The Guilty Party - An East Side Tragedy

by O. Henry

　　

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A Red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sat in a rocking chair by awindow. He had just lighted a pipe, and was puffing blue clouds withgreat satisfaction. He had removed his shoes and donned a pair ofblue, faded carpet-slippers. With the morbid thirst of the confirmeddaily news drinker, he awkwardly folded back the pages of an eveningpaper, eagerly gulping down the strong, black headlines, to befollowed as a chaser by the milder details of the smaller type. In an adjoining room a woman was cooking supper. Odors from strongbacon and boiling coffee contended against the cut-plug fumes fromthe vespertine pipe. Outside was one of those crowded streets of the east side, in which,as twilight falls, Satan sets up his recruiting office. A mightyhost of children danced and ran and played in the street. Some inrags, some in clean white and beribboned, some wild and restless asyoung hawks, some gentle-faced and shrinking, some shrieking rudeand sinful words, some listening, awed, but soon, grown familiar,to embrace--here were the children playing in the corridors of theHouse of Sin. Above the playground forever hovered a great bird. Thebird was known to humorists as the stork. But the people of Chrystiestreet were better ornithologists. They called it a vulture. A little girl of twelve came up timidly to the man reading andresting by the window, and said: "Papa, won't you play a game of checkers with me if you aren't tootired?" The red-haired, unshaven, untidy man sitting shoeless by the windowanswered, with a frown. "Checkers. No, I won't. Can't a man who works hard all day have alittle rest when he comes home? Why don't you go out and play withthe other kids on the sidewalk?" The woman who was cooking came to the door. "John," she said, "I don't like for Lizzie to play in the street.They learn too much there that ain't good for 'em. She's been in thehouse all day long. It seems that you might give up a little of yourtime to amuse her when you come home." "Let her go out and play like the rest of 'em if she wants to beamused," said the red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, "and don'tbother me." * * * * * * * "You're on," said Kid Mullaly. "Fifty dollars to $25 I take Annie tothe dance. Put up." The Kid's black eyes were snapping with the fire of the baited andchallenged. He drew out his "roll" and slapped five tens upon thebar. The three or four young fellows who were thus "taken" moreslowly produced their stake. The bartender, ex-officio stakeholder,took the money, laboriously wrapped it, recorded the bet with aninch-long pencil and stuffed the whole into a corner of the cashregister. "And, oh, what'll be done to you'll be a plenty," said a bettor,with anticipatory glee. "That's my lookout," said the "Kid," sternly. "Fill 'em up allaround, Mike." After the round Burke, the "Kid's" sponge, sponge-holder, pal,Mentor and Grand Vizier, drew him out to the bootblack stand at thesaloon corner where all the official and important matters of theSmall Hours Social Club were settled. As Tony polished the light tanshoes of the club's President and Secretary for the fifth time thatday, Burke spake words of wisdom to his chief. "Cut that blond out, 'Kid,'" was his advice, "or there'll betrouble. What do you want to throw down that girl of yours for?You'll never find one that'll freeze to you like Liz has. She'sworth a hallful of Annies." "I'm no Annie admirer!" said the "Kid," dropping a cigarette ashon his polished toe, and wiping it off on Tony's shoulder. "But Iwant to teach Liz a lesson. She thinks I belong to her. She's beenbragging that I daren't speak to another girl. Liz is all right--insome ways. She's drinking a little too much lately. And she useslanguage that a lady oughtn't." "You're engaged, ain't you?" asked Burke. "Sure. We'll get married next year, maybe." "I saw you make her drink her first glass of beer," said Burke."That was two years ago, when she used to came down to the corner ofChrystie bare-headed to meet you after supper. She was a quiet sortof a kid then, and couldn't speak without blushing." "She's a little spitfire, sometimes, now," said the Kid. "I hatejealousy. That's why I'm going to the dance with Annie. It'll teachher some sense." "Well, you better look a little out," were Burke's last words. "IfLiz was my girl and I was to sneak out to a dance coupled up with anAnnie, I'd want a suit of chain armor on under my gladsome rags, allright." Through the land of the stork-vulture wandered Liz. Her black eyessearched the passing crowds fierily but vaguely. Now and then shehummed bars of foolish little songs. Between times she set hersmall, white teeth together, and spake crisp words that the eastside has added to language. Liz's skirt was green silk. Her waist was a large brown-and-pinkplaid, well-fitting and not without style. She wore a cluster ringof huge imitation rubies, and a locket that banged her knees at thebottom of a silver chain. Her shoes were run down over twisted highheels, and were strangers to polish. Her hat would scarcely havepassed into a flour barrel. The "Family Entrance" of the Blue Jay Cafe received her. At a tableshe sat, and punched the button with the air of milady ringing forher carriage. The waiter came with his large-chinned, low-voicedmanner of respectful familiarity. Liz smoothed her silken skirt witha satisfied wriggle. She made the most of it. Here she could orderand be waited upon. It was all that her world offered her of theprerogative of woman. "Whiskey, Tommy," she said as her sisters further uptown murmur,"Champagne, James." "Sure, Miss Lizzie. What'll the chaser be?" "Seltzer. And say, Tommy, has the Kid been around to-day?" "Why, no, Miss Lizzie, I haven't saw him to-day." Fluently came the "Miss Lizzie," for the Kid was known to be one whorequired rigid upholdment of the dignity of his fiancee. "I'm lookin' for 'm," said Liz, after the chaser had sputtered underher nose. "It's got to me that he says he'll take Annie Karlson tothe dance. Let him. The pink-eyed white rat! I'm lookin' for 'm. Youknow me, Tommy. Two years me and the Kid's been engaged. Look atthat ring. Five hundred, he said it cost. Let him take her to thedance. What'll I do? I'll cut his heart out. Another whiskey,Tommy." "I wouldn't listen to no such reports, Miss Lizzie," said the waitersmoothly, from the narrow opening above his chin. "Kid Mullaly's notthe guy to throw a lady like you down. Seltzer on the side?" "Two years," repeated Liz, softening a little to sentiment underthe magic of the distiller's art. "I always used to play out on thestreet of evenin's 'cause there was nothin' doin' for me at home.For a long time I just sat on doorsteps and looked at the lightsand the people goin' by. And then the Kid came along one evenin'and sized me up, and I was mashed on the spot for fair. The firstdrink he made me take I cried all night at home, and got a lickin'for makin' a noise. And now--say, Tommy, you ever see this AnnieKarlson? If it wasn't for peroxide the chloroform limit would haveput her out long ago. Oh, I'm lookin' for 'm. You tell the Kid ifhe comes in. Me? I'll cut his heart out. Leave it to me. Anotherwhiskey, Tommy." A little unsteadily, but with watchful and brilliant eyes, Lizwalked up the avenue. On the doorstep of a brick tenement acurly-haired child sat, puzzling over the convolutions of a tangledstring. Liz flopped down beside her, with a crooked, shifting smileon her flushed face. But her eyes had grown clear and artless of asudden. "Let me show you how to make a cat's-cradle, kid," she said, tuckingher green silk skirt under her rusty shoes. And while they sat there the lights were being turned on for thedance in the hall of the Small Hours Social Club. It was thebi-monthly dance, a dress affair in which the members took greatpride and bestirred themselves huskily to further and adorn. At 9 o'clock the President, Kid Mullaly, paced upon the floor with alady on his arm. As the Loreley's was her hair golden. Her "yes" wassoftened to a "yah," but its quality of assent was patent to themost Milesian ears. She stepped upon her own train and blushed,and--she smiled into the eyes of Kid Mullaly. And then, as the two stood in the middle of the waxed floor, thething happened to prevent which many lamps are burning nightly inmany studies and libraries. Out from the circle of spectators in the hall leaped Fate in a greensilk skirt, under the _nom de guerre_ of "Liz." Her eyes were hardand blacker than jet. She did not scream or waver. Most unwomanly,she cried out one oath--the Kid's own favorite oath--and in hisown deep voice; and then while the Small Hours Social Club wentfrantically to pieces, she made good her boast to Tommy, thewaiter--made good as far as the length of her knife blade and thestrength of her arm permitted. And next came the primal instinct of self-preservation--or was itself-annihilation, the instinct that society has grafted on thenatural branch? Liz ran out and down the street swift and true as a woodcock flyingthrough a grove of saplings at dusk. And then followed the big city's biggest shame, its most ancientand rotten surviving canker, its pollution and disgrace, its blightand perversion, its forever infamy and guilt, fostered, unreprovedand cherished, handed down from a long-ago century of the basestbarbarity--the Hue and Cry. Nowhere but in the big cities does itsurvive, and here most of all, where the ultimate perfection ofculture, citizenship and alleged superiority joins, bawling, in thechase. They pursued--a shrieking mob of fathers, mothers, lovers andmaidens--howling, yelling, calling, whistling, crying for blood.Well may the wolf in the big city stand outside the door. Well mayhis heart, the gentler, falter at the siege. Knowing her way, and hungry for her surcease, she darted down thefamiliar ways until at last her feet struck the dull solidity of therotting pier. And then it was but a few more panting steps--and goodmother East River took Liz to her bosom, soothed her muddily butquickly, and settled in five minutes the problem that keeps lightsburning o' nights in thousands of pastorates and colleges. * * * * * * * It's mighty funny what kind of dreams one has sometimes. Poets callthem visions, but a vision is only a dream in blank verse. I dreamedthe rest of this story. I thought I was in the next world. I don't know how I got there; Isuppose I had been riding on the Ninth avenue elevated or takingpatent medicine or trying to pull Jim Jeffries's nose, or doing somesuch little injudicious stunt. But, anyhow, there I was, and therewas a great crowd of us outside the courtroom where the judgmentswere going on. And every now and then a very beautiful and imposingcourt-officer angel would come outside the door and call anothercase. While I was considering my own worldly sins and wondering whetherthere would be any use of my trying to prove an alibi by claimingthat I lived in New Jersey, the bailiff angel came to the door andsang out: "Case No. 99,852,743." Up stepped a plain-clothes man--there were lots of 'em there,dressed exactly like preachers and hustling us spirits around justlike cops do on earth--and by the arm he dragged--whom, do youthink? Why, Liz! The court officer took her inside and closed the door. I went up toMr. Fly-Cop and inquired about the case. "A very sad one," says he, laying the points of his manicuredfingers together. "An utterly incorrigible girl. I am SpecialTerrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones. The case was assigned tome. The girl murdered her fiance and committed suicide. She had nodefense. My report to the court relates the facts in detail, all ofwhich are substantiated by reliable witnesses. The wages of sin isdeath. Praise the Lord." The court officer opened the door and stepped out. "Poor girl," said Special Terrestrial Officer the Reverend Jones,with a tear in his eye. "It was one of the saddest cases that I evermet with. Of course she was"-- "Discharged," said the court officer. "Come here, Jonesy. Firstthing you know you'll be switched to the pot-pie squad. Howwould you like to be on the missionary force in the South SeaIslands--hey? Now, you quit making these false arrests, or you'llbe transferred--see? The guilty party you've not to look for inthis case is a red-haired, unshaven, untidy man, sitting by thewindow reading, in his stocking feet, while his children play inthe streets. Get a move on you." Now, wasn't that a silly dream?

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