II
It was the first time that Mrs. Byrne had ever sat down in any public restaurant, except the eating-halls at Coney Island (where she went with "basket parties") or the ice-cream "parlors" at Fort George. And she glanced about her at tiled walls and mosaic floors with a furtiveness that was none the less critical for being so sly. "It's eatin' in a bathroom we are," she whispered. "An' will yuh look at the cup yonder. The sides of it are that thick there's scarce room fer the coffee in it! Well, well! It do beat the Dutch! They're drawin' the drink out of a boiler big enough fer wash day." The approach of a waitress silenced her. When she saw that Mrs. Cregan was not going to speak, she looked up at the girl with a bargain-counter keenness. "Have y' any pancakes fit t' eat? How much are they? Ten cents! Fer how many? Fer three pancakes? Fer three! D'yuh hear that?" she appealed to Mrs. Cregan. "Come home with me, that's a good woman. It's a sin to pay it. Three cents fer a pancake! Aw, come along out o' this. Ten cents! We c'u'd get two loaves o' bread fer the money an' live on it fer a week!"
But Mrs. Cregan was beyond the reach of practicalities, and she ordered her buckwheat cakes and coffee with an air that was mournfully distrait. Mrs. Byrne made a vain attempt to get her own cakes from the waitress for five cents, and then resigned herself to the senseless extravagance. "Yuh'll not make yer own
livin' an' eat the likes o' this," she grumbled asthmatically. "Yuh'd better be savin' yer money."
Mrs. Cregan was looking at the thick china with a sort of aggrieved despondence. (It was almost the expression of a bereaved mother looking at one of her neighbor's children and thinking it a healthy, ugly brat whom nobody would have missed!) She stared at the bare walls and the bare tables of the restaurant, and found the place, by comparison with her own cozy flat, as unhome-like as the waiting-room of a railroad station—the waiting-room of a railroad station when you have said good-bye to your past and the train has not yet arrived to carry you to your future.
As her pancakes were served to her, she bent over the plate to hide a tear that trickled down her nose. It splashed on the piece of food that she raised to her mouth. She ate it—tear and all.
"An' them no bigger than the top of a tomato can!" Mrs. Byrne was muttering.
Mrs. Cregan ate, and the food helped, to stop her tears. It was the strong coffee, at last, that brought her back her voice. "If it'd b'en him, he'd 'a' gone an' got drunk," she said, wiping her cheeks with her napkin. "The men have the best of it. Us women have to take it all starin' sober."
"They're no more than children," Mrs. Byrne replied, "an' they're to be treated as such. Sure, Cregan couldn't live without yuh. He'd have no buttons to his pants in a week."
"An' him!" Mrs. Cregan cried. "Iver, since the Raypublicuns got licked, there's be'n no gettin' on with him at all. Thim Sunday papers 've toorned his head. He's all blather about his rights an' his wrongs. Th' other moornin' didn't I try to get on his bus from the wrong side o' the crossin', an' he bawls at me: 'Th' other side! Th' other side! Yuh're no better than any one ilse!' An' I had to chase through the mud after him! The little wizened runt! He's talkin' like an arnachist! An' that's why he smashed me dish. He'll have no one say 'No' to 'im.... Ah, Mrs. Byrne, niver marry a man older than yersilf."
"Thank yuh," Mrs. Byrne replied with hoarse sarcasm. "I'm not likely to, at my age." She added, consolingly: "Cregan's young fer his years. Drivin' a Fift' Avenah bus is fine, preservin', outdoor work."
"It is that!" And Mrs. Cregan's tone remarked that the fact was the more to be deplored. "He'll be crankier an' crabbeder the older he grows." She dipped to her coffee and swallowed hard.
Mrs. Byrne had screwed up her eyes to squint at an idea that could not well be looked in the face. When she spoke it was to say slyly: "God forbid! But they do go off sometimes in a puff. He looks as if he'd live fer long enough, thank Heaven. But yuh never can tell."
Mrs. Cregan blinked, held her hand for a moment, and then began hastily to fill her mouth with food. The silence that ensued was long enough to take on an appearance of guilt.
It was long enough, too, for Mrs. Byrne to "contrive a procedure."
"Yuh never can tell," she began, "unless yuh have doin's with the devil—like them gipsies that see what's comin' by lookin' in the flat o' yer hand. There's one o' them aroun' the corner, an' they say she told Minnie Doyle the name o' the man she was to marry. An' he married her, at that!" Mrs. Cregan looked blank. Mrs. Byrne leaned forward to her. "I never whispered it to a livin' soul but yerself—but it was her told Mrs. Gunn that her last was to be a boy. A good month ahead! An' when she saw it was true she had no peace o' mind till she heard the priest say the words over the poor child an' saw that the sprinkle o' holy water didn't bubble off him like yuh'd sprinkled it on a hot stove." Mrs. Cregan's vacant regard had slowly gathered a gleam of startled intelligence. "An' if I was yerself, Mrs. Cregan—not knowin'
where I was to go to, ner how I was to live—I'd go an' have a talk with her before I went further, d'yuh see?"
"God forbid! 'Tis a mortal sin."
"'Tis not. When I told Father Dumphy what I'd done, he called me an ol' fool an' gave me an extry litany fer penance. What's a litany!"
"I'd be scared o' me life!"
"Yuh w'd not. Come along with me. I was goin'. I got troubles o' me own. Never mind that. There's nothin' to be scared of. Nothin' at all. No one'll see us. I been there meself, many's the time, an' no one knows it."