Women who had scowled and spat as she walked by, spoke friendlily to her and wiped their eyes with their filthy skirts, and prayed in church and synagogue that she might prosper until her man was well and the old debt paid.Clara went from group to group, relating the whole story, and the tears flowed at each recital.Money they had none to give; but what they had they gave with that generosity which suddenly transfigures rags and filth and makes foul and distorted bodies lift in the full dignity of membership in the human family.
Everywhere in those streets were seen the ravages of disease--rheumatism and rickets and goiter, wen and tumors and cancer, children with only one arm or one leg, twisted spines, sunken chests, distorted hips, scrofulous eyes and necks, all the sad markings of poverty's supreme misery, the ferocious penalties of ignorance, stupidity and want.But Susan's burden of sorrow was not on this account overlooked.
Rafferty, who kept the saloon at the corner and was chief lieutenant to O'Frayne, the District Leader, sent for her and handed her a twenty."That may help some," said he.
Susan hesitated--gave it back."Thank you," said she, "and perhaps later I'll have to get it from you.But I don't want to get into debt.I already owe twenty.""This ain't debt," explained Rafferty."Take it and forget it.""I couldn't do that," said the girl."But maybe you'll lend it to me, if I need it in a week or so?""Sure," said the puzzled saloon man--liquor store man, he preferred to be called, or politician."Any amount you want."As she went away he looked after her, saying to his barkeeper:
"What do you think of that, Terry? I offered her a twenty and she sidestepped."Terry's brother had got drunk a few days before, had killed a woman and was on his way to the chair.Terry scowled at the boss and said:
"She's got a right to, ain't she? Don't she earn her money honest, without harmin' anybody but herself? There ain't many that can say that--not any that runs factories and stores and holds their noses up as if they smelt their own sins, damn 'em!""She's a nice girl," said Rafferty, sauntering away.He was a broad, tolerant and good-humored man; he made allowances for an employee whose brother was in for murder.
Susan had little time to spend at the hospital.She must now earn fifty dollars a week--nearly double the amount she had been averaging.She must pay the twenty-five dollars for Spenser, the ten dollars for her lodgings.Then there was the seven dollars which must be handed to the police captain's "wardman" in the darkness of some entry every Thursday night.
She had been paying the patrolman three dollars a week to keep him in a good humor, and two dollars to the janitor's wife; she might risk cutting out these items for the time, as both janitor's wife and policeman were sympathetic.But on the closest figuring, fifty a week would barely meet her absolute necessities--would give her but seven a week for food and other expenses and nothing toward repaying Clara.
Fifty dollars a week! She might have a better chance to make it could she go back to the Broadway-Fifth Avenue district.
But however vague other impressions from the life about her might have been, there had been branded into her a deep and terrible fear of the police an omnipotence as cruel as destiny itself--indeed, the visible form of that sinister god at present.Once in the pariah class, once with a "police record," and a man or woman would have to scale the steeps of respectability up to a far loftier height than Susan ever dreamed of again reaching, before that malign and relentless power would abandon its tyranny.She did not dare risk adventuring a part of town where she had no "pull" and where, even should she by chance escape arrest, Freddie Palmer would hear of her; would certainly revenge himself by having her arrested and made an example of.In the Grand Street district she must stay, and she must "stop the nonsense" and "play the game"--must be businesslike.
She went to see the "wardman," O'Ryan, who under the guise of being a plain clothes man or detective, collected and turned in to the captain, who took his "bit" and passed up the rest, all the money levied upon saloons, dives, procuresses, dealers in unlawful goods of any kind from opium and cocaine to girls for "hock shops."O'Ryan was a huge brute of a man, his great hard face bearing the scars of battles against pistol, knife, bludgeon and fist.
He was a sour and savage brute, hated and feared by everyone for his tyrannies over the helpless poor and the helpless outcast class.He had primitive masculine notions as to feminine virtue, intact despite the latter day general disposition to concede toleration and even a certain respectability to prostitutes.But by some chance which she and the other girls did not understand he treated Susan with the utmost consideration, made the gangs appreciate that if they annoyed her or tried to drag her into the net of tribute in which they had enmeshed most of the girls worth while, he would regard it as a personal defiance to himself.
Susan waited in the back room of the saloon nearest O'Ryan's lodgings and sent a boy to ask him to come.The boy came back with the astonishing message that she was to come to O'Ryan's flat.Susan was so doubtful that she paused to ask the janitress about it.
"It's all right," said the janitress."Since his wife died three years ago him and his baby lives alone.There's his old mother but she's gone out.He's always at home when he ain't on duty.He takes care of the baby himself, though it howls all the time something awful."Susan ascended, found the big policeman in his shirt sleeves, trying to soothe the most hideous monstrosity she had ever seen--a misshapen, hairy animal looking like a monkey, like a rat, like half a dozen repulsive animals, and not at all like a human being.The thing was clawing and growling and grinding its teeth.At sight of Susan it fixed malevolent eyes on her and began to snap its teeth at her.
