Part 8

The following morning Kit stepped into a new world--a world of friendly words and close companionship. The squalidly poor know nothing of that luxury called friendship. They are huddled together in vast crowds, squeezed and packed by scores within narrow limits, jostled and elbowed by their kind at every turn. They are suffocated by close association. But of fellowship, of interest in one another’s aims, of sympathy with one another’s hardships, they know nothing. Like starving dogs over a bone, they growl and snarl and fly straight at throats. So, when Kit crept half sullenly into the barracks and was greeted by a loud chorus of interested questions and by unstinted praise, the unfamiliar warmth of friendly words thawed into life her sluggish sensibilities. And, too, an entirely new view of herself and the world was suddenly opened to her bewildered gaze,--for the first time in her hard life she was looked upon as a human being of some importance. They told her that she was suddenly become different from her kind, she was better than they, she was “saved.” Not only that, but she must “save” others. She must quit the old life, and work for the common good. Her new friends were as uncouth and as poor and as hard pressed as herself. In their attitude there was none of that maddening condescension, none of that supercilious casting of surplus comforts at her feet, as one would toss a half-eaten orange toward a hungry-eyed beggar brat, which was the only sort of charity Kit had known of hitherto. The friendship of the Salvationists was the frank comradeship of plain men and women; their charity was the outcome of a crude, but living, religious idea. And their wild enthusiasm caught her dull soul in its sweep and lifted it a little above the fetid mists of her world. Some latent spark of womanly ambition was stirred into life, and with halting, dogged feet she tried to climb out of the dank valley of her past.

It was a wearisome task, but the exhilarating sense of friendly interest in her success sustained her. The old appetite for strong drink stung her, but the excitement of the new life helped to dull the craving. She tramped the streets with her companions, her cracked voice shouting quaveringly with them as they sang. She stepped sometimes into the little semicircle at the street corners to tell excitedly “how glad she was that she was saved.” She knelt with the others and prayed aloud for those who were not as she. She was one of a great, enthusiastic army, held up and aided by the superficial strength which comes of close fellowship and common aims. But with that growth of strength in one quarter there came a strange weakness in another. She was growing childishly afraid of Con, and with the growth of that fear there started into life and waxed strong a new loathing and hatred for his rum-soaked person. She would have fled from him, only that her new masters told her she must stick to him. It was her duty to cling to him and to “save” him. Their first injunction she obeyed meekly; but to their second command she turned a deaf ear. She knew what Con was; they did not. Every human creature in the wide world might be saved--except her husband. He was beyond the pale of humanity. So long as she did not bother him, he paid little attention to her goings and comings. Only once she ventured to protest when he had spent a week’s earnings for drink (Con had a “pull” with the ward “boss,” and when there were no other means of getting money for drink he found employment with the street-cleaners), and he had knocked her down for her temerity, and after that she held her peace and wished dumbly that he might die.

At length there came a proud day when Kit, after unwonted labor over her wash-tub, was the possessor of a decent black gown and of the long-coveted poke bonnet. It was the eve of a great rally at the barracks, when some officer of high degree from “headquarters” was to review the ranks of his army. At the close of day, when the long shadows were beginning to steal across the bare little room, with its musty bed, its one chair, and its rickety table pushed into a corner, Kit crouched upon the floor close up under the gray light of her window, intent upon her work. There were but a few stitches needed to complete her gown, and her stiff fingers fumbled eagerly with the unfamiliar needle. Her thoughts were busy with the glories of the morrow, and she crooned one of the Salvationist hymns as she sewed. And to her singing in the twilight there came the sound of shuffling footsteps outside her door. She looked up apprehensively as the door flew open to admit her husband. He was drunk, sullenly, brutally drunk.

“Where’s my supper?” he demanded, falling heavily into the chair. “Where’s my supper, I say?” he repeated, fixing an evil eye upon her.

“I’ll get it now, Con. I was busy workin’ on my dress, an’ I clean forgot your supper,” she explained, humbly.

“Yer dress?” he asked. “What right’s a measly fool like you with dresses? Le’s see it.” He stretched forth his hand. She caught the black garment sharply away from him.

“No, you’ll spoil it!” she cried, tossing the dress into a corner behind the bed. “You just set still there, an’ I’ll get you somethin’ to eat.”

“Eatin’ be damned!” he replied, surlily. “I want somethin’ to drink. Here! you take the can an’ get somethin’ from Mike’s. ‘F you can buy clothes, you can buy drinks.”

“No, no, Con, not now. Wait till I get supper.”

“I don’t want no supper! You rush de can, I tell you!”

“I won’t!”

“The hell you won’t!”

He started from his chair and went towards her, but something in her eyes made even his sodden senses recoil. He looked at her dubiously a moment, and then stumbled out of the room, muttering thickly.

As the door closed behind him, the woman sprang for her gown, and, dragging it from the corner, slipped it on. A few more stitches were needed in it, but she dared not wait to take them. A great terror filled her soul. She felt that her husband would return quickly, uglier and wilder by a few drams. With shaking fingers she pinned her gown together as best she might. She smoothed her scanty, dry, dead hair with her hands, and then she lifted her bonnet from the bed. She held it a moment admiringly, drawing her fingers softly over its trimmings of dark-blue silk, and along its narrow band of scarlet ribbon, where the bright gilt letters shone. She put it on her head and tied the soft strings carefully under her chin. She glanced hesitatingly at the old plaid shawl, wishing that she had a better one, but the night was cold, and she drew it about her shoulders. With a little sigh of relief she turned to leave the room. As her hand touched the door-latch she heard Con’s heavy tread upon the stairs. She noted that he staggered a little, and with a quick indrawing of her breath she drew herself flat against the wall in the shadows. The man threw the door open fiercely, steadying himself against the jamb as he peered into the dim room.

“Where are you, you she-devil?” he called.

The woman made no sound, and he stepped inside the room, with his broad back towards her. Inch by inch she crept along against the wall towards the door, as he stood turning from side to side in his maudlin search for her, and as her feet touched the threshold he turned and saw her. He rushed forward and grabbed her arms.

“Givin’ me the dirty sneak, are you?” he growled, shoving her inside the room and closing the door. “What d’ yer mean? Eh?”

Kit made no answer. She backed off, her face gleaming white inside her big bonnet.

“Yer a nice one, ain’t you?” he continued. “Won’t get me nothin’ to eat or drink, an’ spendin’ yer money fur clothes, an’ then tryin’ to make a sneak! Oh! I was onto you all the time! You white-faced fool! What d’ yer mean? Eh? Damn you, what d’ yer mean?”

“Stop, Con! Don’t hit me!”

He stumbled forward deliberately and struck her upturned face. She staggered into the corner by the table, and faced him again. A tiny stream of something red trickled down her cheek. Her eyes were suddenly ablaze.

“Let me go!” she shrieked. “Let me go!”

“Yer’ll go an’ get de can filled, that’s where yer’ll go!”

“I won’t--_never!_”

A spasm of hate and rage and terror writhed in her face. With the quickness of desperation she caught a knife from the table and waited for him.

He lunged towards her with uplifted arm. Before his blow fell she gave one swift thrust, and his arm came down simply upon her shoulder. For a moment he stood strangely still. He clenched his fist; his teeth were tight; he breathed hard through his nose.

“Damn you----” Then he reeled and fell.

And as the woman stood there in the gathering gloom, with his blood crawling towards her on the floor, she heard the beat of a drum, and the sound of voices singing shrilly, far down the street. On they came, nearer and louder, until her listening ears heard the thrum of the tambourines. Under her window they passed, and away into the night, until at last their sound was lost in the ceaseless, sullen tumult of Myrtle Street.

MANDANY’S FOOL

By Maria Louise Pool

YE ain’t got hungry for termarters, be ye?”

Some one had knocked at the screen door, and as there was no response, a man’s strident, good-humored voice put the above question concerning tomatoes.

But somebody had heard.

A woman had been sitting in the kitchen with a pan of seek-no-further apples in her lap. She was paring and quartering these and then stabbing the quarters through and stringing them on yards of white twine, preparatory to festooning them on the clothes-horse which stood in the yard. This horse was already decorated profusely in this way. A cloud of wasps had flown from the drying fruit as the man walked up the path. He swung off his hat and waved the insects away.

“I say, have ye got hungry agin for termarters?” he repeated.

Then he rattled the screen; but it was hooked on the inside.

He turned and surveyed the three windows that were visible in the bit of a house.

“They wouldn’t both be gone, ‘n’ left them apples out,” he said to himself. “I’m ‘bout sure Ann’s to home; ‘n’ she’s the one I want to see.”

A woman in the bed-room which opened from the kitchen was hurriedly smoothing her hair and peering into the glass. She was speaking aloud with the air of one who constantly talks to herself.

“Jest as sure’s I don’t comb my hair the first thing, somebody comes.”

She gave a last pat and went to the door. There was a faint smirk on her lips and a flush on her face.

Her tall figure was swayed by a slight, eager tremor as she saw who was standing there. She exclaimed:--

“Goodness me! ‘T ain’t you, Mr. Baker, is it? Won’t ye walk right in? But I don’t want no termarters; they always go aginst me. Aunt Mandany ain’t to home.”

“Oh, ain’t she?” was the brisk response. “Then I guess I will come in.”

The speaker pushed open the now unfastened door and entered. He set his basket of tomatoes with a thump on the rug, and wiped his broad, red face.

“Fact is,” he said with a grin, “I knew she was gone. I seen her goin’ crosst the pastur’. That’s why I come now. I ain’t got no longin’ to see Aunt Mandany--no, sir-ee, not a grain of longin’ to see her. But I thought ‘t would be agreeable to me to clap my eyes on to you.”

The woman simpered, made an inarticulate sound, and hurriedly resumed her seat and her apple-cutting.

“Won’t you se’ down, Mr. Baker?” she asked.

Her fingers trembled as she took the darning-needle and jabbed it through an apple quarter. The needle went into her flesh also. She gave a little cry and thrust her finger into her mouth. Her large, pale eyes turned wistfully towards her companion. The faded, already elderly mouth quivered.

“I’m jest as scar’t ‘s I c’n be if I see blood,” she whispered.

Mr. Baker’s heavy under lip twitched; his face softened. But he spoke roughly.

“You needn’t mind that bit er blood,” he said, “that won’t hurt nothin’. I don’t care if I do se’ down. I ain’t drove any this mornin’. I c’n jest as well as not take hold ‘n’ help ye. I s’pose Mandany left a thunderin’ lot for ye to do while she’s gone?”

“Two bushels,” was the answer.

“The old cat! That’s too much. But ‘t won’t be for both of us, will it, Ann?”

The woman said, “No.”

She looked for an instant intently at the man who had drawn his chair directly opposite her. He was already paring an apple.

“I d’ know what to make of it,” she said, still in a whisper.

“To make of what?” briskly.

“Why, when folks are so good to me ‘s you be.”

“Oh, sho’, now! Everybody ain’t like your Aunt Mandany.”

“‘Sh! Don’t speak so loud! Mebby she’ll be comin’ back.”

“No, she won’t. ‘N’ no matter if she is.”

The loud, confident tone rang cheerily in the room.

During the silence that followed Mr. Baker watched Ann’s deft fingers.

“Everybody says you’re real capable,” he remarked.

A joyous red covered Ann’s face.

“I jest about do all the work here,” she said.

She looked at the man again.

There was something curiously sweet in the simple face. The patient line at each side of the close, pale mouth had a strange effect upon Mr. Baker.

He had been known to say violently in conversation at the store that he “never seen Ann Tracy ‘thout wantin’ to thrash her Aunt Mandany.”

“What in time be you dryin’ seek-no-further for?” he now exclaimed with some fierceness. “They’re the flattest kind of apples I know of.”

“That’s what Aunt says,” was the reply; “she says they’re most as flat’s as I be, ‘n’ that’s flat ‘nough.”

These words were pronounced as if the speaker were merely stating a well-known fact.

“Then what does she do um for?” persisted Mr. Baker.

“She says they’re good ‘nough to swop for groceries in the spring.”

Mr. Baker made a deep gash in an apple, and held his tongue.

Ann continued her work, but she took a good deal of seek-no-further with the skin in a way that would have shocked Aunt Mandany.

Suddenly she raised her eyes to the sturdy face opposite her and said:--

“I guess your wife had a real good time, didn’t she, Mr. Baker, when she was livin’?”

Mr. Baker dropped his knife. He glanced up and met the wistful gaze upon him.

Something that he had thought long dead stirred in his consciousness.

“I hope so,” he said gently. “I do declare I tried to make her have a good time.”

“How long’s she be’n dead?”

“‘Most ten year. We was livin’ down to Norris Corners then.”

The man picked up his knife and absently tried the edge of it on the ball of his thumb.

“I s’pose,” said Ann, “that folks are sorry when their wives die.”

Mr. Baker gave a short laugh.

“Wall, that depends.”

“Oh, does it? I thought folks had to love their wives, ‘n’ be sorry when they died.”

Here Mr. Baker laughed again. He made no other answer for several minutes. At last he said:

“I was sorry enough when my wife died.”

A great pile of quartered apples was heaped up in the wooden bowl before either spoke again.

Then Ann exclaimed with a piteous intensity:

“Oh, I’m awful tired of bein’ Aunt Mandany’s fool!”

Mr. Baker stamped his foot involuntarily.

“How jew know they call you that?” he cried in a great voice.

“I heard Jane Littlefield tell Mis’ Monk she hoped nobody’d ask Mandany’s fool to the sociable. And Mr. Fletcher’s boy told me that’s what folks called me.”

“Damn Jane Littlefield! Damn that little devil of a boy!”

These dreadful words burst out furiously.

Perhaps Ann did not look as shocked as she ought.

In a moment she smiled her immature, simple smile that had a touching appeal in it.

“‘T ain’t no use denyin’ it,” she said; “I ain’t jes’ like other folks, ‘n’ that’s a fact. I can’t think stiddy more ‘n a minute. Things all run together, somehow. ‘N’ the back er my head’s odd’s it can be.”

“Pooh! What of it? There can’t any of us think stiddy; ‘n’ if we could what would it amount to, I should like to know? It would n’t amount to a row of pins.”

Ann dropped her work and clasped her hands. Mr. Baker saw that her hands were hard, and stained almost black on fingers and thumbs by much cutting of apples.

“Ye see,” she said, in a tremulous voice, “sometimes I think if mother had lived she’d er treated me so ‘t I could think stiddier. I s’pose mother’d er loved me. They say mothers do. But Aunt Mandany told me mother died the year I got my fall from the cherry-tree. I was eight then. I don’t remember nothin’ ‘bout it, nor ‘bout anything much. Mr. Baker, do you remember your mother?”

Mr. Baker said “Yes,” abruptly. Something made it impossible for him to say more.

“I d’ know how ‘tis,” went on the thin, minor voice, “but it always did seem to me ‘s though if I could remember my mother I could think stiddier, somehow. Do you think I could?”

Mr. Baker started to his feet.

“I’ll be dumbed ‘f I c’n stan’ it,” he shouted. “No, nor I won’t stan’ it, nuther!”

He walked noisily across the room.

He came back and stood in front of Ann, who had patiently resumed work.

“Come,” he said, “I think a lot of ye. Le’s git married.”

Ann looked up. She dropped her knife.

“Then I should live with you?” she asked.

“Of course.”

She laughed.

There was so much of confident happiness in that laugh that the man’s heart glowed youthfully.

“I shall be real glad to marry you, Mr. Baker,” she said. Then, with pride, “‘N’ I c’n cook, ‘n’ I know first rate how to do housework.”

She rose to her feet; her eyes shone.

Mr. Baker put his arm about her.

“Le’s go right along now,” he said, more quickly than he had yet spoken. “We’ll call to the minister’s ‘n’ engage him. You c’n stop there. We’ll be married to-day.”

“Can’t ye wait till I c’n put on my bunnit ‘n’ shawl?” Ann asked.

She left the room. In a few moments she returned dressed for going. She had a sheet of note-paper, a bottle of ink, and a pen in her hands.

“I c’n write,” she said confidently, “‘n’ I call it fairer to leave word for Aunt Mandany.”

“All right,” was the response; “go ahead.”

Mr. Baker said afterward that he never got much more nervous in his life than while Ann was writing that note. What if Mandany should appear! He wasn’t going to back out, but he didn’t want to see that woman.

The ink was thick, the pen was like a pin, and Ann was a good while making each letter, but the task was at last accomplished. She held out the sheet to her companion.

“Ain’t that right?” she asked.

Mr. Baker drew his face down solemnly as he read:--

Dere Aunt Mandane:--

I’m so dretfull Tired of beeing youre fool that ime going too be Mr. Baker’s. He askt me.

Ann.

“That’s jest the thing,” he said explosively. “Now, come on.”

As they walked along in the hot fall sunshine Mr. Baker said earnestly:--

“I’m certain sure we sh’ll be ever so much happier.”

“So ‘m I,” Ann replied, with cheerful confidence.

They were on a lonely road, and they walked hand in hand.

“I’m goin’ to be good to ye,” said the man, with still more earnestness. Then, in a challenging tone, as if addressing the world at large, “I guess ‘t ain’t nobody’s business but our’n.”

Ann looked at him and smiled trustfully.

After a while he began to laugh.

“I’m thinkin’ of your Aunt Mandany when she reads that letter,” he explained.

THE WAY TO CONSTANTINOPLE

By Clinton Ross

MRS. DENBY poured the tea.

“Now, speaking of Constantinople.”

Mrs. Denby blushed. I envied Denby.

“Ah, yes,” said I, “I have read Gautier, and that is a very good monograph of Marion Crawford’s. I was there once myself.”

“Were you?” said Mrs. Denby, demurely. “Do you take sugar?”

“Oh, tell me!” I began, for I saw I was expected to show some interest.

“Don’t, Dick,” began Mrs. Denby.

“Oh, it’s only Tom,” said Denby, fondly; but not half so fondly as he had before he had found her, and persuaded her, and--I always have had such bad luck with the woman whom it’s worth while trying to marry!

“You see,--it’s a silly story. Dick’s usually are,” began Mrs. Denby.

“Oh, fiddlesticks!” said Denby. “Now, you know--”

“Oh, if you must,” said Mrs. Denby, despairfully.

“Paris was a glare of splendor that February,--after the North Atlantic,” Denby went on. “Did you ever leave New York of a dismal day of winter fog and a week after find yourself in Havre? The boulevards are gay, the shops resplendent. Paris is a different place from Paris in July,--when hordes of our countrymen swoop down on it like the Huns. It’s like the rural visitor doing Fifth Avenue in August, and wondering why New York is so much talked about. But Paris in February is the Paris one dreams of when the word is pronounced, with all its suggestiveness of the world’s gayety. Yet, it was cold that February,--as bitter as in New York; and after coming back one night to my lodging on the Avenue Carnot, where the cab was unable to make its way because of the frozen sleet on the smooth paving of the hill the Avenue des Champs Elysées climbs,--that night I concluded I had not intended exchanging New York for wintry unpleasantness, and decided to go to Constantinople. Constantinople, where I had never been, seemed so far away, and I did not know that it, too, could be bleakly dismal in the spring. The next morning I booked on the Orient Express. That evening I was snugly put away in my compartment, and the morning after was looking on a Bavarian landscape.”

“You always were impulsive,” Mrs. Denby interrupted.

“Yes; nothing proves that more than my conduct the next morning at breakfast in the dining-car. I appeared late. The place was crowded. A very pretty girl--”

“Did you really think so then?” said Mrs. Denby.

“Oh, I did, or else I shouldn’t have taken the seat opposite beside a little chap who was ogling and embarrassing her dreadfully.”

“Such a man’s horrid,” commented Mrs. Denby.

“I saw at once he was one of those little Parisians, whose kind I know well, who in some way lose their appropriateness when transplanted. For I knew at once they were not acquaintances. The girl appeared alone, English or American--I could not be certain. Now, I was sure the man was objectionable,--not quite a gentleman,--or, if he had been, he had distorted the quality.”

“Now you need n’t explain,” said Mrs. Denby. “My honest opinion is that you took the seat for exactly the same reason as he, because----”

“Because the girl was pretty?” said Denby.

“I didn’t say she was,” Mrs. Denby hastened to add.

“‘I beg pardon, Monsieur,’ said I to the man, when he glared. Presently the Swiss brought the young lady’s bill, when a strange agitation appeared in my vis-à-vis. I saw and felt for her. She had no money. She probably had her ticket, but had lost her purse. She did not attempt to go back to the Wagon Lit.

“‘I am going to Constantinople,’ she said.

“‘I beg pardon, Madame,’ began the Swiss.

“‘Cannot the bill--

“‘I am sorry, Mademoiselle,’ said the Swiss, and he looked desolated, with a contrary gleam in his eye.

“Here the man by my side dropped from the category of the gentleman to that of the cad.

“‘If Mademoiselle will allow me,’ he began eagerly.

“I leaned under the table, pretending to pick up a purse, which I really took from my pocket.

“‘I think this is your purse,’ I said in English.

“For an instant she scanned me. The Frenchman looked daggers. She was blushing.

“‘Thank you,’ said she, and I knew she was an American; ‘how stupid of me to have dropped it.’

“And from my purse she paid the bill, nodded to me, ignoring the Frenchman, and without further word left the buffet.

“The particular French cad evidently wanted to pick a quarrel with me, and for a moment I was debating with myself whether I might not have been an ass. A fool’s money goes the way of his scanty wit. The girl might appear pretty, innocent, attractive--and yet--I swallowed my coffee, and returned to my compartment, which I had to myself. The door was open. Presently I saw the young woman of the breakfast-table walking up and down the aisle. I was determined I should not notice her. Suddenly I heard her voice at the door.