“Have you any money?” he demanded.
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Nearly three dollars, Jurgis.”
“Give it to me.”
Kotrina, frightened by his manner, glanced at the
others. “Give it to me!” he commanded
again, and she put her hand into her pocket and pulled
out a lump of coins tied in a bit of rag. Jurgis
took it without a word, and went out of the door and
down the street.
Three doors away was a saloon. “Whisky,”
he said, as he entered, and as the man pushed him
some, he tore at the rag with his teeth and pulled
out half a dollar. “How much is the bottle?”
he said. “I want to get drunk.”
But a big man cannot stay drunk very long on three
dollars. That was Sunday morning, and Monday
night Jurgis came home, sober and sick, realizing
that he had spent every cent the family owned, and
had not bought a single instant’s forgetfulness
with it.
Ona was not yet buried; but the police had been notified,
and on the morrow they would put the body in a pine
coffin and take it to the potter’s field.
Elzbieta was out begging now, a few pennies from each
of the neighbors, to get enough to pay for a mass
for her; and the children were upstairs starving to
death, while he, good-for-nothing rascal, had been
spending their money on drink. So spoke Aniele,
scornfully, and when he started toward the fire she
added the information that her kitchen was no longer
for him to fill with his phosphate stinks. She
had crowded all her boarders into one room on Ona’s
account, but now he could go up in the garret where
he belonged—and not there much longer,
either, if he did not pay her some rent.
Jurgis went without a word, and, stepping over half
a dozen sleeping boarders in the next room, ascended
the ladder. It was dark up above; they could
not afford any light; also it was nearly as cold as
outdoors. In a corner, as far away from the corpse
as possible, sat Marija, holding little Antanas in
her one good arm and trying to soothe him to sleep.
In another corner crouched poor little Juozapas, wailing
because he had had nothing to eat all day. Marija
said not a word to Jurgis; he crept in like a whipped
cur, and went and sat down by the body.
Perhaps he ought to have meditated upon the hunger
of the children, and upon his own baseness; but he
thought only of Ona, he gave himself up again to the
luxury of grief. He shed no tears, being ashamed
to make a sound; he sat motionless and shuddering
with his anguish. He had never dreamed how much
he loved Ona, until now that she was gone; until now
that he sat here, knowing that on the morrow they would
take her away, and that he would never lay eyes upon
her again—never all the days of his life.
His old love, which had been starved to death, beaten
to death, awoke in him again; the floodgates of memory
were lifted—he saw all their life together,
