The Dust Flower. Basil King

lips compressed and eyes swimming, she shook her head.

      “Better do it. You’ll be sorry if you don’t. I can pass you that tip straight now.”

      “If you was laughed at every time you stepped onto the lot––”

      “There’s worse things than bein’ laughed at. I can tell you that straight now.”

      “Nothin’s worse than bein’ laughed at, not for a girl of my age there ain’t.”

      Watching his opportunity he caught her off her guard. Her eyes having wandered to the coat she had just taken off, a worn gray thing with edgings of worn gray squirrel fur, he wrenched back with an unexpected movement the hand that clutched something to her breast, thrust two fingers of his other hand within her corsage, and extracted her pay-envelope.

      17

      It took her by such surprise that she was like a mad thing, throwing herself upon him and battling for her treasure, though any possibility of her getting it back from him was hopeless. It was so easy for him to catch her by the wrists and twist them that he laughed while he was doing it.

      “You little cat! You see what you bring on yourself. And you’re goin’ to get worse. I can tell you that straight now.”

      Still twisting her arms till she writhed, though without a moan or a cry, he backed her toward the disemboweled sofa, on whose harsh, exposed springs she fell. Then he sprang on her a new surprise.

      “How dare you wear them rings? They was your mother’s rings. I bought and paid for ’em. They’re mine.”

      “Oh, don’t take them off,” she begged. “You can keep the money––”

      “Sure I can keep the money,” he grinned, wrenching from her fingers the plain gold band he had given her mother as a wedding ring, as well as another, bigger, broader, showier, and set with two infinitesimal white points claiming to be diamonds.

      Though he had released her hands, she now stretched them out toward him pleadingly. “Aw, give ’em back to me. They’se all I’ve got in the world to care about—just because she wore ’em. You can take anything else I’ve got––”

      “All right, then. I’ll take this.”

      With a deftness which would have done credit to a professor of legerdemain he unbuckled the strap of her little wrist-watch, putting the thing into his pocket.

      18

      “I give that to your mother too. You don’t need it, and it may be useful to me. What else have you got?”

      She struggled to her feet. He was growing more dangerous than she had ever known him to be even when he had beaten her.

      “I ain’t got nothin’ else.”

      “Oh, yes, you have. You gotta purse. I seen you with it. Where is it?”

      The fear in her eyes sent his toward her jacket, thrown on the chair when she had come in. With an “Ah!” of satisfaction he pounced on it. As he held it upside down and shook it, a little leather wallet clattered to the floor. She sprang for it, but again he was too quick for her.

      “So!” he snarled, with his glittering grin. “You thought you’d get it, did you?” He rattled the few coins, copper and silver, into the palm of his hand, and unfolded a one-dollar bill. “You must owe me this money. Who’s give you bed and board for the last ten year, I’d like to know? How much have you ever paid me?”

      “Only all I ever earned—which you stole from me.”

      “Stole from you, did I? Well, you won’t fling that in my face any more.” He handed her her coat. “Put that on,” he commanded.

      “What for?” She held it without obeying the order. “What’s the good o’ goin’ out and me without a cent?”

      “Put it on.”

      Her lip quivered; she began to suspect his intention. “I do’ wanta.”

      “Oh, very well! Please yourself. You got your 19 hat on already.” Seizing her by the shoulders he steered her toward the door. “Now march.”

      Though she refused to march, it was not difficult for him to force her.

      “This’ll teach you to valyer a good home when you got one. You’ll deserve to find the next one different.”

      She almost shrieked: “You’re not going to turn me out?”

      “Well, what does it look as if I was doin’?”

      “I won’t go! I won’t go! Where can I go?”

      “What I’m doin’ ’ll help you to find out.”

      He had her now in the entry, where in spite of her struggles he had no difficulty in unlocking the door, pushing her out, and relocking the door behind her.

      “Lemme in! Lemme in! Oh, please, lemme in!”

      He stood in the middle of the living-room, listening with pleasure and smiling his brigand’s smile. He was not as bad as you might think. He did mean to let her in eventually. His smile and his pleasure sprang purely from the fact that his lesson was so successful. With this in her mind, she wouldn’t withstand him a second time.

      She rattled the door by the handle. She beat upon the panels. She implored.

      Still smiling, he filled his pipe. Let her keep it up. It would do her good. He remembered that once when he had turned her mother out at night, she had sat on the steps till he let her in at dawn before the police looked round that way. History would repeat itself. The daughter would do the same. He was only giving her the lesson she deserved.

      Meanwhile she was experiencing a new sensation, 20 that of outrage. For the first time in her life she was swept by pride in revolt. She hadn’t known that any such emotion could get hold of her. As a matter of fact she hadn’t known that so strong a support to the inner man lay within the depths of human nature. Accustomed to being cowed, she had hardly understood that there was any other way to feel. Only within a day or two had something which you or I would have called spirit, but for which she had no name, disturbed her with unexpected flashes, like those of summer lightning.

      While waiting for the camera, for instance, in the street scene in “The Man with the Emerald Eye,” a “fresh thing” had said, with a wink at her companions, “Say, did you copy that suit from a pattern in Chic?”

      Letty had so carefully minded her own business and tried to be nice to every one that the titter which went round at her expense hurt her with a wound impelling her to reply, “No; I ordered it at Margot’s. You look as if you got your things there too, don’t you?” Nevertheless, she was so stung by the sarcasm that the commendation she overheard later, that the Gravely kid had a tongue, didn’t bring any consolation.

      Without knowing that what she felt now was an intensified form of the same rebellion against scorn, she knew it was not consistent with some inborn sense of human dignity to stand there pleading to be let into a house from which she was locked out, even though it was the only spot on earth she could call home. Still less was it possible when, round the foot of the steps, a crowd began to gather, jeering at her passionate beseechings. For the most part they were children, 21 Slavic, Semitic, Italian. Amid their cries of, “Go it, Sis!” now in English and now in strange equivalents of Latin, or Polish, or even Hebraic origin, she was suddenly arrested by the consciousness of personal humiliation.

      She turned from the door to face the street. It was one of those streets not rare in New York which the civic authorities abandon in despair. A gash of children and refuse cut straight from river to Park, it got its chief movement from push-carts of fruit and other foods, while the “wash” of five hundred families blew its banners overhead. Vendors of all kinds uttered their nasal or raucous cries, in counterpoint to the treble screams of