Part 15

'"S-s-s-s-h, baby, you're all hysterical from overwork and all tired out from worry. There ain't no need to worry, baby. Quigley'll say it can go over another week. She ain't dunning for board, she ain't, baby."

"I--oh--I--"

"Shaking all over, baby, just like you got the horrors! I bet you got scared when you see the snow coming and tackled Ingram to-day, and you're blue. What you got the horrors about, baby--Ingram?"

"No! No!"

"I told you not to ask the old skinflint. I told you they won't do nothing after twelve weeks. I ain't bluffed off by snow-storm, Vi. I don't need South no more'n you do, I don't, baby. I ain't a dead one by a long shot yet! Vi, for God's sake, why you got the horrors?"

She tried to find words and to smile at him through the hot rain of her tears, and the deep-rooted sobs that racked her subsided and she snuggled closer and burrowed into his pillow.

"I--I can't keep it no longer, darlin'. I ain't cryin', I--I 'ain't got the horrors. I'm laffin'. I--I seen him, Harry--Ingram--I seen him just before closin', and--and--oh, Harry, you won't believe it, he said--he--I--I'm laffin' for joy, Harry!"

"What? What, Vi? What?"

She fumbled into the bosom of her blouse and slid a small folded square of yellowback bill into his hand.

"What? What, Vi? What?"

"A cool hundred, darlin'. Ingram--the Aid Society, because it's Christmas, darlin'. They opened up--a cool hundred! We--we can light out To-morrow, darlin'. A cool hundred! Old Ingram, the old skinflint, he opened up like--like a oyster. South, all of us, to-morrow, darlin'; it ain't nothing for me to get a job South. When I seen it was snowin' I'd 'a' killed somebody to get it. I--I had to have it and we got it, darlin', we--we got it--a cool hundred!"

He lay back on the pillow, suddenly limp, the bill fluttering to the coverlet, and she slid her arm beneath his head.

"You could have knocked me down, too, darlin'. Easy, just like that he forked over. 'What's a Aid Society for?' he kept sayin'. 'What's a Aid Society for?'"

"Vi, I--"

"Don't cry, darlin', don't cry. I just can't stand it!"

"I--"

"'S-s-s-s-h! Easy, just like that he gimme it, darlin'."

"And me lying here hatin' him for a skinflint and his store for a bloodsucker and the Aid Society for a fake!"

"Yes, yes, darlin'."

"I feel new already, Vi. I can feel the sun already shining through me. If he was here, I--I could just kiss his hand; that's how it feels for a fellow to get his nerve back. I got my chance now, Vi; there ain't nothing can keep me down. Just like he says--I'll be a new man out there. Look, hon, just talking about it! Feel how I got some strength back already. An hour ago I couldn't hold you like this."

"Oh, my darlin'!"

He sat up suddenly in bed and drew her into his arms and she laid her cheek against his, and in the silence, from the trundle crib beside them, the breathing of a child rose softly, fell softly.

"I--I blew us to a real Christmas, darlin', us and the kid. I--I couldn't help it. I couldn't bear to have her wake up without it, Harry, her and you--and me."

"A real Christmas, baby!"

"Red wine for you, darlin', like I brought you last Tuesday night and warmed you up so nice. The kind the doctor says is so grand for you, darlin'--red wine without bubbles like he says you gotta have."

"Red wine!"

"Yeh, and black grapes like I brought you last Tuesday, and like he says you oughtta have--black grapes and swell fruit that's good for you, darlin'."

"A real blow-out, Vi-dee."

"A bear for the kid, Harry!"

"Vi!"

"Yeh, a real brown grizz, with the grin and all, like she cried for in the window that Sunday--a real big brown one with the grin and all."

"That cost a real bunch of money, sweet!"

"Yeh, I blew me like sixty for it, hon, but she cried for it that Sunday and she had to have a Christmas, didn't she, darlin', even if she is too little. It--it would 'a' broke my heart to have her wake up to-morrow without one."

He regarded her through the glaze of tears. "My little kiddo!"

'"S-s-s-s-h!"

"It just don't seem fair for you to have to--"

"'S-s-s-s-h! Everything's fair, darlin', in love and war. All the rules for the game of living ain't written down--the Eleventh Commandment and the Twelfth Commandment and the Ninth Commandment."

"My little kiddo!"

"To-morrow, Harry, to-morrow, Harry, we're going! South, darlin', where he says the sun is going to warm you through and through. To-morrow, darlin'!"

"The next day, sweetness. You're all worn out and to-morrow's Christmas, and--"

But the shivering took hold of her again, and when she pressed her hand over his mouth he could feel it trembling.

"To-morrow, darlin', to-morrow before eight. Every day counts. Promise me, darlin'. I--I just can't live if you don't. To-morrow before eight. Promise me, darlin'! Oh, promise me, darlin'!"

"Poor, tired little kiddo, to-morrow before eight, then, to-morrow before eight we go."

Her head relaxed.

"You're tired out, darlin'. Get to bed, baby. We got a big day to-morrow. We got a big day to-morrow, darlin'! Get to bed, Vi-dee."

"I wanna spread out her Christmas first, Harry. I want her to see it when she wakes up. I couldn't stand her not seem' it."

She scurried to the hall and back again, and at the foot of the bed she spread her gaudy wares: An iridescent rubber ball glowing with six colors; a ribbon of gilt paper festooned to the crib; a gleaming Christmas star that dangled and gave out radiance; a huge brown bear standing upright, and with bead eyes and a grin.

T.B.

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."