The next day was Labor Day. The occupations of Mr. Cassidy and Mr. Fink ceased for one passage of the sun. Labor, triumphant, would parade and otherwise disport itself.
Mrs. Fink took Mrs. Cassidy's pattern down early. Mame had on her new silk waist. Even her damaged eye managed to emit a holiday gleam. Jack was fruitfully penitent, and there was a hilarious scheme for the day afoot, with parks and picnics and Pilsener in it.
A rising, indignant jealousy seized Mrs. Fink as she returned to her flat above. Oh, happy Mame, with her bruises and her quick–following balm! But was Mame to have a monopoly of happiness? Surely Martin Fink was as good a man as Jack Cassidy. Was his wife to go always unbelabored and uncaressed? A sudden, brilliant, breathless idea came to Mrs. Fink. She would show Mame that there were husbands as able to use their fists and perhaps to be as tender afterward as any Jack.
The holiday promised to be a nominal one with the Finks. Mrs. Fink had the stationary washtubs in the kitchen filled with a two weeks' wash that had been soaking overnight. Mr. Fink sat in his stockinged feet reading a newspaper. Thus Labor Day presaged to speed.
Jealousy surged high in Mrs. Fink's heart, and higher still surged an audacious resolve. If her man would not strike her—if he would not so far prove his manhood, his prerogative and his interest in conjugal affairs, he must be prompted to his duty.
Mr. Fink lit his pipe and peacefully rubbed an ankle with a stockinged toe. He reposed in the state of matrimony like a lump of unblended suet in a pudding. This was his level Elysium—to sit at ease vicariously girdling the world in print amid the wifely splashing of suds and the agreeable smells of breakfast dishes departed and dinner ones to come. Many ideas were far from his mind; but the furthest one was the thought of beating his wife.
Mrs. Fink turned on the hot water and set the washboards in the suds. Up from the flat below came the gay laugh of Mrs. Cassidy. It sounded like a taunt, a flaunting of her own happiness in the face of the unslugged bride above. Now was Mrs. Fink's time.
Suddenly she turned like a fury upon the man reading.
«You lazy loafer!» she cried, «must I work my arms off washing and toiling for the ugly likes of you? Are you a man or are you a kitchen hound?»
Mr. Fink dropped his paper, motionless from surprise. She feared that he would not strike—that the provocation had been insufficient. She leaped at him and struck him fiercely in the face with her clenched hand. In that instant she felt a thrill of love for him such as she had not felt for many a day. Rise up, Martin Fink, and come into your kingdom! Oh, she must feel the weight of his hand now—just to show that he cared—just to show that he cared!
Mr. Fink sprang to his feet—Maggie caught him again on the jaw with a wide swing of her other hand. She closed her eyes in that fearful, blissful moment before his blow should come—she whispered his name to herself—she leaned to the expected shock, hungry for it.
In the flat below Mr. Cassidy, with a shamed and contrite face was powdering Mame's eye in preparation for their junket. From the flat above came the sound of a woman's voice, high–raised, a bumping, a stumbling and a shuffling, a chair overturned—unmistakable sounds of domestic conflict.
«Mart and Mag scrapping?» postulated Mr. Cassidy. «Didn't know they ever indulged. Shall I trot up and see if they need a sponge holder?»
One of Mrs. Cassidy's eyes sparkled like a diamond. The other twinkled at least like paste.
«Oh, oh,» she said, softly and without apparent meaning, in the feminine ejaculatory manner. «I wonder if—wonder if! Wait, Jack, till I go up and see.»
Up the stairs she sped. As her foot struck the hallway above out from the kitchen door of her flat wildly flounced Mrs. Fink.
«Oh, Maggie,» cried Mrs. Cassidy, in a delighted whisper; «did he? Oh, did he?»
Mrs. Fink ran and laid her face upon her chum's shoulder and sobbed hopelessly.
Mrs. Cassidy took Maggie's face between her hands and lifted it gently. Tear–stained it was, flushing and paling, but its velvety, pink–and–white, becomingly freckled surface was unscratched, unbruised, unmarred by the recreant fist of Mr. Fink.
«Tell me, Maggie,» pleaded Mame, «or I'll go in there and find out. What was it? Did he hurt you—what did he do?»
Mrs. Fink's face went down again despairingly on the bosom of her friend.
«For God's sake don't open that door, Mame,» she sobbed. «And don't ever tell nobody—keep it under your hat. He—he never touched me, and—he's—oh, Gawd—he's washin' the clothes—he's washin' the clothes!»
«THE GUILTY PARTY»
A Red–haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by a window. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds with great satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair of blue, faded carpet–slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmed daily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an evening paper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to be followed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type.
In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strong bacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut–plug fumes from the vespertine pipe.
Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which, as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mighty host of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some in rags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless as young hawks, some gentle–faced and shrinking, some shrieking rude and sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar, to embrace—here were the children playing in the corridors of the House of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. The bird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystie street were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture.
A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading and resting by the window, and said:
«Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't too tired?»
The red–haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the window answered, with a frown.
«Checkers. No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all day have a little rest when he comes home? Why don't you go out and play with the other kids on the sidewalk?»
The woman who was cooking came to the door.
«John,» she said, «I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street. They learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been in the house all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of your time to amuse her when you come home.»
«Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to be amused,» said the red–haired, unshaven, untidy man, «and don't bother me.»
«You're on,» said Kid Mullaly. «Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie to the dance. Put up.»
The Kid's black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited and challenged. He drew out his «roll» and slapped five tens upon the bar. The three or four young fellows who were thus «taken» more slowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex–officio stakeholder, took the money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with an inch–long pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cash register.
«And, oh, what'll be done to you'll be a plenty,» said a bettor, with anticipatory glee.
«That's my lookout,» said the «Kid,» sternly. «Fill 'em up all around, Mike.»
After the round Burke, the «Kid's» sponge, sponge–holder, pal, Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at the saloon corner where all the official and important matters of the Small Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tan shoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time that day, Burke spake words of wisdom to his chief.