A Girl of the Streets
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Stephen Crane >> A Girl of the Streets
The forlorn woman had a peculiar face. Her smile was no
smile. But when in repose her features had a shadowy look that was
like a sardonic grin, as if some one had sketched with cruel
forefinger indelible lines about her mouth.
Jimmie came strolling up the avenue. The woman encountered
him with an aggrieved air.
"Oh, Jimmie, I've been lookin' all over fer yehs--," she began.
Jimmie made an impatient gesture and quickened his pace.
"Ah, don't bodder me! Good Gawd!" he said, with the
savageness of a man whose life is pestered.
The woman followed him along the sidewalk in somewhat the
manner of a suppliant.
"But, Jimmie," she said, "yehs told me ye'd--"
Jimmie turned upon her fiercely as if resolved to make a last
stand for comfort and peace.
"Say, fer Gawd's sake, Hattie, don' foller me from one end of
deh city teh deh odder. Let up, will yehs! Give me a minute's
res', can't yehs? Yehs makes me tired, allus taggin' me. See?
Ain' yehs got no sense. Do yehs want people teh get onto me?
Go chase yerself, fer Gawd's sake."
The woman stepped closer and laid her fingers on his arm.
"But, look-a-here--"
Jimmie snarled. "Oh, go teh hell."
He darted into the front door of a convenient saloon and a
moment later came out into the shadows that surrounded the side
door. On the brilliantly lighted avenue he perceived the forlorn
woman dodging about like a scout. Jimmie laughed with an air of
relief and went away.
When he arrived home he found his mother clamoring.
Maggie had returned. She stood shivering beneath the torrent
of her mother's wrath.
"Well, I'm damned," said Jimmie in greeting.
His mother, tottering about the room, pointed a quivering
forefinger.
"Lookut her, Jimmie, lookut her. Dere's yer sister, boy.
Dere's yer sister. Lookut her! Lookut her!"
She screamed in scoffing laughter.
The girl stood in the middle of the room. She edged about as
if unable to find a place on the floor to put her feet.
"Ha, ha, ha," bellowed the mother. "Dere she stands! Ain'
she purty? Lookut her! Ain' she sweet, deh beast? Lookut her!
Ha, ha, lookut her!"
She lurched forward and put her red and seamed hands upon her
daughter's face. She bent down and peered keenly up into the eyes
of the girl.
"Oh, she's jes' dessame as she ever was, ain' she? She's her
mudder's purty darlin' yit, ain' she? Lookut her, Jimmie! Come
here, fer Gawd's sake, and lookut her."
The loud, tremendous sneering of the mother brought the
denizens of the Rum Alley tenement to their doors. Women came in
the hallways. Children scurried to and fro.
"What's up? Dat Johnson party on anudder tear?"
"Naw! Young Mag's come home!"
"Deh hell yeh say?"
Through the open door curious eyes stared in at Maggie.
Children ventured into the room and ogled her, as if they formed
the front row at a theatre. Women, without, bended toward each
other and whispered, nodding their heads with airs of profound
philosophy. A baby, overcome with curiosity concerning this object
at which all were looking, sidled forward and touched her dress,
cautiously, as if investigating a red-hot stove. Its mother's
voice rang out like a warning trumpet. She rushed forward and
grabbed her child, casting a terrible look of indignation at the girl.
Maggie's mother paced to and fro, addressing the doorful of
eyes, expounding like a glib showman at a museum. Her voice rang
through the building.
"Dere she stands," she cried, wheeling suddenly and pointing
with dramatic finger. "Dere she stands! Lookut her! Ain' she a
dindy? An' she was so good as to come home teh her mudder, she
was! Ain' she a beaut'? Ain' she a dindy? Fer Gawd's sake!"
The jeering cries ended in another burst of shrill laughter.
The girl seemed to awaken. "Jimmie--"
He drew hastily back from her.
"Well, now, yer a hell of a t'ing, ain' yeh?" he said, his
lips curling in scorn. Radiant virtue sat upon his brow and his
repelling hands expressed horror of contamination.
Maggie turned and went.
The crowd at the door fell back precipitately. A baby falling
down in front of the door, wrenched a scream like a wounded animal
from its mother. Another woman sprang forward and picked it up,
with a chivalrous air, as if rescuing a human being from an
oncoming express train.
As the girl passed down through the hall, she went before open
doors framing more eyes strangely microscopic, and sending broad
beams of inquisitive light into the darkness of her path. On the
second floor she met the gnarled old woman who possessed the music box.
"So," she cried, "'ere yehs are back again, are yehs? An'
dey've kicked yehs out? Well, come in an' stay wid me teh-night.
I ain' got no moral standin'."
From above came an unceasing babble of tongues, over all of
which rang the mother's derisive laughter.
Chapter XVI
Pete did not consider that he had ruined Maggie. If he had
thought that her soul could never smile again, he would have
believed the mother and brother, who were pyrotechnic over the
affair, to be responsible for it.
Besides, in his world, souls did not insist upon being able to smile.
"What deh hell?"
He felt a trifle entangled. It distressed him. Revelations
and scenes might bring upon him the wrath of the owner of the
saloon, who insisted upon respectability of an advanced type.
"What deh hell do dey wanna raise such a smoke about it fer?"
demanded he of himself, disgusted with the attitude of the family.
He saw no necessity for anyone's losing their equilibrium merely
because their sister or their daughter had stayed away from home.
Searching about in his mind for possible reasons for their conduct,
he came upon the conclusion that Maggie's motives were correct,
but that the two others wished to snare him. He felt pursued.
The woman of brilliance and audacity whom he had met in the
hilarious hall showed a disposition to ridicule him.
"A little pale thing with no spirit," she said. "Did you note
the expression of her eyes? There was something in them about
pumpkin pie and virtue. That is a peculiar way the left corner
of her mouth has of twitching, isn't it? Dear, dear, my cloud-
compelling Pete, what are you coming to?"
Pete asserted at once that he never was very much interested
in the girl. The woman interrupted him, laughing.
"Oh, it's not of the slightest consequence to me, my dear young man.
You needn't draw maps for my benefit. Why should I be concerned about it?"
But Pete continued with his explanations. If he was laughed
at for his tastes in women, he felt obliged to say that they were
only temporary or indifferent ones.
The morning after Maggie had departed from home, Pete stood
behind the bar. He was immaculate in white jacket and apron and
his hair was plastered over his brow with infinite correctness.
No customers were in the place. Pete was twisting his napkined
fist slowly in a beer glass, softly whistling to himself and
occasionally holding the object of his attention between his eyes
and a few weak beams of sunlight that had found their way over
the thick screens and into the shaded room.
With lingering thoughts of the woman of brilliance and
audacity, the bartender raised his head and stared through the
varying cracks between the swaying bamboo doors. Suddenly
the whistling pucker faded from his lips. He saw Maggie walking
slowly past. He gave a great start, fearing for the previously-
mentioned eminent respectability of the place.
He threw a swift, nervous glance about him, all at once
feeling guilty. No one was in the room.
He went hastily over to the side door. Opening it and looking
out, he perceived Maggie standing, as if undecided, on the corner.
She was searching the place with her eyes.
As she turned her face toward him Pete beckoned to her
hurriedly, intent upon returning with speed to a position behind
the bar and to the atmosphere of respectability upon which the
proprietor insisted.
Maggie came to him, the anxious look disappearing from her
face and a smile wreathing her lips.
"Oh, Pete--," she began brightly.
The bartender made a violent gesture of impatience.
"Oh, my Gawd," cried he, vehemently. "What deh hell do yeh
wanna hang aroun' here fer? Do yeh wanna git me inteh trouble?"
he demanded with an air of injury.
Astonishment swept over the girl's features. "Why, Pete! yehs tol' me--"
Pete glanced profound irritation. His countenance reddened
with the anger of a man whose respectability is being threatened.
"Say, yehs makes me tired. See? What deh hell deh yeh wanna
tag aroun' atter me fer? Yeh'll git me inteh trouble wid deh ol'
man an' dey'll be hell teh pay! If he sees a woman roun' here
he'll go crazy an' I'll lose me job! See? Yer brudder come in
here an' raised hell an' deh ol' man hada put up fer it! An' now
I'm done! See? I'm done."
The girl's eyes stared into his face. "Pete, don't yeh remem--"
"Oh, hell," interrupted Pete, anticipating.
The girl seemed to have a struggle with herself. She was apparently
bewildered and could not find speech. Finally she asked in a low voice:
"But where kin I go?"
The question exasperated Pete beyond the powers of endurance.
It was a direct attempt to give him some responsibility in a matter
that did not concern him. In his indignation he volunteered information.
"Oh, go teh hell," cried he. He slammed the door furiously
and returned, with an air of relief, to his respectability.
Maggie went away.
She wandered aimlessly for several blocks. She stopped once
and asked aloud a question of herself: "Who?"
A man who was passing near her shoulder, humorously took the
questioning word as intended for him.
"Eh? What? Who? Nobody! I didn't say anything,"
he laughingly said, and continued his way.
Soon the girl discovered that if she walked with such
apparent aimlessness, some men looked at her with calculating eyes.
She quickened her step, frightened. As a protection, she adopted
a demeanor of intentness as if going somewhere.
After a time she left rattling avenues and passed between rows
of houses with sternness and stolidity stamped upon their features.
She hung her head for she felt their eyes grimly upon her.
Suddenly she came upon a stout gentleman in a silk hat and a
chaste black coat, whose decorous row of buttons reached from his
chin to his knees. The girl had heard of the Grace of God and she
decided to approach this man.
His beaming, chubby face was a picture of benevolence and
kind-heartedness. His eyes shone good-will.
But as the girl timidly accosted him, he gave a convulsive
movement and saved his respectability by a vigorous side-step.
He did not risk it to save a soul. For how was he to know that
there was a soul before him that needed saving?
Chapter XVII
Upon a wet evening, several months after the last chapter,
two interminable rows of cars, pulled by slipping horses,
jangled along a prominent side-street. A dozen cabs, with coat-enshrouded
drivers, clattered to and fro. Electric lights, whirring softly,
shed a blurred radiance. A flower dealer, his feet tapping
impatiently, his nose and his wares glistening with rain-drops,
stood behind an array of roses and chrysanthemums. Two or three
theatres emptied a crowd upon the storm-swept pavements. Men
pulled their hats over their eyebrows and raised their collars to
their ears. Women shrugged impatient shoulders in their warm
cloaks and stopped to arrange their skirts for a walk through the
storm. People having been comparatively silent for two hours burst
into a roar of conversation, their hearts still kindling from the
glowings of the stage.
The pavements became tossing seas of umbrellas. Men stepped
forth to hail cabs or cars, raising their fingers in varied forms
of polite request or imperative demand. An endless procession
wended toward elevated stations. An atmosphere of pleasure and
prosperity seemed to hang over the throng, born, perhaps, of good
clothes and of having just emerged from a place of forgetfulness.
In the mingled light and gloom of an adjacent park,
a handful of wet wanderers, in attitudes of chronic dejection,
was scattered among the benches.
A girl of the painted cohorts of the city went along the street.
She threw changing glances at men who passed her, giving smiling
invitations to men of rural or untaught pattern and usually seeming
sedately unconscious of the men with a metropolitan seal upon their faces.
Crossing glittering avenues, she went into the throng emerging
from the places of forgetfulness. She hurried forward through the
crowd as if intent upon reaching a distant home, bending forward in
her handsome cloak, daintily lifting her skirts and picking for her
well-shod feet the dryer spots upon the pavements.
The restless doors of saloons, clashing to and fro, disclosed
animated rows of men before bars and hurrying barkeepers.
A concert hall gave to the street faint sounds of swift,
machine-like music, as if a group of phantom musicians were
hastening.
A tall young man, smoking a cigarette with a sublime air,
strolled near the girl. He had on evening dress, a moustache, a
chrysanthemum, and a look of ennui, all of which he kept carefully
under his eye. Seeing the girl walk on as if such a young man as
he was not in existence, he looked back transfixed with interest.
He stared glassily for a moment, but gave a slight convulsive start
when he discerned that she was neither new, Parisian, nor theatrical.
He wheeled about hastily and turned his stare into the air,
like a sailor with a search-light.
A stout gentleman, with pompous and philanthropic whiskers,
went stolidly by, the broad of his back sneering at the girl.
A belated man in business clothes, and in haste to catch a
car, bounced against her shoulder. "Hi, there, Mary, I beg your
pardon! Brace up, old girl." He grasped her arm to steady her,
and then was away running down the middle of the street.
The girl walked on out of the realm of restaurants and
saloons. She passed more glittering avenues and went into darker
blocks than those where the crowd travelled.
A young man in light overcoat and derby hat received a glance
shot keenly from the eyes of the girl. He stopped and looked at
her, thrusting his hands in his pockets and making a mocking smile
curl his lips. "Come, now, old lady," he said, "you don't mean to
tell me that you sized me up for a farmer?"
A laboring man marched along with bundles under his arms.
To her remarks, he replied: "It's a fine evenin', ain't it?"
She smiled squarely into the face of a boy who was hurrying by
with his hands buried in his overcoat, his blonde locks bobbing on
his youthful temples, and a cheery smile of unconcern upon his
lips. He turned his head and smiled back at her, waving his hands.
him. "He's all right! He didn't mean anything! Let it go!
He's a good fellah!"
"Din' he insul' me?" asked the man earnestly.
"No," said they. "Of course he didn't! He's all right!"
"Sure he didn' insul' me?" demanded the man, with deep anxiety
in his voice.
"No, no! We know him! He's a good fellah. He didn't mean anything."
"Well, zen," said the man, resolutely, "I'm go' 'pol'gize!"
When the waiter came, the man struggled to the middle of the floor.
"Girlsh shed you insul' me! I shay damn lie! I 'pol'gize!"
"All right," said the waiter.
The man sat down. He felt a sleepy but strong desire to straighten
things out and have a perfect understanding with everybody.
"Nell, I allus trea's yeh shquare, din' I? Yeh likes me, don' yehs, Nell?
I'm goo' f'ler?"
"Sure," said the woman of brilliance and audacity.
"Yeh knows I'm stuck on yehs, don' yehs, Nell?"
"Sure," she repeated, carelessly.
Overwhelmed by a spasm of drunken adoration, he drew two or
three bills from his pocket, and, with the trembling fingers of an
offering priest, laid them on the table before the woman.
"Yehs knows, damn it, yehs kin have all got, 'cause I'm stuck on yehs,
Nell, damn't, I--I'm stuck on yehs, Nell--buy drinksh--damn't--we're havin'
heluva time--w'en anyone trea's me ri'--I--damn't, Nell--we're havin'
heluva--time."
Shortly he went to sleep with his swollen face fallen forward on his chest.
The women drank and laughed, not heeding the slumbering man in the corner.
Finally he lurched forward and fell groaning to the floor.
The women screamed in disgust and drew back their skirts.
"Come ahn," cried one, starting up angrily, "let's get out of here."
The woman of brilliance and audacity stayed behind, taking up
the bills and stuffing them into a deep, irregularly-shaped pocket.
A guttural snore from the recumbent man caused her to turn and look
down at him.
She laughed. "What a damn fool," she said, and went.
The smoke from the lamps settled heavily down in the little
compartment, obscuring the way out. The smell of oil, stifling in
its intensity, pervaded the air. The wine from an overturned glass
dripped softly down upon the blotches on the man's neck.
Chapter XIX
In a room a woman sat at a table eating like a fat monk in a picture.
A soiled, unshaven man pushed open the door and entered.
"Well," said he, "Mag's dead."
"What?" said the woman, her mouth filled with bread.
"Mag's dead," repeated the man.
"Deh hell she is," said the woman. She continued her meal.
When she finished her coffee she began to weep.
"I kin remember when her two feet was no bigger dan yer t'umb,
and she weared worsted boots," moaned she.
"Well, whata dat?" said the man.
"I kin remember when she weared worsted boots," she cried.
The neighbors began to gather in the hall, staring in at the
weeping woman as if watching the contortions of a dying dog. A
dozen women entered and lamented with her. Under their busy hands
the rooms took on that appalling appearance of neatness and order
with which death is greeted.
Suddenly the door opened and a woman in a black gown rushed in
with outstretched arms. "Ah, poor Mary," she cried, and tenderly
embraced the moaning one.
"Ah, what ter'ble affliction is dis," continued she. Her vocabulary
was derived from mission churches. "Me poor Mary, how I feel fer yehs!
Ah, what a ter'ble affliction is a disobed'ent chil'."
Her good, motherly face was wet with tears. She trembled in
eagerness to express her sympathy. The mourner sat with bowed head,
rocking her body heavily to and fro, and crying out in a high,
strained voice that sounded like a dirge on some forlorn pipe.
"I kin remember when she weared worsted boots an' her two
feets was no bigger dan yer t'umb an' she weared worsted boots,
Miss Smith," she cried, raising her streaming eyes.
"Ah, me poor Mary," sobbed the woman in black. With low,
coddling cries, she sank on her knees by the mourner's chair,
and put her arms about her. The other women began to groan
in different keys.
"Yer poor misguided chil' is gone now, Mary, an' let us hope
it's fer deh bes'. Yeh'll fergive her now, Mary, won't yehs, dear,
all her disobed'ence? All her t'ankless behavior to her mudder an'
all her badness? She's gone where her ter'ble sins will be judged."
The woman in black raised her face and paused. The inevitable
sunlight came streaming in at the windows and shed a ghastly
cheerfulness upon the faded hues of the room. Two or three of the
spectators were sniffling, and one was loudly weeping. The
mourner arose and staggered into the other room. In a moment she
emerged with a pair of faded baby shoes held in the hollow of her hand.
"I kin remember when she used to wear dem," cried she.
The women burst anew into cries as if they had all been stabbed.
The mourner turned to the soiled and unshaven man.
"Jimmie, boy, go git yer sister! Go git yer sister an' we'll
put deh boots on her feets!"
"Dey won't fit her now, yeh damn fool," said the man.
"Go git yer sister, Jimmie," shrieked the woman, confronting
him fiercely.
The man swore sullenly. He went over to a corner and slowly
began to put on his coat. He took his hat and went out, with a
dragging, reluctant step.
The woman in black came forward and again besought the mourner.
"Yeh'll fergive her, Mary! Yeh'll fergive yer bad, bad,
chil'! Her life was a curse an' her days were black an' yeh'll
fergive yer bad girl? She's gone where her sins will be judged."
"She's gone where her sins will be judged," cried the other
women, like a choir at a funeral.
"Deh Lord gives and deh Lord takes away," said the woman in
black, raising her eyes to the sunbeams.
"Deh Lord gives and deh Lord takes away," responded the others.
"Yeh'll fergive her, Mary!" pleaded the woman in black. The
mourner essayed to speak but her voice gave way. She shook her
great shoulders frantically, in an agony of grief. Hot tears
seemed to scald her quivering face. Finally her voice came and
arose like a scream of pain.
"Oh, yes, I'll fergive her! I'll fergive her!"