Pinky Swett could stand it no longer. She had often noticed the ragged child, with her pale, starved face and large, wistful eyes, passing in and out of this miserable woman’s den, sometimes going to the liquor-shops and sometimes to the nearest policy-office to spend for her mother, if such the woman really was, the money she had gained by begging.
With a sudden impulse, as a deep wail and a more piteous cry for mercy smote upon her ears, Pinky sprang across the street and into the hovel. The sight that met her eyes left no hesitation in her mind. Holding up with one strong arm the naked body of the poor child—she had drawn the clothes over her head—the infuriated woman was raining down blows from a short piece of rattan upon the quivering flesh, already covered with welts and bruises.
“Devil!” cried Pinky as she rushed upon this fiend in human shape and snatched the little girl from her arm. “Do you want to kill the child?”
She might almost as well have assaulted a tigress.
The woman was larger, stronger, more desperate and more thoroughly given over to evil passions than she. To thwart her in anything was to rouse her into a fury. A moment she stood in surprise and bewilderment; in the next, and ere Pinky had time to put herself on guard, she had sprung upon her with a passionate cry that sounded more like that of a wild beast than anything human. Clutching her by the throat with one hand, and with the other tearing the child from her grasp, she threw the frightened little thing across the room.
“Devil, ha!” screamed the woman; “devil!” and she tightened her grasp on Pinky’s throat, at the same time striking her in the face with her clenched fist.
Like a war-horse that snuffs the battle afar off and rushes to the conflict, so rushed the inhabitants of that foul neighborhood to the spot from whence had come to their ears the familiar and not unwelcome sound of strife. Even before Pinky had time to shake off her assailant, the door of the hovel was darkened by a screen of eager faces. And such faces! How little of God’s image remained in them to tell of their divine origination!—bloated and scarred, ashen pale and wasted, hollow-eyed and red-eyed, disease looking out from all, yet all lighted up with the keenest interest and expectancy.
Outside, the crowd swelled with a marvelous rapidity. Every cellar and room and garret, every little alley and hidden rookery, “hawk’s nest” and “wren’s nest,” poured out its unseemly denizens, white and black, old and young, male and female, the child of three years old, keen, alert and self-protective, running to see the “row” side by side with the toothless crone of seventy; or most likely passing her on the way. Thieves, beggars, pick-pockets, vile women, rag-pickers and the like, with the harpies who prey upon them, all were there to enjoy the show.
Within, a desperate fight was going on between Pinky Swett and the woman from whose hands she had attempted to rescue the child—a fight in which Pinky was getting the worst of it. One garment after another was torn from her person, until little more than a single one remained.
“Here’s the police! look out!” was cried at this juncture.
“Who cares for the police? Let ‘em come,” boldly retorted the woman. “I haven’t done nothing; it’s her that’s come in drunk and got up a row.”
Pushing the crowd aside, a policeman entered the hovel.
“Here she is!” cried the woman, pointing toward Pinky, from whom she had sprung back the moment she heard the word police. “She came in here drunk and got up a row. I’m a decent woman, as don’t meddle with nobody. But she’s awful when she gets drunk. Just look at her—been tearing her clothes off!”
At this there was a shout of merriment from the crowd who had witnessed the fight.
“Good for old Sal! she’s one of ‘em! Can’t get ahead of old Sal, drunk or sober!” and like expressions were shouted by one and another.
Poor Pinky, nearly stripped of her clothing, and with a great bruise swelling under one of her eyes, bewildered and frightened at the aspect of things around her, could make no acceptable defence.
“She ran over and pitched into Sal, so she did! I saw her! She made the fight, she did!” testified one of the crowd; and acting on this testimony and his own judgment of the case, the policeman said roughly, as he laid his hand on Pinky.
“Pick up your duds and come along.”
Pinky lifted her torn garments from the dirty floor and gathered them about her person as best she could, the crowd jeering all the time. A pin here and there, furnished by some of the women, enabled her to get them into a sort of shape and adjustment. Then she tried to explain the affair to the policeman, but he would not listen.
“Come!” he said, sternly.
“What are you going to do with me?” she asked, not moving from where she stood.
“Lock you up,” replied the policeman. “So come along.”
“What’s the matter here?” demanded a tall, strongly-built woman, pressing forward. She spoke with a foreign accent, and in a tone of command. The motley crowd, above whom she towered, gave way for her as she approached. Everything about the woman showed her to be superior in mind and moral force to the unsightly wretches about her. She had the fair skin, blue eyes and light hair of her nation. Her features were strong, but not masculine. You saw in them no trace of coarse sensuality or vicious indulgence.
“Here’s Norah! here’s the queen!” shouted a voice from the crowd.
“What’s the matter here?” asked the woman as she gained an entrance to the hovel.
“Going to lock up Pinky Swett,” said a ragged little girl who had forced her way in.
“What for?” demanded the woman, speaking with the air of one in authority.
“‘Cause she wouldn’t let old Sal beat Kit half to death,” answered the child.
“Ho! Sal’s a devil and Pinky’s a fool to meddle with her.” Then turning to the policeman, who still had his hand on the girl, she said,
“What’re you goin’ to do, John?”
“Goin’ to lock her up. She’s drunk an’ bin a-fightin’.”
“You’re not goin’ to do any such thing.”
“I’m not drunk, and it’s a lie if anybody says so,” broke in Pinky. “I tried to keep this devil from beating the life out of poor little Kit, and she pitched into me and tore my clothes off. That’s what’s the matter.”
The policeman quietly removed his hand from Pinky’s shoulder, and glanced toward the woman named Sal, and stood as if waiting orders.
“Better lock her up,” said the “queen,” as she had been called. Sal snarled like a fretted wild beast.
“It’s awful, the way she beats poor Kit,” chimed in the little girl who had before spoken against her. “If I was Kit, I’d run away, so I would.”
“I’ll wring your neck off,” growled Sal, in a fierce undertone, making a dash toward the girl, and swearing frightfully. But the child shrank to the side of the policeman.
“If you lay a finger on Kit to-night,” said the queen, “I’ll have her taken away, and you locked up into the the bargain.”
Sal responded with another snarl.
“Come.” The queen moved toward the door. Pinky followed, the policeman offering no resistance. A few minutes later, and the miserable crowd of depraved human beings had been absorbed again into cellar and garret, hovel and rookery, to take up the thread of their evil and sensual lives, and to plot wickedness, and to prey upon and deprave each other—to dwell as to their inner and real lives among infernals, to be in hell as to their spirits, while their bodies yet remained upon the earth.
Pinky and her rescuer passed