II
EVENTUALLY THEY ENTERED INTO a dark region where,
from a careening building, a dozen gruesome doorways gave up loads
of babies to the street and the gutter. A wind of early autumn
raised yellow dust from cobbles and swirled it against an hundred
windows. Long streamers of garments fluttered from fire-escapes. In
all unhandy places there were buckets, brooms, rags and bottles. In
the street infants played or fought with other infants or sat
stupidly in the way of vehicles. Formidable women, with uncombed
hair and disordered dress, gossiped while leaning on railings, or
screamed in frantic quarrels. Withered persons, in curious postures
of submission to something, sat smoking pipes in obscure corners. A
thousand odors of cooking food came forth to the street. The
building quivered and creaked from the weight of humanity stamping
about in its bowels.
A small ragged girl dragged a red, bawling infant
along the crowded ways. He was hanging back, baby-like, bracing his
wrinkled, bare legs.
The little girl cried out: “Ah, Tommie, come ahn.
Dere’s Jimmie and fader. Don’t be a-pullin’ me back.”
She jerked the baby’s arm impatiently. He fell on
his face, roaring. With a second jerk she pulled him to his feet,
and they went on. With the obstinacy of his order, he protested
against being dragged in a chosen direction. He made heroic
endeavors to keep on his legs, denounce his sister and consume a
bit of orange peeling which he chewed between the times of his
infantile orations.
As the sullen-eyed man, followed by the
blood-covered boy, drew near, the little girl burst into
reproachful cries. “Ah, Jimmie, youse bin fightin’ agin.”
The urchin swelled disdainfully.
“Ah, what deh hell, Mag. See?”
The little girl upbraided him. “Youse allus
fightin‘, Jimmie, an’ yeh knows it puts mudder out when yehs come
home half dead, an’ it’s like we’ll all get a poundin’.”
She began to weep. The babe threw back his head and
roared at his prospects.
“Ah, what deh hell!” cried Jimmie. “Shut up er I’ll
smack yer mout’. See?”
As his sister continued her lamentations, he
suddenly swore and struck her. The little girl reeled and,
recovering herself, burst into tears and quaveringly cursed him. As
she slowly retreated her brother advanced dealing her cuffs. The
father heard and turned about.
“Stop that, Jim, d’yeh hear? Leave yer sister alone
on the street. It’s like I can never beat any sense into yer damned
wooden head.”
The urchin raised his voice in defiance to his
parent and continued his attacks. The babe bawled tremendously,
protesting with great violence. During his sister’s hasty
manoeuvres, he was dragged by the arm.
Finally the procession plunged into one of the
gruesome doorways. They crawled up dark stairways and along cold,
gloomy halls. At last the father pushed open a door and they
entered a lighted room in which a large woman was rampant.
She stopped in a career from a seething stove to a
pan-covered table. As the father and children filed in she peered
at them.
“Eh, what? Been fightin’ agin, by Gawd!” She threw
herself upon Jimmie. The urchin tried to dart behind the others and
in the scuffle the babe, Tommie, was knocked down. He protested
with his usual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins
against a table leg.
The mother’s massive shoulders heaved with anger.
Grasping the urchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he
rattled. She dragged him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in
water, began to scrub his lacerated face with it. Jimmie screamed
in pain and tried to twist his shoulders out of the clasp of the
huge arms.
The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his
face in contortions like that of a woman at a tragedy. The father,
with a newlyladened pipe in his mouth, crouched on a backless chair
near the stove. Jimmie’s cries annoyed him. He turned about and
bellowed at his wife:
“Let the damned kid alone for a minute, will yeh,
Mary? Yer allus poundin’ ‘im. When I come nights I can’t git no
rest ’cause yer allus poundin’ a kid. Let up, d’yeh hear? Don’t be
allus poundin’ a kid.”
The woman’s operations on the urchin instantly
increased in violence. At last she tossed him to a corner where he
limply lay cursing and weeping.
The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with
a chieftain-like stride approached her husband.
“Ho,” she said, with a great grunt of contempt.
“An’ what in the devil are you stickin’ your nose for?”
The babe crawled under the table and, turning,
peered out cautiously. The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in
the corner drew his legs carefully beneath him.
The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great
mudded boots on the back part of the stove.
“Go teh hell,” he murmured, tranquilly.
The woman screamed and shook her fists before her
husband’s eyes. The rough yellow of her face and neck flared
suddenly crimson. She began to howl.
He puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but
finally arose and began to look out at the window into the
darkening chaos of back yards.
“You’ve been drinkin‘, Mary,” he said. “You’d
better let up on the bot’, ol’ woman, or you’ll git done.”
“You’re a liar. I ain’t had a drop,” she roared in
reply.
They had a lurid altercation, in which they damned
each other’s souls with frequence.
The babe was staring out from under the table, his
small face working in his excitement.
The ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner
where the urchin lay.
“Are yehs hurted much, Jimmie?” she whispered
timidly.
“Not a damn bit! See?” growled the little
boy.
“Will I wash deh blood?”
“Naw! ”
“Will I”—
“When I catch dat Riley kid I’ll break ’is face!
Dat’s right! See?”
He turned his face to the wall as if resolved to
grimly bide his time.
In the quarrel between husband and wife, the woman
was victor. The man grabbed his hat and rushed from the room,
apparently determined upon a vengeful drunk. She followed to the
door and thundered at him as he made his way down stairs.
She returned and stirred up the room until her
children were bobbing about like bubbles.
“Git outa deh way,” she persistently bawled, waving
feet with their dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children.
She shrouded herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam at
the stove, and eventually extracted a frying-pan full of potatoes
that hissed.
She flourished it. “Come teh yer suppers, now,” she
cried with sudden exasperation. “Hurry up, now, er I’ll help
yeh!”
The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious
clatter they arranged themselves at table. The babe sat with his
feet dangling high from a precarious infant chair and gorged his
small stomach. Jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity, the
grease-enveloped pieces between his wounded lips. Maggie, with side
glances of fear of interruption, ate like a small pursued
tigress.
The mother sat blinking at them. She delivered
reproaches, swallowed potatoes and drank from a yellow-brown
bottle. After a time her mood changed and she wept as she carried
little Tommie into another room and laid him to sleep with his
fists doubled in an old quilt of faded red and green grandeur. Then
she came and moaned by the stove. She rocked to and fro upon a
chair, shedding tears and crooning miserably to the two children
about their “poor mother” and “yer fader, damn ’is soul.”
The little girl plodded between the table and the
chair with a dish-pan on it. She tottered on her small legs beneath
burdens of dishes.
Jimmie sat nursing his various wounds. He cast
furtive glances at his mother. His practised eye perceived her
gradually emerge from a muddled mist of sentiment until her brain
burned in drunken heat. He sat breathless.
Maggie broke a plate.
The mother started to her feet as if
propelled.
“Good Gawd,” she howled. Her eyes glittered on her
child with sudden hatred. The fervent red of her face turned almost
to purple. The little boy ran to the halls, shrieking like a monk
in an earthquake.
He floundered about in darkness until he found the
stairs. He stumbled, panic-stricken, to the next floor. An old
woman opened a door. A light behind her threw a flare on the
urchin’s quivering face.
“Eh, Gawd, child, what is it dis time? Is yer fader
beatin’ yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin’ yer fader?”