Part 2 (1/2)

He floundered about in darkness until he found the stairs. He stumbled, panic-stricken, to the next floor. An old woman opened a door. A light behind her threw a flare on the urchin's quivering face.

”Eh, Gawd, child, what is it dis time? Is yer fader beatin' yer mudder, or yer mudder beatin' yer fader?”

Chapter III

Jimmie and the old woman listened long in the hall. Above the m.u.f.fled roar of conversation, the dismal wailings of babies at night, the thumping of feet in unseen corridors and rooms, mingled with the sound of varied hoa.r.s.e shoutings in the street and the rattling of wheels over cobbles, they heard the screams of the child and the roars of the mother die away to a feeble moaning and a subdued ba.s.s muttering.

The old woman was a gnarled and leathery personage who could don, at will, an expression of great virtue. She possessed a small music-box capable of one tune, and a collection of ”G.o.d bless yehs” pitched in a.s.sorted keys of fervency. Each day she took a position upon the stones of Fifth Avenue, where she crooked her legs under her and crouched immovable and hideous, like an idol. She received daily a small sum in pennies. It was contributed, for the most part, by persons who did not make their homes in that vicinity.

Once, when a lady had dropped her purse on the sidewalk, the gnarled woman had grabbed it and smuggled it with great dexterity beneath her cloak. When she was arrested she had cursed the lady into a partial swoon, and with her aged limbs, twisted from rheumatism, had almost kicked the stomach out of a huge policeman whose conduct upon that occasion she referred to when she said: ”The police, d.a.m.n 'em.”

”Eh, Jimmie, it's cursed shame,” she said. ”Go, now, like a dear an'

buy me a can, an' if yer mudder raises 'ell all night yehs can sleep here.”

Jimmie took a tendered tin-pail and seven pennies and departed. He pa.s.sed into the side door of a saloon and went to the bar. Straining up on his toes he raised the pail and pennies as high as his arms would let him. He saw two hands thrust down and take them. Directly the same hands let down the filled pail and he left.

In front of the gruesome doorway he met a lurching figure. It was his father, swaying about on uncertain legs.

”Give me deh can. See?” said the man, threateningly.

”Ah, come off! I got dis can fer dat ol' woman an' it 'ud be dirt teh swipe it. See?” cried Jimmie.

The father wrenched the pail from the urchin. He grasped it in both hands and lifted it to his mouth. He glued his lips to the under edge and tilted his head. His hairy throat swelled until it seemed to grow near his chin. There was a tremendous gulping movement and the beer was gone.

The man caught his breath and laughed. He hit his son on the head with the empty pail. As it rolled clanging into the street, Jimmie began to scream and kicked repeatedly at his father's s.h.i.+ns.

”Look at deh dirt what yeh done me,” he yelled. ”Deh ol' woman 'ill be raisin' h.e.l.l.”

He retreated to the middle of the street, but the man did not pursue.

He staggered toward the door.

”I'll club h.e.l.l outa yeh when I ketch yeh,” he shouted, and disappeared.

During the evening he had been standing against a bar drinking whiskies and declaring to all comers, confidentially: ”My home reg'lar livin'

h.e.l.l! d.a.m.ndes' place! Reg'lar h.e.l.l! Why do I come an' drin' whisk'

here thish way? 'Cause home reg'lar livin' h.e.l.l!”

Jimmie waited a long time in the street and then crept warily up through the building. He pa.s.sed with great caution the door of the gnarled woman, and finally stopped outside his home and listened.

He could hear his mother moving heavily about among the furniture of the room. She was chanting in a mournful voice, occasionally interjecting bursts of volcanic wrath at the father, who, Jimmie judged, had sunk down on the floor or in a corner.

”Why deh blazes don' chere try teh keep Jim from fightin'? I'll break her jaw,” she suddenly bellowed.

The man mumbled with drunken indifference. ”Ah, wha' deh h.e.l.l. W'a's odds? Wha' makes kick?”

”Because he tears 'is clothes, yeh d.a.m.n fool,” cried the woman in supreme wrath.

The husband seemed to become aroused. ”Go teh h.e.l.l,” he thundered fiercely in reply. There was a crash against the door and something broke into clattering fragments. Jimmie partially suppressed a howl and darted down the stairway. Below he paused and listened. He heard howls and curses, groans and shrieks, confusingly in chorus as if a battle were raging. With all was the crash of splintering furniture.