4 files changed, 19278 insertions, 0 deletions

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.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS," WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  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
new 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.  Special rules,
+set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
+copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
+protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark.  Project
+Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
+charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission.  If you
+do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
+rules is very easy.  You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
+such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
+research.  They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
+practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks.  Redistribution is
+subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
+redistribution.
+
+
+
+*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
+
+THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
+PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
+
+To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
+distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
+(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
+https://gutenberg.org/license).
+
+
+Section 1.  General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic works
+
+1.A.  By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
+and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
+(trademark/copyright) agreement.  If you do not agree to abide by all
+the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
+all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
+If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
+terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
+entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
+
+1.B.  "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark.  It may only be
+used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
+agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement.  There are a few
+things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
+even without complying with the full terms of this agreement.  See
+paragraph 1.C below.  There are a lot of things you can do with Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
+and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.  See paragraph 1.E below.
+
+1.C.  The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
+or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic works.  Nearly all the individual works in the
+collection are in the public domain in the United States.  If an
+individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
+located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
+copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
+works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
+are removed.  Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
+Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
+freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
+this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
+the work.  You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
+keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
+Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
+
+1.D.  The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
+what you can do with this work.  Copyright laws in most countries are in
+a constant state of change.  If you are outside the United States, check
+the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
+before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
+creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
+Gutenberg-tm work.  The Foundation makes no representations concerning
+the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
+States.
+
+1.E.  Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
+
+1.E.1.  The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
+access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
+whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
+phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
+Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
+copied or distributed:
+
+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
+
+1.E.2.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
+from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
+posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
+and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
+or charges.  If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
+with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
+work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1
+through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
+Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or
+1.E.9.
+
+1.E.3.  If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
+with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
+must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional
+terms imposed by the copyright holder.  Additional terms will be linked
+to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
+permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
+
+1.E.4.  Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
+work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
+
+1.E.5.  Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
+electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
+prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
+active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm License.
+
+1.E.6.  You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
+compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
+word processing or hypertext form.  However, if you provide access to or
+distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
+"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
+posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),
+you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
+copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
+request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
+form.  Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
+
+1.E.7.  Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
+performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
+unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
+
+1.E.8.  You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
+access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
+that
+
+- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
+     the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
+     you already use to calculate your applicable taxes.  The fee is
+     owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
+     has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
+     Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.  Royalty payments
+     must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
+     prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
+     returns.  Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
+     sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
+     address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
+     the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."
+
+- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
+     you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
+     does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
+     License.  You must require such a user to return or
+     destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
+     and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
+     Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any
+     money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
+     electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
+     of receipt of the work.
+
+- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
+     distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
+
+1.E.9.  If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
+electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
+forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
+both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
+Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark.  Contact the
+Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
+
+1.F.
+
+1.F.1.  Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
+effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
+public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
+collection.  Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
+"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
+corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
+property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
+computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
+your equipment.
+
+1.F.2.  LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
+of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
+Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
+Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
+liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
+fees.  YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
+LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
+PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3.  YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
+TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
+LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
+INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
+DAMAGE.
+
+1.F.3.  LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
+defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
+receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
+written explanation to the person you received the work from.  If you
+received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
+your written explanation.  The person or entity that provided you with
+the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
+refund.  If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
+providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
+receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund.  If the second copy
+is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
+opportunities to fix the problem.
+
+1.F.4.  Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
+in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS," WITH NO OTHER
+WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
+WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
+
+1.F.5.  Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
+warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
+If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
+law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
+interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
+the applicable state law.  The invalidity or unenforceability of any
+provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
+
+1.F.6.  INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
+trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
+providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
+with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
+promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
+harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
+that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
+or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
+work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
+Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
+
+
+Section  2.  Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
+electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
+including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers.  It exists
+because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
+people in all walks of life.
+
+Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
+assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
+goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
+remain freely available for generations to come.  In 2001, the Project
+Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
+and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
+To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
+and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
+and the Foundation web page at https://www.pglaf.org.
+
+
+Section 3.  Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
+Foundation
+
+The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
+501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
+state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
+Revenue Service.  The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
+number is 64-6221541.  Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at
+https://pglaf.org/fundraising.  Contributions to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent
+permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
+
+The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.
+Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered
+throughout numerous locations.  Its business office is located at
+809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email
+business@pglaf.org.  Email contact links and up to date contact
+information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official
+page at https://pglaf.org
+
+For additional contact information:
+     Dr. Gregory B. Newby
+     Chief Executive and Director
+     gbnewby@pglaf.org
+
+Section 4.  Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
+Literary Archive Foundation
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
+spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
+increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
+freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
+array of equipment including outdated equipment.  Many small donations
+($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
+status with the IRS.
+
+The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
+charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
+States.  Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
+considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
+with these requirements.  We do not solicit donations in locations
+where we have not received written confirmation of compliance.  To
+SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any
+particular state visit https://pglaf.org
+
+While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
+have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
+against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
+approach us with offers to donate.
+
+International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
+any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
+outside the United States.  U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
+
+Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
+methods and addresses.  Donations are accepted in a number of other
+ways including including checks, online payments and credit card
+donations.  To donate, please visit: https://pglaf.org/donate
+
+
+Section 5.  General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
+works.
+
+Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm
+concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared
+with anyone.  For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project
+Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.
+
+Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
+editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.
+unless a copyright notice is included.  Thus, we do not necessarily
+keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.
+
+Each eBook is in a subdirectory of the same number as the eBook's
+eBook number, often in several formats including plain vanilla ASCII,
+compressed (zipped), HTML and others.
+
+Corrected EDITIONS of our eBooks replace the old file and take over
+the old filename and etext number.  The replaced older file is renamed.
+VERSIONS based on separate sources are treated as new eBooks receiving
+new filenames and etext numbers.
+
+Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:
+
+     https://www.gutenberg.org
+
+This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
+including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
+Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
+subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
+
+EBooks posted prior to November 2003, with eBook numbers BELOW #10000,
+are filed in directories based on their release date.  If you want to
+download any of these eBooks directly, rather than using the regular
+search system you may utilize the following addresses and just
+download by the etext year.
+
+     http://www.ibiblio.org/gutenberg/etext06
+
+    (Or /etext 05, 04, 03, 02, 01, 00, 99,
+     98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 92, 91 or 90)
+
+EBooks posted since November 2003, with etext numbers OVER #10000, are
+filed in a different way.  The year of a release date is no longer part
+of the directory path.  The path is based on the etext number (which is
+identical to the filename).  The path to the file is made up of single
+digits corresponding to all but the last digit in the filename.  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.zip b/old/10025.zip
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4826179
--- /dev/null
+++ b/old/10025.zip