Part 5 (1/2)
”We have the necessary amount.”
”--Fifty thousand to get it--money first.”
”When do you want the money?”
”Tomorrow at eleven o'clock.”
The stranger arose, went out into the smoke and fog, and disappeared somewhere into the infolding channels of great business undertakings of this wonderfully prosperous city of steel and iron, where even the hearts of men are as the material that the great blast furnaces spew out, day and night, for seven days in the week, week in and week out.
CHAPTER IV.
IN h.e.l.l'S HALF ACRE.
The forlorn individual whom Peter Dieman saw through his spyhole, during his soul stirring conversation with the stranger, was Kate Barton, the wife of Billy Barton, the waterman, and the ragged but chunky young woman with her was her daughter, Star Barton.
They had come into Peter's place to redeem, if possible, or to take away as a gift of charity, if lucky, a few battered and broken kitchen utensils that Billy Barton had sold during one of his thirsty spells while staggering through a vaporless period of inebriacy.
Kate Barton's outlook on life was hopeless. She came into the world as poor as the proverbial church mouse, and seemed doomed to go out of it even poorer. She married Billy Barton, a s.h.i.+ftless young man, with an inherent predilection for hankering after the flowing bowl, and ere she had pa.s.sed a score of years of wedded life twelve innocent starvelings had opened their eyes to her as their mother to gravitate for themselves around the ”old block.”
The poor woman! She was a meek victim of the direst kind of circ.u.mstances that could possibly surround a human being. She was one of those submissive and inept mortals that blindly plod the road of domesticity without a spark of the beautiful to light up the narrow channel of unrequitted effort. When she married Billy Barton, she went about it with that fatality of purpose as is usual with her cla.s.s, and bore her burdens with the equanimity of a horse hitched to a loaded cart on the uphill pull, without a thought for anything beyond her daily tribulations, save that vague idea that the good Lord would take care of her in the after while. She had no ambition further than the difficult task of caring for her home with its limited accommodations and plethoric adornment of young life. The unworthy addition of an imbibing husband, on whom she looked as an inalienable part of her existence, did in no sense tend her thoughts to any less love for him than if he had been a more renowned character among men. Poor, helpless woman!
When Peter Dieman saw her that day through his place of outlook, he saw a woman as lean as a bean pole, as tall as a rail splitter, as cadaverous as a ghost, with a hook nose, deeply sunken gray eyes, a complexion that was a cross between yellow and black, brown stringy hair and toothless mouth. Her dress was of faded black alpaca, her shoes coa.r.s.e and well worn, with a dirty yellow shawl hooded over her head and hanging with frayed edges over her shoulders.
After the stranger had left him, Peter stood a few moments, blinkingly observing her. He then stepped out of his office into the less dingy shop. He lumbered up to where she stood having an altercation with Eli Jerey.
”Well, Mrs. Barton,” he said, rubbing his hands as if very cold, and grinning like a ches.h.i.+re cat; ”can't you and Eli come to terms? What is the trouble?”
”Eli Jerey says I cannot redeem my goods without I pay a profit for your trouble,” she answered.
”Can't have what?” he quizzed.
”Them things that Bill sold you to get drink money with,” she replied.
”What things?” asked Peter.
”Them dishes of mine--them tin pans--them knives--them forks--them spoons--he carried off,” she whimperingly returned.
”I paid him the cash for them--the cold cash, Mrs. Barton,” said Peter, with a stony smile.
”You did, no doubt, or else he wouldn't've been drunk last night,” she replied.
”I never ask any questions where the things I buy come from--I give all anything is worth; no more, no less, and never ask where the money goes when it leaves my hands--I expect to sell them for a profit, or else what am I in business for?” thus screeched the junkman.
”Oh, Mr. Dieman!” wailed the poor creature. ”I have nothing left to cook with or eat on. He's taken the last dish in the house. My children have been eating off the bare boards--and eating their vituals raw.”
”That's not my outlook, Mrs. Barton,” retorted Peter, rubbing his hands now more vigorously than ever, as if he had a fresh chill, or had just come in out of a cold blast of weather.
”I thought you might return them to me,” said Mrs. Barton, appealingly.