The Best Short Stories of 1915

V >> Various >> The Best Short Stories of 1915

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"You let him alone, Hattie Krakow! What's it to you if--"

"Nothing--except I always say October is my unlucky month, because it
was just a year ago that they moved him and the sheet music down to the
basement. Honest, I'm going to buy me a pair of earmuffs! I'd hate to
tell you how unpopular popular music is with me."

"Huh! You couldn't play on a side comb, much less play on the piano like
Charley does. If I didn't have no more brains than some people--honest,
I'd go out and kill a calf for some!"

"You oughtta talk! A girl that ain't got no more brains than to gad
round every night and every Sunday in foul-smelling, low-ceilinged
dance halls, and wear paper-soled slippers when she oughtta be wearing
galoshes, and cheesecloth waists that ain't even decent instead of wool
undershirts! You oughtta talk about brains--you and Charley Chubb!"

"Yes, I oughtta talk! If you don't like my doings, Hattie Krakow,
there ain't no law says we gotta room together. I been shifting for
myself ever since I was cash-girl down at Tracy's, and I ain't going
to begin being bossed now. If you don't like my keeping steady with
Charley Chubb--if you don't like his sheet-music playing--you gotta
lump it! I'm a good girl, I am; and if you got anything to in-sinuate;
if--"

"Sara Juke, ain't you ashamed!"

"I'm a good girl, I am; and there ain't nobody can cast a reflection
on--on--"

Tears trembled in her voice and she coughed from the deep recesses of
her chest, and turned her head away, so that her profile was quivering
and her throat swelling with sobs.

"I--I'm a good girl, I am."

"Aw, Sara, don't I know it? Ain't that just where the rub comes? Don't I
know it? If you wasn't a good girl would I be caring?"

"I'm a good girl, I am!"

"It's your health, Sara, I'm kicking about. You're getting as pale and
skinny as a goop; and for a month already you've been coughing, and
never a single evening home to stick your feet in hot water and a
mustard plaster on your chest."

"Didn't I take the iron tonic and spoil my teeth?"

"My sister Lizzie--that's the way she started, Sara; right down here
in this basement. There never was a prettier little queen down here.
Ask any of the old girls. Like you in looks and all; full of vim too.
That's the way she started, Sara. She wouldn't get out in the country
on Sundays or get any air in her lungs walking with me evenings. She
was all for dance halls, too, Sara. She--she--Ain't I told you about
her over and over again? Ain't I?"

"Sh-h-h! Don't cry, Hat. Yes, yes; I know. She was a swell little kid;
all the old girls say so. Sh-h-h!"

"The--the night she died I--I died too; I--"

"Sh-h-h, dearie!"

"I ain't crying, only--only I can't help remembering."

"Listen! That's the new hit Charley's playin'--Up to Snuff! Say, ain't
that got some little swing to it? Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m! Some little
quick-step, ain't it? How that boy reads off by sight! Looka, will you?
They got them left-over ribbed undervests we sold last season for
forty-nine cents out on the grab table for seventy-four. Looka the
mob fighting for 'em! Dum-dum-tum-tee-tum-m-m!"

The day's tide came in. Slowly at first, but toward noon surging
through aisles and round bins, upstairs and downstairs--in, round
and out. Voices straining to be heard; feet shuffling in an
agglomeration of discords--the indescribable roar of humanity, which
is like an army that approaches but never arrives. And above it all,
insistent as a bugle note, reaching the basement's breadth, from
hardware to candy, from human hair to white goods, the tinny voice
of the piano--gay, rollicking.

At five o'clock the patch of daylight above the red-lighted exit door
turned taupe, as though a gray curtain had been flung across it; and
the girls, with shooting pains in their limbs, braced themselves for
the last hour. Shoppers, their bags bulging and their shawls awry,
fumbled in bins for a last remnant; hatless, sway-backed women, carrying
children, fought for mill ends. Sara Juke stood first on one foot and
then on the other to alternate the strain; her hands were hot and dry as
flannel, but her cheeks were pink--very pink.

At six o'clock Hattie Krakow untied her black alpaca apron, pinned a hat
as nondescript as a bird's nest at an unrakish angle and slid into a
warm gray jacket.

"Ready, Sara?"

"Yes, Hat." But her voice came vaguely, as through fog.

"I'm going to fix us some stew to-night with them onions Lettie brought
up to the room when she moved--mutton stew, with a broth for you, Sara."

"Yes, Hat."

Sara's eyes darted out over the emptying aisles; and, even as she pinned
on her velveteen poke bonnet at a too-swagger angle, and fluffed out a
few carefully provided curls across her brow, she kept watch and, with
obvious subterfuge, slid into her little unlined silk coat with a
deliberation not her own. "Coming, Sara?"

"Wait, can't you? My--my hat ain't on right."

"Come on; you're dolled up enough."

"My--my gloves--I--I forgot 'em. You--you can go on, Hat." And she must
burrow back beneath the counter.

Miss Krakow let out a snort, as fiery with scorn as though flames were
curling on her lips.

"Hanging round to see whether he's coming, ain't you? To think they shot
Lincoln and let him live! Before I'd run after any man living, much less
the excuse of a man like him! A shiny-haired, square-faced little rat
like him!"

"I ain't neither, waiting. I guess I got a right to find my gloves.
I--I guess I gotta right. He's as good as you are, and better. I--I
guess I gotta right." But the raspberry red of confusion dyed her face.

"No, you ain't waiting! No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss
Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot.
"Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come
on home with me now, like you ought to."

"I--you go on! I gotta tell him something. I guess I'm my own boss. I
got to tell him something."

Miss Krakow folded her well-worn hand bag under one arm and fastened her
black cotton gloves.

"Pf-f-f! What's the use of wasting breath!"

She slipped into the flux of the aisle, and the tide swallowed her and
carried her out into the bigger tide of the street and the swifter tide
of the city--a flower on the current, her blush withered under the
arc-light substitution for sunlight, the petals of her youth thrown to
the muddy corners of the city streets.

Sara Juke breathed inward, and under her cheaply pretentious lace blouse
a heart, as rebellious as the pink in her cheeks and the stars in her
eyes, beat a rapid fantasia; and, try as she would, her lips would
quiver into a smile.

"Hello, Charley!"

"Hello yourself, Sweetness!" And, draping himself across the white-goods
counter in an attitude as intricate as the letter S, behold Mr. Charley
Chubb! Sleek, soap-scented, slim--a satire on the satyr and the
haberdasher's latest dash. "Hello, Sweetness!"

"How are you, Charley?"

"Here, gimme your little hand. Shake."

She placed her palm in his, quivering.

You of the classes, peering through lorgnettes into the strange world
of the masses, spare that shrug. True, when Charley Chubb's hand closed
over Sara Juke's she experienced a flash of goose flesh; but, you of
the classes, what of the Van Ness ball last night? Your gown was low,
so that your neck rose out from it like white ivory. The conservatory,
where trained clematis vines met over your heads, was like a bower of
stars; music; his hand, the white glove off, over yours; the suffocating
sweetness of clematis blossoms; a fountain throwing fine spray; your
neck white as ivory, and--what of the Van Ness ball last night?

Only Sara Juke played her poor little game frankly and the cards of her
heart lay on the counter.

"Charley!" Her voice lay in a veil.

"Was you getting sore, Sweetness?"

"All day you didn't come over."

"Couldn't, Sweetness. Did you hear me let up on the new hit for a
minute?"

"It's swell, though, Charley; all the girls was humming it. You play it
like lightning too."

"It must have been written for you, Sweetness. That's what you are, Up
to Snuff, eh, Queenie?" He leaned closer, and above his tall, narrow
collar dull red flowed beneath the sallow, and his long white teeth and
slick-brushed hair shone in the arc light. "Eh, Queenie?"

"I gotta go now, Charley. Hattie's waiting home for me." She attempted
to pass him and to slip into the outgoing stream of the store, but with
a hesitation that belied her. "I--I gotta go, Charley."

He laughed, clapped his hat slightly askew on his polished hair and slid
his arm into hers.

"Forget it! But I had you going--didn't I, sister? Thought I'd forgot
about to-night, didn't you? and didn't have the nerve to pipe up. Like
fun I forgot!"

"I didn't know, Charley; you not coming over all day and all. I thought
maybe your friend didn't give you the tickets like he promised."

"Didn't he? Look! See if he didn't!"

He produced a square of pink cardboard from his waistcoat pocket and she
read it, with a sudden lightness underlying her voice:

HIBERNIAN MASQUE AND HOP

Supper Wardrobe Free
Admit Gent and Lady Fifty Cents

"Oh, gee, Charley! And me such a sight in this old waist and all. I
didn't know there was supper too."

"Sure! Hurry, Sweetness, and we'll catch a Sixth Avenue car. We wanna
get in on it while the tamales are hot."

And she must grasp his arm closer and worm through the sidewalk crush,
and straighten her velveteen poke so that the curls lay pat; and once
or twice she coughed, with the hollow resonance of a chain drawn upward
from a deep well.

"Gee, I bet there'll be a jam!"

"Sure! There's some live crowd down there."

They were in the street car, swaying, swinging, clutching; hemmed in by
frantic, home-going New York, nose to nose, eye to eye, tooth to tooth.
Round Sara Juke's slim waist lay Charley Chubb's saving arm, and with
each lurch they laughed immoderately, except when she coughed.

"Gee, ain't it the limit? It's a wonder they wouldn't open a window in
this car!"

"Nix on that. Whatta you wanna do--freeze a fellow out?"

Her eyes would betray her.

"Any old time I could freeze you, Charley."

"Honest?"

"You're the one that freezes me all the time. You're the one that keeps
me guessing and guessing where I stand with you."

A sudden lurch and he caught her as she swayed.

"Come, Sweetness, this is our corner. Quit your coughing there, hon;
this ain't no T.B. hop we 're going to."

"No what?"

"Come along; hurry! Look at the crowd already."

"This ain't no--what did you say, Charley?"

But they were pushing, shoving, worming into the great lighted entrance
of the hall. More lurching, crowding, jamming. "I'll meet you inside,
kiddo, in five minutes. Pick out a red domino; red's my color."

"A red one? Gee! Looka; mine's got black pompons on it. Five minutes,
Charley; five minutes!"

Flags of all nations and all sizes made a galaxy of the Sixth Avenue
hall. An orchestra played beneath an arch of them. Supper, consisting
of three-inch-thick sandwiches, tamales, steaming and smelling in their
buckets, bottles of beer and soda water, was spread on a long picnic
table running the entire length of the balcony.

The main floor, big as an armory, airless as a tomb, swarmed with
dancers.

After supper a red sateen Pierrette, quivering, teeth flashing beneath
a saucy half mask, bowed to a sateen Pierrot, whose face was as slim as
a satyr's and whose smile was as upturned as the eye slits in his mask.

"Gee, Charley, you look just like a devil in that costume--all red, and
your mouth squinted like that!"

"And you look just like a little red cherry, ready to bust."

And they were off in the whirl of the dance, except that the
close-packed dancers hemmed them in a swaying mob; and once she fell
back against his shoulder, faint.

"Ain't there a--a upstairs somewheres, Charley, where they got air? All
this jam and no windows open! Gee ain't it hot? Let's go outside where
it's cool--let's."

"There you go again! No wonder you got a cold on you--always wanting air
on you! Come, Sweetness; this ain't hot. Here, lemme show you the dip I
get the girls crazy with. One, two, three--dip! One, two, three--dip!
Ugh!"

"Gee, ain't it a jam, though?"

"One, two, three!"

"That's swell, Charley! Quit! You mustn't squeeze me like that
till--till you've asked me to be engaged, Charley. We--we ain't engaged
yet, are we, Charley?"

"Aw, what difference does that make? You girls make me sick--always
wanting to know that."

"It--it makes a lot of difference, Charley."

"There you go on that Amen talk again. All right, then; I won't squeeze
you no more, Stingy!"

Her step was suddenly less elastic and she lagged on his arm.

"I--I never said you, couldn't, Charley. Gee, ain't you a great one to
get mad so quick. Touchy! I only said not till we're engaged."

He skirted the crowd, guiding her skillfully.

"Stingy! Stingy! I know 'em that ain't so stingy as you."

"Charley!"

"What?"

"Aw, I'm ashamed to say it."

"Listen! They're playin' the new one--Up to Snuff! Faster! Don't make me
drag you, kiddo. Faster!"

They were suddenly in the center of the maze, as tight-packed as though
an army had conspired to close round them. She coughed and, in her
effort at repression coughed again.

"Charley, I--honest, I--I'm going to keel. I--I can't stand it packed in
here--like this."

She leaned to him, with the color drained out of her face; and the crowd
of black and pink and red dominos, gnomes gone mad, pressed, batted,
surged.

"Look out, Sweetness! Don't give out in here! They'll crush us out.
Ain't you got no nerve? Here; don't give out now! Gee! Watch out, there!
The lady's sick. Watch out! Here; now sit down a minute and get your
wind."

He pressed her shoulders downward and she dropped whitely on a little
camp chair hidden underneath the balcony.

"I gotta get out, Charley; I gotta get out and get air. I feel like I'm
going to suffocate in here. It's this old cough takes the breath out of
me."

In the foyer she revived a bit and drank gratefully of the water he
brought; but the color remained out of her cheeks and the cough would
rack her.

"I guess I oughtta go home, Charley."

"Aw, cut it! You ain't the only girl I've seen give out. Sit here and
rest a minute and you'll be all right. Great Scott! I came here to
dance."

She rose to her feet a bit unsteadily, but smiling.

"Fussy! Who said I didn't?"

"That's more like it."

And they were off again to the lilt of the music but, struggle as she
would, the coughing and the dizziness and the heat took hold of her and
at the close of the dance she fainted quietly against his shoulder.

And when she finally caught at consciousness, as it passed and repassed
her befuddled mind, she was on the floor of the cloak room, her head
pillowed on the skirt of a pink domino.

"There, there, dearie; your young man's waiting outside to take you
home."

"I--I'm all right!"

"Certainly you are. The heat done it. Here; lemme help you out of your
domino."

"It was the heat done it."

"There; you're all right now. I gotta get back to my dance. You fainted
right up against him, dearie; and I seen you keel."

"Gee, ain't I the limit!"

"Here; lemme help you on with your coat. Right there he is, waiting."

In the foyer Sara Juke met Charley Chubb shamefacedly.

"I spoilt everything, didn't I?"

"I guess you couldn't help it. All right?"

"Yes, Charley." She met the air gratefully, worming her little hand into
the curve of his elbow. "Gee! I feel fine now."

"Come; here's a car."

"Let's walk up Sixth Avenue, Charley; the air feels fine."

"All right."

"You ain't sore, are you, Charley? It was so jammed dancing, anyway."

"I ain't sore."

"It was the heat done it."

"Yeh."

"Honest, it's grand to be outdoors, ain't it? The stars and--and
chilliness and--and--all!"

"Listen to the garden stuff!"

"Silly!"

She squeezed his arm and drew back, shamefaced. His spirits rose.

"You're a right loving little thing when you wanna be."

They laughed in duet; and before the plate-glass window of a
furniture emporium they must stop and regard the monthly-payment
display, designed to represent the $49.50 completely furnished sitting
room, parlor and dining room of the home felicitous--a golden-oak room,
with an incandescent fire glowing right merrily in the grate; a lamp
redly diffusing the light of home; a plaster-of-Paris Cupid shooting
a dart from the mantelpiece; and, last, two figures of connubial bliss,
smiling and waxen, in rocking chairs, their waxen infant, block-building
on the floor, completing the picture.

"Gee, it looks as snug as a bug in a rug! Looka what it says too: 'You
Get the Girl; We'll Do the Rest!' Some little advertisement, ain't it?
I got the girl all right--ain't I, hon?"

"Aw!"

"Look at the papa--slippers and all! And the kid! Look at the kid,
Sweetness."

Her confusion nearly choked her and her rapid breath clouded the window
glass.

"Yeh, Charley! Looka the little kid! Ain't he cute?"

An Elevated train crashed over their heads, drowning out her words; but
her smile, which flickered like light over her face, persisted and her
arm crept back into his. At each shop window they must pause, but the
glow of the first one remained with her.

"Look, Sweetness--Red Swag, the Train King! Performance going on now.
Wanna go in?"

"Not to-night. Let's stay outside."

"Anything your little heart de-sires."

They bought hot chestnuts, city harbingers of autumn, from a vender and
let fall the hulls as they walked. They drank strawberry ice-cream soda,
pink with foam. Her resuscitation was complete; his spirits did not
wane.

"I gotta like a queen pretty much not to get sore at a busted evening
like this. It's a good thing the ticket didn't cost me nothing."

"Ain't it, though?"

"Look! What's in there--a exhibit?"

They paused before a white-lighted store front and he read laboriously:

FREE TUBERCULOSIS EXHIBIT

TO EDUCATE PEOPLE HOW TO PREVENT CONSUMPTION

"Oh!" She dragged at his arm.

"Aw, come on, Sweetness; nothing but a lot of T.B.'s."

"Let's--let's go in. See, it's free. Looka--it's all lit up and all;
see, pictures and all."

"Say, ain't I enough of a dead one without dragging me in there? Free! I
bet they pinch you for something before you get out."

"Come on, Charley; I never did see a place like this."

"Aw, they're all over town."

He followed her in surlily enough and then, with a morbid interest,
round a room hung with photographs of victims in various emaciated
stages of the white plague.

"Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful? Ain't it awful? Read them symptoms. Almost with
nothing it--it begins. Night sweats and losing weight and coughing,
and--oh--"

"Look! Little kids and all! Thin as matches."

"Aw, see, a poor little shaver like that! Look! It says sleeping in
that dirty room without a window gave it to him. Ugh, that old man!
'Self-indulgence and intemperance.' Looka that girl in the tobacco
factory. Oh! Oh! Ain't it awful! Dirty shops and stores, it says;
dirty saloons and dance halls--weak lungs can't stand them."

"Let's get out of here."

"Aw, look! How pretty she is in this first picture; and look at her
here--nothing but a stack of bones on a stretcher. Aw! Aw!"

"Come on!"

"Courage is very important, it says. Consumptives can be helped and many
are cured. Courage is--"

"Come on; let's get out of this dump. Say, it's a swell night for a
funeral."

She grasped at his coat sleeve, pinching the flesh with it, and he drew
away half angrily.

"Come on, I said."

"All right!"

A thin line filed past them, grim-faced, silent. At the far end of the
room, statistics in red inch-high type ran columnwise down the wall's
length. She read, with a gasp in her throat:

1--Ten thousand people died from tuberculosis in the city of New York
last year.

2--Two hundred thousand people died from tuberculosis in the United
States last year.

3--Records of the Health Department show that there are 31,631
living cases of tuberculosis in the city of New York.

4--Every three minutes some one in the United States dies from
consumption.

"Oh, Charley, ain't it awful!"

At a desk a young man, with skin as pink as though a strong wind had
whipped it into color, distributed pamphlets to the outgoing visitors--a
thin streamlet of them; some cautious, some curious, some afraid.

"Come on; let's hurry out of here, Sweetness. My lung's hurting this
minute."

They hurried past the desk; but the young man with the clear pink skin
reached over the heads of an intervening group, waving a long printed
booklet toward the pair.

"Circular, missy?"

Sara Juke straightened, with every nerve in her body twanging like a
plucked violin string; and her eyes met the clear eyes of the young
clerk.

Like a doll automaton she accepted the booklet from him; like a doll
automaton she followed Charley Chubb out into the street, and her limbs
were trembling so she could scarcely stand.

"Gotta hand it to you, Sweetness. Even made a hit on the fellow in the
lung shop! He didn't hand me out no literachure. Some little hit!"

"I gotta go home now, Charley."

"It's only ten."

"I better go, Charley. It ain't Saturday night."

At the stoop of her rooming house they lingered. A honey-colored moon
hung like a lantern over the block-long row of shabby-fronted houses. On
her steps and to her fermenting fancy the shadow of an ash can sprawled
like a prostrate human being.

"Charley!"

She clutched his arm.

"Whatcha scared about, Sweetness?"

"Oh, Charley, I--I feel creepy to-night."

"That visit to the Morgue was enough to give anybody the blind
staggers."

Her pamphlet was tight in her hand.

"You ain't mad at me, Charley?"

He stroked her arm, and the taste of tears found its way to her mouth.

"I'm feeling so sillylike to-night, Charley."

"You're all in, kiddo."

In the shadow he kissed her.

"Charley, you--you mustn't, unless we're--engaged." But she could not
find the strength to unfold herself from his arms. "You mustn't,
Charley!"

"Great little girl you are, Sweetness--one great little girl!"

"Aw, Charley!"

"And, to show you that I like you, I'm going to make up for this
to-morrow night. A real little Saturday-night blow! And don't forget
Sunday afternoon--two o'clock for us, down at Crissey's Hall. Two
o'clock."

"Two o'clock."

"Good!"

"Oh, Charley, I--"

"What, Sweetness?"

"Oh, nothing; I--I'm just silly to-night."

Her hand lay on his arm, white in the moonlight and light as a leaf; and
he kissed her again, scorching her lips.

"Good night, Sweetness."

"Good night, Charley."

Then up four flights of stairs, through musty halls and past closed
doors, their white china knobs showing through the darkness, and up to
the fourth-floor rear, and then on tiptoe into a long, narrow room, with
the moonlight flowing in.

Clothing lay about in grotesque heaps--a woman's blouse was flung across
the back of a chair and hung limply; a pair of shoes stood beside the
bed in the attitude of walking--tired-looking shoes, run down at the
heels and skinned at the toes. And on the far side of the three-quarter
bed the hump of an outstretched figure, face turned from the light, with
sparse gray-and-black hair flowing over the pillow.

Carefully, to save the slightest squeak, Sara Juke undressed, folded
her little mound of clothing across the room's second chair, groping
carefully by the stream of moonlight. Severe as a sibyl in her
straight-falling night-dress, her hair spreading over her shoulders,
her bare feet pattered on the cool matting. Then she slid into bed
lightly, scarcely raising the covers. From the mantelpiece the alarm
clock ticked with emphasis.

An hour she lay there. Once she coughed, and smothered it in her pillow.
Two hours. She slipped from under the covers and over to the littered
dresser. The pamphlet lay on top of her gloves; she carried it to the
window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her night
robe, read it. Then again, standing there by the window in the
moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.

After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a
current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the
bedside.

On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses
battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the
air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She
stirred and half opened her eyes.

"For Gawd's sake, Sara, are you crazy? Put that window down! Tryin' to
freeze us out? Opening a window with her cough and all! Put it down!
Put--it--down!"

Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed
with teeth that clicked. After a while she slept; but lightly, with
her mouth open and her face upturned. And after a while she woke to
full consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips. Her gown
at the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with
cold perspiration.

"Oh--oh--Hattie! Oh--oh!"

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