Part 27

At least in height, "Big Lou" was gigantic. She was fully six feet tall; she stooped a little and was extremely thin, with a hollow chest and narrow flanks, partially hidden by an old red cotton dressing-gown; but the long arms were like flails, and Lou had a temper that did not hesitate to use them as such. Her dirty brown hair was already touched with gray; she had almost no chin; her nose was a smudge in her sodden face and her cheeks were heavy with years of drunkenness. Her mouth hung loose and quarrelsome, and, as she bent over to look hard at Mary, her breath was foul.

She addressed herself, however, entirely to the black-browed Stevens.

"Where'd you git her?" she asked, as if Mary were one of the animals not gifted with articulate speech.

Stevens told of their meeting.

"Where's she from?"

The sailor gave a rapid and wholly fictitious biography.

"How old?"

"Twenty," said Bill.

"I ain't!" protested Mary.

But the sailor shot her an ugly look.

"Close your trap," he told her, and then, to Big Lou, he repeated: "Twenty."

Big Lou picked up the lamp and, holding it in one blackened claw, passed the other over Mary, with dexterous appraisement, from shoulders to knees.

"I'll give you a five-spot for her," she croaked.

"You'll go to the devil," retorted Bill.

"Six?"

"Ten."

"You're a damned thief, Stevens, that's what you are," growled the old woman. "I'll give you seven, an' not another God damned cent."

Mary leaned against the moist wall. She was now past caring, and she hardly heard.

"Make it seven-seventy-five," said Bill, with sudden ingratiation.

Big Lou raised the lamp again and again regarded the animal, her swollen eyes sharpening.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," she said, once more facing the sailor. "Are you goin' to stop here to-night?"

"Yes."

"Well, I'll come up in the mornin' and take a closer look. If she passes that, I'll give you seven-fifty."

Bill's brown face worked in thought, but the thirst for liquor was upon him, and he compromised.

"All right," he said--"if you'll give me five down on account."

The giantess flung aside her red dressing-gown and, from a black cotton stocking that hung loose upon a shriveled shank, drew a few greasy bills. From these she reluctantly counted five, handed them to Stevens, and returned the rest to their original place of safety.

"G'on up," she said. "I stay here till work's done, an' take tolls."

From somewhere in the shadows she produced a black flask and, as Mary, with the sailor's tattooed hand tightly under her arm, began the steep ascent, Big Lou settled herself at her post of gatekeeper upon the lowest step.

Those stairs seemed almost perpendicular. They rose out of the darkness of the hallway at an alarming angle; each step was close upon a foot high; they were not a yard wide, their upper half was boxed between two walls, and they opened directly into the room that evidently served as the parlor of Big Lou Summerton's establishment.

The room was small and badly lighted by a kerosene hand-lamp, which stood upon a circular center-table and sent up a thin column of smoke to the sooty ceiling. A spotted lounge with dilapidated springs stood in one corner; the faded paper was peeling from the plaster, and a broken stove, which glowed an angry red, heated the place to a degree that was well-nigh unbearable. The air was stale and rancid, both from the company that was present and from a long entertainment of similar companies, in days gone by.

There were only two persons in the room. Both were seated at the table, both were drinking whiskey poured into ragged-edged glasses from a bottle that stood between them, and both were, or had been, women. Of these one coughed so sharply and constantly between her toothless gums, and was so shrunken under her blue calico mother-hubbard, that it was plain she would soon be nothing; while the other was a creature with face red and bloated, features stunted and coarse, eyes that glowed dully, and the voice of a crow.

Stevens presented Mary to them, and wasted no formalities.

"This here's a new one," he said, and, motioning his charge to a third chair, himself pulled up a fourth.

The two inmates received her with a loud duet that was almost a choral jeer. Two more glasses were produced from a shadowy cupboard, and the drinking recommenced.

Mary took one long drink and, wasted by privation, passed at once for some time into a daze in which, though she saw all, she reckoned little. She heard Stevens drop into the babbling stage of drunkenness; she noted that, though the women kept pace with his potations, they poured water into their own whiskey and gin into the sailor's; she saw him loll in his chair and sway over the table; she felt his heavy head drop at last on her thin shoulder, and she did not move while, as he lay there, his companions--now hers--went through his clothes and tiptoed out of a rear door.

It was then that, with a quick start, she regained control of herself at the sound of speech below and the tread of feet on the stairs. A rough voice had assured Big Lou that "it was all right," and another voice was supplementing:

"Rest easy, my dear lady: we are paying as we go. Michael, here, is, as you know, a deck-hand on the admirable yacht of my admirable friend Marsden Payne, with whom I have been on a winter excursion; and he has kindly consented to show me his own section of little old New York."

Mary knew that voice, although she could not at once identify it; but, though she sprang up so quickly that she wakened the tumbling Stevens, who slipped to the floor, she could not escape before she found herself directly regarding the flushed face, glowing gray eyes, and disordered hair of Philip Beekman.

Still young and slim in his yachting clothes, he looked at her, swaying a little in the doorway, his back to those perilous stairs, and with no clear recognition.

"Hello!" he said. "I think I've had the pleasure of meeting you somewhere before."

Mary's mouth tightened. She had herself now well in hand. She shook her russet head.

"I guess not," she said.

But her voice betrayed her.

"Good Lord!" said Beekman. The flush deepened on his face. With one hand he snatched his yachting-cap from his black hair; the other he suddenly held out to her, trembling. "Good Lord!" he repeated, this time with something that was nearly awe in his tone. "I--I--it's _Violet_! Will you----? Won't you _please_ shake hands?"

Scarcely less amazed by his manner than was he by her appearance, she took his hand.

Beekman turned to someone on the stairs behind him.

"Get out, Mike!" he said. "I've found a friend."

There was a plucking at his sleeve and the murmur of a concerned voice from the rear.

"No," said Philip; "get out. I tell you that I have found a friend. Go down to the tall lady and hand her your money and then make tracks for the yacht. You may tell Mr. Payne that I shall return in an hour."

Again a muffled protest from the dangerous stairway.

"Pardon me a moment," said Beekman, and turned full around. "Now, then," he continued to his guide, "you get out. I am perfectly well able to take care of myself, and I want a private talk. Do you expect me to kick you downstairs? No? I should probably break your back if I did.--Then, good-night."

He stood there while the deckhand's heavy feet clattered downward; waited until he had heard Big Lou grumblingly give Mike the means of exit, and then he turned again to Mary.

"What," he rapidly began, and his handsome face grew once more earnest, "what in the name of heaven are you doing in this den?--No," he continued, raising a quick hand; "don't tell me; I remember how I sent you out of my mother's house and, upon my word, I'm afraid to hear. I couldn't do anything else--but I don't know. Anyhow, there's one thing sure: you need money. Well, I made a little in the game to-night--not much for Payne, but a good slice for me--and it's yours--it's yours--the Lord knows it ought to go to you!"

She had tried to stop him until he spoke of money; but when he mentioned that, she let him run on, let him search his pockets, and at last let him thrust something into her open hand.

"Here," he said; "take it; take it as a favor to me; take it, and remember what I said to you in Rose's. Watch your chance; get out of here; and for God's sake go back to your own home."

Her fingers closed upon the bills and transferred them to her stocking; and as she did this a movement on the floor made them both turn.

Bill Stevens, whom Mary had forgotten and whom Beekman had not seen, gathered himself together, and at last stood more or less upright upon his unsteady bowed legs. His heavy body rocked uneasily, but his dark face, with its bushy brows and sinister eyes, was thrust forward glowering. One sinewy tattooed hand gripped the back of a chair; the other, knotted into a hard fist, he raised slowly toward Beekman.

"It's your turn to go," he said, with a lingering oath. "This here's my gal; she b'longs to me--an' so does any money she gits."

Instantly Philip was his old, assured self. That quality which was most characteristic of him, that curious mixture of much that was bitter and a little that was sweet, lighted his eyes and rang in his voice.

"Where do _you_ come from?" he asked, smiling. "You look as if you got out of a trap-door, like the fairy in the play."

"None o' your business where I come from," said Bill. "The point is where I'll send you, if you ain't careful."

Mary, who did not like the looks of things, tried to interpose. She put the palms of her hands against the sailor's rough cheeks.

"Listen, Bill," she said, "this is an old friend of mine----"

"Likely!" grunted Bill.

"He is, though; ain't you?" Mary appealed, with a sidelong glance at Beekman.

"Certainly I am," said Philip.

Stevens lowered his fist, but his red eyes remained full of hate.

"I don't care who you are," he rumbled; "this here's my woman."

"All right," said Beekman; "that's to your credit, I'm sure: a man is known by the woman he keeps, and you can't have a better. Only, you see, my friend----"

"I ain't yer friend."

Once more Mary interposed.

"Just sit down, Bill," she urged. "Sit down an' have a drink with us. You can hear all we got to say."

Stevens sank into a chair, but when Beekman, with Mary between them, pushed the bottle toward Bill, the sailor would have none of it.

"I'll stop a bit," he said, "but I ain't goin' to drink with you, an' you needn't think it."

Philip was still undisturbed.

"Have it your own way," he said. "I know how it is: when a man falls in love, he swears off liquor; when he falls out of love he takes to liquor again--one sort of drunkenness is as much as he can stand at a time. I'll take a drink."

Mary, who now began to fear acute trouble, slipped a hand to Stevens, but he drew away.

"I think I'll smoke--if I may," continued the undisturbed Beekman. "A pipe is domestic, a cigar is philosophic, and a cigarette is a cynic: I shall have a cigarette. William?"--And he offered his silver case to the sailor.

"No," said Stevens, shortly.

Beekman tossed his head. Mary saw his gray eyes snap.

"William," he said, "you have got to learn that the best girl is never so good as the next. And you have got to learn manners. If you won't behave yourself properly, I think you had better leave."

Stevens's fingers opened and closed slowly.

"You go to hell," he said.

Beekman rose quietly. His cigarette was in one hand, and with the other, instead of threatening, he pointed to the stairway.

"Run along," he said.

Stevens jumped to his feet and crouched, like a panther ready to spring. Mary, overturning her chair, flung her arms about him and pinioned him in an embrace.

"Don't, Bill!" she whispered, and, over her shoulder: "Don't, Mr. Beekman! Can't you two be friends? Can't you see it's all right, Bill? Can't you let him alone, Mr. Beekman? Bill, you know how much I think of you."

She put her lips to his rough face. She whispered rapid, unthought lies into his ear. She caressed and cajoled him, and at last, when Philip had been persuaded into a half-scornful apology, she managed to get Stevens out of the room and started him down the stairway to seek sympathy of Big Lou while she herself had her talk with Beekman.

They sat down again at the round table and took a drink. Philip wanted to upbraid himself for his conduct to her in his mother's house, and yet, because he felt that he could have followed no course save that which he had taken, he did not know how to begin: all that he was sure of was that there was a wrong somewhere, and that he must somehow make confession of it. Mary, on the other hand, was divided between panic from the trouble so lately avoided and a desire to hear from Philip nothing approaching condolence.

She sought escape in the commonplace.

"You mustn't mind him," she said, with a nod toward the stairs down which the glowering Bill had departed.

"Not a bit," answered Beekman. "I only wanted to get rid of him in order to tell you hew sorry I am for--for--oh, you know."

"Don't talk about that, Mr. Beekman--please."

"But I must talk about it."

"Not now; not yet. Tell me how you are."

"Oh, I'm as near right as I ever am, or ever will be. But, Violet----"

"You're looking rich."

His eyes followed hers to his gilt-buttoned yachting jacket.

"You can never judge a man by his clothes," he said. "Necessity is the mother of pretension."

"Are you married yet?"

"Hardly. There are only two things that a man can't honestly promise: to love, and to cease to love. I'm still too poor to afford those lies."

Mary only half understood his mood, but she was wholly intent on keeping him free of dreaded topics.

"Do you hear anything of the people we used to know?" she asked.

"Well," said Philip, "Rose was let off, you know, and is back at the old address and the old business." He looked at his watch and started. "By Jove," he continued; "I must have been pretty tight. I had no idea it was so late. I've got to be getting back to the yacht soon."

He stood up, his cap in one hand. Mary followed him to the stair door, and there he turned.

"Violet," he said, "I am going to tell you how sorry I am. I am going to tell you, whether you like to hear it or not."

The flush had gone from his face and eyes, leaving them simple and sincere.

Mary's voice faltered. She understood some things that she had never before understood.

"It didn't matter none," she replied. "You couldn't help it."

"I daresay I couldn't. I don't know. These things are too much for me. But I do know that I am sorry--sorry from the bottom of my heart. And if I can ever do anything--anything----"

He put out his hand, and, as she took it, he raised her hand to his lips.

At that instant there was a yell of rage from behind him. Mary, springing back, saw him half turn and reel. She saw a brown, tattooed hand close about his throat, choking his cry of alarm. She saw Bill Stevens's distorted face and red eyes appear above Beekman's shoulder. She saw a knife flash and bury itself deep in the young man's side. And then, with a tremendous smash, both men disappeared down those murderous, black stairs.

It seemed to Mary that she lost not a moment in running down to them; yet, when she reached the hall, the little drama was finished. The sailor was lying stunned in a corner, and Big Lou, with the rescued lamp beside her, was kneeling above Philip's body and running her quick claws through his pockets.

"Damn your soul, get upstairs!" she cried to Mary.

But Mary hesitated. Overhead she heard the skurry of skirts and hurried feet. Before her lay the man that had once so harmed her. His coat had been torn open and a great red smear grew larger and larger upon his white silk shirt. His mouth was twisted, but still. His gray eyes stared at the begrimed ceiling: Philip Beekman was dead.

She leaped across the body, tore back the bolts, flung open the door, and nearly fell into the pitch-black street.

As she ran around the nearest corner, she heard the cry of Mike, the deckhand, who must have been waiting nearby, and then the sharp alarm-call of a policeman's night-stick.

XXX

HER FATHER'S HOUSE

Her way must have led her first to the river and then well northward: she did not know. She did not even know whether she ran or walked. All that she did know was that, at least for hours to come, she must put as many miles as she could between her own tossing thoughts and that still face with the staring eyes which lay at the foot of the steep, dark stairs in Summerton's. The clocks, had she looked at them, would have told her that the night was gone, but the winter darkness still enveloped the city when she found herself at last standing before an illuminated ticket-window and addressing a sleepy clerk at a ferry.

"I want a ticket," she said, and laid down one of the bills that Philip Beekman had given her.

"Where to?" yawned the clerk.

How did it happen that the name which rose to her lips was the name of her native town--a word that she had not uttered since the morning of her awakening in the house of Rose Légère? Perhaps it was because the dead man had, with almost his last words, pleaded with her to go home; perhaps it was because that name, of which she had for so long tried never to think, was, in reality, the one always nearest to her heart; perhaps it was only because no other town was familiar to her. In any event, the name was spoken without consideration of the consequences, and, before she had time to pause or to repent, the clerk had handed her the change, and with it the bit of pasteboard that would bear her home.

"There's a boat in ten minutes," he said: "but you'll have to wait an hour in Jersey City. The first train doesn't go till six-five."

Of what immediately followed she had, thereafter, no clear recollection. She remembered only buying a cold sandwich and a half-pint of whiskey in a deserted café; crossing a bitterly cold, sullen stretch of water from a twinkling cañon to a shadowy shore; walking, for warmth, weary though she was, up and down, and up and down, along a damp, echoing train-shed, and then, at last, passing a clanging iron gate, climbing into a coach, and falling, nearly stupefied, into an uncomfortable, red-plush covered seat. She had but the faintest mental picture of changing cars, and none at all of any subsequent incident, until, in a black dawn, there flashed upon her, from between the frost-figures on the window, a bit of landscape that warned her she was approaching home.

The track came suddenly to the river-side. Beneath a gray sky, which, though the morning was well advanced, the sun seemed afraid to climb, there raced the mile-and-a-half wide strip of gray water. It crashed across a ruined dam; it swept above a submerged "chute" through which, years before, the big pine-rafts from the upper Alleghanies used to be hurled on their way to the Chesapeake. There had been a thaw: only here and there could Mary see the ominous crests of the rocks that threatened the mid-channel; the islands, with trees bare of foliage, were under water, and far away, from the cloudy York County shore, the high hills rose above the mist, dun and cheerless, forbidding and cold. With a quick catch in her throat, she saw the river-road that she had so often tramped on holidays, now axle-deep in mud. Over there were the leafless woods where, when the boughs were green, the children used to picnic, and here, nearer the town, where patches of soiled snow hid under the stunted pines, was the path where one time came, for pink laurel branches, a girl that she had been. The engine whistled sharply and stopped.

Mary mechanically readjusted the hat that she had not touched since she had put it on for the work of the evening previous--the evening so long ago. She stepped to the platform.

The station was just as it had always been. It looked smaller and dirtier, but she knew that it had not changed; and a sharp pain shot through her heart at the realization that, in this town, everything had gone on its placid way while so much had been happening to one of its children. There were the same grinning gamins waiting for the New York newspapers; the same negro porters from the two hotels; the same station-master "calling the train," just as he used to call it in the days when she had watched the outgoing coaches with envious longings for a sight of the strange lands toward which they were bound.

Then, as her aching feet touched the cinder of the thoroughfare, she realized her danger. She had no plan, no scheme of accounting for herself; some unreasoned impulse, partly, doubtless, the primal instinct that drives the wounded beast to its den, had overcome her fears and turned her face in the direction of the home whither she had, for so long, dreaded to return. But now she was seized with a terror of recognition by the townspeople, and so she lowered her head and walked, with the swiftness of panic, among the little knot of loafers about the station-door.

Now that she was here, what was she to say, what to do, where to turn? She moved, unable to evolve any order from the chaos of her thoughts. She could only go over and over the memory of that last day in school; the early violets, purple and fragrant, peeping through the lush grass on the lawns of Second Street; the flaming oriole in the Southwark yard; the lazy sunlight flowing through the open windows of Miss England's sleepy classroom. Mary's blue eyes were bright then, her mouth was red, her cheeks pink; lithe, strong-limbed, and firm of body, her walk had owned the easy, languid grace of a wild animal. And now, the lawns were bare; only a few persistent sparrows hopped in the gutters and along the ground; the sky was empty of sunlight, and she----

She came to a supreme pause. Habit had led her aimless feet. She was standing, in the full morning, before the two-story brick house that was her father's home.

She knew that the door remained unlocked from dawn to night; but she did not at once enter. She was afraid to go in, afraid to stand still, afraid to go away.

Then, from the next house, came decision. It was Etta's, her married sister's place, and she heard someone within it rattle at its door. Anything was better than a meeting with Etta: Mary quietly opened the door to her father's house and slipped inside.

She went down the brief, darkened hallway, past the drawn curtains of the parlor, through the twilight of the dining-room, and stopped at the open entrance to the small, crowded kitchen, where, among neatly arranged and brightly polished pots and pans, her mother was bending over the glowing stove.

Mrs. Denbigh looked up with a start. Still stooped, still hatchet-faced, but grayer and more shrunken, she stood there, her sleeves rolled from her thin forearms, her forehead wet by present labor, her mouth set hard by labors gone.

"Get out o' here!" she said.

"Mom!"

Mary raised and spread her arms in quick petitioning, and then, in that stranger, Mrs. Denbigh recognized her child.

"_You?_" she cried.

She dashed her damp hands to her checkered apron; she stepped toward her daughter with her own arms wide. She bent to kiss her--and she drew as suddenly away.

"There's liquor on your breath!" she gasped.

"I know," said Mary, her voice low and trembling. "I--I ain't been well, mom."

The kiss was given, but less abandonedly than it had promised, and, as the mother drew away, her keen eyes searched the girl from face to feet. Over the multitude of maternal questions there rose the three for which Mary was least prepared.

"Mary--what is it? Where is he? Didn't he treat you right?"

They caught the girl at her weakest point.

"Who?" she asked.