A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill
And Miss Lady with her arms about his neck, making futile dabs at his
streaming eyes with her little wet knot of a handkerchief, passionately
declared that she would promise him anything under the sun, that she was
going to be happy, that she _was_ happy!
“Not yet,” said the Colonel, with much mopping of his brow; “but you
will be! We'll straighten it out. Soon as I get back, I'll take the
matter up. Sift it clean to the bottom. We'll give Morley every chance
to square himself. But 'til then, you won't see him if you can help
it, or read his letters, if he writes? You don't mind promising me that
much, do you?”
“I promise, Daddy.”
Oh! the promises made for a day, and kept through the years, what a lot
of tangled lives they have to answer for!
Miss Lady put the Colonel's things back in his bag, and stooped to kiss
him good night.
“Sure you don't mind my going?”, he asked, studying her face. “I'll be
back Saturday night.”
“All right. Good-by, I won't be up in the morning when you start. Have a
good time, Daddy dear, and--and don't worry about me.”
He lit her candle for her and carried it to the steps where he kissed
her again.
“My little girl,” he whispered.
The house grew still. Out on the landing the tall clock ticked off the
hours to midnight; the fire died to an ember; from the porch without
came the drip, drip, drip of the gutter. Still the Colonel sat in his
split-bottom chair, his little eyes like watch fires in the gloom,
listening for the faintest sound of restlessness from the room above.
CHAPTER VI
The sudden light of publicity that had fallen upon the Cant-Pass-It
saloon sent a glow over that entire region of Billy-goat Hill. Everybody
had something to talk about, and everybody talked, except Chick.
Phineas Flathers appointed himself headquarters for information, and
devoted himself exclusively to arguing about the matter. Myrtella, his
twin sister, who for fifteen years had presided over innumerable cooking
ranges throughout the city, almost lost her new place through her
interest in the affair.
The one subject upon which Myrtella Flathers considered herself a
connoisseur was murder. In sundry third floors back, she had for years
followed the current casualties with burning interest. Realism, romance,
intrigue, adventure, she found them all, in these grim recitals of daily
crime.
Myrtella and Phineas Flathers had been cast into the sea of life at
an early age to sink or swim as they saw fit. Myrtella had survived by
combating the waves, while Phineas adopted the less arduous expedient of
floating.
To him work appeared a wholly artificial and abnormal action,
self-imposed and unnecessary. The stage of life presented so many
opportunities for him to exercise his histrionic ability, that the idea
of settling down to a routine of labor seemed a waste of talent. With
far-reaching discernment he had early perceived that a straight part was
not for him.
In casting about for a field that promised the widest opportunity
for his talent, he discovered the Immanuel Church in the city. Here
philanthropy burned with such zealous enthusiasm that the harvest was
not sufficient for the laborers. Phineas saw his chance and grasped it.
He became a Prodigal Son.
From that time on his sole vocation was attending church. Three times a
week, regardless of the inclemency of the weather, he unwound his long
legs from the chair rungs in the Cant-Pass-It, carefully smoothed his
red hair, and made his way to a front pew in the Immanuel Church.
At intervals, calculated to a nicety, he fell from grace, and was
reclaimed, passing from periods of grave backsliding into periods of
great religious fervor. Meanwhile he followed the Scriptures literally
and took no thought of the morrow. His reliance in Providence and the
Ladies' Aid became, in time, absolute.
Nor did Phineas Flathers' self-respect suffer in the least by this mode
of living. In no sense did he consider himself an incumbent. Did he not
three times a week give a masterly presentation of “our needy poor,”
“our brother-in-misfortune”? Did he not freely offer up his family for
each new church society to cut its wisdom teeth upon? Had Maria, his
wife, not labored wearily through unintelligible tracts, and Chick, his
adopted son, done penance in Sunday School, as often as three Sundays in
succession? Considering all things, Phineas felt that the church got a
great deal for its money.
Myrtella Flathers, following another method, had for fifteen years
fought every obstacle that crossed her path. She had left in her wake
traditions of unexcelled cooking, and unparalleled cleanliness, together
with a vanquished army of mistresses, housemaids, laundresses, and
butlers. She belonged to the order of Cooks Militant, and she had long
since won her spurs.
Among the things which Myrtella in her sweeping condemnation of life in
general disapproved, none loomed larger than her brother and his
family. But the bond of blood, stronger than likes or dislikes, favor
or prejudice, brought her back to him again and again, to share with him
her substance, and to criticize his conduct.
On this particular afternoon she had started out for Billy-goat Hill to
hear about the shooting, and to break the news to the family, that she
had gotten a new place. This happened with such regularity, that it
would not have deserved attention, had not the astounding fact to be
added that Myrtella was pleased. In her fifteen years of rebellious
services she had never before approximated a place that gave
satisfaction. To be sure there were dark and not-to-be-remembered
instances where she had failed to give satisfaction herself, but usually
it was the place, “the new place,” with its varying code of musts
and must-nots, that caused Myrtella to spend many of her days in the
Intelligence Office, or on street-cars, or tramping through the streets
in quest of that ever elusive “good home.”
She had started out on her pilgrimage in a fairly equable frame of mind,
but before she got well under way, the wind had made her furious. It was
a frisky March breeze that had gotten left behind and now wandered into
May, bent on mischief.
Myrtella tacked into it, like a sailing sloop, full rigged and all
sails set, an angular, heavy-set person with a belligerent expression
strangely at variance with the embarrassed, almost timid movements of
her hands and feet. Short locks of straight black hair whipped across
her face, her skirts, blown tightly back against her knees, bellied in
the wind, while her wide-brimmed hat caught the full force of the blast,
like a veritable top-sail.
By the time she had taken three tacks to cross the common, and was ready
to come about at the corner, there was a balloon jibe, that sent the
sails all flapping against the mast, and left her in such a flurry
of indignation, that she failed to see a string that stretched its
insidious length, two inches above the pavement, from fence to curb.
After her fall, instead of expiring of apoplexy, as might have been
expected from her countenance, Myrtella picked herself up from the
pavement and, peeping through a crack in the fence, smiled. It was an
expression so unfamiliar to her features that they scarcely knew how to
manage it.
“I see you, Chick!” she said in a voice that strove to be gentle; “why
don't you come on out here and speak to me?”
Chick and Skeeter, recognized a significant bulge to the string bag
which she carried, scrambled forth, the former skilfully evading her
outstretched arm of welcome.
“He says,” interposed the ever-ready Skeeter, as his companion made
queer noises in his throat, “that he never knowed it was you. He never
went to trip you up. Honest to goodness! You ain't mad, are you?”
“No, I ain't mad.” Myrtella still smiled as she brushed the dust from
her skirt. “Here's a orange I brought you, Chick. You ain't been sick,
have you?”
“Naw! He ain't been sick, but he took that bath you ast him to, and
where's his nickel at?”
Myrtella stood and watched the boys until the corner grocery swallowed
them and their new nickel, then she sighed and turned into Bean Alley.
There were no streets here, and an occasional rock or tin can were the
only islands in a sea of mud. The Flathers' cottage, consisting of two
rooms and a half attic, rested its weight against the cottage next it,
with something of the blind reliance that Phineas Flathers rested upon
the Church. On its other side it commanded an uninterrupted view of the
Dump Heap, which was the background for all the juvenile social life of
that section of Billy-goat Hill.
Here ships were launched in mud puddles, flower gardens attempted in
tin cans, and fierce wars waged between rival gangs; here embryo mothers
played with stick and rag dolls, and aspirants for the circus performed
acrobatic feats on the one bit of fence that had not tumbled down. And
all this activity went on almost under the wheels of the dump carts that
passed to and fro all day. Myrtella, picking her way through the mud,
was just turning the corner of the Flathers' house when her eyes fell
upon a broken window-pane stuffed with a woolen skirt which she had
given to Maria to make over into trousers for Chick. She promptly jerked
it out with a force that brought the glass with it, and by the time she
reached the back door, her jaw was set and her brows knit.
Considering the fact that the rear room was a composite kitchen,
laundry, dining-room, pantry, coal house and cellar, the glances with
which Myrtella swept the chamber and its one occupant, might have been
a trifle less severe. It was a glance in which her individual abhorrence
of dirt combined with her racial disapproval of “in-laws.”
In the one space in the room that was not preempted, Maria Flathers bent
above a wash tub, feebly persuading black garments to become gray.
That was all she asked of them. She was not ambitious. Ambition, like
everything else, had been soaked out of her long ago by those hot,
steaming suds that enveloped her the greater part of her waking hours,
and left her physically, mentally, and morally limp. Her one strong
instinct was motherhood; but five little Flathers, opening feeble
eyes on their future environment, had become so discouraged that they
promptly closed them again. It was as if they really could not stand the
prospect of life in that home with Mr. and Mrs. Flathers for parents!
Only Chick survived, the ash-barrel baby, who really was not theirs
at all, but who having begun life in their back yard, continued as
everything else continued when once established at the Flathers',
for the simple reason that no one ever took the trouble to change the
existing disorder of things.
As Myrtella sailed wrathfully into port and docked at the door-step,
Maria looked up with a gasp:
“Law! Myrtella, you gimme a turn. I forgot this here was your afternoon
off. I thought sure you was Sheeley's rent man.”
“Sheeley's?” repeated Myrtella, her curiosity getting the better of her
temper, as she removed an old shoe and a flour sifter from the nearest
chair and sat down.
“Yes, he's our landlord, but he gits another man to collect. Guess you
heard about his gittin' shot?”
“Read every word that's been printed. Is he goin' to die?”
“Not him. Ain't nothin' the matter with him 'ceptin' his eye is blowed
out. My uncle, back home, got both his eyes--You, Chick!” this to an
invisible presence that manifested itself only through a shower of
pebbles that followed in the wake of a fleeing cat. “Go up to the
saloon, Chick, and tell yer Pappy he'll have to come on home. Yer Aunt
'Tella's here.”
“Don't look like he grows a inch a year,” said Myrtella thoughtfully,
watching him depart.