In the gallery overhead Bridget heard two women dancing and shouting noisily. Somewhere in the building a child was crying loudly in a different key from the bag-pipe. Bridget didn’t notice these things particularly; she was used to them. Only there came over the young human girl-heart which was beating beneath the rags and in the midst of this wretchedness a sick longing for—what? Bridget did not know.
“It’s the hot weather it is,” she said to herself; “it’s usin’ me up intirely. I’ll jist go an’ have a bit av a walk.”
Accordingly she issued forth, shortly afterward, with a broken-nosed pitcher in her hand, and made her way to one of the shops across the street. There were plenty to choose from—the city had looked out for that. Their licenses were as strong as the Municipal Seal, stamped on one corner, with its picture of church steeples and clouds, and heavens above and pure, broad sea beneath, could make them. Nearly every second house in the street beckoned with flaring lights to its pile of whiskey barrels and shining counters; the dark intervals along the street, between these shops, were the ruined homes of those who went in at the lighted doors.
Opposite, the Crystal Palace, then at its filthiest and worst, reared its ugly shape like a fat weed, watered day and night by whiskey and gin.
[Within the last twelvemonth this building has been torn down, and Lincoln Street largely reclaimed from the squalor and wretchedness which marked it on the evening of which I am speaking; but within a stone’s throw of the same spot, the same sights may be witnessed any night in the week. The district is popularly known as the “South Cove.”]
As Bridget pattered along the sidewalk with her bare feet, a coarse-looking woman in front of her threw something down on the bricks and laughed hoarsely. The “something” resolved itself into a kitten, which picked itself up and walked painfully over to a burly, broad-shouldered man who was sitting on the steps of a basement alley, so that his arms rested on the sidewalk. The kitten curled up beside him. The man put out his big, red hand and stroked it once, then went on with his smoking. The kitten was purring and licking its aching feet as Bridget, who had paused a moment from some dull feeling of compassion, went on her way.
Leaving her pitcher at the bar, with the injunction that it should be filled and ready for her return, she passed out of the store and walked slowly down Lincoln Street toward the Albany Station. The street was full of children running to and fro with shouts and screams of laughter or pain; some of them going in and out of the shops with pitchers and mugs, some lying stupidly in the gutter. The air was stifling, and as Bridget reached the corner she saw the groups of belated people hurrying out to the Newtons and Wellesley, where they might cool themselves in the pure air, with whatever means of comfort money could purchase.
Pet Sibley and Bridget Flanagan both reflected upon this as they unconsciously drew nearer and nearer together. Pet was tired, and was beginning to look for a horse-car to take her to her aunt’s house. The little Irish princess had turned and left her “Palace” until she was now near the head of Summer Street.
Ten steps further, and they met upon the corner, with the great gilded eagle’s wings outstretched above their heads. Both paused for a moment. Pet was dressed as she had been in the boat—all in white, with a pretty fluffy ostrich feather curving around her broad straw hat, and a fleecy shawl thrown over her shoulders. Bridget’s shawl was not fleecy, and her dress was not white. Nor did she wear lawn shoes.
What either would have said I do not know. Perhaps nothing. Perhaps their lives, just touching at this point, would have glided farther and farther apart, until there was no room in this earth for them to meet again. But at that moment something happened.