His collar came off with a crack-snap. He held it in the hand that pointed toward the money. He seemed offended at something. Not angry, but hurt. “How can you say that, M’nolia! I got one thousan’ from good ol’ Het and not cen’ more. Wha’ do I do then! Marsh up to Sheedy’s and win a thousan’ more at roulette. Ha! That’s a great joke on Sheedy because, look, roulette isn’ my game. Nev’ has been. Faro’s my game. Tha’s a gen’leman’s game, faro. One thousan’ Hetty, and marsh ri’ up . . . roulette . . . win . . . ’nother . . . Thous. . .” He lurched to the bed.
He was asleep at once, heavily, deeply, beside her on the bed, his fine long head lolling off the pillow. She knelt in her place and tried to lift the inert figure to a more comfortable position; succeeded, finally, after some tugging. She drew the lumpy coverlet over him. Then she sat as before, hunched in her nightgown and the wrapper, staring at the open wallet with its many leaves. It was dawn now. The room was gray with it. She ought to turn out the gas. She arose. She picked up the wallet. Before extinguishing the light she counted out ten one-hundred-dollar bills from the sheaf within the wallet. One thousand dollars. Her fingers touched the bills gingerly, fastidiously, and a little wrinkle of disgust curled her lip. She placed the bills on the dresser. She folded the leather holder and tucked it, with its remaining contents, under his pillow. He did not waken. She turned out the light then, and coming back to the bedside drew on the slippers that lay on the floor. She got her shirtwaist—a fresh white one with a Gibson tuck—from the drawer, and her skirt and jacket from the hooks covered over with a protecting length of calico against the wall. She heated a little water, and washed; combed and dressed her hair; put on her clothes, laid her hat on the dresser. Then she sat in the one comfortable chair that the room afforded—a crazy and decayed armchair done in dingy red plush, relic of some past grandeur—and waited. She even slept a little there in the sagging old chair, with the morning light glaring pitilessly in upon her face. When she awoke it must have been nearly noon. A dour day, but she had grown accustomed to the half-lights of the Chicago fogs. She glanced sharply at him. He had not moved. He had not stirred. He looked, somehow, young, helpless, innocent, pathetic. She busied herself in making a cup of coffee as quietly as might be. This might rouse him, but it would make little difference. She knew what she had to do. She drank the hot revivifying liquid in great gulps. Then she put on her jacket, pinned on her hat, took up the bills and placed them neatly in her handbag. She glanced at herself in the mirror.
“My, you’re plain!” she thought, meaninglessly. She went down the dim stairway. The fusty landlady was flapping a gray rag in the outer doorway as her contribution to the grime of the street.
“What’s taking you out so bright and early, Mis’ Ravenal? Business or pleasure?” She liked her little joke.
“Business,” said Magnolia.
XVII
The knell had sounded for the red brick house with the lions guarding its portals. The Chicago soot hung like a pall over it. The front steps sagged. Even the stone lions had a mangy look. The lemon-water sunshine of a Chicago winter day despoiled the dwelling of any sinister exterior aspect. That light, filtering through the lake mist, gave to the house-front the look of a pock-marked, wrinkled, and evil old hag who squats in the market place with her face to the sun and thinks of her purple past and does not regret it. It was half-past one. Magnolia Ravenal had figured this out nicely. That part of Clark Street would be astir by now. As she approached the house on Clark, near Polk, her courage had momentarily failed her, and she had passed it, hurriedly. She had walked a block south, wretchedly. But the feel of the bills in her bag gave her new resolve. She opened the handbag to look at them, turned and walked swiftly back to the house. She rang the bell this time, firmly, demandingly; stood looking down at its clean-scrubbed doorstep and tried to ignore the prickling sensation that ran up and down her spine and the weak and trembling feeling in her legs. The people passing by could see her. She was knocking at Hetty Chilson’s notorious door, and the people passing by could see her: Magnolia Ravenal. Well, what of it! Don’t be silly. She rang again.
The door was opened by a Negro in a clean starched white house coat. Magnolia did not know why the sight of this rather sad-eyed looking black man should have reassured her; but it did. She knew exactly what she wanted to say.
“My name is Mrs. Ravenal. I want to speak to Hetty Chilson.”
“Mis’ Chilson is busy, ma’am,” he said, as though repeating a lesson. Still, something about the pale, well-dressed, earnest woman evidently impressed him. Of late, when he opened the door there had been frequent surprises for him in the shape of similar earnest and well-dressed young women who, when you refused them admittance, flashed an official-looking badge, whipped out notebook and pencil and insisted pleasantly but firmly that he make quite sure Miss Chilson was not in. “You-all one them Suhveys?”