“Well?” Miss Maria repeated impatiently.
“I want forty cents for gas mantles,” said Mr. Chidden, from the middle of the room.
Without a word, she arose, unlocked a drawer of a dingy, old-fashioned desk, and took out a big black pocketbook. From this she extracted two quarters, which she handed to her brother. His amazement increased. Never before had she given him one cent over the exact amount required. She must be horribly agitated. She might even—
He cleared his throat, stuck the fifty cents into his pocket, and spoke:
“Also, I want three dollars.”
Miss Chidden paused in the act of returning the pocketbook to the drawer.
“What for?” she demanded.
“For myself.”
“What for?”
“Imperial necessity,” said Mr. Chidden, trying to make a joke of it.
“I suppose it’s clothes.”
Her tone was maddening. The flush was leaving her face now, and her lips were straightening out. These ominous signs, and the smart sarcasm of her voice, plunged Mr. Chidden quite suddenly into the depths of exasperated despair. From her appearance of nervous embarrassment, he had thought to take her by surprise and get the three dollars out of her before she realized what she was doing. But he knew that hope was gone as he saw her lips meet in the familiar straight line. Very well, he would fight for it.
“Yes, it’s clothes,” he replied, with sudden passion. “Why shouldn’t it be? I want three dollars.”
“You can’t have it.” Miss Maria returned the pocketbook to the drawer. “And, what’s more, you don’t need it.”
“No? I don’t?” shouted Mr. Chidden, advancing a step and pointing indignantly to a certain portion of his clothing. “Look at that! Just look at it! Perhaps there is men who can wear a pair of pants three years, Maria Chidden, but I’m not one of ’em. It’s unwholesome. Give me three dollars.”
For reply, Miss Maria closed and locked the drawer, returned to her chair, inserted the edge of a sheet under the hemmer, and started the machine. Her only audible comment was a grunt as she hitched the chair up closer.
Mr. Chidden choked with the helpless rage of the timid and oppressed.
“That’s right!” he yelled. “Shut your mouth and look mad. You can’t scare me. I need a pair of pants, and you know it. You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You’ve got rich off of this boarding house, and I’ve slaved for you morning, noon and night for twenty years, and got nothing. What’s three dollars to you? Anyway, I’ve got it coming to me. I’ve earned it. Ain’t I? Haven’t I earned it?”
“Maybe,” was the calm reply. “But you’re not going to get it.”
“No? I won’t get it? All right! All right, then, I won’t get it!”
And Mr. Chidden, tasting defeat, sought for revenge. He tried to think of something to say that would give this tyrant pain. And what he found was:
“What was that little dago doing in here? I saw him come out.”
The machine stopped. Miss Maria arose. Her look was awful. Mr. Chidden met it bravely for three seconds, then began a precipitate retreat toward the door. He was halted by her voice. Anyone would have been.
“Robert!”
“Well?” he murmured, turning.
“Let me tell you right now, Mr. Comicci is no dago. He’s a gentleman. Dago, indeed! A worthless little thing like you to call him names! And you stand right up and insinuate your own sister! Yes, you did! And if ever I... Robert! Robert, come back here!”
But the call went unheeded. With his revenge, Mr. Chidden had swiftly flown — into the hall and down three flights of stairs to the cellar. There he halted and seated himself on an old box behind the coal pile. Almost immediately he jumped up again, ran to the cellar door, and bolted it. Then he returned to the box. This was the refuge he always sought when he required solitude. He took a pipe from his pocket, filled it, lit it, and leaned back against the whitewashed wall to puff and think.
First, he thought of pants. For two weeks now he had been screwing up his courage to the point of asking for three dollars — the price of a certain handsome garment displayed in Greenberg’s window on Eighth Avenue. And since his need was undeniable, he knew that if he had approached his sister in the proper manner, with a due amount of humility and appeal, he would have been successful. But he had allowed himself to be betrayed by a hasty impulse, and now he would probably have to wait another month.
What had set him off? Oh, yes, the dago. That was funny. Of course he had been mistaken; even a dago would not make love to his sister Maria, who was lean and old and rawboned. But then he had distinctly heard the kiss. What if it had really happened? Mr. Chidden puffed out a long column of smoke, and chuckled to himself. He would give anything to have seen the little dago trying to kiss Maria. For some time he sat smoking and grinning to himself, developing many amusing details of the imagined scene.
Then suddenly he sat up with a quick ejaculation, jerking the pipe from his mouth. By Heaven! He hadn’t thought of that! Could it be? Perhaps the little dago wasn’t such a fool, after all!
He leaned back against the wall and began to think in earnest, forgetting to smoke. He remained thus for half an hour, silent, motionless, rapt. Then he slowly arose, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and went upstairs to look at the dining-room clock. It said a quarter past eleven, which meant that Miss Maria had left fifteen minutes before on her daily trip to the Eighth Avenue markets.
“Now’s my chance!” muttered Mr. Chidden.
He mounted to the second floor and passed to the rear of the hall. The door, behind which he had heard the kiss an hour before, was closed. Getting no answer to his knock, he pushed it open and entered. Leaving the door ajar, he tiptoed across to the old-fashioned desk and raised the lid, disclosing to view an orderly heap of receipts, bills, and other papers, and two medium-sized books bound in imitation leather. He took out one of the latter, laid it on the desk, and opened it.
He was nervous; he kept glancing behind him every second, and his fingers trembled, but he finally found what he wanted on page 47. At the top of the leaf was written: “Giacomo Comicci, came in Sept. 22, third-floor front, $5.00.” Beneath this was a list of dates a week apart, and after each date appeared the entry: “Paid $5.00.” But at March 16th the entries of payments halted, though the dates continued. Mr. Chidden glanced at the calendar on the desk, which displayed in black type: “June 28.” Then he went down the line of dates with his finger, counting.
“By Polly!” he exclaimed aloud, for getting the danger of his situation. “He hasn’t paid a cent for fifteen weeks!”
All was clear. His suspicions were justified. No wonder the little dago was trying to kiss Maria! Then another thought came: Never before had any roomer succeeded in remaining under Maria’s roof for more than three consecutive weeks without paying rent, and here — nearly four months! Gradually, reluctantly, Mr. Chidden arrived at the painful conclusion that not only had Mr. Comicci given Maria the kiss, but also that she had been glad to get it.
But he knew his sister Maria. She was a prude if ever there was one. No man — not Don Juan himself — could ever have succeeded in planting the salute of love on her chaste cheek without having first declared the most honorable intentions. By Polly! There could be no doubt of it! The little dago was trying to marry Maria!
Mr. Chidden was thinking fast, but it was some time later, back in the cellar, that he arrived at this startling conclusion. As soon as it entered his mind, it crowded everything else out. He felt himself suddenly confronted by a fearful and wholly unexpected danger. His brain whirled.
True, he had told himself daily for the past twenty years that he was living the life of a slave, and he had made spasmodic and energetic, but fruitless, attempts to get out of it. Handyman in a rooming house is not a position either of honor or of ease, and his sister Maria had taken all the profits. But still the work was not really hard, he never had to worry about anything, he usually got clothes when he had to have them, and he could always squeeze a little spending money out of Maria when his need was urgent. And Maria had saved up something like ten thousand dollars. Not that he wanted or expected her to die, or anything like that; but the fact remained that the ten thousand existed, and that he was her brother, her only living relative.