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THE WOMAN GIVES


      *      *      *      *      *      *

   By the Same Author

   _Lawrenceville Stories_

   THE PRODIGIOUS HICKEY
   THE VARMINT
   THE TENNESSEE SHAD

   THE SPIRIT OF FRANCE
   THE WOMAN GIVES

      *      *      *      *      *      *


[Illustration: In the subdued torment on his face there was a
sudden flickering passage of absolute terror. FRONTISPIECE. _See
page 175._]


THE WOMAN GIVES

A Story of Regeneration

by

OWEN JOHNSON

With Illustrations by Howard Chandler Christy







[Illustration]

Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1916

Copyright, 1916,
By Owen Johnson.

All rights reserved

Published, September, 1916

The Colonial Press
C.H. Simonds Co., Boston, U. S. A.




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

  IN THE SUBDUED TORMENT ON HIS FACE THERE
      WAS A SUDDEN FLICKERING PASSAGE OF
      ABSOLUTE TERROR                                _Frontispiece_

  IT NEVER OCCURRED TO KING O’LEARY TO
    ASK WHAT SHE INTENDED TO DO                           _Page_ 69

  “FRIENDSHIP!” SHE SAID SCORNFULLY, WITH
      A QUICK BREATH, “A LOT OF FRIENDSHIP
      THERE WAS IN THAT!”                                   “   109

  “THERE!” HE GAVE THEM A SIGNAL, AND
      STOOD OFF GRINNING, HIS HEAD ON ONE
      SIDE, CONTEMPLATIVELY, AS THEY
      CROWDED ABOUT THE COMPOSITION                         “   149

  THEN SHE DELIBERATELY TORE IT INTO PIECES                 “   276

  “MY HAT AND MY CANE!” EXCLAIMED “THE
      BARON”                                                “   316




THE WOMAN GIVES


Teagan’s Arcade stood, and in the slow upward progress of the city
it may still stand, at that intersection of Broadway and Columbus
Avenue, where the grumbling subway and the roaring elevated meet
at Lincoln Square. It covered a block, bisected by an arcade and
rising six capacious stories in the form of an enormous H. On
Broadway, the glass front was given over to shops and offices of
all descriptions, while in the back stretches of the top stories,
artists, sculptors, students, and illustrators had their studios
alongside of mediums, dentists, curious business offices, and
derelicts of all description.

The square was a churning meeting of contending human tides. The
Italians had installed their fruit shops and their groceries; the
French their florists and their delicatessen shops; the Jews their
clothing bazaars; the Germans their jewelers and their shoe stores;
the Irish their saloons and their restaurants, while from Healy’s,
one of the most remarkable meeting-grounds in the city, they
dominated the neighborhood.

The Arcade, which had stood like a great glass barn, waiting the
inevitable stone advance of reconstruction, looked down on this
rushing stream of all nations, while occasionally from the mixed
races outside, swimming on the current of the avenue, a bit of
human débris was washed up and found its lodging. It was a bit of
the Orient--the flotsam and jetsam of Hong Kong and Singapore in
the heart of New York. It was a place where no questions were asked
and no advice permitted; where if you found a man wandering in the
long, drafty corridors you piloted him to his room and put him to
bed and did not seek to reform him in the morning. This was its
etiquette. There were the young and unafraid, who were coming up
blithely, and the old and tired, who were going down, and it was
understood that those who were bent on their own destruction should
do it in their own chosen way--a place where souls in hunger and
souls in despair met momentarily and passed.

In the whole city there was not such another incongruous gathering
of activities. There was a vast billiard-parlor and a theater;
a barber shop and shoe parlors; a telegraph station and an
ice-cream-and-candy shop, thronged at the luncheon hour with crowds
of schoolboys; there was also a millinery shop and one for fancy
goods; a clock maker, and two corner saloons. Above, in the lower
lofts, every conceivable human oddity was assembled in a sort of
mercantile crazy quilt. One read such signs as these:

                          WILLIE GOLDMARK
                         HIGH-ART CLOTHING

                THE GREAT INTERNATIONAL NOVELTY CO

                      UNCLE PAUL’S PAWN SHOP
           YOU CAN PAWN ANYTHING FROM A SHOE-STRING TO A
                            LOCOMOTIVE

                     THE PATENT HORSESHOE CO.

             THE ROYAL EUROPEAN HAIR-DRESSING PARLORS
                MARCEL-WAVING TAUGHT IN TEN LESSONS

Besides this, there were offices for a dozen patent medicine cures;
a notary public and public stenographers; while banjo lessons,
instruction in illustration, commercial advertising and fancy
dancing were offered on every floor.

Higher up, on the fifth and particularly on the sixth floor,
where the lofts had been transformed into dwelling-rooms and
studios, a queer collection had settled and clung tenaciously. For
years, oppressed by the vastness and gloom of the reverberating
corridors, they had gone on living solitary lives, barely nodding
to each other, as though each had a secret to bury (which indeed
was often true), and they might have continued thus indefinitely,
had it not been for two events--the accident of King O’Leary’s
meeting Tootles, and the mystery of Dangerfield’s coming to the
corner studio--two unifying events that brought the little group
of human stragglers on the sixth floor into a curious fraternity
that persisted for several years, and was fated to affect several
destinies profoundly.




I


It was Christmas Eve in Lincoln Square. A fine snow was sifting
out of the leaden night, coating the passers-by with silver but
dissolving on the warm asphalt stretches in long, gleaming lakes
where a thousand reflections quivered. From the glowing subway
entrances, the holiday crowds surged up, laden with mysterious
packages, scurrying home for the decking out of tinseled trees
and the plotting of Christmas surprises. The shop windows flared
through the crowds so brightly that they seemed to have brought
up electric reinforcements. The restaurants were crowded with
brilliant garlands gay with red berries and festal ribbons,
while amid the turbulent traffic of the avenues, impudent little
taxi-cabs went scooting merrily, with rich glimpses of heaped-up
boxes inside.

At Healy’s, under the strident elevated station, a few guests
were entering the blazing dining-rooms, laughing and expectant.
The tension of the city’s nerves seemed everywhere relaxed.
For one merry hour in the long, grinding year, united in the
unselfish spirit of revelry, with the zest of secrets to be guarded
and secrets to be discovered, the metropolitan crowd bumped
good-humoredly on its way, gay with the democracy of good cheer.

King O’Leary left the throng at the bar at Healy’s, whistling
loudly to himself, flung a half-dollar to the blind news-dealer
under the elevated steps, calling with gruff gusto, “Merry
Christmas!” and, resuming his whistling, crossed the square to
where Teagan’s Arcade rose in shanty splendor, six stories above
Broadway, filling the block with its flashing electric signs which
hung against the night like so much cheap jewelry.

If King O’Leary continued to whistle with exaggerated gaiety,
tricking himself into a set smile, it was because deep in his
heart he felt the irresistible closing-in of his black hour.
As he neared the glass descent into the rumbling underground,
a flurried eruption of parcel-laden crowds whirled momentarily
about him, wrapping him around with youth, laughter, and the aroma
of friendship and affection. Home! He felt it so keenly; he saw
so clearly rising before him a hundred visions of family groups
gathered in the warmth of cozy houses, he felt so out of it, so
socially excommunicated, that his pretense at gaiety flattened out.
He shifted the soft-brimmed hat over his eyes, as though to shut
out memories, turned up the collar of his coat, and, digging his
great hands into capacious pockets, swung doggedly on. The world
for this one night had run away from him. In the whole city he
could think of no door where he could leave a present or imagine
from what direction one might descend upon him. With the exception
of the half-dollar flung to the blind news-dealer, and a few tips
jingling in his pockets, his Christmas giving was over. Twice a
year, in his happy-go-lucky existence, rolling down incredible
avenues of life from Singapore to Nome, Alaska, meeting each day
with unfailing zest, leader and boon companion through whatever
crowds he passed--twice a year, at Christmas and on a certain day
in mid-April, the secret of which lay buried in his memory, King
O’Leary went down into the dark alleys of remembrance.

He entered the Arcade, which was like a warm, friendly furnace
after the wet, shivering snow flurries, transparent shops on either
side, and ahead the gleam of brass railings barring the entrance to
the vaudeville theater, whose evening program shrieked at him from
 sheets of mystery and guaranteed thrills.

“Lord, but this is awful!” he said solemnly, gazing
absent-mindedly into the glowing tonsorial parlors inscribed “Joey
Shine.” “Wish to the deuce I could think of some one to give a
present to!”

All at once he perceived the manicurist, a tall, Amazonian
young lady, with reddish hair coiled in amazing tangles, who
was examining him with friendly curiosity. He came out of his
