He brought the gin and handed it to her. She took it in silence. She sipped it slowly, holding it within an inch of her lips, staring at the ground as she drank, shivering now and again, as if the drink were ice cold. Gypo watched her suspiciously out of the corner of his eyes.
“What brought ye around here anyway?” he said at last.
He was extremely irritated that she should have come in on him, just at that moment, when he was trying to make a plan, when he had the money of his betrayal hot on his person, without being yet embalmed by a plausible excuse for its presence. He was irritated, but in a confused and ignorant way. He had not reasoned out a plausible excuse, even for his irritation.
Katie held her empty glass upside down in her hand and looked at him, with her blue eyes almost shut.
“Why, what’s the matter with ye, kiddo?” she asked arrogantly, encouraged by the gin. “Why shouldn’t I knock around here if I want to. I’m not employed by a charitable institution at so much an hour to keep out o’ yer honour’s way, ha, ha, when it’s yer lordship’s pleasure to come into this pub. There’s no law agin me comin’ around this part o’ the city at this hour, is there?” She worked herself into a fit of anger gradually as she spoke. She had an idea that Gypo was concealing something important from her and that her arrival at that moment gave her some power over him. That peculiar intuition of the slum woman could pierce the surface of Gypo’s embarrassment, but without being able to probe into the real nature of it. She pushed back her coat with her left hand and put the back of her hand against her reddish frayed blouse below the heart. How slight her breasts were!
“Now Katie—” began Gypo.
But she interrupted him immediately. She had been only waiting for him to begin to speak in order to interrupt him. She was quite happy when given the opportunity of a “barge” of this description.
“Go on with ye,” she cried, “pug nose! I know ye, Ya. You’re bum all right. Yer all right as long as ye get nothin’. But as soon as ye can smell yersel’ after a good meal an’ there a gingle in yer rags, ye stick yer nose into the air an’ ye know nobody. D’ye know what I’m goin’ to tell ye, Gypo? D’ye know what I’m goin’ to tell ye? Yer a mane, lyin’, deceitful twister an’ I got yer measure from now on. Don’t look for nothin’ from me from now on, my fine bucko. No then; ’twill be little use for ye.”
Gypo became nervous and shifted his huge body. He wanted to let his left hand fly out and hit her in the jaw. One slight blow would make her senseless. But he had never struck a woman, owing to some obscure prejudice or other. Still, he was terribly tired of her. Now that he had this money on his person, without as yet having decided what to do with it, he wanted to be free from her.
“You shut up,” he cried angrily, “or I’ll fix ye. Haven’t I given ye a drink?” Then he added half-heartedly: “D’ye want another drink?”
Katie was still staring at him. Suddenly a change came over her. Something suggested itself to her peculiar reason and she changed her attitude.
“Don’t mind what I said now, Gypo,” she continued in a low mournful voice, looking at the ground with hanging lower lip, like a person overwhelmed and utterly defeated by some persistent calamity. “God Almighty, the world is so hard that a person loses her mind altogether. Misery, misery, misery an’ nothin’ but misery. You’re as bad off as mesel’, Gypo, so ye know what I mane. No man has pity on us. Every hand is agin us because we have got nothin’. Why is that, will ye tell me, Gypo? Is God Himself agin us too? Ha, ha, o’ course we were both of us Communists and members o’ the Revolutionary Organization, so we know there’s no God. But supposin’ there was a God, what the hell is He doin’—”
“Katie,” cried Gypo angrily, “none o’ that talk. Lave God alone.”
“God forgive me, yer right,” cried Katie, beginning to sob. But she pulled herself together suddenly with surprising speed and turned to Gypo almost sharply. Her eyes narrowed slightly and a quaint weird smile lit up her face. There was a trace of beauty in her face under the influence of the smile, a trace of beauty and merriment. “Tell us where ye got all the money, Gypo. Ye had none this mornin’.”
Gypo started in spite of himself and glanced at her in terror. He struggled violently, trying to formulate an excuse for his sudden wealth. He fumed within himself for not having made a plan. Unconsciously he cursed McPhillip, whom he had sent to his death, for not having made a plan. He looked at Katie with glaring eyes and open lips.
