Shanty Irish (15 page)

V
IRGINIA
was more gypsy at heart than Irish. Her complexion was dark. Her eyes were a sad and misty blue.

Her new home in Chicago was a rendezvous for beggars. When she was not working or looking for work, she spent hours talking soothingly to bill collectors at the front door, and letting in beggars at the rear.

Her furniture was always bought on the installment plan. It was, whenever possible, of some design that could be turned into a bed by night. By morning all available sleeping places would be occupied. Homeless birds often slept upon the floor.

Virginia slept in a large Morris chair that opened like a jack-knife to form a cot.

She was short, quick and decisive of movement, and pensive. Her hair was chestnut and very long. At thirty, and in spite of having inherited the strength of many peasant ancestors, she was a physical wreck.

In time, after many, many days, she generally paid all her bills. If a collector were too stern, she would pawn another article, for which she had not yet paid. With the money obtained she would hold off the irate collector.

“I'd buy the sun for a candle if I could get it for fifty cents down,” she used to say.

When desperately needing money for her many charities and bill collectors, she paid sixty dollars cash for a police dog puppy. All things were abused in this world, according to Virginia. She thought she saw a sad expression in the dog's eyes. She pawned a diamond ring, for which she had not paid, and bought the dog.

She wanted me to name the combination tiger and coyote, so I called him Jurgen.

Virginia knew the history of the gay pawnbroker.

“My brother, Jim, named him,” she would often tell her gathering of derelicts.

The dog grew into a neighborhood terror.

No one could go near him except Virginia. She contended that he was really a gentle and misunderstood animal.

“Good Heavens,” I once said to her, “why didn't you get a machine gun.”

“I will when they sell them on time,” she replied, with a smile.

Jurgen bit so many people that she was forced to move to another neighborhood.

He soon bit the lady who owned the new apartment.

The lady sued Virginia, and sought to prove that Jurgen had rabies. Virginia was forced to have the animal tested in a hospital. Not able to move right away, she sought to convince the bitten lady that Jurgen had died. It cost twenty-five dollars a week for Jurgen's hospital fees. Unable to bear the expense longer, she finally smuggled him up the back stairs one bitterly cold night. Ever afterward she kept him locked in a back bedroom.

Having won forty dollars at the races, she bought an expensive new hat. It was a dashing creation. She wore it home, where all the stray people admired it. She had actually paid twenty dollars down.

She laid it gently on the bed in the back room. She found a small feather and a smile on the face of Jurgen next morning.

As the dog grew older he became more set in his opinions.

One spring morning a colored ice man came up the back stairs. A large cake of ice was thrown across his shoulders. Jurgen jumped through a screen window at him. The negro swung the ice tongs in an agony of fear. They caught Jurgen under the throat. He went hurtling down five flights to his death. For fear the landlady would see him, Virginia gave Jurgen's assassin ten dollars to take his body away. She cried for several days over her misunderstood companion's sad end.

The people whom she sheltered often stole trifles from one another. They also stole from their hostess. She did not scold, but blamed herself for not locking things up securely. Often she would leave her apartment “on business.” It consisted in walking rapidly to the park and watching children play. She loved grace in every variety. Never having learned to skate as a child, she would stand for an hour and watch boys and girls whirl about on the ice, their many colored mufflers swinging in wide circles as they skated.

After Virginia had worked for several months as a cashier in a cheap restaurant she decided to buy a vacant lot. The price was fifteen hundred dollars. Her salary was ten dollars a week. Immediately her mind was flooded with visions of wealth. “Russell Sage made a million in real estate,” she would often say. She paid three hundred dollars at different periods on the lot. She sold her interest for a hundred dollars in order to pay Jurgen's hospital bill.

Grieved over the brute's death, she went to a town adjacent to Chicago and started a small lingerie store. Like her grandfather, Old Hughie Tully, she knew linens and laces at a glance. She stocked her store with articles of fine quality. She charged working girls exorbitant prices for them. The girls, in turn, bought on the installment plan. They failed to pay. In six months the would-be merchant was nearly penniless in Chicago again.

She carried about with her for years an iron statue of a gypsy. He was dressed in green trousers and red blouse. He poked at a fire with an iron rod. A red electric globe was concealed in an iron brush. Each night Virginia would turn all the lights out in the room, save the red flare under the gypsy. Often she would sit alone and gaze at the gypsy. She had never gone to school over two years in all. Her favorite reading were the great Russian realists. She could not spell three words in succession. In conversation she had poise and an instinctive ability to pronounce words correctly, or at least find simpler words with which to express herself.

The mystical sadness of her mother was ever with her.

She remained always a Catholic. When I tried to get behind her belief, to probe to the limit of her faith, she would always say:

“Well—it's a good show. It rests me, and I feel better when I go to church. Even if in the end I find out I'm wrong I'd still think it was wiser to kid myself.”

She had many shabby love affairs. A tawdry array of men marched in and out of her heart. Each went his way, and left her stupefied for the next romance. At thirty-eight she said, “The prints of their shoes are all in my heart—” and then with a little gesture of defiance. “But I should give a damn.”

T
HERE
was a young Irishman who found his way to Virginia's rendezvous.

He was stooped and cadaverous. He coughed and chewed gum. He continually rubbed a chin upon which hair would not grow. His face was long, pallor intense, his mouth drooped. He was slithery and gaunt with a lazy heart and an alert mind—when linen was discussed.

His father had been a linen mill superintendent in Belfast. His grandfather had worked in the same mill. His life had been devoted to the same commodity.

He sold linen over a counter at a large department store.

Each night he would talk to Virginia about linen. He would laugh at the ignorance of the American people concerning it.

Whenever a piece of linen had been mislaid with no price tag, it was handed to Dunning. He would touch it with a wet thumb and forefinger, holding his chewing gum firmly between his teeth as he did so, as though long propinquity had made him contemptuous.

The linen which Dunning wore was always slightly soiled and in disarray.

He seldom talked to any one except Virginia. Each night regularly at nine he would prepare for bed. Before stretching out his long frame he would cough and say his prayers. He would then lie upon the bed, his hands folded across his chest like a gaunt Irish corpse ready for burial.

Morning would streak across his grisly bed and find him in the same position.

He would look at the yellow splotches on the faded red wall, then at the rough bricks of another building a few feet from his window—then rise and say his prayers.

Linen was the finest thing in life to Dunning. He gauged all things accordingly.

The owner of the store had “a cotton soul.”

He became attached to Virginia—their love of linen being a common ground.

Dunning would get drunk every Saturday night. He would remain nearly unconscious in his room until time for late Mass on Sunday morning. He would then get ready for church with the same precision that he would sell a linen table cloth. In rainy, snowy or zero weather, he would walk down the Boulevard while the church bell tolled solemnly and slowly as if keeping time with his steps.

On Sunday evening he would often sit with Virginia in the living room and drink black coffee, with only the red light glowing under the iron gypsy.

Into these sessions there came from out of Ohio, one of the most beautiful of young women.

She had left her home at seventeen to travel with a cheap carnival company. Within a year she was known as the most beautiful girl in the Follies.

Her hair was dark, her eyes hazel, her features like those on a rare Grecian coin.

Newsboys on crowded city streets would stop to look at her.

Still a virgin, she came to Chicago when the company went on tour. She met a millionaire whom she learned to love, and to whom she surrendered after many months.

He cracked her life to pieces as a bullet would a delicate piece of pottery. She lived with him for a year, on the North Shore. Allowed fifty thousand dollars a year to spend, she was hated by her lover's shrew mother, and was at last abandoned by him.

Alone, she faced the wretched monotony of the dreary days.

By one of those accidents, which Virginia always considered a miracle, the girl found her way to her strange rendezvous.

Virginia was standing at her front door, when the girl passed on her way to look at a room on the floor above.

My mother's daughter was never quite of the city. She greeted the girl warmly.

The driving snow flurried down Washington Boulevard like feathers in a canyon gale. The girl, with the débris of her life in her eyes, told Virginia her errand.

Within a short time all arrangements were made for the girl to live with Virginia.

Deep in her heart my sister was of the opinion that all men were hyenas. She encouraged the girl to bring suit against the millionaire for one hundred thousand dollars.

The leading lawyer in Chicago was engaged.

In this way one of the most famous breach of promise suits in America was filed, from the rendezvous for beggars.

The girl's photograph adorned the front pages of the leading American newspapers.

A year passed. The girl hardly left the apartment. She sat as one bereft of life and hope. A beautiful fragment, she longed for motherhood and recoiled from men.

Her wealthy ex-lover was forced to pay twenty-five thousand dollars. Her share was sixteen thousand. She left the apartment as suddenly as she came.

Other derelicts abused the girl and accused her of the common failing of all mankind—ingratitude.

Virginia's comment was, “I did nothing for her—it made me happy.”

When the money was gone she returned destitute to Virginia. She was gladly welcomed. All were instructed to be especially kind to her.

And now with Virginia and the cadaverous linen seller, she gazed at the iron gypsy and his make-believe fire.…

The snow covered everything. From an alcove window Virginia gazed for a moment down the white boulevard.

“Isn't it beautiful?” she asked. “It reminds me of Grandad Tully's description of bleaching linen in Ireland.”

She turned from the window. “He was like you, Dunning—

“He would talk by the hour about linen. I remember as a little girl he told me that people first learned to weave linen by watching birds build their nests. He told me how flax grew in fields like wheat—and how it was pulled up by the roots—a handful at a time.

“He said that linen cloth buried in tombs for thousands of years has been taken out good as new.”

“That's true,” said the linen salesman. “I've seen it stand washing and ironing.”

The girl from the Follies looked more beautiful than ever in the dim light. She toyed with a small lace embroidered linen handkerchief.

“Gee—I love linen and silk,” she said slowly. “I couldn't live without them.”

The linen salesman looked at her with more interest.

An ambassador had fallen in love with her in New York.

She had told Virginia the story.

Feeling that the bird was captured, he furnished a beautiful cage for it.

The girl would not allow the naïve diplomat to touch her.

Dismayed at the strangeness of men, she left the apartment.

“Mr. ——could have bought you a ton of linen,” Virginia said quickly.

The girl cupped her chin in a slender hand.

“I know—but I'd rather have cotton with some one I loved.” She looked demurely at the Irish seller of linen,—and continued:

“I'm just made different, I guess, it may be a funny way to be made—but I can't help it.”

The linen salesman took a stick of chewing gum from his vest pocket.

Virginia looked from one to the other.

She then went to the kitchen to prepare coffee.

The salesman moved closer to the girl.

“You're the kind of a girl I like,” he finally commented, “one that's honest and true.” He looked at her admiringly.

“Do you go to church?” he asked.

“Every Sunday—except in Lent—then I go three times a week,” the girl replied.

“That's fine,” was the rejoinder—“no woman ever went very far without religion.”

“My mother always told me that—she used to say that if a girl walked with God the devil would never follow.”

Silent moments passed.

Virginia returned with the coffee.

The linen salesman had a method of cheating his employers.

He stole several hundred dollars each week.

If a lady bought a hundred dollar linen table cloth Dunning would steal the receipt when it came from the wrapper.

He would steal a similar cloth the same day.

In a few days it would be brought to the refund desk by a confederate. That gentleman or lady would leave with a hundred dollars.

In time Dunning had saved five thousand. It was his intention to start an exclusive linen store.

In this he was frustrated. His employers, recognizing merit, sent him to Brussels as a linen buyer at twelve thousand a year.

He left with the girl from the Follies.