The Loom of Destiny

Front matter

THE LOOM OF DESTINY

Copyright, 1899, by Small, Maynard & Company (incorporated)

Entered at Stationers' Hall

An Essay in Equality

AN ESSAY IN EQUALITY

AN ESSAY IN EQUALITY

IT was his by right of discovery. For two glorious weeks he had puddled in it, and now, naturally enough, he looked upon it as his own private property.

It was not, to be sure, in his own Alley, but then he had found it first, and it was his by right of occupation. And now, if need be, he was ready to do battle for it, as any son of Adam is ever ready to do for his own, or what he calls his own.

But then it was worth fighting for! It was the most beautiful of mud puddles, three inches deep and four whole feet long. Such things should never have been in a well-ordered city, but every day the watering-cart man who lumbered up and down the Avenue on his great red wagon left the water-hydrant leaking a little, so that the puddle was per replenished. Suns might shine on it, and winds might blow over it, but morning, noon, and night it remained the same tempting thing of delight, oozy of bottom, and sweet to the touch of shoeless feet.

Each day the boy from the Alley brought his sailboat, made of a shingle, with three rakish masts and a rigging of dirty string, and sailed it adventurously up and down his puddle. With a piece of cord tied to the bowsprit, which was very much on the bias, the boy from the Alley puckered up his childish lips, and up to his ankles in mud, choo-choo-chooed delightedly as he pulled his little boat back and forth from one end of the puddle to the other.

And for two golden weeks this continued. Then, one morning, he found an invader on his property. The stranger was a boy of four, wearing shiny gaiters of tan leather and a black-velvet suit with rows of Glittering Things on it. The intruder was not exactly in the puddle, but he was looking down at it with such happy and longing eyes that the boy from the Alley cleared for action.

He eyed the invader darkly. He had found a footprint on his Crusoe's Island. With curious and half-envious eyes, he noticed the Glittering Things worn by the other. Then, with a great air, he launched his little boat and choo-choo-chooed up and down the puddle simply to show the other boy that he was the owner. He contrived, at the same time, to splash as much mud and water as possible on the boy in velvet. But the boy in velvet did not seem to mind in the least. In fact, he drew nearer, and stood at the edge of the puddle, his patent-leather shoes sinking in the mud.

The boy from the Alley resented the intrusion.

"G'won, kid," he said belligerently, although he was not so tall as the other by three good inches.

"T'ant I watch oo?" lisped the other, wistfully, in a voice of such baby timidity that it filled the Alley boy with disgust. In fact, the Alley boy was disagreeably sur . When he knew the invader was n't going to fight him, his respect for the invader went down ten degrees.

Still, the owner of the puddle felt not a little proud of the fact that a being wearing so many Glittering Things should come and ask favours of him. He even said that the boy in velvet might come over and sail the boat. But just once! No more than once, because that boat cost more than all the money the banana man ever had in all his life!

After a time the boy in velvet suggested taking off his shoes, like the other. The Alley boy never before had seen such white legs, and was much disgusted when his companion confessed the stones hurt his feet—but just the littlest bit!

The Alley boy showed the other how to squeeze the mud up between his toes, and how to pick up pebbles with his big toe, curling it under. Then the two grew quite friendly, and had a most glorious mud battle.

How that battle would have come out it is hard to say. At the critical moment the invader's English nurse came around the corner of the Avenue, waving affectionate farewells to a policeman. When she beheld the boy in velvet she held up her hands and screamed. In a second she had seized him and jerked him viciously on to the sidewalk.

Eaven 'elp us!" she cried, as she gazed on him with despair. She shook him vigorously, after looking to see that no one was in sight, and gathered up his mud-stained things, roundly abusing the owner of the puddle as a pug-nosed brat of a thieving street-arab. The street-arab stood in calm indifference, letting the soft mud ooze up between his toes as he watched the tears gathering in the other boy's eyes. The nurse seized her charge and with a contemptuous sniff at the indifferent child in the puddle led the other boy homeward, asking 'eaven to 'elp 'er each time she looked down at his clothes.

As the boy in velvet was jerked bodily along, he gazed back longingly at the mud-puddle and the ship with three masts. Why could n't he do that sort of thing, too? Why were all the good things of life denied him? Why could n't he play in that beautiful black mud, as well as the other boy?

He looked back regretfully at the multimillionaire, who was still letting the soft slime ooze deliciously between his toes. But the strong arm of that irate nurse hauled him relentlessly on. He tugged to get away, but in vain, and as he was dragged homeward up the Avenue his lusty bawling echoed up and down that decorous street, and filled the inmost heart of his English nurse with a secret desire to spank him.

It was two whole weeks before the boy in velvet appeared on the scene again. When he walked slowly down the Avenue his face was quite as white as the lace on his velvet collar, and there was a big swathe of flannel about his throat. The nurse held his hand, for his legs were still very wobbly.

The boy from the Alley was there with his shingle, choo-choo-chooing gaily up and down the puddle.

"I've been thick!" said the boy in velvet, in a weak and doleful voice.

"Was you?" said the owner of the puddle, indifferently. That seemed an enviable distinction to the Alley boy. He thought it was uttered in the form of a challenge. So with a show of infinite pride he stooped to fix his vessel's bowsprit.

"Yeth, I've been dreffully, dreffully thick," wailed the boy in velvet, gazing with hungry eyes on the shingle boat, the mud, and the water.

"Yes, he 'as, you little pug-nosed himp of filth, and it was you as done it!" cried the red-faced nurse. "Whitney Algernon 'Olland, you come 'ere. Don't you dare to talk to the likes of 'im. 'E ain't fit comp'ny for you! 'E's only a dirty little thievin' street-arab, and it was 'im as nearly killed you. Come along, Whitney Algernon 'Olland, or nurse'll go straight 'ome and tell your mamma!"

She cast a withering look on the owner of the puddle, seized the boy in velvet, and dragged him off. The boy in velvet did not and could not understand how she ever could make such a mistake. As she led him relentlessly up the Avenue he wept copiously. But the owner of the puddle choo-choo-chooed up and down his domain of mud with calm, supreme, imperturbable indifference!

Covers

((Front and rear covers)

Instruments of Eros

INSTRUMENTS OF EROS

INSTRUMENTS OF EROS

HE had always been called "Hungry"—Hungry Dooley. Just how he came by this name no one knew. It was thought by many to have been inspired by the boy's thin, wistful-looking face, with its restless eyes and queer little outstanding cheekbones. Others, again, held that the name sprang from Hungry's passion for carting away envied loads of luscious fruit and delectable vegetables, picked up along the river front. These he disappeared with into the dim recesses of an East Side cellar which he dignified by the name of home.

For Hungry, besides being an everyday wharf rat, was the stay and support of three even hungrier-looking sisters and a sickly mother, to say nothing of an alcoholic father who was able, now and then, to beat or bully a penny or two out of him.

It was only right, therefore, that Hungry, as he wandered busily about the odoriferous curbs and the crate-covered docks of the river front, should take himself seriously. He had, of course, many rivals, for there was always a wandering herd of equally hungry-eyed, ragged-looking urchins haunting those alluring wharves, flitting about from boat to boat and cart to cart, like a flock of overgrown city sparrows, ever ready to pounce down upon and fight over any stray piece of fruit, melon rind, or other dubiously misplaced edible to be found among those over-crowded, dirty, busy, clamorous streets and stalls where men bring from far off all those things that go to feed a great, hungry, heedless city.

But the most opulent of those hawk-eyed scavengers was Hungry Dooley. Not an over-ripe banana fell to the ground but he knew of it. Not an unsalable apple was cast away but he had sized it up as a matter of food-stuff. Not a remnant of old fish was left behind but his aquiline eye was on it.

And things went well, and business throve with Hungry. In fact, as time on, he even took unto himself a mate.

She was as diminutive, as thin of leg, and as dirtily unkempt as Hungry himself. But one could see by the way in which he laid his choicest portions of refuse banana and bruised pineapple before her, that to him she was as a goddess on a pedestal, and a thing to kneel to, and worship, and adore.

So plain was it that Hungry had a "stiddy" that envious stories went about through the busy little band, and even certain taunts were thrown out.

But none of these disturbed either Hungry or his sweetheart Brickie, who, by the way, was seen rapidly to gain flesh under Hungry's solicitous eye.

And as spring glided into summer all life changed for Hungry Dooley. A rose mist seemed to hang over the river, and a happy golden halo over the world. He did not know what it meant, but the rattle of the waggons seemed like unending music to him. The sound of the cables became, to his ears, like the murmur of running streams. The alley where Brickie lived was an Eden and a place of infinite delight, and with her at his side he was happy, indescribably happy!

In Hungry the paternal instinct had developed at an early age. He even gave Brickie, willingly, his last bit of orange, for Brickie's appetite was enormous. He found he could satisfy the gnawing pain in his own stomach by saving the peelings and eating them afterwards, when Brickie was n't looking. At times, it was true, the gnawing would become frightfully strong, but on his hungriest day he would rather see Brickie's lips close deliciously round the end of an over-ripe banana than eat it himself.

For three beautiful but fleeting months Brickie clung to him, and the rose mist hung over the river, and the halo over his world.

But it was a dark day for Hungry Dooley when Ikey Rosenberg discovered that riverside El Dorado. When Ikey found a place where fruit could be had for the picking up, he transferred his hunting-ground from the East Side to the region of wharves. Ikey was an element from a different world, however, and from the first it was felt he was an intruder and a menace.

He brought seven pennies in his pocket, the very first day of his invasion, and took pains to show them, by which vanity he lost three. But in two short days he had won the heart of Brickie Sniffins with a broken mouth-organ, a little red and blue lantern, and four penny dishes of ice cream, purchased, with great ostentation, from the despised Italian who dispensed that cooling essence of perpetual joy from a three-wheeled red cart on a nearby corner.

Brickie, in a wonderfully short space of time, grew to feel that she was cut out for a man who had money and could treat her as a girl ought to be treated. She openly declared that she did not care to be seen with a person who could n't wear shoes and stockings, and who had to live in a cellar. That declaration was made the day after Ikey had taken her round and showed her the riches that lay in dazzling disarray in the window of the store of "Isaac Rosenberg, Pawnbroker."

The final break came when Brickie stood on the curb with Ikey and made faces at Hungry.

Hungry saw the change, but he said nothing. Strange tales went the rounds of the wharves, and it was said he was silently eating his heart out. Disconsolately he passed by bananas and onions and oranges, letting ready hands snatch the treasures from under his very nose. He would not even stop to fight over a discarded pineapple.

How it all might have turned out it is hard to say. But on the paltriest accidents of life hinges the course of destiny.

It came about simply because the driver of an express waggon took four glasses of beer, when he knew three glasses were enough. His waggon was piled high with crates on their way to the commission house. And in those crates were little wooden boxes of imported Maryland strawberries. Their fragrance was wafted up and down the wharf, and they glowed through the chinks in the crate in such a manner that Hungry could not help following after the waggon.

When the driver cut a street corner too short, and sent his front waggon wheel up on the curbstone, Hungry knew that top crate was going to fall off—knew it ten seconds before it struck the ground.

The huge crate burst, of course, and a great odorous, crimson wealth of Maryland strawberries tumbled out into the road. A couple of passing waggon wheels crushed juicily through them. The driver sat helplessly in his seat, calling all the curses of heaven down on the heads of his docile team.

But Hungry had been ready. He fell bodily on the ruddy and tumbled mass, and at the risk of being run down by a dozen passing rigs, scooped up the fallen wealth as he had never scooped up fruit before. Brickie they should be for—Brickie—every one of them. Brickie's mouth it was he seemed to see closing on them as he thrust handful after handful into his grimy coal sack, now reminiscent, in perfumes, of many mingled fruits. The fact, too, that they were out of season added infinitely to their value.

But the driver felt that he had to get even with some one. Still swearing, he climbed down slowly from his waggon. He broke off one of the sides of the ruined crate. With it he viciously welted the unheeding child down on his knees in the road. The child did not move, so he struck him again, and then again. Still the boy with the bag kept on gathering in the scattered berries. A policeman sauntered up, tasted a berry or two, and told the driver to leave the kid alone. But in a minute or two the whole herd was upon them, and the crate was irretrievably lost. It was Hungry, however, who had the pick of the pile.

Brickie watched the scene with wistful eyes from the sidewalk. She had not been getting on very well with Ikey of late, and when he declined to enter the struggle for some of the berries, she felt a new and strange contempt for him. For Brickie was very fond of strawberries!

Then, before the whole world, Hungry limped over to the curb and proffered her his bag of precious fruit. Brickie blushed, declined with feigned reluctance, blushed deeper, and then broke out crying. Hungry gave Ikey Rosenberg a black eye for jeering at those tears.

Through her sobs she protested that she would never do it again, and having eyed the open bag, and caught a glimpse of the wealth therein, made a mouth at Ikey Rosenberg that decided the matter for all time.

Once more the rose-tinted mists seemed to dwell on the river, and a golden halo hung over the city, but few people ever knew that a mere little crate of Maryland strawberries was the means of bringing back a lost Eden!

Life's Loaded Die

LIFE'S LOADED DIE

LIFE'S LOADED DIE

BIFF a cop in de eye, if yer lookin' fer trouble, or t'row yerself under de cable, but don't youse ever give our Shanghai de stunt!" was a saying on the East Side long held to be oracular in its unchallenged wisdom. But the East Side in general and this same Shanghai Sharkey in particular had never heard a still older saying about giving a dog a bad name and then hanging it. The Shanghai Sharkey, like all small boys, had an honest and outspoken contempt for anything in the shape of proverb, parable, or text, which same smacked suspiciously of Sunday School and things hateful to the eyes of the urban ungodly, and were, therefore, religiously eschewed.

Yet it was the little germ of truth hidden in the core of that old platitude which made this one boy just what he was. When Destiny flung the Shanghai Sharkey into the world she threw a loaded die on the board, for any New York boy born of the house and name of Sharkey must know that he has a name to live up to and a reputation to sustain.

Timmie did not claim direct relationship with the one and only Sharkey, but very early in life he found that the mere name itself was a standing challenge to fight all new-comers. If the Shanghai Sharkey came home three days in the week with black eyes and the nosebleed, his father, who was a longshoreman by profession and a gin-drinker by occupation, was in the habit of saying that it was not the kid's fault, proudly protesting that his son was a regular chip of the old block! Timmie's father himself had been somewhat of a boxer in his day, and even now, when his powers were in the sere and yellow leaf, he at times showed the weight of his brawny arm. This was true especially when his thin-faced, sickly wife, who sewed ten weary hours a day, refused to hand over the last dime in the house, that he might cheer his drooping spirits with another drop or two of Holland gin. Timmie himself, in his infancy, it must be confessed, had been a silent and sickly baby, with his mother's meek grey eyes and an inordinate love for a certain tattered and bodiless old rag doll. It was this disappointment in his son and heir, Timmie's father stoutly protested, that had first driven him to drink.

But if Timmie's progenitor had at first beheld these things with undisguised anger and disgust, he vigorously undertook the child's reformation, almost, in fact, before he was weaned. The boy was taught, by the time he was able to walk, how to guard, feint, clinch, and break away. At the same time he was in the habit of showing him, in a way that made poor Timmie's mother weep for many an anxious hour, how a Sharkey should be able to stand punishment.

So by the time Timmie was old enough to venture into the open street he was master of his two childish fists, and what was more, he knew it. That knowledge is a terrible and a dangerous thing in the mind of a boy.

It was on his very first day in the open that he won for himself the name of Shanghai, or rather, the Shanghai Sharkey,—a name which stuck to him through a thousand battles.

He was, it is said, thus aptly christened because of his ragged stockings and tattered shoes, which, in the activities of warfare, looked strangely like the feathered limbs of some uncouth Shanghai rooster.

When the victorious boy, very bloody and very white, was helped home after his first fight, his exultant father's joy knew no bounds. The child himself, in his pride, accordingly forgot about his bleeding lip, and wondered why his mother should sit by the window and cry. That night, when her husband was asleep, she stole out of bed and crept stealthily over to the child's little couch, listening anxiously in the darkness to hear if he was still breathing. Timmie, whose head was beating like a drum, was awake, and saw her, but said nothing.

Once honoured by such a name, the Shanghai Sharkey found he had, indeed, a reputation to live up to. Thereafter a new boy dared not venture into the remotest boundaries of the Ward, and expect to dwell therein, without first being duly challenged and fought by the Shanghai. This cost the challenger a tooth or two, numerous scars, and a periodically blackened eye, but many battles, in time, taught him not only how to endure, but even how to elude, the severe punishment which customarily comes with all such encounters. The result was that the new boy was usually defeated, while the victorious Timmie went home each time with less blood wiped from his nose by his ragged coat sleeve. Each engagement added one more to that ever swelling army of urchins who came to look upon the Shanghai Sharkey and his prowess with admiring and reverential eyes. And Timmie's father hit him enthusiastically on the back and said with pride that he was a bloody little devil.

So in time it came about that there was not a boy on the East Side who did not fear and envy this lion-hearted and tiger-toothed hero of a hundred fights. Nor was there a girl within twelve squares of the Sharkey residence (and strangely unpretentious was that residence for such an eminent inhabitant!) who did not furtively cast shy glances at the Shanghai. To be the "steady" of one by the name of Sharkey was something for future generations eternally to dream of, and talk over, and wonder at!

Notwithstanding these seductive advances, the Shanghai Sharkey, as a fighting man, publicly and with fitting dignity, proclaimed that it was not for him to waste his time and goodly strength on women folks. Far from it. At his father's solicitation he beguiled Mike Donovan, who kept the "Lincoln Saloon" on the next corner, to give him certain private tips on left hooks and advancing,—points on which even Timmie's father confessed a latter-day ignorance. Mike Donovan had been a boxer of repute in his youth, and even at the present time three stoop-shouldered young men, wearing gold eye-glasses, came to him twice a week and were regularly sent home with puffed checks and watery eyes. The Shanghai Sharkey, for his lessons in the manly art, entered into a contract which ordained that once a day he should polish the brass window rods of his tutor's saloon.

But in this world every rose has its thorn, and every Klondike its Chilkoot. The Shanghai Sharkey, for all his conquests, with all his admirers, and all his fame, was far from being inwardly happy. He was an impostor. In the bottom of his own heart he knew he was a sham and a deception. He was not the thing he pretended to be, and the irony of it all weighed heavily on his heart.

The skeleton in the Shanghai Sharkey's closet was nothing more nor less than a Baby. Over this Baby his spirit brooded with a tenderness that was almost maternal. As a fighting man he knew well enough he should be above all such things! But try as he might, he could not help entertaining a secret and passionate love for this same little shred of humanity, which came unexpectedly into his home one memorable day. As a Sharkey it was both wrong and inconsistent, and a weakness to be overcome, in some way, and heroically lived down. Babies were for women folks to bother about, and were meant mostly for boys to kick. But the loaded die had ordained that Timmie, the man of blood, should, in truth, have the heart of a girl, and that having such, he should lead for all time a double life.

The same hand that had knocked out Dinney Crockett one day might be discovered the next holding, with great care and tenderness, a little oval-shaped bottle from which a hungry infant could be seen feeding. Or at night the Shanghai Sharkey might be found patiently rocking an uncouth looking little cradle, and humming a slumber croon of his own invention to the Baby. The cradle in question, Timmie himself had made of a sugar barrel and a stolen fence-board. But the worst of it all was, that to do such, was the joy of Timmie's life.

Day after day the Baby's mother lay on her bed, counting the figures on the dirty wall-paper, and nervously clutching at the threads in the worn counterpane. Timmie did not mind not being able to go out, and it did not take him long to learn how to warm the milk. But now and then some stray street-cry would enter the quiet little room, and he would remember his old battles, and the thought of them would fill him with a sickening horror.

Still, in some way, his barbaric little heart warmed to his work, and he did his best to forget, and in time he grew to love the little squalling piece of ever-hungry flesh and blood with a love that was wonderful and beautiful to behold.

It was only natural, then, that following the birth of the Baby there was less bloodshed in the Ward than the oldest inhabitant or even the most vigilant policeman could remember.

But one week after Timmie had completed his wonderful cradle, his father came home, exhaling the odour of gin, and kicked the cradle out into the street. When Timmie's mother, who lay sobbing on her bed, wailed that she had no more money to give him, he prepared to kick the woman into the street after the cradle.

"Money, damn you; I must 'ave money!" roared the man, mad drunk. He had been born within sound of Bow Bells, and under drink or sudden passion his Cockney accent and his hunger to kick women came back to him.

Old off, you bloody young whelp!" he cried the next minute, for Timmie had seen the act and had flung himself on his father, tooth and nail. Old off, I say, or I'll kick your bloody young guts out!"

The man shook the boy off as a bull-dog would shake a pup, roughly, but not unkindly.

"Money! you bawlin' 'ound, money, I say, or I'll—"

Timmie knew his mother was going to be murdered. This time he fought with neither his fists nor his feet. With vice-like arms he clutched his father about the knees, and sank his teeth into the fleshy part of the huge leg he held, till the blood spurted out on the blue-jean overalls, and the taste of it on his lips turned him sick.

The man leaped away with a howl of anguish, recovered himself, and aimed one deadly kick at the boy. The Shanghai Sharkey dodged the great heavy boot like a cat, burst open the door, and screamed again and again for help.

In two minutes a hundred strange feet were tramping about the little house, though it was an hour and more before the hospital ambulance drove up and carried the woman away.

In a moment of consciousness, as they were carrying her out, her feeble eyes caught sight of the police patrol. Then it was she swore to them, over and over again, that it was not her husband who had done it.

Thereafter followed dark and troublous days for the Shanghai Sharkey. Man, at his birth, is the most helpless of all animals, and this fact Timmie learned, in the bitterness of his heart, when he found himself the sole guardian and protector of a motherless baby.

Seldom was he seen upon the streets, and when it did so happen it was always noted that he skulked hurriedly homewards with some strange parcel under his arm. Mysterious washings, too, appeared by night on the Sharkey clothes-line, and endless were the speculations as to just what hand wielded the soap-bar in that depleted household.

As for the Shanghai Sharkey himself, he often all but shuddered as he wondered what the "gang" would think if they ever knew he had turned into a house nurse. For with his own hands he fed and washed and dressed the Baby, and with his own hands he created for it a beautiful perambulator, to take the place of the lost cradle. This perambulator he made of two very wobbly tricycle wheels, purchased from Snapsie Doogan with a broken jack-knife and a paper windmill, while a box that bore the imprint of "Foxbury Rye," the latter being the special gift of Mike Donovan, did duty as body for the carriage.

It was three weeks after his mother had been taken to the hospital, one sunny day, when Timmie was sneaking shamefacedly homeward with a bottle of fresh milk for the Baby hidden under his coat, that he came face to face with Maggie Reilly. That young lady, who for months past had made seductive but ineffectual eyes at the Shanghai Sharkey, was almost bursting with importance, for she had just come from the hospital and was the bearer of great news.