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diff --git a/old/10025-8.txt b/old/10025-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..adf586a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10025-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9639 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gaslight Sonatas, by Fannie Hurst + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Gaslight Sonatas + +Author: Fannie Hurst + +Release Date: November 9, 2003 [EBook #10025] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GASLIGHT SONATAS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +[Illustration: They walked, thus guided by an obsequious waiter, through a +light _confetti_ of tossed greetings.] + + + +GASLIGHT SONATAS + +BY + +FANNIE HURST + + + + +1918 + + + + +[Dedication: To my mother and my father] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. BITTER-SWEET + +II. SIEVE OF FULFILMENT + +III. ICE-WATER, PL--! + +IV. HERS _NOT_ TO REASON WHY + +V. GOLDEN FLEECE + +VI. NIGHTSHADE + +VII. GET READY THE WREATHS + + + + +GASLIGHT SONATAS + + + + +I + +BITTER-SWEET + + +Much of the tragical lore of the infant mortality, the malnutrition, and +the five-in-a-room morality of the city's poor is written in statistics, +and the statistical path to the heart is more figurative than literal. + +It is difficult to write stylistically a per-annum report of 1,327 +curvatures of the spine, whereas the poor specific little vertebra of Mamie +O'Grady, daughter to Lou, your laundress, whose alcoholic husband once +invaded your very own basement and attempted to strangle her in the +coal-bin, can instantly create an apron bazaar in the church vestry-rooms. + +That is why it is possible to drink your morning coffee without nausea for +it, over the head-lines of forty thousand casualties at Ypres, but to +push back abruptly at a three-line notice of little Tony's, your corner +bootblack's, fatal dive before a street-car. + +Gertie Slayback was statistically down as a woman wage-earner; a typhoid +case among the thousands of the Borough of Manhattan for 1901; and her +twice-a-day share in the Subway fares collected in the present year of our +Lord. + +She was a very atomic one of the city's four millions. But after all, what +are the kings and peasants, poets and draymen, but great, greater, or +greatest, less, lesser, or least atoms of us? If not of the least, Gertie +Slayback was of the very lesser. When she unlocked the front door to her +rooming-house of evenings, there was no one to expect her, except on +Tuesdays, which evening it so happened her week was up. And when she left +of mornings with her breakfast crumblessly cleared up and the box of +biscuit and condensed-milk can tucked unsuspectedly behind her camisole in +the top drawer there was no one to regret her. + +There are some of us who call this freedom. Again there are those for whom +one spark of home fire burning would light the world. + +Gertie Slayback was one of these. Half a life-time of opening her door upon +this or that desert-aisle of hall bedroom had not taught her heart how not +to sink or the feel of daily rising in one such room to seem less like a +damp bathing-suit, donned at dawn. + +The only picture--or call it atavism if you will--which adorned Miss +Slayback's dun-colored walls was a passe-partout snowscape, night closing +in, and pink cottage windows peering out from under eaves. She could +visualize that interior as if she had only to turn the frame for the smell +of wood fire and the snap of pine logs and for the scene of two high-back +chairs and the wooden crib between. + +What a fragile, gracile thing is the mind that can leap thus from nine +bargain basement hours of hairpins and darning-balls to the downy business +of lining a crib in Never-Never Land and warming No Man's slippers before +the fire of imagination. + +There was that picture so acidly etched into Miss Slayback's brain that she +had only to close her eyes in the slit-like sanctity of her room and in the +brief moment of courting sleep feel the pink penumbra of her vision begin +to glow. + +Of late years, or, more specifically, for two years and eight months, +another picture had invaded, even superseded the old. A stamp-photograph +likeness of Mr. James P. Batch in the corner of Miss Slayback's mirror, +and thereafter No Man's slippers became number eight-and-a-half C, and the +hearth a gilded radiator in a dining-living-room somewhere between the +Fourteenth Street Subway and the land of the Bronx. + +How Miss Slayback, by habit not gregarious, met Mr. Batch is of no +consequence, except to those snug ones of us to whom an introduction is the +only means to such an end. + +At a six o'clock that invaded even Union Square with heliotrope dusk, Mr. +James Batch mistook, who shall say otherwise, Miss Gertie Slayback, as +she stepped down into the wintry shade of a Subway kiosk, for Miss +Whodoesitmatter. At seven o'clock, over a dish of lamb stew _à la_ White +Kitchen, he confessed, and if Miss Slayback affected too great surprise and +too little indignation, try to conceive six nine-hour week-in-and-week-out +days of hair-pins and darning-balls, and then, at a heliotrope dusk, James +P. Batch, in invitational mood, stepping in between it and the papered +walls of a dun-colored evening. To further enlist your tolerance, Gertie +Slayback's eyes were as blue as the noon of June, and James P. Batch, in a +belted-in coat and five kid finger-points protruding ever so slightly and +rightly from a breast pocket, was hewn and honed in the image of youth. His +the smile of one for whom life's cup holds a heady wine, a wrinkle or two +at the eye only serving to enhance that smile; a one-inch feather stuck +upright in his derby hatband. + +It was a forelock once stamped a Corsican with the look of emperor. It was +this hat feather, a cock's feather at that and worn without sense of humor, +to which Miss Slayback was fond of attributing the consequences of that +heliotrope dusk. + +"It was the feather in your cap did it, Jimmie. I can see you yet, stepping +up with that innocent grin of yours. You think I didn't know you were +flirting? Cousin from Long Island City! 'Say,' I says to myself, I says, 'I +look as much like his cousin from Long Island City, if he's got one, as my +cousin from Hoboken (and I haven't got any) would look like my sister if I +had one.' It was that sassy little feather in your hat!" + +They would laugh over this ever-green reminiscence on Sunday Park benches +and at intermission at moving pictures when they remained through it to see +the show twice. Be the landlady's front parlor ever so permanently rented +out, the motion-picture theater has brought to thousands of young city +starvelings, if not the quietude of the home, then at least the warmth and +a juxtaposition and a deep darkness that can lave the sub-basement throb of +temples and is filled with music with a hum in it. + +For two years and eight months of Saturday nights, each one of them a +semaphore dropping out across the gray road of the week, Gertie Slayback +and Jimmie Batch dined for one hour and sixty cents at the White Kitchen. +Then arm and arm up the million-candle-power flare of Broadway, content, +these two who had never seen a lake reflect a moon, or a slim fir pointing +to a star, that life could be so manifold. And always, too, on Saturday, +the tenth from the last row of the De Luxe Cinematograph, Broadway's Best, +Orchestra Chairs, fifty cents; Last Ten Rows, thirty-five. The give of +velvet-upholstered chairs, perfumed darkness, and any old love story moving +across it to the ecstatic ache of Gertie Slayback's high young heart. + +On a Saturday evening that was already pointed with stars at the +six-o'clock closing of Hoffheimer's Fourteenth Street Emporium, Miss +Slayback, whose blondness under fatigue could become ashy, emerged from the +Bargain-Basement almost the first of its frantic exodus, taking the place +of her weekly appointment in the entrance of the Popular Drug Store +adjoining, her gaze, something even frantic in it, sifting the passing +crowd. + +At six o'clock Fourteenth Street pours up from its basements, down from its +lofts, and out from its five-and-ten-cent stores, shows, and arcades, in +a great homeward torrent--a sweeping torrent that flows full flush to the +Subway, the Elevated, and the surface car, and then spreads thinly into the +least pretentious of the city's homes--the five flights up, the two rooms +rear, and the third floor back. + +Standing there, this eager tide of the Fourteenth Street Emporium, thus +released by the six-o'clock flood-gates, flowed past Miss Slayback. +White-nosed, low-chested girls in short-vamp shoes and no-carat gold +vanity-cases. Older men resigned that ambition could be flayed by a +yard-stick; young men still impatient of their clerkship. + +It was into the trickle of these last that Miss Slayback bored her glance, +the darting, eager glance of hot eyeballs and inner trembling. She was +not so pathetically young as she was pathetically blond, a treacherous, +ready-to-fade kind of blondness that one day, now that she had found that +very morning her first gray hair, would leave her ashy. + +Suddenly, with a small catch of breath that was audible in her throat, Miss +Slayback stepped out of that doorway, squirming her way across the tight +congestion of the sidewalk to its curb, then in and out, brushing this +elbow and that shoulder, worming her way in an absolutely supreme anxiety +to keep in view a brown derby hat bobbing right briskly along with the +crowd, a greenish-black bit of feather upright in its band. + +At Broadway, Fourteenth Street cuts quite a caper, deploying out into Union +Square, an island of park, beginning to be succulent at the first false +feint of spring, rising as it were from a sea of asphalt. Across this park +Miss Slayback worked her rather frenzied way, breaking into a run when +the derby threatened to sink into the confusion of a hundred others, and +finally learning to keep its course by the faint but distinguishing fact of +a slight dent in the crown. At Broadway, some blocks before that highway +bursts into its famous flare, Mr. Batch, than whom it was no other, turned +off suddenly at right angles down into a dim pocket of side-street and into +the illuminated entrance of Ceiner's Café Hungarian. Meals at all hours. +Lunch, thirty cents. Dinner, fifty cents. Our Goulash is Famous. + +New York, which expresses itself in more languages to the square block +than any other area in the world, Babylon included, loves thus to dine +linguistically, so to speak. To the Crescent Turkish Restaurant for its +Business Men's Lunch comes Fourth Avenue, whose antique-shop patois reads +across the page from right to left. Sight-seeing automobiles on mission and +commission bent allow Altoona, Iowa City, and Quincy, Illinois, fifteen +minutes' stop-in at Ching Ling-Foo's Chinatown Delmonico's. Spaghetti and +red wine have set New York racing to reserve its table d'hôtes. All except +the Latin race. + +Jimmie Batch, who had first seen light, and that gaslight, in a block in +lower Manhattan which has since been given over to a milk-station for +a highly congested district, had the palate, if not the purse, of the +cosmopolite. His digestive range included _borsch_ and _chow maigne; +risotta_ and ham and. + +To-night, as he turned into Café Hungarian, Miss Slayback slowed and drew +back into the overshadowing protection of an adjoining office-building. She +was breathing hard, and her little face, somehow smaller from chill, was +nevertheless a high pink at the cheek-bones. + +The wind swept around the corner, jerking her hat, and her hand flew up to +it. There was a fair stream of passers-by even here, and occasionally +one turned for a backward glance at her standing there so frankly +indeterminate. + +Suddenly Miss Slayback adjusted her tam-o'-shanter to its flop over her +right ear, and, drawing off a pair of dark-blue silk gloves from over +immaculately new white ones, entered Ceiner's Café Hungarian. In its light +she was not so obviously blonder than young, the pink spots in her +cheeks had a deepening value to the blue of her eyes, and a black velvet +tam-o'-shanter revealing just the right fringe of yellow curls is no mean +aid. + +First of all, Ceiner's is an eating-place. There is no music except at five +cents in the slot, and its tables for four are perpetually set each with a +dish of sliced radishes, a bouquet of celery, and a mound of bread, half +the stack rye. Its menus are well thumbed and badly mimeographed. Who +enters Ceiner's is prepared to dine from barley soup to apple strudel. At +something after six begins the rising sound of cutlery, and already the +new-comer fears to find no table. + +Off at the side, Mr. Jimmie Batch had already disposed of his hat and gray +overcoat, and tilting the chair opposite him to indicate its reservation, +shook open his evening paper, the waiter withholding the menu at this sign +of rendezvous. + +Straight toward that table Miss Slayback worked quick, swift way, through +this and that aisle, jerking back and seating herself on the chair opposite +almost before Mr. Batch could raise his eyes from off the sporting page. + +There was an instant of silence between them--the kind of silence that +can shape itself into a commentary upon the inefficacy of mere speech--a +widening silence which, as they sat there facing, deepened until, when she +finally spoke, it was as if her words were pebbles dropping down into a +well. + +"Don't look so surprised, Jimmie," she said, propping her face calmly, even +boldly, into the white-kid palms. "You might fall off the Christmas tree." + +Above the snug, four-inch collar and bow tie Mr. Batch's face was taking on +a dull ox-blood tinge that spread back, even reddening his ears. Mr. Batch +had the frontal bone of a clerk, the horn-rimmed glasses of the literarily +astigmatic, and the sartorial perfection that only the rich can afford not +to attain. + +He was staring now quite frankly, and his mouth had fallen open. "Gert!" he +said. + +"Yes," said Miss Slayback, her insouciance gaining with his discomposure, +her eyes widening and then a dolly kind of glassiness seeming to set in. +"You wasn't expecting me, Jimmie?" + +He jerked up his head, not meeting her glance. "What's the idea of the +comedy?" + +"You don't look glad to see me, Jimmie." + +"If you--think you're funny." + +She was working out of and then back into the freshly white gloves in a +betraying kind of nervousness that belied the toss of her voice. "Well, of +all things! Mad-cat! Mad, just because you didn't seem to be expecting me." + +"I--There's some things that are just the limit, that's what they are. +Some things that are just the limit, that no fellow would stand from any +girl, and this--this is one of them." + +Her lips were trembling now. "You--you bet your life there's some things +that are just the limit." + +He slid out his watch, pushing back. "Well, I guess this place is too small +for a fellow and a girl that can follow him around town like a--like--" + +She sat forward, grasping the table-sides, her chair tilting with her. +"Don't you dare to get up and leave me sitting here! Jimmie Batch, don't +you dare!" + +The waiter intervened, card extended. + +"We--we're waiting for another party," said Miss Slayback, her hands still +rigidly over the table-sides and her glance like a steady drill into Mr. +Batch's own. + +There was a second of this silence while the waiter withdrew, and then Mr. +Batch whipped out his watch again, a gun-metal one with an open face. + +"Now look here. I got a date here in ten minutes, and one or the other of +us has got to clear. You--you're one too many, if you got to know it." + +"Oh, I do know it, Jimmie! I been one too many for the last four Saturday +nights. I been one too many ever since May Scully came into five hundred +dollars' inheritance and quit the Ladies' Neckwear. I been one too many +ever since May Scully became a lady." + +"If I was a girl and didn't have more shame!" + +"Shame! Now you're shouting, Jimmie Batch. I haven't got shame, and I don't +care who knows it. A girl don't stop to have shame when she's fighting for +her rights." + +He was leaning on his elbow, profile to her. "That movie talk can't scare +me. You can't tell me what to do and what not to do. I've given you a +square deal all right. There's not a word ever passed between us that ties +me to your apron-strings. I don't say I'm not without my obligations to +you, but that's not one of them. No, sirree--no apron-strings." + +"I know it isn't, Jimmie. You're the kind of a fellow wouldn't even talk to +himself for fear of committing hisself." + +"I got a date here now any minute, Gert, and the sooner you--" + +"You're the guy who passed up the Sixty-first for the Safety First +regiment." + +"I'll show you my regiment some day." + +"I--I know you're not tied to my apron-strings, Jimmie. I--I wouldn't have +you there for anything. Don't you think I know you too well for that? +That's just it. Nobody on God's earth knows you the way I do. I know you +better than you know yourself." + +"You better beat it, Gertie. I tell you I'm getting sore." + +Her face flashed from him to the door and back again, her anxiety almost +edged with hysteria. "Come on, Jimmie--out the side entrance before she +gets here. May Scully ain't the company for you. You think if she was, +honey, I'd--I'd see myself come butting in between you this way, like--like +a--common girl? She's not the girl to keep you straight. Honest to God +she's not, honey." + +"My business is my business, let me tell you that." + +"She's speedy, Jimmie. She was the speediest girl on the main floor, and +now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a +rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it." + +"When I want advice about my friends I ask for it." + +"It's not her good name that worries me, Jimmie, because she 'ain't got +any. It's you. She's got you crazy with that five hundred, too--that's +what's got me scared." + +"Gee! you ought to let the Salvation Army tie a bonnet under your chin." + +"She's always had her eyes on you, Jimmie. 'Ain't you men got no sense for +seein' things? Since the day they moved the Gents' Furnishings across from +the Ladies' Neckwear she's had you spotted. Her goings-on used to leak down +to the basement, alrighty. She's not a good girl, May ain't, Jimmie. She +ain't, and you know it. Is she? Is she?" + +"Aw!" said Jimmie Batch. + +"You see! See! 'Ain't got the nerve to answer, have you?" + +"Aw--maybe I know, too, that she's not the kind of a girl that would turn +up where she's not--" + +"If you wasn't a classy-looking kind of boy, Jimmie, that a fly girl like +May likes to be seen out with, she couldn't find you with magnifying +glasses, not if you was born with the golden rule in your mouth and had +swallowed it. She's not the kind of girl, Jimmie, a fellow like you needs +behind him. If--if you was ever to marry her and get your hands on them +five hundred dollars--" + +"It would be my business." + +"It'll be your ruination. You're not strong enough to stand up under +nothing like that. With a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket +you--you'd go up in spontaneous combustion, you would." + +"It would be my own spontaneous combustion." + +"You got to be drove, Jimmie, like a kid. With them few dollars you +wouldn't start up a little cigar-store like you think you would. You and +her would blow yourselves to the dogs in two months. Cigar-stores ain't the +place for you, Jimmie. You seen how only clerking in them was nearly your +ruination--the little gambling-room-in-the-back kind that you pick out. +They ain't cigar-stores; they're only false faces for gambling." + +"You know it all, don't you?" + +"Oh, I'm dealing it to you straight! There's too many sporty crowds loafing +around those joints for a fellow like you to stand up under. I found you in +one, and as yellow-fingered and as loafing as they come, a new job a week, +a--" + +"Yeh, and there was some pep to variety, too." + +"Don't throw over, Jimmie, what my getting you out of it to a decent job in +a department store has begun to do for you. And you're making good, too. +Higgins told me to-day, if you don't let your head swell, there won't be a +fellow in the department can stack up his sales-book any higher." + +"Aw!" + +"Don't throw it all over, Jimmie--and me--for a crop of dyed red hair and a +few dollars to ruin yourself with." + +He shot her a look of constantly growing nervousness, his mouth pulled to +an oblique, his glance constantly toward the door. + +"Don't keep no date with her to-night, Jimmie. You haven't got the +constitution to stand her pace. It's telling on you. Look at those fingers +yellowing again--looka--" + +"They're my fingers, ain't they?" + +"You see, Jimmie, I--I'm the only person in the world that likes you just +for what--you ain't--and hasn't got any pipe dreams about you. That's what +counts, Jimmie, the folks that like you in spite, and not because of." + +"We will now sing psalm number two hundred and twenty-three." + +"I know there's not a better fellow in the world if he's kept nailed to the +right job, and I know, too, there's not another fellow can go to the dogs +any easier." + +"To hear you talk, you'd think I was about six." + +"I'm the only girl that'll ever be willing to make a whip out of herself +that'll keep you going and won't sting, honey. I know you're soft and lazy +and selfish and--" + +"Don't forget any." + +"And I know you're my good-looking good-for-nothing, and I know, too, that +you--you don't care as much--as much for me from head to toe as I do for +your little finger. But I--I like you just the same, Jimmie. That--that's +what I mean about having no shame. I--do like you so--so terribly, Jimmie." + +"Aw now--Gert!" + +"I know it, Jimmie--that I ought to be ashamed. Don't think I haven't cried +myself to sleep with it whole nights in succession." + +"Aw now--Gert!" + +"Don't think I don't know it, that I'm laying myself before you pretty +common. I know it's common for a girl to--to come to a fellow like this, +but--but I haven't got any shame about it--I haven't got anything, Jimmie, +except fight for--for what's eating me. And the way things are between us +now is eating me." + +"I--Why, I got a mighty high regard for you, Gert." + +"There's a time in a girl's life, Jimmie, when she's been starved like I +have for something of her own all her days; there's times, no matter how +she's held in, that all of a sudden comes a minute when she busts out." + +"I understand, Gert, but--" + +"For two years and eight months, Jimmie, life has got to be worth while +living to me because I could see the day, even if we--you--never talked +about it, when you would be made over from a flip kid to--to the kind of a +fellow would want to settle down to making a little--two-by-four home for +us. A--little two-by-four all our own, with you steady on the job and +advanced maybe to forty or fifty a week and--" + +"For God's sake, Gertie, this ain't the time or the place to--" + +"Oh yes, it is! It's got to be, because it's the first time in four weeks +that you didn't see me coming first." + +"But not now, Gert. I--" + +"I'm not ashamed to tell you, Jimmie Batch, that I've been the making of +you since that night you threw the wink at me. And--and it hurts, this +does. God! how it hurts!" + +He was pleating the table-cloth, swallowing as if his throat had +constricted, and still rearing his head this way and that in the tight +collar. + +"I--never claimed not to be a bad egg. This ain't the time and the place +for rehashing, that's all. Sure you been a friend to me. I don't say +you haven't. Only I can't be bossed by a girl like you. I don't say May +Scully's any better than she ought to be. Only that's my business. You +hear? my business. I got to have life and see a darn sight more future for +myself than selling shirts in a Fourteenth Street department store." + +"May Scully can't give it to you--her and her fast crowd." + +"Maybe she can and maybe she can't." + +"Them few dollars won't make you; they'll break you." + +"That's for her to decide, not you." + +"I'll tell her myself. I'll face her right here and--" + +"Now, look here, if you think I'm going to be let in for a holy show +between you two girls, you got another think coming. One of us has got to +clear out of here, and quick, too. You been talking about the side door; +there it is. In five minutes I got a date in this place that I thought I +could keep like any law-abiding citizen. One of us has got to clear, and +quick, too. God! you wimmin make me sick, the whole lot of you!" + +"If anything makes you sick, I know what it is. It's dodging me to fly +around all hours of the night with May Scully, the girl who put the tang in +tango. It's eating around in swell sixty-cent restaurants like this and--" + +"Gad! your middle name ought to be Nagalene." + +"Aw, now, Jimmie, maybe it does sound like nagging, but it ain't, honey. +It--it's only my--my fear that I'm losing you, and--and my hate for the +every-day grind of things, and--" + +"I can't help that, can I?" + +"Why, there--there's nothing on God's earth I hate, Jimmie, like I hate +that Bargain-Basement. When I think it's down there in that manhole I've +spent the best years of my life, I--I wanna die. The day I get out of it, +the day I don't have to punch that old time-clock down there next to the +Complaints and Adjustment Desk, I--I'll never put my foot below sidewalk +level again to the hour I die. Not even if it was to take a walk in my own +gold-mine." + +"It ain't exactly a garden of roses down there." + +"Why, I hate it so terrible, Jimmie, that sometimes I wake up nights +gritting my teeth with the smell of steam-pipes and the tramp of feet on +the glass sidewalk up over me. Oh. God! you dunno--you dunno!" + +"When it comes to that the main floor ain't exactly a maiden's dream, or a +fellow's, for that matter." + +"With a man it's different, It's his job in life, earning, and--and the +woman making the two ends of it meet. That's why, Jimmie, these last +two years and eight months, if not for what I was hoping for us, +why--why--I--why, on your twenty a week, Jimmie, there's nobody could run +a flat like I could. Why, the days wouldn't be long enough to putter in. +I--Don't throw away what I been building up for us, Jimmie, step by step! +Don't, Jimmie!" + +"Good Lord, girl! You deserve better 'n me." + +"I know I got a big job, Jimmie, but I want to make a man out of you, +temper, laziness, gambling, and all. You got it in you to be something more +than a tango lizard or a cigar-store bum, honey. It's only you 'ain't +got the stuff in you to stand up under a five-hundred-dollar windfall +and--a--and a sporty girl. If--if two glasses of beer make you as silly as +they do, Jimmie, why, five hundred dollars would land you under the table +for life." + +"Aw-there you go again!" + +"I can't help it, Jimmie. It's because I never knew a fellow had what's +he's cut out for written all over him so. You're a born clerk, Jimmie. + +"Sure, I'm a slick clerk, but--" + +"You're born to be a clerk, a good clerk, even a two-hundred-a-month clerk, +the way you can win the trade, but never your own boss. I know what I'm +talking about. I know your measure better than any human on earth can +ever know your measure. I know things about you that you don't even know +yourself." + +"I never set myself up to nobody for anything I wasn't." + +"Maybe not, Jimmie, but I know about you and--and that Central Street gang +that time, and--" + +"You!" + +"Yes, honey, and there's not another human living but me knows how little +it was your fault. Just bad company, that was all. That's how much I--I +love you, Jimmie, enough to understand that. Why, if I thought May Scully +and a set-up in business was the thing for you, Jimmie, I'd say to her, I'd +say, if it was like taking my own heart out in my hand and squashing it, +I'd say to her, I'd say, 'Take him, May.' That's how I--I love you, Jimmie. +Oh, ain't it nothing, honey, a girl can come here and lay herself this low +to you--" + +"Well, haven't I just said you--you deserve better." + +"I don't want better, Jimmie. I want you. I want to take hold of your life +and finish the job of making it the kind we can both be proud of. Us two, +Jimmie, in--in our own decent two-by-four. Shopping on Saturday nights. +Frying in our own frying-pan in our own kitchen. Listening to our own +phonograph in our own parlor. Geraniums and--and kids--and--and things. +Gas-logs. Stationary washtubs. Jimmie! Jimmie!" + +Mr. James P. Batch reached up for his hat and overcoat, cramming the +newspaper into a rear pocket. + +"Come on," he said, stalking toward the side door and not waiting to see +her to her feet. + +Outside, a banner of stars was over the narrow street. For a chain of five +blocks he walked, with a silence and speed that Miss Slayback could only +match with a running quickstep. But she was not out of breath. Her head was +up, and her hand, where it hooked into Mr. Batch's elbow, was in a vise +that tightened with each block. + +You who will mete out no other approval than that vouched for by the stamp +of time and whose contempt for the contemporary is from behind the easy +refuge of the classics, suffer you the shuddering analogy that between +Aspasia who inspired Pericles, Theodora who suggested the Justinian code, +and Gertie Slayback who commandeered Jimmie Batch, is a sistership which +rounds them, like a lasso thrown back into time, into one and the same +petticoat dynasty behind the throne. + +True, Gertie Slayback's _mise en scène_ was a two-room kitchenette +apartment situated in the Bronx at a surveyor's farthest point between two +Subway stations, and her present state one of frequent red-faced forays +down into a packing-case. But there was that in her eyes which witchingly +bespoke the conquered, but not the conqueror. Hers was actually the +titillating wonder of a bird which, captured, closes its wings, that +surrender can be so sweet. + +Once she sat on the edge of the packing-case, dallying a hammer, then laid +it aside suddenly, to cross the littered room and place the side of her +head to the immaculate waistcoat of Mr. Jimmie Batch, red-faced, too, over +wrenching up with hatchet-edge a barrel-top. + +"Jimmie darling, I--I just never will get over your finding this place for +us." + +Mr. Batch wiped his forearm across his brow, his voice jerking between the +squeak of nails extracted from wood. + +"It was you, honey. You give me the to-let ad, and I came to look, that's +all." + +"Just the samey, it was my boy found it. If you hadn't come to look we +might have been forced into taking that old dark coop over on Simpson +Street." + +"What's all this junk in this barrel?" + +"Them's kitchen utensils, honey." + +"Kitchen what?" + +"Kitchen things that you don't know nothing about except to eat good things +out of." + +"What's this?" + +"Don't bend it! That's a celery-brush. Ain't it cute?" + +"A celery-brush! Why didn't you get it a comb, too?" + +"Aw, now, honey-bee, don't go trying to be funny and picking through these +things you don't know nothing about! They're just cute things I'm going to +cook something grand suppers in, for my something awful bad boy." + +He leaned down to kiss her at that. "Gee!" + +She was standing, her shoulder to him and head thrown back against his +chest. She looked up to stroke his cheek, her face foreshortened. + +"I'm all black and blue pinching myself, Jimmie." + +"Me too." + +"Every night when I get home from working here in the flat I say to +myself in the looking-glass, I say, 'Gertie Slayback, what if you're only +dreamin'?'" + +"Me too." + +"I say to myself, 'Are you sure that darling flat up there, with the new +pink-and-white wall-paper and the furniture arriving every day, is going to +be yours in a few days when you're Mrs. Jimmie Batch?'" + +"Mrs. Jimmie Batch--say, that's immense." + +"I keep saying it to myself every night, 'One day less.' Last night it was +two days. To-night it'll be--one day, Jimmie, till I'm--her." + +She closed her eyes and let her hand linger up at his cheek, head still +back against him, so that, inclining his head, he could rest his lips in +the ash-blond fluff of her hair. + +"Talk about can't wait! If to-morrow was any farther off they'd have to +sweep out a padded cell for me." + +She turned to rumple the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy! Can't +wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. Up +to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon' was the +only date I could ever get out of you, and now here you are crying over one +day's wait. Bad honey boy!" + +He reached back for the pink newspaper so habitually protruding from +his hip pocket. "You ought to see the way they're neck-breaking for the +marriage-license bureaus since the draft. First thing we know, tine whole +shebang of the boys will be claiming the exemption of sole support of +wife." + +"It's a good thing we made up our minds quick, Jimmie. They'll be getting +wise. If too many get exemption from the army by marrying right away, it'll +be a give-away." + +"I'd like to know who can lay his hands on the exemption of a little wife +to support." + +"Oh, Jimmie, it--it sounds so funny. Being supported! Me that always did +the supporting, not only to me, but to my mother and great-grand-mother up +to the day they died." + +"I'm the greatest little supporter you ever seen." + +"Me getting up mornings to stay at home in my own darling little flat, and +no basement or time-clock. Nothing but a busy little hubby to eat him nice, +smelly, bacon breakfast and grab him nice morning newspaper, kiss him +wifie, and run downtown to support her. Jimmie, every morning for your +breakfast I'm going to fry--" + +"You bet your life he's going to support her, and he's going to pay back +that forty dollars of his girl's that went into his wedding duds, that +hundred and ninety of his girl's savings that went into furniture--" + +"We got to meet our instalments every month first, Jimmie. That's what we +want--no debts and every little darling piece of furniture paid up." + +"We--I'm going to pay it, too." + +"And my Jimmie is going to work to get himself promoted and quit being a +sorehead at his steady hours and all." + +"I know more about selling, honey, than the whole bunch of dubs in that +store put together if they'd give me a chance to prove it." + +She laid her palm to his lips. + +"'Shh-h-h! You don't nothing of the kind. It's not conceit, it's work is +going to get my boy his raise." + +"If they'd listen to me, that department would--" + +"'Shh-h! J. G. Hoffheimer don't have to get pointers from Jimmie Batch how +to run his department store." + +"There you go again. What's J. G. Hoffheimer got that I 'ain't? Luck and a +few dollars in his pocket that, if I had in mine, would-- + +"It was his own grit put those dollars there, Jimmie. Just put it out of +your head that it's luck makes a self-made man." + +"Self-made! You mean things just broke right for him. That's two-thirds of +this self-made business." + +"You mean he buckled right down to brass tacks, and that's what my boy is +going to do." + +"The trouble with this world is it takes money to make money. Get your +first few dollars, I always say, no matter how, and then when you're on +your feet scratch your conscience if it itches. That's why I said in the +beginning, if we had took that hundred and ninety furniture money and +staked it on--" + +"Jimmie, please--please! You wouldn't want to take a girl's savings of +years and years to gamble on a sporty cigar proposition with a card-room in +the rear. You wouldn't, Jimmie. You ain't that kind of fellow. Tell me you +wouldn't, Jimmie." + +He turned away to dive down into the barrel. "Naw," he said, "I wouldn't." + +The sun had receded, leaving a sudden sullen gray, the little square room, +littered with an upheaval of excelsior, sheet-shrouded furniture, and the +paperhanger's paraphernalia and inimitable smells, darkening and seeming to +chill. + +"We got to quit now, Jimmie. It's getting dark and the gas ain't turned on +in the meter yet." + +He rose up out of the barrel, holding out at arm's-length what might have +been a tinsmith's version of a porcupine. + +"What in--What's this thing that scratched me?" + +She danced to take it. "It's a grater, a darling grater for horseradish and +nutmeg and cocoanut. I'm going to fix you a cocoanut cake for our +honeymoon supper to-morrow night, honey-bee. Essie Wohlgemuth over in the +cake-demonstrating department is going to bring me the recipe. Cocoanut +cake! And I'm going to fry us a little steak in this darling little +skillet. Ain't it the cutest!" + +"Cute she calls a tin skillet." + +"Look what's pasted on it. 'Little Housewife's Skillet. The Kitchen Fairy.' +That's what I'm going to be, Jimmie, the kitchen fairy. Give me that. It's +a rolling-pin. All my life I've wanted a rolling-pin. Look, honey, a little +string to hang it up by. I'm going to hang everything up in rows. It's +going to look like Tiffany's kitchen, all shiny. Give me, honey; that's an +egg-beater. Look at it whiz. And this--this is a pan for war bread. I'm +going to make us war bread to help the soldiers." + +"You're a little soldier yourself," he said. + +"That's what I would be if I was a man, a soldier all in brass buttons." + +"There's a bunch of the fellows going," said Mr. Batch, standing at the +window, looking out over roofs, dilly-dallying up and down on his heels +and breaking into a low, contemplative whistle. She was at his shoulder, +peering over it. "You wouldn't be afraid, would you, Jimmie?" + +"You bet your life I wouldn't." + +She was tiptoes now, her arms creeping up to him. "Only my boy's got a +wife--a brand-new wifie to support, 'ain't he?" + +"That's what he has," said Mr. Batch, stroking her forearm, but still +gazing through and beyond whatever roofs he was seeing. + +"Jimmie!" + +"Huh?" + +"Look! We got a view of the Hudson River from our flat, just like we lived +on Riverside Drive." + +"All the Hudson River I can see is fifteen smoke-stacks and somebody's +wash-line out." + +"It ain't so. We got a grand view. Look! Stand on tiptoe, Jimmie, like me. +There, between that water-tank on that black roof over there and them two +chimneys. See? Watch my finger. A little stream of something over there +that moves." + +"No, I don't see." + +"Look, honey-bee, close! See that little streak?" + +"All right, then, if you see it I see it." + +"To think we got a river view from our flat! It's like living in the +country. I'll peek out at it all day long. God! honey, I just never will be +over the happiness of being done with basements." + +"It was swell of old Higgins to give us this half-Saturday. It shows where +you stood with the management, Gert--this and a five-dollar gold piece. +Lord knows they wouldn't pony up that way if it was me getting married by +myself." + +"It's because my boy 'ain't shown them down there yet the best that's in +him. You just watch his little safety-first wife see to it that from now on +he keeps up her record of never in seven years punching the time-clock even +one minute late, and that he keeps his stock shelves O. K. and shows his +department he's a comer-on." + +"With that bunch of boobs a fellow's got a swell chance to get anywheres." + +"It's getting late, Jimmie. It don't look nice for us to stay here so late +alone, not till--to-morrow. Ruby and Essie and Charley are going to meet us +in the minister's back parlor at ten sharp in the morning. We can be +back here by noon and get the place cleared enough to give 'em a little +lunch--just a fun lunch without fixings." + +"I hope the old guy don't waste no time splicing us. It's one of the things +a fellow likes to have over with." + +"Jimmie! Why, it's the most beautiful thing in the world, like a garden of +lilies or--or something, a marriage ceremony is! You got the ring safe, +honey-bee, and the license?" + +"Pinned in my pocket where you put 'em, Flirty Gertie." + +"Flirty Gertie! Now you'll begin teasing me with that all our life--the +way I didn't slap your face that night when I should have. I just couldn't +have, honey. Goes to show we were just cut and dried for each other, don't +it? Me, a girl that never in her life let a fellow even bat his eyes at her +without an introduction. But that night when you winked, honey--something +inside of me just winked back." + +"My girl!" + +"You mean it, boy? You ain't sorry about nothing, Jimmie?" + +"Sorry? Well, I guess not!" + +"You saw the way--she--May--you saw for yourself what she was, when we saw +her walking, that next night after Ceiner's, nearly staggering, up Sixth +Avenue with Budge Evans." + +"I never took any stock in her, honey. I was just letting her like me." + +She sat back on the box edge, regarding him, her face so soft and wont to +smile that she could not keep her composure. + +"Get me my hat and coat, honey. We'll walk down. Got the key?" + +They skirmished in the gloom, moving through slit-like aisles of furniture +and packing-box. + +"Ouch!" + +"Oh, the running water is hot, Jimmie, just like the ad said! We got +red-hot running water in our flat. Close the front windows, honey. We don't +want it to rain in on our new green sofa. Not 'til it's paid for, anyways." + +"Hurry." + +"I'm ready." + +They met at the door, kissing on the inside and the outside of it; at the +head of the fourth, third, and the second balustrade down. + +"We'll always make 'em little love landings, Jimmie, so we can't ever get +tired climbing them." + +"Yep." + +Outside there was still a pink glow in a clean sky. The first flush of +spring in the air had died, leaving chill. They walked briskly, arm in arm, +down the asphalt incline of sidewalk leading from their apartment house, a +new street of canned homes built on a hillside--the sepulchral abode of the +city's trapped whose only escape is down the fire-escape, and then only +when the alternative is death. At the base of the hill there flows, in +constant hubbub, a great up-and-down artery of street, repeating +itself, mile after mile, in terms of the butcher, the baker, and the +"every-other-corner drug-store of a million dollar corporation". Housewives +with perambulators and oil-cloth shopping bags. Children on rollerskates. +The din of small tradesmen and the humdrum of every city block where the +homes remain unbearded all summer and every wife is on haggling terms with +the purveyor of her evening roundsteak and mess of rutabaga. + +Then there is the soap-box provender, too, sure of a crowd, offering creed, +propaganda, patent medicine, and politics. It is the pulpit of the reformer +and the housetop of the fanatic, this soapbox. From it the voice to the +city is often a pious one, an impious one, and almost always a raucous one. +Luther and Sophocles, and even a Citizen of Nazareth made of the four winds +of the street corner the walls of a temple of wisdom. What more fitting +acropolis for freedom of speech than the great out-of-doors! + +Turning from the incline of cross-street into this petty Baghdad of +the petty wise, the voice of the street corner lifted itself above +the inarticulate din of the thoroughfare. A youth, thewed like an ox, +surmounted on a stack of three self provided canned-goods boxes, his +in-at-the-waist silhouette thrown out against a sky that was almost ready +to break out in stars; a crowd tightening about him. + +"It's a soldier boy talkin', Gert." + +"If it ain't!" They tiptoed at the fringe of the circle, heads back. + +"Look, Gert, he's a lieutenant; he's got a shoulder-bar. And those four +down there holding the flags are just privates. You can always tell a +lieutenant by the bar." + +"Uh-huh." + +"Say, them boys do stack up some for Uncle Sam." + +"'Shh-h-h, Jimmie!" + +"I'm here to tell you that them boys stack up some." + +A banner stiffened out in the breeze, Mr. Batch reading: "Enlist before you +are drafted. Last chance to beat the draft. Prove your patriotism. Enlist +now! Your country calls!" + +"Come on," said Mr. Batch. + +"Wait. I want to hear what he's saying." + +"... there's not a man here before me can afford to shirk his duty to his +country. The slacker can't get along without his country, but his country +can very easily get along without him." + +Cheers. + +"The poor exemption boobs are already running for doctors' certificates and +marriage licenses, but even if they get by with it--and it is ninety-nine +to one they won't--they can't run away from their own degradation and +shame." + +"Come on, Jimmie." + +"Wait." + +"Men of America, for every one of you who tries to dodge his duty to his +country there is a yellow streak somewhere underneath the hide of you. +Women of America, every one of you that helps to foster the spirit of +cowardice in your particular man or men is helping to make a coward. It's +the cowards and the quitters and the slackers and dodgers that need this +war more than the patriotic ones who are willing to buckle on and go! + +"Don't be a buttonhole patriot! A government that is good enough to live +under is good enough to fight under!" + +Cheers. + +"If there is any reason on earth has manifested itself for this devastating +and terrible war it is that it has been a maker of men. + +"Ladies and gentlemen, I am back from four months in the trenches with the +French army, and I've come home, now that my own country is at war, to give +her every ounce of energy I've got to offer. As soon as a hole in my side +is healed up. I'm going back to those trenches, and I want to say to you +that them four months of mine face to face with life and with death have +done more for me than all my twenty-four civilian years put together." + +Cheers. + +"I'll be a different man, if I live to come back home after this war +and take up my work again as a draftsman. Why, I've seen weaklings and +self-confessed failures and even ninnies go into them trenches and come +out--oh yes, plenty of them do come out--men. Men that have got close +enough down to the facts of things to feel new realizations of what life +means come over them. Men that have gotten back their pep, their ambitions, +their unselfishness. That's what war can do for your men, you women who +are helping them to foster the spirit of holding back, of cheating their +government. That's what war can do for your men. Make of them the kind +of men who some day can face their children without having to hang their +heads. Men who can answer for their part in making the world a safe place +for democracy." + +An hour they stood there, the air quieting but chilling, and lavishly sown +stars cropping out. Street lights had come out, too, throwing up in ever +darker relief the figure above the heads of the crowd. His voice had +coarsened and taken on a raw edge, but every gesture was flung from the +socket, and from where they had forced themselves into the tight circle +Gertie Slayback, her mouth fallen open and her head still back, could see +the sinews of him ripple under khaki and the diaphragm lift for voice. + +There was a shift of speakers then, this time a private, still too rangy, +but his looseness of frame seeming already to conform to the exigency of +uniform. + +"Come on, Jimmie. I--I'm cold." + +They worked out into the freedom of the sidewalk, and for ten minutes, down +blocks of petty shops already lighted, walked in a silence that grew apace. + +He was suddenly conscious that she was crying, quietly, her handkerchief +wadded against her mouth. He strode on with a scowl and his head bent. +"Let's sit down in this little park, Jimmie. I'm tired." + +They rested on a bench on one of those small triangles of breathing space +which the city ekes out now and then; mill ends of land parcels. + +He took immediately to roving the toe of his shoe in and out among the +gravel. She stole out her hand to his arm. + +"Well, Jimmie?" Her voice was in the gauze of a whisper that hardly left +her throat. + +"Well, what?" he said, still toeing. + +"There--there's a lot of things we never thought about, Jimmie." + +"Aw!" + +"Eh, Jimmie?" + +"You mean _you_ never thought about it?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"I know what I mean alrighty." + +"I--I was the one that suggested it, Jimmie, but--but you fell in. I--I +just couldn't bear to think of it, Jimmie--your going and all. I suggested +it, but--but you fell in." + +"Say, when a fellow's shoved he falls. I never gave a thought to sneaking +an exemption until it was put in my head. I'd smash the fellow in the face +that calls me coward, I will." + +"You could have knocked me down with a feather, Jimmie, looking at it his +way all of a sudden." + +"You couldn't knock me down. Don't think I was ever strong enough for the +whole business. I mean the exemption part. I wasn't going to say anything. +What's the use, seeing the way you had your heart set on--on things? But +the whole business, if you want to know it, went against my grain. I'll +smash the fellow in the face that calls me coward." + +"I know, Jimmie; you--you're right. It was me suggested hurrying things +like this. Sneakin'! Oh, God! ain't I the messer-up!" + +"Lay easy, girl. I'm going to see it through. I guess there's been fellows +before me and will be after me who have done worse. I'm going to see it +through. All I got to say is I'll smash up the fellow calls me coward. Come +on, forget it. Let's go." + +She was close to him, her cheek crinkled against his with the frank kind of +social unconsciousness the park bench seems to engender. + +"Come on, Gert. I got a hunger on." + +'"Shh-h-h, Jimmie! Let me think. I'm thinking." + +"Too much thinking killed a cat. Come on." + +"Jimmie!" + +"Huh?" + +"Jimmie--would you--had you ever thought about being a soldier?" + +"Sure. I came in an ace of going into the army that time after--after that +little Central Street trouble of mine. I've got a book in my trunk this +minute on military tactics. Wouldn't surprise me a bit to see me land in +the army some day." + +"It's a fine thing, Jimmie, for a fellow--the army." + +"Yeh, good for what ails him." + +She drew him back, pulling at his shoulder so that finally he faced her. +"Jimmie!" + +"Huh?" + +"I got an idea." + +"Shoot." + +"You remember once, honey-bee, how I put it to you that night at Ceiner's +how, if it was for your good, no sacrifice was too much to make." + +"Forget it." + +"You didn't believe it." + +"Aw, say now, what's the use digging up ancient history?" + +"You'd be right, Jimmie, not to believe it. I haven't lived up to what I +said." + +"Oh Lord, honey! What's eating you now? Come to the point." + +She would not meet his eyes, turning her head from him to hide lips +that would quiver. "Honey, it--it ain't coming off--that's all. Not +now--anyways." + +"What ain't?" + +"Us." + +"Who?" + +"You know what I mean, Jimmie. It's like everything the soldier boy on the +corner just said. I--I saw you getting red clear behind your ears over it. +I--I was, too, Jimmie. It's like that soldier boy was put there on that +corner just to show me, before it was too late, how wrong I been in every +one of my ways. Us women who are helping to foster slackers. That's what +we're making of them--slackers for life. And here I been thinking it was +your good I had in mind, when all along it's been mine. That's what it's +been, mine!" + +"Aw, now, Gert--" + +"You got to go, Jimmie. You got to go, because you want to go and--because +I want you to go." + +"Where?" + +"To war." + +He took hold of her two arms because they were trembling. "Aw, now, Gert, I +didn't say anything complaining. I--" + +"You did, Jimmie, you did, and--and I never was so glad over you that you +did complain. I just never was so glad. I want you to go, Jimmie. I want +you to go and get a man made out of you. They'll make a better job out of +you than ever I can. I want you to get the yellow streak washed out. I want +you to get to be all the things he said you would. For every line he was +talking up there, I could see my boy coming home to me some day better than +anything I could make out of him, babying him the way I can't help doing. I +could see you, honey-bee, coming back to me with the kind of lift to your +head a fellow has when he's been fighting to make the world a safe place +for dem--for whatever it was he said. I want you to go, Jimmie. I want you +to beat the draft, too. Nothing on earth can make me not want you to go." + +"Why, Gert--you're kiddin'!" + +"Honey, you want to go, don't you? You want to square up those shoulders +and put on khaki, don't you? Tell me you want to go!" + +"Why--why, yes, Gert, if--" + +"Oh, you're going, Jimmie! You're going!" + +"Why, girl--you're crazy! Our flat! Our furniture--our--" + +"What's a flat? What's furniture? What's anything? There's not a firm in +business wouldn't take back a boy's furniture--a boy's everything--that's +going out to fight for--for dem-o-cracy! What's a flat? What's anything?" + +He let drop his head to hide his eyes. + +Do you know it is said that on the Desert of Sahara, the slope of Sorrento, +and the marble of Fifth Avenue the sun can shine whitest? There is an +iridescence to its glittering on bleached sand, blue bay, and Carrara +façade that is sheer light distilled to its utmost. + +On one such day when, standing on the high slope of Fifth Avenue where it +rises toward the Park, and looking down on it, surging to and fro, it was +as if, so manifest the brilliancy, every head wore a tin helmet, parrying +sunlight at a thousand angles of refraction. + +Parade-days, all this glittering midstream is swept to the clean sheen of +a strip of moire, this splendid desolation blocked on each side by crowds +half the density of the sidewalk. + +On one of these sun-drenched Saturdays dedicated by a growing tradition to +this or that national expression, the Ninety-ninth Regiment, to a flare of +music that made the heart leap out against its walls, turned into a scene +thus swept clean for it, a wave of olive drab, impeccable row after +impeccable row of scissors-like legs advancing. Recruits, raw if you will, +but already caparisoned, sniffing and scenting, as it were, for the great +primordial mire of war. + +There is no state of being so finely sensitized as national consciousness. +A gauntlet down and it surges up. One ripple of a flag defended can +goose-flesh a nation. How bitter and how sweet it is to give a soldier! + +To the seething kinetic chemistry of such mingling emotions there were +women who stood in the frontal crowds of the sidewalks stifling hysteria, +or ran after in terror at sight of one so personally hers, receding in that +great impersonal wave of olive drab. + +And yet the air was martial with banner and with shout. And the ecstasy of +such moments is like a dam against reality, pressing it back. It is in the +pompless watches of the night or of too long days that such dams break, +excoriating. + +For the thirty blocks of its course Gertie Slayback followed that wave of +men, half run and half walk. Down from the curb, and at the beck and call +of this or that policeman up again, only to find opportunity for still +another dive out from the invisible roping off of the sidewalk crowds. + +From the middle of his line, she could see, sometimes, the tail of Jimmie +Batch's glance roving for her, but to all purports his eye was solely for +his own replica in front of him, and at such times, when he marched, his +back had a little additional straightness that was almost swayback. + +Nor was Gertie Slayback crying. On the contrary, she was inclined to +laughter. A little too inclined to a high and brittle sort of dissonance +over which she seemed to have no control. + +"'By, Jimmie! So long! Jimmie! You-hoo!" + +Tramp. Tramp. Tramp-tramp-tramp. + +"You-hoo! Jimmie! So long, Jimmie!" + +At Fourteenth Street, and to the solemn stroke of one from a tower, she +broke off suddenly without even a second look back, dodging under the very +arms of the crowd as she ran out from it. + +She was one and three-quarter minutes late when she punched the time-clock +beside the Complaints and Adjustment Desk in the Bargain-Basement. + + + + +II + +SIEVE OF FULFILMENT + + +How constant a stream is the runnel of men's small affairs! + +Dynasties may totter and half the world bleed to death, but one or the +other corner _pâtisserie_ goes on forever. + +At a moment when the shadow of world-war was over the country like a pair +of black wings lowering Mrs. Harry Ross, who swooned at the sight of blood +from a penknife scratch down the hand of her son, but yawned over the +head-line statistics of the casualties at Verdun, lifted a lid from a pot +that exuded immediate savory fumes, prodded with a fork at its content, her +concern boiled down to deal solely with stew. + +An alarm-clock on a small shelf edged in scalloped white oilcloth ticked +with spick-and-span precision into a kitchen so correspondingly spick and +span that even its silence smelled scoured, rows of tins shining into it. +A dun-colored kind of dusk, soot floating in it, began to filter down the +air-shaft, dimming them. + +Mrs. Ross lowered the shade and lighted the gas-jet. So short that in the +long run she wormed first through a crowd, she was full of the genial +curves that, though they bespoke three lumps in her coffee in an elevator +and escalator age, had not yet reached uncongenial proportions. In fact, +now, brushing with her bare forearm across her moistly pink face, she was +like Flora, who, rather than fade, became buxom. + +A door slammed in an outer hall, as she was still stirring and looking down +into the stew. + +"Edwin!" + +"Yes, mother." + +"Don't track through the parlor." + +"Aw!" + +"You hear me?" + +"I yain't! Gee, can't a feller walk?" + +"Put your books on the hat-rack." + +"I am." + +She supped up bird-like from the tip of her spoon, smacking for flavor. + +"I made you an asafetida-bag, Edwin, it's in your drawer. Don't you leave +this house to-morrow without it on." + +"Aw-w-w-w-w!" + +"It don't smell." + +"Where's my stamp-book?" + +"On your table, where it belongs." + +"Gee whiz! if you got my Argentine stamps mixed!" + +"Get washed." + +"Where's my batteries?" + +"Under your bed, where they belong." + +"I'm hungry." + +"Your father'll be home any minute now. Don't spoil your appetite." + +"I got ninety in manual training, mother." + +"Did yuh, Edwin?" + +"All the other fellows only got seventy and eighty." + +"Mamma's boy leads 'em." + +He entered at that, submitting to a kiss upon an averted cheek. + +"See what mother's fixed for you!" + +"M-m-m-m! fritters!" + +"Don't touch!" + +"M-m-m-m--lamb stew!" + +"I shopped all morning to get okra to go in it for your father." + +"M-m-m-m-m!" + +She tiptoed up to kiss him again, this time at the back of the neck, +carefully averting her floury hands. + +"Mamma's boy! I made you three pen-wipers to-day out of the old red +table-cover." + +"Aw, fellers don't use pen-wipers!" + +He set up a jiggling, his great feet coming down with a clatter. + +"Stop!" + +"Can't I jig?" + +"No; not with neighbors underneath." + +He flopped down, hooking his heels in the chair-rung. + +At sixteen's stage of cruel hazing into man's estate Edwin Ross, whose +voice, all in a breath, could slip up from the quality of rock in the +drilling to the more brittle octave of early-morning milk-bottles, wore a +nine shoe and a thirteen collar. His first long trousers were let down and +taken in. His second taken up and let out. When shaving promised to become +a manly accomplishment, his complexion suddenly clouded, postponing that +event until long after it had become a hirsute necessity. When he smiled +apoplectically above his first waistcoat and detachable collar, his Adam's +apple and his mother's heart fluttered. + +"Blow-cat Dennis is going to City College." + +"Who's he?" + +"A feller." + +"Quit crackin' your knuckles." + +"He only got seventy in manual training." + +"Tell them things to your father, Edwin; I 'ain't got the say-so." + +"His father's only a bookkeeper, too, and they live 'way up on a Hundred +and Forty-fourth near Third." + +"I'm willing to scrimp and save for it, Edwin; but in the end I haven't got +the say-so, and you know it." + +"The boys that are going to college got to register now for the High School +College Society." + +"Your father, Edwin, is the one to tell that to." + +"Other fellers' mothers put in a word for 'em." + +"I do, Edwin; you know I do! It only aggravates him--There's papa now, +Edwin, coming in. Help mamma dish up. Put this soup at papa's place and +this at yours. There's only two plates left from last night." + +In Mrs. Ross's dining-room, a red-glass dome, swung by a chain over the +round table, illuminated its white napery and decently flowered china. +Beside the window looking out upon a gray-brick wall almost within reach, +a canary with a white-fluted curtain about the cage dozed headless. Beside +that window, covered in flowered chintz, a sewing-machine that could +collapse to a table; a golden-oak sideboard laid out in pressed glassware. +A homely simplicity here saved by chance or chintz from the simply homely. + +Mr. Harry Ross drew up immediately beside the spread table, jerking +open his newspaper and, head thrown back, read slantingly down at the +head-lines. + +"Hello, pop!" + +"Hello, son!" + +"Watch out!" + +"Hah--that's the stuff! Don't spill!" + +He jammed the newspaper between his and the chair back, shoving in closer +to the table. He was blond to ashiness, so that the slicked-back hair might +or might not be graying. Pink-shaved, unlined, nose-glasses polished to +sparkle, he was ten years his wife's senior and looked those ten years +younger. Clerks and clergymen somehow maintain that youth of the flesh, as +if life had preserved them in alcohol or shaving-lotion. Mrs. Ross entered +then in her crisp but faded house dress, her round, intent face still +moistly pink, two steaming dishes held out. + +He did not rise, but reached up to kiss her as she passed. + +"Burnt your soup a little to-night, mother." + +She sat down opposite, breathing deeply outward, spreading her napkin out +across her lap. + +"It was Edwin coming in from school and getting me worked up with his talk +about--about--" + +"What?" + +"Nothing. Edwin, run out and bring papa the paprika to take the burnt taste +out. I turned all the cuffs on your shirts to-day, Harry." + +"Lordy! if you ain't fixing at one thing, you're fixing another." + +"Anything new?" + +He was well over his soup now, drinking in long draughts from the tip of +his spoon. + +"News! In A. E. Unger's office, a man don't get his nose far enough up from +the ledger to even smell news." + +"I see Goldfinch & Goetz failed." + +"Could have told 'em they'd go under, trying to put on a spectacular show +written in verse. That same show boiled down to good Forty-second Street +lingo with some good shapes and a proposition like Alma Zitelle to lift +it from poetry to punch has a world of money in it for somebody. A war +spectacular show filled with sure-fire patriotic lines, a bunch of +show-girl battalions, and a figure like Alma Zitelle's for the Goddess of +Liberty--a world of money, I tell you!" + +"Honest, Harry?" + +"That trench scene they built for that show is as fine a contrivance as +I've ever seen of the kind. What did they do? Set it to a lot of music +without a hum or a ankle in it. A few classy nurses like the Mercy Militia +Sextet, some live, grand-old-flag tunes by Harry Mordelle, and there's a +half a million dollars in that show. Unger thinks I'm crazy when I try to +get him interested, but I--" + +"I got ninety in manual training to-day, pop." + +"That's good, son. Little more of that stew, mother?" + +"Unger isn't so smart, honey, he can't afford to take a tip off you once in +a while: you've proved that to him." + +"Yes, but go tell him so." + +"He'll live to see the day he's got to give you credit for being the first +to see money in 'Pan-America.'" + +"Credit? Huh! to hear him tell it, he was born with that idea in his bullet +head." + +"I'd like to hear him say it to me, if ever I lay eyes on him, that it +wasn't you who begged him to get into it." + +"I'll show 'em some day in that office that I can pick the winners for +myself, as well as for the other fellow. Believe me, Unger hasn't raised +me to fifty a week for my fancy bookkeeping, and he knows it, and, what's +more, he knows I know he knows it." + +"The fellers that are goin' to college next term have to register for the +High School College Society, pop--dollar dues." + +"Well, you aren't going to college, and that's where you and I save a +hundred cents on the dollar. Little more gravy, mother." + +The muscles of Edwin's face relaxed, his mouth dropping to a pout, the +crude features quivering. + +"Aw, pop, a feller nowadays without a college education don't stand a +show." + +"He don't, don't he? I know one who will." + +Edwin threw a quivering glance to his mother and gulped through a +constricted throat. + +"Mother says I--I can go if only you--" + +"Your mother'd say you could have the moon, too, if she had to climb a +greased pole to get it. She'd start weaving door-mats for the Cingalese +Hottentots if she thought they needed 'em." + +"But, Harry, he--" + +"Your mother 'ain't got the bills of this shebang to worry about, and your +mother don't mind having a college sissy a-laying around the house to +support five years longer. I do." + +"It's the free City College, pop." + +"You got a better education now than nine boys out of ten. If you ain't man +enough to want to get out after four years of high school and hustle for +a living, you got to be shown the way out. I started when I was in short +pants, and you're no better than your father. Your mother sold notions and +axle-grease in an up-State general store up to the day she married. Now cut +out the college talk you been springing on me lately. I won't have it--you +hear? You're a poor man's son, and the sooner you make up your mind to it +the better. Pass the chow-chow, mother." + +Nervousness had laid hold of her so that in and out among the dishes her +hand trembled. + +"You see, Harry, it's the free City College, and--" + +"I know that free talk. So was high school free when you talked me into +it, but if it ain't one thing it's been another. Cadet uniform, football +suit--" + +"The child's got talent for invention, Harry; his manual-training teacher +told me his air-ship model was--" + +"I got ninety in manual training when the other fellers only got seventy." + +"I guess you're looking for another case like your father, sitting +penniless around the house, tinkering on inventions up to the day he died." + +"Pa never had the business push, Harry. You know yourself his churn was +ready for the market before the Peerless beat him in on it." + +"Well, your son is going to get the business push trained into him. No boy +of mine with a poor daddy eats up four years of his life and my salary +training to be a college sissy. That's for the rich men's sons. That's for +the Clarence Ungers." + +"I'll pay it back some day, pop; I--." + +"They all say that." + +"If it's the money, Harry, maybe I can--" + +"If it didn't cost a cent, I wouldn't have it. Now cut it out--you hear? +Quick!" + +Edwin Ross pushed back from the table, struggling and choking against +impending tears. "Well, then, I--I--" + +"And no shuffling of feet, neither!" + +"He didn't shuffle, Harry; it's just his feet growing so fast he can't +manage them." + +"Well, just the samey, I--I ain't going into the theayter business. I--I--" + +Mr. Ross flung down his napkin, facing him. "You're going where I put you, +young man. You're going to get the right kind of a start that I didn't get +in the biggest money-making business in the world." + +"I won't. I'll get me a job in an aeroplane-factory." + +His father's palm came down with a small crash, shivering the china. "By +Gad! you take that impudence out of your voice to me or I'll rawhide it +out!" + +"Harry!" + +"Leave the table!" + +"Harry, he's only a child--" + +"Go to your room!" + +His heavy, unformed lips now trembling frankly against the tears he tried +so furiously to resist, Edwin charged with lowered head from the room, sobs +escaping in raw gutturals. + +Mr. Ross came back to his plate, breathing heavily, fist, with a knife +upright in it, coming down again on the table, his mouth open, to +facilitate labored breathing. + +"By Heaven! I'll cowhide that boy to his senses! I've never laid hand on +him yet, but he ain't too old. I'll get him down to common sense, if I got +to break a rod over him." + +Handkerchief against trembling lips, Mrs. Ross looked after the vanished +form, eyes brimming. + +"Harry, you--you're so rough with him." + +"I'll be rougher yet before I'm through." + +"He's only a--" + +"He's rewarding the way you scrimped to pay his expenses for nonsense clubs +and societies by asking you to do it another four years. You're getting +your thanks now. College! Well, not if the court knows it--" + +"He's got talent, Harry; his teacher says he--" + +"So'd your father have talent." + +"If pa hadn't lost his eye in the Civil War--" + +"I'm going to put my son's talent where I can see a future for it." + +"He's ambitious, Harry." + +"So'm I--to see my son trained to be something besides a looney inventor +like his grandfather before him." + +"It's all I want in life, Harry, to see my two boys of you happy." + +"It's your woman-ideas I got to blame for this. I want you to stop, Millie, +putting rich man's ideas in his head. You hear? I won't stand for it." + +"Harry, if--if it's the money, maybe I could manage--" + +"Yes--and scrimp and save and scrooge along without a laundress another +four years, and do his washing and--" + +"I--could fix the money part, Harry--easy." + +He regarded her with his jaw dropped in the act of chewing. + +"By Gad! where do you plant it?" + +"It--it's the way I scrimp, Harry. Another woman would spend it on clothes +or--a servant--or matinées. It ain't hard for a home body like me to save, +Harry." + +He reached across the table for her wrist. + +"Poor little soul," he said, "you don't see day-light." + +"Let him go, Harry, if--if he wants it. I can manage the money." + +His scowl returned, darkening him. + +"No. A. E. Unger never seen the inside of a high school, much less a +college, and I guess he's made as good a pile as most. I've worked for the +butcher and the landlord all my life, and now I ain't going to begin being +a slave to my boy. There's been two or three times in my life where, for +want of a few dirty dollars to make a right start, I'd be, a rich man +to-day. My boy's going to get that right start." + +"But, Harry, college will--" + +"I seen money in 'Pan-America' long before Unger ever dreamed of producing +it. I sicked him onto 'The Official Chaperon' when every manager in town +had turned it down. I went down and seen 'em doing 'The White Elephant' in +a Yiddish theater and wired Unger out in Chicago to come back and grab it +for Broadway. Where's it got me? Nowhere. Because I whiled away the best +fifteen years of my life in an up-State burg, and then, when I came down +here too late in life, got in the rut of a salaried man. Well, where it +'ain't got me it's going to get my son. I'm missing a chance, to-day that, +mark my word, would make me a rich man but for want of a few--" + +"Harry, you mean that?" + +"My hunch never fails me." + +She was leaning across the table, her hands clasping its edge, her small, +plump face even pinker. + +He threw out his legs beneath the table and sat back, hands deep in +pockets, and a toothpick hanging limp from between lips that were sagging. + +"Gad! if I had my life to live over again as a salaried man, I'd--I'd hang +myself first! The way to start a boy to a million dollars in this business +is to start him young in the producing-end of a strong firm." + +"You--got faith in this Goldfinch & Goetz failure like you had in +'Pan-America' and 'The Chaperon,' Harry?" + +"I said it five years ago and it come to pass. I say it now. For want of a +few dirty dollars I'm a poor man till I die." + +"How--many dollars, Harry?" + +"Don't make me say it, Millie--it makes me sick to my stummick. Three +thousand dollars would buy the whole spectacle to save it from the +storehouse. I tried Charley Ryan--he wouldn't risk a ten-spot on a +failure." + +"Harry, I--oh, Harry--" + +"Why, mother, what's the matter? You been overworking again, ironing my +shirts and collars when they ought to go to the laundry? You--" + +"Harry, what would you say if--if I was to tell you something?" + +"What is it, mother? You better get Annie in on Mondays. We 'ain't got any +more to show without her than with her." + +"Harry, we--have!" + +"Well, you just had an instance of the thanks you get." + +"Harry, what--what would you say if I could let you have nearly all of that +three thousand?" + +He regarded her above the flare of a match to his cigar-end. + +"Huh?" + +"If I could let you have twenty-six hundred seventeen dollars and about +fifty cents of it?" + +He sat well up, the light reflecting in points off his polished glasses. + +"Mother, you're joking!" + +Her hands were out across the table now, almost reaching his, her face +close and screwed under the lights. + +"When--when you lost out that time five years ago on 'Pan-America' and I +seen how Linger made a fortune out of it, I says to myself, 'It can never +happen again.' You remember the next January when you got your raise to +fifty and I wouldn't move out of this flat, and instead gave up having +Annie in, that was what I had in my head, Harry. It wasn't only for sending +Edwin to high school; it was for--my other boy, too, Harry, so it couldn't +happen again." + +"Millie, you mean--" + +"You ain't got much idea, Harry, of what I been doing. You don't know it, +honey, but, honest, I ain't bought a stitch of new clothes for five years. +You know I ain't, somehow--made friends for myself since we moved here." + +"It's the hard shell town of the world!" + +"You ain't had time, Harry, to ask yourself what becomes of the house +allowance, with me stinting so. Why, I--I won't spend car fare, Harry, +since 'Pan-America,' if I can help it. This meal I served up here t-night, +with all the high cost of living, didn't cost us two thirds what it +might if--if I didn't have it all figured up. Where do you think your +laundry-money that I've been saving goes, Harry? The marmalade-money I +made the last two Christmases? The velvet muff I made myself out of the +fur-money you give me? It's all in the Farmers' Trust, Harry. With the two +hundred and ten I had to start with five years ago, it's twenty-six hundred +and seventeen dollars and fifty cents now. I've been saving it for this +kind of a minute, Harry. When it got three thousand, I was going to tell +you, anyways. Is that enough, Harry, to do the Goldfinch-Goetz spectacle on +your own hook? Is it, Harry?" + +He regarded her in a heavy-jawed kind of stupefaction. + +"Woman alive!" he said. "Great Heavens, woman alive!" + +"It's in the bank, waiting, Harry--all for you." + +"Why, Millie, I--I don't know what to say." + +"I want you to have it, Harry. It's yours. Out of your pocket, back into +it. You got capital to start with now." + +"I--Why, I can't take that money, Millie, from you!" + +"From your wife? When she stinted and scrimped and saved on shoe-leather +for the happiness of it?" + +"Why, this is no sure thing I got on the brain." + +"Nothing is." + +"I got nothing but my own judgment to rely on." + +"You been right three times, Harry." + +"There's not as big a gamble in the world as the show business. I can't +take your savings, mother." + +"Harry, if--if you don't, I'll tear it up. It's what I've worked for. I'm +too tired, Harry, to stand much. If you don't take it, I--I'm too tired, +Harry, to stand it." + +"But, mother--" + +"I couldn't stand it, I tell you," she said, the tears now bursting and +flowing down over her cheeks. + +"Why, Millie, you mustn't cry! I 'ain't seen you cry in years. Millie! my +God! I can't get my thoughts together! Me to own a show after all these +years; me to--" + +"Don't you think it means something to me, too, Harry?" + +"I can't lose, Millie. Even if this country gets drawn into the war, +there's a mint of money in that show as I see it. It'll help the people. +The people of this country need to have their patriotism tickled." + +"All my life, Harry, I've wanted a gold-mesh bag with a row of sapphires +and diamonds across the top--" + +"I'm going to make it the kind of show that 'Dixie' was a song--" + +"And a gold-colored bird-of-paradise for a black-velvet hat, all my life, +Harry--" + +"With Alma Zitelle in the part--" + +"Is it her picture I found in your drawer the other day, Harry, cut out +from a Sunday newspaper?" + +"One and the same. I been watching her. There's a world of money in that +woman, whoever she is. She's eccentric and they make her play straight, but +if I could get hold of her--My God! Millie, I--I can't believe things!" + +She rose, coming round to lay her arms across his shoulders. + +"We'll be rich, maybe, Harry--" + +"I've picked the winners for the other fellows every time, Mil." + +"Anyhow, it's worth the gamble, Harry." + +"I got a nose for what the people want. I've never been able to prove it +from a high stool, but I'll show 'em now--by God! I'll show 'em now!" He +sprang up, pulling the white table-cloth awry and folding her into his +embrace. "I'll show 'em." + +She leaned from him, her two hands against his chest, head thrown back and +eyes up to him. + +"We--can educate our boy, then, Harry, like--like a rich man's son." + +"We ain't rich yet." + +"Promise me, Harry, if we are--promise me that, Harry. It's the only +promise I ask out of it. Whatever comes, if we win or lose, our boy can +have college if he wants." + +He held her close, his head up and gazing beyond her. + +"With a rich daddy my boy can go to college like the best of 'em." + +"Promise me that, Harry." + +"I promise, Millie." + +He released her then, feeling for an envelope in an inner pocket, and, +standing there above the disarrayed dinner-table, executed some rapid +figures across the back of it. + +She stood for a moment regarding him, hands pressed against the sting of +her cheeks, tears flowing down over her smile. Then she took up the plate +of cloying fritters and tiptoed out, opening softly the door to a slit of +a room across the hall. In the patch of light let in by that opened door, +drawn up before a small table, face toward her ravaged with recent tears, +and lips almost quivering, her son lay in the ready kind of slumber youth +can bring to any woe. She tiptoed up beside him, placing the plate of +fritters back on a pile of books, let her hands run lightly over his hair, +kissed him on each swollen lid. + +"My son! My little boy! My little boy!" + +Where Broadway leaves off its roof-follies and its water-dancing, its +eighty-odd theaters and its very odd Hawaiian cabarets, upper Broadway, +widening slightly, takes up its macadamized rush through the city in +block-square apartment-houses, which rise off plate-glass foundations of +the de-luxe greengrocer shops, the not-so-green beauty-parlors, and the +dyeing-and-cleaning, automobile-supplies, and confectionery establishments +of middle New York. + +In a no-children-allowed, swimming-pool, electric-laundry, roof-garden, +dogs'-playground, cold-storage apartment most recently erected on a +block-square tract of upper Broadway, belonging to and named after the +youngest scion of an ancestor whose cow-patches had turned to kingdoms, the +fifteenth layer of this gigantic honeycomb overlooked from its seventeen +outside windows the great Babylonian valley of the city, the wide blade +of the river shining and curving slightly like an Arabian dagger, and the +embankment of New Jersey's Palisades piled against the sky with the effect +of angry horizon. + +Nights, viewed from one of the seventeen windows, it was as if the river +flowed under a sullen sheath which undulated to its curves. On clear days +it threw off light like parrying steel in sunshine. + +Were days when, gazing out toward it, Mrs. Ross, whose heart was like a +slow ache of ever-widening area, could almost feel its laving quality and, +after the passage of a tug- or pleasure-boat, the soothing folding of the +water down over and upon itself. Often, with the sun setting pink and whole +above the Palisades, the very copper glow which was struck off the water +would beat against her own west windows, and, as if smarting under the +brilliance, tears would come, sometimes staggering and staggering down, +long after the glow was cold. With such a sunset already waned, and the +valley of unrest fifteen stories below popping out into electric signs and +the red danger-lanterns of streets constantly in the remaking, Mrs. Harry +Ross, from the corner window of her seventeen, looked down on it from under +lids that were rimmed in red. + +Beneath the swirl of a gown that lay in an iridescent avalanche of sequins +about her feet, her foot, tilted to an unbelievable hypothenuse off a +cloth-of-silver heel, beat a small and twinkling tattoo, her fingers +tattooing, too, along the chair-sides. + +How insidiously do the years nibble in! how pussy-footed and how cocksure +the crow's-feet! One morning, and the first gray hair, which has been +turning from the cradle, arrives. Another, the mirror shows back a +sag beneath the eyes. That sag had come now to Mrs. Ross, giving her +eye-sockets a look of unconquerable weariness. The streak of quicksilver +had come, too, but more successfully combated. The head lying back against +the brocade chair was guilty of new gleams. Brass, with a greenish alloy. +Sitting there with the look of unshed tears seeming to form a film over +her gaze, it was as if the dusk, flowing into a silence that was solemnly +shaped to receive it, folded her in, more and more obscuring her. + +A door opened at the far end of the room, letting in a patch of hall light +and a dark figure coming into silhouette against it. + +"You there?" + +She sprang up. + +"Yes, Harry--yes." + +"Good Lord! sitting in the dark again!" He turned a wall key, three +pink-shaded lamps, a cluster of pink-glass grapes, and a center bowl of +alabaster flashing up the familiar spectacle of Louis Fourteenth and the +interior decorator's turpitude; a deep-pink brocade divan backed up by a +Circassian-walnut table with curly legs; a maze of smaller tables; a +marble Psyche holding out the cluster of pink grapes; a gilt grand piano, +festooned in rosebuds. Around through these Mr. Ross walked quickly, +winding his hands, rubbing them. + +"Well, here I am!" + +"Had your supper--dinner, Harry?" + +"No. What's the idea calling me off when I got a business dinner on hand? +What's the hurry call this time? I have to get back to it." + +She clasped her hands to her bare throat, swallowing with effort. + +"I--Harry--I--" + +"You've got to stop this kind of thing, Millie, getting nervous spells like +all the other women do the minute they get ten cents in their pocket. I +ain't got the time for it--that's all there is to it." + +"I can't help it, Harry. I think I must be going crazy. I can't stop +myself. All of a sudden everything comes over me. I think I must be going +crazy." + +Her voice jerked up to an off pitch, and he flung himself down on the +deep-cushioned couch, his stiff expanse of dress shirt bulging and +straining at the studs. A bit redder and stouter, too, he was constantly +rearing his chin away from the chafing edge of his collar. + +"O Lord!" he said. "I guess I'm let in for some cutting-up again! Well, +fire away and have it over with! What's eating you this time?" + +She was quivering so against sobs that her lips were drawn in against her +teeth by the great draught of her breathing. + +"I can't stand it, Harry. I'm going crazy. I got to get relief. It's +killing me--the lonesomeness--the waiting. I can't stand no more." + +He sat looking at a wreath of roses in the light carpet, lips compressed, +beating with fist into palm. + +"Gad! I dunno! I give up. You're too much for me, woman." + +"I can't go on this way--the suspense--can't--can't." + +"I don't know what you want. God knows I give up! +Thirty-eight-hundred-dollar-a-year apartment--more spending-money in a +week than you can spend in a month. Clothes. Jewelry. Your son one of the +high-fliers at college--his automobile--your automobile. Passes to every +show in town. Gad! I can't help it if you turn it all down and sit up here +moping and making it hot for me every time I put my foot in the place. I +don't know what you want; you're one too many for me." + +"I can't stand--" + +"All of a sudden, out of a clear sky, she sends for me to come home. Second +time in two weeks. No wonder, with your long face, your son lives mostly +up at the college. I 'ain't got enough on my mind yet with the 'Manhattan +Revue' opening to-morrow night. You got it too good, if you want to know +it. That's what ails women when they get to cutting up like this." + +She was clasping and unclasping her hands, swaying, her eyes closed. + +"I wisht to God we was back in our little flat on a Hundred and +Thirty-seventh Street. We was happy then. It's your success has lost you +for me. I ought to known it, but--I--I wanted things so for you and the +boy. It's your success has lost you for me. Back there, not a supper we +didn't eat together like clockwork, not a night we didn't take a walk or--" + +"There you go again! I tell you, Millie, you're going to nag me with +that once too often. Then ain't now. What you homesick for? Your +poor-as-a-church-mouse days? I been pretty patient these last two years, +feeling like a funeral every time I put my foot in the front door--" + +"It ain't often you put it in." + +"But, mark my word, you're going to nag me once too often!" + +"O God! Harry, I try to keep in! I know how wild it makes you--how busy you +are, but--" + +"A man that's give to a woman heaven on earth like I have you! A man that +started three years ago on nothing but nerve and a few dollars, and now +stands on two feet, one of the biggest spectacle-producers in the business! +By Gad! you're so darn lucky it's made a loon out of you! Get out more. +Show yourself a good time. You got the means and the time. Ain't there no +way to satisfy you?" + +"I can't do things alone all the time, Harry. I--I'm funny that way. I +ain't a woman like that, a new-fangled one that can do things without her +husband. It's the nights that kill me--the nights. The--all nights sitting +here alone--waiting." + +"If you 'ain't learned the demands of my business by now, I'm not going +over them again." + +"Yes; but not all--" + +"You ought to have some men to deal with. I'd like to see Mrs. Unger try to +dictate to him how to run his business." + +"You've left me behind, Harry. I--try to keep up, but--I can't. I ain't +the woman to naturally paint my hair this way. It's my trying to keep up, +Harry, with you and--and--Edwin. These clothes--I ain't right in 'em, +Harry; I know that. That's why I can't stand it. The suspense. The waiting +up nights. I tell you I'm going crazy. Crazy with knowing I'm left behind." + +"I never told you to paint up your hair like a freak." + +"I thought, Harry--the color--like hers--it might make me seem younger--" + +"You thought! You're always thinking." + +She stood behind him now over the couch, her hand yearning toward but not +touching him. + +"O God! Harry, ain't there no way I can please you no more--no way?" + +"You can please me by acting like a human being and not getting me home on +wild-goose chases like this." + +"But I can't stand it, Harry! The quiet. Nobody to do for. You always gone. +Edwin. The way the servants--laugh. I ain't smart enough, like some women. +I got to show it--that my heart's breaking." + +"Go to matinées; go--" + +"Tell me how to make myself like Alma Zitelle to you, Harry. For God's +sake, tell me!" + +He looked away from her, the red rising up above the rear of his collar. + +"You're going to drive me crazy desperate, too, some day, on that jealousy +stuff. I'm trying to do the right thing by you and hold myself in, +but--there's limits." + +"Harry, it--ain't jealousy. I could stand anything if I only knew. If you'd +only come out with it. Not keep me sitting here night after night, when I +know you--you're with her. It's the suspense, Harry, as much as anything is +killing me. I could stand it, maybe, if I only knew. If I only knew!" + +He sprang up, wheeling to face her across the couch. + +"You mean that?" + +"Harry!" + +"Well, then, since you're the one wants it, since you're forcing me to +it--I'll end your suspense, Millie. Yes. Let me go, Millie. There's no use +trying to keep life in something that's dead. Let me go." + +She stood looking at him, cheeks cased in palms, and her sagging +eye-sockets seeming to darken, even as she stared. + +"You--her--" + +"It happens every day, Millie. Man and woman grow apart, that's all. Your +own son is man enough to understand that. Nobody to blame. Just happens." + +"Harry--you mean--" + +"Aw, now, Millie, it's no easier for me to say than for you to listen. I'd +sooner cut off my right hand than put it up to you. Been putting it off all +these months. If you hadn't nagged--led up to it, I'd have stuck it out +somehow and made things miserable for both of us. It's just as well you +brought it up. I--Life's life, Millie, and what you going to do about it?" + +A sound escaped her like the rising moan of a gale up a flue; then she +sat down against trembling that seized her and sent ripples along the +iridescent sequins. + +"Harry--Alma Zitelle--you mean--Harry?" + +"Now what's the use going into all that, Millie? What's the difference who +I mean? It happened." + +"Harry, she--she's a common woman." + +"We won't discuss that." + +"She'll climb on you to what she wants higher up still. She won't bring you +nothing but misery, Harry. I know what I'm saying; she'll--" + +"You're talking about something you know nothing about--you--" + +"I do. I do. You're hypnotized, Harry. It's her looks. Her dressing like +a snake. Her hair. I can get mine fixed redder 'n hers, Harry. It takes a +little time. Mine's only started to turn, Harry, is why it don't look right +yet to you. This dress, it's from her own dressmaker. Harry--I promise you +I can make myself like--her--I promise you, Harry--" + +"For God's sake, Millie, don't talk like--that! It's awful! What's those +things got to do with it? It's--awful!" + +"They have, Harry. They have, only a man don't know it. She's a bad woman, +Harry--she's got you fascinated with the way she dresses and does--" + +"We won't go into that." + +"We will. We will. I got the right. I don't have to let you go if I don't +want to. I'm the mother of your son. I'm the wife that was good enough for +you in the days when you needed her. I--" + +"You can't throw that up to me, Millie. I've squared that debt." + +"She'll throw you over, Harry, when I'll stand by you to the crack of doom. +Take my word for it, Harry. O God! Harry, please take my word for it!" + +She closed her streaming eyes, clutching at his sleeve in a state beyond +her control. "Won't you please? Please!" + +He toed the carpet. + +"I--I'd sooner be hit in the face, Millie, than--have this happen. Swear I +would! But you see for yourself we--we can't go on this way." + +She sat for a moment, her stare widening above the palm clapped tightly +against her mouth. + +"Then you mean, Harry, you want--you want a--a--" + +"Now, now, Millie, try to keep hold of yourself. You're a sensible woman. +You know I'll do the right thing by you to any amount. You'll have the boy +till he's of age, and after that, too, just as much as you want him. He'll +live right here in the flat with you. Money's no object, the way I'm going +to fix things. Why, Millie, compared to how things are now--you're going to +be a hundred per cent, better off--without me." + +She fell to rocking herself in the straight chair. + +"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" + +"Now, Millie, don't take it that way. I know that nine men out of ten would +call me crazy to--to let go of a woman like you. But what's the use trying +to keep life in something that's dead? It's because you're too good for me, +Millie. I know that. You know that it's not because I think any less of +you, or that I've forgot it was you who gave me my start. I'd pay you back +ten times more if I could. I'm going to settle on you and the boy so that +you're fixed for life. When he's of age, he comes into the firm half +interest. There won't even be no publicity the way I'm going to fix things. +Money talks, Millie. You'll get your decree without having to show your +face to the public." + +"O God--he's got it all fixed--he's talked it all over with her! She--" + +"You--you wouldn't want to force something between you and me, Millie; +that--that's just played out--" + +"I done it myself. I couldn't let well enough alone. I was ambitious for +'em. I dug my own grave. I done it myself. Done it myself!" + +"Now, Millie, you mustn't look at things that way. Why, you're the kind of +a little woman all you got to have is something to mother over. I'm going +to see to it that the boy is right here at home with you all the time. He +can give up those rooms at the college--you got as fine a son as there is +in the country, Millie--I'm going to see to it that he is right here at +home with you--" + +"O God--my boy--my little boy--my little boy!" + +"The days are over, Millie, when this kind of thing makes any difference. +If it was--the mother--it might be different, but where the father is--to +blame--it don't matter with the boy. Anyways, he's nearly of age. I tell +you, Millie, if you'll just look at this thing sensible--" + +"I--Let me think, let--me--think." + +Her tears had quieted now to little dry moans that came with regularity. +She was still swaying in her chair, eyes closed. + +"You'll get your decree, Millie, without--." + +"Don't talk," she said, a frown lowering over her closed eyes and pressing +two fingers against each temple. "Don't talk." + +He walked to the window in a state of great perturbation, stood pulling +inward his lips and staring down into the now brilliantly lighted flow of +Broadway. Turned into the room with short, hasty strides, then back again. +Came to confront her. + +"Aw, now, Millie--Millie--" Stood regarding her, chewing backward and +forward along his fingertips. "You--you see for yourself, Millie, what's +dead can't be made alive--now, can it?" + +She nodded, acquiescing, her lips bitterly wry. + +"My lawyer, Millie, he'll fix it, alimony and all, so you won't--" + +"O God!" + +"Suppose I just slip away easy, Millie, and let him fix up things so it'll +be easiest for us both. Send the boy down to see me to-morrow. He's +old enough and got enough sense to have seen things coming. He knows. +Suppose--I just slip out easy, Millie, for--for--both of us. Huh, Millie?" + +She nodded again, her lips pressed back against outburst. + +"If ever there was a good little woman, Millie, and one that deserves +better than me, it's--" + +"Don't!" she cried. "Don't--don't--don't!" + +"I--" + +"Go--quick--now!" + +He hesitated, stood regarding her there in the chair, eyes squeezed closed +like Iphigenia praying for death when exiled in Tauris. + +"Millie--I--" + +"Go!" she cried, the wail clinging to her lips. + +He felt round for his hat, his gaze obscured behind the shining glasses, +tiptoed out round the archipelago of too much furniture, groped for the +door-handle, turning it noiselessly, and stood for the instant looking back +at her bathed in the rosy light and seated upright like a sleeping Ariadne; +opened the door to a slit that closed silently after him. + +She sat thus for three hours after, the wail still uppermost on the +silence. + +At ten o'clock, with a gust that swayed the heavy drapes, her son burst in +upon the room, his stride kicking the door before he opened it. Six feet in +his gymnasium shoes, and with a ripple of muscle beneath the well-fitting, +well-advertised Campus Coat for College Men, he had emerged from the three +years into man's complete estate, which, at nineteen, is that patch of +territory at youth's feet known as "the world." Gray eyed, his dark lashes +long enough to threaten to curl, the lean line of his jaw squaring after +the manner of America's fondest version of her manhood, he was already in +danger of fond illusions and fond mommas. + +"Hello, mother!" he said, striding quickly through the chairs and over to +where she sat. + +"Edwin!" + +"Thought I'd sleep home to-night, mother." + +He kissed her lightly, perking up her shoulder butterflies of green +sequins, and standing off to observe. + +"Got to hand it to my little mother for quiet and sumptuous el-e-gance! +Some classy spangy-wangles!" He ran his hand against the lay of the +sequins, absorbed in a conscious kind of gaiety. + +She moistened her lips, trying to smile. + +"Oh, boy," she said--"Edwin!"--holding to his forearm with fingers that +tightened into it. + +"Mother," he said, pulling at his coat lapels with a squaring of shoulders, +"you--you going to be a dead game little sport?" + +She was looking ahead now, abstraction growing in her white face. + +"Huh?" + +He fell into short strides up and down the length of the couch front. + +"I--I guess I might have mentioned it before, mother, but--but--oh, +hang!--when a fellow's a senior it--it's all he can do to get home once in +a while and--and--what's the use talking about a thing anyway before +it breaks right, and--well, everybody knows it's up to us college +fellows--college men--to lead the others and show our country what we're +made of now that she needs us--eh, little dressed-up mother?" + +She looked up at him with the tremulous smile still trying to break +through. + +"My boy can mix with the best of 'em." + +"That's not what I mean, mother." + +"You got to be twice to me what you been, darling--twice to me. Listen, +darling. I--Oh, my God!" + +She was beating softly against his hand held in hers, her voice rising +again, and her tears. + +"Listen, darling--" + +"Now, mother, don't go into a spell. The war is going to help you out +on these lonesome fits, mother. Like Slawson put it to-day in Integral +Calculus Four, war reduces the personal equation to its lowest terms--it's +a matter of--." + +"I need you now, Edwin--O God! how I need you! There never was a minute in +all these months since you've grown to understand how--it is between your +father and me that I needed you so much--" + +"Mother, you mustn't make it harder for me to--tell you what I--" + +"I think maybe something has happened to me, Edwin. I can feel myself +breathe all over--it's like I'm outside of myself somewhere--" + +"It's nervousness, mother. You ought to get out more. I'm going to get you +some war-work to do, mother, that 'll make you forget yourself. Service is +what counts these days!" + +"Edwin, it's come--he's leaving me--it--" + +"Speaking of service, I--I guess I might have mentioned it before, mother, +but--but--when war was declared the other day, a--a bunch of us fellows +volunteered for--for the university unit to France, and--well, I'm +accepted, mother--to go. The lists went up to-night. I'm one of the twenty +picked fellows." + +"France?" + +"We sail for Bordeaux for ambulance service the twentieth, mother. I was +the fourth accepted with my qualifications--driving my own car and--and +physical fitness. I'm going to France, mother, among the first to do my +bit. I know a fellow got over there before we were in the war and worked +himself into the air-fleet. That's what I want, mother, air service! +They're giving us fellows credit for our senior year just the same. Bob +Vandaventer and Clarence Unger and some of the fellows like that are in the +crowd. Are you a dead-game sport, little mother, and not going to make a +fuss--" + +"I--don't know. What--is--it--I--" + +"Your son at the front, mother, helping to make the world a safer place for +democracy. Does a little mother with something like that to bank on have +time to be miserable over family rows? You're going to knit while I'm gone. +The busiest little mother a fellow ever had, doing her bit for her country! +There's signs up all over the girls' campus: 'A million soldiers "out +there" are needing wool jackets and chest-protectors. How many will you +take care of?' You're going to be the busiest little mother a fellow ever +had. You're going to stop making a fuss over me and begin to make a fuss +over your country. We're going into service, mother!" + +"Don't leave me, Edwin! Baby darling, don't leave me! I'm alone! I'm +afraid." + +"There, there, little mother," he said, patting at her and blinking, +"I--Why--why, there's men come back from every war, and plenty of them. +Good Lord! just because a fellow goes to the front, he--" + +"I got nothing left. Everything I've worked for has slipped through my life +like sand through a sieve. My hands are empty. I've lost your father on +the success I slaved for. I'm losing my boy on the fine ideas and college +education I've slaved for. I--Don't leave me, Edwin. I'm afraid--Don't--" + +"Mother--I--Don't be cut up about it. I--" + +"Why should I give to this war? I ain't a fine woman with the fine ideas +you learn at college. I ask so little of life--just some one who needs me, +some one to do for. I 'ain't got any fine ideas about a son at war. Why +should I give to what they're fighting for on the other side of the ocean? +Don't ask me to give up my boy to what they're fighting for in a country +I've never seen--my little boy I raised--my all I've got--my life! No! No!" + +"It's the women like you, mother--with guts--with grit--that send their +sons to war." + +"I 'ain't got grit!" + +"You're going to have your hands so full, little mother, taking care of the +Army and Navy, keeping their feet dry and their chests warm, that before +you know it you'll be down at the pier some fine day watching us fellows +come home from victory." + +"No--no--no!" + +"You're going to coddle the whole fighting front, making 'em sweaters and +aviation sets out of a whole ton of wool I'm going to lay in the house for +you. Time's going to fly for my little mother." + +"I'll kill myself first!" + +"You wouldn't have me a quitter, little mother. You wouldn't have the other +fellows in my crowd at college go out and do what I haven't got the guts to +do. You want me to hold up my head with the best of 'em." + +"I don't want nothing but my boy! I--" + +"Us college men got to be the first to show that the fighting backbone of +the country is where it belongs. If us fellows with education don't set the +example, what can we expect from the other fellows? Don't ask me to be a +quitter, mother. I couldn't! I wouldn't! My country needs us, mother--you +and me--" + +"Edwin! Edwin!" + +"Attention, little mother--stand!" + +She lay back her head, laughing, crying, sobbing, choking. + +"O God--take him and bring him back--to me!" + + +On a day when sky and water were so identically blue that they met in +perfect horizon, the S. S. _Rowena_, sleek-flanked, mounted fore and aft +with a pair of black guns that lifted snouts slightly to the impeccable +blue, slipped quietly, and without even a newspaper sailing-announcement +into a frivolous midstream that kicked up little lace edged wavelets, +undulating flounces of them. A blur of faces rose above deck-rails, faces +that, looking back, receded finally. The last flag and the last kerchief +became vapor. Against the pier-edge, frantically, even perilously forward, +her small flag thrust desperately beyond the rail, Mrs. Ross, who had +lost a saving sense of time and place, leaned after that ship receding in +majesty, long after it had curved from view. + +The crowd, not a dry-eyed one, women in spite of themselves with lips +whitening, men grim with pride and an innermost bleeding, sagged suddenly, +thinning and trickling back into the great, impersonal maw of the city. +Apart from the rush of the exodus, a youth remained at the rail, gazing +out and quivering for the smell of war. Finally, he too, turned back +reluctantly. + +Now only Mrs. Ross. An hour she stood there, a solitary figure at the rail, +holding to her large black hat, her skirts whipped to her body and snapping +forward in the breeze. The sun struck off points from the water, animating +it with a jewel-dance. It found out in a flash the diamond-and-sapphire top +to her gold-mesh hand-bag, hoppity-skippiting from facet to facet. + +"My boy--my little boy!" + +A pair of dock-hands, wiping their hands on cotton-waste, came after a +while to the door of the pier-house to observe and comment. Conscious of +that observation, she moved then through the great dank sheds in and among +the bales and boxes, down a flight of stairs and out to the cobbled +street. Her motor-car, the last at the entrance, stood off at a slant, +the chauffeur lopping slightly and dozing, his face scarcely above the +steering-wheel. She passed him with unnecessary stealth, her heels +occasionally wedging between the cobbles and jerking her up. Two hours she +walked thus, invariably next to the water's edge or in the first street +running parallel to it. Truck-drivers gazed at and sang after her. Deck- +and dock-hands, stretched out in the first sun of spring, opened their eyes +to her passing, often staring after her under lazy lids. Behind a drawn +veil her lips were moving, but inaudibly now. Motor-trucks, blocks of them, +painted the gray of war, stood waiting shipment, engines ready to throb +into no telling what mire. Once a van of knitted stuffs, always the gray, +corded and bound into bales, rumbled by, close enough to graze and send her +stumbling back. She stood for a moment watching it lumber up alongside a +dock. + +It was dusk when she emerged from the rather sinister end of West Street +into Battery Park, receding in a gracious new-green curve from the water. +Tier after tier of lights had begun to prick out in the back-drop of +skyscraping office-buildings. The little park, after the six-o'clock +stampede, settled back into a sort of lamplit quiet, dark figures, the +dregs of a city day, here and there on its benches. The back-drop of +office-lights began to blink out then, all except the tallest tower in the +world, rising in the glory of its own spotlight into a rococo pinnacle of +man's accomplishment. + +Strolling the edge of that park so close to the water that she could hear +it seethe in the receding, a policeman finally took to following Mrs. Ross, +his measured tread behind hers, his night-stick rapping out every so often. +She found out a bench then, and never out of his view, sat looking out +across the infinitude of blackness to where the bay so casually meets the +sea. Night dampness had sent her shivering, the plumage of her hat, the +ferny feathers of the bird-of-paradise, drooping almost grotesquely over +the brim. + +A small detachment of Boy Scouts, sturdy with an enormous sense of uniform +and valor, marched through the asphalt alleys of the park with trained, +small-footed, regimental precision--small boys with clean, lifted faces. A +fife and drum came up the road. + +Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! + +High over the water a light had come out--Liberty's high-flung torch. +Watching it, and quickened by the fife and drum to an erect sitting +posture, Mrs. Ross slid forward on her bench, lips opening. The policeman +standing off, rapped twice, and when she rose, almost running toward the +lights of the Elevated station, followed. + +Within her apartment on upper Broadway, not even a hall light burned +when she let herself in with her key. At the remote end of the aisle of +blackness a slit of yellow showed beneath the door, behind it the babble of +servants' voices. + +She entered with a stealth that was well under cover of those voices, +groping into the first door at her right, feeling round for the wall key, +switching the old rose-and-gold room into immediate light. Stood for a +moment, her plumage drooping damply to her shoulders, blue foulard dress +snagged in two places, her gold mesh bag with the sapphire-and-diamond top +hanging low from the crook of her little finger. A clock ticked with almost +an echo into the rather vast silence. + +She entered finally, sidling in among the chairs. + +A great mound of gray yarn, uncut skein after uncut skein of it, rose off +the brocade divan, more of them piled in systematic pyramids on three +chairs. She dropped at sight of it to the floor beside the couch, burying +her face in its fluff, grasping it in handfuls, writhing into it. Surges of +merciful sobs came sweeping through and through her. + +After a while, with a pair of long amber-colored needles, she fell to +knitting with a fast, even furious ambidexterity, her mouth pursing up with +a driving intensity, her boring gaze so concentrated on the thing in hand +that her eyes seemed to cross. + +Dawn broke upon her there, her hat still cockily awry, tears dried in +a vitrified gleaming down her cheeks. Beneath her flying fingers, a +sleeveless waistcoat was taking shape, a soldier's inner jacket against the +dam of trenches. At sunup it lay completed, spread out as if the first of +a pile. The first noises of the city began to rise remotely. A bell pealed +off somewhere. Day began to raise its conglomerate voice. On her knees +beside the couch there, the second waistcoat was already taking shape +beneath the cocksure needles. + +The old pinkly moist look had come out in her face. + +One million boys "out there" were needing chest-protectors! + + + + +III + +ICE-WATER, PL--! + + +When the two sides of every story are told, Henry VIII. may establish an +alibi or two, Shylock and the public-school system meet over and melt that +too, too solid pound of flesh, and Xantippe, herself the sturdier man than +Socrates, give ready, lie to what is called the shrew in her. Landladies, +whole black-bombazine generations of them--oh, so long unheard!--may +rise in one Indictment of the Boarder: The scarred bureau-front and +match-scratched wall-paper; the empty trunk nailed to the floor in security +for the unpaid bill; cigarette-burnt sheets and the terror of sudden fire; +the silent newcomer in the third floor back hustled out one night in +handcuffs; the day-long sobs of the blond girl so suddenly terrified of +life-about-to-be and wringing her ringless hands in the fourth-floor +hall-room; the smell of escaping gas and the tightly packed keyhole; the +unsuspected flutes that lurk in boarders' trunks; towels, that querulous +and endless paean of the lodger; the high cost of liver and dried peaches, +of canned corn and round steak! + +Tired bombazine procession, wrapped in the greasy odors of years of +carpet-sweeping and emptying slops, airing the gassy slit of room after the +coroner; and padding from floor to floor on a mission of towels and towels +and towels! + +Sometimes climbing from floor to floor, a still warm supply of them looped +over one arm, Mrs. Kaufman, who wore bombazine, but unspotted and with +crisp net frills at the throat, and upon whose soft-looking face the years +had written their chirography in invisible ink, would sit suddenly, there +in the narrow gloom of her halls, head against the balustrade. Oftener than +not the Katz boy from the third floor front would come lickety-clapping +down the stairs and past her, jumping the last four steps of each flight. + +"Irving, quit your noise in the hall." + +"Aw!" + +"Ain't you ashamed, a big boy like you, and Mrs. Suss with her neuralgia?" + +"Aw!"--the slam of a door clipping off this insolence. + +After a while she would resume her climb. + +And yet in Mrs. Kaufman's private boarding-house in West Eighty-ninth +Street, one of a breastwork of brownstone fronts, lined up stoop for stoop, +story for story, and ash-can for ash-can, there were few enough greasy +odors except upon the weekly occasion of Monday's boiled dinner; and, +whatever the status of liver and dried peaches, canned corn and round +steak, her menus remained static--so static that in the gas-lighted +basement dining-room and at a remote end of the long, well-surrounded table +Mrs. Katz, with her napkin tucked well under her third chin, turned _sotto_ +from the protruding husband at her right to her left neighbor, shielding +her remark with her hand. + +"Am I right, Mrs. Finshriber? I just said to my husband in the five years +we been here she should just give us once a change from Friday-night lamb +and noodles." + +"Say, you should complain yet! With me it's six and a half years day after +to-morrow, Easter Day, since I asked myself that question first." + +"Even my Irving says to me to-night up in the room; jumping up and down on +the hearth like he had four legs--" + +"I heard him, Mrs. Katz, on my ceiling like he had eight legs." + +"'Mamma,' he says, 'guess why I feel like saying "Baa."'" + +"Saying what?" + +"Sheep talk, Mrs. Finshriber. B-a-a, like a sheep goes." + +"Oh!" + +"'Cause I got so many Friday nights' lamb in me, mamma,' he said. Quick +like a flash that child is." + +Mrs. Finshriber dipped her head and her glance, all her drooping features +pulled even farther down at their corners. "I ain't the one to complain, +Mrs. Katz, and I always say, when you come right down to it maybe Mrs. +Kaufman's house is as good as the next one, but--" + +"I wish, though, Mrs. Finshriber, you would hear what Mrs. Spritz says at +her boarding-house they get for breakfast: fried--" + +"You can imagine, Mrs. Katz, since my poor husband's death, how much +appetite I got left; but I say, Mrs. Katz, just for the principle of the +thing, it would not hurt once if Mrs. Kaufman could give somebody else +besides her own daughter and Vetsburg the white meat from everything, +wouldn't it?" + +"It's a shame before the boarders! She knows, Mrs. Pinshriber, how my +husband likes breast from the chicken. You think once he gets it? No. I +always tell him, not 'til chickens come doublebreasted like overcoats can +he get it in this house, with Vetsburg such a star boarder." + +"Last night's chicken, let me tell you, I don't wish it to a dog! Such a +piece of dark meat with gizzard I had to swallow." + +Mrs. Katz adjusted with greater security the expanse of white napkin across +her ample bosom. Gold rings and a quarter-inch marriage band flashed in +and out among the litter of small tub-shaped dishes surrounding her, and a +pouncing fork of short, sure stab. "Right away my husband gets mad when I +say the same thing. 'When we don't like it we should move,' he says." + +"Like moving is so easy, if you got two chairs and a hair mattress to take +with you. But I always say, Mrs. Katz, I don't blame Mrs. Kaufman herself +for what goes on; there's _one_ good woman if there ever was one!" + +"They don't come any better or any better looking, my husband always says. +'S-ay,' I tell him, 'she can stand her good looks.'" + +"It's that big-ideaed daughter who's to blame. Did you see her new white +spats to-night?" Right away the minute they come out she has to have 'em. +I'm only surprised she 'ain't got one of them red hats from Gimp's what is +all the fad. Believe me, if not for such ideas, her mother could afford +something better as succotash for us for supper." + +"It's a shame, let me tell you, that a woman like Mrs. Kaufman can't see +for herself such things. God forbid I should ever be so blind to my +Irving. I tell you that Ruby has got it more like a queen than a +boarding-housekeeper's daughter. Spats, yet!" + +"Rich girls could be glad to have it always so good." + +"I don't say nothing how her mother treats Vetsburg, her oldest boarder, +and for what he pays for that second floor front and no lunches she can +afford to cater a little; but that such a girl shouldn't be made to take up +a little stenography or help with the housework!" + +"S-ay, when that girl even turns a hand, pale like a ghost her mother +gets." + +"How girls are raised nowadays, even the poor ones!" + +"I ain't the one to complain, Mrs. Katz, but just look down there, that red +stuff." + +"Where?" + +"Ain't it cranberry between Ruby and Vetsburg?" + +"Yes, yes, and look such a dish of it!" + +"Is it right extras should be allowed to be brought on a table like this +where fourteen other boarders got to let their mouth water and look at it?" + +"You think it don't hurt like a knife! For myself I don't mind, but my +Irving! How that child loves 'em, and he should got to sit at the same +table without cranberries." + +From the head of the table the flashing implements of carving held in +askance for stroke, her lips lifted to a smile and a simulation of interest +for display of further carnivorous appetites, Mrs. Kaufman passed her nod +from one to the other. + +"Miss Arndt, little more? No? Mr. Krakower? Gravy? Mrs. Suss? Mr. Suss? +So! Simon? Mr. Schloss? Miss Horowitz? Mr. Vetsburg, let me give you this +little tender--No? Then, Ruby, here let mama give you just a little +more--" + +"No, no, mama, please!" She caught at the hovering wrist to spare the +descent of the knife. + +By one of those rare atavisms by which a poet can be bred of a peasant +or peasant be begot of poet, Miss Ruby Kaufman, who was born in Newark, +posthumous, to a terrified little parent with a black ribbon at the throat +of her gown, had brought with her from no telling where the sultry eyes and +tropical-turned skin of spice-kissed winds. The corpuscles of a shah +might have been running in the blood of her, yet Simon Kaufman, and Simon +Kaufman's father before him, had sold wool remnants to cap-factories on +commission. + +"Ruby, you don't eat enough to keep a bird alive. Ain't it a shame, Mr. +Vetsburg, a girl should be so dainty?" + +Mr. Meyer Vetsburg cast a beetling glance down upon Miss Kaufman, there so +small beside him, and tinked peremptorily against her plate three times +with his fork. "Eat, young lady, like your mama wants you should, or, by +golly! I'll string you up for my watch-fob--not, Mrs. Kaufman?" + +A smile lay under Mr. Vetsburg's gray-and-black mustache. Gray were his +eyes, too, and his suit, a comfortable baggy suit with the slouch of the +wearer impressed into it, the coat hiking center back, the pocket-flaps +half in, half out, and the knees sagging out of press. + +"That's right, Mr. Vetsburg, you should scold her when she don't eat." + +Above the black-bombazine basque, so pleasantly relieved at the throat by a +V of fresh white net, a wave of color moved up Mrs. Kaufman's face into her +architectural coiffure, the very black and very coarse skein of her hair +wound into a large loose mound directly atop her head and pierced there +with a ball-topped comb of another decade. + +"I always say, Mr. Vetsburg, she minds you before she minds anybody else in +the world." + +"Ma," said Miss Kaufman, close upon that remark, "some succotash, please." + +From her vantage down-table, Mrs. Katz leaned a bit forward from the line. + +"Look, Mrs. Finshriber, how for a woman her age she snaps her black eyes +at him. It ain't hard to guess when a woman's got a marriageable +daughter--not?" + +"You can take it from me she'll get him for her Ruby yet! And take it from +me, too, almost any girl I know, much less Ruby Kaufman, could do worse as +get Meyer Vetsburg." + +"S-say, I wish it to her to get him. For why once in a while shouldn't a +poor girl get a rich man except in books and choruses?" + +"Believe me, a girl like Ruby can manage what she wants. Take it from me, +she's got it behind her ears." + +"I should say so." + +"Without it she couldn't get in with such a crowd of rich girls like she +does. I got it from Mrs. Abrams in the Arline Apartments how every week she +plays five hundred with Nathan Shapiro's daughter." + +"No! Shapiro & Stein?" + +"And yesterday at matinée in she comes with a box of candy and laughing +with that Rifkin girl! How she gets in with such swell girls, I don't know, +but there ain't a nice Saturday afternoon I don't see that girl walking on +Fifth Avenue with just such a crowd of fine-dressed girls, all with their +noses powdered so white and their hats so little and stylish." + +"I wouldn't be surprised if her mother don't send her down to Atlantic City +over Easter again if Vetsburg goes. Every holiday she has to go lately like +it was coming to her." + +"Say, between you and me, I don't put it past her it's that Markovitch boy +down there she's after. Ray Klein saw 'em on the boardwalk once together, +and she says it's a shame for the people how they sat so close in a +rolling-chair." + +"I wouldn't be surprised she's fresh with the boys, but, believe me, if she +gets the uncle she don't take the nephew!" + +"Say, a clerk in his own father's hotel like the Markovitches got in +Atlantic City ain't no crime." + +"Her mother has got bigger thoughts for her than that. For why I guess she +thinks her daughter should take the nephew when maybe she can get the uncle +herself. Nowadays it ain't nothing no more that girls marry twice their own +age." + +"I always say I can tell when Leo Markovitch comes down, by the way her +mother's face gets long and the daughter's gets short." + +"Can you blame her? Leo Markovitch, with all his monograms on his +shirt-sleeves and such black rims on his glasses, ain't the Rosenthal +Vetsburg Hosiery Company, not by a long shot! There ain't a store in this +town you ask for the No Hole Guaranteed Stocking, right away they don't +show it to you. Just for fun always I ask." + +"Cornstarch pudding! Irving, stop making that noise at Mrs. Kaufman! Little +boys should be seen and not heard even at cornstarch pudding." + +"_Gott_! Wouldn't you think, Mrs. Katz, how Mrs. Kaufman knows how I hate +desserts that wabble, a little something extra she could give me." + +"How she plays favorite, it's a shame. I wish you'd look, too, Mrs. +Finshriber, how Flora Proskauer carries away from the table her glass of +milk with slice bread on top. I tell you it don't give tune to a house the +boarders should carry away from the table like that. Irving, come and +take with you that extra piece cake. Just so much board we pay as Flora +Proskauer." + +The line about the table broke suddenly, attended with a scraping of chairs +and after-dinner chirrupings attended with toothpicks. A blowsy maid +strained herself immediately across the strewn table and cloying lamb +platter, and turned off two of the three gas jets. + +In the yellow gloom, the odors of food permeating it, they filed out and up +the dim lit stairs into dim-lit halls, the line of conversation and short +laughter drifting after. + +A door slammed. Then another. Irving Katz leaped from his third floor +threshold to the front hearth, quaking three layers of chandeliers. From +Morris Krakower's fourth floor back the tune of a flute began to wind down +the stairs. Out of her just-closed door Mrs. Finshriber poked a frizzled +gray head. + +"Ice-water, ple-ase, Mrs. Kauf-man." + +At the door of the first floor back Mrs. Kaufman paused with her hand on +the knob. + +"Mama, let me run and do it." + +"Don't you move, Ruby. When Annie goes up to bed it's time enough. Won't +you come in for a while, Mr. Vetsburg?" + +"Don't care if I do". + +She opened the door, entering cautiously. "Let me light up, Mrs. Kaufman." +He struck a phosphorescent line on the sole of his shoe, turning up three +jets. + +"You must excuse, Mr. Vetsburg, how this room looks. All day we've been +sewing Ruby her new dress." + +She caught up a litter of dainty pink frills in the making, clearing a +chair for him. + +"Sit down, Mr. Vetsburg." + +They adjusted themselves around the shower of gaslight. Miss Kaufman +fumbling in her flowered work-bag, finally curling her foot up under her, +her needle flashing and shirring through one of the pink flounces. + +"Ruby, in such a light you shouldn't strain your eyes." + +"All right, ma," stitching placidly on. + +"What'll you give me, Ruby, if I tell you whose favorite color is pink?" + +"Aw, Vetsy!" she cried, her face like a rose, "_your_ color's pink!" + +From the depths of an inverted sewing-machine top Mrs. Kaufman fished out +another bit of the pink, ruffling it with deft needle. + +The flute lifted its plaintive voice, feeling for high C. + +Mr. Vetsburg lighted a loosely wrapped cigar and slumped in his chair. + +"If anybody," he observed, "should ask right this minute where I'm at, tell +'em for me, Mrs. Kaufman, I'm in the most comfortable chair in the house." + +"You should keep it, then, up in your room, Mr. Vetsburg, and not always +bring it down again when I get Annie to carry it up to you." + +"Say, I don't give up so easy my excuse for dropping in evenings." + +"Honest, you--you two children, you ought to have a fence built around you +the way you like always to be together." + +He sat regarding her, puffing and chewing his live cigar. Suddenly he +leaped forward, his hand closing rigidly over hers. + +"Mrs. Kaufman!" + +"What?" + +"Quick, there's a hole in your chin." + +"_Gott_! a--a--what?" + +At that he relaxed at his own pleasantry, laughing and shrugging. With +small white teeth Miss Kaufman bit off an end of thread. + +"Don't let him tease you, ma; he's after your dimple again." + +"_Ach, du_--tease, you! Shame! Hole in my chin he scares me with!" + +She resumed her work with a smile and a twitching at her lips that she was +unable to control. A warm flow of air came in, puffing the lace curtains. +A faint odor of departed splendor lay in that room, its high calcimined +ceiling with the floral rosette in the center, the tarnished pier-glass +tilted to reflect a great pair of walnut folding-doors which cut off the +room where once it had flowed on to join the great length of _salon_ +parlor. A folding-bed with an inlay of mirror and a collapsible desk +arrangement backed up against those folding-doors. A divan with a winding +back and sleek with horsehair was drawn across a corner, a marble-topped +bureau alongside. A bronze clock ticked roundly from the mantel, balanced +at either side by a pair of blue-glass cornucopias with warts blown into +them. + +Mrs. Kaufman let her hands drop idly in her lap and her head fell back +against the chair. In repose the lines of her mouth turned up, and her +throat, where so often the years eat in first, was smooth and even slender +above the rather round swell of bosom. + +"Tired, mommy?" + +"Always around Easter spring fever right away gets hold of me!" + +Mr. Vetsburg bit his cigar, slumped deeper; and inserted a thumb in the arm +of his waistcoat. + +"Why, Mrs. Kaufman, don't you and Ruby come down by Atlantic City with me +to-morrow over Easter? Huh? A few more or less don't make no difference to +my sister the way they get ready for crowds." + +Miss Kaufman shot forward, her face vivid. + +"Oh, Vetsy," she cried, and a flush rushed up, completely dyeing her face. +His face lit with hers, a sunburst of fine lines radiating from his eyes. + +"Eh?" + +"Why--why, we--we'd just love it, wouldn't we, ma? Atlantic City, Easter +Day! Ma!" + +Mrs. Kaufman sat upright with a whole procession of quick emotions flashing +their expressions across her face. They ended in a smile that trembled as +she sat regarding the two of them. + +"I should say so, yes! I--You and Ruby go, Mr. Vetsburg. Atlantic City, +Easter Day, I bet is worth the trip. I--You two go, I should say so, but +you don't want an old woman to drag along with you." + +"Ma! Just listen to her, Vetsy! Ain't she--ain't she just the limit? Half +the time when we go in stores together they take us for sisters, and then +she--she begins to talk like that to get out of going!" + +"Ruby don't understand; but it ain't right, Mr. Vetsburg, I should be away +over Saturday and Sunday. On Easter always they expect a little extra, and +with Annie's sore ankle, I--I--" + +"Oh, mommy, can't you leave this old shebang for only two days just for an +Easter Sunday down at Atlantic, where--where everybody goes?" + +"You know yourself, Ruby, how always on Annie's Sunday out--" + +"Well, what of it? It won't hurt all of them old things upstairs that let +you wait on them hand and foot all year to go without a few frills for +their Easter dinner." + +"Ruby!" + +"I mean it. The old gossip-pots! I just sat and looked at them there at +supper, and I said to myself, I said, to think they drown kittens and let +those poor lumps live!" + +"Ruby, aren't you ashamed to talk like that?" + +"Sat there and looked at poor old man Katz with his ear all ragged like it +had been chewed off, and wondered why he didn't just go down to Brooklyn +Bridge for a high jump." + +"Ruby, I--" + +"If all those big, strapping women, Suss and Finshriber and the whole gang +of them, were anything but vegetables, they'd get out and hustle with +keeping house, to work some of their flabbiness off and give us a chance to +get somebody in besides a chocolate-eating, novel-reading crowd of useless +women who think, mommy, you're a dumbwaiter, chambermaid, lady's maid, and +French chef rolled in one! Honest, ma, if you carry that ice-water up to +Katz to-night on the sly, with that big son of hers to come down and get +it, I--I'll go right up and tell her what I think of her if she leaves +to-morrow." + +"Mr. Vetsburg, you--you mustn't listen to her." + +"Can't take a day off for a rest at Atlantic City, because their old Easter +dinner might go down the wrong side. Honest, mama, to--to think how you're +letting a crowd of old, flabby women that aren't fit even to wipe your +shoes make a regular servant out of you! Mommy!" + +There were tears in Miss Kaufman's voice, actual tears, big and bright, in +her eyes, and two spots of color had popped out in her cheeks. + +"Ruby, when--when a woman like me makes her living off her boarders, she +can't afford to be so particular. You think it's a pleasure I can't slam +the door right in Mrs. Katz's face when six times a day she orders towels +and ice-water? You think it's a pleasure I got to take sass from such a bad +boy like Irving? I tell you, Ruby, it's easy talk from a girl that doesn't +understand. _Ach_, you--you make me ashamed before Mr. Vetsburg you should +run down to the people we make our living off of." + +Miss Kaufman flashed her vivid face toward Mr. Vetsburg, still low there in +his chair. She was trembling. "Vetsy knows! He's the only one in this house +does know! He 'ain't been here with us ten years, ever since we started in +this big house, not--not to know he's the only one thinks you're here for +anything except impudence and running stairs and standing sass from the bad +boys of lazy mothers. You know, don't you, Vetsy?" + +"Ruby! Mr. Vetsburg, you--you must excuse--" + +From the depths of his chair Mr. Vetsburg's voice came slow and carefully +weighed. "My only complaint, Mrs. Kaufman, with what Ruby has got to say is +it ain't strong enough. It maybe ain't none of my business, but always I +have told you that for your own good you're too _gemütlich_. No wonder +every boarder what you got stays year in and year out till even the biggest +kickers pay more board sooner as go. In my business, Mrs. Kaufman, it's the +same, right away if I get too easy with--" + +"But, Mr. Vetsburg, a poor woman can't afford to be so independent. I got +big expenses and big rent; I got a daughter to raise--" + +"Mama, haven't I begged you a hundred times to let me take up stenography +and get out and hustle so you can take it easy--haven't I?" + +A thick coating of tears sprang to Mrs. Kaufman's eyes and muddled the gaze +she turned toward Mr. Vetsburg. "Is it natural, Mr. Vetsburg, a mother +should want her only child should have always the best and do always the +things she never herself could afford to do? All my life, Mr. Vetsburg, I +had always to work. Even when I was five months married to a man what it +looked like would some day do big things in the wool business, I was left +all of a sudden with nothing but debts and my baby." + +"But, mama--" + +"Is it natural, Mr. Vetsburg, I should want to work off my hands my +daughter should escape that? Nothing, Mr. Vetsburg, gives me so much +pleasure she should go with all those rich girls who like her well enough +poor to be friends with her. Always when you take her down to Atlantic City +on holidays, where she can meet 'em, it--it--" + +"But, mommy, is it any fun for a girl to keep taking trips like that +with--with her mother always at home like a servant? What do people think? +Every holiday that Vetsy asks me, you--you back out. I--I won't go without +you, mommy, and--and I _want_ to go, ma, I--I _want_ to!" + +"My Easter dinner and--" + +"You, Mrs. Kaufman, with your Easter dinner! Ruby's right. When your mama +don't go this time not one step we go by ourselves--ain't it?" + +"Not a step." + +"But--" + +"To-morrow, Mrs. Kaufman, we catch that one-ten train. Twelve o'clock I +call in for you. Put ginger in your mama, Ruby, and we'll open her eyes on +the boardwalk--not?" + +"Oh, Vetsy!" + +He smiled, regarding her. + +Tears had fallen and dried on Mrs. Kaufman's cheeks; she wavered between a +hysteria of tears and laughter. + +"I--children--" She succumbed to tears, daubing her eyes shamefacedly. + +He rose kindly. "Say, when such a little thing can upset her it's high time +she took for herself a little rest. If she backs out, we string her up by +the thumbs--not, Ruby?" + +"We're going, ma. Going! You'll love the Markovitchs' hotel, ma dearie, +right near the boardwalk, and the grandest glassed-in porch and--and +chairs, and--and nooks, and things. Ain't they, Vetsy?" + +"Yes, you little Ruby, you," he said, regarding her with warm, insinuating +eyes, even crinkling an eyelid in a wink. + +She did not return the glance, but caught her cheeks in the vise of her +hands as if to stem the too quick flush. "Now you--you quit!" she cried, +flashing her back upon him in quick pink confusion. + +"She gets mad yet," he said, his shoulders rising and falling in silent +laughter. + +"Don't!" + +"Well," he said, clicking the door softly after him, "good night and sleep +tight." + +"'Night, Vetsy." + +Upon the click of that door Mrs. Kaufman leaned softly forward in her +chair, speaking through a scratch in her throat. "Ruby!" + +With her flush still high, Miss Kaufman danced over toward her parent, then +as suddenly ebbed in spirit, the color going. "Why, mommy, what--what you +crying for, dearie? Why, there's nothing to cry for, dearie, that we're +going off on a toot to-morrow. Honest, dearie, like Vetsy says, you're all +nerves. I bet from the way Suss hollered at you to-day about her extra milk +you're upset yet. Wouldn't I give her a piece of my mind, though! Here, +move your chair, mommy, and let me pull down the bed." + +"I--I'm all right, baby. Only I just tell you it's enough to make anybody +cry we should have a friend like we got in Vetsburg. I--I tell you, baby, +they just don't come better than him. Not, baby? Don't be ashamed to say so +to mama." + +"I ain't, mama! And, honest, his--his whole family is just that way. +Sweet-like and generous. Wait till you see the way his sister and +brother-in-law will treat us at the hotel to-morrow. And--and Leo, too." + +"I always say the day what Meyer Vetsburg, when he was only a clerk in the +firm, answered my furnished-room advertisement was the luckiest day in my +life." + +"You ought to heard, ma. I was teasing him the other day, telling him that +he ought to live at the Savoy, now that he's a two-thirds member of the +firm." + +"Ruby!" + +"I was only teasing, ma. You just ought to seen his face. Any day he'd +leave us!" + +Mrs. Kaufman placed a warm, insinuating arm around her daughter's slim +waist, drawing her around the chair-side and to her. "There's only one way, +baby, Meyer Vetsburg can ever leave me and make me happy when he leaves." + +"Ma, what you mean?" + +"You know, baby, without mama coming right out in words." + +"Ma, honest I don't. What?" + +"You see it coming just like I do. Don't fool mama, baby." + +The slender lines of Miss Kaufman's waist stiffened, and she half slipped +from the embrace. + +"Now, now, baby, is it wrong a mother should talk to her own baby about +what is closest in both their hearts?" + +"I--I--mama, I--I don't know!" + +"How he's here in this room every night lately, Ruby, since you--you're a +young lady. How right away he follows us up-stairs. How lately he invited +you every month down at Atlantic City. Baby, you ain't blind, are you?" + +"Why, mama--why, mama, what is Meyer Vetsburg to--to me? Why, he--he's got +gray hair, ma; he--he's getting bald. Why, he--he don't know I'm on earth. +He--he's--" + +"You mean, baby, he don't know anybody else is on earth. What's, nowadays, +baby, a man forty? Why--why, ain't mama forty-one, baby, and didn't you +just say yourself for sisters they take us?" + +"I know, ma, but he--he--. Why, he's got an accent, ma, just like old man +Katz and--and all of 'em. He says 'too-sand' for thousand. He--" + +"Baby, ain't you ashamed like it makes any difference how a good man +talks?" She reached out, drawing her daughter by the wrists down into her +lap. "You're a bad little flirt, baby, what pretends she don't know what a +blind man can see." + +Miss Kaufman's eyes widened, darkened, and she tugged for the freedom of +her wrists. "Ma, quit scaring me!" + +"Scaring you! That such a rising man like Vetsburg, with a business he +worked himself into president from clerk, looks every day more like he's +falling in love with you, should scare you!" + +"Ma, not--not him!" + +In reply she fell to stroking the smooth black plaits, wound coronet +fashion about Miss Kaufman's small head. Large, hot tears sprang to her +eyes. "Baby, when you talk like that it's you that scares mama!" + +"He--he--" + +"Why, you think, Ruby, I been making out of myself a servant like you call +it all these years except for your future? For myself a smaller house +without such a show and maybe five or six roomers without meals, you think +ain't easier as this big barn? For what, baby, you think I always want you +should have extravagances maybe I can't afford and should keep up with the +fine girls what you meet down by Atlantic City if it ain't that a man like +Meyer Vetsburg can be proud to choose you from the best?" + +"Mama! mama!" + +"Don't think, Ruby, when the day comes what I can give up this +white-elephant house that it won't be a happy one for me. Every night when +I hear from up-stairs how Mrs. Katz and all of them hollers down 'towels' +and 'ice-water' to me like I--I was their slave, don't think, baby, I won't +be happiest woman in this world the day what I can slam the door, bang, +right on the words." + +"Mama, mama, and you pretending all these years you didn't mind!" + +"I don't, baby. Not one minute while I got a future to look forward to +with you. For myself, you think I ask anything except my little girl's +happiness? Anyways, when happiness comes to you with a man like Meyer +Vetsburg, don't--don't it come to me, too, baby?" + +"Please, I--" + +"That's what my little girl can do for mama, better as stenography. Set +herself down well. That's why, since we got on the subject, baby, I--I hold +off signing up the new lease, with every day Shulif fussing so. Maybe, +baby, I--well, just maybe--eh, baby?" + +For answer a torrent of tears so sudden that they came in an avalanche +burst from Miss Kaufman, and she crumpled forward, face in hands and red +rushing up the back of her neck and over her ears. + +"Ruby!" + +"No, no, ma! No, no!" + +"Baby, the dream what I've dreamed five years for you!" + +"No, no, no!" + +She fell back, regarding her. + +"Why, Ruby. Why, Ruby, girl!" + +"It ain't fair. You mustn't!" + +"Mustn't?" + +"Mustn't! Mustn't!" Her voice had slipped up now and away from her. + +"Why, baby, it's natural at first maybe a girl should be so scared. Maybe +I shouldn't have talked so soon except how it's getting every day plainer, +these trips to Atlantic City and--" + +"Mama, mama, you're killing me." She fell back against her parent's +shoulder, her face frankly distorted. + +A second, staring there into space, Mrs. Kaufman sat with her arm still +entwining the slender but lax form. "Ruby, is--is it something you ain't +telling mama?" + +"Oh, mommy, mommy!" + +"Is there?" + +"I--I don't know." + +"Ruby, should you be afraid to talk to mama, who don't want nothing but her +child's happiness?" + +"You know, mommy. You know!" + +"Know what, baby?" + +"I--er--" + +"Is there somebody else you got on your mind, baby?" + +"You know, mommy." + +"Tell mama, baby. It ain't a--a crime if you got maybe somebody else on +your mind." + +"I can't say it, mommy. It--it wouldn't be--be nice." + +"Nice?" + +"He--he--We ain't even sure yet." + +"He?" + +"Not--yet." + +"Who?" + +"You know." + +"So help me, I don't." + +"Mommy, don't make me say it. Maybe if--when his uncle Meyer takes him in +the business, we--" + +"Baby, not Leo?" + +"Oh, mommy, mommy!" And she buried her hot, revealing face into the fresh +net V. + +"Why--why, baby, a--a _boy_ like that!" + +"Twenty-three, mama, ain't a boy!" + +"But, Ruby, just a clerk in his father's hotel, and two older brothers +already in it. A--a boy that 'ain't got a start yet." + +"That's just it, ma. We--we're waiting! Waiting before we talk even--even +much to each other yet. Maybe--maybe his uncle Meyer is going to take him +in the business, but it ain't sure yet. We--" + +"A little yellow-haired boy like him that--that can't support you, baby, +unless you live right there in his mother's and father's hotel away--away +from me!" + +"Ma!" + +"Ruby, a smart girl like you. A little snip what don't make salt yet, when +you can have the uncle hisself!" + +"I can't help it, ma! If--if--the first time Vetsy took me down to--to the +shore, if--if Leo had been a king or a--or just what he is, it wouldn't +make no difference. I--I can't help my--my feelings, ma. I can't!" + +A large furrow formed between Mrs. Kaufman's eyes, darkening her. + +"You wouldn't, Ruby!" she said, clutching her. + +"Oh, mommy, mommy, when a--a girl can't help a thing!" + +"He ain't good enough for you, baby!" + +"He's ten times too good; that--that's all you know about it. Mommy, +please! I--I just can't help it, dearie. It's just like when I--I saw him +a--a clock began to tick inside of me. I--" + +"O my God!" said Mrs. Kaufman, drawing her hand across her brow. + +"His uncle Meyer, ma, 's been hinting all along he--he's going to give +Leo his start and take him in the business. That's why we--we're waiting +without saying much, till it looks more like--like we can all be together, +ma." + +"All my dreams! My dreams I could give up the house! My baby with a +well-to-do husband maybe on Riverside Drive. A servant for herself, so I +could pass, maybe, Mrs. Suss and Mrs. Katz by on the street. Ruby, you--you +wouldn't, Ruby. After how I've built for you!" + +"Oh, mama, mama, mama!" + +"If you 'ain't got ambitions for yourself, Ruby, think once of me and this +long dream I been dreaming for--us." + +"Yes, ma. Yes." + +"Ruby, Ruby, and I always thought when you was so glad for Atlantic City, +it was for Vetsburg; to show him how much you liked his folks. How could I +know it was--." + +"I never thought, mommy. Why--why, Vetsy he's just like a relation or +something." + +"I tell you, baby, it's just an idea you got in your head." + +"No, no, mama. No, no." + +Suddenly Mrs. Kaufman threw up her hands, clasping them tight against her +eyes, pressing them in frenzy. "O my God!" she cried. "All for nothing!" +and fell to moaning through her laced fingers. "All for nothing! Years. +Years. Years." + +"Mommy darling!" + +"Oh--don't, don't! Just let me be. Let me be. O my God! My God!" + +"Mommy, please, mommy! I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it, mommy darling." + +"I can't go on all the years, Ruby. I'm tired. Tired, girl." + +"Of course you can't, darling. We--I don't want you to. 'Shh-h-h!" + +"It's only you and my hopes in you that kept me going all these years. The +hope that, with some day a good man to provide for you, I could find a +rest, maybe." + +"Yes, yes." + +"Every time what I think of that long envelope laying there on that desk +with its lease waiting to be signed to-morrow, I--I could squeeze my eyes +shut so tight and wish I didn't never have to open them again on this--this +house and this drudgery. If you marry wrong, baby, I'm caught. Caught in +this house like a rat in a trap." + +"No, no, mommy. Leo, he--his uncle--" + +"Don't make me sign that new lease, Ruby. Shulif hounds me every day now. +Any day I expect he says is my last. Don't make me saddle another five +years with the house. He's only a boy, baby, and years it will take, +and--I'm tired, baby. Tired! Tired!" She lay back with her face suddenly +held in rigid lines and her neck ribbed with cords. + +At sight of her so prostrate there, Ruby Kaufman grasped the cold face in +her ardent young hands, pressing her lips to the streaming eyes. + +"Mommy, I didn't mean it. I didn't! I--We're just kids, flirting a little, +Leo and me. I didn't mean it, mommy!" + +"You didn't mean it, Ruby, did you? Tell mama you didn't." + +"I didn't, ma. Cross my heart. It's only I--I kinda had him in my head. +That's all, dearie. That's all!" + +"He can't provide, baby." + +"'Shh-h-h, ma! Try to get calm, and maybe then--then things can come like +you want 'em. 'Shh-h-h, dearie! I didn't mean it. 'Course Leo's only a kid. +I--We--Mommy dear, don't. You're killing me. I didn't mean it. I didn't." + +"Sure, baby? Sure?" + +"Sure." + +"Mama's girl," sobbed Mrs. Kaufman, scooping the small form to her bosom +and relaxing. "Mama's own girl that minds." + +They fell quiet, cheek to cheek, staring ahead into the gaslit quiet, the +clock ticking into it. + +The tears had dried on Mrs. Kaufman's cheeks, only her throat continuing to +throb and her hand at regular intervals patting the young shoulder pressed +to her. It was as if her heart lay suddenly very still in her breast. + +"Mama's own girl that minds." + +"It--it's late, ma. Let me pull down the bed." + +"You ain't mad at mama, baby? It's for your own good as much as mine. It is +unnatural a mother should want to see her--" + +"No, no, mama. Move, dearie. Let me pull down the bed. There you are. Now!" + +With a wrench Mrs. Kaufman threw off her recurring inclination to tears, +moving casually through the processes of their retirement. + +"To-morrow, baby, I tighten the buttons on them new spats. How pretty they +look." + +"Yes, dearie." + +"I told Mrs. Katz to-day right out her Irving can't bring any more his +bicycle through my front hall. Wasn't I right?" + +"Of course you were, ma." + +"Miss Flora looked right nice in that pink waist to-night--not? +Four-eighty-nine only, at Gimp's sale." + +"She's too fat for pink." + +"You get in bed first, baby, and let mama turn out the lights." + +"No, no, mama; you." + +In her white slip of a nightdress, her coronet braids unwound and falling +down each shoulder, even her slightness had waned. She was like Juliet who +at fourteen had eyes of maid and martyr. + +They crept into bed, grateful for darkness. + +The flute had died out, leaving a silence that was plaintive. + +"You all right, baby?" + +"Yes, ma." And she snuggled down into the curve of her mother's arm. "Are +you, mommy?" + +"Yes, baby." + +"Go to sleep, then." + +"Good night, baby." + +"Good night, mommy." + +Silence. + +Lying there, with her face upturned and her eyes closed, a stream of quiet +tears found their way from under Miss Kaufman's closed lids, running down +and toward her ears like spectacle frames. + +An hour ticked past, and two damp pools had formed on her pillow. + +"Asleep yet, baby?" + +"Almost, ma." + +"Are you all right?" + +"Fine." + +"You--you ain't mad at mama?" + +"'Course not, dearie." + +"I--thought it sounded like you was crying." + +"Why, mommy, 'course not! Turn over now and go to sleep." + +Another hour, and suddenly Mrs. Kaufman shot out her arm from the coverlet, +jerking back the sheet and feeling for her daughter's dewy, upturned face +where the tears were slashing down it. + +"Baby!" + +"Mommy, you--you mustn't!" + +"Oh, my darling, like I didn't suspicion it!" + +"It's only--" + +"You got, Ruby, the meanest mama in the world. But you think, darling, I +got one minute's happiness like this?" + +"I'm all right, mommy, only--" + +"I been laying here half the night, Ruby, thinking how I'm a bad mother +what thinks only of her own--" + +"No, no, mommy. Turn over and go to sl--" + +"My daughter falls in love with a fine, upright young man like Leo +Markovitch, and I ain't satisfied yet! Suppose maybe for two or three years +you ain't so much on your feet. Suppose even his uncle Meyer don't take him +in. Don't any young man got to get his start slow?" + +"Mommy!" + +"Because I got for her my own ideas, my daughter shouldn't have in life the +man she wants!" + +"But, mommy, if--" + +"You think for one minute, Ruby, after all these years without this house +on my hands and my boarders and their kicks, a woman like me would be +satisfied? Why, the more, baby, I think of such a thing, the more I see it +for myself! What you think, Ruby, I do all day without steps to run, and +my gedinks with housekeeping and marketing after eighteen years of it? At +first, Ruby, ain't it natural it should come like a shock that you and that +rascal Leo got all of a sudden so--so thick? I--It ain't no more, baby. +I--I feel fine about it." + +"Oh, mommy, if--if I thought you did!" + +"I do. Why not? A fine young man what my girl is in love with. Every mother +should have it so." + +"Mommy, you mean it?" + +"I tell you I feel fine. You don't need to feel bad or cry another minute. +I can tell you I feel happy. To-morrow at Atlantic City if such a rascal +don't tell me for himself, I--I ask him right out!" + +"Ma!" + +"For why yet he should wait till he's got better prospects, so his +mother-in-law can hang on? I guess not!" + +"Mommy darling. If you only truly feel like that about it. Why, you can +keep putting off the lease, ma, if it's only for six months, and then +we--we'll all be to--" + +"Of course, baby. Mama knows. Of course!" + +"He--I just can't begin to tell you, ma, the kind of a fellow Leo is till +you know him better, mommy dear." + +"Always Vetsburg says he's a wide-awake one!" + +"That's just what he is, ma. He's just a prince if--if there ever was one. +One little prince of a fellow." She fell to crying softly, easy tears that +flowed freely. + +"I--I can tell you, baby, I'm happy as you." + +"Mommy dear, kiss me." + +They talked, huddled arm in arm, until dawn flowed in at the window and +dirty roofs began to show against a clean sky. Footsteps began to clatter +through the asphalt court and there came the rattle of milk-cans. + +"I wonder if Annie left out the note for Mrs. Suss's extra milk!" + +"Don't get up, dearie; it's only five--" + +"Right away, baby, with extra towels I must run up to Miss Flora's room. +That six o'clock-train for Trenton she gets." + +"Ma dear, let me go." + +"Lay right where you are! I guess you want you should look all worn out +when a certain young man what I know walks down to meet our train at +Atlantic City this afternoon, eh?" + +"Oh, mommy, mommy!" And Ruby lay back against the luxury of pillows. + +At eleven the morning rose to its climax--the butcher, the baker, and every +sort of maker hustling in and out the basementway; the sweeping of upstairs +halls; windows flung open and lace curtains looped high; the smell of +spring pouring in even from asphalt; sounds of scrubbing from various +stoops; shouts of drivers from a narrow street wedged with its +Saturday-morning blockade of delivery wagons, and a crosstown line of +motor-cars, tops back and nosing for the speedway of upper Broadway. A +homely bouquet of odors rose from the basement kitchen, drifting up through +the halls, the smell of mutton bubbling as it stewed. + +After a morning of up-stairs and down-stairs and in and out of chambers, +Mrs. Kaufman, enveloped in a long-sleeved apron still angular with starch, +hung up the telephone receiver in the hall just beneath the staircase and +entered her bedroom, sitting down rather heavily beside the open shelf of +her desk. A long envelope lay uppermost on that desk, and she took it up +slowly, blinking her eyes shut and holding them squeezed tight as if she +would press back a vision, even then a tear oozing through. She blinked it +back, but her mouth was wry with the taste of tears. + +A slatternly maid poked her head in through the open door. "Mrs. Katz broke +'er mug!" + +"Take the one off Mr. Krakow's wash-stand and give it to her, Tillie." + +She was crying now frankly, and when the door swung closed, even though it +swung back again on its insufficient hinge, she let her head fall forward +into the pillow of her arms, the curve of her back rising and falling. + +But after a while the greengrocer came on his monthly mission, in his white +apron and shirt-sleeves, and she compared stubs with him from a file on her +desk and balanced her account with careful squinted glance and a keen eye +for an overcharge on a cut of breakfast bacon. + +On the very heels of him, so that they met and danced to pass each other in +the doorway, Mr. Vetsburg entered, with an overcoat flung across his right +arm and his left sagging to a small black traveling-bag. + +"Well," he said, standing in the frame of the open door, his derby well +back on his head and regarding her there beside the small desk, "is this +what you call ready at twelve?" + +She rose and moved forward in her crackly starched apron. "I--Please, Mr. +Vetsburg, it ain't right, I know!" + +"You don't mean you're not going!" he exclaimed, the lifted quality +immediately dropping from his voice. + +"You--you got to excuse me again, Mr. Vetsburg. It ain't no use I should +try to get away on Saturdays, much less Easter Saturday." + +"Well, of all things!" + +"Right away, the last minute, Mr. Vetsburg, right one things after +another." + +He let his bag slip to the floor. + +"Maybe, Mrs. Kaufman," he said, "it ain't none of my business, but ain't it +a shame a good business woman like you should let herself always be tied +down to such a house like she was married to it?" + +"But--" + +"Can't get away on Saturdays, just like it ain't the same any other day in +the week, I ask you! Saturday you blame it on yet!" + +She lifted the apron from her hem, her voice hurrying. "You can see for +yourself, Mr. Vetsburg, how in my brown silk all ready I was. Even--even +Ruby don't know yet I don't go. Down by Gimp's I sent her she should buy +herself one of them red straw hats is the fad with the girls now. She meets +us down by the station." + +"That's a fine come-off, ain't it, to disappoint--" + +"At the last minute, Mr. Vetsburg, how things can happen. Out of a clear +sky Mrs. Finshriber has to-morrow for Easter dinner that skin doctor, +Abrams, and his wife she's so particular about. And Annie with her sore +ankle and--" + +"A little shyster doctor like Abrams with his advertisements all over the +newspapers should sponge off you and your holiday! By golly! Mrs. Kaufman, +just like Ruby says, how you let a whole houseful of old hens rule this +roost it's a shame!" + +"When you go down to station, Mr. Vetsburg, so right away she ain't so +disappointed I don't come, tell her maybe to-morrow I--." + +"I don't tell her nothing!" broke in Mr. Vetsburg and moved toward her with +considerable strengthening of tone. "Mrs. Kaufman, I ask you, do you think +it right you should go back like this on Ruby and me, just when we want +most you should--" + +At that she quickened and fluttered. "Ruby and you! Ach, it's a old saying, +Mr. Vetsburg, like the twig is bent so the tree grows. That child won't be +so surprised her mother changes her mind. Just so changeable as her mother, +and more, is Ruby herself. With that girl, Mr. Vetsburg, it's--it's hard to +know what she does one minute from the next. I always say no man--nobody +can ever count on a little harum-scarum like--like she is." + +He took up her hat, a small turban of breast feathers, laid out on the +table beside him, and advanced with it clumsily enough. "Come," he said, +"please now, Mrs. Kaufman. Please." + +"I--" + +"I--I got plans made for us to-morrow down by the shore that's--that's just +fine! Come now, Mrs. Kaufman." + +"Please, Mr. Vetsburg, don't force. I--I can't! I always say nobody can +ever count on such a little harum-scarum as--" + +"You mean to tell me, Mrs. Kaufman, that just because a little shyster +doctor--" + +Her hand closed over the long envelope again, crunching it. "No, no, +that--that ain't all, Mr. Vetsburg. Only I don't want you should tell Ruby. +You promise me? How that child worries over little things. Shulif from the +agency called up just now. He don't give me one more minute as two this +afternoon I--I should sign. How I been putting them off so many weeks with +this lease it's a shame. Always you know how in the back of my head I've +had it to take maybe a smaller place when this lease was done, but, like I +say, talk is cheap and moving ain't so easy done--ain't it? If he puts in +new plumbing in the pantry and new hinges on the doors and papers my second +floor and Mrs. Suss's alcove, like I said last night, after all I could do +worse as stay here another five year--ain't it, Mr. Vetsburg?" + +"I--" + +"A house what keeps filled so easy, and such a location, with the Subway +less as two blocks. I--So you see, Mr. Vetsburg, if I don't want I come +back and find my house on the market, maybe rented over my head, I got to +stay home for Shulif when he comes to-day." + +A rush of dark blood had surged up into Mr. Vetsburg's face, and he +twiddled his hat, his dry fingers moving around inside the brim. + +"Mrs. Kaufman," he cried--"Mrs. Kaufman, sometimes when for years a man +don't speak out his mind, sometimes he busts all of a sudden right out. +I--Oh--e-e-e!" and, immediately and thickly inarticulate, made a tremendous +feint at clearing his throat, tossed up his hat and caught it; rolled his +eyes. + +"Mr. Vetsburg?" + +"A man, Mrs. Kaufman, can bust!" + +"Bust?" + +He was still violently dark, but swallowing with less labor. "Yes, from +holding in. Mrs. Kaufman, should a woman like you--the finest woman in the +world, and I can prove it--a woman, Mrs. Kaufman, who in her heart and +my heart and--Should such a woman not come to Atlantic City when I got +everything fixed like a stage set!" + +She threw out an arm that was visibly trembling. "Mr. Vetsburg, for God's +sake, 'ain't I just told you how that she--harum-scarum--she--." + +"Will you, Mrs. Kaufman, come or won't you? Will you, I ask you, or won't +you?" + +"I--I can't, Mr.--" + +"All right, then, I--I bust out now. To-day can be as good as to-morrow! +Not with my say in a t'ousand years, Mrs. Kaufman, you sign that lease! I +ain't a young man any more with fine speeches, Mrs. Kaufman, but not in a +t'ousand years you sign that lease." + +"Mr. Vetsburg, Ruby--I--" + +"If anybody's got a lease on you, Mrs. Kaufman, I--I want it! I want it! +That's the kind of a lease would suit me. To be leased to you for always, +the rest of your life!" + +She could not follow him down the vista of fancy, but stood interrogating +him with her heartbeats at her throat. "Mr. Vetsburg, if he puts on the +doors and hinges and new plumbing in--." + +"I'm a plain man, Mrs. Kaufman, without much to offer a woman what can give +out her heart's blood like it was so much water. But all these years I been +waiting, Mrs. Kaufman, to bust out, until--till things got riper. I know +with a woman like you, whose own happiness always is last, that first your +girl must be fixed--." + +"She's a young girl, Mr. Vetsburg. You--you mustn't depend--. If I had my +say--." + +"He's a fine fellow, Mrs. Kaufman. With his uncle to help 'em, they got, +let me tell you, a better start as most young ones!" + +She rose, holding on to the desk. + +"I--I--" she said. "What?" + +"Lena," he uttered, very softly. + +"Lena, Mr. Vetsburg?" + +"It 'ain't been easy, Lenie, these years while she was only growing up, to +keep off my lips that name. A name just like a leaf off a rose. Lena!" he +reiterated and advanced. + +Comprehension came quietly and dawning like a morning. + +"I--I--. Mr. Vetsburg, you must excuse me," she said, and sat down +suddenly. + +He crossed to the little desk and bent low over her chair, his hand not on +her shoulder, but at the knob of her chair. His voice had a swift rehearsed +quality. + +"Maybe to-morrow, if you didn't back out, it would sound finer by the +ocean, Lenie, but it don't need the ocean a man should tell a woman when +she's the first and the finest woman in the world. Does it, Lenie?" + +"I--I thought Ruby. She--" + +"He's a good boy, Leo is, Lenie. A good boy what can be good to a woman +like his father before him. Good enough even for a fine girl like our Ruby, +Lenie--_our_ Ruby!" + +"_Gott im Himmel_! then you--" + +"Wide awake, too. With a start like I can give him in my business, you +'ain't got to worry Ruby 'ain't fixed herself with the man what she +chooses. To-morrow at Atlantic City all fixed I had it I should tell--" + +"You!" she said, turning around in her chair to face him. "You--all along +you been fixing--" + +He turned sheepish. "Ain't it fair, Lenie, in love and war and business a +man has got to scheme for what he wants out of life? Long enough it took +she should grow up. I knew all along once those two, each so full of life +and being young, got together it was natural what should happen. Mrs. +Kaufman! Lenie! Lenie!" + +Prom two flights up, in through the open door and well above the harsh +sound of scrubbing, a voice curled down through the hallways and in. "Mrs. +Kaufman, ice-water--ple-ase!" + +"Lenie," he said, his singing, tingling fingers closing over her wrist. + +"Mrs. Kauf-man, ice-water, pl--" + +With her free arm she reached and slammed the door, let her cheek lie to +the back of his hand, and closed her eyes. + + + + +IV + +HERS _NOT_ TO REASON WHY + + +In the third winter of a world-madness, with Europe guzzling blood and wild +with the taste of it, America grew flatulent, stenching winds from the +battle-field blowing her prosperity. + +Granaries filled to bursting tripled in value, and, in congested districts, +men with lean faces rioted when bread advanced a cent a loaf. Munition +factories, the fires of destruction smelting all night, worked three +shifts. Millions of shells for millions of dollars. Millions of lives for +millions of shells. A country feeding into the insatiable maw of war with +one hand, and with the other pouring relief-funds into coffers bombarded by +guns of its own manufacture--quelling the wound with a finger and widening +it with a knife up the cuff. + +In France, women with blue faces and too often with the pulling lips of +babes at dry breasts, learned the bitter tasks of sewing closed the coat +sleeves and of cutting off and hemming the trousers leg at the knee. + +In America, women new to the feel of fur learned to love it and not +question whence it came. Men of small affairs, suddenly earthquaked to the +crest of the great tidal wave of new market-values, went drunk with wealth. + +In New York, where so many great forces of a great country coagulate, the +face of the city photographed would have been a composite of fat and jowl, +rouge and heavy lip--satiated yet insatiate, the head double-chinned and +even a little loggy with too many satisfactions. + +But that is the New York of the Saturnite and of Teufelsdröckh alone with +his stars. + +Upon Mrs. Blutch Connors, gazing out upon the tide of West Forty-seventh +Street, life lay lightly and as unrelated as if ravage and carnage and the +smell of still warm blood were of another planet. + +A shower of white light from an incandescent tooth-brush sign opposite +threw a pallid reflection upon Mrs. Connors; it spun the fuzz of frizz +rising off her blond coiffure into a sort of golden fog and picked out the +sequins of her bodice. + +The dinner-hour descends glitteringly upon West Forty-seventh Street, its +solid rows of long, lanky hotels, actors' clubs, and sixty-cent _tables +d'hôte_ adding each its candle-power. + +From her brace of windows in the Hotel Metropolis, the street was not +unlike a gully cut through mica, a honking tributary flowing into the great +sea of Broadway. A low, high-power car, shaped like an ellipse, cut through +the snarl of traffic, bleating. A woman, wrapped in a greatcoat of "baby" +pelts and an almost undistinguishable dog in the cove of her arm, walked +out from the Hotel Metropolis across the sidewalk and into a taxicab. An +army of derby hats, lowered slightly into the wind, moved through the white +kind of darkness. Standing there, buffeting her pink nails across her pink +palms, Mrs. Connors followed the westward trend of that army. Out from it, +a face lying suddenly back flashed up at her, a mere petal riding a swift +current. But at sight of it Mrs. Blutch Connors inclined her entire body, +pressing a smile and a hand against the cold pane, then turned inward, +flashing on an electrolier--a bronze Nydia holding out a cluster of frosted +bulbs. A great deal of the strong breath of a popular perfume and a great +deal of artificial heat lay sweet upon that room, as if many flowers had +lived and died in the same air, leaving insidious but slightly stale +memories. + +The hotel suite has become the brocaded tomb of the old-fashioned garden. +The kitchen has shrunk into the chafing-dish, and all the dear old +concoctions that mother used to try to make now come tinned, condensed, +and predigested in sixty-seven varieties. Even the vine-covered threshold +survives only in the booklets of promoters of suburban real estate. In +New York, the home-coming spouse arrives on the vertical, shunted out +at whatever his layer. Yet, when Mrs. Connors opened the door of her +pink-brocaded sitting-room, her spirit rose with the soughing rise of the +elevator, and Romance--hardy fellow--showed himself within a murky hotel +corridor. + +"Honeybunch!" + +"Babe!" said Mr. Blutch Connors, upon the slam of the lift door. + +And there, in the dim-lit halls, with its rows of closed doors in +blank-faced witness thereof, they embraced, these two, despising, as +Flaubert despised, to live in the reality of things. + +"My boy's beau-ful cheeks all cold!" + +"My girl's beau-ful cheeks all warm and full of some danged good cologne," +said Mr. Connors, closing the door of their rooms upon them, pressing her +head back against the support of his arm, and kissing her throat as the +chin flew up. + +He pressed a button, and the room sprang into more light, coming out pinkly +and vividly--the brocaded walls pliant to touch with every so often a +gilt-framed engraving; a gilt table with an onyx top cheerfully cluttered +with the sauciest short-story magazines of the month; a white mantelpiece +with an artificial hearth and a pink-and-gilt _chaise-longue_ piled high +with small, lacy pillows, and a very green magazine open and face downward +on the floor beside it. + +"Comin' better, honeybunch?" + +"I dunno, Babe. The town's mad with money, but I don't feel myself going +crazy with any of it." + +"What ud you bring us, honey?" + +He slid out of his silk-lined greatcoat, placing his brown derby atop. + +"Three guesses, Babe," he said, rubbing his cold hands in a dry wash, and +smiling from five feet eleven of sartorial accomplishment down upon her. + +"Honey darlin'!" said Mrs. Connors, standing erect and placing her cheek +against the third button of his waistcoat. + +"Wow! how I love the woman!" he cried, closing his hands softly about her +throat and tilting her head backward again. + +"Darlin', you hurt!" + +"Br-r-r--can't help it!" + +When Mr. Connors moved, he gave off the scent of pomade freely; his +slightly thinning brown hair and the pointy tips to a reddish mustache +lay sleek with it. There was the merest suggestion of _embonpoint_ to the +waistcoat, but not so that, when he dropped his eyes, the blunt toes of his +russet shoes were not in evidence. His pin-checked suit was pressed to a +knife-edge, and his brocaded cravat folded to a nicety; there was an air +of complete well-being about him. Men can acquire that sort of eupeptic +well-being in a Turkish bath. Young mothers and life-jobbers have it +naturally. + +Suddenly, Mrs. Connors began to foray into his pockets, plunging her hand +into the right, the left, then stopped suddenly, her little face flashing +up at him. + +"It's round and furry--my honeybunch brought me a peach! Beau-ful pink +peach in December! Nine million dollars my hubby pays to bring him wifey a +beau-ful pink peach." She drew it out--a slightly runty one with a forced +blush--and bit small white teeth immediately into it. + +"M-m-m!"--sitting on the _chaise-longue_ and sucking inward. He sat down +beside her, a shade graver. + +"Is my babe disappointed I didn't dig her coat and earrings out of hock?" + +She lay against him. + +"I should worry!" + +"There just ain't no squeal in my girl." + +"Wanna bite?" + +"Any one of 'em but you would be hollering for their junk out of pawn. +But, Lord, the way she rigs herself up without it! Where'd you dig up the +spangles, Babe? Gad! I gotta take you out to-night and buy you the right +kind of a dinner. When I walks my girl into a café, they sit up and take +notice, all righty. Spangles she rigs herself up in when another girl, with +the way my luck's been runnin', would be down to her shimmy-tail." + +She stroked his sleeve as if it had the quality of fur. + +"Is the rabbit's foot still kicking my boy?" + +"Never seen the like, honey. The cards just won't come. This afternoon I +even played the wheel over at Chuck's, and she spun me dirt." + +"It's gotta turn, Blutch." + +"Sure!" + +"Remember the run of rotten luck you had that year in Cincinnati, when the +ponies was runnin' at Latonia?" + +"Yeh." + +"Lost your shirt, hon, and the first day back in New York laid a hundred on +the wheel and won me my seal coat. You--we--We couldn't be no lower than +that time we got back from Latonia, hon?" + +He laid his hand over hers. + +"Come on, Babe. Joe'll be here directly, and then we're going and blow them +spangles to a supper." + +"Blutch, answer!" + +"Now there's nothin' to worry about, Babe. Have I ever landed anywhere +but on my feet? We'll be driving a racer down Broadway again before the +winter's over. There's money in motion these wartimes, Babe. They can't +keep my hands off it." + +"Blutch, how--how much did you drop to-day? + +"I could tell clear down on the street you lost, honey, the way you walked +so round-shouldered." + +"What's the difference, honey? Come; just to show you I'm a sport, I'm +going to shoot you and Joe over to Jack's in one of them new white +taxi-cabs." + +"Blutch, how much?" + +"Well, if you gotta know it, they laid me out to-day, Babe. Dropped that +nine hundred hock-money like it was a hot potato, and me countin' on +bringin' you home your coat and junk again to-night. Gad! Them cards +wouldn't come to me with salt on their tails." + +"Nine hundred! Blutch, that--that leaves us bleached!" + +"I know it, hon. Just never saw the like. Wouldn't care if it wasn't my +girl's junk and fur coat. That's what hurts a fellow. If there's one thing +he ought to look to, it's to keep his wimmin out of the game." + +"It--it ain't that, Blutch; but--but where's it comin' from?" + +He struck his thigh a resounding whack. + +"With seventy-five bucks in my jeans, girl, the world is mine. Why, before +I had my babe for my own, many's the time I was down to shoe-shine money. +Up to 'leven years ago it wasn't nothing, honey, for me to sleep on a +pool-table one night and _de luxe_ the next. If life was a sure thing for +me, I'd ask 'em to put me out of my misery. It's only since I got my girl +that I ain't the plunger I used to be. Big Blutch has got his name from the +old days, honey, when a dime, a dollar, and a tire-rim was all the same +size." + +She sat hunched up in the pink-satinet frock, the pink sequins dancing, and +her small face smaller because of the way her light hair rose up in the +fuzzy aura. + +"Blutch, we--we just never was down to the last seventy-five before. That +time at Latonia, it was a hundred and more." + +"Why, girl, once, at Hot Springs, I had to hock my coat and vest, and I got +started on a run of new luck playin' in my shirt-sleeves, pretending I was +a summer boy." + +"That was the time you gave Lenny Gratz back his losings and got him back +to his wife." + +"Right-o! Seen him only to-night. He's traveling out of Cleveland for an +electric house and has forgot how aces up looks. That boy had as much +chance in the game as a deacon." + +Mrs. Connors laid hold of Mr. Connors's immaculate coat lapel, drawing him +toward her. + +"Oh, Blutch--honey--if only--if only--" + +"If only what, Babe?" + +"If you--you--" + +"Why, honey, what's eatin' you? I been down pretty near this low many a +time; only, you 'ain't known nothing about it, me not wanting to worry your +pretty head. You ain't afraid, Babe, your old hubby can't always take care +of his girl A1, are you?" + +"No, no, Blutch; only--" + +"What, Babe?" + +"I wish to God you was out of it, Blutch! I wish to God!" + +"Out of what, Babe?" + +"The game, Blutch. You're too good, honey, and too--too honest to be in it. +What show you got in the end against your playin' pals like Joe Kirby and +Al Flexnor? I know that gang, Blutch. I've tried to tell you so often how, +when I was a kid livin' at home, that crowd used to come to my mother's--" + +"Now, now, girl; business is--" + +"You're too good, Blutch, and too honest to be in it. The game'll break you +in the end. It always does. Blutch darling, I wish to God you was out of +it!" + +"Why, Ann 'Lisbeth, I never knew you felt this way about it." + +"I do, Blutch, I do! For years, it's been here in me--here, under my +heart--eatin' me, Blutch, eatin' me!" And she placed her hands flat to her +breast. + +"Why, Babe!" + +"I never let on. You--I--You been too good, Blutch, to a girl like--like +I was for me to let out a whimper about anything. A man that took a girl +like--like me that had knocked around just like--my mother and even--even +my grandmother before me had knocked around--took and married me, no +questions asked. A girl like me 'ain't got the right to complain to no man, +much less to one like you. The heaven you've given me for eleven years, +Blutch! The heaven! Sometimes, darlin', just sittin' here in a room like +this, with no--no reason for bein' here--it's just like I--" + +"Babe, Babe, you mustn't!" + +"Sittin' here, waiting for you to come and not carin' for nothing or nobody +except that my boy's comin' home to me--it's like I was in a dream, Blutch, +and like I was going to wake up and find myself back in my mother's house, +and--" + +"Babe, you been sittin' at home alone too much. I always tell you, honey, +you ought to make friends. Chuck De Roy's wife wants the worst way to get +acquainted with you--a nice, quiet girl. It ain't right, Babe, for you +not to have no friends at all to go to the matinée with or go buyin' +knickknacks with. You're gettin' morbid, honey." + +She worked herself out of his embrace, withholding him with her palms +pressed out against his chest. + +"I 'ain't got nothing in life but you, honey. There ain't nobody else under +the sun makes any difference. That's why I want you to get out of it, +Blutch. It's a dirty game--the gambling game. You ain't fit for it. You're +too good. They've nearly got you now, Blutch. Let's get out, honey, +while the goin's good. Let's take them seventy-five bucks and buy us a +peanut-stand or a line of goods. Let's be regular folks, darlin'! I'm +willin' to begin low down. Don't stake them last seventy-five, Blutch. +Break while we're broke. It ain't human nature to break while your luck's +with you." + +He was for folding her in his arms, but she still withheld him. + +"Blutch darlin', it's the first thing I ever asked of you." + +He grew grave, looking long into her blue eyes with the tears forming over +them. + +"Why, Ann 'Lisbeth, danged if I know what to say! You sure you're feelin' +well, Babe? 'Ain't took cold, have you, with your fur coat in hock?" + +"No, no, no!" + +"Well, I--I guess, honey, if the truth was told, your old man ain't cut out +for nothing much besides the gamin'-table--a fellow that's knocked around +the world the way I have." + +"You are, Blutch; you are! You're an expert accountant. Didn't you run the +Two Dollar Hat Store that time in Syracuse and get away with it?" + +"I know, Babe; but when a fellow's once used to makin' it easy and spendin' +it easy, he can't be satisfied lopin' along in a little business. Why, just +take to-night, honey! I only brought home my girl a peach this evening, +but that ain't sayin' that before morning breaks I can't be bringin' her a +couple of two-carat stones." + +"No, no, Blutch; I don't want 'em. I swear to God I don't want 'em!" + +"Why, Babe, I just can't figure out what's got into you. I never heard you +break out like this. Are you scared, honey, because we happen to be lower +than--" + +"No, no, darlin'; I ain't scared because we're low. I'm scared to get high +again. It's the first run of real luck you've had in three years, Blutch. +There was no hope of gettin' you out while things was breakin' good for +you; but now--" + +"I ain't sayin' it's the best game in the world. I'd see a son of mine laid +out before I'd let him get into it. But it's what I'm cut out for, and what +are you goin' to do about it? 'Ain't you got everything your little heart +desires? Ain't we going down to Sheepshead when the first thaw sets in? +Ain't we just a pair of love-birds that's as happy as if we had our right +senses? Come, Babe; get into your jacket. Joe'll be here any minute, and I +got that porterhouse at Jack's on the brain. Come kiss your hubby." + +She held up her face with the tears rolling down it, and he kissed a dry +spot and her yellow frizzed bangs. + +"My girl! My cry-baby girl!" + +"You're all I got in the world, Blutch! Thinkin' of what's best for you has +eat into me." + +"I know! I know!" + +"We'll never get nowheres in this game, hon. We ain't even sure enough of +ourselves to have a home like--like regular folks." + +"Never you mind, Babe. Startin' first of the year, I'm going to begin to +look to a little nest-egg." + +"We ought to have it, Blutch. Just think of lettin' ourselves get down to +the last seventy-five! What if a rainy day should come--where would we be +at? If you--or me should get sick or something." + +"You ain't all wrong, girl." + +"You'd give the shirt off your back, Blutch; that's why we can't ever have +a nest-egg as long as you're playin' stakes. There's too many hard-luck +stories lying around loose in the gamblin' game." + +"The next big haul I make I'm going to get out, girl, so help me!" + +"Blutch!" + +"I mean it. We'll buy a chicken-farm." + +"Why not a little business, Blutch, in a small town with--" + +"There's a great future in chicken-farmin'. I set Boy Higgins up with a +five-hundred spot the year his lung went back on him, and he paid me back +the second year." + +"Blutch darlin', you mean it?" + +"Why not, Babe--seein' you want it? There ain't no string tied to me and +the green-felt table. I can go through with anything I make up my mind to." + +"Oh, honey baby, you promise! Darling little fuzzy chickens!" + +"Why, girl, I wouldn't have you eatin' yourself thisaway. The first +ten-thou' high-water mark we hit I'm quits. How's that?" + +"Ten thousand! Oh, Blutch, we--" + +"What's ten thou', girl! I made the Hot Springs haul with a twenty-dollar +start. If you ain't careful, we'll be buyin' that chicken-farm next week. +That's what can happen to my girl if she starts something with her hubby." + +Suddenly Mrs. Connors crumpled in a heap upon the lacy pillows, pink +sequins heaving. + +"Why, Babe--Babe, what is it? You're sick or something to-night, honey." He +lifted her to his arms, bent almost double over her. + +"Nothin', Blutch, only--only I just never was so happy." + +"Lord!" said Blutch Connors. "All these years, and I never knew anything +was eatin' her." + +"I--I never was, Blutch." + +"Was what?" + +"So--happy." + +"Lord bless my soul! The poor little thing was afraid to say it was a +chicken-farm she wanted!" + +He patted her constantly, his eyes somewhat glazy. + +"Us two, Blutch, livin' regular." + +"You ain't all wrong, girl." + +"You home evenings, Blutch, regular like." + +"You poor little thing!" + +"You'll play safe, Blutch? Play safe to win!" + +"I wish I'd have went into the farmin' three years ago, Babe, the week I +hauled down eleven thou'." + +"You was too fed up with luck then, Blutch. I knew better 'n to ask." + +"Lord bless my soul! and the poor little thing was afraid to say it was a +chicken-farm she wanted!" + +"Promise me, Blutch, you'll play 'em close--to win!" + +"Al's openin' up his new rooms to-night. Me and Joe are goin' to play 'em +fifty-fifty. It looks to me like a haul, Babe." + +"He's crooked, Blutch, I tell you." + +"No more 'n all of 'em are, Babe. Your eyes open and your pockets closed is +my motto. What you got special against Joe? You mustn't dig up on a fellow, +Babe." + +"I--. Why ain't he livin' in White Plains, where his wife and kids are?" + +"What I don't know about the private life of my card friends don't hurt +me." + +"It's town talk the way he keeps them rooms over at the Liberty. 'Way back +when I was a kid, Blutch, I remember how he used to--" + +"I know there ain't no medals on Joe, Babe, but if you don't stop listenin' +to town talk, you're going to get them pretty little ears of yours all +sooty." + +"I know, Blutch; but I could tell you things about him back in the days +when my mother--" + +"Me and him are goin' over to Al's to-night and try to win my babe the +first chicken for her farm. Whatta you bet? Us two ain't much on the +sociability end, but we've played many a lucky card fifty-fifty. Saturday +is our mascot night, too. Come, Babe; get on your jacket, and--" + +"Honeybunch, you and Joe go. I ain't hungry." + +"But--" + +"I'll have 'em send me up a bite from the grill." + +"You ain't sore because I asked Joe? It's business, Babe." + +"Of course I ain't, honey; only, with you and him goin' right over to Al's +afterward, what's the sense of me goin'? I wanna stay home and think. It's +just like beginnin' to-night I could sit here and look right into the time +when there ain't goin' to be no more waitin' up nights for my boy. I--They +got all little white chickens out at Denny's roadhouse, Blutch--white with +red combs. Can we have some like them?" + +"You betcher life we can! I'm going to win the beginnings of that farm +before I'm a night older. Lordy! Lordy! and to think I never knew anything +was eatin' her!" + +"Blutch, I--I don't know what to say. I keep cryin' when I wanna laugh. I +never was so happy, Blutch, I never was." + +"My little kitty-puss!" + + * * * * * + +At seven o'clock came Mr. Joe Kirby, dark, corpulent, and black of cigar. + +"Come right in, Joe! I'm here and waitin' for you." + +"Ain't the missis in on this killin'?" + +"She--Not this--" + +"No, Joe; not--to-night." + +"Sorry to hear it," said Mr. Kirby, flecking an inch of cigar-ash to the +table-top. "Fine rig-up, with due respect to the lady, your missis is +wearing to-night." + +"The wife ain't so short on looks, is she?" + +"Blutch!" + +"You know my sentiments about her. They don't come no ace-higher." + +She colored, even quivered, standing there beside the bronze Nydia. + +"I tell her we're out for big business to-night, Joe." + +"Sky's the limit. Picked up a pin pointin' toward me and sat with my back +to a red-headed woman. Can't lose." + +"Well, good-night, Babe. Take care o' yourself." + +"Good night, Blutch. You'll play 'em close, honey?" + +"You just know I will, Babe." + +An hour she sat there, alone on the _chaise-longue_, staring into space and +smiling at what she saw there. Finally she dropped back into the lacy mound +of pillows, almost instantly asleep, but still smiling. + + * * * * * + +At four o'clock, that hour before dawn cracks, even the West Forties, where +night is too often cacophonous with the sound of revelry, drop into long +narrow aisles of gloom. Thin, high-stooped houses with drawn shades recede +into the mouse-colored mist of morning, and, as through quagmire, this mist +hovering close to ground, figures skulk--that nameless, shapeless race of +many bloods and one complexion, the underground complexion of paste long +sour from standing. + +At somewhat after that hour Mr. Blutch Connors made exit from one of these +houses, noiseless, with scarcely a click after him, and then, without +pause, passed down the brownstone steps and eastward. A taxicab slid by, +its honk as sorrowful as the cry of a plover in a bog. Another--this one +drawing up alongside, in quest of fare. He moved on, his breath clouding +the early air, and his hands plunged deep in his pockets as if to plumb +their depth. There was a great sag to the silhouette of him moving thus +through the gloom, the chest in and the shoulders rounding and lessening +their front span. Once he paused to remove the brown derby and wipe at his +brow. A policeman struck his stick. He moved on. + +An all-night drug-store, the modern sort of emporium where the capsule +and the herb have become side line to the ivoritus toilet-set and the +pocket-dictionary, threw a white veil of light across the sidewalk. Well +past that window, but as if its image had only just caught up with him, +Mr. Connors turned back, retracing ten steps. A display-window, denuded of +frippery but strewn with straw and crisscrossed with two large strips of +poster, proclaimed Chicklet Face Powder to the cosmetically concerned. With +an eye to fidelity, a small brood of small chickens, half dead with bad +air and not larger than fists, huddled rearward and out of the grilling +light--puny victims to an indorsed method of correspondence-school +advertising. + +Mr. Connors entered, scouting out a dozy clerk. + +"Say, bo, what's one of them chicks worth?" + +"Ain't fer sale." + +Mr. Connors lowered his voice, nudging. + +"I gotta sick wife, bo. Couldn't you slip me one in a 'mergency?" + +"What's the idea--chicken broth? You better go in the park and catch her a +chippie." + +"On the level, friend, one of them little yellow things would cheer her up. +She's great one for pets." + +"Can't you see they're half-dead now? What you wanna cheer her up with--a +corpse? If I had my way, I'd wring the whole display's neck, anyhow." + +"What'll you take for one, bo?" + +"It'll freeze to death." + +"Look! This side pocket is lined with velvet." + +"Dollar." + +"Aw, I said one, friend, not the whole brood." + +"Leave or take." + +Mr. Connors dug deep. + +"Make it sixty cents and a poker-chip, bo. It's every cent I got in my +pocket." + +"Keep the poker-chip for pin-money." + +When Mr. Connors emerged, a small, chirruping bunch of fuzz, cupped in his +hand, lay snug in the velvet-lined pocket. + +At Sixth Avenue, where the great skeleton of the Elevated stalks +mid-street, like a prehistoric _pithecanthropus erectus_, he paused for an +instant in the shadow of a gigantic black pillar, readjusting the fragile +burden to his pocket. + +Stepping out to cross the street, simultaneously a great silent motor-car, +noiseless but wild with speed, tore down the surface-car tracks, blacker in +the hulking shadow of the Elevated trellis. + +A quick doubling up of the sagging silhouette, and the groan of a clutch +violently thrown. A woman's shriek flying thin and high like a javelin of +horror. A crowd sprung full grown out of the bog of the morning. White, +peering faces showing up in the brilliant paths of the acetylene lamps. A +uniform pushing through. A crowbar and the hard breathing of men straining +to lift. A sob in the dark. Stand back! Stand back! + + * * * * * + +Dawn--then a blue, wintry sky, the color and hardness of enamel; and +sunshine, bright, yet so far off the eye could stare up to it unsquinting. +It lay against the pink-brocaded window-hangings of the suite in the Hotel +Metropolis; it even crept in like a timid hand reaching toward, yet not +quite touching, the full-flung figure of Mrs. Blutch Connors, lying, her +cheek dug into the harshness of the carpet, there at the closed door to the +bedroom--prone as if washed there, and her yellow hair streaming back like +seaweed. Sobs came, but only the dry kind that beat in the throat and then +come shrilly, like a sheet of silk swiftly torn. + +How frail are human ties, have said the _beaux esprits_ of every age in one +epigrammatic fashion or another. But frailty can bleed; in fact, it's first +to bleed. + +Lying there, with her face swollen and stamped with the carpet-nap, +squirming in a grief that was actually abashing before it was +heartbreaking, Ann 'Lisbeth Connors, whose only epiphany of life was love, +and shut out from so much else that helps make life sweet, was now shut out +from none of its pain. + +Once she scratched at the door, a faint, dog-like scratch for admission, +and then sat back on her heels, staring at the uncompromising panel, +holding back the audibility of her sobs with her hand. + +Heart-constricting silence, and only the breath of ether seeping out to +her, sweet, insidious. She took to hugging herself violently against a +sudden chill that rushed over her, rattling her frame. + +The bedroom door swung noiselessly back, fanning out the etheric fumes, and +closed again upon an emerging figure. + +"Doctor--quick--God!--What?" + +He looked down upon her with the kind of glaze over his eyes that Bellini +loved to paint, compassion for the pain of the world almost distilled to +tears. + +"Doctor--he ain't--" + +"My poor little lady!" + +"O God--no--no--no! No, Doctor, no! You wouldn't! Please! Please! You +wouldn't let him leave me here all alone, Doctor! O God! you wouldn't! I'm +all alone, Doctor! You see, I'm all alone. Please don't take him from me. +He's mine! You can't! Promise me, Doctor! My darlin' in there--why are you +hurtin' him so? Why has he stopped hollerin'? Cut me to pieces to give him +what he needs to make him live. Don't take him from me, Doctor. He's all I +got! O God--God--please!" And fell back swooning, with an old man's tear +splashing down as if to revivify her. + + * * * * * + +The heart has a resiliency. Strained to breaking, it can contract again. +Even the waiting women, Iseult and Penelope, learned, as they sat sorrowing +and watching, to sing to the swing of the sea. + +When, out of the slough of dark weeks, Mrs. Connors took up life again, +she was only beaten, not broken--a reed lashed down by storm and then +resilient, daring to lift its head again. A wan little head, but the eyes +unwashed of their blue and the irises grown large. The same hard sunshine +lay in its path between the brocade curtains of a room strangely denuded. +It was as if spring had died there, when it was only the _chaise-longue_, +barren of its lacy pillows, a glass vase and silver-framed picture gone +from the mantel, a Mexican afghan removed from a divan and showing its +bulges. + +It was any hotel suite now--uncompromising; leave me or take me. + +In taking leave of it, Mrs. Connors looked about her even coldly, as if +this barren room were too denuded of its memories. + +"You--you been mighty good to me, Joe. It's good to +know--everything's--paid up." + +Mr. Joe Kirby sat well forward on a straight chair, knees well apart in the +rather puffy attitude of the uncomfortably corpulent. + +"Now, cut that! Whatever I done for you, Annie, I done because I wanted to. +If you'd 'a' listened to me, you wouldn't 'a' gone and sold out your last +dud to raise money. Whatcha got friends for?" + +"The way you dug down for--for the funeral, Joe. He--he couldn't have had +the silver handles or the gray velvet if--if not for you, Joe. He--he +always loved everything the best. I can't never forget that of you, +Joe--just never." + +She was pinning on her little crêpe-edged veil over her decently black hat, +and paused now to dab up under it at a tear. + +"I'd 'a' expected poor old Blutch to do as much for me." + +"He would! He would! Many's the pal he buried." + +"I hate, Annie, like anything to see you actin' up like this. You ain't +fit to walk out of this hotel on your own hook. Where'd you get that +hand-me-down?" + +She looked down at herself, quickly reddening. + +"It's a warm suit, Joe." + +"Why, you 'ain't got a chance! A little thing like you ain't cut out for +but one or two things. Coddlin'--that's your line. The minute you're +nobody's doll you're goin' to get stepped on and get busted." + +"Whatta you know about--" + +"What kind of a job you think you're gonna get? Adviser to a corporation +lawyer? You're too soft, girl. What chance you think you got buckin' up +against a town that wants value received from a woman. Aw, you know what I +mean, Annie. You can't pull that baby stuff all the time." + +"You," she cried, beating her small hands together, "oh, you--you--" and +then sat down, crying weakly. "Them days back there! Why, I--I was such a +kid it's just like they hadn't been! With her and my grandmother dead and +gone these twelve years, if it wasn't for you it's--it's like they'd never +been." + +"Nobody was gladder 'n me, girl, to see how you made a bed for yourself. +I'm commendin' you, I am. That's just what I'm tryin' to tell you now, +girl. You was cut out to be somebody's kitten, and--" + +"O God!" she sobbed into her handkerchief, "why didn't you take me when you +took him?" + +"Now, now, Annie, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. A good-lookin' woman +like you 'ain't got nothing to worry about. Lemme order you up a drink. +You're gettin' weak again." + +"No, no; I'm taking 'em too often. But they warm me. They warm me, and I'm +cold, Joe--cold." + +"Then lemme--" + +"No! No!" + +He put out a short, broad hand toward her. + +"Poor little--" + +"I gotta go now, Joe. These rooms ain't mine no more." + +He barred her path. + +"Go where?" + +'"Ain't I told you? I'm going out. Anybody that's willin' to work can get +it in this town. I ain't the softy you think I am." + +He took her small black purse up from the table. + +"What's your capital?" + +"You--quit!" + +"Ten--'leven--fourteen dollars and seventy-four cents." + +"You gimme!" + +"You can't cut no capers on that, girl." + +"I--can work." + +He dropped something in against the coins. + +It clinked. + +She sprang at him. + +"No, no; not a cent from you--for myself. I--I didn't know you in them +days for nothing. I was only a kid, but I--I know you! I know. You gimme! +Gimme!" + +He withheld it from her. + +"Hold your horses, beauty! What I was then I am now, and I ain't ashamed of +it. Human, that's all. The best of us is only human before a pretty woman." + +"You gimme!" + +She had snatched up her small hand-satchel from the divan and stood +flashing now beside him, her small, blazing face only level with his +cravat. + +"What you spittin' fire for? That wa'n't nothin' I slipped in but my +address, girl. When you need me call on me. 'The Liberty, 96.' Go right up +in the elevator, no questions asked. Get me?" he said, poking the small +purse into the V of her jacket. "Get me?" + +"Oh, you--Woh--woh--woh!" + +With her face flung back and twisted, and dodging his outflung arm, she was +down four flights of narrow, unused stairs and out. Once in the streets, +she walked with her face still thrust up and a frenzy of haste in her +stride. Red had popped out in her cheeks. There was voice in each +breath--moans that her throat would not hold. + +That night she slept in the kind of fifty-cent room the city offers its +decent poor. A slit of a room with a black-iron bed and a damp mattress. +A wash-stand gaunt with its gaunt mission. A slop-jar on a zinc mat. A +caneless-bottom chair. The chair she propped against the door, the top slat +of it beneath the knob. Through a night of musty blackness she lay in a +rigid line along the bed-edge. + +You who love the city for its million pulses, the beat of its great heart, +and the terrific symphony of its soul, have you ever picked out from its +orchestra the plaintive rune of the deserving poor? + +It is like the note of a wind instrument--an oboe adding its slow note to +the boom of the kettle-drum, the clang of gold-colored cymbals, and the +singing ecstasy of violins. + +One such small voice Ann 'Lisbeth Connors added to the great threnody of +industry. Department stores that turned from her services almost before +they were offered. Offices gleaned from penny papers, miles of them, and +hours of waiting on hard-bottom chairs in draughty waiting-rooms. Faces, +pasty as her own, lined up alongside, greedy of the morsel about to fall. + +When the pinch of poverty threatens men and wolves, they grow long-faced. +In these first lean days, a week of them, Ann 'Lisbeth's face lengthened a +bit, too, and with the fuzz of yellow bangs tucked well up under her not so +decent black hat, crinkles came out about her eyes. + +Nights she supped in a family-entrance café beneath her room--veal stew and +a glass of beer. + +She would sit over it, not unpleasantly muzzy. She slept of nights now, and +not so rigidly. + +Then followed a week of lesser department stores as she worked her way +down-town, of offices tucked dingily behind lithograph and small-ware +shops, and even an ostrich-feather loft, with a "Curlers Wanted" sign hung +out. + +In what school does the great army of industry earn its first experience? +Who first employs the untaught hand? Upon Ann 'Lisbeth, untrained in any +craft, it was as if the workaday world turned its back, nettled at a +philistine. + +Once she sat resting on a stoop beneath the sign of a woman's-aid bureau. +She read it, but, somehow, her mind would not register. The calves of her +legs and the line where her shoe cut into her heel were hurting. + +She supped in the family-entrance café again--the bowl of veal stew and two +glasses of beer. Some days following, her very first venture out into the +morning, she found employment--a small printing-shop off Sixth Avenue just +below Twenty-third Street. A mere pocket in the wall, a machine champing in +its plate-glass front. + + VISITING-CARDS WHILE YOU WAIT + THIRTY-FIVE CENTS A HUNDRED + +She entered. + +"The sign says--'girl wanted.'" + +A face peered down at her from a high chair behind the champing machine. + +"'Goil wanted,' is what it says. Goil!" + +"I--I ain't old," she faltered. + +"Cut cards?" + +"I--Try me." + +"Five a week." + +"Why--yes." + +"Hang your coat and hat behind the sink." + +Before noon, a waste of miscut cards about her, she cut her hand slightly, +fumbling at the machine, and cried out. + +"For the love of Mike--you want somebody to kiss it and make it well? +Here's a quarter for your time. With them butter-fingers, you better get a +job greasin' popcorn." + +Out in the sun-washed streets the wind had hauled a bit. It cut as she bent +into it. With her additional quarter, she still had two dollars and twenty +cents, and that afternoon, in lower Sixth Avenue, at the instance of +another small card fluttering out in the wind, she applied as dishwasher +in a lunch-room and again obtained--this time at six dollars a week and +suppers. + +The Jefferson Market Lunch Room, thick with kicked-up sawdust and the fumes +of hissing grease, was sunk slightly below the level of the sidewalk, a +fitting retreat for the mole-like humanity that dined furtively at its +counter. Men with too short coat-sleeves and collars turned up; women with +beery eyes and uneven skirt-hems dank with the bilge-water of life's lower +decks. + +Lower Sixth Avenue is the abode of these shadows. Where are they from, and +whither going--these women without beauty, who walk the streets without +handkerchiefs, but blubbering with too much or too little drink? What is +the terrible riddle? Why, even as they blubber, are there women whose +bodies have the quality of cream, slipping in between scented sheets? + +Ann 'Lisbeth, hers not to argue, but accept, dallied with no such question. +Behind the lunch-room, a sink of unwashed dishes rose to a mound. She +plunged her hands into tepid water that clung to her like fuzz. + +"Ugh!" + +"Go to it!" said the proprietor, who wore a black flap over one eye. "Dey +won't bite. If de grease won't cut, souse 'em wit' lye. Don't try to muzzle +no breakage on me, neither, like the slut before you. I kin hear a cup +crack." + +"I won't," said Ann 'Lisbeth, a wave of the furry water slopping out and +down her dress-front. + +Followed four days spent in the grease-laden heat of the kitchen, the smell +of strong foods, raw meat, and fish stews thick above the sink. She had +moved farther down-town, against car fare; but because she talked now +constantly in her sleep and often cried out, there were knockings from the +opposite side of the partitions and oaths. For two evenings she sat until +midnight in a small rear café, again pleasantly muzzy over three glasses +of beer and the thick warmth of the room. Another night she carried home a +small bottle, tucking it beneath her coat as she emerged to the street. She +was grease-stained now, in spite of precautions, and her hat, with her hair +uncurled to sustain it, had settled down over her ears, grotesquely large. + +The week raced with her funds. On the sixth day she paid out her last fifty +cents for room-rent, and, without breakfast, filched her lunch from a +half-eaten order of codfish balls returned to the kitchen. + +Yes, reader; but who are you to turn away sickened and know no more of +this? You who love to bask in life's smile, but shudder at its drool! A +Carpenter did not sicken at a leper. He held out a hand. + +That night, upon leaving, she asked for a small advance on her week's wage, +retreating before the furiously stained apron-front and the one eye of the +proprietor cast down upon her. + +"Lay off! Lay off! Who done your bankin' last year? To-morrow's your day, +less four bits for breakage. Speakin' o' breakage, if you drop your jacket, +it'll bust. Watch out! That pint won't last you overnight. Layoff!" + +She reddened immediately, clapping her hand over the small protruding +bottle in her pocket. She dared not return to her room, but sat out the +night in a dark foyer behind a half-closed storm-door. No one found her +out, and the wind could not reach her. Toward morning she even slept +sitting. But the day following, weak and too soft for the lift, straining +to remove the great dish-pan high with crockery from sink to table, she let +slip, grasping for a new hold. + +There was a crash and a splintered debris--plates that rolled like hoops +to the four corners of the room, shivering as they landed; a great ringing +explosion of heavy stoneware, and herself drenched with the webby water. + +"O God!" she cried in immediate hysteria. "O God! O God!" and fell to her +knees in a frenzy of clearing-up. + +A raw-boned Minerva, a waitress with whom she had had no previous word, +sprang to her succor, a big, red hand of mercy jerking her up from the +debris. + +"Clear out! He's across the bar. Beat it while the going's good. Your +week's gone in breakage, anyways, and he'll split up the place when he +comes. Clear out, girl, and here--for car fare." + +Out in the street, her jacket not quite on and her hat clapped askew, Ann +'Lisbeth found herself quite suddenly scuttling down a side-street. + +In her hand a dime burnt up into the palm. + +For the first time in these weeks, except when her pint or the evening beer +had vivified her, a warmth seemed to flow through Ann 'Lisbeth. Chilled, +and her wet clothing clinging in at the knees, a fever +nevertheless quickened her. She was crying as she walked, but not +blubbering--spontaneous hot tears born of acute consciousness of pain. + +A great shame at her smelling, grease-caked dress-front smote her, too, and +she stood back in a doorway, scraping at it with a futile forefinger. + +February had turned soft and soggy, the city streets running mud, and the +damp insidious enough to creep through the warmth of human flesh. A day +threatened with fog from East River had slipped, without the interim of +dusk, into a heavy evening. Her clothing dried, but sitting in a small +triangle of park in Grove Street, chill seized her again, and, faint for +food, but with nausea for it, she tucked her now empty pint bottle beneath +the bench. She was crying incessantly, but her mind still seeming to +revive. Her small black purse she drew out from her pocket. It had a +collapsed look. Yet within were a sample of baby-blue cotton crêpe, a +receipt from a dyeing-and-cleaning establishment, and a bit of pink +chamois; in another compartment a small assortment of keys. + +She fumbled among them, blind with tears. Once she drew out, peering +forward toward a street-lamp to inspect it. It clinked as she touched it, a +small metal tag ringing. + +HOTEL LIBERTY 96 + +An hour Ann 'Lisbeth sat there, with the key in her lax hand. Finally she +rubbed the pink chamois across her features and adjusted her hat, pausing +to scrape again with forefinger at the front of her, and moved on through +the gloom, the wind blowing her skirt forward. + +She boarded a Seventh Avenue street-car, extracting the ten-cent piece +from her purse with a great show of well-being, sat back against the +carpet-covered, lengthwise seat, her red hands, with the cut forefinger +bound in rag, folded over her waist. + +At Fiftieth Street she alighted, the white lights of the whitest street in +the world forcing down through the murk, and a theater crowd swarming to be +turned from reality. + +The incandescent sign of the Hotel Liberty jutted out ahead. + +She did not pause. She was in and into an elevator even before a lackey +turned to stare. + +She found "Ninety-six" easily enough, inserting the key and opening the +door upon darkness--a warm darkness that came flowing out scented. She +found the switch, pressed it. + +A lamp with a red shade sprang up and a center chandelier. A warm-toned, +well-tufted room, hotel chromos well in evidence, but a turkey-red air of +solid comfort. + +Beyond, a white-tiled bathroom shining through the open door, and another +room hinted at beyond that. + +She dropped, even in her hat and jacket, against the divan piled with +fat-looking satin cushions. Tears coursed out from her closed eyes, and she +relaxed as if she would swoon to the luxury of the pillows, burrowing and +letting them bulge up softly about her. + +A half-hour she lay so in the warm bath of light, her little body so +quickly fallen into vagrancy not without litheness beneath the moldy skirt. + + * * * * * + +Some time after eight she rose, letting the warm water in the bathroom lave +over her hands, limbering them, and from a bottle of eau de Cologne in a +small medicine-chest sprinkled herself freely and touched up the corners of +her eyes with it. A thick robe of Turkish toweling hung from the bathroom +door. She unhooked it, looping it over one arm. + +A key scraped in the lock. From where she stood a rigidity raced over Ann +'Lisbeth, locking her every limb in paralysis. Her mouth moved to open and +would not. + +The handle turned, and, with a sudden release of faculties, darting this +way and that, as if at bay, she tore the white-enameled medicine-chest from +its moorings, and, with a yell sprung somewhere from the primordial depths +of her, stood with it swung to hurl. + +The door opened and she lunged, then let it fall weakly and with a small +crash. + +The chambermaid, white with shock at that cry, dropped her burden of towels +in the open doorway and fled. Ann 'Lisbeth fled, too, down the two flights +of stairs her frenzy found out for her, and across the flare of Broadway. + +The fog from East River was blowing in grandly as she ran into its tulle. +It closed around and around her. + + + + +V + +GOLDEN FLEECE + + +How saving a dispensation it is that men do not carry in their hearts +perpetual ache at the pain of the world, that the body-thuds of the +drink-crazed, beating out frantic strength against cell doors, cannot +penetrate the beatitude of a mother bending, at that moment, above a crib. +Men can sit in club windows while, even as they sit, are battle-fields +strewn with youth dying, their faces in mud. While men are dining where +there are mahogany and silver and the gloss of women's shoulders, are men +with kick-marks on their shins, ice gluing shut their eyes, and lashed with +gale to some ship-or-other's crow's-nest. Women at the opera, so fragrant +that the senses swim, sit with consciousness partitioned against a +sweating, shuddering woman in some forbidding, forbidden room, hacking open +a wall to conceal something red-stained. One-half of the world does not +know or care how the other half lives or dies. + +When, one summer, July came in like desert wind, West Cabanne Terrace and +that part of residential St. Louis that is set back in carefully conserved, +grove-like lawns did not sip its iced limeades with any the less +refreshment because, down-town at the intersection of Broadway and West +Street, a woman trundling a bundle of washing in an old perambulator +suddenly keeled of heat, saliva running from her mouth-corners. + +At three o'clock, that hour when so often a summer's day reaches its stilly +climax and the heat-dance becomes a thing visible, West Cabanne Terrace and +its kind slip into sheerest and crêpiest de Chine, click electric fans to +third speed, draw green shades, and retire for siesta. + +At that same hour, in the Popular Store, where Broadway and West Street +intersect, one hundred and fifty salesgirls--jaded sentinels for a +public that dares not venture down, loll at their counters and after the +occasional shopper, relax deeper to limpidity. + +At the jewelry counter, a crystal rectangle facing broadside the main +entrance and the bleached and sun-grilled street without, Miss Lola +Hassiebrock, salient among many and with Olympian certainty of self, lifted +two Junoesque arms like unto the handles of a vase, held them there in the +kind of rigidity that accompanies a yawn, and then let them flop. + +"Oh-h-h-h, God bless my soul!" she said. + +Miss Josie Beemis, narrowly constricted between shoulders that barely +sloped off from her neck, with arms folded flat to her flat bosom and her +back a hypothenuse against the counter, looked up. + +"Watch out, Loo! I read in the paper where a man up in Alton got caught in +the middle of one of those gaps and couldn't ungap." + +Miss Hassiebrock batted at her lips and shuddered. + +"It's my nerves, dearie. All the doctors say that nine gaps out of ten are +nerves." + +Miss Beemis hugged herself a bit flatter, looking out straight ahead into a +parasol sale across the aisle. + +"Enough sleep ain't such a bad cure for gaps," she said. + +"I'll catch up in time, dearie; my foot's been asleep all day." + +"Huh!"--sniffling so that her thin nose quirked sidewise. "I will now +indulge in hollow laughter--" + +"You can't, dearie," said Miss Hassiebrock, driven to vaudevillian +extremities, "you're cracked." + +"Well, I may be cracked, but my good name ain't." + +A stiffening of Miss Hassiebrock took place, as if mere verbiage had +suddenly flung a fang. From beneath the sternly and too starched white +shirtwaist and the unwilted linen cravat wound high about her throat and +sustained there with a rhinestone horseshoe, it was as if a wave of color +had started deep down, rushing up under milky flesh into her hair. + +"Is that meant to be an in-sinuating remark, Josie?" + +"'Tain't how it's meant; it's how it's took." + +"There's some poor simps in this world, maybe right here in this store, +ought to be excused from what they say because they don't know any better." + +"I know this much: To catch the North End street-car from here, I don't +have to walk every night down past the Stag Hotel to do it." + +At that Miss Hassiebrock's ears, with the large pearl blobs in them, +tingled where they peeped out from the scallops of yellow hair, and she +swallowed with a forward movement as if her throat had constricted. + +"I--take the street-car where I darn please, and it's nobody's darn +business." + +"Sure it ain't! Only, if a poor working-girl don't want to make it +everybody's darn business, she can't run around with the fast rich boys of +this town and then get invited to help hem the altar-cloth." + +"Anything I do in this town I'm not ashamed to do in broad daylight." + +"Maybe; but just the samey, I notice the joy rides out to Claxton don't +take place in broad daylight. I notice that 'tall, striking blonde' and +Charley Cox's speed-party in the morning paper wasn't exactly what you'd +call a 'daylight' affair." + +"No, it wasn't; it was--my affair." + +"Say, if you think a girl like you can run with the black sheep of every +rich family in town and make a noise like a million dollars with the horsy +way she dresses, it ain't my grave you're digging." + +"Maybe if some of the girls in this store didn't have time to nose so much, +they'd know why I can make them all look like they was caught out in the +rain and not pressed the next morning. While they're snooping in what +don't concern them I'm snipping. Snipping over my last year's +black-and-white-checked jacket into this year's cutaway. If you girls had +as much talent in your needle as you've got in your conversation, you might +find yourselves somewheres." + +"Maybe what you call 'somewheres' is what lots of us would call +'nowheres.'" + +Miss Hassiebrock drew herself up and, from the suzerainty of sheer height, +looked down upon Miss Beemis there, so brown and narrow beside the +friendship-bracelet rack. + +"I'll have you know, Josie Beemis, that if every girl in this store watched +her step like me, there'd be a darn sight less trouble in the world." + +"I know you don't go beyond the life-line, Loo, but, gee! you--you do swim +out some!" + +"Little Loo knows her own depth, all righty." + +"Not the way you're cuttin' up with Charley Cox." + +Miss Hassiebrock lowered her flaming face to scrutinize a tray of +rhinestone bar pins. + +"I'd like to see any girl in this store turn down a bid with Charley Cox. I +notice there are plenty of you go out to the Highland dances hoping to meet +even his imitation." + +"The rich boys that hang around the Stag and out to the Highlands don't get +girls like us anywheres." + +"I don't need them to get me anywhere. It's enough when a fellow takes +me out that he can tuck me up in a six-cylinder and make me forget my +stone-bruise. Give me a fellow that smells of gasolene instead of bay rum +every time. Trolley-car Johnnies don't mean nothing in my life." + +"You let John Simeon out of this conversation!" + +"You let Charley Cox out!" + +"Maybe he don't smell like a cleaned white glove, but John means something +by me that's good." + +"Well, since you're so darn smart, Josie Beemis, and since you got so much +of the English language to spare, I'm going to tell you something. Three +nights in succession, and I can prove it by the crowd, Charley Cox has +asked me to marry him. Begged me last night out at Claxton Inn, with Jess +Turner and all that bunch along, to let them roust out old man Gerber there +in Claxton and get married in poetry. Put that in your pipe and smoke it +awhile, Josie; it may soothe your nerve." + +"Y-aw," said Miss Beemis. + +The day dwindled. Died. + + +At West Street, where Broadway intersects, the red sun at its far end +settled redly and cleanly to sink like a huge coin into the horizon. The +Popular Store emptied itself into this hot pink glow, scurried for the open +street-car and, oftener than not, the overstuffed rear platform, nose to +nose, breath to breath. + +Fortunately the Popular Store took its semi-annual inventory of yards and +not of souls. Such a stock-taking, that of the human hearts which beat from +half after eight to six behind six floors of counters, would have revealed +empty crannies, worn thin in places with the grind of routine. The +eight-thirty-to-six business of muslin underwear, crash toweling, and +skirt-binding. The great middle class of shoppers who come querulous with +bunions and babies. The strap-hanging homeward ride. Supper, but usually +within range of the range that boils it. The same smells of the same foods. +The, cinematograph or front-stoop hour before bed. Or, if Love comes, +and he will not be gainsaid, a bit of wooing at the fountain--the +soda-fountain. But even he, oftener than not, comes moist-handed, and in a +ready-tied tie. As if that matters, and yet somehow, it does. Leander wore +none, or had he, would have worn it flowing. Then bed, and the routine +of its unfolding and coaxing the pillow from beneath the iron clamp. An +alarm-clock crashing through the stuff of dreams. Coffee within reach of +the range. Another eight-thirty-to-six reality of muslin underwearing, +crash toweling, and skirt-binding. + +But, not given to self-inventory, the Popular Store emptied itself +with that blessed elasticity of spirit which, unappalled, stretches to +to-morrows as they come. + +At Ninth Street Miss Lola Hassiebrock loosed her arm where Miss Beemis +had linked into it. Wide-shouldered and flat-hipped, her checked suit so +pressed that the lapels lay entirely flat to the swell of her bosom, her +red sailor-hat well down over her brow, and the high, swathing cravat +rising to inclose her face like a wimple, she was Fashion's apotheosis in +tailor-made mood. When Miss Hassiebrock walked, her skirt, concealing yet +revealing an inch glimmer of gray-silk stocking above gray-suede spats, +allowed her ten inches of stride. She turned now, sidestepping within those +ten inches. + +"See you to-morrow, Josie." + +"Ain't you taking the car?" + +"No, dearie," said Miss Hassiebrock, stepping down to cross the street; +"you take it, but not for keeps." + +And so, walking southward on Ninth Street in a sartorial glory that was of +her own making-over from last season, even St. Louis, which at the stroke +of six rushes so for the breeze of its side yards, leaving darkness to +creep into down-town streets that are as deserted as cañons, turned its +feminine head to bear in mind the box-plaited cutaway, the male eye +appraising its approval with bold, even quirking eye. + +Through this, and like Diana, who, so aloof from desire, walked in the path +of her own splendor, strode Miss Hassiebrock, straight and forward of eye. +Past the Stag Hotel, in an aisle formed by lounging young bloods and a curb +lined with low, long-snouted motor-cars, the gaze beneath the red sailor +and above the high, horsy stock a bit too rigidly conserved. + +Slightly by, the spoken word and the whistled innuendo followed her like +a trail of bubbles in the wake of a flying-fish. A youth still wearing a +fraternity pin pretended to lick his downy chops. The son of the president +of the Mound City Oil Company emitted a long, amorous whistle. Willie +Waxter--youngest scion, scalawag, and scorcher of one of the oldest +families--jammed down his motorgoggles from the visor of his cap, making +the feint of pursuing. Mr. Charley Cox, of half a hundred first-page +exploits, did pursue, catching up slightly breathless. + +"What's your hurry, honey?" + +She spun about, too startled. + +"Charley Cox! Well, of all the nerve! Why didn't you scare me to death and +be done with it?" + +"Did I scare you, sweetness? Cross my heart, I didn't mean to." + +"Well, I should say you did!" + +He linked his arm into hers. + +"Come on; I'll buy you a drink." + +She unlinked. + +"Honest, can't a girl go home from work in this town without one of you +fellows getting fresh with her?" + +"All right, then; I'll buy you a supper. The car is back there, and we'll +shoot out to the inn. What do you say? I feel like a house afire this +evening, kiddo. What does your speedometer register?" + +"Charley, aren't you tired painting this old town yet? Ain't there just +nothing will bring you to your senses? Honest, this morning's papers are a +disgrace. You--you won't catch me along again." + +He slid his arm, all for ingratiating, back into hers. + +"Come now, honey; you know you like me for my speed." + +She would not smile. + +"Honest, Charley, you're the limit." + +"But you like me just the same. Now don't you, Loo?" + +She looked at him sidewise. + +"You've been drinking, Charley." + +He felt of his face. + +"Not a drop, Loo. I need a shave, that's all." + +"Look at your stud--loose." + +He jammed a diamond whip curling back upon itself into his maroon scarf. He +was slightly heavy, so that his hands dimpled at the knuckle, and above +the soft collar, joined beneath the scarf with a goldbar pin, his chin +threatened but did not repeat itself. + +"I got to go now, Charley; there's a North End car coming." + +"Aw, now, sweetness, what's the idea? Didn't you walk down here to pick me +up?" + +An immediate flush stung her face. + +"Well, of all the darn conceit! Can't a girl walk down to the loop to catch +her car and stretch her legs after she's been cooped up all day, without a +few of you boys throwing a bouquet or two at yourselves?" + +"I got to hand it you, Loo; when you walk down this street, you make every +girl in town look warmed over." + +"Do you like it, Charley? It's that checked jacket I bought at Hamlin's +sale last year made over." + +"Say, it's classy! You look like all the money in the world, honey." + +"Huh, two yards of coat-lining, forty-four cents, and Ida Bell's last +year's office-hat reblocked, sixty-five." + +"You're the show-piece of the town, all right. Come on; let's pick up a +crowd and muss-up Claxton Road a little." + +"I meant what I said, Charley. After the cuttings-up of last night and the +night before I'm quits. Maybe Charley Cox can afford to get himself talked +about because he's Charley Cox, but a girl like me with a job to hold down, +and the way ma and Ida Bell were sitting up in their nightgowns, green +around the gills, when I got home last night--nix! I'm getting myself +talked about, if you want to know it, running with--your gang, Charley." + +"I'd like to see anybody let out so much as a grunt about you in front of +me. A fellow can't do any more, honey, to show a girl where she stands with +him than ask her to marry him--now can he? If I'd have had my way last +night, I'd--" + +"You was drunk when you asked me, Charley." + +"You mean you got cold feet?" + +"Thank God, I did!" + +"I don't blame you, girl. You might do worse--but not much." + +"That's what you'd need for your finishing-touch, a girl like me dragging +you down." + +"You mean pulling me up." + +"Yes, maybe, if you didn't have a cent." + +"I'd have enough sense then to know better than to ask you, honey. You +'ain't got that fourteen-carat look in your eye for nothing. You're the +kind that's going to bring in a big fish, and I wish it to you." + +"Lots you know." + +"Come on; let me ride you around the block, then." + +"If--if you like my company so much, can't you just take a walk with me or +come out and sit on our steps awhile?" + +"Lord, girl, Flamm Avenue is hot enough to fry my soul to-night!" + +"We can't all have fathers that live in thirty-room houses out in +Kingsmoreland Place." + +"Thank God for that! I sneaked home this morning to change my clothes, and +thought maybe I'd got into somebody's mausoleum by mistake." + +"Was--was your papa around, Charley?" + +"In the library, shut up with old man Brookes." + +"Did he--did he see the morning papers? You know what he said last time, +Charley, when the motor-cycle cop chased you down an embankment." + +"Honey, if my old man was to carry out every threat he utters, I'd be +disinherited, murdered, hong-konged, shanghaied, and cremated every day in +the year." + +"I got to go now, Charley." + +"Not let a fellow even spin you home?" + +"You know I want to, Charley, but--but it don't do you any good, boy, being +seen with me in that joy-wagon of yours. It--it don't do you any good, +Charley, ever--ever being seen with me." + +"There's nothing or nobody in this town can hurt my reputation, honey, and +certainly not my ace-spot girl. Turn your mind over, and telephone down for +me to come out and pick you up about eight." + +"Don't hit it up to-night, Charley. Can't you go home one evening?" + +He juggled her arm. + +"You're a nice little girl, all righty." + +"There's my car." + +He elevated her by the elbow to the step, swinging up half-way after her to +drop a coin into the box. + +"Take care of this little lady there, conductor, and don't let your car +skid." + +"Oh, Charley--silly!" + +She forced her way into the jammed rear platform, the sharp brim of the red +sailor creating an area for her. + +"S'long, Charley!" + +"S'long, girl!" + +Wedged there in the moist-faced crowd, she looked after him, at his broad +back receding. An inclination to cry pressed at her eyeballs. + +Flamm Avenue, which is treeless and built up for its entire length with +two-story, flat-roofed buildings, stares, window for window, stoop for +stoop, at its opposite side, and, in summer, the strip of asphalt street, +unshaded and lying naked to the sun, gives off such an effluvium of heat +and hot tar that the windows are closed to it and night descends like a +gas-mask to the face. + +Opening the door upon the Hassiebrock front room, convertible from bed- to +sitting-room by the mere erect-position-stand of the folding-bed, a wave +of this tarry heat came flowing out, gaseous, sickening. Miss Hassiebrock +entered with her face wry, made a diagonal cut of the room, side-stepping a +patent rocker and a table laid out with knickknacks on a lace mat, slammed +closed two windows, and, turning inward, lifted off her hat, which left a +brand across her forehead and had plastered down her hair in damp scallops. + +"Whew!" + +"Lo-o, that you?" + +"Yes, ma." + +"Come out to your supper. I'll warm up the kohlrabi." + +Miss Hassiebrock strode through a pair of chromatic portières, with them +swinging after her, and into an unlit kitchen, gray with dusk. A table +drawn out center and within range of the gas-range was a blotch in the +gloom, three figures surrounding it with arms that moved vaguely among a +litter of dishes. + +"I wish to Heaven somebody in this joint would remember to keep those front +windows shut!" + +Miss Ida Bell Hassiebrock, at the right of the table, turned her head so +that, against the window, her profile, somewhat thin, cut into the gloom. + +"There's a lot of things I wish around here," she said, without a ripple to +her lips. + +"Hello, ma!" + +"I'll warm up the kohlrabi, Loo." + +Mrs. Hassiebrock, in the green black of a cotton umbrella and as sparse of +frame, moved around to the gas-range, scraping a match and dragging a pot +over the blue flame. + +"Never mind, ma; I ain't hungry." + +At the left of the table Genevieve Hassiebrock, with thirteen's crab-like +silhouette of elbow, rigid plaits, and nose still hitched to the star of +her nativity, wound an exceedingly long arm about Miss Hassiebrock's trim +waist-line. + +"I got B in de-portment to-day, Loo. You owe me the wear of your spats +Sunday." + +Miss Hassiebrock squeezed the hand at her waist. + +"All right, honey. Cut Loo a piece of bread." + +"Gussie Flint's mother scalded her leg with the wash-boiler." + +"Did she? Aw!" + +Mrs. Hassiebrock came then, limping around, tilting the contents of the +steaming pot to a plate. + +"Sit down, ma; don't bother." + +Miss Hassiebrock drew up, pinning a fringed napkin that stuck slightly in +the unfolding across her shining expanse of shirtwaist. Broke a piece of +bread. Dipped. + +Silence. + +"Paula Krausnick only got C in de-portment. When the monitor passed the +basin, she dipped her sponge soppin'-wet." + +"Anything new, ma?" + +Mrs. Hassiebrock, now at the sink, swabbed a dish with gray water. + +"My feet's killin' me," she said. + +Miss Ida Bell, who wore her hair in a coronet wound twice round her small +head, crossed her knife and fork on her plate, folded her napkin, and tied +it with a bit of blue ribbon. + +"I think it's a shame, ma, the way you keep thumping around in your +stocking feet like this was backwoods." + +"I can't get my feet in shoes--the joints--" + +"You thump around as much as you darn please, ma. If Ida Bell don't like +the looks of you, let her go home with some of her swell stenog friends. +You let your feet hurt you any old way you want 'em to. I'm going to buy +you some arnica. Pass the kohlrabi." + +"Well, my swell 'stenog friends,' as you call them, keep themselves +self-respecting girls without getting themselves talked about, and that's +more than I can say of my sister. If ma had the right kind of gumption with +you, she'd put a stop to it, all right." + +Mrs. Hassiebrock leaned her tired head sidewise into the moist palm of her +hand. + +"She's beyond me and the days when a slipper could make her mind. I wisht +to God there was a father to rule youse!" + +"I tell you, ma--mark my word for it--if old man Brookes ever finds out I'm +sister to any of the crowd that runs with Charley Cox and Willie Waxter and +those boys whose fathers he's lawyer for, it'll queer me for life in +that office--that's what it will. A girl that's been made confidential +stenographer after only one year in an office to have to be afraid, like I +am, to pick up the morning's paper." + +"Paula Krausnick's lunch was wrapped in the paper where Charley Cox got +pinched for speedin'--speedin'--speedin'--" + +"Shut up, Genevieve! Just don't you let my business interfere with +yours, Ida Bell. Brookes don't know you're on earth outside of your +dictation-book. Take it from me, I bet he wouldn't know you if he met you +on the street." + +"That's about all you know about it! If you found yourself confidential +stenographer to the biggest lawyer in town, he'd know you, all right--by +your loud dressing. A blind man could see you coming." + +"Ma, are you going to stand there and let her talk to me thataway? I notice +she's willing to borrow my loud shirtwaists and my loud gloves and my loud +collars." + +"If ma had more gumption with you, maybe things would be different." + +Mrs. Hassiebrock limped to the door, dangling a pail. + +"I 'ain't got no more strength against her. My ears won't hold no more. I'm +taking this hot oil down to Mrs. Flint's scalds. She's, beyond my control, +and the days when a slipper could make her mind. I wisht to God there was a +father! I wisht to God!" + +Her voice trailed off and down a rear flight of stairs. + +"Yes _sir_," resumed Miss Hassiebrock, her voice twanging in her effort at +suppression, "I notice you're pretty willing to borrow some of my loud +dressing when you get a bid once in a blue moon to take a boat-ride up to +Alton with that sad-faced Roy Brownell. If Charley didn't have a cent to +his name and a harelip, he'd make Roy Brownell look like thirty cents." + +"If Roy Brownell was Charley Cox, I'd hate to leave him laying around loose +where you could get your hands on him." + +"Genevieve, you run out and play." + +"If--if you keep running around till all hours of the night, with me and ma +waiting up for you, kicking up rows and getting your name insinuated in the +newspapers as 'the tall, handsome blonde,' I--I'm going to throw up my job, +I am, and you can pay double your share for the running of this flat. Next +thing we know, with that crowd that don't mean any good to you, this family +is going to find itself with a girl in trouble on its hands." + +"You--" + +"And if you want to know it, and if I wasn't somebody's confidential +stenographer, I could tell you that you're on the wrong scent. Boys like +Charley Cox don't mean good by your kind of a girl. If you're not speedy, +you look it, and that's almost the same as inviting those kind of boys +to--" + +Miss Lola Hassiebrock sprang up then, her hand coming down in a small crash +to the table. + +"You cut out that talk in front of that child!" + +Thus drawn into the picture, Genevieve, at thirteen, crinkled her face for +not uncalculating tears. + +"In this house it's fuss and fuss and fuss. Other children can go to the +'movies' after supper, only me-e-e--" + +"Here, honey; Loo's got a dime for you." + +"Sending that child out along your own loose ways, instead of seeing to it +she stays home to help ma do the dishes!" + +"I'll do the dishes for ma." + +"It's bad enough for one to have the name of being gay without starting +that child running around nights with--" + +"Ida Bell!" + +"You dry up, Ida Bell! I'll do what I pl--ease with my di--uhm--di--uhm." + +"If you say another word about such stuff in front of that child, I'll--" + +"Well, if you don't want her to hear what she sees with her eyes all around +her, come into the bedroom, then, and I can tell you something that'll +bring you to your senses." + +"What you can tell me I don't want to hear." + +"You're afraid." + +"I am, am I?" + +"Yes." + +With a wrench of her entire body, Miss Lola Hassiebrock was across the room +at three capacity strides, swung open a door there, and stood, head flung +up and pressing back tears, her lips turned inward. + +"All right, then--tell--" + +After them, the immediately locked door resisting, Genevieve fell to +batting the panels. + +"Let me in! Let me in! You're fussin' about your beaux. Ray Brownell has a +long face, and Charley Cox has a red face--red face--red face! Let me in! +In!" + +After a while the ten-cent piece rolled from her clenched and knocking +fist, scuttling and settling beneath the sink. She rescued it and went out, +lickety-clapping down the flight of rear stairs. + +Silence descended over that kitchen, and a sooty dusk that almost +obliterated the table, drawn out and cluttered after the manner of those +who dine frowsily; the cold stove, its pots cloying, and a sink piled high +with a task whose only ending is from meal to meal. + +Finally that door swung open again; the wide-shouldered, slim-hipped +silhouette of Miss Hassiebrock moved swiftly and surely through the kind +of early darkness, finding out for itself a wall telephone hung in a small +patch of hallway separating kitchen and front room. Her voice came tight, +as if it were a tense coil in her throat that she held back from bursting +into hysteria. + +"Give me Olive, two-one-o." The toe of her boot beat a quick tattoo. +"Stag?... Say, get me Charley Cox. He's out in front or down in the grill +or somewhere around. Page him quick! Important!" She grasped the nozzle of +the instrument as she waited, breathing into it with her head thrown back. +"Hello--Charley? That you? It's me. Loo ... _Loo_! Are you deaf, honey? +What you doing?... Oh, I got the blues, boy; honest I have. Blue as a +cat.... I don't know--just the indigoes. Nothing much. Ain't lit up, are +you, honey?... Sure I will. Don't bring a crowd. Just you and me. I'll walk +down to Gessler's drug-store and you can pick me up there.... Quit your +kidding.... Ten minutes. Yeh. Good-by." + + * * * * * + +Claxton Inn, slightly outside the city limits and certain of its decorums, +stands back in a grove off a macadamized highway that is so pliant to tire +that of summer nights, with tops thrown back and stars sown like lavish +grain over a close sky and to a rushing breeze that presses the ears like +an eager whisper, motor-cars, wild to catch up with the horizon, tear out +that road--a lightning-streak of them--fearing neither penal law nor Dead +Man's Curve. + +Slacking only to be slacked, cars dart off the road and up a gravel +driveway that encircles Claxton Inn like a lariat swung, then park +themselves among the trees, lights dimmed. Placid as a manse without, what +was once a private and now a public house maintains through lowered +lids its discreet white-frame exterior, shades drawn, and only slightly +revealing the parting of lace curtains. It is rearward where what was +formerly a dining-room that a huge, screened-in veranda, very whitely +lighted, juts suddenly out, and a showy hallway, bordered in potted palms, +leads off that. Here Discretion dares lift her lids to rove the gravel +drive for who comes there. + +In a car shaped like a motor-boat and as low to the ground Mr. Charley Cox +turned in and with a great throttling and choking of engine drew up among +the dim-eyed monsters of the grove and directly alongside an eight-cylinder +roadster with a snout like a greyhound. + +"Aw, Charley, I thought you promised you wasn't going to stop!" + +"Honey, sweetness, I just never was so dry." + +Miss Hassiebrock laid out a hand along his arm, sitting there in the quiet +car, the trees closing over them. + +"There's Yiddles Farm a little farther out, Charley; let's stop there for +some spring water." + +He was peeling out of his gauntlets, and cramming them into spacious side +pockets. + +"Water, honey, can wash me, but it can't quench me." + +"No high jinks to-night, though, Charley?" + +"Sure--no." + +They high-stepped through the gloom, and finally, with firmer step, up the +gravel walk and into the white-lighted, screened-in porch. + +Three waiters ran toward their entrance. A woman with a bare V of back +facing them, and three plumes that dipped to her shoulders, turned square +in her chair. + +"Hi, Charley. Hi, Loo!" + +"H'lo, Jess!" + +They walked, thus guided by two waiters, through a light _confetti_ of +tossed greetings, sat finally at a table half concealed by an artificial +palm. + +"You don't feel like sitting with Jess and the crowd, Loo?" + +"Charley, hasn't that gang got you into enough mix-ups?" + +"All right, honey; anything your little heart desires." + +She leaned on her elbows across the table from him, smiling and twirling a +great ring of black onyx round her small finger. + +"Love me?" + +"Br-r-r--to death!" + +"Sure?" + +"Sure. What'll you have, hon?" + +"I don't care." + +"Got any my special Gold Top on ice for me, George? Good. Shoot me a bottle +and a special layout of _hors-d'oeuvre_. How's that, sweetness?" + +"Yep." + +"Poor little girl," he said, patting the black onyx, "with the bad old +blues! I know what they are, honey; sometimes I get crazy with 'em myself." + +Her lips trembled. + +"It's you makes me blue, Charley." + +"Now, now; just don't worry that big, nifty head of yours about me." + +"The--the morning papers and all. I--I just hate to see you going so to--to +the dogs, Charley--a--fellow like you--with brains." + +"I'm a bad egg, girl, and what you going to do about it? I was raised like +one, and I'll die like one." + +"You ain't a bad egg. You just never had a chance. You been killed with +coin." + +"Killed with coin! Why, Loo, do you know, I haven't had to ask my old man +for a cent since my poor old granny died five years ago and left me a world +of money? While he's been piling it up like the Rocky Mountains I've been +getting down to rock-bottom. What would you say, sweetness, if I told you I +was down to my last few thousands? Time to touch my old man, eh?" + +He drank off his first glass with a quaff, laughing and waving it empty +before her face to give off its perfume. + +"My old man is going to wake up in a minute and find me on his +checking-account again. Charley boy better be making connections with +headquarters or he won't find himself such a hit with the niftiest doll in +town, eh?" + +"Charley, you--you haven't run through those thousands and thousands and +thousands the papers said you got from your granny that time?" + +"It was slippery, hon; somebody buttered it." + +"Charley, Charley, ain't there just no limit to your wildness?" + +"You're right, girl; I've been killed with coin. My old man's been too busy +all these years sitting out there in that marble tomb in Kingsmoreland +biting the rims off pennies to hold me back from the devil. Honey, that old +man, even if he is my father, didn't know no more how to raise a boy like +me than that there salt-cellar. Every time I got in a scrape he bought me +out of it, filled up the house with rough talk, and let it go at that. It's +only this last year, since he's short on health, that he's kicking up the +way he should have before it got too late. My old man never used to talk it +out with me, honey. He used to lash it out. I got a twelve-year-old welt on +my back now, high as your finger. Maybe it'll surprise you, girl, but now, +since he can't welt me up any more, me and him don't exchange ten words a +month." + +"Did--did he hear about last night, Charley? You know what came out in +the paper about making a new will if--if you ever got pulled in again for +rough-housing?" + +"Don't you worry that nifty head of yours about my old man ever making a +new will. He's been pulling that ever since they fired me from the academy +for lighting a cigarette with a twenty-dollar bill." + +"Charley!" + +"Next to taking it with him, he'll leave it to me before he'll see a penny +go out of the family. I've seen his will, hon." + +"Charley, you--you got so much good in you. The way you sent that wooden +leg out to poor old lady Guthrie. The way you made Jimmy Ball go home, and +the blind-school boys and all. Why can't you get yourself on the right +track where you belong, Charley? Why don't you clear--out--West where it's +clean?" + +"I used to have that idea, Loo. West, where a fellow's got to stand on his +own. Why, if I'd have met a girl like you ten years ago, I'd have made you +the baby doll of the Pacific Coast. I like you, Loo. I like your style and +the way you look like a million dollars. When a fellow walks into a café +with you he feels like he's wearing the Hope diamond. Maybe the society in +this town has given me the cold shoulder, but I'd like to see any of the +safety-first boys walk in with one that's got you beat. That's what I think +of you, girl." + +"Aw, now, you're lighting up. Charley. That's four glasses you've taken." + +"Thought I was kidding you last night--didn't you--about wedding-bells?" + +"You were lit up." + +"I know. You're going to watch your step, little girl, and I don't know as +I blame you. You can get plenty of boys my carat, and a lot of other things +thrown in I haven't got to offer you." + +"As if I wouldn't like you, Charley, if you were dead broke!" + +"Of course you would! There, there, girl, I don't blame any of you for +feathering your nest." He was flushed now and above the soft collar, his +face had relaxed into a not easily controllable smile. "Feather your nest, +girl; you got the looks to do it. It's a far cry from Flamm Avenue to where +a classy girl like you can land herself if she steers right. And I wish it +to you, girl; the best isn't good enough." + +"I--I dare you to ask me again, Charley!" + +"Ask what?" + +"You know. Throw your head up the way you do when you mean what you say +and--ask." + +He was wagging his head now insistently, but pinioning his gaze with the +slightly glassy stare of those who think none too clearly. + +"Honest, I don't know, beauty. What's the idea?" + +"Didn't you say yourself--Gerber, out here in Claxton that--magistrate that +marries you in verse--" + +"By gad, I did!" + +"Well--I--I--dare you to ask me again, Charley." + +He leaned forward. + +"You game, girl?" + +"Sure." + +"No kidding?" + +"Try me." + +"I'm serious, girl." + +"So'm I." + +"There's Jess over there can get us a special license from his +brother-in-law. Married in verse in Claxton sounds good to me, honey." + +"But not--the crowd, Charley; just you--and--" + +"How're we going to get the license, honey, this time of night without +Jess? Let's make it a million-dollar wedding. We're not ashamed of nobody +or nothing." + +"Of course not, Charley." + +"Now, you're sure, honey? You're drawing a fellow that went to the dogs +before he cut his canines." + +"You're not all to the canines yet, Charley." + +"I may be a black sheep, honey, but, thank God, I got my golden fleece to +offer you!" + +"You're not--black." + +"You should worry, girl! I'm going to make you the million-dollar baby doll +of this town, I am. If they turn their backs, we'll dazzle 'em from behind. +I'm going to buy you every gewgaw this side of the Mississippi. I'm going +to show them a baby doll that can make the high-society bunch in this town +look like Subway sports. Are you game, girl? Now! Think well! Here goes. +Jess!" + +"Charley--I--You--" + +"Jess--over here! Quick!" + +"Charley--honey--" + + * * * * * + +At eleven o'clock a small, watery moon cut through a sky that was fleecily +clouded--a swift moon that rode fast as a ship. It rode over but did +not light Squire Gerber's one-and-a-half-storied, weathered-gray, and +set-slightly-in-a-hollow house on Claxton countryside. + +Three motor-cars, their engines chugging out into wide areas of stillness, +stood processional at the curb. A red hall light showed against the +door-pane and two lower-story windows were widely illuminated. + +Within that room of chromos and the cold horsehair smell of unaired years, +silence, except for the singing of three gas-jets, had momentarily fallen, +a dozen or so flushed faces, grotesquely sobered, staring through the +gaseous fog, the fluttering lids of a magistrate whose lips habitually +fluttered, just lifting from his book. + +A hysterical catch of breath from Miss Vera de Long broke the ear-splitting +silence. She reached out, the three plumes dipping down the bare V of her +back, for the limp hand of the bride. + +"Gawd bless you, dearie; it's a big night's work!" + + * * * * * + +In the tallest part of St. Louis, its busiest thoroughfares inclosing it +in a rectangle, the Hotel Sherman, where traveling salesmen with real +alligator bags and third-finger diamonds habitually shake their first +Pullman dust, rears eighteen stories up through and above an aeriality of +soft-coal smoke, which fits over the rim of the city like a skull-cap. + +In the Louis Quinze, gilt-bedded, gilt-framed, gilt-edged bridal-suite _de +luxe_ on the seventeenth floor, Mrs. Charley Cox sat rigid enough and in +shirt-waisted incongruity on the lower curl of a gilt divan that squirmed +to represent the letter S. + +"Charley--are you--sorry?" + +He wriggled out of his dust-coat, tossing it on the gilt-canopied bed and +crossed to her, lifting off her red sailor. + +"Now that's a fine question for a ten-hours' wifey to ask her hubby, ain't +it? Am I sorry, she asks me before the wedding crowd has turned the corner. +Lord, honey, I never expected anything like you to happen to me!" + +She stroked his coat-sleeve, mouthing back tears. + +"Now everybody'll say--you're a goner--for sure--marrying a--Popular Store +girl." + +"If anybody got the worst of this bargain, it's my girl." + +"My own boy," she said, still battling with tears. + +"You drew a black sheep, honey, but I say again and again, 'Thank God, you +drew one with golden fleece!'" + +"That--that's the trouble, Charley--there's just no way to make a boy with +money know you married him for any other reason." + +"I'm not blaming you, honey. Lord! what have I got besides money to talk +for me?" + +"Lots. Why--like Jess says, Charley, when you get to squaring your lips and +jerking up your head, there's nothing in the world you can't do that you +set out to do." + +"Well, I'm going to set out to make the stiff-necks of this town turn +to look at my girl, all right. I'm going to buy you a chain of diamonds +that'll dazzle their eyes out; I'm--" + +"Charley, Charley, that's not what I want, boy. Now that I've got you, +there ain't a chain of diamonds on earth I'd turn my wrist for." + +"Yes, there is, girl; there's a string of pear-shaped ones in--" + +"I want you to buck up, honey; that's the finest present you can give me. I +want you to buck up like you didn't have a cent to your name. I want you +to throw up your head the way you do when you mean business, and show that +Charley Cox, without a cent to his name, would be--" + +"Would be what, honey?" + +"A winner. You got brains, Charley--if only you'd have gone through school +and shown them. If you'd only have taken education, Charley, and not got +fired out of all the academies, my boy would beat 'em all. Lord! boy, +there's not a day passes over my head I don't wish for education. That's +why I'm so crazy my little sister Genevieve should get it. I'd have took to +education like a fish to water if I'd have had the chance, and there you +were, Charley, with every private school in town and passed 'em up." + +"I know, girl, just looks like every steer I gave myself was the wrong +steer till it was too late to get in right again. Bad egg, I tell you, +honey." + +"Too late! Why, Charley--and you not even thirty-one yet? With your brains +and all--too late! You make me laugh. If only you will--why, I'm game to go +out West, Charley, on a ranch, where you can find your feet and learn to +stand on them. You got stuff in you, you have. Jess Turner says you was +always first in school, and when you set your jaw there wasn't nothing you +couldn't get on top of. If you'd have had a mother and--and a father that +wasn't the meanest old man in town, dear, and had known how to raise a +hot-headed boy like you, you'd be famous now instead of notorious--that's +what you'd be." + +He patted her yellow hair, tilting her head back against his arm, pinching +her cheeks together and kissing her puckered mouth. + +"Dream on, honey. I like you crazy, too." + +"But, honey, I--" + +"You married this millionaire kid, and, bless your heart, he's going to +make good by showing you the color of his coin!" + +"Charley!" + +She sprang back from the curve of his embrace, unshed tears immediately +distilled. + +"Why, honey--I didn't mean it that way! I didn't mean to hurt your +feelings. What I meant was--'sh-h-h-h, Loo--all I meant was, it's coming to +you. Where'd the fun be if I couldn't make this town point up its ears at +my girl? Nobody knows any better than your hubby what his Loo was cut out +for. She was cut out for queening it, and I'm going to see that she gets +what's her due. Wouldn't be surprised if the papers have us already. Let's +see what we'll give them with their coffee this morning." + +He unfolded his fresh sheet, shaking it open with one hand and still +holding her in the cove of his arm. + +"Guess we missed the first edition, but they'll get us sure." + +She peered at the sheet over his shoulder, her cheek against his and still +sobbing a bit in her throat. The jerking of her breath stopped then; in +fact, it was as if both their breathing had let down with the oneness of a +clock stopped. + +It was she who moved first, falling back from him, her mouth dropping open +slightly. + +He let the paper fall between his wide-spread knees, the blood flowing down +from his face and seeming to leave him leaner. + +"Charley--Charley--darling!" + +"My--poor old man!" he said in a voice that might have been his echo in a +cave. + +"He--his heart must have give out on him, Charley, while he slept in the +night." + +"My--poor--old--man!" + +She stretched out her hand timidly to his shoulder. + +"Charley--boy--my poor boy!" + +He reached up to cover her timid touch, still staring ahead, as if a mental +apathy had clutched him. + +"He died like--he--lived. Gad--it's--tough!" + +"It--it wasn't your fault, darling. God forgive me for speaking against the +dead, but--everybody knows he was a hard man, Charley--the way he used to +beat you up instead of showing you the right way. Poor old man, I guess he +didn't know--" + +"My old man--dead!" + +She crept closer, encircling his neck, and her wet cheek close to his dry +one. + +"He's at peace now, darling--and all your sins are forgiven--like you +forgive--his." + +His lips were twisting. + +"There was no love lost there, girl. God knows there wasn't. There was once +nine months we didn't speak. Never could have been less between a father +and son. You see he--he hated me from the start, because my mother died +hating him--but--_dead_--that's another matter. Ain't it, girl--ain't it?" + +She held her cheek to his so that her tears veered out of their course, +zigzagging down to his waistcoat, stroked his hair, placing her rich, moist +lips to his eyelids. + +"My darling! My darling boy! My own poor darling!" + +Sobs rumbled up through him, the terrific sobs that men weep. + +"You--married a rotter, Loo--that couldn't even live decent with his--old +man. He--died like a dog--alone." + +"'Sh-h-h, Charley! Just because he's dead don't mean he was any better +while he lived." + +"I'll make it up to you, girl, for the rotter I am. I'm a rich man now, +Loo." + +"'Sh-h-h!" + +"I'll show you, girl. I can make somebody's life worth living. I'm going to +do something for somebody to prove I'm worth the room I occupy, and that +somebody's going to be you, Loo. I'm going to build you a house that'll go +down in the history of this town. I'm going to wind you around with pearls +to match that skin of yours. I'm going to put the kind of clothes on you +that you read of queens wearing. I've seen enough of the kind of meanness +money can breed. I'm going to make those Romans back there look like +pikers. I'm--" + +She reached out, placing her hand pat across his mouth, and, in the languid +air of the room, shuddering so that her lips trembled. + +"Charley--for God's sake--it--it's a sin to talk that way!" + +"O God, I know it, girl! I'm all muddled--muddled." + +He let his forehead drop against her arm, and in the long silence that +ensued she sat there, her hand on his hair. + +The roar of traffic, seventeen stories below, came up through the open +windows like the sound of high seas, and from where she sat, staring out +between the pink-brocade curtains, it was as if the close July sky dipped +down to meet that sea, and space swam around them. + +"O God!" he said, finally. "What does it all mean--this living and dying--" + +"Right living, Charley, makes dying take care of itself." + +"God! how he must have died, then! Like a dog--alone." + +"'Sh-h-h, Charley; don't get to thinking." + +Without raising his head, he reached up to stroke her arm. + +"Honey, you're shivering." + +"No-o." + +"Everything's all right, girl. What's the use me trying to sham it's not. +I--I'm bowled over for the minute, that's all. If it had to come, after +all, it--it came right for my girl. With that poor old man out there, +honey, living alone like a dog all these years, it's just like putting him +from one marble mausoleum out there on Kingsmoreland Place into one where +maybe he'll rest easier. He's better off, Loo, and--we--are too. Hand me +the paper, honey; I--want to see--just how my--poor old man--breathed out." + +Then Mrs. Cox rose, her face distorted with holding back tears, her small +high heels digging into and breaking the newspaper at his feet. + +"Charley--Charley--" + +"Why, girl, what?" + +"You don't know it, but my sister, Charley--Ida Bell!" + +"Why, Loo, I sent off the message to your mama. They know it by now." + +"Charley--Charley--" + +"Why, honey, you're full of nerves! You mustn't go to pieces like this. +Your sister's all right. I sent them a--" + +"You--you don't know, Charley. My sister--I swore her an oath on my +mother's prayer-book. I wouldn't tell, but, now that he's dead, that--lets +me out. The will--Charley, he made it yesterday, like he always swore he +would the next time you got your name on the front page." + +"Made what, honey? Who?" + +"Charley, can't you understand? My sister Ida Bell and Brookes--your +father's lawyer. She's his private stenographer--Brookes's, honey. You know +that. But she told me last night, honey, when I went home. You're cut off, +Charley! Your old man sent for Brookes yesterday at noon. I swear to God, +Charley! My sister Ida Bell she broke her confidence to tell me. He's give +a million alone to the new college hospital. Half a million apiece to +four or five old people's homes. He's give his house to the city with the +art-gallery. He's even looked up relations to give to. He kept his word, +honey, that all those years he kept threatening. He--he kept it the day +before he died. He must have had a hunch--your poor old man. Charley +darling, don't look like that! If your wife ain't the one to break it to +you you're broke, who is? You're not 'Million Dollar Charley' no more, +honey. You're just my own Charley, with his chance come to him--you hear, +_my_ Charley, with the best thing that ever happened to him in his life +happening right now." + +He regarded her as if trying to peer through something opaque, his hands +spread rather stupidly on his wide knees. + +"Huh?" + +"Charley, Charley, can't you understand? A dollar, that puts him within the +law, is all he left you." + +"He never did. He never did. He wouldn't. He couldn't. He never did. I +saw--his will. I'm the only survivor. I saw his will." + +"Charley, I swear to God! I swear as I'm standing here you're cut off. +My sister copied the new will on her typewriter three times and seen the +sealed and stamped one. He kept his word. He wrote it with his faculties +and witnesses. We're broke, Charley--thank God, we're flat broke!" + +"He did it? He did it? My old man did it?" + +"As sure as I'm standing here, Charley." + +He fell to blinking rapidly, his face puckering to comprehend. + +"I never thought it could happen. But I--I guess it could happen. I think +you got me doped, honey." + +"Charley, Charley!" she cried, falling down on her knees beside him, +holding his face in the tight vise of her hands and reading with such +closeness into his eyes that they seemed to merge into one. "Haven't you +got your Loo? Haven't you got her?" + +He sprang up at that, jerking her backward, and all the purple-red gushed +up into his face again. + +"Yes, by God, I've got you! I'll break the will. I'll--" + +"Charley, no--no! He'd rise out of his grave at you. It's never been known +where a will was broke where they didn't rise out of the grave to haunt." + +He took her squarely by the shoulders, the tears running in furrows down +his face. + +"I'll get you out of this, Loo. No girl in God's world will have to find +herself tied up to me without I can show her a million dollars every time +she remembers that she's married to a rotter. I'll get you out of this, +girl, so you won't even show a scratch. I'll--" + +"Charley," she said, lifting herself by his coat lapels, and her eyes again +so closely level with his, "you're crazy with the heat--stark, raving +crazy! You got your chance, boy, to show what you're made of--can't you see +that? We're going West, where men get swept out with clean air and clean +living. We'll break ground in this here life for the kind of pay-dirt +that'll make a man of you. You hear? A man of you!" + +He lifted her arms, and because they were pressing insistently down, +squirmed out from beneath them. + +"You're a good sport, girl; nobody can take that from you. But just the +same, I'm going to let you off without a scratch." + +"'Good sport'! I'd like to know, anyways, where I come in with all your +solid-gold talk. Me that's stood behind somebody-or-other's counter ever +since I had my working-papers." + +"I'll get you out of--" + +"Have I ever lived anywheres except in a dirty little North St. Louis flat +with us three girls in a bed? Haven't I got my name all over town for +speed, just because I've always had to rustle out and try to learn how +to flatten out a dime to the size of a dollar? Where do I come in on the +solid-gold talk, I'd like to know. I'm the penny-splitter of the world, the +girl that made the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store millinery department famous. I +can look tailor-made on a five-dollar bill and a tissue-paper pattern. Why, +honey, with me scheming for you, starting out on your own is going to make +a man of you. You got stuff in you. I knew it, Charley, the first night +you spied me at the Highlands dance. Somewhere out West Charley Cox is now +going to begin to show 'em the stuff in Charley Cox--that's what Charley +Cox & Co. are going to do!" + +He shook his head, turning away his eyes to hide their tears. + +"You been stung, Loo. Nothing on earth can change that." + +She turned his face back to her, smiling through her own tears. + +"You're not adding up good this morning, Mr. Cox. When do you think I +called you up last night? When could it have been if not after my sister +broke her confidence to tell me? Why do you think all of a sudden last +night I seen your bluff through about Gerber? It was because I knew I had +you where you needed me, Charley--I never would have dragged you down the +other way in a million years, but when I knew I had you where you needed +me--why, from that minute, honey, you didn't have a chance to dodge me!" + +She wound her arms round him, trembling between the suppressed hysteria of +tears and laughter. + +"Not a chance, Charley!" + +He jerked her so that her face fell back from him, foreshortened. + +"Loo--oh, girl! Oh, girl!" + +Her throat was tight and would not give her voice for coherence. + +"Charley--we--we'll show 'em--you--me!" + +Looking out above her head at the vapory sky showing through the parting of +the pink-brocade curtains, rigidity raced over Mr. Cox, stiffening his hold +of her. + +The lean look had come out in his face; the flanges of his nose quivered; +his head went up. + + + + +VI + +NIGHTSHADE + + +Over the silent places of the world flies the vulture of madness, pausing +to wheel above isolated farm-houses, where a wife, already dizzy with the +pressure of rarefied silence, looks up, magnetized. Then across the flat +stretches, his shadow under him moving across moor and the sand of desert, +slowing at the perpetually eastern edge of a mirage, brushing his actual +wings against the brick of city walls; the garret of a dreamer, brain-sick +with reality. Flopping, until she comes to gaze, outside the window of one +so alone in a crowd that her four hall-bedroom walls are closing in upon +her. Lowering over a childless house on the edge of a village. + +Were times when Mrs. Hanna Burkhardt, who lived on the edge of a village +in one such childless house, could in her fancy hear the flutter of wings, +too. There had once been a visit to a doctor in High Street because of +those head-noises and the sudden terror of not being able to swallow. He +had stethoscoped and prescribed her change of scene. Had followed two weeks +with cousins fifty miles away near Lida, Ohio, and a day's stop-over in +Cincinnati allowed by her railroad ticket. But six months after, in the +circle of glow from a tablelamp that left the corners of the room in a +chiaroscuro kind of gloom, there were again noises of wings rustling and +of water lapping and the old stricture of the throat. Across the table, a +Paisley cover between them, Mr. John Burkhardt, his short spade of beard +already down over his shirt-front, arm hanging lax over his chair-side and +newspaper fallen, sat forward in a hunched attitude of sleep, whistling +noises coming occasionally through his breathing. A china clock, the +centerpiece of the mantel, ticked spang into the silence, enhancing it. + +Hands in lap, head back against the mat of her chair, Mrs. Burkhardt looked +straight ahead of her into this silence--at a closed door hung with a +newspaper rack, at a black-walnut horsehair divan, a great sea-shell on +the carpet beside it. A nickelplated warrior gleamed from the top of a +baseburner that showed pink through its mica doors. He stood out against +the chocolate-ocher wallpaper and a framed Declaration of Independence, +hanging left. A coal fell. Mr. Burkhardt sat up, shook himself of sleep. + +"Little chilly," he said, and in carpet slippers and unbuttoned waistcoat +moved over to the base-burner, his feet, to avoid sloughing, not leaving +the floor. He was slightly stooped, the sateen back to his waistcoat hiking +to the curve of him. But he swung up the scuttle with a swoop, rattling +coal freely down into the red-jowled orifice. + +"Ugh, don't!" she said. "I'm burnin' up." + +He jerked back the scuttle, returning to his chair, and, picking up the +fallen newspaper, drew down his spectacles from off his brow and fell +immediately back into close, puckered scrutiny of the printed page. + +"What time is it, Burkhardt? That old thing on the mantel's crazy." + +He drew out a great silver watch. + +"Seven-forty." + +"O God!" she said. "I thought it was about ten." + +The clock ticked in roundly again except when he rustled his paper in the +turning. The fire was crackling now, too, in sharp explosions. Beyond +the arc of lamp the room was deeper than ever in shadow. Finally John +Burkhardt's head relaxed again to his shirt-front, the paper falling gently +away to the floor. She regarded his lips puffing out as he breathed. Hands +clasped, arms full length on the table, it was as if the flood of words +pressing against the walls of her, to be shrieked rather than spoken, was +flowing over to him. He jerked erect again, regarding her through blinks. + +"Must 'a' dozed off," he said, reaching down for his newspaper. + +She was winding her fingers now in and out among themselves. + +"Burkhardt?" + +"Eh?" + +"What--does a person do that's smotherin'?" + +"Eh?" + +"I know. That's what I'm doing. Smotherin'!" + +"A touch of the old trouble, Hanna?" + +She sat erect, with her rather large white hands at the heavy base to her +long throat. They rose and fell to her breathing. Like Heine, who said so +potently, "I am a tragedy," so she, too, in the sulky light of her eyes +and the pulled lips and the ripple of shivers over her, proclaimed it of +herself. + +"Seven-forty! God! what'll I do, Burkhardt? What'll I do?" + +"Go lay down on the sofa a bit, Hanna. I'll cover you with a plaid. It's +the head-noises again bothering you." + +"Seven-forty! What'll I do? Seven-forty and nothing left but bed." + +"I must 'a' dozed off, Hanna." + +"Yes; you must 'a' dozed off," she laughed, her voice eaten into with the +acid of her own scorn. "Yes; you must 'a' dozed off. The same way as you +dozed off last night and last month and last year and the last eight years. +The best years of my life--that's what you've dozed off, John Burkhardt. +He 'must 'a' dozed off,'" she repeated, her lips quivering and lifting to +reveal the white line of her large teeth. "Yes; I think you must 'a' dozed +off!" + +He was reading again in stolid profile. + +She fell to tapping the broad toe of her shoe, her light, dilated eyes +staring above his head. She was spare, and yet withal a roundness left +to the cheek and forearm. Long-waisted and with a certain swing where it +flowed down into straight hips, there was a bony, Olympian kind of bigness +about her. Beneath the washed-out blue shirtwaist dress her chest was high, +as if vocal. She was not without youth. Her head went up like a stag's to +the passing of a band in the street, or a glance thrown after her, or the +contemplation of her own freshly washed yellow hair in the sunlight. She +wore a seven glove, but her nails had great depth and pinkness, and each a +clear half-moon. They were dug down now into her palms. + +"For God's sake, talk! Say something, or I'll go mad!" + +He laid his paper across his knee, pushing up his glasses. + +"Sing a little something, Hanna. You're right restless this evening." + +"'Restless'!" she said, her face wry. "If I got to sit and listen to that +white-faced clock ticking for many more evenings of this winter, you'll +find yourself with a raving maniac on your hands. That's how restless I +am!" He rustled his paper again. "Don't read!" she cried. "Don't you dare +read!" + +He sat staring ahead, in a heavy kind of silence, breathing outward and +passing his hand across his brow. + +Her breathing, too, was distinctly audible. + +"Lay down a bit, Hanna. I'll cover you--" + +"If they land me in the bug-house, they can write on your tombstone when +you die, 'Hanna Long Burkhardt went stark raving mad crazy with hucking at +home because I let her life get to be a machine from six-o'clock breakfast +to eight-o'clock bed, and she went crazy from it.' If that's any +satisfaction to you, they can write that on your tombstone." + +He mopped his brow this time, clearing his throat. + +"You knew when we married, Hanna, they called me 'Silent' Burkhardt. I +never was a great one for talking unless there was something I wanted to +say." + +"I knew nothin' when I married you. Nothin' except that along a certain +time every girl that can gets married. I knew nothin' except--except--" + +"Except what?" + +"Nothin'." + +"I've never stood in your light, Hanna, of having a good time. Go ahead. +I'm always glad when you go up-town with the neighbor women of a Saturday +evening. I'd be glad if you'd have 'em in here now and then for a little +sociability. Have 'em. Play the graphophone for 'em. Sing. You 'ain't done +nothin' with your singin' since you give up choir." + +"Neighbor women! Old maids' choir! That's fine excitement for a girl not +yet twenty-seven!" + +"Come; let's go to a moving picture, Hanna. Go wrap yourself up warm." + +"Movie! Oh no; no movie for me with you snorin' through the picture till +I'm ashamed for the whole place. If I was the kind of girl had it in me to +run around with other fellows, that's what I'd be drove to do, the deal +you've given me. Movie! That's a fine enjoyment to try to foist off on a +woman to make up for eight years of being so fed up on stillness that she's +half-batty!" + +"Maybe there's something showin' in the op'ry-house to-night." + +"Oh, you got a record to be proud of, John Burkhardt: Not a foot in that +opera-house since we're married. I wouldn't want to have your feelin's!" + +His quietude was like a great, impregnable, invisible wall inclosing him. + +"I'm not the man can change his ways, Hanna. I married at forty, too late +for that." + +"I notice you liked my pep, all righty, when I was workin' in the feed-yard +office. I hadn't been in it ten days before you were hangin' on my laughs +from morning till night." + +"I do yet, Hanna--only you don't laugh no more. There's nothin' so fine in +a woman as sunshine." + +"Provided you don't have to furnish any of it." + +"Because a man 'ain't got it in him to be light in his ways don't mean he +don't enjoy it in others. Why, there just ain't nothin' to equal a happy +woman in the house! Them first months, Hanna, showed me what I'd been +missin'. It was just the way I figured it--somebody around like you, +singin' and putterin'. It was that laugh in the office made me bring it +here, where I could have it always by me." + +"It's been knocked out of me, every bit of laugh I ever had in me; lemme +tell you that." + +"I can remember the first time I ever heard you, Hanna. You was standin" +at the office window lookin' out in the yards at Jerry Sims unloadin' a +shipment of oats; and little Old Cocker was standin' on top of one of the +sacks barkin' his head off. I--" + +"Yeh; I met Clara Sims on the street yesterday, back here for a visit, and +she says to me, she says: 'Hanna Burkhardt, you mean to tell me you never +done nothing with your voice! You oughta be ashamed. If I was your husband, +I'd spend my last cent trainin' that contralto of yours. You oughtn't to +let yourself go like this. Women don't do it no more.' That, from the +tackiest girl that ever walked this town. I wished High Street had opened +up and swallowed me." + +"Now, Hanna, you mustn't--" + +"In all these years never so much as a dance or a car-ride as far as +Middletown. Church! Church! Church! Till I could scream at the sight of +it. Not a year of my married life that 'ain't been a lodestone on my neck! +Eight of' 'em! Eight!" + +"I'm not sayin' I'm not to blame, Hanna. A woman like you naturally likes +life. I never wanted to hold you back. If I'm tired nights and dead on my +feet from twelve hours on 'em, I never wanted you to change your ways." + +"Yes; with a husband at home in bed, I'd be a fine one chasin' around +this town alone, wouldn't I? That's the thanks a woman gets for bein' +self-respectin'." + +"I always kept hopin', Hanna, I could get you to take more to the home." + +"The home--you mean the tomb!" + +"Why, with the right attention, we got as fine an old place here as there +is in this part of town, Hanna. If only you felt like giving it a few more +touches that kinda would make a woman-place out of it! It 'ain't changed a +whit from the way me and my old father run it together. A little touch here +and there, Hanna, would help to keep you occupied and happier if--" + +"I know. I know what's comin'." + +"The pergola I had built. I used to think maybe you'd get to putter out +there in the side-yard with it, trailin' vines; the china-paintin' outfit +I had sent down from Cincinnati when I seen it advertised in the _Up-State +Gazette_; a spaniel or two from Old Cocker's new litter, barkin' around; +all them things, I used to think, would give our little place here a +feelin' that would change both of us for the better. With a more home-like +feelin' things might have been different between us, Hanna." + +"Keepin" a menagerie of mangy spaniels ain't my idea of livin'." + +"Aw, now, Hanna, what's the use puttin' it that way? Take, for instance, +it's been a plan of mine to paint the house, with the shutters green and a +band of green shingles runnin' up under the eaves. A little encouragement +from you and we could perk the place up right smart. All these years it's +kinda gone down--even more than when I was a bachelor in it. Sunk in, +kinda, like them iron jardinières I had put in the front yard for you to +keep evergreen in. It's them little things, Hanna. Then that--that old idea +of mine to take a little one from the orphanage--a young 'un around the--" + +"O Lord!" + +"I ain't goin' to mention it if it aggravates you, but--but makin' a home +out of this gray old place would help us both, Hanna. There's no denyin' +that. It's what I hoped for when I brought you home a bride here. Just had +it kinda planned. You putterin' around the place in some kind of a pink +apron like you women can rig yourselves up in and--" + +"There ain't a girl in Adalia has dropped out of things the way I have, I +had a singin' voice that everybody in this town said--" + +"There's the piano, Hanna, bought special for it." + +"I got a contralto that--" + +"There never was anything give me more pleasure than them first years you +used it. I ain't much to express myself, but it was mighty fine, Hanna, to +hear you." + +"Yes, I know; you snored into my singin' with enjoyment, all right." + +"It's the twelve hours on my feet that just seem to make me dead to the +world, come evening." + +"A girl that had the whole town wavin' flags at her when she sung 'The Holy +City' at the nineteen hundred street-carnival! Kittie Scogin Bevins, one of +the biggest singers in New York to-day, nothing but my chorus! Where's it +got me these eight years? Nowheres! She had enough sense to cut loose from +Ed Bevins, who was a lodestone, too, and beat it. She's singing now in New +York for forty a week with a voice that wasn't strong enough to be more +than chorus to mine." + +"Kittie Scogin, Hanna, is a poor comparison for any woman to make with +herself." + +"It is, is it? Well, I don't see it thataway. When she stepped off the +train last week, comin' back to visit her old mother, I wished the whole +depot would open up and swallow me--that's what I wished. Me and her that +used to be took for sisters. I'm eight months younger, and I look eight +years older. When she stepped off that train in them white furs and a +purple face-veil, I just wished to God the whole depot would open and +swallow me. That girl had sense. O God! didn't she have sense!" + +"They say her sense is what killed Ed Bevins of shame and heartbreak." + +"Say, don't tell me! It was town talk the way he made her toady to his +folks, even after he'd been cut off without a cent. Kittie told me herself +the very sight of the old Bevins place over on Orchard Street gives her the +creeps down her back. If not for old lady Scogin, 'way up in the seventies, +she'd never put her foot back in this dump. That girl had sense." + +"There's not a time she comes back here it don't have an upsettin' +influence on you, Hanna." + +"I know what's upsettin' me, all right. I know!" + +He sighed heavily. + +"I'm just the way I am, Hanna, and there's no teachin' an old dog new +tricks. It's a fact I ain't much good after eight o'clock evenin's. It's a +fact--a fact!" + +They sat then in a further silence that engulfed them like fog. A shift of +wind blew a gust of dry snow against the window-pane with a little sleety +noise. And as another evidence of rising wind, a jerk of it came down the +flue, rattling the fender of a disused grate. + +"We'd better keep the water in the kitchen runnin' to-night. The pipes'll +freeze." + +Tick-tock. Tick. Tock. She had not moved, still sitting staring above the +top of his head. He slid out his watch, yawning. + +"Well, if you think it's too raw for the movin' pictures, Hanna, I guess +I'll be movin' up to bed. I got to be down to meet a five-o'clock shipment +of fifty bales to-morrow. I'll be movin' along unless there's anything you +want?" + +"No--nothing." + +"If--if you ain't sleepy awhile yet, Hanna, why not run over to Widow +Dinninger's to pass the time of evenin'? I'll keep the door on the latch." + +She sprang up, snatching a heavy black shawl, throwing it over her and +clutching it closed at the throat. + +"Where you goin', Hanna?" + +"Walkin'," she said, slamming the door after her. + +In Adalia, chiefly remarkable for the Indestructo Safe Works and a river +which annually overflows its banks, with casualties, the houses sit well +back from tree-bordered streets, most of them frame, shingle-roofed +veterans that have lived through the cycle-like years of the bearing, the +marrying, the burying of two, even three, generations of the same surname. + +A three-year-old, fifteen-mile traction connects the court-house with the +Indestructo Safe Works. High Street, its entire length, is paved. During a +previous mayoralty the town offered to the Lida Tool Works a handsome bonus +to construct branch foundries along its river-banks, and, except for the +annual flood conditions, would have succeeded. + +In spring Adalia is like a dear old lady's garden of marigold and +bleeding-heart. Flushes of sweetpeas ripple along its picket fences and +off toward the backyards are long grape-arbors, in autumn their great +fruit-clusters ripening to purple frost. Come winter there is almost an +instant shriveling to naked stalk, and the trellis-work behind vines comes +through. Even the houses seem immediately to darken of last spring's paint, +and, with windows closed, the shades are drawn. Oftener than not Adalia +spends its evening snugly behind these drawn shades in great scoured +kitchens or dining-rooms, the house-fronts dark. + +When Mrs. Burkhardt stepped out into an evening left thus to its stilly +depth, shades drawn against it, a light dust of snow, just fallen, was +scurrying up-street before the wind, like something phantom with its skirts +blowing forward. Little drifts of it, dry as powder, had blown up against +the porch. She sidestepped them, hurrying down a wind-swept brick walk and +out a picket gate that did not swing entirely after. Behind her, the house +with its wimple of shingle roof and unlighted front windows seemed to +recede somewhere darkly. She stood an undecided moment, her face into the +wind. Half down the block an arc-light swayed and gave out a moving circle +of light. Finally she turned her back and went off down a side-street, past +a lighted corner grocer, crossed a street to avoid the black mouth of an +alley, then off at another right angle. The houses here were smaller, +shoulder to shoulder and directly on the sidewalk. + +Before one of these, for no particular reason distinguishable from the +others, Mrs. Burkhardt stepped up two shallow steps and turned a key in +the center of the door, which set up a buzz on its reverse side. Her hand, +where it clutched the shawl at her throat, was reddening and roughening, +the knuckles pushing up high and white. Waiting, she turned her back to the +wind, her body hunched up against it. + +There was a moving about within, the scrape of a match, and finally the +door opening slightly, a figure peering out. + +"It's me, Mrs. Scogin--Hanna Burkhardt!" + +The door swung back then, revealing a just-lighted parlor, opening, without +introduction of hall, from the sidewalk. + +"Well, if it ain't Hanna Burkhardt! What you doin' out this kind of a +night? Come in. Kittie's dryin' her hair in the kitchen. Used to be she +could sit on it, and it's ruint from the scorchin' curlin'-iron. I'll call +her. Sit down, Hanna. How's Burkhardt? I'll call her. Oh, Kittie! Kit-tie, +Hanna Burkhardt's here to see you." + +In the wide flare of the swinging lamp, revealing Mrs. Scogin's parlor +of chromo, china plaque, and crayon enlargement, sofa, whatnot, and wax +bouquet embalmed under glass, Mrs. Burkhardt stood for a moment, blowing +into her cupped hands, unwinding herself of shawl, something Niobian in her +gesture. + +"Yoo-hoo--it's only me, Kit! Shall I come out?" + +"Naw--just a minute; I'll be in." + +Mrs. Scogin seated herself on the edge of the sofa, well forward, after the +manner of those who relax but ill to the give of upholstery. She was like a +study of what might have been the grandmother of one of Rembrandt's studies +of a grandmother. There were lines crawling over her face too manifold for +even the etcher's stroke, and over her little shriveling hands that were +too bird-like for warmth. There is actually something avian comes with the +years. In the frontal bone pushing itself forward, the cheeks receding, and +the eyes still bright. There was yet that trenchant quality in Mrs. Scogin, +in the voice and gaze of her. + +"Sit down, Hanna." + +"Don't care if I do." + +"You can lean back against that chair-bow." + +"Hate to muss it." + +"How's Burkhardt?" + +"All right." + +"He's been made deacon--not?" + +"Yeh." + +"If mine had lived, he'd the makin' of a pillar. Once label a man with hard +drinkin', and it's hard to get justice for him. There never was a man had +more the makin' of a pillar than mine, dead now these sixteen years and +molderin' in his grave for justice." + +"Yes, Mrs. Scogin." + +"You can lean back against that bow." + +"Thanks." + +"So Burkhardt's been made deacon." + +"Three years already--you was at the church." + +"A deacon. Mine went to his grave too soon." + +"They said down at market to-day, Mrs. Scogin, that Addie Fitton knocked +herself against the woodbin and has water on the knee." + +"Let the town once label a man with drinkin', and it's hard to get justice +for him." + +"It took Martha and Eda and Gessler's hired girl to hold her in bed with +the pain." + +"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Scogin, sucking in her words and her eyes seeming to +strain through the present; "once label a man with drinkin'." + +Kittie Scogin Bevins entered then through a rain of bead portières. +Insistently blond, her loosed-out hair newly dry and flowing down over a +very spotted and very baby-blue kimono, there was something soft-fleshed +about her, a not unappealing saddle of freckles across her nose, the eyes +too light but set in with a certain feline arch to them. + +"Hello, Han!" + +"Hello, Kittie!" + +"Snowing?" + +"No." + +"Been washing my hair to show it a good time. One month in this dump and +they'd have to hire a hearse to roll me back to Forty-second Street in." + +"This ain't nothing. Wait till we begin to get snowed in!" + +"I know. Say, you c'n tell me nothing about this tank I dunno already. I +was buried twenty-two years in it. Move over, ma." + +She fitted herself into the lower curl of the couch, crossing her hands at +the back of her head, drawing up her feet so that, for lack of space, her +knees rose to a hump. + +"What's new in Deadtown, Han?" + +"'New'! This dump don't know we got a new war. They think it's the old +Civil one left over." + +"Burkhardt's been made a deacon, Kittie." + +"O Lord! ma, forget it!" Mrs. Scogin Bevins threw out her hands to Mrs. +Burkhardt in a wide gesture, indicating her mother with a forefinger, then +with it tapping her own brow. "Crazy as a loon! Bats!" + +"If your father had--" + +"Ma, for Gossakes--" + +"You talk to Kittie, Hanna. My girls won't none of 'em listen to me no +more. I tell 'em they're fightin' over my body before it's dead for this +house and the one on Ludlow Street. It's precious little for 'em to be +fightin' for before I'm dead, but if not for it, I'd never be gettin' these +visits from a one of 'em." + +"Ma!" + +"I keep tellin' her, Kittie, to stay home. New York ain't no place for a +divorced woman to set herself right with the Lord." + +"Ma, if you don't quit raving and clear on up to bed, I'll pack myself out +to-night yet, and then you'll have a few things to set right with the Lord. +Go on up, now." + +"I--" + +"Go on--you hear?" + +Mrs. Scogin went then, tiredly and quite bent forward, toward a flight of +stairs that rose directly from the parlor, opened a door leading up into +them, the frozen breath of unheated regions coming down. + +"Quick--close that door, ma!" + +"Come to see a body, Hanna, when she ain't here. She won't stay at home, +like a God-fearin' woman ought to." + +"Light the gas-heater up there, if you expect me to come to bed. I'm used +to steam-heated flats, not barns." + +"She's a sassy girl, Hanna. Your John a deacon and hers lies molderin' in +his grave, a sui--" + +Mrs. Scogin Bevins flung herself up, then, a wave of red riding up her +face. + +"If you don't go up--if you--don't! Go--now! Honest, you're gettin' so luny +you need a keeper. Go--you hear?" + +The door shut slowly, inclosing the old figure. She relaxed to the couch, +trying to laugh. + +"Luny!" she said. "Bats! Nobody home!" + +"I like your hair like that, Kittie. It looks swell." + +"It's easy. I'll fix it for you some time. It's the vampire swirl. All the +girls are wearing it." + +"Remember the night, Kit, we was singin' duets for the Second Street +Presbyterian out at Grody's Grove and we got to hair-pullin' over whose +curls was the longest?" + +"Yeh. I had on a blue dress with white polka-dots." + +"That was fifteen years ago. Remember Joe Claiborne promised us a real +stage-job, and we opened a lemonade-stand on our front gate to pay his +commission in advance?" + +They laughed back into the years. + +"O Lord! them was days! Seems to me like fifty years ago." + +"Not to me, Kittie. You've done things with your life since then. I +'ain't." + +"You know what I've always told you about yourself, Hanna. If ever there +was a fool girl, that was Hanna Long. Lord! if I'm where I am on my voice, +where would you be?" + +"I was a fool." + +"I could have told you that the night you came running over to tell me." + +"There was no future in this town for me, Kit. Stenoggin' around from one +office to another. He was the only real provider ever came my way." + +"I always say if John Burkhardt had shown you the color of real money! But +what's a man to-day on just a fair living? Not worth burying yourself in +a dump like this for. No, sirree. When I married Ed, anyways I thought I +smelled big money. I couldn't see ahead that his father'd carry out his +bluff and cut him off. But what did you have to smell--a feed-yard in a +hole of a town! What's the difference whether you live in ten rooms like +yours or in four like this as long as you're buried alive? A girl can +always do that well for herself after she's took big chances. You could be +Lord knows where now if you'd 'a' took my advice four years ago and lit out +when I did." + +"I know it, Kit. God knows I've eat out my heart with knowin' it! +Only--only it was so hard--a man givin' me no more grounds than he does. +What court would listen to his stillness for grounds? I 'ain't got +grounds." + +"Say, you could 'a' left that to me. My little lawyer's got a factory where +he manufactures them. He could 'a' found a case of incompatibility between +the original turtle-doves." + +"God! His stillness, Kittie--like--" + +"John Burkhardt would give me the razzle-dazzle jimjams overnight, he +would. That face reminds me of my favorite funeral." + +"I told him to-night, Kittie, he's killin' me with his deadness. I ran out +of the house from it. It's killin' me." + +"Why, you poor simp, standing for it!" + +"That's what I come over for, Kit. I can't stand no more. If I don't talk +to some one, I'll bust. There's no one in this town I can open up to. Him +so sober--and deacon. They don't know what it is to sit night after night +dyin' from his stillness. Whole meals, Kit, when he don't open his mouth +except, 'Hand me this; hand me that'--and his beard movin' up and down so +when he chews. Because a man don't hit you and gives you spending-money +enough for the little things don't mean he can't abuse you with--with just +gettin' on your nerves so terrible. I'm feelin' myself slip--crazy--ever +since I got back from Cincinnati and seen what's goin' on in the big towns +and me buried here; I been feelin' myself slip--slip, Kittie." + +"Cincinnati! Good Lord! if you call that life! Any Monday morning on +Forty-second Street makes Cincinnati look like New-Year's Eve. If you call +Cincinnati life!" + +"He's small, Kittie. He's a small potato of a man in his way of livin'. He +can live and die without doin' anything except the same things over and +over again, year out and year in." + +"I know. I know. Ed was off the same pattern. It's the Adalia brand. Lord! +Hanna Long, if you could see some of the fellows I got this minute paying +attentions to me in New York, you'd lose your mind. Spenders! Them New +York guys make big and spend big, and they're willing to part with the +spondoolaks. That's the life!" + +"I--You look it, Kit. I never seen a girl get back her looks and keep 'em +like you. I says to him to-night, I says, 'When I look at myself in the +glass, I wanna die.'" + +"You're all there yet, Hanna. Your voice over here the other night was +something immense. Big enough to cut into any restaurant crowd, and that's +what counts in cabaret. I don't tell anybody how to run his life, but if +I had your looks and your contralto, I'd turn 'em into money, I would. +There's forty dollars a week in you this minute." + +Mrs. Burkhardt's head went up. Her mouth had fallen open, her eyes +brightening as they widened. + +"Kit--when you goin' back?" + +"To-morrow a week, honey--if I live through it." + +"Could--you help me--your little lawyer--your--" + +"Remember, I ain't advising--" + +"Could you, Kit, and to--to get a start?" + +"They say it of me there ain't a string in the Bijou Cafe that I can't pull +my way." + +"Could you, Kit? Would you?" + +"I don't tell nobody how to run his life, Hanna. It's mighty hard to advise +the other fellow about his own business. I don't want it said in this town, +that's down on me, anyways, that Kit Scogin put ideas in Hanna Long's +head." + +"You didn't, Kit. They been there. Once I answered an ad. to join a county +fair. I even sent money to a vaudeville agent in Cincinnati. I--" + +"Nothing doing in vaudeville for our kind of talent. It's cabaret where the +money and easy hours is these days. Just a plain little solo act--contralto +is what you can put over. A couple of 'Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night' +sob-solos is all you need. I'll let you meet Billy Howe of the Bijou. +Billy's a great one for running in a chaser act or two." + +"I--How much would it cost, Kittie, to--to--" + +"Hundred and fifty done it for me, wardrobe and all." + +"Kittie, I--Would you--" + +"Sure I would! Only, remember, I ain't responsible. I don't tell anybody +how to run his life. That's something everybody's got to decide for +herself." + +"I--have--decided, Kittie." + +At something after that stilly one-o'clock hour when all the sleeping +noises of lath and wainscoting creak out, John Burkhardt lifted his head to +the moving light of a lamp held like a torch over him, even the ridge +of his body completely submerged beneath the great feather billow of an +oceanic walnut bedstead. + +"Yes, Hanna?" + +"Wake up!" + +"I been awake--" + +She set the lamp down on the brown-marble top of a wash-stand, pushed back +her hair with both hands, and sat down on the bed-edge, heavily breathing +from a run through deserted night's streets. + +"I gotta talk to you, Burkhardt--now--to-night." + +"Now's no time, Hanna. Come to bed." + +"Things can't go on like this, John." + +He lay back slowly. + +"Maybe you're right, Hanna. I been layin' up here and thinkin' the same +myself. What's to be done?" + +"I've got to the end of my rope." + +"With so much that God has given us, Hanna--health and prosperity--it's a +sin before Him that unhappiness should take root in this home." + +"If you're smart, you won't try to feed me up on gospel to-night!" + +"I'm willin' to meet you, Hanna, on any proposition you say. How'd it be +to move down to Schaefer's boardin'-house for the winter, where it'll be +a little recreation for you evenings, or say we take a trip down to +Cincinnati for a week. I--" + +"Oh no," she said, looking away from him and her throat throbbing. "Oh no, +you don't! Them things might have meant something to me once, but you've +come too late with 'em. For eight years I been eatin' out my heart with +'em. Now you couldn't pay me to live at Schaefer's. I had to beg too long +for it. Cincinnati! Why, its New-Year's Eve is about as lively as a real +town's Monday morning. Oh no, you don't! Oh no!" + +"Come on to bed, Hanna. You'll catch cold. Your breath's freezin'." + +"I'm goin'--away, for good--that's where--I'm goin'!" + +Her words threatened to come out on a sob, but she stayed it, the back of +her hand to her mouth. + +Her gaze was riveted, and would not move, from a little curtain above the +wash-stand, a guard against splashing crudely embroidered in a little +hand-in-hand boy and girl. + +"You--you're sayin' a good many hasty things to-night, Hanna." + +"Maybe." + +He plucked at a gray-wool knot in the coverlet. + +"Mighty hasty things." + +She turned, then, plunging her hands into the great suds of feather bed, +the whole thrust of her body toward him. + +"'Hasty'! Is eight years hasty? Is eight years of buried-alive hasty? I'm +goin', John Burkhardt; this time I'm goin' sure--sure as my name is Hanna +Long." + +"Goin' where, Hanna?" + +"Goin' where each day ain't like a clod of mud on my coffin. Goin' where +there's a chance for a woman like me to get a look-in on life before she's +as skinny a hex at twenty-seven as old lady Scog--as--like this town's full +of. I'm goin' to make my own livin' in my own way, and I'd like to see +anybody try to stop me." + +"I ain't tryin', Hanna." + +She drew back in a flash of something like surprise. + +"You're willin', then?" + +"No, Hanna, not willin'." + +"You can't keep me from it. Incompatibility is grounds!" + +The fires of her rebellion, doused for the moment, broke out again, flaming +in her cheeks. + +He raised himself to his elbow, regarding her there in her flush, the +white line of her throat whiter because of it. She was strangely, not +inconsiderably taller. + +"Why, Hanna, what you been doin' to yourself?" + +Her hand flew to a new and elaborately piled coiffure, a half-fringe of +curling-iron, little fluffed out tendrils escaping down her neck. + +"In--incompatibility is grounds." + +"It's mighty becomin', Hanna. Mighty becomin'." + +"It's grounds, all right!" + +"'Grounds'? Grounds for what, Hanna?" + +She looked away, her throat distending as she swallowed. + +"Divorce." + +There was a pause, then so long that she had a sense of falling through its +space. + +"Look at me, Hanna!" + +She swung her gaze reluctantly to his. He was sitting erect now, a kind of +pallor setting in behind the black beard. + +"Leggo!" she said, loosening his tightening hand from her wrists. "Leggo; +you hurt!" + +"I--take it when a woman uses that word in her own home, she means it." + +"This one does." + +"You're a deacon's wife. Things--like this are--are pretty serious with +people in our walk of life. We--'ain't learned in our communities yet not +to take the marriage law as of God's own makin'. I'm a respected citizen +here." + +"So was Ed Bevins. It never hurt his hide." + +"But it left her with a black name in the town." + +"Who cares? She don't." + +"It's no good to oppose a woman, Hanna, when she's made up her mind; but +I'm willin' to meet you half-way on this thing. Suppose we try it again. +I got some plans for perkin' things up a bit between us. Say we join the +Buckeye Bowling Club, and--" + +"No! No! No! That gang of church-pillars! I can't stand it, I tell you; you +mustn't try to keep me! You mustn't! I'm a rat in a trap here. Gimme a few +dollars. Hundred and fifty is all I ask. Not even alimony. Lemme apply. +Gimme grounds. It's done every day. Lemme go. What's done can't be undone. +I'm not blamin' you. You're what you are and I'm what I am. I'm not blamin' +anybody. You're what you are, and God Almighty can't change you. Lemme go, +John; for God's sake, lemme go!" + +"Yes," he said, finally, not taking his eyes from her and the chin +hardening so that it shot out and up. "Yes, Hanna; you're right. You got to +go." + + * * * * * + +The skeleton of the Elevated Railway structure straddling almost its entire +length, Sixth Avenue, sullen as a clayey stream, flows in gloom and crash. +Here, in this underworld created by man's superstructure, Mrs. Einstein, +Slightly Used Gowns, nudges Mike's Eating-Place from the left, and on the +right Stover's Vaudeville Agency for Lilliputians divides office-space +and rent with the Vibro Health Belt Company. It is a kind of murky drain, +which, flowing between, catches the refuse from Fifth Avenue and the +leavings from Broadway. To Sixth Avenue drift men who, for the first time +in a Miss-spending life, are feeling the prick of a fraying collar. Even +Fifth Avenue is constantly feeding it. A _couturier's_ model gone hippy; a +specialty-shop gone bankrupt; a cashier's books gone over. Its shops are +second-hand, and not a few of its denizens are down on police records as +sleight-of-hand. At night women too weary to be furtive turn in at its +family entrances. It is the cauldron of the city's eye of newt, toe of +frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog. It is the home of the most daring +all-night eating-places, the smallest store, the largest store, the +greatest revolving stage, the dreariest night court, and the drabest night +birds in the world. + +War has laid its talons and scratched slightly beneath the surface of Sixth +Avenue. Hufnagel's Delicatessen, the briny hoar of twenty years upon it, +went suddenly into decline and the hands of a receiver. Recruiting +stations have flung out imperious banners. Keeley's Chop-House--Open +All Night--reluctantly swings its too hospitable doors to the +one-o'clock-closing mandate. + +To the New-Yorker whose nights must be filled with music, preferably jazz, +to pass Keeley's and find it dark is much as if Bacchus, emulating the +newest historical rogue, had donned cassock and hood. Even that half of +the evening east of the cork-popping land of the midnight son has waned at +Keeley's. No longer a road-house on the incandescent road to dawn, there is +something hangdog about its very waiters, moving through the easy maze of +half-filled tables; an orchestra, sheepish of its accomplishment, can lift +even a muted melody above the light babel of light diners. There is a +cabaret, too, bravely bidding for the something that is gone. + +At twelve o'clock, five of near-Broadway's best breed, in woolly anklets +and wristlets and a great shaking of curls, execute the poodle-prance to +half the encores of other days. May Deland, whose ripple of hip and droop +of eyelid are too subtle for censorship, walks through her hula-hula dance, +much of her abandon abandoned. A pair of _apaches_ whirl for one hundred +and twenty consecutive seconds to a great bang of cymbals and seventy-five +dollars a week. At shortly before one Miss Hanna de Long, who renders +ballads at one-hour intervals, rose from her table and companion in +the obscure rear of the room, to finish the evening and her cycle with +"Darling, Keep the Grate-Fire Burning," sung in a contralto calculated to +file into no matter what din of midnight dining. + +In something pink, silk, and conservatively V, she was a careful +management's last bland ingredient to an evening that might leave too +Cayenne a sting to the tongue. + +At still something before one she had finished, and, without encore, +returned to her table. + +"Gawd!" she said, and leaned her head on her hand. "I better get me a job +hollerin' down a well!" + +Her companion drained his stemless glass with a sharp jerking back of the +head. His was the short, stocky kind of assurance which seemed to say, +"Greater securities hath no man than mine, which are gilt-edged." +Obviously, Mr. Lew Kaminer clipped his coupons. + +"Not so bad," he said. "The song ain't dead; the crowd is." + +"Say, they can't hurt my feelin's. I been a chaser-act ever since I hit the +town." + +"Well, if I can sit and listen to a song in long skirts twelve runnin' +weeks, three or four nights every one of 'em, take it from me, there's a +whistle in it somewhere." + +"Just the same," she said, pushing away her glass, "my future in this +business is behind me." + +He regarded her, slumped slightly in his chair, celluloid toothpick +dangling. There was something square about his face, abetted by a +parted-in-the-middle toupee of great craftsmanship, which revealed itself +only in the jointure over the ears of its slightly lighter hair with the +brown of his own. There was a monogram of silk on his shirt-sleeve, of gold +on his bill-folder, and of diamonds on the black band across the slight +rotundity of his waistcoat. + +"Never you mind, I'm for you, girl," he said. + +There was an undeniable taking-off of years in Miss de Long. Even the very +texture of her seemed younger and the skin massaged to a new creaminess, +the high coiffure blonder, the eyes quicker to dart. + +"Lay off, candy kid," she said. "You're going to sugar." + +"Have another fizz," he said, clicking his fingers for a waiter. + +"Anything to please the bold, bad man," she said. + +"You're a great un," he said. "Fellow never knows how to take you from one +minute to the next." + +"You mean a girl never knows how to take you." + +"Say," he said, "any time anybody puts anything over on you!" + +"And you?" + +"There you are!" he cried, eying her fizz. "Drink it down; it's good for +what ails you." + +"Gawd!" she said. "I wish I knew what it was is ailin' me!" + +"Drink 'er down!" + +"You think because you had me goin' on these things last night that +to-night little sister ain't goin' to watch her step. Well, watch her watch +her step," Nevertheless, she drank rather thirstily half the contents of +the glass. "I knew what I was doin' every minute of the time last night, +all righty. I was just showin' us a good time." + +"Sure!" + +"It's all right for us girls to take what we want, but the management don't +want nothing rough around--not in war-time." + +"Right idea!" + +"There's nothing rough about me, Lew. None of you fellows can't say that +about me. I believe in a girl havin' a good time, but I believe in her +always keepin' her self-respect. I always say it never hurt no girl to keep +her self-respect." + +"Right!" + +"When a girl friend of mine loses that, I'm done with her. That don't get a +girl nowheres. That's why I keep to myself as much as I can and don't mix +in with the girls on the bill with me, if--" + +"What's become of the big blond-looker used to run around with you when you +was over at the Bijou?" + +"Me and Kit ain't friends no more." + +"She was some looker." + +"The minute I find out a girl ain't what a self-respectin' girl ought to be +then that lets me out. There's nothin' would keep me friends with her. If +ever I was surprised in a human, Lew, it was in Kittie Scogin. She got me +my first job here in New York. I give her credit for it, but she done it +because she didn't have the right kind of a pull with Billy Howe. She done +a lot of favors for me in her way, but the minute I find out a girl ain't +self-respectin' I'm done with that girl every time." + +"That baby had some pair of shoulders!" + +"I ain't the girl to run a friend down, anyway, when she comes from my home +town; but I could tell tales--Gawd! I could tell tales!" There was new +loquacity and a flush to Miss de Long. She sipped again, this time almost +to the depth of the glass. "The way to find out about a person, Lew, is to +room with 'em in the same boardin'-house. Beware of the baby stare is all I +can tell you. Beware of that." + +"That's what _you_ got," he said, leaning across to top her hand with his, +"two big baby stares." + +"Well, Lew Kaminer," she said, "you'd kid your own shadow. Callin' me a +baby-stare. Of all things! Lew Kaminer!" She looked away to smile. + +"Drink it all down, baby-stare," he said, lifting the glass to her lips. +They were well concealed and back away from the thinning patter of the +crowd, so that, as he neared her, he let his face almost graze--indeed +touch, hers. + +She made a great pretense of choking. + +"O-oh! burns!" + +"Drink it down-like a major." + +She bubbled into the glass, her eyes laughing at him above its rim. + +"Aw gone!" + +He clicked again with his fingers. + +"Once more, Charlie!" he said, shoving their pair of glasses to the +table-edge. + +"You ain't the only money-bag around the place!" she cried, flopping down +on the table-cloth a bulky wad tied in one corner of her handkerchief. + +"Well, whatta you know about that? Pay-day?" + +"Yeh-while it lasts. I hear there ain't goin' to be no more cabarets or +Camembert cheese till after the war." + +"What you going to do with it--buy us a round of fizz?" + +She bit open the knot, a folded bill dropping to the table, uncurling. + +"Lord!" she said, contemplating and flipping it with her finger-tip. "Where +I come from that twenty-dollar bill every week would keep me like a queen. +Here it ain't even chicken feed." + +"You know where there's more chicken feed waitin' when you get hard up, +sister. You're slower to gobble than most. You know what I told you last +night, kiddo--you need lessons." + +"What makes me sore, Lew, is there ain't an act on this bill shows under +seventy-five. It goes to show the higher skirts the higher the salary in +this business." + +"You oughta be singin' in grand op'ra." + +"Yeh--sure! The diamond horseshoe is waitin' for the chance to land me one +swift kick. It only took me twelve weeks and one meal a day to land this +after Kittie seen to it that they let me out over at the Bijou. Say, I know +where I get off in this town, Lew. If there's one thing I know, it's where +I get off. I ain't a squab with a pair of high-priced ankles. I'm down on +the agencies' books as a chaser-act, and I'm down with myself for that. If +there's one thing I ain't got left, it's illusions. Get me? Illusions." + +She hitched sidewise in her chair, dipped her forefinger into her fresh +glass, snapped it at him so that he blinked under the tiny spray. + +"That for you!" she said, giggling. She was now repeatedly catching herself +up from a too constant impulse to repeat that giggle. + +"You little devil!" he said, reaching back for his handkerchief. + +She dipped again, this time deeper, and aimed straighter. + +"Quit!" he said, catching her wrist and bending over it. "Quit it, or I'll +bite!" + +"Ow! Ouch!" + +Her mouth still resolute not to loosen, she jerked back from him. There +was only the high flush which she could not control, and the gaze, heavy +lidded, was not so sure as it might have been. She was quietly, rather +pleasantly, dizzy. + +"I wish--" she said. "I--wi-ish--" + +"What do you wi-ish?" + +"Oh, I--I dunno what I wish!" + +"If you ain't a card!" + +He had lighted a cigar, and, leaning toward her, blew out a fragrant puff +to her. + +"M-m-m!" she said; "it's a Cleopatra." + +"Nop." + +"A El Dorado." + +"Guess again." + +"A what, then?" + +"It's a Habana Queen. Habana because it reminds me of Hanna." + +"Aw--you!" + +At this crowning puerility Mr. Kaminer paused suddenly, as if he had +detected in his laughter a bray. + +"Is Habana in the war, Lew?" + +"Darned if I know exactly." + +"Ain't this war just terrible, Lew?" + +"Don't let it worry you, girl. If it puts you out of business, remember, +it's boosted my stocks fifty per cent. You know what I told you about +chicken feed." + +She buried her nose in her handkerchief, turning her head. Her eyes had +begun to crinkle. + +"It--it's just awful! All them sweet boys!" + +"Now, cryin' ain't goin' to help. You 'ain't got no one marchin' off." + +"That's just it. I 'ain't got no one. Everything is something awful, ain't +it?" Her sympathies and her risibilities would bubble to the surface to +confuse her. "Awful!" + +He scraped one forefinger against the other. + +"Cry-baby! Cry-baby, stick your little finger in your little eye!" + +She regarded him wryly, her eyes crinkled now quite to slits. + +"You can laugh!" + +"Look at the cry-baby!" + +"I get so darn blue." + +"Now--now--" + +"Honest to Gawd, Lew, I get so darn blue I could die." + +"You're a nice girl, and I'd like to see anybody try to get fresh with +you!" + +"Do you--honest, Lew--like me?" + +"There's something about you, girl, gets me every time. Cat-eyes! +Kitty-eyes!" + +"Sometimes I get so blue--get to thinkin' of home and the way it all +happened. You know the way a person will. Home and the--divorce and the +way it all happened with--him--and how I come here and--where it's got me, +and--and I just say to myself, 'What's the use?' You know, Lew, the way a +person will. Back there, anyways, I had a home. There's something in just +havin' a home, lemme tell you. Bein' a somebody in your own home." + +"You're a somebody any place they put you." + +"You never seen the like the way it all happened, Lew. So quick! The day I +took the train was like I was walkin' for good out of a dream. Not so much +as a post-card from there since--" + +"Uh--uh--now--cry-baby!" + +"I--ain't exactly sorry, Lew; only God knows, more'n once in those twelve +weeks out of work I was for goin' back and patchin' it up with him. I ain't +exactly sorry, Lew, but--but there's only one thing on God's earth that +keeps me from being sorry." + +"What?" + +"You." + +He flecked his cigar, hitching his arm up along the chair-back, laughed, +reddened slightly. + +"That's the way to talk! These last two nights you been lightin' up with a +man so he can get within ten feet of you. Now you're shoutin'!" + +She drained her glass, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. + +She was sitting loosely forward now, her hand out on his. + +"You're the only thing on God's earth that's kept me from--sneakin" back +there--honest. Lew, I'd have gone back long ago and eat dirt to make it +up with him--if not for you. I--ain't built like Kittie Scogin and those +girls. I got to be self-respectin' with the fellows or nothing. They think +more of you in the end--that's my theory." + +"Sure!" + +"A girl's fly or--she just naturally ain't that way. That's where all my +misunderstanding began with Kittie--when she wanted me to move over in them +rooms on Forty-ninth Street with her--a girl's that way or she just ain't +that way!" + +"Sure!" + +"Lew--will you--are you--you ain't kiddin' me all these weeks? Taxicabbin' +me all night in the Park and--drinkin' around this way all the time +together. You 'ain't been kiddin' me, Lew?" + +He shot up his cigar to an oblique. + +"Now you're shoutin'!" he repeated. "It took three months to get you down +off your high horse, but now we're talkin' the same language." + +"Lew!" + +"It ain't every girl I take up with; just let that sink in. I like 'em +frisky, but I like 'em cautious. That's where you made a hit with me. +Little of both. Them that nibble too easy ain't worth the catch." + +She reached out the other hand, covering his with her both. + +"You're--talkin' weddin'-bells, Lew?" + +He regarded her, the ash of his cigar falling and scattering down his +waistcoat. + +"What bells?" + +"Weddin', Lew." Her voice was as thin as a reed. + +"O Lord!" he said, pushing back slightly from the table. "Have another +fizz, girl, and by that time we'll be ready for a trip in my underground +balloon. Waiter!" + +She drew down his arm, quickly restraining it. She was not so sure now of +controlling the muscles of her mouth. + +"Lew!" + +"Now--now--" + +"Please, Lew! It's what kept me alive. Thinkin' you meant that. Please, +Lew! You ain't goin' to turn out like all the rest in this town? You--the +first fellow I ever went as far as--last night with. I'll stand by you, +Lew, through thick and thin. You stand by me. You make it right with me, +Lew, and--" + +He cast a quick glance about, grasped at the sides of the table, and leaned +toward her, _sotto_. + +"For God's sake, hush! Are you crazy?" + +"No," she said, letting the tears roll down over the too frank gyrations of +her face--"no, I ain't crazy. I only want you to do the right thing by me, +Lew. I'm--blue. I'm crazy afraid of the bigness of this town. There ain't a +week I don't expect my notice here. It's got me. If you been stringin' me +along like the rest of 'em, and I can't see nothing ahead of me but the +struggle for a new job--and the tryin' to buck up against what a decent +girl has got to--" + +"Why, you're crazy with the heat, girl! I thought you and me was talking +the same language. I want to do the right thing by you. Sure I do! Anything +in reason is yours for the askin'. That's what I been comin' to." + +"Then, Lew, I want you to do by me like you'd want your sister done by." + +"I tell you you're crazy. You been hitting up too many fizzes lately." + +"I--" + +"You ain't fool enough to think I'm what you'd call a free man? I don't +bring my family matters down here to air 'em over with you girls. You're +darn lucky that I like you well enough to--well, that I like you as much as +I do. Come, now; tell you what I'm goin' to do for you: You name your idea +of what you want in the way of--" + +"O God! Why don't I die? I ain't fit for nothing else!" + +He cast a glance around their deserted edge of the room. A waiter, +painstakingly oblivious, stood two tables back. + +"Wouldn't I be better off out of it? Why don't I die?" + +He was trembling down with a suppression of rage and concern for the rising +gale in her voice. + +"You can't make a scene in public with me and get away with it. If that's +your game, it won't land you anywhere. Stop it! Stop it now and talk sense, +or I'll get up. By God! if you get noisy, I'll get up and leave you here +with the whole place givin' you the laugh. You can't throw a scare in me." + +But Miss de Long's voice and tears had burst the dam of control. There was +an outburst that rose and broke on a wave of hysteria. + +"Lemme die--that's all I ask! What's there in it for me? What has there +ever been? Don't do it, Lew! Don't--don't!" + +It was then Mr. Kaminer pushed back his chair, flopped down his napkin, and +rose, breathing heavily enough, but his face set in an exaggerated kind of +quietude as he moved through the maze of tables, exchanged a check for his +hat, and walked out. + +For a stunned five minutes her tears, as it were, seared, she sat after +him. + +The waiter had withdrawn to the extreme left of the deserted edge of the +room, talking behind his hand to two colleagues in servility, their faces +listening and breaking into smiles. + +Finally Miss de Long rose, moving through the zigzag paths of empty tables +toward a deserted dressing-room. In there she slid into black-velvet +slippers and a dark-blue walking-skirt, pulled on over the pink silk, +tucking it up around the waist so that it did not sag from beneath the hem, +squirmed into a black-velvet jacket with a false dicky made to emulate +a blouse-front, and a blue-velvet hat hung with a curtain-like purple +face-veil. + +As she went out the side, Keeley's was closing its front doors. + +Outside, not even to be gainsaid by Sixth Avenue, the night was like a +moist flower held to the face. A spring shower, hardly fallen, was already +drying on the sidewalks, and from the patch of Bryant Park across the maze +of car-tracks there stole the immemorial scent of rain-water and black +earth, a just-set-out crescent of hyacinths giving off their light steam of +fragrance. How insidious is an old scent! It can creep into the heart like +an ache. Who has not loved beside thyme or at the sweetness of dusk? Dear, +silenced laughs can come back on a whiff from a florist's shop. Oh, there +is a nostalgia lurks in old scents! + +Even to Hanna de Long, hurrying eastward on Forty-second Street, huggingly +against the shadow of darkened shop-windows, there was a new sting of tears +at the smell of earth, daring, in the lull of a city night, to steal out. + +There are always these dark figures that scuttle thus through the first +hours of the morning. + +Whither? + +Twice remarks were flung after her from passing figures in +slouch-hats--furtive remarks through closed lips. + +At five minutes past one she was at the ticket-office grating of a +train-terminal that was more ornate than a rajah's dream. + +"Adalia--please. Huh? Ohio. Next train." + +"Seven-seven. Track nine. Round trip?" + +"N-no." + +"Eighteen-fifty." + +She again bit open the corner knot of her handkerchief. + + * * * * * + +When Hanna de Long, freshly train-washed of train dust, walked down Third +Street away from the station, old man Rentzenauer, for forty-odd springs +coaxing over the same garden, was spraying a hose over a side-yard of +petunias, shirt-sleeved, his waistcoat hanging open, and in the purpling +light his old head merging back against a story-and-a-half house the color +of gray weather and half a century of service. + +At sight of him who had shambled so taken-for-granted through all of her +girlhood, such a trembling seized hold of Hanna de Long that she turned +off down Amboy Street, making another wide detour to avoid a group on the +Koerner porch, finally approaching Second Street from the somewhat straggly +end of it farthest from the station. + +She was trembling so that occasionally she stopped against a vertigo that +went with it, wiped up under the curtain of purple veil at the beads of +perspiration which would spring out along her upper lip. She was quite +washed of rouge, except just a swift finger-stroke of it over the +cheek-bones. + +She had taken out the dicky, too, and for some reason filled in there with +a flounce of pink net ripped off from the little ruffles that had flowed +out from her sleeves. She was without baggage. + +At Ludlow Street she could suddenly see the house, the trees meeting before +it in a lace of green, the two iron jardinières empty. They had been +painted, and were drying now of a clay-brown coat. + +When she finally went up the brick walk, she thought once that she could +not reach the bell with the strength left to pull it. She did, though, +pressing with her two hands to her left side as she waited. The house was +in the process of painting, too, still wet under a first wash of gray. The +pergola, also. + +The door swung back, and then a figure emerged full from a background of +familiarly dim hallway and curve of banister. She was stout enough to be +panting slightly, and above the pink-and-white-checked apron her face was +ruddy, forty, and ever so inclined to smile. + +"Yes?" + +"Is--is--" + +Out from the hallway shot a cocker spaniel, loose-eared, yapping. + +"Queenie, Queenie--come back. She won't bite--Queenie--bad girl!--come back +from that nasturtium-bed--bad girl!--all washed and combed so pretty for a +romp with her favver when him come home so tired. Queenie!" + +She caught her by a rear leg as she leaped back, wild to rollick, tucking +her under one arm, administering three diminutive punishments on the shaggy +ears. + +"Bad! Bad!" + +"Is Mr.--Burkhardt--home?" + +"Aw, now, he ain't! I sent him down by Gredel's nurseries on his way home +to-night, for some tulip-bulbs for my iron jardinières. He ought to be +back any minute if he 'ain't stopped to brag with old man Gredel that our +arbutus beats his." Then, smiling and rubbing with the back of her free +hand at a flour-streak across her cheek: "If--if it's the lady from the +orphan asylum come to see about the--the little kid we want--is there +anything I can do for you? I'm his wife. Won't you come in?" + +"Oh no!" said Miss de Long, now already down two of the steps. "I--I--Oh +no, no!--thank you! Oh no--no!--thank you!" + +She walked swiftly, the purple veil blown back and her face seeming to look +out of it whitely, so whitely that she became terrible. + +Night was at hand, and Adalia was drawing down its front shades. + + + + +VII + +GET READY THE WREATHS + + +Where St. Louis begins to peter out into brick- and limestone-kilns and +great scars of unworked and overworked quarries, the first and more +unpretentious of its suburbs take up--Benson, Maplehurst, and Ridgeway +Heights intervening with one-story brick cottages and two-story +packing-cases--between the smoke of the city and the carefully parked Queen +Anne quietude of Glenwood and Croton Grove. + +Over Benson hangs a white haze of limestone, gritty with train and foundry +smoke. At night the lime-kilns, spotted with white deposits, burn redly, +showing through their open doors like great, inflamed diphtheretic throats, +tongues of flame bursting and licking out. + +Winchester Road, which runs out from the heart of the city to string these +towns together, is paved with brick, and its traffic, for the most part, +is the great, tin-tired dump-carts of the quarries and steel interurban +electric cars which hum so heavily that even the windows of outlying +cottages titillate. + +For blocks, from Benson to Maplehurst and from Maplehurst to Ridgeway +Heights, Winchester Road repeats itself in terms of the butcher, the +baker, the corner saloon. A feed-store. A monument- and stone-cutter. A +confectioner. A general-merchandise store, with a glass case of men's +collars outside the entrance. The butcher, the baker, the corner saloon. + +At Benson, where this highway cuts through, the city, wreathed in smoke, +and a great oceanic stretch of roofs are in easy view, and at closer +range, an outlying section of public asylums for the city's discard of its +debility and its senility. + +Jutting a story above the one-storied march of Winchester Road, The +Convenience Merchandise Corner, Benson, overlooks, from the southeast +up-stairs window, a remote view of the City Hospital, the Ferris-wheel of +an amusement park, and on clear days the oceanic waves of roof. Below, +within the store, that view is entirely obliterated by a brace of shelves +built across the corresponding window and brilliantly stacked with ribbons +of a score of colors and as many widths. A considerable flow of daylight +thus diverted, The Convenience Merchandise Corner, even of early afternoon, +fades out into half-discernible corners; a rear-wall display of overalls +and striped denim coats crowded back into indefinitude, the haberdashery +counter, with a giant gilt shirt-stud suspended above, hardly more +outstanding. + +Even the notions and dry-goods, flanking the right wall in stacks and +bolts, merge into blur, the outline of a white-sateen and corseted woman's +torso surmounting the topmost of the shelves with bold curvature. + +With spring sunshine even hot against the steel rails of Winchester Road, +and awnings drawn against its inroads into the window display, Mrs. Shila +Coblenz, routing gloom, reached up tiptoe across the haberdashery counter +for the suspended chain of a cluster of bulbs, the red of exertion rising +up the taut line of throat and lifted chin. + +"A little light on the subject, Milt." + +"Let me, Mrs. C." + +Facing her from the outer side of the counter, Mr. Milton Bauer stretched +also, his well-pressed, pin-checked coat crawling up. + +All things swam out into the glow. The great suspended stud; the background +of shelves and boxes; the scissors-like overalls against the wall; a +clothesline of children's factory-made print frocks; a center-bin of +women's untrimmed hats; a headless dummy beside the door, enveloped in a +long-sleeved gingham apron. + +Beneath the dome of the wooden stud, Mrs. Shila Coblenz, of not too fulsome +but the hour-glass proportions of two decades ago, smiled, her black eyes, +ever so quick to dart, receding slightly as the cheeks lifted. + +"Two twenty-five, Milt, for those ribbed assorted sizes and reinforced +heels. Leave or take. Bergdorff & Sloan will quote me the whole mill at +that price." + +With his chest across the counter and legs out violently behind, Mr. Bauer +flung up a glance from his order-pad. + +"Have a heart, Mrs. C. I'm getting two-forty for that stocking from every +house in town. The factory can't turn out the orders fast enough at that +price. An up-to-date woman like you mustn't make a noise like before the +war." + +"Leave or take." + +"You could shave an egg," he said. + +"And rush up those printed lawns. There was two in this morning, sniffing +around for spring dimities." + +"Any more cotton goods? Next month, this time, you'll be paying an advance +of four cents on percales." + +"Stocked." + +"Can't tempt you with them wash silks, Mrs. C.? Neatest little article on +the market to-day." + +"No demand. They finger it up, and then buy the cotton stuffs. Every time I +forget my trade hacks rock instead of clips bonds for its spending-money I +get stung." + +"This here wash silk, Mrs. C., would--" + +"Send me up a dress-pattern off this coral-pink sample for Selene." + +"This here dark mulberry, Mrs. C., would suit you something immense." + +"That'll be about all." + +He flopped shut his book, snapping a rubber band about it and inserting it +in an inner coat pocket. + +"You ought to stick to them dark, winy shades, Mrs. C. With your coloring +and black hair and eyes, they bring you out like a gipsy. Never seen you +look better than at the Y.M.H.A. entertainment." + +Quick color flowed down her open throat and into her shirtwaist. It was as +if the platitude merged with the very corpuscles of a blush that sank down +into thirsty soil. + +"You boys," she said, "come out here and throw in a jolly with every bill +of goods. I'll take a good fat discount instead." + +"Fact. Never seen you look better. When you got out on the floor in that +stamp-your-foot kind of dance with old man Shulof, your hand on your hip +and your head jerking it up, there wasn't a girl on the floor, your own +daughter included, could touch you, and I'm giving it to you straight." + +"That old thing! It's a Russian folk-dance my mother taught me the first +year we were in this country. I was three years old then, and, when she got +just crazy with homesickness, we used to dance it to each other evenings on +the kitchen floor." + +"Say, have you heard the news?" + +"No." + +"Guess." + +"Can't." + +"Hammerstein is bringing over the crowned heads of Europe for vaudeville." + +Mrs. Coblenz moved back a step, her mouth falling open. + +"Why, Milton Bauer, in the old country a man could be strung up for saying +less than that!" + +"That didn't get across. Try another. A Frenchman and his wife were +traveling in Russia, and--" + +"If--if you had an old mother like mine up-stairs, Milton, eating out her +heart and her days and her weeks and her months over a husband's grave +somewhere in Siberia and a son's grave somewhere in Kishinef, you wouldn't +see the joke neither." + +Mr. Bauer executed a self-administered pat sharply against the back of his +hand. + +"Keeper," he said, "put me in the brain ward. I--I'm sorry, Mrs. C., so +help me! Didn't mean to. How is your mother, Mrs. C.? Seems to me, at the +dance the other night, Selene said she was fine and dandy." + +"Selene ain't the best judge of her poor old grandmother. It's hard for a +young girl to have patience for old age sitting and chewing all day over +the past. It's right pitiful the way her grandmother knows it, too, and +makes herself talk English all the time to please the child and tries to +perk up for her. Selene, thank God, 'ain't suffered, and can't sympathize!" + +"What's ailing her, Mrs. C.? I kinda miss seeing the old lady sitting down +here in the store." + +"It's the last year or so, Milt. Just like all of a sudden a woman as +active as mama always was, her health and--her mind kind of went off with a +pop." + +"Thu! Thu!" + +"Doctor says with care she can live for years, but--but it seems terrible +the way her--poor mind keeps skipping back. Past all these thirty years in +America to--even weeks before I was born. The night they--took my father +off to Siberia, with his bare feet in the snow--for distributing papers +they found on him--papers that used the word 'svoboda'--'freedom.' And the +time, ten years later--they shot down my brother right in front of her +for--the same reason. She keeps living it over--living it over till +I--could die." + +"Say, ain't that just a shame, though!" + +"Living it, and living it, and living it! The night with me, a heavy +three-year-old, in her arms that she got us to the border, dragging a pack +of linens with her! The night my father's feet were bleeding in the snow, +when they took him! How with me a kid in the crib, my--my brother's face +was crushed in--with a heel and a spur. All night, sometimes, she cries in +her sleep--begging to go back to find the graves. All day she sits making +raffia wreaths to take back--making wreaths--making wreaths!" + +"Say, ain't that tough!" + +"It's a godsend she's got the eyes to do it. It's wonderful the way she +reads--in English, too. There ain't a daily she misses. Without them and +the wreaths--I dunno--I just dunno. Is--is it any wonder, Milt, I--I can't +see the joke?" + +"My God, no!" + +"I'll get her back, though." + +"Why, you--she can't get back there, Mrs. C." + +"There's a way. Nobody can tell me there's not. Before the war--before she +got like this, seven hundred dollars would have done it for both of us--and +it will again, after the war. She's got the bank-book, and every week that +I can squeeze out above expenses, she sees the entry for herself. I'll get +her back. There's a way lying around somewhere. God knows why she should +eat out her heart to go back--but she wants it. God, how she wants it!" + +"Poor old dame!" + +"You boys guy me with my close-fisted buying these last two years. It's up +to me, Milt, to squeeze this old shebang dry. There's not much more than a +living in it at best, and now, with Selene grown up and naturally wanting +to have it like other girls, it ain't always easy to see my way clear. But +I'll do it, if I got to trust the store for a year to a child like Selene. +I'll get her back." + +"You can call on me, Mrs. C., to keep my eye on things while you're gone." + +"You boys are one crowd of true blues, all right. There ain't a city +salesman comes out here I wouldn't trust to the limit." + +"You just try me out." + +"Why, just to show you how a woman don't know how many real friends she has +got, why--even Mark Haas, of the Mound City Silk Company, a firm I don't +do a hundred dollars' worth of business with a year, I wish you could have +heard him the other night at the Y.M.H.A., a man you know for yourself just +goes there to be sociable with the trade." + +"Fine fellow, Mark Haas!" + +"'When the time comes, Mrs. Coblenz,' he says, 'that you want to make that +trip, just you let me know. Before the war there wasn't a year I didn't +cross the water twice, maybe three times, for the firm. I don't know +there's much I can do; it ain't so easy to arrange for Russia, but, just +the same, you let me know when you're ready to make that trip.' Just like +that he said it. That from Mark Haas!" + +"And a man like Haas don't talk that way if he don't mean it." + +"Mind you, not a hundred dollars a year business with him. I haven't got +the demands for silks." + +"That wash silk I'm telling you about, though, Mrs. C., does up like a--" + +"There's ma thumping with the poker on the up-stairs floor. When it's +closing-time she begins to get restless. I--I wish Selene would come in. +She went out with Lester Goldmark in his little flivver, and I get nervous +about automobiles." + +Mr. Bauer slid an open-face watch from his waistcoat. + +"Good Lord! five-forty, and I've just got time to sell the Maplehurst +Emporium a bill of goods!" + +"Good-night, Milt; and mind you put up that order of assorted neckwear +yourself. Greens in ready-tieds are good sellers for this time of the year, +and put in some reds and purples for the teamsters." + +"No sooner said than done." + +"And come out for supper some Sunday night, Milt. It does mama good to have +young people around." + +"I'm yours." + +"Good-night, Milt." + +He reached across the counter, placing his hand over hers. + +"Good-night, Mrs. C.," he said, a note lower in his throat; "and remember +that call-on-me stuff wasn't all conversation." + +"Good-night, Milt," said Mrs. Coblenz, a coating of husk over her own voice +and sliding her hand out from beneath, to top his. "You--you're all right!" + + * * * * * + +Up-stairs, in a too tufted and too crowded room directly over the frontal +half of the store, the window overlooking the remote sea of city was +turning taupe, the dusk of early spring, which is faintly tinged with +violet, invading. Beside the stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing +through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery +of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old +flesh, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, full of years and senile with them, wove with +grasses, the écru of her own skin, wreaths that had mounted to a great +stack in a bedroom cupboard. + +A clock, with a little wheeze and burring attached to each chime, rang six, +and upon it Mrs. Coblenz, breathing from a climb, opened the door. + +"Ma, why didn't you rap for Katie to come up and light the gas? You'll ruin +your eyes, dearie." + +She found out a match, immediately lighting two jets of a +center-chandelier, turning them down from singing, drawing the shades of +the two front and the southeast windows, stooping over the upholstered +chair to imprint a light kiss. + +"A fine day, mama. There'll be an entry this week. Thirty dollars and +thirteen cents and another call for garden implements. I think I'll lay in +a hardware line after we--we get back. I can use the lower shelf of the +china-table, eh, ma?" + +Mrs. Horowitz, whose face, the color of old linen in the yellowing, emerged +rather startling from the still black hair strained back from it, lay back +in her chair, turning her profile against the upholstered back, half a +wreath and a trail of raffia sliding to the floor. Age had sapped from +beneath the skin, so that every curve had collapsed to bagginess, the +cheeks and the underchin sagging with too much skin. Even the hands were +crinkled like too large gloves, a wide, curiously etched marriage band +hanging loosely from the third finger. + +Mrs. Goblenz stooped, recovering the wreath. + +"Say, mama, this one is a beauty! That's a new weave, ain't it? Here, work +some more, dearie--till Selene comes with your evening papers." + +With her profile still to the chair-back, a tear oozed down the corrugated +face of Mrs. Horowitz's cheek. Another. + +"Now, mama! Now, mama!" + +"I got a heaviness--here--inside. I got a heaviness--" + +Mrs. Coblenz slid down to her knees beside the chair. + +"Now, mama; shame on my little mama! Is that the way to act when Shila +comes up after a good day? 'Ain't we got just lots to be thankful for--the +business growing and the bank-book growing, and our Selene on top? Shame on +mama!" + +"I got a heaviness--here--inside--here." + +Mrs. Coblenz reached up for the old hand, patting it. + +"It's nothing, mama--a little nervousness." + +"I'm an old woman. I--" + +"And just think, Shila's mama, Mark Haas is going to get us letters and +passports and--" + +"My son--my boy--his father before him--" + +"Mama--mama, please don't let a spell come on! It's all right. Shila's +going to fix it. Any day now, maybe--" + +"You'm a good girl. You'm a good girl, Shila." Tears were coursing down to +a mouth that was constantly wry with the taste of them. + +"And you're a good mother, mama. Nobody knows better than me how good." + +"You'm a good girl, Shila." + +"I was thinking last night, mama, waiting up for Selene--just thinking how +all the good you've done ought to keep your mind off the spells, dearie." + +"My son--" + +"Why, a woman with as much good to remember as you've got oughtn't to have +time for spells. I got to thinking about Coblenz, mama, how--you never did +want him, and when I--I went and did it, anyway, and made my mistake, you +stood by me to--to the day he died. Never throwing anything up to me! Never +nothing but my good little mother, working her hands to the bone after +he got us out here to help meet the debts he left us. Ain't that a +satisfaction for you to be able to sit and think, mama, how you helped--" + +"His feet--blood from my heart in the snow--blood from my heart!" + +"The past is gone, darling. What's the use tearing yourself to pieces with +it? Them years in New York when it was a fight even for bread, and them +years here trying to raise Selene and get the business on a footing, you +didn't have time to brood then, mama. That's why, dearie, if only you'll +keep yourself busy with something--the wreaths--the--" + +"His feet--blood from my--" + +"But I'm going to take you back, mama. To papa's grave. To Aylorff's. But +don't eat your heart out until it comes, darling. I'm going to take you +back, mama, with every wreath in the stack; only, you mustn't eat out your +heart in spells. You mustn't, mama; you mustn't." + +Sobs rumbled up through Mrs. Horowitz, which her hand to her mouth tried to +constrict. + +"For his people he died. The papers--I begged he should burn them--he +couldn't--I begged he should keep in his hate--he couldn't--in the square +he talked it--the soldiers--he died for his people--they got him--the +soldiers--his feet in the snow when they took him--the blood in the snow--O +my God!--my--God!" + +"Mama darling, please don't go over it all again. What's the use making +yourself sick? Please!" + +She was well forward in her chair now, winding her dry hands one over the +other with a small rotary motion. + +"I was rocking--Shila-baby in my lap--stirring on the fire black lentils +for my boy--black lentils--he--" + +"Mama!" + +"My boy. Like his father before him. My--" + +"Mama, please! Selene is coming any minute now. You know how she hates it. +Don't let yourself think back, mama. A little will-power, the doctor says, +is all you need. Think of to-morrow, mama; maybe, if you want, you can come +down and sit in the store awhile and--" + +"I was rocking. O my God! I was rocking, and--" + +"Don't get to it--mama, please! Don't rock yourself that way! You'll get +yourself dizzy! Don't, ma; don't!" + +"Outside--my boy--the holler--O God! in my ears all my life! My boy--the +papers--the swords--Aylorff--Aylorff--" + +"'Shh-h-h--mama--" + +"It came through his heart out the back--a blade with two sides--out the +back when I opened the door; the spur in his face when he fell, Shila--the +spur in his face--the beautiful face of my boy--my Aylorff--my husband +before him--that died to make free!" And fell back, bathed in the sweat of +the terrific hiccoughing of sobs. + +"Mama, mama! My God! What shall we do? These spells! You'll kill yourself, +darling. I'm going to take you back, dearie--ain't that enough? I promise. +I promise. You mustn't, mama! These spells--they ain't good for a young +girl like Selene to hear. Mama, 'ain't you got your own Shila--your own +Selene? Ain't that something? Ain't it? Ain't it?" + +Large drops of sweat had come out and a state of exhaustion that swept +completely over, prostrating the huddled form in the chair. + +"Bed--my bed!" + +With her arms twined about the immediately supporting form of her daughter, +her entire weight relaxed, and footsteps that dragged without lift, one +after the other, Mrs. Horowitz groped out, one hand feeling in advance, +into the gloom of a room adjoining. + +"Rest! O my God! rest!" + +"Yes, yes, mama; lean on me." + +"My--bed." + +"Yes, yes, darling." + +"Bed." + +Her voice had died now to a whimper that lay on the room after she had +passed out of it. + +When Selene Coblenz, with a gust that swept the room, sucking the lace +curtains back against the panes, flung open the door upon that chromatic +scene, the two jets of gas were singing softly into its silence, and within +the nickel-trimmed baseburner the pink mica had cooled to gray. Sweeping +open that door, she closed it softly, standing for the moment against it, +her hand crossed in back and on the knob. It was as if--standing there +with her head cocked and beneath a shadowy blue sailor-hat, a smile coming +out--something within her was playing, sweetly insistent to be heard. +Philomela, at the first sound of her nightingale self, must have stood +thus, trembling with melody. Opposite her, above the crowded mantelpiece +and surmounted by a raffia wreath, the enlarged-crayon gaze of her deceased +maternal grandfather, abetted by a horrible device of photography, followed +her, his eyes focusing the entire room at a glance. Impervious to that +scrutiny, Miss Coblenz moved a tiptoe step or two farther into the room, +lifting off her hat, staring and smiling through a three-shelved cabinet +of knickknacks at what she saw far and beyond. Beneath the two jets, high +lights in her hair came out, bronze showing through the brown waves and the +patches of curls brought out over her cheeks. + +In her dark-blue dress, with the row of silver buttons down what was hip +before the hipless age, the chest sufficiently concave and the silhouette a +mere stroke of a hard pencil, Miss Selene Coblenz measured up and down +to America's Venus de Milo, whose chief curvature is of the spine. +Slim-etched, and that slimness enhanced by a conscious kind of collapse +beneath the blue-silk girdle that reached up half-way to her throat, hers +were those proportions which strong women, eschewing the sweet-meat, would +earn by the sweat of the Turkish bath. + +When Miss Coblenz caught her eye in the square of mirror above the +mantelpiece, her hands flew to her cheeks to feel of their redness. They +were soft cheeks, smooth with the pollen of youth, and hands still casing +them, she moved another step toward the portièred door. + +"Mama!" + +Mrs. Coblenz emerged immediately, finger up for silence, kissing her +daughter on the little spray of cheek-curls. + +"'Shh-h-h! Gramaw just had a terrible spell." + +She dropped down into the upholstered chair beside the base-burner, the +pink and moisture of exertion out in her face, took to fanning herself with +the end of a face-towel flung across her arm. + +"Poor gramaw!" she said. "Poor gramaw!" + +Miss Coblenz sat down on the edge of a slim, home-gilded chair, and took to +gathering the blue-silk dress into little plaits at her knee. + +"Of course, if you don't want to know where I've been--or anything--" + +Mrs. Coblenz jerked herself to the moment. + +"Did mama's girl have a good time? Look at your dress, all dusty! You +oughtn't to wear your best in that little flivver." + +Suddenly Miss Coblenz raised her glance, her red mouth bunched, her eyes +all iris. + +"Of course--if you don't want to know--anything." + +At that large, brilliant gaze, Mrs. Coblenz leaned forward, quickened. + +"Why, Selene!" + +"Well, why--why don't you ask me something?" + +"Why, I--I dunno, honey. Did--did you and Lester have a nice ride?" + +There hung a slight pause, and then a swift moving and crumpling-up of Miss +Coblenz on the floor beside her mother's knee. + +"You know--only, you won't ask." + +With her hand light upon her daughter's hair, Mrs. Coblenz leaned forward, +her bosom rising to faster breathing. + +"Why--Selene--I--Why--" + +"We--we were speeding along, and--all of a sudden, out of a clear sky, +he--he popped. He wants it in June, so we can make it our honeymoon to his +new territory out in Oklahoma. He knew he was going to pop, he said, ever +since that first night he saw me at the Y.M.H.A. He says to his uncle Mark, +the very next day in the store, he says to him, 'Uncle Mark,' he says, +'I've met _the_ little girl.' He says he thinks more of my little finger +than all of his regular crowd of girls in town put together. He wants to +live in one of the built-in-bed flats on Wasserman Avenue, like all the +swell young marrieds. He's making twenty-six hundred now, mama, and if he +makes good in the new Oklahoma territory, his Uncle Mark is--is going to +take care of him better. Ain't it like a dream, mama--your little Selene +all of a sudden in with--the somebodies?" + +Immediate tears were already finding staggering procession down Mrs. +Coblenz's face, her hovering arms completely encircling the slight figure +at her feet. + +"My little girl! My little Selene! My all!" + +"I'll be marrying into one of the best families in town, ma. A girl who +marries a nephew of Mark Haas can hold up her head with the best of them. +There's not a boy in town with a better future than Lester. Like Lester +says, everything his Uncle Mark touches turns to gold, and he's already +touched Lester. One of the best known men on Washington Avenue for his +blood-uncle, and on his poor dead father's side related to the Katz & +Harberger Harbergers. Was I right, mama, when I said if you'd only let me +stop school I'd show you? Was I right, momsie?" + +"My baby! It's like I can't realize it. So young!" + +"He took the measure of my finger, mama, with a piece of string. A diamond, +he says, not too flashy, but neat." + +"We have 'em, and we suffer for 'em, and we lose 'em." + +"He's going to trade in the flivver for a chummy roadster, and--" + +"Oh, darling, it's like I can't bear it!" + +At that Miss Coblenz sat back on her tall wooden heels, mauve spats +crinkling. + +"Well, you're a merry little future mother-in-law, momsie!" + +"It ain't that, baby. I'm happy that my girl has got herself up in the +world with a fine upright boy like Lester; only--you can't understand, +babe, till you've got something of your own flesh and blood that belongs to +you, that I--I couldn't feel anything except that a piece of my heart was +going if--if it was a king you was marrying." + +"Now, momsie, it's not like I was moving a thousand miles away. You can +be glad I don't have to go far, to New York or to Cleveland, like Alma +Yawitz." + +"I am! I am!" + +"Uncle--Uncle Mark, I guess, will furnish us up like he did Leon and +Irma--only, I don't want mahogany; I want Circassian walnut. He gave them +their flat-silver, too, Puritan design, for an engagement present. Think of +it, mama, me having that stuck-up Irma Sinsheimer for a relation! It always +made her sore when I got chums with Amy at school and got my nose in it +with the Acme crowd, and--and she'll change her tune now, I guess, me +marrying her husband's second cousin." + +"Didn't Lester want to--to come in for a while, Selene, to--to see--me?" + +Sitting there on her heels, Miss Coblenz looked away, answering with her +face in profile. + +"Yes; only--I--well, if you want to know it, mama, it's no fun for a girl +to bring a boy like Lester up here in--in this crazy room, all hung up +with gramaw's wreaths and half the time her sitting out there in the dark, +looking in at us through the door and talking to herself." + +"Gramaw's an old--" + +"Is it any wonder I'm down at Amy's half the time? How do you think a girl +feels to have gramaw keep hanging onto that old black wig of hers and not +letting me take the crayons or wreaths down off the wall? In Lester's crowd +they don't know nothing about revolutionary stuff and persecutions. Amy's +grandmother don't even talk with an accent, and Lester says his grandmother +came from Alsace-Lorraine. That's French. They think only tailors and +old-clothes men and--." + +"Selene!" + +"Well, they do. You--you're all right, mama, as up to date as any of them, +but how do you think a girl feels, with gramaw always harping right in +front of everybody the way granpa was a revolutionist and was hustled off +barefooted to Siberia like a tramp? And the way she was cooking black beans +when my uncle died. Other girls' grandmothers don't tell everything they +know. Alma Yawitz's grandmother wears lorgnettes, and you told me yourself +they came from nearly the same part of the Pale as gramaw. But you don't +hear them remembering it. Alma Yawitz says she's Alsace-Lorraine on both +sides. People don't tell everything they know. Anyway where a girl's got +herself as far as I have!" + +Through sobs that rocked her, Mrs. Coblenz looked down upon her daughter. + +"Your poor old grandmother don't deserve that from you! In her day she +worked her hands to the bone for you. With the kind of father you had we +might have died in the gutter but for how she helped to keep us out, you +ungrateful girl--your poor old grandmother, that's suffered so terrible!" + +"I know it, mama, but so have other people suffered." + +"She's old, Selene--old." + +"I tell you it's the way you indulge her, mama. I've seen her sitting here +as perk as you please, and the minute you come in the room down goes her +head like--like she was dying." + +"It's her mind, Selene--that's going. That's why I feel if I could only get +her back. She ain't old, gramaw ain't. If I could only get her back where +she--could see for herself--the graves--is all she needs. All old people +think of--the grave. It's eating her--eating her mind. Mark Haas is going +to fix it for me after the war--maybe before--if he can. That's the only +way poor gramaw can live--or die--happy, Selene. Now--now that my--my +little girl ain't any longer my responsibility, I--I'm going to take her +back--my little--girl"--her hand reached out, caressing the smooth head, +her face projected forward and the eyes yearning down--"my all." + +"It's you will be my responsibility now, ma." + +"No! No!" + +"The first thing Lester says was a flat on Wasserman and a spare room for +Mother Coblenz when she wants to come down. Wasn't it sweet for him to put +it that way right off, ma? 'Mother Coblenz,' he says." + +"He's a good boy, Selene. It'll be a proud day for me and gramaw. Gramaw +mustn't miss none of it. He's a good boy and a fine family." + +"That's why, mama, we--got to--to do it up right." + +"Lester knows, child, he's not marrying a rich girl." + +"A girl don't have to--be rich to get married right." + +"You'll have as good as mama can afford to give it to her girl." + +"It--it would be different if Lester's uncle and all wasn't in the Acme +Club crowd, and if I hadn't got in with all that bunch. It's the last +expense I'll ever be to you, mama." + +"Oh, baby, don't say that!" + +"I--me and Lester--Lester and me were talking, mama--when the engagement's +announced next week--a reception--" + +"We can clear out this room, move the bed out of gramaw's room into ours, +and serve the ice-cream and cake in--" + +"Oh, mama, I don't mean--that!" + +"What?" + +"Who ever heard of having a reception _here_! People won't come from town +'way out to this old--cabbage-patch. Even Gertie Wolf, with their big +house on West Pine Boulevard, had her reception at the Walsingham Hotel. +You--We--can't expect Mark Haas and all the relations--the Sinsheimers-- +and--all to come out here. I'd rather not have any." + +"But, Selene, everybody knows we ain't millionaires, and that you got in +with that crowd through being friends at school with Amy Rosen. All the +city salesmen and the boys on Washington Avenue, even Mark Haas himself, +that time he was in the store with Lester, knows the way we live. You don't +need to be ashamed of your little home, Selene, even if it ain't on West +Pine Boulevard." + +"It'll be--your last expense, mama. The Walsingham, that's where the girl +that Lester Goldmark marries is expected to have her reception." + +"But, Selene, mama can't afford nothing like that." + +Pink swam up into Miss Coblenz's face, and above the sheer-white collar +there was a little beating movement at the throat, as if something were +fluttering within. + +"I--I'd just as soon not get married as--as not to have it like other +girls." + +"But, Selene--" + +"If I--can't have a trousseau like other girls and the things that go with +marrying into a--a family like Lester's--I--then--there's no use. I--I +can't! I--wouldn't!" + +She was fumbling, now, for a handkerchief, against tears that were +imminent. + +"Why, baby, a girl couldn't have a finer trousseau than the old linens back +yet from Russia that me and gramaw got saved up for our girl--linen that +can't be bought these days. Bed-sheets that gramaw herself carried to the +border, and--" + +"Oh, I know! I knew you'd try to dump that stuff on me. That old, +worm-eaten stuff in gramaw's chest." + +"It's hand-woven, Selene, with--" + +"I wouldn't have that yellow old stuff--that old-fashioned junk--if I +didn't have any trousseau. If I can't afford monogrammed up-to-date linens, +like even Alma Yawitz, and a--a pussy-willow-taffeta reception dress, I +wouldn't have any. I wouldn't." Her voice, crowded with passion and tears, +rose to the crest of a sob. "I--I'd die first!" + +"Selene, Selene, mama 'ain't got the money. If she had it, wouldn't she be +willing to take the very last penny to give her girl the kind of a wedding +she wants? A trousseau like Alma's cost a thousand dollars, if it cost a +cent. Her table-napkins alone, they say, cost thirty-six dollars a dozen, +un-monogrammed. A reception at the Walsingham costs two hundred dollars, +if it costs a cent. Selene, mama will make for you every sacrifice she can +afford, but she 'ain't got the money!" + +"You--have got the money!" + +"So help me God, Selene! You know, with the quarries shut down, what +business has been. You know how--sometimes even to make ends meet it is a +pinch. You're an ungrateful girl, Selene, to ask what I ain't able to do +for you. A child like you, that's been indulged, that I 'ain't even asked +ever in her life to help a day down in the store. If I had the money, God +knows you should be married in real lace, with the finest trousseau a girl +ever had. But I 'ain't got the money--I 'ain't got the money." + +"You have got the money! The book in gramaw's drawer is seven hundred and +forty. I guess I ain't blind. I know a thing or two." + +"Why, Selene! That's gramaw's--to go back--" + +"You mean the bank-book's hers?" + +"That's gramaw's, to go back--home on. That's the money for me to take +gramaw and her wreaths back home on." + +"There you go--talking luny." + +"Selene!" + +"Well, I'd like to know what else you'd call it, kidding yourself along +like that." + +"You--" + +"All right. If you think gramaw, with her life all lived, comes first +before me, with all my life to live--all right!" + +"Your poor old--" + +"It's always been gramaw first in this house, anyway. I couldn't even have +company since I'm grown up because the way she's always allowed around. +Nobody can say I ain't good to gramaw; Lester says it's beautiful the way I +am with her, remembering always to bring the newspapers and all, but just +the same, I know when right's right and wrong's wrong. If my life ain't +more important than gramaw's, with hers all lived, all right. Go ahead!" + +"Selene, Selene, ain't it coming to gramaw, after all her years' hard work +helping us that--she should be entitled to go back with her wreaths for the +graves? Ain't she entitled to die with that off her poor old mind? You bad, +ungrateful girl, you, it's coming to a poor old woman that's suffered as +terrible as gramaw that I should find a way to take her back." + +"Take her back. Where--to jail? To prison in Siberia herself--" + +"There's a way--" + +"You know gramaw's too old to take a trip like that. You know in your own +heart she won't ever see that day. Even before the war, much less now, +there wasn't a chance for her to get passports back there. I don't say it +ain't all right to kid her along, but when it comes to--to keeping me out +of the--the biggest thing that can happen to a girl--when gramaw wouldn't +know the difference if you keep showing her the bank-book--it ain't right. +That's what it ain't. It ain't right!" + +In the smallest possible compass, Miss Coblenz crouched now upon the floor, +head down somewhere in her knees, and her curving back racked with rising +sobs. + +"Selene--but some day--" + +"Some day nothing! A woman like gramaw can't do much more than go down-town +once a year, and then you talk about taking her to Russia! You can't get in +there, I--tell you--no way you try to fix it after--the way gramaw--had--to +leave. Even before the war Ray Letsky's father couldn't get back on +business. There's nothing for her there, even after she gets there. In +thirty years, do you think you can find those graves? Do you know the size +of Siberia? No! But I got to pay--I got to pay for gramaw's nonsense. But I +won't. I won't go to Lester if I can't go right. I--." + +"Baby, don't cry so--for God's sake, don't cry so!" + +"I wish I was dead!" + +"'Sh-h-h! You'll wake gramaw." + +"I do!" + +"O God, help me to do the right thing!" + +"If gramaw could understand, she'd be the first one to tell you the right +thing. Anybody would." + +"No! No! That little bank-book and its entries are her life--her life." + +"She don't need to know, mama. I'm not asking that. That's the way they +always do with old people to keep them satisfied. Just humor 'em. Ain't I +the one with life before me--ain't I, mama?" + +"O God, show me the way!" + +"If there was a chance, you think I'd be spoiling things for gramaw? But +there ain't, mama--not one." + +"I keep hoping if not before, then after the war. With the help of Mark +Haas--" + +"With the book in her drawer, like always, and the entries changed once in +a while, she'll never know the difference. I swear to God she'll never know +the difference, mama!" + +"Poor gramaw!" + +"Mama, promise me--your little Selene. Promise me?" + +"Selene, Selene, can we keep it from her?" + +"I swear we can, mama." + +"Poor, poor gramaw!" + +"Mama? Mama darling?" + +"O God, show me the way!" + +"Ain't it me that's got life before me? My whole life?" + +"Yes--Selene." + +"Then, mama, please--you will--you will--darling?" + +"Yes, Selene." + +In a large, all-frescoed, seventy-five-dollar-an-evening-with-lights and +cloak-room-service ballroom of the Hotel Walsingham, a family hostelry in +that family circle of St. Louis known as its West End, the city holds not +a few of its charity-whists and benefit musicales; on a dais which can be +carried in for the purpose, morning readings of "Little Moments from +Little Plays," and with the introduction of a throne-chair, the monthly +lodge-meetings of the Lady Mahadharatas of America. For weddings and +receptions, a lane of red carpet leads up to the slight dais; and lined +about the brocade and paneled walls, gilt-and-brocade chairs, with the +crest of Walsingham in padded embroidery on the backs. Crystal chandeliers, +icicles of dripping light, glow down upon a scene of parquet floor, draped +velours, and mirrors wreathed in gilt. + +At Miss Selene Coblenz's engagement reception, an event properly festooned +with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters +tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a +finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly +seen and still more faintly heard, played into the babel. + +Light, glitteringly filtered through the glass prisms, flowed down upon the +dais; upon Miss Selene Coblenz, in a taffeta that wrapped her flat waist +and chest like a calyx and suddenly bloomed into the full-inverted petals +of a skirt; upon Mr. Lester Goldmark, his long body barely knitted yet +to man's estate, and his complexion almost clear, standing omnivorous, +omnipotent, omnipresent, his hair so well brushed that it lay like black +japanning, a white carnation at his silk lapel, and his smile slightly +projected by a rush of very white teeth to the very front. Next in line, +Mrs. Coblenz, the red of a fervent moment high in her face, beneath the +maroon-net bodice the swell of her bosom, fast, and her white-gloved hand +constantly at the opening and shutting of a lace-and-spangled fan. Back, +and well out of the picture, a potted hydrangea beside the Louis Quinze +armchair, her hands in silk mitts laid out along the gold-chair sides, her +head quavering in a kind of mild palsy, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, smiling and +quivering her state of bewilderment. + +With an unfailing propensity to lay hold of to whomsoever he spake, Mr. +Lester Goldmark placed his white-gloved hand upon the white-gloved arm of +Mrs. Coblenz. + +"Say, Mother Coblenz, ain't it about time this little girl of mine was +resting her pink-satin double A's? She's been on duty up here from four to +seven. No wonder Uncle Mark bucked." + +Mrs. Coblenz threw her glance out over the crowded room, surging with a +wave of plumes and clipped heads like a swaying bucket of water which +crowds but does not lap over its sides. + +"I guess the crowd is finished coming in by now. You tired, Selene?" + +Miss Coblenz turned her glowing glance. + +"Tired! This is the swellest engagement-party I ever had." + +Mrs. Coblenz shifted her weight from one slipper to the other, her +maroon-net skirts lying in a swirl around them. + +"Just look at gramaw, too! She holds up her head with the best of them. I +wouldn't have had her miss this, not for the world." + +"Sure one fine old lady! Ought to have seen her shake my hand, Mother +Coblenz. I nearly had to holler, 'Ouch!'" + +"Mama, here comes Sara Suss and her mother. Take my arm, Lester honey. +People mama used to know." Miss Coblenz leaned forward beyond the dais with +the frail curve of a reed. + +"Howdado, Mrs. Suss.... Thank you. Thanks. Howdado, Sara? Meet my _fiancé_, +Lester Haas Goldmark; Mrs. Suss and Sara Suss, my _fiancé_.... That's +right, better late than never. There's plenty left.... We think he is, Mrs. +Suss. Aw, Lester honey, quit! Mama, here's Mrs. Suss and Sadie." + +"Mrs. Suss! Say--if you hadn't come, I was going to lay it up against you. +If my new ones can come on a day like this, it's a pity my old friends +can't come, too. Well, Sadie, it's your turn next, eh?... I know better +than that. With them pink cheeks and black eyes, I wish I had a dime +for every chance." (_Sotto_.) "Do you like it, Mrs. Suss? Pussy-willow +taffeta.... Say, it ought to be. An estimate dress from Madame +Murphy--sixty-five with findings. I'm so mad, Sara, you and your mama +couldn't come to the house that night to see her things. If I say so +myself, Mrs. Suss, everybody who seen it says Jacob Sinsheimer's daughter +herself didn't have a finer. Maybe not so much, but every stitch, Mrs. +Suss, made by the same sisters in the same convent that made hers.... +Towels! I tell her it's a shame to expose them to the light, much less wipe +on them. Ain't it?... The goodness looks out from his face. And such a +love-pair! Lunatics, I call them. He can't keep his hands off. It ain't +nice, I tell him.... Me? Come close. I dyed the net myself. Ten cents' +worth of maroon color. Don't it warm your heart, Mrs. Suss? This morning, +after we got her in Lester's Uncle Mark's big automobile, I says to her, I +says, 'Mama, you sure it ain't too much?' Like her old self for a minute, +Mrs. Suss, she hit me on the arm. 'Go 'way,' she said; 'on my grandchild's +engagement day anything should be too much?' Here, waiter, get these two +ladies some salad. Good measure, too. Over there by the window, Mrs. Suss. +Help yourselves." + +"Mama, 'sh-h-h! the waiters know what to do." + +Mrs. Coblenz turned back, the flush warm to her face. + +"Say, for an old friend I can be my own self." + +"Can we break the receiving-line now, Lester honey, and go down with +everybody? The Sinsheimers and their crowd over there by themselves, we +ought to show we appreciate their coming." + +Mr. Goldmark twisted high in his collar, cupping her small bare elbow in +his hand. + +"That's what I say, lovey; let's break. Come, Mother Coblenz, let's step +down on high society's corns." + +"Lester!" + +"You and Selene go down with the crowd, Lester. I want to take gramaw to +rest for a while before we go home. The manager says we can have room +fifty-six by the elevator for her to rest in." + +"Get her some newspapers, ma, and I brought her a wreath down to keep her +quiet. It's wrapped in her shawl." + +Her skirts delicately lifted, Miss Coblenz stepped down off the dais. With +her cloud of gauze-scarf enveloping her, she was like a tulle-clouded +"Springtime," done in the key of Botticelli. + +"Oop-si-lah, lovey-dovey!" said Mr. Goldmark, tilting her elbow for the +downward step. + +"Oop-si-lay, dovey-lovey!" said Miss Coblenz, relaxing to the support. + +Gathering up her plentiful skirts, Mrs. Coblenz stepped off, too, but back +toward the secluded chair beside the potted hydrangea. A fine line of pain, +like a cord tightening, was binding her head, and she put up two fingers to +each temple, pressing down the throb. + +"Mrs. Coblenz, see what I got for you!" She turned, smiling. "You don't +look like you need salad and green ice-cream. You look like you needed what +I wanted--a cup of coffee." + +"Aw, Mr. Haas--now where in the world--Aw, Mr. Haas!" + +With a steaming cup outheld and carefully out of collision with the crowd, +Mr. Haas unflapped a napkin with his free hand, inserting his foot in the +rung of a chair and dragging it toward her. + +"Now," he cried, "sit and watch me take care of you!" + +There comes a tide in the affairs of men when the years lap softly, leaving +no particular inundations on the celebrated sands of time. Between forty +and fifty, that span of years which begin the first slight gradations from +the apex of life, the gray hair, upstanding like a thick-bristled brush off +Mr. Haas's brow, had not so much as whitened, or the slight paunchiness +enhanced even the moving-over of a button. When Mr. Haas smiled, his +mustache, which ended in a slight but not waxed flourish, lifted to reveal +a white-and-gold smile of the artistry of careful dentistry, and when, upon +occasion, he threw back his head to laugh, the roof of his mouth was his +own. + +He smiled now, peering through gold-rimmed spectacles attached by a chain +to a wire-encircled left ear. + +"Sit," he cried, "and let me serve you!" + +Standing there with a diffidence which she could not crowd down, Mrs. +Coblenz smiled through closed lips that would pull at the corners. + +"The idea, Mr. Haas--going to all that trouble!" + +"'Trouble'! she says. After two hours' handshaking in a swallow-tail, a man +knows what real trouble is!" + +She stirred around and around the cup, supping up spoonfuls gratefully. + +"I'm sure much obliged. It touches the right spot." + +He pressed her down to the chair, seating himself on the low edge of the +dais. + +"Now you sit right there and rest your bones." + +"But my mother, Mr. Haas. Before it's time for the ride home she must rest +in a quiet place." + +"My car'll be here and waiting five minutes after I telephone." + +"You--sure have been grand, Mr. Haas!" + +"I shouldn't be grand yet to my--Let's see--what relation is it I am to +you?" + +"Honest, you're a case, Mr. Haas--always making fun!" + +"My poor dead sister's son marries your daughter. That makes you +my--nothing-in-law." + +"Honest, Mr. Haas, if I was around you, I'd get fat laughing." + +"I wish you was." + +"Selene would have fits. 'Never get fat, mama,' she says, 'if you don't +want--'" + +"I don't mean that." + +"What?" + +"I mean I wish you was around me." + +She struck him then with her fan, but the color rose up into the mound of +her carefully piled hair. + +"I always say I can see where Lester gets his comical ways. Like his uncle, +that boy keeps us all laughing." + +"Gad! look at her blush! I know women your age would give fifty dollars a +blush to do it that way." + +She was looking away again, shoulders heaving to silent laughter, the blush +still stinging. + +"It's been so--so long, Mr. Haas, since I had compliments made to me. You +make me feel so--silly." + +"I know it, you nice, fine woman, you; and it's a darn shame!" + +"Mr.--Haas!" + +"I mean it. I hate to see a fine woman not get her dues. Anyways, when +she's the finest woman of them all!" + +"I--the woman that lives to see a day like this--her daughter the happiest +girl in the world, with the finest boy in the world--is getting her dues, +all right, Mr. Haas." + +"She's a fine girl, but she ain't worth her mother's little finger-nail." + +"Mr.--Haas!" + +"No, sir-ree!" + +"I must be going now, Mr. Haas. My mother--" + +"That's right. The minute a man tries to break the ice with this little +lady, it's a freeze-out. Now what did I say so bad? In business, too. Never +seen the like. It's like trying to swat a fly to come down on you at the +right minute. But now, with you for a nothing-in-law, I got rights." + +"If--you ain't the limit, Mr. Haas!" + +"Don't mind saying it, Mrs. C., and, for a bachelor, they tell me I'm not +the worst judge in the world, but there's not a woman on the floor stacks +up like you do." + +"Well--of all things!" + +"Mean it." + +"My mother, Mr. Haas, she--" + +"And if anybody should ask you if I've got you on my mind or not, well, +I've already got the letters out on that little matter of the passports you +spoke to me about. If there's a way to fix that up for you, and leave it to +me to find it, I--" + +She sprang now, trembling, to her feet, all the red of the moment receding. + +"Mr. Haas, I--I must go now. My--mother--" + +He took her arm, winding her in and out among crowded-out chairs behind the +dais. + +"I wish it to every mother to have a daughter like you, Mrs. C." + +"No! No!" she said, stumbling rather wildly through the chairs. "No! No! +No!" + +He forged ahead, clearing her path of them. + +Beside the potted hydrangea, well back and yet within an easy view, Mrs. +Horowitz, her gilt armchair well cushioned for the occasion, and her +black grenadine spread decently about her, looked out upon the scene, her +slightly palsied head well forward. + +"Mama, you got enough? You wouldn't have missed it, eh? A crowd of people +we can be proud to entertain. Not? Come; sit quiet in another room for a +while, and then Mr. Haas, with his nice big car, will drive us all home +again. You know Mr. Haas, dearie--Lester's uncle that had us drove so +careful in his fine car. You remember, dearie--Lester's uncle?" + +Mrs. Horowitz looked up, her old face crackling to smile. + +"My grandchild! My grandchild! She'm a fine one. Not? My grandchild! My +grandchild!" + +"You--mustn't mind, Mr. Haas. That's--the way she's done since--since +she's--sick. Keeps repeating--" + +"My grandchild! From a good mother and a bad father comes a good +grandchild. My grandchild! She'm a good one. My--" + +"Mama dearie, Mr. Haas is in a hurry. He's come to help me walk you into a +little room to rest before we go home in Mr. Haas's big, fine auto. Where +you can go and rest, mama, and read the newspapers. Come." + +"My back--_ach_--my back!" + +"Yes, yes, mama; we'll fix it. Up! So--la!" + +They raised her by the crook of each arm, gently. + +"So! Please, Mr. Haas, the pillows. Shawl. There!" + +Around a rear hallway, they were almost immediately into a blank, staring +hotel bedroom, fresh towels on the furniture-tops only enhancing its +staleness. + +"Here we are. Sit her here, Mr. Haas, in this rocker." + +They lowered her, almost inch by inch, sliding down pillows, against the +chair-back. + +"Now, Shila's little mama want to sleep?" + +"I got--no rest--no rest." + +"You're too excited, honey; that's all." + +"No rest." + +"Here--here's a brand-new hotel Bible on the table, dearie. Shall Shila +read it to you?" + +"Aylorff--" + +"Now, now, mama. Now, now; you mustn't! Didn't you promise Shila? Look! +See, here's a wreath wrapped in your shawl for Shila's little mama to work +on. Plenty of wreaths for us to take back. Work awhile, dearie, and then +we'll get Selene and Lester, and, after all the nice company goes away, +we'll go home in the auto." + +"I begged he should keep in his hate--his feet in the--" + +"I know! The papers! That's what little mama wants. Mr. Haas, that's what +she likes better than anything--the evening papers." + +"I'll go down and send 'em right up with a boy, and telephone for the car. +The crowd's beginning to pour out now. Just hold your horses there, Mrs. +C., and I'll have those papers up here in a jiffy." + +He was already closing the door after him, letting in and shutting out a +flare of music. + +"See, mama, nice Mr. Haas is getting us the papers. Nice evening papers for +Shila's mama." She leaned down into the recesses of the black grenadine, +withdrawing from one of the pockets a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, +adjusting them with some difficulty to the nodding head. "Shila's--little +mama! Shila's mama!" + +"Aylorff, the littlest wreath for--Aylorff--_Meine Kräntze_--" + +"Yes, yes." + +"_Mem Mann. Mein Sühn_." + +"'Shh-h-h, dearie!" + +"Aylorff--_der klenste Kranz far ihm_!" + +"'Shh-h-h, dearie! Talk English, like Selene wants. Wait till we get on the +ship--the beautiful ship to take us back. Mama, see out the window! Look! +That's the beautiful Forest Park, and this is the fine Hotel Walsingham +just across. See out! Selene is going to have a flat on--" + +"_Sey hoben gestorben far Freiheit. Sey hoben_--" + +"There! That's the papers!" + +To a succession of quick knocks, she flew to the door, returning with the +folded evening editions under her arm. + +"Now," she cried, unfolding and inserting the first of them into the +quivering hands--"now, a shawl over my little mama's knees and we're +fixed!" + +With a series of rapid movements she flung open one of the black-cashmere +shawls across the bed, folding it back into a triangle. Beside the table, +bare except for the formal, unthumbed Bible, Mrs. Horowitz rattled out a +paper, her near-sighted eyes traveling back and forth across the page. + +Music from the ferned-in orchestra came in drifts, faint, not so faint. +From somewhere, then immediately from everywhere--beyond, below, without, +the fast shouts of newsboys mingling. + +Suddenly and of her own volition, and with a cry that shot up through the +room, rending it like a gash, Mrs. Horowitz, who moved by inches, sprang to +her supreme height, her arms, the crooks forced out, flung up. + +"My darlings--what died--for it! My darlings what died for it! My +darlings--Aylorff, my husband!" There was a wail rose up off her words, +like the smoke of incense curling, circling around her. "My darlings what +died to make free!" + +"Mama! Darling! Mama! Mr. Haas! Help! Mama! My God!" + +"Aylorff--my husband--I paid with my blood to make free--my blood--. My +son--my--own--" Immovable there, her arms flung up and tears so heavy that +they rolled whole from her face down to the black grenadine, she was as +sonorous as the tragic meter of an Alexandrine line; she was like Ruth, +ancestress of heroes and progenitor of kings. + +"My boy--my own! They died for it! _Mein Mann! Mein Sühn_!" + +On her knees, frantic to press her down once more into the chair, terrified +at the rigid immobility of the upright figure, Mrs. Coblenz paused then, +too, her clasp falling away, and leaned forward to the open sheet of the +newspaper, its black head-lines facing her: + +RUSSIA FREE + +BANS DOWN 100,000 SIBERIAN PRISONERS LIBERATED + +In her ears a ringing silence, as if a great steel disk had clattered down +into the depths of her consciousness. There on her knees, trembling seized +her, and she hugged herself against it, leaning forward to corroborate her +gaze. + +MOST RIGID AUTOCRACY IN THE WORLD OVERTHROWN + +RUSSIA REJOICES + +"Mama! Mama! My God! Mama!" + +"Home, Shila; home! My husband who died for it--Aylorff! Home now, quick! +My wreaths! My wreaths!" + +"O my God! Mama!" + +"Home!" + +"Yes, darling--yes--" + +"My wreaths!" + +"Yes, yes, darling; your wreaths. Let--let me think. Freedom! O my God! +help me to find a way! O my God!" + +"My wreaths!" + +"Here, darling, here!" + +From the floor beside her, the raffia wreath half in the making, Mrs. +Coblenz reached up, pressing it flat to the heaving old bosom. + +"There, darling, there!" + +"I paid with my blood--" + +"Yes, yes, mama; you--paid with your blood. Mama--sit, please. Sit +and--let's try to think. Take it slow, darling; it's like we can't take it +in all at once. I--We--Sit down, darling. You'll make yourself terrible +sick. Sit down, darling; you--you're slipping." + +"My wreaths--" + +Heavily, the arm at the waist gently sustaining, Mrs. Horowitz sank rather +softly down, her eyelids fluttering for the moment. A smile had come out on +her face, and, as her head sank back against the rest, the eyes resting at +the downward flutter, she gave out a long breath, not taking it in again. + +"Mama! You're fainting!" She leaned to her, shaking the relaxed figure by +the elbows, her face almost touching the tallow-like one with the smile +lying so deeply into it. "Mama! My God! darling, wake up! I'll take you +back. I'll find a way to take you. I'm a bad girl, darling, but I'll find a +way to take you. I'll take you if--if I kill for it! I promise before God +I'll take you. To-morrow--now--nobody can keep me from taking you. The +wreaths, mama! Get ready the wreaths! Mama darling, wake up! Get ready the +wreaths! The wreaths!" Shaking at that quiet form, sobs that were full of +voice tearing raw from her throat, she fell to kissing the sunken face, +enclosing it, stroking it, holding her streaming gaze closely and burningly +against the closed lids. "Mama, I swear to God I'll take you! Answer me, +mama! The bank-book--you've got it! Why don't you wake up, mama? Help!" + +Upon that scene, the quiet of the room so raucously lacerated, burst Mr. +Haas, too breathless for voice. + +"Mr. Haas--my mother! Help--my mother! It's a faint, ain't it? A faint?" + +He was beside her at two bounds, feeling of the limp wrists, laying his ear +to the grenadine bosom, lifting the reluctant lids, touching the flesh that +yielded so to touch. + +"It's a faint, ain't it, Mr. Haas? Tell her I'll take her back. Wake her +up, Mr. Haas! Tell her I'm a bad girl, but I--I'm going to take her back. +Now! Tell her! Tell her, Mr. Haas, I've got the bank-book. Please! Please! +O my God!" + +He turned to her, his face working to keep down compassion. + +"We must get a doctor, little lady." + +She threw out an arm. + +"No! No! I see! My old mother--my old mother--all her life a nobody--She +helped--she gave it to them--my mother--a poor little widow nobody--She +bought with her blood that freedom--she--" + +"God! I just heard it down-stairs--it's the tenth wonder of the world. It's +too big to take in. I was afraid--" + +"Mama darling, I tell you, wake up! I'm a bad girl, but I'll take you back. +Tell her, Mr. Haas, I'll take her back. Wake up, darling! I swear to God +I'll take you!" + +"Mrs. Coblenz, my--poor little lady, your mother don't need you to take +her back. She's gone back where--where she wants to be. Look at her face, +little lady. Can't you see she's gone back?" + +"No! No! Let me go. Let me touch her. No! No! Mama darling!" + +"Why, there wasn't a way, little lady, you could have fixed it for that +poor--old body. She's beyond any of the poor fixings we could do for her. +You never saw her face like that before. Look!" + +"The wreaths--the wreaths!" + +He picked up the raffia circle, placing it back again against the quiet +bosom. + +"Poor little lady!" he said. "Shila--that's left for us to do. You and me, +Shila--we'll take the wreaths back for her." + +"My darling--my darling mother! I'll take them back for you! I'll take them +back for you!" + +"_We'll_ take them back for her--Shila." + +"I'll--" + +"_We'll_ take them back for her--Shila." + +"_We'll_ take them back for you, mama. We'll take them back for you, +darling!" + +THE END + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gaslight Sonatas, by Fannie Hurst + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GASLIGHT SONATAS *** + +***** This file should be named 10025-8.txt or 10025-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/0/2/10025/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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For +example an eBook of filename 10234 would be found at: + + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/2/3/10234 + +or filename 24689 would be found at: + https://www.gutenberg.org/2/4/6/8/24689 + +An alternative method of locating eBooks: + https://www.gutenberg.org/GUTINDEX.ALL + + diff --git a/old/10025-8.zip b/old/10025-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f83de19 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10025-8.zip diff --git a/old/10025.txt b/old/10025.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..88e17ed --- /dev/null +++ b/old/10025.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9639 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Gaslight Sonatas, by Fannie Hurst + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Gaslight Sonatas + +Author: Fannie Hurst + +Release Date: November 9, 2003 [EBook #10025] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GASLIGHT SONATAS *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + + + + +[Illustration: They walked, thus guided by an obsequious waiter, through a +light _confetti_ of tossed greetings.] + + + +GASLIGHT SONATAS + +BY + +FANNIE HURST + + + + +1918 + + + + +[Dedication: To my mother and my father] + + + + +CONTENTS + + +I. BITTER-SWEET + +II. SIEVE OF FULFILMENT + +III. ICE-WATER, PL--! + +IV. HERS _NOT_ TO REASON WHY + +V. GOLDEN FLEECE + +VI. NIGHTSHADE + +VII. GET READY THE WREATHS + + + + +GASLIGHT SONATAS + + + + +I + +BITTER-SWEET + + +Much of the tragical lore of the infant mortality, the malnutrition, and +the five-in-a-room morality of the city's poor is written in statistics, +and the statistical path to the heart is more figurative than literal. + +It is difficult to write stylistically a per-annum report of 1,327 +curvatures of the spine, whereas the poor specific little vertebra of Mamie +O'Grady, daughter to Lou, your laundress, whose alcoholic husband once +invaded your very own basement and attempted to strangle her in the +coal-bin, can instantly create an apron bazaar in the church vestry-rooms. + +That is why it is possible to drink your morning coffee without nausea for +it, over the head-lines of forty thousand casualties at Ypres, but to +push back abruptly at a three-line notice of little Tony's, your corner +bootblack's, fatal dive before a street-car. + +Gertie Slayback was statistically down as a woman wage-earner; a typhoid +case among the thousands of the Borough of Manhattan for 1901; and her +twice-a-day share in the Subway fares collected in the present year of our +Lord. + +She was a very atomic one of the city's four millions. But after all, what +are the kings and peasants, poets and draymen, but great, greater, or +greatest, less, lesser, or least atoms of us? If not of the least, Gertie +Slayback was of the very lesser. When she unlocked the front door to her +rooming-house of evenings, there was no one to expect her, except on +Tuesdays, which evening it so happened her week was up. And when she left +of mornings with her breakfast crumblessly cleared up and the box of +biscuit and condensed-milk can tucked unsuspectedly behind her camisole in +the top drawer there was no one to regret her. + +There are some of us who call this freedom. Again there are those for whom +one spark of home fire burning would light the world. + +Gertie Slayback was one of these. Half a life-time of opening her door upon +this or that desert-aisle of hall bedroom had not taught her heart how not +to sink or the feel of daily rising in one such room to seem less like a +damp bathing-suit, donned at dawn. + +The only picture--or call it atavism if you will--which adorned Miss +Slayback's dun-colored walls was a passe-partout snowscape, night closing +in, and pink cottage windows peering out from under eaves. She could +visualize that interior as if she had only to turn the frame for the smell +of wood fire and the snap of pine logs and for the scene of two high-back +chairs and the wooden crib between. + +What a fragile, gracile thing is the mind that can leap thus from nine +bargain basement hours of hairpins and darning-balls to the downy business +of lining a crib in Never-Never Land and warming No Man's slippers before +the fire of imagination. + +There was that picture so acidly etched into Miss Slayback's brain that she +had only to close her eyes in the slit-like sanctity of her room and in the +brief moment of courting sleep feel the pink penumbra of her vision begin +to glow. + +Of late years, or, more specifically, for two years and eight months, +another picture had invaded, even superseded the old. A stamp-photograph +likeness of Mr. James P. Batch in the corner of Miss Slayback's mirror, +and thereafter No Man's slippers became number eight-and-a-half C, and the +hearth a gilded radiator in a dining-living-room somewhere between the +Fourteenth Street Subway and the land of the Bronx. + +How Miss Slayback, by habit not gregarious, met Mr. Batch is of no +consequence, except to those snug ones of us to whom an introduction is the +only means to such an end. + +At a six o'clock that invaded even Union Square with heliotrope dusk, Mr. +James Batch mistook, who shall say otherwise, Miss Gertie Slayback, as +she stepped down into the wintry shade of a Subway kiosk, for Miss +Whodoesitmatter. At seven o'clock, over a dish of lamb stew _a la_ White +Kitchen, he confessed, and if Miss Slayback affected too great surprise and +too little indignation, try to conceive six nine-hour week-in-and-week-out +days of hair-pins and darning-balls, and then, at a heliotrope dusk, James +P. Batch, in invitational mood, stepping in between it and the papered +walls of a dun-colored evening. To further enlist your tolerance, Gertie +Slayback's eyes were as blue as the noon of June, and James P. Batch, in a +belted-in coat and five kid finger-points protruding ever so slightly and +rightly from a breast pocket, was hewn and honed in the image of youth. His +the smile of one for whom life's cup holds a heady wine, a wrinkle or two +at the eye only serving to enhance that smile; a one-inch feather stuck +upright in his derby hatband. + +It was a forelock once stamped a Corsican with the look of emperor. It was +this hat feather, a cock's feather at that and worn without sense of humor, +to which Miss Slayback was fond of attributing the consequences of that +heliotrope dusk. + +"It was the feather in your cap did it, Jimmie. I can see you yet, stepping +up with that innocent grin of yours. You think I didn't know you were +flirting? Cousin from Long Island City! 'Say,' I says to myself, I says, 'I +look as much like his cousin from Long Island City, if he's got one, as my +cousin from Hoboken (and I haven't got any) would look like my sister if I +had one.' It was that sassy little feather in your hat!" + +They would laugh over this ever-green reminiscence on Sunday Park benches +and at intermission at moving pictures when they remained through it to see +the show twice. Be the landlady's front parlor ever so permanently rented +out, the motion-picture theater has brought to thousands of young city +starvelings, if not the quietude of the home, then at least the warmth and +a juxtaposition and a deep darkness that can lave the sub-basement throb of +temples and is filled with music with a hum in it. + +For two years and eight months of Saturday nights, each one of them a +semaphore dropping out across the gray road of the week, Gertie Slayback +and Jimmie Batch dined for one hour and sixty cents at the White Kitchen. +Then arm and arm up the million-candle-power flare of Broadway, content, +these two who had never seen a lake reflect a moon, or a slim fir pointing +to a star, that life could be so manifold. And always, too, on Saturday, +the tenth from the last row of the De Luxe Cinematograph, Broadway's Best, +Orchestra Chairs, fifty cents; Last Ten Rows, thirty-five. The give of +velvet-upholstered chairs, perfumed darkness, and any old love story moving +across it to the ecstatic ache of Gertie Slayback's high young heart. + +On a Saturday evening that was already pointed with stars at the +six-o'clock closing of Hoffheimer's Fourteenth Street Emporium, Miss +Slayback, whose blondness under fatigue could become ashy, emerged from the +Bargain-Basement almost the first of its frantic exodus, taking the place +of her weekly appointment in the entrance of the Popular Drug Store +adjoining, her gaze, something even frantic in it, sifting the passing +crowd. + +At six o'clock Fourteenth Street pours up from its basements, down from its +lofts, and out from its five-and-ten-cent stores, shows, and arcades, in +a great homeward torrent--a sweeping torrent that flows full flush to the +Subway, the Elevated, and the surface car, and then spreads thinly into the +least pretentious of the city's homes--the five flights up, the two rooms +rear, and the third floor back. + +Standing there, this eager tide of the Fourteenth Street Emporium, thus +released by the six-o'clock flood-gates, flowed past Miss Slayback. +White-nosed, low-chested girls in short-vamp shoes and no-carat gold +vanity-cases. Older men resigned that ambition could be flayed by a +yard-stick; young men still impatient of their clerkship. + +It was into the trickle of these last that Miss Slayback bored her glance, +the darting, eager glance of hot eyeballs and inner trembling. She was +not so pathetically young as she was pathetically blond, a treacherous, +ready-to-fade kind of blondness that one day, now that she had found that +very morning her first gray hair, would leave her ashy. + +Suddenly, with a small catch of breath that was audible in her throat, Miss +Slayback stepped out of that doorway, squirming her way across the tight +congestion of the sidewalk to its curb, then in and out, brushing this +elbow and that shoulder, worming her way in an absolutely supreme anxiety +to keep in view a brown derby hat bobbing right briskly along with the +crowd, a greenish-black bit of feather upright in its band. + +At Broadway, Fourteenth Street cuts quite a caper, deploying out into Union +Square, an island of park, beginning to be succulent at the first false +feint of spring, rising as it were from a sea of asphalt. Across this park +Miss Slayback worked her rather frenzied way, breaking into a run when +the derby threatened to sink into the confusion of a hundred others, and +finally learning to keep its course by the faint but distinguishing fact of +a slight dent in the crown. At Broadway, some blocks before that highway +bursts into its famous flare, Mr. Batch, than whom it was no other, turned +off suddenly at right angles down into a dim pocket of side-street and into +the illuminated entrance of Ceiner's Cafe Hungarian. Meals at all hours. +Lunch, thirty cents. Dinner, fifty cents. Our Goulash is Famous. + +New York, which expresses itself in more languages to the square block +than any other area in the world, Babylon included, loves thus to dine +linguistically, so to speak. To the Crescent Turkish Restaurant for its +Business Men's Lunch comes Fourth Avenue, whose antique-shop patois reads +across the page from right to left. Sight-seeing automobiles on mission and +commission bent allow Altoona, Iowa City, and Quincy, Illinois, fifteen +minutes' stop-in at Ching Ling-Foo's Chinatown Delmonico's. Spaghetti and +red wine have set New York racing to reserve its table d'hotes. All except +the Latin race. + +Jimmie Batch, who had first seen light, and that gaslight, in a block in +lower Manhattan which has since been given over to a milk-station for +a highly congested district, had the palate, if not the purse, of the +cosmopolite. His digestive range included _borsch_ and _chow maigne; +risotta_ and ham and. + +To-night, as he turned into Cafe Hungarian, Miss Slayback slowed and drew +back into the overshadowing protection of an adjoining office-building. She +was breathing hard, and her little face, somehow smaller from chill, was +nevertheless a high pink at the cheek-bones. + +The wind swept around the corner, jerking her hat, and her hand flew up to +it. There was a fair stream of passers-by even here, and occasionally +one turned for a backward glance at her standing there so frankly +indeterminate. + +Suddenly Miss Slayback adjusted her tam-o'-shanter to its flop over her +right ear, and, drawing off a pair of dark-blue silk gloves from over +immaculately new white ones, entered Ceiner's Cafe Hungarian. In its light +she was not so obviously blonder than young, the pink spots in her +cheeks had a deepening value to the blue of her eyes, and a black velvet +tam-o'-shanter revealing just the right fringe of yellow curls is no mean +aid. + +First of all, Ceiner's is an eating-place. There is no music except at five +cents in the slot, and its tables for four are perpetually set each with a +dish of sliced radishes, a bouquet of celery, and a mound of bread, half +the stack rye. Its menus are well thumbed and badly mimeographed. Who +enters Ceiner's is prepared to dine from barley soup to apple strudel. At +something after six begins the rising sound of cutlery, and already the +new-comer fears to find no table. + +Off at the side, Mr. Jimmie Batch had already disposed of his hat and gray +overcoat, and tilting the chair opposite him to indicate its reservation, +shook open his evening paper, the waiter withholding the menu at this sign +of rendezvous. + +Straight toward that table Miss Slayback worked quick, swift way, through +this and that aisle, jerking back and seating herself on the chair opposite +almost before Mr. Batch could raise his eyes from off the sporting page. + +There was an instant of silence between them--the kind of silence that +can shape itself into a commentary upon the inefficacy of mere speech--a +widening silence which, as they sat there facing, deepened until, when she +finally spoke, it was as if her words were pebbles dropping down into a +well. + +"Don't look so surprised, Jimmie," she said, propping her face calmly, even +boldly, into the white-kid palms. "You might fall off the Christmas tree." + +Above the snug, four-inch collar and bow tie Mr. Batch's face was taking on +a dull ox-blood tinge that spread back, even reddening his ears. Mr. Batch +had the frontal bone of a clerk, the horn-rimmed glasses of the literarily +astigmatic, and the sartorial perfection that only the rich can afford not +to attain. + +He was staring now quite frankly, and his mouth had fallen open. "Gert!" he +said. + +"Yes," said Miss Slayback, her insouciance gaining with his discomposure, +her eyes widening and then a dolly kind of glassiness seeming to set in. +"You wasn't expecting me, Jimmie?" + +He jerked up his head, not meeting her glance. "What's the idea of the +comedy?" + +"You don't look glad to see me, Jimmie." + +"If you--think you're funny." + +She was working out of and then back into the freshly white gloves in a +betraying kind of nervousness that belied the toss of her voice. "Well, of +all things! Mad-cat! Mad, just because you didn't seem to be expecting me." + +"I--There's some things that are just the limit, that's what they are. +Some things that are just the limit, that no fellow would stand from any +girl, and this--this is one of them." + +Her lips were trembling now. "You--you bet your life there's some things +that are just the limit." + +He slid out his watch, pushing back. "Well, I guess this place is too small +for a fellow and a girl that can follow him around town like a--like--" + +She sat forward, grasping the table-sides, her chair tilting with her. +"Don't you dare to get up and leave me sitting here! Jimmie Batch, don't +you dare!" + +The waiter intervened, card extended. + +"We--we're waiting for another party," said Miss Slayback, her hands still +rigidly over the table-sides and her glance like a steady drill into Mr. +Batch's own. + +There was a second of this silence while the waiter withdrew, and then Mr. +Batch whipped out his watch again, a gun-metal one with an open face. + +"Now look here. I got a date here in ten minutes, and one or the other of +us has got to clear. You--you're one too many, if you got to know it." + +"Oh, I do know it, Jimmie! I been one too many for the last four Saturday +nights. I been one too many ever since May Scully came into five hundred +dollars' inheritance and quit the Ladies' Neckwear. I been one too many +ever since May Scully became a lady." + +"If I was a girl and didn't have more shame!" + +"Shame! Now you're shouting, Jimmie Batch. I haven't got shame, and I don't +care who knows it. A girl don't stop to have shame when she's fighting for +her rights." + +He was leaning on his elbow, profile to her. "That movie talk can't scare +me. You can't tell me what to do and what not to do. I've given you a +square deal all right. There's not a word ever passed between us that ties +me to your apron-strings. I don't say I'm not without my obligations to +you, but that's not one of them. No, sirree--no apron-strings." + +"I know it isn't, Jimmie. You're the kind of a fellow wouldn't even talk to +himself for fear of committing hisself." + +"I got a date here now any minute, Gert, and the sooner you--" + +"You're the guy who passed up the Sixty-first for the Safety First +regiment." + +"I'll show you my regiment some day." + +"I--I know you're not tied to my apron-strings, Jimmie. I--I wouldn't have +you there for anything. Don't you think I know you too well for that? +That's just it. Nobody on God's earth knows you the way I do. I know you +better than you know yourself." + +"You better beat it, Gertie. I tell you I'm getting sore." + +Her face flashed from him to the door and back again, her anxiety almost +edged with hysteria. "Come on, Jimmie--out the side entrance before she +gets here. May Scully ain't the company for you. You think if she was, +honey, I'd--I'd see myself come butting in between you this way, like--like +a--common girl? She's not the girl to keep you straight. Honest to God +she's not, honey." + +"My business is my business, let me tell you that." + +"She's speedy, Jimmie. She was the speediest girl on the main floor, and +now that she's come into those five hundred, instead of planting it for a +rainy day, she's quit work and gone plumb crazy with it." + +"When I want advice about my friends I ask for it." + +"It's not her good name that worries me, Jimmie, because she 'ain't got +any. It's you. She's got you crazy with that five hundred, too--that's +what's got me scared." + +"Gee! you ought to let the Salvation Army tie a bonnet under your chin." + +"She's always had her eyes on you, Jimmie. 'Ain't you men got no sense for +seein' things? Since the day they moved the Gents' Furnishings across from +the Ladies' Neckwear she's had you spotted. Her goings-on used to leak down +to the basement, alrighty. She's not a good girl, May ain't, Jimmie. She +ain't, and you know it. Is she? Is she?" + +"Aw!" said Jimmie Batch. + +"You see! See! 'Ain't got the nerve to answer, have you?" + +"Aw--maybe I know, too, that she's not the kind of a girl that would turn +up where she's not--" + +"If you wasn't a classy-looking kind of boy, Jimmie, that a fly girl like +May likes to be seen out with, she couldn't find you with magnifying +glasses, not if you was born with the golden rule in your mouth and had +swallowed it. She's not the kind of girl, Jimmie, a fellow like you needs +behind him. If--if you was ever to marry her and get your hands on them +five hundred dollars--" + +"It would be my business." + +"It'll be your ruination. You're not strong enough to stand up under +nothing like that. With a few hundred unearned dollars in your pocket +you--you'd go up in spontaneous combustion, you would." + +"It would be my own spontaneous combustion." + +"You got to be drove, Jimmie, like a kid. With them few dollars you +wouldn't start up a little cigar-store like you think you would. You and +her would blow yourselves to the dogs in two months. Cigar-stores ain't the +place for you, Jimmie. You seen how only clerking in them was nearly your +ruination--the little gambling-room-in-the-back kind that you pick out. +They ain't cigar-stores; they're only false faces for gambling." + +"You know it all, don't you?" + +"Oh, I'm dealing it to you straight! There's too many sporty crowds loafing +around those joints for a fellow like you to stand up under. I found you in +one, and as yellow-fingered and as loafing as they come, a new job a week, +a--" + +"Yeh, and there was some pep to variety, too." + +"Don't throw over, Jimmie, what my getting you out of it to a decent job in +a department store has begun to do for you. And you're making good, too. +Higgins told me to-day, if you don't let your head swell, there won't be a +fellow in the department can stack up his sales-book any higher." + +"Aw!" + +"Don't throw it all over, Jimmie--and me--for a crop of dyed red hair and a +few dollars to ruin yourself with." + +He shot her a look of constantly growing nervousness, his mouth pulled to +an oblique, his glance constantly toward the door. + +"Don't keep no date with her to-night, Jimmie. You haven't got the +constitution to stand her pace. It's telling on you. Look at those fingers +yellowing again--looka--" + +"They're my fingers, ain't they?" + +"You see, Jimmie, I--I'm the only person in the world that likes you just +for what--you ain't--and hasn't got any pipe dreams about you. That's what +counts, Jimmie, the folks that like you in spite, and not because of." + +"We will now sing psalm number two hundred and twenty-three." + +"I know there's not a better fellow in the world if he's kept nailed to the +right job, and I know, too, there's not another fellow can go to the dogs +any easier." + +"To hear you talk, you'd think I was about six." + +"I'm the only girl that'll ever be willing to make a whip out of herself +that'll keep you going and won't sting, honey. I know you're soft and lazy +and selfish and--" + +"Don't forget any." + +"And I know you're my good-looking good-for-nothing, and I know, too, that +you--you don't care as much--as much for me from head to toe as I do for +your little finger. But I--I like you just the same, Jimmie. That--that's +what I mean about having no shame. I--do like you so--so terribly, Jimmie." + +"Aw now--Gert!" + +"I know it, Jimmie--that I ought to be ashamed. Don't think I haven't cried +myself to sleep with it whole nights in succession." + +"Aw now--Gert!" + +"Don't think I don't know it, that I'm laying myself before you pretty +common. I know it's common for a girl to--to come to a fellow like this, +but--but I haven't got any shame about it--I haven't got anything, Jimmie, +except fight for--for what's eating me. And the way things are between us +now is eating me." + +"I--Why, I got a mighty high regard for you, Gert." + +"There's a time in a girl's life, Jimmie, when she's been starved like I +have for something of her own all her days; there's times, no matter how +she's held in, that all of a sudden comes a minute when she busts out." + +"I understand, Gert, but--" + +"For two years and eight months, Jimmie, life has got to be worth while +living to me because I could see the day, even if we--you--never talked +about it, when you would be made over from a flip kid to--to the kind of a +fellow would want to settle down to making a little--two-by-four home for +us. A--little two-by-four all our own, with you steady on the job and +advanced maybe to forty or fifty a week and--" + +"For God's sake, Gertie, this ain't the time or the place to--" + +"Oh yes, it is! It's got to be, because it's the first time in four weeks +that you didn't see me coming first." + +"But not now, Gert. I--" + +"I'm not ashamed to tell you, Jimmie Batch, that I've been the making of +you since that night you threw the wink at me. And--and it hurts, this +does. God! how it hurts!" + +He was pleating the table-cloth, swallowing as if his throat had +constricted, and still rearing his head this way and that in the tight +collar. + +"I--never claimed not to be a bad egg. This ain't the time and the place +for rehashing, that's all. Sure you been a friend to me. I don't say +you haven't. Only I can't be bossed by a girl like you. I don't say May +Scully's any better than she ought to be. Only that's my business. You +hear? my business. I got to have life and see a darn sight more future for +myself than selling shirts in a Fourteenth Street department store." + +"May Scully can't give it to you--her and her fast crowd." + +"Maybe she can and maybe she can't." + +"Them few dollars won't make you; they'll break you." + +"That's for her to decide, not you." + +"I'll tell her myself. I'll face her right here and--" + +"Now, look here, if you think I'm going to be let in for a holy show +between you two girls, you got another think coming. One of us has got to +clear out of here, and quick, too. You been talking about the side door; +there it is. In five minutes I got a date in this place that I thought I +could keep like any law-abiding citizen. One of us has got to clear, and +quick, too. God! you wimmin make me sick, the whole lot of you!" + +"If anything makes you sick, I know what it is. It's dodging me to fly +around all hours of the night with May Scully, the girl who put the tang in +tango. It's eating around in swell sixty-cent restaurants like this and--" + +"Gad! your middle name ought to be Nagalene." + +"Aw, now, Jimmie, maybe it does sound like nagging, but it ain't, honey. +It--it's only my--my fear that I'm losing you, and--and my hate for the +every-day grind of things, and--" + +"I can't help that, can I?" + +"Why, there--there's nothing on God's earth I hate, Jimmie, like I hate +that Bargain-Basement. When I think it's down there in that manhole I've +spent the best years of my life, I--I wanna die. The day I get out of it, +the day I don't have to punch that old time-clock down there next to the +Complaints and Adjustment Desk, I--I'll never put my foot below sidewalk +level again to the hour I die. Not even if it was to take a walk in my own +gold-mine." + +"It ain't exactly a garden of roses down there." + +"Why, I hate it so terrible, Jimmie, that sometimes I wake up nights +gritting my teeth with the smell of steam-pipes and the tramp of feet on +the glass sidewalk up over me. Oh. God! you dunno--you dunno!" + +"When it comes to that the main floor ain't exactly a maiden's dream, or a +fellow's, for that matter." + +"With a man it's different, It's his job in life, earning, and--and the +woman making the two ends of it meet. That's why, Jimmie, these last +two years and eight months, if not for what I was hoping for us, +why--why--I--why, on your twenty a week, Jimmie, there's nobody could run +a flat like I could. Why, the days wouldn't be long enough to putter in. +I--Don't throw away what I been building up for us, Jimmie, step by step! +Don't, Jimmie!" + +"Good Lord, girl! You deserve better 'n me." + +"I know I got a big job, Jimmie, but I want to make a man out of you, +temper, laziness, gambling, and all. You got it in you to be something more +than a tango lizard or a cigar-store bum, honey. It's only you 'ain't +got the stuff in you to stand up under a five-hundred-dollar windfall +and--a--and a sporty girl. If--if two glasses of beer make you as silly as +they do, Jimmie, why, five hundred dollars would land you under the table +for life." + +"Aw-there you go again!" + +"I can't help it, Jimmie. It's because I never knew a fellow had what's +he's cut out for written all over him so. You're a born clerk, Jimmie. + +"Sure, I'm a slick clerk, but--" + +"You're born to be a clerk, a good clerk, even a two-hundred-a-month clerk, +the way you can win the trade, but never your own boss. I know what I'm +talking about. I know your measure better than any human on earth can +ever know your measure. I know things about you that you don't even know +yourself." + +"I never set myself up to nobody for anything I wasn't." + +"Maybe not, Jimmie, but I know about you and--and that Central Street gang +that time, and--" + +"You!" + +"Yes, honey, and there's not another human living but me knows how little +it was your fault. Just bad company, that was all. That's how much I--I +love you, Jimmie, enough to understand that. Why, if I thought May Scully +and a set-up in business was the thing for you, Jimmie, I'd say to her, I'd +say, if it was like taking my own heart out in my hand and squashing it, +I'd say to her, I'd say, 'Take him, May.' That's how I--I love you, Jimmie. +Oh, ain't it nothing, honey, a girl can come here and lay herself this low +to you--" + +"Well, haven't I just said you--you deserve better." + +"I don't want better, Jimmie. I want you. I want to take hold of your life +and finish the job of making it the kind we can both be proud of. Us two, +Jimmie, in--in our own decent two-by-four. Shopping on Saturday nights. +Frying in our own frying-pan in our own kitchen. Listening to our own +phonograph in our own parlor. Geraniums and--and kids--and--and things. +Gas-logs. Stationary washtubs. Jimmie! Jimmie!" + +Mr. James P. Batch reached up for his hat and overcoat, cramming the +newspaper into a rear pocket. + +"Come on," he said, stalking toward the side door and not waiting to see +her to her feet. + +Outside, a banner of stars was over the narrow street. For a chain of five +blocks he walked, with a silence and speed that Miss Slayback could only +match with a running quickstep. But she was not out of breath. Her head was +up, and her hand, where it hooked into Mr. Batch's elbow, was in a vise +that tightened with each block. + +You who will mete out no other approval than that vouched for by the stamp +of time and whose contempt for the contemporary is from behind the easy +refuge of the classics, suffer you the shuddering analogy that between +Aspasia who inspired Pericles, Theodora who suggested the Justinian code, +and Gertie Slayback who commandeered Jimmie Batch, is a sistership which +rounds them, like a lasso thrown back into time, into one and the same +petticoat dynasty behind the throne. + +True, Gertie Slayback's _mise en scene_ was a two-room kitchenette +apartment situated in the Bronx at a surveyor's farthest point between two +Subway stations, and her present state one of frequent red-faced forays +down into a packing-case. But there was that in her eyes which witchingly +bespoke the conquered, but not the conqueror. Hers was actually the +titillating wonder of a bird which, captured, closes its wings, that +surrender can be so sweet. + +Once she sat on the edge of the packing-case, dallying a hammer, then laid +it aside suddenly, to cross the littered room and place the side of her +head to the immaculate waistcoat of Mr. Jimmie Batch, red-faced, too, over +wrenching up with hatchet-edge a barrel-top. + +"Jimmie darling, I--I just never will get over your finding this place for +us." + +Mr. Batch wiped his forearm across his brow, his voice jerking between the +squeak of nails extracted from wood. + +"It was you, honey. You give me the to-let ad, and I came to look, that's +all." + +"Just the samey, it was my boy found it. If you hadn't come to look we +might have been forced into taking that old dark coop over on Simpson +Street." + +"What's all this junk in this barrel?" + +"Them's kitchen utensils, honey." + +"Kitchen what?" + +"Kitchen things that you don't know nothing about except to eat good things +out of." + +"What's this?" + +"Don't bend it! That's a celery-brush. Ain't it cute?" + +"A celery-brush! Why didn't you get it a comb, too?" + +"Aw, now, honey-bee, don't go trying to be funny and picking through these +things you don't know nothing about! They're just cute things I'm going to +cook something grand suppers in, for my something awful bad boy." + +He leaned down to kiss her at that. "Gee!" + +She was standing, her shoulder to him and head thrown back against his +chest. She looked up to stroke his cheek, her face foreshortened. + +"I'm all black and blue pinching myself, Jimmie." + +"Me too." + +"Every night when I get home from working here in the flat I say to +myself in the looking-glass, I say, 'Gertie Slayback, what if you're only +dreamin'?'" + +"Me too." + +"I say to myself, 'Are you sure that darling flat up there, with the new +pink-and-white wall-paper and the furniture arriving every day, is going to +be yours in a few days when you're Mrs. Jimmie Batch?'" + +"Mrs. Jimmie Batch--say, that's immense." + +"I keep saying it to myself every night, 'One day less.' Last night it was +two days. To-night it'll be--one day, Jimmie, till I'm--her." + +She closed her eyes and let her hand linger up at his cheek, head still +back against him, so that, inclining his head, he could rest his lips in +the ash-blond fluff of her hair. + +"Talk about can't wait! If to-morrow was any farther off they'd have to +sweep out a padded cell for me." + +She turned to rumple the smooth light thatch of his hair. "Bad boy! Can't +wait! And here we are getting married all of a sudden, just like that. Up +to the time of this draft business, Jimmie Batch, 'pretty soon' was the +only date I could ever get out of you, and now here you are crying over one +day's wait. Bad honey boy!" + +He reached back for the pink newspaper so habitually protruding from +his hip pocket. "You ought to see the way they're neck-breaking for the +marriage-license bureaus since the draft. First thing we know, tine whole +shebang of the boys will be claiming the exemption of sole support of +wife." + +"It's a good thing we made up our minds quick, Jimmie. They'll be getting +wise. If too many get exemption from the army by marrying right away, it'll +be a give-away." + +"I'd like to know who can lay his hands on the exemption of a little wife +to support." + +"Oh, Jimmie, it--it sounds so funny. Being supported! Me that always did +the supporting, not only to me, but to my mother and great-grand-mother up +to the day they died." + +"I'm the greatest little supporter you ever seen." + +"Me getting up mornings to stay at home in my own darling little flat, and +no basement or time-clock. Nothing but a busy little hubby to eat him nice, +smelly, bacon breakfast and grab him nice morning newspaper, kiss him +wifie, and run downtown to support her. Jimmie, every morning for your +breakfast I'm going to fry--" + +"You bet your life he's going to support her, and he's going to pay back +that forty dollars of his girl's that went into his wedding duds, that +hundred and ninety of his girl's savings that went into furniture--" + +"We got to meet our instalments every month first, Jimmie. That's what we +want--no debts and every little darling piece of furniture paid up." + +"We--I'm going to pay it, too." + +"And my Jimmie is going to work to get himself promoted and quit being a +sorehead at his steady hours and all." + +"I know more about selling, honey, than the whole bunch of dubs in that +store put together if they'd give me a chance to prove it." + +She laid her palm to his lips. + +"'Shh-h-h! You don't nothing of the kind. It's not conceit, it's work is +going to get my boy his raise." + +"If they'd listen to me, that department would--" + +"'Shh-h! J. G. Hoffheimer don't have to get pointers from Jimmie Batch how +to run his department store." + +"There you go again. What's J. G. Hoffheimer got that I 'ain't? Luck and a +few dollars in his pocket that, if I had in mine, would-- + +"It was his own grit put those dollars there, Jimmie. Just put it out of +your head that it's luck makes a self-made man." + +"Self-made! You mean things just broke right for him. That's two-thirds of +this self-made business." + +"You mean he buckled right down to brass tacks, and that's what my boy is +going to do." + +"The trouble with this world is it takes money to make money. Get your +first few dollars, I always say, no matter how, and then when you're on +your feet scratch your conscience if it itches. That's why I said in the +beginning, if we had took that hundred and ninety furniture money and +staked it on--" + +"Jimmie, please--please! You wouldn't want to take a girl's savings of +years and years to gamble on a sporty cigar proposition with a card-room in +the rear. You wouldn't, Jimmie. You ain't that kind of fellow. Tell me you +wouldn't, Jimmie." + +He turned away to dive down into the barrel. "Naw," he said, "I wouldn't." + +The sun had receded, leaving a sudden sullen gray, the little square room, +littered with an upheaval of excelsior, sheet-shrouded furniture, and the +paperhanger's paraphernalia and inimitable smells, darkening and seeming to +chill. + +"We got to quit now, Jimmie. It's getting dark and the gas ain't turned on +in the meter yet." + +He rose up out of the barrel, holding out at arm's-length what might have +been a tinsmith's version of a porcupine. + +"What in--What's this thing that scratched me?" + +She danced to take it. "It's a grater, a darling grater for horseradish and +nutmeg and cocoanut. I'm going to fix you a cocoanut cake for our +honeymoon supper to-morrow night, honey-bee. Essie Wohlgemuth over in the +cake-demonstrating department is going to bring me the recipe. Cocoanut +cake! And I'm going to fry us a little steak in this darling little +skillet. Ain't it the cutest!" + +"Cute she calls a tin skillet." + +"Look what's pasted on it. 'Little Housewife's Skillet. The Kitchen Fairy.' +That's what I'm going to be, Jimmie, the kitchen fairy. Give me that. It's +a rolling-pin. All my life I've wanted a rolling-pin. Look, honey, a little +string to hang it up by. I'm going to hang everything up in rows. It's +going to look like Tiffany's kitchen, all shiny. Give me, honey; that's an +egg-beater. Look at it whiz. And this--this is a pan for war bread. I'm +going to make us war bread to help the soldiers." + +"You're a little soldier yourself," he said. + +"That's what I would be if I was a man, a soldier all in brass buttons." + +"There's a bunch of the fellows going," said Mr. Batch, standing at the +window, looking out over roofs, dilly-dallying up and down on his heels +and breaking into a low, contemplative whistle. She was at his shoulder, +peering over it. "You wouldn't be afraid, would you, Jimmie?" + +"You bet your life I wouldn't." + +She was tiptoes now, her arms creeping up to him. "Only my boy's got a +wife--a brand-new wifie to support, 'ain't he?" + +"That's what he has," said Mr. Batch, stroking her forearm, but still +gazing through and beyond whatever roofs he was seeing. + +"Jimmie!" + +"Huh?" + +"Look! We got a view of the Hudson River from our flat, just like we lived +on Riverside Drive." + +"All the Hudson River I can see is fifteen smoke-stacks and somebody's +wash-line out." + +"It ain't so. We got a grand view. Look! Stand on tiptoe, Jimmie, like me. +There, between that water-tank on that black roof over there and them two +chimneys. See? Watch my finger. A little stream of something over there +that moves." + +"No, I don't see." + +"Look, honey-bee, close! See that little streak?" + +"All right, then, if you see it I see it." + +"To think we got a river view from our flat! It's like living in the +country. I'll peek out at it all day long. God! honey, I just never will be +over the happiness of being done with basements." + +"It was swell of old Higgins to give us this half-Saturday. It shows where +you stood with the management, Gert--this and a five-dollar gold piece. +Lord knows they wouldn't pony up that way if it was me getting married by +myself." + +"It's because my boy 'ain't shown them down there yet the best that's in +him. You just watch his little safety-first wife see to it that from now on +he keeps up her record of never in seven years punching the time-clock even +one minute late, and that he keeps his stock shelves O. K. and shows his +department he's a comer-on." + +"With that bunch of boobs a fellow's got a swell chance to get anywheres." + +"It's getting late, Jimmie. It don't look nice for us to stay here so late +alone, not till--to-morrow. Ruby and Essie and Charley are going to meet us +in the minister's back parlor at ten sharp in the morning. We can be +back here by noon and get the place cleared enough to give 'em a little +lunch--just a fun lunch without fixings." + +"I hope the old guy don't waste no time splicing us. It's one of the things +a fellow likes to have over with." + +"Jimmie! Why, it's the most beautiful thing in the world, like a garden of +lilies or--or something, a marriage ceremony is! You got the ring safe, +honey-bee, and the license?" + +"Pinned in my pocket where you put 'em, Flirty Gertie." + +"Flirty Gertie! Now you'll begin teasing me with that all our life--the +way I didn't slap your face that night when I should have. I just couldn't +have, honey. Goes to show we were just cut and dried for each other, don't +it? Me, a girl that never in her life let a fellow even bat his eyes at her +without an introduction. But that night when you winked, honey--something +inside of me just winked back." + +"My girl!" + +"You mean it, boy? You ain't sorry about nothing, Jimmie?" + +"Sorry? Well, I guess not!" + +"You saw the way--she--May--you saw for yourself what she was, when we saw +her walking, that next night after Ceiner's, nearly staggering, up Sixth +Avenue with Budge Evans." + +"I never took any stock in her, honey. I was just letting her like me." + +She sat back on the box edge, regarding him, her face so soft and wont to +smile that she could not keep her composure. + +"Get me my hat and coat, honey. We'll walk down. Got the key?" + +They skirmished in the gloom, moving through slit-like aisles of furniture +and packing-box. + +"Ouch!" + +"Oh, the running water is hot, Jimmie, just like the ad said! We got +red-hot running water in our flat. Close the front windows, honey. We don't +want it to rain in on our new green sofa. Not 'til it's paid for, anyways." + +"Hurry." + +"I'm ready." + +They met at the door, kissing on the inside and the outside of it; at the +head of the fourth, third, and the second balustrade down. + +"We'll always make 'em little love landings, Jimmie, so we can't ever get +tired climbing them." + +"Yep." + +Outside there was still a pink glow in a clean sky. The first flush of +spring in the air had died, leaving chill. They walked briskly, arm in arm, +down the asphalt incline of sidewalk leading from their apartment house, a +new street of canned homes built on a hillside--the sepulchral abode of the +city's trapped whose only escape is down the fire-escape, and then only +when the alternative is death. At the base of the hill there flows, in +constant hubbub, a great up-and-down artery of street, repeating +itself, mile after mile, in terms of the butcher, the baker, and the +"every-other-corner drug-store of a million dollar corporation". Housewives +with perambulators and oil-cloth shopping bags. Children on rollerskates. +The din of small tradesmen and the humdrum of every city block where the +homes remain unbearded all summer and every wife is on haggling terms with +the purveyor of her evening roundsteak and mess of rutabaga. + +Then there is the soap-box provender, too, sure of a crowd, offering creed, +propaganda, patent medicine, and politics. It is the pulpit of the reformer +and the housetop of the fanatic, this soapbox. From it the voice to the +city is often a pious one, an impious one, and almost always a raucous one. +Luther and Sophocles, and even a Citizen of Nazareth made of the four winds +of the street corner the walls of a temple of wisdom. What more fitting +acropolis for freedom of speech than the great out-of-doors! + +Turning from the incline of cross-street into this petty Baghdad of +the petty wise, the voice of the street corner lifted itself above +the inarticulate din of the thoroughfare. A youth, thewed like an ox, +surmounted on a stack of three self provided canned-goods boxes, his +in-at-the-waist silhouette thrown out against a sky that was almost ready +to break out in stars; a crowd tightening about him. + +"It's a soldier boy talkin', Gert." + +"If it ain't!" They tiptoed at the fringe of the circle, heads back. + +"Look, Gert, he's a lieutenant; he's got a shoulder-bar. And those four +down there holding the flags are just privates. You can always tell a +lieutenant by the bar." + +"Uh-huh." + +"Say, them boys do stack up some for Uncle Sam." + +"'Shh-h-h, Jimmie!" + +"I'm here to tell you that them boys stack up some." + +A banner stiffened out in the breeze, Mr. Batch reading: "Enlist before you +are drafted. Last chance to beat the draft. Prove your patriotism. Enlist +now! Your country calls!" + +"Come on," said Mr. Batch. + +"Wait. I want to hear what he's saying." + +"... there's not a man here before me can afford to shirk his duty to his +country. The slacker can't get along without his country, but his country +can very easily get along without him." + +Cheers. + +"The poor exemption boobs are already running for doctors' certificates and +marriage licenses, but even if they get by with it--and it is ninety-nine +to one they won't--they can't run away from their own degradation and +shame." + +"Come on, Jimmie." + +"Wait." + +"Men of America, for every one of you who tries to dodge his duty to his +country there is a yellow streak somewhere underneath the hide of you. +Women of America, every one of you that helps to foster the spirit of +cowardice in your particular man or men is helping to make a coward. It's +the cowards and the quitters and the slackers and dodgers that need this +war more than the patriotic ones who are willing to buckle on and go! + +"Don't be a buttonhole patriot! A government that is good enough to live +under is good enough to fight under!" + +Cheers. + +"If there is any reason on earth has manifested itself for this devastating +and terrible war it is that it has been a maker of men. + +"Ladies and gentlemen, I am back from four months in the trenches with the +French army, and I've come home, now that my own country is at war, to give +her every ounce of energy I've got to offer. As soon as a hole in my side +is healed up. I'm going back to those trenches, and I want to say to you +that them four months of mine face to face with life and with death have +done more for me than all my twenty-four civilian years put together." + +Cheers. + +"I'll be a different man, if I live to come back home after this war +and take up my work again as a draftsman. Why, I've seen weaklings and +self-confessed failures and even ninnies go into them trenches and come +out--oh yes, plenty of them do come out--men. Men that have got close +enough down to the facts of things to feel new realizations of what life +means come over them. Men that have gotten back their pep, their ambitions, +their unselfishness. That's what war can do for your men, you women who +are helping them to foster the spirit of holding back, of cheating their +government. That's what war can do for your men. Make of them the kind +of men who some day can face their children without having to hang their +heads. Men who can answer for their part in making the world a safe place +for democracy." + +An hour they stood there, the air quieting but chilling, and lavishly sown +stars cropping out. Street lights had come out, too, throwing up in ever +darker relief the figure above the heads of the crowd. His voice had +coarsened and taken on a raw edge, but every gesture was flung from the +socket, and from where they had forced themselves into the tight circle +Gertie Slayback, her mouth fallen open and her head still back, could see +the sinews of him ripple under khaki and the diaphragm lift for voice. + +There was a shift of speakers then, this time a private, still too rangy, +but his looseness of frame seeming already to conform to the exigency of +uniform. + +"Come on, Jimmie. I--I'm cold." + +They worked out into the freedom of the sidewalk, and for ten minutes, down +blocks of petty shops already lighted, walked in a silence that grew apace. + +He was suddenly conscious that she was crying, quietly, her handkerchief +wadded against her mouth. He strode on with a scowl and his head bent. +"Let's sit down in this little park, Jimmie. I'm tired." + +They rested on a bench on one of those small triangles of breathing space +which the city ekes out now and then; mill ends of land parcels. + +He took immediately to roving the toe of his shoe in and out among the +gravel. She stole out her hand to his arm. + +"Well, Jimmie?" Her voice was in the gauze of a whisper that hardly left +her throat. + +"Well, what?" he said, still toeing. + +"There--there's a lot of things we never thought about, Jimmie." + +"Aw!" + +"Eh, Jimmie?" + +"You mean _you_ never thought about it?" + +"What do you mean?" + +"I know what I mean alrighty." + +"I--I was the one that suggested it, Jimmie, but--but you fell in. I--I +just couldn't bear to think of it, Jimmie--your going and all. I suggested +it, but--but you fell in." + +"Say, when a fellow's shoved he falls. I never gave a thought to sneaking +an exemption until it was put in my head. I'd smash the fellow in the face +that calls me coward, I will." + +"You could have knocked me down with a feather, Jimmie, looking at it his +way all of a sudden." + +"You couldn't knock me down. Don't think I was ever strong enough for the +whole business. I mean the exemption part. I wasn't going to say anything. +What's the use, seeing the way you had your heart set on--on things? But +the whole business, if you want to know it, went against my grain. I'll +smash the fellow in the face that calls me coward." + +"I know, Jimmie; you--you're right. It was me suggested hurrying things +like this. Sneakin'! Oh, God! ain't I the messer-up!" + +"Lay easy, girl. I'm going to see it through. I guess there's been fellows +before me and will be after me who have done worse. I'm going to see it +through. All I got to say is I'll smash up the fellow calls me coward. Come +on, forget it. Let's go." + +She was close to him, her cheek crinkled against his with the frank kind of +social unconsciousness the park bench seems to engender. + +"Come on, Gert. I got a hunger on." + +'"Shh-h-h, Jimmie! Let me think. I'm thinking." + +"Too much thinking killed a cat. Come on." + +"Jimmie!" + +"Huh?" + +"Jimmie--would you--had you ever thought about being a soldier?" + +"Sure. I came in an ace of going into the army that time after--after that +little Central Street trouble of mine. I've got a book in my trunk this +minute on military tactics. Wouldn't surprise me a bit to see me land in +the army some day." + +"It's a fine thing, Jimmie, for a fellow--the army." + +"Yeh, good for what ails him." + +She drew him back, pulling at his shoulder so that finally he faced her. +"Jimmie!" + +"Huh?" + +"I got an idea." + +"Shoot." + +"You remember once, honey-bee, how I put it to you that night at Ceiner's +how, if it was for your good, no sacrifice was too much to make." + +"Forget it." + +"You didn't believe it." + +"Aw, say now, what's the use digging up ancient history?" + +"You'd be right, Jimmie, not to believe it. I haven't lived up to what I +said." + +"Oh Lord, honey! What's eating you now? Come to the point." + +She would not meet his eyes, turning her head from him to hide lips +that would quiver. "Honey, it--it ain't coming off--that's all. Not +now--anyways." + +"What ain't?" + +"Us." + +"Who?" + +"You know what I mean, Jimmie. It's like everything the soldier boy on the +corner just said. I--I saw you getting red clear behind your ears over it. +I--I was, too, Jimmie. It's like that soldier boy was put there on that +corner just to show me, before it was too late, how wrong I been in every +one of my ways. Us women who are helping to foster slackers. That's what +we're making of them--slackers for life. And here I been thinking it was +your good I had in mind, when all along it's been mine. That's what it's +been, mine!" + +"Aw, now, Gert--" + +"You got to go, Jimmie. You got to go, because you want to go and--because +I want you to go." + +"Where?" + +"To war." + +He took hold of her two arms because they were trembling. "Aw, now, Gert, I +didn't say anything complaining. I--" + +"You did, Jimmie, you did, and--and I never was so glad over you that you +did complain. I just never was so glad. I want you to go, Jimmie. I want +you to go and get a man made out of you. They'll make a better job out of +you than ever I can. I want you to get the yellow streak washed out. I want +you to get to be all the things he said you would. For every line he was +talking up there, I could see my boy coming home to me some day better than +anything I could make out of him, babying him the way I can't help doing. I +could see you, honey-bee, coming back to me with the kind of lift to your +head a fellow has when he's been fighting to make the world a safe place +for dem--for whatever it was he said. I want you to go, Jimmie. I want you +to beat the draft, too. Nothing on earth can make me not want you to go." + +"Why, Gert--you're kiddin'!" + +"Honey, you want to go, don't you? You want to square up those shoulders +and put on khaki, don't you? Tell me you want to go!" + +"Why--why, yes, Gert, if--" + +"Oh, you're going, Jimmie! You're going!" + +"Why, girl--you're crazy! Our flat! Our furniture--our--" + +"What's a flat? What's furniture? What's anything? There's not a firm in +business wouldn't take back a boy's furniture--a boy's everything--that's +going out to fight for--for dem-o-cracy! What's a flat? What's anything?" + +He let drop his head to hide his eyes. + +Do you know it is said that on the Desert of Sahara, the slope of Sorrento, +and the marble of Fifth Avenue the sun can shine whitest? There is an +iridescence to its glittering on bleached sand, blue bay, and Carrara +facade that is sheer light distilled to its utmost. + +On one such day when, standing on the high slope of Fifth Avenue where it +rises toward the Park, and looking down on it, surging to and fro, it was +as if, so manifest the brilliancy, every head wore a tin helmet, parrying +sunlight at a thousand angles of refraction. + +Parade-days, all this glittering midstream is swept to the clean sheen of +a strip of moire, this splendid desolation blocked on each side by crowds +half the density of the sidewalk. + +On one of these sun-drenched Saturdays dedicated by a growing tradition to +this or that national expression, the Ninety-ninth Regiment, to a flare of +music that made the heart leap out against its walls, turned into a scene +thus swept clean for it, a wave of olive drab, impeccable row after +impeccable row of scissors-like legs advancing. Recruits, raw if you will, +but already caparisoned, sniffing and scenting, as it were, for the great +primordial mire of war. + +There is no state of being so finely sensitized as national consciousness. +A gauntlet down and it surges up. One ripple of a flag defended can +goose-flesh a nation. How bitter and how sweet it is to give a soldier! + +To the seething kinetic chemistry of such mingling emotions there were +women who stood in the frontal crowds of the sidewalks stifling hysteria, +or ran after in terror at sight of one so personally hers, receding in that +great impersonal wave of olive drab. + +And yet the air was martial with banner and with shout. And the ecstasy of +such moments is like a dam against reality, pressing it back. It is in the +pompless watches of the night or of too long days that such dams break, +excoriating. + +For the thirty blocks of its course Gertie Slayback followed that wave of +men, half run and half walk. Down from the curb, and at the beck and call +of this or that policeman up again, only to find opportunity for still +another dive out from the invisible roping off of the sidewalk crowds. + +From the middle of his line, she could see, sometimes, the tail of Jimmie +Batch's glance roving for her, but to all purports his eye was solely for +his own replica in front of him, and at such times, when he marched, his +back had a little additional straightness that was almost swayback. + +Nor was Gertie Slayback crying. On the contrary, she was inclined to +laughter. A little too inclined to a high and brittle sort of dissonance +over which she seemed to have no control. + +"'By, Jimmie! So long! Jimmie! You-hoo!" + +Tramp. Tramp. Tramp-tramp-tramp. + +"You-hoo! Jimmie! So long, Jimmie!" + +At Fourteenth Street, and to the solemn stroke of one from a tower, she +broke off suddenly without even a second look back, dodging under the very +arms of the crowd as she ran out from it. + +She was one and three-quarter minutes late when she punched the time-clock +beside the Complaints and Adjustment Desk in the Bargain-Basement. + + + + +II + +SIEVE OF FULFILMENT + + +How constant a stream is the runnel of men's small affairs! + +Dynasties may totter and half the world bleed to death, but one or the +other corner _patisserie_ goes on forever. + +At a moment when the shadow of world-war was over the country like a pair +of black wings lowering Mrs. Harry Ross, who swooned at the sight of blood +from a penknife scratch down the hand of her son, but yawned over the +head-line statistics of the casualties at Verdun, lifted a lid from a pot +that exuded immediate savory fumes, prodded with a fork at its content, her +concern boiled down to deal solely with stew. + +An alarm-clock on a small shelf edged in scalloped white oilcloth ticked +with spick-and-span precision into a kitchen so correspondingly spick and +span that even its silence smelled scoured, rows of tins shining into it. +A dun-colored kind of dusk, soot floating in it, began to filter down the +air-shaft, dimming them. + +Mrs. Ross lowered the shade and lighted the gas-jet. So short that in the +long run she wormed first through a crowd, she was full of the genial +curves that, though they bespoke three lumps in her coffee in an elevator +and escalator age, had not yet reached uncongenial proportions. In fact, +now, brushing with her bare forearm across her moistly pink face, she was +like Flora, who, rather than fade, became buxom. + +A door slammed in an outer hall, as she was still stirring and looking down +into the stew. + +"Edwin!" + +"Yes, mother." + +"Don't track through the parlor." + +"Aw!" + +"You hear me?" + +"I yain't! Gee, can't a feller walk?" + +"Put your books on the hat-rack." + +"I am." + +She supped up bird-like from the tip of her spoon, smacking for flavor. + +"I made you an asafetida-bag, Edwin, it's in your drawer. Don't you leave +this house to-morrow without it on." + +"Aw-w-w-w-w!" + +"It don't smell." + +"Where's my stamp-book?" + +"On your table, where it belongs." + +"Gee whiz! if you got my Argentine stamps mixed!" + +"Get washed." + +"Where's my batteries?" + +"Under your bed, where they belong." + +"I'm hungry." + +"Your father'll be home any minute now. Don't spoil your appetite." + +"I got ninety in manual training, mother." + +"Did yuh, Edwin?" + +"All the other fellows only got seventy and eighty." + +"Mamma's boy leads 'em." + +He entered at that, submitting to a kiss upon an averted cheek. + +"See what mother's fixed for you!" + +"M-m-m-m! fritters!" + +"Don't touch!" + +"M-m-m-m--lamb stew!" + +"I shopped all morning to get okra to go in it for your father." + +"M-m-m-m-m!" + +She tiptoed up to kiss him again, this time at the back of the neck, +carefully averting her floury hands. + +"Mamma's boy! I made you three pen-wipers to-day out of the old red +table-cover." + +"Aw, fellers don't use pen-wipers!" + +He set up a jiggling, his great feet coming down with a clatter. + +"Stop!" + +"Can't I jig?" + +"No; not with neighbors underneath." + +He flopped down, hooking his heels in the chair-rung. + +At sixteen's stage of cruel hazing into man's estate Edwin Ross, whose +voice, all in a breath, could slip up from the quality of rock in the +drilling to the more brittle octave of early-morning milk-bottles, wore a +nine shoe and a thirteen collar. His first long trousers were let down and +taken in. His second taken up and let out. When shaving promised to become +a manly accomplishment, his complexion suddenly clouded, postponing that +event until long after it had become a hirsute necessity. When he smiled +apoplectically above his first waistcoat and detachable collar, his Adam's +apple and his mother's heart fluttered. + +"Blow-cat Dennis is going to City College." + +"Who's he?" + +"A feller." + +"Quit crackin' your knuckles." + +"He only got seventy in manual training." + +"Tell them things to your father, Edwin; I 'ain't got the say-so." + +"His father's only a bookkeeper, too, and they live 'way up on a Hundred +and Forty-fourth near Third." + +"I'm willing to scrimp and save for it, Edwin; but in the end I haven't got +the say-so, and you know it." + +"The boys that are going to college got to register now for the High School +College Society." + +"Your father, Edwin, is the one to tell that to." + +"Other fellers' mothers put in a word for 'em." + +"I do, Edwin; you know I do! It only aggravates him--There's papa now, +Edwin, coming in. Help mamma dish up. Put this soup at papa's place and +this at yours. There's only two plates left from last night." + +In Mrs. Ross's dining-room, a red-glass dome, swung by a chain over the +round table, illuminated its white napery and decently flowered china. +Beside the window looking out upon a gray-brick wall almost within reach, +a canary with a white-fluted curtain about the cage dozed headless. Beside +that window, covered in flowered chintz, a sewing-machine that could +collapse to a table; a golden-oak sideboard laid out in pressed glassware. +A homely simplicity here saved by chance or chintz from the simply homely. + +Mr. Harry Ross drew up immediately beside the spread table, jerking +open his newspaper and, head thrown back, read slantingly down at the +head-lines. + +"Hello, pop!" + +"Hello, son!" + +"Watch out!" + +"Hah--that's the stuff! Don't spill!" + +He jammed the newspaper between his and the chair back, shoving in closer +to the table. He was blond to ashiness, so that the slicked-back hair might +or might not be graying. Pink-shaved, unlined, nose-glasses polished to +sparkle, he was ten years his wife's senior and looked those ten years +younger. Clerks and clergymen somehow maintain that youth of the flesh, as +if life had preserved them in alcohol or shaving-lotion. Mrs. Ross entered +then in her crisp but faded house dress, her round, intent face still +moistly pink, two steaming dishes held out. + +He did not rise, but reached up to kiss her as she passed. + +"Burnt your soup a little to-night, mother." + +She sat down opposite, breathing deeply outward, spreading her napkin out +across her lap. + +"It was Edwin coming in from school and getting me worked up with his talk +about--about--" + +"What?" + +"Nothing. Edwin, run out and bring papa the paprika to take the burnt taste +out. I turned all the cuffs on your shirts to-day, Harry." + +"Lordy! if you ain't fixing at one thing, you're fixing another." + +"Anything new?" + +He was well over his soup now, drinking in long draughts from the tip of +his spoon. + +"News! In A. E. Unger's office, a man don't get his nose far enough up from +the ledger to even smell news." + +"I see Goldfinch & Goetz failed." + +"Could have told 'em they'd go under, trying to put on a spectacular show +written in verse. That same show boiled down to good Forty-second Street +lingo with some good shapes and a proposition like Alma Zitelle to lift +it from poetry to punch has a world of money in it for somebody. A war +spectacular show filled with sure-fire patriotic lines, a bunch of +show-girl battalions, and a figure like Alma Zitelle's for the Goddess of +Liberty--a world of money, I tell you!" + +"Honest, Harry?" + +"That trench scene they built for that show is as fine a contrivance as +I've ever seen of the kind. What did they do? Set it to a lot of music +without a hum or a ankle in it. A few classy nurses like the Mercy Militia +Sextet, some live, grand-old-flag tunes by Harry Mordelle, and there's a +half a million dollars in that show. Unger thinks I'm crazy when I try to +get him interested, but I--" + +"I got ninety in manual training to-day, pop." + +"That's good, son. Little more of that stew, mother?" + +"Unger isn't so smart, honey, he can't afford to take a tip off you once in +a while: you've proved that to him." + +"Yes, but go tell him so." + +"He'll live to see the day he's got to give you credit for being the first +to see money in 'Pan-America.'" + +"Credit? Huh! to hear him tell it, he was born with that idea in his bullet +head." + +"I'd like to hear him say it to me, if ever I lay eyes on him, that it +wasn't you who begged him to get into it." + +"I'll show 'em some day in that office that I can pick the winners for +myself, as well as for the other fellow. Believe me, Unger hasn't raised +me to fifty a week for my fancy bookkeeping, and he knows it, and, what's +more, he knows I know he knows it." + +"The fellers that are goin' to college next term have to register for the +High School College Society, pop--dollar dues." + +"Well, you aren't going to college, and that's where you and I save a +hundred cents on the dollar. Little more gravy, mother." + +The muscles of Edwin's face relaxed, his mouth dropping to a pout, the +crude features quivering. + +"Aw, pop, a feller nowadays without a college education don't stand a +show." + +"He don't, don't he? I know one who will." + +Edwin threw a quivering glance to his mother and gulped through a +constricted throat. + +"Mother says I--I can go if only you--" + +"Your mother'd say you could have the moon, too, if she had to climb a +greased pole to get it. She'd start weaving door-mats for the Cingalese +Hottentots if she thought they needed 'em." + +"But, Harry, he--" + +"Your mother 'ain't got the bills of this shebang to worry about, and your +mother don't mind having a college sissy a-laying around the house to +support five years longer. I do." + +"It's the free City College, pop." + +"You got a better education now than nine boys out of ten. If you ain't man +enough to want to get out after four years of high school and hustle for +a living, you got to be shown the way out. I started when I was in short +pants, and you're no better than your father. Your mother sold notions and +axle-grease in an up-State general store up to the day she married. Now cut +out the college talk you been springing on me lately. I won't have it--you +hear? You're a poor man's son, and the sooner you make up your mind to it +the better. Pass the chow-chow, mother." + +Nervousness had laid hold of her so that in and out among the dishes her +hand trembled. + +"You see, Harry, it's the free City College, and--" + +"I know that free talk. So was high school free when you talked me into +it, but if it ain't one thing it's been another. Cadet uniform, football +suit--" + +"The child's got talent for invention, Harry; his manual-training teacher +told me his air-ship model was--" + +"I got ninety in manual training when the other fellers only got seventy." + +"I guess you're looking for another case like your father, sitting +penniless around the house, tinkering on inventions up to the day he died." + +"Pa never had the business push, Harry. You know yourself his churn was +ready for the market before the Peerless beat him in on it." + +"Well, your son is going to get the business push trained into him. No boy +of mine with a poor daddy eats up four years of his life and my salary +training to be a college sissy. That's for the rich men's sons. That's for +the Clarence Ungers." + +"I'll pay it back some day, pop; I--." + +"They all say that." + +"If it's the money, Harry, maybe I can--" + +"If it didn't cost a cent, I wouldn't have it. Now cut it out--you hear? +Quick!" + +Edwin Ross pushed back from the table, struggling and choking against +impending tears. "Well, then, I--I--" + +"And no shuffling of feet, neither!" + +"He didn't shuffle, Harry; it's just his feet growing so fast he can't +manage them." + +"Well, just the samey, I--I ain't going into the theayter business. I--I--" + +Mr. Ross flung down his napkin, facing him. "You're going where I put you, +young man. You're going to get the right kind of a start that I didn't get +in the biggest money-making business in the world." + +"I won't. I'll get me a job in an aeroplane-factory." + +His father's palm came down with a small crash, shivering the china. "By +Gad! you take that impudence out of your voice to me or I'll rawhide it +out!" + +"Harry!" + +"Leave the table!" + +"Harry, he's only a child--" + +"Go to your room!" + +His heavy, unformed lips now trembling frankly against the tears he tried +so furiously to resist, Edwin charged with lowered head from the room, sobs +escaping in raw gutturals. + +Mr. Ross came back to his plate, breathing heavily, fist, with a knife +upright in it, coming down again on the table, his mouth open, to +facilitate labored breathing. + +"By Heaven! I'll cowhide that boy to his senses! I've never laid hand on +him yet, but he ain't too old. I'll get him down to common sense, if I got +to break a rod over him." + +Handkerchief against trembling lips, Mrs. Ross looked after the vanished +form, eyes brimming. + +"Harry, you--you're so rough with him." + +"I'll be rougher yet before I'm through." + +"He's only a--" + +"He's rewarding the way you scrimped to pay his expenses for nonsense clubs +and societies by asking you to do it another four years. You're getting +your thanks now. College! Well, not if the court knows it--" + +"He's got talent, Harry; his teacher says he--" + +"So'd your father have talent." + +"If pa hadn't lost his eye in the Civil War--" + +"I'm going to put my son's talent where I can see a future for it." + +"He's ambitious, Harry." + +"So'm I--to see my son trained to be something besides a looney inventor +like his grandfather before him." + +"It's all I want in life, Harry, to see my two boys of you happy." + +"It's your woman-ideas I got to blame for this. I want you to stop, Millie, +putting rich man's ideas in his head. You hear? I won't stand for it." + +"Harry, if--if it's the money, maybe I could manage--" + +"Yes--and scrimp and save and scrooge along without a laundress another +four years, and do his washing and--" + +"I--could fix the money part, Harry--easy." + +He regarded her with his jaw dropped in the act of chewing. + +"By Gad! where do you plant it?" + +"It--it's the way I scrimp, Harry. Another woman would spend it on clothes +or--a servant--or matinees. It ain't hard for a home body like me to save, +Harry." + +He reached across the table for her wrist. + +"Poor little soul," he said, "you don't see day-light." + +"Let him go, Harry, if--if he wants it. I can manage the money." + +His scowl returned, darkening him. + +"No. A. E. Unger never seen the inside of a high school, much less a +college, and I guess he's made as good a pile as most. I've worked for the +butcher and the landlord all my life, and now I ain't going to begin being +a slave to my boy. There's been two or three times in my life where, for +want of a few dirty dollars to make a right start, I'd be, a rich man +to-day. My boy's going to get that right start." + +"But, Harry, college will--" + +"I seen money in 'Pan-America' long before Unger ever dreamed of producing +it. I sicked him onto 'The Official Chaperon' when every manager in town +had turned it down. I went down and seen 'em doing 'The White Elephant' in +a Yiddish theater and wired Unger out in Chicago to come back and grab it +for Broadway. Where's it got me? Nowhere. Because I whiled away the best +fifteen years of my life in an up-State burg, and then, when I came down +here too late in life, got in the rut of a salaried man. Well, where it +'ain't got me it's going to get my son. I'm missing a chance, to-day that, +mark my word, would make me a rich man but for want of a few--" + +"Harry, you mean that?" + +"My hunch never fails me." + +She was leaning across the table, her hands clasping its edge, her small, +plump face even pinker. + +He threw out his legs beneath the table and sat back, hands deep in +pockets, and a toothpick hanging limp from between lips that were sagging. + +"Gad! if I had my life to live over again as a salaried man, I'd--I'd hang +myself first! The way to start a boy to a million dollars in this business +is to start him young in the producing-end of a strong firm." + +"You--got faith in this Goldfinch & Goetz failure like you had in +'Pan-America' and 'The Chaperon,' Harry?" + +"I said it five years ago and it come to pass. I say it now. For want of a +few dirty dollars I'm a poor man till I die." + +"How--many dollars, Harry?" + +"Don't make me say it, Millie--it makes me sick to my stummick. Three +thousand dollars would buy the whole spectacle to save it from the +storehouse. I tried Charley Ryan--he wouldn't risk a ten-spot on a +failure." + +"Harry, I--oh, Harry--" + +"Why, mother, what's the matter? You been overworking again, ironing my +shirts and collars when they ought to go to the laundry? You--" + +"Harry, what would you say if--if I was to tell you something?" + +"What is it, mother? You better get Annie in on Mondays. We 'ain't got any +more to show without her than with her." + +"Harry, we--have!" + +"Well, you just had an instance of the thanks you get." + +"Harry, what--what would you say if I could let you have nearly all of that +three thousand?" + +He regarded her above the flare of a match to his cigar-end. + +"Huh?" + +"If I could let you have twenty-six hundred seventeen dollars and about +fifty cents of it?" + +He sat well up, the light reflecting in points off his polished glasses. + +"Mother, you're joking!" + +Her hands were out across the table now, almost reaching his, her face +close and screwed under the lights. + +"When--when you lost out that time five years ago on 'Pan-America' and I +seen how Linger made a fortune out of it, I says to myself, 'It can never +happen again.' You remember the next January when you got your raise to +fifty and I wouldn't move out of this flat, and instead gave up having +Annie in, that was what I had in my head, Harry. It wasn't only for sending +Edwin to high school; it was for--my other boy, too, Harry, so it couldn't +happen again." + +"Millie, you mean--" + +"You ain't got much idea, Harry, of what I been doing. You don't know it, +honey, but, honest, I ain't bought a stitch of new clothes for five years. +You know I ain't, somehow--made friends for myself since we moved here." + +"It's the hard shell town of the world!" + +"You ain't had time, Harry, to ask yourself what becomes of the house +allowance, with me stinting so. Why, I--I won't spend car fare, Harry, +since 'Pan-America,' if I can help it. This meal I served up here t-night, +with all the high cost of living, didn't cost us two thirds what it +might if--if I didn't have it all figured up. Where do you think your +laundry-money that I've been saving goes, Harry? The marmalade-money I +made the last two Christmases? The velvet muff I made myself out of the +fur-money you give me? It's all in the Farmers' Trust, Harry. With the two +hundred and ten I had to start with five years ago, it's twenty-six hundred +and seventeen dollars and fifty cents now. I've been saving it for this +kind of a minute, Harry. When it got three thousand, I was going to tell +you, anyways. Is that enough, Harry, to do the Goldfinch-Goetz spectacle on +your own hook? Is it, Harry?" + +He regarded her in a heavy-jawed kind of stupefaction. + +"Woman alive!" he said. "Great Heavens, woman alive!" + +"It's in the bank, waiting, Harry--all for you." + +"Why, Millie, I--I don't know what to say." + +"I want you to have it, Harry. It's yours. Out of your pocket, back into +it. You got capital to start with now." + +"I--Why, I can't take that money, Millie, from you!" + +"From your wife? When she stinted and scrimped and saved on shoe-leather +for the happiness of it?" + +"Why, this is no sure thing I got on the brain." + +"Nothing is." + +"I got nothing but my own judgment to rely on." + +"You been right three times, Harry." + +"There's not as big a gamble in the world as the show business. I can't +take your savings, mother." + +"Harry, if--if you don't, I'll tear it up. It's what I've worked for. I'm +too tired, Harry, to stand much. If you don't take it, I--I'm too tired, +Harry, to stand it." + +"But, mother--" + +"I couldn't stand it, I tell you," she said, the tears now bursting and +flowing down over her cheeks. + +"Why, Millie, you mustn't cry! I 'ain't seen you cry in years. Millie! my +God! I can't get my thoughts together! Me to own a show after all these +years; me to--" + +"Don't you think it means something to me, too, Harry?" + +"I can't lose, Millie. Even if this country gets drawn into the war, +there's a mint of money in that show as I see it. It'll help the people. +The people of this country need to have their patriotism tickled." + +"All my life, Harry, I've wanted a gold-mesh bag with a row of sapphires +and diamonds across the top--" + +"I'm going to make it the kind of show that 'Dixie' was a song--" + +"And a gold-colored bird-of-paradise for a black-velvet hat, all my life, +Harry--" + +"With Alma Zitelle in the part--" + +"Is it her picture I found in your drawer the other day, Harry, cut out +from a Sunday newspaper?" + +"One and the same. I been watching her. There's a world of money in that +woman, whoever she is. She's eccentric and they make her play straight, but +if I could get hold of her--My God! Millie, I--I can't believe things!" + +She rose, coming round to lay her arms across his shoulders. + +"We'll be rich, maybe, Harry--" + +"I've picked the winners for the other fellows every time, Mil." + +"Anyhow, it's worth the gamble, Harry." + +"I got a nose for what the people want. I've never been able to prove it +from a high stool, but I'll show 'em now--by God! I'll show 'em now!" He +sprang up, pulling the white table-cloth awry and folding her into his +embrace. "I'll show 'em." + +She leaned from him, her two hands against his chest, head thrown back and +eyes up to him. + +"We--can educate our boy, then, Harry, like--like a rich man's son." + +"We ain't rich yet." + +"Promise me, Harry, if we are--promise me that, Harry. It's the only +promise I ask out of it. Whatever comes, if we win or lose, our boy can +have college if he wants." + +He held her close, his head up and gazing beyond her. + +"With a rich daddy my boy can go to college like the best of 'em." + +"Promise me that, Harry." + +"I promise, Millie." + +He released her then, feeling for an envelope in an inner pocket, and, +standing there above the disarrayed dinner-table, executed some rapid +figures across the back of it. + +She stood for a moment regarding him, hands pressed against the sting of +her cheeks, tears flowing down over her smile. Then she took up the plate +of cloying fritters and tiptoed out, opening softly the door to a slit of +a room across the hall. In the patch of light let in by that opened door, +drawn up before a small table, face toward her ravaged with recent tears, +and lips almost quivering, her son lay in the ready kind of slumber youth +can bring to any woe. She tiptoed up beside him, placing the plate of +fritters back on a pile of books, let her hands run lightly over his hair, +kissed him on each swollen lid. + +"My son! My little boy! My little boy!" + +Where Broadway leaves off its roof-follies and its water-dancing, its +eighty-odd theaters and its very odd Hawaiian cabarets, upper Broadway, +widening slightly, takes up its macadamized rush through the city in +block-square apartment-houses, which rise off plate-glass foundations of +the de-luxe greengrocer shops, the not-so-green beauty-parlors, and the +dyeing-and-cleaning, automobile-supplies, and confectionery establishments +of middle New York. + +In a no-children-allowed, swimming-pool, electric-laundry, roof-garden, +dogs'-playground, cold-storage apartment most recently erected on a +block-square tract of upper Broadway, belonging to and named after the +youngest scion of an ancestor whose cow-patches had turned to kingdoms, the +fifteenth layer of this gigantic honeycomb overlooked from its seventeen +outside windows the great Babylonian valley of the city, the wide blade +of the river shining and curving slightly like an Arabian dagger, and the +embankment of New Jersey's Palisades piled against the sky with the effect +of angry horizon. + +Nights, viewed from one of the seventeen windows, it was as if the river +flowed under a sullen sheath which undulated to its curves. On clear days +it threw off light like parrying steel in sunshine. + +Were days when, gazing out toward it, Mrs. Ross, whose heart was like a +slow ache of ever-widening area, could almost feel its laving quality and, +after the passage of a tug- or pleasure-boat, the soothing folding of the +water down over and upon itself. Often, with the sun setting pink and whole +above the Palisades, the very copper glow which was struck off the water +would beat against her own west windows, and, as if smarting under the +brilliance, tears would come, sometimes staggering and staggering down, +long after the glow was cold. With such a sunset already waned, and the +valley of unrest fifteen stories below popping out into electric signs and +the red danger-lanterns of streets constantly in the remaking, Mrs. Harry +Ross, from the corner window of her seventeen, looked down on it from under +lids that were rimmed in red. + +Beneath the swirl of a gown that lay in an iridescent avalanche of sequins +about her feet, her foot, tilted to an unbelievable hypothenuse off a +cloth-of-silver heel, beat a small and twinkling tattoo, her fingers +tattooing, too, along the chair-sides. + +How insidiously do the years nibble in! how pussy-footed and how cocksure +the crow's-feet! One morning, and the first gray hair, which has been +turning from the cradle, arrives. Another, the mirror shows back a +sag beneath the eyes. That sag had come now to Mrs. Ross, giving her +eye-sockets a look of unconquerable weariness. The streak of quicksilver +had come, too, but more successfully combated. The head lying back against +the brocade chair was guilty of new gleams. Brass, with a greenish alloy. +Sitting there with the look of unshed tears seeming to form a film over +her gaze, it was as if the dusk, flowing into a silence that was solemnly +shaped to receive it, folded her in, more and more obscuring her. + +A door opened at the far end of the room, letting in a patch of hall light +and a dark figure coming into silhouette against it. + +"You there?" + +She sprang up. + +"Yes, Harry--yes." + +"Good Lord! sitting in the dark again!" He turned a wall key, three +pink-shaded lamps, a cluster of pink-glass grapes, and a center bowl of +alabaster flashing up the familiar spectacle of Louis Fourteenth and the +interior decorator's turpitude; a deep-pink brocade divan backed up by a +Circassian-walnut table with curly legs; a maze of smaller tables; a +marble Psyche holding out the cluster of pink grapes; a gilt grand piano, +festooned in rosebuds. Around through these Mr. Ross walked quickly, +winding his hands, rubbing them. + +"Well, here I am!" + +"Had your supper--dinner, Harry?" + +"No. What's the idea calling me off when I got a business dinner on hand? +What's the hurry call this time? I have to get back to it." + +She clasped her hands to her bare throat, swallowing with effort. + +"I--Harry--I--" + +"You've got to stop this kind of thing, Millie, getting nervous spells like +all the other women do the minute they get ten cents in their pocket. I +ain't got the time for it--that's all there is to it." + +"I can't help it, Harry. I think I must be going crazy. I can't stop +myself. All of a sudden everything comes over me. I think I must be going +crazy." + +Her voice jerked up to an off pitch, and he flung himself down on the +deep-cushioned couch, his stiff expanse of dress shirt bulging and +straining at the studs. A bit redder and stouter, too, he was constantly +rearing his chin away from the chafing edge of his collar. + +"O Lord!" he said. "I guess I'm let in for some cutting-up again! Well, +fire away and have it over with! What's eating you this time?" + +She was quivering so against sobs that her lips were drawn in against her +teeth by the great draught of her breathing. + +"I can't stand it, Harry. I'm going crazy. I got to get relief. It's +killing me--the lonesomeness--the waiting. I can't stand no more." + +He sat looking at a wreath of roses in the light carpet, lips compressed, +beating with fist into palm. + +"Gad! I dunno! I give up. You're too much for me, woman." + +"I can't go on this way--the suspense--can't--can't." + +"I don't know what you want. God knows I give up! +Thirty-eight-hundred-dollar-a-year apartment--more spending-money in a +week than you can spend in a month. Clothes. Jewelry. Your son one of the +high-fliers at college--his automobile--your automobile. Passes to every +show in town. Gad! I can't help it if you turn it all down and sit up here +moping and making it hot for me every time I put my foot in the place. I +don't know what you want; you're one too many for me." + +"I can't stand--" + +"All of a sudden, out of a clear sky, she sends for me to come home. Second +time in two weeks. No wonder, with your long face, your son lives mostly +up at the college. I 'ain't got enough on my mind yet with the 'Manhattan +Revue' opening to-morrow night. You got it too good, if you want to know +it. That's what ails women when they get to cutting up like this." + +She was clasping and unclasping her hands, swaying, her eyes closed. + +"I wisht to God we was back in our little flat on a Hundred and +Thirty-seventh Street. We was happy then. It's your success has lost you +for me. I ought to known it, but--I--I wanted things so for you and the +boy. It's your success has lost you for me. Back there, not a supper we +didn't eat together like clockwork, not a night we didn't take a walk or--" + +"There you go again! I tell you, Millie, you're going to nag me with +that once too often. Then ain't now. What you homesick for? Your +poor-as-a-church-mouse days? I been pretty patient these last two years, +feeling like a funeral every time I put my foot in the front door--" + +"It ain't often you put it in." + +"But, mark my word, you're going to nag me once too often!" + +"O God! Harry, I try to keep in! I know how wild it makes you--how busy you +are, but--" + +"A man that's give to a woman heaven on earth like I have you! A man that +started three years ago on nothing but nerve and a few dollars, and now +stands on two feet, one of the biggest spectacle-producers in the business! +By Gad! you're so darn lucky it's made a loon out of you! Get out more. +Show yourself a good time. You got the means and the time. Ain't there no +way to satisfy you?" + +"I can't do things alone all the time, Harry. I--I'm funny that way. I +ain't a woman like that, a new-fangled one that can do things without her +husband. It's the nights that kill me--the nights. The--all nights sitting +here alone--waiting." + +"If you 'ain't learned the demands of my business by now, I'm not going +over them again." + +"Yes; but not all--" + +"You ought to have some men to deal with. I'd like to see Mrs. Unger try to +dictate to him how to run his business." + +"You've left me behind, Harry. I--try to keep up, but--I can't. I ain't +the woman to naturally paint my hair this way. It's my trying to keep up, +Harry, with you and--and--Edwin. These clothes--I ain't right in 'em, +Harry; I know that. That's why I can't stand it. The suspense. The waiting +up nights. I tell you I'm going crazy. Crazy with knowing I'm left behind." + +"I never told you to paint up your hair like a freak." + +"I thought, Harry--the color--like hers--it might make me seem younger--" + +"You thought! You're always thinking." + +She stood behind him now over the couch, her hand yearning toward but not +touching him. + +"O God! Harry, ain't there no way I can please you no more--no way?" + +"You can please me by acting like a human being and not getting me home on +wild-goose chases like this." + +"But I can't stand it, Harry! The quiet. Nobody to do for. You always gone. +Edwin. The way the servants--laugh. I ain't smart enough, like some women. +I got to show it--that my heart's breaking." + +"Go to matinees; go--" + +"Tell me how to make myself like Alma Zitelle to you, Harry. For God's +sake, tell me!" + +He looked away from her, the red rising up above the rear of his collar. + +"You're going to drive me crazy desperate, too, some day, on that jealousy +stuff. I'm trying to do the right thing by you and hold myself in, +but--there's limits." + +"Harry, it--ain't jealousy. I could stand anything if I only knew. If you'd +only come out with it. Not keep me sitting here night after night, when I +know you--you're with her. It's the suspense, Harry, as much as anything is +killing me. I could stand it, maybe, if I only knew. If I only knew!" + +He sprang up, wheeling to face her across the couch. + +"You mean that?" + +"Harry!" + +"Well, then, since you're the one wants it, since you're forcing me to +it--I'll end your suspense, Millie. Yes. Let me go, Millie. There's no use +trying to keep life in something that's dead. Let me go." + +She stood looking at him, cheeks cased in palms, and her sagging +eye-sockets seeming to darken, even as she stared. + +"You--her--" + +"It happens every day, Millie. Man and woman grow apart, that's all. Your +own son is man enough to understand that. Nobody to blame. Just happens." + +"Harry--you mean--" + +"Aw, now, Millie, it's no easier for me to say than for you to listen. I'd +sooner cut off my right hand than put it up to you. Been putting it off all +these months. If you hadn't nagged--led up to it, I'd have stuck it out +somehow and made things miserable for both of us. It's just as well you +brought it up. I--Life's life, Millie, and what you going to do about it?" + +A sound escaped her like the rising moan of a gale up a flue; then she +sat down against trembling that seized her and sent ripples along the +iridescent sequins. + +"Harry--Alma Zitelle--you mean--Harry?" + +"Now what's the use going into all that, Millie? What's the difference who +I mean? It happened." + +"Harry, she--she's a common woman." + +"We won't discuss that." + +"She'll climb on you to what she wants higher up still. She won't bring you +nothing but misery, Harry. I know what I'm saying; she'll--" + +"You're talking about something you know nothing about--you--" + +"I do. I do. You're hypnotized, Harry. It's her looks. Her dressing like +a snake. Her hair. I can get mine fixed redder 'n hers, Harry. It takes a +little time. Mine's only started to turn, Harry, is why it don't look right +yet to you. This dress, it's from her own dressmaker. Harry--I promise you +I can make myself like--her--I promise you, Harry--" + +"For God's sake, Millie, don't talk like--that! It's awful! What's those +things got to do with it? It's--awful!" + +"They have, Harry. They have, only a man don't know it. She's a bad woman, +Harry--she's got you fascinated with the way she dresses and does--" + +"We won't go into that." + +"We will. We will. I got the right. I don't have to let you go if I don't +want to. I'm the mother of your son. I'm the wife that was good enough for +you in the days when you needed her. I--" + +"You can't throw that up to me, Millie. I've squared that debt." + +"She'll throw you over, Harry, when I'll stand by you to the crack of doom. +Take my word for it, Harry. O God! Harry, please take my word for it!" + +She closed her streaming eyes, clutching at his sleeve in a state beyond +her control. "Won't you please? Please!" + +He toed the carpet. + +"I--I'd sooner be hit in the face, Millie, than--have this happen. Swear I +would! But you see for yourself we--we can't go on this way." + +She sat for a moment, her stare widening above the palm clapped tightly +against her mouth. + +"Then you mean, Harry, you want--you want a--a--" + +"Now, now, Millie, try to keep hold of yourself. You're a sensible woman. +You know I'll do the right thing by you to any amount. You'll have the boy +till he's of age, and after that, too, just as much as you want him. He'll +live right here in the flat with you. Money's no object, the way I'm going +to fix things. Why, Millie, compared to how things are now--you're going to +be a hundred per cent, better off--without me." + +She fell to rocking herself in the straight chair. + +"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!" + +"Now, Millie, don't take it that way. I know that nine men out of ten would +call me crazy to--to let go of a woman like you. But what's the use trying +to keep life in something that's dead? It's because you're too good for me, +Millie. I know that. You know that it's not because I think any less of +you, or that I've forgot it was you who gave me my start. I'd pay you back +ten times more if I could. I'm going to settle on you and the boy so that +you're fixed for life. When he's of age, he comes into the firm half +interest. There won't even be no publicity the way I'm going to fix things. +Money talks, Millie. You'll get your decree without having to show your +face to the public." + +"O God--he's got it all fixed--he's talked it all over with her! She--" + +"You--you wouldn't want to force something between you and me, Millie; +that--that's just played out--" + +"I done it myself. I couldn't let well enough alone. I was ambitious for +'em. I dug my own grave. I done it myself. Done it myself!" + +"Now, Millie, you mustn't look at things that way. Why, you're the kind of +a little woman all you got to have is something to mother over. I'm going +to see to it that the boy is right here at home with you all the time. He +can give up those rooms at the college--you got as fine a son as there is +in the country, Millie--I'm going to see to it that he is right here at +home with you--" + +"O God--my boy--my little boy--my little boy!" + +"The days are over, Millie, when this kind of thing makes any difference. +If it was--the mother--it might be different, but where the father is--to +blame--it don't matter with the boy. Anyways, he's nearly of age. I tell +you, Millie, if you'll just look at this thing sensible--" + +"I--Let me think, let--me--think." + +Her tears had quieted now to little dry moans that came with regularity. +She was still swaying in her chair, eyes closed. + +"You'll get your decree, Millie, without--." + +"Don't talk," she said, a frown lowering over her closed eyes and pressing +two fingers against each temple. "Don't talk." + +He walked to the window in a state of great perturbation, stood pulling +inward his lips and staring down into the now brilliantly lighted flow of +Broadway. Turned into the room with short, hasty strides, then back again. +Came to confront her. + +"Aw, now, Millie--Millie--" Stood regarding her, chewing backward and +forward along his fingertips. "You--you see for yourself, Millie, what's +dead can't be made alive--now, can it?" + +She nodded, acquiescing, her lips bitterly wry. + +"My lawyer, Millie, he'll fix it, alimony and all, so you won't--" + +"O God!" + +"Suppose I just slip away easy, Millie, and let him fix up things so it'll +be easiest for us both. Send the boy down to see me to-morrow. He's +old enough and got enough sense to have seen things coming. He knows. +Suppose--I just slip out easy, Millie, for--for--both of us. Huh, Millie?" + +She nodded again, her lips pressed back against outburst. + +"If ever there was a good little woman, Millie, and one that deserves +better than me, it's--" + +"Don't!" she cried. "Don't--don't--don't!" + +"I--" + +"Go--quick--now!" + +He hesitated, stood regarding her there in the chair, eyes squeezed closed +like Iphigenia praying for death when exiled in Tauris. + +"Millie--I--" + +"Go!" she cried, the wail clinging to her lips. + +He felt round for his hat, his gaze obscured behind the shining glasses, +tiptoed out round the archipelago of too much furniture, groped for the +door-handle, turning it noiselessly, and stood for the instant looking back +at her bathed in the rosy light and seated upright like a sleeping Ariadne; +opened the door to a slit that closed silently after him. + +She sat thus for three hours after, the wail still uppermost on the +silence. + +At ten o'clock, with a gust that swayed the heavy drapes, her son burst in +upon the room, his stride kicking the door before he opened it. Six feet in +his gymnasium shoes, and with a ripple of muscle beneath the well-fitting, +well-advertised Campus Coat for College Men, he had emerged from the three +years into man's complete estate, which, at nineteen, is that patch of +territory at youth's feet known as "the world." Gray eyed, his dark lashes +long enough to threaten to curl, the lean line of his jaw squaring after +the manner of America's fondest version of her manhood, he was already in +danger of fond illusions and fond mommas. + +"Hello, mother!" he said, striding quickly through the chairs and over to +where she sat. + +"Edwin!" + +"Thought I'd sleep home to-night, mother." + +He kissed her lightly, perking up her shoulder butterflies of green +sequins, and standing off to observe. + +"Got to hand it to my little mother for quiet and sumptuous el-e-gance! +Some classy spangy-wangles!" He ran his hand against the lay of the +sequins, absorbed in a conscious kind of gaiety. + +She moistened her lips, trying to smile. + +"Oh, boy," she said--"Edwin!"--holding to his forearm with fingers that +tightened into it. + +"Mother," he said, pulling at his coat lapels with a squaring of shoulders, +"you--you going to be a dead game little sport?" + +She was looking ahead now, abstraction growing in her white face. + +"Huh?" + +He fell into short strides up and down the length of the couch front. + +"I--I guess I might have mentioned it before, mother, but--but--oh, +hang!--when a fellow's a senior it--it's all he can do to get home once in +a while and--and--what's the use talking about a thing anyway before +it breaks right, and--well, everybody knows it's up to us college +fellows--college men--to lead the others and show our country what we're +made of now that she needs us--eh, little dressed-up mother?" + +She looked up at him with the tremulous smile still trying to break +through. + +"My boy can mix with the best of 'em." + +"That's not what I mean, mother." + +"You got to be twice to me what you been, darling--twice to me. Listen, +darling. I--Oh, my God!" + +She was beating softly against his hand held in hers, her voice rising +again, and her tears. + +"Listen, darling--" + +"Now, mother, don't go into a spell. The war is going to help you out +on these lonesome fits, mother. Like Slawson put it to-day in Integral +Calculus Four, war reduces the personal equation to its lowest terms--it's +a matter of--." + +"I need you now, Edwin--O God! how I need you! There never was a minute in +all these months since you've grown to understand how--it is between your +father and me that I needed you so much--" + +"Mother, you mustn't make it harder for me to--tell you what I--" + +"I think maybe something has happened to me, Edwin. I can feel myself +breathe all over--it's like I'm outside of myself somewhere--" + +"It's nervousness, mother. You ought to get out more. I'm going to get you +some war-work to do, mother, that 'll make you forget yourself. Service is +what counts these days!" + +"Edwin, it's come--he's leaving me--it--" + +"Speaking of service, I--I guess I might have mentioned it before, mother, +but--but--when war was declared the other day, a--a bunch of us fellows +volunteered for--for the university unit to France, and--well, I'm +accepted, mother--to go. The lists went up to-night. I'm one of the twenty +picked fellows." + +"France?" + +"We sail for Bordeaux for ambulance service the twentieth, mother. I was +the fourth accepted with my qualifications--driving my own car and--and +physical fitness. I'm going to France, mother, among the first to do my +bit. I know a fellow got over there before we were in the war and worked +himself into the air-fleet. That's what I want, mother, air service! +They're giving us fellows credit for our senior year just the same. Bob +Vandaventer and Clarence Unger and some of the fellows like that are in the +crowd. Are you a dead-game sport, little mother, and not going to make a +fuss--" + +"I--don't know. What--is--it--I--" + +"Your son at the front, mother, helping to make the world a safer place for +democracy. Does a little mother with something like that to bank on have +time to be miserable over family rows? You're going to knit while I'm gone. +The busiest little mother a fellow ever had, doing her bit for her country! +There's signs up all over the girls' campus: 'A million soldiers "out +there" are needing wool jackets and chest-protectors. How many will you +take care of?' You're going to be the busiest little mother a fellow ever +had. You're going to stop making a fuss over me and begin to make a fuss +over your country. We're going into service, mother!" + +"Don't leave me, Edwin! Baby darling, don't leave me! I'm alone! I'm +afraid." + +"There, there, little mother," he said, patting at her and blinking, +"I--Why--why, there's men come back from every war, and plenty of them. +Good Lord! just because a fellow goes to the front, he--" + +"I got nothing left. Everything I've worked for has slipped through my life +like sand through a sieve. My hands are empty. I've lost your father on +the success I slaved for. I'm losing my boy on the fine ideas and college +education I've slaved for. I--Don't leave me, Edwin. I'm afraid--Don't--" + +"Mother--I--Don't be cut up about it. I--" + +"Why should I give to this war? I ain't a fine woman with the fine ideas +you learn at college. I ask so little of life--just some one who needs me, +some one to do for. I 'ain't got any fine ideas about a son at war. Why +should I give to what they're fighting for on the other side of the ocean? +Don't ask me to give up my boy to what they're fighting for in a country +I've never seen--my little boy I raised--my all I've got--my life! No! No!" + +"It's the women like you, mother--with guts--with grit--that send their +sons to war." + +"I 'ain't got grit!" + +"You're going to have your hands so full, little mother, taking care of the +Army and Navy, keeping their feet dry and their chests warm, that before +you know it you'll be down at the pier some fine day watching us fellows +come home from victory." + +"No--no--no!" + +"You're going to coddle the whole fighting front, making 'em sweaters and +aviation sets out of a whole ton of wool I'm going to lay in the house for +you. Time's going to fly for my little mother." + +"I'll kill myself first!" + +"You wouldn't have me a quitter, little mother. You wouldn't have the other +fellows in my crowd at college go out and do what I haven't got the guts to +do. You want me to hold up my head with the best of 'em." + +"I don't want nothing but my boy! I--" + +"Us college men got to be the first to show that the fighting backbone of +the country is where it belongs. If us fellows with education don't set the +example, what can we expect from the other fellows? Don't ask me to be a +quitter, mother. I couldn't! I wouldn't! My country needs us, mother--you +and me--" + +"Edwin! Edwin!" + +"Attention, little mother--stand!" + +She lay back her head, laughing, crying, sobbing, choking. + +"O God--take him and bring him back--to me!" + + +On a day when sky and water were so identically blue that they met in +perfect horizon, the S. S. _Rowena_, sleek-flanked, mounted fore and aft +with a pair of black guns that lifted snouts slightly to the impeccable +blue, slipped quietly, and without even a newspaper sailing-announcement +into a frivolous midstream that kicked up little lace edged wavelets, +undulating flounces of them. A blur of faces rose above deck-rails, faces +that, looking back, receded finally. The last flag and the last kerchief +became vapor. Against the pier-edge, frantically, even perilously forward, +her small flag thrust desperately beyond the rail, Mrs. Ross, who had +lost a saving sense of time and place, leaned after that ship receding in +majesty, long after it had curved from view. + +The crowd, not a dry-eyed one, women in spite of themselves with lips +whitening, men grim with pride and an innermost bleeding, sagged suddenly, +thinning and trickling back into the great, impersonal maw of the city. +Apart from the rush of the exodus, a youth remained at the rail, gazing +out and quivering for the smell of war. Finally, he too, turned back +reluctantly. + +Now only Mrs. Ross. An hour she stood there, a solitary figure at the rail, +holding to her large black hat, her skirts whipped to her body and snapping +forward in the breeze. The sun struck off points from the water, animating +it with a jewel-dance. It found out in a flash the diamond-and-sapphire top +to her gold-mesh hand-bag, hoppity-skippiting from facet to facet. + +"My boy--my little boy!" + +A pair of dock-hands, wiping their hands on cotton-waste, came after a +while to the door of the pier-house to observe and comment. Conscious of +that observation, she moved then through the great dank sheds in and among +the bales and boxes, down a flight of stairs and out to the cobbled +street. Her motor-car, the last at the entrance, stood off at a slant, +the chauffeur lopping slightly and dozing, his face scarcely above the +steering-wheel. She passed him with unnecessary stealth, her heels +occasionally wedging between the cobbles and jerking her up. Two hours she +walked thus, invariably next to the water's edge or in the first street +running parallel to it. Truck-drivers gazed at and sang after her. Deck- +and dock-hands, stretched out in the first sun of spring, opened their eyes +to her passing, often staring after her under lazy lids. Behind a drawn +veil her lips were moving, but inaudibly now. Motor-trucks, blocks of them, +painted the gray of war, stood waiting shipment, engines ready to throb +into no telling what mire. Once a van of knitted stuffs, always the gray, +corded and bound into bales, rumbled by, close enough to graze and send her +stumbling back. She stood for a moment watching it lumber up alongside a +dock. + +It was dusk when she emerged from the rather sinister end of West Street +into Battery Park, receding in a gracious new-green curve from the water. +Tier after tier of lights had begun to prick out in the back-drop of +skyscraping office-buildings. The little park, after the six-o'clock +stampede, settled back into a sort of lamplit quiet, dark figures, the +dregs of a city day, here and there on its benches. The back-drop of +office-lights began to blink out then, all except the tallest tower in the +world, rising in the glory of its own spotlight into a rococo pinnacle of +man's accomplishment. + +Strolling the edge of that park so close to the water that she could hear +it seethe in the receding, a policeman finally took to following Mrs. Ross, +his measured tread behind hers, his night-stick rapping out every so often. +She found out a bench then, and never out of his view, sat looking out +across the infinitude of blackness to where the bay so casually meets the +sea. Night dampness had sent her shivering, the plumage of her hat, the +ferny feathers of the bird-of-paradise, drooping almost grotesquely over +the brim. + +A small detachment of Boy Scouts, sturdy with an enormous sense of uniform +and valor, marched through the asphalt alleys of the park with trained, +small-footed, regimental precision--small boys with clean, lifted faces. A +fife and drum came up the road. + +Rat-a-tat-tat! Rat-a-tat-tat! + +High over the water a light had come out--Liberty's high-flung torch. +Watching it, and quickened by the fife and drum to an erect sitting +posture, Mrs. Ross slid forward on her bench, lips opening. The policeman +standing off, rapped twice, and when she rose, almost running toward the +lights of the Elevated station, followed. + +Within her apartment on upper Broadway, not even a hall light burned +when she let herself in with her key. At the remote end of the aisle of +blackness a slit of yellow showed beneath the door, behind it the babble of +servants' voices. + +She entered with a stealth that was well under cover of those voices, +groping into the first door at her right, feeling round for the wall key, +switching the old rose-and-gold room into immediate light. Stood for a +moment, her plumage drooping damply to her shoulders, blue foulard dress +snagged in two places, her gold mesh bag with the sapphire-and-diamond top +hanging low from the crook of her little finger. A clock ticked with almost +an echo into the rather vast silence. + +She entered finally, sidling in among the chairs. + +A great mound of gray yarn, uncut skein after uncut skein of it, rose off +the brocade divan, more of them piled in systematic pyramids on three +chairs. She dropped at sight of it to the floor beside the couch, burying +her face in its fluff, grasping it in handfuls, writhing into it. Surges of +merciful sobs came sweeping through and through her. + +After a while, with a pair of long amber-colored needles, she fell to +knitting with a fast, even furious ambidexterity, her mouth pursing up with +a driving intensity, her boring gaze so concentrated on the thing in hand +that her eyes seemed to cross. + +Dawn broke upon her there, her hat still cockily awry, tears dried in +a vitrified gleaming down her cheeks. Beneath her flying fingers, a +sleeveless waistcoat was taking shape, a soldier's inner jacket against the +dam of trenches. At sunup it lay completed, spread out as if the first of +a pile. The first noises of the city began to rise remotely. A bell pealed +off somewhere. Day began to raise its conglomerate voice. On her knees +beside the couch there, the second waistcoat was already taking shape +beneath the cocksure needles. + +The old pinkly moist look had come out in her face. + +One million boys "out there" were needing chest-protectors! + + + + +III + +ICE-WATER, PL--! + + +When the two sides of every story are told, Henry VIII. may establish an +alibi or two, Shylock and the public-school system meet over and melt that +too, too solid pound of flesh, and Xantippe, herself the sturdier man than +Socrates, give ready, lie to what is called the shrew in her. Landladies, +whole black-bombazine generations of them--oh, so long unheard!--may +rise in one Indictment of the Boarder: The scarred bureau-front and +match-scratched wall-paper; the empty trunk nailed to the floor in security +for the unpaid bill; cigarette-burnt sheets and the terror of sudden fire; +the silent newcomer in the third floor back hustled out one night in +handcuffs; the day-long sobs of the blond girl so suddenly terrified of +life-about-to-be and wringing her ringless hands in the fourth-floor +hall-room; the smell of escaping gas and the tightly packed keyhole; the +unsuspected flutes that lurk in boarders' trunks; towels, that querulous +and endless paean of the lodger; the high cost of liver and dried peaches, +of canned corn and round steak! + +Tired bombazine procession, wrapped in the greasy odors of years of +carpet-sweeping and emptying slops, airing the gassy slit of room after the +coroner; and padding from floor to floor on a mission of towels and towels +and towels! + +Sometimes climbing from floor to floor, a still warm supply of them looped +over one arm, Mrs. Kaufman, who wore bombazine, but unspotted and with +crisp net frills at the throat, and upon whose soft-looking face the years +had written their chirography in invisible ink, would sit suddenly, there +in the narrow gloom of her halls, head against the balustrade. Oftener than +not the Katz boy from the third floor front would come lickety-clapping +down the stairs and past her, jumping the last four steps of each flight. + +"Irving, quit your noise in the hall." + +"Aw!" + +"Ain't you ashamed, a big boy like you, and Mrs. Suss with her neuralgia?" + +"Aw!"--the slam of a door clipping off this insolence. + +After a while she would resume her climb. + +And yet in Mrs. Kaufman's private boarding-house in West Eighty-ninth +Street, one of a breastwork of brownstone fronts, lined up stoop for stoop, +story for story, and ash-can for ash-can, there were few enough greasy +odors except upon the weekly occasion of Monday's boiled dinner; and, +whatever the status of liver and dried peaches, canned corn and round +steak, her menus remained static--so static that in the gas-lighted +basement dining-room and at a remote end of the long, well-surrounded table +Mrs. Katz, with her napkin tucked well under her third chin, turned _sotto_ +from the protruding husband at her right to her left neighbor, shielding +her remark with her hand. + +"Am I right, Mrs. Finshriber? I just said to my husband in the five years +we been here she should just give us once a change from Friday-night lamb +and noodles." + +"Say, you should complain yet! With me it's six and a half years day after +to-morrow, Easter Day, since I asked myself that question first." + +"Even my Irving says to me to-night up in the room; jumping up and down on +the hearth like he had four legs--" + +"I heard him, Mrs. Katz, on my ceiling like he had eight legs." + +"'Mamma,' he says, 'guess why I feel like saying "Baa."'" + +"Saying what?" + +"Sheep talk, Mrs. Finshriber. B-a-a, like a sheep goes." + +"Oh!" + +"'Cause I got so many Friday nights' lamb in me, mamma,' he said. Quick +like a flash that child is." + +Mrs. Finshriber dipped her head and her glance, all her drooping features +pulled even farther down at their corners. "I ain't the one to complain, +Mrs. Katz, and I always say, when you come right down to it maybe Mrs. +Kaufman's house is as good as the next one, but--" + +"I wish, though, Mrs. Finshriber, you would hear what Mrs. Spritz says at +her boarding-house they get for breakfast: fried--" + +"You can imagine, Mrs. Katz, since my poor husband's death, how much +appetite I got left; but I say, Mrs. Katz, just for the principle of the +thing, it would not hurt once if Mrs. Kaufman could give somebody else +besides her own daughter and Vetsburg the white meat from everything, +wouldn't it?" + +"It's a shame before the boarders! She knows, Mrs. Pinshriber, how my +husband likes breast from the chicken. You think once he gets it? No. I +always tell him, not 'til chickens come doublebreasted like overcoats can +he get it in this house, with Vetsburg such a star boarder." + +"Last night's chicken, let me tell you, I don't wish it to a dog! Such a +piece of dark meat with gizzard I had to swallow." + +Mrs. Katz adjusted with greater security the expanse of white napkin across +her ample bosom. Gold rings and a quarter-inch marriage band flashed in +and out among the litter of small tub-shaped dishes surrounding her, and a +pouncing fork of short, sure stab. "Right away my husband gets mad when I +say the same thing. 'When we don't like it we should move,' he says." + +"Like moving is so easy, if you got two chairs and a hair mattress to take +with you. But I always say, Mrs. Katz, I don't blame Mrs. Kaufman herself +for what goes on; there's _one_ good woman if there ever was one!" + +"They don't come any better or any better looking, my husband always says. +'S-ay,' I tell him, 'she can stand her good looks.'" + +"It's that big-ideaed daughter who's to blame. Did you see her new white +spats to-night?" Right away the minute they come out she has to have 'em. +I'm only surprised she 'ain't got one of them red hats from Gimp's what is +all the fad. Believe me, if not for such ideas, her mother could afford +something better as succotash for us for supper." + +"It's a shame, let me tell you, that a woman like Mrs. Kaufman can't see +for herself such things. God forbid I should ever be so blind to my +Irving. I tell you that Ruby has got it more like a queen than a +boarding-housekeeper's daughter. Spats, yet!" + +"Rich girls could be glad to have it always so good." + +"I don't say nothing how her mother treats Vetsburg, her oldest boarder, +and for what he pays for that second floor front and no lunches she can +afford to cater a little; but that such a girl shouldn't be made to take up +a little stenography or help with the housework!" + +"S-ay, when that girl even turns a hand, pale like a ghost her mother +gets." + +"How girls are raised nowadays, even the poor ones!" + +"I ain't the one to complain, Mrs. Katz, but just look down there, that red +stuff." + +"Where?" + +"Ain't it cranberry between Ruby and Vetsburg?" + +"Yes, yes, and look such a dish of it!" + +"Is it right extras should be allowed to be brought on a table like this +where fourteen other boarders got to let their mouth water and look at it?" + +"You think it don't hurt like a knife! For myself I don't mind, but my +Irving! How that child loves 'em, and he should got to sit at the same +table without cranberries." + +From the head of the table the flashing implements of carving held in +askance for stroke, her lips lifted to a smile and a simulation of interest +for display of further carnivorous appetites, Mrs. Kaufman passed her nod +from one to the other. + +"Miss Arndt, little more? No? Mr. Krakower? Gravy? Mrs. Suss? Mr. Suss? +So! Simon? Mr. Schloss? Miss Horowitz? Mr. Vetsburg, let me give you this +little tender--No? Then, Ruby, here let mama give you just a little +more--" + +"No, no, mama, please!" She caught at the hovering wrist to spare the +descent of the knife. + +By one of those rare atavisms by which a poet can be bred of a peasant +or peasant be begot of poet, Miss Ruby Kaufman, who was born in Newark, +posthumous, to a terrified little parent with a black ribbon at the throat +of her gown, had brought with her from no telling where the sultry eyes and +tropical-turned skin of spice-kissed winds. The corpuscles of a shah +might have been running in the blood of her, yet Simon Kaufman, and Simon +Kaufman's father before him, had sold wool remnants to cap-factories on +commission. + +"Ruby, you don't eat enough to keep a bird alive. Ain't it a shame, Mr. +Vetsburg, a girl should be so dainty?" + +Mr. Meyer Vetsburg cast a beetling glance down upon Miss Kaufman, there so +small beside him, and tinked peremptorily against her plate three times +with his fork. "Eat, young lady, like your mama wants you should, or, by +golly! I'll string you up for my watch-fob--not, Mrs. Kaufman?" + +A smile lay under Mr. Vetsburg's gray-and-black mustache. Gray were his +eyes, too, and his suit, a comfortable baggy suit with the slouch of the +wearer impressed into it, the coat hiking center back, the pocket-flaps +half in, half out, and the knees sagging out of press. + +"That's right, Mr. Vetsburg, you should scold her when she don't eat." + +Above the black-bombazine basque, so pleasantly relieved at the throat by a +V of fresh white net, a wave of color moved up Mrs. Kaufman's face into her +architectural coiffure, the very black and very coarse skein of her hair +wound into a large loose mound directly atop her head and pierced there +with a ball-topped comb of another decade. + +"I always say, Mr. Vetsburg, she minds you before she minds anybody else in +the world." + +"Ma," said Miss Kaufman, close upon that remark, "some succotash, please." + +From her vantage down-table, Mrs. Katz leaned a bit forward from the line. + +"Look, Mrs. Finshriber, how for a woman her age she snaps her black eyes +at him. It ain't hard to guess when a woman's got a marriageable +daughter--not?" + +"You can take it from me she'll get him for her Ruby yet! And take it from +me, too, almost any girl I know, much less Ruby Kaufman, could do worse as +get Meyer Vetsburg." + +"S-say, I wish it to her to get him. For why once in a while shouldn't a +poor girl get a rich man except in books and choruses?" + +"Believe me, a girl like Ruby can manage what she wants. Take it from me, +she's got it behind her ears." + +"I should say so." + +"Without it she couldn't get in with such a crowd of rich girls like she +does. I got it from Mrs. Abrams in the Arline Apartments how every week she +plays five hundred with Nathan Shapiro's daughter." + +"No! Shapiro & Stein?" + +"And yesterday at matinee in she comes with a box of candy and laughing +with that Rifkin girl! How she gets in with such swell girls, I don't know, +but there ain't a nice Saturday afternoon I don't see that girl walking on +Fifth Avenue with just such a crowd of fine-dressed girls, all with their +noses powdered so white and their hats so little and stylish." + +"I wouldn't be surprised if her mother don't send her down to Atlantic City +over Easter again if Vetsburg goes. Every holiday she has to go lately like +it was coming to her." + +"Say, between you and me, I don't put it past her it's that Markovitch boy +down there she's after. Ray Klein saw 'em on the boardwalk once together, +and she says it's a shame for the people how they sat so close in a +rolling-chair." + +"I wouldn't be surprised she's fresh with the boys, but, believe me, if she +gets the uncle she don't take the nephew!" + +"Say, a clerk in his own father's hotel like the Markovitches got in +Atlantic City ain't no crime." + +"Her mother has got bigger thoughts for her than that. For why I guess she +thinks her daughter should take the nephew when maybe she can get the uncle +herself. Nowadays it ain't nothing no more that girls marry twice their own +age." + +"I always say I can tell when Leo Markovitch comes down, by the way her +mother's face gets long and the daughter's gets short." + +"Can you blame her? Leo Markovitch, with all his monograms on his +shirt-sleeves and such black rims on his glasses, ain't the Rosenthal +Vetsburg Hosiery Company, not by a long shot! There ain't a store in this +town you ask for the No Hole Guaranteed Stocking, right away they don't +show it to you. Just for fun always I ask." + +"Cornstarch pudding! Irving, stop making that noise at Mrs. Kaufman! Little +boys should be seen and not heard even at cornstarch pudding." + +"_Gott_! Wouldn't you think, Mrs. Katz, how Mrs. Kaufman knows how I hate +desserts that wabble, a little something extra she could give me." + +"How she plays favorite, it's a shame. I wish you'd look, too, Mrs. +Finshriber, how Flora Proskauer carries away from the table her glass of +milk with slice bread on top. I tell you it don't give tune to a house the +boarders should carry away from the table like that. Irving, come and +take with you that extra piece cake. Just so much board we pay as Flora +Proskauer." + +The line about the table broke suddenly, attended with a scraping of chairs +and after-dinner chirrupings attended with toothpicks. A blowsy maid +strained herself immediately across the strewn table and cloying lamb +platter, and turned off two of the three gas jets. + +In the yellow gloom, the odors of food permeating it, they filed out and up +the dim lit stairs into dim-lit halls, the line of conversation and short +laughter drifting after. + +A door slammed. Then another. Irving Katz leaped from his third floor +threshold to the front hearth, quaking three layers of chandeliers. From +Morris Krakower's fourth floor back the tune of a flute began to wind down +the stairs. Out of her just-closed door Mrs. Finshriber poked a frizzled +gray head. + +"Ice-water, ple-ase, Mrs. Kauf-man." + +At the door of the first floor back Mrs. Kaufman paused with her hand on +the knob. + +"Mama, let me run and do it." + +"Don't you move, Ruby. When Annie goes up to bed it's time enough. Won't +you come in for a while, Mr. Vetsburg?" + +"Don't care if I do". + +She opened the door, entering cautiously. "Let me light up, Mrs. Kaufman." +He struck a phosphorescent line on the sole of his shoe, turning up three +jets. + +"You must excuse, Mr. Vetsburg, how this room looks. All day we've been +sewing Ruby her new dress." + +She caught up a litter of dainty pink frills in the making, clearing a +chair for him. + +"Sit down, Mr. Vetsburg." + +They adjusted themselves around the shower of gaslight. Miss Kaufman +fumbling in her flowered work-bag, finally curling her foot up under her, +her needle flashing and shirring through one of the pink flounces. + +"Ruby, in such a light you shouldn't strain your eyes." + +"All right, ma," stitching placidly on. + +"What'll you give me, Ruby, if I tell you whose favorite color is pink?" + +"Aw, Vetsy!" she cried, her face like a rose, "_your_ color's pink!" + +From the depths of an inverted sewing-machine top Mrs. Kaufman fished out +another bit of the pink, ruffling it with deft needle. + +The flute lifted its plaintive voice, feeling for high C. + +Mr. Vetsburg lighted a loosely wrapped cigar and slumped in his chair. + +"If anybody," he observed, "should ask right this minute where I'm at, tell +'em for me, Mrs. Kaufman, I'm in the most comfortable chair in the house." + +"You should keep it, then, up in your room, Mr. Vetsburg, and not always +bring it down again when I get Annie to carry it up to you." + +"Say, I don't give up so easy my excuse for dropping in evenings." + +"Honest, you--you two children, you ought to have a fence built around you +the way you like always to be together." + +He sat regarding her, puffing and chewing his live cigar. Suddenly he +leaped forward, his hand closing rigidly over hers. + +"Mrs. Kaufman!" + +"What?" + +"Quick, there's a hole in your chin." + +"_Gott_! a--a--what?" + +At that he relaxed at his own pleasantry, laughing and shrugging. With +small white teeth Miss Kaufman bit off an end of thread. + +"Don't let him tease you, ma; he's after your dimple again." + +"_Ach, du_--tease, you! Shame! Hole in my chin he scares me with!" + +She resumed her work with a smile and a twitching at her lips that she was +unable to control. A warm flow of air came in, puffing the lace curtains. +A faint odor of departed splendor lay in that room, its high calcimined +ceiling with the floral rosette in the center, the tarnished pier-glass +tilted to reflect a great pair of walnut folding-doors which cut off the +room where once it had flowed on to join the great length of _salon_ +parlor. A folding-bed with an inlay of mirror and a collapsible desk +arrangement backed up against those folding-doors. A divan with a winding +back and sleek with horsehair was drawn across a corner, a marble-topped +bureau alongside. A bronze clock ticked roundly from the mantel, balanced +at either side by a pair of blue-glass cornucopias with warts blown into +them. + +Mrs. Kaufman let her hands drop idly in her lap and her head fell back +against the chair. In repose the lines of her mouth turned up, and her +throat, where so often the years eat in first, was smooth and even slender +above the rather round swell of bosom. + +"Tired, mommy?" + +"Always around Easter spring fever right away gets hold of me!" + +Mr. Vetsburg bit his cigar, slumped deeper; and inserted a thumb in the arm +of his waistcoat. + +"Why, Mrs. Kaufman, don't you and Ruby come down by Atlantic City with me +to-morrow over Easter? Huh? A few more or less don't make no difference to +my sister the way they get ready for crowds." + +Miss Kaufman shot forward, her face vivid. + +"Oh, Vetsy," she cried, and a flush rushed up, completely dyeing her face. +His face lit with hers, a sunburst of fine lines radiating from his eyes. + +"Eh?" + +"Why--why, we--we'd just love it, wouldn't we, ma? Atlantic City, Easter +Day! Ma!" + +Mrs. Kaufman sat upright with a whole procession of quick emotions flashing +their expressions across her face. They ended in a smile that trembled as +she sat regarding the two of them. + +"I should say so, yes! I--You and Ruby go, Mr. Vetsburg. Atlantic City, +Easter Day, I bet is worth the trip. I--You two go, I should say so, but +you don't want an old woman to drag along with you." + +"Ma! Just listen to her, Vetsy! Ain't she--ain't she just the limit? Half +the time when we go in stores together they take us for sisters, and then +she--she begins to talk like that to get out of going!" + +"Ruby don't understand; but it ain't right, Mr. Vetsburg, I should be away +over Saturday and Sunday. On Easter always they expect a little extra, and +with Annie's sore ankle, I--I--" + +"Oh, mommy, can't you leave this old shebang for only two days just for an +Easter Sunday down at Atlantic, where--where everybody goes?" + +"You know yourself, Ruby, how always on Annie's Sunday out--" + +"Well, what of it? It won't hurt all of them old things upstairs that let +you wait on them hand and foot all year to go without a few frills for +their Easter dinner." + +"Ruby!" + +"I mean it. The old gossip-pots! I just sat and looked at them there at +supper, and I said to myself, I said, to think they drown kittens and let +those poor lumps live!" + +"Ruby, aren't you ashamed to talk like that?" + +"Sat there and looked at poor old man Katz with his ear all ragged like it +had been chewed off, and wondered why he didn't just go down to Brooklyn +Bridge for a high jump." + +"Ruby, I--" + +"If all those big, strapping women, Suss and Finshriber and the whole gang +of them, were anything but vegetables, they'd get out and hustle with +keeping house, to work some of their flabbiness off and give us a chance to +get somebody in besides a chocolate-eating, novel-reading crowd of useless +women who think, mommy, you're a dumbwaiter, chambermaid, lady's maid, and +French chef rolled in one! Honest, ma, if you carry that ice-water up to +Katz to-night on the sly, with that big son of hers to come down and get +it, I--I'll go right up and tell her what I think of her if she leaves +to-morrow." + +"Mr. Vetsburg, you--you mustn't listen to her." + +"Can't take a day off for a rest at Atlantic City, because their old Easter +dinner might go down the wrong side. Honest, mama, to--to think how you're +letting a crowd of old, flabby women that aren't fit even to wipe your +shoes make a regular servant out of you! Mommy!" + +There were tears in Miss Kaufman's voice, actual tears, big and bright, in +her eyes, and two spots of color had popped out in her cheeks. + +"Ruby, when--when a woman like me makes her living off her boarders, she +can't afford to be so particular. You think it's a pleasure I can't slam +the door right in Mrs. Katz's face when six times a day she orders towels +and ice-water? You think it's a pleasure I got to take sass from such a bad +boy like Irving? I tell you, Ruby, it's easy talk from a girl that doesn't +understand. _Ach_, you--you make me ashamed before Mr. Vetsburg you should +run down to the people we make our living off of." + +Miss Kaufman flashed her vivid face toward Mr. Vetsburg, still low there in +his chair. She was trembling. "Vetsy knows! He's the only one in this house +does know! He 'ain't been here with us ten years, ever since we started in +this big house, not--not to know he's the only one thinks you're here for +anything except impudence and running stairs and standing sass from the bad +boys of lazy mothers. You know, don't you, Vetsy?" + +"Ruby! Mr. Vetsburg, you--you must excuse--" + +From the depths of his chair Mr. Vetsburg's voice came slow and carefully +weighed. "My only complaint, Mrs. Kaufman, with what Ruby has got to say is +it ain't strong enough. It maybe ain't none of my business, but always I +have told you that for your own good you're too _gemuetlich_. No wonder +every boarder what you got stays year in and year out till even the biggest +kickers pay more board sooner as go. In my business, Mrs. Kaufman, it's the +same, right away if I get too easy with--" + +"But, Mr. Vetsburg, a poor woman can't afford to be so independent. I got +big expenses and big rent; I got a daughter to raise--" + +"Mama, haven't I begged you a hundred times to let me take up stenography +and get out and hustle so you can take it easy--haven't I?" + +A thick coating of tears sprang to Mrs. Kaufman's eyes and muddled the gaze +she turned toward Mr. Vetsburg. "Is it natural, Mr. Vetsburg, a mother +should want her only child should have always the best and do always the +things she never herself could afford to do? All my life, Mr. Vetsburg, I +had always to work. Even when I was five months married to a man what it +looked like would some day do big things in the wool business, I was left +all of a sudden with nothing but debts and my baby." + +"But, mama--" + +"Is it natural, Mr. Vetsburg, I should want to work off my hands my +daughter should escape that? Nothing, Mr. Vetsburg, gives me so much +pleasure she should go with all those rich girls who like her well enough +poor to be friends with her. Always when you take her down to Atlantic City +on holidays, where she can meet 'em, it--it--" + +"But, mommy, is it any fun for a girl to keep taking trips like that +with--with her mother always at home like a servant? What do people think? +Every holiday that Vetsy asks me, you--you back out. I--I won't go without +you, mommy, and--and I _want_ to go, ma, I--I _want_ to!" + +"My Easter dinner and--" + +"You, Mrs. Kaufman, with your Easter dinner! Ruby's right. When your mama +don't go this time not one step we go by ourselves--ain't it?" + +"Not a step." + +"But--" + +"To-morrow, Mrs. Kaufman, we catch that one-ten train. Twelve o'clock I +call in for you. Put ginger in your mama, Ruby, and we'll open her eyes on +the boardwalk--not?" + +"Oh, Vetsy!" + +He smiled, regarding her. + +Tears had fallen and dried on Mrs. Kaufman's cheeks; she wavered between a +hysteria of tears and laughter. + +"I--children--" She succumbed to tears, daubing her eyes shamefacedly. + +He rose kindly. "Say, when such a little thing can upset her it's high time +she took for herself a little rest. If she backs out, we string her up by +the thumbs--not, Ruby?" + +"We're going, ma. Going! You'll love the Markovitchs' hotel, ma dearie, +right near the boardwalk, and the grandest glassed-in porch and--and +chairs, and--and nooks, and things. Ain't they, Vetsy?" + +"Yes, you little Ruby, you," he said, regarding her with warm, insinuating +eyes, even crinkling an eyelid in a wink. + +She did not return the glance, but caught her cheeks in the vise of her +hands as if to stem the too quick flush. "Now you--you quit!" she cried, +flashing her back upon him in quick pink confusion. + +"She gets mad yet," he said, his shoulders rising and falling in silent +laughter. + +"Don't!" + +"Well," he said, clicking the door softly after him, "good night and sleep +tight." + +"'Night, Vetsy." + +Upon the click of that door Mrs. Kaufman leaned softly forward in her +chair, speaking through a scratch in her throat. "Ruby!" + +With her flush still high, Miss Kaufman danced over toward her parent, then +as suddenly ebbed in spirit, the color going. "Why, mommy, what--what you +crying for, dearie? Why, there's nothing to cry for, dearie, that we're +going off on a toot to-morrow. Honest, dearie, like Vetsy says, you're all +nerves. I bet from the way Suss hollered at you to-day about her extra milk +you're upset yet. Wouldn't I give her a piece of my mind, though! Here, +move your chair, mommy, and let me pull down the bed." + +"I--I'm all right, baby. Only I just tell you it's enough to make anybody +cry we should have a friend like we got in Vetsburg. I--I tell you, baby, +they just don't come better than him. Not, baby? Don't be ashamed to say so +to mama." + +"I ain't, mama! And, honest, his--his whole family is just that way. +Sweet-like and generous. Wait till you see the way his sister and +brother-in-law will treat us at the hotel to-morrow. And--and Leo, too." + +"I always say the day what Meyer Vetsburg, when he was only a clerk in the +firm, answered my furnished-room advertisement was the luckiest day in my +life." + +"You ought to heard, ma. I was teasing him the other day, telling him that +he ought to live at the Savoy, now that he's a two-thirds member of the +firm." + +"Ruby!" + +"I was only teasing, ma. You just ought to seen his face. Any day he'd +leave us!" + +Mrs. Kaufman placed a warm, insinuating arm around her daughter's slim +waist, drawing her around the chair-side and to her. "There's only one way, +baby, Meyer Vetsburg can ever leave me and make me happy when he leaves." + +"Ma, what you mean?" + +"You know, baby, without mama coming right out in words." + +"Ma, honest I don't. What?" + +"You see it coming just like I do. Don't fool mama, baby." + +The slender lines of Miss Kaufman's waist stiffened, and she half slipped +from the embrace. + +"Now, now, baby, is it wrong a mother should talk to her own baby about +what is closest in both their hearts?" + +"I--I--mama, I--I don't know!" + +"How he's here in this room every night lately, Ruby, since you--you're a +young lady. How right away he follows us up-stairs. How lately he invited +you every month down at Atlantic City. Baby, you ain't blind, are you?" + +"Why, mama--why, mama, what is Meyer Vetsburg to--to me? Why, he--he's got +gray hair, ma; he--he's getting bald. Why, he--he don't know I'm on earth. +He--he's--" + +"You mean, baby, he don't know anybody else is on earth. What's, nowadays, +baby, a man forty? Why--why, ain't mama forty-one, baby, and didn't you +just say yourself for sisters they take us?" + +"I know, ma, but he--he--. Why, he's got an accent, ma, just like old man +Katz and--and all of 'em. He says 'too-sand' for thousand. He--" + +"Baby, ain't you ashamed like it makes any difference how a good man +talks?" She reached out, drawing her daughter by the wrists down into her +lap. "You're a bad little flirt, baby, what pretends she don't know what a +blind man can see." + +Miss Kaufman's eyes widened, darkened, and she tugged for the freedom of +her wrists. "Ma, quit scaring me!" + +"Scaring you! That such a rising man like Vetsburg, with a business he +worked himself into president from clerk, looks every day more like he's +falling in love with you, should scare you!" + +"Ma, not--not him!" + +In reply she fell to stroking the smooth black plaits, wound coronet +fashion about Miss Kaufman's small head. Large, hot tears sprang to her +eyes. "Baby, when you talk like that it's you that scares mama!" + +"He--he--" + +"Why, you think, Ruby, I been making out of myself a servant like you call +it all these years except for your future? For myself a smaller house +without such a show and maybe five or six roomers without meals, you think +ain't easier as this big barn? For what, baby, you think I always want you +should have extravagances maybe I can't afford and should keep up with the +fine girls what you meet down by Atlantic City if it ain't that a man like +Meyer Vetsburg can be proud to choose you from the best?" + +"Mama! mama!" + +"Don't think, Ruby, when the day comes what I can give up this +white-elephant house that it won't be a happy one for me. Every night when +I hear from up-stairs how Mrs. Katz and all of them hollers down 'towels' +and 'ice-water' to me like I--I was their slave, don't think, baby, I won't +be happiest woman in this world the day what I can slam the door, bang, +right on the words." + +"Mama, mama, and you pretending all these years you didn't mind!" + +"I don't, baby. Not one minute while I got a future to look forward to +with you. For myself, you think I ask anything except my little girl's +happiness? Anyways, when happiness comes to you with a man like Meyer +Vetsburg, don't--don't it come to me, too, baby?" + +"Please, I--" + +"That's what my little girl can do for mama, better as stenography. Set +herself down well. That's why, since we got on the subject, baby, I--I hold +off signing up the new lease, with every day Shulif fussing so. Maybe, +baby, I--well, just maybe--eh, baby?" + +For answer a torrent of tears so sudden that they came in an avalanche +burst from Miss Kaufman, and she crumpled forward, face in hands and red +rushing up the back of her neck and over her ears. + +"Ruby!" + +"No, no, ma! No, no!" + +"Baby, the dream what I've dreamed five years for you!" + +"No, no, no!" + +She fell back, regarding her. + +"Why, Ruby. Why, Ruby, girl!" + +"It ain't fair. You mustn't!" + +"Mustn't?" + +"Mustn't! Mustn't!" Her voice had slipped up now and away from her. + +"Why, baby, it's natural at first maybe a girl should be so scared. Maybe +I shouldn't have talked so soon except how it's getting every day plainer, +these trips to Atlantic City and--" + +"Mama, mama, you're killing me." She fell back against her parent's +shoulder, her face frankly distorted. + +A second, staring there into space, Mrs. Kaufman sat with her arm still +entwining the slender but lax form. "Ruby, is--is it something you ain't +telling mama?" + +"Oh, mommy, mommy!" + +"Is there?" + +"I--I don't know." + +"Ruby, should you be afraid to talk to mama, who don't want nothing but her +child's happiness?" + +"You know, mommy. You know!" + +"Know what, baby?" + +"I--er--" + +"Is there somebody else you got on your mind, baby?" + +"You know, mommy." + +"Tell mama, baby. It ain't a--a crime if you got maybe somebody else on +your mind." + +"I can't say it, mommy. It--it wouldn't be--be nice." + +"Nice?" + +"He--he--We ain't even sure yet." + +"He?" + +"Not--yet." + +"Who?" + +"You know." + +"So help me, I don't." + +"Mommy, don't make me say it. Maybe if--when his uncle Meyer takes him in +the business, we--" + +"Baby, not Leo?" + +"Oh, mommy, mommy!" And she buried her hot, revealing face into the fresh +net V. + +"Why--why, baby, a--a _boy_ like that!" + +"Twenty-three, mama, ain't a boy!" + +"But, Ruby, just a clerk in his father's hotel, and two older brothers +already in it. A--a boy that 'ain't got a start yet." + +"That's just it, ma. We--we're waiting! Waiting before we talk even--even +much to each other yet. Maybe--maybe his uncle Meyer is going to take him +in the business, but it ain't sure yet. We--" + +"A little yellow-haired boy like him that--that can't support you, baby, +unless you live right there in his mother's and father's hotel away--away +from me!" + +"Ma!" + +"Ruby, a smart girl like you. A little snip what don't make salt yet, when +you can have the uncle hisself!" + +"I can't help it, ma! If--if--the first time Vetsy took me down to--to the +shore, if--if Leo had been a king or a--or just what he is, it wouldn't +make no difference. I--I can't help my--my feelings, ma. I can't!" + +A large furrow formed between Mrs. Kaufman's eyes, darkening her. + +"You wouldn't, Ruby!" she said, clutching her. + +"Oh, mommy, mommy, when a--a girl can't help a thing!" + +"He ain't good enough for you, baby!" + +"He's ten times too good; that--that's all you know about it. Mommy, +please! I--I just can't help it, dearie. It's just like when I--I saw him +a--a clock began to tick inside of me. I--" + +"O my God!" said Mrs. Kaufman, drawing her hand across her brow. + +"His uncle Meyer, ma, 's been hinting all along he--he's going to give +Leo his start and take him in the business. That's why we--we're waiting +without saying much, till it looks more like--like we can all be together, +ma." + +"All my dreams! My dreams I could give up the house! My baby with a +well-to-do husband maybe on Riverside Drive. A servant for herself, so I +could pass, maybe, Mrs. Suss and Mrs. Katz by on the street. Ruby, you--you +wouldn't, Ruby. After how I've built for you!" + +"Oh, mama, mama, mama!" + +"If you 'ain't got ambitions for yourself, Ruby, think once of me and this +long dream I been dreaming for--us." + +"Yes, ma. Yes." + +"Ruby, Ruby, and I always thought when you was so glad for Atlantic City, +it was for Vetsburg; to show him how much you liked his folks. How could I +know it was--." + +"I never thought, mommy. Why--why, Vetsy he's just like a relation or +something." + +"I tell you, baby, it's just an idea you got in your head." + +"No, no, mama. No, no." + +Suddenly Mrs. Kaufman threw up her hands, clasping them tight against her +eyes, pressing them in frenzy. "O my God!" she cried. "All for nothing!" +and fell to moaning through her laced fingers. "All for nothing! Years. +Years. Years." + +"Mommy darling!" + +"Oh--don't, don't! Just let me be. Let me be. O my God! My God!" + +"Mommy, please, mommy! I didn't mean it. I didn't mean it, mommy darling." + +"I can't go on all the years, Ruby. I'm tired. Tired, girl." + +"Of course you can't, darling. We--I don't want you to. 'Shh-h-h!" + +"It's only you and my hopes in you that kept me going all these years. The +hope that, with some day a good man to provide for you, I could find a +rest, maybe." + +"Yes, yes." + +"Every time what I think of that long envelope laying there on that desk +with its lease waiting to be signed to-morrow, I--I could squeeze my eyes +shut so tight and wish I didn't never have to open them again on this--this +house and this drudgery. If you marry wrong, baby, I'm caught. Caught in +this house like a rat in a trap." + +"No, no, mommy. Leo, he--his uncle--" + +"Don't make me sign that new lease, Ruby. Shulif hounds me every day now. +Any day I expect he says is my last. Don't make me saddle another five +years with the house. He's only a boy, baby, and years it will take, +and--I'm tired, baby. Tired! Tired!" She lay back with her face suddenly +held in rigid lines and her neck ribbed with cords. + +At sight of her so prostrate there, Ruby Kaufman grasped the cold face in +her ardent young hands, pressing her lips to the streaming eyes. + +"Mommy, I didn't mean it. I didn't! I--We're just kids, flirting a little, +Leo and me. I didn't mean it, mommy!" + +"You didn't mean it, Ruby, did you? Tell mama you didn't." + +"I didn't, ma. Cross my heart. It's only I--I kinda had him in my head. +That's all, dearie. That's all!" + +"He can't provide, baby." + +"'Shh-h-h, ma! Try to get calm, and maybe then--then things can come like +you want 'em. 'Shh-h-h, dearie! I didn't mean it. 'Course Leo's only a kid. +I--We--Mommy dear, don't. You're killing me. I didn't mean it. I didn't." + +"Sure, baby? Sure?" + +"Sure." + +"Mama's girl," sobbed Mrs. Kaufman, scooping the small form to her bosom +and relaxing. "Mama's own girl that minds." + +They fell quiet, cheek to cheek, staring ahead into the gaslit quiet, the +clock ticking into it. + +The tears had dried on Mrs. Kaufman's cheeks, only her throat continuing to +throb and her hand at regular intervals patting the young shoulder pressed +to her. It was as if her heart lay suddenly very still in her breast. + +"Mama's own girl that minds." + +"It--it's late, ma. Let me pull down the bed." + +"You ain't mad at mama, baby? It's for your own good as much as mine. It is +unnatural a mother should want to see her--" + +"No, no, mama. Move, dearie. Let me pull down the bed. There you are. Now!" + +With a wrench Mrs. Kaufman threw off her recurring inclination to tears, +moving casually through the processes of their retirement. + +"To-morrow, baby, I tighten the buttons on them new spats. How pretty they +look." + +"Yes, dearie." + +"I told Mrs. Katz to-day right out her Irving can't bring any more his +bicycle through my front hall. Wasn't I right?" + +"Of course you were, ma." + +"Miss Flora looked right nice in that pink waist to-night--not? +Four-eighty-nine only, at Gimp's sale." + +"She's too fat for pink." + +"You get in bed first, baby, and let mama turn out the lights." + +"No, no, mama; you." + +In her white slip of a nightdress, her coronet braids unwound and falling +down each shoulder, even her slightness had waned. She was like Juliet who +at fourteen had eyes of maid and martyr. + +They crept into bed, grateful for darkness. + +The flute had died out, leaving a silence that was plaintive. + +"You all right, baby?" + +"Yes, ma." And she snuggled down into the curve of her mother's arm. "Are +you, mommy?" + +"Yes, baby." + +"Go to sleep, then." + +"Good night, baby." + +"Good night, mommy." + +Silence. + +Lying there, with her face upturned and her eyes closed, a stream of quiet +tears found their way from under Miss Kaufman's closed lids, running down +and toward her ears like spectacle frames. + +An hour ticked past, and two damp pools had formed on her pillow. + +"Asleep yet, baby?" + +"Almost, ma." + +"Are you all right?" + +"Fine." + +"You--you ain't mad at mama?" + +"'Course not, dearie." + +"I--thought it sounded like you was crying." + +"Why, mommy, 'course not! Turn over now and go to sleep." + +Another hour, and suddenly Mrs. Kaufman shot out her arm from the coverlet, +jerking back the sheet and feeling for her daughter's dewy, upturned face +where the tears were slashing down it. + +"Baby!" + +"Mommy, you--you mustn't!" + +"Oh, my darling, like I didn't suspicion it!" + +"It's only--" + +"You got, Ruby, the meanest mama in the world. But you think, darling, I +got one minute's happiness like this?" + +"I'm all right, mommy, only--" + +"I been laying here half the night, Ruby, thinking how I'm a bad mother +what thinks only of her own--" + +"No, no, mommy. Turn over and go to sl--" + +"My daughter falls in love with a fine, upright young man like Leo +Markovitch, and I ain't satisfied yet! Suppose maybe for two or three years +you ain't so much on your feet. Suppose even his uncle Meyer don't take him +in. Don't any young man got to get his start slow?" + +"Mommy!" + +"Because I got for her my own ideas, my daughter shouldn't have in life the +man she wants!" + +"But, mommy, if--" + +"You think for one minute, Ruby, after all these years without this house +on my hands and my boarders and their kicks, a woman like me would be +satisfied? Why, the more, baby, I think of such a thing, the more I see it +for myself! What you think, Ruby, I do all day without steps to run, and +my gedinks with housekeeping and marketing after eighteen years of it? At +first, Ruby, ain't it natural it should come like a shock that you and that +rascal Leo got all of a sudden so--so thick? I--It ain't no more, baby. +I--I feel fine about it." + +"Oh, mommy, if--if I thought you did!" + +"I do. Why not? A fine young man what my girl is in love with. Every mother +should have it so." + +"Mommy, you mean it?" + +"I tell you I feel fine. You don't need to feel bad or cry another minute. +I can tell you I feel happy. To-morrow at Atlantic City if such a rascal +don't tell me for himself, I--I ask him right out!" + +"Ma!" + +"For why yet he should wait till he's got better prospects, so his +mother-in-law can hang on? I guess not!" + +"Mommy darling. If you only truly feel like that about it. Why, you can +keep putting off the lease, ma, if it's only for six months, and then +we--we'll all be to--" + +"Of course, baby. Mama knows. Of course!" + +"He--I just can't begin to tell you, ma, the kind of a fellow Leo is till +you know him better, mommy dear." + +"Always Vetsburg says he's a wide-awake one!" + +"That's just what he is, ma. He's just a prince if--if there ever was one. +One little prince of a fellow." She fell to crying softly, easy tears that +flowed freely. + +"I--I can tell you, baby, I'm happy as you." + +"Mommy dear, kiss me." + +They talked, huddled arm in arm, until dawn flowed in at the window and +dirty roofs began to show against a clean sky. Footsteps began to clatter +through the asphalt court and there came the rattle of milk-cans. + +"I wonder if Annie left out the note for Mrs. Suss's extra milk!" + +"Don't get up, dearie; it's only five--" + +"Right away, baby, with extra towels I must run up to Miss Flora's room. +That six o'clock-train for Trenton she gets." + +"Ma dear, let me go." + +"Lay right where you are! I guess you want you should look all worn out +when a certain young man what I know walks down to meet our train at +Atlantic City this afternoon, eh?" + +"Oh, mommy, mommy!" And Ruby lay back against the luxury of pillows. + +At eleven the morning rose to its climax--the butcher, the baker, and every +sort of maker hustling in and out the basementway; the sweeping of upstairs +halls; windows flung open and lace curtains looped high; the smell of +spring pouring in even from asphalt; sounds of scrubbing from various +stoops; shouts of drivers from a narrow street wedged with its +Saturday-morning blockade of delivery wagons, and a crosstown line of +motor-cars, tops back and nosing for the speedway of upper Broadway. A +homely bouquet of odors rose from the basement kitchen, drifting up through +the halls, the smell of mutton bubbling as it stewed. + +After a morning of up-stairs and down-stairs and in and out of chambers, +Mrs. Kaufman, enveloped in a long-sleeved apron still angular with starch, +hung up the telephone receiver in the hall just beneath the staircase and +entered her bedroom, sitting down rather heavily beside the open shelf of +her desk. A long envelope lay uppermost on that desk, and she took it up +slowly, blinking her eyes shut and holding them squeezed tight as if she +would press back a vision, even then a tear oozing through. She blinked it +back, but her mouth was wry with the taste of tears. + +A slatternly maid poked her head in through the open door. "Mrs. Katz broke +'er mug!" + +"Take the one off Mr. Krakow's wash-stand and give it to her, Tillie." + +She was crying now frankly, and when the door swung closed, even though it +swung back again on its insufficient hinge, she let her head fall forward +into the pillow of her arms, the curve of her back rising and falling. + +But after a while the greengrocer came on his monthly mission, in his white +apron and shirt-sleeves, and she compared stubs with him from a file on her +desk and balanced her account with careful squinted glance and a keen eye +for an overcharge on a cut of breakfast bacon. + +On the very heels of him, so that they met and danced to pass each other in +the doorway, Mr. Vetsburg entered, with an overcoat flung across his right +arm and his left sagging to a small black traveling-bag. + +"Well," he said, standing in the frame of the open door, his derby well +back on his head and regarding her there beside the small desk, "is this +what you call ready at twelve?" + +She rose and moved forward in her crackly starched apron. "I--Please, Mr. +Vetsburg, it ain't right, I know!" + +"You don't mean you're not going!" he exclaimed, the lifted quality +immediately dropping from his voice. + +"You--you got to excuse me again, Mr. Vetsburg. It ain't no use I should +try to get away on Saturdays, much less Easter Saturday." + +"Well, of all things!" + +"Right away, the last minute, Mr. Vetsburg, right one things after +another." + +He let his bag slip to the floor. + +"Maybe, Mrs. Kaufman," he said, "it ain't none of my business, but ain't it +a shame a good business woman like you should let herself always be tied +down to such a house like she was married to it?" + +"But--" + +"Can't get away on Saturdays, just like it ain't the same any other day in +the week, I ask you! Saturday you blame it on yet!" + +She lifted the apron from her hem, her voice hurrying. "You can see for +yourself, Mr. Vetsburg, how in my brown silk all ready I was. Even--even +Ruby don't know yet I don't go. Down by Gimp's I sent her she should buy +herself one of them red straw hats is the fad with the girls now. She meets +us down by the station." + +"That's a fine come-off, ain't it, to disappoint--" + +"At the last minute, Mr. Vetsburg, how things can happen. Out of a clear +sky Mrs. Finshriber has to-morrow for Easter dinner that skin doctor, +Abrams, and his wife she's so particular about. And Annie with her sore +ankle and--" + +"A little shyster doctor like Abrams with his advertisements all over the +newspapers should sponge off you and your holiday! By golly! Mrs. Kaufman, +just like Ruby says, how you let a whole houseful of old hens rule this +roost it's a shame!" + +"When you go down to station, Mr. Vetsburg, so right away she ain't so +disappointed I don't come, tell her maybe to-morrow I--." + +"I don't tell her nothing!" broke in Mr. Vetsburg and moved toward her with +considerable strengthening of tone. "Mrs. Kaufman, I ask you, do you think +it right you should go back like this on Ruby and me, just when we want +most you should--" + +At that she quickened and fluttered. "Ruby and you! Ach, it's a old saying, +Mr. Vetsburg, like the twig is bent so the tree grows. That child won't be +so surprised her mother changes her mind. Just so changeable as her mother, +and more, is Ruby herself. With that girl, Mr. Vetsburg, it's--it's hard to +know what she does one minute from the next. I always say no man--nobody +can ever count on a little harum-scarum like--like she is." + +He took up her hat, a small turban of breast feathers, laid out on the +table beside him, and advanced with it clumsily enough. "Come," he said, +"please now, Mrs. Kaufman. Please." + +"I--" + +"I--I got plans made for us to-morrow down by the shore that's--that's just +fine! Come now, Mrs. Kaufman." + +"Please, Mr. Vetsburg, don't force. I--I can't! I always say nobody can +ever count on such a little harum-scarum as--" + +"You mean to tell me, Mrs. Kaufman, that just because a little shyster +doctor--" + +Her hand closed over the long envelope again, crunching it. "No, no, +that--that ain't all, Mr. Vetsburg. Only I don't want you should tell Ruby. +You promise me? How that child worries over little things. Shulif from the +agency called up just now. He don't give me one more minute as two this +afternoon I--I should sign. How I been putting them off so many weeks with +this lease it's a shame. Always you know how in the back of my head I've +had it to take maybe a smaller place when this lease was done, but, like I +say, talk is cheap and moving ain't so easy done--ain't it? If he puts in +new plumbing in the pantry and new hinges on the doors and papers my second +floor and Mrs. Suss's alcove, like I said last night, after all I could do +worse as stay here another five year--ain't it, Mr. Vetsburg?" + +"I--" + +"A house what keeps filled so easy, and such a location, with the Subway +less as two blocks. I--So you see, Mr. Vetsburg, if I don't want I come +back and find my house on the market, maybe rented over my head, I got to +stay home for Shulif when he comes to-day." + +A rush of dark blood had surged up into Mr. Vetsburg's face, and he +twiddled his hat, his dry fingers moving around inside the brim. + +"Mrs. Kaufman," he cried--"Mrs. Kaufman, sometimes when for years a man +don't speak out his mind, sometimes he busts all of a sudden right out. +I--Oh--e-e-e!" and, immediately and thickly inarticulate, made a tremendous +feint at clearing his throat, tossed up his hat and caught it; rolled his +eyes. + +"Mr. Vetsburg?" + +"A man, Mrs. Kaufman, can bust!" + +"Bust?" + +He was still violently dark, but swallowing with less labor. "Yes, from +holding in. Mrs. Kaufman, should a woman like you--the finest woman in the +world, and I can prove it--a woman, Mrs. Kaufman, who in her heart and +my heart and--Should such a woman not come to Atlantic City when I got +everything fixed like a stage set!" + +She threw out an arm that was visibly trembling. "Mr. Vetsburg, for God's +sake, 'ain't I just told you how that she--harum-scarum--she--." + +"Will you, Mrs. Kaufman, come or won't you? Will you, I ask you, or won't +you?" + +"I--I can't, Mr.--" + +"All right, then, I--I bust out now. To-day can be as good as to-morrow! +Not with my say in a t'ousand years, Mrs. Kaufman, you sign that lease! I +ain't a young man any more with fine speeches, Mrs. Kaufman, but not in a +t'ousand years you sign that lease." + +"Mr. Vetsburg, Ruby--I--" + +"If anybody's got a lease on you, Mrs. Kaufman, I--I want it! I want it! +That's the kind of a lease would suit me. To be leased to you for always, +the rest of your life!" + +She could not follow him down the vista of fancy, but stood interrogating +him with her heartbeats at her throat. "Mr. Vetsburg, if he puts on the +doors and hinges and new plumbing in--." + +"I'm a plain man, Mrs. Kaufman, without much to offer a woman what can give +out her heart's blood like it was so much water. But all these years I been +waiting, Mrs. Kaufman, to bust out, until--till things got riper. I know +with a woman like you, whose own happiness always is last, that first your +girl must be fixed--." + +"She's a young girl, Mr. Vetsburg. You--you mustn't depend--. If I had my +say--." + +"He's a fine fellow, Mrs. Kaufman. With his uncle to help 'em, they got, +let me tell you, a better start as most young ones!" + +She rose, holding on to the desk. + +"I--I--" she said. "What?" + +"Lena," he uttered, very softly. + +"Lena, Mr. Vetsburg?" + +"It 'ain't been easy, Lenie, these years while she was only growing up, to +keep off my lips that name. A name just like a leaf off a rose. Lena!" he +reiterated and advanced. + +Comprehension came quietly and dawning like a morning. + +"I--I--. Mr. Vetsburg, you must excuse me," she said, and sat down +suddenly. + +He crossed to the little desk and bent low over her chair, his hand not on +her shoulder, but at the knob of her chair. His voice had a swift rehearsed +quality. + +"Maybe to-morrow, if you didn't back out, it would sound finer by the +ocean, Lenie, but it don't need the ocean a man should tell a woman when +she's the first and the finest woman in the world. Does it, Lenie?" + +"I--I thought Ruby. She--" + +"He's a good boy, Leo is, Lenie. A good boy what can be good to a woman +like his father before him. Good enough even for a fine girl like our Ruby, +Lenie--_our_ Ruby!" + +"_Gott im Himmel_! then you--" + +"Wide awake, too. With a start like I can give him in my business, you +'ain't got to worry Ruby 'ain't fixed herself with the man what she +chooses. To-morrow at Atlantic City all fixed I had it I should tell--" + +"You!" she said, turning around in her chair to face him. "You--all along +you been fixing--" + +He turned sheepish. "Ain't it fair, Lenie, in love and war and business a +man has got to scheme for what he wants out of life? Long enough it took +she should grow up. I knew all along once those two, each so full of life +and being young, got together it was natural what should happen. Mrs. +Kaufman! Lenie! Lenie!" + +Prom two flights up, in through the open door and well above the harsh +sound of scrubbing, a voice curled down through the hallways and in. "Mrs. +Kaufman, ice-water--ple-ase!" + +"Lenie," he said, his singing, tingling fingers closing over her wrist. + +"Mrs. Kauf-man, ice-water, pl--" + +With her free arm she reached and slammed the door, let her cheek lie to +the back of his hand, and closed her eyes. + + + + +IV + +HERS _NOT_ TO REASON WHY + + +In the third winter of a world-madness, with Europe guzzling blood and wild +with the taste of it, America grew flatulent, stenching winds from the +battle-field blowing her prosperity. + +Granaries filled to bursting tripled in value, and, in congested districts, +men with lean faces rioted when bread advanced a cent a loaf. Munition +factories, the fires of destruction smelting all night, worked three +shifts. Millions of shells for millions of dollars. Millions of lives for +millions of shells. A country feeding into the insatiable maw of war with +one hand, and with the other pouring relief-funds into coffers bombarded by +guns of its own manufacture--quelling the wound with a finger and widening +it with a knife up the cuff. + +In France, women with blue faces and too often with the pulling lips of +babes at dry breasts, learned the bitter tasks of sewing closed the coat +sleeves and of cutting off and hemming the trousers leg at the knee. + +In America, women new to the feel of fur learned to love it and not +question whence it came. Men of small affairs, suddenly earthquaked to the +crest of the great tidal wave of new market-values, went drunk with wealth. + +In New York, where so many great forces of a great country coagulate, the +face of the city photographed would have been a composite of fat and jowl, +rouge and heavy lip--satiated yet insatiate, the head double-chinned and +even a little loggy with too many satisfactions. + +But that is the New York of the Saturnite and of Teufelsdroeckh alone with +his stars. + +Upon Mrs. Blutch Connors, gazing out upon the tide of West Forty-seventh +Street, life lay lightly and as unrelated as if ravage and carnage and the +smell of still warm blood were of another planet. + +A shower of white light from an incandescent tooth-brush sign opposite +threw a pallid reflection upon Mrs. Connors; it spun the fuzz of frizz +rising off her blond coiffure into a sort of golden fog and picked out the +sequins of her bodice. + +The dinner-hour descends glitteringly upon West Forty-seventh Street, its +solid rows of long, lanky hotels, actors' clubs, and sixty-cent _tables +d'hote_ adding each its candle-power. + +From her brace of windows in the Hotel Metropolis, the street was not +unlike a gully cut through mica, a honking tributary flowing into the great +sea of Broadway. A low, high-power car, shaped like an ellipse, cut through +the snarl of traffic, bleating. A woman, wrapped in a greatcoat of "baby" +pelts and an almost undistinguishable dog in the cove of her arm, walked +out from the Hotel Metropolis across the sidewalk and into a taxicab. An +army of derby hats, lowered slightly into the wind, moved through the white +kind of darkness. Standing there, buffeting her pink nails across her pink +palms, Mrs. Connors followed the westward trend of that army. Out from it, +a face lying suddenly back flashed up at her, a mere petal riding a swift +current. But at sight of it Mrs. Blutch Connors inclined her entire body, +pressing a smile and a hand against the cold pane, then turned inward, +flashing on an electrolier--a bronze Nydia holding out a cluster of frosted +bulbs. A great deal of the strong breath of a popular perfume and a great +deal of artificial heat lay sweet upon that room, as if many flowers had +lived and died in the same air, leaving insidious but slightly stale +memories. + +The hotel suite has become the brocaded tomb of the old-fashioned garden. +The kitchen has shrunk into the chafing-dish, and all the dear old +concoctions that mother used to try to make now come tinned, condensed, +and predigested in sixty-seven varieties. Even the vine-covered threshold +survives only in the booklets of promoters of suburban real estate. In +New York, the home-coming spouse arrives on the vertical, shunted out +at whatever his layer. Yet, when Mrs. Connors opened the door of her +pink-brocaded sitting-room, her spirit rose with the soughing rise of the +elevator, and Romance--hardy fellow--showed himself within a murky hotel +corridor. + +"Honeybunch!" + +"Babe!" said Mr. Blutch Connors, upon the slam of the lift door. + +And there, in the dim-lit halls, with its rows of closed doors in +blank-faced witness thereof, they embraced, these two, despising, as +Flaubert despised, to live in the reality of things. + +"My boy's beau-ful cheeks all cold!" + +"My girl's beau-ful cheeks all warm and full of some danged good cologne," +said Mr. Connors, closing the door of their rooms upon them, pressing her +head back against the support of his arm, and kissing her throat as the +chin flew up. + +He pressed a button, and the room sprang into more light, coming out pinkly +and vividly--the brocaded walls pliant to touch with every so often a +gilt-framed engraving; a gilt table with an onyx top cheerfully cluttered +with the sauciest short-story magazines of the month; a white mantelpiece +with an artificial hearth and a pink-and-gilt _chaise-longue_ piled high +with small, lacy pillows, and a very green magazine open and face downward +on the floor beside it. + +"Comin' better, honeybunch?" + +"I dunno, Babe. The town's mad with money, but I don't feel myself going +crazy with any of it." + +"What ud you bring us, honey?" + +He slid out of his silk-lined greatcoat, placing his brown derby atop. + +"Three guesses, Babe," he said, rubbing his cold hands in a dry wash, and +smiling from five feet eleven of sartorial accomplishment down upon her. + +"Honey darlin'!" said Mrs. Connors, standing erect and placing her cheek +against the third button of his waistcoat. + +"Wow! how I love the woman!" he cried, closing his hands softly about her +throat and tilting her head backward again. + +"Darlin', you hurt!" + +"Br-r-r--can't help it!" + +When Mr. Connors moved, he gave off the scent of pomade freely; his +slightly thinning brown hair and the pointy tips to a reddish mustache +lay sleek with it. There was the merest suggestion of _embonpoint_ to the +waistcoat, but not so that, when he dropped his eyes, the blunt toes of his +russet shoes were not in evidence. His pin-checked suit was pressed to a +knife-edge, and his brocaded cravat folded to a nicety; there was an air +of complete well-being about him. Men can acquire that sort of eupeptic +well-being in a Turkish bath. Young mothers and life-jobbers have it +naturally. + +Suddenly, Mrs. Connors began to foray into his pockets, plunging her hand +into the right, the left, then stopped suddenly, her little face flashing +up at him. + +"It's round and furry--my honeybunch brought me a peach! Beau-ful pink +peach in December! Nine million dollars my hubby pays to bring him wifey a +beau-ful pink peach." She drew it out--a slightly runty one with a forced +blush--and bit small white teeth immediately into it. + +"M-m-m!"--sitting on the _chaise-longue_ and sucking inward. He sat down +beside her, a shade graver. + +"Is my babe disappointed I didn't dig her coat and earrings out of hock?" + +She lay against him. + +"I should worry!" + +"There just ain't no squeal in my girl." + +"Wanna bite?" + +"Any one of 'em but you would be hollering for their junk out of pawn. +But, Lord, the way she rigs herself up without it! Where'd you dig up the +spangles, Babe? Gad! I gotta take you out to-night and buy you the right +kind of a dinner. When I walks my girl into a cafe, they sit up and take +notice, all righty. Spangles she rigs herself up in when another girl, with +the way my luck's been runnin', would be down to her shimmy-tail." + +She stroked his sleeve as if it had the quality of fur. + +"Is the rabbit's foot still kicking my boy?" + +"Never seen the like, honey. The cards just won't come. This afternoon I +even played the wheel over at Chuck's, and she spun me dirt." + +"It's gotta turn, Blutch." + +"Sure!" + +"Remember the run of rotten luck you had that year in Cincinnati, when the +ponies was runnin' at Latonia?" + +"Yeh." + +"Lost your shirt, hon, and the first day back in New York laid a hundred on +the wheel and won me my seal coat. You--we--We couldn't be no lower than +that time we got back from Latonia, hon?" + +He laid his hand over hers. + +"Come on, Babe. Joe'll be here directly, and then we're going and blow them +spangles to a supper." + +"Blutch, answer!" + +"Now there's nothin' to worry about, Babe. Have I ever landed anywhere +but on my feet? We'll be driving a racer down Broadway again before the +winter's over. There's money in motion these wartimes, Babe. They can't +keep my hands off it." + +"Blutch, how--how much did you drop to-day? + +"I could tell clear down on the street you lost, honey, the way you walked +so round-shouldered." + +"What's the difference, honey? Come; just to show you I'm a sport, I'm +going to shoot you and Joe over to Jack's in one of them new white +taxi-cabs." + +"Blutch, how much?" + +"Well, if you gotta know it, they laid me out to-day, Babe. Dropped that +nine hundred hock-money like it was a hot potato, and me countin' on +bringin' you home your coat and junk again to-night. Gad! Them cards +wouldn't come to me with salt on their tails." + +"Nine hundred! Blutch, that--that leaves us bleached!" + +"I know it, hon. Just never saw the like. Wouldn't care if it wasn't my +girl's junk and fur coat. That's what hurts a fellow. If there's one thing +he ought to look to, it's to keep his wimmin out of the game." + +"It--it ain't that, Blutch; but--but where's it comin' from?" + +He struck his thigh a resounding whack. + +"With seventy-five bucks in my jeans, girl, the world is mine. Why, before +I had my babe for my own, many's the time I was down to shoe-shine money. +Up to 'leven years ago it wasn't nothing, honey, for me to sleep on a +pool-table one night and _de luxe_ the next. If life was a sure thing for +me, I'd ask 'em to put me out of my misery. It's only since I got my girl +that I ain't the plunger I used to be. Big Blutch has got his name from the +old days, honey, when a dime, a dollar, and a tire-rim was all the same +size." + +She sat hunched up in the pink-satinet frock, the pink sequins dancing, and +her small face smaller because of the way her light hair rose up in the +fuzzy aura. + +"Blutch, we--we just never was down to the last seventy-five before. That +time at Latonia, it was a hundred and more." + +"Why, girl, once, at Hot Springs, I had to hock my coat and vest, and I got +started on a run of new luck playin' in my shirt-sleeves, pretending I was +a summer boy." + +"That was the time you gave Lenny Gratz back his losings and got him back +to his wife." + +"Right-o! Seen him only to-night. He's traveling out of Cleveland for an +electric house and has forgot how aces up looks. That boy had as much +chance in the game as a deacon." + +Mrs. Connors laid hold of Mr. Connors's immaculate coat lapel, drawing him +toward her. + +"Oh, Blutch--honey--if only--if only--" + +"If only what, Babe?" + +"If you--you--" + +"Why, honey, what's eatin' you? I been down pretty near this low many a +time; only, you 'ain't known nothing about it, me not wanting to worry your +pretty head. You ain't afraid, Babe, your old hubby can't always take care +of his girl A1, are you?" + +"No, no, Blutch; only--" + +"What, Babe?" + +"I wish to God you was out of it, Blutch! I wish to God!" + +"Out of what, Babe?" + +"The game, Blutch. You're too good, honey, and too--too honest to be in it. +What show you got in the end against your playin' pals like Joe Kirby and +Al Flexnor? I know that gang, Blutch. I've tried to tell you so often how, +when I was a kid livin' at home, that crowd used to come to my mother's--" + +"Now, now, girl; business is--" + +"You're too good, Blutch, and too honest to be in it. The game'll break you +in the end. It always does. Blutch darling, I wish to God you was out of +it!" + +"Why, Ann 'Lisbeth, I never knew you felt this way about it." + +"I do, Blutch, I do! For years, it's been here in me--here, under my +heart--eatin' me, Blutch, eatin' me!" And she placed her hands flat to her +breast. + +"Why, Babe!" + +"I never let on. You--I--You been too good, Blutch, to a girl like--like +I was for me to let out a whimper about anything. A man that took a girl +like--like me that had knocked around just like--my mother and even--even +my grandmother before me had knocked around--took and married me, no +questions asked. A girl like me 'ain't got the right to complain to no man, +much less to one like you. The heaven you've given me for eleven years, +Blutch! The heaven! Sometimes, darlin', just sittin' here in a room like +this, with no--no reason for bein' here--it's just like I--" + +"Babe, Babe, you mustn't!" + +"Sittin' here, waiting for you to come and not carin' for nothing or nobody +except that my boy's comin' home to me--it's like I was in a dream, Blutch, +and like I was going to wake up and find myself back in my mother's house, +and--" + +"Babe, you been sittin' at home alone too much. I always tell you, honey, +you ought to make friends. Chuck De Roy's wife wants the worst way to get +acquainted with you--a nice, quiet girl. It ain't right, Babe, for you +not to have no friends at all to go to the matinee with or go buyin' +knickknacks with. You're gettin' morbid, honey." + +She worked herself out of his embrace, withholding him with her palms +pressed out against his chest. + +"I 'ain't got nothing in life but you, honey. There ain't nobody else under +the sun makes any difference. That's why I want you to get out of it, +Blutch. It's a dirty game--the gambling game. You ain't fit for it. You're +too good. They've nearly got you now, Blutch. Let's get out, honey, +while the goin's good. Let's take them seventy-five bucks and buy us a +peanut-stand or a line of goods. Let's be regular folks, darlin'! I'm +willin' to begin low down. Don't stake them last seventy-five, Blutch. +Break while we're broke. It ain't human nature to break while your luck's +with you." + +He was for folding her in his arms, but she still withheld him. + +"Blutch darlin', it's the first thing I ever asked of you." + +He grew grave, looking long into her blue eyes with the tears forming over +them. + +"Why, Ann 'Lisbeth, danged if I know what to say! You sure you're feelin' +well, Babe? 'Ain't took cold, have you, with your fur coat in hock?" + +"No, no, no!" + +"Well, I--I guess, honey, if the truth was told, your old man ain't cut out +for nothing much besides the gamin'-table--a fellow that's knocked around +the world the way I have." + +"You are, Blutch; you are! You're an expert accountant. Didn't you run the +Two Dollar Hat Store that time in Syracuse and get away with it?" + +"I know, Babe; but when a fellow's once used to makin' it easy and spendin' +it easy, he can't be satisfied lopin' along in a little business. Why, just +take to-night, honey! I only brought home my girl a peach this evening, +but that ain't sayin' that before morning breaks I can't be bringin' her a +couple of two-carat stones." + +"No, no, Blutch; I don't want 'em. I swear to God I don't want 'em!" + +"Why, Babe, I just can't figure out what's got into you. I never heard you +break out like this. Are you scared, honey, because we happen to be lower +than--" + +"No, no, darlin'; I ain't scared because we're low. I'm scared to get high +again. It's the first run of real luck you've had in three years, Blutch. +There was no hope of gettin' you out while things was breakin' good for +you; but now--" + +"I ain't sayin' it's the best game in the world. I'd see a son of mine laid +out before I'd let him get into it. But it's what I'm cut out for, and what +are you goin' to do about it? 'Ain't you got everything your little heart +desires? Ain't we going down to Sheepshead when the first thaw sets in? +Ain't we just a pair of love-birds that's as happy as if we had our right +senses? Come, Babe; get into your jacket. Joe'll be here any minute, and I +got that porterhouse at Jack's on the brain. Come kiss your hubby." + +She held up her face with the tears rolling down it, and he kissed a dry +spot and her yellow frizzed bangs. + +"My girl! My cry-baby girl!" + +"You're all I got in the world, Blutch! Thinkin' of what's best for you has +eat into me." + +"I know! I know!" + +"We'll never get nowheres in this game, hon. We ain't even sure enough of +ourselves to have a home like--like regular folks." + +"Never you mind, Babe. Startin' first of the year, I'm going to begin to +look to a little nest-egg." + +"We ought to have it, Blutch. Just think of lettin' ourselves get down to +the last seventy-five! What if a rainy day should come--where would we be +at? If you--or me should get sick or something." + +"You ain't all wrong, girl." + +"You'd give the shirt off your back, Blutch; that's why we can't ever have +a nest-egg as long as you're playin' stakes. There's too many hard-luck +stories lying around loose in the gamblin' game." + +"The next big haul I make I'm going to get out, girl, so help me!" + +"Blutch!" + +"I mean it. We'll buy a chicken-farm." + +"Why not a little business, Blutch, in a small town with--" + +"There's a great future in chicken-farmin'. I set Boy Higgins up with a +five-hundred spot the year his lung went back on him, and he paid me back +the second year." + +"Blutch darlin', you mean it?" + +"Why not, Babe--seein' you want it? There ain't no string tied to me and +the green-felt table. I can go through with anything I make up my mind to." + +"Oh, honey baby, you promise! Darling little fuzzy chickens!" + +"Why, girl, I wouldn't have you eatin' yourself thisaway. The first +ten-thou' high-water mark we hit I'm quits. How's that?" + +"Ten thousand! Oh, Blutch, we--" + +"What's ten thou', girl! I made the Hot Springs haul with a twenty-dollar +start. If you ain't careful, we'll be buyin' that chicken-farm next week. +That's what can happen to my girl if she starts something with her hubby." + +Suddenly Mrs. Connors crumpled in a heap upon the lacy pillows, pink +sequins heaving. + +"Why, Babe--Babe, what is it? You're sick or something to-night, honey." He +lifted her to his arms, bent almost double over her. + +"Nothin', Blutch, only--only I just never was so happy." + +"Lord!" said Blutch Connors. "All these years, and I never knew anything +was eatin' her." + +"I--I never was, Blutch." + +"Was what?" + +"So--happy." + +"Lord bless my soul! The poor little thing was afraid to say it was a +chicken-farm she wanted!" + +He patted her constantly, his eyes somewhat glazy. + +"Us two, Blutch, livin' regular." + +"You ain't all wrong, girl." + +"You home evenings, Blutch, regular like." + +"You poor little thing!" + +"You'll play safe, Blutch? Play safe to win!" + +"I wish I'd have went into the farmin' three years ago, Babe, the week I +hauled down eleven thou'." + +"You was too fed up with luck then, Blutch. I knew better 'n to ask." + +"Lord bless my soul! and the poor little thing was afraid to say it was a +chicken-farm she wanted!" + +"Promise me, Blutch, you'll play 'em close--to win!" + +"Al's openin' up his new rooms to-night. Me and Joe are goin' to play 'em +fifty-fifty. It looks to me like a haul, Babe." + +"He's crooked, Blutch, I tell you." + +"No more 'n all of 'em are, Babe. Your eyes open and your pockets closed is +my motto. What you got special against Joe? You mustn't dig up on a fellow, +Babe." + +"I--. Why ain't he livin' in White Plains, where his wife and kids are?" + +"What I don't know about the private life of my card friends don't hurt +me." + +"It's town talk the way he keeps them rooms over at the Liberty. 'Way back +when I was a kid, Blutch, I remember how he used to--" + +"I know there ain't no medals on Joe, Babe, but if you don't stop listenin' +to town talk, you're going to get them pretty little ears of yours all +sooty." + +"I know, Blutch; but I could tell you things about him back in the days +when my mother--" + +"Me and him are goin' over to Al's to-night and try to win my babe the +first chicken for her farm. Whatta you bet? Us two ain't much on the +sociability end, but we've played many a lucky card fifty-fifty. Saturday +is our mascot night, too. Come, Babe; get on your jacket, and--" + +"Honeybunch, you and Joe go. I ain't hungry." + +"But--" + +"I'll have 'em send me up a bite from the grill." + +"You ain't sore because I asked Joe? It's business, Babe." + +"Of course I ain't, honey; only, with you and him goin' right over to Al's +afterward, what's the sense of me goin'? I wanna stay home and think. It's +just like beginnin' to-night I could sit here and look right into the time +when there ain't goin' to be no more waitin' up nights for my boy. I--They +got all little white chickens out at Denny's roadhouse, Blutch--white with +red combs. Can we have some like them?" + +"You betcher life we can! I'm going to win the beginnings of that farm +before I'm a night older. Lordy! Lordy! and to think I never knew anything +was eatin' her!" + +"Blutch, I--I don't know what to say. I keep cryin' when I wanna laugh. I +never was so happy, Blutch, I never was." + +"My little kitty-puss!" + + * * * * * + +At seven o'clock came Mr. Joe Kirby, dark, corpulent, and black of cigar. + +"Come right in, Joe! I'm here and waitin' for you." + +"Ain't the missis in on this killin'?" + +"She--Not this--" + +"No, Joe; not--to-night." + +"Sorry to hear it," said Mr. Kirby, flecking an inch of cigar-ash to the +table-top. "Fine rig-up, with due respect to the lady, your missis is +wearing to-night." + +"The wife ain't so short on looks, is she?" + +"Blutch!" + +"You know my sentiments about her. They don't come no ace-higher." + +She colored, even quivered, standing there beside the bronze Nydia. + +"I tell her we're out for big business to-night, Joe." + +"Sky's the limit. Picked up a pin pointin' toward me and sat with my back +to a red-headed woman. Can't lose." + +"Well, good-night, Babe. Take care o' yourself." + +"Good night, Blutch. You'll play 'em close, honey?" + +"You just know I will, Babe." + +An hour she sat there, alone on the _chaise-longue_, staring into space and +smiling at what she saw there. Finally she dropped back into the lacy mound +of pillows, almost instantly asleep, but still smiling. + + * * * * * + +At four o'clock, that hour before dawn cracks, even the West Forties, where +night is too often cacophonous with the sound of revelry, drop into long +narrow aisles of gloom. Thin, high-stooped houses with drawn shades recede +into the mouse-colored mist of morning, and, as through quagmire, this mist +hovering close to ground, figures skulk--that nameless, shapeless race of +many bloods and one complexion, the underground complexion of paste long +sour from standing. + +At somewhat after that hour Mr. Blutch Connors made exit from one of these +houses, noiseless, with scarcely a click after him, and then, without +pause, passed down the brownstone steps and eastward. A taxicab slid by, +its honk as sorrowful as the cry of a plover in a bog. Another--this one +drawing up alongside, in quest of fare. He moved on, his breath clouding +the early air, and his hands plunged deep in his pockets as if to plumb +their depth. There was a great sag to the silhouette of him moving thus +through the gloom, the chest in and the shoulders rounding and lessening +their front span. Once he paused to remove the brown derby and wipe at his +brow. A policeman struck his stick. He moved on. + +An all-night drug-store, the modern sort of emporium where the capsule +and the herb have become side line to the ivoritus toilet-set and the +pocket-dictionary, threw a white veil of light across the sidewalk. Well +past that window, but as if its image had only just caught up with him, +Mr. Connors turned back, retracing ten steps. A display-window, denuded of +frippery but strewn with straw and crisscrossed with two large strips of +poster, proclaimed Chicklet Face Powder to the cosmetically concerned. With +an eye to fidelity, a small brood of small chickens, half dead with bad +air and not larger than fists, huddled rearward and out of the grilling +light--puny victims to an indorsed method of correspondence-school +advertising. + +Mr. Connors entered, scouting out a dozy clerk. + +"Say, bo, what's one of them chicks worth?" + +"Ain't fer sale." + +Mr. Connors lowered his voice, nudging. + +"I gotta sick wife, bo. Couldn't you slip me one in a 'mergency?" + +"What's the idea--chicken broth? You better go in the park and catch her a +chippie." + +"On the level, friend, one of them little yellow things would cheer her up. +She's great one for pets." + +"Can't you see they're half-dead now? What you wanna cheer her up with--a +corpse? If I had my way, I'd wring the whole display's neck, anyhow." + +"What'll you take for one, bo?" + +"It'll freeze to death." + +"Look! This side pocket is lined with velvet." + +"Dollar." + +"Aw, I said one, friend, not the whole brood." + +"Leave or take." + +Mr. Connors dug deep. + +"Make it sixty cents and a poker-chip, bo. It's every cent I got in my +pocket." + +"Keep the poker-chip for pin-money." + +When Mr. Connors emerged, a small, chirruping bunch of fuzz, cupped in his +hand, lay snug in the velvet-lined pocket. + +At Sixth Avenue, where the great skeleton of the Elevated stalks +mid-street, like a prehistoric _pithecanthropus erectus_, he paused for an +instant in the shadow of a gigantic black pillar, readjusting the fragile +burden to his pocket. + +Stepping out to cross the street, simultaneously a great silent motor-car, +noiseless but wild with speed, tore down the surface-car tracks, blacker in +the hulking shadow of the Elevated trellis. + +A quick doubling up of the sagging silhouette, and the groan of a clutch +violently thrown. A woman's shriek flying thin and high like a javelin of +horror. A crowd sprung full grown out of the bog of the morning. White, +peering faces showing up in the brilliant paths of the acetylene lamps. A +uniform pushing through. A crowbar and the hard breathing of men straining +to lift. A sob in the dark. Stand back! Stand back! + + * * * * * + +Dawn--then a blue, wintry sky, the color and hardness of enamel; and +sunshine, bright, yet so far off the eye could stare up to it unsquinting. +It lay against the pink-brocaded window-hangings of the suite in the Hotel +Metropolis; it even crept in like a timid hand reaching toward, yet not +quite touching, the full-flung figure of Mrs. Blutch Connors, lying, her +cheek dug into the harshness of the carpet, there at the closed door to the +bedroom--prone as if washed there, and her yellow hair streaming back like +seaweed. Sobs came, but only the dry kind that beat in the throat and then +come shrilly, like a sheet of silk swiftly torn. + +How frail are human ties, have said the _beaux esprits_ of every age in one +epigrammatic fashion or another. But frailty can bleed; in fact, it's first +to bleed. + +Lying there, with her face swollen and stamped with the carpet-nap, +squirming in a grief that was actually abashing before it was +heartbreaking, Ann 'Lisbeth Connors, whose only epiphany of life was love, +and shut out from so much else that helps make life sweet, was now shut out +from none of its pain. + +Once she scratched at the door, a faint, dog-like scratch for admission, +and then sat back on her heels, staring at the uncompromising panel, +holding back the audibility of her sobs with her hand. + +Heart-constricting silence, and only the breath of ether seeping out to +her, sweet, insidious. She took to hugging herself violently against a +sudden chill that rushed over her, rattling her frame. + +The bedroom door swung noiselessly back, fanning out the etheric fumes, and +closed again upon an emerging figure. + +"Doctor--quick--God!--What?" + +He looked down upon her with the kind of glaze over his eyes that Bellini +loved to paint, compassion for the pain of the world almost distilled to +tears. + +"Doctor--he ain't--" + +"My poor little lady!" + +"O God--no--no--no! No, Doctor, no! You wouldn't! Please! Please! You +wouldn't let him leave me here all alone, Doctor! O God! you wouldn't! I'm +all alone, Doctor! You see, I'm all alone. Please don't take him from me. +He's mine! You can't! Promise me, Doctor! My darlin' in there--why are you +hurtin' him so? Why has he stopped hollerin'? Cut me to pieces to give him +what he needs to make him live. Don't take him from me, Doctor. He's all I +got! O God--God--please!" And fell back swooning, with an old man's tear +splashing down as if to revivify her. + + * * * * * + +The heart has a resiliency. Strained to breaking, it can contract again. +Even the waiting women, Iseult and Penelope, learned, as they sat sorrowing +and watching, to sing to the swing of the sea. + +When, out of the slough of dark weeks, Mrs. Connors took up life again, +she was only beaten, not broken--a reed lashed down by storm and then +resilient, daring to lift its head again. A wan little head, but the eyes +unwashed of their blue and the irises grown large. The same hard sunshine +lay in its path between the brocade curtains of a room strangely denuded. +It was as if spring had died there, when it was only the _chaise-longue_, +barren of its lacy pillows, a glass vase and silver-framed picture gone +from the mantel, a Mexican afghan removed from a divan and showing its +bulges. + +It was any hotel suite now--uncompromising; leave me or take me. + +In taking leave of it, Mrs. Connors looked about her even coldly, as if +this barren room were too denuded of its memories. + +"You--you been mighty good to me, Joe. It's good to +know--everything's--paid up." + +Mr. Joe Kirby sat well forward on a straight chair, knees well apart in the +rather puffy attitude of the uncomfortably corpulent. + +"Now, cut that! Whatever I done for you, Annie, I done because I wanted to. +If you'd 'a' listened to me, you wouldn't 'a' gone and sold out your last +dud to raise money. Whatcha got friends for?" + +"The way you dug down for--for the funeral, Joe. He--he couldn't have had +the silver handles or the gray velvet if--if not for you, Joe. He--he +always loved everything the best. I can't never forget that of you, +Joe--just never." + +She was pinning on her little crepe-edged veil over her decently black hat, +and paused now to dab up under it at a tear. + +"I'd 'a' expected poor old Blutch to do as much for me." + +"He would! He would! Many's the pal he buried." + +"I hate, Annie, like anything to see you actin' up like this. You ain't +fit to walk out of this hotel on your own hook. Where'd you get that +hand-me-down?" + +She looked down at herself, quickly reddening. + +"It's a warm suit, Joe." + +"Why, you 'ain't got a chance! A little thing like you ain't cut out for +but one or two things. Coddlin'--that's your line. The minute you're +nobody's doll you're goin' to get stepped on and get busted." + +"Whatta you know about--" + +"What kind of a job you think you're gonna get? Adviser to a corporation +lawyer? You're too soft, girl. What chance you think you got buckin' up +against a town that wants value received from a woman. Aw, you know what I +mean, Annie. You can't pull that baby stuff all the time." + +"You," she cried, beating her small hands together, "oh, you--you--" and +then sat down, crying weakly. "Them days back there! Why, I--I was such a +kid it's just like they hadn't been! With her and my grandmother dead and +gone these twelve years, if it wasn't for you it's--it's like they'd never +been." + +"Nobody was gladder 'n me, girl, to see how you made a bed for yourself. +I'm commendin' you, I am. That's just what I'm tryin' to tell you now, +girl. You was cut out to be somebody's kitten, and--" + +"O God!" she sobbed into her handkerchief, "why didn't you take me when you +took him?" + +"Now, now, Annie, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. A good-lookin' woman +like you 'ain't got nothing to worry about. Lemme order you up a drink. +You're gettin' weak again." + +"No, no; I'm taking 'em too often. But they warm me. They warm me, and I'm +cold, Joe--cold." + +"Then lemme--" + +"No! No!" + +He put out a short, broad hand toward her. + +"Poor little--" + +"I gotta go now, Joe. These rooms ain't mine no more." + +He barred her path. + +"Go where?" + +'"Ain't I told you? I'm going out. Anybody that's willin' to work can get +it in this town. I ain't the softy you think I am." + +He took her small black purse up from the table. + +"What's your capital?" + +"You--quit!" + +"Ten--'leven--fourteen dollars and seventy-four cents." + +"You gimme!" + +"You can't cut no capers on that, girl." + +"I--can work." + +He dropped something in against the coins. + +It clinked. + +She sprang at him. + +"No, no; not a cent from you--for myself. I--I didn't know you in them +days for nothing. I was only a kid, but I--I know you! I know. You gimme! +Gimme!" + +He withheld it from her. + +"Hold your horses, beauty! What I was then I am now, and I ain't ashamed of +it. Human, that's all. The best of us is only human before a pretty woman." + +"You gimme!" + +She had snatched up her small hand-satchel from the divan and stood +flashing now beside him, her small, blazing face only level with his +cravat. + +"What you spittin' fire for? That wa'n't nothin' I slipped in but my +address, girl. When you need me call on me. 'The Liberty, 96.' Go right up +in the elevator, no questions asked. Get me?" he said, poking the small +purse into the V of her jacket. "Get me?" + +"Oh, you--Woh--woh--woh!" + +With her face flung back and twisted, and dodging his outflung arm, she was +down four flights of narrow, unused stairs and out. Once in the streets, +she walked with her face still thrust up and a frenzy of haste in her +stride. Red had popped out in her cheeks. There was voice in each +breath--moans that her throat would not hold. + +That night she slept in the kind of fifty-cent room the city offers its +decent poor. A slit of a room with a black-iron bed and a damp mattress. +A wash-stand gaunt with its gaunt mission. A slop-jar on a zinc mat. A +caneless-bottom chair. The chair she propped against the door, the top slat +of it beneath the knob. Through a night of musty blackness she lay in a +rigid line along the bed-edge. + +You who love the city for its million pulses, the beat of its great heart, +and the terrific symphony of its soul, have you ever picked out from its +orchestra the plaintive rune of the deserving poor? + +It is like the note of a wind instrument--an oboe adding its slow note to +the boom of the kettle-drum, the clang of gold-colored cymbals, and the +singing ecstasy of violins. + +One such small voice Ann 'Lisbeth Connors added to the great threnody of +industry. Department stores that turned from her services almost before +they were offered. Offices gleaned from penny papers, miles of them, and +hours of waiting on hard-bottom chairs in draughty waiting-rooms. Faces, +pasty as her own, lined up alongside, greedy of the morsel about to fall. + +When the pinch of poverty threatens men and wolves, they grow long-faced. +In these first lean days, a week of them, Ann 'Lisbeth's face lengthened a +bit, too, and with the fuzz of yellow bangs tucked well up under her not so +decent black hat, crinkles came out about her eyes. + +Nights she supped in a family-entrance cafe beneath her room--veal stew and +a glass of beer. + +She would sit over it, not unpleasantly muzzy. She slept of nights now, and +not so rigidly. + +Then followed a week of lesser department stores as she worked her way +down-town, of offices tucked dingily behind lithograph and small-ware +shops, and even an ostrich-feather loft, with a "Curlers Wanted" sign hung +out. + +In what school does the great army of industry earn its first experience? +Who first employs the untaught hand? Upon Ann 'Lisbeth, untrained in any +craft, it was as if the workaday world turned its back, nettled at a +philistine. + +Once she sat resting on a stoop beneath the sign of a woman's-aid bureau. +She read it, but, somehow, her mind would not register. The calves of her +legs and the line where her shoe cut into her heel were hurting. + +She supped in the family-entrance cafe again--the bowl of veal stew and two +glasses of beer. Some days following, her very first venture out into the +morning, she found employment--a small printing-shop off Sixth Avenue just +below Twenty-third Street. A mere pocket in the wall, a machine champing in +its plate-glass front. + + VISITING-CARDS WHILE YOU WAIT + THIRTY-FIVE CENTS A HUNDRED + +She entered. + +"The sign says--'girl wanted.'" + +A face peered down at her from a high chair behind the champing machine. + +"'Goil wanted,' is what it says. Goil!" + +"I--I ain't old," she faltered. + +"Cut cards?" + +"I--Try me." + +"Five a week." + +"Why--yes." + +"Hang your coat and hat behind the sink." + +Before noon, a waste of miscut cards about her, she cut her hand slightly, +fumbling at the machine, and cried out. + +"For the love of Mike--you want somebody to kiss it and make it well? +Here's a quarter for your time. With them butter-fingers, you better get a +job greasin' popcorn." + +Out in the sun-washed streets the wind had hauled a bit. It cut as she bent +into it. With her additional quarter, she still had two dollars and twenty +cents, and that afternoon, in lower Sixth Avenue, at the instance of +another small card fluttering out in the wind, she applied as dishwasher +in a lunch-room and again obtained--this time at six dollars a week and +suppers. + +The Jefferson Market Lunch Room, thick with kicked-up sawdust and the fumes +of hissing grease, was sunk slightly below the level of the sidewalk, a +fitting retreat for the mole-like humanity that dined furtively at its +counter. Men with too short coat-sleeves and collars turned up; women with +beery eyes and uneven skirt-hems dank with the bilge-water of life's lower +decks. + +Lower Sixth Avenue is the abode of these shadows. Where are they from, and +whither going--these women without beauty, who walk the streets without +handkerchiefs, but blubbering with too much or too little drink? What is +the terrible riddle? Why, even as they blubber, are there women whose +bodies have the quality of cream, slipping in between scented sheets? + +Ann 'Lisbeth, hers not to argue, but accept, dallied with no such question. +Behind the lunch-room, a sink of unwashed dishes rose to a mound. She +plunged her hands into tepid water that clung to her like fuzz. + +"Ugh!" + +"Go to it!" said the proprietor, who wore a black flap over one eye. "Dey +won't bite. If de grease won't cut, souse 'em wit' lye. Don't try to muzzle +no breakage on me, neither, like the slut before you. I kin hear a cup +crack." + +"I won't," said Ann 'Lisbeth, a wave of the furry water slopping out and +down her dress-front. + +Followed four days spent in the grease-laden heat of the kitchen, the smell +of strong foods, raw meat, and fish stews thick above the sink. She had +moved farther down-town, against car fare; but because she talked now +constantly in her sleep and often cried out, there were knockings from the +opposite side of the partitions and oaths. For two evenings she sat until +midnight in a small rear cafe, again pleasantly muzzy over three glasses +of beer and the thick warmth of the room. Another night she carried home a +small bottle, tucking it beneath her coat as she emerged to the street. She +was grease-stained now, in spite of precautions, and her hat, with her hair +uncurled to sustain it, had settled down over her ears, grotesquely large. + +The week raced with her funds. On the sixth day she paid out her last fifty +cents for room-rent, and, without breakfast, filched her lunch from a +half-eaten order of codfish balls returned to the kitchen. + +Yes, reader; but who are you to turn away sickened and know no more of +this? You who love to bask in life's smile, but shudder at its drool! A +Carpenter did not sicken at a leper. He held out a hand. + +That night, upon leaving, she asked for a small advance on her week's wage, +retreating before the furiously stained apron-front and the one eye of the +proprietor cast down upon her. + +"Lay off! Lay off! Who done your bankin' last year? To-morrow's your day, +less four bits for breakage. Speakin' o' breakage, if you drop your jacket, +it'll bust. Watch out! That pint won't last you overnight. Layoff!" + +She reddened immediately, clapping her hand over the small protruding +bottle in her pocket. She dared not return to her room, but sat out the +night in a dark foyer behind a half-closed storm-door. No one found her +out, and the wind could not reach her. Toward morning she even slept +sitting. But the day following, weak and too soft for the lift, straining +to remove the great dish-pan high with crockery from sink to table, she let +slip, grasping for a new hold. + +There was a crash and a splintered debris--plates that rolled like hoops +to the four corners of the room, shivering as they landed; a great ringing +explosion of heavy stoneware, and herself drenched with the webby water. + +"O God!" she cried in immediate hysteria. "O God! O God!" and fell to her +knees in a frenzy of clearing-up. + +A raw-boned Minerva, a waitress with whom she had had no previous word, +sprang to her succor, a big, red hand of mercy jerking her up from the +debris. + +"Clear out! He's across the bar. Beat it while the going's good. Your +week's gone in breakage, anyways, and he'll split up the place when he +comes. Clear out, girl, and here--for car fare." + +Out in the street, her jacket not quite on and her hat clapped askew, Ann +'Lisbeth found herself quite suddenly scuttling down a side-street. + +In her hand a dime burnt up into the palm. + +For the first time in these weeks, except when her pint or the evening beer +had vivified her, a warmth seemed to flow through Ann 'Lisbeth. Chilled, +and her wet clothing clinging in at the knees, a fever +nevertheless quickened her. She was crying as she walked, but not +blubbering--spontaneous hot tears born of acute consciousness of pain. + +A great shame at her smelling, grease-caked dress-front smote her, too, and +she stood back in a doorway, scraping at it with a futile forefinger. + +February had turned soft and soggy, the city streets running mud, and the +damp insidious enough to creep through the warmth of human flesh. A day +threatened with fog from East River had slipped, without the interim of +dusk, into a heavy evening. Her clothing dried, but sitting in a small +triangle of park in Grove Street, chill seized her again, and, faint for +food, but with nausea for it, she tucked her now empty pint bottle beneath +the bench. She was crying incessantly, but her mind still seeming to +revive. Her small black purse she drew out from her pocket. It had a +collapsed look. Yet within were a sample of baby-blue cotton crepe, a +receipt from a dyeing-and-cleaning establishment, and a bit of pink +chamois; in another compartment a small assortment of keys. + +She fumbled among them, blind with tears. Once she drew out, peering +forward toward a street-lamp to inspect it. It clinked as she touched it, a +small metal tag ringing. + +HOTEL LIBERTY 96 + +An hour Ann 'Lisbeth sat there, with the key in her lax hand. Finally she +rubbed the pink chamois across her features and adjusted her hat, pausing +to scrape again with forefinger at the front of her, and moved on through +the gloom, the wind blowing her skirt forward. + +She boarded a Seventh Avenue street-car, extracting the ten-cent piece +from her purse with a great show of well-being, sat back against the +carpet-covered, lengthwise seat, her red hands, with the cut forefinger +bound in rag, folded over her waist. + +At Fiftieth Street she alighted, the white lights of the whitest street in +the world forcing down through the murk, and a theater crowd swarming to be +turned from reality. + +The incandescent sign of the Hotel Liberty jutted out ahead. + +She did not pause. She was in and into an elevator even before a lackey +turned to stare. + +She found "Ninety-six" easily enough, inserting the key and opening the +door upon darkness--a warm darkness that came flowing out scented. She +found the switch, pressed it. + +A lamp with a red shade sprang up and a center chandelier. A warm-toned, +well-tufted room, hotel chromos well in evidence, but a turkey-red air of +solid comfort. + +Beyond, a white-tiled bathroom shining through the open door, and another +room hinted at beyond that. + +She dropped, even in her hat and jacket, against the divan piled with +fat-looking satin cushions. Tears coursed out from her closed eyes, and she +relaxed as if she would swoon to the luxury of the pillows, burrowing and +letting them bulge up softly about her. + +A half-hour she lay so in the warm bath of light, her little body so +quickly fallen into vagrancy not without litheness beneath the moldy skirt. + + * * * * * + +Some time after eight she rose, letting the warm water in the bathroom lave +over her hands, limbering them, and from a bottle of eau de Cologne in a +small medicine-chest sprinkled herself freely and touched up the corners of +her eyes with it. A thick robe of Turkish toweling hung from the bathroom +door. She unhooked it, looping it over one arm. + +A key scraped in the lock. From where she stood a rigidity raced over Ann +'Lisbeth, locking her every limb in paralysis. Her mouth moved to open and +would not. + +The handle turned, and, with a sudden release of faculties, darting this +way and that, as if at bay, she tore the white-enameled medicine-chest from +its moorings, and, with a yell sprung somewhere from the primordial depths +of her, stood with it swung to hurl. + +The door opened and she lunged, then let it fall weakly and with a small +crash. + +The chambermaid, white with shock at that cry, dropped her burden of towels +in the open doorway and fled. Ann 'Lisbeth fled, too, down the two flights +of stairs her frenzy found out for her, and across the flare of Broadway. + +The fog from East River was blowing in grandly as she ran into its tulle. +It closed around and around her. + + + + +V + +GOLDEN FLEECE + + +How saving a dispensation it is that men do not carry in their hearts +perpetual ache at the pain of the world, that the body-thuds of the +drink-crazed, beating out frantic strength against cell doors, cannot +penetrate the beatitude of a mother bending, at that moment, above a crib. +Men can sit in club windows while, even as they sit, are battle-fields +strewn with youth dying, their faces in mud. While men are dining where +there are mahogany and silver and the gloss of women's shoulders, are men +with kick-marks on their shins, ice gluing shut their eyes, and lashed with +gale to some ship-or-other's crow's-nest. Women at the opera, so fragrant +that the senses swim, sit with consciousness partitioned against a +sweating, shuddering woman in some forbidding, forbidden room, hacking open +a wall to conceal something red-stained. One-half of the world does not +know or care how the other half lives or dies. + +When, one summer, July came in like desert wind, West Cabanne Terrace and +that part of residential St. Louis that is set back in carefully conserved, +grove-like lawns did not sip its iced limeades with any the less +refreshment because, down-town at the intersection of Broadway and West +Street, a woman trundling a bundle of washing in an old perambulator +suddenly keeled of heat, saliva running from her mouth-corners. + +At three o'clock, that hour when so often a summer's day reaches its stilly +climax and the heat-dance becomes a thing visible, West Cabanne Terrace and +its kind slip into sheerest and crepiest de Chine, click electric fans to +third speed, draw green shades, and retire for siesta. + +At that same hour, in the Popular Store, where Broadway and West Street +intersect, one hundred and fifty salesgirls--jaded sentinels for a +public that dares not venture down, loll at their counters and after the +occasional shopper, relax deeper to limpidity. + +At the jewelry counter, a crystal rectangle facing broadside the main +entrance and the bleached and sun-grilled street without, Miss Lola +Hassiebrock, salient among many and with Olympian certainty of self, lifted +two Junoesque arms like unto the handles of a vase, held them there in the +kind of rigidity that accompanies a yawn, and then let them flop. + +"Oh-h-h-h, God bless my soul!" she said. + +Miss Josie Beemis, narrowly constricted between shoulders that barely +sloped off from her neck, with arms folded flat to her flat bosom and her +back a hypothenuse against the counter, looked up. + +"Watch out, Loo! I read in the paper where a man up in Alton got caught in +the middle of one of those gaps and couldn't ungap." + +Miss Hassiebrock batted at her lips and shuddered. + +"It's my nerves, dearie. All the doctors say that nine gaps out of ten are +nerves." + +Miss Beemis hugged herself a bit flatter, looking out straight ahead into a +parasol sale across the aisle. + +"Enough sleep ain't such a bad cure for gaps," she said. + +"I'll catch up in time, dearie; my foot's been asleep all day." + +"Huh!"--sniffling so that her thin nose quirked sidewise. "I will now +indulge in hollow laughter--" + +"You can't, dearie," said Miss Hassiebrock, driven to vaudevillian +extremities, "you're cracked." + +"Well, I may be cracked, but my good name ain't." + +A stiffening of Miss Hassiebrock took place, as if mere verbiage had +suddenly flung a fang. From beneath the sternly and too starched white +shirtwaist and the unwilted linen cravat wound high about her throat and +sustained there with a rhinestone horseshoe, it was as if a wave of color +had started deep down, rushing up under milky flesh into her hair. + +"Is that meant to be an in-sinuating remark, Josie?" + +"'Tain't how it's meant; it's how it's took." + +"There's some poor simps in this world, maybe right here in this store, +ought to be excused from what they say because they don't know any better." + +"I know this much: To catch the North End street-car from here, I don't +have to walk every night down past the Stag Hotel to do it." + +At that Miss Hassiebrock's ears, with the large pearl blobs in them, +tingled where they peeped out from the scallops of yellow hair, and she +swallowed with a forward movement as if her throat had constricted. + +"I--take the street-car where I darn please, and it's nobody's darn +business." + +"Sure it ain't! Only, if a poor working-girl don't want to make it +everybody's darn business, she can't run around with the fast rich boys of +this town and then get invited to help hem the altar-cloth." + +"Anything I do in this town I'm not ashamed to do in broad daylight." + +"Maybe; but just the samey, I notice the joy rides out to Claxton don't +take place in broad daylight. I notice that 'tall, striking blonde' and +Charley Cox's speed-party in the morning paper wasn't exactly what you'd +call a 'daylight' affair." + +"No, it wasn't; it was--my affair." + +"Say, if you think a girl like you can run with the black sheep of every +rich family in town and make a noise like a million dollars with the horsy +way she dresses, it ain't my grave you're digging." + +"Maybe if some of the girls in this store didn't have time to nose so much, +they'd know why I can make them all look like they was caught out in the +rain and not pressed the next morning. While they're snooping in what +don't concern them I'm snipping. Snipping over my last year's +black-and-white-checked jacket into this year's cutaway. If you girls had +as much talent in your needle as you've got in your conversation, you might +find yourselves somewheres." + +"Maybe what you call 'somewheres' is what lots of us would call +'nowheres.'" + +Miss Hassiebrock drew herself up and, from the suzerainty of sheer height, +looked down upon Miss Beemis there, so brown and narrow beside the +friendship-bracelet rack. + +"I'll have you know, Josie Beemis, that if every girl in this store watched +her step like me, there'd be a darn sight less trouble in the world." + +"I know you don't go beyond the life-line, Loo, but, gee! you--you do swim +out some!" + +"Little Loo knows her own depth, all righty." + +"Not the way you're cuttin' up with Charley Cox." + +Miss Hassiebrock lowered her flaming face to scrutinize a tray of +rhinestone bar pins. + +"I'd like to see any girl in this store turn down a bid with Charley Cox. I +notice there are plenty of you go out to the Highland dances hoping to meet +even his imitation." + +"The rich boys that hang around the Stag and out to the Highlands don't get +girls like us anywheres." + +"I don't need them to get me anywhere. It's enough when a fellow takes +me out that he can tuck me up in a six-cylinder and make me forget my +stone-bruise. Give me a fellow that smells of gasolene instead of bay rum +every time. Trolley-car Johnnies don't mean nothing in my life." + +"You let John Simeon out of this conversation!" + +"You let Charley Cox out!" + +"Maybe he don't smell like a cleaned white glove, but John means something +by me that's good." + +"Well, since you're so darn smart, Josie Beemis, and since you got so much +of the English language to spare, I'm going to tell you something. Three +nights in succession, and I can prove it by the crowd, Charley Cox has +asked me to marry him. Begged me last night out at Claxton Inn, with Jess +Turner and all that bunch along, to let them roust out old man Gerber there +in Claxton and get married in poetry. Put that in your pipe and smoke it +awhile, Josie; it may soothe your nerve." + +"Y-aw," said Miss Beemis. + +The day dwindled. Died. + + +At West Street, where Broadway intersects, the red sun at its far end +settled redly and cleanly to sink like a huge coin into the horizon. The +Popular Store emptied itself into this hot pink glow, scurried for the open +street-car and, oftener than not, the overstuffed rear platform, nose to +nose, breath to breath. + +Fortunately the Popular Store took its semi-annual inventory of yards and +not of souls. Such a stock-taking, that of the human hearts which beat from +half after eight to six behind six floors of counters, would have revealed +empty crannies, worn thin in places with the grind of routine. The +eight-thirty-to-six business of muslin underwear, crash toweling, and +skirt-binding. The great middle class of shoppers who come querulous with +bunions and babies. The strap-hanging homeward ride. Supper, but usually +within range of the range that boils it. The same smells of the same foods. +The, cinematograph or front-stoop hour before bed. Or, if Love comes, +and he will not be gainsaid, a bit of wooing at the fountain--the +soda-fountain. But even he, oftener than not, comes moist-handed, and in a +ready-tied tie. As if that matters, and yet somehow, it does. Leander wore +none, or had he, would have worn it flowing. Then bed, and the routine +of its unfolding and coaxing the pillow from beneath the iron clamp. An +alarm-clock crashing through the stuff of dreams. Coffee within reach of +the range. Another eight-thirty-to-six reality of muslin underwearing, +crash toweling, and skirt-binding. + +But, not given to self-inventory, the Popular Store emptied itself +with that blessed elasticity of spirit which, unappalled, stretches to +to-morrows as they come. + +At Ninth Street Miss Lola Hassiebrock loosed her arm where Miss Beemis +had linked into it. Wide-shouldered and flat-hipped, her checked suit so +pressed that the lapels lay entirely flat to the swell of her bosom, her +red sailor-hat well down over her brow, and the high, swathing cravat +rising to inclose her face like a wimple, she was Fashion's apotheosis in +tailor-made mood. When Miss Hassiebrock walked, her skirt, concealing yet +revealing an inch glimmer of gray-silk stocking above gray-suede spats, +allowed her ten inches of stride. She turned now, sidestepping within those +ten inches. + +"See you to-morrow, Josie." + +"Ain't you taking the car?" + +"No, dearie," said Miss Hassiebrock, stepping down to cross the street; +"you take it, but not for keeps." + +And so, walking southward on Ninth Street in a sartorial glory that was of +her own making-over from last season, even St. Louis, which at the stroke +of six rushes so for the breeze of its side yards, leaving darkness to +creep into down-town streets that are as deserted as canons, turned its +feminine head to bear in mind the box-plaited cutaway, the male eye +appraising its approval with bold, even quirking eye. + +Through this, and like Diana, who, so aloof from desire, walked in the path +of her own splendor, strode Miss Hassiebrock, straight and forward of eye. +Past the Stag Hotel, in an aisle formed by lounging young bloods and a curb +lined with low, long-snouted motor-cars, the gaze beneath the red sailor +and above the high, horsy stock a bit too rigidly conserved. + +Slightly by, the spoken word and the whistled innuendo followed her like +a trail of bubbles in the wake of a flying-fish. A youth still wearing a +fraternity pin pretended to lick his downy chops. The son of the president +of the Mound City Oil Company emitted a long, amorous whistle. Willie +Waxter--youngest scion, scalawag, and scorcher of one of the oldest +families--jammed down his motorgoggles from the visor of his cap, making +the feint of pursuing. Mr. Charley Cox, of half a hundred first-page +exploits, did pursue, catching up slightly breathless. + +"What's your hurry, honey?" + +She spun about, too startled. + +"Charley Cox! Well, of all the nerve! Why didn't you scare me to death and +be done with it?" + +"Did I scare you, sweetness? Cross my heart, I didn't mean to." + +"Well, I should say you did!" + +He linked his arm into hers. + +"Come on; I'll buy you a drink." + +She unlinked. + +"Honest, can't a girl go home from work in this town without one of you +fellows getting fresh with her?" + +"All right, then; I'll buy you a supper. The car is back there, and we'll +shoot out to the inn. What do you say? I feel like a house afire this +evening, kiddo. What does your speedometer register?" + +"Charley, aren't you tired painting this old town yet? Ain't there just +nothing will bring you to your senses? Honest, this morning's papers are a +disgrace. You--you won't catch me along again." + +He slid his arm, all for ingratiating, back into hers. + +"Come now, honey; you know you like me for my speed." + +She would not smile. + +"Honest, Charley, you're the limit." + +"But you like me just the same. Now don't you, Loo?" + +She looked at him sidewise. + +"You've been drinking, Charley." + +He felt of his face. + +"Not a drop, Loo. I need a shave, that's all." + +"Look at your stud--loose." + +He jammed a diamond whip curling back upon itself into his maroon scarf. He +was slightly heavy, so that his hands dimpled at the knuckle, and above +the soft collar, joined beneath the scarf with a goldbar pin, his chin +threatened but did not repeat itself. + +"I got to go now, Charley; there's a North End car coming." + +"Aw, now, sweetness, what's the idea? Didn't you walk down here to pick me +up?" + +An immediate flush stung her face. + +"Well, of all the darn conceit! Can't a girl walk down to the loop to catch +her car and stretch her legs after she's been cooped up all day, without a +few of you boys throwing a bouquet or two at yourselves?" + +"I got to hand it you, Loo; when you walk down this street, you make every +girl in town look warmed over." + +"Do you like it, Charley? It's that checked jacket I bought at Hamlin's +sale last year made over." + +"Say, it's classy! You look like all the money in the world, honey." + +"Huh, two yards of coat-lining, forty-four cents, and Ida Bell's last +year's office-hat reblocked, sixty-five." + +"You're the show-piece of the town, all right. Come on; let's pick up a +crowd and muss-up Claxton Road a little." + +"I meant what I said, Charley. After the cuttings-up of last night and the +night before I'm quits. Maybe Charley Cox can afford to get himself talked +about because he's Charley Cox, but a girl like me with a job to hold down, +and the way ma and Ida Bell were sitting up in their nightgowns, green +around the gills, when I got home last night--nix! I'm getting myself +talked about, if you want to know it, running with--your gang, Charley." + +"I'd like to see anybody let out so much as a grunt about you in front of +me. A fellow can't do any more, honey, to show a girl where she stands with +him than ask her to marry him--now can he? If I'd have had my way last +night, I'd--" + +"You was drunk when you asked me, Charley." + +"You mean you got cold feet?" + +"Thank God, I did!" + +"I don't blame you, girl. You might do worse--but not much." + +"That's what you'd need for your finishing-touch, a girl like me dragging +you down." + +"You mean pulling me up." + +"Yes, maybe, if you didn't have a cent." + +"I'd have enough sense then to know better than to ask you, honey. You +'ain't got that fourteen-carat look in your eye for nothing. You're the +kind that's going to bring in a big fish, and I wish it to you." + +"Lots you know." + +"Come on; let me ride you around the block, then." + +"If--if you like my company so much, can't you just take a walk with me or +come out and sit on our steps awhile?" + +"Lord, girl, Flamm Avenue is hot enough to fry my soul to-night!" + +"We can't all have fathers that live in thirty-room houses out in +Kingsmoreland Place." + +"Thank God for that! I sneaked home this morning to change my clothes, and +thought maybe I'd got into somebody's mausoleum by mistake." + +"Was--was your papa around, Charley?" + +"In the library, shut up with old man Brookes." + +"Did he--did he see the morning papers? You know what he said last time, +Charley, when the motor-cycle cop chased you down an embankment." + +"Honey, if my old man was to carry out every threat he utters, I'd be +disinherited, murdered, hong-konged, shanghaied, and cremated every day in +the year." + +"I got to go now, Charley." + +"Not let a fellow even spin you home?" + +"You know I want to, Charley, but--but it don't do you any good, boy, being +seen with me in that joy-wagon of yours. It--it don't do you any good, +Charley, ever--ever being seen with me." + +"There's nothing or nobody in this town can hurt my reputation, honey, and +certainly not my ace-spot girl. Turn your mind over, and telephone down for +me to come out and pick you up about eight." + +"Don't hit it up to-night, Charley. Can't you go home one evening?" + +He juggled her arm. + +"You're a nice little girl, all righty." + +"There's my car." + +He elevated her by the elbow to the step, swinging up half-way after her to +drop a coin into the box. + +"Take care of this little lady there, conductor, and don't let your car +skid." + +"Oh, Charley--silly!" + +She forced her way into the jammed rear platform, the sharp brim of the red +sailor creating an area for her. + +"S'long, Charley!" + +"S'long, girl!" + +Wedged there in the moist-faced crowd, she looked after him, at his broad +back receding. An inclination to cry pressed at her eyeballs. + +Flamm Avenue, which is treeless and built up for its entire length with +two-story, flat-roofed buildings, stares, window for window, stoop for +stoop, at its opposite side, and, in summer, the strip of asphalt street, +unshaded and lying naked to the sun, gives off such an effluvium of heat +and hot tar that the windows are closed to it and night descends like a +gas-mask to the face. + +Opening the door upon the Hassiebrock front room, convertible from bed- to +sitting-room by the mere erect-position-stand of the folding-bed, a wave +of this tarry heat came flowing out, gaseous, sickening. Miss Hassiebrock +entered with her face wry, made a diagonal cut of the room, side-stepping a +patent rocker and a table laid out with knickknacks on a lace mat, slammed +closed two windows, and, turning inward, lifted off her hat, which left a +brand across her forehead and had plastered down her hair in damp scallops. + +"Whew!" + +"Lo-o, that you?" + +"Yes, ma." + +"Come out to your supper. I'll warm up the kohlrabi." + +Miss Hassiebrock strode through a pair of chromatic portieres, with them +swinging after her, and into an unlit kitchen, gray with dusk. A table +drawn out center and within range of the gas-range was a blotch in the +gloom, three figures surrounding it with arms that moved vaguely among a +litter of dishes. + +"I wish to Heaven somebody in this joint would remember to keep those front +windows shut!" + +Miss Ida Bell Hassiebrock, at the right of the table, turned her head so +that, against the window, her profile, somewhat thin, cut into the gloom. + +"There's a lot of things I wish around here," she said, without a ripple to +her lips. + +"Hello, ma!" + +"I'll warm up the kohlrabi, Loo." + +Mrs. Hassiebrock, in the green black of a cotton umbrella and as sparse of +frame, moved around to the gas-range, scraping a match and dragging a pot +over the blue flame. + +"Never mind, ma; I ain't hungry." + +At the left of the table Genevieve Hassiebrock, with thirteen's crab-like +silhouette of elbow, rigid plaits, and nose still hitched to the star of +her nativity, wound an exceedingly long arm about Miss Hassiebrock's trim +waist-line. + +"I got B in de-portment to-day, Loo. You owe me the wear of your spats +Sunday." + +Miss Hassiebrock squeezed the hand at her waist. + +"All right, honey. Cut Loo a piece of bread." + +"Gussie Flint's mother scalded her leg with the wash-boiler." + +"Did she? Aw!" + +Mrs. Hassiebrock came then, limping around, tilting the contents of the +steaming pot to a plate. + +"Sit down, ma; don't bother." + +Miss Hassiebrock drew up, pinning a fringed napkin that stuck slightly in +the unfolding across her shining expanse of shirtwaist. Broke a piece of +bread. Dipped. + +Silence. + +"Paula Krausnick only got C in de-portment. When the monitor passed the +basin, she dipped her sponge soppin'-wet." + +"Anything new, ma?" + +Mrs. Hassiebrock, now at the sink, swabbed a dish with gray water. + +"My feet's killin' me," she said. + +Miss Ida Bell, who wore her hair in a coronet wound twice round her small +head, crossed her knife and fork on her plate, folded her napkin, and tied +it with a bit of blue ribbon. + +"I think it's a shame, ma, the way you keep thumping around in your +stocking feet like this was backwoods." + +"I can't get my feet in shoes--the joints--" + +"You thump around as much as you darn please, ma. If Ida Bell don't like +the looks of you, let her go home with some of her swell stenog friends. +You let your feet hurt you any old way you want 'em to. I'm going to buy +you some arnica. Pass the kohlrabi." + +"Well, my swell 'stenog friends,' as you call them, keep themselves +self-respecting girls without getting themselves talked about, and that's +more than I can say of my sister. If ma had the right kind of gumption with +you, she'd put a stop to it, all right." + +Mrs. Hassiebrock leaned her tired head sidewise into the moist palm of her +hand. + +"She's beyond me and the days when a slipper could make her mind. I wisht +to God there was a father to rule youse!" + +"I tell you, ma--mark my word for it--if old man Brookes ever finds out I'm +sister to any of the crowd that runs with Charley Cox and Willie Waxter and +those boys whose fathers he's lawyer for, it'll queer me for life in +that office--that's what it will. A girl that's been made confidential +stenographer after only one year in an office to have to be afraid, like I +am, to pick up the morning's paper." + +"Paula Krausnick's lunch was wrapped in the paper where Charley Cox got +pinched for speedin'--speedin'--speedin'--" + +"Shut up, Genevieve! Just don't you let my business interfere with +yours, Ida Bell. Brookes don't know you're on earth outside of your +dictation-book. Take it from me, I bet he wouldn't know you if he met you +on the street." + +"That's about all you know about it! If you found yourself confidential +stenographer to the biggest lawyer in town, he'd know you, all right--by +your loud dressing. A blind man could see you coming." + +"Ma, are you going to stand there and let her talk to me thataway? I notice +she's willing to borrow my loud shirtwaists and my loud gloves and my loud +collars." + +"If ma had more gumption with you, maybe things would be different." + +Mrs. Hassiebrock limped to the door, dangling a pail. + +"I 'ain't got no more strength against her. My ears won't hold no more. I'm +taking this hot oil down to Mrs. Flint's scalds. She's, beyond my control, +and the days when a slipper could make her mind. I wisht to God there was a +father! I wisht to God!" + +Her voice trailed off and down a rear flight of stairs. + +"Yes _sir_," resumed Miss Hassiebrock, her voice twanging in her effort at +suppression, "I notice you're pretty willing to borrow some of my loud +dressing when you get a bid once in a blue moon to take a boat-ride up to +Alton with that sad-faced Roy Brownell. If Charley didn't have a cent to +his name and a harelip, he'd make Roy Brownell look like thirty cents." + +"If Roy Brownell was Charley Cox, I'd hate to leave him laying around loose +where you could get your hands on him." + +"Genevieve, you run out and play." + +"If--if you keep running around till all hours of the night, with me and ma +waiting up for you, kicking up rows and getting your name insinuated in the +newspapers as 'the tall, handsome blonde,' I--I'm going to throw up my job, +I am, and you can pay double your share for the running of this flat. Next +thing we know, with that crowd that don't mean any good to you, this family +is going to find itself with a girl in trouble on its hands." + +"You--" + +"And if you want to know it, and if I wasn't somebody's confidential +stenographer, I could tell you that you're on the wrong scent. Boys like +Charley Cox don't mean good by your kind of a girl. If you're not speedy, +you look it, and that's almost the same as inviting those kind of boys +to--" + +Miss Lola Hassiebrock sprang up then, her hand coming down in a small crash +to the table. + +"You cut out that talk in front of that child!" + +Thus drawn into the picture, Genevieve, at thirteen, crinkled her face for +not uncalculating tears. + +"In this house it's fuss and fuss and fuss. Other children can go to the +'movies' after supper, only me-e-e--" + +"Here, honey; Loo's got a dime for you." + +"Sending that child out along your own loose ways, instead of seeing to it +she stays home to help ma do the dishes!" + +"I'll do the dishes for ma." + +"It's bad enough for one to have the name of being gay without starting +that child running around nights with--" + +"Ida Bell!" + +"You dry up, Ida Bell! I'll do what I pl--ease with my di--uhm--di--uhm." + +"If you say another word about such stuff in front of that child, I'll--" + +"Well, if you don't want her to hear what she sees with her eyes all around +her, come into the bedroom, then, and I can tell you something that'll +bring you to your senses." + +"What you can tell me I don't want to hear." + +"You're afraid." + +"I am, am I?" + +"Yes." + +With a wrench of her entire body, Miss Lola Hassiebrock was across the room +at three capacity strides, swung open a door there, and stood, head flung +up and pressing back tears, her lips turned inward. + +"All right, then--tell--" + +After them, the immediately locked door resisting, Genevieve fell to +batting the panels. + +"Let me in! Let me in! You're fussin' about your beaux. Ray Brownell has a +long face, and Charley Cox has a red face--red face--red face! Let me in! +In!" + +After a while the ten-cent piece rolled from her clenched and knocking +fist, scuttling and settling beneath the sink. She rescued it and went out, +lickety-clapping down the flight of rear stairs. + +Silence descended over that kitchen, and a sooty dusk that almost +obliterated the table, drawn out and cluttered after the manner of those +who dine frowsily; the cold stove, its pots cloying, and a sink piled high +with a task whose only ending is from meal to meal. + +Finally that door swung open again; the wide-shouldered, slim-hipped +silhouette of Miss Hassiebrock moved swiftly and surely through the kind +of early darkness, finding out for itself a wall telephone hung in a small +patch of hallway separating kitchen and front room. Her voice came tight, +as if it were a tense coil in her throat that she held back from bursting +into hysteria. + +"Give me Olive, two-one-o." The toe of her boot beat a quick tattoo. +"Stag?... Say, get me Charley Cox. He's out in front or down in the grill +or somewhere around. Page him quick! Important!" She grasped the nozzle of +the instrument as she waited, breathing into it with her head thrown back. +"Hello--Charley? That you? It's me. Loo ... _Loo_! Are you deaf, honey? +What you doing?... Oh, I got the blues, boy; honest I have. Blue as a +cat.... I don't know--just the indigoes. Nothing much. Ain't lit up, are +you, honey?... Sure I will. Don't bring a crowd. Just you and me. I'll walk +down to Gessler's drug-store and you can pick me up there.... Quit your +kidding.... Ten minutes. Yeh. Good-by." + + * * * * * + +Claxton Inn, slightly outside the city limits and certain of its decorums, +stands back in a grove off a macadamized highway that is so pliant to tire +that of summer nights, with tops thrown back and stars sown like lavish +grain over a close sky and to a rushing breeze that presses the ears like +an eager whisper, motor-cars, wild to catch up with the horizon, tear out +that road--a lightning-streak of them--fearing neither penal law nor Dead +Man's Curve. + +Slacking only to be slacked, cars dart off the road and up a gravel +driveway that encircles Claxton Inn like a lariat swung, then park +themselves among the trees, lights dimmed. Placid as a manse without, what +was once a private and now a public house maintains through lowered +lids its discreet white-frame exterior, shades drawn, and only slightly +revealing the parting of lace curtains. It is rearward where what was +formerly a dining-room that a huge, screened-in veranda, very whitely +lighted, juts suddenly out, and a showy hallway, bordered in potted palms, +leads off that. Here Discretion dares lift her lids to rove the gravel +drive for who comes there. + +In a car shaped like a motor-boat and as low to the ground Mr. Charley Cox +turned in and with a great throttling and choking of engine drew up among +the dim-eyed monsters of the grove and directly alongside an eight-cylinder +roadster with a snout like a greyhound. + +"Aw, Charley, I thought you promised you wasn't going to stop!" + +"Honey, sweetness, I just never was so dry." + +Miss Hassiebrock laid out a hand along his arm, sitting there in the quiet +car, the trees closing over them. + +"There's Yiddles Farm a little farther out, Charley; let's stop there for +some spring water." + +He was peeling out of his gauntlets, and cramming them into spacious side +pockets. + +"Water, honey, can wash me, but it can't quench me." + +"No high jinks to-night, though, Charley?" + +"Sure--no." + +They high-stepped through the gloom, and finally, with firmer step, up the +gravel walk and into the white-lighted, screened-in porch. + +Three waiters ran toward their entrance. A woman with a bare V of back +facing them, and three plumes that dipped to her shoulders, turned square +in her chair. + +"Hi, Charley. Hi, Loo!" + +"H'lo, Jess!" + +They walked, thus guided by two waiters, through a light _confetti_ of +tossed greetings, sat finally at a table half concealed by an artificial +palm. + +"You don't feel like sitting with Jess and the crowd, Loo?" + +"Charley, hasn't that gang got you into enough mix-ups?" + +"All right, honey; anything your little heart desires." + +She leaned on her elbows across the table from him, smiling and twirling a +great ring of black onyx round her small finger. + +"Love me?" + +"Br-r-r--to death!" + +"Sure?" + +"Sure. What'll you have, hon?" + +"I don't care." + +"Got any my special Gold Top on ice for me, George? Good. Shoot me a bottle +and a special layout of _hors-d'oeuvre_. How's that, sweetness?" + +"Yep." + +"Poor little girl," he said, patting the black onyx, "with the bad old +blues! I know what they are, honey; sometimes I get crazy with 'em myself." + +Her lips trembled. + +"It's you makes me blue, Charley." + +"Now, now; just don't worry that big, nifty head of yours about me." + +"The--the morning papers and all. I--I just hate to see you going so to--to +the dogs, Charley--a--fellow like you--with brains." + +"I'm a bad egg, girl, and what you going to do about it? I was raised like +one, and I'll die like one." + +"You ain't a bad egg. You just never had a chance. You been killed with +coin." + +"Killed with coin! Why, Loo, do you know, I haven't had to ask my old man +for a cent since my poor old granny died five years ago and left me a world +of money? While he's been piling it up like the Rocky Mountains I've been +getting down to rock-bottom. What would you say, sweetness, if I told you I +was down to my last few thousands? Time to touch my old man, eh?" + +He drank off his first glass with a quaff, laughing and waving it empty +before her face to give off its perfume. + +"My old man is going to wake up in a minute and find me on his +checking-account again. Charley boy better be making connections with +headquarters or he won't find himself such a hit with the niftiest doll in +town, eh?" + +"Charley, you--you haven't run through those thousands and thousands and +thousands the papers said you got from your granny that time?" + +"It was slippery, hon; somebody buttered it." + +"Charley, Charley, ain't there just no limit to your wildness?" + +"You're right, girl; I've been killed with coin. My old man's been too busy +all these years sitting out there in that marble tomb in Kingsmoreland +biting the rims off pennies to hold me back from the devil. Honey, that old +man, even if he is my father, didn't know no more how to raise a boy like +me than that there salt-cellar. Every time I got in a scrape he bought me +out of it, filled up the house with rough talk, and let it go at that. It's +only this last year, since he's short on health, that he's kicking up the +way he should have before it got too late. My old man never used to talk it +out with me, honey. He used to lash it out. I got a twelve-year-old welt on +my back now, high as your finger. Maybe it'll surprise you, girl, but now, +since he can't welt me up any more, me and him don't exchange ten words a +month." + +"Did--did he hear about last night, Charley? You know what came out in +the paper about making a new will if--if you ever got pulled in again for +rough-housing?" + +"Don't you worry that nifty head of yours about my old man ever making a +new will. He's been pulling that ever since they fired me from the academy +for lighting a cigarette with a twenty-dollar bill." + +"Charley!" + +"Next to taking it with him, he'll leave it to me before he'll see a penny +go out of the family. I've seen his will, hon." + +"Charley, you--you got so much good in you. The way you sent that wooden +leg out to poor old lady Guthrie. The way you made Jimmy Ball go home, and +the blind-school boys and all. Why can't you get yourself on the right +track where you belong, Charley? Why don't you clear--out--West where it's +clean?" + +"I used to have that idea, Loo. West, where a fellow's got to stand on his +own. Why, if I'd have met a girl like you ten years ago, I'd have made you +the baby doll of the Pacific Coast. I like you, Loo. I like your style and +the way you look like a million dollars. When a fellow walks into a cafe +with you he feels like he's wearing the Hope diamond. Maybe the society in +this town has given me the cold shoulder, but I'd like to see any of the +safety-first boys walk in with one that's got you beat. That's what I think +of you, girl." + +"Aw, now, you're lighting up. Charley. That's four glasses you've taken." + +"Thought I was kidding you last night--didn't you--about wedding-bells?" + +"You were lit up." + +"I know. You're going to watch your step, little girl, and I don't know as +I blame you. You can get plenty of boys my carat, and a lot of other things +thrown in I haven't got to offer you." + +"As if I wouldn't like you, Charley, if you were dead broke!" + +"Of course you would! There, there, girl, I don't blame any of you for +feathering your nest." He was flushed now and above the soft collar, his +face had relaxed into a not easily controllable smile. "Feather your nest, +girl; you got the looks to do it. It's a far cry from Flamm Avenue to where +a classy girl like you can land herself if she steers right. And I wish it +to you, girl; the best isn't good enough." + +"I--I dare you to ask me again, Charley!" + +"Ask what?" + +"You know. Throw your head up the way you do when you mean what you say +and--ask." + +He was wagging his head now insistently, but pinioning his gaze with the +slightly glassy stare of those who think none too clearly. + +"Honest, I don't know, beauty. What's the idea?" + +"Didn't you say yourself--Gerber, out here in Claxton that--magistrate that +marries you in verse--" + +"By gad, I did!" + +"Well--I--I--dare you to ask me again, Charley." + +He leaned forward. + +"You game, girl?" + +"Sure." + +"No kidding?" + +"Try me." + +"I'm serious, girl." + +"So'm I." + +"There's Jess over there can get us a special license from his +brother-in-law. Married in verse in Claxton sounds good to me, honey." + +"But not--the crowd, Charley; just you--and--" + +"How're we going to get the license, honey, this time of night without +Jess? Let's make it a million-dollar wedding. We're not ashamed of nobody +or nothing." + +"Of course not, Charley." + +"Now, you're sure, honey? You're drawing a fellow that went to the dogs +before he cut his canines." + +"You're not all to the canines yet, Charley." + +"I may be a black sheep, honey, but, thank God, I got my golden fleece to +offer you!" + +"You're not--black." + +"You should worry, girl! I'm going to make you the million-dollar baby doll +of this town, I am. If they turn their backs, we'll dazzle 'em from behind. +I'm going to buy you every gewgaw this side of the Mississippi. I'm going +to show them a baby doll that can make the high-society bunch in this town +look like Subway sports. Are you game, girl? Now! Think well! Here goes. +Jess!" + +"Charley--I--You--" + +"Jess--over here! Quick!" + +"Charley--honey--" + + * * * * * + +At eleven o'clock a small, watery moon cut through a sky that was fleecily +clouded--a swift moon that rode fast as a ship. It rode over but did +not light Squire Gerber's one-and-a-half-storied, weathered-gray, and +set-slightly-in-a-hollow house on Claxton countryside. + +Three motor-cars, their engines chugging out into wide areas of stillness, +stood processional at the curb. A red hall light showed against the +door-pane and two lower-story windows were widely illuminated. + +Within that room of chromos and the cold horsehair smell of unaired years, +silence, except for the singing of three gas-jets, had momentarily fallen, +a dozen or so flushed faces, grotesquely sobered, staring through the +gaseous fog, the fluttering lids of a magistrate whose lips habitually +fluttered, just lifting from his book. + +A hysterical catch of breath from Miss Vera de Long broke the ear-splitting +silence. She reached out, the three plumes dipping down the bare V of her +back, for the limp hand of the bride. + +"Gawd bless you, dearie; it's a big night's work!" + + * * * * * + +In the tallest part of St. Louis, its busiest thoroughfares inclosing it +in a rectangle, the Hotel Sherman, where traveling salesmen with real +alligator bags and third-finger diamonds habitually shake their first +Pullman dust, rears eighteen stories up through and above an aeriality of +soft-coal smoke, which fits over the rim of the city like a skull-cap. + +In the Louis Quinze, gilt-bedded, gilt-framed, gilt-edged bridal-suite _de +luxe_ on the seventeenth floor, Mrs. Charley Cox sat rigid enough and in +shirt-waisted incongruity on the lower curl of a gilt divan that squirmed +to represent the letter S. + +"Charley--are you--sorry?" + +He wriggled out of his dust-coat, tossing it on the gilt-canopied bed and +crossed to her, lifting off her red sailor. + +"Now that's a fine question for a ten-hours' wifey to ask her hubby, ain't +it? Am I sorry, she asks me before the wedding crowd has turned the corner. +Lord, honey, I never expected anything like you to happen to me!" + +She stroked his coat-sleeve, mouthing back tears. + +"Now everybody'll say--you're a goner--for sure--marrying a--Popular Store +girl." + +"If anybody got the worst of this bargain, it's my girl." + +"My own boy," she said, still battling with tears. + +"You drew a black sheep, honey, but I say again and again, 'Thank God, you +drew one with golden fleece!'" + +"That--that's the trouble, Charley--there's just no way to make a boy with +money know you married him for any other reason." + +"I'm not blaming you, honey. Lord! what have I got besides money to talk +for me?" + +"Lots. Why--like Jess says, Charley, when you get to squaring your lips and +jerking up your head, there's nothing in the world you can't do that you +set out to do." + +"Well, I'm going to set out to make the stiff-necks of this town turn +to look at my girl, all right. I'm going to buy you a chain of diamonds +that'll dazzle their eyes out; I'm--" + +"Charley, Charley, that's not what I want, boy. Now that I've got you, +there ain't a chain of diamonds on earth I'd turn my wrist for." + +"Yes, there is, girl; there's a string of pear-shaped ones in--" + +"I want you to buck up, honey; that's the finest present you can give me. I +want you to buck up like you didn't have a cent to your name. I want you +to throw up your head the way you do when you mean business, and show that +Charley Cox, without a cent to his name, would be--" + +"Would be what, honey?" + +"A winner. You got brains, Charley--if only you'd have gone through school +and shown them. If you'd only have taken education, Charley, and not got +fired out of all the academies, my boy would beat 'em all. Lord! boy, +there's not a day passes over my head I don't wish for education. That's +why I'm so crazy my little sister Genevieve should get it. I'd have took to +education like a fish to water if I'd have had the chance, and there you +were, Charley, with every private school in town and passed 'em up." + +"I know, girl, just looks like every steer I gave myself was the wrong +steer till it was too late to get in right again. Bad egg, I tell you, +honey." + +"Too late! Why, Charley--and you not even thirty-one yet? With your brains +and all--too late! You make me laugh. If only you will--why, I'm game to go +out West, Charley, on a ranch, where you can find your feet and learn to +stand on them. You got stuff in you, you have. Jess Turner says you was +always first in school, and when you set your jaw there wasn't nothing you +couldn't get on top of. If you'd have had a mother and--and a father that +wasn't the meanest old man in town, dear, and had known how to raise a +hot-headed boy like you, you'd be famous now instead of notorious--that's +what you'd be." + +He patted her yellow hair, tilting her head back against his arm, pinching +her cheeks together and kissing her puckered mouth. + +"Dream on, honey. I like you crazy, too." + +"But, honey, I--" + +"You married this millionaire kid, and, bless your heart, he's going to +make good by showing you the color of his coin!" + +"Charley!" + +She sprang back from the curve of his embrace, unshed tears immediately +distilled. + +"Why, honey--I didn't mean it that way! I didn't mean to hurt your +feelings. What I meant was--'sh-h-h-h, Loo--all I meant was, it's coming to +you. Where'd the fun be if I couldn't make this town point up its ears at +my girl? Nobody knows any better than your hubby what his Loo was cut out +for. She was cut out for queening it, and I'm going to see that she gets +what's her due. Wouldn't be surprised if the papers have us already. Let's +see what we'll give them with their coffee this morning." + +He unfolded his fresh sheet, shaking it open with one hand and still +holding her in the cove of his arm. + +"Guess we missed the first edition, but they'll get us sure." + +She peered at the sheet over his shoulder, her cheek against his and still +sobbing a bit in her throat. The jerking of her breath stopped then; in +fact, it was as if both their breathing had let down with the oneness of a +clock stopped. + +It was she who moved first, falling back from him, her mouth dropping open +slightly. + +He let the paper fall between his wide-spread knees, the blood flowing down +from his face and seeming to leave him leaner. + +"Charley--Charley--darling!" + +"My--poor old man!" he said in a voice that might have been his echo in a +cave. + +"He--his heart must have give out on him, Charley, while he slept in the +night." + +"My--poor--old--man!" + +She stretched out her hand timidly to his shoulder. + +"Charley--boy--my poor boy!" + +He reached up to cover her timid touch, still staring ahead, as if a mental +apathy had clutched him. + +"He died like--he--lived. Gad--it's--tough!" + +"It--it wasn't your fault, darling. God forgive me for speaking against the +dead, but--everybody knows he was a hard man, Charley--the way he used to +beat you up instead of showing you the right way. Poor old man, I guess he +didn't know--" + +"My old man--dead!" + +She crept closer, encircling his neck, and her wet cheek close to his dry +one. + +"He's at peace now, darling--and all your sins are forgiven--like you +forgive--his." + +His lips were twisting. + +"There was no love lost there, girl. God knows there wasn't. There was once +nine months we didn't speak. Never could have been less between a father +and son. You see he--he hated me from the start, because my mother died +hating him--but--_dead_--that's another matter. Ain't it, girl--ain't it?" + +She held her cheek to his so that her tears veered out of their course, +zigzagging down to his waistcoat, stroked his hair, placing her rich, moist +lips to his eyelids. + +"My darling! My darling boy! My own poor darling!" + +Sobs rumbled up through him, the terrific sobs that men weep. + +"You--married a rotter, Loo--that couldn't even live decent with his--old +man. He--died like a dog--alone." + +"'Sh-h-h, Charley! Just because he's dead don't mean he was any better +while he lived." + +"I'll make it up to you, girl, for the rotter I am. I'm a rich man now, +Loo." + +"'Sh-h-h!" + +"I'll show you, girl. I can make somebody's life worth living. I'm going to +do something for somebody to prove I'm worth the room I occupy, and that +somebody's going to be you, Loo. I'm going to build you a house that'll go +down in the history of this town. I'm going to wind you around with pearls +to match that skin of yours. I'm going to put the kind of clothes on you +that you read of queens wearing. I've seen enough of the kind of meanness +money can breed. I'm going to make those Romans back there look like +pikers. I'm--" + +She reached out, placing her hand pat across his mouth, and, in the languid +air of the room, shuddering so that her lips trembled. + +"Charley--for God's sake--it--it's a sin to talk that way!" + +"O God, I know it, girl! I'm all muddled--muddled." + +He let his forehead drop against her arm, and in the long silence that +ensued she sat there, her hand on his hair. + +The roar of traffic, seventeen stories below, came up through the open +windows like the sound of high seas, and from where she sat, staring out +between the pink-brocade curtains, it was as if the close July sky dipped +down to meet that sea, and space swam around them. + +"O God!" he said, finally. "What does it all mean--this living and dying--" + +"Right living, Charley, makes dying take care of itself." + +"God! how he must have died, then! Like a dog--alone." + +"'Sh-h-h, Charley; don't get to thinking." + +Without raising his head, he reached up to stroke her arm. + +"Honey, you're shivering." + +"No-o." + +"Everything's all right, girl. What's the use me trying to sham it's not. +I--I'm bowled over for the minute, that's all. If it had to come, after +all, it--it came right for my girl. With that poor old man out there, +honey, living alone like a dog all these years, it's just like putting him +from one marble mausoleum out there on Kingsmoreland Place into one where +maybe he'll rest easier. He's better off, Loo, and--we--are too. Hand me +the paper, honey; I--want to see--just how my--poor old man--breathed out." + +Then Mrs. Cox rose, her face distorted with holding back tears, her small +high heels digging into and breaking the newspaper at his feet. + +"Charley--Charley--" + +"Why, girl, what?" + +"You don't know it, but my sister, Charley--Ida Bell!" + +"Why, Loo, I sent off the message to your mama. They know it by now." + +"Charley--Charley--" + +"Why, honey, you're full of nerves! You mustn't go to pieces like this. +Your sister's all right. I sent them a--" + +"You--you don't know, Charley. My sister--I swore her an oath on my +mother's prayer-book. I wouldn't tell, but, now that he's dead, that--lets +me out. The will--Charley, he made it yesterday, like he always swore he +would the next time you got your name on the front page." + +"Made what, honey? Who?" + +"Charley, can't you understand? My sister Ida Bell and Brookes--your +father's lawyer. She's his private stenographer--Brookes's, honey. You know +that. But she told me last night, honey, when I went home. You're cut off, +Charley! Your old man sent for Brookes yesterday at noon. I swear to God, +Charley! My sister Ida Bell she broke her confidence to tell me. He's give +a million alone to the new college hospital. Half a million apiece to +four or five old people's homes. He's give his house to the city with the +art-gallery. He's even looked up relations to give to. He kept his word, +honey, that all those years he kept threatening. He--he kept it the day +before he died. He must have had a hunch--your poor old man. Charley +darling, don't look like that! If your wife ain't the one to break it to +you you're broke, who is? You're not 'Million Dollar Charley' no more, +honey. You're just my own Charley, with his chance come to him--you hear, +_my_ Charley, with the best thing that ever happened to him in his life +happening right now." + +He regarded her as if trying to peer through something opaque, his hands +spread rather stupidly on his wide knees. + +"Huh?" + +"Charley, Charley, can't you understand? A dollar, that puts him within the +law, is all he left you." + +"He never did. He never did. He wouldn't. He couldn't. He never did. I +saw--his will. I'm the only survivor. I saw his will." + +"Charley, I swear to God! I swear as I'm standing here you're cut off. +My sister copied the new will on her typewriter three times and seen the +sealed and stamped one. He kept his word. He wrote it with his faculties +and witnesses. We're broke, Charley--thank God, we're flat broke!" + +"He did it? He did it? My old man did it?" + +"As sure as I'm standing here, Charley." + +He fell to blinking rapidly, his face puckering to comprehend. + +"I never thought it could happen. But I--I guess it could happen. I think +you got me doped, honey." + +"Charley, Charley!" she cried, falling down on her knees beside him, +holding his face in the tight vise of her hands and reading with such +closeness into his eyes that they seemed to merge into one. "Haven't you +got your Loo? Haven't you got her?" + +He sprang up at that, jerking her backward, and all the purple-red gushed +up into his face again. + +"Yes, by God, I've got you! I'll break the will. I'll--" + +"Charley, no--no! He'd rise out of his grave at you. It's never been known +where a will was broke where they didn't rise out of the grave to haunt." + +He took her squarely by the shoulders, the tears running in furrows down +his face. + +"I'll get you out of this, Loo. No girl in God's world will have to find +herself tied up to me without I can show her a million dollars every time +she remembers that she's married to a rotter. I'll get you out of this, +girl, so you won't even show a scratch. I'll--" + +"Charley," she said, lifting herself by his coat lapels, and her eyes again +so closely level with his, "you're crazy with the heat--stark, raving +crazy! You got your chance, boy, to show what you're made of--can't you see +that? We're going West, where men get swept out with clean air and clean +living. We'll break ground in this here life for the kind of pay-dirt +that'll make a man of you. You hear? A man of you!" + +He lifted her arms, and because they were pressing insistently down, +squirmed out from beneath them. + +"You're a good sport, girl; nobody can take that from you. But just the +same, I'm going to let you off without a scratch." + +"'Good sport'! I'd like to know, anyways, where I come in with all your +solid-gold talk. Me that's stood behind somebody-or-other's counter ever +since I had my working-papers." + +"I'll get you out of--" + +"Have I ever lived anywheres except in a dirty little North St. Louis flat +with us three girls in a bed? Haven't I got my name all over town for +speed, just because I've always had to rustle out and try to learn how +to flatten out a dime to the size of a dollar? Where do I come in on the +solid-gold talk, I'd like to know. I'm the penny-splitter of the world, the +girl that made the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store millinery department famous. I +can look tailor-made on a five-dollar bill and a tissue-paper pattern. Why, +honey, with me scheming for you, starting out on your own is going to make +a man of you. You got stuff in you. I knew it, Charley, the first night +you spied me at the Highlands dance. Somewhere out West Charley Cox is now +going to begin to show 'em the stuff in Charley Cox--that's what Charley +Cox & Co. are going to do!" + +He shook his head, turning away his eyes to hide their tears. + +"You been stung, Loo. Nothing on earth can change that." + +She turned his face back to her, smiling through her own tears. + +"You're not adding up good this morning, Mr. Cox. When do you think I +called you up last night? When could it have been if not after my sister +broke her confidence to tell me? Why do you think all of a sudden last +night I seen your bluff through about Gerber? It was because I knew I had +you where you needed me, Charley--I never would have dragged you down the +other way in a million years, but when I knew I had you where you needed +me--why, from that minute, honey, you didn't have a chance to dodge me!" + +She wound her arms round him, trembling between the suppressed hysteria of +tears and laughter. + +"Not a chance, Charley!" + +He jerked her so that her face fell back from him, foreshortened. + +"Loo--oh, girl! Oh, girl!" + +Her throat was tight and would not give her voice for coherence. + +"Charley--we--we'll show 'em--you--me!" + +Looking out above her head at the vapory sky showing through the parting of +the pink-brocade curtains, rigidity raced over Mr. Cox, stiffening his hold +of her. + +The lean look had come out in his face; the flanges of his nose quivered; +his head went up. + + + + +VI + +NIGHTSHADE + + +Over the silent places of the world flies the vulture of madness, pausing +to wheel above isolated farm-houses, where a wife, already dizzy with the +pressure of rarefied silence, looks up, magnetized. Then across the flat +stretches, his shadow under him moving across moor and the sand of desert, +slowing at the perpetually eastern edge of a mirage, brushing his actual +wings against the brick of city walls; the garret of a dreamer, brain-sick +with reality. Flopping, until she comes to gaze, outside the window of one +so alone in a crowd that her four hall-bedroom walls are closing in upon +her. Lowering over a childless house on the edge of a village. + +Were times when Mrs. Hanna Burkhardt, who lived on the edge of a village +in one such childless house, could in her fancy hear the flutter of wings, +too. There had once been a visit to a doctor in High Street because of +those head-noises and the sudden terror of not being able to swallow. He +had stethoscoped and prescribed her change of scene. Had followed two weeks +with cousins fifty miles away near Lida, Ohio, and a day's stop-over in +Cincinnati allowed by her railroad ticket. But six months after, in the +circle of glow from a tablelamp that left the corners of the room in a +chiaroscuro kind of gloom, there were again noises of wings rustling and +of water lapping and the old stricture of the throat. Across the table, a +Paisley cover between them, Mr. John Burkhardt, his short spade of beard +already down over his shirt-front, arm hanging lax over his chair-side and +newspaper fallen, sat forward in a hunched attitude of sleep, whistling +noises coming occasionally through his breathing. A china clock, the +centerpiece of the mantel, ticked spang into the silence, enhancing it. + +Hands in lap, head back against the mat of her chair, Mrs. Burkhardt looked +straight ahead of her into this silence--at a closed door hung with a +newspaper rack, at a black-walnut horsehair divan, a great sea-shell on +the carpet beside it. A nickelplated warrior gleamed from the top of a +baseburner that showed pink through its mica doors. He stood out against +the chocolate-ocher wallpaper and a framed Declaration of Independence, +hanging left. A coal fell. Mr. Burkhardt sat up, shook himself of sleep. + +"Little chilly," he said, and in carpet slippers and unbuttoned waistcoat +moved over to the base-burner, his feet, to avoid sloughing, not leaving +the floor. He was slightly stooped, the sateen back to his waistcoat hiking +to the curve of him. But he swung up the scuttle with a swoop, rattling +coal freely down into the red-jowled orifice. + +"Ugh, don't!" she said. "I'm burnin' up." + +He jerked back the scuttle, returning to his chair, and, picking up the +fallen newspaper, drew down his spectacles from off his brow and fell +immediately back into close, puckered scrutiny of the printed page. + +"What time is it, Burkhardt? That old thing on the mantel's crazy." + +He drew out a great silver watch. + +"Seven-forty." + +"O God!" she said. "I thought it was about ten." + +The clock ticked in roundly again except when he rustled his paper in the +turning. The fire was crackling now, too, in sharp explosions. Beyond +the arc of lamp the room was deeper than ever in shadow. Finally John +Burkhardt's head relaxed again to his shirt-front, the paper falling gently +away to the floor. She regarded his lips puffing out as he breathed. Hands +clasped, arms full length on the table, it was as if the flood of words +pressing against the walls of her, to be shrieked rather than spoken, was +flowing over to him. He jerked erect again, regarding her through blinks. + +"Must 'a' dozed off," he said, reaching down for his newspaper. + +She was winding her fingers now in and out among themselves. + +"Burkhardt?" + +"Eh?" + +"What--does a person do that's smotherin'?" + +"Eh?" + +"I know. That's what I'm doing. Smotherin'!" + +"A touch of the old trouble, Hanna?" + +She sat erect, with her rather large white hands at the heavy base to her +long throat. They rose and fell to her breathing. Like Heine, who said so +potently, "I am a tragedy," so she, too, in the sulky light of her eyes +and the pulled lips and the ripple of shivers over her, proclaimed it of +herself. + +"Seven-forty! God! what'll I do, Burkhardt? What'll I do?" + +"Go lay down on the sofa a bit, Hanna. I'll cover you with a plaid. It's +the head-noises again bothering you." + +"Seven-forty! What'll I do? Seven-forty and nothing left but bed." + +"I must 'a' dozed off, Hanna." + +"Yes; you must 'a' dozed off," she laughed, her voice eaten into with the +acid of her own scorn. "Yes; you must 'a' dozed off. The same way as you +dozed off last night and last month and last year and the last eight years. +The best years of my life--that's what you've dozed off, John Burkhardt. +He 'must 'a' dozed off,'" she repeated, her lips quivering and lifting to +reveal the white line of her large teeth. "Yes; I think you must 'a' dozed +off!" + +He was reading again in stolid profile. + +She fell to tapping the broad toe of her shoe, her light, dilated eyes +staring above his head. She was spare, and yet withal a roundness left +to the cheek and forearm. Long-waisted and with a certain swing where it +flowed down into straight hips, there was a bony, Olympian kind of bigness +about her. Beneath the washed-out blue shirtwaist dress her chest was high, +as if vocal. She was not without youth. Her head went up like a stag's to +the passing of a band in the street, or a glance thrown after her, or the +contemplation of her own freshly washed yellow hair in the sunlight. She +wore a seven glove, but her nails had great depth and pinkness, and each a +clear half-moon. They were dug down now into her palms. + +"For God's sake, talk! Say something, or I'll go mad!" + +He laid his paper across his knee, pushing up his glasses. + +"Sing a little something, Hanna. You're right restless this evening." + +"'Restless'!" she said, her face wry. "If I got to sit and listen to that +white-faced clock ticking for many more evenings of this winter, you'll +find yourself with a raving maniac on your hands. That's how restless I +am!" He rustled his paper again. "Don't read!" she cried. "Don't you dare +read!" + +He sat staring ahead, in a heavy kind of silence, breathing outward and +passing his hand across his brow. + +Her breathing, too, was distinctly audible. + +"Lay down a bit, Hanna. I'll cover you--" + +"If they land me in the bug-house, they can write on your tombstone when +you die, 'Hanna Long Burkhardt went stark raving mad crazy with hucking at +home because I let her life get to be a machine from six-o'clock breakfast +to eight-o'clock bed, and she went crazy from it.' If that's any +satisfaction to you, they can write that on your tombstone." + +He mopped his brow this time, clearing his throat. + +"You knew when we married, Hanna, they called me 'Silent' Burkhardt. I +never was a great one for talking unless there was something I wanted to +say." + +"I knew nothin' when I married you. Nothin' except that along a certain +time every girl that can gets married. I knew nothin' except--except--" + +"Except what?" + +"Nothin'." + +"I've never stood in your light, Hanna, of having a good time. Go ahead. +I'm always glad when you go up-town with the neighbor women of a Saturday +evening. I'd be glad if you'd have 'em in here now and then for a little +sociability. Have 'em. Play the graphophone for 'em. Sing. You 'ain't done +nothin' with your singin' since you give up choir." + +"Neighbor women! Old maids' choir! That's fine excitement for a girl not +yet twenty-seven!" + +"Come; let's go to a moving picture, Hanna. Go wrap yourself up warm." + +"Movie! Oh no; no movie for me with you snorin' through the picture till +I'm ashamed for the whole place. If I was the kind of girl had it in me to +run around with other fellows, that's what I'd be drove to do, the deal +you've given me. Movie! That's a fine enjoyment to try to foist off on a +woman to make up for eight years of being so fed up on stillness that she's +half-batty!" + +"Maybe there's something showin' in the op'ry-house to-night." + +"Oh, you got a record to be proud of, John Burkhardt: Not a foot in that +opera-house since we're married. I wouldn't want to have your feelin's!" + +His quietude was like a great, impregnable, invisible wall inclosing him. + +"I'm not the man can change his ways, Hanna. I married at forty, too late +for that." + +"I notice you liked my pep, all righty, when I was workin' in the feed-yard +office. I hadn't been in it ten days before you were hangin' on my laughs +from morning till night." + +"I do yet, Hanna--only you don't laugh no more. There's nothin' so fine in +a woman as sunshine." + +"Provided you don't have to furnish any of it." + +"Because a man 'ain't got it in him to be light in his ways don't mean he +don't enjoy it in others. Why, there just ain't nothin' to equal a happy +woman in the house! Them first months, Hanna, showed me what I'd been +missin'. It was just the way I figured it--somebody around like you, +singin' and putterin'. It was that laugh in the office made me bring it +here, where I could have it always by me." + +"It's been knocked out of me, every bit of laugh I ever had in me; lemme +tell you that." + +"I can remember the first time I ever heard you, Hanna. You was standin" +at the office window lookin' out in the yards at Jerry Sims unloadin' a +shipment of oats; and little Old Cocker was standin' on top of one of the +sacks barkin' his head off. I--" + +"Yeh; I met Clara Sims on the street yesterday, back here for a visit, and +she says to me, she says: 'Hanna Burkhardt, you mean to tell me you never +done nothing with your voice! You oughta be ashamed. If I was your husband, +I'd spend my last cent trainin' that contralto of yours. You oughtn't to +let yourself go like this. Women don't do it no more.' That, from the +tackiest girl that ever walked this town. I wished High Street had opened +up and swallowed me." + +"Now, Hanna, you mustn't--" + +"In all these years never so much as a dance or a car-ride as far as +Middletown. Church! Church! Church! Till I could scream at the sight of +it. Not a year of my married life that 'ain't been a lodestone on my neck! +Eight of' 'em! Eight!" + +"I'm not sayin' I'm not to blame, Hanna. A woman like you naturally likes +life. I never wanted to hold you back. If I'm tired nights and dead on my +feet from twelve hours on 'em, I never wanted you to change your ways." + +"Yes; with a husband at home in bed, I'd be a fine one chasin' around +this town alone, wouldn't I? That's the thanks a woman gets for bein' +self-respectin'." + +"I always kept hopin', Hanna, I could get you to take more to the home." + +"The home--you mean the tomb!" + +"Why, with the right attention, we got as fine an old place here as there +is in this part of town, Hanna. If only you felt like giving it a few more +touches that kinda would make a woman-place out of it! It 'ain't changed a +whit from the way me and my old father run it together. A little touch here +and there, Hanna, would help to keep you occupied and happier if--" + +"I know. I know what's comin'." + +"The pergola I had built. I used to think maybe you'd get to putter out +there in the side-yard with it, trailin' vines; the china-paintin' outfit +I had sent down from Cincinnati when I seen it advertised in the _Up-State +Gazette_; a spaniel or two from Old Cocker's new litter, barkin' around; +all them things, I used to think, would give our little place here a +feelin' that would change both of us for the better. With a more home-like +feelin' things might have been different between us, Hanna." + +"Keepin" a menagerie of mangy spaniels ain't my idea of livin'." + +"Aw, now, Hanna, what's the use puttin' it that way? Take, for instance, +it's been a plan of mine to paint the house, with the shutters green and a +band of green shingles runnin' up under the eaves. A little encouragement +from you and we could perk the place up right smart. All these years it's +kinda gone down--even more than when I was a bachelor in it. Sunk in, +kinda, like them iron jardinieres I had put in the front yard for you to +keep evergreen in. It's them little things, Hanna. Then that--that old idea +of mine to take a little one from the orphanage--a young 'un around the--" + +"O Lord!" + +"I ain't goin' to mention it if it aggravates you, but--but makin' a home +out of this gray old place would help us both, Hanna. There's no denyin' +that. It's what I hoped for when I brought you home a bride here. Just had +it kinda planned. You putterin' around the place in some kind of a pink +apron like you women can rig yourselves up in and--" + +"There ain't a girl in Adalia has dropped out of things the way I have, I +had a singin' voice that everybody in this town said--" + +"There's the piano, Hanna, bought special for it." + +"I got a contralto that--" + +"There never was anything give me more pleasure than them first years you +used it. I ain't much to express myself, but it was mighty fine, Hanna, to +hear you." + +"Yes, I know; you snored into my singin' with enjoyment, all right." + +"It's the twelve hours on my feet that just seem to make me dead to the +world, come evening." + +"A girl that had the whole town wavin' flags at her when she sung 'The Holy +City' at the nineteen hundred street-carnival! Kittie Scogin Bevins, one of +the biggest singers in New York to-day, nothing but my chorus! Where's it +got me these eight years? Nowheres! She had enough sense to cut loose from +Ed Bevins, who was a lodestone, too, and beat it. She's singing now in New +York for forty a week with a voice that wasn't strong enough to be more +than chorus to mine." + +"Kittie Scogin, Hanna, is a poor comparison for any woman to make with +herself." + +"It is, is it? Well, I don't see it thataway. When she stepped off the +train last week, comin' back to visit her old mother, I wished the whole +depot would open up and swallow me--that's what I wished. Me and her that +used to be took for sisters. I'm eight months younger, and I look eight +years older. When she stepped off that train in them white furs and a +purple face-veil, I just wished to God the whole depot would open and +swallow me. That girl had sense. O God! didn't she have sense!" + +"They say her sense is what killed Ed Bevins of shame and heartbreak." + +"Say, don't tell me! It was town talk the way he made her toady to his +folks, even after he'd been cut off without a cent. Kittie told me herself +the very sight of the old Bevins place over on Orchard Street gives her the +creeps down her back. If not for old lady Scogin, 'way up in the seventies, +she'd never put her foot back in this dump. That girl had sense." + +"There's not a time she comes back here it don't have an upsettin' +influence on you, Hanna." + +"I know what's upsettin' me, all right. I know!" + +He sighed heavily. + +"I'm just the way I am, Hanna, and there's no teachin' an old dog new +tricks. It's a fact I ain't much good after eight o'clock evenin's. It's a +fact--a fact!" + +They sat then in a further silence that engulfed them like fog. A shift of +wind blew a gust of dry snow against the window-pane with a little sleety +noise. And as another evidence of rising wind, a jerk of it came down the +flue, rattling the fender of a disused grate. + +"We'd better keep the water in the kitchen runnin' to-night. The pipes'll +freeze." + +Tick-tock. Tick. Tock. She had not moved, still sitting staring above the +top of his head. He slid out his watch, yawning. + +"Well, if you think it's too raw for the movin' pictures, Hanna, I guess +I'll be movin' up to bed. I got to be down to meet a five-o'clock shipment +of fifty bales to-morrow. I'll be movin' along unless there's anything you +want?" + +"No--nothing." + +"If--if you ain't sleepy awhile yet, Hanna, why not run over to Widow +Dinninger's to pass the time of evenin'? I'll keep the door on the latch." + +She sprang up, snatching a heavy black shawl, throwing it over her and +clutching it closed at the throat. + +"Where you goin', Hanna?" + +"Walkin'," she said, slamming the door after her. + +In Adalia, chiefly remarkable for the Indestructo Safe Works and a river +which annually overflows its banks, with casualties, the houses sit well +back from tree-bordered streets, most of them frame, shingle-roofed +veterans that have lived through the cycle-like years of the bearing, the +marrying, the burying of two, even three, generations of the same surname. + +A three-year-old, fifteen-mile traction connects the court-house with the +Indestructo Safe Works. High Street, its entire length, is paved. During a +previous mayoralty the town offered to the Lida Tool Works a handsome bonus +to construct branch foundries along its river-banks, and, except for the +annual flood conditions, would have succeeded. + +In spring Adalia is like a dear old lady's garden of marigold and +bleeding-heart. Flushes of sweetpeas ripple along its picket fences and +off toward the backyards are long grape-arbors, in autumn their great +fruit-clusters ripening to purple frost. Come winter there is almost an +instant shriveling to naked stalk, and the trellis-work behind vines comes +through. Even the houses seem immediately to darken of last spring's paint, +and, with windows closed, the shades are drawn. Oftener than not Adalia +spends its evening snugly behind these drawn shades in great scoured +kitchens or dining-rooms, the house-fronts dark. + +When Mrs. Burkhardt stepped out into an evening left thus to its stilly +depth, shades drawn against it, a light dust of snow, just fallen, was +scurrying up-street before the wind, like something phantom with its skirts +blowing forward. Little drifts of it, dry as powder, had blown up against +the porch. She sidestepped them, hurrying down a wind-swept brick walk and +out a picket gate that did not swing entirely after. Behind her, the house +with its wimple of shingle roof and unlighted front windows seemed to +recede somewhere darkly. She stood an undecided moment, her face into the +wind. Half down the block an arc-light swayed and gave out a moving circle +of light. Finally she turned her back and went off down a side-street, past +a lighted corner grocer, crossed a street to avoid the black mouth of an +alley, then off at another right angle. The houses here were smaller, +shoulder to shoulder and directly on the sidewalk. + +Before one of these, for no particular reason distinguishable from the +others, Mrs. Burkhardt stepped up two shallow steps and turned a key in +the center of the door, which set up a buzz on its reverse side. Her hand, +where it clutched the shawl at her throat, was reddening and roughening, +the knuckles pushing up high and white. Waiting, she turned her back to the +wind, her body hunched up against it. + +There was a moving about within, the scrape of a match, and finally the +door opening slightly, a figure peering out. + +"It's me, Mrs. Scogin--Hanna Burkhardt!" + +The door swung back then, revealing a just-lighted parlor, opening, without +introduction of hall, from the sidewalk. + +"Well, if it ain't Hanna Burkhardt! What you doin' out this kind of a +night? Come in. Kittie's dryin' her hair in the kitchen. Used to be she +could sit on it, and it's ruint from the scorchin' curlin'-iron. I'll call +her. Sit down, Hanna. How's Burkhardt? I'll call her. Oh, Kittie! Kit-tie, +Hanna Burkhardt's here to see you." + +In the wide flare of the swinging lamp, revealing Mrs. Scogin's parlor +of chromo, china plaque, and crayon enlargement, sofa, whatnot, and wax +bouquet embalmed under glass, Mrs. Burkhardt stood for a moment, blowing +into her cupped hands, unwinding herself of shawl, something Niobian in her +gesture. + +"Yoo-hoo--it's only me, Kit! Shall I come out?" + +"Naw--just a minute; I'll be in." + +Mrs. Scogin seated herself on the edge of the sofa, well forward, after the +manner of those who relax but ill to the give of upholstery. She was like a +study of what might have been the grandmother of one of Rembrandt's studies +of a grandmother. There were lines crawling over her face too manifold for +even the etcher's stroke, and over her little shriveling hands that were +too bird-like for warmth. There is actually something avian comes with the +years. In the frontal bone pushing itself forward, the cheeks receding, and +the eyes still bright. There was yet that trenchant quality in Mrs. Scogin, +in the voice and gaze of her. + +"Sit down, Hanna." + +"Don't care if I do." + +"You can lean back against that chair-bow." + +"Hate to muss it." + +"How's Burkhardt?" + +"All right." + +"He's been made deacon--not?" + +"Yeh." + +"If mine had lived, he'd the makin' of a pillar. Once label a man with hard +drinkin', and it's hard to get justice for him. There never was a man had +more the makin' of a pillar than mine, dead now these sixteen years and +molderin' in his grave for justice." + +"Yes, Mrs. Scogin." + +"You can lean back against that bow." + +"Thanks." + +"So Burkhardt's been made deacon." + +"Three years already--you was at the church." + +"A deacon. Mine went to his grave too soon." + +"They said down at market to-day, Mrs. Scogin, that Addie Fitton knocked +herself against the woodbin and has water on the knee." + +"Let the town once label a man with drinkin', and it's hard to get justice +for him." + +"It took Martha and Eda and Gessler's hired girl to hold her in bed with +the pain." + +"Yes, yes," said Mrs. Scogin, sucking in her words and her eyes seeming to +strain through the present; "once label a man with drinkin'." + +Kittie Scogin Bevins entered then through a rain of bead portieres. +Insistently blond, her loosed-out hair newly dry and flowing down over a +very spotted and very baby-blue kimono, there was something soft-fleshed +about her, a not unappealing saddle of freckles across her nose, the eyes +too light but set in with a certain feline arch to them. + +"Hello, Han!" + +"Hello, Kittie!" + +"Snowing?" + +"No." + +"Been washing my hair to show it a good time. One month in this dump and +they'd have to hire a hearse to roll me back to Forty-second Street in." + +"This ain't nothing. Wait till we begin to get snowed in!" + +"I know. Say, you c'n tell me nothing about this tank I dunno already. I +was buried twenty-two years in it. Move over, ma." + +She fitted herself into the lower curl of the couch, crossing her hands at +the back of her head, drawing up her feet so that, for lack of space, her +knees rose to a hump. + +"What's new in Deadtown, Han?" + +"'New'! This dump don't know we got a new war. They think it's the old +Civil one left over." + +"Burkhardt's been made a deacon, Kittie." + +"O Lord! ma, forget it!" Mrs. Scogin Bevins threw out her hands to Mrs. +Burkhardt in a wide gesture, indicating her mother with a forefinger, then +with it tapping her own brow. "Crazy as a loon! Bats!" + +"If your father had--" + +"Ma, for Gossakes--" + +"You talk to Kittie, Hanna. My girls won't none of 'em listen to me no +more. I tell 'em they're fightin' over my body before it's dead for this +house and the one on Ludlow Street. It's precious little for 'em to be +fightin' for before I'm dead, but if not for it, I'd never be gettin' these +visits from a one of 'em." + +"Ma!" + +"I keep tellin' her, Kittie, to stay home. New York ain't no place for a +divorced woman to set herself right with the Lord." + +"Ma, if you don't quit raving and clear on up to bed, I'll pack myself out +to-night yet, and then you'll have a few things to set right with the Lord. +Go on up, now." + +"I--" + +"Go on--you hear?" + +Mrs. Scogin went then, tiredly and quite bent forward, toward a flight of +stairs that rose directly from the parlor, opened a door leading up into +them, the frozen breath of unheated regions coming down. + +"Quick--close that door, ma!" + +"Come to see a body, Hanna, when she ain't here. She won't stay at home, +like a God-fearin' woman ought to." + +"Light the gas-heater up there, if you expect me to come to bed. I'm used +to steam-heated flats, not barns." + +"She's a sassy girl, Hanna. Your John a deacon and hers lies molderin' in +his grave, a sui--" + +Mrs. Scogin Bevins flung herself up, then, a wave of red riding up her +face. + +"If you don't go up--if you--don't! Go--now! Honest, you're gettin' so luny +you need a keeper. Go--you hear?" + +The door shut slowly, inclosing the old figure. She relaxed to the couch, +trying to laugh. + +"Luny!" she said. "Bats! Nobody home!" + +"I like your hair like that, Kittie. It looks swell." + +"It's easy. I'll fix it for you some time. It's the vampire swirl. All the +girls are wearing it." + +"Remember the night, Kit, we was singin' duets for the Second Street +Presbyterian out at Grody's Grove and we got to hair-pullin' over whose +curls was the longest?" + +"Yeh. I had on a blue dress with white polka-dots." + +"That was fifteen years ago. Remember Joe Claiborne promised us a real +stage-job, and we opened a lemonade-stand on our front gate to pay his +commission in advance?" + +They laughed back into the years. + +"O Lord! them was days! Seems to me like fifty years ago." + +"Not to me, Kittie. You've done things with your life since then. I +'ain't." + +"You know what I've always told you about yourself, Hanna. If ever there +was a fool girl, that was Hanna Long. Lord! if I'm where I am on my voice, +where would you be?" + +"I was a fool." + +"I could have told you that the night you came running over to tell me." + +"There was no future in this town for me, Kit. Stenoggin' around from one +office to another. He was the only real provider ever came my way." + +"I always say if John Burkhardt had shown you the color of real money! But +what's a man to-day on just a fair living? Not worth burying yourself in +a dump like this for. No, sirree. When I married Ed, anyways I thought I +smelled big money. I couldn't see ahead that his father'd carry out his +bluff and cut him off. But what did you have to smell--a feed-yard in a +hole of a town! What's the difference whether you live in ten rooms like +yours or in four like this as long as you're buried alive? A girl can +always do that well for herself after she's took big chances. You could be +Lord knows where now if you'd 'a' took my advice four years ago and lit out +when I did." + +"I know it, Kit. God knows I've eat out my heart with knowin' it! +Only--only it was so hard--a man givin' me no more grounds than he does. +What court would listen to his stillness for grounds? I 'ain't got +grounds." + +"Say, you could 'a' left that to me. My little lawyer's got a factory where +he manufactures them. He could 'a' found a case of incompatibility between +the original turtle-doves." + +"God! His stillness, Kittie--like--" + +"John Burkhardt would give me the razzle-dazzle jimjams overnight, he +would. That face reminds me of my favorite funeral." + +"I told him to-night, Kittie, he's killin' me with his deadness. I ran out +of the house from it. It's killin' me." + +"Why, you poor simp, standing for it!" + +"That's what I come over for, Kit. I can't stand no more. If I don't talk +to some one, I'll bust. There's no one in this town I can open up to. Him +so sober--and deacon. They don't know what it is to sit night after night +dyin' from his stillness. Whole meals, Kit, when he don't open his mouth +except, 'Hand me this; hand me that'--and his beard movin' up and down so +when he chews. Because a man don't hit you and gives you spending-money +enough for the little things don't mean he can't abuse you with--with just +gettin' on your nerves so terrible. I'm feelin' myself slip--crazy--ever +since I got back from Cincinnati and seen what's goin' on in the big towns +and me buried here; I been feelin' myself slip--slip, Kittie." + +"Cincinnati! Good Lord! if you call that life! Any Monday morning on +Forty-second Street makes Cincinnati look like New-Year's Eve. If you call +Cincinnati life!" + +"He's small, Kittie. He's a small potato of a man in his way of livin'. He +can live and die without doin' anything except the same things over and +over again, year out and year in." + +"I know. I know. Ed was off the same pattern. It's the Adalia brand. Lord! +Hanna Long, if you could see some of the fellows I got this minute paying +attentions to me in New York, you'd lose your mind. Spenders! Them New +York guys make big and spend big, and they're willing to part with the +spondoolaks. That's the life!" + +"I--You look it, Kit. I never seen a girl get back her looks and keep 'em +like you. I says to him to-night, I says, 'When I look at myself in the +glass, I wanna die.'" + +"You're all there yet, Hanna. Your voice over here the other night was +something immense. Big enough to cut into any restaurant crowd, and that's +what counts in cabaret. I don't tell anybody how to run his life, but if +I had your looks and your contralto, I'd turn 'em into money, I would. +There's forty dollars a week in you this minute." + +Mrs. Burkhardt's head went up. Her mouth had fallen open, her eyes +brightening as they widened. + +"Kit--when you goin' back?" + +"To-morrow a week, honey--if I live through it." + +"Could--you help me--your little lawyer--your--" + +"Remember, I ain't advising--" + +"Could you, Kit, and to--to get a start?" + +"They say it of me there ain't a string in the Bijou Cafe that I can't pull +my way." + +"Could you, Kit? Would you?" + +"I don't tell nobody how to run his life, Hanna. It's mighty hard to advise +the other fellow about his own business. I don't want it said in this town, +that's down on me, anyways, that Kit Scogin put ideas in Hanna Long's +head." + +"You didn't, Kit. They been there. Once I answered an ad. to join a county +fair. I even sent money to a vaudeville agent in Cincinnati. I--" + +"Nothing doing in vaudeville for our kind of talent. It's cabaret where the +money and easy hours is these days. Just a plain little solo act--contralto +is what you can put over. A couple of 'Where Is My Wandering Boy To-night' +sob-solos is all you need. I'll let you meet Billy Howe of the Bijou. +Billy's a great one for running in a chaser act or two." + +"I--How much would it cost, Kittie, to--to--" + +"Hundred and fifty done it for me, wardrobe and all." + +"Kittie, I--Would you--" + +"Sure I would! Only, remember, I ain't responsible. I don't tell anybody +how to run his life. That's something everybody's got to decide for +herself." + +"I--have--decided, Kittie." + +At something after that stilly one-o'clock hour when all the sleeping +noises of lath and wainscoting creak out, John Burkhardt lifted his head to +the moving light of a lamp held like a torch over him, even the ridge +of his body completely submerged beneath the great feather billow of an +oceanic walnut bedstead. + +"Yes, Hanna?" + +"Wake up!" + +"I been awake--" + +She set the lamp down on the brown-marble top of a wash-stand, pushed back +her hair with both hands, and sat down on the bed-edge, heavily breathing +from a run through deserted night's streets. + +"I gotta talk to you, Burkhardt--now--to-night." + +"Now's no time, Hanna. Come to bed." + +"Things can't go on like this, John." + +He lay back slowly. + +"Maybe you're right, Hanna. I been layin' up here and thinkin' the same +myself. What's to be done?" + +"I've got to the end of my rope." + +"With so much that God has given us, Hanna--health and prosperity--it's a +sin before Him that unhappiness should take root in this home." + +"If you're smart, you won't try to feed me up on gospel to-night!" + +"I'm willin' to meet you, Hanna, on any proposition you say. How'd it be +to move down to Schaefer's boardin'-house for the winter, where it'll be +a little recreation for you evenings, or say we take a trip down to +Cincinnati for a week. I--" + +"Oh no," she said, looking away from him and her throat throbbing. "Oh no, +you don't! Them things might have meant something to me once, but you've +come too late with 'em. For eight years I been eatin' out my heart with +'em. Now you couldn't pay me to live at Schaefer's. I had to beg too long +for it. Cincinnati! Why, its New-Year's Eve is about as lively as a real +town's Monday morning. Oh no, you don't! Oh no!" + +"Come on to bed, Hanna. You'll catch cold. Your breath's freezin'." + +"I'm goin'--away, for good--that's where--I'm goin'!" + +Her words threatened to come out on a sob, but she stayed it, the back of +her hand to her mouth. + +Her gaze was riveted, and would not move, from a little curtain above the +wash-stand, a guard against splashing crudely embroidered in a little +hand-in-hand boy and girl. + +"You--you're sayin' a good many hasty things to-night, Hanna." + +"Maybe." + +He plucked at a gray-wool knot in the coverlet. + +"Mighty hasty things." + +She turned, then, plunging her hands into the great suds of feather bed, +the whole thrust of her body toward him. + +"'Hasty'! Is eight years hasty? Is eight years of buried-alive hasty? I'm +goin', John Burkhardt; this time I'm goin' sure--sure as my name is Hanna +Long." + +"Goin' where, Hanna?" + +"Goin' where each day ain't like a clod of mud on my coffin. Goin' where +there's a chance for a woman like me to get a look-in on life before she's +as skinny a hex at twenty-seven as old lady Scog--as--like this town's full +of. I'm goin' to make my own livin' in my own way, and I'd like to see +anybody try to stop me." + +"I ain't tryin', Hanna." + +She drew back in a flash of something like surprise. + +"You're willin', then?" + +"No, Hanna, not willin'." + +"You can't keep me from it. Incompatibility is grounds!" + +The fires of her rebellion, doused for the moment, broke out again, flaming +in her cheeks. + +He raised himself to his elbow, regarding her there in her flush, the +white line of her throat whiter because of it. She was strangely, not +inconsiderably taller. + +"Why, Hanna, what you been doin' to yourself?" + +Her hand flew to a new and elaborately piled coiffure, a half-fringe of +curling-iron, little fluffed out tendrils escaping down her neck. + +"In--incompatibility is grounds." + +"It's mighty becomin', Hanna. Mighty becomin'." + +"It's grounds, all right!" + +"'Grounds'? Grounds for what, Hanna?" + +She looked away, her throat distending as she swallowed. + +"Divorce." + +There was a pause, then so long that she had a sense of falling through its +space. + +"Look at me, Hanna!" + +She swung her gaze reluctantly to his. He was sitting erect now, a kind of +pallor setting in behind the black beard. + +"Leggo!" she said, loosening his tightening hand from her wrists. "Leggo; +you hurt!" + +"I--take it when a woman uses that word in her own home, she means it." + +"This one does." + +"You're a deacon's wife. Things--like this are--are pretty serious with +people in our walk of life. We--'ain't learned in our communities yet not +to take the marriage law as of God's own makin'. I'm a respected citizen +here." + +"So was Ed Bevins. It never hurt his hide." + +"But it left her with a black name in the town." + +"Who cares? She don't." + +"It's no good to oppose a woman, Hanna, when she's made up her mind; but +I'm willin' to meet you half-way on this thing. Suppose we try it again. +I got some plans for perkin' things up a bit between us. Say we join the +Buckeye Bowling Club, and--" + +"No! No! No! That gang of church-pillars! I can't stand it, I tell you; you +mustn't try to keep me! You mustn't! I'm a rat in a trap here. Gimme a few +dollars. Hundred and fifty is all I ask. Not even alimony. Lemme apply. +Gimme grounds. It's done every day. Lemme go. What's done can't be undone. +I'm not blamin' you. You're what you are and I'm what I am. I'm not blamin' +anybody. You're what you are, and God Almighty can't change you. Lemme go, +John; for God's sake, lemme go!" + +"Yes," he said, finally, not taking his eyes from her and the chin +hardening so that it shot out and up. "Yes, Hanna; you're right. You got to +go." + + * * * * * + +The skeleton of the Elevated Railway structure straddling almost its entire +length, Sixth Avenue, sullen as a clayey stream, flows in gloom and crash. +Here, in this underworld created by man's superstructure, Mrs. Einstein, +Slightly Used Gowns, nudges Mike's Eating-Place from the left, and on the +right Stover's Vaudeville Agency for Lilliputians divides office-space +and rent with the Vibro Health Belt Company. It is a kind of murky drain, +which, flowing between, catches the refuse from Fifth Avenue and the +leavings from Broadway. To Sixth Avenue drift men who, for the first time +in a Miss-spending life, are feeling the prick of a fraying collar. Even +Fifth Avenue is constantly feeding it. A _couturier's_ model gone hippy; a +specialty-shop gone bankrupt; a cashier's books gone over. Its shops are +second-hand, and not a few of its denizens are down on police records as +sleight-of-hand. At night women too weary to be furtive turn in at its +family entrances. It is the cauldron of the city's eye of newt, toe of +frog, wool of bat, and tongue of dog. It is the home of the most daring +all-night eating-places, the smallest store, the largest store, the +greatest revolving stage, the dreariest night court, and the drabest night +birds in the world. + +War has laid its talons and scratched slightly beneath the surface of Sixth +Avenue. Hufnagel's Delicatessen, the briny hoar of twenty years upon it, +went suddenly into decline and the hands of a receiver. Recruiting +stations have flung out imperious banners. Keeley's Chop-House--Open +All Night--reluctantly swings its too hospitable doors to the +one-o'clock-closing mandate. + +To the New-Yorker whose nights must be filled with music, preferably jazz, +to pass Keeley's and find it dark is much as if Bacchus, emulating the +newest historical rogue, had donned cassock and hood. Even that half of +the evening east of the cork-popping land of the midnight son has waned at +Keeley's. No longer a road-house on the incandescent road to dawn, there is +something hangdog about its very waiters, moving through the easy maze of +half-filled tables; an orchestra, sheepish of its accomplishment, can lift +even a muted melody above the light babel of light diners. There is a +cabaret, too, bravely bidding for the something that is gone. + +At twelve o'clock, five of near-Broadway's best breed, in woolly anklets +and wristlets and a great shaking of curls, execute the poodle-prance to +half the encores of other days. May Deland, whose ripple of hip and droop +of eyelid are too subtle for censorship, walks through her hula-hula dance, +much of her abandon abandoned. A pair of _apaches_ whirl for one hundred +and twenty consecutive seconds to a great bang of cymbals and seventy-five +dollars a week. At shortly before one Miss Hanna de Long, who renders +ballads at one-hour intervals, rose from her table and companion in +the obscure rear of the room, to finish the evening and her cycle with +"Darling, Keep the Grate-Fire Burning," sung in a contralto calculated to +file into no matter what din of midnight dining. + +In something pink, silk, and conservatively V, she was a careful +management's last bland ingredient to an evening that might leave too +Cayenne a sting to the tongue. + +At still something before one she had finished, and, without encore, +returned to her table. + +"Gawd!" she said, and leaned her head on her hand. "I better get me a job +hollerin' down a well!" + +Her companion drained his stemless glass with a sharp jerking back of the +head. His was the short, stocky kind of assurance which seemed to say, +"Greater securities hath no man than mine, which are gilt-edged." +Obviously, Mr. Lew Kaminer clipped his coupons. + +"Not so bad," he said. "The song ain't dead; the crowd is." + +"Say, they can't hurt my feelin's. I been a chaser-act ever since I hit the +town." + +"Well, if I can sit and listen to a song in long skirts twelve runnin' +weeks, three or four nights every one of 'em, take it from me, there's a +whistle in it somewhere." + +"Just the same," she said, pushing away her glass, "my future in this +business is behind me." + +He regarded her, slumped slightly in his chair, celluloid toothpick +dangling. There was something square about his face, abetted by a +parted-in-the-middle toupee of great craftsmanship, which revealed itself +only in the jointure over the ears of its slightly lighter hair with the +brown of his own. There was a monogram of silk on his shirt-sleeve, of gold +on his bill-folder, and of diamonds on the black band across the slight +rotundity of his waistcoat. + +"Never you mind, I'm for you, girl," he said. + +There was an undeniable taking-off of years in Miss de Long. Even the very +texture of her seemed younger and the skin massaged to a new creaminess, +the high coiffure blonder, the eyes quicker to dart. + +"Lay off, candy kid," she said. "You're going to sugar." + +"Have another fizz," he said, clicking his fingers for a waiter. + +"Anything to please the bold, bad man," she said. + +"You're a great un," he said. "Fellow never knows how to take you from one +minute to the next." + +"You mean a girl never knows how to take you." + +"Say," he said, "any time anybody puts anything over on you!" + +"And you?" + +"There you are!" he cried, eying her fizz. "Drink it down; it's good for +what ails you." + +"Gawd!" she said. "I wish I knew what it was is ailin' me!" + +"Drink 'er down!" + +"You think because you had me goin' on these things last night that +to-night little sister ain't goin' to watch her step. Well, watch her watch +her step," Nevertheless, she drank rather thirstily half the contents of +the glass. "I knew what I was doin' every minute of the time last night, +all righty. I was just showin' us a good time." + +"Sure!" + +"It's all right for us girls to take what we want, but the management don't +want nothing rough around--not in war-time." + +"Right idea!" + +"There's nothing rough about me, Lew. None of you fellows can't say that +about me. I believe in a girl havin' a good time, but I believe in her +always keepin' her self-respect. I always say it never hurt no girl to keep +her self-respect." + +"Right!" + +"When a girl friend of mine loses that, I'm done with her. That don't get a +girl nowheres. That's why I keep to myself as much as I can and don't mix +in with the girls on the bill with me, if--" + +"What's become of the big blond-looker used to run around with you when you +was over at the Bijou?" + +"Me and Kit ain't friends no more." + +"She was some looker." + +"The minute I find out a girl ain't what a self-respectin' girl ought to be +then that lets me out. There's nothin' would keep me friends with her. If +ever I was surprised in a human, Lew, it was in Kittie Scogin. She got me +my first job here in New York. I give her credit for it, but she done it +because she didn't have the right kind of a pull with Billy Howe. She done +a lot of favors for me in her way, but the minute I find out a girl ain't +self-respectin' I'm done with that girl every time." + +"That baby had some pair of shoulders!" + +"I ain't the girl to run a friend down, anyway, when she comes from my home +town; but I could tell tales--Gawd! I could tell tales!" There was new +loquacity and a flush to Miss de Long. She sipped again, this time almost +to the depth of the glass. "The way to find out about a person, Lew, is to +room with 'em in the same boardin'-house. Beware of the baby stare is all I +can tell you. Beware of that." + +"That's what _you_ got," he said, leaning across to top her hand with his, +"two big baby stares." + +"Well, Lew Kaminer," she said, "you'd kid your own shadow. Callin' me a +baby-stare. Of all things! Lew Kaminer!" She looked away to smile. + +"Drink it all down, baby-stare," he said, lifting the glass to her lips. +They were well concealed and back away from the thinning patter of the +crowd, so that, as he neared her, he let his face almost graze--indeed +touch, hers. + +She made a great pretense of choking. + +"O-oh! burns!" + +"Drink it down-like a major." + +She bubbled into the glass, her eyes laughing at him above its rim. + +"Aw gone!" + +He clicked again with his fingers. + +"Once more, Charlie!" he said, shoving their pair of glasses to the +table-edge. + +"You ain't the only money-bag around the place!" she cried, flopping down +on the table-cloth a bulky wad tied in one corner of her handkerchief. + +"Well, whatta you know about that? Pay-day?" + +"Yeh-while it lasts. I hear there ain't goin' to be no more cabarets or +Camembert cheese till after the war." + +"What you going to do with it--buy us a round of fizz?" + +She bit open the knot, a folded bill dropping to the table, uncurling. + +"Lord!" she said, contemplating and flipping it with her finger-tip. "Where +I come from that twenty-dollar bill every week would keep me like a queen. +Here it ain't even chicken feed." + +"You know where there's more chicken feed waitin' when you get hard up, +sister. You're slower to gobble than most. You know what I told you last +night, kiddo--you need lessons." + +"What makes me sore, Lew, is there ain't an act on this bill shows under +seventy-five. It goes to show the higher skirts the higher the salary in +this business." + +"You oughta be singin' in grand op'ra." + +"Yeh--sure! The diamond horseshoe is waitin' for the chance to land me one +swift kick. It only took me twelve weeks and one meal a day to land this +after Kittie seen to it that they let me out over at the Bijou. Say, I know +where I get off in this town, Lew. If there's one thing I know, it's where +I get off. I ain't a squab with a pair of high-priced ankles. I'm down on +the agencies' books as a chaser-act, and I'm down with myself for that. If +there's one thing I ain't got left, it's illusions. Get me? Illusions." + +She hitched sidewise in her chair, dipped her forefinger into her fresh +glass, snapped it at him so that he blinked under the tiny spray. + +"That for you!" she said, giggling. She was now repeatedly catching herself +up from a too constant impulse to repeat that giggle. + +"You little devil!" he said, reaching back for his handkerchief. + +She dipped again, this time deeper, and aimed straighter. + +"Quit!" he said, catching her wrist and bending over it. "Quit it, or I'll +bite!" + +"Ow! Ouch!" + +Her mouth still resolute not to loosen, she jerked back from him. There +was only the high flush which she could not control, and the gaze, heavy +lidded, was not so sure as it might have been. She was quietly, rather +pleasantly, dizzy. + +"I wish--" she said. "I--wi-ish--" + +"What do you wi-ish?" + +"Oh, I--I dunno what I wish!" + +"If you ain't a card!" + +He had lighted a cigar, and, leaning toward her, blew out a fragrant puff +to her. + +"M-m-m!" she said; "it's a Cleopatra." + +"Nop." + +"A El Dorado." + +"Guess again." + +"A what, then?" + +"It's a Habana Queen. Habana because it reminds me of Hanna." + +"Aw--you!" + +At this crowning puerility Mr. Kaminer paused suddenly, as if he had +detected in his laughter a bray. + +"Is Habana in the war, Lew?" + +"Darned if I know exactly." + +"Ain't this war just terrible, Lew?" + +"Don't let it worry you, girl. If it puts you out of business, remember, +it's boosted my stocks fifty per cent. You know what I told you about +chicken feed." + +She buried her nose in her handkerchief, turning her head. Her eyes had +begun to crinkle. + +"It--it's just awful! All them sweet boys!" + +"Now, cryin' ain't goin' to help. You 'ain't got no one marchin' off." + +"That's just it. I 'ain't got no one. Everything is something awful, ain't +it?" Her sympathies and her risibilities would bubble to the surface to +confuse her. "Awful!" + +He scraped one forefinger against the other. + +"Cry-baby! Cry-baby, stick your little finger in your little eye!" + +She regarded him wryly, her eyes crinkled now quite to slits. + +"You can laugh!" + +"Look at the cry-baby!" + +"I get so darn blue." + +"Now--now--" + +"Honest to Gawd, Lew, I get so darn blue I could die." + +"You're a nice girl, and I'd like to see anybody try to get fresh with +you!" + +"Do you--honest, Lew--like me?" + +"There's something about you, girl, gets me every time. Cat-eyes! +Kitty-eyes!" + +"Sometimes I get so blue--get to thinkin' of home and the way it all +happened. You know the way a person will. Home and the--divorce and the +way it all happened with--him--and how I come here and--where it's got me, +and--and I just say to myself, 'What's the use?' You know, Lew, the way a +person will. Back there, anyways, I had a home. There's something in just +havin' a home, lemme tell you. Bein' a somebody in your own home." + +"You're a somebody any place they put you." + +"You never seen the like the way it all happened, Lew. So quick! The day I +took the train was like I was walkin' for good out of a dream. Not so much +as a post-card from there since--" + +"Uh--uh--now--cry-baby!" + +"I--ain't exactly sorry, Lew; only God knows, more'n once in those twelve +weeks out of work I was for goin' back and patchin' it up with him. I ain't +exactly sorry, Lew, but--but there's only one thing on God's earth that +keeps me from being sorry." + +"What?" + +"You." + +He flecked his cigar, hitching his arm up along the chair-back, laughed, +reddened slightly. + +"That's the way to talk! These last two nights you been lightin' up with a +man so he can get within ten feet of you. Now you're shoutin'!" + +She drained her glass, blew her nose, and wiped her eyes. + +She was sitting loosely forward now, her hand out on his. + +"You're the only thing on God's earth that's kept me from--sneakin" back +there--honest. Lew, I'd have gone back long ago and eat dirt to make it +up with him--if not for you. I--ain't built like Kittie Scogin and those +girls. I got to be self-respectin' with the fellows or nothing. They think +more of you in the end--that's my theory." + +"Sure!" + +"A girl's fly or--she just naturally ain't that way. That's where all my +misunderstanding began with Kittie--when she wanted me to move over in them +rooms on Forty-ninth Street with her--a girl's that way or she just ain't +that way!" + +"Sure!" + +"Lew--will you--are you--you ain't kiddin' me all these weeks? Taxicabbin' +me all night in the Park and--drinkin' around this way all the time +together. You 'ain't been kiddin' me, Lew?" + +He shot up his cigar to an oblique. + +"Now you're shoutin'!" he repeated. "It took three months to get you down +off your high horse, but now we're talkin' the same language." + +"Lew!" + +"It ain't every girl I take up with; just let that sink in. I like 'em +frisky, but I like 'em cautious. That's where you made a hit with me. +Little of both. Them that nibble too easy ain't worth the catch." + +She reached out the other hand, covering his with her both. + +"You're--talkin' weddin'-bells, Lew?" + +He regarded her, the ash of his cigar falling and scattering down his +waistcoat. + +"What bells?" + +"Weddin', Lew." Her voice was as thin as a reed. + +"O Lord!" he said, pushing back slightly from the table. "Have another +fizz, girl, and by that time we'll be ready for a trip in my underground +balloon. Waiter!" + +She drew down his arm, quickly restraining it. She was not so sure now of +controlling the muscles of her mouth. + +"Lew!" + +"Now--now--" + +"Please, Lew! It's what kept me alive. Thinkin' you meant that. Please, +Lew! You ain't goin' to turn out like all the rest in this town? You--the +first fellow I ever went as far as--last night with. I'll stand by you, +Lew, through thick and thin. You stand by me. You make it right with me, +Lew, and--" + +He cast a quick glance about, grasped at the sides of the table, and leaned +toward her, _sotto_. + +"For God's sake, hush! Are you crazy?" + +"No," she said, letting the tears roll down over the too frank gyrations of +her face--"no, I ain't crazy. I only want you to do the right thing by me, +Lew. I'm--blue. I'm crazy afraid of the bigness of this town. There ain't a +week I don't expect my notice here. It's got me. If you been stringin' me +along like the rest of 'em, and I can't see nothing ahead of me but the +struggle for a new job--and the tryin' to buck up against what a decent +girl has got to--" + +"Why, you're crazy with the heat, girl! I thought you and me was talking +the same language. I want to do the right thing by you. Sure I do! Anything +in reason is yours for the askin'. That's what I been comin' to." + +"Then, Lew, I want you to do by me like you'd want your sister done by." + +"I tell you you're crazy. You been hitting up too many fizzes lately." + +"I--" + +"You ain't fool enough to think I'm what you'd call a free man? I don't +bring my family matters down here to air 'em over with you girls. You're +darn lucky that I like you well enough to--well, that I like you as much as +I do. Come, now; tell you what I'm goin' to do for you: You name your idea +of what you want in the way of--" + +"O God! Why don't I die? I ain't fit for nothing else!" + +He cast a glance around their deserted edge of the room. A waiter, +painstakingly oblivious, stood two tables back. + +"Wouldn't I be better off out of it? Why don't I die?" + +He was trembling down with a suppression of rage and concern for the rising +gale in her voice. + +"You can't make a scene in public with me and get away with it. If that's +your game, it won't land you anywhere. Stop it! Stop it now and talk sense, +or I'll get up. By God! if you get noisy, I'll get up and leave you here +with the whole place givin' you the laugh. You can't throw a scare in me." + +But Miss de Long's voice and tears had burst the dam of control. There was +an outburst that rose and broke on a wave of hysteria. + +"Lemme die--that's all I ask! What's there in it for me? What has there +ever been? Don't do it, Lew! Don't--don't!" + +It was then Mr. Kaminer pushed back his chair, flopped down his napkin, and +rose, breathing heavily enough, but his face set in an exaggerated kind of +quietude as he moved through the maze of tables, exchanged a check for his +hat, and walked out. + +For a stunned five minutes her tears, as it were, seared, she sat after +him. + +The waiter had withdrawn to the extreme left of the deserted edge of the +room, talking behind his hand to two colleagues in servility, their faces +listening and breaking into smiles. + +Finally Miss de Long rose, moving through the zigzag paths of empty tables +toward a deserted dressing-room. In there she slid into black-velvet +slippers and a dark-blue walking-skirt, pulled on over the pink silk, +tucking it up around the waist so that it did not sag from beneath the hem, +squirmed into a black-velvet jacket with a false dicky made to emulate +a blouse-front, and a blue-velvet hat hung with a curtain-like purple +face-veil. + +As she went out the side, Keeley's was closing its front doors. + +Outside, not even to be gainsaid by Sixth Avenue, the night was like a +moist flower held to the face. A spring shower, hardly fallen, was already +drying on the sidewalks, and from the patch of Bryant Park across the maze +of car-tracks there stole the immemorial scent of rain-water and black +earth, a just-set-out crescent of hyacinths giving off their light steam of +fragrance. How insidious is an old scent! It can creep into the heart like +an ache. Who has not loved beside thyme or at the sweetness of dusk? Dear, +silenced laughs can come back on a whiff from a florist's shop. Oh, there +is a nostalgia lurks in old scents! + +Even to Hanna de Long, hurrying eastward on Forty-second Street, huggingly +against the shadow of darkened shop-windows, there was a new sting of tears +at the smell of earth, daring, in the lull of a city night, to steal out. + +There are always these dark figures that scuttle thus through the first +hours of the morning. + +Whither? + +Twice remarks were flung after her from passing figures in +slouch-hats--furtive remarks through closed lips. + +At five minutes past one she was at the ticket-office grating of a +train-terminal that was more ornate than a rajah's dream. + +"Adalia--please. Huh? Ohio. Next train." + +"Seven-seven. Track nine. Round trip?" + +"N-no." + +"Eighteen-fifty." + +She again bit open the corner knot of her handkerchief. + + * * * * * + +When Hanna de Long, freshly train-washed of train dust, walked down Third +Street away from the station, old man Rentzenauer, for forty-odd springs +coaxing over the same garden, was spraying a hose over a side-yard of +petunias, shirt-sleeved, his waistcoat hanging open, and in the purpling +light his old head merging back against a story-and-a-half house the color +of gray weather and half a century of service. + +At sight of him who had shambled so taken-for-granted through all of her +girlhood, such a trembling seized hold of Hanna de Long that she turned +off down Amboy Street, making another wide detour to avoid a group on the +Koerner porch, finally approaching Second Street from the somewhat straggly +end of it farthest from the station. + +She was trembling so that occasionally she stopped against a vertigo that +went with it, wiped up under the curtain of purple veil at the beads of +perspiration which would spring out along her upper lip. She was quite +washed of rouge, except just a swift finger-stroke of it over the +cheek-bones. + +She had taken out the dicky, too, and for some reason filled in there with +a flounce of pink net ripped off from the little ruffles that had flowed +out from her sleeves. She was without baggage. + +At Ludlow Street she could suddenly see the house, the trees meeting before +it in a lace of green, the two iron jardinieres empty. They had been +painted, and were drying now of a clay-brown coat. + +When she finally went up the brick walk, she thought once that she could +not reach the bell with the strength left to pull it. She did, though, +pressing with her two hands to her left side as she waited. The house was +in the process of painting, too, still wet under a first wash of gray. The +pergola, also. + +The door swung back, and then a figure emerged full from a background of +familiarly dim hallway and curve of banister. She was stout enough to be +panting slightly, and above the pink-and-white-checked apron her face was +ruddy, forty, and ever so inclined to smile. + +"Yes?" + +"Is--is--" + +Out from the hallway shot a cocker spaniel, loose-eared, yapping. + +"Queenie, Queenie--come back. She won't bite--Queenie--bad girl!--come back +from that nasturtium-bed--bad girl!--all washed and combed so pretty for a +romp with her favver when him come home so tired. Queenie!" + +She caught her by a rear leg as she leaped back, wild to rollick, tucking +her under one arm, administering three diminutive punishments on the shaggy +ears. + +"Bad! Bad!" + +"Is Mr.--Burkhardt--home?" + +"Aw, now, he ain't! I sent him down by Gredel's nurseries on his way home +to-night, for some tulip-bulbs for my iron jardinieres. He ought to be +back any minute if he 'ain't stopped to brag with old man Gredel that our +arbutus beats his." Then, smiling and rubbing with the back of her free +hand at a flour-streak across her cheek: "If--if it's the lady from the +orphan asylum come to see about the--the little kid we want--is there +anything I can do for you? I'm his wife. Won't you come in?" + +"Oh no!" said Miss de Long, now already down two of the steps. "I--I--Oh +no, no!--thank you! Oh no--no!--thank you!" + +She walked swiftly, the purple veil blown back and her face seeming to look +out of it whitely, so whitely that she became terrible. + +Night was at hand, and Adalia was drawing down its front shades. + + + + +VII + +GET READY THE WREATHS + + +Where St. Louis begins to peter out into brick- and limestone-kilns and +great scars of unworked and overworked quarries, the first and more +unpretentious of its suburbs take up--Benson, Maplehurst, and Ridgeway +Heights intervening with one-story brick cottages and two-story +packing-cases--between the smoke of the city and the carefully parked Queen +Anne quietude of Glenwood and Croton Grove. + +Over Benson hangs a white haze of limestone, gritty with train and foundry +smoke. At night the lime-kilns, spotted with white deposits, burn redly, +showing through their open doors like great, inflamed diphtheretic throats, +tongues of flame bursting and licking out. + +Winchester Road, which runs out from the heart of the city to string these +towns together, is paved with brick, and its traffic, for the most part, +is the great, tin-tired dump-carts of the quarries and steel interurban +electric cars which hum so heavily that even the windows of outlying +cottages titillate. + +For blocks, from Benson to Maplehurst and from Maplehurst to Ridgeway +Heights, Winchester Road repeats itself in terms of the butcher, the +baker, the corner saloon. A feed-store. A monument- and stone-cutter. A +confectioner. A general-merchandise store, with a glass case of men's +collars outside the entrance. The butcher, the baker, the corner saloon. + +At Benson, where this highway cuts through, the city, wreathed in smoke, +and a great oceanic stretch of roofs are in easy view, and at closer +range, an outlying section of public asylums for the city's discard of its +debility and its senility. + +Jutting a story above the one-storied march of Winchester Road, The +Convenience Merchandise Corner, Benson, overlooks, from the southeast +up-stairs window, a remote view of the City Hospital, the Ferris-wheel of +an amusement park, and on clear days the oceanic waves of roof. Below, +within the store, that view is entirely obliterated by a brace of shelves +built across the corresponding window and brilliantly stacked with ribbons +of a score of colors and as many widths. A considerable flow of daylight +thus diverted, The Convenience Merchandise Corner, even of early afternoon, +fades out into half-discernible corners; a rear-wall display of overalls +and striped denim coats crowded back into indefinitude, the haberdashery +counter, with a giant gilt shirt-stud suspended above, hardly more +outstanding. + +Even the notions and dry-goods, flanking the right wall in stacks and +bolts, merge into blur, the outline of a white-sateen and corseted woman's +torso surmounting the topmost of the shelves with bold curvature. + +With spring sunshine even hot against the steel rails of Winchester Road, +and awnings drawn against its inroads into the window display, Mrs. Shila +Coblenz, routing gloom, reached up tiptoe across the haberdashery counter +for the suspended chain of a cluster of bulbs, the red of exertion rising +up the taut line of throat and lifted chin. + +"A little light on the subject, Milt." + +"Let me, Mrs. C." + +Facing her from the outer side of the counter, Mr. Milton Bauer stretched +also, his well-pressed, pin-checked coat crawling up. + +All things swam out into the glow. The great suspended stud; the background +of shelves and boxes; the scissors-like overalls against the wall; a +clothesline of children's factory-made print frocks; a center-bin of +women's untrimmed hats; a headless dummy beside the door, enveloped in a +long-sleeved gingham apron. + +Beneath the dome of the wooden stud, Mrs. Shila Coblenz, of not too fulsome +but the hour-glass proportions of two decades ago, smiled, her black eyes, +ever so quick to dart, receding slightly as the cheeks lifted. + +"Two twenty-five, Milt, for those ribbed assorted sizes and reinforced +heels. Leave or take. Bergdorff & Sloan will quote me the whole mill at +that price." + +With his chest across the counter and legs out violently behind, Mr. Bauer +flung up a glance from his order-pad. + +"Have a heart, Mrs. C. I'm getting two-forty for that stocking from every +house in town. The factory can't turn out the orders fast enough at that +price. An up-to-date woman like you mustn't make a noise like before the +war." + +"Leave or take." + +"You could shave an egg," he said. + +"And rush up those printed lawns. There was two in this morning, sniffing +around for spring dimities." + +"Any more cotton goods? Next month, this time, you'll be paying an advance +of four cents on percales." + +"Stocked." + +"Can't tempt you with them wash silks, Mrs. C.? Neatest little article on +the market to-day." + +"No demand. They finger it up, and then buy the cotton stuffs. Every time I +forget my trade hacks rock instead of clips bonds for its spending-money I +get stung." + +"This here wash silk, Mrs. C., would--" + +"Send me up a dress-pattern off this coral-pink sample for Selene." + +"This here dark mulberry, Mrs. C., would suit you something immense." + +"That'll be about all." + +He flopped shut his book, snapping a rubber band about it and inserting it +in an inner coat pocket. + +"You ought to stick to them dark, winy shades, Mrs. C. With your coloring +and black hair and eyes, they bring you out like a gipsy. Never seen you +look better than at the Y.M.H.A. entertainment." + +Quick color flowed down her open throat and into her shirtwaist. It was as +if the platitude merged with the very corpuscles of a blush that sank down +into thirsty soil. + +"You boys," she said, "come out here and throw in a jolly with every bill +of goods. I'll take a good fat discount instead." + +"Fact. Never seen you look better. When you got out on the floor in that +stamp-your-foot kind of dance with old man Shulof, your hand on your hip +and your head jerking it up, there wasn't a girl on the floor, your own +daughter included, could touch you, and I'm giving it to you straight." + +"That old thing! It's a Russian folk-dance my mother taught me the first +year we were in this country. I was three years old then, and, when she got +just crazy with homesickness, we used to dance it to each other evenings on +the kitchen floor." + +"Say, have you heard the news?" + +"No." + +"Guess." + +"Can't." + +"Hammerstein is bringing over the crowned heads of Europe for vaudeville." + +Mrs. Coblenz moved back a step, her mouth falling open. + +"Why, Milton Bauer, in the old country a man could be strung up for saying +less than that!" + +"That didn't get across. Try another. A Frenchman and his wife were +traveling in Russia, and--" + +"If--if you had an old mother like mine up-stairs, Milton, eating out her +heart and her days and her weeks and her months over a husband's grave +somewhere in Siberia and a son's grave somewhere in Kishinef, you wouldn't +see the joke neither." + +Mr. Bauer executed a self-administered pat sharply against the back of his +hand. + +"Keeper," he said, "put me in the brain ward. I--I'm sorry, Mrs. C., so +help me! Didn't mean to. How is your mother, Mrs. C.? Seems to me, at the +dance the other night, Selene said she was fine and dandy." + +"Selene ain't the best judge of her poor old grandmother. It's hard for a +young girl to have patience for old age sitting and chewing all day over +the past. It's right pitiful the way her grandmother knows it, too, and +makes herself talk English all the time to please the child and tries to +perk up for her. Selene, thank God, 'ain't suffered, and can't sympathize!" + +"What's ailing her, Mrs. C.? I kinda miss seeing the old lady sitting down +here in the store." + +"It's the last year or so, Milt. Just like all of a sudden a woman as +active as mama always was, her health and--her mind kind of went off with a +pop." + +"Thu! Thu!" + +"Doctor says with care she can live for years, but--but it seems terrible +the way her--poor mind keeps skipping back. Past all these thirty years in +America to--even weeks before I was born. The night they--took my father +off to Siberia, with his bare feet in the snow--for distributing papers +they found on him--papers that used the word 'svoboda'--'freedom.' And the +time, ten years later--they shot down my brother right in front of her +for--the same reason. She keeps living it over--living it over till +I--could die." + +"Say, ain't that just a shame, though!" + +"Living it, and living it, and living it! The night with me, a heavy +three-year-old, in her arms that she got us to the border, dragging a pack +of linens with her! The night my father's feet were bleeding in the snow, +when they took him! How with me a kid in the crib, my--my brother's face +was crushed in--with a heel and a spur. All night, sometimes, she cries in +her sleep--begging to go back to find the graves. All day she sits making +raffia wreaths to take back--making wreaths--making wreaths!" + +"Say, ain't that tough!" + +"It's a godsend she's got the eyes to do it. It's wonderful the way she +reads--in English, too. There ain't a daily she misses. Without them and +the wreaths--I dunno--I just dunno. Is--is it any wonder, Milt, I--I can't +see the joke?" + +"My God, no!" + +"I'll get her back, though." + +"Why, you--she can't get back there, Mrs. C." + +"There's a way. Nobody can tell me there's not. Before the war--before she +got like this, seven hundred dollars would have done it for both of us--and +it will again, after the war. She's got the bank-book, and every week that +I can squeeze out above expenses, she sees the entry for herself. I'll get +her back. There's a way lying around somewhere. God knows why she should +eat out her heart to go back--but she wants it. God, how she wants it!" + +"Poor old dame!" + +"You boys guy me with my close-fisted buying these last two years. It's up +to me, Milt, to squeeze this old shebang dry. There's not much more than a +living in it at best, and now, with Selene grown up and naturally wanting +to have it like other girls, it ain't always easy to see my way clear. But +I'll do it, if I got to trust the store for a year to a child like Selene. +I'll get her back." + +"You can call on me, Mrs. C., to keep my eye on things while you're gone." + +"You boys are one crowd of true blues, all right. There ain't a city +salesman comes out here I wouldn't trust to the limit." + +"You just try me out." + +"Why, just to show you how a woman don't know how many real friends she has +got, why--even Mark Haas, of the Mound City Silk Company, a firm I don't +do a hundred dollars' worth of business with a year, I wish you could have +heard him the other night at the Y.M.H.A., a man you know for yourself just +goes there to be sociable with the trade." + +"Fine fellow, Mark Haas!" + +"'When the time comes, Mrs. Coblenz,' he says, 'that you want to make that +trip, just you let me know. Before the war there wasn't a year I didn't +cross the water twice, maybe three times, for the firm. I don't know +there's much I can do; it ain't so easy to arrange for Russia, but, just +the same, you let me know when you're ready to make that trip.' Just like +that he said it. That from Mark Haas!" + +"And a man like Haas don't talk that way if he don't mean it." + +"Mind you, not a hundred dollars a year business with him. I haven't got +the demands for silks." + +"That wash silk I'm telling you about, though, Mrs. C., does up like a--" + +"There's ma thumping with the poker on the up-stairs floor. When it's +closing-time she begins to get restless. I--I wish Selene would come in. +She went out with Lester Goldmark in his little flivver, and I get nervous +about automobiles." + +Mr. Bauer slid an open-face watch from his waistcoat. + +"Good Lord! five-forty, and I've just got time to sell the Maplehurst +Emporium a bill of goods!" + +"Good-night, Milt; and mind you put up that order of assorted neckwear +yourself. Greens in ready-tieds are good sellers for this time of the year, +and put in some reds and purples for the teamsters." + +"No sooner said than done." + +"And come out for supper some Sunday night, Milt. It does mama good to have +young people around." + +"I'm yours." + +"Good-night, Milt." + +He reached across the counter, placing his hand over hers. + +"Good-night, Mrs. C.," he said, a note lower in his throat; "and remember +that call-on-me stuff wasn't all conversation." + +"Good-night, Milt," said Mrs. Coblenz, a coating of husk over her own voice +and sliding her hand out from beneath, to top his. "You--you're all right!" + + * * * * * + +Up-stairs, in a too tufted and too crowded room directly over the frontal +half of the store, the window overlooking the remote sea of city was +turning taupe, the dusk of early spring, which is faintly tinged with +violet, invading. Beside the stove, a base-burner with faint fire showing +through its mica, the identity of her figure merged with the fat upholstery +of the chair, except where the faint pink through the mica lighted up old +flesh, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, full of years and senile with them, wove with +grasses, the ecru of her own skin, wreaths that had mounted to a great +stack in a bedroom cupboard. + +A clock, with a little wheeze and burring attached to each chime, rang six, +and upon it Mrs. Coblenz, breathing from a climb, opened the door. + +"Ma, why didn't you rap for Katie to come up and light the gas? You'll ruin +your eyes, dearie." + +She found out a match, immediately lighting two jets of a +center-chandelier, turning them down from singing, drawing the shades of +the two front and the southeast windows, stooping over the upholstered +chair to imprint a light kiss. + +"A fine day, mama. There'll be an entry this week. Thirty dollars and +thirteen cents and another call for garden implements. I think I'll lay in +a hardware line after we--we get back. I can use the lower shelf of the +china-table, eh, ma?" + +Mrs. Horowitz, whose face, the color of old linen in the yellowing, emerged +rather startling from the still black hair strained back from it, lay back +in her chair, turning her profile against the upholstered back, half a +wreath and a trail of raffia sliding to the floor. Age had sapped from +beneath the skin, so that every curve had collapsed to bagginess, the +cheeks and the underchin sagging with too much skin. Even the hands were +crinkled like too large gloves, a wide, curiously etched marriage band +hanging loosely from the third finger. + +Mrs. Goblenz stooped, recovering the wreath. + +"Say, mama, this one is a beauty! That's a new weave, ain't it? Here, work +some more, dearie--till Selene comes with your evening papers." + +With her profile still to the chair-back, a tear oozed down the corrugated +face of Mrs. Horowitz's cheek. Another. + +"Now, mama! Now, mama!" + +"I got a heaviness--here--inside. I got a heaviness--" + +Mrs. Coblenz slid down to her knees beside the chair. + +"Now, mama; shame on my little mama! Is that the way to act when Shila +comes up after a good day? 'Ain't we got just lots to be thankful for--the +business growing and the bank-book growing, and our Selene on top? Shame on +mama!" + +"I got a heaviness--here--inside--here." + +Mrs. Coblenz reached up for the old hand, patting it. + +"It's nothing, mama--a little nervousness." + +"I'm an old woman. I--" + +"And just think, Shila's mama, Mark Haas is going to get us letters and +passports and--" + +"My son--my boy--his father before him--" + +"Mama--mama, please don't let a spell come on! It's all right. Shila's +going to fix it. Any day now, maybe--" + +"You'm a good girl. You'm a good girl, Shila." Tears were coursing down to +a mouth that was constantly wry with the taste of them. + +"And you're a good mother, mama. Nobody knows better than me how good." + +"You'm a good girl, Shila." + +"I was thinking last night, mama, waiting up for Selene--just thinking how +all the good you've done ought to keep your mind off the spells, dearie." + +"My son--" + +"Why, a woman with as much good to remember as you've got oughtn't to have +time for spells. I got to thinking about Coblenz, mama, how--you never did +want him, and when I--I went and did it, anyway, and made my mistake, you +stood by me to--to the day he died. Never throwing anything up to me! Never +nothing but my good little mother, working her hands to the bone after +he got us out here to help meet the debts he left us. Ain't that a +satisfaction for you to be able to sit and think, mama, how you helped--" + +"His feet--blood from my heart in the snow--blood from my heart!" + +"The past is gone, darling. What's the use tearing yourself to pieces with +it? Them years in New York when it was a fight even for bread, and them +years here trying to raise Selene and get the business on a footing, you +didn't have time to brood then, mama. That's why, dearie, if only you'll +keep yourself busy with something--the wreaths--the--" + +"His feet--blood from my--" + +"But I'm going to take you back, mama. To papa's grave. To Aylorff's. But +don't eat your heart out until it comes, darling. I'm going to take you +back, mama, with every wreath in the stack; only, you mustn't eat out your +heart in spells. You mustn't, mama; you mustn't." + +Sobs rumbled up through Mrs. Horowitz, which her hand to her mouth tried to +constrict. + +"For his people he died. The papers--I begged he should burn them--he +couldn't--I begged he should keep in his hate--he couldn't--in the square +he talked it--the soldiers--he died for his people--they got him--the +soldiers--his feet in the snow when they took him--the blood in the snow--O +my God!--my--God!" + +"Mama darling, please don't go over it all again. What's the use making +yourself sick? Please!" + +She was well forward in her chair now, winding her dry hands one over the +other with a small rotary motion. + +"I was rocking--Shila-baby in my lap--stirring on the fire black lentils +for my boy--black lentils--he--" + +"Mama!" + +"My boy. Like his father before him. My--" + +"Mama, please! Selene is coming any minute now. You know how she hates it. +Don't let yourself think back, mama. A little will-power, the doctor says, +is all you need. Think of to-morrow, mama; maybe, if you want, you can come +down and sit in the store awhile and--" + +"I was rocking. O my God! I was rocking, and--" + +"Don't get to it--mama, please! Don't rock yourself that way! You'll get +yourself dizzy! Don't, ma; don't!" + +"Outside--my boy--the holler--O God! in my ears all my life! My boy--the +papers--the swords--Aylorff--Aylorff--" + +"'Shh-h-h--mama--" + +"It came through his heart out the back--a blade with two sides--out the +back when I opened the door; the spur in his face when he fell, Shila--the +spur in his face--the beautiful face of my boy--my Aylorff--my husband +before him--that died to make free!" And fell back, bathed in the sweat of +the terrific hiccoughing of sobs. + +"Mama, mama! My God! What shall we do? These spells! You'll kill yourself, +darling. I'm going to take you back, dearie--ain't that enough? I promise. +I promise. You mustn't, mama! These spells--they ain't good for a young +girl like Selene to hear. Mama, 'ain't you got your own Shila--your own +Selene? Ain't that something? Ain't it? Ain't it?" + +Large drops of sweat had come out and a state of exhaustion that swept +completely over, prostrating the huddled form in the chair. + +"Bed--my bed!" + +With her arms twined about the immediately supporting form of her daughter, +her entire weight relaxed, and footsteps that dragged without lift, one +after the other, Mrs. Horowitz groped out, one hand feeling in advance, +into the gloom of a room adjoining. + +"Rest! O my God! rest!" + +"Yes, yes, mama; lean on me." + +"My--bed." + +"Yes, yes, darling." + +"Bed." + +Her voice had died now to a whimper that lay on the room after she had +passed out of it. + +When Selene Coblenz, with a gust that swept the room, sucking the lace +curtains back against the panes, flung open the door upon that chromatic +scene, the two jets of gas were singing softly into its silence, and within +the nickel-trimmed baseburner the pink mica had cooled to gray. Sweeping +open that door, she closed it softly, standing for the moment against it, +her hand crossed in back and on the knob. It was as if--standing there +with her head cocked and beneath a shadowy blue sailor-hat, a smile coming +out--something within her was playing, sweetly insistent to be heard. +Philomela, at the first sound of her nightingale self, must have stood +thus, trembling with melody. Opposite her, above the crowded mantelpiece +and surmounted by a raffia wreath, the enlarged-crayon gaze of her deceased +maternal grandfather, abetted by a horrible device of photography, followed +her, his eyes focusing the entire room at a glance. Impervious to that +scrutiny, Miss Coblenz moved a tiptoe step or two farther into the room, +lifting off her hat, staring and smiling through a three-shelved cabinet +of knickknacks at what she saw far and beyond. Beneath the two jets, high +lights in her hair came out, bronze showing through the brown waves and the +patches of curls brought out over her cheeks. + +In her dark-blue dress, with the row of silver buttons down what was hip +before the hipless age, the chest sufficiently concave and the silhouette a +mere stroke of a hard pencil, Miss Selene Coblenz measured up and down +to America's Venus de Milo, whose chief curvature is of the spine. +Slim-etched, and that slimness enhanced by a conscious kind of collapse +beneath the blue-silk girdle that reached up half-way to her throat, hers +were those proportions which strong women, eschewing the sweet-meat, would +earn by the sweat of the Turkish bath. + +When Miss Coblenz caught her eye in the square of mirror above the +mantelpiece, her hands flew to her cheeks to feel of their redness. They +were soft cheeks, smooth with the pollen of youth, and hands still casing +them, she moved another step toward the portiered door. + +"Mama!" + +Mrs. Coblenz emerged immediately, finger up for silence, kissing her +daughter on the little spray of cheek-curls. + +"'Shh-h-h! Gramaw just had a terrible spell." + +She dropped down into the upholstered chair beside the base-burner, the +pink and moisture of exertion out in her face, took to fanning herself with +the end of a face-towel flung across her arm. + +"Poor gramaw!" she said. "Poor gramaw!" + +Miss Coblenz sat down on the edge of a slim, home-gilded chair, and took to +gathering the blue-silk dress into little plaits at her knee. + +"Of course, if you don't want to know where I've been--or anything--" + +Mrs. Coblenz jerked herself to the moment. + +"Did mama's girl have a good time? Look at your dress, all dusty! You +oughtn't to wear your best in that little flivver." + +Suddenly Miss Coblenz raised her glance, her red mouth bunched, her eyes +all iris. + +"Of course--if you don't want to know--anything." + +At that large, brilliant gaze, Mrs. Coblenz leaned forward, quickened. + +"Why, Selene!" + +"Well, why--why don't you ask me something?" + +"Why, I--I dunno, honey. Did--did you and Lester have a nice ride?" + +There hung a slight pause, and then a swift moving and crumpling-up of Miss +Coblenz on the floor beside her mother's knee. + +"You know--only, you won't ask." + +With her hand light upon her daughter's hair, Mrs. Coblenz leaned forward, +her bosom rising to faster breathing. + +"Why--Selene--I--Why--" + +"We--we were speeding along, and--all of a sudden, out of a clear sky, +he--he popped. He wants it in June, so we can make it our honeymoon to his +new territory out in Oklahoma. He knew he was going to pop, he said, ever +since that first night he saw me at the Y.M.H.A. He says to his uncle Mark, +the very next day in the store, he says to him, 'Uncle Mark,' he says, +'I've met _the_ little girl.' He says he thinks more of my little finger +than all of his regular crowd of girls in town put together. He wants to +live in one of the built-in-bed flats on Wasserman Avenue, like all the +swell young marrieds. He's making twenty-six hundred now, mama, and if he +makes good in the new Oklahoma territory, his Uncle Mark is--is going to +take care of him better. Ain't it like a dream, mama--your little Selene +all of a sudden in with--the somebodies?" + +Immediate tears were already finding staggering procession down Mrs. +Coblenz's face, her hovering arms completely encircling the slight figure +at her feet. + +"My little girl! My little Selene! My all!" + +"I'll be marrying into one of the best families in town, ma. A girl who +marries a nephew of Mark Haas can hold up her head with the best of them. +There's not a boy in town with a better future than Lester. Like Lester +says, everything his Uncle Mark touches turns to gold, and he's already +touched Lester. One of the best known men on Washington Avenue for his +blood-uncle, and on his poor dead father's side related to the Katz & +Harberger Harbergers. Was I right, mama, when I said if you'd only let me +stop school I'd show you? Was I right, momsie?" + +"My baby! It's like I can't realize it. So young!" + +"He took the measure of my finger, mama, with a piece of string. A diamond, +he says, not too flashy, but neat." + +"We have 'em, and we suffer for 'em, and we lose 'em." + +"He's going to trade in the flivver for a chummy roadster, and--" + +"Oh, darling, it's like I can't bear it!" + +At that Miss Coblenz sat back on her tall wooden heels, mauve spats +crinkling. + +"Well, you're a merry little future mother-in-law, momsie!" + +"It ain't that, baby. I'm happy that my girl has got herself up in the +world with a fine upright boy like Lester; only--you can't understand, +babe, till you've got something of your own flesh and blood that belongs to +you, that I--I couldn't feel anything except that a piece of my heart was +going if--if it was a king you was marrying." + +"Now, momsie, it's not like I was moving a thousand miles away. You can +be glad I don't have to go far, to New York or to Cleveland, like Alma +Yawitz." + +"I am! I am!" + +"Uncle--Uncle Mark, I guess, will furnish us up like he did Leon and +Irma--only, I don't want mahogany; I want Circassian walnut. He gave them +their flat-silver, too, Puritan design, for an engagement present. Think of +it, mama, me having that stuck-up Irma Sinsheimer for a relation! It always +made her sore when I got chums with Amy at school and got my nose in it +with the Acme crowd, and--and she'll change her tune now, I guess, me +marrying her husband's second cousin." + +"Didn't Lester want to--to come in for a while, Selene, to--to see--me?" + +Sitting there on her heels, Miss Coblenz looked away, answering with her +face in profile. + +"Yes; only--I--well, if you want to know it, mama, it's no fun for a girl +to bring a boy like Lester up here in--in this crazy room, all hung up +with gramaw's wreaths and half the time her sitting out there in the dark, +looking in at us through the door and talking to herself." + +"Gramaw's an old--" + +"Is it any wonder I'm down at Amy's half the time? How do you think a girl +feels to have gramaw keep hanging onto that old black wig of hers and not +letting me take the crayons or wreaths down off the wall? In Lester's crowd +they don't know nothing about revolutionary stuff and persecutions. Amy's +grandmother don't even talk with an accent, and Lester says his grandmother +came from Alsace-Lorraine. That's French. They think only tailors and +old-clothes men and--." + +"Selene!" + +"Well, they do. You--you're all right, mama, as up to date as any of them, +but how do you think a girl feels, with gramaw always harping right in +front of everybody the way granpa was a revolutionist and was hustled off +barefooted to Siberia like a tramp? And the way she was cooking black beans +when my uncle died. Other girls' grandmothers don't tell everything they +know. Alma Yawitz's grandmother wears lorgnettes, and you told me yourself +they came from nearly the same part of the Pale as gramaw. But you don't +hear them remembering it. Alma Yawitz says she's Alsace-Lorraine on both +sides. People don't tell everything they know. Anyway where a girl's got +herself as far as I have!" + +Through sobs that rocked her, Mrs. Coblenz looked down upon her daughter. + +"Your poor old grandmother don't deserve that from you! In her day she +worked her hands to the bone for you. With the kind of father you had we +might have died in the gutter but for how she helped to keep us out, you +ungrateful girl--your poor old grandmother, that's suffered so terrible!" + +"I know it, mama, but so have other people suffered." + +"She's old, Selene--old." + +"I tell you it's the way you indulge her, mama. I've seen her sitting here +as perk as you please, and the minute you come in the room down goes her +head like--like she was dying." + +"It's her mind, Selene--that's going. That's why I feel if I could only get +her back. She ain't old, gramaw ain't. If I could only get her back where +she--could see for herself--the graves--is all she needs. All old people +think of--the grave. It's eating her--eating her mind. Mark Haas is going +to fix it for me after the war--maybe before--if he can. That's the only +way poor gramaw can live--or die--happy, Selene. Now--now that my--my +little girl ain't any longer my responsibility, I--I'm going to take her +back--my little--girl"--her hand reached out, caressing the smooth head, +her face projected forward and the eyes yearning down--"my all." + +"It's you will be my responsibility now, ma." + +"No! No!" + +"The first thing Lester says was a flat on Wasserman and a spare room for +Mother Coblenz when she wants to come down. Wasn't it sweet for him to put +it that way right off, ma? 'Mother Coblenz,' he says." + +"He's a good boy, Selene. It'll be a proud day for me and gramaw. Gramaw +mustn't miss none of it. He's a good boy and a fine family." + +"That's why, mama, we--got to--to do it up right." + +"Lester knows, child, he's not marrying a rich girl." + +"A girl don't have to--be rich to get married right." + +"You'll have as good as mama can afford to give it to her girl." + +"It--it would be different if Lester's uncle and all wasn't in the Acme +Club crowd, and if I hadn't got in with all that bunch. It's the last +expense I'll ever be to you, mama." + +"Oh, baby, don't say that!" + +"I--me and Lester--Lester and me were talking, mama--when the engagement's +announced next week--a reception--" + +"We can clear out this room, move the bed out of gramaw's room into ours, +and serve the ice-cream and cake in--" + +"Oh, mama, I don't mean--that!" + +"What?" + +"Who ever heard of having a reception _here_! People won't come from town +'way out to this old--cabbage-patch. Even Gertie Wolf, with their big +house on West Pine Boulevard, had her reception at the Walsingham Hotel. +You--We--can't expect Mark Haas and all the relations--the Sinsheimers-- +and--all to come out here. I'd rather not have any." + +"But, Selene, everybody knows we ain't millionaires, and that you got in +with that crowd through being friends at school with Amy Rosen. All the +city salesmen and the boys on Washington Avenue, even Mark Haas himself, +that time he was in the store with Lester, knows the way we live. You don't +need to be ashamed of your little home, Selene, even if it ain't on West +Pine Boulevard." + +"It'll be--your last expense, mama. The Walsingham, that's where the girl +that Lester Goldmark marries is expected to have her reception." + +"But, Selene, mama can't afford nothing like that." + +Pink swam up into Miss Coblenz's face, and above the sheer-white collar +there was a little beating movement at the throat, as if something were +fluttering within. + +"I--I'd just as soon not get married as--as not to have it like other +girls." + +"But, Selene--" + +"If I--can't have a trousseau like other girls and the things that go with +marrying into a--a family like Lester's--I--then--there's no use. I--I +can't! I--wouldn't!" + +She was fumbling, now, for a handkerchief, against tears that were +imminent. + +"Why, baby, a girl couldn't have a finer trousseau than the old linens back +yet from Russia that me and gramaw got saved up for our girl--linen that +can't be bought these days. Bed-sheets that gramaw herself carried to the +border, and--" + +"Oh, I know! I knew you'd try to dump that stuff on me. That old, +worm-eaten stuff in gramaw's chest." + +"It's hand-woven, Selene, with--" + +"I wouldn't have that yellow old stuff--that old-fashioned junk--if I +didn't have any trousseau. If I can't afford monogrammed up-to-date linens, +like even Alma Yawitz, and a--a pussy-willow-taffeta reception dress, I +wouldn't have any. I wouldn't." Her voice, crowded with passion and tears, +rose to the crest of a sob. "I--I'd die first!" + +"Selene, Selene, mama 'ain't got the money. If she had it, wouldn't she be +willing to take the very last penny to give her girl the kind of a wedding +she wants? A trousseau like Alma's cost a thousand dollars, if it cost a +cent. Her table-napkins alone, they say, cost thirty-six dollars a dozen, +un-monogrammed. A reception at the Walsingham costs two hundred dollars, +if it costs a cent. Selene, mama will make for you every sacrifice she can +afford, but she 'ain't got the money!" + +"You--have got the money!" + +"So help me God, Selene! You know, with the quarries shut down, what +business has been. You know how--sometimes even to make ends meet it is a +pinch. You're an ungrateful girl, Selene, to ask what I ain't able to do +for you. A child like you, that's been indulged, that I 'ain't even asked +ever in her life to help a day down in the store. If I had the money, God +knows you should be married in real lace, with the finest trousseau a girl +ever had. But I 'ain't got the money--I 'ain't got the money." + +"You have got the money! The book in gramaw's drawer is seven hundred and +forty. I guess I ain't blind. I know a thing or two." + +"Why, Selene! That's gramaw's--to go back--" + +"You mean the bank-book's hers?" + +"That's gramaw's, to go back--home on. That's the money for me to take +gramaw and her wreaths back home on." + +"There you go--talking luny." + +"Selene!" + +"Well, I'd like to know what else you'd call it, kidding yourself along +like that." + +"You--" + +"All right. If you think gramaw, with her life all lived, comes first +before me, with all my life to live--all right!" + +"Your poor old--" + +"It's always been gramaw first in this house, anyway. I couldn't even have +company since I'm grown up because the way she's always allowed around. +Nobody can say I ain't good to gramaw; Lester says it's beautiful the way I +am with her, remembering always to bring the newspapers and all, but just +the same, I know when right's right and wrong's wrong. If my life ain't +more important than gramaw's, with hers all lived, all right. Go ahead!" + +"Selene, Selene, ain't it coming to gramaw, after all her years' hard work +helping us that--she should be entitled to go back with her wreaths for the +graves? Ain't she entitled to die with that off her poor old mind? You bad, +ungrateful girl, you, it's coming to a poor old woman that's suffered as +terrible as gramaw that I should find a way to take her back." + +"Take her back. Where--to jail? To prison in Siberia herself--" + +"There's a way--" + +"You know gramaw's too old to take a trip like that. You know in your own +heart she won't ever see that day. Even before the war, much less now, +there wasn't a chance for her to get passports back there. I don't say it +ain't all right to kid her along, but when it comes to--to keeping me out +of the--the biggest thing that can happen to a girl--when gramaw wouldn't +know the difference if you keep showing her the bank-book--it ain't right. +That's what it ain't. It ain't right!" + +In the smallest possible compass, Miss Coblenz crouched now upon the floor, +head down somewhere in her knees, and her curving back racked with rising +sobs. + +"Selene--but some day--" + +"Some day nothing! A woman like gramaw can't do much more than go down-town +once a year, and then you talk about taking her to Russia! You can't get in +there, I--tell you--no way you try to fix it after--the way gramaw--had--to +leave. Even before the war Ray Letsky's father couldn't get back on +business. There's nothing for her there, even after she gets there. In +thirty years, do you think you can find those graves? Do you know the size +of Siberia? No! But I got to pay--I got to pay for gramaw's nonsense. But I +won't. I won't go to Lester if I can't go right. I--." + +"Baby, don't cry so--for God's sake, don't cry so!" + +"I wish I was dead!" + +"'Sh-h-h! You'll wake gramaw." + +"I do!" + +"O God, help me to do the right thing!" + +"If gramaw could understand, she'd be the first one to tell you the right +thing. Anybody would." + +"No! No! That little bank-book and its entries are her life--her life." + +"She don't need to know, mama. I'm not asking that. That's the way they +always do with old people to keep them satisfied. Just humor 'em. Ain't I +the one with life before me--ain't I, mama?" + +"O God, show me the way!" + +"If there was a chance, you think I'd be spoiling things for gramaw? But +there ain't, mama--not one." + +"I keep hoping if not before, then after the war. With the help of Mark +Haas--" + +"With the book in her drawer, like always, and the entries changed once in +a while, she'll never know the difference. I swear to God she'll never know +the difference, mama!" + +"Poor gramaw!" + +"Mama, promise me--your little Selene. Promise me?" + +"Selene, Selene, can we keep it from her?" + +"I swear we can, mama." + +"Poor, poor gramaw!" + +"Mama? Mama darling?" + +"O God, show me the way!" + +"Ain't it me that's got life before me? My whole life?" + +"Yes--Selene." + +"Then, mama, please--you will--you will--darling?" + +"Yes, Selene." + +In a large, all-frescoed, seventy-five-dollar-an-evening-with-lights and +cloak-room-service ballroom of the Hotel Walsingham, a family hostelry in +that family circle of St. Louis known as its West End, the city holds not +a few of its charity-whists and benefit musicales; on a dais which can be +carried in for the purpose, morning readings of "Little Moments from +Little Plays," and with the introduction of a throne-chair, the monthly +lodge-meetings of the Lady Mahadharatas of America. For weddings and +receptions, a lane of red carpet leads up to the slight dais; and lined +about the brocade and paneled walls, gilt-and-brocade chairs, with the +crest of Walsingham in padded embroidery on the backs. Crystal chandeliers, +icicles of dripping light, glow down upon a scene of parquet floor, draped +velours, and mirrors wreathed in gilt. + +At Miss Selene Coblenz's engagement reception, an event properly festooned +with smilax and properly jostled with the elbowing figures of waiters +tilting their plates of dark-meat chicken salad, two olives, and a +finger-roll in among the crowd, a stringed three-piece orchestra, faintly +seen and still more faintly heard, played into the babel. + +Light, glitteringly filtered through the glass prisms, flowed down upon the +dais; upon Miss Selene Coblenz, in a taffeta that wrapped her flat waist +and chest like a calyx and suddenly bloomed into the full-inverted petals +of a skirt; upon Mr. Lester Goldmark, his long body barely knitted yet +to man's estate, and his complexion almost clear, standing omnivorous, +omnipotent, omnipresent, his hair so well brushed that it lay like black +japanning, a white carnation at his silk lapel, and his smile slightly +projected by a rush of very white teeth to the very front. Next in line, +Mrs. Coblenz, the red of a fervent moment high in her face, beneath the +maroon-net bodice the swell of her bosom, fast, and her white-gloved hand +constantly at the opening and shutting of a lace-and-spangled fan. Back, +and well out of the picture, a potted hydrangea beside the Louis Quinze +armchair, her hands in silk mitts laid out along the gold-chair sides, her +head quavering in a kind of mild palsy, Mrs. Miriam Horowitz, smiling and +quivering her state of bewilderment. + +With an unfailing propensity to lay hold of to whomsoever he spake, Mr. +Lester Goldmark placed his white-gloved hand upon the white-gloved arm of +Mrs. Coblenz. + +"Say, Mother Coblenz, ain't it about time this little girl of mine was +resting her pink-satin double A's? She's been on duty up here from four to +seven. No wonder Uncle Mark bucked." + +Mrs. Coblenz threw her glance out over the crowded room, surging with a +wave of plumes and clipped heads like a swaying bucket of water which +crowds but does not lap over its sides. + +"I guess the crowd is finished coming in by now. You tired, Selene?" + +Miss Coblenz turned her glowing glance. + +"Tired! This is the swellest engagement-party I ever had." + +Mrs. Coblenz shifted her weight from one slipper to the other, her +maroon-net skirts lying in a swirl around them. + +"Just look at gramaw, too! She holds up her head with the best of them. I +wouldn't have had her miss this, not for the world." + +"Sure one fine old lady! Ought to have seen her shake my hand, Mother +Coblenz. I nearly had to holler, 'Ouch!'" + +"Mama, here comes Sara Suss and her mother. Take my arm, Lester honey. +People mama used to know." Miss Coblenz leaned forward beyond the dais with +the frail curve of a reed. + +"Howdado, Mrs. Suss.... Thank you. Thanks. Howdado, Sara? Meet my _fiance_, +Lester Haas Goldmark; Mrs. Suss and Sara Suss, my _fiance_.... That's +right, better late than never. There's plenty left.... We think he is, Mrs. +Suss. Aw, Lester honey, quit! Mama, here's Mrs. Suss and Sadie." + +"Mrs. Suss! Say--if you hadn't come, I was going to lay it up against you. +If my new ones can come on a day like this, it's a pity my old friends +can't come, too. Well, Sadie, it's your turn next, eh?... I know better +than that. With them pink cheeks and black eyes, I wish I had a dime +for every chance." (_Sotto_.) "Do you like it, Mrs. Suss? Pussy-willow +taffeta.... Say, it ought to be. An estimate dress from Madame +Murphy--sixty-five with findings. I'm so mad, Sara, you and your mama +couldn't come to the house that night to see her things. If I say so +myself, Mrs. Suss, everybody who seen it says Jacob Sinsheimer's daughter +herself didn't have a finer. Maybe not so much, but every stitch, Mrs. +Suss, made by the same sisters in the same convent that made hers.... +Towels! I tell her it's a shame to expose them to the light, much less wipe +on them. Ain't it?... The goodness looks out from his face. And such a +love-pair! Lunatics, I call them. He can't keep his hands off. It ain't +nice, I tell him.... Me? Come close. I dyed the net myself. Ten cents' +worth of maroon color. Don't it warm your heart, Mrs. Suss? This morning, +after we got her in Lester's Uncle Mark's big automobile, I says to her, I +says, 'Mama, you sure it ain't too much?' Like her old self for a minute, +Mrs. Suss, she hit me on the arm. 'Go 'way,' she said; 'on my grandchild's +engagement day anything should be too much?' Here, waiter, get these two +ladies some salad. Good measure, too. Over there by the window, Mrs. Suss. +Help yourselves." + +"Mama, 'sh-h-h! the waiters know what to do." + +Mrs. Coblenz turned back, the flush warm to her face. + +"Say, for an old friend I can be my own self." + +"Can we break the receiving-line now, Lester honey, and go down with +everybody? The Sinsheimers and their crowd over there by themselves, we +ought to show we appreciate their coming." + +Mr. Goldmark twisted high in his collar, cupping her small bare elbow in +his hand. + +"That's what I say, lovey; let's break. Come, Mother Coblenz, let's step +down on high society's corns." + +"Lester!" + +"You and Selene go down with the crowd, Lester. I want to take gramaw to +rest for a while before we go home. The manager says we can have room +fifty-six by the elevator for her to rest in." + +"Get her some newspapers, ma, and I brought her a wreath down to keep her +quiet. It's wrapped in her shawl." + +Her skirts delicately lifted, Miss Coblenz stepped down off the dais. With +her cloud of gauze-scarf enveloping her, she was like a tulle-clouded +"Springtime," done in the key of Botticelli. + +"Oop-si-lah, lovey-dovey!" said Mr. Goldmark, tilting her elbow for the +downward step. + +"Oop-si-lay, dovey-lovey!" said Miss Coblenz, relaxing to the support. + +Gathering up her plentiful skirts, Mrs. Coblenz stepped off, too, but back +toward the secluded chair beside the potted hydrangea. A fine line of pain, +like a cord tightening, was binding her head, and she put up two fingers to +each temple, pressing down the throb. + +"Mrs. Coblenz, see what I got for you!" She turned, smiling. "You don't +look like you need salad and green ice-cream. You look like you needed what +I wanted--a cup of coffee." + +"Aw, Mr. Haas--now where in the world--Aw, Mr. Haas!" + +With a steaming cup outheld and carefully out of collision with the crowd, +Mr. Haas unflapped a napkin with his free hand, inserting his foot in the +rung of a chair and dragging it toward her. + +"Now," he cried, "sit and watch me take care of you!" + +There comes a tide in the affairs of men when the years lap softly, leaving +no particular inundations on the celebrated sands of time. Between forty +and fifty, that span of years which begin the first slight gradations from +the apex of life, the gray hair, upstanding like a thick-bristled brush off +Mr. Haas's brow, had not so much as whitened, or the slight paunchiness +enhanced even the moving-over of a button. When Mr. Haas smiled, his +mustache, which ended in a slight but not waxed flourish, lifted to reveal +a white-and-gold smile of the artistry of careful dentistry, and when, upon +occasion, he threw back his head to laugh, the roof of his mouth was his +own. + +He smiled now, peering through gold-rimmed spectacles attached by a chain +to a wire-encircled left ear. + +"Sit," he cried, "and let me serve you!" + +Standing there with a diffidence which she could not crowd down, Mrs. +Coblenz smiled through closed lips that would pull at the corners. + +"The idea, Mr. Haas--going to all that trouble!" + +"'Trouble'! she says. After two hours' handshaking in a swallow-tail, a man +knows what real trouble is!" + +She stirred around and around the cup, supping up spoonfuls gratefully. + +"I'm sure much obliged. It touches the right spot." + +He pressed her down to the chair, seating himself on the low edge of the +dais. + +"Now you sit right there and rest your bones." + +"But my mother, Mr. Haas. Before it's time for the ride home she must rest +in a quiet place." + +"My car'll be here and waiting five minutes after I telephone." + +"You--sure have been grand, Mr. Haas!" + +"I shouldn't be grand yet to my--Let's see--what relation is it I am to +you?" + +"Honest, you're a case, Mr. Haas--always making fun!" + +"My poor dead sister's son marries your daughter. That makes you +my--nothing-in-law." + +"Honest, Mr. Haas, if I was around you, I'd get fat laughing." + +"I wish you was." + +"Selene would have fits. 'Never get fat, mama,' she says, 'if you don't +want--'" + +"I don't mean that." + +"What?" + +"I mean I wish you was around me." + +She struck him then with her fan, but the color rose up into the mound of +her carefully piled hair. + +"I always say I can see where Lester gets his comical ways. Like his uncle, +that boy keeps us all laughing." + +"Gad! look at her blush! I know women your age would give fifty dollars a +blush to do it that way." + +She was looking away again, shoulders heaving to silent laughter, the blush +still stinging. + +"It's been so--so long, Mr. Haas, since I had compliments made to me. You +make me feel so--silly." + +"I know it, you nice, fine woman, you; and it's a darn shame!" + +"Mr.--Haas!" + +"I mean it. I hate to see a fine woman not get her dues. Anyways, when +she's the finest woman of them all!" + +"I--the woman that lives to see a day like this--her daughter the happiest +girl in the world, with the finest boy in the world--is getting her dues, +all right, Mr. Haas." + +"She's a fine girl, but she ain't worth her mother's little finger-nail." + +"Mr.--Haas!" + +"No, sir-ree!" + +"I must be going now, Mr. Haas. My mother--" + +"That's right. The minute a man tries to break the ice with this little +lady, it's a freeze-out. Now what did I say so bad? In business, too. Never +seen the like. It's like trying to swat a fly to come down on you at the +right minute. But now, with you for a nothing-in-law, I got rights." + +"If--you ain't the limit, Mr. Haas!" + +"Don't mind saying it, Mrs. C., and, for a bachelor, they tell me I'm not +the worst judge in the world, but there's not a woman on the floor stacks +up like you do." + +"Well--of all things!" + +"Mean it." + +"My mother, Mr. Haas, she--" + +"And if anybody should ask you if I've got you on my mind or not, well, +I've already got the letters out on that little matter of the passports you +spoke to me about. If there's a way to fix that up for you, and leave it to +me to find it, I--" + +She sprang now, trembling, to her feet, all the red of the moment receding. + +"Mr. Haas, I--I must go now. My--mother--" + +He took her arm, winding her in and out among crowded-out chairs behind the +dais. + +"I wish it to every mother to have a daughter like you, Mrs. C." + +"No! No!" she said, stumbling rather wildly through the chairs. "No! No! +No!" + +He forged ahead, clearing her path of them. + +Beside the potted hydrangea, well back and yet within an easy view, Mrs. +Horowitz, her gilt armchair well cushioned for the occasion, and her +black grenadine spread decently about her, looked out upon the scene, her +slightly palsied head well forward. + +"Mama, you got enough? You wouldn't have missed it, eh? A crowd of people +we can be proud to entertain. Not? Come; sit quiet in another room for a +while, and then Mr. Haas, with his nice big car, will drive us all home +again. You know Mr. Haas, dearie--Lester's uncle that had us drove so +careful in his fine car. You remember, dearie--Lester's uncle?" + +Mrs. Horowitz looked up, her old face crackling to smile. + +"My grandchild! My grandchild! She'm a fine one. Not? My grandchild! My +grandchild!" + +"You--mustn't mind, Mr. Haas. That's--the way she's done since--since +she's--sick. Keeps repeating--" + +"My grandchild! From a good mother and a bad father comes a good +grandchild. My grandchild! She'm a good one. My--" + +"Mama dearie, Mr. Haas is in a hurry. He's come to help me walk you into a +little room to rest before we go home in Mr. Haas's big, fine auto. Where +you can go and rest, mama, and read the newspapers. Come." + +"My back--_ach_--my back!" + +"Yes, yes, mama; we'll fix it. Up! So--la!" + +They raised her by the crook of each arm, gently. + +"So! Please, Mr. Haas, the pillows. Shawl. There!" + +Around a rear hallway, they were almost immediately into a blank, staring +hotel bedroom, fresh towels on the furniture-tops only enhancing its +staleness. + +"Here we are. Sit her here, Mr. Haas, in this rocker." + +They lowered her, almost inch by inch, sliding down pillows, against the +chair-back. + +"Now, Shila's little mama want to sleep?" + +"I got--no rest--no rest." + +"You're too excited, honey; that's all." + +"No rest." + +"Here--here's a brand-new hotel Bible on the table, dearie. Shall Shila +read it to you?" + +"Aylorff--" + +"Now, now, mama. Now, now; you mustn't! Didn't you promise Shila? Look! +See, here's a wreath wrapped in your shawl for Shila's little mama to work +on. Plenty of wreaths for us to take back. Work awhile, dearie, and then +we'll get Selene and Lester, and, after all the nice company goes away, +we'll go home in the auto." + +"I begged he should keep in his hate--his feet in the--" + +"I know! The papers! That's what little mama wants. Mr. Haas, that's what +she likes better than anything--the evening papers." + +"I'll go down and send 'em right up with a boy, and telephone for the car. +The crowd's beginning to pour out now. Just hold your horses there, Mrs. +C., and I'll have those papers up here in a jiffy." + +He was already closing the door after him, letting in and shutting out a +flare of music. + +"See, mama, nice Mr. Haas is getting us the papers. Nice evening papers for +Shila's mama." She leaned down into the recesses of the black grenadine, +withdrawing from one of the pockets a pair of silver-rimmed spectacles, +adjusting them with some difficulty to the nodding head. "Shila's--little +mama! Shila's mama!" + +"Aylorff, the littlest wreath for--Aylorff--_Meine Kraentze_--" + +"Yes, yes." + +"_Mem Mann. Mein Suehn_." + +"'Shh-h-h, dearie!" + +"Aylorff--_der klenste Kranz far ihm_!" + +"'Shh-h-h, dearie! Talk English, like Selene wants. Wait till we get on the +ship--the beautiful ship to take us back. Mama, see out the window! Look! +That's the beautiful Forest Park, and this is the fine Hotel Walsingham +just across. See out! Selene is going to have a flat on--" + +"_Sey hoben gestorben far Freiheit. Sey hoben_--" + +"There! That's the papers!" + +To a succession of quick knocks, she flew to the door, returning with the +folded evening editions under her arm. + +"Now," she cried, unfolding and inserting the first of them into the +quivering hands--"now, a shawl over my little mama's knees and we're +fixed!" + +With a series of rapid movements she flung open one of the black-cashmere +shawls across the bed, folding it back into a triangle. Beside the table, +bare except for the formal, unthumbed Bible, Mrs. Horowitz rattled out a +paper, her near-sighted eyes traveling back and forth across the page. + +Music from the ferned-in orchestra came in drifts, faint, not so faint. +From somewhere, then immediately from everywhere--beyond, below, without, +the fast shouts of newsboys mingling. + +Suddenly and of her own volition, and with a cry that shot up through the +room, rending it like a gash, Mrs. Horowitz, who moved by inches, sprang to +her supreme height, her arms, the crooks forced out, flung up. + +"My darlings--what died--for it! My darlings what died for it! My +darlings--Aylorff, my husband!" There was a wail rose up off her words, +like the smoke of incense curling, circling around her. "My darlings what +died to make free!" + +"Mama! Darling! Mama! Mr. Haas! Help! Mama! My God!" + +"Aylorff--my husband--I paid with my blood to make free--my blood--. My +son--my--own--" Immovable there, her arms flung up and tears so heavy that +they rolled whole from her face down to the black grenadine, she was as +sonorous as the tragic meter of an Alexandrine line; she was like Ruth, +ancestress of heroes and progenitor of kings. + +"My boy--my own! They died for it! _Mein Mann! Mein Suehn_!" + +On her knees, frantic to press her down once more into the chair, terrified +at the rigid immobility of the upright figure, Mrs. Coblenz paused then, +too, her clasp falling away, and leaned forward to the open sheet of the +newspaper, its black head-lines facing her: + +RUSSIA FREE + +BANS DOWN 100,000 SIBERIAN PRISONERS LIBERATED + +In her ears a ringing silence, as if a great steel disk had clattered down +into the depths of her consciousness. There on her knees, trembling seized +her, and she hugged herself against it, leaning forward to corroborate her +gaze. + +MOST RIGID AUTOCRACY IN THE WORLD OVERTHROWN + +RUSSIA REJOICES + +"Mama! Mama! My God! Mama!" + +"Home, Shila; home! My husband who died for it--Aylorff! Home now, quick! +My wreaths! My wreaths!" + +"O my God! Mama!" + +"Home!" + +"Yes, darling--yes--" + +"My wreaths!" + +"Yes, yes, darling; your wreaths. Let--let me think. Freedom! O my God! +help me to find a way! O my God!" + +"My wreaths!" + +"Here, darling, here!" + +From the floor beside her, the raffia wreath half in the making, Mrs. +Coblenz reached up, pressing it flat to the heaving old bosom. + +"There, darling, there!" + +"I paid with my blood--" + +"Yes, yes, mama; you--paid with your blood. Mama--sit, please. Sit +and--let's try to think. Take it slow, darling; it's like we can't take it +in all at once. I--We--Sit down, darling. You'll make yourself terrible +sick. Sit down, darling; you--you're slipping." + +"My wreaths--" + +Heavily, the arm at the waist gently sustaining, Mrs. Horowitz sank rather +softly down, her eyelids fluttering for the moment. A smile had come out on +her face, and, as her head sank back against the rest, the eyes resting at +the downward flutter, she gave out a long breath, not taking it in again. + +"Mama! You're fainting!" She leaned to her, shaking the relaxed figure by +the elbows, her face almost touching the tallow-like one with the smile +lying so deeply into it. "Mama! My God! darling, wake up! I'll take you +back. I'll find a way to take you. I'm a bad girl, darling, but I'll find a +way to take you. I'll take you if--if I kill for it! I promise before God +I'll take you. To-morrow--now--nobody can keep me from taking you. The +wreaths, mama! Get ready the wreaths! Mama darling, wake up! Get ready the +wreaths! The wreaths!" Shaking at that quiet form, sobs that were full of +voice tearing raw from her throat, she fell to kissing the sunken face, +enclosing it, stroking it, holding her streaming gaze closely and burningly +against the closed lids. "Mama, I swear to God I'll take you! Answer me, +mama! The bank-book--you've got it! Why don't you wake up, mama? Help!" + +Upon that scene, the quiet of the room so raucously lacerated, burst Mr. +Haas, too breathless for voice. + +"Mr. Haas--my mother! Help--my mother! It's a faint, ain't it? A faint?" + +He was beside her at two bounds, feeling of the limp wrists, laying his ear +to the grenadine bosom, lifting the reluctant lids, touching the flesh that +yielded so to touch. + +"It's a faint, ain't it, Mr. Haas? Tell her I'll take her back. Wake her +up, Mr. Haas! Tell her I'm a bad girl, but I--I'm going to take her back. +Now! Tell her! Tell her, Mr. Haas, I've got the bank-book. Please! Please! +O my God!" + +He turned to her, his face working to keep down compassion. + +"We must get a doctor, little lady." + +She threw out an arm. + +"No! No! I see! My old mother--my old mother--all her life a nobody--She +helped--she gave it to them--my mother--a poor little widow nobody--She +bought with her blood that freedom--she--" + +"God! I just heard it down-stairs--it's the tenth wonder of the world. It's +too big to take in. I was afraid--" + +"Mama darling, I tell you, wake up! I'm a bad girl, but I'll take you back. +Tell her, Mr. Haas, I'll take her back. Wake up, darling! I swear to God +I'll take you!" + +"Mrs. Coblenz, my--poor little lady, your mother don't need you to take +her back. She's gone back where--where she wants to be. Look at her face, +little lady. Can't you see she's gone back?" + +"No! No! Let me go. Let me touch her. No! No! Mama darling!" + +"Why, there wasn't a way, little lady, you could have fixed it for that +poor--old body. She's beyond any of the poor fixings we could do for her. +You never saw her face like that before. Look!" + +"The wreaths--the wreaths!" + +He picked up the raffia circle, placing it back again against the quiet +bosom. + +"Poor little lady!" he said. "Shila--that's left for us to do. You and me, +Shila--we'll take the wreaths back for her." + +"My darling--my darling mother! I'll take them back for you! I'll take them +back for you!" + +"_We'll_ take them back for her--Shila." + +"I'll--" + +"_We'll_ take them back for her--Shila." + +"_We'll_ take them back for you, mama. We'll take them back for you, +darling!" + +THE END + + + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Gaslight Sonatas, by Fannie Hurst + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GASLIGHT SONATAS *** + +***** This file should be named 10025.txt or 10025.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/0/0/2/10025/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Josephine Paolucci +and PG Distributed Proofreaders + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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