Maggie: A Girl of the Streets and Other Writings About New York (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) by Stephen Crane Read Free Book Online

babe, Tommie, was knocked down. He protested with his usual vehemence, because they had bruised his tender shins against a table leg.
    The mother’s massive shoulders heaved with anger. Grasping the urchin by the neck and shoulder she shook him until he rattled. She dragged him to an unholy sink, and, soaking a rag in water, began to scrub his lacerated face with it. Jimmie screamed in pain and tried to twist his shoulders out of the clasp of the huge arms.
    The babe sat on the floor watching the scene, his face in contortions like that of a woman at a tragedy. The father, with a newlyladened pipe in his mouth, crouched on a backless chair near the stove. Jimmie’s cries annoyed him. He turned about and bellowed at his wife:
    “Let the damned kid alone for a minute, will yeh, Mary? Yer allus poundin’ ‘im. When I come nights I can’t git no rest ’cause yer allus poundin’ a kid. Let up, d’yeh hear? Don’t be allus poundin’ a kid.”
    The woman’s operations on the urchin instantly increased in violence. At last she tossed him to a corner where he limply lay cursing and weeping.
    The wife put her immense hands on her hips and with a chieftain-like stride approached her husband.
    “Ho,” she said, with a great grunt of contempt. “An’ what in the devil are you stickin’ your nose for?”
    The babe crawled under the table and, turning, peered out cautiously. The ragged girl retreated and the urchin in the corner drew his legs carefully beneath him.
    The man puffed his pipe calmly and put his great mudded boots on the back part of the stove.
    “Go teh hell,” he murmured, tranquilly.
    The woman screamed and shook her fists before her husband’s eyes. The rough yellow of her face and neck flared suddenly crimson. She began to howl.
    He puffed imperturbably at his pipe for a time, but finally arose and began to look out at the window into the darkening chaos of back yards.
    “You’ve been drinkin‘, Mary,” he said. “You’d better let up on the bot’, ol’ woman, or you’ll git done.”
    “You’re a liar. I ain’t had a drop,” she roared in reply.
    They had a lurid altercation, in which they damned each other’s souls with frequence.
    The babe was staring out from under the table, his small face working in his excitement.
    The ragged girl went stealthily over to the corner where the urchin lay.
    “Are yehs hurted much, Jimmie?” she whispered timidly.
    “Not a damn bit! See?” growled the little boy.
    “Will I wash deh blood?”
    “Naw! ”
    “Will I”—
    “When I catch dat Riley kid I’ll break ’is face! Dat’s right! See?”
    He turned his face to the wall as if resolved to grimly bide his time.
    In the quarrel between husband and wife, the woman was victor. The man grabbed his hat and rushed from the room, apparently determined upon a vengeful drunk. She followed to the door and thundered at him as he made his way down stairs.
    She returned and stirred up the room until her children were bobbing about like bubbles.
    “Git outa deh way,” she persistently bawled, waving feet with their dishevelled shoes near the heads of her children. She shrouded herself, puffing and snorting, in a cloud of steam at the stove, and eventually extracted a frying-pan full of potatoes that hissed.
    She flourished it. “Come teh yer suppers, now,” she cried with sudden exasperation. “Hurry up, now, er I’ll help yeh!”
    The children scrambled hastily. With prodigious clatter they arranged themselves at table. The babe sat with his feet dangling high from a precarious infant chair and gorged his small stomach. Jimmie forced, with feverish rapidity, the grease-enveloped pieces between his wounded lips. Maggie, with side glances of fear of interruption, ate like a small pursued tigress.
    The mother sat blinking at them. She delivered reproaches, swallowed potatoes and drank from a yellow-brown bottle. After a time her mood changed and she wept as she carried little Tommie into another room