Calvary Alley

Chapter V. On Probation

For a brief period Nance Molloy walked the paths of righteousness. The fear of being "took up" proved a salutary influence, but permanent converts are seldom made through fear of punishment alone. She was trying by imitation and suggestion to grope her way upward, but the light she climbed by was a borrowed light which swung far above her head and threw strange, misleading shadows across her path. The law that allowed a man to sell her fire-crackers and then punished her for firing them off, that allowed any passer-by to kick her stone off the hop-scotch square and punished her for hurling; the stone after him, was a baffling and difficult thing to understand.

At school it was no better. The truant officer said she must go every day, yet when she got there, there was no room for her. She had to sit in the seat with two other little girls who bitterly resented the intrusion.

"You oughtn't to be in this grade anyhow!" declared one of them. "A girl ought to be in the primer that turns her letters the wrong way."

"Well, my letters spell the words right," said Nance hotly, "an' that's more'n yours do, Pie-Face!"

Whereupon the girl stuck out her tongue, and Nance promptly shoved her off the end of the seat, with the result that her presence was requested in the office at the first recess.

"If you would learn to make your letters right, the girls would not tease you," said the principal, kindly. "Why do you persist in turning them the wrong way?"

Now Nance had learned to write by copying the inscriptions from the reverse side of the cathedral windows, and she still believed the cathedral was right. But she liked the principal and she wanted very much to get a good report, so she gave in.

"All right," she said good-naturedly, "I'll do 'em your way. An' ef you ketch me fightin' agin, I hope you'll lick hell outen me!"

The principal, while decrying its forcible expression, applauded her good intention, and from that time on took special interest in her.

Nance's greatest drawback these days was Mrs. Snawdor. That worthy lady, having her chief domestic prop removed and finding the household duties resting too heavily upon her own shoulders, conceived an overwhelming hatred for the school, the unknown school-teacher, and the truant officer, for whom she had hitherto harbored a slightly romantic interest.

"I ain't got a mite of use for the whole lay-out," she announced in a sweeping condemnation one morning when Nance was reminding her for the fourth time that she had to have a spelling book. "They' re forever wantin' somethin'. It ain't no use beginnin' to humor 'em. Wasn't they after me to put specs on Fidy last week? I know their tricks, standin' in with eye-doctors an' dentists! An' here I been fer goin' on ten years, tryin' to save up to have my own eye-teeth drawed an' decent ones put in. Snawdor promised when we got married that would be his first present to me. Well, if I ever get 'em, they will be his first present."

"Teacher says you oughtn't to leave the milk settin' uncovered like that; it gits germans in it," said Nance.

"I'd like to know whose milk-can this is?" demanded Mrs. Snawdor indignantly. "You tell her when she pays fer my milk, it 'll be time enough fer her to tell me what to do with it. You needn't be scurryin' so to git off. I'm fixin' to go to market. You'll have to stay an' 'tend to the children 'til I git back."

"But I'm tryin' to git a good report," urged Nance. "I don't want to be late."

"I'll send a excuse by Fidy, an' say you 're sick in bed. Then you kin stay home all day an' git the house cleaned up."

"Naw, I won't," said Nance rebelliously, "I ain't goin' to miss ag'in."

"You're goin' to shut up this minute, you sass-box, or I'll take you back to that there juvenile court. Git me a piece o' paper an' a pencil."

With great effort she wrote her note while Nance stood sullenly by, looking over her shoulder.

"You spelled teacher's name with a little letter," Nance muttered.

"I done it a-purpose," said Mrs. Snawdor vindictively, "I ain't goin' to spell her with a capital; she ain't worth it."

Nance would undoubtedly have put up a more spirited fight for her rights, had she not been anxious to preserve peace until the afternoon. It was the day appointed by the court for her and Dan Lewis to make their first report to Mrs. Purdy, whose name and address had been given them on a card. She had washed her one gingham apron for the occasion, and had sewed up the biggest rent in her stockings. The going forth alone with Dan on an errand of any nature was an occasion of importance. It somehow justified those coupled initials, enclosed in a gigantic heart, that she had surreptitiously drawn on the fence.

After her first disappointment in being kept at home, she set about her task of cleaning the Snawdor flat with the ardor of a young Hercules attacking the Augean stables. First she established the twins in the hall with a string and a bent pin and the beguiling belief that if they fished long enough over the banister they would catch something. Next she anchored the screaming baby to a bedpost and reduced him to subjection by dipping his fingers in sorghum, then giving him a feather. The absorbing occupation of plucking the feather from one sticky hand to the other rendered him passive for an hour.

These preliminaries being arranged, Nance turned her attention to the work in hand. Her method consisted in starting at the kitchen, which was in front, and driving the debris back, through the dark, little, middle room, until she landed it all in a formidable mass in Mrs. Snawdor's bedroom at the rear. This plan, pursued day after day, with the general understanding that Mrs. Snawdor was going to take a day off soon and clean up, had resulted in a condition of indescribable chaos. As Mr. Snawdor and the three younger children slept in the rear room at night, and Mrs. Snawdor slept in it the better part of the day, the hour for cleaning seldom arrived.

To-day as Nance stood in the doorway of this stronghold of dirt and disorder, she paused, broom in hand. The floor, as usual, was littered with papers and strings, the beds were unmade, the wash-stand and dresser were piled high with a miscellaneous collection, and the drawers of each stood open, disgorging their contents. On the walls hung three enlarged crayons of bridal couples, in which the grooms were different, but the bride the same. On the dusty window sill were bottles and empty spools, broken glass chimneys, and the clock that ran ten minutes slow. The debris not only filled the room, but spilled out into the fire-escape and down the rickety iron ladders and flowed about the garbage barrels in the passage below.

It was not this too familiar scene, however, that made Nance pause with her hand on the door-knob and gaze open-mouthed into the room. It was the sight of Mr. Snawdor sitting on the side of the bed with his back toward her, wiping his little red-rimmed eyes on a clean pocket handkerchief, and patting his trembling mouth with the hand that was not under the quilt. Heretofore Nance had regarded Mr. Snawdor as just one of the many discomforts with which the family had to put up. His whining protests against their way of living had come to be as much a matter of course as the creaking door or the smoking chimney. Nobody ever thought of listening to what he was saying, and everybody pushed and ordered him about, including Nance, who enjoyed using Mrs. Snawdor's highhanded method with him, when that lady was not present.

But when she saw him sitting there with his back to her, crying, she was puzzled and disturbed. As she watched, she saw him fumble for something under the quilt, then lift a shining pistol, and place the muzzle to his thin, bald temple. With a cry of terror, she dashed forward and knocked the weapon from his hand.

"You put that down!" she cried, much as she would have commanded William J. to leave the butcher knife alone. "Do you want to kill yerself?"

Mr. Snawdor started violently, then collapsing beside the bed, confessed that he did.

"What fer?" asked Nance, terror giving way to sheer amazement.

"I want to quit!" cried Mr. Snawdor, hysterically. "I can't stand it any longer. I'm a plumb failure and I ain't goin' to ever be anything else. If your maw had taken care of what I had, we wouldn't have been where we are at. Look at the way we live! Like pigs in a pen! We're nothing but pore white trash; that's what we are!"

Nance stood beside him with her hand on his shoulder. Poor white trash! That was what the Clarke boy had called her. And now Mr. Snawdor, the nominal head of the family, was acknowledging it to be true. She looked about her in new and quick concern.

"I'm going to clean up in here, too," she said. "I don't keer whut mammy says. It'll look better by night; you see if it don't."

"It ain't only that--" said Mr. Snawdor; then he pulled himself up and looked at her appealingly. "You won't say nuthin' about this mornin', will you, Nance?"

"Not if you gimme the pistol," said Nance.

When he was gone, she picked up the shining weapon and gingerly dropped it out on the adjoining roof. Then her knees felt suddenly wobbly, and she sat down. What if she had been a minute later and Mr. Snawdor had pulled the trigger? She shivered as her quick imagination pictured the scene. If Mr. Snawdor felt like that about it, there was but one thing to do; to get things cleaned up and try to keep them so.

Feeling very important and responsible, she swept and straightened and dusted, while her mind worked even faster than her nimble hands. Standards are formed by comparisons, and so far Nance's opportunity for instituting comparisons had been decidedly limited.

"We ain't pore white, no such a thing!" she kept saying to herself. "Our house ain't no worser nor nobody else's. Mis' Smelts is just the same, an' if Levinski's is cleaner, it smells a heap worse."

Dinner was over before Mrs. Snawdor returned. She came into the kitchen greatly ruffled as to hair and temper from having been caught by the hook left hanging over the banisters by William J.

"Gimme the rocker!" she demanded. "My feet hurt so bad I'd just like to unscrew 'em an' fling 'em in the dump heap."

"Where you been at?" asked Uncle Jed, who was cutting himself a slice of bread from the loaf.

"I been down helpin' the new tenant move in on the first floor."

"Any childern?" asked Nance and Lobelia in one breath.

"No; just a foreign-lookin' old gentleman, puttin' on as much airs as if he was movin' into the Walderastoria. Nobody knows his name or where he comes from. Ike Lavinski says he plays the fiddle at the theayter. Talk about your helpless people! I had to take a hand in gettin' his things unloaded. He liked to never got done thankin' me."

Mr. Snawdor, who had been sitting in dejected silence before his untouched food, pushed his plate back and sighed deeply.

"Now, fer heaven sake, Snawdor," began his wife in tones of exasperation, "can't I do a kind act to a neighbor without a-rufflin' yer feathers the wrong way?"

"I cleaned up yer room while you was gone," said Nance, eager to divert the conversation from Mr. Snawdor. "Uncle Jed an' me carried the trash down an' it filled the ash barrel clean up to the top."

"Well, I hope an' pray you didn't throw away my insurance book. I was aimin' to clean up, myself, to-morrow. What on earth's the matter with Rosy Velt?"

Rosy, who had been banished to the kitchen for misbehavior, had been conducting a series of delicate experiments, with disastrous results. She had been warned since infancy never to put a button up her nose, but Providence having suddenly placed one in her way, and at the same time engaged her mother's attention elsewhere, the opportunity was too propitious to be lost.

Nance took advantage of her stepmother's sudden departure to cheer up Mr. Snawdor.

"We're gittin' things cleaned up," she said, "I can't work no more to-day though, 'cause I got to report to the lady."

"Ain't you goin' to slick yerself up a bit?" asked Uncle Jed, making a futile effort to smooth her hair.

"I have," said Nance, indignantly, "Can't you see I got on a clean apron?"

Uncle Jed's glance was not satisfied as it traveled from the dirty dress below the apron to the torn stockings and shabby shoes.

"Why don't you wear the gold locket?" suggested Mrs. Snawdor, who now returned with Rosy in one hand and the button in the other.

The gold locket was the one piece of jewelry in the family and when it was suspended on a black ribbon around Nance's neck, it filled her with a sense of elegance. So pleased was she with its effect that as she went out that afternoon, she peeped in on the new tenant in the hope that he would notice it. She found him leaning over a violin case, and her interest was fired at once.

"Can you play on the fiddle?" she demanded.

The small, elderly man in the neat, black suit lifted his head and smiled at her over his glasses.

"Yes, my little friend," he said in a low, refined voice, "I will play for you to dance sometime. You would like that? Yes?"

Nance regarded him gravely.

"Say, are you a Polock or a Dago?" she asked.

He gave an amused shrug.

"I am neither. My name is Mr. Demorest. And you are my little neighbor, perhaps?"

"Third floor on the right," said Nance, adding in a business-like tone, "I'll be down to dance to-night."

She would have liked very much to stay longer, for the old gentleman was quite unlike any one she had ever talked to before, but the card in her hand named the hour of two, and back of the card was Mrs. Purdy, and back of Mrs. Purdy the juvenile court, the one thing in life so far whose authority Nance had seen fit to acknowledge.