“WHEN THE KING COMES IN”
By Anthony Leland
SHE slunk along in the shadows listlessly, staring with unheeding eyes at the shuffling crowds upon the sidewalks, at the fly-blown, tawdry splendors of the shop windows, and at the yellow gloom of the pawn-shop. The autumn wind swept sharply up from the river, and she drew her old plaid shawl about her tightly with one hand, while with the other she covered her swollen and discolored cheek. The sidewalks and roadway were covered with a thin, slippery coating of mingled filth and mud. An autumn mist, heavy with smoke, pressed itself tightly down upon the street, deadening the light of the electric lamps at the corners into mere splotches of a dully-luminous gray. Frowsy, palefaced girls hung about dark doorways where they bandied mirthless jests with lounging men and boys. In front of a bar-room, whence came the fangling notes of a piano and the scream of a high-pitched soprano voice, a man stood and urged the passers-by to go in and witness “the dizziest ‘vawdyville’ in the city.” The woman in the old plaid shawl passed him without heeding his blatant voice. She had heard his sing-song shout many times; the “dizzy vawdyville” was nothing new. There never was anything new in Myrtle Street; it was ever the same ugly, sordid, joyless place day and night, week in and week out. It was always crowded with people, but it was always strangely sullen and mirthless. You never heard any one laugh there. At times when some one slipped and fell upon the slime of the pavement, or when one of the white-faced girls hurled shrill defiance at a man or at her companions, a hoarse human bark rent the air, but it was not a laugh. Even the children, who scrambled in the gutters and crept in and out of the dark alleys, forgot to laugh.
The woman with swollen and discolored cheek, who was crawling along in the shadows, halted in front of a dram-shop on a corner, and gazed doubtfully, longingly, at its swinging door. She was wondering if perchance Red Mike would trust her for a drink. She felt keenly the chill air from the river. She was strangely weary and down-hearted, too.
Earlier in the evening she and her man had quarrelled. He was drunk, as usual, and had struck her, but for some unaccountable reason she had not screeched and struck back and tried to claw his face. She had simply grabbed her old shawl and escaped into the street, where she had wandered about for an hour. It was very odd that she had acted thus, and now she was shamefaced about asking Red Mike for a drink of whiskey! He got all their meagre earnings, anyway, did Red Mike, and he was usually easy enough about donating a dram or two when they were down in their luck, and heretofore she had n’t minded asking him. And if he chanced to refuse, she eased her mind by a good mouthful of curses, which she spat at him like a cat. But tonight she was foolishly squeamish about asking him; she feared the loafers about the bar would jeer at her if he refused; her face pained her where Con’s blow had fallen, and she was cold and shivering, and—well, she was losing her nerve. So she turned away from the hot glow of the bar-room door and passed on into the mists of the street.
As she crawled along there came to her ears a quick thud of a drum-beat and the sound of men and women’s voices singing. Marching through the gloom they came, a flapping banner above their heads, the red shirts of the men and the blue, scarlet-banded bonnets of the women lending for a moment a patch of color to the dim dinginess of the street. Suddenly they paused and fell upon their knees in the road, while a man’s voice wailed out a prayer. Time was when Myrtle Street gibed at the Salvationists and threw rocks at them and hustled them about. But that was when the red shirts and the flapping banner were something new. The newness was gone now, and Myrtle Street merely shuffled indifferently past, and the beat of the big drum, the strident voices of the exhorters were quite as much a part of the night sounds of the place as the bawling of the showman or the chatter of the frowsy girls. The woman, shivering under her shawl and fondling her bruised cheek, glanced apathetically at the kneeling men and women, when quickly her eyes became fixed upon the face of one of them whom she knew. It was Maggie, the girl who once occupied a dark little hole of a room next her own in the big tenement house where she yet lived. Maggie! a forlorn, starving thing of whom she had lost track entirely—in truth, she had not thought of her since the day when the poor, sniveling, pale-faced creature had been turned into the street for not paying her rent. Myrtle Street does not waste much time in tracing the whereabouts of unfortunate acquaintances, nor in thinking of them after they drift out of sight under the ever-mounting wave of disaster which laps hungrily thereabout. But Maggie in a big bonnet, with her eyes closed and kneeling in the mud, was enough to arouse Myrtle Street’s benumbed curiosity. So the bedraggled woman on the sidewalk pressed quite close to the curb and stared at her, wondering vaguely at the transformation. The man ended his prayer, and his companions, rising to their feet, began to sing again. The woman on the curb took no heed of the words which they sang. She was not for some moments vividly conscious of the song at all; she was conscious only of being tired and cold. Her curiosity regarding Maggie was dying, and she loitered with the little group which huddled upon the curb, simply because she had nowhere else to go. But as she stood there in the mist with her sunken eyes staring vacantly into the night, the music which touched her ears began to affect her oddly. It was a curious, wailing melody, with a barbaric accompaniment of jingling tambourines, and as its monotonous, insistent swing beat the air a strange feeling of awakening began to stir her dull veins. She weaved to and fro a little in unison with the measure of the song. She closed her eyes and felt a tightening in her throat. She clutched her shawl. She felt a wild desire to cry out or sob. Suddenly they ceased to sing, and she opened her eyes with a start. Maggie stepped into the little semi-circle of men and women, and in high, hard tones began to speak.
“Oh! Those is great, great words, my friends, which we have just sung,” she said; “awful words! Terrifyin’ words! Did you hear ‘em? Did you understand ‘em? Did they come home to you?
“‘When the King comes in,
Like lightning’s flash will that instant show
Things hidden long from friend and foe.
Just what he is will each one know,
When the King comes in.’
“Think of it! Think of it! Like a flash will it be, and you will know and I will know—everybody will know just what we are. Oh! It is awful! Like lightning’s flash will that coming be—remember that! Don’t try to believe it is far off. It isn’t. It may be to-night. It may be within an hour—a minute—a second, for you and me. But be it near or far, it’s coming, coming, coming!” Her voice shrilled piercingly, and the woman, listening so intently upon the curb, felt a thrill of excitement at the sound. It was not clear to her what it all meant, but she had a queer feeling of awe as she looked at Maggie’s drawn face and listened to her strained, sharp voice. “My God!” the girl continued, “think of it! Think if He comes to-night and finds you in all your sin and wickedness and filth. Think, think and be afraid. Think, and before it’s too late, get saved! I am saved, and I thank God to-night for it!”
A low chorus of “Glory to God!”
“I believe!”
“I believe!” came from her companions.
“I am glad to-night to stand here to tell you that I am saved and happy—oh! so happy! Why do you wait? Some of you know me—I was sinful and tired and afraid once, but not now, thank God! not now. I’m saved, saved, saved!”
Louder and wilder grew the girl’s cry. She waved her arms violently, and paced rapidly to and fro. The listening woman shifted her position from the sidewalk to the gutter. Her hands loosened their clutch upon her shawl; she wrung them constantly as she looked with wondering eyes at Maggie—Maggie who was n’t tired nor afraid any more, and was happy, and all because she was “saved”! What did it all mean? How had it happened?
The girl stopped abruptly in her walk, and, as though answering her thought, cried, “It is so easy to get saved, too. All you have to do is to throw yourself on your knees and call on Jesus, and give yourself up to Him, and all your sins and fears and troubles and burdens are gone, and you’ll be happy and glad and free and saved forever!”
Without a pause her voice shot into the song which they had sung before; but now its measure was changed to a clear, quick chant, with which she kept time by a soft patting with her hands. Clearer and higher grew her tones, and her companions, sinking to their knees, moaned in hushed voices a weird accompaniment, while the gently shaken tambourines lent again their strange barbaric rhythm, marked from time to time by the great drum’s muffled beat.
Nearer and nearer to the semi-circle of kneeling figures stole the listening woman. Tears were streaming from her eyes, her blue lips quivered, a great sob tore itself from her tight throat. At length she stood quite within the lines of the singers, and then, with a strange, wild cry, she, too, fell upon her knees in the slime of the street. Her old shawl fell from her head, her arms rested upon the drum, her swollen face was buried in them. A great shout of “Glory to God!” went up about her, and some one on the curb cried amazedly, “Why, it’s old Kit!” But she heard only that monotonous wailing voice chanting stridently “When the King Comes In.” Afterwards there came a knowledge of some one’s arm across her shoulders, of whispered words and urgent voices, a sensation of being lifted to her feet and helped along the street, and then a confusing blur of yellow light from oil lamps in a dingy hall. And at length full consciousness, dull fatigue, and an overwhelming desire for sleep.
Maggie and one of the brothers in red jersey and jaunty cap walked home with her, pouring into her ears encouraging advice in strange, cant words, which she but half understood. At the doorway of the human hive where she and Con slept and fought and starved the man looked sharply at Maggie.
“You are sure!” he whispered.
“Yes—they’re married,” replied the girl.
“You will come to the barracks early to-morrow morning?” he asked, turning to Kit.
She promised to do so, and, passing into the dark hall, climbed upward to where Con lay in drunken stupor.
The following morning Kit stepped into a new world—a world of friendly words and close companionship. The squalidly poor know nothing of that luxury called friendship. They are huddled together in vast crowds, squeezed and packed by scores within narrow limits, jostled and elbowed by their kind at every turn. They are suffocated by close association. But of fellowship, of interest in one another’s aims, of sympathy with one another’s hardships, they know nothing. Like starving dogs over a bone, they growl and snarl and fly straight at throats. So, when Kit crept half sullenly into the barracks and was greeted by a loud chorus of interested questions and by unstinted praise, the unfamiliar warmth of friendly words thawed into life her sluggish sensibilities. And, too, an entirely new view of herself and the world was suddenly opened to her bewildered gaze,—for the first time in her hard life she was looked upon as a human being of some importance. They told her that she was suddenly become different from her kind, she was better than they, she was “saved.” Not only that, but she must “save” others. She must quit the old life, and work for the common good. Her new friends were as uncouth and as poor and as hard pressed as herself. In their attitude there was none of that maddening condescension, none of that supercilious casting of surplus comforts at her feet, as one would toss a half-eaten orange toward a hungry-eyed beggar brat, which was the only sort of charity Kit had known of hitherto. The friendship of the Salvationists was the frank comradeship of plain men and women; their charity was the outcome of a crude, but living, religious idea. And their wild enthusiasm caught her dull soul in its sweep and lifted it a little above the fetid mists of her world. Some latent spark of womanly ambition was stirred into life, and with halting, dogged feet she tried to climb out of the dank valley of her past.
It was a wearisome task, but the exhilarating sense of friendly interest in her success sustained her. The old appetite for strong drink stung her, but the excitement of the new life helped to dull the craving. She tramped the streets with her companions, her cracked voice shouting quaveringly with them as they sang. She stepped sometimes into the little semicircle at the street corners to tell excitedly “how glad she was that she was saved.” She knelt with the others and prayed aloud for those who were not as she. She was one of a great, enthusiastic army, held up and aided by the superficial strength which comes of close fellowship and common aims. But with that growth of strength in one quarter there came a strange weakness in another. She was growing childishly afraid of Con, and with the growth of that fear there started into life and waxed strong a new loathing and hatred for his rum-soaked person. She would have fled from him, only that her new masters told her she must stick to him. It was her duty to cling to him and to “save” him. Their first injunction she obeyed meekly; but to their second command she turned a deaf ear. She knew what Con was; they did not. Every human creature in the wide world might be saved—except her husband. He was beyond the pale of humanity. So long as she did not bother him, he paid little attention to her goings and comings. Only once she ventured to protest when he had spent a week’s earnings for drink (Con had a “pull” with the ward “boss,” and when there were no other means of getting money for drink he found employment with the street-cleaners), and he had knocked her down for her temerity, and after that she held her peace and wished dumbly that he might die.
At length there came a proud day when Kit, after unwonted labor over her wash-tub, was the possessor of a decent black gown and of the long-coveted poke bonnet. It was the eve of a great rally at the barracks, when some officer of high degree from “headquarters” was to review the ranks of his army. At the close of day, when the long shadows were beginning to steal across the bare little room, with its musty bed, its one chair, and its rickety table pushed into a corner, Kit crouched upon the floor close up under the gray light of her window, intent upon her work. There were but a few stitches needed to complete her gown, and her stiff fingers fumbled eagerly with the unfamiliar needle. Her thoughts were busy with the glories of the morrow, and she crooned one of the Salvationist hymns as she sewed. And to her singing in the twilight there came the sound of shuffling footsteps outside her door. She looked up apprehensively as the door flew open to admit her husband. He was drunk, sullenly, brutally drunk.
“Where’s my supper?” he demanded, falling heavily into the chair. “Where’s my supper, I say?” he repeated, fixing an evil eye upon her.
“I’ll get it now, Con. I was busy workin’ on my dress, an’ I clean forgot your supper,” she explained, humbly.
“Yer dress?” he asked. “What right’s a measly fool like you with dresses? Le’s see it.” He stretched forth his hand. She caught the black garment sharply away from him.
“No, you’ll spoil it!” she cried, tossing the dress into a corner behind the bed. “You just set still there, an’ I’ll get you somethin’ to eat.”
“Eatin’ be damned!” he replied, surlily. “I want somethin’ to drink. Here! you take the can an’ get somethin’ from Mike’s. ‘F you can buy clothes, you can buy drinks.”
“No, no, Con, not now. Wait till I get supper.”
“I don’t want no supper! You rush de can, I tell you!”
“I won’t!”
“The hell you won’t!”
He started from his chair and went towards her, but something in her eyes made even his sodden senses recoil. He looked at her dubiously a moment, and then stumbled out of the room, muttering thickly.
As the door closed behind him, the woman sprang for her gown, and, dragging it from the corner, slipped it on. A few more stitches were needed in it, but she dared not wait to take them. A great terror filled her soul. She felt that her husband would return quickly, uglier and wilder by a few drams. With shaking fingers she pinned her gown together as best she might. She smoothed her scanty, dry, dead hair with her hands, and then she lifted her bonnet from the bed. She held it a moment admiringly, drawing her fingers softly over its trimmings of dark-blue silk, and along its narrow band of scarlet ribbon, where the bright gilt letters shone. She put it on her head and tied the soft strings carefully under her chin. She glanced hesitatingly at the old plaid shawl, wishing that she had a better one, but the night was cold, and she drew it about her shoulders. With a little sigh of relief she turned to leave the room. As her hand touched the door-latch she heard Con’s heavy tread upon the stairs. She noted that he staggered a little, and with a quick indrawing of her breath she drew herself flat against the wall in the shadows. The man threw the door open fiercely, steadying himself against the jamb as he peered into the dim room.
“Where are you, you she-devil?” he called.
The woman made no sound, and he stepped inside the room, with his broad back towards her. Inch by inch she crept along against the wall towards the door, as he stood turning from side to side in his maudlin search for her, and as her feet touched the threshold he turned and saw her. He rushed forward and grabbed her arms.
“Givin’ me the dirty sneak, are you?” he growled, shoving her inside the room and closing the door. “What d’ yer mean? Eh?”
Kit made no answer. She backed off, her face gleaming white inside her big bonnet.
“Yer a nice one, ain’t you?” he continued. “Won’t get me nothin’ to eat or drink, an’ spendin’ yer money fur clothes, an’ then tryin’ to make a sneak! Oh! I was onto you all the time! You white-faced fool! What d’ yer mean? Eh? Damn you, what d’ yer mean?”
“Stop, Con! Don’t hit me!”
He stumbled forward deliberately and struck her upturned face. She staggered into the corner by the table, and faced him again. A tiny stream of something red trickled down her cheek. Her eyes were suddenly ablaze.
“Let me go!” she shrieked. “Let me go!”
“Yer’ll go an’ get de can filled, that’s where yer’ll go!”
“I won’t—never!”
A spasm of hate and rage and terror writhed in her face. With the quickness of desperation she caught a knife from the table and waited for him.
He lunged towards her with uplifted arm. Before his blow fell she gave one swift thrust, and his arm came down simply upon her shoulder. For a moment he stood strangely still. He clenched his fist; his teeth were tight; he breathed hard through his nose.
“Damn you——” Then he reeled and fell.
And as the woman stood there in the gathering gloom, with his blood crawling towards her on the floor, she heard the beat of a drum, and the sound of voices singing shrilly, far down the street. On they came, nearer and louder, until her listening ears heard the thrum of the tambourines. Under her window they passed, and away into the night, until at last their sound was lost in the ceaseless, sullen tumult of Myrtle Street.