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It faced the familiar grimy street, fringed on the great arteries each side by cigarette stands and saloons, and it was entered by the usual flight of stained and shabby steps, its doorway showing a set of some dozen letter-boxes, and looking down upon a basement entrance frequently embellished with ash-cans and milk-bottles, and, just at present, with banks of soiled and sooty snow.
The blonde bombshell, with her `sugar daddy, her alimony `racket, and the hundred hard-boiled dodges wherewith she chisels money and goods from her prey, is, again in her own crude phraseology, `knocked for a row of ash-cans' by Sophie Dawes. As, I think, you will presently see. Sophie was born at St Helens, Isle of Wight according to herself in 1792. There is controversy on the matter.
Down below I heard ash-cans toppling over all along the street and rolling to the gutters. It lacks a few nights of Hallowe'en, but doubtless the wind's calendar is awry and he is out already with his mischief. When a window rattles at this season, it is the tick-tack of his roguish finger. If a chimney is overthrown, it is his jest.
I will go back, I will do anything now I will empty ash-cans, and find it a joy. The book is done safe in next to my heart! And now it will be printed, and not fire nor earthquake can destroy it after that. Free! Free! I am writing on the train. I write commonplaces. That is because I can not shout. But back there, coming out of the woods, I shouted and not commonplaces either!
It was a perfect, crisp New York morning, all blue sky and amber sunshine, and even the ash-cans had a stimulating look about them. The street cars were full of happy people rollicking off to work: policemen directed the traffic with jaunty affability: and the white-clad street-cleaners went about their poetic tasks with a quiet but none the less noticeable relish.
Under this she sat patiently till nightfall came with quiet, then sneaked back like a shadow to her old iron-yard. Thus the days went by for two months. She grew in size and strength and in an intimate knowledge of the immediate neighborhood. She made the acquaintance of Downey Street, where long rows of ash-cans were to be seen every morning. She formed her own ideas of their proprietors.
It was one of those cold, clammy, accusing sort of eyes the kind that makes you reach up to see if your tie is straight: and he looked at me as if I were some sort of unnecessary product which Cuthbert the Cat had brought in after a ramble among the local ash-cans. He was a stoutish infant with a lot of freckles and a good deal of jam on his face. "Hallo! Hallo! Hallo!" I said. "What?"
In the daytime you become a fish, to wriggle over the ocean's floor amid strange flora and fauna, such as ash-cans and lamp-posts and venders' carts and cab-horses and sandwich-men. But at night you are neither fish, bird nor beast. The night was May thirteenth; never mind the year; the date should suffice: and a Walpurgis night, if you please, without any Mendelssohn to interpret it.
The meat-man rarely proved a success, but the ash-cans were there, and if they did not afford a meat-supply, at least they were sure to produce potato-skins that could be used to allay the gripe of hunger for another day. One night the mother Cat smelt a wonderful smell that came from the East River at the end of the alley.
Ash-cans and garbage-pails were in front of many of them, and through unshuttered windows a child could occasionally be seen with its face pressed against the pane, waiting to wave good-by to some one who was leaving.
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