Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Through the open door curious eyes stared in at Maggie. Children
ventured into the room and ogled her, as if they formed the front row
at a theatre. Women, without, bended toward each other and whispered,
nodding their heads with airs of profound philosophy. A baby, overcome
with curiosity concerning this object at which all were looking, sidled
forward and touched her dress, cautiously, as if investigating a
red-hot stove. Its mother's voice rang out like a warning trumpet.
She rushed forward and grabbed her child, casting a terrible look of
indignation at the girl.
Maggie's mother paced to and fro, addressing the doorful of eyes,
expounding like a glib showman at a museum. Her voice rang through the
building.
"Dere she stands," she cried, wheeling suddenly and pointing with
dramatic finger. "Dere she stands! Lookut her! Ain' she a dindy?
An' she was so good as to come home teh her mudder, she was! Ain' she
a beaut'? Ain' she a dindy? Fer Gawd's sake!"
The jeering cries ended in another burst of shrill laughter.
The girl seemed to awaken. "Jimmie--"
He drew hastily back from her.
"Well, now, yer a hell of a t'ing, ain' yeh?" he said, his lips curling
in scorn. Radiant virtue sat upon his brow and his repelling hands
expressed horror of contamination.
Maggie turned and went.
The crowd at the door fell back precipitately. A baby falling down in
front of the door, wrenched a scream like a wounded animal from its
mother. Another woman sprang forward and picked it up, with a
chivalrous air, as if rescuing a human being from an oncoming express
train.
As the girl passed down through the hall, she went before open doors
framing more eyes strangely microscopic, and sending broad beams of
inquisitive light into the darkness of her path. On the second floor
she met the gnarled old woman who possessed the music box.
"So," she cried, "'ere yehs are back again, are yehs? An' dey've
kicked yehs out? Well, come in an' stay wid me teh-night. I ain' got
no moral standin'."
From above came an unceasing babble of tongues, over all of which rang
the mother's derisive laughter.
Chapter XVI
Pete did not consider that he had ruined Maggie. If he had thought
that her soul could never smile again, he would have believed the
mother and brother, who were pyrotechnic over the affair, to be
responsible for it.
Besides, in his world, souls did not insist upon being able to smile.
"What deh hell?"
He felt a trifle entangled. It distressed him. Revelations and scenes
might bring upon him the wrath of the owner of the saloon, who insisted
upon respectability of an advanced type.
"What deh hell do dey wanna raise such a smoke about it fer?" demanded
he of himself, disgusted with the attitude of the family. He saw no
necessity for anyone's losing their equilibrium merely because their
sister or their daughter had stayed away from home.
Searching about in his mind for possible reasons for their conduct, he
came upon the conclusion that Maggie's motives were correct, but that
the two others wished to snare him. He felt pursued.
The woman of brilliance and audacity whom he had met in the hilarious
hall showed a disposition to ridicule him.
"A little pale thing with no spirit," she said. "Did you note the
expression of her eyes? There was something in them about pumpkin pie
and virtue. That is a peculiar way the left corner of her mouth has of
twitching, isn't it? Dear, dear, my cloud-compelling Pete, what are
you coming to?"
Pete asserted at once that he never was very much interested in the
girl. The woman interrupted him, laughing.
"Oh, it's not of the slightest consequence to me, my dear young man.
You needn't draw maps for my benefit. Why should I be concerned about
it?"
But Pete continued with his explanations. If he was laughed at for his
tastes in women, he felt obliged to say that they were only temporary
or indifferent ones.
The morning after Maggie had departed from home, Pete stood behind the
bar. He was immaculate in white jacket and apron and his hair was
plastered over his brow with infinite correctness. No customers were
in the place. Pete was twisting his napkined fist slowly in a beer
glass, softly whistling to himself and occasionally holding the object
of his attention between his eyes and a few weak beams of sunlight that
had found their way over the thick screens and into the shaded room.
With lingering thoughts of the woman of brilliance and audacity, the
bartender raised his head and stared through the varying cracks between
the swaying bamboo doors. Suddenly the whistling pucker faded from his
lips. He saw Maggie walking slowly past. He gave a great start,
fearing for the previously-mentioned eminent respectability of the
place.
He threw a swift, nervous glance about him, all at once feeling guilty.
No one was in the room.
He went hastily over to the side door. Opening it and looking out, he
perceived Maggie standing, as if undecided, on the corner. She was
searching the place with her eyes.
As she turned her face toward him Pete beckoned to her hurriedly,
intent upon returning with speed to a position behind the bar and to
the atmosphere of respectability upon which the proprietor insisted.
Maggie came to him, the anxious look disappearing from her face and a
smile wreathing her lips.
"Oh, Pete--," she began brightly.
The bartender made a violent gesture of impatience.
"Oh, my Gawd," cried he, vehemently. "What deh hell do yeh wanna hang
aroun' here fer? Do yeh wanna git me inteh trouble?" he demanded with
an air of injury.
Astonishment swept over the girl's features. "Why, Pete! yehs tol'
me--"
Pete glanced profound irritation. His countenance reddened with the
anger of a man whose respectability is being threatened.
"Say, yehs makes me tired. See? What deh hell deh yeh wanna tag
aroun' atter me fer? Yeh'll git me inteh trouble wid deh ol' man an'
dey'll be hell teh pay! If he sees a woman roun' here he'll go crazy
an' I'll lose me job! See? Yer brudder come in here an' raised hell
an' deh ol' man hada put up fer it! An' now I'm done! See? I'm done."
The girl's eyes stared into his face. "Pete, don't yeh remem--"
"Oh, hell," interrupted Pete, anticipating.
The girl seemed to have a struggle with herself. She was apparently
bewildered and could not find speech. Finally she asked in a low
voice: "But where kin I go?"
The question exasperated Pete beyond the powers of endurance. It was a
direct attempt to give him some responsibility in a matter that did not
concern him. In his indignation he volunteered information.
"Oh, go teh hell," cried he. He slammed the door furiously and
returned, with an air of relief, to his respectability.
Maggie went away.
She wandered aimlessly for several blocks. She stopped once and asked
aloud a question of herself: "Who?"
A man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously took the
questioning word as intended for him.
"Eh? What? Who? Nobody! I didn't say anything," he laughingly said,
and continued his way.
Soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such apparent
aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes. She
quickened her step, frightened. As a protection, she adopted a
demeanor of intentness as if going somewhere.
After a time she left rattling avenues and passed between rows of
houses with sternness and stolidity stamped upon their features. She
hung her head for she felt their eyes grimly upon her.
Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and a chaste
black coat, whose decorous row of buttons reached from his chin to his
knees. The girl had heard of the Grace of God and she decided to
approach this man.
His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence and
kind-heartedness. His eyes shone good-will.
But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive movement and
saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step. He did not risk it
to save a soul. For how was he to know that there was a soul before
him that needed saving?
Chapter XVII
Upon a wet evening, several months after the last chapter, two
interminable rows of cars, pulled by slipping horses, jangled along a
prominent side-street. A dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded drivers,
clattered to and fro. Electric lights, whirring softly, shed a blurred
radiance. A flower dealer, his feet tapping impatiently, his nose and
his wares glistening with rain-drops, stood behind an array of roses
and chrysanthemums. Two or three theatres emptied a crowd upon the
storm-swept pavements. Men pulled their hats over their eyebrows and
raised their collars to their ears. Women shrugged impatient shoulders
in their warm cloaks and stopped to arrange their skirts for a walk
through the storm. People having been comparatively silent for two
hours burst into a roar of conversation, their hearts still kindling
from the glowings of the stage.
The pavements became tossing seas of umbrellas. Men stepped forth to
hail cabs or cars, raising their fingers in varied forms of polite
request or imperative demand. An endless procession wended toward
elevated stations. An atmosphere of pleasure and prosperity seemed to
hang over the throng, born, perhaps, of good clothes and of having just
emerged from a place of forgetfulness.
In the mingled light and gloom of an adjacent park, a handful of wet
wanderers, in attitudes of chronic dejection, was scattered among the
benches.
A girl of the painted cohorts of the city went along the street. She
threw changing glances at men who passed her, giving smiling
invitations to men of rural or untaught pattern and usually seeming
sedately unconscious of the men with a metropolitan seal upon their
faces.
Crossing glittering avenues, she went into the throng emerging from the
places of forgetfulness. She hurried forward through the crowd as if
intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward in her handsome
cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her well-shod feet
the dryer spots upon the pavements.
The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed animated
rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.
A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift, machine-like
music, as if a group of phantom musicians were hastening.
A tall young man, smoking a cigarette with a sublime air, strolled near
the girl. He had on evening dress, a moustache, a chrysanthemum, and a
look of ennui, all of which he kept carefully under his eye. Seeing
the girl walk on as if such a young man as he was not in existence, he
looked back transfixed with interest. He stared glassily for a moment,
but gave a slight convulsive start when he discerned that she was
neither new, Parisian, nor theatrical. He wheeled about hastily and
turned his stare into the air, like a sailor with a search-light.
A stout gentleman, with pompous and philanthropic whiskers, went
stolidly by, the broad of his back sneering at the girl.
A belated man in business clothes, and in haste to catch a car, bounced
against her shoulder. "Hi, there, Mary, I beg your pardon! Brace up,
old girl." He grasped her arm to steady her, and then was away running
down the middle of the street.
The girl walked on out of the realm of restaurants and saloons. She
passed more glittering avenues and went into darker blocks than those
where the crowd travelled.
A young man in light overcoat and derby hat received a glance shot
keenly from the eyes of the girl. He stopped and looked at her,
thrusting his hands in his pockets and making a mocking smile curl his
lips. "Come, now, old lady," he said, "you don't mean to tel me that
you sized me up for a farmer?"