Part 22

Four or five blocks away, the business part of the city began to be serious; buildings of ten or twelve stories, several of much more than that, were piled against the sky; but here, where walked the shoppers and their disturbed shadower, the street had fallen upon slovenly days. Farther out, in the quarter whence they had come, it led a life of domestic prosperity, but gradually, as it descended southward, its character altered dismally until just before it began to be respectable again, as a business street, it was not only shabby but had a covert air of underhand enterprise. And the shop windows had not been arranged with the idea of offering a view of the interiors.

Of course Elsie and Daisy did not concern themselves with the changed character of the street; one shop was as good as another for the purposes involved in the kind of shopping that engaged them this morning; and they were having too glorious a time to give much consideration to anything. Elsie had fallen under the spell of a daring leadership; she was as excited as Daisy, as intent as she upon preserving the illusion they maintained between them; and both of them were delightedly aware that they must be goading their frowning follower with a splendid series of mysteries.

“I declare!” Daisy said, affecting peevishness. “I forgot to look at orstrich feathers an’ unb’eached muslin at both those two last places we went. Let’s try in here.”

By “in here” she referred to a begrimed and ignoble façade once painted dark green, but now the colour of street dust mixed with soot. Admission was to be obtained by double doors, with the word “_Café_” upon both of the panels. “_Café_” was also repeated upon a window, where a sign-painter of great inexperience had added the details: “_Soft Drinks Candys Cigars & C._” And upon three shelves in the window were displayed, as convincing proof of the mercantile innocence of the place, three or four corncob pipes, some fly-specked packets of tobacco, several packages of old popcorn and a small bottle of catsup.

Daisy tugged at the greasy brass knob projecting from one of the once green doors, and after some reluctance it yielded. “Come on,” she said. The two then walked importantly into the place, and the door closed behind them.

Laurence immediately hurried forward; but what he beheld was discouraging. The glass of the double door was frankly opaque; and that of the window was so dirty and besooted, and so obstructed by the shelves of sparse merchandise, that he could see nothing whatever beyond the shelves.

“Well, dog-_gone_ it!” he said.

* * * * *

Daisy and Elsie found themselves the only visible occupants of an interior unexampled in their previous experience. Along one side of the room, from wall to wall, there ran what they took to be a counter for the display of goods, though it had nothing upon it except a blackened little jar of matches and a short thick glass goblet, dimmed at the bottom with an ancient sediment. A brass rail extended along the base of the counter, and on the wall, behind, was a long mirror, once lustrous, no doubt, but now coated with a white substance that had begun to suffer from soot. Upon the wall opposite the mirror there were two old lithographs, one of a steamboat, the other of a horse and jockey; and there were some posters advertising cigarettes, but these decorations completed the invoice of all that was visible to the shoppers.

“Oh, dear!” Daisy said. “Wouldn’t it be too provoking if they’d gone to lunch or somep’m!” And she tapped as loudly as she could upon the counter, calling: “Here! Somebody come an’ wait on us! I want to look at some of your nicest unb’eached muslin an’ some orstrich feathers.”

There was a door at the other end of the room and it stood open, revealing a narrow and greasy passage, with decrepit walls that showed the laths, here and there, where areas of plaster had fallen. “I guess I better go call in that little hallway,” said Daisy. “They don’t seem to care _how_ long they keep their customers waitin’!”

But as she approached the door, the sound of several muffled explosions came from the rear of the building and reached the shoppers through the funnel of the sinister passage.

“That’s funny,” said Daisy. “I guess somebody’s shootin’ off firecrackers back there.”

“What for?” Elsie asked.

“I guess they think it must be the Fourth o’ July,” Daisy answered; and she called down the passageway: “Here! Come wait on us. We want to look at some unb’eached muslin an’ _orstrich_ feathers. Can’t you hurry _up_?”

No one replied, but voices became audible, approaching;—voices in simultaneous outbursts, and manifesting such poignant emotion that although there were only two of them, a man’s and a woman’s, Daisy and Elsie at first supposed that seven or eight people were engaged in the controversy. For a moment they also supposed the language to be foreign, but discovered that some of the expressions used were familiar, though they had been accustomed to hear them under more decorous circumstances.

“They’re makin’ an awful fuss,” Elsie said. “What _are_ they talkin’ about?”

“The way it sounds,” said Daisy, “it sounds like they’re talkin’ about things in the Bible.”

Then another explosion was heard, closer; it seemed to come from a region just beyond the passageway; and it was immediately followed by a clatter of lumber and an increase of eloquence in the vocal argument.

“You _quit_ that!” the man’s voice bellowed plaintively. “You don’t know what you’re doin’; you blame near croaked me that time! You _quit_ that, Mabel!”

“I’m a-goin’ to learn you!” the woman’s voice announced. “You come out from under them boards, and I’ll learn you whether I know what I’m doin’ or not! Come out!”

“_Please_ go on away and lea’ me alone,” the man implored. “_I_ never done nothin’ to you. I never seen a _cent_ o’ that money! _Honest_, George never give me a cent of it. Why’n’t you go an ast _him_? He’s right in yonder. Oh, my goodness, whyn’t you ast _him_?”

“Come out from under them boards!”

The man’s voice became the more passionate in its protesting. “Oh, my goodness! Mabel, can’t you jest ast George? He ain’t left the place; _you_ know _that_! He can’t show his face in daytime, and he’s right there in the bar, and so’s Limpy. Limpy’ll tell you jest the same as what George will, if you’ll only go and ast ’em. _Why_ can’t you go and _ast_ ’em?”

“Yes!” the woman cried. “And while I’m in there astin’ ’em, where’ll _you_ be? Over the alley fence and a mile away! You come out from under them boards and git croaked like you’re a-goin’ to!”

“Oh, my _good_ness!” the man wailed. “I _wish_ I had somep’m on me to lam you with! Jest once! That’s all I’d ast—jest one little short crack at you!”

“You come out from under them boards!”

“I won’t! I’ll lay here till——”

“We’ll _see_!” the woman cried. “I’m a-goin’ to dig you out. I’m a-goin’ to take them boards off o’ you and then I’m a-goin’ to croak you. I am!”

Elsie moved toward the outer door. “They talk so—so funny!” she said with a little anxiety. “I doe’ b’lieve it’s about the Bible.”

“I guess she’s mad at somebody about somep’m,” Daisy said, much amused; and stepping nearer the passageway, she called: “_Here!_ We want to look at some unb’eached muslin an’ _orstrich_ feathers!”

But the room beyond the passage was now in turmoil: planks were clattering again, and both voices were uproarious. The man’s became a squawk as another explosion took place; he added an incomplete Scriptural glossary in falsetto; and Elsie began to be nervous.

“That’s awful big firecrackers they’re usin’,” she said. “I guess we ought to go home, Daisy.”

“Oh, they’re just kind of quarrellin’ or somep’m,” Daisy explained, not at all disturbed. “If you listen up our alley, you can hear coloured people talkin’ like that lots o’ times. They do this way, an’ they settle down again, or else they’re only in fun. But I do wish these people’d come, because I just _haf_ to finish my shopping!” And, as yet another explosion was heard, she exclaimed complacently: “My! That’s a big one!”

Then, beyond the passage, there seemed to be a final upheaval of lumber; the discussion reached a climax of vociferation, and a powerful, bald-headed man, without a coat, plunged through the passage and into the room. His unscholarly brow and rotund jowls were beaded; his agonized eyes saw nothing; he ran to the bar, and vaulted over it, vanishing behind it half a second before the person looking for him appeared in the doorway.

She was a small, rather shabby woman, who held one hand concealed in the folds of her skirt, while with the other she hastily cleared her eyes of some loosened strands of her reddish hair.

“I got you, Chollie!” she said. “You’re behind the bar, and I’m a-goin’ to make a good job of it, and get George and Limpy, too. I’m goin’ to get all three of you!”

With that she darted across the room and ran behind the bar; whereupon Daisy and Elsie were treated to a scene like a conjuror’s trick. Until the bald-headed man’s arrival, they had supposed themselves to be quite alone in the room, but as the little woman ran behind the counter, not only this fugitive popped up from it, but two other panic-stricken men besides—one with uneven whiskers all over his mottled face, the other a well-dressed person, elderly, but just now supremely agile. The three shot up simultaneously like three Jacks-in-the-box, and, scrambling over the counter, dropped flat on the floor in front of it, leaving the little woman behind.

“Crawl up to the end o’ the bar, George,” the bald-headed man said hoarsely. “When she comes out from behind it, jump and grab her wrist.”

“Think I’m deef?” the little woman inquired raucously. “George’s got a fat chance to grab _my_ wrist!”

Then her eyes, somewhat inflamed, fell upon Daisy and Elsie. “Well, what—what—what——” she said.

Daisy stepped toward the counter, for she felt that she had indeed delayed her business long enough.

“We’d like to look at some nice unb’eached muslin,” she said, “an’ some of your _very_ best orstrich feathers.”

The subsequent commotions, as well as the preceding ones, were indistinctly audible to the mystified person who waited upon the sidewalk outside the place. Finding that his eyes revealed nothing of the interior, he had placed his ear against the window, and the muffled reports, mistaken for firecrackers by Daisy and Elsie, were similarly interpreted by Laurence; but he supposed Daisy and Elsie to have a direct connection with the sounds. A thought of the Fourth of July entered his mind, as it had Daisy’s, but it solved nothing for him: the Fourth was long past; this was not the sort of store that promised firecrackers; and even if Daisy and Elsie had taken firecrackers with them, how had it happened that they were allowed to explode them indoors? As for an “ottomatick” or a “revolaver,” he knew that neither maiden would touch such a thing, for he had heard them express their aversion to the antics of Robert Eliot, on an occasion when Master Eliot had surreptitiously borrowed his father’s “good ole six-shooter” to disport himself with in the Threamers’ garage.

Nothing could have been more evident than that Daisy and Elsie had definite affairs to transact in this café; the air with which they entered it was a conclusive demonstration of that. But the firecrackers made guessing at the nature of those affairs even more hopeless than when the pair had visited the barber-shop and the harness-shop. Then, as a closer report sounded, Laurence jumped. “_Giant_ firecracker!” he exclaimed huskily, and his eyes still widened; for now vague noises of tumult and altercation could be heard.

“Well, my go-o-od-_nuss_!” he said.

Two pedestrians halted near him.

“Say, listen,” one of them said. “What’s goin’ on in there?”

“Golly!” the other exclaimed, adding: “I happen to know it’s a blind tiger.”

Laurence’s jaw dropped, and he stared at the man incredulously. “Wha-wha’d you say?”

“Listen,” the man returned. “How long’s all this been goin’ on in there?”

“Just since _they_ went in there. It was just a little while ago. Wha’d you say about——”

But he was interrupted. Several other passers-by had paused, and they began to make interested inquiries of the first two.

“What’s the trouble in there? What’s going on here? What’s all the shooting? What’s——”

“There’s _something_ pretty queer goin’ on,” said the man who had spoken to Laurence; and he added: “It’s a blind tiger.”

“Yes, _I_ know that,” another said. “I was in there once, and I know from my own eyes it’s a blind tiger.”

Laurence began to be disconcerted.

“‘A blind tiger’?” he gasped. “A blind tiger?” What caused his emotion was not anxiety for the safety of his friends; the confident importance with which they had entered the place convinced him that if there actually was a blind tiger within, they were perfectly aware of the circumstance and knew what they were doing when they entered the animal’s presence. His feeling about them was indefinite and hazy; yet it was certainly a feeling incredulous but awed, such as any one might have about people well known to him, who suddenly appear to be possessed of supernatural powers. “Honest, d’you b’lieve there’s a blind tiger in there?” he asked of the man who had confirmed the strange information.

“Sure!”

“Honest, is one in there? Do you _honest_——”

But no one paid him any further attention. By this time a dozen or more people had gathered; others were arriving; and as the tumult behind the formerly green door increased, hurried discussion became general on the sidewalk. Several men said that somebody ought to go in and see what the matter was; others said that they themselves would be willing to go in, but they didn’t like to do it without a warrant; and two or three declared that nobody ought to go in just at that time. One of these was emphatic, especially upon the duty men owe to themselves. “A man owes _something_ to himself,” he said. “A man owes it to himself not to git no forty-four in his gizzard by takin’ and pushin’ into a place where somebody’s _usin’_ a forty-four. A man owes it to himself to keep out o’ trouble unless he’s got some call to take and go bullin’ into it; _that’s_ what he owes to himself!”

Another seemed to be depressed by the scandal involved. He was an unshaven person of a general appearance naïvely villainous, and, without a hat or coat, he had hurried across the street from an establishment not essentially unlike that under discussion—precisely like it, in fact, in declaring itself (though without the accent) to be a place where coffee in the French manner might be expected. “What worries _me_ is,” he said gloomily, and he repeated this over and over, “what worries _me_ is, it gives the neighbourhood kind of a poor name. What worries _me_, it’s gittin’ the neighbourhood all talked about and everything, the way you wouldn’t want it to, yourself.”

Laurence took a fancy to this man, whose dejection had a quality of pathos that seemed to imply a sympathetic nature.

“_Is_ there one—honestly?” Laurence asked him. “Cross your _heart_ there is one?”

The gloomy man continued to address his lament to the one or two acquaintances who were listening to him. “It’s just like this—what worries _me_ is——”

But Laurence tugged at his soiled shirt-sleeve. “Is there _honest_ one in there?”

“Is there one _what_ in there?” the man asked with unexpected gruffness.

“A blind tiger!”

The gloomy man instantly became of a terrifying aspect. He roared:

“Git away f’m here!”

Then, as Laurence hastily retreated, the man shook his head, and added to his grown listeners: “Ain’t that jest what I says? It gits everybody to talkin’—even a lot of awnry dressed-up little boys! It ain’t _right_, and Chollie and Mabel ought to have some consideration. Other folks has got to live as well as them! Why, I tell you——”

He stopped, and with a woeful exclamation pointed to the street-corner south of them. “Look there! It’s that blame sister-in-law o’ George’s. I reckon _she_ must of run out through the alley. Now they _have_ done it!”

His allusion was to a most blonde young woman, whose toilet, evidently of the hastiest, had called upon one or two garments for the street as an emergency supplement to others eloquent of the intimate boudoir. She came hurrying, her blue crocheted slippers scurrying in and out of variegated draperies; and all the while she talked incessantly, and with agitation, to a patrolman in uniform who hastened beside her. Naturally, they brought behind them an almost magically increasing throng of citizens, aliens and minors.

They hurried to the once green doors; the patrolman swung these open, and he and the blonde young woman went in. So did the crowd, thus headed and protected by the law’s very symbol; and Laurence went with them. Carried along, jostled and stepped upon, he could see nothing; and inside the solidly filled room he found himself jammed against a woman who surged in front of him. She was a fat woman, and tall, with a great, bulbous, black cotton cloth back; and just behind Laurence there pressed a short and muscular man who never for an instant relaxed the most passionate efforts to see over the big woman. He stood on tiptoe, stretching himself and pushing hard down on Laurence’s shoulders; and he constantly shoved forward, inclosing Laurence’s head between himself and the big woman’s waist, so that Laurence found breathing difficult and uncomfortable. The black cotton cloth, against which his nose was pushed out of shape, smelled as if it had been in the rain—at least that was the impression obtained by means of his left nostril, which remained partially unobstructed; and he did not like it.

In a somewhat dazed and hazy way he had expected to see Daisy and Elsie and a blind tiger, but naturally, under these circumstances, no such expectation could be realized. Nor did he hear anything said about either the tiger or the little girls; the room was a chaos of voices, though bits of shrill protestation, and gruffer interruptions from the central group, detached themselves.

“I _never_!” cried the shrillest voice. “I never even _pointed_ it at _any_ of ’em! So help me——”

“Now look _here_——” Laurence somehow got an idea that this was the policeman’s voice. “Now look _here_——” it said loudly, over and over, but was never able to get any further; for the shrill woman and the plaintive but insistent voices of three men interrupted at that point, and persisted in interrupting as long as Laurence was in the room.

He could bear the black cotton back no longer, and, squirming, he made his elbow uncomfortable to the aggressive man who tortured him.

“_Here!_” this person said indignantly. “Take your elbow out o’ my stomach and stand still. How d’you expect anybody to see what’s going on with _you_ making all this fuss? Be quiet!”

“I won’t,” said Laurence thickly. “You lea’ me out o’ here!”

“Well, for heaven’s sakes!” the oppressive little man exclaimed. “Make some _more_ trouble for people that want to see something! Go on and _get_ out, then! _Oh_, Lordy!”

This last was a petulant wail as Laurence squirmed round him; then the pressure of the crowd filled the gap by throwing the little man against the fat woman’s back. “Dam _boy_!” he raved, putting all his troubles under one head.

But Laurence heard him not; he was writhing his way to the wall; and, once he reached it, he struggled toward the open doors, using his shoulder as a wedge between spectators and the wall. Thus he won free of the press and presently got himself out to the sidewalk, panting. And then, looking about him, he glanced up the street.

At the next crossing to the north two busy little figures were walking rapidly homeward. They were gesturing importantly; their heads were waggling to confirm these gestures; and they were chattering incessantly.

“Well—dog-_gone_ it!” Laurence whispered.

He followed them; but now his lips moved not at all, and there was no mumbling in his throat. He stared at them amazedly, in a great mental silence.

* * * * *

“What wears _me_ out the _most_,” Daisy said, as they came into their own purlieus again, “it’s this shopping, shopping, shopping, and they never have one single thing!”

“No, they don’t,” Elsie agreed. “Not a thing! It just wears me _out_!”

“F’instance,” Daisy continued, “look at how they acted in that las’ place when I wanted to see some orstrich feathers. Just said ‘What!’ about seven hundred times! An’ then that ole pleeceman came in!”

For a moment Elsie dropped her rôle as a tired shopper, and giggled nervously. “I was scared!” she said.

But Daisy tossed her head. “It’s no use goin’ shopping in a store like that; they never _have_ anything, and I’ll never waste my time on ’em again. Crazy things!”

“They did act crazy,” Elsie said thoughtfully, as they paused at her gate. “I guess we better not tell about it to our mothers, maybe.”

“No,” Daisy agreed; and then with an elaborate gesture of fatigue she said: “_Well_, my dear, I hope you’re not as worn out as _I_ am! My nerves are jus’ comp’etely _gone_, my dear!”

“So’re mine!” said Elsie; and then, after a quick glance to the south, she giggled. “There’s that ole _thing_, still comin’ along;—no, he’s stopped, an’ lookin’ at us!” She went into the yard. “Well, my dear, I must go in an’ lay down an’ rest myself. We’ll go shopping again just as soon as my nerves get better, my dear!”

She skipped into the house, and Daisy, humming to herself, walked to her own gate, went in, and sat in a wicker rocking-chair under the walnut tree. She rocked herself and sang a wordless song, but becoming aware of a presence that lingered upon the sidewalk near the gate, she checked both her song and the motion of the chair and looked that way. Master Coy was staring over the gate at her; and she had never known that he had such large eyes.

He was full of formless questions, but he had no vocabulary; in truth, his whole being was one intensified interrogation.

“What you want?” Daisy called.

“I was there,” he announced solemnly. “I was there, too. I was in that place where the pleeceman was.”

“_I_ doe’ care,” Daisy said, and began to sing and to rock the chair again. “_I_ doe’ care where you went,” she said.

“I was there,” said Laurence. “_I_ saw that ole bline tiger. That’s nothin’!”

Daisy had no idea of what he meant, but she remained undisturbed. “I doe’ care,” she sang. “I doe’ care, I doe’ care, I doe’ care what you saw.”

“Well, I did!” said Laurence, and he moved away, walking backward and staring at her.

She went on singing, “I doe’ care,” and rocking, and Laurence continued to walk backward and stare at her. He walked backward, still staring, all the way to the next corner. There, as it was necessary for him to turn toward his own home, he adopted a more customary and convenient manner of walking—but his eyes continued to be of unnatural dimensions.

MARY SMITH