His fare came forth with the Casino dreamy smile still on her plain face. Jerry took her by the arm and led her into the police station. A gray-moustached sergeant looked keenly across the desk. He and the cabby were no strangers.
Sargeant, began Jerry in his old raucous, martyred, thunderous tones of complaint. Ive got a fare here that
Jerry paused. He drew a knotted, red hand across his brow. The fog set up by McGary was beginning to clear away.
A fare, sargeant, he continued, with a grin, that I want to inthroduce to ye. Its me wife that I married at ould man Walshs this avening. And a divil of a time we had, tis thrue. Shake hands wid th sargeant, Norah, and well be off to home.
Before stepping into the cab Norah sighed profoundly.
Ive had such a nice time, Jerry, said she.
An Unfinished Story
We no longer groan and heap ashes upon our heads when the flames of Tophet[158] are mentioned. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium[159], or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction. This is a pleasing hypothesis; but there lingers yet some of the old, goodly terror of orthodoxy.
There are but two subjects upon which one may discourse with a free imagination, and without the possibility of being controverted. You may talk of your dreams; and you may tell what you heard a parrot say. Both Morpheus and the bird are incompetent witnesses; and your listener dare not attack your recital. The baseless fabric of a vision, then, shall furnish my theme chosen with apologies and regrets instead of the more limited field of pretty Pollys small talk.
I had a dream that was so far removed from the higher criticism that it had to do with the ancient, respectable, and lamented bar-of-judgment theory.
Gabriel[160] had played his trump; and those of us who could not follow suit were arraigned for examination. I noticed at one side a gathering of professional bondsmen in solemn black and collars that buttoned behind[161]; but it seemed there was some trouble about their real estate titles; and they did not appear to be getting any of us out.
A fly cop an angel policeman flew over to me and took me by the left wing. Near at hand was a group of very prosperous-looking spirits arraigned for judgment.
A fly cop an angel policeman flew over to me and took me by the left wing. Near at hand was a group of very prosperous-looking spirits arraigned for judgment.
Do you belong with that bunch? the policeman asked.
Who are they? was my answer.
Why, said he, they are
But this irrelevant stuff is taking up space that the story should occupy.
Dulcie worked in a department store. She sold Hamburg edging, or stuffed peppers, or automobiles, or other little trinkets such as they keep in department stores. Of what she earned, Dulcie received six dollars per week. The remainder was credited to her and debited to somebody elses account in the ledger kept by G[162] Oh, primal energy, you say, Reverend Doctor[163] Well then, in the Ledger of Primal Energy.
During her first year in the store, Dulcie was paid five dollars per week. It would be instructive to know how she lived on that amount. Dont care? Very well; probably you are interested in larger amounts. Six dollars is a larger amount. I will tell you how she lived on six dollars per week.
One afternoon at six, when Dulcie was sticking her hat-pin within an eighth of an inch of her medulla oblongata[164], she said to her chum, Sadie the girl that waits on you with her left side:
Say, Sade, I made a date for dinner this evening with Piggy.
You never did! exclaimed Sadie admiringly. Well, aint you the lucky one? Piggys an awful swell; and he always takes a girl to swell places. He took Blanche up to the Hoffman House one evening, where they have swell music, and you see a lot of swells. Youll have a swell time, Dulce.
Dulcie hurried homeward. Her eyes were shining, and her cheeks showed the delicate pink of lifes real lifes approaching dawn. It was Friday; and she had fifty cents left of her last weeks wages.
The streets were filled with the rush-hour floods of people. The electric lights of Broadway were glowing calling moths from miles, from leagues, from hundreds of leagues out of darkness around to come in and attend the singeing school. Men in accurate clothes, with faces like those carved on cherry stones by the old salts in sailors homes, turned and stared at Dulcie as she sped, unheeding, past them. Manhattan, the night-blooming cereus, was beginning to unfold its dead-white, heavy-odoured petals.
Dulcie stopped in a store where goods were cheap and bought an imitation lace collar with her fifty cents. That money was to have been spent otherwise fifteen cents for supper, ten cents for breakfast, ten cents for lunch. Another dime was to be added to her small store of savings; and five cents was to be squandered for licorice drops the kind that made your cheek look like the toothache, and last as long. The licorice was an extravagance almost a carouse but what is life without pleasures?