Maggie, a Girl of the Streets and Other New York Writings Read online

  “Will it?” demanded Penny, astounded. Penny was always astounded when the rent came due. It seemed to him the most extraordinary occurrence.

  “Certainly it will,” said Purple with the irritated air of a superior financial man.

  “My soul!” said Wrinkles.

  Great Grief lay on the bed smoking a pipe and waiting for fame. “Oh, go home, Purple. You resent something. It wasn’t me—it was the calendar.”

  “Try and be serious a moment, Grief.”

  “You’re a fool, Purple.”

  Penny spoke from where he was at work. “Well, if those Amazement people pay me when they said they would I’ll have money then.”

  “So you will, dear,” said Grief, satirically. “You’ll have money to burn. Did the Amazement people ever pay you when they said they would? You’re wonderfully important all of a sudden, it seems to me. You talk like an artist.”

  Wrinkles, too, smiled at little Pennoyer. “The Established Magazine people wanted Penny to hire models and make a try for them, too. It will only cost him a big blue chip. By the time he has invested all the money he hasn’t got and the rent is two weeks overdue he will be able to tell the landlord to wait seven months until the Monday morning after the day of publication. Go ahead, Penny.”

  It was the habit to make game of little Pennoyer. He was always having gorgeous opportunities, with no opportunity to take advantage of his opportunities.

  Penny smiled at them, his tiny, tiny smile of courage.

  “You’re a confident little cuss,” observed Grief, irrelevantly.

  “Well, the world has no objection to your being confident, also, Grief,” said Purple.

  “Hasn’t it?” said Grief. “Well, I want to know!”

  Wrinkles could not be light spirited long. He was obliged to despair when occasion offered. At last he sank down in a chair and seized his guitar. “Well, what’s to be done?” he said. He began to play mournfully.

  “Throw Purple out,” mumbled Grief from the bed.

  “Are you fairly certain that you will have money then, Penny?” asked Purple.

  Little Pennoyer looked apprehensive. “Well, I don’t know,” he said.

  And then began that memorable discussion, great in four minds. The tobacco was of the “Long John” brand. It smelled like burning mummies.

  HOW PENNOYER DISPOSED OF HIS SUNDAY DINNER

  Once Purple Sanderson went to his home in St. Lawrence county to enjoy some country air, and, incidentally, to explain his life failure to his people. Previously, Great Grief had given him odds that he would return sooner than he then planned, and everybody said that Grief had a good bet. It is not a glorious pastime, this explaining of life failures.

  Later, Great Grief and Wrinkles went to Haverstraw to visit Grief’s cousin and sketch. Little Pennoyer was disheartened, for it is bad to be imprisoned in brick and dust and cobbles when your ear can hear in the distance the harmony of the summer sunlight upon leaf and blade of green. Besides, he did not hear Wrinkles and Grief discoursing and quarreling in the den and Purple coming in at six o’clock with contempt.

  On Friday afternoon he discovered that he only had fifty cents to last until Saturday morning, when he was to get his check from the Gamin. He was an artful little man by this time, however, and it is as true as the sky that when he walked toward the Gamin office on Saturday he had twenty cents remaining.

  The cashier nodded his regrets. “Very sorry, Mr.—er—Pennoyer, but our pay day, you know, is on Monday. Come around any time after ten.”

  “Oh, it don’t matter,” said Penny. As he walked along on his return he reflected deeply how he could invest his twenty cents in food to last until Monday morning any time after ten. He bought two coffee cakes in a Third avenue bakery. They were very beautiful. Each had a hole in the center and a handsome scallop all around the edges.

  Penny took great care of those cakes. At odd times he would rise from his work and go to see that no escape had been made. On Sunday he got up at noon and compressed breakfast and noon into one meal. Afterward he had almost three-quarters of a cake still left to him. He congratulated himself that with strategy he could make it endure until Monday morning, any time after ten.

  At three in the afternoon there came a faint-hearted knock. “Come in,” said Penny. The door opened and old Tim Connegan, who was trying to be a model, looked in apprehensively. “I beg pardon, sir,” he said, at once.

  “Come in, Tim, you old thief,” said Penny. Tim entered, slowly and bashfully. “Sit down,” said Penny. Tim sat down and began to rub his knees, for rheumatism had a mighty hold upon him.

  Penny lit his pipe and crossed his legs. “Well, how goes it?”

  Tim moved his square jaw upward and flashed Penny a little glance.

  “Bad?” said Penny.

  The old man raised his hand impressively. “I’ve been to every studio in the hull city and I never see such absences in my life. What with the seashore and the mountains, and this and that resort, I think all the models will be starved by fall. I found one man in up on Fifty-seventh street. He ses to me: ‘Come around Tuesday—I may want yez and I may not.’ That was last week. You know, I live down on the Bowery, Mr. Pennoyer, and when I got up there on Tuesday, he ses: ‘Confound you, are you here again?’ ses he. I went and sat down in the park, for I was too tired for the walk back. And there you are, Mr. Pennoyer. What with tramping around to look for men that are a thousand miles away, I’m near dead.”

  “It’s hard,” said Penny.

  “It is, sir. I hope they’ll come back soon. The summer is the death of us all, sir, it is. Sure, I never know where my next meal is coming until I get it. That’s true.”

  “Had anything to-day?”

  “Yes, sir—a little.”

  “How much?”

  “Well, sir, a lady give me a cup of coffee this morning. It was good, too, I’m telling you.”

  Penny went to his cupboard. When he returned, he said: “Here’s some cake.”

  Tim thrust forward his hands, palms erect. “Oh, now, Mr. Pennoyer, I couldn’t. You——”

  “Go ahead. What’s the odds?”

  “Oh, now——”

  “Go ahead, you old bat.”

  Penny smoked.

  When Tim was going out, he turned to grow eloquent again. “Well, I can’t tell you how much I’m obliged to you, Mr. Pennoyer. You——”

  “Don’t mention it, old man.”

  Penny smoked.

  THE MEN IN THE STORM

  At about three o’clock of the February afternoon, the blizzard began to swirl great clouds of snow along the streets, sweeping it down from the roofs and up from the pavements until the faces of pedestrians tingled and burned as from a thousand needle-prickings. Those on the walks huddled their necks closely in the collars of their coats and went along stooping like a race of aged people. The drivers of vehicles hurried their horses furiously on their way. They were made more cruel by the exposure of their positions, aloft on high seats. The street cars, bound up-town, went slowly, the horses slipping and straining in the spongy brown mass that lay between the rails. The drivers, muffled to the eyes, stood erect and facing the wind, models of grim philosophy. Overhead the trains rumbled and roared, and the dark structure of the elevated railroad, stretching over the avenue, dripped little streams and drops of water upon the mud and snow beneath it.

  All the clatter of the street was softened by the masses that lay upon the cobbles until, even to one who looked from a window, it became important music, a melody of life made necessary to the ear by the dreariness of the pitiless beat and sweep of the storm. Occasionally one could see black figures of men busily shovelling the white drifts from the walks. The sounds from their labor created new recollections of rural experiences which every man manages to have in a measure. Later, the immense windows of the shops became aglow with light, throwing great beams of orange and yellow upon the pavement. They were infinitely cheerful, yet in a way they accented the
force and discomfort of the storm, and gave a meaning to the pace of the people and the vehicles, scores of pedestrians and drivers, wretched with cold faces, necks and feet, speeding for scores of unknown doors and entrances, scattering to an infinite variety of shelters, to places which the imagination made warm with the familiar colors of home.

  There was an absolute expression of hot dinners in the pace of the people. If one dared to speculate upon the destination of those who came trooping, he lost himself in a maze of social calculations; he might fling a handful of sand and attempt to follow the flight of each particular grain. But as to the suggestion of hot dinners, he was in firm lines of thought, for it was upon every hurrying face. It is a matter of tradition; it is from the tales of childhood. It comes forth with every storm.

  However, in a certain part of a dark West-side street, there was a collection of men to whom these things were as if they were not. In this street was located a charitable house where for five cents the homeless of the city could get a bed at night and, in the morning, coffee and bread.

  During the afternoon of the storm, the whirling snows acted as drivers, as men with whips, and at half-past three, the walk before the closed doors of the house was covered with wanderers of the street, waiting. For some distance on either side of the place they could be seen lurking in doorways and behind projecting parts of buildings, gathering in close bunches in an effort to get warm. A covered wagon drawn up near the curb sheltered a dozen of them. Under the stairs that led to the elevated railway station, there were six or eight, their hands stuffed deep in their pockets, their shoulders stooped, jiggling their feet. Others always could be seen coming, a strange procession, some slouching along with the characteristic hopeless gait of professional strays, some coming with hesitating steps wearing the air of men to whom this sort of thing was new.

  It was an afternoon of incredible length. The snow, blowing in twisting clouds, sought out the men in their meagre hiding-places and skilfully beat in among them, drenching their persons with showers of fine, stinging flakes. They crowded together, muttering, and fumbling in their pockets to get their red, inflamed wrists covered by the cloth.

  Newcomers usually halted at one of the groups and addressed a question, perhaps much as a matter of form, “Is it open yet?”

  Those who had been waiting inclined to take the questioner seriously and become contemptuous. “No; do yeh think we’d be standin’ here?”

  The gathering swelled in numbers steadily and persistently. One could always see them coming, trudging slowly through the storm.

  Finally, the little snow plains in the street began to assume a leaden hue from the shadows of evening. The buildings upreared gloomily save where various windows became brilliant figures of light that made shimmers and splashes of yellow on the snow. A street lamp on the curb struggled to illuminate, but it was reduced to impotent blindness by the swift gusts of sleet crusting its panes.

  In this half-darkness, the men began to come from their shelter places and mass in front of the doors of charity. They were of all types, but the nationalities were mostly American, German and Irish. Many were strong, healthy, clear-skinned fellows with that stamp of countenance which is not frequently seen upon seekers after charity. There were men of undoubted patience, industry and temperance, who in time of ill-fortune, do not habitually turn to rail at the state of society, snarling at the arrogance of the rich and bemoaning the cowardice of the poor, but who at these times are apt to wear a sudden and singular meekness, as if they saw the world’s progress marching from them and were trying to perceive where they had failed, what they had lacked, to be thus vanquished in the race. Then there were others of the shifting, Bowery lodging-house element who were used to paying ten cents for a place to sleep, but who now came here because it was cheaper.

  But they were all mixed in one mass so thoroughly that one could not have discerned the different elements but for the fact that the laboring men, for the most part, remained silent and impassive in the blizzard, their eyes fixed on the windows of the house, statues of patience.

  The sidewalk soon became completely blocked by the bodies of the men. They pressed close to one another like sheep in a winter’s gale, keeping one another warm by the heat of their bodies. The snow came down upon this compressed group of men until, directly from above, it might have appeared like a heap of snow-covered merchandise, if it were not for the fact that the crowd swayed gently with a unanimous, rhythmical motion. It was wonderful to see how the snow lay upon the heads and shoulders of these men, in little ridges an inch thick perhaps in places, the flakes steadily adding drop and drop, precisely as they fall upon the unresisting grass of the fields. The feet of the men were all wet and cold and the wish to warm them accounted for the slow, gentle, rhythmical motion. Occasionally some man whose ears or nose tingled acutely from the cold winds would wriggle down until his head was protected by the shoulders of his companions.

  There was a continuous murmuring discussion as to the probability of the doors being speedily opened. They persistently lifted their eyes toward the windows. One could hear little combats of opinion.

  “There’s a light in th’ winder!”

  “Naw; it’s a reflection f’m across th’ way.”

  “Well, didn’t I see ’em lite it?”

  “You did?”

  “I did!”

  “Well, then, that settles it!”

  As the time approached when they expected to be allowed to enter, the men crowded to the doors in an unspeakable crush, jamming and wedging in a way that it seemed would crack bones. They surged heavily against the building in a powerful wave of pushing shoulders. Once a rumor flitted among all the tossing heads.

  “They can’t open th’ doors! Th’ fellers er smack up ag’in ’em.”

  Then a dull roar of rage came from the men on the outskirts; but all the time they strained and pushed until it appeared to be impossible for those that they cried out against to do anything but be crushed to pulp.

  “Ah, git away f’m th’ door!”

  “Git outa that!”

  “Throw ’em out!”

  “Kill ’em!”

  “Say, fellers, now, what th’ ’ell? Give ’em a chanct t’ open th’ door!”

  “Yeh damned pigs, give ’em a chanct t’ open th’ door!”

  Men in the outskirts of the crowd occasionally yelled when a boot-heel of one of frantic trampling feet crushed on their freezing extremities.

  “Git off me feet, yeh clumsy tarrier!”

  “Say, don’t stand on me feet! Walk on th’ ground!”

  A man near the doors suddenly shouted: “O-o-oh! Le’ me out—le’ me out!” And another, a man of infinite valor, once twisted his head so as to half face those who were pushing behind him. “Quit yer shovin’, yeh——” and he delivered a volley of the most powerful and singular invective straight into the faces of the men behind him. It was as if he was hammering the noses of them with curses of triple brass. His face, red with rage, could be seen; upon it, an expression of sublime disregard of consequences. But nobody cared to reply to his imprecations; it was too cold. Many of them snickered and all continued to push.

  In occasional pauses of the crowd’s movement the men had opportunity to make jokes; usually grim things, and no doubt very uncouth. Nevertheless, they are notable—one does not expect to find the quality of humor in a heap of old clothes under a snowdrift.

  The winds seemed to grow fiercer as time wore on. Some of the gusts of snow that came down on the close collection of heads cut like knives and needles, and the men huddled, and swore, not like dark assassins, but in a sort of an American fashion, grimly and desperately, it is true, but yet with a wondrous under-effect, indefinable and mystic, as if there was some kind of humor in this catastrophe, in this situation in a night of snow-laden winds.

  Once, the window of the huge dry-goods shop across the street furnished material for a few moments of forgetfulness. In the brilliantly-lighted space app
eared the figure of a man. He was rather stout and very well clothed. His whiskers were fashioned charmingly after those of the Prince of Wales. He stood in an attitude of magnificent reflection. He slowly stroked his moustache with a certain grandeur of manner, and looked down at the snow-encrusted mob. From below, there was denoted a supreme complacence in him. It seemed that the sight operated inversely, and enabled him to more clearly regard his own environment, delightful relatively.

  One of the mob chanced to turn his head and perceive the figure in the window. “Hello, lookit ’is whiskers,” he said genially.

  Many of the men turned then, and a shout went up. They called to him in all strange keys. They addressed him in every manner, from familiar and cordial greetings to carefully-worded advice concerning changes in his personal appearance. The man presently fled, and the mob chuckled ferociously like ogres who had just devoured something.

  They turned then to serious business. Often they addressed the stolid front of the house.

  “Oh, let us in fer Gawd’s sake!”

  “Let us in or we’ll all drop dead!”

  “Say, what’s th’ use o’ keepin’ all us poor Indians out in th’ cold?”

  And always some one was saying, “Keep off me feet.”

  The crushing of the crowd grew terrific toward the last. The men, in keen pain from the blasts, began almost to fight. With the pitiless whirl of snow upon them, the battle for shelter was going to the strong. It became known that the basement door at the foot of a little steep flight of stairs was the one to be opened, and they jostled and heaved in this direction like laboring fiends. One could hear them panting and groaning in their fierce exertion.

  Usually some one in the front ranks was protesting to those in the rear: “O—o—ow! Oh, say, now, fellers, let up, will yeh? Do yeh wanta kill somebody?”

  A policeman arrived and went into the midst of them, scolding and berating, occasionally threatening, but using no force but that of his hands and shoulders against these men who were only struggling to get in out of the storm. His decisive tones rang out sharply: “Stop that pushin’ back there! Come, boys, don’t push! Stop that! Here, you, quit yer shovin’! Cheese that!”