XXIX The Doors of the Shadow
It is a winding and tortuous way across Greenwich Village to Summerton’s. The mazed course runs through streets that squirm like worms between a fisherman’s fingers; it skirts cobbled courts that are in twilight at midday and damp in the longest drought; it turns and doubles up passages that seem blind, dodges through the very bones of tumble-down warehouses, storehouses, houses so ramshackle that the imagination can conjure no possible use for them, and it comes out at last into a foul thoroughfare that appears to be no better than a stinking alley, so close to the water’s edge that the masts of the river’s cluttered craft look as if they grew upon the dirty, sagging roofs opposite, and so near to the wharves that the green walls of the buildings are wet and odorous as if from a continuous application of bilge-water.
By day, when its residents are asleep, this street is loud with straining Norman horses, and clattering vans, and whip-cracking carters from the docks; but by night—and the nights are very dark down there—it becomes the haunt of sailors and longshoremen, drunk and shouting, or still and drugged. Then the blue electric lamps snap hysterically at distant corners; the uneven pavement mounts steeply upward, or dashes precipitately downward, with no warning; laughter and curses and the crash of breaking glass or spluttering oaths issue now and again from the blackness at one’s elbow, where, hidden among the warehouses, stand the houses for the storing of another sort of wares: the slave-houses maintained for mariners. Grotesque men, could you see them, stagger into dim entrances; terrible caricatures of women, if the light would show them, steal out and dart upon gutter-couched drunkards to paw their pockets. The night is alive with shadows, and the whole street a hungry, quivering quicksand.
Only by urging her eyes to their utmost could Mary make out anything of the house before which she and her unsteady companion came to pause. Even then all of which she could be sure was that, cowering under the shadow of some huge brick building, and skulking beneath its own rotting eaves, it was a half-sunken, old, narrow house, long since abandoned as unfit for legitimate purposes, and leaning rakishly to one side, like an ancient libertine that knows his evil and grins at it.
The sailor knocked lightly at an almost unseen door. A panel of it slid open and threw a ray of light on his face.
“Who’s there?” asked a voice that was like the rasping of a file.
“It’s Billy,” said the sailor.
“Billy who?”
“Billy Stevens. Le’me in, Lou.”
A pair of swollen eyes came to the open panel and looked, down the shaft of light, into the sinister face of Bill.
“Who’s that with you?” croaked the voice.
“A gal I got for you.”
“Is she all right?”
“O’ course she is, Lou; else what in hell’d she be doin’ with me? Come on; le’me in.”
The swollen eyes disappeared, and the panel was shut. There was a sound of the withdrawal of several bolts. Then the door swung open, was closed and relocked behind the newcomers, and Mary found herself in an unfurnished hall, not more than fifteen feet square, lighted by a dim lamp standing on the lowest step of a steep flight of stairs, and guarded by the owner of the swollen eyes.
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.