The Rosie World
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"Rosie dear, like a good child, will you bring me me pipe and a few matches?"
Rosie, busied in the kitchen over the supper dishes, always knew just when this call was coming, and always had her answer ready: "All right, Dad. Just wait till I dry my hands and I will."
Tonight she gave the usual answer in the usual cheerful tone, for she felt that it behooved her to meet deceit with deceit if she was to catch the beast unaware. So she got Jamie his pipe, and later came out again and perched on the arm of his chair.
"Say, Dad," she began.
She took a peep at him from the corner of her eye. Heaven knows he did not look fierce. He was a plain, lean, little man, of indeterminate colouring, with sparse hair, sparser mustache, and faded blue eyes, that had a patient, far-away look in them. His face was thin and worn, with lines that betokened years of labour borne steadily and without complaint. He was a silent man and passed for thoughtful, though contemplative would better express his cast of mind. He looked at things and people slowly and quietly, as if considering them carefully before committing himself. Then, when he spoke, it would be some slight remark, brief and commonplace.
When Rosie began: "Say Dad," he waited patiently. After several seconds had elapsed, he turned his head slightly and said: "Well, Rosie?"
He gave her a faint smile, and patted her hand affectionately. Ordinarily, at this place, Rosie would have slipped an arm about his neck, but tonight she held back.
"Say, Dad," she opened again, in a coaxing, confidential tone, "did you have a good run today?"
The world in general supposes, no doubt, that, to a motorman, one day's run must be much like any other. Rosie knew better.
Jamie very deliberately relit his pipe before answering. Then he said: "Yes, it was all right, Rosie."
Rosie waited, as she knew from his manner that something more would finally come. Jamie gazed about thoughtfully, then concluded: "They was a flat wheel on the rear truck."
Rosie was all sympathy. "Oh, Dad, I'm so sorry! It must ha' been horrid riding all day on a flat wheel."
Jamie took a puff or two, then announced: "I didn't mind it."
"Well, Dad, did you report it?"
Jamie scratched his head, as if in an effort to remember, and at last said: "Sure."
After a decent interval, Rosie began again: "Say, Dad, what'd you think of a man who chased his wife with a hatchet?"
Rosie thought it would be a little indelicate to come right out with butcher-knife. Hatchet was near enough, anyway. Rosie's idea was that her father would betray himself by defending the husband. When he did, she expected to tell him that she knew all. Her imagination did not carry her beyond this. She was prepared, however, for something horrible.
Jamie O'Brien turned his head almost quickly. "With a hatchet, did you say, Rosie?"
"Yes, Dad, with a hatchet."
"That's bad. And is it some one around here that we know?"
"No, it ain't anybody. I was just saying, what would you think of a man who did that?"
"And it ain't some one we know?"
With a wave of his pipe, Jamie dismissed all hypothetical hatchets, and returned to the more sensible contemplation of the sky line.
Rosie felt that she was being trifled with. She gazed at her father meaningly.
"Well, what would you say to a man who chased his wife with a butcher-knife?"
Again Jamie took an exasperating time to answer, and again his answer took the form of the question: "Is it some one we know, Rosie?"
Rosie threw discretion to the winds. "I'm sure you ought to know whether it's some one we know!"
Jamie blinked his eyes slowly and thoughtfully. "I don't seem to place him, Rosie."
Rosie left him in disgust. Brutality is bad enough, but hypocrisy is worse. She went as far as the kitchen door, then turned back. She would give him one more chance.
Again smiling, she put her arms about his neck. "Say, Dad, if you was to get awful mad at me, what would you do?"
"At you, do you say, Rosie? Well, now, I don't see how any one could get awful mad at you."
Rosie's patience was about exhausted, but she restrained herself. "But, Dad, if I was to do something awful bad – steal ten dollars, or run away from home!"
Jamie looked at Rosie, then at the sky line, then at the soap-box, then back at Rosie. Surely now a brutal threat was coming.
"Why, Rosie dear, I don't think you'd ever do anything like that!"
Huh! What kind of an answer was that for a father to give his child? Rosie straightened her back, and without another word departed. She felt that her worst fears were justified. Any man as difficult to trap as Jamie O'Brien was a dangerous character.
She nursed her resentment the rest of the evening. Just before she went to sleep, however, she decided, as a matter of scrupulous justice, to suspend final judgment until she should have seen for herself that damning evidence of his brutality, namely, the scar on her poor mother's right shoulder. Yes, she would find some excuse for seeing it at once.
The next morning, while her mother was preparing to go to market, of itself the opportunity came.
"Rosie dear," Mrs. O'Brien called down from upstairs, "I need your help. One of me corset strings is busted."
Rosie found her mother seated at the bureau, half dressed, fanning herself with a towel. A full expanse of neck and shoulders was exposed, so that Rosie, busied at her mother's back, was able to scan minutely all that there was to scan. She looked and looked again, and by patting her mother affectionately, was able to add the testimony of touch to that of sight.
In due time her mother departed, and Rosie, left alone, turned to the mirror and gazed into it several moments without speaking.
"Well!" she said at last. "What do you know about that!"
She shook her head at the round-eyed person in the mirror, and the round-eyed person nodded back, as deeply impressed with the inexplicability of things as Rosie herself.
CHAPTER XVI
WHAT EVERY LADY WANTS
All morning Rosie moved about the house preoccupied and silent, heaving an occasional sigh, murmuring an occasional "Huh!"
At dinner she paid scant attention to her mother's market adventures, and with difficulty heard Terry's orders concerning a new paper customer. Her mind was too fully occupied with a problem of its own to be interested in anything else.
On the whole it was a strange problem, and one that, after hours of thought, remained unsolved. By mid-afternoon Rosie was ready to cast it from her in disgust but she found that she could not. Like a bad conscience, it stayed with her, dogging her steps even on her paper route.
It had the effect of colouring everything that she saw or heard. When she handed a paper to Mrs. Donovan, the policeman's wife, who exclaimed: "What do you think of the beautiful new hammock that Mr. Donovan has just gave me?" Rosie remarked in a tone that was almost sarcastic: "Oh, ain't you lucky!" and to herself she added cynically: "And I'd like to know who gave you that black-and-blue spot on your arm!"
She found one of the Misses Grey pale and haggard under the strain of a hot-weather headache. Rosie forced her unwilling tongue to some expression of sympathy; but, once on her way, she told her disgruntled self that what she had wanted to say was: "Well, Miss Grey, I must say, if I didn't know you was an old maid, I'd ha' taken you for a happy married woman!"
Near the end of the route, she found old Danny Agin waiting, as usual, for his paper. His little blue eyes twinkled Rosie a welcome, and his jolly cracked voice called out: "How are you today, Rosie?"
For a moment Rosie gazed at him without speaking. Then she shook her head, and sighed.
"You look all right, Danny Agin, just as kind and nice as can be, but I guess Mis' Agin knows a few things about you!"
Danny blinked his eyes several times in quick succession. "What's this ye're sayin', Rosie?"
"Oh, nuthin'. I was only saying what a nice day it was. Good-bye."
Rosie started resolutely away, then paused. She really wanted some one with whom to talk out her perplexity, and here was Danny Agin, a man of sound sense and quick sympathy, and her own sworn friend and ally.
Rosie turned back and, seating herself on the porch step at Danny's feet, looked up into Danny's face.
"What's troublin' you, Rosie dear?" Danny's tone was kind and invited confidence.
Rosie shook her head gloomily. "Danny, I'm just so mixed up that I don't know where I'm at. You know Janet McFadden? Well – "
Rosie took a long breath and, beginning at the beginning, gave Danny a full account of yesterday's discussion. She brought her story down to that very morning when her mother had called her upstairs to tie the broken corset string. At this point she paused and sighed, then looked at Danny long and searchingly.
"And, Danny, listen here: There wasn't any scar at all! I hunted over every scrap of both shoulders and I felt 'em, too, and they were just as round and smooth as a fat baby! And she said: 'A foot long at least and two fingers deep.' And she even said it itched in rainy weather! Now what do you know about that?"
Danny slowly shook out the folds of a large red handkerchief, dropped it over his head and face, and bowed himself as though in prayer. No sound came from behind the handkerchief, but Danny's body began to shake convulsively. Either he was sobbing, or —
"Danny Agin, are you laughing?"
Danny slowly raised his head and, drawing off the handkerchief, began wiping his eyes.
"Laughin', is it? Why, it's weepin' I am! Don't you see the tears?"
Rosie looked at him doubtfully. "I don't see what you're weeping about."
Danny shook his head mournfully. "It's a way I have, Rosie. A thought came over me while we was talkin' and off I went. And – and here it comes again!"
Danny reached for his handkerchief, but too late. The thought seemed to hit him full in the stomach, and back he fell into his chair, rolling and spluttering.
"Danny Agin, you are laughing!"
Danny wiped his eyes again. "Perhaps I am this time, Rosie. I'm took different at different times."
Rosie frowned on him severely. "Well, I think you were laughing the first time and you needn't deny it. And, what's more, I don't see anything to laugh at."
"Whisht now, darlint, and I'll tell you. I'll talk to you like man to man. 'Twas thought of the ladies."
"What ladies?"
"All o' them. They're all the same."
"Who are all the same?"
"The ladies, Rosie. Janet and your ma, and the rest o' them!"
"Danny, I don't see how you can say that. Ma and Janet are not a bit the same. They're exactly different. There's ma who's got a kind husband, and she goes telling that he chases her with a butcher-knife, and there's Janet whose father is a drunken brute, and she goes pretending he's the best ever."
"Precisely, Rosie. You couldn't have expressed it better. Now you'll understand me when I tell you that they all want the same thing, which is this: They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat. Now let me say it to you again, Rosie: They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat. There!"
Rosie put her hands to her head in distraction. "Danny Agin, I don't know what you're talking about!"
"I'm talkin' about the ladies."
"Well, then, what I want to know is this: How can they want a thing when they don't want it?"
It was Danny's turn to look distracted. "Rosie, Rosie, ye'll drive me mad with yir questions! If I could tell you how they do, I would and gladly. But I can't. All I can tell you is they do."
"But, Danny, what sense has a thing like that got? 'They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat.' That's exactly like saying: It's winter and it's summer at the same time. It's not good sense to say a thing like that."
"Sense, Rosie?" Danny looked at her reproachfully. "It's not sense I'm talkin' about. It's not the logic of the ladies I'm impressin' on you, mind – it's their feelin's. I'm tellin' you the kind o' man every lady's on the lookout for – a fine brute of a fella that would as soon knock her down as look at her, and yet would never raise a finger against her."
Rosie's hands dropped limply into her lap. "Danny Agin, do you know sometimes I get so mixed up that I feel just like I was crazy! That's how I feel now."
Danny nodded sympathetically. "Small wonder, Rosie. 'They want to be beat, and they don't want to be beat.' I defy any man to say that over fifty times and not go mad! And what would you say, Rosie, to a poor man havin' to live, day in and day out, for forty years with an everlastin' conthradiction like that? Ah, Mary's a fine woman, but I tell you, Rosie, in all confidence, I've had me own troubles. Many's the time I've seen her just achin' for a good sound beatin', but, if ever I'd laid the tip o' me finger upon her, her heart would ha' broke, and she'd ha' felt the shame of it the longest day of her life. And they're all the same, Rosie; take me word for it, they're all the same. They want their menfolks to be lions, and they want them to be lambs."
Lions and lambs! Her mother's very words! Upon Rosie the light began to break. "Why, Danny!" she gasped.
"Take yir own case, Rosie dear. There's yir own da, a meek lamb of a man – "
"But, Danny, I like my father because he's so kind!"
"Whisht, now, darlint, and listen. Wouldn't it be fine if he was the size of that sthrappin' polisman, Pete Donovan, with the lump of a diamond in his shirt front as big as an egg, and a great black mustache coverin' the red lips of him, and a roar in his voice that'd send the b'ys a-scatterin' for blocks around!"
The figure evoked was certainly one of heroic proportions, and Rosie, as she gazed at it, involuntarily gave a little sigh.
Danny chuckled. "Ha, ha, Rosie! Ye're like the rest o' them!"
"No, I'm not, Danny Agin! Honest I'm not! I'm glad my father's kind. I wouldn't love him if he wasn't, and you needn't think I would!"
Rosie struggled hard to convince Danny, but in vain. The more she protested, the louder Danny chuckled.
"Only think, Rosie dear, the pride in yir heart, if this great brute of a man, rampin' about like a lion, tearin' to pieces everybody that stood in his way, in yir own prisence, wee bit of a woman that ye are, should turn into a tame lamb!"
"Oh, Danny!"
In spite of herself, Rosie faced the world with something of the conscious air of a lion-tamer. Danny's chuckle recalled her to herself, and she watched him with growing resentment, as he continued:
"You see, Rosie, it's this way: The worse brute a man is, the greater glory he brings to the woman that tames him. Rosie, me advice to any young man that is courtin' a girl is to roar – not to roar at her, mind, but at everybody else when she's within hearin'. What a fine feelin' it must give a girl to have a roarin' bull of a young fella come softly up to her and eat out of her hand! And think of the great game it is to keep him tame! Rosie, take me word for it, these here soft-spoken men like yir own poor da and like meself – I take shame to confess it – make a great mistake. Many's the time it had been better for me peace of mind afterward had I let out a roar just for appearances' sake. I see it now."
Danny wagged his head and sighed.
"It's lucky for you, Rosie, that you have me to tell you all this, for ye'd never hear it from the ladies themselves. They never let out a whisper about it, but carry on just like Janet and yir own ma. Ah, don't tell me! I know them! They's some kind of a mystic sisterhood among them – I dunno just what, and in some few things they never give each other away."
"Don't they, Danny?"
"They do not."
Rosie regarded the old man thoughtfully. One could see the very processes of a new idea slowly working in her mind. Danny watched her curiously. At length he asked: "Well, Rosie, what is it?"
Rosie paused impressively before answering: "I was just thinking, Danny Agin, that you're right about yourself, but you're making a great mistake about my father." Rosie nodded significantly. "He's not as quiet as you think he is, in spite of his quiet ways. Sometimes he's just awful."
For a moment Danny was taken in. "Why, Rosie, aren't you just afther tellin' me about the scar that wasn't there?"
"Yes, and I'm sorry now I told you." There was a gleam in Rosie's eye which declared very emphatically that the sequel to that story would never again be related. "Listen here, Danny Agin! Now I understand – if my mother made up something about that scar, it was just to hide something else that was worse!"
"Why, Rosie! Ye don't say so!" For a moment Danny looked at her in astonishment. Then he lay back with a wheezy guffaw. "Rosie, ye'll be the death o' me yet! I suppose if the truth was known, Jamie beats yir ma every night of her life to a black-and-blue jelly! Don't he now?"
Rosie covered herself with an air of distant reserve. "I'm not going to tell you what he does. That's a family matter. But I will say one thing: You think Terry's awful nice, don't you? Everybody does. But do you know what he'd do to me if I was to lose one of his paper customers? He'd just beat the puddin' out o' me – yes, he would!"
"Why, Rosie!" Danny looked shocked. "What's this ye're sayin'? I thought you and Terry were great friends."
"Great friends? Oh, yes, we're great friends all right. You can always be great friends with a fellow like Terry as long as you run your legs off for him. But just let something happen, and then – "
Rosie ended with a "Huh!" and shook her head gloomily.
Danny gasped. "You don't say so, Rosie!"
There was the sound of an opening screen, and Danny, knowing that his wife must be coming, with a wheezy chuckle called out:
"Mary, Mary, do ye know who's here? It's Rosie O'Brien, and she's one of ye! She's fallen into line!"
Mrs. Agin came out on the porch, and stood for a moment looking from Danny to Rosie. She was a tall, gaunt old woman with thick white hair and thick eyebrows, which were still dark. She gave one the impression of great tidiness and cleanliness, together with the possibility of that caustic speech which so often characterizes the good housekeeper.
Rosie appealed to her eagerly: "Mis' Agin, I think Danny's just awful!"
Mrs. Agin glanced sharply at Danny, and then, with a seemingly clairvoyant understanding that the subject under discussion related somehow to the eternal war of the sexes, she went over to Rosie's side at once.
"What's he been sayin' to you, dear?"
"He's making fun of me because I told him if I was to lose one of my paper customers, Terry would beat me. And he would, too!"
Mrs. Agin turned on Danny severely. "Take shame to yourself, Dan Agin, to be teasin' Rosie O'Brien!"
"And listen here, Mis' Agin," Rosie continued. "He's been sayin' just awful things about us!"
"About us, Rosie? Do you mean about both of us?"
"About all of us, Mis' Agin – us ladies."
Rosie sat up very straight and severe.
Danny seemed to think the situation amusing, but he was the only one who did. Mrs. Agin glared at him darkly.
"Dan Agin, what's this ye've been sayin' to Rosie?"
Danny continued to shake with silent mirth, so Rosie answered for him:
"He says what all of us ladies wants is this: We want to be beat, and we don't want to be beat. Now, isn't that the silliest thing you ever heard, Mis' Agin? And he says when we marry a brute of a man, we pretend that he's kind and nice, and when we marry a nice, kind man, we let on he's a brute."
"Dan Agin, what do ye mean, puttin' such nonsense into Rosie's head? Answer me that now!"
"And listen, Mis' Agin," Rosie went on. "Just because he's that kind of a man himself, he thinks everybody else is. And they're not! Every one thinks my father's so quiet and nice, but I guess I know him! Sometimes he's just awful! And Terry, too! But Danny here, he thinks they're every one of them just as harmless as he is. I guess he's so scared himself that that's the reason he tries to make out that other men are, too!"
Mrs. Agin glared at Danny a moment in silence. Then she spoke:
"Dan Agin, how dare ye go blastin' the reputation of decent men! There are others like ye, do ye say? There are not! There's not another woman in Ameriky that's stood what I've stood for forty years! Ah, many's the time it was just one black murtherin' look I was cravin' from ye to bear out me story that I had married a man, instead of a joke! And did ever I get it from ye, Dan Agin! I did not – bad cess to ye for a soft-hearted, good-for-nuthin' of a man that'd let a woman thrample ye in the dust if she wanted to! 'Twas yir luck that ye little deserved to marry a decent, quiet woman like meself!"
"Ye're right, Mary!" Danny murmured meekly. "Ye're a fine woman!"
"Hold yir tongue, Dan Agin, or, cripple that ye are, I'll be givin' you the lickin' that I've wanted to give you these forty years every time ye've let me have me own way when I oughtn't have had it!"
Rosie stood up to go. "I have one more paper to deliver, Mis' Agin, so I'll have to say good-bye. If Terry was to know that I stopped to talk before I had delivered all my papers, he'd beat me half to death."
Mrs. Agin smiled on her affectionately. "Good-bye, Rosie dear. And mind, now, if ever again Danny goes talkin' such nonsense, ye're to call me, and I'll soon settle him. Now run along, or that brute of a Terry'll be after you."
"Good-bye, Rosie," Danny called out, in a tone of hypocritical meekness that made Rosie's blood boil anew.
Rosie stopped and turned about to give him the look of scorn that he deserved.
"Danny Agin, you just ought to be ashamed o' yourself the way you treat poor Mis' Agin!"
"I am, Rosie," Danny gasped in a voice of mock tears exasperating beyond words.
CHAPTER XVII
ROSIE PROMISES TO BE GOOD
Rosie hurried away, furious at Danny, and furious also at her own father. Any man who puts his womenfolk to such shame ought to be choked! In spite of certain drawbacks, Janet McFadden's lot was happier than Mrs. Agin's, or than Rosie's own. At least no one ever called into question Dave McFadden's ability to govern his own household. This was so patent to the world at large that Janet could actually go about pretending that her father was a sentimental weakling. Happy, happy Janet!
It made Rosie shudder in self-disgust to think of the many damning admissions that she had made Janet. Well, at any rate, she would never again be caught. She had learned a thing or two since yesterday. Moreover, she would lose no time in setting Janet right. She would stop to see Janet now on her way home. That scar story would make Janet open her eyes! And Rosie would not foolishly situate it on a spot as easy of detection as her mother's right shoulder. Nev-er!
A woman who was sweeping the steps in front of the tenement where the McFaddens lived, made the friendly inquiry: "Lookin' for Janet?"
Rosie nodded.
"Better not go up," the woman advised. "Dave McFadden's just come in soused again."
Rosie paused.
"Is he beating Janet?"
"No, I don't think so. Janet knows pretty well how to take care of herself. Gee, you ought to see her dodge him! She's a wonder! He wouldn't ha' caught her last time if she hadn't slipped."
Rosie started on, and the woman called after her: "I tell you, you better not go up! Dave sure is out lookin' for trouble!"
The warning was a kindly one, but Rosie saw no reason for accepting it. The truth was that, in her present mood of resentment against the Danny Agins and Jamie O'Briens of life, she felt that it would be a relief to see a man who was confessedly out looking for trouble.
The McFaddens lived on the fourth floor back. Their door was open, so Rosie could hear that something was going on as she climbed the third flight of stairs. When she reached the top, her courage faltered. Had the McFadden door been closed, very probably she could not have forced herself to knock; but, as it was open, if she slipped along the dark hall quietly, she could take a peep inside before announcing herself.
"Daddy!" she heard cried out suddenly. It was Janet's voice. "My arm! You're hurting me! Please let go! I'll be good!"
"Arguin' with your own father, eh?" Dave's thick voice boomed and rumbled. "Well, I'll learn you a lesson!"