, I am!"
"It's your health, Sara, I'm kicking about. You're getting as pale and
skinny as a goop; and for a month already you've been coughing, and
never a single evening home to stick your feet in hot water and a
mustard plaster on your chest."
"Didn't I take the iron tonic and spoil my teeth?"
"My sister Lizzie--that's the way she started, Sara; right down here in
this basement. There never was a prettier little queen down here. Ask
any of the old girls. Like you in looks and all; full of vim, too.
That's the way she started, Sara. She wouldn't get out in the country on
Sundays or get any air in her lungs walking with me evenings. She was
all for dance-halls, too, Sara. She--she--'Ain't I told you about her
over and over again? 'Ain't I?"
"'Sh-h-h! Don't cry, Hat. Yes, yes; I know. She was a swell little kid;
all the old girls say so. 'Sh-h-h!"
"The--the night she died I--I died, too; I--"
"'Sh-h-h, dearie!"
"I ain't crying, only--only I can't help remembering."
"Listen! That's the new hit Charley's playing--'Up to Snuff!' Say,
'ain't that got some little swing to it? Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m! Some
little quickstep, ain't it? How that boy reads off by sight! Looka, will
you? They got them left-over ribbed undervests we sold last season for
forty-nine cents out on the grab table for seventy-four. Looka the mob
fighting for 'em! Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m!"
The day's tide came in. Slowly at first, but toward noon surging through
aisles and around bins, up-stairs and down-stairs--in, around, and out.
Voices straining to be heard; feet shuffling in an agglomeration of
discords--the indescribable roar of humanity, which is like an army
that approaches but never arrives. And above it all, insistent as a
bugle-note, reaching the basement's breadth, from hardware to candy,
from human hair to white goods, the tinny voice of the piano--gay,
rollicking.
At five o'clock the patch of daylight above the red-lighted exit door
turned taupe, as though a gray curtain had been flung across it; and the
girls, with shooting pains in their limbs, braced themselves for the
last hour. Shoppers, their bags bulging and their shawls awry, fumbled
in bins for a last remnant; hatless, sway-backed women, carrying
children, fought for mill ends. Sara Juke stood first on one foot and
then on the other to alternate the strain; her hands were hot and dry as
flannel, but her cheeks were pink--very pink.
At six o'clock Hattie Krakow untied her black alpaca apron, pinned a hat
as nondescript as a bird's nest at an unrakish angle, and slid into a
warm, gray jacket.
"Ready, Sara?"
"Yes, Hat." But her voice came vaguely, as through fog.
"I'm going to fix us some stew to-night with them onions Lettie brought
up to the room when she moved--mutton stew, with a broth for you, Sara."
"Yes, Hat."
Sara's eyes darted out over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned
on her velveteen poke-bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a
few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and with
obvious subterfuge slid into her little unlined silk coat with a
deliberation not her own.
"Coming, Sara?"
"Wait, can't you? My--my hat ain't on right."
"Come on; you're dolled up enough."
"My--my gloves--I--I forgot 'em. You--you can go on, Hat." And she
burrowed back beneath the counter.
Miss Krakow let out a snort, as fiery with scorn as though flames were
curling on her lips. "Hanging round to see whether he's coming, ain't
you? To think they shot Lincoln and let him live! Before I'd run after
any man living, much less the excuse of a man like him! A shiny-haired,
square-faced little rat like him!"
"I ain't, neither, waiting. I guess I have a right to find my gloves.
I--I guess I gotta right. He's as good as you are, and better. I--I
guess I gotta right." But the raspberry red of confusion dyed her face.
"No, you ain't waiting! No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss
Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot.
"Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come
on home with me now, like you ought to."
"I--You go on! I gotta tell him something. I guess I'm my own boss. I
have to tell him something."
Miss Krakow folded her well-worn hand-bag under one arm and fastened her
black cotton gloves.
"Pf-f-f! What's the use of wasting breath?"
She slipped into the flux of the aisle, and the tide swallowed her and
carried her out into the bigger tide of the street and the swifter tide
of the city--a flower on the current, her blush withered under the
arc-light substitution for sunlight, the petals of her youth thrown to
the muddy corners of the city streets.
Sara Juke breathed inward, and under her cheaply pretentious lace blouse
a heart, as rebellious as the pink in her cheeks and the stars in her
eyes, beat a rapid fantasia; and, try as she would, her lips would
quiver into a smile.
"Hello, Charley!"
"Hello yourself, Sweetness!" And, draping himself across the white-goods
counter in an attitude as intricate as the letter S, behold Mr. Charley
Chubb! Sleek, soap-scented, slim--a satire on the satyr and the
haberdasher's latest dash. "Hello, Sweetness!"
"How are you, Charley?"
"Here, gimme your little hand. Shake."
She placed her palm in his, quivering.
You of the classes, peering through lorgnettes into the strange world
of the masses, spare that shrug. True, when Charley Chubb's hand closed
over Sara Juke's she experienced a flash of goose flesh; but, you of the
classes, what of the Van Ness ball last night? Your gown was low, so
that your neck rose out from it like white ivory. The conservatory,
where trained clematis vines met over your heads, was like a bower of
stars; music, his hand, the white glove off, over yours; the suffocating
sweetness of clematis blossoms; a fountain throwing fine spray; your
neck white as ivory, and--what of the Van Ness ball last night?
Only Sara Juke played her poor little game frankly, and the cards of her
heart lay on the counter.
"Charley!" Her voice lay in a veil.
"Was you getting sore, Sweetness?"
"All day you didn't come over."
"Couldn't, Sweetness. Did you hear me let up on the new hit for a
minute?"
"It's swell, though, Charley; all the girls was humming it. You play it
like lightning, too."
"It must have been written for you, Sweetness. That's what you are, Up
to Snuff, eh, Queenie?" He leaned closer, and above his tall, narrow
collar dull red flowed beneath the sallow, and his long, white teeth and
slick-brushed hair shone in the arc-light. "Eh, Queenie?"
"I gotta go now, Charley. Hattie's waiting home for me." She attempted
to pass him and to slip into the outgoing stream of the store, but with
a hesitation that belied her. "I--I gotta go, Charley."
He laughed, clapped his hat slightly askew on his polished hair, and
slid his arm into hers.
"Forget it! But I had you going, didn't I, sister? Thought I'd forgot
about to-night, didn't you, and didn't have the nerve to pipe up? Like
fun I forgot!"
"I didn't know, Charley; you not coming over all day and all. I thought
maybe your friend didn't give you the tickets like he promised."
"Didn't he? Look! See if he didn't!"
He produced a square of pink cardboard from his waistcoat pocket and she
read it, with a sudden lightness underlying her voice:
HIBERNIAN MASQUE AND HOP
SUPPER WARDROBE FREE
ADMIT GENT AND LADY FIFTY CENTS
"Oh, gee, Charley! And me such a sight in this old waist and all. I
didn't know there was supper, too."
"Sure! Hurry, Sweetness, and we'll catch a Sixth Avenue car. We wanna
get in on it while the tamales are hot."
She grasped his arm closer, and straightening her velveteen poke-bonnet
so that the curls lay pat, together they wormed through the sidewalk
crush; once or twice she coughed, with the hollow resonance of a chain
drawn upward from a deep well.
"Gee! I bet there'll be a jam!"
"Sure! There's some live crowd down there."
They were in the street-car, swaying, swinging, clutching; hemmed in by
frantic, home-going New York, nose to nose, eye to eye, tooth to tooth.
Around Sara Juke's slim waist lay Charley Chubb's saving arm, and with
each lurch they laughed immoderately, except when she coughed.
"Gee! ain't it the limit? It's a wonder they wouldn't open a window in
this car!"
"Nix on that. Whatta you wanna do--freeze a fellow out?"