Part 7

"The poor child!" she murmured. "An' don't I know what it is? I've seen them go under, here one an' there another, hungry or overworked, every mother's daughter of them. There was Molly Ryan, as good a girl as you'd find in a day's search of the parish, left alone with no one to put clothes on her back; an' pretty Agnes Donovan--out of work for four months--her as died in the City Hospital; an' Giulia Fortuni, whose father kept a fruit-stand by the Grand Street "L" station.--What can we do for her, Hermann-boy?"

"Dot's vat I vanted to ask you, Katie," said Hoffmann. "She has to hof friends und vork first of all."

"Friends she has right here; but work she must have whether or no. I begin me old search for meself in the mornin', an' I'll keep eye an' mouth ready to get a job for her."

Cynically hopeless and city-wise in regard to her own chances, Katie's Celtic soul warmed to something of Hermann's optimism in the cause of a sister. She began planning at once, and when the train drew up outside the tunnel-shed, she had the absent Violet established as a cloak-model in the big Lennox Department-Store, and engaged to marry a floor-walker.

And then Coney--Coney the sweetly reasonable in price and the extravagantly generous in provision--crowded out of her mind, for that day, all thoughts save the thought of itself.

A great many years ago--oh, a very great many years ago!--when you were a little boy, your father took you to the county-fair. You remember it, even yet, as a purple day in the glad calendar of your childhood: the blood cattle, the show of farm implements, the prize pumpkins, the side-shows with their fat ladies and skeleton gentlemen, and the suave individual that put a bean under a cup and then, for a dollar, showed your shrewd parent that it was under another. But above all you remember the crowd. Never before had you seen so many people in one place, never realized that there were so many people in the world; and even now, out of the past, you can hear an awed voice saying:

"There are five thousand persons here."

Well, back home, the county-fair, thank heaven, continues to grow. Cattle are sleeker and pumpkins larger; the fat ladies weigh more and the thin gentlemen less; the shell-game, in one form or another, aids the progress of agriculture by making five dollars grow where only one grew before. But, in the meantime, the ugly, delightful "amusement-park" has brought the county-fair to the city-limit, and nearly three hundred thousand persons go to Coney Island every day.

Early in the season though they were, Katie and Hermann no sooner stepped upon that Surf Avenue which is at once the heart and the aorta of the Island, than they felt, as there they always felt, that they had entered upon the Land of Carnival. The broad, but crowded, way was dancing with the noise of festival, with the clangor of brass bands, the cries of venders, the smell of the circus, the tang of the sea.

Here, from mixed drinks to mixed music, went not the thugs and blacklegs, the pallid men and the painted women that would have filled such a place had it been within the borough of Manhattan. In their stead here drove the cars of generally stolid people of business and leisure, and here, above all, walked the workers of the city, the weaker sex and the stronger, seeking holiday. The full-portion hat on the half-portion girl is as familiar to Surf Avenue as to the Waldorf palm-room; care is erased from the tablets of memory. On Coney there is no To-morrow.

The laughter of the hundreds of children rang out no more freely than did that of the thousands of their elders. Mothers with babies in their arms were young again. Stately blondes and languorous brunettes, gracefully seated on the wooden steeds of the score of merry-go-rounds, rode with a dignity unsurpassed in Hyde Park or the Bois, and never a cowboy at a round-up was more adventurous than the young East-Sider mounting a hired horse upon the Pony Track.

Every nook had something to sell, and Katie had her day's work in keeping Hermann from stopping at each booth. There were miles of scenic railways on all of which he wished to ride; there were scores of panorama that tempted him with pictures of every disaster from the San Francisco fire to the Messina earthquake. There were the familiar canes waiting to be caught with the familiar ring: there were the familiar chutes to be shot, and the familiar "galleries" where the rattle of rifles recalled the battle of the Yalu. Down on the beach an army was shouting in the surf, and on every hand along the jostling, good-natured street were peanuts and popcorn, "crispettes" and "hot dogs." Upon dozens of polished floors dancers were slowly revolving with a marvelous ability to distinguish between the time of their own orchestra and that of the band in the café opposite, and everywhere were picture machines and machines that sang.

Cheap it doubtless was, but cheap also in the sense of small cost. Except in the larger cafés, the ordinary drinks sold at only five cents the glass, and the glasses were not an insult to the drinkers' capacity. Hermann and Katie had their beer at one of the smaller places. They dined for twenty-five cents apiece, without tips, at the "Home-Made-Lunch-Room"; they were twirled and buffeted in a swiftly revolving car down a series of precipitous canvas chasms, paying five cents apiece for the privilege of the shaking-up that, at home, Hermann would have resented with a blow; and they chose the last seat in the last car of a steep gravity railway, where a man must hold himself aboard with one arm and his shrieking sweetheart aboard with the other.

It was all blatant, all tawdry, all the apotheosis of the ridiculous, all essentially America-at-play; but when, at night, in the electric-train shooting through the warm darkness, the pair returned citywards, it was toward their own hard-earned and with difficulty retained places of shelter that they were going, like children after a strenuous holiday of make-believe with school to begin upon the morrow; and if, in most of the seats, as in that occupied by Katie and Hermann, girls slept with their heads resting frankly upon sleeping masculine shoulders, it was but a rest before conventional partings at home-doorways, the play-day ended for the lonely couch, and the work-day soon to begin.

VIII

MR. WESLEY DYKER

In that company of the ignoble army of martyrs over which circumstances had given Rose Légère command, there were five members. Besides Mary, who now was Violet, Celeste, whom ancient conditions had temperamentally predetermined for such service, and Fritzie, who had chosen a partly moral slavery as less onerous than a wholly economic servitude, there was the highly colored Englishwoman Evelyn, who regarded her present station as one of the descending steps inevitable for everyone that set foot upon the way they all were treading, and Wanda, a dark little Russian Jewess, who, as soon as she had landed at the South Ferry from Ellis Island, had fallen into the hands of the slave-traders, and had thenceforward persistently striven upward to the place she now inhabited.

For the maintenance of her authority upon these and their patrons, Rose, unlike some of her fellows, did not have to depend upon the assistance of any man quartered in the house. To the discipline of the inmates her system of charge for clothes, food, and shelter was admirably suited; for the regulation of the visitors the generally nearby person of big Larry Riley, the policeman, amply sufficed. One other outsider seemed, however, to have a regular connection with the establishment, and this person early excited Violet's curiosity.

Dressed in the extreme of fashion, as fashion is known from Fourteenth Street southward, his gray, almost white, suits always fresh from the pressing-iron, and his flowered tie and ever evident gay silk handkerchief always glaringly new, this dapper, dark young man was unmistakably Neapolitan. His glossy black hair clustered tight over his forehead; his brown skin shone as if rubbed with oil; his eyes danced like merry, but sinister, bits of coal, and his too red lips were continuously, loosely, patterned to a smile that was more nearly contemptuous than good-humored.

For at least a part of every evening this Italian, who always entered the house from the rear and without the formality of knocking, sat in the kitchen, drinking his beer with infinite leisure and, in the intervals of her discussions in the parlor, condescended to talk, lazily, with Rose.

"Who is he?" asked Violet, on what was perhaps the fifth of his visits that she had happened to observe.

Celeste, to whom the question had been addressed, shrugged her smooth shoulders.

"He ees Angel," she answered.

"He don't look like one."

"No, not mooch, but hees name, eet ees that: Rafael Angelelli. Eef he had the moostache, he would be almost 'andsome."

"Rose acts like she thought a good deal of him as he is."

"But why not?"--Celeste raised her heavy brows. "'e ees 'er sweed'eart."

"He is?" repeated Violet, who could not yet understand the masculine lover that would batten upon his conquest. "I notice he pretty nearly lives here, an' he never pays out a cent, an' never seems to work at anything, an' he always wears good clothes."

"My child, truly! That is the reason that I have tol' you: 'e ees 'er sweed'eart."

"Well, it's queer," said Violet, remembering another caller to whom, though he was a less frequent visitor, Rose was equally attentive. "I don't think he's half as nice as that fellow who comes here in a taxi--the one that always wears a dress-suit an' sits in the back parlor. He's a swell."

But at this Celeste grew enigmatic.

"Oh," she said, "that ees deeferent"--and would say no more.

Nevertheless, it happened, not long afterward, when the black Cassie was absent on her "evening out," that Violet, descending the back stair in unshod feet to steal from the ice-chest--as was her companions' custom--a quiet bottle of the beer that she had come to like, was brought to a palpitating stop by the sound, just then, of Rose's and Angel's voices from the kitchen but a few steps below her. The pair were plainly engaged in an important conversation, the woman hurried and frightened, the man cold and obdurate.

"Naw," said the Neapolitan; "I maka naw move out o' deesa house."

"But he's coming in now, I tell you," Rose almost supplicated. "He'll be in the back-parlor in half a minute, an' I've got to go in an' talk to him."

"Olla righta; you go; I go alonga you."

"You can't do that; you know you can't. You know how things are without my tellin' you. What makes you so stubborn all of a sudden?"

"I don' lika dees Meesta Wesley Dyker."

"That's no reason why you should double-cross me."

"'E's too mucha de fina gentleman."

"I don't care what he is; you ought to know what I am. Do you want to tear up your own meal-ticket and throw down your easy money?"

"Easy mon'? You maka de joke!"

The woman's voice noticeably changed.

"Do you mean you want some more coin?" she asked.

The Italian did not answer.

"Because I won't give it to you," Rose continued, anger darting into her still cautiously lowered voice. "I know what you're doing with it. I know you had a girl from a department store out at shows twice last week, an' the second time she had a new dress on."

Somewhere in the front of the house a door closed heavily.

"'E's comin'," the Italian coolly commented. "Do you wanta that I go along in with you?"

As quickly as it had entered, all the anger fled from Rose's voice, and Violet, accustomed to it in command or at satisfied ease, was amazed now to hear it swaying between terror and genuine affection.

"I didn't mean it!" Rose pleaded. "I didn't believe it when I heard it an' I don't believe it now, I know how much it costs a fellow to live. Here's another ten-spot. I--I--you know how I hate Dyker, and Angel, you know that I love you!"

The listener heard Angelelli rise and heard even his voice soften, though probably less with affection than with gratification.

"Now you talka lika de person witha gooda sense," he said. "Don' you listen to de beega lie no more. I lika you--nobody but only you. You are de gooda girl."

There was a whispered word more, and then the kitchen door was softly shut and Violet heard Rose, going into the next room, welcome that Wesley Dyker who, Violet had, to Celeste, so favorably compared with Angel.

The woman on the stairs hesitated. She wanted to pursue her eavesdropping, and she knew that she could regain her room, should the doorbell ring, before she was likely to be missed; but she was afraid that, in the maid's absence, Rose might return to the kitchen for a bottle of wine and discover her. Accordingly she waited the few minutes that were required for the first of such errands, and, those over, crept forward to the lighted keyhole, ready to retreat at the first intimation of danger.

She gave her eye precedence over her ear, and, as it chanced that Dyker was sitting directly in the limited shaft of her vision, she was enabled to get what was her first careful view of him.

A man but little beyond thirty, Wesley Dyker's face, which might once well have been handsome, was beginning to show that flaccid whiteness which must later light to red and glow to purple. What his mouth might have told, a crisp, short, brown mustache concealed, but the regularity of his other features lost much of its effect because of eyes that, though large and steel gray, were heavy-lidded and calculating. Nevertheless, Violet's estimate of the man was not without justification. He spoke easily and well in the voice of education; his excellently made evening clothes displayed a figure that had not yet lost its admirable lines, and even the face--to one that either had known it during its gradual changes, or to one that lacked a fund of experience for purposes of comparison--was not wanting in attraction.

To the sturdy Rose, whose hand he held and who was looking at him with what she patently believed to be a tender expression, he was speaking with a certain formal politeness that was novel in the ears of the listener.

"You think you can get it?" Rose was asking.

"I think that I have something more than a fighting chance," replied Dyker.

"What does O'Malley say?"

"He is at least as liberal in his promise to me as he is in his promise to the other man."

"And the big chief doesn't yip?"

"My dear Rose, you should know, by this time, enough of New York politics to realize that the first qualification of a big boss is to hold his tongue, and that the present incumbent, whatever his other shortcomings, can always keep quiet as long as he has no pen in his hand."

Rose freed her hand to pour the wine.

"May I smoke?" asked Dyker.

"You always ask me that, and you always know you can."

He bowed and, drawing a cigarette from a plain gun-metal case, lighted it.

"Of course," he pursued, "I expect to win--I always expect to win, because failure may fight its way to a perch on any man's banner, but it's sure to lodge on the standard of the man that sits and waits for it. But I can't be sure of O'Malley."

"I guess whatever headquarters orders will go with him, all right."

"On the surface, perhaps; but, if he wants to, he can have his own candidate run on an independent ticket, and then he can quietly knife me at the polls."

"Would he have the nerve?"

"It is precisely what he did election before last. I am sure of that, and yet nobody has ever been able to prove it. That is where I look for your help."

Rose took his hand again, and pressed it reassuringly.

"I always take care of my friends," she smiled, "and you sure have been good to me. Where do I come in on this game?"

"Just yet you don't have to come in at all. It may be that everything will be honest and above-board--I trust it will--and in that case you need not disturb yourself."

"But if it ain't?"

"If it isn't,"--he looked at her kindly, but keenly, from under his heavy lids--"I shall want you to let me know just as soon as O'Malley begins to make preparations for registering voters from this house."

Rose bent forward and kissed him lightly on his flaccid cheek.

"That's easy," she laughed.

"Perhaps, but if you have to go so far at first, you will have to go farther afterward."

"An' now?"

"Just now I want you to keep your ears open for gossip. You are in a position to hear a lot: in this house men talk that are dumb outside."

"Who are you thinkin' of?"

"Several people, friends of O'Malley's. There's one cheap little camp-follower who, I am told, gets around here rather frequently. I don't suppose that he's of enough importance to know much, but he would be worth watching."

"What's his name?"

Dyker filled Rose's glass, and poured more wine for himself.

"Angelelli," he answered.

From the darkened kitchen, Violet, her eye now fast to the keyhole, drew a short breath, and watched Rose as the sophisticated spectator watches an emotional actress when she approaches her "big scene." But Rose, still the primitive Teuton of the brewery-calendar, never quavered.

"Rafael Angelelli?" she inquired.

"I think so. He is a little Italian loafer with no work and plenty of money. You know him, of course?"

"Sure I know him. He's in an' out of here all the time. We call him 'Angel'."

"Hum. Well, there are angels and angels, so that name may fit him as well as any other. There may be nothing to it, but he does hang about O'Malley a good deal, and it might be worth your while to find out what, if anything, he knows."

"That's easy," purred Rose. "Here's success."

The pair clinked their glasses, and drained them.

"And--Rose?" began Dyker.

"Yes?"

"Neither this little fellow nor any of his crowd knows about--us?"

Rose's placid smile was eminently convincing.

"I guess I know my business," she said.

"I dare say you do. Only don't let him know that you know mine."

"Trust me for that, Wes' dear."

"Because, if O'Malley could get hold of it, he would have a rather formidable weapon."

"He doesn't know I ever set my lamps on you."

"Good," said Dyker; "and he mustn't know it for a good many months to come. Now, then, let's have just one pint more between us--only a pint--my dear--and----"

But the woman at the keyhole waited to hear no more.

IX

THE COURT OF A MERCHANT-PRINCE

When that injudicious grasping of the third-rail had snuffed out the low, but stubborn, flame that a foreman had known as "Number 12," and a few score of human beings had called Michael Flanagan, his wife, Bridget, had looked up from her washtub long enough to refuse the offer of a hundred dollars, made by the company's claim-adjuster as full payment for whatever inconvenience she might have been occasioned by her husband's demise. One of those very modern young lawyers, whose livelihood depends upon their study of the newspapers, and the speed of their feet, had arrived at the Flanagan tenement ahead of the adjuster. He had accepted a contingent fee of ten dollars, and thereafter, being defeated by the company's expert attorneys in a lower court, refused, as usual, to appeal unless the widow handed him a further amount of money that was wholly beyond her reach. So Irish-eyed Katie was put to work, as she should in any case have been put, and Mrs. Flanagan went on with her washing.

The girl's first position was in a second-hand clothing shop on Sixth Avenue, where she went to work at eight in the morning and quit at half-past ten at night. The stock-in-trade of this place was largely revived ball-gowns and opera cloaks, bought, for the most part, from women of so much means as to pretend, at least, that they never wore the same gown twice, and yet of too much thrift to give their discarded clothes to charity. Its patrons were persons that the original wearers of the gowns would have blushed to meet. And its proprietress was a little lynx-eyed, hook-nosed person whose sole object in life was to induce the former class to sell for less than they had intended and to persuade the latter class to buy for more than they could afford.

The virtue of this method she impressed, by precept and example, upon her six girl-clerks, and she raised their profits as they raised their prices of sale. She told, with a fine pride, how she had once so conducted a negotiation that a Riverside Drive husband had paid her nearly as much for a dress that he was buying for a Forty-seventh Street acquaintance as he had first paid for the same dress when it was made for his wife.

But, commissions to the contrary notwithstanding, neither Katie nor her companions could earn anything beyond a bare living wage. The lure of clothes was always before them; their work was the handling and the praising of beautiful fabrics beautifully arranged. They were told that they might themselves buy of these at what the proprietress called a mere nothing above the cost price, but what was really a considerable increase over it; they wanted to look their best among their friends, and their employer insisted that they look their best to her patrons; there was not one of the half-dozen clerks that was not continually from fifteen to a hundred dollars in her mistress's debt.

That Katie, like many another making the same fight, escaped further contamination, that the contrast between the oppression of the hook-nosed owner on the one hand and the apparent ease and luxury of her customers on the other, did not tempt her,--for opportunities were plenty,--from the station of clerk to purchaser, was due in part to her own sturdy character and to the accident of her own Celtic temper. Other girls there were who were not so destined, but Mrs. Flanagan's weary feet one day refused to support their possessor, and Katie, knowing well the need of ready money for the doctor and the druggist, neglected to purchase, even on credit, an expensive black walking-suit that was repeatedly called to her attention.

"Say, you'd look just grand in this," said the psittacidic proprietress, Mrs. Binks.

She held the dress extended, putting its best points to the light. And all the other clerks echoed:

"You'd look just grand in it, Miss Flanagan!"

"I would that," replied Katie, who was as taciturn to her employer as she was loquacious to everybody else.

"Why don't you take it?" asked Mrs. Binks.

"I don't just like it," lied Katie.

Mrs. Binks blinked her bead-like eyes. That the girl's reply could be true was inconceivable.

"Try it on," she suggested.

"Where's the use? I don't want it."

"Oh, try it on anyway."

"I'll be too busy, Mrs. Binks. The customers 're startin' to pour in this very minute."

"Then try it on at your lunch time. I'll leave it handy here, over this chair."