John Marsh's Millions Part 18

CHAPTER XI.

The Bowery, that Broadway of the slums, odoriferous sink of cosmopolitan pauperism, degradation, and crime, wore its familiar, everyday aspect of ugly squalor and vice--grimy, dilapidated rookeries, dark, sinister hallways, filthy, greasy pavements littered with decayed fruit skins, gutters choked up with offensive black slime, suspicious-looking characters, abominable stenches of sauerkraut and stale beer which offended the nostrils on every side. On the slender rails high overhead occasional trains crashed by with a sullen roar; in the middle of the roadway rushing trolley cars noisily clanged their warning gongs, while on either sidewalk stretching as far south as the City Hall cheap clothing shops, tough saloons, low dance halls, p.a.w.nbrokers, penny arcades, vaudeville shows, displayed their gaudy signs. Up and down pushed and jostled a perspiring and motley crowd--bearded Jew peddlers, pallid sweat-shop workers, Chinese, flashily dressed "toughs,"

furtive-eyed pickpockets, sailors on sh.o.r.e leave, factory girls, painted street walkers, slouching longsh.o.r.emen, tattered tramps, derelicts of both s.e.xes--an appalling host of unkempt, unwashed, evil-smelling humanity.

In the side streets, just off the main thoroughfare, conditions were even more congested and depressing. On either hand ricketty, grimy tenements were alive with bearded Russians, fierce-looking Italians, vociferating Irish, pot-bellied Germans. From broken windows hung clotheslines bending under the load of newly washed rags; on flimsy, rusty fire-escapes were jammed filthy mattresses on which slept the wretched occupants, glad to escape from the foul air and heat within; dark stairways and stoops were thronged with neglected, consumptive children. The evil smells were so numerous that it was impossible to determine which was the most objectionable. The air was full of discordant, nerve-racking sounds. On one side of the street an Italian was grinding a wheezy organ, while little girls, some with bare feet, danced to the music. A few yards farther on, boys with white faces drawn by hunger, were rummaging eagerly in ash barrels, hunting for sc.r.a.ps of refuse. Two women were pulling each other's hair in the centre of a circle of encouraging neighbors, neglected babes were screaming, dogs were barking, a vendor was shrieking his wares. It was h.e.l.l, yet nothing unusual--only everyday life in the slums.

"Isn't it dreadful?" murmured Paula, as she and Tod hurried along Rivington Street.

"Gee!" replied her escort. "Look at some of those faces! They seem hardly human. Animals are better looking."

"They are not to blame," answered Paula sadly. "These poor people are the victims of circ.u.mstances. They have been brutalized--the Jews by centuries of race persecution, the others by merciless economic conditions. The black poverty in which they live is well nigh inconceivable. Their desperate struggle for mere existence is unbelievable."

"Phew!" exclaimed Tod, as he peeped through the window of a gloomy, broken-down rookery. "How can any one live in such a place? The Black Hole of Calcutta couldn't have been much worse!"

"That's just it," answered Paula, with some warmth. "You self-satisfied, well-fed people uptown don't take the trouble to come down here to find out how the poor live. We Settlement workers know, for we are right in the heart of it all. What you see from the street is nothing. You must enter some of these tenements if you wish to become really acquainted with the shocking conditions in which they live--the crushing poverty, the physical and moral suffering, the gross immorality. In some places as many as twelve persons, full-grown men and women, half-grown boys and girls, all eat and sleep in one dark, ill-ventilated room. Can you wonder that such a life brutalizes them and that they die like flies?"

Tod shrugged his shoulders.

"What good would it do if we did know? We couldn't help all of them. You remember what Baron Rothschild said to a wild-eyed anarchist who one day managed to break into his office brandishing a pistol: 'My friend, you insist that I share my fortune with the poor. I am worth five millions of dollars. There are in the world more than five hundred million paupers. Here is your share--exactly one cent.'"

"That's all very well," smiled Paula. "I don't go to that extreme. We can't help all, but we can help a little. If the rich could see things as they are, it would make them reflect. I don't think they would be so wickedly extravagant in their own homes if they saw all this misery. The price of one big dinner served in a Fifth Avenue mansion would support half a dozen families here for a year."

Tod looked skeptical.

"I like to hear you talk," he said lightly, "because you're so earnest about it, but really you're wrong. If these people were given a.s.sistance to-day they would be as badly off to-morrow. All civilizations have had this problem to deal with. The poor are the underdogs in the struggle for life. They're only half human, anyway. Most of them have never known anything better. They are used to roughing it. They actually enjoy their dirt. They themselves are largely responsible for their own misfortunes.

They drink, they're shiftless and thriftless."

"The rich have more vices than the poor," answered Paula quietly. "The poor drink to drown their troubles. We can't say just why, of two men born with the same advantages, one prospers and the other remains in the gutter. We can only deal with the problem as we find it. It is dreadful to think that buried in these fearful tenements, brutalized by their frightful environments, are numbers of talented young men and women who are trying to better themselves. Left to themselves they are likely to sink deeper in the frightful mora.s.s that surrounds them, but if extended a helping hand they may be able to rise above the appalling conditions and so escape the terrible degradation and suffering that otherwise awaits them. A boy or girl, children of the tenements, may have within the genius of a Wagner or a Rosa Bonheur, but from infancy these children are so dragged down, so brutalized by their unspeakable environments that their natural aspirations and talents are hopelessly crushed. It is to such as these that the Settlement lends its aid. We are trying to help the deserving, we are seeking to sift the gold from the dross. Look, there is the Settlement House!"

On the opposite side of the street was a substantial-looking building resembling a small school-house. Conspicuous by its cleanliness among the surrounding dingy tenements, erected by enlightened and humane idealists for the sole purpose of uplifting humanity, it stood as a kind of moral lighthouse set down in a deadly mora.s.s of crime and hopeless pauperism.

"Come, I will show you all through," cried Paula enthusiastically. Her face brightened up and her step was elastic as once more she found herself in the midst of her fellow workers. Smiles and nods greeted her from every direction. The place was busy as a beehive. The halls were full of people; cla.s.ses were going on in the different rooms. Taking Tod's arm, she led him in this direction and that, proud to show all there was to be seen. There were regular night cla.s.ses where those employed during the day could receive instruction in stenography, bookkeeping, and other useful vocations, gymnasiums, cla.s.ses where the technical trades were taught, cla.s.ses where music lessons were given.

There were also attractive recreation rooms which kept young men from the dangers of saloons and young girls from the temptations of the dance halls.

"It's such interesting work," she said. "Here I have no time to think of my troubles. I can forget Uncle James and Bascom Cooley."

Tod was full of enthusiasm.

"No wonder you've no use for society and the rest," he said admiringly.

"If I'd taken a taste for this sort of thing years ago perhaps I wouldn't have made such a fool of myself."

Paula laughed.

"There's still time," she said mischievously. "It's never too late to mend, you know." Leading him once more in the direction of the street, she added: "This is the bright side of my work; I'll let you look now on the darker side. It isn't so pleasant. Come with me."

Docilely he followed her out of the building, wondering where he was being taken, caring little, so long as she was with him. This dark-eyed girl, with her serious views and charming manner, had already taken a strong hold of the young man. She was utterly different from any girl he had ever known, and cogitating secretly with himself, he came to the conclusion that the comparison was in her favor.

Quite unconscious that she was the object of her companion's thoughts, Paula hurried along the narrow, slippery pavements, crowded with pale-faced women and children, obstructed by all kinds of wagons and hucksters' pushcarts. Stopping for a moment at a delicatessen shop, she purchased some ham, eggs, b.u.t.ter, and bread, and then hastened on again until she came to a big, dreary tenement.

"We go in here," she said, quite out of breath after the quick walk. "It is the home of one of my favorite pupils, Annie Hughes. They are wretchedly poor. The father is an incorrigible drunkard and the mother is bedridden. Only the devotion of her child keeps her alive. I want you to see Annie. She is only twelve, but she does the work of two women.

She cannot play like other children of her age, yet she never complains.

She is entirely devoted to her mother. It's a dreadful hovel they live in. You'll be shocked at what you see, but don't show surprise. Mrs.

Hughes is a decent woman, and it will only distress her. She's consumptive and can't live long. If she dies I shall adopt and educate Annie as my own."

They entered a dark, narrow, forbidding-looking hallway, with walls thickly begrimed with the acc.u.mulated filth of years, and so cracked that the plaster in places had fallen out in huge chunks, exposing the wood lathing. At the far end was a winding, ricketty staircase, every stair filthy with refuse and rubbish, and only dimly lighted by small windows that did not look as if they had been washed since the house was built. It was a steep climb to the sixth floor, and both were out of breath when they reached the top. Paula approached a door, and knocked.

"Is that you, Annie?" called out a feeble voice.

"No, Mrs. Hughes--it is I, Miss Marsh, with a friend."

Without waiting for further invitation, they pushed open the door and went in.

A shocking scene of neglect and squalor met their eyes. In a dimly lighted, poorly ventilated room about fourteen feet square, on a tumble-down bed, covered with filthy rags, lay a woman past middle age, apparently asleep. Her eyes were closed and she did not take the trouble to turn her face as the visitors entered. The place, living room and bedchamber in one, was indescribably and hopelessly dirty and littered with broken furniture and rubbish of every description. It was really the attic of the house, the low ceiling formed by the roof sloping down to the front, where a small window looked into the street below. Half the gla.s.s panes being broken and patched up with paper, only a poor light entered the room, and this helped to partly conceal the dirt-encrusted floor, torn, filthy bedding, and greasy stove piled up with unwashed dishes. The foul air reeked with offensive odors of decaying vegetation and bad drainage.

The woman on the bed started to cough, a violent cough which shook the bed. When the spasm had pa.s.sed she turned to see who had come in. Paula she knew, but Tod was a stranger, yet her face expressed neither surprise or embarra.s.sment. The poor are accustomed to unceremonious visits from Salvation Army workers and others, and they are so wretched that they have ceased to care about anything. A faint smile came over the invalid's pale, wan face.

"I thought it was Annie," she said. "She's been a long time gone. I had to send her to the Dispensary to get some more medicine. My cough is very bad to-day."

She stopped, seized again by a fit of coughing.

"I brought you a few little things, Mrs. Hughes," said Paula, laying down the packages she had brought. At the same time she slipped a five-dollar bill into the woman's hand. "Let Annie beat you up a fresh-laid egg. It'll do your cough good. You must get all the nourishment you can or you'll never get strong."

"G.o.d bless you, lady," murmured the sick woman. "Where would Annie and me be to-day if it wasn't for you?"

"Where's your husband?" demanded Paula.

Mrs. Hughes shook her head feebly.

"I don't know," she whispered. "He never comes near me. He earns wages now and again, but it all goes in whisky. The neighbors say he was arrested last week and sent to the Island."

Paula turned to Tod.

"Isn't it fearful?" she said, in a low tone.

Tod put his hand in his pocket and pulled out a ten-dollar bill.

"Terrible!" he said. "Here--give her this. She needs it more than I.

It's the first thing I've done for charity in my life, and somehow it makes one feel good."

Paula looked at him and smiled as she pa.s.sed the money over to Mrs.

Hughes.

"This is from my friend here," she said.

"G.o.d bless you, sir!" she said. "It'll help keep Annie and me going a little while more. 'Tain't for long, though. I've given up hope. I'll never get any better. The doctor says I'm a goner. He knows. He told a neighbor, and she told Annie. The poor child came home crying as if her dear little heart would break. It's not for myself that I'm worrying.