Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
The group of urchins burst instantly asunder and its individual
fragments were spread in a wide, respectable half circle about the
point of interest. The saloon door opened with a crash, and the figure
of a woman appeared upon the threshold. Her grey hair fell in knotted
masses about her shoulders. Her face was crimsoned and wet with
perspiration. Her eyes had a rolling glare.
"Not a damn cent more of me money will yehs ever get, not a damn cent.
I spent me money here fer t'ree years an' now yehs tells me yeh'll sell
me no more stuff! T'hell wid yeh, Johnnie Murckre! 'Disturbance'?
Disturbance be damned! T'hell wid yeh, Johnnie--"
The door received a kick of exasperation from within and the woman
lurched heavily out on the sidewalk.
The gamins in the half-circle became violently agitated. They began to
dance about and hoot and yell and jeer. Wide dirty grins spread over
each face.
The woman made a furious dash at a particularly outrageous cluster of
little boys. They laughed delightedly and scampered off a short
distance, calling out over their shoulders to her. She stood tottering
on the curb-stone and thundered at them.
"Yeh devil's kids," she howled, shaking red fists. The little boys
whooped in glee. As she started up the street they fell in behind and
marched uproariously. Occasionally she wheeled about and made charges
on them. They ran nimbly out of reach and taunted her.
In the frame of a gruesome doorway she stood for a moment cursing them.
Her hair straggled, giving her crimson features a look of insanity.
Her great fists quivered as she shook them madly in the air.
The urchins made terrific noises until she turned and disappeared.
Then they filed quietly in the way they had come.
The woman floundered about in the lower hall of the tenement house and
finally stumbled up the stairs. On an upper hall a door was opened and
a collection of heads peered curiously out, watching her. With a
wrathful snort the woman confronted the door, but it was slammed
hastily in her face and the key was turned.
She stood for a few minutes, delivering a frenzied challenge at the
panels.
"Come out in deh hall, Mary Murphy, damn yeh, if yehs want a row. Come
ahn, yeh overgrown terrier, come ahn."
She began to kick the door with her great feet. She shrilly defied the
universe to appear and do battle. Her cursing trebles brought heads
from all doors save the one she threatened. Her eyes glared in every
direction. The air was full of her tossing fists.
"Come ahn, deh hull damn gang of yehs, come ahn," she roared at the
spectators. An oath or two, cat-calls, jeers and bits of facetious
advice were given in reply. Missiles clattered about her feet.
"What deh hell's deh matter wid yeh?" said a voice in the gathered
gloom, and Jimmie came forward. He carried a tin dinner-pail in his
hand and under his arm a brown truckman's apron done in a bundle.
"What deh hell's wrong?" he demanded.
"Come out, all of yehs, come out," his mother was howling. "Come ahn
an' I'll stamp her damn brains under me feet."
"Shet yer face, an' come home, yeh damned old fool," roared Jimmie at
her. She strided up to him and twirled her fingers in his face. Her
eyes were darting flames of unreasoning rage and her frame trembled
with eagerness for a fight.
"T'hell wid yehs! An' who deh hell are yehs? I ain't givin' a snap of
me fingers fer yehs," she bawled at him. She turned her huge back in
tremendous disdain and climbed the stairs to the next floor.
Jimmie followed, cursing blackly. At the top of the flight he seized
his mother's arm and started to drag her toward the door of their room.
"Come home, damn yeh," he gritted between his teeth.
"Take yer hands off me! Take yer hands off me," shrieked his mother.
She raised her arm and whirled her great fist at her son's face.
Jimmie dodged his head and the blow struck him in the back of the neck.
"Damn yeh," gritted he again. He threw out his left hand and writhed
his fingers about her middle arm. The mother and the son began to sway
and struggle like gladiators.
"Whoop!" said the Rum Alley tenement house. The hall filled with
interested spectators.
"Hi, ol' lady, dat was a dandy!"
"T'ree to one on deh red!"
"Ah, stop yer damn scrappin'!"
The door of the Johnson home opened and Maggie looked out. Jimmie made
a supreme cursing effort and hurled his mother into the room. He
quickly followed and closed the door. The Rum Alley tenement swore
disappointedly and retired.
The mother slowly gathered herself up from the floor. Her eyes
glittered menacingly upon her children.
"Here, now," said Jimmie, "we've had enough of dis. Sit down, an' don'
make no trouble."
He grasped her arm, and twisting it, forced her into a creaking chair.
"Keep yer hands off me," roared his mother again.
"Damn yer ol' hide," yelled Jimmie, madly. Maggie shrieked and ran
into the other room. To her there came the sound of a storm of crashes
and curses. There was a great final thump and Jimmie's voice cried:
"Dere, damn yeh, stay still." Maggie opened the door now, and went
warily out. "Oh, Jimmie."
He was leaning against the wall and swearing. Blood stood upon bruises
on his knotty fore-arms where they had scraped against the floor or the
walls in the scuffle. The mother lay screeching on the floor, the
tears running down her furrowed face.
Maggie, standing in the middle of the room, gazed about her. The usual
upheaval of the tables and chairs had taken place. Crockery was strewn
broadcast in fragments. The stove had been disturbed on its legs, and
now leaned idiotically to one side. A pail had been upset and water
spread in all directions.
The door opened and Pete appeared. He shrugged his shoulders. "Oh,
Gawd," he observed.
He walked over to Maggie and whispered in her ear. "Ah, what deh hell,
Mag? Come ahn and we'll have a hell of a time."
The mother in the corner upreared her head and shook her tangled locks.
"Teh hell wid him and you," she said, glowering at her daughter in the
gloom. Her eyes seemed to burn balefully. "Yeh've gone teh deh devil,
Mag Johnson, yehs knows yehs have gone teh deh devil. Yer a disgrace
teh yer people, damn yeh. An' now, git out an' go ahn wid dat
doe-faced jude of yours. Go teh hell wid him, damn yeh, an' a good
riddance. Go teh hell an' see how yeh likes it."
Maggie gazed long at her mother.
"Go teh hell now, an' see how yeh likes it. Git out. I won't have
sech as yehs in me house! Get out, d'yeh hear! Damn yeh, git out!"
The girl began to tremble.
At this instant Pete came forward. "Oh, what deh hell, Mag, see,"
whispered he softly in her ear. "Dis all blows over. See? Deh ol'
woman 'ill be all right in deh mornin'. Come ahn out wid me! We'll
have a hell of a time."
The woman on the floor cursed. Jimmie was intent upon his bruised
fore-arms. The girl cast a glance about the room filled with a chaotic
mass of debris, and at the red, writhing body of her mother.
"Go teh hell an' good riddance."
She went.
Chapter X
Jimmie had an idea it wasn't common courtesy for a friend to come to
one's home and ruin one's sister. But he was not sure how much Pete
knew about the rules of politeness.
The following night he returned home from work at rather a late hour in
the evening. In passing through the halls he came upon the gnarled and
leathery old woman who possessed the music box. She was grinning in
the dim light that drifted through dust-stained panes. She beckoned to
him with a smudged forefinger.
"Ah, Jimmie, what do yehs t'ink I got onto las' night. It was deh
funnies' t'ing I ever saw," she cried, coming close to him and leering.
She was trembling with eagerness to tell her tale. "I was by me door
las' night when yer sister and her jude feller came in late, oh, very
late. An' she, the dear, she was a-cryin' as if her heart would break,
she was. It was deh funnies' t'ing I ever saw. An' right out here by
me door she asked him did he love her, did he. An' she was a-cryin' as
if her heart would break, poor t'ing. An' him, I could see by deh way
what he said it dat she had been askin' orften, he says: 'Oh, hell,
yes,' he says, says he, 'Oh, hell, yes.'"
Storm-clouds swept over Jimmie's face, but he turned from the leathery
old woman and plodded on up-stairs.
"Oh, hell, yes," called she after him. She laughed a laugh that was
like a prophetic croak. "'Oh, hell, yes,' he says, says he, 'Oh, hell,
yes.'"
There was no one in at home. The rooms showed that attempts had been
made at tidying them. Parts of the wreckage of the day before had been
repaired by an unskilful hand. A chair or two and the table, stood
uncertainly upon legs. The floor had been newly swept. Too, the blue
ribbons had been restored to the curtains, and the lambrequin, with its
immense sheaves of yellow wheat and red roses of equal size, had been
returned, in a worn and sorry state, to its position at the mantel.
Maggie's jacket and hat were gone from the nail behind the door.
Jimmie walked to the window and began to look through the blurred
glass. It occurred to him to vaguely wonder, for an instant, if some
of the women of his acquaintance had brothers.
Suddenly, however, he began to swear.
"But he was me frien'! I brought 'im here! Dat's deh hell of it!"
He fumed about the room, his anger gradually rising to the furious
pitch.
"I'll kill deh jay! Dat's what I'll do! I'll kill deh jay!"
He clutched his hat and sprang toward the door. But it opened and his
mother's great form blocked the passage.
"What deh hell's deh matter wid yeh?" exclaimed she, coming into the
rooms.
Jimmie gave vent to a sardonic curse and then laughed heavily.
"Well, Maggie's gone teh deh devil! Dat's what! See?"
"Eh?" said his mother.
"Maggie's gone teh deh devil! Are yehs deaf?" roared Jimmie,
impatiently.
"Deh hell she has," murmured the mother, astounded.
Jimmie grunted, and then began to stare out at the window. His mother
sat down in a chair, but a moment later sprang erect and delivered a
maddened whirl of oaths. Her son turned to look at her as she reeled
and swayed in the middle of the room, her fierce face convulsed with
passion, her blotched arms raised high in imprecation.
"May Gawd curse her forever," she shrieked. "May she eat nothin' but
stones and deh dirt in deh street. May she sleep in deh gutter an'
never see deh sun shine agin. Deh damn--"
"Here, now," said her son. "Take a drop on yourself."
The mother raised lamenting eyes to the ceiling.
"She's deh devil's own chil', Jimmie," she whispered. "Ah, who would
t'ink such a bad girl could grow up in our fambly, Jimmie, me son.
Many deh hour I've spent in talk wid dat girl an' tol' her if she ever
went on deh streets I'd see her damned. An' after all her bringin' up
an' what I tol' her and talked wid her, she goes teh deh bad, like a
duck teh water."
The tears rolled down her furrowed face. Her hands trembled.
"An' den when dat Sadie MacMallister next door to us was sent teh deh
devil by dat feller what worked in deh soap-factory, didn't I tell our
Mag dat if she--"
"Ah, dat's annuder story," interrupted the brother. "Of course, dat
Sadie was nice an' all dat--but--see--it ain't dessame as if--well,
Maggie was diff'ent--see--she was diff'ent."
He was trying to formulate a theory that he had always unconsciously
held, that all sisters, excepting his own, could advisedly be ruined.
He suddenly broke out again. "I'll go t'ump hell outa deh mug what did
her deh harm. I'll kill 'im! He t'inks he kin scrap, but when he gits
me a-chasin' 'im he'll fin' out where he's wrong, deh damned duffer.
I'll wipe up deh street wid 'im."