Another silence; then the voice again, a little louder, as though the
speaker had stepped out into the center of the room.
"Mabel is not a-goin' home with you," it said; and the listener
outside threw back his head with the gesture of a man sensitive to
music who listens to some ecstatic melody. "She happens to be stoppin'
here with us to-night. You say that she's your wife, but that don't
mean that she belongs to you, body and soul, Bill Greer--not to you,
who don't possess your own body, or soul. Why, you can't keep your
feet steady, you can't pull your hand away from mine. You can't hold
your tipsy eyes on mine. Do you call that ownin' your own body? And as
fer your soul, it's a hell of rage and dirty feelin's that I'd hate to
burn my eyes by lookin' closely at."
A deep, short, alarming chorus of laughter interrupted the speech. The
speaker evidently had her audience.
"So you don't own anything to-night," went on the extraordinary,
deliberate voice; "surely you don't own Mabel. You can't get a claim
on her, not thataway. She's her own. She belongs to her own self. When
you're fit to take her, why, then come and tell us about it, and if we
judge you're a-tellin' us the truth, mebbe we'll let her go. Till
then--" a pause which was filled with a rapid shuffling of feet. The
door flew open and in its lighted oblong the observer saw a huddled
figure behind which rose a woman's black and shapely head. "Till
then," repeated the deep-toned, ringing voice, "get out!" And the
huddled man came on a staggering run which ended in a backward fall on
the cobbles of the court.
The man who watched trod lightly past him and came to the open door.
Inside, firelight beat on the golden log walls and salmon-colored
timber ceiling; a lamp hanging from a beam threw down a strong,
conflicting arc of white light. A dozen brown-faced, booted young men
stood about, three musicians were ready to take up their interrupted
music, the little fat man who had called out the figures of the
quadrille, stood on a barrel, his arms folded across his paunch. A
fair-haired girl, her face marred by recent tears, drooped near him.
Two of the young men were murmuring reassurances to her; others
surrounded a stout, red-faced girl who was laughing and talking
loudly. The Jew's eyes wandered till they came to the fireplace. There
another woman leaned against the wall.