This Beats Hell by Dixie Willson Read online

  All-Story Weekly, January 31, 1920

  I

  and her fat sides heaving, met his startled gaze.

  HE second hour after night is a Sullenly straightening his hat, brushing

  queerish time. It really doesn’t seem to

  his clothes, and shifting his twisted coat-T be a time of itself at all, but just a cross shoulders, he sat down on the iron bench between has-been and will-be—a time which again.

  things elect, when they want to happen outside

  “I thot I’d never get clost enough to

  the sense of the world’s schedule hours. And it stop you!” she panted—righting her sad little looks even more of a rusty time than it is, turban and drawing her scraggy black shawl from the cold iron bench of a park in closer about her throat. “Darby it’s—it’s November. The nothingness of it trickles with against the law!”

  awful coldness down a spine, and, if pockets

  “Law nothin’!” replied Darby

  are empty, it trickles even more coldly disgustedly. “Law can’t keep nobody from through them and on down a pant leg—and it goin’ to hell when he’s ready. Next time, you makes cold feet—it makes cold feet!

  keep your hands off me.”

  Such an hour—entertaining such a

  “Mr. Michael Darby,” Amy Shores

  spirit in his back and through his pockets, did informed him—her returning breath

  Darby—find his feet cold.

  permitting a try at dignity. “Hell means

  The rear of the park gave into a high

  nothin’ to me, when you’re owin’ me eleven wall, beyond which lay tracks, freight-cars, dollars board-bill. You can clean the lady on wharves, boatmen’s shanties, and a sullen the top floor’s entire rugs to-morrow, and so river. The river was black and ugly, but life is on. When you get me paid up—do as you

  sometimes black and ugly too, and Darby felt like—but it’s against the law, plum against the that of two ugly things, the river—in which it law, Darby,” she finished in the tone of one took the least effort to be carried, was quite objecting to oysters in June, and seated herself the choice.

  beside him.

  But as his leg swung to take itself over

  Darby sniffed disgustedly. “Everything

  the wall riverward. it was frantically you ever set your eyes on is against the law,”

  clutched—his balance undone to the park side he said, “and incidently, I ain’t cleanin’ rugs again, and a near-three-hundred-pound woman for nobody. I see plenty o’ men have money with a shapeless hand at her panting throat, without cleanin’ rugs for it, and I’ve got as

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  good a right to have it as see it.”

  The picture provoked a mental parade of the The chill gray park, with the entire event till, in backward sequence, he November moan through its gaunt trees, hung visioned its beginning, and then—then he

  around them so sepulchrally that, after the laughed!

  moment of silence which Amy’s still

  Amy’s mightiest sob held itself on the

  struggling breath demanded—-neither found rise. Her chin came up—and her lips

  voice to speak again. They were very much tightened, as she faced him.

  alone.

  “You—you poor Scandinavian,” she

  Far down a dead-leaf path, one pale

  blubbered. “You—you poor I mean Irishman.

  street light made cold thin shadows. The bare Are you laughing at me? You—you—”

  ground, the bare sky, the dank, raw air—made Something in her manner entirely

  hopelessness out of everything, and presently changed the spirit of the scene for Darby, and Amy began to feel cold feet, too. She spread inspired a new pep in him, somehow, that

  one hand over her eyes and nose and began to brought his shoulders up smartly as he met her snivel softly into it. Behind the wall the river indignant gaze.

  breathed coldly against the wharf posts.

  “I was thinking of you getting over the

  Coldly, yes, but after all.

  wall,” he said.

  Amy’s snivel grew into a little wail,

  For a moment she looked at him with scorn.

  but Darby, slouching heedlessly beside her, Then out on the river a wailing two-toned boat paid no attention.

  whistle began to mourn. Simultaneously, a sad

  “D-D-Darby,” her choking voice came

  little drizzle added itself to the dismal scene, at last, “I—I—guess you’re right. Hell’s the and line by line—the haughteur of Amy’s face easiest. Let’s you and me just— You think it fell into tragedy—the sobs began again—and would be hell?” she interrupted herself a bit heaving to her feet, she turned her face

  anxiously.

  skyward. Her shapeless straw turban slipped

  “Speakin’ for me—yes,” he answered

  as far as her rear belt buckle where it clung by shortly.

  a leaf—her dull old skirt moved forlornly in

  “Well,” she took up again in a the raw wind, and the black shawl pitifully hopeless tone, “we reapeth as we soweth. and scant, pinned close to her neck, made her face I don’t deserve no better ‘n others—but the seem very white—very living-and-dying

  stewing veal on the cheapest corner of the white.

  market was twenty-two cents to-day, and four

  “Oh, death,” she cried, her voice sharp

  rooms empty, winter comin’ on—and me with despair that had long struggled against takin’ on more size constant. I wouldn’t never itself. “You can’t sting me no worse than life.

  have the heart by myself—but with a strong I guess I choose you after all.”

  man at my side—”

  Her face brought Darby to his feet—

  But the thought proved greater than the

  brought him where he could see beyond the spirit, and with the sudden coming of a raw dead November park—to the living light at the wind from the river. Amy broke—her chin

  gate of it—made him feel a thing he had long dropped itself on her heaving bosom, and her forgotten—that he was a living man in a living shoulders shook with sobs.

  world—as big a man as ever made a million—

  Darby shivered, put his raw-boned a man bigger than any circumstance that ever hands in his pockets, and absent-mindedly dared construct itself!

  framed the picture of his bony lankiness, and And then over that feeling—flooded another.

  Amy’s short bulkiness going down together.

  A strange one, to him. One no less human, but

  This Beats Hell

  3

  quite unprecedented. A tender, gentle surging just too late to see her! She was gone! Kind, thought for the tear-stained white face before sweet, Amy! The only soul on earth who’d

  him. A forgetfulness of Amy Shores’s ever cared whether his head ached and his superfluous bulk—in remembrance of her stomach went empty or not. And he’d laughed fingers once upon a time bandaging his broken at her! Laughed at her!

  wrist—of her voice singing the neighbor’s

  “Amy—” he cried brokenly. “Forgive

  baby to sleep—her care with the darn on his me, Amy. I can’t get along without you—”

  coat-sleeve—his warm coat and her thin

  The river wind shoved him against the

  one—her thin skirt—her poor hat—her ragged rail, and he clung there like a rag in a storm—

  shawl—panting, achingly, out in the night to staring down the black wharf. After a while a save him.

  stern hand touched his
shoulder.

  And he’d laughed at her! He’d

  “Come along,” came an officer’s

  laughed! What, for a yellow dog was he voice. “No loafing here. Come along with anyway! What did he have for a soul in his me—so I can be sure you keep moving.”

  worthless skin!

  So Michael Darby went back through

  But when he’d got all hold of himself,

  the park, and past the light and into the town again, and his human eyes came back to where again, but all the while he kept thinking how Amy’s white face had been—she wasn’t pretty and pink Amy’s cheeks had looked on there! With the determination born of her birthday, when the ice-man had dared him anguish—she’d reached up on the bench—and to kiss her.

  up on the wall—and down on a truck and all alone—quite without the “strong man beside,”

  II.

  she’d got to the ground on the other side, and she’d gone through the freights—and across The next morning was the beginning of the the tracks, and, when Darby, with an third half of Michael Darby’s life. The first exclamation of alarm, sprang over the wall half had been the years from nothing to

  after her —she was past the shanties, and at twenty-four—when nobody could say for a

  the water’s edge!

  fact that Darby would never amount to

  “Amy!” he cried sharply. “Wait! What

  anything. The second half—the years from

  you doin’! Wait!”

  twenty-four to thirty-five, when everybody But she waited for nothing! Up on the

  knew—and so did Darby, that he was

  wharf she climbed, and without a backward worthless, which two halves ended in his

  glance—hurried down the water-washed decision for hell on the certain gray night in length of it.

  November.

  “Amy!” begged Darby frantically—as

  Then began the third half—which did

  he plunged after her. “Wait!”

  as a third half of anything would be bound to But his cry, unanswered, echoed do—disproved everybody’s conjectures-even mockingly along the cold shore, while Amy, Michael Darby’s.

  well out now, planned calmly enough that she His bed in the station served him

  wouldn’t jump—she’d just slip in “easy.”

  acceptably. Since he knew he really hadn’t So when she came to the end. she sat

  done himself to it—it was a kindness of the down on the wharf’s edge—a little side-wise, state to him, rather than a safeguard a gainst so that one foot dangled in—and a pleasantly him—and in a big new spirit of going to live gentle wave folded over it.

  and do and be, he knew that such a care for Darby leaped up the wharf steps—but

  such a man as himself was quite due, and so,

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  whereas the night before it would have stung he saw should be for a man to beat rugs—and him as making him a man cursed with a right and proper, as a crowning of his new keeper—it now warmed him, as making him a spirit, that he should hurry to the address, man blessed with a host.

  really hoping for the privilege.

  In the morning his straight shoulders,

  And all day long, Michael Darby beat

  keen eyes, and quiet manner, offset his rugs. But he wasn’t Darby beating rugs at all.

  rumpled clothes to such an extent that his He was a man making good. A man

  man’s apology to the judge for having had to exchanging ability for capital. A man who was take advantage of a public shelter, was going to pay for his dinner, and have his shoes received with a man’s reassurance—and shined, and hunt up a room to own, and never Michael Darby went out into the good air, and take a newspaper out of a street-box again as saw the world before him.

  long as he lived!

  And Amy? He couldn’t sense her—

  gone. He sensed just that the new man he was, III.

  was her doing—not his. It seemed as though this new determination was a trust to her—an AND all those things he did—and then, in the answering act to her anxiety for him of the quiet of the bare little room, came Amy’s night before.

  voice—shone her laughing eyes—soothed her She’d saved him, and now he must

  gentle fingers—blushed her cheeks at mention prove to her that her effort had been worth of the ice-man, and over Darby surged such a while!

  wish that it were true—that he had to leave the Then came thoughts that she’d lost her

  house and go for a walk to try and put his self for him. Lost her courage to his account.

  thoughts behind him.

  Came thoughts that through the dark halls of Still, through it all, she seemed more to the old brick boarding-house, her voice have come, than gone. When he finally went wouldn’t be singing: “Just a Song at Twilight”

  back to bed, it was with tender care that he any more—that all the dirty little children hung his coat over the chair. Amy’s darn was cramming around the big old wicker chair for in the sleeve of it! With smooth precision, he an evening story—would just wait, and wait.

  put his tie in the top drawer. She had pressed But someway—that couldn’t seem to be. It

  it! And when he took a hot bath, and got

  didn’t seem that, that chilly, gray, wailing between the two sheets he had paid for—he hour could have been at all—coming like that, found a humble satisfaction in being sure that and taking Amy away with it, and leaving

  somehow she knew what this twenty-four

  such a new Michael Darby behind it!

  hours had done for him.

  Well—he’d buy a paper, and see. But

  For a week Darby beat rugs. For three

  at the news-stand, he remembered his pockets weeks he loaded sawdust. For a month he

  and so turned, instead, to a high tin street-box, moved freight, and then he took the

  which every morning found full of discarded night-watchman’s place in “The Harding

  news sheets. He selected one—and opened it, Lithograph Company.” where posters were

  but from all over the page Amy’s visioned supplied for bill-boards all over the world.

  face looked at him—and he couldn’t read a So Darby passed into a salary. He had

  thing. Hastily he turned it over, blinked the thirty dollars a week. But he had more money thoughts out of his eyes until he could see than he wanted—more than was comfortable.

  again, and then hunted for “job ads.”

  And the reason thirty dollars a week was more It seemed right and proper that the first than was comfortable, was because every cent

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  5

  of it stung him with a memory of Amy as he cut out Amy’s dimpling face, and framed it—

  had seen her last—her thin shawl—her poor haloed it—in gold.

  shirt—her white face—giving up the sunshine The next day, the janitor, cleaning up,

  of the world because stewing veal was twenty-carried the rest of the picture out in his waste-two cents—and because Darby wouldn’t lift a basket, and the next night, as Darby sat

  hand to pay her eleven dollars board—and

  cleaning his light—came a rap at his office he’d laughed at her!

  door.

  That

  was

  one thought of Amy and the

  Surprised, he opened, to a jauntily-

  thirty dollars a week, but always hand in hand dressed gentleman with a blond mustache,

  with that, was another. The thought of Amy, plaid socks, and a walking stick—who

  as pretty and fresh and sweet as any lady in promptly came in past Darby, took the only the land, waiting with a smile for his home-chair—and made himself at home.

  coming—minding his little needs with

  Then from his pocket he produced the

  tenderness—and then, after a while he was lower half of the sna
p-shot of Amy—of which bound to understand that he’d loved Amy Darby promptly relieved him. The man Shores better than any of the world, or all of laughed.

  it—that the world, in fact, was merely a

  “Touchy, eh!” he remarked. “Well, I

  working machine without her—that the just thought you might know the lady.”

  manhood suddenly sprung up within him, had Darby’s eyes narrowed, but he said

  been just an intuition to do for Amy, and be nothing, and the man, flecking patent toe, with for Amy—that it was love for her that had mahogany stick, went on.

  come when she had gone, and had made her

  “My name’s Chapin,” he announced.

  seem so close to him then.

  “I’ve been connected with this paper firm, On that same birthday, that same buying bill-posters for ten years, and I called iceman had taken a snap-shot of her in her around to-day to stock for the new season, and sunny back door. Darby had it in his pocket, the janitor—friend of mine who knows where and one Saturday night, at the desk in his little my interests are—saved me this half of a

  office, he found courage to take it out and scene from your waste-basket, thinking you’d look at it.

  know the lady’s address, and for a reasonable There had been a time when Darby had

  price would put me hip. Needn’t get mad,

  been so little of a man—that he’d let tears Pard. All fair and honest you know. Just

  come to his eyes once, about something—but helping a man find somebody he’s looking

  he had the mind to be ashamed, and get them for!”

  out. Now he was so much of a man—that tears Darby, having nothing to say, did the

  came, and came and ran all down his rough unusual thing under those circumstances—

  cheeks, and down his chin—and made little said nothing, and presently the man put his water blisters all over the picture in his question again.