The Goodness of St. Rocque, and Other Stories

								

Her hair was pale and drawn in sleek, thin tightness away from a
pinched, pitiful face, whose dull cold eyes hurt you, because you knew
they were trying to mirror sorrow, and could not because of their
expressionless quality.  No matter what the weather or what her other
toilet, she always wore a thin little shawl of dingy brick-dust hue
about her shoulders.  No matter what the occasion or what the day, she
always carried her knitting with her, and seldom ceased the incessant
twist, twist of the shining steel among the white cotton meshes.  She
might put down the needles and lace into the spool-box long enough to
open oysters, or wrap up fruit and candy, or count out wood and coal
into infinitesimal portions, or do her housework; but the knitting was
snatched with avidity at the first spare moment, and the worn, white,
blue-marked fingers, half enclosed in kid-glove stalls for protection,
would writhe and twist in and out again.  Little girls just learning to
crochet borrowed their patterns from Tony's wife, and it was considered
quite a mark of advancement to have her inspect a bit of lace done by
eager, chubby fingers.  The ladies in larger houses, whose husbands
would be millionaires some day, bought her lace, and gave it to their
servants for Christmas presents.
As for Tony, when she was slow in opening his oysters or in cooking his
red beans and spaghetti, he roared at her, and prefixed picturesque
adjectives to her lace, which made her hide it under her apron with a
fearsome look in her dull eyes.
He hated her in a lusty, roaring fashion, as a healthy beefy boy hates
a sick cat and torments it to madness.  When she displeased him, he
beat her, and knocked her frail form on the floor.  The children could
tell when this had happened.  Her eyes would be red, and there would be
blue marks on her face and neck.  "Poor Mrs. Tony," they would say, and
nestle close to her.  Tony did not roar at her for petting them,
perhaps, because they spent money on the multi-hued candy in glass jars
on the shelves.
Her mother appeared upon the scene once, and stayed a short time; but
Tony got drunk one day and beat her because she ate too much, and she
disappeared soon after.  Whence she came and where she departed, no one
could tell, not even Mrs. Murphy, the Pauline Pry and Gazette of the
block.
Tony had gout, and suffered for many days in roaring helplessness, the
while his foot, bound and swathed in many folds of red flannel, lay on
the chair before him.  In proportion as his gout increased and he
bawled from pure physical discomfort, she became light-hearted, and
moved about the shop with real, brisk cheeriness.  He could not hit her
then without such pain that after one or two trials he gave up in
disgust.
So the dull years had passed, and life had gone on pretty much the same
for Tony and the German wife and the shop.  The children came on Sunday
evenings to buy the stick candy, and on week-days for coal and wood.