Part 26

Dazedly, she looked about. Beside her, upon one side, sat a gray-haired woman of sixty, too old any longer to earn that tribute which would have secured her immunity for the prosecution of the trade she must recently have adopted. Nearby was a girl of thirteen, who, temporarily neglected by her owner, had been arrested for the same offense. On the bench sat a fat negress who informed all listeners that she was falsely charged with picking the pocket of a bald-headed white man that she had solicited. Over them all streamed the pitiless light of strong lamps, upon them all were soon to feast the eyes of the crowd in the near court-room.

The newcomer bowed her head. She did not know that a court-retainer had been waiting her arrival. She did not know that, as soon as she had entered, this retainer had hurried to a telephone. She did not know that, in answer to this call, Rafael Angelelli had hurried to the door that she had just passed, and there presented a note bearing a potent signature. She did not even know that these things were of common enough occurrence, and she was aware of only her misery until she heard the Italian's low voice and saw him beckoning her to the bars.

She almost ran toward him. The other prisoners gathered about her, but the officer that accompanied Angel waved them away, and himself drew back. Mary clutched the bars as if they had been a tangible hope.

"Angel!" she whispered.

But Angelelli fronted her, scowling. He shook a tight fist under her shrinking eyes.

"You are a dam' fool!" he answered.

Mary could not articulate. Her lips involuntarily found an unthought query, but her voice was dumb.

"Why you not leesten to theesa Wesley Dyk'?" pursued Rafael. "Now maybe you go to the Island. You know what that mean? Theesa jailers cut off your hair, beat you up every mornin', every evenin' regular. No meals; only bread an' water; no wheeskey. An' when you come out every cop hava you' peecture an' you get arrest' each time an' senta back again to jail!"

She believed him. She would have believed anything that was said to her by someone she had previously known. With a flow of ready tears that blinded her sunken eyes, she begged him to tell her of some way of escape.

Angel was ready with his answer. It seemed that he still represented Wesley Dyker and that Mr. Dyker was not disposed to be so hard on her as impartial justice demanded that he should be. In the back-room of a nearby saloon there were a lawyer and a notary in waiting. If Mary would promise to swear to and sign before them a prepared paper denying the accusations she had made to Marian, Angel would now, by means of a second note, see that the sitting magistrate did but fine her, and would hand her at once the amount of that fine.

She had supposed that her arrest had been on the charge of larceny from Mrs. Turner's boarding-house; she had not known that she was accused of no more than the practice of her trade, and she could scarcely credit news so good as this which Angel brought her.

"An' I won't have to go to Miss Marian?" she asked.

"No. Meest' Dyk' want thees paper for hees girl--jus' to square heemself witha hees girl--no more. You go where you want."

"An' the judge'll let me off?"

"Right away."

She promised, and a moment later was led into the court-room.

She saw the gaping, leering crowd, which filled half of that apartment beyond the low grating. She saw the stolid policemen herding their charges as stockyard hands herd cattle for the slaughter. She saw the stealthy slavers buzzing in and out, bent upon nefarious rescue; the waiting lawyers on the outer bench and the laughing lawyers inside, joking together or making mirth before the desk at which, in his black robe, sat the weary, cynical, indifferent magistrate, his face as expressionless as that of a Chinese Joss. She heard, between the roars of elevated trains, the unintelligible oaths, administered, as she now understood that the average oath is administered, with a rapidity that robbed them of all dignity and most effect; the drone of testimony constantly interrupted to the point of confusion and always curtailed to the exclusion of essential truth; the mechanical pronouncement of sentence that ended, as if the two things were on phrase, in the summoning of the succeeding case. All this she saw and heard and disregarded. She had been struck down, trapped, held fast in the grip of the invisible enemy that she thought of as the City. She had been conscious of nothing but the living Fear, and now, Angel had told her, some portion of relief was at hand.

Her arraignment, the payment of her fine, her meeting with the waiting Italian, her progress to the nearby saloon where the lawyer and the notary were ready for her--all this passed like a vision of the night. She signed without reading it--though she would not have understood it if she had read it--the formal denial to which her affirmation was immediately affixed. She was too dazed to think until, leaving the three smiling men behind her, she had turned again into free Sixth Avenue.

It was then that she saw coming toward her a young man--a young man that might have been anywhere from nineteen to thirty-two--with hair that was dark and curly, sorely-shaven olive cheeks just showing the defeated tokens of a blue-black beard; a dapper, prosperous young man, with thick lips and hard eyes and a smartly cut overcoat, from one pocket of which flashed a brilliant-bordered handkerchief.

In the instant Mary's exhaustion dropped from her brain and shoulders. She forgot her fright of the earlier evening; she remembered only the sufferings from which it had arisen. Her waiting had not, after all, been vain. She was calm, she was resourceful, she was resolved.

"Hello, Max," she said.

XXVII

JUDGMENT

At first he did not know her. He stood there, while their eyes were locked, in his own eyes no gleam of honest memory. He was unchanged--the serene, the secure, the smug Max Grossman of that first meeting in the street of her little Pennsylvania town; but she, as she so well knew without this silent testimony, was not now, and never again could be, the girl of that lost springtime. He looked at her, his thick lips drawn thin in a professional grimace, and not until she spoke a second time did he recognize her.

He started then, and his olive face went pale; but Mary put out her hand precisely as if she were meeting, after a brief absence, only an acquaintance of the everyday friendly sort, and Max, too glad for pardon to question motive, seized and squeezed her hand tenderly.

"Vhat?" he cried in mock pleasure at this _contretemps_. "No, it _ain'd_! I gan't hardly belief mine eyes you're lookin' so fine. But it _is_ Mary Denbigh!"

She smiled almost gayly. In little she had to lie, but in much, though for a reason that he must not suspect, she was indeed exultant.

"I am lookin' good, ain't I, Max?" she said.

He surveyed her cheap finery; saw her hair, disordered in her passage through the crowded court-room, and turned his gaze quickly from her hollow, painted cheeks, her hardening carmine mouth, and her heavily ringed eyes.

"You're _grand_," he said. "I always knew you'd make good, Mary."

"You jollier!" she laughed, and with her free hand, patted his olive cheek.

"No, it's _hon_est, so help me."

"Then don't you want to buy me a drink, Max?"

Grossman dropped her hand. His face grew doubtful.

"I vish I had _dime_," he said, "but I god to see a friend down the Avenue, an'----"

"A lady, Max?"

"Ach, no, Mary."

"Then let him go. You ought to be glad to take a walk with as good-lookin' a girl as you say I am."

For another fleeting instant Max let his eyes rest on her face, then lowered them. He looked at the pavement and drew an awkward line upon it with the edge of his tan boot-sole. More significant than any physical change in her was the fact that she could now embarrass him.

"I know, Mary," he stammered; "but, you see, this here feller vhat I tol'----"

She laughed again. She thrust her arm through his and turned his face uptown.

"Forget it!" she said. "Don't you worry, Max; I ain't goin' to rake things up, if that's what's souring you. Life's too short. All I want is a talk and a drink."

Half reluctantly, he let her lead him; but she could lead him and that sufficed her.

He lit an American cigarette and puffed it nervously.

"I've just been in there," she said, with a backward jerk of her head in the direction of the police-court.

"There?" Max was not surprised, but he added: "Vhat vas you doin' in there?"

"What do you think?" responded Mary. She herself was thinking rapidly--about other things.

"You vasn't in drouble?"

"I guess you would call it that."

"Pinched?"

"Yes."

He had asked her no questions about her past--but concerning her present he chanced a query.

"Mary," he inquired, "do you mean they god you up fer your beesiness?"

"That's about it," she said.

"But vhy don't you square you'self vith the goppers?"

"I don't know. I--I was broke, Max."

"I vish I gould _help_ you, Mary," he said, his curiosity cooling at the thought of an appeal for assistance.

She saw it, and it amused her.

"Can't you do it?" she asked, dropping her voice into a whine.

He tried to draw away from her, but her linked arm held him affectionately fast.

"I been havin' rotten luck," he declared; "somethin' awful. I ain't got hardly only the money vhat's in my _glothes_."

"Well, then," said Mary, looking at the clothes and knowing well that they somewhere concealed an ample yellow sum, "why don't you take me on your staff?"

"Mary," he cried, trying to spread his hands, and failing dismally with the one that her pinioning arm hampered, "vhat do you think I am? A millionaire? I ain't got no staff."

"Come off!" she bantered.

"I ain't--honest."

"Still in the other line?" she persisted. "I thought you might be trottin' 'em on the street--they say there's more in it. Why do you stick to supplyin' the flats and the houses?"

Her voice was the perfection of good nature, but he writhed under it.

"Mary!" he pleaded.

"Well," she said, disregarding his tone, and keeping his arm fast in her own, "you do supply 'em, don't you? I know one fellow who makes his livin' goin' the rounds, findin' what girls is sore on their madams an' then gettin' a commission by sneakin' 'em out an' changin' 'em to new flats. He lets on he's sellin' kimonas, but one sample's lasted him three years."

"Mary!" repeated Max, more weakly.

"That's the truth," she said, and then: "But can't you start street-work an' take me on your staff?"

Again he looked at her,

"No," he answered.

"Not young enough lookin' now, eh?" She was still smiling.

"Ach," he protested, "you oughtn't nod to be so _hard_ on a feller. If you chust knowed----"

But she had gone far enough, and she would not let him finish. They had reached a saloon near to her new lodging-place, and she paused. There was, and she knew it, no word in his excuse that she would have credited. Nor did she mean, just yet, to let him see her hatred. In order that he might the better see it at a later moment, she wanted now to quiet his naturally ready fears. She had found that she could harass him, and that, for the present, was all that she needed to know.

"Never mind," she said, "I told you I wasn't goin' to rake up nothin', an' I mean to keep my word. Come on in here. This is a quiet place. You're goin' to buy me a drink, anyhow, just to show that we're still friends."

He brightened at this indicated avenue of escape.

"_Sure_ we're still friends," he declared, "an' you can haf all you vant to _drink_, too."

She slipped her hand into his--she could do it, she had learned, without the dumb flesh seeming to shrink from that contact--and pressed it.

They went into the deserted "ladies' room" of the saloon to which she had referred, and sat down there, facing each other under a light turned kindly low.

"Vhiskey?" asked Max.

"Yes," said Mary.

"Two of 'em," ordered Max of the waiter that had answered his ring, "an' don'd make 'em so _stingy_ like most you fellers ofer this vay."

The man brought the liquor, placed it before them, and went away.

"Vell," said Max, raising his glass, smiling his thin smile, and apparently forgetting that he had ever denied whiskey; "here ve are, _ain't_ it?"

If Mary was remembering another night and another drink she did not say so; instead, as Max tilted his sleek head far back between his shoulders and dropped the whiskey down his throat, her hand watched for the instant when his gray eyes were on the ceiling and that instant poured the liquor from her own glass to the floor. When her companion's head came forward her fingers, wrapped about the glass, were just withdrawing it from her lips.

"I can drink that better'n I used to," she said.

Max grinned again. So long as she did not upbraid him for his part in it, so long as she did not go into the details of its earlier stages, he had no objection to hearing of her past, was even languidly curious about it, and was certainly sorry that it had not brought her to more seeming prosperity.

"You sure didn't take that like you vasn't _used_ vith it," he said.

"I'll take another just to show you how," she answered, and pressed the nearest button.

This time his eyes were on her and she had to drink. But she did not scruple: so long as she retained her head and Max lost his, the effect of the alcohol on her system concerned her but little.

They had a third drink, for "old time's sake," as Mary suggested, and this she succeeded in pouring down her dress-front. At the fourth, Max began to show signs of fear that he would have a drunken woman on his hands, but Mary's patent sobriety soon reassured him, and overcame his protests against a fifth by recalling his promise of liberality.

His cold eyes sparkled into a faint light. Little spots of red appeared in the olive of his cheeks. He felt the advance of the enemy in his veins and tried to go; but Mary began an imaginative narrative of her recent experiences and insisted on his listening. When he at last successfully interrupted that, she twitted him with being able to drink less than his pupils, and Max was once more forced to order. He was not drunk, or nearly drunk, but the fine edge of his discretion was dulled: he saw in the woman, who had now moved to his side, nothing that, whatever motives might be at work, could possibly harm him; he found something ludicrous in the situation. Her looks seemed better than they had appeared an hour earlier, and her tentative advances flattered him.

Mary, though she had drunk more than was good for her, had managed to spill enough liquor to retain all the sobriety she needed; but, when they at last rose, she swayed a little unsteadily.

"Now," she said, "you'll just buy me a half-pint for my head in the mornin', an' then you'll walk as far as my door."

Still enjoying the piquancy of the affair, he obeyed her. He even consented to come to her hall-bedroom with her--a room the exact reproduction of that which she had formerly rented farther uptown--and there, forgetful of the provision against the morning, they finished the half-pint.

At last he stood up from the bed on which he had been sitting while she, opposite, used the single chair.

"Vell," he said, grinning; "it's been good to see you again, und maybe I'll gome back some efenin'."

She rose before him. The light was at her back and her face resumed, as she stood there, some furtive traces of its earlier grace. The eyes seemed to soften, the cheeks were a natural pink beneath their coating of rouge, and her russet hair, curling about her face, relieved the harder outlines and cast a gentle shadow around the neck. She spread out her arms.

"Kiss me," she said.

He smiled and leaned condescendingly toward her.

"What's your hurry?" she murmured.

He looked at her, and the weak light and the strong liquor stood her in good stead.

"I ain't in no hurry," he smiled.

She met him smile for smile--and then, in a sudden sense of triumph, she flung back her head and laughed.

It was not until three hours later that he finally left her, but he left hurriedly, for the remorseless gray light of morning was coming in at the window, and it fell upon her as she wrapped a soiled pink kimona around her shivering figure and slipped her feet into a pair of rundown Turkish slippers.

"Good-by," he said, looking away from her.

"Wait a minute," said Mary. "I'll go with you to the door."

She did go. She followed him down the dark stairway, creaking noisily under their shamed feet, and she stood for a moment in the black hall, holding the brass knob of the door, as he passed to the step outside. Mary slipped the dead-latch, ready to bolt the door.

"Max," she said.

He turned quickly, nearly knocking over, as he did so, the milk-bottles that were lined, in a white row, upon the step.

"Yes?" he returned, and grinned sheepishly.

She thrust out her towsled head and looked up and down the gray morning street. The block was empty. She drew her head clear of the door. She was still trembling, but from neither cold nor fear.

"You ain't goin' without kissin' me?" she asked.

But a reaction of disgust had seized him.

"Yes, I am," he said.

Mary's one hand tightened on the knob; the other flattened itself against the nearest panel of the door, ready to push hard.

"All right," she replied, with a sudden change in her voice that, still low, became tense and metallic. "You think I'm--I'm done for, Max. Well--_you're done for, too!_"

The man's jaw dropped. His olive face was ashen. His eyes stared.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

Mary's mouth was wreathed in a smile.

"You know," she answered.

Max retreated so suddenly that he nearly fell down the stone steps.

"You've--you've----" he gasped.

"Yes," said Mary.

"It's a lie! You're tryin' to scare me!" His jaw worked spasmodically. "It's a damned lie!" he repeated.

"You don't believe me?" the girl inquired.

If she had looked for heroics, if she had feared melodrama, she was as yet disappointed. The knees of Max shook under him; he was in abject terror.

"It's a lie," he muttered over and over. "It's a damn' lie!"

"Think what you please," said Mary. She was still smiling, still serene. "You believed I'd forgot, didn't you? Well, I didn't forget, Max Grossman, an' now you'll remember. If you don't yet think I'm givin' you a straight story, all you have to do is just one thing: _wait_."

Max uttered an inarticulate cry and threw himself at her, but he only bashed his head against the closed door.

Mary had shut it, and in time. Behind it, in the dark hallway, she lay half fainting.

"It's the last of you, Max," she laughed.

And it was.

XXVIII

HUSKS OF THE SWINE

Mary was too ill to go to work that night, and on the night following she was no better. The shock, the spasm of success, the recoil, not moral but physical, after the satisfaction of a supreme desire--these things were, of themselves, enough to leave her prostrate. But, in addition to these, she had, while standing at that open door, contracted one of those heavy colds to which she was now rendered especially susceptible. Through long hours of the day and the darkness she tossed among the hot sheets of her bed, sometimes with her teeth clicking in a chill, again with her body burning in a fever, but always revolving in her seething brain the details of the vengeance that she had wrought.

Her physical sufferings mattered little to her. There were hours when she was wholly incapable of feeling them. When the inertia of the state of reaction began at last to wear away, it left her with a glow of recollection so great that there seemed no place for lesser sensation. She had accomplished her great work, she had achieved her mission. What she had done had been done solely for her own heart's sake; there had been no delusion of a celestial command, no distorted thought of a social duty; yet, the impulse, however utilitarian, had been supreme, and its end filled her with a sense of triumph that, for want of the proper title, she was sure was happiness.

A wiser head and an unwounded heart would have known enough of life to see that even Max Grossman was not entirely to blame. A better brain could have looked back into the past. It could have seen Max as the type of all his kind, the symbol of every one of the great company of slavers, the inevitable result of a system blind both to its own interests and to the interests of the race. It could have seen the child, one of half a dozen born to a woman that could not, properly, have cared for three. It could have seen that child neglected, dirty, forgotten, locked, by day, in the bedroom where the whole family tried vainly to sleep by night, learning the highest facts of life from the worst of teachers: the cramped childish brain--and going out, at last, upon the street, with passions prematurely developed and perverted. It could have seen the social order shape that child into society's enemy: the starved boy-pickpocket sent to the monstrously misnamed "reformatory"; the same child branded as a criminal, with none to shelter or to trust him, and with a knowledge, gained in the state's own institution, which fitted him to be only a crafty gorilla to harass the state. It could have seen the fatal line of least resistance as clearly in the resultant man as it is seen in the life of him that does no more than wreck a bank or steal a corporation, and, hideous as its course is in the one instance, it would have seen that the line was the same in all.